One-shots {Spider-man}

The essay

Peter has a hidden and rough past. When he has an essay to write for class and gets stuck, Tony discovers a few things about his seemingly fine spiderkid. 

He is at the tower late at night and Tony gets alerted and finds him in the lab. Peter lives at May's but he spends a lot of time at the tower. 

***

Peter kicked his legs back and flexed his fingers behind his head, craning it sideways. He shut his eyes for a second before shaking his head and groaning. Peter sat up and hovered his hands over the keyboard of his crappy old Lenovo laptop. 

He read the previous words on the Word document and tore his gaze away for the 50th time this evening - or should I say morning. He arrived just before midnight but it was now getting to two in the morning. 

The boy looked over at his notes and printed reports. It shouldn't be this hard, Peter thought. He wanted to yell, to scream or do something instead of staring intently at the screen but he didn't. Peter sat in silence, anxiety rising every time he looked at the work he had put together. No noise. Just watching the screen until the memories rose to his mind and adverting his gaze shortly before that happened. 

"Parker?" Peter jumped at the sound of Tony's confused tone. He snapped his eyes up and saw Tony standing in his Iron Man pyjamas and socks, bed hair and a cup of what Peter assumed was coffee in his hand. 

Peter pressed the 'sleep mode' button on his laptop and shut the lid. "Mr-Mr Stark, what are ... what are you doing here?" He coughed, his voice was rough and raw from the lack of use. 

"I could ask you the same question, kid," Tony made his way closer. Peter tried to hide his notes and worksheets but Tony noticed what he was doing and kept his gaze on Peter. "What's going on, kid. Shouldn't you be asleep - and home?" 

He bit the inside of his cheek. "May went to sleep and I-I didn't want to keep the light on and wake her so I figured I could work on my essay here. I thought you'd be asleep," 

"FRIDAY said your heartrate kept spiking and that you'd been staring at the screen for 10 minutes and written nothing. Do you want some help?" Tony offered, making his way closer. Peter put a hand on top of his papers and closed his notebook quickly as he rapidly shook his head in response. "I'm great at essays. C'mon, what's it about?" 

Tony sat down not too close but still not far enough for the conversation to be any more awkward than it needed to be. "I can't tell you," Peter felt guilt rise when Tony looked offended and hurt. "It's not that I don't want your help!" He immediately reassured. Peter sighs. "My English teacher gave us an assignment a week ago. We have to write an essay on our opinions of things that affect us in daily life that is serious problems but something we has either experienced or someone close to us experienced," 

"That doesn't explain as to why you are in my lab at two in the morning stressing over it," 

Peter sends a half-hearted glare his way. "What I close to write about ... I've never told anyone about it before. It's happened three times and I never mentioned it," Tony didn't reply. It left Peter room to continue. "MJ and Ned both finished their essays days ago. MJ's writing about how black women get treated differently in workplaces for their gender and skin tone. Ned wrote about bullying and how it can affect people of all ages and their productivity," 

"You never told anyone about - well whatever this is?" Tony wondered. Peter nodded in confirmation. "If you don't like talking about it then why are you writing about it. Don't you have to read these aloud or something?" 

Peter shook his head. "No, no, we just hand them in. The teacher grades them and hands them back to us the next day. I thought writing about it would be easier but I guess it's just as hard," Peter huffed. "I'd change ideas but that would take too long. I'm already halfway through this,"