Peter and Tony had been working all weekend on some upgrades Tony wanted to implement in his most recent iteration of the suit, the Mark 49. He was developing the Mark 50, the nanotech suit, or the bleeding edge suit, as Tony liked to call it, concurrently, but Peter had learned Tony liked to have backups for his backups, and that he was always trying to improve whatever he was already working on. Including Peter, it seemed, he thought with a grimace.

Tony was determined that Peter learn to build the armor from the inside out, and the mechanics were a little more than he was ready for. Tony had been walking him through it, but he'd gotten a phone call he'd ended up going upstairs to take. And that was over twenty minutes ago.

So now Peter was stuck, and wasn't sure how to progress to the next point in the leg assembly. The actual physicality of it was throwing him, even with instructions from FRIDAY. But that wasn't a good excuse. He laid his head down on his arms and thought for a moment, then finally raised his eyes and nose above his arms and looked at a camera sensor.

"Hey, FRIDAY?"

"Yes, Peter?"

"Do you have video of Tony assembling this part on past Marks that I could look at?"

"There is footage of almost everything Boss does in here."

Peter's head snapped up. "Perfect. Uh, do I have permission to view those?"

FRIDAY was silent for a moment. "Boss has not restricted those videos from anyone who is allowed in the lab."

"So… yes?"

"Yes."

"Great. Can you play the most recent footage of him doing this exact assembly, and maybe queue up the one before that, in case I need it?"

FRIDAY did, and the video made all the difference. "O-oh. I get it now!" After seeing the demonstration, even though it was from a far angle, he was able to repeat the motions and successfully attach the pieces.

Sitting back, rather satisfied with himself for finding a work-around during around his mentor's absence, he kept watching the continuing footage, looking at the next few steps. When he was about to move forward, he had a sudden thought.

"Hey, FRI? Is there early footage, like when Tony was making and testing his first suit? Well, second? That would have been in Malibu, right?"

"That's correct. And though there is not automatic footage like the video you just watched, he did have the bots record those early trials."

Peter's eyes widened in excitement. "Can I see some?"

"Yes."

The screen changed to a view of Tony holding a skeleton-version of the hand repulsor and aiming it at a target. Out of the frame, he heard Pepper's voice.

"I thought you said you were done making weapons."

"It is. This is a flight stabilizer. It's completely harmless." Peter's eyebrows raised at that, having seen exactly what Tony could do with his "flight stabilizers."

Predictably, Tony was blasted backwards out of the frame, and there were loud crashing noises.

"I didn't expect that."

Pepper had just started shrieking at him, off-camera, when the clip cut out. Peter snickered.

The next clip that popped up showed Tony wearing just pieces and parts of the tech found under the armor.

"Day 4, test 20, configuration 2.0. DUM-E is on fire safety and U is on camera duty."

Tony blew up various targets, only knocking himself off his feet about half the time. The clip ended when DUM-E got trigger happy and sprayed him with a fire extinguisher and he started cursing a blue streak at the unfortunate robot.

Peter covered his mouth firmly, giggling like crazy. Oh man, this was gold. Why hadn't he ever seen any of these? FRIDAY seemed to be skipping through to some of the more momentous or entertaining clips, which Peter definitely appreciated.

"Day 11, test 37, configuration 2.0. For lack of a better option, DUM-E is still on fire safety. If you douse me again, and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to a city college." Despite that warning, DUM-E followed the engineer's every move with the extinguisher nozzle until Tony warned him off again.

It was interesting to see the workshop in Malibu. He'd seen pictures, but never gotten a good feel for it. It mostly looked like a fancy garage, with a line of beautiful classic and new cars along one side. Oh. Tony was testing flight capabilities for the first time. Right there with all those pretty cars? Though he'd mostly only seen Iron Man in total control of his movements, Peter was still worried for them. With good reason, he soon found.

It actually went pretty well. At first. U wasn't the best videographer, but he managed to mostly follow Tony's movements as he wreaked minor to medium havoc through parts of his workshop.

The first actual flight was next. Peter couldn't hear the conversation he was probably having with the AI (JARVIS at that time, right?) and then suddenly Tony just blasted out of the garage. The footage cut back in with Tony lying in a pile of wreckage that used to be a beautiful blue car, and DUM-E spraying him (again) with the fire extinguisher. Ouch.

"Hey, FRI? Can you show me some later footage? Maybe like after Mark 40? How about when he was figuring out how to make the suit come assemble around him when he called it?"

FRIDAY seemed to think for a moment, then brought up some footage, still in Malibu. It was automatic footage this time, so no weird camera angles from U, but there wasn't much activity at first. Just an interesting conversation between Tony and his AI, JARVIS.

"Ow!" Tony was… injecting himself with something? Oh gosh, was that how he used to get to suit to know where to attach? With so many markers?

"Forty-six…. Forty-seven…" counted the AI. Peter watched in a bit of horror. Were those things still in Tony? That couldn't be healthy.

"Sir, please may I request just a few hours to calibrate…" The AI sounded exhausted. And somehow… more human than FRIDAY did.

"No. Forty-eight." Peter watched Tony inject himself again, flinching with his mentor's small noise of pain.

"Micro-repeater implanting sequence complete."

"As you wish, sir. I've also prepared a safety briefing for you to entirely ignore." The AI sounded both weary, and annoyed. He was not impressed with his creator.

"Which I will. Right, let's do this."

Their interaction was… different than Tony's was with FRIDAY. It sounded almost more like the back-and-forth he had with Rhodey, and sometimes with Peter now. Yes, FRIDAY was snarky sometimes, but Tony's banter with her was more surface-level. Knowing Tony as well as he did, Peter could hear… history there. Familiarity. Tony talked to FRIDAY like an assistant he was fond of. He talked to JARVIS like he was part of his family.

Peter shook the thoughts out of his head and refocused on what was going on on the screen. He watched as Tony worked out the kinks and got the suit to finally start responding, piece by piece. (With a holiday-themed soundtrack, no less. So Tony. Peter rolled his eyes fondly.)

"Alright, I think we got this. Send 'em all."

Pieces start coming faster and faster, but more or less hitting the right spots.

"Probably a little fast, slow it down. Slow it down just a… little bit." A piece nearly hit Tony in the head then.

Peter flinched as the next two pieces hit hard. The faceplate was heading for him, and Tony, who had obviously spent a lot more time in the suit at this point, executed an impressive flip to catch the piece at the right angle.

"I'm the best." Yep, there it was. The Tony he knew now was a little less self-absorbed, but his basic personality hadn't changed. Peter smiled and nodded, impressed.

Of course, that's when a random piece came flying as well, knocking the man down and scattering the suit everywhere. A laugh burst out before Peter could contain it. Tony even failed with style.

"As always, sir, a great pleasure watching you work." JARVIS was so dry, and so done with Tony at the point. You could hear it in his tone.

Peter tilted his head in interest again. He was quite curious about Tony and JARVIS's relationship. His mentor almost never mentioned him.

It was at that moment that Peter realized there was another heartbeat in the room with him. His mentor's very recognizable heartbeat. Drat his spider sense for never reacting to the man anymore.

He whirled around to see Tony standing in the doorway, his face looking a little like he'd seen a ghost. But he didn't look necessarily unhappy. Just… affected.

"Sorry, Mr. Stark. I was watching some videos because I couldn't figure out how to attach that next part without you here, so FRIDAY said it would be okay if saw how you did it last time, and then I was just curious , so I asked about seeing some of your older test videos with the suit, and then-"

"Pete. Peter. Breathe."

Peter did. "Am I in trouble? I can't tell from your face…"

"No, not in trouble." Tony walked further into the room and set his hand on Peter's shoulder. He tried not to, because no one wants to be weird, but he could feel himself lean into Tony's hand. It had been a long week, and he'd really been looking forward to hanging out here. He was probably a little frustrated that Tony had disappeared ten minutes into their session.

"I should have asked you before I watched those videos."

"Probably, but it's not a big deal. Sorry I left you on your own to figure that out. Seems like you did just fine using your available resources." He squeezed Peter's shoulder then let go to swipe at his hair affectionately before going over to inspect the work Peter had done while he was gone.

They chatted about why it went together that way, and started looking at next steps. When it had been quiet for a moment, Peter finally got brave enough to ask the question that had settled in his brain.

"Mr. Stark?"

"Yeah, kid?"

"Will you tell me about JARVIS?"

Tony was silent for a moment. "What do you want to know? Uh, he started out as just a natural-language computer interface system when I first programmed him. I named him after Edwin Jarvis, our butler. He and his wife showed me more kindness and compassion as a kid than my own parents ever had time for. So it was comforting for JARVIS's voice, and later, his personality, when I added the AI element, to be a little similar."

"I think I knew a lot of that. Tell me about him as… as a person. I feel like you guys were good friends. Like he knew you pretty well. I mean no offense, FRI, you're awesome," he looked up with a big, reassuring smile at her sensor, "but was JARVIS a little more advanced than her? He seemed it, from those few video clips where I could hear you guys talking."

Tony sat back on his stool and sighed a little. He looked sad.

Peter backtracked. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, sir. I don't mean to pry."

"No, Pete. It's okay." Tony stood up and moved to the couch, motioning for Peter to join him. the teen settled next to him, partially turned so he could see Tony's face while he talked.

"He was more advanced than FRI, because we'd had a lot more intense interaction, and for a longer time period. He did a lot of learning with me, and a lot of creating, and troubleshooting. And he dealt with me at my more self-destructive times. I think the first near-human emotion he learned was 'worry,' which I kind of hate. But it set him up for a lot of growth as an AI, and he was invaluable to me as an assistant. And as a friend. He was there for me no matter what, no matter when."

Tony laughed self-deprecatingly. "I mean I programmed him to be, but as he grew and developed, he was always taking things a step further than he absolutely needed to, and man, could I count on him to try to keep my head on straight. You heard some of his sass there in the last clip. Sometimes I wonder if I programmed that in without realizing it. I didn't necessarily mean to, but it developed pretty quickly." Tony shook his head and smiled faintly.

"When I asked him about it, he just said he was programmed to learn, and he'd been learning from me. Which, fair enough," his mentor grinned, shrugging.

Peter smiled back, intrigued at how much Tony was opening up about this.

"But… isn't he part of Vision, now?"

"Sort of. Vision has his memories, or at least can access them. And he speaks with JARVIS's voice. Which, honestly, is a little hard for me sometimes. But he's not JARVIS." He was quiet for a moment.

"I don't know what to call it. Can an AI have a soul? A spirit? They can certainly have a personality," he said, nodding at FRIDAY's sensor. "And that's gone now. And yeah, I miss him."

Peter leaned into Tony's shoulder, trying to offer a little support, but not knowing how it would be received at the moment.

Tony brought the hand that was draped behind him up to brush through Peter's hair softly. "I can tell you that he would have loved you."

"Yeah?"

"Are you kidding? You're as smart as me, but way more polite, and you try to get me to take care of myself. You've even been known to get me to bed before midnight. JARVIS would have been the president of your fan club, kid."

Tony finished his gentle hair tousle with a sideways bump, playfully pushing Peter away like he normally did when he found himself getting too mushy.

Peter grinned at the compliments, and stood up as Tony started to do the same. "Now, should we get back to work? If you're really good, I'll tell you about when JARVIS locked me out of my lab for a good twenty-four hours, after I exceeded his self-set number of explosions in one day."

"I'm always good," Peter answered back.

"Yeah, you are," Tony grinned. "Except when you're dialing up the 'teenager' setting." He picked up his micro tool-set and approached the suit they were building.

"So, I was working on the Jericho missile, which we really needed completed in order to get testing going, and I hadn't slept in probably two days, and was nursing a hangover - don't be like me, kid- and something was definitely off with my calculations…"