An Unknown Amount of Time Has Passed and Peter is Still Struggling
Peter was done.
He felt like no matter how hard he tried it had no impact on his grades.
He studied and did his homework and showed up to class and he was still failing.
Every night he would work until he physically couldn't keep his eyes open long enough to continue, then he would brew himself a cup of coffee and go out to patrol. He would come home from his "break" well into the early hours of the morning and go back to his work. By the time he was finished it would be almost five in the morning and if he had to get up at six to get ready for school he rationalized that it wasn't even worth it to sleep, so he would get his suit back on, and go back out. Because of the odd time there were quite a few college students who swore that when they were returning home from a frat party or bar crawl they had gotten a special escort from New York's favorite spider pal.
Despite his attempts his grades remained the same, what made it worse was that his teacher had students hand back papers so he had to deal with both getting grades well below a sixty five and not being allowed to lie about it because at least one person knew his actual score.
Peter stopped sharing his grades with May, only bringing them up when she asked and when she did he would share his science grades. What she doesn't know can't hurt her.
This mindset was also applied to his self harm. But this time no one had to know.
At least that was his goal, turns out Peter wasn't as sly as he thought he was.
Stupid Karen and her stupid nonconsensual body scans.
He'd forgotten that all of her data was shared with the computers at Stark tower.
And Peter really hadn't foreseen the fact that Mr Stark had a habit of combing through that data when he couldn't sleep.
So when Mr Stark had shown him his body scans from every day for the past month Peter had frozen.
When Mr Stark had shown him scans of his mutilated thighs, the "damage" highlighted in red against the pale blue model of himself on the screen, Peter's blood had turned to ice.
Mr Stark looked into his eyes trying not to look or sound accusatory, "Peter, can you tell me what happened there? The suit hasn't obtained any damage so can you please explain to me how you have forty two cuts on your legs."
Peter had decided to do the rational thing and run,
as fast as he could,
out of the tower,
and down to the street.
He only stopped when he reached the subway station exactly seven blocks from Stark tower.
It was his favorite subway station, he'd often get off at this stop when going to work on new tech with Mr Stark and wanted to have some time to walk with just himself and his thoughts.
This time he walked down the stairs and onto the train car with no peace in his mind, only dread. He couldn't avoid Mr Stark forever. The man was tracking him for God's sake.
Peter was freaking out as he walked back to his apartment he wished he could sink into his hoodie, or melt and drip down the floor boards.
And once he was back home, alone in his room he cut again
except all he could think now was "43... 44......45"
now that he knew how many cuts he had, he felt like he had to keep track
After all, math wasn't what he was struggling with