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seriousficTitle: The Cost of Wearing Masks
Fandom: Spider-Man movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,670
Author’s Note: Betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
htbthomas. Takes place after the events of Spider-Man 2, assuming Spider-Man 3 never happened.
Previous Part: Chapter 2
Next Part: Chapter 4
Characters/Pairings: Peter/MJ, Otto Octavius, Roderick Kingsley
Summary: Peter catches a cold. Thankfully, it’s not like there are any supervillains out there to interrupt his rest and relaxation…
Roderick Kingsley worked long into the night in his office. Oscorp wasn’t just another boring white-collar corporation. It had all sorts of intrigue and backroom deals hiding just under the respectable military-industry surface. He worked through a thick stack of papers, looking for points of interest to type on his laptop. So far, nothing. Oscorp had momentarily failed to arouse his interest. Then he paused at one.
He held the paper up to the light. “Oscorp Warehouse No. 37,” he read aloud.
He set it down and highlighted a single sentence. Contents classified.
Then he picked up his phone.
***
Peter lay in bed. His nose was red. His eyes were tearing up. He felt and looked (as a glance at any mirrored surface reminded him) like hell. A sneezing fit had given him a very welcome excuse to leave Otto’s company. Unfortunately, web-swinging in his condition was out of the question. Maybe it was the last vestiges of his Spider-Man No More days leaving his system, but his entire body was in open rebellion. He called MJ from a pay-phone and waited for her to come to ferry him home.
She’d brought him to her apartment, scandalously, and then left him for an audition. Peter took the opportunity for some thoughts in his diary, which he always composed mentally before setting to paper.
Puny Parker. That's what they used to call me. I never used to think of myself that way... at least not after a certain radioactive spider decided to pass along it's proportionate speed and strength by way of a bite. But now that's all I can think of myself of. Mary-Jane tucked me in. How embarrassing is that? You'd think my Spider-Sense would keep me abreast of cold germs, but nooooooooooo...
The front door opened. Footsteps approached. Peter fervently hoped it wasn’t Doctor Doom...
“Hey Pete.” Mary-Jane flounced into view in full Florence Nightingale mode, carrying a tray. “Thought I’d take the day off and housesit.”
“Thanks.” Peter sat up, quickly blowing his nose before she reached him. “How was your audition?”
Mary-Jane, in rapid succession, took his temperature, fluffed his pillow, and shoved him back down into a resting position. “Great. I nailed it and am doing nothing but waiting for a call-back and rehearsing lines for the rest of the afternoon. Which is good for you, since I get to lavish attention on my favorite man-spider.” She gestured to her tray like a model on a game show. “Chicken noodle soup, herbal tea, and DayQuil. I come bearing gifts, as they say.”
“You're the best thing to happen to me... ever. And you have a very attractive figure.”
“You're addled, aren't you?”
Peter nodded solemnly. “Yes. I don't know if I'm half-awake or half-asleep. I think this is what being high is like.”
“It's not, trust me. ¿Qué piensas en mi español?”
“Excuse me?”
“My Spanish, is it any good? My character needs to speak Spanish. Her name is Maria Lopez.”
“Sounds Hispanic.” Peter knew he could figure out the fly in the ointment… a-ha! “You're not Hispanic.”
“I'm one-ninth on my mother's side. And I play Hispanic very well!” As per usual, Mary-Jane’s anxiety translated into action. “You want to watch some TV? I could bring the TV in here...”
“That'd be great. Thanks a million.”
She kissed him on the forehead. “Keep getting better. I'll be right back.”
“Bring tissues,” Peter mumbled, congested again. She nodded on the way out the door.
Peter sat back and looked out the window. There would be a man in Roman armor standing on a rooftop, swinging a gladius around like he knew how to use it.
“Not again! When I'm on a date, supervillains. When I'm on the can, supervillains. When I'm in the theater, supervillains. Well, not this time! Screw it, New York can handle it on its own. They've got S.W.A.T. teams and beat cops and the National Guard and the FBI and... and...”
Peter rolled back his covers.
“I'm a-comin', I'm a-comin'.”
He dizzily dragged his costume from the dresser where he’d stuffed it among MJ’s pantyhose. The dresser was under the window, so when he looked up he saw the Human Torch fighting the baddie.
He's new to the biz. Good. The last supervillain I thought of getting out of bed for was Rocket Racer. What a loser. He travels on rocket-powered skates. It makes one yearn for the simple majesty of a jet-propelled glider. Some bank guards took him in last week, which gives me hope. I used to think they couldn't handle anyone whose idea of a mask wasn’t pantyhose pulled over their heads. He was trying to rob a bank as part of his senior project. MIT is offering him a scholarship and ESPN3 wants his patent for a new Xtreme sport. Sometimes I hate the universe. I wish some gigantic space-traveling being would come from the far reaches of the galaxy and devour the planet.
Mary-Jane nudged the door open. Peter closed the drawer hurriedly.
“So,” Mary-Jane started off as suspicious as Columbo running an interrogation, “what are you doing out of bed?”
“Nothing. Just stretching my legs.”
“What've you got in there? Some porno rags?”
“No!”
“What then?”
“You know...“
Mary-Jane saw the costume and stuffed in back into the drawer. “Oh! Jeez. That. You just...” she backed out of the room, “put it in there?”
Peter collapsed back down to the bed, then wearily wiggled under the covers. His voice grumbled around the pillowcase. “Well, unless you have a safe I could use...”
“It's on backorder. And on the matinee today...” MJ wheeled the TV in front of the bed… their bed, Peter realized with a bit of a shiver… with the title menu harbingering his doom. “Pretty Women!”
Why couldn’t it have been Doctor Doom? “Are you sure there isn't some superbaddie I can't bash for you?” Peter said in a last-ditch effort to avoid complete emasculation. “I am extremely well-endowed in the bashing department.”
“If you don't shut up, I'll show you bashing.” Taking some cushions from an easy chair, she made her own little back brace against the headboard and sat down next to the lying-down Peter. “But since you’re sick, and if you insist,” she added morosely, “we could watch some mindless action movie that I would be bored stiff by.” Her eyes, when she considered this possibility, were as plaintive as a baby kitten.
“Yes, let’s do that.”
Mary-Jane scowled for a moment, then pressed play.
***
Arnold Donovan waited outside warehouse thirty-seven. He was scruffy-looking, with a disreputable case of jitters. He waited impatiently under a streetlight, picking something new to fidget with every thirty seconds. At last, a Mercedes-Benz pulled to a stop in front of him. Donovan hurried to greet his employer, but he opened the door and got out well before Donovan could reach him.
“It’s late, Mr. Donovan. What is it you want to show me?”
”Something worth gettin’ out of bed fo’.”
Inside the warehouse, there were no guards. They were contracted to only patrol the premises, never to go inside. Donovan led his employer to an opened crate. As his boss watched expectantly, Donovan dug into the crate and came up with a purple glove. Heavy, like leather. He pulled it on, stretched his fingers. The glove hummed with electricity.
”Intriguing,” his employer said.
”I know! They got all kinds a’ high-tech crap in here. Look at this!” He pulled out a silvery, coiled whip. “Why’s a weapons manufacturer making this kind a’ junk?”
”Intimidation. Fear.”
Donovan pressed a button on the whip’s stud. The tail of the whip shocked him and Donovan dropped it.
”The element of surprise,” his employer continued, oblivious. “The man who came up with this had a brilliant mind. Twisted, but brilliant nonetheless.”
The employer tried the glove on, flexing his hand inside it.
”Help me get it into the car.”
It took them an hour’s hard labor, but they cleared out almost an entire shelf of the warehouse, filling the trunk and backseat of the Mercedes with goblin prototypes. Then they walked back inside, just to check to see if they had missed anything. Donovan’s employer held a briefcase, which he set down on an empty shelf.
“Whaddya think all this is worth?” Donovan asked.
“Oh, the most valuable thing I have to give.”
He pointed a purple-garbed hand at Donovan. Sparks, like horridly beautiful sprinkles, shot out of his finger and into Donovan’s stomach. The thug clutched his wounded belly and dropped. His employer opened the briefcase to reveal a bottom half filled with bricks of C4 and a top half taken up by a laptop-like console. He set the timer for one minute, then left.
Donovan, wounded but still alive, struggled towards the briefcase as it counted down. His employer was long gone, leaving just the echoes of his footprints. Trailing blood, Donovan hauled himself up the shelf. Below the timer was a small button marked cancel. With twenty seconds to go, Donovan pressed the cancel button. He laughed for a moment in triumph… then noticed his action had sped up the countdown.
The warehouse exploded, the light of its flames barely reaching the Mercedes-Benz that was already driving away.
***
Otto Octavius rechecked his calculations for the eightieth time. They couldn’t be right. They said that the only way for a destabilization to develop as quickly and largely as the one at the demonstration had was for the reaction to be dependant on impure Tritium. Tritium of the kind Harry Osborn had provided, as the memos showed. They had found him innocent of wrongdoing. Doctor Octopus was not so lenient. He scrawled the crucial equations, the crucial flaw onto every scrap of paper in the room. When he ran out, he drew on the walls. Then the floor. And the ceiling. And when he was done, he laid in bed and didn’t know what to do.
So the voices came back and told him.
Fandom: Spider-Man movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,670
Author’s Note: Betaed by
htbthomas. Takes place after the events of Spider-Man 2, assuming Spider-Man 3 never happened.Previous Part: Chapter 2
Next Part: Chapter 4
Characters/Pairings: Peter/MJ, Otto Octavius, Roderick Kingsley
Summary: Peter catches a cold. Thankfully, it’s not like there are any supervillains out there to interrupt his rest and relaxation…
Roderick Kingsley worked long into the night in his office. Oscorp wasn’t just another boring white-collar corporation. It had all sorts of intrigue and backroom deals hiding just under the respectable military-industry surface. He worked through a thick stack of papers, looking for points of interest to type on his laptop. So far, nothing. Oscorp had momentarily failed to arouse his interest. Then he paused at one.
He held the paper up to the light. “Oscorp Warehouse No. 37,” he read aloud.
He set it down and highlighted a single sentence. Contents classified.
Then he picked up his phone.
***
Peter lay in bed. His nose was red. His eyes were tearing up. He felt and looked (as a glance at any mirrored surface reminded him) like hell. A sneezing fit had given him a very welcome excuse to leave Otto’s company. Unfortunately, web-swinging in his condition was out of the question. Maybe it was the last vestiges of his Spider-Man No More days leaving his system, but his entire body was in open rebellion. He called MJ from a pay-phone and waited for her to come to ferry him home.
She’d brought him to her apartment, scandalously, and then left him for an audition. Peter took the opportunity for some thoughts in his diary, which he always composed mentally before setting to paper.
Puny Parker. That's what they used to call me. I never used to think of myself that way... at least not after a certain radioactive spider decided to pass along it's proportionate speed and strength by way of a bite. But now that's all I can think of myself of. Mary-Jane tucked me in. How embarrassing is that? You'd think my Spider-Sense would keep me abreast of cold germs, but nooooooooooo...
The front door opened. Footsteps approached. Peter fervently hoped it wasn’t Doctor Doom...
“Hey Pete.” Mary-Jane flounced into view in full Florence Nightingale mode, carrying a tray. “Thought I’d take the day off and housesit.”
“Thanks.” Peter sat up, quickly blowing his nose before she reached him. “How was your audition?”
Mary-Jane, in rapid succession, took his temperature, fluffed his pillow, and shoved him back down into a resting position. “Great. I nailed it and am doing nothing but waiting for a call-back and rehearsing lines for the rest of the afternoon. Which is good for you, since I get to lavish attention on my favorite man-spider.” She gestured to her tray like a model on a game show. “Chicken noodle soup, herbal tea, and DayQuil. I come bearing gifts, as they say.”
“You're the best thing to happen to me... ever. And you have a very attractive figure.”
“You're addled, aren't you?”
Peter nodded solemnly. “Yes. I don't know if I'm half-awake or half-asleep. I think this is what being high is like.”
“It's not, trust me. ¿Qué piensas en mi español?”
“Excuse me?”
“My Spanish, is it any good? My character needs to speak Spanish. Her name is Maria Lopez.”
“Sounds Hispanic.” Peter knew he could figure out the fly in the ointment… a-ha! “You're not Hispanic.”
“I'm one-ninth on my mother's side. And I play Hispanic very well!” As per usual, Mary-Jane’s anxiety translated into action. “You want to watch some TV? I could bring the TV in here...”
“That'd be great. Thanks a million.”
She kissed him on the forehead. “Keep getting better. I'll be right back.”
“Bring tissues,” Peter mumbled, congested again. She nodded on the way out the door.
Peter sat back and looked out the window. There would be a man in Roman armor standing on a rooftop, swinging a gladius around like he knew how to use it.
“Not again! When I'm on a date, supervillains. When I'm on the can, supervillains. When I'm in the theater, supervillains. Well, not this time! Screw it, New York can handle it on its own. They've got S.W.A.T. teams and beat cops and the National Guard and the FBI and... and...”
Peter rolled back his covers.
“I'm a-comin', I'm a-comin'.”
He dizzily dragged his costume from the dresser where he’d stuffed it among MJ’s pantyhose. The dresser was under the window, so when he looked up he saw the Human Torch fighting the baddie.
He's new to the biz. Good. The last supervillain I thought of getting out of bed for was Rocket Racer. What a loser. He travels on rocket-powered skates. It makes one yearn for the simple majesty of a jet-propelled glider. Some bank guards took him in last week, which gives me hope. I used to think they couldn't handle anyone whose idea of a mask wasn’t pantyhose pulled over their heads. He was trying to rob a bank as part of his senior project. MIT is offering him a scholarship and ESPN3 wants his patent for a new Xtreme sport. Sometimes I hate the universe. I wish some gigantic space-traveling being would come from the far reaches of the galaxy and devour the planet.
Mary-Jane nudged the door open. Peter closed the drawer hurriedly.
“So,” Mary-Jane started off as suspicious as Columbo running an interrogation, “what are you doing out of bed?”
“Nothing. Just stretching my legs.”
“What've you got in there? Some porno rags?”
“No!”
“What then?”
“You know...“
Mary-Jane saw the costume and stuffed in back into the drawer. “Oh! Jeez. That. You just...” she backed out of the room, “put it in there?”
Peter collapsed back down to the bed, then wearily wiggled under the covers. His voice grumbled around the pillowcase. “Well, unless you have a safe I could use...”
“It's on backorder. And on the matinee today...” MJ wheeled the TV in front of the bed… their bed, Peter realized with a bit of a shiver… with the title menu harbingering his doom. “Pretty Women!”
Why couldn’t it have been Doctor Doom? “Are you sure there isn't some superbaddie I can't bash for you?” Peter said in a last-ditch effort to avoid complete emasculation. “I am extremely well-endowed in the bashing department.”
“If you don't shut up, I'll show you bashing.” Taking some cushions from an easy chair, she made her own little back brace against the headboard and sat down next to the lying-down Peter. “But since you’re sick, and if you insist,” she added morosely, “we could watch some mindless action movie that I would be bored stiff by.” Her eyes, when she considered this possibility, were as plaintive as a baby kitten.
“Yes, let’s do that.”
Mary-Jane scowled for a moment, then pressed play.
***
Arnold Donovan waited outside warehouse thirty-seven. He was scruffy-looking, with a disreputable case of jitters. He waited impatiently under a streetlight, picking something new to fidget with every thirty seconds. At last, a Mercedes-Benz pulled to a stop in front of him. Donovan hurried to greet his employer, but he opened the door and got out well before Donovan could reach him.
“It’s late, Mr. Donovan. What is it you want to show me?”
”Something worth gettin’ out of bed fo’.”
Inside the warehouse, there were no guards. They were contracted to only patrol the premises, never to go inside. Donovan led his employer to an opened crate. As his boss watched expectantly, Donovan dug into the crate and came up with a purple glove. Heavy, like leather. He pulled it on, stretched his fingers. The glove hummed with electricity.
”Intriguing,” his employer said.
”I know! They got all kinds a’ high-tech crap in here. Look at this!” He pulled out a silvery, coiled whip. “Why’s a weapons manufacturer making this kind a’ junk?”
”Intimidation. Fear.”
Donovan pressed a button on the whip’s stud. The tail of the whip shocked him and Donovan dropped it.
”The element of surprise,” his employer continued, oblivious. “The man who came up with this had a brilliant mind. Twisted, but brilliant nonetheless.”
The employer tried the glove on, flexing his hand inside it.
”Help me get it into the car.”
It took them an hour’s hard labor, but they cleared out almost an entire shelf of the warehouse, filling the trunk and backseat of the Mercedes with goblin prototypes. Then they walked back inside, just to check to see if they had missed anything. Donovan’s employer held a briefcase, which he set down on an empty shelf.
“Whaddya think all this is worth?” Donovan asked.
“Oh, the most valuable thing I have to give.”
He pointed a purple-garbed hand at Donovan. Sparks, like horridly beautiful sprinkles, shot out of his finger and into Donovan’s stomach. The thug clutched his wounded belly and dropped. His employer opened the briefcase to reveal a bottom half filled with bricks of C4 and a top half taken up by a laptop-like console. He set the timer for one minute, then left.
Donovan, wounded but still alive, struggled towards the briefcase as it counted down. His employer was long gone, leaving just the echoes of his footprints. Trailing blood, Donovan hauled himself up the shelf. Below the timer was a small button marked cancel. With twenty seconds to go, Donovan pressed the cancel button. He laughed for a moment in triumph… then noticed his action had sped up the countdown.
The warehouse exploded, the light of its flames barely reaching the Mercedes-Benz that was already driving away.
***
Otto Octavius rechecked his calculations for the eightieth time. They couldn’t be right. They said that the only way for a destabilization to develop as quickly and largely as the one at the demonstration had was for the reaction to be dependant on impure Tritium. Tritium of the kind Harry Osborn had provided, as the memos showed. They had found him innocent of wrongdoing. Doctor Octopus was not so lenient. He scrawled the crucial equations, the crucial flaw onto every scrap of paper in the room. When he ran out, he drew on the walls. Then the floor. And the ceiling. And when he was done, he laid in bed and didn’t know what to do.
So the voices came back and told him.
