Life was Good

Peter had a calm smile on his face as he waited for the elevator to reach its destination. Laura was at his side, she was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a black tank top that hugged her skin and cut off at the stomach, showing off her defined abbs and body. Over the top of that was a black leather jacket that was newly bought.

Peter couldn't help but let his eyes wander for a second as he took her frame in, before quickly snapping back to reality and starring ahead. 'Why did elevators always take so long???'. If he had been paying a little more attention, he might have noticed Laura tracking him movements in the corner of her eye.

She smiled to herself as she thought back on the day. She didn't know why Peter had woken her up so early, but she was glad to spend time with him. It had already been 4 months since he had come to stay at the tower and with everything that was happening, the missions to take out hydra basses, the constant training, the numerous test Tony kept running on her.

She wanted to let out a small growl at the thought of the nosy billionaire, but it was repressed quickly at the thought of the day. Peter had taken her to the park where his bench used to be, it was already repaired and replaced, which was a little surprising but even the city must have realized having a bullet ridden bench in the middle of central park wasn't the best idea.

Or maybe a certain someone greased the wheels to get it done faster.

While there he had taken her to the best hod dog cart in the city, or so he had proclaimed and she had to admit it was good. She had polished off two pretty easily. After that he had taken her to Coney Island where they spent the rest of the day at the fair. Though she was a bit uncomfortable with the amount of people that were around she started to thoroughly enjoy herself when he had grabbed her hand and pulled her around to each amusement.

Her heart beat sped up a little as she snuggled into her new leather jacket, Peter had won it for her after he noticed her staring at it as they walked by, what could she say for some reason she really loved a good leather jacket.

This action Peter did see, his smile getting wider.

It had been a long 4 months as he slowly settled into a new groove. After having met the avengers at the mall and coming back to the compound Peter had quickly set up a new normal balancing his life and vigilante work.

Though technically he was still spider man 8+ hours a day.

How did the avengers not notice? Simple really.

After the realization that hydra had infiltrated shield and the fallout from the big Washington debacle the avengers had become very busy. Captain America had been shielded pretty heavily as he was the one to stop them, along with the falcon that had to be debriefed by his superiors.

Though they were shielded it didn't mean they weren't going to be called in for the senate meeting that were taking place in Washington to address the issue. At the same time this meant that Natasha wasn't around a lot as she was a key player in the trials and her face had progressively been plastered on the TV.

Something Peter was pretty sad about.

Clint went off the radar pretty quickly and only showed up ever second day or so. Though Peter knew where he was going after having Crystal check, there were rare few people who knew where he disappeared to.

Both Bruce and Tony spent most of their time around the tower, though Bruce had been disappearing as well to deal with the aftermath of his trip to help his cousin 4 months back and his run in with old rival general Thadeus Ross.

Peter had been informed about what happened but left well enough alone, Bruce's cousin herself had decided to isolate herself away from others as she came to terms with her new 'condition', thankfully Tony was nice enough to foot the bill to where she was hiding, while Peter and Crstal were stalling the government and especially Ross from doing anything drastic to the poor woman.

Though Bruce and Tony were around a lot more, they were both reclusive, working out in the labs whenever they could, though Peter would see them whenever he went down to work on things, such as Natasha's 'Widow Bites', they didn't care to talk to him too much outside of that or want to know where he was.

Not that they were bad people to hang out with, Peter actually quite liked working with them, but duty called and he was back to being the friendly neighborhood Spider man. Though he did get a chuckle every now and then when Crystal would inform him that Tony had once again tried to track his position through satellite imaging. Of Course, Crystal would then hack their servers and leave a new surprise for the billionaire.

On Felicia's side, she was busy once again with school, something she couldn't escape from, though she did skip quite a few days from what Peter could tell. Thor was an altogether different matter. Though Peter thought he might be heading back to Aagard and that would be the reason he couldn't appear often, it was actually him heading around the world and checking up on Jane Foster that took up a majority of his time. Felicia had a field day with the number of jokes she made about the two when Thor was around. It was funnier how Thor reacted to the teasing.

Finally, it was back to Laura. Her time had been split between the institute and the tower. Though he didn't pry, he knew that the relationship between her and Logan had been getting marginally better and she had been making a lot more friends with the other mutants with the number of visits she had. He heard she had been getting close to two people, a Rogue and Jubilee.

He hadn't met them yet, but he soon would be. Another smile flashed on his face this time though it was a bit sly as he watched the number on the elevator continue to go up. They were almost at their destination.

The other thing that had been keeping Laura busy were the number of tests that Tony and Bruce were running her through. Peter wouldn't lie he was also pretty interested in what happened to Laura. Though he slightly knew about what happened to Laura with her Adamantium Claws, no one could figure out how she suddenly acquired a whole set of bones covered in the substance, well actually they weren't even sure what the substance was.

Peter may or may not have had Crystal hack into Tony's servers to find out his results and then sent them to Shuri to have a look. Even she couldn't figure out what the substance was made of and that was intriguing as well as terrifying though it hadn't caused her any trouble yet, or hurt her from what every test could tell.

What the strange thing was, is that even though her whole body structure was covered in this substance her bones still seemed to be growing, which made no sense. She should have been stuck in her body height for the rest of her life, her bones set and unchanging like Logan's, but over the last 4 months she had actually grown a full 2 inches, which of course kicked off another round of research and test.

Though Peter did make sure they didn't go too far. Laura had already been through enough test in her life.

Finally, what had been keeping the avengers busy had been dealing with the remnants of Hydra. Though they had been called into senate every now and then, the main threat they had been dealing with were the amount of Hydra Bases that Tony had been discovering using the Shield database and other world reports.

Though most missions only lasted a day, especially with the Quinn Jett getting them where they needed to go fast, it still banked up into a lot of time. The amount of good they had done in this time had already caused them to accrue international fame.

Thankfully most countries let them come and go as they pleased, especially when I came to the radical and nihilistic HYDRA cult. Though there were some countries that denied their meddling like Latveria, though Peter highly doubted Hydra would be foolish enough to try and set up a base in Doom's country.

*Ding*

Peter shook his head as he finally heard the sound of the elevator stopping. Moving to the side and slightly behind Laura his smile grew wider as the doors opened into the dark pent house. Laura frowned as the lights in the pent house were nearly always on, especially at 6 o'clock. Her body tense as she sniffed the air, her claws about to pop out when the lights turned on and....

SURPRISE!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Laura stopped in shock as Peter gently moved her forward.

Everyone in the room that had gathered for her birthday stepped forward as they started to congratulate the girl and hand over small presents and hugs. Laura didn't know where to even begin as Peter stepped back and watched who he guessed was Rogue and Jubilee step forward to surround their friend as they began to talk and move her elsewhere.

Felcia stepped to his side as they both watched her be drawn to the giant cake that Tony had prepared. "Did she enjoy the day?" Felcia asked from the side as she gave Peter a quick look. Peter gave her a quick look as well as he replied.

"Yeah, she loved it, didn't suspect a thing. We didn't even do that much" She gave him a small playful slap on his arm as she grabbed his shoulder and also pulled him over. "Don't think I don't see that new jacket you got for her..." She leaned into whisper as she tilted her head to Logan who was off to the side already drinking a glass of hard liquor.

"...though I think you may have undercut Logan, I think I saw him bring in a different leather jacket for his gift." Peter turned his head and swallowed in a tiny amount of fear. He didn't want a near immortal serial killer coming after him because he had undercut his gift to his 'daughter', he's also trying to connect with.

He started to think of his escape plans as they moving forward. "Wouldn't have been able to do this if you hadn't posed the question and then got everyone on board." The party idea had started first when Felcia and him had been talking about Laura and when her birthday was.

It should have been no surprise, though it was horrifying, that Laura had never actually had a birthday party before. After having quietly probed this information 1 month ago, it had been Felcia and Peter's mission to throw her one.

Thankfully Tony was a billionaire and Felicia had certain ways to get him to spend money, Peter didn't ask. All they needed was for everyone to be around on a certain day, as well as Laura gone for most of it so they could set up. This was where Peter gracefully stepped in to take her out.

Looking at her face now, as she bit into her birthday cake for the first time, a smile blossoming wider on her lips, Peter couldn't help but smile.

Life was good.