From the Top

When he became aware of anything at all again, the first thing he noticed was that all the pain had gone.

Sometimes a chronic burden is most conspicuous by its absence. Now that the pain had vanished, it was shocking to realize what an albatross it had been on his energy. It was amazing he'd held up as long as he had.

But eventually strength runs out, as it had for Peter.

It wasn't like he'd thought he was invincible, not by a long shot. There was a difference, however, between believing you couldn't be killed and believing you shouldn't be killed, not when you could do so much.

Behind his eyelids, red light pulsed the way it had before the world had gone out.

When he opened them, the Green Goblin was staring down at him.

“Yahhh!” Peter yelped, springing to his feet, heart racing and hands held up defensively.

“Woah, dude, stop!” said Osborn, which seemed out of character.

Now that Peter really looked at him, the Goblin's face seemed kind of rubbery. Like a mask. Then he realized it was a mask. “Oh,” he said stupidly. “You're not actually the Green Goblin.”

“Nice mask though, right? Can you move? You're holding up the line.”

Peter looked around and was startled to find himself...at a convention center, nearly identical to the one the Stark Expo was held in. He stared at the crowd, many of whom were wearing costumes patterned after heroes and villains alike. A lot of them wore startlingly familiar faces over their own heads. He was standing at the edge of the food court, currently interrupting the progress of those interested in getting a snack from Cinnabun.

Automatically he stepped out of line, slowly turning. Everywhere he looked he saw familiar faces, molded from plastic and rubber. A large red-and-blue banner welcomed him to Comic-Con. Every once in a while, the place was flooded by red light that appeared to emanate from everywhere at once.

This...wasn't yet another dimension, was it? He felt, strangely, as he had when he'd landed in Miles's New York City. Everything seemed familiar, but not expected.

The same could be said of swiveling again to stare directly at Peter Parker, blond and blue-eyed and the last Peter had checked, very dead. He was holding a Slurpee.

Peter boggled at him.

“I'm dead, right?” he said.

“You don't look dead.”

“You're here, so I'm definitely dead.”

Blond Peter raised his weirdly blond eyebrows and took a slurp of his raspberry icee. “Just which hemisphere of eternity are you thinking this is?”

A massive, very realistic-looking Thanos lumbered past them, headed for the pizza counter. Peter stared after him.

“Jury's still out,” he said.

Though there was no apparent danger and on second look Thanos's Infinity Guantlet was made of shiny gold plastic, Peter was quietly and with great composure freaking out a little.

"Would you just tell me if I'm dead or not?" he demanded, though he didn't really want to hear the answer.

“Either you're dead or you're in, like, a coma or something,” Blond Peter said unhelpfully. "Either way, I don't think hysterics will do you much good. Relax, man."

“Either you're dead or you're a figment of my imagination,” grumbled Peter, gazing across the crowd. “Is this like the King's Cross bit at the end of Harry Potter? Are you just like, some projection of my subconscious?”

“If so...a comic book convention?” Blond Peter took a drag on his drink and looked around. “This is what the cat drags out of your subconscious? It's kind of on the nose. Not exactly Shakespearian.”

“I am watching you literally hose down that giant Slurpee.”

“I wasn't complaining.” Blond Peter looked around and spied a gladiator-style half moon of carpeted risers facing a large marble fountain, into which convention-goers were throwing pennies. He ambled over to climb a few risers and plop down with his feet stretched out. After a moment of hesitation Peter followed suit for lack of anywhere else to go, settling on the same riser a couple feet away.

Milling costumed people were striking cheerful poses for admirers' cameras. There were a lot of Spider-Man outfits. Some of the costumes, Batman and Superman and Harley Quinn, were from actual comics while others referenced real life heroes, like the Avengers.

If his head really was calling the shots, maybe his psyche had just assumed a convention was the most natural place for a couple of Spider-Man iterations to hang out. His suspension of disbelief served him well here, where it made no sense to be.

“I didn't think your dimension had Comic-Con,” said Peter, resting his elbows on his knees.

“We call it Funny Fest. You know, for the funny pages.”

Peter made a face.

“Well, at the very least I can tell you these aren't the pearly gates. Next hall over," Blond Peter added slyly. He leaned one elbow on the riser to his back. "But maybe it's a little of both. I might be your Al. Like from Angels in the Outfield. Maybe I'm real, and your mind is filling in the rest of this place.”

“Wouldn't you know?”

Blond Peter smiled. “Guess I would.”

Not-Blond Peter sighed and rolled his eyes. “Whatever. How long am I stuck here for?”

“Can't say. Time isn't relative here.”

“What is this, Inception?”

“Your atoms just scattered like buckshot. Things could be worse.”

“And you're here...why? We never met,” said Peter, frowning. If his subconscious were to conjure up a ghost, it'd be Ben or May Parker. If he was truly dead, he wanted to see them first. Neither possibility allowed for the guy who'd had his chest caved in by the Wilson Fisk of another universe.

Blond Peter set his Slurpee down on the riser. “Honestly? I just thought you might like some company.”

Maybe he did. Maybe seeing Uncle Ben or Aunt May would be too great a temptation to linger.

They watched a kid totter by with a cardboard Captain America shield. A pair of older youths excitedly compared loot they'd purchased from comic vendors. There was a kind of happy hubbub throughout the hall that was oddly peaceful. No one was arguing which of his suits looked the best. Sometimes that took over a whole panel.

“So you know about Miles, right?” said Peter, still leaning forward.

Blond Peter smiled. “Yeah. How great is that? I'm proud of him. Wish I could have stuck around to help. You and I both know that's not fun to figure out alone.”

He'd wanted to mentor Miles, Peter remembered. He'd offered. Peter had had to be guilt-tripped into half-assing the job.

“I didn't really want to fill the vacancy,” he admitted, taking his elbows off his knees and crossing his arms, leaning back against the riser.

“Yeah, I know.”

Was he mad about it? Peter gave the Slurpee-sipping Parker a side glance.

Blond Peter returned it. With a shrug, he said: “Maybe if I were in your mismatched shoes, I wouldn't have been super enthusiastic about it either. But you still came through.”

“I tied him to a chair.”

“You did more than that, Mr. Self Deprecation, but yeah, you tied him to a chair and he had to bust out of it. I said I'd help him, not that I'd make it smooth sailing. No one can. There's always gonna be that point of...I don't know, reckoning? That first time you have to go beyond what you think you can do. Because if you don't, people will die.” He took another slurp. “Miles didn't break out to save New York, you were gonna do that. He didn't do it to spare the other Spider-Things, you were gonna do that. He did it to save you.”

Peter hadn't thought of it that way. Spider-Man did not get saved. He saved himself or died. Like the guy who was now contentedly draining an icee drink that never seemed to diminish.

“You're pretty well adjusted to being dead,” Peter observed.

“Comes from a lifetime of adjusting.”

He sounded sad. He'd had an MJ too, an intact marriage he couldn't return to. His aunt was still alive. He'd been happy and beloved.

It wasn't fair.

As though he'd read Peter's mind, Blond Peter slanted a look that seemed, for the first time, genuinely annoyed. “You think it would be more fair if our places were reversed?”

“I don't know if there's anything to reverse.”

“You know there is, jackass. You can feel it. You know this is a holding pattern. Maybe if you truly gave up, you'd join me. But you haven't, so you're sitting there feeling guilty. That's asinine.”

“Easy for you to say!” Peter said defensively, slouching. Now he had to feel sorry for feeling sorry? “You got to jettison all your survivor's guilt once you weren't a survivor anymore. If we're anything alike, pal, and you were sitting in my place, you'd feel the same way.”

“Well, maybe,” conceded Blond Peter, the anger quickly fading, “but now I've got the grand gift of hindsight, and I can tell you: don't waste time on this. You deserve to go home as much as I did.”

At some point the convention crowd had begun to thin out. Peter watched a group of people chatting animatedly on their way to another hall. Thanos finished his slice of pizza and left.

Eyes following them he said, “You haven't made the mistakes I've made.”

Blond Peter shrugged. “I never got the chance. I might have. The Accords haven't happened in my universe—yet. Who's to say I wouldn't have done everything the same? You're putting me on a pedestal because I'm blond and dead. No one talks about the stupid music video I seriously regret or my tooth-rotting cereal or that weird popsicle, because I went down fighting.”

“Glory to the fallen.”

“Uh-huh. I think you think there's a big difference between us and there's not.”

“Dumb music videos aren't a big deal. It's not like you let people down.”

“I died,” said Blond Peter, sadly. “That was a letdown. You think I was a better Spider-Man than you? Maybe I didn't get around to making your mistakes yet. But I also didn't save as many people. I didn't stop as many monsters. Everything I could do wasn't enough. And despite what you think, I made mistakes too. Real ones. Honestly...I'm kind of jealous of you. Maybe it wasn't pretty, but you always got things done.”

Peter was stunned. Blond Peter, jealous of him? “It's not like you could help dying. That was on Kingpin. You did your best.”

“Yeah, but you know us. We blame ourselves more than anybody else does. All the goodwill in the world wouldn't make me feel like less of a failure.”

“I was going to die, too, in your dimension,” Peter reminded him, so maybe he wouldn't feel like the only one. “And it was my call.”

“But you didn't. Almost giving up isn't giving up.”

“No, that's where you're wrong. I did give up. Miles...just didn't let me.”

His alternate self smiled. “And you let him not let you. No, stop—oh for God's sake, would you let yourself off the hook for once?”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Peter said irritably, although he then recalled MJ's words, from the Met: One day you're going to have to stop punishing yourself...

“With great power comes great responsibility,” quoted Blond Peter, picking his Slurpee back up. “But sometimes, I wonder—if he'd known how much power we really had, if Uncle Ben would have thought...that our power was too much, that it created too much responsibility. When you can do more things than you can't do, the things you can't do seem like...”

“Like you're not trying hard enough,” mumbled Peter.

“There is such a thing as too much responsibility.” Seeing Peter glance at him, Blond Peter raised his shoulders. “Don't look so impressed, I'm not Gandalf. A lot of this I've only figured out since I died.”

“Great.” Peter grimaced.

“Something for you to look forward to.”

“Shut up.”

The intermittent red pulsing seemed to have mostly stopped. By now most of the convention goers were gone. The hall seemed a little lonelier. The Peters sat for a while, watching people leave. One last girl tossed a penny in the fountain and walked to join her friends.

“You can go, if you want,” murmured Peter. Though, weirdly, he didn't want him to.

“Nah, I'll stick around til the end.” Blond Peter played with his straw.

The kid with the Captain America shield left with her parents. Watching employees close up shop in the food court, shutting grates over counters and stacking the chairs on tables, Peter felt an odd dread.

Blond Peter didn't move yet. “It wouldn't get any easier, you know, just because you got new moxie or whatever.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It's not like baddies would go, like, 'oh, Spidey's groove is back, guess I won't stress him out any more' and not rob the Federal Reserve.”

“I could ask politely.”

“Ye won't receive. I'm serious, though...nothing's changed except your resolve. You would still be tired.”

“Are you asking if I can handle that?”

“I guess. Can you?”

It was a question Peter had asked himself already, back in the fish tank. He'd known it wasn't enough just to claw his way back to MJ; there would have to be steps that followed, precautions against falling into the same rut. Especially when it came to kids.

Going home didn't mean he'd never have another bad day. There'd be slobberknocker fights and crimes he wasn't around to stop and times when he would be sick of every jerk who put on a mask and set out to wreck someone's day. He'd still get stressed and bruised and exhausted. So why did he feel more prepared for it now?

Maybe...because he'd stopped feeling like he had to do it alone.

Peter put his chin on his fist. “I'll be fine,” he said with a small smile.

“I thought so.” Blond Peter shook his icee and peered down the straw. “Nice going with Davis, by the by.”

“You do know he stole a Degas?”

“I know he put it back.”

“In the Lost and Found.”

“Well, that's what it's for.” Blond Peter grinned. “I'm dead, Pete, that stuff is just funny now.”

Though he rolled his eyes, Peter smiled. In truth, he was glad Davis had taken the chance to do better. It was easy sticking your neck out for innocent people, that's why so many others did it. Reaching the ones who were thought too far gone...that was hard, and for every fifty times Spider-Man tried it, maybe once would it almost work.

By now nearly everyone had gone. There was a sense of profound loneliness about the empty hall. He felt bad for leaving Blond Peter, who looked wistful lingering there on the riser, toying with his icee cup.

“I'm sure Miles will keep an eye on your MJ and Aunt May,” Peter told him.

“Yeah.” Blond Peter set his Slurpee down, and Peter saw it was empty at last. “Wish I could.”

“I know.”

They were alone now. Even though he wasn't afraid, exactly, Peter again felt that sense of dread—he still did not know what was coming, only that this...place had been a momentary comfort. Would he be in pain again? Well, if so, he'd handle it. He'd get back up.

So did Blond Peter. Rising, Peter shook his proffered hand.

“Well, good chat,” said Blond Peter.

“You did a good job, you know,” Peter told him seriously. Blond Peter looked surprised. “I mean it. You helped a lot of people.”

Blond Peter smiled. “Thanks. Go help some more.”

Peter gazed around the convention center, struck by the sensation of being in such a vacuum of sound. There was no place in the New York he knew where he'd ever be so alone again. When he looked back, his alternate self was gone. So was the Slurpee cup.

“Very on the nose,” he said aloud, closing his eyes. "No points for subtlety."

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As in the indiscriminate suspension of sleep, things were dark for an undefinable time longer. When he regained some kind of consciousness and opened his eyes, it was to a surprise no more welcome than the Green Goblin.

He was in a coffin. A metal coffin! Oh shit, had they buried him after all?

“What the—lemme out! Let me out!” He began pounding on the barrier, trying to draw his fist back enough to get a solid hit.

“Hey—hey STOP!” A voice he recognized as Stark's yelled. “PETE, STOP!”

“Stark? Where the hell am I?” Peter yelled back, his voice slamming short against the barrier.

“Well, obviously I buried you alive!” snapped the unseen Stark.

“Don't joke about that, it happened once! What is this thing?”

“What? When were you—?”

“Stark!”

“You're in the rock tumbler, for God's sake! Would you leave me with one intact piece of machinery please, or should I just turn you loose to wreck the whole base? Stay still!”

Breathing hard, Peter did as he was bid. It wasn't easy; he hated tight spaces like this.

He was alive. Alive! How? In the convention center it'd been easier to dismiss the sheer absurdity of making it back to any living dimension in one literal piece. His pulse was still going wild. Where was MJ? MJ, he remembered, was waiting for him.

“Hey, Peter,” came another, calmer voice, which he placed as Banner's. “Listen, think of it like an MRI machine. We need you to stay still for a while and let the particle accelerator do its work.”

“It's not on now, is it?” Peter asked, trying not to move his mouth too much. “How did I get here?”

“We turn it on in cycles. Best not to let it run for too long, but we kind of pushed it when you got here. I'll switch it back on in a minute. Wanda got to you just in time, at the Tower,” he added.

The pulsing red, before the black. That had been Maximoff, enveloping him in red energy and saving his life. The Avengers had gotten to the Tower.

Now he heard Shuri's welcome voice. She sounded sure and positive. “When we turn the accelerator back on, you will likely see flashes of light. You should not be experiencing any pain from it. Tell us if you are.”

Peter was awfully sore but he didn't think that was from the fix-it. “OK,” he mumbled, and closed his eyes. He trusted they knew what they were doing but his memory uncomfortably recalled Anatoli Burgorski and what had happened when he'd gotten caught headfirst in a particle accelerator. In hindsight it was a miracle Ock's collider hadn't paralyzed them all.

“How long have I been in here?” he suddenly thought to ask.

Stark answered through the speaker. “Two days, on and off.”

Peter's eyes snapped open. “Two days?” he demanded, shooting up and knocking his forehead against the container. “Ow!”

“Lay back down, moron! You were kind of in pieces, you know! Putting Humpty Dumpty back together again required a little more delicacy than gorilla glue. Wanda got you here, but you were still in bad shape. To be honest,” Stark said with some strain, “I really thought it was too late. We couldn't run the tumbler too long without killing you, but you were practically dead already.”

“All of which we can discuss later,” Shuri said firmly. “For now, please, be still.”

Practically dead already? Peter shut his eyes again and the convention center resurfaced in his head, looking as it had when he'd left it. He was too tired to examine what seemed suspended between dream and memory.

“About to run it,” said Banner. “Just for a few minutes. Then you can stretch your legs. You'll have to go back in, but you're doing really well. Turning on...now.”

Humming filled his ears. Through his eyelids he saw flaring light. As Shuri had promised there was no pain, though after a while he began to feel the same nauseousness he'd gotten from the energy chamber. Fortunately it did not last long, as the humming and light ceased when the cycle had completed. When it was over he let out a breath he'd been holding.

There was a snap and a hiss, then the top of the container sprang open. Peter grunted and shielded his eyes against the lab's light, pushing himself to sit upright and rubbing his temples.

Once his vision adjusted he found he was sitting in a half-open cylinder running between the two mouths of the particle collider. Swinging his legs out, he kept rubbing his jaw and said, after glancing at the lid: “I feel like Count Dracula.”

“You look like him, too,” said Stark, emerging through a side door in the pristine white lab. “After this I'm converting this thing into a tanning bed.”

“You will not,” Shuri said placidly, striding from behind him and walking up to Peter, wrist already raised. The beads scanned him from the top of his head down and Peter tiredly scanned its readouts backwards. Shuri was pleased by the results. “You are coming along very well,” she said with a bright smile. “I think another day and you will be well cooked.”

“Keep me a little pink inside,” Peter joked, though he felt raw.

Then he paused, frowning and putting a hand to his side. He lifted a corner of his thin t-shirt to reveal a scar where he was pretty sure a right kidney used to be.

“Not every cell made it back,” Banner said meaningfully, bringing up the rear of the group. “Including that kidney. And your gall bladder. Sorry. Had to remove the pieces. Wanda kept you together as best she could.”

“Well, I hope those atoms are happy polluting some other universe,” said Peter, though he was very unnerved by the revelation. Thank God Wanda had had the sense to preserve the organs he couldn't toss. “Think I lost any brain cells?” Before Stark could make the joke first he added, “Not like I had a ton to spare.”

“I'll say,” Stark muttered.

“Actually, Humpty, you came together very well,” said Banner. “You were pretty scarred up yesterday. Your recovery factor's very impressive. I'm sure it helped.”

Peter glanced at the machine he'd emerged from and was truly stunned by what they'd managed to put together in such a short amount of time. The three of them had practically rewritten Olivia Octavius's rewrite of string theory.

Being pulled back from the brink of literal disintegration required some adjustment after weeks of bracing against it, and a small voice in the back of Peter's head was going you've been gone two more days and MJ's waiting—

“Walk around a little,” Shuri suggested.

Peter lowered to the floor. He was a little wobbly, but he stayed upright. “I'm ready for World of Dance,” he announced once he'd gone the length of the room and back.

He was grinning at Shuri's eye roll when a glitch of his fingers sent him a foot in the air. “What—?” he gasped.

“Well, that is why you must cook some more,” Shuri said with her hands on her hips. “The process is more gradual than Octavius's machine, because we are doing this correctly.” Peter detected a hint of professional disdain. Clearly, the princess considered Octavius to have breached the strictest code of scientific ethics by rushing her machine.

Peter swiveled the hand before his eyes, examining the minute glitching closely. “It doesn't hurt the same.” Was he really fixed? Having lived with the universe's weirdest chronic condition for a while now, its cure, even a gradual one, seemed as much a feat of magic as science.

“The cells are still a little unsettled, but they're not trying to make a break for it anymore,” said Banner, lowering his digital display and leaning forward to peer. He didn't seem unduly concerned. “At least, the attempt's halfhearted.”

“Aww. My homesick little runaways.”

“Home for a hot meal. Speaking of which, why don't we get you one?” said Banner.

Peter's stomach answered for him, making Shuri giggle. “Thanks,” he said, and then, a little embarrassedly: “Um—thanks for all this. For figuring it out.”

Shuri beamed at him, then she and Banner began to exit the lab while discussing what meal he might best keep down. Peter called after them: “Nothing too healthy, thanks.”

Their footsteps faded and he was left alone with Tony Stark. Iron Man stood with his chin in one hand, contemplating the collider.

“Not bad, for a paper mache volcano thrown together the night before the science fair,” he mused, turning away and strolling down the machine's length. “Maybe I won't turn it into a tanning bed after all.”

Peter recognized his classic stalling tactic and waited it out.

Part of him wanted to pelt Stark with a million questions—where was Parker? He hadn't unmasked prematurely, had he? How much did Peter owe Stark for the—well, everything? Where were Miles and Davis?

Then a thought struck him. “Oh, crap,” he said aloud. “Did Rogers's car get towed? That was three-hour parking.”

Stark's hand fell from his chin and he turned to Peter incredulously. “The Volkswagen? That's what you're worried about?”

“Ah, well—the damage was otherwise done,” Peter admitted, feeling his jaw. It was scratchy after a couple of days without shaving.

“No kidding,” Stark said in a flat voice. “If you paid me a million every month for, oh, sixty years, you might settle up the cost of what you broke.”

Those B.A.R.F. glasses were worth only a fraction of the research that had gone into making them, but Peter wasn't disposed to argue. The fish tank was rather harder to replace. “You got the suit back, right?”

“Yes, I got the suit back,” Tony said waspishly. “Is there anything else you swiped? Should I check the silverware?”

For some reason his pique made Peter grin, in part because he could tell Stark's heart wasn't totally in it. “You tell me how much there's supposed to be and I'll tell you how much there is.”

Stark huffed and crossed his arms, finally dropping into a chair beside the door to the control room.

Peter absently rubbed at his wrists. He still hurt all over, but it was different from the pain that had dogged him for what seemed a long time now—maybe because of the promise of relief. “Can you tell me what's going on?” he asked at last.

Stark threw him a dark look but answered. “Nothing whatsoever,” he said. “FBI's crawling all over Fisk Tower, but Wilson Fisk seems to be in the wind, somehow.”

“That so?”

Exasperated, Stark said: “Blurring dimensional purview, are we?”

“Are you seriously worried about jurisdiction?”

“Oh, a little! We can't just dump our problems into the laps of other universes, you know. What if they spit him back?”

“What're they gonna do, FedEx him?” Peter waved a hand. “They wouldn't know where to start. I'm not being cavalier about this, Stark. Even if they could return Fisk to sender, I don't think they would. I'm pretty sure their S.H.I.E.L.D's gonna stamp 'MATTER OF NATIONAL SECURITY' in fat red letters on his forehead and pass a lot of paperwork along. Peter Parker left a lot of goodwill behind in that universe.”

“Little in the gray area for you, isn't it?”

“For me? Yeah, maybe.” Peter was rankled. He was always held to a different standard! “Coming from anyone else, it'd be called merciful. He's alive, isn't he? No one died.”

“You almost died! Which is what Parker didn't want!” Stark stabbed a finger at him. “Don't you remember him saying he didn't want anyone getting killed over this? It wouldn't have mattered how well the rest of that plan carried off, if you'd gone down with it! He still wouldn't have thought it was worth it. He didn't even want anything to happen to Fisk, let alone you!”

“I'm not a kid, Stark,” Peter snapped, flushing. “I knew what I was doing.”

“And you knew it'd make that kid feel like shit the rest of his life if you'd died. He still feels like shit.”

“It was a shitty situation. Either he feels bad for exposing people to danger because he's unmasked, or he feels bad because someone exposed themselves first to prevent that. Listen, I get it,” he said when Stark began to interrupt, “I've got my own remorse. Peter Parkers don't like when others stick their necks out for us—we've always felt that's our job. We live between the rock and the hard place. Spider-Men fight over guilt like it's a bone, 'cause we'd feel guilty if the other got it. I'm done letting it run my life and I hope Parker figures that out before I did.”

He was on his feet, pacing animatedly, waving his hands.

“I didn't do this to save him from more guilt. I didn't do it to save me from more guilt, though God knows I felt bad enough. I did it because I saw a chance to help people. That's all. I didn't just do it for him. It was also for everyone who ever crossed Peter Parker's path or ever will. I'm not going to apologize and if Parker even starts to try to apologize I will lose it.”

Stark's jaw worked.

Peter stared him down. “I'm glad you care about the kid. But he's going to have to deal with this. It's not easy, it never is. Too bad.”

However some apology was, in fact, owed. Peter had too much respect for science and Tony Stark's abilities in the field not to appreciate the value of what he'd destroyed. “But I am sorry about breaking your stuff.”

“Not for stealing it?”

“You're not even sorry I stole it. I know when you're genuinely mad, Tony, and this is just Oscar bait.”

Stark rolled his eyes but appeared mollified. “Fine. It's not like I can say I'm not relieved. And between you and me, I love when stuff breaks. It means I get to make new stuff and Pepper can't complain.”

“Your wedding playlist needs some work,” Peter told him, “unless you're just that into Hanson.”

Stark's eyebrows shot up and he sat back in his chair. “Hanson? No, that's getting thrown out the window. Vanessa Carlton and the heavy metal can stay. 'Let the Bodies Hit the Floor' can get the dancing started.”

Peter huffed a small laugh and sat down on the floor. It was pleasantly chill. He leaned his head back against the machine. “Where's, ah—”

“Your interesting new bestie, the Prowler?”

“To start with,” Peter said carefully. "Though I wouldn't say we're karaoke-level friends yet."

“Not really sure, but the FBI seemed awfully excited about an anonymous new source when we chatted yesterday.” Stark shot him a critical look which Peter ignored. “I'm guessing you won't say how that one came about.”

Peter couldn't, not without compromising several identities. “Sorry. What about the skinny Spider-Man in the black suit?”

“The one still reeking of spray paint fumes? He's around, talking to Parker and Ned. Once you were out of the woods I shooed them away and they began eating their way through my pantry.”

Peter laughed. “Sounds like Comic-Con started up in your kitchen. Guess I should say hi." His stomach growled. "I mean, after I eat."

 "Yeah." Stark paused, seeming on the verge of saying something else. Peter waited, oddly apprehensive.

Then with a minute sigh, Tony said, arms still crossed: "Thank you."

Peter smiled.

"I mean, imagine feeding that kid all the time."

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