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Peter wakes up at 2:47 am. He’s tired—patrol ran late, and he didn’t get to bed until after midnight. He wants to roll over and go back to sleep, but he can’t. His senses are going crazy. He can hear May’s heartbeat in the next room over, he can practically feel the blood pressure of everyone in the apartment complex.
“Guess it’s time to get up,” he mutters to himself.
He considers studying, but dismisses the urge almost instantly. It’s so fucking loud, he could never concentrate. So he puts on the suit and sneaks out his window, making sure to leave it cracked for when he returns.
“Good morning, Peter,” Karen says smoothly in his ear. “It’s a little early to patrol, isn’t it?”
“Nah,” Peter says. His voice is hoarse, and he’s still a little sleepy. “I’m not tired. Anything interesting on police comms?”
“Not at the moment,” Karen says. “When is the last time you have eaten?”
Her voice is so kind, and he leans into it for a moment, perched on the roof of the apartment building. It’s nice, to have someone who cares as much as she does.
He feels sick the moment the thought enters his head. Of course he has people who care, people who aren’t artificial intelligence.
It’s not May’s fault she works so much—they’re a one-income family. Rent in Queens is steep, and she keeps food on the table and a roof over his head. Ned is Ned, and he cares so much in his excited, overeager way. Even MJ is less snarky to him when she knows he’s feeling shitty.
Peter resolves to be extra nice to everyone for the rest of the day.
“I think I ate yesterday,” Peter says automatically. “It doesn’t really matter right now.”
“That is a distressing statement, Peter.”
Peter laughs. “Let’s go fight some crime.”
___
It’s going to be a sucky day. He knows as soon as he drags himself through the window at five-thirty, because May is sitting on his bed clutching his cell phone, her knuckles white.
“This can’t keep happening, Peter,” she says, and he feels like shit. She’s not crying, but she’s close, and suddenly he’s close too.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he’s not entirely sure what he’s apologizing for. There are so many things to choose from.
“I wake up and the house is empty. You’re gone, and, and . . .” May swallows hard and looks up at him. Peter hits his chest and the suit falls off him. He pulls off the mask with a flick of his wrist.
“I haven’t been gone long,” he says.
“I’ve been up since three,” she responds.
And the world comes crashing down around him, because May has to be at work in an hour and she hasn’t slept either. He’s a terrible person, for worrying her like this. He can’t imagine the terror she felt, waking up with her kid gone, his window open and his crime-fighting suit missing. He feels sick.
May stands up and pulls him into a hug. He lets her, even though he doesn’t deserve the comfort it brings. He closes his eyes and inhales the smell of shampoo and lotion.
“We have a curfew for a reason,” May says when she pulls away. “You can’t stay out all night. It’s not safe.”
“I came home for a while,” he says automatically. “I swear, I didn’t-,”
May smiles sadly at him, and his protests die in his throat.
“I love you, Pete,” she says.
“Yeah,” he responds, and his throat feels tight. “You too, May.”
___
Second period, he finds out that he’s failing calc.
Well, not failing. His teacher pulls him aside, hands him a test with a large red F scrawled in the corner, and informs him that his grade has fallen to a C plus.
“You’re a good kid, Peter,” Mr. Evan says, with the patronizing kindness that adults seem to love to talk to him with. “I know you have big dreams for college. I don’t want this to hold you back, so I’ll let you retake the test on Friday. Just this once, mind you.”
Peter opens his mouth to respond—he’s not sure with gratitude or regret. But his eyes fall on that big red F again, and he can’t quite make the words come out.
Mr. Evan smiles and pats him on the back. He’s a nice guy, and a good teacher. He really cares about his students, and Peter is unspeakably grateful. Mr. Evan seems to understand.
__
MJ slides next to him and Ned at lunch. He looks up at her in surprise, because he’s not used to her sitting with them. She’s always there, sure, but she’s never so close.
“Flash is telling everyone you’re addicted to Adderall,” she says as a way of greeting.
Ned chokes on his sandwich. Peter pounds him on the back.
“He’s just salty because Peter’s setting the curve in physics,” Ned says as soon as he can breathe again. “I heard from Abe that he, like, totally failed the pop quiz.”
MJ looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “Is it true?”
“No!” says Peter indignantly. “Jesus.”
“Well, then you better be careful,” MJ says matter-of-factly. “Trust me, you don’t want these rumors to get out of hand. They could actually do some damage to your good-boy rep.”
I have a good boy rep? Peter mouths at Ned, who shrugs.
“You know Flash,” Ned says mildly. “He’ll say anything if he thinks it will put him ahead of you.”
“I’ll try to figure something out,” MJ says, pulling a book out of her backpack and burying her nose in it. “I’m officially the new campaign manager for your life, Parker.”
“Why?” asks Peter.
“No offence,” MJ says, offence implied in every syllable. “But you’re not doing very well on your own.”
___
Sixth period, Peter gets pulled out of class so the vice principal can go through his backpack.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Peter says dully. He should be doing stoichiometry right now, not watching Mr. Davis tear apart his personal belongings. He’s immensely glad he left the suit at home.
“We received an anonymous tip off that you’ve been having a problem with pills,” Mr. Davis says apologetically.
He’s going to kill Flash.
“We have a zero-tolerance policy of using Adderall at Midtown,” Mr. Davis says. “But it happens more often than you would think. Kids thinking they can use drugs to get a hand up in academics. What usually ends up happening is their grades fall, their relationships with loved ones falter, and addiction takes control of their lives.”
“Cool story,” says Peter dully as he watches Mr. Davis stare in bemusement at a bottle of web fluid. “I’m still not popping pills, though.”
Mr. Davis shakes his head as he finishes emptying out Peter’s backpack. “Go wait outside,” he says finally.
“You didn’t even find anything!” Peter says indignantly.
“Which is why I’m not suspending you,” Mr. Davis says. “I still want you to take the rest of the day off. I’m going to call your parents to come get you.”
“Good luck with that,” Peter says. “They’re both dead. So.”
Mr. Davis flushes slightly. “I assume you have a legal guardian, in any case?”
“I live with my aunt,” Peter says. “But she’s a nurse, and she’s not allowed to have her phone on at the hospital. You can page her, I guess.”
Flash is waiting for him in the office, under the pretense of seeing the nurse for a headache. He grins cheerfully at Peter.
“Are you expelled?” he asks gleefully. “Can I have your locker?”
The anger hits Peter like a tidal wave. This shit could go on his permanent record. It’s not just a dumb joke, not to him. It’s serious and messed up, and he thinks he might hate Flash, however harmless he may be.
“Why,” Peter asks, the anger in his voice sharp enough to cut. “Why do you pull stuff like this, Flash? What have I ever done to you?”
Flash opens his mouth to respond, then closes it. He looks at the ground, and then looks away. If Peter didn’t know better, he’d think he almost looks apologetic.
“No, forget it,” Peter says, his temper rising. “I’m out of here.”
He hoists his backpack up his shoulder and storms out of the office.
“Peter, wait!” says the receptionist in distress. “You can’t leave until someone comes to pick you up!”
Peter stops in the doorway, and turns around.
“No one’s coming for me, Marge,” he tells her.
___
Peter takes the subway to Brooklyn. Ben loved Brooklyn, and always talked about moving to one of the good parts when money wasn’t so tight.
He finds a nice, small café to hunker down in. Peter doesn’t have much money, but he gives the barista two crumpled dollars for a coffee and finds a table in the back corner.
He opens up his laptop—it’s a shitty Dell processer, only fifty dollars on eBay, but he’s replaced some of the hardware and the motherboard so it runs pretty fast considering. He emails his teachers to see if he can get any of assignments.
His phone buzzes with a text from someone. He can’t text very easily on his cell, because it’s really old and in any case the screen is so cracked he can barely decipher it. He has three missed calls from May, but when he checks her location she’s still at the hospital, so she can’t be too worried about him.
His phone rings again, and this time it’s Happy. Peter wants to send it to voicemail and pretend he didn’t see it, but he can’t. Because what if Mr. Stark needs him for a mission or something?
“Hey Happy. What’s up? Is there another mission? Because my suit’s at home, and-,”
“Why are you in Brooklyn?” Happy asks sullenly. He’s been . . . not nice, but nicer, since the whole Vulture fiasco. He doesn’t sound really pleased right now, though.
“Are you tracking me?” Peter demands. “Wait, for reals? Because I’m not wearing the suit, and I’m pretty sure this phone is too old to be able to—,”
“Of course I’m tracking you,” Happy says. “I watched security footage of you getting on a train to Brooklyn. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m fine,” Peter says quickly. The barista is looking at him curiously, so he lowers his voice. “What’s up?”
“It’s too early in the morning to deal with teenagers,” Happy mutters. “I did not sign up for this shit.”
Normally Peter would take the snide comments, but his day has been lousy and he’s not really feeling the love right now.
“So why are you calling, then?” Peter asks, and he can’t keep the anger out of his voice. “I didn’t initiate contact with you, you don’t have to check up on me.”
“Your aunt is freaking out,” Happy snarls. “Apparently she got a call from the school that you’re all coked up or something . . .”
“I’m not on cocaine!” Peter whisper-yells into the phone. “Jesus.”
“Really?” Happy says. “Because I got the same call from Vice-Principal Donald as she did, and from what it sounds like—,”
There are tears welling up in the back of Peter’s throat, and for some reason he can’t choke them down.
“Look,” he says. “I didn’t sign up for this either, alright? I didn’t ask for . . . for any of this.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and Happy goes quiet.
“What’s that supposed to mean.”
“It means,” says Peter quietly. “I’m not sure how much longer I can deal with all this.”
It’s a feeling that’s been building up inside him for a while, but he hadn’t known it was there until the words came out. Because he can go to school like nothing’s wrong, patrol like he doesn’t have a book wedged underneath his floorboard with the names of all the people he couldn’t save. But it all comes down to the fact that he’s so, so tired of it all.
It’s not that he doesn’t love being Spiderman, because he does. But he can’t be inside a parking garage without imagining it crashing down on him. He can’t be relieved that he’s saved people without remembering all the ones he hasn’t. He can’t shower without remembering the feeling of his lungs filling up with water.
And those are just the Spiderman related traumas. There are other ones, ones that it’s Peter Parker dealing with, and not Spiderman. Ones that still cause him to wake up in a cold sweat.
Happy’s been talking to him, and there’s a feint note of panic in his voice. Peter isn’t sure how long he’s been tuning it out.
“Look, no one said being a vigilante was easy. No one will think any less of you if you take a break for a little while—I’ll call Tony, see what we can do . . . are you still there, kid?”
“No,” Peter says firmly. “I mean, yes, I’m still here. Don’t call Tony. Just forget I said anything, okay? I can handle it, I’ve been handling it. It’s all g.”
“G? What does that even—,”
“Bye, Happy,” Peter says. He terminates the call before he can mess up anything worse than he already has.
___
He calls May on the subway ride home. She’s frantic—understandably—frantic enough to have broken the no-cellphones-at-the-hospital rule.
He tries to explain to her how it was a misunderstanding, the whole pill thing. He doesn’t know if she believes him or not, but she says she does. So. That’s that.
“I’ll meet you at home,” she says. “I can take the rest of the day off.”
“I’m okay,” he tells her. “I’ll probably just study calc.”
“You sure?” May asks tiredly. “We can get take out, maybe watch a movie. We should talk about all of this, and I’m working a double today so I won’t be home until late otherwise.”
Peter can hear a man’s voice shouting at her in the background, telling her to get off the phone, and he shakes his head frantically. He’s getting her in trouble with her boss.
“It’s fine,” he says. “I’m sorry, May.”
“I love you, Peter,” she says, with the tiredness of a mother who’s afraid she’s losing her son. It’s not what Peter wants to hear.
___
He’s at home, studying calc, when the doorbell rings.
Peter slides his web shooters over his wrists, and mentally kicks himself for taking them off. He always wears them, these days, except for when he showers.
Tony Stark is leaning against the doorway, tinted glasses obscuring his eyes. Peter is shocked into stillness for a second, staring perplexed at the man in front of him. He’s hasn’t really seen Mr. Stark since the whole Vulture fiasco. He knows May has had long conversations with him since she found out her nephew was fighting crime in Queens in Stark-made spandex, but he wasn’t privy to those discussions. So.
“Mr. Stark,” Peter says finally. “Hey. What’s up?”
Tony Stark breezes past Peter into the living room like he owns the place. Peter stands as still as a statue for a few seconds before shutting the door with a click.
Mr. Stark settles himself on a chair and stares in surprise at the textbook lying open beside him. He picks it up and stares at it for a moment.
“You’re studying the Inverse Chain Rule? How old are you, again?”
“Fifteen,” Peter says crossly. “Mr. Stark, what are you doing here?”
“May was pretty freaked out today,” Tony says, paging through the textbook. “Happy was too, come to think of it, which was a surprise because normally he’s pretty laid back. This book is shit, by the way. I thought you went to a STEM high school.”
“I do,” Peter said, unsure how to deal with the amount of guilt coursing through him.
Tony tilts the book towards Peter, showing him a diagram of a Picture Proof. “The fuck is this?”
“A way to show your reasoning,” Peter says absently. “You know, so you can get points for knowing what you’re doing even if you don’t get the right answer.”
“There are no participation trophies in mathematics,” Tony fumes. “This is crap.”
Peter shrugs.
Tony sets the book down on the table with a bang. He grabs his Stark phone and pushes his sun glasses higher up his nose.
“Come on,” he says, “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Peter asks.
“Somewhere public,” Mr. Stark answers coolly. “A restaurant or something. So neither of us can freak out.”
“I can’t,” says Peter. “I’m pretty sure I’m grounded.”
Mr. Stark pinches the bridge of his nose and mutters some words in Italian that Peter’s fairly sure May would never teach him.
___
In the end they order takeout, and eat it out on the fire escape. It’s shwarma, whatever that is, but it doesn’t taste bad.
Peter’s never seen Mr. Stark look so human, draped over the fire escape ledge with his shwarma clutched in his hand. His sunglasses are off, sat carefully beside him, and he looks like he’s not sure where to start.
“So,” Peter says.
“So,” Tony responds. “You should’ve heard Happy when he called me. He was practically in tears. Rambling on and on about how you were high off your ass on a mixture of LSD and heroine.”
Peter sits bolt upright, fuming. “Omg! I’m not on drugs!”
“Did you just say ‘omg?’” Tony asks. “Unironically? Because if you did . . . no, that’s not the point. Why does your school think you’re hooked on Adderall?”
Peter viciously bites into his shwarma and kicks his legs over the fire escape. “It was just some stupid rumor some kid made up, alright? It’s not a big deal.”
Tony chews his shwarma thoughtfully. “Why didn’t you punch him?”
Peter glares at Tony. “Gossip got me sent home from school. I don’t even know what would happen if I hit someone. Also, I don’t hit people.”
Tony puts his sunglasses back on, as if to protect himself from the emotion in Peter’s voice.
“Why didn’t you tell Happy? Kid, if some little shit is giving you a hard time—,”
“Why does everyone think I need to tell an adult every detail?” Peter fumes. “I’m fine.”
“Take my advice, kid,” says Tony tiredly. “Don’t settle for fine, alright? You’re better than that. You deserve . . . god, you deserve the world, but that’s cliché. Don’t listen to me, I’m just a sentimental old man. But . . . fine isn’t good enough, alright?”
Peter shoos a pigeon away from his shwarma.
Tony checks his watch. “Where’s May, anyway? It’s almost eight, and this isn’t really the kind of thing I’m equipped to handle.”
“She’s working a double,” Peter says dully. “She’ll be home by midnight.”
“Jesus,” Tony says, tiredly running a hand through his hair. “Nurses, huh? They’re badass.”
Peter nods.
“Alright,” Tony says. “Here’s what’s going to happen from here on out. You’re going to start taking care of yourself, and I mean nine hours of sleep, three meals a day, yoga every morning taking care of yourself. You’re going to tell an adult when things get rough, and we’ll deal with it. If something’s up, you have to talk about it to someone.”
“What, like you?”
“Like a therapist. All you have to do is say the word, Peter, my interns have great health insurance. Or you could talk to May, or Happy, or . . . yeah, me, I guess. And—this is going to sound really cliché, I really resent you for making me say this—when you’re ready to talk, we’ll be here to listen.”
“I can handle things by myself,” Peter says stubbornly.
Tony’s eyes are far away. “You don’t have to, though,” he says. “That’s the thing. It’s taken me years to figure that out kid. You don’t have to go down this path. You can try all you want, but I’m sure as hell not going to let you.”
Tony stands up and brushes off his pants. He stuffs his shwarma wrapper in his pocket and clambers back through the window.
“That was a really good exit line,” Peter calls after him.
“Damn it kid, you have to let me leave on a high note. You can’t just say stuff like that after I’ve dropped the mic.”
___
Peter wakes up at 3:32 am.
He wants to roll over and go back to sleep, but he can’t. His senses are going crazy. He can hear May’s heartbeat in the next room over, he can practically feel the blood pressure of everyone in the apartment complex.
“Guess it’s time to get up,” he mutters to himself for the second day in a row.
He considers studying, but dismisses the urge almost instantly. It’s so fucking loud, he could never concentrate.
He eyes his suit, hanging carefully in his closet. Then he closes his eyes, shakes his head, and listens to the sound of May breathing for a few minutes.
He pulls out his phone, opening the contact labeled TS.
He takes a deep breath, and types his message.
You up?
His phone rings five seconds later.