i love you. you don’t have to say it back, though. ↳ @websdesigner
a ghost of a memory to flicker through her. he looks at her like he knows her. he looks at her like she’s hope and faith and a future all wrapped into one. there is an ache in her that he answers; a hollowness she didn’t know she felt. sometimes it’s as if she looks past him when she wants to look at him. as if memory is just beyond her reach.
has she known him long enough to love him? she had always been practical, unlikely to emotional fancies - not prone to falling in love. she’d loved once. it had been a love that consumed her. that molded her.
but she can’t remember that face. can’t remember that love. forgotten the peace that love had given her.
a swallow. tongue to dart out and wet her lips before she asks, ’ how can you know Peter? how can you know what love feels like? ’ and her gaze raises to his. meeting his as she finds herself leaning into him as if it’s a pattern her body remembers, an arm around his waist; cheek to press to his shoulder.
’ will you wait? until I know how to say it back? ’
how easy it was to get lost in the memories of something long gone, to let the relentless and interminable waves of pain and grief wash over him and leave him stranded and barely afloat in the ether of those memories. he’d barely gotten to make a promise, to himself and the object of the thoughts that occupied his mind every waking moment, to do right by her. a promise to do right by them.
this was not the way to do it. he was not supposed to let himself drown. but maybe, if he could just let himself say everything he never got the chance to - before it got ripped away from him when the green phantom flashing through the night sky as good as tore his soul clean out of his body - then maybe the message would reach the right person.
it was a lot of wishful thinking. and where his gwen went, it was not a matter of being trapped in a different world.
peter slowly began to pull himself out of his state of numbness. it didn’t matter how many peculiarities he got to witness in the years he’s donned the suit and mask. there was no individual, human or otherwise alien and no mutation he’s ever encountered stranger than looking into the eyes of gwen stacy and not recognising her.
“ no, no, no. i don’t - “ he swallowed hard against the constricting feeling in his throat. “ i don’t expect to hear it back. i know it means nothing to you. i just thought . . . if i say it, then maybe - “ maybe she’ll know i still mean it.