"So," Ned started, covering his eyes with the palm of his hand and rubbing at the ends of his brows with his pointer finger and thumb, "you're saying that you called the guy who tried hacking you so you could have some 'company' while you dug a bullet out of your stomach with a tweezer?" he strained out, dropping his hand to stare Peter dead in the eye.
Peter rubbed at the back of his neck sheepishly. "Well, when you put it like that-"
"Peter."
The brunette dropped his head defeatedly. "Yeah, I know."
Ned sighed, flopping backwards on the bottom bunk. He waited for a few moments before speaking again. "You're good now?" he checked, and Peter made an affirmative sound.
"Right as rain," he proclaimed. "I mean, it stopped, like, bleeding and everything before I even bandaged it up," he admitted.
"Of course it did," Ned muttered. "That is literally the only reason you're still not freaking dead or something, Peter. You're basically half spider, half cockroach, dude . How could you just - just go to school like that?!" he exclaimed accusingly, throwing his hands up from where they'd been strewn on the bed.
"First off - I take very much offense to being called a cockroach, thank you very much. And second, I've already missed too many classes - Ms. Warren said she'd give me a detention next time it happened!" Peter defended, collapsing onto the bed next to his friend.
"So what!" Ned shot back.
Peter scoffed. "So it'd go on my school record - that's what."
Ned faltered, then huffed, frowning reprovingly at him. "I can't believe I almost agreed with you. I cannot."
"Why not?" Peter countered, turning his head to the side to look at his friend.
"Because that would've been me agreeing that getting shot and going to school with the effect of that shot still in you was an okay thing because, otherwise, you might've gotten a detention," Ned reproached, completely monotone except for the emphasis on those few words.
"You kinda sound like MJ," Peter noted, entirely ignoring the basis of the speech.
Ned sighed. "I kinda sound like MJ," he agreed resignedly. He heaved a breath and hoisted himself upright, Peter doing the same and tilting his head questioningly at his friend. Ned eyed him, squinting. "You're not gonna call him back though, right?"
Peter glanced away, shrugging sheepishly. "I said I would," he hedged.
"Peterrrrrrrr," Ned groaned dropping his head forward. "That is a bad idea™."
The brunette couldn't hold back a laugh, making a face at his friend that was contorted by his smile. "Did you just verbalize ™?"
"Yes," Ned said bluntly, looking him dead in the eye. "Yes I did. Because you are the literal epidemy of bad ideas, Peter. You want to call - again - this dude you don't even know just cause he asked nicely? Dude! He's a literal hacker! You are giving the hacker a way to hack. Peter. Peter. What are you doing," Ned stressed, looking like he was on the verge of shaking him.
"Well I'm not doing anything now," Peter said mulishly, crossing his arms with a petulant scowl. He gave it up after a second and sighed. "I'll be careful," he promised.
Ned stared at him. "You'll be careful," he repeated, deadpan, then shook his head. "You're just, ugh." He stood and picked up his rucksack, slinging it over his shoulder and making his way to the bedroom door. At the last second, he turned back to Peter. "Just - use your burner phone again, alright?" he checked, clearly recognizing there was no point in arguing over the matter now that Peter had set his mind to it.
Peter nodded along dutifully, giving a salute. "You got it," he agreed seriously.
His mask cracked after a moment, and an impish smile broke through.
Ned sighed again, rather despairingly, and opened the door, grumbling something or other under his breath.
Peter, of course, heard him anyway, and gave an indignant cry as the door closed and his friend laughed.
.
Tony took a sip of his coffee and almost spat it right back out when his phone rang, loudly belting out the beginning chords to 'Hey, Hey, What can I do.'
As it was, he set down his mug a tad too hard, ignoring how a bit of coffee sloshed over the brim, and stumbled out of his chair, bashing his knee into the metal leg with a curse as he swiped his phone into his hands, quickly pressing accept.
He took an aborted breath. "Hey," he said, just barely managing to sound nonchalant as he rubbed at his aching knee and retook his seat.
"Uh - hi," the kid managed to strangle out in reply, and Tony withheld a mix of a snort and a sigh of relief. Sure, the teen sounded like he was dying, but less out of a literal reason and more from just probably being the sort of person who tended to fail at communication.
He threw up his holographic screen again and set to tracing, letting the program he'd tweaked the last time work in the background as he focused his attention on the caller. "Didn't expect you to actually call," he remarked blithely, leaning back in his chair.
The kid let out a laugh. "I mean - I, guess I felt kinda bad about freaking you out yesterday," they admitted sheepishly.
Tony looked towards the ceiling. Understatement of the year. "Yeah; thanks for that," he said dryly.
The teen spluttered. "It's not like- I just - I -" they cut themselves off, and there was a deep, crackling inhale as the kid took what was probably a steadying breath. "I," they started, much more calmly, "needed a distraction. So. Thank you for being that."
"So I've been demoted to distraction," Tony mused. "I'm hurt."
"No - I - ugh," the other gave up rather abruptly.
Tony exhaled sharply through his nose, a smile twitching at his lips. "No?" he prodded.
He could practically hear the scowl on the other end of the line. "No," they affirmed. "I needed a distraction, yes, but you're also, like, cool?"
"Was that a question?" Tony asked, staring up at the ceiling as his eyes crinkled slightly. "Because I can assure you that my coolness is very much not up for dispute. It's a fact, Junior," he informed them, idly glancing down to check the tracking progress. He'd changed routes yesterday so he wasn't honing in on the geolocation the device was presenting itself - since that clearly hadn't been going great - and instead tweaked it to follow the service provider schemes local to the general area. So far, the patch of red had narrowed down to about three fourths of its previous size.
He zoned back in as the kid huffed. "Excuse you. 'Junior?' Really? And you wonder why I question your coolness," they shot back, scoffing exaggeratedly.
Tony made an indignant noise, folding his arms up behind his head and interlacing his fingers, resting back against them. He shook his head disappointedly to the open air. "Junior is a perfectly adequate name," he maintained. "What? You'd prefer pipsqueak?" he asked with false genuineness.
"No!" the kid immediately cried out. "You - frg - urgh - no. Just. That word is highly unallowed on these premises."
Tony couldn't withhold a snort. "How articulated of you," he noted delicately, smirking all the while.
There was some shuffling, then a soft thump. "Why are you like this," the teen muttered, though it was more like a whine, the sentence sounding distinctly muffled. Tony had the impression that the kid was lying face first in his bed. Or maybe the carpet. Who knew, the new generation was strange like that.
"You mean honest? Well, someone's gotta be," Tony said blithely, skimming his hand across the hologram's slowly narrowing down region.
"Uhuh," the kid replied dubiously, now sounding clear again.
"Don't believe me? Wow, I'm hurt - again," Tony noted, imbuing a sense of downtrodden moroseness into his tone.
The other didn't fall for it, and Tony could almost picture the squinted, deadpan expression the teen wore when they responded, "You poor soul," without even the slightest trace of inflection in their voice.
Tony bit out a laugh before he could stop it, rolling his eyes at the screen. "I sure am," he agreed magnanimously, then sobered up. "Hey, but you're really alright, right?"
"I'm alright," the other affirmed easily, and Tony breathed another quiet sigh as some of the remaining tension finally fled his shoulders.
They both tapered off into silence after that, Tony not willing or wanting to end the call so he could keep tracing it but also not having much else to say, and the kid seemed to be in a similar predicament.
"Uhhhhhhhhh," the teen voiced, then fell quiet again.
Tony grinned, bemused. "Very succinct," he noted.
"Dude," they groaned.
"That I am," Tony agreed lightly, keeping his voice steady even as he felt a pulse of adrenaline enter his system, the hologram's bright red perimeter having shrunk to cover just a single block.
"Yeah, yeah," the kid huffed, then paused. "By the way, are you like, a computer security person, or an engineer or something?" he asked.
Tony was only half listening again, tapping his fingers antsily against the tabletop as he leaned in towards the projection, heart pounding and knee bouncing as he watched with avid anticipation for the localization to finish zoning in. "Something like that," he muttered.
Another pause. "Are you hacking me again?" the teen asked, sounding like they were very much hoping to receive a negation but also were completely resigned to the truth. Tony, still not completely present, took a beat too long to reply, the kid bursting out a "ah frick" and audibly fumbling the phone before it shut off with a snap .
"Wait!-" Tony started, but it was too late, and he squinted reproachfully down at his phone as the dial tone rang out.
A beat later, though, his eyes drifted back up towards the hologram, and a slow, triumphant grin spread across his face at the address that'd blinked into existence, a single dot having appeared on the centralized area of the map.
"Gotcha."