Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Author's Note

• Peter is 15 and a sophomore.
• This is mostly written from outsider POV’s.
• This isn’t fluff necessarily, just a fun idea I had.  Consider yourself warned that this story has gone off the rails since the very start.  The idea that Midtown would be moved to Stark Tower is outlandish and fun.  It’s supposed to be.
• There is angst and bullying in chapter 2.  Along with that is the warning that the bullying includes name calling and what could be considered sexual harassment (verbal).  Chapter 2 is also full of found family themes.
• Warning: A few curse words.  Thought I’d warn you in case anyone cares.  There are a few scattered throughout.
• Sometimes I headcanon that Midtown Tech is a charter school.  Other times I headcanon that it’s a private school which students have to pay to get into.  For this fic, it’s a charter school.  The best way I can explain a charter school is this: It’s like a public school (in that students don’t pay to attend and it’s open to just about everybody, and it’s publicly funded), but it’s run like a private school, which means no teachers unions, and the charter school isn’t tied to the governing body of the public school system.  Also, because charter schools are in high demand in places like New York City, they’re always full, and it can be hard to get into them.  Usually a lottery is held by law to pick students to get in, but I headcanon that Midtown screens students to make sure they’re a good fit since Midtown is a school for high achieving kids.

ONE - The Fire

Ned can’t believe what he's seeing.  It’s all going up in smoke.  Orange flames and loud crashes, and cracking noises as the roof of the main building caves in.  He doesn’t know how, but it’s all gone… not just the main building, but the gym too.

“Dude,” he whispers.  He’s not crying, but he thinks he might.  Midtown isn’t just a school, it’s his school.  Without Midtown he’s going to have to go to a public school where he’ll get bullied for being smart, and where he’ll be bored because the public schools don’t have awesome science and robotics labs.

“What-” comes Peter’s choked voice beside him.  Ned takes a sideways step towards his friend so their shoulders are touching.  “I don’t… how.”  Midtown is a safe place for a lot of kids, even kids like Flash who try to be a bully here.  Ned went to middle school with Flash and knows Flash was one of the most picked on kids until they got to highschool and got accepted into Midtown.  Peter still gets bullied some at Midtown, but Ned knows Midtown is a better option for Peter than other schools.

“Holy shit,” comes another voice, and they turn to find Abe.  Abe does have tears in his eyes.  Abe is a freshman and new to the AcaDec team.  Ned knows he was excited to be accepted to Midtown.  School has only been in for a week, so Abe barely had a chance to experience it.

The three of them, and a growing group of other kids who are just arriving to school for the day, stand on the sidewalk outside the school gates, staring in shock and awe.  Students gather in clusters as they stare at the flames consuming their school and turning it into ash.  Sirens can be heard all around them as fire trucks rush to the scene and firemen shout out commands.

“Where do we go for the day?” Ned asks.

No one knows.  Clearly they don’t have school.  Ned looks to the left and sees several teachers in the parking lot watching on in horror.  Three of them are crying, he notes, and it makes him feel like it’s ok to have tears pooled in his own eyes, which he does now.  Mr. Harrington is just standing there staring at the wreckage and the flames.  He looks like he’s just arrived into the parking lot, and one foot is still inside the car as he stands there, holding onto the open driver side door.

“Fucking bullshit.”  Ned turns and finds Flash standing on the other side of Abe, gripping the strap of his expensive backpack tightly.  Flash swallows but it looks like he’s having trouble even doing that.  “I’m going home,” Flash says a minute later, and turns to head towards his car.  He just got his license and has been bragging about the expensive car his mom and dad bought him.

Peter runs his hoodie sleeve across his eyes and then turns to go too.  “Come on,” he mutters quietly to Ned.  Ned hates the way his friend’s shoulders are slumped.  He doesn’t realize he’s carrying himself in the same way.

Peter and Ned take a few steps, but Abe calls out after them.  “Hey… wait.  Where are you going?  Where- where do I go?”

“Home,” Peter says.

Abe hasn’t yet wiped his own tears away.  Ned looks at Peter, but Peter is staring at Abe’s face.

“You can come with us,” Peter says, and Abe doesn’t wait to be told twice.  He hurries after them.  In the week that school has been back in, Abe has been all smiles and innocent questions.  He’d been so happy to be going to Midtown instead of whatever public school he lived near, that it was like nothing could dampen his spirits.  Now they know that flames and ash could.

The three of them make their way to the nearby subway station, a crowd of kids and teachers still behind them, watching their school year go up in smoke.  They don’t talk as they walk down the sidewalk, and then down into the subway station.  They’re quiet as they get on a train a few minutes later, and then as they stand crammed in with other people heading to work or school.

They switch trains, and when they exit onto a busy street in Manhattan, Abe startles out of the quiet trance he seems to have been in since leaving the school.  “Where are we going?” he asks.

“My house,” Peter says.

“You live in Manhattan?”

“You can’t tell anybody where I live,” Peter tells him.  “It’s-”

“It’s kind of a secret,” Ned fills in, voice dull.

“Ok,” Abe says, uncertain.  “I won’t tell anyone.”

They walk a few blocks, skyscrapers towering over them.  Abe looks like he wants to start asking questions when they approach Stark Tower and go in through the front doors, but he’s too sad… too tired, like Ned and Peter are to say much of anything.

“Oh, Peter,” a secretary greets as they pass the front desk.  “Do you have a day off of school or something?”

Ned’s throat tightens at that question.  School is out forever… at least for Midtown.  His parents don’t have any money to put him in a private school.  He wonders if Mr. Stark will put Peter in a private school, and how much time they’ll actually get to spend together once that happens.  The thought of losing his one and only friend brings tears back to his eyes again.

“We just-” Peter pauses, not sure what to say.  “We had to come home,” he says, and leads Ned and Abe to the elevator reserved for security and people with red and above access.  It’s the fastest way up to the 80th floor where they’ll have to change elevators to go to the upper levels of the tower.

Once the elevator doors are closed and the three of them are rising up through the building, Abe does ask some of the questions burning inside him.

“You two live here?”

“Peter does.”

“Are you-”

“Yeah,” Peter says quietly, despite that Abe didn’t get to finish the question.  Whatever he had been about to ask, Peter sounds like he just wants to get it over with.  “Don’t freak out.”  Ned is surprised that Peter has allowed Abe to come to the tower at all.  Only he and MJ know that Peter lives there with Mr. Stark and Miss Potts, and that Mr. Stark adopted him.  Ned has been over a few times a month since that adoption a year ago, and MJ has been over a couple times.  Ned doesn’t think that he and Peter are MJ’s friends, but she hangs out with them at lunch sometimes.  The two times she’s been to the tower were to help Peter with homework for literature class.

They get out at the 80th floor and move to another elevator right beside the one they just exited.  Then they’re moving up again, and the elevator doesn’t stop until it gets to the 93rd floor and opens up to the penthouse.

“I’m pretty sure I’m still asleep and that I’m late for school,” Abe says in awe as Peter leads them out and to the couch in the large open living space.  “I’m asleep.”

Ned wishes he is still asleep… that the present situation is just a nightmare he can wake up from.

Usually when Ned goes to Peter’s house, Peter brings out snacks and soda, and they turn on some music, or go to his room to play video games.  They talk and laugh and joke, or pull out homework to work on in his room, or watch movies.  Now the three of them just sit there, Peter hunched forward, head in his hands.  Abe and Peter are both quiet, so Ned is too.  It feels wrong to break the heavy silence that’s descended over them.  This is how Mr. Stark finds them ten minutes later when he comes up to the penthouse.

“Pete?”

Ned looks over the back of the couch as Mr. Stark approaches, a concerned look on his face when Peter doesn’t answer.  When Mr. Stark sees the look on Ned’s face and realizes that all of them are quiet, his look morphs from concerned to worried and anxious.  He comes around the couch and sits down next to Peter, putting a hand on his back.

“Hey,” Mr. Stark says quietly.  “FRIDAY said you came home with some friends.  What happened?”

“The school-” Peter’s throat catches, and Ned scrunches up his face, trying to keep the tears from coming back.  “It’s gone.”

“What-” Mr. Stark pauses and looks around at Ned and Abe again.  “Pete, what happened now?”

“We got there and it was on fire,” Peter says.  “It’s gone.  We don’t have a place to go to school anymore.”  Now that Peter is talking, it doesn’t seem that he can stop.  “We- we’re going to have to go somewhere else, and I know you’ll want to put me in a private school, but Ned’s family can’t afford that, and he’ll end up in public school, and then I won’t get to see him or MJ or, or-”

Mr. Stark puts both arms around Peter and pulls him into a hug, cutting off Peter’s rambling.  Peter buries his face in Mr. Stark’s shoulder and doesn’t sit up again.  Ned wishes his parents aren’t at work so he can do the same thing.  He wants to hug his mom and dad and tell them his life is over, because for Ned, school pretty much is his life at this point.  Academic Decathlon, and Peter, and his early morning Robotics club on Wednesdays… it’s all gone.  Judging by the look Abe has on his face, Abe is thinking the same thing.

“Ok,” Mr. Stark says quietly after a few moments.  “We’ll figure this out.  I can fix this.”

Ned wonders how he can fix it, because even Mr. Stark can’t build a new school in just a few days, or even a few weeks.  That kind of thing takes time.

Mr. Stark looks over Peter’s head to Ned, and tries to reassure him, “It’s going to be ok.”  Ned swallows hard and gives a nod.  He doesn’t think it will be ok, but it’s nice to hear from Peter’s dad that it will be, since he won’t see his own parents for another eight hours.  Peter’s dad looks to his left to the leather chair Abe is sitting in and tells him too, “It’s going to be all right.”

Abe gives a nod like Ned did, eyes full of tears again.  He still looks like he believes this is all some sort of dream… like he’s not entirely sure he’s sitting in Tony Stark’s penthouse after their school burned down.

Mr. Stark looks back down at the top of Peter’s head and says softly, “Hey buddy, why don’t I order some food for you guys, huh?  You can stay up here for the day.  I need to make some calls.”  He looks up at Ned again and says, “You should call your parents and let them know where you are and that you’re safe if you haven’t already.  You too,” he directs at Abe.

Peter clutches onto Mr. Stark’s soft pullover for another few moments, and then lets go.  Mr. Stark reaches up to the back of Peter’s head and holds him there for a moment, looking into Peter’s eyes.  “I’ll fix this, ok?”  It’s a promise, and Ned wants to hold onto it as much as Peter seems to want to.

Peter nods.  “Ok,” he says quietly.  Ned can tell that Peter has been crying.  Mr. Stark gets up and moves around the back of the couch.  He puts a hand on Ned’s shoulder for a moment, and then leaves them there, heading back to the elevator.  The three of them are left in silence again, but it doesn’t feel as heavy as it did before.

Finally, several minutes after Mr. Stark is gone and the three of them have had some time to calm down, Peter rises and goes to the kitchen.  He grabs an armful of sodas and bags of chips and says, “Come on.”  He looks at Abe and says, “You like Playstation don’t you?”

“I’ve never played on one before.”

Ned and Abe stand up and make their way to Peter and follow him into his room.  “I have a racing game, and two Avenger’s games, and some others.  You pick.”

“I call Captain America if we play Avengers,” Ned says, dropping down onto the foot of Peter’s bed across from the large flat screen TV on the wall.

“Iron Man,” Peter says.

They both look at Abe, who gives a shaky smile and says, “Hulk.”

* * *

Jim Morita feels like he’s moving through fog.  The school is gone.  There’s nothing left.  His only consolation for the loss of the school, and his job… his second home, is that the fire happened before school, so there were no students inside.  He was inside the building early doing some paperwork, along with a secretary, a janitor, and Mr. Hayes the PE teacher when the fire alarm started going off.  All of them made it out, so that’s a positive thing he can try to hold onto.  Everyone is alive.  That’s the best we could hope for.

The teachers can find new jobs, the students can go to new schools.  They will have to, though none of that makes Jim feel better about what happened.  After the alarms went off, he had rushed out of the building and to the parking lot to see smoke billowing out of the west side of the school.  Several teachers had been standing there, wide eyed.

“What’s going on?”

“How did the fire start?”

“Where’s the fire department?  You called 911 right?”

“No, I called 911.  They’re on the way.”

More teachers had arrived, followed by students, who thankfully stayed outside the fence and didn’t try coming onto school property.  By the time most of the students arrived, there were visible flames licking the outer walls, smoke and fire billowing out of windows on three sides of the school.  Even Jim could see at that point that the entire building was going to be a loss.  Several of the teachers and secretaries in the staff parking lot cried, and there was nothing he could do about it when his own throat was tight watching his school go up.

The students for the most part had dispersed.  Only a few remained, watching in shock as the firefighters tried to get the blaze under control.  At some point Mr. Harrington had gone out to talk to those that had remained and to send them home.  Then the teachers had dispersed too, leaving only Jim to talk to the police and firefighters.

“How did it happen?” he asks.

“We won’t know for a while. There will be an investigation.  They were old buildings,” the fire chief says.  “There’s a possibility it was faulty wiring.”

It’s hours before the police leave and Jim feels like he can finally go.  His eyes rove the perimeter of the school warily to the various news vans and news crews that are there reporting about the fire.  He hopes they’ll let him pass without trying to question him, because he doesn’t have the mental energy to deal with that at the moment.

He climbs into his car, the last in the staff parking lot.  Jim lets out a slow breath, and then runs his hand over his face.  As much as Midtown is a refuge for students, it is for a lot of the staff too.  Teaching in public schools can be hard, and many of them had taught or worked in public schools before coming to Midtown.  Midtown is, was, a charter school, meaning it received public funding but was run like a private institution.  The rules the staff and students followed were different than in public schools. They had to deal with less behavioral issues here, and the culture at Midtown was something they’d carefully cultivated for years.  He’s sad to see all of that be washed away… sparks of excitement and creativity washed out by fire hoses, ash swirling a drain.

He startles when his cell phone rings in his pocket.  It’s probably one of his teachers, or maybe Anne, his wife.  He’s disappointed when he tiredly hits a button to answer and it’s a male voice he doesn’t recognize on the other end of the line.  He was really looking forward to talking to Anne.

“Is this Jim Morita, principal of Midtown?”

He sighs.  Somehow the media must have gotten his personal cell number.

“Yes?” he asks with a sigh.  “Who am I speaking to please?”

He’s really not expecting the man on the other end to announce himself as New York’s local genius, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist.  Never in a million years would he expect such a thing.  “This is Tony Stark.”

Jim pauses.  He’s tired.  Too tired.  “Excuse me?”

“Tony Stark,” the voice says again, and Jim sits up straight, as if Mr. Stark, Iron Man can see him despite that it’s not a video call.

“Mr. Stark, erm… what can I do for you?”

“It’s more of what I can do for you,” Mr. Stark says.  “I heard there was a fire at Midtown this morning.  That leaves you without a place for the students to go to school for the rest of the year.  As it so happens, the first three floors of Stark Tower are empty because they were under renovation.  Our staff was going to be moving back into those levels this week, but they don’t have to.  If you think the space would be big enough, I’d like to offer it to Midtown to use while the school is being rebuilt.”

Jim’s mouth opens and closes several times, like a gaping fish.  He’s not sure he heard right.  “You- I’m sorry.  You want to house our school?”

“It will just be temporary.  You have what, about a thousand students?”

“700.”

“We have space for that.  The third floor is a cafeteria and employee gym, but you can use that for your students.  The first and second floor are mostly offices, conference rooms, and work spaces.  They’re just about the right size for a class of 30 kids.”

“That’s so generous, but I don’t understand why.  Why are you offering us the space?”

Mr. Stark is quiet on the other end of the line for a moment.  “My kid goes to Midtown.  I’m not about to let him miss the school year or have to transfer to another school and lose all of his friends.”

His kid?  Tony Stark has a kid?  If he does have a child, Jim thinks it would be a lot less work for the man to just transfer his child to a private school.  To go to all this trouble… all the trouble it will be to set up Midtown in Stark Tower… he must really love his son.  He had said it was a he, hadn’t he?

“I didn’t realize you had a child attending our school,” Jim says, mind trying desperately to think about the various wealthy children that attend.

“Might seem a little too much like nepotism if I tell you.  Besides, he’d be upset with me if people found out and then started treating him differently.”

“Right.  I understand.”

Mr. Stark is quiet again for a moment.  “So what do you say?  Shall we get the ball rolling on this thing?”

Jim wants to say yes.  He wants to say no.  What he really wants is time to think, and consider all the angles to this proposal.  He wants to go home and wrap his arms around Anne, and then take a nap and not think about any of it at all.  But Mr. Stark is asking him now.  What had he said his reasoning was?  He doesn’t want his son to miss the school year, or transfer to another school and lose his friends?  Jim doesn’t know who this mysterious younger Stark is, but he doesn’t want that either, for him or any of his other students.  He doesn’t want his staff to have to find new jobs… doesn’t want to lose his colleagues, or the student culture at Midtown.  What he wants is his school back.  He wants to start this day over again and have it go differently.

“Yes.  Please, I mean.”

“Great.  Why don’t you drop by the tower today if you can.  Tell your name to the staff at the front desk and I’ll come down and show you the space.”

“I’m on my way,” Jim says.  He swallows.  He doesn’t know what this is going to look like… doesn’t know what the rest of his week, or the rest of the school year is going to be like, but he’s grateful that there will be a rest of the school year.  He’s grateful all of his staff had made it out of the inferno alive, and that all of his students are safe.

“See you soon.”  Mr. Stark hangs up and Jim pulls the phone away from his ear and stares at it, like it’s a mythical creature that just sprouted eyes and a sparkly horn.

His eyes come up and sweep the still smoldering and smoking ruins of Midtown.  Maybe they’ll have to change the school mascot from a tiger to a phoenix, because Midtown is about to rise from the ashes.

* * *

Jim half expects to be thrown out when he arrives at Stark Tower and steps into the lobby.  After watching the school burn down, he feels like everything is surreal, and like it’s entirely possible that he’s so stressed out that he dreamed this solution up out of thin air.  The secretary seems to have him down for an appointment with Mr. Stark though.  Jim is thankful that he almost always wears a suit to work.  He still feels woefully underdressed in his light gray suit, but then Mr. Stark’s voice calls out to him from across the atrium, and Jim sees that the man is wearing jeans, a black band t-shirt and a blazer over top.  To top off his outfit, he’s wearing sneakers.

“Hey Teach,” Tony calls.  He waves him over to an elevator he’s holding for him near the bank of front doors.  Jim hurries to meet him and joins him in the elevator.  The man lets the elevator door slide closed, and Jim subconsciously smooths down the front of his shirt as Tony hits the number one on the panel of buttons.

“Thank you for taking the time to see me,” Jim says.  He wonders if he should try to strike up a conversation, but it’s only a few moments until the elevator door opens up to the first floor.

Tony waves his hand like it’s nothing, and steps out of the elevator, Jim right behind him.  “This is it,” he says.  “FRI, turn the lights on for us on levels one to three.”  Jim doesn’t know who he’s talking to, but the lights turn on, illuminating the wide hallway they’re in.  Tony immediately pushes open a door in front of them and leads Jim inside.

“This is what I was thinking for classrooms.  Some of the rooms are bigger than others.  This is one of the smaller ones.  There’s already tables and chairs in most of the rooms, so you won’t have to bring furniture in.”  He points to the ceiling at a projector and says, “A lot of the rooms have these.  Some have white boards.  I think there’s some rooms without either, but we can figure that out.”  He turns to Jim and says, “What do you think?”

“It’s-” Jim nods, hands on his hips.  He still can’t believe his luck.  He can’t think of anything he’s done to deserve this.  Funny, because earlier that morning he couldn’t imagine what he’d done to deserve his school turning to ash.  If he thinks about it for more than a few moments, he can still see the flames dancing in his mindseye.  He tries to push the image away, because in front of him is a pristine room with light gray tables pushed together, chairs placed around the edges.  “This is perfect,” he says, and Tony smiles at him.

“Great, let me show you some of the others.”  Tony leads Jim out and down the hall.  The next door he pushes open down at the end of the hall is a much smaller room, but one entire wall is floor to ceiling windows overlooking the busy street below.  “Figured this could be your office.  There’s room out front for some counters for office staff.  There’s three more offices like this right next door, so there’s space for a vice principal or other staff.”  There’s no furniture in this room, but Jim thinks he can deal with that.  If he has to bring his desk from home, it’ll be a small price to pay to get the school up and running again.

Mr. Stark shows him a few more rooms on the first floor, including a bathroom, and then takes him up to the second floor, which is pretty much the same.  On the third floor there’s a newly renovated employee gym with a half basketball court and some workout equipment.  It’s much smaller than the gymnasium they had, but it’s a lot better than the nothing the school currently has.  “Gym class,” Tony says.  “There’s a cafeteria too.”  He leads him to the cafeteria, which is furnished with tables, chairs, and vending machines.  “The kitchen is through there.  There’s two more employee cafeterias higher in the tower, so my staff won’t miss this one.”  There’s a few more rooms on the third floor, including a small men’s and women’s locker room.  Tony suggests the other three rooms be used as study rooms or a library.  Jim follows along, mostly quiet until Tony starts talking about everything that will need to be done to make this happen.

“I’ve already got the lawyers drawing up paperwork and looking into laws, figuring out what we need to do and to have you sign to make this happen.  I can set up a chemistry lab and a robotics lab with everything you need in two of the rooms, but everything else you’re going to have to find yourself… textbooks and lockers if you need them.  If you can find lockers, I’ll have my guys install them.  Any kind of work that has to be done like that has to be done by us for insurance purposes.”

Jim is reminded just what an overwhelmingly large task this is going to be.  He has no idea where they’re going to get lockers, textbooks, and other things they need.  They need new computers and they’ll have to rebuild all of their records from scratch, which will mean a lot of overtime for teachers and secretaries.

“I know for insurance purposes there will be some things we’ll need to do.  Everyone that works at the school is background checked, and we can’t have other people coming in and out of the school.  Is that something we can make work?” Jim asks.

“We can work something out.  At the very least I’m going to need my head of security to have access to the three Midtown floors.”

The Midtown floors.  Jim’s head is spinning.  They’re really doing this.  “Yes,” Jim says, because he’s having trouble forming full thoughts at the moment.  Then he shakes himself mentally and looks at Mr. Stark.  “I’ll contact the board and have them work on the insurance paperwork and find out what they need us to do.  I can’t thank you enough for this Mr. Stark.”

Tony waves him away again, like it’s nothing.  “It’s for the kids.”

Or for his kid, Jim thinks.

“When can we start-” moving things in, working on this, turning this into a school, Jim thinks, mind rushing.  In the end he just leaves it hanging there.  When can we start?

“Tomorrow.  My lawyers need the rest of the day to finish the paperwork on our end.  If you come in tomorrow at eight they’ll have some things for you or the board of directors or whoever to sign.  You can let us know what you need on your end and then we can get started.”

Jim thinks it’s incredible that it’s all happening so fast.  He’s used to change taking time.  Sometimes things take so long to get done at Midtown that they don’t get done at all.  He’s got half a dozen people he has to call before the day is done, and even then, there’s so much to do, he doubts they’ll get the school set up in the next month.

“Thank you again.”  He holds out his hand to shake, and Mr. Stark stares down at it for long moments.  Jim is just about to retract his hand when Tony reaches out and shakes it quickly.

“It’s for the kids,” Tony says again, though this time he appears to be talking more to himself than to Jim.  He indicates the elevator and takes him back down to the lobby.  Then he’s gone, and Jim stares at the employees coming and going through metal detectors before disappearing into various elevators and through several doors.

He walks back to his car, mind racing.  As soon as he’s inside and has his door shut, he pulls his phone out and dials the first teacher number in his phonebook.  He doesn’t even check to see who it is, and is disoriented when a woman answers.

“Hello?”

“Joyce?”  It sounds like Joyce.

“Jim?”

“Get on the phone and start calling every teacher in the city you know.  We need textbooks, and lockers, new computers-”

“Wait, what are you talking about?”

“We’ve got a school to run.  We need to replace everything we lost.”

He forgets that she doesn’t know about the tower until she says quietly, “Jim… we don’t have a school anymore.  The building is gone.  Are you- you didn’t get hurt in the fire did you?”

He huffs out a shaky laugh and runs a hand through his hair.  “Joyce, we have a school.  You’re not going to believe it, but I got a call from Tony Stark.  He’s letting us use the first three floors of Stark Tower until the school is re-built.  We can start moving stuff in tomorrow or the day after, but we don’t have anything to move in.  He’s-” he laughs again.  “There’s chairs and tables inside, and a gym and cafeteria.  He said he’ll take care of the chemistry and robotics labs.  But everything else we still need to come up with ourselves.”

“You’re serious,” she says.

“I’ll call the rest of the Midtown teachers.  You start calling everyone else you know.  Get a spreadsheet going and send me a link in an email.  Make it open so everyone can start putting down what they can get and when and where.”

He doesn’t even give her a chance to respond before he ends the call.  He has other calls to make… dozens of them.  He dials the next teacher and leads off with, “We’re setting up shop in Stark Tower, start calling teachers you know at other schools to see what they can help us replace.”

It’s Roger Harrington that he’s dialed.  Roger is quiet for long moments.  He doesn’t question him like Joyce did.  What he does say is, “Stark’s got a kid that goes to Midtown doesn’t he?”

“You know?”

Roger is silent for a few moments.  “I’ve got four or five friends that work at other schools that I can call,” he says instead of answering the question.

“Email Joyce.  She’s starting a spreadsheet of things we can get.”  Jim knows he’s being rude, but he hangs up on Roger too.  He’s got too many calls to make, and he’s too excited to be polite.

* * *

Midtown’s insurance requires that the students stay separate from any employees at Stark Industries.  This means they need a separate entrance that only students are allowed to use.  Jim doesn’t know how they’re going to make that happen, but when he tells the lawyers the next morning as he’s signing paperwork and going over rules they’ll have to follow while at Stark Industries, they make a note of it and tell him they’ll pass it along.

One of the lawyers walks him through the rules three times and gives him multiple printed copies.  “All of your staff will have to sign.  Your students will also have to sign a version of this.”

“Right,” Jim says.  “Of course.”  Most of the rules are things like not causing damage to the building or property, not attempting to get to parts of the building they don't have clearance to access, and that the students and staff will need to go through a security checkpoint including a metal detector each time they enter the building.

“That concludes what we need to take care of then.  Bring in any paperwork we need to sign for insurance purposes.  As of this moment, anything that happens on levels one through three falls under Midtown’s insurance, including accidental injuries and death.”

“I understand.”  The lawyers stand to leave the room, but Jim says, “Wait.  When can we start moving in?”  He had been up most of the night taking calls from teachers, and even the news, who had gotten his number from somebody.  That morning on his way out the door he’d heard his own voice coming over the news Anne had turned on, on the TV.  “We’re just so fortunate that no one was hurt.  That’s the most important thing,” he’d told the reporter over the phone at nearly midnight the night before.

“Is it true that you were contacted by Tony Stark and offered space to hold classes in Stark Tower?”

“Yes.  Things are moving quickly.”

“What reason did he give for this act of generosity?”

Jim had smiled as he’d headed out with a piece of toast in his mouth as Anne kissed him on the cheek, his own words coming from the TV.  “He said it’s for the kids.”

“Everything is taken care of on our end,” the lawyer tells him again.  “Use the elevator nearest the front door and cooperate with security when they stop you or your staff on the way in.  The tower AI will only give you access to levels one through three.”

Jim is left in the conference room alone, a wide smile on his face.

* * *

It’s a flurry of movement and people in each other’s way the next day.  The PE teacher Mr. Hayes had scored several banks of lockers, though he had been cagey when he was asked where they had come from.  For now Jim isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.  As a result, a construction crew that Mr. Stark has hired is installing them in the wide hall just outside the elevator on the first floor.

There’s also various teachers coming and going up and down the hall and in and out of classrooms carrying boxes of textbooks and other supplies.  In between dragging heavy boxes full of stuff out of the elevator that Mr. Mills is sending up from the lobby, Jim is directing teachers to their new classrooms, answering questions, and checking things off of his clipboard.  Both school secretaries are in setting up the new office, but they’re too busy to direct people to where they need to be.  His vice principal is up on the third floor trying to set up the kitchen with the lunch ladies, and their janitor is up on the second floor helping teachers rearrange tables in classrooms.

Jim is looking over his fifteen pages of lists and names on his clipboard when he hears a familiar young voice say, “Oh, hey Mr. Morita.”  He looks up and finds Peter Parker carrying a box of books past him with a smile.

Jim stares at Peter’s back.  Peter Parker?  Peter is Tony Stark’s son?  He can’t wrap his mind around it.  He’s been thinking about it for three days, making a mental list of students who might be Stark’s son.  There are three seniors, a junior, and two freshmen he’s been considering.  He’s thought about Flash Thompson (the sophomore is certainly pompous enough to be the son of a billionaire), but he’d met Eugene’s parents and knows for certain he isn’t a possibility.  The thought had never occurred to him before that kind, rambling, always smiling Peter Parker might be-

“Hey Mr. Morita.”  He turns and finds Ned Leeds carrying a box of supplies, following after Peter.  “This is so cool isn’t it?  We get to go to school in Stark tower!”  He doesn’t stop to chat, he just keeps going because the box of supplies is heavy.  From what little Jim can see, it looks like both boys are headed to the new chemistry room.  Ned disappears around a corner and is gone.

It’s only a few moments before a third student trails after the two boys at a leisurely pace.  “Sup,” says Michelle Jones with an upward nod of her head, and then she’s gone too.

He deflates a little.  Maybe Peter isn’t the son of the famous genius.  For some reason there are multiple kids running around helping to set up.  Now that he thinks about it, he knows several teachers have kids that attend Midtown and that they’ll be helping their parents set up their classrooms in the next few days.  It makes sense that one of those kids might be here now and might have asked Peter, Ned, and MJ to help.  All three of them are good kids… model students for the most part, and helping set up their new school instead of taking a week or two off is just the sort of thing they might do.

He shakes himself mentally and steps out of the way as members of the construction crew walk by with more lockers.  These ones look different than the ones Mr. Hayes had brought in.

The whole city knows that Midtown burned to the ground, but after hearing that Tony Stark has given the school space in his tower, there’s been an outpouring of love from teachers and others around the city.  People want to throw themselves behind the cause of getting Midtown up and running again knowing that Iron Man has done the biggest part, which is giving them a new temporary home.

Chapter Text

“So do we have to leave the building tomorrow just to come back in through the metal detector?” Ned asks.

“He said we have to until they get us all back into the system.  Tomorrow’s the first day, but not really,” Peter says.

Ned nods. Midtown had sent out emails to all students and parents detailing how the first few days back will go.  It’s going to take everyone time to adjust, so the first week back will focus on going over the new rules they’ll have to follow since they’ll be in Stark Tower, getting students into the new computer system and re-enrolled in classes, and getting to know the layout of the new school.  Students and parents will have all kinds of forms to sign and turn in.
Lying on his back on the bed that pulls out from under Peter’s queen size bed, Ned throws a soft squishy ball up into the air above his face and catches it as it falls.  It’s almost ten PM, and they both know Pepper will come in soon to tell them to go to bed since school starts again the next day.  Ned has been staying in Peter’s room in the tower for the past three days.  He’s still not sure how he managed to convince his parents to allow him to stay on a school night.  His main argument had been that he wouldn’t have to go far to school in the morning, just down the elevator.  He thinks maybe his parents let him stay because losing Midtown and witnessing the fire had been rough. It had been rough for everyone. That was just seven days ago.

“So just to be clear,” Ned says as Peter puts some of his clothes away, “we’re still not telling anyone you live here, right?”

“Definitely not.”

“You know, it could make things easier.  You wouldn't have to sneak around."

"I won't be sneaking."

“Well, you kind of will be if you’re pretending to be like every other student, right?  You have to come and go from the student entrance.”  Earlier, Peter and Ned had gone down to the lobby with Mr. Stark after they were sure all of the teachers and Midtown staff had left the tower for the day.  They’d gone to check out the new ‘Midtown’ entrance.  In the lobby there’s a bank of doors facing the street.  The door all the way on the right side had been designated as the Midtown entrance.  A temporary wall of frosted glass had been built leading from the Midtown door to the Midtown elevator.  A new metal detector had also been installed, and is going to be manned by a couple of Stark Industries security guards.  All students and staff will have to pass through the metal detector and past the guards to get in and out of the tower.  The elevator that has been designated for Midtown can go up to the 80th floor, but FRIDAY is only going to allow students and staff to access the first three floors and the lobby.  All students coming to school in the morning are going to be dropped on the 2nd floor, and will have to use the stairwells to get up and down on the Midtown levels for the rest of the day.

“It’s just for a few days,” Peter says, right as Pepper knocks on the bedroom door and opens it to look inside.
“Time for bed boys.”

“Ok,” Peter tells her.

She gives them both a smile, says, “Goodnight sweetheart,” and closes the door.

Peter flops down on his bed and stares at the ceiling on his back as Ned pulls the covers up over himself on the pullout bed beside Peter’s.  “Peter.”

“Yeah?”

“Your dad is pretty cool.”

“Yeah,” Peter says with a smile before rolling so his back is to him.  “I know.”

* * *

School starts again on a Tuesday.  Ned and Peter leave early and exit through the private parking garage, walk down the street to a coffee shop and grab a couple egg sandwiches on croissants, and then turn onto the next street where the entrance to the main lobby of Stark Tower is.  There are already fifty students waiting in line on the sidewalk to get in.  Some are shuffling nervously, others are filled with excitement like Peter and Ned.  The line is moving slowly, so Peter and Ned have time to eat their breakfast before making their way in through the Midtown entrance. The line continues inside down the makeshift frosted glass corridor that leads to the Midtown elevator.  After a couple minutes, they make it to the metal detector and get through it without an issue.  Mrs. Burnham is waiting by the elevator, holding the door for them.  They’ll be the last two in before it closes.  “12 per elevator,” she informs them.  “Each morning, hold it until there are 12, then you can go up.”  She pulls her hand back and lets the elevator door close, and without having to push the button for the Midtown levels, it starts to rise.  Ned and Peter both know that FRIDAY is in control.  It’s less than a minute before they reach the second floor and the door opens again.  They’re greeted by the PE teacher Mr. Hayes, who is dressed like he always is, in workout clothes.  Ned wonders if they’ll even have gym class today.

“Freshman that way,” he says pointing to the left, and three kids get off the elevator and go down the hall to where another teacher is waiting to direct them.  “Sophomores that way,” he says, pointing to the right.  “Go to the stairwell and go to the first floor.”  As Peter and Ned step off the elevator and turn right, they hear Mr. Hayes telling juniors to go up the stairwell to the cafeteria, and seniors to go up the stairwell to the gym.

Ned and Peter make their way down the stairwell at the end of the hall and to the first floor, where another teacher tells them to get in line at the new office.  MJ and Flash are already there along with a dozen other sophomores, most of whom Peter doesn’t know.  Secretaries are handing out paperwork and pens to students as they get to the front of the line.

“So,” Flash says, turning around.  He ignores MJ who is between him and Peter.  “Gonna tell us again all about your internship at Stark Industries Penis?” he asks with a smirk.

Peter frowns.  “No?”

“That’s what I thought.  I heard there’s an AI that listens to everything that’s being said.  Wouldn’t want your lies to be exposed now would we?”

Peter takes a deep breath and then lets it out slowly.  Ned shifts and rolls his eyes.  “You’re an idiot,” Ned tells Flash, though not loud enough for the secretaries at the newly installed front desk to hear.

“I’m not the one lying about an internship,” Flash scoffs.

“You know we were here last week helping to set up right,” MJ finally says, sounding bored.  “We were here because of Peter’s internship.”

“Whatever,” Flash says as the line moves forward.  He looks like he wants to continue harassing them, but they’re too close to the secretaries now for him to keep talking.  More sophomores appear at the end of the line as a big group of them come down the stairs together.  After a minute Peter, Ned and MJ make it to the front of the line and are all handed forms and pens.  “Find a spot in the hall to sit down and fill those out,” one of the secretaries tells them.  “Then hold on to them and stay put until a teacher comes to get you.”

Ned moves to the far end of the long hall, as far away from Flash as he can get, and Peter and MJ follow him.  Once the three of them are settled down against the wall, they start filling out the stack of forms.  The first two sheets are things like their address, phone number, name of their guardians and their phone numbers.  The third sheet asks them to fill out the schedule, classes, and teachers they had during the first week of school before the fire.  The fourth sheet asks about the classes they had passed the previous year.  It doesn’t ask for grades, just for a list of classes they passed and failed.  Thankfully Ned remembers everything he took the previous year, and is able to fill everything out.  With the computers all being lost in the fire, it makes sense that they’re going to have to figure out what to give students credit for, for the previous years they attended.  Ned wonders how many students will lie and say they passed classes that they didn’t, and if there’s some kind of system in place to make sure that doesn’t happen.

They’re there for half an hour when Mr. Harrington comes down the hallway and asks for a show of hands of who has filled out their paperwork already.  About forty hands go up and he tells everyone that’s done to come with him.  He takes them into a classroom and holds out a box for everyone to put their completed paperwork into.  It’s a tight fit to get forty students into this room, and some of them end up sitting on the floor near the front of the room.

Mr. Harrington hands out another packet.  “Put these forms in your backpacks,” he says.  “These need to go home and be filled out by your guardians.  Bring them back tomorrow.”  Once everyone has put the forms in their bags, Mr. Harrington hands out a packet of rules, and they spend the next thirty minutes going over the new rules.  Everyone has to sign the last sheet and hand that in.

“You’re all with me for the day,” Mr. Harrington tells them.  “We’ll do a quick tour of the Midtown levels, go over rules for coming in in the morning and leaving in the afternoon, and get everyone a locker.  We don’t have enough lockers for everybody, so everyone will be sharing a full size locker this year.  Everyone pick someone in this group to be your locker buddy.  All sophomore lockers are going to be on this level in the hall right outside the door of this classroom.”

Around eleven their group goes up to the cafeteria and sits with several other groups having lunch.  It’s almost the end of the day when Mr. Harrington assigns lockers.  Peter and Ned get a locker right next to MJ’s.  MJ ends up sharing with a boy named Zayne wearing all black from head to toe.  He has black hair and heavy black boots.  He seems friendly, and MJ seems to know him.  Ned can tell right away that Peter doesn’t like him.

“Dude,” Ned whispers when they’re back inside the classroom they’ve been in all day.  “Are you jealous?”

“What?” Peter asks in surprise.  Then he tries to school his face to neutral but fails miserably.  “No. No no, not- I’m not jealous.”

Ned shrugs but gives his friend a knowing look.  “You could just ask her out or something.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Yeah, why would you do that?” Ned parrots back with a sly grin.  Peter nudges him in the arm and then they quiet down, because Zayne and MJ come back into the room and sit down at the table across the aisle from them.

At the end of the day, they haven’t gone to class, or learned anything, but everyone is now familiar with the new school layout and the rules, and have had all their questions answered.  Peter and Ned exit the building out the front like everyone else, and then head around the side of the building and back in through the private parking garage.  Happy is waiting for them so he can take Ned home.

“See you tomorrow,” Peter tells him.

“Yeah, later.”

Ned is looking forward to seeing his parents after having stayed at the tower for several days.  He can’t wait to tell them about his first day back, about getting to share a locker with Peter, and about MJ and Zayne.  Despite losing a week of school, and losing the Midtown building to a fire, Ned thinks this might be his best year at school yet.

* * *

Things are going well, Mark Hayes thinks as he watches kids walking up and down the halls of the second floor.  The gym is on the third floor, so that’s where he should be spending most of his time, but it’s too quiet up there.  Most of the classrooms are on the first and second floor, and Mark likes leaning against a wall and watching and listening as students pass by, arms crossed.  The only time the third floor is alive is when lunch is being served.  Currently the robotics lab, senior English, and economics are the only classes up on the third floor aside from PE.

So Mark leans against the wall down on the second floor and watches.  He shouts at a couple to break apart because they’ve been leaning against each other against a locker for just a little too long.  Then he holds out a fist to one of his basketball players as he passes and gets a fist bump in return.  It’s the last day of their first week back, and the excitement of getting to go to school in Stark Tower hasn’t left the students or staff yet.

A kid slams a locker door somewhere down the hall, and Mark straightens up.  “Hey hey!  Watch it with the lockers!” he shouts, and a freshman straightens up, nods, and hurries off.  Mark had brought in about a third of the lockers, most from under the table deals he’d made with janitors and other PE teachers around the city.  The PE teacher at PS 188 owed him a favor (well, less of a favor, and more of a debt.  The man had lost almost a grand to Mark in a poker game several months prior).  As a result he used his wife’s keys at Newton High to smuggle out three banks of lockers.  Those banks of lockers hadn’t been in the best condition, but still, they were better than nothing.  Then a day later Mark had done some wheeling and dealing with a friend that worked as a janitor at William Cullen Bryant High to get several more banks of lockers, these in much better condition.  He’d made under the table deals and forgiven poker debts all over the city to get lockers, media carts, basketballs and other PE equipment, and other things teachers needed.  Most of the stuff had been donated, but all of the lockers have to make their way back to where they came from eventually, and he needs them all to be in good condition.

A loud tone plays from the ceiling signaling that passing time will end in one minute.  Mark makes his way to the stairs and up to the third floor to start his PE class.  The new gym is small, but they’re making due and he’s grateful to have it.  Kids are just filtering into the gym from the locker rooms when he makes it inside.

“Start stretching!” he calls out, and the students that are already there sit down in groups to stretch, continuing to chat with each other.  A lot of the chatter over the last week has been about Tony Stark, the Avengers, and rumors about whether or not the Avengers are currently living in the tower.  As he passes by a group of boys, he notes that the chatter today seems to be about Stark’s private lab.

“It’s gotta be a huge lab right?” Brad says.  “Who knows what all he’s making in there.  He’s probably developing laser weapons or something.”

“Bet his lab is in the basement,” says George.  “He’s probably got tunnel exits that go out into different parts of the city, maybe even out under the river.  There was that sighting one time of Iron Man popping up out of the East River.”

The group murmurs their agreement and the talk goes on about Tony Stark’s secret dungeon lair lab.  Mark isn’t paying much attention as he is busy directing other students who have come in to start stretching.  It’s not until Peter Parker pipes up and says, “It’s not in a basement, it’s on the 92nd floor,” that Mark tunes back in to the conversation.

“How do you know?” George says, a doubtful look on his face.

Flash doesn’t give Peter a chance to answer as he walks over to the group and stands above them, laughing.  “It’s because you’ve been there, right Penis?”

“Let’s cut back on the name calling,” Mark says, not turning to look at them.  The other boys start laughing, though whether it’s at Flash or Peter, he doesn’t know.

“You Parker?  Get real,” Brad laughs.  Mark does turn to look just as Peter shrugs and turns away from the group.

MJ and Zayne move over to sit next to Peter and Mark hears MJ say, “They’re idiots.”

“Wait, you believe him?” Zayne asks.

MJ shoots him a look and Zayne shrugs.

“Why didn’t you tell them about your internship?” MJ asks, and Peter shrugs again.

“What’s the point?  I’m tired of repeating it.  No one believes me anyway.”

“Idiots,” MJ says again.

Mark doesn’t know if Parker has an internship or not, but it’s good to see he’s got a couple friends that are willing to back him up.  It’s too bad his friend Ned isn’t in the same gym class.

“All right, cut the chatter,” Mark says, and the 35 students in the gym turn to look at him.  “Split into the same groups as yesterday.  One group grab basketballs, the other head to the weight room next door.  You’ll switch in twenty minutes.”  The kids start to separate into groups, but Mark makes a decision he hopes will make the class go a little smoother.  “Parker, switch spots with Haskins.”

Peter raises his eyebrows, but moves towards the group with MJ and Zayne.  It will make his job easier, Mark tells himself, if he doesn’t have to worry about Parker getting bullied while he’s in the weight room with Flash and the other boys that had been laughing at him.  This way he’ll be with a couple of his friends at least.  After Flash’s group leaves through the door in the side of the gym to the weight room, Parker flashes him a grateful look, and Mark gives him a nod.

Lockers, and basketballs, media carts he’d helped track down for Mrs. Miller, and helping Peter Parker get away from the jeers of his bullies.  Mark Hayes hasn’t been able to do a lot in the grand scheme of things when getting the school back up and running, but he’s of the belief that a lot of little things can add up to something big.  Yeah, he thinks, he’ll keep doing the little things and hoping they add up enough to be worth it to somebody in the end.

* * *

Flash is having an awesome day.  His dad gave him money that morning to have his car detailed, his mom promised they could take a trip for his birthday over Christmas break, and as soon as he stepped out of the elevator onto the second floor that morning, he saw Parker trip and go sprawling, books flying out of his arms.  Flash had spent the next several minutes laughing, even after Parker had gathered his things and moved off to his first period class.

Parker is both a genius and a klutz.  He’s a pain in Flash’s ass.  No matter how hard Flash works to have the highest GPA, Parker is always ahead of him by at least one point.  No matter how hard Flash works to get onto the main AcaDec team, Parker and others are always a step ahead of him and are able to answer more questions correctly when he challenges them for a spot on the main team.  Parker gets good grades in class and makes it look effortless.  Even when he’s not paying attention he can ramble off answers if he’s asked a question.  It’s complete bullshit, so when Parker trips and falls, or makes a fool of himself in front of girls, Flash is happy, because it means he’s not the best at every single thing.  Flash dresses better than him, he’s got more money than him, he’s got a better family than him, and he has better social skills.  In some things, Flash wins.  If he can just study a little harder or longer, he can win at all the things, he thinks.

The problem is, some people think Parker has an internship at Stark Industries.  He doesn’t, he can’t, but it pushes Parker just a bit ahead of Flash in social status at Midtown.  That shit is annoying as hell.  Parker is a liar, and it’s not fair that he should get ahead because of lies.  So Flash points it out to anyone that seems to believe that he actually has an internship.  Stark Industries doesn’t take high schoolers as interns.  Flash knows, he checked.  Getting to go to school at Stark Tower is as close to having an internship as Parker has ever gotten, he thinks.

So when Flash sees Parker coming out of the elevator one morning and onto the second floor… the elevator which had just shown it was coming down from high up in the tower, Flash narrows his eyes.  Where the hell was he coming down from?

“What the hell was that Parker?” Flash asks, hurrying to catch up to him as he strides away towards the stairwell.

Peter turns, confusion in his eyes.  “Huh?”

Flash points back at the elevator behind them.  “Where’d you just come from?”

“Uh… just coming to school,” Peter says.

“The numbers above the door said it was coming down from like the 30th floor.”

Peter shrugs.  “I have an-”

“No,” Flash cuts him off with a sharp tone.  “Don’t give me that internship bullshit.  How’d you trick the tower AI into letting you get up to a higher floor?”

Peter frowns, and turns to move off.  Flash steps around him and blocks his path.  “Dude, I have class,” Peter says.

“Tell me how you did it.  Did you hack the elevator panel?”

“I didn’t hack anything.  I have clearance to be higher in the tower.”

“No you don’t.”

“Whatever.  I’m going to class.”

Flash lets him pass, staring at his back as Peter disappears into the stairwell on his way down to the first floor.

Even if Parker has an internship, there’s no reason for him to be working higher in the tower before school.  Maybe it was just a mistake.  Maybe Parker had gotten into the elevator in the lobby like everyone else, and the tower AI had malfunctioned.  That has to be it, Flash thinks.

Later on in precalculus, Flash studies Parker as he raises his hand to answer the teacher’s questions again and again.  He seems to be sketching something or doodling and not paying attention, but he still gets all the answers right… like this is easy for him… like he already knows all the material.  Flash works hard to keep up with him and to be the best in everything he does.  That this comes easy to Parker isn’t fair.  He should have to work for it too, or at least have the decency to make it look like he’s working for it.

Flash wads up a piece of paper into a ball and throws it at the back of Parker’s head.  Peter stiffens, but doesn’t turn around as the paper hits him and then falls to the floor.

Later, when class is over, Peter picks up the wadded up ball of paper and drops it in the trash can on his way out.  Flash hates him.  The kid is a total loser.

* * *

There have been a few bumps in the road during their transition to the Midtown levels at Stark Industries.  Three times now, a junior named Brant has gotten into arguments with security guards down in the lobby.  It’s gotten to the point that Jim is having to assign a teacher to go to the lobby each morning around 7:40, which is the time Brant Marcus typically shows up.  Jim doesn’t know what Brant’s issue with security is, but he’s sent off three emails of apology to the Stark Industries security staff already.  He hopes he doesn’t have to send off another.

There have also been issues with getting students up the elevator and to the Midtown levels in time.  Ferrying twelve students at a time up to the Midtown levels causes a bottleneck at the entrance, and leaves a line of students waiting outside.  They’ve remedied that for the most part by asking students to arrive at intervals.  Freshman are supposed to arrive by 7:00, sophomores at 7:25, juniors at 7:40, and seniors at 7:50.  Seniors are the only students given leeway to be 10 minutes late to school.  It’s been working out well so far.

Parking for teachers has been an issue as well.  They need 30 parking spaces, but they can’t park on the street, and there aren’t that many spots available in the Stark Industries parking garage under the tower, as those spaces are all taken by employees.  They’re still working on that issue. This morning Jim had to park in a parking garage five blocks away and walk.  He knows some of his staff are walking even further each morning, and others have started to take the subway or bus and walk in.

For the most part things are going smoothly though, far smoother than Jim could have hoped for considering everything that’s happened.  School has been in for three weeks, and they’re tackling problems as they come up.  If nothing else, it’s been interesting.  All of the issues they’ve had and more are brought up by teachers as they sit in their weekly staff meeting Thursday morning before school starts.  One thing that consistently comes up at each meeting is the question, “How did we score this space at Stark Tower?”

Jim gives the same answer he always does.  “Mr. Stark said it was for the kids.”

“I heard a rumor,” says Joyce, and Jim frowns.  He likes to listen to rumors as much as the rest of his staff and students do, but he doesn’t like to perpetuate them.  Rumors cause problems, and he’s hoping this isn’t a rumor about- “I heard Tony Stark has a kid that goes to Midtown.”  Jim sighs.

“It’s best not to engage in rumors,” he says, uncomfortably aware that the eyes of all of his staff are on him.  Jim’s eyes find Roger Harrington and they share a knowing look.  Jim is positive that Roger knows who the said child is, but Jim won’t ask him again.

“It’s true though, right?” Bill Greene asks.

“As I said, it’s best not to engage in rumors.  Mr. Stark said he wanted to help us out, and I took the offer.  That’s all that’s important.”

Roger teaches several science courses, and he’s in charge of Academic Decathlon.  Jim doesn’t think Roger could glean enough information from having a student in class to tell who their parents are short of seeing them at parent teacher conferences.  He spends a lot of time after school, on field trips, and on trips to AcaDec meets with his team though, and that might be enough time for him to figure out who Tony Stark’s son is.  It’s this thought that makes Jim think the student in question is on the Academic Decathlon team.  That is both helpful and not helpful.

There are ten students on the team, six boys and four girls.  Two of those boys are rich, but Jim has been able to rule both of them out.  Like the other teachers, Jim hasn’t been able to put this from his mind.  He’s curious, and intrigued.  He would expect any son of Tony Stark’s to flaunt his wealth, to dress to impress, to command a room or a news conference like his father can… but Jim hasn’t seen any kids like that at Midtown.  The other four boys on the AcaDec team aren’t wealthy, or at least not that he can discern.  He knows the parents of two of the boys personally, so they’re out.

Out of the six boys on the AcaDec team, Jim has narrowed the possibilities down to either Ned Leeds or Peter Parker, though neither of them make sense in the grand scheme of things.  Ned has two parents and Peter has his aunt.  Jim had checked into both of their files.  Both of Ned’s parents are listed as contacts, and Peter’s aunt is listed as his guardian.  Peter has several other numbers listed as emergency contacts, but no names are listed with those numbers.  He assumes they’re other family members or maybe even some of Peter’s neighbors or his aunt’s friends.  He makes a mental note to send Peter’s aunt an email about adding names to those emergency contact numbers.  They’re still trying to get all the student information back into the new systems, which are now backed up on a cloud.  Like Peter’s files, many student files that were complete before the fire, are now incomplete.  It’s going to take weeks or months to get everything fixed and back in order again.

He spends a lot of time wondering if he’s wrong, and that the student isn’t on the team, or that maybe Roger somehow has other information that has led him to the conclusion about Tony Stark’s son.

Mrs. Jiménez pulls Jim out of his train of thought when she pipes up and says, “If we’re talking about rumors, I heard an interesting one recently.  I have a friend over at Newton High.  He said they lost half their lockers down one hall.  They can’t figure out where they went.  They came in a couple weeks ago and all the stuff that was in the lockers was sitting in neat piles all down the hallway.”

All eyes turn to Mr. Hayes, who gives Jim a lazy look and says, “What?”  His arms are crossed and he’s leaning casually against a wall.  “You want to give them some of ours?”

“Like I said,” Jim says with a sigh.  “It’s best not to engage in rumors.”

* * *

“Mr. Harrington,” Seth whines, “can’t we just sneak up to the cafeteria and see if there’s anything to eat.  Please?  I’m starving.”

“We could order pizza,” Ned suggests.

“You got money for pizza?” Flash snaps.

The AcaDec team has been sitting in Mr. Harrington’s classroom for hours trying to go over the brand new booklet the team was given.  It’s going to be a lot of work to memorize the new information so they’re ready for upcoming competitions.  Team meetings usually run late right after they get a new information booklet.  Instead of being done at four thirty, it’s after five and everybody is hungry, Peter included.  His stomach gives a loud gurgle to remind him that he hasn’t eaten since noon.

“I second pizza,” Peter says, and Flash shoots him an irritated glare.

“All right, everybody calm down,” Mr. Harrington says.  “If any of you have snacks in your bags, feel free to eat.”

Peter leaps up from his spot and says, “Be right back!”  He doesn’t ask for permission to leave because Mr. Harrington doesn’t usually require it for AcaDec meetings after school.

His locker is right outside the door to the AcaDec room, but he doesn’t have any food in there.  He thinks that maybe he should bring down some snacks to keep there in the future.  Instead Peter goes down towards the office and then gets into the elevator and hits the button for the 80th floor.  He shifts back and forth on his feet impatiently.  It takes some time to get up through the tower.  On the 80th floor he greets Happy with a quick, “Hey Happy!” and switches elevators so he can continue up to the penthouse.  He’s in a hurry.  If he’s gone too long, people will start to question him.  Abe, MJ, and Ned know, so he doesn’t have to worry about them.  Maybe he’ll tell everyone when he gets back that he took such a long time because he had to use the bathroom.

Pepper is in the penthouse when he gets there.  “Hey honey, are you done for the day?”

It’s unusual for her to be home so early, and Peter wonders if she took the afternoon off.

“Nope, just hungry,” Peter says.  He passes her and goes into the kitchen, opening the cupboard they keep full of snacks, mostly for him.  He starts pulling down boxes of Pop-Tarts, granola bars, and a big bag of chips.

“You must be,” Pepper says as he gathers it all into his arms.

“Everybody is hungry,” he tells her.

“When will you be done, do you think?”

“Uh… six?”

She nods.  “I’ll order dinner for six then.  Tony will be at a late meeting until seven, but you and I can have dinner and watch a movie.”  She sounds like she’s asking him if that’s something he wants to do.

He turns back to her and grins.  “That sounds great Miss Pepper!  Can we get Chinese?”

She smiles and nods and Peter hurries back to the elevator with his armful of snack booty.

It’s a good ten minutes since he left, before he makes it back down to the first floor.  He steps out of the elevator near the office and almost bumps into Mr. Hayes.

“Sorry Mr. Hayes!”

“Parker, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack eating all that junk!” the PE teacher calls after him.

“It’s ok, I’ll die happy!” Peter calls back, turning the corner into the hall with Mr. Harrington’s room.  He’d like to go straight into the room and dump the armful of snacks down, but he almost runs smack into Mr. Morita.

“Sorry, sorry,” Peter says in a hurry.  Mr. Morita eyes the armful of snacks as Peter dodges around him, and ducks into Mr. Harrington’s room.

“Whoa,” says Seth.  “Where’d you get all that?”

“Uh, my locker?”  He dumps the snacks onto a table in front of MJ, like he’s just brought her a bounty of gifts.

“There’s no way you had all that in your locker Parker,” Flash grumbles.  Peter responds by pushing a box of cookies and cream Pop-Tarts towards him.  Flash takes it without a word and opens it up, pulling a package out.

“What’d you do, buy out the cafeteria vending machines?” Betty asks, reaching for a box of granola bars as MJ opens the bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

“They don’t sell entire boxes of Pop-Tarts and full size bags of chips in the vending machines,” Flash says, irritated.

“Uh,” Peter turns halfway, pointing over his shoulder behind him towards the door.  “I raided the intern snack cupboard.”

Flash has his back to them, but Peter notes his shoulders are shaking, and that he’s gripping the box of Pop-Tarts so hard that he’s crushing it.

“All right, let’s settle,” Mr. Harrington says.  “Let’s try to get through the last section so we can go home and eat some real food.”

Peter takes his spot next to MJ and she tips the open end of the bag of Doritos towards him.  Peter loves living this close to school.  He loves being able to roll out of bed in the morning twenty minutes before school and still get to class on time.  He loves that Ned keeps convincing his parents to let him stay in Peter’s room in the penthouse, even on school nights.  Ned won’t be staying tonight, but he’ll be staying Tuesday night, and maybe Wednesday night too.  And, when he’s hungry, Peter can just run home for snacks, he thinks with a grin as Mr. Harrington starts asking the group decathlon questions again.

* * *

Flash doubles down on making sure everybody knows that Peter is a liar.  One day after school he catches Peter exiting through the locked door in the frosted glass partition that separates the Midtown entrance from the rest of the Stark Industries lobby.

“Where are you going?” Flash asks.  He’s surprised Parker is even able to open the door.  Others have tried, but only security seems to be able to get through it.

“Work,” Peter says.  Ned gets out of the throng of students leaving school for the day and heads for the partition door too.

“Hey, do you have an internship too?” a freshman asks Ned.

Ned turns and says, “Nah, I’m just going with Peter.”

Flash’s blood boils.  He doesn’t know what’s going on, but there’s no way Parker has an internship.  He probably has a family member that works at the tower in janitorial or maybe security.  Flash thinks of how he used to go to the bank with his dad some days in the summer when he was younger.  He would sit around in his dad’s big office, staying absolutely silent until it was time to leave.  That’s probably what’s going on here.  Peter is probably waiting for an aunt or uncle to take him home at the end of their shift.  He imagines Peter sitting at the front desk doing homework while an aunt who is a secretary finishes work for the day.  It makes sense then that Ned would be allowed to go out into the main lobby too if he’s riding home with Peter.

“He doesn’t have an internship,” Flash says to the group at large as he exits out onto the sidewalk.  “He’s got a family member that works here or something.  He was probably going out to get a ride home.  The kid is such a liar.”

A few of the freshmen give Flash a look like they’re not sure what to make of what he’s said, but some of the older kids nod like Flash is making good sense of the situation.

“Yeah, you’re right,” George says, nudging Flash with his elbow.  “Remember him trying to tell us he’d been to Iron Man’s lab?”  George laughs and Flash feels vindicated that someone believes him.

After school Flash typically walks down several blocks to the subway with a large group of kids he barely knows.  He doesn’t have any friends at Midtown, so he usually puts headphones in and listens to music.  George, who is in his PE class, is part of this group.  Today he seems like he wants to talk to him, so Flash keeps his headphones in his pocket.  “Kid is a joke,” George says.  “What makes him think we’d be dumb enough to believe him about an internship?  What’s he going to come up with next?  That he’s Iron Man’s son?”

Flash laughs.  “No, he’ll tell us he’s an Avenger.”

They laugh again and another boy from their PE class pushes forward in the group making their way down the sidewalk away from Stark Tower.  “Are we talking about Parker?” he asks.

Flash gives a nod.

“Someone should teach him to keep his big mouth shut.”

The three of them talk all the way to the subway station, and then on the train.  Flash notes that other Midtown kids are listening as they talk about Parker and his lies.  The next day at school, he’s pleased to hear some of those kids telling Peter he’s a liar.  Flash thinks this might just be the best school year yet.

* * *

Tony is rash.  Happy knows this.  He’s known it ever since he started working for him.  When he was younger and was spending his days driving Tony around, going out to fetch food for him, and just being his bodyguard, Happy hadn’t minded as much.  The job had been exciting and he was getting to fly all over the world with a billionaire.  Paris, Dubai, Tokyo, Rio De Janeiro… getting to go all those places, and to big parties full of beautiful women and expensive liquor had made up for all the rash decisions Tony made on a daily basis that left Happy having to clean up after him.

He wasn’t 26 anymore though.  Happy was no longer just a bodyguard and driver tasked with getting Tony home safe after a late night out drinking, or going out to find him when he called and said he wasn’t quite sure where he’d ended up after a night on the town going from party to party.  Now Happy has a lot of responsibilities.  He’s the head of tower security and is responsible for everyone that’s in the tower at any given time.  He’s still Tony’s bodyguard, though Tony doesn’t seem to need one much these days when he can call an Iron Man suit to him from practically anywhere.  Happy is also responsible for Peter, who does need a bodyguard despite also being Spider Man.  The kid gets himself into just as much trouble as Tony ever did, even if it’s a different kind of trouble.

Tony’s latest rash decision has brought Peter’s entire school right into the tower.  It means an extra seven hundred some odd people that Happy is responsible for every day.  It means there’s three levels of the tower his security staff can’t get to.  Happy is the only one cleared to go to those floors.  Even Tony and Pepper can’t go down there unless they have an appointment or are there in the capacity of Peter’s parents.  If Tony had stopped to think for just one minute what kind of headache moving a highschool into the tower would cause Happy, the legal team, the security staff, and other departments, this whole thing might have been avoided.  Might have, because Tony always does what he wants.

The only department that doesn’t seem to mind is PR, who has been running with this new form of ‘charity’ that ‘SI’s very own Tony Stark’ has come up with.

Happy avoids the Midtown floors if at all possible.  He walks through once a day before he goes up to his apartment on the 81st floor for the night just to make sure the students haven’t caused any major damage, but otherwise stays away.  He’d very much like to keep it that way for the entire year, but his responsibility to look after Peter gets in the way when FRIDAY notifies him that there’s been an incident and that Peter is hurt.

Happy groans and slides a hand down his face.  “What?  What happened?  How is he hurt?”

FRIDAY pulls up a security video of the employee gym Midtown is using on the third floor.  It looks like the kid is in gym class and that they’re playing basketball.  A different kind of anger than the one he has at Tony for making rash decisions comes over him as he watches the recording and sees two boys throw a basketball at Peter at once, both clearly aimed at his face.  Peter sidesteps one and dodges the other before a third boy throws a ball at him and it hits him square in the nose.

“Are you kidding me with this shit?” Happy asks, standing up from his desk suddenly.  He goes to the elevator and hits the button for the first floor so he can get to the Midtown office or the Midtown nurse’s office.

“The kid is in the nurse’s office right FRIDAY?”

“Peter is in the men’s locker room on level 3.”

Happy drags his hand down his face again.  “Is a teacher with him?”

“No, Peter appears to be trying to stem the flow of blood from his nose on his own.”

He grumbles several unfriendly things about what he’d like to do to the three boys that had thrown basketballs at Peter.  It’s clear from the video footage that it was intentional and that they were trying to hit him in the face.  Just the way they’d surrounded him is proof enough of the bullying.  Tony is going to flip out when he sees the recording.

He hits the button for the third floor and FRIDAY lets him out there a minute later.  A few students are sitting in the empty cafeteria studying, and they give him curious looks as he passes and heads towards the locker rooms and gym.

“Security,” he calls out to announce himself before entering the men’s locker room.  He doesn’t know who all is in there and wants them to know he’s coming in.

“Uh, in here Happy,” he hears Peter’s nasally reply, and finds him standing over a bathroom sink, wad of paper towels held to his nose.

“Is it broken?” Happy asks.

“I think so,” Peter tells him, and Happy sighs.

He puts a hand on the back of Peter’s neck and says, “Let me see.”  Peter tilts his head back and pulls the paper towel away, but has to put it back right away because his nose starts bleeding again.

“What happened?” He wants to know what Peter will say.  The kid always downplays his injuries.  Once he’d tried to hide a stab wound after a night out patrolling as Spider Man.  That had been back before Tony had adopted him so he could have joint custody with May.  The kid had sat at home in his aunt’s apartment for three hours before she got home from a late shift and found him slumped down on the bathroom floor, pressing a towel to his side.  It had been one of the many things that had led her to asking Tony to help her more with Peter.

“It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.  It looks like a kid threw a basketball at your face.”

Peter turns and frowns at him.  “It’s cheating if you already know the answer,” he says.  “It was an accident.”

“It definitely wasn’t an accident.  Come on, you’re going home for the day.”

“What?  Happy, it’s nothing, really,” Peter protests.

“It’s a broken nose, you’re going to the doctor.”

Peter grumbles but follows Happy out of the locker room and to the elevator.  Students aren’t supposed to use the elevator during the school day once they’re inside, they’re supposed to use the stairs to get between floors, but Happy isn’t going to bother with that particular Midtown rule at the moment.

When the elevator opens two floors below, Happy takes Peter straight to the school office.  The secretaries look startled to see him there with his hand on the back of Peter’s shoulders.

“Oh, Mr. Hogan, what’s- what can we do for you?”  They’re not used to seeing him on the Midtown floors.

“I got a security alert about an injured student.  This kid is going home for the day.  I need to see the principal.  I have security footage to show him.”  While the school has rules against bullying, it was made clear to the students and Midtown staff that SI has a zero tolerance policy, and that they would have to follow it.

One of the secretaries takes Peter into the little room the school nurse has set up as a nurse’s office, and the other knocks on the principal’s office door, which is right behind the secretary’s counter.

Mr. Morita opens his door and looks just as surprised to see the head of tower security as the secretaries had been.

“Mr. Hogan, what can I do for you?”

Happy motions into the man’s office and he steps aside so he can enter.  Mr. Morita shuts the door and Happy tells FRIDAY to pull up the footage from the incident on the principal’s computer.  Mr. Morita watches, disturbed, as the footage plays.  It’s barely a minute long.

“I was notified by FRIDAY of a student being injured due to bullying.  I went down and found him in the locker room and brought him down to the nurse’s office.  Kid is going home for the day.”

Mr. Morita shifts nervously in his seat and then looks up at him.  “While that’s probably the best course of action,” he says, speaking cautiously as though he’s treading on thin ice, “we have school protocols we need to follow Mr. Hogan.  We can’t just send him home.”

“His nose is broken, he’s going home.  Also, the kids involved in this get punished.  That’s SI policy.  It’s a safety and security issue to have a kid with a broken nose on the property, and to have the people that broke his nose still on the premises.”

Jim nods.  “Of course they’ll be handled.”

In order to make this whole ‘Midtown at SI’ thing work, Tony and Stark Industries had to agree that they wouldn’t interfere with the daily operations of the school in any way.  The one exception to that is Happy, who has full authority when it comes to tower security.  Any security issue or threat is Happy’s to deal with, and he gets the final say.  By reminding Mr. Morita that it’s a security issue, Happy doesn’t have to fight him on it.

He turns to leave and Mr. Morita says, “I’m sorry that you had to come handle this yourself.”

“It’s my job,” Happy says.  He opens the door and Mr. Morita follows him out.  Happy makes his way down four doors to the school nurse’s office.  The door is open and Peter is sitting on a cot, still holding his nose.  “Come on kid.”

Peter rises to leave but Mr. Morita clears his throat from behind him.  “We have to call his emergency contact to come get him.”

“Pull up his contact and call the first number that’s not his aunt.”

Jim frowns but then nods to one of the secretaries, who already has Peter’s file pulled up on her computer.  She picks up the phone and dials the number, and Happy’s phone rings.

“You’re one of Mr. Parker’s emergency contacts?” Mr. Morita asks.  He glances back and forth a few times between Happy and Peter.

“I’m friends with his aunt May,” Happy says.  It’s not a lie.  He is friends with her.  He just also happens to be friends with Peter’s father.

Peter walks out of the nurse’s office, paper towels still held to his nose.  “Come on,” Happy tells him.  “I’ll take you to the doctor and then home.  We’ll call May on the way.”  He has no intention of calling May.  Tony or Pepper can do that later.

Happy and Peter don’t look back as they walk away from the office, the office staff staring after them.  They get in the elevator and disappear behind the elevator doors.  As soon as they start to rise up through the tower, Happy says, “FRIDAY, I want a full report about what punishment those kids get for doing this.”

“Mr. Thompson, Mr. Akins, and Mr. Avery have been called to the office.”

“Good,” he grumbles, and then grows quiet.  Tony had made a rash decision in letting Midtown move into the tower, but in this case, Happy’s glad Peter was in the tower and that FRIDAY had recorded the incident.  He used to pick Peter up after school and see bruises on his face.  He had never been able to get him to admit that he was being bullied, but now he has proof.  Not only that, but he had been able to go take care of the problem right away, instead of Peter hiding out in a bathroom by himself trying to fix a broken nose.

After they switch elevators so they can head up to the med bay on the 83rd floor, Peter shuffles next to him and says quietly, “You can’t do that.”

“Can’t do what?”

“You can’t come down to the school and drag me into the office just because Flash was being a jerk.”

“It’s my job kid.”

“Would you have been alerted and come down if it was some other kid?”

“No.”

“So you can’t do that.  It’s not fair.  I don’t want to get special treatment.”

Happy thinks that over for a moment as they near the 83rd floor and the elevator doors open again.  Instead of getting out he turns to Peter and says, “Whether you want it or not you’re Tony’s kid and you’re going to be treated differently.  It’s something you’re going to have to get used to.”

Peter stares at him in surprise, paper towels still pressed to his nose.  When he doesn’t say anything, Happy motions for him to step out of the elevator, and takes him to the Med Bay.  Tony is already waiting inside.  Happy hasn’t had the time to notify him yet, but FRIDAY must have.

“Roos, what the heck happened?” Tony fusses, guiding Peter to a chair as the doctor comes in and tells Peter to pull the paper towel away from his nose so he can see.

Happy stands back and watches for a few moments before excusing himself.  It’s not common knowledge yet that Tony adopted Peter.  As soon as the media finds out, Peter is going to have to get used to being treated differently.  He’ll be in the spotlight as the future heir to Stark Industries.  His every move will be scrutinized because he’ll be a public figure.  So far Tony and Pepper have managed to keep the news under wraps.  They’re all hoping that they can hold off the media finding out until after Peter graduates high school, or maybe even college.

Happy only hopes they can.

* * *

Peter doesn’t know if Flash got in trouble for hitting him in the face with a basketball or not.  He tries to ask FRIDAY but is given the answer that it’s confidential and that Peter isn’t privy to that information.  If Flash is in trouble, he hasn’t said anything to Peter about it.  He has been extra frustrating to deal with since that incident however.  So have other kids.

Several older students (several meaning almost a dozen) have taken to calling out to Peter in the halls to make fun of him for his fake internship.  They ask him ridiculous questions about Tony that Peter never attempts to answer.  He’d learned his lesson after trying to tell them that his dad doesn’t have a lab in a dungeon under the tower.

Not everyone at school is rude to him, so Peter does his best to ignore it.  He has Ned and MJ, and MJ’s locker buddy Zayne isn’t so bad either.  Most of his AcaDec team is pretty cool, and for the most part other students just leave him alone.  It doesn’t take long before he gets tired of Flash and his friends however.

“So what do you do as an intern Parker?  Take Mr. Stark his coffee?”

Peter walks past the senior that asked him and goes to his locker.

“Nah, he does more than that, right?” another guy asks, coming up beside Peter to lean on the locker next to his.  “Parker probably does all kinds of things.”

Peter turns to him.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The boy has a dark smile on his face.  “I think you know what it means.  Everyone knows what kind of reputation Stark had before he was Iron Man.”

“Repu-” Peter’s face is hot.  He wants to hit the guy so hard that he flies down the hall.  Instead he slams his locker, and the two seniors laugh loudly.  They’re talking about the ‘playboy’ part of the name the media had given his dad years ago.  Peter is aware of some of the things Mr. Stark did before Peter knew him, but a lot of those things seem so far away from the man he knows that he can’t imagine it.  What the two jerks laughing at him are implying is so bad, Peter wants to throw up.  Pepper would throw these boys out of the tower if she heard what they were saying.

“Awe, come on now, you’re the one that wants to have an internship with him so bad you’re willing to lie about it,” one of them says.

Peter clenches and unclenches his fist.  He’s so done.  The only reason he doesn’t punch them both is that they’re in the tower.  If they were still at the old Midtown campus, he thinks he wouldn’t be hesitating like this.

“My mom-” he starts, thinking about threatening them with Pepper, but he bites his words off.  It only makes them laugh louder.

Flash, who had been coming down the hall, slaps Peter on the back once and says, “Your mom nothing Parker.  You don’t have a mom, remember?”

Peter deflates as Flash and the two seniors walk away, all three of them laughing.  He supposes they’re right.  He doesn’t have a mom.  He has May, and he loves her.  He misses her too.  He misses her so much sometimes that his stomach starts to ache.  And he has Miss Pepper, but she’s not his mom.  She didn’t adopt him, Tony did.  Tony adopted him and then Tony and Pepper got married a few months later.  He doesn’t know what he was thinking, throwing around the word ‘mom’ like that.

The hall empties out around him as the warning bell sounds, and Peter stands there, shaking silently and trying to get his breathing under control.  He has aunt May, and he has his dad, and he has miss Pepper.  He has Happy and Rhodey too.  He’s got nothing to complain about.

Why can’t people just leave him alone?

* * *

“Come on loser, you’re coming with us,” MJ says, grabbing Peter’s sleeve after school and dragging him towards the stairwell.

“Huh?  Wait, what do you mean?”

“We’re getting coffee and cookies.”

“We are?” Peter asks as she continues to tug on his sleeve, forcing him to follow her and Zayne.

“Yes, I’m kidnapping you.”

“Careful, you’re going to trigger a protocol or something,” he says, and she shrugs.  She lets go of his sleeve and he follows her and Zayne down to the Midtown entrance in the lobby and out onto the sidewalk.  He’s surprised when she grabs his sleeve again along with Zayne’s and pulls them out of the throng of students and in the opposite direction of the nearby subway station.  Only after they’re away from the crowd does she let go of both of them.  MJ has been watching Peter get bullied all week.  She suspects that now that Midtown is in the tower, that Peter doesn’t get out much.  She has a growing suspicion that he’s actually Spider Man, but hasn’t brought it up with him yet, and doesn’t plan to.  Spider Man has been suspiciously absent from the news lately.

“So, why are we getting coffee?” Peter asks.

“Because you needed to get out.”

“I get out,” he says.

“Really?”

He mumbles something she doesn’t quite hear, and when he looks up and finds her brow raised he says, “Ok, not so much recently.”

She doesn’t say, ‘I told you so.’

“Ned’s been at home sick all week and those jerks haven’t let up on you all week either,” she says.  “Why don’t you do something about that?”

“Like what?”

“Tell a teacher,” Zayne says.

Peter shrugs.  “I can handle it, it’s no big deal.”

“Dude, your…” Zayne trails away.  “S’not right.”

Peter frowns and MJ says, “He knows.”

“He knows what?” Peter asks, shoulders stiffening.

“He knows where you live.”

“You told him?”

“I saw you and your dad in Queens a couple weeks ago.  My family and I were driving by.”

Peter stares at him, mouth opening and closing.

“It’s cool,” Zayne says.  “Makes sense why we get to go to school in the tower.  And it’s not right that you’re getting bullied when you’re basically the whole reason we have a school to go to this year.”

Peter seems to relax a little at that.  “We were getting some of my stuff from my aunt’s apartment.”

“You have an aunt that lives in Queens?” Zayne asks, surprised.  MJ knows Zayne thinks Peter is Tony’s biological son.

“Sometimes,” Peter murmurs, but doesn’t elaborate.

They walk two blocks and make it to the coffee shop MJ has been visiting since school started back up in the tower again.  She and Zayne have been going for coffee before school on Monday mornings and after school on Wednesdays.  It’s Friday, but Peter really needed to get out of the tower.

“Can’t your dad do anything about it?” Zayne asks a few minutes later as they sit down at a table with their coffee.

Peter shrugs.  “What’s he going to do about it?  No one knows and I don’t want special treatment.”

“Well if I was getting bullied,” MJ said, “my mom or dad would go to the principal about it.”

“If you were getting bullied,” Zayne shoots back, “you would beat the crap out of whoever was bullying you.”

“True,” she says.  “But still, that’s what parents do.”

“Happy already told them when Flash threw the basketball at my face,” Peter says.

“So have Happy do it,” MJ replies.  She points at Peter’s coffee, breaks the giant soft cookie she just bought into three pieces, and pushes one piece towards Peter.  “Ned agrees by the way,” she says.

“Ned’s at home sick.”

“I’ve been keeping him updated.”

Peter huffs a little laugh at that.  They don’t talk about it again as they finish their coffee, sitting in the window as the gray clouds open up and it starts to drizzle, turning the sidewalk shiny and splattering raindrops down the window.  Instead MJ starts up a conversation with Zayne about the drama club, which MJ is a part of, and then she pulls Peter into a conversation about an upcoming AcaDec competition, and the potential for their yearly AcaDec field trip to be to somewhere good this year.  By the time their coffee is gone and they’ve ordered and eaten another large cookie, Peter seems relaxed.  He looks more relaxed than he has in a couple of weeks.  That’s all MJ wants, is to see him smile.

“So I kind of wanna know,” Zayne says as they get up to leave.  “Your bedroom, is it coated in gold?”

Peter scoffs and MJ says, “His bedroom is a mess.  No gold.”

“No gold,” Peter confirms.  He flips the hood of his hoodie up over his head as they step out into the rain and start heading back towards the tower.  “I have a Playstation though.”

“The new one?” Zayne asks.

Peter nods, looks nervous for a second and then says, “We can play sometime if you want.”

Zayne shrugs.  “Sure.”

“What about now?” MJ asks, and Peter nods.  She knows Peter and Ned have been a little wary of Zayne since the start of school, but he’s cool, and right now with Ned out sick, Peter needs a friend.  That means it’s MJ’s job to do things like drag him out for coffee and cookies, or to get him thinking about other things than the jerks he’s been dealing with at school.

Once they get up to the penthouse, Peter hurries them through the living space and into his room.  It looks the same as the last time MJ saw it.  There’s a pair of dirty socks on the floor by the bathroom door, Peter’s bed isn’t made, there’s a t-shirt and hoodie over the back of his computer chair, and a stack of books on Peter’s night stand.

“See?” Peter says nervously after shutting his bedroom door.  “No gold.”  He points to the Playstation though.  MJ is always surprised when she comes up to Peter’s room with him and Ned, which has only been a handful of times, that Peter’s dad hasn’t spoiled him rotten.  He has a big screen TV and a Playstation, and his furniture is nice, but she always expects to see lavish art works adorning the walls, hoards of expensive electronics, or other expensive things.  This is Peter though, and she knows Peter doesn’t want lots of expensive things.  She also knows his Playstation is one of his most prized possessions, because he’d never had a gaming system before moving into the tower.

“Cool,” Zayne says again, and he and Peter sit down on the floor at the foot of the bed to play video games.  MJ watches for a few minutes, calls Peter and Zayne both losers for being bad at the racing game they’re playing, and then pulls out her homework.

Peter is still relaxed and looks like he’s having fun, and he’s not giving Zayne side eyed glances like he’s worried about him or wary of him.  Mission accomplished, she thinks.  Now if she and Ned can just needle Peter enough to tell his parents that he’s getting bullied, the school year might get a little better for him.

* * *

Jim shuffles the new insurance paperwork he’s just received in front of him at his desk, and then stares nervously at the open email on his computer screen.  Since moving the school into the tower, he hasn’t had to interact with SI staff or lawyers much, except the few emails he’s had to send in apology to tower security, and the one encounter he had with Mr. Hogan in regards to Peter Parker.  Now he has to email Mr. Stark, and he’s not looking forward to it.  He still can’t believe their luck in getting to use three floors of Stark Tower for the school year, and he worries frequently that he or his staff or the students will do or say something that will cause Mr. Stark to rescind his offer.  If they have to leave the tower, Jim doesn’t know what they’ll do for the rest of the school year.

It’s just insurance paperwork, he tries to reassure himself.  All the same, it’s something Mr. Stark will have to sign himself.  Jim had tried to email the SI legal team, but had been sent an email back only a few minutes later telling him to email Mr. Stark.

He braces himself and then reaches out to the keyboard, typing out a quick message.  He reads and re-reads it three times, checking for spelling errors and wording.  He wants to make it clear that even though it’s a time sensitive issue, he’s not demanding an audience with the man.  Jim is flexible and can send the paperwork to him however he wants, including faxing it.

As soon as the email is sent, Jim takes a deep breath and tries to relax.  It’s fine, it will all be fine, he reassures himself.  Midtown’s insurance company just needs clarification on a few things and needs some more signatures.  Something about fire suppression systems within the building, earthquake preparedness, and evacuation protocols.  There are other things, but Jim hadn’t included all of that in the email.

He stands up, getting ready to go out to the office and grab a cup of coffee, because it’s early and he’d had to skip making coffee at home in order to get in early to get this taken care of.  He barely makes it to his office door before the tower AI is talking to him.  He startles, but then settles when he realizes what’s going on.

“Mr. Stark can sign the papers now.  Please proceed to the elevator and I will take you to him.”

Jim nods.  Should he say something back to the AI?  The rules they’d all had to sign said the AI wouldn’t respond to them or interact with them.  “Uh, yes, thank you,” he says.  The AI doesn’t respond, and Jim takes a moment to smooth down the front of his button up shirt and tie.  He grabs his suit jacket and pulls it on before leaving his office and turning to go to the elevator.  Once he’s inside and the door is closed, it starts rising without him having to push any of the buttons.  His eyes travel nervously to the display above the buttons and he watches as the elevator rises past the third floor.  It’s somewhere around level fifty when he wonders just how high he’s going.  Mr. Stark must be in his office, he thinks, and it makes sense that the owner of the company would have his office somewhere near the top of the tower in order to get the best views.

At the 80th floor the elevator door opens and the tower AI speaks from the ceiling again.  “Please step out of the elevator, and then get into the elevator immediately to your left.”

Jim steps out and looks around the empty hallway.  Just a few feet away is another elevator.

“This one?” he asks, and this time the tower AI responds.

“Yes.”

He steps inside the second elevator and it starts to rise again.  He smooths down the front of his shirt nervously again, and then again just before the elevator stops and the door opens.  He looks up at the panel and sees that it says 93.  93?  Isn’t that the very top of the tower where Mr. Stark’s penthouse is?

His eyes leave the display and his heart starts to race when he realizes he’s been brought right up to the penthouse, even though it’s not the penthouse in front of him, but a four foot long hall that ends in a door.

“This is where I’m supposed to be?” he asks.

“Affirmative,” the AI responds.

Jim takes a deep breath, walks the few feet to the door, and knocks.  A minute later the door opens, not to reveal Mr. Stark, but Peter Parker in socks, pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, his hair sticking up in the back like maybe he’d just woken up.  All the anxious thoughts racing through Jim’s mind skid to a halt.

“Oh, hey Mr. Morita.”  Peter looks around the little entry hall to see if there’s anyone else there.  Then he steps aside and says, “Do you wanna come in?  Are you here to see Mr. Stark?”

Jim nods and takes a tentative step forward into the penthouse.  Peter closes the door behind him.  “The tower AI gave me permission to come up to see Mr. Stark.”  Jim has flipped back and forth over the possibility of Mr. Stark’s son being Peter a dozen times.  Every time he rules Peter out, something happens to make Jim consider him again.  The head of tower security being on Peter’s emergency pick up list, or Peter racing through the halls after school with his arms full of snacks, or Peter returning to the tower two hours after school let out just as Jim is leaving, even though it’s not an Academic Decathlon day.  After all this time, it’s Peter, and Jim doesn’t understand how it can be.  It is him, because sweet, innocent, helpful Peter Parker is standing right in front of him in his pajamas in Tony Stark’s penthouse, but it still doesn’t make sense.

Peter pads away to the large open kitchen.  “You want a bowl of cereal Mr. Morita?  I think he’s in the shower so you might have to wait a few minutes.”

Jim’s eyes travel around the posh modern penthouse, from the large living area with a fireplace and a massive TV above it, to the wall of windows overlooking the city in the kitchen and dining area.  Then they find Peter sitting on a stool at the kitchen island eating a bowl of chocolate cereal.  “No, uh… thank you Mr. Parker.”

“Coffee?” Peter asks, and before Jim can say no, Peter gets up and goes to the coffee pot to pour him a cup.  Jim shifts awkwardly, feeling uncomfortable with the paperwork he needs signed in hand, and then at Peter’s encouraging look gives in and walks to the kitchen.  He feels like he’s intruding.  He’d never expected the tower AI to bring him all the way up to Tony Stark’s home.

Peter goes to the fridge and pulls out two different flavors of creamer and sets them both next to the mug of coffee.  Jim is interested to note the mug is Spider Man themed.  He wonders if it belongs to Peter, because he had assumed everything owned by Tony Stark would be high quality.  Though as he pours some creamer into the coffee and takes a sip, he reasons that a mug is a mug no matter how expensive.

Peter moves back to the other side of the kitchen island and sits down to finish his bowl of cereal.  Jim thinks he should start up a conversation… ask Peter something school related, but his mind is drawing a blank.  Thankfully Peter starts up a conversation for him.

“How’s it going on the new building?” he asks.  “Is it still on schedule to finish in the summer?”

“We should be back on our own campus by the start of the next school year.  There have been some hiccups with permits, but it’s all going well.”

“I heard the school will be different?  It’s gonna look different than before?”

“Thanks to a generous anonymous donation,” Jim knows it has to have come from Mr. Stark, “the school will have several high tech robotics and chemistry labs.  Everyone is very excited.”

Peter grins.  “That’ll be so cool.  I’m definitely signing up for the advanced robotics courses next year.”  He pours a second serving of cereal into his bowl and starts eating again.  Jim is going to ask if Peter gets to use his father’s private lab or work on the Iron Man suits, but before he can, the door leading to the elevator opens and the head of tower security comes in.  Every time Jim sees him he’s struck by his hulking form and often grumpy demeanor.

“Kid,” Mr. Hogan says, walking in.  He’s typing something on a security tablet, not looking up.  “You need to clean out the backseat of my car.  There’s chip crumbs everywhere.  It’s disgusting.”  He looks up as he comes into the kitchen and spots Jim standing there.  His face goes dark for a moment, but then he looks at Peter and gives a slight nod of his head towards Jim.

“I set a lab on fire yesterday in Chemistry.  He’s here to expel me,” Peter says like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Jim stiffens at the lie and Mr. Hogan just stares.  Then he snorts and says, “Yeah, that’s something you would do.”  He ignores what Peter said after that and says, “I expect the back seat to be vacuumed out by dinner.  If it’s not, you’re not allowed to eat back there anymore.”

“Sure Happy.  That wasn’t me by the way, it was Ned.”

“Your friend, your mess to clean up.  I’m not a butler.  That’s not in my job description.”

“I’ll clean it up.  It’ll be better than new.”

“I don’t need better than new, I just need the crumbs gone.”

Peter grins at him and Happy turns to leave.  “By five kid.  Don’t make me come up here and drag you down to the parking garage.”

“Got it Happy!”

The man disappears into the elevator and Jim watches Peter.  He has a little smile on his face.  He’s not bothered at all by being told to go clean up the head of security’s car.  Jim finds himself suddenly with conflicting views on Peter.  Peter is clearly Tony Stark’s son.  He lives in a penthouse at the top of a billion dollar tower.  His father has the resources to house an entire high school at the drop of a hat.  Tony Stark is powerful, not only as Iron Man and as an Avenger, but as a businessman, and likely in the political world as well.  That means Peter is powerful by proxy.  Jim is sure that if Peter wanted to, he could get the head of security fired if he complained to his father.

That view doesn’t match up to what Jim knows of Peter Parker though.  Peter Stark, he corrects himself.  Peter goes out of his way to help people.  He carries heavy boxes of books and equipment for people.  He holds the door for people, and even when other students are being mean to him, he doesn’t ask teachers for help.  He could have complained to his dad and had him throw his weight around to get Flash Thompson kicked out of school since Midtown is now housed in the tower.  That hasn’t happened though.

“Hey kiddo, you about ready for school?”

Jim turns as Mr. Stark comes out of another room and crosses the large living space into the kitchen.  Tony leans down and gives Peter a quick kiss on top of his hair and then moves around the island to make himself a cup of coffee.

“Almost,” Peter says.  Tony turns to look at him, eyes sweeping over his messy hair and pajamas.

“You’re enjoying living close to school just a little too much Roo.  Hurry up and go get dressed or you’ll be late.”

Peter shoots him a grin and slides off the stool.  He deposits his bowl into the sink and disappears into a room just off of the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.

“Mr. Stark,” Jim says, clearing his throat.  He always feels a little nervous when talking to the man.  He holds out the forms and says, “I’m sorry to intrude.  I didn’t realize your AI was bringing me to your home.”

Tony shrugs and takes the files.  He points at the Spider Man mug Jim is still holding and says, “Want a refill?”

“No, thank you.”

“Kid likes you if he let you use his mug.”

Jim looks down at it, filing away the information that Peter’s favorite hero is Spider Man. It’s surprising given who his father is, but then again, Spider Man is popular with a lot of students at Midtown.

Tony spreads the paperwork out before him on the kitchen island and his eyes scan over it for long moments.  He picks up one of the papers and reads it as he takes a drink of his coffee.

“This won’t be an issue,” he says.  “I’ll give these to Pepper to sign.”

“Thank you.  Again, I’m sorry to intrude.”

Tony waves him away.  “Sometimes this place is a revolving door of people coming in and out.  Pete’s friends, Happy, Avengers.  I’m used to it.  I figured you had a busy day ahead and wouldn’t have time to get these to me later.”

Jim stares at him for a moment.  Tony Stark thought Jim had a busy schedule?  That was… considerate of him.  Also not something Jim would have expected, though maybe he should have considering the man is allowing Midtown to take up three whole floors of his tower for nine months.

“Well, thank you.”

Jim is about to excuse himself and go back to the elevator, because school starts in five minutes, but Peter opens the door to what Jim assumes is his room, and comes back into the kitchen, dressed for the day with his backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Bye dad,” Peter says, and he tries to duck out of a hug his father is trying to give him.  Tony snags him before he can get away.  He reaches up to the back of Peter’s hair where some hair is still sticking up and tries to smooth it down.

“C’mon, I’m gonna be late.”

“Your hair is a mess.”

“That’s the way I like it!”  Peter gives Tony a hug and then makes a break for the elevator.  Jim seizes his chance and follows after him.

While they’re waiting for the elevator to come back up, Tony calls, “You’re cleaning out Happy’s car after school right?  I don’t want to hear him complaining for another two days about it.”

“I’m on it.”  The elevator door slides open and Peter and Jim step inside.  “See you later.”

“Have a good day Roo.”

As the door slides closed, Jim wonders about the nickname.  Peter pulls out his cellphone and his fingers fly over the screen, typing out a text as he leans against the elevator wall.  Jim can only assume it’s to one of his friends.  He itches to ask Peter all of his questions… like if Parker is a fake last name they use to conceal his identity, and who May Parker is if not Peter’s aunt that he lives with (or that Jim thought he lived with).  He wants to know if he’ll be receiving an NDA later that will tell him he’s not allowed to reveal Peter’s identity to anyone.  And he wants to know why Peter seems so well rounded after growing up like he has.

“Mr. Parker, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

Peter looks up, and for a moment looks like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Sure.  You want to know about- um… about me living up there?  In the penthouse with Mr. Stark I mean.”

Jim shifts slightly, hands in his pockets.  Maybe he shouldn’t have asked at all.  He gives a little nod.

“Mr. Stark adopted me.  I mean, half adopted me?  It’s complicated.”

Jim frowns.  That’s not the answer he’d been expecting at all.  Peter continues to ramble on on his own though, so Jim listens as the elevator door opens on the 80th floor, they get out and change elevators and continue heading down through the tower.  “My parents died, so I lived with my aunt and uncle.  But then I got the internship with Mr. Stark, and I was here a lot, and May put him on my emergency contact list to pick me up from school if something happened.  Then May got an offer to go on a trip for Doctors Without Borders, and she really wanted to go.  So Mr. Stark adopted me so he’d have joint custody with May.  I live here now.  May was supposed to be gone for six months, but uh… she really likes working abroad, and Mr. Stark likes having me here, so… yeah.  I- I live here now.  May’s supposed to come back for Christmas for a couple days.  She hasn’t been back in a year.”

Peter seems just as nervous as Jim felt up in the penthouse.  He’s giving him a look like he wonders if his principal will believe him.  It’s definitely a lot to take in.  The story is unbelievable, but then again, Jim never would have believed he’d be running a school in the lower levels of Stark Tower.  He doesn’t like to see Peter looking so nervous, so he says, “That’ll be nice to see her then when she comes back.  Will she be staying here with you?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, visibly relaxing a little.  “There’s a guest room.  She doesn’t have an apartment anymore since she’s living abroad.  We cleaned it out a few weeks ago.”

“I see.”

They’re nearing the Midtown levels when Peter says nervously, “Uh, Mr. Morita?”  He still looks nervous when Jim looks over at him.  “I- I’m sorry about Happy… coming and taking me that day when I had the- when I broke my nose.”

“There’s no need to be sorry,” Jim says.  “We would have sent you home anyway.”

“Yeah but… I don’t want to be treated any different than anyone else.  And, uh…” Peter grips and ungrips the strap of his backpack nervously.  “Can you maybe not… tell anyone?  About- me I mean?  About Mr. Stark?”

Jim remembers Mr. Stark’s words from the day of the fire, about not telling him who his son is because it might seem too much like nepotism.  Jim wonders if it’s something Mr. Stark is against, or if it’s something Mr. Stark had kept in mind because it’s something Peter is nervous about.  What else had he said that day over the phone?  ‘He’d be upset with me if people found out and then started treating him differently.’

Jim can be discreet.  He doesn’t need to sign an NDA.  “Your secret is safe with me Mr. Parker,” he says just before the elevator door opens.  He thinks the bright smile Peter flashes him is all he needs to keep his secret.  Jim moves off for his office, smiling to himself.  Peter is a great kid.  He thinks now more than ever that Mr. Harrington must know Peter’s secret too.  If it’s something Peter wants, they both have good reason to keep his identity hidden, especially since it’s not harming anybody.

* * *

Peter thinks it’s interesting how a really good day can turn into a really bad day at the drop of a hat.  Early that morning Peter had left the tower to meet Ned, MJ and Zayne at the coffee shop.  They’d spent forty five minutes drinking coffee and hot chocolate, and laughing with each other.  It turns out that when he’s not completely silent and moody, Zayne is pretty funny.  He can see why MJ wants them all to be friends.

He’d also found out on their way back to the tower from the coffee shop that MJ and Zayne aren’t dating, and that she doesn’t like him as anything more than a friend.  He found that out when she took Peter’s hand as they walked down the sidewalk in the rain.  He had looked down at their hands, fingers intertwined, and then back up at her face.  She’d been smiling at him.  “Got something to say loser?”

“No,” he’d said with a smile, his heart beating rapidly.  “I just thought… you and Zayne.”

“Just friends,” she had said with a smile.

Coffee with friends, holding hands with MJ, and then getting his Spanish test back in first period and finding out he’d aced it had all made for a really great start to his day.

Not even Flash harassing him in second period calculus could dampen his spirits.  It’s not until passing time between second and third period when Peter is trying to get to his locker that things start to turn south.  And when things go wrong for Peter, they go really wrong, like they always do.

“She’s a slut.”

Peter frowns at the word the boy down the hall had thrown out so casually.  He doesn’t like that kind of language, and he doesn’t like name calling.  He tries to ignore it as he twists the dial on his locker, putting in the combination.

“Psh, probably,” another boy says.  It’s two of the older boys that have been harassing him for the past couple weeks along with Flash.  “How else you think she got the job?  I mean… CEO?  Everyone knows it’s true.”

Peter stiffens.  Who exactly are they talking about?  “Dude, there’s no way she just went from personal assistant to CEO unless she was sleeping with the boss.”

Peter slams his locker door closed, the loud noise echoing down the hallway.  Both boys look up and grin when they see he’s staring at them.  “Problem?” one of them asks.

“Who are you talking about?”  Peter thinks it doesn’t really matter who they’re talking about, it’s wrong either way.

“Pepper Potts.  I mean, you know how to get promotions at SI right?  Since you’re their intern?” the boy raises his brow and laughs.  Peter’s gut clenches.  The boy is startled when he finds that Peter has seemingly levitated down the hall the fifteen feet between them, and that they’re now face to face.

“It’s not true,” Peter says angrily, one fist gripped around his backpack strap, his other hand clenched at his side.  “She’s smart, and really good at what she does.  She’s the best CEO and she’s the best thing that could have happened to Stark Industries.”

The taller of the two boys leans down so he can look Peter in the eye.  “She’s a slu-” he doesn’t get to finish the word, because Peter punches him in the mouth, and the boy gasps for breath, startled at the sudden pain and blood sprouting from his split lip.

“Whoa Parker chill!” the other senior shouts, hand on his friend to keep him upright.  The boy Peter hit falls backwards onto his hind end anyway and looks up at Peter, shocked, fingers reaching for his split lip and coming away covered in blood.

Peter leans down and says angrily to him, “Don’t talk about my mom like that.”

He’s so angry he’s shaking.  He’s breathing hard like he just ran several miles, and both fists are clenched at his sides.

A teacher must have heard the commotion because in the next second someone is touching Peter’s arm and trying to pull him back.  “Mr. Parker, step back.”

Peter startles, shrugs out of Mr. Harrington’s grip and shouts, “Get off me!”  He becomes aware suddenly that there’s still students in the hall, watching him… watching everything that just happened.  He doesn’t give Mr. Harrington a chance to reach for him again, and stalks down the hall and around the corner, past the office and to the elevator.  He hits the button, ignores Flash telling him he’ll get in trouble for using the elevator in the middle of the day, and lets the elevator carry him up through the tower.  The elevator is just big enough for him to pace, and he does so until it lets him out at the 80th floor and he switches elevators.  He paces there too, and as soon as he gets into the penthouse hurries into his room and throws himself face first onto his bed.  He buries his face in his pillow and finally the anger starts to fade away.

The anger is replaced with a feeling of dread, because he just hit a student unprovoked, and he’s not looking forward to whatever the consequences of that will be.  His dread quickly fades away and is replaced by another feeling though.  It’s a familiar feeling he tries to push away whenever it creeps up on him.

Peter loves Tony and Pepper.  He can’t let people say things like that about them.  Kids can call him a liar, but he can’t let them say things like they had about Pepper and Tony anymore.  His stomach churns just thinking about what the same two boys had implied weeks ago about Tony… about Peter, who they didn’t believe was actually his intern, or about any interns Tony might have.  It’s all so wrong.

He loves Tony and Pepper and feels lucky that Tony adopted him.  He loves living with them in the tower.  He has nothing to complain about.

But sometimes, when he thinks about it, or in moments like these when he’s really upset and May’s not there, he feels a little bit like May abandoned him… like she left him as soon as she knew there was someone else to take care of him.

He’s been trying not to feel hurt by it for over a year, because she’s not related to him by blood, and because she and Ben had just gotten stuck with him.  They’d never made it seem like that… she and Ben had always made it seem like they were happy to take care of him.  May leaving… going across the planet and not coming back for over a year makes him question that though.  He feels more and more like Pepper and Tony are his mom and dad the longer he’s here, and he loves it, but the more he feels like they’re his mom and dad, the more he feels like he’s lost May, and that stings.  It hurts, and he doesn’t know how to make that go away.

Peter doesn’t know how long he lies there on top of his covers, face buried in his pillow when he hears Happy come in through his bedroom door behind him.  He doesn’t knock, he just stands there for a few moments in silence before he says, “You have to go back to school.”

“Don’t wanna,” Peter says, voice muffled by the pillow.

“You don’t have much of a choice.”

Peter sits up, eyes red and hair a little messed up.  “Don’t make me go back down there.  Please?”

Happy looks sympathetic, which is not something Peter usually sees from him.  “You didn’t want to be treated differently, remember?  I let you stay up here, that’s you getting preferential treatment.”

“I’m gonna be in so much trouble,” Peter says, feeling miserable.

“You’ll probably get suspended,” Happy says.

“Not- not at school,” he says.  “They’re… they’re gonna be so mad at me.”

“I don’t know what happened, but hitting someone isn’t like you.  Boss and Mrs. Boss know that.”

“Do they know what happened?”

“I was notified by FRIDAY but your principal also called me since I’m on your contact list.  You ran off during school hours and they had to know where you went.  I called Tony.”

Peter lets out a long breath and hangs his head.  Tears are threatening to spill out of his eyes without his permission.

“You know Boss has done a lot worse right?” Happy says.  “He’s yelled at board members, and a couple of times he’s knocked cameras out of reporter’s hands.”

“That’s worse than hitting somebody?”

“That’s just a couple things.  Whatever this is, I don’t think they’ll be too mad at you.  It’ll work out.”

Peter doesn’t believe him, but he gets up to follow him back to the elevator anyway.  He leaves his backpack behind in his bedroom.

They don’t talk again as the elevator carries them down.  When they get to the principal’s office, Peter is dismayed to find Tony sitting inside with Principal Morita.  His dad looks upset, but also worried.

“Mr. Parker, please come in and have a seat,” Mr. Morita says.  He looks nervous, and Peter hates that.  As soon as he’s inside, Happy shuts the door and leaves him there to deal with all of this alone.  He’s not alone though, he reminds himself when he glances at Tony again.

“Tell us what happened,” Mr. Morita says, and Peter shakes his head.  He can’t.  He won’t repeat what the boys had said.  It was only words.  He can’t even claim that he was getting bullied, because he wasn’t in that moment.  Peter has no excuses for what he did.

“Pete?” Tony prompts, voice tight.

He shakes his head again.  “Nothing happened.  I hit him.”

“If you wont tell us, we can pull up security footage,” Tony says.  Peter grimaces and begs Tony with his eyes not to.  Tony shakes his head and voice still tight asks, “So that’s it?  You just hit a kid for no reason?  He’s just standing there in the hall and you walk up to him and punch him?”

“Pretty much,” Peter croaks.  He’s afraid Tony is going to push it, because Happy is right, it’s not like Peter to resort to violence.  Even as Spider Man he does his best to incapacitate people with his webs rather than fight them.  And he has never hit someone at school before.  Not once.

He’s surprised when Tony seems to let it drop.  “All right,” Tony says, bringing out his ‘all business’ voice.  He looks at Mr. Mortia.  “How long is he suspended for?  Or is he being expelled?”

“Expelled?  No, no of course not Mr. Stark.”  The anxiety in Mr. Morita’s voice and posture is back.  Peter probably should be expelled, but Mr. Morita is afraid to punish him because he’s tied to Mr. Stark.

Peter hangs his head and is surprised when Tony reaches out and puts a hand on Peter’s back and rubs a couple times as though he’s trying to calm him down.  “Look, I don’t want him expelled, but whatever your decision is, it won’t affect Midtown being allowed to stay at the tower through the end of the school year.  We’re not asking for special treatment.  I know that’s not what Peter wants.”

Jim stares at Tony, surprised, but then nods.  “It’s his first offense, and aside from a split lip and a bruise, the other boy has no broken bones or lasting injuries.  For a first offense like this it’s in school suspension for one week.  He’ll still have to come to school every day, but he’ll spend the day in a room with a teacher doing schoolwork.  He’ll still be allowed to have lunch in the cafeteria and attend PE as that class requires attendance for a grade.”  Jim looks at Peter, who is still hanging his head and leaning forward and says, “I would like to know what happened though Peter.  I’ve never seen you act like this before and I’m surprised.”

“Nothing,” Peter says, looking up.  “They were just… mouthing off.  I shouldn’t have hit him.”

“What were they saying?”

Peter swallows hard.  “It was bad, you don’t want to know.”

“Were they bullying you?”

He shakes his head slowly, mouth closed, not looking at Mr. Morita, just staring off into space.  “Not, not this time.”

“This time?” Tony asks.  Peter grimaces and looks at his dad.  “Are you getting bullied?”

“It’s- it’s not anything.  Not like in PE with the basketball.  It’s just words.”

“Depending on what was said, that still counts as bullying,” Mr. Morita says.

“But I wasn’t getting bullied today.  We’re not here to talk about that.”

“No,” Tony says, “I want to hear about the bullying.  Do I have to ask FRIDAY for footage of that?”

“Please don’t.  It’s nothing, ok?  They just… make fun of me because they think I’m lying about having an internship.  They say stupid things and call me a liar, and ask me stupid questions.”

“And today?  What was bad enough that they said that made you want to hit that kid?” Tony asks.

Peter pales.  “You really don’t want to know… I’m not going to repeat it.  I don’t want to.”

Silence hangs between the three of them for a few moments, and then Tony says, “Are we done here?  Does his suspension start today or tomorrow?”

“I think I have everything I need for now,” Mr. Morita says.  “If you have further information about what happened, please let me know.  He can go home for the day.”

“Thank you.”

Tony stands up and Peter rises too.  He’s aware of how tense Mr. Stark is beside him as they leave the principal’s office and make their way to the elevator.  As soon as the doors close, Peter stiffens when Mr. Stark wraps his arms around him.

“What the hell happened Underoos?” he asks quietly.  Peter sags against him in relief.  Happy had been right about this too.  Tony seems to be mad… unsettled, but he’s hugging Peter instead of yelling at him.  Tony has been angry with Peter before… after he took part in the ferry being split in half, and for hacking his spider suit, and for other things like not telling someone as soon as he’d been stabbed.  This feels different though.  It doesn’t feel like he’s going to get yelled at.

“I just wanna go home,” Peter says, and they ride up through the tower the rest of the way in silence, Tony’s arms wrapped tightly around him until they have to switch elevators.

Tony makes Peter a sandwich for lunch and asks again if Peter wants to tell him what happened.  Peter doesn’t, and Tony leans on the counter of the kitchen island.  “I’m going to watch the security video,” he says.

“S’nothing.”

“No, not when my kid decides to hit somebody.  Whatever was said, I want to know.”

“You’re just gonna be mad at me.”  It was just words, Peter tells himself again.  He hit a kid over words.  The guy hadn’t threatened anybody.  Tony will be more upset when he sees that Peter really had no reason to hit him at all.

“I can’t promise I won’t be upset,” Tony says, and Peter looks up at him.  “But we’re family.  Whatever happened, we’ll figure it out together.”  Peter knows it’s true, he’s seen it over and over again.  Mr. Stark hadn’t even flinched or acted surprised when May asked him to have joint custody of him.  And then when May had talked about taking the opportunity to travel with Doctors Without Borders, Tony had told Peter he’d move into the tower with them, like it had already been decided and was no big deal.  Whatever came their way, they always tackled it together.

Peter nods and Tony comes around the kitchen island and puts his hand on Peter’s shoulder for a moment, and then moves past him to go down to his lab.  Peter washes his plate and then goes to his room and shuts the door.  He sits on the edge of his bed and just waits for his dad to come in and tell him how stupid he was for hitting that guy.  He waits, but after half an hour of sitting there he asks FRIDAY if his dad is even still in the upper levels of the tower.  His heart sinks when FRIDAY announces that he’s back in the principal’s office.

It’s a full hour until his dad comes back up to the penthouse.  “You went back to the school,” Peter says when Tony comes into the bedroom and sits down on Peter’s rolling computer chair.

“Apparently FRIDAY has been keeping track of all of the bullying that’s been done to you.  As soon as I watched the video of what happened today, she had others cued up for me to watch.  I took them to the principal.”

“It’s not fair,” Peter says.  “This wouldn’t happen for other kids.”

“Kid, FRIDAY had videos of bullying happening around the school, not just for you.  I turned all the videos over to the principal.”

Peter looks up, mouth hanging open.  “What?”

“FRIDAY takes SI’s anti-bullying policy very seriously.”

He rolls the chair towards Peter and then puts a hand on Peter’s shoulder.  “It’s not just words kid.  The things they said… that’s just wrong.”

“It was just a few times.”

“Try thirty seven in four weeks,” Tony says.

“That’s how many FRIDAY recorded for everybody?”

“That’s how many she recorded of them bullying you.  That’s just the big things, not the little incidents here and there.”

Peter shrugs.

“Mr. Morita said you’re still suspended, but not for a week, only for three days.  Because it was the same group of kids bullying you for over a month, what was said today was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Peter frowns, not understanding.

“You were provoked,” Tony clarifies.

“I wasn’t though!”

“Yeah, you were, for weeks.”

“So… they’re suspended too?”

“Most of them will be suspended.  Everyone that was caught in more than one instance of bullying, against you or anyone else, will be required to attend an anti-bullying seminar put on by SI.”

Peter frowns.  “What’s that?”

“HR hosts training for new employees, including training on how to treat co-workers, bullying, harassment… HR is going to put on an anti-bullying seminar at the school and they’ll be required to attend.  And a couple of the kids that bullied you are going to be recommended to see the school counselor.”

“Why?”

“The things they said made the principal uncomfortable.  Some of what those guys were saying classifies as sexual harassment.”

“It’s no big deal,” Peter says again.

“Except it is.”

“I still hit them over words.”

“Yeah, that happened,” Tony says, “and it’s not ok, which is why you still have three days of in school suspension.  But,” Peter looks up at him as his dad pauses.  “I’m not mad Underoos.  I just want you to tell me and Pep when stuff like this is happening so we can take care of it before it gets this bad.  There’s no reason for you to sit through bullying like that day after day.”

Ned and MJ had told him similar things in the past few weeks.  Ned had told him that the year before when Flash had bullied him all year long.  And Happy had reminded Peter earlier that day, just like his dad had, that families figure things out together.

Suddenly Peter feels like a dam inside him is cracking.  He scrunches up his face, not wanting to cry, because he feels stupid for feeling the way he does about May, and for getting so mad that he hit a kid at school.

He leans forward towards Tony, and his dad pulls him into a hug.  “Hey, what is it?” he says softly.

“I miss May,” Peter chokes.  “It’s been a year… she didn’t come back.”

“Hey, she’s coming back for Christmas Roo.  That’s just a couple months away.”

Peter knows.  He keeps trying to remind himself of that.  “She doesn’t want to be here.  She doesn’t want me.”

“Not true.  She loves you.  You talked to her this week didn’t you?”  May calls once a week like clockwork to check in with Peter, to let him know where she’s working and that she’s ok.  She asks about his schoolwork, his friends, Spider Man, and Tony and Pepper.  But she’s not there.  She was only supposed to be gone for six months and come back, but she never came back.

“Yeah,” Peter mumbles, face buried in his dad’s shirt.

Tony reaches up and runs his hand through the back of Peter’s hair.  “Roo, you know I want you, don’t you?  Pep and I… we’re really lucky to have you here with us.”

Peter gives a wet laugh into Tony’s shoulder and pulls back.  That Peter is welcome in their home has never been a question.  He feels wanted and loved.  He just wishes he didn’t have to lose May to gain Mr. Stark as a dad.

“Yeah, I know,” he says.  “Love you too Mr. Stark.”

Tony lets go of him and ruffles his hair.  “I’ll see if I can’t get May in a week earlier for Christmas.  I know that doesn’t fix things but… she loves you kid.  If you’re missing her this much, we can have a talk with her when she gets here in December to see if we can work out something different.”

“Different?”

“I can help her find another job here in the city, and you can move back in with her.”

Panic rises up in Peter's chest for a moment.  “I don’t- I wanna stay here.”  He doesn’t want to move again, and upend his life for a second time.  May leaving and him moving into the tower had been a big change.  A good change, but a big one.  Now he’s settled, and he doesn’t want to leave.  He wants May back, but at the same time feels selfish for wanting that.  If Peter had his way, May would live in the tower too, but he knows that’s not what she wants, and that she’s happy working for Doctors Without Borders.

“I want to stay with you,” Peter says again.

Tony looks a little stunned, but his eyes are also looking suspiciously wet.

“Then you’re not going anywhere.  I want you to stay too, so does Pep.  Besides, Happy’s an ugly crier, and I don’t want to see him cry if you decide to move out.”

Peter laughs again and swipes his hoodie sleeve across his eye.

“Come on kid, let’s go watch a movie or something.  Or we can go down to the lab if you want.”

Peter follows him to the elevator and down to the lab.  They pull out a project they’ve been working on for weeks after school when Peter’s not hanging out with his friends, and before long there are bits of metal and circuitry scattered around them on the metal workbench.

“I’m telling Pep you called her mom,” Tony says after half an hour.

Peter looks up at him.  “What?”

“I heard you call her mom in the recording.  In a couple recordings.”

“Mr. Stark…” Peter pauses when his dad gives him an exasperated look.  Peter knows what the look is about.  He switches back and forth pretty freely between calling him Mr. Stark and dad, but knows his dad would prefer if he stopped calling him Mr. Stark.

“She’ll love it,” Tony says.

“I don’t want her to know what’s in the videos.”

“She’s gonna want to know why you were suspended, and she’s not going to take, ‘He said something and I just hit him,’ as an answer.  Trust me kid, I’ve tried and it doesn’t work.”

Peter gives him a hard look, but can’t hold the look as his dad pushes a freshly soldered circuit board towards him so he can add the MEMs micro mirror he’s been working on to it.  He loves working with his dad in the lab.

“Besides, we don’t keep things from each other.”

“You didn’t tell her about the explosion in the lab last week,” Peter jokes.

Tony points the screwdriver at him.  “No, and you’re not going to either.  She’ll lock us both out of here.”

Peter grins and Tony does too.

“I just… don’t want her to know what they were saying about her.”

“FRIDAY,” Tony says, looking at the ceiling.

“Yes Boss.”

“Make a copy of the recording to show Pep when she gets off work tonight.  Fuzz out the words the boys said about her.  Cover them up with static or something.”

“Done Boss.”

“There you go kid, how about that?”

Peter nods.

Tony is right.  Later, when Pepper comes up to the penthouse around six, the first question she asks is what happened at school, because FRIDAY or Happy, or maybe even Tony told her he was suspended.  Tony explains about the bullying, the bullying seminar that’s going to happen later in the week in the Midtown cafeteria, and then he has FRIDAY pull up the footage of the incident that morning.  When the video plays, there’s static playing over the words of the boys.  Peter reels back and hits the taller boy, and then leans over him and says in a hard tone, “Don’t talk about my mom like that.”

The recording plays for a few more seconds until Peter storms off, and then cuts out.

Pepper frowns and says, “What did they say about Peter’s mother?  Or were they talking about May?”

“They were talking about you,” Peter says, face set in a frown, “and you don’t wanna know what they were saying.  I don’t wanna repeat it.”

Surprise filters across her face.  “Me?”

“He’s right, you don’t want to know,” Tony adds.

She puts her hand up over her heart like she's touched that Peter called her mom, and presses her lips together to stop tears from coming, but they come anyway.

“Come here sweetheart,” she tells Peter, and Peter gets up and steps toward her, wrapping his arms around her.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.  “You don’t have to defend me though sweetheart.  I don’t know what they said, but people say things about me all the time.  They always have.  They say things about your dad too.”

“It was stupid,” Peter says.  “It was just words.”

“I know,” she says.  “Sometimes words are the worst.”

Peter agrees with her.  Sometimes words are the worst.  Whether it’s Flash laughing at him because he’s an orphan, or kids calling him a liar, or implying things they shouldn’t.  Words cut, and Peter is glad his dad talked to the principal about the bullying.  He loves going to Midtown, and he loves going to school there in the tower.  School hadn’t felt like a place he wanted to be for the last month though.  Maybe now things will change and he can start to enjoy going to school again.

Pepper places a  kiss on the top of Peter’s hair and says, “How about Chinese food and a movie?”

He grins up at her as he pulls away.  When Tony is working late in his lab, or is away at the compound upstate overnight, or has a late meeting, Peter and Pepper eat Chinese food and watch a movie.  It reminds Peter of sitting on the couch and watching sitcoms with May while they eat Thai food.  He hopes that she’ll make it back for Christmas, but if she doesn’t, he knows he’ll be ok.  Stab wounds, May leaving and Peter moving, Midtown burning down and bullies… whatever happens, they’ll figure it out as a family.  They always do.