Peter & Bucky Are Pals

Chapter 7

The Five Times Peter Got Help With Schoolwork and The One Time It Was Done For Him

Peter threw his phone across his bed, burying his face in his pillow. He had a group presentation due the next day, and nobody was replying to him. He’d done his part; his five slides were thorough with supporting evidence from Fahrenheit 451. Unfortunately, nobody else was as timely. Two people hadn’t even started, and the other one had a single, messy slide. It was already past ten, and they showed no signs of getting any work done.

Peter sighed. He picked himself up and sat down at his desk, rubbing his eyes. He opened the SparkNotes page on 1984 and began gathering examples of destruction caused by lack of freedom. It took him nearly an hour to organize it all into slides, and he let out a very manly whimper when he realized that he still had two books to pick through. He managed to get a couple slides of information out of the summary for The Handmaid’s Tale before exhaustion got the best of him and he hauled himself up to the shared floor to make himself a strong cup of coffee.

“Might I recommend getting some rest, Mr. Parker?” said JARVIS in the elevator back to Peter’s room. “You slept less than four hours last night, as well as the previous one, and you are displaying signs of sleep deprivation.”

“Can’t,” Peter said. “I’ve gotta finish the project.”

“Perhaps you could ask for help, then?”

“It’s late. I don’t want to bother anyone.”

“Sergeant Barnes, Mr. Stark, and Ms. Romanova are all currently awake,” JARVIS replied.

“They’re probably busy,” Peter said, stumbling a bit as he stepped out of the elevator and made his way into his room. His coffee sloshed onto his shirt a bit, and he swore. He sat down, scrubbing his blurred eyes as he stared at his computer. His brain was starting to feel like sludge, and he downed the cup of coffee before pulling up a PDF of The Handmaid’s Tale and skimming through it as best he could. He found a few good quotes, but he seemed to have to read things twice before he could process them. His eyes got stuck a few times, and he had to force them onwards. The edges of his vision were dark, and he wasn’t entirely surprised when his head fell to his desk with a thud and everything went black.

----

Tony was working on refining his parachute release design when his music softened, and he looked up, slightly irate.

“What?”

“Mr. Parker seems to have fallen unconscious from exhaustion. He is uninjured and his vitals are stable, but it would do him good to be put in his bed.”

Tony dropped the screwdriver he was holding and hurried to the elevator, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he stepped in. He fidgeted as the elevator descended and was out the doors as soon as they slid open, slipping into Peter’s room and frowning deeply at the sight of him passed out at his desk. He picked up an empty coffee mug that seemed to have fallen on the ground and set it quietly back on the desk.

“JARVIS, any abnormalities in his vitals now?”

“Nothing terribly out of the ordinary. His blood pressure is slightly high and his coordination was poor when he was awake.”

Tony wrapped his arms around Peter’s midsection and hefted him up, the boy’s head lolling against Tony’s shoulder. Tony carried him across the room to his bed, laying him down and pulling the blankets over him. He remained limp, and Tony tried not to worry.