Chapter 6

Harley and Peter sped around their lab, tidying anything away that needed to be and hiding any classified Avengers-related projects. Luckily it wasn't too bad and they were able to get it done quickly before pulling up several simpler experiments that the class would be more likely to understand, as well as one or two projects that showed what they were really capable of. They included some stuff about Peter's web designs, because it tied into several different areas of science, and since Peter's 'internship' included working on Spider-man's suit, he figured it was ok to show his class what he supposedly did at SI (even though it included a lot more than just fixing his suit, as seen earlier by everyone's dependence on him in the first R&D lab).

They even had a few minutes to spare, so Harley asked Peter how he was coping, pulling him over to their couch to cuddle as he did so. "I'm doing ok, Harls, nobody has come crawling out of the woodwork to embarrass me, apart from you of course!" Peter gave him a grin to show that he didn't mind in the slightest. (He should've known that that was a jinx, but he had a few more minutes of reasonable quiet, let him be blissfully ignorant for now!) The two boys stayed cuddled together until the elevator arrived, spilling Peter's classmates out to annoy him once again.

Mr Harrington once again apparently couldn't stop himself from being a dick and opened his mouth to berate Peter once more. "Parker, how dare you go wandering off from the tour group! You are here to learn, not to canoodle with your boyfriend." Harley's eyebrows raised and he mouthed canoodle? to Peter. "How did you even know where to go, we weren't told until a minute ago? Or were you just looking for an empty room and figured this one would do?"

Harley decided it was time to cut Peter's teacher off, what can he say, he really doesn't like the guy! "Hey Mr teacher Sir, hi class! Welcome to our lab! By ours, I of course mean mine and Peter's. Emma thought the next part of your tour was too boring, and since she asked so nicely, Peter agreed to let you come up here instead. No-one can come in here without our express permission, you should feel lucky that Peter is doing you the honour of letting you in here." Maybe Harley was going a bit too far, but seeing how the whole class treated his boyfriend was really grating on his nerves. They're lucky he hasn't pulled out his potato gun!

Emma could see Harley's temper flaring and quickly jumped in, addressing the class with a big smile, even though she too was feeling annoyed at the treatment of one of her friends. "That's right guys! You are some of the only people to ever get to come in here, none of the other interns or staff have the clearance to come in here unless specifically invited. It is one of the most creative labs in this whole building and its taken on a sort of mythical status with everyone else in the building. If anyone gets to come up here to work on something with these two it's like they've ascended to heaven. It's all that gets talked about for weeks after it happens, because it's so rare that they need anyone's help, since between them they cover almost any scientific field you could think of!" Emma was proud of the two boys, as were pretty much any of the employees that knew them. Flash could be heard scoffing in the background and whispering to his friends, probably how this was yet another elaborate ruse of Peter's, rather than taking it as proof that Peter really did work here. Meanwhile Peter was just stood with his head down, blushing at the praise.

"Since it's their Lab I'm gonna let Peter and Harley take over this part of the tour, and I'm gonna sit back and enjoy learning just like the rest of you," Emma chirped.

Peter and Harley held a silent conversation, mainly conveyed through eyebrows and hand gestures, arguing about who would speak first. Harley won in forcing Peter to show off his genius to the class.

"Right guys, yeah, welcome to our lab, umm… so, we've pulled up a couple of our easier old projects and experiments for you to look at. Luckily, most of the stuff we do in here is fun and we're usually just making things blow up, anything super classified we work on in our private labs." Peter wasn't really sure where he was going with this, he wasn't used to having people actually paying attention to him as Peter Parker.

Betty raised her hand then and Peter was grateful that someone had cut off his rambling. He pointed to her to indicate for her to go ahead. "You mean this isn't the only place you work Peter? Do you really have your own private Lab?" Betty asked.

Peter was grateful to see that at least someone seemed to be coming around to believing that he actually worked here. "Yeah, well as you saw earlier, I help in the lower labs such as R&D. When I'm down there I'm just helping others with their work, fixing sections or helping them understand things y'know. Quite a lot of the stuff down there comes from ideas that me and Harley come up with in here actually, so I can help them see where the idea came from or what it's supposed to become.

"This is our fun lab, as I said we experiment a lot in here and come up with ideas for SI. There's a lot of explosions and laughs, but if we actually come up with something good we either work on it ourselves or pass it along to someone else. Then we each have our own private Lab, where we work on serious and classified projects, where we wont be disturbed by anyone. This normally involves bleeding edge tech to improve SI or work directly related to the Avengers.

"Oh and I will also spend time in Dr Banner's and Mr Stark's labs if they need a hand with anything!" Peter tacked onto the end, as if he had forgotten what most people thought of as the most incredible part of his work.

Peter looked out to the class at large and saw the shock on a lot of people's faces. He hoped now at least that they'd believe him when he said that he had an internship here. Knowing his luck though, probably not.

Harley then decided to step forward when it looked like Flash was going to interrupt once again. He started talking the class through one of their simpler projects, although when he addressed it as such, Mr Harrington looked offended on behalf of his students. "Why are you saying it's a simple assignment? I assure you my students are top of their grade they don't need to be patronised and treated like kindergarteners."

Harley snorted and replied, "I thought we'd start off with something easier, as what we do here goes well beyond high school science Teach, after all this is the world's leading company in, well, just about everything. Peter can show you something more complicated in a bit and we'll see how many of your students keep up.

Flash was heard saying, "Well it can't be that hard if supposedly Parker can do it, he isn't even that smart!" Everyone decided to just ignore him for the time being though and Harley and Peter continued to show the class different projects and experiments, each one harder and more complicated than the last, and they covered a wide range of scientific fields. Even Mr Harrington didn't know the answers to questions the two asked, although Ned and MJ recognised a few of the projects and added their input where they could.

Peter moved on to showing them Spider-man's webs and shooters, talking the class through many elements, including doing an experiment where his classmates could make the web fluid, as well as showing them how it compressed into the shooters and discussing the physics of Spider-man's swings on the webs, likening it to a pendulum. He actually found himself enjoying explaining it all to the class, he just had to be careful not to refer to Spider-man as "I" or "Me".

Of course Flash had to go and ruin his good mood. "Hey Penis, why would a dweeb like you be allowed to work on anything to do with Spider-man? You obviously stole the shooters or whoever you paid off to get in here put them here for you. How much did you pay them anyway? I thought you were poor!" (Also can we just ask why a teacher isn't doing anything about one student repeatedly calling another student "Penis"?)

"The main part of my internship focus is to work on Spider-man's suit, which includes his webbing and shooters Flash. And if I was lying and just stole them then how would I know any of what I've just talked to you about? Or been able to walk you all through actually making the web fluid?" Peter was really getting fed up of Flash's attitude.

"It's all just lies! I bet it's not even real web fluid, it's probably not even sticky!" Flash retorted. He didn't have long to look smug though, as Harley, quick as a flash (haha) loaded the web fluid Peter had made into a web shooter and fired it. It covered Flash's mouth stopping him from speaking. Harley smiled in satisfaction. "That's better, now where were we?"

"Now just hold on a minute young man, you just assaulted one of my students!" Mr Harrington looked rather red in the face, scowling in anger.

Harley just aimed the web shooter at the teacher and said "I didn't appreciate the way he was treating my boyfriend and quite frankly you haven't done a single thing to stop him all day. In fact you've been pretty much just as bad. Now, lets move on shall we?" He waited for a nod from the teacher before he lowered his weapon and went to move on to their next (and final) project.

Peter grabbed his arm, quickly removing the web shooter and placing it on a nearby desk, whilst he hissed "Harley! You can't threaten a teacher!"

"I just did darlin' and he ain't my teacher, what trouble is he gonna get me in? Report me to HR? They'll pass the message on to Tony and he'll congratulate me." With that he gave Peter a kiss on the cheek and moved back to talk to the class. Peter slunk over to where Ned and MJ were standing. Ned began to gush about how cool both the projects and Harley were. Peter hid his face in his hands, unable to believe Harley just webbed Flash and threatened his teacher. He was gonna be in so much trouble! He couldn't help the small part of him that thought that webbing Flash was hilarious though. And if he found protective Harley rather hot, well, nobody had to know!

Harley had been happily engaging the class with the final project for about ten minutes when Peter's Spidey-senses went off. He heard a noise up above him and figured Clint was in the vent, waiting to pounce. Peter sighed. He supposed it had taken long enough for one of them to show up. He whispered to Ned and MJ what was happening, telling them to look up in a second, and started a countdown when his senses increased. "3…2…1…"

The grate in the ceiling above them pulled back and Clint came tumbling out, less than graceful for a super-spy. Peter figured the momentum of pushing the heavy grate out of the way compromised the archer's balance. As he fell Clint yelled "Peter, catch me!"

At the very last second Peter took a very deliberate step back and watched the man crumple to the floor. The class turned around at the commotion, not yet sure what was going on.

Clint clambered to his feet, brushing himself off. He looked over at Peter and growled "What the fuck Parker?!" causing Peter, Ned, Harley and even MJ to start laughing. Once they started they couldn't stop, and anytime they looked at Clint's betrayed face they all laughed harder.

"Fri please tell me you filmed that?" Peter asked, wiping tears from his eyes.

"Of course Mini-boss, would you like me to save it?"

"Yeah, save it to my private file and the 'Avengers Fails' compilation. Thanks Fri!" Peter replied, whilst Clint was desperately trying to get the AI to delete the footage, not that she listened.

You knew I was there, you could've caught me!" Clint exclaimed.

"Uhh, no I couldn't, have you seen the size of you compared to me? You would've squished me! And Harley likes me in one piece, don't you babe?" Peter looked around nervously before glaring at Clint, he didn't want to give away his secret to the whole class!

"Sure do babe!" Harley called back from where he was still laughing.

Clint at least looked apologetic for nearly blowing Peter's cover on at least his super strength. He instead turned to the class with a bright smile. "Hi guys! I'm Clint, but I imagine at least some of you know me as Hawkeye. I'm here to invite you to lunch up in our common room!" Peter groaned and buried his head in Harley's chest, who had moved closer to his boyfriend while Clint was speaking. Why were they doing this to him? For a minute there he'd actually thought he would get away with not having to deal with his family embarrassing him for the day. "I heard it was next on the agenda. I hope you don't mind missing out on the tour of the cafeteria though!" Clint was laughing at that, knowing how everyone would jump at the chance to see any sort of Avengers' space, and also how much Peter was hating every minute of this! Oh well, he owed the kid, ever since he beat him in their prank war. Clint was the master of prank wars! Peter never should've taken that title away from him.

The class looked on in awe as they realised that they were meeting a real-life Avenger! Soon the questions started and Clint suddenly looked a little overwhelmed. Serves him right, Peter thought, a little uncharitably, but come on, the whole team was gonna be up there! I hate you! Peter signed to the archer, who grinned and signed back No you don't!

Emma cut over the din to agree that they could eat lunch up there, so long as they were respectful, and everyone was buzzing excitedly, wondering who else they might see.