Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Peter was little, he loved to dance. Ballet was his passion, more important to him than the air he breathed. He adored the swell of music in his pulse, he thrived on the way the ground fell away beneath his feet as he leapt, like gravity disappeared the moment he decided to move. When he wasn’t dancing, he wished he was; he longed for the spark of color it brought to his life again. He’d been orphaned young, but the music and the pirouettes became his safe space, his family when Aunt May was at work. 

Dancing made him feel steady, made him feel whole—at least until he hit third grade.

For every ounce of joy dancing added to his life, his classmates tore four ounces away. 

The girls in his classes weren’t awful; they asked him about his recitals and got excited when he demonstrated different foot positions. Peter liked his female classmates because they didn’t think he was weird for doing ballet. In fact, some of them were in his ballet class, and they frequently chatted about what they’d learned the day before. There was a certain comradery between them, an understanding. 

The boys were the real trouble.

Peter tried so hard not to take their comments to heart. They called him girly, but he told himself girls were a great thing to aspire to be like (Aunt May was a girl; Aunt May was successful and strong and happy, so there couldn’t be anything wrong with being girly). They called him ballerina, but there were so many cool ballerinas (Diana Vishneva, Misty Copeland, Natalia Osipova, Raven Wilkinson—he could go on and on about all the famous ballerinas his teacher had shown him—so there couldn’t be anything wrong with being a ballerina). And they called him gay, but Aunt May had told him there was nothing wrong with that, either (Elton John was gay, Freddie Mercury was bi, so if Peter was, too, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that). 

Peter tried so hard not to take their comments to heart, but days upon days of snarky comments and brutal physical attacks, of hurtful tones and faces, would have been enough to push anyone to quit. 

By the fourth grade, Peter had asked Aunt May if he could pull out of his ballet class. She told him he didn’t have to, that she would talk to his teachers or his principal if he wanted her to, but eight-year-old Peter said no. He wanted out, and he got exactly that. 

At first, Peter had liked the extra time. He’d boosted his grades, he’d picked up new hobbies, he’d met Ned, and he’d enjoyed all of it. But there had been an itch in his feet, a need to move, and in class, he’d found himself drumming his fingers against his desk to the tune of The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. He was still light on his feet, he still twirled when he got the chance, and he still occasionally stood with his feet in the first or third positions. Even so, he figured performances and classes weren’t worth the bullying, no matter how much he missed them.

That all changed when he got bitten by the radioactive spider. When he decided to pick up the vigilante lifestyle, not only did he begin to mix up web fluid in his freshman chemistry class; he went home and worked up the courage to ask his aunt if he could start ballet classes again. Swinging from webs required a balance of strength and relaxation, he figured, and ballet asked for the same ratio. So, really, he was starting to dance again because he could help people that way, right? It wasn’t the repeating melodies in his ears. It wasn’t the emptiness he felt without the slippers on his feet. It wasn’t the pining in his chest when he watched ballet videos on YouTube. It was… helping people.

Right. 

Yeah.

Yup.

Helping people.

That was all.

And thus the classes started once more. May always found a way to get him to the practices, he had a great time, and (bonus!) he got better at using his webs. He was able to help more people. But with great power comes great responsibility. As he helped greater numbers of people, his name went around the Internet. No longer was he watching ballet videos on YouTube; he was watching videos of Spiderman. All over the big web. Not his dinky, little, made-from-spare-chemicals-in-class webs. The now-everyone-knows-you web. 

Including Tony Stark.

That was when the famed “Stark Internship” began, and you know the rest. 

Those were the events that led Peter to where he is now. Now, the moment in which he stands in the kitchen, prying a hot bagel out of the toaster while holding Philadelphia cream cheese in his other hand. Now is a month after Mr. Stark took Peter under his wing, a month after Germany. Now is the time his aunt decides to breach the topic of her nephew’s dancing. 

“I think you should quit ballet,” she says. When Peter turns to look at her, he drops the cheese. He fumbles with it, wrestles it back into his hands (fast reflexes, you know), and he firmly places it on the counter. May is peering over her glass of orange juice, using the beverage to mask the discomfort pressed onto her lips. Peter can see she grits her teeth, however, from the way her jaw muscles clench. “It’s just…” she lets the glass hit the table and then rolls it in circles, so the juice swirls—like Peter is hoping to do this afternoon, in ballet class. “You’ve got that internship thing now. I’m worried you’re spreading yourself too thin, between school and ballet and an internship. I think you should focus on just two.”

Peter takes a butter knife from the drawer and bitterly spreads cream cheese atop his freshly toasted bagel. “How about just ballet and the internship,” he suggests, quirking an eyebrow. 

May rolls her eyes. “I’m not letting you drop out of high school, Peter.” 

He takes a mouthful of his breakfast. “Worth a shot.” His aunt is right. The amount of sleep he’s gotten in the past month is strikingly diminished from what a teenager should be getting. Smaller than what most teenagers actually get, too. And that definitely says something in support of May’s conclusion. Not to mention his grades are slipping. The solution is to shorten his list of responsibilities. Quitting the job of Spiderman—quitting the internship, as May knows it—simply isn’t an option, and May has shown dropping out of high school isn’t a choice, either. There’s the logical half of his brain that says ballet has to go, but there’s also the artistic, desire-focused half, that tells him ballet is the one thing that absolutely has to stay. 

Logic wins.

He hates it.

“I emailed your teacher about quitting last night. She sends her condolences.” Peter shrugs, disheartened; being responsible sucks sometimes. If nothing else, Mr. Stark will be proud, he tells himself. Or Happy, since Mr. Stark isn’t even on hugging terms with Peter, it seems. Yet Happy doesn’t appear to care about Peter’s voicemails, either. So, he keeps the disappointment to himself. Locked away in his feet, which still dance when the room is empty, and locked away in his fingers, which still tap out the Sleeping Beauty Waltz before he falls asleep some nights.

Months pass like that, dancing in secret, spinning with his toes to rooftops as he waits for something to happen during patrol. Almost drowning in the lake passes like that, almost sinking a ferry passes like that, almost dying while fighting a criminal Mr. Stark explicitly told him not to fight passes like that, and denying a position amongst the Avengers passes like that. Mr. Stark leaves him the new suit, May finds out he’s Spiderman, and Peter still doesn’t go back to ballet. But now Mr. Stark calls him sometimes, so that’s a plus. And once, just the once, Peter gets to snoop around in his mentor’s lab.

Mr. Stark tinkers with Dum-E on one side of the lab, while Peter fiddles with the eye sockets of his suit on the other. His nails tap the tempo of Clair de Lune against the plastic, which somehow plays louder in his ears than the heavy beats of Highway to Hell Mr. Stark is blasting through every speaker at once. Peter has popped the eye pieces out, so when he pulls the mask over his head, the fraying ends of the fabric tickle his skin. Somehow, the absence of conversation is excruciating this Saturday afternoon, like it wouldn’t usually be.

He rolls the loose eye pieces in his palms, and he clears his throat. Mr. Stark glances up. Highway to Hell quickly dips in volume. “I miss ballet,” Peter states. His mentor gives him a strange look—nose wrinkled, chin tilted up in confusion—and then puts his tools down. 

“It still exists, though?” Mr. Stark’s chair swivels closer to where Peter has himself situated, cross-legged on the floor. He spins it on the way, and Peter thinks about pirouettes, as he often does when things move in circles. 

He pushes the eye pieces over the holes in the fabric, nervous about the conversation now that he has it. “No, I meant I miss doing ballet.” Mr. Stark pulls his legs up onto his chair, crossing them like Peter has done with his own on the ground. 

“You did ballet?” Peter nods, and he wonders if Mr. Stark will laugh at him. He hasn’t gotten the expression the boys from third grade had worn when they’d found out. Not yet, and Peter counts that as a good sign. “I feel like Pepper did ballet.” And he’s also comparing Peter to someone important to him, Ms. Potts—also a good sign. “She never said she did ballet, but I feel like she’s the type of person who would. It’s like a fiancé sixth sense I have.” He taps his forehead twice, and Peter wonders if he’s doing it because he knows the meme. 

Does Mr. Stark look at memes? 

Probably. 

Probably Ironman memes, actually.

Setting the eye pieces on the floor next to him, Peter laughs. “Maybe. She has the features to pull off the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy, I think.” Peter tugs the mask off his face, and he can tell he’s grinning from the ache in his cheeks. Mr. Stark is smiling, too, though his is a little more withdrawn. 

He spins in his chair again. “Wow, you really know your ballet stuff, kid.” Then he stops spinning to tack on, “Nerd.” There’s not a drip of malice in his words, though, and his eyes are attentive, in a lighthearted sort of way, not scrutinizing. It’s a bit like how May looks at him when he goes off on a tangent about a fun lab in chemistry, a bit like how she smiles when he talks about a new LEGO set he wants. It looks a bit… familial. Then Mr. Stark snaps his fingers, and Peter is torn from his line of thought. “Can you—can you do that thing where you stand on your toes? No, wait, can you make your feet go backwards?” 

Eagerly, Peter nods. He stands up, puts his feet in the fifth position, shifts a bit, and then lifts himself on demi-pointe. “I’m not in the shoes, so it would be a bad idea to stand all the way on my toes.” Mr. Stark leans over the side of his chair, putting his cheek as near the floor as he can, to get a look at Peter’s position. It wobbles surprisingly little, considering how out of practice Peter is, and his mentor nods at him. He nods at his stance, which he probably isn’t knowledgeable enough to spot the flaws in.

“Yeah, no, I can’t do that,” he laughs. “No need to, uh, flex.” Peter falls out of his position from laughing. Mr. Stark puts his elbows to his folded knees, as Peter sits down on the floor, and his hand falls gingerly atop Peter’s hair. It lands softly, like he doesn’t want to commit to the attachment the touch indicates, like he’s not ready to add another member to his small circle of family. But it’s there, and his smile stretches past the withdrawn shape it had been before. Confidently, he determines, “I think we need to get you back in some ballet classes, Pete.”

Mr. Stark clearly believes his statement because he gets Ms. Romanoff to teach Peter sometimes, when she’s around, and he finds Peter a spot in his old class again. There’s still a distance in their relationship, a bit of apprehension, but he shows up to watch Peter’s practices with Aunt May sometimes. Peter catches him recording the recital on his phone, too. He gets the videos in a text from Mr. Stark during the drive home from every rehearsal he attends. 

He has a formal performance or two, and he doesn’t tell his classmates about them. Though he knows he gets bullied already, Peter isn’t too keen on the idea of giving his abusers more ammo so freely, so easily. The only people he decides to open up to about it are Ned and, eventually, MJ. They both come to every single show they know about. Ned brings him a bouquet once (one of the three dollar bundles of daisies you can find at the front of grocery stores, wrapped in plastic and rubber bands—the price tag is scratched off when Peter gets it). He presses a few of the flowers and keeps them slipped between textbooks in his closet, not that he thinks he’ll ever tell Ned that.

Ballet is as great as Peter remembers it being when he was younger—better than great, if he’s being honest. It’s something like a passion to Peter, something like the smoldering feeling he gets in his chest when someone thanks Spiderman for saving them, something like the sting of his eyes when people tell him they’re proud of what he’s done. Ballet makes him feel whole. Ballet is a part of Peter’s everything.

But then Thanos happens.

And ballet is gone. Peter is gone. Half of his ballet class is gone, and those who remain are a scattered group of heartbroken kids, some newly orphaned and the others too busy mourning to dance. The class disassembles, the whole universe falls apart. Tony Stark falls apart. He pieces himself back together, but he’s got cracks running up and down his heart from where he hit the ground after Peter died. There are mornings when the only thing he can listen to is the Once Upon a December rendition Peter danced to in one of his performances. There are nights he can’t fall asleep until he hears it. And yet, there are also days he throws up at the thought of it. It’s his favorite of Peter’s routines, but he can’t bring himself to watch the video of it.

At least Pepper doesn’t complain about the loop the song runs on in the living room on those painful mornings. She knows to check on him in the lab when it’s playing, she knows she has to coax him to bed. 

It’s her favorite of Peter’s routines, too.

Morgan grows up hating the song, because her parents break down when they hear it. But she finds the video of the performance, and she recognizes the boy dancing. She knows him from the picture her dad holds tight and cries over after her bedtime some nights. She knows him from the photograph on the windowsill. She knows him from the stories her dad tells her about the little spider boy, the stories he was never good at disguising as fiction. And she thinks the way the boy dances is stunning; she’s mesmerized by his twinkling outfits and his quick feet. Morgan doesn’t have the words to describe him, but when the spotlight on the stage catches his shimmery shirt, she thinks of the time her parents brought her out in the early morning to see shooting stars.

She decides she doesn’t hate the song anymore.

Then what Thanos did unravels. 

Peter isn’t gone anymore.

Mr. Stark almost is, and Peter is mad at his recklessness for a while, feels bitter at how easily his mentor was ready to throw his life away—Peter doesn’t speak to him for two weeks and four days. The whole world feels like it’s been shifted three inches to the left, like how he imagines those pranks where you move the furniture feel. Everything’s a bit like how he left it, but a bit more broken, a bit more sad, a bit more shadowed. When things start to fall into place again, when Mr. Stark has finished getting his new arm (when he and Peter make up and start to talk), when Mr. Stark becomes just Tony, and when the universe bends and swells to accept its returning occupants back into society, Peter marches to ballet as soon as he has the chance.

There’s an orchestra plucking strings and ringing bells in his ears, capturing his beating heart and his fluttering feet once more.

The ballet starts again. It grounds Peter. He forgets about the feeling of crumbling apart— literally —and he forgets the emptiness that pounds in his chest from the five years he can’t find in his memories. At least for as long as he dances. When he’s practicing his moves for a performance choreographed to the Merry-go-round of Life, he experiences some of the few minutes in which his muscles don’t ache like he’s reaching for a part of himself he left behind on Titan. In which his mind doesn’t clamber for an explanation as to why everything changed in what passed as an instant to Peter.

Next week, on Friday night, he’s scheduled to perform in a showcase with the rest of his class, and he’s pulling out all the stops. Every move he’s learned, all the balance he’s developed. His aunt, Happy, Tony, Ms. Potts, Morgan, Ned, MJ, and everyone important to Peter has made a commitment to be there, and Peter would want his first show in five years to be everything he can possibly make it, anyway. Every day after school, he runs through the routine and watches playbacks of himself to iron out any imperfections he can spot. By Wednesday, he’s proud of how it’s turning out. 

That said, he’s running himself ragged, and each morning, he has a harder time waking up. He’s falling asleep in chemistry, when he realizes his arms aren’t nearly good enough pillows to fully drag him into unconsciousness. With his chin on the sleeves of his jacket, his head faces the front of the room, but he’s only listening to about seven percent of the lesson, at the most. His eyelids slip between half and fully closed at a sluggish, exhausted pace. Ned nudges him as though he’s fallen asleep.

“You’re really tired,” he whispers under the teacher’s lesson. “I know it’s not something fun, like a lab, but you should at least try to pay attention.” Peter rolls his head, so his cheek is on his forearms, and he wrinkles his nose at his friend. Over Ned’s shoulder, he makes eye contact with MJ, who sits at the table next to them, and there’s an inkling of concern in the way she brings her brows together. She folds her hands under her cheek, mocking sleep, and then she points at Peter, jerking her chin in question. C’mon, Peter’s not that obviously tired, is he?

He sticks his tongue out, and MJ rolls her eyes, then shifts them back to the teacher. Peter looks at Ned. “Late night rehearsals,” he explains. Ned perks up.

“Really? Dude, you gotta leak the footage to me.” Peter shakes his head, fairly vigorously considering it’s still sideways on his arms, and puts a finger to his lips. Though Ned remains excited, he does so quietly. “Why not? I know you have it. Lemme see!” Finally, Peter relents. He drags his phone out of his pocket, chooses the video, and slides it flat on the table. 

The video is muted, and Peter is only viewing it out of the corner of his eye, since he’s cautiously keeping watch of the teacher, to make sure he’s not spotted using his phone. He registers MJ leaning over the edge of her table to slyly catch a glimpse of the footage, too. Dread rolls in his stomach; he hopes his friends aren’t drawing too much attention. If they cause a scene, the teacher will surely look over, and if the teacher looks over, everyone else will—

A voice starts speaking quietly over his shoulder, “Um.” Peter whips around to glare at Flash, who sits at the table behind him. His chair is pushed to the edge of his own table, so he can hang his head out into the aisle and clearly see even the dimmest brightness setting on Peter’s phone. He’s too far to decipher what’s playing on the screen, but he can see that there are shifting images, and he loudly calls them out. “Whoa, are you watching a video? In class!” 

Ned hastily clicks the power button on the side of Peter’s phone—he doesn’t hit it hard enough because of shaky fingers; the phone remains lit—and he tries to pass the object back to Peter, but the damage is done.

The teacher is looking right at them. “Something you want to share with the class, Parker?” 

Oh God, oh no, hell no, absolutely not —

“Not particularly,” Peter squeaks, shoving his phone into his lap. His ears are hot with mortification; the concept of the whole class seeing his routine is utterly suffocating. Frankly, he’d rather be outed as Spiderman than show the video to everyone. That could be a good distraction. Shout hey, I’m Spiderman, and maybe everyone will forget about the phone, maybe he can escape this without drowning in embarrassment. He’d be labeled as insane, but that would ruin his highschool career less than doing ballet will. Yet the teacher holds out a hand—palm up, fingers waving the phone over—and the time to act is gone. 

Peter’s chair makes an awful noise as he teeters it out of its place. His skin is so flushed his eyes water, and he wants so badly to yank his hood up over his red ears, but that’s as against the rules as using his phone is. So, he swallows the humiliation, paces to the front of the room, and sets the phone in his teacher’s waiting hand. The phone is halfway through the video, and digital Peter finishes a grand jeté right as the teacher takes it. Digital Peter doesn’t quite stick the landing, but he looks graceful to the untrained eye.

His teacher blinks at the screen. “You do ballet?” 

Peter forsakes the ban on hoods, and pulls the fabric up over his head. “Yeah,” he murmurs. Someone in the first row of lab tables fails to stifle a laugh. It comes out, just a stutter of a snort, but it’s enough to make the person next to them laugh, too. And suddenly, the whole right side of the room is chittering with amused noises. Then the left. MJ throws her eraser at the student who started it, and it only serves to make the room buzz more. 

What year is it now? Surely, the world is past making fun of a boy for liking ballet, right?

Apparently not. 

It takes the teacher exactly twenty-six seconds to get the class quiet, but it’s twenty-six seconds past what Peter can handle. He counts all the seconds out, each one immeasurably worse than the one preceding it, and he presses his chin as close to his collarbones as he can, to hide how badly he’s blushing and how many tears are on his cheeks. Peter hates crying.

And now, he’s pretty sure he hates ballet, too.

After school that day, he goes home and skips patrol, skips ballet practice, and goes straight to bed. He wakes up at three in the morning. His phone is bright—and unplugged—next to him in bed. There are twelve text messages from Ned, the last one having come in four hours ago, and three from MJ. Her last text is stamped two minutes ago. Peter reads hers first:

ned is worried. answer him before he has a stroke, says her initial text. It’s marked “9:24 PM”

Exactly one hour later, you’re really good at ballet, and i’m sure that if the teacher actually showed the class the video, no one would have laughed

And the bottom text, for what it’s worth, i think it’s really cool that you do ballet. just fyi. it takes a lot of strength to stand on your toes and crap. so that’s pretty manly

As Peter’s thumbs hover over the keyboard, plotting a brief answer, a new message pops up. or whatever, it says. He smiles, tired and pained.

Thanks, MJ

He swipes that conversation aside, reads the top notification from Ned, and decides he doesn’t have the energy or confidence to read the eleven other texts from his friend. Peter kicks his phone to the foot of his bed and pulls his pillow over his nape. His fingers knead the fabric of the pillowcase until he falls asleep again. 

The next time he wakes up, he can hear more cars on the street below his window than he could in the dead of night, and he takes the pillow off his head. His fingers twitch towards his phone, and this time, he sees texts from more than just Ned and MJ (seven more from Ned, one more from MJ); this time, his screen is occupied by a message sitting under bolded letters that spell out Mr. Stark. There’s only one message, but it’s a paragraph. Perfectly punctuated, perfectly capitalized, it mentions how Peter’s aunt said he missed ballet practice last night. In a way that definitely could have been more precise, more direct, the text goes on to essentially say Tony is worried. It ends with an assurance that he himself will drive Peter to practice this afternoon. 

Peter types out an excuse that he’s sick, but he decides the lie isn’t worth the effort of its upkeep. He holds backspace longer than he needs to, staring at the little, blue cursor until his vision blurs and stings. He blinks and lifts his thumb; the cursor starts to blip again. Numbly, he writes, okay! :-) thanks! Peter hopes it reads cheerier than the passive frown on his lips, but the smiley face likely gives the insincerity of his excitement away. Tony probably already knows he’s unhappy, regardless. A happy Peter would never allow himself to miss ballet, a happy Peter never would have warranted a fretful text. 

He trudges through the school day, dodging questions about his wellness, with minimal apologies to Ned for ignoring his messages, because his friend promises he understands. Peter doesn’t talk much other than that. The insults from his classmates are constant and staggeringly detailed. One boy brings his little sister’s tutu to class to offer as a “gift” for Peter. Peter hardly reacts as it’s thrown across his desk; he only buries his nose deeper into his phone and pulls his sleeves farther down his wrists. Another kid brings a ribbon knotted into a bow, but after seeing the first kid, MJ takes to hanging around Peter’s desk whenever she can. Her crossed arms and dull gaze from over Peter’s shoulder keeps most people at a distance. Ned stands around, too, but he’s not quite as scary as MJ.

She walks him out of school when the bell rings, lagging a couple steps behind to keep her presence distant, but apparent. It feels like it’s backwards. Peter, who is Spiderman—Peter, who is a literal superhuman—leaving the building with an escort who’s just a normal, human girl. But the lack of conflict while she’s near makes Peter think maybe backwards is okay. He’s not even sure why any of this bothers him. No matter what his classmates say, he loves ballet. 

And yet there’s not any music thrumming in his chest this time, there’s no itch in his feet like there was when he’d been bullied before. His shoulders feel heavy and his feet feel worse, like they’re bolted or stapled to the sidewalk in front of his school. For the first time in years, he doesn’t want to dance. He wants to sleep. 

Quietly, he thanks MJ, and she nods before heading off in one direction, while Peter jogs the other. No one says anything to him or even looks at him oddly, but he can’t shake the lump in his stomach that says they’re planning to, so he’s grateful for his quick feet that manage to hurry him to Tony’s car. When Peter rips the door open, his mentor jumps in his seat at the noise, and his phone jerks from his hands. It lands in the cup holder between the two front seats. Peter sees he’s been scrolling through the ‘Spiderman’ tag on Twitter, but doesn’t mention it.

He looks at Tony, who he notices has maintained his habit of wearing long sleeves, as he’s been doing since he got the prosthetic. His shades are on his nose, and luckily the car he chose to bring is inconspicuous that no one recognizes him as Tony Stark. Well, not no one. Peter recognizes him. What he recognizes more, though, is the way he’s drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and the way his eyebrows dip to the edge of his glasses.

That’s the concerned dad look he gives Morgan when she’s been fiddling with tools she shouldn’t have touched.

Posture relaxed, he nods his head in the direction of his phone in the cupholder. “Skipped patrol last night, huh? Something’s really bothering you if you’re not even out past your bedtime like you usually are.” Peter shrugs, settling his backpack between his ankles as a distraction. He hadn’t noticed how loudly Tony’s nails were tapping against the wheel until they stopped; the car fills with a silence Peter can’t swallow.

“I was tired.” 

His mentor doesn’t waste a second calling his bluff.

“You know, I have depression, kid. I’ve used all the coverup stories.” Peter wishes he had the silence back, suddenly. He wordlessly clicks his seatbelt into place, watching Tony and mirroring his furrowed brows. There’s a beat of quiet between them. Tony is the first to fold; he sighs, takes the car out of park, and pulls away from the line of waiting parents. “You can talk to me about whatever’s upsetting you, Peter.” Folding his arms over his stomach, Peter nods his head. After that, he rolls his cheek up against the window and Tony turns the knob to up the volume of We’re Not Gonna Take It.

Normally, Peter would hear the elegant piano keys in his mind, the notes of his next performance, overtop of the classic rock. 

Peter doesn’t hear anything except drums and electric guitars. 

He recognizes the turns Tony is taking, and dread makes his shoulders slouch because he knows they’re headed to his ballet class. His performance is tomorrow night; he should want to go to class more than anything else, but all he wants to do is run through the Dairy Queen drive-through for a Blizzard, and then head home to sleep. Swiping nervously between the home screen pages on his phone, he looks at Tony. “Can I skip practice?”

Tony’s fingers tighten around the wheel, and Peter swears he’s about to swerve off the street. His line of sight shifts from the road for a moment, locking on Peter, lips taut in a frown. “Why?” He flicks his head back to facing the windshield, but his knuckles are still white, and the music rings in Peter’s ears. The sound is making his blood rush—in an overwhelming, sickening sort of way—and he knows his ears aren’t supposed to pound in time with his heart, as they’re doing now. His temples throb, he thinks he’s on the brink of a mental breakdown, and he tastes the pain in his throat from wanting to sob. 

Hands shaking, he scratches his scalp. “I’ve got—I’ve got homework.” His voice all but shatters halfway through, and he winces at the way Tony’s hands loosen on the wheel in response. They’re loose, and the wrinkles between his brows have loosened, too. He looks sad, the paragon of pity, and he isn’t saying anything. God, if he keeps not saying anything, Peter’s going to cry, and he does not want to cry in front of his idol for the hundredth time since they’d met. 

The music is different, the last song ended a while ago, but Tony turns the volume down too low for Peter to hear over his internal counting. Counting the unsteady pounding of his heart, getting faster and faster, the closer to crying he gets. Counting the calm breaths he’s supposed to be taking. One breath in, one breath out, don’t overthink it—

“Alright,” Tony says, suddenly. “If you don’t wanna go.” He shifts over to the far left lane, to make a u-turn at the next light. 

The turn signal clicks, the car hums, the breaks change the pitch of the humming, but the classic rock remains on mute.

That music is quiet, but so is the music usually running hot through Peter’s veins.  

Peter wishes his internal melody would come back, if only to smother his negative thoughts.

His phone lights up with a notification, but he brings the heels of his palms to his eyes to stop oncoming tears, instead of attempting to read it. Quietly, he asks, “Can we go to Dairy Queen?” He can feel Tony look away from his intense observation of the red light they’re sitting at; he can feel his mentor watching him try to string himself together once more. He’s scrambling to pick up the pieces of what used to be his passion, struggling to make himself proud to be a dancer again, struggling to want to perform tomorrow night. “Please,” he murmurs, politeness an afterthought, as he drops one hand to his lap and swipes the other under his runny nose. “It’s been a bad day.”

Silence, and then, “Sure, kid.”

He can hear the woeful, uneasy smile in Tony’s voice. 

They get the ice cream. It doesn’t make him feel better like he thinks it should. He sleeps it off.

Peter doesn’t use the sickness excuse that day, but he does use it Friday. He pulls a Ferris Bueller, making his palms clammy and pleading his aunt to let him stay home. She frowns, but doesn’t deny him what he asks. After she leaves for work, Peter has the apartment to himself, and he whiles away the whole day sleeping. Once, he wakes up when Ned texts him, asking if the showcase is still happening tonight, and Peter pretends to be regretful while informing him that no, it will not be happening. Not with him in it, at least.

The next time he thoroughly awakens is Saturday afternoon. His phone almost seems heavier from all the missed messages. He answers them with miniscule amounts of emotion; short bursts of abbreviated letters, no emojis, no emoticons, no capitalization, no punctuation. One word texts, if he can get his point across with so little. While he waits for responses, he turns his ringer on, just to bring music back to his ears. His heart plays nothing.

His phone buzzes and whistles a tune the moment he places it next to him on his unmade bed, and he eyes it warily. Ned’s name sits at the top of his screen, and under it, there’s only a link. Another message pops up, the notes play again—Peter shuts his eyes, hoping they’ll surround him and spark a music box in his chest; nothing happens—and it’s still Ned, adding, MJ sent me this. Intrigued, Peter clicks the link. An article.

From the image at the top of the webpage alone, he can tell it’s not at all what he would have expected in a 3 PM message from Ned. Tony, Ms. Potts, and Morgan are there, in a blurred, little box at the top of his screen. The background of the photo is the familiar, sporty green of a nearby shoe store, and a blob of carnation pink hangs from each of their hands, even more familiar than the colors of the shoe store. Peter clicks the image, swipes his fingers to zoom in, and he’s certain he recognizes what they’re—presumably—purchasing, but there’s no way his conclusion can be right. 

Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and Morgan Stark buying ballet slippers? 

Preposterous. 

Maybe Morgan—she’s young enough to start a ballet career, but the whole family seems unreasonable, unlikely, unnecessary. Over the top, even, but not over the top in the typical Tony style. Tony would be public about buying something he’s passionate about. He’d make a show out of supporting an up-and-coming rock artist, or talk to the press about how he purchased millions of dollars of solar panels. The fact that he’s in the image, watching the cameras out of the corner of his eye with a knowing gleam to his grinning cheeks, while holding a ballet slipper seems unreal. 

Why didn’t he order it online? Going to the store, where he would undoubtedly run into awestruck fans with trigger happy Snapchat fingers, was a conscious decision. But why? Why would he subject himself to that for something as insignificant as ballet slippers? What was he thinking? Are they special slippers? Peter thinks maybe they’re for a charity or something, but surely he would have heard about that before Tony, considering he loves ballet and keeps up with news about it.

Peter scrolls through the first couple paragraphs of the article. Low and sweet and quiet in the back of his mind, the Merry-go-round of Life starts to play again. He hardly notices the tune is stuck in his head. He doesn’t hear himself humming it as he reads.

The article has quotes from Peter’s ballet teacher, saying Tony signed up for classes, along with Morgan and Ms. Potts. None of them will be in Peter’s class (Peter is eternally thankful for that), but the article has his teacher’s photo right there, and her name underneath, so he knows they definitely signed up at the same studio. Publicly. None of them ever mentioned an interest in ballet before this article, so Peter’s left with wonder burning in his stomach.

Why?

To reiterate, the very notion of it is preposterous.

He navigates his phone, wrestling with it until his text conversation with Tony from a couple days ago sits open in his palms. Peter stares at it, taps his thumb on the outside of his phone case, and ponders if it’s worth asking. Pulling up the article again, he copies the link, then pastes it in the text message. After the link, Peter types a series of question marks before he hits send and hastily clicks his phone off. It’s abandoned in favor of getting something to eat.

There’s a pep in Peter’s step as he walks, too small for him to notice on his own, but large enough that May smiles as he flits to the kitchen. His heels lift off the floor—he’s light on his feet—like he’s skipping, dancing. His movements have a rhythm, too, as though he’s practicing the performance he was supposed to give on Friday. For the first time since Wednesday, he wants to do more than just sleep.

After making and eating a sandwich, he returns to his room. He slides his cellphone open, and there’s a shrugging emoji from Tony in his notifications. The message preceding it is a typed out sunglasses emoticon. It’s stamped ten minutes ago, so Peter assumes that’ll be the only explanation he’s getting on the article. He’s finally begun to crawl out of his downwardly spiraling mood; he decides to leave the issue alone lest he fall back into the pit of frustration and anxiety. 

Peter gets his makeup work from Ned, he finishes all his homework, and he emails his ballet teacher, asking if he can do his performance in the next showcase. After getting an affirmative answer, he finds himself in a better mood. His day, from 3 PM onward, becomes fairly productive. That night, he goes on patrol again, and he practices his routine on the rooftops, counting out the measures of his song in whispers as he moves. The music is loud and soothing in his pulse, his feet are graceful and perfectly timed, and the cars on the streets below create a backdrop of noises that make Peter imagine a bustling audience. 

He hadn’t realized while it was happening, but the past couple days passed like he wasn’t in time with himself. As though a whole bunch of deaf musicians were trying to play together in his chest without a director. It felt like how the warmups at the start of an orchestra performance sound. His legs hadn’t been moving right, his brain had been misfiring, and it only fell back together when something shoved one piece into place. It had a pleasant kind of domino effect, where the return of his desire to dance sparked the return of his motivation as a whole. 

Though he doesn’t know why the concept of Tony starting ballet brightens his mood, he can’t deny that his motivation skyrocketed when he found out. Something about the way Tony stood in line in the photo, entirely assured in his impulsive decision to pick up a new hobby… It flashes like a big thumbs-up to Peter. Like, without saying a word, Tony’s telling him that he should be assured in his hobby, too. Assured in his passion. And, surprisingly, he is. 

Finally, his orchestra is in time, and he knows he’s the director. 

On Monday, school is better, too. His chemistry teacher is the first to call out to him. “You can officially say you did ballet before it was cool!” And everyone in class agrees. In fact, the very same classmates who laughed at his ballet last week, are coming up to him now, asking if he can give them advice. Where to sign up, where to buy the outfits, how much it costs, if it’s too late to get into the game. The attention isn’t his favorite thing, but he’s ecstatic that it’s more positive than it was last week.

Ned loudly—intentionally so—asks him about his performances, and the teacher agrees to let Peter put a video on the projector in front of class. It’s the one Ned had been watching on Wednesday. What was a joke before becomes showstopping now. The whole room lurches when the Peter in the video jumps, they all fall back into their seats when he lands, and they cheer when he bows at the end, sweaty and out of breath. After the video, more people clamber to Peter’s desk, cluttering the space on his side of the classroom. Sure, it’s clutter, but it’s the kind of clutter he likes, like the pile of old photos he has in his closet or the eclectic assortment of shirts he has hanging on the bar above them. It’s the sort of clutter that makes his stomach warm and his cheeks burn with a smile.

He scrolls through a few of his older routines to show the class; virtually no chemistry gets done for the remainder of the hour. When he’s out of videos to share, he’s shoved to the front of the room and asked to twirl or to demonstrate any moves he can do without the shoes on. Peter thrives on the attention, on the burst of music it elicits in his chest, more than he’d ever willingly admit. 

His desk is smothered with attention the rest of the day, in all of his classes. 

There’s no ballet practice after school, so Peter heads straight home, dodging questions on his way out of the building. Once he’s back in his apartment, he settles into a groove on the couch to work through all the extra homework he’s acquired from being too distracted in class to finish. Mindlessly, he flicks on the TV as he begins to scribble his names on the tops of assignments.

At first, the normal news is on, but then that program ends, and he’s left with the celebrity, typically-he-wouldn’t-care type of news. What kind of AP kid has time to care about which person they’re never going to meet is dating that other person they’re never going to meet? Half the time, Peter doesn’t even have time to sleep, let alone—

But, lo and behold, Tony’s on (because of course he’s on), and Peter makes time in his busy schedule. Apparently his first ballet class was this afternoon. The announcer summarizes the whole ballet story, then the live footage of Tony—outside of Peter’s ballet class—begins.

Cameras flash around him, as if the lights are tucked behind his ears and into his hair, as if they’re folded into his sunglasses that balance on the end of his nose, as if they’re in the pink slippers dangling from the end of his index finger. Peter glances at the homework in his lap, but the TV wins. He is as confused as anyone else as to why Tony had begun ballet. Why would he look away from the answer? He watches Tony ruffle Morgan’s hair with one hand—he’d ruffled Peter’s hair like that, Peter notes, almost distantly—and shift his grip on his ballet slippers in the other hand. 

The walls of Peter’s apartment buzz with the pure intensity of the noise in the footage, a mess of loud questions asked by desperate celebrity reporters, but one question takes center stage.

“Tony! Why did you start ballet?”

Tony takes his glasses off his nose, grinning wide—in true Tony Stark fashion—and he folds them. He’s taking his sweet time, but every reporter goes quiet, watches dutifully, and leans into the circle of a crowd that has formed around him, like he’s a magnet and they’re flimsy piles of metal shavings. His sunglasses fall into his pocket. “Well,” he starts, and Peter watches cameras flash at that word alone. Part of him laughs at the eager reporters, but part of him knows he’s awaiting the answer as anxiously as they are. His pencil sits next to him on the couch, alone and forgotten, bouncing on the cushion as he leans closer to the TV. He sets his homework on the other side.

“Well,” the reporter echoes, shoving her blocky microphone closer.

“It’s because your daughter wanted to take classes,” another reporter pipes up. When Tony looks at him, he adds on a hasty, “Right?”

Morgan wrinkles her nose; all the cameras lock on her and capture the raw emotion with which she shakes her head. She sticks her tongue out and squints her eyes. “No!” Ms. Potts and Tony both laugh, but the reporters are silent, confused. Peter is, too. Wasn’t that why? It would have been the most logical conclusion. “I only wanted to ballet because Mom and Dad do it!” 

The cameramen turn to Ms. Potts. “So, because you wanted to,” one plainly says.

She waves a hand in front of her face, chuckling, and she pats Tony on the shoulder. The cameras pan to his face; confused murmuring fills the footage, leaking in from the sidelines. “It was all Tony’s idea!” For a moment, the man in question only smiles larger, until he confirms Ms. Pott’s statement with a strong nod. 

“Yep, all me.” The crowd makes their frustration at his vagueness apparent. They murmur comments Peter can’t make out over the static of muffled conversations, but Tony clears his throat, and everything immediately silences. Like the reporters tasted their words getting hot in their mouths, so they spit them out, all at once. Abandoned thoughts litter the sidewalk as Tony starts to speak. “It’s a pretty cool thing to do,” he huffs, shrugging like he hadn’t put hours of thought into his answers. But Peter can see a stiffness to the rise and fall of his shoulders, a shortage of his normal ease in his words, and he knows his mentor stood in front of his mirror and rehearsed for hours. 

The question of why is burning in his throat again.

Then Tony smiles, and it’s not the smug grin he usually gives the cameras. It’s sincere and gentle, and Peter can see that while the line up next is rehearsed, he means it. He thinks of Aunt May, the look on her face when he comes home with good news about a test he didn’t think he’d do well on. He thinks of her expression when he tells her about a joke Ned told him. He thinks of her smile when he vibrantly shares a story of someone he saved on patrols the night before. He thinks of the motherly way she smiles.

That’s how Tony is looking at the camera. 

Peter can’t help feeling like Tony isn’t really looking at the camera at all; he’s looking right through the TV, at Peter.

“I have this intern, Peter,” he says, drawing his sunglasses out of his pocket. Peter chokes upon hearing his name. Was Tony allowed to do that? Name him on TV? His phone is already ringing next to him, Ned’s name and photo bright on the screen. A text comes in from MJ, probably watching the same thing Peter and Ned are watching, probably just as shocked. Peter doesn’t read her text. Flipping his phone over, he catches his breath as Tony continues. He’s placed his sunglasses on his nose, but he’s still softened with a smile. “Peter does ballet, and he’s pretty young, actually. But he’s real good at it—better than I’m ever gonna get. He showed me one of his recitals. I thought it looked cool.” Pausing, his smile wanes, only slightly, and he cocks his head to one side. “And I wanted to show him it’s okay to like things that maybe not everyone is gonna like.”

There’s not any music in Peter’s chest when the footage fades back to the news anchors, yet he’s okay with that. Not a single note plays, but there’s something else in the melody’s place. It’s warm and small against the thrum of his pulse, a tickle of joy, and he can’t help smiling when he notices it. He scoops up his phone from where he’d flipped it onto the couch, ignores another incoming call from Ned, and opens the text conversation with Tony. 

Thank you, he writes.

The word “Read” appears under it in an instant. He grins, knowing somewhere in the city, Tony’s thinking about him, same as he’d think about Morgan. Knowing Tony is so far past the no hugging rule, so far past the we’re not there yet, that he’s actively reaching out to Peter. Knowing that Tony can piece together when he’s sad, and knowing that he cares enough to try to cheer him up.

Three dots pop up.

Of course. Any time, kid.