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Peter gulped as the bus went over yet another pothole. This day was going to be, to put it nicely, a disaster. It was just Parker-luck that his entire class was visiting Stark tower. What’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like Peter could cause an entire ferry to blow up again, especially not from his own home, right?
It had been eight months since Thor had snapped Thanos and his army away, and Peter had moved into Stark Tower with Tony and the rest of the team. Tony had bought back the tower during the blip, Peter was pretty sure Tony had told him why, but that conversation now felt like a fever dream that Peter was desperate to forget.
Peter frantically searched around the wreckage of the compound. After spotting who he was looking for, Peter swung over as fast as he could before tackling him into a hug.
“Mr. Stark I missed you, you would not believe the day I’ve had. I was feeling all weird and tingly and then next thing I knew it felt like I was waking up from a nap and then Dr. Strange told me it had been five years and that’s just CRAZY!”
“Yeah, kiddo,” Tony chuckled, patting Peter on the back, “Things have gotten crazy around here too in the last five years.”
“I should probably call May. Oh! And Ned and MJ! Do you know if any of them blipped?”
Tony hesitated for a moment, “As far as I know your friends blipped, I can help you track them down in a little bit.”
“What about May?” Peter gulped, beginning to feel his heart race.
“How about we go get some food? You want a burger? I could go for a burger. Did I tell you I bought back the tower? I decided having some roots in the city is a good thing in case of any more intergalactic crises.” Tony rambled, trying to avoid the subject.
“Mr. Stark?” Peter’s voice wavered. “What about my Aunt May?”
“Listen kiddo, I didn’t want to tell you this here, but while you were gone there was an accident,” Tony started trying to avoid eye contact with the teen. At this point Peter felt like his heart was in his throat. “And there’s no real good way to tell you this, but May… didn’t make it.”
Peter felt like his world was crashing down around him and all of the sudden he couldn’t breathe. Mr. Stark was still talking, but Peter couldn’t hear a word he was saying. He had fallen into a black hole and Mr. Stark was screaming at him from the outside. He was too focused on the fact that he wasn’t even there for her funeral. He should’ve been there. After all, that was May, she was the one who cleaned up all his scraped knees when he fell off his bike, she helped him with all his spelling list words, she was always there ready with a bowl of popcorn and Star Wars whenever he had a bad day at school. She was May, she couldn’t be gone.
“Peter,” he felt Ned nudging him, “what do you think we’re gonna see today?” his best friend whispered.
Peter shook himself from his trance, trying to avoid crying on the bus. Flash seeing him cry was about the last thing he needed today. “I don’t know man, not like I actually need this tour,”
“HEY PENIS! You crying about how your fake internship is going to be exposed today? Ha! Maybe Stark will notice how I’m not a crybaby orphan and give me a real internship. Wouldn’t that be a funny twist of fate.”
“Mr. Thompson, would you please sit down!” Mr. Harrington called from the front of the bus. Flash sat back down with a huff, but not before flipping Ned and Peter off.
Unphased, Ned turned to Peter and loudly whispered, “Dude, we’re literally going on a field trip to your house. Like how weird is that, obviously we aren’t gonna see the part you actually live in, at least I think not, but still.”
“Yeah man it’s wild.”
Peter felt someone tapping him on the shoulder, and turned around to see MJ, “Hey nerd, why did you even come to school just to ride the bus back to your house?”
“Well we’re trying to keep it quiet that I’m living there, at least for right now.”
“Plus wouldn’t it like look really suspicious if you were just already there when we got there?” Ned interjected.
MJ blinked, “I think that’s exactly what Peter was trying to say. But that makes sense I guess.” She said before turning back to her book.
“Do you think we’ll get to meet any Avengers. Obviously not Thor, but like could we meet the Winter Soldier? Or what about Black Widow, do you think she’ll be around?” Ned asked excitedly.
“Ned, even if Bucky or Nat are in town I doubt we’ll get to see them. As far as I know Nat’s taking watching her best friend die in front of her pretty badly. I only ever occasionally see her in the training gym.”
“Oh well, that’s okay.” Ned continued to ramble on about what he thought might happen on the trip as Peter allowed himself to zone out for the rest of the drive.
Peter’s eyes filled with awe as the bus pulled up to the tower. Despite living there, it never ceased to amaze him how awesome the tower really was. He followed the rest of his classmates off the bus and into the lobby. Peter chuckled as he watched everyone look around in amazement. If they thought the lobby was cool, wait till they got up to the Avenger’s museum.
After checking in with Cheryl, the receptionist on duty today, Mr. Harrington walked over to the group. “Now I hope I don’t need to remind you all what a privilege it is for us to be here today. I don’t want anyone doing anything to mess this up for the class,” he looked pointedly between Peter and Flash at this, “we’ve all had a rough year and I think we could all use a little cheering up. Now our tour guide will be here-”
“Right now,” a thick southern drawl interrupted Harrington and Peter almost burst out laughing when he realized who their tour guide for the day was. “Hey y’all I’m Harley Keener and I’ll be your tour guide today.”
Harley had become a pseudo big brother to Peter, just as Peter had become Morgan’s pseudo big brother in the months since everyone had come back. He didn’t quite understand how Mr. Stark and Harley had met, but Peter had long since learned better than to question anything about Mr. Stark’s past. Harley hadn’t been snapped away so he was a few years older than Peter and going to Columbia while “interning” with Mr. Stark. At this point the term was moreso a formality for what Peter and Harley did, they were more like Mr. Stark’s personal assistants.
“Alright y’all I’m going to hand out your visitor badges. Please, for the love of all Stark tech, keep them visible at all times, FRIDAY gets upset when people she doesn’t know don’t have badges on.”
At this Betty’s hand shot up, “Mr. Keener, who is FRIDAY?”
Harley chuckled before answering, “FRIDAY is the AI that Tony designed and runs through the building. She acts as a security system, she’s basically like Google, up in the labs we use her to play music, and she does just about anything else we need her to. Say hi FRI.”
“Welcome to Stark Industries Midtown Tech!” FRIDAY’s voice echoed through the lobby.
The class murmured with excitement at this while Harley passed out their badges. Before pausing when he got to Peter.
“You left this upstairs this morning and Tony asked me to give it to you.” Peter looked and it was his regular badge that he had used before he officially moved into the tower.
“Heh, sorry about that I was more than a little distracted when I was getting ready this morning. How did you end up on tour duty?”
“Totally fine, Tony realized it was your tour and wanted someone you knew to be in charge.”
“Hey Pe- Peter did you pay off the tour guide to pretend to know you and give you a different colored badge?”
“Oh piss off Flash.” MJ deadpanned.
“Pete, do I need to call backup to deal with that one?” Harley whispered. Peter shook his head, Harley shot him an unsure glance before moving on to continue handing out the badges.
“Ummm Mr. Keener?” Abe started when Harley got to him.
“Please just call me Harley, Mr. Keener was my dad and lord knows I don’t want to be associated with him.”
“Okay, Harley. What do the different badge colors mean?”
Peter glanced down at his badge. Shit. Everyone else had white ones and this was not a low level intern badge. Peter, and all the other tower residents had gold badges that gave them access to basically anywhere in the tower. With a few exceptions of course, but Peter could go pretty much anywhere in the tower unrestricted, and this made his badge stuck out like a sore thumb.
“Well the white badges y’all have are for any tower visitors, tour groups, potential business partners coming in for meetings, delivery truck drivers, you get the idea. Anyone with these badges needs to be with someone with a higher ranking badge. Low level employees have a bronze badge that only lets them in at certain times but they can get to any of the nonresidential floors. Any supervisors or other high ranking people have silver badges. They have 24/7 access to nonresidential floors but that’s really the only difference between bronze and silver. And then there’s gold which is reserved for tower residents, which is really just the Starks, the Avengers, and Tony’s personal interns.”
Flash glanced over at Peter seeing his badge color, Flash’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck Parker?” He muttered before shooting his hand up. “Does SI take high school level interns?”
“Generally speaking, no.” Harley started.
Flash smirked at Peter, “ha told you so.”
“However,” Harley continued. “If someone’s work catches Tony’s eye, he may take him under his wing as one of his personal interns.”
“Yeah but those people have to be in college too right?” Betty interjected.
“Not necessarily, Tony and I met when I was like 10 and I had an internship offer from him before I even graduated high school. And Tony’s other intern right now is still in high school.”
The class murmured with excitement at this, trying to figure out what high schooler would be lucky enough to work directly under Tony Stark. The idea of working personally with Mr. Stark still excited Peter and he knew that Harley was talking about him. Flash’s eyes narrowed at Peter, but after a glare from MJ he dropped the subject.
“Now if you’ll all follow me to the elevator let’s get this tour on the move.” Harley said, trying to move the conversation away from Peter. The group stirred with excitement as they followed Harley. “5th floor please FRI.” And the elevator took off.
“Okay y’all welcome to the Stark Industries museum. This floor focuses on the company’s beginnings, the next floor up has more on the inventions of SI as recent as things added last week” Harley said gesturing to a spiral staircase in the center of the room. “And the top floor is dedicated to the Avengers. We have about an hour in here, feel free to look around and I’ll be here to answer any questions you might have.”
Ned jumped excitedly at this, “Bro can we go look at the Avengers stuff?”
“Whatever you want man, I’ve been in here a few times and have seen basically everything.”
“Can I tag along with you nerds?” MJ said, walking towards the duo.
“I mean yeah sure, but why us and not like Betty or your other friends?” Peter questioned.
“Well I mean you’re Spiderman and live in the tower so I thought I could get some insider knowledge,” MJ said.
Peter and Ned’s eyes met in a panic, “I- I’m not Spiderman that’s crazy…” he trailed off as his hand rubbed the back of his neck.
“Yeah, totally insane. why would you even think something like that?” Ned added, his voice squeaking at the end of his sentence.
MJ rolled her eyes, “Well if I wasn’t positive before, that reaction just sold it. But you two really aren’t subtle. Or quiet.”
“Look, can we just keep this info quiet?” Peter whispered. “Mr. Stark would get like super mad if he found out I told anyone else. He already doesn’t like that Ned knows.”
“Wait so I was right?” MJ questioned. Peter and Ned nodded while looking around cautiously. “Cause I was only like 67% sure.”
“Nope, you’re entirely right.” Peter leaned in closer and then whispered, “I am Spiderman.”
MJ stared in shock for a moment, before shrugging. “Alright then,” she said. “Ned, did you say you wanted to go look at the Avengers display?”
The trio headed up the stairs, whispering excitedly about what was going on around them. Upon arriving on the third floor of the museum, Peter laughed watching his friends react to everything around them. He had to admit, it was pretty cool. In the center of the room, mannequins wearing replicas of each of the original six Avengers suits stood in a circle. Around the edge of the room were replicas of the newer members of the team's suits. Each mannequin was accompanied by a small plaque featuring information about that team member.
“Dude I didn’t know you were officially an Avenger?!?!?” Ned whisper-yelled to Peter.
“I’m not, Mr. Stark and I decided after the blip it was better for me to wait till I turn 18 to join the team.”
“Then why is there a mannequin wearing your suit?” MJ leaned over to ask. Peter whipped his head around to see what she was talking about. And there it was, over on the other side of the room right in between Wanda and Scott. His suit.
“I- I- I uh- don’t know,” Peter said, as he approached the suit mildly confused, “Come on, let’s go look.”
Spider-Man
Identity Classified
Fun Facts:
Spider-Man’s favorite PopTart flavor is Strawberry.
He’s deathly afraid of spiders.
His favorite pair of pajama pants have Hello Kitty on them.
Peter felt his cheeks quickly flushing, Mr. Stark had to have written these without consulting Peter. Now the entire world knows he sleeps in Hello Kitty pants, but nobody could blame him, they were the first thing Mr. Stark had ever bought him and they were comfy. MJ could barely contain herself as she snickered reading the sign.
“Please don’t,” Peter whispered, wondering jokingly how Mr. Stark could have betrayed him like this.
“Peter what happened to all your Star Wars pajama pants?” Ned asked him confused.
“May bought them for me.” Understanding fell over Ned and MJ as one of them tried to think of an appropriate response to the statement.
“Get out of my way Penis,” Flash whisper-yelled as he pushed his way in front of the trio to bask in the Spider-Man exhibit. “Are you trying to soak up some of Spider-man’s coolness cause *thats* never gonna happen.”
MJ started to say something, before Peter pulled her and Ned aside, “Honestly guys, he’s not worth it, let’s just go find something else to look at.” Ned and MJ shared an unsure glance before deciding not to fight it and follow Peter’s lead. The trio wandered towards the model of the Mark IV Iron Man suit. Even working under Tony, and being a superhero himself, Peter was still filled with awe. The trio continued wandering the museum, at some point, Peter wasn’t quite sure when Harley joined them, but by the time they had made it to the wall with “Remember the Fallen” in bold letters, he was there. Photos of Captain America in action hung behind his shield on the wall, next to it one of Clint’s old bows hung vigil on the wall surrounded by pictures of him, on the other side of the shield, a large frame containing Vision’s cape and a photo of him in the middle. The group stood in silence, allowing Peter the space to process, he hadn’t really come down as much since this renovation had been completed.
“You’re gonna regret that Barton,” Peter said, fumbling to pick up the Nerf gun that had just been knocked out of his hands.
“Whatever you say Spider-Kid” Clint laughed as he pulled himself back up into the vent he was hanging out of. The two had been in a vicious Nerf war for a week now, and the other tower residents were getting concerned how dedicated the two were given that Peter was only supposed to be here on the weekends. Peter quickly leapt onto the ceiling crawling over to the vent to chase the avian hero through them. Mr. Stark was not going to be happy that Peter was back in the vents, but this was a matter of pride for him. It would be simple to just give up, but he was not going to let Barton beat him now. Peter had never lost a Nerf war and he wasn’t going to start now.
Peter wasn’t going to start crying now. There were people around and that was embarrassing, heaven forbid Flash see him crying over some heroes that he “hadn’t met.”
“HA PENIS!” Too late. “Why are you even crying over Hawkeye, he was like lowkey the most boring Avenger.”
“Flash please,” Peter started.
“Excuse me, Mr.” Harley glanced at Flash’s badge, “Mr. Thompson. I’m sure you were made aware of this prior to your arrival, given that it was in the paperwork you had to sign in order to enter the premises, but Stark Industries has a strict no bullying policy. If this happens again I’m going to have to ask you to leave the building.” With that Harley pulled Peter to the side.
“Honestly Harley, you didn’t have to do that.”
“Pete, you know as well as I do that Tony’s got this entire place wired. You’re lucky Pepper forced him to actually show up to that board meeting this morning otherwise he’d probably be storming in here himself.”
“I just don’t want Flash to think I can’t fight my own battles,” Peter glanced around before whispering, “I’m Spider-Man for crying out loud, I should be able to stand up for myself.”
Harley nodded, “I get you darlin’, but sometimes even the biggest heroes need help, why do you think Tony keeps Pepper around.”
“That’s true, I guess.”
“Well, the good news is it's lunchtime so we can get out of here and isolate ourselves at a table in the corner of the lunch room and forget about the world.” Peter nodded and Harley turned “Alright Midtown! Our time in the museum has come to a close, if you could please find your way back towards the elevator, we’ll head up to lunch!”
The group of teens clustered together, all of them excitedly talking to their classmates about what they had seen in the museum. Peter was no exception as he nodded and listened to Ned explain everything that he had seen as if Peter hadn’t been with him the whole time. Eventually, the elevator arrived and Peter followed the rest of the group in.
The elevator doors opened to the large staff cafeteria. Food stalls from every type of cuisine imaginable lined the walls.
“Alright y’all lunch is on the house, we’ll have about 45 minutes and then we’re heading up to R&D for a little friendly competition,” Harley said and the group began to disperse to the different booths around the room.
Peter turned to Ned and MJ, “What do you guys want, I helped hand pick like half of these places so they’re all really good.”
“It’s Cinco de Mayo right? We could get tacos over there.” Ned said, gesturing to the taco restaurant in the corner.
Peter froze. There was no way he’d forget this. He panicked trying to find his phone. He quickly turned the screen on just to double check. There was no way he’d have forgotten. But, there it was right below the time. Today’s date: May 5th, 2024. May’s birthday.
Peter sunk to the ground as he felt the tears rolling down his cheeks now heavier than before. There it was in stone right next to his Uncle Ben. Maybelle Reilly Parker; May 5, 1984- October 28, 2021. The reality of everything hit Peter all at once in that moment. May was gone, there weren’t going to be any more Star Wars movie nights, no more dumb jokes over Thai food. Was anyone actually there for her funeral? Did she even have a funeral?
As though he could read Peter’s mind, Tony spoke up. “After you all blipped, Pepper and I got dinner with her once a week. We took care of her, don't worry.” Tony sat, wrapping an arm around Peter, who melted into the embrace.
“Was she in pain?” Peter asked after a few minutes.
Tony hesitated before saying, “Honestly underoos, I’m not sure. We just got a call from the hospital that she was there and it was serious, but by the time Pep and I got there she was gone. We planned a nice funeral for her, it was small but there were people there.”
Peter nodded trying to digest this information. The two sat in silence for a long time after that, before Peter finally spoke up. “The year after Ben died, I knew I wanted her birthday to be special,” absent-mindedly tracing the dates on the stone as he spoke.
“We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to kiddo,” Tony interrupted.
Peter shook his head “No it helps to talk it out.”
“Alright then carry on,” Tony replied, sounding a little unsure about the situation.
“So the year after Ben died, I wanted to do something special for May. But I was only like 12 so there wasn’t really much I could do. I decided I was going to try and cook dinner. So, I stopped at Delmars on my way home from school that day and used my allowance for the week to buy a cheap jar of spaghetti sauce, a box of pasta and a single ‘Happy Birthday’ balloon.” Peter paused to collect his thoughts as a few stray tears fell down his face, and Tony rubbed his back assuringly. “When I got home that night I realized that I had never actually cooked by myself before and I didn’t know how to do anything. I didn’t know how much water to put in the pot and I ended up burning the pasta and almost burnt down the apartment.”
Tony chuckled at this, “So what did you do?”
“I pulled out thé ‘for emergencies only’ credit card May gave me for nights she worked late and ordered Thai takeout for her,” Peter grinned and Tony burst out laughing. “Every year after that we avoided all the lines at the taco restaurants and got Thai for dinner on her birthday.”
“Do you maybe want to get Thai tonight? I can have FRIDAY order some and it’ll be at the tower by the time we get ho- there.” Tony said, quickly correcting himself.
Peter wasn’t quite ready to call the tower home, and Tony was trying to be super careful about the subject. But the almost slip up was the least of Peter’s concerns. Thai was his and May’s *thing,* getting it with Mr. Stark would almost feel like treason.
“Ummm, Mr. Stark, could we maybe get something else?” Peter asked, his voice wavering. “Thai was our thing and-” he paused, trying to fight back some more tears “I just don’t think I’m ready to share that with anyone else yet.”
Tony nodded, “Anything you want kiddo.”
He wasn’t sure when it happened but Peter realized he had ended up on the floor. He could feel himself shaking. But there was no way for him to stop this from happening. Suddenly he was hearing everything and nothing at the same time. He was a terrible nephew he should’ve been there. If it weren’t for the stupid spider bite on the stupid Oscorp field trip he would’ve been. He could see Ned and Harley’s mouths moving but the only thing he was actually hearing was his heartbeat, which sounded like it was going 100 miles per hour. Was he breathing? He had to be breathing. Right?
Next thing he knew Happy was racing toward him saying something but Peter still couldn’t understand a word of what anyone was saying. He had forgotten May’s birthday how could he have done such a stupid thing. He should be laughing and eating Thai with her, not sitting here on the floor of Stark tower sobbing while she was dead in the ground. His entire class stood around him staring. Not only was Peter awful and forgot May’s birthday, his entire class was watching him have a panic attack in his own home. Flash was probably having a field day with this, but Peter couldn’t hear clearly enough to tell.
“Hey kiddo,” a voice suddenly broke through to Peter. “Do you want to get out of here?” He nodded, unsure of who he was talking to. Peter felt himself standing up and being guided towards the private elevator. He couldn’t get in the elevator, then his entire class would know he lived here. As far as they knew he was in a foster home in Midtown. Which was true, but this wasn’t exactly a normal foster home. But his legs betrayed him and he just kept walking. He felt himself let out a sigh of relief when he saw the penthouse living room and collapsed on the couch almost immediately.
“Whenever you’re ready kiddo.” Peter heard Mr. Stark say, but Peter just nodded in response.
Eventually Peter looked up, “It’s her birthday.”
Tony’s eyes widened, “I’m so sorry Underoos, I don’t know how that escaped all of our minds. I never would’ve had Pep approve the trip for today if we had.”
Peter shook his head, “I think I would’ve wanted it to be today, if I had remembered this morning it would have been a good distraction. I just don’t get how I could’ve forgotten. I’ve never forgotten May’s birthday, Ned and I even joked about May the 4th yesterday. Mr. Stark I might be the worst nephew in the history of the universe.”
“Peter, trust me, you are most definitely not the worst nephew ever, I can think of a few major historical figures who definitely have you beat on that one.” This made Peter chuckle, “Obviously I’m not going to force you to go rejoin your class, but I would like to point out they most definitely are all now aware of the fact that you live here.”
“Honestly Mr. Stark, I think they’re probably more shocked about the fact that you actually know me. None of them ever believed me about the internship.” The last part mumbled so that Tony wouldn’t get mad.
“What was that again?”
“None of them believed me about the internship.” Peter answered, realizing there was no escaping the inevitable on this one.
“But your teacher did right?” Peter shook his head, before Tony started again. “I’m gonna have the school’s head. I filled out all the paperwork. You’re supposed to be getting credit for this, which I’m going to guess you aren’t getting. I’m going down to talk to that teacher.”
“Mr. Stark please,” Peter said, trying to calm him down.
“Uh uh kiddo, you can come if you want but you aren’t stopping me.”
Peter thought for a moment before realizing that if he were there Tony would be a little less likely to spill at least one of his life altering secrets if Peter were in the room. He hopped up and followed Mr. Stark to the elevator. As the two entered the elevator, Tony pulled Peter into a hug.
“It’s all gonna be alright Underoos, I promise.”
And Peter couldn’t help but believe him.
Peter wasn’t sure how long he had been gone, but lunch was over and his class was now in one of the lower level research labs. It looked like they had been given some spare parts and were in teams trying to build miniature robots. Peter trailed behind Mr. Stark as he stormed out of the elevator.
“Which one of you is in charge here and not employed by me?” Tony demanded.
Mr. Harrington stepped forward, “That would be me, I’m so sorry about Peter I told him not to make a scene today, I promise he’ll be properly punished when we get back to school.”
“Punished? Like hell the kid will be punished, the kid had an anxiety attack, in what world does that warrant a punishment?”
“Well he made such a scene that you had to come and deal with him, and I’m sure you’re a very busy man. Not to mention him consistently lying about having an internship here, when our tour guide outright said high schoolers can’t get one. ”
“Wrong move on Harrington’s part,” Harley whispered to Ned and MJ who nodded in assent. Peter glanced over at them trying to figure out what they were whispering about.
Tony took a deep breath and glanced at Peter who had walked over to join the trio of his friends, “Sir do you have any idea the trauma he’s been through-”
“We’ve all been through a lot this last year and some of us have clearly not readjusted as well as others.”
“His aunt DIED while he was blipped! May I remind you that May Parker was Peter’s primary caregiver, I think you’d have a tough time, what was the word you used? Right, ‘readjusting’ too if you came back and your last living relative was dead.” Tony was borderline yelling at this point and Peter was starting to worry he’d give something massive away by accident just because he never thought straight when he was angry.
“Mr. Stark, I’m so sorry for taking time out of your day, but I’ll make sure to call Peter’s case worker the second we get back to school and let her know about this incident.” Harrington made sure to shoot Peter a pointed look, seemingly unaware of the gravity of who he was actually speaking to.
“There’s no need, given that I happen to be Peter’s current guardian.”
The room fell silent at this as no one dared to make a move. Flash’s jaw was nearly on the floor, the rest of Peter’s class just stared at him in shock. Harrington’s eyes widened first in surprise and then clearly in fear of Tony.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in my lab, Pete feel free to join me whenever,” he turned to Harrington, “Oh and by the way, that internship he’s ‘faking’ is very much real and I could get you in some serious legal trouble for ignoring all the paperwork he’s been turning in. Now, I’m assuming he doesn’t need to ride the bus back to school just to waste my driver’s time for him to go and get Peter?”
Harrington shook his head then stuttered, “no no, of course not.”
“That’s what I thought, as his guardian I’m giving him permission to leave whenever he feels like it. Given who I am, where we are, and what you just witnessed I don’t think that will be a problem. Also Harley if anyone tries to give Peter a hard time, feel free to kick them out with no warning.” Harley nodded and Tony turned and reentered the elevator, leaving the group behind. The class returned to making their robots, though talking weirdly quietly and occasionally shooting Peter a weird look.
Harley turned to Peter, “You doing okay darlin’?”
Peter nodded, “I don’t really want to talk about it. What’re they doing?”
“Well they’re currently building robots, and then some of the other interns are going to judge them so that I don’t have to.”
“So could we possibly sneak out and get me some food since I didn’t actually ever eat lunch?”
Harley nodded and the two hurried out of the room.
About twenty minutes later, with a sandwich in hand, Peter and Harley reentered the lab only to see the room in a state of mass chaos. In the center of the room smoke rolled off one of the robots while another, the one Peter remembered being the one Flash was working on, sat smashed into pieces next to it.
“They decided it would be a good idea to try and have a robot fight,” one of the interns, whose name was escaping Peter, explained to the pair.
“Do we even want to know what happened?” Harley asked.
“Probably not, however Harley I would advise asking Mr. Thompson to leave, as soon as you two left he started spouting some bullshit that Peter was doing more than ‘paying people off’ in order for Mr. Stark to claim he knows him.”
“It's like he didn’t even listen, my God,” Peter said, shaking his head. As if on cue, Flash noticed Peter had reentered the room and began confidently strolling over to him.
“Alright Parker, whose dick did you suck for Tony freaking Stark to claim he’s your foster parent.”
Peter groaned as Harley stepped in front of him, “Mr. Thompson, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Damn Parker you can’t even fight for yourself, I always knew you were a useless orphan.”
“Hey Friday?”
“Yes Mr. Keener?” The voice from the ceiling echoed through the room.
“Could you please have security come up to Lab 7C? I need assistance with a tower guest.”
“Certainly sir, they’ll be up momentarily.”
“Thanks Fri!”
Suddenly it was as if it all at once clicked for Mr. Harrington, “Hey now, you can’t just remove students from my supervision.”
“Well sir, you’re more than welcome to go join him as he sits in the lobby, but Mr. Thompson does need to be removed from the tour as per the Stark Industries Anti-Bullying policy outlined in the forms everyone on this tour signed.” At this one security officer Peter had never seen and a very disgruntled Happy entered the room. Harley nodded in the direction of Flash and the security officer escorted him out of the room.
“My father will be hearing about this!” Flash called out as he was nudged into the elevator.
The rest of the tour went off without a hitch, though Peter didn’t pay attention to much of it. He spent the entirety of the rest of the tour avoiding Ned and MJ’s concerned glances, really not wanting to talk about it. When the rest of his class left to get on the bus, Peter went back up to his room to take a nap.
When Peter woke up, he scrolled past the texts from his friends trying to make sure he was okay, as well as ignoring the newest round of mean comments directed at him by Flash on instagram. Peter was seriously unsure how those were getting through the modified version of the baby monitor protocol Mr. Stark had installed on his phone as soon as he had moved into the tower, but asking about it would only draw attention to the issue.
“Hey Fri?”
“Yes, Peter?”
“Where is everyone right now?”
“Tony is down in his lab working on the newest version of your suit, Miss Potts has just returned to the penthouse and is in the living room, and Harley and Morgan are currently in Morgan’s room coloring; would you like me to alert Tony that you’re awake?”
“No it’s okay, I’ll head down there in a few minutes, thanks Fri.”
Peter rolled out of bed and headed towards the living room, where Pepper seemed to be waiting for him.
“Hey kiddo,” Pepper said, as Peter crawled next to her on the couch. “Sounds like you had a crazy day.”
“Heh, yeah, that’s one way to describe it.” Peter chuckled.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, not really, can we just order a pizza and watch Star Wars or something?”
“Of course, do you just want the regular?”
“Yeah that sounds good, should we invite Da- Mr. Stark,” Peter corrected himself. He watched the grin spread across Pepper’s face, there was no way this wasn’t getting back to Tony. “No Pep, please don’t tell Mr. Stark, he’ll never let me live it down.”
Pepper smiled, “We’re going to meet you wherever you’re at kiddo, and whatever you want to call us, we’ll respond to. If we’re Pepper and Mr. Stark forever, then that’s who we’ll be, we just want to be present in your life.” Peter nodded digesting all the information, “However,” Pepper continued, “There’s no way I’m not telling him-”
“Telling me what?” Tony asked as the elevator door opened.
“No-NOTHING!” Peter sputtered as Pepper laughed. Tony looked between the two with a confused look on his face.
“Don’t worry about it, I might tell you later.” Pepper winked.
“Alrighty then,” Tony said, still looking very confused. “Do we have a plan for the night?”
“Peter suggested Star Wars and pizza?”
“Sounds good to me!” Tony said.
As the movie played on the TV, Peter looked around the room at the family he had acquired. Morgan was curled up in between Tony and Pepper softly snoring, as she normally was during a Star Wars movie. Harley was on the other side of the couch, pretending he was interested, but staying because he knew how much Peter needed him.
Much to Peter’s dismay Tony noticed him staring, and mouthed “are you okay?” Peter nodded, and thought about how lucky he was to have found Mr. Stark.