Till I Met You: A Peter Parker Fanfiction

Chapter Føūrtëën

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"Freedom station? What's that?" Harry asks as we drive past the sign, parking as close to the entrance as we can.

"It's like 'Dave and Buster's'," I tell him, unbuckling my seatbelt.

"But cheaper," Clint adds before getting out of the car.

The rest of us get out of the car and head inside. "Woah," Harry says as we enter.

"I used to go here all the time as a kid, but this one looks a lot bigger than the one I remember," I say to Tony as he leads us to a token machine.

"That's because this one used to be smaller," he pauses, "'regular sized'," he says with finger quotes. "But they just got done remodeling it," he tells me.

I nod in acknowledgement and Tony puts his credit card in the machine. He pushes a few buttons and the machine starts spitting out tokens into a small tray outside of the machine.

I see Harry fiddling with his sweatshirt sleeves and I ask him, "What do you plan on doing first?"

He looks at me and says, "I kinda want to learn skiball. You think you can teach me?"

I get excited and say, "Of course I can. I love that game! That's always my favorite one to play."

He smiles and the sound of the coins stopping grabs our attention. Clint starts counting them out, dividing them into four piles and Tony starts talking.

"Okay. So, it's currently a little past one twenty. I think everyone gets about seventy-five tokens. Spend them wisely, have fun, and don't do anything illegal. Save that energy for later."

"What?" Harry whispers to me, confused.

"Don't worry," I tell him. "I think he's joking."

"He's not," Clint says. I make eye contact with Tony and he gives me a quick wink.

Harry gives me an anxious look and I give him a gentle smile.

"Okay, take your tokens," Tony says. Him and Clint grab their piles and run off in a direction.

"Have fun," Clint says quickly, before they're out of sight.

"Come on. Let's go," I say, grabbing Harry's wrist, leading him to skiball.

"Okay. So, I click this button, right?" he asks.

"Yep. Go for it," I tell him.

He presses the button and the machine releases the ski balls. "Okay. Now I grab one?" he asks.

"Yep," I tell him.

"Okay, how do I throw it?" he asks.

I gently take the ball from his hard and explain, "You just act like you're bowling," as I demonstrate without actually throwing the ball.

I hand him the ball and he says, "So, like this?" as he throws it up too high, hitting the safety glass instead of it going in through the bottom.

I can't help but laugh. He shoots me a look and I put my hands up, mockingly, in defense. "I'm sorry," I say. "Try again if you'd like," I tell him, gesturing to the machine as if I were gesturing royalty to a doorway, like they do in the movies.

He mocks my words and gestures and grabs the ball he failed to throw correctly from off the ground. He rolls it this time and it goes in through the bottom. He yells, "Ha!" and turns to me. "Suck it," he says, throwing his hands down, thrusting into the air.

He's too busy celebrating his victory to see me blush momentarily. "Good job, Princess! You made it in the 'ten points' hole," I say jokingly, as if I'm a father, proud of my daughter.

He rolls his eyes and smiles before grabbing another ball to continue.

After a few times of taking turns on skiball, Harry and I wander off to find a new game.

"Ooh, this one," I say, leading Harry over to a two player space shooting game.

My message ringtone goes off and I look to see a message from Tony.

• SMS/Text Message/Incoming/From: Tony •
[Hey. I forgot to mention, text me when you guys are done. Clint and I are both about half way out of tokens. Pass the news to your boyfriend.]

I smile and heat rises in my cheeks. I pass the "news" to Harry and we put coins in the machine.

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