Tiny Genius

Peter Can't Keep A Secret

"Mr. Stark has been deaged?!" Ned whisper yelled. Peter quickly shushed him, glancing around the library to make sure none of the Decathalon team heard this exclamation that would surely garner questions like the ones that were undoubtedly about to pour out of his best friend.

"Keep it down. We don't need the whole world knowing," he whispered, giving the room one last nervous glance as his heart tried to jump out of his throat. MJ was still flipping through cards and his other classmates were talking at another table. The former was the furthest from the two best friends, but he would bet a lot of money she would hear something before anyone else did. She always knew something before everyone else. A few times, he thought she knew he was Spider-man, but he never figured out if that was true or not. If it was, than she sure was good at keeping a straight face.

And if he had a little crush on her, no one else would know besides himself. MJ was just too awesome for him.

"How?" Ned whispered, lowering his voice a few octaves thankfully. Both of them were pretending to read the practice questions for their next decathlon competition, but they were really just looking at a blank notebook and talking without looking at each other. It had tricked Mr. Harrington so many times, but now they weren't at risk because he was yet to be in the library. It was the only reason they hadn't started practice yet and the indirect reason Peter had spilled the beans on accident. He was anxious to get home to May and Tony, even if they didn't need him there. He felt like there was danger around every corner, Strange's words about accomplices still ringing out in his mind. Someone could try and hurt Mr. Stark, but that wasn't going to happen on his watch.

He loved his adult mentor like a father, and he adored the kid version of him. He was so adorable, but so... sad. Everytime they turned around, he thought they were going to get mad. Not for the first time, Peter wondered if Howard Stark really was the man like in the news. Every hour with his child mentor told him no, he wasn't. What kind of father yelled at their four year old child? What kind of father made their kid feel unsafe and unloved? A bad one, that's what.

"I don't exactly know, Ned," he sighed, running a hand through his hair. The teen had been doing that a lot lately, the stress of school and being a superhero mixing with the stress that came from babysitting Tony Stark. He was a really good kid, but being around him reminded Peter that this wasn't the mentor he knew. He saw the similarities, yes, but he was different. The bad part was that he couldn't tell which had the mask. It also reminded him that it was all his fault this had happened to his mentor, and the guilt knawed viciously at his stomach.

"Did it have something to do with that wizard dude on the news? No one saw Mr. Stark fly off." Ned asked, glancing over at him. "I just thought he went with you or something."

"Yeah," he replied after a moment of hesitation, one hand pulling at his sleeve anxiously. "It's my fault." Ned opened his mouth to say something, but Peter cut him off. "It really is, Ned. If I hadn't froze up, Mr. Stark wouldn't have had to step in front of me and get hit. We would have caught the guy and all been fine. But I just had to go screw it up." He crossed his arms across his torso, hugging himself. It was a nervous action he had stopped years ago, but it sometimes resurfaced when he was feeling especially guilty, like now. He felt powerless to do anything. He knew nothing about magic and he was being forced to wait on a solution to get his mentor back. His older mentor back. He loved the kid version of him, but he found himself missing adult-Tony more and more every day.

He woke up without a barrage of rambling texts from the man or a sleepover to look forward to. The inside jokes of theirs had been forgotten and there were no more hair ruffles whenever Mr. Stark was around. In fact, Peter was doing the ruffling sometimes. Little things he had taken for granted were bringing him sorrow and regret, wishing he had cherished the last shoulder pat or "good job, kiddo" that he so often got. Everything was all wrong, all backwards, and it was all his fault.