"You ok, Peter?"

I'd been in the tower all of ten minutes on Monday morning before Tony noticed something was up. You might think he's so wrapped up in his work that he doesn't notice what's going on with the people around him, but that's the opposite of the truth. Tony always knows exactly what's going on with everybody, and he's insanely perceptive. He just doesn't always show it.

I took out my phone. "It's, um, probably nothing, but I got a weird text last Friday night, when we were here having dinner." I showed him the threatening message.

In return, I got one of those looks from Tony. One of those disappointed dad looks. I'm telling you, I was really starting to feel that line blur between mentor and uncle.

"You didn't think you should tell me this before?" he asked, clicking through the settings on my phone.

"I figured it was a joke or something," I said. "I tried to research the number, but I couldn't find anything."

"A joke?" he repeated. "Someone out there knows that Peter Parker's phone belongs to Spider-Man, and you think that's a joke?"

I shrugged. "Figured I could fix it somehow. Tried to message them back, but they haven't responded."

"All right," said Tony briskly, in problem-solving mode. "You're getting a new phone. I don't care what you tell your aunt. Tell her it's a present for being a good intern or something, not that you deserve it after keeping this to yourself all weekend."

"Sorry," I mumbled. Now that we were talking about it, not telling him right away did seem pretty idiotic. "I'm not used to having somebody to tell this stuff to."

Tony nodded. "We'll get to that, but first, new phone, and I'm going to connect this one to mine, so that if they message you again, I'll get a notification too. From now on, this phone is just a paperweight unless your psycho decides to call or text."

"Yessir," I answered.

After that, Tony took me to a floor of the Tower that I'd never seen before, one that was like a mini tech factory. He walked up to a counter where a guy in a white lab coat was working with computer chips and SIM cards. "Mike, can I have one of those Stark 3H prototypes?" He handed over a card that had the info from my old phone. "Transfer all of this onto it, please. It's for Peter here. Get Harriet to engrave his name on the back. He'll need it by four this afternoon to take with him."

"Of course, Mr. Stark," said Mike, who looked like he'd just seen a ghost. I guess Tony didn't visit that floor in person very often.

"The 3H won't be out for another year," said Tony as we got back onto the glass elevator. "You and I will have the only ones in current use. I tried to give one to your aunt, but she said she didn't want anything that complicated."

"Yeah," I agreed. "She's not that big on technology." Which was kind of funny, I guess, because she definitely was big on Tony, the techiest tech guy in the world.

"All right," he said. "Back to the lab for now, but don't think you've escaped having a conversation. After lunch, I'm going to turn into Mr. Miyagi, and we're going to talk it out, Karate Kid." He clapped me on the shoulder. The truth is, I really didn't mind. Tony likes to talk about things, get them out in the open. I didn't always like to admit it, but I was the same way.

We worked side-by-side until lunch, which was roast beef, potatoes, carrots, and some kind of sauce. I had no idea what was in it, but it was amazing. Since I'd been Tony's intern, we hadn't repeated a single meal. That's one of the perks of being an intern for one of the richest guys on the planet, I guess. A guy who's rich and hates routines, at any rate.

Tony talked about normal stuff while we ate, science stuff, and I started to feel a little bit nervous about the afternoon. I knew that when Tony said we were going to talk something out, it meant I wasn't going to get away until he was absolutely satisfied that he'd gotten to the bottom of it. As I've said before, in a lot of ways, he was nothing like Uncle Ben, but in that way they were identical. My uncle had always had this way of pinning me to the wall and pulling the whole truth out of me, just by the way he looked at me. If he'd been the one around instead of May, there's no way I could have lied to him for so long. He'd have seen through me like translucent paper.

"Where are you, Peter?" Tony's question jerked me back to the present moment and to my unfinished plate of meat.

"Sorry," I said. "I was thinking about my uncle. Sometimes you remind me of him, mostly when you're on me about something."

He gave me a funny look. "I've never been anybody's uncle."

"I, um, didn't mean to imply anything," I said quickly. Man, this was getting weird fast. I had tried so hard to keep his relationship with May out of my internship, and he'd seemed to think that was a good idea too, since he hardly ever brought it up.

"That doesn't mean I don't want to be somebody's uncle, if they want that," he said quietly. "It's a package deal, Peter. You're May's kid. That means if May's in my life, you're my responsibility, too. Just so you know. You don't have to like it, but it's not really something you can opt out of, either." That was a lot to take in. I stared down at my half-eaten roast beef and tried to figure out what I was thinking, whether I believed him, whether I could really trust him - as more than a mentor.

"I lost my parents too, Peter," he said softly. "I know how hard it is to trust somebody new." I swear, sometimes it was like he was reading my mind.

"You make May happy," I said finally, "but until a few months ago, you were just a guy I knew off TV and magazines."

"But I'm not that guy, am I?" Tony asked. I shook my head. He wasn't wrong. The world saw one Tony Stark, but I knew a different one, one who liked to sit in our apartment with his shoes off, eating my aunt's nachos and watching reality TV, who kept buying new sweaters and mysteriously leaving them at our place just because MJ liked to steal them.

"While you're thinking," he continued, "how about taking a stab at explaining why you decided to keep your psycho mystery text to yourself?"

"Like I said," I repeated, "I'm just not used to having anybody to talk about the Spider-Man stuff to."

"And yet," Tony shot back, "we've been doing this internship thing for over a month. I think you were consciously avoiding involving me. And I want to know why. Am I that unreliable? That much of a jerk? Incompetent?"

"Of - of course not," I answered quickly. "I just - "

He waited, and I realized he wasn't going to finish my sentence for me.

"I'm afraid you're not going to want to stay around." I said it quickly so the words ran together, like watercolor paints bleeding all over and into each other.

"So you'd rather take on a mysterious psycho yourself than find out you can't trust me," Tony finally supplied.

"Pretty stupid," I said.

"No, it's not," he answered, looking at me across our small makeshift lunch table. "I'd probably do the same thing. When you've been hurt by people leaving, whether they did it on purpose or not, you end up going to great lengths to keep from depending on anybody else to stick around."

"Peter, I can't make you believe this, but I'm not going anywhere. No matter what happens with your aunt, I've taken you on. Simple as that. I don't expect you to flip a switch and start trusting me, but a little effort would be appreciated. You can test me; I won't fold. I'm going to be here when you need me. Besides, MJ likes me. Doesn't that count for something?"

He wasn't exaggerating. MJ adored him. She'd already taken to hugging him good night and talking over all of her auditions and school projects with him. She didn't trust everyone, but when it came to people, she was a lot quicker on the draw than I was. She knew what she thought of them right away, and Tony had been on her good list since Day 1.

"It's not you," I said softly.

"Oh boy," he answered, sitting back in his chair, "Am I getting the 'It's not you; it's me' speech from a guy? There's a first time for everything."

I clenched my hands together under the table. "I'm not worth it."

Tony leaned forward and looked me in the eye. "Bingo. That's where we needed to get to. All right, Peter. I know what my challenge is. I'm going to show you that you're worth it to me, or die trying."

We called it Operation Psycho, the secret between us about my mystery text and the threat it contained. But when I heard that name, I didn't feel fear. Instead, every time I thought about Operation Psycho, all I could feel was the warmth that had slowly filled me that day when Tony's words had pierced through my emotional armor and into my thick skull.

Maybe he wasn't just a superhero who'd decided to teach me a few things. Maybe he wasn't just my aunt's boyfriend. Maybe he actually wanted me. That was something. Really something.