Throwing Caution to the Wind

Chapter 25

When he walked out of his room in his favorite fuzzy pajama bottoms and an old Midtown sweater he didn't expect for anyone but Mr Stark to see him. And the man had seen him in his pajamas a lot already. Including this particular combination.

What he didn't expect to see, was Colonel Rhodes dresses in full milletary dress having a cup of coffee at the counter.

He stopped dead in his tracks, his brain still trying to figure out what was in front of him.

The Colonel heard him and turned around

"And who might you be" he asked raising an eyebrow.

"Peter, sir, Peter Parker" he responded nervously.

"And why are you in the tower" he asked.

"Uhhh, I fell asleep" it came out sounding like a question.

"Couldn't you 'fall asleep' at home" he asked clearly getting suspicious.

"Uhhhhhhh" Peter really didn't know how to respond to this. He and Mr Stark hadn't really talked much about what to say about what to tell the other Avengers.

"Kid, I don't know who you are, or what your doing here, so why don't you go take a seat in the living room and wait for Tony to get here. You're probably a securities risk so don't expel to go home, or at least not without a bug" he said slowly taking Peter by the shoulder and leads him to the couch which he and Mr Stark had ironically watched a movie on the night before.

Colonel Rhodes walked back to the kitchen and thanks to Peter's enhanced hearing he could tell that he was on call with Mr Stark.

"Hey Tony, there's a kid in the living room. I think he night have hacked Friday or something, she didn't say anything...curly brown hair, I think he has blue eyes... You're coming, great" he heard one side of the conversation.

A few minutes later he heard the fan ding of the elevator.

"Hey kid, so I guess I should introduce you to-" Mr Stark said walking into the living room.

"Why do you look like I've called the firing squad on you" he asked.

"I, I didn't expect you to have company sir" Peter said.

"Oh ya, sorry kid. My bad. This," he said gesturing to Colonel Rhodes, "is Rhody, my best friend and the only reason I'm still alive."

"Dang straight" said the Colonel.

"But seriously, Tony, who is this" he asked curiously.

"This, is my intern, Peter Parker. Remembering Boonton" he asked looking at him for confirmation. When the Colonel nodded he  continued, "well, he took the kid in and all that, I sat through a meeting cause Pepper threatened to shut down Friday, anyways, I arrive at the meeting, and there's the kid right. And he's absolute brilliant. And unlike all those other guys, he actually cares about what he's talking about, gets real excited-"

"Get to the point Tony, come on already. You're killing me over here" the Colonel interrupts clearly getting impatient.

"I'm getting to it Platypus, you need context "he says shaking a finger at him, "anyways, so the kid is brilliant right, so I get R&D on his ideas right away. And I invited myself to the next meeting. The kids really quite this time though, but final I get him to talk. Once I get the ball rolling, he doesn't shut up, and honestly, I didn't mind. I come back again the next week, but this time the kid isn't there. I ask 'ole Boonton where he is and he tells me the kids doing paperwork. I go and hunt him down, and apparently Boonton fed the kid some BS about how he doesn't understand how the company runs or whatever and has the kid do paperwork. I did some digging and it turns out Boonton didn't have Peter with him legally. But I couldn't send the kid away, so I offered him and internship and here we are" Mr Stark explained.

Colonel Rhodes looks between the two of them in disbelief.

"Kid, you must really be done special if you got Tony "I thought that giving myself food poisoning to get out of a meeting was a good idea" Stark to come to 3 meetings I a row" he told him.

"He's exaggerating, I just had a couple ideas that the others didn't think of. Really, I didn't do much" Peter said ducking his head blushing.

"No need to be modest, your amazing kid, smarter than maybe even me when I was your age" Mr Stark said clapping a hand on his shoulder.

"So you are special kid, Tony would never say something like that if he didn't mean it. Plus, he looks happy when he said that, that's what's most impressive here" Colonel Rhodes said.

"It's impossible not to love him" Mr Stark said fondly.

"I'm just a kid from Queens sir, nothing special about that" Peter said hanging his head to hide his blush.

"Don't ever sell yourself short you hear me, talent doesn't care about where you're from or who you are. And oof you've got talent, but more importantly, you've got heart. People with heart, even if they don't have talent will do sometimes in their lives, and you, with both, will change the world one day" Mr Stark said getting down in front of Peter cupping his face.

"Thanks Mr Stark, that means a lot" Peter said quietly.

Rhody was taken aback, did he just watch his best friend act like that. Because if he did, then the kid must be amazing.

After that, the 3 if them worked together and made a nice breakfast together. Rhody couldn't help but notice the fact that they were making way more food than the 3 of them could conceivably eat, but neither of the other 2 seemed to notice.

"Hey, Peter, Tony, isn't this a bit much food" he asked gesturing to the large stack of bacon and pancakes with more on the griddle.

The other 2 looked at eachother seemingly having a silent conversation.

"I'm Spiderman" Peter blurted out.

Rhody looked between the 2 of them. This scrawny highschool kid was Spiderman, the vigilante who he'd seen catch buses with his bare hands on YouTube. The vigilante who was able to do dizzying tricks with his webs between the skyscraper of New York.

"Is that why you picked him for the internship'' he asked.

"Nope, I didn't even find out until well after the internship started. The kids genuine smart, I wasn't lying about any of that earlier. It was a lucky coincidence though" Tony said winking.

Later, while Peter and Mr Stark were in the lab, Mr Stark pulled up his chair up to Peter's workstation.

"So kid, we had a look at all the scans of last night, and it looks like Met Man was targeting you specifically. We found that the chemicals yiu inhaled with the amount you inhaled probably wouldn't have affected a normal person as much as you did. But with your enhanced senses, it affected those more than most people" Mr Stark explained.

"Oh, what does that mean for me" Peter asked.

"It means I'm gonna build a better filtration system that can probably be toggled on or off when you need it" Mr Stark said.

"Ok" Peter said.