strangetrip | [GP] A New Month

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[GP] A New Month

When Liz woke up in the morning, she didn't think anything of the fact that Peter wasn't beside her - he normally went to make muffins the mornings they spent the night tonight. Liz knew, too, that it was arrival day and she was scheduled to work so it made sense for the early morning. After she showered and dressed and Peter still hadn't come back, Liz had gone to the kitchens. Mary was doing some baking for the day and told her she hadn't seen Peter all morning. Bo was going through the stock under the bar - she also hadn't seen Peter. When Liz went to Peter's room and Alec confirmed that he wasn't there, she started to get worried. Instead of continuing her search, she went to the front desk.

"I'd like to find out what room Peter Parker is in." She took a deep breath and when the man behind the desk said there was no 'Peter Parker' staying at the inn, Liz's world world closed in around her. She stood there staring at the man blankly - she stood there for a while until Alec showed up and asked about Peter. Liz was pretty sure she shook her head, but she couldn't be sure. A few minutes later, Liz forced herself to move and find Ned.

It didn't take a genius to figure out what was going on and Mary decided more baked goods would be better for today, again. It seemed like arrival day was turning into 'departure date' and that was troubling. Selfishly, of course, she made sure her boys were still here, including James, and even River. Once that was confirmed, she decided to take over most of Liz's duties today - she was going to be useless in her current state.

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Leo was unaware of any drama. He had woken up early and found himself in the kitchen upgrading the fridge system. Did it need to be updated? Probably not, but if the fridge could get colder more efficiently, that would be good, right? Plus Leo always wanted one of those fridges that made ice and water so he was going to do that to this fridge.

As he worked on some of the tubing, his hand slipped and he got violently sprayed by water. "Ah!" He was drenched. He chuckled to himself. "Wherever you are Percy, thanks for that."

Five popped into the kitchen, appearing from seemingly nowhere as usual. If the fresh disappearance of the day troubled him at all, he didn’t show it; he’d come to the kitchen to make a sandwich.

When confronted with a soaking wet kid... or soaking wet other kid, sigh... he had to smile a little. “Never met anyone who names tubes before. Or blames ghosts for’em.”

"What?" His Spanish accent was evident to anyone who knew dialects right off the bat. "Oh, nah. Was just sending a thought to one of my friends back home. He's the son of Poseidon so if anyone wanted to drench me in water, he totally could."

"Uh-huh." Son of Poseidon was no more ridiculous than 'my dead brother had tentacles in his torso and lent them to my not-dead brother who talks to dead people'.

Five moved to collect stuff for his sandwich: bread, peanut butter, marshmallows, knife. As usual, he teleported through obstacles rather than walk around them. "God of the sea, huh. Is that a salt water tube?"

"Gods, I hope not. Talk about gross ice cubes!" He stood up and considered himself for a moment. He was drenched and it was getting uncomfortable. In a brief moment, Leo started to heat up. His clothing began to steam as the water in the fabric started to evaporate. "Whatcha making?" As if steam flowing from his body were completely normal.

"Peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich." It was one of the few advantages of being a kid again: if you ate that kind of thing when you were an old man, you got judged. Kids were expected to eat junk.

Five didn't ignore the steam, though. He tilted his head, considering, then shrugged like it didn't matter. (Even though, technically, it did. Anyone with powers was interesting.) "Must be interesting being your own laundromat."

His sandwich sounded delicious. Leo glanced over at the condiments to see if there were enough for two... or maybe three.

He shrugged at the boy's comment though. "Sometimes, yeah. It sucks if I don't control it properly and I end up naked because I burned my clothes." That had happened to Leo far too many times already. "Plus if I don't actually wash them, the B.O. starts to build, let me tell you." Also something Leo had experience with.

There was plenty for more sandwiches, and Five didn't bother putting the stuff away, with the other kid eyeballing it.

"I believe it. One of my brothers probably has a similar thing." Luther's altered physiology probably had severe BO problems if he didn't keep on top of them - sweat plus gorilla hair and proportions? Yeah, no. "I only jumped and left my clothes behind a couple of times, when I was little. First thing I got drilled into me."

"Jumped?" Once he was dry the steam stopped and Leo temporarily abandoned his work to go fix himself two sandwiches.

The boy definitely focused hard, if he'd missed Five bouncing back and forth earlier. Still, Five liked jumping, so he didn't mind demonstrating.

Which he did, teleporting across the kitchen to collect two plates, then back to the counter where his sandwich waiting for one of them. "Jumped."

"Uh? Awesome!" Leo's eyes went up in delight. He'd never seen someone capable of that yet and it was so cool. "That must save of like, a lot of time. You're probably never late."

"Nope." Five grinned, a genuine smile instead of the mouth-only thing he offered out of politeness. "If time travel was less of a pain in the ass, I'd make double sure."

"Wait. You can also time travel? Dude. That's so cool! Have you seen any cool times? Hey, have you visited the Greeks?" Other than the gods, Chrion, and Calypso, he didn't know anyone who was around from ancient times.

"Did you miss the part where I said it's a pain in the ass?" Five shook his head. "I'll give you a not even slightly random example, so pay attention. The first time I time-traveled, I ended up thirty years in my future. Which was an empty post-apocalyptic hellhole, by the way. Forty-odd years after that, I figured out the right math to put me about a week before that apocalypse. Think for a minute how long it'd take to figure out a millennia jump."

He waved a hand then, dismissing his own order, and decided to give the kid something. "I mostly hit more recent history. Went to the JFK assassination a couple of times. Lincoln once. The Hindenberg. Late 19th century London." If not for a quick neckbreaking, someone would've caught the Ripper two kills in instead of never.

He shook his head. "I can safely say, with all the weird stuff I've seen from my world, that that last stuff you said was the coolest in the world." Although he noticed a lot of the stuff Five had decided to go back and look at were stuff surrounding death - he tried not to think to deep on that.

Leo picked up his sandwich and chowed down with not a lot of decorum. "So which one was when you teleported naked?" Because that sounds like a story!

“None of them.” Five took a bite of his own sandwich, then shrugged. “I was about four. My dad wasn’t amused. He drilled me about eight hours and started vacuuming after every jump so he could discipline me if I left anything behind.”

"Started vacuuming?" Leo couldn't help think of when he'd watch old women vacuum to scare away stray dogs in his neighbour and he was definitely picturing that now too. "No offense, but that sounds pretty loco. I mean, you were four.

"Yeah, to pick up any hairs or threads I left behind." Five 'ported over to the fridge, grabbed a couple of sodas, then jumped back to the other boy. One of the sodas was for him, after all. "Yeah, well, I had it easy. I wasn't Klaus or Vanya."

"And here I thought having Hera trying to kill me a bunch of times as a child was messed up." He shook his head as he talked around his sandwich, which, by the way, was delicious. "No offense."

"None taken." Peanut butter and marshmallow was objectively a perfect sandwich. Five had even been able to have something like it in the apocalypse - some peanut butter had survived as well as some marshmallows, even if bread pretty much hadn't. "My family's at least nine levels of fucked up. Probably more."

His comment produced a sandwich and teeth-filled grin. He liked this kid. He lifted his half-eaten sandwich. "Here's to messed up families, huh?"

Toasts were better with vodka, but the sandwich would do here and now. Five lifted his briefly. “Cheers.” He took another bite, then offered a hand to shake. “Number Five. Just Five is fine.”

Yep. If he only had a name, his growing up definitely sucked. "Leo Valdez, though you can just call me Leo." Leo, who was now on his second sandwich. "You ever need something fixed, I got you. Did you see that mower Roomba? Totally me."

"Talented." He was, too. "Nice to meet you. I usually manage my own repairs, but I'm happy to outsource. You need any math done or a quick lift someplace, we can make it a trade."

"Like instant Uber. I like it." Leo grinned. "You know, if you were from my world, you could make lots of money. I mean, it's not as cool as flying on top of a celestial bronze dragon, but it's close."

Re: OTA

st_illfive - 2019-08-05 19:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: OTA

st_reakdwithgrease - 2019-08-05 19:28 (UTC) - Expand

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