Worsening
Days went by before Peter randomly remembered the sludge Inncident, coincidentally on call with Ned again, this time joined by MJ.
They caught her up to speed on what happened that night before Peter made a small connection,
"I think whatever that thing was made me a bit stronger- like-Natasha freaking Romanoff was impressed with me during training after that!"
"I doubt that, maybe your just getting better at self improvement? Like a normal non sludge person?" MJ said, shrugging not really believing the whole thing.
"Dude, like a power up in a game! Or a good luck charm!" Ned suggested, only half jokingly.
"Yeah-! My good luck sludge,"
"That sounds so gross-" MJ laughed rolling over in her bed, the group was saying goodnight, except Peter who said he would be up for a little while longer.
It's been two days and he hadn't had a wink of sleep, he was so much more energetic than usual, but he did some productive stuff at night.
Like eat, rearrange his entire room, go on a peaceful night walk and look at the moon for a while, eat again.
The moon was always so shiney, he always loved shiney things.
Okay not always, but recently shiney stuff was pretty neat! Like scrap metal from the suit Mr stark tossed away- he didn't steal it! He borrowed it, he'll give it back later.
And one of Natashas knives, she always cleaned it so nice he just had to look at it for a while, but now it sat in his bed, she would only dirty it anyway.
He borrowed some other stuff, nothing to important that anyone would miss, it all sat in his bed which he didn't use anymore.
Morning came quicker than he thought, the sun peaked through his blinds and he was still as awake and energetic as ever.
He ate breakfast, which was some cereal, some toast, eggs, and bacon; then he ended up cooking a bacon egg and cheese sandwich, all before may even woke up.
She was surprised to catch Peter wide awake watching a documentary on how chicken farming works.
"Hey early bird, what's with the five course meal-?" she hesitated to ask, patting his head looking at his screen seeing a factory machine putting lables on meat packages as a voice explained what was going on.
"Just hungry," he shrugged, fixing his hair after May ruffled it up and started brewing her coffee.
She couldn't take her eyes away from his eyebags, it looked like eyeshadow it was so bad. Nervously, she felt like she had to ask.
"Did you sleep last night Pete? Your looking a bit tired there, love."
"Urm, not really- but I'm not tired it's fine, just extra energetic is all."
She nodded, still giving him a look of concern;
"Yeah- I heard you up and moving last night, mumbling a lot."
"Was I? Sorry, I talk to myself it's weird I know-"
"No, no- I talk to myself to its not weird just- unusual for you. Being up like this, I mean you used to sleep into the afternoon if I let you." she giggled, Peter waved his hand Dismissively and started picking at the crumbs on his plate.
"I'm fine," he looked at his phone clock, quickly getting up and grabbing his coat off the back of his chair.
"I'm heading over to Mr Starks early, I thought I'd get ahead of schedule."
He started cleaning his mess at the table, May stood by stirring her coffee in confusion.
"Peter, you'd be two hours early..?"
"Yeah, I just said Im getting ahead of schedule-"
"Well yes, but doesn't two hours seem a bit excessi-"
"May!" he slammed his hand on the table, his shout startled her into almost spilling some of her cup.
"Peter B. Parker! Do not slam your fist on my table!"
She lectured him, he glanced down and without even realizing his fist was clenched so tightly his palm went white.
He relaxed his hand and apologied, grabbing his bag and leaving without either one of them uttering another word.
"Rough morning?" Natasha tapped his shoulder snapping him back to reality, his eyes were glued to an unfinished paper with only the word "food" written on it in horrible hand writing.
So scribbled and roughly drawn it nearly tore the page, his pencil was snapped at the tip for who knows how long he's been spacing out there.
He looked at her and apologied, erasing the word and laying his head down on the desk.
"I don't even remember what I was writing," he laughed, slowly blinking tiredly and yet his body refused to sleep.
Four days without even laying down and closing his eyes for a bit, for no reason either.
"I have days like this to, tired all day and then all of a sudden you feel like running a marathon at night" Natasha smiled getting her own chair and sitting next to him.
"Yeah, two marathons more like it." he wasn't even lying, he didn't remember much but he left last night; his suit was drenched in sweat and he had to sit down the minute he snapped back to himself.
His legs just gave out, like he was running around nonstop for hours, and yet he didn't remember even leaving that night.
He felt mad, unreasonably mad just all the time. Giving may attitude because he was mad only made him angrier, and grabbing Natasha like that at the restaurant, how awkward it was to pretend like it was just an accident when in reality he did it entirely on purpose.
He got so mad that she reached for his meal he went out of his way to hurt her.
"So, summer break is almost over and your nearly a, uh, junior now? Right?" she remembered, trying to change the subject, wrapping her arm around him.
"Don't fucking touch me-"
She pulled away, her eyes wide, not even awkwardly laughing like she normally did.
Peters eyes widened immediately, apologizing frantically, his voice cracking in embarrassment.
"Jesus- I'm so- sorry Ms Romanoff! I'm not mad at you! I don't know why im being such an ass-"
"It's fine-"
She waved him off, giving a look of concern, but something else was in her expression.
Peter couldn't make it out, looking at her eyes his mind flooded with assumptions.
She must hate him.
Grabbing and hitting her like that, he did it on purpose but it made him so pissed for some reason.
How much of an asshole could he be? Natasha needs to leave him the fuck alone before he does something he'll regret.
He doesn't want to hurt her yet he goes out of his way to snap at her like that? And May.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled getting up, grabbing his bag from the floor next to his seat and leaving, Natasha staying put not even turning to follow him with her eyes across the room.
***
That was all she needed to confirm her suspicion from last night,
His outburst at the restaurant, May texting Tony about their morning quarrel.
Peter is a sweet kid.
It's out of character, something he'd never think of doing hurting people and yelling at them like this.
The first thing that made her think was his body language changing completely over night.
The way he spoke and walked, his posture and even the way he checked his phone significantly less than normal.
The spacing out for minutes at a time before twitching and acting like nothing happened. Even his smile changed, less alive and bright, more forced and teethy than normal.
If it wasn't for her observation of body language and facial reading she would have never known, that's why no one else caught on but her and Bucky.
Both trained Russian spys, they knew how to sense the smallest shift.
And they did, a major small shift.
"So, obviously he is acting strange, but- I mean whats wrong?" he asked. "Mind control? Possession? Hormones? It can't be something crazy."
Nat shrugged, her full weight leaned against the window they stood by in the lounge, empty with with no lights but a table lamp and open curtains.
The room was filled with warm light, the heating in the tower was amazing against the outside cold.
Bucky sighed, darting his eyes around thinking of what to do next.
"We could always tell the others, if somethings wrong with Peter, emotional or not, they could help." Natasha said calmly with empathy in her voice, she genuinely cared if Peter was just upset but still willing to do anything if him hurting others only escalated.
Bucky agreed that would be best, only thing they could do was hope the others will listen and understand.
The first person they approached that night was Stark, Tony was always the closest to Peter and had the most influence over him than any of them.
If Peter was upset or thought to be upset he was most willing to try and do something about it, the evidence didn't make sense at first until Tasha showed him the red mark on her wrist.
He narrowed his eyes, his jaw slightly open in disbelief that Peter would put his hands on someone, Natasha Romanoff of all people.
Peter looked up to her, trained with her every other day. He was a good kid, taught to never lay hands on a women like that. (even if Natasha was a women with more than sufficient combat training)
"I guess I just- can't think of him ever doing something like that I mean.." Tony just shook his head, his eyes closed as he sighed.
"I can definitely ask if everything's alright but I doubt he'd give a straight answer, he already doesn't tell me everything as good as the kid is."
"Should we let anyone else know? Or maybe it'd be better if you did it?" Bucky asked arms crossed, he was always nervous about speaking to Stark as he did murder his parents.
Nicely he took it generally okay when Steve told him around the time of the accords being put into place, but he never went out of his way to talk to Bucky, hell even look in his direction without making a face; James caught him everytime, the face of disgust.
"I can tell his aunt but I don't know if anyone else would care, if it gets to a point he's hurting anyone who touches him then go ahead and let everybody know." he responded.
"I doubt that would ever happen though"