Is He Kevin Bacon?
1.
“Is he Kevin Bacon?” Gamora asked. She slowly turned from the TV and looked towards the two Peters, looking very much confused and a little disappointed.
“No, he is not Kevin Bacon,” Quill snapped. He frowned and slammed the popcorn bowl down on the table before pointing angrily at the screen. “What is this shit?”
Peter tossed a gummy worm in his mouth. “Footloose,” he answered, “the remake.”
“Bullshit.” Quill stood and looked back at the screen. “Why would they remake Footloose?”
Peter grinned. “Maybe because they realized the original kinda sucked?”
Quill’s frown deepened. “I hate you.”
Peter shrugged. “I’ll get over it.”
2.
If Peter was grateful for anything in his life it was that he’d managed to convince a sentient somewhat-talkative tree to be his friend.
Not because it was cool or anything (it totally was), but because he was almost a thousand percent certain that Mr. Stark would skin him alive if he’d let a klepto-smartass-raccoon (because, yeah, that’s a thing) steal an arc reactor.
“Let me out,” Rocket ordered.
Peter shook his head and quietly mouthed “No,” behind Rocket’s back. Groot just rolled his eyes.
Rocket was trapped in what looked like a little cage of thick twigs and vines that was sprouting out from what should have been Groot’s hand.
Peter slowly approached the cage, swallowed nervously, and cleared his throat. Rocket turned around and snarled.
“Come on, man, you can’t just take things that aren’t yours,” Peter pleaded, hand held out expectantly.
“Oh, I think I can,” Rocket countered, “It’s what I do best.”
“I am Groot,” Groot admonished…or so Peter guessed, because Rocket sighed, glared at Groot, and reached into a hidden pocket to retrieve the dull reactor.
“Traitor,” he hissed before pushing the reactor through the gap in the makeshift cage.
Peter sighed in relief. “Thanks,” he said, more to Groot than Rocket, but whatever, before turning to leave.
If he was lucky, he’d be able to put the reactor back before Mr. Stark even noticed it was gone.
3.
Peter was an idiot.
MJ agreed, but that was beside the point. He was pretty sure her opinion had been unchanged since freshman year, current events not-withstanding.
Leave it to Peter to lose an alien in the middle of Manhattan.
“She looks like a freaking bug, how hard could this be?” MJ asked, completely unworried. She bit into a corndog and glanced around.
“She looks less buggy with the hat,” Peter reminded her, standing on his tiptoes and trying to see above the crowd. “Oh god, what if she takes it off?”
“She’s naïve, not stupid,” MJ pointed out. She tossed the empty corndog stick into the garbage, licked a smear of mustard off her finger, and stepped up on a fire hydrant. “Found her, hat and all.”
Which was good, because the last thing Peter wanted to do was to let Mr. Stark and Gamora know that he’d lost Mantis near Times Square.
It’d be even better if Mantis wasn’t so freaking friendly.
“Hey, Mantis!” Peter called, dodging through a group of tourists.
Mantis turned, smile widening at the sight of Peter and MJ approaching. “Hi, Peter,” she said, waving enthusiastically, like they hadn’t just spent the entire afternoon walking through the city together. “This is Sasha.”
Peter turned and looked at the woman standing behind Mantis. She was unsmiling.
“Hey,” Sasha said, grabbing Mantis by the arm and turning her back around, “It’s extra for group.”
Peter stopped and frowned. Group?
Sasha looked back at Peter, her frown suddenly matching his. “And I don’t do kids.”
Oh.
Great. Leave it to Mantis to find the one prostitute working outside an Olive Garden.
“Oh,” also leave it to her to point it out. “You are thinking about sex.”
Sasha looked startled, like she wasn’t used to people saying it out loud in the middle of the street. Which, come to think of it, she probably wasn’t. Discretion and all.
“Oh, no,” Peter shook his head and smiled as politely as he could as he broke the contact between the two women. “No, no, no. Sorry, uh, Sasha, no. Big misunderstanding.” He grabbed Mantis by the hand and pulled her away. “Mantis, let’s go.”
“I am sorry, Peter Parker,” she said. She flexed her fingers in his hand and tilted her head to the side. “You are embarrassed.”
Peter pulled his hand out of her grip and quickly stuck it in his pocket. “Yeah, don’t…just, let’s go back, yeah?”
“Is it because of the sex?”
“Mantis!”
MJ just laughed. “You’re an idiot.”
See? She agreed.
4.
“He is beautiful.”
Peter looked up and followed Drax’s line of site. Thor was standing across the room, talking animatedly with Quill and Gamora. “Sure.”
Drax frowned and looked down at Peter. “You do not agree?”
“No, I agree,” Peter assured him, because yeah, he was pretty sure the majority of the planet would agree, “but we don’t generally say it. Out loud.”
Drax’s frown turned to one of confusion. “Why not?”
Peter didn’t know, maybe because…”He could hear me?”
“Do you consider it a sign of weakness?” Drax asked. He turned to Peter and crossed his arms.
“What? No.”
“Gamora admits Thor is beautiful and she is a fine warrior,” Drax pointed out, ignoring Peter’s protest.
“I don’t think it’ll show weakness.”
“Your mate agreed.”
Peter frowned in confusion, realized who Drax was talking about, and then sighed as he begged, “Please do not call MJ my mate.”
“Then what is the problem.”
“It’s just, you know….,” Peter shrugged and then gestured towards the god on the other side of the room. “He’s Thor, with the muscles, and the…height. And I’m…,” Peter trailed off as he looked down at his bare feet.
“He is one of the finer samples of your race,” Drax agreed, nodding slowly as his eyes turned back to Thor.
“I don’t think he’s one of us. Technically.”
“That would explain why he’s so much better than you.”
“Wow, dude. Rude.”