stupidbutgood | (no subject)

Jensen's interests are wide-reaching and incredibly varied. It's entirely possible he'll go on a deep research spiral about this that will last him a few days, maybe even a week, and then he'll get distracted and never touch it again. It's one of the many reasons he's so resistant to the idea of getting a degree; the commitment sounds terrifying. What if he changes his mind?

It's good that Peter doesn't fight him on paying; he'd just point out that he earns a halfway decent salary (now), doesn't have any housing costs (of his own), and is here as Peter's guest.

He falls for Peter's bait easily. "How do you know that? Did you build one? How long did it take you?"

"I did build one." Peter nods. "For a science fair when I was a kid. A Michelson interferometer is so simple to make. It's three mirrors, a light source, and a detector. Ta-da!"

Yes, he has science fair trophies. His Aunt is very proud of him. Peter would feel better if they were in the basement but that's not going to happen any time soon. He just has to live with that.

"It might still be in my Aunt's basement. Luckily, I get to work with better equipment now." Peter looks really happy about that. Because he's also a gadget nerd. He loves tinkering.

Jensen's smile goes a little indulgent as Peter explains, clearly envisioning Beth in Peter's shoes. She's not a very science-minded kid, hasn't really settled into one specific subject the way he uncle did at her age, but she's still as smart as a whip and he can absolutely see her winning a science fair prize.

"I'm pretty sure there's no might about that," he points out, even though he's never met Peter's aunt. He also didn't know that New York apartments came with basements. Does she even live in the city? She has to, Peter's said he'd never left New York before.

"What's the coolest machine you get to work with now?"

For Peter it's always been science and photography, his two great hyperfixations. There's rarely been other things in his life that have been more important. Crime fighting has taken the lead but that's a recent development.

"Okay, no judgement because it's not the latest and greatest in physics equipment but I really like electron microscopes." They're almost old school these days even though the technology keeps getting better and better like all technology.

Although, his true favorite are his web shooters, but shhhs.

Peter is saved from launching into the wonders and beauties of the electron microscope by their order getting called. He grabs his coffee and can absolutely smell the sugar in Jensen's. He's pretty sure there's no way Jensen's making it through class with that much sugar.

"You know, it'd probably be cheaper if you bought black coffee and just dropped a candy bar into it," he points out.

"I wasn't going to judge you no matter what you said," he protests, but is likewise happy to get distracted by their coffees being ready.

Immediately popping the lid off his, he takes a long draught of the very sweet concoction to make room for the milk he then turns to add to the top. He'll happily drink black coffee with no sugar at all if it's all that's available — burnt sludge is a pretty apt descriptor for most of the coffee he gets while overseas and he's learned to be grateful for it no matter how bad it tastes — but if given his druthers, he prefers too-sweet abominations that would send lesser men into a diabetic coma instantly.

"The candy bar is for later." He winks at Peter as he finishes adding enough milk to bring the coffee back to the rim, and then snaps his lid down. "I haven't slept in like—" a brief moment while he does some mental calculations, "—thirty-nine hours? I need the boost to get through class. Hah! That's so fun to say. I feel like I'm cosplaying a college student, this is great."

"Dude." Peter's pretty sure he just witnessed a crime against coffee. "We could have rescheduled so you could get some sleep."

Peter's sleep schedule is a disaster zone but even he has rarely pulled such long stints without sleep. It's not a never done it, but it's not often. He feels immediately guilty too. Of course he should've thought about time zones and travel and let Jensen get some sleep.

"Don't force yourself to stay up just for me." Peter is definitely not worth that. "Come on, I can walk you back to the subway and we'll meet up later."

"Nope, I'm awake. The coffee is just so I don't turn into a crazy person running on fumes alone. I'm good."

Jensen's insomnia is a well-known handicap among the team, and more than once Cougar has had to physically drag him away from his computers and sit on him until he succumbed to the need to sleep. That usually was only necessary after two full days awake, though, so they've got another nine hours until they reach the danger zone.

He doesn't point out that he's had to run missions like this before. He has a feeling that Peter, self-proclaimed gun-avoider and apparent pacifist, wouldn't appreciate knowing that Uncle Sam has thrown him sleep-deprived into a situation where the threat of losing an arm or a leg is a real possibility.

"C'mon, it'll be fun! I've never been to college before, I want to go."

For such a large man, he has incredibly effective puppy eyes when he tries. It probably helps that his glasses make the blues bluer and his lashes look longer.

"Right, don't turn into a crazy person." One corner of Peter's mouth tips up in amusement.

Jensen is kinda crazy but the sort of crazy that appealed to Peter. He was funny and smart and ridiculous. Maybe a little insane but not in a way that was bad. He certainly didn't feel threatened even knowing Jensen was probably the most dangerous person in this cafe.

"I guess it's my own fault," he says after a minute of Jensen's ridiculous pout and puppy eyes. "I keep telling you that you can go to college."

Instead of spending his life getting chewed up by the military industrial complex that Peter is really starting to hate for some unknown reason.

"Come on, man, the building is this way." Peter jerks his head towards the exit and they walk out of the cafe together. "We'll sit in the back of the room so the professor doesn't notice he's got an extra student."

Jensen is kind of crazy. He can't help it. He's been shot and and blown up and other unsavory stuff a little too many times to ever be normal again, but at least he's self-aware about it and it manifests in normal ways. Mostly normal ways. As normal as he can get, considering the circumstances.

"Yes. This is your fault." He bumps his shoulder into Peter's as they exit the shop, seemingly perfectly happy now that he's got caffeine and a promise to be allowed to sit in on a lecture.

"Is that something they'd protest? I'd have thought that the more students the merrier, right?"

Peter sways a little with the bump but he never loses step. "You didn't pay for the privilege of higher education. God forbid anyone get a free education around here."

He has some strong views about the educational system. Kind of like he has strong views about the military. He might have strong views in general about a lot of things.

"I picked this class because the professor knows his stuff but he doesn't know his students. We should be able to get away with this." Peter likes the guy a lot more during office hours when he's talking one on one.

His lectures are a little hit or miss.

"Mm. What are we, some kind of socialist hellscape like Canada?"

Jensen has really very little qualms when it comes to lying or stealing from people or institutions who absolutely can eat the loss. Maybe he should, maybe he should care about shit like that, but he doesn't, and he's done so much worse that it seems stupid to get hung up on something as small as getting value out of something he didn't pay for.

"It's fine, though. If we do get caught, I already forged the proof that I'm auditing, they're not gonna get you in trouble." Because clearly that was the reason Peter is concerned, of course.

That's like the fourth surprising thing Jensen has said since hello. Peter feels like his head is spinning. How many surprises can one guy have?

"You forged proof?" He repeats to fully wrap his head around the idea. "Man, I was just going to take the bump to my grade or whatever slap on the wrist they'd do."

Did he look into what would happen if he got caught sneaking a non-student into a class? No, not at all. He just accepted there may be consequences and rolled with it.

He seems just as surprised as Peter is, although for different reasons. Why wouldn't he forge proof? Half the fun of doing undercover-adjacent things is the prep, getting the costumes and paperwork and ID badges and stuff prepared. If this was going to be a longer term thing he'd have made himself a student ID and probably forged transfer papers and everything.

"Well, yeah, I mean it seemed easier than coming up with a convincing lie..."

He shakes his head, tutting a little. "C'mon, Peter, don't be ridiculous. Always be prepared, that's the Boy Scouts motto! Or something. I was never in scouts, obviously."

Maybe he should have expected a plan. Jensen is special forces. It just... didn't seem important enough in Peter's head. He can't imagine being important enough for someone to stay up reading physics papers and faking audit papers just to sit it on a class. Apparently, it's important enough to Jensen.

"Okay, well, I'm buying lunch." Peter's tone says he's not going to listen to any arguments. "I'm going to take you to the best pizza place in town. This is a closely guarded secret, by the way."

It is the best pizza in town, hands down. Peter protects this secret because he doesn't want his favorite spot becoming Instagram famous.

He jogs a few steps ahead and opens the door to the physics building for Jensen. Got him!

"You're going to regret that when you find out how much I can eat," Jensen warns, but he's half-laughing as he says it, so it's unclear if he's being serious. (He is.) "As long as it's proper New York style I'm not going to complain."

Pooch is from Detroit, so when he's in charge of cooking, he has to pretend to like square pizza, but Pooch isn't here, so Jensen can be honest.

He's busy talking a sip of his coffee-sugar sludge when Peter suddenly darts ahead to grab the door, and he finds himself chuckling a little at the smug expression on his face. Alright. So that's how it's gonna be. That's fine. Peter's probably faster than he is, but Jensen's pretty sure he's got a longer reach. He'll beat him to the next door for sure.

Peter gives him a look and gestures with his hands. "Of course it's New York style, what else would I feed you?"

There are places to get other styles of pizza in New York City but Peter is a local boy. He gets New York style and everything else is second best. There's no way they're getting anything else.

The classroom is on the second floor of the building. Peter takes the stairs. Normally he goes two at a time but he holds back since he has company with him. "If you really want to look like you'd auditing, I can give you a notebook."

Normally Jensen would also take the stairs two at a time, but since Peter doesn't, he doesn't either. Later, he'll laugh at them looking out for each other all careful-like.

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Man, I haven't taken paper notes in years, this is going to be fun."

Perhaps not surprisingly, Jensen works almost exclusively on a computer nowadays, but if he's going to be taking notes on something he doesn't understand, he should maybe remove the temptation to get sucked into something else while he's in class. It would be just like him to start accidentally doing something else halfway through and then not hearing a single word out of the instructors mouth.

"I try not to take my laptop with me." Because the thing is on its last leg and really does better if he just leaves it in his apartment. It's on his list of things to upgrade once he has the money.

If he has the money. That's a better way to put it.

The classroom isn't the largest. It's not an introductory lecture hall or anything like that but it's spacious enough. Peter grabs them a seat in the back and digs through his backpack for a notebook. He has to nudge his camera out of the way.

He hands it over along with a Pac Man themed pencil. "This should work."

The instant Jensen finds out about Peter's laptop he's going to pitch such a fit, Peter will allow him to rebuild it for him simply out of self preservation. Perhaps it's better that they postpone that discovery until a later date.

"I feel naked without my laptop," he says conversationally, like it's not incredibly obvious he isn't carrying anything but his wallet.

Naked or not, he slides into a seat with a palpable buzz, accepting the notebook and pencil, his face lighting up when he sees what's painted along the wood. "Thanks, man, this is great!" Immediately setting to spinning the pencil over his knuckles again and again, he slouches a little in his seat and leans in towards Peter so he can talk without broadcasting to the whole class what they're saying.

"So what did you guys cover last class? Am I too far behind?"

"Why didn't you bring it?" There are plenty of other students with their laptops or tablets out. Peter is one of the minority taking notes in a notebook. He loves tech but tech is expensive.

Dollar store notebooks have never let him down.

At Jensen's question Peter flips to the notes he took from the last class. They were detailed and thorough. Peter is a very good about his notes. When he's in class and not recovering from some Spider-Man injuries.

"Here, read these over. I think that'll get you caught up enough to follow along today." The class is only an hour and a half. It's not one of his longer lab classes. That would be impossible to sneak Jensen into.

"Pooch and Cougar confiscated it. Said I had to participate in the real world if I was going out to meet up with friends. When I told the half my friends are on my computer, they told me that didn't count and I have to give them a sitrep when I get back. So my plan is to bore them to death with as much physics talk as I can as payback."

Being bullied by his teammates doesn't seem to bother him at all. He knows they're just looking out for him. As the youngest and still the team rookie, he knows they feel responsible for him in a brotherly kind of way.

"I guess they're concerned everyone I meet online is a weird pervert who's going to sex-murder me, which as I've pointed out before, is a lot easier said than done and usually requires a lot more goons than the average internet denizen has access to.

"Do you have access to goons?" he ask nonchalantly as he pulls Peter's notebook closer so he can skim over his notes. "Hey, your handwriting's pretty good!"

Edited 2026-01-01 00:17 (UTC)

"Ah shit, they figured out my evil plan. I was so going to sex-murder you this whole time." Peter snaps his fingers and gives an aw shucks kind of shrug. "Guess I'll have to find another victim."

Peter looks about as likely to murder someone as he does to join the Army. He knows he's not one of those people even with all the secrets he keeps about himself.

A classmate two seats over looks up at that and gives him a look. Peter just ignores him. The joke is funny whatever his fellow students think.

"I don't have access to goons. Why would I have goons?" Peter doesn't get the purpose of the question at all.

It's okay, Jensen laughs at his joke even if he doesn't look up from the notes he's skimming. "I knew it!"

Sure, Peter doesn't look like a weird sex-murderer, but Jensen's been at the mercy of people who don't look like they'd be that dangerous and found out that looks can be incredibly deceiving.

He turns the page. "To hold me down while you torture and sex-murder me, obviously. Maybe to get a few licks in of their own." He's been caught more than once in the middle of doing something that required him to stay in one, usually central, location. It's meant he's the weakest link of any infiltration and, as such, has had to pay the price.

Peter wants to point out he doesn't really have friends but that's a depressing thought so he doesn't voice it.

"I do my best work alone, so no, I don't have goons." He shakes his head. "Pretty sure I can hold you down on my own."

He expects that statement to get a laugh because he still has that skinny, tall physique going on. He doesn't look like much of a physical threat at all. Jensen can't possible think of him as one given he's much broader and military trained.

"But now we'll never know because your friends spoiled my fun."

This time he does look up, cutting Peter a sideways glance and smirking at him but not refuting his statement.

"They're upsettingly good at that, all of them. Real killjoys."

It's true, Peter is tall and kind of gangly, but that doesn't mean all that much. What would be more surprising is if behind the physics nerd photographer facade, Peter was also hiding a secret proficiency in wrestling or jujitsu. That would be impressive. Jensen mostly just relies on brute strength when he has to, so it's possible Peter could overpower him. Theoretically.

smart, i've never been in the army and i know jack about computers so i really biffed this lol

thank god no one's fact checking us

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