He has to do it.

He has to.

He doesn't care that it's getting late. He doesn't care that he and all of the Avengers agreed that it was a good time for everyone to go to bed and that he should really be trying to sleep right now. He can't just not give his new Spider-Man suit a whirl.

He slips the suit on, pulling the mask on last to complete the look. He feels so badass. He can't see himself from here, but he's pretty sure he looks so badass too. This is so cool. He's going to be the coolest superhero in Queens. (He might already be the coolest superhero in Queens. Is that Daredevil guy in Queens? He's somewhere in the city. He's probably been in Queens before. He counts as competition for the title.)

And then there's a woman's voice in his ear.

"Hello, Peter," she says cheerfully.

Peter jumps – in the most literal sense; his feet actually leave the ground. "Who are you?"

"I am SKAI, your artificial intelligence companion," the voice answers cheerfully. "Mr. Stark created me to help you on your missions."

"Oh!" He did say something about that, didn't he? "Well, hi, then! It's, uh... It's nice to meet you!"

"You, too!" SKAI says. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Uh..." Peter ponders that. Does he need help with anything? He doesn't think he needs help with anything. He's really just trying the suit on; he's not taking it for a test drive or anything. "I'll let you know."

"Sounds good!" SKAI says. "If you need me, I'll be here!"

"Thank you, SKAI!"

With that all settled, Peter moves from his new AI buddy and onto the important matters: looking at how fucking awesome he is.

He doesn't have access to a mirror – he can't believe the Avengers don't have their own private bathrooms here – so he does the next best thing: he sets his phone up on his bed, camera mode on, and angles the screen straight ahead. It's already on selfie mode from the vlog he was recording earlier with the team, so all he has to do is set the timer.

He has ten seconds to strike a pose. He quickly backs away and drops to the floor, one leg out to the side while he crouches on the other. He puts one hand down on the ground, and he experiments with what to do with the other one. He's hit poses like this before, but it's never really been a pose pose; it was just something he did in the heat of the moment with no thought put into it whatsoever, and he has absolutely no memory of what he did with his other arm.

He tries putting it on the floor first, next to his other hand. It feels kind of weird. So then he tries putting it up. That feels even weirder, somehow. Maybe he should put his hand out? Or forward? Or back? Or–

Snap.

Oh, great. Now it's just kinda out there somewhere. He bets that looks stupid.

He hops back to his feet to check his phone. He's not sure he even wants to see this picture. He must look so stupid. He's definitely going to have to retake it. That's not even a question. It's–

Oh, it's actually not that bad.

Huh.

Well, he can't wait to take this baby out for a spin. He's going to look so cool. The city's going to be blown away by this tech upgrade.

Wait, what if they don't recognize him? This is a completely different outfit than he usually wears! Sure, it has the same red and blue coloring, and it does keep the same spider theme, but what if he looks like some cheap knockoff? (Or some rich knockoff? That sounds much more likely, actually, now that he thinks about it.) What if he looks like he's impersonating the real Spider-Man? Are people going to connect the dots? They'll have to, right? They're not actually going to think there are two Spider-Men?

Of course they're not going to think there are two Spider-Men. Why is this even a thought that he's entertaining? People aren't that stupid. (Well, some of them are, but there are enough not stupid people to figure it out and explain it to the actually stupid people.)

He pulls his mask off and plops down on his bed, lying on his back to look up at the ceiling. This is still so cool. He can't believe this is actually his life. A few months ago, he was just some loser kid from Queens, and now he's basically an Avenger. That's so crazy.

Wait, is he an Avenger? He's at Avengers Compound, with the Avengers, wearing a fancy high-tech suit that was given to him by an Avenger. Does that make him an Avenger? He kind of feels like that makes him an Avenger. Or maybe it's too early to tell. Maybe he needs to make sure this is more than a one-time thing before he can call himself an Avenger. But if this keeps up...

Well, he feels like he might be on his way to becoming a real Avenger.