#8--April 21, 2019
Peter and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Peter lays his head down on his arms and represses the urge to groan. He’s been staring at his paper so long that his eyes are sore. Can eyes even get sore!?
“What’s up, kiddo?” Tony asks, fiddling with some new project for SI that Peter would so be over if he didn’t want to shoot all of the lights out and dip his head under water for some type of break to his bruised and battered senses. “You’ve been staring at that paper for hours now and I think you only wrote one word.“ Peter looks down and there it is, one word. The. As in, the start of his paper for English. Peter actually lets out a groan this time but it doesn’t make him feel any better. His eyes are burning, his head is pounding, and he generally just doesn’t feel good.
Today hasn’t been a very good day. Rewind to this morning.
Peter’s awoken not by his alarm clock, but by the banging three floors down. His neighbors seem to be fighting again and apparently the one really really likes to bang pots like that one chick on that one show who was on vine because the other neighbors were so loud that they didn’t get any sleep. Which also means, that with his enhanced senses, Peter didn’t get any sleep either.
Peter just rolls over in his bed, pulling a pillow over his head and groaning into his mattress tiredly. On top of not getting that much sleep last night, Peter had stayed out on patrol much later the night before due to some weapons dealing that he ended up wrapping up for the police with a pretty hand-made web-fluid bow. That also happened to hold all of the crooks together. Stuck to the wall. Because, hey! they’re criminals. And Peter likes webbing up criminals.
But he’s not feeling like that today.
Peter just lays down in his bed, trying to smother himself with his pillow. It doesn’t work and he smashes his alarm clock when it rings because goddammit does that hurt. It appears that it’s going to be one of those days. And by that, he means his senses are turned up a little too high. Not too high to cause him sensory overload immediately, but enough to grate on him and slowly build to such an overload. And when it’s one of those days, it’s pretty bad.
After a few moments of blissful peace, because finally the one woman stopped banging the pots and nobody’s yelling anymore, Peter’s jerked out of his daze by Aunt May. “Peter! I know you’re awake! You’ve got to get to school,” she half-shouts, making Peter grunt at the loud noise. Yeah, it’s going to be a bad day today. He can already sense it.
His spidey sense is trigger happy and his heart is racing because you’re in danger goddammit. You’re going to die! May’s going to die! The whole world is going to die! Peter does his best to ignore it. He usually can ignore the senses during school where it points out poorly placed legs and a pencil thrown towards his head or two, but today’s just not working.
Peter just rolls off his bed and blindly searches through his closets because god dammit the sun’s too bright. And holy hell where’s the sun’s light switch? Peter just grumbles to himself, pulling on the pair of jeans he wore yesterday because they’re not as tight as his clean ones and grabbing a random shirt that feels extra comfy. He tosses a black, grey, and white flannel over his maroon shirt and literally just slips on two random socks because who the fuck cares if you’re wearing a blue, red, and white sock with a star on it and a black and red one with a symbol usually found on a certain black spiders butt?
He leans against his door in lieu of opening it before actually turning the knob and nearly falling on his fucking face because sure, wicked cool spidey reflexes, you can catch a god damn knife aimed at his head but you can’t fucking catch him when he almost faceplants? Peter just rolls his eyes as he stumbles into the bathroom, leaving the lights off as he finally peels his eyes open. And ouch, god dammit that really fucking hurts.
After a few moments of temporary blindness, Peter finds out that the sudden bout of pain in his eyes was most likely due to not having opened them yet to adjust and it dulls until there’s barely ache. He swiftly goes through the routine of brushing his teeth, face scrunching up in disgust as he uses May’s toothpaste because his ran out yesterday and he forgot and there’s peppermint in there and ever since the spider bite peppermint has suddenly become his all-time enemy.
When he finally manages to finish scrubbing his teeth, Peter immediately rinses his mouth out, nearly gagging at the scent and the taste of the residue peppermint. Peter shivers for a moment in disgust before running his fingers through his hair quickly. He’s not all tidy and his curls are out because who the hell has time for hair gel when the substance sticks to everything and has a very faint odor that he can sometimes ignore but seemingly can’t even think of today?
Peter meets Aunt May with a tired grumble as he shoves toast into his mouth, pulling on his old sneakers because they’re more comfortable than the new ones Mr. Stark bought him. He feels a pang of guilt before he shoves it off, handing Aunt May her jacket as she walks by it. Peter pulls his backpack on and the two of them slip out of the apartment, lights off and the door locked.
“Are you sure you don’t want a ride?” May asks him as they rush down the stairs because the elevator is broken again. (He thinks that it was never really fixed in the first place.) Peter just shakes his head as he sticks his earbuds it, not putting his music on as he uses the device to drown out some of the city noise around him. “Be good for Mr. Stark, I’ll see you on Monday,” May says, snapping Peter out of his slight daze as she plants a kiss on his cheek.
Peter just stands where he is when his Aunt jumps in her old car to drive to work in and drives off because he forgot that it’s Friday and that means Mr. Stark and the Compound and shit everything got worse because Mr. Stark will want him in the lab with the too bright lights, the too heavy smells of chemicals and oil, and the too loud AC/DC music.
Peter just lets out another groan as he sprints towards the station where he needs to jump on a train to get to school and then walk a few blocks to said school. Peter nearly groans again at the thought of people bumping into him and brushing against his clothes and skin and the loud noise because he’s sensitive dammit.
Surprisingly, nothing really goes wrong on the train but it was so loud that Peter’s sure his ears are bleeding. So, it still seems like a pretty terrible day so far.
When he gets to school, Peter’s sure his head is going to explode. His spidey senses are still going haywire and his brain is pretty much fried with how much input his eyes and ears are taking in. All he really wants to do is curl up in the janitor’s closet with his soundproof headphones and fancy blackout sunglasses.
But he can’t. Because it’s not a sensory overload yet and he has a Spanish test that he’s pretty sure that he may not bomb.
So, Peter toughs it out. He toughs it out all the way until fifth period that happens to be his lunch period which also happens to be one of the busiest lunch periods other than next period. So, shit! is a pretty accurate word to describe the situation at hand with the loudness, but it becomes a double shit! when Peter hears Flash’s voice.
Peter really doesn’t like Flash. He really really doesn’t like Flash. And he was starting to wonder when the guy would show up because he usually corners Peter before lunch in the halls or before first period starts. But, of course, both MJ and Ned happen to be absent and he’s left to fend for himself. Which would be fine any other day because he’s Spider-Man, but then again, today just isn’t a very good day.
“Hey, Penis Parker!” Flash yells as he walks purposeful strides towards his lonely little table. “What? No friends here to defend you now? You gonna call your girlfriend to defend you again?" Peter just ignores him and rests his head on his arms. "Hey, Penis! I’m talking to you!”
“Fuck off, Flash,” Peter spits out, grabbing his bag and stalking out of the cafeteria, not even bothering to look back at the bully’s no doubtedly shocked face. Peter doesn’t worry about tossing his lunch out because he didn’t have one in the first place.
And now he’s hungry because god dammit why does he always forget about his metabolism? But, Peter marches on. The rest of the day manages to drag by and Peter’s relieved when he jumps into Happy’s SUV because holy shit isn’t it so peaceful and silent and dark in there?
Happy grunts a greeting that Peter isn’t bothered to respond to and they begin their journey to the Compound. Peter’s just slumped in his seat and he hasn’t even bothered to buckle his seat belt like usual because god dammit he’s too tired and done with all of this shit.
The ride to the Compound is uneventful but Peter feels even more terrible because he blew off Happy’s few attempts at talking to him and he was rude. But he’s too tired today to care. He manages to safely drag himself into Tony’s lab and immediately the lights pierce through his eyes and Peter doesn’t know whether he wants to scream or cry or sleep.
“Hey, kid!” Tony beckons Peter. “Go ahead and get started on your homework. We’ll work on your new web shooter design later." Peter just nods his head, not bothering to say anything. He sees Tony look at him out of the corner of his eye but he doesn’t really care. Because today was just a really bad day.
So when Tony asks him what’s up, he spills.
"Today’s just a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, Mr. Stark!” Peter says, tossing his pencil away as if it means nothing to him. “First, I wake up before my alarm clock because of my stupid neighbors with haywire spidey senses, then I’m forced to use May’s toothpaste that has peppermint in it because mine ran out, then the train station was loud and I’m pretty sure my ears were bleeding, and then I had to skip out on lunch because of stupid Flash, and now the lights are too bright and my head hurts and I’m so freakin’ tired!”
Peter deflates with a trembling lip and lowered eyes while Tony stares at him, shocked at the outburst. After a few moments, Peter hears Tony set down his tools. He feels a hand being placed on his shoulder and then Tony’s lifting his chin up. “Kid, why didn’t you say anything?” Tony says, his voice soft and full of worry. “You should have called if you were this close to a sensory overload.”
And it’s now that Peter realizes that he was literally dealing with a mild sensory overload the whole time and then tears begin to fall. Tony hushes him and pulls him to his chest and they rock back and forth for a moment. “Hey, Friday, dim the lights for the path to my room, please,” Tony says, the lights dimming as he leaves Peter’s things and leads him to his bedroom.
Peter just sniffles into his jacket sleeve, nearly crying again as he realizes that he’s wearing the big long sleeved shirt Ben bought at the Stark Expo all those years ago. Tony, hearing the sniffles, just wraps his arm around Peter’s shoulder, steering him into his room.
He immediately pulls the kid to his bed and orders Friday to put on a movie. “I’ll be right back, Pete,” Tony says. Ten minutes later, Tony strolls into the room with a box of pizza and a few bottles of water. How he got pizza in under ten minutes, Peter has no idea. But he appreciates the food and immediately tucks in as Tony joins him.
It’s not long until he’s feeling better and he’s no longer hungry or thirsty. Peter just tucks himself into Tony’s side, finally allowing his eyes to fall shut. So, apparently, Peter's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day has a pretty good ending, all things considered.