chapter one!
in the background

IN A WORLD of superheroes and supervillains (and everything in between), Nina Hart always felt quite small. As a simple mortal with nothing that special about her that could stop a whole alien invasion, she was nothing more than a mere background character. If this was a novel, or a movie, or something straight out of a comic (because it honestly felt like it was these days), she was always sure she'd be that girl no one cared about. The girl who had a very rushed design and character growth━or perhaps none at all! Just trying to make her way to work without being some love interest being abducted, or some superhero fighting some arch-nemesis in the middle of the street (because every villain had a god complex, apparently, and needed to be the centre of attention).

She was just trying to maneuver her way along the concrete towards the front steps of her high school. Just trying to find her friend among the many heads and bored faces. Just trying to live a normal, mundane life in a world where mundane didn't fully exist.

The good thing about being a small character in this huge story that belonged to someone else was that Nina wasn't alone. She was surrounded by background characters no bigger than herself. She drifted around fellow students, tilting her board just right to make smooth turns; bypassing those just trying to make their way through life much like her. No one extraordinary, with superpowers and a comic book origin. Just normal people, living normal lives━going to work, going to school, paying their bills. The little guys stuck in a much bigger guy's world.

(Truth was, Nina was never a background character; in any universe. And while she slumped and she rolled her eyes and she scrolled through her phone to find the right song to listen to, she could feel it. There was something strange in the air; a feeling as if her life had been planned from beginning to finish, and had happened just like this many times before).

She reached the steps. Fixing her sneaker on the back of the board, the cream-coloured, doodle-filled skateboard skidded to a halt. She took the tip in her fingers and jumped up the steps, quickly returning to her position to slide in through the open doors.

Right now, Nina Hart was small, and meaningless, and she was okay with that. She could start to make her way to her locker before a teacher could go off at her for riding her skateboard inside. She could take a deep breath and start every day as normal as the next with only one thing different ths semester (and that was without her best friend beside her).

Everyone warned her about dating her best friend━that it wasn't going to end up well. That one day, it would fall apart, and she would be left on a dry ocean, watching the waves of everything that they had been before drift so close, but the tide never close enough to reach her. The baggage was too much to keep a friendship going when you had kissed when you thought no one was watching, and laughed at the tables at Mr Delmar's Sandwich Shop, and ate the whole box of strawberry icecream instead of studying. But Nina had been so in her head that she didn't even think about that. She ate that icecream far too quick, and now she was left with a terrible shock from the brain freeze.

"Nina!"

She glanced over her shoulder, coming to a stop on the tiles. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes when her biology teacher gestured angrily to her skateboard. "In the air, or it's in my office!"

Nina scoffed to herself but grabbed her skateboard and held it over her shoulder with a sarcastic shake. Her biology teacher nodded, "There you go━now keep it up there! And I mean it, Nina!" Their voice drowned out as she continued her way down the corridor.

As soon as she was sure her teacher didn't see her anymore, she put the skateboard back down and was bag to riding the sea of students, avoiding flying drones, bodies and those idiots who thought it was smart to stop in the centre of the corridor and talk to their friends.

Up above, like an annoying bird in her ear, the school news welcomed everyone back with Betty Brant's cheerful, "Rise and shine, Midtown Science and Technology."

"Don't forget about your homecoming tickets," then said Jason, a jock who was forced into doing the broadcast. He never put effort in; everything he said was low and monotone, like he was a robot reading a script. "Do you have a date for homecoming?" he asked Betty.

Her face fell, and the camera zoomed in. "Thanks, Jason, but I already have a date."

"Okay."

"Yeah."

(Comedic genius, really).

Nina ducked under another flying drone. That was what made Midtown a bit different to other schools. The kids that attended her dull-faced and a little annoying, but they were dull-faced and a little annoying geniuses who took a test to get in. (And yes, Nina was amongst them).

Coming up to the lockers, Nina Hart searched for a specific head of blonde hair and found her leaning against her locker, scrolling through her phone. "Felicia!" Nina let out and tilted her skateboard towards her. She arrived quickly, stopping expertly just before she'd run into her ankles.

Her best friend jumped, and cat-like eyes stared at her, in shock, under a heavy fringe. "Nina!" she scolded. "I like my ankles!"

"Sorry," she stepped off the board and tilted it up to lean against the leg of her jeans.

Felicia Hardy was one of those girls who might be someone tremendously smart, but didn't like to be. She did the bare minimum that kept her in this school, but since her father was sent to prison over a heist (and shocked her and her mother to brittle pieces for months━and even now), Nina's best friend didn't really care much for anything anymore. She still did the bare minimum, she still came to school every day and attended gymnastics where she was a reigning champion, but it was rarely ever with the bright, happy smile she used to.

"Here," Felicia passed Nina a granola bar. "Stole it from the shop on the way up here."

Nina took it with tender fingertips, now, "Cia━"

"Oh, it's too early in the morning to hear that," her best friend rolled her eyes and hefted up her laptop against her chest. "Just eat it, Nina. Or I'll take it and enjoy it in home room."

She was reluctant, but she opened the wrapper and ate in anyway.

"Anyway," Felicia started the way towards Nina's locker in the next corridor. Nina grabbed her skateboard and walked along beside her. "How are you? Do I need to remind you━?"

"No, you don't," Nina rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "I got the messages this morning━I understood the first five hundred times ... 'Focus on yourself', 'He doesn't deserve you━'" Felicia recited them with her, nodding alonng to make sure she knew them off by heart.

When they were finished, she seemed satisifed. "Good, because I remember the night he broke up with you and you stayed at my place. It was dark..."

Nina made a face, "It wasn't that dark." Felicia arched a dubious brow. "It wasn't!"

"I had to stop you from stealing his things and burning them as a sister bonding session━which, while I would have loved the idea," her friend held up a hand, back-tracking, "seeing you trying to steal that packet of chips at the grocers was enough to tell me I never want to see that again."

Nina pursed her lips, "You have a point. Well, I'm proud to tell you," they neared the break in the corridor towards the next, "that I have completely moved on. I will focus on myself, I will not focus on him. Peter Parker is just a bug under my boot that I will step on when he realises exactly what he's missing."

Felicia smirked━sly, as if she always had a trick up her sleeve. "That's my girl," she cooed and reached up to squeeze Nina's cheeks. She smacked her hand away, chuckling. "You did remember."

"It's not like you gave me a choice."

They chuckled again. They turned the corridor. In passing, Nina felt a set of eyes on her. Glancing back, she hated how she faltered━she knew those eyes were his.

Peter Parker had never been the boy girls sought themselves out for. He was quiet and insecure, and not the tallest. He used to wear glasses too big for him that made his eyes bug out and had arms like a twig. But Nina had loved him━he was her childhood best friend. He was kind, he was a dork, he was smart, and he loved his camera and he was Peter Parker, and that had been enough for her. But now, he was different. No glasses, barely any acne━he had shot up like a cork (still not the tallest, but now he just stood over Nina's height instead of being shorter), and no longer carried around a camera, or his stupid instrument for band practice ... he was Peter Parker, yes, sure, but he wasn't her Peter Parker. Not anymore.

A moment of silence settled between the two old friends. Peter Parker and Nina Hart had been those two kids everyone believed would end up together in the end like it was some fairytale. They had known each other since they could remember (aka, kindergarten), and had been attatched to each other's hips from then. The worst thing about it, was Nina believed that fairytale. She was so caught up in the love story that seemed to make her feel like maybe she was living her own romance novel, the main character and Peter was her everything, that she didn't realise they were high school kids, and no relationship lasted.

She remembered the night he broke up with her over some stupid excuse how he no longer had the time for a relationship with the Stark Internship.

And just like that, years of friendship flew away in the blink of an eye.

Maybe that was why it hurt so much because no matter what, they had been friends first, and now, not even that seemed to matter anymore.

Nina had to look away, continuing on. She wanted to say that Felicia's mantra's had worked and that she believed them, truly ... but she didn't. It still hurt. Not just the loss of a relationship, but a friendship that had meant more to her than almost anything on this Earth. There were galaxies, and exploding stars, but she had Peter.

Get over it, she told herself, move on.

*ೃ༄

"HOW does he even do that?"

Should Nina be paying attention in math? Yes. Should she be taking notes from the board? Yes. But was Felicia showing a really cool Spider-Man video? Yes, yes, yes.

Nina's skateboard had gotten confiscated on the way to class, which she wasn't surprised by. But she was sure Felicia might steal it back before school ended, as she usually did. Her best friend confused her that way. She declared she wanted nothing to do with her father, and yet commited petty thief crimes like they were nothing more than just something anyone did on the average day. Maybe she didn't want to admit that perhaps she had taken her father's sentence more to heart than she was determined to remind everyone, but Nina couldn't tell her that.

Felicia narrowed her eyes at the video on her phone they gazed at hoping their teacher wouldn't notice. "Do you think that stuff comes out of him?" she wondered as Spider-Man swung past the camera with a long stiff web attatched to a building off screen.

"If it did then that's gross but also really cool," muttered Nina. "Like━on a scientific level━wait, hang on━" she rewinded the footage on Youtube, "━how did I just realise that's a new suit? It's a huge uprade."

"Yeah, it's way better than a sweatsuit," snickered Felicia. She quirked a suggestive brow, "Do you think he's hot behind that suit?"

"Yeah," Nina agreed, nodding, "must be really sweaty."

Felicia stared at her, incredulous. "Hon, seriously?"

It took Nina a minute to realise what she meant and went a shade of scarlet. "Oh! Right ... um ... I don't know, maybe ..."

"Like just think of the amount of push-ups he has to do to have that core strength. And don't get me started on the arm strength ..."

"Okay," their teacher was saying, tapping her marker against the diagram she drew on the white board, "so how do we calculate linear acceleration between points 'A' and 'B'?"

Without hesitation, Flash Thompson put his hand up. Felicia groaned under her breath. Important thing, Flash isn't even his real name. His actual name is Eugene, and if that doesn't explain enough about Flash Thompson's obnoxious personality, then Nina doesn't know what will. The teacher called upon him, and he answered: "It's the product of sine of the angle and gravity divided by mass."

"Nope," Warren shook her head and Flash's arm fell in surprise. She walked past him and noticed a head buried behind his duck-taped laptop (the only thing keeping it together). Nina tensed, watching her ex with his chin set on his arms and his honey-brown hair tousled. "Peter━" he shot up, and Nina quickly adverted her gaze. Focus on yourself. "You still with us?"

Peter closed the lid of his laptop, "Uh━uh, yeah, yeah," he cleared his throat, cheeks turning pink. "Uh ..." he read the board, and answered easily, "mass cancels out, so it's just gravity times sine."

"Right," Warren clicked the lid back onto her marker. "See, Flash," she glanced at the boy in passing, "being the fastest isn't always the best if you are wrong." There was some laughter, and Flash narrowed his eyes, jaw set.

Glancing over his shoulder, he whispered to Peter, "You're dead."

Nina rolled her eyes. Yes, just the usual day of being in the background ... just, with a few changes.

*ೃ༄

a/n: first chapter up and out!!!! i've been working on this plot even before the first trailer for no way home came out. and we've already started with the drama ahahaha.

heard that no way home is the end of tom's contract, which means that this movie is the last (if not the last, ever) of tom's spider-man in a solo movie for a while. which makes me think that if they bring the solo movies back, because venom has been brought into the mcu?? (spoilers...?) (so, like, spider-man has gotta be coming back, right?), i really hope it's like in college, and peter can mentor miles morales then retire instead of dying cos i don't think i could handle seeing tom die on screen.

also, i am SO keen for spider-man 2 on the PS5. not that i have a PS5 to play it. i'll be watching other people play it constantly. but yo it looks soooo good so far. it'll be a long wait but i've got my stash of carrots, chips and smoothies (and coffee), and i'm ready.

    (lol I told myself this would be a while before being published but nOpe apparently not).