st_x5_494 | Coming Back Home (Closed to Peter)

Alec listened without any seeming shift in his body or his expression. In fact, he listened carefully. Even more so, he didn't reach for a bottle.

"You need to do what you need to do, Peter. I'm done arguing with you. If you say you can do it, then you can do it." He wasn't being sarcastic. His tone was leveled and calm as he looked over at him. Alec knew nothing he could say or do was going to change Peter's mind - so what was the point? "I know you don't think I have confidence in you, so I'm sorry for that. I do, but I'm done trying to prove it. Like you said, you're old enough. You can handle it. You can handle everything. So, okay."

And the part that went unsaid, that Alec knew deep down, was he already accepted Peter's death. That someday Peter wouldn't listen to advice of those with more experience and he'd die. Alec just hoped when it did, it would be quick for the kid.

"Okay."

Peter's not sure what else to say. Lately, it feels like he doesn't know what to say a lot of the time. He wonders if this is what adults do. Not young adults like him, but adult-adults. Do they talk everything out like this? Are things always this awkward and uncomfortable? He never used to have talks like this with Ned, but the two of each other seemed to understand each other implicitly. There were times when he didn't have to say anything at all and Ned just understood. And he understood Ned like that, too.

Even though Alec said he was fine with talking, it feels like he doesn't want to. It'd be awkward for him to just sit there, so he should probably find somewhere else to hang out for awhile until it doesn't feel awkward. Peter's not sure when that'll be. He wonders if Alec feels the same way and that's why he keeps leaving. Maybe it was better that they not be roommates at all.

Peter pushes himself off the bed and thumbs towards the door. "I'm gonna go down for coffee," he says. "I'll be back later."

He wonders if Alec will be here later.

Alec would still be there, though whether Peter wanted him to be is a different thing.

He nodded, then as Peter turned, his voice sounded again. "You know... If you'd rather room with someone else, like that Star-Lord guy, I'd understand." He would... though Alec thought he wouldn't have felt so upset about the idea. It seemed Peter really had rubbed off on him more than he realized. Even so, Alec couldn't bring his face to express such pain. Manticore trained him well.

Peter spins around and looks at Alec, the distress visible on his face. If he hadn't badgered Alec for a complete list of his skills from virtually day one, he might have thought Alec a mindreader. All this time, was Alec thinking the same thing?

"No," Peter says immediately. "No, not -- not unless you want me to go."

Peter's gaze is steady on Alec as he braces for his roommate's answer.

Edited (italics) 2018-05-18 20:54 (UTC)

"...I don't." The answer came easily after a moment. There was a pause. "I like having a roommate." Another pause. "...I like having you as my roommate."

That last part had been a little hard for him to squeeze out.

Peter feels so overwhelmed. The last few days have felt like a rollercoaster of emotions: Liz and Max, the sudden boost of confidence when he fought with Xavin, the disagreement with Liz, the encounter with Rocket, learning that his future self was an Avenger from Quill, then the fight with Alec. So much had happened so quickly that it was hard not to feel overwhelmed. He might have been confident in the future-him's abilities, especially if Mr. Stark had christened him as an Avenger, but he didn't feel confident in his ability to handle all of this at once right now.

So when his eyes start to burn, Peter knows that there's no stopping it.

"Yeah," he says, his voice cracking. He wipes the first few tears away with the back of his hand. "Me too."

Edited 2018-05-18 21:41 (UTC)

Peter was... crying? Alec sat up straighter on instinct, but he has no idea what the hell to do. He wasn't even used to women crying - and they did that a lot - let alone a guy.

In another moment he was up, but clearly unsure of what to do. Awkwardly he walked forward and then more on instinct than anything else, Alec hugged him.

The tears only come faster when Alec hugs him, and Peter feels so many emotions all at once that he can't even begin to identify them. But as much as he tries, he can't seem to stop crying. Maybe it's because of everything that's happened or the fact that Alec's hugging him and he never thought that would happen or that he still feels bad for the shitty thing he said. It might be something else entirely.

Peter doesn't know.

It takes a moment for his arms to react, and he wraps them around him and buries his face into Alec's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he says, and he doesn't know what he's apologizing for because he feels like he's sorry for so much right now.

Alec's not exactly sure why, but he feels like an asshole. The tears are no doubt his fault - they almost always were. He holds Peter tightly, letting him cry as much as he needs to. It's the sorry, though, that confused him. "Nothing to be sorry about. I say a bunch of stupid shit all the time."

Peter eventually peels his face away from Alec's shirt and he looks over in his direction, though not exactly at him. He attempts a smile, just so Alec knows he's okay, but it comes out crooked and wrong. Peter is cognizant of this fact when he turns around, plops down on the edge of the bed again, and presses the butt of his palms against his eyes.

Thenor, hypothenor, he thinks, because it was a Academic Decathalon question two years ago.

He should say something, but he doesn't have any idea what to say. When he's sure he's not going to cry anymore, he pulls his hands away from his face and looks down at the ground.

"Sorry, I don't really want to get coffee anymore," he says to the floor.

It wasn't what he was apologizing for before, but it's what he's apologizing for now.

He waited there silently and didn't move as Peter sat there on the bed. He could feel the dampness on his shirt and it really bothered him to see Peter like he was now. It was things like this moment Alec wanted to protect Peter from. And from moments where this would happen because someone like Stark died and the kid had to burden that responsibility - because Peter would even if it wasn't his fault.

"Do you even like coffee?" He stood there, keeping his tone casual.

Peter makes a tiny, fragmented sound that eventually works itself to a full dull, huh kind of a laugh. "No," he says lightly. "I don't."

Peter doesn't say anything for a few moments after that. He's still trying to put his thoughts into order so that he can understand with perfect clarity what he's feeling, but like knowing what to say right now, it's not coming easily.

And it doesn't quite come together when he opens his mouth to speak again.

"Why do you always leave?" he asks.

Peter kind-of asked before after Alec left when he punched him in the nose, but he never explicitly asked why he chose to leave. Peter just pointed out that Alec was avoiding him, Alec avoided admitting it, and Peter just asked why he didn't want to talk about it because that's the reason he thought Alec was avoiding him to begin with.

Peter's not entirely sure it still is, or that it ever was.

His hands slipped into his pant pockets and he exhaled a little. Why? He looked at Peter and his current state.

"I need to think." A rare moment of Truth. "...I'm not used to..." One hand comes back out of his jeans and he made a vague gesture in front of him. "All this. I'm used to being alone and being told want to think and all that bullshit."

He paused.

"It's not you, it's me." And for once Alec uses that line and actually means it.

Peter wants to ask Alec to stay because every time Alec goes, he worries. But Peter knows he can't ask for that, because it'd be selfish. So he doesn't ask.

Peter takes a breath, his shoulders rising a little with the act. He's starting to feel less teary; his eyes are burning less than they were before. He stops looking at the floor and looks up at Alec.

"Do you think you're going to ever be okay with this?"

Peter isn't just asking for himself. Selfishly, yeah, he wants Alec to be okay with this because he doesn't want to worry. But he also wants Alec to be okay with this because Alec deserves to be. He deserves to be comfortable with not being along with being able to make his own choices with being able to think his own thoughts.

Sometimes, he thinks Alec thinks he doesn't deserve that.

Alec never had the urge to hug someone as much as he had a few minutes ago, save for Rachel, but he definitely had never felt the urge to do it twice in under ten minutes. He didn't move, though. He hated how Peter seemed so upset about a life that wasn't his. Moments like this... how could anyone look at Peter and wish him to fight against people who might kill him one day?

Suddenly Alec knew exactly how Max felt about Manticore. He remembered back to the barn where those kids from Manticore were hiding and how Max refused to leave them despite the tactical disadvantage they were in. Alec understood Max a whole lot better now.

"Talking about my feelings?... no, probably not." He paused, felt bad for some reason, then shrugged. "But maybe I'm getting better at being with people..." Slowly, but surely.

"I'm happy," Peter says, though he doesn't sound happy. Not because he isn't, but because it's hard to sound happy when your nose is drippy and your eyes are red, and your throat has that weird clogged feeling it gets whenever you end up crying.

Maybe it's not a lot to some people, but to Peter it's a start. It's better than what it was the first time they met what feels like an eternity ago now. Maybe being roommates helped with that a little. On some level, Peter thought that maybe Alec needed him as much as he needed Alec.

At least he hoped so.

Peter sniffs, then wipes at his nose with the back of his hand. He looks down at the carpet again. "I sometimes, you know," Peter says, because it's hard, somehow to admit it, even though it shouldn't be. "I sometimes get scared, but I just -- I just end up doing it anyway."

Peter doesn't think that Alec will get it. He insisted the other day that being afraid was what would keep him alive, but on some level, he knew that it wasn't enough. There probably wasn't anything that would get him to stop. Eddie had threatened to kill him and everyone he loved, but even that real and legitimate threat to May and Ned couldn't stop him. And it didn't stop him from saving Eddie afterward, either.

He's pretty sure if he told Alec that, he wouldn't understand that either.

"I was never saying you shouldn't do it." Alec wished he wouldn't, but he knew Peter couldn't stop himself. Alec couldn't either, even when he pretended he could. Like when he drove away from those kids in the barn with an 'I'm saving myself, good luck' air and then turned around and helped to save their ass in the end. As much as Alec wanted to be selfish, in the end, he couldn't quite like bad things happen either. Not anymore, anyways. Not since Max had freed him.

"You just have this way of making it sound like you're going on some trip to an amusement park or something and you don't stop to acknowledge how fucked up something is. Like you think you're invincible." He sighed and found a wall to lean on. "I've seen that before. I've seen it in kids your age and in people my age. Hell, even I used to be like that. Those people always got hurt. Or worse - I got people killed for thinking I was some untouchable bad-ass." He had turned his fear into over-compensation and that hadn't been good.

"Now I just acknowledge I'm scared and turn it into energy to fight." He paused. "My enemy back home is stronger than us and doesn't feel pain and are harder to kill than any transgenic ever made - scared means we don't underestimate them."

Peter thinks about this for a moment and continues staring down at the carpet.

"I know I'm not invincible," he says finally. "I used to get beaten up at school. The only difference is that now I get beaten up by people with alien tech instead of high school kids."

Years of bullying proved helpful when he came home with a bruise on his face after a night of patrolling. May just assumed it was just the kids from school rather than some handbag-stealing thug fighting her vigilante costumed nephew. He had convinced her not to go to the principal because it'd just make the bullying worse. To his surprise, she believed him even though he was usually a bad liar.

He took that in, paused in silence, then found himself asking in return a question he hadn't thought about before. "Do you look forward to it? If all crime stopped tomorrow, would that upset you?"

What would he do if there was nothing to fight? Alec didn't know the answer. He expected to die before finding this out.

"Yeah, I look forward to helping people," Peter says. "But if I didn't need to do it because everything in the world was okay..."

Peter takes a breath.

"I'd be okay with it."

He really would. Peter just wasn't naive enough to think that something like that might actually happen someday.

Alec gave a small nod. That was good enough for him.

"Look... I'm not saying you can't think it's cool to be an Avenger or fight with Stark." Alec actually avoided an eyeroll, but he almost popped a blood vessel preventing it. He really hated this guy he had never met. "Just maybe consider how it sounds to other people. Consider why you don't tell your Aunt May everything or, I'm assuming, Liz. "

He paused.

"Then again, we're two different people from different worlds. If Max came here from the future to tell me I had to battle five breeding cult freaks while a pregnant girl gave birth and I was shot in the arm, I don't think I'd be bouncing off the walls with excitement."

"I don't tell them because I don't want them to worry," Peter insists, and he knows he's coming dangerously close to insisting that he can handle it and that's probably just going to tick Alec off, so he's just going to let it slide. He's not sure that Alec has anyone in his life who he doesn't want worrying about him.

Peter's pretty sure that Alec thinks that no one does.

"I think it's different," Peter says, though he's not going to argue. "If you got to fight alongside the person you admired most to do something that'd have a real impact... wouldn't you be excited?"

Peter's not sure that Alec even has anyone he admires. Or if he does, he doubts it's anyone Alec admires as much as he does Mr. Stark.

"I grew up watching the Avengers on TV saving people. Saving me. Being able to call myself one of them, it's like getting elected President."

Alec was pretty sure his President hated his job. Ever since the Pulse, politicians got a lot of slack for everything. Then again, the government was corrupt, so maybe they didn't care.

"If you think they'll worry, then shouldn't you at least know to worry a little bit? You can handle things and still worry about the outcome. If you're going to fail If it's the last time you'll see whoever. blah blah blah. The worry keeps you on your goal to win."

"I do worry," Peter insists, sulking. He's looking less sad now, and more like his normal self. "When you win, bad things can still happen."

It's almost as if Peter is determined to prove Alec wrong.

"Of course. Sometimes you have to ruin someone's life to stop them from doing bad things." Or kill them, like Max had with his twin, Ben. Or like Alec had to with some of the lesser evolved transgenics. "Sometimes the best solutions the shittiest one."

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