It had been ten minutes, and Lucy was starting to worry if Spider-Man was really friends with Tony Stark or not.

Together, they sat on the balcony of Mr. Stark's personal floor of the Avengers Tower. Well, she sat, Spider-Man was pacing up and down the balcony so quick, she was afraid the web slinger was going to burn a line into the ground. Lucy raised a brow, tilting her head slightly as she tapped her foot impatiently. "Hey, look, I've got a life to get back to, unfortunately so maybe we can—"

"No, he said come over! He said he wanted to meet you." he sounded nervous, like he didn't trust his own statement. He also shouted it at her, making her take a step back.

"Alright, but really, we look even more like idiots like we usually do just standing here. Did he say when he was coming over?"

"Uh, no, he just said bring her to the tower, I just kind of guessed he meant here." he said sheepishly, stopping in his tracks. Lucy couldn't help but notice that his stance looked very small, almost like the way a child acts when they've been told off. It suddenly occurred to her that she had just let a complete stranger drag her to Avengers Tower with the opportunity to meet Mr. Stark, that seemed like a complete open and shut case of Stranger Danger. She stood up, folding her arms as she looked up to the sky, as if Iron Man would fly by as if on cue. "He's gonna be here." the young vigilante said, nodding.

Lucy just gave him a sidewards glance, before shivering a bit. She wondered if Sarah knew where she was, they had installed a tracker in her suit to make sure the hacker could keep up and know her whereabouts at all times while crime fighting. Usually, she had to go and pick her up because she was beaten up pretty badly and needed Sarah's aid right away, so it was one of the better ideas they had had as a collective mind. Perhaps the coverage up this high wasn't great, Tony Stark seemed the type to be paranoid about being listened to, or tracked(despite previous media interviews where he practically invited criminals to his doorstep), so she doubted Sarah could get a proper signal while she was this high up. Lucy had to close her eyes a moment, she absolutely hated heights. They made her palms clammy, and her balance shift. She took a breath, she could do this.

Just then, she heard an excited gasp leave the masked hero beside her, making her eyes open to see a blur of red and gold shoot through the night sky. The famous suit of armour looked bigger than what she would've thought when coming face to face with it. Her heart rate increased as the armour began to settle a few feet in front of her. She was going to meet Tony Stark, she was going to meet one of her idols, she couldn't believe it. Spider-Man turned to her a little, chuckling. "Told you."

All she could do was nod, before she walked over to the suit of armour currently getting taken off the billionaire's body. "Mr. Stark!" Lucy squeaked, getting the man's attention. "Oh my god, you're real. You actually exist."

Tony smiled a curt smile at her. "Yep, pretty sure I do exist. That would be a let down if I was just AI all this time."

Lucy jumped in her spot. "I have so many questions, what's it like when the armour goes on, do you have a suit for every occasion, have you let any of the other Avengers wear it?" the endless stream of questions began to melt into unintelligible gibberish, making Tony stare at her, not getting any of it. Behind her, Spider-Man's lenses narrowed in confusion at her ability to talk so fast. She only stopped when Tony held up a hand to silence her. He turned his attention to the other hero.

"Is she always like this?" when all he got was a shrug in response, he sighed. "Alright then, let's start again—"

"But you didn't answer my questions." Lucy said, a little cluelessly.

Tony clenched his raised hand for a second, before starting again. "Hey, you must be Flicker. Spider-ling's been talking about you for awhile, so I've decided to see what all the fuss was about. Care to tell me a little about yourself?"

"Oh, uh," suddenly Lucy forget everything about her superhero persona, "I call myself Flicker because I can teleport—"

"Wait, really, like using tech or—?" Tony's curiosity suddenly peaked.

Her face lit up. She walked a bit away from them, until she could see Tony have to squint to see her. Closing her eyes, she visualised the spot right beside the Avenger and when she reopened them, she was where she needed to be, staring up at his alarmed face. "I try to be a superhero but I don't think that's working out very well." she smiled at him innocently.

Tony blinked, trying to figure out how she did that. "From the videos I've seen, no, it's not." he said, still a little distractedly. "But, that's fine. We can work with that, you can work with that."

When he pointed to Spider-Man, the two younger heroes balked. "I can what?!" Spider-Man exclaimed at the same time Lucy shouted. "He can what?!"

"Come on, you need a little experience working with someone else if you guys plan on being Avengers. Lord knows it coulda helped us." he muttered the last part to himself before recollecting himself and pointing to the both of them. "So, this is the point where you tell each other your identities."

You could've knocked Lucy over with a feather at that point. Both her and Spider-Man began to voice their outrage before he silenced them. "Ah, ah. Identities are another thing we don't care about in the Avengers. Also, I really want to know what kind of mask you have because someone your age should not have that kind of tech. Hand it over."

She hesitated, before conceding that he was right, everyone in the world knew the Avengers identities, it wasn't a big deal. So, swallowing hard, she slipped her mask off her face, revealing plain, Lucy Connors for all the world to see. Lucy tried to look effortless while she did it, but her hair did end up getting caught in her mask. "Uh, hi." she said, in a hay voice that was the complete opposite of what she had wanted to come off as.

Spider-Man stood there for a few seconds as Tony admired the tech in the mask before he ripped off his own. Lucy's eyes widened to the size of planets at the revelation. Peter fucking Parker, her tutor, was standing right in front of her, as her once main rival.

"What?" the two said in unison, making Tony look up.

"You two know each other." he asked, concentrating on the mask again.

"We're in the same math class." Lucy answered for them. "He's my tutor."

"Huh, how fitting. He's your tutor in both school and street." he seemed to be entirely pleased with the notion, but Lucy was anything but. This was so weird. From Peter's look, that feeling was mutual. once Tony was done with the mask, he handed it back to her. "Okay, so, I've a question. Who gave you that mask?"

"My friend Sarah." Lucy replied, still not done staring at Peter. "She wouldn't tell me where she got it though."

"Yeah, she got it from me."

That made her eyes tear away from her tutors. "She got it from who now?"

"From me, all that tech, that's all me. So either she stole from me, or she's a damn good replica maker."

Suddenly, it hit Lucy like a truck. "Her dad works for Stark Tech."

"Robert White?" she nodded. "You're friends with his kid?" she nodded again. "Great, because I need that little pest near me again." Lucy pressed her lips into a thin line, she knew Sarah had badgered her dad to try and get her a job at Stark Tech, going so far as to hack into Tony's personal phone line to ask him herself. The girl's dedication as second to none. "Alright, you can keep it, I wasn't going to use it anyway, it was just some practice."

She cradled the mask in her hand. "Uh, thanks, I guess?"

"Okay, so, here's my idea. Peter will teach how to actually be a proper, functioning superhero, and maybe we'll consider you two for an Avenger spot."

"An Avenger spot, you mean just one?" Peter piped in for the first time in a while.

Tony shrugged. "Two kids on the team? I'm not up for that, and honestly, I don't think Happy is up for that. So, decide amongst yourselves. You know, do that chick flick thing were you battle it out while 'one way or another' plays in the distance, or something to that affect."

As he strutted off, Peter called after him. "But how do we tell you that we've made a decision?" 

"You'll know!" he pressed something on his phone and his armour began to resurface. "Don't do anything stupid, you two!" he waved his metal clad fingers at the before taking off, leaving them at Stark Tower.

Lucy scowled at the figure flying away. "He didn't answer my questions."

Peter turned back to her and groaned.

Finding Flicker was much worse than he thought.

-

School that Monday was weird.

It was the beginning of the end of the school year, exams were beginning soon, extra curricular were finishing up and the only thing both Lucy Connors and Peter Parker could think about was, oh my god, someone knows my identity. 

As the thought practically ate away at Lucy until lunch, Peter was thinking of ways he could let her down easily when it came to the training part. Throughout social studies he kept thinking of scenarios to tell her they weren't going to work out. Most of them ended with him ending up on his ass, so it was a work in progress.

Lucy and Sarah met at lunch, the former talking animatedly about something that happened in her french class and all the while everything went in one of Lucy's ears and out the other. All she could think about was that her tutor was Spider-Man, that one of the smartest, and yet least popular kids in her school happened to be the hero who did everything right. She sat down, her mind far away as Sarah kept on talking. She hated that she was kind of ignoring her friend, but she had an excuse.

She cupped her chin with her fist as she sat there for a few moments, struggling to get that info into her head, when Sarah said something that shook her out of her stupor. "Hey Ned, come sit over here!"

Ned, she knew that name. Ned Leeds was the boy from her English class, the one who talked about Star Wars like it was his life blood, and the boy who Sarah talked about far too often to be considered 'being nice'. She sat up straighter, remembering something else, something important about the boy. His only best friend was Peter Parker, they went everywhere together. Lucy was so screwed.

And sure enough, he showed up beside Ned, who was waving at Sarah with a dopey grin on his face. His friend paled beside him as they walked over to the two girls. Lucy turned her stare into a slight glare, but she realised how weird that would look and so turned her gaze to anyone in the room but him. Her eyes landed upon Flash for a moment, who just raised a confused brow at her and shifted in his seat. Great, that didn't work either. Looks like she was going to have to face the music.

Ned set his stuff down, Peter doing the same right next to him. "Hey, Sarah!" he said, waving again.

"Hi, Sarah." Peter said with a small, polite smile. Then, he nodded at her. "Lucy."

"Peter." she said straight back, although she still wasn't looking at him.

Sarah frowned. "You two know each other."

"No." they said in unison. They had a habit of doing that, and every time, they found each others eyes. Lucy huffed, this was annoying.

"But you said you were tutoring someone named Lucy." Ned said, not getting situation at all. Lucy could tell just from the way Peter looked at his friend, that Ned had no clue about his powers or identity. Perhaps Sarah would be just as oblivious if Lucy wasn't so liberal with her powers.

Peter closed his eyes for a second, breathing slow and hard. "Yeah, I am."

Lucy shot him a smirk, as if to say, in more ways than one. He just rested his chin on his crossed arms on the table. Sarah tucked her black hair behind her ear, before speaking to Ned. "Um, Ned?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you see the new X-Wing lego set I got?" Lucy's eyes grew soft at the blush that was creeping across Ned's tan complexion. "I can show the photos on my phone if you want."

From the corner of her eye, Peter's head lifted a little in interest. "Um, yeah, sure. How many pieces?"

"217. I know it's small."

"No, 217 pieces is really awesome." together, they flicked through the photos. "Cool! I heard they're coming out with a new huge death star one!"

Sarah's mouth fell open. "You mean the one where you get Palpatine as well?" he nodded. "Oh my god, Lucy, did you hear that?"

"I did." Lucy said in what could only be described in a mother listening to her child ramble on, kind of way. For a second, her eyes flashed to Peter, who was grinning at the scene in front of them. He locked eyes with her for a moment before raising his brows in delight. He was just as touched as she was to watch these two idiots in love talk.

"I was gonna buy something from the vending machine. Wanna come?" Ned asked quietly to Sarah, who nodded, her own blush sneaking through. They both got up with the promise of returning, and before they knew it, they were alone.

Peter opened his mouth to say something, before Lucy broke the silence first. "I have a proposition."

He hesitated. "...Go on."

"You saw what I saw right? How these two are practically made for each other?"

"I saw what you saw."

"Well, my propositon, dear web slinger, is to get these two together by the end of the summer."

Peter's head rose from his arms although. "Matchmaking is not my thing. Girls don't....I'm not very good with girls, let me tell you."

Lucy waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, I don't care about your inability to talk to us, I'm just saying that we push these two into situations that force them to talk about their feelings or some romantic shit like that."

The boy frowned at her. "So, on top of me tutoring you, and training you, you want us to be matchmakers to our friends."

"It's either that or we fight over who get's to be an Avenger. I'm all for option one, by the way."

He didn't need time to think about it. Ned deserved someone who liked him as much as Sarah seemed to. Now, if only Lucy could help him with Liz. "You've got yourself a deal, Ms. Flicker."

Lucy grinned just as Sarah and Ned came back to the table. Sarah held a packet of skittles in her hand while Ned held a bottle of gatorade. "Hey, what's with the atmosphere change?" she asked.

The two, both partner in crime fighting and couple creating, smiled at each other.

"We just found some common ground."

-

A/N: and so, operation get Narah together is in flight. 

If I'm going to be honest, the main couple for the majority of this book is Ned/Sarah, Peter/Lucy don't really find out about their feelings until later. Like when I say this is slow burn, this is slow burn. They've got too much to think about anyway, what with Tony giving them that ultimatum. 

I love how different Lucy is to Nora, like she deals with Peter's identity differently, and her relationship with everyone is completely different. For example, Nora would like Lucy, Lucy wouldn't be so fond of Nora. Nora's way too uptight for her. Nora's alignment is true neutral, Lucy is the most chaotic good one can get. 

Comment, vote & follow! - emma