when the hero comes to the one who believes in him¹

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Until almost Sunday, Peter did not leave the house, spending time reading textbooks, or helping Vanessa with cooking, entertaining her, or arranging a battle in Mortal Kombat or Mario Card.  True, the constantly returning thoughts to Romanoff, which firmly settled in his brains, did not give the guy a chance to get down to business qualitatively.  Hundreds of thoughts wandered in the guy’s head, colliding with each other, they generated real chaos, where two ideas dominated - self-hatred, because the guy betrayed the memory of Gwen, carried away by agent Romanoff, who actually deserved the nickname Black Widow, and constant questions  what would happen next if he still walked the red-haired spy home.  Thinking about it, the guy did not notice Vanessa's worried looks that he did not understand Peter's problems, nor the cautious questions of Stacy, who came to the guy's house the next day to talk about the robbery of the store.  Both of Peter's older comrades could not understand why the guy fell into a quiet melancholy, which was occasionally interrupted by short outbursts of anger, and again continued with depression, because everything was fine before going to the Connors.

As a result, by Monday morning, the question of Peter’s condition stood up sharply - George talked with Kurt, who even got distracted from one of his most interesting projects for the sake of his student, Vanessa talked about what happened to the guy, overhearing the conversation between the police chief and the brown-haired man in the living room,  Murdock and Wade, and everyone came to the conclusion that the guy had finally fallen in love.  True, it is not clear to whom, and how it all ended there, but Peter clearly had some feelings for the girl, and they were by no means indifference.  And now two independent groups were trying to figure out who the red-haired stranger was and where she could be found, and Romanoff had sunk into the water, no longer appearing in that convenience store.

At first glance, the second week of May was no different from the previous one - Peter was still moping, his friends were still looking, but suddenly there was a gap.  On Wednesday morning, Parker noticed for the first time that Wade had also moved into his apartment, stepping on a slice of pizza on the floor and blasting the Wilsons.

  "Do you have any idea how difficult it was to clean your pigsty in Harlem?"  A low whisper, turning into a whistle, made Wade shrink slightly, realizing that Parker, in this state, is capable of anything.   "I spent a fucking six hours on this, about three hundred liters of water and more than ten bags of garbage!  And if you try to do something like this here, I'll rip your hands off and put them up your assholes!"

  "Heck, got it."  Wade said with a nod, and Vanessa just giggled, glad that Peter was getting back to normal.  Thoughts about Romanoff still flew in the guy’s head, but the young man decided to leave everything to chance.  If fate wills, they will meet again, like Peter and Natasha, and not like the Widow and the Spider.

As he went out on patrol that evening, Peter kept a close eye on what was happening below, watching private jets and S.H.I.E.L.D. jets in the sky.  After an hour and a half, during which the guy prevented a couple of store robberies, and also frightened off two thieves who clearly wanted to profit from the contents of an elderly man’s bag, the guy saw a rather strange situation - in one of the courtyards of western Manhattan, a deal was taking place between two not the most popular gangs  , Owl Cookies and Red Fluff.  These groups also went under the authority of the Kingpin, but at the same time did not have patrons like Scorpio, Tarantula or Eagle Owl, because of which they were despised by stronger gangs, gradually squeezing out territory and crippling gang members.

Sitting on the visor of one of the buildings, while hiding so that no one could see him in the shade, the guy began to observe an unusual deal - there were no suitcases, bags or anything like that, the leaders of the two groups simply exchanged red envelopes, and then silently  kinvuv, went in different directions.  It was unusual, it was curious and Spider decided to find out what was going on.  It remained only to understand who to go to him first - Barton Burns or Steve Rhodes.  Sighing, realizing that it was necessary to decide quickly, the guy took out one of the homemade biological bugs, and attaching it with a point throw to the back of the departing Red leader, he flew after the Owl pickup truck.