Friendly Neighborhood Trans Spider-Man
Chapter Seven - Anxiety? Anxiety.
Breakfast with the Avengers is surprisingly normal. Well, except for Clint. Nothing about Clint is normal. He manages to sit on top of the fridge and messily eat his cereal. It gives Peter an idea. Natasha walks into the scene, Clint on the fridge and Peter on the ceiling, both trying, and failing, to eat their breakfast. Her eyes meet each of theirs as they both freeze, and she sighs. She ignores them. She grabs a muffin from the counter and sits at the table, all the while keeping her eyes off of the two.
It’s when Steve comes in that it all breaks down.
“Wha-” he freezes, mid-step into the kitchen. “Why?”
Clint continues slurping at the milk left in the now empty bowl. Natasha just shrugs. Peter almost drops his bowl, but in a graceless fumble he manages to catch it and drop the spoon instead. It hits the floor with a loud clang.
Steve shakes his head. He picks up the spoon and takes the bowl away from Peter. He sets them gently in the sink.
“Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for school, Peter? It’s almost 7:30, and class starts at eight.”
“Oh, crap,” he says, eyes wide. His feet detach from the ceiling, and he falls to the floor in a heap of limbs. “Ow.” He pushes himself to his feet and scrambles out of the room, throwing a, “Thanks, Steve!” over his shoulder.
He runs to the elevator and tells Jarvis to take him to his floor. He grabs his backpack from the couch and checks quickly to see if he has everything he needs. He does. The elevator takes him down to where Happy waits impatiently at the private entrance.
“Took you long enough. I’m not getting a speeding ticket because you like to take your time getting ready. It’s a twenty minute drive, kid.”
Peter sits heavily in the backseat of the car as Happy gets in the front. He ignores the driver’s mutters and tries not to focus on the anxiety rising up in his chest. He slows his breathing, aware of the binder compressing his chest. Bruce had cleared him to wear it for school, under the strict rule that he would take it off after the eight hours were up. Peter had agreed, of course.
His stomach hurts. His fingers tap out a rhythm on his leg, but he stops after Happy sends him a glare for the noise.
The car pulls up to Midtown High. Peter grabs his bag and flings open the car door. Happy grunts his displeasure at the action, but Peter zones him out. His head is spinning. There are so many people in front of the school, talking and laughing, causing noise. Peter walks through the crowd. He ignores the noise and slides past the moving bodies. He almost makes it to the doors.
A hand meets his shoulder, and he jumps. If the hand hadn’t pushed him towards the ground, he would have jumped onto the wall and stuck there. His heart pounds.
“You okay, Peter?” Ned asks with a frown.
His voice is concerned, but it’s too loud. Too loud and too much. Peter’s breathing gets shallow, rapid. Ned’s brow furrows, but Peter needs to get out. He needs to escape.
He moves on instinct. He’s outside; he blinks; he’s inside. He’s running through the halls, dodging people and jumping over backpacks. He hears muffled shouts but ignores them. Until a shoulder rams into his chest. He falls to the floor, hard.
His heart is all he can hear, the fast pace of a drum. His vision is blurry, but he recognizes the face towering above him.
“What do you think you’re doing, Penis?”
Peter, for once, doesn’t freeze. His reflexes catch the punch aimed for his ribs. His fingers dig into Flash’s fist. He pushes back, sending Flash through the air to crash into a locker. Peter pushes himself up and runs. He feels the stares of the students around him dig into his skin, but he runs.
He makes it to the third floor bathroom, the least used one in the school. He locks the door and slides down the wall. His stomach is killing him. He manages to dig through his backpack and pull out his mask. He tugs it over his head and breathes a sigh of relief.
The eyes block out the light, and the sound blockers in the mask kick in. He lets the silence and darkness calm his pounding heart. He breathes deeply. Somebody knocks on the door behind him, sending vibrations through his body, and he whimpers. His phone buzzes in his pocket. He throws it across the bathroom floor.
The cold tile underneath him focuses him. It reins him in, directs his attention to the hard floor. His hands flatten against it. It seeps through his skin and pulls him back to the real world. Slowly, the sound blockers fade out and the noise fades back in. The knocking had stopped, now replaced by steady breathing from behind him. He recognises the pattern of breaths. Ned. But there’s someone else. MJ sits next to Ned on the other side of the door.
Peter feels his muscles relax. His shoulders drop, and the tension in his arms releases. His stomach ache lets up slowly. His breathing steadies, mimicking Ned’s slow and deliberate breaths.
“Should I notify Mr. Stark?” Karen asks softly through his mask.
Ned’s whisper, only picked up because of Peter’s enhanced hearing, is spoken after Karen. “You okay, Peter?”
“Ye-yeah,” he says, voice cracking and muffled through the mask. “Yeah, I’m alright.”
“Class starts in five minutes,” MJ says just as softly as Ned and Karen.
“We wanted to make sure you weren’t late,” says Ned. “Also, I wanted to tell you that Flash was caught by a teacher after you got away. She said he had to go to Morita’s office. Apparently she had watched him hit you first.”
That makes Peter smile, before he realises that this could all backfire because of Flash’s parents’ reputation in the school, and his smile drops. He looks to where he threw his phone. The screen is shattered. He shuffles over to it and tucks it into his backpack.
“Karen?” he asks before he takes the mask off. “Could you text Happy and tell him my phone broke? I don’t want him or Mr. Stark to think I wasn’t responding for a bad reason.” At the AI’s assent, Peter tucks the mask next to his broken phone at the bottom of his bag.
Peter stands on shaky legs. He takes unsteady steps to the door and unlocks it, pushing it open. Ned stands in front of him with MJ off to the side. Ned opens his arms, giving Peter a choice. Peter dives into the hug. He presses his face into Ned’s shoulder and almost sobs as MJ’s hand rubs his arm.
“Come on,” Peter says. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and pulls away from the two. “Don’t want to be late to first period.”
