Chapter Text
He’s dreaming again.
Dreaming of her.
She’s beautiful, radiant and alive.
Cooking something horrible in the kitchen that smells like the boy's locker room. When peter takes a peek into the pan, it resembles some kind of mud pie he made when he went camping with Ben a few years back.
May smiles.
Peter hugs her, but she’s gone.
-
He wakes up with wet cheeks and an ache deep in his heart.
-
He creeps down the stairs, with his history textbook in hand.
He hates history. He hates textbooks.
But he hates the feeling of missing May even more.
So he distracts himself.
Sitting alone in the kitchen on Tony Stark’s private floor, pretending to read. He doesn’t know why he even bothers, there’s no one here.
If only his past self could see him now. This is not how he imagined spending his first stay at the compound.
He stares out the window, the lighted courtyard in the compound. His eyelids droop, but he can’t sleep.
He can’t.
Can’t see her again.
-
When Ms. Potts makes her way to the kitchen the next morning, peter has already made her a coffee, one pump of creamer, one packet of sugar.
“How did you know this is how I take my coffee?” She asks, in a futile attempt to spark a short conversation before the caffeine kicks in.
“Call it intuition,” Peter says. (It’s not, he asked FRIDAY)
His voice is too peppy for the morning. Ms. Potts reaches out an arm to him.
“What are you doing up?” She asks. He sits down.
“Can’t I just wake up early?”
Pepper takes a sip.
“Have a good day, Peter.”
She mourns for this kid, mourns for the aunt he lost.
Mourns for the part of him that went with her.
-
He passes Mr. Stark in the hallway, but his eyes are too clouded with sleep to even register Peter.
That’s fine with him though.
He’d rather not be seen.
-
At school it’s like…
It’s not…
…
It’s a haze.
Flash leaves him be. Ned and Mj try twice to invite him out for coffee. (This is a first for Mj, so he can tell it’s pity)
He hates pity.
He hates feeling like this.
His work piles up. even on the first day back, his teachers have no sympathy.
Isn’t this what you wanted? For it to all go back to normal?
The voice in his head is pounding his skull. It’s been there ever since the accident, since his life fell apart.
Now he can’t even find the strength to pick up the pieces.