Chapter Text
Peter had been living in Stark Tower for a month or so now, and honestly, for the most part it was great. Peter had been spending nights at Stark tower before May got her job in Europe, so he already had a semi-decorated bedroom, and he was perfectly comfortable with Mr. Stark and Mrs. Potts, as well as the rest of the Avengers, who drifted in and out of the residential quarters every few weeks.
The downside was that Peter missed May terribly. He missed her signature lasagna and the way sit with him and listened to him rant about whatever cool things had happened when he was Spider-Man that day. He was eighty percent sure that Mr. Stark would certainly do the same for him, but he didn’t want to be a bother. He was also too scared to ask.
He’d been having trouble sleeping, as well, but nightmares hadn’t struck yet, so he wasn’t too concerned. Yet. If one ever came, he wouldn’t know what to do. When he was living with May, it was easy to creep out of the apartment and wander - or rather swing - through the streets of New York without worrying May, since she had no way to know. In Stark Tower, F.R.I.D.A.Y. sent a notification to Mr. Stark every time Peter left, no matter the time of day, so there was no chance he could sneak out.
Even tonight, he tossed and turned, sleep being just out of reach. He became frustrated and all but stomped over to his desk, slamming open his homework binder. Might as well get a head start, Peter thought, while audibly sighing.
“Karen?” Peter mumbles, half whispering, even though he was certain no one would be able to hear him.
“Yes, Peter?" He had programmed her into his phone, and his digital clock that sat on his desk, similarly to an Amazon Alexa, which Mr. Stark called ‘medieval slop’ and insisted that his A.I. tech was much more intelligent and sophisticated.
“Where’s my pencil?” For a smart kid, Peter was always misplacing things, especially his pencils. This was his last pencil, so he really really needed it.
“In your bathroom.” Peter swore the A.I. laughed at him, but he was so sleep deprived he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure. How did his pencil end up in the bathroom?
He stumbled to a stand, momentarily swaying on his feet. Coffee he thought. He had the gross instant stuff that you added warm water to in his room, and he could turn the tap water real hot, he figured. It sounded like a perfect plan to him. He snatches his pencil, then fills up a random mug - where’d that come from - with the hottest possible water, then slowly drifts back to his bedroom.
He pours a bit of the powdered coffee into his mug, swirling it with his finger - it wasn’t so hot that he’d burn himself. It tasted awful, but did the job. He managed to get through to the morning and finish his homework a full three days early.
When he hears faint footsteps in the hallway outside his door, he decides to leave his room and interact with the residents of Stark Tower, which currently consisted of Mr. Stark, Mrs. Potts, and Clint Barton - though he was barely ever seen, preferring to hang out in the vents unless the rest of the Avengers were around. Exhaustion had settled over Peter like a warm blanket, only without the comfort it provided, and he felt the need for another cup of coffee.
“Good morning, kid,” Mr. Stark says, leaning on the counter next to the coffee machine Peter oh so longed for. “Sleep well?”
“Yep.” Peter lied through his teeth, refusing to make eye contact with the older man as did so. It was one thing to lie to someone, but it was another thing to lie to them while looking them in the eye. He’d met so few people who managed to do so, so casually, including a handful of the bad people he’d fought, and Flash Thompson.
“Try again, spiderling” Mr. Stark, raises a brow, as if reading his brain, then repeats his question. “Sleep well?” Peter took a breath. He could either tell Mr. Stark the truth, or continue to lie, and let Mr. Stark read through him like glass.
he decides, for some stupid reason, to tell the truth. “I’ve not slept in days, sir.” Peter still refuses to make eye contact, only for a different reason this time. He felt guilty that Mr. Stark had provided him with a home and a bed and food on a plate, and he couldn’t even be normal enough to sleep through the night.
“Why’s that, kiddo?” Mr. Stark starts making Peter a cup of coffee, something he’s extremely grateful for.
“I dunno.” Peter shrugs, not particularly enjoying the topic of conversation. “I just can’t sleep.”
Tony sighs, dropping the topic - for now. He hands the kid the cup of coffee, which Peter downs in seconds, then slides a stack of waffles across the counter. Peter ate significantly more food than any kid his age, or anyone for that matter, due to his fast metabolism, but Mr. Stark didn’t seem to mind.
“How about I drive you to school today?” Mr. Stark flashes the kid a smile. Peter shrugs with a nod, pretending to be indifferent, but inside he was jumping with joy. His mentor, the Tony Stark, was going to drive him to school. Obviously, no one would see, but WHO CARES!! “Alright, go get your bag and whatever else kids your age bring to school, ‘kay?”
Peter jumped up the stairs, taking two steps at a time, grabbed his bag and cell phone, and make it back down in what must’ve been record time. During the elevator ride, Peter showed Mr. Stark how he’d programmed Karen into his phone, which hadn’t been too hard, but Mr. Stark was proud of him either way, which made his chest tighten with pride.
The car ride was just as chatter-filled, only this time it was about all the things he wanted to do in the lab this weekend. Peter had been thinking about laser webs for a while now, which were in theory just webs made up of lasers instead of web fluid, but they’d have to see. Mr. Stark said if he did anything too dangerous to his suit, he’d reinstate the training wheels protocol, which he’d just turned off.
“Define dangerous?” Peter said slowly, washing half his plans drip down the imaginary drain of his mind.
“Anything that will blow something up without control, that will cause you injury, or will cause me injury.” Mr. Stark spoke as if he had recited the answer to that very question. Though, knowing him, it was probably written into the code of some other ridiculous protocol in Peter’s suit. It was probably called the I just want to torture Peter and annoy him protocol. Peter let out a silent laugh at his own joke.
“So no missile webs?” Peter sighs, watching his dreams of having bombs shoot from his wrist disappear.
“Okay, a: you already have grenade webs, and b: how would that even work?” Mr. Stark pulled up to the sidewalk at the side of his school, twisting to face him.
“My grenade webs aren’t actual bombs though, they’re just webs that go everywhere and make a mess! And i picture the missiles to be really small, but have a decent explosion?” Peter paused, realizing that design wouldn’t really work. “Or you could just give me a gun? Or real grenades?”
“Not in a million years.” Peter stuck his tongue out at the older man, then swung the car door open. “Have a good day, kid! Happy’ll be round to pick you up, okay? And I probably won’t be home when you get there, so don’t worry.”
“Oky-doky!” Peter slammed the door shut and made his way towards the front of his school, where MJ and Ned were waiting for him.
“Jeez, loser, you look awful.” MJ noticed, while handing him his second cup of coffee for the day - or was it his third, since he had his instant coffee at midnight which technically counted as today…
“Thanks, I’ll pay you back tomorrow.” Peter takes a sip of the warm goodness, which coated his taste buds perfectly.
“Don’t bother, I took a fifty from my grandma’s wallet.” Ned’s jaw drops in horror, probably at the thought of doing that to a grandmother. Him and his grandmother had a good relationship, so he’d never be awful to her. “Oh calm down, the woman's a demon, I swear. She deserves whatever she gets.”
Peter laughs, knowing that only MJ would call an elderly woman a demon. The bell rings, and Peter drags himself to the only class he didn’t find easier than singing the ABC’s; english. His brain was very science and math based, so he liked facts and strict rules. English wiped any of that off the table, especially with conjugation and punctuation. He still passed with perfect marks, but he had to spend more time studying for it - which was nearly impossible, because how the hell does someone study for english?
The class goes by rather quickly, since as it turns out, they had a sub, so the entire class was spent working on any unfinished assignments - Peter had none, so he just reads his new superman comic. In his next period, he reunited with Ned, thankfully. They shared only two classes this semester, the first being calculus. Peter liked math, as he said earlier. It made sense to him. Ned, however, loved it. He loved coding, and numbers to him were like a warm cup of cocoa.
“What’d you get for thirteen on the homework?” Ned sits down next to Peter, already having the booklet out. Peter rifles through his bag, looking for his homework duotang - he liked to be organized, so he kept his homework out of his binders until it got marked. “f of x equals three x squared minus five x plus seven” Ned says allowed. Peter snorts, because that must’ve been the easiest question in the package.
“Uh, f prime of x equals six x minus five.” Ned nods, and Peter steals a glance at his page. It said the exact same thing.
“What about fourteen, The limit as x approaches two of x-.”
“It’s seven.” Peter interrupts, trying not to laugh at his best friend. Ned was as smart as Peter, yet worried so greatly about his answers. “And fifteen is x squared plus c.” Peter pauses, then offers the same suggestion he gives nearly everyday, which Ned snatches up without a second thought. “Do you just want my package?”
“Yes, please.”
The class drags on slowly, since the teacher decided to review the exact same lesson that they did last week, because one student didn’t understand. Finally, lunch comes, and he gets to see MJ as well. No one except Ned knew this - and Mr. Stark, Mr. Captain America, Ms. Romanoff, and Mr. Clint, but that was only because they figured it out on their own - but Peter had a major crush on MJ. He thought she was way smart, and loved how she didn’t care about anything, yet cared about everything at the same time, and how she could cheer up a room with her blunt humour. Not that he’d ever tell her any of that.
“What’s up, losers.” MJ sat next to Peter at the picnic table, which sent him internally freaking out. “Did you guys finish the chem homework?” Peter certainly did. The twenty page package was what he’d spent the night working on. “I did, until the last question, with the lesson on Rutherford, and I got extremely bored and didn’t process it, then fell asleep. I didn’t realize till ten minutes before I had to go that it was a whole quiz-slash-essay on his life.”
“Oh, I didn’t do that either, but that’s because Mr. Harrington said it wasn’t being marked and was optional.” Ned explained, as if it were obvious and written in neon letters at the top of the page. “So you’re all good.”
“Wait, it's not being marked?” Peter froze, pulling out his blue duotang once more. “I practically wrote a whole biography on him!” Peter showed them the two pages worth of writing he’d done, causing his two friends to laugh their asses off at him.
“When did you even have the time to do this?” MJ says, while reading the first side of the first page. “This must’ve taken like an hour! Half of this stuff wasn’t even in the lesson?”
“I stayed up pretty late.” Peter lies. Staying up implies he went to sleep, which he did not.
“Yeah, no duh,” MJ gestures to his face. “There’s a reason I said you look awful, Peter. Do you ever sleep?” Peter flushes red, but a moment later, MJ turns back down to her homework, which she had been trying to get a head start on.
“He doesn’t need to!” Ned jumps in, giving Peter a sandwich. Both of Peter's friends always brought extra food for him, what with his metabolism and such. “He’s like a real life batman. Except instead of protecting Gotham, he protects New York.” Ned says this as if it makes perfect sense, and in a way it did. Peter was kinda like Batman. He was an orphan, his superhero name ended in man, and he was really good with tech. The only difference was, Peter was a kid, who needed sleep, and had been forced to get powers, rather than developing his own ways to fight crime. He also didn’t have a super-awesome batmobile.
“Yeah, except Bruce Wayne is like, the most handsome guy in Gotham.” Peter offers to the discussion. “There are a thousand better looking dudes in New York.” Peter sighs, glancing at his biceps. He had been working out more and getting more muscular, but it was still nothing compared to, oh, say, Captain America.
“I dunno about that.” MJ murmurs, causing Peter to snap his gaze to her. She flushes bright red when Ned asks what she said, her hands meeting to fiddle with each other. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Mind your own business, Leeds.”
They spend the rest of lunch talking about stupid things, like Star Wars and DC and whatnot, but Peter can’t get what MJ said out of his head. Must’ve just been a slip of the tongue, right? Or she misheard him and thought he said something else. Yeah, that oughta be it. Even so, he couldn’t get it out of his head. He couldn’t get her out of his head.
The rest of the school day flies by pretty fast and didn’t consist of much except Ned’s constant questions about living with Mr. Stark, and MJ’s deadpan comments, both of which never failed to cheer him up. Peter loved talking about Mr. Stark, to his friends at least. If anyone else found out… well he would certainly die.
When Peter leaves school, he quickly slides into the car. Happy doesn’t say anything, thankfully. He was so tired, he could barely form full sentences. The last time he even got a wink of sleep was three days ago in his photography class, when they were presenting the pictures they’d taken for their macro photography unit.
“Coffee?” He mumbles, his head leaning against the glass window. The coolness felt nice against his face, which was hot with exhaustion. He seriously needed another cup, or else he’d crash, and Mr. Stark would be all ‘I told you, Pete, you have to sleep. You’re a growing boy’ and then Peter would say he’s closer to being a man than a boy, and Mr. Stark would laugh at him and mumble ‘whatever makes you happy, underoos’ and Peter would spend the rest of the day scowling.
“Sure, kid, where are you thinking?” Happy glanced back, before snapping his eyes back onto the road. Peter was an anxious kid, and had told Happy as much, so the older man tried his best to keep his eyes on the road at all times. “Not too far, Tony wants to have you in the lab as soon as possible. Says he’s got a surprise for you.”
A surprise? What could that be? Maybe he made him a brand new suit - no that wouldn’t make sense, his suits were perfectly fine, and there was practically nothing that could be improved. Peter spent a moment thinking about all the possibilities of what this surprise could be before he remembered Happy had asked a question.
“Small place near my old building, I think?” Peter mumbles, feeling his eyes blink shut. Maybe he could squeeze in a couple minutes of rest, and he would certainly avoid nightmares. Nightmares can’t happen in the day, right? There’s a reason they’re called nightmares.