Chapter Text
It had been a long night for one Peter Parker. Patrolling almost the whole night hadn’t been his original plan but there had been so much stuff happening from stolen cars to helping find a missing cat. The cat had been absolutely adorable with its big sparkling eyes and by the time he had arrived home, the sun was rising over the horizon and the flecks of light hurt his sensitive eyes. He slept for an hour before his obnoxious alarm clock decided it was the perfect time to wake up and start the new day. Groggily, he shut down the clock carefully (he had already broken one by smashing it to pieces and boy had that been hard to explain to Aunt May).
Deciding to risk it, he shut his eyes again to fall into a dreamless slumber.
It was Aunt May who woke him up from it, frantically speaking about how he could still make it if he ran and dressed up quickly.
He muttered back something unintelligible in his sleep deprived state and put some clothes on, still half asleep.
He did make it in time thanks to his web shooters. He had swung to school purely by instinct since his eyes had a hard time trying to stay open. At one point he had considered skipping school altogether and sleeping on a rooftop or something.
He felt like death, like a zombie trying to look like a normal, breathing, human. Peter could feel the dark eye bags under his eyes. Comping his tousled hair with his fingers didn’t help and he still looked like he had slept the last night under a bridge. He sure as hell felt like it.
The front of the school yard was full of people walking like they were woken from their hundred year long sleep this morning and had a hard time dragging themselves into the building. Peter blended in the mass and let it guide him inside. He didn’t see Ned anywhere, so he went straight to where his locker was to get his books for the day.
When he was getting his books from his locker, it happened. There was a noisy group of people a few meters away from him, talking and chattering (why do girls always laugh so loudly?). Out of nowhere, someone of them shouted.
“The floor is lava!”
And that’s how Peter ended up on the ceiling.
In his defense, supervillains were starting to be an ordinary thing, and no one even batted an eye when one appeared. They just run away screaming because, well, that’s what people normally do. But at least they clear off the area which is a good thing. Although oftentimes people had a bad habit of staying on the sidelines and watching the battle unfold like they weren’t in imminent danger.
Therefore, it would be completely normal and plausible if there was actual lava on the school grounds. His sleepy mind had come to the clever conclusion that getting as far away as you can from the lava is important because it’s highly dangerous and could kill him instantly. So ceiling it was.
Wait... ceiling?
Peter was now completely aware of all the stares he was getting from his schoolmates. There was no screaming, no panic. Only a pregnant silence, waiting to be broken by the first person who dared to say something.
No wonder his spider sense hadn’t gone off. The danger was nonexistent.
But his identity was in jeopardy. No normal person is able to stick to the ceiling and stay there. He had never been as awake as he was right now, eyes as big as saucers.
The full realization of his unfortunate situation hadn’t completely registered in his brain yet. Yet. The panic would soon come, he just knew it. This time it was his and not some civilians’ who are running for their lives.
He couldn’t handle the heavy silence anymore.
“Wassup? Lovely day today, isn’t it?” he blurted, not having any control of his own mouth. That happened awfully often.
It took five seconds after that.
Suddenly he was way too aware of the loud pulse in his ears, thumping like the end of the world would be coming. Maybe it was. For him. He could feel his face warming up and his hands becoming sweatier by the seconds as they pressed against the goddamn ceiling.
How do people breathe again? You inhale the air slowly and then blow it out, right? He was failing the first step.
It felt like hours, but it must have been only a few minutes when he heard the sharp intake of breath. “Dude.” Peter knew that voice. It was Ned who had probably just entered the hall.
He could feel the incoming headache but was too afraid to move. His unseeing eyes and panicked expression told everything to his best friend.
“Parker, what the f–”
Oh god, Flash was behind him!
“Oh my god! Mr. Stark’s newest, uh, invention is so cool! You told me about it yesterday and how it, um, let’s the user walk on walls like a spi– like an insect!” Ned wasn’t the best liar in the world and his stuttering wasn’t exactly convincing, but Peter was grateful for the distraction.
He tried to say something but soon discovered he couldn’t form the words and ended up looking like a fish out of water, mouth opening and closing uselessly.
Of course, it was Flash who replied back. “So, does Spider-Man use that invention too?”
Why did he have to mention Spider-Man? People were smart in this school and he could picture the gears turning in everyone’s heads.
Ned scratched his chin awkwardly and answered, “Uh no… He can stick to surfaces naturally.”
Peter truly hoped everyone thought he was such a pathetic person that he could never be secretly a superhero. Or maybe he was pathetic enough to be a superhero sporting a bright red and blue skin-tight suit almost every day. But the suit was really cool and latest technology and he really wished he was wearing it at the moment.
“But Peter’s wearing an invention! They – Mr. Stark and Peter – uh… invented it together! They used Spider-Man as an inspiration!”
Peter really really appreciated his best friend’s attempt to fix the situation, but this nightmare would never be over until Peter was back to the ground.
But it was like his body was on a complete lockdown, limbs rigid and unresponsive, still glued to the ceiling. Unconsciously, he was clinging to the hard surface for dear life to stay away from everyone. To be as far away from the stares and whispers as he could. No one could get him from here, yet he didn’t feel safe.
“Peter, you need to calm down,” he heard Ned saying below him, worry coating his voice. “Here. I’ll help you down.”
Peter turned his head to see Ned offering his slightly shaking hand to him. It was within his reach and he could grab it if he just unstuck his right hand fingers. There was a smile on his friend’s face, albeit a small one, as he waited as patiently as he could in a situation like this.
Deep breaths, Peter. Deep breaths.
One finger was off, another one following soon. The three others he yanked off with force.
With his now free hand, he reached for Ned’s hand warily – the mental image of that one painting crossed his mind and he smiled back at Ned.
Ned’s hand was bigger than his and enveloped his smaller one. It was warm and calming. The encouraging look his friend gave him made him compose himself, the staring students forgotten.
When he finally got his body to work, he jumped down with Ned’s help, knees almost buckling under him. There were several possible reasons for his trembling.
A shaky ‘damn’ was all Peter managed to mutter.
And then all hell broke loose.
Of course, no one was going to forget about a person being on the ceiling the moment the said person returned to the same level with them.
Peter swallowed down the lump in his throat and forced his legs to stop shaking as he tried to ignore the frantic whispers and questions around him. This wasn’t the end of the world and everything would be fine eventually like in comic books, right? No one would remember his little mishap tomorrow; the nerd Peter Parker isn’t very memorable after all.
Peter wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans, hoping that the floor could swallow him.
The school bell rang – resonating in the hall and making Peter’s ears ache – but no one made a move to go to their first class of the day. Instead they all stood around him and gawped at him like he had grown a second head or two extra pairs of hands.
And then his savior came.
“What’s with all this fuss?” a female teacher, whose class Peter had never had, asked. She made a waving motion with her hands, signaling them to get going.
Everyone was glancing behind them as they walked away. Flash still stood where he had been the whole time, glaring daggers at Peter. “Pen- Parker was on the ceiling!”
The teacher rolled her eyes and laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. “Right. Get to your class. Chop chop.” Flash obeyed reluctantly.
She then turned to face Peter, looking stern with her hands on her hips. “You’re Parker, correct?”
Peter couldn’t trust his mouth yet, so he only nodded as an answer.
Before she could start questioning them Ned grabbed his arm and began dragging him past the teacher and towards their first class. “Gotta go. We’re late. Uh- bye!”
Their escape came to a halt when they rounded the corner and Ned grabbed both of Peter’s shoulders, brows knitted in worry. “You okay?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Are you going home?”
Peters eyes widened at his friend’s question.
“I can’t. What would May say if I suddenly came back home?” He turned around to walk past Ned who was blocking his way to the classroom. “Let’s just go. We’re lucky if the teacher hasn’t come yet.”
“You could always say you were feeling sick,” Ned reasoned.
“I don’t want to worry her.”
In Ned’s opinion Peter was way too stubborn for his own good sometimes, but he shrugged and jogged back to his best friend’s side. “So how did you even end up in that situation?”
“I’ve never been as tired as I am right now.” They both knew that was a blatant lie. “And then someone behind me yelled ‘the floor is lava’. Superhero instincts, I guess,” Peter shrugged.
“Oh man...”
“Can we just not talk about this, please?”
“Yeah, yeah sure.”
The silence did last only until they got to the classroom and Ned started gushing like the typical fanboy he was. “You’d totally ace that game, dude!”
“Wake me up if I start snoring,” Peter muttered, his voice muffled as he rested his head on his hands. He could sleep the physics class if he was lucky and the teacher didn’t mind. He already knew the things they were going to learn today like the back of his hand.
Ned didn’t wake him until the end of the class when everyone else were packing their stuff and heading to their next lesson. Peter rubbed his stiff neck, groaning.
“Better?” Ned asked.
“No.”
He slept for another hour and missed a boring English class.
By lunch time, there was already a rumor going on around the school about him being a mutant. Students who had never paid any kind of attention to him before where now staring at his every move when he walked on the halls like they were expecting him to do something supernatural all of a sudden.
Peter sat at the table farthest from the other students and nibbled at the stuff on his plate that the cook had the audacity to call ‘food’. Nevertheless, Ned was wolfing down his own share.
“Not hungry?” he asked between forkfuls.
“Not really, no.”
“It’s actually tolerable if you ignore the look and texture.”
A chair next to Peter was then pulled out and someone laid their tray on the table rather harshly. The newcomer glanced at her plate briefly, raised one elegant eyebrow and dug her sketchbook from her bag. Only after that did she regard them.
“How’s it going, bug boy? You look like you could use some sleep,” Michelle said, drawing his face on her book.
“You heard about,” Peter gulped, “morning?”
“Nah. I knew already.” Not even looking up, Michelle continued finishing her sketch of Peter’s baffled expression. From what he could see, it looked pretty good.
The silence continued for a few moments until something unexpected happened.
“It’ll be okay,” she said, the corners of her mouth turned slightly upwards. It was a genuine smile, something Peter rarely – if ever – saw from her. She looked really pretty like that.
“Uh- thanks,” he stammered and tried to smile back.
“I’m here too,” Ned reminded them helpfully. “But seriously you’ve done weirder. This is small.”
Michelle practically showed her sketchbook in Peter’s face who in response gave her a thumbs up.
“You guys are losers, remember that. You’ll be losers tomorrow and the week after, so you have nothing to worry about,” she assured.
Ned cocked his head to the side. “But you figured it out, didn’t you?”
“Because I’m me,” she smirked, crossing her arms. “Hey, don’t drool on my book,” she suddenly said as she turned towards Peter. The boy was fast asleep on the table using Michelle’s sketchbook as a pillow and snoring quietly.
Ned snorted while Michelle commented on how cute Peter looked and yanked her book back.
“Wha–” Peter yawned and rubbed his tired eyes. It took him a while to register that they were in the cafeteria and it was only afternoon.
The school day would be over in a few hours and he could finally go straight to home – no Spider-Man, just sleep.