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Peter took the last sip of his fifth coffee of the night as he put the finishing touches on his lab report, not even bothering to read it over before he sent it in to his physics professor. He was fairly certain that it was completely incomprehensible anyway; words had stopped making sense about two hours ago.
He sighed, setting his Spider-Man mug, a Hanukkah gift from Mr. Stark, on his desk, adding to the ever-growing pile of “wash later” dishes. After shutting his laptop with an audible clack, he got up, finally starting to get ready for bed.
As he rifled through the heap of dirty clothes on the floor for his pajamas, his phone buzzed. Distractedly, he pulled it out of his pocket, having to squint for a minute before he could process the two texts from Ned.
“Dude. Check the news”, the first one read, followed by a picture of a news report showing a girl in a pink and white suit. Peter was pretty sure the blurry news scrawl under her said: “Hostage Situation: Screwball Challenges Spider-Man”.
He scrubbed his hand over his face, for a second seriously considering just ignoring the text and going to sleep. But then his conscience won out over the fatigue, and he gave one last longing glance towards his bed before he slipped on his suit and swung out the window.
It wasn’t hard to find Screwball, mostly because she was broadcasting her location to the world from a livestream on her phone. Peter prayed that the coffee was enough to keep him awake as he swung in through the window of the building she was in, which was surrounded by police and news teams.
“Hey, you wanted me, right?” Peter called as he landed behind her, “I’m here, now let the hostages go.”
She giggled, spinning around to point her camera at him. “Spider-Man! Say cheese, you’re live!”
Peter just stared at her, dumbfounded. For a second he thought that the sleep deprivation might’ve been finally catching up to him as he glanced around the room. “Where are the hostages?”
“What, no funny quip? C’mon, Spider-Man, I have eighteen million fans at home that are counting on you.” She pouted, tilting her head to give him a pleading stare.
Peter looked over the room a second time, realization sinking into his chest as he took in the deranged gleam in her expression. He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing. “There are no hostages, are there?”
Screwball shook her head, careful not to let the camera see it. “Fine. I guess my followers will just have to settle for something else.”
Before Peter could process what was happening, Screwball tucked her phone into a pocket in the front of her suit and charged full speed at him. Acting almost entirely on instinct, he lobbed a web grenade at her, which caught her in the chest and threw her against the wall.
“Hey, you ruined my camera!”
Peter yawned, hitting her with just a couple more webs to make sure she stayed stuck to the wall. “Good fight.”
She shrieked something unintelligible in return. He turned to leave, ignoring her furious stream of expletives.
By the time he made it back to his apartment, Peter was dead on his feet. He climbed into his bed, not even bothering to take off the Spider-Man suit before he curled up under the covers. He wondered what time it was as he shut his eyes, finally able to-
Peter had to fight back a wave of blinding rage and despair as his daily wake up alarm went off. For a minute he weighed the pros and cons of not going to class in his mind before he realized that he didn’t care.
He shut off the alarm and closed his eyes, all but passing out on his pillow.