If They Knew All About You

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree

Peter's life had gone to shit. It really had, not slowly but swiftly and thoroughly. In just a couple of weeks, he had gone from supported friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and happy Stark Industries intern to swiping toiletries, canned food, and cereal over the scanner of a cashier point while he worried about his comatose superhero mentor whose life was hanging in the balance. This was a nightmare. And it was only his first day of his new summer job. With everything that had happened the week before, with what had happened to Mr. Stark, he had almost forgotten about the upcoming change in his routine.

This had been a horrible idea. It might be giving him some breathing room with Aunt May complaining about the internship, but he wasn't all that sure anymore, that this would be worth it. All the beeping, all the people talking around him, the weird smells that came from the fast-food counter close to the exit. He had picked Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays to work just to be sure that it wouldn't clash with his internship days. So, of course his first day had fallen on the first day of his summer recess. All that planning around his timetable with Mr. Stark now seemed a little redundant. His mentor was still unresponsive the last time he had been at the Compound, which had been the previous night. They hadn't even taken him off the breathing machine. Peter's heart gave a tight squeeze as the images of his mentor lying motionless in that room all alone flickered in front of his eyes. All wasn't well. It really, really wasn't.

"Hey, those aren't mine!"

Peter shook himself out of his thoughts. "Sorry!" He stared at the monitor. There were a couple of cans with sliced pineapple on the older ladies tally now, that belonged to the next person in line. Heat shot in his face and his hands started to sweat.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit!

"Erm... I'm so sorry, Ma'am, I don't really know..." He turned around, looking for someone he could wave to for help, but nobody was paying any attention to him. His supervisor, who had shown him what to do, had her back turned to him and Peter was completely blanking on her name. You'd think those checkout registers should be super intuitive, but Peter would probably have an easier time programming one of these things than remembering which colored button did what. Nope, he wasn't going to wing this.

It took him forever and just before he was about to leave his booth and actually walk down to talk to her, his supervisor did notice him at last. People were already switching to other checkout counters and both ladies, that were waiting for his mistake to be corrected, were getting rather impatient.

"Just concentrate a little better, Peter." Zoey, that's what it was, Zoey told him. "You have to be a lot faster than this."

6 hours. It wasn't even the maximum a minor was allowed to work on a non-school day by law, but it was long enough. It was still a short day compared to the time he would usually spend working at his internship, but time just didn't want to pass at all while he was sitting behind that counter. So different to his time at the lab, which had always been everything but tedious. Not recently of course. Those past few days had been hard. He had gone back to the Compound every single day. To see Mr. Stark, obviously. Peter stayed with him as much as he could, not just to be there if he— when, when he would wake up. There was another issue he had been dealing with: his suit. He was still without an acceptable way to access the technology that was supposed to help him keep people safe. Sure, the suit itself would probably work even if Mr. Stark had been worried. That had just been him freaking out about the incident in Leipzig. And who could blame him? But there had been a different problem that had emerged that last Friday night.

He had sat by Mr. Stark's bed for what had felt like hours, just staring at the ceiling, the walls or the man himself. His mentor's skin was incredibly pale. The only color came from the dark red wounds on his forehead, on the bridge of his nose and an array of smaller cuts on his cheekbones just above the mounting of the breathing tube. They blended in with the dark purple color of a bruise just below the man's left eye. There was nothing Peter could do to help. He'd been trying to at least say something, talk to him in an effort to, well, to what? He probably didn't even hear him. Still, there was a desperate urge in Peter's heart to have him know that he wasn't alone.