I am Laila Shaqura, a displaced person from northern Gaza to southern Gaza, specifically the city of Rafah.
In light of this ongoing aggression, there is no glimmer of hope except for you and your standing with us. I tell you the story of my mother and her fetus in this war.
In the midst of this devastation, the expectant mother faces countless challenges. She suffers from malnutrition due to a lack of healthy food, which exposes her and her fetus to multiple health risks. Due to the lack of adequate health care and weak immunity, this led to her contracting hepatitis, anemia, intestinal diseases, and preeclampsia.
In addition, the psychological pressure resulting from war and displacement increases her suffering. The constant concern for the safety of the family and the fear of the sound of the continuing violent bombing tonight led to high blood pressure, imbalance in movement, and fainting this morning. It was a very bad morning.
Despite the sound of cannons, the sound of bullets, the bombing, the fear and anxiety, a new life continues to form inside the mother’s womb. My mother held me with hope for the future, but the war stole from her the ability to dream.
Not only did she carry a fetus, but she also carried the burdens and pain of war.
The pain of her pregnancy increases with the weight of the war and its sorrows. She carried life in her belly and the war destroys life around her. We sometimes wonder,
Will this expected child live in such a broken world?
At this moment, I wonder if the war will take this awaited child from us before he sees the light??!
Rafah is no longer safe, and the sounds of bombing intensify every night.
There is no time to escape death. My mother's health condition is deteriorating. There is no health care. We want her to stay alive.
This is about the lives of two people (a mother and her child).
Let us extend a helping hand to those who have lost everything.Your donation can give new lives and hope for the future.
Please help us by sharing the post on your page so that we can collect donations and get out of the war. You are our hope. I will be very grateful to you . ❤️🙏🏼
"this fundraiser is vetted by nabulsi, fallahifag, el-shab-hussein, ibtisams, sayruq"
You tell Spider-Man about your crush on an oblivious Peter Parker. Spider-Man recommends giving Peter a signal—a sign, so he knows what you want. [4k words, shy!fem!reader/tasm!peter]
˚₊𓆩༺ 🕷༻𓆪₊˚
The night is sweet and warm.
The sun is setting, and the bakery at the end of the street is closing. You watch from your rooftop as one of their workers smokes a cigarette out back, smoke drifting upward, a sight at odds with the smell of powdered sugar ever-present on the breeze.
You pull your knees up toward you and rub your face with a sleeve-covered hand. The hoodie Peter got you is soft to the touch, smelling of detergent against your nose. You stretch it over your knees and peer down at your socks, black with little flowers on the sole. Peter said they looked Minecraft-y, and then he asked if he could borrow a pair from the pack that you never saw again.
You like thinking of him wearing them. Maybe he thinks of you when he does, or maybe they’re rolled up and forgotten under his bed.
You loose a depressed sigh and lean back in your summer chair. There wasn’t much heat for sunbathing today, but the roof makes for a good place to rest in the agreeable evenings. Less so when it rains, which is often. You eye a grey cloud on the horizon but your reluctance to move nor gather your stuff leaves you frowning. You are trying quite hard to stay away from your apartment and, as a consequence, your evil phone. If you have your phone, you’ll check over and over if Peter has replied to your message, but he hasn’t. He doesn’t, really, reply very often.
The sun goes and goes, presenting a miserable dark sky with little in the way of stars, but there are lights in the distance, buildings and cars, all now flocked in artificial white. It’s no soft glow.
You lay down, sit back up, lay down again. You reach for your book and discard it with a sigh. You count the planes that fly overhead, searching for the next whenever the former flies from view. You think about Peter and his big hands, how hot they’d felt pressed to your waist. How brown his eyes are, how soft his lashes must be when touched.
The swip and thwip of spiderwebs being thrown catches your attention immediately. Spider-Man. He must be near—you’ve seen him in person more times than you can remember, and the sound puts you at ease, that delicate snap and stick as he ejects, lets his weight pull, then cuts the line. You lean over the edge of your chair to look for him–
And almost lose your nose as a suit of red and blue comes flying up toward your rooftop.
“Holy–”
“Fuck!” you say, throwing yourself backward with a shout. You bring your hand to your chest, pressing your heart back behind your ribs as the blur of colour comes to a stop on the edge of the roof.
“Sorry!” Spider-Man says. “Jesus, you didn’t see me? I’m kind of, you know, brightly coloured?”
“You came out of nowhere! You’re going sixty miles an hour!”
Spider-Man rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “I got places to be. Well, most of the time.”
You feel your heart jumping under your palm. Spider-Man shifts, his head tilting down as though he’s squinting at you assessingly.
“Hey, are you okay? I didn’t mean to scare you.”
You swallow your nerves. “Yeah. Yes, I’m fine. You scared me, s’all. Sorry for cussing. And yelling.”
He giggles brightly, plonking down on a creaky lawn chair, unperturbed by its green moss. “Yeah, you should be sorry, potty-mouth. Kiss your ma with that mouth?”
You laugh without thinking. “Sometimes.”
Spider-Man lays back in the chair and folds his arms over his stomach. It strikes you that you wouldn’t know if his eyes were open or closed, he looks relaxed, like he could doze. He looks tired, actually. He gives a long sigh and sits up some. Eyes open, decidedly.
“What are you doing up here?” he asks.
“Oh, I’m reading.”
“Reading what?”
You refuse to tell him that it’s a silky sweet romance with a besotted leading man and a beautiful girl, but struggle to think of a lie. The silence lingers until it’s awkward.
Finally, Spider-Man waves a hand at you, his voice genial as he says, “Keep your secrets.”
“Are you okay?” you ask.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
It might be more apt to ask him what it is that he’s doing up here. Surely Spider-Man has more important things to get too than sitting in a rinky-dink chair waiting to snap beneath any weight at all on your dreary rooftop in the cold weather. And more that he doesn’t know you, hasn’t ever spoken to you, no matter how many times you’ve seen him around the city.
“You look tired,” you say softly.
“I’m okay. But, hey, thanks for asking.”
“Sure.”
Awkward silence lingers again. Your blatant confusion as to his presence becomes obvious, and Spider-Man looks away, rubbing at his neck again with that same nervous hand.
“You looked lonely,” he says. “I guess I wondered if you wanted company, or– or a shoulder to cry on, or something. Anything.”
“Is that something you do often?”
“What good is looking after the neighbourhood if everybody in it goes home sad?” Spider-Man shrugs. “You don’t have to tell me anything, I’ll only sit here if that’s cool.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
You’re thinking about Peter again. It’s ridiculous, there’s a superhero on your roof and you’re thinking about Pete, but you can’t help it. Spider-Man reminds you of him, his height and build, even his voice, though Spider-Man is all bravado and gruffness where Peter’s a tiny bit shy. It’s what made becoming his friend possible—he’s shy and you’re worse, you’re immovable, you struggle to talk half the time. If Spider-Man hadn’t scared the fuck out of you scaling up the building, you wouldn’t have been able to open your mouth.
“I have a friend,” you say, buckling under the pressure of the quiet. “And I like him. And I don’t know what to do, so. That’s why I’m all messed up.”
“You don’t look messed up,” he says, bringing a hand to his chin to hold like he’s pondering something deeply. “You like someone? That’s a good thing.”
“I don’t think he likes me back.”
“That sucks, but– okay, sorry if this is weird, but you’re beautiful.” Spider-Man straightens in his chair. “Like, you’re really beautiful. And your voice is so nice, I’ve barely heard it and I already know it’s addictive.”
You laugh again without meaning to, a sputter of sound.
“You’re really pretty. If he doesn’t like you back, I’m sure you can find somebody else.”
“Thank you, Spider-Man, but I don’t want anybody else,” you say softly. “He’s really perfect. Have you ever–” You clear your throat, picking at a scagged thread on your pajama bottoms and avoiding his gaze. “It’s stupid.”
“I bet it’s not.”
Nobody’s ever called you beautiful before. Nobody’s ever…
Peter makes you feel beautiful. Tips your chin up with his pinky finger to get your eyes, takes a good look at you when he’s seeing you for the first time in a while, but he never says anything about it. He smiles and he's sweet, but he doesn’t call you beautiful.
“He makes me feel like the only person in the world,” you confess. “He’s not perfect, like I said. He lashes out, and he forgets all the time, he’s late constantly, but he always says sorry, and you know he really means it? He’s the most genuine person. And he’s–” pretty, you want to say, but you look sideways at Spider-Man and can’t bring yourself to say it. “I want more of him than he wants to give me, is all, but I don’t mind. I like being his friend.”
“You want more,” he says, as though turning the words over in his mouth.
“That’s the hard part.”
“That’s a nice love story.” He exhales slowly. “Lucky guy.”
“It’s not a love story,” you say, trying for happy acceptance and sounding weak.
“It could be. Have you told him how you feel? I don’t see how a guy could hear all that from a girl like you and not at least try to make it work?”
You bring your knee up and rest your nose on the fabric there. “I don’t usually talk to people like this. I find it really hard.”
“Oh, so I’m special?”
“You’re an exception.”
“You don’t talk to this guy?”
You press your face fully to your knee, thighs aching.
“Peter doesn’t answer the phone,” you mumble, hoping Spider-Man won’t hear you. “Can’t talk to him about anything. And what would I even say? I know we’ve been friends for years and all but I like you now, and I’m prepared to make things awkward between us forever?” You whine quietly. “Everything’s so hard.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
Spider-Man sounds flustered. Sounds like he took a long plunge from a tall skyscraper. You look up, perplexed, and he’s facing you completely still. It’s like he’s been turned to stone.
“You–” He swallows. “This Peter guy, you really like him?”
“I’ve had a crush on him since forever! And he never notices me, ever!” You scrub at your face. “I know it’s stupid and childish and high school, I know I should tell him how I feel even if there’s not the slightest chance that he’d ever want me back–”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
You squint at him. “You don’t know Peter.”
He laughs, still sounding all flustered and weak. “Okay.”
“Sorry. I guess I’m being really corny, huh?”
“No.” His voice is higher, too, almost like he’s holding his breath. “It’s not corny, it’s nice.”
“He’s really pretty,” you say, lamenting your sad lonely life without him. And now you’ve made a mess all over Spider-Man’s generous listening. If there was a chance he’d come to see you again, you have surely ruined it.
Spider-Man squeaks.
You stare at him. He’s pulling at the edge of his mask, fanning himself, giving you rare glimpses of his pale skin.
“Are you okay?” you ask.
“I’m sorry, I’m– super warm.”
“Oh. Is the suit hot?”
“It can be, yeah.”
“I guess I don’t know how to move on,” you say, breaking your gaze to stare at the gravelly rooftop instead. “He’s a great friend, and I didn't always want it so badly. I don’t know why… why it got so much worse lately. I see him and I wish he’d grab me and– and kiss me–” You bite your tongue. “Sorry, Spider-Man. That’s too much information."
“Kiss you how?” he asks.
You jolt a little. “Uh, you know. Just kiss me. A real kiss. He’s kind of affectionate, like, sometimes he tries to hold my hand before we cross the street, and one time he did kiss my cheek, but it was, like, a bit. I want a real kiss.”
“Huh.”
“It’s lame.”
“Love is kinda lame. Corny and cheesy,” Spider-Man sounds oddly pleased. “But maybe he’s got all these lame feelings too, and didn’t want to push you. You seem kinda shy. Maybe he’s worried he’s not reading things right. If you’re the kind of girl who’s easily flustered, how can he know if it’s because of him or not?”
“But what do I do?”
“I don’t know.”
You laugh. “Thanks.”
“I’m sorry, but whatever you do, if he gets the signal, he’ll reciprocate.”
“How do you know?”
“Girl as pretty as you?” Spider-Man’s voice goes soft as butter. “He’d be an idiot not to.”
—
By the time you’d made it back inside that night, Peter had replied to your message.
In fact, Peter had spammed you. Answered everything you said with detail and then launched into an apology for not responding, cos he had a bunch of stuff to do and Aunt May had the car and his phone died on the subway home, yada yada.
He then asked you out.
Alright, he didn’t. He asked if you wanted to come over and watch a movie the next day, which is pretty standard Peter friendship activity, but has you smiling like a loser at your phone.
Yes, you’d texted him, would love to, I’ll bring dinner?
Do not!!!! I will order in for us when you get here :D
You’re standing in your nicest skirt, a pretty pink thing that ends at the knees and, and your newest converse, which aren’t all that new. Your cardigan is charcoal wool and buttoned all the way up to fight the sudden chill. It’s later than you realised; you spent an hour panic-changing your clothes and lamenting your response Spider-Man’s advice. You have to give Peter a signal, right?
You are dressed very cute for a movie at his place, and you smell delicious. You’re gonna give him a wide-eyed flirty stare and who knows, maybe he’ll finally get the message.
Or he’ll wonder why you’re so overdressed.
The door finally opens, and Peter’s already smiling. His cheeks are red like spring cherries with a flush that crawls down his neck and probably stains his broad chest, too, his hair in order for once, his usual hoodie and jacket traded in for a plain white t-shirt that’s a little tight. Shows the indents of his chest, the lines of firm muscle there.
“Hey, beautiful,” he says.
You want him to call you beautiful forever. “Don’t,” you say instead. He should know better. You fluster at anything.
Peter stands aside to let you in. You’ve been to the Parker house a ton of times, but it’s noticeably clean, and dimly lit. There are a couple of candles lit in the living room and a bowl of popcorn stands on the coffee table, filling the room with the smells of toffee and butter.
“Was it cold?” he asks.
You nod hurriedly. “So cold. I thought it was supposed to be summer.”
“We’re not that lucky. Make yourself comfy, okay? I gotta grab your drink.”
You unlace your shoes and leave them by the doorway, padding into the living room in your socks. The couch is fitted with enough throw pillows to turn a three-seater into a two-seater. You’re forced to plop yourself somewhat in the middle, but you’re too tempted by the popcorn to worry. You sneak a piece while Peter’s gone, humming as the sweetness breaks out across your tongue.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he calls.
“For what?”
“For not answering you!” His voice echoes nearer, and he grimaces his way through the hall into the living room, two glasses of your favourite in his hands. “I’m awful. I’m an idiot, and I never check my phone. I’m sorry.”
“Peter, it’s fine.”
“You sure?”
Your eyes widen of their own accord as he sits down next to you, thigh to thigh, so close you can see the little bits of amber that swim in his irises, all that brown fragmented by shards of sunlight.
“I–” You nod oddly. “Am sure. Of course. I don’t expect you to drop everything–”
“I know you don’t, but still. I have my phone with me. I can answer you more, and you’re important to me. I get distracted.”
“Did you get all your errands done?”
“Sure.” He hands you your glass and puts his own on the coffee table. “Thanks. You’re an angel.”
“You’re not so bad,” you say.
You relax. Peter lets you choose the movie, and you feel warm sitting there pointing his remote at the TV, flicking unsurely through everything, but he’s Peter. You put on Cado Lake and hand him the remote, sure he’ll enjoy a sc-fi flick, and are instantly gratified when the movie hooks his attention. Not too much, though. He’s clear of mind enough to put the popcorn bowl in your lap and nip you with little questions. Who’s that again? Hey, she looks like May. Wow, you smell good, what is that?
You’re about an hour into the movie when Peter’s hand sews itself behind your back.
It’s warm, and big. His fingertips skate over the mall of your back until he’s found your side, where it curls, and he pulls you gently toward him. Your head drops into the space between his shoulder and head, the TV a colourful blur in front of you, your hand paused dead in the nearly empty popcorn like you’ve been frozen.
“Okay?” he murmurs.
“Yeah,” you say. You’re fine.
He’s warm. He’s solid beside you.
“You’re letting me eat all the popcorn…”
His laugh is a huff against your head. “I’ll make some more.”
“No.” You rest your cheek on his arm. Bliss flits through your entire body like a wave. “It’s okay. I won’t eat your share.”
“You do what you want,” he says, and you wonder if he’s relaxing beneath you, too, heat of his body seeping through his clothes and into your skin as his fingers rub gently into your side. “Get you a sack of popcorn, if you want me to.”
“This is nice.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. This is good.”
You struggle to pay attention to the movie for the next few minutes, wondering if this is really what you think. It’s not exactly friendship-level affection to wrap your arm around someone, is it? But Peter’s so lovely, it could be nothing. Why would it mean anything? What could Peter want with you? Of course you have a crush on him, he’s gorgeous, but Peter has no such motivations about you. Does he?
He’s quiet for a while. You think the movie might’ve really snagged him, but then he turns to you with a shy smile that brightens exponentially when you sneak a glance at him and end up smiling back.
He doesn’t look away.
It gets so hot you wish you could peel out of your cardigan, but you don’t wanna move and displace the moment.
“You’re missing the movie,” you whisper.
“I’ve missed so much of it,” he says.
“What?”
“Look.” He swallows. “Look, I don’t know if I’m– maybe I’m way off base here, and all, but,” —his hand climbs your side, folding over your, pulling you even closer— “maybe I’m not? I don’t know.”
“Off base about what?”
“You know.”
“Do I?” you ask. You can hardly speak above a breath, but Peter hears it.
Peter’s gaze darts down.
You lift your chin. Spider-Man, you think, watching as Peter’s brows knit like he’s in pain and his pupils turn to dimes, sunshot brown melding dark, this better work.
Peter inches his face down until your noses are touching, your eyelashes forced shut in a flutter at his proximity.
He lingers there, in the quiet, breathing the air your exhale and holding his tongue as he raises his hand to cup your cheek tenderly. His fingers slip beneath your ear and his thumb drags over your cheek, distending your lips, and his lips brush against yours so softly you aren’t sure if he really has kissed you, or if you want it bad enough to conjure the sensation. But then he presses in for a proper kiss, and the quiet in the room gets replaced by the pounding of your heart in your own ears.
He tips your head a little and kisses upward, parting his lips to encourage you to let him in. You suck in a breath as he wades in for a real kiss, the heat of tongue and the soft plush give of his lips on yours. He encourages your head back quick, your eyes squinting ever so slightly, but he’s only moving you to wade in for the same kissing at a new angle. His nose tip scrunches into yours.
Your thoughts are electric. Your hand vies for a place to anchor, grasping tightly at his shirt, screwing the fabric over his chest into a ball.
“Holy crap,” he says, pulling back a touch.
His eyes are shining. His mouth is damp with spit, but you aren’t certain if it’s yours or his.
“I can’t believe I had the willpower to wait this long for that,” he says, running his thumb over your bottom lip. “Shit, you're just as perfect as I thought.”
You laugh in a tangle. “What?” you ask breathlessly.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long. Wow, you taste like toffee.”
“I’m sorry–”
Peter gets his thumb under your chin to tip your face up. “For what? For being perfect?”
“For tasting like popcorn.”
“That is the least of my worries.” He does a one-eyed squint at you, stroking your chin and cheek with his thumb, a caress that makes your stomach ache as much as the kisses had. “Sorry it took me so long to kiss you. You’re a hard girl to read.”
“I know,” you mumble.
He kisses your cheek and ducks his face into the side of your head, gathering you in for a hug that’s strong but careful, too, your thigh curving into his lap. He doesn’t seem to notice the way he’s dragging you onto him as he breathes in your hair.
“Pete?”
“Yeah?”
You struggle out of his arms. “Can you kiss me again?” you ask.
“Yes. Yeah. Oh my god, absolutely.”
Your laugh as he bends your backwards into the mountain of throw cushions is ecstatic. Then smushed, quickly, but it’s fine. The kiss is worth getting cut off.
—
(One month later.)
“I was going to tell you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Seriously, I was! But I didn’t want you to be embarrassed."
“Right.”
“And I didn’t want you to be mad.”
You stare at Spider-Man in your boyfriend’s bedroom, unmasked, Peter Parker with hair like a dandelion and eyes so sorry he’s almost winning you over, the mask clasped in hand.
“You knew who I was talking about,” you say, crossing your arms over your chest, “and you still made me give you a signal? Do you know how hard that was for me?”
“You can do hard things!”
“Peter.”
“I wanted to be sure. I have a huge crush on you, you know that? It was just as scary for me as it was for you.”
You sniff indignantly. Spider-Man drags himself from his window to take your hands, pouting like a loser for your forgiveness.
“Can you please forgive me?” he asks. “Don’t you think it would’ve given my secret away if I turned up at your door and planted one on you? You do not understand the strength it took to wait.”
“Peter, it wasn’t even twenty four hours.”
“You’re really pretty,” he mumbles.
You forgive him already, not that he needs to know that. You have more important questions to ask.
“So, what’s with the webs?”
“D’you like ‘em?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He whines.
You plant a little kiss on his jaw and make for the bed you’d been planning on napping in before his impromptu return through the open window. “Come hold me while I nap,” you say, moving back his sheets, “please. And maybe I’ll think about forgiving you.” You’re too tired to think about this in depth.
Peter throws himself into the mattress. You crawl into his arms.
“You kinda smell like street,” you mumble, nuzzling his neck, a hint of forgiveness to settle his bad nerves.
His head falls back as he lets out a relieved sigh. “You smell perfect,” he says.
synopsis: a collection of moments where you and your boyfriend sukuna cater for each other ! fluff, f!reader, college!au, slightly suggestive maybe (?)
[4:19PM]
it was friday night, the designated date night for you and your boyfriend. you sat across from sukuna at a restaurant the two of you had been talking about going to for a while now. the lights were dimmed, jazz spilling out smoothly from the speakers while you smiled at his lazy anecdotes of work.
you took a sip of your drink, your lipstick transferring onto the rim of the glass.
“oh one sec, baby.” you murmured, grabbing your purse and reaching for your lipstick.
after rummaging for a few seconds, a frustrated sigh left your lips when you realised you’d probably left it at home.
“what’s wrong?” sukuna spoke up, swallowing the piece of steak in his mouth.
“nothing much, just left my lipstick at home.” you shrugged, it wasn’t really a huge deal so you went back to eating your own dinner.
you watched your boyfriend’s brows furrow for a second, the black tattoos on his face moving too. you smiled softly to yourself, always endeared by how expressive he was sometimes.
he reached into the pocket of his jacket, wordlessly handing the lipstick you were searching for to you.
“you grabbed it before we left?” you smiled, taking it from him.
“hm? nah i keep one with me just in case you need it. that’s the one you like isn’t it?” he grumbled, going back to cutting at his steak. but you could see the tips of his ears turning pink.
[12:03PM]
“it’s too bright, this is killing me.” sukuna groaned from the other side of the beach towel.
the weather was great today so you’d both decided to hang out on the beach for a couple hours. currently, you were laying back on your towel, lounging contently while you tanned in the warm sun.
you looked at sukuna through the sunglasses perched on your nose, giggling at how your boyfriend repeatedly squeezed his eyes shut when he tried taking a glimpse of anything on the beach.
“told you to bring your own pair.” you smiled teasingly, giggling when you reached into your basket and put the spare pair of sunglasses you kept onto his face. “you should start listening to me.”
sukuna’s face broke into a grin at your actions. he playfully tugged out your wrist and brought you closer to him, one hand resting onto your hip as the other pinched your chin to press a kiss to your lips.
“why bother when my girl is always so thoughtful?”
[7:27PM]
you hated contacts. today was no different from most other days, the lenses in your eyes were drying your eyes out. usually this wouldn’t be a problem but the bottle of eyedrops you usually kept in your bag was completely empty.
now you were in your lecture, barely able to focus on what was being said. it didn’t help that the lecture you were currently in had arguably your university’s most dull professor. you tried to ignore the professor’s monotone voice lulling you to sleep, continuing to type your notes on your laptop languidly and trying to ignore how dry your eyes were.
groaning softly, you rummaged your bag again, hoping that by some miracle a pair of your glasses appeared but you had no luck.
“what’s wrong, baby?” sukuna noticed your annoyance, leaning over to whisper to you.
you sighed softly, barely turning your head to look at him.
“out of eyedrops and my eyes are super dry right now. and i left my glasses in my dorm.” your lips tugged into a pout. you were tempted to just leave the hall and head back to your dorm but your professor was annoyingly the only one strict on attendance.
sukuna listened to your words, shaking his head gently and picking up a small, beat up clear pouch from his bag. it must've been his old pencil case in school judging by the pen marks. he took out a small bottle of eyedrops, holding your chin and silently encouraging you to tilt your head back a little so he could squeeze a little into your eyes.
you blinked a few times, adjusting to the liquid before beaming up at him for his thoughtfulness.
“thanks, kuna..” your words trailed off, peeking at the other contents of his case. you couldn’t see much but you could see a corner of a pack of pads sticking out slightly, along with a hair tie.
you smiled softly, leaning your head on his shoulder while continuing with the rest of the lecture.
summary: peter’s new arachnid senses often leave him disoriented—hibernating and waking up in places he doesn’t recognise. it’s a small problem, one he's willing to deal with on his own, till he wakes in your apartment with his arms wrapped around you.
pairing: peter parker x reader
content: no bnd movie spoilers (feel free to read if you haven't seen bnd), FLUFF, clingy! peter parker, comfort, light banter, arachnid! peter, peter goes through it, yearning
Peter hates most of the new developments that arrived with the enhanced levels of his arachnid half—and migraines are definitely top of the list. Particularly the ones that start early in the morning, muffling his senses and rendering him a zombie slob for the entire start of the day. He stirs in his sleep, a soft, pounding ache burrowed in the back of his skull. It's an irritating sensation, one he's already grown familiar with, worsening the overheating, the sensitivity that comes with his overloaded senses, the pull of nerves behind his eyeballs.
His nose burrows deeper into a comforting scent, arms tightening around something soft. Letting out a dragged sigh, low against his throat, the pain fades into something barely noticeable. A sort of relaxed relief that hasn't hit him in years, with his entire body growing slack and heavy, the kind that only comes after a restful sleep. One he hasn't achieved since—his gaze peers open, blinking heavily as his eyes adjust to his surroundings.
The first thing he catches sight of is a familiar bundled sight of hair, and the curve of a shoulder. He must be dreaming. The sunlight stings the sensitivity of his eyes, and he blinks harsher in an effort to recollect himself. His brows furrow as he loosens a hand, parting from his tight grip to run his fingers gently over the loosened hair.
He wasn't dreaming. Somehow, he was laying in your bed, hugging you like an oversized koala.
"What?" He mumbles, the word falling soft out of his cotton mouth.
You stir slightly in response to the grazing of his touch, and it kicks Peter-Tingle on high-alert that this was not a figment of his imagination. He's quick to un-hand you, scooting backwards towards the edge—and tumbling harshly onto the floorboards with a loud thump, snatching the sheets with him.
The noise echoes in his eardrums, curls splaying out over the floorboards, and Peter is completely frozen. In absolute cold, drowning terror, he watches you stir fully, turning around and stretching at your limbs—a dissatisfied frown perched in your lips at the sudden loss of warmth.
What has he done?
"Spider-Man?" You mumble, voice groggy, almost muffled as your nose dips deeper into the pillow, the one he occupied seconds ago.
Your gaze finally peers open, one palm coming to rub at your undereyes—before meeting his own widened, nearly terrified expression.
"You're awake." You state, as if his existence within the walls of your apartment is a daily, common occurrence. Even if he hasn’t stepped foot into his most favourite apartment, in years. "Hm, you've got brown eyes, who would've thought?"
Why is he here? Why are you so calm about this?
“I’m—so, so sorry.” His words fumble over each other, ears reddened at the tips. Feeling awfully exposed, he wraps his arms around his knees as he lifts himself into a sitting position, caving in on himself as he averts his gaze. “I don’t know why—or how—oh god. Was I hugging you? How did I even—I’m so sorry, I swear I have no clue on how I ended up here.”
Worse, he wasn't wearing a mask. Or much of anything really, aside from an old t-shirt, and Hello Kitty shorts that barely fit his thighs. As his fingers grip at the edge of the shirt, running over the hem, it hits him that these are his clothes. Ones he never stole back from your place, that he had merely assumed was lost to time.
Nothing could have prepared him for this situation, no prep-time or warnings from E.V.I.E.. He didn't have the protection of being Spider-Man and the mask that's become his second skin. No, he had landed bottom-first as bare-faced, shell-shocked Peter.
"You really don't remember how you got here?" You question, lashes fluttering shut as you struggle to stir awake. "Damn, I was wondering if you could tell me."
"No—I swear, I completely blacked out." He scrambles for a response. "Next thing I knew, I was in your bed—I can't believe I just said that."
Running a hand past the bridge of his nose, he hides pathetically behind his fingers, his best attempt of a mask against the chaotic churn of nerves bundling through his gut. He had promised to keep you safe by staying as far away as he could—aside from the daily checking of your social media pages and the occasional swing down your usual coffee shop just to see if your favourite order remained the same, but this? How was he ever going to forgive himself for it?
He hears shuffling, in the normal sense and not the heightened echoes he’s used to ever since his arachnid side started spinning out of control. Strangely, his senses have been dialed down to normal since he regained consciousness—and he can’t dumb it down to just a good rest. It has to be cause of you.
His lashes flutter against the pads of his fingers as he meets your gaze through the gaps. You face him head-on, sitting cross legged right in front of him, head tilted in innocent curiosity.
“You’re a cuddler.” You hum in acknowledgment.
He was genuinely going to be the first Spider-person to ever die of shame, not that he's met many, but he's sure Peter 1 and Peter 2 have never unknowingly climbed into the bed of their special someone because they couldn't control their own DNA evolution. A low sound escapes his throat, clenched through his teeth—completely at a lost for words.
He has no clue on what he’s supposed to do, not when there's no routine or steps to fall back on. Be Spider-Man (Mask's gone). The man the city actually wanted (One who preferably doesn't have panic attacks wearing Hello Kitty pants). Stay far away from his previous life (Scored a huge FAIL here). Get flowers for May (Done). Scroll through your social media pages (..Done). Feel the thrumming vibrations of the washing machine after patrols (Skipped, was too nauseous). Rinse and repeat.
There’s no coming back from this, and it wasn’t even in his control. He hadn’t meant to find you. The last thing he could recall before passing out in his apartment was—he had just wanted to go home. He swore that was all he intended.
“Hey.” Your voice, soft and warm, finally coaxes him out of his thoughts. He hadn’t even realised just how tight he had been clenching his eyes shut—as his gaze takes a few seconds to adjust back into colour with you in his full view.
Slowly and gently, your own fingers raise to pry his away from his face. He’s sure he has hand marks all over his skin, but you look at him with such a soft expression—he nearly keens.
“I got you. You're safe.” You reassure, repeating it as a mantra. “You’re safe here.”
His Adam’s apple bobs harshly, and he feels the tightening of his chest nearly burst at the seams. God, he missed you. All he wanted was to hug you, and tell you he was sorry—for all of it. That he hadn’t gone a single day without wanting to hear your voice, to be exactly where he was right now—that this was all he needed if he wasn’t so weak. If he wasn’t cursed.
“Sorry.” That’s all that comes out, a croak in his voice that he failed to swallow back.
Your lips quirk into a soft smile, and you look like home. He feels his muscles physically deflate in tension at the sight, something no inhibitor or invention could ever replicate. His life has been spinning out of control, and you've just set the needle aside without even blinking.
“You’re all good, Spidey.” Your voice is warm, comforting. “Aside from hogging the blankets, it wasn’t half-bad for my first sleepover with a vigilante.”
His lips part, a laugh caught in his throat—half shattered, half hopeful.
“Could you—I don’t know, explain to me what happened?” He raises his hands, gesturing to your apartment. “I can’t believe I lost control—I don’t remember anything.”
Your lips part, a small grin tucked between your lips. "If you insist."
A loud crash resounds behind you, kick-starting your frightened senses. Head whipping to the window, you spot your window ledge shoved half-way with brutal force, and a body covered in deep reds and blues on your wooden floorboards.
"Holy shit." You mutter to yourself, skillet pan still in hand, the oil coating its surface bubbling into tiny pops.
Spider-Man is in your living room. Spider-Man is spread out across your floorboards, seemingly knocked out cold, in your apartment.
Another sizzling pop snaps you out of your stump, and you realise the collapsed vigilante is your responsibility. Your fingers fumble to switch off your stove with a click, skillet haphazardly placed over the stove burner—apron still hanging around your neck as you rush towards the body. God, you hope it wasn't an actual body.
"Spider-Man?" You call out tentatively, and you're struck by how his body moves in response, the stretch of his back with that familiar logo disappearing to reveal a mop of dark brown curls.
He wasn't wearing a mask. You didn't know what you expected from a hero who seemed nearly indestructible on the news, even when in the process of being smashed into buildings by tanks, but Spider-Man looks much younger than you expected, ahead of you by at most a couple years—bearing a youth that is almost frightening.
He certainly did look battered. Bruises littered his cheek, as if he had slammed himself into bricks or concrete on the way, before he had landed himself in your apartment. Dark circles pooled as a dark shadow under his eye-bags, and his hair was a wet, clumped mess from the rain.
You didn't know where to begin—if you were even allowed to touch him to check if he's hurt, or to call a professional. Did the professionals even know who he was, of his true identity? What if you doomed New York City's most beloved vigilante to his fate, just because you made the wrong call?
Your knees meet carpet, hands trembling in indecision and nerves, coming to rest on his shoulder. At your touch, a hiss escapes his lips and you immediately snatch your hand back, clutching it at the wrist. Who were you kidding, you were the last person equipped to save a person's life—much less a hero's.
You rise halfway, head swinging around to locate your phone—when you feel an insistent pull of your apron, tripping you back to land on the carpet.
"Don't go." He whispers.
Your gaze snaps back to his face, and find his eyes open. Or at least, that's where his pupils should've been. He must be half-unconscious, with the way his eyes are blown into a darkened void, lips parted in some sort of daze.
"I'm going to get help." Your words form despite the panic arising in your chest at the state of him. Is this poisoning? What else could explain the blackened sclera, the way darkened veins coated his skin in an almost bluish-purple. "I'll be right back." You promise.
He shakes his head, almost insistently stubborn, jaw clenching in panic. "No, don't go." His grip tightens almost instantly, and you're swept by his abnormal strength with a sudden tug, tumbling on top of him. "Please."
You freeze, feeling the wet raindrops from his suit seep into the cotton of your apron. Before you even have a chance to push yourself off, his arms wrap around you protectively. Squashed between his broad chest and the tight grip of his hold, your nose is buried into the crook of his shoulder. You smell fresh detergent, sweat, and something so achingly familiar—it churns your senses into mush that it takes you a few seconds to register.
He's shaking, and almost feverishly warm.
"Spider-Man." You plead. "Listen to me. You don't look good. And I do not want a dead Spider on my conscience, so please—you have to let me go so I can find some professionals, just someone to check if you're alright."
His touch is a sizzling heat as the warmth envelopes you, almost like a weighted, heated blanket.
"No. Stay." He pleads. "Please, I don't want—I just need you."
He sounds so exhausted. Why wouldn't he be? Before he had suffocated you into this strange circumstance of a hug, his entire face had been dull in colour, sweat pooling at the curls over his forehead, and he just looked—fragile. Completely unlike the hero of the city you're used to seeing on screen, whether it be receiving the keys to the city or those cheerful quips that make its frequent rounds through the internet when he swoops in to save the day.
"Spidey." You call him gently, trying to think of how to persuade him. "—I won't leave you alone, I promise. Just let me get up, to at least fetch you a change of clothes. You're soaked."
The seconds passing by without a response, or the loosening of his muscles, feel like the longest beats of your life. Your own heart thumps along with the rise and fall of his chest, waiting with bated breath.
"Promise?" He murmurs weakly.
"I promise." You whisper. "I'm not going anywhere."
You feel the slow release of warm breath against your skin, the way his fingers tremor over the small of your back. Something in him relaxes just enough, and his arms give in, thumping heavily at his sides. You rise instantly, palms pushing at his chest and falling back onto the carpet. Feeling the wet residue of the rain coat your apron, and the side of your cheek that had been buried in his shoulder—your cheeks grow impossibly hot.
You need to snap out of it. He needs clean clothes. Yeah, that's a start.
Stumbling in your step, you rush towards your wardrobe—digging through the unorganised mess for a bag of clothes you had kept hidden in the most corner nook. One you hadn't thrown out since your first discovery of its existence, containing Hello Kitty shorts, some old, faded T-shirts—choices you would've never purchased for yourself but had for as long as you could remember.
You had run through a list of reasons for its existence, seemingly packed for an overnight guest. Maybe from that house-warming party you had thrown once before deciding you much preferred your space being reserved for only you, and someone had left their clothes mistakenly. Despite whatever plausibility or excuse—you never found the strength to throw them away. Even when you had every reason to, your mind instinctively buries the thought and the bag remained exactly where it was, kept in a zip-locked bag for it to be used by someone.
Apparently, today was its much-needed day.
Hoisting the bag over to the living room where he still laid, cheek pressed to the carpet, you’re relieved that the tension that previously consumed his expression has faded somewhat, with his lips parted slightly in slow exhales. His body seemed to be recalibrating, instinctively calming down right in the centre of your home.
Your hand comes to rest on his cheek, tapping it gently. Although his eyes with that dark void don't open, a low rumble escapes his throat—convincing you that he's still somewhat conscious.
"Hey, Spidey." You whisper. "I brought some clothes. Do you have the energy to change?"
He doesn't respond, and you poke your tongue into your cheek, analysing the length of him with dawning dread. It's no big deal, you just have to peel off this ridiculously tight suit with no zipper in sight without making it weird, and attempt at successfully pulling a T-shirt over his head.
Making your choice of a 'I Survived My Trip To NYC' graphic tee found at the top of the pile inside, your gaze switches back to the sprawled vigilante. From how heavy his arms had been earlier, rendering you immobile when pinned under them, you wouldn't dare make the mistake of assuming his weight would be easy to flip over. You could attempt to at least expose his back for you to take off that suit—assuming the costume even had a zipper.
Your long calculation apparently does the job for you as Spider-Man senses you near, and his arm curls protectively around your thigh, burying his nose into the crook below your knee. Your entire body stills, a tight grip over the tee as he gently rests his head over your knee, the soft texture of his curls brushing goosebumps against your skin. HIs body turns just enough to expose the expanse of his back—and the sight of a hidden zipper beneath that familiar symbol is a good sign.
Okay, sure. You could work with that.
He was ripped. You should've expected that, but the slow rise and fall of his chest expands the muscles across his exposed torso. You force yourself to tear your gaze away from the sight, reassuring yourself that your eyes were purely looking for possible injuries. You wouldn't go that low to check out a vigilante who was passed out in your living room.
Your fingers press into the sides of his cheeks, maneuvering his head so you could fit the opening of the tee over his head. Curls run through the white fabric before landing over his shoulder blades. It's strangely intimate, the way he's easily pliable in your hands—trusting you so completely. His lashes flutter once every few seconds, but he remains exactly where he is, body wrapped almost completely around yours—acting as a human barrier to you and the outside world—as you dress him in something soft and clean.
He's not supposed to be here, and you're not supposed to feel this protective over a stranger who dresses in two primary colours. Yet, seeing him at rest—makes you feel calm. The quiet of the apartment is a low hum rather than the empty chasm you’re used to, and your fingers run through his hair almost habitually.
You can't just leave him on the floor. There's also the latter half of his suit you don't want to deal with.
"Spidey." You whisper.
He lets out a low groan, wincing as his eyes shut tighter—burying himself deeper into your skin.
"No-no." Your hands come up to gently cup his cheek, coercing him.
His lashes part, and you're met with that same, expansive void, finding your own reflection in his gaze. He's still not quite himself, you believe—but he is able and willing to listen to you.
"I need you to put on these shorts." You gesture to the Hello Kitty pants you laid out for him. "Then, I need you to come to bed."
His brows furrow, lashes fluttering slowly as he processes your request. "Bed."
"Yes." You repeat. "You're exhausted, and I'm not leaving you on my floorboards. It's not too far, so please—help me out a little, Spidey."
His gaze doesn't blink, but you feel the shift in his muscles at your command. He stumbles as he raises himself, body slumping into you—but you steady him with your own grip. His nose buries itself once more into a crook to inhale your scent, this time being your shoulder.
"Okay." You mutter. "That's progress. Come on, up."
It takes you a couple minutes, mostly because he clings to you with every step and he is made of heavy weight. Whatever they feed the heroes of New York, it was clearly something out of limits from your measly grocery bill. By the time he managed to slip himself into those Hello Kitty shorts while you kept your gaze heavily fixated on the ceiling, making sure only to look when the waistband was tight around his torso, it wasn't long before he tripped himself face-first into your blankets. Your own body collapses beside him—equally tired as he is.
You attempt to form a pillow fort in your daze, a barrier of sorts. More for him than you, as you're sure in the morning once this side of him disappears—he'll have a much different reaction to waking up in an apartment with a stranger he doesn't know.
It gets demolished within seconds.
As if the pillows have formed a personal vendetta against him, they're thrown aggressively onto the floorboards. Your hand reaches out to grab them because you had just put them in the laundry—but your wrist is snatched too and you're tugged into his embrace.
You land back into the sheets, cheek smothered against his chest, and there he goes again, wrapping himself around you like a cocoon.
Here in your bed with his arms wrapped around you like you're his only anchor, brows furrowed tight—Spider-Man looked so human. Soft, and incredibly vulnerable. His arm still grips limply onto you even if you can feel his consciousness fading, as if the lack of contact would have you disappearing completely from his reach.
"Those pillows were meant for you, y'know." You mutter, unable to hide your amusement.
His lips curl into a stubborn pout. "Don't want them." He grumbles, words nearly incoherent with the small parting of his lips. "In my way."
You snort softly, before noting the dirt that coats his cheeks. With such a close proximity, you see everything. The soft lines at the corners of his eyes, the bridge of his nose, and just how beautiful he was.
"You've got dirt on your face." You whisper softly. "I should help you with that."
His grip tightens considerably, and you're dragged up so close to his face that your noses nearly bump into one another.
"Okay-okay. I'm not going anywhere." You feel the need to remind him, hand slowly lifting to press against his bruised cheek.
If the press of your finger-pads against the bruise was painful, he didn't show it—only burrowing his face deeper into the curve of your palm, a relieved sigh escaping his lips. The crease between his brows finally unfolds, and the years coated on his expression fades with it—leaving him looking impossibly young.
"Smells like you." He grumbles lowly, pressing the tip of his nose deeper into your palm.
Your heart skips a beat, traitorously even when you're sure he won't remember any of this by the morning.
“Do you have anyone?” You ask gently. “Someone I need to call?”
It’s heart-breaking, the way he immediately shakes his head, his curls ruffled against the sheets. For someone so beloved by the city, even in such a weakened state, he still believes that he has no one.
"Why are you here?" You murmur more for yourself, gazing openly over the fanning of his lashes over his darkened circles.
If it weren't for the expansive heat seeping from his broad chest through the cotton tee you tugged over his head, you would've believed yourself to be in the thick of a sweet, non-sensical dream.
You expect him to be fully asleep, but you hear it, low and almost inaudible. "Home."
Your heart tremors, barely able to comprehend it. "What?"
His words grow muffled against the sheets, the mess of his curls sinking deeper into the pillows—but you hear it. “Wanted to come home.”
Peter watches as you wring a cloth of its excess water over the sink, and the familiarity is dangerously luring. How many times has he sat here on your couch, watching as you prepped a medicine kit or a towel after his patrols? It’s almost unfathomable how quickly the new routines, rigorous with repetition and duty, all that control—that responsibility that leashed him tight falls apart the second he is in your proximity. Where old overpowers the new, because there is nothing he craves more than this. The past—the memories that became more present than reminder, when his own life had pressed ‘pause’ the moment he lost you.
He should’ve insisted on leaving when you offered to clean up the dirt that still coated his face. He should’ve shattered the hope that gleamed in your eyes when he gave you the barest nod, knowing how dangerous that fleeting belief could be when his own had never held value.
He did none of what he was supposed to do—and he didn’t even have the gull to feel ashamed for it, taking in the sight of you with unconditional hunger, absorbing every trace of movement and the way your voice resonated in the hearth of your home. He belonged in your life once, the same way the remains of his old t-shirts were kept in your wardrobe, or how the bathroom door still has the replaced hinges he fixed once on your third home date. There’s him all around, and the sight was its own guilty pleasure that the universe hadn’t completely stripped away the parts of him that used to exist in your life.
"You didn't do anything." You reassure him from across the kitchen counter. "Trust me, when you showed up in my apartment—you weren't in a state of anything other than being near-collapse."
His expression contorts. As if he needed more reasons to hate these new changes to his body—messing up all that is predictable. Predictable is good. It's safe. What isn't within even the remote levels of safe, is forcing you to look after him the entire night because he isn't even in control of his own body.
You stop in front of him, brushing some magazines and half-littered candy wrappers to the side as you sit on the coffee-table, knees brushing against his.
"Breathe." You murmur softly, eyes crinkling with a soft teasing expression.
He hadn't even realised he was holding his breath, being so close to you that it makes him feel faint. Oxygen swoops back into his lungs, his chest rising and falling as he stares at you openly with his mouth slightly gaped.
The cloth in hand raises to press against his cheek, and he feels the slight sting of its cool temperature against the warmth of his skin, the bruise above his cheekbone.
It doesn't truly register for him, not when you're staring at him so keenly he feels the need to ask. "What?"
"I just didn't expect Spider-Man to be so—" You struggle to find the words. "Human. I don't know. I suppose that sounds stupid, but you could pass by me in a coffee shop and I'd just sum you up as a cute stranger I'd never see again, not an actual crime-fighting vigilante."
The two of you were together, so it shouldn’t have struck him with elated surprise to hear it, but the admission that you still found him—he feels sixteen again, taken back to when you had first pressed a kiss onto his cheek and he understood immediately on what it meant to fall in love so completely that you could never look back.
You're too focused on dapping the wet cloth to notice his widened gaze, or the way he swallows dryly—licking at his lips. "You think I'm cute?"
"I mean—this entire time, I half-expected Spider-Man to be at least half-spider. Plus, I have eyes." You tease, your fingers gently brushing the wet cloth over the darkened soot across his cheek, rubbing off the marks. "I meant to do this last night, but you kept protesting when I tried to leave the bed. Clinging onto me—"
"Okay, okay." He raises his hand, catching you by the wrist. He's definitely flustered now. "I don't need to hear the details. I believe you."
You snort softly. "Thought you wanted the full story."
"Yeah, summed up—minus the details." He splutters. "I'm already dying inside from shame, and I've definitely ruined my impression with you forever."
"That's not true." You hum.
He blinks slowly, processing your words.
"There's no shame in reaching out for help, hero or not. I know you’re under a lot of public scrutiny but—it doesn't change who you are, y'know? You're deserving of support, just as much as everyone else. Even if the world expects you to be a hero—" You state. "You're still a person, and it seemed like you really needed someone."
He stiffens, jaw tightening as his eyes avert from yours to pinpoint his focus elsewhere—anywhere but you.
"You're not just someone." He mumbles lowly.
The press of the cloth against his cheek falters. "What?"
"You're—" His voice trails off, jaw clenching tight. “You weren’t scared of me?”
He understands how he can get when he loses control. The way his vision blacks out, and how his mind caves into silence—with his body moving on instinct rather than command. The reflection of a monster in the mirror, everything he swore not to be. The version of him that snuck into your apartment, clinging onto you as a lifeline—was stripped of the rules and promises he had made to keep everything together.
It was him at his most selfish—doing what his instincts pleaded—no, begged for him to do, and he had caved in for all of it. That's why he's here, and why you're staring with an expression he didn't dare uncover.
“I think you’re a lot more scared of yourself right now than I am.” You answer truthfully. “You were in a lot of pain. The last thing I would be was scared, when all you needed was someone to look out for you. Even if it's just for a little while.”
"I—" What is he supposed to say to that? That you're right on, and you've always been even without knowing who he is, and that he's been losing himself ever since he lost you? He swallows thickly. "I haven't been myself lately."
Your fingers tighten imperceptibly, grounding him. "You're still you, maybe you've just been putting aside what reminds you of that. I'm no vigilante, but working yourself to the bone and collapsing in a stranger's apartment—I think that's a signal for a horrible work-life balance."
"I have been resting." He argues. "I get enough hours, I have proof."
"Yeah, that's definitely why you slept like a log last night."
His lips part, gaze finally meeting yours, staring at you wordlessly. Eventually, a laugh escapes his lips, deepening the lines near the corners of his eyes. It's a little sad, and you wonder just how much he had to carry on his own—for a laugh to sound that broken.
"This is hard. I'm not supposed to—" He mutters, and that's the closest thing to raw honesty that you've pulled out of his mouth. "You're way too good for me."
Your smile deepens, and your fingers trace gently over his cheek where the bruise was finally fading. That must've been the mistake of it—the familiarity of muscle memory after a long patrol. He leans in, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek in thank you.
It’s only when he spots your frozen expression that he realises what he's done.
"I was not supposed to do that." He mutters to himself, widened eyes locked onto the spot where he left the kiss.
You blink, and he follows the movement—staring at each other in complete silence. His expression contorts, and you can't help the giggle that bubbles out of you.
"That was—wow." You choke back on your laughter. "I think you're running out of things you're not supposed to do, Spidey."
His own gaze crinkles into a smile, abashed. "I'm sorry, I just—I wanted to thank you. It was out of habit."
"Habit—you crash into people's apartments often and give out these free kisses?" You tease. "Is it part of the job description?"
He shakes his head immediately, terrified by the suggestion. "No—no. I swear this is my first time ever doing anything like this. I got the habit from my aunt, she used to—um..."
His expression dampens considerably. "Kiss my cheek for good luck."
Your gaze softens. "She sounds sweet."
"Yeah." His laugh churns awkwardly with a wince. "You would've loved her."
You watch him, and you sense it again—that chasm that ran deeper than the surface of his winced smiles. The way he shook his head when you asked if he had anyone, and even now, the way he fumbled with his fingers as if he didn't quite know what to do with himself in your gaze—and how he hadn't suggested once since waking up that he wanted to leave.
He was waiting, the way one waits for permission to exist in a room when they haven't been invited in one for years.
"Spidey." You call out.
He whips his head to look at you, pupils still widened in some perpetual disbelief, over the fact that he was in your apartment—that you were right in front of him.
"I'm going to make breakfast." You start, not leaving room for argument. "And you're going to help me."
He blinks once, then twice in astonishment. He swallows dryly. "O-Okay."
Your smile loosens into something reserved for a vigilante you had stayed up all night checking his temperature for.
You find that Spider-Man is pretty good in making pancakes, and that he easily maneuvers himself around your kitchen as if he had already memorised the layout. Of where your favourite mugs are, and how he didn't question twice when taking out the ice-cream tub without you needing to say it.
You could narrow it down to Spidey-senses, or whatever theories that's come up on your feed for his inhuman capabilities—but could it really just be that? Could his super-human abilities be the only reason behind why the warm hazel of his eyes light into the tiniest fireworks as he watches you scourge on your pancake, smiling at him with butter at the corner of your lips—as if the sight of you eating breakfast was the most beautiful thing he's ever seen?
Or why he picked you as his destination for home, or the slip of his tongue on how you meant a great deal more to him than just a someone who so happened to let him stay the night.
You have so much to uncover, but for now, he's just a boy in a NYC graphic tee that’s his exact size, and fluorescent shorts that do nothing for his thighs. He catches your gaze on his peculiar outfit, and his own lips purse in amusement.
"Any reason for the outfit choice?" He murmurs, a knowing smile covered by his fist as he rests his chin over his wrist, head tilting slightly as he gazes at you. "It's inventive."
"Oh—" You blink. "I don't know. I kinda always had them. They don't belong to me, but I just didn't see a need to throw out free clothes."
Your lips quirk up, teasing. "Suits you though. Think you'll keep it?"
He shrugs. "I don't know. I think I'll have to return it."
"Why?"
"So I can borrow it again." He suggests slowly.
You stare at him, unable to hide your growing grin. "Smooth, Spidey. Real smooth."
His gaze lights up. "Better than the cheek kiss?"
"Tons better. You could try it again—I'll see if I can adjust the scores." You tease.
"Really?" He stutters, akin to a flustered high-schooler.
"Yeah, but you'll have to tell me your name." You gesture with a point of your fork. "Can't go around giving free kisses without ID."
You meant it as a joke. You're no expert in superhero protocols, but you're sure the codenames meant no personal information spilled outside their work-life. Even when you've already seen his face, and shared a bed with him, and let him take your second favourite mug though he can't possibly know that last one. There's lines you've certainly crossed, but his name?
You part your lips to take back your impulsive request, to brush it off—only to find genuine consideration forming in his expression. Your smile falls slack in wonder. No, he wouldn't. He couldn't possibly.
Yet, he looks at you, almost peering deep into your soul. He looks at you as if he knows you, all boyish and unguarded. Whatever he sees, past the bed-hair and ice-cream smothered lips—it's worth it to him. It's worth something honest, and sacred—a truth he'll never be able to take back. It's a genuine, soft thing—a precious smile that lifts his lips, one you have no idea how brave he is for keeping. He has made his choice, and you're a part of it, always.
Peter looks at you, and he sees the only present he'll ever want. Past spells and starting-overs and stupid choices—at the centre of it all, it all becomes so simple. You—who his body sought out of instinct, who inhabited his mind with your own personal island, who had taken his heart from the first time he saw you. You're home, and no rules or lines drawn could've stopped him from returning back to you. His everything.
"Peter. Peter Parker."
likes, reblogs and comments are always appreciated <3!!
marvel masterlist - coming soon! (do let me know if you'd like to be added to a peter parker taglist, i may be making one as i have more fics coming up for him <3).
you aren’t surprised when you find peter getting dressed in the middle of the night, as if he’s in a rush to get out of your room.
“you know, one of these days you’ll at least have the decency to wake me up before you decide to get out of dodge.”
peter turns to you with a regretful smile, “you know i can’t do that, (y/n).”
“staying the night doesn’t mean anything, peter,” you say bitterly. “you can fuck me but you can’t sleep beside me? i’m not asking you for a commitment, i’m asking you to sleep and then leave in the morning like a normal person. it makes me feel like shit when you sneak out like you came here for one thing and one thing only.”
“i’m sorry.” you know that peter isn’t by any means a bad person, but the empty apologies are starting to get on your nerves.
“just go,” you turn away from him. “i sleep better without you here anyways.”
“(y/n), please don’t be like this.”
“be like what?” you turn back to him. “i can’t keep doing this with you if she’s on your mind. i thought you were trying to move on.”
“i am, but you know it’s been hard—“
“it’s been four years!” you exclaim, sitting up in your bed. “four years of this on and off thing, and i don’t think i can do it anymore.”
“what are you saying?”
“i’m saying that i want you to get the hell out of my apartment and i don’t want to see you anymore.”
you’ve known peter for a long time. you met him when he was at his lowest and needed someone to get under so he could forget about his heartbreak, but over time a friendship developed between the two of you. he confided in you about things he would’ve normally confided in ned about, such as spider man and the amount of pressure that’s on him to make may proud.
and with time, you’ve fallen in love with him. you thought it was something you could work through and eventually forget about, but the nights in the sheets have only made you fall harder. you find yourself yearning for the post coital moments as well as the sex itself.
“get out,” as soon as peter notices the tears in your eyes, he feels like a jerk. “go and watch ned’s instagram story and fantasise about the life you could have had with them instead of living in the real world. the people you interact with have real feelings, peter. just because you switched yours off doesn’t mean that the rest of us don’t know how to hurt.”
“(y/n)—“
“get out!”
he knows he won’t be able to change your mind, so peter lets himself out with a look you can’t read on his face. as soon as the door clicks behind him, you freely let your tears fall and wish you had never met him.
everything is getting worse and thats why it's SO so important that we have fun and hang out and play and im being serious im being unimaginable amounts of serious
Synopsis: After dropping out of school due to your mental health, you befriend Peter and he helps you find a way to get back in
Masterlist
Peter typed a few sentences for his midterm paper, and then switched tabs to play The Sims for a few minutes. He returned to his paper and wrote a single word, then opened Google and looked up if a zombie bit a vampire, which one would change. He continued this cycle of procrastination until you caught his eye. You had pushed open the door of the registrar office at Empire State University with such force that Peter had heard it from his spot on a distant bench. He watched you walk with folded arms across campus and felt his heart pick up speed when you plopped down on the bench next to him. You buried your face in your hands and let out a sigh, seemingly unaware that Peter was right beside you. He looked around as he wondered if he should give you space or help a stranger.
“Are you okay?” Peter finally asked you. You jumped a little and picked your head up from your hands to look at him.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to infiltrate your bench. I wasn’t paying attention and thought you were one of those realistic statues.”
“I actually was until like 20 minutes ago when I made a wish to a fairy to become a real boy.” He replied, pulling a smile out of you. You sat up and shook your head at his joke, seeming to be in a much better mood than when you first sat down. You and Peter exchanged a smile and he felt the beginnings of butterflies erupting in his stomach.
“But really, are you okay?” He asked again.
“What gave you the impression I’m not okay?” You asked with an embarrassed smile, knowing he must’ve just watched you sulk across campus.
“I’ve just never seen someone sit on a bench with the level of rage you just did.” Peter said, making you crack another smile.
“Then you must not be native to Manhatten. That’s just how we sit here.” You shrugged.
“Not exactly. I’m from Queens.”
“Yeah? You’re not too far from home then. You should know about the bench culture around here.” You said as you turned your body to face him.
“I guess I’m still learning. But I appreciate the real world example.” He chuckled and nervously tapped his fingers on the sides of his computer.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to interrupt anything if you’re busy.” You said and gestured to his laptop. Peter’s eyes flicked to his game of The Sims, and then back to you.
“Oh, uh, yeah. I’m pretty busy, but I can write this paper later.” Peter lied and quickly shut his laptop.
“A paper? How’s it going?” You asked him. Peter looked down at his laptop and chewed his lip, knowing damn well he had not written enough to have anything to tell you. But since this was a rare occurrence where he found it easy to carry on small talk, he decided to be honest.
“Can I tell you something?”
“I mean, I’m not gonna stop you.” You said aa you picked at the chipping paint on the bench.
“I wasn’t writing a paper. I made a sim of my high school bully and I put him in a pool and removed the ladder.” He confessed. You stared at him for a while, making Peter fear he had just scared off the pretty stranger he’d hoped to befriend. But to his delight, you burst out laughing.
“Thank you so much for opening up to me.” You chuckled. “That was so vulnerable of you.”
“Sorry.” He laughed shyly. “I’ve been trying and failing to write this damn paper since last night. You’re the first person I’ve talked to all day.”
“It’s okay.” You assured him, and he could tell you meant it. Peter smiled softly at you and had a memory suddenly flash in his head. It was of you sitting in the back of a classroom with your hoodie up and chin resting on your hand. He remembered thinking you had sad eyes amongst the prettiest face he had ever seen. He also remembered when you slowly stopped coming to class until he never saw you again. Your eyes weren’t sad anymore, but he still recognized you.
“I know you.” He told you, making you frown and shake your head.
“No you don’t. I don’t go here.” You said, not meeting his eyes when you said the last part.
“I do. You were in my mathematics and quantum reasoning class last fall.” He insisted. You looked back up at him and studied his face until you were able to place it.
“You’re Peter. Parker. I remember the alliteration.” You smiled when his name came back to you.
“I am.” He smiled back. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“Because you were the only one who would raise their hand in that class. And the teacher would always say, “Is Peter the only one paying attention?” And I’d think to myself, wow, Peter is the only one paying attention.”
“Yeah.” He laughed softly. “I liked that class. Did you?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.” You shrugged, making Peter laugh.
“You’re Y/n.” He said once his laughter died down.
“Okay, how could you possibly know that? I never raised my hand in that class.”
“No, but you said it on the first day during attendance.”
“And you remember that?” You said doubtfully. “That was over a year ago.”
“Doesn’t matter. I still remember. I told you. I know you.” Peter said with a boastful shrug. The ease he spoke with and the kindness in his eyes was making you feel like a person unattached to their past. You turned all the way to him now, forgetting all about the conversation that brought you to that bench.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” You chuckled. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“You too. So, what brought you to the registrar office today? Were you having a too good of a day and felt like going somewhere where everyone would have one sided tension with you and tell you if you want to take a required class for your major, you have to wait three years for it to be offered again and carry Madame Zeroni up the mountain and then the class is only offered at 7 in the morning or 9 at night? But you also can’t get in because it’s full?”
“Yes, actually.” You laughed, much to his relief. “I just really like I always leave there with three more problems than I went in with.”
“What problem did you go in there with, if you don’t mind me asking? Maybe I can help.”
“I’m trying to register for classes next semester.” You told him as you looked down at your hands. Peter could see you twisting a ring around your finger over and over, but pretended not to notice.
“Oh, I can totally help you with that. You just have to register online. What’s your student ID number?” He said and opened back up his laptop. You shook your head and started to twist your ring faster around your finger.
“I don’t have one.” You said quietly.
“All students have one. It’s on your student ID card. Do you have that? If you do, I can help you find the number.” He offered. His eagerness to try and help you was making what you had to tell him feel all that more embarrassing to say.
“I don’t have that either. I mean, I do, but they just told me that it doesn’t work anymore. I, uh, I kinda dropped out the semester we had that math class together.” You admitted without meeting his eyes.
“Oh, well, it’s great that you’re coming back.” Peter said as if it was simple as anything. You looked into his eyes to see if he wasn’t judging you, but he wasn’t. Not at all.
“Thanks.” You smiled softly and stopped twisting your ring.
“For what?”
“For not asking me why I dropped out.”
“It’s none of my business.” Peter shrugged, making you smile wider.
“I wish the lovely people in the registrar office felt the same way.” You sighed and looked back at the office.
“Did they give you a hard time?” He asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes. Apparently I did not drop out the “right way”and if I want to take classes, I have to reapply to the school and go through the whole admission process again.“ You sighed again and started to twist your ring around your finger.
“That really sucks. I’m sorry.” Peter said sincerely as he watched you do it.
“It’s my fault. I should not have dropped out. I should’ve just taken a leave of absence.” You shut your eyes tightly and shook your head. Peter then watched you slowly tap the top of your head, then the side of your eye. You continued tapping down your face and chest, stopping after tapping below your pinky. Then, you took a breath and opened your eyes.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this.” You said without looking at him.
“It’s okay. I like talking to you.”
“Really?” You asked skeptically. “Why?”
“Is that really so hard to believe?” He laughed at your skepticism.
“Usually, no. But you’re not meeting me at my best self.” You told him with a sad look in your eyes.
“I like you anyway.” He shrugged, something you were coming to find he did a lot. You raised your eyebrows at him and watched his face turn a deep shade of pink.
“I like talking to you, I mean.” He quickly corrected himself.
“You’re not so bad yourself.” You said coyly. “You’re a good listener. Must be why our math professor liked you so much.”
“That, and I was sleeping with the guy.” Peter joked, making you laugh once again.
“Lucky him.” You replied, causing Peter’s breath to catch in his throat.
“Hey, so, I just imprinted on you, if that’s cool.” He warned you.
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what that means.”
“No?” He gasped. “Would you be interested in coming to my dorm and watching the greatest movie ever made?”
You squinted at him for a second as you thought about it. On the one hand, he was basically a total stranger. On the other, talking to him made you feel the most normal you’d felt in a long time, and you weren’t ready for that to end.
“Lead the way.” You decided.
“For real?” His eyes widened in delighted surprise.
“You’re not gonna murder me, are you?” You asked as you stood up from the bench. He quickly put his things away and stood up as well before you could change your mind.
“I can’t.” He assured you. “The RA for my dorm is strict as hell.”
“Hate when they’re like that.” You rolled your eyes to play along.
“Right? I can’t have open flames, can’t play music past 8 p.m., and I can’t murder people? It’s like, what can I do then?”
“You’re funny.” You laughed as you followed him towards the dorms.
“That’s a nice way to say “odd”. That’s the word people usually opt for.” He told you, but with no self-pity in his tone.
“I wasn’t thinking that.” You shook your head. “I was just thinking that you’re funny.”
Peter turned his face away so you wouldn’t see the smile you brought to him. He normally wasn’t very good at making friends, especially not after everything that happened when the world forgot him. But with you, he felt like he could be known again.
Peter scanned his ID on his door and let you into his dorm. His roommate was working on the computer at his desk, hardly looking up when Peter entered the room.
“Hey, Nikhil.” Peter greeted. “This is Y/n. We’re gonna watch a movie.”
“Nice to meet you.” Nikhil nodded at you. “Just don’t have sex when I’m in the room, okay guys? I’m leaving in like 15 minutes. Just wait.”
“We were not gonna do that at all, actually.” Peter said with a red face.
“We weren’t?” You asked, making both boys look at you.
“Kidding.” You clarified. “We’re for real watching a movie.”
“Alright. I’m trusting you.” Nikhil said warningly before turning back to his computer and putting headphones on.
“He seems nice. Kinda shy, though.” You said to Peter, making him laugh.
“Great guy.” Peter played along as he walked over to his side of the room. You subtly took in your surroundings, getting to know Peter a little more with everything he chose to decorate his room with. He appeared to be very neat, with the cleanest desk you’d ever seen in a dorm before. He had a few movie posters on his walls, but no personal pictures anywhere. You then looked over at the small bookshelf that Peter was crouching down in front of, which was filled with DVD’s.
“Wow. You have a lot of movies.” You said as you sat on his bed to be next to him.
“Yeah.” He sighed as he looked at his collection. “I’m a bit of a cinephile.”
“What’s that?” You scrunched your nose. “Like, you’re sexually attracted to movies or something?”
“What? No.” He laughed. “It just means I really love movies.”
“Maybe just say that instead.” You chuckled. “What’s your favorite?”
“Stand By Me. The best portrayal of boyhood, in my opinion.” Peter said as he handed you the DVD.
“Hm. I haven’t seen it.” You said as you read the back of it and traced your finger over the pictures of the cast.
“What? You have to. But not today. This is what you need to watch today.” Peter said as he slipped a Twilight DVD into your hands.
“Oh, hell no. You’ve purchased this?” You laughed and held it up.
“Um, of course I did? What else am I supposed to turn to in moments of solace?” He replied. “I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t know.”
“If it means that much to you, ’ll give it a whirl. Maybe it’ll help me in my moments of solace too.” You begrudgingly agreed and scooted back on his bed. Peter kicked his shoes off, so you did the same. He gave you a shy smile as he sat beside you, leaving enough space between you to he respectful. You returned the smile as he pulled an outdated laptop onto his lap and put the movie into the side of it. You couldn’t help but chuckle at the fact that he owned a laptop that could still play DVDs.
“You better not be laughing at my Jurassic laptop.” Peter said as he pressed “play”, making you laugh less discreetly.
“I’m sorry. I just didn’t know they still made laptops that could do that.”
“Oh, baby, they don’t. This is vintage.” He informed you. “And by vintage, I mean it was a hand-me-down and I can’t afford a modern one.”
“I’m surprised the charger still works.” You replied, trying not to let it show how affected you were by him calling you “baby”.
“It does. I just have to hold it at the right angle and not move or breathe or think around it until it’s fully charged.”
“This movie better be worth it, then.” You told him as a playful warning.
“Trust me. Your life is about to change.” He assured you as the film began. As you watched it, his eyes couldn’t help but wander down to your hand. It was lying right next to his and looked ever so inviting. He could feel his fingers twitching as he tried to fight the magnetic pull that your hands were emitting. You noticed where his eyes were and looked down at your hands as well. You made eye contact and Peter felt his entire face go red.
“Eyes on the screen, mister.” You said with no intention of putting your eyes back on the screen.
“Have I ever told you how pretty you are?” He asked you, making the corners of your mouth peak into a smile.
“We met about forty-five minutes ago, so no. You haven’t.”
“Well, you are. You’re really pretty.” Peter said as he unabashedly stared at your face.
“Woah. Twilight movie is making you bold, yeah?”
“I just wanted to tell you in case this ends up being a hallucination from my Jurassic laptop charger electrocuting me and I never seen you again.”
“It’s not a hallucination.” You assured him. “I’m real.”
“How can you be real?” He asked like he genuinely didn’t know the answer. You smiled shyly and playfully turned his face back towards his screen. In a moment of boldness brought on by his compliment, you rested your head on his shoulder. It wasn’t something you’d normally ever do, especially not with a stranger, but it had been a long time since you felt this at peace in your mind and body. Something about him was giving you the serenity you’d been chasing for a long time now.
When the movie ended, you slowly took your head off his shoulder and rubbed your eyes. There was an ache in your neck from the position you’d been in, but you didn’t mind it.
“So?” Peter asked. “What did you think?”
“I still don’t know what “imprinting” means.” You said and he nodded his head.
“So, I realized about 40 minutes in that that wasn’t going to be explained in this movie.” He admitted. “But I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to leave.”
“Peter, if I was gonna leave, I would’ve done it as soon as you put on a vampire movie.” You pointed out.
“Did you love it?” He smiled as if he already knew your answer.
“I like that you like it.” You answered, making him laugh.
“Good. Because there’s 4 more. And I own them all.”
“4?” Your eyes widened. “What? As in, one more than three?”
“Yep. And you don’t even want to know how many books got milked out of this.”
“Oh God.” You rubbed your face. “Don’t make me watch another. I beg you.”
“I won’t. But I do want to know some things.” He said as he shut his laptop and turned to face you. Your smile faltered, like you were expecting his first question to be why you dropped out.
“Like what?” You asked as you twisted your ring around your finger.
“Tell me about yourself. Your best self, since you said this isn’t it. Which I am finding hard to believe, by the way.” Peter said instead, causing you to stop twisting your ring.
“I don’t know. What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Foods you like, noises you hate, hobbies. Whatever you feel like telling me.” He shrugged. The sun was beginning to set behind him, making the tips of his hair glow gold. You stared at it for a while, trying to memorize the outline of his silhouette.
“Well, I like pasta with butter. Specifically bowtie pasta. I hate the sound of people snapping and popping their gum. Like holy shit, just chew it. And I don’t really have hobbies.”
“No?” You raised his eyebrows. “Nothing you like to do?”
“I don’t know. I liked to draw. And ride the subway and listen to music.”
“You don’t like that stuff anymore?” Peter asked, taking note of you speaking in past tense.
“I do. I just… I don’t know. Nothing really interests me anymore.”
“That’s okay. Hobbies are just a distraction from what’s really important in life.”
“And what’s that?”
“Screen time.” Peter said like it was obvious, earning a laugh out of you. He laughed too and never took his eyes off you.
“You know, you’re pretty much the first friend I’ve made here.” You admitted to him when your laughter died down.
“Really? But you’re so charming.”
“I’m not. Especially not during….” You trailed off and looked down at your hands. You twisted your ring a few times and then took it off to roll it between your fingers.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t super personable when I was going here. I was kinda going through some stuff.” You said after a beat. You didn’t meet his eyes as you spoke, but you could feel them on you. He didn’t press you for more information, but he picked up on what you were hinting at.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.” Peter said in a gentle voice. When you thought about that time in your life, you could feel all the emotions charge at you. Peter watched you do the same taps to your face that you did on the bench until you seemed to relax a little.
“I don’t want to talk about that right now.” You said finally. “But I do like talking to you. Something about you, I don’t know. It feels like a fresh start.”
“Maybe it is.” He said, simple as that. You wanted to believe him.
“I wish it could be. But the school rejected me.”
“But they said you can reapply, right?”
“Yeah, but not until the fall semester. That’s almost a year from now. And there’s no guarantee they’ll let me in then. I got waitlisted twice when I applied here the first time around. I’ll be competing with all the freshman and their glowing personal essays.” You explained as you slipped your ring back on and twisted it around and around.
“I could help you, if you want. We could try to appeal to the school. It wasn’t your fault that you had to leave. And it’s amazing that you’re trying to return to finish your education after what you went through. Maybe they can make an exception and give you your spot back.”
“Why would you help me?” You asked him. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Why do I have to owe you something to help you?Can’t I just help you?”
“But I’m a stranger.” You reminded him.
“You’re not a stranger. You were in my math class.” He replied. You couldn’t help but smile at that, but turned your face so he couldn’t see.
“You’re trying to find a way to argue with my logic, but you can’t. I can tell.” Peter said when you didn’t respond. You rolled your eyes and looked at him.
“Make your case then. How would you help me?”
“Oh, okay. Let me think. Well, we could ask for a meeting with the dean. And we would present your case and tell her how much you want to rejoin the school and continue your education.”
“What if she doesn’t care?”
“Well, maybe we need something to get her attention.” Peter thought out loud. “Like, you and I can organize a club or an event or something to show her what a positive addition to the school you’d be.”
“I mean, I would’ve really like a club where people could talk about their struggles and not give advice or anything. Just listen and learn from each other.” You told him. His face lit up and he clapped his hands in excitement.
“We could start that!” He exclaimed. “You and I could be the co-chairs. I bet Nikhil would join too. And I could put a flyer on the bulletin board in the hallway to let other people know about it.”
He was so excited that it was hard to tell him you weren’t really the kind of person that started clubs and got people together. But if this really was a fresh start, maybe you could be.
“Okay.” You said with a timid smile.
“Okay?” Peter grinned and leaned in to catch your eye.
“Okay.” You confirmed. “But if you change your mind, I can do it by myself. I don’t want to put you out.”
“I’m not gonna change my mind. We are doing this thing. Here, put your number in my phone.” He said as he handed over his phone to you. You felt your face warm up as you made yourself a contact in his phone.
“Hot. Very divisible by three.” Peter said when you gave the phone back to him. You laughed and playfully shoved his shoulder.
“Seriously, though.” You told him. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.” He shrugged again. You wondered if he knew how often he did that. Or if he knew how cute it was when he did it.
“I appreciate you, Peter from math class.” You said as you stared deep into his eyes.
“And I appreciate you, Y/n from the bench.” He said back. You both laughed but never broke your eye contact. The sun was fully set behind him now, but you weren’t ready to leave your new friend just yet.
“So that’s how you self regulate? You watch teen vampire movies?” You asked as you played with the DVD case, opening and shutting it over and over to keep your hands busy.
“Doesn’t everyone?” He joked. “What do you do?”
“I have a few things I learned in therapy that help me.” You told him before you could worry about oversharing.
“You tap.” He said, hoping he wasn’t crossing a line. You studied his face to see if he thought it was strange, but he just seemed interested.
“I do. It’s called EFT tapping. It helps me with my anxiety.”
“That’s cool.” He smiled. “When I’m anxious, I count all my fingers. I read once that in dreams you usually have 6 or more fingers. So I count mine to remind myself that I’m present and not dreaming. But maybe you could teach me how to do your taps sometime.”
“I like that.” You smiled back. “And yeah, I could totally show you sometime.”
You stayed looked at each other for a minute, the only light in the room coming from a lamp Nikhil had left on. You knew if you stayed any longer, you were gonna end up in love with him.
“I should probably get going.” You said with a sad smile.
“I’ll walk you.” He offered.
And so he did. Peter walked you back to your family’s apartment while talking about the next three movies he wanted to show you. You were happy to be quiet and listen to him speak, feeling grateful that he wasn’t expecting you to say anything back. When you reached your apartment, you felt sad to end the night.
“I’ve never said this and genuinely meant it, but it was really nice meeting you.” You told him with complete honesty.
“Same here. I hope everything works out for you. It would be nice to have you back at the school.”
“I appreciate you saying that.” You said with coy smile and eyes unwilling to meet his.
“Of course. I really, really mean it.” He assured you. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” You said back before watching him walk back to campus. You let out a sigh and let yourself into your apartment, finding the urge to text him as soon as you got back to your room. You didn’t, and did your skincare and daily journaling instead. When you finally got into bed after some dinner, the urge was too strong.
“did you notice we didn’t eat for 6 hours?” You texted him without bothering to say who you were.
“I didn’t notice until I got back to my dorm and now the whole dining hall has noticed” He wrote back almost immediately.
“what did you get?” You laughed as you rolled over in bed.
“chicken nuggets and hot chocolate and macking cheese”
“what the hell is macking cheese ?”
“you’ve never had it? like kraft?” He wrote back.
“bruh do you mean mac AND cheese ??”
“what the hell is mac”
“macaroni” You told him and sent a picture of how it was spelled from a google search.
“well don’t you just know everything”
“interesting combination nonetheless”
“I had meatballs and cantaloupe and an enchilada for lunch 😍” He sent back.
“I know your colon hates you”
“that’s a terrible thing to say !!” He replied, making you wish you were still with him.
“my dinner. not that you cared to ask” You wrote and sent him a picture of the bowl of cereal and microwaveable soup dumplings you had made yourself for dinner.
“sick invite” He answered.
“I’ll be sure to invite you next time I make this delicacy”
“do you want to hang out this weekend? we can get your transcripts together and make our proposal for our club” He wrote after a few minutes. Your heart skipped a beat and you were too excited to play it cool and wait a minute to answer.
“I would love to :-)”
“maybe we should eat together this time bc full disclosure I just got some kind of fruit cobbler” He wrote you, complete with a picture of the lumpy looking dessert he had gotten himself.
“it’s a date” You wrote back, hoping it wasn’t too forward. You watched the typing bubble appear on your screen as butterflies flooded your stomach.
“this is even better than my fruit cobbler! and i like that your smily face has a nose :-)” He finally wrote back, making you sigh in relief.
“I think he likes that he has a nose too”
“does Saturday work?” He asked.
“yes! I just have therapy until 1”
“then I’ll be outside your place at 1:01”
“okay zoey brooks”
Peter was sitting at a table by himself in the dining hall with the biggest smile on his face. His paper was long forgotten, and all he could think about now was the beautiful girl he had met on the bench that day.
When Saturday finally came, Peter showed up to your apartment promptly at 1:01. You came down a few minutes later, practically running outside to see him. It had been a long time since you felt excited by something, so you had been looking toward to today.
“Hey! You look really nice.” Peter told you.
“So do you.” You returned the compliment.
“Thank you, thank you. Hungry?”
“Always.” You replied and linked your arm with his. He wasn’t super familiar with the area, so you brought him to a cafe you liked that had big couches for you to sit on. You brought some food to a round table in a secluded corner, giving you some much appreciated privacy.
You took a few bites of food and then discreetly took your medication for the day. You could tell Peter had noticed and smiled in embarrassment.
“Sorry. I didn’t have time for breakfast and I have to take these with food.”
“Don’t apologize.” He said kindly. “As long as you share.”
“My food or the pills?” You laughed.
“Maybe both. What do they do, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“They help me regulate my mood and sleep and stuff.” You explained to him without going into too much detail as to why you were on them.
“Oh, wow. I didn’t know there was medication for that. And here I was just rawdogging my depressive episodes.”
“You’ve struggled with depression?” You asked him in a soft tone.
“Yeah. I struggled with it pretty bad last year. My aunt passed and I lost my friend group at the same time, so I wasn’t doing my best.”
“That must’ve been so hard. Did you have anyone to talk to while you were going through that?” You asked as you placed over his.
“Um, no actually.” He realized. “I didn’t.”
“Well, you have me now. Or we can find a therapist for you if that’s something you’d like to do. Seeing one really helped me, but everyone is different.”
“Yeah. Yeah, maybe.” Peter nodded and rubbed his thumb along your knuckles.
“And, you know, I didn’t know anything about getting medication either.” You told him. “I didn’t realize that was an option I had for a really long time. So maybe that can be one of the features of our club? We educate the members on how to find resources that may work for them.”
“That’s a really great idea. I think this club will do a lot of good on campus. And so will you.” Peter said and gave your hand a squeeze.
“If I can get back onto campus. They still have to let me in.” You reminded him.
“They will. We’re gonna figure that all out today. Did you bring your transcripts?”
You nodded and handed him a folder of your grades that you had printed out the night before. He took a minute to go through them and looked up at you in amazement.
“These are your grades? How could the school not let you back in if you were doing this well?”
“Because I was only doing that well until I wasn’t.” You sighed as you looked at the two semesters worth of grades on transcript. It was difficult to be reminded of what you were once capable of achieving before your mind turned on you. Peter was looking at you, but not as if he was expecting you to say anything. He just had a simple yet understanding look on her face that compelled you to open up.
“When everything got really bad with my mental health, I stopped going to class or turning in my assignments. My professors threatened to drop me from their classes for being inactive, so I panicked and dropped out. That’s why the school won’t just let me back in. They think I’ll do it again, and that would be giving my spot to a student who is more “dedicated” to their studies.” You told him after a beat of silence. Peter listened to you while never letting go of your hand.
“But you are dedicated.” Peter insisted. “You were an amazing student that suddenly stopped turning things in or coming to class. Wasn’t it obvious to your professors that something was going on with you to cause such a drastic change?”
“Colleges don’t care about stuff like that, Peter.” You frowned. “They just want classes filled.”
“I don’t accept that.” He shook his head. “Someone should have helped you. Checked in on you. Anything. I’m sorry nobody did.”
“It’s not really anyone’s responsibility to do that.” You shrugged. “I could have asked for help at any point.”
“It would have taken two minutes to email you and ask why you suddenly stopped showing up to class. Someone should have done something.”
“There are so many students at this school. I can’t really blame my professors for not noticing that I changed.”
“They noticed enough to threaten to kick you out.” He pointed out. You didn’t meet his eye, knowing he had a point.
“Are you sure you want to go back to a place that doesn’t care about their students?” Peter asked quietly.
“Maybe our club will make a difference.” You said as you met his gaze again. He felt his resentment towards his school melt away and turn into hope for how things could be going forward.
“I like the way you think.”
After finishing your food and working some more at the cafe, you walked back to Peter’s dorm to continue planning everything out.
“Okay. This is good. We have your transcripts and a letter to the board of education here to appeal your case and ask for readmission.” Peter said as he looked at the array of papers you had laid out on his bed.
“And I am nearly done with our club proposal.” You added as you looked up from your laptop.
“Right. What should we call the club?” Peter wondered. You thought too and looked around his room for inspiration. Your eyes landed on his movie collection, his favorite standing out to you.
“What about something like “Sit by Me”? Because we’d all be sitting together and talking. It’s like an invitation to be included.”
“I love it. Is perfect. You’re a genius.” He declared. You grinned and added it to the proposal.
“Now we need a classroom.”
“Already covered. I asked my robotics teacher and he said his room is free every Tuesday at 5.” Peter told you. You pumped your fist and put that into the proposal as well.
“I think we really have something here.” You said as you looked up from your computer in excitement. Peter was already looking at you with a love struck smile on his face.
“Yeah.” He agreed. “I think we really have something here too.”
That following week, you and Peter sat outside the deans office and waited to be called in. You had the binder of your club proposal on your lap and Peter had all your academic information on his. You’d seen him every day that week to finalize all the details, all leading up to this moment. When your name was called, he gave your hand a squeeze and went with you into the office.
Hidden under the desk, Peter held your hand while you explained your struggle with your mental health over the past year and how it led you to drop out of school. The dean looked over your grades while you spoke, giving you hope that she would understand your case and let you back into the school. Finally, she looked up from the papers with a tight smile.
“I appreciate you coming in and wanting to resume your education. But we don’t tend to reconsider things of this nature. Like the registrar office told you, you are welcome to reapply in the fall.”
Peter watched your face fall and felt your grip tighten on his hand. You nodded your head in understanding, but Peter wasn’t ready to accept rejection just yet.
“Miss, if I may.” Peter began. “Y/n would be a great addition back to campus. She was an excellent student when she was here. And she helped me create a club that we hope will bring a lot of positive change to campus.”
“Club?” The dean raised a hardly interested eyebrow. You slid the binder towards her and opened it up.
“We want to start a club here that builds peer support for people struggling with their mental health. We would provide a safe environment to talk about our feelings without any judgement. We plan to have monthly guest speakers to educate about mental health and the resources that are out there. The first three months speakers are included in the binder. And we would have events that advocate and spread awareness about mental health issues, like our bake sale that raises money to pay for more resources on campus.”
“That is all very nice, but this doesn’t really align with the schools goals at the time.” The dean said without looking at the binder. Peter was about to step in again, but you had it this time.
“Supporting your students mental health doesn’t align with the schools goals?” You asked.
“Clubs cost money. Your guest speakers will cost money. The school is not in a place to fund another club right now.” She said with a simple shrug.
“The regular meetings won’t cost the school any money.” Peter mentioned. “And if you look at the binder, you’ll see the first three guest speakers agreed to do it for free.”
“And didn’t this school just install a 30 million dollar rehabilitation room for when the athletes get injured?” You added.
“Our athletes are very important to the school community.” The dean stated. “Therefore, recovering from their injuries are very important to us.”
“Sure, but what about the injuries you can’t see?” You asked. “What about the students who bring just as much to the school community who are hurting and have no one to talk to? The art students who paint the murals you guys love to post about? The dancers and the art kids who bring in crowds that help fund your salaries?”
“Or the quiet nerdy kids who like robots and struggle to make friends.” Peter added.
“Yeah.” You agreed. “Don’t they matter just as much?”
“Yes, but-“
“But what?” You cut her off.
“Like I said, a club like this does not really align with the schools goals at the time. I really don’t see how it would benefit the students on this campus. That’s not something student here struggle with.”
“How do you know that?” Peter asked her. “A lot of people suffer in silence. Especially college students.”
The dean stared at you for a moment, then at Peter, and then shut the binder.
“This school cannot create clubs on every new trend.” She said finally.
“Mental health is not a trend.“ Peter said as he stood up out of his seat. You pulled him back down by the arm, not wanting him to cause a scene since he was still a student there.
“It’s not worth it, Peter. She doesn’t want our club. Because if we had a mental health club at this school, the school would have to acknowledge that mental health is important. And that doesn’t align with their “goals”at this time.”
“I’m sorry I can’t give you the response you were looking for.” She said flatly. “My answer is no. As for your readmission, you are welcome to reapply in the fall.”
“Right. Thanks.” You rolled your eyes and grabbed your bag to leave. Peter stood up as well, but didn’t follow you to the door.
“Quick question. Should I tell you now that I’m dropping out, or should I just have Y/n show me?” Peter asked. “Because this school certainly makes it easy to drop out, but pretty difficult to get help when you need it.”
“Peter, no.” You took his arm and shook your head. While you found the gesture incredibly moving, you couldn’t let him throw his education away for someone who was basically a stranger.
“Mr. Parker, I highly suggest you reconsider before making that kind of decision. You are one of the brightest minds here and an integral part of our science center. You should not drop out of this prestigious university on a whim.”
“Yeah, well, I just don’t think this school really aligns with my goals at the time.”
With that, Peter took your hand and pulled you towards the door. You were stunned to silence, never taking your eyes off him as he lead you through the doorway.
“Wait.” The dean said abruptly and stood up from her desk. You and Peter stopped walking to look at her.
“If it means this much to you, we will allow your club. And miss L/n can reapply for this spring semester. We cannot make an exception and just let her back in, but we will take her creation of this club into consideration when viewing her application.” The dean said as if each word pained her. You and Peter turned to each other and had a quick conversation with your eyes that told each other to play it cool.
“Thank you.” Peter said curtly. “We hope to see you at our first club meeting.”
“And I hope to see you in the spring.” You added before closing her door. You walked a few paces away from her office before jumping up and down in excitement. Peter pulled you into a hug and spun around in a circle.
“We did it! We threatened the dean into allowing our club!” He exclaimed as he lifted you off the ground.
“And I can reapply a semester early! It’s no guarantee, but at least it’s a start.”
“I’m so glad. You and I could be talking classes together by January.” Peter sighed happily and set you back on the ground. You pulled apart a little, but kept your arms resting around his neck.
“Would you really have left the school for me?” You asked him.
“Of course. I wouldn’t want to stay at a school that doesn’t care about the wellbeing of their students.”
“I’m really glad I met you.” You grinned and pulled him back into a hug.
“Me too. We make a good team.” Peter replied as he rubbed small circles on your back. When you pulled away, your face was just inches from his.
“A really good team.” He said as his eyes dropped to your lips. He looked back into your eyes for approval, and you nodded your head. Seconds later, he had crashed his lips to yours. You kissed him in front of all the office ladies and passing by students, forgetting their presence entirely.
“I think know what our first club meeting should be.” Peter said when you pulled away. You could feel the warmth from his blush on your face.
“What are you thinking?”
“A dinner.” He smiled. “Just the two of us.”
“Like a date?”
“Date?” He scoffed. “No, this is strictly business.”
“Uh huh.” You playfully rolled your eyes and kissed him again. When you pulled away, you had a more serious look on your face.
“I just hope you know that I’m still on my path to recovery. I’m doing a lot better now, but I will still have bad days. I really, really like you. But I’ll need to take this slow.“
“I know, of course.” Peter assured you. “Recovery isn’t linear. We will go at your pace. You just tell me how I can help you when you have those bad days.”
“I will. But you’ll never be able to “fix” me, if that’s what you’re hoping will happen. This could be something I struggle with for a really long time.”
“You don’t need to be fixed. You need to be supported.”
“You might be too good to be true, Peter from math class.” You smiled and rested your forehead against his.
“Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.”
Three months later, you sat on Peter’s bed with your laptop pulled on your lap. It was the day you were supposed to hear back from the school about your readmission, so you’d been biting your nails down to the quick all morning as you waited.
“Did you get the email yet?” Peter asked for the sixth time in the last fifteen minutes.
“Not yet. It should be any second now.” You replied as you chewed off another fingernail. Peter took your hand out of your mouth and placed it on top of your head. You nodded and started to do your tapping strategy to calm yourself down. Just as you tapped below your pinky, you got an email. You looked up at Peter with wide eyes and he gave you a reassuring smile.
“Whatever happens, I love you. And we will figure it out together.”
“You love me?” You raised your eyebrows. “Is that a recent development?”
“Did I not mention that?” Peter laughed in embarrassment as his face turned a shade of pink that was pretty unique to him. You laughed too and pulled him onto the bed by his hand to kiss him.
“I love you too.” You told him, making him break into a huge smile.
Before he could say anything else, your laptop chimed with a notification. Your heart raced as you opened the email from the school with Peter watched over your shoulder. You’d barely read the word “congratulations” before Peter was covering your face in kisses.
Synopsis: After reading Peter’s letter and rejecting him, you invite him inside your apartment to talk
“Sorry about him. He’s just excited that you’re here.” You said once Ned left the apartment to get the food he’d ordered. You and Peter were alone once again, with you on the couch and him sitting on the floor. He was preoccupied by a Lego set Ned had put out, but you were still thinking out the letter you’d found. The letter that informed you that you and Peter were once together, but you had his existence entirely wiped from your memory.
“It’s all good. This is honestly the most fun I’ve had in years.” Peter told you as he fitted another two blocks together.
“Really? You don’t do Lego nights with your new friends?”
“No, no. I didn’t really make any. Not the kinds that like to build Lego’s, anyways. I’m pretty busy with Spiderman stuff.” He answered you. There was no self pity in his voice, but that only made you feel all the more guilty. The more you thought about what his last four years must’ve been like compared to yours, you wanted to break down into tears and hold him tight. You had to look away from him when your eyes began to water.
“That makes me sad.” You admitted as you discreetly dabbed at your eyes.
“What does?” He wondered.
“Thinking of you going through all of this alone. I mean, Ned and I had each other, but we didn’t even know that we had lost something. You really didn’t have anyone?”
“No, but it’s okay.” He assured you. “Don’t feel sad. I made the decision to have the spell cast. I knew what it would do.”
“I don’t know if I could have done something that selfless.” You shook your head and continued to dodge his gaze. Peter watched you and could tell you were emotional and trying to hide it from him, but he knew you too well. The last thing he wanted was for you to feel any kind of remorse for a decision he made.
“Yeah, well, I guess I’m just a better person than you.” He shrugged and watched your reaction carefully. Despite forgetting him, his sense of humor still worked on you. You cracked a smile and looked at him.
“You’re funny.” You told him. “That’s something I’ve learned about you so far. Selfless and funny.”
“And humble.” He added, making you smile again.
“Right, and humble.” You nodded. You watched him build the Lego set some more as the two of you sat in comfortable silence. Peter had a million things he wanted to say to you, but didn’t want to overwhelm you, so he kept quiet.
“Gentle, too.” You said after a beat of silence.
“Gentle?” He tilted his head.
“The way you held me when you swung me home.” You explained. “You kept me secure, but it still felt respectful of my space. And you swung us back so slowly and carefully. Even… even after what I had just said to you.”
Since he still had his mask on, you watched his body language carefully to see how he reacted to being reminded of you telling him you didn’t love him. You wanted to see if it was crushing him as much as it was crushing you, or if he was more understanding. But he was too hard to read.
“You know, you never really liked swinging with me.” Peter laughed softly. “It used to scare you, understandably so. That’s why I went so slow. I didn’t want to freak you out anymore than you probably already are. I know reading that letter must’ve been a lot.”
“I’m right, then.” You smiled coyly. “You are gentle. And considerate. That’s another thing I know about you now.”
“Collecting data on me, are you?” Peter asked, grateful that his mask was concealed the delighted smile he was wearing. After the heavy conversation you’d had after you discovered the letter, he was appreciating each shred of tenderness between the two of you.
“Wouldn’t you? If someone showed up at your door and said “hey, by the way, we were together, but I was wiped from your memory”, wouldn’t you want to learn everything about them to see why you once loved them?”
“Honestly, I don’t even know if I’d believe them.” Peter admitted. “I’m actually kinda surprised that you did. You’re usually pretty skeptical and like to see things for yourself. For all you know, I could be making this all up as a really elaborate way to ask you out.”
“I didn’t even think of that.” You realized. “I just automatically believed you when I read the letter.”
“Why do you think that was?” Peter wondered as he looked over at you.
“I don’t really know. I think it just made sense to me. All throughout college, I felt like there was something missing in my life. Nothing ever satisfied me - no job, no guy, no achievement, because I always felt like I was waiting for something more. So when I read your letter, it all made sense. I knew what I’d be waiting for was actually a who. And that’s you.”
Peter could do little to suppress the onset of hope growing within him that maybe you whole heartedly believing him meant a part of you remembered him. He was quiet for a minute and felt himself getting emotional once more. He couldn’t wipe his eyes since he still had his mask on, so he nodded his head and looked down.
Peter could feel your gaze all over him, but his voice was too shaky to speak. After being told by both you and Jean that you had no thoughts of him, it meant everything to him that some part of you had felt his absence.
“Well I very grateful that you believed me.” He said once he finally trusted his voice not to crack. You smiled sadly and then looked down at your lap. Peter watched you, feeling like there was something at the tip of your tongue that you’d been holding back for the entirety of the conversation.
“Hey, Peter?” You asked in a timid voice.
“Yeah?”
“I feel really bad about what I said to you before. About not loving you, I mean.” You admitted, still keeping your eyes down. Peter swallowed and looked away as well as he mentally prepared himself to have this conversation again.
“Oh, that’s…that’s okay.” He said kindly. “I don’t want you to worry about that, okay? Don’t feel bad. It’s….everything is okay.”
“None of this is okay.” You said tearfully. “That must’ve been really awful to hear after you waited so long to talk to me. I can’t stop thinking about your face when I said it. I keep replaying it in my mind.”
Peter didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he stood up from his spot on the floor and sat beside you on your couch. You watched him through tear stained eyelashes and moved over a little to be closer to him. Silently, Peter took a box of tissues off the end table and handed them to you.
“I really don’t want this to weigh on you.” He said finally. “What you said, it’s really okay. How could you love me? You don’t know me.”
“I think I just felt really angry in that moment. I remember you coming into the donut shop before I started school. I remember you holding that letter in your hand. You looked like you had something to tell me.” You recalled as you dried your eyes with your tissue.
“I wish I had just told you then.” Peter sighed. “I really do. I’m sorry I took that choice from you.”
You stared at him for a moment and wished you could pull his mask off and look into his eyes. You settled for the glimpse of them that you could get through the white of his mask, and found unexpected comfort in them.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner, Peter?” You whispered. “We could have been rebuilding this whole time. I could’ve been getting to know you this whole time. But now, I feel like you’ve been taken from me twice.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Was all he could say. You could tell he was crying too. You wiped your eyes again and then started to rip up the tissue to give your hands something to do.
“It’s strange. I don’t remember you, but I can still feel what a loss that is.” You said as if you were thinking out loud. As you looked into Peter’s eyes, he had never seen you look so lost. He decided you’d both gone long enough without connection and pulled off his mask.
“What are you doing? Put it back on. Ned could come back any minute.” You warned him as your head whipped to the door to see if Ned had returned.
“I don’t care.” Peter shook his head. “I have to tell you this.”
“Tell me what?” You asked as your eyes desperately searched his face to try and jog your memory.
“I am truly sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner. But you have to understand that it only came from a place of wanting to protect you.”
He paused as though he was carefully considering his next words. His knee was bouncing up and down, seemingly unbeknownst to him, so you put your hand on top of it. It stopped bouncing almost immediately and he instinctively put his hand on top of yours. He rubbed his thumb over your knuckles for just a second before remembering that you didn’t have that kind of relationship anymore. He quickly withdrew his hand and wiped his eyes.
“When I first went to give you the letter all those years ago, I had just come back from my aunts grave. I was carrying the weight of my lifestyle being the cause of her death. Seeing your face that day was the only thing that eased the pain. But then I saw that you still had a bandage on your face from helping me when I was fighting some people. You probably don’t remember that either.”
You reached up and touched the scar above your right eyebrow when you heard this. Something you’d always chalked up to being a birthmark or leftover scrape from childhood had been a connection to Peter this whole time.
“When I looked at you and heard how excited you were to go off to school, you seemed so peaceful.” Peter continued. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I couldn’t complicate your life all over again and risk you getting killed for me.”
You chewed your bottom lip for a moment as you processed what he was saying. You could understand his reasoning to a point, but you still wished he had let you make the decision for yourself.
“Did I know you were Spiderman when we were together?” You asked him.
“Yeah. You figured it out.” He said with a soft laugh when he remembered the night you told him you knew his secret. You didn’t seemed pleased by that answer and frowned at him.
“But doesn’t that mean I already knew the risk? And was with you regardless?”
“You were.” He had to agree. “I guess it didn’t feel like a risk anymore after my aunt passed. It felt inevitable.”
You sighed and put your hand back on Peter’s knee. He looked into your eyes expecting residual anger, but they were only soft now.
“I understand why you did what you did. But I don’t want you to make decisions like that for me ever again, okay?” You said firmly but kindly.
“I won’t.” He nodded. “Never again. I promise.”
“Good. Because if I’m back in your life now, I need to be able to trust you.”
“You can. I’ll make it up to you.” He assured you. The faintest hint of a smile crept onto his face, so he looked down in attempt to hide it.
“What?” You wondered.
“I didn’t realize this meant you were officially back in my life.” He said in a quiet voice. You could hear a difference in his voice as he spoke, sounding much lighter than he had since he first reentered your life.
“Ned and I are, yeah.” You said simply, not understanding how desperately he needed to hear that.
“That’s, uh, that’s really great to hear.” He nodded and kept his head low so you wouldn’t see his misty eyes. He didn’t want you to see that he was all choked up over the mere fact you were someone he could talk to again.
“You could’ve heard it four years ago.” You said out the corner of his mouth. Peter let out a soft chuckle at that, making you smile as well. The atmosphere in the room finally felt a little less intense and you were able to smile at each other.
“Are you gonna remind me of that for the rest of our lives?” Peter asked you, secretly thrilled to have the beginning of some kind of inside joke with you. Inside jokes existed between people who meant something to each other, giving him hope that this would be the first of many between you.
“Almost definitely.” You assured him.
“I deserve that.” He shrugged. To his surprise, your smile fell and a very serious look crossed your face.
“You don’t deserve any of this.” You stated as you stared into his eyes. Peter blinked at the sudden candor from you and nodded his head to show you he heard you.
“I appreciate you saying that.” He said, voice quiet once again.
“I mean it, Peter.” You insisted. “No one should have ever had to go through what you’ve gone through. But you don’t have to go through it alone anymore. I’m here for you now. As long as you’re honest with me.”
“Since I’m being honest, there’s actually something else I have to tell you.”
“Oh God.” You sighed. “There’s more? What else could you possibly have to tell me?”
“You know how I came into your room the other day and told you someone bad was after you? And then we found out later that it was Jean?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“After I got you out of your apartment, we landed on a rooftop. I thought I had gotten us far enough away from Jean where she couldn’t get us, but I didn’t. She took you over at some point without me realizing. And she, uh, she kissed me.” Peter admitted. He’d been carrying the shame from the moment he’d realized it was Jean, and not you, who kissed him. In the spirit of rebuilding your relationship, he knew he had to be honest with you.
“Oh. I didn’t know that happened. Everything just sort of switched off after we left my apartment.” You frowned and tried to recall the moments between Peter rushing into your open window and you waking up in his arms on the sidewalk after Jean threw you off the rooftop.
“I assumed you didn’t know. But I wanted you to know that I kissed you back. Or, her back, I guess. But only because I thought it was you. I really thought we were safe from her up there. If I had known it wasn’t really you, I never would’ve kissed her back. Or, you back. I don’t know exactly. I just want you to know that I’m really sorry.”
“I appreciate you telling me that.” You smiled sadly at him. “And your apology. I’m pretty disgusted that she used my body like that, but I don’t blame you for it. I know you wouldn’t have kissed me if you knew the truth.”
“I wouldn’t. Ever. But I’m still sorry.”
“I forgive you, since you didn’t know. Plus, I’m sure we’ve kissed before, right?”
“Yeah.” Peter blushed. “We have.”
“I figured. That explains why I don’t remember my first kiss.” You said with a sad laugh. Peter could tell that bothered you but stayed silent to let you process it.
“Or my first time.” You realized. “Was that you, too?”
“Yeah, yeah that was me.” Peter said weakly. He was bright red now, but luckily, you weren’t looking at him.
“Damn. And here I thought I was a virgin.”
“Definitely not.” Peter mumbled.
“Definitely not?” You repeated through a laugh. “Damn, Spiderman. What were we getting up to?”
Before he could answer, he watched your face slowly drop into a frown. You slumped back on the couch and stared off into the distance but not at anything in particular.
“That’s actually hitting me pretty hard.” You confessed. “Those were two pivotal moments in my life and I have no memory of them. Or of being in love. Or, I’m sorry. Were we in love? How serious was our relationship? Your letter just said we were together.”
“Very serious and very much in love. We were that annoying couple that sat on the same side of the booth at restaurants.” He informed you. You smiled a little at that, but he could tell you were still grieving the loss of memories for those foundational moments in your life.
“Oh God. Really?” You asked in total disbelief, feeling unable to imagine yourself as one half of a couple that did that.
“Oh yes. And always holding hands. Even under the desk in class. People would make fun of us sometimes. But even when they did, you never let go of my hand.”
“I mean, that’s pretty sweet.” You admitted. “As long as we weren’t the kind of high school couple that would like bark at each other or make out to say goodbye if we had different classes.”
“No, no barking.” He chuckled. “Just holding hands. And you’d wear my debate club hoodie. You always said it was because it smelled like me, but I really think you just didn’t want to buy your own.”
“That sounds like me. I actually still have that. I thought it was mine.”
“It’s mine. My initials are on the tag.”
“Really?” Your eyes widened. “How did I not notice that? I did notice it smelled like cologne, though. But I thought that was because Ned had borrowed it or something.”
“Nope. All me.” Peter said proudly.
“What else?” You asked as you leaned your chin on your hands to look at him. You resembled a kid eagerly waiting to hear the next part of a storybook, and that made Peter eager to tell you.
“You’d come over every Friday and my aunt would make us some bizarre recipe she saw online. It was never good, and rarely edible, but you’d always pretend to like it. And then we’d sneak out and get McDonald’s.”
“May.” You recalled. “I could never remember how I knew her. Or why I spent so much time at a 50 year old woman’s home in my teens.”
“Yeah, May.” He smiled sadly. “We’d watch movies in your room a lot. You let me show you all my favorites. If you complimented something random about the movie after we watched it, I knew that meant you didn’t like it. Like, “the score was really powerful” or “the costumes were so detailed”. That’s when I’d think yep, she hated it.”
“Is that why I’ve seen all the Star Wars movies? That’s your doing?”
“Oh, yes.” He nodded. “That’s all me.”
“Keep going.” You said, thought it sounded more like a plead.
“You always had my back. Always. You don’t remember this, but before the spell, my identity got revealed to the world. You went down swinging for me anytime someone said something to me. Even though it was making things harder for you.”
“Harder how?”
“You got fired from your job. So did Ned. And neither of you got into MIT because you were linked to the “controversy” about me.” He explained.
“I can’t believe that happened. I don’t remember any of that.”
“It did. That’s part of the reason I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“Which you’re sorry about.” You reminded him.
“Right, which I’m sorry about.” He nodded in agreement and cracked a smile at you keeping him in line. You frowned again and touched a gentle hand to Peter’s cheek, to which he instantly melted into.
“You gave up so much for Ned and I to have normal lives. And we had no idea for all this time.” You said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Of course. I would do anything to protect you guys. Anything.”
“I can’t tell you how much I wish I had our memories.” You stayed in a hushed tone as you stroked his freckles with your thumb.
“I really wish you did too.” He said, voice beginning to waver as well. You gave him a teary smile and then wiped your eyes with the back of your hand.
“Listen, um, I know that I said before that I’m grateful for what you sacrificed for me, but that I don’t know you.”
“I remember.” Peter said quietly.
“But I’d like to.” You continued. Peter stared into your eyes for what felt like a really long time, unwilling to blindly trust that this was really you talking and not another trick.
“If that’s okay?” You added when he didn’t respond.
“Can I have four years to think about it?” He said finally, making you laugh through your tears and pull him into a hug. He hugged you back as tightly as he could and let himself trust that this was real. He buried your face in his shoulder, letting himself grow familiar with the new perfume you wore. You held him just as tightly, feeling your muscle memory kick it as you gripped the curls on the top of his head.
“No, you may not.” You said into his shoulder. “I think we’ve lost enough time.”
warnings: brand new day spoilers (but it's genuinely the smallest one you ever did see)
summary: you're avoiding the party that mj and ned wanted to throw, but that doesn't stop you from being found by a stranger. why can't you shake the feeling that he's familiar?
a/n: umm it's been eight years since i posted on this account? we're so back? saw brand new day in theaters (twice) and felt teenage me gnawing on the bars of her enclosure this one is for her (and for y'all). potential for a part two...
You didn’t know exactly what it was. You didn’t mind the music or the alcohol; even being around so many people was fun sometimes. Before everyone got drunk and started spilling things and yelling, obviously. But every single party you’d been to at MIT had felt…wrong. Like you were missing something. Like someone was supposed to be there with you, and they weren’t.
Which didn’t make sense. Ned and MJ had gone to a majority of the parties you’d gone to throughout college, and they were your closest friends. How could you feel like something important was missing when everything important was already there with you?
Either way, you’d started trying to avoid that gnawing feeling in your chest. Besides, you were growing out of the phase where going to every party and meeting every person you could fascinated you. Maybe one day that deep, dreadful sinking would go away. Maybe it would stop appearing at parties, on every birthday you turned a year older, on the small amount of dates you’d gone on where the feeling got so strong it made you nauseous.
Today, though, was an exception. You’d graduated this past summer and moved back to New York with MJ and Ned, and they were determined to throw one last party with all the college friends that had wound up back in the city, too.
Well, Ned was determined. You and MJ were lukewarm about the whole thing.
Which is why you were in your—abysmally small—bedroom, working through this line of code that you were pretty sure was going to get you fired from your shiny new job if you didn’t figure out why it wasn’t working, with your door open to the noise beyond. It was to keep an eye on MJ and Ned, you told yourself, even as you eyed all the swaying people around the TV you’d just spent fifty dollars on from Facebook Marketplace. Ugh, you should have moved it before. If they broke it, you were totally making Ned buy you takeout for a week.
You went back to work, thankful everyone seemed to be too preoccupied with the party to worry about the weird girl staring at her computer screen on her bedroom floor. You couldn’t figure this out. It was driving you crazy. You were sure it had worked yesterday evening, and then when you’d come into work this morning it was all wrong and every single test you did didn’t fix it and you were going to throw your computer—
A knock on your open door. A cleared throat. “Um, hey.”
You looked up.
A guy around your age stood in your doorway. The first thing you noticed about him were his eyes, wide and expressive, looking at you as if you were the one who’d shown up in his bedroom. But…reverent too, almost in disbelief. He was looking at you like he’d never seen a girl before.
But he was cute. And something about him…
He seemed familiar.
“Are you okay?” he asks you. His gaze starts to bounce around the room the second you meet it, avoiding your eyes. “You looked, um, mad?”
“Oh!” You laugh a little at yourself. “I’m just doing some work. I’ve been told I look mad when I can’t figure something out. I don’t even realize it.” But who had told you that? It wasn’t your family, or Ned or MJ. But someone had told you. Who had it been?
The guy shifts on his feet. You realize he’s holding a bouquet of flowers, which is a weird thing to bring to a party, but you find it charming. He squints his eyes at you, but the corner of his mouth is lifting like he wants to smile. It makes something in your chest flutter. “You’re doing work during a party?”
He’s teasing you. You feel yourself smiling back. “Yes, I am. Super important work, I might add.”
“Oh, yeah?” He leans a shoulder against your doorframe, eyes on yours now.
You can’t look away.
“Yep. Keep an eye out because I’m gonna dethrone Spider-Man from the first page of the Daily Bugle tomorrow with my amazing work on debugging this finance app that only has three hundred downloads. Really groundbreaking stuff.”
He smiles fully, now. It makes you feel triumphant, nervous, and warm. “That’s awesome because I love—What’s the name of the app?”
“Financipply” Stupid name. From the doubtful look he sends you, he agrees.
“That’s perfect because I love Finacnipply. Can’t wait to see you on the front page.” You roll your eyes, but you laugh. You both do, his shy and small, as if he hasn’t done it in a long, long time. As if he shouldn’t be laughing at all. But his eyes are bright. They turn towards the floor as your laughter dies, shy. “So what can’t you figure out?”
And you just can’t stop looking at him. You motion towards your computer screen vaguely. “Just this code. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. It’s just not working.”
He takes a small step forward. “Do you think…Can I…look at it?”
“For real? You code?”
He shrugs, one hand in his pocket. Adorable. “I…dabble?”
“Are you sure about that?”
Another flash of a smile. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“Alright then. Knock yourself out.”
He comes to sit next to you on the rug you found at the thrift store a couple blocks away, rubbing his palms over his jeans and looking intently at your computer screen. He smells like clean laundry and the rain the city had earlier in the day, and he’s looking at your code like he actually understands it. “Oh wow. Cool.” He scrolls through it a couple times, up, down. You’re entranced by his profile, so close. He stops to type. “Did you try this?”
You blink. Look at the screen. “Oh my gosh, no.” A simple line edit. You know when you see it that it’ll work. “Holy shit. You did it. Holy crap. Thank you. You’re, like, awesome.”
“It was nothing.” But he's ducking his head with a blush. “Seriously.”
“What’s your name, anyway? Since you saved me from getting fired.”
“Um, May..nard.”
“Maynard.” It sounds wrong. You’ve never had that thought before—that someone’s name is wrong. But it’s a sure feeling in your chest. The one you have when you know your code tests are going to work, and when you decided you wanted to move back to the city. It’s really the only feeling you trust anymore.
“Yep.” He leans back on his palms, and your eyes run down his arms unconsciously, tracking muscles and veins. You have a brief, overwhelming urge to curl closer to him, to run your hands down his biceps, to take his hands into yours and trace the lines of his palms. And it feels normal, to have that feeling. So normal, your body almost starts moving on its own accord. But his voice breaks you out of it. “So, is this what you want to do? Program apps?”
You tell him that your dream is to work on developing video games, and he nods like it makes complete sense and gets you to tell him that you’d love to make a game based off of Star Wars, which makes his eyes light up in a way that has your breath catching.
And that’s how you end up talking to a cute boy on the floor of your bedroom for an hour, about Star Wars and your favorite video games and what got you into them in the first place. He makes you laugh, and talking to him is so easy. It’s hard to believe you just met him now and not in high school. He would fit right in with MJ and Ned. You can almost see it for a moment; the four of you hanging around the diner MJ used to work at before college, laughing and teasing and studying. The image is so visceral that for a moment it feels real.
You’re just about to invite him over sometime because you’re so sure that they’d love him and that you want to get to know him better, when there’s a crash from the living room.
Both of you turn, and your face immediately drops. That better not have been your TV.
You sigh. “I need to go make sure nothing important is broken.” You almost add on a desperate wait for me, but he’s already standing up and holding out a hand for you.
That would have been too weird to ask for, anyway. Right?
You let him pull you up. When your hands touch, it’s almost as if the warmth radiates from his calloused fingers, grips your heart, and drags it all the way down to your toes. He lets go quickly, as soon as you’re on your feet, but you stand there for a moment, disoriented. Feeling like…feeling like you’re right where you need to be. But also like you’ve forgotten to do something. It pulls at your brain like a grocery item list you know you were thinking about five minutes ago, but no matter how far you reach, you can never remember what it was.
It shouldn’t bother you this much—you’ve been feeling it since you went to college. It hung over you during orientation, and move-in day, and every visit home. It reaches you in dreams, and weirdly, whenever Ned shows you the thousands of videos he gets of Spider-Man swinging across the city.
But you’d never felt this close to grasping it before. You can almost see an image in your brain, faded around the edges like an old photograph, a word floating just on the edge of your consciousness.
“You okay?” He’s asking you. Maynard. God, why does that name sound so wrong to think?
He looks about a second away from grabbing your hand again.
You want to let him.
But you hear MJ’s voice from the living room, firm in the way she only uses when she’s annoyed, and you know that your TV is probably done for. Maynard seems to be able to sense it too, because he urges you to go.
And your TV is broken, thanks to some idiot and his friend who decided to start play-fighting for no reason. He gives you a twenty from his pocket, but you can’t even focus. Your mind is too busy playing back your night. Warm brown eyes, messy curls, soft smiles. You end up just waving it off—but you keep that twenty—and rushing back to your room to find Maynard.
Only, he’s not there when you return.
Your laptop is closed and placed at the foot of your bed. On top, the bouquet he showed up with.
You stand there, in the middle of your tiny room, touching your fingertips to the carnations and grieving.
Grieving for what? You keep asking yourself. Why do I feel this way?
But you can’t figure it out. It stays, stays, stays.
Later that night, his face comes to you in your dreams. It’s younger, unburdened with the sadness you’d seen lying underneath. He’s laughing, bright and beautiful, and he’s looking at you. You’re on a rooftop somewhere, both of you golden in the sun, and he’s saying your name with a fondness that notches into your spine.
I love you, he says, and he means it. It’s in his eyes, in the way his expression melts into softness, in the way he traces his fingers across your shoulder and pulls you into him.
Peter, your voice sounds just as yours does now, weighed down by adulthood. You run your fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, and there’s a peacefulness in your body that you know you haven’t felt in years, even through the haze of the dream. I’ll always love you.
You feel the press of his lips to your hair, the curve of them as he smiles.
You wake up. Gasping, gripping the thin sheets of your bed, sweat gleaming on your collarbone.
Peter, your mind whispers to you in the dark.
“Peter.” You murmur it into the moonlight shining across your floor, to your heart beating against your ribcage, to the knot in your stomach that finally releases.
“Peter.” You say again. Taste it on your tongue, certain you’ve said it a thousand times, in a million different ways.
summary: you’re an insomniac, and you can’t help but notice your new roommate's comings and goings at odd hours. Peter’s a not-very-good liar that gets worse as he falls in love
tasm!Peter x fem!reader ♡ 14k words
You hear the first stirrings when sunlight is already spilling warm and bright through your apartment. The groan of bedsprings, followed by a more human groan, followed by feet hitting the floor. The floor groans too, old wood with old water bubbles trapped beneath.
It’s a short time later that Peter trudges out from his room, going immediately to the kitchen and the pot of coffee you started early this morning. The pajama bottoms he puts on for your benefit are on backwards.
“Good morning.” You stop looking at him as soon as he looks at you, peering intently at the textbook in your lap. You’ve been on the couch since before the sun rose. The fall semester only began yesterday, and already you’re bogged down with readings and the early stages of projects. This couch is new—or new to you, you found it on a curb last week—but soon you suspect the cushion you’re sitting on will have an indent just about where you’re sitting now.
“Morning,” Peter mumbles, tired but not unfriendly. “You’ve got homework already too, huh?”
You give him a rueful smile over your shoulder. “I don’t think it ever stops.”
Peter makes a noise somewhere between humorous and sorrowful and pulls a mug down from the cupboard. One of yours, but you don’t care.
You think that if he’s this tired on the second day of classes, you’re going to hate to see him during finals. You’re tired too, but at least you have a reason. Though, you allow, you don’t know for sure that Peter’s reason might not be the same as yours.
This is the problem with random roommates. You don’t know if it’s more likely that the person sleeping across the hall from you is a nocturnal studier or has a drug problem.
“Did you go out last night?” you ask.
Peter’s brows jump together. He watches his mug as he fills it up. “No. Why?”
You feel immediately stupid. You’ve overstepped. You’re nosy. You don’t mean to be.
“I heard the door open.”
No way to say that without sounding like a paranoid freak. You have a quiet door in a loud city. At nearly midnight, with sirens wailing and your neighbor singing in the shower on the other side of your wall, you shouldn’t have heard it. But you did.
If Peter finds this odd, he doesn’t mention it. “Oh,” he says, dragging the word out long and slow. “Out as in out of the apartment. I thought you meant out out, like to the club or something. No, I just…I had a late night craving. Went down to the bodega to grab some chips.”
You feel yourself frown. You hadn’t heard the door open again until a couple hours later, far longer than a trip to the bodega would take. But to ask more questions would be to admit you’d still been listening, so you don’t. Maybe Peter has some emotional attachment to a bodega in Queens. He said he was from Queens, right?
Peter joins you in the living room. You’ve opened a window to let the air in, still warmish but getting cool enough that you can get away with running the fans and not the air conditioning, and Peter turns his face into the light as he settles in on the opposite side of the couch. You wonder if he’ll have his own dent in time, too. He doesn’t strike you as the type.
“You were up late, too, huh?” he asks. The smell of his coffee mingles with the smells of wet pavement and car exhaust coming in through your window.
“Sorry,” you say, before you can stop yourself, “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s cool. It’s not prying to make sure the door to your apartment isn’t left unlocked in the middle of the night.” Peter grins. Two dimples dive into his cheeks. “Were you doing homework then, too?”
“No.” You don’t consider lying. It’s not something you feel the need to be private about, even with virtual strangers. “I just don’t sleep much.”
Your roommate’s head tilts. The movement reminds you of a cocker spaniel. “Like, you can’t?”
“I can’t,” you confirm. “Not usually, at least.”
“Ouch. That sucks.”
Peter’s sympathetic bemusement confirms for you that his reasons for being tired are not, in fact, the same as yours. Whatever they might be, you file it away as None of Your Business. You’ve asked, he’s told, that’s the end of it. You sleep not twenty feet apart, but Peter is a near stranger to you. You don’t have any right to his mysteries.
“So,” he says into the silence that follows, “any classes today?”
“Yeah.” You check the time on your laptop. Corner the page of your textbook. “Actually, I’d better go. It starts in twenty minutes. Do you care if I leave my mess on the coffee table?”
Peter glances at your collection of pens and highlighters with a look that makes you think his version of mess might be different to yours.
“Go ahead,” he says. “So long as you don’t mind my mess joining it.”
“Of course not.” You zip up your backpack, relieved.
“You coming back for lunch? I think I’m gonna go grab a bagel in a sec, I can bring you back one.”
“Oh, that’s…” That’s too much. That’s more than roommate duties, and more than you want to return. “That’s okay,” you say, moving towards the door. “I packed a sandwich, I’ll probably camp out on campus between classes.”
Peter raises his hand in a lazy salute. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks.” You try to mirror him. It feels weird; you let your hand drop halfway through. The door shuts nearly silently behind you.
—
Peter plies you with meatloaf when you return. He’s been to his aunt’s in Queens and brought back enough to feed a family of four.
“It’s not…I’m not gonna lie to you, it’s a not world-renowned meatloaf,” he says, bringing a forkful to his mouth. “But it’s food and it’s free and I can’t eat it all by myself, so.”
You’re not in any position to turn down free food. You sit on the couch next to him. Peter’s left the cushion by the window open, and you wonder if already you each have your own spot. The meatloaf isn’t bad.
You talk about your classes. Peter’s studying biophysics and biochemistry, two words which mean nothing to you but apparently require lots of time spent at the labs on campus. He congratulates you on the achievement of getting matched with a roommate who will make you feel like you live by yourself; his classes are only getting started, but soon he’ll be in the lab most of the time. Though your own classes are far from easy, you don’t envy him.
Peter doesn’t need any help from you; he finishes the rest of the meatloaf in that one sitting.
—
You get into a rhythm quickly. On campus from your first class in the morning until your assignments (or at least the ones due the next day) are finished usually sometime in the evening, cooking at home, eating on the run, plasma donation on Thursdays at seven to make some extra cash, four scoops of coffee grounds in the machine because both you and Peter need it strong. Peter brings home more meals from his aunt. Her name is May, you learn, and after the third free dinner you write her a thank-you note for Peter to bring back to her.
Your hot water goes out. Peter sweet-talks the landlord while you send stern emails to the leasing company until it gets fixed. You bring his laptop instead of yours to campus by mistake and have to meet up at a library to swap. Peter comes from the lab, half-jogging with plastic goggles pushed up into his hair and making it stick out in every direction. It’s endearing beyond reason. You make him a sandwich to take to class when he oversleeps. He comes to pick you up from the plasma donation clinic when you forget to eat beforehand. You develop inside jokes about the flickering light above your stove, and the erratic banging you think is your upstairs neighbors having sex, and the too-good-for-this-world cashier at the bodega on your corner. No matter how Peter tries to get you in on it, you refuse to develop inside jokes about his Aunt May’s cooking.
It’s in the dull blue of a sleepless night in September, Aunt May’s pasta pomodoro still heavy in your stomach, when you hear the lock on your front door click. It’s a quiet sound, but you’re too antsy to miss it in your otherwise silent apartment. The door opens with a shush of air.
You wonder if Peter is going out or coming in. It’s late, but not so late for the overworked grad student population. He warned you that he’d eventually be spending long nights at the lab.
You don’t get up with any suspicions. You only want to make sure the door gets re-locked, and you haven’t heard the second click.
There’s an odd sound as your bedroom door opens. Like plastic ripping or cast fishing line, blink-and-it’s-over. You step out to find Peter wrapped up in your largest blanket and absolutely covered in filth.
You blink.
Peter blinks back at you.
“Jesus,” you say.
“Nope, just me.” Peter grins, but it falls short of his usual. “Sorry, lame joke. My uncle used to make it. It was lame then, too, I guess.”
“What happened to you?”
“Uh, there was a small accident at the lab. You should be asleep.”
“Small? Is that soot?”
“It’s…it’s soot, yeah.”
You’re reeling. You turn the kitchen light on to see him better. Peter’s left footprints in from your front door. There’s soot even in his hair, tinging it a darker color. “Was there an explosion?”
He grimaces. “It was a super small explosion. Very contained. But, you know, chemicals. Volatile stuff.” You shake your head, baffled, and his expression softens. “It was freaky, but everything’s fine now. It’s late, you should go back to sleep.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
Peter’s brow furrows; the lines are more pronounced with soot etched into them. “You weren’t? It’s almost three,” he says, as if to himself.
“What’s with the blanket?”
“The…oh.” He looks down. “Right, yeah. The lab actually took my clothes. They’re probably not contaminated or anything, but they’re being disposed of for liability reasons.”
You look down at your blanket, covering him toe-to-chin, and back up at Peter. “They made you walk home naked?”
Peter blinks. “Uh. No, no, not…totally naked.”
You raise your eyebrows at him.
“They gave us…lab coats?” His voice tips up at the end like a question and the corners of his mouth tip up with it, sheepish. He gives a little shrug. “It’s not super modest, but it’s what they had on hand. Sort of like a slutty nurse costume situation? I didn’t want to, uh, you know, scar you as you were coming out of your room.”
“Right.” You frown, embarrassed of the heat you can feel coming to your face. “I…appreciate that.”
“Anytime. But you can go to bed now, seriously.” Peter starts edging towards the bathroom. “Don’t let me keep you up, I know you have that nine a.m. tomorrow.”
You wave him off. “I’ll be fine, we don’t have any explosions in my class. Are you okay? Is there anything I can help with?”
“Nope! No help.” Peter’s voice pitches slightly when you step towards him. He draws the blanket tighter, walking backwards until his back bumps the wall and feeling his way into the bathroom. “It’s just that I’m really basically naked. Like, so, so naked, and it’s embarrassing, so you should just go to your room and I’ll shower and then we can, uh, probably just not talk about this, if you’re alright with that. Because I’m embarrassed. Okay?”
“Okay.” You hold your hands up peaceably. “If you’re sure.”
“Super sure.” Peter flashes you a smile before shutting the bathroom door. “Goodnight!”
You go back to your room and sit with your head laid flat in the middle of your pillow, your bent knees making a tent of your covers. You listen to the shower running until it squeaks off at three-thirty.
—
Your backpack feels heavier leaving the library than it did on the way to campus this morning. Your train runs less frequently after midnight, so walking is nearly just as efficient. It’s a long, slow trudge up the hill that leads from campus to your neighborhood, past empty university buildings and through dapples of pale streetlights. A raccoon stops riffling through a trash can to look at you as you pass. You raise a hand to let him know you’re a kindred spirit.
It’s cliché, but you sort of love the city after dark. It’s less glitzy than people think. The city may not sleep, and neither do you, and apparently neither does Peter, but some people have to. The streets are relatively quiet, technicolor dulled into grays and blues that blur together as you pass them by. Somewhere out of view, a siren wails like a ghost’s cry.
It’s the quiet that allows you to hear the schwick and rush of air that comes before feet hit the sidewalk beside you.
You flinch hard. Nearly send yourself tumbling into the street, but a hand whips out to catch you before you can slip off the curb. Slippery red fabric with black latticework spanning up the wrist.
“It’s okay.” Spider-Man steps back as soon as you’re steady. He holds his hands up. “It’s okay.”
You put a hand to your heart, feeling it beating beneath your palm. “Jesus. Don’t you know not to sneak up on girls walking by themselves?”
“Don’t you know girls shouldn’t walk by themselves?” Spider-Man counters lightly.
You suppose you’re meant to feel chastened, except you are a girl, and you have to get places, you can’t have a chaperone at all times. Also, this superhero speaks in a deep, rough voice that makes you think of teenage boys trying to sound tough.
“Is this really the most pressing thing you have to deal with?” you ask him. Spider-Man’s head tilts, and you gesture around you at the empty street. “Aren’t there any bank robberies happening? Or, like, serial killers on the loose?”
He’s wearing a mask, and yet you could swear it’s like his eyebrows raise. “How common do you think those are?”
You shrug and keep walking, though you’re careful not to put your back fully to him. Even Spider-Man could turn out to be a bad guy to be stuck alone with. “I don’t need any help,” you say. “Thanks for the tip, though.”
He keeps pace with you. “Are you a student?”
You look at him sideways. “Maybe. What makes you ask?”
He taps the pin on your backpack. “The university has a walking buddy program, you know. So students don’t have to walk home alone after long nights at the library.”
“How long have you been following me for?”
“What?”
You narrow your eyes at him. You don’t like that he guessed you were coming home from the library; however, on the chance that it is a guess you’re not about to tell him he was right.
“I’m just saying.” Spider-Man’s hands are up again, in a gesture of peace. “You should think about calling a walking buddy next time.”
“Maybe I’d rather be alone than alone with someone who’s volunteered to learn the routes to people’s homes.” You throw him a pointed look.
Spider-Man’s casual gait doesn’t falter, but he lets out something that sounds almost like a laugh. “Are you always this suspicious of people trying to help you?”
“John Wayne Gacy was known to lure victims by promising help.”
“But I’m…” The voice behind the mask changes, turning younger and less polished. He lifts his gloved hands haplessly. “...Spider-Man.”
You shrug, not allowing yourself to feel bad. “I’m suspicious of people in general. And I don’t need help.”
“Noted. Listen, can I just walk you to your building to make sure you get in safe? I won’t know your apartment number or anything.”
You give him an appraising look. Spider-Man walks with a respectable distance between you, his hands swinging at his sides. It’s not like you could actually make him go away even if you wanted to, but you do think he would fuck off if you said no. Ultimately, that’s what makes the decision for you.
“Okay,” you say, tacking on reluctantly, “thanks.”
“Hey, all in a day’s work. Until there’s another bank robbery or serial killer, obviously.”
Spider-Man turns out to be a half-decent walking companion. He offers to give you a lift instead—but once he clarifies what he means by lift and you swiftly decline, he only continues walking beside you at a New Yorker’s amble. He asks you about your classes. You admit to having fallen asleep earlier at the library, and then staying late to make up for the study time you’d missed. He tells you about how it feels to swing through the city at night; how there are some neighborhoods he likes better than others for their calmness, but of course by the nature of what he does he tends to stick to the noisier ones. Times Square isn’t only a hotspot for crime during the day, as it turns out. He says, in a light, kind voice, that he’s glad to have the break of walking you home. He enjoys the quiet of your little neighborhood, too.
True to his word, Spider-Man lets you go at your building. He watches you walk up the front steps, waving when you turn around briefly before buzzing yourself in. You hear the schwick of his webbing shooting out just before the door closes behind you.
You slog up the flights of stairs to your apartment, letting your backpack drop by the door and sending a silent apology to your downstairs neighbors right after. You feel lighter without it, but still your body all but drags you to the floor when you sit to take off your shoes. You turn at the sound of a door creaking open.
Light spills out into the hall as Peter emerges in his plaid pajama bottoms. You wince.
“Hey,” you say softly. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”
“No.” He shakes his head, though you obviously did. His hair is all messy from sleep, sticking out in every direction. “Did you just get back?”
“Mhm.”
Peter makes a face highly reminiscent of a sad puppy. “You were on campus all day?”
You shrug, like what can you do? Peter’s a grad student, too; he’ll get it.
But your roommate looks troubled. “Did you eat?”
“I…” You blink, realizing why, besides the late hour, you might have felt so tired on your walk home. “I guess I forgot about dinner. I fell asleep for a while in the library.”
“Yeah?” Peter’s already moving towards the kitchen. “Sit down, I’ll make you something.”
“Peter, that’s okay.”
“I’m not gonna have you passing out waiting for the microwave or whatever. Just sit down.”
You find you don’t have much argument left in you. You’re dead tired, and the couch does look like a nice place to rest. “I thought we ran out of May’s lasagna.”
“We did. I can’t cook as good as her, but I can whip up a half decent quesadilla.”
You fall silent, resting your cheek on the back cushion of the couch and watching as Peter puts a thin slice of butter into a pan on your stove. Your teeth worry into your lower lip.
“Doesn’t the library close at midnight?” he asks.
“Two,” you correct him. “It’s open twenty-four hours during midterms and finals week, though.”
Peter glances at you out of the corner of his eye. “It’s not midterms or finals.”
“Hence why I got kicked out.”
He makes a chuffing sound like laughter, familiar in a way you can’t place. “Can’t believe you stayed late enough to get kicked out.”
“I know, right? It’s like bar close for students.”
“Are you really comparing yourself to people who get kicked out of bars?”
“Hey, we’re both committed, just to different pursuits.”
Peter hums, ceding the point. “I guess the only difference is that you got kicked out on a Tuesday.”
“You think the barflies aren’t there on Tuesdays?” You give him a droll look. “Wisen up, Parker.”
Your roommate casts you a glance paired with a half-smile. “You know productivity decreases with exhaustion, right?”
You scoff. “You don’t get to talk about healthy sleeping habits. I know you work just as hard.” He brings you a plate with a neatly folded quesadilla on it, and you soften your tone as you take it. “Thank you.”
Peter settles into his side of the couch, putting his feet up on the coffee table. He watches you take your first couple of bites. “I just think,” he says, “that if you pass out somewhere from sleep deprivation or low blood sugar or whatever, there might be some part of our lease agreement that says I’m responsible for that.”
You raise your eyebrows at him. “Did you read that whole thing?”
“Oh, hell no.”
“Me neither.”
“I’m only saying that it’s possible. Landlords love weird clauses.”
You hum as you chew, playing along. “Okay. That’s fair. What if I kept a note constantly on my person that said this isn’t Peter’s fault, so that if someone finds me passed out you can avoid culpability? Would that make you feel better?”
Peter’s lips twitch. He shrugs. “A little.”
“Perfect. That’s what I’ll do, then.”
“You could also just come home before some poor librarian has to kick you out. Or,” he goes on, “call me to walk you home if it’s late.”
You give him a look. “I’m not going to call and wake you up so you can come get me every time I stay late on campus.”
“I wouldn’t mind being woken up. I might be on campus too, and anyway I’d want to help.”
“I don’t need help.”
Peter frowns. “If you say so.”
You nod, trying to smile to soften the rejection. You hold up what remains of your quesadilla. “This is really good, by the way.”
Peter mirrors your half-hearted smile. “I learned from the best.”
“Yeah, you did. I really owe May another card.”
“You don’t owe May anything, and if she were here she’d tell you that herself.”
—
You feel like something is amiss. It’s not a new feeling. Some nights, you can’t stop going over things you’ve done wrong. Times you said something you shouldn’t have, acted without thinking, didn’t act and regretted it, going back as long as you can remember. It’s enough to make you hate yourself.
Other nights, like this one, you become convinced there’s something still yet to be done. You didn’t actually hit submit on that assignment. You’ve left the stove on. Your water bottle is sitting abandoned on your table in the library, begging to be stolen. Someone’s trying desperately to call you, but you clicked your phone to silent without realizing.
The anxieties worm their way into your weary bones until the only option is to drag yourself out of bed and quiet them. It’s not like you were going to fall asleep anyway.
Your building is old and creaky. You take care to walk on light footsteps into the kitchen, reassuring yourself forcefully as you go. The stove is off. The freezer is shut. The heater is not turned up so high that you’re going to be surprised by a heart-stopping electrical bill. The kitchen sink isn’t leaking. Your school things are just where you left them, heaped together in your backpack beside the door. The front door is…
The front door is unlocked.
You know you locked it when you came in. You’re sure you did, because you don’t allow yourself to put your keys on the hook unless you have and there they are. You look towards Peter’s room.
When you text him, there’s no chime you can hear.
YOU: Hey, are you home?
PETER: Just left, forgot my laptop on campus! Everything ok?
YOU: Yeah, it’s fine. The door was unlocked.
PETER: Shit. SO SORRY!!!
PETER: U can lock it, I have my key.
YOU: It’s fine. Locked now.
PETER: Won’t happen again. Promise!
You double-check that Peter’s key is missing from his hook before actually locking the door. You think wryly that you and Peter may have synced in your sleeping habits; you always seem to be awake at the same times. Or maybe you were simply both such terrible sleepers to begin with that the comings and goings of the other don’t make much difference.
You run through a few more checks before going to bed. The window that goes to the fire escape is latched. The oven is off. Your laptop is charging.
Right next to Peter’s.
—
The next night, you’re not woken by worries but by cold. You rouse from a fitful hibernation to find yourself coiled tight like a crab within its shell, knees pressed together and chilled nose hidden beneath your covers. Early winter seeps through your apartment like a frozen kiss.
You take your blankets with you as you stumble out of bed, bleary-eyed. You feel the chill more when you leave your room, though less in the living room. The heat is supposedly on. Peter’s door is closed, but you knock to see if it’s woken him, too. There’s no answer.
“Peter,” you whisper.
Still nothing, and you knock again.
“Pete, are you up?”
When another minute of this produces no response, you turn the door knob tentatively. You know it’s a massive invasion of privacy. You know that. But your apartment feels like it’s teleported to the Arctic, and for all you know Peter could be comatose with hypothermia right now.
It feels all the more plausible when you open the door and the air that meets you is cool enough to make your skin pebble under your blankets. Peter really might have hypothermia. If he was here.
But Peter’s bed is empty, and his window is open.
You decide to leave it that way in case it’s how he needs to get back in. You take more blankets with you to go back to bed.
—
There are few things you can think of which require someone to be out in the darkest hours of the night. None of them are reassuring. Things too illicit to be exposed to daylight, risky things, illegal things.
If you’re being honest with yourself, you probably should have realized sooner. New York is expensive, and Peter doesn’t seem much better off than you are. You’re both full-time students without jobs; everyone has to supplement their income somehow. He probably makes more doing whatever he’s doing than you do pimping out your plasma once a week.
Peter may not seem like the type, but you don’t have to be the type to do drastic things when you’re broke. Anybody could be doing anything. Some people do yard work, some people babysit, some people buy cheap shit and resell it on ebay; you donate plasma; Peter deals drugs, probably. It’s fine. It’s…well, it’s not fine, it’s dangerous, but you can understand it. He has access to a lab and pays for school with government grants. He had to be paying for your rent somehow.
“Hey.” Peter returns to your table with a mug in each hand. “You good?”
You let out a little hum. “Yeah, why?”
“You just looked kinda spacey.” He sets your coffee in front of you. You pick it up, gratified by the way it sears your tongue and seeps sweetness into your tastebuds.
You’ve taken to spending your Saturdays together at this coffee shop, The Daily Bean. It’s big enough in size that you can always find a table in some hidden corner if you look hard enough, small enough in popularity that regulars can still stare-shame anyone who talks too loudly when everyone else is trying to work. You and Peter like that it’s walkable from your apartment, and that the chairs are comfortable, and that every mug is unique so you can debate who got the better one when your drinks come out. The icing on the cake is that if you order a simple drink, refills are free so long as you bring back your mug. You keep asking Peter to go up to the counter because you’re worried the employees are going to get angry with you for abusing their policy by camping out all day, and no one can get angry with Peter.
And that’s sort of the sticking point, isn’t it?
Peter is a good guy. He’s nice, he works hard in school, he pays rent on time. Obviously he has this other thing going on on the side, but that doesn’t make you like him any less. It’s not fair that he should have to give up sleep and put himself in god-knows-what dangerous situations just to live. Lately, the crescents under his eyes are nearly as bad as yours. You’re worried about him.
“You do photography, right?”
Peter looks up, blinking, from where his attention had gone back to his laptop. He’s working on something he told you about during the walk over, some report of some sciency thing. You think he could tell you weren’t grasping it even as he explained it to you.
“I take pictures sometimes,” he says, doing a side-to-side sort of nod. “Not really the same thing.”
“But you’re good.”
It’s not a question. You’ve seen the photos all over Peter’s room. They’re stuck to the walls with scotch tape like he’s not even proud of them, but they’re incredible. Candids of a graying woman you imagine to be Aunt May in different locations of the same lovingly cluttered home. Stills of people in the motions of their day, on the subway and lounging on front steps and smiling at dogs. Angles of the city that make you feel like you’re flying.
Peter makes a face. “Eh…”
You huff a laugh at his humility. “I’m just saying, have you ever thought of charging people for that?”
“For…”
“To take pictures of them. Or to buy your pictures, either way.”
“I don’t know.” Peter shrugs. He looks almost like he might be blushing. “I can’t think of anyone who would want to pay for that, and anyway I’m not sure I have the time to, like, monetize it or whatever.”
“I could probably help,” you say casually. Take a sip of your coffee to sell it.
Peter watches you, unabashed in his staring even when you won’t look back at him. “Yeah? You’d do that?”
You lift your shoulders. “Sure.”
“How come?”
You meet his gaze, though it sends tingles from your ears all the way down your spine to do it. The brown eyes waiting for you are just as warm and thrice as sweet as the drink in your hand. “Because I want to,” you say.
Peter’s mouth kicks up in the corner. “Noted,” he replies. “Thanks.”
You make a mumbly sound of acknowledgement, going for your coffee again. Your roommate’s grin worsens.
“Hey.” He bumps your ankle lightly with his under the table. “You want to learn something about protein misfolding and Alzheimer’s?”
“No.”
“Yeah, you do.” Peter shuts his laptop, setting his elbows on it to lean closer to you. “So, when proteins lose their functional shape…”
—
Lately, the only place you can find sleep is in places it shouldn’t be. Slumped over the table of a study room, in the chair of the plasma donation clinic, in your sunlit living room between classes. When Peter finds you, you’ve started a small puddle of drool on your textbook. The fluorescent lights of the library press at your eyelids, obscuring any awareness of time in a distant outside world.
Peter says your name with something soft curled around the syllables.
Your eyes burn as you open them to find him crouched by your chair, one hand on your textbook and the other floating a few inches above his knee like he’d been thinking of reaching for you. His hair is sticking up the way it does when he’s run his fingers through it.
“Peter?”
“Hey. Hi.” He clears his throat, blinking something away from his expression. “Glad you still know my name. Since, you know, you seem to have forgotten where we live.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“I’m hoping to save the librarians some hassle.” His mouth curves, pink and lovely, into a little smile. “Ready to go?”
You peel yourself off of your textbook, allowing Peter to close a pencil in it to mark your page before dropping it into your backpack. You feel like you’re moving through molasses, back clicking as you stretch; you must have been sleeping deeply.
“What time is it?” you yawn as Peter helps you into your coat. He shoulders your backpack without saying anything.
“One-thirty.” When you blink blearily at the near-desolate library, he touches your shoulder gently to direct you toward the elevators. You try to take your backpack from him, and Peter only hikes it up further on his shoulder. “They’re gonna put posters of you up at some point. I think you’re here more than anybody else on campus.”
You send him a droll, sleep-addled look out of the corner of your eye. “I don’t think you get to talk about staying out late.”
He doesn’t look at you. “No? Why not?”
“Because you’re always at the—” You yawn hugely. “At the lab.”
Peter huffs a laugh. If it sounds a bit relieved, you’re perhaps too tired to judge. As you step into the elevator, he hits the button for the ground floor and steps back beside you to put an arm over your shoulders. “Touché.”
You stand still in silent uncertainty as the elevator descends. This is closer than you and Peter have been before. It feels a slight shift from bumping elbows in the kitchen or accidentally brushing each other’s knees under your table at The Daily Bean, though maybe that’s just you. Regardless, it’s going to be a cold walk home; Peter’s body is emanating an enviable warmth through his coat, and you’re just sleepy enough to consider leaning a bit on him as you walk. You stay where you are.
“How’d you know where I was?” you ask as the elevator doors open. Peter steps out with you tucked under his arm as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“It’s almost two in the morning on a Thursday.” He waves to the librarian at the desk, pushing the front door open for the both of you. “Where else would you be?”
“Ha ha,” you mutter. “But, like, how’d you find me?” It’s a big library. Five floors, dozens of tables, and you’d been hidden away in your own private corner chosen specifically for how rare it is for any other student to stumble across. You suppose someone outside might have seen you through the window by your table, but even that seems unlikely. It’s higher up than most people think to look.
“I’m an efficient search committee,” says Peter. He adjusts his hold on you when the wind picks up and you step closer unconsciously, hand slipping down your arm to encourage further sharing of his warmth. “Cold?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t this bad when I left.”
He makes a half-smug humming noise; you feel its vibrations kiss the top of your head. “That’s what happens when you stay out this late, I guess. My Uncle Ben used to say nothing good happens after midnight.”
“Have I called you a hypocrite yet?”
“Only in implication.”
“Well, you are.”
Peter laughs, the sound wonderfully crisp. “Did you at least eat?”
“It’s not your job to feed me, you know.”
“Seems like someone’s gotta do it.”
“Well, for the record, I did.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Peter seems to gather that if you walk all the way home he’s going to end up carrying you for at least part of it, so you go down into the subway to wait for the next train. You fall briefly asleep on his shoulder waiting, and again in your seats once you get on. It’s a feat, considering you’re only a stop away on this line, but both times Peter rests his chin on the top of your head like he’s surrendered to the idea of keeping you there.
It’s only after he’s half-dragged you up the stairs to your apartment and is digging your key out of your backpack (why he doesn’t seem to have his, you don’t bother asking) that you say, “I’m sorry you had to come all the way to campus to get me.”
Peter makes a quiet scoffing sound, jiggling the handle until the door gives way. “I didn’t have to. I don’t mind, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“You’re always doing things for me, though.” You shuck off your coat, tossing it over the back of the couch as he does the same with his. “You’re either making me food or picking me up from places or bringing me my stuff…”
Peter’s eyebrow twitches, a teasing curve to his mouth that fits his voice to its shape. “So what, I’m not allowed to do things for you? You’re gonna rob me of that?”
“Do you have a hero complex or something?”
You think it’s obvious you’re teasing him back, but Peter’s expression flickers with something that makes you wonder if he didn’t catch the levity in your tone. He recovers fast. “Maybe.”
“I’m just saying,” you try on a bit of sincerity, “you don’t have to.”
“Hey, I know.” He moves closer, eyes dark in the low light. Neither of you have moved for a light switch, your apartment cast in the cool blue tones of the moonlight coming in the window. “I really don’t mind. I like doing things for you.”
“But,” you ask, hesitating, “who does things for you?”
Peter’s eyebrows lift slightly, as though he’s surprised you’d ask. When his voice lowers, there’s something about the roughness of it which tugs at a memory. “You do.”
You feel yourself frown. Yes, you try to do things to make Peter’s life a bit easier, but that’s half out of a sense of gratitude for all he already does for you and they’re never really sizable things. A few extra pancakes left in the fridge when you know he won’t wake with enough time to make breakfast before class, a pack of twizzlers snagged from the bodega when you notice he’s running low. Is that as much care as Peter gets? It can’t be.
You’re about to tell him that he deserves better, but when you open your mouth you realize he’s right there, and letting yourself list forward is just as easy.
Peter kisses you like he’s breathing you in. Slow at first, the beginnings of an inhale, and then in great pulls. He cups the side of your face, stepping forward, crowding you, his other arm winding around your waist to keep you from falling when you move backwards into the couch and nearly tip yourself over the edge. A few seconds later and he’s changed his mind, sending you both over so you collapse down onto the cushions in a heap, him all on your side and you all on his. One sleepy, confusing tangle.
“I thought you wanted me to go to bed,” you mumble against his lips.
“Who said that?” Peter rolls you sideways, putting you to the inside of the couch so he can push your hair away from your face. “Tomorrow’s Friday. It’s basically the weekend already.”
“Could’ve probably stayed at the library then.”
“Too cliché.”
His hand coasts up your back, and you find you’re out of cleverness. “Yeah?”
“Mhm. Plus, what would the librarians think of you? You’re a big name over there.”
“You’re such a hypocrite.”
Peter sighs into your mouth. “Tell me about it.”
—
Maybe it should be awkward, but it’s not. You and Peter already live together, already have your routines and your in-jokes and an ease of moving about each other in a small space, so adding kissing to the mix really doesn’t feel like so far of a leap.
It’s not fireworks. Or butterflies or cartwheels or any of that. It’s…easy. Like slipping into a warm bath. You feel yourself unspool one inch at a time, until coming home from class to lay yourself down in Peter’s lap and go over flashcards with him is as natural as breathing.
“It’d be over in Chelsea, so I could stay here and take the bus.” Peter’s got his glasses on, which always make you want to kiss him hard enough to get them all askew, and his hands are wandering your legs and waist as he talks, not helping matters. “And they’re doing this really cool stuff with ion channels that I could get involved in…”
He’s telling you about an internship he’s applying to for the summer. You’re sitting in his lap trying to look engaged and not humiliatingly wanton. Really, you like the sound of this internship. It would mean you’d both get to stay in the apartment for the summer, since you’re returning to a previous internship in the city, too, and of the options Peter’s told you about this one offers the best pay. You may not understand ion channels or space radiation or half of what he talks about, but you love the idea of anything that might supplement his supplemental income.
“Didn’t you say your internship’s in Greenwich?” Peter asks, touch coasting up your back.
You hum in the affirmative.
He grins, flashing a dimple you want to poke your tongue into (because you’re a nonsensical, depraved thing). “We could meet in the middle for lunch.”
“That would be nice.” You give into your baser urges and lay a soft kiss on the side of Peter’s nose. The frames of his glasses dent into your cheek. “Where would we go?”
“I know a good sandwich place on Eighth and Hudson,” he murmurs, pushing his glasses up into his hair to kiss you properly. Damn him. His voice hums against your lips. “Maybe lunches there sometimes, dinners at Chelsea Market.”
“Chelsea Market?” You smile, and Peter’s quick to kiss the corner. “Are we made of money in this fantasy?”
“Duh. We’ll have high-roller internships—”
“Speak for yourself.”
“—and those of us who are possibly being taken advantage of for their cheap labor and wonderful, perfect—” He mushes his lips to your face with each word. “—really very valuable brain will luckily have a lovesick biophysics intern to sponsor them.”
You hum, sliding your finger along the curve of his glasses behind his ear. “Where am I gonna find one of those, you think? Should I start loitering on park benches reading genetics books and looking confused?”
For someone so gentle and who spends so much of his time in labs, Peter is surprisingly strong. You’ve discovered this several times over now, enough to want to goad it out of him when you can, and still it surprises you to find yourself flat on your back against the couch cushions less than a second later. You’re giggling breathlessly before Peter even gets to you.
“You think you’re so funny,” he mutters, a far cry from menacing as he smooshes wet kisses into the underside of your jaw.
“Or I—I could try hanging around the three-in-one shampoo at the discount store—” Peter squeezes your waist, and you gasp out a laugh. “—or hoard all the city’s ramen so they come to me.”
“Okay, you know I eat better than that, you traitor. Are you trying to get yourself cut off from my culinary resources?”
You squirm, pushing at Peter’s hands and enjoying how useless it is. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Also” —he breezes right past the threat, because you both know he wouldn’t— “if you have a problem with my hair, all you’ve gotta do is say something. Does it smell bad?”
He sticks the top of his head in your face, the soft ends of his hair tickling your nose. You stick your face in dutifully to take in a pull. You know the scent of Peter’s three-in-one (you live together, you’ve read the bottle), but somehow his hair always manages to smell like fresh laundry, too. You have every intention of feigning shock and disgust, except you’re overtaken by a rush of affection and the teasing mood leaves you.
You press your lips to his forehead. “It’s perfect.”
“Wow. Even with three-in-one in there?”
“I’m surprised, too.”
Peter tilts his head up, bumping your noses together. “Guess you don’t have to go on the search for some other biophysics guy to fawn over you, then.”
Fawn. That’s exactly what Peter does, fawn over you, but it’s somehow worse that he does it knowingly.
“Maybe not,” you say, “but you know I’m not just going to let you get my lunch every time.”
“Oh, yeah? How are you gonna stop me?”
“I don’t know.” You heave a long, thoughtful sigh. “I guess probably start selling your photos to make my own way in the world.”
Peter laughs. “I think probably one of the most adorable things about you,” he says, lips to your cheek, “is that you think those are worth something. They’re all yours, pretty girl.”
“They’re definitely worth something. I’m going to make millions.”
“Sure you are.”
“You’ll see, when I move out of this place into a penthouse and you’re still just scraping by on your measly STEM salary.”
Peter watches you with an analytical gaze. You’re playing at levity, but he knows by now when you’re hiding your sincerity away, and he also knows what you’ve been pushing for for weeks now.
“Why do you want me to sell them so badly?” he asks.
You shrug. “Because,” you say, “I’ve never seen the city the way I do when I look at them. I think other people would like that, too.”
He mushes your hip in his hand affectionately. “They’re not that original. I’d be one of a thousand people trying to sell pictures of New York.”
“Yeah, but yours are good.”
“You’re so stubborn,” he mumbles, pushing his face into yours to kiss you with a vengeance, “and cute. I just don’t have the time, sweetheart.”
“I can set you up a website.” It’s not said in haste. You’ve been trying to think up ways to get this idea off the ground for a while now. “That way you don’t have to do anything, I’ll just list them for you and handle the shipping when people buy them.”
Peter blinks at you. It’s clear he’s caught offguard, and it aches a bit that you offering to help him out is still so unexpected. You’ve been trying to do it more—though it’s near impossible to keep up with how often Peter helps you, and it seems like he ups the ante with every attempt you make—but you wonder if Peter will ever get used to the feeling of someone wanting to do things for him. You can relate to that particular discomfort.
“Would that make you happy?” he asks after a moment.
“It would,” you reply honestly.
He hesitates. “I would want to choose which ones you put up. And I don’t want you to be disappointed if they don’t sell…”
“I won’t be disappointed.” You wave him off, already reaching for your laptop despite still being trapped underneath him. “They’ll sell like hotcakes.”
“What even is a hotcake?” Peter muses, though he moves when you nudge at him, allowing you to sit up and open your laptop.
“Pretty sure it’s an old-timey word for pancakes.”
“Do pancakes sell famously well?”
You cut him a dry look. “Then they’ll sell like Mets merch, Peter. Is that better?”
The distracted look in Peter’s eyes diminishes, replaced by a more familiar one. “I think you’re the hotcake they were talking about,” he says, smarmy.
“Are you saying I sell?”
“No! No. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Yeah, walk that one back, Parker.”
—
You’re halfway to a dream about holiday break and Peter’s fresh-laundry smell when the fire alarm goes off. It knocks you out of your study fugue state and knocks your coffee clean over, making you gasp and fumble for your laptop. It’s gotten all over your lap, too, but you don’t have time to think about that, ignoring the burn and the shrill wailing in favor of wiping your keyboard off on your shirt.
A moment later, and the coffee is no longer your laptop’s paramount threat. The sprinklers go off. You stow your laptop in your bag, hugging the whole thing to your chest like you can shield it with your body. It’s then that you remember what a fire alarm means.
You’re not the only brain dead, half asleep straggler in the library who hasn’t been quick to action. There are other students just now making their way to the stairwell door; you grab your notes and follow suit.
The alarm is deafening in the stairwell. It bounces off the walls in a painful, ceaseless screech, punctuated by flashes of bright white light. Coming down from the top floor, you’re joined by a throng of others as you descend. People shove; a girl shouts her friend’s name; someone else stops by the railing, halting the flow around them as they try to make their way back up to some forgotten item. Most heads are ducked, the sprinklers still raining down and water dripping from chins and noses. You say an apology that gets swallowed up by the cacophony when you step on someone’s foot. You wince when someone else steps on yours. You curl around your backpack and keep going.
You’re near the back of the push down the stairs, so when Spider-Man arrives your only indication is the change in tone of the shouting below you. Cheers go up with the siren’s shriek, and you peer over the railing just as a stream of webbing shoots past you, sticking to the ceiling. The spandex-clad vigilante follows it up. He goes slowly, scanning faces as he goes by.
“All good? Everybody okay? Let’s make our way down in a neat and orderly fashion, folks. No need to push. Where’s the fire, am I right?”
If he wanted to go put out the fire, or even to sweep from the top floor down to make sure no one’s still not evacuating, there are surely quicker ways, but you’re a bit warmed that Spider-Man is taking the slower route to check that you’re all okay. He’s risen nearly to you now, and while some of the students around you have stopped or taken out phones, you’re still trying to get out of here. Of course, now that you’re looking at Spider-Man and not your feet, you fall straightaway onto your ass.
It’s embarrassing. You narrowly avoid hitting your chin on the stair railing; someone near you gasps. Your tailbone and your pride both feel terribly bruised.
“Oh, shit. Hey. You okay?”
It doesn't help matters that you’ve pulled Spider-Man’s attention, too.
He swings neatly over the very railing that nearly concussed you a moment earlier, reaching down to pull you upright.
“Yeah, you’re okay. Nothing feels broken, right?” He skims touches over your elbows, your waist. It’s all too much at once, an overwhelm, but you step away quickly when he lays a probing hand at the small of your back.
“What?” Spider-Man’s voice rings with concern just loud enough to be heard over the alarm. “That hurt?”
You’re shocked speechless. Does he just go around touching everyone like that? It feels intimate to you.
“Oh.” He seems to get it. His demeanor changes, a few more inches of space appearing between you. “Sorry. Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” you say.
“Can I, uh.” He looks up in the direction he was heading, then back to you. “Can I give you a lift down?”
You feel yourself frown. “I can make it on my own.”
Spider-Man breathes out a dry chuckle. “I forgot how suspicious you are of people who want to help you.”
You blink, biting your tongue against the question that rises to it. You remember me? It’s difficult not to feel flattered, but you’re also just baffled. Spider-Man saves dozens of people every day, and yet he remembers a conversation with a girl he only walked home on an uneventful night?
“Just let me take you to the ground floor,” he asks. “I won’t be able to relax if I think there’s some injured bootstrapper hobbling their way down the stairs.”
You don’t remember deciding to agree, and you certainly think you’re going to argue his bootstrapper label more than comes out, but you find yourself clinging to spandex-clad and surprisingly warm shoulders a minute later, Spider-Man’s hold far from unwelcome now as he lowers you gently to the ground.
“Come on,” he says, ignoring the people who stop and stare in favor of guiding you outside.
You think it’s probably a good sign that there isn’t smoke visibly pouring out of any windows you can see. The library’s fire suppression system may have worked fast enough to put the fire out before it grew too large. Spider-Man keeps you close, maneuvering you both through the gathering crowd and past the arriving firefighters to the curb across the street.
“What happened here?” he asks you, something achingly familiar about the gentleness of his tone as he looks down at your lap. Whereas most of your clothes are speckled with dampness from the sprinklers, across your thighs is a dark, prominent splotch.
“Coffee,” you answer resignedly.
He hisses. “Hot?”
“Not cold.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No, not really. I think the sprinklers cooled me off.”
You try on a smile there. You think maybe Spider-Man mirrors it, his tone lightening some.
“Is your butt okay, too?”
“My butt’s none of your concern.”
“Hey, I concern myself with every butt in this city. You’re all under my care.”
It feels ridiculous, laughing while your university library is still being evacuated and alarms are still going off. It’s also nice. The laughter gathers like bubbles in your chest, fizzing and popping and disrupting the tension in there. You wonder if this is how Spider-Man does what he does, if it’s what makes him so good at it.
“I’m fine,” you tell him.
“Promise?”
“Yeah. Don’t you need to…” You look at where the firefighters are running into the building.
Spider-Man follows your gaze. “Yeah,” he says, though he doesn’t move. He glances between you and the building a few more times, fingers twitching at his sides. “I, uh.”
“Thanks for your help.”
The dismissal is clear, and it seems to snap him out of it.
“Right. Okay.” He finally takes a step back. “Stay put, okay? Don’t go anywhere. I’m serious. Just, I have to—you stay here.”
“Okay,” you say. He’s already shot away on a web, and with the sirens and the shouting, you aren’t sure if he hears you.
You aren’t sure why Spider-Man would ask you to wait. Does he plan to come back? He seemed flustered; he might not have meant it. You’re resting your head on your knees with eyelids growing heavier, but it seems rude to leave when someone rescues you and then asks you to wait up.
“Hey.” You jolt when a hand lands on the back of your neck. “Hey, hey. It’s just me.”
Peter’s a sight for sore eyes. His grin is tentative as he sits on the curb beside you, all soft brown eyes and hooked brows. The apprehension goes out of you in an instant.
“Hi,” you say, warmth filling your chest.
“Hi, sweetheart.” Peter rubs between your shoulder blades, looking you over. “What happened?”
“There’s a fire in the library.”
“Yeah, I think they put that out.” He offers you a small smile. “I mean what happened to you? What’s this?” He sets a hand to your thigh, over the wet spot on your jeans. His brows rise. “It’s warm.”
“Yeah, I…” You shake your head, breathing out a sigh. “I knocked over my coffee when the alarm went off.”
Peter frowns. “Ouch.”
“How’d you even know about the fire? I thought you were at the lab tonight.”
“I, uh.” He seems distracted, still looking concernedly at your burnt jeans. “I saw it on the news.”
“Already?”
“Yeah, the school sent out a text alert. Hey, don’t you want to get those pants off?” Peter gives you a look in exchange for the one you give him. “Not like that, you delinquent. Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean let’s go home and put some ice packs on your or something, okay? Are you good to walk?”
You’re shaking your head before he’s finished talking. “Pete, I’m fine. But I have to…” The words shrivel up, humiliated with themselves, before leaving your mouth.
Can you really tell Peter that Spider-Man asked you to wait here for him? Peter might like you well enough to make out from time to time, but you can’t imagine they make rose-tinted glasses thick enough to look past anything that sounds so pathetically made up as that. Why would the city’s favorite vigilante, with his very busy schedule, want you to stay put so he could come back for you after saving the day? It’s a good question. Peter said the fire is out; if Spider-Man was coming back, surely he would have already?
“What’s up?” Peter asks you. His voice is gentle. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” You shake your head to clear a nagging thought. “Let’s go home.”
You stand on your own, though Peter’s hands hover while you do and he gets an arm around you as soon as he’s allowed. You walk tucked close to his side, his thumb rubbing absently over your hip.
“How’d you know I was gonna be here?”
“Well, it’s quarter to midnight on a Friday. I was gonna go around checking the clubs first, but…”
“Asshole.”
“Nerd.”
“...Did you really come looking for me?”
“Duh. And it’s not like I was far, the lab’s just across campus. Hey, did you hurt your butt somehow?”
“What?”
“You’re walking funny.”
“I am not.”
“Yeah you are, it’s like…it’s sort of a hobble. Did you?”
“You’re making this up.”
“I’m not! What happened to your butt?”
“I am not hobbling.”
—
You find out the next day that the fire was started by some idiots who tried to smoke and then freaked and tossed their still-lit blunt when they heard someone coming. If it had fallen onto the carpet or a table it might have gone out, but of course it landed right on the corner of a bookshelf, seemingly endless kindling spread out in front of it like the promised land. The fire was put out quickly, but not before most of that shelf went up and not without incurring water damage on everything else in the library.
You read the news article and seethe while Peter applies burn cream to your legs, doing it for you because he claims you’re neither gentle nor patient enough with yourself to do it nicely. His touch is featherlight.
It’s Saturday, and so Peter succeeds in cajoling you into spending the day in bed, napping and touching and musing in whisper-soft voices about what you might order for dinner, but Sunday you heed the university’s call for help.
The library is all but destroyed. The carpet needs to be ripped out, some of the furniture needs to be recovered or replaced, hundreds of books need to be inspected and salvaged. The librarians and janitorial staff can’t do it all themselves.
You may be selfish (Peter calls it single-minded), but this isn’t something you’d normally concern yourself with; you’ve got your own shit to deal with, impending exams and a now-glitchy laptop that could use some attention. It bothers you that this was your library, though. You’ve spent a lot of time tucked away in its stacks, Peter’s spent nearly as much navigating them to come drag you home, and if the fire had been more serious you could’ve been in real trouble. You feel like you owe it something, a little bit. At least a few hours of your time.
Peter comes to help, because Peter doesn’t need a sense of obligation to step up. He’s made of better stuff.
You go through the shelves with other volunteers, sorting books into bins based on how damaged they are. Peter gets tasked with bringing old furniture out into the sun, stuff that should have been replaced decades ago but the school is still going to try to save, even if it’ll probably smell like mildew forever. You get periodically distracted when he walks by with some musty armchair and you can see the shapes of his biceps through his shirt. At lunchtime you run home to make sandwiches, and you and Peter eat them on the same curb he found you sitting on two nights prior, the sun on your faces and breaths clouding in front of your mouths.
You call it quits when it gets dark, though some of the volunteers switch the lights on and stay. Peter buys you both hot chocolate on the way home. He waves you off when you try to pay and teases you about being extra careful because you’ve already had enough hot drink incidents for one week.
Despite knowing you have heaps of studying left to get through, you feel strangely energized. Peter sits down in his couch dent when you get home and pulls up his notes, and you can’t stop thinking about the library. There’s got to be a more efficient way to dry the books. Who’s making sure the staff gets meals, when they’re there supervising all day? And surely there’s a more durable flooring than carpet to put in a library. If they take it down to the hardwood, and then people donate old rugs to help swallow sound…
You go back. It becomes a part of your routine. You go to class, you study, you help at the library, you bring Peter something to eat at the lab, you study some more. Peter goes for dinners at his Aunt May’s and comes home with tupperware intended specifically for you. At night, he tries to help you fall asleep, experimenting with different things he’s read to see what works. On some of those nights you end up faking it so that he feels accomplished. Most nights, you don’t, so that he’ll stay with you for longer before eventually saying he has to go to the lab or to the bodega or to wherever before slinking off. Those nights you think you sleep the least, though it’s hard to be sure.
You and two other students haul a donated couch up the library stairs. You learn how to wedge paper towels between the pages of the most waterlogged books, a tedious but rewarding process. You get friendlier with the librarians than you ever have been, which Peter finds ironic considering you spend half the time you used to there. One of them is married to one of your professors, and your efforts earn you a bit of extra credit, a small miracle you’d never have dared to hope for.
“What’s this?” Peter asks one afternoon at The Daily Bean. You’re meeting between classes for a quick study session; you haven’t seen him since you left him sleeping early this morning to go to the library. Rain falls in gentle patterings outside the window, fog clinging to the panes. Autumn is having its last hurrah. Thanksgiving is next week, and the city tends to grant everyone’s wishes for snow soon after that. The last of the leaves have been shaken from the trees, and now they squelch rather than crunch under your feet.
You look at where Peter’s turned your hand to the side. “Oh.” You roll your eyes, rubbing at the white so that it flakes off. “It’s paint.”
“They’re making you paint now?”
“Yeah. I guess they figure if they’re already gutting so much of the building, may as well do a full remodel.”
“Is it starting to feel like they’re just using you for free labor?”
“Oh, definitely,” you laugh.
Peter’s dimples frame his smile in parenthesis. “You don’t seem mad about it,” he says.
“No, I’m resentful.”
“You are?”
“I am.”
“Yeah?”
“Yup.”
“You seem resentful.” Peter’s grinning for real now, his eyes warm. Sometimes you think you’d say anything to get him looking at you like this. It’s addicting. “You seem ready to revolt.”
“I might.” You take a sip of your coffee. “No, I don’t know. I don’t mind it.”
“Aw,” he says. “You’ve gone soft.”
“I have not. Don’t think I’ve abandoned my get-rich-quick scheme. The website is up.”
Peter blinks. “My website?”
“My website,” you correct him, teasing, “since you won’t sell your own photos yourself. I’m just waiting for the go-ahead from you on which ones to put up.”
“Yeah,” he says, quieting. “We can do that.”
“Soon?”
“Tell you what, pretty girl.” Peter takes your hand, kissing the side of your pinkie just before the paint starts. It sends goosebumps all the way up your arm. “You find some time to pencil me in between your studying and being the school’s go-to laborer, and we’ll do it.”
You have to look away from your roommate’s sweetheart brown eyes. He’s still holding your hand. “I’d probably have less studying to do later if we actually did some now.”
“You can’t study now. This is a date.”
“It is?”
“Yeah, duh. Did you think we were actually going to study? That’s just how I get you to come to these things, loser.”
—
“Is it, like, the suit and tie kind of dinner or the nice sweater kind?” you ask.
Peter’s exhale suggests he’s trying to be quiet about his amusement, but not very hard. “You could show up in yoga pants and my sweaty t-shirt, and she’d still think you were gorgeous.”
“Could you try to be a little less biased?”
“If I was being biased, I’d tell you to wear my sweaty t-shirt and forget the pants.”
“Peter, I’m serious.” You step out of your room and into the hall where he can see you. “Is this going to be okay, or should I pick something nicer?”
Peter turns around from where he’s standing in front of his own mirror trying to subdue a cowlick. He’s wearing a sweater and jeans, which is reassuring. It’s also new. You’re used to seeing Peter in his pajamas, or in rumpled sweatshirts he threw on in a rush to get to class, but this is…well, your roommate cleans up nice. His handsomeness is no surprise, but the new effect on you is. The green of his sweater somehow makes his eyes look an even softer color as they take you in.
“You look beautiful,” Peter says.
Your cheeks tingle at the bald reverence in his tone. You finger the hem of your dress. “It’s okay?”
“Come on.” He huffs a laugh. “Are you kidding me?”
“No.” But Peter looks like he wants to eat you, and he’s dressed more casually than you are, so you think you have your answer. You move on before he gets any ideas. “I’m thinking of trying to throw together a pumpkin pie,” you say, going to check on your rolls in the oven. Peter tails you. “I’d have to run to the bodega, though. Do you think we have time?”
Peter leans against the counter. “What would you have to get?”
“A pie tin, crust, pumpkin puree, eggs, and…um, I think there might be milk…” You take out your phone to check.
Peter steals it from your hand, kissing the frown that comes to your lips. “Don’t sweat it. Your rolls are going to be more than enough.”
Your frown persists. “It feels rude to only bring one thing and let her do everything else.”
“It’s not rude. Are you kidding? Aunt May’s had me mooching off her since forever, she’ll be psyched that you brought anything at all.”
“I already owe her for probably a dozen meals.”
“Sweetheart.” Peter puts his arms around your shoulders, drawing you into a lazy hug. “You’re freaking out.”
“I’m not freaking out.”
“You are. And it’s sweet,” he allows, kissing your temple, “but you don’t have to. May’s already obsessed with you. She’s asked me, like, six times this week if you like green bean casserole.”
“I like anything she makes,” you mumble.
“I know. Kiss-ass.”
You can’t deny it. You want Peter’s aunt May, this woman who’s fed you for the better part of a semester and now invited you to Thanksgiving at her home, to like you, obviously. And part of you suspects that Peter’s reassurances aren’t entirely empty. It’s hard to imagine anyone who raised a boy this kind being anything but loving and generous. You’ve seen pictures of Aunt May in Peter’s room; she has eyes remarkably like his, considering they’re related by marriage, and smile lines etched onto her face the way only genuine warmth can scar. It’s not so much that you’re worried she’ll dislike you for wearing the wrong thing or using the wrong fork, but she’s something to Peter and it’s becoming harder to deny that Peter’s something to you now, so you can’t help but want to make a good impression.
“Not trying to be a kiss-ass,” you murmur, circling your arms around Peter’s waist, “but you look really nice.”
Peter smiles. “See, that’s exactly the kind of thing a kiss-ass would say.”
“I know. It was a risk I had to take, because I needed to tell you.”
You get squished to Peter’s chest. You suspect it’s so you won’t see him fluster.
“Don’t tell her the rolls were frozen, okay?” you plead. “The story is I made them from scratch.”
“Right. With, like, yeast and wheat?”
“And whatever else goes into bread, sure.” You squeeze him back, but your grip slackens when Peter hisses. “What?”
“Nothing.” His voice buoys with false levity. “Sorry.”
“Peter, what?” You retreat enough to see him, hand skimming up his side. “Are you hurt?”
“It’s nothing,” he says again. His hand comes up to cover yours when it lands on his ribs, and you know without asking that’s the sore spot. “I just, I fell yesterday. I’m a little bruised up.”
You look up at him. Your concern feels like a tender thing, like your guts are spilling out into the space between you. It makes you a bit sick. “What happened?”
“I was, uh, skateboarding.”
“You were skateboarding.”
“Yeah.” Peter’s shrug looks bashful. “I haven’t done it since high school. Turns out it’s not exactly like riding a bike.”
You don’t know if you believe him. You want to. You really want to, you want to think Peter would never lie to you, but you know already that he does. It used to be something you could ignore, but now it makes you too sad to bear thinking on.
“Please be careful with yourself,” you ask him.
Peter catches the sobriety in your tone. “I’m fine,” he says, more sincerely now, cupping your face. “I won’t do it again. Anyway, maybe I’m tougher than I look, did you ever think of that?”
You chuff a laugh. “You’re not.”
“Mean.” He kisses you. “You’re a meanie.”
“Kiss-ass, meanie. Pick something to call me and stick with it.”
When you arrive at Aunt May’s, she already knows who you are, but Peter introduces you anyway. This time, he calls you his girlfriend.
—
On occasion, when you know Peter’s gone on one of his late-night errands, you also take the opportunity to do away with the pretense of sleep. Finals are nearly done. There’s nothing you can do for the library at night, though repairs are nearly completed and the school expects for it to reopen at the start of the spring semester anyway. There’s really not much for you to do, but your head drives you out of bed with an itchy sense of urgency nonetheless.
This time of year, your apartment is well lit all through the night. The wattage of the city has increased tenfold, lights of white and red and gold twinkling at all hours to entice tourists and holiday shoppers into storefronts. Peter insisted on getting you a cheap tinsel tree, too. It glows warmly in the corner of your living room.
You hear Peter’s window slide open somewhere around two-thirty. It’s a bit earlier than he usually comes back, but you hope he’s in to stay. You know Peter knows that you wake up to find him gone at least some of the time; but you don’t ask, and so neither does he. It’s…an ache.
You imagine the silence sometimes like a physical thing, a weight balanced on a string that stretches between the two of you, pulled tight. You feel it some times more than others. You hear the slide of Peter’s window, and the string tugs at the center of your chest, impeding on your breathing room. A dull, familiar ache.
You know from experience what will happen now. Peter will sleep in his room for the rest of the night. You might hear another few sounds—a shoe being tossed into the closet, the groan of bedsprings. He’ll come out in the morning to find you—maybe asleep, maybe still awake—on the couch, and he’ll chide you between playful kisses so as not to seem too serious, and you’ll pretend not to resent his hypocrisy, though really it’s not the hypocrisy you resent.
You don’t expect him to come out of his room.
You almost wouldn’t know it was him if not for the way the figure steps carefully over the squeakiest of your floorboards. Peter is wearing sweatpants and a bulky hoodie, so rumpled you almost wonder if he threw them on just now. He cracks the door to your room, peering inside.
“Peter?”
Peter turns on his heel lightning-fast. “Hey,” he says. He looks flustered, face mostly in shadow but the whites of his eyes are lit in your tree’s glow. “Hey, hi. What’re you doing up?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” Your voice sounds shockingly normal for the tension crackling through the room. Peter shifts on his feet. “Are you okay?”
He shrugs, giving a quick shake of his head as though unsure why you’d ask. “Yeah, I’m just—I had a weird feeling, so I wanted to see if you were okay. Nightmare, I guess.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“So you are?”
“Huh?”
“You’re okay?” Peter’s acting twitchy, and it’s making you nervous. Of the two of you, he definitely seems the least okay.
“Yeah, Pete,” you say gently. “I’m fine.” You open your arms in invitation, and Peter hesitates a moment before stepping forward. It’s a bit of an awkward hug, you half twisted to reach over the back of the couch and him bent over to get to you, but you make the most of it.
“What’s going on?” you murmur, raking your fingers through the hair at his nape. It’s sweaty, like he’s been running. You don’t really anticipate a genuine answer to your question, but it feels important for Peter to at least know you care enough to ask.
You feel his head shake. “Nothing,” he says. He gives you a squeeze, some other half of an excuse probably already on his tongue, but before he can get it out you both jerk apart.
“Ow.” Your skin burns where Peter’s wrist pressed to it.
“Shit. Sorry, baby, let me see.”
You turn around, allowing him to pull the collar of your sleep shirt down enough to look at it. “What was that?”
“I have, uh. I was just tinkering around with something in my room—you know me, tinkering—and this thing I was messing with sort of exploded. I didn’t realize it was still hot, I’m sorry.” He blows a bit of cool air on your skin. You turn to try and see for yourself. “Hold on, I think we still have some of that burn cream.”
But in turning, you can now see the light on his face. “Peter,” you breathe.
Peter must hear something in your voice, because he stops mid-pivot. The weight between you heavies. You feel the strain on your lungs.
“What happened to your face?”
His expression twinges. You wonder that it doesn’t reopen the cut on his lip, or if that slow seep of blood is all it can muster anymore. Your boyfriend’s jaw is marred with an ugly splotch of color, already darkening in the center. The cheery glow of your Christmas tree shows in unforgiving starkness the dried blood crusted around his nostrils and the bruise of his nose.
“This?” Peter smiles, and now his lip does reopen. He hardly seems to notice. “I, uh…well, it’s embarrassing, but I fell out of bed.”
“Peter.” Your voice thins.
“I know, it’s so stupid. Didn’t put my arms out to save myself or anything, just boom—face to floor.”
“Peter,” you say again. “Just tell me what happened. Please.”
“I’m telling you.” He’s smiling still, like you’re silly, his silly girl, but you can see the strain around his eyes. “Babe, I think you’re more tired than you notice. Let’s go to bed, okay? I actually have to go out and get a replacement part for the thing I exploded, but—”
“Don’t.” Your eyes are burning. You see Peter see them, his smile dissolving at the edges. “Please just tell me the truth. Who’s doing this to you?”
“Sweetheart—”
“No, I—I got it at first, because we’d just moved in and you had no reason to trust me. It wasn’t my business, and I got that. I didn’t—I was fine with letting you do whatever you wanted to.” Tears blaze hot paths down your cheeks, but you refuse to break Peter’s stare long enough to wipe them. “It just seems like it keeps getting worse, though, you know? Or maybe it was always this bad and I just didn’t know, but now—I don’t know, I don’t really know what this is, but it’s different than it was at first. We’re not strangers anymore, right? You can trust me. Please, I just—” Your voice splinters. “I just want to help.”
Peter’s looking at you with something desperate in his expression. You can see the whites of his eyes again, and his chest is moving like he’s breathing harder than he needs to. He takes a step back, and the string between you pulls taut. It feels sharper than an ache now.
“I have to—”
“Don’t go,” you cut him off.
Peter’s face pinches. “I have to. I have to, I’m sorry. Please go to bed.”
“Why?” Your shoulders jump, something in you crumpling as you realize there’s nothing you can do to make him stay. Your nose runs. “Just stay here.”
He glances toward his bedroom, then back at you. He must have left the window open; you can feel the night chill beginning to permeate your apartment. Peter’s fingers twitch at his sides.
“Please,” you try again.
Sirens wail outside, and Peter takes another step away from you. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I have to go right now. I’ll be back, okay?”
You don’t reply, watching through blurred vision as he goes.
It takes you less than a minute to come to a decision after that. You’re still leaking from your eyes and nose, so you grab a wad of toilet paper from the bathroom, cramming it into your pocket before throwing on a sweatshirt over your sleep clothes and shoving your feet into shoes.
Peter’s not on the fire escape when you stick your head out his window. You have no clue how he climbed down so fast. You push the window closed and go out the front door.
Your neighborhood is less quiet tonight. The sirens that make up the city’s constant white noise are closer than usual, louder, echoing down alleyways to reach your peaceful cluster of buildings. You think half-humorously that they might create an opportunity for Spider-Man to pay a visit; maybe if he’s not too busy, you can get him to help track down your runaway boyfriend and scare some sense into him.
You hate to think of what could compel Peter to come back out here tonight, when he was already so beat up and he clearly didn’t want to. You don’t understand what role he could play. Is he making things for someone? Is that why he had that exploding thing on his wrist? Peter’s skilled, and smart, but you don’t think he’d get mixed up in anything that required him to pass off dangerous technology to anyone who wouldn’t be responsible with it. Unless he had to, at least.
You’re so furious with him. You tear off a square of toilet paper, blowing your nose. If he gets any more hurt than he already is, you’ll tell Aunt May on him, you swear to god.
It’s almost funny, considering how much better lit the streets are, that you don’t notice anyone around until the gun is at your back.
“Purse,” says a voice at your ear.
“I don’t have one.” Your voice wobbles, but mostly because of the whiplash. Christ, what a shitty day. “I don’t have anything on me.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me.” The gun presses harder into your back. “Phone, then.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I don’t! I left it at home.”
“You know what—”
“What?” Comes a voice from behind you both. A familiar voice.
For a millisecond, you could swear it’s Peter, your heart clenching, but you turn after the mugger does to find Spider-Man standing a few feet away. As soon as the gun is trained on him, white webbing jams the barrel and it’s cast harmlessly to the side.
“I don’t think she’s lying, man.” Spider-Man moves toward you, firing webs on the way that plaster the mugger’s feet to the concrete. “I think you just picked the wrong girl tonight.” He jerks his head at you, and you get his meaning instinctively, stepping out of the way as he moves close enough to give the mugger a shove. The other man goes careening backwards. As soon as his hands land on the ground, webs ensure that’s where they stay.
Spider-Man takes your elbow in hand, guiding you away. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m…” Something’s nettling you. You wish for Spider-Man and he appears, is that how it works now? You have the feeling like you’re forgetting something. “This is where I live.”
He laughs, but it doesn’t sound very amused. “I know, but why are you here? What’re you—” He pulls the waist of your pajama pants up from where they’ve started to slip. “Sweetheart, it’s freezing out. Couldn’t you at least have put on a real coat?”
Sweetheart.
Your voice sticks in your throat.
“Your fingernails are gonna fall off,” Spider-Man goes on in a familiarly chiding tone (playful, so as not to seem too serious). He walks you out of the alley, ignoring the calls of the man stuck to the pavement. “What do I have to say to get you back inside? I’ll come with you, how’s that?”
“Peter?”
Spider-Man looks over at you. Eyes of all white, and yet everything said in the tilt of his head. “I was going to tell you when I got back,” he says, still walking towards your building, “but of course you had to go out and find trouble. You probably think I’m full of shit now.”
“Peter,” you say. Not a question this time, but an exhalation. Something released.
“I’m not making it up, though, I really was going to tell you. I would have told you before I left, but there wasn’t really time, I could hear the cops having a shootout and I really felt like I had to go—I actually only came home because my web-shooter caught a stray, so I needed a backup…”
You’re reeling, you think. Or swooning. You’ve never figured out the difference. Spider-Man’s (Peter’s. Spider-Man’s?) hand has found its way around your waist, keeping you propped up against him. Silly, to be treated like you’re the delicate one when you know for a fact he’s all bruised and bleeding under that mask. There are probably other injuries you don’t know the half of.
When Peter stops, you don’t understand why until you realize you’re standing in back of your own building. You’ve crossed streets without noticing.
“I thought we’d take the fast way up,” he says.
You manage a “hm?” before he’s tightening his grip on you and you’re sling-shotting up six stories. Peter sets you down on the fire escape. You grip the railing when he lets you go, the cold metal digging into your palms as he jimmies open his bedroom window. He has to gently uncurl your fingers to usher you inside.
It’s clear one of you is more practiced at going in and out of windows than the other. You half-crawl onto Peter’s bed, stumbling a bit in an attempt to avoid getting your shoes on his pillow, whereas your boyfriend slips gracefully through and is laying down before you’ve managed to turn around. He pulls the window shut so that it hardly makes a sound. You wonder if it’s habit.
“You okay?” Peter asks as he pulls off his mask.
You stare. “Me?”
He looks chastened, but says anyway, “Yeah, sweetheart. You’re shaking a little.”
“I’m…” You reach for him. Your fingertips lay themselves over the bruised bridge of his nose. Peter’s eyes are sorry. “I’m surprised.”
“You also just had a gun pointed at you.”
“So did you. You probably have guns pointed at you all the time.”
He shrugs, as though this is more or less true. “Are you mad?”
“I don’t know what I am,” you admit. “Probably, a little.”
“Is it okay to ask for a hug?”
“Am I going to hurt you?”
“No,” he promises, reaching forward to bring you to him. His lips mush to your cheek. “It looks worse than it is. Perk of the spider mutant thing, I heal fast.”
You’re still careful with him. You hug him with your arms around his shoulders, feeling the strange texture of the webbing spread over his suit. There’s a strangeness to your senses; it feels like a tuning fork has been struck, everything reverberating and trembling its way into alignment. Your heart trembles with it.
“This isn’t what I was expecting,” you hear yourself say.
“It’s not? I sort of thought you had it all figured out.”
You shake your head.
“Well, you’re taking it a lot better than I expected. If that helps at all. I kind of thought you might freak out.”
“I don’t know how much freak out I have left.” You intend to stop there, but the next admission comes tumbling from your mouth unbidden. “I’ve been worrying for a long time.”
“Oh, yeah?” Peter sounds genuinely apologetic, and so doting it makes your chest tight. He rubs your back like he can feel it happening. “I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t want to drag you into this, but then it seemed like you were gonna find out no matter what, and…honestly, I just thought I’d get matched with a roommate who didn’t give a shit.”
“Bad luck.”
“Yeah, maybe. Not really.” He pulls back enough to kiss you, bumping his nose against yours affectionately. “Hey, maybe it’s too soon, but there might be a pro to the whole dating Spider-Man thing.”
You look at him. A face you know as well as anything, and from the neck down a suit you’ve seen mostly in news clips. He’s your boyfriend; he’s Spider-Man. He’s your boyfriend who’s Spider-Man.
“Yeah?” you ask.
“If you really like those pictures in my room, I can bring you to the places where I took them from. It’s not, ah, something most of the public can access. Special privilege only.”
“Oh.” You nod slowly. “Yeah, that’s cool.”
“Too soon?”
“Maybe. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that you work for the cops.”
“Uh, okay, I don’t work for the cops, I work with them. I’m not some narc.”
The incredulity in his tone is so distinctly Peter that you come back into yourself. All of the trembling pieces settle into alignment.
“Right, it’s just. I don’t know.” Your lips give a small tug. You see a familiar amused curiosity ignite in familiar warm brown eyes, and you press a quick kiss to his lips before delivering the news. “I’ve been picturing you more or less at odds with the law. I was pretty sure you were a drug dealer.”
peter swings you around the city for the first time!
a/n: hi hi here is another peter drabble :P i hope u guys enjoy !! hopefully its not ooc gulp … i love writing for him hehe :3 lmk what u guys think !!! (also send in any requests u might have :D)
tags/warnings: fluff !! no spoilers for bnd :3
“and you’re sure you can carry me in one arm?” you ask apprehensively, staring over the edge of your apartment building before clutching onto your lover tighter.
“‘course i can!” you hear the smile in his voice. you turn to face him, worry painting your features. “sweetheart i promise i won’t let anything happen to you, okay?”
you bite your bottom lip, thinking for a second before shuffling closer to him. peter instantly pulls you in by your waist, nestling your body against his with a smile under the mask.
“ready?” he asks you, knowing you most definitely were not.
“are you sure your webs are strong enough for two people? i mean this is new organic web and-” your ramblings are cut short by Peter placing one finger under your chin, forcing you to look at him and not the skyline.
“would i ever do anything to put you in danger?” you shake your head softly. “you’ve seen me fight guys three times your size with these webs, right?” you feel heat creeping up your neck as you realize how silly your concern must seem to him.
“sorry,” you mumble, wiping your sweaty palms on your thighs, “just nervous.”
“don’t be, I’ve got you, he whispers, “ready baby?”
you take a deep breath, throwing your arms around his neck and nodding. peter lifts his mask quickly, placing a chaste kiss to your cheek before lowering it and grinning.
his grip on your is firm, even if you tried to get loose you don’t think you’d be able to. a nervous smile on your lips as he steps forward with you in his arms. you gulp as he shoots a web to the building across the street.
peter expects a shriek or a terrified cry to leave your lips as he runs forward and leaps off the building, but it never comes. you gasp at the sensation in your belly, immediately smiling when the warm summer breeze hits your face and runs through your hair.
“oh my god!” you gasp out, laughing slightly, “this is amazing!” your grip on peter is still iron clad, but the nerves you’d once felt had completely been left behind. you watch as peter shoots web after web, swinging the two of you gracefully through the busy new york streets.
“havin’ fun?” he watches you from the corner of his eyes, taking in how awe-struck you looked, smiling fondly as you giggle at the reflection of the two of you on a skyscraper.
“yes!” you shriek happily, your legs wrap tighter around his waist as the two of you free fall momentarily, squealing when he shoots a web and propels the two of you up quickly.
peter laughs at your small noises of excitement, cheeks dusted pink as he looks at you again. you were in complete and unbridled joy, and it was all because of him. the thought makes his heart flutter, and his grip on your tightens a fraction.
“that’s where I stoped the bank robbery! and that’s where I got my ass handed to me,” he points out different locations as the two of you swing, a small story with every ‘thwip.’
you listen intently, reprimanding him when he mentions haphazardly bandaging himself after being on the brink of death.
“okay, we’re here,” peter swings the two of you to the top of a building, landing softly and immediately wrapping both arms around you to keep you steady. “you okay?” he asks quickly, giggling when your legs wobble slightly as you stand.
“yeah, just a lot of adrenaline,” you admit sheepishly. your arms are still looped around his neck as you stare up at him. the vibrant red mask looks down at you. if you stare long enough, maybe you could trace out his features…
peter doesn’t give you the chance, one large hand splayed across the small of your back while the other reaches for his mask. your eyes immediately widen when you see him grab the hem of it.
“peter what if-” his giggles cut you off, morphing your concerned expression into a confused smile.
“what if someone sees me? this high up in the air?” he teases, pulling his mask off as he finishes talking. his brown curls are sticking every which way, and the gash he’d gotten on his nose two days ago is almost fully healed. his eyes practically sparkle as he looks down at you with a smile.
peter grins, looking around and humming. you do the same. there’s only a rogue pigeon and the empty roofs of buildings surrounding the two of you.
“I don’t think our pal over there would sell us out,” he motions to the fast asleep pigeon, you smack his chest lightly. Peter smiles, smoothing your hair down before kissing your forehead.
the two of you watch the sunset on the rooftop, hands intertwined as you rest your head on his shoulder. peter fidgets with your fingers as he speaks, telling you about new tech ideas he has and how his new enhanced abilities were coming along. you listen to him intently, soaking up his words and smiling as the golden rays from the sun enshroud the two of you.
“thank you,” he adds after a beat of silence. you furrow your brows, sitting up straighter and looking at him.
“for?”
“coming with me. doing this with me,” he makes a vague motion to himself and the city with his arms, “i know it’s a lot, so thank you.” his stomach flips when you give him a sweet smile.
“thank you for letting me in,” you reply, loving the way his breath hitched in his throat as you leaned in. your noses touched before you glanced up at him, smiling as you pressed your lips to his gently.
peter immediately kissed back, one hand snaking to the back of your neck and the other to your waist, smiling when you accidentally clash teeth.
“sorry,” he mumbles, face flushed as you pull away.
“‘s okay,” you mumble, running your fingers through his hair before letting your hand settle on his cheek. your thumb brushes his cheek softly, his eyes flutter shut at the feeling. peter can hear your heart rate pick up, his eyes open to meet yours.
“y’know i love you right?” you say quietly, swallowing harshly as he stares back at you. Peter’s own heart rate increases as a smile breaks onto his face.
“yeah, i love you too,” he replies easily, melting into your touch and smiling.
SUMMARY: You were born a non-bender, but Aang tries to make you feel included.
WARNING(S): fluff, angst
WORD COUNT: 5,197
PAIRING: Adult!Aang x reader
A/N: Hope you like it! Comments and feedback are always welcome.
MASTERLIST
The first time Aang got you out of the house to teach you, he was all smiles.
Bright and hopeful, excited to share something that mattered to him. You don’t think you’d ever seen him look that happy, especially by the fourth attempt.
Airbending.
The others thought you might pick something up eventually. Water, earth, maybe even fire, but nothing ever came of it. And deep down, you knew nothing ever would.
You weren’t a bender.
You weren’t going to wake up one day and move the ground beneath your feet, or shift water with your hands, or throw fire. It wasn’t something you could learn. It wasn’t something anyone could promise you. You weren't born to be able to bend.
But Aang didn’t let it go.
And you didn’t have the heart to take that from him, no matter how much it pained you.
So you let him pull you out of the tower you’d been calling home for years now and take you to the Southern Air Temple.
You’d been there before, back when it was you, Katara, and Sokka, following him around while he showed you around. You’d seen far greater things, but the temple in ruins always settled heavily in your heart. It felt different now. More overgrown. Quieter.
Still beautiful though.
And you knew how much it meant to him.
You ran your hand along one of the columns as you walked, the stone cool under your fingers. You wondered if he ever thought about what this place used to be. If being here made it harder or easier.
“Okay,” Aang says, clapping his hands together as he turns to you. “Airbending. My area of expertise.”
His grin widens. And just like that, he looks like himself again.
You cross your arms loosely, raising a brow at him. “Confident?”
He moves past you, then circles back, positioning himself a few feet away. His posture shifts without him thinking about it. He looks lighter on his feet, shoulders relaxed, arms loose at his sides.
“I have to be,” Aang says easily. “I’ve only been doing this my whole life.” He steps back a little, giving you space. “Besides, you've made it through three trials. You haven't given up.”
“Three failures,” you correct.
“Three attempts,” he says, like it matters.
You sigh, finding your sandals more interesting, the dirt beneath them crunching with every press-down you make. You're pulled out of the hole you begin making up in your mind when Aang claps loudly again. The crack had made you flinch.
“Okay! Airbending isn’t about forcing anything,” he starts. “That’s why it’s hard to explain. You don’t grab it like the earth beneath your feet, or push it like fire. You… move with it.”
You nod, even if you don’t fully get it.
He gestures for you to stand straighter. “Feet apart. Don't stand too stiffly. You don’t want to lock yourself in place.”
You adjust, trying to copy him.
“Good,” he says. “Now, don’t think about making something happen. Just focus on what’s already there.”
“The air,” you say.
“Yeah.” He gives a small nod. “It’s everywhere. You don’t need to have a source like water or earth. You just… connect to it.”
You take a breath, slower this time.
Behind him, the wind moves through the open temple, brushing past the columns, slipping through broken archways. You can feel it on your skin, faint but constant.
“Okay,” he says. “Follow me.”
He steps into motion, slow and controlled. His arms move in a wide circle, like he’s tracing something invisible.
You mirror him. At least, you try to. Your movements feel heavier. Less natural. Like you’re thinking about every step instead of letting it happen.
“Loosen up,” he says gently. “You’re resisting it.”
“I’m not trying to,” you mutter.
“I know...”
You exhale, forcing yourself to relax your shoulders. Your arms follow his again, slower this time, less rigid. You shift, trying to follow what he’s doing again.
“Better?”
“Yeah. That’s good,” he says. “Now just…move your arms. Slow at first.”
You copy him, lifting your hands and pushing them forward in the same motion he just showed you.
Nothing happens.
You try again.
Still nothing.
Aang doesn’t say anything right away. He just watches on, further heightening the fact that you were aware he was observing your every move.
“Try not to think about it too much,” he says after a second.
You let out a small breath. “That’s kind of hard not to, especially when I’m trying to make something happen.”
“I know,” he says. “But if you focus on making it happen, it won’t.”
You glance at him. “That doesn’t sound very helpful.”
He laughs. “It’s true, though. Don’t think on it too much.”
You shake your head a little, but you try again anyway. This time slower.
Less stiff, more loose.
Going with the flow.
For a second, it almost feels right.
Almost.
“Now shift your weight,” he adds. “Don’t stay rooted. Airbenders don’t stand still if they can help it.”
You step lightly to the side, copying the way he moves. He’s already adjusted, already onto the next move before you've barely finished the previous action.
You’re a step behind. Always a step behind. Never able to keep up with the rest of them.
“Okay,” he says. “Now guide it.”
Your arms move through the air, and for a second, you almost think you feel something pulse within your palms.
But it’s gone before you can figure out what it might be.
Probably nothing to be honest.
You drop your hands with a huff. “Yeah. Still nothing.”
Aang steps closer, not an ounce of discouragement on his face. “That’s okay. It takes time. With more practice, you're bound to get something out of it. It gets easier. Trust me.”
“For you maybe,” you say. “You’ve been doing this since you were a kid.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from it.”
You give him a look. “Aang, I can’t move a leaf, I couldn't shift the water from the stream, I couldn't move the stupid pebble that Toph had me attempt to move. Zuko even tried having me light the fire for the camp we set up. We almost froze. I can't move anything!”
“Not yet,” he corrects. Oh, how you wonder where he gets his patience and his calm from? Something you were surely running out of.
You sigh, but there’s no real frustration behind it. Yet, anyway.
He hesitates for a second, then moves behind you. “Can I?” he asks.
You nod. His hands hover near yours before settling lightly over them. Gentle, warm to the touch.
“Let me guide you,” he says.
You feel him push your arms through the same motions as before. Slower this time. More steady.
“Breathe,” he adds quietly. The warmth of his words tickles your ear.
You try to match his pace, his breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.
The air moves around you, brushing past your arms, your face. You can feel the wind, how it responds to him. The subtle breeze he lets swim in and out through your hair.
“Feel that?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
You almost laugh at the sensation, but you keep going. Letting your hands move with his instead of trying to lead on your own.
For a second, the motions feel easier. Like you’re not working as hard to exert them, act them out.
There's barely anything happening. Most of which is done by Aang. But the air in front of your hands stirs.
You pause.
“Did you—”
“I saw it,” Aang says quickly, a little quieter now. “Keep going.”
Your focus breaks.
And just like that, it’s gone. You let your arms fall.
“Of course.” You huff in defeat.
Aang doesn’t move away right away. “You felt it, though, right?” he asks.
“Barely.”
“It’s still something.”
You turn your head slightly, glancing back at him. “It only worked because you were helping. I’m not even sure that was me just now.”
“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe you just needed to stop trying so hard.”
You don’t answer that.
After a second, his hands drop away from yours. You miss the warmth of them in an instant. The lack of his touch makes you want to pull him close again.
“Do you want to try again?” he asks. Chin dipping to try and get your eyes to meet his own. They don't. He looks down at the ground before waiting for your response.
You look at your hands, then back at him.
“Maybe later, if that’s okay.”
"It's okay. We can take a break."
-
The hill you found and settled on feels nice and cool underneath your touch as the sun dips.
Long shadows stretch across the mountains, swallowing the land around them, making it quieter. Emptier. At peace.
You and Aang sit side by side, and you disturb a patch of grass by pulling grass stems from the ground. You'd guess your anxiety was to blame for impulsively messing with perfectly good grass. Aang had lain back, eyes darting up at the sky. His thoughts wandering, you'd guess as much, seeing as his fingers stopped tapping against his stomach.
For a while, neither of you speaks.
The wind moves gently through the open air, brushing past softly, reminding you of the reason for being there in the first place. You figured Aang could've been reminded of home. Of everything he lost, but who were you to speak for him?
Aang exhales slowly.
“It’s weird,” he says.
You glance at him. “What is?”
He doesn’t look at you. Just out.
“The sky. The temple, all the antiques we keep finding. Everything.”
His fingers curl slightly against the grass as he sits up.
“I used to think the temples would always feel full,” he admits. “Like, no matter what happened… I could come back, and it’d still feel like home. Still… alive.” There’s a pause. “But it only reminds me of how everyone I've ever known...is gone.”
That lands heavier than anything he’s said all day.
You don’t interrupt. You just listen.
“They’re gone,” he continues, voice quieter now. “The monks. My friends. Gyatso. The stories they all used to tell, the way we used to celebrate, the food we would eat… even the stupid games we played.” A soft, broken laugh slips out of him. “I’m the only one left who remembers any of it.”
Your chest tightens.
“I don’t even know if I remember it right anymore.” He finally looks down at his hands. "I keep thinking that if I die, my culture dies with me. What if I forget something important?” he whispers. “What if it all just… disappears with me? No one but me can carry on my past. My whole life rests in my hands.”
There it is. His fear. It hits you harder than you expected. Because for once, this isn’t about being the Avatar.
This is just a boy, a man now, sitting in the ruins of his home, terrified of being the last voice of his people.
You don’t think. You don’t weigh your next words. You just… say it.
“Then I’ll carry it with you.”
Aang freezes.
You don’t stop.
“I’ll learn it,” you add quickly, heart racing now. “All of it. The stories, the traditions... Whatever you remember, I’ll remember too. I won’t let it disappear.”
He’s staring at you now.
Completely still. Like he’s not sure he heard you right.
“And if you’re worried about it ending…” You hesitate, then push through it anyway, the words tumbling out before you can stop them.
“I’ll give you a legacy.”
The silence falls heavily on you both. You look out into the valley, feeling the wind settle.
And the second it leaves your mouth, you second-guess your words.
Oh.
Oh no.
Your breath catches. “I-I didn’t mean—”
Aang’s expression changes.
“You’d… What?” he asks softly.
You shake your head quickly, heat rushing to your face. “I didn’t mean it like that, I just mean, I mean I did, but not—” you let out a nervous breath, stumbling over yourself. “I just meant I’d help. However you needed, I—”
“You’d give me children?” he interrupts.
That stops you. Your mouth opens agape, then shuts.
His voice is so quiet you almost miss it. You look at him properly now. Really take in the man before you. Give him children? You'd be stupid not to want a family with him.
Something in your chest settles warmly.
“Yeah,” you say, softer this time. “If you wanted me to. The only thing I could really give back.” You release a nervous laugh.
Aang’s eyes search yours, like he’s trying to find any sign of hesitation. Doubt. Anything that screamed that you were just trying to make up for what you lacked in, but you weren't
There isn’t any. Because you meant it. Even if you didn’t take into account how much you did until just now.
“You don’t have to do that,” he says, but there’s no strength behind it. No real push. No malice. Just a hint of genuineness.
“I know,” you reply. A beat. “I want to, though.”
That hits him harder than anything else.
You see it in the way his breath stutters slightly, the way his shoulders drop just a fraction, like something inside him is loosening up for the first time all day.
“You’d really…” he starts, then stops, swallowing. “…you’d learn everything?”
You nod. “Everything you’re willing to teach me.”
For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. Then his hand reaches for yours. Slowly, hesitant. Like he’s still asking permission to touch you, when he has every right to. When you don’t pull away, his fingers tighten slightly around yours.
“That means a lot to me, Y/n,” he admits, voice barely above a whisper. "I never even considered the idea of having children right now.
You smile, just a little. “I figured. It looked like your heart stopped for a second there.”
A soft huff of breath leaves him. almost a laugh, but not quite.
The wind returns, gentle once more, curling around the two of you as if it felt the heaviness settle between you. Like it had listened in.
Aang glances down at your joined hands, then back up at you.
For once, he doesn’t try to turn it into a joke right away. He just looks at you.
Like he’s still catching up to what you said and what it means. Not just the words, but the fact that you meant them. That you said them so easily, like it wasn’t something huge you placed in his lap.
It was.
You can tell by the way he keeps holding your hand, squeezing every now and then, like letting go would break up the moment too fast.
“I don’t know what to say,” he admits after a while.
You let out a small breath through your nose. “You don’t have to say anything.”
“I feel like I should.”
“You don’t have to.”
His mouth twitches a little at that, but it fades just as quickly.
“I just…” He looks away for a second, out at the valley below, at the fading light and shadows. “I’ve spent so much time thinking about what I lost that I never really thought about what could still happen. What I could still have.”
Your thumb brushes lightly over his knuckles before you can think better of it. Aang notices. His shoulders loosen again, but not enough.
“You make it sound simple,” he says.
“It’s not simple.”
This turns his attention back on you.
“It’s just not impossible either,” you say quietly. “There’s a difference.”
He studies your face for a second, and you can almost see the thoughts moving behind his eyes. Aang was never very good at hiding what he felt, but this is different. He's less open. More careful. Like he’s afraid of letting this conversation go in the wrong direction. Of making you angry.
“You'd really give me children?” he asks again.
Not because he didn’t hear you the first time. Because he needs to.
You nod once. “Yeah.”
“And learn all of it?”
“Yes.”
“The stories, the customs, the food, the prayers, the weird games—”
You smile a little. “You’re really trying to sell it now.”
That earns a breath of a laugh. Then he goes quiet again.
“Even if you can’t bend?”
There it is. You had a feeling it would come back to that.
You look down at your lap for a second before answering.
“Especially then.”
Aang frowns. You take a breath.
“I can’t give back from the lack of bending,” you say. “I know that. I know I’ll never be part of your culture in the same way you were born into it.” You pause, picking at a blade of grass near your knee. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t love it because it matters to you. It doesn’t mean I can’t help keep it alive. This could be one of the only things I can give back.”
His face changes at that. Softens. Something about those words gets through to him in a way the other words of the gang couldn't. Maybe it's because he knows you’re not saying it to make him feel better.
You’re saying it because you’ve already decided.
“I don’t want you to think this is all you’re good for,” he says after a moment.
You look at him, caught a little off guard.
“What?”
He turns toward you more fully now, his hand tightening around yours.
“The only thing you could really give back?” he repeats softly, using your own words. “Don’t say it like that.”
Heat crawls up your neck in half embarrassment, and half of something else.
“I just meant—”
“I know what you meant.” His voice stays gentle, but there’s something firmer in it now. “But you make it sound like you have to make up for something.”
You open your mouth, then close it. Because there isn’t a clean lie waiting to spill past your lips. Aang notices that too.
“You don’t owe me a legacy,” he says. “And you don’t owe me children just because you can’t bend.”
Your throat tightens a little.
“I know,” you say, but it comes out softer than you intended.
He watches you for another second, then shifts closer, close enough that your heads are leaning against each other.
“You don’t have to try and even the score for what you think you're lacking in,” he says. “Not for me.”
His words land hard. Too hard.
Because some part of you had thought exactly that, even if you didn’t want to say it out loud. That if you could never stand beside the others in the way they did, through bending, through power, through something useful, then maybe you could still give him something that mattered.
Something lasting.
You stare down at your lap for a second, blinking against the sting behind your eyes.
“I didn’t mean for it to sound like that,” you say quietly. “I’m not trying to make up with children for my lack of bending with you.”
“I know.” He says it immediately. Reassurance following his understanding. “I know you’re not.”
It helps. His words. A little.
You breathe out slowly.
“I just hate that I can’t help out sometimes,” you admit. "Heck, even Sokka is out there being a hero... But what can I do?"
Aang goes still. Because he finally understands what’s underneath all of the hurt you've bottled up inside of yourself.
The discouragement after every attempt. The way you'd look away from everyone's eyes after every attempt. The way you'd say it’s fine, when it clearly wasn't.
He shifts again, this time dipping his head enough that he can see your face better.
“What can you do?” he repeats quietly. And it's just him, sitting with the question instead of brushing it off.
You don’t answer right away because you’ve already answered it a hundred times in your head. Nothing, was always your response. He frowns as though the crease in your forehead gave you away.
“You think being a hero is just about bending?” he asks.
You give a small shrug. “It helps.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
You glance at him, a little caught. He doesn’t look away.
“You think Sokka is a hero, but he can't bend?” Aang presses.
You hesitate. “Yes, but—”
“But what?”
You sigh, frustrated now. “But he still does things, Aang. He fights. He plans. He actually contributes when something goes wrong.” You shake your head a little. “When things get bad, I’m just… there.”
The words come out flatter than you meant them to. Like you’ve said them before. To yourself. Too many times.
Aang’s expression tightens.
“You’re not ‘just there,’” he says.
You don’t argue. You don’t agree either. You just look away again.
“Do you remember the canyon?” he asks suddenly.
You frown slightly. “What about it?”
“You were the one who figured out how to settle the feud between the Gan Jin and the Zhang tribes,” he says. “You made them work together to get us out of being eaten by those canyon crawlers.”
“Wasn't that you—”
“And the village near the volcano?” he continues. “You were the one who convinced the villagers that they needed to evacuate.”
You shake your head. “That’s not—”
“And when Appa got hurt,” he adds, quieter now, “you stayed with him the whole night. You looked over him, you lost sleep over it too.”
You go still because you do remember that memory.
You remember thinking it didn’t count. That it wasn’t enough.
“That’s not fighting, though,” you say, softer now.
“No,” Aang agrees. “It’s not.”
He leans in just slightly, not crowding you, just enough that you can’t ignore him.
“But it’s helping.”
You swallow.
“It’s paying attention,” he continues. “It’s seeing things the rest of us miss because we’re too busy trying to win something.”
His voice softens. “And it matters.”
You look at him again because he’s not trying to make you feel better.
He’s not reaching just to say something nice. He means it.
“But when something actually happens—” you start.
“You’re there,” he says, cutting in gently this time. “You don’t run. You don’t hide. You stay.”
Your chest tightens.
“That’s not nothing.”
The wind shifts around you again. You look down at your interlocked hands.
“It doesn’t feel like enough sometimes,” you admit.
Aang nods. “I know.”
That catches you off guard.
“I get that, trust me,” he adds. “I’ve felt that too.”
You blink at him. “You?”
“Yeah.” A small, almost self-conscious smile tugs at his mouth. “Being the Avatar doesn’t automatically make you feel invincible.”
You let out a quiet breath. That… comforts you more than you expected it to.
Aang studies your face for another second, then reaches out again. This time, slower, more deliberate, as he nudges your right cheek with his left hand, before pressing a gentle kiss on it. You don’t pull away.
“I'm sorry if we made you feel that way. You don’t have to be like the rest of us to matter,” he says.
You let that sit. It doesn’t fix everything. But it settles the war that was waged inside you anyway.
“You really believe that?” you ask.
He nods.
“I wouldn’t be sitting here with you if I didn’t.”
That makes you look at him again. A small, uneven smile pulls at your lips.
“You’re really bad at letting people wallow in their self-pity,” you mutter.
He smiles back, softer now. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been told that.”
You huff out a quiet laugh, shaking your head.
"Why do you keep talking like bending is the only part worth carrying on?”
That shuts you up again.
He’s not angry. If anything, he sounds a little sad. A little frustrated that you still can’t see what he’s trying to tell you.
“My people weren’t just airbenders,” he says. “They were monks, teachers, healers. They made toys for kids and baked fruit pies and played games and told stories they’d told a hundred times before.” A small smile pulls at his mouth. “They were annoying sometimes. And stubborn. And really nosy.”
A laugh slips out of you before you can stop it. Aang smiles a little wider when he hears it.
“My culture didn’t live in bending alone,” he says. “It lived in how we treated people. What we believed. How we lived.”
He looks down at your joined hands. “And you’ve been trying to understand that part of me since the day we met.”
Your heart settles.
“So no,” he says softly. “You wouldn’t be giving me the only thing you could offer.”
You swallow.
“Aang…”
“You’d just be giving me more of you.”
His words are so simple they almost hurt. You don’t know what to do with them. So for a second, you do nothing. Then your hand tightens around his. His eyes flick down to it, then back to your face.
You shake your head a little, a laugh leaving you, thin and shaky. “You always know how to make me feel stupid in the nicest way possible.”
That finally gets a real laugh out of him.
“You’re not stupid.”
“Mm.”
“You’re not.” He presses firmly, gently.
You look over at him. “I heard you the first time.”
“Good.”
The breeze picks up around the two of you, cooler now that the sun has dropped. It lifts a few strands of your hair and brushes the fabric on his sleeves.
Aang leans back on one hand, still facing you.
“I think I’d like that,” he says after a while.
You blink. “What part?”
He smiles, small and careful. A beat. “All of it.”
Something in you eases. Not all the way, but enough to let you breathe easier.
“Even if I can't bend?”
He tilts his head, brows furrowing in feigned shock. “You can't bend!”
You let out an offended noise and shove at his shoulder.
He laughs, catching your wrist before you can do it again.
“I’m kidding,” he says.
“You’re not.”
“Okay, maybe a little.”
You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling a lot brighter now, and he is too, and the heaviness from a minute ago doesn’t feel quite so sharp in your chest.
He keeps hold of your wrist for a second longer than he needs to. Long enough for the mood to shift again. Just slightly.
His smile fades first, not into sadness, but something more aware. Serious. You felt it too. The tension.
The way he raised his hand and his thumb brushed once, almost absentmindedly, over the side of your face.
“Aang,” you say softly.
His eyes avert from your lips, falling on your softening gaze.
You lost your train of thought, the words you wanted to say falling off the tip of your tongue. Maybe it was nothing. His name just felt easier than everything else sitting between you.
His eyes search your face anyway.
“Yeah?”
You shake your head, but not because you want to take it back.
“Nothing.”
His mouth curves faintly. “You sure?”
“No.”
He studies you for another moment, then glances out at the valley again.
“You want to stay here tonight,” he says. “If you want, of course.”
You lift a brow. “You mean avoid going back and getting interrogated by Katara?”
“That too.”
You smile. “Tempting.”
“Very. It’s quiet here.”
You look around. The grass. The temple in the far distance, worn down but still standing strong, like Aang.
“It is.”
Aang nods, then looks back at you. Letting the quiet air take over as he took in his favorite view. You. Who went back to pulling at the patch of grass you disrupted, he can't help but let his smile grow.
“I love you.”
There it is again. His plain honesty. It always got the best of you. You feel your face heat up, but there’s no point in pretending you didn't hear him.
“I love you too,” you say, expression timid, but still facing the ground.
His heart beats faster. This was it for him. You were it. All he'd ever want, so long as the universe allowed you and him to last. To be.
His shoulders drop. His mouth softens. He looks younger for a second, and older too. Like the boy and the man he’s still becoming are both sitting right here beside you. Making your head spin and your heart full.
The wind curls between you again. Gentle. Familiar.
And this time, when the silence returns, it doesn’t feel empty.
It feels full.
Aang glances at your joined hands once more, then back at you, his expression almost shy despite everything you’ve just said.
"So you really want children with me?"
"Yes, Aang." Your grin grows as you stifle a laugh.
“Do you want to start...on our legacy?” he asks.
You smile.
“Right now?” you ask.
Aang freezes. “Right now?”
You shrug, biting back another laugh. “You’re the one who asked.”
His brain immediately starts short-circuiting.
“Okay, wait, hold on—” he lets go of your hand just to gesture wildly, before stopping again. “I didn’t mean like right now, right now, I meant like, someday right now. Future right now. Not, this exact moment on a hill—”
You’re fully laughing now.
“Aang—”
“No, because there’s—there’s steps!” he insists, pointing at the ground like the steps might appear if he believes hard enough. “There are definitely steps. We skipped all of them.”
“You asked!”
“I didn’t think you’d say yes that fast!”
You tilt your head. “You wanted me to say no?”
“No!” he says immediately. “No, definitely not that either, just, maybe a warning? A little preparation time?”
You grin. “You’re panicking.”
“I am not panicking,” he says, voice an octave higher than usual. “I am calmly evaluating a very big, important, life thing—”
He stops. Looks at you. You’re still smiling at him like this is the best thing that’s ever happened.
“You’re serious, though,” he says, quieter now.
You nod. “Yeah.”
That does it. He exhales, shoulders dropping, all that frantic energy softening just a little.
“Okay.”
A beat.
“Okay,” he repeats, like he’s trying to convince himself he’s got this.
Then.
“Not right now, though,” he adds quickly.
You laugh. “Not right now.”
“Good,” he says, relieved. “Because I think I’d pass out.”
“You’d pass out?”
“Immediately.”
You bump his shoulder. “Avatar, master of all four elements… defeated by the talk of children.”
He points at you. “You’re the one who started it!”
“You asked!”
“And I regret nothing,” he says quickly, then pauses.
You laugh again, leaning your head against him. He relaxes this time, letting your head rest against his shoulder, still a little flustered but smiling anyway.
“We can start with the easy stuff,” he mutters.
“Like what?”
“Like… teaching you those games I used to play here,” he says. “Much safer.”
Seeing yuji and his back (mmffghh back muscles...) in the morning making breakfast
-dada modulo yuji anon
mbnnghhhh Modulo yuuji staying at your place for once and instead of slipping into the night and leaving you with a cold empty bed .. he stays. he sees the bag of groceries you forgot to unpack last night on your kitchen counter right before he intends to leave and he stays…
because there’s enough in the bag for two people instead of just one — and it warms his icy shielded heart to know you think of him as an extension to your being, not just another body. yuuji stays and helps himself in your kitchen, he fries two eggs sunny side up but one crispier than the other, his fingers flex around your kitchen knives as he slices tomatoes and fresh onion for the beans. his back muscles ripple as he rolls his shoulders, sore from the scratches and the bite marks you’ve left on him possessively. he doesn’t mind the sting, it keeps him company buzzing under his skin while you sleep.
as he sears and fries and toasts, he can’t help but think about the smile on your face that’ll appear once you see that he’s stayed. he pictures you swept up in his shirt and elation in your eyes and decides — he’ll stay to make you breakfast every morning after as well.
