Chapter Text
“Oh, this looks good,” Amber said. “Turn it up.”
“No, don’t!” Gordon protested, already resigned to the office television blasting in the background of his call. He scowled and spun his chair away so that he could bury himself in the back of his cubicle, and Derrick spammed the volume button all the way up until the newscaster was practically screaming at them.
“-confirmed,” the anchor said somberly. “After a brief but brilliant career of crime-fighting, we salute our city’s hero and wish his family and friends peace. And, with this confirmation, we also have Spider-Man’s identity.”
This voicemail has not been set up. Goodbye!
Gordon heard that message more times in a day than he heard his name in a week, and every single time it set a fire to his blood. People just thought they could shirk their responsibilities, thought they could just feign absence or ignorance and get away with scamming thousands upon thousands of dollars. Well, not on Gordon’s watch.
“Peter is survived by his wife, actress MJ Watson. Peter’s classmates described Peter as brilliant and compassionate, always with his heart in the right place. MJ and Peter’s childhood guardian have both indicated that anyone wishing to show appreciation to Spider-Man donate to the charity FEAST, which provides lodging, meals, and clothing to New Yorkers in need. Here at NYNC, we would like to take a moment to sincerely thank Spider-Man, thank Peter Parker, for–”
Gordon swiveled his chair back around so fast that he nearly swiveled a full circle. He stared up at the office television, mouth slightly agape. There, up on screen, was a classically handsome blond man with a self-deprecating smile and absurd muscle toning. He had the sort of vaguely beautiful face you’d expect to see under a superhero’s mask. The scrolling banner at the bottom of the screen listed him as Peter Parker, SPIDER-MAN, age 26, Queens native.
“I know him,” Gordon said.
Derrick choked on his kombucha. Amber leaned around the edge of her cubicle and clapped Derrick hard on the back while grinning at Gordon.
“What, like you met him?” Amber said. “I always wanted to meet Spider-Man. Always just missed him. Like the time Rhino attacked A-line, but I’d overslept. Or the time that Mysterio attacked A-line, but I’d overslept. Or–”
“No,” Gordon said. “Not Spider-Man. Peter Parker.”
“Whaaa?” Amber said, slapping Derrick even harder on the back as his coughs grew more intense. “Gordie! Come on! Tell us everything!”
“He owes over 35,000,” Gordon said. He pulled up his computer to pull up the file, and yep , right there, was 26-year-old Peter Benjamin Parker, married, with two defaulted credit cards, and no payments in the past six months.
“Oh,” Amber said, sounding much less interested. “I thought you like, knew him knew him. Dude, Derrick, do you need water or something?”
Gordon stared at his spreadsheet, the glow of the screen reflecting on his bifocals. Out there, people were mourning Peter Parker the hero. They wouldn’t care about Peter Parker the debtor. And where exactly had all that Spider-Man money gone? Parker must have made an absolute fortune on royalties and branding.
Gordon frowned at his screen. In a matter of weeks, the little cell with Peter Parker’s information would be deleted with the next system update, his voided Social Security Number kicking him out of the system. No one would know about Peter Parker’s money mishandling.
Gordon pulled out a notepad. He highlighted a row on his spreadsheet.
He started to write.
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------
“How was work today?” Lacey asked, turning her cheek expectantly for Gordon to kiss. Gordon knew the script well. He cupped her hip with a hand, dropped a kiss, and took a step back and out of the way.
“Good. How was your day?”
“Well,” Lacey said, tone sliding straight into the exaggerated cadence of truly spectacular gossip. “The Langleys lost their son.”
“Oh,” Gordon said. “Uh…” He was always a bit unclear on when there were euphemisms in play. Surely Lacey wouldn’t be using that tone if Byron had died. “What, uh, happened?”
“Well,” Lacey said again, somehow even more significantly than before, “A couple of days ago, Marlene went to pick up Byron from basketball practice. You know how overprotective she can be. Anyways, she got to chatting with Trisha, and she says she turned back around and he’d completely disappeared.”
“Where’d he disappear to?”
“That’s the thing, Gordie,” Lacey said. She paused to retrieve a casserole from the oven. “He’s not reappeared yet.”
“Oh!” Gordon said, relieved that it was a missing child case and not the child-died-in-an-accident one. His reaction wasn’t the one Lacey was looking for, though, so he gave another, “Oh, ” to reflect the proper alarm.
“They’ve checked with family. They’ve checked with Byron’s friends. They checked with the school in case Byron had made new friends that they didn’t know about yet. They called the police.”
“And..?” Gordon asked, because Lacey loved leading questions, she always looked so satisfied when he managed a good set-up.
“Nothing.” Lacey set her casserole on the stovetop with great aplomb. “And it gets even worse, Gordie.”
“No,” Gordon said. “How?”
“Byron’s not the only kid to go missing recently,” Lacey said. “Marlene says they talked to an officer whose son was taken too.”
“A cop’s kid?” Gordon said. “Now who the heck would take a cop’s kid?”
Lacey tapped her nose with her enormous oven mitt. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Anyways, I told Marlene not to worry about dinner.”
“Good,” Gordon said. “I hate how unsafe this city’s become.”
“I hope Spider-Man gets back from his holiday soon,” Lacey said. “This sort of thing never happened under his watch.”
Gordon didn’t have any particular feelings about the new Spider-Man that’d started running around New York as soon as the old one was pronounced dead. He didn’t seem to be into the same merchandising that the original had been, which was a poor money move, but that also probably meant that he wasn’t recklessly spending money.
$35,628 of debt. And people still idolized the man. Irresponsible. Irresponsible!
His notes from the office were burning a hole through the front cover of Gordon’s copy of A Brief History of Time. He’d thought once of sending the damning information to that one news site that had subsisted off of ragging on Spider-Man, but Gordon was a law-abiding citizen, and that was privileged information. Even if it did belong to a dead man.
“Carry this for me?” Lacey asked, gesturing to the casserole.
“Certainly,” Gordon said.
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The new Spider-Man was showing off a pair of tennis shoes in the ad banner on Gordon’s facebook page. It was a poorly targeted ad because Gordon had been a loyal Reebok’s customer since the 70’s, but that wasn’t the reason that Gordon was looking at the advert with increasingly furrowed brows.
It was just that there were a lot of unanswered questions he had left from the Peter Parker Spider-Man, and if this Miles one was headed in the same direction– what with the jumping into product promotion– well, then Gordon was entitled to some answers after all the time he’d spent on the Parker file. Miles was still pretty young, hadn’t gotten to the point of dating superstars, but surely he wasn’t that far off. There were all sorts of baby-faced teenage celebrities these days.
“Shoot!” Gordon yelped as his elbow slipped and hit the keyboard, and his page refreshed. The ad had disappeared, but now there was a video shared from multiple friends auto playing at the top of his feed. It looked like some sort of arrest footage, and then there was a flash of red and blue that had Gordon unmuting the video and dragging the cursor back to watch again.
The movement was quick, and the audio jumbled, but if Gordon were a betting man…well, he’d put money on it that the Spider-Man in half second of frame was the original one.
Which was impossible. The man was dead. Cleared from all government records.
Gordon opened up the comment section, and in the background, the video continued.
No way definite hoax
I LOVE PEETER PARKER!!!!
Guys that’s definitely him thats spiderman
“Miles! Spider-Man!” the reporter shouted from the video. “Who was that other person? It looked like Peter Parker Spider-Man.”
Gordon scrolled back up to the video as Miles confirmed.
“Care to elaborate?” the reporter pressed.
Miles folded his arms. “It’s our world’s Peter Parker.”
The video continued, but Gordon stopped listening.
He knew what he had to do, as surely as though he had trained for this moment his entire life.
He navigated to the IRS website. He downloaded a copy of Form 1099-C. He hit print.
It was time for Peter Parker to pay his debts.