Xara's Guide To Befriending Superheroes (Not Clickbait):-
Rule 1: Call him a serial killer.
Rule 2: Blackmail him.
Rule 3: Be in love with his alter ego.
MCU!Peter Parker story.
Book [1] of the Paracosm series (but can also be read as a stand-alone).
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⋆ eight ⋆
"Those look cool," I can't help but gush a few days later when Spider-Man holds out new web-shooters. They look slightly different from the ones he's wearing now, and I can't help but marvel over them. "You've got to teach me how to make them sometime. They look like a cool upgrade."
He laughs, shaking his head. "They're actually for you."
It takes a second for his words to process in my brain, but when they finally do, I just shake my head slightly. "They... what?"
That's when he grins and takes one of my hands, helping slide them on, but I'm literally frozen in place. "Well... we were saying that we needed a faster way around the city, and because your bike is gone I made new ones for efficiency. Totally not because we're friends or anything, you know."
Just as he adjusts the sizing on my wrists, I smile back. "Definitely not." I can bet under the mask he's grinning, though. All weekend we were on the phone while I was studying, which definitely wasn't what I was expecting when I signed up for this in the summer. He said he was making something during our calls while I worked, but... "That's what you were doing all weekend! Making these!"
He holds his hands up in surrender. "You caught me. Okay, let me explain how to use this quickly before we go on patrol. I'll have to keep replacing the fluid cartridge because the webs are going to run out if we go all around the city. That stays on the web shooter magnetically. It's meant to snap onto the cuff but your wrist is... abnormally small, so I'm going to have to modify it slightly–"
"Does this mean I'm Spider-Woman?"
Spider-Man stops talking, just staring at me for a second, mechanical eyes growing smaller for a second. "...No," he finally replies, sounding confused, himself.
"Damn it."
"Well... sort of? I guess? Unofficially," he stammers, trying to figure it out. "Also, wouldn't you be Spider-Girl?"
"Wouldn't you be Spider-Boy?" I counter, raising my eyebrows as I look at the web-shooters on my wrists, trying to figure them out. "Wow... did you make these out of old watches and bicycle shifters– WOAH!"
I jump backwards when a web shoots out of the centre of my wrist without warning, thrown across the empty street, and I think for a second before realising, "Wait! Retractible trigger?" Spider-Man nods, watching me carefully, and I bite my lip for a second before pressing it again, aiming for the top of a building instead. Never let it be said I don't take risks.
Then I find myself yelling as I'm suddenly in the air, rushing towards the top of the building, and I know I very much miscalculated the space between where my head would've ended up and where the edge of the building was. Luckily, there's a rush of red and blue before arms wrap around me and I feel steady ground below us.
