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Peter shuffled into the kitchen, backpack slung over one shoulder. "I need you to sign something."
Tony didn't look up from his tablet, coffee mug hovering near his mouth. "What is it?"
"Permission slip. Field trip. School's coming here. To the Tower."
That got Tony's attention. He set the mug down and actually turned, one eyebrow lifting. "Here?"
"Yeah, here." Peter grabbed a granola bar from the cabinet, not quite meeting his eyes. "The public tour program. Pepper opened it a few months ago."
"And you need me to sign because—"
"Because you're my guardian and it needs a guardian signature. That's literally how permission slips work, Tony."
Tony huffed something that might've been a laugh and picked up a pen from the counter caddy, uncapping it with his teeth in a way that made Peter wince.
He signed with the same illegible scrawl he used on every legal document that came through the Tower — more shape than letters, but unmistakably his.
"There." He slid it back. "Anthony Edward Stark, guardian. Very official."
"You didn't have to write the whole thing out."
"I like writing the whole thing out." Tony didn't look up, already back to his tablet. "Sue me."
Peter didn't say anything to that. He just took the paper back and folded it into his bag.
"So," Tony said, "what time's this circus rolling in?"
"Nine. And that's exactly why I'm telling you now — don't do anything." Peter pointed the granola bar at him like a weapon. "No showing up. No 'accidentally' walking through the lobby. No FRIDAY announcements. Nothing."
"I have a company to run, Pete. I wasn't planning my whole day around your field trip."
"Uh-huh."
"I have meetings."
"Uh-huh."
"You have zero faith in me."
"I have perfect faith in you," Peter said, already backing toward the door. "That's the problem."
Trip Day
The bus ride over was exactly as bad as Peter had braced for.
It started the second they pulled up outside the Tower.
"Wow, Penis, big day," Flash said, sliding in beside him in line like he'd been waiting all morning for the opening. "You gonna introduce us to your boss? Oh wait — you don't actually have one."
"Flash," Ned said, tired.
"What? I'm just saying, it's a big building for a fake internship." Flash grinned at his own joke, glancing around for an audience. A couple kids near the back snickered.
MJ, a few feet ahead, didn't even turn around. "Statistically, the more you repeat a joke, the less funny it gets. You're deep in the negatives now."
"Nobody asked, Jones."
"And yet." She kept walking.
Flash rolled his eyes and turned back to Peter like she hadn't spoken at all. "Seriously, though. Don't wanna confess to faking this whole thing before we go in."
Peter kept his eyes forward, jaw tight, and said nothing. It was easier that way. Talking back just gave Flash more to work with, and it gave Mr. Harrington an excuse to look over like Peter was the one causing the scene.
"Must be nice," Flash went on, dropping his voice just enough to sound like he thought it was private, "having a made-up job to brag about. Guess when your only family's dead you gotta make up something to feel special—"
"What the fuck, dude." Ned's voice cracked, sharp this time.
"I'm just saying it like it is."
MJ finally turned around fully, expression flat and dangerous. "Your obsession with Peter is getting out of hand, Flash."
Flash flushed and kept his mouth shut.
Mr. Harrington, three feet away and very clearly close enough to have heard every word, didn't so much as glance over. He was busy doing a headcount, clipboard in hand, muttering under his breath about bus seating.
The line shuffled forward. Peter's hands curled into loose fists at his sides, knuckles pale, but his face stayed carefully blank.
"Parker." Mr. Harrington's voice cut through, sharp enough that a few heads turned. "A word."
Peter's stomach dropped anyway, even though he hadn't said a single thing back.
He stepped out of line, trailing after his teacher a few feet off to the side — close enough to still hear the murmur of the class, far enough to feel very deliberately singled out.
Mr. Harrington lowered his clipboard, voice pitched low but not exactly kind. "I don't want any trouble today. You understand me? No outbursts, no arguing with Flash, no lying — and I mean it about the internship thing. I don't know what this is, some kind of coping mechanism, attention thing, whatever, but today is not the day. You don't go around telling people you work here. Are we clear?"
Peter's jaw worked once before he answered. "...Yes, sir."
"Good." Mr. Harrington was already turning back toward the group, clipboard rising again like the conversation had never happened. "Back in line."
Peter walked back to his spot without a word, staring straight ahead at the revolving glass doors, at his own reflection ghosted across the Stark Industries logo twenty feet above the entrance.
He didn't say anything. He was getting good at that.
The tour guide — a woman in a crisp Stark Industries polo who introduced herself as Denise and looked entirely too cheerful for a Friday — herded them toward the gates, then stopped just short of them, clipboard held to her chest like a shield.
"Before we head in, I want to introduce you to someone very important around here. FRIDAY."
A murmur went through the group. "Who?"
"FRIDAY isn't a person," Denise said, visibly pleased with the reaction. "She's an AI. She runs security, the elevators, environmental systems — pretty much everything you'll see today. But she's not just the building's system. She's Mr. Stark's personal AI. He built her himself."
That got a ripple of interest even from the kids who'd spent the whole bus ride pretending not to care.
"Is she, like, always listening?" someone asked, half-nervous.
"She's always helpful," Denise corrected, smile flickering just slightly, like she wasn't entirely sure those were the same thing.
Denise was already turning back toward the gates, gesturing the group forward. Visitor badges were passed out in a stack, each printed with a little red VISITOR banner across the bottom.
Peter didn't take one.
He pulled his own card out of his back pocket instead and tapped it against the reader at the far turnstile without breaking stride.
The light blinked green and the gate swung open.
"Welcome back, Mr. Parker," FRIDAY's voice said, pleasant and easy, threading down from a speaker somewhere in the ceiling.
"Thanks, Fri," Peter said, already stepping through, not even glancing up.
Behind him, the line had gone dead silent.
Denise turned around so fast her lanyard swung. She stared at the gate. She stared at Peter. She stared down at her own clipboard, like it might have an explanation written on it somewhere.
"...Did the building just talk to him?" someone muttered.
"how did she know his name?" another kid said, louder.
"Mr. Parker?" Flash's voice, somewhere between a laugh and genuine confusion.
Denise, opened her mouth, closed it again, and settled for herding the rest of the class toward the elevators — like if she just moved fast enough, nobody would ask her to explain.
Ned, walking beside Peter, looked like he was trying very hard not to grin.
The Tour
The lobby tour was mostly harmless — the mural, the model of the original Stark Expo pavilion, a wall of framed patents Denise clearly had memorized down to the filing dates.
Peter trailed at the back of the group, trying to make himself small.
It didn't last.
They'd barely rounded the corner toward the elevator bank when Clint's voice carried down the hallway before the man himself even came into view. "—no, that's not how the vending machine works, you have to hit it on the left side, I've told you this six times—"
"I hit it on the left side last time and it ate my dollar," Natasha said, entirely unbothered, falling into step beside him. Then she spotted Peter and her whole posture changed, easy and warm. " маленький паучок."
"Hi, Nat." Peter lifted a hand in a small wave, like this was a completely normal Tuesday — which, for him, it was.
Clint squinted at the group behind Peter, taking in two dozen teenagers in matching visitor badges. "Field trip?"
"Field trip," Peter confirmed.
"Rough." Clint said it with the weary solidarity of a man who'd chaperoned things before. He nodded at the class in general.
Natasha reached out and ruffled Peter's hair on her way past, unhurried, like she had every right to — which, apparently, she did — and kept walking, already back in conversation with Clint about the vending machine. Neither of them looked back.
The class did not recover quickly.
"She called him—" someone started.
"I don't know what that means but it sounded nice—"
Flash, arms crossed, jaw tight. "It's probably fake. Like, a bit. They probably do this for tours."
Nobody agreed with him out loud. MJ just gave him a long, flat look and said nothing at all, which was somehow worse.
They made it one more floor before the elevator doors opened on Loki and Bucky, mid-argument, Loki holding a plate stacked with something that smelled unmistakably like fresh cookies.
"They're not poisoned, Barnes, I don't know why you insist on—"
"I'm not saying poisoned, I'm saying suspicious—"
"Everything I do is suspicious to you, it's exhausting—" Loki spotted Peter over Bucky's shoulder and his whole tone shifted, delighted. "Peter! Perfect timing. Tell this paranoid relic my baking is not an assassination attempt."
"Your baking literally set off the smoke alarm last week," Peter pointed out, already reaching for a cookie without being offered one.
"That was a seasoning issue."
"That was a fire, Loki."
Bucky, watching this exchange with the long-suffering patience of a man who lived with both of them, held the plate out toward the class instead, entirely deadpan. "Bruce made the batch in the back that's actually safe. This one's a gamble."
Denise, badge lanyard askew, was staring at the plate of cookies like she wasn't sure she was allowed to breathe.
"Bruce isn't coming down too?" Peter asked, already halfway through his cookie.
"Said he's got a thing in the kitchen," Bucky said. "Said to tell you he'll see you at lunch."
"Cool." Peter waved at them as the class started moving. "See you guys later."
"Bring the small ones," Loki called after him, gesturing vaguely at the class. "I want to see if any of them scream."
"Loki."
"I'm joking—" The elevator doors slid shut on the argument still going.
Flash had gone very, very quiet, staring at the closed doors like he was trying to reconstruct what he'd just watched.
"He called him—" a kid near the front tried.
"He offered him a cookie—"
Denise cleared her throat, badge still crooked, voice climbing half an octave higher than it had been ten minutes ago. "So! The, um — R&D floor is just up ahead—"
The Cafeteria
By the time they reached the staff cafeteria for lunch, most of the class had stopped whispering and started openly staring every time Peter did anything at all — reached for a tray, picked a table, breathed.
The cafeteria worker behind the counter, an older woman with a hairnet and a name tag that read ROSA, lit up the second she spotted him in line.
"There he is." She'd already filled his plate before he could say anything. "You didn't eat enough yesterday, I could tell. You're doing that thing with your shoulders."
"I ate plenty, Rosa—"
"Mm-hm." She wasn't listening, already spooning a second helping onto his plate. "And don't let me catch you giving half of it to that Barnes boy again. He's got arms like tree trunks; he can get his own."
"That was one time—"
"It's always one time with you." But she was smiling when she said it, patting his hand once before waving him along. "Go on, sit. You're holding up the line."
Peter mumbled a thanks and shuffled off with a tray that could've fed two people, ears pink, very deliberately not looking at his class.
Behind him, Denise had gone quiet in a way that suggested she was rapidly recalculating several things about this "average intern."
Flash, tray in hand, stared after him for a long moment before saying loudly,"he probably just gets coffee and stuff not that important.”
"Keep telling yourself that," MJ said, not even looking up from her own tray, and kept walking.
The Workshop
The R&D workshop was exactly the kind of place that made teenagers forget how to behave. Half-finished prototypes lined the walls, holographic displays flickered with schematics, and the air smelled like ozone and fresh coffee.
Denise clapped her hands together, voice climbing back into tour-guide mode. "Now, this is where some of our junior interns get hands-on experience with—"
The doors slid open before she could finish.
Tony walked in like he owned the place — which, technically, he did — eyes scanning the room until they landed on Peter. A slow grin spread across his face.
"Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in." Tony sauntered over, hands in his pockets, completely ignoring the two dozen frozen teenagers. "I heard there was a field trip. Couldn't miss the chance to see my favorite intern in action."
Peter's entire body went rigid. "Tony," he hissed, low enough that only Tony could hear. "You said you had meetings."
"I do." Tony shrugged, completely unbothered. "This is more important."
"Tony," Peter said again, sharper this time, cheeks already burning. "Don't."
"Don't what?" Tony's grin widened. He reached out and ruffled Peter's hair, exactly like Natasha had earlier — except infinitely more embarrassing in front of the entire class. "Don't be proud of my kid? Too late."
"I'm not your kid," Peter muttered, ducking away, but Tony just followed, relentless.
"Sure you are. Signed the papers, didn't I? Anthony Edward Stark, guardian, very official." Tony quoted himself, then turned to the class like he was addressing a board meeting. "He's been interning here since he was fourteen. Best kid I've ever worked with. Even listens sometimes."
"Tony," Peter said, voice cracking slightly. "Please stop."
"Or what?" Tony leaned down, mock-whispering. "You gonna tell your teacher on me?"
That did it. Peter's embarrassment tipped straight into annoyance. "You're impossible, you know that?"
"Gets me out of bed in the morning." Tony straightened, finally acknowledging Denise, who looked like she might faint. "Denise, right? Pepper says you're doing great with the tour program. Keep it up."
"Th-thank you, Mr. Stark," Denise stammered.
Tony waved a hand. "Just Tony's fine. Unless you're filing something — then it's Mr. Stark." He glanced back at Peter, eyes dancing. "Unlike some people, who think first names are a free-for-all."
Peter rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. "Oh my god."
Mr. Harrington, who had been standing frozen near the back of the group, finally seemed to remember he existed. He stepped forward, face pale, and grabbed Peter's shoulder — firm, almost hard.
"Peter," he said, voice tight with panic. "A word. Now."
He pulled Peter a few feet away, hand still gripping his shoulder like he was afraid Peter might bolt. Then he turned to Tony, words tumbling out in a rush.
"Mr. Stark, I am so sorry. I don't know what's gotten into him — calling you by your first name like that, in front of everyone. It's completely inappropriate. I'll have a serious talk with him. He'll be punished for this. I assure you, this kind of disrespect won't happen again."
Peter's stomach dropped. He opened his mouth to say something — anything — but Tony moved faster.
Tony's hand came up, not aggressive, but firm, and he pushed Mr. Harrington's hand off Peter's shoulder like it was nothing. His expression had shifted, all the humor gone, replaced by something cold and protective.
"Get your hand off my kid," Tony said, voice low but carrying.
The room went dead silent.
Mr. Harrington blinked, hand still hovering where he'd been holding Peter. "I — I didn't mean—"
"You don't get to grab him," Tony continued, stepping between Peter and the teacher like it was the most natural thing in the world. "You don't get to threaten him. And you definitely don't get to apologize to me for him calling me by my first name — in my own building."
Mr. Harrington's mouth opened, then closed. "But — he's a student. I'm responsible for—"
"He's my responsibility," Tony cut in, not unkind, but final. "And right now, he's fine. So back off."
Peter stared at the floor, heart hammering, but there was something warm settling in his chest too. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
Tony glanced back at him, expression softening. "You good?"
Peter nodded, once. "Yeah."
"Good." Tony turned back to the class, clapping his hands together like nothing had happened. "Alright, who wants to see the new repulsor tech?"
A few kids raised their hands, hesitant. Most were still staring at Peter like they'd never seen him before.
Flash, who had been uncharacteristically quiet through the whole exchange, finally found his voice.
"This is ridiculous," he muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear. "He's just some kid. You're acting like he's special or something. He's not. He's just—"
"Flash," Ned warned, but Flash ignored him.
"No, seriously. He's lying about all of this. You can't just walk into a place like this and—"
"Enough." Tony's voice cut through the room like a blade.
Flash shut up instantly, but Tony was already walking toward him, expression unreadable.
"Let me make something clear," Tony said, stopping just in front of Flash, who suddenly looked very small. "You don't get to talk about him like that. Not here, not anywhere. You've got a problem with my kid, you take it up with me. And not special? He's one of the smartest people I have ever worked with. He helps me on real projects — solves in an afternoon what takes my other engineers weeks. So if we're talking about who's not special here, kid, it isn't him."
Flash's mouth opened, then closed. He nodded, once, fast.
"Good." Tony stepped back, then glanced at Peter, something almost like pride in his eyes. "You," he said, pointing at Mr. Harrington, "and your teacher there are both barred from Stark Tower. Permanently. And I'll be having a conversation with your school board about how you stood there and let a student get bullied — then accused him of lying when he never once did."
Peter finally looked up, meeting Tony's gaze. He smiled, and something in his posture loosened.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I need the kid's help with something." Tony put an arm around Peter's shoulders and led him away.
"Thank you, Dad. For everything," Peter said softly.