I Can't Make You Love Me || Peter Parker x OC

Chapter 16: The Message

Peter's perspective

After finishing my cup and making myself a second one, I was feeling much better and a piece of toast sealed the deal for me. I went back into the living room and put blankets back in order, subtly slipping my phone into the pocket of my sweatpants.

"I can get ready and changed in just a few minutes, so tell me when you think you want to leave." I called into the kitchen, getting an absent "Okay" back in response. Once my one-item clean up of the living room was done, I went over to Anneliesa's door frame and grabbed my backpack from off of the ground. I wanted to go through it, just to see if there was anything that I might be able to get ahold of Mr. Stark or Aunt May with.

I turned my bag upside-down and let all of the contents spill out onto the couch. A ton of notebooks and loose papers came out, along with the body and the mask of my suit, which I put off to the side. The pockets on the front had nothing but spare pencils, pens, and random trash like gum wrappers. Coming up on my last resorts, I even looked through my pencil case, but there was obviously nothing beneficial to my situation in there. In hindsight, I don't actually know what I was expecting to find, but I didn't find it, that's for sure. I didn't have enough expectations going into this to feel disappointment on the tail end, but I don't really know how else to describe the way I was feeling.

Begrudgingly, I put everything, bar my suit, back into my backpack and set it where it was before. Even if there was nothing in my backpack that could help, I still had a multi-billion dollar, artificially-intelligent super suit, and I'd be a fool if I didn't use it in every way it could be used.

My biggest problem for right now is being realistic with my options. Yes, I had a miniature recon drone that I could send to the compound to talk to someone, and I had a whole load of emergency alert type-things, but I'm not actually in danger, and Mr. Stark knows where I am, why I'm there, and when I'm supposed to be coming back. There's no real reason for me to be freaking out about this so much, but I guess it makes me feel a lot more secure when I know I can get ahold of any of them at any time.

Forcing myself to calm down, I put my suit back in my bag and went to the kitchen again. I took my seat across from her, watching her movements as she finished her tea and stood to put her mug in the sink. She checked the time above the stove, right around 8:15, and apparently made a decision within herself.

" If you want to go ahead and change, I'll probably be right behind you. I was looking at the weather, though, and it's like barely 40 out today, so you're welcome to borrow one of my coats if you need more layers."

I nodded silently and gave her my thanks as I grabbed my suit on my way to her bathroom. The suit, built with so much precision, fit like a second skin on me, and when I put my clothes on overtop of it, you couldn't see a difference, even if you were looking for it. My knowledge of my suit and how it worked was surprisingly limited until just a little under a year ago when Ned helped me hack into my suit. A nice blend of experience out on the field and crushing boredom late at night has let me learn a lot more about Karen and how she and my other tech works.

The mask and body pieces can work independently of each other, but can't really get to their full potential without the other. The AR-capable lenses were obviously in the mask, but so were the, for lack of better terms, speakers and mics that Karen and I used to communicate with each other. Just wearing the mask gave me access to a comparatively small amount of Karen's potential. It also did what was possibly the most important thing; hiding my identity from those that don't need to know it

The bodysuit was perhaps the most complex. Woven into the stitching was billions of dollars worth of technology. More complex trackers than the one that was under the skin on my shoulder, the coding for all 576 web combinations, and various composite data chips. Karen was able to draw a lot of information and data from the body portion, but there wasn't much I could do with just the body if I didn't have the mask as well. More nervous rambling aside, I'm really just trying to justify going through with all of this for myself.