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“Peter, how exactly do you get yourself into these situations?” Tony hadn’t pictured himself saying this as he walked into the lab, but the teen lying on the floor with several ice packs had other ideas. “Like, seriously. How does one even do that.”
“Well, Mr. Stark,” Peter said, staying right where he was on the floor. “I was in gym class, see, and there were a few other kids in gym class, and most of them were in cheer. And they thought, seeing as I’m small--”
“Oh god,” Tony muttered.
“Well, they thought--” Peter continued, ignoring Tony entirely. “They thought that I would be easy to toss up for a cool trick that would be photographed and put in the yearbook or whatever. And I thought, ‘Well, ok, we’ll see how this goes. I’ve got spider powers, it’ll be fine.’”
“You know what?” Tony said, sitting down on his work bench and putting his head in his hands. “Just--whenever you pause for breath in this story, just assume I’m saying something internally like ‘Oh no’ or whatever. Just please do that. To save me energy.”
“Righty-o Mr. Stark,” Peter said cheerfully. “Anyway, I climbed onto their shoulders, and they pushed up on my feet, and then I made my first mistake.”
“This is absolutely not your first mistake, kid.”
“You said you weren’t gonna talk, Mr. Stark.” Peter gave him a quick glare and then went on with his story. “And I’m going to keep on talking now. So, I figured I’d give them a little help, y’know? Just a little spider-strength boost. So, I jumped a little bit. But I way underestimated myself, and smacked into the ceiling. And I couldn’t, like, stick, because that would give the game away--”
“What game?”
“Mr. Stark,” Peter said seriously. “You said you weren’t gonna talk. But anyway, not all of us are millionaires who can afford not to have a secret identity. Moving on.” He cleared his throat. “So, I hit the ceiling and fell back down to the floor, and that’s why I've got these two,” He used his left hand to point at his knees. His right had two ice packs itself; one on the wrist and one on the elbow.
“But apparently the ceiling didn’t like getting hit by a random sophomore, and it’s one of those one’s that has the sorta slats like tile? Right. It fell on top of my right arm, and I was basically just buried in plaster and weird school smelling materials.”
“Can I talk now?” Tony lifted his head again and raised an eyebrow at Peter.
“Oh, absolutely Mr. Stark,” Peter grinned.
“What the hell. What the actual hell. I cannot stress my confusion and exhaustion enough. Why are you this way. I cannot. No more. Please.”
“In my defense--” Peter paused, then shrugged. “I have no defense. I am very small, and I have no money, so you can only imagine the kind of stress that I am under.”
“Every time you use that quote, I am reminded that you keep on giving your aunt the allowance—uh, intern pay--I give you.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Stark.” Peter inhaled deeply and looked up at the ceiling. “Anyway, at least one good thing came out of it.”
“And what’s that?” asked Tony, already dreading the answer.
“I made ten bucks. Flash said it was the best thing he had ever seen.”
Tony stood up and started to walk out the door.
“Hey, where’re you going?” Peter craned his neck and watched him go.
“To bed. You’ve finally done something so fucking stupid I’m going to sleep.” The lab doors slid shut, leaving Peter to sort himself out on his own.