Work Text:
The end of quarter one is closing in fast, which means deadlines are no longer theoretical. They are immediate. Tangible. Sitting just behind everyone’s shoulder.
By 7:30 on a Thursday night, most of Stark Industries has gone dark. Offices emptied. Lights dimmed. Security sweeping through floors on predictable routes. The R&D intern lab, however, is still very much alive.
There are four of them. One from Cornell. One from NYU. One from Columbia. One from MIT.
Sherri Rojas is the MIT intern, and one of the few out of state undergraduates accepted into the New York headquarters. She’d had other options. A smaller SI research facility in Massachusetts, practically embedded in campus. Close to family. Close to friends. She could have stayed in her senior-year apartment, kept her routine intact, finished out the year surrounded by familiarity.
It would have been easier.
But when the acceptance email came through with the option to work at HQ — the official HQ — the choice was clear. Sherri packed up her cat, Salsa, and moved into the Stark Industries provided housing with the rest of the out of state interns. Seven bedrooms. Seven bathrooms. Upper East Side.
It’s ridiculous. And significantly nicer than anything she’d been paying for in Massachusetts.
“I cannot get this to work.”
Amelia Gray’s voice is thin with frustration. A second later, her forehead meets the metal lab table with a solid thunk. She doesn’t lift her head afterward.
Sherri swivels her chair toward her, feet dragging lightly against the floor. “I’m begging you not to concuss yourself before we finish our project,” she says. “That’s not a great look.”
Amelia lets out a muffled groan.
Sherri leans back, eyes drifting up toward the ceiling, trying to reorganize the problem in her head — and nearly tips over when something clips her chair from the side.
Joel Griffin skids to a stop next to her, one hand snapping out to steady her chair before it can fully tip. He looks exhausted from staring at code too long.
“Can you look at ours?” he asks. “I’ve been stuck on this for an hour and I hate it.”
Sherri presses her lips together, then sighs. “Joel, I don’t even know how to fix our problem,” she says, gesturing vaguely back toward Amelia. “I don’t have a secret third brain for yours.”
“Tragic,” Joel mutters, already rolling away.
Across the lab, Maurice reclines in his chair and it’s clear he’s given up entirely. “I would do a lot of questionable things to get five minutes with Tony Stark right now,” he says, staring at the ceiling. “Nothing illegal. Probably.”
Sherri snorts before she can stop herself.
The laughter dies quickly, leaving the lab quiet again. Four workstations. Two stalled projects. Too many open tabs. Not enough answers.
They’re smart. All of them are or they wouldn’t be here. But Stark Industries has a way of reminding you what it’s like to be a little fish in a big pond.
Internships here don’t come with safety nets. You either figure it out, or you don’t get asked back.
“Hey, FRIDAY,” Sherri says, tone deliberately flat, almost teasing. “Can you ask Mr. Stark to come help us with our problems?”
Everyone knows FRIDAY is selective about who she listens to. The likelihood of the AI responding and honoring her request is about as likely as her cat sprouting wings overnight and talking to her in Japanese.
“Yeah, right, like that’s gonna—” Joel starts.
Before he can finish, a voice chimes smoothly overhead.
“Mr. Stark is currently occupied,” FRIDAY says, “but he is sending someone down to assist you now.”
The lab goes quiet.
Maurice is the first to move, pushing his chair back and standing as he stares up at the ceiling. “Did Stark’s AI just… respond to you?”
Amelia straightens so fast her chair squeaks. Sherri’s own chair stops spinning mid-turn.
“Who do you think he’s sending?” Amelia asks, eyes flicking to the double doors that open onto the hallway.
All of them are looking at the same spot now.
“Probably some senior engineer,” Joel grumbles. “Someone who’ll give us a cryptic hint and tell us to rethink the problem.”
And really, he’s not wrong. Higher ups treat every problem the interns face as a learning experience and an opportunity to ‘challenge’ themselves.
A couple of minutes pass. Then the handle turns. The door swings open and—
Sherri blinks.
It’s a kid.
No. A teenager. Maybe. Definitely not older than sixteen. Possibly younger. He pauses just inside the lab, hands tucked awkwardly into the pockets of his jeans, eyes darting around like he’s not entirely sure he’s in the right place.
For a second, Sherri assumes he’s lost. Someone’s kid who wandered off where he shouldn’t have.
“Hey,” Maurice says, voicing what all of them are thinking. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”
“Do your parents know where you are?” Amelia adds, gentler, and rising from her seat.
Something in the boy’s expression flickers. He shrugs, smoothing down a stray curl that refuses to cooperate.
“They’re both dead,” he says, far too casually for the words that had just come out of his mouth. “So… probably not, but my Aunt does.”
The room freezes.
Maurice and Amelia both choke, for different reasons. Sherri feels her stomach drop, heat crawling up the back of her neck.
“Oh,” Amelia says faintly. “Okay. I’m—sorry.”
The boy shifts, clearly uncomfortable now. “Uh. Mr. Stark sent me down,” he says, words tumbling over each other. “To see if I could maybe—help? FRIDAY explained it on the way here. You’re stuck on your projects?”
He rocks slightly on his heels, hands still jammed in his pockets. Ratty jeans. A science pun T-shirt that looks like it’s been washed too many times. Nervous energy written all over him.
Sherri exchanges a quick glance with the others. Whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t this.
“No offense,” Joel says, folding his arms, irritation threading through his voice despite himself. “But you’re, what, twelve? I think this might be a little out of your league.”
Sherri doesn’t say anything, but the thought lands anyway, sharp and unwelcome.
This is who Stark thinks they need?
The kid straightens. His shoulders pull back, chin lifting a fraction, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. He scans the lab again, slower this time, and clearly cataloging their work.
“Well,” he says, voice wavering only at the start, “I’m actually fifteen. And, yeah… that might be true. But Mr. Stark did send me down here. He said if you gave me a hard time I should—” He falters, then exhales. “I don’t know. Just… humor me? Please?”
The words tumble out awkwardly, earnest and unpolished.
Sherri considers him for a beat.
They aren’t making progress on their own. And if this kid really does have Tony Stark’s attention, the worst that happens is nothing changes. The best is they get unstuck.
She pushes back from her chair and stands.
“Okay,” she says. “Sure.”
She motions him over to her workstation. “Amelia and I are working on the exosleeve.”
Amelia hesitates, then nods and starts explaining. She walks through the design — lightweight support, adaptive tension, meant to reduce strain during repetitive motion. It works at first. Then it stiffens. Locks up. Starts fighting the user instead of helping them.
Sherri watches the kid closely, expecting his attention to drift halfway through.
It doesn’t.
He picks up the half-finished sleeve, turning it over carefully in his hands, thumb tapping absently against the casing while Amelia talks. His brow furrows — not confused. Focused.
Amelia is already gearing up to apologize for getting too technical when he reaches out and pulls a fresh panel onto the holo screen.
Sherri blinks.
She didn’t even know you could open it that quickly.
“Okay,” he says, words coming faster now. “So the math’s not wrong. You’re just correcting too late.”
Lines appear on the display. A curve. A repeating pattern.
“You’re telling it to respond after the strain spikes,” he continues, sketching as he talks. “But by then, the sleeve’s already working against the movement. It’s overcompensating.”
He taps the screen.
“What if it adjusted before the strain happens? Based on how the joint is moving instead of how much force it’s under.”
The lab goes quiet.
Sherri feels it click before she can stop herself.
“Oh.”
Amelia leans closer to the screen. “But wouldn’t that throw off the calibration once it cycles?”
“Second-pass normalization,” Sherri says automatically.
“It recalibrates on the next movement,” the kid adds at the same time.
They both freeze.
Sherri looks at Amelia. Amelia looks back.
Fuck it, that look says. Let’s try it.
Joel and Maurice have already drifted over, abandoning their station without comment. Watching while they follow the kid’s directions step by step, rerouting the sequence, shifting the adjustment phase earlier in the cycle.
The sleeve hums.
Then relaxes.
Moves smoothly.
No locking. No resistance.
The issue they’ve been stuck on all day disappears.
They all stare.
The kid shifts under the attention, suddenly looking fifteen again. “Uh,” he says. “Did that… help?”
Maurice recovers first.
“Okay,” he says, already grabbing the kid by the arm. “Nope. You’re not done. Come look at ours.”
And just like that, the teenager who wandered in out of nowhere is being dragged across the lab like a borrowed tool they don’t intend to give back.
-
Twenty minutes later, even Joel and Maurice have pushed past their roadblock.
They’re clustered around their workstation now, firing questions at the kid about swarm coordination and task distribution, interrupting each other in their rush to keep up. The teenager, no longer folded in on himself, talks easily as he works, hands moving, voice animated. The nerves have burned off, replaced by something lighter. Happier.
Mid-sentence, his eyes flick to the door.
Sherri notices immediately. She follows his gaze just in time to see the double doors swing open.
Tony Stark strides into the lab.
Sherri has seen him before — in passing, on elevated walkways, through screens — but never this close and never like this. No suit. No polish. A faded SI hoodie clinging to his shoulders, darkened with oil and grease. His hair mirrors the kid’s, smudged and unruly, like they’ve been working side by side.
Sherri has to physically stop herself from saying something deeply stupid. Go Beavers dies in her throat.
“When I sent you down here,” Stark says mildly, eyes flicking to the curly-haired teenager, “I meant help. Not do their projects for them.”
The kid grimaces. “I’m not—I didn’t—” He stumbles over the words. “They asked and I—we were—”
Stark chuckles and slings an arm around his shoulders, easy and familiar.
“Relax,” he says. “I’m teasing. I figured this would be good for you.”
For a moment, Sherri feels like she’s witnessing something private. Something she shouldn’t be seeing. She looks away on instinct, giving them space.
“You get what you needed?” Stark asks, clearing his throat as if he’s just remembered the rest of the room exists.
“Yes, sir.”
“We did.”
“Thank you for sending him.”
The replies overlap, a chorus of agreement threaded with disbelief. None of them quite know what to do with the image in front of them: Tony Stark, arm around a teenager who looks like a miniature version of him.
“Good,” Stark says, surveying the lab and the four of them with an assessing glance. “It’s a school night. He still needs to eat dinner, so I’m stealing him back.”
There’s a faint awkwardness to it — not uncertainty, exactly, just awareness. Sherri doesn’t blame him. They are all staring.
A school night. Dinner.
“It was nice to meet you all,” the kid says, a little breathless now that the adrenaline’s worn off. “Good luck on your projects.”
Tony’s already steering him toward the door, leaning down to murmur something Sherri can’t quite catch. Whatever it is, it makes the kid duck his head, smiling, before he disappears into the hallway.
Tony Stark stays.
The lab goes quiet.
The four of them stand there, suddenly very aware of their posture, their proximity to unfinished prototypes, the fact that they are staring at a man who is both a legendary engineer and a public superhero. Tony looks back at them for a moment, expression unreadable.
“I should remind you,” he says mildly, “that discussing anything that happens on company property — people, projects, or otherwise — with anyone outside Stark Industries is a violation of your contracts.”
He smiles, easy and polite.
“It would also get you blacklisted from the program.”
Sherri nods immediately. So do the others. The words aren’t sharp, but the meaning is unmistakable. It isn’t a threat exactly. It’s policy. Which somehow makes it worse.
“Good,” Stark says, satisfied. “Have a good night.”
Then he turns and heads for the door, following after his—
Kid?
Clone?
Whatever that was.
The door swings shut behind him.
There’s a beat of silence.
Then Maurice exhales. “Okay. So. Is Tony Stark a dad?”
“Or,” Amelia says slowly, eyes wide, “did he clone himself?”
Joel drags a hand down his face. “A twelve year old just embarrassed us professionally. He’s definitely got Stark DNA.”
“Fifteen,” Sherri corrects automatically.
Joel shrugs. “Same difference.”