Work Text:
It was fiddly, really fiddly, trying to make this inhibitor. Frank, surprisingly, had everything he needed to make it, so Will doesn’t even need to go back home to make it. He didn’t particularly want to ask why Frank has everything to make it, but he can chalk it up to a plethora of reasons.
Around fifty percent of them include making bombs.
What also doesn’t help is having Mike Wheeler on the other side of a curtain, lying on a bunk bed which Will is sure his feet are hanging off of. God, he can vividly picture it, his familiar lanky build laying down, one hand behind his head, cradling the waves in his black hair, glasses set on the tip of his nose—
“What are you actually doing back there?”
The question catches Will off guard, and the welder he’s holding in his left hand catches on the inhibitor, and suddenly, it’s slightly fried.
Okay, understatement. It’s fully fried. Good job Will made two and accounted for that.
He grabs the other one from its perch on his mask, and sets it in front of him, blinking at it, before he remembers Mike had actually spoken to him, “Oh, I— it’s a long story.”
“Considering the fact you basically kidnapped me from my house, I think I deserve an explanation,” Mike laughs out, but the laugh doesn’t hide the underlying insistence that makes Will’s stomach sink.
The welder starts up again, and metal drips onto the inhibitor as Will continues trying to mould it, sticking out his tongue in concentration. Another beat of silence passes, and Will thinks Mike’s dropping it, until his voice sounds out from behind the curtain again, “And, also, I’m bored, man. I’m on a bed in a boat, what am I supposed to do?”
A soft laugh escapes Will at Mike’s remark, and the evidence of it stays on his face, lips curled as he sets the welder down and stretches out on the chair, “Dude, you’re an adult, you can entertain yourself.”
“Why would I do that when Spider-Man is on the other side of this curtain?” Mike shoots back, and Will’s convinced that this is his own way of ridding the boredom. Annoying Will. Well, annoying Spider-Man.
Will sighs, a loud, exaggerated sound, and stares down at the inhibitor on the desk, “Basically, my body’s mutating at a molecular level to become more arachnid than human. And I can’t really function like that, because, like, who can? So I’m trying to make an inhibitor for it.”
“I thought you were already more spider than man,” Mike says, tone lined in confusion, and another laugh escapes Will, more comfortable than the last, and he can already hear the beginnings of a protest coming from Mike, “Hey, your name has Spider first! I thought that was like the— the big bit!”
Will laughs again, more of a chuckle this time, and the smile makes a home on his face fully this time, more like a grin instead, “Well, no, I’m not. Imagine that? I’d be like,” he leans back on his chair, looking up to the ceiling, “probably have eight arms, or something.”
A moment passes, before Mike comes out with a quiet, “Ew,” and Will already knows the exact scrunch of his nose that’s on his face. The image in his mind makes his grin fade, and Will slumps forward again, picking the welder back up.
Mike must’ve picked up on the change in tone, because Will can hear him shifting on the bed, changing position, something he’s always done when he’s uncomfortable. He pushes the sound out of his peripheral, and focuses on the welding.
It’s like that for a few minutes, until Mike speaks up yet again.
“Maybe you need another mind to look at it? I did a few classes in molecular biology, before I, like, decided what my major was going to be.”
Will can already hear him going to jump off the bed, and he knows that anything he says now will be useless to stop Mike, so he sighs, and grabs his mask to put back on, “Just— wait a minute. While I put this on.”
“Oh, shit, yeah,” Mike mumbles, and he lingers behind the curtain for a second before Will sticks his head out, masked up, and Mike takes that as a sign to near-run to Will’s side, to see the work-station.
He’s already grabbed the inhibitor before Will can turn around, and Will has to snatch it off him quickly, staring at him for a good second, before sputtering, “You can’t just— this is the only one I have left before I have to go back home and get another!”
“How does it work? On like, magnetic fields, or what?” Mike asks, completely ignoring Will, and for once, it feels like them again, back in high school, back when they were going through this together.
Will swallows down the sudden rush of nostalgia, almost physically shaking his head to rid himself of it, “Yeah, magnetic fields. But it keeps overheating, that’s the only problem. And I’ve already accounted for the field from my suit.”
“Huh,” Mike says slowly, furrowing his brows behind his glasses, hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck. His gaze flicks between the inhibitor and Will, and suddenly, Will feels very scrutinised. More than he has in a long time. Especially when Mike’s eyes land on his own through the mask, “What about them?”
Will blinks at him, staring up from the chair, before blurting out, “What?”
“Your goggles. Is that what you’d call them?” Mike points at them, and Will can feel his mouth practically fall agape in realisation, just as he mumbles out a soft, “Fuck.”
Will’s hands move on autopilot as they plug the inhibitor into the computer, and he tries to ignore Mike’s smug gaze from above him as he codes into consideration the magnetic field from his lenses. It takes a couple seconds for it to knock into the inhibitor, but it does it eventually.
“What do you do now?” Mike murmurs, staring down at it.
Will unplugs it from the computer, spinning it over in his hand, before spinning the chair around to look up at Mike, and shrugs, “Put it on and hope it doesn’t overheat and blow up again.”
He starts to roll up the back of his mask, exposing his neck to the cold air, amplified tenfold by Mike’s eyes on him. Just as he’s going to put it on, he looks up at Mike, meeting his gaze, before nodding back to the bed, “Maybe you should, like, get away in case it does blow up or something.”
“Oh, that’s— yeah, good idea,” Mike mumbles, and backs away to the bunk beds again, falling to sit down on the bottom bunk. His head nearly hits the top of the bed, and he keeps staring at Will whilst he moves to put on the inhibitor.
Will really hopes having your ex-boyfriend who’s forgotten who you are doesn’t affect the inhibitor.
It clicks into the back of Will’s neck just as Mike looks away, and Will takes that as a sign to look over at the computer, checking his hormone levels, how they’re fluctuating, changing. The silence in the room feels heavy, for some reason.
That’s how Will finds himself asking quietly, “What did you major in?”
Mike’s head snaps back towards him, “What?”
“You said that you did molecular biology before deciding your major. What was your major?” Will elaborates, and he half-regrets it now, but he’s also never been more thankful to have a mask to cover up a flush.
Mike looks taken aback, for reasons Will can’t place, but he eventually answers, “Creative writing.”
It makes perfect sense.
“You go to college?” Mike murmurs after a few seconds, and it's Will’s turn to be taken aback.
He shakes his head, laughing out a quick, “No, imagine juggling all this on top of college work too.”
Mike hums in response, and he lies back down on the bed, hands resting behind his head, “What would you have majored in? If you did?”
“Art,” slips out before Will can stop himself, an admission that he hadn’t even realised he knew himself. Mike’s mouth opens as if he was going to ask Will to elaborate, but from a stroke of pure luck that hasn’t found Will in years, the computer beeps out a string of noises, and when Will looks over, a smile splits across his face.
Mike must’ve gotten up, because suddenly, he’s behind him, shouting out a loud, “Holy shit, I didn’t think it would actually work!”
“You literally just—“
“Yeah, well, fake confidence is key,” Mike waves a hand at him dismissively, and grabs Will to pull him up. He lets out a yelp as Mike does, but it doesn’t deter him, because once he’s up, Mike gives him a push towards the stairs, “now you can go and actually do your job, man.”
Will turns to look at him, staring for a couple of seconds in disbelief, before deciding on just saying an exasperated, “Can you— look, just stay here while I deal with it. Please?”
“Yeah, okay, fine,” Mike waves his hand yet again, and Will wants to throttle him and kiss him at the same time.
A beat passes, and Will’s feet refuse to move, shifting back and forth on the floor as he stares at Mike, who simply stares back. It’s funny how absence makes the heart grow fonder, or whatever they say. Eventually, Will’s able to force himself to head up the stairs, away from Mike, and he shoots a web to get himself up off the floor and into the air, back into downtown Manhattan.
He forgets about the letter out by the computer.