Distracting Biology
“So what do you guys think about Spider-Man?”
“You’re right, Bob, that is definitely a conversation change.”
“I don’t know,” Wade mused. “He’s certainly new, and he’s a bit… bright for Gotham. At least, his old outfit was. The new one fits a bit better here, plus he’s got the Gotham Utility Belt that the rest of the Bats have.”
“Bullshit,” Bob snorted. “We were kids when the first Robin showed up, how the hell can you get any ‘brighter’ than that?”
“Come to think about it, he actually kinda moves like the first Robin did,” Mark pointed out.
“What?” Wade asked.
“No, no, Mark has a point! They’re both all flip-a-dee-doo-dah, ya know?”
Wade laughed. “Sure, if that’s how you wanna say it. I don’t know, Bob, I think he’s pretty cool. He certainly seems more worried about the everyday Gothamite than the villains, which I think is pretty cool. Why do you ask?”
“You remember me telling you about my fridge?”
Mark and Wade began to snicker incessantly with the mere mention of it, to which Bob sighed. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. The only reason I bring it up is because apparently my new new fridge was brought in by the same company. Except they decided they didn’t want to piss me off any further, so they just decided to leave it at the bottom of my apartment building and do nothing else. They just fucking drove off afterwards!”
“That’s just terrible,” Mark sympathized.
“So I’m standing there,” Bob continued, “barbeque sauce on my titties, staring at my fridge, wondering how the hell I’m going to get it up there. And, wouldn’t you know it? A weird ass guy in red and blue spandex with a spider symbol on his chest asks if he can help. I’m joking, and I ask him if he has super strength, otherwise he might not be much help. So he just stares at me, and I swear I can feel his smile, and he just. Fucking picks it up like it weighs nothing? And so I lead him back to my apartment, and he even helps me get it hooked up! Says he was able to help his aunt with installing a fridge a year or so ago. So we get it hooked up, and I ask who he is, and that is how I met Spider-Man.”
The other two were silent for a moment.
“Huh,” Wade says. “I think I met Red Hood once.”
“You what?” Mark practically screeched.
“And you didn’t think to tell us?” Bob adds.
“I just didn’t remember it until now. And it never came up, whaddya want from me?”
“To tell us the story, you numpty!” Mark verbally smacks Wade upside the head.
“Okay, geez. Well, I was taking some trash out, and I got to the dumpster and I open the lid, and oh god, there’s a man there.”
“Honestly, I wouldn’t find that that surprising,” Bob interrupted. “It’s fucking Gotham.”
“As I was saying,” Wade said pointedly, “I did what I could and helped the guy out, made sure he was okay and then went on my merry way. I was later scrolling through the news when I saw a ranking of the Bats and this weird guy was on there. Apparently his name is Red Hood, and he’s kind of a crime lord. So I can only hope that if I get caught up in something a little dangerous, I don’t know, maybe I’ll have someone on my side.”
“Did he say why he was in the dumpster?” Mark asked. “I feel like— I feel like you can’t just leave that out.”
“He said he fell in there. I think it was from the roof.”
“The roof of your ten story apartment building?”
“Yeah.”
“What?!”
“I don’t know, he didn’t act like it was a weird occurrence for him. The only thing he thought was weird was that he had been helped out of it.”
“Your do-gooding is going to get you killed one of these days,” Bob bemoaned.
“Or it could get me on the good side of one of the more dangerous people in Gotham,” Wade pointed out.
“Robin stopped to pet Chica once while Batman gave me the stink-eye,” Mark mentioned.
“You got to experience the Bat Glare in person?”
“Oh yeah. It was pretty scary, but the kid was scarier somehow.”
“That’s our stabby little Robin for you,” Bob said fondly.
“You Gothamites are fucking insane,” Mark declared.
“Oh, please! At least our city doesn’t have heroes or villains that could reverse the rotation of the fucking Earth, Mr. Metropolis!” Bob said.
“No, you only have people that poison the water supply regularly and that claim a greenhouse in Robinson Park!” Mark shot back.
“How dare you, Poison Ivy is a legend,” Wade said, offense definitely taken.
“She’s an eco-terrorist!”
“And?”
Silence. “Fuck, what were we talking about?”
They were cooking again, what with Peter’s meta-sized diet and Tim knowing the importance of eating regularly. Despite popular opinion, Tim was not a bad cook. He had been raised in a mansion practically by himself and with access to the internet, of course he had to feed himself somehow. And he was bored, so he had taken up cooking.
“You were all alone?” Peter asked, after Tim had explained as much.
Tim shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, yeah? Parents were gone practically all the time and the housekeeper only came down a couple times a week to make some food for me, so it was just me most of the time.”
“In that big ass mansion?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus dude.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Tim argued, stirring the noodles and taking one out to test doneness.
“That’s the definition of parental neglect. How are you okay??”
“How are you okay?! You went through a fuck ton in the past year!”
“Fair enough.” Peter starts to turn back to the dishes, when Tim’s elbow knocks the bay leaves off the counter. Tim tried to catch it, only for a thin web to shoot out and snatch it from the air a second before it could hit the ground. Tim gawked and looked up at Peter, whose face was beet red.
“I thought you didn’t wear your web-shooters out of costume?”
“I uh. I don’t…”
Tim turned off the stove and darted over to Peter, grabbing Peter’s wrist and studying it. Peter suddenly sucked in a breath when Tim’s thumb found the small opening, spasming. Tim dropped Peter’s hand like a hot potato. “Shit, did that hurt? Fuck, I’m so sorry!”
“No,” Peter said, voice strangled. “No, it didn’t hurt, you’re fine.”
“Then what… was that?”
Peter’s gaze was suddenly intently fixed on the ceiling as Tim squinted at him. “Pete, if it didn’t hurt, what was that?”
“Did that actually hurt? It’s okay if it did, I mean, it’s not ‘cause I wasn’t thinking at and that meant it hurt you, so I’m so fucking sorry, I just…”
“No, it didn’t hurt.” Peter’s pupils were dilated, really dilated. Tim blinked.
Oh. Oh. Tim swallowed and grabbed the pasta pot off the stove, draining it in the sink. “Do you, er, want to talk about it?”
“My spinnerets? Sure. What just happened? Not particularly.”
“Okay.” Tim took the pasta back to the stove and mixed in the alfredo sauce from the pan next to it. The kitchen was awkward and quiet, and Tim was carefully filing the information away. “So did those come with the rest of your powers?”
“No. Peter Two had them, but Peter Three and I use artificial webs.”
“So where did they come from?”
Peter grimaced. “I was staying in an abandoned building for a while before I moved in with Jason. The building is a little… radioactive?”
Tim blinked. “What.”
“I er. Woke up one morning, and there they were!”
“You think the radioactivity…”
“Yeah. Yeah I do. It was a radioactive spider, after all.”
“Fuck, what else changed?”
“I have these now too.” Peter pulled the side of his cheek back, revealing his teeth.
Tim squinted. “I don’t see anything different about them.”
“Gimme a sec.” Peter closed his eyes, apparently concentrating on something. Tim’s mouth fell open as Peter’s canines extended a bit in length. Tim walked back over to Peter, examining the pointy teeth.
“There are small holes at the end of them,” Tim marveled.
“What? I mean, I guess I haven’t been to the dentist in a while…”
“Pete, I don’t think those are cavities.”
Silence. “Oh. Oh! Tim, I bit my tongue the other day!”
“Okay?”
“My tongue was numb afterwards!”
Tim stared at Peter, his jaw practically on the floor. “What the fuck,” Tim whispered.
They stared at each other for a moment. “Fuck,” Peter mumbled. “We should probably get a sample of it and concoct an antivenom.”
“Why?”
“If I bite you while we’re kissing or, you know, I could fucking kill you!”
Tim’s eyes were as wide as the dinner plates they had gotten from the cupboards. “Could you?”
“I’m as strong as I am because my strength is proportional to that of a spider. If my strength is like that, then… Tim, I was bitten by a widow spider.”
“Fuck.”
Peter started pacing, running his hand through his hair. “Have I already accidentally poisoned you? Shit, fuck, I don’t—”
His breathing became erratic, and Tim quickly grasped his hand. “Hey, hey. If you had done that, I can guarantee we would know about it, alright? It’s going to be okay.”
Tim pressed Peter’s hand to his chest and held it there, breathing in slow, exaggerated breaths. Peter matched it, and was relatively calm again. Relatively. “We can synthesize something tomorrow night, okay? Just come to the Batcave after school. It’s going to be okay.”
They sat down and started eating quietly. Peter was still pretty spaced out, and Tim couldn’t blame him in the slightest.