For Mai

[whateveraspidercan]

Peter was really terrible about this whole "blending in and act normal" thing. He'd never been normal to start with but throw in the fact that he was Spider-Man and Aunt May would freak out if she knew it was kind of a mess. It was safer that way of course but it still wasn't easy.

So Peter tried really hard to be your basic 18 year told. The problem was that he was kind of a weirdo even without Spider-Powers. He'd gotten better, he could talk with attractive girls without making a complete fool of himself, he could hang out and meet new people, things like that. But he still flailed mentally sometimes and was just generally a dork.

Which meant that during lunchtime he normally sat by himself. Sometimes people would sit with him and talk to him and on very, very rare occasions people would invite him to sit with them but usually he just found a table to himself and sat down by himself. Today he was left to ponder the mystery of school cafeteria chicken nuggets by himself.

Comments

[darkangelsawyer]

Peyton came into the cafeteria with a bit of an attitude - mostly to cover all the anxiety/upset/unhappiness about being pulled from Tree Hill and shoved into a high school where she definitely didn't belong. Why her father had chosen this time to decide he wanted her closer while he was out working on the trudge boat, she had no idea.

At least in Tree Hill she'd had friends and people she could count on. Here she was living alone in a relatively crappy little apartment where people banged on the ceiling if she played her music too loudly.

So here she was, stuck at this stupid place, and while she had no interest in eating right now, she had to be some place. She sat down at a table with just one guy sitting at it, pulled out her sketchbook, and worked on her latest dark cartoon.

[whateveraspidercan]

Peter didn't really know the girl that sat down at the same table other than he'd seen her around a bit. She had a kind of... angry energy or something to her. But maybe that wasn't fair to her though. Maybe she just happened to look like she was angry but she totally wasn't?

"H- hey," Peter said, giving her what he hoped wasn't too awkward of a smile as the word came out way quieter than he'd meant it to. "Hey, I'm Peter. You're new here, right?"

[darkangelsawyer]

"Oh God, this can't be my life right now," Peyton said, rolling her eyes. "Of course your name is Peter, because you can't get more cutesy than Peter and Peyton. And I definitely don't do cute."

She sighed and shook her head a little. "I'm sorry. It's not your fault I'm in a foul mood. I should be grateful that you didn't tell me to get the hell away from your table and banish me to stand in a corner like a total loser."

Her pencil got set down on her open sketchbook and she offered him her hand. "Yes. I'm new. And not here by choice - no offense. Peyton Sawyer. Nice to meet you, Peter, though I'm sure you probably don't feel the same way at this point."

[whateveraspidercan]

"Uh, what?" Peter started to say when she made a comment about their names before she continued on just talking. At least she was apologizing, although Peter felt a little like he was getting whiplash from how this conversation was going. He hadn't exactly played it out in his head how this was going to go but he wouldn't have imagined it going like this.

"I mean, that was definitely a roller coaster of an introduction but I like roller coasters so it's okay," he said, giving her a smile to show that he didn't mind as he shook her hand. "I'm not new here, by choice I guess. And the name is Peter Parker, which probably makes it a really bad name in your book. And you can sit at the table as often as you want."

[darkangelsawyer]

Welcome to the mess that is Peyton, Peter.

"Maybe you can tell me then why everyone here seems to be a science or math nerd or something. No offense. Just everywhere you look there's all these people talking about stuff that I can't begin to understand. Don't you have like basketball or cheer-leading or art classes?" She put up a hand to stop any comment he might make. "Yes, I was a cheerleader and yes, I agree, I'm one of the least cheery people you'll meet. Heard it before."

[whateveraspidercan]

Peter glanced behind him for a moment to see if maybe there was someone else behind him that she was talking to. He wasn't sure if he was dumb for not making the assumptions that she assumed he was or- you know, it was probably better to just not think about it too much. She was just trying to make sure he understood where she was coming from. And she did seem pretty un-cheery.

"I was just going to say that we're a STEM based school for kids that really like science and math," Peter said. That sounded a lot better than saying they were all gifted or something. "We have one of the best Academic Decathalon teams in the nation. We have a basketball team too, they're just not very good. There's a game tonight if you want to go?"

[darkangelsawyer]

"Oh,I knew this was a mistake!" Peyton said. "I'm as far from liking science and math as you're likely to get."

She gave him a look at the whole Academic Decathalon thing, but refrained from making the nearly obligatory, 'ohmigod, you geeks!' comment. Still he seemed nice enough and going home to her Not!Home and only semi-decent empty apartment was not high on her list. "Not very good, huh? Well, why not? Sure. A basketball game sounds like a decent way to kill part of the night."

[whateveraspidercan]

"Yeah? Cool. That's cool," Peter said. He'd actually never been to one of the school basketball games before so he didn't know how cool it actually was but it seemed like the sort of thing that she liked so he could at least pretend to be excited about it.

"What do you have last period? There's probably just enough time to go get something to eat before the game, if you want?"

[darkangelsawyer]

"Study hall." Peyton rolled her eyes. "Usually I just blow out of here and go somewhere else."

Nobody had seemed to care - not that she'd been here long. Still if they called home to complain she'd just delete it from the answering machine. No way they could reach her dad on the dredger.

She took a breath and managed a slightly embarrassed smile. "Something to eat not on my own actually sounds really good."

[whateveraspidercan]

"Alright, cool. I'll meet you outside the back gate? There's a corner store with some pretty good sandwiches not far and then we can come back for the basketball game," Peter said. He didn't say anything about skipping class because he could already tell she wasn't going to change her mind about that just because some random classmate told her.

[darkangelsawyer]

All right," Peyton said and ducked her head a little as she smiled. "Thanks. Sorry I was being such a bitch. I'd like to say I'm not usually like that, but I kind of am."

She was also an incredibly loyal and kind friend, but it took someone who could stick with her and see through her defenses to discover that. A lot of people didn't care enough to bother.

[whateveraspidercan]

"That's okay, clearly you haven't heard some of the people who've been going here for a while say to me," Peter said. While it was mostly Flash that was doing that stuff he sure got a lot of people to follow along. Peter had long since learned to ignore it though. Mostly.

"But cool. The bell is about to ring so I'll see you in a few hours?"

[darkangelsawyer]

"People say bad stuff about you?!" Peyton was instantly on alert. "Who? I'll kick their ass!"

She made a face as the bell did indeed ring. "I'll see you in a few hours, but this conversation is not over."

Peter was one of hers now and she'd be damned if she'd sit back and let people give him shit.

[whateveraspidercan]

Peter was glad for the bell, not wanting to have to explain who Flash was and why she shouldn't kick Flash's ass. For the first time in a long time though Peter was glad to have something other than being Spider-Man to look forward to after school. Plus he was pretty good about leaving class super fast once the bell rang so Peyton didn't have to wait very long for him once school went out.

"Hey," he said, waiving at her. "You ready?"

[darkangelsawyer]

She closed up her sketchbook, where she might just have been working on a sketch of Peter, and stuck it in her backpack. "More than ready. Show me something good about this ridiculous city."

[whateveraspidercan]

"Are you kidding? You haven't found a single good thing in New York?" Peter asked, completely incredulous. Sure he'd only really traveled for the academic decathlon stuff and that one time with the Avengers but still, it was New York. Everything here was good. Almost everything.

"Okay, we are coming up with a list of stuff for you to do here that's awesome."

[darkangelsawyer]

She looked at him a bit skeptically. "I'll believe the awesome when I see it."

Honestly, she'd spent most of her time alone in her little apartment playing her music and sketching, not quite feeling comfortable with the noise and crowds of people. It was a huge change from quiet little Tree Hill where everybody seemed to know everybody.

"But it will give me something to do so I'm not just sitting home being miserable."

[whateveraspidercan]

"Right, you can come hand out with me and be miserable," Peter said, turning to walk backward a moment to flash her a smile. He was going to get Peyton to enjoy at least one thing about New York if it killed him. Hopefully it wouldn't kill him.

"So when you're sitting at home being miserable, what do you do?"

[darkangelsawyer]

"Mostly I listen to my music and sketch," she admitted. "Back home I started kind of a podcast thing, so I have my camera on and people can tune in to watch me. Sometimes people from home will watch and IM me or something so we can talk, but mostly it's just me sitting there stupidly listening to whatever I feel like spinning that night."

[whateveraspidercan]

"Oh man, did you know we have a digital media class?" Peter asked, super excited to have maybe found some school classes that Peyton would be interested in. He knew that STEM stuff wasn't for everyone but everyone should be excited about at least one thing they did at school.

"And even if you didn't want to take the class there's always people that want to have their cool sound equipment they've built used but are too shy to actually record things. What kind of music do you like?"

[darkangelsawyer]

"Oh, I don't have anything to record," Peyton said quickly. "Believe me, you do not want to hear me try to sing!"

Still, it was kind of him to make an effort to get her involved.

"I do want to produce records one day. That's my dream. I like pretty much any kind of music - all sorts of the alternative stuff and just anyone who really knows how to play - none of the stupid bubblegum pop stuff, but other than that, yeah."

[whateveraspidercan]

"That's pretty cool. I don't know anything about producing music other than like... Dr. Dre does it. You could be Dr. Pey? If you use that I totally want credit in the liner notes of the first album you do... if they even do liner notes. You'd have to make a CD or record to have liner notes," Peter said, completely babbling despite the fact that he'd just said he didn't know anything about producing music. It just sounded like a pretty cool job to him.

[darkangelsawyer]

Peyton just stared at him for a moment. "I can guarantee you I won't be Dr. Pey."

Then she relented. "But you just might make my liner notes anyway."

[whateveraspidercan]

"Yeah?" Peter said, although he wasn't sure that he really believed her. Not that he really thought she was straight up lying to him but because he thought by the time she actually made a record she would have forgotten all about him. "Would you put out a physical album then?"

[darkangelsawyer]

"Oh yeah," Peyton said. "There's just something about a physical CD. You can hold it in your hands and, yeah... There's something about pulling that plastic off and the smell of the new CD and just being able to look at all the stuff while you're listening. I mean, vinyl is the absolute best, but that's just not being done anymore unfortunately. Not much anyway."