Log -- Teddy Altman || Peter Parker ‣ WHO: Teddy Altman || Peter Parker ‣ WHAT: Meeting up face to face after death from above ‣ WHEN: August 20th, 2020 ‣ WHERE: The Beach ‣ RATING | WARNINGS: Low || References to death ‣ STATUS: Complete || Log
A hero is somebody who voluntarily walks into the unknown.
Teddy Altman & Peter Parker
After the sheer and utter madness that the days in Orange County had been following the attack of the Paradooms (he didn’t know but he hoped that was the right word) Teddy had reached out to Peter as he didn’t think it would be a bad idea to meet the guy that he’d been talking to face-to-face.
Nerves were normal, right?
Teddy loved people, being social, having friends and having an extended family, but he was subject to insecurity and worry just like everybody else. Add into that the complication of dying in one of the worst ways imaginable and Teddy was not anywhere near a hundred percent.
Still, he wasn’t about to let any of that negatively affect his experience in Orange County or with the people in it. It was bright, sunny, warm and Teddy hadn’t wanted to be indoors which meant he had asked Peter to meet him at the beach. Currently, he was barefoot, letting the waves roll over his feet, and he’d pulled his t-shirt off to rest it over his shoulder.
It really was beautiful here.
Peter’s attempts at making friends had been going well. Most of them, with the exception of Ian, were older, but that was to be expected, right? He was at college and had done a year of college already when the others his age were graduating - or would be graduating next year. He was the youngest in his class, having just been sixteen when he had started at ESU. But it just seemed like - especially on the network - there weren’t many people his age at all.
Not that it mattered, everyone here was going through the same weird stuff. The most recent one was those comic-book monsters that were pretty much the stuff of nightmares. They had to be a Batman thing, right? Something to do with Batman? Or that kind of… Well. It hurt his head to think about it too much (and for someone who did chemistry and quadratic equations for fun that was saying something).
The beach was filled with people, so Peter was even more glad than he had been before that they’d agreed on a place to meet because otherwise trying to find someone he’d never met before in a crowd of people would have been super hard. Jogging to the edge of the sand and taking his shoes off (because no thank you, sand particles), Peter headed across the beach to where he’d agreed to meet his network friend.
“Hey, uh- Teddy, isn’t it?”
Teddy turned his head at the voice that called his name and offered the other guy a broad grin. “Yeah, that’s me. You have to be Peter.” Not exactly hard to work out.
“You doing okay after the whole crazy stuff that happened?
The same crazy that seemed to have vanished overnight and it was very much like it had never happened which of course impossible. Some things weren’t easily forgotten.
“Oh, oh yeah, I’m good. I mean it was insane and I think we all need some kind of therapy after all that but yeah, I’m okay. It was an experience. Are you?”
He flopped down onto the sand, wincing as soon as he did because he had forgotten that they were hanging out on the beach. Sand. Gross.
Teddy laughed at Peter’s reaction to sand. “Not a big sand fan, huh?” He didn’t mind it so much as long as it kept out of his pants. Sand in underwear? No, thank you.
He plopped himself down next to Peter and drew his legs up so that he could rest his arms atop of them. “Well, I- I died.” Teddy reached out to catch a small shell and picked it up to turn it over in his fingers. “Like, literally torn limb from limb so that was… something.”
Peter’s eyes went as wide as saucers as he stared at Teddy for a moment, mouth open until he caught himself and shook his head. “You- you died?! But you- oh my God are you okay? That’s a stupid question but I- oh wow.”
He swallowed, unable to imagine how horrible that must have been, or how horrible that must have been to wake up from knowing that it had happened. “You died and came back to life. That seems a lot cooler - and scarier - than what I did.”
“Scarier for sure,” Teddy agreed ruefully. “I don’t think cool is the right word for it.”
He thumbed at the shell in his hand and shrugged. “I have no idea how the whole being resurrected thing worked, but I am very glad it did.” Otherwise, his poor aunt she would have been devastated. She’d already lost her sister after all.
“But-” He said as he turned his interest to Peter, “Less about me, more about you. What did you end up doing?”
Peter winced a little. Yeah, cool had been the wrong word to use. He’d sort of frozen and definitely made the wrong word choice there. He cleared his throat, apologetically offering Teddy another shell like a peace offering.
“Oh, you know,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “worked out I can stop a bus with my bare hands.”
Teddy leaned over and nudged Peter’s shoulder with his own, taking the shell and gave him a reassuring smile. Believe it or not but Teddy was fairly difficult to offend.
“I knew that question was for you,” he said with a laugh.
He tipped his head. “No damage done, right?”
“I’m beginning to think it wasn’t as subtle as I thought it was,” Peter admitted sheepishly, rubbing behind his ear and resting his elbows on his knees as he planted his feet in the sand. “But, uh, no, I’m okay. Like, weirdly so. I’ve been wanting to test how strong I am for a while but probably under slightly more controlled circumstances, you know?”
He offered Teddy a little smile. “My aunt and uncle chewed me out for being in the middle of it but I couldn’t just stay by, y’know? Plus I got this… like, chemical compound from my dreams that is really super sticky. And when one of the things caught my ankle and threw me into a building I stuck to the side of it. I’ve looped right back round to being worried that I’m gonna turn into some kind of human spider.”
“Yep, hate to break it to you, but it was not.” He grinned over at Peter. It made sense, to want to test super strength out, but in a way that was safe and controlled.
Did everybody’s dreams come with super powers or was it person specific?
“Human spider isn’t a great superhero name though,” he did point out, seriously. “Spider boy, Spider kid, Arachne, Eight legs-” Teddy rattled off as he cycled through potential names, but all of them sucked.
“No one would take me seriously if I was called Spider boy or Spider kid,” Peter bemoaned, knowing he needed some kind of code name but he was struggling to think of one that didn’t sound really stupid. “Is Spider-Man too obvious? I’ll grow into it…”
Teddy narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips as he considered the suggested name. It’s definitely better than any of his suggestions. “Spider-Man,” he repeated accompanied by a nod. “I like it.”
He repeated the movement of his thumb over the shell. “And like you said you’ll grow into it which means it has staying power.”
Peter laughed. “Yeah, and staying power’s really important in a superhero name. Can you imagine having to rebrand after a few years because you’re not a teenager anymore?”
Picking up another shell, Peter tossed it into the air and caught it a few times. “I guess, then, uh- I’m Spider-Man?”
“That would suck.” And awkward. Not to mention expensive, probably. Especially if you had a costume that was set up for your younger self and had to source another one for when you outgrew that one.
Teddy smirked and nudged Peter’s shoulder. “I guess you are. How does it feel?”
Peter laughed and nudged Teddy’s shoulder back in kind. “Feels good,” he said. “I think. Maybe. I mean, I think it feels good. I guess I gotta find out what it means to be a superhero before I get too carried away, though.”
He cleared his throat and glanced at Teddy. “You wanna grab an ice cream? I can tell you about the time that I watched my aunt and uncle trying to plant tulips in Animal Crossing?”
Teddy chuckled and smirked over at Peter. “Mm, you have a point there.” He wasn’t sure where to start, but… “If you need any help I’d be happy to do what I can.”
“Yeah, that sounds great.” He grinned, pulled on his t-shirt, retrieved his abandoned sneakers and socks. He didn’t put his shoes on though, not until they were off the sand, and there was no chance of cross-sand-contamination.
“I have a feeling this is going to be a good story.”