Picking Up The Pieces

18. Unexpected Guests

   It had been two weeks since our trip to Florida. I had been granted the apartment and was slowly trying to move in with Peter's help. Ever since the my event with Hawkes, I spent my free time finding information on him and his whereabouts while finishing acceptance papers for Midtown School. And I received an email from Coulson requesting me to come back to SHIELD to help his team. In short, my summer was getting really complicated. At the moment, Peter and I were painting what was going to be my room.

"Which blue?" for the third time, holding up two buckets. Praise for the metal arm as it could hold triple the amount of weight I could with my organic one. Peter rubbed his face as he yawned, smearing residue paint on his hand from painting the bathroom all over his face.

"Uh, the lighter one," Peter finally chose, and I set the chosen bucket down. We both grabbed large rolling brushes and began to cover the walls. "Why is painting rooms so hard?"

"I have no clue," I smiled, holding the brush in my metal hand. No pain here. "Just think that this at least exercises your muscles. I just can't wait to get the workout room done."

"You really think you can pin me down?" Peter laughed from the other side of the room. "I've beaten you whenever we go to the gym."

"That's because I'm a lady and I don't want to embarrass you," I pointed out, struggling to paint the area closest to the floor. I felt something wet hit me in the back of my head, which I gingerly touched with my organic hand. I retracted it to find smeared paint dots. "Oh, you are so dead." I turned around to face him, but I got a paint splash to my face. Where was he?

"Really don't think the odds are in your favor, Belle," Peter smirked, his face suddenly appearing upside down in front of me. He had planted himself to the ceiling. I raised a brow at him.

"You're on." With some movement of my fingers, beads of wet paint began to float out of the buckets. Peter's face fell. "Did you forget this is water based?" With a quick snap, the paint flew on to Peter, and he crashed down on an open bucket. My eyes widened as the paint covered me from head to toe, getting in my hair and on my metal arm. Sometimes karma's a bitch.

"Did I win?" Peter grinned sheepishly from the floor. I chuckled as I helped him to his feet.

"You loser."

"But I'm your loser," he said, cocking his head to the side. I shook my head in defeat as I glanced around at the room. Buckets were on the floor, spilling and mixing to create new hues of blue. Peter followed my gaze. "Hey, that one's a nice color."

"We should use that for the living room," I thought out loud. "I'll go out to get some more paint so we can finish." Peter looked around the room, and I thought he was going to say an idea when this spurred out of his mouth:

"Can you get food from Delmar's?" I smacked a hand to my face. I couldn't blame him; I was hungry too. We had been working before the sun had even risen. Still, couldn't he get the food while I got the paint?

"I'm getting the paint, and Delmar is just two floors down and a block away. Can you help a girl out?" Peter put on a thinking face, which I responded with what I think was a puppy dog face. Peter started laughing hard.

"Don't.. do that," he said between breaths. "That face."

"It's that bad?" I said, laughing along with him. "Fine, I won't, just go buy the food. I'll be back before you know it."

It wasn't even an hour later when that became a total lie.

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