Chapter Text
Spider-Man was sitting next to her on the subway.
It was 3:47 am on a Thursday and she was trying to focus on the cold sandwich in her hands, but Spider-Man was on the other side of the empty train car with his head back against the wall. The side of his suit has a huge rip in it, with red and purple blotches marring his skin.
She knew as much as anyone about Spider-Man – the local super who helped the little guy. At this point, it was a bit of a misnomer as he had literally been to space to save half of the universe, but that was the tagline. And he didn’t exactly save them, either.
She herself remembers the snap all too well. At 13 years old, she felt like a badass after sneaking out to go to some stupid party a skeevy high schooler had invited her to. In the early evening the 22 bus was full of students on their phones, young adults pre-gaming for the night ahead, and everyone else just trying to get home. She herself had been texting another girl she knew who was going to the party, trying to meet up so they could arrive together. Getting invited to the party was only half the battle. The rest of the fight was being cool at the party. In her pre-teen head, she would be a total loser to show up alone, even though she hardly knew the other girl. They did a project or two together but were hardly on a first-name basis.
She was looking for some stupid gif when someone started screaming. Without moving her head, her eyes flew up to the noise. A middle-aged lady, with her hand grasping at the air, was watching as her daughter disintegrated into dust in her arms. Beside them, a group of people dressed for the club began falling back on their heels, dust floating beside them as 5 out of 9 of them fell to the ground in a puff of residue. Half the bus started disintegrating into large flakes of soot. Including the bus driver.
People were screaming. The bus was crashing into the back of a sedan. Small bits of dust stuck to her sweaty skin from where the man next to her had been sitting.
It was the longest five minutes of her life.
With each passing second, each brush of wind and soot against her skin, she was sure it was her next. She couldn’t hide or run, and it would get her while she sat on the stupid bus in a stupid outfit on a stupid Thursday in stupid Boston.
It was so stupid. She felt so stupid. She didn’t even say goodbye to her parents before she left.
Five and a half years later and 200 miles away, she was face-to-face with one of the ones who didn’t stop it.
After it, lots of videos of the Avengers beginning the fight flooded the internet. From the morning, when Iron Man quipped at the aliens. When the big one’s arm got cut off in a show of straight-up magic. Dr. Banner conspicuously not going big, green, and angry.
Now, all she can remember is the blurry phone video of a giant ring rising into the sky with a little spider getting smaller and smaller, attached to the side of the ship.
The little spider seemed even smaller in the empty train car. No one knew who he was under the mask, but he was small. He wasn’t Captain America with the big, chemically-altered muscles, or like Black Widow with the otherworldly presence that made her feel a million feet tall. He was just… Spider-Man. A very injured not-spider not-man.
Her skin was itching. The cold grilled cheese she had gotten at lunch was hanging halfway between her mouth and lap, and she was taking furtive glances at the red superhero a few seats down.
Should she do something?
She may not have grown up in New York, but Boston wasn’t some hick town, either. She knew that to survive in the city, you kept your head down. You don’t put your neck out for anyone, because all you have here is your neck. But she could see the layers of dirt caked up to his knees, the blood soaking into the torn fabric around his ribs.
With a jolt, the masked man’s head shot up straight, like he had heard something. Jolting her peering eyes away, she stared hard at the sandwich while trying to track him as he stood. It seemed like he must have heard something. But, she had an earbud in her right ear and the tracks chugged at the door beside her.
Are spiders supposed to have super hearing?
With another glance through her bangs and below her hoodie, Spider-Man seemed to finally notice he wasn’t alone in the car.
“Oh! Oh, my bad! Haha,” he trailed off slightly awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to…” he turned around to where he was sitting, and where a small puddle of blood now glistened off the bright overhead lights.
“Bleed all over the place.” He finished, and even though she couldn’t see his mouth beneath his mask, she could hear the self-deprecating smile that was on his face.
“It’s, uh, not my seat…so, no worries.” She tried to come across as if she hadn’t been scarily aware of his presence this entire time. Hadn’t been watching the blood leak from the injuries – it looked like road rash, like he had been dragged across the streets of New York. Gross. And ouch.
He waved a hand at her, and reached the other to rub the back of his neck, “Yeah! That’s, uh, so true! Hah…” The movement pulled his rips in his suit further to show that the purple went past where she could see.
She shouldn’t get involved. He was an Avenger. He was a superhero. He was snapped, and came back.
Without any fanfare, she pulled the cold grilled cheese into two triangles along the indent. She struck out her hand his way, “It’s gross and cold,” her capitulation was along with a shrug as she held it out to him.
The white ovals that represented his eyes widened as he took in her offering. Wrapped in butcher paper that was saturated in hours old oil, it was everything he ever wanted in that moment.
He abruptly crossed the distance between them, stopping only when he stood to her left, only the bar to hold between them. And the sandwich. He stopped himself short, his fingers itching to grab the half from her, rip his mask off, and shove it down his throat right there. Screw his secret identity, screw this night, and screw his dignity.
“Are you – no, you-you bought it. You should enjoy it!” He smiled behind the mask, but it was watery and his knees felt like they might buckle beneath him.
She raised her head a bit, finally looking at him without the curtains of bangs in front of her eyes. Her hoodie still hid most of her face, but she at least met his eyes.
“I won’t enjoy it, so you might as well have some,” she let her eyes flick to his side, “You need it more than me.”
This was stupid. She was stupid. She should have kept her head down and eaten the nasty sandwich by herself. He was an Avenger, for God’s sake! He probably had a butler waiting for him, or even a butler just to make his sandwiches! His stupid sandwich butler definitely would make a much better sandwich than the American cheese smashed between white she got at Tamie’s food stall. From lunch. God it probably tasted like cardboard and old fry oil by now.
That final thought shook her out of the stupidity of her decision. She wasn’t helping. If anything, she was helping herself. Now, she wouldn’t feel obliged to eat the whole thing. Really, she was making him do her a favor.
With the encouragement (and honestly, even if she hadn’t insisted, he was probably going to eat that damned sandwich), he let his gloved hands wrap reverently around the butcher paper along the corner of the bread. In the pass, she felt the material of his gloves against her cold skin. It wasn’t quite cotton, but not nylon either. It felt too nice to be polyester, and too durable for silk. With the man standing just a few feet in front of her, his whole existence was all she could focus on. How he held the sandwich tightly but gently, how his knees were bent against the movement of the train, and — and oh god, how he was staring at her.
Their eyes met again and his head dipped lower, still making eye contact. “Thank you…” he gulped against the admission, “You..aren’t wrong. I did need this.”
He’s so earnest. Thankful for a nasty, old, stinky grilled cheese. And not even the whole thing! Only half. After he no doubt just came off of a fight where he fought the latest villain of the week to save lives. Where he got dragged against the pavement, or up a building, or dropped from a building. And he was thanking her so genuinely. For shit.
The feeling of bile rising against her esophagus wasn’t unfamiliar.
She tried to hide her grimace against a bite into her half of the sandwich. It was gross.
The train grinded to a halt, still 3 stops from where she got off. But she couldn’t. She rose to her feet, threw her canvas bag against her back and slid past Spider-Man.
“Yeah.”
He almost didn’t hear it above the ding of the door closing. The metal doors slid angrily, closing her off from him. Without looking back, she took two stairs at a time out of the subway as the train pulled forward away from the stop, Spider-Man now alone in the train car.
He watched her back until he couldn’t see her anymore. Both the stairs and the train bringing them further away from each other.
With a sigh, Peter sat in the seat she was sitting and slid the bottom of his mask to just above his nose and took a huge bite out of the sandwich, nearly taking some of the butcher paper with him.
With a small smile and a low chuckle, he offered the empty train car, “It is gross,” and took another bite.