Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They’d drawn lots for who had to do it, if Peter had to tell the truth. There had been a whole rigorous process in place, Morgan had ultimately been the one to pick the loser, and it had, naturally, been Peter who’d fallen victim to the tragic fate. Hence why he was in the belly of the beast: Hammer Industries. Peter swallowed sharply as he entered the building, to be greeted with a man he’d desperately tried to avoid over the years in his position at Stark Industries. 

A flash of too-white teeth, a cheap suit and the bold clap of hands, yes— it was Justin Hammer. 

“Mr Parker-Stark!” Justin said—loudly, always too loud. Peter had reluctantly watched several of his conferences and interviews, and had quickly figured out the man exuded an uncomfortable level of over-confidence that he didn’t live up to, and attempted to make up for it by using a loud voice.  

“Such a pleasure to finally meet you properly,” the man continued, holding out a hand which Peter reached over to shake. He tried not to shiver as he made physical contact with the man, but it was hard. 

They’d crossed paths before, at galas and such, but Peter had always deliberately excused himself from the conversation when Hammer got involved. Tony had recommended keeping away from Justin and Peter had definitely seen the benefit in doing just that. He would always make an excuse that required his attention — a phone call, or a person across the room he needed to talk to, something along those lines. It had worked and as a result Peter had successfully been able to avoid Justin Hammer for the years he’d spent as Joint CEO. 

So when it had become a necessity to have one of the CEOs of Stark Industries — or at least senior people — to have a meeting with Hammer about a shared contract…well. There had been squabbles over whose role it was, truly, to have to put up with the insufferable man. He and Pepper had both agreed it was never going to be Tony, because that would have ended in disaster. The last time they’d sent Tony into a rival company….well, let’s just say Norman Osborn had a restraining order against the billionaire for a reason. 

Pepper was perfectly cordial with Justin Hammer — except for the whole incident in which he’d teamed up with a guy who’d tried to take Tony down thing. His little stint in prison after that had done him good, and he’d written an apology to both Pepper and Tony. Not that either of them had read their apology, god no. Peter was pretty sure Tony had used them for firewood in a project he’d been working on at the time. But she’d said no to the meeting, on the grounds that she was ‘in Tokyo’ which was complete bullshit because he knew full well she’d booked the flight immediately after the meeting had been arranged (he’d checked her phone record, and she’d called Jeffords, their pilot, immediately after the email from Hammer Industries had come into their inboxes). 

The whole ‘drawing lots’ system had been futile, really. It had been rigged. Pepper had given Morgan a juice pop, and that had been it. She’d bribed her way into forcing her daughter to condemn Peter to the meeting.

He was honestly surprised that Hammer Industries was still afloat, honestly, after he’d hacked into their finances yesterday to get a general understanding for the company. It was dire, really.

What had the guy said just then? Oh—right, nice to meet him properly. 

“Yes, well,” Peter grimaced, painting on a smile and trying not to break Hammer’s arm as he lightly shook the hand back. Justin seemed fairly intent on shaking Peter’s hand so hard it would fall off (which wasn’t really possible but he was doing his damn best). 

“How have you been?” Hammer said, like they were old friends. They weren’t. “I heard you put through a big deal with some investors over in Tokyo just last week?”

“Oh, well I wouldn’t say big,” Peter muttered. 

“20 million, wasn’t it?” Justin’s eyebrows raised. 

Yes, well, that was probably considered big for Hammer Industries, but for Stark that was one of the less pricey deals they’d established — especially in more recent years. Peter took it as a compliment, exaggeratedly smiled at Justin. 

“You’re correct, yes, 20 million. I’ve been well, thank you,” Peter clarified, and then, reluctantly tacked onto the end, “And you? How have you been?” 

“Oh, very good, thank you Mr Parker-Stark—may I call you Peter?” 

No, Peter privately thought, but imagined what Pepper would say if he actually said that out loud. He wondered if it would get him banned (like Tony was from any correspondence with Hammer Industries) and briefly considered it, before blinking and realising that that was absolutely insane and he didn’t want to jeopardise his social standing just to get out of a meeting. (Or did he?)

“Of course,” Peter said, the words ashes in his mouth. 

“Let’s get to the meeting room, shall we, Peter?” Hammer grinned, and waved his way toward the elevator. Peter followed, glancing out the glass doors as if there was still a chance for him to escape his fate. 

In the elevator, he slyly pulled out his phone to text the group chat he had with Tony and Pepper in despair. 

STARK FAM WITHOUT BEST MEMBER (MORGAN, OBVIOUSLY)

peter: pls tell me there’s a mission anything to get out of this please i’ll fight aliens, does thor need me? asgard? anywhere?

tony: no mission here, squirt, sorry

peter: i resent that, i’m old now remember, you can call morgan squirt, your daughter who is a literal child?

tony: but it’s so much more fun when I call you it. you should have let me go to the meeting instead of you, sacrifice your old man

pepper: definitely not happening.

peter: guys pls don’t subject me to this fate he’s so insufferable this is torture please guys

tony: good luck squirt

Clearly there was nothing he could do to escape. He’d have to commit to it. Peter resigned himself to the fact that he was about to spend about three solid hours with Justin Hammer talking through contracts and having to listen to his grovelling and god forbid he’d forgotten about the terrible puns too, why hadn’t he gotten stabbed on patrol last night and forced Pepper to do it in place of him?!

“Emails?” Hammer asked, glancing at Peter as he put away his phone with a frustrated roll of his eyes. Well, he wasn’t about to tell the man that he was messaging his not-biological-but-in-every-other-sense-of-the-word parents and begging to get out of the meeting. So…yeah, emails worked as a good enough excuse. 

“You know how it is,” Peter said lightly, letting out a sigh, and hated himself for saying it, hating himself more when Justin boomed with laughter as a result.

He glanced around the elevator, seeing if there was any way he could conceivably make an escape, and concluded there was nothing to it. They went up to whatever floor Hammer had pressed — Peter hadn’t been looking, too busy texting — and the door to the elevator opened to reveal a wide corridor with plenty of employees dashing about. It was a carpeted floor, fairly enclosed, and Peter hated it. 

He missed the labs. 

Justin stepped out, still grinning, and then seemingly caught sight of someone and dashed off to go and fetch him. 

“Timothy!” Justin called out as he walked, and ran over to the tall guy with the brown hair who was facing away from them. He grabbed his arm, pulled him back over to Peter. The dude still hadn’t turned around, and Peter raised his eyebrows in slight interest. 

“Peter, this is my son Timothy. Timothy Hammer,” Justin Hammer said, and Peter turned to be greeted with—

Holy shit.  

It was Not Paul. 

A face Peter hadn’t seen in years, not since the time back when he was still in high school, back before MIT, when he was getting used to his role as the occasional CEO and third in command. 

Not-Paul had been a Hammer tech spy who’d briefly infiltrated the Marketing department as the assistant to their Head of Marketing (Mark from Marketing, of course). He’d then started a plot to try and get the new launch of Starkphones released far earlier than they were supposed to. It had failed, obviously, because Peter had uncovered the plot whilst on a field trip with his classmates, much to Not-Paul’s chagrin. Not-Paul had been publicly humiliated in front of all of the interns, who’d loved it and still talked about it years later, and then had been dragged off by Happy. 

And it was an incredibly satisfying twist, that Not-Paul was in fact Justin Hammer’s actual literal son, Timothy. Oh, the interns were going to love it. It was going to go down in Stark Industries history. Peter was overjoyed. His terrible day had just improved significantly. 

Peter’s face widened into a grin as he caught eyes with the man, and Not-Paul’s eyes blinked in surprise and abject horror as he saw who it was he was meeting. 

“Oh,” Peter smiled, “We’ve met, I do believe.” 

This was going to be fucking brilliant. 

“You have?” Justin said, glancing between his son and Peter, possibly wondering why Peter was having such an emotional response to seeing him. But Peter couldn’t control himself or his emotions, he was too content at this twist in his day, this shift in his life. 

Not-Paul was blinking rapidly in real time. 

“Timothy,” Hammer said lightly, making eye contact with him that seemed to say say something you idiot this is a CEO, this is Peter Parker-Stark you’re meeting and here with right now. 

Not-Paul—Timothy, rather—looked horrified, but he managed to blurt out a, “Hello.”

Peter made a split-second decision to relieve him of the boredom of the next several hours. 

“It’s lovely to see you again. You must come join us in the meeting,” He had to physically stop himself from saying Not Paul, and it took all of his self restraint, “…Timothy.” 

“Oh—um, are you sure?” Hammer turned to Peter with a slightly alarmed expression. He seemed not to have very much faith in his son. Not-Paul, too, looked disconcerted at the idea of him being in a meeting. Maybe he wasn’t the heir to the company like Peter was. How sad for him. 

“I absolutely insist,” Peter nodded, “We’re old buddies, aren’t we, Timmy?” 

“You are?” Hammer glanced between Peter and Not-Paul like his son had grown a third head. 

“Oh, yes, we had a mutual acquaintance, Paul, I think his name was,” Peter pretended to ponder the name of the made up acquaintance, trying not to smile and give away the fact that the whole story was a blatant lie. “But it’s been so many years…” 

“Was it Paul, Timothy?” Justin asked him. 

“Um, I think so?” Timothy said, playing on with the lie and looking panicked as he did so. Peter presumed that Justin Hammer had no idea about the whole infiltrating Stark Industries thing based on his son’s expression and the pure panic on his face, so Peter was concocting a marvellous lie that Timothy simply had to go along with. But it was a damn good bargaining chip for the future. 

They made their way to the meeting room in peace, Timothy tagging along, not being disturbed by any employees. In fact, Peter noticed that any employees that went past them actively seemed to avoid Justin Hammer’s gaze. Several of them did a double take when they saw Peter, which, fair enough, it was an odd sight. 

Their meeting went smoothly, much to Peter’s surprise. He expected that his enthusiasm was because of the discomfort that Timothy was going through as they sat in the conference room. Every question Peter had — not that he really had any questions, because, as he’d said, he’d hacked into the finances of Hammer Industries the previous night, it was just fun to ask things — he directed it at Not-Paul, who would then squirm and glance to his father in conclusion.

“What do you think of Figure 12A, Timothy?” 

“Timmy, thoughts on this?” 

“Have you considered doing such a thing, Tim, my friend?” 

It was driving Justin Hammer absolutely round the bend. Peter thought he was actually a little bit jealous of his son, which was so hilarious he wanted to laugh until his stomach ached. Every time Peter’s eyes went over to Not-Paul, Justin cleared his throat and said, “Peter?” 

Peter had never had so much fun in a meeting in his life. Well, maybe that was going a bit far. He had, after all, had quite a lot of interactions he considered fun. But that one was up there with the greats. He was already picturing the ways he would tell it to the rest of the interns, and it was absolutely glorious. 

After the meeting, which was about as productive as it could have been considering all of Peter’s interruptions, Peter insisted that he had to get going and “as much as he wanted to stay for a coffee with them so he could catch up with his re-found friend, he really had to get back to his own company”. 

And what a shame it was, Peter thought, smiling gleefully at the thought of getting back into the world, getting away from the carpeted floors of Hammer Industries and the sub-par security system in place. He was practically drooling at the thought of the Stark labs as they went back down in the elevator to the lobby. 

“It was lovely to see you again,” Peter pretended to gush over Timothy, shooting him a sly glance when Justin wasn’t looking. He ignored Justin, who looked offended, and gave them a cheery wave.

“Bye, Timothy, darling,” Peter said as he walked out those glass doors, pulling them wide open like he was the star of the show (he was). 

Not-Paul and Justin just stared at him like he was crazy, both slightly bewildered and unsure of quite what to do. Peter grinned and breathed in the fresh air, never happier than to see the bright light of the sun shining down on him, and didn’t look back.

All in all, Peter thought that the trip to Hammer Industries had been a complete and utter success. 

Chapter Text

The grin remained on his face for several minutes as he left the Hammer Industries HQ, walking in the vague direction back to Stark Industries. Peter should have called a cab, or maybe have rang Happy to see if he was around, but he was content to walk, buzzing with excitement. 

That had been hilarious. He hadn’t expected to be met with Not-Paul when he’d walked into the Hammer Industries building, and it truly done a 180 for his mood. He whistled to himself, attracting attention from various passerbys who looked at him with slight frowns—he had a recognisable face, as CEO of a big energy company, but people were sometimes scared to approach him.

And Peter’s grin was pretty wide, so he didn’t blame them. 

After several moments, he couldn’t stand not being able to talk with anyone, brimming with the desire to tell someone—anyone—so he called up Pepper on his phone.

”Just had the meeting," Peter announced as the call connected through, slightly breathless. He didn’t get breathless from doing exercise, so it wasn’t the walking, just sheer joy from the morning he’d had. Timothy Hammer, man. 

"Oh!" Pepper exclaimed with a considerable amount of interest. ”You don’t sound as….traumatised as I’d expected you to be. How was it?”

"It was…god, Pepper.” Peter sighed. “It was wonderful." 

There was a considerable pause on the other end of the line. Pepper had certainly not expected that, given how upset Peter had been about having to attend the meeting in the first place. 

"Did Justin Hammer drug you?” Pepper asked, then urgently called out for her husband before Peter could say anything in response. “Tony, quick, come in here.”

Peter shook his head. “Pepper, wait, don’t get him—”

But it was too late, Tony had been summoned. Peter heard the rustling telltale noise of Pepper putting him on speaker, and then Tony’s voice rung through the phone. 

“Peter?” His dad said, frantically, in the way he always did when he was worried about something. “Are you alright?”

“I think Hammer drugged him,” Pepper told him, slightly quiet, not directed at Peter. 

Tony’s response was loud, and alarmed. "What?!"

Peter covered his face with his spare hand and groaned. “Justin Hammer did not drug me at our meeting, oh my god."

"Why do you think he’s been drugged?” Tony asked his wife in a hush hush voice so Peter couldn’t hear it. Except, of course, he could, because they were still on speaker. 

"He said the meeting was wonderful.” Pepper hastily said back. “Used that exact word.” 

"What the fuck," Tony whispered, disturbed. Peter heard the pair of them breathing through the phone for a second—silently communicating, probably. They did that sometimes, it was annoying. 

"Peter, turn on your camera right now, switch to a video call, I want to see you." Pepper instructed, and yup, they’d definitely discussed something behind his back. 

"Maybe he’s being held hostage by Hammer, good point,” Tony added, his voice quiet enough to suggest he hadn’t meant for Peter to hear it. Seriously, it was like they forgot he had superhearing.

Peter rolled his eyes, and turned on his camera to show that he was in fact not kidnapped, he was perfectly alright and walking down the streets of New York. Honestly, Peter had been kidnapped one time and suddenly they got all worried even though he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. 

Tony and Pepper turned their own camera on as the call switched to a video call, and Peter was able to see them. Pepper was sat at the table in the penthouse, Tony lingering behind her. He looked stressed—his hair sticking up and his attention darting across the screen as if he was trying to make sure Peter was alright in every feasible manner. 

“Guys. Please. Listen. I’m not drugged. It was fine,” Peter reassured them. “I just bumped into someone, that was all.”

Tony’s frowned, his face contorting. ”At Hammer Industries? Who the hell do you know at Hammer Industries?”

Tony said it like it was an insult. Which, fair enough, it kind of was.

"Oh, you know," Peter replied vaguely. "Justin Hammer’s son.”

Both Pepper and Tony stared at him like he’d gone slightly mad, their mouths dropping open. 

“You know Justin Hammer’s son,” Tony blinked. 

Peter felt a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “In a roundabout kind of way. I suppose you could say that.”

Tony made a small noise—imperceptible, and Pepper shot a desperate look to the camera. 

"Peter please, he’s going insane, look at him. Tell us what happened, in plain English.” 

His fun was over, then. Tony did look stressed, Peter supposed. His fists were white and tightly clenched on the back of the chair Pepper was sat on, as if to stabilise himself. 

"Well, to put it bluntly,” Peter let out a breath. “Justin Hammer’s son is actually an ex-employee of ours. Kind of. Remember that one field trip of mine from several years back, when we had that incident with Marketing?”

Pepper seemed to get it instantly, her mouth making an ‘o’ in comprehension. "Oh my god, it’s not…”

Peter nodded. "Oh, but it is.”

"Paul? Or Not Paul, as you named him," Pepper smiled, sitting back in her chair with a fond expression on her face. “Wow.”

Tony looked confused. "Was I there for this incident?” 

Pepper shook her head, glancing at her husband. "No, we didn’t get you involved, but I did recount it to you later. The spy from Hammer Industries, went into Marketing and pretended to be a guy called Paul, then Peter figured out he worked at Hammer?” 

Tony tensed up, blinking and turning to Peter. ”Wait, so that was actually Hammer’s son?”

"Apparently so,” Peter nodded. “His name is Timothy. Justin introduced him to me and I promptly invited him to the meeting so I could ask him as many questions as I could. He’s absolutely not qualified for business, I had so much fun.” 

Both Pepper and Tony disliked Justin Hammer due to the whole Ivan Vanko incident, so neither of them seemed to be mad about this turn of events. It was reasonably unprofessional, what Peter had done, but they trusted his judgement.

“That’s…a unique approach,” Pepper said, smirking. The idea must have amused her. God, Peter wished he’d filmed Justin Hammer’s annoyed face whenever he called his son Timmy, like they were old friends. And when he’d referred to him as darling…well, Pepper would have died to see that footage. 

“And exactly like what I would have done,” Tony grinned, sending him a wink. “Good job, kid.” 

“Thanks, dad,” Peter responded casually, looking left and right whilst crossing a road. He didn’t even come close to getting killed, which was pretty good for New York streets. 

“Do you want me to come and pick you up?” Tony offered, watching intently. 

Peter considered it for a moment, and then shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m alright. Need to stretch my legs, and then I’m going to go and find the interns, tell them all about my morning.”  

Tony was understanding. “Craving some lab time?” 

Peter nodded. “Very much so. Did you know the labs at Hammer Industries are carpeted?” 

A wave of visible revulsion crossed over Tony’s face.

“Why?” He asked, aghast. 

“I know, it was awful.” Peter shuddered, and crossed another road. “So, yeah, I’m going to the labs. Gotta tell the others about this, anyways.” 

“Right,” Tony agreed. 

“Well, we can have an actual debrief about the meeting at some point tomorrow,” Pepper instructed, glancing at her watch. “Glad it went as well as it did, though.” 

“Yup, yup, sounds good to me,” Peter grinned. “See you later for movie night?” 

They spoke for a minute about the choice of movie for that night: Moana, because it was one of Morgan’s favourites and as much as he pretended he hated it, Tony actually knew all of the lyrics to the songs. Peter had once caught him singing How Far I’ll Go in his workshop, before it had suspiciously switched to ACDC when he walked through the door.

Then Peter was left to walk back to Stark Industries in peace, simply thinking about the wondrous morning he’d just had. He greeted everyone on the ground floor with a fist bump and a smile, wishing them all an amazing afternoon. People came running up to him to ask how his day was going, and he lightly chatted with them all before jumping in the lift and clicking the floor for his favourite lab in the R&D department. 

There were a lot of interns at Stark Industries, and many of them focused in the R&D department. Still, over the years, Peter had grown attached to a good number of them, and the ones in the particular lab he’d chosen were his favourites. It was led by Jasper Nolan, who was Peter’s absolute favourite intern of all time and had been there for the original field trip incident. 

Most of the interns that had been around during the field trip had since moved on to become official researchers and scientists, but some originals had stayed. Despite this shift, the tale of Not-Paul had been passed down by word of mouth, and it was a legendary story throughout the entirety of R&D. Only several new interns would be in the dark about the incident.  

So when Peter arrived to the lab, his grin still plastered on, he knew it was going to be a big deal. They were going to freak. 

"You’ll never guess what just happened to me,” He called out, immediately attracting attention from everyone in the room.

Jasper stared at him blank-faced. "Boss, no offense, but that could go in about seven hundred different ways just because it’s you.” 

Peter tried not to take offence to that. In fairness, he had announced several things in a similar manner to what he’d just done, and most of them had been considerably more weird than meeting an ex-colleague (…of sorts). 

"Guess. I’ll give you three guesses, like a genie.” Peter threw his hands up in the air triumphantly. “Then if you don’t get it, I’ll tell you.” 

“Can we have…hints?” One intern asked, putting down the blueprints she’d been holding to focus on him.  

"Blast from the past,” Peter said vaguely, his gaze dancing over the different people in the room, gauging their reactions. 

“That does not help at all,” Jasper commented. 

Peter shrugged, and let them think. Most of them knew about where he’d been that morning, because he’d complained about it at length, but that didn't seem to be on their mind in terms of possibilities. About seven things could have happened to Peter since leaving the Hammer Industries building, and besides, what kind of interesting shenanigan could possibly have happened there? It had been drilled into all of them that the obvious answer, when it came to Peter, was usually incorrect. 

“Did you get kidnapped again?” Annabelle said, sympathetically, and it was truly concerning that that was something she suggested without blinking. Or maybe the fact that absolutely no-one was surprised by that comment that was more concerning. 

Peter shook his head without elaborating, and they went back to thinking. 

Then someone gasped—Catarina, who looked extremely excited. 

“Is it Stabby?” She queried, eyes wide. “Is he somehow back?” 

There were a series of excited whispers from across the room. 

Peter blinked. “What? No, Stabby is definitely banned from the lab, guys, I’m sorry. Da—Mr Stark said it was too much of a health and safety risk to have him wandering around the corridors.” 

Stabby, of course, was a reference to the Roomba that the lab had acquired several years prior, back before Peter had gone to college. He’d been a beloved favourite of everyone in R&D, but a serious hazard because of the knives that someone had attached to him. Everyone had been nearly stabbed in the ankles at least once as he roamed the floor—but they’d considered it his form of showing love. 

Eventually they’d had to ban Stabby because of his violent love language, and they’d had a whole funeral for him. Even now, years later, there was a picture of the interns posing with Stabby on the communal corkboard in the break room. He’d been an icon. 

“He can have my desk space,” Catarina offered, and people started nodding, giving up their space too, proclaiming they could all share desks in order to get their Roomba back. 

“Guys, we can’t have him back, I’m sorry, really,” Peter told them, feeling bad that he’d gotten their hopes up. 

Maybe he should enter into renegotiation with Tony—they could compromise, surely. There must be spare rooms somewhere in SI that weren’t being used. If he could just wrangle an empty room for Stabby to live in, then he could get Stabby out of the hibernation they’d had to leave him in after the ban. 

“Anyways, we’re getting off track.” Peter blinked himself out of the tangent he’d gone off on. “Guys. What happened to me this morning?” 

People went back to their considerations, mumbling vague words to each other but no-one saying anything out right. 

“You were at Hammer Industries,” Jasper said slowly, and Peter nodded. Maybe he was going to get it—god, he knew Jasper was his favourite for a reason. “Did Hammer….somehow try and kill you?”

And….nope, not even Jasper could figure out where this was going. 

“We need to work on your guessing abilities,” Peter shook his head. “No, okay, fine, that’s three guesses, even if they were wildly off the actual answer. I’ll tell you. Okay. I ran into…drumroll, please?” 

The interns did, in fact do a drumroll. It was perfectly executed, mostly because they’d practised it a lot. They quieted as Peter put his hands out in a calming motion. 

“I ran into none other than Not-Paul today,” Peter announced, and then…chaos. People went absolutely wild—jumping out of their chairs, whooping, yelling questions. Jasper’s jaw had dropped, and he sat into his chair decisively, covering his mouth with one of his hands in shock. 

The interns certainly did not disappoint with their reaction. 

There were a few people without context, who sat with confused faces. Peter caught one of the whispers of two of the newer interns who clearly hadn’t heard the iconic tale. 

“Who the hell is Not-Paul?” one asked, frowning in confusion. 

“Clearly someone who isn’t Paul,” the other intern muttered back to them, equally as concerned as to why everyone had reacted in such a manner. 

“Guys, guys, I know this is exciting, I know,” Peter said loudly. “We never thought this would happen. But some people don’t know the tale, I was wondering if anyone would like to remind us of the event?”

Jasper and some of the other interns did a dramatic reenactment of the whole thing, which Peter thoroughly enjoyed watching, and then everyone was up to speed. Attention turned back to him, waiting for an explanation. 

Peter sighed. “I was miserable, walking through Hammer Industries’ carpeted labs,” —there was a collective wince at that declaration, as no one liked the idea of carpeted labs— “until Hammer introduced me to someone. The guy turns around, and bam, it’s Not-Paul.” 

“Wow,” several people mumbled at the same time, imagining it. 

“And that’s not even the sweetest part,” Peter shook his head, bracing for it. “It turns out…Not-Paul is actually Timothy Hammer, aka Justin Hammer’s son.” 

There was a collective exclamation of: “What?!”

“His son?” Annabelle added, seeming shocked. “That whole time, Paul was actually his son? I know we knew he worked there, but damn!” 

“We were working with Hammer’s son that whole time?” Jasper raised his eyebrows. “No-one tell Mark from Marketing, he’ll never forgive himself.” 

“Yeah, it was his son. I feel kind of bad for him, he doesn’t seem very appreciated.” Peter shrugged, thinking of the surprise on Timothy's face when Peter asked him to come along to the meeting. “Anyways, I made him squirm, invited him to my meeting and pretended we were old acquaintances the entire time. Justin was so mad.” 

No-one seemed to know how to react to that, and Peter took the silence as a way to escape. Now he’d enlightened them with knowledge, it was time for him to scatter and actually get some work done. 

Peter shrugged. “So, yeah, that’s what happened to me this morning, sorry for interrupting your work flow, guys. If you’ll excuse me, I think I need to send Justin and Timothy a lovely handwritten thank you note to confuse the hell out of both of them.” 

“Only you, boss,” Jasper grinned. “This would only happen to you.”