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now that everyone is done watching bnd.. i’m expecting a shit ton of arachnid sensory overload! peter parker fics immediately at my desk by tomorrow morning with a side of canon compliance…
and time, is taking its sweet time erasing you (part two)
part one
pairing: peter parker x fem!reader
word count: 6.2k
warnings: mugging (minor, over quickly), kissing(!)
summary: getting your memories back comes with a lot of feelings, but one thought consumes it all: where is he?
a/n: thought about splitting this into more parts…then decided i didn’t care. thank you for all the love on part 1!! i’ve had the best time reading your comments and seeing all the reblogs!! tried to tag as many people as i could!! don’t hate me if this sucks okay byeeee
Well, would it even be going crazy if you were suddenly having memories that you were sure were yours, and sure had been taken from you somehow? Is that going crazy, or is it going uncrazy?
Whatever.
After your dream, you spend the day with the worst headache you’ve ever had in your life. You think you take about ten Advil to get through the day (screw the warning labels), hating your stupid job and the stupid 90-day policy before you can take PTO because the last thing you want to do after remembering a name that makes your heart feel like it’s flying out of your chest is sit at a desk and look at code for a stupid, dumb app.
On a Friday.
You spend your entire shift staring at the wall in your cubicle where you’d pinned a picture of you, Ned, and MJ from high school. By twelve, you’re one hundred percent certain that there had been someone else there. Someone next to you, arm around your shoulder, a smile that makes you feel jittery just thinking about it. You know what that smile looks like. You know.
Peter Parker, a constant mantra in your head. You’d written it on sticky notes you’d slapped on twenty different things in your room, filled an entire page of your work notebook with it. You would not forget again.
You couldn’t.
By two, you remember his Aunt May and her warmth, the way she’d always feed you and always treat you like one of her own. How she’d always teased Peter but never, ever hesitated to protect him.
By two-thirty, you remember that she’s dead. You look up her obituary on your work computer—screw it—and read through it, sniffling and aching and destroyed when there’s no mention of a nephew anywhere on it.
Peter Parker, you write again on a sticky note, then under it, Aunt May.
By four, your memories of high school have reshaped, the blurry remnants of them you’d had remolding like wet clay, and Peter is everywhere.
The first day of freshman year, debating with you on the subway about who was going to be more popular (neither of you).
Laid across your bed with chemistry textbooks open, wearing sweats and a hoodie and looking so soft. You remember wanting to kiss him, feeling ashamed because of it.
All the times he’d started disappearing, missing classes. When you’d invite him over for dinner and he’d never show. When your study sessions turned from the two of you laughing and not really getting any work done, to just you. Alone.
Following him after school, knowing something was up, wanting to be there for him. Watching him strip to his boxers in an alleyway, tug on Spider-man’s suit and launch himself onto the rooftops.
Sneaking into his window and waiting in his bedroom, so angry he’d never told you. Deflating immediately when he’d slipped in later that night, wide and pleading brown eyes, a bruise on the apple of his cheek, looking so vulnerable in a suit that meant anything but.
Your first kiss. The pink of Peter’s cheeks, the way his breath caught, stuttering through telling you it’d always been you. That he couldn’t imagine another day where you didn’t know. How couldn’t you have known?
Sitting on rooftops, going to dances, learning the ways his body responded to your touch, looking up how to do stitches for when Spider-man would come tumbling through your bedroom window, scaring you to death—that’s how you knew how to do stitches! Dates where he’d hold you to his chest and take you swinging around Manhattan, wind in your hair and laughter in your throat.
God, you’d loved him. You’d loved him more than anything else in the world.
More than anything.
And you still did. Still had, all these years. Felt it in your chest, curled up and ever-present. Felt it expand when you’d seen him again, light you up from the inside without warning.
But how had you forgotten?
By five, when you’re on the subway home, you know.
The memory bleeds against your eyelids. Peter, beaten and bloodied, eyes red from crying and busted blood veins. Your Peter, telling you that you would forget everything, wiping your tears and promising that he’d come find you. That he’d come get you and make you remember.
You telling him you would never forget.
But you had.
And he’d let you.
You’re so angry at the thought that you have to take a lap around your block before you enter your apartment. So angry that you end up going to your favorite bodega on the corner and getting your favorite sandwich even though you're supposed to be saving money. And then you get annoyed on top of that because the second your order leaves your lips you suddenly remember that it had been Peter’s favorite too.
That you both used to split one from Delmar’s on Wednesdays and eat it on the roof of your parent’s apartment.
You must look downright furious, because Jay, the cashier that’s been there every time you’ve come since you moved in, slides you a chocolate bar on top of your finished sandwich and doesn’t charge you for it.
You eat the whole thing while you take the stairs up to your apartment, muttering to yourself.
Then you see all your sticky notes. Peter Parker on your lamp, your closet door, on the coat hanging from your bed frame, on your window and pillow, where you’d scattered a handful of them at 3am.
You were mad. You were pissed.
But you wanted to be mad at him to his face. To see him and yell at him until you lost your voice. To watch the way his eyes would change from your words, so easy to read. To hug him and kiss him and touch him. To throw things and watch him dodge them effortlessly, to let him calm you down, to let him.
You wanted to know if he still had the same sandwich order.
Did he even want you to remember?
You think about the look on his face the night before—he’d been right there next to you after all that time, and you’d let him slip away. The way he’d looked at you when he’d knocked on your door, how he’d held your hand when he’d helped you up, how he’d let you talk to him about the dreams you’d already shared with him in the dark with this calm, serene look on his face.
And you didn’t care if he wanted you to remember him or not.
You were going to find him.
The next day, after a night filled with dreams about calloused hands and hushed whispers, after waking up with tingling lips and a hollowness to your chest, you start your search with a sudden kind of desperation.
Ned had gone to visit his grandma for the weekend, so you plant yourself in his chair and spend hours searching the internet for any trace of Peter Parker.
You even search for Maynard—absolutely ridiculous name—and then spend ten minutes crying over how Peter it was to use a dumb fake name, and how you miss him so much.
You find nothing.
The spell had worked. Peter Parker was nowhere. No one.
You sit back in the chair and try to breathe through your disappointment.
How were you going to find a ghost? How would he ever know that you remembered?
A notification sounds through the computer. Discord, from Ned’s Spidey Tracker server. You silence it absentmindedly.
Then you sit up.
Peter Parker was nowhere.
But Spider-man…Spider-man was everywhere.
And you knew how to track him.
You move so fast you hit your knee on the underside of the desk, and curse your way through pulling up the app files. You’d helped Ned code the app, so you knew it was based entirely on community sightings of Spider-man, constantly taking in reported locations and spitting them back out for the users.
Which meant you knew how to compile a list of his most common locations. Maybe if you could narrow it down enough, you could figure out where he could be.
You make a mental note to talk to Ned about how dangerous this app could actually be, and then you get to work.
You can’t believe how many people have been using the app. There are hundreds of thousands of sightings and photos and videos to sort through. It takes you hours.
Which is definitely attributed to you constantly getting distracted by videos of Spider-man after fights, heaving chest and weak knees, swinging off all alone.
How many wounds had he had to treat by himself?
How lonely he must be.
You don’t narrow it down to a few specific locations until close to midnight. Queens (of course), a five block radius of sightings going back to when Ned officially published the app. You compile the time stamps.
Most of them are in the middle of the night, into early morning.
“God, Peter, when do you sleep?” You mutter to the screen as your code spits the times back at you. You’re almost sick with how much you want to hold him.
It’s late. It’s late and you should wait until tomorrow. At least until the sun comes up. But you dismiss the thought as soon as you have it. You feel like you’ll die if you wait any longer to find him. Plus, it’s the perfect time. The app said so.
And you’ve never been a very patient person.
So you go to your room to get ready, and you hesitate. Should you…look nice? What if you don’t even find him? What if you find him and he says he doesn’t want you—
No. You’re not going there. This is Peter. Yes, you’d forgotten him. You’d forgotten him and the guilt was eating away at you for it. But you knew him. Even through the haze, you know him.
As angry as you are, you know why he did what he did, self-sacrificing idiot.
You hated that it made you love him even more.
In an effort to be quick, you just throw on a sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. You grab your mace and make sure your keys are poking through your fingers, just in case. Small crimes have practically disappeared over the past four years, but you were going to a part of Queens your mom and even Peter had once warned you about, so you weren’t going to take any chances.
Plus, a crazy part of your brain whispered, if you get mugged, maybe he’ll come save you.
Yep. Definitely losing your mind a little.
You ride the subway with tunnel vision. Mapping where you’ll go, how long you’ll look, how much it’ll take before you give up. It’s quiet on the subway, only the occasional sleepy passenger and drunk college kids going home in crowds. But once you get to your stop in Queens, you exit alone.
You take a deep breath, and you start walking. Eyeing alleyways and rooftops, ears perked for any movement. Keys in one hand, Spidey Tracker open in the other, map devoid of any spider symbols.
You loop the blocks slowly, one direction then the next. It’s probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, being out so late on your own, but you had that feeling. The only one you’d trusted since college Since, now you knew, you’d forgotten everything.
The feeling of being right. Of being sure.
So you keep walking, holding on to hope that the stragglers you avoid on the sidewalks will see something you don’t and set off the app. You keep staring at the screen, at the void of streets with no red icons, urging one to pop up.
Which, in the end, was the thing that actually took first place for the stupidest thing you’d ever done.
Because you hadn’t been paying attention. If you had, you’d have heard the footsteps. You’d have heard the schlick of the pocket knife being cracked open.
You would have been able to close your hand around the mace on your keychain before you’d been pushed into an alley, face pressed hard into the brick wall, until it stung.
The man holding you grunts as he slams your wrist against the wall to get you to drop your phone. You try not to cry out at the pain, to not show them how scared you are as it clatters to the ground.
Your mind goes somewhere very, very far from your body.
Another pair of hands wretches your keys from your grip, and then there you are, defenseless. The one holding your wrist yanks you back around and slams your back against the brick. He keeps one hand firmly on your shoulder and brings the other up to your throat. You feel the prick of the knife against the underside of your jaw, and grind your teeth against the whimper that wants to escape.
You can barely see the man’s face under his hood in this darkness, barely make out the shape of his eyes. He must see the screen of your phone on the ground, because he snorts. “Looking for Spider-man?”
His friend chuckles.
“He’s not here,” He continues, his tone mocking. He runs a finger down the side of your face, and you think you’re going to throw up. “It’s just you. And us.”
Your phone vibrates from where it’d fallen, still open to Spidey Tracker. A notification brightens the screen, then:
New Spider-man sighting! Location: Queens.
The one holding you freezes a second before a web wraps around the knife he’s holding against you and drags it up into the darkness.
“I’m sorry,” A voice calls from somewhere above, hiding where the light doesn’t touch. “Were you using that for something?”
Your body crumples against the brick in relief. It’s him.
The man doesn’t even have time to move before he’s getting jerked back, so hard his body goes flying into the adjacent wall. Before you can even blink he’s encompassed completely in webs, eyes and mouth obscured.
The other one starts running immediately, but a figure swings from the shadows, kicking him straight in the chest and sending him sprawling against a dumpster with a deep clang. You have one second to let out a breath before he’s enveloped, too.
It all happens so fast. Them getting webbed, Spider-man talking through the mask like he’s on a phone call, saying the words mugging and two males, early 20s, she’s safe. Then picking up your phone and keys, pressing a gentle hand into your upper back, and guiding you back out onto the street. The glow of the lights almost blind you, and you blink.
You’re…okay.
You look back into the alley, your attackers groaning into the dark.
Wow, you think.
“Are you okay?” Spider-man—Peter—asks, keeping his distance now that you're safely in the street and can see him fully. Cloaked in red and blue, the white eyes of the suit expanding and contracting as he takes you in. As he, no doubt, realizes who you are.
You know exactly when he does, because his entire body tenses up and goes still, easy to see under the material that hugs every single muscle that has only grown bigger since you’d last seen him this close. You watch, slowly, as his free hand clenches into a fist, and then he’s crossing over towards you, fast.
Fingers on your chin, turning you to face the light, to check for damage. A small, choked off sound when he must see something there. Now that your adrenaline is fading, you can feel the pain against your cheek, the way your knees are shaking, the other hand he’s put against your side to hold you up. He’s so warm, is your first coherent thought, so warm and here.
“I’m okay,” You manage. Your voice sounds breathless, scared.
Spider-man’s fingers leave your jaw, move up as if he means to press them against what you assume is a cut on your face, but then stop. You feel him take a breath, so close to you, then pull away. He takes a step back, two. Your body goes cold. “What are you doing here?” He asks you, his voice desperate and wounded under the mask. You don’t have to see him to know the quiver in his lip, the worry that has to be shining in his eyes. But he clears his throat and backs up even more, almost completely out of the light now. “I mean…uh…why are you out here this late? Alone?”
There’s a roughness on the alone, an anger you know from when you’d tried to help him stop a car jacker in junior year and gotten thrown to the ground, hard. The memories come easier now, a constant stream of pieces that leave you disbelieving that this man loved you. That he’d cared for you and you’d cared for him. Peter Parker. Spider-man.
You hadn’t planned what to say. You sure as hell hadn’t actually planned on getting mugged, despite the real possibility. Your mouth feels dry and your body is buzzing with nerves, battling with the need to touch him. You open your mouth, not even sure what will come out—
New Spider-man sighting! Location: Queens.
You both jump.
Across the street, you see a flash, and a voice yells, “Spider-man!” Your phone vibrates and sounds another notification, and you see the spider icons start popping up, reflecting against the material of his suit where he’s still holding your phone. “Spider-man, could I get a picture?”
Spider-man looks at the person starting to cross the street, then looks at you, then back. The eyes of his suit are impossible to see through, but you can see the indecision in every line of his body.
Whether he should leave you for the police. Whether you want him to.
You think back to the other night, the urge to tell him wait for me despite not knowing him. What had happened when you didn’t do it.
You’re desperate. You have this feeling that if you let him walk away now, you won’t have another chance. That he’ll swing away or the cops will come and you’ll lose him, anyway. You grab at his arm, the hard line of his bicep, and all you can say, all you can whisper, is, “Peter.”
His head whips over to you. Those eyes contract in, out, in, out. He goes utterly, completely still. You wish you could see his face, see what he was thinking. How he was looking at you.
There’s a whoosh of breath from under the mask. He takes a step closer to you and your heart has enough time to jump into your throat by the time he hands you your things, wraps one arm around your waist, and tells you lowly, “Hold on to me.”
So you do. Hands around his neck, so close to the line of his mask, as he shoots the two of you up and away from the pedestrian who throws his hands up, away from the incoming police sirens, and across the rooftops. You feel the wind in your hair for just a moment, enough time for you to smile, to let the part of you that’d forgotten everything remember what it had been like, before you’re on concrete again, however many stories up.
Spider-man lets you go like he’s been burned, pacing a few steps away and running his hands over his mask, where you know he’d be pulling at his curls if he could get to them.
All at once, he turns to you. “What did you say?”
Quiet, nervous, as if he’d heard wrong.
It’s a slow thing, dropping your things to the ground and walking over to him. He tracks your every movement carefully. Tracks it as you bring your hands up, across his shoulders, up to where the mask meets the neck of his suit. You run the pads of your fingers under the material, finally finally against his skin, and he shivers against you.
You wait to see if he’ll stop you, but he’s practically swaying on his feet under your touch. You don’t think he’s breathing, don’t think he lets out a breath until you pull off the mask and your eyes meet.
There’s a scratch across his forehead, right over his eyebrow. A bruise on his jaw. His eyes are glistening as they take you in, running over and over your face, searching. Hopeful.
Perfect.
The mask thudding to the ground sounds like it’s miles away.
“Peter,” you murmur. You press your hand to his cheek, and he leans into it, melts into it.
He laughs, a disbelieving thing. A tear falls from his eye and curls around your thumb as he loops his fingers around your wrist, loose and distracting. “You remember.”
You feel like there are a thousand little stars in your chest, shining and imploding. You nod, and with a sniffle, realize you’re crying, too. Smiling, too. So hard you feel the strain of it. “I remember.”
You look at each other, twin tear-stained cheeks, and then Peter is pulling you close, into his chest. You throw your arms over his shoulders, run a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck. He shudders, ducks his head into your collarbone, and bunches his hands into the fabric at your waist as if he’s scared you're going to disappear.
You stand there for what feels like hours, breathing each other in. The smell of the wind on him, so familiar to you, so similar to how it was before everything happened. Like nothing had changed, like you hadn’t spent four years feeling his absence without knowing why.
But he pulls away from you, sudden. Far enough to look into your eyes. “Tell me you’re okay.” His hand lifts to run against the cut on your cheek. Moves down to your arms, the redness of your wrists. You feel his touch rattle into your bones. “I hate that this happened to you.”
“I’m okay, Peter. Promise.” You can’t stop saying his name, marveling at the feel of it on your tongue after not saying it for so long.
The look he gives you is so pained. “Let me fix this for you.”
You shake your head, even as your stomach twists pleasantly at the tone of his voice. “It’s nothing.”
He grips your chin, and you wish you could feel his fingers without the suit. He makes you look at him, to see the emotion in his eyes. He says your name, low and sweet, and you feel like breaking apart. “Please.”
“Okay.”
You would’ve gotten mugged a thousand times—hell, you’re scared of what you’d be willing to go through—if it meant it would end with you right here, with Peter leading you down into his apartment.
It’s a mess of tech: a line of monitors on a large desk, a fancy-looking printer lasering up something you can’t see, a treadmill shoved into a corner. The bed is a mess of threadbare sheets, and the kitchenette is bare, just a couple of chip bags and protein powder sitting on a shelf by the fridge.
It’s…honestly, it makes you feel unbearably sad.
You’d been going to college, learning about computers and SQL and Python, meeting Ned and MJ to study on the quad, making friends and new memories.
And he’d been here.
“Here,” Peter says, tugging you over to sit at the edge of his bed. He leaves you there, taking off his mask and throwing it haphazardly onto his keyboard, bending to tug out a giant first aid kit from underneath the desk. When he returns, he kneels between your legs, still in his suit, thigh muscles rippling and bulging against the fabric.
A secret you hadn’t even told MJ and Ned: you’d had a crush on Spider-man. Crush sounded ridiculous, but it was the only way you could describe it. Even at MIT, you’d watched any video you could of him swinging around New York, thinking about the man under the mask. Could you be blamed, seeing how he filled out that suit?
It’d made a lot more sense in the past couple of days. Maybe you didn’t remember Peter Parker, but your body sure as hell remembered Spider-man.
It’s a little overwhelming, Peter looking up at you tenderly through his lashes, clad in something almost obscene. Two sides of the same coin.
Very overwhelming, actually.
He gets to work cleaning your cut, standing between your knees. He holds one hand against your jaw, fingers reaching into your hair, as he gently dabs it with alcohol. You sigh into the touch, and wait until he’s finished putting tape on it to say, “I missed you, you know. I might have forgotten you, but I don’t think my body ever stopped wondering where you were.”
He must have been waiting for you to say something first, because he lets out a deep, shuddering breath. He tilts your head up with the hand still in your hair, and with the other, traces the line of your bottom lip. You feel like you’re on fire, hot under the touch. He’s looking at you like he had the other night, like he’s scared you’re going to disappear from right under his hands. “I missed you, too. So much. Every day.”
You want to ask, then why? Why did you let me forget?
But you’ve spent so much of the last forty eight hours angry, and right now, you want to be relieved.
The anger can come later. It will come later.
Peter is doing this half-smile, gaze still caught on your face. “I was always—“ a huff, another graze against your lip that leaves you reeling. “I was always thinking about you. It was distracting. I couldn’t—I couldn’t do anything.”
You run your hand up his abdomen, clad in red. It pulses under your touch, and Peter’s breath hitches like he’s in pain. You stop at the spider on his chest, drag a finger across the surface. “You seemed like you were doing just fine.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “There’s so much to tell you. But I don’t want to drag you back—“
“Do not finish that sentence.”
Suddenly you’re standing, finger pointed at his chest. You clench your teeth against the anger that hits you, white-hot. You’d been doing so good, forgetting it. You try to breathe, breathe through the reality that he’s trying to do this to you again. “Peter,” the way his face crumples under you saying his name again almost gives you pause. “I’ve lived without you for four years. And I’m so pissed at you for doing that to me. Thinking about you in this shithole—sorry—all alone for all that time makes me so angry. Thinking about you leaving me and Ned and MJ in a world where we think you don’t exist is—is so—“
You have to break off to breathe. Peter is following every word you’re saying, even as his eyes grow red with tears again.
“I’m mad, Peter. I’m heartbroken that you did this to me. But now I can tell you that I do know what it’s like to live without you. Whatever life you wanted for me, away from you, from all of this, I got it.
“And I hated it. I spent every second feeling like something was missing. You know the first date I tried to go on, I puked twice before I even made it out the door and had to cancel? Everything was so wrong all the time. You said you were always thinking about me? Well I was always thinking about you and I didn’t even know why.
“Peter.” You touch his face, and you feel your expression shift, recognize it from your dreams. The soft slant of your mouth, the warmth of your eyes. “I’d rather be in danger every day of my life, every second, than to keep living it without you. I can’t do it anymore, and I won’t do it.”
And Peter, through his tears, through the lump in his throat starts to say, “I don’t—“
You cut him off. “Do you love me? Still?”
Even though you’d known the answer, known it since he’d knocked on your door as a stranger, it’s a relief when he immediately nods his head. “Yeah. Yes. You know I—yes, of course. Always.”
Always.
“Do you want to be with me? I’m talking about Peter Parker. No Spider-man, no multiverse bullshit. You.”
You watch, transfixed, as his defenses lower. As he’s left deflated, nothing but messy curls and sad eyes. “Yes.”
“Then be with me.”
“I can’t—“
“If you want me out of your life, you’re gonna have to get Doctor Strange to make me forget again. I mean that. I love Peter Parker, and there is no Spider-man without Peter Parker. And if Peter Parker loves me, and Peter Parker wants to be with me, I’m gonna let him.” For good measure, you add, “Fuck Spider-man.”
It gets a surprised laugh out of him, as watery as it is. The smile stays after, too. Even through it, through how much you’re sure he’s heard you, you know you haven’t completely convinced him. You see the hesitation behind his eyes.
Stubborn, stubborn man. You could get him to change what kind of candy he wanted at the store, but when he came to what he thought protected you, it was like talking to a wall.
And unsurprisingly, you were failing.
“Just,” you touch his hand, revel in how it immediately envelopes yours like second nature. “Be with me. At least for tonight. No Spider-man, no memory curse that I’ll definitely need to talk to you about later, just Peter. You and me.”
He squeezes your hand once. “You and me.”
Your chest feels like it could cave in with the relief. You’d do it. You’d convince him, some way.
For now, you just wanted to see him.
“You want to change out of the suit?” You ask him, “I wanna…feel you.”
It comes out…not how you intended it. You just meant you wanted to feel the skin of his hand when he touched your face, the jut of his collarbone under your touch, the stretch of his bicep.
But he gulps, hard. “I, uh—Yeah. Yeah, I can go—“ He throws a thumb over his shoulder, looking panicked, and honest to God stumbles over his feet. “I have—clothes, bathroom. Yeah. Be right back.”
You laugh into the dark, and you think the lightness of your chest could fill the entire room. The entire city.
When Peter returns in a hoodie and sweatpants—looking so much more like the boy you fell in love with—his cheeks are still red. He comes to stand close to you, chest to chest, and lets out a breath like it'd been hard to be so far from you for that small time.
This was your Peter. Say all you want about Spider-man, but Peter would always be yours, tucked against your ribcage like a secret just for yourself. Whether he liked it or not.
He leans his forehead against yours. Already, being out of the suit has made him softer. More honest. “I’m so happy you’re here. I’m scared I’m dreaming.”
You do what you’ve been dying to do since two nights ago, even if you’d been avoiding the feeling. Run your hands under the bottom of his hoodie, splay them against his lower back. He’s so warm, and just touching him makes you feel too full, a soda can shaken too much just before opening. His content sigh, the way his body slackens the smallest bit, the heavy blink he gives you.
“Me too. It’s how I remembered you—a dream.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Us on the roof. I was saying your name. I was happier than I’d been in years. When I woke up I just…kept remembering. Stole Ned’s computer to try and find you.”
“Spidey Tracker…you coded it, didn’t you?”
You nod against him, pleased he’d noticed. “Totally dangerous, by the way. Someone could track you down easily.”
“Someone did.” He smiles at you, not at all threatened by someone using it to hurt him, not afraid.
You roll your eyes, and his crinkle at the corners, running over your face, catching on your lips.
Staying there.
“Hey, Peter?”
He makes a humming sound, distracted.
“When are you gonna kiss me?”
There’s a soft, startled gasp in the back of his throat. He looks back at you, eyes a little wide. “I didn’t know if you wanted me to.”
“I’ve been waiting four years to kiss you.”
He licks his lips, blushing at your words. He brings his hand to cradle the back of your head, just how you like it, and keeps the other under your chin to angle you so all you see are his eyes. “Can you say my name again?”
You wonder how long it’d been since he’d heard it. His name, meant for him.
“Kiss me, Peter.”
And he does, groaning softly against your mouth, tightening his grip on your hair just enough to have you sighing into him. He breaks away, tilts your face just the slightest bit, and meets you again, devouring.
This had been one of your favorite things, when Peter shucked off the awkwardness and became a mix of demanding, gentle, and eager.
It’s one of the last memories that come to you, how your body responds to him. Where to touch him so that his breath stutters, his fingers flex against your jaw. You run your hands up the notches of his spine and suck on his bottom lip, knowing the low groan that will come after. Trace your thumbs up the ridge of his abs, knowing his hips will twitch towards yours, knowing it makes him pull your head back to lick deeper into your mouth.
But he knows you too. Knows to put a hand on your lower back to arch you into him. Knows to, when your kisses start to get sloppy, spin you so that he can sit on the bed and pull you with him. Your knees on either side of his hips, him looking up at you.
Kiss-swollen. Dazed.
“I love you,” Hands teasing under the hem of your sweatshirt, he kisses your cheeks, your forehead. His thumbs are white-against the skin of your stomach as he presses his lips to the shell of your ear and whispers, “I’m sorry.”
He tells you twice more, hugging you to him, sucking spots into your neck, the underside of your jaw.
“Peter,” You say his name again just to feel him sigh into your neck. Card your fingers through his curls and tug him where you want him. “I’ll always love you.”
You sound so much like the girl in your dream. The past, happy version of you, with no missing pieces in your brain. This time, just a little breathless.
Feeling Peter’s lips lift into a smile against your skin.
When he pulls back, all heavy lidded eyes looking up at you, hands halfway up your sweatshirt, splayed over your bare ribs possessively, you have an all-encompassing fear that you are dreaming. That there’s no way this is happening, this beautiful man pliant beneath you, absolutely lovely.
But he’s so solid under you, under your mouth. The small sucked and bitten marks on your neck feel real, the coiling warmth in your stomach that spikes the longer he looks at you with those dark eyes, as he runs his tongue over his bottom lip, feels real.
The fondness, the relief threatening to rip you apart feels real.
You put your palm over his heart, just to feel it racing.
The both of you breathe in the dark.
He tucks your hair behind your ear. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs. Then, absently, like he doesn’t really mean to say it, “You said you couldn’t live without me.”
“I said I don’t want to live without you.”
He shrugs a shoulder, smirking now. “Same thing.”
You pretend to think. “On second thought—“
He makes a noise that sounds a lot like nu-uh, rolling you onto your back in the bed and blowing air into your neck. It makes you laugh and completely stops you from finishing your sentence. You’re so, blindingly, happy.
He looms over you, arms bracketed on each side of your head. Smiling. “Stay here tonight.”
“Um, was that a question, or?”
He says your name again, slow. Savoring it. “Stay here with me tonight, please?”
And it really hadn’t been a question because obviously you would do it. You didn’t want to let him out of your sight. “I would love to,” you answer. “But I have a question for you, too.”
“Okay.”
You grin at how attentive he becomes, eyes curious.
“Who the hell is Maynard?”
Peter buries his head into your shoulder with a groan.
summary: you run from the weight of society and take to the road in order to escape. along the way, you are protected by a hedge knight who never asks who you truly are, only who you choose to be beside him. when at the tourney at ashford, what grows between you two is quiet and fleeting. something born of trust, and the understanding that some things are meant to be felt, not claimed.
authors note: you can look anyway in this story I’ve only determined hair color. get ready for yearning.
