Forever

chapter six

No matter how much he wanted to skip training, he couldn't. Not with Natasha or Clint. He couldn't get away with it with them. Yet after everything that had happened with Nico...

Whatever. Harley had walked in while he was having a panic attack—this couldn't possibly be any worse.

Pushing open the doors, he found them both already down there sparring. He watched as they exchanged hits and blocks for a couple of minutes before Natasha finally pinned Clint.

"How many is that for me again?" she teased, standing up.

"Oh, shut up."

She laughed and they walked over. "Hey, Peter. Ready?"

He nodded and together they started teaching Peter new moves. They were mostly defensive and were designed to make an attacker's hits work against them. Eventually, they moved on to sparring as well, each switching off to go against Peter.

"Okay, what's up?" Natasha asked after she'd pinned him for the third time in a row.

She offered him a hand and helped him up. "Nothing. Why?"

"You're distracted. Something's bothering you." She raised an eyebrow as if daring him to tell her she was wrong.

"Yeah, spill the beans, Spiderling," Clint added. "It hurts me to admit, but I know you're harder to beat than that."

Peter crossed his arms. "Just stressed about... school and stuff," he mumbled defensively.

She hummed. "How was hanging out with Nico earlier?" she asked nonchalantly, though it was obvious enough to Peter what she was doing.

He just shrugged and looked at Clint briefly before looking off. "Fine. Nothing different than normal."

She just hummed again and nodded, before telling him to head on upstairs. Peter sighed. He figured she'd learned exactly what she had wanted to from that anyway.

School the next day seemed to get whatever weirdness from yesterday off his back. MJ and Ned knew nothing of what happened or how he might have acted, so it felt normal. They were coming over after school again to hang out, so it would be a nice distraction, at least.

History threw things off again. Like normal, Harley walked in after him and sat down next to him, but it was different this time. There were no backhanded, passive-aggressive comments—or plainly-aggressive comments for that matter. No name-calling or jeering either.

They still said nothing to each other, but it didn't feel like a way to aggressively ignore each other anymore.

Once it was finally over, he did his best to ignore it. He was always overthinking things anyway. After school, Peter brought Ned and MJ over to hang out. It would distract him well enough, at least. "I'm so behind on my chemistry homework. I've been so busy, I haven't done the last few assignments."

"Well, it's probably good that the homework's optional then," MJ snorted, looking over her book.

"Yeah, but I still have to do it to know what's going on!"

"Please, Peter, you already know all of it, what are you even talking about," Ned laughed. "If anything, you should let me do it. I have no idea what's going on in it, even after studying."

"They shouldn't require chemistry. I mean, if you're good at computer stuff and coding, what's the point in being good at chemistry anyway?" Peter added.

"Okay, what's up with your phone?" MJ cut in abruptly.

Peter glanced over at Ned, but he looked just as clueless. "What do you mean?"