st_x5_494 | Morning Run (Closed to Peter

"it's not a hassle." Alec could give him the theory of body conditioning. It only just occurred to him that Peter had gone from a weakling to someone who can stop a car without actually working out.

"You can teach me how to daydream." He'd probably regret that remark.

"I don't know if that's really something that can be taught," Peter says. It's weird, but now that he thinks about it, it's something that comes to him naturally.

"I just think about the way I'd want things to turn out. And sometimes the way I don't want things to turn out because sometimes you have to have things not turn out in order for there to be a payoff at the end of the story."

The story here being the daydream.

Alex did not understand this need. "What sort of things do you think about?" And why he also wanted to ask, but didn't.

"You can't laugh," Peter says, eyes bearing down on Alec.

Alec now clearly needed to know the answer. "I won't laugh." Outwardly, anyways.

"Like..."

This is embarrassing.

"We're in the middle of class and there's suddenly a big alien attack on the school. Or maybe not on the school, but near it. Everyone's panicked and freaking out and I'm calm because I've handled this kind of stuff before. I can't change into my suit, but I've got my web-shooters on me and I pull on the mask. Everyone knows I'm Spider-Man, especially Flash."

Especially Flash.

"And I jump out of the window, and I'm fighting these aliens, and Mr. Stark's talking to me through the mask telling me the Avengers are being deployed and I'm like 'Little busy here!' and then there's a big fight with the boss, but the Avengers still aren't there, and I defeat him even though it's tough and then Thor and Iron Man show up and Thor gives me a high five and Mr. Stark says 'good job, kid'."

Peter can feel his face growing red.

"Like that."

Thankfully Alec was trained enough not to have his expression change as he listened. But really - that was probably the most embarrassing thing he had ever heard, and Peter talked a lot. He blinked, trying not to look too judgy. There were parts that didn't surprise him - like how Peter had to fight 'the boss' like it was some sort of video game or how Stark had to praise him. Alec was sure the Psy-ops division would have a field day psychoanalyzing that day dream.

"How would you be able to take on all the alien guys if you don't kill them? And why wouldn't the 'boss' just do whatever he wanted to do while you were fighting the other guys?"

"Web-shooters," Peter says, lifting the wrist of his good arm, as if to demonstrate. That reminds him -- he needs to replace his cartridges.

"And yeah, the boss would be... doing things --" Peter wasn't really thinking about what the boss was doing until he finally stopped an appropriate number of alien bad-guys. "-- and I'd have to stop him before he did more. Like, maybe he was coming close to achieving his objective--" Whatever that was. "--but I showed up just in time to stop him."

Alec listened, but his expression perhaps gave away that he had no real clue as to why this was an enjoyable thing for Peter to think about. Also the logistics were all off. Peter was assuming somehow the timing would work and - he stopped himself from over-analyzing. He was pretty sure he'd go insane.

"What happens afterwards? You finish your science test?"

"No, you usually stop daydreaming after the hi-fives and Iron Man telling you you did a good job."

This was embarrassing. Why did he even say this? Alec probably thought he was totally uncool. Or more uncool.

Peter looks down at his bandaged arm.

"You have to try now," he says.

"okay..." He didn't know why he'd do it, but he supposed it was similar to running through variants of an outcome.

"Uh. We're running in the desert and you slow down so we make it through the whole thing without getting attacked by hyenas." He paused. "...then we high five?"

Peter frowns at Alec's answer in obvious disapproval.

"Something better," he says.

Alec wondered if his sometimes fantasies of women counted.

"Fine. I'm in a Jacuzzi and there's this woman-"

"No, not that kind of daydream!"

Peter facepalms with his good arm. "Come on!"

"Alright, fine." He paused and thought. It was sort of cheating, but, "Max and I decide to save the day because that's what we do and we end up at a strip club -" He shot Peter a look that said 'relax' " - and there's this mermaid there and we decide to help her escape, but some guy shows up we think is the enemy and while we're kicking his ass, the mermaid is captured and that dude ends up being the mermaid's mate. So we team up and get her back and those two swim away happily ever after... then Max and I high five each other."

"You're not taking this seriously," Peter moans. He's pretty sure Alec is just screwing with him. "Come on, Alec. Just close your eyes and think about something you think would be cool. And not women and not alcohol and not any of that other stuff," he says, because he knows there's almost certainly something that he's neglected to put on that list.

He sighed. "Fine. But for the record that really happened.. except for the high five part."

Alec closed his eyes though, just for Peter, and tried to think of something. It took him a long time.

"We're in Jam Pony and we're surrounded by cops and White's people are coming in... and instead of leaving them there, we kill them and kill White and don't ever have to worry about them again."

He opened his eyes with an expression that said 'good enough'?

Peter frowns at that.

At the root of every good daydream is something that someone really wants. All the other details are there to form a cohesive narrative in which you somehow manage to get whatever that thing is that you really want. Most of Peter's daydreams were fairly indirect: he wanted to be respected and validated and heroic, though it was said in many more words than that.

But Alec's daydream is strangely direct.

"Is that what you want? For White and his people to be dead?"

Edited 2018-05-30 01:19 (UTC)

He shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much. Would make the world a better place and we'd have to stop running and hiding." And unlike Peter's version of life, the only way they were going to be stopped was through death.

Peter sorta wishes he'd let Alec just make up a daydream about girls or money or something.

"I have this daydream sometimes, where I'm applying for colleges and I don't let Mr. Stark know where I'm applying because I really want to get in because of my own merits and not because he had some extra pull," he says. "I go into Columbia for the college interview and I'm not freaking out at all. I'm confident and all my answers are exactly what they want to hear and I know it."

Peter nods lightly. His eyes are opened, but set on a fixed point, like he's watching it all play out in front of him, like on TV.

"Two weeks later, I get the acceptance letter. I've got a full scholarship and May doesn't have to worry about anything. And it's close by so I can commute so I can still live with May and protect Queens."

He looks over at Alec and doesn't say anything. Not because he doesn't know what to say, but because he doesn't really have anything else to. Sometimes, even this daydream feels completely out-of-scope, like taking on alien forces or winning Mr. Stark's approval.

But what else were daydreams for?

Alec got the sense that Peter daydreamed a lot.

"That doesn't sound like a day dream so much as a plan of action." Alec could at least think of those.

"Yeah," Peter says, trying to sound more sure of himself than he felt. Honestly, he'd been ready to throw college away until he defeated the Vulture and Mr. Stark took him to the Avengers Facility. After that, though, he thought that maybe college wouldn't be so bad, and that maybe he could handle both; he'd managed high school and the Vulture, after all -- even though it meant he was being called to the principal's office all the time.

But in the future, it sounded like he wasn't fighting high-tech alien weapons dealers in New York; he was fighting really bad guys in space. This wasn't missing Decathlon Nationals. He was probably gonna miss a lot more school than that.

"I don't think I'm gonna do that well on the interviews, though," Peter says, scratching his cheek. "I always get really nervous about that stuff."

That was also a big part of why this was a daydream.

"You have any others?"

"Any what?" Alec watched Peter for a moment. He needed way more confidence. Even with a girlfriend and some ass-hat telling him he was an Avenger, it seemed Peter still doubted himself.

"Daydreams?... I don't know if you notice, but I suck at them." He paused. "I can tell you over twenty different ways to exit the inn in case of different scenarios, though - that's how my brain is wired."

"You're not gonna get better at it unless you try," Peter says. "Like running."

"Maybe I shouldn't. I have a family history of letting my imagination turn me into a psycho-killer."

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