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Opening the line of communication had been his idea. One of those ideas that he just kinda did, impulsively, without asking first. To his credit, it was a huge benefit to have someone on the inside of the NYPD that didn’t hate his guts. He wanted to do his best to keep that relationship up. Which was easier said than done.
“What’s up?” he cheerfully greeted.
“Spider-man?” she recognized his voice instantly, “are you really sure you should be calling me?”
He shrugged, before realizing she couldn’t see him. “Yeah, don’t worry about it.”
“You do realize it’s protocol to forward this to forensics for security purposes?” she didn’t even bother asking him how he got her number.
“Yeah, no duh. I already accounted for that. Go ahead.”
A heavy sigh came from the other side. “Alright, do I even want to ask why you’re so sure this won’t be tracked back to you?”
“It’s an encrypted virtual machine running on a VPN. Totally untraceable to my ID. This is like, elementary stuff. Practically learned it in grade school.”
This did cause her to choke out a laugh. “I really doubt they were teaching you this in school.”
“Oh yeah, it was from my st—internship,” it escaped his mouth before he even realized what he was about to say. He immediately froze after stumbling over his words. Nice going, Parker! He mentally chastised himself for the colossal slip up. It wasn’t like anyone would probably be able to find a link back to him from Stark Industries—not anymore—but he really didn’t want to test that out if he didn’t have to.
Thankfully, she didn’t press him on that. But then again, Detective DeWolff was cool like that. “Alright, just remember to not abuse this line of communication.”
“Me? I wouldn’t dream of it. Promise I’ll only be using this for very important business.” He nodded self-assuredly, before once again realizing she couldn’t see him. Peter was just too used to over-emphasizing his reactions as Spider-Man to shake it off easily. His mask wasn’t as emotive as it used to be, so his body language had to do a lot of heavy lifting.
Now, what he told the Detective wasn’t a lie, but she really should’ve asked him what he classified as ‘important business.’
Detective DeWolff finally picked up on the fourth ring.
“So if I asked you what kind of flowers you hated, would you be honest with me?” Peter rolled right into his question, forgoing any sort of greeting.
“I’m kinda in the middle of something,” she gritted out. ‘This better be important’ went unsaid.
“Oh yeah, yeah—me too. You see, I’ve got this police detective who saved my butt the other day, but the problem is I don’t know how to thank her. And she's just so busy all the time saving the city and kicking ass. So! I thought I’d swing by and drop off some flowers at her office. But! I also know that everyone’s different and you can’t just buy the same flowers for everyone. So I wanted a second opinion.”
A sigh crackled over the line. For several moments there was this awful silence, long enough that Peter thought she had hung up on him.
“Anything but lilys…my kid is allergic to that specific kinda pollen.”
For a long pause Peter stood stock still with the phone in his hand, shocked that she had actually given him an honest answer.
“Sweet! Thankyou! Igottagonowbye!” He said his peace in a single breath before hanging up. Peter had to get moving. If he held up the line any longer people were probably gonna shove him out of the way. When he’d come in for his usual floral arrangements at the bodega he’d been shocked to find out that they were out. Completely out. He’d been momentarily thrown for a loop, until he checked his phone and saw the date.
May 14th, 2028. It was Mother’s Day. His usual time that he swung by wasn’t gonna cut it. So he’d had to wait in this line that went around the entire block because apparently only one store still had flowers in stock. It was absurd. He only realized halfway through the line that he actually had zero clue what kind of flowers to buy for the Detective. He didn’t want to wait in line, again.
How he could forget Mother’s Day was beyond him. Though, it wasn’t like he had anyone to celebrate with anymore. He used to celebrate it with May because she was basically his mom. Even if she didn’t always accept the title, he would always use the day to celebrate her and everything she did for him. The loss of her still hurt, but he did his best to cling onto the good memories with her.
Oh shoot—DeWolff had kids didn’t she? He should’ve wished her a happy Mother’s Day right? Or would that be weird—Wait! Why was she even working on Mother’s Day?
At that moment he surmised that maybe he wasn’t the only person in the city to be pushing back their personal lives in the name of serving the city. Though, his circumstances were a bit different. The detective had a family at home waiting for her, and depending on her to come home every night alive. Peter had his decrepit apartment and his AI assistant who didn’t have any real steak in his life outside of what she’d been programmed to do. Even though she spoke to him and had a voice—It wasn’t a real equivalent.
A humorous thought occurred to him at that moment. Spiders—he had spiders waiting for him at home. While he didn’t exactly like sharing his living space with other arachnids, he didn’t really have any good way of getting rid of them. All the usual spider repellents worked on him as well. It had been rather startling when he had attempted to use a deterrent—only to end up hacking up a lung at the pungent smell that expelled from the spray can. He had to keep his windows open for weeks just to get the smell out of the apartment. Occasionally, he would pick up a whiff of it and he would gag.
So no: Peter had no real way to keep the spiders away without also fumigating himself as well. The spiders got to stay—but they were on very rough terms. Roommates, but really bad roommates. Didn’t contribute to much, other than maybe keeping away the other worse creatures. But couldn’t they have done that outside of his living space? He’d been startled too many times by a certain creepy crawly unwanted guest getting too close for comfort.
Yes, he was Spider-Man. But did that mean he had to love arachnids? Hell no! He was just thankful that he only had some of the weirdness of spiders after getting his powers. He still was grossed out every time he was reminded that there was a version of himself out there who had organic webs. Eugh.
Spider-Man had spiders waiting for him at home.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the phone, Detective DeWolff stared at her blank phone screen. Did Spider-Man really have nobody else to ask about what kind of flowers to buy someone? The thought landed heavier in her heart than she expected. The guy could be so enthusiastic and cheerful, that it was easy to see past the loneliness that managed to slip through the cracks every now and again.
DECEMBER (POST BND)
Peter squeezed into the train at the last possible moment before the automatic doors whooshed closed behind him. Quite literally by the skin of his teeth. He normally preferred to swing, but right now the city was going through a terrible cold spell that meant he was freezing at high altitudes, and about half the time he webbed onto something, a chunk of ice or hardened snow would give way and he’d have to frantically adjust before he became a blue and red splat on the street.
After one too many close calls, he resigned himself to take the subway home instead of swinging all the way back. It sucked: it was loud, cramped, and smelled like something died—but at least he wasn’t seconds away from pummeling to his death.
With the organic webs now in the equation, he hadn’t really known how’d they fare in the extreme climate. His synthetic webs (really strange how he has to differentiate them now) tended to become extremely fragile and crack once it got too cold. Or—melt when the temperature gets too high. Peter really was happily surprised to find that the organic webs held up marginally better. He was still trying to figure out all the differences though. Occasionally it would hit him that the webs were coming out of him and he would freeze while the revulsion rippled through him.
It had been an interesting year to say the least. He still had a crappy apartment that did not stay a comfortable temperature no matter if it was summer or winter. But now he had several people who were blowing up his phone after a scuffle to check on him. It was strange getting used to that kind of attention again, but it wasn’t necessarily bad. Just different.
He managed to squeeze into a small sliver of ‘open’ room on the train car. His phone held up to his ear balanced between his shoulder and neck because his hands were full. He had stopped on the way home from patrol to grab a few things from the uptown Trader Joe’s he’d been hearing so much about. He’d been blessed with some cash reward after catching a criminal he hadn’t realized was on the FBI’s most wanted list—so he suddenly had the funds to actually buy some of the wacky niche foods he’d seen online. It had all seemed so good when he was shopping, he might’ve gone a little overboard… He probably should’ve ate something before he went shopping.
Once he settled into his cramped spot, he returned his attention to his phone conversation. “Okay, okay, I’ve rested and done all that. I swear I’m totally back to full health. You can’t see me right now but I’m holding my hand up to my heart—scouts honor.”
While he did do the motion as promised, he grabbed the collar of his puffy jacket, subtly pulling it closer to his neck to ensure that not an inch of the suit was visible on this cramped train. The spandex was buried underneath his outer layers because it was easier to just layer clothes on top instead of stripping naked every time he wanted to slip back into ‘civilian mode.’ It was more convenient that way, especially during the winter. Peter just had to make sure he had a few sets of spare clothes ready to go.
Still, it added another layer of unease because he had to make sure the comically bright red and blue wasn’t showing. Being found out to be wearing a perfect replica of Spider-Man’s suit would be difficult to explain outside of Halloween or New York Comic Con. In the tight spot he found himself in, It wasn’t like he had an easy means of escaping. Everyone was stuck here for the foreseeable future until they arrived at the next stop.
On the other end of the phone, Detective DeWolff sighed like she always did when he said something mildly annoying or she didn’t agree with. He had learned her verbal mannerisms just as he was sure she probably had learned his. It was a learning curve at first.
“I know, I know. I’m just telling you to take it easy. I saw that video of you—“
“Hey—hey—that was an accident and you know that!” he spoke up to get her to stop talking about that particular stumble. It had been a video that someone had managed to sneak of him slipping and falling on his ass in the middle of Central Park. The entire ground had been covered in snow, and so he had unknowingly only been attached to that very upper layer of snow, which as one would expect gave way very easily with little force.
The Rhino had pelted him across what he had later learned was the lake frozen over because he hadn’t had the grip he thought he had. By the time he managed to catch himself and reorient, he’d crash landed into a tree, which turned out to be an important tree or something. It wasn’t all too bad of a stumble in the broader picture of the fight, The Rhino went down smoothly shortly after and back into custody, but the video had gone viral. He could still hear J. Jonah’s aggravating voice faintly in his ear: ‘SPIDER-MENACE: GOES ICE SKATING & DESTROYS THE ENVIRONMENT INSTEAD OF FIGHT ESCAPED CONVICT!’
Peter physically had to shake himself from the thought. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, had it not been mere months since he very publicly got shot and was hospitalized. Some people were quite literally praying on his downfall. He had to do everything in his power to avoid adding fuel to that. He held onto the outpouring of love and support that he had received. The city at large loved him, even if there were a few outliers. A few very outspoken outliers, but outliers nonetheless. It was extremely preferable to the world where the majority assumed he was a murderer.
“Anyways. I barely even remember what happened anyway. Super healing and all that.”
He didn’t feel weird about talking out loud on the phone in the cramped train. Everyone was way too self absorbed into their own little bubbles. Plus, he found himself suddenly extremely thankful for everyone having a phone addiction. It wasn’t like he could judge, he was glued to his phone as much as anyone else. Other people would scroll while walking, he would scroll while he was swinging. Both were technically sorta dangerous. So there was that, and the several people blasting their devices at full volume in their one train car alone. His voice was very unlikely to be heard in these conditions, and even if they did, they’d probably lump him into being another person spouting nonsense. Quite a common sight on the subway. One time he saw a guy wearing a dog cone that he was using as a cereal bowl. Never change New York, never change.
“You’re not still getting those headaches are you?”
Oh. She remembered that. It had been a while since either of them had brought it up so he assumed she’d forgotten or something. “Nope! No more headaches. I’m aaaall better.” He stressed the syllables to come off as positive as possible. While accepting both sides of himself had meant the end of all the nauseating headaches, it also led to some other…complications. Something he absolutely did not want to discuss with anyone ever. For instance, his ‘spider-self’ preferred the darkest corner of the room—on the ceiling. He hadn’t even realized what he was doing until Frank showed up to his apartment unannounced—he didn’t even want to know how he’d gotten his address—and promptly freaked out upon seeing Peter hanging out on the ceiling.
Frank’s version of freaking out wasn’t the same thing as most other people’s freak out, his included loud swearing and Peter narrowly getting shot. Which was certainly a way to wake up. It was up there from when he’d woken up nearly naked hanging upside down over the alley. Still, Frank being a little trigger happy wasn’t too shocking: but he’d still been extremely apologetic afterwards, at least by Frank standards. Frank had admittedly ‘softened’ up around him after the whole ‘I shot you and almost killed you’ incident.
Peter had attempted to reassure him that there were no hard feelings. He’d been shot before, and he’d fought people who he would’ve preferred to be on the same side on. It was kinda like when Captain America dropped that jetway on him in Germany—but worse? Peter wasn’t the best with analogies, he knew he had to work on it.
Frank, like most ‘older’ people, preferred phone calls and detested texting as a primary form of communication. Phone calls were also best in their line of ‘work’ because they often needed a way to communicate hands-free. Peter could do both, but there were just some things that were better said over text than on the phone.
Like the time he texted Frank a link to a compilation of Call of Duty quickscopes with the caption: “this is u.”
Frank had called him a few minutes later, presumably after he watched the full duration of the video, loudly cursing him out on full blast while the other people inside the small shop gave him looks. Peter had been trying to show that the incident wasn’t a big deal and that they should move on. Frank had apparently not held the same sentiment.
Humor in bad situations was kinda his whole deal. He couldn’t just switch off that part of himself. Peter thought Frank sometimes took things too seriously and needed to lighten up a bit. What’s a bit of morbid humor?
The train passed through a deeper part of the tunnel, and the cell service temporarily gave out. Which meant for a few seconds the zombified masses looked up from their devices and blinked blearily as if they had just noticed where they were. The speaker crackled in his sensitive ears. Ouch.
Peter blinked when he thought he heard it echo for a second. No, he was probably just dealing with the side effects of his super hearing. That, and being in a tunnel did weird things with sound.
“So,” he attempted a harsh segue once the crackling ceased. “any fun Christmas plans?”
“Hoping to actually get a break, how bout’ you?”
Peter laughed. “I hear ya, but as the saying goes: the city never sleeps.”
With some further commiserations over the lack of an actual break from work, they eventually reached a stop, and a portion of the crowd left which granted everyone a modicum of more space. It was nice to not have several people’s elbow digging into his back anymore.
The whole time he’d been on the train his spider sense had sorta been going off as a low level buzz, but he’d brushed it off because it was absolutely a safety concern to have so many people pressed together like a can of sardines. Crowd crush and all that. If it spiked, then he’d be concerned.
“Again I have to remind you that unlike me, you can actually walk away from this with no strings. You’re allowed to have a break.”
He opened his mouth to respond but paused at the odd sound coming from the speaker. It was a high pitched reverberation that almost sounded like a feedback loop.
A heavy stone dropped in his gut as his eyes widened. His gaze tore across the train cart to see who exactly he was riding with. Among the other unrecognizable faces, at the very end of the cart, sat a very familiar figure on her phone, completely oblivious to him.
The creeping feeling he’d been having this whole time finally made sense. Crap crap crap, he needed to end this phone call, now. “Ah, I tried it, didn’t like it, plus I have like, zero insurance or anything so I do kinda need this…” he attempted a joking tone but with the underlying pressure to now wrap up this phone call and hang up before anything alerted her to his presence was weighing down on him. Evidently, it was in his voice.
“You okay? It took you a moment to respond there…”
He shifted so he was turned around facing the complete opposite direction of the detective who sat a few seats down.
“Haaaah, what? Pfft, no, I was just trying to avoid tripping on the sidewalk.” He held his breath as he waited to see if she would take his forced comment as totally natural.
“Right. Well, my stop is coming up so I think I should hang up now. Swing home safely, or whatever you do.”
“Thanksdetective! Youtoo!” Peter hung up the phone immediately, but didn’t move from his position. If he made a sudden movement then it would be obvious, right? He shifted his grip so he could slip his phone into one of his inner jacket pockets. He would’ve preferred to zip it up, but he was unable to do so at the moment. He would just have to hope that he wouldn’t get pickpocketed—again.
It took him several moments for his brain to catch up how they were exiting at the same stop. Crap!
The train car slowed to a stop, the overhead speakers garbled nonsense, before everyone who needed to get off shifted towards the doors to wait for them to open. In the corner of his vision he could see the short woman waiting at the other opening. Phew.
One crisis averted, onto the next. He still had to get back to his apartment with his groceries intact. Which, for him, was easier said than done when there seemed to be an attempted mugging or escaped convict around every corner.
Peter had to basically shove his way through the terminal, it was so crowded! It was a miracle that the fire department hadn’t been called, you could barely move. NYC was busy enough during the rest of the year, and it was nearly impossible to get anywhere during the Christmas & New Years season. He’d somewhat forgotten that his hands were full, and that paper bags really were not all that durable—until a very untimely ripping sound caught his ears. Which made him scramble to hold the bag together as he slowly pulled over to the side to regather his things.
Being Peter Parker sucked. He couldn’t just web up the bag and keep walking like nothing happened. That would be too weird. Instead he had to mourn the durability of the bag and figure out how he was gonna get the stuff home in one piece. Maybe he could buy a bag somewhere, and he could use that? It wasn’t looking too good. He might be walking home with his arms balancing several things.
“Hey, I think this is yours?” a voice spoke up through the noise and it caused his head to shoot up.
Detective DeWolff was crouched in front of him, holding out a can.
Peter stared at her frozen in place for several long moments. His mind raced with several thoughts: did she know? Had she actually noticed him on the train? Detective DeWolff wasn’t stupid, he knew that potentially she could figure him out quite easily. Then he had the most eloquent thought of them all: Holy crap! Eventually he shot out a hand to robotically grab the offered lost item. He nodded tersely in thanks, his eyes never leaving hers, searching for a single sign of recognition. When he didn’t find any, he unclenched his jaw but still kept his mouth shut. For starters, she very well knew what Spider-man sounded like. There’s no way he was going to tip her off.
“You okay, kid?” awe, she sounded so concerned about him even though she had no idea who he was. The sentiment warmed him until he realized she could’ve just been playing ‘good cop’ because he was acting suspicious. Maybe that was it, he still hadn’t said a word to her and that was pretty weird.
Peter forced a smile to his face and nodded. It ended up looking a bit more like a grimace. He had to get out of this situation before she caught on to who he was. Which led him to once again, tip his head in thanks, scurrying off with a very confused detective in his wake.
“Kids these days…no manners” she scoffed under her breath before resuming her walk.