Tony smiled at her as she exited the elevator, eyes crinkling in that fond and soft-looking way that made Penny feel all warm and happy inside. Truly a break from her boiling annoyance at the audacity and stupidity of her classmates.
With one look at her face, her dad seems to know what to do: make popcorn.
He knows Penny’s about to throw down a shit storm of information and he has to be prepared for the entertainment. This is usually how their Gossip Fridays go when she stays the night while Aunt May has the night shift.
They settle comfortably on the couch, a blanket thrown over their laps and popcorn sitting in a vibrant green and pink polka-dotted bowl. It really was hideous, but Tony insisted on using it at every opportunity since it was Penny’s terrible fifth-grade project that Aunt May had unearthed in her father's presence.
Tony leans back, popcorn in hand, before looking at her with an all-knowing curiosity.
Penny launches into the last very long week she just had.
“Tony you wouldn’t believe the week I just had. First of all, before even coming here, Happy and I went by some stupid fast-food place that’s new in town. I don’t even remember the name of it now, but after he ordered me a combo, they continued to tell us they didn’t have soda. What kind of place just runs out of soda?! Then, Happy asked for water, and guess what, THEY SAID THEY DIDN’T HAVE WATER.” Penny takes a deep breath, trying to keep her annoyance but amusement at bay, Tony’s face is priceless.
Tony’s jaw dropped. “So, they didn’t have anything to drink?”
Penny smacks herself in the face, dragging her hand down dramatically. “They only had unsweetened tea. Who does that?! That’s just bad water. How can they say they’re out of water but they have tea? Don’t they have to use water to make that crap? That reminds me, Midtown started selling sodas in the cafeteria this week and, obviously, I was pumped, and guess what?” Penny flopped dramatically towards the popcorn bowl, grabbing a handful. Tony raised a brow.
“All of the sodas were diet. No sugar. Diet. Who in their right mind sells only diet and sugar-free sodas to high schoolers? They do realize barely anyone is going to drink that crap, right? It’s like buying flat soda, and that’s just nasty.”
“So, you’re telling me,” Tony pops some more of their snack into his mouth, “That I need to give that school more funding? Seriously, diet sodas? Unforgivable.”
Penny nods her head vehemently. “Agreed. It's a crime against humanity. That’s not even the worst part.”
Shoving more popcorn into her mouth she continues with her tale. “So we got a new introduction to drafting substitute this week, you know since Ms. Thompson totally bailed the first week of school, and we had this cranky 20-something-year-old making us do movie notes, Dad. MOVIE. NOTES. Even then, there are these stupid jerks in my drafting class that took the germx from the top of the computer towers and started squirting them everywhere. The sub doesn’t even tell them to knock it off! She only told them to stop when they hit another guy in my class, but not when it landed on me, my homework, and my laptop! She didn’t do a single thing when I told her about it either!”
Tony frowned severely; brows furrowed. “Do I need to come up there and give this lady a piece of my mind for letting boys run around wild?”
Penny made a so-so gesture with her hand. “I’m not entirely opposed, but she’s subbing for someone else now. They’re still looking for a drafting teacher so they got this cranky old white dude to come sub in on Tuesday and he’s been here all week and you will not believe the audacity of this guy.”
Tony seems to perk up. This is his area; this is where Penny knows he will listen to every single word and make whoever annoyed the shit out of her rue the day. Use her words and stories to sue the crap out of the guy.
It's kind of sweet.
“First of all, he made us do a stupid alphabet sheet. In junior year. Literally, it was an assignment to ‘practice your lettering’ like, Hello, I’m seventeen. I know how to write. And this guy has the brain cells of an insect because he starts talking about how number 2 pencils are superior and write so much better and that they are so much more reliable than mechanical pencils, which, is not true because I break wooden pencils way too often for my liking. Then he goes on to say, verbatim, ‘This is a time to work not have fun. You can’t have fun and write letters at the same time.’ Like seriously, how old is this guy?”
Tony starts laughing. Belly laughing, the kind where eyes get watery, and stomach starts hurting. Penny could barely contain hers either, because seriously someone needed to send this guy back to the 1940s, but she had to push on.
“That doesn’t even begin to start Wednesday, in my History class that morning some girl, Anita or something, answered the question Dr. Davis asked in class. It was simple, ‘What state didn’t go to the constitutional convention?’ You would not believe what she said.”
“What, did she say some state that didn’t even exist yet?” Tony asked, curious, Penny shook her head.
“She said Germany, you know, a whole country. Germany didn’t come to the constitutional convention. Germany isn’t a US State. This girl is killing me, because today she told me her English teacher told her to write a small essay with an introduction, body, and conclusion paragraph. But what the teacher actually wanted was a basic body paragraph and she mistook the word assertion to mean introduction. She told me she had to write an assertion paragraph. She's a Junior and she still doesn’t even know what that is in one of the most advanced schools?!” Penny huffed, trying to catch her breath.
Tony looked at her blankly. “No, really? Germany? Assertion Paragraph? Pen, are you sure this is the right school for you? Can’t I just send you to MIT early to save me the pain of hearing how dumb-down this school has become?”
Penny just waves him off, “You know I’m staying for Ned and MJ. Anyway, in fourth period AP Physics today I had a guy named Jackson tell me that he got a girl pregnant and that his son is due in January. And this guy is the same age as me, mind you, and so I asked him how old this girl even was because I’ve known this dude for the last three years of my life and never had I heard any rumor of him dating and he proceeds to tell me he got a twenty-one-year-old girl pregnant.”
It takes Tony a second to process what she just said before dawning horror flashes over his face. “Shit, kid, was- or is- this woman grooming him? Baby trapping? He’s sixteen.” Her dad seems to be going a little green in the face, she can only imagine the scenarios he's thinking of.
Penny tries not to think of Skip.
Shivers rack her body, but she tries to ignore it. Get back on track. It’s the past.
The past haunts.
“I-I know, I’m really worried about him, but he seemed so proud of himself. How do you even get someone out of that conditioning if he’s really being groomed?” Penny shakes her head, pursing her lips. “A-Anyway, that old man sub I was talking about? Yeah, he keeps asking me if I need help to look at a ruler, or if I even understand the material we’re covering, which, by the way, is learning how to write the alphabet and read a ruler. In high school, I think this guy is actually dumber than I can ever guess. He always asks me and the other girls in my class if we understand what’s happening, but he never says a single thing to the guys in my class. Today, even, he even said to a guy who sits next to me, Matt, that ‘reading is bad for you’ and that he should put his book away and work on the already finished assignment for the day. He even came over to me, even though I had it done, and put it on top of my Calculus homework and said his work is more important than, and I quote, ‘stupid math’.”
Tony sits there for a second, hands clenching, before smoothing out his expression completely. “Is he being sexist to you? Does he single you out?”
Penny shrugs a little, shrinking into her seat. The old guy does, even though she hates to admit it. She’s Spider-Woman. She’s strong and independent but an old guy commenting on her ability to even think is kind of embarrassing when it's done in front of a whole class of her peers and some of the freshmen.
She nods, pensive, before playing with the edge of the blanket. By this point, the popcorn has gone cold, but she doesn't mind as she buries her other hand in the cold-buttery goodness. It's a nice distraction. “I d-don’t want to do anything rash, but he’s…rude, impolite at worst to the girls in my class. Condescending more than anything.”
Tony nods as if he finalized some decision in his head before moving the horrifically colored bowl of popcorn to the coffee table in front of them. Pulling Penny into his side, Tony tucks her under his chin.
Penny feels warm, loved, cared for, and seen in her dad’s embrace. It’s nice.
“Don’t let him beat you down, Pen, he doesn’t deserve that much of your good graces diminished,” Tony says confidently, placing a soft kiss on the crown of her head.
She snuggles closer into his side, giving him a slight smile. “I know, Dad.”
Tony gives her a hug, full of love that Penny can’t help but absorb like a little sponge. It's strange, to have a full-blown parental figure, but she can’t deny that it's not fully growing on her. It has its perks.
“I’m still going to hunt this old man down and blow him up with one of my repulsors, though.” Tony comments idly.
Penny startles, “Dad!”
Her dad’s rumbling laughter is her only reply, and she falls into the easy motions as her stomach starts to hurt from laughing so much.
Yeah, she can get used to this.