Work Text:
The private elevator was supposed to take twelve seconds.
That was what FRIDAY promised. Twelve seconds straight down from the penthouse to the main lobby, wrapped in a smooth, quiet box of glass and steel. A totally boring, normal ride.
Except Peter Parker somehow found a way to turn a twelve second elevator trip into a full scale national emergency.
Up in the lab, FRIDAY’s polite Irish voice cut right through the quiet of the early morning.
"Boss. We have a minor glitch in Elevator Car Three."
Tony didn’t even look up from the soldering iron he was using to fuse a tiny wire onto a repulsor piece. He had been down here all night, running on three energy drinks and sheer stubbornness.
"Define minor, Fri. Is it playing elevator music, or did someone spill coffee on the buttons?"
"Neither. The car stopped between the thirty fourth and thirty fifth floors. The manual buttons aren't responding, and the emergency brakes locked up because of a power surge."
Tony’s hand slipped. The soldering iron hissed as it burned a black line straight across his workbench.
"A power surge,"
Tony repeated, his voice dropping into that tight, dangerous tone that usually made Happy run for the hills.
"In my building? The building powered by a clean energy arc reactor?"
"Yes, Boss. A backup line blew during that thunderstorm we had earlier."
"And who," Tony asked, standing up so fast his chair crashed into the floor behind him, "is in the box?"
"Peter."
The soldering iron hit the table with a loud clack.
Down in Elevator Car Three, things were way less dramatic.
The lights had blinked once, made a weird hum, and then died completely. The fancy glass box went pitch black for two seconds before the emergency backup strip kicked on with a dim, yellow glow.
Peter didn't even drop his backpack.
He stood right in the middle of the floor, holding a half eaten sleeve of Oreos in one hand, staring up at the ceiling.
"Well, crud," Peter mumbled.
He waited five seconds. Ten. He hit the 'Door Open' button a few times. Nothing happened. The little digital screen flickered between 34 and 35 before blinking out completely.
"Great. Just great," Peter sighed, checking his watch.
"I'm already running late for school, and now Mr. Stark's super expensive futuristic box has trapped me. Classic."
He pulled out his phone to call, but before he could even tap the screen, the elevator speaker crackled to life.
"Peter?!"
The voice practically rattled the glass walls. It was loud, out of breath, and panicked—way too panicked for a stuck elevator.
"Uh, hey, Dad?" Peter said, holding the phone away from his ear and looking up at the speaker.
"Listen, so, funny story. The ride is kind of stuck."
"Stay right where you are! Don't touch the walls! Don't jump up and down! Don't even breathe too hard, the magnetic locks on that shaft are reading a four percent drop in power—"
"Dad, I'm fine," Peter interrupted, popping another Oreo into his mouth.
"It's just an elevator. I'm standing on solid ground."
"It is not just an elevator, Peter, it is a high speed metal tube hanging by a thread over a massive drop—"
"It's thirty floors, actually, and the emergency brakes caught like a minute ago"
Peter pointed out, leaning his back against the wood wall.
"I can just pop the doors open if you want. Or squeeze through the hatch on the roof—"
"If you touch that hatch, Parker, I am personally welding you into an Iron Man suit and leaving you on the roof."
Tony’s voice was cracking, pure panic cutting right through his usual snark.
"FRIDAY, override the locks on thirty four right now! Use the backup hydraulics!"
"Boss, the backup hydraulics need the primary circuit board, which is offline—"
"Then route the power from my lab! Reroute the whole building if you have to!"
Peter winced as he heard a loud crash through the speaker. He could picture it perfectly, Tony ripping off his safety glasses, hair a wild mess from pulling an all nighter, pacing a hole in the penthouse floor while typing on three floating screens at once.
"Mr. Stark, seriously, chill out," Peter said softly, popping another cookie.
"I'm totally okay. I'm literally eating breakfast."
There was a dead, heavy silence on the line.
"You're... what?"
"Eating breakfast," Peter repeated, holding up an Oreo sleeve to the empty air.
"Stark Tower cafeteria cookies. The double stuff ones you said were terrible for my metabolism."
"This is not a joke, Peter. I am having a mild heart attack up here."
"You don't even have a regular heart anymore, remember? You have a glowing space rock generator in your chest."
"I am speaking as your father, you ungrateful little menace."
Tony let out a long, shaky breath, the furious typing slowing down a little.
"Are you hurt? Did you bang your head when it stopped?"
"No. It didn't drop, it just clicked to a halt. Smooth ride, ten out of ten, would not recommend when running late for homeroom."
"Good."
Tony’s voice dropped, losing the frantic edge, though you could still hear how terrified he was just knowing his kid was stuck.
"Good. Stay put. Don't move an inch. Helen Cho is already standing by with a medical team just in case you stubbed your toe."
"Dr. Cho is not treating a stubbed toe, Mr. Stark. I'm fifteen, and I heal like crazy, remember?"
"I don't care if you heal like Wolverine, you are my kid and you are hanging in my broken building."
Tony muttered something under his breath about firing every architect in New York.
"The rescue squad is almost there. Just... keep talking to me. Tell me why your backpack weighs fifty pounds. Keep your voice in my ear."
Peter smiled, looking down at his phone. Even if Tony went totally overboard every single time something minor happened, it still felt pretty nice knowing someone cared this much.
"Okay,"
Peter said, unzipping his heavy backpack and pulling out a wrinkled math notebook and a pencil.
"If you really want to know, I'm trying to finish last night's calculus problem set before first period, which is impossible because number fourteen makes zero sense. Who integrates a curve like that anyway?"
"If you fail calculus, I'm grounding you from the spider suit until college,"
Tony muttered through the speaker, the distant sounds of him pacing and barking orders at FRIDAY echoing in the background.
"Focus on your derivatives. It builds character."
"Character? Dad, I'm dangling in a metal box between floors thirty four and thirty five. My character is already built."
"Watch the tone, kid. Just keep reading. What's the function?"
For the next five minutes, the most terrifying billionaire in the world stayed on a live comm link, aggressively coaching a fifteen year old superhero through advanced math equations while a team of mechanical engineers scrambled to override the elevator shafts.
Down in the main lobby, things were a total war zone.
Dr. Helen Cho was stationed right at the front doors, holding an open medical kit with a digital thermometer and a flashlight ready. Behind her, roughly twenty armed security guards in full gear stood at attention, while technicians tapped furiously on glowing tablets. Happy Hogan was pacing back and forth near the main desk like a caged tiger, muttering under his breath and looking ready to punch a concrete wall.
Suddenly, a heavy fire door banged open from the stairwell.
Tony Stark marched out of it. He had ditched his lab coat, his dark shirt was wrinkled from an all nighter, his hair was sticking up in three different directions, and he looked like a man who was moments away from dismantling the entire building with his bare hands.
"Status!"
Tony barked, storming straight toward the security console.
"Tell me the car is moving, Fri, or I'm blowing the ceiling off the shaft."
"Emergency manual override successful, Boss," FRIDAY’s voice chimed smoothly overhead.
"Car Three is descending to the ground floor now."
CLUNK.
With a sudden, heavy shudder, the elevator cables jerked, and the car smoothly slid down the final stretch, dinging happily as the heavy glass doors slid wide open.
The entire lobby went dead silent.
Helen Cho rushed forward instantly, stethoscope out. Happy lunged toward the door, his eyes wide. A squad of guards stepped up with medical stretchers just in case.
And out stepped Peter Parker.
He was holding a half eaten sleeve of Oreos in one hand, his heavy backpack slung over one shoulder, wearing his high school jacket and mid stride chewing a cookie.
Helen stopped dead in her tracks, lowering her medical kit. Happy froze mid stride, blinking hard. The security guards stared blankly.
Peter blinked back at the crowd of twenty plus emergency personnel, looking entirely bewildered. He glanced at Helen, then at Happy, and finally locked eyes with Tony, who was standing at the front looking like he had just aged ten years in ten minutes.
The lobby was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Peter swallowed his bite of cookie, raised a hand slowly, and gave a weak, awkward wave.
"...Um," Peter said, his voice echoing in the massive room.
"Is it cool if I still go to school, or do I need a permission slip for the elevator trauma?"
Tony stared at him for three full seconds. Then, slowly, he marched forward past Helen and Happy, grabbed Peter by the shoulders, and pulled him into a tight, fierce hug right in front of the entire security team.
"You're a menace,"
Tony muttered fiercely into Peter's hair, his grip trembling just a fraction.
"An absolute, grey hair inducing menace."
Peter grinned, patting Tony awkwardly on the back, and held out the open package of cookies.
"Want an Oreo, Dad? They're double stuff."