A Family of Flaws

Chapter Sixteen; Two Spiders Meet

Peter shook his head and shrugged at her words. "All I did was patch you up and move you." He said with a sheepish smile, feeling self-conscious in front of the spy. "Plus, it was already enough that you and the other Avengers let me help. That was like, totally awesome."

  "Good, because I thought that you should come to the tower one day and train with me." Black Widow spoke, almost casually, while placing her hands on her hips. "I hate to say it, but you have no proper technique. It looks like you just picked up on some good strategies and go with what your instincts tell you." She said critically, dropping the friendly act and looking at him with a dead serious face. "Instincts can save your life, but so can some proper training."

  Peter froze and nodded mutely. She wasn't the first Avenger to want to train with him, Hawkeye had mentioned it too, and Captain America and Falcon had mentioned training with the team when they first confronted him. But it was so weird to hear someone critique him when they hadn't even seen him fight.

  Unless Black Widow had seen him fight.

  But there was no way she watched him, right? He wasn't even that important of a hero. All he did was stop local muggings and maybe help with containing some bigger villains (which were always handled by the Avengers or some government unit). Maybe Black Widow just didn't trust him and wanted to see if he was really trying to be a hero or not.

  Peter pushed all his thoughts away. Black Widow might just actually be interested in his skills and abilities. For once he might be more than a street hero who stood in the shadows. But that didn't matter right now, clearly she wasn't here to talk about why she wanted to help him improve or why the Avengers wanted to recruit him. She was here to invite him to train with her at the tower. And that was awesome on so many levels.

  Trying to keep himself from freaking out, Peter stood up a bit straighter and turned back to Black Widow, hoping she didn't see the way he zoned out a bit, lost in his overactive thoughts. "Training sounds cool." He replied, trying to sound nonchalant (and failing). "I'm free all weekend." He added, making sure to leave out as many personal details as possible. Even if he wanted to trust her (and the other Avengers) he was definitely not ready for his identity to be revealed, but knowing the team's history, he truly doubted they wouldn't try to figure it out.

  Hopefully they could learn to just trust him and let him reveal his identity in his own time.

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*Peter's POV*

Crawling back in through his bedroom window, Peter felt tired but excited. After his interaction with the Black Widow, his night had continued as per usual, and that had been that. Tomorrow (technically today because it was already four in the morning) he was going to be meeting Black Widow on the roof of Avengers tower and training with her, and possibly meeting some of the other Avengers.

Though he was tired and wanted to sleep, he also wanted to take a shower and eat something so he could be ready for the training session. They had arranged to meet around six o'clock in the afternoon, so he still had a lot of time, but he vibrated with enthusiasm and anxiety. Training with the Avengers. That was so cool but they were also some of the smartest and strongest people in the world, the elite. Would his identity be compromised if he let his guard down? How was he supposed to go when he would have to be on edge constantly?

Peter sighed and rubbed his eyes, he didn't want to think so badly of the Avengers. They were Earth's mightiest heroes after all, but it was hard to trust people when their job was to protect the people of Earth, no matter the cost. If they thought it was necessary, then they would do whatever it takes to find out his identity. Thankfully, it seemed they had settled on recruiting him and they weren't pushing him to reveal his identity.

Maybe they would just trust him, get to know him, and let him reveal his identity on his own. They all seemed genuine enough, from the brief interactions he had with them outside of fighting.

As Peter pulled off his suit, he made sure to stretch his hearing as far as possible, listening all around for the usual sounds that signaled May was on her way up to the apartment. She had worked a long night shift so it was unlikely she was going to barge into his room, but she was going to be home in about half an hour, and he didn't want to risk outing his identity to her. With the stress of everything else, he should be the one thing she didn't have to worry about.

Peter threw on a pair of shorts and a baggy t-shirt before sitting down at his desk and pulling out some homework. He could take a nap later when May was sleeping as well, then he could shower quickly and leave to make it to the training session. Unfortunately, just because it was the weekend, teachers still decided to assign ungodly amounts of homework. Getting a head start on it was never a bad thing, even if it was four in the morning.

Cringing at the sight of the large packet, he grabbed a pencil and began jotting down answer after answer. The answers were messily written and he was hardly showing any work (preferring to do most of the things in his head) but they were all correct as far as he was aware, which meant he made quick work of the whole packet within forty minutes of starting it.

May had come in a few minutes ago, going straight to bed without even changing from what he could hear, and heading off to dreamland long before Peter would be. It was nice to hear her soft breathes at the back of his mind, unnoticeable for people with normal senses, but background noise for Peter.

Finishing off a short page that was supposed to be written about a book the class had read at the beginning of the year, Peter pulled out his earphones and put his music on the lowest setting, still a little too loud for his ears, but it drowned out all the other things that he could unfortunately hear.

Paper after paper was finished in record time, and then messily shoved back into Peter's school bag. There was still one class that had a packet that needed to be completed, but it was in Chemistry so it wouldn't take long.

Checking the time, Peter allowed relief to wash over him as he noted it was about eight, which meant he could shower without May thinking it was weird.

Still being careful of where he stepped and how loud he was (May was no doubt exhausted and he didn't want to wake her), Peter grabbed some clean clothes and headed into the small bathroom. The water would be cold and unwelcoming, but it would wash the smell of sweat and the dirt that still managed to get all over him despite the suit off of his skin.