PTR Arachnid 24601

Ch 28 - Branzino?

3rd POV

"You got bit by a spider?" Ned asked as they walked to school the next day. "Can it bite me? Well, it probably woulda hurt, right? You know what whatever. Even if it did hurt, I would let it bite me. M-maybe. How much did it hurt?"

"Spider's dead, Ned," Peter replied a bit tersely.

After a long silence of Leeds visibly struggling to not talk, he opened his mouth again, "Do you lay eggs?"

Spider's head whipped around to face his friend, shock and confusion written clearly on his face, "Wh-at? No."

Later in biology, Ned wheeled over to him,."Do you spit venom?"

Peter cringed a little, remembering all the people he killed with it, including the illusion Bucky. He nodded stiffly and whispered, "Yes."

Ned's eyes widened and his lips parted in awe. "Can you summon an army of spiders?"

Parker almost laughed as he tried to pay attention to Mr. Harrington. "No, Ned."

The next class the web-slinger had with Ned was Spanish. They couldn't talk about his alter-ego during lunch since Gwen and Harry were there. So, the questions came back during class.

"How far can you shoot your webs?"

"Don't know. Shut up." Peter was growing tired. Though the flabbergasted look on Ned's face was rather amusing, he didn't like the constant stream of queries.

"If I was you, I would stand on the edge of a building and just shoot it as far as I could."

"Shut up, Ned," he whisper-yelled, gritting his teeth in frustration. He ignored the murderous look he got from a female student in front of him.

Gym came next and the class listened to one of Captain America's PSA's. Spider bit back his laugh. He was definitely going to bring this up later.

"Do you train with him, too?" Ned asked, thinking about how his friend got to train with the Black Widow. Maybe he trained with other Avengers?

"Yeah. I stole his shield." The grin escaped his lips when he thought about the time he and Steve were training. Rogers was allowed to use his shield since he wasn't as strong, but Peter had webbed it out of his hands in the first ten seconds. The bewildered look on his face was priceless.

Ned asked more questions during sit-ups, only to be constantly shushed by a very annoyed Peter.

"Hey, can I be your guy in a chair?"

"What?" Peter squinted and tilted his head a fraction of an inch. Guy in a chair? What's that?

"You know how there's a guy. In a chair. Telling the other guy where to go? Like– like, if you were stuck in a burning building, I could tell you where to go because there'd be screens around me and I could swivel around them 'cause I'd be your guy in the chair."

"Ned, I don't need a guy in a chair." As tempting as it sounded, he wasn't sure he wanted a voice in his ear constantly while he fought bad guys and rescued civilians.

"Looking good, Parker," Coach Wilson commented as he passed, causing Peter to realize he was over-doing it and totally not keeping up his 'weak nerd' persona. He let out a strained breath and made everything look harder.

Spider invited Ned to the tower that night. Tony had requested a meeting with the two teens and the other Avengers to go over the whole Ned-knows-almost-everything thing.