Chapter Text
Just about every person on the planet would agree that Stark Tower is a magnificent sight to behold. The sheer size of it was near awe inspiring, and it never failed to make jaws drop upon being seen up close and personal. That is unless you live there and see it every single day. Which is why Peter didn’t bother to look up from his phone when the bus stopped in front of the familiar building. His classmates didn’t have much time to ogle the tower though, because Mrs. Ficarra was herding everyone off the bus in an effort to get to their scheduled security check in slot on time.
There were many gasps from the Midtown students when they entered the lobby of the tower. Peter could understand that; the lobby had a huge sitting area in the center with expensive (and comfy looking) chairs and tables, a reception desk that took up the length of an entire wall and was manned by at least ten secretaries at all times, high ceilings, tall windows that supplied natural light, colorful and elegant paintings that offset the chic white aesthetic, and several elevators that could only be accessed by going through the security stations set up in font of each of them.
Mrs. Ficarra led them to one of the secretaries that was available at the reception desk.
“Hello! We’re here for a guided tour of the tower, should be under Midtown School of Science and Technology?”
The man behind the desk started typing away on his computer (the newest model of Stark tech, obviously) before nodding. “Yep, here you are. I’ll send a call for your tour guide to come meet you all down here and they’ll take you through security” he said. “Please go have a seat in our waiting area just there and someone will come get you.”
With that, the eager teens (well, Peter Parker was decidedly NOT eager) wandered over to the plush couches and chairs and immediately started chattering about how cool everything was. Mrs. Ficarra told them to keep their voices down and be good representatives of Midtown, but even she was gushing about the tour to come.
Within a few minutes, a short young woman walked up to their group and introduced herself as their guide.
“Hi everyone, my name is Elise Mason and I’ll be showing you all around today!”
Elise was a college student interning at the tower. It could be said that she would much rather be doing anything else than giving a tour to high schoolers, but she drew the short straw, so she had to take time away from her projects to do exactly that. She took stock of the school group to try to gauge whether this would be a fun tour or a tedious one. It seemed promising; everyone was looking at her attentively and hanging on her every word already. All except for one kid in the back.
“No way,” she said with equal amounts of disbelief and excitement. The students turned to see what she was talking about. None of them realized that they were missing the point by looking BEHIND Peter.
“Miss, is something wrong?” Cindy asked.
Elise was still looking at Peter, who had finally made actual eye contact with her. His entire demeanor screamed ‘DO NOT NOTICE ME I’M TRYING TO BLEND IN.’ Peter’s shoulders were hunched inward, his head slightly ducked, hands in his sweatshirt pockets, and those puppy eyes looked absolutely mortified. While all his classmates were trying to focus on some perceived commotion behind him, Peter gave her a frantic head shake. Elise couldn’t really figure out why he was reacting as if he expected to be shot at, but she decided to ask about it later.
“Oh, uh,,,, nope, nothing’s wrong I just got surprised by something. Let’s get on with it so we can see the tower, huh? Sound good?” She was met with enthusiastic nods. “Alright folks, I’m just gonna pass out your lanyards with your guest security badges on them. When I call your name, please come up.”
Peter was now freaking the fuck out. What was he gonna do??? He didn’t have an ID badge, hadn’t had one ever since he lost his seventh reprint while on patrol. That had been months ago, and he was so used to FRIDAY scanning his biometrics automatically that he’d forgotten that it would make him stand out in front of his class! Shit shit shit shit shit!!
“Dude, hey, are you alright?” Ned whispered when he noticed his best friend doing what appeared to be a spot on impression of an owl having a stroke.
“Absolutely NOT!” Peter choked out. “I don’t ever use a badge anymore, remember? Everyone’s gonna notice if Ellie doesn’t call out my name for a guest ID and I can’t think of any good excuse!”
“Well yeah, MJ and I aren’t going to get our names called either. We’ve got our own IDs too,” Ned explained slowly, as if talking to a toddler.
“Oh my god I didn’t think of that either! How are we gonna explain that?!?? You two wouldn’t have any reason for having those if I was just a regular intern!” Peter was whisper-shouting in a frenzy.
“Hey, loser, it’s chill. They’ll forget about it eventually.” MJ said as the group of students who had yet to receive badges dwindled.
“WILL THEY THOUGH???”
Elise had called all the names she had on her list. Because Peter worked in the tower, she was correct in her expectation that she wouldn’t be giving him a guest ID. The other two teens who hadn’t been called were throwing her for a bit of a loop though.
“Whoops, seems like I missed a couple. Can you three come here and check something with me real quick?”
The trio of friends gathered around her to explain themselves.
“Ha! Penis and his friends are totally gonna get kicked out of the building! I knew he’d get in trouble for faking an internship!” Flash boasted loud enough for their whole class to hear. His comment warranted a reprimand from Mrs. Ficarra. He didn’t look too chastised.
“Peter, are you doing alright, man?” Elise asked. Her coworker looked close to tears. Or a heart attack. Or both.
“Um, hi Ellie. I just really don’t wanna be on this tour and I’m trying to keep my whole class from finding out just how involved I am here.” he explained quietly.
“Well they must know you intern here, right?”
“I mean, yeah, but most of them don’t believe that and they definitely don't know that I have the fucking highest possible clearance in the whole building! Someone’s bound to ask why I don’t have a badge to scan, or why my clearance is ‘Classified’ when yours is ‘Level 3 Intern.’”
“Wait, why don’t they believe that you work here? That’s so dumb.”
“That’s not my main concern right now, Ells!”
“Okay, okay. Now why were you two not on my class list?” Elise asked the unfamiliar students.
“We’re friends of Peter’s and we come here often enough to visit that we were given our own IDs.” MJ clarified. The older intern looked to Peter for confirmation. He gave a distracted nod.
“Alright then, can I just have a look at them for a sec?” She asked.
“Of course!” Ned pulled his badge from his jeans pocket and handed it over, as did MJ.
“Alrighty, that checks out, these are legit. Let’s go join your classmates and get on with the tour.” She already knew Peter didn’t carry a badge.
Elise was just turning around to corral the larger group when she was stopped mid-step by a hand on her arm.
“Hey Elise?” It was the edgy looking girl, MJ. “Peter here is really freaking out about his clearance situation. Would you mind distracting the rest of our class while we walk through? I’d rather he not die by anything other than my hand, but it seems like the anxiety might beat me to it if he keeps up like this.”
“Yeah, no problem guys,” she said. Peter was a good friend, and this was the least she could do when he looked so uncomfortable. “Anything else? We really should get going…”
“Thank you so much Ells, I’ll really owe you one!” Peter said as he tried to calm down.
“No you won’t, Pete. I’m happy to do it.”
“Uh, okay then. Oh! I also wanted to warn you! Um, don’t be too shocked if some, uh, Avengers decide to crash the tour to embarrass me. I tried asking them not to, but it’s pretty much inevitable at this point.” Both Ned and MJ nodded in agreement with his last statement.
The short intern just laughed. “Oh boy, this is gonna be fun!” She ruffled Peter’s hair and went over to the rest of the group, the three friends following not far behind.
Elise led the class over to one of the security stations in front of an elevator and demonstrated how to swipe their badges and walk through the scanners. With the way most of the students reacted, you’d think the mundane act was the event of a lifetime. One by one, Peter’s class began filtering through security.
Once all but the trio of friends had gone through the scanners and swiped their badges, Elise called the rest of the group’s attention to her by starting to go over the rules they would have to follow while they were all in the tower. With everyone distracted, Peter made his way through security.
FRIDAY’s voice greeted him as he walked through. “Hello Peter. You’re back earlier than usual. Should I tell Boss?”
“No FRI, that’s okay. He already knows I’m here.”
“Very well. You have a message from A Little Bitch, would you like to hear it?”
“NO!” Peter definitely did not need anyone possibly overhearing whatever bullshit Shuri sent him. “I’ll just check it later, thanks FRI.”
“You’re welcome, Peter.”
Ned and MJ went through security without any fuss, and the trio quickly rejoined their class. Everyone was still listening to the rules Elise was spouting, so no one noticed the stragglers, and if they did, they didn’t think anything of it. All except for one Flash Thompson, who shot a suspicious and (not quite) threatening glare at the trio. However, no one out-glares MJ, so the matter was dropped before it could even be mentioned.
“Okay I think I’ve covered just about everything, so let’s get started!” Elise announced to everyone. “Everybody hop on the elevator (the elevators were absolutely HUGE, because everything about Stark Tower was huge, so fitting a group of twenty into one was nothing) and we’ll head up to our first stop: the SI business offices!”
As the students shuffled into the lift, Peter slid his phone out of his pocket and took a look at the message he had from Shuri.
‘Yoooooo imma have fun with this lol good luck’