Prompt: Tony helps Penny get ready for a gala

Penny crossed her arms, glaring at her reflection in the mirror. She didn't usually spend much time thinking about her clothes, mostly because her wardrobe consisted mainly of t-shirts and jeans. It wasn't that she didn't like pretty dresses and nice clothes. They were great…for other people. Lots of girls were absolutely gorgeous in their cute sundresses and strappy sandals. But she never felt right in those clothes…never felt like herself. Instead, she always felt like a little girl playing dress up in her aunt's closet. Thanks to her new, improved reflexes and balance, she could walk in heels, but that didn't mean they didn't kill her feet, and she was pretty sure Pepper Potts and every other woman that wore them on a daily basis were either hiding some secret that made them bearable, or that their feet had gone numb at some point and they'd just never gotten feeling back.

Penny liked her comfortable clothes and the cute, warm cardigans and boots that MJ called basic. She liked being cozy in the fall, and wearing sneakers all the time, and not worrying about which clothes she could and couldn't throw into the washing machine on laundry day.

And the dress Pepper had picked out for her was none of those things. She was pretty sure the fabric would disintegrate if she threw it into May's old washing machine, and it felt like if she moved too much, the dress would slip off her shoulders. She had to wear a strapless bra, and she wondered if it was supposed to be this tight or if she'd bought the wrong size.

Her hair cascaded around her shoulders in perfect curls and she felt…silly. The makeup felt like too much and the curls her hair had been fixed into made her look like someone else. And she had been nervous about the stupid fancy gala but now she was a thousand times more nervous because there was no way that she could tell THE Pepper Potts that she couldn't wear this outfit. The one that had been specifically picked out for her.

The knock on the door shouldn't have startled her. Her senses were good enough that, if she focused, just a little, she could hear everyone's footsteps for a full city block. But she wasn't focusing…not on her surroundings anyway.

"Come in," she called, trying to make her face show something other than discomfort.

"Hey, kiddo. You almost ready?" Mr. Stark stopped short, adjusting his sleeves and giving her a once over. She didn't know how exactly she'd classify their relationship now. 'Mentor' didn't seem right. 'Father figure' felt like way too much, way too fast. And 'boss' was technically correct since she had an internship with him but at the same time, not quite right either.

"Yeah. I'm, uh…ready."

He nodded slowly, his slicked back hair not moving an inch with the movement. "Right. That's the dress Pepper picked out for you?"

She nodded. "Mhm. Pretty, right," she tried, doing her best to smile.

He thought for a second, then tilted his head. "Come with me."

She followed, grabbing the little black clutch that held her phone, her movements surprisingly graceful despite the agony in her toes that had already started within only eight minutes of wearing them. The gala wasn't until the next day, so she wasn't sure exactly where they were going with her in this dress, but she still didn't feel comfortable questioning her mentor/boss too often. His staff, used to seeing her around the tower by now, all seemed to be following them with their eyes, and she had to imagine it looked strange, him in his usual work outfit of a band t-shirt and jeans, and her in a shimmery red dress and ridiculously high heels. Come to think of it, she was pretty sure Pepper had asked her to wait for her to come back so they could make any adjustments they had to have made to the dress before it was time for the gala, and she wasn't sure which of her two bosses outranked the other.

Mr. Stark led her to his personal floor where she'd spent a surprising amount of time, considering she was supposed to just be his intern. But there had been movie nights with him and Pepper, and working together in the lab, and getting ice cream when she'd had a bad day at school. Or he'd had too many meetings. Penny couldn't quite remember what her own father had been like, something that sometimes made it hard for her to sleep at night, her mind desperate to recreate some kind of memory of him, but if Mr. Stark was attempting to check off every box on a 'good dad' checklist, he was doing a decent job.

But she also couldn't help thinking about those months between the airport fight with Captain America and her Homecoming night…the unanswered voicemails and being foisted off on Happy who hadn't wanted to deal with her and Mr. Stark taking her suit and getting trapped under a parking garage…and she knew that Mr. Stark had been trying to make it right. He'd given her a real internship and then there were the aforementioned movie nights and ice cream trip and lab days.

So really, she told herself, she should just trust him…shouldn't keep waiting for him to take her suit away again. Shouldn't be so scared to ask him where exactly they were going and why she couldn't have changed first.

It took her until they were standing in the living room, Mr. Stark typing something on his phone, before she was able to make herself ask.

"Um…Mr. Stark?"

"Hm?"

"What…uh…what are we doing? I think I was supposed to wait until Ms. Potts came back to…" He hadn't looked up from his phone and she sighed, crossing her arms. "Mr. Stark?"

"Yeah?" He finally looked up and she huffed out a sigh.

"What are we doing here?"

"We're waiting on Sergio."

She blinked, trying to search her mind and make that sentence make sense, coming up empty. So, adopting the tone she'd use with Luna, her neighbor's five-year-old daughter, she nodded. "Okay. And who is Sergio."

"He's my clothes guy."

"Is he the one that picks out your t-shirts?"

He snorted out a laugh, shaking his head. "No. That's all me, Pen."

That was another thing. Not Penny. Not Penelope. Not Miss Stark. All things a teacher would call her. A mentor. A boss.

Pen.

Her friends called her Pen sometimes. So did May. Uncle Ben had called her 'Pen.' Maybe her father had too.

She couldn't remember.

"So…what does Sergio do?"

The soft 'ding' of the elevator interrupted when he opened his mouth to answer, and a tall man with his hair slicked back in a ponytail and a goatee shaped to look suspiciously like Mr. Stark's, stepped into the room.

"Ah. Sergio. Perfect. Penny, Sergio. Sergio, this is my intern, Penny. She's coming to my gala tomorrow and she needs options. Pepper has her measurements on file. We've got roughly 24 hours."

"You're not giving me a lot of time, Tony."

"Do I ever?"

The man gave a longsuffering sigh, then turned and left the room.

"Mr. Stark?"

"Oh…right. You want to go get changed? What do you want for lunch?"

"My clothes are downstairs."

"There's clothes for you in the spare room. Third on the left."

It took her a minute to process that. Clothes for her. In the spare room. Of Tony Stark's tower.

"Go on, Spiderling. You don't want to eat pizza in that dress. Unless you'd rather have Thai. Or Chinese? Lasagna?"

Too dazed to work out why exactly he had spare clothes for her in the spare room, Penny just shook her head. "Um…no…pizza is good."

"Great. Get changed. We should have time to eat before Sergio's ready for us."

For a spare room, Penny thought as she shut the door behind her and looked around, was oddly…themed. The dark blue comforter had a black spider that took up the majority of the bed, as did the red throw pillows. There was a flat screen TV on the wall, and on the entertainment center underneath, she could see what she thought was a PS5, controller charging on a little stand. The bookshelf was full of science books and novels, a few comic books thrown in here and there, and there was a little framed painting of a spider on the top shelf.

When she opened the door to the walk -in closet, hesitant, as though someone would tell her off for snooping, she found a whole row of t-shirts and sweatshirts on one side, and on the others, jeans and sweatpants. On the floor were at least ten pairs of sneakers, and the knowledge hit Penny like a crowbar to the face, something she had personal experience in.

This wasn't a spare room.

It was her room. And not just Spider-Girl's room, despite all the spiders. The room was comfortable. And the walls were a dark, soothing blue, with curtains that were thick enough to black out the room entirely if she was overwhelmed, which happened occasionally thanks to her senses. There was a mini fridge on the desk, and when she opened it, she found little bottles of water and sodas, and on the top shelf, a stack of candy bars. Her favorite candy bars. A Twix, a KitKat, and two packs of Reese's Cups.

The books were all books she wanted to read. The bed had at least five pillows. The closet was full of clothes she would wear and the fridge had her favorite drinks and snacks.

This was her room.

Out in the living room, now wearing jeans and a Hello Kitty t-shirt, a callback she couldn't help smiling at, she sat down on the sofa across from Mr. Stark. He looked almost nervous, sitting there, phone in hand. "So…what do you think?"

"Of…the spare room?"

"Yeah. I mean…it's…I don't have a lot of guests and you've been spending a lot of time here, what with the movie nights and the lab days and the…pizza. So. I figured you could use a room so you didn't have to go home late."

"Oh." She smiled then, not able to help it. "It's a great room. I like all the spiders."

He chuckled. "Pepper said it was overkill."

"The one in the picture is cute."

"Good. I commissioned an artist to paint that. $50,000"

Her jaw dropped. "Mr. Stark…"

He grinned. "Kidding. I bought it on Amazon."

She laughed, letting out a relieved breath. "And the PS5?"

"I had an extra. Dug it out of storage."

That, she didn't believe. "You didn't have to do that."

He waved a hand. "No big deal, Spiderling. It wasn't even that dusty."

She shook her head, blinking hard and dropping her eyes. "Thank you, Mr. Stark," she all but whispered. She didn't mean for the Play Station, and she knew he knew that, so she left it at that, and he smiled, eyes warm as he nodded, seeming relieved.

"Sure thing, kiddo. Now, I ordered pizza and soda. Breadsticks too. I know all about your plan to eat me out of house and home. So grab something to drink and we'll wait for Sergio."

"What exactly is Sergio going to do?"

"I told you, kid. He's my clothes guy."

"Why do I need a clothes guy?"

"Because you don't like the dress."

She blinked at him, then shook her head, feeling like a jerk. "No…Mr. Stark, it's…it's a beautiful dress! And Miss Potts picked it!"

"It is a beautiful dress. And Pepper has impeccable taste. But you don't like it. So I thought we'd give you some options."

As it turned out, Sergio was not just Mr. Stark's 'clothes' guy.

He was Mr. Stark's suit guy.

And eight hours later, after eating pizza and watching a movie and trying on eight different outfits, Penny stood in front of a full-length mirror in her room, the dark blue suit somehow fitting her like a glove. It even had pockets! She could walk without worrying that her bra was going to show, and she could wear a pair of the brand new, red-bottomed sneakers with it and it didn't look stupid, plus they didn't hurt her feet. And of course, the cufflinks were tiny golden spiders, but she didn't mind. In fact, she kind of liked them.

Mr. Stark knocked on the door to the spare room that was actually her room a few seconds later, coming in when she invited him, and smiled at her, taking in the outfit.

"Well? What do you think, Pen? Better?"

She grinned, nodding when he dropped a hand on her shoulder. "Yeah. Much better."