(11-09-2022, 10:16 PM)Shepherd Wrote:Quote:“Hey,” he says, pushing his sunglasses further up his nose. “Anyone seen my intern?”https://archiveofourown.org/works/272420...8#workskin
The kids stare at him, completely unperturbed.
“Peter,” Tony says, in case any of them need clarification.
“He disappeared around the same time that Spiderman showed up to wrangle the acid bird,” MJ says, her tone completely level. “Imagine that.”
The other kids nod. Tony winces.
“You can all expect non-disclosure forms delivered to your doorstep by my very scary lawyers,” he says, internally cursing Peter six ways to Sunday. “If you even think about outing him—”
“You can relax,” Ned says—Tony vaguely recognizes him as Peter’s ‘guy in the chair,’ whatever that means. “They’ve known Peter’s secret for a while now. They won’t tell.”
That takes Tony by surprise. “Excuse me?”
“How stupid do you think we are?” the blond girl demands. “There was that whole thing in Washington—”
“—‘I’m not going to show up at the decathlon meet,’” Flash mimics in an annoyingly high voice. “Unrelated—prepare for the Washington Monument to split open like a watermelon, but don’t worry! A Queens-based vigilante, who just happens to have the exact same voice as I do, is gonna save you guys at the last moment.”
“Spiderman swings by to rescue us at least once a week,” the smiling kid continues, nodding. Tony’s pretty sure his name is Abe. He vaguely remembers the kid’s table from the Midtown science fair—he built a potato-powered microwave that’s “battery” doubled as both a snack and an electric toothbrush. It was pretty damn impressive, even to Tony.
“Peter got super jacked about halfway through our freshman year,” MJ continues, her expression sour. “And he talks about Spiderman all the time. He told Ned about stealing Captain America’s shield in gym class—loudly, might I add—”
“And every time Spiderman swings by to save Midtown from terrorists or bomb threats or acid spitting pigeons, he always pays special attention to MJ,” the blond girl says. “His AI never stops trying to get him to ask her out. So either Spiderman is the world’s biggest perv—”
“Or he’s Peter,” Abe finishes. “And the latter is far more likely.”
“Don’t tell him we know his secret,” the blond girl says quickly. “He takes so much pride in it, and it’s really cute watching him try to come up excuses for why he needs to skip practice.”
“His dog has died seven times,” MJ says.
“One time, he told me he was having kidney stones,” Flash says. “I asked him to prove it—you know, thinking he would send me forged medical papers or whatever—and the next day at school he came up to me, handed me two big-ass rocks, and said, ‘those were inside me.’”
The link to the story seems broken. That just me?