"So you want me to tell your aunt… What?" Ms. Nesbeth asks when Peter tracks her down that Monday afternoon. "That I just woke up one morning and decided to slash her rent out of the kindness of my heart?"
"I mean…kind of?"
Their landlady spares him a single disgusted glance before going back to the dubious yellow stain she's attempting to scrub from the second floor's hallway carpet. By the looks of things, she's not making much progress.
Ms. Nesbeth—a gray haired, leathery sixty-something who Peter's always imagined was a grizzly tamer in some former life—has never really warmed up to him. He tries not to take it personally, though. From what he's seen of her interactions with the building's other tenants, she's never really warmed up to anyone. It's a rule that applies double to anyone south of middle age, and therefore too young to share any of her common interests: cribbage, Johnny Cash, and obscure M*A*S*H references, primarily.
As a result, Peter hadn't wanted to get her involved in his plan at all.
But after a weekend spent nonstop brainstorming under Mr. Stark's annoyingly hovering eye, he doesn't see a way around it.
As Peter surmised during the tortuous hours of forced bedrest he'd endured on Saturday, while he might have a plan to earn money for May, actually getting that money to her is a challenge in its own right.
Two or three fights a week, he decided, sounds like an achievable goal—assuming, anyway, he can avoid any more injuries that leave his head feeling like a piñata post-party. And he can probably let himself win half of them without stacking the odds unfairly against everyone else, or raising suspicions about how some random kid with supposedly no formal training is able to best every opponent thrown his way. Added up, that's a solid three hundred bucks a month.
Not a life changing amount. But definitely something.
And while May can be a little absentminded at times, Peter's pretty sure she'd notice if he started slipping that kind of cash into her purse, or mysterious ATM deposits kept cropping up in her bank account. With his luck, her mind would immediately jump to the billionaire she happens to get coffee with on a semi-regular basis. May Parker, who appreciates receiving charity even less than Peter does, wouldn't hesitate to confront Mr. Stark.
And then Mr. Stark would know. And he'd want to help, because that's what he always does—he always helps Peter with stuff, always tilts the balance of debt evermore to one side—and that...
Aren't you enough of a charity case already?
He couldn't let that happen.
So. Ms. Nesbeth it was.
"There's gotta be some good reason for lowering someone's rent," Peter says, biting his lip and hoping he doesn't sound like the whiny toddler she doubtless believes he is. "Maybe you could tell her… I don't know. That someone was, like, murdered in our apartment before us? And you were going to factor that in when we moved but you forgot so that's why you're giving us a discount now?"
Ms. Nesbeth stops her scrubbing. She leans back on her heels, joints creaking, and stares up at him.
"Murdered."
Heat creeps up Peter's neck. "Yeah. Or that market value went down. Or… I don't know. Something."
Her unimpressed expression shows no signs of wavering.
Panic, muted but there, bubbles in his chest. Because even though it's not his first option, he needs Ms. Nesbeth's mediation. If he can't get it, all the progress he's made—finding Mike, getting the man on board, the seventy dollars hidden under his mattress and the future dollars he now has a chance to earn—will be worthless.
He does his best not to let the panic show, but there's a fraught edge to his voice when he says, "Please, Ms. Nesbeth. I promise I'll get you the money in advance every month, and I'll…I'll help out around here too if you want. I can, like, do all the hallway vacuuming or something? Or… I-I'm really good at fixing stuff. I can do maintenance work."
Ms. Nesbeth is watching him closely, her face unreadable.
At her continued silence, Peter's hope siphons away. And hope is what was apparently keeping him propped up, because as soon as it's gone, he slumps inward like a limp marionette.
He makes one final, pathetic attempt. "Just… Please. My aunt can't find out it's me. Please."
Peter's not sure if it's his obvious desperation; or if his kicked puppy expression, as Mr. Stark has christened it, really is as undefeatable as the man accuses it of being. Either way though, after several anxiety-inducing, bated-breath seconds, the deep lines ridging Ms. Nesbeth's forehead slacken the tiniest bit.
"You're a weird kid," she says flatly.
She goes back to the stain.
Peter dares to perk up the tiniest bit. "Is that a yes?"
May's happy when she gets home that evening.
Despite the concern in her eyes when she sweeps Peter into a hug and asks how he's feeling, it's obvious she's squashing down a smile. And as soon as he confirms his full recovery from the migraine he'd begged Tony in vain not to tell her about, she lets a full grin break forth. It never once wavers as she goes about making the vegetarian meatloaf Peter's long since learned to dread, and when she opens the oven door only for smoke to start spewing forth, her response is to just laugh and ask, "Thai?"
It's been over three months since they last ate out. They just haven't been able to afford it.
Peter, seated at the kitchen table, hunches further over the chem sheet he'd been working on as May cooked. He rests his cheek on his hand, trying to hide a growing smile of his own.
He doesn't know what Ms. Nesbeth told her, and he doesn't push his luck by asking.
Whatever it was, it worked.
"Please, Ned," Peter begs, clutching his balled up suit a little closer to his chest. "I know you can do it. You've hacked it before."
The physics project they're supposed to be working on (a toothpick bridge that in theory will help them better understand gravitational and load forces; so far, the only thing Peter's learned is how to get Elmer's glue out of clothes) sits abandoned on Ned's desk. Peter probably should've felt bad for getting them so sidetracked, but all he can feel is frustration at his friend's unreasonable, ridiculous obstinance.
They've been going in circles for ten solid minutes. And Ned still shows no signs of budging.
"I just don't think it's a great idea." Ned leans back in his chair. He crosses his arms and eyes Peter, who's anchored himself to the wall above the desk, bare feet pressed against the paint, weight resting on his haunches. "I love you, man, but if it's a choice between being a good friend and getting on Tony Stark's bad list, you're on your own."
Peter groans. "That's so lame, dude."
"His nickname is literally the Merchant of Death. The Merchant of Death, Peter!"
"It's just Mr. Stark. That's not scary at all."
"It's like you want me to go to prison for the rest of my life."
"He tripped on a wrench and landed face-first in a pan of engine oil the other day."
"I won't even get a trial. My parents will just wake up one day and find my bed empty."
"Then Dum-E panicked and doused him with a fire extinguisher."
"I'll spend the rest of my life locked in some top secret government facility, wearing striped jumpsuits and playing sad blues on a harmonica."
"It took ages to clean everything up. Why are fire extinguishers even a thing?"
"You know what they don't have in prison? Star Wars. They don't have Star Wars in prison."
"FRIDAY let me have a copy of the video for future blackmail. I'll show it to you if you help with the suit."
Ned groans. "You're not listening to me. Mr. Stark put the tracker in it for a reason: so he knows where you are if you get into trouble. I'm not just gonna put in a fake signal. What are you gonna do if you're, like, bleeding out behind a dumpster somewhere and he can't find you?"
"I won't even be in the suit. That's the entire point of the decoy signal."
"And why only Thursdays? This is just…really sketch, Peter. And you won't even let me in on the secret. Not cool, dude."
"I told you," Peter says, sounding every inch as frustrated as Ned. "It's personal. Like, really personal, okay? Come on, man. This is important."
"What could be so important that—"
"I'm not asking you as my guy in the chair, Ned." Peter gives him the most imploring look he can muster. "I'm asking you as my best friend."
It does the trick: hesitation finally starts to creep into Ned's expression.
Peter slides a little lower down the wall so they're more or less eye to eye. Guilt gnaws at him when he sees the conflict playing out on Ned's face. He knows he's putting Ned in an impossible position—knows he's being a shitty friend just by asking the other boy to hack the suit again, not even giving him a reason why. But the alternative—blindly hoping Tony won't find out about Peter's illicit Thursday night activities—is too risky.
"Please, Ned," Peter says quietly. "I really need you."
Ned stares at him. Then, after a long, silent moment, he deflates. "Fine."
Peter has to actively resist the urge to jump down and scoop his friend into an off the ground hug. "Dude. I love you so much right now."
Ned glances over his shoulder as if expecting a pissed off Iron Man will suddenly burst through his bedroom door. "I just want you to know, if I end up, like, dead in an Iowa cornfield with a giant repulsor burn mark going straight through my chest—"
Peter passes the suit down when Ned makes a grabby hand for it. "Mr. Stark's not gonna find out."
"—A, coolest death ever."
"Plus, he likes you too much to kill you."
"And B, you better—wait." Ned's head shoots up from where he'd been examining the suit to gape at him. "What?"
Peter's lips twitch. "He likes you. He says your caffeinated quokka vibe is fun to be around. And he thinks your hat collection's cool." The last part is kind of made up, but he figures one self-esteem-boosting white lie is pretty harmless when pitted against all the other, much bigger stuff he's hiding.
Ned's wide eyes take on a faraway look. Peter's a little worried he's about to start crying. "Tony Stark thinks I'm cool," Ned breathes. "Holy shit."
Thursday night rolls back around. Peter swings to the same alley as last week, but this time, just before pulling off his mask, he asks Karen to initiate the newly installed In Case of Nosy Parents Protocol. When he walks away from his webbed-up backpack, it's with the knowledge that the suit inside will appear to be actively patrolling Spidey's usual routes, should anyone care to check.
The ninety dollars he goes home with a few hours later make his sore, possibly broken ribs worth it.
Last weekend, when Peter's hunger-induced binge resulted in a truly humiliating hour spent throwing up everything he'd managed to squeeze into his stomach, he'd been so certain the vomiting was just because of his probable concussion—an unpleasant side effect of the vertigo that had made his stomach wobble like he was going sixty on the Coney Island Cyclone.
But then it happens again.
This time, he can't be sure what led him back to his current position splayed out in front of the toilet on his ensuite's marble floor. Maybe it's his ribs, which have escalated from a dull throb to searing pain over the course of his heaving. Or, as is admittedly more likely, maybe it just wasn't the best idea to devour twenty-odd pounds of food in one sitting after spending four days surviving on the meager meals he'd allowed himself.
The only thing Peter knows for sure is, despite his unwavering conviction that Tony's about to step through the bathroom door any second now—that Tony will squat down at his side, will knead the nape of his neck and brush the hair from Peter's forehead and murmur reassurances that it's almost over and bring him water and haul him back to bed and sit up with him until Peter falls asleep like he had last week…
Despite his conviction, this time, Tony never comes.
"Angle A and angle B are complementary angles. If angle A measures 27 degrees, what—"
MJ's voice drowns beneath the deafening rumble of a low-flying plane. She stops, looking up from the stack of flash cards in her hands to shoot an annoyed glare at the window.
After a few seconds, the noise fades away. MJ turns back to the cards. She takes a breath, opening her mouth to resume the question when—
"Yo Parker," Flash says.
Peter holds back a sigh. He shares a mutual, long-suffering look with Ned before looking over at Flash. Across the table and a few seats down, the other boy's watching him, a condescending smirk plastered across his face.
"That thing we just heard?" Flash continues, pointing towards the ceiling. "That's called an airplane. I know they're really loud and scary, but don't freak out. Planes are like buses, except they go over the poor neighborhoods instead of through them. Got it?"
It shouldn't bother him. Peter's used to Flash's taunts, including those aimed at the fact that, in comparison to the overwhelming majority of Midtown's student population, Peter might as well be living in a gutter for all the money to his name. And over the years, Peter's gotten good at letting them just roll off his back; letting them get under his skin is exactly what the other boy wants, and showing any signs of hurt will only egg Flash on further. This time—this taunt—shouldn't be any different.
It shouldn't be.
But it is.
Peter presses his lips together and looks away. In the seat next to him, Ned shifts and inhales like he's gearing up to respond, but the door behind MJ swings open before he gets the chance. Mr. Harrington walks in, a piece of toilet paper trailing behind his one shoe.
MJ doesn't miss a beat.
"Hey, Mr. Harrington?" she says, glancing over her shoulder. "Flash can't come to nationals this year since we're flying. Planes really freak him out."
Flash gives an indignant sputter.
Maybe it's just his imagination, but in the half second after Peter meets MJ's eyes and mouths a silent thank you, he could swear she's holding back a smile.
Two more Thursdays come and go.
Two more weekends spent with Mr. Stark.
Unlike the two weekends prior, Peter's careful not to let his insatiable appetite get too out of check; he paces his eating, chews each bite at least twice before swallowing, stops himself from sneaking back to the kitchen for a second covert dinner after Tony and Miss Potts have gone to bed.
But the agonizing restraint isn't enough. Peter still ends up right where he started, back on the bathroom floor, gripping the toilet like a lifeline.
And it's a good thing, really, that Mr. Stark doesn't come find him like he had the first time Peter had gotten sick. It's a good thing Mr. Stark doesn't ask him a bunch of questions, doesn't interrogate him until Peter's carefully crafted façade shatters. It's a good thing that FRIDAY, for whatever reason, doesn't seem inclined to snitch on Peter again.
(Or maybe she has. What if she has told on you, and Mr. Stark just doesn't care?)
It's a good thing, Peter continues to remind himself. And maybe, just maybe, if he repeats it often enough, he might actually come to believe it.
Late one night at the end of the month, he puts the three hundred cash he'd been storing beneath his mattress into an envelope. He slips the collection beneath Ms. Nesbeth's office door, and slinks back upstairs to his and May's apartment. May's even snoring, dampened by their bedrooms' shared wall, lulls him back to sleep.
"On this week's episode of Hero Watch," comes Betty's voice from the hallway TV, "Tony Stark is in the news again for his recent expansion of the September Foundation, a program created two years ago to provide scholarships and grants to economically disadvantaged students."
Peter grits his teeth and walks a little faster, but it doesn't do much good. Even though Midtown's filled with its usual early morning cacophony of slamming lockers and milling students, the school's news broadcast stands out, cutting through the background noise and ringing crisp in Peter's ears.
"Way to be a hero, Iron Man," Jason says. He doesn't need to see the screen to imagine the cheesy grin and thumbs up Jason's giving the camera.
There's an awkward pause before Betty continues. "If you're from a lower income family and worried about paying for college, be sure to check out their website."
Peter bites the inside of his cheek and begins to recite the periodic table to himself, trying to stop the disadvantaged that's looped like a broken record in his mind.
There's a poster of Maslow's hierarchy of needs hanging in his social studies classroom. Peter spends the entire class period staring at it.
He wonders where on the pyramid his classmates rank. He wonders where he ranks in comparison.
By the time the bell rings, he's given up on finding any answers.
"Are you sure nothing's going on at school?" May asks for the umpteenth time, peering at him over the rim of her wine glass. On the TV, a VCRed sitcom audience laughs.
Peter glances at her from the other end of the couch, hoping he looks nonchalant as he scoops a handful of popcorn into his mouth. "Yeah. Everything's cool. I've got a bunch of cramming to do for finals and stuff, but other than that it's good."
It's not the whole truth, but it's not a complete lie, either. As per usual, his teachers seem to have saved the bulk of their students' workloads until the very last stretch of the semester. Peter kind of wants to curl up and die just thinking about all the uncompleted assignments still waiting for him in his backpack. Even more than that though, the thought of the semester ending at all fills him with progressively more dread as the calendar marches forward. Because summer means no school, and no school means no free lunches, and no free lunches means yet another meal Peter will either have to go without or pay for himself, and buying food for himself means less money for May, and she's already dealing with so much that even that isn't really a legitimate option.
It's an endless spiral of worries.
May purses her lips as if she's debating whether or not to press the issue. Peter's on the verge of calling it a night and going to bed early in a last resort effort to escape her scrutiny, but before he can do anything, she beats him to it. "Just make sure you're taking care of yourself." There's still a worried glint in her eyes, but she manages to sound lighthearted when she says, "Can't have you keeling over just yet. I need you around to take care of me when I'm old and gray."
That, at least, is a natural enough diversion.
The grin Peter gives her is as wide as he can make it around the popcorn puffing his cheeks. "What do you think I'm doing now?"
It's not exactly surprising when a throw pillow hits him square in the face.
What's black and white and cranky all over?
Peter, still half-asleep as he stands at the crowded bus stop, blinks down at the text.
mr stark it's 7 in the morning
idk. the ny times opinion column? a sleep deprived nun? a penguin after it learns it can't fly?
Mr. Stark forgoes a written response, letting the attached image speak for itself. Peter opens it to find a stern-faced Miss Potts glaring up at him from his phone screen. She's standing near the penthouse elevator, arms crossed, dressed for work in a blouse and black pencil skirt and painful-looking stilettos. On the small entrance table next to her hip, a familiar, ugly modern art piece is pushed front and center. Peter immediately recognizes it as the one he and Tony accidentally broke last month when they got a little overzealous testing a new design for his webshooters.
In hindsight, they probably should have confined their spiderized skeet shooting to the lab.
Tony had glued the windmill-looking thing back together and replaced it in the hopes she wouldn't notice, but that apparently hadn't gone to plan.
busted…
Yeah. I'll pay for my half. Yours is coming out of your allowance.
Even in text, the joke is obvious.
It still manages to send a spike of anxiety rushing through him, and Peter has to swallow around the lump that settles in his throat.
Because—unlike Ned and MJ and probably all his other classmates and definitely, definitely Flash, who makes a point of bragging at every chance he gets about the hundred dollars a week his parents give him—Peter doesn't have an allowance. He's never gotten an allowance. Much less the kind he'd need to pay for even a small portion of an art piece like Miss Potts', which was probably made by some famous sculptor and sold for a ridiculous four or five digit price.
Several moments go by as Peter tries to think of something to say. Something lighthearted enough to pass as normal.
Several moments must be too long though, because his phone pings a third time just as the bus pulls up to the curb.
You drive a hard bargain, Parker, but fine, I give. I'll cover your half too in exchange for a free movie night of my choice.
Hint: it ain't gonna be Star Wars.
Peter flashes a weary smile at the driver as he boards, tapping out a response one-thumbed as he weaves his way towards the back.
:(
where did luke get his bionic hand?
No.
at a secondhand store :)
Hope you enjoyed the Wall of Shame, kid. You just earned yourself another week on it.
:(
The replacement sculpture Miss Potts ends up getting is just as ugly as the first, and all he can think when he sees it for the first time is, Rich people are so weird.
"Good news!"
The smell of warm pizza reaches Peter in tandem with May's cheerful declaration, and he looks up to find two boxes stacked in her arms. She kicks the front door shut with her heel and sets them on the counter, tossing her keychain down beside them.
"Hey May," he says, waving a flathead in greeting.
She comes over, cupping the nape of his neck and leaning down to plonk a kiss in his hair. When she pulls back, her eyes are sparkling. "Hey, baby. Looks like you're keeping busy."
He glances down at the partially dissected PlayStation strewn across the kitchen table. In a miraculous stroke of luck, the PlayStation hadn't even made it fully to the dumpsters when he came across it on his way home from school; either out of laziness or the hope that someone like Peter would find it, whoever'd thrown it left the console sitting atop a pile of garbage bags, there for the taking. As Peter soon discovered, it's in dire need of a repair job—the hardware's seen better decades, never mind better days, and he'll need to replace a few parts entirely to get the system running again—but he should be able to get at least a little extra cash from it.
And, these days, any cash is worth the effort.
May gives an indulgent hum as he runs through what all needs work, but she doesn't share the same enthusiasm for tech as Mr. Stark and Ned do. It's obvious from her slightly vacant expression that even using layman's terms, his monologue's not registering. He cuts himself short with a mumbled, "Sorry."
Her gaze snaps back into focus. She shakes her head and smirks. "You're just too smart for me. But I'm still excited that you're excited."
"Thanks, May." He gives her a pointed look. "Speaking of excitement…"
Her roguish smirk becomes a more genuine grin. "At long last, I'm getting back on track. Internet and Netflix are both back up." She turns and unshoulders her purse, hanging it on the coatrack before making for the cupboards. "And I got us victory pizza to celebrate. Since the table's already occupied, I'm thinking we do dinner and a show."
The same mixture of relief and pride Peter sometimes gets when one of his teachers hands back a huge exam with a circled A at the top, or when he answers the winning question at a Decathlon competition, washes over him.
This is it, Peter thinks, slowly exhaling as he watches May retrieve plates and glasses. Every bruise and concussion and potential broken rib he's gotten in the ring is finally starting to pay off. He's not just a burden. He's not just a deadweight.
His plan is finally working.
Or at least, it's kind of working.
Because, as Peter's forced to admit later that night as he's getting ready for bed, his healing is slowing down. Bruises that would normally take only hours to disappear are now lingering for days, clinging to his skin in ugly, deep blotches. The wrist he landed on during one of his fights last week, which should have fully recovered by now without issue, is still swollen and sending piercing pains up his arm at periodic intervals. The full-body soreness he hasn't experienced since after Ben is now the first thing to greet him in the mornings, and the last thing to see him off at night.
Everything just sort of…hurts.
As he brushes his teeth, he tries not to look at the stranger standing shirtless in the bathroom mirror before him—the one with too-pale skin, and too-dark circles underlining their eyes, and a too-gaunt torso littered with too-purple smudges that are yellowing at the edges.
Peter's not stupid. He knows the slowed healing is a direct result of the weight that continues to trickle off him one ounce at a time. But there's not much else he can do about it besides what he already is: stuffing himself with as many calories as his body can handle whenever he's staying with Tony, and sticking it out all the days in between. It's not ideal. But when he thinks about how hard May works—how she always looks every inch as tired as Peter does, how her posture's always drooped when she gets home from a double shift, how she still always makes the time to sit down and catch up with him and make sure he knows he's loved even when it's clear all she wants to do is go to bed—a few lost pounds is a small price to pay.
So he pretends not to notice the worried looks Ned keeps shooting him. He pretends it's plausible Ned's mom keeps accidentally packing extra food in her son's lunch, and Ned's only choices are to either throw it away or foist the chips and apples and cookies onto Peter. He pretends he doesn't feel MJ's eyes drilling holes through the back of his head during their shared classes. He pretends she doesn't keep aiming all the easy questions his way at Decathlon practice, because his brain only ever seems to be half-functional anymore and people are starting to notice. And when Mr. Cobbwell has him stay behind after chem one day and asks in a low, cajoling voice if there's anything going on at home, anything on his mind Peter wants to talk about, Peter just shakes his head and pretends it's true.