Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader
Warnings: Angst
Summary: The scientific method: make an observation, form a question and a hypothesis, conduct an experiment, and then analyze the data and draw a conclusion. Is Peter Parker still in love with me?
A/N: For Day 2 of Spider-Man Feda @spidermanfeda
Peter and I have always been people of science and when we have theories, we test them. To prove or disprove, we test them. That's what we do. It’s how we’ve always done--every word and touch between us has been an experiment in dating.
When Peter and I moved in together we both made a promise to each other: I wouldn’t wait up for him and he would always use the front door. Peter kept his promise, but I broke mine on the first night.
I spent a year falling asleep on our uncomfortable couch waiting for him to come home but I always woke up in our bed wrapped up in Peter’s sweet embrace. On the nights he’d come home early enough, he’d kiss me awake and we’d both laugh as he carried me to bed. We’d stay up for hours just talking, laughing and making love.
Dear diary, I think to myself because being with a man like Peter Parker means you can no longer put your doubts and fears to paper. I don’t think Peter Parker is in love with me anymore. I shift my weight and the couch creaks underneath me whining as I continue to wiggle onto my side.
The first morning I woke up alone on the couch my heart forgot how to beat. The only conclusion I could come to was that Peter hadn’t made it home. My lungs did not have the strength to expand under the barrage of different scenarios ranging from captured to killed. I lurched to my feet, weighed down by my panic, and stumbled into our secondhand coffee table. It screeched three inches forward, glasses rattling and bouncing atop the scratched surface.
I said his name in a gasp, not enough air for me to project my voice further than my corner of the universe. I braced myself against the couch and the coffee table, inhaling shakily, and pushed his name out a second time through a broken sob.
“Peter!”
A thud from the bedroom and then he appeared, eyes squinted in sleep and a microscope held close to his chest.
“What's wrong?” He slurred, not quite present in the moment. His appearance reduced me to an incoherent mess, that much he understood. We sat on the floor together, his arms cradling me to his chest and his hand running down my back soothingly.
When I told him my fears, he apologized profusely and adorned every inch he could reach with redemptive kisses. He'd been so tired, he explained, that for the first time since we moved in together he had used the window as Spider-Man.
“Look at that,” he'd said through a soft laugh. “You scuffed up the floor.” I followed his gaze to four grooves where the legs of the coffee table had scraped against the floor.
“Guess we won't be getting our deposit back.” Peter teased lightly and then he drew me into a deep kiss, one of many we would share that morning, and I knew that we were in love.
In a tangled mess on our living room floor Peter Parker made me another promise. He would never leave me to sleep alone on the couch ever again.
He kept that promise for another year. He reverted back to the man who would lift me off the couch and carry me to bed. He never kissed me awake and we didn't stay up late talking, but he held me and on occasion we'd make love to one another.
He stopped carrying me to bed, resorting to touching my shoulder and shaking me to consciousness. When he was sure I knew he was home he'd walk to our bedroom, muscles sore and joints stiff.
“Do you want me to run you a bath?” I'd ask him quietly. He never answered yes or no. I ran the bath on the off chance that he decided he wanted it--wanted me. The nights he would shuffle naked into our small bathroom were some of the most intimate of our relationship. Peter would hiss between his teeth as he lowered himself slowly into the hot water, slowly relaxing.
I'd sit on the side of the tub and gently wash his chest with a washcloth, massage his scalp, kiss his temple and wash his hair. At some point he would take my hand, brushing kiss after kiss against each finger tip and I knew that I was loved.
He stopped coming to the bathroom, but it took me a stubborn three months to stop drawing baths for him. The baths became another series of experiments conducted to prove my hypothesis: I don’t think Peter Parker is in love with me anymore.
This is the last experiment I will conduct, I tell myself with tears in my eyes. If he comes in through the door… even if he comes through the window and wakes me up with a kiss or a touch, then some part of him still loves me. It’s not over if he just gives me something--anything.
Peter Parker is the smartest man I know, but something tells me that this is a test he will fail. I blink, and the tears fall swift and unforgiving from my eyes onto the wine red couch cushion below my head. The couch is second hand, like most of our furniture.
I force my mind not to think of how most everything in this apartment is ours. How can an apartment filled with three years’ worth of combined stuff be divided? Our record player was salvaged and repaired by Peter, but our collection of vinyl records was started and maintained by me. One is useless without the other. What use was a collection of records without something to play them on? What use was a record player with no records?
Who would I become if Peter Parker isn’t in love with me anymore?
I hold my breath at the telltale rattle of the window, straining to hear the glide of wood on wood as Peter slides open our bedroom window. I do something that, as a scientist, I have never done before--I pray. I pray that this time will be different: that this is not the night for broken promises and lonely hearts. I squeeze my eyes shut, hold my breath and grip one of our threadbare throw pillows tightly to my stomach.
Please, Peter, I beg. Please still be in love with me.
The bedsprings creak under his weight and my throat constricts with emotion. I press the threadbare cushion to my face and try to muffle my sniffles. I hadn’t realized how hollowed out this would leave me--did not predict this intense pain or the uncontrollable crying.
I think the worst part of this experiment is knowing about all of Peter’s abilities. Some part of me still believed that if he heard me crying he would come to me and we would talk this out. But I muffle my crying, knowing full well he can still hear, and he doesn’t come to me.
Calm down, I tell myself as my breathing begins to turn to desperate gasps of air. What are the next steps?
It calms me, to think of what will need to be done now that this experiment has come to an end. I’ll need to pack my necessities--clothes, my toiletries, any work I’ve brought home with me…. I’ll arrange to pick up everything else, like my books and photos, at a later date. He can keep the record player and the collection, if he wants. I don’t care anymore.
I’ll call my mom and see if I can stay at home until I find a new place… I’ll have to call my cousin and see if I can amend my RSVP for her wedding. I won’t need a plus one anymore.
Thinking of what needs to be done lulls me to sleep and I wake up to an empty apartment.
Conclusion: Peter Parker isn’t in love with me anymore. It’s time to move out and on.
Summary: Peter receives a note from his secret admirer
Warnings: a few swear words, embarrassment, Peter has a bad time :(
A/N: this is my contribution for @spidermanfeda Day One!! this challenge may be the death of me tbh
Peter raced down the empty hall, skidding to a stop at his locker. He had already missed homeroom, but if he made it in time for first period, he might be able to dissuade the teacher from marking him absent later. He could not afford another red mark on his attendance sheet; that would mean more detentions, and less time as Spider-Man.
Peter quickly entered the combination into his locker, and pulled the door open with such force it came right off the hinges.
“Shit,” he muttered, cringing at the sound of the breaking metal as it echoed down the hall.
He set the door down on the floor and scrambled to grab the books he needed and stuff them in his bag. As he ran his fingers over the spines of a few of the text books piled in the locker, making sure he didn’t need any of them, a folded slip of pink paper caught his eye. His heart sank as he realised it must be a detention slip he had thrown in there and forgotten about.
He retrieved the paper, chewing on his lip as he opened it.
Roses are red
violets are blue
I lose my breath
when I’m around you
Meet me under the bleachers at lunch
- your secret admirer xo
“What?” he whispered, eyes wide. He didn’t have time to analyse the handwriting, or interpret the meaning of the poem, because the bell was ringing and he would definitely be late if he lingered any longer. He lifted the locker door and perched it back on its hinges, hands hovering in front of it as he took a hesitant step back, waiting for it to fall. When it didn’t, he turned and sprinted to his next class, the note tucked safely away in his back pocket.
“Dude, someone has a crush on you! This is insane!” Ned’s eyes were wide as they roamed every inch of the note. He turned it over in his hands, inspecting it for any clues as to who might have written it.
“Try not to sound so surprised,” Peter grumbled. He took the note back and folded it, hiding it in the pages of his chemistry text book. “And I don’t know—something feels…weird.”
“I mean, it’s not that weird that somebody has a crush on you,” Ned said.
“Dude—”
“Something you’d like to share with the class, Mr Parker?” the teacher called.
“Uh- no, sir,” Peter replied, shrinking in his chair.
The teacher turned back to the board, scribbling frantically as he continued his lecture, and Peter turned to Ned. “People have crushes on me, Ned. It happens, it’s not unrealistic,” he murmured. “But this feels weird. ‘Meet me under the bleachers’? That’s sketchy. Why wouldn’t they just talk to me, like a regular person?”
“Do you remember when you met Liz? How long was it before you could form a complete sentence around her?”
Peter huffed. “I could speak to her—”
“No, you couldn’t,” Ned replied flatly. “In fact, if she still went to school here you probably still wouldn’t be able to talk to her. This person is probably just shy. You should give it a chance.”
Peter’s brow creased as he turned back to his books. Even if Ned was right about the note being innocuous, there was only one person Peter wanted to have written it. But she was one of the most beautiful girls Peter had ever seen, and he doubted she even knew who he was. She definitely wouldn’t have been paying enough attention to him to know which locker was his.
As if on cue, (Y/N) raised her hand to answer the teacher’s question. “It increases across the period and decreases down the group.”
“Correct!” the teacher enthused, before continuing his excited speech about electronegativity.
(Y/N) twiddled a pen in her hands, flicking it lightly back and forth in her fingers as her eyes scanned the messy scrawl of the teacher’s writing on the board. Any time Peter’s gaze landed on her, everything around him seemed to fade out. She radiated calm. That’s what drew Peter to her—the sense of quiet that seemed to follow her wherever she went. For him, everything was always dialled to eleven, but it was as if concentrating on her allowed Peter to turn everything else down. He wondered, if he got close enough to her, would the noise of the outside world disappear altogether.
Even if the note wasn’t from her, Peter still wanted to know who had written it. He was tired of pining after a girl that didn’t even know his name. If there was someone out there who liked him, he was more than willing to give them a chance.
The gym was eerily quiet at lunch. Peter’s shoes squeaked on the floor as he made his way to the bleachers, folding and unfolding the pink note in his hands. He slid it into his pocket when he ducked under the bleachers to wait for his secret admirer.
He was almost afraid to look when he heard footsteps shuffling towards him, but he glanced up to find April Montgomery just a few feet away, wringing her hands together. The light sliced through the bleachers in slats that fell softly across her face, illuminating her golden hair and rosy cheeks.
“So you got my note,” she said quietly.
Peter merely gaped at her. April was one of the most popular girls at Midtown. She was a senior. And she was gorgeous. Peter could barely breathe, let alone speak to her.
“It’s okay, Peter,” she said, stepping towards him. “You don’t have to be nervous.”
He exhaled shakily as she closed the distance between them and looked up at him from underneath dark lashes.
“Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked.
“Wh- I… of course,” he said. Peter didn’t know April very well, so he couldn’t say with any certainty that he liked her, but one thing he couldn’t deny was that she was beautiful.
“Would you like to kiss me?” she whispered. She stood so close, Peter could feel her breath on his chin, could smell her flowery perfume.
He thought about (Y/N), and her calmness and her quiet. He thought about the way she pulled at him, like the tide tugging at a shell on the shore, drawing it into the ocean. Maybe he didn’t feel that way about April, but (Y/N) didn’t feel that way about him, either.
He nodded, and April smiled. “Close your eyes,” she said.
Peter allowed his lids to flutter shut, his heartbeat quickening as he felt her lean towards him. Of all the things he had thought he might do that day, kissing April Montgomery underneath the bleachers in the gym was not one of them.
Heat rose in Peter’s cheeks as he leaned in, feeling the warmth of April’s lips just inches away. He reached out tentatively and took her hand—
April snorted, jumping back and bringing her hand up to her mouth to stifle her laughter. “I’m sorry,” she wheezed between giggles. “I can’t.”
“And cut!” called a voice from the other side of the bleachers. Peter’s stomach churned. He’d know that voice anywhere. “Great work, April!”
“Flash?” Peter said quietly. The confusion in his voice earned him a glance from April that seemed almost sympathetic, but it dissolved back into a grin as her laughter returned.
“Do you know what day it is, Penis Parker?” Flash asked as he rounded the corner, a shadowy silhouette at the end of the bleachers.
Peter knew exactly what day it was, and he was livid with himself for being so stupid. How had he not worked it out sooner?
“April Fools’! Or should I say, April fooled you!” Flash grinned. Peter couldn’t look at his smug face any longer. His anger curdled his blood, almost clouding his vision. He pushed past Flash and sprinted towards the door. “What? You don’t want to see the footage?” Flash called after him.
Peter glanced back, hand on the door, to see Flash and his friends gathered around a phone, snickering at whatever was on the screen. He ducked out of the gym before he could lose the shred of dignity he had left.
The laughter of Flash’s friends followed Peter down the empty hallway. Tears stung his eyes as he pulled the paper from his pocket, rolling it up in a tight ball and throwing it in the trash. He took a moment to stand still, eyes shut tight and fists clenched, reeling in his anger.
The clang of the bell pulled him out of his haze, as floods of students pooled out into the hallway. Peter couldn’t face them. If he knew Flash at all, that video would already be all over the internet, and everyone would have seen it.
He ducked his head, hurrying through the sea of students towards the door, which he pushed open without looking back. The cool air soothed his burning cheeks, allowed him to catch his breath. With a quick, cursory glance behind him, he jumped the school’s fence and darted out across the street.
He’d be marked absent again, and probably get detention, but he didn’t care. He’d take the silence of detention over the taunting of his classmates any day.
Thank you to everyone who has shown an interest in participating in Spider-Man FEDA! I’m so excited to see how this goes!
In preparation, I’m looking for volunteers to help moderate this blog and make sure no fics get left out. It’ll also be a great way to meet new people within the fandom and make new friends.
Mods must:
be free to update the blog at least one day per week
be able to answer questions politely and respectfully
be comfortable with adhering to a tagging system
know how to use basic tumblr functions such as links and queues, or be willing to learn!
If you’re interested, please apply here.
The deadline for applications is March 24th, please reblog this post to spread the word! Don’t hesitate to message if you have any questions.
Introducing Spider-Man FEDA: a month-long event where writers post a Fic Every Day in April, and everyone is welcome to take part!
How it works:
Aim to post a fic every day in April, but there’s no pressure! You can opt to write every second day, or even once every week. This is purely to motivate you, not stress you out. Even if you only post one, you can still be included!
This is for characters within the Spider-Man Universe, so you can write about whoever you want within that
There is no word limit. A fic could be 100 words or 4000, it’s still a fic, and will be included!
Why it’s a good thing:
All fics will be reblogged and sorted into masterlists on this blog, so it’s a great way to promote your writing and reach a wider audience
All the fics will be in one place so readers can find them easily, and be introduced to writers they might not have found otherwise
So much new content for the fandom!!
Challenges are great motivation, and will hopefully lead to inspired writers <3
I wanted to start promoting this as soon as possible, to spread the word and give people time to prepare if they’re interested in participating and want to get a head start. I will also be looking for mods for the blog, so if you’re interested in helping out with that side of things, keep an eye out! I’ll post about that soon.
If you have any questions at all, don’t be afraid to message me or drop me an ask
PS The biggest thanks to Ouafa @petesparkes for making one of the most beautiful headers I’ve ever seen for this blog :’)
