Venomous

Chapter 2

In Your Corner

Saturdays were Peter's favorite days of the week. Not because he didn't have school, or even because it gave him the day to go on patrol or watch Star Wars, but because it was his upstate visiting day! Every Saturday, Mr. Stark sent Happy Hogan to pick Peter up at eight o'clock sharp so that he and Peter could work in his lab upstate, or so they could train together, or even just hang out with the other Avengers. So yeah, Peter freaking loved Saturdays.

When eight o'clock rolled around, Peter grabbed his backpack and raced out of his room and through the apartment towards the front door. "Bye, May, see ya later tonight!" He said excitedly as he gave his aunt a kiss on the cheek before bolting out the door with the biggest grin on his face. His aunt watched him go, laughing lightly as he bounded out of the apartment like a kid on Christmas morning.

Peter raced down the stairs of the apartment building and out onto the sidewalk, where a silver Audi was waiting for him at the curb. Peter grinned from ear to ear as he climbed into the car. "Morning, Happy!" He greeted the driver as he closed the car door behind him.

Happy Hogan was Peter's 'point man', as Mr. Stark liked to say. He was the person that Peter was supposed to text first if he was having any issues as Spider-Man. Or, that's how it used to be, at least. Mr. Stark had really warmed up to Peter in the past several months, and now Peter had Iron Man's personal cell number in his contact list. It excited Peter beyond belief when Mr. Stark had loaded the information into his cell phone himself. The number was for emergencies only, technically, and Peter was afraid to ever actually use it, so he still mostly stuck to texting Happy whenever he needed something.

"You're two minutes late, kid." Happy turned in his seat to face Peter. "I run a tight schedule around here, I don't have time for you to be messing around, alright?"

"Right, sorry, Happy," Peter apologized, but he knew that the driver was just messing with him. Mostly.

The car ride upstate was about two hours long, so usually Happy turned on a radio talk show, which was a secret message to Peter to be quiet. Usually, Peter obliged and kept his mouth shut, occupying himself with homework or surfing YouTube, but today was different for some reason. Peter just couldn't help but be a bit hyper active that particular Saturday. Needless to say, it was annoying Happy out of his damned mind.

Happy liked Peter well enough, he had saved his job when he stopped Vulture from stealing the Stark quinjet on moving day. Happy respected Peter, but sometimes the kid was just too much. He hardly ever kept still, and when he did, it was because his mouth was running at a hundred miles a second. When the kid got to talking about something that he was excited about, there was no stopping him, so Happy just sucked it up and listened to the kid run his mouth until he was done.

That Saturday, however, Peter didn't seem to want to end. He was too excited, and though Happy didn't blame him for it, it was certainly getting on the older man's nerves. He found it best just to try to tune him out. Or role up the divider.

And after thirty minutes of listening to Peter ramble on about the new Solo movie, Happy did just that.

That's when Peter finally got the message and decided to work on his math homework. It was basic enough stuff, so he finished rather quickly, and spent the rest of the trip on his phone, looking through news articles about Spider-Man. Most of them were nice, Queens, along with the rest of New York City, seemed to like the web slinging hero well enough, but there was one newspaper that always seemed to try to bring out the worst in him: The Daily Bugle.

It was a local Queens paper run by a man called J.J. Jameson. He hated Spider-Man more than some of the villains he fought. Jameson claimed that Spider-Man was a 'menace' who had to be stopped. He was constantly slandering the hero's name, and while Peter tried his best to ignore it, today was different.