Peter wakes up curled against Mr. Stark's chest, head tucked in a spot between the arc reactor and Mr. Stark's arm, a blanket was haphazardly thrown over them as though it had rumpled with their movement.
It's one of Ben's old blankets, ugly, old things that looked like those ugly Christmas sweaters except woven into blankets with all the wrong colour schemes. This one is muted red, and the thread reminded Peter of blood, growing up.
Peter hasn't seen it since Ben's death, and dimly, he vaguely recalls that May slept with them on the nights where she had missed him the most, crying over a blanket and sobbing by their... her... bedside, trying to remain strong in front of Peter and silently breaking when she thought that he wasn't looking.
There's sunlight streaming in through the windows, and Peter has a moment of panic as he wonders how late it is, before May comes in with a plate of leftover pancakes from the previous night, looking distinctively more put together than Peter saw her the last night and Peter remembers that it's a Saturday.
"Morning, sleepyhead," May greets him with a kiss on the forehead and sets the pancakes down on the coffee table. "Took you long enough to wake up."
"Mm," Peter groans as he unfurls, gently stretching his legs first and then moving slowly so as to not disturb Mr. Stark. "What time is it?"
"Still early," She looks amused, "Go back to sleep. I have to go to work soon."
Peter frowns at her, "You don't work Saturdays."
"Picked up a few extra shifts," May says, weary and loving, "Don't worry about it."
"You know, when you say stuff like that, all it does is make me worry even more, right?"
May laughs and ruffles Peter's hair, "My sweet little kid."
Peter puffs out his cheeks, "I'm more than sweet, I'm adorable."
"Ah, yes," May's eyes light up with amusement, "How could I have forgotten your most redeeming trait? Your dashing good looks and chipmunk cheeks."
Peter laughs at her, loud and full, and beneath his head, Mr. Stark groans and shifts a bit.
"Oh, oops," May shushes him and Peter shushes her back until it's just a ridiculous game of them shushing each other in increasingly louder sounds. May finishes off her pancakes when Mr. Stark's moving shushes them properly and whispers to Peter quickly, "Be back by 4, okay, sweetie? I put a twenty on the kitchen counter for lunch."
"Love you, May," Peter whispers, and May ruffles his hair, that fond, loving smile on her face that she gets whenever she and Peter get all dopey and sappy on each other.
"Love you, too, kiddo," May sighs, more of a breath, and then she's gone, burnished pea coat slung over her shoulders and hair tied back in a rough french braid.
When she leaves, Peter internally debates the pros and cons of getting up, casting worried glances at the sunlight, but the warmth of the blanket around his torso and the weight of Mr. Stark's arm over his shoulders is comforting, and, well, it's the weekend, isn't it? So Peter puts his head back on Mr. Stark's chest, the steady pulse of the arc reactor buzzing on his cheeks as Mr. Stark's chin drops to land on the top of Peter's head.
Sunlight through the window, Mr. Stark's thumb in his hair, a comfy couch and a blanket over his legs.
What more could he ask for?
There is an envelope in Peter's locker.
It's neat and white and has his name written in the dark, rounded print that shows that someone took their time with writing his name. Slipped on top of his sneakers through the little cracks in his locker, innocently waiting for him to open it.
He eyes it suspiciously and after fingering it, figures that it isn't a bomb or something else that's insane from someone who figured out his secret identity, so he opens it and...
Glitter explodes everywhere.
There's a flash and it's in front of him and all over the locker and all over the floor and someone laughs nearby but all that Peter can think of his ash, ash, ash and his breath is caught in his throat and...
It gets everywhere, on his arms and on his feet and when Peter sees it all he can think of his a red world and watching as his skin turns to dust and...
He's screaming, shoving at the glitter and scratching his arms and the background noise fades away and it feels like ages and ages before something hard slams into his arm.
He stops, slamming his back against a wall of lockers and shutting his eyes as a copy of Pride and Prejudice sinks to the ground.
"Peter," There's a hand on his shoulder, frantic but bleeding with forced control. "Peter, it's okay, you're fine."
"I'm sorry," He sobs, voice cracking. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I..."
"It's fine, it's fine," vaguely, he registers the voice as Ned's as the hand curls around his cheeks, fingers on the side of his face and palm flat below his cheekbones. "It's fine, Peter."
He curls up, the hand still on his cheek and he bites his tongue, mumbling, "Thank you," because he wants to apologize but that's selfish, what his friends needs is for him to be grateful, not self-deprecating.
"It's okay, man," Ned sighs.
Another hand goes through his hair, parting it ever so slightly, lightly running against his scalp. "Want to get up?" MJ hums and, well, that explains where the book came from.
Peter flinches, because he doesn't want to, doesn't want to face the world, to stand, to open his eyes, but what else can he do? So he opens his eyes and tries not to gag when he sees the glitter and stands up, hands bracing himself against the lockers as he mumbles a soft okay.
It isn't okay.
It's nowhere near okay.
But Peter can pretend.
He braced himself against Ned, knowing how absurd he must seem, having a panic attack over something as stupid as glitter.
"I'm sorry," He repeats, burying his face in Ned's shoulder as they walk to the nurse's office, hand in hand.
"Hey, it's okay, man," Ned says, gentle and soft because Ned is perfect like that (and Peter wonders what he did to ever deserve something so good, someone so kind). "But hey, glitter. Now we learned a new trigger, that's good, right? I mean, it would have been better to figure it out without the whole panic attack in the middle of the hall dilemma but you take what you can get, yeah? It'll be okay. You're going to be okay."
And Peter, he knows this. He knows that he'll be okay, but he can't choke out the words because even though he knows, even though the knowledge sits in his brain as firm and immovable as the sun, though all logic tells him this, he doesn't know. Not properly. Not truly. Not when he sees glitter and he thinks, revolted, of his body fading away, his healing factor slowing down death in a way that didn't stop any of the others, his body desperately attempting to hold back the inevitable, Peter can't help but think of that and god, isn't that pathetic?
"So, no glitter," MJ hums next to him. Peter can practically picture her walking next to them, book in hand and head lowered to keep her reputation as the aloof bookworm firmly in place, "How's confetti?"
Peter shakes, "Too soon," he whispers, and it's meant to be a joke except for the fact that his voice cracks and MJ falls silent for a moment.
"Sorry," she says, and Peter gets the distinct feeling that she's looking at him.
"No, it's fine, I..." Peter gnaws on his lower lip as they finally reach the nurse's office and Ned sets Peter down. Peter's grip on Ned's hand tightens when Ned moves away, "Stay?"
"Yeah," Ned sits down next to him, and Peter curls up into his arm. "Of course."
"Well, I'm leaving," MJ cards her fingers through Peter's hair, "Think that you can survive without me?"
Peter cracks the ghost of a smile, "As if."
She laughs a bit and then goes back to humming the sun. Peter gets a vague sense of familiarity, but can't quite put his finger on what song it is. "You have Intro to Biz first, right?"
Peter realizes what she's doing, "You're not going to..."
"Of course not," MJ sounds offended, "I'm just going to take notes. Not like I'm going to record your lecture or anything."
"Cheerios," Peter breathes, half amazed, half laughing. "Don't you have music first period?"
MJ flicks his forehead, making a vague attempt at sounding aloof but utterly failing. "Yeah, so?"
"Music is your favourite class."
"I don't do that much in music anyway," MJ huffs, "All that I get to do is play the flute, and I could do that anytime that I wanted."
"But you love playing with the band." Peter sounds childish now, petulant and ungrateful for the kind favour that MJ is offering to him.
"Yeah, well," MJ makes a vague sound in the back of her throat and then there's an awkward pat on Peter's head before the bell rings and she mutters, "Gotta go. See you, losers."
"Bye, MJ," Ned says, and Peter makes a vague echo of the sentiment.
Ned casts Peter a worried glance, "You sure that you're okay, man?"
Peter wraps his arms around Ned's torso and breathes in Ned's smell. Cold cereal and cardboard, probably from his legos and the leftover breakfast smell on his tongue. "I've got you, haven't I?" He smiles into Ned's arm.
"Dude," Ned laughs, pressing a hand against Peter's arm, "That was so cheesy."
Peter moves in closer to Ned, "What can I say?" He quips, "I'm a cheesy guy."
"Yeah, well," Ned sobers a bit and pats Peter's arm, "Don't be afraid to take your time to recuperate, okay, Mr. Cheesy?"
Peter hums and stays there, head on Ned's arm until the nurse comes in and starts asking questions.
"I was fine," Peter sulks to his therapist, idly playing around with a paperclip. "May was busy with work and I was fine and then they insisted on calling her so now May has to take even more shifts and I'm worried about her because she's been taking a lot of those lately and I'm worried that she's going to burn out but she keeps insisting that she's fine and it frustrates me and..." He throws his paperclip across the room and scowls at it. "It's so stupid. I shouldn't be getting all worked up over this, I know, it's just a little thing, but I can't stop thinking about it and..." His fingers drum into the arm of his seat.
Tip-tap. Tip-tap. Tip-tap.
"I get it," His newest therapist, a man with pastel pink hair, agrees, "Money's worrisome, but your parents don't like it when you talk about it. They want to keep you young and innocent and carefree, but all that you want to do is help out."
"Yeah," Peter huffs, "I mean I get that it's just because she loves me, but she needs to take care of herself, too. And she's not doing it."
"That's not your fault, Peter," His therapist says softly.
Peter starts gnawing on his nails. "It's making me go nuts," He mutters, closing his eyes. "It's the stupidest thing ever, and here I am, acting like a stupid whiny brat about it when you've got patients with real problems and..."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," His therapist cuts in sharply, eyes narrowing and holding a hand up, "Pause, stop, rewind. What do you mean, 'real problems'? Are you hallucinating? Did you just make up all these problems? Are they all in your head? Do they not actually exist in real life?"
Peter knows this tactic. MJ's used it on him enough, but he still isn't sure how to evade it. "No, but..."
His therapist narrows his eyes, and Peter concedes with a slump in his seat.
"You know what it was that I got all freaked out over?" Peter plays with the drawstrings of his hoodie. He wants to curb himself, to stop with all the nervous ticks because he knows that he looks like an open book, but he can't help it. He needs to do something with his hands, with his fingers, to stop the feeling of movemovemove stuck in his chest. "Glitter. I haven't had any bad experiences with it, I just saw it and freaked."
"There is nothing wrong with having a trigger," His therapist says sharply, "Just because your trigger isn't something like a gun doesn't invalidate it."
Peter gnaws on the inside of his cheek. "I'm not going to win with you, am I?" He asks faintly, smiling a bit. He can almost imagine MJ as a therapist, sharp and kind and harsh but sweet, a walking oxymoron.
"I can stop if you want me to," His therapist's eyes are sharp, dark as coal and the edges of his mouth twitch like he's not sure if they want to go up or down.
Peter tilts his head back, "I'm paying you to interrogate me, aren't I?"
His therapist sounds amused, "This is a free trial. It literally said that in the brochure."
Peter makes a face at the therapist, "I think that I like you," He groans.
"How unfortunate," The therapist raises an eyebrow, "Truly, a tragedy."
Beyond all odds, Peter laughs.