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Ron Staedtler seems to dislike Reagan Ridley.
Reagan has never been good at reading people. There were so many times where she misread cues, or couldn't read in between the lines. She seems to be smart at everything but people. So, usually, she can never be sure about what a person thinks about her — despite many inventions she made to read what emotions she stimulates when talking to people.
However, Ron is very good at making it obvious.
He's so forward with it that she almost feels thankful rather than offended.
For him, it's his first year of college. He spent it trying to avoid her in hallways, and being uncomfortably formal whenever a situation calls for them to talk. But Reagan, despite being his age, is already on her third year. Her peers disliking her isn't really a foreign concept.
She'll live. She has no interest in befriending someone who seems to be allergic to breathing the same air as her. She has no interest in befriending anyone, actually.
But, just as predicted, Reagan has the worst luck known to man.
Apparently, Prof. Sheimpough didn't see her frantictly shaking her head as he assigned her and Staedtler to be partners for a long term robotics project. So, here they are.
As soon as class ended, Reagan makes a beeline for him. There's something a bit humorous about the fact that he stays put, knowing that he needs to actually speak to her if he wants to get a passing grade.
"It's pretty early in the semester and this is our first project, so I'm sure you're not doing anything on the weekends. Let's start collecting materials by saturday, at 10 am. Your dorm room or mine?" Reagan usually tries to soften her voice when speaking to her classmates, because there's been too many times where people had an issue with how blunt she sounds. But, Staedtler already dislikes her, so there's no point in that.
"Yours." He says, like he's trying to end this conversation as quickly as possible.
Reagan nods, before remembering that her room is a mess. She wonders if she has enough time to remove all the loose screws and the spare parts on her floor. She doesn't want to spend her friday night making sure there's no safety hazards on her floor.
"Actually, can we do our project in your room?"
"Why did you even ask if-" Staedtler sighs into his hands, before squining at her. "I have roommates. You live alone, don't you? Isn't that one of the benefits of your dad working here? We'll have more space."
And unfortunately for Reagan, that does make sense.
"Okay." She gives up, because it's early in the morning and she thinks she might go insane if she spends what little of her energy that she has left arguing with this guy. "Sure."
Neither of them ask for each others numbers. She's sure it'll be fine.
Maybe Ron should've asked for Reagan's number.
He think it'd annoy him to see her name in his contacts, but he'd take it over waiting here for another ten minutes. He almost felt bad for being late, and he was about to mutter an apology for arriving at 10:13 AM rather than the time they talked about, but all of those worries went away when he knocked on the door and came to the realization that Reagan isn't even here.
Now, it's been half an hour since the time they were meant to start.
For his other partners in group tasks, if this happened, there would at least be a sheepish roommate letting him in and telling him that they're still showering, or that they just bought something outside for a few minutes.
But Reagan Ridley lives alone, so he just sits down infront of her dorm room trying to remember if they have any mutual friends that he could call.
If she doesn't arrive in five minutes, he's going to leave.
Where could she even be? Ron tries to know as little about Reagan as possible, but one of the few facts about her that he knows is that she stays in her dorm room as much as physically possible. To the point where they had to do wellness checks on her to make sure she's still breathing.
Maybe she's sleeping?
Ron thinks about calling Gigi Thompson — who he doesn't even remember getting the number of — because he recalls them speaking a few times. Plus, she's a social butterfly. If anyone would have the ability to reach Reagan, it'd be her.
But, as his finger hovers over the call button, there's a loud clang at the back of the building.
Unless there's a gigantic racoon scouwering their trashes for food, that had to be a human being.
Out of pure curiosity, boredom, and a lack of self preservation instincts, Ron checks it out.
Shit, shit, shit.
That single word has been repeating in Reagan's mind ever since she woke up. Not only did she somehow sleep through all ten of her alarms — which she literally programmed to shake her awake, how did she sleep through that — she's now fucking injured.
The worst part of being a superhero is that you just have to follow the schedules of everyone else.
When she woke up, there was an alert of a robbery halfway across the town, and she had to rush to put on her suit just to get there in time. Then, when she was rushing back, one of her robotic arms decided to malfunction, leaving her to crash against the dumpsters behind her dorm building.
Great.
Now she actually has to wash her suit.
If she's careful enough, she can sneak into her room and pretend she was asleep the entire time. It's a bit of a hard task considering her crash probably alerted everyone within a miles radius, but she's taking her chances. What else can she do?
Ron is pretty sure Spiderman is trying to break into Reagan Ridley's room.
He really, really admires the superhero, really! His roommates have seen all the posters he has on his wall, he donates to all the causes Spiderman gives attention to, and he even defends their image infront of his family. But it kind of looks like they're trying to rob from a poor college girl.
Maybe it isn't even Spiderman. Ron's knowledgeable enough to know that they have a few rivals who can shapeshift, so maybe this isn't Spiderman, but rather someone trying to frame them.
And even if Reagan isn't necessarily someone he likes, but he doesn't want to see her room get ransacked.
So, he stays in a somewhat hidden corner, filming with his phone. He's not going to take on whoever that is, but he can at least gather enough evidence.
He has to say, this guy is really bad at robbing. He's pretty sure he has like, ten minutes of footage of the guy just fumbling around and trying to find… A hammer? A rock to throw? Ron's not really sure.
He hears a muffled swear from their mouth, before they lean down until their mouth is near the small open gap in the window.
Ron zooms in as they take off their mask.
"Bear-O, open the window!" The voice is… Reagan's.
Ron looks at his phone.
The face is also Reagan's.
Oh.
Oh.
Spiderman is—
"Reagan Ridley?" Immediately, her head snaps to the voice.
Ron Staedtler is standing there with his mouth agape, his hand on his phone like he was filming. Reagan wonders if she's seeing things right, because she can't even think properly because there's a chance that she's suffering a concusion from how hard she hit her head earlier.
"Staedtler." Her eyes go to his phone. "Give me that."
She takes a step forward before he could even think about running away.
Whatever intimidation tactic she was going for falls flat, because she also falls flat. On the ground. Just to make it worse, one of her robotic hands manage to bump her head. The pain is so intense that she physically can't see anything for a few seconds.
God, she really wished that the mutated spider gave her a higher pain tolerance. But she can't think about that right now, she has to think about not passing out from the absolute exhaustion and pain she's facing.
She's not.
She's not gonna pass out—
It takes Ron a lot of effort to drag Reagan inside.
He tries to do it as quick as possible, because he has a feeling that if anyone else sees her, then the whole town is going to figure out who she is through quick-spreading gossip.
Jesus, her suit is heavy. Thankfully, her robot — Bear-O, he thinks — opened the window enough for him to be able to pull her inside and lay her down her bed.
She's injured.
He knows its an inevitable thing for Spiderman to have a few scars and burns here and there, but it's different to see it close up. She has a scar on her shoulder, deep enough that it tore through her suit. The suit doesn't even seem to be made of regular fabric, but something stronger.
Ron has to go through piles of takeout boxes, spare metal, and crumpled up blueprints to find the first aid kit, but he finds it in the drawer underneath the sink.
Apparently, the gigantic robot doesn't respond to anyone but Reagan. So, he has to just ignore it staring at him as he tries to patch up her wounds.
Judging by the tiny cuts in her suit and in her skin, she most likely fell into a pile of shattered glass in the dumpster. Ron recalls that Spiderman has an accelerated healing factor, if the pictures pointing out injuries suddenly fading after only an hour was correct. It seems to be true, judging by the fact that Reagan isn't bleeding anymore.
Reagan.
Is Spiderman.
How fucked up is that?
After Ron, with shaking hands and a tweezer, manages to remove the small glass shards in the shallow part of her wounds. It's only her shoulder and her left leg thats injured, thankfully. It only takes him a few more minutes to apply antibiotic and wrap everything up properly.
So.
He's just waiting for her to wake up now.
Reagan's in her bed.
She doesn't remember a time where she woke up without an alarm blaring in her ears, so something is wrong.
Shit.
As soon as a slimmer of her memories come back to her, she immediately sits up. Which proves to be a horrible idea, because her sight falters for a few seconds, and she has to grab unto her bed's frame to not fall.
"Staedtler!"
Ron Staedlter is sitting near her desk, close to the robotic arms she pairs with her spider suit. Upon seeing her, he immediately puts two hands up in surrender, one of which is holding a screwdriver.
"What are you doing?!" Reagan can't do anything in this state but clutch her head and try to stand. Luckily, she's not the only person here. "Bear-O, hug him!"
"What-" Ron is immediately cut off by Bear-O, who was previously dormant behind him, suddenly hosting him up in the air. With both of his hands behind him, he's forced to let go of the screwdriver. "Reagan, what the fuck!"
Reagan pays him no mind as he kicks and squirms, she just tries to get to the desk once she spots his phone.
Right.
The recording.
Thankfully, it was already open when she grabs it. She goes to his gallery, only to see everything but the thing she's looking for. More selfies. A picture of a cat on the campus. Then, another selfie.
"Staedtler, where's the video you just took?" Reagan faces his phone at his face, and he stops fighting the indestructable robot holding his hands to his back. "Where is it?"
"I already deleted it!" Ron stammers, glaring at her when she steps closer. "Can you tell your metallic teddy bear to let me go?"
That's where she hesitates.
She's never told anyone about her identity. The one person who does- did know her identity found out about it all on his own. She can't trust Staedtler in their stupid robotics project, how could she trust him with her identity?
Maybe if she keeps him here until she's able to create a mind-manipulation invention to filter which memories he gets to keep.
Reagan turns to her desk, seeing which materials she can use.
She notices her supernumerary arms on the table. She doesn't remember taking them off, so it must've been Ron removing them from her back before he carried her to bed.
God, did he carry her to bed? She can't imagine him doing that.
Reagan's hand goes to her bandaged shoulder. It's sloppily done. But she has a feeling that's because he didn't want to remove the suit while she was asleep. Ron bandaged her shoulder and her leg. She doesn't even do anything about her stab wounds.
It also looks like he…
"Did you try to—
"—fix my stuff?" He doesn't know if he's insane, but for some reason, he thinks that Reagan is letting her guard down. Her eyes aren't glaring at him anymore. Instead, it's inspecting what he did to her invention.
"I just… fixed some things. There were some loose screws that were about to fall off. I didn't want to move anything too much, its…" This might be the closest thing to a compliment that Ron will ever say to Reagan. "…a really impressive invention."
Reagan's head snaps up, before looking at him with a grin.
"Staedtler, did you just say something nice to me?" Reagan laughs, and if he was anywhere else, he would've thought about laughing along with her. Unfortunately, he's sitll middair in her apartment.
He sees her roll her eyes, like she knows exactly what he's thinking.
"Fine. Bear-O, release."
Ron yelps as he's suddenly dropped on the floor.
Before he could stand up, Reagan looms over him. In one second, he thinks about how terrifying she is. In another second, he's chiding himself for being terrified of Reagan Ridley, who he just saw trip on air an hour ago, before passing out when her invention hit her head.
He looks up at her anyway.
"What do you want, Staedtler?" Reagan throws her phone at his lap. "How do I know that you're not going to give away my identity?"
Ron thinks.
His mind goes back to all the time Reagan entered class loud and late, not caring about the disruption she causes to the room. Was she staying up late patrolling the city? What about the times she'd sleep in class? Or the times where she'd be coming to class with a headache, whining about the bright lights in the classroom? He always just assumed that the latter was because of alcohol and late night parties, rather than head injuries.
He wonders if she remembers the time he was drunk alone on a bridge, spacing out as he looks down on the city that always felt too big for him. Does she remember making conversation with him and coaxing him to go back to his room?
"I just want to finish this project." Ron doesn't know how to show that he's being earnest, but he is. How does someone like him gain the trust of someone like Reagan Ridley? "I won't do anything that would put you in danger. Because that means putting the city in danger. I'm not a dumbass."
Reagan rolls her eyes at the last part.
"Hey." He snaps.
"Sorry." She says, not looking sorry in the slightest.
She's quiet for a few more moments, before offering a hand and helping him stand up. Ron tries to not notice how firm her grip is. There's an almost sticky texture in the palms of her suit. He wonders if thats on purpose.
"Truce." Reagan states firmly as he stands up, looking at him directly. God, does she know eye contact doesn't have to mean staring into people's souls? "Don't make me regret this."
"I'll try not to."