lovesick 𑣲.
spiderman!jake x superfan!reader ₊ ⊹
synopsis: reader has had a devastatingly embarrassing crush on spiderman ever since he saved her from a mugging two years ago. what happens when reader is paired up with jake for a chem project, the boy who can't seem to stop staring at her?
wc: 3.8k
warnings: reader-insert fic, female reader, written in third person (sorry, I had a hard time getting into second person for some reason), romance, fluff with a pining setup, brief violence (attempted mugging, knife mentioned but non-graphic), canon-typical superhero elements, teen and up! no explicit content today :p not beta read
Y/N had a massively embarrassing secret.
She was hopelessly in love with someone who could never love her back. Someone who probably doesn’t even remember her.
2 years ago
It all came crashing down on her one autumn night her freshman year. Her lab had just ended at 9 PM and she was rushing back to her apartment to turn in her lab report before it was due. Of course, with her luck, it had started to pour. This only added to her already sour mood.
She sighed dramatically and put the hood of her hoodie above her head. The walk to the apartment was only 10 minutes, and she’d done it before, both in the daylight and dark. But, something about the atmosphere of this specific night felt wrong. And, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, the uneasy feeling lingered in her stomach throughout her walk.
Only about 3 minutes into her walk, she heard a noise behind her. Frightened, Y/N looked back, only to discover that a rat had seemingly knocked over a metal trash can. She took a deep breath to stabilize her rapidly beating heart, and then turned around.
2 steps in was all it took for Y/N to realize that she was not alone on her walk. As she looked up from the pavement she saw a figure standing several yards ahead of her. Breathe. Maybe they’re harmless. Of course, at that moment, the mysterious figure pulled out and opened a pocket knife. She had decided that this might be the right time to start freaking out.
“Drop the bag,” the figure ordered.
“I-I’m a college student. I have no money in here, I promise. You’re only wasting your time,” Y/N defends. Although she was verbally defending herself from his orders, she shakily began dropping her shoulder to take off her backpack. She knew better than to go against a man holding a knife at her.
“You have a laptop, don’t you? A phone too? That’s money, kid.”
Before taking off her backpack completely, she reaches into one of the sides and pockets the pepper spray she always carries around. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. Now, she just has to wait until he’s close enough. Maybe then she can spray him, pick up her bag and run as fast as she can to safety. Or potentially die trying. But if the latter occurred, at least she wouldn’t have to stress out about that lab report anymore.
“Ok. Here you go. Look through my bag, just please don’t hurt me.”
As the attacker began to come closer, she heard an echoing scream coming from the alleyway adjacent to where they were standing. What the fuck?
Just then, a swinging figure dressed in a red and blue suit catapults into the man in front of her. Both the attacker and the masked hero tumble to the ground in a mixture of limbs and grunts.
I should probably get out of here, right? She thought to herself.
But, before she could take a single step back, the masked figure had the attacker’s wrists pinned above his head in a mess of stringy webbing, hoisting him a few feet off the ground and sticking him to a rusty lamppost along the pavement.
“Yeah, that’s gonna hold. Probably. Actually, definitely, don’t worry about it,” the vigilante said, more to himself than anyone else, giving the makeshift webbing trap an experimental tug before turning around.
Y/N’s brain, which had been running off of pure adrenaline for the last couple of minutes, short-circuited completely. Because, standing in front of her now, was Spider-Man. The actual, real-life Spider-Man was standing in front of her, after just saving her life.
“Hey! You okay?” He jogged (well, sort of bounced) over to her, hands up like he was approaching a spooked animal on the side of the road. “That was some quality bag-defending, by the way. Very compelling argument. Have you considered politics as a career path?”
She stuttered through a mess of vaguely familiar words before blurting out a coherent sentence, “Knife. He had a knife.”
“Yes. I noticed that. Kind of my whole thing actually. Noticing knives.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and even through the mask she could tell he was cringing at his awkwardness. “Sorry. Are you hurt? Did he touch you?”
“Uh. No. No, I’m okay. I’m fine, I think. I dropped my pepper spray.” She looked down at her hand. She had not, in fact, dropped her pepper spray. She was still holding it in a death grip.
He looked down at it too, and tilted his head. “Is that your backup pepper spray, then? Very prepared, I respect that.” Then, silence. “You can, uh, you can put that away now, if you want. I’m the good guy. Allegedly.”
She did, face going hot despite the cold weather. “Right. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize, I’d be spraying me too. First impressions are rough when you swing in mid-mugging.” He effortlessly picked up her backpack from where it had been placed and held it out to her. “I believe this belongs to you.”
“Yeah, thank you.” She took it, fingers brushing his covered hand for half a second and something about the size of his hand compared to hers registered somewhere in the back of her scrambled brain. “Uh, thank you. Really. I don’t– I’m not really sure what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. It’s no big deal. Just get home safe, okay? It’s late, and it’s pouring, and I’m guessing…” he tilted his head slightly, eyes landing on her backpack, “you have a lab report due soon? You’ve got that look. Well, that and the fact that I can see your Chemistry notebook sticking out of your backpack. And your goggles are clipped to the side of your bag.”
Y/N laughed, bewildered with the entire situation at this point. “You know, you’re weirdly observant for a guy wearing a onesie.”
Before he could quip back with something clever and charismatic, a siren wailed, and his head snapped toward the sound.
“Duty calls,” he said, already backing away. “Go home, lock your door, and maybe… I don’t know… take the well-lit route next time? I can’t be everywhere.”
She imagined that if he weren’t wearing a mask, he’d have the cockiest smirk on his face. A blush crept up on her cheeks as she pictured the sight.
“Wait,” she said, unable to stop herself.
He paused.
Y/N didn’t actually have anything to say, she just didn’t want him to leave yet. Which was definitely a strange sentiment to have about a masked vigilante she’s known for a grand total of five minutes.
“...Good luck with the lab report, stranger,” he muttered out. And then he shot a web line and was gone, swinging up into the rain and out of her sight.
An idiotic smile crept up on her face.
Present Day
Y/N burst through the lecture hall doors just as class was about to start. She, of course, was running late this morning. But, by sheer determination, she had somehow made it to class on time, hair slightly out of place and face flushed from her stressful run across campus. She plops down in her usual seat next to her friend, Mia, who she whispers a greeting to so as to not disturb the rest of the class.
As she begins to pull out her notebook and laptop, she feels a pair of eyes on her. Looking up from her backpack, she makes eye contact with the guy sitting two benches ahead and to the left, half-turned in his seat like he’d been looking at her for longer than she realized.
He was definitely cute, she’d noticed that, for sure. Messy dark hair that always looked like he’d run his hands through it one too many times, a hoodie that had seen better days, and this expression like he was either about to crack the worst joke known to man or apologize for something, she was never sure which.
He held her gaze for a moment too long before his eyes went wide and he spun back around in his seat so fast she heard his notebook fall off the edge of the table and hit the floor with a slap that echoed in the lecture hall.
Y/N raised an eyebrow at Mia, who was already grinning back at her.
“He does that literally every class,” Mia whispered, full of amusement, evident by the glimmer in her eyes.
“What?”
“Stares. At you, specifically. And then combusts the second you notice.” Mia nodded toward the front, where the guy was very intently bent over, retrieving his notebook and obviously refusing to look anywhere near their direction. “I think someone might have a little crush.”
“He’s probably just spacing out. People stare at nothing all the time, Mia.” Y/N pulled her laptop out and flipped it open. “I do it constantly. Yesterday, I stared at a vending machine for like four minutes. Four straight minutes, I kid you not.”
“Sure. And I’m sure it’s also a coincidence that the ‘nothing’ he’s spacing out at specifically is … you.”
“Mia. It’s a big lecture hall. Statistically, someone’s gotta be looking this way. It’s all just timing, seriously.”
Mia opened her mouth to protest further, but the professor cleared his throat at the front of the room, and the lecture hall quieted down into the low rustle of laptops opening and pens clicking. Y/N caught one more glance toward the front, where the guy whose name she was pretty sure was Jake, had his shoulders hunched slightly, ears a little red, and taking notes on a lecture that hadn’t even started yet.
She shook her head, amused with his awkwardness, and then turned her attention to the professor.
The lecture droned on in a sea of stoichiometry problems and diagrams, and Y/N’s attention drifted in and out the way it always did during early morning classes. Sometime around the professor’s third tangent about molarity, she noticed a girl in front of her lean over to her deskmate.
“Can I borrow a pencil? Mine just totally gave up on me,” the girl winced, holding up a pink mechanical pencil.
Before her deskmate could even respond, a hand appeared over her shoulder from the row behind her. Jake’s row. He was already holding out a spare pencil, pre-sharpened of course.
“Here,” he whispered, voice low so as not to disturb the class. “Keep it, I have like six.”
“Oh my god, thank you, you’re a lifesaver,” the girl whispered back, already turning to face the front again.
“No problem!” He gave a small thumbs up, which he immediately retracted with embarrassment.
Y/N huffed out a quiet laugh at this, which Mia, ever observant, had noticed.
“He’s so effortlessly friendly,” Mia murmured. “Last week, he gave up his lab stool for that girl who sprained her ankle, and I’m pretty sure he stayed after to help clean up someone’s spilled acid solution even though it wasn’t his mess.”
“Oh, that’s… sweet.”
“I also heard he tutors freshmen in the library on Thursdays. For free. And Priya said he walked her all the way to her car during the thunderstorm last month because she didn’t have an umbrella.” Mia shrugged, her tone somewhere between impressed and exasperated. “Basically, what I’m trying to say is, if there was a school award for Most Likely To Give You His Jacket, this guy would win. By a landslide.”
Y/N glanced toward the front again, where Jake was now diligently annotating his notes, tongue slightly poking out in concentration.
“And he’s cute. And single, as far as anyone knows.” Mia’s tone shifted, casual on the surface to the untrained ear, but very clearly leading somewhere. “Just saying.”
“Don’t,” Y/N said, not even looking up from her notebook.
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Liar. I can hear your scheming from here.”
Mia grinned. “Okay, but for real. Jake is sweet, he’s clearly into you, and you’ve been single since forever. Why aren’t you literally pouncing on him?”
Y/N sighed, closing her notebook. “It’s really stupid.”
Mia cocked an eyebrow.
“There’s just… someone else. Sort of. It’s complicated.” She lowered her voice, glancing around to make sure no one could hear what she was about to say. “You know how I told you about that mugging thing, freshman year?”
Mia’s expression shifted. “The one where Spider-Man saved you? Yeah, obviously, you’ve told that story like a gazillion times.”
“I have not– Okay, whatever.” She felt her face heat up. “The point is, I don’t know. Ever since then, I just haven’t been able to feel like that about anyone else. It’ll be like… I meet someone, and they’re nice or funny, or whatever, and it’s fine but it’s never…” she struggled to find a word, “... it never feels like that.”
“Y/N, babe, that is deeply unwell behavior and I say that with love.”
“Ugh. I know.”
“You’re comparing every guy you meet to a superhero you talked to once. Two years ago. Two!”
“I know, Mia.”
“He probably doesn’t even remember it. He probably saves like, hundreds of people a month. You’re one alleyway in a very long list of alleyways.”
“I know,” Y/N groaned, dropping her head onto her folded arms on the desk. “I told you it was stupid.”
“Not stupid, just inconvenient. And totally unfair to Jake, who doesn’t even know he’s competing against a guy in spandex.”
The professor’s voice cuts through their conversation. “Alright, before everyone runs off, one more thing before you go. Your semester project assignments are up on the portal. I’m pairing you up for this one, so check now if you want to plan around your partner’s schedule.”
A collective groan ripples throughout the room. Y/N pulled out her phone and scrolled the portal posting until she found her name in the list of alphabetized names. Aha! Bingo.
Y/N L/N & Jake Sim
“So?” Mia leaned over her shoulder without asking, and then immediately gasped.
“Don’t,” Y/N pleaded.
“The universe is really pulling you two together, huh? A whole semester project. Alone. Together. At, presumably, someone’s apartment. You know… because that’s how these things goooo…”
“It’s a lab partner assignment, Mia, not a proposal.”
“Sure. Sure, sure, sure.” Mia was already gathering her things, too pleased with herself and the situation to calm her smile down. “I’m just saying, maybe give the golden retriever a chance. See what happens.”
See what happens. Okay. I can do that, she thinks to herself.
Just as Mia exits the room, Jake approaches Y/N.
“Uh, hi. Y/N, right? I’m Jake Sim. I think we’re partners for this project,” he mutters in a shy manner before sputtering out a bunch of nonsense, “I know people have like, partner preferences, or whatever, so if you’re not comfortable with this we could probably ask the professor to switch some groups around–”
“This is fine,” Y/N assures him, mostly just wanting him to stop rambling. “I was thinking we could do some research at my apartment? It’s pretty close to the campus, and I could send you all the details if you give me your number.”
Jake’s face immediately turns beet red as he fishes his phone out of his pocket and hands it to her. “Y-yeah. That sounds a-awesome,” he blurts out with a voice crack mid-sentence.
She hands the phone back to him, now with her number typed in. “Right. Well, okay. See you then.”
“See you.” He lifts his hand in a half-wave before she leaves, before face-palming and muttering to himself.
Jake had texted her twice before their meeting. Once to check the address, and once to ask if he should bring snacks (something she found incredibly charming).
By the time he knocked on her door at exactly the time they agreed upon, she was mid-way through cleaning off her kitchen island. Shit, he’s here. Rushing to open the door, she found Jake standing there with a backpack slung over one shoulder and a bag of pretzels held up like an offering.
“I wasn’t sure what to bring. Do you like pretzels?” he said, by way of greeting.
“I do like pretzels.” She stepped back to let him in, biting down a rising smile. “You didn’t have to bring anything.”
“Yeah, I know. But, I wanted to. Not– not in like, a weird way. Just, a normal… project partner gesture.” He winced, visibly regretting every word that had come out of his mouth.
The door secured behind them and an awkward silence filled the room, one that can only be described as the strange feeling of having a new person enter your place of comfort.
“Right. Well, the bathroom’s down the hall if you need it,” she offered, mostly to fill the silence. “And, the kitchen table’s set up. Or we can do the couch. Whichever is easier for spreading stuff out.”
“Table works.” He set his backpack down but didn’t sit, instead glancing around the apartment with unhurried curiosity, almost like he was trying to store new information. “Nice place. Very… you. N-not that I’d know what ‘very you’ means. That was a weird thing to say.”
“It’s fine.” She wasn’t really paying attention, mostly digging through her backpack in an effort to find something. “Feel free to look around, I just need to find the rubric, I swear I had it–”
She trailed off, raking through several folders, completely missing the moment when Jake had turned toward the hallway that led to her bedroom, where the door was left slightly ajar.
Through the gap in the door, visible even from the kitchen table, was a wall.
A wall covered, floor to ceiling, in Spider-Man. Posters, mostly. Some were the kind you’d find at a comic book store, while others appeared to be homemade. Several newspaper clippings scattered throughout. And a shelf lined with action figures posed ridiculously.
The sudden silence was deafening. Jake did not say anything for a solid five seconds. Which, for Jake, was practically a record. “So,” he finally managed, his voice strange and almost strangled in a sharp inhale, “you like Spider-Man.”
Y/N promptly looked up from her folder, followed his line of sight to the half-open door, and felt her stomach drop through the floor and to the depths of hell. “Oh my god.” She was across the room in two steps, slamming the door shut like it could somehow undo what he saw. “Okay, so that’s– you weren’t supposed to see that. Like, at all. I usually close it, I just forgot–”
“It’s okay!” Jake said quickly, hands up in a way she realized looked strangely familiar. “I’m not judging, I just… that’s a lot of Spider-Man. A very impressive amount, actually,” he stopped just then, realizing that her face was redder than he’d ever seen it, “I mean, I collect vintage stamps, so I’m not really in a position to judge anyone’s hobbies.”
A surprised laugh sprung out of her. “You do not collect stamps.”
“No, I don’t, but I panicked and said the least cool thing I could think of to make you feel better and it just came out as stamps.” He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Can I ask why you like him so much, though?”
A moment passed as Y/N weighed how much of this she actually wanted to say out loud. “It’s a long story,” she said finally.
“I’ve got time.”
So she told him about it all. The late-night lab, the dark road, the man with the knife. And then the kind, masked stranger who came swinging in to save her. “He could’ve just left the second the guy was all webbed up. But he stayed, and he made sure I was okay, and he made me laugh. And I know that sounds insane, getting hung up on some guy I talked to for five minutes two years ago, believe me, I know–”
“It doesn’t sound insane,” Jake said, tone going very soft and careful, eyes spacing out on the wall.
“Jake? What’s wrong?”
“Can I tell you something,” he said, eyes back to hers, “and you have to promise not to freak out?”
Her stomach flipped. “Surely you know how terrifying that sounds.”
A breath, and then he spoke again, his voice dropping into something quieter, and more honest, stripped of his nervous rambling. “I remember that night.”
Y/N stared at him. “But, that’s impossible. There was no one else there, just me, the attacker, and Spider-Man.”
His eyes pierced into hers as a beat passed, “I remember that night… because I am Spider-Man.”
A laugh threatened to escape from her. “Are you making fun of me right now?”
“No! No, I swear. Watch,” he pulled up his jacket sleeve and aimed his posed hand at a corner of the wall, before firing a string of web fluid. Holy shit. “I know it’s crazy, but Y/N, you’re not the only one who can’t stop thinking about that night. God, I mean, I’ve been crushing on you for years now, and when I realized we were in some of the same classes together? I lost my mind. But you didn’t know Jake, you only knew Spider-Man.”
She exhaled a shaky breath. “Now I know both,” she stared into his eyes, now with the realization that he’s the same guy she can’t seem to get out of her head, “You saved my life. A-and you give people pencils in class, and you stay after lecture to help clean up spills, and you tutor freshmen at the library for free!”
The space between them shrank as he approached, “I didn’t know you knew that much about me.”
“Turns out I had a lot more reasons to like you than I realized.”
“Yeah?” A small, disbelieving, boyish smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, like he still wasn’t entirely sure that this moment was real. He was now close enough that she had to tilt her head back slightly to keep looking at him. “Is this okay? That I’m here. Like this.”
“This is more than okay, Jake. You’re the reason for my poster wall.” Her shaky hand found the front of his hoodie, pulling him in slightly.
He huffed out a small laugh, and reached up to gently tuck a strand of stray hair from her face, fingers lingering against her cheek. “For the record, I’ve thought about this moment a humiliating number of times. And it never once involved a chemistry project.”
“Truly a devastating use of my study time.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“You better.”
He was still watching her, hand still on her cheek, waiting for permission. She closed the distance instead, rising up slightly on her toes, and dissolving his next words the moment her lips met his.
not a hundred percent sure how to format this kind of stuff, so i definitely took inspiration from several fic authors on here!! i'll have my own style eventually, i promise lol
thank you for reading my first fic on tumblr!! i'm pretty happy with how this came out, I know it's not perfect and i'll gladly take any feedback you guys have for me. until next time!!
