Peter Parker's Plentiful Problems

questionable qualities of the nonexistent ______

I FORGOT TO POST THIS ONE BEFORE THE NEXT ONE I AM VERY SORRY

So it won't be so bad. It shouldn't be! That's what he convinced himself. It was probably true. He'd gotten more stressed over less. Something about Harley just made him.. freakishly nervous. Scared. He didn't know. Just—weird.

But not weird enough that he couldn't ignore it. In fact, that was exactly what he was planning on doing.

Moving on—or for better wording—ignoring, he decided to just chill out for a while. Go with the flow, or whatever the kids were calling it. Yolo. Eat the rich. Down with the gas prices. Whatever.

"Right, yeah, sorry about that" Peter chuckled stupidly, rubbing the hairs on the back of his neck for mild comfort.

"Don't even worry about it, it's a big school" Harley assured, brushing it off.

Haha, sure. Big school is the problem. Despite this man spawn camping every single one of Peter's class, he just managed to miss it because of the big school.

Excuse Peter's nerdiness, but he really did start to feel like he was in a video game in third period when he hopped out the window of the first floor, since he'd hidden after everyone piled out of the classroom, the teacher heading to the restroom like he did at the end of every class (which Peter had recently learned was really secret spy code for 'heading over to hang out with Ms El, where they were certainly not just eating lunch together'. Yet another fun thing to ignore). So if that's what he meant by Big School, then sure.

Not much happened after that. Again, an underwhelming interaction, Harley talked about the different species of ladybugs, and how he was pretty sure he'd eaten a yellow one at lunch yesterday in his corn, but it seemed Peter really was just paranoid for some reason.

"You want to come sit with Harry and I at lunch tomorrow?".

Ope—there it is.

"Me?" He pointed to himself dumbly, as if it wasn't obvious, "Oh.. I don't know. I mean, I've got my friends I hang out with at lunch, I don't want to leave them. Thank you though, I appreciate it—"

"We could join you guys, you know" Harley suggested, oh so helpfully, "You seem like a cool dude, and Harry's been itching to hang out with you again".

It was like being stabbed in the heart with a rod of money he was allowed to keep if he survived. He wanted to hang out with Harry, but again, just one more week. One more to gather his bearings. Converse with Ned and round up some excuses, and he'd be fine.

Maybe.

Probably.

Hopefully.

When Peter didn't reply, and instead just stared at Harley for a minute, Harley bit his lip in thought before speaking again.

"Is there like.. and actual reason you guys don't hang out anymore?" His hands found each other and they fumbled for a moment, "I'm pretty sure Harry would tell me, but if it was like, a bad thing, I'll leave you alone. He just seems so happy when he talks about you, and I don't know.. just thought it'd be cool to hang out with you too".

Money-knife just turned into pure diamond. Also there was six of them. All impaling him. His heart was in pain.

"No! No, he and I are fine" excuses excuses where the fuck are you, "I just.. I guess there were a lot of people who weren't really happy with me? And I didn't want them picking on him too so I just—I mean now it's fine, no one really cares anymore, but I don't know. I feel like it's too late now".