Malen'kaya Zemlya [2] [P. Parker]

3.8 The Lecture

Peter was sitting on a jungle gym while I leaned against it.

He wrung his mask and beckoned me up with him, but I declined. I was not in the mood to be embarrassed more by trying, a failing, to climb something hundreds of kids could climb but I could not.

Peter was telling the story of what happened to Iron-Man. "And then he just, he just, like, swooped down like a monster and he picked me up and, uh, he took me up, like, a thousand feet and just dropped me. How'd you find me? Did you put a tracker in my suit or something?"

"I put everything in your suit, including this heater," Tony replied.

"Whoa!" Peter said as the heater dried his suit. Steam rose off his shivering body. "Whew, that's better. Thanks."

Tony turned to me. "Your heater was damaged when you fell. Sorry, kiddo."

I shrugged, rubbing my arms to warm myself up.

When I looked back up at Peter, he held his arms out, having moved across so he was just above me.

I shook my head, but he reached down and picked me up from under my arms and pulled me onto the jungle gym with him. I let out a complaint that was muffled by him pressing my face into his shoulder.

After a moment, the warmth from his suit started spreading into me and I relaxed.

"Cute." Tony scoffed. "What were you two thinking?"

"The guy with the wings is obviously the source of the weapons," Peter said defensively. "I- We gotta take him down!"

"Take him down now, huh? Steady, Crockett, there are people who handle this sort of thing." Tony said. The condescending and overprotective tone in his voice was starting to annoy me.

"The Avengers?" Peter asked.

"No, no, no." Tony brushed him off. "This is a little below their pay-grade."

I spoke up. "Then this is the stuff for us to deal with, right. These are the kinds of things that the Elementals looked after when we were a team. Now it's just me and Peter, but this is our 'paygrade', isn't it?"

Tony shook his head. "Nope. This is way bigger than you two."

"If it's so big, then why don't you deal with it?" I scoffed.

"Because I don't have time-"

"Anyway, Mr. Stark, you didn't have to come all the way out here. We had that. We were fine." Peter cut in, attempting to diffuse the tension. He rubbed my arm to calm me down.

"Oh, I'm not... Here." Tony replied, the Iron-Man mask flipping open to reveal a mechanical hole where I would usually see his face.

I leaned back and looked up to the sky in defeat. "Oh, of course."

"Thank God this place has Wi-Fi or you would be toast right now. Thank Ganesh while you're at it." Tony said with a more condescending tone. "Cheers," he added to someone that I was guessing wasn't us.

Then he turned the focus of his voice back to us. "Look, forget the flying vulture guy, please."

"Why?" Peter asked.

"Why?" Tony repeated incredulously. "Because I said so!"

There was a short moment of silence, then, "Sorry, I'm talking to a pair of teenagers."

I scoffed in disbelief.

"Stay close to the ground. Build up your game helping little people, like that lady that bought you the churro. Can't you just be a friendly..." There was a clink like Tony had put his drink down. "Neighbourhood Spider-Man. And, Ashley, you shouldn't even be wearing that suit. You'll get caught and get in more trouble than you were already in and I can't have that."

"Why?" I asked. "Because you made the suit and don't wanna get caught too? Because I can damn well tell you don't particularly care about anything other than that."

With that, I jumped from the jungle gym, ignoring Peter's protests, and stormed away.

(A/N)

I feel like I wrote this chapter quite well.

I like it.

It's short and sweet, and I did more writing this morning so now I'm happy.

Happiness to you all!

That was cringe.

I'm stopping.

-lost_in_a_book__