chapter two | ollie the king of chess
chapter two | ollie the king of chess
"Your mom is really nice," Peter Parker told Oliver Jensen as the pair sat across from each other on Oliver's floor.
The pair were currently taking a break from their study session and enjoyed the snack that Dorothea Jensen (who's name Peter was still a little too nervous to say because he thought he'd pronounce it wrong, offend the woman, and then get kicked out of the house) had brought the two boys.
Peter had quickly downed most of the snack and told Oliver at least three times that his mother was a terrific chef. To this, Oliver had explained that his mom spent most of her time at home if she wasn't working and that her favorite past time was to cook - especially traditional Norwegian dishes like the one they were currently enjoying, so that both she and Oliver would remember their roots.
"What are these called again?" Peter asked despite the fact that his mouth was filled with at least three cookies.
Oliver smiled lightly. "Serinakaker."
"Serinakaker," Peter tried to mimic. His pronunciation was quite a bit off, but Oliver smiled at the attempt none the less.
"They're Norwegian butter cookies," Oliver explained. He picked up the second to last one on the plate a took a bite. "Normally, there would be almond slices sprinkled on top, but Mamma doesn't like to do that with new guests just in case they have allergies or something, you know?"
Peter nodded and appreciated the thought. His earlier statement of thinking Oliver's mom must be really nice became even more certain. He was also pretty sure Oliver had inherited her caring heart, because the boy slid the plate with the last cookie over to Peter. As much as Peter wanted to reach out and grab the last one, he attempted to practice some self control and raised his eyebrows at Oliver.
"Oh, you can have it," Peter assured Oliver. "It's your house, your cookie."
Oliver cracked another grin and shook his head. Without even realizing it, Peter was instantly mirroring the other boys smile as he came to the understanding that they were at a bit of a standoff.
"Ollie, I'm not taking it," Peter laughed.
Oliver, who was trying desperately to remember how to breathe after hearing Peter call him 'Ollie', made his lips turn into something close to a frown. "What, are you saying you don't like my moms cookies? Is that why you don't want it?" Oliver questioned, his suddenly looking a little disappointed.
Peter's eyes widened. "No! No, of course not," Peter panicked. Quickly, to prove his point, he reached out to grab a cookie, only to see Oliver break out in to a grin again once Peter took a bite. Swallowing what was in his mouth, Peter said, "Hey! You guilted me into eating it."
Oliver shrugged. "I've seen you play chess, Parker. You're easy to read."
"No, I'm not!" Peter responded defiantly. He felt pretty confident that when it came to chess, he had amazing control over his external expressions, but that confidence cracked under the bemused gaze of Oliver Jensen. "I don't believe you can read me," He decided finally. "Do you have a chess board? I'll prove it right now."
It was safe to say that at this point, Pre-Calc was long forgotten. Luckily, Peter and Oliver were probably the best prepared for the test out of any one else in the class, so they could afford to be distracted by each other's competitiveness, for the time being.
Oliver accepted Peter's challenge by pulling out a foldable chess board from under his bed. Sweeping aside both the study guides and their math textbooks, the boys unfolded the board and began setting up the respective pieces, but not without stealing glances at each other as they each prepared for the game.
At one point, when Oliver had put almost all of his pieces in place, he'd looked up to see Peter was already looking at him, and got so flustered he'd accidentally knocked over his knight. Nearly his entire face felt like it was on fire as he put the piece back where in it's place.
"White makes the first move," Peter eventually murmured softly once they both had their pieces in place.
Oliver, who had the white peices shook his head. "Nope. In this house, guests always go first."
Once again, Peter was beaming happily because, once again, Oliver had said something that was so incredibly normal but made Peter feel bubbles of joy bouncing around his stomach.
"Fine," Peter sighed dramatically, which made Oliver roll his eyes and laugh. Once both boys were done being, as Bex would've liked to say, absolute dweebs, Peter made his opening move by sliding his King's pawn two spaces.
After being a part of Chess club for quite a few months now, Peter knew every move was important. That being said, he also knew that good first moves should be made to help strength his king's guard, which he was pretty sure he had just done with his opening move. However, Oliver let out a soft 'tsk' as Peter took his hand off of his nwely positioned pawn, and it was a sound that somehow made Peter second guess everything.
Peter couldn't help but look up at Oliver, who was already looking at him with pure confidence in his eyes. Oliver's pointer finger -which was already touching a pawn that was infront of one of his bishops- slid the pawn forward without Oliver even looking down on it.
The game continued like this for a few more moves. Peter would make a move that he was, like, eighty-five percent confident in, and Oliver would do something with such poise and seemingly minimal thinking involved that Peter would instantly feel like he was doing something terribly wrong. How he had gone so long in Chess club and Peter hadn't noticed how intense Oliver could be, Peter wasn't sure. Then again, Peter had never played against Oliver before, and Peter was pretty sure that was because the teacher in charge of the club had known that they were on very different chess-skill levels.
Peter was beggining to wish he had paid attention to Oliver's skill level a little bit more closly during the club meetings, because Peter's earlier confidence in the notion that he was not readable quickly went out the window. All he could do was watch in dismay as Oliver smiled at him confidently and maneuvered his bishop across the bored.
"Sjakkmatt," Oliver grinned.
Peter let out a long defeated sigh and leaned back on his palms. "I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that means checkmate in Norwegian?"
"That would be an accurate guess," Oliver nodded. "Want a rematch."
"No way," Peter laughed lightly. "You've proven your point. You are so out of my league I don't even know how we're allowed to be in the same club."
"That's not the point I was trying to make," Oliver responded much quicker then he had intended to. Suddenly, his eyes had darted back down to the chessboard even though the game was very much over. "Um, should we maybe start studying again?"
"I'd like to, but I think I should get going," Peter explained as he glanced at his watch. "My Aunt May is probably going to have dinner ready soon."
Oliver nodded understandingly. While he didn't want Peter to leave, he also definitely didn't want to get him in trouble with his aunt. Anyways, if Peter stayed too much longer his mom would be insisting that he'd stay for dinner and that would only end in Peter hearing a dozen super embarrassing stories from Oliver's childhood.
As Peter packed his schools books back into his backpack, he glanced over to Oliver who had moved to sit on to his bed. Oliver gave Peter a small smile before pretending to be responding to a text on his phone.
"Hey this was, um, fun. Like, I had a good time. A-and I feel like the studying really helped," Peter began to ramble. Hopefully, he asked, "Maybe we could do this again next time we have a test?"
Oliver gave him a small smile and a nod. "Yeah, that'd be nice," he agreed.
Once Peter was packed up, Oliver walked him out to the front door of their apartment. On their way out, Oliver's mom had tried to insist that Peter stayed for dinner, but Peter explained that his Aunt was waiting for him. Begrudgingly, Dorothea Jensen finally allowed Peter to leave, but not without a quick hug that made Oliver almost explode from embarrassment.
After Peter left, Oliver once again retreated to his room. When he got there, he pulled out his phone and called Bex. He was only half expecting her to answer as he knew she was at work, but his best friend seemed to manage to make time for him and picked up the phone.
"I have three minutes before my boss comes to find me," Bex said hurriedly. "So give me a crash course to everything that happened."
Oliver collapsed on his bed and stared up at his ceiling. He smiled absently to himself before deciding he was going to mess with Bex, as any good best friend would. "Crash course on what?" he asked coyly.
There was a brief moment where Oliver could've sworn he heard Bex growl through the phone, and the blonde boy bit back a laugh.
"Don't be dumb, I'm on a time restraint for god's sake," Bex reminded him.
"Okay, okay," Oliver caved. "Well, we studied some. Mamma brought cookies-"
"-Serinakaker?"
"Yes," Oliver confirmed. He let out a amused huff at the thought of Bex sitting at work longing for his mom's cookies. "Anyways, he said he really liked the cookies, and he tried to pronounce them but he didn't do a great job. It was still cute though. Peter Parker is cute when he tries to speak Norwegian."
"Yes, yes, I know. You think Peter Parker is cute if he's just sitting their exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide," Bex mumbled dramatically. "I want some juicier details, though. Like, did something nice and romantic happen?"
"We played chess," Oliver offered hopefully.
"You played chess," Bex repeated, her tone one of disappointed disbelief as she let out a long sigh. Oliver could practically hear her eyes roll through the phone lines. "Of course," she groaned. "Well, what are you at least going to text him."
"Text him?"
Another groan from Bex. "Yes! You have to send him something soon. Let him know you have fun, get the idea in his head that you have a good time together. He needs to think your interested because you so are but we both know you won't make the first move."
"Who said anything about making moves?" Oliver asked. Suddenly, he was sitting up on his bed and his heart was starting to beat faster. As it did with any young teenager thinking about their crush, the idea of confronting those emotions were close to sending the boy spiraling.
"God, I have so much work today and in such a short time if I don't want to get in trouble," Bex muttered.
If there was anyone who could talk some sense into Oliver, it was her. She was, as she liked to tell him, the only love guru he had, so he was going to have to like it. And while he never agreed to that, Bex Tran had made it her personal mission to make sure she didn't have to continue to sit in Math class with the two of them while they all pretended longing glances weren't being stolen. It was getting distracting, and Bex really needed to have all of her attention on the teacher.
Truthfully, she needed Peter and Oliver to admit their feelings to each other if she wanted to be able to pass Pre-Calc.
When Peter Parker had gotten home, his mind was still mostly on his study session at the Jensen apartment and he he hadn't really expected much to be going on in his own apartment. He figured he would talk with his Aunt about the fancy car out front, eat some dinner, and then go do homework. What he hadn't been expecting was a surprise visit from the one and only Tony Stark.
Peter had to do a double take (or more like a quadruple take) to make sure it really was Tony Stark sitting with his Aunt on the couch, chatting away about some grant that Peter had apparently one. Just as Peter began to wrap the mind around the fact that Iron Man himself was in their tiny apartment, Tony was whisking Peter back into his bedroom.
Needless to say, Peter was absolutely stumbling over his own thoughts and the words currently coming out of his mouth were nothing short of nonsensical.
Once they were in the safety of Peter's bedroom, Tony quickly flicked the door lock before finding the trashcan and spitting out the walnut date loaf that he had been chowing down on for the sake of the kind Aunt May. However, without her in sight, he no longer felt the need to politely choke down the food.
"As far as walnut date loaves go, that wasn't bad," Tony admitted.
Temporarily ignoring Peter's gaze, Tony straightened himself up before moving to look around the small space that was Peter's room. Letting out a bemused chuckle, he poked at the makeshift almost - command center of technology that Peter had situated in the corner of his room.
"Oh what do we have here?" Tony inquired with a grin. His gaze drifted to Peter, who was shifting awkwardly as the very, very rich man looked over his very, very cheap finds. "Thrift store? Salvation Army?"
"Uh, the garbage actually," Peter explained sheepishly.
"You're a dumpster diver?'
"Yeah, well, I-" Peter began to try to explain is actions, but quickly gave up. "Anyway, look. I definitely did not apply for your grant-"
"Ah-ah," Tony interjected. He slip something out of his pocket only to hold it up the Peter. "Me first. Quick question of the rhetorical variety; that's you, right?"
Being projected on a little screen was a video of the one and only Spiderman swinging through the city's of New York. The video stopped just as Spiderman got to the center of the screen and zoomed in on the masked face.
"Um, no," Peter defended. To keep himself from fidgeting to much, he crossed his arms as he looked away from the screen. "Wh-what do you mean?"
"Yeah," Tony laughed to himself. He flipped the screen so that a new video of Spiderman was now being projected into the air. "Look at you go," he wandered sarcastically. "Wow! Nice catch! Three-thousand pounds. Forty miles an hour? That's not easy. You've got mad skills."
"That's, uh, that's all on youtube though, right?" Peter asked Tony quickly. "I mean, that's where you found that? 'Cause you know that's all fake. It's all done one a computer."
As Peter began a small rant explaining how nothing on the internet was even believable, Tony began looking around the room again. As he mumbled something to Peter about UFO's over Pheonix to make the boy think he was convinced, he grabbed a nearby baseball bat and poked at the ceiling.
Sure enough, out came tumbling a Spiderman suit. Just as Tony noted the article of clothing, Peter was leaping across the room to snatch the suit and toss it into a corner.
"Uh, that's, uhh..." Peter exhaled. Not knowing what else to say, he nodded uncomfortably.
"So, you're the spiderling," Tony announced, walking towards Peter. He immediately frowned at his own words. "Crime-fighting spider? Spider Boy?"
Peter let out a sigh. "Spiderman."
"Not in that onesie, you're not," Tony assured him.
"It's not a onsie," Peter said defensively. He moved to walk past Tony so he had ample room to pace. "I can't believe this," He muttered. "I was having a really good day today, Mister Stark. Didn't miss my train, I hung out with a friend that I, well I dunno exactly how I feel but it was nice and it was the most normal I've felt in forever."
Tony tried his best not to roll his eyes. "Who else knows? Anybody?" Tony asked, desperate to get back on subject.
Peter shook his head. "Nobody."
"Not even your special friend," Tony murmured. He leaned down to pick up the suit as Peter cringed and shook his head. "What about your unusually attractive aunt?" Tony questioned next.
"No, no. No!" Peter answered quickly. He pointed in the direction of his locked door. "If she knew she would freak out. And when she freaks out I freak out..." Peter trailed off as he looked down at his desk of electronics. As he normally did when he was uncomfortable, he reached out to find something to tinker with.
"You know what I think is really cool?" Tony asked. He tossed a vile over to Peter, who caught the glass without even looking up. "The webbing. Tensile strength is off the charts. Who manufactured that."
"I did," Peter explained. He tossed the vile to his bed.
"Climbing walls? How are you doing that?" Tony questioned next.
Peter, who had looked like he was about to answer, was distracted by a buzzing in his pocket. Tony frowned as the teenage boy looked down at his phone and seemingly smiled at a text.
"Let me guess, this is the friend you mentioned earlier?" Tony asked exasperatedly. It was yet another rhetorical question, but he had a feeling Peter wasn't going to get that.
Sure enough, Peter looked up somewhat dazed and trying to fight back a grin.
"Huh?" Peter asked. Before Tony could answer, Peter's brain caught up to the question it had been asked. "Oh, um, yeah. Sorry. Just wanted to check in that I got home safely and thanking me for hanging out. Which... you don't care. Sorry.'
Tony let out a sigh before trying to recollect his thoughts. When he had come to recruit an extra pair of hands to go to Germany, he had not prepared himself for the possibility for dealing with a somewhat lovesick teenage boy. In fact, he didn't think there was anything that could've prepared him for this ordeal.
Tony took a deep breathe, trying to figure out how to navigate the topic. He needed to steer Peter back to talking about his powers, because once he understood that he could understand what he could best be used for. And then maybe, just maybe, Tony will indulge him and let him talk about his crush. Or, more likely, he will stick Happy with him if this fellow teenager seems like they are about to resurface.
Either way, getting to Germany to find Captain America was the number one priority.
oliver is the softest and most nonconfrontational bean until it comes to chess, and then he will obliterate anyone and every one. i'm so proud of my son. if you want to learn more about him you can check out his profile in my oc book!! I just added it!!
also real talk, what should oliver and peter's ship name?? i straight up cannot decided lol.
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