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It starts off as a normal day. Gwen picked the boys up from their extracurriculars on her way back from Oscorp and met up with Peter on their way back home.
The five of them are munching on ice cream from the dessert place a block away from the Stacy’s when Philip asks her, “Do you think Spider-man can talk to spiders?”
“What?” she turns to look at her youngest brother then Peter, who has this mischievous glint in his eyes.
(Oh this is so not going to be good.)
Philip rolls his eyes, “I said, do you think Spider-man can talk to spiders?”
“Hm… good question. But I don’t think so,” Peter replies before she can. “Why do you ask, buddy?”
“No reason,” Philip mumbles as he eats another mouthful of his oddly matched mint chocolate-strawberry ice cream.
They pause at the red light and Gwen hears Philip tells Peter, who leans down to listen while holding Simon’s hand, “I am just reading Percy Jackson, Peter. He can talk to fish. So maybe Spider-man can talk to spiders too.”
For no reason, though, Gwen gets this bad, bad feeling. Like Peter might do something… dumb.
But the light turns green, and Howard drags her forward. “C’mon Gwen, we need to unfreeze the chicken before mom gets home!”
She brushes that feeling aside.
It is a couple days after that she realizes, as she feared, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
As in, Peter Benjamin Parker – ranking second (just behind her, thank you very much) at Midtown High – has decided to conduct… well, for the lack of a better description, a science experiment.
Of a hypothesis that does not stand on any scientific grounds.
In her room.
Because of something her young, dumb brother has mentioned in passing.
The “spider incident” – as they now call it – unfolds something like this:
It’s a normal Saturday, and Gwen goes out of her room to grab some snacks, having been working hard on her latest English essay and wanting a break. Her mom is called to the office to handle a client’s legal emergency and her brothers are at a birthday party, so technically she has the apartment all to herself until the rest of her family comes back home.
“Peter,” she calls his name as she enters her room, having unexpectedly found Peter let himself in (again) after climbing up from the fire escape. She notices something that wasn’t there before when she left the room in her periphery. It is something… odd-looking. Out of place.
Something that she definitely does not want to see in her room.
Or anywhere near her, for that matter, aside from in a zoo (which she also won’t go to out of ethical reasons).
“Peter, why is there a tarantula… in my room?”
He whips his head around, big brown doe eyes wide open like a deer in headlights. It’s like he doesn’t notice that she’s gotten back from the kitchen. “… Gwen?”
She glares at him.
Peter, still dazed at her sudden entrance, looks at her, follows her line of sight to the container that holds an eight-legged arthropod, then back at her again. His mouth opens but no sound comes out.
(Tarantulas may be usually quite timid in front of humans, but that does not mean by any sense that they are not potentially harmful.)
(If a scenario presents itself and a tarantula envenoms a human… Well, granted technically the area stung would only look and feel like a bee sting.)
(But a tarantula is very, very scary looking.)
(And very, very, very hairy.)
(So all together a terrible combination indeed on a rather small being, if you ask Gwen.)
“Baby?” Peter near whispers. “Gwen?”
“Why is there a tarantula?” she asks again.
“Uh…” his hands gesture everywhere as he tries to form a response. “Remember Philip’s question a few days ago?”
“Uh huh.”
Peter wipes his hands on his pants, he’s looking squirmy.
“I… kind of… got curious?”
(Uh oh. Bad idea.)
See, this is something you have to know about Gwen’s boyfriend, Peter.
Don’t get her wrong – Gwen loves Peter. There are many things that she absolutely loves about the man.
He’s funny, brave, so fucking kind, charming, polite, emotionally mature and very gentleman-like (which is more than one can say for the majority of boys in high school). He’s a part-time criminal-fighting BAMF nicknamed Spider-man who’s saved the city a handful of times. He’s very hot andhandsome (have you seen that ass and that hair volume?). He’s also smart and an incredible scientist.
So, Peter is, as people would call it, an absolute keeper.
But he can also, occasionally, be incredibly… stupid. Not in the textbook-stupid sense. Just… in the common-sense-lacking type of stupid way.
Like, bringing a live spider to her girlfriend’s home kind of stupid.
Mind you, it is a live, big ass spider.
“Of all spiders, Peter? The big, scary, hairy kind?”
He has the audacity to smile at her sheepishly and pumps his fist in the air. “Yay… go big or go home… right?”
“No! That is not what I meant!”
It takes them a while to notice, but here’s the thing.
If you ever have the unfortunate incident where your handsome-and-normally-very-smart-but-for-some-reason-got-kind-of-dumb-today boyfriend brings home a spider (the alive kind) in a container… you should:
1) Never, ever, ever, take your eyes off of the container.
2) Always make sure the lid of the container is sealed – y’know, so that the spider won’t… come out?
And 3) Do not let your insanely hot boyfriend get into a make out session with you to distract you from the fact that he’s put the spider cage on top of your pile of math worksheet in your room.
(Yes, this is highly specific. But can you blame Gwen?)
(Her homework will most likely be burned by the end of the day because for as much Gwen loves Peter, she hates spiders.)
“Gwen?” she hears her name called, follows by a frankly inhumanly high-pitched scream from her mother. “Why is there a tarantula in the corner of the living room ceiling?”
One look at the suddenly empty plastic box gets her heart skipping a beat.
“Oh no,” Peter mutters under his breath. He swears some more. “Fuck! The spider… it’s gone.”
Gwen swears, a lot. “No shit, Sherlock.”
God, does she hate spiders.
(Gwen has more than a few questions:)
(How did the spider find a way out of its containment unit to begin with?)
(Why did Philip have to ask this dumb question out loud?)
(Why did Peter have to test this stupid hypothesis?)
“Peter… fix this.”
They hear more screaming from the living room.
Gwen’s pretty sure her brothers just got back too.
There’s the sound of something crashing outside.
“Peter, baby, now would be a great time for you to tell me that you can communicate with spiders,” she stares into his eyes. “Peter.”
“… I tried, I really did, but I can’t talk to spiders,” he scratches his head. “… Sorry?”
She wants to throw her hands. Exasperated, she points out to the door, “Go out and save us, please.”
Peter shakes his head vehemently and exclaims, “No! Tarantulas are scary!”
“Then why did you bring one home?” Gwen could cry.
God save them.
It takes the collective power of not one, but three adults, and three smaller children, to coax the tarantula back into the container.
(There was a lot of tears and shaking involved too, not that any of them would admit it.)
(Spiders are very, very scary indeed.)
Dinner is delayed for at least an hour, and everyone is near exhausted before it even begins.
Helen gives up on making dinner and opts instead to order pizza – she’s too tired to do anything afterwards.
Later, everyone sits at the sofa and watches TV. The program is ironically, a nature documentary narrated by Sir David Attenborough.
Peter has one arm around Gwen’s waist, and she’s curled up against him – a position which, by the way, feels criminally comfortable – he presses a kiss to the top of her head and murmurs, “We are never doing that again.”
“You mean, you are never doing that again,” she replies in agreement. “I love you, Peter Parker, but if you ever do something similar again, I will seriously consider breaking up with you.”
“Got it.”