Archive of Our Own ^beta

He thinks maybe, just maybe, this could be something.

Something amazing.

—

His idea was sparked when he was out as Spider-Man, because apparently high stress situations were the best scenarios for Peter’s inner genius to shine.

It wasn’t necessarily convenient, but it worked.

At first, he arrived on a bridge too late to stop the cars from colliding. All he could do was pull out the passengers before an inevitable explosion. The last person he pulled out was a little girl with dark skin and even darker, frizzier hair. She was in the back seat crying, hugging an Iron Man plushie to her chest. Help me, her face said.

Her parents were behind him screaming, wailing, for him to please, please, save our daughter, save her, and god Peter wanted to, but-

But.

Spider-Man pulled her out of the car with the flesh of her calf hanging on by an inch of her skin. It sagged and gaped open, revealing bone and blood and too much of her insides that Peter would’ve thought her dead if he couldn’t hear her faint heartbeat.

“Hey, hey,” Peter said, laying the girl down away from the car, “You’re gonna be okay. You hear me? Everything’s gonna be okay,”

The girl was unconscious. Peter knew he was still talking to her for himself.

He eyed his web shooters and tried to remember a setting on them that wasn’t meant for semi-lethal or lethal assists. There were none. But there was no way in hell that Peter could just- could just stay there, doing nothing for the girl dying in his arms.

“This might hurt a bit,” He said, brushing the hair from her face before he repositioned the flap of sagging flesh back against her calf. She didn’t move.

Peter had never shot a web on any person’s open wound. Not even his own when things got desperate. Hurt a bit was a definite understatement when Peter himself had no idea how these acids would react to her blood. He didn’t have a choice.

The arc of webs against her leg were messy and uneven, slowly soaking with her red, red blood. It held her leg together in one piece, all the while making Peter want to gag.

The girl’s face was scrunched up in pain. Peter gulped. He looked back up to her parents who were still crying on the other side of the girls body.

“I can get her to a hospital. My webs aren’t meant to hold flesh together so I need to get her to one fast.”

Neither parent looked up or even acknowledged him, too preoccupied by whispering reassurances into their daughter’s ear. But when the mom looked up suddenly, her eyes were fierce.

“Her name is Muslima Zakir. You stay with her until a doctor comes, then you come find me. Go.”

Peter doesn’t manage to say anything back because the mother has already pulled her husband off from the ground, letting Peter carry Muslima.

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It was past his curfew when he got home with the news playing on a low volume. May didn’t say anything, instead just hugging him and stroking his hair softly while his own salty tears stained her shirt. All Peter could think about was how the skin on May’s calf wasn’t sagging open.

No one died. Muslima was the only injury. The doctors said she was going to be fine.

But there was a thrumming under his skin, building up, buzzing and buzzing until his ears were ringing and he was in his chair with a pen in hand, already writing on the back of his graded history paper.

He thinks maybe, just maybe, this could be something.

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At school the next day, Peter spent most of his time listening to Ned talk about his save from the day before. He tuned out for most of it, making him feel guilty, but Peter couldn’t focus.

The thrumming, buzzing, constant ringing in his ears hadn’t gone away. He started writing on the backs of any papers he could get his hands on. It was unconventional, inconvenient, and a mess, but Peter’s thoughts flew together seamlessly, despite being strewn across classroom floors and folders.

In chemistry, instead of sneak-creating web fluid, he was writing so fast with so much tension that when Ned tapped his shoulder to get him to pass him the solution, Peter snapped his pen in half, spilling ink all over their lab table.

“Dude,” Ned breathed, wide eyed. In awe, but concerned. “That was sick. But, like, are you okay? You looked really stressed out. Did something happen? Are you hurt-?”

He was cut off by Mr. Harrington walking by their lab table. “Everything okay, boys?”

Thrumming, buzzing, ringing-

Peter grabbed Ned’s pencil and kept writing.

“Uh…” Ned said, both him and Mr. Harrington eying him. Peter paid no mind. “Yeah. Yeah, we just spilled some ink into the solution. Sorry.”

“Be a little more careful next time, alright?” Ned nodded while Peter wrote. “And Peter, if you could, come see me after class.”

At this, Peter did look up. He remembered where he was- it wasn’t Tony’s lab, it was his chemistry class and he couldn’t afford to be slacking off enough to aggravate teachers and lose his scholarship.

He felt a little guilty, but the buzz under his skin made him feel numb to almost everything else around him.

“Um, yeah, of course, Mr. Harrington,”

Flash made a remark, but Peter was already back to writing.

This, Peter thought, looking at the basic scratch of a polymer he just created, could be something.

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“I’ll be honest, Peter,” Mr. Harrington started, “I’ve been worried about you for a while now, but today really solidified that. Is everything okay? At home? Outside of school?”

Thrumming, buzzing, ringing-

The ear ringing thing was different. It wasn’t like how his ears usually burned when he overloaded or when a bomb went off or a building collapsed. It paralyzed him, rendered him unable to think about anything other than figuring that out.

It was a weird feeling, no doubt.

But when he was writing and reforming that compound, it honed in on his work. He focused more and thought about solutions he never would have thought of before. It was like he was on some sort of adderall rip-off and he couldn’t even complain because what Peter’s got in mind, what he was planning to do… it could do something. It could be something.

Although in times like these, it really sucked because he couldn’t give his full attention to his teacher who might then talk to his principal who would most definitely call May.

“Wha- No! No, no no no no. I’m fine. Nothing’s- nothing’s wrong at home. I- I think I’m just a little stressed, that’s all. Stark Internship and all that.” He waved his hand around vaguely. Mr. Harrington looked unconvinced.

“Right. Well, don’t overwork yourself. You’ve still got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t be afraid to slow down. Just- try not to explode ink all over the lab tables again?”

“Of course, Mr. Harrington.” Peter said, already making his way to the door. “Have a nice weekend!”

He pulled out his phone.

Thrumming, buzzing, ringing-

Peter dialed Mr. Stark’s number and he picked up on the third ring.

“Kid. What’s up, aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“Can I stay at the compound for the weekend?” Peter blurted out without answering the question.

“You cleared it with Aunt Hottie?”

“Yup,” Peter lied.

“Happy’ll be there in ten.”

The thing Peter loved about Tony Stark was that he could understand this- this constant buzzing underneath the skin to do more, be more, move, build, create, do it, make something great. It was exactly what Peter needed.

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“So I’m thinking,” Peter said once he was in the compound, following Tony down to the labs, “that I should use a different lab for what I’m working on right now.”

Tony snorted. “What, working on your own suit with me got too boring for you, kid?”

“No, no! Nothing like that. It’s just- I’m working on a more biomedical engineering project.” The word project sounded weird in his mouth. What he was working on- it wasn’t just a project. It was so much bigger than a project. He didn’t know how big it was going to be, but thinking about it’s applications made him eager to drop everything else in his life just to work on it.

Tony’s face scrunched up, like he was physically upset that it wasn’t mechanical engineering “I guess we could set you up in Bruce’s old lab.”

That put a pause on the buzzing.

“Bruce’s lab? Bruce, as in, Doctor Bruce Banner? The world renowned nuclear physicist? The one who wrote award winning papers on anti-electron collisions and gamma radiation? You’re setting me up in his lab?”

“Don’t get too excited there, kid.”

‘It’s just- It’s Doctor Bruce Banner,” He said, sighing with actual heart eyes.

“He’s over in Norway with Thor right now, but maybe I’ll get him to come over and watch you make a fool of yourself in front of him. So-” he moved on before Peter could counter that it wouldn’t matter because it’d be Doctor Freaking Bruce Banner, “what project you working on?”

Peter hadn’t told May or Ned, but Mr. Stark was looking at him and suddenly, Peter felt compelled to tell him the truth.

“My web fluid,” He said tentatively. “I think, if we adjusted the formula, we could use it as a sealant. For open wounds. If we could get it to clot flowing blood and release a pain neutralizer directly to the wound, it would neutralize the acid we need to make it long lasting - someone could wear for as long as they need to on the open wound and still walk or function normally. It would act like another, thicker, more durable layer of skin to protect the wound from infection but also being light enough not to suffocate it. Essentially, it’d be like a giant band aid but for bigger wounds. There’d be no need for stitches at all.” He shook his head. “Of course, it’s all just a fantasy right now, but-”

Peter stopped when Tony cut in front of his line of vision and put his hands on his shoulder, eyes wide with amazement. It wasn’t something Peter could immediately recognize on his face.

“Kid. Pete. Peter,” Mr. Stark released a large breath and locks eyes with him, moving one hand to cup his neck and cheek before pulling away and reaching for his phone.

“What?” asks Peter, voice hard because he thought- out of all people, Tony Stark could understand him- this need to create something great. “Look, I really don’t care if you don’t think I can do it, but-”

“Bruce,” Mr. Stark said, over the phone, Peter realized. “I need you to come down here, ASAP.”

There was a pause and Peter couldn’t process anything about what Tony said before he continued.

“What-? No, there are no aliens. It’s not a battle, Brucie. It’s Science Bros time.”

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ASAP actually meant 7 hours because direct teleportation didn’t yet exist and Dr. Banner’s lab wasn’t even cleaned of dust yet.

There was still a buzz under his skin, threatening to light him on fire, but there was something he had to do first, something he’d been meaning to do, so he told Tony not to wait up for him and swung himself through the city.

Peter learned that it was far too easy for a masked vigilante to learn where the children’s wing was in a hospital and perch himself against the window of Muslima’s room.

Her parents were on either side of her, heads bowed. They didn’t notice him, but the other two people in the room did. They’re older, one of them, the boy, was obviously college age and the other- the other, Peter Parker recognized.

Aydan Zakir.

This- Spider-Man was not expecting this. Seeing someone from school. This was a mistake, he realized. He should have done this after visiting hours, instead of possibly compromising his identity because yeah, okay Peter liked to pretend he wasn’t a bad secret keeper but it didn’t take a genius to know that he wasn’t.

He’d already got one arm lined to throw a web when-

“Wait!” Aydan said, low enough not to disturb her parents but loud enough to get Peter to stop. “Thank you,” Peter can hear her gulp and sees her blink back tears. “Thank you for saving my sister.”

Peter jumped from the window before she could say anything more.

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“So far, I’ve got this.” Peter reached into his bag blindly, pulling out handfuls of crumpled papers.

Tony picked one up and held it just close enough to tell Peter that the paper was actually his already graded history paper.

“No, no, it’s on the back Mr. Stark,” He said, childishly, but also with a new sense of urgency Tony hadn’t seen outside of battle before, taking the paper from Tony’s hand and laying it on the table, spreading the backs of other papers along with it.

The gears in Tony’s head were clicking and working into overdrive. There was a thrumming underneath his skin.

Tony Stark is no biochemist or bio-anything, really, but what he was looking at just then - the adhesion formulas, the density calculations, the blood clotting theories, it started falling together like a perfect puzzle piece.

All they had to do was create a few more pieces. A few more pieces, and this could be something.

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It took Bruce Banner approximately a minute and a half to recognize that Peter Parker was a genius.

Tony was in the corner, reading more about biochemistry (which- wow) while Bruce looked over the countless pieces of paper strewn over the table.

The rough sketch of the polymer made his mind race, thinking about how to create it, how to make it last longer, how to make it more durable yet keep it’s flexibility, how it would reject infection, how it would fight its own acid releasing nature-

Then Peter Parker walked into the room.

(Bruce felt a little intimidated, actually)

“Ohmygod,” He breathed, “You’re Doctor Bruce Banner. Here. In front of me. Not on a picture frame in my classroom. Ohmygod I’m standing in the same room as Doctor Bruce Banner.”

Okay, yeah, he might’ve been a little stupid to feel intimidated.

Peter smiled at him shyly and Bruce thought this- working with the Science Bros on something, something revolutionary-

Well, he knew it was going to change some lives.

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“May, I think… I think I’m about to do something amazing.”

“What? Peter, I swear if some costumed freak drugged you again, I will-”

“Listen, May, don’t worry. Nothing’s wrong with me. I am in perfectly sound health. I’m just gonna stay at the compound this weekend.”

“All weekend? I mean, if Tony’s not too offset by your morning self, I guess I’ll see you on Monday. Love you, Peter-”

“I love you too, May.” A pause. “I really- I really do think this could be something, May.”

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After about five hours of working non-stop, Peter admitted that he was not expecting that working with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner would be three times more unorganized and chaotic than it would’ve been working by himself.

It made him think that they were all a couple of college kids studying for finals week, what with papers from textbooks thrown across the lab, textbooks themselves highlighted and sprayed with pen ink, and the other countless computers running simulations and telling them of their failures all around him.

He thought it should have been too much, overloading his senses to their breaking point, but instead, it was eerily relaxing.

The thrumming and buzzing under his skin had become a weird comfort, letting him know that maybe- just maybe- he could make this and it could be something.

Until his stomach growled loudly and both Tony and Bruce threw their pens at him with enough force that it stung.

“Wha-?”

“Oh god, Peter, I’m so sorry,” Bruce started, lazily scrubbing his face, “that was purely instinctual. I didn’t mean that.”

“Yeah, sorry about that kid,” Tony followed up, cracking his back loudly as he sat up from his horizontal position on the floor, “Stress habit. You’ll pick it up soon enough,”

By the time the pizza came, all three of them were on the lounge couches watching reruns of Friends. Bruce made them promise that they would take this time as a break then come back with “fresh eyes,” but after the third bite into slice one, they were all trying to avoid pizza stains on the whiteboards they moved into the room.

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Peter stayed at the compound all weekend with Tony and Bruce (BRUCE BANNER!!), eventually falling into an unhealthy routine of falling asleep and waking up at random intervals in the lab, only leaving to go to the bathroom or getting food.

It was the longest he’d gone without Spider-Man-ing, but he didn’t feel guilty about it. He was doing something in this lab. And it was going to be so much more than just Spider-Man.

But this routine made going back to school so much harder.

Everyone at school just seemed so much… more. The teachers were louder, the lights were brighter, Flash’s annoying presence seemed to follow him all throughout the building and Ned was trying to explain last Friday’s lab through text and MJ was drawing more than usual so her constant pencil scratch noise was now a constant pounding in his head and-

Aydan Zakir walked by.

Before Peter knew what he was doing, he jogged up to her and tapped her shoulder, ignoring MJ’s questioning looks.

She glared daggers at him before he could even say anything and- well, yeah Peter probably should’ve thought this through. Obviously she would be Not Happy to be in school or socialize with her little sister still in the hospital.

“Um- I just wanted to say sorry. About your sister. Being in the hospital. And-”

“How do you even know about that? I haven’t told anyone” She hissed, more with confusion than actual heat.

Peter wanted to slap himself on the forehead. Why did he always make things worse for himself? “I- um- I was on the bridge when the accident happened. I recognized your parents and just assumed-”

“Well thanks,” She said, not dismissive, just… exhausted. They walked into history together, Aydan taking her seat in the front row while Peter sat next to MJ by the window.

“You were on the bridge, hm?” It wasn’t a question. Peter let his head fall against the desk roughly.

“I’m too tired for this, MJ. Question my Spider-Man-ness in another seven years. I’ve officially left the chat.”

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Flash forward about a month working with Tony and Bruce (BRUCE BANNER!), and Peter had almost fully adjusted to a working schedule that worked for him and for May’s worrywart hours.

Now, he spent Tuesdays and Thursdays at home with May, he went to every decathlon practice, tried to improve his “friendship” with Aydan (because it made sense that if he was creating what he was creating, he should get along with the family of the person who inspired him), and ate and slept regularly. Either that, or May pulled the plug on overnight stays at the compound.

He’s somehow managed to balance decathlon practice, schoolwork, and this… project, while maintaining relationships and Spider-Man activity.

They should’ve known it was too good to last.

He and Bruce (BRUCE BANNER!) were hunched over a table, spitting ideas back and forth on the temperature factor when there was a sudden, intense, white-hot, deafening, blinding shriek that made Peter stumble backwards and fall on top of a whiteboard. His hands clamped down on his ears to try and ease whatever kind of ringing was burning his eardrums.

“Noise cancellation. Noise cancellation!” Peter screamed, trying, trying, to sort his left from right, up from down, when all of a sudden it stopped.

Peter could breathe again.

“-id? Kid? You with me? C’mon, Peter, say something-”

“Give him some space, Tony! You’re crowding him.”

Peter removed his hands from his ears. There was no blood.

“What….? What was that?”

“What was what? Jesus, Pete, you scared the shit outta me. You don’t know what happened?”

“You guys…” He didn’t understand. “You guys didn’t hear that?”

“Peter, there was no noise. It was just us, no noise. At least, not until you knocked into everything.”

He sat up, cradling his head with both hands and put his head between his legs.

He kinda wanted to cry.

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Project “Something” (because, really, what else was there to call it) was put on a temporary hiatus to figure out what went wrong with Peter.

Usually, Peter would protest or decline their attention, and for a while he did. But then he was lying on a hospital bed when he should’ve been at school, and Peter couldn’t really dispute them.

When he came to, both Bruce (Bruce Banner!!!) and Tony were in the room, with Bruce setting up some stuff next to his EKG (he had an EKG??) and Tony leaning against the far wall. It was weird to see him not moving or pacing around the room.

Well, actually, everything about this set up had been weird.

Last he could remember, he was in his Spanish class. Nothing too out of the ordinary or unique until-

Oh. Oh.

Peter’s cheeks flushed red when he remembered himself tumbling out of his chair because of the ringing and remembering the looks on all his classmates faces.

Ok, so the ear ringing thing wasn’t stopping anytime soon. And it happened during class, which meant that Flash’s teasing would be even worse the next time he went back to school.

His lip trembled. “What’s happening to me?” He asked, his voice so soft that the other two could barely hear him. Peter could tell it would be bad news by the way Bruce kept looking to Tony for reassurance.

“That’s the thing, Peter. Nothing’s wrong with you, physically. I’ve ran tests and different scans all day, but there’s no abnormality.”

“So… the ear ringing? It’s all just… psychosomatic? It’s just in my head?”

Tony pushed himself off the wall and crossed his arms, leveling Peter with a look that made him feel like he had done something really, really wrong.

“It’s a stress thing, kid. You’re taking on too much at once. Your brain can’t handle it, so it does it’s whole ear ringing thing to get you sit down and slow down until you-”

“I’m not stressing myself out!” Peter said instinctively, shaking his head and leaning away from both men. “I’m not! I’m handling everything fine! I’m sleeping and eating and-”

“Pete,” Tony cut him off with a hand on his shoulder. Peter wanted to shove it off, but instead found himself relaxing up the grip. “Stressed out people are notorious for screaming ‘I’m not stressed’. It’s not your fault, kid, we just gotta change the schedule up a little bit.”

“Woah, woah, wait, ‘change the schedule’? We’ve already done that!” Peter ripped the blankets off his legs and stood up, waving his arms at Tony and Bruce. “Listen, Mr. Stark, Dr. Banner, I appreciate you taking the time to check me out and figure out what’s going on, but I’m not docking anymore hours working in the lab. And neither of you can stop me. This- what we’re doing- it’s bigger than us. Making this, marketing this as a pharmaceutical product, it could- it’s going to save lives. And I’m not about to let one of many parts of my brain tell me I can’t do it, so you guys- you can’t take this away from me.”

Peter’s eyes were a little bit glassy. Neither man would look at him.

He walked out and marched to the lab.

Hell would freeze over before Peter Parker would stop working on this.

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Contrary to the belief of every adult involved in his life, Peter did actually know how to take care of himself mentally. He just chose not to sometimes. It took him a few incidents (pulling a ferry together by eight thin, thin webs, knowing that everyone there would drown and die because of him-) (crushed under a full building all alone, no one in the area for miles, dying out under a building alone and no one would see him when he took his last breath-), but he did learn.

So he did try to destress. It turned out to be really inconvenient for all the adults involved in his life because he just ended up logging in more hours as Spider-Man.

He was surprised that May hadn’t announced a punishment for breaking his curfew so often, but then he saw her having lunch with Tony Stark later that day so his surprise quickly morphed to irritation.

Whatever. Even if everyone was against him as Spider-Man, they would still help him out as a scientist.

And really, that’s all he needed. And Peter could feel it coming- a breakthrough just waiting to happen. The thrumming increased exponentially every time he stepped foot into a lab.

So what, if every adult involved in his life thought he was a mess?

(The ear ringing didn’t happen as often anymore, but there was a new feeling. He wasn’t sure what it meant)

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Four months working with Tony and Bruce went by before they stopped theorizing on whiteboards and scraps of paper and running simulations and started experimenting

Peter and Bruce found the basic chemicals Peter used for his web shooters while Tony set up the Trial Camera.

“I can’t even believe we’re doing this right now,” Peter said while grabbing some salicylic acid.

“I know what you mean,” Bruce said, “It feels like we’ve just been running programs and simulations. Making and testing this in person… well, it’s not something I thought I’d actually get to do. But I am really excited to do it.”

“Yes! Same! Also, you guys won’t be so concentrated like before that you’ll throw pens at me when I’m hungry. Maybe only moderately concentrated and you’d throw a paper clip-”

Bruce laughed out loud. “I said I was sorry! And don’t go getting a big head. I guarantee you’ll pick up the same habit in a year’s time,”

“I can promise you right now, Dr. B-”

“Bruce,”

“I will never,” Peter said, ignoring Bruce altogether, “ever, throw office supplies at innocent-”

“Hey!” Tony said suddenly, barging into their chemical storage room. “Camera’s ready. Let’s-”

A pen hit Tony’s forehead at lightning speed, dropping to the ground and echoing.

“Oh my god,” Peter said, breathless, his previously pen-occupied hand now empty. “What did I just do?”

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3/15/2018

Month 5, Week 3 of Experimental Trials

We started experimenting to increase the product’s lifeline three weeks ago. So far there’ve been only minimal improvements. Dr. B and I have been trying to isolate the chemical from my webs that helps them decompose faster and negating that, but we ended up just unraveling the whole polymer altogether. We’ve been trying to see if there’s anything else we could do instead of just totally scrapping the idea of using my webs but it doesn’t seem like there’s much else.

Mr. Stark’s been reading a lot more about biochemistry and keeps giving me his old books after he’s scratched tiny notes on the side. It’s not helping me as much as I need it too.

Ned thinks it really cool, at least. He thinks the whole thing is cool, but really, right now it’s just frustrating.

Nothing Dr. B does or anything I do or anything Mr. Stark does with tech is giving us any promising results. It’s been three weeks of nothing, barely any progress and it’s the most frustrated I’ve been that I can remember.

When I go to school, all I can think about is how badly I’m failing at this. And everyone keeps telling me that it’s only been three weeks, and I can’t expect results right away, and all that stuff about the lightbulb but it still feels awful. I just wanna crawl into a ball and cry all the time. It’s like I’ve lost my drive to finish making this.

Which is awful. It feels disgusting.

And I want to keep trying because this could help so many people, especially depending on the way we market it, but I just can’t bring myself to sit down and try to find a solution to this.

I feel like I’m going insane.

It feels stupid to feel insane too. Dr. B and Mr. Stark aren’t deterring. They just keep going and approaching from different angles and they still somehow have the energy to keep genuinely caring. It’s really fucking unfair. And now the one (1) aspect in my life that I thought I could rely on through everything is making me so irate and frustrated and upset that MJ asked if I was depressed yesterday in history.

I used to be so excited when I came to work with them in the lab. But nothing has happened in five months and I really just want to sleep on the couch with May. While watching Star Wars.

I bet Mr. Stark would have a really nice laugh if he knew I wrote about watching Star Wars in a diary.

I’m going insane.

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Mr. Harrington held Peter back after class the next day at school.

“Listen, Peter,” He started, and by then, Peter already tuned him out. He couldn’t listen to another person telling him to slow down while expecting him to jump to the moon.

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Apparently, nodding along numbly while Mr. Harrington talked wasn’t good enough, because when he got home, May was already there.

“Hey, Peter. You feeling okay?” She stood up from the couch and gave him a hug. He hadn’t even set down his backpack.

The way she stroked his hair made his eyes water, so he just hugged her tighter before anymore tears could make her worry.

“You’re teacher called me a little while ago. Said he was concerned about you, and I am too, Peter.” She pulled away to look Peter in the eye, both hands cupping his cheeks. “You’re grades aren’t slipping, but he said you were more distracted than ever. You’re not participating in class anymore.”

Peter sniffled, because how awful of a nephew was he to make May so worried that she took off of work? Why was he always so selfish-

“Peter,” May said, dragging Peter’s eyes back to hers. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right? I’m always going to be right here.”

It was like something inside him snapped. Not violently, but like the way water from a stream would hit a rock just right after millions of years and the rock would erode away.

And suddenly, Peter couldn’t control the tears.

“Yeah,” Peter said, sobbing. “Yeah. I know.”

He ripped out that page in his diary for May to read instead of trying to find different words to express his despair. She read it while Peter was still crying into her shoulder then crumpled it into a ball and threw it in the trash.

“You’re not going insane, Peter. It’s just a set back. Nothing- no one but yourself is stopping you from finishing what your working on. You’re going to solve this, just like you always do.”

“I can’t, May. I- I can’t-"

“No, baby. There’s never been anything you couldn’t do. What’s stopping you? It’s only one set back in a revolutionary product, Peter. Take time off, come back with a new perspective and I know you’ll get to the bottom of this.”

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The next time Peter was at the Compound, he had mud all over the front of his jeans and t-shirt from when Flash knocked him down earlier in school that day. It didn’t trigger his spider-sense at all, so he tried to find Bruce to see if he could find out what was wrong.

Instead, he walked into the kitchen and saw seven other people casually chatting over the island like they’ve been there before. Frequently.

And then he started looking at these people’s faces and almost fell right back on his face because holy crap he was standing in the same room as the Avengers.

He was standing in the same room as the Avengers with mud all over him from a high school bully.

“Uh…hi?”

Eloquent, Parker.

They went silent all of a sudden, all of them turning to look at him which definitely went down as the time he felt the Most Intimidated in his entire life. He had a list.

“Good afternoon, Peter,” Vision said, breaking the silence. Peter relaxed a little. He’d seen Vision from time to time around the Compound but they’d only talked a handful of times.

“Oh! Hey, Vision. Do you know where I could find Dr. B?” Everyone was still staring at him. Peter didn’t think anything could top this moment on his list.

“Wait, sorry, hold on-” A dark-skinned man stood up, confusion clear as day on his face. Sam Wilson, his brain helpfully supplied. Falcon. He was in the same room as The Falcon. “Who’re you again?”

“Um,” Peter licked his lips. He was definitely going to pass out. “I’m an intern?”

He was met with raised eyebrows.

“No, no I am an intern. I’m just, I do more work than a usual intern. I’m working with Mr. Stark and Dr. B on a project. I’m, uh, Peter Parker, sir.”

“Peter Parker Peter Parker? You’re the kid that’s working with Tony on that project that he’s killing himself with?” James Rhodes asked, unimpressed. Peter couldn’t find himself to care. The War Machine just said his name. Twice. He was definitely dead and in heaven.

“To be fair, sir, it’s kind of killing all of us-”

“Pete! There you are!” Tony said, coming in from another door and making direct eye contact with the other Avengers in his kitchen (THE OTHER AVENGERS!!!) “Is it Thursday already?” He looked down at his watch. “Well, would ya look at that.”

Most of the other avengers (THE OTHER AVENGERS!!!) rolled their eyes and scoffed.

“Glad to see nothing’s changed, Stark,” The red haired lady said (The Black Widow was in the same room as him, The Black Widow was in the same room as him, The Black Widow was in the same room as him-)

“Lovely to see you all too. Have you guys meet Pete?” He walked over to Peter, guiding him over with a firm hand on his shoulder.

Last year, when he did the same thing, he asked him to be an Avenger.

“Alright, Pete, this is Cap, BirdBrain 2, Vision, Wanda, the Original BirdBrain, Nat, and Rhodey, who you probably should’ve meet ages ago. Alright, introductions are done. You ready to come down…” Tony looked at Peter’s clothes and raised an eyebrow. “Who threw you down a well, Parker?”

“Technically, he only pushed me. But I, uh, didn’t really sense it coming,” Peter said, hoping Tony would understand what he was trying to say.

His eyes widened when he realized and Peter sighed in relief. “Is Bruce here? He could… yeah, we should find him.”

“Actually,” Natasha cut in, “Bruce left about an hour ago to talk with SHIELD about something. He said to tell you two that he probably wouldn’t have Science Bro Time’ today.”

“Oh,” Peter said before he could stop himself. “You know, it’s really fine. I don’t have to see him today. I’ll, uh, just get back home and take care of my clothes and-“

“Kid, relax. You can stay, Brucie’s still gonna be here tomorrow. We’ll just pick things up from there. Besides,” Tony smiled at him and suddenly, Peter regretting ever being alive. He was definitely about to be embarrassed the hell out of. “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are all right here in this room. Except for Thor. But you’ll settle for us, yeah?”

After an hour, Peter had successfully managed to accidentally tell them all he was Spider-Man. Well, actually, Natasha, Clint, Wanda, Vision, and Rhodey already knew, but they were a collection of super spies, a sentient computer, a mind reading telepath and Tony’s best friend, so the odds were against him on this one.

“Wait, wait, so on you ditched your homecoming date - the one that you’ve pinned over for two years - to crash a plane her father was hijacking?” Sam asked incredulously, barely containing his laughter.

“I mean, there are some key elements of that night you’re excluding, but yeah, that was my homecoming night and first real villain, I guess.”

Clint snorted, “What else could he be missing from that night? What, was your bully humiliated by your date’s dad too?”

“Nah, but I got to steal his car.”

Tony choked on his drink. “You stole a car?!”

“But actually, you missed the part with the building and the engine.”

“Descriptive,” Wanda said dryly, smirking. Peter shuddered. He couldn’t get Wanda anywhere near close to MJ. They’d kill him.

“There’s not much to tell actually,”

Steve chuckled, “Oh, I really doubt that. C’mon, it’s been a while since I’ve been in school. I wanna hear what happened on homecoming night.”

Someone coughed, covering up their “It’s been more than a while,” comment but Peter paid no mind.

“Well, once I stole his car, I followed her dad to this abandon warehouse -which, I bet if so many warehouses weren’t abandoned, crime rate in this city would decrease exponentially overnight - but anyways, he kinda just cut down the support beams of the building and skrted outta there. Then once I got out from under the building, yadda yada yada, I webbed onto his leg until I got on the plane, which was doing its whole camouflage thing - by the way, Mr. Stark, super cool design. I was definitely going to talk to you on some improvements - and then the bad guy used the stolen alien tech to get into the plane but then some stuff happens and now I’m like crawling on the outside of the plane, trying to get to the door when all of a sudden he comes back and rips off the paneling on the side of the plane and now I web myself back onto him because I can’t really hold onto the plane if there’s no paneling but then he shakes me off and I see the engine, like, right in front of me and I know I can’t avoid it so I web it up and just fall right into it and grip around the middle.

“And I didn’t die, obviously. So then he gets his vulture wings chewed up by the engine and I’m thinking, like, ‘wow, I can’t believe that worked’ when the whole engine falls through. And now I’m holding the engine in one hand and gripping the plane and it’s stressful and I drop the engine and Vulture comes back so I go up to the top of the plane again and then there’s another engine and the Vulture is still there so I’m falling towards the engine, miss it by a hair and…”

Peter trailed off when he looked up and almost everyone with their eyebrows raised. And not in the good way. More in the “what the heck, this kid must be mental”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize. I just thought you wanted- um, never mind. I can, uh, I can leave. I didn’t mean to… ruin the mood or anything,” Peter mumbled, avoiding eye contact as he stood up.

“Hold it,” Tony said, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him from going any further. “No one said you had to go. We were just a little… surprised. Homecoming isn’t usually so traumatizing. Well, it is. Just, not so post-traumatic stress traumatizing.”

“Besides,” Wanda cut in, “I’m sure you saved the day after that. Sometimes things have to be destroyed before any progress can be made. Come sit back down,”

Peter didn’t sit back down. His eyebrows were scrunched up. He was muttering under his breath.

“Kid? Doing okay over there-?”

“That’s it!” Peter said so suddenly that Tony’s hand flew off his shoulder. He turned to him. “Mr. Stark, that’s it!”

“What? What’s happening in your head there?”

“It’s just like Wanda said, sometimes things have to be destroyed before any progress-”

“can be made,” Tony said, the two of them completing the sentence together. “What are you getting at?”

“We keep the corrosive catalyst.”

There was a pause, then Tony shook his head. “Yup, still not getting it, kid. Weren’t we trying to figure out a way it wouldn’t dissolve?”

“Yeah, yeah, obviously,” Tony interrupted him with a scoff, “But this whole time we’ve thought the only way to get it to stop dissolving was by trashing any aqueous chemicals. If we tweak it - it’ll take, like, two minutes, tops - to dissolve into something like the trapped gasses from the wound, the natural pain neutralizing acid-”

“Would work on the thing itself!” Both Tony and Peter were snapping fingers and pointing aggressively at each other, speaking a language only they knew.

“And it would self repair!” They said at the same time.

“God, Peter, you… you freaking did it! You solved it!”

“Um…” Sam said after Tony and Peter ran to the lab like seven year olds for recess. “Anyone actually get any of that?”

--------------------------------------

The days went by a little faster after that. Peter was no longer dreading long hour lab sessions and he didn’t still shed a tear or two before he went to bed.

They called Bruce later that night and explained to him Peter’s breakthrough.

He scoffed. “How could we not have seen that! I mean, what kind of scientists are we when it took us weeks to get to that conclusion?”

“Don’t really know. But… it might sound stupid but I’m really starting to think this could be something, you know?” Peter said, wringing his hands. “Anyways, we were about to run some formulas. Should we wait until you get back or…?”

“No, no. Don’t wait up for me. I might be here for a while. And Peter, trust me, I know exactly what you mean. But, um, everyone’s there, right?”

“Yeah, they surprised the hell outta the kid. He was all embarrassed in front of the big-shot heroes and scared us half to death.”

“Well, I’m a pretty big-shot hero and Pete, you definitely scared me when I first met you. Must be a Spider thing.”

“Wha- Dr. B, how did I scare you?”

“I’m gonna stop you right there, kid. 16 year old innovator with an idea to revolutionize the medical industry? Anyone who wouldn’t be scared of that is a nut job.”

“Stop it,” Peter whined, trying to force the blush crawling up his neck to dissipate. “Anyways, Dr. B, what are you doing over at SHIELD?”

“Well, you remember when I was in Norway helping Thor set up New Asgard? I also made a pitstop in Wakanda, that insanely advanced country in Africa who’s-”

“Trying to open itself up to the world? Dr. B, you went to Wakanda? I’ve- Ever since I heard about it from Karen, I’ve literally been dying to go! You never said you went to Wakanda!”

“Alright, kiddo, chill out.” Tony tugged him back down to sit, “But, yeah Brucie I thought Science Bros don’t keep secrets. Why’d you never spill the beans on Wakanda?”

“Because you’d get your hopes up ridiculously high, like you’re doing right now,” Bruce deadpanned. “But in all seriousness, I wanted to see if King T’Challa and his sister, Princess Shuri, would be willing to help us out, as, you know, the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Meaning, I’ve gotta talk to SHIELD about why a never before seen vibranium jet is headed to the Compound in a few weeks.”

“So cool.”

--------------------------------------

When Peter and Tony first went to the lab to test their theory, it was early on a Saturday morning. Peter’s web fluid usually dissolved after about one to two hours, so they had time to kill.

“What should we do now, Mr. Stark?” Peter asked while fumbling with some more carbon tetrachloride. Tony whisked it out of his hands.

“We’ve actually got the day booked, Parker. I’m sure Pepper’s already outside waiting. Let’s go.”

Peter didn’t stop asking questions until they got to the car, wondering what they would be doing and stressing on how if he was going anywhere with Pepper Potts, he should’ve dressed up a little more than a t-shirt and sweats.

He opened the car door and saw his aunt May staring back up at him.

“Well aren’t you all dolled up?” She said dryly while Peter was still trying to understand exactly what was happening.

“Wha- May? What’re you doing here? What’s going on?”

“We’ve got stuff to do today! It’ll be fun, I promise.” She said, clasping her hands together against her chest.

“Yeah, I’ve figured that part out. I mean, like, what are we doing? Specifically. Because as much as I love seeing you, May - and you too, Ms. Potts - this is a little… I mean, it’s just not what I was expecting, that’s all.”

May smiled and brushed back his hair. “Yeah, baby, I know. I should’ve done this earlier. But better late than never.” She took a deep breath and looked Peter in the eyes. “We’re making Tony and Pepper your emergency guardians.”

Peter blinked. A couple times, actually.

“What?”

“I thought it was time to have a protocol ready, in case of anything happening to me or-“

“Wait, happening to you? May- you- you’re not sick or anything, right? You’d tell me if you were sick, you’d-”

“No, no, Peter, I’m not sick. I’m fine, perfectly healthy. It’s just in case you can’t reach me. I know you’ve been spending a lot of time with Tony and Pepper in the lab, so I needed to make sure they could assume some responsibilities over you if you needed it.”

“Oh,” Peter said dumbly. “What kinds of responsibilities? Because, I mean, I don’t wanna burden you guys with all of this if it’s-”

May put a hand on his shoulder. “Peter. Look at me. One: Tony, Pepper and I have already talked about this. Extensively. They wouldn’t be in the car right now if they weren’t 100% on board.” Tony and Pepper made agreeing remarks. They flew over Peter’s head.

May could tell he was about to freak out again and she shook her head. Peter was too selfless for his own good.

“Peter, we don’t want you to worry about any of this,” Pepper cut in. “The change that you’ll notice the most is that now I can sign a permission slip from school. Or sign you out from school. There’s a little more, but for the most part, nothing’s going to change.”

“Oh,” Peter said, again, and felt himself deflate comfortably. He smiled. “That doesn’t sound too bad. So both you and Mr. Stark will be listed on, like, forms and stuff? Is it gonna show up like I have three parents? Because, Ms. Potts, Mr. Stark - I love you guys, but three is kind of really excessive? I just-”

“Kid, relax!” Tony said from the driver's seat. “Pep is going to be the initial name we put down, that way most people won’t look in too deep when they see that all three of you have the same last initial. We can have it arranged that my name is blocked on more public forms, but they’ll still dial my number if there’s an emergency or anything and you’re school will know I’m in the picture too. Nothing to worry about.”

Peter smiled, but it quickly faded to a look of horror. “Oh my god, MJ is gonna know that Pepper Potts is my guardian.”

--------------------------------------

The next few weeks were quiet after that. It went something like…

1) Bruce came back just in time to celebrate their third prototype’s two week anniversary of survival.

2) They had some celebratory pizza with the rest of the Avengers.

3) MJ found out about Pepper and Ned found out about Tony and the whole ‘having celebratory pizza with the rest of the Avengers’.

4) The principal called him up to the main office.

It happened right after lunch and his teacher glared at him when the speakers asked him to go see the principal because it interrupted her “beginning of lesson” plans. It was just a fancier way of saying she was giving out a worksheet while she took attendance, but he did go to this school for a fancy education, so all was sort of fair.

“Is this some sort of joke?” Principal Morita said as soon as Peter sat down in his office. He threw down a file, which Peter assumed to be his own.

“I- I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t- Um, what am I here for, again?”

His principal glared (again). “This morning, I was handed a new file. ‘It’s Peter Parker’s updated file’, they said. I hoped it wasn’t too drastic of a change, but I see you’ve treated your time at this school as a joke, yet again. Let me remind you, Mr. Parker,” He said lowly, bending down to meet his eye level. “Here at Midtown Tech, we do not tolerate felonies like adding Pepper Potts as your second guardian. Or providing her fiancee’s - Tony Stark’s -phone number alongside her own.”

Peter’s eyes blew wide and his mouth fell open. “Wha- No! Principal Morita, I assure you, I take being here very seriously. That, that wasn’t a prank or anything. May and Ms. Potts thought-“

“Peter, please!” Morita cried out, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “You can’t actually expect me to believe this isn’t some elaborate joke? Now, I know you’re here on a scholarship program, so I’m sure you understand the repercussions for a crime like this, but I’ll take the liberty of reminding you-”

He cut himself off when he heard a phone ringing. Peter’s phone.

Morita looked absolutely livid, but before he could say anything, whoever Peter was calling picked up the phone.

“Peter? Can I call you back? I’m about to head into a meeting and you should probably be in class.”

“Hi, Ms. Potts,” Peter said, smiling at the camera while pointedly avoiding his principal’s eyes. “Listen, I’m just going to, um, hand my principal the phone, I guess? Could you just, um, prove that you’re my legal guardian? Like, with your face? Wait, no that came out wrong, I just meant that maybe-“

“Peter. Just hand over the phone.”

Morita blushed a brilliant red when Peter gave him the phone and he met a very irritated Pepper Potts.

“Listen,” Pepper started before Morita could fully compute that he was actually looking at Pepper Potts. “I’m not here to tell you how to do your job. You seem pretty capable of that, but I should inform you that forging legal guardianship isn’t something anyone can do easily, let alone as a prank. You’re thinking Peter did this as a prank, right? Yeah, well, if you’d looked closer at that file, you’d see my signature and my fiancee’s signature and May Parker’s signature. And even if you thought he forged that, he couldn’t have entered the courtroom without a guardian present. Now, I’ve got a meeting to attend to. If you’ve got any more questions, you should leave a voicemail. With the phone number I provided on that form. Hand the phone back to Peter, will you?”

Numbly and shellshocked, Morita handed the phone back to Peter . He tuned in just to hear Pepper end the call with “Love you, Peter. I’ll see you at home.”

There was a tense silence for over a minute before Peter opened his mouth and started talking again.

“Principal Morita, I’m really sorry about that. Calling someone while you were talking, I mean. I had to, but it was still extremely rude and I fully apologize-”

“Stop.” Morita held up a hand. He looked three years older than he just did. “I’m the one who owes you an apology. I accused you of a crime then threatened to take away your scholarship with practically no basis. You can go back to class.”

--------------------------------------

For the most part, Peter was getting better.

Well, he wasn’t writing in his diary that he was going insane, so Peter counted it as improvement.

After they had successfully made their product last up to two months (TWO MONTHS!!!), they had to start tackling other factors, like the durability - which, for some reason, wasn’t proportional in any relation to his web fluid’s standard tensile strength - the temperature flux, the flexibility, and - the worst part - figuring out everything with the pain neutralizing acid differentiating skin and an open wound.

Peter didn’t know how any scientists survived like this. It was like after one finally climbing up one ladder ring, the two more were added.

He might not have been crying himself to sleep every night, but he was down right exhausted. Like all the energy had been sapped straight from his bones and left him to bleed out on the cold, hard, tiled grout with snow falling-

“Dude, are you okay?” Ned said, interrupting his spiraling thoughts in his seat next to him. “You kinda zoned out for, like, a minute and a half,”

Right. School. Chemistry.

“You’re not about to fall on the ground again, are you? Because that was really scary and you still won’t tell me what’s going on other than your working on a project with the Hulk and Iron Man and at first it was cool but now I’m just really paranoid all the time and-“

“Ned,” Peter cut him off, eyes closed as he tried to just… just hope some of the blood would find its way back into his body. “I’m gonna be fine. You don’t have to worry about anything. And I don’t want to tell you anything yet because progress is moving really slowly. Like, really slowly. We only started experimenting around two months ago.”

Ned’s eyes went wide with wonder and it made Peter hate himself because he’d been such an awful friend for that last seven months-

“Experimenting, huh?” Flash said mockingly from behind them.

Peter groaned internally. Today was Not the day for Flash’s comments. Peter didn’t even have the energy to hold up a hand to his face.

“Penis Parker experimenting on something outside of school? I thought you were too broke for that, Parker. What, you get a new sugar daddy or-”

Flash cried out loud when a book hit the back of his head.

That’s when Peter looked up because throwing books was a classic MJ move and MJ wasn’t in his chemistry class.

Both he and Ned looked at the culprit with wide eyes. Aydan Zakir brushed back the end of her hijab and raised an eyebrow.

“Now I understand why MJ likes throwing books,” She said, smirking.

“Dude,” Ned whispered dramatically. “What is it with you and girls? You gotta give me some pointers. After you tell me about ‘the project’” He said the words in a wobbly voice and Peter laughed.

It was the first time he really laughed in awhile.

“Boys! Back to work!” Mr. Harrington said

“Yessir,” Flash, Ned, and Peter mumbled.

Peter was about to get back to his notebook when his Spider-Sense flared up and trained his eyes on the door.

Nothing happened right away, but Peter had been Spider-Man long enough to know not to ignore anything his Spider-Sense threw at him. Especially after that disappearing act it pulled a little while ago, which was actually just (another) symptom of excessive stress.

A millisecond later, the door flew open and Peter locked eyes with Bruce Banner.

Bruce wasted no time. He was panting, probably from running here, and choked out a few vague words. “Peter, we gotta go. She’s here.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “You gotta be more specific here, Dr. B. Who’s here?”

Suddenly, Tony was beside Bruce. “You get the kid yet?” He asked, ignoring Mr. Harrington’s unintelligible sputtering.

“Mr. Stark, what’s going on? I’m kinda in the middle of class right now.” He gestured to his dumbfounded chemistry teacher. Both Bruce and Tony scrunched their eyebrows at him.

“Peter, there’s no time. Tony’s already signed you out, so let’s go.”

Peter, stuffing loose papers into his bag and pointedly avoiding the looks from everyone in his class, huffed with irritation.

“Will you at least tell me why I’m being dragged out of my classroom?”

“Kid, they’re here. She’s here.”

Peter finished up his handshake with Ned. “Bye, Ned, I’ll text you. And, um, thanks Aydan. Bye Mr. Harrington. Also, Mr. Stark, that’s not any clearer.”

“Shuri! Peter, Shuri is here.”

Peter left the classroom with wide, comical eyes, letting his classmates hear him scream “She’s here?!” Before leaving altogether.

Their classroom was left in a stunned silence for a while.

Bruce Banner came back into the classroom. Mr. Harrington looked white. “Um, sorry for disrupting your class-“

“Bruce! Let’s go!”

--------------------------------------

So when Tony and Bruce said “They’re here,” they actually meant the plane would be landing in twenty minutes. Which, fine, okay, but they also neglected to mention that they would have a “team meeting” with the Black Panther for another two hours.

“Team meetings” didn’t include Spider-Man for some reason. Whatever.

Anyways, with Tony and Bruce and everyone else chatting with the King, Peter started walking down to the lab to sulk. He stopped when he heard a voice he didn’t recognize call his name.

“Are you Peter Parker?” They asked and Peter whipped around so fast he was dizzy, but you really couldn’t blame him because he was in the same room as Princess Shuri of Wakanda, aka the Smartest Person Alive. Holy Hell.

“Um- I mean, yeah- I am, uh, I am Peter Parker, Princess Shuri.”

She raised an eyebrow and he felt himself blush. “You can drop the Princess title. We are the same age, after all.”

“Yeah!” Peter cringed at his voice crack. “Um, yeah, we are, but you know- you’re the Princess Shuri of Wakanda. You know, the singular person to manipulate and store and reuse kinetic energy and one of the only people who knows how to use vibranium in any way, so I mean, maybe not Princess, but I think you deserve some sort of title and…” Both of the Princess’s eyebrows were raised. She looked about three seconds from keeling over with laughter. “And I’ll stop talking now. Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything I just-”

“Relax, colonizer. The mumbling is irritating, but still endearing.” Peter let out a sigh of relief. And then his cheeks heated up because the Princess of Wakanda and the Smartest Person Alive called him endearing. “You know a lot about what I do in Wakanda. What kind of scientist are you?”

“Oh! No, I’m not really- I wouldn’t call myself a scientist. I’m just helping out on a project with Mr. Stark and Dr. B.”

“Let me guess. Mechanical Engineering?”

“Biomedical, actually,”

Shuri hummed. “I never would’ve thought Tony Stark a man to willingly work in a biomedical field.”

“You know, I didn’t think so at first either, but looking back, I don’t think we would’ve gotten this far without him.”

“You still haven’t told me what it is you are working on.”

“Oh! Sorry, sorry. Um, do you want anything to drink or something before or do you just wanna go down to the lab now…?”

She laughed out loud and Peter chuckled. Maybe his superhero/scientist awe factor was decreasing.

Wouldn’t that be something.

--------------------------------------

“So, um, we’re still in the very, very, early stages of creating this, but what it’s essentially supposed to do is replace stitches,”

“Oh. I knew the rest of the world was behind in every field but I hadn’t realized you still stitched together most wounds.”

“Yeah and it’s actually a huge problem here, in America at least. Without free healthcare for everyone, a lot of people don’t like to go to hospitals, so we’re trying to make this and eventually market it as a pharmaceutical product so anyone can just go to the closest Walgreens or Rite Aid and pick it up for, like, five bucks. I’m still not too sure on how it’d be applied, but that's definitely a problem for later.”

“You don’t have free healthcare in America?” Shuri asked, and when Peter looked back at her, his eyes blew wide. She was already manipulating 3D structures like Tony did with a simple wave of her hand. “I knew America had some issues but I thought wanting free healthcare is something everyone could agree on,”

Peter huffed. “You’d think so. But, it’s not. There were a couple times I saw someone bleeding out or someone with a broken bone call an Uber to take them to a hospital to avoid ambulance costs.”

“Well,” Shuri said, craning her knuckles and smirking, “what do you have so far?”

Peter smiled.

This- working with someone who recognized this issue even from around the world and wanting to help- could be something.

“Well, right now we’ve been able to maximize it’s lifespan to about 5 weeks and counting. The design and components are based off of Spider-Man’s web fluid, so it already has a corrosive catalyst. We manipulated it to act as a sort of gaseous pain killer that worked to slowly repair the wound-“

“h-Leptane and Ethyl acetate? Smart.”

Peter nodded, giddy. This was going to be great.

“Yes! Yeah, exactly. But obviously not all of the corrosive catalyst could be used as the pain killer because then there’d be too big of an equilibrium shift. So instead we decided to let it dissolve and have the acid repair system repair the whole thing together constantly.” Shuri nodded with approval and Peter felt his heart ascend to an astral plane.

The Smartest Person Alive just nodded at his solution and called it smart.

“But now we’re having some trouble factoring in temperature. If this is going to be marketed around America and hopefully worldwide, it’d have to be able to withstand extreme temperatures without condensing or expanding.”

“No substance can react to temperature fluxes in Vibranium.”

Peter felt a thrumming under his skin. A buzzing, an ear ringing and the urge to do more, be more, move, build, create, do it, make something great and suddenly Peter was in a desk, pencil in hand, drawing up ideas.

He looked over to his left and saw Shuri still expertly manipulating Friday’s system, toying with huge 3D models that she’d already created in their limited time.

This was going to work.

--------------------------------------

Peter and Shuri had been in the lab for hours upon hours, stuck in a deep rooted concentration, occasionally spitting out ideas back and forth until Peter was pulled out of his headspace by his phone vibrating loudly. Looking back over to Shuri, he saw she was unfazed. He shuddered. Peter could already feel the sting of an office supply she would throw at him if he interrupted her now.

Group Chat with: science made me green, I Am Science
science made me green: Hey, Peter. We’re almost done with the meeting up here. Science Bros dinner?

Peter smiled. Science Bros dinner was always the best dinner, not because of the food itself (endlessly oily pizza) but because it was with the Science Bros. People who could keep up with Peter science-wise but still know how to have a good time. He looked back over at Shuri and texted back a reply to Bruce.

science made me an arachnid: for sure! text me when and i’ll meet u guys up there.

“Hey, Shuri,” Peter called out instinctively, then realized his mistake. He quickly brought his arms up to shield himself from any oncoming pens but lowered them when nothing hit him.

“What crazy thing are you doing now, colonizer?”

Peter’s jaw unhinged. “You… you didn’t hit me?”

Shuri laughed out loud and Peter felt himself blush bright red. “Was I supposed to? Is that how you do things in America? Hit people when they call for you? I should try it.”

“No, no that’s not what I- forget it. Whatever. Anyways, got any plans for tonight?”

She leveled him with a look. “My brother is the King of a country with the only supply of a practically indestructible metal. I may be the smartest person alive but I’m still only his sister.”

“In that case, wanna join me and the other Science Bros for dinner?”

“‘Science Bros’? What kind of cult did I walk into?”

--------------------------------------

Two weeks working with Shuri flew by.

Like Peter had expected, Tony was a little apprehensive of letting a newcomer into the club but relented after a day of her proving that she was, in fact, the smartest person in the world.

She quickly rattled off several different solutions for the temperature flux, which were all great. But it left them with the problem of choosing which one would work best for at-home applications

Hence the two weeks of lab testing and experimenting.

It was a headache and a half and Peter kept having to remind himself that he was doing this for everyone. It wasn’t just an off the side, back burner project.

This was his work. His job.

Which was exactly why after three and a half hours in that lab that day, Peter put on his suit and swung across Queens, ignoring the Science Bros’ cries of confusion.

He swung and swung, and tried to remember the exact address until he saw a somewhat familiar building. He crawled up 26 windows before seeing who he came for: a little girl with dark skin and even darker, frizzier hair.

“Muslima!” Spider-Man called out from her balcony.

“Spider-Man!” She said unfazed, squealing and running towards the balcony. “Ammi said that you saved me on the bridge but I didn’t see you so I couldn’t say thank you.”

“Aw, you don’t have to thank me. All part of the job as Spider-Man,” He gave her an animated wink and she giggled. “How’s your leg feeling?”

She looked down and lifted up her pant leg so Peter could see the huge, red, angry scar. “It doesn’t hurt anymore and I don’t have to stay in a wheelchair anymore! But ammi says I have to wear a weird smelling lotion so the scar isn’t so red.” Muslima gave Peter a crooked smile. “But I think it looks cool right now! It’s red just like you, Spider-Man!”

Peter couldn’t tell if he was going to laugh or gag at what she was saying.

“What kind of lotion smells that bad? Don’t most of them smell like flowers?”

“Ammi says it’s a… I dunno, but she says it like the word moist. And oink like a pig.”

“Ointment?” Peter could feel the gears in his head turning. Ointment. Ointment.

Muslima’s face lit up and she pointed an enthusiastic finger at him. “Yeah! Like that.”

“That’s… that’s really smart. Muslima, you just gave me a really cool idea.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!” He held his hand up for a high five and she met it with energy. God, Peter loved kids. “Listen, I’ve got to go right now,” Her face fell and Peter felt his heart snap. He was such a pushover. “But I have a friend. His name is Peter and he’s friends with your sister, Aydan. So if you ever need me, ask your sister for him, okay?”

She nodded, all previous traces of sorrow forgotten. He winked again and swung away, back to the compound.

For a moment, Peter felt his disbelief about the project from all those months ago. The uncertainty, his hesitation.

And he thinks this - the semi coherent thought rummaging around in his brain - could really be something.

He sort of missed that feeling.

--------------------------------------

Peter was ready to swing back to the Compound and lay down his idea to everyone else but stopped himself beforehand.

Well, not really stopped. He was more… stunned into silence.

Around a small table, Bruce, Tony, and Shuri were playing Uno. Loudly

“How are you so good at this?” Bruce groaned as he picked up more cards to add to his already huge pile. “You’ve never even played before!”

Shuri grinned. “I am a goddess.”

“Well, I am Iron Man, so take two, Princess,” Tony said, dramatically throwing down a green plus two card.

“You cannot do that.”

“Um, yes, yes I can do that.”

“No, I changed the color to blue.”

“Doesn’t matter, it’s a plus card so I can put a plus card on top of that.”

“No… that’s not- Tony do you know how to play this game?”

“Of course I know how to play the- did you seriously just ask me if I knew how to play a card game meant for seven year olds?”

“I needed the clarification because by the way this game has been going, you obviously don’t know how.”

Peter blinked. Twice. Thrice.

“Guys.”

“Excuse you, Princess but I’ve lived in a country where Uno is played by numerous children so I think-”

“Wow, hooray, you were born in America. I should just let you win the game now, I guess.”

“You know what, yeah. Yes, I think that’d be good for everyone here-”

“I was joking you old-”

“Calling me old now, Princess? We’ll I’ve-”

“I have a name, you know and-”

Bruce lifted his head up from the table and looked at Peter tiredly.

“Save me,” He whispered.

“Guys!”

Both Tony and Shuri stopped their bickering and turned to look at Peter.

“Ah, Spider-boy. I was wondering-”

“Not the time for the extreme sass, Shuri,” Peter said in a rush. “I’ve got an idea.”

Bruce smiled and shoved all the cards off the table, watching Tony and Shuri’s faces crumple into frustrations. “Now we’re talking. Peter Parker’s ideas after a round trip as Spider-Man are always promising.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know that. Did you have to throw the cards everywhere?”

“Irrelevant,” Peter took off his mask and suit, shimming into his regular clothes. “So I’m thinking: ointment.”

Tony looked at him incredulously. “Did you hit your head or something? We’re over half a year into this project based all off your webbing. No take backs now.”

“No, no, not like that. I mean, what if we created an ointment infused with vibranium? The webbing thing itself would have vibranium in it too, so if we can polarize it just right, they can act magnetically, creating-”

“A sealed environment.” All of them finished, eyes alight with wonder.

“That’s perfect!” Shuri said, already making her way towards her lab area. “It is a much easier home applicant than my own temperature control ideas and it’ll cost even less to make.”

No.

This wasn’t just going to be something.

This was going to be everything.

--------------------------------------

As per the Wakandan’s agreements, King T’Challa and Princess Shuri left two days later.

“Here,” She said, pulling apart their hug and tugging Peter’s wrist closer to her. Shuri pulled out a bracelet- no, not a bracelet. They were-

“Remote Access Kimoyo Beads?! Dude, you’re giving me Remote Access Kimoyo Beads?!”

She laughed. “I knew you guys would be trying to figure out a way to call me in a couple hours to fix another problem. I at least thought I could make it easier for you.”

“You- I- this-” Peter opened and closed his mouth, unable to find words. He smiled. “Come here,”

He invited her into his arms for a tight hug.

“I’m gonna miss having you around, Shuri.”

“Same here, bug boy.” She pulled away and leveled him with a glare. “Make sure MJ knows how to use that.”

Walking away from Peter, she stopped to give Bruce and Tony their own hugs.

Looking over her shoulder, Tony called out to T’Challa. “When she gets home, she better learn some proper manners. Calling the world’s most innovative person old-”

“It is because it’s the truth, old man,” She replied, not breaking the hug “Unlike you being the most innovative person in the world-”

“I house and feed you for two weeks and this is how you-”

“You guys asked me to be a part of your science cult-”

“Correction: Peter did. I was not consulted when-”

“Just send me off, old man.”

Tony huffed and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Yeah, yeah. Get home safe, Princess.”

--------------------------------------

There was a weird dynamic without Shuri alongside them, but the three of them made it work. They had to.

After a month and a half, Peter was in the labs with Tony while Bruce went out to pick up food, observing their creation in a synthetic testing simulation.

SHIELD medical agents used similar things to test themselves in an under pressure situation. It modeled any part, or the whole human body and would react accordingly. That included blood spewing, bubbling stomach acid, vomiting, colored veins, and so much more.

It was a little nauseating, if Peter was being honest.

Like the old school kid he was, Peter took his own pencil and paper notes on the effect it was having and how the thing itself was withstand (And hot damn they really needed to get this thing a name). Hunching over, Peter recorded numbers and stimulants and observations until Tony interrupted his train of thought.

“Keep bending over like that, kid, and you’ll give yourself the back of an 80 year old,”

“Then we can be matching, Mr. Stark!” He replied, sarcastic enthusiasm bleeding from his tone. Tony shook his head.

“I let you hang out with a princess for two weeks and this is how you repay me?”

Peter snorted and turned back to the simulation, notebook in hand.

He looked at it with wide eyes. He blinked. Twice. Thrice.

No, there’s no way it could be doing…

“Mr. Stark,” Peter called out, voice trembling a little bit. “Mr. Stark! Look at this!”

Tony walked over, eyes blown open when he saw what was happening. “What- how is that happening?”

“I don’t really know! I was just grabbing some of my spare blood samples, like the ones we need for if I ever need a transfusion? And I proportionated the amount to oversaturate this thing. I wasn’t expecting anything to happen but with a sealed environment and my unstable blood… well, you saw what just happened.”

What just happened, Tony said to himself to understand that he was definitely not dreaming, was the wound started closing up on itself twice as fast as it should have.

Damn.

When Bruce came back, it was obvious dinner was the least of their worries.

--------------------------------------

In a true, college kid fashion, Peter Parker didn’t go home to May until he ran out of clean clothes at the compound and couldn’t find the laundry.

“Ohhh no,” May said when Peter called to tell her he was “spending the night” at their apartment. “No, no. You don’t get to pull this, young man. You promised you’d be home on Tuesdays and Thursdays, yet I haven’t seen you in over a week. Nuh-uh. You are coming straight home and then I want you to call your ‘Science Bros’ and tell them I’m making dinner.”

“What? May, no, no, you don’t have to make dinner for us-”

“Actually, I do, Peter. I’m not about to let my kid spend more time at someone else’s house then not invite them over for a meal. C’mon, Peter, where’re you’re manners?”

“May, I really don’t think-”

“Ba-bap! No arguing. That is final. I’ll see you tonight baby.”

Peter, resigned to his fate, sighed. “Bye, May.” He scrolled through his text history.

Group Chat with: science made me green, I Am Science
science made me an arachnid: may wants to make dinner for you guys tonight.
science made me an arachnid: come up with excuses fast

He didn’t get a reply until three periods later, and Peter sincerely hoped they took his warning to heart instead of having to suffer through May’s cooking.

science made me a green: Why? I’d love to get to meet your Aunt, Peter
science made me an arachnid: no, trust me.
science made me an arachnid: you can talk with her whenever you want
science made me an arachnid: just not over dinner
science made me an arachnid: never over dinner
I Am Science: Yeah, Brucie, the cooking is pretty awful
I Am Science: But, Pete, I’ve wanted to talk to aunt hottie some more. Especially after the guardianship thing and you spending so much time with me.
I Am Science: I’m finally taking responsibilities now, Pete
I Am Science: We’re going to have so much fun

Peter groaned and let his head hit his desk.

science made me an arachnid: kmn, plz
science made me green: ?

--------------------------------------

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Parker. This looks great,” Bruce said hours later, sitting in his apartment with May’s meatloaf in front of him. Tony and Peter shared a look. He was going to get himself killed.

“Oh, thank you, Dr. Banner. And, please, call me May,”

“Bruce,” He said back, smiling and sent a look to Tony. Eat the meatloaf, his face said.

Kill yourself, is what Tony read from that.

“So!” May said, clasping her hands together. “Tell me more about what you boys are working on. And I know- I know some of this is classified but tell me what you can.”

“May,” Peter whined, “C’mon, I’ve already told you everything I could.”

“Hush. I wanna hear it from the people with PhDs.”

“Well actually,” Bruce started, taking a bite of the food. His eyes went wide, probably feeling all of his taste buds shriveling up and dying. Tony and Peter shared a look. Bruce gave a sheepish smile. “Sorry, May, could you, uh, point me to the bathroom?”

May pointed to a door and Tony picked up the conversation in Bruce’s place.

“I don’t think there’s much left to tell you, actually. Can’t say anything about the marketing moves or what it actually is we’re creating. I can tell you, though, that Peter is the one doing everything.”

Peter blushed an embarrassing shade of pink. “No, no everyone works the same amount, May, and-”

“Pete, you sound like a communist when you say that. Just take the compliment, alright? Trust me, we’d still be where we were seven months ago without you.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Were we even working on this seven months ago?”

“Exactly.”

May laughed and nudged the food closer to Tony and Peter. They both looked at each other desperately until Tony got an idea and winked at Peter. He internally groaned.

“I’ll go check on Brucie-bear, first, May. He gets shy sometimes.”

While Tony was theatrically knocking on the bathroom door, May turned her attention back to Peter. He smiled nervously.

“Peter, I am so proud of you. You know that, right?” Peter nodded, suddenly less nervous and instead feeling a slight burn behind his eyes.

Because that was all he ever wanted. May to be happy and make her proud.

“Now, come on, dig in. You haven’t been eating enough over at the compound.”

A sharp knock at the door cut off his reinstated panic of eating May’s food.

“Did you invite anyone else over, May?” Peter asked, already getting up to open the door.

“No, but it might just be Ronnie from 3d. I still have her dust pan.”

It was not Ronnie from 3d.

Peter opened the door to see-

“Foggy!” Peter cheered, opening the door all the way. “Hey, man, I haven’t seen you in forever. How-”

“Peter,” Foggy said, uncharacteristically upset and urgent. He walked into their apartment, keeping his eyes locked on Peter’s. “Listen, I know we all promised we would never call you for something like this but he’s bleeding out on a roof and I- I can’t move him, Jessica’s out of town. Please, Peter, I- I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Peter!” Tony’s loud and extremely irritated voice cut through Foggy’s daze and he finally saw that it wasn’t just Peter here, but Iron Man and the Hulk. And Aunt May. “Care to introduce us to your friend? Or is he too busy recruiting 16 year olds to drag men bleeding out on rooftops.”

Ignoring Tony, Peter forced Foggy to look back at him. “Where?”

Tony, Bruce, and May all expressed their disapproval, but Peter was already suited up and with a quick “I’ll be back,” he left.

--------------------------------------

Swinging, swinging, swinging-

--------------------------------------

In the end, Peter found Matt not with his sight, but by following the heavy metallic stench of blood.

“No, no no no no,” Peter landed on the rooftop (the rooftop of their office building of all places). Matt, still in his horned mask, was lying in a deep puddle of his own blood. Peter was only sure he wasn’t dead when he heard Matt take in a small breath.

There was a gaping hole, a few centimeters above his belly button. Blood continued to ooze out of it.

“Hey, hey, c’mon,” Peter lifted his head up slightly and patted at his face. This wasn’t Daredevil. Daredevil would never let himself die out on a roof. He was always in a dumpster or in Claire’s apartment. He wouldn’t bleed to death on a roof-

Before Peter even knew what he was doing, his web fluid canister was replaced by the prototype that sat in his pocket. It was still untested, hundreds of factors had yet to be accounted for but Peter was desperate and he needed this to work.

With a few thwip-thwips, Matt’s wound was webbed shut from his stomach and back. The webbing prototype turned red with blood fast.

Peter swung Matt back to his apartment, silently praying that he didn’t kill him in the process. Unsurprisingly, Karen was already there, waiting for them.

“Oh thank god,” She whispered when she caught sight of Peter. “Just, lay him down on the couch. I called Claire, she should be here any minute. Why don’t you go over to the bathroom and get yourself cleaned up.”

“No, no, I should stay here. I can help-”

“Spider-Man,” Karen cut him off and Peter finally caught sight of the dark bruises under her eyes, her usually soft blonde hair looking much darker and greasier. What was Daredevil even up to, to make his people worry about him so much? “Look at yourself. Go clean up in the bathroom. You can borrow Matt’s clothes if you need to.”

Peter looked down at his suit and felt a little dizzy at how much blood was on it. He hastily made his way to Matt’s bathroom, picking up a large sweatshirt.

His hands were trembling. He was barely able to scrub off the blood on the knees, let alone the entire chest. Why was washing off his suit so difficult? His eyes blurred with tears before he could even recognize he was crying.

God, he hated feeling like this. He became Spider-Man to stop feeling that utter disparity and hopelessness and yet even still, it hit him in full force every time.

Stupid feelings.

He slapped his face and stared himself down in the bathroom mirror. “Alright. C’mon, Spider-Man. Stop crying and get over yourself. Make sure your webbing didn’t just kill Daredevil, stop crying and suit up.” He shook his head and let the suit’s self drying feature start self drying. The stains on his knees were pretty much faded so he shimmied on the sweatshirt and pulled his mask back over his face.

It wasn’t like he didn’t trust Claire or Karen with his identity. In fact, he was pretty sure Karen already knew who he was. But a secret identity was a secret identity, and far too many people for his liking already knew.

--------------------------------------

When Peter walked back out to the living room, Claire Temple was already there, poking curiously at his webbing with Karen.

“Spider-Man. This stuff yours?”

“Yeah. It’s something Dr. Banner has been working on with me. It’s not finished yet though, so-”

Claire’s eyes suddenly turned to ice and she grabbed Peter’s wrist before he could touch the webbing on Matt’s stomach. “You used a potentially harmful medical prototype without his consent?”

Peter huffed. “Well it’s not like he was conscious enough to answer even if I had asked! And besides, if I hadn’t used it, he’d already be dead by blood loss.”

Her glare didn’t lose any of its heat but she redirected her attention to Matt. “I can just rip this off, right? It’s not gonna hurt him?”

Peter shook his head. “It won’t hurt him, but it definitely won’t help him. The way this is designed, it’s supposed to stay on for a while. If you take it out now, it’d essentially be the same as removing a dagger from a stab wound.”

Claire cursed under her breath and Peter found himself doing the same.

He hated feeling so helpless, like the only thing he could do was wait. But it was the only thing he could do.

--------------------------------------

The next day after school, Peter saw Foggy outside, waiting in his car. Foggy waved at him.

“Hey, Foggy,” Peter said, climbing into his car. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here. How’d you beat out all the soccer moms?”

Foggy scoffed. “It wasn’t easy. I got here half an hour before school let out and there were only a handful of close parking spaces left.”

“Well, um, not that I don’t like seeing you - because I do! - it’s just, um, where are we going?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Because… I don’t know where we’re going?”

Foggy rolled his eyes. “Pick a place. Anywhere you want to go that’s in a reasonable distance. As a thank-you for last night. Claire did her final check up on Matt. She said it wasn’t like anything she’d seen before. He should’ve been in bed resting for two weeks, but apparently he’ll be ready for work in five days.”

Peter shot up in his seat, eyes glowing. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Oh my god,” Peter said, resting his head in his hands.

It worked. It worked better than he could’ve ever anticipated it to, all those months ago.

“Oh my god.”

--------------------------------------

In the end, Foggy didn’t take Peter anywhere special on account of him being way too keyed up to even sit still in his car. Instead, Foggy and Peter found themselves in Matt’s apartment.

“Foggy?” Matt asked, his voice rough and almost unintelligible. They both cringed and moved closer to him.

“And Peter!”

Peter could practically pinpoint the exact moment Matt connected the dots from the previous night.

“Were you… last night-?”

“Yeah, yeah that was me,” Peter said, cutting him off while Foggy got up to get Matt a glass of water.

Matt sunk back on the couch with a small smirk.

“That webbing you shot on me last night? Was that yours?”

Peter blushed a bright red. “Um, well, I mean, Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark and Shuri helped me out on it a lot. They did most of the work, actually.”

Matt huffed out a laugh, looking in Peter’s direction, “Alright, then. You tell those guys that it’s got a helluva kick back. Stings, a lot.”

Peter found himself cringing. It wasn’t like he hadn’t assumed the first time it was used there would be something to fix, but he’d been so caught up in the whole Matt’s not dead! thing that he’d pushed it all to the back burner.

Although…

“What if you just tell them yourself?” Peter asked quickly and literally felt Matt tense up.

“Peter…” He began tersely.

“Okay, I hadn’t meant it like that. I just meant… what if you came to the Compound sometime? It would just be me and you and I could get a better look at the effects of the prototype. Gauge what to fix and by how much.”

Matt still looked pensive. Peter bit his lip.

He was not above begging.

“Please, Matt. I don’t have to tell you what we could do with this kind of product if I can just get it to work.”

Again, Matt huffed, this time much more irritated. Secret identities weren’t just there to wear a mask, after all. Peter knew it could mean serious repercussions from his job it he was seen coming and going from the Avengers Compound.

“You could bring Foggy with you! And Ms. Page! I just- Matt, I need this to work. You- you gotta understand that.”

Matt laid back down on the couch. “Yeah, alright kid. Alright.”

--------------------------------------

5/23/18
Month 7

Okay so Matt agreed to let me run some tests and at first I got excited but not too excited because there was still a super high chance of him declining but then he texted me asking how I usually got upstate. Long story short, I was in the car with Happy, Foggy, Ms. Page, and Matt for over an hour.

Surprisingly, the most uncomfortable part about the trip was sitting in the front seat next to Happy.

Also, since Happy had to sign a billion NDAs like May, he couldn’t tell Mr. Stark that there were other people with me. Definitely saved me a huge headache.

Matt’s tests have actually revealed a lot about the product (we needed a name for this thing seven months ago), especially about the pain neutralizing acid (PNA). It was one of the first things that we did and it was really easy compared to everything else, but apparently it’s just not pain neutralizing enough. If we do make it less painful, it probably wouldn’t make a difference, it’d just take up some more time.

Absorption/clotting factor worked great, gotta maintain that.
We couldn’t really check the temperature flux, obviously, and plus I was kinda in a rush so I couldn’t apply the ointment.
I’m also thinking that the PNA won’t be able to recognize the difference between skin and an open wound. Need to work on that so the PNA will know when to stop itself then the whole thing would disintegrate naturally.

(Biodegradability is the second most important thing, right after marketing. Climate crisis, hello?)

Flexibility is a wild card because I had assumed it would be just as flexible as my regular web fluid. But earlier when we first tested the durability, it wasn’t proportional in any relation to my web fluid’s standard tensile strength at all. If it’s the same for the flexibility, (can’t accurately predict this, tho. Have to test it with Dr. B later).

Conclusion: testing with Matt with Ms. Page and Foggy in the lab with me has been the highlight of my week. With more tests, old vines will not be the only thing to cure my depression.

--------------------------------------

Peter was getting better with his hero-worshipping by a lot. He had to thank Shuri for that, for being the first hero/super famous person that quelled his hero-worshipping within four hours.

Now, Peter could be in the same room as Thor (who had returned for a while from New Asgard) and could have one (1) full conversation without freaking out. Similarly, he’d grown really close to some of the other Avengers. He and Clint got along great and Peter went out with Wanda regularly. Most of the other Avengers were openly jealous of her getting “first-name privilege” with him.

Peter spent that Saturday with Wanda, with her trying to cure his exhaustition from the whole Daredevil fiasco of that week with a trip to the mall and a lunch date. Then Peter’s over reactive spider senses started to throw a hissy fit when more people came in, so the two opted for lunch and a walk in Central Park.

“It’s just… I know I can’t tell you this, which is the most frustrating part of all. But other than that… science is just so draining,” Peter whined to her as she sipped her coffee.

She gave him a pity smile and he glared. “No one said science was relaxing,”

“No one said shit about science,” He countered, “They just said ‘do it’ and expected me to not commit suicide or come out with an obsessive anxiety disorder or extreme depression.”

“Sometimes I feel like you physically need Shuri to be here just so you can have someone to relate to about the whole… killing yourself thing.”

Peter sighed dramatically. “I guess I’ll just have to settle for you.”

Wanda smacked him upside the head and then beat him in Mario Kart when they got back to the Compound.

--------------------------------------

The next day Peter’s at the lab, he, Bruce, and Tony were quiet. Working in the lab, day in and day out with literally nothing to show for it took a hefty toll on them.

They chose to work on the flexibility first, applying patches of the healing webbing (wasn’t the official name but Peter really couldn’t keep calling it “The Project”) to the dummy’s elbows and knees, hips and knuckles.

Tony was in the corner analyzing the minimal data they collected and Peter’s “anonymous” research on the after effects while Bruce and Peter caught a piece of healing webbing that fell off near its elbow. They looked at each other, cradling the used webbing in between their hands and collectively sighed.

Peter’s hand went to his wrist, twisting the kimoyo beads Shuri gave him. It was a nervous tick that later developed into just a regular, constant tick. Twist right, right, right, twist left, left, twist right, right, right.

“Maybe you should call her,” Bruce said quietly, though it was loud enough in their quiet environment to startle Peter into almost throwing something at him.

He looked down at the kimoyo beads. It wasn’t like he hadn’t called her before, because he did, but usually she was working on something even more amazing to “ease the rest of the world” when Wakanda fully opened their borders. It was probably a testament to how tired he was when he hesitated for only a minute before calling her.

Then hung up.

Tony made a noise of confusion but didn’t say anything.

“Do you, uh,” Peter licked his lips, “Do you guys think we could just call her after, like, a quick nap? Just, like, right here, on that couch over there.” He dragged himself over to the new lab couch and pulled the blanket up to his chest. Sleep came for him quickly.

Tony and Bruce exchanged glances. Peter never took naps around them. It was totally against his “prove I’m not a kid” charade he had going on.

“Alright, well,” Tony stretched out and sat on the couch too, maneuvering Peter so his head was in his lap and pulled the blanket back over them. “Guess I could use some more beauty sleep.”

Bruce looked like he was going to protest but… sleep sounded really freaking good right then.

Literally five minutes into their nap, Peter shot up, his eyes wide and his hair a mess.

“Holy crap,” Peter said, looking at their work on the table while Tony and Bruce regained their bearings. “Holy crap we are so stupid.”

Tony groaned, and again even louder when Bruce shoved him off his shoulder. “Naps imply more than ten minutes of sleep, Parker.”

“We already infused metal in this! It’s magnetized! Guys, all we had to do was adjust the amount of webbing per wound, instead of just relying on adhesive strength!” Without waiting for a confirmation from Bruce or Tony, Peter moved a few holographic diagrams around with ease. “Look, it’s like a 2% increase of webbing for every, I dunno, five centimeters of wound around joints?”

Bruce made his way over to Peter, going over his math while Tony rubbed his eyes. “Words aren’t processing right now, so could you show me whatever it is you’re talking about?”

Peter quickly rattled off some numbers and waited for a bit of ointment and webbing was created. After applying the ointment, he shoved the webbing into his web shooter canister and poised his hand out. “Watch this,” he said over his shoulder and shot the webbing for a millisecond longer than he had previously on the dummy’s knee, right on the ointment.

The webbing started shifting, attracted to the metal in the ointment, and formed a raised shape like a parachute with the ends tied down. Peter ran over to the dummy and positioned it upright, letting the knee bend. The webbing contracted with it.

“Told you,” Peter said, practically breathless, eyes not leaving the dummy.

(Later, when Pepper sent May a photo of the three of them: Peter’s head on Tony’s lap and Tony’s head resting on Bruce’s shoulder with Bruce’s head leaning on Tony’s, all three denied that it ever happened.)

--------------------------------------

“Hey, so,” Peter started, months later in a heavily air conditioned laboratory, when problems about pain neutralizing acids and biodegradability were fully solved. “I know we used my blood for the healy properties of the webbing and that you guys fabricated a weird, synthetic rip-off version of that,”

Tony and Bruce nodded although neither looked up from their hand of Uno cards.

“But how did you know it would be safe? Because, like, my blood is kind of poisonous and you guys warned me if I ever gave blood, that person would get literal radiation poison.”

Still not looking up from his cards, Tony replied. “Synthetic, remember? Just analyzed your blood and Brucie figured out the healing stuff was separate from the radiation.”

“Uno,” Peter placed down a green card. “What does that mean?”

Bruce put down a plus four changing the color to yellow and Tony sighed. “Well, I realized that the radiation activated a healing factor in your blood. Because it was already activated, it didn’t need to surround itself with radiation, so we extracted samples of your radioactive blood and synthesized a non radioactive copy and that’s it.”

“So cool,” Peter breathed. “Also, I win.”

--------------------------------------

Ladders.

Peter hated ladders.

Science was just one endless ladder, and as soon as you got up one rung, a billion more would float into existence.

They’d figured out everything- everything about the healing web thing. Everything to make it tick right, to make it painless, to make it enduring, to make it flexible, to make it biodegradable. Yet they still had so much left to do.

So much left to do.

He was tired.

--------------------------------------

Peter woke up to the bright and harsh sun, and MJ’s voice.

“Get up loser, we’re going shopping.”

“No,” Peter mumbled from where his face was buried in his pillow.

“Sorry, dude, but this is non-negotiable,” Ned said and pulled his blankets off him.

“Nooooooo,” He protested, curling up into a ball, twisting his pillow to muffle over his ears. It was quickly ripped from his weak, morning grasp.

“Peter,” MJ snapped, whacking him with said pillow, “It’s halfway through summer and I’ve barely seen you twice. You’re spending the day with us, no exceptions.”

“Yes, exceptions.” Peter countered, angrily getting up and putting clothes on, “I’ve got something I need to do. Already scheduled. Sorry, I’m booked.”

“For the whole day?”

Ned quickly put himself between the two. “Peter, dude, we don’t care. We’ll come with you. We just miss you, alright?”

Peter looked between the two, his eyes unusually sharp for being abruptly woken up only seconds ago. Soon enough, he relented. “Fine. Let’s go then. We’re going to the Kitchen.”

“Hey, so,” Ned started, wringing his hands together as soon as they left the apartment. “I know we said we’d go with you no matter what but, like, just out of curiosity and slight fear, why are we going to Hell’s Kitchen?”

“Ned, I told you already, someone called in a favor, I’m gonna do it and it’ll be over in twenty minutes, max.”

“Ok, you do know how shady you sound when you say that, right?”

Somehow, somehow, his 20 minute job of fixing up Matt’s copy machine turned into a 40 minute job. The office of Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson was not only given a working copier, but a whole new encrypted software system (courtesy of Ned), and a brand new high school intern (who could ever tell MJ no?).

--------------------------------------

There’s this one time in the dead of night that Peter got an idea. It was a little more crazy than some of the others he’s thought of at that hour, but nothing too exotic. So he put on his suit, leaving a note for May, and swung to the Avengers Compound.

It’s upstate, so once he left the city, he was traveling much slower. Worth it, he reminded himself.

Crawling up the windows, he banged on the one decorated with bird stickers. He didn’t bother saying anything, knowing he wouldn’t have his hearing aids in, but hoped that the banging vibrations would be enough.

Clint, curled up in his blankets, gave Peter the finger and pushed his head further into his pillow. Peter banged harder.

“Go back to your team, Laura said. It’s just for a few days, she said. Give yourself a break, spend some time with Natasha, no one’s going to come banging on your window at three am, she said.”

His clock glowed brightly, saying 3:17.

“Go home.” Clint said as soon as he got to the window.

“I need you help.”

“In seven hours, you can get it. Go home.”

“I won’t be able to sleep,” Peter countered, still sticking to the side of the building.

“I don’t care. I won’t be able to sleep if you stay here. Go home.”

“If you let me in, I’ll tell you what Mr. Stark, Dr. B, and I are working on.”

Clint raised an eyebrow. Peter hopped into his room, already talking a mile a minute. Throughout his demonstration, Clint felt himself grow a whole new admiration for Peter. Of course, seeing how he looked at all hours of the day keyed him in on how much effort Peter put into this, but actually hearing about this miracle bandage he was working on put things into a new perspective.

“Uh, wow, Pete. I… I don’t know what to say, that’s-”

“Nothing without a name,” He admitted with a huff. Clint looked smug.

“So you came here to confess I’m just better at naming things, huh.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Shut up. If you were working even half my hours your naming powers would be depleted too.”

Clint looked right at Peter, holding his eyes for far too long for Peter to be comfortable with. He imagined Cooper looking as worn out and exhausted and decided he should probably cut him a break.

And give May Parker his kudos.

“So the first thing: the product looks a lot like Spider-Man’s webs, but we can’t name it anything too Spider-Man-y. Not for copyright reasons, because I’m sure Stark already trademarked your name but because you’re a vigilante. The police might discourage people using it if it was connected to you, or if your public image as Spider-Man changes, which it will. That being said, you still gotta reference the Spidery-ness of it all.”

Peter nodded intensely, looking like he was taking and filing away his own mental notes.

Jesus, this kid.

--------------------------------------

Half a month later and Peter was still mostly nocturnal. The only thing keeping her from strangling Peter, Shuri thought, was their time difference, which made his call only slightly more bearable.

“What do you think would happen,” Peter started, eyes glassy with tears from torturing his eyes. Shuri hated him. “If I just covered myself with it? Just have my skin suffocate under the webbing?”

“You’d die. Of suffocation.”

“Oh,” He said, like an idiot.

“Are you drunk? Can you even get drunk?”

He gave her a tired, lopsided smile. “Fun fact: I can only be intoxicated for, like, 10 minutes, max. Dr. B tested it out the first few days I met him.”

“Huh,” She filed that information for later.

“Wait. What do you think would happen if I covered myself, but not my mouth or nose?”

Shuri hit her head on her desk and hung up.

--------------------------------------

The thing about working with the same two people day in and day out means that you basically become those two people.

Hence, Peter sneaking out of his room to the lab and locking eyes with Dr. B and Tony doing the same on his left and his right. They didn’t move for at least a full minute, just looking at each other with varying degrees of nervousness.

“I’ll grab the snacks,” Peter said after another five minutes.

--------------------------------------

“Is… is that it?” Bruce asked, stepping away from the projection and removing his glasses. He looked back at Tony with wide eyes. “This is it. It’s done. It’s… it’s finally done.”

Tony was silent until he barked out a laugh. “Peter’s gonna be so upset he missed this.”

--------------------------------------

The bags of chips fell onto the floor as soon as Peter entered the lab, seeing Bruce and Tony leaning against the wall, looking extremely smug.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

--------------------------------------

“We’re here today with the dream team of inventors and doctors alike to talk about their new, groundbreaking and revolutionary medical product, The-----”

The feed cuts to black. A split second later, the hostess is back on, looking only slightly more frazzled.

“Sorry about that, something must’ve scrambled the feed. Anyways, today, we’re joined with some pretty big names tonight, so let’s give a warm welcome to Princess Shuri of Wakanda! Doctor Bruce Banner! Tony Stark and his prodigy intern, Peter Parker!”

A loud round of applause, coming from both the unseen audience and the people sitting next to her. A few whoops are heard. The hostess turns to Shuri.

“So. Tell us, how’d you manage to get involved in this project, across the world from your current residence?”

“Well, my brother dragged me along to his visit to the Avengers Compound to talk about Vibranium. What it is, how it works, what makes it so special, and didn’t bother to invite me, the person who knows the most about Vibranium itself, despite me already being in the Compound.”

Scattered laughs accompany Shuri’s and everyone else’s on stage.

“So I found him,” Shuri points at Peter, sitting at the opposite end of the couch. “He was all mopey because his science buddies were chatting it up with the King of Wakanda, so the two of us just went down to the lab. I saw what they were working on, solved all their problems, and beat them at Uno. Numerous times.”

“She really didn’t,” Tony cuts in. “She just didn’t know how to play and made up her own rules,”

“I do not know how many more times I can tell you old man-”

Bruce sighs wearily and pulls out his wallet. He hands Peter a five dollar bill. Peter looks incredibly smug. “Just once. Can you two get together just once without debating the intricate rules of Uno?”

Their hostess laughs. “You guys are like straight out of a sitcom.”

Peter and Tony look her dead in the eye. “It’s not as fun as it seems,” they say in perfect synchronization.

She clears her throat. “Well. Um, moving on. Dr. Bruce Banner, it’s been a hot minute since we last heard from you. What’s been keeping you so busy these last few years?”

“Uh, well for me, science isn’t usually a collaboration. I’ve been working on a few of my own little projects, but when Tony called me and I saw Peter’s insane first draft, I was already packing my bags.”

“Sounds intriguing. What’d his first draft look like?”

“It was all very Stranger Things season 2,” Tony says, “The backs of old homework and tests and he just strung them together like Joyce Byers.”

The audience laughs and a bright blush is visible on Peter’s face.

“So, Dr. Banner, I assume you were the main-brain on this team, since Mr. Stark here is clearly a mechanic, not a doctor.”

Shuri, Bruce, and Tony scoff almost all at the same time.

“Peter did all the heavy lifting here. I was really just looking over his work.”

“Speaking of which!” The hostess turns to face Peter. “What did it feel like for you, working in the labs with such high profile people?”

“Oh, um,” His voice squeaks. Tony laughs quietly. “Well, it was pretty daunting at first. I mean, I knew Mr. Stark for a while before this but when I first met Dr. B I was a wreck. But once I got over the whole ‘hero-worship’ thing, it just felt kinda natural.”

She smiles. “Let’s talk about our guys’ project. You can’t deny that it looks very similar to Spider-Man’s, New York’s own superhero, webbing.”

“Well, yeah,” Tony says, “He was the one to give us samples of his web fluid for this. Even helped out himself a little.”

The hostess looks shocked. “Oh. Wow, um, working with Spider-Man himself! How did that come about? He just swung over to the Avenger’s Compound one day?”

“Nah, Spidey doesn’t have any sense of direction outside the city. But Pete here is the only guy who can take a decent picture of Spidey, so they met up and that was it.”

“Wow. So this thing, it’s got Spider-Man’s endorsement?”

Peter laughs uncomfortably. “No, no, nothing like that. He just helped us with understanding how his webbing works, nothing more.

The hostess looks upset, but quickly moves on. “Well, other than having Spider-Man with you, we’d all like to know… how accessible is this miracle product? Do you have to go to the hospital first, or order shipments? And how much is the estimated cost?”

Shuri, Bruce, and Tony waited for Peter to talk. “Well, um, the whole point of making this was so that people wouldn’t have to go to the hospital as frequently. It’ll start popping up in some big pharmacies in a week or so with clear instructions on how to use it. The cost will depend on the size you buy at the time, but it won’t cost more than twenty bucks.”

There’s a heavy silence for half a minute. Peter looks even more uncomfortable than before.

The audience suddenly erupts into cheers. It’s loud enough for microphone feedback.

Their hostess is overwhelmed. If she said anything, no one heard her.

--------------------------------------

Later, months and months and months later, when Peter’s in his college dorm, his best friend since starting at Columbia kicks open his door, laptop in hand.

“Peter! Peter, shit, did you just see the new article the NY Times just released?”

“After all this time I’ve known you, Harry, I never would have expected you to say that sentence to me, outloud, unprompted.”

“First, I’m Harry Osborn, I always look at big articles to make sure there’s no new scandal, like last February.” They both shuddered at that reminder. “And second, this… this was not unprompted. I just learned my best friend is the new Andrew freaking Jackson!”

Before Peter could even question what that meant, Harry shoved his laptop in Peter’s face. His eyes went wide.

PETITION TO RECREATE THE TWENTY DOLLAR BILL AS PETER PARKER SURPASSES HALF A BILLION SIGNATURES

Peter has to reread it a few times before anything could actually process.

“Holy shit.”