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Peter sighed quietly and resisted the urge to twist around in his seat and look at the clock again. The teacher had already reprimanded him after the third time it had happened, and he really didn’t want to stay after class, or worse, have to explain to May why he had gotten detention for disruptive behavior. The urge to race out of school, don his suit and swing around the city was becoming more powerful with every slowly-passing second and Peter just wanted to know for how much longer he was trapped in this stuffy classroom. Why had he left his phone in his locker?
Ned shot him an exasperated look and Peter realized that he had started to jiggle his leg again and forced himself to stop. School just seemed so pointless lately. The math problems they were currently supposed to be working on were mind-numbingly easy and he’d finished scribbling his answers into his notebook ages ago. Ned was done too, but unlike Peter, his best friend didn’t mind the free time, mostly because he was reading a comic book that he was clumsily hiding from view with his binder. Peter was pretty sure that their teacher had noticed but didn’t care because it didn’t interrupt her lecture.
Taking a deep breath, he focused on his classmates to distract himself. Jess was passing romantic notes to Maddy, judging by their flushed cheeks and fumbling fingers; it was sort of cute how both of them were still insisting that there was nothing going on between them when literally everyone had caught them flirting one time or other, and really, those instagram pictures just said it all. A couple of rows ahead, Tyler was thumbing through a gallery of bikini-clad models on his phone. Next to him, Domingo started decorating a little doodle of Spider-Man with tiny hearts, much to Peter’s own mortification. He felt his ears grow hot and wondered about what it would feel like if people knew who he actually was and were to suddenly fawn over him.
Peter shifted in his seat. This line of thought didn’t exactly steer him away from the things he was trying so hard to ignore. There was a reason why he wanted to hightail it out of here and throw himself head-first into crime fighting. Well, there were many reasons, quite honestly, but one of them involved running away from his problems. He would be more ashamed of himself if his questionable coping mechanism didn’t involve helping people. He was just so frustrated that he couldn’t figure himself out, and choking on the growing suspicion that there was something wrong with him, something far less socially acceptable than superpowers.
High school, Peter had come to realize, differed from middle school in one very significant way: suddenly it was all about boys, girls, dating and sex. Maybe middle school had already shown signs of that, but Peter had been happily immersed in his nerdy pursuits of science fiction, stalking Tony Stark online – he had literally absorbed every scrap of news and gossip going back at least a decade – and teaching himself how to build computers. Life had been good, simple.
But now? The pressure to date and lose one’s V-card was an almost tangible force permeating the air. He was already fifteen – almost an adult, really – and he hadn’t even dated anyone yet.
Intellectually, Peter knew that “there was still time” and “he was still young” and some people only “started dating in college”. But those placatory sentiments didn’t soften the sheer omnipresence of dating and sex that surrounded him daily and the constant feeling that time was running out. Gossip, bragging, bets, insults, compliments – it all focused on these two topics, which could well have been one and the same judging by the way his peers talked about them.
Peter shot another look at Jess and Maddy’s badly disguised attempts at communication (seriously, last-period math was a joke) and tried to suppress the frustration that spread through him like a wildfire. But better frustration than anxiety or self-pity, he decided a moment later and frowned down at his notes.
Jess and Maddy were lucky, really. There wasn’t anybody that Peter wanted to be with. Not that he had time to be with anybody even if he wanted to. His double life pretty much saw to that.
But if he was honest, physical intimacy – and to some extent even emotional intimacy – kinda scared him a little. It just didn’t seem appealing, not like Hollywood made it out to be. But maybe he wasn’t ready to be so vulnerable in front of another person; there was nothing he could get out of such an encounter that would make it alright to let somebody see him.
Unbidden, Peter’s thoughts wandered to Liz and he once again struggled to understand how his feelings for her could possibly fit into this picture. He remembered how his heartbeat had stuttered around her and how his cheeks had flushed a traitorous shade of pink, how exhilarating her attention had felt when it focused on him. Nobody had needed to tell him that she was somebody you wanted to date – one just knew. Nobody actively decided who was desirable, it was just something that was collectively understood and so Peter had never questioned it.
Until now.
He suddenly thought that he might have just stumbled across something helpful; maybe, he wondered, maybe “pretty” and “hot” and “attractive” weren’t quite the same thing.
He recalled the way Tyler had stared at Jess during PE – it had been an intense, urgent sort of stare that had made Peter uncomfortable. He knew that it meant Tyler thought of Jess as hot. It wasn’t a difficult expression to decipher, he’d seen it on many faces around him, often accompanied by crude commentary. When Peter looked at Jess, he thought that the messy bun she was wearing made her look kinda cute, and the slope of her neck was very beautiful, like a painting he’d seen on Tumblr the other day. Peter could tell that her body was nicely shaped, but he didn’t feel any of the urgency he had seen on Tyler’s face – or maybe he did, and he just didn’t recognize it as such? How was he supposed to tell if his feelings differed to those of other people? There was only one set of feelings he had access to.
When he tried to imagine kissing Jess, or touching her skin, being intimate with her, it didn’t do anything for him in the way he thought that it should. It was just awkward – how exactly was he supposed to picture it? But maybe he just didn’t have the right sort of imagination for it, maybe he would feel all of these things when it was really happening.
If anything, thinking about another person naked made him feel ashamed, as if he were crossing a boundary – an invisible line of consent neither had asked for or given.
Similarly, he just knew that Jake’s butt was drool-worthy, but couldn’t say why or how, and didn’t really feel the need to drool himself, didn’t even really daydream about it or secretly want to rub against it (like Domingo seemed to want to, if the gossip was to be believed). But that didn’t necessarily have to mean anything. Maybe he just didn’t like objectifying people, or maybe Jake wasn’t his type...or Jess...or Liz – but wasn’t Liz his type? Her beauty had made him feel giddy, but he started to realize that there had been nothing sexual about his feelings.And there was always the embarrassing possibility that he was simply a “late bloomer”.
Peter fiddled with his pen and wished he could get out of here. The familiar sensation of dread started to settle in his gut – it wasn’t anything like the fear of fighting for your life or the fear of losing somebody important to you. No. It was the sort that made it a little harder to breathe, that lingered even when you were happy, that came with the growing realization that there was something inherently wrong with you that separated you from everyone else, something unacceptable.
Being a superhero was the sort of different that many people wished they could be, but not wanting to have sex sounded more like a defect. Or maybe he did want to have sex? He was so confused.
He tapped the pen against his notebook. For all that he had wanted to ignore his problems, he sure had made it very far down the rabbit hole. That always happened; his thoughts spiraled out of control and he would be stuck with this sensation of being wrong in an indescribably way. And there was no one he could talk to about it. He didn’t even know how to put it all into words or what questions to ask.
As a result, he’d been focusing even more on patrolling than usual, hoping his mood would dissipate with swinging around the city and catching bad guys, but it wasn’t really working.
Maybe if he tried harder? Covered more ground?
Okay, yeah, so his coping mechanism wasn’t perfect. At this point, all it did was distract him for a little while – he did feel more himself when he was wearing a mask and swinging from building to building than he ever did on the ground with his face exposed for everyone to see – but he would take what he could get.
He was incredibly lucky that he had Spider-Man, he didn’t know what he’d do without him. And yet, there was a tiny niggling doubt at the back of his mind – what if the spider bite was the reason that he felt this way? It had changed what his body could do and endure, maybe he just...wasn’t quite human anymore?
Peter blanched and stamped down on that line of thought. If he let his stupid feelings undermine Spider-Man too – there would be no peace left for him. It was probably just a phase anyway; he was making a big deal out of nothing. He just hadn’t found the right person yet.
Skin itching and fingers tapping a nervous rhythm against the edge of his desk, Peter finally gave in; he twisted around and looked at the clock.
Predictably, his teacher didn’t like it.
“Mr. Parker–”
But before she was able to finish her admonition, the bell blared loudly through the building and signaled the end of his day. Peter was out of his seat in an instant and already halfway across the room. He turned around and stumbled backward through the doorway, smiling apologetically at his best friend.
“Sorry, gotta go – my internship.”
Ned nodded sagely and Peter raced to his locker in order to grab his phone and switch out the content of his backpack. He was more than ready to don his suit and ignore all of his problems.
He slammed his locker door shut and jogged through the rapidly filling hallway without paying much attention to his surroundings, thumbing through his phone with one hand. There was a message waiting for him in his inbox.
HAPPY (3:43PM): meet me in the parking lot.
Groaning, he slowed his gait and started dragging his feet. Could he pretend he hadn’t seen the message? Probably not. Reluctantly, he joined the other students as they trickled more sluggishly out of the building. The text message couldn’t have come at a worse time, he decided. Usually Peter didn’t mind meeting his handler; they were finally on better terms ever since Happy had sat him down and apologized for his dismissive attitude and lackluster support in the past. But most of the time their face-to-face meetings still went hand in hand with an update of The Rules, so Peter had mixed feelings about the attention. Right now, though, right now he just wanted to jump off a skyscraper, enjoy how a few seconds of freefall made his heart soar, and maybe trade some punches with a bank robber or two. Not that he wanted there to be crime, but he really needed to let off a little steam.
It took no time at all to spot Happy’s Audi or the large man in suit with stony facial expression leaning against the side of the black car. As bad luck would have it, he was parked right next to Flash. Maybe Happy would say something cool that would make Flash choke on his insults, but Peter highly doubted it.
He quickly trotted across the yard and came to a breathless halt beside his handler. From the corner of his eye he could see Flash already gearing up to say something, but with one clipped sentence, Happy took all the wind out of both of their sails.
“Get in the car, Tony wants to talk to you.”
Flash’s mouth dropped open and Peter tried very hard not to copy him.
“I–what? Mr. Stark? Why–I mean, we’re supposed to meet next week, did something happen?”
Happy pushed him toward the back door.
“Not that I’m aware of. Do you have your things with you?”
Numbly, Peter nodded and patted his backpack.
“Good, then get in,” Happy continued and walked around the car to the driver’s side.
Peter did as he was told and completely ignored Flash’s flabbergasted expression even though it might have cheered him up a little to revel in the guy’s confused outrage. Instead, it took all of his focus to buckle in and try to relax.
This was good, right? Maybe there was a mission. That could totally happen, even if he really doubted it. Mr. Stark never took him on missions, or gave him orders. Well, he did, but they were more of the “pace yourself and don’t forget to do your homework” variety that Peter had learned to ignore.
Happy pulled out of the parking lot and Peter sighed.
The meeting probably wouldn’t run too long, he’d still be able to get some patrolling done after.
Then, he shook his head.
He didn’t know what was wrong with him. Tony Stark wanted to see him, why wasn’t he completely over the moon? Usually they only met a couple of times a month so that Mr. Stark could update his suit (and lecture him until he felt better about letting Peter do his thing). Wasn’t this the sort of distraction he could really use right now? Why wasn’t his fanboy brain overwriting his rational brain?
Maybe it was because he was feeling especially off-balance today, and he really needed his balance around Mr. Stark. Peter was always such a stuttering mess around his hero, somehow managing to act like a complete child just when he was trying his hardest to be mature and responsible and definitely-Avengers-material. And he wasn’t good at faking stuff, especially feelings, and Mr. Stark would notice if he was...off. He always noticed. And Peter just knew he was going to snap, because Mr. Stark was really good at needling people into snapping, and he really just wanted to keep this on the DL. Maybe, if he was lucky, Mr. Stark wouldn’t care. Even though he often asked about his life – probably out of politeness, though Peter didn’t know why he bothered being polite to him when he was really rude to the rest of the world most of the time, and often to Peter too, it just seemed to be his default setting, really – Mr. Stark didn’t care about teenage drama, said it gave him hives. Peter’s weird malfunctioning feelings counted as teenage drama, didn’t they? So maybe he’d be able to get Mr. Stark to leave it alone.
All too soon, Happy pulled into the underground parking garage of SI’s New York branch, and forced Peter to interrupt his musings.
Nervously chewing on his lip, he followed his handler to the elevator and for once didn’t try to fill the silence with awkward chatter as they rode up to Mr. Stark’s private lab, except to greet his second favorite AI.
“Hey, FRIDAY.”
“Hello, Peter. Congratulations on your Spanish quiz.”
He frowned and wondered if Karen and FRIDAY had been talking about him again or if Mr. Stark had stepped up his supervision.
“Thanks, FRI,” he replied, and kept his thoughts about the sheer amount of stalking these people did to himself. He fell silent and tried to strategize. It shouldn’t be hard to get Mr. Stark off his back, right? If Mr. Stark thought something was up, he’d just mention that he was worried about dating – which was technically true, and how else was he supposed put it anyway? That sounded sufficiently like teenage drama to him.
Happy regarded him shrewdly and Peter realized that he was already fucking it up. There was usually no silence he didn’t try to fill, especially when faced with meeting Iron Man, and his uncharacteristic behavior had already been noted by his handler.
Great.
“Do you know what this is about?” he asked belatedly and hoped he’d somehow be able to survive the day. Sometimes, the universe really loved to make him uncomfortable.
Happy opened his mouth to answer but was interrupted by the quiet “ding” signaling that the elevator was coming to a stop. His handler shrugged and pushed him out of the cabin, content to shadow him while he took the lead. This wasn’t Happy’s show after all.
Peter had been to several of Mr. Stark’s labs by now – the one at the tower before it had been sold, the one at the Compound – and all of them were intimidating. Some messier than others, but all of them sleek and futuristic and so far beyond state-of-the-art that it was hard to comprehend sometimes. As he stepped in, slow and unsure, it took him a moment to locate the man himself.
Mr. Stark wasn’t working on any project that he could see, seemingly here for only one purpose, to talk to Peter; instead he slouched on the couch in the corner and was typing furiously on his phone. When he spotted them, he sprang to his feet and slipped the device into his pocket as he hurried over.
“There you are, perfect timing!”
“Hey, Mr. Stark. What’s up? I thought we were meeting next week?”
Mr. Stark waved that away.
“I have a new suit for you. Why wait?”
Peter was momentarily thrown and simply stumbled after the inventor towards one of the lab tables where he already spotted the familiar red fabric.
“N-new suit? But my suit is perfect, you didn’t have to go to all that tr–”
“It’s nothing, I like to tinker,” Mr. Stark interrupted him, but his next words belied the casual nature of his work: “I found a way to optimize the parachute. Built in some more sensors. It’ll only open if you’re facing down, and only after your Web Wings have stabilized your fall somewhat. Of course, if you need it, you can always activate it yourself, but in the event that you can’t...well, let’s just say that there will be no repeat of last time.”
Peter bit down on the urge to tell him that if he’d known he had a parachute, he wouldn’t have ended up almost drowning. But judging by the stiff line of Mr. Stark’s shoulders and his carefully averted eyes as he explained the new features with a lot of gesturing and techno babble, it was clear that he knew that too and was probably beating himself up about it.
“–could have updated your current suit, but I figured you didn’t want to fork it over even for a few days.”
“Yeah, that’s–yeah,” he swallowed thickly at the thought of being trapped as Peter Parker for several days in a row. “Thank you, Mr. Stark. This is amazing.”
He reached out and trailed a finger along the curve of the spider emblem on the back that was hiding the improved parachute. Then he slid his backpack off his shoulder and was just about to pull out his old suit and hand it back when Mr. Stark waved him off.
“Keep it. As a backup. And, please; retire Mark I? That jumpsuit is offensive to superhero costumes everywhere.”
Peter privately agreed, it was rather ugly. He was just relieved that Mr. Stark hadn’t called it a onesie again. But he’d probably still keep it, just in case.
“Thanks,” he said again, and carefully folded his new suit so it would fit into his backpack with the old one.
“So,” Mr. Stark said and wandered off to another lab table, poking machinery and fiddling with tools as he passed them. “How’s life?”
There he was, being polite again. Peter wished they could just keep to superheroing. What did you tell a grown-up about your life, anyway?
“It’s good,” he lied. Or semi-lied? Technically, it was good. Nothing bad had happened, just his feelings being stupid. “Aced my Spanish quiz, and my English Lit assignment. May is gonna make some lasagna to celebrate, it’s, like, the only thing she knows how to cook well. Oh, and Ned got this video game we’ve been dying to play!”
Rambling was good, rambling was safe. People expected it of him and usually didn’t ask any follow-up questions because they didn’t want to cause another avalanche. But today, luck didn’t seem to be on his side.
“Mhm. And how are things after...what was her name? Liz?”
Oh. It was one of those conversations.
“Yeah, no, I mean, it is what it is.”
Mr. Stark nodded and poked a holographic blueprint.
“Anyone new catch your eye?”
“No, no,” he replied, maybe a little too quickly. “Dating’s–no. There isn’t anybody, dating’s not, it’s weird.”
Damn it, why had he said that it was weird? That was, like, a red flag in the superhero business.
“Weird?” Mr. Stark asked and enlarged the blueprint, for all intents and purposes looking like he wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation. But Peter knew better by now. Mr. Stark was always paying attention; he just didn’t want people to know. The reason for that Peter hadn’t quite figured out yet, but he was working on it.
“It’s nothing.”
Mr. Stark raised an eyebrow, visible even from where he was standing off to the side. The man clearly didn’t believe him, and also, for some unfathomable reason, wasn’t letting it go. Peter scrambled for a plausible lie.
“It’s just after Liz...it doesn’t feel right.”
There, that sounded believable. And sure, he missed her, for all that they didn’t even have one proper date, but it wasn’t what bothered him about dating.
“I’m sure,” Mr. Stark said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
For a moment, Peter was angry. How dare Mr. Stark question him like that? What if it had been the real reason for his bad mood? He’d feel even worse now, invalidated – and then realized how ridiculous that sounded. If Peter hadn’t been lying, Mr. Stark wouldn’t have picked up on it.
Man, he needed to get out of here and do some crime fighting.
“It’s really nothing,” he said tiredly, and then, because he seemed to be losing even against himself today: “Probably just hormones being out of whack.”
It should have been fine, but apparently it had been the exact wrong thing to say.
Mr. Stark’s head snapped up. He pushed away from the table and looked him up and down.
“Out of whack? How? In a teenager sort of way? Or more of a spidey sort of way? FRIDAY bring up the scanner,” he rattled off and then, taking in Peter’s widening eyes and probably realizing that he was being unnecessarily intense: “I’m sure it’s normal.”
That, however, was also the wrong thing to say. Peter couldn’t hold back a bitter snort. Yeah, normal.
Mr. Stark stilled and looked at him with that razor-sharp focus of his, making him cross his arms and tug his hands under his armpits. It was a defensive posture straight out of the textbook, but he couldn’t help it.
For a long moment nobody said anything. Mr. Stark was analyzing what he saw on his face and in turn Peter tried not to show anything. He didn’t...he couldn’t possibly talk about this with his quasi mentor. Could he? He knew that Mr. Stark cared about him in some way; the man did spend an awful amount of money and time on his suit – suits, plural – and had arranged for a handler, even though he didn’t want Peter on the team. But he didn’t show his concern the way other people did, not like Aunt May, or Ned, or even the occasional teacher who was fond of him. On the contrary, Mr. Stark seemed to be allergic to honest portrayals of feelings, and even when he tried to express them, there was so much deflection and staging involved that Peter didn’t know what to make of them. And, he reflected, they were usually wedged in between lectures and dangerous situations, which made it easy to overlook them, something that was probably calculated as well. The longer Peter knew Mr. Stark – and wasn’t that a trippy notion? – the more complicated he became.
So even though Mr. Stark was invested in his well-being, Peter expected some sort of long-winded, snarky monologue, maybe some poking and prodding, and probably a tagged-on admonition to take it easy. Plus some cool updates for his suit in a few week’s time. Which was why the next words caught him completely off guard.
“Wanna talk about it?”
Peter blinked, and then averted his gaze. He’d thought that there wasn’t anyone he could talk to about this, and he wasn’t sure if Mr. Stark was the right choice even so, considering his past exploits. That was, like, the opposite of what Peter was feeling.
And yet.
“I don’t want to bother you,” he admitted, which was at least part of the truth. “It isn’t related to Spider-Man.”
Mr. Stark’s expression didn’t change; he remained still and observant, more open than Peter had ever seen him.
“It’s no bother,” was all he said at last and leaned back against the table, but didn’t further prompt him to talk about it. Giving Peter a choice. It was that more than anything that made him open his mouth and blurt out the truth.
“I think there’s something wrong with me.”
A beat of silence in which Peter blushed and stared at his shoes.
“How so?”
He bit his lip. How was he supposed to put it all into words?
“I don’t–it’s just–” Peter huffed in frustration and then tried again.
“I don’t want to have sex,” he admitted and didn’t look up because he didn’t want to see Mr. Stark’s reaction. “Or I...maybe I do? I don’t know anymore. Like, for example, there is this guy in my class, and he-when he looks at girls you can just see that he wants to rip their clothes off? But I don’t get it? It’s like I’m missing what he’s feeling. I mean, girls are pretty, and boys too, and I-but I don’t-it just seems weird to want to be with them that way? I just don’t feel like I...but everyone else seems to need it, you know? And what if...what if I’m just wrong now, with my abilities and everything?”
By the end of that incoherent speech he wasn’t just crossing his arms, he was clinging to himself. He finally looked up and met Mr. Stark’s unreadable gaze. At least he didn’t look weirded out, or worse, amused. Or pitying. In fact, he seemed to be taking him rather seriously.
“First, I’m gonna say that it could be a side effect of that spider bite. I don’t know enough about it, what changes your body went through, stuff like that. If you want, I could contact a few people, get them to run some tests. But,” he said, and Peter was already hanging on every word. It sounded like there was a solution forthcoming. He didn’t necessarily want to be turned into a labrat, but he didn’t think Mr. Stark would let that happen to him. “There could be a perfectly human explanation for this. You could be asexual, that’s what it sounds like to me. Somewhere on the gray-ace spectrum, maybe. I’m not saying that that’s what it has to be, because nobody can tell you what you’re feeling, you’ll have to decide that for yourself. There are a lot of resources online you could check out, and-are you okay?”
Peter shook his head, feeling dazed.
“What?” he asked, and then once again: “What?”
Mr. Stark’s gaze softened and he backed up a little, taking it more slowly.
“Asexuality,” he explained, and paused for a moment to let him take it in, “It’s a lack of sexual attraction. A majority of people, as you know, is attracted to the opposite sex, some to their own, some to both, et cetera. But there are other people, like perhaps you, like me, who do not experience sexual attraction at all, it’s-this is a very rudimentary explanation, mind you, it’s more complex than that, but you can read up on it later, it’s a lot to take in at first,” Mr. Stark waved his hand through the air. “Believe me, it’s taken me a long time to figure it out. Didn’t even know what it was called for most of my life. Thank god for the internet, amiright?”
Asexuality, he mouthed and tried to get used to the shape of the word on his tongue. A lack of sexual attraction. That sounded–yeah, that sounded like it could be it, he thought. Maybe he was–that. Asexual. Not attracted to other people. Then it hit him. Mr. Stark wasn’t attracted to other people?
Peter’s eyes widened, and the dazed feeling of having received too much new information all at once slowly receded.
“What? But you–I mean, you’re–” He pulled one of his hands from his armpit and waved it through the air in a way that he hoped would get his meaning across, because he didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
“Are you calling me a slut? Not cool, Parker.”
“What? No!”
Happy snorted from his post near the door, prompting Peter to reexamine the situation. Yep, there was definitely amusement dancing in Mr. Stark’s eyes.
“Don’t sweat it,” the inventor replied with a smirk. “You’re right, I love sex, there’s no denying it. It’s fun, and helps me unwind. This is another thing you’ll learn once you start poking around online. The term asexual just defines the group of people someone’s attracted to – in this case, no one – it doesn’t say anything about what you like to get up to, or what you’re feeling. Sadly, you’ll still have to figure those things out by yourself. What a bummer, right? Everyone’s different. You might not ever want to have sex, and that’s okay. Seriously? If someone tries to make you feel inferior for not wanting to have sex, I’ll beat them up... Just kidding. Well, mostly.” Mr. Stark interrupted himself, and then: “Anyway. This was a bit of an info dump. Just think about it. Maybe you’ll have an aha-moment when you start reading up on it, maybe it’s more gradual. Seriously, there is no fixed timeline for self-discovery. And you can talk to me. If you want. If you have questions. Or need to vent,” he stopped again for a moment, probably reorganizing his thoughts. “If you think that this is complete BS, tell me now, and we’ll figure out what else it could be.”
Peter was a little floored by the man’s compassion. He might be Spider-Man, but underneath he was just a random teenager. And here they were, with Mr. Stark offering even more of his time, when everybody watching the news could tell how busy he was these days.
“Honestly, I’m still in awe that you were able to get something out of my incoherent mess of an explanation,” he breathed with a fluttering heart and revelled in Mr. Stark’s tiny answering snicker. “What you said about being asexual–it sounds like maybe that’s it? I don’t-I’ll need to think about it.” Mr. Stark nodded. “But it’s something, right? I had no idea what sort of questions to ask, still don’t, but now I have a word to look up–I’m good at research.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
A slightly awkward post-conversation moment of silence descended upon them. Peter had never been good with silence, it made him feel like he was doing something wrong. He scrambled for something to say, but in the end it was obvious.
“Thank you, Mr. Stark. For listening. And helping. And the suit, again.”
“Sure thing, kid,” the inventor replied with a fleeting smile. “Now. I’m sure there’s something you’d rather be doing, and I really need to get back to work. Go on, I know you want to throw yourself off my building. I’ll give you permission just this once, as long as you report back on the new features. Come on, get out of here.” Mr. Stark emphasized his little parting speech with grand shooing motions and Peter couldn’t have stopped the broad grin from spreading across his face, even if he’d tried.
“Awesome! Thank you, Mr. Stark!”
Peter turned on his heels and raced out of the lab, already pulling his sweatshirt over his head and almost crashing into his handler.
“Bye, Happy,” he shouted over his shoulder and jumped into the elevator that was conveniently opened by FRIDAY at the right moment. As soon as the doors closed behind him, he started stripping out of his clothes in earnest and pulled on his new suit as fast as possible. By the time he reached the roof, he had stored away his things and secured the straps of his backpack more firmly around his shoulders so that it wouldn’t slide off.
“Thanks, FRIDAY,” he chirped happily and stepped out into the fresh air. The view before him was breathtaking, blue skies and sunlight glinting off the nearby buildings.
Taking a deep breath, he sprinted toward the edge, already feeling lighter than he had in weeks.