[Closed to Quill] The physics is theoretical, but the fun is real.

[st_arkintern]

Peter Parker is sitting in the cafe, a textbook sprawled out on one side of the table, a graphing notebook filled with complicated-looking equations and the corresponding math on the other. Today's self-chosen subject of study? Lagrangian mechanics.

Peter idly taps his pencil near the bottom of the page and lets his chin sink into the palm of his free hand. If he keeps looking at this, he thinks he's going to lose his mind. He's been trying to figure out this answer for fifteen minutes now, and he's pretty sure that he's made a mistake somewhere, but he can't find where.

Peter folds his arms against the table then lays his forehead against them with an audible groan. Truly, it is a groan of despair.

Comments

[st_arkintern]

Peter nods his agreement. "When you have powers like ours, you have a lot of responsibility. I'm sure those people on that planet wouldn't have been able to do anything if you hadn't helped them. Not because they didn't want to help, but because there's some things only we can do."

Peter looks down at his notebook. A crude version of the spider symbol on his suit is drawn in the lower right corner in sharpie.

"I'm really glad that you get it," he says, looking up. "It feels like most people don't."

[st_arlord]

"People here?" He asked. "I thought this place was crawling with superheroes."

Quill thought back to Alec and rubbed his nose gently. This is probably not going how it's supposed to go...

[st_arkintern]

"Back home, mostly," Peter says, thinking of Mr. Stark and the things he said after the ferry incident. Apparently, there were a lot of people who didn't think he was capable because he was young. "But there's still some people here that think that I can't handle it."

People like Alec.

"I'm still better able handle it than most people." Maybe not some of the more experienced superheroes, yeah, but definitely better than people who didn't have special powers. "But you get that. None of those people on the planet would have been able to hold the stone but you. All of them could have died, but you risked your life to save them, even though you might have died, too. You did what needed to be done because you needed to."

Peter hopes he's not getting too weird. He looks down at his notebook, embarrassed:

"I think that's really heroic."

[st_arlord]

Quill beamed. If this was a movie, there would be a close up on him and really cool music in the background.

Yeah, I am heroic

"You'll get there one day, dude." He replied. "You're already pretty heroic. You jumped onto a space ship to try and stop a bad guy."

[st_arkintern]

Peter feels something warm up inside of him at the words of praise. It's not exactly something that he gets all that often. Especially about being Spider-Man.

"Really?"

Peter tries not to look as happy as he really feels, but immediately fails at it.

"I can't believe I get to go on a spaceship," he says. "Was it a Millennium Falcon-type ship or a USS Enterprise-type?" Thee's so many spaceship names he can start listing off right now, but maybe it's just easier to ask: "Or was it something totally different?"

[st_arlord]

"Totally different. Kind of like some big-ass weird wheel thing. Like a big Krispy Kreme" He said and gestured the shape with his hands. "And when we found you, you put up a heck of a fight. I mean, I totally won between you and me and I put a gun to your head until I realized you weren't working for the bad guys - sorry, by the way. But yeah. Spaceship. Planet. Aliens. You get the whole inter-galactic tour."

[st_arkintern]

All of this is utterly bizarre to Peter, and while his brows are furrowed in thought as Quill offers his explanation, he accepts everything he's told without argument. Even the part about having a gun put to his head because he knows that the bad guy they're going after is a really bad guy, and it's probably better to be safe than sorry in situations like those.

"All this, it's so exciting," he says. "Being an Avenger, going into space, fighting with Mr. Stark, fighting with you, it's--"

Peter doesn't even know how to finish that sentence, so he just presses his lips together.

"I'm sure you've been doing this kind of stuff since before I was born," he says. "So I'm sure it's not as exciting for you as it is for me."

[st_arlord]

"It's still pretty exciting," he said. "Space kind of keeps things interesting. You'd be surprised how many aliens are out there."

He looked at the kid who was clearly excited. Quill grinned. Excitement was key to this sort of thing.

Then he remembered Gamora.

Then Quill's nose started to hurt.

"But, uh. You know, it's not always fun," he said, his expression getting more serious! "I went after Thanos because he took my girlfriend."

[st_arkintern]

"What?"

Peter straightens at that, brows furrowed.

"He took your girlfriend? Why?"

[st_arlord]

"Well, it's kind of a long story," He said, as he continued anyways, "But Thanos is sort of basically like Gamora's adoptive dad. Which, right? Super awkward potential father-in-law. Anyways, Gamora has information he needs so he took her. Obviously I'm going to get her back."

I just have to find her first...

[st_arkintern]

"Well, yeah," Peter says, nodding in agreement. Of course he's gonna get her back. "If I know that-- " Or is it knew? It's kind-of knew for Quill and know for him. "-- I'll definitely help you find her."

Peter doesn't believe he'll remember anything here when he gets back, but he's sure that even the future-him would help if Quill told him.

[st_arlord]

"Thanks, dude, that means a lot." He said with a smile.

Quill really liked Peter Parker.

"She's kind of a hard-ass, so I'm sure she'll complain when I save her." He continued. "You know how women are."

[st_arkintern]

Dude was much better than kid, Peter decides.

Peter does not know how women are, but he nods anyway because it seems like the right thing to do. "What's your girlfriend like?" he asks. "Is she a Guardian too?"

[st_arlord]

"Uh, she's amazing," He answered easily. "She kicks ass and does't take shit from anybody, but also has like, this heart of gold. And she's smoking hot."

Quill was quite enamored.

"And of course she's a Guardian," He said. "You can't not have a girlfriend and not make her part of your super cool team of kick ass heros."

[st_arkintern]

Quill really, really seems to like her. Peter can tell. He wonders if he sounds like this whenever he talks about Liz. He hopes so.

"How'd the two of you meet?"

[st_arlord]

"She stole the orb with the power stone from me," He said easily. "Then we all ended up in jail. You know, your classic love story."

Quill smiled. It was a sort of dopey, I'm-in-love smile that Rocket would make fun of in an instant.

"What about you?" He asked, trying to focus. No more face-punches for me. "I met your girlfriend. She's cute."

For a kid and a nerd, but Peter's both of those too...

[st_arkintern]

"We officially met on New Years' Eve," he says. "I was wearing this uncomfortable suit and was sitting by myself when she came up to talk to me. I basically realized I liked her ten minutes into our first conversation."

Peter's embarrassed, but only a little embarrassed. Probably because the way Quill smiled told him he'd get it on some level.

[st_arlord]

Quill nodded very seriously. He understood this quite well and didn't see any reason to belittle it. He had liked Gamora off the bat too even when she was trying to take away his score.

"Not as cool as my meeting, but still pretty cool." He replied. "Plus, New Year's Eve, right? Perfect excuse to kiss a lady."

[st_arkintern]

"Yeah, but we didn't end up kissing until three weeks later." Maybe he should have kissed her then, but it didn't seem right when they didn't know each other all that well.

"Sora and I ended up making these homemade fireworks using a bunch of stuff we found around the inn," he says. "Liz and I talked for awhile and we ended up kissing that night."

Peter suddenly gets that same goofy smile Quill had on his face a minute ago.

[st_arlord]

"Woah, you made fireworks?" Quill said, impressed. "Seriously cool, dude. That's a pretty strong opener, too, for a date. I might have to use that one day if Gamora ever gets angry at me."

Gamora is often angry at me...

Quill shrugged off his own thought.

"Is she some super hero to?" Quill asked. "Like, uh. Web-girl or Venus-Fly-Trap?"

I need to work on my superhero names. Once more Quill was thankful Rocket was not around to hear him make an ass of himself.

[st_arkintern]

Peter's face grows warm. "It was for everyone," he says very quickly. "We didn't have anything for New Year's, so Sora and I started looking into it. It wasn't really anything impressive, just more elaborate sparklers."

There was only so much Peter could do with what they had on-hand. But it had been fun trying to figure it out without the internet to lean on.

"No, she's not a superhero," he says. "She gets the whole superhero thing, though. Back home, I couldn't really tell anyone about it, so it made a lot of problems."

[st_arlord]

Whether or not Peter had meant to impress a girl, Quill thought it was still a great way to get chicks.

"That's important," he agreed, "there's a lot of stuff to factor in with being a superhero. Sometimes you miss dinner dates or you got to cut out of the movie you're currently making out of. And the laundry. I mean, wow right?"

[st_arkintern]

"Yeah," Peter says, leaning forward. He doesn't really have to worry about the whole laundry thing because he knows what weeks it's his job to do the laundry, so he gets it done, but the stuff about missing dinner dates and movies?

"I had to ditch my date at Homecoming because her dad was going to hijack Mr. Stark's cargo plane with all these high-tech weapons and tech that night," he says. "I didn't know who the Vulture was until he was driving us to the dance and I realized right afterwards what he was doing, and I couldn't explain to Liz why I was leaving."

Peter quickly adds: "It's another Liz. Not the same Liz." He just keeps liking girls with the same name.

[st_arlord]

"Wait, wait. Hold up." Quill said, raising his hand. "First of all, The Vulture? Cool bad guy name."

And Stark definitely seems like the kind of guy to almost lose his weapons.

"But you're dating a girl named Liz here, and you dated one back home?" Qull asked rhetorically. "Dude That deserves a high five."

He leaned over the table, leaving a hand up for Peter to slap.

[st_arkintern]

Peter grins and high-fives Quill. One date probably wasn't dating, but he's not going to argue that. Mostly because Quill is probably one of the Top Five Coolest People alive and Peter really wants him to think that he's not a cool and not just a nerd who plays with LEGOs and dresses up in a leotard.

"Yeah," he says. "The Vulture name really worked out because he was scavenging for parts left over from Avengers battles." Even if anyone else didn't think the name was cool, Peter thought it was appropriate. "Things with Liz really work out, though. She was upset about me ditching her at Homecoming, then after I brought her dad in, she ended up moving to Oregon."

That kind of put a damper on Peter's chances of taking her on a second date.