Chapter Text
ok so maybe peter wasn’t in the best of situations. At least hes not in the worst of them. He could be on the side begging for food and pulling the whole “please help, I’m mute, and homeless” or he could be eating some mouldy, very stale, and slightly ancient bagel, however he wasn’t homeless, he was just family-less.
Its not like it’s horrible, it could be much worse. Just because everyday he came back from being called penis at school to a room he shared with 2 other boys and knowing that everyone who loved you is dead, it doesn’t mean peter is on the verge of death – most of the time.
“hey Pete”
A quick wave and smile to Nathan
Nathanial Rodrigues. He's a pretty cool guy. A bit theify but otherwise great. Sometimes peter loses a highlighter or a top or his shoes or something else and then Nathan walks on in coincidently having just found them. How inconspicuous.
“do you know where Lucas is?”
Peter shook his head
Peter thought it was a bit obvious that he had just got back. I mean peter hadn’t even taken his coat of yet.
Lucas was a bit discombobulated all the time. Also losing something or other, and actually losing it.
“k bye then”
And…Nathan was gone.
Thank fucking god. Peters not in the mood today.
He got loads of chemistry homework, physics homework, and English homework. The science he can do, he's a science guy. English is a completely different story. Sure he can do it, and sure he can get an A on the test, but can he do it at “home”, absolutely not. It just doesn’t work in some crowded and loud house.
So the science got done in about 10 minutes each, the English on the other hand had taken up 3 hours of peters time and had resulted in 5 sentences crossed out and 3 words still successfully on the page without a line through them.
He gave up.
He doesn’t do that much, but he did give up.
So instead of doing his homework, peter climbed out the window.
No one really notices when peter is in the room or when he's not in the room. Not speaking kinda does that.
So peter goes on a walk around queens. Then goes on a walk around the main part of NYC. And then gets caught in an alien invasion.
Granted, this one is kinda small compared to the ones peter lost his aunt in, that one had made its way to queens and the avengers (cough Captain America cough) had thrown one of those whale things into the hospital aunt may use to work at.
But anyways, he got caught in an alien attack.
He was more scared than the average New Yorker. Mainly because his aunt died in one of them, but also the whole not being able to yell for help thing, it didn’t really help.so he was running away a bit more scared than the rest of the city, then his day got loads worse.
One of those freaky, lanky, blue things was right in front of him with its weird sword thing. Not that great, if you asked peter.
And he was about to magically get his voice back in the form of a scream, when that weird guy was gone and was replaced by a tin can.
Woopsy, not a tin can, an iron man.
“you alright kid?”
Peter just looked at him kinda dumbly.
“youngsters are so rude nowadays”
He still looked a bit expectantly at him so peter just started signing to him and then the face plate opened up and mr stark looked truly baffed* out of his mind.
Then iron man just… flew off.
Kinda obvious he would do that, hes got aliens to take down.
And peter has a group home to get back too.
So peter makes his way back there, still a bit shook from the whole near death experience, so he was walking a bit slow.
Maybe like, 5 minutes to the house, there was a wiring sound behind him, then a thud.
“hey kiddo.”
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH its Mr Stark!!!
This guy is like a genius. A science icon.
Peter did a small little wave, and a shy little smile.
“so you’re what, mute? deaf?”
What an odd question. And a bit of a dumb one. Peter doesn’t have hearing aids and can obviously hear him. So maybe he’s not as much of a genius.
Peter guessed that THE tony stark would not know sign language, because let’s be honest, he’s a billionaire, if he needed to talk to someone who couldn’t speak, he’d pay someone to interpret.
So instead of signing a response, he just pointed to his mouth.
“right well, you’re not going to be very chatty then, are ya?”
No shit sherlock. However, if he learned sign language, peter would out-hand-movement him 100%.
“what’s your name kid?”
Peter was actually very tempted to tell him that, no, what was not his name, however he wasn’t about to get sassy with a billionaire superhero.
Peter didn’t actually know how he was meant to tell Mr Stark his name, because its not as if he could just say it.
“Peter Parker. That right?”
Wtf!?!?!? How did he know that??????????
Stark must have picked up on how confused/ shocked/ alarmed peter was because he starts explaining.
“I have an AI who can do face recognition, and im guessing her software is great and was also correct”
Peter just nodded looking down slightly.
“hm, well I was just checking you were alright, and also I recognised your face from somewhere.”
This,this was either very bad or very good.
“you go to midtown don’t you? Yes, the answer is yes you do, and they submitted some paperwork, boring stuff if you ask me, with the details of students they think could go quite far in life for us to keep an eye on, and you Mr Parker, were on that list, and rightfully so. 4.0 gpa, should be 3 grades above your current one, you would fit right in”
Where is this going exactly? Because he was starting to get a bit concerned.
“so I would like to offer you the opportunity to work in one of the labs for a day to test it out. I mean sure we don’t normally hire highschoolers to be our interns but by my logic your basically a collage graduate, so why don’t I walk you home and ask your parents?”
Who was gonna tell him. Certainly not peter, cause he cant. But who was going to tell poor old Mr Stark that he would not find his parents at “home” but would in fact find them 6 feet under.
But this was going to be at least a bit funny, so peter nodded and started to walk back to his house. How he was going to explain why he was out, peter didn’t know. He was kind of hoping that the whole iron man being next to him offering him a potential internship would overshadow the whole peter sneaking out a window thing.
So they ended up at the group home a few minutes later and the tin can looked very out of place
“this is where you live?” he asked as if it was a decrepit box down a sketchy ally.
With a quick nod of peters head, both of them walked into the house (peter brought a key, he wasn’t stupid)and up to Mrs Landon (the lady in charge)’s office.
Mr Stark went in and a few minutes of “really, that is great”s and “you would do that”s and “oh hes going to be so excited”s, Mr Stark was out of the office and face to face with a bored looking peter.
“make your way to Stark tower tomorrow” a Saturday, thank god “by 9:30am” oh dear god. That early on a weekend, he was so not having it.
And with that Tony Stark left the building and peter went upstairs and straight to sleep.
He couldn’t be bothered to deal with Nathan and Lucas.
The next day he woke up at the very early time of 6:30, leaving an hour to get ready, 10 minutes to get to the bus stop, then a 20 minute bus ride, 5 minutes to get from bus stop to train station, 45 minutes to get into the middle of NYC, 15 minutes to get to the tower, and 5 minutes to spare.
He ended up 10 minutes late.
He accidentally bumped into someone and they made a big scene and then he missed his train so had to wait for a later one.
He walks up to the receptionist and just kinda looks at her, then the notebook and pen on her desk.
“good morning, how may I assist you today?”
She apparently wasn’t used to getting fleeting looks between her, a notebook, and a pen because she looked a bit confused. So to help her out he just started signing and she got the point and pushed the paper towards him.
My name’s peter parker and I got told I’m doing an intern test day or something like that. I was wondering where I go.
“oh yes I got told about you, just go into the elevator and FRIDAY our AI will take you to your floor”
So peter did just that, then got briefed on what he was meant to be doing today, then did what he was meant to be doing, along with helping some other people with ‘really difficult equations and code that they couldn’t figure out for the life of them’, then left, went ‘home’, and went to bed.
He really wasn’t expecting too much, but he did have fun. He certainly wasn’t expecting Mr Stark to personally come visit him again. And he definitely wasn’t expecting him to offer peter an actual internship.
Nor was he expecting to be taken to a different floor when he went back on the Monday after school, but instead of being taken to the R&D floor he got taken to one of the private ones.
He went into that building the weird, nerdy, scrawny, mute orphan with 2 friends max and came out of the building being the PERSONAL INTERN OF MR STARK.
Granted his life also consisted of spiderman-ing but that was kind of a side job.
Basically his whole life direction had been changed by this internship.