(Fem.) Percy meets Spidey

34

I leaned anxiously against Mr. Stark's desk. The fingers of one hand clicked away at the keyboard as he flipped through information on a holoscreen with the other.

"Relax, Pete," he said. "I put a backdoor into everything I do. Nothing's airtight, but making sure I've got the only key's worked pretty well." The screen flashed, and he grinned. "Here we go."

"This feels wrong to do."

"Trust me, kid, if something's really up with her dad, it's better to figure it out now. It should have been dealt with a long time ago. If someone dug into my records and figured out what a piece of shit my dad was, I'd thank them for getting me out of that."  He titled his head. "Or maybe not. I would have missed out on a lot of parties and drugs. LSD was so nice in the eighties."

"Should you be telling that to a high-schooler?"

"Your metabolism's so fast you probably can't even get high." He tapped a folder and quickly pulled up what he wanted. Percy's birth certificate. He whistled. "She was a big baby." 

I leaned around him, uncaring of how heavy she was when she was born, and looked at the lines where parents should be listed on the record. Sally's name was listed, but no father.

"Are you sure she said custody weekends?" Mr. Stark asked. He rubbed his chin and continued without waiting for me to answer. "There needs to be a legal father for there to be anything related to custody."

Of course he would know that. I frowned. "So is he not actually her dad?"

"Either that or he's strangely good at avoiding the government and has a reason to avoid the government. Not usually a good sign. You know anything else about him?"

"Percy said he's not allowed to raise her. But I don't-- There's not anything else."

Mr. Stark sighed, long and drawn out. "And?"

I frowned. "He's...scary. Not like a haunted house or anything. It's like...It's like the same kind of danger I felt when in the car with Vulture, but it's even worse because I don't even know why I feel like this." There had been so many times I stopped people from beating their kids or wives. They never made my Spidey sense go off like that.

Flash didn't either, not passively at least. Only when he was an active threat.

"You sure you've never run into this guy before?"

"I think I would've remembered meeting my neighbor's weirdly terrifying dad before. Even if I hadn't seen his face, trust me, I'd have recognized the feeling." Swallowing, I stared at my lap. How did Sally not realize something's wrong with him?

Why was she more upset about Percy being home than having him around Percy in the first place? May would probably kill a man if he thought he was a threat to me. So does Sally not...know?

The thought makes me sick in a way I haven't been since the first time I used my web shooters.

Should I tell her? No. No, because I don't have proof and who's going to take the word of a teenager who doesn't even know the person. No, because what if Sally does know--I didn't want that to be the case--and it just makes Percy's life worse.

Mr. Blofis might be a better option. He's one of the few teachers who intervenes whenever Flash messes with me. And I couldn't see him letting Percy get hurt. Which led to the issue of what if he gets hurt trying to stop something he's not prepared for? I groaned and tugged at my hair.

Her dad wasn't normal, and it wasn't fair of me to put dealing with him on normal people. If anything happens...

Mr. Stark seemed to understand where my thoughts were heading. A heavy hand grabbed my shoulder.

"If anything happens with her and her father you are not getting involved. Leave it to the adults."

"What if you won't get there fast enough?"

His face pinched.  "No one is ever fast enough in this sort of stuff. But that's not the point,  Underoos. You're a teenager. You should be out partying and enjoying life before you have to worry about your credit score and whatever normal people worry about. If something--anything--happens where the girl's in danger from her father, you call me or Pepper or Nat, fuck even the police if you think they'd be better suited, and you get the hell out of there."

He poked my nose when I tried to argue, and he closed down the tabs.

"You're my responsibility," he said seriously. "I don't like the situation either. I regret even taking you to that airport, do you think I want you throwing yourself into situations without backup? It's one thing for you to be solving small crimes on your own, and a completely other thing to throw yourself against a completely unknown party when I might not be able to get there in time."

"But-!"

"No."

"Mr. Stark, I do this sort of thing all the time."

"You're the one who said you don't have any reason why you should feel like this about him. If you learn anything, it's to trust your gut, not your emotions. I know you're nice little heroic heart  is begging you to stop anything that might happen here, but whatever weird spider instincts you have are telling you that it's not safe. Creepy crawlies are prey animals, and you're recognizing him as a predator."

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just keep an ear out, and I'll  see if Pepper'll put out a child abuse awareness campaign this quarter. All we can do...is wait."

A chapter! That kept refusing to be written

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