Chapter 2
It was a week later when Peter moves in. It was the quickest move in Kate had ever seen. He had a total of three boxes and one book bag that he was particularly protective of and that was it. So he had all of his belongings in his room within an hour. She almost didn’t believe him when he said he was done. Then an hour later, he walked out of his room and said he was unpacked and got his key before leaving again to “grab some groceries.” He was soft spoken, and a bit awkward, and super polite. Even more so than when he came by for the interview.
She was busy that day with work herself, so she didn’t have much of a chance to talk to him after she gave him the key, and reminded him to call her if he needed anything. She wasn’t there when he returned and when she came back, he was gone again. But there was a few new things in the pantry so she could tell he had actually came back at some point.
Between her job, and she assumed his own job, she actually didn’t see him much the whole first two weeks he was technically living there.
“How’s the roommate thing going?” Sam asked her over comms, when she showed up to help with an Avengers thing. They’d found an underground alien hideout, who had slowly been contaminating the water supply to half of Brooklyn. It was starting to become a huge problem so they were all jumping in to help now that the source had finally been discovered. Well, most of the new Avengers anyway. Rhodey was still in DC and Yelena was doing her own thing for a while in Europe. Not that she was really a part of the Avengers.
“Of course it had to be aliens. He’s never going to stop talking about this,” she heard Bucky mutter, the sound of something crunching echoed through the comms as he spoke before she had a chance to answer Sam.
”I don’t know, I never see him,” she called back, pausing to shoot an arrow into one of the escaping aliens arm, pinning it to the wall. She wasn’t aiming for a kill shot. They wanted answers to what they were doing first, and killing wasn’t really her thing anyway. Clint warned her it may come with the job at some point, but so far she’s been lucky. “It’s kind of like I still don’t have a roommate. Except there’s a lot more protein bars and ramen in my cupboards.”
Before Sam or anyone had a chance to reply, Spider-Man decided to join the scene.
Spider-Man isn’t really apart of the team, but he’s not really not part of the team either. He just sort of shows up sometimes, and everyone just accepts him. Even if Bucky finds him a little weird, and for some reason seems a little afraid of him, even if he won’t really admit it. Says he’s stronger than he looks and it makes him wary. But Spider-Man is always helping people. He’s “just looking out for the little guy” as he once said to them when they asked what his deal was.
Sometimes, looking out for the little guy, meant getting involved in the bigger stuff.
So actually, it made sense he’d been looped into this issue, since it had started to affect quite a huge sum of Brooklyn’s population. The hospitals had been filled with people sick from the contamination.
“Hey guys,” he chirped, as he smoothly lands on a nearby telephone pole, perched up there with astonishing balance. “I was hoping you guys would show up. A wise man once told me to call for help when I’m out of my depth and well-“ he shrugged, then flipped off the pole and landed nimbly right next to Kate.
He turned to stare at her for a second with his head cocked to the side, and it made Kate feel like he was seeing her for the first time or something- when they had definitely teamed up on more than one occasion, and then he put up his hand to do some weird, awkward salute.
“Is he saying he was the anonymous tip?” Sam asked, his voice filtering in through the comms, and Kate can’t help roll her eyes as she laughed and saluted back to Spider-Man like it was completely normal.
“Duh, Cap. Keep up old man,” Spider-Man quipped, placing his hands on his hips as he looked over at the entrance. Bucky and Sam were already inside, and she’s meant to be watching the exits. Kamala, another newbie is coming too and she’s going to help with the detaining. Something that she suspects Spider-Man will jump in on himself.
“You know, just because I have the name Captain America doesn’t mean I’m old,” Sam argued back, and there’s another crunch that comes through as he’s talking that makes Kate internally cringe. “Okay, these aliens are something wicked. Spider-Man if you’re going to be here can you come in and offer up some of those freaky webs?”
“As long as you never call them freaky again.” He nodded then a second later he shot his webs toward the entrance and was slingshotting his way through a window.
The rest of the mission goes mostly as planned. She sees Spider-Man take a pretty nasty hit to the head, but he bounces back fairly quickly, and shouts at the alien that hit him in a way that makes Kate think he may have a concussion as he webs him to the wall. Of course, the guy denies any pain, and he’s gone before any officials show up on the scene. Which is typical. Spider-Man seems to have a love hate relationship with the government and police force from what she’s noticed.
Kate stayed to help with clean up, and she’s still new herself to the team so Cap makes her stay for debrief, which is really just the four of them still left going to get lunch together and discuss what happened. Really, it just felt like another excuse for Sam and Bucky to check in on her and Kamala since they’re the young ones.
“How do you know Spider-Man isn’t young like us?” Kate asked one day, when Bucky was trying to say Kamala was too young to be on the team, before they finally accepted she was going to keep showing up the way Spider-Man did. “No one knows who he is. He could be 17 under that mask, we don’t know.”
Bucky immediately denied any plausibility to that, reminding her that Spider-Man has been around since the accords started. He remembers him being there when the Avengers all fought each other in Germany. “There’s no way he’s a kid. He can’t be.” He didn’t say anything else on the subject though.
Kate didn’t end up back in the apartment until much later that day, and Peter was already there, crashed on the couch with The Lion King playing on the television. His hair was a curly mess, half matted to his head, half sticking up this way and that.
“Cute.” She found herself muttering quietly under her breath as she smiled down at his sleeping form on the couch, before shaking her head and walking away, immediately thinking it weird that she’d just done that. Super creepy to stare at your sleeping roommate that you barely know yet, Kate. You hang out with Yelena too much.
Images from the fight were still prominent in her mind, and she wanted to figuratively and literally wash the day off of herself, so she went and showered before ordering pizza while she watched reruns of Big Bang Theory on her bed to let her roommate sleep.
She was in the middle of her third episode when she finally heard the bell alerting her to the pizza’s arrival. She saw Peter shift and rollover as she walked past, but other than that, it looked like he was still asleep. She buzzed the pizza guy up quietly, and waited by the door. This was longest she’d been in the apartment at the same time as Peter, she realized, and he was asleep the whole time.
“Hey, thank you. Here you go,” she greeted, passing over some cash before taking the two boxes of pizza. It was probably entirely too much for two people but oh well. As quietly as she could, she used her foot to close the door, and the second the door clicked shut, Peter’s head popped up over the couch, his eyes wide as saucers. “Oh shit, I’m sorry.”
“What’ time is it?” He blinked, sliding his legs off the couch so he was sitting up and rubbed at his eyes. He looked utterly confused and disoriented for a minute, frowning over at her as she stood there holding the pizza by the front door.
”Uhh…. Like 7? PM?” She added when his frown deepened and he turned to squint out the window. Then his eyes went wide, suddenly alert as he practically fell off the couch in his hurry to scramble off of it.
“Oh crap. I had a meeting at 5:30. Shit shit. Shit. I’m so sorry. I’ve gotta go.” He scrambles out of the room, darting to his bedroom. He was brushing his hair down at as he went, and then started pulling his shirt over his head before he was even through the door.
She blinked stupidly in his direction for probably way too long- surprised to see how… fit he looked under his baggy shirts from the quick glimpse she got. He seemed so skinny and lanky that it caught her off guard- that was all. There was absolutely nothing else too it. Finally, she shook herself out of it and moved to sit the pizza boxes on the kitchen table.
“Don’t leave without grabbing some pizza!” She called out, knowing he would probably hear her in his room. She could still hear him moving around in there, and every now and then, another quiet curse would filter through the door after something banged. A minute or two later, he was rushing back out, wearing clothes that were infinitely nicer than she’d seen him wear before- but still a bit too lose.
”Thank you,” his eyes met hers for just a moment as he smiled and grabbed a slice and then with his prized book bag slung over his shoulder, he was running out the front door.
She had no idea what the meeting was, but if it was important enough that he wanted to dress better, it was probably too late at this point since he was two hours late. But she didn’t have the heart to tell him that- but maybe she was wrong anyway. Maybe he was meeting with family or something.
Speaking of family… she owed Clint a phone call.