“You seem distracted,” Tony said from way closer than Peter was expecting, startling him. Peter jerked in his seat, straightened his spine from the curve it had been in while he was working hunched over his web-shooters, and looked Tony in the eye.
“Distracted?” Peter asked, blinking, and then rubbed at his eyes with his knuckle.
“Yes,” Tony said with emphasis. “You tried to fill your web-shooter with DUM-E’s protein shake, almost sent to fabrication an Iron Man faceplate with the eyes cut out entirely, and tried to give me your Spanish homework three times tonight instead of the documents I asked for.”
“Ok,” Peter admitted with a wince, “ that does seem pretty damning. Um. Maybe I have been kind of distracted this afternoon.”
“Kind of distracted?” Tony asked. “You were nearly unresponsive. And it’s not just today, although today has been… especially weird. You’ve been distracted in the lab almost every night this week.”
Peter grimaced. “sh*t, really?”
“sh*t really,” Tony said.
“Aw heck,” Peter said, realizing he’d cursed, “are you going to tell my Aunt I said sh*t?”
“I don’t give a f*ck if you curse, Peter. Jesus f*cking christ.”
That was fair.
“So give it to me straight,” Tony said. “What’s got your head all in a tizzy this week?”
Peter sighed. “Ok. So you know how my class is going on a field trip to… here… on Friday?”
Tony nodded slowly and patronizingly. “Yes, I do believe you might have mentioned it a time or two.”
“Oh shut up,” Peter said. “So… we’re going on a tour of the tower. Specifically the labs, right?”
“Right,” Tony said. “You have told me all this before.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “And then you freaked out and tried to invade the tour guide department—”
“Human Resources,” Tony interjected with a scoff.
“—and Pepper had to kick you out and tell you to leave the tours to the professionals.”
Tony pouted slightly. “I could have come up with a really stellar tour for your class. You don’t know.”
Peter softened at that. The fact that he’d been stressed about coming to SI, and Tony’s response had been to try (and fail) to make the experience into something amazing had really warmed his heart. He wasn’t going to tell Tony that, of course. Pepper would call that ‘encouraging bad behavior,’ and Peter didn’t want to get on Pepper’s bad side, but still… it made something feel fizzy in his heart to know that Tony had immediately thrown himself into a project on Peter’s behalf.
“But that’s beside the point,” Tony said when Peter didn’t continue heckling him, his tone drifting from faux-defensive into something more open. “Your school’s tour is mostly going to be viewing the labs, R&D, engineering, etcetera,” he prompted.
“Right,” Peter said.
Tony paused for just a second before pushing again. “And why does that make you look like you’re having an out-of-body experience? The bad kind of out-of-body experience?”
Peter let out a sigh.
“Ok, Tony, you have to understand, when I first… when you…when I…”
“Take a deep breath, Underoos,” Tony said, putting a grounding hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Don’t rush. You’ve got all the time in the world. Just breathe.”
Peter took in a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. When he felt like he could actually think in full sentences, he tried again.
“No one believes my internship is real,” he said with unhappy confidence.
Tony blinked at him.
“At school, I mean,” Peter clarified. “Well, not no one. Ned believes me. Obviously. And MJ. And, like, Liz did. I mean I’m pretty sure she did. Before. You know. I put her dad in jail.”
“I feel like I know where this is going,” Tony said.
And maybe he did, but now Peter was on a roll and he couldn’t stop.
“Really,” Peter said, “it’s mostly this kid in my school named Flash. He’s an asshole. Like. A jerk kind of asshole, you know? He’s always been a jerk. Thinks he’s cooler and smarter and stronger then he actually is. He’s an alternate for Acadeca and— anyway. Ever since before the internship was real, like, back when I used to call my Spider-man-ing my ‘internship,’ he’s always claimed I was lying about having an internship with Stark Industries. Which. Annoying. But not world-ending or anything.”
“The school knows it’s real,” Tony pointed out. “We filled out paperwork and everything. It was very tedious. I hated every minute of it. Pretty hard to forget.”
“Sure,” Peter agreed, ignoring Tony’s complaints. “But it’s not like they’re handing out signed affidavits to some kid about another student’s private documentation or whatever. That’s, like, a breach of privacy.”
Tony furrowed his brow. “I guess I can’t really complain about that.”
Peter nodded. “So, Flash is always bringing up how I’m lying about having a Stark Industries internship and how I’m just making sh*t up and then bragging about it to try and seem cool when I don’t even really have an internship, blah blah blah—”
“You are cool,” Tony said.
Peter bit his lip to keep from grinning at Tony, and instead continued talking, ignoring that Tony was being sappy at him on purpose to try and make him feel better, because otherwise he’d never finish saying his piece.
“But ever since they announced that we were taking a field trip to tour SI, Flash has gotten so much more annoying about it! He keeps saying that I should admit now that I lied, because when we finally get to SI it’s all going to come crumbling down around me.”
Tony pressed his lips into a thin line. “I think I hate this kid. Am I allowed to hate a kid? Is that against some law or the Geneva Convention or something?”
“If it’s war crime to hate Flash Thompson,” Peter said, “then I’m going to war crime jail.”
Tony let out a laugh.
“And I might have been paraphrasing anyway,” Peter admitted. “But the message is the same. He thinks that as soon as we get to SI there will be proof that I was lying about having a Stark Industries internship! And he’s convinced most of our classmates of that as well. And the worst thing, Tony,” Peter said glumly, “is that he’s right.”
Tony blinked at him dumbly. “Hey, Pete? You do know that you do actually have an internship here, don’t you? I mean, again, we filled out so much f*cking paper work. With HR. To get you on the docket officially.”
Peter let out a sigh. “I know. I know that. And you know that. And Mrs. Potts knows that. And Happy and Rhodey and, and… well, we all know that’s true. And, like you said, presumably someone in HR as well. But that’s it.”
“Isn’t that enough?” Tony asked, tilting his head in confusion.
“Not if I have to prove that I actually do intern here,” Peter said. “There’s no way the tour is going to include this lab, and even if it did, without me actually in here working, there’s no proof that I work in here regularly. It’s not like we have name plates on our desks or something. There’s no sign that says, ‘Peter Parker, Actual Intern, works in this lab.’ And again, even if something like that did exist, I’ve never seen a tour group come to this lab. There’s just no way they’d see any proof that I do, in fact, work here.”
Tony pursed his lips slightly, his eyes unfocused in the way that Peter recognized as Tony’s thinking expression.
“And,” Peter continued, “the field trip tour group probably will be interacting with a lot of people in the labs that is on the tour, and some of them will have interns or know interns or be interns, and if Flash or someone asks them if they know me, they’re going to say ‘No!’ Because they don’t know me, Tony. And I’m younger than the official internship program allows entry to anyway. And even though I do have an internship here, no one will believe me if I literally can’t prove that anyone in any of the labs knows who I am. I barely believe me, and I’m literally, actually, genuinely sitting in your lab in SI right now! I— this field trip is going to prove to everyone that I lied about my internship, and I didn’t lie! And no one will believe that, or me, or anything I do or say ever again, and it’s going to ruin my life! This field trip is ruining my life!”
“Take a deep breath,” Tony said, pushing away from the table and out of his seat before surprising Peter by reeling him into a hug. “You’re going to be ok. We’ll figure something out. Your internship is real, Peter. No one gets to take that from you, or call you a liar, or make you feel as stressed as you obviously are. You deserve better than that ass-hat Flash.
Peter let out a startled breath of laughter. “I don’t think you can call a kid an ass-hat,” he said.
“I can call a kid an ass-hat if I want. He was a jerk to my intern. He deserves much worse than being called an ass-hat by someone he doesn’t know and in a situation he cannot observe.”
Peter chuckled. “Ok. Yeah.”
“Say it,” Tony prompted, a smile audible in his voice.
Peter pretended to stall. “Ok. He’s an ass-hat.”
“Hah!” Tony crowed. “Good. I’m glad we agree. Now, how to fix your little situation.”
Peter slumped in his seat and fidgeted slightly with his web shooters. “I don’t think there is a fix for this… situation.”
Tony scoffed. “Of course there is. There’s always a fix. Don’t be stupid.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “Like what, Tony? It’s not like there’s anything we can do in the next 48 hours. It’s too late today to do anything. People in the labs wouldn’t be working this late, which would be the same issue tomorrow as well, since I have Acadeca right after school and was planning on Spider-manning around town afterwards. So it’s not like you can waltz me in and introduce me to some of the other workers. Which! Even if you did do that, there’s no guarantee that the people you’d hypothetically introduce me to are the same people who’d be in whatever labs we end up going to on Friday anyway. And sure, if that coincidence paid off, sure, they’d corroborate my story, especially if you're the one to tell them that I’m your intern— or an intern— or whatever, but it would all fall apart if Flash asked even one question. What department does Parker work in? What does his job entail? Who does he work with? No one would have any of those answers. So. I really don’t see a solution.”
Tony studied him appraisingly. “You’ve really thought this through, huh?”
Peter let out a bone-tired sigh. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
Tony tilted his head to the side, and it looked like he had his thinking face on again, but when he opened his mouth, instead of a crazy plan that Peter would no doubt have to shoot down, Tony just said, “Is there anything I can do? If I can’t fix this, is there anything I can do to make this better, or make you feel better, even if it’s just for right now?”
Peter let out a small sigh of relief. He’d been afraid Tony would make a big deal out of this, go off half-co*cked without thinking it through (again), and then it would all end up blowing up in Peter’s face. But this… Tony being thoughtful and consoling, that was useful.
“Pizza?” Peter asked.
“Pizza, huh?” Tony said with a grin. “That I can definitely do.”
And who knew, maybe pizza and lab time would help push Peter’s worries out of his head.
Peter spent the rest of the evening eating pizza and working with Tony in the lab, and trying very, very hard not to think about how in two days everyone at school was going to think they were getting proof that Peter was a clout-seeking liar.
From: Tony Stark <[emailprotected]>
To: Research & Development Supervisors <[emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; ...>; Internship Supervisors <[emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; …>
Cc: Pepper Potts <[emailprotected]>
Subject: URGENT - Internship Update
Attachment: Intern_Peter_Parker_031417.jpg
Listen up, folks. This is a picture of Peter Parker. He is an intern. He’s a chief intern. He’s an engineering and biochemical research intern. He’s also kind of my personal assistant. If you don’t see him in the labs, it's because he’s too smart to be working in the general level and research labs. Kid’s a genius.
But if you do see him while he’s interning, if you see him walking into a lab, if you see him grabbing a coffee, if you see him running down the halls with a fire extinguisher, don’t panic. He’s supposed to be here. Anywhere you see him in SI, that’s where he’s supposed to be. Because he’s my intern. I probably told him to go into that lab, or the coffee he’s grabbing is for me, or he really needs that fire extinguisher because he didn’t listen to me when I told him not to put that very flammable chemical within the reach of U’s arm and now the lab is on fire.
Point is, if anyone sees this kid running around, don’t bother him, he’s doing something important. Some important thing I told him to do. If anyone asks about him, you let them know not to worry about him, because he works for me, and if anyone questions that they can call me direct and I’ll tell them to their face, because that kid is my intern.
Let your staff know, too. Post his picture somewhere the staff will see it, so they can familiarize themselves with what my intern looks like, so they won’t freak out if they see him wandering around.
I’m sure you have questions: Since when did I have my own intern? How long has he been working for me? Why did I hire a teenager when SI’s rules indicate that interns can’t apply until they get accepted into a university?
He is an Intern.
Tony Stark
[emailprotected]
Stark Industries - Research & Design
StarkIndustires.Org
From: Leroy Marston <[emailprotected]>
To: Rosie Valence <[emailprotected]>
Subject: FWD: URGENT - Internship Update
Attachment: Intern_Peter_Parker_031417.jpg
Rosie, is this a joke? Is this spam? This can’t actually be from Tony Stark, can it?
Leroy Marston
Leroy. [emailprotected]
Research & Development - Assistant Coordinator
StarkIndustires.Org
From: Rosie Valence <[emailprotected]>
To: Leroy Marston <[emailprotected]>
Subject: RE: FWD: URGENT - Internship Update
Attachment: Intern_Peter_Parker_031417.jpg
I thought so too. Since when does Tony Stark himself send out intern updates? Especially about a child-intern that literally no one has ever heard of. But I reported it as phishing and Tech pushed it back saying it was legitimate. It’s theoretically possible that someone other than Stark physically used his computer to send the update, but I genuinely think FRIDAY would have caught that before it went out.
I think it’s real. I think the kid’s actually Stark’s intern.
Rosie Valence
[emailprotected]
Head of Research & Development
StarkIndustires.Org
From: Leroy Marston <[emailprotected]>
To: Rosie Valence <[emailprotected]>
Subject: RE: RE: FWD: URGENT - Internship Update
Attachment: Intern_Peter_Parker_031417.jpg
Bullsh*t.
Leroy Marston
Leroy. [emailprotected]
Research & Development - Assistant Coordinator
StarkIndustires.Org
From: Rosie Valence <[emailprotected]>
To: Leroy Marston <[emailprotected]>
Subject: RE: RE: RE: FWD: URGENT - Internship Update
Attachment: Intern_Peter_Parker_031417.jpg
Just get the photo posted, Leroy. Somewhere easily visible. I’ll send an all-staff update.
Rosie Valence
[emailprotected]
Head of Research & Development
StarkIndustires.Org
From: Chuck Marz <[emailprotected]>
To: All Staff - Internships & Faculty <[emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; …>
Subject: FWD: URGENT - Internship Update
Attachment: Intern_Peter_Parker_031417.jpg
See attached…
If Mr. Stark is interested in bringing in a personal intern, the correct paperwork needs to be followed.
I will contact Mr. Stark, but if any of you see Mr. Parker, please indicate to him that he needs to sit down with us and HR to complete his internship paperwork.
Chuck Marz
[emailprotected]
Stark Industries - Internship Coordinator
StarkIndustires.Org
From: Estelle McCoy <[emailprotected]>
To: Chuck Marz <[emailprotected]>
Subject: RE: FWD: URGENT - Internship Update
Attachment: Intern_Peter_Parker_031417.jpg
Hi Chuck,
I apologize for the confusion. I’m actually the person who handled Mr. Parker’s paperwork when he first started interning with Mr. Stark. They came in after the department was closed and I was the only one working. I was staying late to finish up the Brunner paperwork. Since it was Mr. Stark I fast-tracked it. If you contact HR they should be able to find the correct paperwork. It’s filed under Stark.
Sorry again,
Estelle
Estelle McCoy
[emailprotected]
Stark Industries - Internship Liaison
StarkIndustires.Org
From: Chuck Marz <[emailprotected]>
To: All Staff - Internships & Faculty <[emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; [emailprotected]; …>
Subject: RE: FWD: URGENT - Internship Update
Attachment: Intern_Peter_Parker_031417.jpg
Please disregard previous email. Issue has been resolved.
Chuck Marz
[emailprotected]
Stark Industries - Internship Coordinator
StarkIndustires.Org
To: Estelle McCoy <[emailprotected]>
From: Chuck Marz <[emailprotected]>
Subject: RE: RE: FWD: URGENT - Internship Update
Attachment: Intern_Peter_Parker_031417.jpg
Thanks for your quick response, Estelle.
Reminder: Stark Industries does not allow employees to work outside of their scheduled hours. While I appreciate your dedication to finishing the Brunner paperwork, it was not so important that it could not have waited until the following business day.
Since the work has already been done, please submit an OT request for the hours worked, and in the future, if you think a project will require more of your time then you are scheduled, communicate that with your supervisor and they can assess whether OT is needed or if the project completion can wait until the next business day.
Thank you,
Chuck Marz
[emailprotected]
Stark Industries - Internship Coordinator
StarkIndustires.Org
From: Pepper Potts <[emailprotected]>
To: Tony Stark <[emailprotected]>
Subject: RE: URGENT - Internship Update
Tony.
Stop sending cryptic emails to my employees. This was the weirdest way to do what you did. You will be explaining to me your thought process over dinner tonight.
Pepper Potts
[emailprotected]
CEO of Stark Industries
StarkIndustries.Org
From: Tony Stark <[emailprotected]>
To: Pepper Potts <[emailprotected]>
Subject: RE: RE: URGENT - Internship Update
;)
Tony Stark
[emailprotected]
Stark Industries - Research & Design
StarkIndustires.Org
Peter was trying really, really hard not to throw up as he stared up at the towering building before him, his classmates milling in a loose bunch in front of him as Mr. Harrison walked through the glass-front doors and into the building.
Stark Industries.
Usually one of his favorite places.
Usually.
Right now he wanted nothing more than to get the f*ck out of dodge.
Or at least not come back until all of his classmates were gone.
They hadn’t even gone into the building yet, which meant that it could only get (so, so much) worse before this horrible field trip was finally over.
“What’s the matter, Parker?” Flash sneered back at him from the front of the group. “Finally realizing how badly this is all going to go for you?”
“No,” he muttered under his breath, “I’ve known for a while how badly this was going to go for me.”
Ned, the only person close enough to overhear him, put a commiserating hand on Peter’s shoulder and grimaced.
“What was that, Penis?” Flash asked, a smirk on his lips. “Was that you finally admitting that you lied about having an internship here?”
“No,” Peter said with a sigh, loud enough for Flash (and all of their eavesdropping classmates) to hear him. “I didn’t lie about having an internship at Stark Industries.”
Flash snorted and shook his head, mockingly pitying. “You know, the more you lie now, the worse it’s going to be for you later.”
“He’s not lying!” Ned defended hotly. “You’re just jealous because Stark Industries wouldn’t let you intern for them in a million years.”
Flash’s face dropped from mocking sympathy into a contemptuous sneer in record time. “Shut the f*ck up, Nerd Leeds. I could get an internship at Stark Industries whenever I wanted. And it would even be a real one, unlike whatever lie Parker has been shoving down your throat from the beginning.”
“I will pay you,” MJ said drily, looking up from her sketchbook with such a put-upon sigh that it almost made Peter smile, “to please just shut up. I don’t care whatever kink or fetish you have with—”
“Fetish!” Flash squawked, his face turning red.
“—calling Peter a liar,” MJ continued, “and/or trying to humiliate yourself by making this whole outing all about you and your—”
“Humiliate me?” Flash demanded. “I’m not the one who’s going to be—”
“— demand for attention at all times. I don’t give a sh*t if you think Peter is lying. What’s it matter to you? How is it—”
“— humiliated when the truth comes out! Parker’s going to have to eat his f*cking words. And then everyone will know what a loser he really—”
“—your business whether Peter has an internship here or not? You’re just trying to be an asshole for no goddamn reason, and guess what? You’ve succeeded. Congratulations, Eugene, you’re an asshole and a—”
“Kids!” Mr. Harrison’s voice called from the front doors, and both MJ and Flash cut off their tirade immediately (no one wanted to get in trouble for using that kind of language on a field trip of all things. If they were caught, they might have to spend the whole field trip sitting in the bus). The class turned, almost as one, to find Mr. Harrison waving them over.
“Well,” Mr. Harrison said, impatience edging his words, “what’s the hold up? They’re ready for us in here.”
The group moved toward Mr. Harrison, toward the doors to the lobby, and as they moved, Flash wormed his way close enough to Peter to give him a quick, subtle shove in his ribs, out of the view of everyone except for Peter and Ned. Even MJ missed it, two steps ahead of them, as she was.
“Watch it, Parker,” Flash said with a sniff, and then hurried to get back to the front of the group as they entered the building.
“What an asshole,” Ned muttered with a shake of his head.
But then they breached the lobby and Ned’s eyes immediately widened, looking up and around him at the architectural wonder that was the Stark Industries lobby.
“Woah,” Ned said, awe and wonder in his voice as they followed Mr. Harrison through the lobby, “look at this building! It’s amazing!”
And it was, Peter thought. All sparkling modernity in metal and glass. An architectural feat. And Peter too had been impressed with it, the first few times he’d come here. He barely even noticed it anymore. Same old, same old.
And even if he had the ability to look up and see the inside of the building like it was once again his first time seeing it, even then he probably wouldn’t be able to really appreciate the glamor of the building what with the churning in his gut and the deep feeling in the pit of his stomach that this really was the end for him.
After this, everyone would think he was a liar, and they’d all hate him, and then he’d have no friends and May would probably un-adopt him or something and—
“Hey,” MJ said, quiet and calm in his ear. “You need to calm down. You look like we’re taking you to death row or something.”
“Yeah,” Ned said, just as quietly, from Peter’s other side. “No one cares about what Flash is saying. They all know he’s just full of hot air.”
That was distinctly not true. Peter had seen the looks from his other classmates. Whether they all believed Flash or not, they were all, at least, curious to see what would happen next. Would Peter be proved right? Or was Flash correct, and Peter Parking was a horrible, no good, dirty little liar?
“And what does it matter what they think anyway?” MJ asked with a scoff. “We know it’s true. Ned and I. And the teachers know it’s true. Who gives a f*ck what Flash and his cronies think? Who cares if the other kids, the ones who don’t even know you that well, if they think you’re lying? We know you’re telling the truth. We know.”
Peter let out a long breath and nodded. “You know.”
“Hell yeah we do,” Ned said, much too cheerfully for the heartfelt pep talk that MJ had just given. “We know you’re a badass SI intern, and f*ck Flash. If he’s too dumb to see the truth when we literally shove it in his face, well that’s not our problem.”
“f*ck Flash,” MJ agreed succinctly.
Peter nodded, slowly, feeling some small amount of tension leak out of him. It wasn’t all of it, and part of him still felt like throwing up, but at least he didn’t feel like the entire world was being pulled out from under him.
“Alright kids,” Mr. Harrison said, as he stopped in front of the wide reception desk, next to a young man with round wire glasses and a kind smile, “this is our tour guide. Mr. O’Reilly. Listen to everything he says. We’re very lucky to be given this honor.”
The man laughed. “Please, call me Walter. I’m only a couple years older than you so asking you to call me Mr. O’Reilly feels strange.” He waved at them, then. “Hello all, I will be your tour guide today! I’m actually not one of the usual tour guides. I’m from the biochemical engineering lab— I’m an intern up there— but when they heard that you were all coming from Midtown School of Science and Technology,” he laughed slightly, “well they decided to have one of the scientists lead the tour. We’re going to be spending most of the tour in the labs after all, and I’m probably more qualified to answer in-depth science questions than the regular SI tour guides.”
That had Tony written all over it. Peter found himself involuntarily smiling, wondering how Tony had been able to get his claws into this tour after all, especially when he’d been summarily banned from interfering with it originally.
He shouldn’t be surprised, actually. When Tony got an idea into his head he really couldn’t be stopped.
“Thank you, Walter,” Mr. Harrison said, pointedly.
“Thank you, Walter,” the class echoed, and Walter blushed a little
“That’s a power trip for sure,” he said with a laugh. “Forgive me if I seem flustered. I am!” He laughed again. “But enough about me! You’re here for a tour of our most excellent laboratory facilities, right?”
“Yeah!” Ned said, cheerful and loud, his voice one in a sea of many excited high-schoolers. Peter’s mouth stayed shut.
“Excellent,” Walter said, “right this way.”
He turned and moved towards the bank of elevators past the busiest part of the lobby. Peter didn’t use those elevators as often as he used the private, smaller ones that were only accessible with FRIDAY-given permission, but these ones weren’t unfamiliar to him.
As they walked, and then as they waited for the elevator, Walter kept up an easy, casual monologue about the building.
“I’ve been told,” Walter said, as the elevator they were waiting for arrived and they piled inside, “by security, that I’m supposed to warn you not to wander. We’re going to be moving through some sensitive areas, and while the tour is meant to be informative, there are still some classified in-the-work projects that are not available to the public. If you’re found wandering, legal action may be taken.”
“For real?” Cindy asked.
“Yeah,” Walter said, and laughed awkwardly. “We work on pretty heavy duty projects and everyone who works here has ended up signing at least one NDA. You won’t get in trouble as long as you stay with the group, so don’t worry. Just don’t, you know,” he shrugged, “wander off.”
Mr. Harrison looked at Peter and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “See? You can’t be doing that sh*t here.”
Peter ducked his head.
“Any questions?” Walter asked.
Flash’s hand shot up.
“Yes, you,” Walter said, gesturing at Flash.
“How did you become an intern?” Flash asked. “Do you know all the interns here? Can I become an intern?”
Walter laughed slightly. “So many questions! Well, kid, I do love your enthusiasm, but at the moment, no, you can’t become an intern. SI interns are only pulled from applicants who are already in college, or at least already have their high school diploma. But don’t feel like you have to wait. You can apply as soon as you get your admittance letter to your university of choice.”
“But I can’t get in as a high-schooler?” Flash demanded, and his eyes flitted to Peter’s for a second before flitting away. “Has anyone ever gotten in while still in high school?”
“Not that I know of,” Walter said simply, not at all aware that he was marking Peter’s doom.
“Huh,” Flash said, eyes pausing on Peter for much longer this time, a smirk curling his lips, “that’s good to know.”
Peter felt his heart sink as other classmates started glancing at him as well. In Curiosity. In Judgment.
Liar, liar, liar, their gazes seemed to say.
But he wasn’t a liar!
It just… it didn’t look good for him.
Walter, having no idea that he’d just destroyed Peter’s entire life, said, “Oh look! We’re here!” right after the elevator dinged, and then stepped out.
They all followed him out of the elevator and into a long hallway made mostly of glass walls and dark tiled floor. Peter purposefully dragged his feet so that he could be the last to exit (besides Mr. Harrison). He didn’t want to meet anyone else’s gaze if he could help it.
“Now,” Walter said, as he led them down a hall, “we considered starting off with some of the tamer labs, but you’re all nearly adults, and what with attending a science and technology school, we thought it was…”
“How about that, Parker?” Flash said from much too close, snapping Peter’s attention away from Walter in a second. Flash had sidled up to Peter, letting the rest of the class move forward as they followed Walter, so he was able to get right up in Peter’s personal space without any of their classmates being the wiser (Peter was only sure that this wasn’t a more public dressing down because 1. Flash didn’t want to get called out for being disruptive on a field trip, and 2. Peter was sure Flash was going to give Peter such sh*t for “faking an internship” later, in front of as many students as possible, in order to thoroughly ruin Peter’s life as much as physically possible).
“How about what, Flash?” Peter asked, trying to speed up and leave Flash behind.
Peter knew that was a dumb question. He knew exactly what Flash was referencing. It was all that he’s been thinking about. It was probably all that anyone had been thinking about. Flash had just eviscerated him, with only a few poorly timed questions.
“How about the fact that I just proved you’re a liar,” Flash said, his voice dripping with condescension and his smile smarmy. “Now everyone knows just what a poor, pathetic, loser you are, Penis Parker.”
Peter grimaced and turned his head away slightly. He couldn’t stand to look at Flash. He knew that it was cowardly, that he should stand up for himself, that he should say something to prove that he wasn’t a liar, and he wasn’t a loser, but— but he felt pretty pathetic. He felt like a loser. And while he was grimacing and trying to make himself open his mouth to defend himself, to say something—
Flash just walked away.
Strode, cool, confident, collected, back towards the front of the group where Walter was still talking about… something.
Honestly, Peter couldn’t really focus on that at the moment, he was so thoroughly… frustrated with Flash. Anger and embarrassment and dread and the entire unfairness of it all making a strange hot-cold ball of something well up in his throat.
He was half-glad that this was happening at a field trip at all, and not someplace where he’d be expected to answer questions, because he didn’t think he’d be able to force a single word out of his mouth at the moment.
Ned, who was several steps ahead of him, and listening intently to Walter, turned back for just a second to grin at Peter, to share his excitement with Peter, and then turned back to Walter, obviously hanging off of every word the lab-intern-cum-tour-guide was saying.
Peter tried to swallow the ball of emotion lodged in his throat, tried to push the memory of Flash calling him a, ‘poor, pathetic, loser,’ out of his head, and actually pay attention to what Walter was saying.
“This is our first stop of the tour,” Walter said, as he stopped in front of a set of doors. “Like I said, there are some sensitive experiments happening in this lab, so don’t touch anything, and if you have a question please let me know! I’m excited to introduce you to your first SI lab.”
“Well,” Peter heard Flash sneer to one of his cronies, “not everyone’s first time at a Stark Industries lab. Oh wait!” and then burst into annoying laughter.
Peter twisted his fingers together and squeezed. He couldn’t decide if he felt like crying, or like punching Flash in the face, but those were both bad first instincts, and so he just held onto his hands like a lifeline.
“This is so exciting!” Ned hissed to Peter out of the corner of his mouth as Walter opened the door to the lab with dramatic flair and then led them all inside.
“Mmm-hmm,” Peter agreed.
Ned’s eyes flicked to his, but they didn’t flick away immediately. His eyes held on Peter’s for a long moment before his smile dropped into a frown.
“Flash,” Ned said, aggrieved.
“Don’t worry about it,” Peter said. “Don’t let it ruin your fun.”
“Peter,” Ned said, plaintive, “I don’t want to have fun if it means you’re suffering in silence behind me. That f*cking sucks.”
“Language, boys,” Mr. Harrison said, having come up closer behind them then they’d noticed. “Let’s move inside.”
“Yes, Mr. Harrison,” Peter said.
“Sorry Mr. Harrison,” Ned said.
“I think you need to talk to Flash,” MJ said, slowing down until she was steady with Peter and Ned, on Peter’s other side, her chin hooked over her shoulder so she could talk to Mr. Harrison without fully turning to him.
“Hmmm?” Mr. Harrison questioned. “Why do I need to talk to Eugene?”
“Well,” Ned said slowly, “I think he’s—”
“—being an asshole,” MJ said, cutting Ned off.
“Yeah,” Ned said, “that.”
Mr. Harrison sighed. “Language. Jesus.”
“Seriously though,” MJ said.
“MJ,” Peter said quietly, shaking his head. “Don’t.”
“MJ do,” Ned said.
“Flash is being a jerk to Peter,” MJ told Mr. Harrison. “And it’s getting out of hand.”
“Well,” Ned said.
“Stop,” Peter begged. He really didn’t want to get their teacher involved. Mr. Harrison would just have to get the principal involved and then they’d call May, and they’d probably call Flash and his parents in on it to get his side of the story, only Flash’s parents are rich and they could bribe the school to make sure Flash doesn’t get punished or whatever and then where would that leave Peter? They’d start calling him Peter-the-snitch, and honestly Peter would deserve it.
“It’s actually way past out-of-hand,” MJ corrected, ignoring Peter’s plea.
“What do you—” Mr. Harrison started, a concerned divot between his eyebrows, but was interrupted by Walter.
“Alright everybody, welcome to the Biochemical research lab! Here we’ve got Dr. Winchester working at that first station—”
Peter reluctantly allowed himself to pay attention to the people around him, the bustling lab, the people in white coats with clipboards or cups of coffee in their hands, the various machinery common in large lab settings which usually brought Peter joy but today felt like nothing so much as a taunt.
“And then, there’s Dr. Nakahara and her interns. Uh. It looks like Henry and Sidney are the ones working with her today.”
One of the interns raised a hand and waved, a cheerful grin on his face, and the other was writing something down furiously on a clipboard.
“And then over by the electron microscope is Dr. Bayliss. And hey! That’s Benjamin with her.” He raised his voice slightly. “Hey Benji!”
The young man in question looked up slightly, and then catching sight of Walter raised his hand in greeting. There was a quick conversation between Dr. Bayliss and Benjamin, and then Benjamin started towards them.
“Benji and I started at the same time,” Walter said, turning back to the class.
“So he’s an intern too?” Abe asked.
Walter nodded. “Sure is. He works mostly in this lab, though sometimes he’s stolen away by the medical research and development department because he’s taking pre-med classes at the moment and is weirdly good with medical hypotheticals.”
Benjamin put a hand on Walter’s shoulder as he stopped next to their tour guide, and then raised a hand to wave at the group. “Hey-a kids! What are you lot doing in this dark and depressing dungeon of your own volition?”
Walter laughed. “Benji, stop it. They’re the tour group I was telling you about.”
“Oh right,” Benji said. “Good. Good. Great. Well,” he told the group, “have a look around. Don’t get too close to Charles—”
“Dr. Winchester,” Walter corrected.
“—because he will bite,” Benjamin continued, unperturbed. “But Kellye is one of the good ones. You can ask her anything and she’ll be really cool about telling you your question is stupid. Hands down one of the best scientists at SI.”
Walter sighed. “That’s Dr. Nakahara to you,” he corrected, and then turned to the group as well. “He’s right though. Feel free to wander, within reason. Don’t touch anything, but please look around.”
There was a pause where no one moved, and then Benjamin said, “Go on, ducklings!” and the teens started to disperse slightly.
“Come on,” MJ said, sidling up to Peter and grabbing one of his arms.
“What?” Peter questioned, as MJ led him towards one of the work stations.
“You need to get out of your head,” MJ said.
“Yeah,” Ned added, hurrying slightly to come up to Peter’s other side. “Flash is being a real asshole, but that doesn’t mean it has to ruin your day.”
The work station they approached was clean, but not uncluttered. Test tubes and beakers were scattered around, and sheets and sheets of data littered the tabletop. Peter tried to get a closer look at the papers to see what experiment they were working on, but they pages were covering each other up, and Peter wasn’t about to go shuffling through these papers when they’d just been told not to touch anything. Even if those numbers did look a lot like the data Tony had been using in his research on holographic tables whenever they needed a break from fiddling with Peter’s spider suit or any of Tony’s suits.
Peter’s fingers twitched slightly.
Surely he wouldn’t get in trouble for touching papers. After all, Walter had probably just told them not to touch anything so they wouldn't accidentally hurt themselves. There was a lot of dangerous stuff in SI labs, but paperwork wasn’t one of them. Or maybe he’d forbade touching anything due to the privacy of certain projects, but Peter worked for SI. He’d signed his fair share of NDAs. Out of everyone, really, Peter was the most qualified to go touching random stuff in a lab in the middle of Stark Industries.
“If Mr. Harrison doesn’t do something about it, though,” MJ said darkly, pulling Peter’s mind away from the scattered papers on the table, “I’m going to do something drastic.”
“Like talk to the principal,” Ned said, a little too enthusiastically.
“Or set Flash’s car on fire,” MJ said.
“Yes!” Ned exclaimed.
“No,” Peter said, as firmly as he was able to.
“He deserves it,” MJ said with pursed lips.
“No arson,” Peter said. “I can’t believe I’m being the voice of reason here.”
“It is pretty out of character for you,” Ned said with an easy nod.
Peter rolled his eyes and swung his hand out in mild frustration. “Well, you don’t have to agree so fast, Ned. Jeez.”
“No, Ned’s right,” MJ said, eyes wide and guileless, but with a small smirk playing around the edges of her lips. “You’re definitely the troublemaker here.”
Even knowing MJ was just messing with him, Peter felt his cheeks heat up slightly. It was true that he’d caused issues on their last several field trips, but it wasn’t his fault!
“MJ,” he moaned, dropping his face into his hands.
“Peter,” MJ mocked, mimicking Peter’s groan, a smile on her face.
“Ned,” Ned added cheerfully.
Peter couldn’t help the giggle that left his mouth, and then stopped, surprised. Hadn’t he just been feeling like absolute sh*t? End-of-the-world suckage? Hadn’t he just had to deal with Flash effectively ruining his life? How could his brain put that to the side in the face of something so easy as a small joke among friends?
“You nerd,” MJ complained to Ned, all smiles.
“Huge nerd,” Peter said, joining in with a smile, and made a wild movement meant to indicate how big of a nerd Ned really was.
And with the large movement, the swing of his hand up and over, his hand accidentally hit the table top with an audible clang and a few of the scattered pages which were overhanging the edge of the desk shifted, and then began their floating descent to the floor below.
“Oh sh*t,” Peter said, and automatically reached out to grab the pages.
“Hey,” snapped a deep male voice, and Peter’s eyes snapped over to see the man introduced as Dr. Winchester striding over with a thunderous expression on his face. “No touching.”
Peter’s eyes widened.
Could today really get worse?
“Woah,” Walter said, stepping into Peter’s line of sight and getting to Peter before Dr. Winchester was able to, “be careful there.”
“Didn’t we just tell you not to touch anything?” Benjamin complained from halfway across the room, effectively drawing the attention of all of Peter’s classmates, and Mr. Harrison, to what Peter had just done.
Poor, pathetic, loser, the Flash in his head jeered at him.
“Sorry,” Peter said, stooping to pick up the paper which had fallen to the floor.
“Stop,” Benjamin barked, hurrying closer, “do not touch those! Didn’t I just say that? I just said that.”
God. Peter was f*cking up everything.
“Sorry,” Peter said miserably, straightening up, no papers in his hands. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”
“I know, kid,” Walter said kindly. “Mistakes happen. Don’t worry about it.” But he did sound slightly worried. He was looking down at the papers too, not yet catching Peter’s eye.
“Oooh,” Flash’s voice said from across the room, “looks like Parker’s in trouble. Think he’s about to get kicked out?”
“It really was an accident,” Ned said defensively, but with a grimace on his face, like he too feared the worse.
Benjamin shook his head as he stepped into their loose circle, “You’re fine. Mistakes happen. Just, you know—” and then he cut himself off with a snap of his teeth.
Startled, Peter turned to look more closely at Benjamin. He’d been staring between Walter and the spilled papers, but now he got a good look at Benjamin, and Benjamin, surprisingly, was staring right back at Peter, his eyes wide, his mouth half open.
He didn’t say anything.
“Uh,” Peter said, “I’m… sorry. I really didn’t mean to. And I didn’t look at them or anything.”
“Peter,” MJ said, “they don’t think you’re a spy.”
“Hopefully,” Peter muttered. It would honestly be just his luck.
Walter let out a light laugh as he dropped down to pick up the papers, “Kid, we don’t think you’re a spy.”
“Thank god,” Ned said with a huge, heartfelt sigh that made it obvious that had been a concern of his.
Peter glanced at Benjamin, who was still staring at him, and when MJ followed his gaze to the intern, she frowned.
“Hey,” she snapped, “what’s your problem?”
Walter straightened at that, and jerked his eyes to her, and then over to Benjamin.
“Benji?” Walter asked, sounding confused and mildly concerned. “You doing ok?”
But Benjamin was still staring at Peter.
Finally, as if it came from a long ways away, he said, “Holy sh*t. You’re Peter Parker.”
“Uhhhh,” Peter said, blinking at him. “Yeah?”
“You know Peter?” Ned asked, eyebrows raised.
But now Walter was staring at Peter as well, with wide unblinking eyes.
“Dude,” MJ snapped, her eyes narrowing, and her arms folded tight across her chest, “you are both being so creepy right now.”
That broke them out of it.
“Sorry, sorry,” Walter said, “I just wasn’t prepared for this.”
“Prepared for what?” Peter asked.
“I mean,” Benjamin added, “we got the emails and everything, but we thought it was just Mr. Stark being eccentric or something.”
“What?” Ned asked.
From across the room, Peter heard Flash say, “Wow, they must really be laying into him over there. I can’t believe they’re still telling him he f*cked up. That’s so embarrassing.”
And then Dr. Winchester finally arrived, balding head, large frown, pristine white coat flapping around him, with his hands stuck in the pockets of said coat. “Listen up, children. You may be guests in this laboratory, but it doesn’t mean— good god, you’re Peter Parker.”
This was just getting more and more confusing.
“Do I know you?” Peter asked.
“Hah!” Benjamin said, “I can’t believe you clocked him so fast, Chuck!”
“Charles,” Dr. Winchester corrected, “and of course I did. I’m not blind. Plus, I’ve been forced to look at that dratted photo Rosie and Leroy posted all day yesterday and today because it’s directly in front of my lab station.”
“Photo?” Ned asked.
“Yeah,” Walter said, nodding to Peter, “you know.”
Peter did not know.
Benjamin grinned at Peter and winked. “Sure he does. Chief King Intern or whatever his title is.”
Peter balked. “Chief King what? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sorry,” Walter said, “was it a secret?”
Dr. Winchester scoffed. “I couldn’t be that much of a secret if Stark sent that email. Plus. He’s got a plaque.”
“A plaque?” MJ asked.
“Oh yeah,” Benjamin said, “there was a big to-do.”
“What plaque?” Peter demanded. “What’s going on?!”
“Do you… want to see it?” Walter asked.
They showed him the plaque.
“Holy sh*t,” Ned said, as all six of them stared up at the enlarged photo of Peter, grinning, that hung from the wall, and the plaque beneath it that said:
Peter Parker
Chief Intern
Do Not Bother
“That’s insane,” Peter muttered. “Why is that there?”
“That’s what we’d all like to know,” Dr. Winchester harrumphed.
“Peter?” Mr. Harrison’s voice said from just behind them, “what is that?”
Peter turned to see his whole class. They must have seen Peter, Ned, and MJ following an ecstatic Walter and Benjamin, and a less-ecstatic Dr. Winchester, over to this part of the lab and followed in curiosity. And now they were all staring up at the same photograph, the same plaque that Peter had just been gazing at himself.
“I…” Peter started, but he had no idea how to finish the thought.
It was a pretty good picture of Peter too, so he couldn’t even really complain about that. Only the angle was all wrong, and Peter was in a T-shirt and oil-stained jeans, and was staring way off from the camera, and he was laughing in the photo, and—
And Peter would bet money that that was a picture FRIDAY had taken with a security camera.
He was starting to get an inkling of what was going on.
“Peter Parker,” Flash read aloud, “Chief King Intern. Do Not Bother. What does that even mean?”
“Hells if I know,” Benjamin said, and then Walter slapped his arm with a chiding, “Language!”
“So, it’s some sort of prank? It must be,” Flash said, warming to the subject. “I mean, Parker here must have gotten in here ahead of time and put up this—”
“Framed photograph and metal plaque?” MJ mocked. “Please, Flash, at least pretend you have a brain in that tiny little head of yours.”
“Shut up, Michelle!” Flash hissed through clenched teeth.
“Jones,” Mr. Harrison said with a warning in his voice, “Thompson.”
“Oh it’s definitely not a prank,” Walter said. “Or at least, not one from Mr. Parker here.”
“Yeah,” Benjamin said, “this one came down from on-high. From Mr. Stark himself.”
“Tony Stark?” Flash asked, incredulous.
“You know another Mr. Stark who works in this building?” Benjamin asked Flash, voice verging on incredulous.
“Uh,” Flash said.
“What is going on?” Ned hissed in Peter’s ear.
“I don’t know!” Peter hissed back.
“Couldn’t someone have impersonated Mr. Stark?” Flash asked.
“Not in this tower,” Benjamin said. “Not with FRIDAY in everything.”
“That’s Mr. Stark’s AI,” Walter exclaimed. “She’s pretty much in complete control of digital security in the building.”
“And,” Benjamin said, “she’s very….”
“Protective,” Walter cut in.
“Of Mr. Stark,” Benjamin finished.
“Maybe,” Dr. Winchester said in a slow, New England drawl, “if the email had come from someone else… it could have been a prank.”
“But there’s no way FRIDAY would allow anyone to use Mr. Stark’s email address unless Mr. Stark himself was in on it,” Walter said.
“Which means,” Benjamin said, and then tapped an unsteady drum roll on the closest hard surface, which was Dr. Winchester’s lab station, “that Mr. Stark’s Personal-Assistant-slash-Lord-High-Intern is here, right now, in this very lab.”
Peter was so f*cking confused.
His brain was white noise. Fuzzy and buzzy and giving not very much of anything at the moment.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Harrison said. “Lord High Intern?”
“That sounds… fake,” Cindy said from somewhere in the group.
“What sounds faker?” MJ asked. “That somehow this entire group of Stark Industries employees is trying to mess with our heads? Or that our classmate has been effectively lying to all of us, and the office, and the teachers, and the principal, for months?”
“So,” Abe said, slowly, “then Peter really is an intern here after all?”
“Bull-sh*t!” Flash burst out, loud and frustrated.
“Language!” Mr. Harrison snapped. And then his sharp tone morphed into one of confusion. “Peter has been an intern with Stark Industries for months. It was approved by the office. We have the paperwork and everything.”
Peter sucked in a sharp breath, and it felt cool and clean and edifying, for the first time since Flash had started this smear campaign.
Is this all it really took? Could he have just asked Mr. Harrison to announce his internship to the class, and had this over with weeks ago?
But the very thought of that, of asking a teacher to announce his internship to the class… it left a sour taste in his mouth. He wasn’t one for showboating. He couldn’t have done that.
This though, this quiet, unexpected silence, feeling his chest fully expand in his chest with every inhale, feeling the weight of the stares of his classmates and knowing that for once they weren’t thinking that Peter was a liar, that he was pathetic, or a loser. That felt good.
So very, very good.
“Told you,” Ned exclaimed. “I literally told all of you! Peter works here!”
Peter glanced at Ned’s vindicated expression, and then at MJ, who had a smaller, but no less strong smirk on her own face. And then he looked at Mr. Harrison who was just oozing confusion, and Flash whose face was red and splotchy and looked like it couldn’t make up its mind about whether it should look embarrassed or enraged. And then he glanced at the faces of Benjamin and Walter and Dr. Winchester, who looked their own version of confused and awed, and he shrunk a little bit into himself.
“I do work here,” he told them, and then turned to face his class. “I do.”
“Yeah,” Seymour said, “we’re starting to get that.”
“My question, is how?” Brad said. “Even Walter said that you can’t become an SI intern until you get accepted by a University.” He turned to Walter, “Right?”
Walter nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said, sounding singularly unsure.
“But it’s true,” Ned exclaimed. “Peter does have an internship here.”
“Right,” Walter agreed, sounding, if anything, even more unsure.
“Well can someone explain what’s going on then?” Cindy asked.
“Ours is not to question why,” Benjamin said, sounding completely above these mortal curiosities. “If Mr. Stark says he’s an intern, then he’s an intern.”
“Ok,” Cindy said, “but how?” She turned to look Peter directly in the eye. “Inquiring minds want to know, Peter. How in the world did you become not only the youngest person to ever intern for Stark Industries, but also, somehow, someone the other interns all call ‘King Intern?’”
Now that was something Peter couldn’t answer. “I’m not king of anything,” Peter said adamantly.
“That’s Chief King Intern to you,” Benjamin said sternly, but with a laugh audible in his voice.
“Royal Intern,” Walter said.
“Lord High Intern!” Sidney-the-intern called from Dr. Nakahara’s area.
“Maestro of Interns,” Henry agreed.
“Personal Executive Intern,” Dr. Bayliss chimed in.
“Oh leave the kid alone,” Dr. Nakahara said. She’d wandered over to the group as well, and said to Peter, “They’re just being silly. We’re all very happy to meet you,” and put a hand out for Peter to shake.
Peter, flushing, and mildly embarrassed, and shy all of a sudden, gratefully took her hand and shook it, firmly.
“Thanks,” Peter said, and very suddenly it sunk in that technically Peter was meeting his coworkers right now, and his Aunt-May-trained internal customer service kicked in and he said, “It’s nice to meet you all too. Mr. Stark speaks very highly of all of you.”
“Mr. Stark!” said a very familiar, and very outraged voice from the door.
Peter and his unlikely entourage turned to see Tony himself striding into the lab, wearing an Italian suit and dark sunglasses, which most likely meant he’d been in meetings all morning, since otherwise he’d be wearing holey jeans and a faded and oil-stained band tee.
“Do you hear this?” Tony asked, his mock-outrage filling the room. “I work with the kid two to five days a week for over a year, and he calls me Mr. Stark?! I’m offended. Really, truly offended. You wound me, kid, honestly.”
“Mr. Stark!” Walter exclaimed, a glint of hero-worship in his eyes.
“Yes!” Tony said, “that’s exactly what he said! ‘Mr. Stark!’ Like I’m his boss or something.”
All of Peter’s worries and concerns, his confusion, his anxiety, all of it dropped far, far into the background, overwhelmed and pushed aside by the automatic and inescapable feeling of fond exasperation that welled up within him whenever he was faced with Tony at his Tony-est.
“You are my boss,” Peter said drily, his voice coming out easier and more confident than it had all day.
Tony scoffed. “Do you see? Do you see the disrespect that I have to deal with? Kellye, you see what I’ve got to work with in my lab?”
Dr. Nakahara laughed. “He seems like a nice kid, Mr. Stark,” she said.
“Betrayal,” Tony complained, “betrayal from all sides!”
“If he’s so disrespectful,” Flash piped up, because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut for an entire conversation if it killed him, “why does he get to work here?”
Tony’s faux annoyance dropped immediately, and he squinted at Flash like he was meeting a particularly annoying shareholder for the first time. Finally, only after Flash had began to squirm slightly, looking around for a rescue that wasn’t coming, did Tony say, “You don’t really get humor, do you kid?”
Flash’s face turned red and he pressed his lips together, hard, but at least he had the presence of mind not to try and contradict Tony to his face. Tony had no qualms with being rude to assholes, teenaged or not, and Peter was tired of Flash’s bullsh*t, was exhausted and irritated and stressed, but he didn't actually want Tony to verbally shred him to pieces.
At least not in front of Mr. Harrison, and Peter’s other classmates, and the people in this lab who were all, technically, Peter’s coworkers.
“To clarify,” Tony said, rolling his eyes and addressing the whole room, “I was joking. Peter’s not the kind of kid I’d call disrespectful. Honestly he’s a little too respectful, too sincere, most of the time.”
“Mr. Stark!” Peter complained.
“T-O-N-Y,” Tony spelled, “Tony. C’mon kid you can do it.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “P-E-T-E-R,” Peter spelled back, “not ‘Kid.’ It’s not hard.”
Tony’s mouth quirked up at the corner, his real grin, the one he only showed to people like Pepper and Rhodey and Happy and Peter. “You little sh*t,” he said to Peter, nearly cackling.
Someone in the group of Peter’s classmates gasped, and Mr. Harrison said, “Well I say,” but all Peter could do was laugh.
“Nooooo,” Peter said, drawing the word out. “Peter.”
“Peter,” Tony said drily, crossing his arms over his chest.
Peter blinked at him, guilelessly. “Yes, Tony?”
“You’re a pain in my ass, you know that?”
“Yes, Tony,” Peter said, at his most polite.
“Holy sh*t, Peter knows Tony Stark,” said Abe.
“Holy sh*t is right,” Benjamin said.
“You really intern here?” Sally asked.
“Oh my god,” Ned complained. “Yes he does!”
“Ok, yeah, right,” Walter said. “We all got the email. And the photo, and the plaque, but—”
“Actually,” Peter cut him off, forgetting to be on his best behavior since Tony was right there, lowering his guard, “Tony. Why do they have a photo of me, with a plaque, calling me King Chief Executive Royal Wizard Intern, or whatever you had it say?”
Tony burst out laughing. “Oh my god, oh my god,” Tony gasped, as he clutched at his sides and fairly wheezed through the jocularity.
Peter pursed his lips to keep from laughing along with him.
“That was a serious question,” Dr. Winchester said pompously, “although asked in a silly way. Why is this child an intern?”
That was actually not the question that Peter had asked, but he couldn’t fault the guy for his confusion.
Pulling himself upright, and stifling his laughter, Tony patted Peter on the head a couple times and said, his voice hitching slightly as if it could devolve into laughter again at any moment, “Genius.”
“What,” Cindy asked, “you just pick up genius kids from random High Schools and make them interns?”
Tony shrugged. “Why not?”
Why not indeed? Tony Stark was known for being eccentric. It wouldn’t be that out of place for him to find some random kid who no one knew and put him on the payroll. And it wasn’t like they could tell everyone the truth: that Tony had actually found him as Spider-man and that the internship had initially been a sham to cover up said Spider-manning.
“Could I be an SI intern?” Flash asked.
“Great question,” Tony said, “No.”
Ned chuckled.
“But he gets to be an intern,” Flash complained, still red in the face.
“First come, first serve,” Tony said breezily. “Also I have doubts about the level of your intellect.”
“Tony,” Peter scolded. “You can’t say that!”
“Well I just did,” Tony said. “Moving on, you, with the hand raised in the back. What the— what the f*ck, Ginger, you don’t have to—”
Dr. Bayliss, lowering her hand, cut him off by saying, “Mr. Parker is still in High School. Does that mean we’re now accepting high school applicants to our Internship program?”
“Hell no,” Tony said. “Marz would kill me.”
“Then how do we have an SI intern still in high school?” she asked. “No offense Mr. Parker.”
“It’s fine,” Peter said, because it was a valid question, “and you can call me Peter.”
Tony let out a long sigh. “Not that it’s anyone else’s business—”
“Well, you don’t have to answer,” Dr. Bayliss said.
“No, no,” Tony said, “I should have figured everyone would have questions.”
“You did figure everyone would have questions,” Dr. Nakahara said. “You even floated a few of those questions in your initial email. You just failed to answer any of them.”
“I feel like I desperately need to see this email everyone keeps talking about,” Peter said.
“Same,” MJ agreed.
“I got away with it,” Tony said, “by making him a personal intern. Technically he doesn’t intern for SI. He interns for me.”
“He’s an SI intern on all the paperwork,” Mr. Harrison cut in.
Tony met Peter’s gaze and then nodded towards Mr. Harrison, as if to say, See, someone at your school does know you intern for me.
“My lawyers are very good,” Tony said. “It has to do with him not entering the SI internship program. He’s still on SI’s employee docket, but he’s only an SI intern in that he is my intern and I work for SI. Capiche?”
“Not in the least,” Mr. Harrison admitted.
“Look through the paperwork again sometime,” Tony recommended. “And it isn’t like it matters in the long run. On paper he works for SI. If he puts it on his resume— which he should— and the… whoever reads resumes wants to fact-check it, if they call Stark Industries HR, they’re gonna get confirmation that Peter is an SI intern.”
“But he’s not an SI intern?” Mr. Harrison asked.
“Yes he is,” Tony refuted.
“He just doesn’t have to conform to the rules for becoming an SI intern because he doesn’t intern through the internship program,” Dr. Bayliss said, sounding like she found that explanation completely reasonable.
“Exactly,” Tony said. “I knew we hired you for a reason.”
“You hired me because of my extensive research history, all the publications I have under my belt, and my ability to wade through your nonsense, it’s true,” Dr. Bayliss said.
Tony grinned at her.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Flash muttered under his breath, too quiet for anyone to hear— except for Peter, with his enhanced senses.
“Ok,” Peter said, not ignoring so much as reveling in Flash’s dismay, “but explain why I’m Chief Royal King Intern of the World or whatever.”
“Stop,” Tony said, “don't make me laugh again, I’ll choke.”
“It’s a valid question though,” MJ said.
Tony shrugged. “First of all, I only said ‘Chief Intern.’ You’ll have to blame the rest of those titles on the riff raff.”
“Don’t call my interns riff raff,” Dr. Nakahara said.
“You can call my intern riff raff,” Dr. Bayliss said with a laugh.
“Hey!” Benjamin said in faux outrage.
“I don’t have to conform to whatever rules the SI internship program have on titles,” Tony said pompously. “I could have called you anything. I just made it up. Technically you are my chief intern. My head intern, if you will. The most intern out of all my interns.”
“I’m your only intern,” Peter said drily, trying to hold back his laughter.
“Not if you count U,” Tony said. “And DUM-E. What, were you going to leave out my longest-working interns, just because I made them in a lab and don’t pay them and also actually don’t consider them interns at all?”
Peter did laugh then.
“What about the picture?” Ned asked.
“So they’d recognize him,” Tony said. “Duh.”
“And the plaque,” MJ said, and then said, “Let me guess. It’s so they’d know his name. And title.”
Tony shot MJ finger guns. “Bingo.”
“Why that photo,” Peter complained. “I’m not even looking at the camera.”
“You’re laughing,” Tony said simply. Like that was all that mattered.
Peter didn’t know how to respond to that, or to the warm, fluttery feeling that it made well up inside of him.
“This is by far the weirdest field trip I’ve ever been on,” Sally said.
“What about last year when Spider-man saved us in DC?” Cindy asked.
“Sure,” Sally said, “that was buck wild. But at least that was just Spider-man. This is different. This is finding out that one of our classmates has had an entirely separate, very cool life, knowing famous people and being a baller, and has kept it all a secret from us this entire time! It’s not like one of our classmates was secretly Spider-man or something. This is so much weirder.”
“Ok, valid,” Cindy said, nodding in agreement.
Peter was pressing his lips together so hard that they’d probably bruise, if he didn’t have that handy healing factor. He was desperately, desperately, trying to be so normal right now.
Ned choked, and then quickly turned that choke into a cough.
“Well,” Tony said, his expression completely normal, with no indication at all that one of Peter’s classmates had just glided so close to a secret truth that no one was supposed to know, “I don’t know about all of you, but I think maybe it’s time to continue on with that tour that was promised to you.”
“Yes, please,” Peter said, anxious to get everyone’s mind off of Peter (and also Spider-man) as quickly as possible.
“Awww,” Seymour said. “But this was just getting good.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “You came here for a tour. I tried to make it a cool-ass tour. Don’t tell me you want all my hard work to go to waste.”
“You can’t say cool-ass to a bunch of teenagers,” Peter said.
“Who are you going to tell?” Tony asked. “My boss?” He scoffed.
“I’ve got Pepper on speed-dial,” Peter said.
“Anyway,” Tony said, turning back to the class, “I worked really hard to make an entertaining and educational tour for you all, and you’re telling me you want it to go to waste?”
“You’ve got Pepper Potts on speed dial?” Abe asked.
“Do people even still use speed dial?” Benjamin cut in.
“What’s speed dial?” Ned asked.
“She’s in my favorites in my contacts,” Peter corrected. “There, are you happy?”
“Ecstatic,” Abe said. “Can you tell her I’m a huge fan?”
“No,” Peter said, shutting that idea down quick. He was a pushover, he knew, but he was not getting Pepper involved in any teenage nonsense. She was too cool for that.
“Maybe we should get on with the tour,” Mr. Harrison said, albeit reluctantly.
“Awwww,” Seymour said. “But Tony Stark!”
Tony rolled his eyes. “What if I went on the tour with you, would that be acceptable?”
“Yes!” Cindy shouted.
“Hell yeah,” Brad agreed loudly.
Ned whooped.
“I’m not going to be learning anything, am I?” MJ asked.
Peter shook his head.
Tony turned to Walter. “Unless you feel like I’m stealing your thunder?” He raised his hands in surrender. “I don’t want anyone to feel like I’m stepping on toes, here.”
“No,” Walter said, stars in his eyes, “please. I’d be honored.”
“Great,” Tony said with a clap of his hands. “Now that that’s settled, I think it’s time we move onto the next lab.”
He started moving towards the exit, Peter’s classmates and teacher following after, and almost sneakily, looking at Dr. Winchester as they went, the lab interns and Doctors Nakahara and Bayliss followed along as well, grinning at each other like they were about to watch the show of a lifetime.
Peter supposed it wasn’t every day that The Tony Stark himself gave tours of SI laboratories.
“Peter,” Tony’s voice said from the front of the pack, already in the hall.
“Yes, Tony,” Peter said, hurrying to catch up. He’d stuck towards the back of the group out of habit, and now had to side-step his classmates and the other interns to get up to where Tony was waiting, with MJ close on his heels and Ned holding onto his sleeve to keep from being separated.
“There you are,” Tony said, when Peter, Ned, and MJ caught up, before turning and continuing down the hall. “What? Did you expect me to give this tour all on my lonesome? This is why I promoted you to Chief King Intern, Parker.”
“Of course, Mr. Stark,” Peter said.
And then he skipped ahead a half a second faster, so that for just a moment he was close enough to Tony to not be overheard when he said, “You ‘promoted’ me to f*ck with Flash and you know it.”
Tony shrugged, unrepentant. “That’s what he gets for being an ass-hat. Ass-hats don’t get to f*ck with my kid and get away with it. You see his face? He looked like he swallowed a lemon.”
Peter laughed. “Ok, ok. So what’s actually next on the tour?”
“Why? You excited to see what amazing things I’ve got in store for your field trip today?”
And Peter was surprised to realize that he actually was.
