Chapter Text
Becket Singers isn’t necessarily a new intern to Stark Industries Research and Development department, but he hasn’t been here as long as the singing roomba has.
Becket hasn’t worked in a lot of companies. He’s only a junior at MIT with a background in chemistry. He finished his honors thesis on organometallic compounds by sophomore year and wanted something a little more challenging for the summer. He’s got grad school in his future—of course, because in this day and age it’s very hard to get a decent paying job in STEM without getting some sort of graduate degree—and while his research already looks fantastic on his resume, there’s nothing quite as fantastic as Stark Industries Intern (even if only for a summer semester).
Where was his point in this? Oh, right. So, Becket hasn’t worked at a lot of companies, but even he thinks the roomba that follows his boss and plays Mmm Whatcha Say full volume every time Mr. Stark drops something on the ground is more than a little weird. He knows it’s The Roomba and not just a roomba by the printed out stock photo of Mr. Stark’s face that is haphazardly taped to the top.
(He hadn’t believed it at first, when the other interns told him. He thought it was some sort of hazing ritual to get the new guy to believe whatever dumb bullshit they make up on the spot. Then he saw it with his own eyes and he hasn’t been the same person since.)
Becket had asked about it exactly once.
His lab supervisor told him a tale, in a haunting tone, about how the roomba just showed up one day, started following Mr. Stark around and not a single person—in all of the brilliance that is the SI staff—could get rid of it. Apparently, once, they’d tried throwing it down the garbage shoot, never to be seen again. Only for a new and better roomba to show up that very next day as if nothing perilous had ever happened to it. If the roomba breaks, it’s fixed by the next morning. If someone destroys it, it comes back even more powerful.
No one knows who created it and repairs it and, unfortunately, no one knows why.
It’s not the only thing he wonders about. Becket doesn’t know a lot about Tony Stark, but he always wonders why, exactly, a man like Mr. Stark allows a roomba that plays Mmm Whatcha Say whenever he drops something to continue to follow him around a very prestigious building full of business people and researchers from around the world. Becket swears he’s even seen Mr. Stark holding open a door for it, once.
(The other interns call Mr. Stark eccentric. Becket is convinced that he, like everyone else, simply can’t kill the roomba because it’s too powerful for even a man like Mr. Stark.)
Becket won’t ever get the chance to ask, though—perks of being a lowly R&D intern for the inorganics lab is the fact that he’s seen Mr. Stark exactly five times in his two months of being here and most of them were during casual 2am coffee runs on the third floor. A part of him is still convinced that he experienced a mass hallucination based solely on lack of sleep and several hours spent working on stoichiometry.
Logically, Becket knows the mystery of the singing roomba is going to remain a mystery. It’s not like he has anyone to ask—no one had ever seen the roomba repair guy and lived to tell the tale.
Perhaps that’s the reason why he’s so surprised when walking into the inorganics lab, bright and early at exactly six-forty-five AM, only to see a child crouched in the corner of the room with several empty drink cans, various screwdrivers, and a roomba at his feet.
To top off his morning, Becket recognizes the stock photo of his boss taped to the top. This is no mere roomba.
The kid, as if sensing him walk in, jerks his head up and meets his eyes. Becket tries to keep his voice even and says slowly, “…What are you doing with that roomba?”
The kid freezes, screw driver held in suspension looking akin to a deer in the headlights. “I’m, uh, I’m fixing it?”
The roomba makes a sad beeping noise. The kid absentmindedly runs his fingers over the sleek, black side as if it were habit.
“Why are you fixing it?”
“So it works?”
It’s then that Becket comes to a terrifying realization that could rock the very foundation of the SI intern social ladder.
“You’re the Roomba-Man,” Becket breathes and tries to keep the horrified awe out of his voice. Then, seeing as the kid goes up maybe to his chin, he corrects, “Roomba-Kid.”
The kid puffs up like a balloon and says, like he has a lot of practice, “I’m a man.”
“Oh, god,” Becket says and tries not to think about the fact that he’s solved the biggest mystery in the history of SI within just two short months of working here.
“Sorry about crashing in your lab but inorganics had the stuff I needed so,” the kid scratches the back of his head awkwardly then gathers his remains—roomba, screwdrivers, trash, and all—before standing up and heading out. He pauses at the door, turns around and says, “Thanks for letting me sit here for a sec and y’know, not screaming for security.”
Becket never let him do anything but Becket does not say this.
Then Roomba-Kid is gone, lost in the crowd of people reporting early for work.
Becket doesn’t try to stop him. Roomba-Kid already holds so much power in his hands so Becket thinks no one can really blame him for being more than a little terrified in his presence. He just holds his lab keys, stares at the same spot, and tries to convince himself that this isn’t all just a weird, coffee-induced dream.
As it turns out, Becket isn’t the only one to notice something strange this morning. It just isn’t until his mandated lunch break that he finds out.
“Anyone else here seen the kid who ransacked inorganics last night?” Jess says and drops her food on the table before slouching in her seat.
Jess, like Becket, is one of the four interns that work in the inorganics lab. She’s a chemistry major specializing in geochemistry. She’s also senior—a year older than him—who’s been interning here since every summer since her sophomore year. Becket isn’t quite sure how she keeps getting her internship renewed but he hopes, with careful detection work and friendship bribes, that she will (eventually) tell him her secrets.
The other two people at the table are John (sophomore, biochem major) and Ryan (junior, chem major working with redox stability and redox reactions). Together, the four of them make up the only interns across the board that were accepted into the undergrad inorganics lab internship.
“Someone took stuff from the lab?” Ryan asks.
“A lot of my tools were missing this morning,” Jess says. “I didn’t really think much of it until I saw who did it and he wouldn’t give them back. Said Mr. Stark needed them which is bullshit because Mr. Stark has his own personal lab full of things I’ve only seen in my wet dreams. I’m gonna go inform the head after lunch.”
There’s a sinking feeling in Becket’s stomach because this morning with Roomba-Kid could not be a coincidence. “What did he look like?”
“About yay-high, brown hair, brown eyes, looks like trouble. Probably a middle schooler by vibe alone.”
“You saw the Roomba-Kid,” Becket informs her.
“The Roomba-Kid,” John repeats, slowly.
Becket nods. “The roomba repair guy.”
“Alright, back up. Wait a sec. We’re talking about the roomba, right? Like, the singing one? The one with Mr. Stark’s face taped to the top?” At everyone’s nods, Ryan continues, “There’s a roomba repair guy?”
“…Ryan, who do you think keeps replacing the roomba after we get rid of it?” Jess asks.
Ryan purses his lips. “I thought it was just, like, Mr. Stark’s thing.”
“Like,” John says and is forced to pause. Becket begs every god he knows for Mr. Stark to not be listening in to random intern conversations. “Like a fetish?”
“I mean, you said it,” Ryan says. “Not me.”
Jess holds her head in her hands. “Oh my god, the roomba that plays Mmm Whatcha Say is not Mr. Stark’s fetish.”
“Listen, I’m not here to judge kinks—”
“Please shut up,” Jess says. “Ryan, I’m actually begging you to shut your mouth. John, don’t encourage him.”
John shrugs then snaps to get their attention. “Anyway, back to the actual important conversation that we were just having—roomba repair man is a kid?”
“He’s like twelve years old,” Jess confirms despite the blaringly obvious fact that the kid is definitely much older than twelve. “Maybe a high-schooler. I didn’t exactly ask.”
“Holy shit,” John says.
“It’s whatever,” Jess says. “As long as Roomba-Kid stops stealing my stuff and doesn’t cause problems, I don’t see a reason to worry about him.”
(They should have worried about him, Becket thinks much, much later. By god, they should’ve worried.)
There are three things Becket has learned after working under one Tony Stark.
The first, and most important, rule is that unless you hold a lottery ticket in your very hands, you do not—under any circumstances—give Mr. Stark something to hold. Especially if it’s papers. Double especially if it’s papers that are incredibly important and pertain to the future of the company.
Mr. Stark has a way of sniffing those out and avoiding them the most.
The second, and still very important, rule is that interns are not allowed anywhere near Mr. Stark’s personal lab. This is due to the incident in ’12. Becket, unfortunately, does not know what happened during this incident and no one there is currently alive to tell it.
The third rule is if one is to even catch a glimpse of Ms. Pepper Potts in any way, shape or form they are not to bother her with anything unless she specifically asks them first. Legend says this rule was created by Mr. Stark himself after a bunch of interns kept harassing her. Becket, personally, thinks that rule is absolute bullshit because Ms. Potts could end a man’s life without a second of hesitation and doesn’t need something as arbitrary as a rule to protect her.
There are, of course, minor rules like don’t use dangerous chemistry equipment alone, always double check stoichiometry calculations, and don’t take stuff from the cabinets without informing a lab head first.
As long as he follows these rules, Becket knows everything will work out. It’s why rules are made in the first place—to foster peace and create a stable and helpful environment for project development. It’s why, again, he finds himself surprised to see Roomba-Kid arms deep in the chemical cabinet in the inorganics lab.
“What are you doing?” Becket asks, not for the first time.
Roomba-Kid doesn’t look nearly as surprised this time around. “Oh! Hi. Your name is Becket, right? Ms. Potts was talking about you and the other interns a while back.”
Becket is going to ignore the implication that Roomba-Kid is on speaking terms with Ms. Potts. He just can’t wrap his head around the very idea at this point in his very confusing, very short life.
“That’s me,” Becket confirms. Then, “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh, right! Mr. Stark locked me out of the lab yesterday for reasons that were not my fault so I’m going to cover Mr. Stark’s lab entirely with sticky notes but I want them to be sticky enough that he can’t just peel them off,” Roomba-Kid says, dead serious. “I’m gonna call them unstickable sticky notes.”
Becket thinks about questioning it, but stops. The idea of in itself not especially weird—if Roomba-Kid, for whatever reason, has the clearance to be in the lab without FRIDAY tattling on him, then he obviously has permission from someone. Unstickable sticky notes could easily be a cover for a classified project and, well, Becket’s never been one to push.
“Alright, have fun with that,” he says. “Jess says to bring back her tools because you keep losing them and she needs those for her project.”
“Jess is one of the interns in this lab, right?” Roomba-Kid asks and shuts the cabinet. He’s holding a bucket of chemicals with one hand and a stolen hand-crank centrifuge in the other. “Tell her I’m sorry. Mr. Stark and I needed it ‘cause he snapped his on the Mark 78 and I couldn’t find it in the organics lab. He’ll get her a new one. Or get himself a new one. I don’t really know.”
Becket eyes the bucket of chemicals and wonders if this is a good idea. “Right.”
“Anyways, nice meeting you!” Roomba-Kid says and wanders out of the lab and out of sight. Just like last time, when Becket does go to check, Roomba-Kid is gone with not a single thing to trace him by.
It occurs to him later that he never got Roomba-Kid’s name. Then he shrugs because it’s the Roomba-Kid. An eternal mystery of in itself and, well, Becket is more than happy to be as far away from that mystery as possible.
It’s not until the next day when he figures out that he’s completely and utterly fucked.
He’s in his lab when it happens, googles and gloves on because he’s not an animal. Unfortunately, he never gets to finish his project because his day starts and ends with him accidently overhearing two employees from the engineering sector that were milling about in the inorganics lab for the day.
“Didn’t you hear? Someone put sticky notes all in Mr. Stark’s lab so now he’s making us clean them off—”
“Sticky notes? In Mr. Stark’s personal lab?”
“Crazy, right? I hear they’re hard to get off. Something about the chemical composition allows them to completely adhere to flat surfaces. Everyone’s been trying all morning to clean them up.”
The voices gradually fade to the background. Becket stares at his hands.
Oh, Becket thinks. Oh, shit.
There are four things Becket has learned after working under one Tony Stark.
The fourth rule is if the Roomba-Kid says he’s going to do something, you—under every circumstance—must do everything in your power to stop him. Otherwise, overtime is spent unsticking unstickable sticky notes from a billionaire’s personal lab, simultaneously wondering and regretting which life choices led you to this exact, cursed moment in time.
It’s been exactly three weeks since the sticky note incident. Becket has look hell in the eyes and hell looks like a rainbow of tiny square papers that stick to just about everything and do not come off without extreme amounts of force (and some fire).
It’s alright, though, because after a stunt like that, he knows he won’t be seeing Roomba-Kid around again. Mr. Stark would never allow anyone like that to stay, no matter what circumstances came to them being here in the first place.
It’s not the first time he’s been proven wrong by Roomba-Kid. Still, you can only imagine his surprise when he walks into inorganics only to see Roomba-Kid hard at work once again.
(No one blames him for turning around and walking right back out.)
By this point, Roomba-Kid is more than an urban myth. He’s a tiny demon running around with the power of god at his fingertips. Becket isn’t sure how this kid is still in the R&D department and he’s not completely sure he even wants to find out.
Although, it’s to the point that Roomba-Kid is around enough that most everyone has at least glimpsed his face by now. Not many of them have held a conversation which is evident by the lack of a formal name other than Roomba-Kid, but, well, at least they can prove Roomba-Kid is real and not just a story cooked up by the chemist employees to scare new interns into behaving.
Lunch rolls around and with it comes the bountiful prospect of gossip from the inorganics interns.
“I think Roomba-Kid is a kind soul but my god he’s a misguided little shit that has entirely too much power for his tiny middle schooler hands,” Jess says as she slides into the table seat.
“He’s high school age at least,” Becket says.
“He’s a sophomore,” Ryan drums his fingers on the table, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. When he notices their confused stares, he rolls his eyes. “What? I actually talk to him sometimes. He’s weirdly magnetic.”
“He helped me carry stuff to the lab,” Jess tells him. “Helped John find some of the chemicals from upstairs and then he turned around and stole another centrifuge from the cabinet. He’s a sweet kid, but I don’t understand him at all.”
“He doesn’t have a badge either. I saw him attempting to bribe the security guard to let him through the doors,” John says.
Becket holds his face in his hands and offers a muffled, “How does he even exist?”
“Does anyone know like, why, this kid just exists in Stark Industries and no one knows how to get rid of him or..?”
"He takes after the very singing roomba he created," Becket says.
Jess beckons them closer, like out of some crime TV show, and Becket knows he doesn’t get paid enough to deal with this when she says, “I once asked Mr. Stark if he knew about Roomba-Kid and he said, get this, who? So, y’know, I have a theory—”
“Oh, god,” Ryan says.
“—I have a theory,” Jess repeats, more forceful. “I think that Roomba-Kid is actually the ghost of a kid who once came on a tour here and died in this very facility. So now he haunts the halls as a form of revenge.”
“I think that your theory sucks and you should be ashamed of yourself,” John says, dryly.
Jess whacks him on the arm and ignores his laughter. “Don’t be fucking rude, John.”
“I have to agree with John,” Becket says. He ignores the booing. “Ghosts can’t fix roombas or stick unstickable sticky notes to Mr. Stark’s personal lab.”
Ryan tries and fails to hide his snickers when he says, “If we gave a tip to the Buzzfeed Unsolved crew do y’think they’d come out here an investigate?”
“He’s not a ghost,” John says
“Demon, maybe?”
“Oh my god, he’s literally just some random kid.”
“But that doesn’t make sense! He fixes the singing roomba and he takes stuff from the labs and no one can stop him and he stuck unstickable sticky notes to Mr. Stark’s private lab and is still allowed in the building!”
It’s between the bickering that Becket catches sight of a pair of people out of the corner of his eyes. There should have been nothing remarkable about two people in a busy cafeteria, but Becket takes in the familiar sight of curly hair, brown eyes, and a t-shirt with a science pun on it talking animatedly alongside Actual Anthony Edward Stark and promptly drops his lunch.
He gapes for a solid second, seeing but not believing. It definitely doesn’t look like Mr. Stark is forcing the kid to leave given the smiles on both of their faces. If anything, Becket thinks he looks rather proud.
“So, uh, Mr. Stark definitely knows Roomba-Kid,” Becket says and discreetly tilts his head in the direction of that level of bullshit.
The table goes silent.
“Oh my god,” Jess says. She almost sounds gleeful. “Oh my god, he’s not just some random kid. He’s Mr. Stark’s kid.”
From there, Becket’s life only gets weirder.
“Have you seen Mr. Stark or Peter around here?” Actual Ms. Pepper Potts asks. Her voice is kind, but there’s a hard edge to it.
Becket looks into her eyes and only feels absolute respect and a healthy amount of panic because this woman could end his entire life before he could even lift his pinky finger.
He’s still kind of overwhelmed being in the mere presence of the woman who single-handedly keeps this company running so all he can do is stutter out, “Ah, no ma’am, sorry ma’am….”
“Well, if you happen to see either of them do you think you could send them to my office? I have some, ah, issues to discuss with the both of them. Especially Peter. I haven’t seen him around in a while.”
Becket doesn’t know who Peter is, but he fears for him.
Becket runs into Mr. Stark another six times in the span of two weeks. Mr. Stark approaches him and has a conversation about his thesis on organometallic compounds. Becket, miraculously, does not pass out during any of these instances and actually manages to sound like the competent undergraduate researcher that he is.
(That doesn’t stop him from freaking out afterward, though.)
Sightings with Roomba-Kid are increasingly common as well. No one has managed to get his real name, but that’s not from lack of trying on their part. Apparently, Roomba-Kid learned of his nickname and took a liking to it. Becket knows a lot more about him, though—he’s sixteen, a sophomore, goes to Midtown Tech, likes chemistry, likes dorky science puns even more, and, amazingly, is the personal intern of Mr. Stark.
Becket hadn’t known Mr. Stark even took personal interns.
Seeing Mr. Stark and Roomba-Kid together, though? It hasn’t happened since that fateful lunch break where Jess called Roomba-Kid Mr. Stark’s son and hasn’t let go of it since. He’s heard the stories, of course, but Mr. Stark is a busy man and Roomba-Kid does….well, whatever Roomba-Kid does in his free time is not something Becket really wants to know.
There’s a knock on the door.
“Nose goes,” Ryan says.
Becket’s not one for door duty so he’s the second person to put a finger on his nose. Jess is, like always, last. She grumbles and grabs the papers she’s working on but stands up from where she had been lounging at her desk with grace and walks over to the entrance anyways.
Jess opens the door then promptly almost drops the papers she’s holding. “M-Mr. Stark! And, uh, Roomba—I mean, can I help you, sir?”
Becket’s head snaps up so fast he swears he gets whiplash. There’s a wheezing sound from John and Ryan coughs something that sounds suspiciously like a laugh into the palm of his hand. There, standing in the entrance door to inorganics, is Actual Anthony Edward Stark and Roomba-Kid. Mr. Stark is smiling, hand on Roomba-Kid’s shoulders but Roomba-Kid absolutely does not look like he wants to be here at all which is a stark contrast from all the times Becket and Co have caught him sneaking in and stealing equipment and chemicals.
The first thing out of Roomba-Kid’s mouth is, “Don’t do it.”
“Ignore him,” Mr. Stark says with all the exasperation one gathers from fathering a sixteen year old. “This is the inorganics lab, right? Kid, introduce yourself.”
Said kid had very obviously been attempting to sneak off when Mr. Stark grabs his arm and yanks him back into the room. Becket has no shame in admitting that he’s gaping. The entire lab is eerily silent. Even the actual employees watch with rapt attention.
Roomba-Kid bites his lip and crosses his arms. For a moment, Becket wonders if he’ll answer at all. Then, Roomba-Kid says, “Hi, I’m Peter Parker.”
“Oh, wow,” John says like Mr. Stark hadn’t just exposed Roomba-Kid’s secret identity to the entire inorganics department.
Becket thinks of that conversation with Ms. Pepper Potts not even a week ago and tries to hide his cringe. If Roomba-Kid survived Ms. Potts’ fury, he doubts there’s much else on the planet that can get rid of him at this point. Although, Becket finds that his stomach twists unpleasantly at the thought of Roomba-Kid leaving. It’s as Ryan said; he’s weirdly magnetic.
“Babysit him,” Mr. Stark says. “I need to go do important superhero things and he likes you guys for some reason.”
“Don’t do it,” Roomba-Kid—Peter repeats. Then he whirls around on his heel with a surprising amount of grace and says to Mr. Stark, “Let me come!”
“Absolutely not,” Mr. Stark tells Peter. He faces the horrible confused quadruplet of interns as if he isn’t essentially asking them to be an over-qualified babysitter to his son. “Peter is very slippery and very persuasive but I need you guys to keep him in this room until I come and get him.”
Jess still hasn’t taken her hand off the door handle. Ryan has his head in his hands, looking every bit as overwhelmed as Becket feels, and says, “What is even going on here?”
“Let me come, Mr. Stark!”
“No. You are going to stay here because I am your boss and I say so.”
“Fire me, then,” Peter says, like a challenge. Becket almost yells because he worked so hard to get here and this kid is just goading to get fired. “Fire me right now.”
“No,” Mr. Stark says. “Suffer.”
Peter chooses to stick his tongue out, like a mature adult.
“Do not move. Do not come after me. I’m serious, Peter.”
“Hi serious, I’m dad.”
“I’m ignoring that,” Mr. Stark says. He turns back to the interns and gives them all a hard look. Becket’s sweating underneath his required white lab coat. “Keep. Him. Here.”
“Uh,” Jess says. “Yes, sir?”
Mr. Stark nods once and sends a look at Peter who rolls his eyes. He’s gone and out the door before another word can be uttered or before Peter can attempt to goad his way into being taken on a superhero business trip despite being a sixteen year old high school student.
Personal intern, my ass, Becket thinks.
Becket’s not quite sure what to make of Peter Parker but Peter Parker has no qualms of making everyone out as friends within the next ten minutes of being trapped and imprisoned in an SI lab. He’s also very forthcoming with information—in a grand total of five minutes Becket has learned that Mr. Stark is not, in fact, his dad, that he lives with his aunt, that his best friend is named Ned, that he’s slowly befriending a girl named MJ, and he keeps the roomba running because he thinks of it as both a joke and a challenge. Apparently, the entire disaster started because Mr. Stark thought he couldn’t program a roomba to follow him around considering how much he’s in and out of the SI halls. Peter was the one who went the extra mile and added music whenever Mr. Stark dropped something. Now, Mr. Stark is cursed to have a musical roomba follow him around the halls of SI for all entirety.
Ha. Take that, Mr. Stark. Never underestimate what teenagers will do out of spite.
As it turns out, keeping Peter from leaving is, in fact, a very hard and very demanding job. Peter tries to sneak out no less than fifteen different times in the first twenty minutes of the lab and the only reason Becket even realizes he left is spot is due to the warning alarm Mr. Stark had personally installed to keep him there.
“Oh my god, are you actually Batman?” John asks and holds Peter under the armpits like a cat to keep him escaping for the umpteenth time. Peter’s feet dangle a couple inches off the ground and he laughs, like the joke is somehow ridiculously funny.
“Something like that,” Peter says then kicks his legs. “Put me down.”
“Bad kid,” Ryan drops him anyways. “I need a squirt bottle or something, man. I don’t want to get fired because you escaped the lab.”
“Mr. Stark won’t fire you,” Peter tells him. “He’s nice.”
“To you, maybe,” Jess says. “You get father-son privileges.”
Peter’s face turns the color of a cherry tomatoed but he says, like he has a lot of experience, “I already told you, Mr. Stark isn’t my dad.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’m serious! I’ve only know him, like, two years—”
“That makes it even more suspicious! Where did he even find you? I thought—"
Becket takes this time to interrupt, sending an argument before it actually happens. He’d been meaning to ask, anyways, ever since that conversation with Ms. Potts from a week ago. “So, Peter, did you get in trouble with Ms. Potts?”
Peter looks at him like he’s grown another head. “Why would I get in trouble with Ms. Potts?”
“...Because last time I saw her she said she was looking for you and she, uh, she did look happy.”
“Oh! Don’t worry about that, Ms. Potts loves me,” Peter grins at him. “She was mad at Mr. Stark ‘cause Mr. Stark took me out of school last week for, uh, unplanned internship purposes.”
They chat and laugh and goof off for the next couple hours. Peter’s thwarted escaping attempts gradually die off as he becomes more comfortable around the group and he’s around and helping with as many chemical equations as can split his attention between. In the end, Mr. Stark comes and picks up his wayward intern long after the sun had set with a thank you and a promise of extra overtime in their next paychecks. Peter leaves without ever stealing a centrifuge or any assortment of chemicals so Becket counts that as a victory.
After all, it’s not every day you learn so much stuff about the elusive Roomba-Kid and his Iron Dad.
Peter Parker breaks Becket’s list of SI rules and creates new ones just as fast.
The most important rule comes right after he spots the two of them in hall. Peter carries a stack of papers that he seems to be trying, unsuccessfully, to Mr. Stark.
It’s a losing battle. The first rule and (previously, not that Becket knows it at the time) most important rule is that Mr. Stark will not be handed anything. Especially if that anything consists of papers that are important to the future of Stark Industries. Becket can see the bold Stark Industries letterhead from here.
“Take them,” Peter says. He follows Mr. Stark around on his heels, poking him every so often with the corner of the packet. Mr. Stark is steadfast in his resolve to ignore his wayward intern.
“Go put them in my lab,” Mr. Stark says.
“You won’t read them if I do that!” Peter says. Mr. Stark pauses, then shrugs as if the accusation isn’t completely baseless. “I’m going to tell Ms. Potts if you don’t take these.”
“Good luck, kid. She’s got years of experience trying and failing to hand me these things.”
Peter sighs, exasperated, but there’s a smile on his face. The papers are still clutched tightly in his hands. “Mr. Stark, hold them.”
“No.”
“Hold them.”
“No, kid.”
“I’m gonna drop them.”
“Peter—"
Peter drops them. The papers start to fall like in slow motion. Becket can only watch as they get closer and closer and closer to the floor.
They’re not even stapled, Becket thinks in a growing sort of terror.
Mr. Stark catches them. “Kid, you are actually going to kill me. You see these grey hairs? That’s because of you, Peter. You’re giving me grey hairs.”
Peter laughs and gives him a smile that could outshine the sun. “Thanks, Mr. Stark!”
There are five rules Becket has learned since starting his internship. Number five is that Peter Parker (alias: Roomba-Kid) is an unstoppable force of nature that no one can squash and fears no god nor man on this earth.