4
With his mind made up, Peter grabbed his computer and sat down at the janky kitchen table. He needed to come up with a plan. His best bet was probably to break into the tower, he doubted anyone would grant him free access to wander around and talk to the heroes as he so pleases so that was his only option. For houses he researched the tower’s blueprints, committing them to memory and coming up with a path. He had also discovered the tower had an AI watching over the building and its occupants. That would make the mission a little harder but he was up for a challenge, no one said this couldn’t be fun.
Thanks to Hawkeye’s Twitter, Peter knew that every Friday night the Avengers had a movie night, so he knew exactly where they would be and when making his plan seem a lot easier to execute. He just hoped he wouldn’t fuck it up.
———
Peter snapped his head up as he heard his alarm ring, almost giving himself whiplash. He stumbled over to his phone, tripping over all of the stuff he had been leaving on the floor because he was too lazy to put anything away and switched it off. He was getting into a bit of a habit of sleeping at the kitchen table, there was no way that was good for your back but at least he was getting shit done. As he was thinking over his mission, he remembered why his alarm had gone off in the first place. His first day of school. Looking at the time, he cursed and jumped over the mess, running to the bathroom to wash away his stink.
By the time he was finished getting ready, it was too late for him to have anything to eat. Hopefully, Midtown had edible lunches or else he was fucked. He grabbed his bag and ran out the door, almost forgetting to lock it. Not that there would be much to take if he was robbed, but the embarrassment would take him out.
He was beginning to feel nervous as he sat on the train, he had never been to a real school before. He didn’t know how to act, how to talk to people his age, how to get lunch. It was all completely new to him and he knew if he made himself look like an idiot on the first day it would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life. He would never forget it.
As Peter imagined all the ways he could destroy his social life before it had even begun, he felt his phone vibrate. He took it out and noticed that Ned had texted him confirming whether they were still meeting on the stairs. Was that another social construct? Confirming plans before they happened. Peter didn’t know but he replied confirming that yes, they were still meeting on the stairs anyway.
Putting his phone away, Peter was glad to see that the train had reached his destination. Any more time to think about all of the horrible things that could happen to him today and he would explode.
Very quickly, because Peter still wasn’t used to controlling his speed, he arrived at midtown. It wasn’t hard to spot Ned in the crowd, his jumping and waving made it extremely easy to tell him apart from everyone else as he stood next to a girl who looked like she wanted to drown herself from the embarrassment.
“Hey Peter, this is Mj,” Ned pointed, “I think we’re friends?” Ned looked at the girl for confirmation, frowning when she shrugged and looked down at her book.
“Hey,” she mumbled.
“I think you need to go to the office, we’ll take you,”
Peter followed the two throughout the building until they reached the office. He didn’t tell them that he already knew where it was, Ned seemed excited to be showing him around, who was he to break the news to him?
He went in and quickly retrieved his updated schedule and locker details before Ned was again, gladly showing him the way.
“That’s my locker,” Mj spoke, pointing to the blue locker next to Peter’s.
“You two are locker buddies!” Ned cheered. Peter didn’t know what that was but if Ned was happy then it was good, right?
“Anyways, do you like Star Wars?” Ned asked, as Peter copied what Mj was doing and put all of the stuff he didn’t need into his locker.
“What’s Star Wars?” Peter knew he probably shouldn’t ask questions like that, but Ned didn’t seem to be the brightest in the bunch so he probably wouldn’t think it was too suspicious.
“You don’t know Star Wars? Oh. My. God,” Ned’s jaw slacked in disbelief.
“Couldn’t have just said no, could you?” Mj shook her head.
Before Ned could begin his nerdgasm, the bell rang, “Let’s go, we have homeroom,” Mj sighed, grabbing the boy’s collars and dragging them down the hallway.
———
“You’re finished already?” Mr Harrington asked, taking the packet from Peter’s desk, “although I shouldn’t be surprised, not with how well you did on the entrance exam,”
“Yeah,” Peter smiled, awkwardly. He really needed to get better at the whole talking to people thing, he was sure there was something you were supposed to say to that.
“I’m gonna get you some harder work from now on, there’s no point in you sitting here doing stuff you’ve clearly already mastered,” The teacher walked away.
Peter looked around the room, not knowing if he was supposed to be doing anything else whilst he waited for class to be over when he made eye contact with another student. He was dressed nicely and had his hair slicked back, Peter thought it just looked greasy but who was he to judge, maybe that was the look? He tried to smile in his direction, but the boy just glared in return and turned back to his work. Shrugging to himself, Peter turned his attention to the window, there was bound to be something interesting out there.
———
“I would start to bring your own lunch if I were you,” Mj stated, sitting next to Peter at the lunch table.
“Why, it looks okay?” it didn’t, but Peter wasn’t one to complain. Maybe he should bring his own lunch, but that would just mean more time in the grocery store and nobody was strong enough for that.
“Even you know you’re lying,” she smirked, looking down at her book as she took her lunch out.
It didn’t take Ned long to join them and before Peter knew it, the boy was doing a deep dive into all of the Star Wars lore, getting into nitty-gritty detail on all the things there is to know about the franchise. But at least Peter knew what it was now, even if he did want to rip his ears out.
Thankfully, Ned’s rant was interrupted by the boy in Peter’s class with the greasy hair, he didn’t look too happy to be standing there which left Peter a little confused.
“So, you think you can just waltz into the building and outsmart everyone? seriously, you are no better than anyone else here,” he snarled, “I thought you were actually pretty cool until I saw you walking in with this fatty,” he laughed, holding his stomach as if it was the funniest thing in the world.
Peter was about to let it go, he had dealt with bullies his entire life, they were adults, but bullies nonetheless, he knew how to deal with it and how to forget about it but as he turned back to Ned to let him continue his Star Wars rant, he noticed the hurt on his friends face and that just wouldn’t do.
“You can insult me all you want, you clearly have some of your own problems and choosing to take them out on someone else,” Peter started, standing up and coming face to face with the bully, “that’s your choice, but what you’re not going to do, is take it out on my friends, so if I were you, I would walk away and g back to your silly little friends,” Peter almost growled, glaring.
The boy faltered at the look in Peter’s eyes. But the stupid will always be stupid. He squared his shoulders and looked Peter in the eyes, trying his hardest to look tough even if he was a lot smaller than Peter, “and what are you going to do about it, you gonna go crying to mommy and daddy? well, I’ll have you know that my parents practically run this school so no matter what you do I will always win-”
The bully fell to the ground as Peter’s fist met his face. Now don’t get him wrong, the boy’s words didn’t hurt him in the least, he had grown up having much worse thrown at him. His voice was just so fucking annoying, like seriously, he should go get that checked out, it can’t be healthy to sound that nasally.
“Ah! He punched me!” the boy screeched, attracting the attention of absolutely no one. Once he realised that nobody cared, the boy picked himself off the floor, blood gushing out of his nose, and left the cafeteria.
“That was awesome!” Ned gushed, staring with amazement in his eyes, “Where did you learn how to do that?”
“It was pretty cool,” Mj admitted, she wasn’t as excited as Ned but it was the most emotion Peter had seen from her all day, “Flash has always been an ass, it’s nice to see someone put him in his place,”
Peter smiled in thanks before sitting back down, lies already running through his mind to answer Ned’s question.
“My dad used to be in the Russian military, I grew up in the bases so I learned a few things,” Peter shrugged, going back to his wet mac and cheese.
“Is that where the accents from?” Mj asked.
“Yeah, I lived in Russia my whole life until recently,”
“Cool, I’ve always wanted to learn Russian,” Mj said.
“I can teach you if you want,” Peter offered, he didn’t know if she would accept, she seemed a little shy so he was pleasantly surprised when she nodded.
“Cool, well start whenever you’re ready,” Peter smiled. He was a lot better at this friend thing than he thought he would be.
———
The rest of the day flew by and Peter left the building with more friends than he’d had in his entire life. There were no other incidents like the one with Flash and he seemed to get on with everyone really well. He wondered what it would be like to be friends with everyone but he was more than content with Ned and Mj. For his first time at a real school, Peter thought he did pretty well for himself.
As he’s walking to the subway station, Peter catches sight of the Avengers tower again and he’s starting to feel like it’s following him. He already knew what he needed to do and the sight of the building was just starting to piss him off. He almost reconsidered his choice as he got on the train, he’d had an amazing day and revealing to the Avengers was risking everything he had worked for since arriving in the country. But he knew the guilt would never leave him, he had to take the risk whether he wanted to or not.
Later that night, Peter divides his time between texting in the new group chat Ned had made with Mj and him, doing his homework and going over his plan. He wondered if he could take the Red Room down himself but very quickly concluded that he didn’t stand a chance, they would kick his ass. He was good, but he wasn’t that good.