So... you remember that time I said I was done? No more chapters? Guess I lied. Had another idea, and rolled with it. Hope you like it. I was supposed to be cleaning.

Tony knew that Peter was weird.

Well, that wasn't to say that he himself wasn't weird. And when most of your closest friends are a green rage monster, a spy, an alien/god, a sorcerer, a spandex wearing parkour enthusiast, or a hundred-year-old walking American flag, weird becomes the normal.

But Peter wasn't any of those things. Peter was a scientist and a mechanic. A genius of many talents. That, Tony figured, was the sort of cocktail that would inevitably come with quirks. But by quirks, Tony meant something like eating the same sundae every night, OCD, or counting backwards as he worked. Hell, Peter could have decided to do his thing in his underwear and Tony would've barely blinked. But Peter didn't just have genius quirks, Peter was weird.

Take last year for example. Tony had meandered into Peter's lab to get a second opinion on a project and what he saw just about gave him a heart attack. Apparently Peter had the brilliant idea to glue his own feet to the ceiling. It took the next half hour to cut him down, and another hour of soaking the kid's feet, along with the chunks of ceiling panels, in a solution before Peter's feet were freed.

Peter kept insisting that he thought the change of perspective would help him think better. Tony told him he was an idiot. The billionaire still had no idea how Peter managed to get himself in that position.

Or last week, when Tony caught Peter staring at a fly in the kitchen. Tony hadn't thought it possible, but Peter never lost sight of it. Flies are really fast and small. It shouldn't be possible to follow it with your eyes for as long as Peter was.

And what about last month, when Tony and Peter were discussing the pros and cons of human cloning? Out of nowhere, Peter gasped, eyes wide, and went stiff as a board. When Tony asked what that was about, the kid started spouting nonsense about realizing he left the oven on. Jarvis later informed Tony that it was in that very moment that a minor earthquake had passed them. The wave was so small that it shouldn't have been possible to even feel it, much less on a skyscraper.

Tony was starting to think Peter was secretly a mutant. And taking the fly incident into account, maybe frog based? Whatever was going on with Peter, Tony made it his mission to find out.

At first, he tried placing cameras around his apartment. But Peter didn't do anything that gave himself away. If anything, Peter looked a bit wary, as if he knew he was being watched. Tony gave that idea up after a month.

That was when the billionaire decided to take a more direct approach. Getting a viable DNA sample was easy. The tower was a second home to Peter after all. It didn't take long for Tony to figure out that Peter wasn't entirely human. About 95% was human, the rest he couldn't identify. Without another strand of DNA to compare it to, Tony had no way of knowing what it was. He couldn't just run a search, that sort of technology didn't exist.

He considered writing software into his scanners that would identify if Peter had the X gene, but figured there'd be no harm in making a call first.

He asked Professor Xavier, point blank, if Peter was a mutant. Xavier simply laughed and assured Tony that the kid wasn't a mutant. Tony hung up with a smirk on his face.

Xavier hadn't bothered to ask Tony who Peter was.

Meaning Xavier already knew who Peter was.

Meaning Peter was a mutant.

At first Tony wondered why Peter hadn't come clean with him, but after a fair bit of thought he figured that mutants don't exactly have the best reputation and press. And although Stark Industries had donated a few million to various mutant charities, Tony himself hadn't been particularly public about his support for mutants.

He decided to fix that. If Peter was uncomfortable about sharing his secret, then Stark was going to change his mind.

Phase 1: Tony started a conversation up with Peter about mutants and all that they could offer the world. After about half an hour he realized that all Peter had been saying for the past ten minutes was "uh-huh" and hadn't looked up from the chemistry set up he'd been dutifully maintaining. Tony scowled, unbeknownst to Peter.

Phase 2: Stark set up a press conference in which he publicly donated ten million toward Professor Xavier's school for gifted youngsters. He even read a speech Pepper wrote for him about his support for the misunderstood group of people.

The press went wild.

The people went wild.

Social media went wild.

Peter blinked, said that's great, and went right back to calibrating the bionic leg he was working on. Tony pouted from behind his back.

Phase 3: Tony made an effort to go out of his way to ask Peter how his day was, and that if he everneeded someone to talk to, Tony would be there. Finally, Tony saw the reaction he was looking for. Every time the topic was brought up, Peter would curl into himself a little more. He looked more and more guilty every time Tony reached out to him.

After Tony buttered him up for a couple weeks, Peter seemed to crack just a little bit.

"Why did you go public?"

Tony stopped what he was doing, a little confused by the question. "What?"

Peter was dutifully avoiding his gaze. "When you said you were Ironman, what made you decide to do it?"

"Uh…" Tony had to take a second to figure out how best to answer. This was the most progress he'd made in months, and he didn't want to mess it up. "I didn't want to hide, I guess. Little known fact, but a government agency was trying to have me sweep the whole thing under the rug. Bending to the will of someone else so soon after, you know, Afghanistan… it didn't sit right with me."

"Oh," Peter hurriedly nodded in understanding, "That makes sense. But… do you ever regret it? I mean, doesn't people knowing who you are put a target on your back and everyone who knows you?"

"Are you worried that someone is going to target you?"

"N-no! Not at all, I just mean…" Peter started to fidget with his shirt.

Tony looked at Peter with a new growing sense of understanding. "I still don't regret it. If I know who my friends are, and my friends know who I am, I think it makes it a lot easier to trust and look out for each other." Tony paused to smirk at Peter, who was too deep in thought to notice. "Of course, it doesn't hurt that most of my friends can hold their own when the going gets tough."

Peter grew quiet after that. The rest of the afternoon was spent in silence.

Phase ∞: A week after Tony and Peter's heart to heart, Spider-Man swung right onto the top of the tower and asked Jarvis to let him in. When Tony was notified, he didn't know what to think. Spider-Man had never just shown up uninvited before, and in the middle of the day no less. Well, except that one time. The one with the window… but in hindsight, it was kind of warranted.

But that was a long time ago and entirely forgotten! Well, mostly. Anyway, back to the present. Tony told Jarvis to let the webhead in and took an elevator up to meet with him.

The moment Tony's eyes connected with Spidey's lenses, Spider-Man ripped his mask off. Tony saw the face of Peter and all he could do was gape. Puzzle pieces started slamming into place in rapid succession in Tony's mind. Every time a question would come up, he'd start to try to phrase it aloud before another puzzle piece would slam into place and shut off that train of thought.

On the outside, Peter shifted from foot to foot and watched in terrified fascination as Tony stood there, mouth opening and closing and making a faint choking sound.

Tony had known both Peter and Spider-Man for years now. There wasn't really all that much he could ask that he didn't already know.

But wait, Spider-Man's an enhanced from a lab accident! He can't be Peter, because Peter's a mutant-

…

Tony face-palmed.