Time to Leave - Peter

[st_hotflashes]

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.

Comments

[st_arkintern]

"That's pretty good," Peter says, smiling broadly. "Better than the first time I tried to use it."

That's definitely true. And his own homemade web-slingers were far less sophisticated than the ones Mr. Stark designed for him, so that only added to the difficulty.

[st_hotflashes]

"I think you definitely look cooler when you do it." He made it look good. Of course , Liz thought he looked good doing everything.

"How long did it take you to get really good at them?"

[st_arkintern]

"I'm still not perfect with them," Peter admits. "Sometimes I hit the side of buildings or I don't realize there's anything else I can hook onto and flub my landing."

And he's gotten out of practice. Sure, he was able to manage the other night with Liz, but he'd done a lot of nighttime webslinging the entire time he was in Europe just because he missed it.

[st_hotflashes]

Liz carefully took off the web-shooters. She didn't want to accidentally have it go off and have her foot or something attached to the floor.

"You know..." Liz looked down at the devices in her hand thoughtfully. "When you first used these, when you were dressed as Spider-Man and you made that hammock, I'd never scene anything like it before. And you built it so well... I was really impressed." She glanced up and sent him a soft, warm smile. "If someone were to have told me I'd fall in love with a boy while sitting on spider webbing, I don't think I would have believed them."

She held out the devices to give them back.

"And, you know," Liz's lips twitched a little before she turned her gaze to the window to stop the threat of another blush. "I think it's really attractive when you use them." That might be another weird thing to admit, but Liz had come to know it to be the truth.

[st_arkintern]

Peter lets out a soft chuckle at that. "I don't know," he says. "If someone were to tell me I'd fall in love with a pretty, smart woman, I wouldn't have a hard time believing that at all."

Both Lizes had been pretty and smart.

Peter takes the web-shooters back into hand and slips them back on.

"I'll just have to find an excuse to use them more often." It was just hard to find excuses or ways to use them at the inn.

[st_hotflashes]

She smiled when he called her smart and pretty. Unlike a lot of people, when Peter called someone smart, it held more weight because he was incredibly smart.

"I think that's one of the biggest reasons I'm going to miss Italy." All the excuses for him to speak Italian. Really, it was a wonder how Liz hadn't just made out with him half the trip.

"Maybe you can use your webbing to make sculptures or something for the art show."

[st_arkintern]

"I've never tried that," Peter says, considering. "Or thought about it, but I could definitely give it a try!"

It'd give him something to keep him preoccupied.

"When's the art show, anyway? Have you guys settled on a date?"

[st_hotflashes]

"I think maybe September? Mack is almost finished his comic book - it's a really interesting story and he can draw really well. Caroline was thinking maybe we might make it permanent, if people like the show itself. Like a gallery." It felt weird to be organizing things like this, but kind of nice, too. Like she was channeling Isabel.

[st_arkintern]

"I like that," Peter says. "Especially if we can change things up now and then." It'd be great if people could showcase their talents; there were a lot of people that Peter knew, but didn't know well enough to know their hobbies.

"Is Mack's comic a superhero one?" He'd seen bits and pieces of his artwork.

[st_hotflashes]

She nodded. "It's about a boy who can turn into a fox. They're called a Kistune?" Liz had no idea that Mack was really one too.

[st_arkintern]

"Oh yeah, that's the one he told me about," Peter says. "You know, Piotr had a Japanese comic book made about him. I wish I could have found it while we were still here." Yeah, it was Europe and not Japan, but Peter found the coolest weird things in used bookstores and thrift stops. And that was precisely where he spent the brunt of his shopping time in Europe.

[st_hotflashes]

"He mentioned that. I didn't know it was about him and his real powers though... I didn't even realize Piotr had powers until he helped me out with those wolves." Now she thought she was ridiculous for not figuring it out sooner.

"Maybe one day you'll have comics written about you."

[st_arkintern]

"You didn't know?" Peter asks, surprised. He doesn't even remember how he found out, just that he found out very soon after they first met. "I immediately asked him whether or not a magnet would stick to him."

A beat.

"It wouldn't," Peter says, disappointed.

[st_hotflashes]

"Probably a mixture of some of the non-magnetic metals like Titanium... But it also has to be somewhat organic, right? If it's a part of his body." Molecular biology was Liz's favourite subject, after all.

[st_arkintern]

"I don't know," he says, honestly. "It's weird. I want to ask how it works, but it feels intrusive somehow. Maybe because it's his body."

He felt the same way about Kitty, too.

"I wouldn't mind it if someone asked about me, but that's me."

[st_hotflashes]

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

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

[st_arkintern]

"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.

[st_hotflashes]

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.

[st_arkintern]

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."

[st_hotflashes]

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."

[st_arkintern]

"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.

[st_hotflashes]

"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.

[st_arkintern]

"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.

[st_hotflashes]

"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.

[st_arkintern]

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?"