41"I'm Edna 'Eddie' Brock and this has been the Brock report," Eddie finished, waiting for her cameraman to give her the cue that they were off air. After a couple of seconds he gave her a thumbs-up as she released a breath she didn't know she was holding. "Thanks, Carlos. Man, that guy gives me the creeps. I mean, he acts nice and everything but I can tell that it's all a facade or some shit like that," she lamented as she got up from her chair before pushing it back in under the table. She put away her journal and pen into one of her larger pockets as she made her way to the exit of the building, throwing up a hand behind as she farewelled, "See you next time, Carlos!"
Eddie approached her motorcycle that she illegally parked in front of the building and pulled out the keys, plugging them into the ignition to start it. She grabbed the helmet she left behind and then she donned it, revving up the engine as she made her way back to her apartment. She weaved in and out of traffic, breaking several laws in the process, but she finally made it back home. After parking in her spot (as the rest of the tenants knew to not park there unless they wanted to be yelled at), she made her way up the stairs to her apartment door. She fumbled with the keys for a second before entering, tossing them into the bowl near the door. Eddie kicked off her shoes and took off her jacket and fell onto her bed face first. She groaned into the pillow, making sure she didn't get too loud so nobody comes knocking on her door.
The apartment she rented wasn't big by any means, but it was serviceable enough. There wasn't enough room for a dining table nor was there space in the bathroom as it was so cramped, but it did its job at keeping a roof over her head. Eddie flipped herself onto her back as she stared at the white ceiling, longing for companionship once more as decided to close her eyes and lament her poor life choices.
She missed Peter dearly, she couldn't get him out of her head, even though it's been half a year and some change. Eddie missed his stupid adorable face, the way he smiled, the way they made love when they both got brave enough to do it, even though they did it only twice.
She just had to fuck it up like always, like with everything in her life. She just had to get too controlling, too jealous and obsessive over who he hanged out with and why. She just had to get it into her head that Gwen Stacy, Peter's childhood friend, loved him just like she did and wanted him for herself, as that was her downfall. She confronted him on this during an argument and that caused him to grab his things and leave, ignoring her pleas and cries of regret.
Was she truly a "controlling, obsessive, jealous woman" as he said?
Maybe. It wasn't her fault that he was ridiculously handsome, kind, and smart, that he had a heart as big as Manhattan with his altruism. It wasn't her fault that he attracted every sane girl from all around him, making her want to chase off every woman with a stick.
For the first month, no matter how many times she called him he never picked up, and for the second month no matter how many times she texted him he never messaged back, never even giving her the time of day; not even a chance to save their relationship, which left her feeling heartbroken and bitter over everything.
Eddie started tearing up before wiping her eyes with her hands. God, she was such a pathetic woman. She wished her heartache disappeared, hell, she partly wished she never met Peter at all so that she would never experience this type of pain. But alas, no god was listening, and even if they did they wouldn't care what one puny mortal thought. She sighed as she got off her bed and made her way to the kitchen, pulling out a cut of instant steak and some leftover chinese food rice and putting both into the microwave, setting it to high.
She waited patiently as the two items spinned on the plate until the timer beeped, signalling to Eddie that it was done. She grabbed a nearby paper plate and put the food onto it, taking out a metal fork and steak knife from one of the drawers in the kitchen. As soon as she sat down she digged in, feeling extra hungry today for some reason. She practically inhaled it all, letting out a large unladylike belch when she finished.
This was her life now, wasn't it? For a full year and some change it's been like this, eating alone and being alone, surviving solely on cheap food items. Having no one to talk to about her day or just hang out with made her depressed and unwilling to change her bad habits. Eddie wiped her mouth with a napkin before she laid her forehead onto the table, sighing to herself as she reached into her pockets and pulled out her smartphone. She speed-dialed Peter out of desperation, wanting him to answer, hoping to any god of love he would answer. It rang and rang, nobody picking up.
Until he did.
"Eddie? Are you okay?" Peter asked immediately into the phone, the sound of cars zooming by being heard in the background. His voice didn't echo much, perhaps because he was in an enclosed space?
Her throat tightened up at hearing him, causing her to be silent for the first ten seconds. "I—I, uh, yeah. I'm good. It's just good to hear you again, Pete. I miss you," she replied, internally cringing on her choice of words. Of all the things she could have possibly said she just had to say the most homesick ex-girlfriend thing possible.
Peter breathed out a sigh of relief into the receiver before he spoke up again uncertainly, "I, uh, miss you too?"
What?
He missed her?
Eddie's heart began to beat even faster at this revelation as she sat up in her chair. "You do?" she asked with hope.
"Uh, it's complicated, Eddie. I'm sorry I didn't answer your calls or texts if you sent me any. I lost my old phone and had to get a new one once I saved up enough money," he hurriedly explained.
"So he wasn't ignoring me purposely? That means—"
"Gah! Shit, I gotta go. Text me later if you want, I promise I'll answer this time!" Peter promised before ending the call prematurely.
A bright smile appeared on Eddie's face at his promise. Maybe this was her chance to get him back, to show him that she was better than before. She resolved to text him an hour or two later, as clearly he was busy doing something important somewhere.
With her spirits lifted, Eddie exited her kitchen and entered her living room, turning on the television to pass the time until she texted her ex.
"Why was Eddie calling you?" Jane asked, suspicion thick in her tone of voice as she sat in the passenger's seat. She didn't like that there was another girl vying for her Peter's attention/love. She knew who would win in the end (herself, of course) but still she didn't appreciate the competition. Her Peter didn't take his eyes off the road for even a second to acknowledge her, causing her to pout in annoyance.
"I have no idea. I thought she wasn't into me anymore, to be honest," he responded as he braked at the sign of a red light, causing the car to stop perfectly before the white line on the road. He turned to face Jane as he self-deprecatingly remarked, "I mean let's be honest, I was lucky to get even one girl to like me back then and so far nothing has changed."
She frowned at his "joke," which she didn't find funny in the least. While not many, and from what she could gather from her Peter's memories and her own observations, there was at least four people her Peter; those being Black Cat (AKA Felicia Hardy), Gwen Stacy, Edna "Eddie" Brock, and most importantly herself. Jane didn't understand why her human had such low confidence in how attractive he was and the effect he had on the opposite sex, and she resolved to one day (somehow) to solve it.
"Okay, we're here, Jane," Peter announced, breaking her out of her thoughts. He had parked his beat-up Subaru in a random parking spot not too far away from one of the side entrances. The two of them unclicked their seatbelts as they exited the vehicle, walking side by side over to one of the side doors. After pulling out his keycard and scanning it against the small black scanner, they were granted access further into the building.
It was a typical high school, according to her copied memories of the place. It had linoleum tiles as for the flooring, which hadn't been buffed out in a while, and the overhead linear fluorescent tubes were turned off, meaning they were walking in slight darkness. That was no bother to either of them, as they both had enhanced eyesight as they made their way to…wherever they were going. As long as she was with her Peter she didn't really care what the hell was happening or going on.
They trekked to one of far corners of the school and entered a classroom, which was filled with at least twenty or so desks and chairs in the front half of the room for the children who came here. The other half had weird black tables connected to the floor with stools on top of them. If Jane had to guess the other half was where science was done, and the closer half to the door was where the children learned. Her Peter turned on the lights and closed the door behind them, before then beelining to a metal box in the back of the room. Jane watched with curiosity as her Peter pulled up his sleeves to his elbows and then attached a blue apron and safety goggles to himself. He then went back into the box and pulled on some rubber gloves. "Why are you wearing all of that?" she asked as she got closer.
"Unless you know what you're doing and have complete confidence that you don't need it, it's a wise decision to wear safety equipment when working with chemicals," he lectured as he looked around the room, clearly looking for something. After a second his eyes widened and he grinned to himself as he found what he was looking for: A blue thermos with its lid on, having the school logo on it. He proceeded to empty the container into a nearby sink and rinsed it out thoroughly with soap and water.
Jane decided to play along and pulled her sleeves up as well, getting herself an apron, goggles, and pair of gloves to match with her Peter. He was currently carrying multiple sciencey-looking devices that she only half-recognized from her copied memories. He laid them all out on the table and connected one of the devices to a spigot before twisting the valve, releasing the gas to power the bunsen burner. "So, what should I do?" she asked, watching him get up again, only this time he was approaching a wooden cabinet on the wall.
"Connect everything in a way so that the boiling flask is above the bunsen burner, but also connected to the volumetric flask," he tried to explain, grabbing a multitude of hard-to-pronounce vials/chemicals from the cabinet. He came back and placed the objects onto the table, about to build the next setup that connected to everything.
"Peter, this would go much faster if I just read your mind to know what you need to do," Jane argued, taking off her glove and holding out a hand. Her favorite human looked at her hand with hesitance, looking slightly apprehensive about doing it before he sighed, realizing that she had a point. He took off one of his gloves and grabbed Jane's hand, which was pleasantly warm to the touch. Jane read the surface layer of his mind, finding out what exactly he was going to build before begrudgingly letting go, the both of them putting back on their gloves.
The two of them worked side by side quietly as they assembled the flasks and vials and piping until it ultimately connected to the blue thermos at the end, which just so happened to be upside-down at the end of the apparatus. Peter used a dropper to put a few drops of toluene into one of the flasks, completely engrossed in what he was doing. Sometimes he would ask Jane to grab one of chemicals to give to him, which she happily did, as she was spending quality time with her Peter. Before long her Peter had created a green vapor in one of the glass flasks, directing it carefully into the blue thermos. Once filled and properly pressurized, he attached a special lid that had two long nozzles, one that went straight out and the other bended into the first. He turned off the bunsen burner and took off his goggles and gloves, rubbing his eyes as they had teared up for some weird reason.
"Is that it?" Jane asked, pointing to the modified blue thermos.
Her Peter chuckled as he held it up, "It is and, hopefully, it works."
"Why wouldn't it work? Didn't you do this before?" she asked as she took off her safety gear and put it back in the metal box.
"Yes and no. I have made The Lizard a cure before, but it was a serum the first time I made it. This time, however, with your help I've made his cure into a gas that he can inhale to turn him back to normal."
"How come you've made it into a gas instead of a liquid?" she asked as she got close to him again, wanting to be on him again like last night.
"Because it was a pain in the ass to pierce through his scaly skin," he answered simply before his Spider-Sense went off, alerting him that someone was going to be opening the classroom door in the next few seconds and they'd see things, especially Jane. "Quick! No time to explain, you have to hide!" he told her while whisper-shouting. Jane, thinking on her feet, simply turned into her slime/goo form and launched herself onto her Peter, changing her appearance to look like a nice leather jacket that he was wearing.
The door opened to reveal an aging man with brown hair and a well-groomed beard. He wore glasses as he peaked his head into the room, spotting Peter in the back. "Peter? What are you doing here, today of all days?" he asked as he walked inside and peered at the chemical station with curiosity.
"Mr. Harrington, sir, I was, uh, working on a science project of mine," Peter admitted, rubbing the back of his head in nervousness.
"Peter, just call me Roger. I'm not your teacher anymore, you know," Roger corrected. "Nice jacket, by the way."
"Uh, thank you? I mean, thank you," Peter stuttered out as he began to disassembled the apparatus that he and Jane made to synthesize a cure.
"So, have you graded your students' exams yet?" Harrington asked casually as he watched his former student clean up his mess.
"Oh crap, I completely forgot!" Peter exclaimed in worry. "I'll do it soon, right after this."
"Jane, why I am still wearing you?" Peter asked as he graded the papers on his desk. The two of them were in a different classroom, the one Peter actually taught physics in. It was a standard classroom with nothing inherently interesting about it, other than her Peter of course, who sat at his bigger desk at the front of the room, showcasing the hierarchy of the teachers and students. The cure for The Lizard was sitting upright on his desk next to a bottle of fruit punch that her Peter had nabbed from a vending machine.
"Because I like it and I can do this," she responded within his mind before using her powers of biokinesis to erase her Peter's growing headache from grading his students.
Almost immediately he sighed in relief at his headache going away. "Good point and thank you, but let's not make this a regular thing."
"Oh?" she asked, not really believing him. Why in the hell would she (and eventually him) ever want to not do this? To be so close that they'd practically be one was a form of ambrosia to the little miss.
"Wearing another person as a jacket/clothes is a little…intimate," her Peter explained. "And also weird."
"Intimate, maybe. But weird?" Jane tutted, as if disapproving of his actions/words. "I find it…captivating. Being so close to you is making my day, so please don't take it away from me, Peter," she begged.
Before Peter could even process her choice of words, his smartphone started to act up, playing a jazzy/old song as a ringtone. "Yuri?" he asked as he answered his phone.
"Spider-Man, I need you to meet with me on the roof, same old place as usual, got it? There's something I need to talk to you about, in-person," Yuri Watanabe adds on before ending the call.
"Never a dull moment in my life," Peter quipped to himself as he quickly finished grading the last paper on his desk. He was about to undress when he realized his predicament: "Shit, I don't have a spare Spider-Man suit on me. How am I going to meet with Yuri if I don't have my tights?" he lamented.
"I can help with that, actually," Jane piped up, a smile on her nonexistent face. Without warning him she changed her form from that of a leather jacket to her Peter's iconic red and blue Spider-Man suit, expanding her size to reach all over him. And by god, did it feel heavenly to Jane, being all over the one she loved. She could feel his muscles, his tendons, his cells and membranes, all of it was accessible to her and hers to control if she wanted to.
Peter started to pat himself down, not feeling the bulkiness of his clothing underneath Jane's approximation of his original suit, almost as if his clothing was never there. "This is so weird. What did you to my clothes?" he asked as he pulled on the sleeve of his "suit." It felt like his real suit, hell, it even moved like his real suit, but he knew it was all fake, that Jane was only making it so lifelike to appease him.
"I can store items and things inside myself, Peter. Your clothing is in a safe place, don't worry," she reassured from within his mind. "And don't worry about your web-shooters, I can easily recreate it."
"Can you store the cure?" Peter asked, grabbing the modified thermos and holding it close to his suit. Wordlessly a tendril of slimy goo reached out and plucked it from Peter's grasp before dragging it inside of herself. "That'd would've been handy when I worked for the Bugle," he thought aloud. "Okay, this is going to be one of the weirdest things I've ever done," her Peter remarked as he jumped out the window and made a web-line to the nearest building, on his way to see the captain.
"Why's that?" Jane asked, taking in the sights around them as they swung through New York City. They were high above the cars and people littering the streets, with nary a bird in their way. The sun was almost high overhead, with clouds in the sky providing some shadows to the ground.
"Oh, maybe it's because I'm wearing you as a literal suit?" he reminded her. The both of them fell silent as he made his way to the police station. Jane, however, noticed that his middle-back pain receptors were going off and causing her Peter to be in unnecessary amounts of pain; so she turned them off, causing her Peter to sigh in relief once more. "Thanks, Jane."
Miss Doe didn't get a chance to telepathically respond as her Peter landed on the rooftop of the police station. There was one other individual there, a young Asian woman with black hair with a no-nonsense aura around her. She was leaning on a railing that kept her from plummeting to her death, waiting for (presumably) Spider-Man. "You're late," was the first thing she said when he arrived.
"Sorry, I had…suit issues," Spider-Man answered honestly.
"You okay from your last fight? It looked pretty brutal," Yuri probed.
"Yeah, I'm all good. It takes a lot more than that to kill Spider-Cop," he joked in a gruff voice, causing the captain to sigh in exasperation.
"Let's get down to business. How are you handling The Lizard situation?" Watanabe asked.
"Already got a cure for him," Spider-Man responded, tapping his lap where his pocket would be. "Just gotta find him first."
"Have you tried the sewers?" the policewoman asked, turning her head to look downwards at the streets below.
"That's where he was last time, but now that he's with Doc Ock they could practically be anywhere," Spider-Man said with slight frustration in his tone of voice.
"Speaking of Doc Ock, do you have any idea on what he's doing? He broke out of Ryker's for a reason and then recreated The Lizard, but for what?"
Suddenly Yuri's walkie-talkie buzzed alive with static before a masculine voice began to say, "There's a 4-5-9 in progress at an abandoned lab, located in Greenwich! Reinforcements have been repelled by Doc Ock, I repeat, Doc Ock is repelling police force! Send more reinforcements to my location!"
"I'm just gonna, you know?" Spider-Man uttered out, standing on the railing while balancing on it.
"Do your thing," Yuri approved, watching him tilt forward ever so slightly to imbalance himself, causing him to plumet to the ground before he made a web-line in the direction of Greenwich, swinging away from her.
It was times like these that Yuri Watanabe wished she didn't listen to Spidey and kept on smoking. At least then she could finally relax without a bottle of brandy.
Author's Note:
Fun fact: I actually drink Hawaiian Fruit Punch when working on these chapters, and if I'm out of fruit punch I drink soda/soft drinks instead.