Peter groaned as he tried, once again, to get his aunt to drop the subject. Somehow, she had found a letter requesting parental permission for a field trip - a trip Peter most certainly did not want to go on - and now she was insisting on his attendance.

"And you just hide the letter from me? Do you realise how that looks, Peter? It's bad enough, the looks I get from the rich housewives at your school for being a single woman raising a teenager, but now apparently I don't care about you education!"

Oh, yeah. She was also quite upset.

"I'm sorry, May," Peter cried, never happy to see the woman who raised him like a mother in anything other than a state of contentment. "It's just, you know, I don't wanna go and I thought you'd make me-"

May crossed her arms. "That's another thing. Why don't you want to go? You intern there, surely you'd enjoy it. You idolise Tony Stark for God's sake."

Because I'm Spiderman, Peter wanted to say. And Tony Stark thinks he's funny to drop hints just to annoy me. Instead he just set his jaw and glared at the ground. "I don't know."

"Fine. Don't tell me. But you're going on that trip. I'll hand the letter in myself."

Aunt May forgave him within the hour, but her decision had been final, which led to Peter closing his eyes and refusing to move as the minibus pulled into the parking lot of their destination.

"Penis Parker!" Flash called again from the back, laughing with his friends as they saw Peter's back tense up, trying to ignore the hated nickname. "It's not too late to back out now, you know. Maybe if you go home now you can keep pretending you're special."

Gritting his teeth, Peter dug a cap out of his bag and stuck it on his head. It may not have been the best disguise but, hey, glasses worked for Clark Kent. He didn't think anyone they'd run into on the trip would recognise him - he worked mainly on the upper floors, which were riddled with security, whenever he was ever actually in the office - but he couldn't be too sure. Tony had set a rule that Peter's presence was to be reported to him whenever he made an appearance, and Tony really liked embarassing Peter.

Ignoring the hounding and jabs from the idiots pushing their way off the bus, Peter slowly got up and stood next to Ned outside, waiting for their teachers to collect the passes.

"Dude," Ned said, looking at Peter like he was stupid. "Why don't you just show him your card? You've got, like, level-one thousand clearance or something; it'd totally shut him up."

Peter shuffled slightly, ducking his head behind Ned as a car pulled up and a couple of scientists got out. He gave Ned a long-suffering look. "Are you kidding? He'd cause a scene, and then Mr Stark would show up, and then I'd never be able to live it down that I take field trips to his company."

Ned nodded, not really understanding why his best friend was so bothered. It wasn't like Peter hadn't already expressed his undying love and hero-worship for the billionaire.

Miss Warren came back and started handing out badges, lecturing on good behavior as she did so, and so completely missed the sight of Flash Thomson laughing and pushing Peter Parker into the metal detector with his keys still in his pocket. The alarm, however, she did hear. It was impossible not to. Loud, obnoxious blaring filled the air, red lights strobed, and the shouts of two dozen security guards dwarfed it all.

Everybody turned, slowly, to see gangly Peter Parker sitting in the middle of it all, a terrified look on his face and his phone slipping out of his fingers onto the floor.

"Um, sorry?"

After that it was a bustle of chaos, resulting in the students of Midtown sitting in the lobby while Peter faced a very intimidating security guard.

"You trying to break in?" The guy asked, leaning right into Peter's face. He cringed. The dude's breath smelt like tuna.

"What? No, I tripped."

"Trying to sneak in a phone? Take a few quick 'Snapshots'?"

Peter blinked, thoroughly confused. "Snapshots? What're... I mean... Oh, do you mean Snapchats?"

The guard flushed. "Listen here, punk, you better drop the attitude or I can take you down to the station. I gotta lotta authority with the boys down there."

He flashed Peter his security badge with what appeared to be pride, though Peter seriously doubted his amount of influence. Still, who was he to know what kind of bribes the police took? He was the one doing their damn job for them half the time.

"The station? Oh man, I can't go to jail! What's that gonna look like on my college applications? Come on, dude, cut me some slack here. I'm wearing a t-shirt with a science pun on it, do I seem cool enough for jail to you?" He sounded pathetic, even to his own ears, but May would almost certainly murder him if he was within a mile of being arrested.

Thankfully, Ned was to the rescue, as always. "He works here," the boy blurted out, running into the room panting. "Swipe... swipe his card."

The guard looked decidedly unimpressed. Peter didn't blame him; who'd believe a fifteen year old kid worked at a multi-billion dollar company. "You work here, kid?"

Peter nodded slowly, unsure of how to get out of this situation. He took his cap off; it wasn't like he needed it now. "Intern. I, uh, I intern here."

A resigned look on his face as he had to play out the facade, the guard held his hand out. "You got a clearance card?"

No matter what anyone said, Peter totally didn't fumble as he retrieved the electronic from the bottom of his bag. Nor did he drop it. Onto the guard's foot. It's... it's fake news, man.

Shock flooded the guard's face as he scanned the plastic, and he looked at Peter in a totally new light. "Level twelve?" His voice was skeptical, which was kind of offensive considering the dude worked for a tech company but didn't know what Snapchat was. Old people, seriously.

"I get, uh, coffee. For people, not for me, because people say when I have coffee I get way too jumpy and I'm already so exhausting that enough's enough so I'm not really allowed coffee anymore. But the people I get it for are. Allowed, that is. To drink coffee. But they're probably allowed to do a lot of other stuff too, now that I think about it, because," Peter shrugged helplessly. "Level twelve."

For some reason the tuna-breath's face became even more skeptical. This time Peter couldn't blame him; that had sounded very unconvincing.

"Did you steal this? That's a felony, punk, I'm calling the cops."

Yeah... really not convincing.

Peter spluttered, holding his hands up in defence as fish-face clamped his hand on his shoulder. "Whoa, woah, woah, woah, woah! You couldn't do some kind of facial recognition scan or something? Come on, dude, this place belongs to Tony Stark, you're telling me Apple beat him to face scanners?"

Nemo eyed him up. "You got one chance. If Marge down in reception doesn't recognise you, I'm taking you in."

"Okay," Peter said frustratedly. He had no clue if Marge would know who he was but if she didn't he could always get Ned to cause a distraction once they were out in the open space, not a tiny cell-room.

Marge had no clue. Really, Tony needed to get better receptionists because this one was a witch.

Thankfully, modern technology could beat the hell out of witches.

Peter really hadn't wanted to do this but Marge was glaring and he could see Flash laughing from the sofa and he really, really didn't want to go to jail. "F.R.I.D.A.Y!"

There was an awkward pause, in which Flash yelled something about Penis Parker belonging in a mental asylum if he thought a day of the week would save him, but it wasn't actually more than like four seconds before a feminine voice rang out of nowhere, totally saving Peter's butt.

"Mr Parker. You weren't scheduled to come in today."

Flash looked absolutely gobsmacked and Peter was loving it.

"Yeah," he said, overly casual. "I'm not here for work stuff, thanks, F.R.I.D.A.Y, I'm on a field trip with school. Hey, any chance I might get away without, uh, the boss hearing about it?"

"I'm sorry, Mr Parker, but I'm afraid Mr Stark has already been notified. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Peter wracked his brain on who could possibly stop Tony from ruining his entire life. "Do you know where Miss Potts is? She's usually here at this time, right? As CEO? Can you please call her?"

"Of course, Mr Parker."

Awkward and red-faced, Peter shuffled back over to his classmates, who looked incredibly impressed. Well, most of them anyway. Questions were flying at him from every direction, but Flash and his buddies were totally the worst. "Parker! Hey, Penis Parker! Think you're too good to talk to us now, huh? Because you get a robot coffee a couple days a week? It doesn't change anything about you, Penis, except that you do menial labour while I'm-"

"Excuse me?"

Tony hadn't been paticularly loud, but he hadn't had to be. At the sound of Iron Man's voice, Flash stopped talking immediately.

"You... You're Tony Stark!"

"Congratulations," Tony said drily. "Great observation there. The guy who owns a company is at his company, real shocker there. Don't let me interrupt me, go on with whatever it is you were just saying about my intern."

"Your intern?"

"Well, now you're just copying me." Tony looked at Peter. "You see that? You see how he just... Does he know how to spin his own sentences yet or are you advanced for your age group?"

"I, uh, he knows how to speak, Mr Stark, I promise. Most teenagers do. You do know that, right? I just... oh, you were being sarcastic. Sorry," Peter stammered out, glancing awkwardly in between his classmates and his mentor, who was currently pinching the bridge of his nose with a disgruntled sigh.

"Yes, kid, I'm aware that teenagers have the ability to speak. Jesus, for a guy with a genius IQ you can be exceptionally stupid sometimes. You sure you're not on drugs?"

He was answered, not by Peter, but by a brisk redhead who entered the room with a frown on her face. "If he is, he's not allowed to stay over tonight," Pepper said as she handed her sheaf of paperwork to Tony. "You should be in a meeting."

The superhero shrugged, pointing an accusatory finger at Peter. "He should be in school."

"He is in school, Tony. He's on a field trip. We spoke about this."

"Yeah, speaking of, I thought the lower floor labs were supposed to become kindergarten, not the lobby," Tony said, casting a glare at Peter.

Miss Warren rushed over to apologise to the prominent billionaire, sparing no expense on the gushing. After half a moment, Tony held up a hand in interruption, already bored with the ego boost. "Alright, I'm done. You guys go... look at robots or whatever. Kid, you're with me. It's not like you need the tour, and I've got a couple things I wanna try out with you."

Pepper rolled her eyes as Peter grinned and rushed after her fiancé, giving Ned a rusged, apologetic pat on the back on the way past. Honestly, parts of her were proud at the effort he put into the child, but a lot of her fretted over the future of a boy with such an upbringing. She didn't know what the fallout would be from Peter's class' discovery that he was, in fact, Tony Stark's personal intern, but she sure as hell knew she'd be there to protect him, no matter what.