STEPPING UP [BOYXBOY]✔️

CHAPTER 10: GROSS SPIDERS AND BAD IDEAS

PETER PARKER
Present

Contrary to everyone thinking that I'm irrational and stupid, I had a plan. And a good one at that.

Shadow- first off, what kind of name as that? It sounds like some uncreative writer bullshitted it out in a lame attempt to sound cool. It wasn't working. But anyway, yeah. My plan was a good one.

He was planning for me to get there tomorrow, so I was going right now to catch him off guard.

First off, I sneak next to wherever the place is. I use a reconnaissance drone (it's like a tech spider that's made for exploration, it's really cool) to scope out the building. It'll detect where MJ is, as well as this so-called Shadow dude.

I'll be able to figure out what he was planning to use against me and sneak attack him or whatever.

It was a great plan. A plan that I came up with during the fifteen minutes it took for me to get from Ned's to the abandoned building.

It looked super dusty and old. And there were spiderwebs everywhere.

Gross. I hate spiders. Ironic, I know.

"Suit Lady," I whispered, "are you there?"

Suit Lady was like the guide inside of it that Mr Stark designed. It was like EDITH in the glasses. I named her Karen.

"What do you need?" her monotonous voice responded and I jumped a little bit.

"Go send a reconnaissance spider into that building," I told her and tried to keep my voice as low as possible.

I raised my hand and shot the fake spider onto the doorstep. "It's in," Karen replied.

I watched the camera inside my suit as it crawled inside. Inside the building looked even grosser. There were so many spiders that it blended in easily.

"Find MJ."

It creeped along the floor and I tried to memorize the layout but everything looked the same. Once it scoped out the bottom floor it inched up the stairs.

Have you ever noticed how slowly spiders move? I always thought it was fast, but a good twenty minutes of nothing had passed. I didn't expect my Friday night to be spent watching a spider take ten hours crawling up a flight of stairs.

Once it reached the top it slid under a door, and there was MJ. Her wrists were tied behind her back and her legs were glued to the chair she was forced to sit on. She looked as beautiful as ever, but that's not what caught my eye.

There, right in front of MJ, stood Quentin Beck.

My heart pounded in my chest and I felt my mouth go dry. I blinked twelve times to make sure I wasn't seeing things, but it went a question anymore. He was alive.

"What the fu-"

"Language!" Karen scolded.

"H-he's alive?!" I spoke louder than intended.

I watched MJ and Beck having a regular conversation and I tried to listen in on it.

"Shadow has a plan, he wants revenge, it's a long story," Quentin explained and I melted at the sound of his rough, masculine voice. "Just normal, psychotic villain stuff, okay? He wants revenge on Tony Stark but he's dead so he's using Peter. In order to hurt Peter he wants to hurt everyone he loves."

I barely processed the important words he was saying because he looked so handsome in front of her. He had five o'clock shadow leading down to his broad shoulders and muscular body. Instead of my mouth going dry it began to water instead in want. In that moment I forgot all about everything he had done to me and focused on how perfectly the dim light hit his face.