It must be a new record, Peter thought bitterly, for a new employee to be called into HR less than three hours after starting a new position.

A stern-looking woman with hair pulled up in a tight, white bun glared at him over her glasses. "Mr. Parker," she started.

Peter burst into tears. "I'm being fired l, aren't I?"

The terse line of her mouth pulled up at an edge. "You'd be surprised how often I get asked that." She handed him a tissue. "Just because you're called into HR doesn't necessarily mean you're being fired."

She didn't say no, Peter thought morosely as he wiped at his eyes.

Without even waiting for him to compose himself, she said, "Tell me, Mr. Parker, did you have any idea who Mr. Stark was before meeting him in the office today?"

Groaning, Peter buried his head in his hands. Yep, he was definitely getting fired. Who didn't recognize Tony Stark on sight? Except for Peter Parker, apparently. "I know it sounds hard to believe, but I honestly didn't know it was him at the club on Friday. He introduced himself as Tony, and how was I supposed to guess a billionaire CEO would be at Bottom Feeders?"

The woman cleared her throat, and Peter blushed. He'd always thought the club name was cute, kind of funny, but saying the name in front of this ancient woman seemed like a sin, like having your grandma catch you with your pants down. "Mr. Parker, I'm to assume that at no point during that evening you realized you were"—she cleared her throat again, trying to think of the right word—"ah, with Tony Stark."

The best way to get through this would be to make sure he kept telling the truth. "No. Though, to be honest, I was drunk at the time. I didn't realize how drunk I was when Tony—Mr. Stark—bought me another drink."

The woman blanched, and she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Let me get this straight. You were drunk, and your employer bought you another drink?"

Peter sank further into his chair, chin pressed to his chest, eyes on the floor. "Yes."

She shuffled some papers for a moment before addressing Peter. "There will be a committee hearing, of course, to determine what to do. For now, you don't work in the same building as he does, so I see no reason to suspend you for the duration. It might take some time, but if you have any questions, or if there's anything else you'd like to add to your statement, please call me at this number." She pushed a card across the table with her information typed in neat, steady letters. "For the time being, Mr. Parker, I don't expect you to be at your best. Take the rest of today off, get yourself pulled together, and report to work tomorrow. Since this is an HR matter, I will make sure you don't lose pay for the day, nor will you need to use sick leave or personal hours for today."

Picking up the card and sliding it in his wallet, he thanked the woman. After exiting the office, he made his way to the nearest restroom, and broke down again. "I'm so fucked," he sobbed.

Tony watched Gladys emerge from her office, a scowl plastering her face when she noticed him. "You're fucked, Mr. Stark."

Straight to the point, as always. Happy patted his knee as he buried his face in his hands. "Just tell me he didn't know who I was," he begged.

A thin white eyebrow rose judgmentally. "Incredibly, no, Mr. Stark, he did not recognize you. He claims he was very drunk."

Tony groaned and sank even further. That would not look good in front of the board. Not only was he in a position of power, but he had bought Peter more alcohol. This situation had "sexual harassment lawsuit" written all over it. "Will it add any points in my favor if I mention that he didn't cum?"

A shocked silence. "Mr. Stark, never say those words, in any order, in front of me ever again. Do I make myself clear?"

Peter slammed the apartment door behind him, feeling only a little guilty about disturbing his neighbors. His eyes were itchy and red, yet he still felt the need to cry. He had texted MJ a cryptic message about leaving work early, but he was wholly unprepared for the small gathering of MJ, Aunt May, and Ned waiting for him in the living room. Aunt May was immediately on him, arms around his neck, and he began crying anew.

"What happened, Peter? Talk to me."

"I'm getting fired," he sobbed.

"That's bullshit," swore MJ. "Look, we'll get a GoFundMe for a lawyer and generate some fucking attention and get this all handled."

"Peter, I have a friend who's a corporate lawyer who might know someone who can help," Ned offered. "I can even call if you want."

Peter shook his head vigorously. "I don't think a lawyer can help. Everything that happened is my fault." Giving Aunt May the side eye, he addressed MJ and Ned. "Remember that guy I met last Friday? It turns out he was Tony Stark."

"Oh my god!"

"That bastard," MJ hissed. "He's your boss."

"Yeah, but he didn't know that at the time. How is he supposed to remember hundreds of thousands of employees? But a case could be made that I knew who he was and was trying to coerce special privileges from him."

"To be fair," piped in MJ, "have you seen Tony Stark? If I had a dick, I'd let him give me a handy, too."

"Oh my god!" Ned covered his ears while MJ giggled and Peter glared.

"Did you meet with HR?" Aunt May steered the conversation back to the matter at hand.

Peter nodded and extracted himself from Aunt May in favor of sitting on the couch. "Yeah. She's the one who told me to take today off, to decompress before returning to work tomorrow."

Aunt May's frown relaxed. "Tell me everything she said, Peter." After recounting their conversation as best he could remember, Aunt May said, "Peter, it really doesn't sound like you're getting fired. In a situation like this, with a company so big, HR would really need to investigate the situation further, in order to protect the employees, the employer, and the company itself."

Ned had been on his phone and nodded his head. "I agree with May. I've been looking, and you have a lot of laws protecting you, Peter."

Still not feeling any better, Peter frowned. "I'm sorry, everyone, and I can't thank you enough, but I think I want to be left alone for a little while."

Aunt May patted his knee gently. "Of course, Peter. Always know that we're here for you."

Pepper Potts wondered if it were buried in her contract that she was allowed to punch her boss. Her hands stayed fisted at her sides as Tony and Happy brought her up to speed with the Parker situation. She had already read the email from Gladys in HR yet took a sick pleasure in watching Tony actually look guilty about something for once in his life. "Tony, what were you thinking? You could have ruined this boy's entire career!"

"Well, I wouldn't have done it if I had known he was one of my employees," Tony mumbled. But he remembered those leather pants, the way they hugged Peter's ass so perfectly, and wasn't so sure. He wondered for a minute if the hickey was still there. Too bad Peter's suit had so sufficiently hidden it from view.

"Tony, do not go anywhere near that boy until all of this is over. I mean it."

"Of course I won't. I'm not stupid." He wondered if he could get his meetings moved to Tower II, just so he could have a chance to get a glimpse of Peter.

"No, Tony," Pepper snapped sharply. "Whatever it is that you're thinking, just no."

That night, Peter wore Tony's Metallica shirt to bed and drifted off, wrapped in the scent of sage and sandalwood.

Peter went to work the following day, stomach in knots, but no one mentioned anything about HR or Tony Stark. He settled into his new routine, glad to have something to occupy his mind. HR had been right; he was working in a smaller, separate building about a block away from the main SI building, so he had no reason to dread Tony Stark walking by. Yet there was nothing to keep him from remembering the feeling of his hands on his body, how warm they had been, how hard he had been rocking up against—

And Peter would be up, pacing the office, taking sips from his water and taking deep breaths, trying to remain in the right headspace. He'd throw himself back into his team project until something else would remind him of that night. For example, two desks down, looking at the mathematical models he was calculating, his coworker innocuously commented, "Beautiful."

In his other ear, Peter heard Tony whisper, "Shit. You feel so good in my hand. Gonna make you cum, beautiful. That alright?"

Luckily, his supervisor let him know it was time for his lunch break, so Peter had an hour to calm down before returning to work. He walked to Bryant Park, grabbing a salad on the way, before settling down on a bench and indulging in a recent vice: Googling Tony Stark.

So he was supposed to be calming down, but he couldn't resist. He had never been interested in pop culture, so he really didn't know much about his new boss. Transparently, he tried to tell himself that he was simply learning about his new company, but as his searches grew more specific ("Tony Stark shirtless," "Tony Stark sexy," "Tony Stark at the beach"), he forgot to pretend.

"Fuck, I'd like to lay you out in a proper bed and take you all the way down my throat. Would you like that, beautiful? Want to fuck daddy's throat?"

Peter shut his phone off, threw out his salad, and marched back to the office. "No more Googling at lunch," he grumbled to himself.

Otherwise, Peter was incredibly happy with his new job. The coworkers that had followed him in the partial merger were a great team, and they integrated with SI procedures and systems seamlessly. In fact, if it weren't for the Stark logo on literally everything, Peter could pretend he was still back at Barritech.

He was also given a small stipend to work on his research, as well as slotted time to work in a StarkLab, equipped with everything he could ever hope to need. Since SI was currently clean energy focused, Peter had been looking into their arc reactor technology, pieces of which had been on the drawing board for decades, never coming any closer to completion. More chemistry driven than physics, Peter focused on the molecular side of things: how the atoms would fit together when all was said and done and how that would affect their behavior.

It made the days whip by unexpectedly quickly. When he was in the lab, he even forgot to worry about the upcoming HR hearing. Gladys had emailed him and let him know that everything would be settled by the end of the work day on Friday. There was an attachment with a bunch of legal jargon, which he sent to Ned in hopes his lawyer friend could translate. The document essentially laid out his rights as an employee of Stark Industries and that they would provide a lawyer for Peter, free of charge, should he desire one.

Back at the apartment, MJ was an absolute doll. She kept him just busy enough to keep him from ruminating and worrying. She even cooked dinner every night that week—something absolutely unheard of from her. She promised that she and Ned would take him out that Friday night, no matter what happened.

"We can go anywhere except Bottom Feeders," Peter grumbled. Though part of him remembered Tony's promise that, if he wanted, they could meet there again… He shook his head. He was already in enough trouble as it was without purposely seeking Tony out, no matter how much it made his heart ache.

And at night, Peter held Tony's shirt by his face, convinced he could still catch a whiff of sage and sandalwood.

Tony didn't mean to read Peter's article on possible arc reactor adjustments, yet here he was, entirely absorbed in the research Peter had already completed in less than a week. When Pepper caught him and nearly exploded, turning a shade of crimson never before catalogued in nature, Tony swore to her that JARVIS was programmed to alert him whenever someone was performing research on arc reactor technology. She relented because that program had prevented an unpredictably violent Ivan Vanco from injuring potentially hundreds of people in Monaco a handful of years prior.

When Pepper wouldn't stop her lecture, Tony waved her off and gestured to the paper. "Look at this. He postulates that the arc reactor wouldn't work given today's current technology, that a new element would need to be 'created.' Oganesson was first synthesized in a lab in Russia in 2002, but it's incredibly unstable. I mean, Uranium is the heaviest element that can exist in nature, and it only has 92 protons compared to Oganesson's 118. If I could get a particle accelerator built in this lab—"

"Tony!" Pepper cut him off, and Tony sat up swiftly, having forgotten she was there. "Tony. You're not building a particle accelerator."

Tony growled, countenance darkening. "Pepper, you of all people know that if you tell me not to do something, that I'm going to do it."

She held up her hand and closed her eyes. "You're not building a particle accelerator as an excuse to add Peter onto your exclusive 'team,' where it will be just the two of you unsupervised in a room. I don't know if you're aware of this, Tony, but Peter can sue the entirety of Stark Industries for sexual harassment. You had your fucking hand in his pants." She opened her eyes and approached him carefully, leveling her eyes with his. "Promise me, Tony, that you're not going to build a particle accelerator as an excuse to get close to this boy."

Tony chewed his lip, thinking. "What if"—Pepper threw up her hands in exasperation and turned so she was facing the wall—"I built the particle accelerator in a public lab…and I set up a program with JARVIS that I can't access the lab if he's in there." He left out the part of Peter being able to access the lab if he was in there. A scene began playing in his mind of Tony, elbows deep in machinery, turning slowly to the doors as Peter walked in. Maybe Peter would lay him down on the lab table and have him right there, all the more tantalizing with the possibility of other employees walking in at any minute. Maybe—

Pepper turned slowly and dangerously to face Tony. "You do realize that if your company is sued, it's people like me who would lose their jobs?"

That finally got through to Tony. He blinked steadily, taking in the frustration and exhaustion she exuded. "You're right. Of course you're right." He closed out of the research paper (though he already had it bookmarked in his browser). "I got carried away." He reached out and gently took her hands in his. "Pepper, you're the only person in this world who can steady me when I get like this. I would never let anything happen to you—or anyone else in this company, for that matter. If Peter does start a lawsuit, I promise no one else will get hurt."

She sighed and extracted her hands from Tony's grasp. "You can't promise that, Tony. No one can promise that. Just…no particle accelerators."

Drawing an X over his heart, he smiled. "No particle accelerators. Promise."

He watched her walk from the room before pulling Peter's research article back up, reading it again, brain racing at a hundred miles an hour. "JARVIS, I'm going to need some parts ordered to my lab." As he continued his calculations in his head, he amended, "Scratch that, I'm going to need a lot more space. JARVIS, email CERN and ask if I can use their particle accelerator. Email Fermilab, too. Illinois is a lot closer than Switzerland."

After reading Peter's research one more time, he pulled up his father's original blueprints for an arc reactor. Technology had come a long way in the last 50 years, and many great minds had weighed in on Howard Stark's brainchild in those years, but sometimes it was best to go back to basics.

It was Thursday night, and he forgot to sleep, drafting blueprint after blueprint of possible configurations for an arc reactor, ready for if he discovered the new element Howard Stark alluded to in his research…

"Sir?" JARVIS prompted.

Tony rubbed his eyes. He must have fallen asleep. "What is it, J?"

"Fermilab has given their consent for you to use their facility. CERN has more reservations and has provided a list of restrictions."

A yawn. "That's great, J." Surely his AI didn't wake him up just for this…

"I would also like to add that if you intend on making it to the HR meeting on time, you have enough time for a shower if you leave right now."

Tony groaned. "Maybe start with that one next time?" Stretching, he was halfway to the door when Pepper entered, frowning.

"Don't tell me you slept here."

"Alright, I won't tell you."

Peter fidgeted anxiously as he waited to be summoned into the conference room, pressing imaginary wrinkles out of his suit pants just to have something to do with his hands. A secretary had offered him coffee when he had first arrived, but he had refused, worried he would need to pee in the middle of the meeting, or spill it on himself, but now he wished he had accepted it, just to take his mind off the hundreds of butterflies floating in his stomach.

The door cracked open, and he was greeted by Gladys's stern gaze over her glasses. Taking deep breaths, Peter followed her into the room. Most of the people in the room he didn't recognize, except Ms. Potts, and when his eyes caughts Tony's, his heart beat erratically, immediately feeling memories of his hands on his body. Tony looked absolutely gorgeous in his navy suit and gold tie. He sat casually back in his chair, his ankle perched on his knee, and Peter had to resist staring at his crotch, remembering too vividly how incredible that cock had felt pressed into his ass.

Gladys performed the introductions. Two others were from human resources, at the far end of the table. On Peter's side, they had provided him a lawyer ("Just in case," Gladys had insisted), and a lawyer for SI sat beside Tony and Pepper.

When Gladys seated herself at the head of the table, she began without preamble. "We're here to determine what, if any, action will be taken against Anthony Edward Stark and/or Peter Benjamin Parker in light of the sexual events that took place this past Friday, April 10th. Due to Mr. Parker being employed by Stark Industries at the time of the event, Mr. Parker is within full rights to press legal charges—"

"What?" Peter squeaked, paling. "I don't want to press charges!"

Gladys once more turned her severe gaze in his direction. "Mr. Parker, perhaps you'd like to discuss this with legal counsel first."

Peter flushed, angry, embarrassed. "There's nothing to discuss! At the time, I didn't even know it was—Mr. Stark." Peter stumbled over the name, and his blush darkened. "Look, I've been thinking about this. Technically, my first day at Stark Industries wasn't until Monday. Couldn't we just say—?"

But Gladys was shaking her head firmly. "I'm not changing your contract, and you'd be smart not to suggest such a thing in front of these lawyers."

Tony cleared his throat, and Peter was glad to have an excuse to let his eyes wander. Was he wearing his sage and sandalwood cologne? Or did he wear a different scent to work?

"We're all eager to get this wrapped up in a nice, tidy package. Just tell me what I need to do. I'm prepared to give up all hiring and firing power; that way no one could ever accuse Peter of using me to get a promotion. You know what? I'll do just that. Effective immediately, I revoke any and all ability to hire, fire, or promote any SI employees. Except Pepper. I retain rights to promote Pepper."

"Tony," she ground warningly through gritted teeth.

"And Happy. I can promote Happy. But that's it. No one else." He eyed Gladys. "What else do you want? I can pay for Peter's legal fees from my personal funds instead of business funds, if that's—"

Gladys interrupted swiftly. "Mr. Stark, I highly suggest you stop talking before you make an even bigger mess than the one you've already created. Given the circumstances, and Mr. Parker's decision not to go forth with a lawsuit, we can only advise you, Mr. Stark, to take care of your behavior in the future, though I'm sure I'm asking the impossible here. We do have some additional provisos, for the both of you. Though you work in separate buildings, if you ever find yourselves in the same room, make sure there are plenty of chances for eyes to be on you. Have a chaperone, if you will. Like at a middle school dance. Second, hold yourselves accountable for any future actions. Transparency is better than hiding behind the curtains." She paused, making eye contact with the other members of HR before adding, "If there's nothing else anyone wishes to add, I daresay we're done here."

As the others stood up to leave, Peter gaped. "You mean I'm not fired?"

Gladys allowed herself a small smile. "Mr. Parker, you are a delight. In this particular instance, you did nothing wrong, and thus, there would be absolutely no reason to fire you." Her stern posture was back instantly. "Though now you know what Mr. Stark looks like, so I daresay that won't help you in the future, should you find yourself in a similar situation…though, pray you don't. Now, if you'll excuse me, and I hope you don't think this rude of me, but I hope to see neither of you in here again."

Tony watched Peter exit the conference room, his hands tingling with the desire to reach out to him, wrap him in his arms. Peter had looked beautifully out of place in that room, a diamond mixed in with coal dust, something so pure and chaste forced to mingle with Tony's purely dark intentions. He felt the way Peter looked at him, eyes bright with desire, clearly still aching for him as Tony did for Peter.

Pepper was gathering her things and speaking to Tony, but he wasn't listening, unabashedly scheming ways to get closer to Peter without alerting HR.

"Tony? Did you hear me?" He jerked at the sound of his name, finally turning his full attention to Pepper. "I said that could have gone a lot worse and that you're extraordinarily lucky Peter didn't file a lawsuit. We should go out tonight, you, me, and Happy. Colonel Rhodes, too, if he's available. This was a stressful situation, and I don't want you alone tonight, stewing, or back in your workshop…doing whatever it is you do there."

Tony nodded, letting his mind drift back to memories of last Friday night, the feel of Peter's cock against his palm. "Sure, Pep. Make the plans, and I'll be there."