Magnar (magnar) wrote in gen_m_logs, @ 2008-03-11 11:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | benjy parker, magnar maximoff |
Completed Log, Magnar and Benjy
WHO: Benjy and Magnar! (and mentions of Mutt)
WHEN: Tuesday
WHERE: Magnar and Benjy's room (too lazy to look up the number, heh)
WHAT: Roommate bonding, could it be? Nah!
WARNINGS: PG? b/c filth comes from Magnar's mouth
"Parker!", Magnar barked out at him, turning his attention to his roommate at last. Magnar had been spending the last five minutes looking under piles of clothes, in drawers, in the closet, even under the bed, but he could not find the match to his shoe. And he was getting irritated. And when he got irritated, he started to snap at people. The shoe wasn't anywhere in with his things, so it must somehow have gotten in with Parker's stuff. Yes, Parker. It was easier to remember than Benjy and it gave Magnar a comfortable distance from his roommate. He didn't know him well enough yet to feel friendly with him. But Magnar didn't make friends easily.
He'd only come to the school a few short weeks ago. He had a mixture of excitement and dread about being there. He finally had some freedom from his mother, which was amazingly awesome. He also had a new puppy, who he loved to death, despite often appearing annoyed with him. He
had family here as well, family that he hadn't had much of a chance to get to know well earlier in his childhood, but had that chance now. And he was on Earth now, not the moon, where he'd grown up previous to this. This was especially exciting to him as it was (literally) a whole new world for him to explore.
The negatives were many as well. He still had to go to school. The school was full of people he didn't know and he was convinced that he didn't want to know most of them. He still had to follow rules (he was just getting started at figuring out how to bend or break them). And
perhaps most negative, he had to share a room. Magnar had never had to do this before. And he didn't share easily. And now his shoe was missing. His very expensive shoe.
"You have my shoe over there?", he said, scowling over at the other boy as he held one black sneaker up in the air. "It was here last night", he said, the hint of an accusation in his voice. What the boy would want with his shoe, Magnar did not know. What Magnar did know was that he'd been planning on taking a run, and had wanted to run in those shoes. He had other shoes, of course. At least ten other pair in his closet. But he wanted this pair of shoes.
Benjy Parker was hanging upside-down from the ceiling just above his bed, his nose buried in an advanced chemistry book that was from his father's bookshelf. He'd been there considerably longer than Magnar and honestly, if anyone was going to be irritated about getting a new roommate, it should have been him. However, not much seemed to irk Benjy. He was pretty easygoing, pretty willing to share his space----especially because Magnar had a cute puppy that Benjy happened to indulge like crazy. Magnar, on the other hand, was on the scary side.
The great thing about being half deaf was that no one was really aware of how deaf he was, which meant that if he didn't feel like getting yelled at he could keep his nose buried in the book for as long as he liked, pretending that oops, he just couldn't hear Magnar trying to chew him out. Finally, however, Magnar was practically in his face and the shoe was in his line of sight, and he really couldn't avoid him anymore. Darn.
He pulled the book down (or up, depending on whether you were facing right-side up or not) and frowned at Magnar. "I don't have your shoe," he said, blinking. "What would I want with one shoe? I might be a spider, but I don't have extra feet----and even if I did, I'd have an even number of feet, so I'd take shoes in pairs..."
Oh, yeah. Father's son, definitely. The Parkers all had a knack for being obnoxious in that way; it must have driven mother Mary Jane crazy.
Magnar waited for Benjy's answer, feeling a bit more irritated at the boy's slow response. Apparently he hadn't heard him, and it took waving his shoe to get his attention. But from his answer, Magnar surmised that Benjy must have heard the question. So he was just ignoring him. Nice. He just wished the upside-down kid could be helpful.
"What do I know what you'd want with it? Maybe you were looking for a place to lay spider eggs", he said, wrinkling his nose. See, he could be a smart ass and reference facts about spiders as well. "I dunno. Maybe it got into your stuff by mistake?", he said. Only after the accusation would he consider that maybe it was just an accidental loss or misplacement. He paused, looking at Benjy and his reading position. "How can you stand doing that?", he asked. "I think I'd puke or pass out or something if I were upside down for that long. And it's creepy", he added, obviously never hearing of the saying of attracting bees with honey, not vinegar.
"It's comfortable," Benjy countered, dropping the book onto the bed. He was much happier wall-crawling and ceiling-hanging than he was walking and sitting like a normal person. It just didn't feel right. "You'd puke or pass out, but I'm not human." Apparently, he'd gotten the message that his dad's altered DNA made him some other species than human, and Benjy took that to heart (and thought it was wicked cool).
He dropped, flipping down onto the bed and bouncing off it to land on his feet next to Magnar. Rubbing the back of his neck he took a look at the mess that was his half of the room. It wasn't that he wanted to be messy, but he had an attention span shorter than Magnar's dog most of the time and cleaning up was something that was low on his priority list. "Um. Yeah, maybe it's in here?" He crouched, and then he ducked down, peeking under the bed----and then he was scrambling under the bed, his skinny frame making that easy. Several items were then flung out onto Magnar's feet----science magazines, music magazines, five socks, a dust bunny, a pencil covered with bite marks, and one of Benjy's own shoes.
"I'm not seeing your shoe!" he shouted unnecessarily. "Yet. Not seeing it yet, there's a lot of stuff!"
"It's weird", the boy from the moon retorted, as if he knew anything about being 'normal'. To the not human comment, Magnar rolled his eyes. He wasn't completely human either. And in his eyes, it made him different than others too, in some cases he even thought it made him better than some others.
Magnar made a grunting noise as if to say 'about time!' when Benjy finally came down and began to look in earnest for the shoe. He ignored the show-offy (in his opinion) landing of the other teen. To his credit, Magnar did help too, but wasn't going to touch any of Benjy's things to look under or behind them. He squatted close to the floor, looking critically at the mess. Magnar's side wasn't much better, so he wouldn't complain about the mess.
But that changed when objects began sliding out from under the bed where Benjy was, a sock bumping against Magnar's foot. He kicked it away, saying, "Geez, Parker, what all you got under there? Have you ever cleaned in here?" He made a face at the things that were flying out from under the bed. His attention was caught by the music magazine for a moment, and for half a second his face softened, thinking that was cool before it was followed by a science magazine,
then a chewed up pencil. His face went back to being a scowl.
"What?" was Benjy's default I-can't-hear-you response, and he tended to respond with it even when he thought he'd heard the question right. He tended not to understand people when he wasn't looking at them, and it took him a while to backtrack and figure out what the question probably was. In this case, Benjy poked his head out from under the bed and squinted at Magnar. "Yeah, I clean," he said. "I take all the stuff there"----he pointed to the other end of his side of the room----"and I put it here." Shoved under the bed. That was good enough for cleaning.
As he talked to Magnar, his hand was rooting around under the bed, reaching and trying to find anything else. His fingers just barely brushed something unfamiliar... and kind of wet and gunky. "Oh----oh, hey." He flicked his wrist and with a characteristic thwip, a shot of webbing wrapped around the object and tugged it toward his hand. Finally scrambling out from under the bed, he was triumphant.
"Is this it?" Dangling from a sticky piece of webbing was Magnar's other shoe, chewed on and covered in what was hopefully Mutt's drool.
Magnar heard the 'what?' from under the bed, and was half tempted to thump the mattress with his fist. But that wouldn't do, Benjy was trying to help, even if he didn't seem to be helping very well so far. When the other boy's head peeked out from under the mattress, Magnar looked at him expectantly. "Well?", he said impatiently. "That's not cleaning", Magnar said about what Benjy had described. "That's disgusting."
When Benjy had appeared to find something, Magnar asked, "What? You find it?" When Benjy crawled out from under the bed, pulling something toward him with the webbing (which Magnar thought was gross by the way), Magnar took close note of what was coming out. When he saw it, his face changed from surprise to anger. "Wha- What'd you do to it?" He was upset at this, those shoes were new. He looked at it some more, the shoe looked awful. He didn't even want to touch it.
"Dude," said Benjy, giving Magnar a deadpan stare. "I didn't do it. Do I look like I eat shoes and drool on them? ---No, don't answer that, I know what your answer is." He sniffed, looking at the shoe with a mixture of disgust and extreme amusement. "It looks like Mutt left me a present, but he really should have thought about giving it to you."
He looked a little sheepish and his snickering died down. "I kind of forgot that when I was leaving the room earlier I saw him messing around with it."
Magnar couldn't fight Benjy's logic, even if he wanted to. It was obvious that the pup had found a fondness for shoes. There was no amusement on Magnar's face, only disappointment. A short string of quite curses came out of his mouth, followed by, "I just got those! And they cost a fortune too", he said, looking really irritated by this. "Just... just set it over there", Magnar said, voice flat, gesturing toward an empty spot on the floor near the window. He'd deal
with it later.
He looked over at Benjy again when the boy admitted to seeing the puppy with it. "You what?", he said, his brow raising. He couldn't believe this, betrayed by his own roommate. "That makes you an accessory", he said matter-of-factly, as if this were a murder trial rather than a chewed up shoe. "You didn't think to take it away?" Magnar sighed. He wasn't going to go on about it. "Great." He sat down on his bed with a dramatic drop. "At least if it's the dog's fault, I can guilt mom into getting me another pair." But that still didn't solve him wanting to go in a run in them now.
Benjy looked rather like a kicked puppy himself as he dropped the shoe on the floor, letting the webbing go with it. "Mags, it's not that bad. I mean, it's totally wearable." Growing up in a family with a dad who was notoriously strapped for cash and a struggling actress for a mom meant that he'd wear shoes until the soles fell off and he'd even wear his dad's hand-me-downs that were some ten, twenty years out of style if they were still in good shape. "Besides, I figured if you left it out for Mutt to chew on that you wouldn't mind him chewing it. I mean, you don't mind him chewing my stuff." Mutt had gone through a good deal of Benjy's stuff and chewed it to bits and ... okay, maybe Benjy was being ever-so-slightly vindictive. It was only fair that Magnar's dog chew on Magnar's stuff. It didn't matter if most of Benjy's stuff looked like it had already been chewed on anyway.
"Don't you have a million pairs of shoes in there? You don't have to confine yourself to your room with one shoe, Cinderella."
Magnar grunted at Benjy's attempt to downplay it. He looked at the shoe, not sharing Benjy's optimism about it still being wearable. It was new! It wasn't supposed to look like that, especially since it's match still looked new.
"I didn't leave them out on purpose", Magnar said, picking up the nonchewed shoe and tossing it over by its match. He was mad about this still, but in his mind the blame was shifting to where it should have been all along. On himself. He should've put them away in the
closet, he forgot to. And Benjy did have a point about the pup chewing on his stuff, but Magnar wasn't going to agree that easily. "Well, just look at your side of the room. If you wouldn't leave everything laying around..." But of course this was what Magnar himself had just done. So he wasn't going to get on Benjy's case any more about it. Unless provoked.
"Of course I won't", Magnar said about the shoes. He didn't get the Cinderella reference, other than recognizing it as a princess name, so he shot Benjy a glare as he got up and started walking toward the closet. "I'll just find something else to wear for my run." He was aware that he was bordering on sounding whiny about his shoes, even though in his mind he was justified, so he decided he wouldn't go on about it anymore. He opened the closet door, and there were a lot of
pairs on the floor to choose from, most of them pairs of running shoes, which was what he was wanting to wear anyway.
As he shuffled through shoes, he glanced over at Benjy, feeling a pressure of speech, like he should say something as he seemed to still have the other's attention. "What were you reading?", he asked him.
Magnar did have a million pairs of sneakers. He could live without the shiny new ones. Besides, toss the chewed one in the washing machine and it'd be good as new, almost. Or something. Close enough. Benjy whistled low under his breath and flopped down onto his bed, hanging upside-down off of it to look at Magnar.
"Advanced chem----complex inorganic polymers," he said, and it was more than obvious that if he went on, he was going to wax into complete geek mode. "It's a book that my Grandpa Richard used to help inspire his formula that Dad would use to make his web fluid stuff," he said. "And Dad says that even if I have organic web fluid----that's the" ----he pointed to his wrist to make it clear, like Magnar was an idiot---- "I should still study how it works and how to make it, inside and out... it's only one of the most complex chemical substances on earth." Because the Parkers were a line of geniuses. Obviously. Shame that Benjamin was pretty much socially inept.
Magnar wasn't even going to think about those shoes anymore right now if he could help it. He found another pair, this one white, and pulled them out of the pile of shoes on the floor of his closet. Magnar sat on the floor in front of the closet, working with the laces to undo a
few knots that were in them. As he worked on this, he listened to Benjy. His face took on a blank look betraying that he had about no idea what Benjy was talking about. Chemistry wasn't Magnar's thing (school as a whole wasn't his thing), so that part went over his head. And he wasn't familiar enough with Spiderman Sr.'s life story to have a great idea what Benjy was talking about. He did understand about the organic web fluid, the gross looking stuff that he used to stick to things, or to get things to stick to him.
"That's, um... great, Parker", Magnar said, his face showing that he didn't understand a word of that and was being slightly sarcastic. "Nice hobby you have there." Reading advanced chemistry for fun? At least he knew who he could talk to about his chemistry homework if he ever needed tutoring. A moment later, his mind took a different take on what Benjy had just said, and his head tilted in sudden interest. "So it's like a formula that makes stuff just like that crap you shoot out of your hands?" That could come in handy for a prank, should the need ever arise.
Benjy, however, didn't get the ulterior motive, and he nodded quickly. He reached under the bed and pulled out a rolled-up blueprint and a messy notebook. "I copied all this from Dad," he said, bounding over and mistaking Magnar's sneaky ideas for actual interest. "The formula's almost like Dad's----I mean, he's got it pretty close, but it's synthetic. He didn't have organic webshooters for most of his career, it was just, like... it's a long story. But I got the organic ones, and May doesn't have them, so May has to use this synthetic stuff, and most of the Spider-stuff is built around what it can do. Mine's not nearly as cool as this stuff is, but that might just be my age and... stuff, I dunno. So, like..."
He spread out the blueprint, which detailed the formulas and processes as well as the webshooter diagram----and then he flipped open the notebook which had copies of all of Peter Parker's notes. And then he started explaining it, which was essentially a completely foreign language to Magnar. "...and that's what really is incredible, the fact that it's super strong and durable once released but starts off in essentially liquid form and then... after an hour of exposure just dissolves.. I mean, it's one thing to be born with it, but to actually come up with how to make it----"
Magnar was a bit taken aback when Benjy showed sudden enthusiasm, gathering up an armful of things and scampering over to his side, reminding him a bit of Mutt when he's especially pleased with himself about something (like chewing a hole in one of Benjy's socks).
Magnar's face scrunched up as he looked at the things that Benjy was putting before him. "Is that even English?", he commented as he squinted at the diagrams. Still, it did sound interesting, especially how Benjy described it. Maybe he could get him to make it for him
sometime.
"So it's liquid, then solidifies when exposed to oxygen?", he asked, wondering if he was getting the gist of what Benjy was saying. It was strange that he was almost bonding with his roommate over this.
"Well, yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's liquid and it's super-compressed, or else... I mean, with a webshooter this size? You wouldn't be able to hold any webbing in there. So, like, it just expands exponentially and solidifies into a super-strong, super-adhesive polymer." Benjy rubbed the back of his neck, shifting from foot to foot. "It totally blows my mind how it all works and I think ... I mean, it's one thing to just know it works and not know anything about it but once you do know how it works? That's when it gets really amazing. ---Are you seriously interested in this?"
He looked back up at Magnar with surprise. They were so used to bickering that the idea of them having an actual conversation came as a total shock when Benjy realized what the were actually doing.
Benjy said a lot more things that Magnar barely understood at all, and he gave his head a slight shake. Did this kid really talk this way all the time? Magnar once again wondered how he'd gotten stuck with a roommate. When Benjy asked him if he was seriously interested in this,
Magnar couldn't help his reaction. He smirked, saying, "I didn't understand a damn thing you just said. The web fluid is kind of interesting, but only what it does, not how it does it. That shit's way over my head." He gave another look at this stuff that Benjy had spread out. Yeah, no comprehension whatsoever. "This really what you do in your free time? You have to get out more." Speaking of, he'd finished undoing the knots and began to slip on one of the shoes.
"Is this... wh... well, yeah," said Benjy, looking at Magnar blankly. "Yeah, this is what I do in my spare time. I do other things, too." He had an ancient video game system and he had his annoying music habit, and he loved running around outside and expending all his excess energy. "But I like to do this. Tch. What it does is cool, but how it does it is just crazy cool."
As if to prove his point, he pressed his two middle fingers down in traditional Spidey fashion and flicked his wrist, sending webbing up into Magnar's corner of the ceiling, right above his bed. A nice, messy set of strings. His organic web fluid wasn't as nice and plasticky as the synthetic stuff. On a good day, it was really like clean threads of silk, but ... that was on a good day. "Like, that's cool, but it's not as cool as what's actually going on in my body, right?"
Magnar smirked patronizingly as he tied up his shoe when Benjy said he does other things too. What a dork. "I'd settle for being able to do it and not caring how", Magnar said. "I know that as a mutant, I can do all kinds of things. Do I think about how it happens? Not
really."
He watched Benjy spin his web, looking mildly annoyed at the sight. "That crap totally evaporates, right? I'm not going to have any spider gunk on my bed, am I?", he asked in a slightly intimidating tone of voice. He arched his eyebrows at hearing Benjy's last comment. Did he have any idea how nerdy he sounded? "I like the things I can do, but I really don't care how it happens. It just does. I got better things to think about." He grabbed his other shoe, pushing it onto his foot and starting to tie it up as well. "And you should too. Don't you
ever think about girls or anything like that?"
He'd been about to say that sure, the "crap" evaporated eventually... except it took more than an hour and left a slick sort of film behind at points of contact. Whoops. Good thing Magnar distracted him from mentioning that or else he was gonna get a smack or something.
"What?" Benjy asked, but it wasn't because he couldn't hear. Didn't he think of girls? Benjy made a face, but his cheeks went pink. He was a little bit of a late bloomer in the growing out of the girls-have-cooties department (what was he, six?) but girls were also not beyond his notice and he was thoroughly embarrassed. He liked girls. Sure he did, but... he was the kind of guy who, when he liked a girl, fell flat on his face and stumbled uselessly over his words. "Um. Yes?"
And that was all he had to say about that. "You don't care why you do what you do? You don't care how it works? How can you not care how you work? It's you... like..." You're so self-absorbed, of course you'd be fascinated with the science of your inner workings... but Benjy narrowly avoided saying that.
Magnar rolled his eyes at the 'what?', thinking 'not this again'. "You know, girls? Nice tits, soft hair, smell nice?" Yes, he was explaining to Benjy what a girl was. Welcome to biology 101, Magnar style. Benjy's discomfort and embarrassment was evident, and Magnar
found it mildly amusing.
"What does it matter how I do what I do?", Magnar said with a shrug of his shoulders. "How can there be an explanation for what I do? For what half the people around here do? How do you explain being able to run up the side of buildings? Or stand on top of blades of grass without crushing them? Not everything in life can be made into an equation. And I don't know why anyone would want it to be."
Heh. Magnar said "tits." Not that Benjy hadn't heard the word, and not that Benjy didn't ever say worse things, but saying something like "tits" generally got Benjy a smack across the back of the head from his mother or sister, so his natural response was to cringe and glance back over his shoulder as if to make sure Mary Jane Watson-Parker wasn't standing there ready to bap him.
"Everything's explainable," said Benjy staunchly. He decided that he'd been standing normally for too long, and so he then started to creep toward the wall. He hopped up and stuck, legs bent, elbows on his knees, chin in his hands. There. "I mean, I stick to walls because of fibers in my hands and feet. My sister sticks to walls because she has a biomagnetic field... Back when mutants were a new thing, this was all pretty unbelievable, but our scientific
explanations are seriously advancing and I think it's awesome just how our bodies are able to do such amazing and different stuff. And if we know how something works, then... then we can fix it more easily if something should break. Right? Don't you think?"
He had humored Benjy and his nerdspeak for a while, but was ready for his run as the two of them were clearly not speaking the same language. As Benjy backed to the wall then stuck to it, Magnar watched this, curious. He finished tying up his other shoe as he replied.
"Even if everything is explainable, and I'm not saying it is, I don't feel like I have to be the one to explain it. I guess it's good that some people do feel like they have to get explanations for everything", he admitted. "Those are the people who fix cars when they're broken down or do hip replacement surgeries, or cure disease or whatever. But that's not me." So Magnar was actually agreeing with Benjy. Somewhat.
"But enough of this", Magnar said, standing up once his shoes were tied. "I need to go for a run." he glanced down at the shoes, then over to the newly ruined pair at the other side of the room, frowning slightly. For a moment he almost thought of asking Benjy if he wanted to run, but quickly decided against it, deciding that Benjy couldn't keep up, or he'd just decide to swing around on his spider ropes instead, and he'd be subjected to more discussion about spider DNA or something.
Benjy opened his mouth to ask if he could come, but then he stopped himself and scuffed his bare feet on the floor. They'd had enough of a rocky bonding experience, hadn't they? He knew when to back off, after all. Besides, he had reading to do. Picking up his things, he hopped back over to his bed. "Sure thing, man," he said, sitting cross-legged on his bed. "Sorry to keep you. I geeked out. Oh, hey, lemme see if I can fix up your sneakers while you're gone."
Magnar watched with a hint of amusement as Benjy was back on the floor then back over to the bed. It seemed that the kid had a difficult time staying still for any amount of time, unless he was upside down. Definitely weird. He shut the closet door again (wasn't about to let the Mutt have access to all those shoes too!) and made to cross the room to the door when he heard what Benjy said. "Don't worry about it", Magnar said charitably.
And about the shoes, he said, "That's okay, you don't have to." He did recognize the kindness of the offer, so kind that Magnar couldn't even begin to comprehend why the boy would offer to do that for him. Magnar wouldn't waste his energy to try to fix up his own shoes, much less ever offer to do it for someone else. As tempting as it was to have his roommate become his personal servant, Magnar knew that wouldn't fly. He did give another glance at the shoes, his thinking starting to change a little. If the one shoe was cleaned up, maybe it would still be wearable, despite some definite scuffing and scratches and bite marks on it. "I'll take a look at it later", he said, not sure if he actually would bother to or not. Why should he when he was pretty sure that one phone call later, he could get a brand new pair from his mom. "Have fun reading", he said, almost managing to keep the sarcasm from his voice as he opened up the door and headed out.