Chapter Text
Peter stared at the downturned permission slip on his desk, slouching back into his chair as the full weight of Pepper’s statement at breakfast – which he’d, at the time, ignored due to the pancakes topping ten on his plate – crashed over him. He stared listlessly at the slip, resisting the urge to put his head in his hands.
“Peter,” said Pepper, a little more uptight than usual. The new products were delayed, thanks to a manufacturing error in one of the German factories receiving the wrong pieces from one of the South Korean factories, and she was evidently (as always) more stressed about it than anyone else at the long table.
But that wasn’t his fault, which judging from her tone alone was all he was about to be presented with: blame. Not that Pepper had ever blamed him for anything—except that time he’d nearly managed to blow up half the sitting room, which had been a joint venture between himself and Clint anyway, not that the archer had taken any responsibility.
Peter kept his eyes set firmly on the stack of pancakes in front of him, oozing maple syrup and topped with an unhealthy amount of bacon.
“Peter,” Pepper tried again. “Listen. Something is going to happen at school today, and you’re probably not going to like it.” She sat primly in her chair next to Mr. Stark, eating her own pancakes—a much reduced amount in comparisons to a few of the towers around the table. “But this is actually out of SI’s hands, so I thought I’d give you advance warning so you can prepare suitably for it.”
Humming, Peter delivered a non-committal response as he dug into his pancakes.
Why the Hell hadn’t he listened? He should have figured it out; he was smart, after all, smarter than most of the people in the classroom, teacher included, even considering his school was STEM—so why hadn’t he?
The slip mocked him as he shoved his elbows against his desk with a little force, rattling it and causing a few of his classmates to glance across to him. Mr. Harrington recalled their attention easily, though he was having a hard time gaining Peter’s. “... So, we should take this opportunity to immerse ourselves in the environment of the fields you’ll one day be working in.” Pacing along the length of the white board, Mr. Harrington slowed up and finally came to a stop. “Now that that’s settled – would you actually like to know where you’re going on your field trip?”
A collective murmur came from most of the class, Peter excluded. His stomach churned as he watched Mr. Harrington’s mouth form around the words, “Turn over your slips.” But he was already prepping himself for the inevitable explosion of noise.
The rustle of paper splintered around him and—
“No way!” shouted Flash from a desk forward, practically leaping from his seat as the noise bubbled around him. “Stark Industries? We’re going to Stark Industries?”
“That’s right, Flash,” Mr. Harrington preened, turning to the white board. “Now, class, I have to go over a few things with you...”
Peter continued not to listen, his eyes ghosting across the words STARK INDUSTRIES FIELD TRIP with calculated horror in his system. It was scheduled for Friday – this Friday, Peter realised with dread, which was one of the weekends Mr. Stark and a delightful array of Avengers spent in New York. Why not next week? he thought with dismissive concern, knowing too well it was futile to even begin planning anything—to try and convince Pepper to have it rescheduled. There was no point of that considering, as he read the slip more carefully, he realised it really was out of their hands.
Dammit, it’s that stupid governmental initiative. Peter clenched his fist against the desk, resisting the urge to shake his head at the small print; Secretary of Education, Maria Rosendale, maintains the nation-wide Open For All initiative for the enhancement of students and progressive learning by taking the classroom to the companies. If there was one name (well, there were quite a few actually) which got dragged through the mud at dinner, it was Secretary Rosendale’s.
Thankfully, Peter had never met her but he’d witnessed the aftermath of a meeting Mr. Stark had taken with her on discussion of the stupid Open For All scheme; she’d been hoping to have an endorsement from Stark Industries to put on her papers—especially after failing to get one from Oscorp. But Mr. Stark – having been recently chastened by Pepper for not taking enough interest in paperwork – had read through the entire 243-page document and said he wouldn’t give a penny to it in a conversation Peter was reliably informed went like:
Mr. Stark: “Look, I have kids. I know kids. This could be a good thing—except you’re the current US administration. You just cut funding to underprivileged schools, and stopped supporting valuable initiatives which sought to put good kids without a hope in hell of gettin’ somewhere into internships like ours. We’re still funding ours privately.”
Secretary Rosendale: “With all due respect-”
Mr. Stark: “And that’s how you lose all of mine. Please, continue.”
Secretary Rosendale: “Mr. Stark. Those initiatives from the previous government were outdated and difficult to safeguard. Open For All will see classrooms and schools around the country being able to go into places like Stark Industries to see how it really works—and will hopefully push the students to work harder, so they can experience the kind of wealth they’ve only ever seen in your flash and bang on television.”
Peter had scoffed at this point of Mr. Stark’s retelling as they’d worked on converting a diesel engine, and Mr. Stark had nodded in such a way as to state, “Stupid, right? When the kids they’re supposedly ‘helping’ into the sectors with this stupid initiative are actually the ones who get Ferraris for their birthdays, anyway.” It was a difficult thing to communicate when you had a wrench between your teeth, but Peter had speed-read the paperwork afterwards just to see what it was all about, and he thought that was pretty close.
Unfortunately, in not endorsing it, Secretary Rosendale had decided to take it a few steps further—and write the damn thing into law (thankfully with a few corrections, to give a ‘select’ few underprivileged – but not underperforming – schools access, too) and it passed. It passed way too easily.
Dinner that evening, one of the rarer 'family meals', Peter remembered, had been Thai food, and the entire meal was spent with Pepper trying not to shout down her phone at reporters and Mr. Stark angrily texting Rhodey and Dr. Strange. Peter had finished in record time and gone off to tinker with an old clock in his room and video-chat Ned until midnight, when Mr. Stark had barged in and told him to either go to sleep or come to the lab.
School the next day was absolutely shit with the hour of sleep he managed on an uncomfortable spinning chair under one of Mr Stark’s oil-smeared hoodies, but damn it was so worth it.
Now, though, the chickens had come home to roost and Peter was about to find out all the annoying little nuances that came with Open For All. No wonder Mr. Stark had been so docile by his fourth coffee this morning, and Pepper had whisked herself away to the office as soon as she could. The other Avengers, too, had looked a bit annoyed, which Peter had at first taken to being because of the extra work they were doing promoting peace thanks to the new-and-improved (and ratified) Sokovia Accords. (God, so much shit had been passed through lately--not that the Accords were shit, but...)
So, they’d been briefed and Peter hadn’t? It was a cruel realisation, and he grabbed his phone out to text... Well, he could always rely on Happy.
Pete: wth is this field trip?
Hapster: Didn’t anyone tell you about that? It’s this Friday; it’s from that stupid OFA scheme.
Pete: yeah worked that out. Why is Midtown doing it?
Hapster: It’s a STEM school, and it’s on their list. And so is SI. Would you have rather gone to Oscorp again?
Peter visible shuddered at the empty threat. If the field trip had been to Oscorp, Mr. Stark wouldn’t have let him go. He’d rather have had Peter fall off a twenty-storey building without his web shooters than have Peter anywhere near Oscorp ever again—and that wasn’t just because of the spider bite, or that they were fledgling competitors, or even because Mr. Stark hated the Osborns with every ounce of his stuffing (He really did, and Peter concurred instead of just agreed - because he loved annoying him).
No, no: It was because if Peter stepped into the lobby, everything would go to shit. Every cloak, every attempt at subterfuge, every precaution would have been worthless and, even though Peter wasn’t allowed to know his bodyguard and identity protection bill, he knew it had more zeros than there had any right being.
“Mr. Parker, are you listening?” Mr. Harrington was suddenly in front of him, twitching his nose at Peter like a rabbit about to have the best damn treat in the world—and that to Mr. Harrington was being able to send Peter to detention.
“Of course I am, Mr. Harrington,” said Peter, turning his phone screen-down. His eyes caught the clock on the wall. “I... was just pulling up my email – to you, earlier this week – about those assignments, because you didn’t respond... And class was almost over, so...” Peter clutched at straws, mimicking the smile Pepper had him working on for when the inevitable happened.
This seemed to subdue the overambitious and ratty teacher. Mr. Harrington dropped his raised shoulders and gave a single nod, turning to walk back to the white board. “Well, Mr. Parker, we can discuss that in a moment once class is over—but please, you need to listen to the information regarding this field trip.” He leant back against his desk, trying to be that teacher who was hip and cool, and definitely wasn’t wearing a piss-yellow jacket with a posh tissue he never used poking out of the pocket.
Mr. Dell was so much better.
Mr. Harrington ignored hygiene decency and scratched his beard as he grabbed up the packets on his desk, handing them to Cindy Moon to distribute. “Thank you, Ms. Moon. Now, in the folder you’ll find the Open For All pamphlet, along with Stark Industries’ terms and conditions for visitation—and their rules, which you’ll have to follow at all times. There’s also a small card to fill out and return by-” He checked his notebook, spread awkwardly out on the desk under a cold coffee, “By tomorrow. These will be for your badges, which you’ll need for the tour.”
The class mumbled excitedly at the prospect of having SI merch. Peter just wrinkled his nose and left a reminder on his homework to ask Pepper if he needed to do that—it wasn’t like he could ask Mr. Harrington.
The teacher didn’t even believe Peter’s internship was real – no one did, which would have been hilarious if the paperwork wasn’t all in order. Mr. Stark even wrote phony reports for the school’s benefit. Sometimes Peter wondered if Principal Morita even believed him.
With Mr. Harrington distracted, Peter turned his phone up and wrote to Happy again:
Pete: do u know what dinner is tonight i’m starving
Hapster: No. Also, learn how grammar works, please. You’re just as bad as your Dad.
Dad.
Peter squirmed in his seat. He still wasn’t sure about the Dad thing yet. If he had to worry about that, along with the field trip, his grades, and all of his other work (the last two weren’t big worries, really), he wasn’t sure how to find the headspace. A quarter each to make a whole sounded right, and the math worked out, but ever since the tests—ever since May... Ever since everything, he’d been more than just preoccupied with Dad.
“You don’t have to call me dad, kid. Nothing has to change between us—just let me help you, OK?”
It wasn’t that simple – at the time, Peter had hoped it was – but Mr. Stark was wrong because everything had to change, especially after May died suddenly. Peter’s first big expense had been her apartment, which Pepper thought was a great idea—it meant no one snooping around as to why Peter’s address was suddenly the Tower, because all he had to do was pretend he still lived in Queens, in the beat-up apartment complex. No one was going to ask questions—especially when not many people even knew May had died.
Peter remembered the conversation. He didn’t like to, but it was hard not to when he’d been sat in Pepper’s office with May’s lawyer, a greyhound-like woman, and the SI attorneys, big gruff pit bulls the lot of them, and Pepper and Mr. Stark, and they were reading through May’s will. It had recently been updated, to include Tony Stark as legal guardian should anything happen to her (with extensive paperwork to confirm Mr. Stark as Peter’s biological father, and a hand-written letter from Mr. Stark as confirmation Peter himself hadn’t even seen).
There were a lot of things Peter either hadn’t seen or hadn’t known about May. Like he hadn’t known she had a grave reserved and paid-for in Italy, or that she had a little bit of money put aside for her ticket there. She didn’t want a funeral either: just to be put in the Italian soil.
Peter respected her wishes, or at least he tried to. Mr. Stark flew them out there with her, as he had some business in Milan he should sort out anyway, and Peter had quietly requested a service. A small one. On the private plane home to New York was when he cried, sitting away from Mr. Stark and Happy. He’d always thought she would be buried with Uncle Ben, where he could visit her—he couldn’t help but feel the loose threads of betrayal tying his heart together, entangling it like a web around a helpless fly.
So much had happened since everything else had happened, and this was just another thing that had to happen – the field trip, the last one before he left Midtown and went on to college--if he went on to college. He could get through it.
He’d gotten pretty good at getting through things.