Spidey and the Iron Girl: Vol. 1

#5: Enemy of My Enemy

"Holy shit, this is--," Collin had to stop herself from continuing, her mouth half-full of the sandwich that was proving to be a lot tastier than she expected. But Peter was smirking at her now, and there was no way she could let the expression of self-satisfaction stay on his face. "Uh, not that bad, I guess... I mean, it's nothing I'd ever eat again, but it's... fine..."

"Uh huh, it's just 'fine," Peter took a huge bite out of his own hero and slurped on his soda. "We'll pretend I didn't just watch you inhale half of that sandwich..."

"I was hungrier than I thought," She shrugged, pushing her glasses up her nose with the back of her hand.

"So, I was right to make us stop for lunch?" Peter pressed, still chewing.

"What? I'm sorry, I can't hear you over your bad manners. Swallow then speak, Peter. Swallow then speak--."

"Yeah, Peter, we all know how much you love to swallow," An abrasive male voice cut in on their bickering. Peter tensed, his jaw freezing in the middle of another gigantic bite into his hero.

Collin looked up as a shadow fell over them into the face of a guy that looked about their same age who was looking at Peter like he was fresh meat.

"Hey, Flash," Peter said weakly, swallowing down the chunk of sandwich whole-- goddamnit, he was only five seconds into a conversation with Flash and now he couldn't even think about swallowing normal things without making it dirty.

"Hey, yourself-- aren't you going to introduce me?" Flash crossed his arms, looking pointedly at Collin.

"Yeah, Peter, aren't you going to introduce us?" Collin smiled maliciously, seeing how Peter was already starting to cower in front of this guy.

Peter sighed heavily. Introducing two of his least favorite people to each other seemed like a bad idea but he had no choice.

"Flash, this is Collin Sta-- Stern. Collin Stern," He quickly caught himself from revealing who exactly Collin was. It wasn't that the Iron Girl's identity was a secret-- In fact, Peter had seen some older news-spreads in Forbes magazine about Tony building Collin a special suit when she was a child and, later on, other news outlets had published stories about her training as she got older. Still, because she wasn't an active part of the Initiative, she didn't get a lot of media exposure and, since Flash clearly didn't recognize her, Peter wanted to keep it that way. "Collin this is... Flash Thompson. He's a-- I know him from school."

"Collin Stern, huh?" Flash looked Collin up and down now, openly checking her out. Peter's fingers dug into the wrapper of his sandwich violently. "Well, I have two questions for you, Collin: One, how do you know Peter? And two, why, since you're so obviously out of his league?"

"Oh, you think that we're--?" Collin looked at Peter, who turned bright red and began to cover up, their explanations overlapping.

"We're not on a date or anything, we're just hanging out," Collin's spoke quickly and calmly, not seeing any need for an elaborate cover story. Because, really, the idea that they were doing anything like a date was just laughable. Peter, on the other hand...

"It's just-- Uh-- We're working on a project thing--!" He practically shouted, making Collin resist the urge to face-palm.

Flash frowned in confusion.

"So what is it? Are you hanging out or are you working on a project?"

"Both!" They blurted out in unison. Collin shot Peter a look that she hoped clearly instructed him to shut the fuck up and let her take over the excuses.

"Yeah, we're, uh, working on a... photography project," She explained, seeing someone behind Flash taking selfies by the Astoria Park sign. "We're just on a lunch break right now, you know, hanging out..."