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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"Will it be stronger?" She knew if anyone could crack it, it would be Peter. He was brilliant with chemistry and he had won the contest they had with her chemistry homework.

"Have you ever thought about making some that can glow in the dark?"

"That's the hope," he says about it being stronger. "I'd like it to be longer-lasting, too. Usually two hours is enough for most purposes, but sometimes you need it to not dissolve for a longer time."

And with regards to it glowing in the dark.

"I never thought about that before," Peter says, smiling. "I think it'd be great. I know this probably sounds silly, but it'd be fun to use for decorating for Halloween also."

He wonders if they're going to have a Halloween party again this year.

"It's not silly." She smiled to him. "I think it's cute and resourceful. I bet it would help make a haunted house scarier." She loved Peter, but the idea of a human-sized spider was kind of terryfing.

"What made you think glow-in-the-dark, though?" Liz probably had a better idea for it than he did.

"Oh, um... Well, I was thinking it might be helpful at night. Especially if you you can figure out a way for it to last longer. You can mark things for yourself or for the police of something. Or making it easier to see the bad guy as they try to escape." Try, because obviously Peter would catch them.

"Great idea," he says, pulling her into a sidehug. "If you have a good idea, you should share it. All of it. Not just the idea itself."

He kisses the side of her head. Liz's hair smells nice.

She smiled, feeling a warmth at his praise. It was hard to feel like she had any useful contributions because she had never fought bad guys like he had before. She wasn't a superhero.

Liz leaned against him. The train and the whole trip - Liz had never felt more relax (except for the few tense moments throughout). It was easy to picture this being real. She thought, at least for the most part, that she had seemlessly fit into 2018.

"I think... One of the things I'm going to miss the most, is how sometimes we were completely alone." Not that she had anything against Alec or anyone else, but - "things felt less... Complicated."

"Yeah, I know," Peter says. "I guess when everyone's so close together, it's hard to feel like you're ever alone."

Peter keeps his arm around Liz as he turns his head enough just to look outside the window behind them. "This probably seems weird, but... even when we were walking along the Siene and there were tons of other people around us, it really felt like we were alone I guess it's probably because we didn't know any of them."

A luxury they didn't have at the Madonna Inn.

Liz reached for Peter's hand and intertwined their fingers. She knew exactly what he was saying. "No one asking questions or giving advice."

No one giving Liz a hard time for the way she felt or telling her she was being ridiculous for considering ways to be with him in the future. Here, no one really gave them a second glance.

"Just people asking for directions in foreign languages," Peter says, with a laugh. Some things didn't change; it was the same in NYC. "Maybe after all this time away, we'll miss all the questions and the advice."

Peter doubts it.

"I'm definitely going to miss being Spider-Man," he says. That much he's certain of.

She squeezed his hand. "You're still Spider-Man, wherever you are" but she knew what he meant. And she figured there was something to be said about wearing the mask anonymously, too.

"You know... You can wear the suit whenever you want with me."

"I know I can," Peter says, smiling lightly. And he knows Liz would like it, too. But there's something different about going out and saving people who need to be saved, or stopping people who need to be stopped. And that kinda stuff generally doesn't happen at the inn. It just happens when the Other Worlds opens.

"What else are you going to miss?" he asks. "Other than the anonymity, I mean."

Liz knew there was a difference. It was one of the reasons why she was building ths obstacle course.

"Soft serve ice cream." She smiled. That was easy. "And... I liked seeing into your world." She had CDs with current bands and some teen magazines. Bo also said she had her 'covered' for pop culture references - whatever that meant.

"...what about you?"

"Movies in theaters," he says. "Thrift store shopping. Museums. The internet. People-watching." It was hard to explain the latter, but there was something just intensely relaxing about it.

Liz could see why the internet would be a missable. She didn't feel the same affinity for it as Peter did, not having it around really.

"If you want, I can start a store back home and make you haggle with me." She looked playfully to him.

"I'm done with haggling," he assures her. "At least for now. Ask me in another two months."

Peter's just relieved he has a pile of books to peruse through. Not only because he needed something new to read, but also because it doesn't mean he has to wait until Ms. Rasputin isn't working to visit the library.

He should probably buck up already.

"We should probably try and figure out how to make soft-serve before we head home and lose internet access," Peter says, pulling out his phone. Most of the other things they're not going to be able to bring back. But soft-serve might actually be do-able.

Liz watched him fondly. She felt like Peter looked so relaxed looking things up on his phone and she liked watching him. "Back home, what do you look up the most on the internet?" She was going to guess science stuff, but who knew.

"I was always on the irlSuperheroes Subreddit," Peter answers. "It's basically like a message board for superheroes fans. And people who don't like superheroes, but those comments usually get downvoted until the community thinks the criticism's valid. It's a lot less toxic than SuperheroChan."

He looks up briefly at Liz. "Neither one exists here. Reddit does, but not irlSuperheroes Subreddit."

Peter presses SEND and shoots a link in a text message to Liz's phone.

"I think it's do-able at the inn, we just need to make sure we write everything down."

Liz's phone chimes and she opened it. She pressed the link and started to look through it. "I can write it down." She took the sketchbook again and started to write the instructions down.

"Did people discuss you a lot on that... Sub-reddit?"

"I mean, yeah, sometimes," Peter says, embarrassed. "Not as much as the other superheroes, though." He wasn't exactly a big name yet. But it sounded like he would be if he ended up in space, fighting Thanos.

"They basically talk about anyone they think is a superhero. Or super powered. Or anyone or anything they suspect is super powered. They talk about aliens, too. Conspiracy theories are pretty popular."

"Wait... So people could talk about, like, they think some principal has powers and discuss the 'proof' they have? Thanks sounds dangerous." She wondered if there was a Roswell one.

She paused. "Could you... Show me the, um, website? Reddit, I mean."

"Yeah, I mean, I guess. Mostly people just speculate over celebrities or politicians." That was way more interesting to them than thinking some 15-year old boy from Queens was Spider-Man.

Peter pulls up the link on his phone so Liz doesn't have to navigate away from the recipe on her own. "Here."

Liz has learned in her practice with the phone that the magnified glass was usually for searching. She thought for a moment and typed in UFO and clicked on the first thing that popped up. The first link in the forum maybe shouldn't have been a surprise. At least some things were the same here.

"See anything interesting?" Peter asks, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder. He hates it when people do that to him. It makes him feel uncomfortable.

She read a little bit through the post. "No. I mean, maybe?" She shook her head as if to say 'I don't really know, I'm an idiot' and handed the phone over with it still up on the screen. "I'm sorry. I just - I'm not sure what I was doing." Or why she felt so weird about it now and guilty too.

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