Pepper leaves some time later, making excuses about meetings the next day so Tony walks her to the door.
"I'm so happy for you Tony" she says as they hug by the door.
Tony cocks his head as a question and waited for her to continue.
She elaborated by saying, "we didn't work out, and that's fine. It wasn't meant to be, but you seem genuinely happy with Peter, and I think you being with him is good for you" she finished rather lamely.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't worry about it" she says and leaves Tony confused on his doorway.
He walks back in to find Peter still lying on the ground, face up on the throw pillows.
Tony sat on the couch and watched him, his eyes were closed and he looked exhausted.
"Pete?"
"hmmm?"
"How much sleep did you get last night?" Tony asked as he prods Peter lightly with his foot.
"That's a bit rich coming from the man, who and I quote said "I'll sleep when I die, or when Loki dies whatever comes first".
Peter waved his hands as he talked, but he couldn't hind the slight wince that came from the action.
Without bothering to ask for permission, Tony grabbed the sides of Peter's t-shirt and pulled up lightly. To expose a delightful collection of bruises, new and old. But worryingly mostly new.
"What the hell is this?"
Peter moaned and rolled over, inadvertently revealing more bruises across his back. Tony was aware that Peter's super-hero 'career' was more hands on than Tony's.
Tony had a billion dollar suit of armour, or a highly advanced mechanical prosthesis rather, but all Peter had was a spandex suit and his wits.
Well that wasn't entirely true, Peter did have the proportionate strength of a spider, lightning fast reflexes, extreme flexibility (which is by the way awesome) and his very high intelligence.
But often it felt like the only thing keeping Peter from being a red and blue smear on the pavement was his spider-sense.
"Who did you fight today? A transformer?" It was a weak joke and Tony knew it but he was always better at joking as a defence or to hurt, rather than to comfort.
Still Peter laughed wryly at the comment, and eased back into the cushions.
"Why don't you lie on the couch?" Tony asked and made as if to carry the younger man onto the suede couch.
"No, its better for my back this way" Peter explained, "My spine was kinda bent today and this helps the vertebrae align better."
Tony was shocked at how matter of fact Peter talked about his spine, but then again he was often as cavalier with his own health, with much less of a safeguard.
At least Peter had something of a healing factor, Tony didn't even have that.
"Are you at least going to tell me what happened, or will we have to play the most stressful and boring game of twenty questions."
Peter didn't reply for a while so Tony moved the coffee table away and lied down next to him, he didn't say anything and after a while Peter began to talk.
Its really not a big deal, this sort of thing happens all the time. Which in hindsight is maybe not the most reassuring thing to say, but I am used to being a human beach ball. I know how to take a punch and how to fall well.
And so Peter told Tony of his earlier fight with Kraven.
It was supposed to be a fairly normal day, I had an appointment at the doctors after work and I was catching a cab to there. But traffic was backed up to the wazoo so eventually I checked out what was going on, and because the gods of smeg loved to fuck with me it was Kraven.
Tony cocked his head as a question as he gently massaged Peter's lower back, enjoying the happy relaxing noises he was unintentionally letting out.
You haven't heard much about Kraven, but he's like a big-game hunter on speed. Super strong, super fast and very good at all the kinds of things that douche bags on safaris cart around in the hope of 'bagging a tiger' or whatever. But in his case he knows how to use them, he's not your traditional baddy. His family's stinking rich so he has no interest in money or power, only the hunt.
Peter moved around on the pillows so he'd be more comfy and went on.
Anyhow a few years ago he gets it in his head that since I'm Spider-Man I'm more Spider than Man. And he tries to well hunt me. Peter seemed completely unconcerned by this titbit of information and Tony wonders exactly how weird Peter's life is and how much he's told him.
The weird thing was, he was attacking the public library. That's completely out of character and frankly he was strange as well. Like he was jonesing for something or he was high. I've never seen him like that before and the weirdest thing was he had one of those Chitauri alien weapon dealies, and it was malfunctioning or something.
After I took him down.
Peter subconsciously moved around on the pillows as he talked, and Tony made a mental note to get Peter a massage later.
I had to disarm that, which was a mother and a half. But alls well that ends well and I went to my Doctors appointment, luckily I distracted him so he didn't notice my collection of bruises.
Peter finished his story and closed his eyes. He seemed to be falling asleep and Tony wasn't sure on the correct procedure to move a super-hero with back injuries.
Thankfully he knew someone who could.