-Broadcast-
Barry had worn glasses since before he could remember. He had needed them as a child; after the power came, the need went away, but he kept wearing them. It was easier than explaining why he had stopped.
He held the signed newspaper in both hands and did not ask Spider-Woman for a hug, because he was a shy fan who understood the difference between wanting something and asking for it. The autograph was more than enough. He would frame it.
Borsalino was watching both of them.
They were performing for each other, he thought — both of them, simultaneously, in different costumes. The girl in the spider suit was wearing the spider suit. The boy in the glasses was wearing the glasses. Neither of them had said anything true yet, and they had somehow arrived at a situation where they were about to cooperate.
It was very tiring, this modern habit of never being direct.
From the moment Gwen had entered the range of his Observation Haki, Borsalino had recognized her. He had danced with her at The Liberty — three dances she had not requested — and he had a good memory for body language. The spider suit changed very little about the way she carried herself.
He was aware that this was apparently not how it was supposed to work. He had gathered, from what Barry had explained during their cohabitation, that the masked-hero convention operated on a principle of maintained ambiguity: if a villain had not seen a hero unmasked, the villain would not recognize them on the street, and vice versa. This principle appeared to hold across most of the city's superhero encounters.
Borsalino found this principle exhausting. If there was something to say, one should say it. He was not a villain and he was not obligated to participate in the ambiguity.
Gwen's spider sense flagged him before he took a step toward her.
She had been calibrating the room from the moment she entered it — the nerd classmate posed no threat, but the tall older man had been filed under unpredictable since The Liberty incident. She turned fractionally, weight shifting.
Borsalino picked up the small clay figure on Barry's shelf. It was a Spider-Woman figurine — accurate in posture, accurate in proportion, the kind of detail a dedicated fan got right.
"This has her shape quite well," he said. "Though she looks rather like your classmate." He set it down. "Am I wrong, Miss Gwen Stacy?"
Barry looked at the spider suit. He looked at the figurine. He looked at the spider suit again.
Gwen Stacy — the campus social centerpiece, the one who attended everything and knew everyone — did not fit the image he had built of street heroism. Street heroism was, in his conception, something done by people who had nothing else to be doing. Gwen Stacy had cocktail parties. She had study groups. She had a calendar that was presumably full.
Gwen maintained her altered voice without missing a beat. "I don't know who you're talking about. I came here for help. After tonight, we won't cross paths again."
Barry turned to smooth things over, because that was his reflex. "My uncle's had a long day. He saw someone at The Liberty earlier and got a little confused. Sorry about—"
He stopped.
Borsalino had moved.
Barry registered it as a disturbance at the edge of his speed-sense — a flicker of light-speed motion that his own ability barely caught the tail end of. By the time his eyes processed what had happened, Borsalino was standing behind Gwen with her hood in one hand and her mask in the other, and the face that had been underneath was currently visible to everyone in the room.
Gwen Stacy. Light silver hair with the faintest hint of gold. The face that Barry had spent approximately three semesters being too nervous to speak to directly, now approximately one meter from his own face.
He stood very still.
Gwen processed what had happened. Her hand had been reaching for the spider sense, anticipating a physical attack, and Borsalino had moved between her reaching and her responding at a speed that had effectively not existed for her to track. He was standing behind her with her mask, looking pleased with himself.
"I danced with the campus beauty three times at The Liberty," he said. "I pay attention to how people move. One develops a sense for these things."
"You're the reason I got thrown out of The Liberty," Gwen said, in her actual voice, which came out far more composed than she felt. She raised her hand and shot a line of webbing at the space behind her.
It crossed the room and stuck flat against the wall.
Borsalino was standing in front of her.
She had not seen him move. The air around him had carried a faint yellow discharge — the particular shimmer of something moving at a speed that made the surrounding moment seem to pause — and then he was simply elsewhere, watching her webbing miss with the serene expression of someone for whom this was a normal Tuesday.
"You're not an ordinary person," she said.
"No," Borsalino agreed pleasantly.
Gwen recalibrated. The wretched old man had turned Barry into a target for gossip and spent Barry's money freely and danced with her without permission, and she had categorized him as eccentric but manageable. She was updating that assessment now in real time, and the update was not reassuring.
Barry stepped between them, because that was also his reflex.
"He's done demonstrating. You came here for something — about saving people. Let's hear it." He looked at Gwen steadily. "I'll help if I can. That's what you came for, right?"
Gwen looked at him. She looked at Borsalino.
She took the sketch she had made and put it on the table. An underground tunnel — rough walls, no markings, a junction at one end. The fragment from her spider sense, rendered as accurately as she could manage.
She explained the relevant parts. She left out the part where the person carrying her friends in the tunnel was the wretched old man currently standing three meters away, watching the conversation with idle interest. She was not ready to have that particular discussion yet.
Barry picked up the sketch. He studied it for a long moment, turning it, tracing the junction line with his finger.
"I've been in this tunnel," he said. "I think. It would be in the city infrastructure records — the university library has the complete set. I could go—" He paused, calculating the time that implied. "It might take a while."
Gwen opened her mouth to redirect the plan.
Barry took off his glasses.
He set them on the table beside the Spider-Woman figurine, and his thin frame was suddenly outlined in red — not ambient light, not a reflection, but the particular crackling static of a current building from the inside out. His eyes, without the glasses, were completely focused.
The fan had been exposed. No point in the fan pretending either.
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