st_arkintern | Tony Stark Voice Test

"I don't know," Peter admits. "I'm not sure if it's possible for her to freak out more than she has already."

It's true. It was even worse than the time with the ferry. If he hadn't been so upset then, she probably would have been more upset than she wound up being.

May really cared about him. And that's why she was freaking out. Even though he didn't realize it at the time, he was pretty sure Mr. Stark felt the same way, even though Peter was sure he wouldn't ever admit it.

"Famous last words." Tony checked his watch. It was getting close to 4:00 in the afternoon, and he recalled Peter mentioning that May tended to work until evening.

"If I've got the all clear, I'll head over now. Being grounded doesn't mean you can't have visitors, right? Some may enter, none--none being you--may leave." Tony balled up the chip bag resolutely, pitching it at a circular metallic waste bin across the room.

"You're the princess in the castle, I'll be the plumber that rescues you from Aunt Koopa." A pause. "That was a joke. You can laugh."

Tony's words are enough to pull a smile out of Peter. It's not quite a laugh, but it's as close as they're going to get right now.

"May's probably going to get home in two and a half hours," he tells her. "Maybe a little more if the trains are running late." There was no risk of early arrival because of transit; Peter had never heard of the trains arriving early. At least in New York. Maybe it was better elsewhere.

"Do you think you can be here before then?"

"Can Iron Man clock in at Mach 5? The answer is yes, though I use more discretion in residential areas." Tony supported his phone in his newly freed hand, sliding up from the lounge.

"You a betting man?" Tony inquired, satisfied with the small hint of levity in Peter's voice. "Six minutes. Tops. Winner sets the terms."

"Six minutes?" Peter draws back the curtain to look outside; the roads are blocked up, probably all the way back to Queens Blvd. Downstairs, he can see some of the kids from the 3rd and 4th floor drawing outside with sidewalk chalk. The old lady who lives next door looks like she's chatting with someone Peter doesn't recognize.

Eyes are everywhere. If Tony's going to make an appearance as Iron Man, he's almost certainly going to be noticed.

"I'm really not sure you can do it, Mr. Stark," he says, almost apologetically. "Not without drawing some attention."

'Oh Spidey of little faith.' Tony kept that quip to himself. Few could have doubted his capabilities so flagrantly and gotten off as lightly as Peter was, but it was nearly impossible to be anything but impishly giddy at the imminent look on the boy's face when he was to be inevitably proven wrong.

"Think of something good, kid. Aaaaaaaaaaand go." A tap of the screen, and the line was cut.

Peter looks down at his phone as the screen blips back to his Call Log. He frowns and tosses it on his bed.

"Think of something good?" he murmurs. He's not even sure what he'd have Tony do if he actually made it. Maybe... give him a tour of his lab?

Peter feels a jolt of excitement at the idea, enough that he really does hope Tony's late. It'd be hard for him to ask for something like this normally; he didn't want to impose. But if he got to set the terms, that was totally different.

Peter pushes open the window and pokes his head out, looking up, as if he can expect to see Iron Man descend at any moment.

The minutes crept by as mundanely as could be, the sky filled with the usual fare of crows, planes, or the occasional drone. The ground was no more exciting, occupied by the usual sights and sounds of New York. While never boring, simply nothing screamed that Stark-level of pizzazz anywhere to be found.

The five minute mark hit. Still nothing.

Peter ducks his head back inside his room and picks up his cell phone to check the time. Five minutes. Not quite six. He presses his lips together, tosses the phone back on the bed, then ducks his head back out in anticipation...

...and hopes he doesn't look foolish if it turns out that Tony's entrance is totally normal.

Seconds tick by to slowly add up to the final sixth minute. A hot breeze swells and passes through the window despite the dully overcast conditions, accompanied by a muted whoosh of air.

"You'll catch flies like that, kid." Tony Stark's characteristically dry voice sounded from thin air.

Before the boy had any time to puzzle over it, Tony's equally characteristically smirking features popped out from nowhere, inches away from Peter's own. It looked as if someone had begun to paint his portrait against the New York skyline and simply stopped at the face. (Alternatively, if he had stuck his face through one of those corny cut-out boards, but with buildings.)

"Open the window some more and back up. The stealth armor is a sleek beast, but she's still a lady. You wouldn't let a lady bump into things during her grand entrance."

Edited 2018-07-19 09:00 (UTC)

Peter's mouth drops just in time for Tony to make that quip about flies --

-- only to clamp shut the second his face surfaces in front of him.

By reflex, Peter takes a step back, but stops. It's not until Tony issues his orders that Peter's mind snaps back into action, and his body with it.

"Y-yeah!"

Peter opens the window as high as he can, then scrambles backwards, leaving Tony with more than enough room to maneuver in.

It's only once Tony is safely situated inside that Peter opens his mouth again.

"You really didn't have to rush here," he insists. Still, there's no denying how moved he feels by Tony's urgency; he knows that he's very busy, and still he dropped everything immediately to be here.

It's hard for Peter not to feel touched right now.

The armor's form became visible as its chrome plating darkened and distinguished itself from its surroundings, not unlike a chameleon. Tony emerged from the armor, dusting his matching (and rather humble) black shirt and jeans combo off.

"I'm retired, kid. Also, when I make bets, I don't make it a point to lose." The man eyed Peter as he said that, mouth drawn tightly with visible reluctance. "Speaking of. ... ...I think it's up for debate who won."

"I think you were a little late, Mr. Stark," Peter says. "You were already past six minutes when you arrived, and it was probably over seven by the time you came inside."

Peter really wants that lab tour. And besides that, he knows he's right.

Even if Mr. Stark doesn't think so.

"It's called staging." Tony claimed the sole spinny chair in the room, rotating in a slow, defeated circle with the force of his rear end flopping down into it.

"I could have made a beeline for your room, if you weren't too attached to your noggin." He pushed off his foot onto the floor, making the chair jolt into another few rotations.

"Alright. Fine. Hit me with your best shot."

"That doesn't matter because you were still late when you arrived here," Peter argues.

Peter dampens his lips, reluctant to ask Tony for something that seems so simple and nerdy. If the roles were reversed, he knows that Tony would come up with something good, something fun. Asking to see his lab somehow feels seems uncool somehow.

"I want to see your lab," he says, finally. "Just... not while I'm grounded."

"My lab." Tony repeated, fixing Peter with a look as the chair slows to a stop. He opened his arms in silent inquiry, as if expecting Peter to continue.

"Just my lab? Or did you want fries with that?" He paused and backpedaled, truly registering the look that was already plaguing the boy's face before he started talking. "I'm just saying. You could have a tour and some nice gelato. A bubbly or two. Some high class--oh, right, fifteen. Scratch that."

Peter shoots Tony a disturbed look -- the same sort of disturbed look he gave him when he called May hot.

"Just the lab is fine," he tells him, though the gelato is tempting. "There's actually a lot of people online who speculate what you have in there."

Peter may or may not be a regular visitor of the superhero subreddit.

"And you have the new suit," he says, gesturing to arc reactor on his chest. "I'd really, really like to see how it was made."

It was really, really cool.

"You get one selfie." Tony held up a finger. "One."

The implications of Peter's words weren't at all lost on him.

"And not while you're in the lab. If I see any hint of snapchat or instagram while you're on my turf, I'll have Aunt May ground you for the rest of your life. Then I'll summon your spirit with voodoo and have you grounded for the rest of your death."

He gets a selfie, too?

Peter couldn't show the Berlin video trip video to anyone (Happy's orders), but he could probably get away with showing a selfie to Flash. That at least, might stop him from giving him a hard time over the Stark Internship thing.

At least Peter hoped so.

"Promise," Peter says solemnly. "Just one selfie."

Peter takes a breath and sits down on the edge of his bottom bunk. There's so many emotions muddled up inside of him right now. Worry at how they're going to handle May, warmth at his mentor's willingness to drop everything to help him, excitement at being able to see Mr. Stark's lab -- and it's overwhelming.

He looks over at Tony.

"What are we gonna tell May?" he asks, finally.

"What indeed." Tony dug around to work a bulge from his pocket, producing a Stark Industries branded stress ball. 'Who even approved these?'

"If there's one thing I learned from...recent events, we'll call it, is that compromise is essential." He tossed the ball Peter's way. "When someone has power, it's bound to frighten others. In all sorts of ways."

Peter catches the ball easily; superheightened reflexes are just one of the advantages of being bitten by a radioactive spider during a school field trip.

Peter looks down at it, then gives it a squeeze. He looks up at Tony just as he finishes his last sentence.

"What do you mean?"

Peter is oblivious.

Tony suppressed a grimace. While it was true he enlisted Peter for work on behalf of the Sokovia Accords, it wasn't a topic he was eager to discuss explicitly. Swallowing his emotion, he opened his hand to prompt Peter to pass him back the ball.

"Checks and balances. You have the power to fight crime and quite literally combat evil. It's dangerous work. Messy. Unfortunately, you don't stop being the teenage nephew to one very alarmed Aunt May. Of course she's going to use her power as your guardian to put you in check. Or, as you see it, an over correction."

Tony quirked a knowing eyebrow at Peter. He had done the exact same thing to his protege when he had gotten too big for his britches, after all.

Peter looks at Tony's hand and for a second it doesn't immediately occur to him that Tony wants the ball and not a low-five. Thankfully, it registers quickly enough that this doesn't become another hug-in-the-car incident.

Peter passes Tony the ball, then nods at what he's saying.

"Yeah, that makes sense," he says. It does. "So how do we get May to correct her over-correction?"

He didn't exactly go into the whole "stopping Vulture" thing with the hope of correcting Tony's over-correction, either. And something like that might have convinced Tony Stark of his readiness, but he's pretty sure it'd have the opposite effect on May.

"Diplomacy, kid. Diplomacy." Tony gives the muddled red ball a few good squeezes. "What approach do you use when asking permission to have your friends over? Or a puppy? Or to borrow the car on your sixteenth? Hopefully what you don't do is whine, first off."

Tony passed the ball back and forth between his hands, idly rotating a few degrees back and forth in the dark chair. He felt hilariously out of his element, but he wasn't about to admit it.

"You swear you'll be responsible. You promise to stay out of the liquor cabinet and that you'll house train Fido." Tony tossed the ball Peter's way in a high arc. "No one's gonna hand you the keys to the car if they can't trust you with it, kid."

"I don't whine," Peter protests in a tone of voice that comes across as whining.

Peter presses his lips together. He's not sure he wants to know the answer to this question.

"Do you trust me?"

He thinks that Tony does; he wouldn't give him the suit back if he didn't. But there's still that lingering doubt that if he did trust him, it was tentative -- that as soon as he screwed up, he'd take the suit away again.

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