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It starts with a little twinge while Peter is returning his lunch tray.
It isn’t the pain that catches him by surprise; Peter is used to pain by now. The constant aching in his chest, caused by the arc reactor filling the space where most of his sternum should be, has become second-nature by now in the two months since he was fitted with the device. This twinge, though, is something different. Like a combination of an electric shock and someone physically poking his heart.
He stops short and Ned bumps into him from behind.
“What is it?” Ned asks.
The feeling has already gone away, and Peter almost wonders if he imagined it.
Ned catches the flick of Peter’s eyes down to his chest, however, and asks, “Oh, is it the…y’know…your… puppy? ”
(Ned has taken to using the code word ‘puppy’ to refer to Peter’s arc reactor when there are other people around. Peter can’t remember how it started, but it’s a useful metaphor, even if it does have its flaws.)
Peter shrugs. “I think so…It just did something weird. Like a”—he tries to think of a word that will fit the metaphor—“bump, or…”
“Head-butt?” Ned suggests helpfully. “You mean your puppy head-butted you?”
“Something like that,” Peter replies. They continue to the tray bussing station and start scraping the remains of their lunch (spaghetti with spicy meatballs) into the compost. Peter looks around before leaning in to whisper, “It could have been an electric shock. I’ve definitely never felt anything like it before.”
Ned’s eyes grow wide. “Maybe you should go home sick. I mean, if it’s…” Brad Davis suddenly appears beside Peter to empty his own lunch tray, so Ned switches gears. “If your… puppy is, uh, chewing through your cables, that could be dangerous—maybe you should keep an eye on him at home,” he finishes with a sidelong look at Brad, who doesn’t seem to notice.
Peter considers it as they place their empty trays on the bussing cart and head for the cafeteria exit. But the twinge was so fleeting, and he feels perfectly normal now (or, as normal as he can with an arc reactor in his chest that has to stay secret from everyone but those closest to him), so it would surely be overkill to go home now and miss afternoon classes. Plus he hates that concerned look Ned is always giving him when they talk about the arc reactor, as if Peter might shatter like glass any minute.
“Nah,” he decides as they make their way to their lockers. “It was nothing. Probably just heartburn from those meatballs.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Ned shoots him another uncertain look but doesn’t say anything else.
Turns out it wasn’t the meatballs.
About ten minutes into Harrington’s class, the problem returns with a vengeance. Peter jolts upright at the feeling of another zapping sensation deep in his chest. This time, however, it doesn’t stop there. After the twinge goes away, Peter gets a terrible sensation of his heart skipping beats. Then the opposite happens: his heart starts beating too fast, too hard. This is not good, this is very not good. This sudden, acute awareness of his heart brings to the forefront of his mind something he’s been trying not to think about for weeks.
The image of Harrington at the front of the class starts swimming before his eyes. He squeezes his eyes shut, and now he’s no longer in school. It’s two months ago, still summer vacation, and he’s somewhere in New Jersey with the Avengers, having just invaded a remote warehouse and defeated a group of skilled militants armed with some of the most advanced alien tech they’ve ever seen. The enemies are bound and detained, and the Avengers are collecting the alien weapons for analysis back at the Tower, when suddenly one of the militants manages to get a hand free to pick up a grenade on the floor by his feet.
Peter’s spidey sense screams at him but it’s too late. The grenade explodes in front of him, sending a hailstorm of shrapnel in just one direction: straight at Peter’s chest. The Avengers will learn later that it’s a self-guided grenade that automatically aims its explosion at the closest living target. One of the more sinister weapons in the enemies’ arsenal.
Peter lands on his back as his chest explodes in pain, and he’s screaming so hard that his lungs feel like they’re going to burst, but he can’t stop. Everything else after he looks down and registers the hole blown in the front of his suit is a blur. Faces are looking down at him in a panic, Tony is screaming something to Peter, Steve is shouting orders at the Avengers, and Hulk disposes of the man who threw the grenade…
He wishes he would pass out, but he doesn’t—he’s awake for it all. Being carried, screaming, back to the quinjet with someone’s balled up shirt pressed against his chest to stop the blood, his spider suit being cut off his body during the short but agonizing ride back to the compound, and a med team waiting for them when they arrive. One of them puts a mask over his nose and mouth and he’s mercifully engulfed in darkness.
The next thing he remembers is waking up two days later with an arc reactor glowing in his chest, invasive and painful, and Tony there trying to hold his shit together as he explains to Peter what happened. How it wasn’t ordinary shrapnel in that grenade, but some sort of pyrophoric alien alloy that, when exposed to gases, becomes unstable and would poison Peter’s bloodstream if surgeons tried to remove it. SI’s R&D team, led by Tony, immediately started developing the tech to remove it safely, but it will take months to complete. So Peter is stuck with the arc reactor until then.
The hardest part about that whole conversation wasn’t the bad news, it was watching Tony deliver it; his eyes shining with tears, and his voice so tight with emotion that it was difficult for him to speak. Peter has never seen his mentor so scared, so utterly torn apart.
“Peter?”
Peter is jolted back to the present and looks at Ned when he whispers his name. He realizes that all his muscles are tensed up and he’s feeling light-headed from his erratic breathing. Something is very wrong with the arc reactor. It’s always a little painful, but it shouldn’t feel like this. Like the accident.
Ned is looking at him with alarm now. “It wasn’t the meatballs, was it?”
Peter doesn’t answer. He needs to call Mr. Stark, now. He stands up.
“Mr. Harrington?” he says, as calmly as possible, balling up his hands to keep them from shaking.
Mr. Harrington stops mid-sentence and looks at Peter, either not noticing or not acknowledging how stressed-out Peter looks.
“Peter?”
“Can I have a pass for the bathroom, please?”
To his relief, Harrington doesn’t argue, even though it’s barely been fifteen minutes since lunch ended. Peter grabs his hall pass and power walks out of the classroom and down the hall to the nearest washroom. It’s mercifully empty since everyone is in class. Peter locks himself in the farthest stall from the door and pulls out his phone to call Tony, silently praying that it won’t go to voicemail.
Tony answers on the third ring.
“Ditching class, kid?” he asks when he picks up, sounding surprised and amused. “Bit old to start that, aren’t you?”
“Hi, Mr. Stark,” Peter says as casually as possible.
Some of his anxiety must have seeped into his voice, because Tony’s joking tone disappears.
“Hey, Pete. What’s up?”
Now Peter can hear anxiety in his mentor’s voice behind the deceptively laid-back tone. Tony has been more protective of Peter than usual since the incident, which Peter can’t fault him for.
“Nothing much,” Peter begins automatically. Stupid, he chides himself. Tony will see right through that. Why would Peter be calling him during class if nothing is wrong? “Well, there’s one thing. I just had a question about the…” he lowers his voice, even though the bathroom is empty, “arc reactor.”
“Shoot.” Now Tony definitely sounds concerned.
“Well, it’s been feeling…odd the past twenty minutes or so.”
“Odd how?”
“I’m feeling some jolts, like, electric shocks maybe? And my heart’s beating kind of weird. Like it’s skipping beats or something. And then it beats really hard.”
There’s a second of silence before Tony answers, sounding all business. “OK, kid. I know what that is. It’s not too serious, but I am going to have to make some adjustments to the wiring today. I’ll weasel out of this board meeting and pick you up. Can you wait at the front office?”
Peter suddenly feels guilty about worrying Tony. He’s put him through so much stress already, and now Tony has to leave an important business meeting just for him? This is the last thing he needs.
“Oh, no, there’s no rush, Mr. Stark,” he forces himself to say. “It’s not that bad. It can wait until after school.”
“Kid, you left in the middle of class to call me. It doesn’t sound ‘not that bad.’ Besides, I know what that particular malfunction feels like, and it feels shitty. I used to have one of those things in my chest too, remember?”
Peter does remember. He didn’t know Tony while he had his arc reactor, but ever since needing one of his own, Peter’s heard all the stories from Tony about what he went through. Peter thought it would stress him out to hear about what he was in for—the constant aching, the reduced lung capacity, the reconstructive surgery he’ll need at the end of all this—but eliminating the mystery around the experience actually helped calm the worst of his fears. Tony got through it alright, so Peter will too.
“No, really, I can handle it until you’re done with your meeting.” A particularly strong jolt hits his heart at that moment, and he suppresses the urge to suck in a breath from the pain. “Besides, my teacher will ask questions if I leave now.” He hopes his voice doesn’t sound as strained as his tight chest is making him feel.
“Way ahead of you,” replies Tony. “I’ve got about a dozen plausible reasons on standby for situations like this.”
“It’s alright, I’m feeling better already. I’ve only got two more hours of class. I’ll meet you out front after school, OK?”
“Kid—”
“I’ve gotta go. If I stay in here any longer, my teacher might think I’m in here doing drugs or something. I’ll—I’ll see you after school!”
Before Tony can say anything else, Peter hangs up on him—then immediately feels a pang in his chest that has nothing to do with the arc reactor. Last time he hung up on Tony, he ended up getting a whole ferry sliced in half and Iron Man had to come save the day. But this time, he really does have things under control. He just has to hide his shaking hands, control his breathing, discreetly wipe the sweat off his face, and try not to panic for the next…he checks his watch…hour and fifty-three minutes.
Peter’s glad he sits in the back of Harrington’s class. It’s one of his easiest courses, so he often only half-listens while using the time to plan out Spider-Man things, like optimizing his patrol route or reading NYPD police blotters and press releases to figure out who the bigger fish are in New York’s criminal underworld.
Today, though, he can’t focus on anything except the havoc in his chest. When his heart pounds, it roars in his ears. And the random electric jolts nearly make him jump in his seat when they strike, but he manages to sit still. God, if Flash caught him flinching, he’d be sure to draw as much attention to him as possible.
The skipped beats, though, are the worst. Each time they happen, Peter’s brain fires off a panic signal that convinces him at a primal level that his heart will never start beating again. It only lasts a second each time, but it’s a very uncomfortable second.
After half an hour, Peter is barely maintaining his composure. He’s resting his forehead in both hands and looking straight down at his notebook on his desk, trying to force himself to read the words on the page to get his mind off the terrible memories that keep bombarding his mind each time his arc reactor acts up. Ned has been looking this whole time like he wants to speak but is thinking better of it. Finally though, he leans over to whisper quietly to Peter.
“Peter, you really should go. I’ll come over tonight if you’re feeling better, and we can do our homework togeth—”
He’s interrupted by a knock on the classroom door. The door opens, and the class gasps in unison. Peter looks up from his notes and can’t help his own belated gasp. Because Mr. Stark himself has just entered the room, dressed in a sharp business suit with his sunglasses on his head. Principal Morita is standing in the doorway looking awestruck, having clearly just escorted Tony to Peter’s class.
A huge feeling of relief washes over Peter. Tony’s here, he came, this ordeal is nearly over. But…why did he come all the way to Peter’s class instead of having him paged to the office?
Tony looks at Peter and gives him a sort of pained smile that tells him that whatever is happening right now was not his idea. He turns to Mr. Harrington, whose eyes look like they’re going to pop out of his head.
“Hi. Tony Stark,” he says with a suave smile, holding out his hand for Harrington to shake. Harrington does, but it looks automatic, like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. His eyes haven’t left Tony’s face since he first noticed him enter the room.
“Gonna need that hand back,” Tony says when Harrington has made no move to release it. Harrington suddenly pulls away like he’s been burned. He smiles sheepishly as the class snickers.
“Sorry, Mr.…um...Stark.” He clears his throat. “To what do we owe this...extraordinary pleasure?”
“I’ll make it quick,” says Tony, turning back to the class and regarding Peter. “Just need to steal a kid from you. Peter’s got an appointment he can’t miss.”
Mr. Harrington stares at Tony wide-eyed. “Peter Parker? Has an appointment with you ?” He looks at Peter. “So he really is your intern.”
“Told you,” Ned mutters just loudly enough for Harrington to hear.
“That he is,” says Tony proudly. “Best one I’ve ever had.”
Even with Peter’s intense discomfort at the moment, he’s suffused with a warm and fuzzy feeling at that.
“Tell them about the award!” whisper-shouts Principal Morita, who has stepped inside the door.
Tony shoots the principal a tight-lipped look that Peter recognizes as annoyance and exasperation. He quickly turns back to the class, though, and clears his throat.
“Right. Well. Starting this year, Stark Industries is giving an annual special award to one promising intern to honour them for their hard work and to encourage innovation. It’s called the, uh—Internovation Award. And Mr. Parker here is the first ever winner. The winner was supposed to be announced last week, but there was a delay. I won’t bore you with the details, but that’s why Peter’s only finding out about it now. The presentation ceremony’s this afternoon, so we’ll have to get a move on.”
The class turns to look at Peter, all murmuring excitedly, and Peter feels himself turn red. He can’t give Tony the unimpressed look he wants to with everyone staring at him, but he does quirk an eyebrow at him, and Tony responds with a guilty-looking shrug that says ‘Welp, this got out of hand.’ But then MJ looks at Peter with a proud grin on her face, and suddenly Tony’s pretense doesn’t sound so bad. He smiles back at her, but his smile nearly falters as his heart suddenly starts pounding way too hard again.
“Wow, congratulations, Peter!” says Harrington over the chatter of the class.
“Hang on,” interjects Flash, looking between Peter and Tony with a mixture of disbelief and disdain. “ Peter Parker won an innovation award? This Peter Parker? ”
Tony levels him with an icy look. With insidious politeness probably honed from years of dealing with snide comments from the press, he says, “I’m sorry, who are you?”
The sneer disappears from Flash’s face, and he sinks down in his seat as the rest of the class snickers. Peter starts to laugh too but has to stop because it hurts his chest.
“Anyway,” continues Tony, pointedly edging toward the door and nodding toward Peter, “can’t be late to the ceremony.”
“Right,” says Mr. Harrington. “Peter, you can go with your...uh, your...Iron Man. Stark. Mr. Stark. Sir,” he stammers, as the class breaks into renewed giggles.
“I’ll call you later,” Ned whispers as Peter quickly packs his books. They give each other a quick wave, and Peter grabs his bag and follows Tony to the door.
“How about a round of applause for Peter?” says Principal Morita, who hasn’t stopped grinning since he entered the room.
“Oh, jeez,” Tony murmurs as the class (except Flash, who’s still sulking) erupts in applause. He grasps Peter’s arm, gives the class a quick wave, and steers him out the door.
They walk out of the school in step, getting looks and hushed whispers from the students on the front steps who are on a free period.
“Sorry about that,” Tony says with a nod back toward the school. “ I wanted to have you called to the office so we could leave discreetly. But when I told Principal Starstruck in there the reason I came, he insisted I tell your whole class the good news.” He huffs a laugh. “I might have to make this award a real thing now, with so many people hearing about it. Anyway I didn’t mean to draw that much attention to you. I should have come up with a less showy excuse.”
“It’s OK! It was worth it to see the look on Flash’s face,” replies Peter with a laugh. He cuts his laugh short because of the pain it causes in his chest. Tony notices.
“‘Feeling better already,’ huh?” he asks, eyebrows raised skeptically. “Looks like I was right to come early. How you holding up?”
They reach Tony’s car and he opens the passenger door for Peter, who collapses onto the seat and breathes a sigh of relief.
“I’m OK, I guess.” He looks up at Tony. “Thanks a lot for coming. But what about your meeting?”
Tony gives a dismissive wave and rests an arm on the open car door. “What good’s a board secretary if not to take the meeting minutes? Besides, I’ve ducked out of board meetings early for much less legitimate reasons. One time was because I was just really craving chicken nuggets.”
Peter suppresses another potentially painful laugh at that. “How did you know to come early?” he asks instead.
“I know you, kid,” says Tony with a half-smile. “Your self-preservation instincts leave a lot to be desired. Plus I told you: I know what that malfunction feels like, and I wasn’t about to let you deal with that all afternoon, no matter how much you tried to downplay it. My self-preservation instincts are hardly better than yours, but I wouldn’t even last longer than an hour or two before I’d be crawling out of my skin.”
“It isn’t really that bad,” Peter insists. “I probably could’ve handled…” He trails off at the deadpan look Tony shoots him.
“Kid. You’re doing it again.”
Peter’s mouth snaps shut.
Tony shuts the door with a smile and heads to the driver’s side.
They drive in silence for a short while, Peter hunkered down in his seat trying to suppress his reactions to his arc reactor’s shenanigans, and Tony shooting him discreet glances whenever he shifts uncomfortably in his seat from another jolt.
Eventually, Tony speaks. “Look, kid. I know how you’re feeling. And I don’t mean how the arc reactor feels—I mean I know how you feel. About all this. I know you want to try to pretend that this isn’t a huge deal. And I get it; you don’t want May to worry, you don’t want Ned or MJ to feel burdened, or think you’re weak.”
Peter says nothing. Tony is spot on, and Peter doesn’t want to admit aloud how right he is.
Tony continues. “And I get it. I do. Just ask Pepper how invincible I pretended to be after I got back from Afghanistan.” He huffs a laugh, but his face quickly grows serious again. He glances at Peter and back to the road, and then adds gently, “But you don’t always have to put on a brave face, kid—least of all for me.”
Peter’s arc reactor must be messing him up more than he thought, because he suddenly feels a lump in his throat.
“I’m the one person who understands the kind of trauma you’re experiencing,” Tony continues. “And make no mistake,” he adds quickly, before Peter can try to argue, “It is trauma. God.” He shakes his head and says, more to himself than to Peter, “I can’t believe how long it took me to admit that.”
He’s silent for a moment. Peter doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he doesn’t reply.
“But the malfunctions sure do a good job of reminding you, don’t they?” Tony says with a humourless laugh after a moment. His tone makes Peter suspect that he, too, got flashbacks to his accident when his arc reactor acted up.
“I wish it was as simple as just surgically implanting the arc reactor and you’re done,” Tony continues. “But it’s still gonna need lots of adjustments to get it working right with your biology. I was hoping it would just be the routine adjustments we’ve been doing so far, but—glitches like this are gonna happen sometimes too. The plus side is I’m more equipped to fix them now than I was when I was the one with the arc reactor.”
Peter suppresses a shudder. He can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Tony to have to figure all this out through trial and error on himself.
“Anyway, I am glad you called me,” Tony says. Then adds, with a glance at Peter and a quirk of his eyebrow, “Slightly less glad about the hanging up on me part.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter says quickly. “I just—felt bad about interrupting you at work. You’ve got so much to worry about already. And I didn’t want to add to that, so I…” Ended up adding to it anyway by hanging up on you, he finishes in his head.
Tony scoffs at that. “That’s where you’re wrong, kid. For one thing, it’s no trouble at all to come get you. The demands on my time aren’t as urgent as you think they are. For another, if I think you’re trying to hide any of your symptoms from me, I’m only going to worry more.” His tone grows softer and he adds, “So, promise me that the next time this happens, you won’t try to trivialize it, at least with me. Alright?”
“Alright,” Peter agrees. It won’t be easy, but it’s the least he can do, after everything Tony has done for him.
Tony glances at Peter and smiles before adding, “Being a cyborg sure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”
There’s a pause, and then they both break into laughter. Despite the discomfort it causes in Peter’s chest, it does lighten the mood a little, which Peter is grateful for.
“God, no,” he replies through the remains of his laughter. “Those RoboCop movies were a lie.”
A short while later, Peter is lying back on a reclining chair in Tony’s lab, his arc reactor on a table beside him, while Tony reaches into the casing in Peter’s chest with some specially-made plastic tools. (According to Tony, trying to use metal tools is akin to a game of Operation, except with more screams than buzzes.)
Peter is at the point now where he can observe Tony’s work with interest. During those first few weeks, when Tony had to make frequent adjustments to the voltage and frequency, it was a different story. Peter could barely even look down while the arc reactor was out of his chest. He both hated having it in and hated having it removed.
He adjusts the mirror attached to his chair to get a better look as he feels one of Tony’s tools nudge a loose object deep inside the casing.
“Yep, there’s your problem,” Tony says, leaning in for a closer look. “The toroidal inductor got jostled loose. I forgot to factor in your Spider-Man antics when I soldered it in there,” he adds with a smirk. “I made the same mistake when I designed it for myself too. I thought I’d fixed this flaw, but you must pull a lot of Gs when you’re on patrol. I’ll reinforce it. Shouldn’t happen again.”
Just then, Peter’s phone buzzes from a text message. He pulls it from his pocket. The message is from Ned.
How’s your puppy?
Peter smiles and types his reply.
He’ll be OK. Just have to reinforce my cables so he won’t chew through them again.
From Tony’s position leaning directly over Peter’s chest, he catches sight of Peter’s phone screen. He frowns at the message.
“‘Puppy?’”
Peter chuckles. He hasn’t let Tony in on this yet.
“It’s a metaphor,” he says. “A code word.”
That doesn’t seem to clear things up for Tony. His confused frown deepens.
“I don’t get it…Am I the puppy?”