Chapter Text
“But it would be so much lighter if it was made of carbon-fiber!” Peter argued as he swiveled around on his stool, but Tony didn’t even look at him. The billionaire’s attention was fixed on the bluish hologram in front of him, which showed the unfinished design of the new Iron Man suit.
They were on Tony’s new very secret workshop, a rather small cabin in the middle of the woods—small for Tony’s standards, of course, because it was bigger that any apartment Peter had ever lived in.
The Sokovia Accords still allowed Tony to work on his suits, as long as he kept the government in the loop about his breakthroughs—he didn't, of course. However, that didn't mean all the new faces in American politics fancied the millionaire tinkering with weapons of mass destruction—not after Ultron. So Tony had sought a more discreet hideout than a mansion perched on a cliff.
“For the umpteenth time, Peter, that’s the dumbest idea you’ve ever had.”
“But—”
“Listen,” Tony sighed, exhausted, though not because of Peter. “I know flashy armors seem very cool, but you're not Iron Man, Peter, and I'm not Spider-Man. I need—”
Tony spun around to face the boy and found him tugging at the drawstrings of his hoodie. Only Peter's nose peeked out from beneath the hood, the rest of his face hidden.
Tony could only stare.
When Peter realized Mr. Stark was looking at him, he hastily pulled the hood down, nearly falling off the stool in the process. He managed to regain his balance at the last second, then smiled sheepishly as though nothing had happened.
Tony raised an eyebrow, trying to look like the responsible adult in the room, when in reality he could barely hold back a chuckle.
Teenagers... They were incapable of staying focused, weren't they?
“As I was saying,” he continued, in a lighter mood than before, “your weaknesses are not the same as mine. You have powers, Peter, real powers. You're able to stop a moving car and stand up to the Winter Soldier. You might prefer your suit to be light and flexible, but if I’m hit by an alien beam, I'd better have that armor protecting me. Got it?”
Peter opened his mouth to argue, but nothing came out. He just babbled for a second before blurting out, “Well then, I’m out of ideas!”
With that, Tony’s attention returned to the problem at hand, and his mood darkened. He glanced at the hologram, still hovering above the table like a painful reminder that, no matter how high his IQ was, some problems didn’t have an easy solution.
“The way this is going, I think I have no choice but to redesign the entire energy regulation system,” he admitted. “There’s no way to get the plates covering the rear reactors to open faster. And if they don’t, the new reactors will melt them.”
With a hopeless sigh, Tony turned around again and began to disassemble the holographic suit piece by piece for a clearer view of the energy regulation system. He was already thinking about directing energy from the core to the rear reactors through the torso instead of over the shoulders when Peter gasped behind him. The gasp alone made Tony smile.
The kid had an idea.
“What if you replace the lubricant?” Peter suggested.
Tony didn’t turn around, didn’t face him.
Instead, he started putting the pieces of the suit back in place. He wouldn’t need to redesign the energy regulation system anymore.
“Which is your favorite subject in school, Peter?”
“Chemistry,” the boy answered, to which Tony scoffed.
“Really? Chemistry? With all the possibilities engineering has to offer, and you prefer chemistry?” the billionaire teased, only half-heartedly.
Peter simply shrugged. “It came in handy when I was making my webs. Besides, engineering works with the materials you already have. Chemistry lets you make new ones. There are millions of compounds nobody's ever synthesized, and even more reactions nobody's tried yet. Isn't that awesome?”
Tony hummed. He was already testing potential lubricant formulas on his computer, but didn’t spare Peter a glance or a smile or any sort of acknowledgment. No, they weren’t there yet.
“Well, whatever you chose to do in the future, I’m pretty sure you will excel at it.”
“God, Peter, stop drooling! I’m trying to take notes and your whimpering is very distracting.”
Peter was dimly aware of a female voice calling his name, but it wasn’t enough to pull him from the bittersweet dream he’d been having.
When the voice fell silent, his mind drifted under again. Tony’s back came into view once more, the familiar nape of his neck just out of reach. Always his back, always his nape… Peter had spent most of his time with Tony chasing his shadow, only to discover that shadow was too long to ever reach the end of it.
So he'd stepped out of it.
The rustling of papers and the scraping of chairs against the floor were finally annoying enough to bring him back to reality, so Peter raised his arms from under his forehead—where they’d been serving him as a pillow—to cover his ears.
As soon as he did that, smack!, a hand ruthlessly slapped his forehead.
Peter bolted upright so fast his chair tipped over, crashing onto the floor behind him as he barely stopped himself from vaulting onto the table. Months of forcing himself to act like a normal human being in public had kicked in just in time.
A chuckle drew his attention to the side. The black girl with thick braids was already finishing packing her things into her backpack. She looked far too amused.
“Weirdo,” she called over her shoulder, though there was no real bite to it, as she turned around to leave the classroom.
“Wait!” Peter shouted, to no avail. The girl was already walking away.
He snatched up his laptop, phone, and books, then hurried after her. By the time he caught up, she was already stepping through the doorway.
She didn’t even spare him a glance, as though his presence by her side was already so natural that he was little more than part of the scenery.
As they walked through the door together, Riri finally spoke.
“Why do you always react like your life is on the line?” she asked, genuine curiosity in her voice. “It feels like you’re always in fight-or-flight mode.”
“Sorry—rough childhood,” Peter teased, and it was half-true. Was fighting Thanos at sixteen considered a rough childhood? Did waking up five years later and losing the only father figure he’d ever had count as a traumatic experience? Was being erased from everyone’s memory reason enough to fall asleep in class?
He shook the thought from his head. He considered Riri a friend, truly, and he didn’t have many—but there were things he didn’t want her to ask about.
Riri had been, in many ways, an accident.
Peter had never intended to go to MIT—those dreams had died the moment all his school records and every other trace of his existence vanished after Strange's spell. Instead, he’d left Peter Parker behind and focused on being only Spider-Man, the hero he was sure Tony would’ve been proud of. Maybe May too—no, hell, he knew from the start she would never have approved of what he was doing to himself, but he tried not to think about it, tried to convince himself he didn’t have a choice.
Jean had changed all that. What had begun as a fight against a mysterious force had become a gift wrapped in shadows. The incident with Jean Grey and Damage Control had forced him back into MJ’s and Ned’s lives, and when they welcomed him with open arms, he hadn’t had the strength to walk away a second time.
They were still rebuilding. Jean had restored something in their minds—a whisper, muscle memory—but the memories of their childhood together hadn’t returned. Even so, Peter didn’t have the heart to mourn that. They were welcoming him back into their lives, little by little. Less than a year earlier, he wouldn't have dared hope for it. It still felt surreal. He didn’t want to be greedy.
It was MJ who suggested he start attending classes at MIT.
Obviously, he couldn’t earn a degree. He couldn’t officially enroll. But at a university that big, with hundreds of students coming and going every day, nobody would notice one more face quietly sitting at the back of a lecture hall. She said it would help Peter be Peter again, that it would give him an excuse to interact with other people.
So, he started going to Cambridge, Massachusetts, three days a week. It was a four-hour drive, but he could cover half the distance by swinging, which cut the trip down to about two hours.
Sometimes he felt guilty for leaving New Yorkers on their own, but he tried to remind himself that things had been quiet over the past year. Rumors had spread around—crime didn't pay in New York anymore. There were too many vigilantes. Criminals had fled the city like rats.
As a result, MIT it was.
Enter Riri: a seventeen-year-old taking graduate courses. They had sat in the back together without exchanging a word for almost three weeks, although Peter had had a nagging feeling about her from the start. At the beginning of October, he found out why. From then on, he stuck to her like glue.
It was now June.
Realizing they'd been walking in silence for a while, Peter snapped out of his thoughts and asked Riri, "So, did the formula work?"
They were walking down the corridor of the Physics Building, where they had just attended Advanced Thermodynamics together. She was studying Electrical Engineering, and while he mostly snuck into graduate Chemistry lectures, he sometimes tagged along to her classes to keep an eye on her.
Riri scrunched up her nose in a way that said, I wish!, then answered, “No, it didn’t.”
“What? That can't be right.” Peter said. “I checked the formula twice.”
“I know, but I think the steel from the junkyard wasn’t as clean as we thought.” Riri adjusted her backpack. She did that when she was frustrated. “There must've been contaminants we didn't account for.”
Peter instantly understood and threw his arms up. “The paint. It must’ve been the paint.” He took a closer look at Riri’s face. Yep, she’d tried to hide it, but the corner of her left eyebrow was slightly singed. “Did it explode?”
“No, but it got… really hot.” She sounded sheepish.
As soon as she said that, Peter felt guilt tighten around his chest.
“Oh, God, I’m so, so sorry, Riri. Really, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I should’ve been more careful. I should’ve taken all the factors into account. I wasn’t paying enough attention. I—”
“Shut up!” she snapped, looking at him for the first time since leaving the class. “Ugh. You’re always apologizing. It’s so annoying.”
“Sorr—”
“Don’t. Just don’t.” She raised a hand to cut him off before he could apologize again. “You always do that, and I’m not good at dealing with your…” She searched for the right words but found none, so she settled on, “…emotional shit. Just stop apologizing for everything. It’s maddening.”
When she finished, she looked away and started walking twice as fast. Peter let her get a few steps ahead—he’d learned the hard way to respect her boundaries.
Riri was like a grumpy cat: get too close, and she'd scratch you. In reality, she was just shy. Fitting in had never been easy—it was one of the downsides of being younger than everyone else at one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Given that Peter had waited four years before coming to the MIT, he was five years older: almost twenty-two, while she was barely seventeen. The only thing they had in common was that they kept to themselves—Riri because of the age gap, and Peter because he didn't want to draw attention to himself, since he wasn’t a real student. (Or, at least, that was the explanation he’d given her, and she hadn’t questioned it.)
It had taken Riri a while to warm up to him. He’d had to prove he was useful by showing her he was a better chemist than she was, and only then had she begrudgingly started asking him for help with some of her “side projects,” although she always kept the bigger picture hidden from him. That had been the start of their friendship, new as it was.
After a few moments, Peter approached silently, closing the distance between them. He stopped a few feet behind her, not entirely sure whether he was allowed to walk by her side yet.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Riri blurted suddenly. “Yes, the flames were green. Your formula probably reacted with the paint residue, although I’m not sure why.”
“I have a few theories. I could go by your workshop and get a sample, perhaps?” Peter finished, his voice growing quieter as the words left his mouth.
It was a hopeless request, he knew.
In nearly eight months of friendship, Riri had never let him set foot in her workshop. Peter didn't even know where it was. She guarded that secret with almost paranoid determination. All he'd managed to piece together was that it had to be somewhere near the port—an old warehouse, if he had to guess.
He could have found it ages ago. Following her would have been easy. However, he never did. Riri was his friend, and if she wanted him there, she'd invite him when she was ready.
She never had.
As expected, Riri shot him her most murderous look.
“Thanks. I'll grab a sample for you.” Her tone left no room for negotiation. “Are you coming to class tomorrow?”
Peter let out the most dramatic sigh he could muster—he wasn’t willing to push her, but he was more than willing to guilt-trip her.
“Don’t be a drama queen,” she chuckled.
As she said that, Riri pushed open the glass door leading outside, and they stepped into the plaza in front of the Physics Building.
Immediately, Peter felt his spider-sense tingle. It wasn't the sharp warning of an imminent threat, but the familiar, uncomfortable itch he was growing used to whenever he was around Riri.
As soon as they stepped outside, he spotted them: two intimidating black women with obviously fake wigs sipping coffee to their left—the Dora Milaje—and five American agents in black suits scattered across the plaza. Two stood by the fountain, one "reading" last week's newspaper on a nearby bench, and the other two were blatantly spying on them from one of the windows of the Math building. They blended in so poorly with the students that Peter couldn't understand how no one else had noticed them yet.
There are more than usual, Peter observed with a frown, referring to the agents. Letting his protective instincts take over, he slipped his arm through Riri's, gently drawing her closer in the most unsubtle way possible.
He felt the Dora Milaje shooting daggers at him, but he ignored them.
“You’re too clingy,” Riri complained, but made no attempt to shake him off.
Peter’s tingling told him the Dora Milaje weren’t happy with how little resistance Riri was putting up either, and the boy could see the agents by the fountain taking notes, updating their boss—whoever that was—about Riri’s new friend.
“So, coming to class tomorrow?”
Peter didn’t hear the question because, just then, he caught sight of two agents heading straight toward them. Despite the determination in their eyes, Peter half expected them to turn and change course at any moment, but they didn’t. They kept walking. Straight toward Riri.
Peter tensed and tightened his grip on Riri's forearm. Were they going to bump into them? They’d never been this bold. What did they wan—?
…Oh.
One of the agents—a buff, forty-something man in a fitted suit—had his right fist clenched around something. A syringe? A bug? Whatever it was, Peter was baffled.
Never before had they engaged in such direct contact. They’d always kept their distance, though the boy didn’t know whether they were following orders or if the Dora Milaje had been keeping them at bay.
This time, however, the Dora Milaje drinking coffee near the Physics Building were too far away to intervene without making a fuss on campus. They were already up and moving, but it didn't take a genius to tell they wouldn't want to make their presence known.
Whatever their interest in Riri was, it was obvious she wasn’t supposed to find out.
The agents were closing in, the Dora Milaje wouldn’t make it, and Riri remained blissfully oblivious to what was about to happen. It was then that Peter realized he’d have to do something.
He didn’t like the idea—he’d worked very hard to keep a low profile, and meddling in the affairs of the Americans would put a target on his back—, but he did it anyway.
He pretended not to notice them until the last second. As they were about to bump into each other, he grabbed Riri and pulled her abruptly to the side, moving her out of the way.
He had to give it to the two men, though: they didn’t even flinch when their target suddenly became out of reach. They kept walking, expressionless, as Riri and Peter hurried away in the opposite direction.
“What was that?” Riri asked with a confused frown as Peter pulled her along faster, so he answered:
“There was gum on the floor.”
Fortunately, she didn’t turn around to check.
He didn’t turn around either, but he could feel the agents’ gazes on his nape, both confused, both a bit annoyed by the interference.
It wasn't the first time he'd gotten in their way, but he was usually more subtle. He’d gotten lost on purpose once to throw off her stalkers, and another time he’d caused a little fire in the cafeteria, but he was pretty sure no one connected that last one to him.
This was the first time his actions could seem truly intentional, and he couldn’t help but feel a little worried. He hoped it wasn’t enough to put him on their radar—he didn’t want to get dragged into whatever game the US government and the Dora Milaje were playing.
(Ugh, he hated the subtleties of espionage.)
However, there was something else that bothered him more: the agents had never been so bold as to try to bug Riri.
Are they finally making a move?, he wondered. He clicked his tongue. What an inconvenience.
What had changed? He’d been sticking to her for months and had never sensed danger.
“Peter, are you listening to me?”
No, he wasn’t. He was too busy keeping an eye out for potential bugging attempts.
He suddenly spotted one of the Dora Milaje from before atop the Math building. She was staring at them—at him—, so Peter tried not to look at her directly, pretending to be as oblivious as any regular civilian.
Her partner was nowhere to be seen, and Peter tried not to think about what the other Dora Milaje was doing to the two agents that’d just tried to wire Riri.
I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know, he told himself, although every cell in his body was screaming that he should make sure those agents weren’t banged up, half-dead in a dumpster.
(There was one thing he hated more than the subtleties of espionage, and that was the not-so-subtleties of politics, especially the art of “sending a message.”)
Peter had long stopped wondering how the hell Riri had gotten herself into that mess, being tailed by the two most powerful countries in the world—because the agents had to be American, that was the only thing Peter knew about them. The particular agency they worked for—Damage Control? The New Avengers?—he had no idea.
Riri was a smart girl with little to no instinct of self-preservation, so it was only a matter of time before she attracted the wrong kind of attention. In fact, the more Peter got to know her, the more he realized how exceptional she was, so it came as less and less of a surprise that she had two fucking Dora Milaje as her personal bodyguards. After all, Tony’d taught Peter the dangers of being too smart for one’s own good.
And despite the fact that this tug-of-war between America and Wakanda was happening on a weekly basis, Riri remained blissfully oblivious. It was part of her character: she didn’t register anything she wasn’t interested in, including classmates, the weather, or even car accidents happening in front of her. (Peter had learned this from experience.)
The end of the world could be unfolding before her and she would be too engrossed in a book about Power Electronics to notice.
Well, Peter certainly wasn’t going to tell her about the Dora Milaje. It wasn’t worth antagonizing Wakanda.
Of course, he shouldn’t know about the Dora Milaje either, and he wouldn’t know if it hadn’t been for his spider-senses.
He’d noticed something was off in his first Thermodynamic class, the one he had with Riri—though he didn’t know her at the time. His spider-senses kept tingling, but Peter wasn’t able to pinpoint where the threat was coming from. Besides, it was more of a background noise, not a true, concerning warning, so he’d let it go.
However, the following week that uncomfortable feeling came back, and although whatever was happening didn’t seem life-threatening, he just couldn’t ignore it.
Twice in a row, in the same class? That was a pattern.
He’d found the source of his discomfort during the third lecture: He noticed a woman pretending to talk on her phone while spying on Riri, so Peter immediately rushed to the girl—who was a stranger by then—and grabbed her arm as if they were the closest of friends in an attempt to get her to safety.
He ended up with a black eye.
Needless to say, Peter and Riri didn’t get off to a good start.
Only by observing her day after day as the good stalker he was did he realize what was happening: both the Dora Milaje and what could only be the US government had an interest on her. After a month, Peter came to the conclusion that neither of them wanted to hurt Riri and calmed down, but by then, somehow, they’d already become friends.
And Peter didn’t regret a thing.
He didn’t have many friends, and it was rare to meet a person his age who was as smart as he was. Even smarter, maybe. (Not just maybe—for sure.)
“PETER!” Riri yelled, and Peter realized she’d been calling him for a while.
He cast one last sidelong glance towards the Dora Milaje at the top of the Math building and then turned his attention to Riri, who was pouting at him. “What’s up?” he asked nonchalantly.
“So? Are you coming or not?”
“Come where?”
“Tomorrow. Spectral Graph Theory Class. Sample. Do I have to spell it for you?”
“Yeah, yeah. Right. Sorry. I’ll be there.”
Riri shook her head and rolled her eyes—he might be smart, she was thinking, but she was lucky if she could get his attention for more than three seconds. Quite a contrast to her, who could get so absorbed in her own mind that the outside world became no more than a haze.
They had reached the side door of the Math building, where she had class next. A bunch of students gathered in front of the main entrance, chatting happily between classes, but she preferred to avoid crowds.
She pulled the glass door open, then paused for a second to bid goodbye to Peter. "See you tomorrow then,” she said, and took a step in.
"Actually…" Before he realized what he was doing, Peter had blocked the door with his foot. Riri turned around and found him standing under the frame, biting his lower lip in hesitation. “I’m free right now. How about I sneak into your class?”
“This class is about advanced theorems in probability. I thought you weren’t interested in non-practical classes,” Riri said dryly.
“No,” Peter admitted. “But I’m sure I could learn something useful.”
If the agents were really making a move, or planned to do so, he didn’t feel comfortable leaving her alone, even if it was only for a few hours and the Dora Milaje kept watch over her 24/7.
Riri shrugged and resumed walking, giving him tacit permission to follow her. She pretended she didn’t care about him coming—that was her default self-defense mechanism: indifference—, but she was actually delighted.
She’d only known him for eight months, two weeks, three days, six hours, and seven minutes, but she had to admit she’d grown fond of him.