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"YOU EVER HEARD OF SPIDERMAN?"
I don't know what I expected when Dad called me after the whole thing with the Accords, the bombing and Captain America becoming a fugitive, but it definitely wasn't this.
I would have asked him about it, all of it, but I could see from the video feed that his eye bags were set deeper than usual and his eyes lacked its usual teasing playfulness I had grown up expecting whenever he said something like this, so I kept my questions to myself. Instead, I asked, "That's the guy Harley was ragging on about, right? With the webs?" and before I knew it, I was sitting on May Parker's couch.
(I didn't know Harley Keener in person, but after the Mandarin incident when he helped Dad and I heard about his potato gun, it was all I could think about for the following weeks, and I knew I had to befriend this guy. He was crazy smart, pretty funny and he texted me memes and funny videos sometimes because he felt like it. I never had a brother, but he was the closest to one I ever got.)
I hadn't been in Queens before, despite living in New York for a few years, but it was nice. The streets looked more comfortable and lived in that the clear cut lines and corporate diffusion of Manhattan, the air feeling lighter and warmer in a way not connected to the outside temperature. It felt a bit like Brooklyn, from the few times Iris, Bianca and I would sneak out and scare our parents, but different in a way I couldn't describe.
The door opened with creak and a boy stepped through, headphones in his ears and a laptop with a mess of wires plugged into it tucked under his arm. "Hey, May," he greeted, in a voice that was way younger than I expected it to be.
"How was school?" May asked conversationally as he disappeared into another part of the apartment, setting his bag and laptop down. Objectively, I knew Peter Parker was a teenager, because Dad had told me he was a teenager before we walked in but I thought that meant he was 17, maybe 18, not around my age.
He offered her a halfhearted, "okay," absentmindedly going to walk past us. "There's this crazy car parked outside," he remarked, turning to May just slightly. That was when he spotted us.
He was wearing a stupid pizza shirt, and a plain gray hoodie, his hair neatly parted in a way that I was sure would look better if it was messier. He wasn't remarkably attractive or anything, just looked like any old teenage boy, but as he nervously picked his headphones out of his ears and stuttered out an introduction ("Um wha- what are you do- hey! I'm Peter), a blush crept over my face.
I fumbled with my phone, typing out a quick text as Dad introduced himself more casually than I had ever seen him introduce himself (he liked to add flair when it came to his name). "Dominic," I said, trying to mimic his casual nature as I sent the text.
