st_x5_494 | Morning Run (Closed to Peter

Peter looks over at his arm. The old blood has already started to dry and the newer blood is still oozing out. The skin around the punctures is slightly raised from where the creature's maw was pulled from his arm. Peter can't help but think that it looks a little like a volcano with blood oozing out of it instead of lava.

"I know I don't," he says, quietly. "But I still want to."

He sighed loudly. The idea that Peter would do such a stupid thing - what the hell was he going to do around Stark when he had to battle Thanos? The thought was unsettling.

"I'm just a guy, Peter."

Alec wasn't sure why, but he felt anger inside of him. He wasn't sure if it was anger towards Peter or to himself or to the situation... it was just there and it translated into his face as determination.

"I know," Peter says. He does know, just like he knew that he shouldn't need to impress Alec. Knowing hardly did anything to change how he felt, though, and he isn't sure he'd be able to explain it in a way that made sense to someone who didn't ever want to impress anyone ever.

"Don't you ever want people to just see the best side of you?"

"Yeah." Even here, he was sure that was one of the reasons why Corbie had such a strange hold over him. Even Peter, to some degree.

He paused and continued to walk until he managed to say what he had been thinking for over five minutes in his head.

"Your fighting isn't the best side of you. You have far better sides." His eyes remained on the path, the comment almost like he hadn't said it at all.

"I want to look competent," Peter says, and then he quickly readjusts to say what he actually means. "I want to be competent."

For a few moments, Peter doesn't say anything.

"Mr. Stark told me once that he was the only one who believed in me," he says, finally. "That none of the Avengers did."

Peter takes a breath.

"I just... want to prove to them that I'm someone worth believing in."

"Peter" His name came out hard around the edges, like Alec was clearly trying to control his anger. Alec would have stopped right then and there and had a talk with Peter, but they were both bleeding and if Peter lost his arm, that would be on Alec, so he kept walking despite the rage brewing inside.

"From what you've told me, you haven't spent more than five minutes with anyone else but Stark. How do you know what they think or not?" Alec was still of the belief that Tony Stark said a lot of shit to manipulate Peter. He saw in Stark the same sort of stuff he saw in Lydecker. "You got that Hyena off my back even after you've been injured. You're competent. You just need to actually believe that."

"Because I'm a kid."

It's the first time Peter actually admits it.

"Because I was fourteen years old when he brought me to Germany. Because everyone thought he was crazy for recruiting me because of it."

The inn was just starting to come in view. It was good because even Alec's stamina was starting to drain. He had been slowing down ever so slightly for a while now.

"If you want to become as old as them, maybe trying to stay alive is more important."

"My age shouldn't matter," Peter says. "I don't get why it does."

As the hotel comes into view, he can't help but still hope that no one sees them. Yeah, they're visibly injured, but the last thing he wants is for someone to see them and make a big deal out of it.

"Would you say that to someone who was twelve?"

Alec slowed to a stop. "You want to go to the clinic, or you want me to fix you up in your room?"

"Depends on what the 12-year old could do," Peter argues. "Besides, there's a huge difference between 12 and 16."

When Alec stops, Peter's quick to give his answer: "The room. I should probably be back to normal in a day, so there's no use making a big deal out of it."

Edited 2018-05-28 19:24 (UTC)

Alec was going to argue that Peter just told him that he had been fourteen at the time, but didn't. Instead, he headed for the rooms. He headed not through the front way, but through the back of the building in a manner that seemed to suggest he had studied how people moved in the inn and was avoiding the most popular places.

When he got the the room, he finally sat Peter down on a chair - no sense in getting blood on the bed. Alec now had a limp, but he disappeared into his bedroom and came out with the black pack of his. He brought out bandages, antisepic, and tools to stitch up Peter's arm. He also disappeared into the bathroom and came back with towels and used the bucket of ice as a bucket of water.

Despite having his own wounds, he moved to start to clean Peter's arm.

"Shouldn't you take care of yourself first?" Peter asks, pointedly. "If you pass out or something, I'm not going to be able to do much to help."

Peter can at least admit he's in a sorry state right now.

"I've been in worse." He really had. "We're made to be durable... I have a little longer before I need to rest. So, the lesson for the day is how to stitch up a wound." Alec wasn't going to be able to fix his back, after all.

Alec's brow was sweating though. He would have to stop soon.

He picked up the needle after Peter's wound was clean. "This is going to sting." He started to stitch the wound up with careful hands.

Peter tenses up as Alec pierces through with the needle, but after that first intrusion, Peter finds himself slowly relaxing.

"Did you have to do this a lot?" he asks. Alec is surprisingly good at it -- his stitches are neat and even. Somehow Peter doubted that Alec was mending clothes, so that meant he had to have sewn someone else up at some point.

"In the field? No, not really. More in the last year, sure." Because Manticore was hunting them, so it gave for more occasion/need for it. "But we had lessons on it all the time. We're no good if we can't keep going. We're also universal blood donours, if you ever need a transfusion or an organ of mine."

"I hope I don't need your blood or your organs," Peter says. He winces as Alec pulls his needle through. Everything would be healed through soon enough, but this would probably help it.

"I'm B+," Peter says helpfully. "Would you be able to take my blood if you needed it, or is this a Type-O kind of thing?"

"I'm O-... but I can only take blood from another X5. Same with organs." It would be a one-way deal. The healers here like Pike made the idea far less likely to need something like that, though.

Alec's almost done. It seems like the bleeding has stopped for his arm which was good.

Peter feels a prickle of worry form at the back of his neck, but he tries really hard to ignore it. Alec was a super fast regenerator. There were also healers here, so blood transfusions and organs weren't likely to be a problem.

Those thoughts don't do much of anything to assuage his concern.

"You should take care of yourself first then," Peter grumbles.

Over Alec's dead body would he take care of himself over Peter, but he didn't say that. Instead, he finished dressing Peter's wound, put gauze overtop.

"I'm fine. It just needs to be cleaned and stitched so it closes without a scar." He tugged off his shirt and tossed it into the garbage from where he was and then practically fell down into the chair. "I can work on my leg while you get my back. Just don't mess up too much." The last part was meant as a joke as her ripped his pant leg open more and began to clean the bite mark.

Peter's not sure if he's capable enough to do this.

"Are you really going to let me do that?"

Let probably isn't the word he's looking for. Peter's by no means scrambling for the opportunity to stitch up someone else's back. Yeah, it might be a valuable life skill, but he was worried about screwing up and hurting Alec.

He's also pretty sure his stitches aren't going to look nearly as good as Alec's.

"Yeah. I meant it what I said about you." That he was capable. Peter just needed to stop making stupid decisions from time to time is all. "If you don't want to, It'll heal on it's own. It'll just take longer." And he'd probably have to rest a lot more.

Alec didn't really turn to put pressure on Peter to make a decision, but instead got to work on his leg. His leg was where he'd bleed out from the most, really.

Peter nods solemnly, then goes through the stuff that Alec pulled out. He spends a little longer than Alec cleaning Alec's wound -- in part because he's delaying the first stitches, but also because he wants to be sure he's doing a good job.

"I'm about to start, okay?" He wasn't sure if he was right or wrong to give Alec a warning, but he'd want a warning.

Peter takes a breath and starts his first stitch.

It's only his muscles around his shoulders that seem to twitch when Peter does the first pass with the needle, but then his skin relaxed. There is a moment where Alec felt his eyes droop close and he realized maybe there'd been more blood that was lost than he realized, but he also knew he'd be fine after a rest. And he was thankful Peter couldn't see his face either.

"You're doing fine." Probably, anyways.

"Yeah," Peter says, not in agreement because he needs to say something to acknowledge what Alec's saying and yeah seems as good enough a word to the affirmative as any. "I'll try and get this done quickly."

A beat.

"But not too quickly," Peter quickly reassures. "I'm not gonna rush through and mess up."

Still, Peter continues to work and before long, Alec's back is stitched up.

"You're not going to be able to sleep on your back," he says, bandaging it up. It looked bad. Peter couldn't help but feel guilty, even if he knew Alec was going to be fine. He didn't like people being hurt because of him.

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