#super dork

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Part 1

“Ash… Ashton… Mr. Irwin!”

Ashton’s desk shook with the force of someone kicking it, and the boy snapped to attention. “3.14!” he blurted.

Mr. Parker looked at Ashton over the rim of his glasses. “Try to keep up, Mr. Irwin,” he advised the teenager.

“Yes, sir. Sorry,” Ashton mumbled, his face tinged red with embarrassment as the class laughed. He rubbed the sleep from his hazel eyes, his glasses pushing up his face. Crime fighting really needed to be high school friendly.

“Sir!” the girl next to him, her sneakered foot still resting against the leg of his desk, spoke up, raising her hand.

“Yes, Miss Y/L/N?”

“Ash is right.”

Mr. Parker made a quizzical face before looking back at the board. “Hmm, I suppose he is. Nice catch.”

“Thanks,” Ashton muttered under his breath.

“No need,” she whispered back, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s not the answer. But by the time he realizes that, it won’t matter. You got drool in the corner of your mouth, by the way.”

Ashton pulled the sleeve of his hoodie up over his hand and then hastily wiped at his mouth. “Thanks again,” he muttered, shifting his gaze away from hers. It would be his rotten luck. Fucking super powers and he still looked like an idiot in front of the girl he’s had a crush on since preschool. What was the good of having quick reflexes if one of those reflexes wasn’t charismatic wit? He pushed back his hoodie in a surge of irritation, ruffling his sandy brown curls as he did so.

Y/N let out a hissed wince so sharp, it had him turning his head towards her. “What?” he asked, putting her undeservingly so on the receiving end of his annoyance.

If his misplaced outburst bothered her, she made no mention of it as she asked, “Lose a fight with a drum kit?” She nodded at his cheek, bringing attention to the bruise he had been hiding with his hood in the first place.

“It’s nothing,” he muttered darkly, drawing the hood back up with a quick tug. Son of a bitch, Ash, get it fucking together, he cursed himself out. He kept his eyes glued to the front of the classroom, counting down the seconds until he was free from the girl who made his insides ache worse than any physical battle with evil.

~~~

“What are you doing?!” The words fell from his lips with surprise. He tried not to stumble over his feet as she dragged him down the hallway through the crowd of students. “What the fuck?!” he asked again, with more sharpness than he meant to direct towards her as she slammed him up against the wall in a secluded area. Are you really questioning this right now?

“Hold still,” she instructed with an eye roll before her hands were pushing his hood down.

“Will you tell me what you’re doing, please?” he questioned, putting emphasis on his “please.”

“Covering your bruise, Spider-man.” Her voice barely spoke the name as she started applying concealer to his battered cheek.

He stiffened, defenses on high alert. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied.

His response earned another eye roll. “You might have the rest of the world fooled, but I’m not stupid, Ash. You don’t become first in our class if you don’t notice things around you. And it is curious, isn’t it? Spider-man starts cleaning up our streets right around the time Ashton Irwin starts becoming a world-renowned klutz.”

The hazel eyes burned brightly behind the black frames as he scanned around them to make sure they were absolutely alone. “You can’t tell anybody.” His lips barely moved as he uttered the nearly soundless command.

The concealer snapped shut and she admired her handiwork, her fingers soft against his skin. “Your secret’s safe with me, super dork,” she smirked, placing a gentle kiss to his cheek before sauntering off.

Ashton watched her go, certain that the tinge in his cheeks was now a permanent facial feature.

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Part 2

Every part of Ashton’s body screamed as he stumbled back to where he had left his stuff. Spider-man may have gotten his victory, but he had gotten his ass thoroughly kicked in the process. He was going to have a hell of time covering up this mess. Thankfully, he knew just the girl who’d be able to help him. If she’d let him in.

His bruised knuckles rapped against her apartment window. The curtain moved to the side and he offered a small wave as the window scraped open. “Super dork, to what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked, crossing her arms.

He answered by pulling off his mask.

“Jesus fuck! Ashton!” She continued to swear under her breath as he collapsed on her couch. “You need to go to the hospital!”

“No!” he said sharply. “No one can know! And c’mon, aren’t you a nurse? Bandage me up, doc.” He offered a cheeky wink.

She was already moving about, grabbing supplies. “I can’t believe you’re cracking a joke at a time like this.”

“If I can’t crack a joke now, when can I?” he wondered with a flippant tone.

She rolled her eyes. “Safe to assume the rest of you is as bad as your face?”

“It’s rude to insult the injured,” he pouted.

“Shut up and strip,” she instructed.

“Yes ma’am,” he snapped his teeth at her, his charm still in full effect as he tugged off the top part of his suit.

She swore again, taking in all the damage his body wore, while trying not to marvel at the well toned torso underneath the bleeding and bruising. “You should really go to the hospital, Ash,” she told him again as she started dabbing disinfectant across his skin, feeling his muscles ripple under her movements.

“You know as well as I do that I can’t just walk into a hospital looking like this,” he told her, his hazel eyes dark.

“You could change out of the suit first.”

“And then what? Explain how I got beat to shit by a giant green lizard?”

“Giant green lizard, eh?”

“Slithery fuck…” Ashton grumbled. “So, how have things been?” he asked as she gently cupped his chin to dab at his face gently with the disinfectant.

“Don’t act like you haven’t been keeping tabs on me.”

“Oh, so you noticed, huh?”

“I told you, you don’t become first in your class if you don’t notice things around you.”

“Yeah, but that was like what… 7 years ago?”

“And in those 7 years the only thing you learned was how to talk to me without tripping over your tongue.”

“It was a necessary skill,” he grinned, his cheeks flushing red anyway. Ever since she had shoved him in that hallway to cover his bruised cheek, she had become his second secret. She had taught him how to cover his bruises and helped him keep up with his school work. She kept his identity a secret. And they had loved each other. Had. Loved.

~~~

“You need to get out of here!” he screamed at her.

“No! I’m not leaving you!”

“Get out!”

“No!”

“I can’t save you from this!”

“I don’t need you to save me!”

He shot his web, flinging her out of harm’s way, cutting her cries out of his mind.

~~~

“It took me hours to get free. I found your webbing in my hair for weeks,” she told him sadly, passing him a mug of tea.

“And it would have taken me a lifetime to get over you if you had gotten hurt,” he said, not meeting her stare as his fingers wrapped around the mug.

“Well, I did get hurt. And you got over me just fine.” She kept her eyes on anything but him and his bandaged and battered bare chest as she sat down next to him on the couch, drawing her knees up to her chest.

“Got over you?” he scoffed into the mug. “Yeah. Right.”

“Well I haven’t seen you in what? 3 years?”

“Oh, so you don’t notice everything now do you Miss Valedictorian?”

“You’re lucky I took the Hippocratic Oath…” she told him, narrowing her eyes. “You know what I meant. Been a while since you climbed through my window. You know you could’ve used the front door. No parents to hide from these days.”

“I co- It was my fault. And don’t act like you didn’t look at me differently. Like I was the villain instead of the hero. They all did.”

“I didn’t.”

His hand slammed the mug down on her coffee table. “Yes you did!”

“I lost my parents and you on the same day, Ashton! I didn’t blame you, but I needed time to heal! And I needed you!”

“Bullshit! If anyone in this relationship needed the other, it was me needing you!”

“Then why didn’t you stay?!”

“Because I could barely look at myself in the mirror! And every time I looked at your face all I saw was hurt! Hurt that I caused! A face that once looked at me with such love I was never deserving of was suddenly seeing me for what I really was: a monster.”

“In all of the stories, in all of the world, you have never been the monster.”

“Not even in ours?”

“Never.”

“And this story of ours… tell me again how it ends?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you where it picks up again.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “It picks up after years of stubborn silence. You ask for forgiveness.”

“Can you ever forgive me?” he asked.

“And then I tell you that there’s nothing to forgive because none of it was ever your fault. And then you say?”

“I’m still sorry. For everything. I’ll do better this time, I promise.”

“And then I tell you that I know you will. Because while Spider-man is the city’s hero, it’s Ashton Irwin who’s always been mine. And then, we do this.” She finished her narrative banter with him by pressing her lips to his.

They always love each other. Always. Love.

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Part 3

“You got any clothes in this bag of yours you can change into? I can wash your suit for you,” she offered, nudging his backpack with her foot.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. You already did so much. I sh- I’m just gonna g-“ his voice broke off and his face scrunched up in pain as he leaned forward to pull himself up off the couch.

“You are staying for overnight monitoring,” she said, helping him lie back into the cushions. “Doctor’s orders.” She picked up his bag and started to rummage through his belongings. “Sweats, good. C’mon, let me help you get changed and in bed.”

“I’m fine on the couch,” he said, lifting his hips to tug off the bottoms of his suit, revealing- unsurprisingly so- more bruising. “You don’t have to give up your bed for me,” he added as he eased his way into the sweatpants.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Ash. I’m not sleeping on my couch for you.”

“So both of us are going to sleep in your bed? Together?”

“Not like we haven’t done it before.”

“If I recall correctly, we didn’t exactly do a whole lot of sleeping, sweetheart.”

“Oh, the charm’s back. How nice…” She rolled her eyes sarcastically as she gathered up his suit. “There special instructions on how to wash this, or…?”

“Yeah. You can’t.”

“I can’t?”

“Self-cleaning technology. To- he developed it with the help of Wakanda technology for me.”

“That old suit was rather smelly,” she commented, not wanting to press the issue of how he had gotten his new fancy suit.

“Try living in it,” he chuckled with only a small trace of humor as his mind took him to a dark place against his will.

“Hey, come back to me, Ash,” she coaxed softly, resting her hand on his bicep, her voice fighting to reach him through the fog that was welcoming him.

“Can we go to bed now?” he asked in a voice that reminded her of the boy he used to be, shy and uncertain. A far cry from the confident charm possessed by the man he had grown to be.

~~~

“Hey, Ash, I’m gonna need you to hold this building for me, kid!” Tony’s voice sounded in his earpiece. It was calm amidst the chaos raining down around them. A skill that Ashton had yet to learn from his mentor. “I’m sending you my location. Stay low. Get people to safety. Do not engage, do you understand, me?”

“Roger,” he replied, eyes darting around for her. She was here. He could sense it. And he couldn’t leave if he knew she was in danger. And Tony had told him to get people to safety. And she was people. So he wasn’t technically defying orders…

“Yeah, kid?” Steve’s voice was in his ear now. Breathless with exertion, but steadily calm. If they could remain calm, so could he. Time to prove he was more than neighborhood friendly.

“Not you, sir,” Ashton responded, allowing a small chuckle.

“Copy that.”

Ashton chuckled quietly again to himself as he finally found her. “What are you still doing here? Run! Get out of here! Get to shelter!”

“Come with me!” she begged. “Let them fight this!”

“I have to help them! I have orders!”

“Now’s not the time to play hero, Ashton! You’re no good to anybody dead!”

“And I’m no good to anybody standing here arguing with you when I have a job to do! Get to safety! Don’t make me tell you again!”

“Ash!” she continued to beg. “Don’t leave me! Come with me, please!”

“You need to get out of here!” he screamed at her.

“No! I’m not leaving you!”

“Get out!”

“No!”

“I can’t save you from this!”

“I don’t need you to save me!”

He shot his web, flinging her out of harm’s way, cutting her cries out of his mind.

~~~

His legs kicked at the blankets in his sleep as the dream held him captive. “No…” he called out weakly, his body twisting.

~~~

“That way!” he directed. “Keep running that way and don’t look back! There’s shelter ahead! Keep going!” He tried to keep his voice upbeat, friendly, as he raised it so it carried out among the stampede of people running past him.

“Building’s evacuated and secured, Mr. Stark,” he reported into his earpiece.

“Keep clearing out the city. We got to get all these people out.”

He swallowed the surge of anger. Throwing a fit because he didn't like his assignment wasn’t going to prove he wasn’t the same kid he was when he had first gotten his powers. He didn’t have time to be angry for long as all his senses rang loudly like a fire alarm pounding in his head. A building three blocks away was about to come down with people still inside.

He let his senses take control of his body, taking it to where it was needed.

He quickly took in the scene and set to work. He prayed the webbing would hold as he did his best to secure it to the buildings around it. The muscles in his arms screamed in protest as he gritted his teeth and planted his feet. “Tony! This building’s coming down!”

“Is everyone out?”

“There’s a family still inside. 4th floor, 7th window. Tony, I can’t hold this building and get them out at the same time… there’s still people below. Why are there still people?! You gotta get out of here!”

“Hold the building, I’m on my way.”

Ashton heard the soft ping of a tendril of webbing breaking off. “No. No, no, no…” he whispered, his voice climbing high as he frantically shot out more webs for more grip. “Hey, Cap? Your shield strong enough to prop up a building?” Ashton joked as he fought against the panic threatening to seize him.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Stark, kid,” Steve chuckled. “Hang in there. He’s on his way.”

“On your left, Grandpa,” Tony said and Ashton looked up to see the red blur.

“Howard was older than me, Tony…”

The tendrils continued to snap, almost faster than Ashton could fling them. “Tony, my webbing’s not holding. I don- Tony, what do I do?”

“Hey, kid?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m about to ask you to do something and I just need you to do it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“The building’s structurally damaged. It’s coming down and there’s no stopping it. I’m going to do my best to get these people out that are still trapped. But I need you to let go and get somewhere safe. Can you do that?”

“Tony, no! I can hold it until you get the people out!”

“Let go, kid. Your job’s done. Clock out. Go home.”

“NO!” Ashton screamed as the building started to fall, his webbing breaking in a series of rapid snaps.

~~~

“TONY!” The cry tore out of Ashton’s throat as his eyes flew open, panic and terror in his chest. He fought for each breath as his senses grounded him. He was safe. In bed. Alive. Tears spilled a path down his cheeks as his shoulders heaved with the sobs breaking free.

“Hey,” a voice called out in the darkness and a soft hand was on his arm. “Shh, it’s okay. It was only a dream.”

“No, it wasn’t…” was the broken whisper. “I was supposed to secure the buildings and get everyone to safety. It was a simple fuckin’ assignment and I couldn’t even do that, right… If I had been faster, I could have saved them. Your parents. Him. Everyone.”

“My parents were already dead on the other side of town. You and that building had nothing to do with their deaths. As for Tony? He was a genius, Ash. He knew he wasn’t getting out of that building unscathed.”

“I should have tried harder! Been better…”

“You did everything you could. You made all the right calls. Ash, it was an accident. An accident that you were part of, sure. But it had nothing to do with you.”

“People died because of me!”

“People died because of Loki’s army. People lived because of you. I lived because of you.”

Her admission lifted some of the weight pressing down on him. He could live through the villain smackdowns. He could live through the loss of life. It wasn’t easy, but he could do it. But the loss of her? Well, let’s just say that if it came down to her or his powers, he would choose her and never think twice. “Of all the things I’ve lost, you’re the one thing I can’t bear to lose,” he told her, reaching out to grab her hand in his, letting the memories of all the times he had done this before flood out the rest of the weight.

“Then maybe you should stop letting me go,” she replied, squeezing his fingers with hers.

“I’m never letting you go again,” he promised, lifting up their hands to brush his lips against her knuckles.

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