Apocalypse (Alibi Drabbles #2)
TASM!Peter x female reader, fluff and comfort
This is the second in a short series of drabbles based on my fic, The Perfect Alibi
Word count: ~2900
CWs: none. totally SFW.
💜 thank you to the amazing @raylan-c for making headers for this drabble series 💜
It was the end of the world.
Because, no - you hadn’t read it wrong. As many times as you refreshed the page and willed the number to be different, it was the same every time.
Sixty-four.
Your throat was the first to tighten, your lips and tongue quickly following suit before a shocked sob burst through. Your eyes felt unnervingly hot. They stung. That ugly crying pressure mounted behind your forehead, your shoulders tensing halfway up your neck as it all built and built until you finally burst.
Alone in your dorm, you cried hard into your pillow as you tried to come to terms with the fact that your grade on your most recent test was, by definition, poor but passing.
D.
Forever on your transcript.
It wasn’t as if this one grade on this one test was going to put your scholarship in jeopardy, but the anxiety cleaving to your chest was the thought that this could be the beginning of a steep, slippery slope down to worse grades and failing the class and losing your scholarship and failing out of college and- oh god. You were stuck in a cycle of catastrophic wondering. A cycle framed by tears and failed attempts at deep breaths for nearly a full hour until you finally got a grip of yourself long enough to remember you wouldn’t have this privacy for much longer; Peter was out on Spider-Man duties tonight, like most nights, and he was sure to climb through your window at some point soon.
So you cleaned up all the tissues, used a makeup wipe on your face just to feel a little more fresh, chugged half a bottle of water to replenish your tears supply, and switched your bedside lamp off. You doubted you’d sleep. That swelling pit in your stomach which threatened to swallow you whole surely promised to keep you awake for the six hours until your next class started. If you couldn’t sleep, your focus would be off, and you wouldn’t retain the information, and then you couldn’t study right, and then you’d nearly fail another-
The familiar gentle landing of Peter’s sneaking form near your window snapped you from your spiral and back to the task at hand: pretend to be asleep. Pretend everything’s fine. Like it did most nights, the window slid open. Seeing the darkened room and your turned-away blanket-covered body, Peter climbed into your room as quietly as he could.
You sensed him crawling along your ceiling all the way to the door before he dropped with nearly no sound at all. If there’d been any sort of fan or white noise in your room you wouldn’t have heard him at all. He picked up the clothes you’d stashed by the door and changed into them before he balled up the Spider-Man suit and placed it in your hamper as per usual. Just as you heard him zip up his sweatshirt, he went dead silent.
As much as you tried to not hold your breath, or to do anything unusual which would give away how upset you were, a surface-level understanding of Peter's heightened senses told you he’d clocked something was off. Knowing that he knew was enough to make you choke back another round of tears, and a small sniff broke through your defences.
He was by your side in a second.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he soothed in a worried whispered. The bed dipped with his weight pressing down beside you, and the gentle pressure of his kind hand on your upper back was enough to crack the floodgates even further. The embarrassment of that was enough to make you turn more away and shield your face with your hands. “Hey, talk to me.”
You shook your head when you sensed all of Peter’s silent questions, not knowing how to explain that you were crying over something that seemed so silly compared with what he tended to on a regular Tuesday night. He must’ve thought someone died, or that you were hurt or sick or something that made sense to cry over. How much pain had he encountered on the streets of New York that evening, and you were crying over a bad grade? Regressing into the guilt of feeling awful only made you feel even worse.
Seeing you weren’t in the headspace to respond, and that you certainly weren’t calming down at all, Peter leaned down and rested his head against your side while he let his palm draw up and down your back. When that seemed to placate you a bit more, to have his physical strength and comfort around you, he shifted to lie down on his back next to you. With a gentle but firm tug, he turned you over. He let you keep your hand in front of your face, but instead had you rest your head against his chest. Then, he wrapped his arm around your waist and pulled you in close.
Your cheeks stung with the burn of your tears and your sheer mortification that someone - that Peter - had found you like this. But his hand cradled the back of your head and the more your cheek sunk into the strength of his body, the longer you settled against his steady heartbeat, and with every gentle sweep of his fingers through your hair, you felt yourself calming. Letting go of the fear of his judgement or the potential for your nose to drip against his sweatshirt, you willingly buried yourself deeper into him as you breaths slowed to be deep, even and peaceful. Before you could unravel an explanation in your head, you’d fallen asleep in his arms.
“Hey.”
A gentle whisper, a hand on your shoulder and the lingering smell of strong, black coffee roused you from your sleep. As soon as you opened your eyes you noticed how stuffy your head felt, how puffy and tight your nose and eyes and ears were with the tears from the night before.
“Oh, god,” you groaned, looking over at Peter’s nervous smile as he crouched next to your bed. Then, panic struck your chest as you noticed it was light outside. “Class,” you gasped, “W-what time is-”
“Hey, hey, chill - we’re not late,” Peter assured and stood as you made to sit up. You felt grossly hungover from your meltdown, right down to the headache and that sticky taste in your mouth. “But are you sure you want to go? I mean-”
“I have to go,” you mumbled and swung your legs over the side of your bed, not quite meeting his eye. “Sorry, Peter,” you sighed.
He didn’t immediately respond with words, instead setting down the coffee he’d brought you on your bedside table before taking a seat beside you. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” you sniffed, nodded, wiped your nose with the back of your hand. “It’s stupid. It’s just…” you felt your breath catch, tears threatening to spill all over again. “It’s just a D. My GPA will recover,” you laughed humourlessly and stood up. Peter grabbed your hand from where he was sitting, prompting you to look back and down towards him.
“It’s not stupid if it matters to you.”
You tried giving him a thankful smile, but your skepticism towards his sentiment clearly shone through. He squeezed your hand again.
“I’m serious,” he nodded and repeated, “I’m serious. I know how much this means to you. It's not stupid.”
You fumbled over a response. Then, finding none, you just smiled sadly and squeezed his hand before putting on a brave face, picking out a change of clothes, then slipping through to the shared bathroom to have a quick shower.
It was hot and good and woke you up to a new day and unfortunately the reality that last night really had happened. Peter had done his best to assuage your guilt and embarrassment at your reaction, so now your melancholy disposition was a result of the facts at hand: you’d really only gotten a D on that test. The worst part was that you left the room feeling good about it. That for the first time in a long time you’d let it wash right off your shoulders as you moved on with your day. What a stupid mistake for a stupid- no. Don’t go down this path.
Peter was sitting on your bed with his hand over his eyes as you reentered the room, slipping them open for just a second to peer and ask, “Are you decent?”
“Yehes,” you sniffed a laugh and tossed the towel over the hook on the back of your door. “Thank you,” you said sincerely as you walked over to your bedside table and picked up the coffee he’d brought you. He did that a lot, you realised. Said it was “something a boyfriend should do.” But he never once accepted your cash to pay him back. “For the coffee, for… last night. It was nice to not be alone.” You sipped the coffee. It was still hot. “Sorry if I got snot all over your sweatshirt.”
“Oh it’s drenched in your snot,” he teased, obviously joking. “It’s really gross, actually, it’s just caked it in.” You scoffed and nudged his knee with your own before gathering your things to head to the class you two both had. It was the very same class which brought on your very first D. Maybe you should talk to the professor afterwards. Gosh, if you could show your face to her - what if she thought you hardly listened, hardly tried, or just didn't care?
“We should get going,” you ignored his tease, but couldn’t hide the half-grin spreading across your lips.
You walked the almost ten minutes across campus to the lecture theatre and Peter’s arm slung around your shoulder as you got closer, probably because he could hear the way your heart was beating faster. “Ask about a re-sit,” he offered as you two stepped into the building together. “I’m sure Dr. Deshpande would make an exception.”
Biting your lower lip, you nodded and clutched the half-empty coffee cup just a little bit tighter as you and Peter entered the lecture hall. The first thing you noticed was the small line of students waiting to talk to your professor, which made your brow furrow a little bit since that was usually an after-class feature of the lecture. You saw her look somewhat confused, hold up a hand to ask someone to slow down, before leaning down to look through her computer. “She’s asking everyone to sit down,” Peter told you, having an advantage on listening in. “A few people were asking about their results.”
After five minutes, a constantly murmuring buzz of students whispering amongst themselves, one very stressed-looking teaching assistant and one very unimpressed Dr. Deshpande, your lecturer stepped to the centre of the teaching stage and everyone immediately quietened.
“I am afraid there has been a mistake made with the input of grades. As you may recall, the test contained sixty-five questions. It appears the grades were inputted as the total questions correct, instead of the percentage correct - as they should have been,” she tried to not sound annoyed at a nuclear level as people buzzed with relieved whispers of excitement.
Sixty-four. Not sixty-four percent, sixty-four out of sixty-five.
A+.
You whipped your hands up to your face, trying to stop the tears of pure relief which threatened to spill over. Given the sounds from some other students, the feeling was definitely mutual. But Peter slung his arm around your shoulders and his relieved chuckle was enough to stave off the tears and instead make you also laugh a bit in disbelief. Maybe it wasn’t the end of the world.
After trying to pivot your focus from your roller coaster of emotions to the matter at hand - momentum and its properties - you did your best to focus on the lecture instead of Dr. Deshpande’s promise that the grades would be rectified no later than one o’clock in the afternoon.
So there you sat, after lunch, on your bed in your dorm with Peter. Even though you knew your grade, you kept refreshing the page to make sure your teacher's words weren't some kind of hallucination. Peter had made himself comfortable with his long legs crossed in front of him on your bed, his back against your headboard. You opted to sit with your back against the wall, your knees tucked to your chest, feet resting against his shin. You two usually sat like this, even though no one was around to see it.
Finally, the page refreshed and there it was. Ninety-nine. Your loud sigh of relief told Peter the grades had finally been updated, making him chuckle again.
“Feeling better?” He grinned and took a sip of his juice.
“Uh, yeah,” you laughed back and shut the lid, rubbing your sleepy eyes, remembering you only really got a few hours of rest the night before. “What did you get?”
After a few clicks on his own laptop, he made a classic ‘not bad’ face. “Ninety-eight.”
“Ooh,” you clicked your tongue with a wink. “Looks like I got you beat, Parker.”
“Hey,” he pointed an accusing finger at you with a cheeky grin. “Not too long ago you were dripping snot all over my sweatshirt and-”
“-we’ll I’ll clean it, if it’s such a big deal-”
“-and I was very helpful in calming you down and-and I brought you coffee-”
“-yeah, as a boyfriend should!”
You crossed your arms defiantly as Peter grinned and set his drink down on your bedside table. “I’m glad it’s all okay,” he said in a tone so soft it caught you off guard. You uncrossed your arms and smiled back.
“Thank you for staying.”
“You know you can call me, right?” He took a sharp breath in and lowered his eyebrows. “When I’m out there. Any time. You can call me if something’s wrong.”
You smiled, looking down at your feet. “That’s above and beyond your duty as a fake boyfriend.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but… you’re my best friend. That’s real.”
Beyond touched, you felt your jaw go a little slack as you tried to find the words to tell him he was your best friend too. Why was it so hard to say? He looked at you for a few seconds before laughing once or twice to break the tension.
“I’ll take your stunned silence as a mutual declaration of best-friendship,” he took another sip of his drink and wiggled his eyebrows. “Unless you have another friend you wipe your snot all over?”
“Peter!” You kicked at his shin where your feet were still resting against him, making to reach behind you for the pillow between your back and the wall to whack him with. Instead of going through with it, you decided to be cheeky back. “Yeah, fine. I’m the crying friend. But I’m also the smart friend.”
“Oh, ahare you now?” He laughed, placing his drink back on the table.
“Yes,” you raised your nose in the air and crossed your arms. “Mister Ninety-Eight,” you nudged his shins with your foot again, and his eyes flitted down to where they were messing with him.
“Fine, you can be the smart friend,” he started, and you narrowed your eyes at the mischievous gleam in his own. “You’re also the ticklish friend. Let’s not forget that.”
“Well, that’s yet to be proven,” you snarked, trying to hide the way you’d tensed at his playful threat.
Peter’s smile hadn’t quite turned into a smirk but definitely had turned cheeky. “D’you want me to prove it?”
You eyed your move, and the executed it. As you shoved yourself forward to place your seat over his shins, you shot back, “I can do it myself.”
By the time your hands made their way beside you to tickle at the bottoms of his socked feet, Peter’s hands were already around your upper arms. He twitched and laughed and pulled gently (gently for him) on your arms until you couldn’t fight him any more. You grinned at the laughs that’d spilled over his lips as you relented in your fight and resigned yourself to crashing backwards, half into Peter and half onto your mattress.
“You sure I’m the ticklish friend?” You giggled as you held your hands up in self-defence. “Those were some cuhute little laughs, Peter,” you kept giggling, shooting your gaze between his hands and his face.
He scoffed and nodded, narrowing his eyes as he made quick work of breaking past your defences. “Say that again,” he warned loudly as he dug his fingertips in your sides and lower ribs. You yelped and squirmed as he pinched and prodded at the sensitive places on your sides, all you could really do was half-heartedly push at his hands.
“Okahay, okay fine- Peheter!” You squealed and kicked your legs as you writhed under his hands, eyes shutting, laughter bursting from your lips. As much as you tried to fight him, it was worthless. He didn’t stop until you admitted, out loud, that you were the ticklish friend.
After being worn down from his attack, tired from the lack of sleep and emotional exertion of the previous night and early morning hours, before you knew it was happening, for the second time in a single day you fell asleep on Peter Parker.
And he smiled as you did.