Babysitting a Superhero (Stark's daughter X Peter Parker)

7. "Why us?"

She got her lunch tray and started making her way towards the very back of the cafeteria, where she could see Ned and- Holy Shit! That's the guy from the subway. So he did go to Midtown after all!

Now that Amara was getting a good look at him, she noticed that he wasn't bad looking. She'd even go as far as to say he was sort of...cute? In a puppy dog kind of way.

They seemed to be having a half-hearted conversation, looking around the canteen for something. Amara found herself getting slightly - slightly - nervous, what if they didn't want her sitting with them, what would she do then? Although, it's not like people would not want her to sit with them, she was the new girl, after all. That made her automatically interesting. But that would require meeting new people and talking to them, which on a regular day, Amara would be fine with, but today, when she's functioning on practically zero sleep, wasn't something she particularly wanted to do.

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Peter was trying and failing to multitask. You'd think with him being a superhero, juggling two separate lives and all, he'd be pretty decent at multitasking, but that was most definitely not the case. At least not when he was trying to focus on his food and his best friend at the same time.

"Peter? Are you looking?" Ned asked. He had told Peter all about the new girl and how she was apparently planning on sitting with them at lunch.

Peter replied, while focusing on eating his food, "Ned I don't think any new person would sit with us. Not when they can practically join any friendship group they want."

Ned was adamant, though, "She said she was gonna sit with us."

"Maybe you misheard her?" Peter wasn't usually this pessimistic, however, he didn't want his best friend to get his hopes up, especially for this very unlikely situation.

When Peter walked into the cafeteria to sit in his regular seat next to Ned, like he did every day, he wasn't expecting Ned to have anything to be this excited about.

Peter had seen the new girl, Amara, in fact, it wasn't the first time he's seen her, she met him before when he was Spiderman, and he was also ninety eight percent sure that he saw on the subway this morning too. And she was beautiful. And not in a subtle way either. She's the kind of beautiful that you see on the street, and you have to look again just to make sure you weren't imagining it; un-ironically and fully beautiful. She seemed really cool when he talked to her on the restaurant roof yesterday, too. And if he was being completely honest, he hoped that he would see her again.

Unfortunately, being that beautiful usually meant that they had lots more options, friends-wise as opposed to someone like Peter or Ned. And it also meant that they would rarely ever talk to anybody like them, not by choice at least.

"Think about it Ned, you said that you told her I was in her second period, right? Well, she didn't talk to me. Face it, Ned. She probably found some more 'appropriate' friends and is sitting with them now." Peter leaned his head on his hand and looked down at his food and after a while, Ned followed suit.

They sat in silence for a few moments until an unfamiliar voice spoke up, "Ned? Hi! I was just wondering if that invite to sit with you guys was still there?"

Peter looked up in shock and Amara Rogers was standing with her bag and lunch tray. So he was wrong, she really did want to sit with them - Peter would have to remember to apologise to Ned later.