Chapter Text
Today was the day and there was no backing out of it, unfortunately. Well, he could always attempt to climb out of the bus, but that would probably require some sort of big distraction if he had any hopes of getting away with it, and so far there didn’t seem to be anything of the sort available.
At least no one knew about the field trip, so it’d be fine, probably. Except not, because his name was Peter Parker and that meant that somehow the universe was conspiring against him or something. Thor had assured him that is not how it worked, but the guy had only been around for fifteen hundred years or so, so what did he know.
“Hey, Parker…”
And… there it was. Peter was fairly certain he could time Flash’s taunts down to the second at this point. At least he had learned to tune it out. Sort of.
Fifteen minutes that felt like fifteen hours later, they finally arrived. Peter dutifully followed the rest of the class out, silently praying to every god out there that he wouldn’t run into anyone who would recognize him. It really shouldn’t be that hard to avoid recognition. They were at Stark Industries, so there really wasn’t much Avengers related stuff here, and when he was here he was usually coming through a different entrance anyway. So that would take care of… the lobby. That’d take care of the lobby.
Great.
Well, it was a start, at least.
As his class filed through security he held his breath, but he made it through with his disposable little visitor’s badge, and absolutely nothing happened to indicate that he was recognized by the system. Or that he had had Karen talk to Friday who had maybe sort of removed him from the system, temporarily of course.
It was all fine.
“If you would follow me,” the tour guide said, bringing him out of his thoughts. It wasn’t anyone he recognized. Good.
⚛︎
“And this is our main Human Resources office,” the tour guide said.
Ooh, this wasn’t great. Why on earth were they stopping here, anyway? It wasn’t like it was a very interesting place, especially to a bunch of high schoolers.
And he hadn’t just been hoping to avoid it because of the high concentration of people who knew him in that office or anything. Not at all.
Yes. He absolutely wanted to avoid running into anyone in the Human Resources Office if at all possible. They hated him. Okay, well hate might be a strong word, but they didn’t exactly love that he was an “intern” who did absolutely nothing they could pinpoint and was vaguely connected with the Avengers. He had been convinced Mr. Daley’s eye was never going to stop twitching after he had sort of come in with Pepper that one time. Or was it when he came in with Dr. Banner?
The man had recovered, thankfully.
And… said man was also not in today. Maybe the universe didn’t hate him after all.
⚛︎
“…R&D, which of course stand for Research and Development…”
Peter tuned out the tour guides voice once again. He liked Stark Industries, he really did. It was just that after spending so much time with Tony in his lab, even the labs here didn’t quite measure up. Also Pepper had been complaining last Saturday about a certain Dr. Erkens, and Peter couldn’t quite bring himself to look the man in the face after some of the things Pepper had said before suddenly remembering that he was there and apparently “impressionable.” He wasn’t sure he had ever seen Tony look that smug.
“Hey, Parker…”
Huh. Three seconds early, would you look at that.
“…lying about your internship. Scared everyone will finally figure out how big of a loser you are?”
Peter was fairly certain no one had ever accused Flash of being overly creative.
The clearing of a throat brought a blessed end to whatever insults Flash was continuing to spew. An unimpressed Dr. Erkens, who Peter thought couldn’t be all that bad, was staring at the two of them.
“Young man, if you would mind focusing on the matter at hand instead of distracting your classmate with juvenile taunts…”
Yeah, Dr. Erkens wasn’t all bad. Peter also thought he would treasure the look on Flash’s face for a long time.
Hey, no one’s perfect.
⚛︎
The tour came to a very anticlimactic end. The last thirty minutes had been spent with senses dialed up to about a hundred, since he was positive something was going to happen. The last major field trip he had been on had resulted in him getting bit by a spider. Doesn’t sound all that bad when you say it like that, but when it’s a spider that somehow manages to get you super sick and wake up with superpowers one day, well…
So he had been sure something was going to happen.
But then it didn’t.
And now here they were, shuffling through to the lobby, essentially done with the tour, and not one thing had happened.
“Oh my gosh, is that Tony Stark?”
He had spoken too soon. He really should know better by this point.
“That’s Iron Man,” someone else shouted.
Peter groaned, not even bothering to hold it in. It’s not like anyone would be able to hear it over the noises his classmates were making.
Their teachers tried to calm the students down, they really did. Peter would have given them at least a B+ for effort.
At least Tony was walking… this way.
Yep. The universe hated him. That’s all, folks. He should take this up with Dr. Strange at some point because really, it was a bit ridiculous how much the universe seemed to hate him.
“Hey kids, education is important, stay in school,” Tony called out, as he hurried through their little group that was blocking his exit. Because of course they were. It’s not like was anywhere else in the building they could have all been standing at that precise moment.
Well at least it couldn’t get any worse.
“Bye kiddo, see you tonight. Don’t forget your chemistry textbook.”
“Bye Dad.”
“Love you,” Tony called out, just before disappearing through the exit.
Then he was gone and Peter was left with a couple dozen slack-jawed classmates.
As their little exchange fully sunk into his mind, he decided that he really ought to just stop thinking thoughts. Or speaking. That was a good plan. No thinking at all. From this point forward he would just live his life in ignorant bliss. Maybe Thor knew some nice little uninhabited planet that he could move to.