You Heard Me Correctly, Mr Parker

what episode number is this?

PART ONE

20 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes, and 14 seconds previous.

"I'm telling you, it could work."

"And I'm telling you it wouldn't."

Peter clenched his jaw and stared at Mr Stark from where he hung upside down off a web over his bench in Mr Stark's lab. Mr Stark, himself, stared back at him from across the room, arms crossed.

"But you haven't considered the stabilising agents of it. If we just re-adjust the ratio of the-" Peter continued, his gaze never faltering from his mentor, unlike Mr Stark's who went back to fiddling with a piece of shoulder armour on his desk as he interrupted Peter,

"Who's the genius, billionaire, philanthropist here?" Mr Stark said and didn't wait for an answer, "Drop it kid, with our formula, there isn't enough calcium chloride in New York for episode 82 of your bad ideas," he said, and although he had a good-humoured tone it still hurt, nonetheless, to be turned down so harshly.

"Consider 82 dropped," Peter mumbled before dropping to a standing position on the floor and dissolving the web hanging from the ceiling. 

Mr Stark didn't appear to have heard a thing. Peter bit back a sigh before he swept his papers on "episode 82" into the bin and pulled out his middle-school chemistry notes and a few pieces of fresh paper.

Peter thought back to the sixth-grader, Justin Knox, that he was tutoring, and tried to come up with equations that would suit him. 

Knox wasn't too behind, Peter considered, but he was still behind enough that it made any teacher's job harder than it should be, and that's where he came in.

As Peter picked apart a year's worth of notes, his mind kept straying to "episode 82" as Mr Stark had put it. 

The calcium chloride could have stabilised his medi-webs if only Mr Stark would listen to him. 

Peter bit back another sigh, he could be doing so much more with his time, like working on his suit, if he didn't have to tutor Knox.

It's not that he didn't want to help him - if he didn't spend all his free time either on patrol or in the lab with Mr Stark, he would've signed up to tutor without a second thought. 

However, he did spend his free time on patrol or in the lab, so Spider-Man now makes a lot fewer appearances in Queens these days than he used to.

The tutoring was courtesy of Principal Morita who forced Peter into this after his unapproved absence for his trip to Germany and his many absences following afterwards. 

And to make up for his "slacking off" (as Morita had put it) Peter - with his straight A's - is to meet with Knox twice a week at the library for 2 hours after school on a Wednesday and on Saturday mornings - which are both Spider-Man days. 

This means Mr Stark had no clue of any of it, which is fine, Mr Stark didn't need to know of everything that happened in Peter's life, and he might cut down their lab days if he knew anyway.

Peter was suddenly brought back to the present when Mr Stark cleared his throat right above where Peter was seated in the lab.

"Kid, am I paying you to complete a middle-schooler's chemistry homework?"

"Uh," Peter began, he felt his cheeks heat up and his heartbeat quickened as he looked up into his mentor's face. Mr Stark didn't look particularly angry, just a mixture of curiosity, confusion, and a hint of frustration, which made Peter gulp, "Y-you're not paying me at all, Mr Stark."