Tony walked into Peppers office just in time to see the latest intern candidate strip off his shirt. Pepper was out because she'd taken Morgan back to her room. She was too young to see the injuries that Pepper imagined Peter had hidden under his shirt.
"Ok, what'd I miss?" Tony asked as he came around the desk. He saw the burns and shook his head. "Good lord, you're a mess!" He noticed the large diagonal scar running across his chest. "What's that from?"
"The burns are from this morning. My apartment building caught on fire, and I helped an old lady with senile dementia get down from the third floor." Peter pointedly ignored the original question about his chest scar.
Tony noticed his head. "What about your scalp?" He noted how the boy dodged his question about the scar on his chest and filed it away for future reference.
"I had to rescue her cat from the roof. He insisted on riding my head all the way down," Peter said morosely. "But the scratches are pretty much healed. I heal fast."
"So, I see," Tony said, "But we need to get that Spandex scraped off pronto. It's not going to be pleasant; I can tell you that much."
Peter rolled his eyes and stood up. "Yes, sir, Mr. Stark," he said obediently. "Warn my aunt that I'm coming in, though. May Parker. I'm Peter."
"I was thinking more about my lab," Tony hemmed. "Let's melt the goo with ethanol so they don't have to scrape it off."
"I'm all for that," Peter said eagerly. "We could add acetone to the ethanol to speed up the process."
Tony glanced at him in surprise. "For someone so young, you seem to know your chemistry. What else do you know?" He was trying to keep the kid talking to get his mind off the pain. He hoped that it was working.
Peter laughed. "I know that if you accidentally mix potassium citrate with mop water, when it dries, every time someone takes a step, the floor makes an explosive noise."
Tony leveled his gaze at him. "Oh, accidentally on purpose, huh?" He didn't buy the accident because Peter was trying far too hard to appear innocent and failing, and quite possibly because his eyes were dancing merrily in his head.
"Who, me? I'm as innocent as the driven snow," Peter protested as they approached Tony's laboratory.
"I don't know, driven snow can be pretty dangerous," Tony quipped. He hid his grin, and they went to his personal laboratory. "My chemicals are at your disposal."
Tony watched with an eagle eye as Peter whipped up a solution, filled a spray bottle and sprayed the scorched and melted areas on his wrist. Soon he had black goo dripping onto the table and his wrist was spandex free.
"You could market that stuff and make a killing," Tony commented as he watched Peter run his wrist under cold water to cool his burn. "I'll help you with the patent."
Peter perked up. "Really? It'd be nice to not have to scrape by every month. Our bills run pretty tight."
"As my intern, you'll learn to process how to submit for patents," Tony said casually. "I'm surprised that you didn't apply for the Oscorp Internship. It's more prestigious than what I can offer."
Peter craned his head and affixed Tony with an icy stare. "I will not work with or for that psychopath Norman Osborne. I won't go anywhere near him. He's got a lot to answer for. I was best friends with his son Harry until his little freak out."
"Oho. You've got his number," Tony chuckled. "Ok, then. You want to tell me why you hacked into SI?"
Peter flushed a deep scarlet, embarrassed that he'd been caught out, but he answered his question. "It was a-a mutual challenge between my f-friend and myself. I just wanted to know if I could do it and I'd missed the deadline to apply for the internship by five minutes. Flash hacked into SHIELD and got a file on Spider-Man." Peter mentally cursed himself for stuttering and pulled himself together with great effort.
"He got into SHIELD? That's impressive," Tony said, rubbing his chin. "And what's this about you having an AI? Jarvis said something about it."
Peter's eyes twinkled. "Are you sure you're ready?" He brought out his phone and a little device of his own making and switched it on. "Hey, Pep."
"Hi, Peter. How's the interview going?" Pep asked glibly. Her hologram sparkled to life and a miniature Pepper Potts stood on the table before Tony. Tony schooled his expression. It wouldn't be good to have his jaw hit the table.
"Good. Pep stands for Personal Encryption Protocol. I like to make acronyms that sound like personal names, by the way."
"Oh, and I don't?" Tony joked. "It humanizes them." He looked Pep up and down. "How did you manage to make a hologram?"
They talked for an hour about Peter's hopes and scientific dreams, when Pep interrupted. "Peter, you're getting a call from May."
"I need to take this," he said apologetically to Tony. "She's probably worried sick about the fire."
Tony nodded, and Peter picked up. "Oh, my god. Peter, are you ok? What happened? We have to find another place to live. The entire structure is unsafe."
"Mrs. Collins was fixing breakfast and left her stove on. When I pulled her out of her apartment, she was sitting on her bed staring at the flames on the ceiling. Her cat jumped on my head and rode all the way down."
"Oh, that poor woman. She'll have to go to a nursing facility, and she won't be able to keep Mr. Gibbs."
"That cats a menace," Peter complained. "He hates me. Hopefully someone will take him. Won't be me."
"Not with your asthma," May said. "I hope you didn't get too much smoke in your lungs. I want you down here asap."
Peter groaned but eventually agreed to be looked over for smoke inhalation and have his burns attended to. "I used to have asthma," he told Tony. "I've had a hard time convincing Aunt May that it's not an issue anymore, but she won't listen. I've got to placate her, so she doesn't freak."
"You used to have asthma? What changed?" Tony asked with idle curiosity. He eyed Peter casually as he nodded for him to go.
Peter thought over his response quickly yet thoroughly. How did he explain what he wasn't exactly sure of himself? "I'm not sure. I guess I just grew out of it. Maybe my lungs matured." He said the last as a joke, but Tony looked grave. Asthma was no joking matter. It was the bane of his family. He'd been spared; other family members had not.
They needn't have worried about asthma. It was the least of their concerns. May ran over to Peter as soon as he came in.
"Oh, sweetie, you smell awful. You were in the worst part of it, weren't you?" She ushered him to an examination bed and had him jump up on it, which he did with ease.
"Uh…yeah. I had to get Mrs. Collins out. She would have burned alive if I hadn't gone in. The ceiling was on fire as it was, and she was just sitting there, staring at it."
"Did you get burned?" May asked professionally as she strapped a mask on his face and put a pulse oximeter on his finger. It read 100 percent.
"Well, yeah. My 'shirt' melted but I got it peeled off, thanks to Mr. Stark's supply of chemicals," Peter told her. "Spandex doesn't burn, it melts."
Dr. Cho just happened to be passing by and heard Peter's remark. "Let me see those burns," she said professionally.
Peter held out his wrist automatically, and she took it in both hands, turning it this way and that. Yes, it had been burned, but it looked like a burn scar three weeks old, not recent. She raised an eyebrow and looked at him. "Um…I heal incredibly fast?"
"I believe it," Dr. Cho said gently, letting his hand drop. "Does May know about this ability of yours?" May had left the room as soon as Dr. Cho came in.
"Yes, I believe that she does," Peter said confidently. She'd accidentally walked in on him while he was starting to undress one day. Luckily, he hadn't gotten any farther than removing his mask. "I imagine it will come out sooner or later, so you might as well know. I don't want this to go any farther than this room, though. I'm I'm Spiderman."
Dr. Cho blinked in surprise and looked at him. "And how did this occur?"
"I was bitten by a genetically engineered spider at Oscorp. I've been dodging the Green Goblin ever since," Peter told her in a rush. "I imagine that you'll be seeing a lot of me in the future. I tend to get injured on the job a lot."
"Oh, wonderful. Another frequent flyer," Dr. Cho joked. "I'm sure you can't be as bad as Tony or Cap, though."
She sent him on his way with burn cream and something for pain. When he told her it wouldn't work because of his metabolism, she gave him something a little stronger.
"This is very important, Peter. Only take these when you are near your bed. I give these to Steve Rogers, understand? Don't think that I didn't see your broken wrist during my examination."
"Oh, that's nothing," Peter poo poohed. "It's a minor injury. I've had three broken ribs and a gunshot to my upper thigh and didn't have any pain medicine."
He was surprised when he came out of medbay and was greeted by Pepper and Morgan. "So, what's this about you having a broken wrist and a dislocated shoulder?" Pepper asked calmly, voice even. Peter froze. There was just something about her voice that made him feel like a toddler. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, just weird.
"Oh. Yeah. Um. I didn't realize it until we got the hand and burn under control. Then it started hurting like a mo…" Peter broke off when Morgan poked at his legs.
"Language," she whispered. "Not in front of the kid." He looked down into her huge dark eyes and melted. Reaching down, he ruffled her dark hair and smiled softly.
"I'm sorry little bit. I'll try harder. I get potty mouth when I hurt," he whispered. He winked and smiled.
Surprisingly, she winked back. "Daddy must hurt all the time." She grabbed ahold of Peter's good hand. "I want to show you my room. Mommy, may I please show Peter my room?"
"Oh, honey, Peter has to unpack his stuff," Pepper told Morgan, who began to pout. She really liked Peter. He was nice and talked to her instead of around her or through her.
"It's ok, Ms. Potts," Peter reassured Pepper. "I don't mind. If you're really good, I'll let you find a home for Mr. Platypus. Although he might need a bath."
Pepper looked at him in shock. "Platypus? That's one of Tony's nicknames for Rhodey. May I ask what Mr. Platypus is?"
Peter laughed a bit self-consciously. "Platypus is a stuffed animal that I've had as long as I can remember. He's got no nose because I apparently chewed it off when I was teething, and Aunt May sewed buttons to replace his eyes when his eyes fell off."
"Maybe our Platypuses can be friends," Morgan shouted excitedly, pulling at Peter's hand. Laughing, he let her pull him along.
To Peppers shock, they were identical. Well, as identical as they could be, considering that Peter's was nearly fifteen years old and had hard use.
"Mine came from daddy's friend, Rhodey. See? He had his name embroidered on him so I wouldn't forget him." She pointed to the stomach of the little animal.
"Nope, no name on mine. It's just a coinki dinki that our Platypuses look alike," Peter told Morgan. "But they can still be friends, ok?"
Morgan agreed, thinking that would be a lot of fun.