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There were many things Peter Parker was prepared for on a Wednesday morning.
A pop quiz in biochem? Expected.
Gwen needing help with her quantum mechanics project? Par for the course.
Empire State University being invaded by the government-sanctioned chaos parade that was the Thunderbolts? Not so much.
“Technically,” Gwen muttered as she elbowed Peter in the ribs, “they’re the New Avengers now. Rebranded. Like gluten-free cereal.”
Peter gave her a look. “I’m not convinced they’re any less likely to cause property damage.” Is he a little salty? Yes. But it’s not technically their fault, more so the governments, and personal resentments that come from Peter’s own current issues.
From their perch on the steps of the central quad, the Thunderbolts—sorry, New Avengers —were easy to spot. A stage had been erected. Banners waved. Students gathered like moths to a fire made of danger and bad decisions.
Front and center was White Widow, all sharp eyes and disinterest. She looked like she'd rather be anywhere else—except maybe next to her towering red-suited father, who waved enthusiastically at students like he was running for prom king.
Walker—because out of pure principle, Peter refuses to call him Captain America—stood stiffly, like he didn’t trust anyone not to try to attack him (Understandable, ESU students did start a hate club for him when he debuted. So… fair.)
Mr. Barnes—who Peter briefly fought that one time—leaned against a railing in full ‘I did not sign up for this and am forced to be here against my will’ mode, a shitty vending machine coffee in his hand.
Ghost was shockingly the only normal-seeming one, bored and picking at her gloves like being anywhere but here would be much better.
From Peter's understanding, their tag-along speculated PR manager— Fentry? Bentry? Or something—briefly introduced the team to the crowd before slipping away relatively unnoticed, apparently uninterested in the speech Red Guardian had launched into about the greatness of Russian heroism.
Peter had honestly drowned them out once Gwen and Harry left him; he was really only at the weird PR stunt/event for free merch and food. God forbid a boy is broke and needs to stock up on bright blue school spirit toiletries.
He was in the middle of taking one too many gift baggies from the Art club booth when someone grabbed his arm. Not aggressively—but definitely with intent. His spider-sense had given him a heads up a moment too late, which was… actually really odd and he’d have to look into that later.
“Finally,” the woman said. “You’re fast, Bob, I give you that. Not fast enough to ditch me, though.”
Peter turned, brows lifted.
White Widow—If he recalled correctly, her name was Yelena Belova. She happened to be the sister of Natasha Romanoff, which was a shock when for Peter when had asked Karen to research the members when he first saw their group debut—-she was standing next to him, hands on her hips, mouth twitching with irritation. And she was looking directly at him.
Peter blinked. “...Hi?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Do not play dumb. Where did you go? You weren’t on stage for five minutes before vanishing. We’ve talked about this, Bob, now you’re making me look like a mother scolding her toddler.”
Ah . Oh no.
She thought he was someone else.
Bob, to be specific, whoever that was.
Peter could’ve corrected her.
He should’ve corrected her.
She scrutinized his appearance, noting the ESU hoodie that engulfed him at the moment, clearly different than what she was expecting/remembering. “Did you rob some poor, depressed child?” She scrunched her nose up in distaste. “This is besides the point. Where were you?”
But there was something a little thrilling—and maybe a tiny bit funny—about being mistaken for someone else by an actual superspy-assassin. Plus, if she was looking for Bob, and he wasn’t Bob, that was Bob’s problem. Right?
So Peter awkwardly smiled. “Uh. Sorry?” he held up his bags of ‘stolen’ goods as if that were explanation enough.
Yelena stared at him, clicking her tongue, she shook her head, exasperated, as if used to this behavior. Then she grabbed his wrist and pulled him along.
“Good,” she said briskly. “You’re coming with me. Alexei is about to explain the cultural significance of beet soup to these American children, and I refuse to suffer alone.”
Peter opened his mouth.
Closed it.
And let himself be dragged away.
—
Bob wasn’t exactly sure how he ended up across campus.
To be completely fair, he’s never actually been to a university before, never finding the time to pursue further education between addiction and weird ‘adventures’ across the globe. So it’s only natural that he loses his way to the bathroom in a massive campus large enough to fit 36 thousand students.
He’s almost 87% sure he’s walking in the complete opposite direction of the stage, which would usually mean Yelena would track him down any moment now—okay, so he’s directionally incompetent, sue him.
But this is about his 6th time getting lost this week alone (mind you, it’s Wednesday), and he’s more than a little nervous about how badly he’s going to get scolded once Yelena tracks him down.
It’s not only embarrassing when she scolds him in front of people, but it’s a hit on Bob’s pride. If he can’t find his way around a university campus, how could he be a qualified member of a team? (Ignoring all the weird complicated Sentry/Void issues he would rather avoid than dwell on)
He’s about to just bite the bullet and call Bucky or Yelena to help him figure out where the hell he is, when he’s gripped by a strong hand.
From the sheer strength of the grip and the wisps of blond hair, Bob initially thinks it’s Yelena, which makes his face unconsciously form a smile in response to the thought. However, upon more than a glance, he finds it to be a pretty student clinging onto him.
“Peter? I thought you were stealing the free merch back on the quad.” The girl talks to Bob with such familiarity that it kinda throws him off a bit. He looks side to side, finding no one there, and then awkwardly points to himself, questioning if she was talking to him or not.
She stared at his confused face blankly before rolling her eyes with a smile, as if this were typical behavior coming from him, which it was , but how did she know that?
“I was… in the bathroom?”
The girl raises one perfect blond eyebrow up, which disappears behind her wall of bangs, and looks at him with curious pale eyes.
“Huh, okay.” She relents, a little skeptical at Bob’s behavior, which is odd considering she’s never met him before. Stuffing the notebook in her arms back into her bag, she hooks her arm through his elbow and leads them away from the spot where they originally were.
“Um.” Bob looks around helplessly, hoping to spot Yelena, or Bucky—he’ll even take Walker at this point because this is the weirdest, most polite kidnapping he’s ever experienced.
And he’s been kidnapped a lot in his lifetime.
“Where are we going?” The girl looks up from her phone with a frown, staring at Bob with concern and as if he’s an idiot.
“We need to wait for Harry at the dining hall? Hello, we talked about this like an hour ago. He was gonna see if Flash would be willing to grade your TA work so we could go out tonight.”
Bob blinked.
First of all, who names their kid Flash ?
Second of all, it’s starting to become more clear that there’s been some sort of confusion between Bob and… Someone else, Peter, whoever that might be.
“Oh, right.” Bob nods, putting a polite yet awkward smile on his face. He doesn’t want to be rude and embarrass the girl clinging to his arm. He knows he would be beyond embarrassed if he made this mistake.
She didn’t seem to notice the hesitation, just squeezed his arm. “You really need to write stuff down. You’d lose your own head if it wasn’t webbed to your neck.”
So Bob just kept his mouth shut, smiled, and let himself be dragged away.
This will be a… Peter problem.
Right?
—
Peter had been through a lot of bizarre things in his life.
Fought alien warlords. Turned into dust. Came back. Swung through Queens in a spandex suit for most of his teenage years. But nothing—not Thanos, not awkward Avengers compound brunches, not even MJ’s passive-aggressive texts—had prepared him for the deeply surreal experience of Yelena Belova dragging him into a Thunderbolts Q&A panel like he belonged there.
“We can sit in the back, right?” Peter asked as she pulled him up the steps of the makeshift outdoor stage. “I’m more of a behind-the-scenes kind of guy.”
“No,” Yelena said flatly. “You sat out of the panel last time because you ‘‘felt spiritually threatened by fluorescent lighting.’ You’re due.”
“Ah.”
He would apologize to Bob later. Assuming he ever found him. Or survived this.
The panel was already in full swing—Red Guardian waxing poetic about Soviet super-serums and how American peanut butter lacked “soul.” Walker looked like he was seconds away from snapping a pen in half just to feel something. Ava sat at the edge, dying of boredom. And then there was Bucky.
Bucky Barnes. The guy Peter had once (accidentally) webbed in the face during a scuffle in Germany.
He looked up when Yelena and Peter— Not Bob, Peter mentally screamed—climbed onto the stage. His eyes narrowed.
Peter offered a weak wave.
Bucky did not wave back.
Yikes.
Yelena shoved Peter toward one of the chairs. “You’re late.”
Red Guardian paused mid-rant about a spoon? Yeah Peter can’t really get a good read on him. “Ah! Bob! I was just telling the story of how I once used a spoon to disable an entire Hydra outpost. You remember this stroy, yes?”
Peter blinked. “...Sure?”
“Ha! Classic Bob.” Red Guardian slapped his knee, absolutely delighted. “Such a good listener. Like a little owl.”
Peter sank further into the chair. This was fine. Everything was fine. He adjusted his hoodie and tried to blend into the stage backdrop.
Yelena sat next to him with the long-suffering sigh of someone who has been forced into the eldest sister role of the team.
The moderator pointed toward a student in the front row. “Looks like we’re all here finally, yes?” Peter vaguely recognized her as Mrs. Neal from the english department. “Lets get started with a few questions for our guests!”
The first few were pretty tame, if boring, asking questions. Simple things like where they got their training from, which for obvious reasons most of the team lied about, or things like what eyeliner Yelena uses.
The moderator pointed to a student in the crowd, “Yes, you there! A question for Sentry?”
The student beamed. “Yeah, uh, your hair’s, like, really shiny in person. What conditioner do you use?”
Peter looked around, noting the awkward silence when nobody else piped up, meaning that Sentry was meant to be him . Or, well, Bob.
“Uh… grief.”
The student blinked. Yelena actually choked. Red Guardian threw back his head in laughter.
“Such honesty!” he declared. “You are never this funny.”
Yelena leaned in and whispered, “You’re doing so much worse than I expected. It’s kind of impressive.”
“Thanks,” Peter said, already calculating possible exit routes from the stage. “Do I get a sticker or something?”
“No,” she said. “You get to pass out New Avengers-branded water bottles later.”
“Can’t wait.”
Peter tugged the sleeves of his oversized hoodie down and slouched a little lower in his chair. Somewhere in the audience, a seagull stole a churro from a student. He watched it with longing.
This was fine. Everything was fine.
Totally normal Wednesday.
Absolutely not impersonating a government-employed superhero.
Definitely not going to spiral about this later.
–
By the time Bob reached the dining hall, he had committed to the bit.
Not because he wanted to.
Because the blonde girl—whose name he had not yet learned, which felt like a war crime considering how casually she’d linked arms with him—had a grip like a python and an entire agenda. She'd led him down two flights of stairs, through a quad, and into a building that smelled aggressively like soy sauce and burnt coffee.
He didn’t even like coffee. It made him chatty, more so than usual.
“Over here,” she chirped, guiding him through the student-packed chaos of the cafeteria and toward a round table near the windows. Seated there was one more student: a tall, clean-cut guy with an effortless model-like look and a smile that made Bob feel underdressed in his own skin. He assumed this was Harry.
The guy looked up from his phone after they approached the table. “Hey, Pete. Finally.”
Bob tried to smile. It came out like a grimace. “Hi.”
The girl raised a brow but didn’t comment. She just handed him a drink—something green and possibly radioactive. “Matcha. You always complain about it but drink it anyway.”
“Thanks,” Bob said, holding the cup like it was an explosive.
The blonde beside him slid into the seat across from him, clearly in her element. “He got lost again,” she said, tossing her bag onto the table. “You’re lucky I found him before he started trading his phone for a granola bar.”
The boy—definitely Harry—snorted. “Classic Parker.”
Bob laughed. It was an awful, hollow sound. Inside, he was dying.
“No free merch this time? I’m actually shocked.” Harry commented with a raised brow and a bite of his burrito.
“Oh, I had to piss.” Was that how Peter talked? No clue. He just needed to find the perfect time where he could escape unnoticed, but from the furrow of Harry’s brows it might have been a bit much.
“So,” Gwen said, changing topics and poking at her bowl of stir fry, “Flash says he might cover your grading duty tonight if you promise not to ghost him again on lab reports.”
Bob had no idea what any of that meant. But he nodded with the wide-eyed fervor of a man trying to escape a hostage situation with his dignity intact.
“Awesome,” Harry said. “Because you’re coming out with us tonight. No excuses. Trivia Night at Lee;s.”
Trivia Night.
How…Geeky.
Not that he was one to talk.
“Oh. Cool,” Bob said. “Sounds... uh, enlightening.”
Gwen squinted at him. “You feeling okay?”
No.
But Bob nodded anyway. “Just tired. Long day of... People watching. You know.”
Harry tilted his head, something in his expression shifting. “People Watching?”
“Uh. Y’know, observing.” Bob sipped the matcha. Immediately regretted it. “For life.”
The table went silent.
Bob prayed for a black hole to open up under his seat.
Thankfully, Gwen burst out laughing. “God, you’re so weird sometimes.”
Bob gave a weak chuckle, hands trembling slightly as he put the cup down. He needed to find Yelena. Or Alexei. Or literally anyone with a clearance badge and a tranquilizer.
Or maybe just Peter. Because at this rate, Bob was going to ruin this guy’s entire academic and social reputation by accident.
Harry was still watching him, though. Not amused. Not laughing.
Just... thoughtful.
“Hey,” he said slowly. “You didn’t hit your head or something, did you?”
“No, no,” Bob said quickly. “I mean. Maybe. But no. I’m fine.”
Gwen leaned her chin on her hand. “Is this like last week when you forgot your own email password and blamed it on quantum fatigue?”
Bob blinked. “Yes?”
Harry narrowed his eyes.
Bob began sweating through his shirt.
At that exact moment, Gwen’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it, frowned, and stood up. “Harry, come with me. Flash says he needs to borrow a soldering kit and you know he’ll fry himself if left unsupervised.”
Harry stood slowly, eyes still fixed on Bob. “Right. Sure.”
Gwen smiled at Bob as they left. “Don’t disappear. We’ll be back in ten.”
As soon as they were out of sight, Bob slumped forward and buried his face in his hands.
He had no idea how Peter lived like this.
College was terrifying.
—
Bob had been kidnapped by polite people before.
There was that time in Brazil with the eco-commune that wanted to ‘detox his aura with frog venom.’ And the incident in Prague where that cult mistook him for a reincarnated mushroom deity. But this? This might be worse.
Because this time, they thought he was normal .
“Peter,” the blonde girl— Gwen, he’d learned—said, tugging him toward the main quad where he was trying to find before he got lost, “We seriously need to get your blood tested. You’ve been acting weirder than usual today.” She sounded like she was joking, but with Bob’s luck that was somehow unlikely.
Bob laughed weakly. “That’s… probably true.”
Also, apparently, he had TA work . And a mutual friend named Harry , who had plans for the evening. And he a reputation for stealing student council gift bags, which—honestly—did sound like something he might do.
He didn’t want to embarrass Gwen by correcting her, and she’d been nice, even giving him a protein bar when she thought he was lightheaded. So really, there was only one thing to do: Ride this out until he could find Yelena or at least a Thunderbolt-branded emergency exit sign.
It was as he was mid-chew on that surprisingly decent protein bar that everything went sideways.
Across the quad, he saw a familiar back (mostly because it looked like his )—hunched, hoodie-clad, carrying far too many giveaway tote bags.
Bob blinked.
The guy turned.
They made eye contact.
Bob stopped walking.
Gwen, still tugging his wrist, looked confused. “Peter?”
“...Um,” Bob said softly, pointing.
At the same time, across the lawn, Peter—trapped in an awkward conversation with Red Guardian about Soviet military push-up techniques—turned and saw himself .
Well. Not exactly himself.
But close enough that Peter almost dropped all three tote bags and squinted at Bob like he was studying a germ underneath a microscope.
“Holy crap,” he muttered.
Yelena followed his gaze, frowned, and muttered, “No. No—Bob?”
Bob waved.
Gwen blinked between the two of them. “Wait.”
Across campus, Bucky Barnes stood up from where he’d been lurking at a booth offering free ‘mental resilience’ pamphlets and narrowed his eyes. Walker, behind him, tensed.
Even Ghost took a cautious step forward.
The campus went about their day behind them, uncaring to what they were doing now that the event had ended, now wanting to go about their merry way to their classes.
Two young men. Both brown-haired. Same lean build. Same nose. Same weirdly chaotic energy radiating in different fonts.
Peter slowly raised a hand. “Hi. I think you’re me.”
Bob raised a hand back. “And I think you’re me.”
They seemed way too calm about this.
“Wait,” Gwen said, voice climbing. “ You’re not Peter?! ”
Bob winced. “I’m… not.”
Yelena crossed the quad like a woman on a mission, stopping between them, looking from one to the other like she was trying to spot the difference in a cartoon.
“This is horrifying,” she said flatly. “There are two of them?”
“They look like Funko Pops,” Ava said, strolling up beside her. “But alive. And more stressed.”
“I—okay, in my defense,” Peter began, raising both hands, “she thought I was Bob, and I just kind of… went with it?”
Yelena turned slowly to him, narrowing her eyes. “ You went with it. ”
“It was sort of an experiment?”
“To what end?”
Peter gestured helplessly. “Social science? Also, uh, I didn’t know how to say no without sounding rude.”
Gwen shoved Bob’s arm, not unkindly but more frustrated. “You let me call you Peter sixteen times! ”
“Yeah, and I felt terrible by the fourth one!”
Meanwhile, Bob looked at Harry, who had been standing there utterly confused in silence, apologetically. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t want to ruin your day. Or your plans. Or your churro.”
“What churro?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Red Guardian finally caught up to the group, breathing heavily. “Wait, why are there two Bobs ?”
Peter shook his head. “No, see, I’m Peter—”
“Ha! That’s what Bob would say!” Red Guardian declared, patting Peter on the shoulder, making him stumble “Classic Bob misdirection!”
“Ow, that hurt” It really didn’t.
Walker coughed into his fist, hiding a smirk. “Maybe we put name tags on them.”
Bucky sighed. “ That,” he pointed at Bob and Peter, “is a security risk.”
Ava crossed her arms. “This is hilarious.”
Yelena pinched the bridge of her nose. “I need five Tylenol and a drink with enough caffeine to kill a rhino.”
Peter, still winded from Alexei’s throttle looked over at Bob.
“You’re Bob, right?” he asked.
“Yeah. And you’re Peter?”
“Yup.”
They stared at each other for a beat too long.
Then, in unison: “ Weird .”