Chapter Text
School felt like it started eons ago. When you have super speed, the passing of a single day feels like an entire year when going at everyone else’s pace. This was probably why when it came to final exams, Peter felt like every lesson he had been taught was a lifetime ago.
It was the middle of the day. Most of the students at the school were in classes, but Peter had a free study period. He was holed up in his room, music on full blast and his nose buried in his chemistry text book as he tried to recall what he had learned months ago when this unit first started. He had always enjoyed science at school, but regular schooling was always too difficult for him to be able to focus on anything for very long. At least here he could go at his own, much faster pace.
His notes were coming along nicely, though more than a few pages had been torn out of his notebook and balled up on the floor when he messed up his flow. These exams were important, not because they determined whether or not he continued at the school, but because they were Peter’s chance to prove something.
That he wasn’t the terrible student everyone always thought he was.
Peter knew he was smart, but growing up, teachers took one look at him and his inability to stay still and labelled him. Troublemaker, a distraction, a menace… a bad student. He could never study properly and always had bad grades, which was why he dropped out of high school in the end. He couldn’t do it. He was faster than everyone else… but he couldn’t keep up with his classmates.
But he could here. At Professor Xavier’s school, Peter finally felt like he was on even ground. He didn’t feel so left behind and lost. Where before boredom would take over within minutes of a class starting, here Peter felt engaged in every lesson and actively took part. Who knew being allowed to run around the back of the room was all it took to make him a better student?
These exams felt like the last hurdle, the last thing standing between Peter and proof that he was a good and intelligent student who wasn’t just wasting everyone’s time and resources. These grades were something he could take home to his Mom and show her that would say “look! I’m not the failure everyone told you I am.”
They were important, to put it simply. Hence, hiding inside of his room and studying non-stop. His chemistry exam was next week, and for the life of him, Peter just couldn’t make sense of what he had written. He knew his handwriting was bad, but this was illegible chicken scratch. The ink seemed to blur into shapes and symbols Peter couldn’t comprehend. Blinking a few times hoping it would help make sense of what he was trying to read, Peter eventually groaned and let his forehead collide with the desk in a clunk.
This was hopeless.
Just as he sat back up again, a plate appeared next to him on the desk. Startled, Peter turned around, and found a kind smile staring down at him.
“I thought you enjoyed Chemistry?” Erik asked him after the young mutant had taken off his headphones
“Yeah I do, when I can make sense of it.” Peter grumbled, then looked at the plate. “You brought me lunch?”
“You have missed it for the third day in a row,” Erik commented with a small, disapproving tsk, “you can’t study properly on an empty stomach.”
He was right, of course, but rather than admit that to him Peter just swiped up one of the waffles from the plate and took a bite. Potato waffles, carrots, and some salad. No meat, he noted, his father’s subconscious dietary habits appearing on the plate he dished up for his son. It made the speedster smile. It had been a long time since someone put so much care into something for him.
One hand came to rest on Peter’s shoulder, and the other picked up the notebook from the desk. “What are you struggling with?”
“I can’t make sense of anything I wrote. It’s supposed to be about magnetic elements, but it’s like I didn’t even write it in English.”
“Because you didn’t.”
Huh?
“At least, half of it. Some of these words are German.”
Erik turned the notebook around. It was definitely probably because he now had food in his stomach, even if it was just a few bites of waffle, but as he looked at his work, sure enough Peter found that almost every other word was written in German. When he first moved to America with his mother as a young boy, it took a while to stop getting his languages mixed up when speaking and especially writing. Sometimes it was instinct to go back to writing in his first language.
“Oh.”
“I think you were so hungry, your brain wasn’t registering the words properly,” Erik mused with a bit of a smirk as he placed the notebook back down. “Take a break, schatz, eat your greens, then go back to studying. Your brain will thank you.”
Peter spun around in his chair and threw his arms around his father’s middle. “Thanks, Dad,” he said, words muffled because his face was buried in Erik’s shirt. He felt a hand gently stroking his hair, and the familiar feeling of a kiss pressed to the top of his head.
“You’re welcome, mein sohn,” Erik told him, “keep at it, you’ll do great.”
With a final ruffle of silver locks, the two let go of one another and Erik left Peter to his studying. Peter put his headphones back on and, instead of going back to his work, he grabbed a comic book from his collection and flicked through it. As the sun made its way across the sky outside, Peter occasionally grabbed another bite of his lunch, but he didn’t go back to studying until the plate was empty and he felt like he had a lot more energy.
He didn’t skip lunch again, even if Erik had to keep bringing him plates or dragging him down to the kitchen. And when he was able to race back to Virginia and show his mother the straight Bs he got across his exam results, he was able to finally feel proud of schoolwork for the first time in his life.
He didn’t notice the report card pinned in Erik’s office for a few weeks. Or in the Professor’s.