"Yeah." He sits down on the roof. "It's-- I dunno, I can't sleep and I can't eat and I can't focus and I can't make decisions and I can't think and I'm so tired all the time and everything is really boring and I don't want to talk to anyone and I can't work and every time something minor goes wrong I want to scream and it's really hard to do anything except go out partying and get laid. For some reason I have lots of energy for that so I've been doing it a lot."

"............Asher, that's called depression." 

He curls up next to Asher. He's missed doing this. 

Asher very hesitantly pets his hair.

"I don't get depression. You know how many traumatic fucking things have happened to me in the past five years? And I always bounce back."

Hairpetting is good. He leans into Asher's hand. "Alternately, a lot of traumatic things have happened to you in the last five years and now you have depression." 

"I'm not suicidal or anything. And I have good reasons for hating myself."

"Maybe it isn't. But it really, really sounds like it, and I'd look there before I looked anywhere else." He leans against Asher's side. "...I want to ask what's been up but I'm not actually sure I want to hear about your partying and getting laid adventures, they don't sound like they'd make great stories." 

"More fun to do than to talk about."

(He's deflecting.) 

"Fair enough." 

(He notices. He isn't sure he wants to push.) 

"Is there anything you want to talk about? I didn't come prepared with conversation topics, I just — missed you and Lev was worried." 

"I don't know. How have you been?"

"...I've been okay. Haven't been sleeping much. My parents are getting really worried about me, some of my teachers are worried and some are pissed that I've stopped even pretending to do homework or pay attention. I've been going to Marlo's in the middle of the night when I can't sleep and seeing Lev in the afternoon, that's been nice." 

"I am reliably informed that school sucks."

"You were not lied to." 

"College is better, if you're careful you can have all classes where the grade is half midterm and half final, and if something like this happens you can take a semester off."

"I think college for me is going to be pretty different than college for you. If I even go to college." 

"You don't have to. There's really no reason for you to go unless you like what you'd learn there."

"I have no idea what I'd learn there. — My parents really want me to but I'm getting an 18% in English right now and it's not like I can put 'my grades tanked because I'm Spiderman' on an application, and it's not like they were great before, I just test well. So I might not be able to regardless of what I want." 

He startles when he hears Sasha's grade and then he says, "It might be easier for you to get into MIT than somewhere else, MIT'll listen to me when I'm like 'you should accept this kid, they're really smart.' Maybe I'd have to put my name on a building, I don't know."

"...maybe, but one, I don't want to be the kid who only got in because their billionaire friend paid for a building, and two, I don't even like math." 

"No, you would have gotten in because you're really smart but your grades suck for understandable reasons that you can't tell anyone about, and you have a very very smart friend who is friends with a bunch of people at MIT who will believe him when he says you're smart. Because he wouldn't lie about that."

"My grades sucked before I was Spiderman, I just test well and wasn't so tired so it was easier to hide. And I still don't actually like math."

"I can't decide between getting defensive of MIT's humanities programs, apologizing for my poor choice in networking, saying that grades are bullshit and don't actually measure anything important, and saying that you don't actually have to go to college because you're Spiderman."

"You're sweet. 

I don't know. I've been hearing a lot about how much more college graduates make on average than high school graduates, and how important it is to get into a good school, and assorted other things that probably nobody ever told you in your life because you're Asher Stark. But grades seem like a pretty good way to measure whether I am capable of doing school things, which is relevant when I'm considering signing up for four more years of school." 

"I mean, you can go work for SHIELD, that's a decent salary and it's doing things you would have done anyway. If you don't want to rely on 'this rich guy I know adores me and wants to give me whatever I want,' which seems reasonable."

"...thank you for reminding me that there is at least one job for which I can totally put 'I'm Spiderman' on a resume." 

"There'd be more but that guy at the Daily Bugle who hates you has kind of fucked things up."