We have this now - Peter

[st_x5_494]

Alec had gotten back to the room about an hour or so before the other world closed up. It felt a little weird to be going back to a place with far less freedom and far less things to do. It was almost like choosing to go back to prison.

He pushed any of those thoughts aside. There was no time to dwell.

He was currently taking a shower, but there was a peculiar addition to the room. On Peter's bed was a little kitten that was currently pouncing at the small hills made from the bedding and bounding up and down the bed itself as if chasing some imaginary assailant.

Comments

[st_arkintern]

Peter frowns for a second, then heads for his backpack, unzips it, then pulls out a notebook and a pencil case and heads back to the table. He opens the notebook, quickly scans through his chemical equations, then looks over at Alec.

"I didn't ever tell you what happened in the warehouse, did I?" He had told him that it collapsed on him, but not much of anything else.

[st_x5_494]

Alec watched him curriously for a moment. "No... But I know it left an impression." His arms unfolded. He wondered if he was going to hear it from Liz again. The Geneva hotel thing had been, in part, to make up for it.

[st_arkintern]

"So I told you about how Mr. Stark took the suit away, right?"

[st_x5_494]

He nodded. "And I'm sure you did something stupid."

[st_arkintern]

"I didn't do anything stupid," Peter protests. Everything he did that night was probably some degree of stupid, but he'd already exhausted all other options. Happy wouldn't hear Ned out, and there was no telling what sort of damage would be done once other-Liz's dad got away with them.

"I told you about how I found out other-Liz's dad was the Vulture, right?" Peter's not sure about this one.

[st_x5_494]

"Yeah. Took the bad guy's daughter out on a date. Classic move." Probably somewhere, anyways. Well, he supposed he did it too, but Rachel's father wasn't the bad guy.

[st_arkintern]

"Yeah, well," Peter says. "I left my cell phone in his car so Ned could track him, and I--"

Crap. He should have thought before telling this part of the story.

"--borrowed Flash's dad's car and followed him back to the warehouse."

[st_x5_494]

He nodded all seriously. "Uh huh. Uh huh. And I'm sure that asshole let you out of the kindness of his heart."

[st_arkintern]

"There was a lot at stake here," Peter insists. "If the Vulture had gotten his hands on all that tech, there's no telling who else would have gotten it or what they would have done with it. The FBI couldn't handle the Vulture just by himself when we were on the ferry."

The Avengers really would have to have been called in.

"Anyway!" Peter says, segueing this conversation away from the legality of technically carjacking Flash for the good of New York and back to the warehouse. "I ended up following him back to this warehouse to confront him, and he remotely activates his suit, and it's just... flying everywhere and I'm just dodging and trying to keep out of its way and I don't even notice that all the beams holding the building up were damaged and -- it just all comes crashing down."

[st_x5_494]

Alec's expression darkened a bit. No wonder the kid didn't like enclosed places. This was exactly why he needed to not do this stuff solo.

[st_arkintern]

"So," Peter looks down at his notebook. "I was trapped and I tried really hard to get out, but I couldn't move. I thought I was going to die down there without anybody ever finding me."

Peter takes a breath.

"But I got out and I'm okay now," he says. "I know I told you about it that night already." In far less detail than now. "I just wanted you to know that even when I'm freaking out or when I'm scared, I'll still pull myself together and make it through."

Maybe not immediately, but.

"So... you really don't need to worry about all that stuff with Thanos. I have backup this time. I'm not doing it alone."

[st_x5_494]

He listened with a blank expression. Blank because that's what he always did when he was processing.

"If I didn't worry, I wouldn't be a friend." He didn't bring up how his girlfriend had apparently helped him out through those vents either.

"I know what your kind of life is like. Liz doesn't and she worries." As far as Alec knew, she had no reason first hand knowledge anyways. "It's called... Caring"

[st_arkintern]

He knows Alec considers him a friend already, but it makes Peter happy to hear it.

"Yeah, I know," Peter says. "But I just figure everyone'd worry less if they thought I could just handle things, you know?"

Peter picks a pencil up off the table and taps it idly against the notebook. "It's part of why I'm trying to figure out things like... making my own suit or improving the web formula." There were other reasons too, but...

"If I can figure those things out here when I don't have a lot to work with, then I can probably figure out how to do this easy when I get back home." Even if he doesn't remember. "And then maybe people will worry less when I leave."

[st_x5_494]

He tried not to look at Peter like he was a child and for the most part, he was successful. "You know what would make worry less? If you knew sometimes that it was already too much and you went to people and said 'hey, I need your help' before you went." He put up a hand to stop Peter from arguing. "I'm not saying when people don't listen. Happy was an idiot for ignoring you. But showing you know your limits would help people to know you're not just going to jump off a damn bridge without a plan."

[st_arkintern]

And Peter, for once, doesn't argue.

"Yeah, I know," Peter says, simply. "And I'm trying. I promise I am. I really haven't done anything reckless in awhile."

Well, anything that he considered reckless.

[st_x5_494]

"Good. Leave that shit to me, okay? I'm better at reckless than you are anyways" it was meant to be a joke, but also true.

He paused. "How are you doing being back?"

[st_arkintern]

"If I'm going to be less reckless, you need to be less reckless, too."

Peter tosses the pin at Alec.

"It made me miss home," Peter says. "And I do. What about you?"

[st_x5_494]

He caught the pen easily and gave him a 'yes mom' eyeroll. He didn't think it was the same thing.

"Me? I have a shit hole world so I don't miss it. I only want to go back so Max and the other has back up."

[st_arkintern]

"See, and that's why you're good," Peter says. He pauses, thinking of whether or not the aforementioned theft could be construed as good or not.

"Or mostly good," he supplies. But it might not be possible for someone to be totally good 100% of the time, anyway.

[st_x5_494]

He rolled his eyes again, this time more pointedly. "Whatever you say. You know, you should look into being a PR person if the whole superhero thing doesn't work out."

[st_arkintern]

"I'm gonna go to college, so the superhero thing isn't going to be my full-time thing," Peter informs him. That was a realization he had come to pretty recently. Well, right before he ended up here at the inn. "I'll probably try to get a part-time job, though."

To help out May.

[st_x5_494]

"I thought the superhero thing was going to be your full time thing?" He was teasing, but was actually glad to hear that. Not that he thought college was important, but at least Peter wasn't entirely focused on one thing in life.

[st_arkintern]

"I don't think the superhero thing pays," Peter says. He didn't exactly ask Mr. Stark about money, and somehow it would feel weird getting paid to save people. Sure, doctors and nurses saved people, but... it just felt different. "So I'm going to need to make my own living."

[st_x5_494]

He nodded. "Saves people by night, does... Science by day?" Alec understood the need for money, certainly. "It's why I work at Jam Pony. Apart from being able to get passed sector police, it pays."

[st_arkintern]

"I don't know," Peter admits. "I guess I just stopped thinking about what I wanted to do for a living after I became Spider-Man." There was a time where that was all he wanted to do was just that.

"But now I'm trying to figure it out. I just don't know if there's going to be a normal job flexible enough for me to work it and do the Spider-Man thing." At least not without divulging his identity, and even then, it might still be a problem.