Anton's got a spark but (cantstartafire) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-01 19:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: marvel comics, hulk, spider-man |
Who: Bruce Banner and Peter Parker
What: Doing science and stuff
Where: Bruce's warehouse lab/Hulk Lair
When: Before the group plot, before the wacky craziness! After the meeting Bruce had with Steve...And before his hospital visit to Tony. Got it? Got it. Good.
Warnings: Excessive amounts of adorbs (as usual)
It was one of the many nights that Bruce had opted to stay at his lab rather than his apartment. Not that there was much difference between the two places. The lab space was simply bigger. Bruce brought work home with him no matter where that home happened to be at any given moment. It wasn’t that he disliked his apartment, it just wasn’t too safe to hang out there should there be an incident. His space was small and simple, a five floor walk up with one bedroom, a very small kitchen and a fire escape/balcony that led to a slightly darkened alley between his apartment building and the liquor store next door. It wasn’t the worst place to live and his apartment was clean, there were no strange smells in the outer hallway. Most importantly it was as quiet - well as quiet as New York got- and Bruce appreciated that more than anything.
But not as quiet as a warehouse laboratory in New Jersey. The only sounds he regularly heard were sirens and the occasional truck offloading God only knew what into one of the other warehouses on the grounds. His was far removed, run down except for the sophisticated locks on the door, rusty roof, the whole nine yards. There weren’t even any lights around it, but Bruce didn’t consider himself someone who needed security.
It was after dark, the sirens drove by on the road and he barely noticed them. He didn’t have any assignments, no projects, no requests from anyone to do anything. He felt a bit listless, restless, antsy, irritated, frustrated...It was getting to him. In his experience things were never quite so simple as Loki wanting to take over the world, there was something else, something worse. There always was, and he just hoped that it wasn’t him. He’d been used as a weapon more times than he liked, he’d been chased, he’d been drugged, he’d had spells put on him. He’d been in therapy for as long as he could remember, and even knowing everything he knew, having learned as much about himself as he had...He did his best to show an abundance of caution. He trusted himself, but he couldn’t control everyone else in the world. The minute he was threatened his control would slip. He knew it would. And things were very, very threatening right now.
After his conversation with Loki, he was convinced he was as crazy as the Loki he remembered, but craziness did not mean he wasn’t to be concerned about. Bruce was very, very concerned. The conversation they’d had hadn’t been threatening, and Bruce knew he was probably just wrecked. There was no doubt in his mind, he’d been hearing that his whole life. But he still believed what he’d said, that it was what you chose to do with your crazy that mattered.
Bruce didn’t always know what to do with his, but he knew what was right and what wasn’t. He’d been sitting there reading for the longest time as his mind wandered, he realized he must have turned a dozen pages and he had no idea what he’d read at all. He closed the book and set it down on the coffee table as he leaned back on his couch and leaned his head back closing his eyes. He rubbed his forehead as he took a few deep breaths, no danger, just pure exhaustion.
Peter had listened to the Avengers talk and bicker about Thor on the communicators, and what everything seemed to have come down to was making the communicators a little neater, smaller, and more capable. Maybe that had just been Tony Stark being Tony Stark, but Peter had been feeling sort of not-helpful in every capacity of his life lately, and the idea of doing something with his brain seemed like a good idea.
At the time. At the time it seemed like a good idea, until he realized he was stalking Bruce Banner to find his lab and talk to him about it, which was high on both the creepy and the fatality meter. There were definitely better guys to be following around than the one who could turn green and crushy if he was rubbed the wrong way, but hey, it was for a good reason! He just wanted to say hi and help out. Noble. Right, the road to crushification was always paved with good intentions, in his experience.
Once he’d pinned down the location of Bruce’s lab, the rest was easy. He waited until it was getting close to sundown, then swung his way over the bridge to Jersey side, always a fun commute. It took him the better part of an hour, even travelling as the spider webbed, to get to the place, and he was a mite winded when he finally did arrive. Okay, maybe he’d take a cab back.
Peter touched down a short way from the warehouse, and closed the remaining, open distance on foot. Made sense, obviously, that he would put himself out here as in the middle of nowhere as you could get while staying close to the city. Jersey might as well have been the arctic circle as far as he was concerned. “Hey,” he called out, wandering up to the front door, then around to one of the windows. Loudly announcing his presence seemed like a good idea, rather than startling the guy with the gamma radiation. He wasn’t exactly easy to miss in the red and blue costume, a black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. “Uh, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man out here. Just wanted to drop in and say hi, but if you’re scared of bugs I’ll go, I don’t want to be the one to freak you out. Fury will kill me an extra time on top of all the other ones he’s got banked if I do that.”
Bruce sat up starting a bit when he heard the first “hey.” He didn’t say anything for a moment waiting for the person to keep talking, wondering if they were just passing by. He got to his feet when Spider-Man announced himself and couldn’t help but chuckle that the kid seemed to be on Director Fury’s watch list. Bruce knew what it was like to be on that list. Very well.
He opened the side door closest to where he’d last heard the voice and chuckled, “Come on in, no harm done,” he said smiling a bit once he actually got a glimpse of him. Apparently this was a busy week for the Banner laboratory. First Steve, now Spidey...He just hoped more unsavory types didn’t follow them here. “Considering Directory Fury isn’t here is it safe to assume this is a social call?”
For a guy who could turn into a monster that could take out a city if he had a bad day, Bruce was pretty gentle looking. Then again, that's what he'd always heard. Still, it was one thing to be told something, another thing to meet somebody face to face. He'd probably expected somebody slightly more haggard, but maybe he was just thinking of how he'd feel in Bruce's shoes, always looking over his shoulder. Oh, wait, he did that already, just maybe not on the same scale. In the end, most of the tight wearing, superpower-having people he'd met fell into that wheelhouse, kind of paranoid by necessity and a bit jumpy. Bruce just had it worse than most, and for a couple different reasons.
Spider-man padded into the laboratory, ogling the equipment and doing a quick catalog in his head of what he had at his disposal. He dropped the duffel on the floor, and folded his fingers together behind his back. "Sort of," he said. It was a bit difficult much of the time to tell where he was looking because of the dark glass of the mask, but he compensated for it, turning his head to make it clear his attention was on Bruce. "I mean, yeah, I wanted to get to meet you in person. I've read pretty much everything you've ever published, so..." He dragged a heel along the ground. Ugh, he had promised himself he was going to be good, and not fanboy out. "But yeah, I heard you talking about the comms with Stark and I thought I might lend a hand if he didn't have time or had put rims on it or something. That guy is an awesome supergenius, but I kind of have this feeling they're going to emit mating calls for playboy bunnies by the time he's done with them."
Bruce closed the door when Spidey entered the warehouse, locking it out of habit. He smiled incredibly sheepishly when he said he’d read everything he published, he knew Spider-Man a bit, they’d chatted a handful of times in the past, but he was no stranger to “re-meeting” people. And he’d almost forgotten what a fan of science he was, it was refreshing. He was shuffling through a stack of notebooks before he knew it and picked one up which was well worn, well used, and full of writing and notes and handed it to the kid, “And now you can read something unpublished. I’m going to need that one back though,” he said knowing it would be appreciated.
The notes were about 8 months of work on a Radiation Chemistry project that attempted to monitor how changing cells reacted on a case by case basis to certain stimuli. Everything from toxins, to radiation exposure and right on down to spider bites and gamma ray bursts, something he supposed both he and Spider-Man had in common in very different ways. Very different. “It’s not nobel prize winning but it’s a good read.”
He sat down at one of his lab tables and took out the communicator. Bruce was brilliant, he was beyond brilliant. He knew how every part of the comm device worked, why it worked, he was taking it apart in his head, and putting it all back together again. But he conceded when it came to gadgets. That went to Tony Stark. And Bruce didn’t take his “Bannertech” to Tony unless he knew it would hold up. He didn’t have funds, time, or patience to attempt to make communication devices that would hold up for Iron Man. So he employed the man on the other side of the door who had a great time with it, and Bruce was impressed they worked on either side. But naturally, the design wasn’t quite up to par. He might have stuck up for them a bit more if they’d been his brainchild, but at this point he didn’t care. But he didn’t want to take them back to the other side either.
So he motioned to the stool next to him wondering if Spider-Man was going to play with the science kit with his mask and gloves on. Bruce understood protecting oneself, but was it a bit moot at this point? He debated internally whether or not to say anything. “That would be great, if I brought them back to the other side I don’t think we’d ever get them back. Tony sent some specs,” he said pulling the file up on a loud, and old, keyboard which was attached to a shockingly fast computer system, but of course the monitor was huge and also old. It was a mess of wires and pieces pulled from as many sources as necessary. But it did the trick.
Spidey took the notes from Bruce with eager curiosity, quickly paging through the top few pages, flicking through with his fingers and skimming the contents. "No kidding," he murmured, through reverence and distraction. He lifted his head again, pausing on the section about spider bites. "Where'd you get all this info?" he asked. He wasn't worried about Banner cracking his genetic code, or something, since he expected he didn't know much about the Ozcorp hybrid spider than had bit him. No offense to Bruce, but after Goblin, they'd kind of had their fill of big green guys trashing the labs, he figured, and half their experiments weren't legal anyway. The odds that he'd gotten in to grab their research seemed slim to none. Then again, this Bruce seemed kind of different, maybe, like he was from one of those other universe things.
But right, he hadn't come to read research on cell stimuli, and though he was already kind of riveted he made himself put the papers down. He moved around the corner of the lab table and watched as Bruce typed on the keyboard. "What kind of specs? Flashy shiny Stark specs?" Those would be usable, although most likely he'd pare them down some. Not like he was going to tell Tony Stark, mechanical genius his business, but Peter did know a thing or two about miniaturizing mechanics for convenience. Hey, web shooters.
He looked up to Bruce's face. "...So let me know if this seems weird," he said slowly, "But have we like...met?" He waved a hand. "I mean I'd remember you, but it seems like half the people around here are buddies or don't even know what Ultimates are and it's weird."
Bruce cocked his head to the side a bit, “Well most of the theory came out of my head, the experiments were just that, get a little lab space continue trying to find out why and what keeps happening to me,” he said with a shrug. “It all goes back to my accident really, but when I start going I try and start small before working myself directly into gamma rays. Gamma rays still do weird things to me,” he actually chuckled for a moment, “Not as weird as the original weird thing they did to me.”
He nodded at Spidey’s assertion that they were, indeed, flashy specs. “I think he’s got the Chinese restaurant I live above on speed dial,” he said with sigh as he he straightened his glasses and looked at the monitor. He took his glasses off again when Spidey asked if they’d met, it was a question Bruce was becoming more and more used to. He smiled a bit and nodded, “Yes, but I assume a different you. We know each other pretty well actually, but I’m not really buddies with anyone right now. Steve is probably the closest, but these are all people I’ve known for...A very long time. A very long time,” he said with a sigh. “Yourself included, but no one remembers me either.”
Peter didn't really want to put a heavy emphasis on Bruce's problem, but admittedly, the whole 'altered cell structure' thing was interesting to him for pretty obvious reasons. "Trust me," he said, spreading his hands. "First thing I did when I started jumping over houses was look at my DNA. I mean, how could you not?" Those of them out there who weren't born mutants, but had ended up sort of in a similar boat through freak accidents and the like, they had a common thread binding them all together which Peter found inherently fascinating. "It's weird, when you think about it. People like you and me running around, we both ran into fate, right? Like, sometimes fate just hits you with a gene altering bus. And it changes something that in nature is meant to be unalterable - your genetic code. It should be the deepest you can go in one individual organism, but it's not." He shrugged. "Maybe Lamarck wasn't as wrong as everybody thought. He just didn't live long enough to see genetic tampering."
Spidey turned back the the schematics. "Anyway. Tell me to shut up or I'll just nerd out until you hulk smash me due to boredom." It was hard not to get caught up in the sheer joy of having someone to talk to about this sort of thing. Fact of the matter was, a lot of people who'd been tampered with were scientists - they'd done it to themselves, or something had gone wrong in an experiment, and voila - superpowers and supercurses. And some of them, like him, had just caught a weird, 'right place, right time' kind of thing. But a lot of the metahumans with altered gene structures were sort of crazy. So it was kind of hard to find anybody to talk it out with. There was no support group, and it wasn't like Peter had a connection to a larger academic establishment of superheroes. Jeez, he hadn't even technically graduated high school yet. "See, that bums me out, because you seem pretty cool, like a sciencey guy, and my friends tend to either get attacked by supervillains, or turn into ones." The comment was offhand, as joking as everything else Spidey said, but there was a thread of something else in it. That was what he did, turn the negatives into humor. It had kept him sane this long, at any rate. He cocked his head. "So...secret identity?" he asked. "Is it...actually a secret? Or do you know me and all my cats’ names in the future?" He threw up his hands and picked up a communicator, scrutinizing it. "I don't even know why I ask anymore," he said, mournfully. "Half of New York knows my secret identity. I’m thinking about throwing it up on one of the jumbotrons in Times Square, just get it over with."
“I don’t think that when Lamarck was talking about soft inheritance with his buddies that he took into account one day there would be mutagenic spiders or people jumping into the blast of a gamma ray bomb. But really how could he? As far as I’m concerned, with the things I’ve witnessed, there is no such thing as quack science when it comes to living things. You and I are just one example of that, I’ve been studying myself for years and find something new out every time I do. The fact that we turned out the way we did because of accidents makes the question of where the real mutants come from that much more interesting. We’re environmental, and we’re not supposed to be. What about them? What’s their deal? Granted,” he said with a bit of a chuckle, “I’m not quite man enough to walk up to the handful of mutants I know and ask for some genetic material,” Bruce didn’t always get along with the handful of mutants he was acquainted with. They didn’t trust him, and sometimes the feeling was mutual.
He waved his hand and shook his head at the teenage superhero, “If I got bored with science talk and nerding out we’d be in big trouble,” he reassured him. Bruce smiled slightly and took his glasses off cleaning them on the hem of his shirt as Peter said he was bummed out he didn’t remember him, but his eyebrows shot up at the mention of his secret identity and he inhaled just a bit and shrugged slightly as he put his glasses back on, “Secret identity is not so secret,” he admitted, but he was still willing to go along with it if it helped. At the mention of telling everyone in the world who he was he cleared his throat and shook his head. “If I can offer a piece of advice,” he said gently but quite seriously, he was speaking from experience, “I’ve seen you do almost precisely that, jumbotron included...I wouldn’t do that again.” Granted this was a different Spidey, a different Peter Parker (an Ultimate Spider-Man? He’d have to check that one out once he got back to the other side), things might not go the way they had before, but from that moment on things just seemed to get worse. And then worse than that. Then Cap was gone and the Illuminati was taking things to extremes Bruce never really wanted to have to witness, or experience again.
"They're pretty cool," Peter said. "You know, the ones I know, anyway. The ones who don't suck are pretty awesome, but I guess every little slice of humanity is that same way. Anyway, the ones I know I don't think they would mind too much. I think they'd figure if anybody wasn't going to turn over their gene code to the feds, it'd probably be you." It wasn't a dig, just fact. "You could argue that the advances we've made in science in the last couple hundred years have made so many varieties of metahuman possible that natural selection is kicking in at its finest to keep humanity up to speed."
The way Bruce went sort of somber when Peter mentioned secret identities was...yeah, kind of worrying. What had his future self done to get that kind of a look on Bruce's face? Had he really been stupid enough at some point to tell the whole world he was Spider-Man? What had happened then? He didn't really like to think about it, because if Bruce's tone was any indication, he wouldn't like any of the answers.
At any rate, it seemed that maintaining said secret identity in this room, anyway, was kind of moot. He thought about it for another second, then shrugged. Ah, to hell with it. He reached up and pulled the mask off, with a touch of sheepishness. He didn't unmask himself often, but when he did, it was usually with a smile and a certain amount of straightening of his back, fully prepared to get made fun of because he was so young. And he was young - eighteen years old, and he'd been sixteen before he'd ended up in some guy's head one day out of the blue. Dark hair, funny little smile, and not bad to look at when he had his glasses off. On the surface, he wasn't much more than a quick, sarcastic kid who happened to have some superpowers. But there was something in those dark eyes that spoke to something more, something lurking underneath the humor, hard and determined as anybody twice his age.
Peter cleared his throat, lifting the communicator. "So. I can tell you I can make it smaller," he said. "And I can kick up the security some, I think. There’s a couple holes in here you could dance the cancan right on through."
Bruce smiled and chuckled a bit at the thought of him handing anything over the feds and he shook his head, “I try and stay out of their line of sight as much as possible. It’s not always easy when you’re green and weight a metric ton though,” he added with a bit of a wry smile.
When Peter took his mask his off Bruce smiled warmly, “Hi Peter,” he said with a slight nod. Peter always looked young to Bruce, even when he was older he looked young to Bruce. But this was a whole separate sort of young. This was really young. And Bruce was impressed that Peter managed to be respectful, smart, and as well adjusted as any superhero could be. Peter didn’t always command respect but he deserved it and Bruce gave it to him readily. He’d been a boy genius too, with a rough start. He knew how lucky they all were from time to time when they could manage to see something in each other that others didn’t always have figured out right away. “Yeah I wonder about the security holes if they’re because they’re from the other side of the door so maybe they’re secure in Las Vegas and about as useful as a six character password on this side with a password hint about your first car.”
“More of you to love,” Peter said, with a cheeky little grin.
Peter shook his head. “Man, that’s weird. People aren’t supposed to know secret identities, right? That’s why they’re secret. And now Bruce Banner knows my name.” He was resigned to the idea, and maybe a little pleased. There was some awe in the statement, actually. Talk about people he never thought he’d meet, let alone be on a first-name basis with. It was also much, much appreciated that Bruce didn’t try to give him any of the ‘you’re just a kid’ stuff people usually tried on him, because he wasn’t just a kid, he hadn’t been just a kid for a long time, all appearances and general goofiness aside. “No clue about how that might work, but you’re right, it’s probably a pretty safe bet. I can work out some of the kinks here, and then I’ll work something out with my guy on the other side and get some alone time to work out what I can over there too.”
Bruce smiled almost sadly and nodded, “The best laid plans, secret identities always seem to be a big part of the best laid plans,” it had been the start of so many fights between friends. It had been a nightmare, and he was beyond pleased that it didn’t seem to be happening here. Not yet.
“You have a guy on the other side too? We seem to be resourceful people to know, Peter,” he said with a chuckle. “And it wouldn’t something else if we could get these to work from one side to the other in case the journals are too slow,” he paused, “But we don’t know what everyone’s sitaution is from one side to another. Best not to tempt fate I think.”
“Course I do,” Peter said, with a smile and a shrug. “Doesn’t everybody around here these days? My guy isn’t really into the tech thing, but not everybody has to be, he’s got other stuff he’s good at.” Music, mostly. Simon and Peter didn’t talk a whole lot, since they got along okay, but there were certainly things about him that Peter admired. His talent as a musician, for one. Peter had given up on that particular skill set in fourth grade when he’d had to play percussion in the school band because Uncle Ben and Aunt May hadn’t had the money to buy him a cello or something. Turned out his sense of rhythm was about as bad as it could possibly be. Ah, memories. “Good question,” he said, thoughtfully. “We’ll just have to test them and see, right?”
Peter picked up the prototype and closed it in his hand. “I’ll take this and work on it,” he said, looking up at Bruce. Yup, he might be able to dodge a bullet and lift a car, but he was still shorter than most guys. Whatever, so was Wolverine, and nobody made fun of that guy. “I’ll shoot you a message when I’ve got something workable?”
Bruce smiled and shrugged a bit, “I’m not sure if others are as cooperative, though I’m pretty sure once my guy on the other side gets a real glimpse of the other guy on this side he will become a bit less accommodating,” he was used to it from people he knew, and people he thought were friends...There was no reason to expect much different from his other other alter ego. But he wasn’t going to dwell, that was for certain. He was well beyond dwelling.
“Sure, Peter, definitely. And I think Tony wants in on it too so I’ll try and keep everyone in the loop, sound good?” he asked with a smile. It was going to be a strange road to walk down, but he’d already had more company in a week than he had in the last six months. That was something.