Work Text:
There’s a loud bang from the floor below and the building rocks, ever so slightly, and the hanging lights sway.
Peter falls off of the ceiling with a loud thud.
“What the hell?” he says to himself. Explosions weren’t the norm here at the Avengers Tower—well, they were, but usually they were controlled, and they’d gone explosion-free for weeks now.
Peter bounds down the stairs—six at a time, sticky feet keeping him upright where balance could not—and he makes it down the emergency stairwell in record time, forcing the sliding door to the lab open and—
“Hey, Peter,” Hiccup says, waving a pair of pliers at him. “Sorry about that.”
“Sorry about what?” Peter demands, and suddenly, unbidden, a huge smile crosses his face. “Sorry about science?! Aw, hell no,” he says. “Science! All must fall before the mighty goddess! We devout nerd followers of her ancient religion must sacrifice data charts and chant binary in angry worship of her circuitry glory! We must place the flash drives and the Expo markers—” at this, he seizes an unopened box of whiteboard dry-erase markers and gestures at it, impassioned “—upon the altar of our blueprints and moldy Petri dishes!”
Hiccup’s grinning now. He sets down his pair of pliers, grabs the blowtorch, and joins in. “We must scrub our hands of magic and the rumors of the ether to prove them wrong!” they chant together, the speech flowing easily now. “We must find our own answers, clear our own paths!” They each summit desks, Science Items held out towards each other and continuing to recite, even after Hiccup knocks a beaker off the table with his peg leg. “We must—”
Bruce comes in then, looking frazzled and tired. “Oh my god,” he says, and Tony peeks his head over Bruce’s shoulder, surveys the scorch marks on Hiccup’s eyebrows, the Expo markers in Peter’s hands, the blowtorch that’s still on—
“I taught you well,” he says with unholy glee.
“WE MUST SHAKE THE WALLS WITH OUR DEVOUT PRAYER!” they holler together, Tony awkwardly squeezing onto the top of the table with Peter, and Bruce just shakes his head and turns on his heel. “WE MUST TAKE THE CHANCES NOBODY ELSE IS WILLING TO TAKE—BURN THY EYEBROWS AND RIP THY NAILS IN THE NAME OF OUR GODDESS! OUR SCARRED HANDS MEAN NOTHING IF THOU ARE NOT PLEASED, OUR GODDESS!”
They stop, and their chant hangs in the empty silence.
“AND NOW, WE MUST GET BACK TO WORK!”