You weren’t supposed to get paired with Anya Corazon.

She was the quiet one. The girl who came in just after the bell, hoodie up, backpack slung low, always a little out of breath like she'd run from somewhere far away just to make it on time. Smart — really smart — but distant. A little intimidating, if you were honest. Not in a mean way, but in that I'm-carrying-something-you-wouldn't-understand kind of way.

But when the teacher announced new lab partners and your name followed hers, you didn’t complain. You just gathered your notebook, calculator, and your awkward charm, and moved two seats to the left.

She barely looked at you when you sat down. Just passed you a pair of goggles and said, “Hope you’re not the type who blows stuff up.”

You grinned. “Only by accident.”

And that was how it started.

Chemistry with Anya Corazon was… complicated. Not the class — the class was fine. You actually liked stoichiometry more than you thought possible. But her — she was harder to pin down. One week she was calm and helpful, correcting your equations with a little smirk. The next, she was distracted, scribbling in the margins of her notebook with ink-stained hands, flinching at sudden noises, checking her phone like it was wired to something life-or-death.

You didn’t ask at first. You figured it wasn’t your business. But then there was the fire alarm incident — the one where the lab vent sparked and filled the room with smoke. People panicked. You froze.

Anya didn’t.

She grabbed the extinguisher, cut the flame at its source, opened the window with a move too smooth to be school-learned, and helped two kids outside like she’d done it a hundred times before.

After that, you started noticing the bruises. The weird burns. The way she kept checking the sky through the classroom window like she was expecting it to fall.

So one day, during lab cleanup, you asked.

“Anya… what’s going on with you?”

She didn’t answer right away. Just stared at the beaker she was rinsing like the swirl of chemicals held her whole life story.

“I do a lot after school,” she said finally. “Things I can’t really explain.”

“You in some kind of trouble?”

She looked up. And for the first time, she really looked at you.

“No,” she said. “But I’m keeping people out of it.”

You weren’t sure what to say. So you didn’t say anything. You just nodded.

That Friday, you found a spider insignia stitched into the hem of her hoodie.

The next week, you saw her vanish into an alley after school — and something swung out of it seconds later.

You didn’t tell anyone.

But you stayed her partner. In lab. In class. And maybe, in something more.

Now, it’s late. The school’s empty. You're both still in the chem room, putting away beakers and laughing about how badly you both failed the last quiz.

She looks at you suddenly — eyes softer, like she’s peeled off another invisible layer.

“You know,” she says, “you’re actually kind of good at this.”

“Chemistry?”

“No,” she smiles. “Noticing.”

And just like that, your hands brush near the cabinet, and the whole world slows down — not because it’s a big, romantic moment. But because she let her guard down. With you.

There’s a new kind of chemistry now — between danger and trust. Between two students. Between Spider-Girl and the one person who saw her first as just… Anya.