Simon Curran; Peter Parker/Spider-Man (bigtimehero) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-02 18:39:00 |
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Entry tags: | iron man, spider-man |
Who: Peter and Tony
What: Through the door shenanigans.
Where: New York.
When: Just after going through the door for the first time.
Warnings/Rating: None!
So Peter was 18. That was weird. What was weirder than being 18 was that his new age was one of the things that weirded him out most, and in the grand scheme of things - being in a guy's head, finding out he was living in a Twilight Zone episode, having spider powers - being 18 was definitely not as weird as some other stuff. Didn't even compete, really. But here he was! 18 years old, back in Queens, and totally clueless as usual.
It had taken some pressuring to get Simon to actually go through the door. In the end, it had been MK that convinced him, a need to be prepared and go in ahead of her if she was going to go in too some time. He’d planned on avoiding it, he really had, but...it hadn’t been as easy as all that. Peter sure as hell wanted his chance to talk, and, eventually, after several days in a row of the same dream about people dying in front of him and being unable to save them, Simon gave in. He went to the door, unlocked it, and stepped through.
There was a brief ripple of change, and then Peter was standing on the familiar old steps to the familiar old cellar. He could walk around, and talk (oh man, talking, he'd missed talking) and standing on his own two feet was a novelty not to be played down. Aunt May was out, so the house was quiet, and it was an easy thing to slip the suit on and get going, leaping across rooftops toward Manhattan. Getting airborne always helped him think.
So, realistically, Peter knew he probably didn't have long to be back to himself again, and Simon really hadn't been a good listener over the past few weeks. Peter had been trying to communicate, making some serious effort, and Simon had not been reciprocating. Peter felt maybe a couples counselor was needed, but he didn't have one on hand, so he just started talking out loud. To himself. He was already wearing red and blue spandex, how much more of a loon could he look like?
"Look, I'm sorry you almost got you killed jumping on some guys." He began climbing up the wall, hopping onto the vertical surface and scaling it smoothly, fingers sliding along the rough brick and clinging with just a light pressure on his fingertips. "I feel you. I, too, don't like death all that much in general. I wasn't trying to get you killed, I was just thinking about the stuff I could be out there doing, and I guess it translated as you running around in my place. My bad, I'll get on that. But hey, maybe, just maybe, consider being a better listener. I’m thinking if you’d been listening, we could have talked this out and that wouldn’t have happened. Did Mr. Rogers teach you nothing?"
From street level, someone pointed up as Spider-Man ran off the edge of a building, leaping into the air. He tipped forward, somersaulted tightly, and fired off a web, swinging around the corner of the building and using the momentum to launch himself down the street. He felt immediately better, and though he could feel Simon recoiling internally with terror at the fifteen story drop below, Peter felt right back at home. It had been like being cooped up for a long, annoying car ride, and now he could finally stretch his legs and settle back into his own body again. “All I’m saying is, we’re stuck with each other, right? We’re Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, J. Lo and...right, she broke up with that guy. Whatever. We’re a team. We’ve gotta be, or one of us is going to make the other one do something without meaning to that’s going to end up in double the death.”
Spider-Man swung up and over the edge of a thirty story skyscraper behemoth, landing neatly on one of the gargoyles, feet clinging to the metal and stopping him short. He threw his foot back to catch himself, peered down, and then up.
“I’ll level with you. If I could do anything about this, I would.” He rolled his shoulders forward, looking down to the people on the street below. “It’s not...it’s not always so great, you know, being a superhero. It actually really, really sucks most of the time. People get hurt and turn into goblins when I hang around them, nobody can deny that. So just...I know you like this girl that Mary’s hanging around with, but don’t get too close to her.” Behind the mask, invisible, his stare was long and unfocused. “She’s just going to get hurt too.”
A sound interrupted Peter’s conversation with his new imaginary friend, and he turned, looking back over his shoulder. Ooh, company. Company might be good.
That sound was the combined decibel level of two ion cyclotron resonance frequency booster antennae attached to the bottom of two red carbon-carbon composite boot soles using magnetic fields to super-heat hydrogen-fueled plasma, which in turn propelled a red robot through the sky at the speed exceeding that of a passenger airplane. It sounded sort of like Cape Canaveral compressed into a box at first, but after Tony’s scanners picked up the vitals of a skinny kid in a mask stuck to the side of a building, he cut the acceleration and dropped down neatly in mid-air to hover at conversation level. The sound died down to the distant roar of Canaveral through a television set.
Tony’s voice was processed through the Iron Man UI, cleaned into a slightly digitalized version meant to make it over the sound of the boots, and projected outward instantaneously. “Hey, kid,” he said, an obvious grin in the sound of it. “Nice pajamas. You just come from Sin City, or you’ve been here the whole time?” He phrased it pretty carefully, not wanting to boast Silver’s location outright to a (sort of) stranger. The two of them had managed a rough symbiosis, and in comparison to Tony, Silver was a quiet, calm presence in the back of Tony’s mind. The ex-spook was enjoying the suit. Tony tried not to be prejudiced about it.
Peter gaped momentarily, and then got himself together. Right. No big deal. Just Iron Man. Normal stuff. And hey, he wasn’t just some kid any more. Now he was an 18 year-old kid, who also happened to be a big time superhero. He’d worked for Nick Fury too, hadn’t he?
Peter stepped forward, circling Iron Man slightly to get a better look at the suit. He’d never seen it this close, and his geek brain was going haywire watching every twitch of the thing. It was a masterpiece of machinery, an absolute beauty. He continued talking, even as he was running down the most likely design for the propulsion system in the boots. “If I’d known an Avenger was coming to visit my humble rooftop I would’ve brought the nice china,” he said. He darted to the side again, trying to get a look at the backside of the suit. “That is a sweet ride. It has to be - what - plasma, right? Aw man, I know we haven’t known each other very long, but can we have a sleepover sometime? Just me and the suit? I won’t try any funny business, I just want one night with her to spend some quality time and look her magnets over.” At some point he remembered that he’d been asked a question, and he tilted sideways a bit. His posture was willowy, always shifting from side to side, belying the fact that he might jump off at any moment. “Yep, I came from Vegas. Well, originally I came from the planet Tarantula where all the girls have six arms and everybody can swing around buildings and jump thirty feet in the air and wears stylish red and blue spandex.” He rocked back on one foot. “Kidding.”
Tony grinned, not that you could see it, because the helmet had no means of expression. “If I wanted the china I would have called ahead. I was just passing over, you can keep the red carpet, New York.” Tony watched his interface screens as his scanners kept a target on Peter as he circled around the armor. He turned his neck with an audible hydraulic movement anyway. He was surprised that the kid got such a quick read on the armor and a little wary about his secrets being too obvious. There wasn’t much a kid could do with the theory, or so he hoped. “Yeah. Good eye. I can pretty much see your heartbeat with my UI, kid. I know you’re kidding like I know you’re human.” Awkward pause. “Even if I didn’t... know Know. Let me guess; you’re swinging around up here and having a talk with your inner child?”
Peter heard the grin, or he chose to believe he did. He reached his arms behind his back, grabbing hold of his wrist. "You came all the way down here on a flyby just for me? You better not do that, dude, the other New Yorkers will get jealous. Half of them already want to run me out of town, I don't need you turning the rest on me."
As far as Peter was concerned, his theory about the boots was harmless. It wasn't like he could replicate it, or could really tell how the machinery came together to make it all work smoothly. That would take years of reverse engineering without a really, really good lab, the kind that cost millions of dollars and he didn't possess. It would also take time, time he didn't have considering he barely got his homework done most days. Actually, if he got real for a second, he barely made it to class most days. Wait - he was eighteen now. Did he still have class? Crap! He hadn't even picked colleges yet!
"Inner guy who's older than me, more like, but good guess. You talk to the child inside a lot? Tell him he's going to grow up and have a suit that flies one day?" Peter scuffed his foot against the ground. "Human? That's the nicest thing anybody's said to me in a while. Most of you big superheroes call me a mutant within about ten seconds of meeting me. I mean - not that there's anything wrong with being a mutant. But I'm not one. I mean, some of my best friends are mutants." He cleared his throat. "How 'bout them Yankees, though, huh?"
Satisfied that the Spiderboy’s examination wasn’t dangerous and that his intelligence wasn’t the jealous revenge-of-the-little guy kind, Tony relaxed. He was careful about his technology, careful enough that he didn’t think anyone would be able to accurately replicate it even if they had full access to his lab and records. “Well, I can’t see all the way into your DNA, but if you’re a mutant I don’t know why that has to make you not human,” Tony said, easily. “I’m the inner child in this dog and pony show. You wouldn’t believe the guy on the Vegas side. Absolutely no fun whatsoever. He’s like a zen Colonel Fury. It’s hell.” But he was still smiling, from the sound of it, so it must not have been all that bad.
Peter and Fury's relationship was...how to put it? Strained. Yeah, that was probably a good word for it. "I can't imagine Fury being zen. I don't think it's in the guy's vocabulary." He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice and didn't really succeed. If there was one thing Peter wasn't good at, and that aging three years hadn't improved, it was hiding how he felt about anything. "Wait, now I'm confused. Are you the inner child, or the dog, or the pony? Or are you the pony and Cap is the dog and what, Hulk's the inner child? Makes sense, the guy throws tantrums better than any baby I've ever had the pleasure to meet."
“I haven’t met--” But then Tony realized he had, or should have, at some point. It was all fuzzy, like someone else’s whiskey dream. “...Right. I don’t think I have. I’m a brand-new me, kid. I’m the kid with the dog on the pony, it’s not an Avengers reference. Nice to meet you.” The hydrogen burners put a little bit of a strain on Tony’s system even when he was hydrating all the time, so he maneuvered to one side and cut the burners, dropping with a fully metal clunk on the edge of the building. It was an easy move of long practice. “Who came up with ‘the Avengers’? What are we ‘avenging’?”
“That’s gotta be hard to make work,” Peter said. He was trying to imagine a small Tony Stark, riding a pony and holding a dog. Interesting. “Nice to meet you too, tin man,” he said, after that totally satisfying sound the suit made when it hit the cement. Man, he wanted a look inside the workings of that thing so bad. “Good question. I’ll point out that it’s your team, though, and you should probably know what you’re avenging. And I don’t know why you’re asking me about this, I’m named after an animal and the suffix ‘man’. I don’t think I’m really qualified to break your team name down for you.” Peter chattered on and on, weaving a little closer to Tony. The talk was, as usual, a cover for his own nervousness, and in this case it was also covering his wish to pee from joy. Okay, gross thought, but still - it was Iron Man.
The Iron Man’s helmet tipped to one side, looking grim and quizzical at the same time. Hundreds of tiny pistons readjusted as Tony shifted his weight. “It’s not my team.” He sounded defensive, even a little alarmed. “I’m a recruit. I’m not even a recruit. I’m consulting, supposedly, and they haven’t even consulted me on anything yet. All that other stuff happened to someone else. Made up in... comics, or whatever. Not me. I’m sure you can understand.” Let’s hope someone could.
“You’re on it,” Peter pointed out. “It’s your team.” He paused. ‘What do you mean, you’re consulting?” None of what followed made even the littlest bit of sense to Peter. “...no, I kind of can’t. What other stuff happened? Did I miss something important when I got skipped to 18?” Peter’s history was congruous and straightforward. There were things he’d seen while Simon had been doing his own research, things about another version of him in some other universe, and things that would happen in the future, but none of that seemed real. As far as he knew, somebody had just made all that stuff up. He was still him. He knew how old he’d been before he randomly became 18, and he knew what had happened to him up to the second he got dropped into somebody else’s head.
“Me, on a team,” Tony repeated, to himself, shaking his head with a hiss of machinery. “That can’t be good. They just had me consulting. It means they pay me to answer questions... usually. Not that they asked any.” He made no visible motion, hit no buttons, but the gold mask of the suit suddenly lifted with a miniature, oiled whisper. Tony’s groomed, smiling face appeared within the immaculate armor. “Nothing I know of. We’ve never met. Yet. That I know of. So, New York, where’s the good pizza places around here? College kid like you, you’ve got to know.”
Peter’s brows, invisible behind his mask, shot up. It wasn’t every day a Superhero took their mask off, even if everybody did kind of know who they are. It was also totally weird to see a human face inside the machine, despite the fact that their obviously was a person in there. Kinda spooky. “I’ve seen you on TV. And from a good distance,” he said. He’d met a few of the big heroes out there, and a lot more of the villains. Iron Man, though, hadn’t been one of them. “You’re even more photogenic in person. And definitely one of the Avengers, so I don’t know what to tell you there except things are really weird for everybody lately.” He hopped up onto the building ledge. “How do you know I’m in college? I’m wearing a mask. Don’t I sound mature?” It was, in part, a joke, but getting people to obscure him as being older than he was protected him better than almost anything else. Nobody thought a kid his age could be out doing what he did. It was one of the things that kept him - and the people around him - safe. “Pizza, though, I can get you. There’s a pretty good place about six blocks from here. They’ve got a seriously mean pesto pizza thing with these Parmesan crumblies...basically to die for.” There was an audible grin behind the mask. “Race you?”
Tony Stark smiled that photogenic Tony Stark smile. He was used to watching eyes (both admiring and judging) and nearly as accustomed the photoflashes as sunlight. “College was a guess.” Tony’s ripe, pleasant voice was lacking the faint metallic echo of speakers, and it had a mellow edge that the suit was lacking. “But the suit runs diagnostics on everything. Measurements of joints, size of your heart, there’s no way you’re over 30, and you sound young and you’re too smart not to be in school.” Smug smile. “College.”
With heavy metallic steps Tony clunked to the edge of the roof. Thanks to the custom fitting of the suit, it was no more difficult than striding down an office hallway. He out, squinting for a view of this pizza place, but then he smiled. “You’re on.” Mask still up, Tony pitched sideways over the building. A split second later a faint chink was the mask slamming closed and the boots kicked in a moment after that. Iron Man roared off toward food, feeling a little less confused just because he wasn’t the only one flying around New York looking for answers.
Crap. Stupid sensors. “I might be a midget,” Peter pointed out, stepping toward the corner of the rooftop, looking back at him over his shoulder. Oh, sure, he could pretend he wasn’t freaked out or totally trying not to die over how cool it was that Tony Stark just agreed to race him, but of course that wasn’t true. He just knew better than to admit it. People didn’t stick around long if you poked them repeatedly and squealed in fanboy delight.
Peter took an acrobatic dive off the building’s edge, throwing a hand out and firing a web at the office building across the street. Webbing fired from the tiny shooter on his wrist, clinging to the glass and steel as tightly as they did to any other surface, and Peter swung down the street, throwing his legs out in front of himself to pick up momentum, giving himself the satisfaction of a small whoop of glee. He picked up speed quickly, and while he didn’t have the advantage of a good propulsion system, his own body did the job pretty nicely. Having the proportionate strength of a spider meant he could whip himself around corners and through back alleys and blistering speeds once he picked up momentum, and he flipped and swung his way through the streets with smooth, eager grace, firing a few more webs than usual to get a little extra oomph on each jump between swings. Oh yeah, he was so going to kick Iron Man’s butt.