strangetrip | "No One Told Me Why I'm In Berlin"

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"No One Told Me Why I'm In Berlin" - Tag Peter and Alec

When Liz found out that the new world was actually Earth and Europe, she couldn't quite hold back her excitement. The fact that the year was, according to the people at the desk, 2018 meant she was going to be closer to Peter's time than her own. She would finally be able to experience what his world was like, even just a little bit, and learn more about the internet and scientific advancement and maybe watch a few of Peter's favourite films they couldn't get at the inn.

"I still don't know why I'm here." Alec sat across from the two teenagers on the train heading to Berlin looking appropriately put-out despite not actually feeling that way. The truth was, he had never been to Europe and he had seen that semi-embarrassing video that Peter had of his trip to Germany and maybe, just maybe, he wanted to see it. Though he told himself he was actually just chaperoning because the world could be dangerous and both Liz and Peter were naive and believed the best in people, even when they shouldn't.

Liz was dialing another phone number on the smartphone she had been given. Thankfully she had enough practice with Peter's to be able to use the one she had and not look entirely inept. So far there had been no answer with Maria's house and the number for the Crashdown was out of service. Her home got a busy signal. She also knew it was a possibility everyone had moved or something. Then suddenly her face lit up - the Roswell police department was on the other end.

"Hi, um. Yes. I was wondering if I could speak to Sheriff Valenti please?" A pause. "Sheriff Valenti. Valenti." Another pause as her excitement lessened. "Okay, well, um. Can you at least tell me if there was a record of a Sheriff Valenti on the force?... How can you not know that." She caught herself as the words came out more tense and annoyed. Liz took a breath. "Yes, I'll hold." And hold she did. The more she waited, the more her expression dampened. Finally, there was a voice again. "Oh.. okay. Yes. Thank you. Goodbye."

She hung up. "They, um. They have no record of him working there. So I guess.. this isn't my world."

Alec shrugged, still looking out the window. "This isn't mine either. We can be twinsies, if you want."

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Peter shoots Alec a disapproving look. Why did everything have to be about drinking with him?

"I was only here for one weekend," he says. He'd been excited about the hotel room, but ultimately, they didn't spend very much time in Germany at all. It was supposed to only be a weekend retreat, and most of the weekend was spent in commute. "So I didn't really get to see much at all."

Just the airport, really. And the hotel room. And a little bit of Berlin at night.

"I think I'd like to see the Berlin Wall, and Check Point Charlie. It's where people used to pass between West and east." Liz might have looked at some brochures.

Alec gave Peter a look back, then rolled his eyes. "And probably a museum." What Alec didn't know was Berlin had probably the best sex museum in the world. "I call dibs on nightlife."

Which of the group was chaperoning who was up in the air, really.

"The Berlin Wall would be interesting to see. What museum were you thinking about?"

Then as soon as he gets the words out, he looks over at Alec. "If you're going out at night, the least you can do is come out with us during the day and learn something."

Clearly, Peter is the Alec-wrangler of this operation.

"We are going out at night. Trust me. It'll be fun."

He shrugged. "If I get to pick, can it not be history related?"

Liz glanced at Peter with a slight smile. Most museums we're history related. She reached into her backpack she had brought and pulled out a brochure. She realized she could probably look up stuff on the phone, but she wanted more practice first.

"... There's a spy museum?" She held out the brochure.

Alec took it, looking appropriately like he wasn't going to enjoy it, but then he looked at the brochure and pursed his lips. "Okay... Might not be too mind numbing."

"History isn't boring," Peter argues, but then it occurs to him that maybe Alec isn't interested in learning a history that isn't his and drops it.

The spy museum sounds interesting to Peter, too, and he nods at the suggestion. "Anything science or computer-related?" he asks, and then he looks over at Alec. "Are you okay with science and computers?"

The brochure had a bunch of museums on it. There were a lot of one's Alec thought would be boring. He sighed for a moment, but then saw one Peter might like. He held out the brochure to him. "Computer Games." A nerd's museum for sure.

An attractive woman moved down the aisle with a cart of food and stopped in front of them. She spoke German to them. Alec leaned forward, his smile charming and flirtatious. "Ich nehme an, du bist nicht auf der Speisekarte? eine Schande. Zwei Koks und ein Bier bitte." He winked.

She smiled, almost giggling, and produced two cans of coke and a beer in a can. She then pulled out a piece of paper, wrote on it, said something with a blush to Alec in German and then handed him the paper. Afterwards she pushed the cart away, continuing her work. No money had been exhanged.

Alec look at the paper and grinned.

Edited 2018-06-25 02:50 (UTC)

Peter takes the brochure and looks it over. He's about to voice his excitement for the museum when Alec exchanges words with a woman working the food court.

Immediately, Peter is suspicious.

"What'd you say to her?"

"What?" Alec looked defensive, palms up. "I flirted with her and she gave me her number." He couldn't help he was charming, Peter.

"I didn't realize you spoke German." Liz was impressed. While it didn't stir in her anything like when Peter did it, she had to admit that Alec's flawless German was impressive.

"I know most of the languages on this continent." You couldn't infiltrate a country if you didn't know it's language. At least not well.

"I guess that'll be helpful." She glanced to Peter.

"See?" He gestured to Liz, but looked at Peter. "She gets it. And free drinks too. What's not to like?" He cracked open his German beer and took a sip

Peter exchanges a look with Liz. Yeah, it'll be useful, but it makes him uneasy knowing that Alec will be saying things neither of them can understand.

Peter cracks open his soda and takes a sip of it, his eyes narrowed on Alec with great suspicion.

"Are you gonna call her?"

"Sure, maybe." He shrugged. He didn't think Peter would appreciate what he really wanted to say which was 'If a better offer doesn't come around' so he left it at that. "Why? You want to interview her first?" He almost said something else, but with Liz there he had to be on his best behaviour... or at least some tempered form of behaviour.

Liz smiled against her can. Peter and Alec, despite bickering a lot, sounded like they could be brothers. It was cute.

"No, but you shouldn't lead people on unless you're really interested," he says. "And you shouldn't take advantage of their generosity, either."

This, of course, did not stop him from drinking the soda anyway.

"... Clearly you have no idea what a one-nighy stand is." Alec looked at Peter. "The whole reason she gave me her number was for sex, not to settle down and have babies with. Plus she's hot, if I don't call I'm sure she'll find some other guy willing to sleep with her. She'll be fine."

Despite herself, Liz blushed. Though a few moments later there was an announcement got Berlin and it was obvious to train was slowly down.

Peter doesn't say anything at Alec's reply, because he knows that he has a point. Instead, Peter briefly sulks, then passes the brochure back over to Liz. He taps on it as she takes it into her hands.

"We should definitely go here," he says. "But where are we going first? Are we just going to figure out what hotel we're gonna stay at?"

He'd suggest the one Mr. Stark put him up at the last time he was in Berlin, but he was pretty sure it had to have cost a small fortune.

Liz paused. "Well.. they gave me a map to some places. A lot of them are like, hostels and stuff, but we could probably find somewhere else by just walking. Or we can ask around.... or we could look something up on here." She lifted up her phone. She knew it could do it, but Liz had no idea how to get to the internet yet on a smartphone or how to even use the internet yet and she didn't want to admit that.

Alec had so many comments he wanted to say right then and there, but stopped himself because he decided to needed to space out Peter's glares. So he remained quiet, beer finished, when the train came to a halt. Unlike Liz who had a backpack, Alec had seemingly nothing on him. "If you're worried about money, I could probably get us a discount." He glanced to Liz as if considering something. "Or... never mind." That would be a one of those movie montages.

Liz stood and collected her backpack. "I guess it depends on if we want one room or two... or three." Because she wasn't going to assume anything.

"I am not sharing a room with you two. I don't want to be kept up all night with you giggling and talking about chemical formulas."

"I'll see if I can find anything," he tells Liz. He's already going through a list of hostels on his phone when Alec opens his mouth and begins to talk about a discount. Before Peter can shoot him a warning look, he cuts himself short.

"We don't giggle about chemical formulas," Peter says, frowning. He passes the phone over to Alec, a website pulled up on the web browser. "This hostel isn't expensive, but I can't read anything on the webpage."

Alec looked at the screen. "Singles, doubles, bigger rooms with bunk beds." He shrugged. "Seems fine." Then again, Alec was used to sleeping in abandoned buildings, so he might not be the best person to decide on what was appropriate. "It's close to some of the stuff you guys want to see."

He passed the phone back. "Fine. I don't want to keep you two up bringing home one or more lady friends and making them giggle, if you know what I mean." Believe it or not, but Alec was already trying to temper his mouth.

Liz, on the other hand, just kept thinking how much like Michael he was sometimes. Other times he was like Kyle. She ducked her head and flushed a little, though couldn't help the comment. "Don't worry, we won't hinder your... tour of Germany." Not that she necessarily condoned random sex, but she though Alec was actually secretly a nice guy so if he did have one-night stands, it was probably done the right way - whatever that looked like (and she had no idea).

As they stepped out onto the train platform, almost as if on cue, the lady who had been working on the train stepped out, still in her uniform and as she passed them, she smacked Alec on the ass and said something in German with a wink. Alec followed her with his eyes for a moment or two. "...yeah, yeah I'm definitely going to have to take her home and make her giggle."

And then there was suddenly a not-so-happy looking guy with muscles who approached the woman. They were having a heated exchange and the man looked up and she pointed at Alec. "Uh... we should, probably start finding that hostel." He ushered them toward the opposite side of the platform away from the guy who was about to start walking toward them.

Peter shoots Alec a I-told-you-so look as they briskly make their way off the platform and onto the streets. Peter plugs in the address as they walk and the built-in nav system walks them to their destination.

He shifts his phone into one hand and takes Liz's hand into the other.

"I wonder where everyone else is going," Peter says as he rounds a corner. "Europe's a pretty big place."

Not that he knows that much from experience.

"I'd really like to go to the airport," he says. "I really didn't get to see it the last time we were here except when I was fighting. We flew in on one of Mr. Stark's private jets."

Alec rolled his eyes in response to Peter. It wasn't his fault if a woman was going to cheat on someone with him!.

"Why don't we then?" Liz squeezed Peter's hand. "We can probably see a lot of the airport without needing to go through security." She paused. "Did you guys end up breaking a lot of things when you were there last time?"

Alec rolled his eyes again, but refrained from sarcastically saying 'no, they just gently fought and avoided all the breakable things'.

"Yeah," Peter says, trying (and failing) to dampen his enthusiasm. "I crashed through an airport terminal and I knocked down a sign and then Falcon crashed through this glass stand and glass went everywhere!"

The whole airport felt like it was made out of glass.

"And then I threw the Winter Soldier and Falcon through this railing and there was more glass and then his drone dragged me out of another window."

Two windows down.

"And then there were a bunch of cars on the ground and stuff was on fire, and I think I heard an explosion earlier, but I didn't get to see it actually happen because I was fighting the Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Captain America knocked this jetway onto me, so that broke, too."

He takes a breath. "Then Ant-Man got really big and he threw War Machine and I had to save him and I knocked over a truck. And then Ant-Man broke the wing of a plane and it exploded and Vision used this lazer out of his head to completely split the Air Traffic Control Tower. And then we knocked over Ant-Man using the trick they used in Return of the Jedi to take down the AT-AT and then he fell right into an airplane and it exploded."

It's only after the words left his mouth that he realized precisely how much he talked about it. He had Karen replay the video for him dozens of times, and it was still hard for him not to get excited about it even now, almost two years later.

Especially since he'd soon be fighting with them again.

"Wow." Liz looked amazed in a way that cried devotion. It sounded like so much was happening she didn't know how Peter could keep things straight.

Alec looked at the two of them, then rolled his eyes yet again - he was going to get a strain. "For someone who's all about the good deeds and whatever, you sure did a lot of property damage."

Peter is immediately on the defense.

"I couldn't help it," Peter argues. "Besides, most of the damage happened because of other people. I just crashed through two windows and knocked some people over. I wasn't exploding cars or breaking planes or doing major structural damage."

"You still contributed. What's that saying about bullying? If you stand there and do nothing, you're just as bad?"

Liz shot Alec a look this time. "That's not really a fair comparison."

Alec shrugged. He thought it was.

"I wasn't bullying anyone," Peter says. "They're all superheroes, and some of them were fugitives of the law."

Or so Mr. Stark told him.

"I was just helping apprehend them."

"Uh, huh. All I'm hearing is justification for vandalism" Alec was mostly screwing with Peter, but maybe it was because he was so eager to potentially get his ass kicked.

Liz looked between them and was grateful when she saw a distraction. She pointed at the goat logo. "Look, the hostel. Let's go in and get rooms or whatever and then we can figure out where to go from there."

Peter glares daggers at Alec, but his intense staring is broken off by the sound of Liz's voice.

"Yeah."

--

They're able to get two rooms at the hostel; they're small, but clean, and Peter figures that it's okay that they're small because they don't plan on spending much time there anyway. He felt that he spent too much time inside at the inn, anyway.

"There's a train that goes right to the airport not far from here," he says, looking down at his phone. "Is everybody okay going there first?"

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