If They Knew All About You

Paper Trail

The sun had been up for a while, though it wasn't all that high in the sky yet. Peter was just lying on his side, eyes on the window. His head hurt and there was a deep fatigue in his bones that he wasn't quite able to shake. That was probably the concussion, or maybe the aftereffects of the cradle. Dr. Cho had said he'd still need time to recover, spider-metabolism or not.

Mr. Stark had come to see him a couple of times. At least as far as Peter could tell. He hadn't spend all that much time conscious since he'd woken up in that room. The man had still been quite distant and Peter couldn't really blame him. Of course, he was. Peter had tried to get some of the things that had happened over the last days straight in his head, but a lot of it was still a blur. There was a part of him that was honestly thankful for that. He tried to think about that warehouse as little as possible. Their efforts to extract the pin code from him. The joy those men had taken from their work on him. He forced the thought out of his head. That was in the past. That stuff didn't matter.

A lot of those images, those memories were a blur though anyway. Still, after careful consideration he had decided that some things that he kind of remembered must have been more than fever dreams or hallucinations, they must have been true. He did remember seeing Mr. Stark down in that basement. He did remember him being shot at and that had of course turned out to be true. Peter had tried to pin down a coherent version of how he had gotten out of those heavy chains that had trapped him in that chair and it wasn't Mr. Stark face that he saw in front of himself, freeing him. It was Steve Rogers. The Rogues hadn't been an illusion. Steve Rogers had appeared in that hole and ripped off the chains that had held Peter down. The bonds that he had been too weak to break on his own. Maybe Captain America was stronger than him after all. Maybe it had just been the drugs. Either way, they had come and rescued him. Mr. Stark with the help of the Avengers. Some of them at least. Mr. Stark had even confirmed that they knew who he was now.

He owed them his life. He still owed Mr. Stark an apology for breaking his trust. For going behind his back. A proper one, not the stammering sniffling version he's produced so far. Peter couldn't stand the quiet looks, the physical distance the man kept. It made him face how badly he really had screwed up, reminded him of what they once had and how different everything would be from now on.

A deep growl from his stomach pulled him out of his thoughts. He'd had breakfast. That was the first shock of the day. Well, no. The first shock of the day had been when he had woken in the middle of the night and found Mr. Stark sitting next to his bed. That had been the first shock. Miss Potts pushing through the door to his room in the morning bringing him breakfast had been a different kind of shock.

"Good morning."

He blinked at her a couple of times, his mouth all dry. "Mo-morning."

"How did you sleep?"

"I... erm.. okay.... okay, I guess."

She had been carrying a tray with a bunch of stuff; a sandwich, some cereal, fruit and a glass of juice. The tray had fold-out legs and she waited for Peter to shuffle up into more of a sitting position before she placed it across his lap.

"Well, that makes one of us." She sighed and massaged her lower neck with one hand.

Peter squinted at her from behind his sandwich, not sure what to say. Not sure how to even begin to have a conversation with Pepper Potts.

She pulled up the chair that Mr. Stark had used earlier, elaborating. "Fell asleep on the couch."

It was outlandish having her sit there and complain about something so mundane, reminded him of those first couple of weeks when he had gotten to know Mr. Stark. Both of them larger than life global pop-culture icons but at such close proximity seemingly so normal. He would have never pictured Pepper Potts agreeing to sit let alone sleep on anything but the most expensive, most comfortable designer furniture money could buy. Well, he had assumed the same of Mr. Stark until he had made friends with those weird couches in his workshops.