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Peter gulps down another breath and thumbs a shard of bark he found next to the trunk he leans against. God, this is embarrassing—like, when he face-planted in front of Cindy Beckham in 6th grade embarrassing. It prickles on his skin like ants, the reality of his current situation. It’s not even what was argued; Peter believes in the validity of his argument, that’s not the issue—it’s what he did. Oh how Peter falls, felled by the challenges of early adulthood. And instead of confronting such issues with the gusto of a confident young adult, he ran away into the woods to…what? Consult the dryads?
His head hits the trunk. He palms the loose dirt under him, caressing pebbles and dying leaves. If he leans into his sensations he could forget all of this. The spider lurking within him comforts in these moments—the spider-sense feels the vibrations in the air, the insects blanketing the forest floor around him, the tree behind him buzzing with energy, and it all starts to feel like a mouth. Hot and wet and dismal.
The issue with opening his senses like this is that it quickly dissolves into overstimulation. Dappling sunlight stabs and so do the caresses with pebbles, sickness settles in the stomach, saliva coats his mouth—and the humid air goes from sitting in a mouth to being swallowed by it; suffocating and sticky.
It all zooms out too quickly. Peter groans, clutching his head.
“Is that the sound of regret, I hope?”
Tony. Shit. Peter knuckles his eyes. “For which part?”
“Gotta say all of it was a total trainwreck. Your argument construction skills are in dire need.”
“Uh-huh, sure. You have glasses?”
“Overstimulated?”
“Yep.”
Head ducked down, Peter holds his hand out and titanium wires cool his fingers. His eyes closed, Peter places the aviators on his face and opens them. The stabbing dulls into poking. Peter looks up at Tony—dressed in sweats and a V-neck sweater, a casual ensemble that shocks Peter as much as when he first saw it, arriving at the lake house—and he postures a kind of annoying amusement that prickles Peter’s “Tony sucks” sense.
“Well then,” Peter starts, stumbling to his feet, Tony catching him, “I’ll get out of your hair.” And he turns around and begins crawling up the tree.
“Peter Benjamin Parker you will not climb up that tree.”
Mouth agape, Peter whips his head to Tony. “I will not be middle-named.”
“Then don’t pull stunts that warrant being middle-named. Now get down or I swear to God I will get my rocket boots and bring you down myself.”
“Did you just call them rocket boots?”
Silence. Peter sighs and jumps down, crossing his arms. “What?”
“What was that?”
Peter shrugs. “I told you I’m not doing that internship.”
“No, you told me that you’re throwing away an amazing—”
Peter starts to climb the tree again.
“Hold it, Tarzan,” Tony says, Peter pausing. “You also told me you’re not going to any of the internships you applied for, despite getting into nearly half of them.”
“Because I decided that it would be better to help out May and get a job.”
“The internships are paid.”
“I need to watch over Queens.”
“There are like 3 vigilantes per square mile, I’m sure you can find someone to watch over.”
Peter feels that wretched thing wrap and whip around in his chest, vicing him. “It doesn’t matter, I’m not going.”
There’s a string of muttered curses with a thrown in Jesus Christ. Tony waves his hands a little, exasperated. “But why?”
They stare at each other. Unspoken sentiment passes between them—and it’s then Peter knows they’re dancing around the truth, that they both know why, that Tony can read between the lines. A coward knows a coward.
His body deflates and he slides down the tree once more. The bark catches his cotton shirt and drags it up, leaving his back bare and scratched, the knobs on his spine red. He readjusts the shirt and rubs his eyes which displaces the aviators. Peter considers throwing them in Tony’s face and if he’d have to pay for them if broken. Tony joins him in the dirt.
“I did the spelling bee when I was a kid,” Peter says, “and I was pretty good at it. Won the initial contests in my grade and then at the entire school, and then it was the county, and when it was time for the state competition I faked sick so I wouldn’t have to go.”
Peter watches Tony watch the trees, gauging a reaction. He just nods.
“I felt sick, leading up to it. I couldn’t eat, all I could think about was messing it up. May would’ve had to take off work to drive me—and you had to pay for the hotel and a deposit fee to compete, and even though May never said anything I felt like. Like if I failed I would’ve wasted all of this time and money, and she’d be upset with me, 'cause money was always a problem.”
“The internships aren’t a competition, Pete.”
“But they are. The other reason I dreaded that competition was because the further I got, the smarter the kids were. For a while, I was the big fish in a small pond, but as I progressed my pond got bigger and so did the other fish. I—I couldn’t compare, after a while. And that’s what those internships are too. The best of the best, some even better than me. And there could be enough smarter kids that I don’t get one of the recommendation letters, or job offers, or I fail to network and succeed.”
Peter swallows down the lump in his throat, inhaling. Spelling Bees—bringing existential dread and tears since their creation.
“What’s the key factor to the inventing process?”
“C’mon Tony don’t do the whole vague thing—“
“Failure.” He says, and it reverberates through the forest, tickling the trees’ roots and sealing Peter’s throat shut, “Failure is key. Do you know how many times I’ve fallen flat on my face? Literally and metaphorically? Do you know how much people's money, time, care, and more I’ve wasted from failing? How I’ve embarrassed myself time and time again with my beautiful wax wings melting down to a pathetic puddle?”
Peter stares at the ground.
“A lot. Too many to count, actually. And I’m sure you’ve failed too, but because this feels big, you think that failing is gonna obliterate you and there’ll be no return. Which isn’t true. You know what’s going to happen if you fail? You’ll live. And you’ll keep going. And then you’ll eventually fail big again and you’ll ding ding ding! Keep living.”
“People only talk about their successes,” Peter grumbles.
“Because success is hollow. It lacks substance so it’s easy to talk about. Failure—it’s heavy. It’s being burned down to ashes. It’s trudging through mud and getting caked in it. Shorn to stubble. And then it’s rising from the ashes and washing yourself clean and growing what you lost. It forces you to be a person and confront the specific part of you that failed—to look and introspect at the underbelly of what you don’t want to know. Failure is reincarnation—success is stasis.”
Tony claps Peter on the back. “Look, I get it. It’s embarrassing to faceplant. But everyone faceplants and the people who pretend they aren’t are the most insecure of the bunch. So faceplant. Fail. Embarrass yourself. It’ll work itself out, George.”
Peter looks at him, brows furrowing. “Of the jungle?”
“Glad you caught the reference.”
He bumps his shoulder against Tony, laughs a little, rolls his eyes, “Lame.”
It falls into a comfortable silence as Peter gnaws on Tony’s words. Peter zooms in with his spider-sense again—not enough to injure himself—and feels the thousands of insects weaving and surviving in their micro-ecosystems. Failure for them is absurd, catastrophic—and human failure contains an absurdity too, but Peter failing this internship won’t result in his death the way an ant failing its job as an ant would result in its demise. It’s a privilege, in that way, to be a human and fail, to be able to perceive failure and success and desire.
And if Tony of all people can fail, can strip himself of his flesh and fat and tendons, down to the fragile bone that dissolves and then build himself anew, why can’t he?
“Okay, I’ll do the internship,” Peter says, “But I will complain. A lot. And still remain grateful for the opportunity at the same time—but still. I’ll complain too. And it’ll be your fault.”
“Hm. And I assume I’ll be on the receiving end of the complaining?”
“Oh yeah. Don’t even think about putting me on Do Not Disturb.”
Tony grins. “Wouldn’t try.”
They both stand. Tony looks at him and Peter can see the failures he’s collected over his lifetime; in the wrinkles on his forehead and crow-feet, in the smile that’s softened the longer Peter’s known him, in his titanium arm, in his sweater threads and gray hairs. It’s all rebirth.
“I’m proud of you,” Tony says, and Peter feels elated and embarrassed in a confusing dichotomy. His default setting for validation.
“Right.” Peter blinks. “Thank you. Sir.”
“It’s still terrifying—you should be proud of yourself too, for doing it.”
Peter bobs his head. “Totally.”
Tony rolls his eyes and pulls him in a hug. It’s a little stiff and awkward, but his throat closes again anyway, and he grips Tony’s dorky sweater—eyes burning.
They separate and Peter looks at the roofs of trees, blinking until any tears recede. Tony holds a staring contest with his shoes.
“Thanks, Tony.”
They look at each other. Peter realizes he had it wrong—the coward thing. They’re something different, something stronger.
“No problem kid.”