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[imagine-midtown-high]

Strong Idiot Vibe Part 2

Paring: Peter Parker x Reader

Words: 1.8k

Warnings: None

Summary: After moving to Midtown High a few months ago, you start to settle in with your new friends — including the one and only Peter Parker. But a few things don’t line up with him and you catch a glimpse of something that changes your perspective.

A/N: This is part two of ‘Strong Idiot Vibe’ (you can search for the tags ‘my fics’ or ‘strong idiot vibe’) but can be read on its own. Thanks so much for reading and let me know what you think or if you’d like this story to continue!

‘5...4...3...2...1...’ You smiled as the bell rang, signaling the beginning of your AP Chemistry class. You leaned back in your chair and grinned as someone ran through the doorway, a solid 15 seconds late.

“Mr. Parker, what did I say about being late?” Ms. Jones chastised without looking up from grading papers at her desk.

“Sorry, Ms. Jones!” Peter said while trying to smooth down his disheveled hair. “I, uh, had a thing and—“

“Mr. Parker, just go sit down,” Ms. Jones said, shaking her head with an exasperated grin on her face.

“Thank you, Ms. Jones. Sorry, Ms. Jones” Peter said and looked to you with a pleased smile on his face as he walks over to your shared lab station.

“I’m surprised she let you get away with that one,” you said as Peter set his backpack down and sat in the chair next to you. “But... you were still late so that’s another mark.”

“Y/n... come on! I was way closer this time,” Peter whined.

“Nope. It counts,” you said while trying to repress your smile and be serious. You pulled out a piece of paper with the title ‘Number of Times Peter is Late’ at the top and an impressive 20 tally marks, now 21, and first semester wasn’t even halfway over. At the beginning of this school year, you didn’t know anyone since you had just moved to Queens and started going to Midtown High. But you quickly met your now best friend MJ and lots of other people on the Decathlon team after you joined. Including, the one and only Peter Parker who you’d met on the first day of AP Chemistry when he’d arrived, of course, late.

After a pattern had started arising, you’d started counting and eventually a list had been formed with a deal that if Peter reached 50 by the end of the year he’d have to go up to Flash Thompson and tell him ‘how amazing he is’ and that ‘he’s an undervalued member of the decathlon team’. After struggling to find a counter-motivation, MJ suggested that if Peter didn’t reach 50, you would have to say yes to one of Flash’s endless attempts to go on a date. When you rejected Flash on the first day of school, initially he’d seemed aggravated, but soon made it his mission to ask you out until you said yes.

Of course, after realizing how horrible Peter was at arriving to class on time, you knew that you wouldn’t have to worry in the slightest about going on a date with Flash. “And considering you were 15 minutes late yesterday, it wasn’t too hard to beat that record today,” you laughed.

“Fine, fine. I’ll let you count it,” Peter seceded, raising his hands in the air defensively. You could feel your heart skip a few beats during your banter with Peter and tried to calm your nerves at the sight of him. You’d accepted the fact that you might have some feelings for Peter but it really was nothing. At all. You were fine.

“All right everybody, settle down,” Ms. Jones announced over the chatter. “We’re finishing up our two-day lab on exothermic reactions so hopefully you all got some work done yesterday.” Everyone chuckled and you and Peter got the materials from your lab yesterday and set up.

“So where’d you go yesterday when you left Decathlon early?” You asked, pulling out the lab aprons when Peter arrived with the goggles. Yesterday, Peter had suddenly left their Decathlon practice 30 minutes early after receiving a text — not that you had been watching him.

“I, uh, had a thing with the Stark Internship.” Peter busied himself with tying his apron behind his back and in the corner of your mind, you noticed that he was avoiding eye contact.

“Was it an emergency? I saw you leave pretty quickly.” You finished tying your own apron and put on your goggles.

“Uh, yeah. I was... called in to do a thing but I, um, don’t think I’m allowed to talk about it — confidentiality and all, you know,” Peter rambled as he fumbled and set up the test tubes. You nodded like you understood, which you did. You were sure that Stark Industries was very particular about keeping their information secret, but you wondered what Peter, an intern, would be working on that would be so important. A voice in the back of your head, that sounded an awful lot like Flash, wondered if Peter could be lying about the internship but you shook it off. As much as Flash didn’t want to believe it, you were sure that Peter was telling the truth. After working together for a few months, you and Peter completed the lab easily in a choreographed dance — weaving between each other and finishing in record time.

“I’ll clean up if you turn in the lab?” Peter asked, already picking up the cleaning materials.

“Deal,” you said and walked over to Ms. Jones’ desk.

“Done already? You and Mr. Parker do seem to make a good team.” Ms. Jones picked up the lab report from your hand. “... And only 1.3% error, I think that’s a record for this lab. It had quite a few difficult variables. Good work.” She smiled and nodded, placing your paper in her pile of papers to grade.

“Thank you, Ms. Jones,” you said and walked back to your now clean lab station where Peter was reorganizing the reactants you’d used. “Jones said we broke the record for the lowest percent error on this lab,” you said with a grin Qand sat down next to Peter.

“Not to mention we finished,” Peter looked down at his watch, “35 minutes earlier than everyone else.” You both looked around the room at everyone else still working on the final reactions for today. Peter snorted and you followed his line of sight to see Flash fumbling with an overflowing test tube and yelling at his poor lab partner. You both laughed at the sight and you flicked your eyes at Peter for a second, taking in his untidy hair and pink indent marks on his cheeks and forehead due to the goggles. But really, you focused on his smile as he threw back his head in laughter and the way he crinkled his eyes. Peter turned his head and you quickly looked away, hoping that he hadn’t caught you staring like an idiot.

“Hey, at least we don’t have any homework. The post-lab questions are the only thing on the board,” you said hoping to deflect.

“Thank goodness because I have tons of statistics homework from Miller.” Peter opened his backpack, shoving something to the bottom — probably a jacket— and pulling out his homework.

“Ugh, don’t get me started. I have his class first period and I think he takes out his morning grumpiness on us,” you said only exaggerating your misery slightly. Mr. Miller really was the strictest teacher at the school and loved to give his AP Statistics students extra work for one toe out of line. Peter laughed and you both returned to your homework.

After about 15 minutes, you were so absorbed in your homework you almost didn’t notice Peter start to mess around with a beaker in one of the drawers on the other side of him... again. You never brought it up, but after finishing labs early or during lectures, Peter would do experiments on his own — occasionally huffing in disappointment or whispering comments under his breath. You didn’t want to seem pushy and you knew Peter wouldn’t do anything dangerous, but you couldn’t figure out what Peter was doing with his body blocking your view and the chemicals he grabbed so obscure. Your best guess was something carbon-based but you had no idea; maybe it was something for the Stark internship. Suddenly, Peter leaned back and stretched, making your heart race slightly at the way his shirt— but more importantly, it gave you a view into the drawer. You only saw it for a few seconds but it looked like the beaker was filled with a white, stringy material almost like spider silk. Spider silk. Peter leaned back and continued working on his statistics homework, giving his experiment time to react. Spider silk. It took your mind a split second to think of Queen’s own superhero that just so happened to use the same— no, Peter couldn’t be. But once you got the thought in your head a few things started to line up. His disappearance from decathlon yesterday just so happened to align with what you saw on the news: the appearance of Spider-Man and Iron Man at a battle against a rouge science experiment, genetically-modified hamsters the size of buses, that were terrorizing northern Manhattan. Not to mention D.C., that everyone had told you about, Peter going missing and Spider-Man suddenly showing up in D.C. to save the Decathlon team in the Washington Monument.

“Hey, have you done the homework on standard deviation? I’m stuck on number 14,” Peter asked, oblivious to your internal meltdown, still trying to work out the problem he was working on. After you forgot to respond for a few seconds he looked over at you.

“Uh, um, yeah I did. Let me see,” you said trying to not either freak-out and run out of the classroom or blurt out and ask Peter if he was... Spider-Man. You decided that you might be going crazy. You looked at the problem and remembered it from when you had done the problem yesterday, it had a strategy but it was difficult to figure out. You pointed out a few things in the problem and Peter picked up on what you were trying to lead him to.

“Thanks so much, y/n,” he said and smiled at you, making your cheeks flush slightly. Wait, Spider-Man. You’d almost forgotten. But, you’d rather base your suspicions on more concrete material than coincidences and some weird experiment Peter was doing. And the Stark Internship. Of course, Spider-Man would have connections to Tony Stark, his suit was obviously Stark tech. Again, not concrete evidence but you didn’t think that Stark Industries took on many teenage interns that had access to confidential information and had to be called in for ‘emergencies’.

You tried to return to your homework but not even a few minutes later you were distracted by someone making a scene walking up to Ms. Jones’ desk to turn his lab in. Flash handed over his lab and turned around with his arms spread, a smug grin on his face. He looked to your side of the room and when he made eye contact with you, his grin widened. Oh crap, he’s going to walk over here to brag, of course, about how well he did on the lab.

“Oh crap,” you whispered as you realized that Peter hadn’t noticed Flash walking over and still had the drawer wide open.