Work Text:
Not the dangerous kind - that was a different radar entirely, one that ran on adrenaline and made his stomach drop. No, this was the garden-variety kind. The kind where a seventeen-year-old tells you they didn't submit their assignment because their laptop "caught a virus," and you nod sympathetically while mentally noting that the virus was probably called Fortnite. The kind where someone's been "sick" on the exact three days that a certain ex-best-friend was also absent. The kind that made up approximately 40% of his working life, and which he had long since made peace with.
The Stark Industries Internship fell squarely into this category.
Here's what Roger knew: Peter Parker was a genuinely brilliant kid. Top of his class in physics, effortlessly good at chemistry, the kind of student who made you feel like your job actually mattered. He was also chronically sleep-deprived and had the self-preservation instincts of a lemming with a death wish. He disappeared from school at odd hours. He'd quit the decathlon team - the thing he'd been passionate about for two years - and then come crawling back. His attendance record looked like Swiss cheese.
And then there was this internship business.
Roger's best reconstruction of how it started went something like this: Peter and Ned Leeds had been talking. Probably about the Stark Expo, or one of those YouTube breakdowns of Iron Man's repulsor technology, or whatever it was that kids who could actually do calculus talked about in their free time. Maybe Peter had said something like "wouldn't it be cool if..." or "I applied and maybe..." or even just "I want to work there someday." And Ned, who was a wonderful kid and the best friend a socially awkward teenager could ask for, had - in the way that wonderful, enthusiastic best friends sometimes do - heard this as Confirmed Fact and then told approximately everyone within earshot.
And then Flash Thompson had overheard.
Flash, who had never met a piece of gossip he couldn't weaponize, had immediately started loudly and publicly calling it a lie. Which meant that Peter, who could barely make eye contact with a cafeteria worker, was now boxed into a corner where denying it meant agreeing with Flash, and agreeing with Flash was apparently a fate worse than death when you were sixteen. So Peter had quietly, awkwardly confirmed it whenever directly asked, with the specific body language of someone who would rather dissolve into the floor.
And Ned had enthusiastically backed him up every single time. Unprompted. In detail.
Roger had discussed it with the other teachers, the way they discussed everything, during those fifteen-minute windows of caffeine-fueled gossip that were the only thing keeping most of them sane.
"He's a liar," said Ms. Warren, who taught physics and had very little patience for things she considered unrigorous. "A sweet liar, but a liar."
"Maybe it's real," said Mr. Dell, who was pathologically optimistic and also routinely fell for the laptop-virus excuse.
"It's not real, Julius." Roger had said it not unkindly. "Stark Industries doesn't hire high schoolers. They barely hire undergrads. Their internship program is aimed at PhD candidates and postdocs. I looked it up."
"But Peter's really smart-"
"Peter's really smart for a high school sophomore. That's not the same thing as 'qualified to work at a Fortune 500 tech conglomerate.' The kid hasn't even taken the AP exam yet."
He'd taken a sip of truly terrible staff room coffee and shrugged. "My bet? Peter and Ned were daydreaming out loud, the way kids do, and Flash turned it into a whole production. Now Peter's stuck. He's not going to admit it was a misunderstanding because that means Flash wins, and Ned's too good a friend to realize that backing up the story is actually making everything worse."
He'd paused.
"It's not even top five dumbest things one of my students has done this week."
And that had been that. Roger didn't think badly of Peter for it. He'd been a teenager once. He'd told his entire eighth grade class that his uncle was a stunt double for Harrison Ford. (His uncle sold insurance in Trenton.) Teenagers embellished. Teenagers got trapped by their own embellishments. It was part of the developmental process, and it didn't make Peter Parker a bad kid.
What it did make him was a problem, once Midtown's annual STEM field trip to Stark Industries was confirmed.
Roger stared at the permission slip template on his screen and slowly rubbed his temples.
This was going to be a disaster.
Not an elevator-nearly-plummeting-in-the-Washington-Monument disaster - he really needed to stop using that as his benchmark for bad - but a social disaster. The kind that left bruises you couldn't see. He could map it out like a physics problem:
Step one: They arrive at Stark Industries.
Step two: Flash Thompson loudly and publicly demands that Peter prove his internship.
Step three: Peter cannot prove his internship, because it does not exist.
Step four: Peter is humiliated in front of twenty-three of his peers, at least four of whom will film it.
Step five: The video ends up on some school social media account with a caption like "Parker Lied 💀" and Roger has to deal with the fallout for the next three months.
Step six: Somehow, some parent complains to the principal that Midtown's students were making false claims about affiliations with Stark Industries, and now it's a school reputation issue, and Roger gets a talking-to about vetting student claims.
He could see it. He could see all of it, rolling toward him like a slow-motion car crash.
So he did what any reasonable adult would do: he tried to head it off.
"Peter, can I talk to you for a second?"
It was after class. Peter had that look he always had these days - half-present, slightly guilty, like he was late for something he couldn't tell you about. His backpack was already on both shoulders, which Roger had learned to read as I am calculating how quickly I can end this conversation.
"Sure, Mr. Harrington."
Roger closed the classroom door. Not all the way - you didn't close doors fully when you were alone with a student - but enough to signal that this was A Private Conversation.
"So, the field trip," he said, going for casual. Landing somewhere around 'dentist making small talk before a filling.' "Stark Industries. Exciting stuff."
"Yeah." Peter smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "Really exciting."
"Look, I want this to be a good day for everyone. Including you. Especially you, actually, because-" He paused. How did you say I know you don't really have an internship and I'm trying to protect you without saying those words? "Because I know there's been some... talk. About your connection to Stark Industries."
Peter's smile dropped. "My internship."
"Right. Your internship." Roger chose his next words like a man crossing a frozen lake. "Peter, I want you to know - whatever the situation is - I'm not judging you. At all. Kids talk. Things get... exaggerated. It happens."
"It's not exaggerated."
"Okay. Okay, sure. I just-" Roger pushed on, because he was already in it now, and backing out would be worse. "I just want to make sure that tomorrow goes smoothly. So I'm going to ask Flash to not bring up the internship thing, and I think it would be really good if you also... didn't bring it up. Just so we can all focus on the tour and the science and-"
"You don't believe me."
It wasn't a question.
"Peter-"
"You think I made it up."
"I think-" Roger stopped himself. Started again. Tried to find the version of this that was honest without being cruel. "I think it doesn't matter, for the purposes of tomorrow. What matters is that everyone has a good educational experience without any... interpersonal drama. Can we agree on that?"
Peter stared at him. Roger couldn't quite read the expression - he'd expected embarrassment, the sheepish look of a kid caught out. This wasn't that. This was something flatter. Harder.
"Yeah," Peter said, very quietly. "Sure. No drama."
He left without saying goodbye.
Roger sat in his empty classroom and thought: well, that went terribly.
But it was the right call. He was sure it was the right call.
Peter didn't talk about it on the walk to Ned's locker. He didn't talk about it during lunch. He didn't talk about it during sixth period, or on the subway home, or while he was doing homework on the ceiling of his bedroom because May was having a phone call in the kitchen and the acoustics were better up there.
He didn't talk about it, because if he talked about it, he was going to cry, and Peter Parker did not cry about a teacher thinking he was a liar. He fought actual supervillains. He had been trapped under a collapsed building. He had once gotten a churro thrown at his face mid-swing and not even flinched. He was fine.
Mr. Harrington thought he was a liar.
Mr. Harrington, who had believed him about the Washington Monument. Mr. Harrington, who had let him back on the decathlon team with no questions asked. Mr. Harrington, who Peter had always privately thought was one of the only teachers who actually liked him, not just his grades.
Mr. Harrington had sat him down with that careful, diplomatic voice - the one adults used when they were trying to be kind about something they'd already decided - and basically said: I know this isn't real, and I need you to not embarrass us tomorrow.
The worst part was that Peter understood the logic. He did. If he had been lying, everything Mr. Harrington said would have been perfectly reasonable. Compassionate, even. He wasn't being mean. He was trying to protect Peter from Flash, in his own way. He was trying to keep the peace.
He just also didn't believe a word Peter said.
Peter texted Tony: Please don't make a big deal about the field trip tomorrow.
Tony replied in eleven seconds: When have I ever made a big deal about anything?
Peter stared at this message for a long time.
I mean it, Mr. Stark. Please. Just let us do the tour. Don't show up, don't send anyone, don't do anything. I'm asking you as a favor.
The reply took longer this time. Two minutes.
You got it, kid. Low profile. I won't even be in the building.
Peter knew - with the bone-deep certainty of someone who had been a teenager for sixteen years and a superhero for one of them - that this was a lie. He knew it the way he knew that Flash was going to be terrible tomorrow and that Ned was going to struggle to keep the secret and that MJ was going to notice everything and say nothing.
He set an alarm, turned off the light, and tried not to think about the look on Mr. Harrington's face. That gentle, careful look. The one that said I'm on your side, even though we both know you're full of it.
Peter didn't sleep well.
The morning of the field trip, Peter sat at the back of the bus.
Roger noticed this immediately. Peter was a front-of-the-bus kid by nature - the kind who accidentally made eye contact with the teacher too much and then got flustered about it. The fact that he'd voluntarily exiled himself to the back row, next to the emergency exit and as far from Roger as physically possible, was a message.
Ned kept shooting Roger wounded looks, which meant Peter had told him about their conversation.
MJ, sitting three rows ahead of them with a book, periodically glanced between Peter and Roger with an expression Roger couldn't interpret and wasn't sure he wanted to.
Flash was on his phone. Roger let it go. Pick your battles.
Stark Tower rose up ahead of them, and Roger felt the specific kind of foreboding that he had come to associate with field trips in general. Nothing good had ever happened to him on a field trip. A student had once thrown up in his lap at the Natural History Museum. Two freshmen had tried to steal a skeleton from the anatomy exhibit. And then there was Washington.
"Alright, everyone. Single file. Phones away - and I mean away, Flash, not just screen-down in your hand. We are guests here, and we are going to behave like we deserve to be."
The lobby of Stark Industries was very clean, very bright, and very normal.
This surprised Roger. He'd half-expected something more dramatic - an enormous portrait of Tony Stark, maybe, or a robot receptionist. Instead, it looked like any other high-end corporate lobby: marble floors, a reception desk staffed by two very normal-looking human beings, a security checkpoint that was thorough but not theatrical.
Their tour guide was a young woman named Priya who had a Stark Industries lanyard and the calm, competent energy of someone who gave tours to school groups on a regular basis and had long since lost the capacity to be fazed by teenagers.
"Welcome to Stark Industries! I'll be your guide today. Before we start, everyone needs to check in at security - name, school affiliation, photo for a temporary visitor pass. We take security seriously here, so please don't wander off from the group, don't take photos in restricted areas, and stay with me at all times."
No color-coded badge hierarchy. No AI announcing names and clearance levels from the ceiling. Just a sign-in sheet, a photo, and a lanyard that said VISITOR in plain black text.
Peter signed in without incident. If anyone at the security desk recognized him, they didn't show it. His visitor badge looked exactly like everyone else's.
Roger noted this. He felt guilty for noting it.
The tour began. It was, Roger had to admit, excellent. Priya clearly knew her material, and Stark Industries was - setting aside the whole superhero thing - genuinely one of the most important tech companies in the world. The clean energy division alone was worth the trip. He watched his students lean in, ask questions, light up the way that teenagers did when they were learning something that actually mattered to them, and he remembered why he did this job.
Peter was quiet. Attentive, but quiet. He kept his hands in his pockets and he didn't volunteer a single piece of information, which, for Peter Parker, was roughly equivalent to holding his breath.
They were in the materials science wing, Priya explaining the applications of a vibranium-alloy composite, when Flash leaned over to Peter.
"Pretty cool, huh?" Flash said, not quite whispering. "Must be wild seeing all this for the first time. You know, like the rest of us."
"Flash," Roger said, from three feet away, without turning around.
Flash straightened up. "What? I'm just making conversation."
"Make it quieter."
They moved on. Ten minutes later, in the bioengineering corridor, Flash sidled up again while Priya was fielding a question from Betty Brant.
"Hey, so do you think your supervisor will come say hi? Or is it, like, a remote internship?" He pitched it just loud enough for the four nearest students to hear. "Like, a really, really remote one. From your bedroom."
Peter said nothing. His jaw tightened.
"Flash." Roger stepped between them, physically. He kept his voice low - a skill honed by years of hallway interventions. "I spoke to you before the trip. I was clear. This is your second warning, and I don't give thirds. The next comment gets you sitting in the lobby with security for the rest of the tour. Are we understood?"
Flash opened his mouth.
"That was not a question that has more than one correct answer."
"...Yes, Mr. Harrington."
"Thank you. Go walk with Abe."
Flash retreated. Peter glanced at Roger - a quick, conflicted look, there and gone - and then turned back to the tour.
It was, Roger reflected, deeply unfair that protecting a kid from a bully and not believing that same kid could coexist so uncomfortably in the same afternoon. But here he was.
They were forty minutes in, deep in a section about Stark Industries' advanced research division, when a door opened at the far end of the lab.
Tony Stark had been ready since 8 AM.
This was unusual. Tony Stark was not, by nature or habit, ready for things at 8 AM. Tony Stark at 8 AM was typically a creature of coffee and grievance, a man who communicated primarily in grunts and who had once threatened to reprogram FRIDAY's entire personality matrix because she'd opened the blinds before nine.
But today, Tony had a plan.
Here's what Peter didn't understand - what Peter, for all his terrifying intelligence, still didn't get - about being a kid who was telling the truth in a room full of people who'd decided you were lying: you couldn't fix it from the inside. Tony knew this. Tony had been that kid, once, a lifetime ago, telling a boardroom full of his father's old colleagues that he could build the Jericho missile smaller and lighter, and watching them smile the way adults smile at children they've already dismissed.
You needed someone from the outside to walk in and say: no, actually, he's right.
Peter had texted him last night. Please don't make a big deal about the field trip tomorrow. And Tony had said he wouldn't. And he'd meant it, at the time, in the sense that he wasn't going to do anything crazy. He wasn't going to roll up in the suit or send a car or put Peter's name on a plaque in the lobby. He was just going to... happen to walk through the lab. At the right moment. And casually confirm the internship. A light touch. Barely a thing.
Okay, he'd rehearsed the entrance twice. And he'd changed shirts. And he'd asked FRIDAY to track the tour group's location so he could time his arrival. But that was just being prepared. Peter would understand.
He waited until FRIDAY confirmed the group was in Lab 7 - good, that was one of the impressive ones, high ceilings, visible prototype work - and then made his entrance.
Casual. Easy. The Black Sabbath shirt was a nice touch; it said I'm not performing, I just live here. He leaned against a workstation. Found Peter in the group - rigid, pale, looking at Tony with an expression that Tony chose to interpret as surprised but pleased and not actively considering homicide.
"Oh hey. Field trip?"
The tour guide introduced the group. Midtown School of Science and Technology. Perfect.
"Hey, Pete." Natural. Warm. Exactly the right note. "How's the project coming? The one we were working on Thursday?"
And then the big one. The line he'd been turning over in his head all morning. He addressed the teacher directly - a rumpled, tired-looking man in a slightly crooked tie who had to be the one Peter had mentioned. The one who didn't believe him.
"You know," Tony said, "you've got a hell of a kid here. Peter's been interning with us - what, eight months now? Nine? Best young mind I've seen come through this lab. And I don't say that lightly."
He paused. Let it land.
"I hope his teachers appreciate what they've got."
There it was. The moment. Tony watched the teacher's face, waiting for the recognition, the embarrassment, the oh God I was wrong. He'd imagined this part. The teacher would stammer something apologetic. Tony would be magnanimous about it. Peter would feel vindicated. Everybody wins.
The teacher looked at Tony. Looked at Peter. Looked back at Tony.
"He's been interning here for eight months?" the teacher said.
Tony's grin widened. Here it comes. "Nine, actually. I know - impressive, right? Kid's a-"
"No - hang on. Nine months. He's been working here for nine months."
Something was wrong. The tone was wrong. Tony had heard a lot of tones in his life - boardroom tones, battlefield tones, Pepper's you forgot our anniversary tone, which was the scariest of all - and this was not the tone of a man feeling ashamed. This was the tone of a man who had just identified a problem.
"...Yeah?"
"And you didn't submit any paperwork?"
The grin died.
"What?" said Tony.
"Paperwork. Work experience documentation. The school-employer agreement. The liability waiver. You know - the paperwork."
Tony looked at Peter. Peter had gone very still, but there was something happening around his mouth that Tony didn't like. It looked worryingly like a kid trying not to smile.
"I... what paperwork?"
"Mr. Stark." The teacher - Harrington, Peter had called him Harrington - took a breath that had the quality of a man organizing a great many thoughts into a queue. "New York State has specific requirements for minors engaged in work experience programs. The employer submits documentation to the school. The school verifies the placement. There's an academic liaison, a supervision agreement, a schedule review - it's not complicated, it's about six forms - and in return, the student receives academic credit."
He turned to Peter.
"Peter. A Stark Industries internship, properly documented, would be worth at least two science credits and probably two math credits a semester. That's four credits you've been leaving on the table. Per semester. For nine months."
Peter opened his mouth. Closed it.
"That's potentially an entire course-load of credit. You could have had a lighter class schedule. You could have dropped one of your afternoon periods. No wonder you're exhausted all the time - you've been doing a full-time school schedule and what is apparently a legitimate internship at a major technology firm, and nobody-" He looked back at Stark. "Nobody thought to call the school?"
The lab was very quiet.
"We have policies for this," Harrington continued. "We have an entire system designed to make sure that students doing work experience aren't being penalized for it. Peter's attendance record is - Peter, I'm sorry, but it's a mess - and if we'd known he was doing accredited work experience, we could have adjusted his schedule months ago. We could have assigned a faculty advisor. We could have made sure his grades reflected his actual workload instead of-"
He gestured, vaguely, at the general concept of a teenager being run into the ground.
"He's been falling asleep in class," Harrington said, and his voice dropped. "I thought he was just... I thought it was a teenager thing. But he's been doing this. And going to school full-time. And you're Tony Stark. You have an entire HR department. You have a legal team. You're telling me nobody in this building thought to Google 'New York work experience requirements for minors?'"
Tony opened his mouth.
Closed it.
He had, over the course of his career, been dressed down by senators, generals, and Pepper Potts in a pair of Louboutins. He had weathered congressional hearings and board coups and being yelled at by Captain America, which was like being scolded by a golden retriever in a flag. None of it had made him feel quite like this. Because those people had been angry, or self-righteous, or performing for a camera. This man was just correct. Correct, and upset about the specific thing Tony hadn't thought about, and there was no argument to make because the man was right.
"In my defense," Tony said, slowly, "I am... not great at paperwork."
"Clearly."
"I have people who-"
"Do they know he's a minor?"
Tony winced.
Peter was going to die.
Not in the fun way, not in the oh no a building is falling on me way that he'd gotten uncomfortably used to. In the deeply mundane, exquisitely teenage way of standing in a room where two adults were having a conversation about you in the third person while twenty-three of your classmates watched.
But here's the thing.
Here's the thing that was making it very, very hard to keep a straight face.
He had told Tony. He had sent an actual text message, with actual words, saying please don't make a big deal about the field trip tomorrow. He had been as clear as a sixteen-year-old communicating with a billionaire could possibly be. And Tony had promised. And Tony had shown up anyway, in a cool-guy t-shirt, with a rehearsed speech, expecting - Peter had seen the exact moment of expectation on Tony's face, he'd watched it happen in real time - expecting Mr. Harrington to crumble.
And instead Mr. Harrington was lecturing Tony Stark about Form 12-B or whatever and Tony was standing there with the expression of a man who'd pulled the pin on a grenade and watched it turn into a water balloon.
Peter had never felt so vindicated in his entire life.
He was also probably in more trouble now than before, because Mr. Harrington was going to want documentation for nine months of work, and approximately seventy percent of what Peter actually did at Stark Industries was wildly illegal for a minor and also secret because of the spider thing, but that was a Future Peter problem.
Present Peter was riding a wave of pure, crystalline I told you so and he was not getting off.
Flash's mouth was hanging open. He hadn't said a word since the lab door opened. He looked like someone had unplugged him.
MJ had produced a sketchbook and was drawing. Peter couldn't see what, but he could hear the pencil moving fast.
Ned had both hands clapped over his mouth. His eyes were enormous. He was vibrating so hard that the kid standing next to him had edged away.
Mr. Harrington turned back to Tony.
"I'll need a contact from your HR department. Or whoever handles educational liaisons." Then he looked at Peter, and something shifted in his face - the bureaucratic momentum dropping away, leaving something quieter underneath. "Peter. I'm sorry I didn't take you at your word. That wasn't fair to you. But I'm going to make sure you get credit for every hour you've put in here, retroactively if I can swing it. Come see me Monday."
Peter's throat did something inconvenient. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Mr. Harrington."
Mr. Harrington straightened his tie, turned to Priya - who was watching all of this with the wide-eyed composure of someone who was absolutely going to tell this story at every staff happy hour for the next five years - and said, "Sorry about the interruption. Should we continue the tour?"
They continued the tour.
Tony Stark did not join them.
He did, however, appear to be on his phone before they'd even left the lab, and Peter - whose hearing was significantly better than anyone in the room knew - caught: "Pepper, hypothetically, if I forgot to-"
The door closed behind them.
Flash was quiet. Conspicuously, unnaturally quiet. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his eyes forward and he didn't look at Peter once, which was its own kind of victory. Not a loud one. Not the kind that came with an audience. Just the sudden, total absence of someone who'd been saying "prove it" for nine months and had just watched someone prove it.
Ned lasted approximately ninety seconds before grabbing Peter's arm and whisper-shouting "DUDE" into his shoulder.
"I know."
"DUDE."
"I know, Ned."
"Mr. Harrington yelled at Tony Stark!"
"He didn't yell, he - yeah, okay. He kind of yelled."
"About paperwork!"
Peter pressed his lips together hard. "Yeah."
"That's the most Mr. Harrington thing that has ever happened!"
Peter couldn't argue with that.
On the bus home, MJ leaned over the seat in front of him and held up her sketchbook. It was Tony Stark's face, rendered in clean graphite lines, at the exact moment Mr. Harrington had said "do they know he's a minor?" She'd caught it perfectly: a man in the precise act of realizing that he had brought a dramatic gesture to a bureaucracy fight.
"This is art," Peter said.
"Obviously," MJ said, and went back to her book.
On Monday morning, Roger found an email from Stark Industries' Head of Educational Partnerships - a position that, he was fairly certain, had not existed before the weekend - with all six forms filled out, a proposed academic credit structure, and a schedule accommodation plan.
It was cc'd to Pepper Potts.
You're right. My bad.
- T.S.
P.S. I'm still not great at paperwork.
P.P.S. He really is the best young mind I've ever seen, though. That part wasn't the bit I messed up.
Roger pinned the printout to his classroom corkboard, right between the decathlon team photo and a fire safety notice that was eleven years out of date.
Peter came by after third period. He stood in the doorway with his backpack on both shoulders, hovering like he wasn't sure if he was welcome.
"Hey, Mr. Harrington. You said to come Monday?"
"Sit down, Peter." Roger pulled up the email from SI, turned his monitor so Peter could see it. "Okay. So. Let's figure out your schedule."
Peter sat down.
He was smiling. Not the fake one from last week - small, a little uncertain, like he was still deciding if he was allowed to have it.
Roger smiled back.