ＳＬＡＴＥ ◼ STEVE ROGERS◼

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"Pete, you gotta pull the larger end through the loop. Do that, and you're done,"

Watching Peter Parker attempt to tie his own tie was truthfully one of the best things that Charlotte Watson had seen in a long time. The smile never left her face as she stared at the hologram screen before her, laughing as she watched May Parker attempt to help her nephew with the tie.

"You make it sound so easy," Peter grumbled, grabbing the end and beginning to pull it through. His face brightened as he thought he had done it correctly, only for the entire tie to fall apart immediately. "This is hopeless! I'm not wearing a tie to homecoming! How do you even know how to tie one of these?"

"Steve liked when I did it for him," Lottie told him with a shrug, chopping up the last of her vegetables, dumping them into the mixing bowl beside her as she looked back at the screen. "You missed the loop. Pull the section at the front and just pull it through."

"Wait, I think I got this," May reached into the frame, moving Peter's tie into the correct place. The pair celebrated on the other end of the call as Lottie let out another laugh, shaking her head as she prepared her meal. "BOOM!"

"I got two corsages! Lottie, I need you to help me pick one!"

Another laughed tumbled from both Lottie and May's lips as Peter rushed off the sight of the screen and out of camera line. May shook her head, sitting down on Peter's bed as she looked over at the woman on the screen before her.

"I really can't thank you enough, you know? Peter always admired all of you, I did too not going to lie. I thought when he said he'd lost this internship, it would all go away..."

"He's like a little brother to me, May. I wasn't going anywhere," Lottie told the woman with a smile as she placed her finished meal into her bowl. "I don't know what was going through Tony's head when he took the internship away, but I'm not just going to abandon Peter."

"It just means a lot. The internship meant so much to him, and after everything he's been through..." May trailed off before looking at Lottie with wide eyes. "I'm not trying to say that you haven't been through a lot! Wow, you've probably been through way more than any of us-"

"May, it's alright. Trust me,"

The women only smiled at one another, engaging in small talk as they waited for Peter to return with the two corsage options. Lottie continued to keep up the facade of being one of Peter's mentors for his Stark Internship, the cover story he had invented for being Spider-Man.

Just as she had suspected, Peter had left her a depressing voicemail crying about having his suit taken away. She didn't get to listen to it until the early morning, right about the same time that she stumbled upon Tony and Rhodey throwing away all of the alcohol in the compound. That might have led to a small heart to heart between Rhodey and Lottie, though the man would deny that there was any crying involved in that discussion.