Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

An Essay on Gratitude

Spooktober 17: Smile

⚠️TW: panic attack, canon-typical violence⚠️

"I want a show of hands," Ms. Smith clapped, striding in front of the class. "Who here has somebody in their life who they're grateful for?"

With a collective silent sigh, the hands of tired teenagers stretched up. Peter is amongst them, although only devoting half of his attention to the words being said, the other half trying to finish an assignment that was due last week.

He had slipped behind after an unfortunate incident of the soul known as "procrastination," and had been working towards getting caught up with the classes he had the least patience for, which now left him with English.

"That's great," Ms. Smith said, pleased. "I want you all to keep whoever you're thinking of in your head– because your next assignment is going to be all about gratitude."

She wrote the word on the whiteboard in big, blocky letters, underlining it twice. "First of all, general information. I want your essays to be a minimum of five paragraphs– to clarify, this means an introduction paragraph, three properly formatted body paragraphs, and one conclusion paragraph. You're going to format in MLA, with works sourced in a bibliography on the last page. Any questions so far?"

A mumble of "no" across the classroom.

"Good." Under 'gratitude', she continued writing in bullet points. "Now, the fun stuff. In your essay I want you to answer three main questions. One, what does gratitude mean to you? Two, who are you grateful for and why? Three, how do you think gratitude has changed you?"

Peter glanced up from his work and stared blankly at the white board, his mind twisting at the prompt. It seemed... a lot more emotional than he would rather be over a school assignment.

He had a small handful of people that he would do anything in the world for, people he had been grateful for, people who he got out of bed for, people who he protected the city for.

Still— Peter wasn't exactly a word person. He showed that gratitude through his actions. Putting away the dishes, vacuuming, doing the laundry, all before May got home. An old sweatshirt with rips at the seams that Ned gave him when he was cold, which he stitched and washed with May's nice-smelling detergent before returning. Using his strength to carry books for MJ when she's perusing the library.

Another problem he had run into was which one of these people he was going to write about. Peter spent the better half of his planning time in class scratching out half-formed ideas and starting sentences, erasing and re-writing names. It carried on like this until the bell rang, and Peter slumped out of his seat even more defeated than when he walked in.

His mind continued turning the puzzle over as he made his way onto patrol.

This, of course, was a problem.

It never did well to go on patrol while his mind was somewhere else. It wasn't a job to be distracted on; as the result was always someone getting preventably hurt, and in most cases, that someone ended up being his own dumb self.

That's why, as painful as it was, it really wasn't shocking when Peter found himself swinging haphazardly towards the Compound, his right leg hanging uselessly in the air because— oh yeah, he had been shot.

GSWs were definitely at the top of the list for his least favourite patrol injuries. (Or, bottom of the list— however that worked.) It wasn't like stabbings were fun or easier, but gunshots had the added effect of, well...

Peter stumbled onto the grass, blood gushing from his leg and dripping as he limped along to the back entrance, which he knew from unfortunate experience was the closest way to the medical wing. His heart is its own rabbit-footed affair, beating fast and causing his lungs to choke as he tried to take in panicked gasps of oxygen.