You Found Me Lol
Peter awoke with a start. He was surprised but ecstatic about Steve having followed him. It gave him permission to actually look at Steve’s pictures and to follow him back. And it also gave him permission to message Steve. Peter spent the better half of an hour just looking through Steve’s account and just admiring his physique and beautiful face. He had to remind himself not to like all his posts so that Steve didn’t think he was a weirdo. Then he remembered to follow him back. He wanted to message him immediately but didn’t know what to put.
After five minutes, he decided to write, “You found me lol”. Peter decided to leave it at that since he didn’t want to abuse his messaging privileges. He went back to his home page when he finally realized and put the pieces together that Steve had seen his pictures too and he panicked for a bit.
Peter went onto his own profile to look at the pictures he had posted of himself. There were a lot from high school with Ned and Michelle, and Peter remembered that he hadn’t talked to them in a couple of weeks. He frowned a little. He had wanted to talk to them every week, but everything with Steve and Quicksilver had distracted him. It was a Sunday so he told himself he would call Ned and Michelle later that day.
Looking through his insta pictures, Peter realized he hadn’t posted a lot of pictures from college and worried that Steve would think there was something wrong about that. Then, Peter realized that Steve thought he was twenty-one, not eighteen. If Steve found out that he had lied, he might end their friendship and whatever else they could have before it even started.
Peter looked through all his photos and captions to edit or erase any evidence that all his high school pictures were from his time in high school. He could pretend they were taken at some community college back home and that he’d finally transferred to MCU. It wasn’t like that was unheard of. He also went back and deleted any pictures related to his birthday so that Steve wouldn’t find out what his actual age was.
It was only a three age difference, which didn’t seem like a lot to Peter. It wasn’t like he was pretending to be Steve’s age. And it wasn’t like he was seventeen pretending to be an adult. He was an adult, just pretending to be slightly older. He would tell Steve later when they were too close for him to end the friendship. It wasn’t even too big of a lie, and it was only so he could get into the bar. What college student didn’t drink anyway?
Once he was satisfied, Peter relaxed a little, but hoped that Steve hadn’t scrolled too far down his profile and figured out his real age. He had another thought as he logged onto his facebook. He doubted that Steve would look for him on every social media platform he was on, but he didn’t want to risk it. Peter went and took his birthdate off every social media account he was on and put all his accounts on private just in case. If Steve ever wanted to add him on any of those accounts, Peter would look through them and do the same thing he had done to his instagram. However, he figured that Steve would probably know the truth by then so he wouldn’t have to do as much work.
After he was done with that, he remembered he had wanted to call Ned and Michelle. He looked at the time and saw that it wasn’t even noon yet so Michelle would probably still be asleep. Ned would be awake though.
Before calling him, Peter checked Scott’s bed. It was empty as if he’d never come home. Peter guessed he had crashed at Carol’s place. He hoped they had had a good time, but at least Scott not being there meant that he could talk to Ned as loudly as he wanted.
Peter video called Ned and his friend answered after a few rings. “Peter!” he said excitedly. “How are you?”
Peter smiled when seeing his friend. He looked different since the last time he’d talked to him. More mature or something. He wondered if he looked any different to Ned. “Hey,” he replied. “I’m good. Having a really good morning actually.”
“That’s great!” Ned said. “Me too. I just got a pair of new glasses that I ordered online.” Maybe that’s what was different about him. Yeah, the glasses did look new. “I also got a haircut yesterday and it doesn’t look ugly today so I’m happy about that.” Now that Peter looked at Ned’s hair it also looked shorter. Maybe it wasn’t so much that he looked mature, just that he’d gotten a haircut and new glasses. He thought he probably looked the same to Ned after all.
“You’re looking good, my boy,” Peter said. “I should probably get a haircut too shouldn’t I?”
“Nah, your hair looks good a little longer,” Ned said. “You should grow it out more. You look pretty sick with long hair.”
“I don’t know. I feel like it would be too much maintenance. Remember last time I tried to have long hair? It was a mess.”
“I disagree. I think it looked badass.”
Peter then got a message from Steve and he was tempted to read it, but he also wanted to give Ned his full attention. He hadn’t spoken to him in weeks and he didn’t know when he would speak with him again if he gave any more attention to Steve.
“I’ll think about it,” Peter replied to Ned.
They spent the next half an hour talking about what they had been learning in school science-wise and what shows they had been keeping up on. Ned told him he had started to watch The Boys after Peter had recommended it and he loved it. Peter told Ned he and Scott had finished watching season 2 of Arrow and were going to watch a season of Rupaul’s Drag Race. The conversation went places.
After Peter and Ned said their goodbyes and hung up, Peter lay in bed for a minute almost forgetting the reason why he had rushed the conversation and the goodbye. Then he looked at his phone again and saw the message from Steve.
“Yep, you said you followed Hulk so you weren’t hard to find,” Steve had replied. He had also left a little close-eyed laughing emoji with the tongue sticking out.
Peter quickly wrote back, “I’m sure she has plenty of Peters following her.”
He waited a few minutes to see if he would respond back. Maybe Steve was busy or he wasn’t the type to reply back quickly. Or maybe he was like Peter and didn’t want to seem desperate by not replying right away. But after waiting, he didn’t get a response back.
Peter thought it was an opportune time to call Michelle since it was now after noon. He called her but she didn’t pick up. He then received a text from her which said, “You woke me up, ass.”
“Sorry,” he replied. “I thought you’d be awake by now.”
Peter’s phone started buzzing and it was Michelle. He picked up and there was her beautiful face in all its just-woke-up glory. No makeup, frizzy hair, and a scowl that could destroy armies.
“Hey, sorry again,” Peter said.
“Yeah, whatever. What’d you want to talk about?”
“Just wanted to say hi and see how you were.”
“You can just text next time. I’m hanging up.”
“No wait!” He didn’t want her to hang up just yet. He wanted to look at her pretty face some more so he had to think of something that would want her to remain on the call. “I uh...met someone.”
“Oh?” she perked up and sat up in bed, giving Peter her full attention. “Who is she? Or he?”
“He…” Peter started, “is an older guy that I met at a bar.”
“A bar?” Michelle looked even more intrigued. “Like a juice bar? Or…”
“I have a fake ID, Michelle.”
“You have a fake ID?” She had a look of both shock and pride on her face as if Peter was her son and he had just told her he had graduated summa cum laude.
“Yeah, I have a friend who made some and we went to a gay bar a few weeks ago.”
“A gay bar? A few weeks ago?” She now looked a little annoyed but still proud. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Tell me everything, right now!”
Peter told her about his experience at the bar the first night and being called onstage by Hulk. He told her about the second night and how they all made friends with Steve. And then he told her about the night before and how he and Steve had followed each other on instagram.
“Well damn,” she said. “College is doing wonders for you. I bet you’ll lose your virginity before the end of the year.”
“Hopefully to Steve,” Peter said, thinking about how great it would be to be with the man.
“How hot is this guy anyway? You said he’s twenty-eight?”
“Yeah, he’s like hot hot. He’s not like a gross old man trying to prey on me or anything. If anything, I’m probably preying on him.”
“You couldn’t prey on anything even if a church kneeler hit you in the face.”
“Whatever, I’m just saying, I’m probably showing more interest in him than he is in me. But we’re just friends for now. I bet the more time we spend together, the more likely he’ll be into me. Maybe.”
“I’m sure he will, Pete. You’re a hottie. He’d be crazy not to want to deflower you.”
“Shut up.”
“Alright, alright. Just like...send me a screenshot of him or something. I wanna see if I can picture you two together.”
“Okay, I will.”
They talked a little bit longer and then Michelle hung up. Peter went on Steve’s profile and took a screenshot. As soon as he sent it to Michelle, he got a message from Steve.
It said, “I’m pretty sure she’s the one following Peters. But replace Peters with penis lol.”
Before he could stop himself, Peter replied, “Hmm but now you’re the one following a penis, I mean Peter.”
As soon as he hit enter, he panicked a little. He’d forgotten to wait a few minutes to reply to not seem desperate. And what he wrote was just garbage. He was about to try and erase the message before Steve could see it, but then the little “seen” message popped up under it. Peter held his breath as he saw that Steve was replying.
“No other penis...I mean Peter...I’d rather follow,” the response said.