The next morning at school Peter had to meet with the principal, Mr. Morita, to plead his case, fully expecting to be expelled.
"You're a good kid, Peter. You're a smart kid," Mr. Morita had told him. "Just try to keep your head on straight."
Ned and Katya were waiting for him outside of the office when he left. "Are you expelled?" Ned asked hurriedly, "Do you have to go to that school on 46th where the principal has a crossbow?"
Katya looked at Ned oddly.
"Pretty sure that's an urban myth." Peter told him, as much to head him off as to placate Katya. "But no, I'm not expelled."
"You're so lucky." Ned was incredulous.
'Keeping his head on straight' meant going to every class, keeping his grades up, and attending every afterschool detention he'd been assigned… which seemed like it'd span the rest of the semester. So he did so. He spent most of the time feeling like he was under water, or barely there, but he answered questions in class, he did his homework on time, he wasted away each day afterschool for the hour or so detention required, and he didn't go on patrol. At all. The most exciting things in his life went back to earning a good grade on a test and the cafeteria's square pizza on Fridays.
At least he had more time to spend with Ned and Katya, and it was kind of nice not coming home with bruised ribs every night.
One afternoon the three of them found themselves in Peter's room, Ned and Peter finally finishing the Death Star. They'd introduced Katya to legos, who was fascinated.
"You could build like anything with these," She said, taking a few of the parts they hadn't used yet and sticking them on top of one another in no particular order. Ned laughed.
"Yeah, that's kind of the point of Legos." Ned took the pieces she was playing with lightly once she'd put them down. "But we need these pieces."
"Yeah, because you're building something specific." She scooted forward to get a closer look at the Death Star. "Are there legos where you don't have to build one specific thing?"
Peter grinned. She'd just finished helping them all on their Spanish homework, which she apparently spoke fluently, despite not taking the class, yet she was amazed by the concept of legos. "There's tons. We should get you some."
Her face brightened visibly. "Yes! Please. Where?"
"Well to start, I've got a bunch in my closet-" he pointed to the top shelf, "There in the back corner."
"Just don't mix them up with these." Ned said seriously, shifting a few between piles. He'd organized them by blue print section for maximum efficiency.
"Okay, okay, I won't." Katya stuck her tongue out at him, even though his back was turned, and dragged Peter's wheeled desk chair over to the closet so she could reach. SHe had to do a little digging but eventually resurfaced with a plastic bin full of spare lego pieces, grinning.
She set herself up in the far corner of Peter's room- since Ned wouldn't let her get any closer, just to 'maintain the integrity of the pieces'- and started fiddling, sorting them into similar sized shapes and pieces before seemingly changing her mind and sorting them by color.
"So are we going to homecoming?" Ned asked nobody in particular, locking another piece of the upper deck into place. Peter shrugged. He honestly hadn't thought about it at all.
"What is that?" Katya asked, not looking up from her own pieces. Why she was sorting them by color, Peter had no idea, but that bin held all the spare parts from the models he and Ned built from over the- wow, years- so she had a lot to get through.
"What's Homecoming?" Ned repeated her question in disbelief, before correcting himself. "Oh, right, you're not 'from here'-" He didn't say it cruelly, more in a covert way- Ned had bugged Peter multiple times about her 'superhero origins', since he refused to believe that she wasn't also somehow 'involved with the Avengers'. "It's a dance party the school throws, and everyone gets dressed up and you get to hang out in nice clothes and you bring dates and stuff."
"Dates." Katya repeated, clearly waiting for an expansion on that word. Peter almost chuckled, but let Ned handle it.
"Yeah, like, you ask people you like- usually the guy asks the girl out, or if you have a girlfriend or boyfriend, that sort of thing- to go with you, and you wear matching clothes and spend the night together-" Ned cut himself off, his face reddening- "not the night night i mean, just the party, although some people- er, nevermind." he was suddenly much more interested in the portion of the upper deck he was working on.
"So who did you ask?"
Ned was still staring intently at the legos in his hand. "I don't have a date."
"Can you go if you don't?"
Ned looked relieved. "Yeah, absolutely, that's why I asked." he brightened. "We can all go together, as a friend group."
Peter shrugged. "I actually hadn't been planning on-"
"That sounds like fun." He hadn't been looking at her, but he could hear the smile in Katya's voice. He glanced over at her, where she'd started organizing the pile of red legos she'd collected into some sort of hexagonal pyramid, and found himself smiling as well.
"Yeah. Yeah it does."
— – —
Any reservations he'd had about Homecoming went straight out the window the next day after English.
Swinging the ridiculously large hall pass along with him on his way to the bathroom, Liz crossed his path on her way to the gym. Even though his stomach didn't do it's usual backflip when he saw her for some reason, his voice still sounded more nervous than he'd meant it to. "Oh- hey. I thought you had calculus this period."
"Yeah, just doing some Homecoming stuff."
He sped up a bit to close the distance between them. "Hey, look, I-er- I just wanted to apologize about the whole Decathlon thing, I-"
"-It's fine." she cut him off, almost tersely. "Last week, Decathlon was the most important thing, but- then I almost died." Peter didn't know how to unpack how simply she had put that.
"No, I just- I mean that, it was not cool. Especially because I-" The moment he'd been waiting for- dreading- felt like it was finally here, and the words were coming to him much more easily than he'd ever anticipated. "I…like you."
"I know."
Peter looked at her, unable to make eye contact with her before now. "You do?"
"Yeah,' she gave him half a smirk. "You're terrible at keeping secrets."
Peter laughed nervously. "You'd be surprised."
A moment passed, full of the unsaid that Peter didn't know how to break, so he ripped off the bandaid. "I, er, I got to get to class, but- I'd say we should hang out sometime-" His face fell as he realized. "But I'm going to be in detention for like…ever, but, erm. I guess you already have a date to Homecoming." What was he doing? The words weren't coming out easily, persay, but at least he wasn't dealing with the normally overwhelming fluttering in his chest that had always made it so hard to talk to her.
"Actually, I've been so busy planning it I never got around to that part."
Peter gripped the hallpass tightly. "You, er-" a flutter flickered in his stomach- there it was. "You want to go with me?"
Liz gave him a look he couldn't read, but at least it didn't look like a bad one. "Yeah, sure."
"Really?! I mean, er- great. Cool."
Liz nodded. "Cool."
"I'm, er- actually going that way-" he nodded past her awkwardly, and began to make his way back to class. Had that really just happened? Had he really just done that? He'd asked Liz Toomes to Homecoming and she had said yes. He couldn't keep the grin from his face as he made his way back to class, practically skipping.
—- –—
Katya noticed immediately. "Someone's happy."
Even through detention he'd been grinning like an idiot, so he guessed it was obvious. "Yeah, I , er-" He fell into step with her and Ned, who had taken to waiting for him after class by doing their homework in the library. "I asked Liz to Homecoming."
"And she said yes?!" Ned confirmed, even more excited than usual. Peter nodded, heat flooding his face. "Dude, that's awesome!"
"Yeah, I-" he glanced over at Katya, who was nodding along, but it was almost in a politely interested way rather than enthused. A pang ran through his chest he couldn't identify, but he shoved it away. "I can't believe it." His face couldn't stop grinning.
"But it's tomorrow, you've got like, so much work to do." Ned goaded. They were on their way back to Peter's apartment to put the finishing touches on the Death Star, but he was right- Peter was going to have to enlist Aunt May for some emergency services.
"Yeah, so maybe we finish the Death Star quickly and then Aunt May can help me find a suit."
Ned nodded, but when Peter turned to Katya to gauge her reaction she'd stopped in her tracks. "I just remembered that tomorrow's actually Moving Day, so I have stuff in my room I need to go through. And I need to find a dress, so…." she trailed off, eyes on her shoes once again. "I'm going to go do that."
Something in Peter deflated, but he didn't know what it was or why it did. Instead, he proffered a wave. "Okay then, Katya. See you at school tomorrow."
"Yeah," she muttered, turning to head the opposite direction, "See you guys."
