Chapter Text
You don't know what you expected walking into Stark Tower for the first time-well, technically it's the new christened Avengers Facility now, but "Stark Tower" still rolls off the tongue easier-but you definitely didn't expect to be arguing with a sentient AI about your security clearance within your first fifteen minutes.
"I'm telling you, Friday, my clearance is approved. Tony Stark himself signed it." You clutch your access badge like it's a winning lottery ticket, willing it to grant you entrance.
"Mr. Stark signs many things," Friday replies in that overly polite Irish lilt, a little too amused for a non-corporeal being. "Most of them while sipping a seventy-year-old scotch and listening to AC/DC. That doesn't mean they're always legitimate."
"Wow," you mutter, "you're sassier than I imagined."
"I've learned from the best."
Before you can argue back, the glass doors behind you whoosh open, and it strides the man himself-Tony Stark, in all his disheveled genius glory. T-shirt with a questionable stain, sunglasses indoors, a tablet in one hand, and what looks like a half-eaten protein bar in the other.
"There she is," he says, barely glancing up from the screen. "Intern #0389. My newest burden-slash-project. Friday, let her in before she starts crying. We don't have insurance for emotional damage."
"I don't cry," you say, following him inside.
"Everyone cries. It's just a matter of when and how loud."
And with that, you're in. Just like that. No fanfare, no orientation, no HR welcome packet. Just Tony Stark and his walking hurricane of chaos, which you are now apparently expected to survive.
Later that Day..
You expected paperwork. Maybe spreadsheets. Instead, you are three hours into reorganizing a weapons prototype closet that's probably illegal in fifteen countries. Tony handed you a high-tech label maker and said, "Don't blow yourself up," before vanishing in a cloud of blaring rock music and motor oil.
You sit cross-legged on the floor, holding what looks like a cross between a boomerang and a blender. "Why is everything her either glowing or humming?"
"Because you're not a supposed to touch it."
You jump and nearly scream-because standing at the door is none other than Natasha Romanoff, sipping a smoothie, watching you like you're a mildly amusing Youtube video.
"...Hi," you say, trying not to sound breathless.
She tilts her head. "Intern?"
You nod.
"Brave."
Then she just walks off.