The second time Peter visited the penthouse was only two weeks later. Surprisingly, he was actually invited this time, and he approached the Tower lobby with confidence. No, that was a lie. He was almost as nervous as the first time. He stepped hesitantly into the lobby, very aware of the precious cargo in his backpack. Mr. Stark had told him bring the suit by so he could install some updates. How could he already have upgrades when he'd updated the suit before he gave it back to Peter last month? He hadn't even worn it out of the house since then. He and May had finally come to an understanding, but there were some new protocols and safety measures she wanted installed before she'd allow Peter to even put it on again. Which is why he was entering the Tower from the ground floor. Again.
Peter stepped hesitantly up to the reception desk. It was late afternoon on a Wednesday, and the lobby was bustling with activity.
"Yes? Can I help you?" The man at reception was a different one from last time, and he seemed disinterested, but not dismissive.
"Uh, Peter Parker? I'm supposed to go up to the labs?" He really wasn't sure what he was supposed to say. Hopefully Mr. Stark had remembered to let them know he was coming.
The guard looked doubtful, but tapped his name into his workstation, tilting his head in surprise as something came up. He eyed Peter with interest, then opened one drawer, then another, before pulling out a plastic badge on a lanyard.
"I guess this is yours, Mr. Parker," he said with bemusement, handing it across the desk. If you'll just head over there to security, they'll help you through.
Security? But his suit…
"Um. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to go through security," Peter said softly.
The guard's face turned politely condescending, and he pointed sternly towards the checkpoint. "Everyone goes through security."
Peter panicked just a little bit, and almost turned around and headed back out to the street to regroup. But then he figured it was worth a try, and took a deep breath.
"Ms. FRIDAY? Uh, if you're listening, could you maybe do that thing again, where I'm already cleared? Because I don't think I should go through security today. I mean, with what we're working on?" the last part was added meaningfully, but he wondered if he should throw an obvious wink in there. He wasn't sure how perceptive the AI was.
The guard's phone rang immediately. He was staring at Peter with a perturbed look on his face, and he didn't break eye contact as he picked up the receiver.
Because of Peter's enhanced senses, he could hear the other end of the conversation.
"Hello, Mr. Hindel. This is FRIDAY. If you'll please look up Directive 287-B, you'll see that you're to send Mr. Parker to the Penthouse elevator, please. He's been cleared, and does not go through standard security."
"Um, I… uh, that's highly irregular," Hindel stammered as he typed into his workstation again.
"Entirely untrue. There is a whole list of people who use the private elevators, and who aren't subject to security, as you know. Mr. Parker happens to be on that list now."
He seemed to be reading something carefully on his screen.
"Okay, thank you," he said, still sounding uncertain. "Uh, Mr. Parker, you can proceed to the east corner elevators," he said, his eyebrows lowered in confusion. He pointed to the set of elevators FRIDAY had directed him to the last time he'd been there.
"Thank you, sir," Peter said brightly, walking quickly before anyone could change their mind.
Peter breathed a sigh of relief as the lift ascended. "Ms. FRIDAY?"
"Just FRIDAY is fine, Mr. Parker."
"Oh, okay. Thanks! You can call me just Peter, too."
"Okay, 'just Peter,'" the AI responded.
Holy cow. Did Mr. Stark's AI have a sense of humor? Peter bit his lip and side-eyed the ceiling, trying to figure out if he'd heard right.
"Am I supposed to go to Mr. Stark's lab or to the penthouse?" he asked politely, deciding to ignore the comment he didn't fully understand.
"Boss is in the lab. Go to your left and it's the third door on the right."
The elevator doors slid open, and Peter stepped out, obediently turning to his left and walking for several minutes before he reached the third door. Either the door was automatic, or FRIDAY opened it for him, because soon he was staring back into the super-amazing technological playground that Mr. Stark had shown him before. He held his breath as he stepped through the door, eyes lighting up as his head swiveled around, trying to take it all in.
"Hey, kid. Is school out already?" Mr. Stark asked, blinking as he looked up from his project. FRIDAY, did I skip lunch again?"
"Yes, Boss. I did remind you."
"Hmmph." Then looking back at Peter, he asked, "Didya bring the suit?"
"Yeah, right here!" Peter said, setting his backpack down and pulling things out of the top of the bag until he could access the bottom, where he'd hidden the spider suit under his sweater. He had to tug a few times before it came out, and he self-consciously smoothed it out before holding it up with a grimace on his face. Oh. There were some crumbs. Whoops. He brushed them away and raised his eyes to Mr. Stark's face, since he had been silent through all this.
The older man's head was canted to the side, his eyebrows raised incredulously. "Seriously, kid? You're stuffing that multi-million suit in the bottom of your grody backpack?"
"Grody?" Peter wasn't completely sure he knew what that meant, but he could guess. It didn't sound complimentary, and it probably had something to do with those granola bar crumbs.
"Well, how else was I supposed to bring it to school, Mr. Stark? Wait… multi-million? Crap."
Mr. Stark just raised an eyebrow, his fingers going back to what they were working on when Peter had walked in.
"It's not like I could carry around its big suitcase all day at school, sir. I mean, if it can handle all the Spiderman stuff I do when I'm wearing it, is my backpack really gonna hurt it?" he argued.
Mr. Stark sighed. "Good point, I guess. Bring it over and get it connected."
Peter did, checking in with his eyes with its creator as he connected the suit to the port to make sure he was doing it right. He and Ned had connected it to a computer before, obviously, but they weren't supposed to have done that… Hopefully Mr. Stark wasn't thinking about that incident.
"FRI, go ahead and apply those updates, please," Mr. Stark said, looking back at the project on his holoboard in distraction. He seemed annoyed. At Peter? Or at what he was working on? Peter started looking more carefully. Oh. Those looked like schematics for some kind of solar power. Maybe the new exterior ones Mr. Stark had mentioned he was working on a few weeks ago? But something was off with one of the simulation readouts. Peter stared at it for a few minutes before scooting in closer to get a better look at the schematics. He glanced up to see Mr. Stark watching him with a raised eyebrow.
The last time Peter had been here he'd been pretty overwhelmed (in a good way), and had mostly stayed quiet (to help keep all his inner freaking-out from spilling into unintelligible words) while Mr. Stark showed him around. He hadn't gotten to see the man's tech interface in action other than a few things that he did too fast for Peter to follow.
"Something's off here, right?" Peter said, motioning at the problematic portion.
"Yeah," Mr. Stark drawled. "Definitely an issue. Any thoughts?"
"Is there a way to… FRIDAY, can you expand this part, so I can see the background code?"
"Belay that, FRI." Instead, Mr. Stark showed Peter the hand motions to use, and where to bring up the different options to expand that portion.
Peter sat down on a stool so he could pore through the code more carefully for the next ten minutes. It was fascinating. It was almost beyond him, even though he'd been working a lot more with Ned lately, wanting to understand more of what he was looking at the next time he encountered the coding in his suit. Preferably sanctioned, this time, he thought with a grimace. But what if Mr. Stark wasn't available, and he had to do some tweaking or repair by himself? He desperately wanted to be able to independently deal with stuff like that if needed.
But there. Right there. Shouldn't that be included with the previous part, if it was going to work like the others seemed to be? Without saying anything, he stood up and expanded the code on the piece that was performing correctly. Yeah, that looked different. He closed it, and went back to the faulty code.
"FRIDAY, can you save like a back-up of where it is right now, so if what I do messes it up, you can fix it?"
"Those protocols are already in place, Peter," FRIDAY said.
"Don't worry about it, kid," Mr. Stark said at the same time, and a glance to the side showed the older man watching him with an intrigued look on his face.
Peter pointed to the piece he wanted to alter. "How do I take this and put it up here, instead?" Peter asked.
Mr. Stark's face settled into a surprised smile. "Way to go, Turing. I think that's gonna solve the problem." He showed Peter how he marked a selection and moved it with his fingers buried in the hologram, then said "Reverse, FRI," and let Peter re-do the fix himself.
And it seemed to work! The simulation's numbers adjusted and a few red spots turned green. Peter slumped back in relief, smiling.
"Well, how about that? I knew you were smart, but I didn't realize how quickly you'd adapt to the holoboard, much less be able to fix something I hadn't figured out yet. Nice work, kid." He set a hand on Peter's shoulder and squeezed gently as he grinned at him.
Peter flushed slightly at the praise from the older genius. That-all of that-had been really amazing. And the holo-interface had made it even moreso.
"Is this what you do all day? Just design stuff like this, and then fix things that aren't working?"
"Pretty much. Sometimes it's fun, and sometimes it's frustrating. But it's always rewarding, eventually," Mr. Stark said with a half smile, making a few adjustments to the project before sliding it all into a folder with a flick of his fingers.
Peter just breathed out slowly. Be cool. Don't freak out over how insanely sick everything in this whole lab is.
"Shall we check on your suit?" Mr. Stark gave Peter a curious look, and Peter finally realized he'd asked him a question.
"Oh, yeah! Yeah, that'd be great."
Mr. Stark stood up and walked over to where Peter's suit was plugged in. "Bring it up, FRI. Everything go okay? How's Karen?"
A holoscreen popped up above Peter's suit, and Mr. Stark started scrolling through screens. Man, Peter wanted to know exactly what each represented, and how to manipulate and add and just understand it all.
"All systems updated successfully," said FRIDAY.
"Hello, Mr. Stark," Karen chirped from the display. Peter grinned when he heard her voice. He had been putting the mask on during his enforced inactivity, just to chat with her, because he missed her sunny encouragement, honestly. She was similar to FRIDAY, but so different personality-wise.
"Hey there, Karen. You about ready to get back to work?" Mr. Stark asked Peter's AI.
"Yes, thank you. I'm looking forward to it very much. And so is Peter. Why, the other day he said-"
"Oh, Karen, that's not necessary," Peter said, his voice an octave higher than usual. "Uninteresting, really."
Mr. Stark's mouth quirked up in amusement.
"We're both…uh, ready, sir. Does this give me the green light?"
The engineer chuckled at Peter's enthusiasm. "Yep. You should be good to go."
Peter could feel his face split into the biggest grin he'd had in weeks. He had seriously been going stir crazy, and part of him had wondered if Aunt May would ever agree to him getting out there again.
"Could I… could I swing home, and patrol on the way today then?" he asked hesitantly, accepting the suit as Mr. Stark unplugged it and handed it to him. He stroked the shiny fabric almost reverently.
"Affirmative, Ghost Rider," Mr. Stark said, smiling back. Go change."
Peter did, very quickly, and then brought his clothes back to stuff in his backpack. Would anyone notice Spiderman swinging with a backpack on? He'd just have to stay high until he got closer to home and could stash it. Hopefully somewhere it wouldn't disappear this time.
"Crack a window for the Spiderling, would you FRI?"
"Technically these windows aren't supposed to open like that, Boss," she said disapprovingly. If he'd like to go up to one of the balconies-"
"Just because they shouldn't doesn't mean it's not possible. Check your code again, and make it so. We'll wait."
The AI's silence was somehow disgruntled.
"Hey, Mr. Stark?" Peter said as they waited, backpack on over the suit and mask in-hand.
"Yeah, Underoos?"
Peter grimaced at the nickname, but pushed forward, trying to be confident.
"Since you're going to be staying here at the Tower for at least a while, do you think… do you think I could come by sometimes and you could show me more about how your holotables and design software works? I mean, if you have some boring stuff you don't wanna do, maybe I could help with that or… pretty much anything in here, I'd be happy to do…" he trailed off.
Mr. Stark slanted his head, obviously considering.
"Well, your aunt wants you to come by at least twice a month and get your suit checked over anyways. Why don't we just make it a standing weekly appointment, and when we don't need to do anything with it, you can help with whatever I'm working on?"
"Oh my gosh, Mr. Stark, yes , please!"
"How about Friday afternoons? You don't have any school stuff then, right? Acadec is Thursdays?"
How did he know that? "Uh, yes sir, that sounds amazing. I'll be here. Uh, I probably shouldn't swing, right? We don't want people to see me coming in the Tower windows every week? The subway isn't very fast, but I can hopefully catch the 3:30 train, and-"
"Nah, I'll have Happy pick you up. You have fun, and be careful, okay?" Mr. Stark said, gesturing at the window that FRIDAY had figured out how to swing completely open and in. "See you on Friday," he finished, reaching a tentative hand out to swipe playfully across Peter's hair. Peter felt a warm spot in his chest, and he couldn't help the excited smile that was on his face again. Still? Probably still.
"Sounds awesome, sir. Thanks. I'll see you then!" He jumped lightly up to the sill, calculated his trajectory, and leapt, a webshooter firing ahead of him to snag the closest building.
As he hurtled forward at impossible, wonderful, beautiful speeds, (man, he had missed this!) his hearing picked up the fading voice of his mentor.
"Remind me not to watch next time, FRI. Kid's definitely gonna give me a heart attack."