Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Harley!” Peter squealed, launching himself onto the older boy as he entered the penthouse. Harley dropped his bags, letting Peter hit him with an oof. 

“Hey cuckoo,” Harley replied, chuckling. “I missed you too.” He stroked the back of Peter’s head, a broad smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. Peter let his body go slack at the touch, anchored to Harley with only his power to stick to anything. “Ugh you’re so clingy!” He laughed.

Peter clung tighter, burying his face in Harley’s neck. “You love it,” He replied.

“I do.”

Dr. Stark shook his head, taking hold of Peter from under his armpits to detangle him from his surrogate brother. “Alright, c’mon now Roo. I’m sure Harls’ is very hungry after his journey,” Peter whined, but didn’t protest Tony pulling them apart. 

“After we eat, you can show me what you’ve been working on,” Harley suggested, lamenting in the way it made Peter’s eyes sparkle. 

Peter squealed, clapping his hands. “You just wait to see the robot I built. It’s-”

“Irresponsible.” Tony cut in.

Pepper chuckled, from where she was serving up plates of pasta. “Like you can say much Tony.” 

Tony looked over to her, bewildered. “You’re- I can condone it for the sake of parenting!” He argued. 

“Sure you can,” Pepper replied. “Sure you can.” 

Tony looked back over to the two boys, who were taking their seats next to each other at the table. “Look,” He said. “Just don’t do anything that I wouldn't do,” He turned to Pepper with a look on his face that tried to convey;  Look at me, I can parent! But if the resulting expression of Did you actually just tell them that? You moron displayed on Pepper’s face made Tony’s balls shrivel back into his body, he didn’t show it on his face.

//-//

Azi was barely holding it together. They were exhausted, and it didn’t help that their boss Happy had put them out front, either. What did help however, was the not infrequent deliveries of fresh coffee from their wonderful, delightful (and also completely exhausted) Husband. 

The couple had had it easy with their daughter so far, and it wasn’t as if they had expected parenting to be smooth sailing all of the time, however they didn’t expect the ‘terrible twos’ to come on so… well, terribly. She wasn’t even two anymore, but yet now is when she has apparently decided to gang up with the devil behind their back. 

They didn’t think that they had been this tired since she had been born.

If it wasn’t for the constant stream of coffee entering their body to keep the gears grinding, Azi would’ve missed it. 

‘It’ being the slightly large man with a pot-belly and an angry look on his face, stomping towards them. Azi steeled themself, preparing for confrontation. The man reached them, sticking a finger in their face. “Tell me,” He seethed, “Why my son is not allowed on his trip here.” 

“Sir, if you are to take that tone with me, I'm afraid that you’ll have to be escorted out.” They replied, absolutely too tired for this shit, but also grateful for the three years experience dealing with angry customers in the retail job they had when at college.

“I have no tone that isn’t absolutely necessary!” He said, slightly offended. “My son is a respectable boy who gets good grades and he’s not allowed here, but someone like you ,” The man gestured to Azi, who’s eye makeup, piercings, mullet and ‘they/them’ pronouns on their nametag where obviously being referred to, “Is allowed to work here.” 

Azi picked up their radio, and asked for more personnel to come and escort the man out. “No, you can’t get rid of me.” He said. “You better give me an answer, boy or I'll ruin your life.” 

“First of all, not a boy.” Azi started. “Second of all, the system will flag you for threatening and abusing security, so next time that you try to enter, the front doors won’t open for you.” The man opened his mouth to protest, but Azi ignored this, continuing with their speech. 

“Lastly, the system has flagged your son, whoever he may be, as a security risk and therefore denied him entry. Our security system is in place to protect the workers, as well as any confidential information that needs to be protected. Threatening us, will not do anything to change the fact that he is to be denied entry into the premises.”

The man was about to protest again, but only got as far as “Now, you listen here-” Before he was dragged away by two other security guards, and unceremoniously pushed out of the doors. Azi watched as the man strode angrily over to them, only to shake them and find that they wouldn’t budge. 

A hand grazed over Azi’s shoulder, drawing their attention away from the man, who was now trying another door. “You look so sexy when you get all authoritative like that,” Justin said in a low voice that made the hair stand up on the back of their neck. 

“Hey baby,” They yawned, accepting the fresh cup of coffee from Justin’s hands. “Thanks, but try to control yourself whilst we’re at work,” 

Justin shrugged. “If I have to beat one out in the bathroom, that’s what I'll do,” His tone dropped again, and the stubble grazing their cheek reminded Azi just how close he was standing. “I mean when I see my sexy sexy partner-”

Azi pushed him away. “Justin, go. Now.” 

“We’re finishing this tonight,” He promised.

Azi raised their eyebrows. “Finishing this,” They made air-quotes, “Is not the reason I was expecting to be awake tonight.” 

Azi watched their husband deflate in front of them, wishing that they hadn’t brought up the issue of Annie. “Right.” He said. “Sleeping is definitely preferable at the moment.”

Chapter Text

“You,” Harley took a sip of his coffee, black unlike Peter’s sugar-filled monstrosity. “Are fucking with me.” 

“I wish I was fucking with you.” He replied. 

A minute passed, and both of them sipped their coffee in silence, the only noise in the lab being the robot moving behind them. 

“No. You are fucking with me.” Harley decided, putting the mug down on the table. The robot continued to whir in the background.

“Harls', this isn’t two truths and a lie,” Peter chuckled at his friend’s disbelief.

“So I’m just supposed to believe that whilst  I’m over at MIT having only  kissed one boy and going to three parties, two of which were boring as fuck-”

Peter interrupted. “Those two were only boring because there was no kissihmp.” Harley shoved a hand over Peter's mouth to get him to shut up.

“No, I'm talking. Let me- Ew you are so gross!” Harley flailed, his hand now wet from Peter licking it. Wiping his hand on his jeans, Harley continued. “I refuse to believe that you managed to blow up a lab and then get shot and reveal your identity to a security guard, but not only that, your class is going on a field trip to here?”

Peter’s gaze hardened with determination that Harley knew he would regret indulging, but he was curious. “I can prove it.” Peter said.

Peter showed Harley the permission form. He took Harley to speak with Azi, and showed him the experiment that he did to blow up the blast containment room. 

Very quickly, Harley became extremely grateful that Peter and Tony had designed a stronger blast containment room. He was also very grateful that nobody but him and Peter were in the lab when the blast containment room didn’t contain the blast. “Shit.” Peter said. Harley couldn’t see him; the entire room was clouded with webs. “Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as last time,” 

“Tony is going to kill us.” Harley said, and decided that he should sit down. ‘This is the last time I will ever underestimate the parker luck’ He thought. 

Just when Harley thought it wouldn’t get worse, the remains of whatever container was holding the web-prototype started squealing. “Duck!” Peter called, flattening himself onto the floor, as the container began to propel itself across the room. At the sound of breaking glass, The boys both sat up to see that the container had in fact propelled itself through the window. The bulletproof window.

Peter and Harley looked at each other. Then back to the window, and then back at each other. “RIP,” Peter said, placing a hand on his heart, “To the container that couldn’t contain it’s disappointment at failing so badly at containing that it became suicidal.”

“May it rest in peace.” Harley agreed solemnly.  

Neither of them were surprised when Dr Stark came in barely a minute later, however they were slightly surprised that the only complaint he had was about a window, and not about the fact that they had completely destroyed the lab and the blast containment room.

//-//

Notice: Staff be aware that lab 3B is closed due to an incident causing damage to the blast containment room and to the window.

Please use lab 6A’s blast containment room as an alternative. 

Tara stopped, brows furrowing. She pinched herself, hoping that this was a dream and she would wake up. 

Nothing happened. 

She counted her fingers, remembering that people have extra fingers in dreams. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. “Okay, so I'm not dreaming,'' she said. Thinking back to the last time she had seen a sign like that, and how much she needed a coffee, Tara decided that it might be a good idea if she just avoided all of that nonsense and just went home. 

//-//

Peter and Harley were in the lab, and the robot was still whirring in the background. Harley was going nuts. “Okay Cuckoo, what the fuck does your robot do?” Harley said, putting down his pencil from the assignment he was writing because whilst the lectures stopped, the homework didn’t. 

“Huh?” Peter looked up from where he was currently attempting to fix his thoroughly smashed phone. He had a pair of magnifying glasses on, which made his eyes look hilarious. The first time he had seen Peter wearing them, he laughed for what felt like forever, but now he was used to the sight. “Oh! That robot. He’s called Signor Ragioni.” 

A beat passed. “But what does this Signor Ragioni do?” Harley said. 

“Well, Peter replied. “He does my homework.” 

Another beat. “You have a robot.” Harley said. “Who does your homework?” 

Peter nodded. “Well, Mr Stark doesn’t mind, as long as I do the subjects like English myself,” He explained. “I mean, I already know basically all the math and science that they teach at school, so I just built the robot to do it for me,” 

“Okay,” Harley said, deciding to leave it there. 

//-//

The existence of coffee was something that Dr. Olivers was very grateful to be blessed by. He took a deep breath, sighing in contempt as the scent wafted through his nose. Jonas sat at his desk, going through his emails as he sipped the coffee. 

He made sure to check his emails four times a day at least, but often more. Being head of department meant that his attention was constantly being pulled in many directions at once. Usually, any emails that found their way into his inbox could be solved relatively quickly, or weren’t particularly stress inducing. 

And then there were the emails from Peter. Jonas was sure that The Kid was single handedly the reason for his hair going grey. What Jonas wasn’t expecting, however, was there to be another email in his inbox from the other kid who was making his hair go grey. He decided to finish his coffee before dealing with it.

To: [email protected] 

From: [email protected]

Subject: It wasn’t my fault

Hey Dr. O! Much sry 4 lab accident. Even thought I was there, It wasn’t my fault. Blame H 4 everything.

—

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Unfortunate incident in the lab

Hello Dr. Olivers. 

It has been a while, hasn’t it? I do miss working with you, even though I have been having such a good time away at MIT and missing out on all of the… misfortunes that my brother Peter has caused. 

Keeping in mind that I wasn’t there for any of Peter’s unfortunate exploits, I would like to formally apologise for the destruction of the blast-containment room in lab 3b, and the subsequent hole in the window. 

Whilst the damage done was completely not my fault, I am sure you know by now that I was in the room when it happened, and do apologise for not doing anything to stop it from happening. 

My Sincerest apologies, H. Keener.

Jonas rubbed his hands on his temples. Whilst he was absolutely appalled yet again by Peter's lack of email etiquette, he was at least grateful that Harley knew how to be professional, even though his email seemed slightly like a passive aggressive threat. 

//-// 

“Why is it called Signor Ragioni?” Harley asked.

Peter looked up and took the glasses off of his head. “Well, he wasn’t called that originally. I named him Mr. Accountant , and then Mr Stark started calling him Signor Ragioniere which means Mr. Accountant in Italian, and it kinda caught on.” Peter took a breath. “So, we were calling him Signor Ragioniere for a while, but it’s a bit of a mouthful and I decided to shorten it.” 

“And you came up with Signor Ragioni? That’s not exactly much shorter, Pete. ” 

“Well actually it was Signor Ragi first, but that didn’t sound right, so I started making different variations and bouncing them off of Mr Stark. Turns out, Signor Ragioni translates to Mr. Reasons in Italian and Mr Stark thought that it was hilarious.” 

Harley laughed. He hadn’t expected anything less from Peter.

Chapter Text

Peter usually loved field trips. And a field trip without Flash? Any other time he would be overjoyed, however a field trip to Stark Industries was not something to look forward to. 

Ned however, had other ideas. It was a field trip to Stark Industries for goodness sake! He had never been to SI before, and it was SI ! The biggest tech company in the world! What wasn’t there to be excited about? 

The bus ride over lasted way too long for Ned’s liking. Peter thought that it was too short.

//-//

“Azi,” Happy greeted them with a nod. 

Azi nodded back. “Morning boss,” They said, feeling chipper after getting a good night’s sleep for once. (Thank god for mother-in-law) 

“Mr. Parker has asked for you, especially to be the security escort on this tour.” Happy said. 

Azi raised their eyes. “Me? Really?” When the board were discussing having SI field trips, it was decided that the only way to do it safely and protect confidential information, was to have a security guard escorting the tour alongside the tour guide. Azi knew this much and had been on a fair share of tours themself, however it took them by surprise that Peter- Spider-Man- would ask for them in particular.

Happy grunted out a shrug. “He told me you two had a bonding experience.” 

Azi couldn’t stop themself from chuckling. “If you call stopping him from bleeding out a bonding experience,”

Happy just sighed. “Well, he does, and that’s what matters.” 

//-//

Spanning hundreds of floors and made almost completely out of glass, Stark Industries was a sight to behold. It reflected sunlight like a beacon, and seemed to almost draw humanity into it. Peter had to admit it was breathtaking, no matter how many times he saw it. 

Unlike his classmates, Peter managed not to gape whilst coming through the entrance of the building. Its high, angled ceilings and glass windows did make quite an impression, but as somebody who had bled out and almost died looking up at them, the magic had lost its touch slightly. 

There were security booths straight forwards where employees were lining up in rows according to their security level which was signposted next to each station, but Mr. Harrington led them to the left, where an information desk stood. There was one that was just labelled with a big ‘i’, and had a young looking security guard that Peter vaguely recognised sitting behind it, but they instead approached the desk that was labelled ‘press and tours.’ 

The class stopped short of the desk and started having animated conversations with each other, whilst waiting for Mr. Harrington to finish his discussion. Excitement was buzzing through the group. “Do you think we’ll get to meet the avengers?” Ned asked in a hushed whisper. 

Peter rolled his eyes. “We won’t.” He said. 

“It’s not like the avengers are gonna come say hi to every random group of high-schoolers that come in the doors,” MJ added. “They’re the avengers. They have… avenging to do.” They watched Ned deflate slightly. “Hey man, expect disappointment, and you’ll never be disappointed.” 

A rhythmic clap brought their attention back to where Mr. Harrington was standing, now alongside a young lady with blue hair who was wearing a badge that read ’tour guide’ and Peter’s new favourite security guard, Azi. Peter sent them a small smile and raised his hand quickly, and received a smile and nod back. “Alright Midtown! If you’d all follow me!” She called, and turned around. 

The woman led them behind the desk and through a small archway, which opened up into a room filled with bean bags and had a large screen at the front. Azi waited until all of the students were in front of them, before following, as was customary in this role. Tour-guiding was one aspect of their job that they quite enjoyed, partly because they loved seeing the ways that young people reacted to the inner workings of the company, and partly because it meant that they got to spend some time with whoever was leading the tour and make a new friend. 

The class all went to sit on the beanbags, leaving Mr. Harrington to stand awkwardly off to the side, having decided not to embarrass himself by sitting on one of the beanbags. Azi stood at the back of the room, whilst the woman took her place at the front. “Hey guys! My name is Laura and I’ll be leading your tour today,” She introduced. “Behind you is Azi,” She pointed at them, and they saluted when the  class turned to look at them. “And they are the security escort for this tour.” 

Laura clapped her hands together. “Now that we’ve done introductions, does anybody have any questions right off the bat?” She asked, scanning the room. A few people raised their hands. She nodded to someone in the front row; a kid from the other science group. Peter vaguely recognised him, but hadn’t ever had a conversation with him. 

“What are we going to see today?” He asked.

Laura kept the smile on her face as she replied. “I will get to that soon, but I can assure all of you budding scientists that it will be very interesting.” 

She motioned next to Sally, who was waving eagerly to get her question chosen. “Will we have any hands-on activities?” 

Laura tapped her nose and winked. “That’s for me to know, and for you to find out,” She said and Peter had to suppress a snort. He knew there would at least be a presentation- Peter himself had helped Dr. Olivers do some experiments for field trip groups to see, however not all groups ended up doing an interactive activity- some due to security risks identified by FRIDAY, others due to circumstances around timing. “Any more questions?” 

More hands shot up, and Laura dutifully answered each in turn-including one about visiting the bathroom- before turning to the computer that was set up in the corner of a room to load up a presentation. “Okay kids,” She said. “I’m going to get you to watch a short video, and then me and Azi will take you through to complete your security checks.” Once the video cued up, she pressed play.

Chapter Text

As he watched the video, Peter began to realise that he had helped make parts of it. Pepper had asked him to interview Dr. Stark and gave him questions to ask, whilst FRIDAY filmed his response. Tony knew about it, however was unwilling in all of his attempts to take an interview with any form of press, so roping Peter in was a sort of last-ditch attempt of making it work. Peter hadn’t seen the full video however, and was like the rest of the midtown students in the room, captivated by it.

The video started by stating some history about Stark Industries and its founder. The death of Tony’s parents and his time in Afghanistan were only covered briefly before the subject moved on to how he had changed the company around in a full 360 from a thriving weapons manufacturer to an even more successful technologies business. 

This part of the video was partly in interview format, cut from snippets of what Peter had gotten out of Dr Stark, as well as commentary and video footage of the inside working of SI. They discussed the moralities of his being ‘the merchant of death’ and what compelled him to change, along with what he hoped for the future of the company. They also touched on female empowerment in a male dominated industry- something which MJ perked up at- and about why Dr Stark chose to put Pepper in charge as CEO. 

The video then switched subjects, introducing different people in different job roles working in SI. Frankly, Peter was sick of talking about careers in school, especially since he knew what he was going to do. He was going to go to MIT and work at SI- just like Harley. He knew what he was going to do, but most of the class didn't have any ideas further than something in stem which seemed to be standard for the majority of them.

The careers part seemed to drag on for forever, although in reality it was only about 15 minutes. It ended on a slide that listed Stark Industries social media accounts and a meme that was about 6 months out of date and made everyone in the room cringe.

Laura cleared her throat to speak again. "Okay guys, today you will be meeting lots of different people who help o keep Stark Industries running. Hopefully by the end of this you will feel a bit more informed about the path that you want to take for your future career, and of course have fun." she paused for a second. "Now, Azi is going to take you through security. Azi?"

Azi started to talk as they made their way to the front of the room. "Hey guys, I'm going to hand out your passes now. They have a chip in them that let's FRIDAY, the buildings AI know where you are at all times." Azi picked up the basket of passes at the front. The passes each had the students pictures, so they spent time matching pictures to faces whilst continuing to talk.

"FRIDAY is arguably the most important part that keeps SI running. She handles all security, including taking a proactive approach to who is allowed in the building."

"What do you mean by a proactive approach?" Abe asked.

"Well," Azi continued. "She takes information from news sources and word of mouth from the people who work here, and restricts access to anyone who she finds dangerous or a risk to keeping SI and its confidential information safe." 

Peter hadn’t known about this, and it suddenly occurred to him that the phone calls he had made to Ned, MJ, Harley and Shuri where he had complained about Flash was probably the reason for his absence on this trip. He felt a wave of guilt roll over him, but it was conflicted by the gratitude he felt for FRIDAY. "Is that why not all of us were able to come?" one of Flash's goons asked sourly.

Azi nodded. "yes, that seems likely.'' They finished handing out the passes and letting the students chat amongst themselves. Azi cleared their throat again to get the students' attention. "If you'd all now follow me through here, so that we can put your bags in lockers." Azi funneled them through the door that was to the left of the screen, scanning his pass to open it.

The door led them through to a room that was lined with lockers. There was a metal detector, which had another bean bag area, as well as some tables and chairs like those that would be found in a cafeteria. "the lockers work from your badges," Azi explained. “They are able to lock and unlock them. Please make sure that you put your bags in them, but take out your lunches. You will be eating on the other side of the room and won’t be able to access the lockers for the rest of the day, so make sure that you have everything that you need at hand.”

“Are we allowed our phones?” Sally asked, waving her pink case slightly.

Azi nodded. “Phones are allowed, however FRIDAY will interrupt their interface temporarily to stop you from leaking anything confidential. Now, once you have sorted your bags, please line up at the scanner, and I’ll let you all through.” The students started putting their bags away, chattering to their friends. There was enough space for one locker each, so Peter took one for himself. He briefly had to check with Azi to ask them whether he was allowed to keep wearing his web-shooters, to which Azi replied that it was okay as long as he wore his visitors’ pass and kept his level 9 pass on him also, so that FRIDAY knew it was him. 

Peter ended up being one of the last of his classmates to go through the scanner with his web shooters still on his wrists, by which time his class were all buzzing with impatient excitement to go and see something exciting. The scan didn’t show anything unusual on any of the students. It seemed that the majority of them had phones (Including Peter, who knew that Karen had probably linked her system to FRIDAY’s now, so they could do whatever computers did for fun) and some people had smart watches, but nothing was any cause for concern. 

Mr Harrison was allowed to keep his backpack, because it had the students paperwork in for emergency situations. Azi tried to convince him that it wasn’t necessary to bring it, but Peter caught their eye and gestured to just let him take it. Peter resolved that he’d have to talk to whoever was in charge of field trips about this later, because he assumed that it wasn’t legal for the staff to bring students on trips without emergency medical information- even if FRIDAY already knows or can find out medical details by a cycle of her processors.

Chapter Text

“Alright Midtown!” Laura clapped her hands together again. Apparently, Peter (and probably MJ before Peter) conceded that this was her favourite way of getting their attention. She began to open the next door- this one a set of doubles- whilst continuing to speak. “If you’d follow me through here, I’ll take y’all up to our first stop of the day, and coincidentally the first step of product development. Is everyone okay with stairs?” She looked back at them, receiving a round of nods and affirmatives before saying; “Alrighty!” and leading them upwards.

Peter knew where they were going. He himself had only been to this section of stark industries a few times- preferring to work on his projects and ideas alone or with Tony- but he was familiar enough to know his way around. “This is what is formally called Planning and design however, it’s usually referred to as The hall of ideas. Can anyone take a guess as to why that is?” Laura stopped in front of another set of double doors, these ones painted red, with the planning and design sign above it.

Charles put his hand up “Is it because ideas for projects are brainstormed in there?” He guessed. 

Laura smiled and opened the doors. “That is partly correct,” Laura said, walking them into the room. The walls were curved at the corners, and had a large window at the front. Despite it only being three floors up, the view was still magnificent- a scenery of the moderately sized garden area that SI has, designed by Pepper herself who wanted the employees to have a green space to refresh their minds whilst at work. It wasn’t the only green area in Stark Industries, nor was it the most impressive. The rooftop garden took that spot. 

In the middle of the room were two large conference tables, both pushed together and surrounded by chairs. Meetings in this room either tended to be small with only a handful of people attending, or very large, with a team of sometimes up to forty people in the meeting. There was a screen on wheels next to the table, and some papers laying in a crooked pile off-center from the middle.

The most interesting thing about the hall of ideas and the thing about it that gave it its name was what was displayed on the walls. The students circled the room in awe, looking at the earliest ideas and blueprints of products that were now available to the public. There were hundreds of them, each with a plaque underneath which told them the name of the project, how many redesigns it underwent, and how long it took to develop. 

There were prints for all of the stark-phones and the medical tech that Stark Industries had designed and put out, along with a wall on one side of the room that encased Dr Starks original designs for the iron man suit, singed slightly at the edges and dirtied from the damage done to it in Afghanistan, Peter’s earliest web shooter designs which were funnily enough drawn on the back of a trigonometry worksheet, and various other avengers’ tech. “Why are there potato gun designs on the wall of avenger’s tech?” Ned whispered to Peter, who glanced around and had to hold in his laugh when he saw them. 

Whilst Peter had been in this room before, it had been on business, which meant that there wasn’t too much time for him to spend looking at everything on the wall in detail. “Those are Harley’s gun design’s,” Peter whispered back. He looked across all of the designs that were displayed on this wall and let a broad smile creep on his face as he realised what this wall was. “The stuff on this wall were all made by people that Dr Stark considers family,” His whisper was low, more a huff of realisation if anything. He wasn’t really sure if it was something that he even meant to say. The realisation did however, fill him with a happiness like Peter had never felt before. 

This room is also called the hall of ideas , because it is filled with the first ideas created from completed projects created in Stark Industries.” Laura continued to speak after she had given the students some time to look around. The class quietened, but didn’t give the guide their full attention, too enthralled by the walls. Laura, who had guided many tours, was used to this and continued nonetheless. “The first stage of product development is important, because it is literally the start of all projects. Without the meetings done in this room to discuss ideas and create preliminary designs, none of the projects would ever get started.” She concluded. “Fifteen more minutes, and then we’ll move on.” 

Fifteen more minutes seemed about the right amount of time to stay looking around, because by the time it was ready to move on, almost everyone was finished looking around. MJ had taken out her pocket sized sketchbook and had started making a small sketch of Peter’s face from when the realisation of what the wall displayed hit, and was almost finished by the time that they moved on. Peter knew that not finishing it didn’t bother her. They would probably finish it at lunch time. 

Before they left, Laura asked if anybody needed to use the toilet, and to go now if they did because they wouldn’t get the chance to for the next hour or so. This meant only one thing: They were going to the R&D floors. 

Chapter Text

The one flaw about Stark Industries that employees consistently complained about, was that on all six floors of the Research and development department there were no bathrooms. It’s something that tends to baffle new SI interns and employees who really don’t want to take three flights of stairs or an elevator to use such facilities. Of course, there is a perfectly good reason for this. 

At the beginning, SI did have various bathrooms on their R&D floors, which were appreciated by various employees, including the head of the department (who was a mere intern at the time) Dr. Jonas Olivers. Like other employees who have been working in the department during the series of incidents, Dr Olivers never complained about having to travel up or down three floors to relieve himself. 

Like all bad things that tended to happen in Stark Industries Research and development, It started with an explosion. Jonas was working on his first independent project at the time- an interesting piece of tech which he called the floomba; a robot not too dissimilar to the  roomba, however designed to crawl across the ceiling and get rid of any cobwebs. The project never went anywhere of course, and the blueprints are now hung in the hall of curiosity where failed projects go to die.

Whilst programming the floomba to change directions when it hit a wall, he suddenly felt the ground beneath him begin to shake, and a rumbling sound reverberated through the walls. Passing it off as an everyday occurrence because after all this was Stark Industries- the top weapons manufacturer in the world, Jonas continued with his own meagre project, wondering absentmindedly if they would try to weaponize his idea like they had done with Sandra’s. 

When Jonas went for his lunch break, he took a detour to the break room that he had left his sandwich in, because he needed to use the bathroom. Except the bathroom and surrounding hallway wasn’t exactly… functioning. He got the story out a Sandra later, who was and always had been a complete gossip. Apparently, someone’s bomb prototype that they were making hadn’t exploded as expected in the blast-containment room. As they were walking it back to their lab to try and figure out what had gone wrong, it decided that it was the right time to explode. Sandra was explaining with such enthusiasm that Jonas was taken aback by the completely blasé way that Sandra told him that this person died. He felt angry at her, a feeling mixed with irrational guilt for not going to see what the explosion was. (Jonas didn’t know why seeing Sandra made him feel so utterly annoyed and frustrated, but he celebrated with champagne when she got poached by HammerTech.)

He made sure to find out who it was that got blown up, and discovered that it was Travis Penn, a man in his late 20’s. Jonas remembered meeting the guy. He remembered his bright smile and endless enthusiasm about science. At the funeral, Jonas met Travis’ wife who he had mentioned once, and found out that she was pregnant. The fact hit him like a wave, and he had to take a second to regain his balance. 

He kept in touch with Mrs Penn and found out that her first name was Angelica, but she liked to go by Angie. The bathroom and hallway got repaired, and life seemed to move on. Angie gave birth with what turned out to be twins, and their friendship started developing into a romance. 

Jonas had been put on a new project that actually had something to do with weapons development, and even though it wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things at SI, he felt incredibly proud. He was working on this project with some colleagues when the next eventful moment that led up to the getting rid of toilets on R&D levels occurred. 

Yet again, it started with an explosion of such. However, it didn’t sound like the typical explosion- more a deep popping sound and then a whoosh noise from about that made everyone look up in confusion. 

And then it started raining. 

Jonas stood still, confused as to why he was currently drenched in water that was dripping down from above, before he was bodily removed from the room by another employee into a corridor where they had to wade through water to get into the stairwell. The stairwell itself was also wet and slippery from the water that was spilling through the doors and splashing down like a water-fall. The floor beneath them was soaked through and leaking water as well, however the floor Jonas was on was the worst affected, being directly under the explosion. 

The full explanation was released later, and Jonas aided his curiosity by reading it. When the bomb had gone off some months prior, some part of the bomb had entered the water system via the toilet, becoming lodged in the pipe. As the toilet was flushed repeatedly, the shrapnel damaged the pipe further, until one fateful flush caused it to burst and cascade water everywhere, ruining many ongoing projects and causing millions of dollars in damage and profit loss. 

After this, Stane decided that something like this should be avoided from happening again, so all bathrooms were removed, remodelled and repurposed.

Dr Olivers has never been startled by an unexpected explosion again. However, he has been taken off guard to the uncanny resemblance of Travis that he sometimes sees in Peter, not that Peter knows this of course.

When he and Angie got married later in the summer, they left a seat empty sans the rose, for Travis on top of it, the man who tragically brought them together in the first place. 

Chapter Text

Laura led the class up the stairs in silence, letting them chatter amongst themselves in the background. Peter hung to the back of the class leaving his ostensibly more excited classmates ahead of him. MJ stayed with him, not as excited as her other classmates because she was passionate about mechanics more than the sciences, which wasn’t something that would be covered in this tour. Ned however, was interested more in physics and computer programming and took up conversation with Sally near the front. 

“Hey,” Peter greeted as they walked.

“Peter.” Azi nodded in greeting, before turning their eye on MJ. “And you are-”

“MJ. She/they.” 

Azi smiled, and shook her hand. “Azi, they/them, It’s nice to meet fellow enbies every now and again,” MJ smiled at that. They also enjoyed meeting more people like themself. There weren’t too many non-binary people who went to midtown, so Peter knew that she didn’t get to that too often. 

Shifting their attention back to Peter, Azi continued. “So how’s the uh- the injury?” They asked, shifting their eyes from Peter to MJ as they tried to figure out how to phase the question to make it not sound suspicious. 

“Oh, she knows. You don’t have to hide it. Turns out they’re too observant for me to hide things from.” Peter replied, and Azi relaxed in relief. “It’s fine, all healed now.” Peter replied. He pulled his shirt up to show that the injury hadn’t even left a scar.

“That’s good,” They replied. “And wow- those healing powers are no joke,”

“He likes to say that he’s at least 30% more bulletproof than the rest of the population,” MJ said with a glare, her tone conveying how much she disliked this fact.” Peter was about to reply with his objection, but his attention was steered away as they stopped moving, and Laura began to talk again.

“Alrighty! In a minute, we are about to enter one of the labs to see a demonstration. For your safety, Stark Industries advises you to stay behind the first line of workbenches in the room, and to wear eye protection, which will be in a rack just inside. Please take a pair and stand at the front of the room,” She opened the door, and led them all inside of a lab. Peter had been in the lab before, and as Mr Stark’s personal hire, had his own personalized pair of SI eye protection. However for this tour he picked up a generic pair as a school he was only known as an intern. 

The generic SI protective eyewear were not uncomfortable like the bulky plastic ones at Midtown with scratches from years of use and creaky hinges so Peter didn’t particularly mind. The frames were framed with the blue colour of the long and still chunky, but were sleek and sat on your face in a way which meant that they could be forgotten about. (This led to many embarrassing moments where people had only realized they were still wearing them when at home, or halfway down the street, so a sign now hung next to the door of each lab, reminding them to be removed.) Peter put the glasses on, and took his place to the end of the room.

The lab was long enough that the whole class could fit across the length of it without anyone having to stand behind. Mr Harrington also stood in this line, almost as excited as his students to see the demonstration. Peter had to hold back a groan when he saw that it was Harley standing at the front. “You have got to be kidding me,” He muttered under his breath without moving his teeth, only loud enough for MJ to hear. She was standing next to him and snorted in response. Peter wished that he could go back in time and un-tell Harley about this field trip - surely this was something that he had done on purpose.

Again, Laura clapped to get their attention. “Now, usually we have one of the more senior scientists do a demonstration for y’all, but today Harley here has offered to do one. This is exciting because he is the second youngest intern to work at Stark Industries, and is currently studying in MIT. Both of our youngest interns were both hand-picked personally by Dr. Stark. Harley?” 

The students turned their attention to Harley, who was standing up front with his mischievous grin plastered on his face. Peter began to have the feeling in his stomach that happened whenever he saw that expression, and couldn’t help himself from becoming excited. “Yes ma’am,” Harley Said, winking. “Now, y’all may be expectin’ some elephants toothpaste level experiment, which i’m sure you’re all familiar with, so today Imma do somethin’ a bit different.” Harley then cupped his hands around his face, and whispered loudly; “Don’t tell Miss Potts, because I didn’t get permission,” Which made everyone laugh except Peter, who took it seriously, and sent a small nod to Harley when they caught eyes. Although his brother was a bit frustrating sometimes, they both knew the importance of covert communication and code.

“So today, Imma show y’all how I make my potato guns, which is what made Mr Stark invite me to work on. Unlike the other intern, I didn’t get in on a technicality. I got in for my can-do attitude and great aptitude to science,” 

Peter had to stop the expression that he wanted to make from forming on his face. Right now he really wanted to be wearing his spider-man mask. “A technicality? ” he whispered to MJ “Mr Stark told me that he was looking into me for hiring anyway, and just so happened to figure it out!” Peter was already plotting his revenge in his head. 

Harley showed them his designs, explaining how the potato guns worked and what he had done to make each of them better. He then let them watch as he pulled a box onto the table, made a joke about ikea flat-packs and talked through how the potato gun was assembled.

“Tony actually helped me improve my designs for my potato guns personally. The summer after we met, he took me up here and spent a few weeks teaching be a bunch of sciency shit, and then decked me out a lab of equipment in my garage,” Harley slotted the last piece in place. “This is my finished potato gun. You guys can all have a look,” He said and passed it to the end of the aisle. 

Harley also pulled a potato out of the box and placed it on the workbench before putting the box out of view. He let the gun pass down to Mr Harrington, who seemed enthralled by it for a few minutes, before taking it back. “And now, It’s time to test it.”

Azi spoke up, as if on queue. “Okay, everyone move back behind the next workbench please,” The students obeyed, all scrambling backwards as Harley positioned a 30cm thick piece of foam against the wall opposite the lab’s window.

Peter decided that now was probably a great time to pull out his phone and start recording. Unlike his classmates, he knew that FRIDAY hadn’t blocked his phone because he wasn’t just a visitor. From everything that he knew about Harley, Peter could tell with absolute certainty that this was going to be good

Harley put the potato into the gun and gestured to the foam board. “Now this board was developed by Howard Stark when SI was still a weapons manufacturer, to test projectile weapons. Every five centimeters is the equivalent to the average density of one human body. They would measure into the hole that the projectile made with a normal ruler until they hit the projectile, to know how effective it is at different ranges. However, now we use it for different purposes.” Harley aimed the gun towards the board, before turning on his heel rapidly, and shooting at the window instead. 

There were some audible gasps and even a stifled whimper in the crowd as the potato collided with the window. Peter gritted his teeth, because although the windows were bulletproof, he wouldn’t put it past Harley to build something powerful enough to break them. They had done it before, afterall. He ended the video recording.

Chapter Text

Harley ducked down as soon as the gun had been shot. It zoomed past, colliding with the window with a thunk, before bouncing off and rebounding over his crouched body, into the foam. From there, it made an impact and fell almost unsatisfyingly to the ground, bouncing once and rolling just shy of Harley’s feet. “Nothin’ to worry about,” Harley got do his feet, the potato in his hand. “The glass is bulletproof. Not that we haven’t managed to break it before, but that’s somethin’ I'm legally not allowed to talk about.” 

It seemed that none of the students in the room knew what to do. Peter looked over to Laura, and for a second it looked like she didn’t know what to do either. He supposed that this probably- definitely- wasn’t an everyday occurrence on field trips. A quick glance at Azi confirmed it. They too were also standing there looking unsure of what to do. 

Laura cleared her throat and started clapping. Slowly, Peter’s peers started joining in. “Thank you, Harley for that interesting presentation and let’s just say- eventful demonstration,” She said, causing a few people to laugh. Laura looked at her watch. “Now, let’s all go back down and eat our lunch, and afterwards, the research and development department head is going to come down to talk to y’all about what it’s like to work in Stark Industries.” 

Peter furrowed his eyebrows. He knew who the head of R&D was. He had met Dr. Olivers countless times and not one of those times had he come across as a man who was interested in helping children decide what they wanted to do for their futures. Of course Dr Olivers may not have a choice in the matter, but Stark Industries wasn’t the kind of company that forced their employees to do responsibilities that didn’t align with their aspirations. Oh. Peter thought, suddenly coming to a realisation. Oh. Dr Olivers just doesn’t like me. 

It was something that did make sense. Peter seemed to do nothing but inconvenience the man, even though he tried hard not to, and make it right when he did inconvenience him. He wasn’t particularly surprised at the revelation, either. Dr Olivers was very professional, which is the opposite of Peter. He’s good at science, and he has a pretty thorough understanding of how running a business works, but if he had never met Mr Stark, he probably would’ve been a photographer at The Bugle for the rest of his life because there is no way that he would be able to hold down a job, otherwise. 

Lost in thought and running on autopilot, Peter hadn’t realised that they were back in the room with the lockers until MJ bumped their shoulders together with a smirk. “Come on loser,” She said. “Let’s find a seat, I need to finish my sketch.” She raised her eyebrows and began making their way towards the table that held everyone’s lunches. Peter closed his mouth which had apparently opened at some point, and followed. 

Peter sat down, taking a large bite out of his sandwich and opened his phone. He had six notifications; one from an app telling him his lives were through, and that tried to guilt-trip him into doing a lesson on Duolingo. Tony had texted him to remind him that they were doing to dinner tonight and to wear something nice. He had a text from May, which held nothing but a picture of a dog. And a text from Harley. Peter scowled before replying.

Harley ;) 

Peter I hate you so much. Prepare for revenge.

Harley ;) ;)

He also had an email, and was surprised to open it and find that it was from Dr Olivers.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Your Fieldtrip.

Hello Peter, 

I have just been talking with Keener who has informed me that you will be a part of the group whom I am to visit later this day. 

Of course this is very exciting for you, however if I may, I would like to receive your feedback on my slideshow presentation, so that I am able to improve it from some critique. 

I thank you in advance for sharing your opinions so that I can better the engagement the presentation will receive in future. I will, in return, accept this act as an apology for the havoc that you have caused in my lab. 

Kind Regards, Dr. Olivers. 

—

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Your  Fieldtrip

Dr Olivers! I would love to give you feedback on your presentation :)) 

But!!! 

It really was harleys fault that the window broke. I actulaly have prood bc he literally just did it again (NOT BROKEN DON’T PANIC!!!!!!!!) In front of my class. 

Don’t trust harley he is a menace and i will attach the bideo below. 

(SRY this is messy, i habe to typ equick.)

[attached: 01834903762994.MP4 ]

—

Peter sent the email and went back to his sandwich. Revenge was a glorious, glorious thing. Have fun trying to stop Pepper from trying to find out now, bitch. Peter thought smugly. 

MJ rolled their eyes and knocked his knee. “Yo, stop looking so good about yourself, you’re ruining by drawing.” She said. Peter scowled, and sent the video to the rest of the interns for good measure, entering the subject line as: How to make a good demonstration to fieldtrip groups. 

Chapter Text

When the class had all finished their lunches and were just chatting amongst themselves, Laura caught their attention and redirected it to herself. “Now whilst we’re waiting for Dr. Olivers to arrive, does anybody have any questions for me?” She smiled, showing teeth. 

A few people raised their hands, so she began pointing at people to ask her questions. “Do you just do tours at SI, or do you have other responsibilities?” A girl called Zoha who Peter knew from English class.

“No, I do other things as well as tours for lovely people like you on field trips. In fact, I am one of the interns in the marketing and PR department of SI. Although admittedly a lot of my job is fetching coffee, I help develop advertisements and public campaigns to promote Stark Industries products and movements to the public. Field Trips are one example of how SI gets young people like you’s lot involved and excited about the future of Science and technology.” 

Laura nodded at another student, Charles, who held his hand up. “How can we intern here?” He asked her. 

“Now that is a brilliant question, and one that we get quite often from young people like yourselves,” She said. “Internships available in research and development are available for college level graduates in any field of science or mechanics. After you finish college, think about applying, but just be aware: It’s very competitive. Dr. Stark only offers six internship spots per year for his two year program. Most of the interns go on to get jobs at SI, so Dr. Olivers and Dr. Stark have to choose who gets the internship places very carefully. I’m not as well equipped to answer questions about the type of internship I imagine you guys will be trying for, so if you have any further questions about internships, I recommend you direct them to Dr. Olivers after his presentation.” 

Peter shrunk back in his chair, hoping that none of his classmates were doing calculations and putting two and two together from what they knew about his internship, and had learnt from what Laura had just said. His eyes darted around the room, but nobody's expressions outwardly revealed that they had realised anything was up. “Dude, relax.” Ned whispered, probably a bit too loud to be considered private. “Everyone here is too stupid to think about that.” 

Ned was trying to reassure Peter, but it didn’t work particularly well. MJ wasn’t being particularly helpful either- Peter expected that she was fishing for another reason to draw his face in the slightly bewildered yet horrified expression which countless times she had expressed as being her favourite Peter face. “I would have figured it out,” They shrugged, mouth smirking in one corner. 

“MJ, you would figure out the weight of the moon  by just looking at it,” Ned replied, grasping at straws. “Nobody but MJ would have figured it out, and we know that she’s not the kind of person who’d go sharing that sort of thing.” Peter looked between his two friends, not really sure how he was supposed to react to their antics.

MJ persisted. “Mmmmm, I think Flash-”

“Flash isn’t here right now.” Ned interrupted, and the expression on his face when he looked at MJ was so harsh that Peter was worried that they may spontaneously combust right there and then. He almost laughed, never having known that his guy in the chair was so utterly loyal.

MJ began to open their mouth again, but was interrupted by Mr Harrington’s “Shhhh!” and threat of detention, which seemed rather aggressive for what it was worth. Closing her mouth, MJ turned back towards the front. Ned and Peter followed her lead, trying to catch up and figure out what Laura was talking about now.

“-Is still at college, however, he is in a unique position, as somebody personally scouted and employed directly by Mr Stark.” Oh . Peter realised. They were talking about Harley. “There is one other person other than Mr Keener currently in the same position, although he has not yet started college yet, and from what I have heard through the grapevine, there’s another one lined up to start very soon,” She concluded. 

“Have you ever met the other ones?” Betty interrupted enthusiastically. She seemed to realise what she had just done and reddened. “Oh, I- Sorry.” She stuttered out.  

Laura smiled and breezed on. “No worries- I just love to see all of you so excited about the possibility of working with us in future.” Her eyes caught Peters, causing his heart to thump hard in his chest. Apparently, Laura recognised him. He couldn’t say the same for her- he only tended to recognize those who he ran  into fairly regularly, but after today Laura would become somebody regognisable to him. Peter began to panic at what she was going to say next- whether this would be the moment that all the attention that he was trying so desperately to avoid slid over and burnt holes in his chest. Laura continued. “Yes, I have met the other one very briefly, although he did fall asleep into his coffee cup only seconds later, so I doubt he remembers me.” The statement elicited giggles from the class. 

Peter let himself relax, momentary panic easing into embarrassment as the memory surfaced. He had been so exhausted from completing his most recent project on time for the deadline that he had taken a dose of Harley’s adderall and had a stream of coffees to keep him up for the three days he needed to bring it to completion. In the meeting where they handed it off to marketing, he had been so exhausted that it was deluded to think he would be able to stay awake. 

“Any more-” Laura began to ask, but stopped speaking when the door opened. She turned to see Dr. Olivers walking into the room, wearing his usual attire- Button down shirt and slacks under a white lab coat with his name and a dinosaur sewn into the breast pocket. “Good afternoon Dr. Olivers!” She greeted the scientist with a handshake. “This Is midtown science and technology; your audience for today.”

Chapter Text

“Good afternoon Laura, Hello Midtown.” Jonas said. He smiled, an action that caused Peter to question whether he had ever seen such an expression on the man’s face before. Peter concluded that maybe he was too frustrating for Dr. Olivers to find him likeable. He knew he had that effect on a lot of people; they either found humor in his antics like the interns and Tony, or he caused chronic migraines like Mr. Lee the janitor and (on occasion) Pepper. 

The class waited for Jonas as he cued up the presentation from a memory stick onto the board behind him. Then he stepped forwards, and began to flip through slides. Dr Olivers presentation was similar to the one the class had been shown at the beginning of the tour, however instead of telling them about the history of Stark Industries, it went into detail with examples and pictures of the process in creating some of the projects that had come out of Stark Industries. Peter paid attention, picking out projects that he recognized and had a hand in creating, thinking of the presentation as sort of like a highlight reel of things that he had done. 

He kept an eye out for his peers reactions to certain parts of the presentation so that he could give Dr Olivers feedback, making sure to type notes on his phone about what he had thought of the presentation, and any half-formed ideas for improvement. 

Overall, he found the presentation to be really enjoyable, if not slightly cringy. Jonas had included several memes which were very fitting for where he placed them, however not particularly funny anymore, due to them being pretty dead. He noted down that one in particular as his main criticism. 

What students found most interesting, Peter noticed, was the part of the presentation that went through the design and creation of avengers tech, like Natasha’s widow bites and Clint’s bow. He himself was particularly interested in the physics that explained how Hawkeye measured what angle he was going to shoot with, and the draw strength needed to put the amount of power behind each shot he took. Peter noted that Dr Olivers should add some things that people his age would be more interested in, like projects that are directly related to, or would have an effect on them. He had a few ideas to contribute to this already, and was more than happy to share them with the doctor. 

When Dr Olivers finished his presentation, he then asked for questions from the class. Again, many people enthusiastically put their hands up, and Jonas started to methodically go through the hands, dutifully answering each question. 

Peter wondered where this patience he had somehow summoned came from, because whenever he and Harley came across him, Dr Olivers didn’t seem to have any. Maybe by the time that they got to see each other, he had already used all his patience on other field trip groups, and didn’t have any to spare on the two teenagers. It was strange for Peter to see Jonas without engaging the frown lines which were usually so prominent on his face, but he liked it. Peter decided that maybe he should go a little easier on the man from now on. It probably wasn’t healthy to stress him out like that. 

The questions first started about things that they had seen in the presentation, such as how long projects took, what was his favourite and least favourite project and did he personally work on any avengers tech (The answer to that was no- only Tony, Harley and Peter did.) but they quickly changed into questions about working in Stark Industries, and his classmates started to ask the questions which Laura had told them to save for him. 

“I’ve been working here since I was an intern,” He explained to them. “And now, I get to mentor interns as a department head. I’ve met some of my best friends through this job, including my wife.” Peter hadn’t known that Dr Olivers was married, but he hadn’t really had any conversations with the man further than him telling Peter off about something he had done, or asking Peter whether he should be telling him off about something that he expected the teenager to have done.

“What do the interns do when they’re working at SI?” Abe asked. 

Peter listened to the answer that Dr Olivers gave. He himself wasn’t completely familiar with this, as he tended not to work in a team with other staff members very often, so only came into contact with them every now and again. He was fully aware that some of the interns seemed to not believe that he was real, or though he was Mr Starks’ secret son or something.

“The first task that new interns get is to create a project in a team. It can be whatever they want, but has to be potentially marketable, or have alternate uses to make it a possibility. A lot of these designs end up in a place called the hall of curiosity which you will all see just before you leave here. It is similar to The hall of ideas however it is instead a memorial to failed projects. I myself have a few designs down there myself.” 

“What was your first project?” 

Jonas looked sheepish for a minute as he gave his reply. “My first project ended up in the hall of curiosity. It was called the Floomba, and was supposed to be like a Roomba, but one that went on the ceiling to clear cobwebs away. Of course nothing came of it though, as the thing couldn’t get through any doorways, making it practically useless.” It seemed like the type of thing that Peter would’ve come up with- he had worked with Roombas before; something that a lot of people regretted not stopping him from doing, because now the hoovers got sad when there wasn’t anything to clear up, and became extremely irritating. Pepper had ended up hiring people for the specific purpose of making messes to keep the Roombas happy. 

Jonas continued on with explaining the original question. “After the initial project, the interns are invited to observe and have some input on any projects that are currently ongoing. They spend time rotating through types of projects- medical technology, smart technology, engineering and mechanical technology just to give a few examples. If they find one that they particularly enjoy or excel at, they do projects that revolve around it and specialise in that particular field in their second year here.” 

More questions were asked after that, until Laura looked at her watch and decided that it was time to take the class down to basement level for a visit to the hall of curiosity.

Chapter Text

Peter had never been down to the hall of curiosity before. In fact, he hadn’t even known that it existed before today, or he probably would’ve already visited it with Harley. (And probably some alcohol, but nobody really needed to know that- especially not Mr. Stark or Miss Potts) 

Unlike the hall of ideas, the room was set up more like a museum. As well as blueprints and designs explained by placards, there were also prototype designs wherever projects had gotten that far. Not all of the failed projects were put on display in the hall of curiosity however. Only the most exciting ones. All of the other ones were stored in boxes on the shelves of a rather large storage room off of the side of it. 

The first part of the museum was dedicated to SI projects that were almost completed, but hadn’t quite been finished due to the fact the the technology hadn’t yet been created, or the prototype couldn’t be scaled up or down effectively. Peter imagined that once upon a time, blueprints of the arc reactor also resided down here.  

All of the projects in this part were good ideas. Peter could see the merit of them, and avidly started discussing with Ned and MJ ways in which the projects could be made to work. Some of them actually seemed to be possible, which was something he made a mental note about so he would remember to come back down here with Harley, as it was something that they could probably spend some time working on together. 

As the hall of curiosity continued, the projects and ideas became more wacky and more wonderful. The next section was where the projects created by interns were displayed. The class all took their time to look for the project that Dr. Olivers had told them about, and all decided that they loved the idea of it. There were two projects down in this section that Peter actually recognised. One made by some interns that he had helped out with, and surprisingly, the other one was his, which was something he wasn’t expecting to see. 

It was blueprints for a design of a phone that worked a bit like Thor’s hammer did, because he was sick of losing it all the time, and decided that it was a good idea to create one that could be summoned by just a word, or a click of a button. (He didn’t get round to figuring out which method he was going to use yet) Peter lost interest in this project just as he was beginning to think about making the first prototype for the design and hadn't thought about it since.

“That’s such a cool idea!” Ned said as the three of them looked at it.

“I’d forgotten about this,” Peter replied. “Huh. Maybe I'll finish it,” 

Ned looked at Peter with a huge smile on his face. “ You made this? That is awesome, man!” 

MJ looked at them incredulously. “But wouldn’t it just slam into walls and break?” She pointed out. 

“Oh yeah, I already thought about that,” Peter replied. “It was going to connect up to FRIDAY who has the building’s blueprints on her system, so it could navigate around. Never figured out how to stop it from hitting people though.” He admitted. 

They moved on to the next area shortly after. This part of the museum had the most strange and… well, curious ideas. It was the area that inspired and gave name to the hall of curiosity. 

In this section were ideas that were purely made of what if’s? Ideas that had no place or basis in science that was achievable and simply only existed because somebody got curious. There were designs for superhero suits, there were designs for hovercrafts and there were designs that couldn’t even be explained by the person who created them. 

“This is just-” Peter couldn’t even finish his sentence, completely lost for words as he read the placards. 

“I know, ” Ned said, looking at a blueprint for something that was named on its placard as ‘the inside-out rubix cube’. The idea of it, from what the trio could gather was that their hands would end up inside the cube via some sort of wormhole contraption or something. It really didn’t make any sense at all. 

This part didn’t even have any prototypes. One of the spaceship designs did have a model to go with it based on the blueprints, however when Peter examined the two, he found the model to be highly inaccurate to what was shown on the blueprints. Not only were the designs impossible to make, more of them were also impossible to even imaging working, causing the entire group of students to be completely awed and yet simultaneously baffled by each design they looked at. 

It was clear that the hall of curiosities was the highlight of the trip, and also apparently a good thing to end it on. After a long while of letting the students explore it, Laura clapped her hands together again, to get their attention. “Alrighty guys! Now, I'm afraid that we’re coming to the end of our trip today. Now, we’re going to head on up to the lockers where you guys can hand your passes back in and grab your stuff. I’ll then show y’all where the gift shop is and let you have a look before I say goodbye.” 

Disappointment was palpable in the room as Laura led them up. Peter knew that all of them wished that they could’ve spent longer in the hall of curiosities because he himself knew he would be doing just that. However, the end couldn’t be helped, as the bus driver was a bit grumpy and didn’t have much patience for them if they were late going back to the school. 

Chapter Text

It didn’t take long for the students to gather up their belongings and be ready for the gift shop, the longest part of the process being collecting in the badges, as Azi had to run everybody through the security again before they handed the badges back to make sure that nothing had been stolen whilst they were on the tour. 

After this was done, Laura led them to the gift shop. She walked up at the front with Mr Harrington and Peter heard her ask him how long they had until they needed to be back on the road, which was apparently 20 minutes. She gave them 15 minutes in the shop, and pointed them towards the toilets in the entryway, in case anybody needed to relieve themselves before the journey. 

Peter followed Ned around the shop as he looked for a souvenir. He had already decided that he wasn’t going to get anything, having already got multiple hoodies and T-shirts from when he had come to the tower in his suit and needed something to change into.

“How much for a hoodie?” Ned questioned, looking at the tag. He deflated at the price. “Aw come on! I’m ten dollars short.” He looked at the rack next to the hoodies. “I’d still be short or a T-shirt too,” He sighed. “Guess it’ll have to be a pen,” 

“Wait, Ned. Get the hoodie, I'll sort it for you.” Peter said. 

Ned shook his head. “No dude, It’s ten dollars, I can’t take that much from you,” He replied. 

Peter took his shoulder. “Just trust me, alright? Get the hoodie.” Confused but deciding to listen to his best friend, Ned found his size and pulled one off of the rack. Peter also found MJ who was looking at a bracelet and told her basically the same- to grab what they wanted no matter what and he’d sort it. They chose a bracelet that looked similar to the necklace Peter had gifted her, and followed them to the counter, where the Cashier scanned their purchases. 

Peter flashed his ID badge, showing the cashier his security level. Mr. Stark had given him high enough clearance on his ID that it came with the perk of not needing to pay for anything from the shop. Peter had heard from other employees that they got things from the shop at a heavily discounted price, which stopped him from feeling guilty about getting things for free. 

“Alright, would you like a bag?” He said, Causing Ned to pause as his hand was halfway to his wallet in either shock or confusion- Peter wasn’t quite sure. MJ however showed no outward signs of anything like Ned did. 

Peter could tell that Ned wanted to wear the hoodie, and MJ could either put the bracelet on or in her bag, so he said no. 

“Dude, what?” Ned asked once they were out and waiting with a few of their classmates for everyone else. 

Peter just shrugged. “Mr Stark says everyone with my clearance level gets stuff from the store for free,” He explained. Only a handful of people had clearance that high, but Peter wasn’t quite aware of how few people actually did hold the same clearance level as him. He was also unaware of how the cashier kept looking over to him and trying to figure out who the hell he was. 

//-//

Although Peter wished that he could spare Happy the time of coming to collect him from school by staying at SI instead of taking the bus back, he didn’t think it would be very good for Mr Harrington’s health to come back missing a student, so he got on the bus and rode with the class back to midtown. The journey back was full of discussion about the day’s events, as well as an ongoing debate about who would be most likely to get the internship positions. So far, it had been decided that MJ would definitely get in, Betty and Charles would be considered but wouldn’t quite make it, and that Flash would probably definitely get in due to some bribery on the part of his parents. 

MJ didn’t comment on the fact that they chose her as somebody who would definitely get in; they knew that both she and Ned had internship positions held at SI for them if that’s what they wanted in future. MJ knew that that is what she wanted, and had even decided on the field they wanted to enter into- mechanical engineering. She did however comment on Flash. “Flash wasn’t allowed to come on the trip, probably because his background check turned out to be negative. If he wasn’t allowed to come for a tour, there’s no way that SI will employ him.”

“Well, that’s what bribery is for,” Zoha said.

Charles nodded. “Yeah, Flash’s father would probably just donate them a bunch of money to clean his record.”

“Don’t you think they would’ve tried that for the trip?” MJ  replied, raising her eyebrows. 

They went silent for a few moments, thinking, until finally they all said something in agreement. Peter knew for certain that Flash would never be allowed to step foot in SI, even if he was bleeding out on the pavement outside, but it seemed that MJ had gathered that too. He had a feeling, however, that MJ wouldn’t end up working for Stark Industries, and would instead be trained by SHIELD to become an agent. He wasn’t so sure as to what Ned would choose, but thought that his heart would probably choose for him, and he’d end up working with computers. 

Peter’s future was already set for Stark Industries, but his classmates didn’t need to know that. They could speculate about internships all they wanted, but Peter knew that in reality he was going to be the only one in his class that was guaranteed to be working in SI after college. 

The bus arrived back at midtown by the end of the school day. He usually had Academic Decathlon afterschool today, but Mr Harrington had cancelled it, unsure whether they would be back in time. They had managed to arrive back in time, but nothing was guaranteed- apparently not even aliens falling out of the sky, so it was always better to be safe than sorry. 

Chapter Text

When he arrived back at SI later that day, Peter gave Dr Oliver’s his feedback, and then started on giving him ideas for improvements. 

“I can give you some info about Spidey, and I made a robot to to my homework for me, so that’d be a good addition,” Peter offered.

Jonas nodded in agreement, liking this idea. “Alright, you do that for me.” 

“You’re memes are all really outdated,” He said.  “I could make some for you. To put in the presentation. SI specific ones, I mean so that they won’t go out of date as quickly.” 

“Yes, that will be good.” Jonas replied. 

“How do you even know about memes?” He asked, getting off track. “You’re like-” Peter tried to figure out his age, but shook his head and gave up. “You’re like old ,”

Dr Oliver’s sighed. “I have kids just a bit younger than you. I know what memes are.” 

Peter sat back in his chair, surprised. “You have kids?” He exclaimed. “I thought you hated kids! Does that mean that you just hate… Me and Harley?” his voice got quieter at the end, full of apprehension and a touch of self loathing. 

“What?” Jonas sighed, thinking about his countless interactions with the two boys. He hadn’t realised it, but now he could see why Peter thought that was the case. “Oh, Peter- no. I don’t hate you guys. It’s just-” He ran a hand through his silver hair, trying to decide the best way of telling Peter about Travis, or whether he should tell him about him at all. Doing so would drag up a lot of bad memories for him, and Jonas really didn’t need the sleepless nights. 

“You just- you both remind me of someone.” He finally said, “A friend I lost a long time ago in an accident right here.” Putting a hand on Peter’s shoulder, Jonas looked him in the eye. “I just stress about you guys ending up just like him.” 

The only thing that Peter could think of to reply with, was “Oh.” They sat in silence for a moment, letting the words sink in, and Peter started to feel relieved, not realising how heavy the weight of thinking that Dr Olivers hated him really was. 

“You do need to work on your email etiquette though,” Jonas said, cutting the silence. 

Peter let out a startled huff of laughter. He looked up at Dr. Olivers with that faux ‘angel face’ that he wore when doing something mischievous, or asking for forgiveness. “If I do, will you forgive us for the window?” He asked.

“So you admit it was your fault?” Dr Olivers looked at him with a pointed expression, the frown lines on his face becoming prominent in the way that Peter was used to seeing them. 

His eyes widened, realising what he had just done. “Wait, no!” He said, hands waving wildly in front of him. He was panicking slightly; for all that he was joking about the explosion, he really didn’t want to suffer the consequences if caught. Luckily, the knock at the door saved him by diverting Dr Olivers attention to whoever was behind it. 

The door opened, and Mr Stark stepped in, followed by a blonde girl who seemed to be around Peter’s age. “Ah,” He said. “Both people we need to speak to.” He put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, the same way he did to Peter and Harley when he was introducing them to new people, and suddenly Peter knew who she was- knew what this was about. 

“This is Gwen,” He said. “Gwen Stacy. She'll be working with you and Harley.” 

Peter smiled, standing up and holding his hand out to shake. “Hi Gwen, I’m Peter. Do you like Star Wars?”