It’s lunch time, and you’re sat under the bleachers. The world down here is always a little different—muted, like someone turned the saturation down on everything except sound. The metal beams above you hum faintly with the vibrations of students stomping across the stands, laughter echoing in fractured pieces. The air smells like cold concrete, slightly sweet vending machine air drifting from somewhere nearby, and the faint trace of rain that never quite left the morning. It’s not glamorous, but it’s yours. A shared routine: you, Peter, and whatever chaos lunchtime decides to bring.

Peter is beside you, shoulders slightly hunched as he picks absentmindedly at the edge of his sandwich wrapper. He looks relaxed in theory, but in practice he always looks like he’s solving a problem no one else can see.

You’re talking about anything and everything like you always do—half nonsense, half philosophy, the usual.

Somehow, the conversation drifts to the Avengers. His head tilts slightly at the mention, like a satellite catching signal.

“Yeah, Spider-Man is quite cool,” you say casually.

“I mean, yeah. I guess.” he says, half committed.

He tries for casual, but there’s a microscopic delay before he speaks, like his brain briefly files it under do not react too strongly to this topic or you will combust.

You keep going, animated now, tracing shapes in the air with your hands as you talk about heroes and powers. The usual awe.

Then you mention the way he saved your cat from a tree. You’re smiling as you talk about it, that memory clearly still warm in your mind, like it happened yesterday instead of weeks ago. The way he moved. The way he didn’t hesitate. The way he made it look easy in a way that definitely wasn’t.

“I need to know who he is under that mask, like he was so kind. I bet he’s fine as fuck under there.”

The air changes.

His eyes widen slightly. His mouth opens, then closes again like it forgot which language to use.

You like Spider-Man.

A weird, sharp flicker of something rises in his chest. Not pride. Not panic.

Clean, irrational jealousy.

Of Spider-Man. Which is—statistically speaking—him.

Then he hears his own voice, already speaking before he can stop it. “You have a thing for Spider-Man?”

It comes out a little too fast. A little too pointed. He hears it the moment it leaves his mouth and immediately wants to fold it back into itself like paper.

He clears his throat, scratches the back of his neck, suddenly fascinated by a random bolt in the bleachers above you.

Spider-Man? Really?

He can’t even show his face properly. Half the time he’s dangling off buildings like a moth.

And Peter Parker feels a completely unreasonable spike of jealousy toward a man he has to actively remind himself he is.

His thoughts trip over themselves.

Why does he get to be cool? Why does he get to be admired like that? Why do you sound like that when you talk about him?

He stops himself mid-thought.

Because it clicks.

Because the math completes itself in the most humiliating way possible.

Oh.

That’s me.

The silence that follows is brief, but it feels structurally significant. Like the universe paused to watch him embarrass himself in real time.

He exhales through his nose, slow and careful, trying to recover whatever dignity just fell out of his pocket and rolled under the bleachers.

This is odd.