Chapter Text
1
Peter had gone to May, who was busy, to the mall, which was expensive, to Bruce, who was clueless, to even Natasha, who wasn’t even in the country.
And still, nothing.
Nobody could teach Peter how to wrap a present.
What the fuck.
To be entirely honest, he didn’t even trust the rest of the Avengers to not snitch—maybe Steve Rogers, but he was busy wrapping his own presents all the time and told everyone not to bother him.
He had even tried YouTube! All the videos were confusing and complicated. He just wanted to learn how to wrap a normal, decent sized present for his mentor-father figure-childhood hero!
Was that so much to ask?
Peter cursed and ripped the shoddy wrapping paper off the box, crumpling it up and tossing it to the side.
It was ridiculous. He had spent hours—days—weeks searching for the perfect Christmas present for Mr. Stark, and he wouldn’t even be able to give it to him.
Not without it having the perfect wrapping job.
It was ironic, really, because if it was a gift for any other person, he would have gone to Mr. Stark by now. And the best part was that he would have helped him! He way a way of explaining things with the perfect mix of talking and correcting that always made it click for Peter.
“That’s it,” he said aloud, falling back upon the cushion of his failures. “I can’t go.”
”Can’t go where?” Ned’s stuffy voice came from Peter’s phone on the nightstand.
“To the compound to celebrate Christmas with the team!” He looked scorned at the phone, as if it had personally wronged him.
“Oh.” A brief pause. “Why not?”
Peter groaned and rubbed his hands down his face. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?”
”Not really, no.”
”I can’t go to the party because I can’t wrap Mr. Stark’s present! And it doubly sucks because they were going to postpone celebrating a whole day just so that I could be there without ditching Aunt May.” He rolled over and pressed his face into his bedroom carpet.
“Why don’t you just ask May to help? I’m sure she knows how?”
”She’s too busy to sit down and show me. I don’t wanna bother her anyways.”
Ned sighed heavily. “I’d help you, but I’m too sick to move. Also, I don’t know how. And I don’t want to.”
”Thanks, buddy. Merry Christmas to you, too.” Peter whined and grabbed the phone. He turned it off speaker and pressed it tightly to his ear, speaking in a hushed whisper, “What am I supposed to do?”
”Hey, why don’t you just use your webs? You use them to wrap shit all the time.”
”I can’t use my webs, Ned,” he protested. “I use them all the time. I want this to be . . . I dunno. Special? I just—I need something outside of Spider-Man, ya know? To show him that’s not what our entire relationship is about!”
When Ned replied, in was on the wave of a low groan. “Oh my god, you’re so lame.”
“You’re meaner than usual. Have you been hanging out with MJ again?” Peter watched the fan on his ceiling swing in slow circles around and around and around.
“Yeah. Also, she wants me to tell you that if you miss one more decathalon practice, she’s going to shove the trophy we won last year up your ass. So probably don’t miss any more practice.”
Peter was barely listening. He was too busy thinking of anyone who might be able to help him wrap Mr. Stark’s present. He was brought back into the conversation by Ned’s insistent voice.
“Peter? Peter!”
“What.”
”I asked what you got him.”
The boy sighed and looked over at the box holding the man’s present. “Uh, sort of hard to explain.”
”I literally can’t get out of bed without throwing up. I’ve got time.”
Peter considered this, then stood up and crawled into his own bed. He kept one eye on the door and lowered his voice a bit. “Okay, but you can’t tell anyone, alright?”
”Who am I gonna tell? And stop talking like that, I know that you’re home alone.” Ned sounded very done with Peter’s dramatics, unfortunately.
“Ned, you’re supposed to be my best friend.” Peter scowled and pulled the blanket over his head.
“Right now I’m your very sick best friend. Get to the good part, what’d you get Mr. Stark?”
”Uh, basically, he once told me that listening to someone’s heartbeat helps him go to sleep, right? And, like, he doesn’t have nightmares or anything. But he can really only listen to Ms. Pott’s heartbeat, and she’s gone a lot. So I took some wireless earbuds and sort of, like, fiddled with them for a bit. And, like, me, Colonel Rhodes and Ms. Pott’s all have these watches that track out vitals and heartbeats and stuff, so I sort of just adjusted the earbuds to connect to our watches instead of his phone or whatever. And he can, like, choose which person he wants to listen to, if he has a preference. Or he can listen to all three of ours at once, or any combination thereof. I basically installed a simpler, mini FRIDAY into the earbuds. To help him sleep.”
There was a long pause after Peter stopped talking. He grew nervous.
“What?” He asked. “Is it stupid? Oh, god, it’s really stupid and nerdy, isn’t it?”
“No, not at all,” said Ned hurriedly. “Actually, that . . . that’s kind of ingenious. I just—well, aren’t you giving gifts in front of everyone? Don’t you think that’s a little personal for everyone to see?”
Peter bolted upright, already nodding as if his friend could see him. “Yeah! Yeah, of course, but see, I actually wrote a letter to go with the gift which explains it all, so to everyone else it just looks like a normal pair of wireless earbuds. And I’m pretty sure it’s like, the perfect gift, but I can’t find anybody to wrap it!”
Another long, long pause.
“Have you considered using a gift bag?”
”. . . Holy shit!”