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Peter looked at his assignment and started to understand why Tony had looked so sympathetic when Peter mentioned that he had two Gen Eds he needed to get done this semester. In his defense he thought he picked the easy option. Creative Writing sounded easy. You made stuff up and you wrote it down. You didn’t have to research. You didn’t have to spend hours and hours in the lab doing experiments. You made stuff up and you wrote it down. Easy. Peter didn’t realize there would be lying involved. If he had, well, he would at least have seriously considered the introduction to Shakespeare course instead. It had also fit into his schedule and fulfilled the English Gen-Ed.
‘What I did on my Summer Vacation? (Write 1000 words)
The teacher had called it an icebreaker assignment. Peter didn’t want that ice to break. He was on thin ice as it was.
He looked at the blank document in front of him.
‘This summer I went to a secretive African country and hung out with the princess while my hot, rich boyfriend argued with the king about the rarest material on Earth.’
Peter backspaced furiously.
‘This summer an Alien abductee came back to Earth with his spaceship and crew and we hung out while he and my boyfriend argued about music. The green lady and the blue lady are getting along better now.’
Peter backspaced again.
‘This summer I talked with a wizard about how physics and magic could be reconciled. He invited me to his secret wizard mansion in the middle of New York after we de-cursed a bus stop in Queens.’
Peter frowned at the words then typed. ‘And my hot rich boyfriend would have totally argued with him if he had been there.’
He sighed and deleted the text. Normal, what normal things had he done this summer?
‘This summer, I met my aunt's new boyfriend who turned out to be a projection of an hivemind. Which wasn’t really the deal breaker. The deal breaker was that the hivemind had duplicated that projection two hundred times to see other women. My aunt was not happy. She threw a shoe at him.’
Peter squinted at the screen. That was more normal. Really, that kind of stuff had to happen to everyone in New York. Sure, most people didn’t know about the hivemind but there had been a lot of news articles speculating on the mystery dater after a hundred women had reported their boyfriend missing. The general public didn’t know that the hivemind had left after a stern talking to from Thor about love and fertility. Peter backspaced.
‘This summer, I worked as an Intern at Stark Industries.’
Awesome, that was normal right? Lots of his classmates had internships. Mandy bragged about how she got a top spot at Oscorp. Suresh talked endlessly of how he was helping at a startup game developer. Even Owen, the guy who always wore a black hoodie and smelled like pot, said he had something going with a secret government agency. Peter frowned and jotted down a note to check if that was legit.
‘I got to work with my hot rich boyfriend’
Peter backspaced.
‘I got to work with Tony on…’
Peter backspaced again.
‘I got to work with Mr. Stark on really interesting projects like the microchips in the new StarkPhone.’
Wait, Pepper wasn’t going to announce those upgrades until the Stark Expo next month. Peter backspaced.
‘I got to work with Mr. Stark on important projects like plastic particulate extraction from soil.’
That was still in the research phase too. It would help remove pollutants from contaminated areas. Which was amazing. And was probably firmly under his employee NDA which was not.
‘I got to work with Mr. Stark on really awesome projects like faster than light travel by pulling apart an alien spaceship.’
He was probably going to get an angry note from SHIELD for even typing that into the document. His phone dinged. Peter rolled his eyes and erased the sentence.
‘I got to sit in Mr. Stark’s lap.’
He paused and added. ‘It was awesome.’
He backspaced again.
‘I learned a lot and got to work on many interesting projects. I also got a lot of coffee for very important people in suits.’ Peter smiled. His teacher didn’t need to know that the suits were more often kevlar and nanotech than Tom Ford or Armani. ‘It was challenging work but very rewarding.’
‘I spent time with my friends from high school. It was nice that they were back in New York over the summer so we could hang out together.’ It had been great to spend time with them again. Video chats could only do so much.
Ok, only one more thing. That’s how essays went right? He had two points he needed a third then a conclusion and he was home free.
‘I nearly exposed my superhero identity to the world because of Green Goblin’s bombs and Deadpool’s lack of boundaries.’
His phone dinged again. Then three seconds later again. Well it was nice to know someone was paying attention.
‘I came out to my aunt this summer. It was hard on both of us but I think we’ve come to a good place and I know that whoever I am, she loves me.’
Again the teacher didn’t need to know that his particular coming out had been as Spider-Man. May had known he was Bi since he was thirteen.
````
When Peter got the assignment back there was a comment from the teacher. ‘It was refreshing to read an assignment that didn’t focus on the dinosaur attack this summer. Keep up the good work.’
Peter blinked. The dinosaur attack on New York. Why hadn’t he remembered that? He could have written about that. There were all sorts of dinosaurs and pterosaurs roaming the streets for a long weekend. Everyone had been spamming Instagram with photos. He let his head drop to thunk against his desk.