i. -- CAPILLARY ACTION
🕊 ↳ ˚ ✧ ☁️ ∵ ☽ ↶ 🕸 ✶
˗ˏˋ you walked in, caught my attention ˎˊ˗
MARY JANE WATSON, more commonly referred to as Jane, was absolutely livid.
It was seven a.m. and she'd accidentally busted a glass jar of webbing all over her desk while trying to get her shoes on, more specifically the webbing she'd stayed up till three in the morning trying to create and perfect.
An explanation was due.
Jane Watson was amongst the brighter students of midtown school of science and technology. The S.T.E.M oriented school was situated in the compact city of Queens, New York.
And at such school, as any other teenager infested building, every student had their clique. Their assigned personalities and friends that controlled their four year life span. Jane preferred to claim she didn't belong to any one group in particular, but, she tended to fall under the 'geek' category. Which was saying a lot, being in a school full of geeks.
Her undying love for chemical science as well as quantum physics and mechanics, kept her hands busy. Either pouring and mixing god knows what in beakers to try and make something happen, or attempting to figure out teleportation because she hated riding the bus and there was no way she could afford a car in this economy and being 16.
She blamed a certain quantum physics book for that idea, the whole questioning the actual law of mass and space. Something about being able to alter the rules of space and manipulate them to change the state of physical mass excites Jane to her core.
Not in a weird way...
No one ever quite knew what she was talking about most of the time either way. Most of the kids simply being interested in high level technological engineering or human biology. Jane figured i'm her adult life half of her high school classmates would be surgeons or working at some IT company she'd never heard of. At least her school had students who'd contribute to society, most of them hopefully.
The Watson woman was widely known across campus, for reasons of their own. Her decathlon trophies and shiny school record tended to make its way through the school either way. That or people always whispered about her outfits, a lot of them thought it was too much effort to put in at 6 in the morning, Though, even if she knew she was completely capable of befriending 80% of midtown high, she had decided way back in the seventh grade, that she was completely okay with just two.
Peter Parker was shuffling his way through the overly crowded halls of midtown, his lips pressed together as he maneuvered around prototypes of robots and poster-board covered with research. He was too busy thinking about the unread text messages he'd sent Happy Hogan. Wondering when Iron Man would call him. They'd said they would call him if they needed him. But that was over two months ago, and Peter was getting anxious.
"Parker!" A voice called out lightly, making his head turn
and dragging him from his thoughts. Not many people knew his name around the school. And not many people actually said his name without the word 'penis' in front of it.
His eyes landed on an elegantly dressed girl, her platinum blonde hair swaying behind her, tied up tightly in a high ponytail. her intricate striped zig zag turtleneck went nicely with the pink plaid skirt she wore, and the pristine white thickly heeled boots on her feet completed the look.
At least- he thought it looked nice.
Jane Watson was the only person, besides Tony and Happy, that actually knew about Spider-Man. Peter wasn't the best secret keeper, and Jane was way too good at knowing when Peter was lying.
And thank god she did know, because there was no way Peter would've ever gone to Germany to fight Captain America and metal-arm guy without her web fluid. He would've totally embarrassed himself.
In front of Iron Man and Black Widow
"You look depressed."
He shrugged. "Just... two months is a long time."
Jane sighed, hustling in front of him so she could walk backwards and effectively look him in the eyes. "Pete, they'll call you, okay? And besides, I have good news."
Peter's hands moved her her upper arms, directing her out of the way of another student who was too focused on the drone controller in his hand to see Jane. But Jane didn't even acknowledge his help, as if they'd done this several times before. "Oh yeah? Like Tony Stark called you and asked for my number?"
Jane shook her head. "Wow, okay. You need to forget about that for like, two seconds."
"Yeah right. And you should drop chem."
"Watch it, Parker. Chemistry has been saving your ass since you put on that spangly tracksuit and goggles." She twisted, noticing she'd reached her locker, her hands absentmindedly twisting in her combination as she kept her eyes on Peter.
"It wasn't a - just tell me the good news." Peter sighed, leaning against the adjacent locker.
Jane smiled proudly, digging into the bag that hung off of her shoulder, her fingers finding a bright yellow sandwich container. "This."
Peter arched on of his eyebrows. "Your lunch?"
Jane groaned, before glancing around her swiftly. no one that paid attention to them was near, so she popped open the top, revealing a glob of white goo. "No doofus, web fluid. I was up for like - forever, finishing it. I may or may not have found out how to get the actual spider silk protein from that biotech place down on 57th."
Peter stared at the substance, before sticking his finger into it with curiosity. As soon as his skin came in contact with the substance, it crawled up the tip of his finger and stuck. He shook his finger, trying to shake it off, only for the substance to remain glued to his finger tip.
Jane smiled. "Basic capillary action and enhanced adhesive." She grabbed the toothpick that laid beside the goo and began scraping it off of his finger, letting the substance stick to the small wooden stick before she dropped it back into the container and closed the lid. "This stuff won't snap midair if you're doing your super special swinging spider duties."
"Jane, that's actually epic." Peter smiled, meeting the warm brown color of her eyes.
Jane had demanded to help Peter with his Spider-Man deeds ever since she'd found out about it. She hadn't wanted a matching suit or anything like that, but she wanted to help. And her first idea came when Peter had helped fix her shoe with his original web fluid.
It had stuck one of her broken heels back together, but only for two hours. So her job was constantly tinkering with the fluid, making it better. Her knack for chemicals was definitely a plus as well. "All in a days work."
Spider-Man made Peter happy. He wasn't an average high school student anymore. And Jane saw the thrill Peter got from slinging from building to building. He'd even agreed to taking her once.
She's thrown up afterwards.
So she stayed on the ground and fiddled with sticky stuff and silk proteins. And she loved making Peter happy. It was one of the better rewards she got from it.
"What's up, Penis Parker? Babe Watson?" The words left the mouth of Flash Thompson smoothly as he strutted down the hall, his collection of friends around him.
Both Jane and Peter rolled their eyes, obviously tired of the nicknames the greasy haired teenager had come up with freshman year. Jane wasn't sure what his flirting tactic was exactly. She didn't see how insulting her best friend and then catcalling her was effective in any way.
"Join me, and together, we'll build my new lego Death Star." The dramatic voice of Ned Leeds made Jane turn, seeing the tanned skin of her other best friend, a smile on his face.
"What? No way! That's awesome! How many pieces?" Peter immediately questioned, letting Jane slide the sandwich box back into her bag.
"Three thousand eight hundred and three." Ned smirked, obviously very proud of his new addition to his collection of Star Wars themed legos. As would any sane person.
Jane shook her head. How they had anytime to do stuff like that was beyond her. She was always busy either experimenting in the basement of her house or finishing papers for some of the online classes she'd signed up for over the summer. A.P chemistry at Midtown wasn't enough for the girl. Organic chemistry and biochemistry were much more fun. Soon enough she felt she was ready for bioanalytical and inorganic chemistry classes as a local community college that was offering them for free if she dual enrolled as a high school student.
Jane enjoyed the challenge.
"That's insane." Peter breathed out, unconsciously shutting Jane's locker for her as she placed the French workbook into her bag.
Ned nodded in agreement. "I know. You want to build it tonight?"
Guilt immediately gnawed at Peters stomach, knowing he couldn't. Tonight was patrol night and now he had to test out Jane's new serum before he exploded with excitement about that. "I can't tonight. I've got the Stark - "
Ned nodded. "Mhmm-mmh. Stark internship"
Seeing as Jane has gotten her things, the trio started down the hallway, Peter in the middle and Jane and Ned on either side. Jane staying out of the conversation and busying herself with her fingernails that had week old grey paint on them. Maybe she'd do that tonight too, a little self care and redo her own nails. Maybe warm colors, for the fall?
"Always got that internship."
Peter shrugged. "Yeah, well, hopefully it'll lead to a real job with them."
Ned smiled, looking out into the hallway. "That's be so sweet."
The Parker boy nodded, "Right?"
"He'd be all, 'good job on those spreadsheets, peter. here's a gold coin.'" Ned spoke, totally exaggerating a Tony Stark impression best he could.
Peter gave the boy a look.
"I have no idea how jobs work."
Jane nodded. "That's exactly how they work."
Ned chuckled. "I'll knock out the basic bones of the death star at my place. And then I'll come by afterwards..."
But suddenly, Peter isn't involved in the conversation anymore. As if in slow motion, Peter comes to a stop, his eyes locked on a figure at the end of the hall, in front of the mounted trophy case. W follows his gaze to see the stunning dark-haired girl he'd locked onto. Her eyes immediately rolled at the sight of Liz Allen.
Peter is completely mesmerized by the girl, smiling stupidly as their eyes meet momentarily. The annoyance on Jane's face is clear but goes unnoticed.
"...because for the most part, the difficult thing is the base of it. the top half we can knock out in two hours, tops." Ned finished, not noticing the boy's inability to keep up with their conversation.
But Peter nodded anyway. "Yeah, that'd be great."
Ned looked to the smaller platinum blonde. "Jay, you're invited too, if you want."
She appreciated him offering, making her feel included even though they both knew that Lego Death Stars weren't her idea of a fun night. It was the though that counts. Jane was already shaking her head at the boy. "I've got a ten page paper on organic chem to do. It's due in like two weeks so I have to get started."
And her gaze falls onto the puppy eyed Parker- "But I'm sure you two won't even notice."