Chapter Text
“Ned?”
“Pete, I fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up-“
“Ned! Calm down. What’s going on?”
“You know how I got my wisdom teeth taken out today, right?”
How could Peter forget? His best friend was missing today and Flash took it as his chance to pick on Peter even worse than usual. Thankfully, the day was halfway through and he had actually been able to remember to bring his lunch today or else he would have been screwed.
“Well, duh. That’s why you weren’t at school today to see MJ roast Flash in English Lit.”
“She did? I would have loved to see that!”
“Dude, it was so cool! She literally shut him up in a debate and it was so great to see him try and fight back only to dig himself into a deeper hole. Mrs. Flores then used it as a teaching point against misogyny and sexism.”
“I love Mrs. Flores! I hate that I missed it. Anyway, they put me under some anesthesia and it made me loopy for a good while.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Well, apparently, my mom didn’t listen to what I said and she forgot to take away my phone while I was under the influence of the anesthesia.”
Peter nearly choked on the sandwich he was eating. Shit. There was a lot of things that could go wrong with Ned having his phone while he was loopy. Ned had some videos of him wearing the suit as Spiderman. Even worse, Ned had the videos of them as kids trying to recreate their favorite Star Wars battles with Lego and homemade costumes.
“Did you post one of our old videos?”
“No! That would have probably been better though.”
“How can anything be worse than that? We were literally reenacting Star Wars scenes in homemade costumes in your garage.”
“Well, I opened Twitter.”
“So? You can delete tweets you know.”
“Not if they’ve already gone viral!”
“What type of tweet did you make that it went viral?”
“Well, today’s the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of James Stark and everyone’s been sharing the aged up rendering of his face which was made using the new StarkTech, BARF. That’s a really bad acronym, by the way. I would have probably named it something much cooler.”
Peter had a bad feeling about this. He hadn’t been able to open his social media today since he slept through his alarm after a late night of patrol. He had barely just enough time to take a quick shower and grab the packed breakfast and lunch his aunt had made for him before he had to run to catch the train to get to first period.
Now that he thought about it, more people had been staring today but he thought that was just because he was wearing the same jacket as the day before and they must’ve thought he didn’t shower or something.
“I don’t think Mr. Stark is exactly known for his naming skills.”
“True. Well, in my drugged up mind, the rendering looked exactly like you, Pete.”
Peter’s heart stuttered in his chest.
“Ned. What did you do?”
“I may have tagged you in the original post with the caption saying, hey @peterwithab it’s you! And then a bunch of people retweeted it and said I was being disrespectful and they wanted to cancel me since it was serious matter involving a missing kid and I was making a joke. Obviously, now I regret making it into a joke but while I was drugged, I thought they were attacking me so I retweeted my original tweet with a picture of you that looked exactly like the rendering with a caption that said prove me wrong and now every wannabe detective and sleuth on Twitter’s been looking into your life?”
Shit. This was bad. This was really bad. Fuck. How was he going to fix this?
“Ned! What the hell, man?”
“In my defense, I was drugged. I didn’t know what I was doing!”
Peter winced.
“How bad is it?”
“They definitely know about the mysterious circumstances surrounding your parents’ death and the recent article on the school website about your academic achievements kind of didn’t help the situation since they’re calling you a child genius in the article. They haven’t been able to dig up any good quality old pictures of you though but that’s because when I woke up and realized what I did, I immediately logged into your Insta and archived them.”
“Thanks man.”
“They did manage to get an old newspaper shot of you at your parent’s funeral and they compared it to the last seen pic of James Stark and they do look pretty similar. It also doesn’t help that a bunch of our classmates have actually been feeding the flames, trying to get clout.”
“Really?”
“Can you blame them though? You really do look like James Stark. I swear!”
“Ned, we’ve talked about this before. Just because I look like the missing Stark heir and my parents died suspiciously doesn’t mean that I’m James Stark.”
“Well, a bunch of nerds on Twitter think you are. Anyway, would it really be that bad if you actually were the Stark heir?”
Peter took a moment to think about how cool it would be to have Tony Stark as his father and how his life would have been like if he was James Stark. It would have probably been amazing but he wouldn’t trade Ben and May for the world. They raised him when his parents couldn’t and they showed him what family was. Also, he didn’t know how he would explain the whole webslinging thing he recently acquired.
“Dude, my life’s crazy enough without this adding to it.”
“You’re right.”
“By the way, when you say viral, how big do you mean?”
“I mean that #JamesOrPeter is part of the top ten trending hashtags in the country just below #JamesIsAlive and #JusticeForJames.”
“Ned!”
“I know. I’m sorry!”
“What can we do to fix this?”
“I mean, you could open your Twitter and tell them that you aren’t James Stark.”
“But wouldn’t that seem suspicious?”
“Maybe. What if you do like a Star Wars reference, like these are not the droids you are looking for.”
“Wait. That might actually work but would it get them to back off though?”
“I don’t know, Pete. Some have even tagged the FBI in their tweets. I’ve been refreshing to see if they’ve responded.”
“The FBI? Ned, they can’t know about the web.”
“I know but if you aren’t James Stark then this whole thing will be dropped soon. After all, things go viral all the time and they get forgotten about in a few weeks. You probably will just have to lay low for a bit to be safe.”
“Yeah. I know. You owe me so much for this, Ned.”
“If it’s any consolation, I got my mom to promise to come and pick you up later for an apology movie night and I already messaged your Aunt May if we could do it since it’s a Friday and she agreed.”
“Harry Potter Marathon?”
“Harry Potter Marathon. Are we still okay?”
“Of course we are. Yes, you may have caused thousands of strangers to look into my life but you’re still my bro.”
“Aw, thanks, bro.”
“Right back at ya, bro. Anyway, I need to finish eating since lunch is about to finish.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot. Just ignore the stares. This should all blow over soon anyway, right?”
“Hopefully! Gotta go. See ya later, Ned.”
“See ya, Pete!”
After hanging up on Ned, Peter buried his head in his hands and groaned. This was a mess. This explained why so many classmates of his had their phones out and oddly angled to face him. This also explained why Betty had been trying to corner him before he sat down with MJ to eat lunch. What was he going to do?
“Hey Loser. You alright?”
MJ had apparently moved closer to him after noticing his plight. He would have normally reacted earlier what with his new Spidey sense but for some reason, she was safe for him and she didn’t trigger it.
“No. Ned sent a bunch of twitter detectives to analyze every aspect of my life in the hopes of seeing if I’m the missing Stark Heir and apparently, I’ve gone viral.”
“And you’re still friends?”
“He didn’t mean to! He was under the influence of anesthesia. That’s enough to make people do crazy things.”
“Is it really that crazy though?”
“I mean, yeah. I had parents and sure, my life story is a bit tragic but I’ve had more than enough happiness to counteract the bad.”
“Do you think it’s possible though that you are the Stark Heir?”
“Do you think so?”
“Well, I saw the rendering and my first thought was that it was actually you but I didn’t tweet it unlike some people. You do kind of look like Stark and you are smart enough to be related to him.”
That was a huge compliment coming from MJ and Peter really wasn’t sure how to handle it. He could feel a semblance of a blush making its way onto his cheeks but he couldn’t do anything to stop it.
“Thanks, MJ.”
“Don’t overthink it, loser. Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen? You gain a new family. So what?”
MJ was right. It wouldn’t hurt him that much if he actually was James Stark. If anything, it might help him get the training he needs to be able to truly help people and he would have more family in his life. The only negative was being in the public’s eyes but wasn’t he already there anyway? The more he thought about it, the better it would actually be.
The lunch bell rang, stopping Peter’s train of thought and forcing him to cram the rest of his sandwich into his mouth so that he could make it in time for AP History. He had to put this to the side first and get through the rest of the day. Then, he could meet with Ned and they could figure out what to do. Peter could only hope that his aunt wouldn’t find out until they could fix this.