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Peter doesn’t deal well with stress.
His exams are coming up, he’s been having to patrol more often, and he’s been working on a new version of his web-shooters that for some reason just don’t work the way he wants them to. It’s safe to say that Peter is, honest to God, one hundred percent stressed.
Now, if Peter was a better functioning human being he would have been able to deal with all of his stress factors in a healthy way. He would be studying more productively, patrolling less, and would have simply accepted that he would just need to shelve the prototype for another day. Sadly, Peter isn’t as well-adjusted as some people may perceive him to be, resulting in him simply continuing on with his life as if everything was perfectly a-okay.
He continues to patrol almost daily, worries about his exams and spends way too much time in the lab. This works out just fine for a week or two, where he manages to get by with only a little bit of sleep deprivation. Still, Peter is only human. He can’t keep going on like this forever.
His breaking point happens on a Saturday afternoon.
He had been staying at Stark Tower, spending his time studying for his chemistry test while waiting for Tony to come home from a meeting. Sure, Peter enjoyed chemistry, but for some reason, he was having an immensely difficult time trying to focus on his reading material. Peter softly sighed, crossing his arms after flipping yet another page.
Maybe he just needed a snack first, he thought.
He closed his book before making his way to the kitchen, his socked feet shuffling across the heated floor. He pulled open a cabinet, studying its contents before moving to another cabinet. And then another. And then one more. Over and over, until he had glanced over every single item of food in the kitchen.
Peter worried his lip between his teeth, swaying from side to side on his feet as he considered his options. There were so many things to pick from, but nothing seemed appealing enough at the moment. His eyes flicker over a bag of chocolate chips, which suddenly brings him to an idea. Why not just bake some cookies?
He quickly gathers the necessary ingredients, after asking FRIDAY to look up a recipe. (He’s willing to admit that he’s an alright cook, but he still isn’t skilled enough to operate without a recipe). FRIDAY preheats the oven for him, while Peter starts measuring out all of the ingredients.
This is where he makes his first mistake.
Tony seemed to be running a bit low on flour, which meant that Peter only had about three-quarters of the amount he needed. Now, Peter thought, how much would it hurt to just use a little less flour? Maybe his cookies would end up being a bit smaller, but that wouldn't be so terrible. He could just eat more of them!
For a while, everything seemed to go just fine. He had his dry and wet ingredients measured out and was about to move onto the next step when the oven beeped, signaling that it was preheated. Peter glanced at the oven, then at the clock, and then finally at the little bowl of weighed-out butter he was holding on to. The recipe said to melt the butter, but that would take another minute or so to do, and Peter was getting antsy.
He eventually just shrugs his shoulders, before dumping the still-solid butter in with the dry ingredients, before moving on to adding the eggs and mixing until a dough forms. The dough looks, and tastes, great. He can’t help but get excited when thinking about handing Tony a freshly baked cookie when he gets home. He’ll be so surprised, Peter thinks while smiling to himself.
Finally Peter throws a healthy helping of chocolate chips in with the dough, mixing carefully to incorporate them. FRIDAY helps him locate a scooper, which he uses to make perfectly uniform balls of the cookie dough. He places them on a baking sheet, and carefully slides them into the oven.
He then realized he now has to actually start cleaning up the mess that he had made. Although he is a decent cook, cleaning up had never been Peter’s forte. He could do it, of course, but he wasn’t necessarily good at it, nor did he enjoy it. But no matter what, there was a pile of dishes that needed to be washed, and Peter hesitantly took up the task.
His positive mindset came crumbling down around him when he actually started the cleaning.
Are you at all familiar with that feeling of being perfectly fine in a stressful situation, until one teeny tiny thing goes wrong, and all of a sudden it feels like the world is going to end? Maybe you stub your toe, or you find out that your favorite flavor of yogurt is being discontinued, and suddenly you find yourself sobbing uncontrollably on your bathroom floor?
For Peter, that moment comes when he drops a glass mixing bowl.
His hands had been slippery from the soapy water, and the bowl had simply slipped from in between Peter’s fingers as he was lifting it out of the sink. The bowl crashed onto the very edge of the countertop, where it shattered into innumerable tiny shards of glass.
Peter had jumped away in shock, now on the other side of the room, safely away from any pieces of glass he could possibly step on. For a second, he just stands there and stares. There’s glass and splashes of soapy water everywhere. The kitchen is a mess. Then he sinks down onto the floor and just starts to sob.
And that's how, 15 minutes later, Tony finds him.
Tony walks into the penthouse to the sound of Peter’s dramatic sobbing, and the scent of cookies. He’s pretty alarmed when he steps in the kitchen and finds Peter sitting against a kitchen cabinet, face pressed up against his knees, surrounded by broken pieces of glass.
“Peter?” he asks as he crouches down beside the younger man, “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Peter looks up at him, face flushed and streaked with tears. He shrugs his shoulders, before burrowing his head back against his legs. Tony caringly rubs his back, his brow furrowed in worry. What had happened for Peter to be such a wreck? Surely it wasn’t the broken bowl, Peter knew well enough that Tony didn’t mind replacing such trivial things as that. Maybe it had been the shock of breaking something?
“It’s okay, baby. It’s just some glass, nothing to be worried about,” he says as he tenderly strokes Peter’s hair.
After a few more comforting words and some more physical touch Peter seems to calm down a bit, wiping the tears away with the sleeve of his shirt. He shoots Tony a watery smile, sniffing as he does.
“I’m sorry, I’m just- I’m just acting really dumb right now. I don’t know why dropping a mixing bowl upset me this much.”
Tony shakes his head in disapproval, “Peter, you’re not being dumb at all. I think you might just be a bit frustrated, or worked up. Could that be it?”
In return, Peter gives him a sheepish nod.
“When that happens,” Tony continues, “it usually leads to pretty dramatic reactions to small things. It’s nothing to be worried about, as long as you make sure to work on the thing that’s making you this frustrated. If you don’t it will probably just get worse”.
“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience”.
Tony lets out an amused laugh as he stands back up from his crouched position, hissing slightly at the strain he feels in his knees.
“That I sure am, sweetheart”.
Tony wanders over to the oven, careful to avoid the glass, and peeks through the see-through window to figure out what exactly Peter had been baking. It turns out he was baking- well, Tony isn’t exactly sure what Peter had been baking. The baked good smells like chocolate chip cookies and he can even make out chocolate chips peeking through the dough, but the dough itself was spread out and thin, close to burning at the very edges of the baking sheet. The middle doesn’t look cooked all the way through.
Tony, quietly and inconspicuously, turns off the oven. He opens the oven door, and pulls out the tray of supposed-to-be cookies, carefully setting them down on the countertop.
“Do they look nice?” Peter asks from where he’s still seated on the kitchen floor, thankfully no longer crying.
“Pete,” Tony starts, trying to pick his words carefully so as not to upset Peter again, “I don’t think they’ll win a beauty pageant any time soon, but you could probably eat from the middle with a spoon if you wanted to”.
“Oh,” Peter responds, sounding more disappointed than sad.
Tony turns around to face him, a gentle smile on his face.
“I know they’re not home-made cookies, but I believe we still have some Toll House cookie dough in the freezer. How would you feel about throwing some of that in the oven, and then we can talk about what’s been bothering you so much?”
Peter smiles, the type of smile that makes his eyes scrunch up in the most adorable manner, before nodding. Tony’s heart swells up at the sight of it, suddenly overcome with the realization that he would go to the end of the world — and probably even further — just to make Peter smile like that.
“I’ll go get a broom,” he says.