till forever falls apart

the spider-boy

It's weird that Peter doesn't come through the window.

Kate's not sure how to feel about it and she really doesn't know if it's a good weird or bad weird, but it's still different.

She lets him in through the front door, the same one that they retrieve their takeout from, and walks him upstairs to the apartment where her girlfriend - her girlfriend, Yelena Belova - is sat on a couch.

There's no clicking of the lock on the window or creak as it opens, there's no Yelena mulling about the kitchen for food, there's no backpack of Peter's suit shoved into the corner.

It's just Peter in an MIT hoodie and worn jeans and closed windows and Yelena on the couch.

It's all weird.

But Yelena quickly makes him play a game of Super Smash Bros with her and Kate orders Chinese food and everything falls into a new normal.

"How's MIT?" Yelena ends up asking while they're eating, "Are you the next Tony Stark yet?"

"No," Peter replies, fiddling with his broken chopstick, "Just hurts my brain, to be honest. MJ and Ned are killing it, though, they're... they're finding it kind of easy."

"There's always those people," Kate replies, leaning back on the couch and snacking on a crab rangoon, "MIT isn't prestigious because it's easy, though, so don't worry yourself too much."

Peter nods, "I guess. How are you guys? I mean, like..." he looks around before nodding at Yelena, "this is a lot of different."

"We're managing," Yelena says, one hand on the ends of her hair, "Anya's coming over later, if that's okay. Something about meeting Spider-Man is very important to her."

"With all you guys tell me about her, I can't believe I haven't met her already," Peter offers a small smile, "Kate, can I ask you something?"

"You just did," Kate says with a sarcastic ha, "what's up?"

"You are so lame, Kate Bishop," Yelena interjects before grabbing her soup and placing it delicately in her lap.

"Rude."

"Anyway," Peter glances at Kate, "how do you deal with the whole... being a legacy kid thing?"

"Like, my mom owning a security company thing?" Kate questions, and Peter nods. "I guess... I don't know. I got lucky that I was able to do archery and martial arts, but the academic and professional side of it was stressful. It's been way better since I handed off the company last year."

"But like," Peter huffs, using his not-broken chopstick to stab at his food, "I feel like there's all of this pressure from Mr. Stark to be like him. And it's exhausting, especially when my friends are doing so much better than me and I feel like I can't handle it."

"Well," Kate grabs her water off of the table, "do you enjoy it? I know I always hated the business side of everything, but the comp-sci part was at least fun to learn. I now know a stupid amount of coding."

Peter shrugs, "It's not interesting."

"Maybe that's the problem," Kate suggests, "maybe you could do some exploratory courses. See if there's something more interesting out there."

Peter nods, quiet this time and Yelena switches the topic.

"We should play some more games."

-

Yelena gets away at some point to use the bathroom, and as she's finished with her business and drying her hands off, she finds herself messing with her hair.