leave this better than we found it || peter & flash (FLASHback)
Just on the verge of being breathless, Peter stepped into his dorm room and gently kicked the door shut behind him. Running hardly took anything out of him, but the added pressure to be back on time might have done the trick. He had promised Flash he’d be around at 5, but that had also meant forcing himself to run back after getting takeout. In theory, he could have whipped out the webshooters to move things along, but the risk felt a little to large for just the food. The holy grail of takeout, given, but maybe not quite the kind of emergency that dictated swinging through New York without his suit while the sun still hadn’t set.
His usual place had been packed, even for a Friday night. If it hadn’t been, the time crunch likely wouldn’t have been there, but an unfortunate bout of Parker Luck had been nipping at his heels all day. As long as it didn’t carry through to the rest of the night, he figured he would manage.
Dropping the bag onto his desk, Peter spared quick glance around the small room. It was fairly neat, all things considered, and for once, he had actually deigned to make his bed. There was a stack of dvds strewn haphazardly on his pillow - action movies he borrowed from one of the boys he vaguely knew down the hall. They looked awful; Flash would love them. Not a bad effort, Parker. Considering the circumstances, he figured more than some half-assed attempt at a Friday night was in order. And, oh - right, circumstances. Flash. Leaving. Yeah, that.
Peter slipped off his shoes and sank down onto the foot of his bed, pushing an extended sigh from his lungs. It wasn’t that he wasn’t thrilled for his friend, who was finally getting a chance to do what he wanted after all of this, but hell, he was leaving to join the army. There was so much unpredictability there, wrapped up in something so blatantly dangerous. A voice in the back of his head warned that thinking along those lines was hypocritical after all that he did at night, dressed in a suit and swinging from rooftops. His life was dangerous; he knew that, but this was different. This wasn’t about him - this was about Flash. If anyone could handle this, it would be Flash, and there wasn’t a fiber in Peter’s being that believed otherwise. But if something went wrong - if he didn’t make it out alright ( alive ) then Peter wouldn’t be able to handle that.
Meeting again at ESU had changed everything between them. Even after all that had happened in their past, Flash was one of Peter’s closest friends. There was still a part of him, somewhere deep down, that marveled at how strange that still sounded to his own ears, but he wouldn’t give up their friendship for the world. He didn’t want to chance losing it, either. Peter was hopeful, and he tried to believe with all that he was that they would keep in touch when ( of god, if ) Flash returned, but also knew that there was a chance they wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be any kind of a good chance, if he had anything to say about it.
Someone knocked at the door, a couple of sharp raps against wood, and Peter took a pause to breathe. There were too many ‘what ifs’ hovering over his head, and that never made for leaps and bounds of fun, so he pushed them aside. Terrible action movies now - incessant worrying later.
Finally steady again, he rolled off the bed and padded over to the door. There were good things to think about, tucked in between all of the worry and hypotheticals. His friend was doing something of his own volition, and that was huge. He deserved this, and really, that was what mattered. Peter was happy for him.
There was a small, lopsided smile tugging at the corner of his mouth when he pulled on the handle, letting the door swing open. No matter how much it felt like they would be saying goodbye, and despite the unpredictability of war, spending time with Flash was something that he liked. They could have this, goodbyes be damned. So he raised his hand in a poorly executed salute. “Movies and takeout - as promised. Mission complete, or whatever you’re supposed to say.”
