Not the Norm
Discussing his patrols and working on his suit with Mr. Stark are both cool and all, but Peter's never been more excited about anything in his life than he is about the chance to try out the VR console at the tower.
He had to save up his allowance and birthday money forever just to afford his old Playstation, so he'd resigned himself to waiting years to try any VR games, but then! During their last team up patrol, Mr. Stark casually dropped the bomb that he had pretty much every console in existence sitting around with no Avengers left to use them. If that wasn't a blatant hint to swing by sometime, then what was?
So swing by, he does.
He goes straight for the empty top floor and lets himself in through one of the doors he knows Mr. Stark always leaves unlocked for him, pulling off the mask while FRIDAY warns Mr. Stark of his arrival.
There's a beat of silence before FRIDAY's voice floats over the room again.
"Boss is busy, but he suggests you make yourself at home, Mr. Parker."
That's all the invitation Peter needs. He may have been too nervous to do anything but stand around waiting the first time FRIDAY relayed that particular message, but he's long used to it now. Sometimes Mr. Stark gets too deep into a project and can't bring himself to be interrupted, but apparently Peter's proven himself enough to be trusted alone with FRIDAY.
She leads him to a large, surprisingly domestic room a couple floors down. It's even cooler than he expected. Everything is still set up like the ex-Avengers only stepped out for a minute, minus the fine layer of dust across every surface. Definitely no team hangouts these days, then.
It sort of reminds him of his living room at home but blown up to at least quadruple the size. There are enough couches to comfortably fit the team at its largest, though they're surrounded by a variety of long-dead hanging plants and a mini-fridge that he shudders to imagine opening. There's an untouched nest of blankets in one corner that he can't imagine any of the remaining Avengers would have made. Then again, he never met most of them on friendly terms, so what does he know? His eyes land on the cabinet loaded down with gaming consoles and he grins.
The VR is the obvious choice. Sure, the shiny new Wii and Xbox are cool, but Ned has those and never minds Peter dropping in to use them, especially after they agreed to pool their money for multiplayer games for all their consoles. Barring Mr. Stark, he might never get another chance to see what virtual reality is like.
A short round of hunting leads him to a drawer full of controllers and other loose video game paraphernalia, and despite never playing before, it's easy enough to figure out which headset and controllers match the system. A lot of the controllers are new, but there's only one bundle with a full-on headset rather than a headphone/microphone combo.
There's an entire wall dedicated to bookshelves loaded down with what must be thousands of video games for all the consoles, and he is so going to look through literally all of those next time, but today, he's pretty sure all the relevant games are digital releases.
He grabs his bounty, dumps it on the couch as gently as possible, and moves to the front of the room to start the console and get a closer look. It's cool, no doubt about it, but up close it's not much to look at, so he sprints and leaps for the couch, twisting himself midair to land comfortably among the cushions and decorative pillows that just scream Pepper.
He tugs on the headset with a few minor adjustments and grabs sloppily for the controllers, getting a feel for them while he navigates the main menu and searches through the downloaded games. Some kind of obvious zombie shooter he's never heard of is near the top of the list, and that's good enough for him. It's a simple matter to find the sandbox mode from there because no way is he wasting his time on story mode when he can jump straight into the action instead.
He spawns with the map materializing around him and realizes he must have missed the option for a tutorial when a zombie stumbles up from behind and immediately takes him out with no warning.
He spawns again, and this time he whips around in time to see the zombie, but he misses the trigger button and dies again, groaning in frustration as soon as he realizes what happened.
Hey, he never said he was good at this. At least no one is around to see how bad he really is. There's something distinctly uncomfortable about the idea of an Avenger laughing at him, even for a completely unimportant skill like playing video games.
No one needs to know how many deaths it took before he learned how to actually walk, but after that, things go more smoothly.
Until the middle of one attempt leads up to one particularly dizzying sweep of an automatic in an almost successful attempt to take out a circle of zombies encroaching from all sides.
Bad idea. Bad idea. The combination of half-convincing himself he's actually spinning around and his actual lack of motion doesn't sit well with his stomach. He claps a hand to his mouth while he panics, but FRIDAY takes the initiative to chip in.
"Out the door, first room to your left, Mr. Parker."
He rips off the VR apparatus and follows the directions with no further hesitation, crashing to his knees on the cold tiles while the room swims dizzyingly around him.
He caves into the nausea, letting a gag come a little harder than strictly necessary so he can just get it over with. The feeling sticks uncomfortably in his throat, making him hack against the itch over and over until he's bringing up bitter bile and thoroughly regretting most of his afternoon.
That's enough to swear off VR for his near future at the very least. His Playstation never betrayed him like this.