Rollercoaster - Peter Parker

26. Everything is Falling Apart

After his almost kiss with Caden, Peter Parker had given up. He had completely given up on him and Caden ever being normal again. It was inevitable that they wouldn't work out in one way or another; it was too good to be true.

He had started to become increasingly depressed. It affected everything: his superhero patrols, his homework, his effort in school, and his interactions with everyone around him. The depression brought on a lot of dysphoria which was the best thing to add on top of the pile of his life going downhill.

Peter threw himself into his own work. He had much bigger concerns than his love life, he had to find a way to stop Flash and whatever plan his group had devised.

Peter consulted Ned many times over the weeks after Caden's birthday, coming up with ideas and theories on what could fully stop Flash.

"I just," Peter sighed in the middle of another long phone call, "I give up!" He threw his pen against his notebook, shaking his head at the list of ideas the boys had been compiling.

Ned sighed into the phone as well, and Peter could hear the exhaustion the action gave off. It was around midnight, and they hadn't come up with a solid plan for hours.

"I can't keep tying up Flash and throwing him to the side, Ned!" Peter muttered, spinning around in his desk chair in an attempt to shake out his nerves.

Ned snorted, chuckling a bit under his breath. This made Peter partly frustrated, partly too tired to care. "Sorry," Ned replied to Peter's sigh of exasperation. "The way you said that is basically saying you're procrastinating the Flash situation, but also, like, procrastinating Flash just as a person."

Peter shook his head, laughing along with Ned before his eyes settled back onto his notebook. A few beats of silence passed between them before Peter spoke up again. "I hope Tony's got a better plan than we do right now."

"I bet he does," Ned said without hesitation. "If there's anyone without a plan, it's Flash. I mean, he can't keep randomly meeting you with his dysfunctional group forever, you know?"

"And, I can't keep avoiding him forever," Peter mumbled, his eyes drifting from the list to the blue velvet box holding his lion bracelet.

Starting off as a statement only about Flash, Peter realized that it applied to Caden as well. He chewed the inside of his cheek in thought, having to listen closely as he missed half of what Ned was saying.

"...Flash or Caden?" Ned finished, figuring that Peter hadn't heard a word he had said.

"I don't know," Peter finally groaned, stretching as he stumbled over to his bed. "The Flash thing or the Caden thing really is the question, isn't it?"

As a rhetorical question, he knew what his answer should be, but Peter couldn't tell what the right answer was at all.

-

Peter was ready to throw down his bag into his room and sleep away his problems for a few hours after school, but when May told him that a friend was waiting for him in his room, everything stopped.

"Another friend," May quickly added upon seeing Peter's face washed of its color. "Not Caden," she whispered, placing an arm around him before turning Peter towards his room.

Peter ran through a list of every one of his friends that could possibly be there, but he was not expecting Tony Stark to be standing in the middle of his room.

"Mr. Stark?" Peter said slowly, his eyebrows slightly raised in confusion. He closed the door behind him, slowly walking around as if he was in some type of trouble. And, the several occasions when Tony Stark showed up out of nowhere, Peter was headed to Germany, got his suit taken from him, and was offered a position on the Avengers team.