strangetrip | [EP] Frustration of a Caged Animal

Peter feels a surge of frustration rise up in him. First, calling him a kid, now telling him what to do? He knows what to do.

"I don't need to be told how to use my powers," Peter counters, his shoulders held back. "I've had them for over a year now, and I know what I'm doing."

Alec saw the change in his posture. huh. Something was pent up there and Alec was bringing it out - he seemed to do that, Logan would probably point out.

He gave a single nod as if agreeing, but in almost a blur of speed Alec round-house kicked out at Peter's chest from what had been a very casual stance.

-- and the attack lands roundly in Peter's chest, sending him stumbling back a few feet. It's at that point that the frustration manifests in real anger. He could deal with him throwing a punch at him before, but between telling him how to use his own powers and this, Peter's done being totally above this.

Because he's not. Even he has limits.

Peter swings a fist at Alec's face.

Alec was expecting the kid to retaliate because that's what you did when you were pissed off. He took a step back to avoid it and a shit-eating grin formed on his lips.

"Dude, you are so angry right now."

He spun clockwise to send his right elbow towards Peter, focused at his chest again.

Alec's grin doesn't inspire calm in Peter; if anything, it just makes him angrier. What kind of person acted like this?!

"What is wrong with you?!" Peter demands, a half-second before Alec can spin his elbow towards his chest.

With one swift motion, Peter somersaults onto the ceiling, narrowly avoiding the attack. Like his namesake, he quickly crawls across the ceiling, before landing solidly behind Alec.

Peter flings another fist towards Alec. "Do you -- do you just enjoy pissing people off?"

Alec had not seen 'crawling on the ceiling' coming.

The punch made contact. His body pushed forward from the impact, but instead of stepping forward, Alec kicked back with his left foot right behind him like a horse, then followed it up by twisting his body to bring his right hand onto Peter's right shoulder. Regardless if either made contact, he jumped back, hands up in a defensive position.

"If you're good at something you might as well learn to enoy it, right?"

Alec's kick very nearly sends Peter spiraling to the ground -- but somehow, he manages to stay on his feet. His body is aching a little now, but the adrenaline is running through him now, the same way it did whenever he was in engaged in combat.

He manages to spin out of the way just before Alec chops at him.

"You enjoy this?" Peter spits out. He's sure that if anyone's in the nearby rooms, they'll attract them soon enough; neither one of them is exactly being quiet. And somehow, that knowledge makes Peter all the more ready to end this as quickly as possible.

But if there's anything Peter's aware of now, it's that Alec isn't a pushover, and this fight isn't close to being over.

Alec's got his arms up in defense, so he's not going to get anywhere with another punch to the face or to the torso. So Peter does the first thing that comes to mind and swings a leg out, hoping to knock Alec's legs out from underneath him.

He was definitely expecting some sort of top level attack, considering Peter seemed to be angry, but was impressed when he felt his legs get kicked out from under him. As he fell, Alec jerked his body backwards and did a flip instead of landing on his ass. As he popped back up on his feet, he was smiling, though not quite a smirk (but still pretty condescending to most people). "Okay, okay. So you've got some brains even when you're angry. Impressive."

Peter takes a breath.

"I always have brains, and I always use them," he retorts. He's clearly on the defensive, though he doesn't go far enough to actually hold his arms up in front of him.

"It's why I don't go around picking fights with people -- why I don't go around destroying public property."

"To be fair, you started this. All I did was test your reflexes and then you got pissed off at me." Which, Alec was kind of used to so it didn't hurt his feelings or anything. As Cindy sometimes said, Alec was an acquired taste.

"I didn't start anything," Peter insists, with all the same anger he directed at Tony Stark that day at the ferry. "You threw a punch at me, and when that wasn't good enough for you, you kicked me. That's not testing my reflexes. That's being a bully."

Peter's aware he sounds whiny and fifteen, but right now, he doesn't care about what he sounds like. What he cares about is being right.

"So what are you going to do about it?" Alec decided not to argue and his voice was definitely like an adult talking to a teenager as he stared at Peter with a over-confident 'now what?' smirk.

"You said you wanted to test my reflexes," Peter says, his head raised in challenge. "Why don't you test them now?"

He paused, then nodded his head to the side as if deciding to do what he wanted. Alec feinted left and right then jumped up high. He twisted in the air with the hopes of grabbing the kid from the back and using his momentum to spin both of them to the ground, with him on top.

The move is too fast for Peter to react, even with Spidey-senses. If Peter weren't so angry, he might have marveled at Alec's almost supernaturally-fast acrobatic movements the same way he did at Bucky's arm or Captain America's shield.

But right now, that particular trait doesn't register as anything more than an obstacle that needs to be overcome.

Peter hits the ground hard, and a half-second later, is already mentally his next move. "You still haven't even seen half of what I can do," he insists. This fight is stupid, and consciously, Peter knows that it's stupid, but he can't stop himself; he's tired of everyone always treating him like a kid, like he didn't know how to use his own powers, like he's just some nerd whose sole purpose at parties was to be taunted with the name Penis Parker by DJ Flash at the earliest possible opportunity.

Peter attempts to fold his legs between him and Alec -- and if he can, use them to knock the other man off and away with his feet.

Peter's strength is enough to send Alec back up into the air, actually sending him into the vending machine whose glass breaks against his back, though Alec appears to be unphased by it as she shrugs off the glass.

"You keep saying that." A challenge in subtle words and it was only after they were said out loud did he realize he sounded a lot like Lydecker and there was a slight confused frown that then disappeared because he was good at compartmentalizing and he didn't want to deal with that right now.

Like the very creature that was his superhero namesake, Peter jumps up to his feet, looks down at the now-broken vending machine with a look of stark disapproval.

Immediately, Peter's eyes flicker back over to Alec's face.

"I keep saying it because it's true," Peter angrily insists. "If you wanted to know more about who I am or what I can do, you could have done something besides swinging your fists at me."

"Alright then. "Who are you?"

Alec said it, but since the kid was so angry, he decided to give the kid something to focus on. He through a series of punches and jabs, some perhaps purposefully easier to block than others, aimed both at Peter's chest and sides of his abdomen.

Peter manages to push forward an answer in between blocking (and taking) some of Alec's hits.

"I'm--" he starts, narrowly blocking one of Alec's jabs. "--Spider-Man."

And before Alec can get another hit in, Peter jumps back, then attempts to return Alec's blows with a few of his own.

"And who are you?" he asks, because obviously Alec isn't just some normal person. He's had to fight normal people before. Those fights were usually short-lived and ended with Peter stringing them up with webshooter fluid until the cops came to pick them up. Somehow, he's not entirely sure that he'd be able to pin Alec down with webfluid with reactions like that. Not unless he caught him off-guard.

Alec let the punches connect, but was surprised at how hard Peter was actually punching. He had to start blocking them or he'd get some bruises. Annoyingly it might have looked like Alec was blocking effortlessly, but perhaps because Peter was angry - like one of those annoying Kung Fu masters who was letting their pupil swing but blocking with one hand while sipping tea.

"I'm just some guy." Really, he didn't have a cool name or anything and Alec certainly didn't try to stand out - training and being hunted the rest of your life made that ingrained.

"You don't look like a spider." Or a man, he thought, but didn't mention that part out loud.

Alec let the kid attack for however many swings he took without an attempt to retaliate.

"I'm not a spider," Peter says, angry that he has to state the obvious to begin with. "I'm a superhero."

Though he's not really acting much like it right now. And though Peter's unable to determine quite why, Alec's cool lack of retaliation prickles at him. Like he doesn't really see him as a threat. Like he doesn't really think of him as any more than just some helpless, incompetent kid.

Instead, he lays a kick at his chest -- and uses the force of the impact to propel him to do a backflip. He moves like a practiced gymnast, with effortless grace and precision --

-- well, at least until he's interrupted. Then things aren't so graceful.

Alec's breath left him in an 'oof!' as he staggered back a step or two. He watched Peter do a blackflip, appreciating the execution. Alec took a quick step up and to the side and when Peter landed, Alec reached out to grapple him under the armpits.

"Nice title."

Alec is definitely mocking him, and Peter can't stand it. Now can he stand being grappled
like this. It reminds him too much of being bullied in junior high.

"Let go of me!"

Peter attempts to elbow Alec in the chest.

He took the elbow. It hurt, but his grip remained. A vivid image of a kid younger than Peter, nine or so, flashed into his eyes. He didn't want to go on another hike carrying literally 100lbs of weight for the third time that day because he unit had been the slowest. He had whined and stopped his feet and threw the bag on the ground at the commanding officer's feet in front of the rest of the boys, Alec included. The officer shot the kid in the foot saying now he had a real reason not to hike, but told him he needed to find his way back to the barracks on his own - a 15 mile hike on its own. No one had been allowed to help and they all had to divide the weight of the extra pack among themselves and continue their training.

"Why are you so angry?" He didn't let go, like a solid tree rooted in the ground.

"Because you tried to hit me," Peter spits out, continuing to struggle against Alec. "Do you think --" Peter grunts. "Do you think that wouldn't make someone angry?"

But it's not the truth -- not the full truth. And Peter knows it, but he has absolutely no reason to tell this guy who has him in a bodyhold who'd probably just use it as some sort of ammunition against him, anyway.

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