st_hotflashes | Time to Leave

Time to Leave - Peter

Venice was beautiful. She was glad they had managed to get to it as it near the recommended time the Inn's "travel agents" had told them to take before heading back 'home'.

She was standing in the middle of one of the squares that overlooked a large, old, beautiful church. She was waiting for Peter to bring back some gelato before they headed to the train. It felt... Bittersweet. This other world felt almost like home. The space and the diversity really helped Liz to relax. Spending time with Peter here, too, helped make things feel... Right.

She adjusted her pack on her shoulder as she waited.

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She nodded, though it wasn't exactly the same for her to agree to such a thing.

"Have you ever, um. Studied your cells?"

"No, not really," he says. "But once we finish building your microscope, we can compare."

Thankfully, Peter was able to acquire the little else they needed in Europe.

She nodded, though she didn't really have much experience with the idea. Liz reached for her backpack and pulled out a small sketch pad. There were vague sketches of some places they've been and even more of what looked like maybe Peter. Several doodles of the Spider-Man crest.

"I wonder if yours would look different."

She opened it to a blank page and started to sketch what regular human cells would or should look like under a microscope.

Then, beside it, she sketched other cells that looked completely different.

"These are alien cells. Or, at least the cells of Max and the others." She had sort of collected a sample without him knowing.

Peter looks over the sketch with great interest. Biology isn't exactly his area of expertise (chemistry and physics were), but the her second drawing was clearly not human.

"I'm sure something was altered," Peter admits. "I just don't know if it was my blood or something else."

For the briefest of moments, Liz wondered what would happen if she had a baby with Peter. It wasn't the first time she had that thought, but she didn't normally have them while Peter was around. She ducked her head to try and cover up the embarrassment she felt from such a thought at a random time.

"If you want to figure it out, we probably could."

"Well, we have a lens now," he says. "So we can try it out when we get back to the inn."

A beat.

"I wonder if anyone else would let us look at their blood." It'd make for good science.

"You could probably convince Alec." Liz didn't know a lot about Alec, but she knew enough to know he wasn't entirely human. "Maybe Kitty. Piotr probably would. And Pike."

Well now she was getting a little excited about the idea of looking at different people's samples of cells or blood. In fact, she had an excited expression on her face that screamed science nerd right now.

"I wonder if my blood is going to look similar to anyone else's," Peter says, wonderingly. "Maybe all people with powers have a similar mutation in the blood."

Now Peter's starting to feel excited, too.

"They might." She thought about it. "Piotr said that the people in their world are called mutants and they have the x-gene? So... maybe that's a common thread?" Although Peter was bitten by a spider and not born with the ability, so his cells probably mutated a little different.

She looked at him, "Would you, um -" She paused, then shook her head. "No, sorry. That's weird. Forget it." She rolled her eyes at herself - calm down Liz.

Liz might be all to eager to drop it, but Peter's not convinced that whatever she's asking is really as weird as she insists it is.

"Would I what?"

She blushed, looking down at the sketch pad. "Would you... want to compare your cells to a spider...?"

"Yeah," Peter says. "I wouldn't mind at all." He presses his lips together. "Why would you think that's weird?"

She looked to him with a bit more of a serious tone in her eyes. "I just... Didn't want you to, I know know, think I thought of you as part insect or something."

"It wouldn't bother me if you did think of me as part insect," Peter says, his lips quirking up into a smile. "Because it'd mean you'd like me even in spite of it."

"I do. I mean, I would" she smiled to him. "I don't think there's anything that would make me stop liking you." Which she meant

"I'm sure there's something," Peter teases. "What if I were Roach-Man?"

Liz laughed. "Even then... though I don't know what your powers would be... maybe you could hiss really loud?" Trying to picture Peter as anyone but Spider-Man was hard.

"Maybe... flight?" There were roaches that flew. "There was a guy named Ant-Man who we fought in Germany. He could get really small and really big."

The big part wasn't particularly ant-like.

The thought of a flying cockroach was a little scary, but Liz would still love Peter.

"Ant-Man? And you mentioned Black Widow before. And you're Spider-Man." She knew of Thor and the Hulk and Captain America too. "There's a lot of superheroes named after insects... But I guess that makes sense. We all have animals we usually feel embody us."

Peter chuckles lightly. "I'm not sure that a spider really would have embodied me until I got bit by one." Peter's not really sure what animal he'd think embodied him before then. He's just so used to being Spider-Man that really, the only animal he can identify with lately is the spider.

"What about you? What animal do you think embodies you?"

"what would you say, if I said... Um. Dolphin?" She tried not to look as embarrassed as she felt.

"What, for you?" Peter thinks about this, but only briefly. "I think it works, though."

He couldn't tell her why, but it does.

She smiled. "Dolphins... They're really smart, you know? They're one of the few mammals that can recognize themselves in a reflection. And they're social. They like playing and being in groups." Dolphins might also be her favourite animal. "They're also, um, one of the few mammals to mate for pleasure." She blushed because it as one of the facts she found really interesting, but it was so sort of embarrassing

Smart, social, playing and being in groups.

Peter nods at all of this.

But then when Liz mentions mammals mating for pleasure, Peter blushes, too. "Oh," he finally manages. "I can see why you'd relate."

Peter has to resist the urge to facepalm. Why did he just say that? And right after she just mentioned them being one of the few mammals to mate for pleasure, too.

Her eyes widened a little and then she turned red, ducking her head for a second. He probably didn't mean it like that...right? Still... "It is nice... But unlike dolphins, I'm pretty sure I'm monogamous."

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