in technicolor

“Uncle Brett?”

Brett looked over his shoulder to see his sweet, sweet nephew standing there, back by his sour, sour cousin.

“What have you done?” he asked of Sasha. She gave him a smile full of glittering white teeth.

“You need to get on twitter,” she said.

There was a goose—or rather, geese. Creatures of mass destruction, agents of chaos, disciples of hatred itself. Pick your poison, the result was all the same—terrorizing people in Union Square. A handful appeared to have landed and taken to waddling around the greenery and street corners, claiming the place as their own.

Now, in Brett’s experience, New Yorkers were a hundred times more scared of their fellow subway occupants than they were of any non-human creature. Non-human creatures could be scowled at and scoffed at and called a ‘fuckin’ moron’ without any repercussions.

The same could not be said of friends and neighbors.

That said, if there was one thing that New Yorkers physically could not cope with, it was the great outdoors and all the glory that came with it. They could not cope with trees (all that damn pollen—the nerve of these things, taking up all these parking spaces), they could not cope with birdsong (can’t a person get just a moment of fuckin’ quiet around here?), they could not cope with rabbits or gophers or the bits of leaves that flew artfully into their coffee.

No. New Yorkers could only cope with those forms of local wildlife that resembled their own urbanite existences. There was a healthy respect in the city for rats, for example. And one-eared tom cats and dogs that barked and sneered at you from apartment windows all day long, not screaming out of maltreatment, but rather of paranoia and frustration with captivity and ennui.

“Is there not more to life than this?” these captive dogs asked with their teeth bared at all passersby. “Is there truly more to life than rampant distrust and waiting for that one special person to come home to make it all seem worth it?”

This was all to say that the geese were causing absolute bedlam in Union Square.

They were charging coffee drinkers at their café tables. Hissing and shrieking at old and well-meaning folks just trying to feed the city’s flying rat population. Several children had been bitten and had been captured by phones all around, sobbing and clutching at their parents’ horrified necks.

Union Square was no longer a square for people. It was Goose Headquarters South.

Someone, in a moment of clarity, had decided that there was only one man for this job and he was human-adjacent at best.

Peter had come out in the middle of the day on a Saturday to see what he could do about the geese.

Animals loved Peter for no good reason. None. Absolutely none.

The smaller they were, the more likely they were to come flying into Peter’s arms like he was their long-lost brother.

Brett had seen him more than once sitting up high, communing with pigeons. Cuddling them like they were cats. The damn things refused to shit on him like they did on the rest of the population. They had respect for Peter.

The same could be said of dogs. There was not a vicious dog in a neighborhood when Spiderman was loping through it. Half the dogs in the city had had personal and loving contact with Spiderman.

It was terrifying.

Brett had never been so intimidated by anything that Peter could do. Forget the web. Forget the interdimensional thing.

His ability to tame Juanita from two blocks over’s pitbull-lab mix?

That shit wasn’t kosher.

Peter’s Friend of All Animals schtick had gotten around in the city. People liked to take pictures of him up there on streetlamps cuddled in with the pigeons or playing with dogs and cats through high-rise windows. There had been more than a few images of Spiderman, just hanging out—just chilling, wandering around the streets of New York City with a fuckin’ chicken or a rabbit in his arms, asking people if they knew its owner. Or as he called them, ‘their life partners.’

Peter didn’t believe that animals could be owned.

The images of him encountering the geese certainly validated that idea for everyone involved.

Someone had posted a series of five photos on twitter, all taken seconds apart, in which Peter strode towards one of the violent geese of Union Square. He held out hands to it in a gesture of peace. The goose noticed him.

The goose threw out its wings and chased him up the side of a building.

The bevy of images people posted in response to this set showed Peter getting down from the building and being immediately chased into the park park proper, up a bench, then a street lamp, then a trashcan, and finally up onto good old George Washington’s metal horse with him.

“Spidey’s stuck,” someone captioned this final image in delight.

Someone else posted a short a video clip of Peter hissing back at one of his assailants and digging out his phone to call for back up.

“Oooo he’s calling in the big guns,” this helpful human wrote.

Brett ruminated on the fact that Peter had finally found the point of New York City which all superpeople used as the basis of choosing where to live—by which Brett meant that they’d all looked at south Manhattan and gone, ‘ha, fuck that, nah. I need to be at least two miles away from that bullshit.’

The closest person to him geographically was Matt. Matt evidently refused to come. Brett could imagine that phone conversation. It started with Peter saying ‘I’m being assaulted by a goose’ and Matt laughing, then hanging up.

DP quickly appeared in the pictures in Sasha’s news feed.

The goose chased him away from the base of Spidey’s claimed statue and flapped its huge wings at him when he tried to come in closer to grab it.

Wade was Canadian. You’d think these things would feel some kind of distant kinship with him.

But no.

Geese were stone fucking cold, man.

Another goose came onto the scene to bite Wade’s ass just while he was wrangling the first one.

Wade grabbed this goose by its long goose neck and the first goose bit his hand the second he was distracted. And then both geese, in a moment of clarity, spotted Peter edging down from the statue and abandoned Wade to put the fear of God in him and drive him back up onto George Washington’s horse.

“We should go save him,” Amos told Brett with big eyes.

Ha.

As if Brett was going out to menace a goose on his day off. No thanks.

“Brett, Spidey’s your friend,” Sasha sang. “You’ve gotta to help him. It’s how you maintain trust.”

“If he really wanted to leave, he’d figure out a way,” Brett snapped. He stood up and handed the phone back to Sasha.

Amos dragged him back out to the living room about half an hour later in distress. He pointed to Sasha’s phone.

“He tried to web away, but a whole flock of them showed up!!” he cried.

The tweets coming in with Peter in them had started to take on a more concerned tone indeed. The kid was thinking in the most recent image. He’d swapped sides on the Washington statue because his previous place was now occupied by a mean motherfucker. He had a few knuckles pressed to his bottom lip while he stared down at the three geese down at the statue’s base, hissing and flapping up at him.

There was no DP in sight in this picture. He must have had enough and told Peter to deal with it on his own.

Brett almost felt bad for him.

Almost.

It took the last image of Peter leaping from his perch, going for a tree that really did it for Brett.

He wouldn’t make that jump, try as he might.

Peter was a tiny kid. If Brett hadn’t himself seen how much food he put away in a day, he’d be worried that he was halfway to starving. But those branches weren’t gonna hold even that much weight.

And sure enough, the next picture was of Peter on the ground now, getting flocked by furious geese.

“They’re chasing Spidey out of the park!” someone captioned. “Who is our hero now??”

Brett managed to convince the kids that Spidey was just fine and off plotting his revenge. He was not hurt. The park would be fine when the geese finally realized that there was no goose-appropriate food there and left.

Then there was a knock at the door and Brett opened it to Foggy standing there with a dead flat expression.

“I need you,” he said without even a hint of amusement, “To go tell my idiot and Frank Castle that their combined power is going to do nothing but antagonize these demons.”

Peter was not suffering this defeat lightly at all, now, was he? He’d gone to lick his wounds and collaborate.

Amos wriggled past Brett, screaming for the attention of his real favorite uncle. Foggy hugged him without taking his gaze off Brett’s face.

“Did your usual charm not work?” Brett asked him.

Sasha ducked under his arm to wave at Foggy, too.

“My usual charm pales in comparison to their disgusting masculine posturing,” Foggy said.

…right.

So it was a competition now, that’s what he was saying.

“Brett, if DP couldn’t handle it, neither of those lugs can.”

“Let me get my shoes,” Brett sighed.

Normally he would not take the kids with him, but they were insufferable and begging and Kelly did not approve of leaving Amos in only Sasha’s care yet, so Brett bit the bullet and told them to get their damn coats. Foggy didn’t seem to mind. He was pretty worked up. Brett was going to let that sleeping dog lie for now.

When they got to the scene of the crime, which was not Union Square, but rather Stuyvesant Square just a couple blocks over, Brett found himself watching the public watch a very indiscreet meeting of minds. Peter was the only one in full costume, Matt had opted for his black pajamas, topped off for once with a leather coat at least two sizes too big for him and a matching black scarf. He kept his hands stuffed in his pockets, while Castle hadn’t bothered with anything but his usual daytime khaki jacket. He’s acknowledged the weather only through his use of a beanie.

Peter had crammed himself into Matt’s jacket with him, and besides this slight bit of humor, the three were having a very deep and serious conversation, ignorant of all the camera phones broadcasting it for the rest of the city.

Foggy seethed quietly next to Brett.

They couldn’t very well go over there without implicating themselves in this bullshit, so they had to wait until a ‘team break’ gesture was made.

Amos and Sasha were nearly rigid with excitement. They were finally going to meet Spiderman up close and personal.

Or they thought they were.

Peter noticed Brett and Foggy first and, using that sixth sense of his, realized the trouble coming his way.

He snuck off and let Matt and Castle be confronted by Foggy’s unbridled ire.

Both of them had the decency to crunch together in its face and slink off out of view. Foggy watched the two of them go and rattled for as long as he could bear before turning around and following them. Brett sighed and tugged at Amos’s hand to follow Fogs before he got swept up in the dissipating crowd.

“You two are idiots. Brett, tell them they are idiots.”

Amos and Sasha were slightly disappointed that they were in the presence of Daredevil and the Punisher instead of Spiderman. But they were keeping high spirits thanks to Foggy’s admittedly entertaining rage.

“You’re idiots,” Brett said dutifully.

Foggy barely gave him time to finish before launching back in.

“There? You hear that? You hear it? It is not just me calling you two morons. You know why? Because you are patently stupid.”

“Take it down a notch, Nelson,” Castle said. “I’ve dealt with a goose or two in my time. Pretty sure I can—”

“If you shoot even a single bird in public, so help me god, I am doing everything in my power to have you arrested and your dog taken to the SPCA,” Foggy snapped.

Castle was offended.

“It’s a bird,” he said. “What do you want me to do, eat it? Would that be better on your conscious?”

Foggy vibrated with rage.

“We’re not eating it,” Matt told Castle. “The kid says he wants to release it into a ‘more suitable habitat.’ So we will release and/or lure the targets to somewhere more suitable. And anyways, with the likes of your aim, we’d be picking out shrapnel out of our teeth for days.”

Castle leveled him with a look that said he had an idea of a more suitable habitat for him and it looked like the nearest water feature.

“You wanna—”

“OR,” Foggy said. “We can not try to pick a fight with a bird, huh? Is this not the most suitable option here? Is it really worth either of your trouble and convenience to go out in the middle of the damn city and to do battle with a load of overstuffed chickens?”

Foggy had a point there which Matt missed by about a mile and a half.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s Saturday. What else is there to do?”

Sasha smashed her face against the back of Brett’s arm so that she didn’t scream-laugh in the presence of two known vigilantes.

Foggy turned around and scooped up Amos. Amos was surprised, but not less than Matt when Foggy shoved the kid into his arms.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You’re now busy. Amos, this is Double D. You love Double D, don’t you? He wants to babysit you and your cousin all. Day. Long. Isn’t that right, Brett?”

Errrrr.

Not what Brett had in mind, but he did kind of like Matt’s expression over there.

“Sure,” he said.

Amos gawked at him and then crowed in delight and threw his arms around Matt’s neck.

“I wanna meet Spiderman!” he said. “Can you help us meet Spiderman?”

Castle was confused at the presence of this kid. He jerked his face over to Brett and noted the secondary kid behind him.

“This a fuc—freakin’ daycare now, detective?” he demanded.

Brett kind of wanted to fuck with him.

“It’s Saturday,” he said. “So yeah.”

There was a pause and Brett prepared to watch his life flash before his eyes as Frank Castle considered reaching for his gun.

“I have a proposal,” Matt decided. “What if we dispatched the geese—peaceably, Foggy, breathe—in a covert kind of way? With these rampscallions’ help? Would this not meet everyone’s needs?”

Amos, interested in Matt’s mask and very determined to get his cold fingers pressed against the seam between it and Matt’s cheekbones, cocked his head.

“What’s a rampscallion?” he asked up at him.

“A public menace,” Matt told him. “What do you think, are you fit for the job?”

Amos lit up.

“I’m a menace!” he chirruped.

“Heck yeah, you are,” Matt told him. “Welcome to the team.”

Foggy held his face in his hands. Castle just sighed.

“Red, we aren’t a team,” he said.

Matt turned his eyeless mask towards Frank and set his lips into a flat line. He waited.

“Not a team?” Amos asked him.

Matt waited.

“I hate you and don’t know this kid from Adam,” Castle said. “I am here for geese and geese only.”

“I’m Amos,” Amos said.

“He’s Amos,” Matt echoed, “Not Adam, God Frank, get it together.”

Castle’s shoulders began a slow descent downwards.

“I don’t know why I even bother,” he finally grumbled. “Whatever. Whatever the case, we need to go grab Spidey before he finds his laundry hamper and pisses the things off.”

“I didn’t agree to public involvement,” Peter snapped when he was relocated with not one, but two plastic laundry hampers in hand. “And if you’re gonna deviate from the plan, then I don’t need any of youse. I’ll get Hawkeye to help me. He’ll do it in a heartbeat. Kate says he’s reached a state of apathy. He knows no fear.”

“Can Hawkeye talk to birds?” Amos asked, tugging at Peter while still holding Matt’s hand.

Peter scowled down at him and took in a breath before going rigid all over.

“Oh my god,” he said, to Brett and Foggy’s confusion. “What’s your name?”

Amos smiled hugely up at him.

“Amos!” he chirped.

Peter hauled him up to eyelevel without giving him any warning whatsoever.

“Amos,” he said seriously, “You’re brilliant.”

Peter wanted Matt and Castle to help him kidnap Sam Wilson. He seemed to believe that Sam Wilson could speak to birds and no one really knew how to break it to him that he’d been maliciously lied to.

Foggy tried to, as gently as he could, but Peter blazed past his attempted intervention and decided that a kidnapping would be no good. They had to lure Wilson out this way on his own volition so that he was calm in the face of the opposition.

And that was absurd, yes, but besides that, there was just one problem.

“Why does he have to live in Brooklyn??” Peter lamented, making circles of frustration around their group with Amos trailing after him. “Why does everyone live in Brooklyn?”

“Better rent,” Matt said sagely.

“More community,” Castle offered.

“You two are not helping,” Peter scowled. “You’re old, tedious, and useless to me. Begone with you.”

“Nah, I’m invested now,” Matt said.

“I want to see Wilson talk to a goose,” Castle agreed.

Peter mugged at them both through his mask.

“Useless,” he reiterated. “I have to do everything myself around here. Man. Just once, I’d like to be on the other side of—”

“Sam Wilson’s feeding pigeons two blocks north,” Matt announced for the group out of absolutely nowhere.

Everyone paused and looked at him.

“What?” he said. “I’m being useful. You want me to go get him or—”

“Nah, I got this,” Castle said. “Y’all stay here.”

Frank Castle was a smart guy when you got past the fact that he was as direct and hard-headed as they came. He knew that Sam Wilson had dedicated his life to one thing and one thing only and that was public service, with a specialty in supporting veterans.

Castle apparently had a friend who he described as ‘eerily similar’ to Sam Wilson. He knew this guy inside and out and so he knew that if there was one thing Sam Wilson could not resist, it was a vet asking for help.

Sam Wilson had been standing on Wade Wilson’s last goddamn nerve on this point for the last year. Castle decided to go play the victim for .02 seconds and he came back with his mark in record timing.

Only when he found himself in front of the group as a whole did Sam realized that he’d been played. He told Castle that just for that, he was adding him to his shitlist with Wade.

“Uh-huh, whatever you want, pal,” Castle said. “More importantly: geese.”

“Geese?” Sam repeated.

“Geese,” Peter told him with clawed fingers. Amos imitated him.

Sam stared down at them both.

“Oh,” he said. “So you finally got down. Buck was timing you.”

“Go tell them to fuck off,” Peter directed, pointing furiously in the geese’s general direction.

Sam lifted an eyebrow at him.

“I can’t talk to birds,” he said.

“Red,” Peter said immediately.

“Lie,” Matt supplied just as quickly.

“Try again,” Peter said. “And go. Tell them. To get bent. Or I’m gonna make ‘em all into geese dumplings and leave ‘em for the birdcatcher.”

There was a pause.

“Peter, there is no birdcatch—”

“JUST GO ALREADY.”

“Your name is Peter?” Sasha asked Peter’s furious form once Sam had relented and said he would go coo at the geese just to appease him.

“My name is none of your business,” Peter snapped. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“She’s my cousin, kid. Take it down a notch,” Brett warned.

Peter glared at him, too, too irritated with the world at large to care about his allegiances at the moment.

“Sam Wilson is encountering resistance with the geese,” Matt informed the group.

Foggy gave him a seriously concerned face which he couldn’t see.

“Define ‘resistance,’” Castle said.

“They’re making much noise,” Matt said, nodding in some kind of sympathy for the scene he was tuned into.

“Good noise? Bad noise?” Foggy asked him.

“Resistance,” Matt emphasized.

“Does he need saving?” Foggy asked.

Another pause while Matt listened.

“Promptly,” he decided.

“Horrible animals,” Sam snapped once Peter had martyred himself once again. He’d gone sprinting right at the flock of geese surround Sam and they’d cleared back in alarm. Now they were posturing in a circle at the rest of them. Peter had perched himself on Matt’s shoulders because Matt was the Man Without Fear.

This included geese.

He tipped his face down at the brave one that had stormed forward and started rapping its head against his belt. He hissed at it.

It hissed back.

Matt sniffed like he’d found the gesture wanting. The goose reared back and honked at him at maximum goose-volume. Foggy grabbed his arm and Peter contorted himself so that he was now kneeling on Matt’s shoulders.

Brett scooped Amos up before he caught any unwanted action.

“Shoo,” Sam said at another goose slowly encroaching on his space. “God, so rude, these things.”

“They’re evil,” Peter decided, leaning over Matt’s head to join him in scowling down at Matt’s offender.

“I still got a permanent solution,” Castle said. He jerked when one of the geese tried to stuff its head into his pocket alongside his hand.

He was ignored.

“Seems like they want something,” Sam said.

“Toes,” Peter said knowingly.

“Ritual sacrifice,” Matt offered up in the same vein.

Sam gave the two of them the flattest look he could muster.

Sam’s solution was a bunch of birdseed. People at the park were fascinated by him and took photos as he went around leaving little piles of seed in his wake and to Brett’s surprise, the birds started following him.

Sam pretended not to notice them.

“We’re going on a field trip,” he said over his shoulder at the others. “The rest of you now have a job and that job is to direct traffic.”

Amos was delighted.

“We’re gonna play policemen,” he told Brett.

“I ain’t playing no policeman,” Peter huffed as Matt let him down from his shoulders.

“Kay, you can be a traffic cone,” Castle said, already fucking off after Wilson.

“I wanna be a cone,” Amos said after him.

Foggy caught him before he chased after the Punisher.

“No, honey, no one here’s a cone,” he said gently.

“Fuck that, I’m a cone,” Peter decided. “Red, come be a cone with me.”

Matt considered this.

“Do I get health insurance?” he asked.

“Not even a little. I’ll make you a yellow suit, though,” Peter tossed over his shoulder.

Matt considered this with much gravitas indeed.

“I like yellow,” he said. “Me and Danny could match.”

Brett caught ahold of Foggy’s arm before he had an aneurysm in public.

Sam was taking these birds to a different park with more space for them, it turned out. It was about a mile walk to Tompkin’s Square and Brett wasn’t 100% sure how or why, but at some point, Sam stopped putting down little piles of bird seed and all the damn geese carried on waddling after him anyways.

They did not bite or hiss much at all along the way.

It was nothing short of miraculous in Brett’s humble opinion.

Peter and Matt and Castle found themselves, as the most recognizable personalities available at the moment, going out and playing crossing guard (not traffic cones, to Matt’s enormous disappointment) between streets. Peter’s red and blue made this easy for him. Matt’s mask helped him out a bit.  

Castle employed a Gandalf-esque approach and just slammed a fist against the hood of any vehicle that tried to pass him.

He evidently hadn’t been in the part of the army which taught you how to peacefully direct traffic. This came as no surprise to anyone whatsoever.

At some point, a load of pedestrians joined the walk and before Brett knew it, there was a whole protective wall of people on both sides of the line of geese. The mass of human bodies made cars more likely to stop and there were camera phones coming out in droves recording the whole thing. Brett couldn’t even see Sam Wilson at the front of the line anymore.

The mile came to an end when webbed feet hit fresh greenery . It took longer than it might otherwise have been because while a mile for one person wasn’t very far, a mile for an impromptu parade of people and birds made for a much longer journey.

The geese had disappeared from sight by the time Brett made it to the green, nephew in hand and cousin at his heels. He ushered Amos and Sasha in front of him and stood on his toes, looking for a familiar haircut. He caught sight of Foggy’s distinctive blond mop and herded the kids over to where Foggy and Matt were standing at the edge of the park. Matt had lost his mask and coat somewhere along the way and looked like a whole different person. His ginger hair looked like it had seen better days and he let his big scarf hang languidly over the shoulders of a familiar flannel overshirt that Brett swore he’d seen Foggy wear before.

Foggy was still peeved with him and was busily exercising his eyebrows his way.

Amos didn’t notice anything especially different or suspicious about this and went running over to give Matt a hug and to tell him all about his adventures with Spiderman.

Sasha, however, paused. Brett glanced back at her and raised an eyebrow.

“You okay?” he asked.

She wrinkled up her face.

“Wasn’t DD wearing boots like those?” she asked, pointing at Matt’s black, overly laced monstrosities.

Brett hummed.

“Mighta been,” he said. “I wasn’t looking.”

He left it at that. Didn’t say anything when Sasha’s fingers clenched on the back of his jacket arm.

“Yo.”

Those fingers jumped and Brett turned around to see Peter standing there, similarly sans suit. His hair was fucked up and ruffled like Matt’s and his weekend clothes looked like an enormous red, white, and teal hoodie with just the slightest edge of red peeking out along the neckline. Over that, he wore a khaki lined jacket.

“I told you,” Peter said with a strong jaw.

Sasha gaped at him.

Brett laughed.

“You sure did,” he said.

“Bird whisperer,” Peter said. “Don’t you forget it. My weird is nothing compared to the Avengers’ weird.”

Brett lifted an eyebrow at him.

“You purr,” he said.

“I don’t,” Peter snapped back at him forcefully. “And even if I did, that’s normal compared to bird-whispering.”

Sasha was hyperventilating a little bit at Brett’s side. Brett tactfully ignored it and let her have her moment.

“Where’s the old guy?” Peter asked. “Not the usual one or the Wilson one, the one with the guns. I need to shove it in his face.”

“Think we lost him a while back, Pete. Sorry. You’ll have to gloat another time,” Brett said.

Peter glared back towards Union Square.

“You coward,” he murmured. Then he turned back to Brett. “I’ve had enough of birds for today. Everyone’s making fun of me. I’m going home.”

“Alright, kid, I hear you. Thanks for helping,” Brett said. “Maybe take Sunday off.”

“I’ll think about it,” Peter tossed over his shoulder before swinging around and stuffing his hands into his pockets.

As soon as he was gone, Brett looked down at Sasha, still clutching at his jacket.

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked her.

She jerked her face up to him in shock.

“That was Spiderman,” she whispered.

Brett shrugged high.

“Mighta been,” he said.

“He’s—Brett. He’s??”

“He’s?” Brett encouraged.

“He’s so grumpy???”

Brett laughed.

“He’s not usually in such a foul mood,” he promised her. “Maybe we’ll introduce you guys again when he’s on the up and up instead of surrounded by angry livestock.”

Or maybe not.

Brett got the feeling that Peter probably loved cows.

“Hey, we’re done here,” Foggy interrupted before Sasha could expound on her impression. He had Matt by the arm and Matt once again had Amos on his hip. “You gonna stay or are you headed home?”

Amos wanted to stay and he wanted Uncle Matt to stay with him. Matt politely declined and said that he had to go home because he’d promised to train with his boxing friends that evening. Amos decided that he wanted to box now.

Sasha said nothing.

Brett decided that they were going to lunch.

“Spiderman’s name is Peter,” Sasha debriefed in Brett’s living room as he watched Amos make patterns in ketchup with French fries.

“Yes,” Brett said.

“Peter what?”

“Do I look that stupid to you, Sash?”

She scowled.

“I saw his face. I could find him,” she said.

Brett couldn’t help his smirk.

“Height, weight, eye color, hair color,” he said. “List ‘em right now.”

Sasha puffed herself up and put down her chicken nugget to start ticking off fingers.

“Shorter than me, like, 100 pounds, brown, and---uh.”

Brett waited.

Sasha realized her mistake.

“If I saw him I could recognize him,” she maintained.

“Eye color,” Brett said.

“Bro—blue. They were blue,” Sasha sniffed. Then paused. “Green. Hazel.”

Brett took a long drink of coke.

“You’re a dick,” Sasha told him.

“You’re an unreliable witness,” Brett told her.

“I saw him. I’m gonna find him on facebook. Peter Spiderman. I’ll find him. Mark my words.”

“Sash, there’s a reason he chose to do that,” Brett said. “It’s ‘cause he knows that people will believe whatever they want to believe and honey, no one wants to believe that Spiderman is just some regular, bratty little kid running around in a red suit.”

Sasha paused and lowered her phone into her lap.

Brett couldn’t tell what she was thinking about.

“Introduce us again,” she said. “I want to be friends.”

Brett rolled his eyes.

“Listen, hon. I know I said that, but my job doesn’t mean I can just—”

“He seems like he’s a little lonely.”

Brett paused. Sasha didn’t look up at him.

“All the other super-people are a lot older than him and he kept saying how they’re all useless, so I just thought, maybe he could use some friends. I won’t tell anyone else.”

Brett was touched on Peter’s behalf. And he was proud of his cousin’s heartfelt interest.

“He’s really annoying,” he told her gently.

“You don’t know that,” she said.

“He’s really into sci-fi,” Brett told her. “And 80s music. He’s super petty too. He’s always breaking Tony Stark’s equipment and telling bad jokes to DD and Deadpool.”

Sasha smirked.

“Cool,” she said. “I like 80s music and being a jerk, too. We’re like human geese, both of us. We’ll get along great. Introduce us properly.”

Ahahaha.

Not in a thousand fucking years.