I only love fictional men

My body instantly springs out of bed and rushed to my bathroom. I need to look presentable. I need to be ready. I need to seem like put together human that he could maybe possibly reciprocate crush towards.

Instead of getting out of bad at the last possible moment before I would be running late, throwing on any suitable training clothes and trudging my way to the gym. Today I got ready over an extended period. I picked out my cutest training outfit and made sure to stretch and warm up before heading downstairs so I could be in my best physical shape and actually seem like a capable Avenger.

As I walk into the gym, no one is there, the lights are off, and the room is dark. I am very rarely the first one here, but I’ll take it. I switch on the lights and head to the cupboard at the back of the room to start to set up the equipment Nat usually uses for our sessions.

“Why are you here before me? I am always the first person here. And you’re setting up too? This isn’t like you”.

I turn around to see Nat entering the room and setting her training bag on the bench near the door. She looks confused as she starts to take off her jacket and walk towards me.

“I woke up really early this morning, I don’t know why, so I thought I’d get a head start” I lie. It definitely wasn’t because I’m trying to impress a Spider type superhero who will be joining us at any moment. Handing her the infamous stopwatch, which is probably my nemesis due the number of times I struggle to complete sets in the time provided.

“Oh, well that’s made my job a little easer this morning” she chuckles whilst accepting the watch and hanging it around her neck. “But you’re going to have to set up for two” she continues “Peter is joining us today”.

“Oh yeah” I vocalise acting as if that wasn’t my main motivation for getting out of bed this morning. “I completely forgot, okay I’ll grab another set of everything” I head back to the storage cupboard to collect the items.

When I enter the gym room again, I see Peter talking to Nat, smiling at me as he sees me enter the room.

“Hi” I start, as I walk towards them setting down the other sets of weights “Did you have a nice weekend?”

“Yeah, I did thanks” He replies, “Did you?”

I nod. Nat walks towards her bag and starts getting out the final pieces we need for our sessions and I continue.

“Are you ready for this week? Having your first training session with Nat is really throwing you in the deep end. She can be tough” I laugh. He laughs too.

“Yeah, I’m a bit scared of her but I’m excited to see what the Avengers do to train. I’m worried I won’t be able to keep up” I laugh at his joke this time. He laughs too.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine.” I assure him, “If those videos of you swinging around the city have shown me anything, you’ll probably be better at this then me”.

“Oh, so you’ve watched them?” he asks with a small smirk.

Shit. I really just put myself in a compromising position there. I don’t want him to know that all I’ve done the last two days is watch every video of him I could find on YouTube. That is not exactly ‘I don’t have a massive crush on you’ behaviour.

“Oh yeah… Dad showed all of us them before you joined.” I stutter “Plus they’re viral. I couldn’t escape them if I tried”.

I brush it off whilst sitting down into a hamstring stretch to try and focus on anything else than that slip-up I just made and remove myself from his eye level. Eye contact was not the best thing to be making right now. I didn’t want to accidentally reveal to him the big mistake I just made.

Nat comes back over and starts a new conversation topic, moving it to dynamic stretches and correct warming up technique.

---

An hour later, I’m exhausted, my chest is heaving as I’m trying to get more air into my lungs. Nat’s sessions were hard, but since I now needed to be at my best physical performance to not look like fool in front of Peter, I’ve been pushing myself the hardest I have ever done and was trying to make it look like I wasn’t about to pass out extremely soon.

“Okay great guys!” Nat continues after the beeping of the stopwatch goes off once again, signalling the end of the set. “Now we’re going to put all of those moves to practice. I want you to have a little vs sparing match to see if you can keep effectively blocking and dodging attacks coming towards you”.

Great. Just what I want, my sweaty body to be facing towards Peter’s as he watches my every movement intensely in order to anticipate where to hit me next. Just great.

As we start, I’m not doing well. Peter has dodged every hit I’ve made towards him and has successfully made contact with me five times.

‘Pull yourself together’ I mumble to myself in my head. This is embarrassing. Steve, Sam and Bucky were working out in the corner and have been for the last 15 minutes. After losing the 3rd round, they started to look over, and noticed I wasn’t on my normal game. I was usually great at this. Nat looked confused too. As she called the 6th round in Peter’s favour. I take a deep breath and get myself into position.

As we start again, he swings his right arm towards me, I successfully duck under and as I’m squatted, I lift my left leg and manage to successfully wrap it around his right ankle and pull it towards myself, so he loses his footing and stumbles backwards. As he does this, I take my right arm and manage to strike him. Finally, I have a point in my favour. After another 15 minutes of sparring, we are now tied.

“This is the last round.” Nat announces “And you’re tied so winner takes all. 3, 2, 1. Begin!”

This time he swings at me with his left arm. I dodge. I swing at him with my left. He dodges. He lowers himself and tries to trip me up with his legs with a swooping motion at my ankles. I jump. As he raises back to a standing position, I try to strike. He dodges to the side.

After this uneventful back on forth, he catches me off guard and manages to tackle my left side and bring me down to the mat. I land on my right side and immediately try to roll myself back up to a standing position, but as I start to get back up, he is still crouched over me from the tackle and mumbles “Oh no you don’t”.

He pushes his body back against me, so I hit the floor with my back. After taking the impact of hitting the floor yet again I realise he is straddling me. Peter Parker is straddling me. In my gym. With four Avengers watching. My body is lying against the floor with my arms stuck under his thighs, lying at my sides, and he is sat on top of me resting against my lower stomach. I want to die.

He quickly realises our compromising position and gets himself up and offers me a hand to get me up also. I take it without looking at him. I look at my feet the whole time. As if that is helping me get myself up more efficiently. I clear my throat awkwardly and stand at his side looking at Nat. Taking a step to the right to stand a bit further from him.

She doesn’t even seem to notice our awkwardness due to the situation and congratulates Peter.

“That was a great session guys! Y/N just remember to tuck your elbows close to yourself when you fall so your arms do not get trapped. But great job Peter on getting them down. That’s a great outcome for a first session. I’ll see you again tomorrow morning”.

She smiles and walks away making her way over to Sam who earlier challenged her to yet another sparring session when he first came in. (He is still yet to win against her, but I appreciate his determination).

Peter and I slowly start walking together towards the door. Still yet to talk to make eye contact with each other.

“So…” I start “We have training with Wanda too today. That doesn’t start for another half an hour so we can get showered and clean up before then. You know where your room is right?”

“Yeah.” he replies, “I dropped my stuff in there this morning just before I came down to the gym”.

“Cool.” I answer. We walk silently to the lift as I select the floor that will lead us to our rooms. As I walk down the corridor, I realise his room is literally opposite mine. Great. That’s really going to be great with wanting to avoid him if this awkwardness stays around. Just another unfortunate event to add to today.

“Umm, I’ll come and get you just before we should head down. I doubt you know where we need to head” I continue slowly backing away towards my bedroom door. Practically gasping for this interaction to be over.

“Okay great, I’ll see you then” he smiles as he walks into his room and closes the door.

As I enter my room. I want to lock the door and never leave. But alas, that is not an option, so I head to the shower and then get dressed. I lie on my bed and stare at the clock counting down the minutes until I have to face him again. As the time arrives, I sigh and head to his door. Knocking on it lightly, hoping he maybe doesn’t hear me and I can head down by myself, but he appears at the door seconds later. As I see him slowly open the door and I’m met with his awkward tight-lipped grin, I decide to no longer make it awkward between the us. I’m going to and act like the whole straddling incident didn’t happen and wasn’t plaguing every thought in my mind.

“You ready?” I say with the most chipper voice I can managing right now. He nods and I continue. “Cool! Follow me!”

As we make our way to the studio, I talk to him about anything and everything I can to ease the tension. College, Midtown High, other Avengers. Anything to make the next few days we spend with each other not feel like we had to walk on eggshells around each other. By the time we approach the studio we are having a regular conversation. Success! Hopefully, this next bit of training is better.

Training sessions with Wanda are a lot more chill than the ones with Nat. It was more about focusing on your powers and abilities and taking control of them. If it wasn’t for Wanda, I would still be turning invisible at every uncomfortable moment. Earlier today would have been a lot more interesting if that was the case.

She starts the session by getting to know more about Peters abilities and ‘Spidey sense’ as he calls it. She explains the exercises that will be useful in becoming attuned with them. For an hour we work on these exercises, sat crossed legged beside each other as Wanda guides us through them. It was peaceful and the closest thing to meditation and mindfulness we manage to get at the Avengers facility. This place is the epitome of chaos.

As we finish up the session. Peter and I thank Wanda and make our way to head out the studio.

“Oh, actually, Y/N can I talk to you for a second? It’s just about your progress”.

“Of course.” I reply, “Hey Peter, I’ll meet you in the kitchen for lunch?” I ask him, making sure that he is actually okay with those plans and didn’t want to be alone instead.  

“Sure!” he replies and smiles before heading down the corridor. “I’ll see you in a sec”.

I head back into the room and walk towards Wanda.

“What’s up? Is something wrong?” I ask, I wasn’t too concerned that this was about anything serious.

“I noticed you weren’t really focusing that much in that session. Maybe you were too focused on somebody else who was also participating?” She questions with a slight sing-song voice, like a child making fun of another in a playground.

Oh no. How could I forget that Wanda can read minds? Like how can I forget that? It comes up in everyday conversation all the time, and NOW I choose to forget? My heart drops realising she now knows about my embarrassing crush, but also because she can literally be reading all my worries about this right now.

“Wanda! I thought we talked about not reading our minds! As you know, how it’s a complete violation of our privacy” I whine. I’m so embarrassed. I try to ignore the fact that she now knows I have a crush on Peter, but instead try to direct the conversation to her mind reading.

In all honesty. When she joined the Avengers, we all had a meeting about how she can never use that ability on any of us, and she agreed and hasn’t used it at all, at least to all of our knowledge.

“I have to read your minds to get a better sense of your progress, you know I only do it during our sessions”.

She’s right. We did agree to that at the beginning. Years ago. When I first started training, and I have since completely forgotten about it.

“It’s okay! I won’t tell anyone, and for what it’s worth I think you two will be cute, you know, if Tony can look past it” She laughs, and I smile with relief. I love Wanda, if anyone had to know about my crush, I’m glad it’s her, she definitely won’t tell anyone. Maybe that comes with the responsibility of having the power to know everyone’s secrets. It would make sense. Though I will definitely now have to try and censor my thoughts around her during sessions from now on. That could lead to a lot more uncomfortable conversations.

---

As I make my way into to the kitchen, I see Peter looking in the fridge.

“Need a hand?” I ask heading to the kitchen island.

“You know what? I’ve got this, I’m actually a good cook.” He responds with a look of pride across his face as he faces me looking away from the fridge.

“Ooh okay, well I guess I can teach you how to fight and you can teach me how to cook” I laugh as she starts gathering all the ingredients.

“That’s funny, considering the fact you were pinned under me not even a couple of hours ago.” He retaliates as a snarky remark.

I start the feel the embarrassment hit my body and the transition of turning invisible that comes with it. I immediately look panicked as I try to get control of it, so I don’t turn invisible in response to what he just said.

I laugh to pretend like I’m not completely mortified.

“Touché Parker. But I still have to taste your cooking first. You may just be all talk”.

Lunch turned out to be delicious and he made me eat my words. Quite literally.

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“Anyway…” Tony continues as the other Avengers chuckles die down after Steve’s outcry “he arrived not too long ago. Happy is next door giving him all the T&Qs and they should be done now. Let me just check and I’ll introduce you all.” Tony then leaves the room, and the other Avengers start to talk among themselves.

I pull out my phone and type ‘NYC spider boy’ into YouTube clicking on the second search result with 20 million views. I have seen this video before as my friend Michael sent it to me around a week ago.

“Do you think there are many other super kids wandering around the city?” Sam asks, whilst looking at the video of my shoulder. Currently the hero is stopping a city bus from off-roading into some confused tourists by building up a wall with his web.

“I doubt it, I mean I guess he’s the only one going viral” I answer, moving the angle of my phone so the others who have gathered around me can see “but it would be cool to be able to meet some people my age who do what I do, no offence guys”

They all laugh. Being the youngest Avenger and hanging out with 30+ year olds all the time can be kind of isolating, but it’s like having a super close family. A family who also happen to be in life and death situations regularly together. But that’s a great bonding experience I would say.

“Guys, this is Peter, the Spider-Boy” Tony draws our attention away from my phone to the door where he has just entered.

“Spider-Man” Peter mutters as a lame attempt to correct him.

“Peter?” I question and the boy stood in front of me was not who I expected. I didn’t expect the masked vigilante swinging through New York to be someone that I knew.

“Y/N?” He responds, looking even more confused than I am “What are you doing here?”

-

“So Tony Stark is your dad?” Peter asks.

After seeing a guy from your school who you shared a chemistry class with last year, walking into a super-secret meeting for superheroes where he will be now joining your team. It is understandable that Peter and I were now talking this out to figure out how this state could be so small.

“Yep” I answer. We were sat next to each other on bar stools at the kitchen island. Wanda made some of her famous fruit smoothies for us and we were both stirring them around with our straws whilst conversing alone in the main living space.

“But your last name isn’t Stark, or Potts?” He continues, genuinely really confused about this whole situation.

“Yeah, well you can’t have the daughter of a billionaire and superhero couple walking around New York City alone, going to a normal school, having normal hobbies. It’s like asking for me to be taken hostage. So, I don’t have either of their last names and the general public doesn’t know I exist. It’s for my safety” I continue, reciting this memorised answer I’ve had to say to multiple people once they find out my existence.

Peter nodded as if he was understanding everything, he probably was, but I guess this wasn’t the conversation he planned to have today.

“And you’re the great Spider-Man” I continued, wanting the change the subject from me to him. “How did that happen? Wait… were you Spider-Man when you sat behind me in Chem last year?”

He began to explain to me the story, it happened to him on our school trip to OSCORP we took last year for our Chem class that happened just before the end of the semester. Something about a radioactive spider. It was strange, kind of the weirdest superhero transformation story I’ve heard. And I’ve heard quite a few.

My story was nowhere near as interesting. I guess having superhero parents who were always around weird alien technology and contaminated substances led to some weird epigenetic alterations of their reproductive cells and then when they had me, I could turn invisible.

They didn’t know at first, I was seemingly a normal baby. Then at my 2nd birthday party when they surprised me with a freaky clown, I was so scared that my body just decided to turn invisible. They weren’t expecting it, the clown definitely wasn’t expecting it and they had to cover up with a very convincing lie.

From then, whenever I was embarrassed, scared or essentially in a situation where I wanted to disappear. I did. Literally. It wasn’t entirely effective though as even though my body tuned invisible, the clothes I was wearing didn’t. I spent the majority of my preteen years of being a walking hoodie and jeans with no head or hands protruding from the gaps. For my 13th birthday Bruce and I got to work on a suit which responds to the activity of my skin cells, when I was invisible, my suit was invisible. It made it a lot more effective for me to actually be invisible when I turned but it also meant my dad let me start training to become an Avenger.

Training was fun, I worked with Nat a lot in our gym in order to become an efficient fighter. ‘Just because people couldn’t see me, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t know how to serve a mean right hook’ she always said. I also spent a lot of time with Wanda, trying to manage my powers. Now I am able to actually turn invisible and visible again on demand. And it only takes extreme embarrassment now to turn me invisible against my will, which is great because mum and dad finally let me, after my years of begging, attend Midtown High and stop being home school. This is where I met Peter last year and now I’m at Columbia studying genetics and engineering. A double major, I know but when you’re around the top geniuses in the world everyday, there is no such thing as too much learning.

“So, I guess we’re the only Midtown Alumni to have these crazy powers huh?” Peter finishes. After a long ramble about his becoming a superhero story. I guess he wanted to ease the tension after I couldn’t really think of what to say after “that’s super cool”. It wasn’t like I wasn’t interested, I really was, but when I wanted to have another person my age to hang out with, I didn’t expect it to be the boy I spent my senior year of high school obsessing over. I had turned shy, like really shy, like my normal levels of shy times 50. I couldn’t think of what to say.

“Sorry, if that story was too long and boring, I’ve only gotten to tell it to one person before, my best friend Ned so I was kind of excited to be able to tell it again.”

“No, it wasn’t boring, it was genuinely really cool!” I say a little too loudly and enthusiastically. I cringe at my tone of voice and speak normally again as I continue “It’s just I didn’t really expect the new Avengers recruit to be you, you know, like someone I know. It’s just kind of weird, but nice? I don’t know, now I’m rambling”

Peter chuckles.

“Umm, so are you going to be staying with us whilst you train or are you going back to Queens?” I ask, hoping this new question will miraculously erase Peter’s memory of what I last said.

“A bit of both, my Aunt is back in queens and I don’t want to leave her completely alone, but this upstate facility is a little too far for an everyday commute. I’m here just for today but once I start training on Monday, I think I might stay for the whole week.”

“Well, I can give you the tour! Since you’ll be staying with us soon, I guess you’ll want to know where everything is!” I say whilst jumping of my bar stool and putting my half full smoothie cup in the fridge. I noticed peter has just finished his, so I grab the glass and put it in the dishwasher for him. He thanks me as I do so.

“So this is the kitchen, where we make our food, different from the kitchen where the chefs make our food for occasions, charity events blah blah blah. And also, this seating area here is kind of the main seating area where we’ll sit throughout the day. Lots of sofas because there are lots of us and this is Bucky’s armchair. Don’t ever sit in Bucky’s armchair.” I say, stopping behind the chair and resting my hand on the headrest.

“Bucky, scary guy with the metal arm right?” Peter questions whilst following me at a slight distance around the room as I show him around. I nod. “Yeah, don’t worry, I won’t be sitting in his chair” he laughs.

I continue to show him the rest of the complex, the gym, the labs and finish up on the floor with all our rooms.

“I’m not sure which one of these rooms will be yours because we have a couple spare ones, but they all have the same layout. Look I’ll show you mine” I walk into my room, then hold the door open for Peter so he can follow me in.

“Uh, so this is my room. Obviously, yours won’t be decorated like mine but It’ll be the same size and have an en-suite attached with a full shower and tub and stuff. You know, the basics” I say, whilst sitting on the edge of my bed.

“I like your room, it’s cosy” he adds whilst looking around and then heading for the bookshelf as soon as he spots it.

“Ah thanks, I mean it’s cool, bigger than when we were in the tower in the city so I can’t complain” I say whilst also looking around. What is it about someone else being in your room that makes you see it with fresh eyes and make you super self-conscious that there is going to be a rogue piece of underwear on the floor? Even though I know I tidied my room this morning.

“Holy crap, Vision you scared the life out of me” I say on an exhale whilst holding my hand to my chest after the large gasp I just made as he enters the room, through the wall.

“Sorry, but your door is open” He continues, “Mr. Stark has told me that your car is here to take you back home Mr. Parker. If you would just follow me, I can lead you there” Vision continues, as if him just floating through my bedroom wall and speaking to the boy from my chemistry class now turned superhero was a normal thing to happen on a Thursday evening.

“Oh… thanks Vision” Peter says with some hesitancy, you can see that this is a weird circumstance for him too. “Well, I’ll see you on Monday then” he says smiling at me and walking towards the door. Which vision doesn’t use to exit.

“Yeah, see you then” I smile as he closes the door and I’m left in my room listening to him shuffling down the corridor.

“Alright gang.” Tony begins, standing in front of all the Avengers at the end of a large oval table in the conference room.

“I’m sure you’ve seen these ‘viral videos’ of this Spider-Boy kid swinging around the city and being a friendly neighbourhood vigilante. Well, Happy and I have managed to track him down and he’s agreed to join the team”

“Viral videos of superheroes?” Steve exclaims, looking at Tony whilst tilting his head and looking genuinely exhausted. “I’m still catching up on these keyboard cats and kids biting fingers”.

I giggle. Having Steve around was just the same as having an uncle you saw once the year who lived of the grid. He was extremely sweet, but utterly clueless to anything other than his job. But I mean, that job does include fighting evil aliens.

“Anyway…” Tony continues as the other Avengers chuckles die down after Steve’s outcry “he arrived not too long ago. Happy is next door giving him all the T&Qs and they should be done now. Let me just check and I’ll introduce you all.” Tony then leaves the room, and the other Avengers start to talk among themselves.

I pull out my phone and type ‘NYC spider boy’ into YouTube clicking on the second search result with 20 million views. I have seen this video before as my friend Michael sent it to me around a week ago.

“Do you think there are many other super kids wandering around the city?” Sam asks, whilst looking at the video of my shoulder. Currently the hero is stopping a city bus from off-roading into some confused tourists by building up a wall with his web.

“I doubt it, I mean I guess he’s the only one going viral” I answer, moving the angle of my phone so the others who have gathered around me can see “but it would be cool to be able to meet some people my age who do what I do, no offence guys”

They all laugh. Being the youngest Avenger and hanging out with 30+ year olds all the time can be kind of isolating, but it’s like having a super close family. A family who also happen to be in life and death situations regularly together. But that’s a great bonding experience I would say.

“Guys, this is Peter, the Spider-Boy” Tony draws our attention away from my phone to the door where he has just entered.

“Spider-Man” Peter mutters as a lame attempt to correct him.

“Peter?” I question and the boy stood in front of me was not who I expected. I didn’t expect the masked vigilante swinging through New York to be someone that I knew.