Gwen was (ex_first621) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-17 13:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: marvel comics, gwen stacy, spider-man |
Who: Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker
What: Voices, growth spurts and a liberal dose of emo!teens
Where: Marvel, Midtown High → Stacy home
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Nope
The days were growing longer and the rainstorms that had marked Captain Stacy’s death had given way to a thick humidity and sunshine so bright that it was almost insulting. Peter’s list of priorities had a new suit at the top of it, one made out of some kind of breathable material so he didn’t get heatstroke every time Spider-Man had something to do. Fortunately, Peter thought, as he pulled his chemistry folder out of his locker, the stats are true, and most crime happens at night when it’s nice and cool, if still sticky, or Spider-Man would have been dead-by-sweat last week. The halls of Midtown weren’t any cooler thanks to the recent AC problems, and there was a lot of cursing as the students blamed everybody from the teachers to the NYCDOE. The football players were making a big show out of sticking their heads in the drinking fountains and everybody else tried to avoid their “well-meaning” attempts to cool everybody off--by emptying water bottles over unsuspecting students.
Thinking about cotton-polyester-spandex mixes with dry seams, Peter took a precautionary glance up and down the hall (not just for Flash and his buddies, but also for Gwen) and made it to class just as the bell was going off. All the windows were open in the chem lab, but it did little to alleviate the heat, and a small scuffle had just taken place over who got to be closest to the fan in the corner. Mr. Warren was breaking it up and forcing everybody into lab pairs by assigning seats. Plopping bag and books down where he was told, Peter barely noticed the rest of the proceedings, caught up in his plans for suit-making and guilt about his automatic attempts to avoid ending up in close contact with Gwen.
Gwen knew things were different, and not just because of her dad. She was taller than she'd been the day before, and her hair was longer, and she knew it had something to do with the woman in Las Vegas. She was having trouble having it all make sense scientifically, but she was sure there was a way in which it did. Most things, even things people considered fanciful, had some basis in science, and that always made Gwen feel better about things. Well, it had until her dad died, because nothing could make anything better after that. But she wasn't going to sit around and sulk, not even when Peter didn't come to the funeral, or come see her after, or anything. No, she'd walked right up to his door, and she'd known before he'd ever opened his mouth that her dad had made him promise not to see her again. It was absolutely so like her dad to do that, and she was angry at Peter for agreeing. Because she didn't care if he was Spider-Man. It wasn't about that; it never had been, and he was making it all about that one thing. And anyway, she'd helped. New York would have been so out of luck if she'd gone and hidden like Peter had told her to. He underestimated her, but that was okay. If he wanted to be that way, fine.
Gwen was already in Chemistry when Peter arrived. She was dressed in a gray skirt and black knee highs and a shirt that was a little too snug, due to an unexpected growth spurt. She didn't look up when Peter entered, but she tried to look at him out of the corner of his eye, to see if he was different too, but he probably wasn't. She didn't think everyone had some woman in their head, and maybe it was some kind of exposure to something. Anyway, she wasn't going to mention it to anyone, because the last thing she needed was more people thinking she couldn't take care of herself. She looked up as Peter passed, and she opened her book as Mr. Warren assigned her Peter as a partner. She considered requesting a change, but that would just be sullen and sulky, so she turned in her seat to look at him. "Coming?" she asked, her bowed lips slightly turned down in a pout. She wasn't moving where he was. Anyway, her table was closer to the fan.
Peter was doing his level best to avoid Gwen Stacy with every means at his disposal. Captain Stacy had literally given his life for Peter's and it was a sacrifice that he didn't take lightly, no matter how much his daughter might wish it otherwise. Gwen would always be pretty, but it was her tears he found difficult to ignore, and, convinced in his cowardly way that she would inevitably break down if they had any kind of meaningful conversation, Peter took drastic measures. He got to class only seconds before the bell or just after, taking a series of tardies just to make sure there was no time to make awkward eye-contact or pretend to chat. He was webslinging to school in the early morning and sneaking in through second-floor gym windows left open so that there was no hanging around the steps, and not even a chance of seeing Gwen walking into school from the drive. He wouldn't be able to keep it up forever, but the situation was eating at him and he was trying the easy stuff first.
There was the guilt, yes, that he had lived and the Captain had died, but more than that, Peter missed her. He felt like she was the only person who could understand about Spider-Man, and it wasn't like he was planning on telling anybody else. And there was her smile... and her laugh, and the things she said when she looked at him...
Peter's thoughts imploded behind his eyes as the very girl's voice interrupted. He knocked his chemistry book onto the floor and probably would have taken out a couple beakers set out for the experiment if it hadn't been for the spider's reflexes. More guilty looks around as he recovered the book from the floor and skulked after Gwen toward her chosen table. This was the worst. Maybe he could pretend to be sick and leave.
Peter collapsed in his seat, shedding notebooks and losing the chemistry book again. He let it fall, poking at his father's glasses to keep them on his face and avoiding looking right or left.
Gwen didn't actually know any of what was going on in Peter's mind. They'd only dated a few weeks, even if she'd been watching him and hoping he'd ask her out for weeks before he finally did. But it was too new to be able to just look at him and know what was going on in his head, even being as smart as she was, and there was the hurt layered over top of everything that made it hard to see that he was having a hard time too. All she knew was that he was avoiding her, and it made her angry, and angry was easier than being sad. She'd been sad for days and days after the funeral, and she wasn't sure it was ever going to completely go away, that feeling.
She pretended she didn't care when he moved, when he sat down and collapsed in his seat after saving the beakers. She knew exactly how he'd saved the beakers, having spent a very memorable night webslinging over New York in his arms, and the memory made her cheeks redden enough that she opened her book to the day's experiment and stared at the words in an effort to keep him from noticing. If Peter Parker wasn't even going to talk to her, she wasn't going let him see her blushing over him.
Instead, she began reading off the steps for the day's experiment, and she looked over at him once she finished, composure a little better once she was done. Looking at him made her go a little dreamy, though, and she blinked three times to clear her head. "Do you want to get the labcoats and goggles, or do you want to start the beakers?" she asked him. And, really, the experiment was beneath both of them, but it was something to concentrate on that wasn't how close he was.
Peter was so distracted that he almost didn't realize that there was someone else watching until a distinctly separate, male voice said into his mind: At least say hi. Peter jerked his head all the way around in a futile attempt to catch whoever was speaking right behind him, but there was no one there. He glanced around; no one was watching or snickering behind their hands. He listened, and listened hard. He could hear one of the students in the back row chewing on her pencil. There was a rodent of some kind in the wall behind the teacher’s desk, scratching around. He could hear Gwen’s breath as it hissed out over her lips. No voice. He looked at Gwen to see if she’d heard anything, but she was looking at her book--intently, so she wouldn’t have to look at him. Must have imagined it, Peter told himself. Get a grip, Peter. You’re starting to hear voices. Not a good sign.
Peter hiked up one flat skater-sole sneaker up on the crossbar of his lab stool and hopped, shuffling a half-inch closer to Gwen--stool and all. Screech, thunk. No one noticed that he could balance on it in mid-air, not when it barely moved up and sideways, and even if they had been watching, they probably wouldn’t have seen it anyway. He could have put a foot down and pulled it, but why?
He glanced at the experiment, processed the expectations in the first glance, and looked away again, only half-listening to Gwen’s voice as she read off the instructions. He was staring down as she listed ingredients. Had her skirt always been that short? Had he seen it before? It looked kind of like that gray wool looking one... but this one was smaller. And shorter. Like halfway up her thigh shorter. Thighs. Both.
Peter yanked his head up, eyes wide, when she addressed him with a question. “Wha?” I totally wasn’t staring, please say you didn’t notice me staring.
She was staring at his face when he yanked his head up, having caught him looking, and the look she gave him as she crossed her arms said she'd seen him looking. She had no books to hug to her chest, but the gesture was one that spoke of regularly having that security blanket, but she didn't notice the fact that the books were lacking, because catching him staring had only made the simmering anger in her spike.
"Peter Parker," she chastised, her only reply to his wha? And maybe she thought that fumbling was adorable, that obvious caught puppy look in his eyes, but no! She wouldn't melt just because he was himself, and because he was adorable, and because even being this close to him made her heart threaten to beat out of her chest. Which wasn't really possible, and as top student in her class she knew that, but it still felt like it. No, she wasn't going to let him get away with staring, not after he hadn't been there for the funeral, and after he had agreed not to see her anymore. She'd needed him, and he hadn't been there, she reminded herself.
Except maybe for the fact that his reaction gave her hope that he might change his mind, and that showed on her face, even as she scolded him. And she really liked kissing him, and maybe she was thinking about that too, and the realization made her straighten her back and speak calmly (mostly). "I asked if you wanted to get the ingredients going, or if you wanted to get the labcoats, but maybe it's better if I handle the chemicals." She gave him that look, the one that said she knew her GPA was just thismuch higher than his. "Do you need directions to the labcoats?" Innocently.
Peter gave a sheepish half-smile that was his version of Gwen’s pink blush, awkward but not exactly sorry. He winced at her expression but the smile turned into dangerous hints of a grin at the use of his full name. “The new skirt. Is. Um. Nice?” He pointedly looked away from her and down at the book and lab sheet, taking on an air of serious application. Peter Parker, top student. (Well, top student until next quarter’s grades came out, which would reflect the inevitable plummet of attendance and quiz scores. Being Spider-Man did not really leave a lot of time for studying.) Hoping to recover some points with a lab that he knew he could do with at least one eye closed, Peter ran his eyes down the prep. Fairly basic. He used hydrochloric acid at home to carefully clean up some of the component messes of his webbing, which degraded quickly after a certain amount of time, but stuck like cotton candy to everything. When he wasn’t willing to wait, Peter used basic chemistry to keep his Aunt May from freaking out about the state of his room.
“No,” Peter said, just as innocently, poking at his father’s glasses again. “They’re right over there.” He pointed with his pencil and then wrote out a label in pencil to affix to one of their vials, obviously intending to get the ingredients going without actually answering her question. Gwen’s GPA wasn’t that much higher, was it? It was like a skosh. A skosh. For now. Ugh. He pulled at his stool, and then kicked a foot out to look at his toes. His shoes felt tight.
She almost told him that it wasn't a new skirt, but she held off when she realized that it meant he was paying attention to what she was wearing. It shouldn't matter, she knew, and she refused to be one of those silly girls that only cared about boys noticing them, but he wasn't just any boy. So, instead of correcting him, she watched him look down at the book and lab sheet, and maybe she considered sulking a moment later, because he was actually reading and not paying attention to her at all. She was used to him being nervous, handsy, starey - all kinds of things, and even competitive a little, but this experiment didn't require a lot of thought, not with his intelligence.
"Then you can find them really easily," she said, a hint of teasing cheekiness in the words, just like when she'd informed all his fellow "interns" that he was second in his class. There was a smile on her lips when she took the remaining vials from him, her fingers brushing his as she reclaimed his pencil as well. She crossed her knees at the thigh, and she watched him pull at the stool, and she decided he might be taller. A growth spurt, maybe? She had only seen him once in weeks, which just reminded her why she wasn't going to fall right into his lap - not that he'd indicated he wanted her to fall into his lap or anything. Right, no, science. "We're going to lose points if we don't get started," she added, before turning her attention to the vials and the labels, which she stole from him at the last moment, too.
Peter made a little sound of protest that sounded halfway between a puppy whine and a baby gurgle when she took his pencil and his vials away. He pouted, but stopped the second she crossed her legs high on the stool. He could actually hear her thighs rubbing together, and suddenly the oppressive heat was practically choking. “Uh. Okay. Fine.” Giving in way too quickly, Peter fell off his stool in a controlled sideways tilt and headed over to the wall where the lab coats hung in a row. He chose two at random but dawdled there, looking out the window and trying to think of something besides Gwen. Gwen who he was staying away from. For her safety. No romantic entanglements for the crazy superhero in spandex. Hot, sweaty spandex.
Peter rubbed his face and sidled back over to his lab partner, trying not to hear, see, or think anything. He held the lab coat out to her. His was an inch short at his wrist. Settling back on the stool in his uncomfortably tight sneakers, he twitched his fingers--left... then right. He rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck. And the second there was a chance, he snagged his pencil back. He pulled the sheet of paper toward him and started drawing the diagram of expected chemical reactions--without actually doing the experiment. He poked at his glasses. “Do you, uh. Want to do the one for the hydrochloric acid? I got the... nitric...” he pointed at the paper with his pencil. “Or, uh.” Sheepish smile. He quickly put the pencil down. “We could do the experiments first... whatever.”
She watched the controlled fall with a smile that was nowhere near starry-eyed, really, and she didn't watch him as he went to grab the labcoats. Thinking was a lot easier before he'd come into her life, but she'd known she was in trouble right away with, and logic had somehow stopped to apply for things like putting sentences together and not staring at a boy dawdling over labcoats in an effort not to come back to where she was. She turned back quickly when he rubbed face, knowing the gesture was a precursor to him turning around and returning to her. She hadn't been looking, nope, of course not. She was busily labeling vials and setting everything in its proper place for the experiment, which was what she was doing by the time he got back to her.
She let him take the pencil, and she slid off the stool and slipped the labcoat on over her skirt and shirt. She pulled the goggles from the labcoat's pocket, and she perched them atop her pale blonde hair as she watched him diagram. Gwen was a stickler for following the rules, and she took his pencil when he put it down, tucking it behind her ear. "We should do the experiments first," she decreed, looking down at her own paper, which was already labeled with areas for each reaction, and only waiting for her to fill them in, even though she already knew what the reactions would be. She tilted her head as she watched him, trying to keep the smile off her face at how he looked when he stammered. As for that sheepish smile that made remembering they were even in lab a challenge, and her anger seeped away a tiny bit to let in some concern about how he'd been lately, which she didn't know. He didn't look messed up, not like he had that day he'd showed up at her window all bruised and cut, but he might just have gotten better about hiding it. "Have things been-" pause, "okay?"
That wiped the smile right off his face. He looked down again, this time at his paper, and sat in silence until Mr. Warren walked by. “Uh, yeah. Mmhm.” He nodded his head up and down without looking at her, trying not to enjoy the feeling that somebody knew even if he technically wasn’t supposed to be hanging out with her or telling her about it. Sliding his chin to one side he snuck a glance out at her. Tentative smile. “I think my aunt probably thinks I’m sneaking out for illegal cage matches or something.” And now, coming in at barely over a hundred pounds, with absolutely no social life and sweaty spandex, the amazing SPIDER-MAN... Right.
Reaching up, Peter handed over a pair of goggles to the girl without the glasses before he started with one pipette and measured out the acid so she could weigh the copper scraps. “What about... um, you?” Right, because everything with her was going to be wonderful. Funeral was great, Peter, you should have been there to try the canapes.
She tugged the goggles down over her eyes, and she almost managed to keep back a young, girlish smile when he mentioned his aunt, because as angry as she was, as upset as she was, it still made her stomach tickle to have him talking to her again. And she was a smart girl, Gwen. She knew he was trying to keep the promise he'd made to her father, and she knew talking to her at all probably wasn't anything he meant to do. But he did, talk to her, that is, and that felt a little like success, even if he was still a jerk. But he wasn't, and she knew he wasn't, and that was the problem. "Your aunt probably knows where you are, Peter, even if she doesn't say." Because Gwen was of the opinion that women were smarter than anyone thought they were most of the time, and she didn't see why Peter's aunt would be any exception. "You can always come to my place, you know, if you're in trouble or anything," she told him, turning her attention back to the experiment with the offer, in case he looked at her like he didn't want to or something. Not wanting to see her because of her dad was one thing; not wanting to see her because he just didn't want to, well, that was so a different thing.
His question about her was met with a blank stare as she turned back to look at him. "My dad's dead, Peter. It's been hard." Which maybe wasn't fair, because she remembered the nice old man, his uncle, who had died a few months back, the one who'd kind of gotten them together by telling her about the picture on Peter's computer. "But you know what that's like."
Peter thought his aunt probably knew what he was up to, too. She gave him these unspeakable looks that had no name but always happened whenever he’d gotten up to something especially dangerous that night, and it didn’t occur Peter that maybe he was obviously guilty enough that she could pick it out from a long way off. She’d stopped asking about it, and slowly they were finding a routine, managing without Uncle Ben, drawing circles of activity around the places he used to be things he used to do. Peter thought there was probably a gap between what Aunt May suspected and Spider-Man, and he made sure he didn’t close it, because faced with actuality she’d probably freak out. Sometimes Peter still freaked out, no reason she should be any different.
“Yeah.” Peter refocused his eyes on his paper. His expression became withdrawn and solid, without mobility. He had made his promise. It was a lame superhero that started out breaking promises right off. A few seconds later he said, “I’m not bringing trouble to your place, Gwen.” That was exactly what Captain Stacy had made him promise for, to keep him from running back to Gwen and drawing all his problems to her doorstep. Windowsill. Whatever.
She turned to him, ignoring the experiment altogether, and she gave him a frank look, all blue eyes and understanding. "I get it, Peter. I do get it. But I can make my own choices, good intentions or not. I'm allowed to do that," she insisted, and it was a quiet insistence, but insistence just the same. Gwen wasn't the kind to back down, even after a lifetime spent with the most disciplinarian dad in the world. But that dad had loved her, and she hadn't been scared of him, and she wasn't scared of this either. "Even if you made a promise, that doesn't mean you get to just disappear when I need you," she said, the certainty in her words indicative of the woman she would (hopefully) grow one day to be. And she'd been in trouble since that day he'd landed on her fire escape, so it's not like anything had changed just because her mentor had killed her father. Not Peter; Dr. Conners, even if Peter gave him the means to do it.
"Yeah," Peter said again, only it wasn't yeah at all, not even close to agreement. Instead it was just filling the space of silence with some kind of sound so he could say something he knew she wouldn't like. He refused to look at her, knowing exactly the expression that would be on her face, the same one she wore when she told him about worrying her dad wouldn't go home, the quiet, anxious one of suffering understanding. He hated it, hated putting it there, hated being responsible for it.
But that was what he had to be. Responsible. Uncle Ben taught him he had to take responsibility for his actions, and that was what he was doing. He had to make sure he kept Gwen as safe as she could be, and her father had known... known what kind of person Spider-Man would be, and what kind of enemies he would make. "Yeah. But I have to make a choice, too."
Dropping his pencil in one movement, he let it roll against the vials, and fell sideways off his stool again, landing heavy on his feet. He just needed to get out of there. He shouldn't even be with her, enjoying her company, being friendly, thinking about her skirt. He would just tell Mr. Warren that he had to go to the bathroom and not come back, or something... They're totally going to catch you. Oldest trick in the book.
Peter whirled around in the middle of the classroom like a crazy person, looking wildly around. "Who said that?!" Wait, the voice said. You can hear me? Peter whirled around again, nearly knocking over another kid going for the supply cabinet. People stopped what they were doing to stare.
At first, Gwen thought it was a ploy to get away from her. Because, let's face it, Peter wasn't exactly very smooth when it came to talking about things, and the conversation was getting into an area she knew he didn't want to discuss. She gave him a look, one that said she knew exactly what he was up to, but then the look faded away when she got a good look at his face. He looked honestly freaked, and she stared a moment as he almost knocked the other kid over.
"Peter?" she asked, starting to slide off her stool and reach for his arm. She noticed the other kids staring then, and she realized this might be a really terrible idea, especially if someone noticed how quickly he moved, or how fast his reflexes were.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, and Gwen pushed away from the stool and closed her hand over Peter's bicep... except she couldn't close her hand over Peter's bicep, because it was bigger than it normally was. Gwen knew exactly what Peter Parker felt like under his shirts, and under the suit too, and this wasn't it. She stared a minute too long, and then she looked up at the teacher.
"I'm taking Peter to the nurse, Mr. Warren. The experiment was just too much for him," she said, and had she been anyone other than the top student in her class, the teacher might have given her trouble about it. But she knew he wouldn't, especially not now. All the teachers kept looking at her like they felt sorry for her since her dad died, and she kind of couldn't stand it. She tugged on Peter's arm.
There wasn’t anybody there but the voice was talking, saying something about being there but he couldn’t move anything and this was so crazy. Peter was looking less crazy and more scared, thinking this was some more messed up part of his spider-related evolution, and totally not believing the separate voice who was trying to convince him otherwise. He entirely forgot he was in the middle of class until Gwen took his arm--and even in the situation he could not help but notice their relative heights were slightly different. He gave her a rather wild look but didn’t argue with her, and in a second they were back out in the hall. “Gwen,” he said, strained. “There’s someone talking in my head.”
He was definitely taller. That was Gwen's first realization in the hallway, strangely enough, and it took her a moment longer to realize what he was saying about a voice in his head. She pulled him a little further aside once it registered, and she dropped her voice to a hush, a whisper. "Me too. Is it because of the antidote, do you think?" she asked, because what else could it be? It was the only thing they'd both been in contact with, unless it was something else from Oscorp, but she didn't think so. Still, they might need to go look around, and that would mean finding Norman, since the place was locked down now. No, Harry, Harry would let them look around. But, scientifically, if they were both affected, then it couldn't mean anything else. Did that mean everyone else was affected too? "Peter, what if it's happening to everyone?" she asked.
The idea that the two of them might have made the rest of the city crazy made Peter’s eyes go wide with horror and terror. Ignoring the increasingly-distressed voice, Peter glanced around the mostly empty hallway, and then peered back through the tiny window to the chemistry classroom. People had gone back to what they were doing. One of the football players was throwing balled up paper at the back of the teacher’s head. “They... they seem fine.” Peter groaned and stepped back from the door. “The voice has a name. How could it just be the two of us? Something... maybe getting in contact with the device? Something in the lab?”
She watched his frantic movements, but she stayed perfectly still precisely where she was. She knew he didn't mean the science lab, which meant he'd come to the same conclusion she had. "We need to get in there and look. My badge might still get us around inside, but the front door isn't going to open for anyone other than Mr. Osborn." Here, she paused. "Or Harry. Either way, we need to see." We, not he, we. She leaned back against the bank of lockers then, and she looked him over; she really looked. "You're taller," she said. "More than few centimeters taller, and the circumference of your bicep has increased." She looked down at herself, and the too snug shirt, the too short skirt. "My clothes are smaller," she said hopefully. That's it, Gwen, blame the clothes. And finally, a sigh. "Mine has a name too."
Whoa. No we. There’s no we. Peter couldn’t even be distracted by Gwen’s comment about her clothes, or by the comment about his bicep (though he did sort of look down to check it out). Smothering the silent hell yeah that always comes with extra muscles, Peter frowned at her. “He’s saying crazy stuff, the voice. Look, you don’t need to be breaking into Oscorp. I can find a way in from the roof as... I mean, not from the lobby. I’ll call you if I find anything.” He started to walk away down the hall--toward the gym.
She didn't chase him, but she did call out to him as he walked down the hall. "When have I ever done what you told me to do, Peter Parker?" she asked, the voice confident and carrying and not at all afraid.
Peter practically screeched to a halt on the waxed tile and whipped around the other way again. “What, are you serious?” She was totally serious. He advanced again back to her. “You’re totally going to get caught, and you’ve got a lot more to lose. Your dad told me about that college rec and if you get caught in there they’re going to nail you to the wall.” He pulled at his too tight collar, stretching the t-shirt cotton to its limits and revealing the line of tight red just over his collarbone. “My way of getting the info is better and you know it.”
She glanced at the line of red, and then she looked back up at his face. There was a tiny tilt of her chin, almost imperceptible, really, but it was a sign of stubborn determination, even if it was all wrapped up in a deceptively pale softness; she was, when it was all said and done, her father's daughter. "My way works just as well as yours. I know Oscorp like the back of my hand, Peter Parker, and I'm not going to hide somewhere just because you made a promise to my dad. You need me, just like you needed me to make that antidote." She said it quietly, but with full knowledge that there wouldn't have been time to stop Dr. Connors if she had listened to Peter's demand that she leave Oscorp while the antidote was cooking.
“I can’t believe you’re bringing that up right now.” It was all irritation and little kid frustration. He paced back toward the gym exactly two steps and then whirled back at her, pumping his fingers through his hair and make it stand up wildly at all ends. “Your way, they know you’re in there, and they want to know why. My way is safer if we don’t get caught.” Oh God he totally used we. “Look if you just wait I can handle this. Shut up,” he added angrily, addressed at the ceiling, or rather, the voice in his head, who was saying this wasn’t necessary and they should all calm down.
She tapped a foot as she looked at him, considering, and it was that we that made her back down a little. "Alright, but I want you to swing by my place right after. I mean it, Peter, if you don't show up at my window by-" She paused, trying to figure out a good amount of time. "If you don't show up by eight tonight, I'm going down there myself." It wasn't an empty threat, either, which was obvious enough just by looking at her face. She looked up at the ceiling belatedly, wondering what his guy was saying, and then she looked back down and smiled when she noticed how he'd made his hair stand up all over the place. It was a fond smile, all blushy young and the kind of things that came with first loves. "Mine doesn't drive me crazy like that," she admitted of the girl in her mind.
Peter brought wide brown eyes back down to her. The whites were showing all around them and he kept on pacing one step this way and one step that way. “He’s just insisting it’s fine. There’s a voice in my head how is that fine?!” He wasn’t even sure who he was talking to, but he was grateful that she had at least agreed not to go. “I...” He shouldn’t be going to her house. That was so bad. “I’ll call. I will call by eight. Okay? Call.” He made a little phone gesture with his thumb and pinky against the side of his head.
She shook her head, her expression absolutely, deadly serious, blonde hair slipping over her shoulders and the scent of her verbena shampoo on the air around them. "Peter," she said, warning in the tone her voice.
Oh God she was wearing that citrusy smelly stuff. Peter stepped back as a precautionary survival measure. “Fine. Five minutes. Five minutes. To say everything is fine and... and I’m crazy.” He gave her a final look, less panicked and more worried, a contemplative expression. Then he turned and took off toward the gym and its windows at a jog.
The rest of the day took forever for Gwen. She had trouble concentrating in class, and she didn't hear Mrs. Andrews twice during Honors Calculus. If she had gotten in trouble, she would have felt better, but instead Mrs. Andrews looked at her like she might break, and Gwen couldn't have been happier when the final bell rang. She went straight home, and she pushed her food around her plate disinterestedly for the family dinner that her mom still insisted on having, but even her brother was quiet there, and no one noticed that Gwen was jumpy, just like she'd been back when she'd first found out her boyfriend was being chased by every single one of her dad's policemen.
As soon as she finished helping clear the table, Gwen disappeared into her room, using homework as a pretense that she knew no one would argue with, especially not these days, when her mom spent most of her time in her room. She propped her chair beneath the door, to keep anyone from turning the lock, and she changed out of her ill-fitting school clothes and opted for a white sundress that was more forgiving to the growth spurt. She covered it with a yellow shrug, and then she tried to actually work on the homework she'd said she was going to work on. She ended up doing a lot of staring at the window, a lot of chewing on the end of her pencil, and a lot of pacing, but very little homework.
By 7:50, she was just sitting on the bed, watching the window and biting on her fingernails.
Oscorp was a big fail. The only thing the trip really did was give Peter a chance to determine that no, he definitely wasn’t claustrophobic, because otherwise he would have died in the airducts, and also get to know The Voice, whose name (it insisted) was Billy. Peter got out his phone twice to just text Gwen and avoid her like a total coward, but he knew she would go storming right out of the building and try to bluff her way into the Tower, and then it would be all Peter’s fault and he could just see Captain Stacy’s face if Peter ruined Gwen’s chances at college.
Finally shoving his cellphone in his bag, Peter scaled Gwen’s building, muttering to himself the whole time. “Sure, Captain Stacy, I’ll leave your daughter completely out of it while we both go crazy. No, I don’t actually think I accidentally exposed her to some kind of hideous chemical while we were trying to save the city, but I can’t be absolutely sure.” Firing a web and swinging parallel to the surface of the windows and crawling around to avoid a light on in the apartment directly below, a red-and-blue figure swung up one armed over the side of Gwen’s fire escape, looking odd with a beat-up school backpack on.
Her breath caught in her throat, but it always did that when she saw him again after not seeing him for awhile, and it didn't matter if he was in that suit or not. She moved off the bed, shoved open the window, and tugged on his backpack to get him into her room. She glanced at the chair beneath the doorknob, making sure it was still actually there, and then she moved back to give him space. She didn't tug his mask off, but she wanted to, even though she knew he was going to try to get out of the room as fast as he possibly could. "Hey, hi," was the belated greeting that finally found its way to her lips, and there was a little bit of a shy head duck there, because she remembered his last visit to her bedroom. "What did you find?"
Peter felt like he was standing in the middle of her room in his underwear or something. When nobody knew who was under the mask it wasn’t as big of a deal when he was in the leotard, and the mask usually made him feel safe and strong rather than a dope. A little off balance as she pulled at the backpack, he clung to it and tipped sideways instead of actually giving it up, and thanks to the spider in him he just stuck to the floor on the side of one foot and then righted himself. For once, Billy--the Voice--kept his opinions quiet.
A familiar sigh made it past the mask, though there was no visible expression. “A whole bunch of nothing. They ran all kinds of tests on the lab and the air after the Genali device went off, and nothing else was disturbed. If that’s what caused this, then nobody caught it.” The mirror bug eyes stared at her for a few seconds. “Have you noticed any other effects?” He shrugged to keep the backpack on one shoulder.
She let go of the backpack he refused to give up, and there was no missing the fact that she was trying to see his expression beneath the mask. "Take that off?" she finally asked, and it had nothing to do with the things he'd found at Oscorp, but it was just as important. She was expecting him to say no, though, and she was prepared for it, but not scared enough of rejection not to ask for what she wanted. "They might not have been looking for anything like this," she finally said, concentrating on the problem at hand. "Or maybe it's from being in contact with Dr. Connors when he wasn't himself anymore," which was possible, and it would explain why no one else had complained of symptoms.
As for other effects, she sat on the bed as she thought that one through. "I'm taller. Not as much as you, but some, and my clothes are a little tighter." That confession came with a blush, but she gave him a look that said he better not comment on it. "And the girl, but that's it. Oh, and there's been some weird notifications on my phone, but I think there's just a problem with my service." She didn't even know why she'd mentioned that, and the woman in her head didn't clarify it either, but she spoke Spanish most of the time, the woman. Gwen had gotten straight As in Honors Spanish, but even she got tired of translating all the noise in her mind sometimes.
He stood there for a few seconds longer. He knew there was more, but he wasn’t supposed to be getting her involved. He kept on shifting between the idea that she was already, and there was nothing he could do except try to help her out of it, and the idea that he was making it somehow worse with his presence. There was simply no way to be sure. Taking a deep breath through the mask, Peter took a couple steps back and sat in Gwen’s desk chair, dropping his bag between his knees and holding it open with one gloved hand. Pulling his mask off first from the back of his neck, he exchanged the mask for a much-graffitied spiral notebook from the bag. The notebook was showing writing that Peter hadn’t written, didn’t remember writing, and watched appearing. He handed it to her wordlessly, looking oddly grave under the incredible mess of his hair from the mask.
She watched him take off the mask, and there was no concealing the fact that she liked his face so much better. It wasn't even that she disliked the idea of Spider-Man, but it was Peter she'd fallen for, not the superhero, and she almost reached out a hand to smooth his hair. She refrained though, because she was going to be strong about this! Instead, she took the notebook he handed over, and she watched the writing appear. She frowned, her bowed lips pursing together as she thought, and then she stood (notebook still in hand), and she grabbed her iPhone. She swiped her fingers across the screen a few times, and then she pulled up the unfamiliar journaling program there. She looked back from the notebook, to the screen, to the notebook, and then she walked over and handed them both to him. The words were all matching, and the sentences that were being written and typed were all perfect mirrors of each other. "I thought it was a problem with the program," she admitted, standing between his knees and looking down at him.
Peter took the notebook back and the phone, too, holding them both in the tips of his fingers like maybe they were poisonous. He watched the text scroll for a minute, noting how some of the text was not text at all, but handwriting. Having flipped through some of his own notebook and what had filled in recently, he lifted one hand and handed it back limply. “Then I guess in a few hours we won’t be us anymore, and that will answer that problem.” Peter rolled his bag off his shoulder so it was in his lap, and then stood up--slowly--with that barrier between them. “I should go.”
She hadn't actually read anything yet, so she didn't know what he was talking about, but she didn't ask, either. She just watched him use the bag as a barrier between them, and the feeling of loss as she stepped back was plain on her face just then, just as it had been when she'd shown up on his porch after her dad's funeral. "Did you promise my dad you wouldn't be my friend either?" she asked, her expression a determined softness that said she might not scream, and she might not stomp, but that didn't mean she gave up on things so easily.
Without answering, Peter gave her a long look that had enough time to go raw and red. He really missed her. He missed touching her, missed thinking about seeing her even when he wasn’t seeing her. Dropping the bag heavily by one strap, he threw it over his shoulder and then scratched behind his ear. “I shouldn’t be here.” Looking blindly around for his mask, he picked it up again. “I guess I... I’ll see you at school.” He swallowed and turned away from her, taking a breath through his mouth before pulling the mask over the back of his head.
"Yeah, I guess," she managed as he was pulling the mask back over his head, but she took a step forward just before he managed to cover the bottom half of his face, and she touched her fingers to his chin and stopped him. "I know what you promised my dad, Peter, but I get to make my own choices. Not you. Not him. I really like this guy in my class, even though he's not as smart as me, and even though he's really not smooth, and he has this spider problem - and I can be pretty stubborn." She stepped back, fingers trailing over her lips as she moved away. "Bye.”
Peter froze with the mask down over his nose, half bug and half boy. It was hard to see her through the fabric, so after a few seconds, he pulled it down all the way, again the anonymous icon. He still hadn’t admitted to any promises being made, and he didn’t want to, feeling it was some sort of betrayal, but Gwen obviously knew her father better than Peter did. “I make my own choices too. I chose this.” He spread five fingers out over the symbol on his chest, every joint at an angle. If he could keep helping people he had to do that, and he had to make sure it wasn’t at a cost to someone who didn’t deserve it.
Spider-Man ducked out the window and put one foot out to gain purchase on the side of the wall. He ducked down a little to look back in at her. “...Bye.” And one foot followed the other, and he climbed up out of sight.