Chapter Text
Peter Parker struggles to fit in.
That has been a fact of life for him since he was a little kid. He’s an orphan (yes, his aunt is alive, but still), just barely over the poverty line yet attending a fairly prestigious STEM school, and just, well, a nerd. A nerd who still frequently plays with Legos, and gets offended when someone confuses Star Trek for Star Wars. (They are extremely different, thank you very much.)
Oh, and the half-human, half-spider thing. Can’t forget about that.
After an unfortunate encounter with a radioactive spider when he was freshly 15, Peter’s DNA mutated, allowing him to become the wall-crawling, web-slinging, pun-making vigilante most New Yorkers know as Spider-Man.
Giving credit where credit is due, his popularity has increased tenfold since he debuted in all his spider-y glory. His official social media accounts (all with the same username, @MaskedSpiderNY) have at least 500,000 followers each, his Twitter being closer to 2 million. He’s constantly being recognized, has become somewhat of a feared name among criminals, and even has his own merch. That’s the best part of his newfound fame, in Peter’s opinion. (Other than the time Ned felt the need to tell him he was wearing Spider-Man boxers. TMI, dude…)
However, people liking Spider-Man—the friendly neighborhood persona that Peter has spent too much time perfecting—doesn’t mean they like Peter, or even the weirder side of Spider-Man. Sure, they enjoy the quick-witted quips he slings just as often as he slings his webs, and they enjoy that he keeps civilians safe in times of crisis, but they don’t know him.
Being half spider isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Actually, it is; he loves being Spider-Man, but sometimes things get… odd. Like when he hears a rat in the walls of his apartment and has the urge to catch it and eat it, or when he gets too cold and gets the sudden, irresistible urge to nap (which he later found out was his body going into hibernation.)
Or that one time his leg got cut off and regrew in a few hours. Don’t tell Aunt May about that one; she’d flip out.
The leg thing is how he found his favorite way to share his deepest personal woes with the world, though! The night it happened, Peter was anxious and mildly delirious (for obvious reasons), so just as any average teenager with a terrifyingly high pain tolerance and lack of adult supervision in a trauma-causing situation would, he decided to tweet about it.
On his personal account, @PeanutButterPjelly, he typed up a brief explanation of the predicament he was in, clicked the “post” button without hesitation, turned his phone off, and promptly fell asleep. It was only the next day that he’d realized just what exactly he’d shared with the world.
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Peter One @PeanutButterPjelly • 7h
if i hypothetically lost my leg but then grew it back, would i still be able to call out of my spanish test tomorrow ???
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Staring down at his phone in an uncomfortable mixture of horror and awe, Peter can’t help but notice how well the post has done. It has nearly 50,000 retweets and double the likes. It even has a decent amount of comments, everyone replying with overwhelming approval. They all took it as a joke, but they liked it. His joke, where he shared a very private part of his life, was met with enthusiasm rather than distaste.
After the first one had blown up, Peter began to tweet about his everyday spider-struggles, disguising them all as one-liners. His account quickly gained popularity, with thousands of people finding his content to be anywhere from “oddly relatable” to “funny in an absurd way.”
Of course, no one knows that Peter is telling any amount of truth with his tweets, but he doesn’t care. A lot of these things he doesn’t even feel comfortable telling Ned, MJ, or even May—not wanting to weird them out or be seen differently for his instincts post-mutation—so having an outlet where he can share his thoughts without worry has been great for him.
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Peter One @PeanutButterPjelly • 16s
one day someone's going to show up at my house and i’ll have to explain the human-sized web in the corner…
Peter One @PeanutButterPjelly • 19h
anyone else think it’d be fun to hunt the NY rats for sport/sustenance? no just me??? ok…
Peter One @PeanutButterPjelly • 1d
“i’m not an insect!!!” i yell. they don’t listen.
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Somehow, Mr. Stark never fails to be the downfall of Peter’s “foolproof” plans.
“What the hell is with your posts recently, kid?” Tony asks over the comms he and the rest of the Avengers (plus Peter!) share. Another overzealous alien hoard with a slightly stronger alien leader is attacking, so of course they’re all there to take the hits that an average person couldn’t. Saving the world, one glob of Mystery Goo to the eye at a time.
Peter is swinging toward one of the little blue bastards when his mentor’s voice crackles in his ear, so he wavers a bit on the landing and ends up knocking the alien out cold with nothing but his feet and physics. He tumbles to the ground, landing on his face (ouch), and is immediately swarmed by a dozen more aliens looking for a fight (even more ouch).
“What do you mean, Mr. Stark?” Peter shouts, finally responding, as he expertly dodges blasts of goo and limbs he’s only 60% sure are the aliens’ arms.
“You’ve been posting the weirdest things recently! I follow you, you know,” Tony replies, as if it’s common knowledge. Peter did not know that.
“Uh—”
“Can you guys focus?!” Clint bellows, cutting off whatever Peter was about to say.
Instead, Peter spends the next 20 minutes fighting off aliens, webbing them to the ground, the walls, or wherever else there’s room, and overthinking.
He knows, rationally, that Mr. Stark probably wouldn’t call him weird for having a spider’s instincts. Especially not because he knows exactly how mutated Peter is, having been there when Dr. Banner did thorough testing on his DNA. Nonetheless, the possibility scares him. What if Mr. Stark is grossed out by it all? What if he hadn’t realized how badly this mutation actually affects Peter, and finding out through Twitter of all places causes him to change his mind? Will Peter lose the suit again? Will he lose his connection to the Avengers—to Tony, for good? Over the time they’ve worked together, Peter has bonded with the man in a way he’s only ever bonded with family, and he’s terrified to lose him. To lose the third father figure in his life, all because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about a few stupid impulses he had.
He hits an alien a little too hard, and his hand goes through it. He startles out of his spiral to stare at his fist, covered in goo and what he can only assume is this alien’s guts, and takes a wavering step back. That had been the last one, so he gives himself a moment to exhale shakily.
“Kid?” He hears. Not through the comms, though. Whipping his head around, Tony is standing behind him—still clad in the Iron Man suit, sans the helmet.
“Uh, yeah! Hey Mr. Stark, I’m done here; I dealt with all my aliens—um, I got a lot of goo on my suit, but, you know, it’s alright.” Peter forces a grin, the expression not quite meeting his eyes. Good thing he has a mask on, right?
“Right. Well, we have to deal with moving them, then get food. Are you coming? We’re all headed to that one place you like on 92nd street—Lila’s Diner, or something.” Tony shrugs, glancing over Peter’s shoulder at the limp alien. He raises a brow but doesn’t say anything about the accidental brutality, which Peter appreciates.
“You mean Lola’s Diner? I’m totally up for their food! Pancakes sound so good right now,” Peter says, grinning for real now. He shakes his slime-covered hand like a dog shaking water out of its fur, and Tony makes a face.
“Gross, Underoos. Do that away from me, you almost hit my face with projectile sludge,” Tony mutters, shooting the kid a faux-disapproving glare and re-engaging his helmet. Peter briefly wonders how he’s able to do that without moving or giving FRIDAY any sort of verbal command.
Silently moving on from the conversation, Peter and Tony gather up the webbed aliens. A large truck, likely driven by Cap or Sam, pulls into the lot they’re standing in, so Peter resorts to tossing large bundles of the blue creatures either to Tony or directly into the truck as he goes.
They fall into a rhythm; Peter unsticks the aliens from wherever he’d put them, webs them even more to ensure safe passage, and tosses the cocoon-like balls of web to Tony, who sticks them all together in the bed of the truck. They power through it all, gathering what has to be nearing a hundred of the most headache-inducing beings Peter has encountered in the last…
Month. Maybe two.
A few more minutes go by, and the two of them have reached the last few. Holding what was a particularly feisty alien in his arms, Peter has a weird thought. It’s about a foot and a half in height, and confined to a web cocoon, it lost about 6 inches. That size, combined with its convenient inability to move within Peter’s perfectly spun webs, makes it… Perfect to eat.
Jeez.
Making a face at—well, himself, Peter drops the last alien into the truck and wordlessly shoots a web up to a lamppost, which he then uses to propel himself up and in the direction of the diner. Stupid spider thoughts; it probably wouldn’t even taste good! The goo it produces definitely doesn’t seem appetizing, and—it’s an alien! Not food!
Taking a moment on a rooftop across the street from Lola’s, Peter pulls out his phone to tweet about it. Might as well indulge his fans when the opportunity arises! Plus, he needs reassurance that he hasn’t gone completely crazy. (There’s a good chance he has…)
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Peter One @PeanutButterPjelly • 3s
it’s really weird that my first instinct is to eat something if it’s wrapped up and in my hands. is that why people find burritos appealing?
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He shoves his phone back into his suit—thank you, Mr. Stark, for putting pockets in this thing—and launches himself down toward Lola’s Diner. This place has been one of his favorites to visit ever since he got his powers; the owner, Lola, loves to give him free food anytime he comes in on patrols, and scolds him if he’s overly beaten up by time he gets there. The food is beyond incredible, the diner’s vintage vibe is the perfect amount of cozy, and the staff is always friendly—even with grumpy Avengers that look like they’ve been beaten half to death.
He saunters through the door, seeing the rest of the Avengers already inside seated at a large table, no doubt constructed out of multiple smaller tables to compensate for the size of their group. Steve and Tony seem to be bickering over a menu, voices carrying through the restaurant to Peter’s ears, regardless of his enhanced hearing. Natasha and Clint are sitting beside each other on the opposite side, nursing minor injuries and murmuring to each other about who-knows-what. Thor and Dr. Banner are sitting on either end of the tables; Dr. Banner on the side facing the door, menu in hand and green fading from his skin, Thor on the side facing away, boisterously laughing at Steve and Tony’s argument.
Bucky, Vision, and Wanda sat this one out, and Sam returned to the Avengers Compound right after the fight, so Peter was left with two choices of seating. Either he could sit directly next to Clint, or directly next to Tony.
I think we all know who he chose.
Settling into his seat, Peter startles a bit as a broad arm rests across his shoulders. He looks to his left, where Tony is staring at him, arm hugging him as if the man thought he’d run away.
“So, Pete,” Tony starts, and instantly Peter’s spider sense hums at the base of his skull. Not danger, but not comfortable. “What’s with the post about wanting to eat an alien? If you were that hungry, you could’ve said something.”
Huh?
“Wait—what? Mr. Stark, I don’t—I do not want to eat an alien! Why would you think that? Ew—seriously!” Peter shrugs out of the man’s hold but remains in his seat. Truth be told, he wants to crawl up onto the ceiling and hide in a dark corner until daybreak, but he refrains. For Mr. Stark’s sake. That, and because he’s curious as to how Tony could come to that conclusion.
“Your Twitter post,” Tony deadpans. He even pulls out his phone, still open to, you guessed it, Twitter, as proof.
After he was done waving the screen around, Peter was able to read the screen more clearly, and it instantly made his heart drop. Tony was on Peter’s personal page, and the tweet on his screen was the one he’d made right before walking into the diner. He’d spent so much time spiraling about what Tony’s reaction to his old posts might be that he forgot the man would see new posts, too. And then, even worse, he forgot about the entire conversation, so he came into the diner completely unprepared! No excuse, no time to practice a well-thought-out lie, nothing!
How could he be so stupid?!
“Why do you follow… my personal Twitter account, Mr. Stark…?” Peter mumbles, eyes glued to the screen, unwilling to look up. That isn’t the point—nor is it important—but he doesn’t know what else to say. He hears everyone at the table go quiet, can feel their eyes on him. Suddenly, Peter feels very claustrophobic.
The minute of silence feels like it stretches for hours. Peter can hear everyone’s heartbeats.
“Is there any truth to the stuff you say on there, Bambino?”
God, Peter is so fucked.