Work Text:
Peter’s phone dies mid-text message to Mr. Stark five bus stops from Stark Tower. He’d sent his ‘on the way’ about four texts previous and was typing out another ‘thank you for the new suit’, so it’s not the end of the world. But now that he’s not glued to his phone, Peter’s suddenly hyper-aware of everyone around him.
There’s a guy giving a sales pitch about the essential oils he’s selling out of his coat pockets that Peter’s desperately trying not to make eye contact with. Someone in the row in front of him is wearing way too much cheap cologne, and another person is watching TikTok at full volume.
He's considering doing his Spanish homework out of sheer desperation, but it’s 4pm on a Thursday, so the bus is packed, and if he goes rummaging around he’s gonna elbow the lady next to him. She looks like she just got off a 12 hour shift in the ER, if the stains on her scrubs are any indication, which means she might actually kill Peter if he bothers her.
So he stares at his scuffed converse, because he wasn't lucky enough to get a window seat.
Essential oil guy is moving closer. Peter only has two stops left.
“Hey, kid. You got fifteen bucks on you?” Oil guy asks just as the bus jerks to a stop. Peter pretends he doesn't hear him over the announcement that the doors are opening, and shuffles quickly out. He can walk the last 3 blocks to Stark Tower.
This whole visit had been the idea of Pepper Potts, who had heard about Peter’s “Stark Internship”, and had thoughtfully decided to give it more credibility with paperwork and everything so he can get a few college credits out of the whole thing. But that means if he wants to keep using “Stark Internship” as an excuse to be out doing Spiderman things, he has to show up at the tower and put in at least two hours as a personal intern each week.
The problem is that Pepper had done most of the paperwork, sending him a few emails about what was expected of him and a lot of things to sign, but not any clear instructions on how to get into the lab itself. So Peter doesn’t actually know where he’s supposed to go once he gets in the building.
And Tony had told him to “just drop by whenever you’re free” and gave no further instructions, so all he’s going on is that big important people are usually on the top floors of buildings in movies and that’s about it.
As Peter walks into the very high-end and futuristic lobby of Stark tower, he feels very, very out of his element.
May always said if you’re lost, look for someone mom-shaped.
There’s a lady at one of the security desks who’s got that tilt to her mouth moms get when they've had one too many stubborn kids, and Peter bee-lines it to her.
She looks up, the beads in her braids clinking together pleasantly, at odds with the eyebrow she raises at him in silent question.
“Uh, I have a meeting? With Tony Stark?” Peter squeaks out. Great job Parker, real convincing.
Desk Lady looks him up and down. “Mmmhmm, what’s your name, baby?”
Oh god, she totally doesn’t believe him. She's gonna call security and Peter is gonna get kicked out on his first day, and the lady is still looking at him expectantly, that corner of her mouth pulling down.
“Peter Parker.” He says in one, nervous breath.
She types for a moment, her eyebrows raise in surprise, and she looks back up at him, appraisingly.
“Can I see your drivers license?”
Peter shakes his head. He doesn't have one of those. Even though he’s technically old enough to drive, May doesn’t make enough money for them to own a car. And even if she did, traffic in the city is insane, so most of the time it’s faster to use the readily available public transportation and bike share apps.
“Do you have your Stark Internship work badge on you?”
Peter also doesn’t have one of those. But he has a student ID in his wallet, which he holds up sheepishly.
Desk Lady looks at it disparagingly, but plucks it out of his hand and types some more.
“There’s a camera on your right, look at it and smile in 3, 2, 1.” A light flashes, capturing what’s probably an awful picture of Peter, deer-in-the-headlights, but he’s not gonna ask Desk Lady to take another one.
A machine whirs on her right, and she passes Peter his school ID back, along with a badge on a lanyard with “Lab Intern” printed in bold red letters, along with his name and- oh god, yeah that’s not a good picture of him. Yikes.
“Do you know where you’re going, sweetheart?”
Peter is too embarrassed to say no, so he nods, and with a quick thank you, scurries off to the security line.
He’s let through with no issue, loops the lanyard over his head, and follows the few people lingering around to the elevators. There’s no buttons or markers for how to open them, but people are waving their badges over a non-description patch of wall, and a few seconds later, an elevator will appear.
Peter stands, shifting foot to foot, not sure which one to get onto.
Is it weird if he just hops in? Is there an unspoken rule for this?
One of the elevators is about to close, he hears the sound it makes as the gears unlock on the sliding doors, when someone makes eye contact with him. A touch of the side of the door has it sliding back into the wall, and Peter rushes over gratefully.
“Which floor?” The guy asks, absentmindedly.
“Uhh…” Peter glances at the buttons -thank god there’s buttons on the inside. It goes up to level fifty five, though he’s sure there’s more levels than that, there must be another elevator that takes you higher. Peter’s just gonna have to find it.
“Fifty five.” He tries to sound sure of himself. May always said that if you’re going places you don't belong, to act confident and like you do it every day so you’ll blend in. Not that Peter isn’t supposed to be here, but his phone is dead, and he’s not actually sure where Mr. Stark’s lab is or how to get there, so maybe he’s just a little bit not where he’s supposed to be.
The guy presses the button without comment, and they ride in silence until they reach the guy’s floor. There’s a gaggle of chatting employees with varying ‘Intern’ badges waiting, and they brighten up when they see what floor Peter’s going to.
“Headed to the free Cava bowls?” A guy with messy black hair, and a badge that reads ‘R&D intern’ with the name ‘Dan’ underneath asks.
Peter sure wasn’t, but now his interest has been peaked.
”On fifty five?” He asks, just to make sure they’re not requesting another floor.
”Yeah, did you not see the Slack message? Man, you’ve gotta put the ‘Where-The-Food-At’ channel on ‘receive notifications’.” The dude standing next to him with a cheery yellow sweater, and an ‘IT intern’ badge with the name ‘Turner’ tells him, not looking up from his phone.
”My old job had Microsoft teams, and thank god we don’t do that here. The notifications never worked right. Got logged out of the channels all the time.” A girl with a gothic style dress, combat boots, and a ‘sustainability intern’ with ‘Sam’ on her badge complains.
“Ugh, I hate Microsoft Teams.” Turner groans.
“Tell me about it.”
The elevator opens with a pleasant ding, and Peter lets the group guide him to a meeting room milling with other employees descending on a table of catering.
“Yes!” Dan cheers, “We got here before all the dips are gone! Nothing worse than dry Cava.”
“Looks like they’ve got a few of the pre-made vegan ones too. Score.” Sam heads off to claim her prize.
Peter laughs as he loads up a bowl, stomach rumbling in anticipation.
. . . .
Tony is recalibrating the right gauntlet on mark 47 when Jarvis speaks and it takes him a second to comprehend the words.
“Sir, Peter has entered the building and appears to be headed to meeting room B on floor fifty five.”
“Fifty five?” Tony could have sworn he’d told the kid to meet him up in his personal lab when he got to the tower. “What could he possibly need from there?”
“He appears to be enjoying a free Cava bowl with some of the other interns.
Tony sighs, wipes his hands on his jeans, and stands. “I could take a break.”
And if he manages to snag a bowl, Pepper won’t be able to get on him for skipping lunch again.
“If you’re planning to tell Ms. Potts that you ate lunch today, I will remind you that it’s currently 4pm.”
Tony internally curses Jarvis’s programming. Did he have to make it so comprehensive?
“It’s noon somewhere. Gonna go find the kid.”
. . . .
“I love free food.” Peter says around a bite of lukewarm meat and rice.
“Right?” A guy with a grey blazer over a band t-shirt, ‘R&D technician’ and the name ‘Takashi’ on his badge, agrees. “They never feed us in R&D because we can’t hummus on the new Search and Rescue Bot.”
“Oh, I worked on some of the starting code for that, but once it took off, they transferred it to my lab supervisor as soon as it got interesting.” Dan bemoans, “How’s that going?”
“We’re actually doing a demo in fifteen. I’ll take you all up if you don't have anything time sensitive going on and want to see its progress.” He gestures to the group Peter has somehow found himself in.
Up? Yeah, Peter needs to go up. Maybe he’ll figure out where Tony’s lab is along the way.
. . . .
Tony arrives at meeting room B to a massacre of empty Cava catering.
“What the fuck. Is my tower full of vultures? And where’s Peter?”
“It seems he's been invited to the demonstration of the new R&D Search and Rescue Bot.” Jarvis helpfully informs him.
Tony groans. “Jarvis, order me a Cava bowl. Can’t believe the kid went along to a secondary location. Where’s his self preservation?”
“According to the videos circulating of his nightlife activities, I believe he had frighteningly little of that to begin with.”
“Right you are, Jarvis, right you are.” Tony sighs, resigning himself to chasing after his intern.
. . . .
It turns out that the Search and Rescue Bot is definitely a work in progress, and this is the first real run they’re giving it with the new hydraulics installed.
It’s made out of a flexible carbon fiber skeleton with a lightweight frame, and when it’s done, they’re planning on enclosing it within a soft, inflatable vinyl exterior in an attempt to make its appearance non-threatening to civilians.
Which is great, because at the moment it's looking like a bipedal Spot the Boston Dynamics Robot Dog, which is very maneuverable for rough terrain, but it’s a little scary to look at to say the least.
They’re standing outside the multilayered tempered-glass testing room, a cord running under the pressure-sealed door connected to a laptop that’s being hovered over by various members of R&D.
One of them has a phone out recording, and Takashi clears his throat. “This is the first test of our Search and Rescue Bot.”
A mechanical whine starts up, and the hydraulics spasm into movement. It’s jerky and dis-jointed. Takashi sighs.
“I’m assuming it’s not supposed to do that?” Sam asks, eyeing the thing neutrally.
“No, there must be something wrong with the hydraulics.” Dan says with a frown
Peter watches the way the robot moves. Something about it seems familiar. “Could be a connector loose on the FPGA. If it’s wiggling, it might cause the hydraulic commands to not register.”
He’s speaking out-loud, but mostly to himself, so it sends a jolt through him when everyone turns to look at him.
“The what?” Sam whispers, bewildered.
“Mini computer board for embedded programming.” Turner mutters back in an undertone
Takashi turns to Peter with a calculating gaze. Peter gulps, feels a little bit like a bug under a microscope and hoping he didn’t just upset the guy. “You wanna take a look?”
Peter brightens immediately, nodding frantically. Hell yeah he wants to see the programming. And the robot itself if they’ll let him.
The interns shuffle to make room for Peter to scroll his way through the programming.
“Can I see your API? What’s it routing to?”
Someone reaches over him and pulls up another window.
Peter scans it with a frown. Ned’s better with coding, but Peter wasn’t part of Midtown High School’s Robotics Club for nothing. And he’d worked on hydraulics on the last project he’d done before having to quit to prioritize Spider-Man, so it’s fresh in his mind.
“This isn’t as optimized as it could be. There’s a faster way to do this.”
A scoff comes from one of the people behind him, but Peter doesn't bother to turn, too busy trying to remember what they’d done to make their model less jerky. “How would you do it then?”
“Can I see your source code?”
Takashi unplugs the Search and Rescue bot from the laptop, and pulls it out of Peter’s hands. “You know what? Let's move upstairs where we have the big monitors and plug this in so we can all see. And then we can copy the project and set up a branch on a repo so we can follow what changes you're making without changing anything permanently. Andy, will you take the other interns back down to fifty five?”
Peter hesitates. He really should be meeting with Mr. Stark soon, but if they’re going up, it could be closer to the personal labs. And if they’re planning on sitting in one place long enough, maybe someone will have a phone charger.
. . . .
Tony makes it to the testing room Jarvis assured him Peter was using, and stares around at the empty room in astonishment.
“Unbelievable. He’s been kidnapped for a third time. Jarvis, where the hell is the kid this time?”
“Peter’s currently on floor 70 in meeting room F.”
Well, the kid’s making his way up in the world. Though Tony doesn’t have a clue what he could possibly be doing in a conference room of all places.
“Tell him to stay put this time.”
“I’m afraid I can't do that.” Jarvis informs him, sounding rather smug for an AI.
“Why the hell not?”
“Ms. Potts has directed me to count your daily steps, and you’re on your way to breaking your record for the week.”
Tony throws his hands into the air while he stomps back onto the elevator. “Kid better be in there still or I’m putting you in a Furby casing when I get back to my lab.”
. . . .
Peter’s got the API on one screen for optimizing, a branch on another screen, and the source code on yet another. He loves having access to this many screens. So much better than trying to program on Ned’s laptop who’s fan runs like it's going to become a helicopter and fly away.
He’s having a great time typing away, bouncing ideas off all the R&D team members they’ve gathered. Peter has a suspicion that his informal meeting has ended up on a slack message somewhere.
Tony bursts in the room, eyes a little wild, and hair disheveled like he’s been running a hand through it. He locks onto Peter with a frightening intensity, and Peter abruptly realizes that the room has gone still.
Everyone has frozen in the face of Tony Stark’s obvious irritation.
“What do you think you're doing?”
Peter cringes, “Uh, well there was this test run on the new Search and Rescue Bot and I noticed a-”
“Look at me.” Tony cuts him off, and Peter abruptly shuts his mouth, “Look at that” Peter obediently turns back to his screen where he was really just mid-code and he should really finish that, “Look at me.” Peter pulls his hands back from where they’d unconsciously drifted back toward the keyboard, and glances back at Mr. Stark. “Look at that.” Peter is starting to feel like he might get whiplash. “Does that look like what your internship is on?”
To be entirely honest, Peter isn't actually sure where he is in the building, much less what he’s supposed to be working on, but he’s not going to say that. “But Mr. Stark, the-”
“Nuh uh. Nope. Don’t wanna hear it. Why didn’t you come up to my lab?”
“I uh… couldn't find it.”
Mr. Stark looks incredibly unimpressed.
Peter points to his phone plugged into the charger of an R&D employee that happened to have one in their backpack. “And my phone died so I couldn’t call you.”
Tony eyes the beat-up, at least four models behind, smart phone with open disdain.
“Yeah, we’re getting you another one of those. Come on.”
Peter looks back at the codes and models on the screens with longing, “But we were getting somewhere here.”
“I’m sure R&D can handle their own projects without-“ Tony stops abruptly, squinting at the screen. “What API is that? We’re in the process of migrating to a new one. Why aren’t you running on the updated software?”
Takashi’s shoulders slump, “I’m not good at the new one yet. We were gonna run the test on this and then transfer over if it went well.”
“Not good at-” Mr. Stark looks affronted at the mere prospect. “It's not rocket science. Some of the buttons have moved, big deal. Budge over. Look you open this file here-”
. . . .
Pepper Potts herself finds them two hours later, a disapproving tilt to her mouth when she spots the room full of R&D employees sprawled across every surface, pizza boxes and soda bottles carefully kept away from any sensitive pieces of technology.
“Peter, you were supposed to be home half an hour ago. It’s a school night. Tony, I have four things for you to sign, and it’s past working hours for the rest of you. Whatever you're working on will be here tomorrow.”
The room chorus variations of “Yes, Ms. Potts” and dutifully start saving projects, packing away laptops and sheepishly throwing away pizza boxes.
Ms. Potts sighs, equal parts irritated and fond. She turns to the sole teenager, “Peter, how was your first day?”
Peter gulps. Having the full, undivided attention of the CEO of Stark Industries is intimidating.
“Oh, well I got a little lost, but May always says the best tour is a self-guided one.”