Peter Parker

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© TESSISAMESS

Peter is working on a history paper when he hears a rap at the door. Truthfully, he's relieved for the interruption. Though he'd become accustomed to writing out his essays on lined paper (a marked changed from how he used to submit his papers back home), he's been writing for long enough that his hands are beginning to cramp. He's made enough changes to his paper already that he'll have to pen it down all over again before it's due, which unfortunately for Peter, is tomorrow.

"Coming!" he calls out. He sets his pen down, pushes himself off his chair and heads for the door. When he opens it, he finds someone he didn't expect standing on the other side.

"Hey," Peter says, not entirely sure how to take Tony's sudden appearance. He didn't usually drop by without saying something first. "Everything okay?"

It is a clear, windless day when Peter Parker steps outside the Madonna Inn, a backpack slung over his shoulder. Peter is grateful for the good weather. It's still a little nippy out (his nose tickles from the cold), but it's nothing that Peter can handle after fifteen New York winters.

Peter quickens his pace afterwards and jogs over to where Tony Stark is already standing on the Madonna Inn's mostly-empty parking lot. "Hey! Ready to get started?"

Peter Parker is sprawled out on his bed while he waits for Alec to get out of the shower. He's been dreading this conversation for awhile now, but the longer he keeps it from Alec, the worse he's sure things will be.

As soon as he hears the shower turn off, he sits up on the bed and folds his legs at the ankle. When Alec emerges, he immediately blurts:

"Hey, can we talk?"

"Mr. Stark?"

Peter stands at the edge of the bed that Tony shares with Thor. He wears the Iron Spider armor Tony made for him, the faint glint of the moon through the thin slit between either side of the curtain reflecting off the suit's dark colors.

Peter's hair is styled differently from the Peter here at the inn; it's longer, more wild, even floppy. School had grown more and more demanding as the end of his sophomore year approached and balancing school and his time as Spider-Man was difficult. He had promised May he'd maintain his grades as part of the Spider-Man Negotiations of 2017, but criminals didn't stop just because he had two papers to write by Friday, a quiz tomorrow, and a test next Tuesday.

Hair had been less of a priority. Peter couldn't put off his homework if he wanted to continue being Spider-Man; he couldn't put off his evening patrol if he wanted to protect Queens, either. There were no serious long-term consequences to not getting his hair cut (save for perhaps more bullying from Flash, who was prone to bullying him anyway). A haircut could wait until later.

Peter always thought there'd be more time later.

Tony doesn't stir. Peter presses his lips together -- a nervous habit acquired when he was still alive -- and draws a little closer. He resists the natural urge to place a hand on Tony's shoulder to wake him; he knows that his fingers will slip right through. Instead he repeats, this time a little louder:

"Mr. Stark?"

The first sign Annie slept over is the blanket trailing over the floor from beneath the bed. Peter had missed it when he groggily shoved himself off the mattress, but his feet didn't when they hit the ground. Peter woke up quickly after then, and was on the floor in an instant, peering beneath the bed to confirm his suspicions.

Annie.

Peter's mind immediately goes blank; he's not sure what he should do, or if he should do anything. Eventually, though, the cogs in his mind start turning and he reaches out to scoop her up from beneath the bed to set her down on top of it. Things had changed, but it didn't mean that this had to, too.

Today, Peter Parker's the one behind the bar. Tony sits on the barstool opposite from him. Typically, they stand at about the same height, but when he's seated, Tony's just the tiniest bit shorter.

Peter looks down at the glass, and then down at him. "You think this is enough alcohol?" he asks, gesturing at the glass, filled with amber-colored rum. He'd asked Tony if he'd help him learn how to make drinks, but Peter was self-conscious about the entire affair, checking in for the Tony Stark seal of approval almost every step of the way.

He really wanted to make a good drink for Tony.

"Do you like monster movies?"

Peter Parker is sitting on a barstool, hunched slightly over the bar as he looks up and over at Tony on the other side. There's no one in the bar but them tonight, and Tony's the one making them the first of their drinks. The Tender Knob, if Peter remembers correctly.

Who would name a drink that?

That question isn't what's on Peter's mind right now, though. Peter's always really liked monster movies: Godzilla, Mothra, King Kong, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, King Ghidorah, and Gamera. And that first question is probably going to be followed up with another one depending on Tony's response.

"'Cause when I was in Europe, there was this little indie cinema where they were showing this monster movie. Not Pacific Rim: Uprising, but another one. It was a lot different from other monster movies, though."

( Under the cut. )

Mr. Stark, can I ask for some advice?

( Under the cut. )

When Peter Parker texts Happy, it's in a panic.

Happy
HAPPY
Happy this is important!
I really need Tony's help
May knows I'm Spider-Man
She's freaking out right now
And when she freaks out I freak out
And I'm freaking out now too
Happy
Please tell Tony I need to talk to him

Peter looks down at his phone, waiting for Happy's response. There's nothing. He tries to be patient. Minutes go by with nothing. For a brief moment, he considers texting him again, but just as he's about to thumb in another message his phone vibrates.

UNKNOWN NUMBER

Peter takes a breath and presses his finger against the green Accept Call button, then swipes right.

"Hello?"

Ongoing. Tossing tags here as they come in for ease of editing.

( Father's Day Morning. )

Peter Parker is sitting in the cafe, a textbook sprawled out on one side of the table, a graphing notebook filled with complicated-looking equations and the corresponding math on the other. Today's self-chosen subject of study? Lagrangian mechanics.

Peter idly taps his pencil near the bottom of the page and lets his chin sink into the palm of his free hand. If he keeps looking at this, he thinks he's going to lose his mind. He's been trying to figure out this answer for fifteen minutes now, and he's pretty sure that he's made a mistake somewhere, but he can't find where.

Peter folds his arms against the table then lays his forehead against them with an audible groan. Truly, it is a groan of despair.

• Peter shaves at least once a week, despite having no facial hair to speak of.
• Peter takes bugs outside rather than kills them.
• Peter talks to Karen about his problems when Alec isn't in his room, but stops as soon as Alec enters. (This has changed since he's discovered Alec can hear him talking to Karen from the other room.)
• Peter is typically a pretty hard sleeper, but when his spidey sense goes off, he's up in an instant.
• Peter sometimes makes his web-fluid at the table in his room. While normally, things go off without a hitch, lately he's run into some pretty visible problems.

Peter hopes Alec is asleep.

He knows already that it's unlikely. Alec always seems to be awake. The one time Peter's caught him sleeping in the entire time they've lived together is the one night when Alec had that nightmare. And if that was any indication of a normal night for him, Peter could hardly fault him for not sleeping.

Peter slowly opens the door to their suite of rooms, then looks around very slowly. When he determines the area is vacated, he takes one quiet step forward, then another, and then another.

Alec's nowhere to be seen.

And with a sigh of relief, Peter Parker immediately flops back onto his bed. Safe.

The first day, he thought they were just missing each other. There were days like that sometimes, where he'd go to the restaurant right after she left, and then to the forest and it turned out she was in her room, and she'd knock on the door to her room just to find out later that she had lessons with Mrs. Rasputin.

He told himself that before he went to sleep, because he wanted to believe it and because every day they had missed one another since the whole breast incident at the pool had played out just like this.

On the second day, he thought she was angry with him. Her door was locked and she didn't answer it. He went down to all of her favorite places, inquired if she made it to her shift, asked everyone he passed if they had seen her, but none of them had. Anxiety filled him. He didn't like fighting with Liz. He didn't like fighting with anyone.

But before he went to sleep, he told himself the same story he told himself the day before. But this time, he had a harder time believing it.

On the third day, he realized she was gone.

That was the day he went up to Darryl and asked to see the guest list, his heart racing, hoping against hope that somehow his intuition was wrong and that Liz was just mad at him and they'd fix things and everything would be all right.

But when his fingers filtered through the pages and his eyes scanned the words and the numbers there, he finally came across the words he hoped he wouldn't see:

Room 189 - Vacant

He spent the afternoon pacing, trying to sort his thoughts, but there were no sorting them. Every time his mind seemed like it was on the cusp of putting things in order, something scrambled it all up and he had to try again. And as much as he tried, he couldn't make sense of it. He couldn't make sense of anything at all.

On the fourth day, he woke up against the door to her room.

He fell asleep there the night before, hoping perhaps that the door would open and he would just fall through and everything would be okay again. He didn't know why he hoped it because he knew it wasn't going to happen, but he hoped it anyway. He needed hope then more than he needed hope for a very long time.

He sat against the door the entire day, and people gave him curious looks as they passed him in the hall. None of them said anything, but he wondered if they knew Liz was gone or they just hadn't noticed yet. He looked at the wall and found faces in the wood paneling there. None of them were Liz's.

On the fifth day, Alec hauled him back to his room.

He'd fallen asleep outside of her room again the night before and hadn't gone back to his room. Maybe Alec figured he was staying with Liz, or maybe he'd figured out what had happened, but whatever the reason, he found him and hauled him up to their room on the 3rd floor. He thought he heard Alec complaining in the same sort of way he did when he wanted to sound put-out, but really wasn't.

Peter turned on the TV even though there wasn't anything he wanted to watch, because the sound somehow brought him some comfort. He was five minutes into an episode of something when he thought he heard Liz's voice. Younger, but it was hers, he was sure of it.

The girl on the screen looked just like her, only younger, and Peter knew that she wasn't Liz and Liz wasn't her. But for the first time, he had absolute focus on something that wasn't his own muddled thoughts. When the episode was over, he watched another, hoping the girl would make a reappearance, but she didn't. Not in the next one, or the one after that, or any of the episodes Peter watched until he finally dozed asleep.

On the sixth day, Alec insisted that he leave their room.

Peter tried to sound like his normal self, voicing his objections and telling him he was sleepy (and he was), but Alec's tone told him there was no room for argument. He sat in the library for awhile, staring at the pages of this book he was sure he'd normally understand, but couldn't understand right now. Nothing seemed to be making sense. Not the science or the math or the equations written there, plain as day, or his situation now.

Instead, he wondered if Liz was okay and when he finally decided she was, he wondered if she remembered anything about this place, and if she remembered this place, if she was with Max and if she was, was she happy?

There were two parts that were in complete contradiction with one another. One that told him he should be happy that she was back home, that she was with people who loved her and would protect her; the other, the selfish part of him that was angry and sad and lost because she was gone. He hated that part of himself.

He checked out the book from the library even though he knew he would never read it and went back up to the room and laid down. That night, Alec didn't come back and Peter hoped that he was staying in someone else's room.

On day seven, Peter decided he'd try to act normal.

Alec hadn't disappeared, and when he came back in the morning, Peter was sorting and folding his laundry. It was strange how the routine somehow managed to keep him distracted in a way nothing else did. When he leaned down to put his clothes away, he found a book there. Immediately, Peter knew what it was. He dropped his clothes and they landed at a pile at his feet, but he didn't care; he pulled it out immediately and paged through it, eyes scanning over pages he'd read, and pages he hadn't. He doesn't stop until the last page with her writing.

And everything she's written there is normal. That day was no different from any other day for her, even though it was life-changing for him. Peter didn't know how to feel about it. Everything in the journal was so normal, and everything here felt like it wasn't.

He eventually refolded the clothes and placed them back into their drawer and Peter went out to the forest where Liz had taken him that day he talked about his parents. He sat down with her journal and read all of it from the beginning and wondered if it just wasn't there when she got home.

There was so much in it. Things he had forgotten and things that he hadn't. Good memories and some unpleasant ones. And for the first time since Liz had vanished, Peter found himself crying, tear after tear hitting the pages. The loss was so great and there was no memorial, no ceremony for those people who left. He had closure with his parents, with Uncle Ben, but there was no closure for this.

Before Peter went to sleep, he told himself that things were going to be okay. And that they might not be okay tomorrow or the day after that or the day after that, but someday they would be. Because like that first night when he told himself that they were just missing one another, he desperately wanted it to be true.

Folded and tucked into the pages of Liz's newly-returned journal is a a note from Peter in his neatest print:

Liz,

I'm really glad you showed this to me because it really helped me to learn how you feel. Sometimes it's really hard for me to tell what someone feels or how to react to it. I'm a lot better at Calculus and Chemistry than I am with human emotions. So knowing exactly how you feel, it just helps in a way that's difficult to understand.

I know that people have things they need to keep to themselves. Things they don't really want to talk to anyone about. But if there's anything you ever want to say to me and you're not sure how you're going to feel, I'm not going to judge you.

Love You,
Peter Parker

PS: I definitely feel the same way.