Peturi Makes My Heart Go WHOOSHHHHH - Tumblr Posts

He meets her in a lab.

Duh.

Except, it’s not her lab, it’s Tony’s, and he thinks - he’s pretty sure that that’s something she’s complaining to her brother about as they stand in the middle of the wide, open room, surrounded by suits and gadgets and a ridiculous amount of Iron Man prints hung on the walls.

Not that he actually knows what she’s saying, because she’s talking in a language he doesn’t understand, but it’s - beautiful, and the syllables roll off of her tongue with a sort of grace he didn’t think was possible for words to even have, and her voice is lilting and so happy, and he thinks it maybe short-circuits his brain a little.

He runs into the edge of a table. And knocks something off of it in a loud clatter.

“Smooth,” Tony says under his breath, patting Peter’s shoulder as he walks by, and Peter sort of cringes, as usual, because when is his life not an ongoing comedy of errors?

But, she’s laughing, and there’s not an ounce of malice behind it. She’s laughing, her shoulders shaking, her eyes bright and her perfect, pearly teeth bared, and he thinks his ears actually perk up at the sound of her voice carrying into the air. And the twinge of embarrassment that he’s expecting to follow - just doesn’t.

He decides that he really, really likes her laugh. And if he can manage to string the words together, maybe he’ll get around to telling her.

She calls Tony’s suits primitive. To his face.

Peter laughs.

Her brother chuckles, hands folded behind the small of his back, poised and like, ridiculously regal or something. They both are. Even though she’s sort of leaned back against the table with her arms crossed, her chin is held high, her shoulders straight, and he’s pretty sure that kind of self-possession on anyone else would be sniffed out in an instant.

But she’s a genius and very well aware of it. He would know. Her country which is very not third-world and is actually probably a few dozen worlds ahead of theirs, is her country - breathed to life by her intellect and her innovation. His school has done nothing but dissect her blueprints and her ridiculously long list of technological achievements.

He and Ned have gone back and forth for three days now about what her best invention is.

Obviously Peter’s got a favorite. And she’s brought it with her.

“You want to give it a spin?” she asks, and it takes him decidedly too long to realize that she’s talking to him, and he just - blinks at her. Like an idiot. Her smile curls, soft and happy and twinged in amusement, and she just blinks back at him, waiting for an answer that he doesn’t have. Well. He has it. Good luck getting his brain to remember how to talk, though.

(He decides that he also really, really likes her smile.)

“Come on,” she says, apparently making up his mind for him, and she grabs her hover skateboard from where she’s propped it against the leg of the table, and she takes his hand and starts tugging him forward.

“Shuri.” Her brother sounds wary and amused and proud all at once. But mostly proud.

She waves her hand, dismissive. “It’s fine,” she promises Peter, tapping the side of the thing with her foot and turning it on, and he smiles way too widely because he’s about to use a hover skateboard.

She may be his favorite person on the planet.

“Don’t listen to him,” she says under her breath, a conspiring smile on her face as she leans in for him to hear, and her face is like - inches away from his, and he blinks, and blinks, and grins, and she sets her hands on his shoulders and starts shrugging him out of his backpack. “He dislocated his shoulder the first time he tried it, is all.”

Um.

“Dislocated?”

“Relax.” She gestures for him to step onto the board, so he does, and he heart trips just a little bit when she takes his hands and climbs onto it with him, turns him by his shoulders so that his back is to her. He isn’t so sure that this is a sensible way to learn how to ride a hover skateboard. But. He’s not complaining.

“Do you trust me?” she asks, and he looks over his shoulder to find her head tilted, lips curled, eyes twinkling. She smiles like she’s got the secrets to the world in the palm of her hands, and he laughs because he’s thinking that that’s not too far off, actually.

“Um. No?”

She beams. “Good.”

I have feelings about them and I blame @thoughtfulbearpanda