revivalproject | [Video]

remind me to apologize about that later.

He tosses the communicator off to the side somewhere and opts to just lay on the bed and stare blankly at the ceiling. Maybe if he thinks about anything else he won't feel that strong desire to scratch.

He sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly and then focuses his attention on reciting the periodic table from memory in attempt to ignore how badly he wants to scratch. He holds up until he gets to Iridium.

Something snaps he finds himself furiously scratching at his irritated skin. It doesn't really make it feel better but he does it anyway. It takes him a minute to get to the door because like any teenager that's done something they know they're not supposed to, he tries to hide it. He his face with cool water and pulls his sweatshirt on despite that it's well, summer now.

He pulls the door open and immediately he's making a face as he usually does when Tony says something he considers to be outlandish.

"They're hives, Mr-Tony. Hives aren't contagious. At least, I don't think they are."

"Yeah, well, 'being a spider' isn't supposed to be contagious, either," Tony was ready to retort, looking incredibly disappointed for someone who wasn't actually that worried about contracting Peter's hives. He raised his proposed cures impatiently, for Peter to stop looking so...red...and let him in already, only to breeze through and invite himself onto the end of the bed, where he looked even more unimpressed.

"You want to have a roommate here?" he wondered. "I guess if you don't need that much personal space, I mean, good for you, that's probably healthy..." He did not look convinced, eyeing the room like it was Peter's unworthy girlfriend. "There's a bunch of fixed up houses just south of here, though, and Cayde actually has this great space--don't tell him I told you, but it's not being used right now, in the clocktower. Furnished."

"Okay, that's fair." Peter supposed the spider did sort of, in a way, spread its spideryness to him. "I promise not to bite you." He just offers a grin and then steps out of the way so Tony can let himself in. He takes the anti-itch salve and and then looks around the room. Maybe it's because he's poor but the room doesn't look that bad to him. He's only half listening to Tony's suggestions and is more focused on the itching at his neck.

He chances scratching, wondering if Tony's even paying attention. "Don't worry about that. I'm gonna stay with Tommy and Billy for awhile."

Of course Tony was paying attention, even if his head was turned like he was surveying the other side of the room, keeping his watch on Peter out of the corner of his eye. At first, he replied, "That makes sense. Well, no, it doesn't, living with them sounds like a nightmare, talking to either of them is an emotional minefield, but you're all Avengers, you should stick together. Stop that or I'll take that away from you." He still wasn't quite looking in Peter's direction, fingers tapping restlessly where they were curled around the edge of the mattress. "Jon made that one," he continued in the same tone, like he hadn't just made a threat, indicating with his chin toward the plastic bottle, "couldn't tell you what's in it, but he hasn't been wrong yet." So, that was probably Peter's problem solved, but Tony had brought the hammered brass pot from their bathroom as well, before he knew Jon was already prepared, and he explained, "That other one, that's what I use to shave, soothes the skin. Maybe you can still find a use for it, in...four or six years."

Peter pauses his itching and slowly brings his hand down. Take what away? His hand? He turns his attention to the plastic bottle and looks at it somewhat skeptically.

"it's like a cream, right? so if it's topical I can't really metabolize like I do most medicines." And hopefully it doesn't given him any weird side effects. But that would be his luck. He's busy considering the bottle of stuff Jon made he almost missed that dig about Peter not needing to shave for a few years.

"You know I'm almost sixteen, right?" He chances asking and then something clicks. "...did you bring me aftershave?"

That metabolism was a problem that Cap had, too, so Tony pouted thoughtfully, trying to work out what he would have done to help a supersoldier with hives. Maybe Jon was clever enough to foresee the problem, but in the meantime Tony abruptly got to his feet to head for the washroom.

"And you've been working on that..." he asked as he went, with a finger circling around his own beard, "For, what, three years? Almost as old as you are." He was gone and running water by the time his teasing smirk broke through.

"You could think of it like that, sure. If you like it, it grows around here when it's hot, a lot around the forge, it looks like these cucumbers that grow upright and you can squeeze the gel out of them, like sponges. I thought maybe they were edible. That was a mistake. What is it that Reed says? Science is exploration." He appeared again with a dripping towel. Hopefully, Peter didn't have plans to use that.

Peter just watches Tony move around, he'd learned from talking to the Tony in his universe that sometimes you had to run the things he says through a mental sieve and not take it all at face value.

He looks a little closer at the stuff Tony had brought. "Oh, so it's kinda like Aloe Vera?" He asks, turning it over in his hand. He wonders if it'll feel about the same as when you apply aloe to sunburns. He'd be okay with that. Is it rude if he tries some now or rude if he doesn't? Whatever, he's gonna test it. He pulls the lid off and scoops some out and applies a a very small mount to-shit he's still wearing his sweat shirt. Rather then apply to his arm he applies it his neck.

And it is soothing. That's nice. While Tony is doing whatever Peter pulls his sweatshirt off, revealing his now slightly tattered 'y'all need science' tee shirt and a lot more hives. He looks up at the towel and make a face.

"Why'd you drown that towel?"

"Aloe, yeah, a lot like that," Tony agreed, snapping his fingers for the connection made. The experience wasn't quite as tacky as aloe, but it did have a similar, green scent and hydrating effect that had been helpful in more than a few applications singing, slicing and shaving himself in the forge.

He stopped in the doorway where he could see Peter again, staring briefly and openly ignoring Peter's question with a raised lip that could have been concern. "Jesus, you look like you got into a fight with the Wasp. Or several toddlers. Very tiny fists." That couldn't be comfortable, and suffocating the hives under the sweater could not have been helping. There, Tony finally lifted the towel to reply, "To help." The opposite of sweating out the problem. He flicked one finger in the air for Peter to...do something, the breadth of the problem was honestly overwhelming to look at and Tony wasn't sure of the most effective place to start. Starting to circle him to get a 360 view of the problem was not really helping, but Tony persisted, suddenly snatching at his shirt to check under the hem and see how far down Peter's back the welts had spread. Too far. Tony pressed the cold towel there, stuffing it under the ratty t-shirt, where he found a new thing to complain about; "You're not going to find a roommate dressed like that. A tie can go a long way."

Peter's well aware he's not looking his best and that it's.. it's bad. He still manages to feel offended.

"It's not that bad!" He argues, maybe pouting a little. Nevertheless when Tony motions for him to... come here? That's what Peter's taking it to be anyway as he moves over. He feels a little self conscious and just watches Tony circle him. "Hey! What are you-!" Peter immediately tries to step away when Tony messes with the hem of his shirt. "Oh."

Well, it does help, a little. He's big enough to admit that. And then Tony's making comments about his wardrobe. Did every Tony Stark in every universe just need to find something about him to disapprove of?

"Oh yeah, That's really gonna tie my whole outfit together."

That did earn Peter a snort, that Tony tried to cover soberly with a disapproving shake of his head for the lack of appreciation of his wisdom. "Hold that," was the only warning Peter got to stop the towel from splattering to the floor and soaking into his threadbare carpet as Tony released it and made to snatch the cream Jon had made away from him instead. "We can make more, if its helping. Hey, that could be a good use for this shirt, tear it up, you're right, good thinking hanging onto it," Tony proposed, and continued his impatient fussing right up until he was about to touch Peter's face with an unappealing, grey dollop, where he hesitated only long enough to raise his eyebrows inquisitively.

Meanwhile, he was still talking, "I wore a tie almost every day when I was your age. I decided when I went to college that it would make people take me more seriously, even if I was a foot shorter than all of them, so I was this gangly kid in a full three piece suit sitting in the lecture hall, like clockwork. It did the opposite, if you can imagine, absolutely beefed the cool factor calculation on that one. I'd even be in a windsor knot at the bar at some robotics convention while the rest of my classmates where doing body shots. I figured out the beard eventually."

He can try and hide it with disapproval but Peter definitely heard that and he's counting the fact he at least got Tony to snort at his comment as a win. His reflexes are still pretty second to none and he grabs the towel just as Tony lets it go.

"What? No! I like this shirt." Peter protested, taking a protective stance to shield it from any destruction Tony had in mind. He tunes out most of the fussing and since he's currently in charge of the towel he doesn't stop Tony from bringing the gray goop to his face. It doesn't stop him from making a weird face though because it's not a smell he was expecting. At least it does its job and he doesn't feel quite so much like scratching his skin off.

"And point of information I don't have a suit- I mean, I do. But it was technically my uncle's and it's still in Queens. Not really something I want to be wearing on the daily. Besides, I'm really sure if I wore a suit to Midtown Tech Flash would actually hit me with his car rather than just pretend. He's already got a personal vendetta against me for being poor."

It wasn't immediately clear to Tony if it was ideal to spread the cream around, or rub it in, so it was with a faint grimace that he cautiously patted around the worst of the hives on Peter's face, leaving him with new, grey splotches where the red ones had been. He had to force himself to stop wrinkling his nose so they weren't making the same uncomfortable face at each other.

"Okay, first of all, that's tragic on so many different vectors, we've got to get you a proper suit," he declared. It was possible that wearing a suit to lunch at the post-apocalyptic diner was as misguided to wearing one to Differential Equations at 8AM, but Tony was in his half the time and it did improve his confidence. "And I guess we should get you a suit," he finally acknowledged, since Peter was taking his embarrassing school stories so literally, even if he kept his focus very pointedly on his delicate itch-solution dabbing as he did so. "You know, eventually."

They may not be flattering gray splotches but it is really curbing the itch and that's all he can really ask for at the moment. That and for Tony to not care so much about his mostly thrifted wardrobe.

Peter's not really big on suits but Tony seems really concerned about the fact all he has for a suit is and hand-me-down from his uncle. He's not sure why though, it's not like a suit wouldn't just get ruined here. Why bother dressing up at all?

"Well, we can't call be billionaires." Peter comments drily, rolling his eyes before they snap to attention again. "Oh! I mean, it'd be nice to have Karen again, but I still have my web shooters. I do need more fluid though-I'm basically out at this point."

For a second, it seemed like Peter still didn't get what Tony was talking about, then he hoped Peter didn't get what he was talking about because he determined, hand frozen in the air, "You named your suit 'Karen'?" The kid probably didn't have the same kind of relationship with his suits that Tony did with the Iron Man, but he was still forced to confront the vision of just how much weirder that relationship would be if he had been naming the models after...models. It was kind of nice to realize he could have handled something worse and deftly avoided it.

"What? no!" Peter shook his head harshly. "No that would just be ridiculous. I named the AI in my suit, Karen." He admitted as though that were any less weird. "I mean I was just calling her suit lady but I felt bad about it so I gave her a name. She likes it." He stated, chin jutting out in defiance.

"And anyway, you don't get to judge because you literally named yours Female Replacement Intelligent Digital Assistant Youth- I mean you call her Friday but that's what her full name is." A beat. "Well, not you, you. Mr Stark did. I mean you are Mr-Tony. But you know what I mean."

That was definitely not less weird, but Tony did have to agree that 'suit lady' was probably the worse option, if he had to pick. He just didn't agree that he had to pick. "Ah-huh..." he started to murmur slowly, tapping at Peter's shoulder to get the towel back and re-soak it for new application, and wipe what was left of this goop off of his hands, only to be further confronted with the idea that his suit had an AI and that she hadn't even named herself.

"Why would I need an AI? What happened to Jo?" he asked. Before Peter could work up that confusion that Tony could sense from a mile away, he elaborated, "I don't--the suit is part of me," and offered an open palm, suddenly now covered in smooth gold, pouring up to his fingertips from under his sleeve. That wasn't going to help Peter any time soon, but they could maybe make a similar system, on a budget.

"I don't know. I didn't program her." Peter shrugged before passing the towel over. "But I do know that there isn't much Friday could hack into. I mean Karen could do that too but I use her mostly to track bad guys and stuff. She's also, apparently a tattle tale." Baby-monitor Protocol, he huffs in slight irritation. If Tony made the suit then that meant he had access to every thing Peter did because as much as Peter adores Tony, he's a massive control freak. Both in his universe and this one. Not that he would ever say that to his face.

"...Who's Jo?" He chances asking. There was JARVIS, before FRIDAY but as far as Peter's aware, it's always been an AI running the suit. Well, sort of. He glances down to see the gold and is eyes widen, clearly very impressed.

"That's so cool! Is it like.. nano-tech?"

Tony's first reaction was to wonder who Peter's suit could possibly be tattling to, with a pinch of concern between his brows that only became intrigue with some consideration. It would definitely help to know when Spidey had gotten himself stuck at the bottom of the ocean, he wasn't great at letting anyone know about that kind of thing, and May was too old to be constantly on edge without a little bit of reassurance that some AI tattling might offer. For that, he gave Peter's cheek an affectionate pat (the cream seemed to be drying down into a kind of sticky tack, which did colour the gesture as Tony wrinkled his nose with some regret) before he was swinging around back toward the bathroom with the towel.

"Jocasta, the synth that Ultron made? Before I had this, she was running most of my systems. It was supposed to be to give her something to do, so she could kind of go outside..." he explained, letting Peter fill in where he might be concerned. If Jocasta wasn't running the Iron Man, then she might have already been decommissioned. "I did end up relying on her too much, you know, it was good, ultimately, to move her out of the shop," he did reassure, since obviously she wasn't running anything now, and Tony could return brightly to announce, "The nanoweb, yeah, plugs into my brain, input lag is fractional now, lets me--" And he tilted his head, listening for the indication from Peter's communicator that he had received a text. 'Do this'.

That wasn't something Tony really explained to anyone else, if he could help it, and it was some relief to be able to tell someone that might actually understand and help improve the systems he had managed to piece together in this wasteland. Maybe the kid wasn't his Peter, he was missing a few pounds and graduate degrees, but Peter was someone Tony could trust, if he was anything. "Up," he continued suddenly out loud, looking irritably impatient like he had been waiting this whole time for Peter to intuit that Tony was trying to shove the towel up his clothes again.

Peter wrinkles his nose right back but more from the texture than anything. He watches Tony disappear to the sink again and sit down on the edge of the bed, listening to him mill about just out of sight.

"That's not-Ultron didn't do that where I'm from. He made a bunch of copies of himself and wiped Sokovia off the face of the planet trying to create some extinction level threat-I mean I don't know a lot about it-I was like thirteen when all that happened." He stands up again when Tony comes back out like he thought maybe he wasn't supposed to be doing that.

His communicator, which somehow found its way on the floor and under the bed alerts him to a message and he dives down to fish back out from under the bed.

"That's so cool..." Peter voices. "So if I got the communication data point could I do that?" He asks eagerly and then, at Tony's tone, lifts his shirt up to reveal the irritated rashes decorating his torso. The hem of his shirt makes its way to his mouth where he holds it in place with his teeth before offers to the towel by just turning his palm up.

It took Tony a beat to place the name, because it wasn't completely alien to him, except that it wasn't part of his Earth, either. The place where Wanda had come from, she or Tommy or Steve had told him, and he snapped his fingers as he placed it to announce, "We don't have that." Dropping the heavy towel into Peter's hands, he continued, "Sokovia. Never existed to be wiped out--you know, I really should have asked Jon, he's from an Earth, too, but he'd never heard of Captain America or the Fantastic Four or--anything, just baseline humans, nothing, I wonder if he has a Sokovia. He could probably draw us a whole global map, you could show me."

After a beat, he added, "Ultron, we have. Obviously. Shame about Jocasta, you'd love her, but the rest of it, that sounds right."

Spinning in a circle, trying to remember the last time he had seen the itch cream, it had definitely been in his hand, he waved both of his now empty hands to temper some of Peter's excitement. "Maybe. Definitely not this, exactly, I wouldn't be able to replicate it on my own, and I don't know a biologist that talented on this side of the universe. But I've been trying to work out how those datapoints work since I got here, and there's something to that, the neural-touch interface, if I can pin it down, you'd get pretty close."

"That bleak." Peter states, really enunciating each syllable to get the words around the fabric he's currently go in his mouth. He takes the towel and applies it to his rashes. Very carefully, When Tony's attention is on something else, he chances scratching through it and it burns and cools all at once. It's kinda nice. He does it again and finally lets the hem of his shirt go so that it falls back over is, what he hopes is stealthy, scratching.

"I really hope it exists somewhere because I'd hate for it to have only been thing in my universe just to get.. obliterated." The Avengers had done what they could but there was still lots of casualties.

Where did the anti-itch cream go? Peter takes a glance around the room and wonders if it also managed to find its way under furniture.

"Karen used to send all my text messages for me. Well not all of them-I mean that wasn't her job. Actually, I'm not sure what her actual job was other than to report my every single move to Friday." That was an exaggeration but he's pretty sure that's how Tony knew about the lady that bought him a churro that day. "Ned joked that was probably like an AI Nanny which is bananas insulting!"

It was only then that it occurred to Tony that Peter was not likely to have made the AI, that was not his usual field, so his brief stare of concern was replaced with...well, an acceptance of some unstated context. That didn't make it any better than Peter didn't know what Karen was doing when he really needed to be the most in control, presumably, but that was less troubling than losing control of his own experiments.

"That's nice, that they have each other," he suggested, deciding that this gossiping must have meant a blossoming artificial romance. "Why didn't you...give her another job?"

"How do you give an AI another job? She's a great assistant she's just also, apparently a traitor and records everything I do through something Mr Stark calls 'the Baby Monitor Protocol." Which is obviously a terrible name for it.

...

Please ignore the fact he's scratching like a child with chicken pox. It's just really itchy and he can't help it.

It could not be ignored, in fact it had to be addressed, and unfortunately, if Tony was too distracted to remember what he had done with the cream, Peter was clearly worse. Without looking down, still focused on Peter like they were having a perfectly normal conversation and Peter wasn't actively trying to make his own life worse, Tony snatched his wrists and replied, "You tell her to do something else that isn't that." This seemed like an obvious solution to Tony, so he had to come up with the reason this would not be so obvious and landed on, "Unless she really likes doing the Baby Monitor thing...," which he supposed would make for a more difficult conversation. He didn't get much of a chance to reflect on exactly how much of a pushover he would personally be in that situation, because it finally struck him, "Wait, did I make your suit? You let me make you a suit?"

Peter didn't even let Tony look at his suit. Other-Peter.

Tony might have looked down but Peter does the moment he feels the man grab his wrist. He doesn't pull away though and just blinks for a second before frowning slightly at him for interfering.

Peter was about to tell him about how much trouble he'd gotten himself in when he had Ned hack the suit the first time but he stops when Tony asks if he-or the other version of him made the suit and frowns harder.

"Um.. yeah? Did you not make it in your world? I mean it wasn't so much as I let you-or him make me a suit-I would have refused if you'd-he'd asked. That's like waaay too much. It was more you- I mean he- did it without telling me and then gave to me when I got dragged to Germany. The suit I made wasn't nearly as... connected."

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