To All Those Brave and Lovely

College

They're talking about college.

It's absurd, really, because last year that wasn't even a thought in her head.  Most kids from her old school didn't really care about college, and if they did, they went to the community college twenty minutes away.  A lot of them stayed to work in their family's shops or on the farms or maybe join the gang that they had thought was a good idea when they were younger, but a few lucky ones get out because of athletic or academics.

The lucky ones.

Technically, Nora is one of the lucky ones now.  And now she's listening to Tony offer to take Peter to MIT the next time he stops there, how he's sure they won't have a problem with them tagging along, and Tony could practically garuntee an acceptance letter.

"You think he means it?"  Peter stared after him, still looking a little stunned and starstrucklike he always does when Tony talks to him.  

"Probably."  Nora watched him go, too, and then collapsed down onto the couch.  And also back down onto Peter, because she was using him as a pillow and he hadn't had the heart to push her off yet.  "He's nice like that."

He really did mean it, Nora finds, because a week later she's hanging out with MJ and Evangeline, getting increasingly more and more excited texts from Peter as the days go one.  She doesn't understand half of them, because he's using scientific jargon that she would need a dictionary to make sense of, but she can tell that he loves it.  

(The part she loves is all the selfies that he drags Tony into, and she can pinpoint the exact moment where Tony stops being reluctant and starts having fun.)

"This has been so amazing,"  Peter tells her later that night, breathless and excited and generally sounding like he just had the time of his life.  "I mean, I spent the whole day with Mr. Stark, and the classes all sound so cool, and I talked to this professor..."

He goes on, long enough that Nora starts to zone out, only coming back when he stops with the rush of words and gets quiet again.  "But what if I don't have what it takes to come here?  I mean,"  She knows what he means, knows that he's at that other school on scholarship and that he probably spent the day surrounded by trust fund kids.  

"You're the smartest person I know.  You're going to be fine."  She rolls over onto her stomach, stares at the picture he had given her for a month ago, the one his Aunt May took and he framed.  It's just the two of them, him bending over her so he can whisper some joke in her ear.  The photo was taken right at the beginning of her laugh.  "You'll run circles around those kids."

"You think so?"

This was quiet Peter, the one she doesn't get to hear very often.  The one that comes to her with his sensory overload and his anxiety and the newest of the awful things that the kids at school come to him.  Nora sort of hates quiet Peter.  "I know so."  She can hear muffled talking in the backround, probably Tony yelling at him to get off the phone before take off so he can buckle up, and stifles a laugh.  "Text me when you get home okay?  So I know you're both safe."

She had made him promise the same thing on his way there, and he had agreed.  She didn't say that the idea of airplanes make her nervous now, and didn't have to, because he had seemed a little nervous at the prospect of flying.

"Okay."  Nora can hear the smile in his voice.  "Night, Nora."

She cradles the phone closer to her, wants to keep him on the line, wishes she was there with them.  "Night, Peter."

The two of them get back home early, early enough that Peter gives her a quick hug and then immediately falls asleep on the couch, leaving her to shove a cup of coffee across the table at an exhausted looking Tony.  "That kid,"  He starts out menacingly, but doesn't appear too tough because he was smiling fondly in Peter's gerneral direction.  "Never stops talking."

Nora smiles, pours herself a cup of coffee, and collapses down beside him.  "He had so much fun though.  You should have heard him on the phone."

"Yeah, well."  Tony shrugs, quiet as he always is in the face of a compliment, and Nora rolls her eyes.  "He's a good kid."

Peter wakes up eventually, sitting at the kitchen counter while she makes him pancakes.  (Nora's trying to learn how to cook.  Sometimes it works.  Sometimes it doesn't.)  "You really should have seen it,"  He mumbles, forcing the words out through a yawn.  "Would have been more fun with you there."

Nora doesn't look at him, just turns her face back to the pancake batter to hide her smile.  "Did you miss me?"

"I always miss you,"  He says, and there is no joking in his face when she turns to look at him.  He's squinting at her like she's too bright to look at, face screwed up as if he's in pain.  "You're my favorite person in the world right now, do you know that?"

Nora grips onto the spoon in her hand she's afraid it might cut into her already scarred palm, then lets out a sigh that sounds more like a hiss.  "Peter,"  She lets the spoon fall onto the counter and crosses the room to get to him.  "What's wrong?"

"I need to talk to you about something.  About something I did.  That we did, sort of, and you're not going to be happy, and I just need you to know-,"  He's doing his thing again, the one where he's nervous so all his words come out in a rush, and Nora is so relieved that she almost starts laughing.  Only Peter would get this upset about something so small, even though it's been the elephant in the room for weeks.

"Peter, relax.   I know."  

"You know?"  His face splits into confusion and then relief, and before he can talk she turns back to the pancakes, the better to hide her expression.

"Of course I know.  Ned showed me the video.  And I don't mind."  He still has a look on his face that didn't exactly fit in this context, but Nora pushes through, afraid that her courage would falter if she waited much longer.  "It was a kiss.  And I'd do it again, if it meant that Flash would stop picking on you."

I'd do it again anyway, she thinks, but she wouldn't say that out loud.

"The kiss.  Yeah."  He looks disappointed for a moment, then bounces back to how he had been when he sat down, happy and bubbling over with information about MIT.  "That's good.  Great.  Glad we..." Peter raps his knuckles on the table, chews on his lip.  "Glad we got that out of the way."

"Me too,"  Nora says, and even her smile feels like a lie.

When Tony comes into her room the next day, she's almost entirely convinced he heard her conversation and was coming to give her fatherly advice about it.  But he doesn't, just fiddles with the fidget spinner (it had seemed cool at the time) on her desk and stares at the wall.  "You been thinking about it?"  He says finally, when she's started to wonder if he just wandered in on accident.  "College, I mean?"

She'd never really considered it, never could afford it before so why waste time on the impossible, and she told him so.  "You could now. Afford it, I mean."

She takes a second to think about that, her going to some university and sitting through classes, taking notes while the teacher lectures, going back to a dorm to greet a room mate that looks a little bit like MJ.  But that screeches to a halt just like it always does, because she can't quite picture that yet.  "How?"

Tony draws up short, staring at her over his coffee cup.  "Me, obviously.  If you wanted to go, I'd pay for it."

She thinks about that after he leaves, how easy he said it, how simple, like throwing that amount of money away on her was nothing to him.  And maybe it wasn't.

College, she thinks, and spends all night looking at pictures of college campuses on her phone, great brick buildings and smiling students and classrooms with more kids than her entire high school back home.  

It's a nice thought.