(Author's note: Fun fact, when I wrote the dance scene in 2020, In my head I imagined this song playing in the background Hunger - Amused, and to this day I still imagine this song when I get to this chapter. In case you want to listen what I was listening to when young me was writing this for the first time lol).

Everything looked like a carnival. Nikolas's eyes kept wandering around the entire entrance with a big smile on his face. May dropped them off at school but not before asking the boys to pose for a photo. They both put their shoulders together. Nikolas startled slightly and his eyes widened more than normal when he felt a hand around his waist. Ensuring that May would have captured that expression forever.

"Should we hold hands?" Nikolas asked when he saw that everyone who entered the hall full of balloons did so. "It's like a thing, right?

Peter shook his head as he kicked some balloons down the hall, stopping when there were only two doors on his way to the dance.

"Not if you don't want to, unless...you want me to hold your hand?"

"I want to take your arm again."

"Then the arm will be." Peter said with a tender expression putting his hand back on his stomach while Nikolas took it and they both entered the gym.

Lights attacked his eyes. The music seemed pleasant and Nikolas was glad that Happy got him a last-minute suit under "emergency" call, moving almost all the Stark Industries workers who were there to get it after Nikolas pretended to attend with casual clothes. Happy just replied "Don't move."  And he left the room giving orders with his phone to his ear.

Nikolas managed to hear something like; "I want someone to get me a suit in the size of a 15-year-old...----why? YES, YES! It's Tony's request. As soon as possible thank you."

Peter led him to the center of the dance floor where almost everyone was. He saw Ned and a girl who seemed to be Peter's friend, Nikolas had seen her in the decathlon photo in Peter's room. She lifted her finger when she saw Peter. Ned gave them a thumbs up. Nikolas looked at Peter in panic as the lights brightened to the slow-song rhythm where the intention was a couple's dance.

"I'm not sure I know how to dance this." Nikolas stammered. "It's not exactly what I practiced.

Peter offered his hands and Nikolas took them. Peter's hands were warm while his were cold. He wrapped Nikolas's hands around his neck as he gently placed his around Nikolas's waist. Peter knew that all this was new for him so he didn't want to go so fast and every step he took, he made sure with his eyes that Nikolas didn't look uncomfortable.

Tony had warned him about being patient and now Peter wanted to be patient with Nikolas as long as it took, he wouldn't pretend to be upset if the time was long for Nikolas to understand things the way he did.

They moved from side to side trying to be coordinated with the music. Nikolas stepped on the tips of Peter's shoes, he quickly apologized.

"People here are watching us, they're whispering about us and I can't help but hear them. They're too noisy inside my head." Nikolas pointed looking Peter in the eyes.

"Then stop listening to them, they don't know that you're like a super-secret-cool bird of the night with all your uhhmm....-- broken bones and dark eyes. I said it would be fun tonight and it would be just you....." Peter stumbled on the words, his tongue clogging. "You.....---

Peter stopped leading the dance. His hands felt hard as he slid them from Nikolas's waist to clench them into fists. His spider-senses ran through his entire body like a cold shiver and his pupil widened enough for Nikolas to feel that things were no longer going well. Nikolas lowered his hands from Peter's neck to his chest, moving with his finger the flower that he also had on top of his pocket.

Nikolas turned his face to where Peter was looking over his shoulder. Behind the decorated doors was Liz in a peach-colored dress with her father saying something to her before she joined the others. In his eyes, Nikolas thought that Peter was looking at her, causing an uncomfortable feeling inside him. Peter wasn't looking at Liz.

He moved silently from where Peter was, disappearing into the crowd until he sat in the stands full of confetti and bright curtains. Nikolas didn't even notice when Peter ran off the dance floor and disappeared from the party. He got a glass of soda and as he drank it in disgust, a girl with curly hair approached him.

"Since when you're Peter's boyfriend, I saw you guys dancing. Very pitiful and lame."

"I-I'm not Peter's boyfriend."

"That's even more pitiful and lame."

"MJ!

Nikolas focused his gaze on Ned who agitatedly came up to them, taking a break leaning against Michelle as he caught his breath.

"Sorry MJ." Ned stopped leaning into her. "I need to share a word with Nikolas urgently and not suspicious at all.

Ned took him to the computer lab making sure to go unnoticed by any teacher. Nikolas didn't understand anything until Ned typed a few things and a tracker appeared on the screen.

"He knew Peter would be here." Ned stuck his finger on the screen, on the moving red dot. "Peter is moving, I can't believe Liz's father is the vulture."

That ignited all of Nikolas's senses.

"What did you say?"

"He told me everything very quickly while he was driving Flash's car. Peter doesn't even have a license! He just told me 2 things: Liz's father, vulture."

"HE WENT ALONE?!?! That's what happened?!?!?" Nikolas began to fidget, some bones twisting as his blood began to boil. "But why did he take so long to attack? We took away all his chances. We had one last shot and .......-

Nikolas's face fell as he realized that in the fighting, he and Peter hadn't taken away all of Liz's father's opportunities. Now it was his turn to have the one last shot.

"The plane." Nikolas swallowed. "He wants the plane.

"You have to go, the car stopped here but I don't recognize the streets....---"

"Don't worry. You did it well." Nikolas snapped his neck to one side, opening and closing his fingers. His voice becoming heavier and broken. "I think I can feel Peter's trace. Thank you, guy on the chair.

Ned stood dumbfounded as Nikolas ran down the hall before anyone else saw how the bones in his arms ripped through the fabric of his vest.

"It was an honor, spider trinity." Ned muttered.

"So this must be their super-cool-secret-lair."

He walked around wearing the homemade suit, the first one he had created. It was a warehouse, empty but with some tables and tools on them. And a man with his back to Peter as he approached.

"Is that you Peter?"

Peter was frightened for a moment by the hollow way the man had said his name, without concern that he had been caught. When the vulture finally faced him, he had no mask.

"You knew it?" Peter blurted out. "All this time you knew? How?

"Of course I knew!"

Toomes burst into sarcastic laughter as he clapped his hands, Peter threw a web to tie them up but that didn't stop Liz's father.

"I started to suspect it when your little friend, the one with the fangs, attacked me that night digging his nasty claws into my shoulder. Then I saw him again in our confrontations, fighting alongside the friendly neighbor spiderman. Liz told me that you and someone named Nikolas disappeared before the math competition, she was very angry by the way. And about the monument? It's a matter of time before I figured it out. You should be more careful next time.

"There won't be a next time." Peter hissed taking the position of a spider with all his senses ready.

"I think there will be." Toomes said sardonically.

The vulture suit shot out in his direction from the side Peter had seen the machines, like a boomerang it came back and began to stick to Toomes's body piece by piece.

"What are you trying to do! That thing didn't even touch me!" Peter landed dodging the mechanical wings.

"I didn't plan on doing it."

The ground began to shake. Toomes emerged from there in his full vulture suit as the place that was once a lair now turned to abandoned rubble with the roof falling on peter.

(07/01/2023)