Spiderman Oneshots

Loophole (3)

Happy Easter to anyone celebrating :)

Peter Parker had been alone for almost a month now. Well, kind of alone. Since he'd found an apartment he could (barely) afford, he'd had neighbours, and a landlord, and people he recognised occasionally from his grocery runs. He'd gotten to know some of the locals on patrols after he'd finished making a new suit, and he'd met some friendly people through his newish job at the local pizza delivery place, as well as those he sometimes helped out at FEAST. And, of course last but far from least, all the people in his classes at the university he'd managed to get himself accepted into. It wasn't MIT, but it had decent lecturers for the course he was interested in and he felt he'd do just fine. Everything was just fine.

Peter Parker was surrounded by people, but he still felt alone.

The busyness of the new semester helped, though. Between studying, his job, volunteering at FEAST and vigilantism, he was never left alone with his thoughts for too long. It was the second week of classes, and Peter was starting to learn his way around the lecture rooms and labs at the university, as well as recognise a few of the more commonly occurring faces.

"What are you working on?" The person at the bench next to Peter's asked during one of the lab sessions. "Looks interesting."

Peter glanced up, surprised. He hadn't expected anyone to start up a conversation with him, but he guessed it was a fairly normal thing to do. He just wasn't here to make friends - he'd seen where that road led. Still, May had taught him to be polite so he briefly explained his concept to his fellow student and pointed out a couple of the features that were starting to take shape.

"Wow, wish I was smart enough to understand all that," they joked. Their accent was odd - distinct but not comparable to anything Peter could name. "So, hang on, this bit-" they pointed at the part Peter was currently working on- "acts like glorified noise-cancelling headphones?"

"I mean, it's a little more complicated than that because I'm going for total destructive interference instead of just blocking white noise, but yeah, that's the idea."

"Huh." They nodded. "You BioEng guys are going to take over the world someday, I can tell."

Peter laughed despite himself. He would most certainly not be doing that. "Are you not on this course?" He asked despite himself.

The other student laughed. "Nah. They just let me use the labs because my idea of modern art is slightly controversial and they weren't sure where else to put me. I'll be spending most of my time in here or the chem rooms making funky colours and scaring the technicians, so you'll probably be seeing a lot of me."

"Oh," Peter said, and managed a smile. "I'm Peter."

"I'm Louis," the art student said with a smile, "mostly. Sometimes I'm Louise, but I'll let you know if and when that happens so don't worry about it."

"Nice to meet you, mostly-Louis. I would shake your hand or something but I'm covered in grease."

Louis grimaced and Peter's smile faltered. "Sorry, did I say something wrong?"

"No! I'm just still trying to decide if I like my name or not. I think I might change it to something more interesting - what do you think of Anakin? Or Grindelwald? Maybe Heimdal?"

Peter laughed, relieved. "A little obvious, maybe, but all pretty cool." Something sparked inside his project and the contraption began to let off smoke. "Ah, sorry, need to deal with this." Glad for the excuse to leave the conversation, he picked up his project and ran over to the electrical fire extinguishers.

He wasn't here to make friends. He wasn't.

Louis wasn't in the labs the next day, but he was there the next couple of times Peter went in to work on his project. And despite Peter's best attempts to radiate I'm-focusing-and-unsociable-leave-me-alone-and-find-someone-more-interesting vibes, his fellow student found a way to strike up conversation every time. Peter couldn't ignore anyone asking about the progress on his project, so he found himself explaining the details, and when Louis talked about his art concepts Peter found himself similarly captured by the ideas.