and I'm dying to figure out what she's hiding

[spideyguy]

Alright, so maybe this wasn't his best idea.

It's just that Peter has been chasing this crime ring for a while now - the Devil chased them out of the Kitchen and when they scattered to the wind, they ended up all over the city. Their strength is less so than it was now that they're not centralized, breaking off into factions, but it makes the whole thing that much harder to track down and totally eliminate, especially when there are so many different spokes of the beast now - in short, it's a fucking mess. DD has been helping him a bit with intel and the occasional backup call, but he doesn't venture much out of the kitchen on his own, so Peter has taken point.

He ended Tuesday night of last week with three broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder, but it gave him a massive break in the whole thing - a location where some of the main operators would be. Surveillance for the next few days helped him figure out that it was a nightclub - a very exclusive one, from the everything about it; the clientele, the guards at the door, the blacked out windows on the cars. Friday night, he tried getting close enough to hear something - but if he gets too close in the Spidey outfit, he knows they'll scatter again. This might be his one shot to blow this whole thing wide open, and he can't be hasty about it.

So he waits. Peter watches, and tries to figure out what to do.

Like he said, he never claimed this was a great idea. It was just an idea.

Peter knew Tony decently enough. Iron Man had bigger things to worry about than street crime, but when hoards of aliens or robots or whatever-the-fuck flood the streets, they were bound to cross paths. They'd even shared pizza on a rooftop once, Peter sure got a kick out of that one. When you fight doomsday threats with someone, you just have a certain kind of rapport kind of...built in. This crazy fucking plan he's hatched is definitely stretching the limit of their relationship, insofar as they have one at all, but Tony is the only person in Peter's dinky little burner phone that could possibly stand a chance of getting him in there.

So he calls him, and nervously explains what he's trying to do into Tony's answering machine. Peter's left wondering if it's really his phone at all, but given that he didn't ask for it, Tony gave it to him and told him to call it if he ever ran into any trouble above his pay-grade, Peter's holding out hope that it was valid.

The plan is simple: it's an exclusive, elite club where you have to know someone who knows someone who knows - whatever, you get the picture. Peter's reasonably confident Tony can either bluff his way in, or find an invite. He's been watching for a few days now, and he doesn't think anyone will look twice at him if he's...well, if he's hanging off Tony's arm, some little plaything of the week.

"I know how it sounds," Peter tries not to plead into the phone; he's trying to sound confident, not embarrassed that this is the brilliant solution he's come up with. "But I think it's the only way to get in there and figure this out. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

He takes a deep breath - he's also exposing his secret identity for this, only to Tony, but still. It's that important. "I hope you'll be able to help me, Mr. Stark. I'm planning to try Saturday. Just...let me know."

And if he's going it alone, attempting to flirt his way in the door (he has no idea how he's possibly going to do that), well, then, he's going it alone.

Comments

[spideyguy]

That would be a very decisive no, he was definitely not always like this. He was both a safety hazard to others and himself. Some would argue that he still is. Now he did take ballet lessons until he was 10, because Ben tried to take him to the karate place next door but Peter was always too enthralled by the people dancing in the windows. He doesn't think any of it transferred over - it sure didn't when he was in high school - but everything comes so naturally now, like it was a muscle memory he didn't know he had. It also - feels like it switches on and off, sometimes. As Spiderman, he can do that - let go, to the fullest extent of his abilities. As Peter Parker, he has to reign it in - and sometimes he feels uncomfortable in his own skin. He already did, even before the superpowers. And as for the nightclub...well, shit, Peter really wants to pull this off, so he's just going to have to figure that part out as they go. Is he a failure of a college student if he's only ever been to a nightclub once...to take nightlife photos for a magazine?

"I have many skills. Jack of all trades." Peter pauses as Tony takes his face in, struggling not to shift his weight from foot to foot. This was all his stupid fucking idea anyway. God, he really stepped in it this time, didn't he? He smiles awkwardly, almost apologetically for springing it on him, but now that the cat's out of the bag, he really doesn't have anything left to lose, right?

"I can see that," Peter steps closer and dumps his backpack on the floor by the couch, tossing his mask on top of it. He can't remember the last time he was around somebody in the suit with his mask off this casually. "Casually", as if you can call it that. Well, kinda. No one's trying to kill them (yet). "Be careful, don't want your face to stick like that."

"Fourteen? Fourteen?" Peter snorts, carefully approaching the bar, spreading gloved hands on it when he reaches it. His fingers drum, unable to keep still, and his gaze keeps flickering from Tony's hands to his face, as if he can't decide whether he'd rather not make eye contact and watch what he's doing, or gauge Tony's expression. "I'd be insanely tall for fourteen. Could you imagine? 'That small child is built like a tree trunk.'"

"And yes, I am. Twenty-three." Peter enumerates, because he feels it bears repeating. He runs an anxious hand through his hair, mussing it up even further. Don't worry, he brought a comb, for whatever that will do for him (probably...not much). "Sure, why not. Tonight's the night I say fuck it, apparently."

[engineous]

Maybe someday they will bond over the fact that they both studied ballet, though probably to varying degrees of support from their father figures. Tony had been put through the gambit of cultural education at the hands of his mother and the squadron on tutors she'd hire every year, but ballet had been on that Tony actually enjoyed enough not to find ways to avoid it. Not that it lasted long when his father, cruel as ever, had decided that boys past a certain age shouldn't be doing girly things like dancing and so put a stop to the lessons.

Not that Tony is thinking about dancing anymore, not when he's got Spider-Man's face to drink in. It's always been something of a game to Tony, guessing what might be beneath the mask of superheroes and villains alike. It was becoming increasingly rare for the good guys to hide their faces, and secret identities didn't seem to be in vogue for most heroes, so Peter is something of a rarity. But instead of being scarred or old or ugly, he's truly and objectively handsome. Tony can't get over it even though he's managed to drag his eyes from Spidey's face and focus on some much-needed alcohol.

"Nineteen at the most," Tony counters, because yes fourteen had been dramatic, but that's the kind of bitch he is. "In my defense, it's not like you stand still long enough to get the full measurements. And yeah, I've got tech for that, but it would have started a rabbit hole towards your identity and I wanted to steer clear of that."

Not that it hadn't been tempting when Spider-Man had first come on the scene. Tony has still been more active in the immediate safety of New York at that time, so having someone appear out of nowhere in a costume and mask had been something of a red flag. Rather than dig into this Spider-Man's identity and possible motivations, however, Tony had stuck to a tight but distant observation of his activities until deeming him the 'hero' variety of super rather than the alternative.

Pouring them both a generous drink, he slides the glass towards Spidey, clinks his own against the rim, and then downs half of it. They're going to be drinking later anyways, and Tony knows that he'll make a more convincing nightclub patron if he's a little lubed up beforehand. Pushing himself back and up onto the counter behind him, he swirls his glass in one hand while leveling his gaze at the unusual guest.

"So. You got a plan?"

[spideyguy]

Peter's experience was quite the opposite. Hell, Ben and May were just happy he was taking an interest in something at that age - post-parental units departing from his life - it was, for obvious reasons, a difficult time to inherit a child. But the dancing made him smile, gave him a way to get comfortable with his body which - over the course of the years he took the classes - grew longer, lankier, like a newborn deer growing into its legs. He would have made a great football player, if it weren't for the debilitating asthma.

"Ha, ha," Peter snorts, though what Tony really dances around is the obvious math staring them in the face - that if Peter is twenty-three, and he was first active eight years ago...yeah, he's not far off base there. "I would appreciate that continued courtesy, but you know, cat, bag, etcetera."

His identity is now in Tony's hands, because no doubt this place has cameras, if there isn't a camera already on Tony's person. Maybe both. Still, Peter walked in here knowing all of that, knowing that it could have been SHIELD agents waiting for him and not a billionaire, and blindly trusting that it wouldn't be. Peter takes the glass in gloved hand, taking a measured sip as he watches Tony down half of his own. Not a bad idea, honestly, especially with how smooth the Scotch is - not that Peter should have expected it to be anything but - but he sets the glass down, manfully suppressing the nose wrinkle that tries to work it's way forth; alright, he doesn't much like the taste anyway, no matter how smooth it is. He's more of a wine coolers guy for sure, and yeah, mainly for the sugar.

"I've got a plan." Peter confirms with a quick nod of his head, meeting Tony's gaze head-on. "I can't promise it's a good one. I just - I can't see any other way of getting inside, and I know it's the hub."

Is his plan to perform a 40+ citizen's arrest and free anyone trapped there that he finds, ultimately, to the point of utter chaos? Yeah, maybe. Will it work? Therein lies the question.

"But - " Peter holds up a finger, leaning down to snag his backpack, which he upends on the bartop. There's a variety of items that come spilling out - the pile of fabric that is presumably his clubbing outfit, some sort of mesh something or other and hot pink shorts; a set of bulky cuffs that look like an attempt at stylish jewelry; a choker and an eyeliner pencil, clearly borrowed; a handful of printed out photographs in low-light detail; and a little packet of notes and sketches, covered in his chicken scratch. Peter reaches for the latter two first, brushing aside the other items to the edge of the bar, and starts setting out the photos for Tony to look at. "I've got our targets. Sid Rosthram is the highest name I know, but these three - "

Peter sets out three photos of hard-faced men in expensive suits, next to Sid. "They've gotta be the top dogs. I've heard their phone calls about moving the product - the cover is Mattel dolls, like, Barbies? The sex trafficking, anyway, pretty sure that's this guy, and he has a deal with this guy to use them as drug mules, too."

Brow furrowed - clearly, the whole thing bothers him, as it would any reasonable human being - but this is Peter's first real big bust, and his skin itches at the idea of people suffering while he's sitting here explaining the whole thing, even if it's stuff Tony needs to know. He lays out a few more photographs of the entrance to the club, the back alley, some empty and some with trucks and men.

"The number of guards on duty fluctuates. Saturday is, I think, the day with the most men there. Somewhere between twenty to thirty, from what I can tell. I want to catch as many as we can. There are only two entrances, but the back door doesn't have any cameras on it." Clearly, they don't want any evidence of what's being smuggled in and out of the back of the club. "The buildings on either side of this alley are owned by the gang, so they think it's airtight."

"What I propose," And here come the notes. Peter unfolds them, a taped together drawing of the building plan, which, even if the writing is not so, seems neatly put together - well, he copied it from the library archives, after digging for a while. Peter taps a finger at the entrance, dragging it through the dance floor to the private rooms at the back that skirt the entrance to the kitchen. "We enter through the front as patrons. We fake our way to a private room, insist on the one in the back for privacy, I don't know, a 'clean getaway', something. We take out the guys in the back, and then I can break the door, stop them from getting out or getting help that way; it's plated steel, they won't be able to bust it down."

"Then, we get to the lower level," Peter flips the page, which becomes a lot less clear on the space - clearly, a lot of it is guesswork. "The working bluff is that we're bored in the private room and want another - "

It takes some work for Peter to get the word out, anger coloring his tone. " - playmate. If that can get us downstairs we just - trap them, and take them all out before they have time to even think about running."