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The interns of S.I. all stared at the teenage boy who was currently elbows-deep in one of their cabinets, the collective thought of ‘what the actual fuck is a child doing in our labs’ running through their minds.
Lilah, who had alarmingly dark bags under her eyes, clutched a beaker full of coffee to her chest—yes, that was against protocol, no, she didn’t actually care enough to stop—she cleaned it, okay? And somebody had broken the last mug so she was kinda out of options. She leaned her head closer to her coworker. “I’m not hallucinating this, right?” She whispered. Her eyes were fixed on the kid, who had pulled a bottle of something out of a drawer and inspected it closely before throwing it to the side. “I mean, sure , my blood is like ninety-eight percent coffee because I’m in the middle of my dissertation, so who knows if I’m even capable of cognitive function anymore, but still—tell me you see the kid too?” She said as she tucked a piece of fluffy blonde hair behind her ear before picking up one of the various multi-colored vials at her table so it looked like she was actually doing work.
Alex snorted, giving her a tired glare. “Why are you asking me? I’m pretty sure the last time I slept was last week, and that was only because you switched my regular coffee with decaf—you definitely crossed a line there, by the way, you don’t mess with something sacred—and on top of that, you crushed a sleeping pill into the fake coffee, traitor . Right now I’m running off of pure spite for you. I don’t even know if I’m real anymore,” He whispered back, running a pale hand covered in dry-erase marker through his cropped black hair, his half-closed eyes also trained on the boy.
On the other side of Lilah, a brown-skinned boy named Micah was cleaning his glasses using a corner of the standard lab coat all the interns wore. He peered through them to make sure all the dirt was gone before jamming them back onto his face and staring once more at the teen. “Huh,” he said quietly. “I guess he’s not a smudge my brain mistook for an actual human being.”
There was a sudden cry of triumph as the kid popped up, clutching a container of motor oil to his chest. “Found it!” He said to himself, a wide, pleased smile on his face. Turning to go, he froze, noticing how everyone was focused on him. With redeemed cheeks he started to fidget, rambling, “U-um, sorry guys, I was just working on this robot thing to connect to my AI with Da– um, with Mr. Stark – I’m his intern – and somehow we ran out of oil and so I offered to come down here to get some, and, um, I guess I have it now so I’ll be going?” Before anyone had the chance to say anything in response he left, the door quickly swinging shut behind him.
For a brief moment everyone was quiet, until Micah asked incredulously to the room at large, “I– I’m sorry, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I swear to god I just heard him say he was working with Stark?"
“I was more focused on the fact that he has his own AI,” Vanessa answered from across the room, blinking the shock from her dark eyes. She stuffed a pencil into her frizzy bun and brushed her bangs aside before continuing, “I mean, he did say that, right?”
“Excuse me,” James called out loudly, “but am I the only one that noticed how he nearly called Dr. Stark ‘Dad’? Because that happened, you know.” A flurry of murmurs went throughout the room.
Abruptly, the door flew open with a bang! and everyone jumped slightly, their heads whipping around to see the boy once again.
He dashed over to one of the whiteboards. “Sorry, had to drop off the oil before I could come back – DUM-E gets sad if he can’t make his smoothies,” he said as he erased part of the equation that was there, and then started to rewrite it. “Anyways, I just noticed that there was a tiny mistake in one of the equations…well, I guess not so tiny, but still, I thought I would help you guys out…aaaand done!” With a small flourish, he finished the equation which had been bugging the entire R&D section for months , drew a little smiley face in the top corner of the whiteboard, and turned to go. Looking back over his shoulder, he said, “If you guys need any more help just tell FRIDAY to send for me! Nice to meet you! Bye guys!”
Twenty-seven pairs of disbelieving eyes followed the kid as he left the room.
Isa, one of the senior interns, rushed over to the whiteboard, her eyes quickly scanning the new writing. A small, shocked noise escaped her. “ Dios mío, he fixed it,” she breathed, her accent thick.
“No way,” Micah said, pushing his way to the front to stare at the new-and-improved equation on the whiteboard. “No fuckin’ way. We’ve been working on that for months – months! – and some kid just waltzes in here and solves it, no problem? What is he, a Stark?”
A beaker of coffee dropped to the floor and, surprisingly, didn’t shatter. “Oh my god, ohmygod, that’s it!" Lilah squealed. “He’s Dr. Stark’s son !”
James looked at Lilah, then at the equation, then back towards Lilah. There was a moment of silence, and then: “Sweet baby Jesus,” James said in a hushed tone, “you’re right .” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Listen up, everybody, you’ve all just witnessed a once-in-a-lifetime thing here – Lilah Montgomery, for the first time ever, is right !”
Everyone started to applaud.
Lilah scowled. “I’ve been right before,” she muttered.
“Oh yeah?” James rolled his eyes and began to tick examples off on his fingers. “Like that time when you thought that one secretary was having an affair with the head of security when they were actually just bonding over Downton Abbey? Or when you thought Mia had killed Planty the Plant when it was actually Lisa, because she was bitter and hateful and we all agree that getting her fired for Planty’s death was the best thing we’ve ever done? Or when you freaked out because you thought the coffee was switched to decaf but actually–”
“Okay, okay! I get it! My theories are usually wrong…but you agree that I’m not wrong about this,” Lilah grinned.
A rag flew through the air and hit her in the face. “Just clean up the coffee, Lilah,” Joey yelled from across the room. “And what have I told you about using the beakers as mugs?”
Lilah stuck her tongue out at him as she kneeled to wipe up the spilt coffee.
Isa, whose gaze had wandered to the smiley face the boy had drawn, smiled softly. “This boy es tan precioso,” she said to herself before raising her voice. “It doesn’t matter who he is – he saved all of our asses from another one of Mike’s ‘I’m-so-disappointed-in-you’ lectures, and he is, quite frankly, adorable, which means that Angie—” Isa pointed at a shorter girl with large glasses and extremely curly brown hair “—is going to bake some of her famous cookies to give to him as a thank-you…and to possibly serve as—let’s call it motivation—for him to grace us with his presence more often.”
Angie gave a wide smile and nodded her agreement. “Alex!” She shouted. The lanky boy startled, jerking his head around to face Angie.
“Wha’?” He mumbled, rubbing a hand over his face and smudging some marker onto his cheekbones in the process.
“I’m promoting you to my baking assistant, come help me make cookies.” Without waiting for a response she grabbed his hand and began to lead him to the mini-kitchen in their break room.
(In the thirty seconds it took to get to the break room, exactly fourteen other employees were informed of Stark’s adorable, genius, much more approachable son and told, in no uncertain terms, that they were to protect him at all costs. It took five more minutes for the rest of the interns to know about the kid, and another ten for the entirety of R&D to be aware of the baby Stark and how he solved the problem they had been having so much trouble with)
This is how, with less than two minutes of interaction between him and the interns, Peter became known to all of Stark Industries (except for, somehow, Pepper Potts and Tony Stark) as the Boss’ son and managed to wrap an entire sector of S.I. around his pinky finger.
The next day, as Peter was eating the cookies that some nice interns gave him, FRIDAY informed him that he had over a hundred requests (all addressed to some version of mini-Stark or mini-Boss) asking him to look over projects and equations.
Peter fell out of his chair.