◤ chapter eight: ❛ secret
identities ❜ ◢

⋆

          TONI WAS BORED, BUT IT WAS PRE-CALC SO COULD ANYONE REALLY BLAME HER? The class was utter trash and she was sure she'd never actually use pre-calc later in life, but she has to right now because that's the class she's sadly in, and it's boring as fuck. Even talking to Harry would be more interesting than this was. But whatever, she can suck it up for forty-five minutes. At least, she could in theory.

But in actual practice, when she's in the back of the class and none of her friends are there – well, there's some of Atlas' friends and she guessed that they were fine, but they weren't close by any means – the class was utter torture. Complete torture. Inhumane torture. But she can't complain too much because she willingly signed up for the class and subjected herself to this, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

And she didn't.

She was counting down the minutes until the bell rang and she quickly packed up, ready to go to lunch. That had to be the only good thing about pre-calc; it was fifth period right before lunch and after that she could stop being so fucking bored and get some entertainment from either Sabrina or Atlas.

As she went out of the classroom, and held onto the strap of her bag, maneuvering around others stopping in the hallway to talk to their friends. Ugh. She hated when people did that even though she was guilty of doing the same on many occasions, but whatever.

She got out her phone to check if she had any messages or snaps, not paying attention until she bumped into someone. Looking up briefly, seeing if this was someone she would actually apologize to or not, she rolled her eyes when it was just Harry Osborn because of course it was. The universe absolutely hated her, that was completely apparent with how much he was showing up in her life even though she had made it clear to everyone – even God or whoever ruled the universe – that she hated him.

She went to move past him but he grabbed her arm, calling out, "Hey!"

Tugged back, she glared at him before yanking her arm away. "Don't fucking touch me," she hissed at him, holding the arm he tugged at close to her so he couldn't get it again. Toni didn't do touch, especially with someone like Harry.

"Sorry," he apologized, raising his arms in a surrendering motion, "I just wanted to talk to you."

"About what?" she raised an eyebrow, even though she was pretty sure she knew what he wanted to talk about and what she never wanted to discuss again.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on. Don't play dumb, Toni, you know what I wanna talk about."

"Well, I don't. There's no reason to bring that up because it was a huge mistake and we were both drunk and it didn't mean anything," Toni bluntly told him, "Good?"

He huffed, "Not really. We slept together, that's not just nothing."

"Really? I can't be your first one-night stand, can I?" Toni asked him rhetorically, "We fucked, yeah, and it's not gonna happen again. And you can forget about whatever we talked about."

"You don't remember?" he raised an eyebrow.

She shook her head. "Not really," she admitted, "I was blackout drunk. Like, it was us at the party and then me waking up in your bed the next morning. But it doesn't matter. We aren't friends and we certainly aren't fuck buddies or anything. So just forget about this and let's go back to hating each other."

Harry rolled his eyes before leaning in, "I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: I don't fucking hate you. You annoy me, but I don't hate you. So if you think we're enemies, it's just one-sided."

As he pulled away from her, she glared at him. "Yeah, we're not enemies, sure, but that doesn't mean we're friends."

"I never said we were," Harry returned.

"Good," she said in a finalization of their conversation, "Well, bye. Let's hope we never have to talk ever again."

"Whatever," Harry shook his head at her, walking away leaving her alone.

She huffed to herself. God, Harry was so infuriating. Why the fuck did he have to say that he didn't hate her and make her look like the bad guy for hating someone who didn't hate her? He wasn't better than her; she was better than him! At least she wasn't...well, so what if they were similar? She was still better.

She ran into the bathroom and looked around to make sure no one was in there before letting out a scream of frustration. She really hated him for leaning in and allowing his breath to tickle her air, for making her feel like her insides were on fire when she tried to remember the night they fucked. It just wasn't fair at all and she hated him.

She really hated him.

Not wanting to waste any more time of her lunch period, she walked out of the bathroom and began to walk toward the lunch room when she heard whispering in one of the classrooms. Curiosity overtaking her, she stealthy made her way over to the cracked door to listen, peering in to see that it was Peter Parker and Ned Leeds in the computer lab.

And she didn't really know them, if she was being honest, because they were the complete opposite of cool and were the type of kids to make posters about the dangers of underage drinking or smoking or doing drugs – well, whatever she did basically. So they weren't even close to being friends, but she still leaned in.

"I still don't understand why you didn't show up at Liz' party," Ned said to Peter.

"I was going to, but then I saw this explosion and I had to go check it out and I saw these guys selling this alien-like technology. But then they saw me because my phone went off and I was chased by them and it was totally dangerous but kinda cool but then I went into the water and Mr. Stark had to save me," Peter rambled on and Toni's face morphed into one of confusion.

"Man, you're so cool," Ned gushed.

Peter blushed and looked down. "Thanks, but you know what's cooler? I got a piece of the technology."

He reached into his bag and pulled out a glowing purple box – well, it was circular, but whatever, it was box-like – and handed it to Ned. "Cool!" Ned exclaimed.

"I just don't know what it does," Peter sighed as Ned started examining it.

"Well, we'll find out then," Ned said decidedly, "I mean, I am your guy in the chair which means I'm obligated to help you find out what this is. I'm sure we can do it."

"Thanks, Ned," Peter smiled at him.

"So, you wanna hang out later? We can try and figure this out some more," Ned asked him.

Peter shook his head. "Sorry, but I'm tutoring this guy after school now for some money and then I have to go out on patrol."

"Spider-Man's duties never end, do they?" Ned asked, "I mean, really, when you do sleep?" then he gasped, "When do you do your homework?"

Toni stilled. Spider-Man? Fucking Spider-Man? Dweeb Peter Parker, who stumbled over himself in every conversation and had a stutter, was the new friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? Really?

Part of her didn't want to believe it. It's not like it was believable, after all, since Peter just didn't seem like the Spider-Man type. But, then again, he did claim to have a Stark Internship and she never quite believed it or disbelieved it, it really wasn't any of her business, and Ned did say that Peter knew Spider-Man because of the internship which led to Flash goading him into making the masked superhero show up at Liz' party.

(It never happened, but she guessed she knew why now.)

And, well, of course Peter would know who the superhero was if he was Spider-Man and that glowing purple box did seem to point that he really truly was the superhero. So, well, fuck.

Toni went to school with a superhero, Spider-Man really was just a kid like her, and it was Peter Parker. Holy fuck.

So now she had two options: she could, one, walk away and pretend like she didn't know and just go about her day completely normal or, two, expose herself and let them know that she had been eavesdropping on their conversation.

But the thing is, Toni can't keep secrets. She can, but she needs to at least tell one person just to get out. Usually that person was Sabrina but this was big; this would be like outing someone from the closet if she told Sabrina, so she can't. She's a bitch, she can admit that much, but she knows the difference between right and wrong and that would be a major wrong.

So she won't tell Sabrina but she has to tell someone. Which leaves her with the second option which was why she slowly opened the door and watched as the two boys scrambled, Peter even going as far as to stand up, their eyes both wide.

"You're Spider-Man," was the first thing out of her mouth, the only thing that came to mind to say, "What the fuck?"

"Please don't tell anyone," Peter rushed out as she stepped into the rush, "You can't, you really can't. I mean, Mr. Stark might kill me and Aunt May will definitely kill me. Please."

Toni blinked, shaking her head slightly to get out of her trance. "Relax, Parker, I won't say anything. I'm not a fucking insensitive, exposing asshole. But really, you? I mean, like, no offense, but my money would not be on someone like you."

"Um, thanks?" Peter questioned.

"What were you doing out there?" Ned asked because Peter was freaking out over someone else finding out his identity.

"Oh, um, I was in the bathroom and then I heard you guys talking so I decided to eavesdrop," Toni explained herself, moving a hair behind her ear as her cheeks flushed a little.

Okay, like she said, she was a bitch who listened in on other people's conversations to see if she could get dirty on them. Sue her.

"You were eavesdropping?" Ned asked, "That's so not cool."

Toni rolled her eyes. "Oh, whatever. It's not like it was personal, I do it all the time to a lot of different people. The only difference is usually once I hear something juicy I walk away and tell everyone. You're lucky."

"But you're not gonna tell everyone, are you?" Peter asked, full-blown panic mode now.

"Geez, Peter, I told you, I'm not gonna expose you so calm your tits," Toni huffed, talking a seat while still training her eyes at them, "But here's a little tip so no one else learns about your nighttime activities: maybe don't talk about being Spider-Man and mention your relation to him during school? Just a thought."

Peter and Ned both blushed at her little tip for them. "Yeah, I get that," Peter mumbled before looking up at her again, "You're not gonna like want to get it on the Spider-Man business, are you? Like Ned?"

"Please, I don't do superheroes, unless it's Captain America because then I will because, damn, have you seen his ass in that suit?" Toni made a noise thinking about Captain America. Like, yeah, he was a total war criminal now and that was bad and he sucked, but he was also fucking hot. Insanely hot and Toni would love to tap that, thank you very much.

Peter coughed awkwardly. "Right, great. Um, thanks for not telling anyone?"

"You're welcome," Toni smiled, her phone buzzing with a text from Sabrina asking where she was. Standing up, she gave them one last look, "Well, I gotta go. Good luck with your superhero business, losers, and try not to expose yourself because you're really good at it apparently. Adios."

And with that, she walked out of the room, heart pounding with her newfound information as she finally went to the cafeteria. While talking out things with Harry and getting their relationship straight was on her to-do list, finding out Spider-Man's identity definitely was not, but things rarely go to plan for her, so could she really be surprised?

did i really make toni eavesdrop and find out peter is spider-man? yes bc it was extremely unrealistic when ned was asking peter all these questions during classes that no one else found out, feeding into the theory that everyone in midtown already knows but pretends not to for peter's sake. also it just seemed like such a toni thing to do to eavesdrop on a random conversation so...