Chapter Text
“No...no no no. This is not happening,” I mutter under my breath, rifling through my kitchen cabinets for the third time before finally admitting defeat. I had run out of sugar. For cookies. Cookies I was hell-bent on baking for my first lab meeting at Oscorp tomorrow.
Why cookies, you ask, when I should be obsessing over the formulas for my health regeneration serum prototypes that could change the world of medicine as we knew it? Stress baking. My guilty little habit. And yes, I was under a lot of stress as of late.
I desperately wanted to make a good first impression on my new colleagues at Oscorp. As a freshly hired post-baccalaureate summer intern, one of only 5 in my cohort might I add, I was tasked with coming up with a new line of research the world renowned technology and research corporation could feasibly follow down. The rules? The project had to align with Oscorp's general interests, meet the time constraints of the internship, be ethically plausible, and of course, scalable and profitable.
I’d started dabbling with the serums back in my sophomore year as a research assistant at Empire State University (ESU). The undergraduate lab I worked in had gotten me far, but its resources couldn’t hold a candle to what Oscorp could offer. That said, I was under no illusions: in academia, I could poke and prod at the mysteries of science just for the thrill of discovery, but at Oscorp, the endgame was never pure curiosity, it was profit, patents, and, most likely, selling my tech to the military-industrial complex to do potentially unspeakable amounts of harm. My biggest challenge then? Convincing them it could also be profitable in the biomedical world without losing sight of the science that actually mattered to me.
So...here I was, attempting to bake my infamous (and very persuasive) brown butter, chocolate chip cookies to ensure my research proposal was deemed exciting and pursuable by Oscorp for the betterment of society. Only I had completely fucked myself over by not double checking if I had enough ingredients. Typical.
By now you’re probably thinking, well Gwen, why don’t you just pop down to the bodega a block away and get some more sugar? Bing, bang, boom. Problem solved.
Uh-first off, do you know how stupidly expensive those places upcharge simple pantry necessities compared to the usual grab and go junk food they stock?
Secondly, my first paycheck from the summer internship hadn’t hit my bank account yet, and after shelling out first and last months rent and the security deposit for my tiny studio apartment in a not so great part of Queens, my bank account was currently in the red.
Suddenly, it hit me. All I needed was half a cup of sugar. Surely a next door neighbor would be willing to save me during this desperate time of need with a you scratch my back, I scratch your back kind of repayment plan thrown in for good measure.
So...as much as I hated the idea of knocking on random people's doors and having to deal with awkward, fake niceties, it had to happen.
I quickly slid on my pair of ballet flats stashed near my front door, not caring that my very casual ensemble of black leggings and an extra large “Empire State University BioChem Club” threadbare T-shirt clashed with the shoes I’d purchased specifically to look put together for my internship. It’s not like it mattered what I looked like right now, I just needed some sugar. Right?
I start down the hallway of my apartment complex, knocking on the first door to the left of my own, a fading “212” visible above the peephole. I wait. And...wait. Either nobody lived here, or they were working the night shift.
With a sigh, I continue down the hall, reaching door “213.” I knock, a bit louder than I had on the previous door. In response, I hear a loud “thud” that echoes through the front door and into the hallway where I’m standing. A window slamming shut perhaps? That’s odd. Despite it being late May, New York had been unreasonably cold as of late, apparently wanting to cling to Spring showers.
“Uh! One second.” Comes a distinctly chipper, yet frazzled male voice.
I wait.
“Sorry just-”
More distant thuds, and then something that sounds like a crash.
“Shit!”
Suddenly I feel wildly out of my comfort zone. I had clearly interrupted this person's evening and they were now paying the price for my own poor planning.
“Don’t worry about it, actually, pretend I never knocked. I’m so sorry-” I call through the door when it suddenly bursts open, well, as open as the secondary door chain would let it be open.
I’m met with quizzical brown eyes, messy chestnut hair, flushed cheeks, and a very obvious and painful looking split lip. The man...boy? No, certainly a man standing in the doorway appears winded. He is dressed as casually as me, a navy colored sweatshirt and grey sweatpants. He is about the same height as me, maybe a couple inches taller, but just barely. Annoyingly, all of these things work incredibly well together. So well together, that I suddenly forget where I am or what I need.
“Are you okay?” I blurt, feeling an annoying heat creep up the back of my neck.
“Huh?” he replies, bushy brows furrowing under his helmet of unkempt hair.
“Your lip...you’re bleeding. Are you okay?”
The man swipes at his mouth and then looks at the streak of red that stains his knuckles with a somewhat surprised expression.
“Uh...yeah. I’m fine. I was just errr-boxing” he fumbles for words, glancing back into the depths of his apartment for a second. “Well, not boxing alone obviously. I was at the gym. Yeah! I just got home from my boxing gym, where I box, you know, uppercut, hook, jab, that kind of thing. My coach was a bit rough on me tonight, at the gym, where I do boxing.”
Do boxing. Was that the appropriate term? “Right...” I trail off, trying, but clearly failing to not come off skeptical in my reply.
It was his turn to look at me now. Or so it seemed. His eyes trail from my ballet flat clad feet to the top of my head, where my blonde bangs hang neatly against my forehead. I would be lying if I said his careful gaze didn’t make something in my stomach flutter.
“You knocked on my door, right? Is there something I can do for yo-”
I cut him off before he can finish, thrusting my bright green, one half cup measurer in his direction.
“I’m out of sugar. I’m baking some cookies for a lab meeting tomorrow and I doubled the batch because I didn’t know how many people were going to be in attendance but I forgot to check if I had enough and I could go to the bodega down the street but-”
And then I cut myself off, because now I was rambling almost as bad as he had been moments prior.
The man gently takes my cup measurer offering, then does something I’m not expecting. He offers his other freehand out through the gap in the door.
“I’m Peter.”
“Gwen, Gwen Stacy.”
I reach forward, shaking his rough, callused hand.
“Want to come inside, Gwen Stacy?”
It probably wasn’t my best or brightest idea to go into a man's apartment with whom I’d just learned partook in a serious and potentially deadly combat sport, and yet here I was, standing in his studio that looked nearly identical to my own.
In my defense, I always had this strong gut feeling about people when I met them for the first time. It was this innate sense. This immediate knowledge about whether a person was good or bad. And it had never steered me wrong. In fact, there was this TA in one of my undergraduate physics classes that always gave me the heebie jeebies. A few months after the semester concluded, I caught wind he’d been kicked out of the graduate program for sending cryptic late-night emails to female students about “collaborating on side projects.” The moral of the story is, this Peter fellow, well, the only thing wafting off him was goodness.
“What’s the sugar for again?” Peter calls over his shoulder as he rummages through his kitchen.
I stand in the cramped foyer, nervously shuffling from foot as I attempt to discreetly snoop on Peter’s apartment from my vantage point. While the space is similarly laid out like my own, the walls and floors are nearly bare. There’s a twin sized bed shoved off to one corner and a dresser. There’s books piled three, sometimes five high in different shaped mounds across the floor and minimal furniture but that’s it. No artwork. No nick nacks. No...nothing to give me an idea as to who this person really is.
I’m startled back to the present when there’s a thump of a bag of sugar onto the kitchen countertop.
“Jackpot.”
“Oh uh...I’m making some cookies for people at work. I just got a summer internship at Oscorp, they’re a-”
“Multi-million dollar biotechnology company. Yeah. I’ve heard of them.”
The reply from Peter isn’t terse, but it carries a weight that makes me a bit uneasy.
“Are you a scientist then?” he asks.
I nod, watching as he fills my cup measurer to the brim with sugar. “I just graduated with my BS in biochemistry actually. But I’m more into the bio than the chemistry bit.”
That seems to capture his attention. Peter leans back against his countertop, inspecting me again.
“Huh...”
“What?” I question.
“I’m a biochemist too. But I’m more into the chemistry than bio bit.” A smirk.
Nope. Absolutely not. It just wasn’t possible. There was no universe in which another biochemist lived exactly two doors down from me-well, okay, apparently there were multiple universes, but still-not universes where this was a normal occurrence.
“You’re kidding,” I say, narrowing my eyes in his direction. “You’re actually a biochemist?”
Peter lifts one shoulder in a half shrug, half challenge. “Swear on my empty apartment.”
Ah, so he noticed me staring.
“Okay,” I say slowly, crossing my arms. “If you’re really a chemistry guy…what’s the strongest naturally existing polymer?”
His eyebrows shoot up and I swear he nearly chokes on his own spit. “You’re quizzing me now?”
“Just answer.”
He doesn’t even blink before he responds.
“Spider silk.”
Damn. He’s good.
Okay. Round two.
“Fine,” I say, pretending that his quick response didn’t impress me. “What about Michaelis-Menten kinetics? What does Km stand for?”
Peter’s smirk returns, annoyingly confident. “Substrate concentration at half-maximal velocity.”
He didn’t even hesitate. Fine. I’ll concede.
“Okay chemistry boy. Your turn.”
He taps his fingers along his jaw in thought. “If you had to choose, are you a membrane person or a cytoskeleton person?”
I gasp, offended. That was like asking someone if they liked tacos or pizza better, which were, arguably, both equally great in their own ways. “Why would you make me choose?”
He shrugs, waiting for my response.
I pretend to think deeply, then sigh. “…Fine. Cytoskeleton. Actin filaments are the backbone of society afterall.”
Peter grins, this quiet, soft thing that tugs at my chest for reasons I do not have the time to unpack.The night wasn’t getting any younger, and I still needed to bake two dozen cookies and run through my presentation slides one more time before I even thought about sleeping.
“Good answer,” he murmurs. “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”
“Not going to quiz me?”
Peter offers me my now filled sugar cup like a peace offering.
“Nah, I trust you. Plus, the shirt kind of gives you away.” Another smirk.
I flush, my eyes darting down to my nerdy T-shirt I’d almost forgotten I was wearing. I internally curse myself for not changing into something less casual.
When I grasp the cup of sugar, our hands briefly touch and I swear there’s a momentary shock of electricity. I freeze for half a second, wondering if he felt it too, but his face is unreadable.
“Thank you. And again, I’m sorry for interrupting your night,” I say, taking small backwards steps towards his front door.
“As long I can get one of those cookies from you, then how about we’re even?”
I nod, the hint of a smile dotting my lips as I reach for the door handle.
“It was nice meeting you Gwen.”
“Likewise, Peter.”