let me show you my city || gwen & peter
Peter can still remember vividly meeting Gwen Stacy for the first time, her blonde hair resting against her shoulders, her snow white skin and blue eyes that sparkled with a fierce warmth and something else Peter didn’t have a word for at that age. He remembered stopping his tracks, his mind screeching to a halt as he just looked at her. He’d been busy playing with Harry at the time and had completely forgotten what game they’d been playing as he just looked at her in awe and fascination. The butterflies in his stomach had made no sense to Peter at the time, but now looking back it was clear that this was the beginning of falling for one Gwen Stacy.
He’d been just a kid back then, unable to do anything about what he was feeling and too terrified to even talk to the girl. Eventually he’d worked up the courage to talk to her and seemingly out of nowhere a bond was formed. Quick friends that soon turned into becoming best friends, Peter found himself spending as much time as he could with her, finding no matter his mood he’d end the day with a smile if he could talk to Gwen.
High school came and Peter soon found that those seemingly innocent feelings began to take shape into something more. Gwen wasn’t a child anymore, barely a girl and just on the cusp of becoming a woman and, well, Peter noticed. But it wasn’t just her looks, it was just everything else about her that had him smitten. Her evident genius, her laugh, the way she always handled herself with such efficiency. Yet despite everything he felt, Peter continued to be the close friend Gwen clearly needed more than anything else and maybe that was good enough, to just be a part of her life.
Becoming Spiderman changed a lot about them, but not their relationship. He was still her close friend, only this time she was the only one who knew his deepest and most intimate secret, the only one he’d ever willingly told. It was their secret, something that was just theirs and Peter found that oddly precious to him and maybe, well, maybe he was feeling just a little bit brave tonight. Which was why he was tapping on the window of one Miss Stacy’s room, stuck to the wall outside her window. “Miss Stacy, you live here?” He exclaimed in mock shock, looking around as if double checking, before looking back at her with the mask.
"Fancy that, but now that I’ve got your attention I was thinking you could use a break and come see the city with me. My treat."
Gwen Stacy spent a lot of time wrapped up in her own mind; it wasn't unusual for someone as clever as she. Other people, well, they often just couldn't keep up with her racing brain. That, perhaps, would explain just how and why she had become so close to Peter Parker over the years. He kept up with her in a way that not many could; an intellectual rival, and a best friend. They had latched on to one another when they were young, and Gwen could count on five fingers how many siblings she had; Peter was among them. He was her closest friend, her best friend (though she could never pick him over Harry, or Harry over him), and she adored him, loved him dearly. She daresay knew Peter Parker better than she knew herself. So when she heard a tapping on her window early that evening, she instinctively knew it would be Peter leaning against the glass.
"I do indeed, Mister Spider-man, sir," she remarked, fluttering her eyelashes teasingly and smirking at him, closing the biochemistry textbook that had been her reading material. She set down her pen, frowning briefly down at the unsolved equation. She could come back to it later, right? A chat with Peter would do her good; Gwen often found herself falling into the scientist schism, forgetting to do anything other than science. It hadn't been so bad in high school, but then, in high school, she hadn't had access to such fantastic technology and resources. She leant back on her chair, tipping it onto its back two legs, and grinned at her best friend, brushing a piece of blonde hair out of her face as he spoke. She adopted a mock consideratory expression. "Well, I do have all this work," she said, motioning to the papers on her desk.
"But, for Spider-man? Well, I suppose I could make an exception. Can't say no to my favourite web slinger, now can I?" She smiled at him lightly, standing up and grabbing a jumper off of her bed. It wasn't necessarily cold outside, but if Peter planned on swinging around the city, she'd be damned if she was going out in the light top and jeans she had donned earlier to go to classes. "Show me the world, Spider-man. It's not like I've lived here all my life," she teased, walking over to the window. "Honestly, Petey," she murmured, "you're absolutely ridiculous. We have a biochemistry exam on Friday and you're running around the city." She winked, that familiar laugh in her eyes. If she was being truthful, Gwen Stacy would pick time with her best friends over time studying any day.
