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In his defence, Peter hadn’t expected the reaction he’d gotten. He forgot, sometimes, that the things that happened to him weren’t normal things.
They knew who he was, that wasn’t the issue. The face of Peter Parker-Stark had become a household name before his eighteenth birthday, really. So everyone at MIT knew he was the heir to a company worth billions, knew his legacy, his name and his face. He’d found a couple of cool people to hang out with from his classes, and they were all collected in one of their rooms, having a chilled evening playing games and sipping at beer.
That was the college life, it seemed. None of them were legally old enough to drink yet–not that Peter had much interest in alcohol, in any case–so they weren’t really able to get large shipments of alcohol delivered to their door. One of them was friends with someone who was happy to supply them with some beers though, so at least there was that. Peter, who’d tried much nicer types of alcohol than beer, tended to steer clear of it.
He’d found a cool bunch of people to spend time with. No Rhodey, but then he already had a Rhodey (Ned). Peter wasn’t really looking for another best friend. He lived with Ned, in any case. The only reason Ned wasn’t with them that night was because he was spending time with some guys from a super-niche Robotics team that he’d joined. So Peter had ventured to the other people’s room alone.
It was nice to be treated as if he was just some other college kid—because in essence, he was. Sure, he was a CEO to one of the biggest companies in America, and his dad was Tony Stark, and he was Spider-Man (that one was still a secret) but he was still just some guy trying to teach himself how to live without any guardians and get a degree!
Except all of his newfound friends…they were almost too respectful about it! He’d expected a lot of questions about his experience, or Tony, or the Avengers—but they were all avoiding the subject like it was completely off-limits, which it wasn’t. Peter expected a few questions. That was honestly what he wanted, to at least get it out of the way. Remove the mystery surrounding Peter Parker-Stark.
Hence when they ended up in a game of three truths and a lie (a fun variant of two truths and a lie), Peter considered the idea that it was a good time to have a little fun. He considered all the things he could have said—there was an endless list (as helpfully proven by Andrew Maguire). But as he raced through the odd amount of things that had happened to him, and as he’d listened to the others give their answers, he paused his sudden desire to throw caution to the wind and tell his college friends some weird facts about himself.
So when it was his turn—“Peter, you’re up!”—he’d backed out of doing anything too interesting. He didn’t want to show off.
“Okay, um. My favourite colour is blue, I’ve never been rock-climbing, I—”
He didn’t even get to finish his sentence.
“No, c’mon, really?” His friend Max (full name Max Modell), interrupted him, raising an eyebrow. He had a half-empty bottle of beer in his hand.
“What?”
"We've been being tame, respectful, but you can't get out of this one." Max shook his head, and took a swig of his drink. “You’re the heir to Stark Industries , you gotta have some better stories than your favourite colour. C’mon, be real with us.”
Peter glanced at them for a moment–they were all nodding in encouragement. It couldn’t hurt. They’d all been so respectful, and it had been getting kind of boring. Time to let them in on a few of his secrets.
“Uh, okay. Once I got kidnapped, I have a handshake with the President of the United Status, I know how to defuse a bomb but I’ve never had to use it and I’m 17th in line to the English throne.”
There was a stunned silence as they all took that in.
“Repeat that for us?” Gwen—blonde-haired, smarter than him probably—said with wide eyes. She looked actively concerned.
Peter repeated his previous set of truths and the one lie.
“That’s so obvious.” Gwen blinked. Peter’s heart sunk a little—he’d thought he’d done pretty well, to be fair. She opened her mouth to explain, but then Max was speaking.
“Yeah,” Max shook his head. “It’s got to be the kidnapping, that’s a lie, there’s no way that wouldn’t have made the news when it happened.”
Well, maybe it would have hit the news if he’d been kidnapped for longer than a period of like, a couple of hours.
One of his other friends shook his head at Max. “No, I think it’s plausible that he got kidnapped, he’s the son of a rich billionaire, that happens all the time. Didn’t Tony Stark himself get kidnapped when he was like seven?”
“Six,” Peter corrected. “For the first time. Possibly when he was seven too, I can ask.”
He had kind of lost track of the times that Tony had been kidnapped. They’d talked through it at some point, but it was difficult to remember each time. Peter was just glad his experiences had been fairly tame in comparison. Waterboarding sounded decidedly not fun.
“Of course you can,” someone mumbled, slightly in awe that he could just talk to Tony Stark at his beck and call.
Max seemed to ignore this. “And that’s public knowledge, we knew that Tony was taken. I’m calling bullshit on the kidnapping one.”
“Wait, Max, but that means you think he’s in the line of succession for the English Crown ?” Gwen looked incredulous.
Max shrugged. “I can see it. Don’t you guys think a crown would look good on his head?”
He proceeded to mimic the crown with his hands, whilst the others made varying noises of agreement, considering. Peter had very strong suspicions that Max was in fact a stoner. He made a mental note to avoid any offering of brownies in the future. Not that he minded drugs—just not for him. It didn’t bode well for his senses, much like coffee.
“We’re all agreed that the defusing a bomb thing is real, though, right?” Gwen clarified, glancing around. There was a chorus of agreements.
“100%.”
“Don’t we all know how to defuse a bomb, in theory?”
Peter supposed it was a pretty regular thing for people on their type of course to do, in fairness. He could give them that. His smile twitched, slightly, but he'd decided to stay silent to ensure they didn't get any hints.
“We seem to be all skipping past the fact that he said he had a handshake with the President.”
“Well,” Max theorised, holding out his hands. “It’s like this, right. President Ellis is close with Colonel Rhodes, and Rhodes is Tony Stark’s best friend. So maybe somehow they crossed paths. And maybe they made a handshake when they crossed paths.”
Huh. Peter was impressed. That was actually some pretty good logic.
“It’s kind of too specific not to be true, if that makes sense,” Gwen added. “But it also sounds like bullshit, so I’m not sure.”
They were still debating the veracity of the President statement two minutes later, when Peter’s phone rang. He shot them all an apologetic look and pulled it out, placing a silent bet on who it would be.
The company mostly left him alone whilst he was in college, so he could get the full experience of living life by himself, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still get the emergency call from one of the interns asking him for a chemical formula they’d forgotten or a blueprint they’d misplaced. Sometimes Andrew Maguire, the head of the Legal Department, just called him because he missed him. It seemed like it was honestly harder for them than it was for him.
But, considering it was later than 9pm, it was unlikely to be anyone from the company itself, so maybe Tony? Someone from his personal life? If there was something desperately wrong in New York, it’d only take him a couple of hours a couple of hours to get there. Cause Tony had conveniently ‘left’ his spare private plane in Boston ‘just in case’ it was ever needed.
Peter was wrong on both counts. It wasn’t someone from Stark Industries, and it wasn’t family or a friend either.
Unfortunately , Ted and Reed from Netflix had not gotten the memo on the leaving-him-alone-during- college front, and still continued to call him. It was almost comical, the amount of times an important event had been interrupted by the incompetent CEOS of Netflix, but Peter was getting tired of it.
Because again . Really?
“Are you kidding me? This is the third time this week!” Peter muttered, sighing. He turned to face his friends, who were all glancing at him curiously. “Hold on just one second, guys, I’ve got to take this.”
Peter took in a deep breath before clicking ‘answer’. He turned away from his friends.
Ted’s voice came loud over the phone. “Hey, Peter, sorry to disturb you, we just need to have an emergency video meeting over StarkChat, stocks are down again and–”
Okay, that was it .
“No, Ted, I’m sorry, this isn’t on anymore. I’m pulling the plug.”
“Pulling the plug on–what? What do you mean?”
“You’re fired, that’s what I mean. Both you and Reed.”
“But…Peter!”
“You’ve been ringing to tell me the stocks have been down every other day at this rate. We’ve had more calls than I have had with my own aunt. I’m in college. Look, can you just–” Peter closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers over them, stressed. “Can you put David on the phone, please?”
“David?” Ted asked, bewildered.
“Yes, David, Head of…something, you know. My favourite employee.” Peter requested.
“Can we please renegotiate your previous statement,” Ted pleaded.
“Ted, I don’t have time for this, get David on the phone now.”
The entire room had fallen silent, which made Peter want to pull his own hair out and finish the conversation as quickly as possible.
“Mr Parker?” David asked when he answered the phone about two minutes later, clearly very confused and perplexed.
“Congratulations,” Peter told him. “You’re the new CEO.”
There was a concerned gasp from across the room. Probably Gwen.
“Excuse me?” David asked, equally concerned. He lowered his voice slightly and whispered, “Mr Parker, have you had any coffee in the last…oh, I don’t know, 48 hours? Because you just…”
“Gave you one heck of a promotion?” Peter raised an eyebrow. “No, I haven’t had any coffee. Ted and Reed are staring daggers at you, right? I just fired them. Hope you were in the market for a pay rise, you’re about to get a big one. Presuming it’s ok to make you CEO, of course.”
“I’m not sure that’s exactly a position I can refuse."
“Good,” Peter grinned. “That’s settled, we can work out the intricacies of the paperwork tomorrow. Ted’s probably begging for the phone back, don’t let him yell at you for this but I’m hanging up now because I’m currently socialising.”
Peter said a final, “Ciao,” and then placed his phone back into his pocket, relieved.
“What was that ?” One of his friends asked, blinking slowly at him. “Who is Ted? Or Reed? Or David?”
“Are they employees of Stark Industries?” Max asked.
“Ted is one of the joint CEOs of Netflix. Well, was .” Peter stared darkly at the phone.
“But you….you just…you just fired them.” Gwen stuttered. “Peter are you…do you somehow own Netflix?”
“Well,” Peter waved. “I have a controlling interest, and technically the paperwork is in my name, so I suppose you could say that. Christmas gift.”
“You. own . Netflix.”
Needless to say, that revelation didn’t go down very well amongst his college friends. Their reaction was arguably worse than Ned and MJ's.
“Anyways,” Peter brought them back on topic ten minutes later, a beaming smile on his face, after they’d all lightheartedly yelled at him because a) he owned Netflix and that was apparently something to freak out over b) "so if you just fired the CEOs does that mean i’ll have to renew our subscriptions? we aren’t all billionaire’s kids y’know” and c) "does the new CEO take movie requests to be added?" (David did).
“Did you all decide which one of my facts was the lie?” he inquired.
They all shook their heads, as they’d been unable to choose the lie due to such drastic difference in decisions between them all.
“I’ll give you a hint, narrow it down.” Peter decided to take pity on them. “Ted and Reed also decided to interrupt...when I was kidnapped.”
“You actually were kidnapped?” Max asked, his tone slightly disappointed that he’d been wrong.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” Gwen asked, immediately alarmed.
“Yeah, it was fine.” Peter shrugged, nonchalant. “I didn’t even get a scratch on me, honest. I got myself out of it in like, an hour, tops?”
“So that leaves…the handshake, the bomb defusing and the 17th in line to the throne.” His friend counted it off on his fingers.
They sat and argued for a while longer, which honestly was quite amusing to listen to, before turning to Peter with tired expressions.
“We give up,” Another of his friends admitted. “Which one was it?”
“The bomb one,” Peter smirked.
“You don’t know how to degree a bomb?” Max raised an eyebrow, then leaned back and reached for a book on his shelf. “Here, this’ll teach you.”
Of course he just had that on command.
“No, I do know how to.” Peter passed back the book. “I was lying about the never-having-to-use-it part.”
There was a deafening silence, and then a chorus of comments.
“What?”
“Peter, you had to defuse a live bomb?” Gwen was growing more and more distressed by the minute.
“You need to tell us that story, stat.”
“For another night, maybe,” Peter tapped his knee. “It wasn’t as fun as it sounds.”
“It sure sounds like it was fun,” Max grumbled, putting his bomb defusing book back in its correct place. It wasn’t even said sarcastically—the boy genuinely believed it. Of course he’d be excited about that sort of thing.
“Wait, so, you and the President—”
“Yup,” Peter interrupted, popping the ‘p’ as he did so.
“And you’re 17th in line to—”
“Yup.”
Another silence, and then everyone in the room was sitting back and groaning.
“I thought he was so normal,” Gwen was muttering to herself. “Peter Parker-Stark, unassuming student, does all the work without help, normal kid…only to find out all this.”
“It’s a conspiracy,” Max mumbled to her, and she nodded back fervently.
“We’ve never been more wrong in our lives.”
Peter just smirked and leant back in his sitting position, relieved at their reaction. At least they’d stopped being so damn polite about it, so that was a win.
Besides. He’d only told them about the tame stuff.