Chapter Text
“Show business,” [Beck] said. “The art of illusion. The business of fooling our eyes and our hearts, presenting us with life- the way that it’s not.”
- Adam-Troy Castro, The Gathering of the Sinister Six
*
This all begins with a flash of light in a Stark Industries lobby, nearly two weeks to the day that Spider-Man was outed and Mysterio’s death was publicized.
It starts with an electric crackling brightness, and the gleam of light off of rounded glass. The sunlight shimmering off of bronze clasps at the shoulders, the silky green of the shirt, the strange darker green of the segmented parts covering the arms. It almost looks like tubing of some sort, slick and metallic. A thick purple cape brushes around the figure’s heels, boots the same bronze as their gloves and clasps.
In one hand is some kind of box that’s outright sparking now, blue and strange. The neon brightness of it is a stark contrast against the far more muted tones of the suit.
It’s Mysterio yet not as the figure raises their hands, green fog already swirling around their feet. “Haha! Tis I, Mysterio!” They begin, and there’s an odd kind of metallic ring to their voice. Something distorted, and off. “Quake with fear, for I am here, you cowering fools! No man is match for my-”
And that’s right about when one of the security guards manages to taser the figure, catching them in the back.
They crumple up like a house of cards almost immediately, and instead of shattering the helmet just… makes a hollow kind of thunk against the tile. A beat of silence passes, before the visitors continue going on their way and security manages to drag this so-called Mysterio into one of the elevators after one of them secures the sparking box. It’d almost be funny, if the person didn’t weigh a goddamn ton as dead weight, and hadn’t interrupted a perfectly fine day. This is some grade-A bullshit, as one of the guards would put it.
And it only goes further downhill from there.
*
It isn’t hard to find the latches connecting the helmet to the figure’s shoulders, and get the plastic fishbowl off to reveal a very average looking white man. Dark slightly curling hair that’s starting to thin at the forehead, a bit of stubble along the jaw. It isn’t hard to pull off the cape, either when there’s just… some kind of heavy-duty Velcro keeping it on in the first place, the clasps at the shoulders decorative rather than functional. One of the guards, Hughes, shares a look with the other, Martinez, and a thought comes through loud and clear:
Is this guy serious?
Entering Stark Industries in the most bombastic manner, and you use Velcro to hold onto your cape? That’s… a whole new brand of something special that they’ve seen in their ten years with the company. Is this guy one of those messed-up cosplayers? Because either way he’s going to be hit with the mother of all trespassing and cease and desist letters after this, if not outright jail time.
The guy is already handcuffed as they rifle through his pockets, check him over for any weaponry. The scanners hadn’t picked anything up on the way down, but hell only knows what people have these days. There’s no refurbished Chitauri tech, no smart little gadgets or gizmos besides whatever the hell is in the boots and helmet that lit up the scanners like Christmas lights. One of those small plastic ID holders for a lanyard, funnily enough, is shoved into an inside pocket and contains only three things.
- A folded-up printout of some kind of pseudo-work order, nearly incomprehensible chicken scratch at a glance. The Oscorp logo is emblazoned at the top, but there’s something… wrong about it. Hughes flattens it out carefully and sets it aside for bagging, making a quick note that it’s something of interest. Could be worth borrowing one of the document scanners and seeing if the built-in recognition program could pick up what they couldn’t at a glance.
- A legit-looking insurance certificate for yet another Oscorp related thing, and something that sounds absolutely bullshit at that: security-testing for teleporting threat, issued to Crystal Ball Effects as a contractor. One hand, it’d explain the guy popping out of nowhere. Other hand, a teleporting threat? Come on. This guy wasn’t even a poor man’s Doctor Strange. Martinez holds the paper up to the light, but… huh. It has a watermark for the New York authority, but just like the Oscorp logo there’s something off about it. Uneasily, Martinez sets it down next to the print-out.
- Some work ID from Crystal Ball Effects with the same guy in the Mysterio suit grinning at the camera, except with wire-frame glasses on and a dark purple dress shirt. The name underneath ‘Manager’ is…oh, come on. Quentin Beck, in plain black letters. The logo is some kind of crystal ball with an all-too-familiar eye shape in the middle.
Martinez lifts the ID up in a gloved hand, and mouths ‘what the fuck’ with a look of open confusion. All Hughes can do is shrug, just as confused, and waggle the evidence bag in the direction of the ID card. It plops in easily, and that’s all she wrote. Just time to bag the other ones up, and wait for this guy to finally wake up. Hell, maybe they’d even get some answers sooner rather than later.
So, they settle in for the wait.
They’re eventually interrupted, though, by Harold Hogan himself, which is just… boggling. Hughes had vaguely worked with him a few times before the guy got shifted over into asset management, thought he was a solid guy, and with the Blip-
Well, nobody asked why Hogan had come back on as head of security. Mrs. Potts had welcomed him back with open arms, and he tended to leave small fish like this to plain old security. Having him step in like this-
Martinez casts a look at the guy still slumped in the chair, this supposed Quentin Beck, and the unease sinks in her gut like a stone. Could it actually be-?
Then their radios are buzzing, a notification that Hogan will be taking over momentarily, and- well. They clear out of there, making sure to take the evidence bags along with. Hogan can figure out what to do with them, if he wants to take over so badly.
*
Quentin wakes up with a pounding headache, which is genuinely just his luck. Some new security guard not getting the memo and deciding to taze first and ask questions later, ugh. Oscorp has really started to lose its touch without the actual Osborns around, which is saying something considering the last few years.
He lifts up a hand preemptively to block out the light, only to come up short with a harsh rattling sound. Oh, great, just wonderful, now the cops are involved if the handcuffs mean anything. It takes everything he has not to outright groan as he finally opens his eyes, squinting in the harsh light. It’s… weirdly bright, actually?
Fluorescent strip lights, maybe, instead of the average bulbs. And instead of the usual brick you’d expect out of a police station, it’s all immaculate white paint and gleaming metal…
Jesus Christ. It might not be the cops, cause this guy looks like a fed through and through. Suit, relatively cleanly trimmed beard, the same kind of hard-eyed look as the guys who came sniffing around for Bennie after Dr. Octavius had presumably passed. “I… can I get my one phone call?” Quentin asks, focused on keeping his tone as bland as possible. No New York edge, no Illinois twist he’d picked up from his partner. Just plain ole Midwestern neutrality, thank you very much. “Call my lawyer, or something?”
“Quentin Beck, huh?” the guy says instead, steamrolling right over his reply, and Quentin feels a twitch of irritation at the knowing look on this guy’s face. “Do you know me?”
“What-? Look, man, I don’t know you from Adam here,” Quentin replies, not even bothering to try and hide his confusion as his brow furrows. His father’s old turn of phrase is sour on his tongue, but accurate: he doesn’t know this man at all, wouldn’t even give him a second glance on the street. “Did Jones put you up to this? I said I was sorry for flipping the desk last time, it’s a hazard of-“
The guy bulldozes right over him again with a loud clearing of the throat, pulling something out of his jacket that looks like a thing Audrey in Digital Effects uses. A tablet but instead of it being bulky and black, about the size of a VHS, it’s strangely thin. Razor thin, even, with a clear segment in the middle and text that looks blurred from the backside, like something out of a sci-fi flick.
Quentin doesn’t bother trying to hide how he shifts slightly in place, unnerved by the sight.
“Quentin Beck, born June 21st of 1985 in New Haven, Ohio, with family up in Huron. Somehow you managed to get a scholarship for MIT, which is a marvel considering your track record of behavior in school. Temperamental outbursts, skipping classes…” The guy lets out a low whistle, and Quentin’s jaw tenses up at the sound, fingers curling tightly around the chain between his wrists. Out of everything so far, the only thing that’s wrong is the year, and that…
It makes his stomach twist in on itself, something sour sitting at the bottom of it now. He doesn’t speak though, biting the inside of his cheek instead. Must be a hell of a file, if it’s got his birth year off by nine years. If this dick wants to reduce him to that file. though, he can learn the mistakes himself the hard way.
“Oh, you graduated from MIT with honors in ‘08.” The guy continues nonchalantly, and oh, somebody has got to be messing with him now. The words ‘graduated from MIT’ make the back of Quentin’s neck itch uncomfortably as his shoulders roll forward a little. Jesus, Jones must really be going for the jugular with that hunk of dialogue.
“Musta had to put in plenty of elbow grease for that, huh? Studied your little heart out to finally get anywhere, and wrote your dissertation based on the theoretical utilization of hard-light programs in educational settings. Fancy, some real ambitious stuff here.” The fed taps a finger against the screen, as if making a point, and okay, what?
“Hard-light programs,” Quentin repeats dubiously, trying to keep his tone bland but failing miserably. He leans forward despite himself, unable to strangle the urge to yank this guy around a little the same way he’s being yanked around. “What kind of engineering track is that goose egg for? Bradbury 101, Gibson 210? Next you’ll be telling me I’m secretly a robot, Jesus Christ.”
And, okay, look, Quentin will be honest: he has thought about getting robot doubles set up for the just-in-case scenario of Spider-Man finally catching on to the effects shop. One misplaced piece of equipment from an old shoot, one mask torn off at the wrong time-
Bennie and Nancy were good at their work, but not that good. Quentin trusted his husband and sister with his life, and if they said they couldn’t pull it off yet he believed them. Robotic animals though, they could do those just fine within reason.
“Are you sure you aren’t one?” the man asks, nay, drawls as he raises a brow in question, and Quentin can’t help but crack up. It’s a nasally sort of laughter, pulled out of him by sheer surprise, but Jesus Christ this fed. Messing up his birthday, saying he graduated from MIT with honors, and trying to make him paranoid about a thing he’d outright mocked? This was looking more like baby’s first cape case than a genuine interrogation, unless they were trying to throw a massive curve-ball his way to unsteady him.
Quentin genuinely doubted they were smart enough to pull that off, though. Mysterio, while his very darling costumed persona, was a master of trickery just as much as he was, and oh, how the holes in this plot just keep getting bigger. He could drive a truck through it already.
Quentin smiles at the fed in a way that others tend to call charming, but his staff would recognize as his ‘angelic manager’ expression. The second someone moaned and complained about the work of his team he’d swoop in, listen to all of the complaints, and proceed to shut them down without his expression slipping even once. Buddy, he’s had to wrangle one of Disney’s directorial darlings after they yelled at Suzy and her fellow costumers for not making changes that the dick had been a month late on submitting said changes for.
A fed? Oh, he’s just absolutely quaking in his fog boots.
“I think,” Quentin begins, keeping his voice steadily neutral again, “that if I was a robot, I would have torn out of this place already. If you were one, you would have already broken something to prove a point.” He taps his knuckles against the metal table to emphasize those words, tempting fate, but he’s dealt with broken fingers already in his life. Doing it again if it meant having something to sling at this guy later to drag him in the mud?
Worth it.
The guy gives him a frankly magnificent stink-eye, and if they weren’t at odds with each other, Quentin would compliment it. He just keeps his smile plastered on though, not wavering an inch even when the guy leans in closer as well. “If I could, I’d snap you like a twig for what you did to the kid.” He says bluntly, “But we have a funny little thing around here called due process, even if people like you don’t deserve it.”
“…'People like me'?” Quentin quotes, any sense of amusement or goodwill fading fast now as his smile drops from his face. He manages to wrangle the handcuff chain enough to be able to prop his chin on a fist, looking at the fed intently now. “Tell me, what sort of people am I, then? And if this is some kinda ‘think of the children’ clutching your pearls deal, direct your complaints to my business partner.” Quentin continues coldly, because he’s heard variants of that phrasing plenty of times before.
People tended to think his sister would be easier to deal with sometimes because he was an ‘overgrown boy playing with toys and makeup’. Nancy would rip this guy’s head off a lot neater than he ever would.
The other man laughs incredulously, and the only thing that keeps Quentin from trying to throw himself at him is the cold metal around his wrists.
“Oh, god, you’re really trying to sell this other universe crap, aren’t you?” the fed says, and there’s a strange kind of bitterness underlying the disbelief. “First that letterhead and the new face, and now this! ‘Business partner’?” The way he says it sounds like a curse, making Quentin’s hackles raise even further. “As-if! Nobody in their right mind would work with a murderer like you.” The fed spits out the last bit with a genuine look of disgust, and-
Jesus Christ, there is so much to unpack here. Quentin feels like he walked onto the set of the wrong movie, all his lines jumbled up in a language he can’t even read. Seems like his headache isn’t going away any time soon.
“…Okay, wind that back.” Quentin begins, leaning back in his chair and doing a vague rewind motion with his hands. “First off, murderer? Second, new face? I’ve had this one for almost forty years, I think I’d know if it’d changed.” He casts a quick look over the fed’s shoulder, looking directly at what has to be two-way glass. “…Shit, is that a new freckle?” He pulls a ridiculous grimace, expression frog-like, and the fed makes a strange choked, sputtering sound.
“And, hey! Other universes are perfectly fine background fodder! Having just some random hack check your shit is less exciting than,” Quentin continues to barrel along while the fed glares daggers at him, clearing his throat so he can adopt his ‘hammy villain’ voice, “Mysterio! Inter-dimensional traveler and trickster.” He drops the voice as quickly as he had adopted it. “They want a performance; I’ll give it to ‘em. But, again, murder?” He snorts, and drums his fingers on the table-top. His wedding band clicks against the metal. If they trashed his gloves, he’s going to sue. “Coverage is only good for light property damage. I’m not risking an increase in premium costs.”
The fed’s face gets all pinched at that, as if he’s sucking on a lemon. “Oh my god, you can’t even do insurance fraud like a normal person. You have to make it an act.” He pinches the bridge of his nose as if trying to stave off a headache, and Quentin feels a satisfying sting of delight even if it’s tempered by a lingering sense of unease sitting low in his stomach.
“Excuse you, Mister Fed,” Quentin begins, hoping his vague smarminess will distract the guy long enough to figure out what’s going on, “fraud’s a big word to be tossin’ around here. I mean, show business is all about fooling the eyes and the heart, but c’mon. I’m more of a…” He taps his ring against the table-top again, biting the inside of his cheek in thought as he surreptitiously checks the ceiling for cameras. “I’d say James Whale type, but you couldn’t pay me to direct.”
No obvious security cameras. Ugh. Sure, you could make that kinda thing smaller these days, but…
He looks back to the guy, doing his best to smile charmingly again. It feels like too many teeth anyways. “When you meet enough of ‘em, the shine wears off. Maybe I’m more of a Vincent Price.” He adopts a thoughtful expression, lifting a hand up to rest underneath his chin like that Watson woman in a magazine ad, shelling out for perfumes or jewelry or whatever. “Whaddya think, am I dashing enough?” Quentin asks, his tone lofty just to needle the guy a bit.
Piss somebody off enough, and they’ll be blinded by their own anger. If he’s lucky, it’ll buy him more time for the others to swing in and bail him out. If not…
Well, again: He wouldn’t object to using any injuries as some very nice leverage to get this guy thrown out of his job. Quentin can cry and rage with the best of them, given the right motivation.
“I think you’re a regular Norman Bates,” the fed says dryly, and before Quentin can even reply with something like If you think that’s insulting, you ain’t seen Anthony Perkins, the guy just keeps going on. “Will you quit it already? You’ve already done this sob story before, this variant isn’t gonna cut it. What’s next, a weepy abandonment? Another dead spouse?”
The man’s tone is cutting, pointed in a way that makes Quentin want to lash out again, but-
That last bit stops him dead, his smile dropping once more. Leaves a gross, slimy kind of feeling rolling around in his stomach. “...Next is my phone call, to my very much alive husband, unless you want a lawsuit.” Quentin replies after a moment, mind gnawing on those words still. Treating it like a dog with a goddamn bone, unable to let it go as his stomach twists into a knot. “I’m done. I’ve sat through you insulting me, calling me a murderer, and now this. I know my rights.”
If his voice wavers a little on that last part, betraying him, he can’t do anything about it now. Even slamming one of his hands down onto the table to make a point doesn’t make him feel strong. All it does is make his ring press harder into his hand and that sick feeling rise a little further in his chest, the same way it had when-
(A phone call in the middle of the day. Bennie’s voice shaking, Something’s gone wrong-)
“I want my phone call.” Quentin repeats, and wants to rip out his own teeth in embarrassment for exposing his underbelly so easily like this. The chill of the room is starting to make his fingers go numb where they’re pressed to the metal.
The guy has a look of distaste again, that lemon-sucking expression, but says “Cough it up, then. What’s the number, hotshot?” He taps at the sci-fi tablet again, the vague word-scribbles changing to what looks like a number keypad in an unsettling blink.
Quentin rattles off the shop’s number first, because that’s one of their rules: two on the job, and two off. The second Quentin got picked up, Suzy would have been brought in to see what’s going on. Bennie and Nancy would be running the shop, and hearing either of them would be a gift right now. A reassurance that this fed could cram it, and-
“The number you have called cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up, and try your call again.” The robotic voice is surprisingly clear coming from the tablet-thing, the same voice Quentin’s heard on automated phone menus and the like while playing phone-tag. The hair on the back of his neck prickles uncomfortably.
“Got another one to try?” the fed asks, an edge of something in his voice, and the smugness to his expression makes Quentin want to clean his goddamn clock. “Normally I’d call that ‘one and done’, but I’m feelin’ kind today.”
“Oh sugar, I’m touched. Such a polite gentleman, ain’t you? Be anybody’s honor to get saddled with you for a spell.” Quentin replies in his driest Southern debutante, dead-eyed and wondering how easy it’d be to dislocate his thumb to slip out of the cuffs. As long as he got one hand free, he’d be able to reach the guy, and see if he had something else besides that tablet-
The fed had to have some kind of radio or phone on him, right? And it wouldn’t be too hard to use with his good hand. Sure, Nancy would give him shit for incapacitating himself, but she once blew herself up a little to get Spider-Man off her back. She couldn’t judge him for thinking seriously about doing this.
“Flattery won’t get you anywhere, I’m taken,” the fed says just as dryly, but his cheeks do color lightly. Quentin notes it with a detached sort of interest, already having a good inkling of where to hit as he taps his ring on the table once more. The repetitive motion and slight click of metal against metal helps center his thoughts.
“How sweet, a little apple pie life for somebody like you.” Quentin replies as saccharine as he can manage, flinging some of the fed’s earlier words in his face as he surreptitiously tests the give of the cuffs again.
The cold metal is starting to get past the slight padding of his suit, and he isn’t sure how long he’s got before his hands are too numb to pull anything off successfully. “What is it, a cute little brownstone decked out in mid-century modern? An apartment out in-” Jesus, they had to still be in NYC, right? “-Queens? Brooklyn? If Manhattan’s out of my price range, it’s a hundred percent out of yours.”
The way the fed is turning red now should be a warning, but at this point, Quentin can’t bring himself to care. God, it’s so disappointing that a cheap shot about the wallet and the presumed family is enough to make him react. Quentin keeps going, digging his own grave with a grim, cold kind of determination he hasn’t felt in years.
“Ah, an apartment then. Lemme guess, I ‘spoiled’ the kid’s mind. Too much violence and, bless your little heart, I’m just right here and an easy target. Sound about right?” He doesn’t bother with any ‘angelic manager’ bullshit this time, or plaster on an expression to lessen some of the bite. All Quentin does is cluck his tongue in disappointment, a habit he picked up from his husband as he spreads his hands out flat on the tabletop. Here are my cards, wanna call it a bluff? “Kids these days, they don’t-”
Before he can even say ‘know the difference between what’s real and what’s fake’, the fed decks him hard enough that something pops as his head snaps to the side. It’s a shocked, wounded animalistic sound that slips out of him as he tries to push himself away from the table but the handcuff chain draws him up short, nails catching on nothing, not even a goddamn scratch in the polished metal-
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” the other man snaps, the anger on his face clear even as Quentin’s eyes water enough to make his contacts damn near useless. The taste of blood in his mouth is familiar, but that doesn’t mean he likes it as he reaches up tentatively to check at his jaw and mouth. No torn skin, no loose teeth, but goddamnit he bit something-
“Do you have all day?” Quentin replies automatically, garbled as it feels around the blood in his mouth because what the fuck, Mr. Fed. He spits out some of it onto the table top, taking a horrible sort of glee from the stain left on that perfect surface. It’s the little things, right? he thinks, grinning wildly if only to keep hysterical laughter from escaping instead. “Give me my last phone call, and I won’t have your job on a platter for assault.”
“You’re in no place to demand anything from me,” the guy says lowly, pointing at him rather aggressively. There’s a flash of thought about trying to bite, but Quentin shoves it down and smothers it. He doesn’t know where this fed has been. “Absolutely none, after all the shit you’ve pulled!”
“If you don’t,” Quentin begins, a low sort of purr to rub salt in the wound, “I’ll scream. It’s such a bad look, someone like you beatin’ on somebody like me. Thought you was a gentleman.” Quentin tsks again, even if the fact he’s staying back in the chair belies his reluctance to get too close to the other man again. “People like me got protections these days.”
And, sure, this guy could drop him into some bleak little hole for mouthing off, but fuck him. If Quentin can’t use rules and societal norms to his advantage, what can he use?
The expression on the fed’s face somehow darkens further, but this is… manageable. Something Quentin can work with. You don’t win accolades working in the horror business, or by rubbing shoulders with the likes of the Tinkerer, or even Kingpin one very strange day.
He can play this guy like a fiddle. All he needs is another crack in that foundation. Another punch, another injury, to use as leverage. Quentin’s played wounded bird with a quick-change before, this won’t be too different. He smiles at the guy, playing innocent for all he’s worth, and can feel his lip finally split when it pulls too wide.
Ugh. Just another thing he’ll have to worry about later. He’ll work with this.
“...If you try anything, I’ll put you into the ground,” the fed eventually grinds out, looking like he’s swallowed another lemon. Quentin risks a small snort, a dismissive shrug, and rattles off the next number once the fed’s tablet does that weird num-pad switch again. A part of him wants to swipe it somehow so Bennie can peel it apart later. Another part of him just wants to see it smash against the table.
But there’s no immediate connection error. Just an actual dial tone for five seconds, ten, and Quentin’s heart creeps up in his throat the longer it draws out, because-
No, no, there’s no way this would be some kind of long con thing with Oscorp. No way they’d stoop to working alongside the authorities to put the shop into the ground, considering the pre-existing skeletons in their closet, the ones Quentin is more than delighted to pull into light if they’re doing this, they can’t do this to them-
It goes to voicemail, and instead of his husband’s voice loosening his shoulders, all it does is make him tense up. The drawl is wrong, the cadence a little too slow. “You’ve reached Benjamin Quirke. I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message and your number, and I’ll get back to you later.” And that goddamn beep afterwards, mocking him-
Quentin’s fingers curl tightly in the chain between the cuffs, hard enough to leave impressions behind. The cold metal of the table bites into his skin. Something sour and heavy curls in his throat, and it’s hard to swallow past it. The fed looks at him, something mocking in the expression. Some goodie-goodie ‘give a shit’ act that makes Quentin want to scream, and smash the other man’s face into the table. Makes him want to bite, claw, see blood because this is wrong, something is wrong-
“You gonna leave a message, wiseguy, or was it another wrong number?” the fed asks, unable to keep a bit of smugness out of his voice. An unsaid I called your bluff and won, and Quentin-
He snaps.
It’s a bad habit, his hamartia, the fatal flaw that undoes everything, he can admit that freely. But his sister is gone, her girlfriend is gone, and his husband- his husband is just as gone too, because that wasn’t his voice. That wasn’t Bennie with his Chicago snappiness and careful hands, it wasn’t Benjamin Beck-
(Quirke handwritten on a piece of paper, taped to the back of a folding chair. That first glimpse of him in profile on a student film set, blond hair, warm eyes, the set of his cheekbones that Quentin had to figure out how to make zombie-hollow, how to twist and shape with latex, spirit gum, and cheap Halloween makeup-)
“Screw you. What game are you playing at here?” Quentin demands, voice cool and sharp. “That isn’t him.” When he slams his hands into the table, cuffs and all, the fed flinches. It’s a sick kind of thrill that leaves him grinning, all teeth, a cornered animal ready to bite. “I know my husband, and that isn’t- that’s not him, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but that’s not Bennie-”
And that’s when three things happen in quick succession:
The room goes dark, only for some generator to kick in. The lights are a sickly blue-white that lend an undead edge to the fed’s face, eyes sharp and dangerous. The fed’s phone also blares some kind of alarm, and then-
A voice from speakers in the ceiling, probably. Maybe from the phone itself. The Irish twist is new at least, Quentin doesn’t get to hear a lot of those casually. It’s the small things. “Boss, someone took a potshot with an EMP. Localized, somehow got past me, I don’t-”
The fed’s eyes drop to his tablet-phone then, some kind of video pulled up on it, those same strange lights vaguely visible even from behind. Or- maybe the Irish person pulled it up at a distance? Unknown. Quentin does the math. So bog-standard building security, a probable-fed, now some Irish tech wiz that can hack into phones-
Not the worst he’s ever had to work with. Not the best, either. Makes him wish his own tech wizards were here, his shop, his family-
Safety net. Jumping off the edge of a cliff knowing everything was coordinated, there was a stunt bag underneath, and it’s been fucking deflated because Oscorp is a gang of grudge-holding assholes who want him out of the way, the last loose end clipped if they’d already-
If-
(Bennie at the loft lab, just there a few hours previously to help patch something up. Dr. Octavius, Call me Otto, tall, polite, dead. The way Kingpin dropped Nancy’s name casually, with that too easy smile, assured they’ll take the job. Osborn’s name in the newspapers, and Quentin smashing the original sculpt because he can’t- it’s evidence, and he can’t-)
“-ey, hey! I’m talking to you!” It takes everything for Quentin to drag his eyes from a point over the fed’s shoulder to the fed’s face, jaw tensed, fingers pressing into the table. Everything feels like it’s behind a pane of glass as the fed snaps his fingers far too close. The urge to bite them is nearly overwhelming. “You tell me, right now, did you orchestrate this? What lackey did you drag into this, I swear to god I’ll put you six feet under if you’re doing this to mess with the kid again-”
The fed does an aggravated swiping motion across his phone-tablet-whatever, and the video just- snaps into place on the wall. Some kind of hidden projector, then, image oddly tinged blue. The same lobby as earlier. More security surrounding some dark figure, that harsh blue-white light washing them out, and-
It takes Quentin a moment to realize what he’s looking at, and then all he can do is laugh.
It’s a wild sound that’s ripped out of him, half-disbelief and half something else. Something he could shriek with if he didn’t believe the guy would try to pull something, because he knows the slant of those shoulders. Knows how that dark leather jacket looks in their closet next to his denim one, how they got it on one of their second-hand runs. Knows those gloves, mechanics ones, and how they’re a size too big so they could fit makeshift projectors into the palms, hide the smoke tubes underneath the wrist cuffs, get the whole contained rig to fit along the spine in conjunction with that, maximize space while streamlining their design-
His husband snarls on the screen, snaps “I want him back,” with a flash of what looks like green fire in his palm, words cracking through the air like stones, and Quentin-
All Quentin can do is laugh with the taste of blood in his mouth, because there’s his safety net. There are the arms that will always catch him, the man who wasn’t on the other end of that goddamn phone, and if his grin at the fed is too toothy and wide, looks more like a baring of teeth than anything else-
Well.
He can play with the best of them.
“Eat. Shit.” Quentin enunciates as clearly as he can, and when that next punch comes? He knows he’s won already.