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There were a group of interns collected in the break room when Peter strolled in to Stark Industries R&D department after his typical Wednesday at school, greeting them with a wave. He chucked his backpack down on the floor and ran over to join them. Whatever they were doing was clearly more interesting than the science they were working on.
“Hey Boss, want some coffee?” Jasper called out, one of the interns amongst the break room huddle. His favourite of all the interns, although Peter tried not to play favourites. “We got a new coffee machine and we’re all trying it.”
They stepped back to show him the new coffee machine, which was practically sparkling in comparison to the rest of the break room. It seemed fancy, for coffee, not that Peter would really know how to tell. Regardless, his interest was piqued. Everyone was gaping at it like it was a precious commodity.
“I’ve never had it before,” Peter said, stepping closer to the machine to inspect it. His hand glided along the smooth surface.
“You’ve never had coffee?” One of the interns exclaimed, blinking at him in surprise. “How come?”
Peter shrugged. “My aunt doesn’t drink it, and Mr Stark said he wouldn’t be the person to start giving it to me, so I just haven’t ever tried it. And cause I never tried it growing up, I’ve never wanted to go out specifically and buy it.”
“Do you want some?” another intern asked, gesturing to the mug collection they’d curated over the years. Peter’s gaze slid over to the mugs, and he paused to consider it. He had had a long day, and he was feeling rather sleepy after his patrol the night previously, as well as that extra Calculus test he’d had to do for his MIT lecturer. When Tony was sleep deprived (which was practically always), he relied on coffee to give him a pick-me-up and to fuel him for the rest of the day.
It was a highly-recommended drink from most people in the world, and just as Peter was about to turn it down, he paused. Surely if everyone loved it that much, it had to be good. Not that he had FOMO, or anything…but maybe it couldn’t hurt to just try it.
“Sure,” Peter nodded. “Why not!”
“Let’s make you a standard Americano,” an intern stepped forward and placed the mug under the coffee machine, pressing a series of buttons. Peter sat and watched as the coffee poured out.
“Do you want sugar in it?” Jasper asked, holding up each option. “Or milk?”
Hm. Peter considered, then shook his head. Tony drank his coffee black, and he trusted Tony’s judgement. So Jasper passed him the mug and he clutched it with both hands—it was warm, comforting. Like holding a mug of hot cocoa.
He took his first sip as all of the interns watched in anticipation for his reaction.
Huh.
Peter perked up. “Hey, this is good! It’s bitter, but like…nice?”
The small sip of the drink had shot a wave of energy through him. There was a range of nods in approval from the interns, and Jasper smiled as he took another sip. He quickly downed the rest of the coffee, liking the taste as well as how it was making him feel. Almost immediately energised, like his spider senses had kicked in.
“Can I have something else?” Peter asked when he was finished.
“What would you like?” Jasper asked.
Peter considered it. His chemistry teacher always said that espresso got him through the tough days, and he was still feeling the wave of tiredness. Tony had told him to skip out on working with the team at R&D if he felt overwhelmed or tired, but he wasn’t tired in a way that felt like he wanted to actually sleep, just in a way of feeling unenergised. Maybe espresso could help him out with that.
“An espresso shot?” He suggested.
Jasper’s eyes widened in alarm. “Oh—uh, are you sure?”
“That’s coffee, right?” Peter asked, concerned he’d gotten it wrong and was now seeming like an idiot to the others.
But the others nodded–it was just that Jasper was reluctant to give him one.
One of the other interns rolled his eyes. “Jasper, loosen up, he’s the Boss, he can handle an espresso shot. Here, Pete, I’ll make it.”
“Right,” Jasper nodded slowly. “It’s fine. This is fine.”
Peter found that he liked the espresso shot. A lot, actually. It sent the same wave of energy through him as the Americano had, just faster. Whilst it was extremely strong, and somewhat unpleasant, it yielded a good result, so he went to fill up his mug for another shot.
“Don’t you think you should slow down a bit there, Peter?” Jasper asked nervously.
Peter turned to him, coffee in hand, frowning. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Right. Uh. Don’t worry about it. You do you, Pete.”
From there, Peter kept filling his cup up with coffee when he’d finished his mug. He would go to do some work on his current projects, and then dash back to the break room when his cup was empty. The only thing in his way, stopping him from drinking faster, was the other people using the coffee machine. Because it was all shiny and new, there was always a big queue to get to it.
At some point though, the line stopped being an issue. There was no-one around, which was odd, because R&D was always busy. But Peter didn’t question it—he was busy with his project, and entirely hyperfocued on getting to the next stage of development with it.
Eventually, Jasper strolled past him.
“Oh, you’re back!” Peter smiled, waving at him. “Brilliant! Jas, come look at this.”
He gestured to his progress, launching into an explanation of the suction boots he’d been working on and the specific mechanism he’d be working on for what–the last hour or so?
Jasper looked startled at his presence, and quite tired. “Peter, did you know there’s a very comfortable bed that belongs to you, up in the penthouse?”
He scoffed back. “Now is not an opportune time for napping! I have a deadline!”
“You set the deadlines, Pete. It’s entirely self-imposed. In fact, I’m pretty sure Pepper told you that if you adhered to this deadline, you’d be way ahead of schedule, and actually recommended you push it back a week.”
Peter frowned. “I was thinking I’d push it forward a week, actually. It’s been going very well all evening–” He turned his head, distracted by a figure walking past in the corridor that he could see through the large expanse of glass windows. “Oh–there’s Maguire! Perfect, I can never catch that man out of his office and I ran into an issue about this mechanism thing. Back in a sec!”
He sprinted out of the R&D lab, science goggles atop his head and a white lab coat on. This was in stark contrast to Andrew Maguire’s full three piece suit, probably adorned with a pocketwatch of some kind. That was a man with the rather large salary of being the Head of Legal of Stark Industries, and the innate ability to not spend his money on anything other than work clothing. Tony was always trying to convince him to get into some hobbies where he could spend his money, but Andrew was pretty determined not to. Other than Carpentry, apparently, which Peter had once found out that Maguire was super into when he’d shown a picture of a mahogany side table he’d made for his sister’s apartment.
Maguire looked fairly surprised to see him, but had long gotten over questioning things that Peter said or did. It was a Stark family policy, quite frankly. You’d lose your sanity if you thought things through too much.
“So, whaddaya think?” Peter asked, finishing off his speech about the potential legal implications of the specific mechanism he’d been working on for the suction boots. He’d been speaking pretty breathlessly and uninterrupted since he’d accosted Maguire in the corridor, and they’d gone all the way past the canteen, where Maguire had ordered and eaten two croissants with jam, and then back up to his office.
Andrew was matter of fact with him, his face blank of emotion. “Peter, you’ve been speaking Italian for the past half an hour, and I haven’t understood a word.”
“No I haven’t,” Peter protested, incredibly confident he was speaking English.
Andrew raised an eyebrow, opened his phone and passed him a video that was timestamped about five minutes prior. He pressed play and Peter witnessed himself speak in very fast, very intense Italian to the lawyer.
“So you mean I have to repeat my entire speech again?” Peter said, aghast. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
“I tried!” Andrew said, reaching for the phone to scroll to slightly later in the video and pressed play again. Peter watched as Andrew tirelessly tried to interrupt him, only for Peter to be unphased by this, super deep into the conversation he’d apparently been having with himself.
“Strano,” Peter muttered under his breath, then his eyes glanced over to something he’d never noticed that Maguire had in his office before–his own personal coffee machine. Peter hadn’t brought his existing mug up to the office, so he stared at it longingly.
Maguire made himself an espresso shot, downed it quickly, and then made a salted caramel latte. Peter wouldn’t have taken him for a sugary coffee kind of guy, but then again, he hadn’t thought the guy would be into wood-working, either. People came with lots of surprises.
“Can I have one too?” Peter blurted out. They hadn’t had any caramel syrup downstairs, and he was excited by the concept. Maguire gave him a strange look, but gestured for him to take a mug.
He had a caramel latte–and two more–whilst he explained the previous speech that he’d done in Italian, but in English this time. Then Maguire respectfully told him that he had work to do, and kicked Peter out of his office. It was probably giving him hives that Peter looked so undistinguished–his hair was in tufts with the googles pushed up into his hair. When he normally had meetings with the man, Peter looked a great deal more respectable.
So he begrudgingly left Maguire’s office–leaving behind the mug, and went back to his own department to get back to work. He definitely still had a few hours more in him before he’d crash–coffee was great! It was keeping him so energised, he felt like he could tackle the whole world.
–
24 hours into Peter Parker having consumed coffee for the first time, Jasper was getting quite worried and unsure how to best tackle the situation. Peter was the guy you went to in situations! He was the situations guy! Jasper Nolan sure as hell was not the situations guy.
When Jasper had arrived in the morning, it had seemed like Peter had no conception that it was in fact, no longer Wednesday evening, and that it had become Thursday morning. Jasper was getting increasingly suspicious that he had spent the entire night in the lab, but he had no proof.
After he came back from his meeting with Maguire, he was downright scary. On his way down, he told Jasper with some level of joy, he’d encountered another coffee machine and had decided to top himself up with a few espresso shots, The amount of caffeine running through Peter’s bloodstream was, quite frankly, probably bordering close to dangerous levels for any human, yet alone one who was new to caffeine.
They decided to stage an intervention when he stopped communicating in English. The interns decided that it wasn’t safe to tell Peter directly to his face that he couldn’t have any more coffee, so they just started stealing the mugs from Peter. Then, when he’d gotten through all of the mugs without questioning where they’d gone, Peter had started to use clean beakers dotted around the lab. They’d hidden those next, and Peter had moved onto the conical flasks for his coffee fill-ups. When that too had gone missing, he’d clearly become very desperate for any kind of receptacle, as when Jasper next walked past the break room, Peter had been sipping coffee out of a petri dish. It was a truly ridiculous sight, the teenager with tufty hair and science googles stood beside the coffee machine.
When he’d started walking on the ceiling and not seeming to notice that it was different from the floor, Jasper started getting incredibly concerned. He wasn’t wearing the suction boots he’d been working on, so how was he up there? It made no sense!
There was one thing that was for certain: Peter Parker and coffee were certainly not a good mix.
Jasper had no conception of how much coffee Peter had consumed–well over the recommended amount for one person’s daily caffeine allowance, that was certain. Hopefully still far from the lethal dose. He just kept a close eye on the guy–as much as you could, with the whirlwind that was Peter Parker Stark.
There was a collective sigh of relief across the lab as Tony entered the room, looking curious, at about 5pm. His face twisted in confusion as he caught sight of Peter, who was walking on his hands and carrying a circuit board in his mouth. “What on earth…”
Peter normally greeted Tony with a hug–at least an excited wave, or a smile. This time, he didn’t even seem to recognise that Tony had entered into the room, he was so focused on what he was doing.
“Thank god, Mr Stark,” Jasper sighed. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but he was just glad he could stop being the responsible one in the situation.
Jasper, Tony, and a collection of the interns who were still in the office watched Peter for a moment, wondering what on earth was going on with him.
“Why is he like this?” Tony Stark asked, perplexed. “What did you do to him—did you guys give him something?”
Jasper swallowed. “Well uh, an americano, and then several espressos. And some other coffee—we lost track, after that, sir.”
“What?!” A dark, horrified look crossed over Tony’s face. “Who gave him coffee?”
Absolutely no-one spoke, terrified of the billionaire’s expression.
“Uh—we got a new machine,” Jasper braved up enough to continue. “And asked if he wanted some. Were we…not supposed to?”
“Oh my god,” Tony pushed a hand through his hair, looking extremely stressed. “Did no-one ever tell you guys about the no-coffee rule for Peter?”
“There’s a no-coffee rule?” Jasper’s brain was just a flurry of one thought: we’re so dead, we’re so dead, we’re all so dead . “He just said no-one had let him try coffee before…”
“Yeah, intentionally. ” Tony told him. “That there–” He pointed at Peter, still upside down, “Is the very reason it exists. His aunt and I have been trying to avoid this day….dear god. You’ve created a monster.”
Jasper whispered in confusion to him, “He said his aunt doesn’t drink coffee.”
“Oh, no, she does,” Tony shook his head. “Just not in the apartment, and Peter doesn’t know. I had to get rid of any traces of it in my workshop, too, to ensure he’d never consume an ounce.”
“So you’ve been actively trying to stop him from having coffee?” Jasper frowned. “Why?”
Tony raised his eyebrows as if the answer to that was fairly obvious, and gestured toward Peter. “That’s why! He had one energy drink when he was 14 and May won’t even talk to me about what happened that day. She calls it ‘that fateful day’. May instated the rule after seeing what caffeine did to him then–but we didn’t tell him about it. I just figured Pepper had passed along the message at some point.” He shook his head.
“I know I told Maguire, but clearly he’s forgotten. I’m going to have to send out a whole email blast.” Tony sighed. “Did you know Maguire said when Peter met up with him, he was just speaking in Italian the entire time? Normally that’s something he only does when we’re in the workshop.”
“ You speak Italian?” One of the interns asked, seemingly shocked into speaking.
Tony shot him an odd look. “Uh, yeah. Point being, he can’t go on like this. Peter, come over here.”
Apparently being addressed did get his attention, because Peter righted himself and started fidgeting with the circuit board immediately. “Oh! Hey! I’ve been having such a great time in the lab–but, look, I think we might have a thief. I keep using things and then they just go missing.”
Tony shot a brief, curious look at Jasper, who did a subtle nod, and in return, got a slight appreciative quirk of the eyebrow from his boss. Then he focused back on Peter again.
“Anyways, besides the point, I’ll bring it up to Pepper. I’m so close to being done with the boots! Just have some circuiting to do, I think. And Maguire and I talked through the legal ramifications.”
Tony stared at him. Then, slowly, he asked, “Have you slept?”
“Yeah, I slept.” Peter nodded, ever so slightly faster than he would normally nod. “I slept really well.”
“Huh,” Tony frowned, and then glanced at him again. “Hey, Pete, what day is it today?”
“Wednesday,” Peter said confidently. “Wednesday evening.”
There was a beat.
“Kid, it’s Thursday.”
Peter looked unconvinced at this revelation. “But I haven't been to school—it can’t be Thursday.”
“You didn't go to school ?" Tony looked horrified.
“I guess not, if you say it’s Thursday. That’s okay, I didn’t have any tests or anything." Peter shrugged it off, “Besides, Morita’s too scared to call my emergency contacts in case you pick up and try and sue him after last time. Did you know that Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms can act as biological markers? I was reading a textbook on it and è stato davvero interessante scoprire la variazione del DNA, dovremmo parlarne con Bruce. Oh, and it led me to realise that where we were going with the latest Starkphone for passcodes wasn’t going to work, so I redesigned the concept and came up with a prototype–it’s just over there, it’s not perfect but not bad for a first time. And also–”
“Yeah, that’s it, you’re officially banned,” Tony interjected.
“Banned? Banned from what?” Peter asked, looking very confused.
“Banned from coffee.”
Peter pulled a sad face. “What? But it’s so nice-tasting!”
“Yeah,” Tony nodded. He gestured to Peter, “But this absolutely cannot happen again. You’ve scared poor Jasper to death. You spoke to Maguire in Italian for half an hour, and you did it again just now, talking about SNPs. FRIDAY told me you were walking on the ceiling?”
Peter bit his lip sheepishly. “Oops.”
Tony shot him a weighted look. “Yeah. Oops . Come on. Up to the penthouse. And you can make Jasper a batch of cookies as an apology.”
Jasper perked up at that idea. Maybe looking after Peter whilst he was caffeinated wasn’t that bad, if he’d get apology cookies out of it. He was great at baking when he put his mind to it.
The young heir gave him a little grin as Tony put his arm around Peter’s shoulder and pulled him out of the room. “Don’t worry, I’ll make red velvet ones.”
Jasper got his cookies–adorned with white chocolate lettering spelling out ‘Sorry’. Maguire got a set of very fancy Japanese wood-working saws as his apology gift. And every time Peter picked up a petri dish after that, the interns all reminded him of the day that became collectively known throughout Stark Industries as ‘the incident that must not be named of February 27th’.