cv (ephemeras) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-01-15 16:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: marvel comics, gwen stacy, spider-man |
Who: Gwen and Peter
What: Making up
Where: Oscorp, a park
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: None
Peter felt better in the city he knew so well. His city. It felt friendly to him because he felt anonymous inside it, and it shielded him with its size and its people. If Loki was going to find him here it wasn’t going to be a surprise, because here everyone was a stranger to him, and he was on guard against everyone because he was from New York. Good old dangerous, scary crazy New York. If he could hug it, Peter would have.
It felt weird being on top of Oscorp again without a mask, and it was even more strange to tilt his head up to the sky and imagine the clouds storming chemical rain. He could close his eyes and smell gunshot and blood and that weird stale water smell that always came off lizards when they were wet. Peter shivered. Better those days were gone.
Avoiding the security cameras on the roof guided by his spidey sense (which was back to working like normal), Peter slid down the side of the building until he found a maintenance window that actually opened. He pushed through and walked in like he belonged there. stealing a badge and avoiding a couple passing scientists by the simple expedient of hanging off the ceiling until they went past. Eventually he found the right floor, and hair windblown, with his jacket pulled down over his neck and the backs of his hands, he walked into the familiar fluorescent white lab.
Gwen was sitting at one of the long black desks that surrounded the circular center of the pristine white lab. She was a white lab coat and a grey wool skirt with grey wool knee-high stockings. One of her chunky black shoes had fallen off her foot, and her wool-covered toes were braced against the leg of the desk. Her hair was held back by a blue headband, one that matched the shirt beneath the lab coat, and she was peering into a microscope that was on the table in front of her. She was absently scribbling on a pad of paper on the table at her elbow, the pencil scratching roughly against the writing surface. There were observations written there, interspersed with girlish spirals and random math equations and games of tic-tac-toe against herself.
She didn't hear him come in, too focused on her work. Lost in the minutia of cells and cell divisions, the sample from Flash's skin something she'd been making notes and tweaks on for weeks. His claim that the suit had worked perfectly made her wonder if she'd miscalculated somewhere, or if they'd just gotten lucky that it was ready after all. It was easier to concentrate on that mutations than on Peter or Harry. She'd spent the night crying about her most recent fight with Peter, about the fact that they couldn't see eye-to-eye, no matter how she tried to logic her way around it. And she hadn't talked to Harry since Christmas; she was avoiding it, because there was the added awkwardness with Goblin, and the fact that Flash insisted it was Mr. Osborn, which she was going to have to tell Harry about eventually.
She blew a blonde lock of hair off her forehead, too engrossed to free her hands and push it out of the way. Her other shoe fell to the floor with a loud thunk, and she kicked it absently with her grey-covered toes, tugging it back in the same manner a second later, then doing it all again.
Peter didn’t try to move quietly; he could have, but he wasn’t trying to sneak up on her the same way he’d been trying to sneak into the lab unseen. Instead, he was caught up in seeing her with her head tilted down in just that way, and seeing her not in the here and now, but in the chemistry labs of the past. She always sat just that way, when she forgot there might be people watching in favor of what was on the counter, on the scale, or in the beaker. His automatic reaction was shy and uncertain, and where he would have put his arms around her, he slid his abused wrists and hands inside his front jacket pockets.
“Hey,” he said, quietly. He said it with enough distance between them that she wouldn’t accidentally drop anything he couldn’t catch, or swing around before he could duck. Even in shock no normal human could beat his reflexes, but he wanted to surprise her, not scare her. Bending down a few inches, he settled his chin on the edge of her left shoulder (to hide the state of the left side of his face for a while longer) and gave her a soft smile into the peripheral of her vision.
Even with his noisy approach, she turned quickly when she heard the beginning of that hey. She wasn't scared, because she was never scared in the lab, which was weird since she'd almost died there. But she wasn't scared; she was just surprised. No one was around just then, and people didn't just drop by Oscorp. Even with her invitation, she'd expected to be called down by the guard or for him to call her phone if he actually did make it (she didn't count on it where he was concerned anymore). But his presence did make her smile. It reminded her of the first time she'd seen him in this building, with his fake badge and hiding behind all those interns.
The quick turn made the pad of paper begin to slip off the edge of the desk, but she didn't notice immediately. She was too busy being surprised that he was moving, and bending, and that his chin was on her shoulder a second later. He wasn't yelling or fighting, and she turned her cheek to look at him. Close up, but she still couldn't see the damage to his face, and she was oblivious to his ruined wrists, not that she hadn't seen him torn apart before; she had. Her blonde hair brushed his cheek, and she smelled like lemons and lab chemicals. "I didn't think you'd come," she said truthfully, more awe that he was actually there than any anger or chastisement in her tone. It felt like forever since she'd seen him, which was a scientific impossibility, but that's how it felt.
He didn’t kiss her, because it was too soon for that really, but he thought about it as he tipped his head and came away from her shoulder to straighten up. The curve of his chin had hints of darkness, like he’d rubbed his cheek with ash--essentially what happened when Peter didn’t shave for a couple days. His version of mountain man also wore layered t-shirts, a hoodie with a skate company logo, and a tattered canvas jacket rather than fur and plaid. His eyes were happy, and he was tired but not falling-down tired. “How come? I said I would.” Not any more aggressive than her, but confused.
His eyes flicked away from her and he leaned at a solid sixty degree angle to catch the pad neatly. The movement drew his jacket up some, but the sweatshirt was pulled down over his hands and the webshooters were strapped farther up toward his elbow to avoid the abused skin of his wrists. The stretch of his hand made him wince with surprise that it caused him discomfort or pain, much the way a football player with a bad knee is reminded of it on game day. He’d decided not to go see any of the doctors he knew. When he turned his head the impact of the Goblin’s fist on his face lit up in blue green and yellow. It looked like someone had hit him with a baseball bat, but a week ago rather than a day; Peter healed quickly.
She was used to the layers and, even sometimes, the stubble. For some inexplicable reason, she wasn't expecting him to straighten, and she turned toward him slightly when he did, a non-vocal tell that she thought he was going to leave, just like that. Come in, rest his chin on her shoulder, then bail again. She knew he'd put Aunt May somewhere, and she was starting to wonder if he'd had any rest, because he looked super tired, but he asked why she'd thought he wouldn't come and distracted her from her immediate question. "I thought you'd be busy," she admitted. But maybe not - Aunt May was somewhere safe, and Mary Jane and Flash were out of town. It was still dark out in New York, but the generators were running in the lab, and she'd gotten used to the darkness that had taken the city over since she'd been back.
She watched him grab the pad, her blue gaze following the movement as well as she could. He always did that kind of stuff, and she was always amazed by it. Sometimes there was too much of the scientist in her when it came to watching him, but he was amazing. Not like Flash, who had some alien making him do the things he do. Peter was different. But that thought was immediately eclipsed by the bruise on his face and that wince when he reached. She turned in her seat completely, facing him full on, and she put a hand to his good cheek so that she could turn his face more fully in the light. "Peter Parker," she whispered, glancing around the empty lab to make sure no one was around. She was off the stool a moment later, all quick and jerky movements as she pulled the slide from the microscope and tucked it (and the notebook) into the bag at her feet. "We need to put something on that," she said, even as she tucked everything away.
When she said she expected him to be busy, Peter reflexively looked out the window at the city that he loved so much. The dark made people crazy; it called up strange things from the hindbrain and made them do stupid things because they assumed nobody was watching. He hadn’t had time to call up why all the power was down, and he felt it was something that he should fix, except Stark Tower was still glowing like a light bulb, and--to be really frank--he hurt and he didn’t want to. Spider-man belonged on the streets trying to keep people from getting assaulted and murdered. He had a hard time believing that SHIELD and Stark weren’t trying to fix the power problem. He looked back at her, faintly guilty now for the thoughts she couldn’t hear.
Peter kept the pad in his fingers and the paper stuck there as he looked into her face. He let her touch him for two very simple reasons: one, he liked it when she touched him, and two, he might as well get something nice out of being decked by a jerk in a Halloween mask. He handed her the notebook back so she could put it away. “Something like what?” he asked, grinning. He had cleaned up so there wasn’t any blood, and considering how he’d looked when he first had occasion to see a mirror, he felt it was going pretty well toward normal. “I’m okay. Can we get food instead? Can you take a break?” He looked at the bag she was packing.
She watched him look outside, and she might not be able to hear his thoughts, but she had a pretty good idea of what he was thinking - that he should be out there, instead of inside with her. She got it now, that his priorities had changed since they'd been together. He hadn't been Spider-Man long then, and maybe she should have realized it was always just a matter of time before he had to figure out what needed his time more. His faintly guilty look made her sure she was right, but she didn't say anything about it just then. She didn't want to fight with him, and she was increasingly sure she couldn't win over his sense of responsibility. She guessed he got it figured out at some point down the line, at least in the comics, but they'd already messed the comics all up, hadn't they? She wasn't even sure they counted as a reference point anymore.
She took the notebook when he held it out, and she gave him a chiding little look when he asked her what they could put on his face. "Do you need me to explain why putting a cold steak on your face is good for bruises, Peter?" she asked, knowing she didn't; he had been second in his class before all this. Her smile was a little teasing, even with the worry, and she had just finished settling the bag on her shoulder when he mentioned food and a break instead. "Can we go somewhere with cold steak?" she asked, obviously still worried, but with enough hesitation in it to make it obvious that she could be convinced otherwise.
When she mentioned cold steak the smile wiped off Peter’s face entirely. What replaced it wasn’t anger, but a reflective expression that he wore when he talked about his family--anyone from Aunt May to his mother. Peter had as much of an inquiring mind as Gwen, and when Uncle Ben had next hoisted a slab of meat out to slap on a bruise, a toddling Peter had informed him it was just for swelling and raw meat had germs. (He had said germs with great authority, as he recalled.) Uncle Ben had told him there were some things science didn’t explain and to hush up and do what he was told unless he wanted to sit there in pain for a while yet.
“I’ll ice it again tonight. I’m okay, it just looks bad,” Peter reassured her. “I’d rather eat a cooked steak. Like a Denny’s or something.” Nobody at a Denny’s was going to point at his face and tell him to go to the ER. “You want me to take that for you?” he asked, pointing at the bag on her shoulder because his Aunt had raised him right.
She didn't know why the smile disappeared from his features. She was sure she'd said something wrong again, but she hadn't mentioned Mary Jane or Flash or Harry, so she couldn't figure it out. The steak comment never came to mind, because the perpetual argument about whether the protease from the steak was better than the bacteria contained in the meat was always entertaining to hear in class. She'd been trying to make him laugh, but it had the opposite effect, and she almost told him she needed to stay and work.
But she had missed him, and she thought they might be able to get through some bad food at Denny's without fighting. Maybe actually have a conversation from beginning to end, for once? "Okay, Denny's, but I'm still allowed to worry," she said, because she always had. From that first day when he'd climbed into her window looking like he'd gone head to head with a bus, she'd worried. She tugged the bag onto her shoulder more securely. "You're the one who looks like you need triage, which means I get to carry my bag," she informed him.
The smile came back. It wasn’t quite the grin, but it did come back. Distracted by the scent of lemons and the idea of her worrying about him (because Peter was eighteen and pretty girls thinking about him was mostly awesome in his book), he didn’t even think about the security cameras watching him walk out with her when he had not walked in. “I could still carry your bag.” Pause. “In triage.”
Now he smirked. The bruising actually made it look rather roguish, but that was because they had left the bright lights of the lab for the fancy ones of the sleek hallway, and there was no color to make the bruises fire up with ghoulish detail. As they moved toward the elevator Peter again slid his hands into his jacket pockets--delicately. After a pause he said, “Uncle Ben gave me a steak the last time Flash hit me.” The memory seemed to be neither good nor bad for him; he turned it over in his mind.
He was lucky; security cameras probably weren't running on the generators. "And have them think your girlfriend makes you carry her things when you're all bruised up?" she teased, before she realized what she'd said. "Your friend," she corrected, making it all the more obvious, and she scuffed one newly-reclaimed and thick-soled shoe against the lab floor, leaving a black scuff. Luckily, the roguish smirk was enough to distract her slightly from her embarrassment, and it was all instinctual, the flirty little smile she gave him in return. His comment about the steak and flash and his uncle, it was the perfect opening for talking about what Flash had told her they'd seen in the woods, but she didn't want to go there just yet. Instead, she made a sound of acknowledgement as she fell into step beside him, still unaware of his injured wrists. "We're going to have to wait forever at Denny's. Only a few places have power generators," she told him. "Think we can do it without going off on each other?" she asked, and she gave him a challenging smile, making a game out of how often they were fighting lately.
He gave her a long, somewhat pleading look during the confusion about friend-as-girl and girl-as-girlfriend. It was like the wince when he’d reached for the pad, only slowed down and drawn out. The scuff on the ground should have made him think of Doc Connors, but it didn’t. He thought of scuffs on the floor of the truck, of rocking with its movements and the clink of chains. He looked at her, afraid that it would show. The placement of his hands was suddenly worried and defensive, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything about her breaking up with him. It felt... petty.
He met her challenging smile with a blink of bewilderment and a slight twitch as they crossed the threshold to the stairs. “I guess. I mean, I think so. We don’t do that if we’re not on the phone,” he admitted. He shouldered the heavy door aside for her so she could enter the stairwell first. His words echoed. “I could tell them I’m Spidey and they might let us in,” he suggested. “Everybody knows already, I guess. ...Of course then someone might try to take a shot at me while we’re there and it would ruin the mood.”
His pleading look, that wincing nonwince, was met with a sheepishly teenage look after the scuffing. She wasn't inclined to argue with him in person. She thought, logically, that there must be science behind that. That something must exist that made her want to just forget all the things she'd steadfastly refused to ignore when he wasn't standing in front of her. She had this idea about not being the type of girl that let her boyfriend (friend, Gwen, friend) get away with things, but in person, that just didn't stick as well.
The blink made her smile. She liked confusing him; she always had. He had this tendency to stammer and not know what to do or say that was endearing. It had always made her smile, even with it seemed like there would be nothing to smile about ever. "There's a science experiment there," she said of his comment that they only argued on the phone, and there was something decidedly flirty about her tone as they entered the stairwell. "Dying at Denny's would really suck, Peter," she said, but there was something serious in her voice; too much death lately, and it was real to her in a way it hadn't been before.
She took the steps two at a time, opening the bottom door for him, instead of making him shoulder it himself. "Girls can open doors too," she told him before he protested. "I don't care if we go to Denny's," she added a second later. "We can just sit, if you want," she said, motioning to the dark Oscorp-donated park across the way. "I think I have some Pop Tarts I confiscated from Dr. Banner in my bag, and a soda."
The things she said didn’t sound as angry as they always did in her text messages. Peter felt like her text messages were always accusing him of things--and telling him what he’d said or how he felt or what he was doing. Peter felt like he should be the one saying what he wanted to say, how he felt, and what he was doing, not the other way around. Her way (he felt) always got the whole thing wrong. Looking at her face, the occasional smile, the quiet acknowledgment of some serious awkward, none of that felt aggressive at all. If anything, he felt that half of what he was feeling was more aggressive than he needed to be. Abruptly he wanted to tell her everything that had happened to him in the last forever. He tried to think how to say it.
He grinned at her and walked through first as requested, without protest. “Yeah, in there is good. I’ll be able to hear it if anybody comes.” The trees were a little daunting, but he felt better on the street and under the sky than he had in the silver hallways of the lab, the same way he had in the Goblin’s forest versus Loki’s truck. He wanted to punch something just then, and it surprised him, so he set to reflecting on it. “Why isn’t Doc Banner allowed to have Pop Tarts?” he asked, curious, marking time as he thought.
Unaware of his feelings and thoughts, she just led the way into the center of the park, where a circle of benches surrounded an opening and a fountain. Despite the city being dark around it, the clearing of trees meant the moonlight could filter in, and it offered a reprieve from the darkness. Her chunky black shoes were loud on the grass, and she bypassed the benches to sit on the edge of the fountain, where no one could come up behind them without notice. It wasn't a thinking concession to what he had been through; she just didn't like the dark very much. She slipped off her lab coat as she walked, rolling it up and putting it in her bag.
She sat on the circular stone that made up the fountain's base, legs crossed at the thigh, and she set her bag down on the grass. She bent at the waist, rummaging through it and coming up with the box of Pop Tarts (which she set beside her hip on the stone) and a mildly-cold coke, which she popped open and held out to him. "Dr. Banner likes too many processed things. Pop Tarts and Ramen and things you get from boxes. It's bad for a man of his age, especially with his temper and blood pressure," she informed him. Taking care of Dr. Banner had become second-nature at this point. "I clean the lab and throw out the junk food once a week. He eats the fresh stuff I put in, but the junk is back by the next time I go to clean," she explained, a little guilt in her voice. She hadn't been there much since she'd been back at Oscorp and crashing with Harry.
Peter wasn’t as fond of the fountain as she was. It made a lot of noise, all that running water, and to him that noise was loud. He couldn’t really hear everything around him like he would have been able to if they were out there in the pitch dark and the trees. But Peter wasn’t a wolf, and he had his spidey sense. The fountain had a romantic, familiar kind of appeal, and Peter could no more see than she could. He settled next to her slowly, since ignoring his bruises had cost him not too long ago and he didn’t want to repeat the mistake. He couldn’t hear the sound of her stockings, though he tried (while pretending he wasn’t).
“That’s nice of you,” Peter said, honestly. It sounded somewhat like what Aunt May did whenever he wasn’t around. Thinking of it made him sad, because he wasn’t going to be able to see her that much, and the home he’d grown up in felt lost to him. Peter took a chug from the coke and drained half of it. He slipped it so it dangled between two fingers and then offered it back gently toward her. “What’s it like at Harry’s?” he asked, interpreting the guilty look correctly.
She swung her legs and shrugged her shoulders when he said it was nice of her to look out for Dr. Banner. "He helped me when I didn't have anywhere to go, and I kind of followed him home and didn't let him say no, so it's the least I can do. Plus, he doesn't have anyone much, not as far as I can tell." It was kinda sad, actually, especially since Dr. Banner was such a nice guy. "I kept a lot of stuff from him recently, and I feel guilty," she added, even though she didn't need to. She hadn't actually talked to Peter in ages, but it felt nice, easy. "About Flash taking the suit and setting stuff up so we could track you, but I just wanted you back here safe. I didn't lie about things before, but I do it sometimes now. My dad would hate it," she said, taking the soda when he offered it.
She scooted a little closer after taking a sip from the soda and handing it back, taking up the space the Pop Tart box had occupied before. She ripped open a foil package, and she tore off a strawberry iced corner before handing the rest over to him. "I hide," she said of Harry's, because there wasn't much else to say. "I haven't been there much. Sam ODed and was in rehab for weeks, and I was going home when the Christmas thing happened and we ended up in the woods." She looked over at him, wincing a little when she saw the bruise on his face again. She lifted her fingers to touch it, but she thought better of it in the end. "I always hate how bruised up you get," she said with honest worry. "Tell me what happened?"
Peter smiled. He liked hearing about Doc Banner, and about doctors in general. He liked that Banner was nice, and that Flash had problems (even if they weren’t normal problems). He wanted to hear about things that weren’t necessarily life or death, about how sad she felt about her dad even if she didn’t say it outright. Peter wanted to feel normal, and it wasn’t because he had almost died; that happened all the time. It was because he felt like the rest of his life would be almost-dying, and he didn’t know if he could handle it. Loki knew, and Goblin knew, and he was pretty sure everyone would, and there was no escaping it. There would be no more normal.
He leaned into her, arm and shoulder, as soon as she was within range. He didn’t even notice he was doing it. He took the conveyor belt cooked pastry and he took a bite that was all sugar and jam. It tasted amazing. “Should we do something for Sam? Do you feel okay?” He was unwilling to talk about what happened while this question still hung in the air, and concerned brown eyes leveled at her face.
She smiled over when he leaned against her arm; she would have done it herself, but she'd started to think about those bruises on his face, the realization setting in that there were probably more of them where she couldn't see. But he'd moved closer, and she decided that meant his shoulder didn't hurt, so she leaned back against him the slightest bit as he took the bite of the Pop Tart. "She's a mess. I don't think there's anything we can do. I tried, and it only kinda worked out. We won't be like that when we're older, will we?" she asked, assuming they'd both make it the four years it would take to get them to Sam's ripe, old twenty-two. She was surprised he asked how she felt, and it showed. No one had asked her that. "Tired. I just feel drained. Like on the weekend after finals week. They have her on all these medicines." She paused. "Now will you tell me?"
Peter’s shoulder was fine. It was his chest, back, sides and arms that had the worst of it, places where they’d been able to grab, kick or punch. He always forgot how small and light she was. Gwen had a voice that was big without being loud, strong without being hard, and in his head he always remembered her as being tougher than she was in person. She seemed soft, leaning against him. He switched hands with the Pop Tart and tentatively put an arm around her, hugging her gently with the tips of his left fingers. “I don’t know what we’ll be like. But I think I know enough not to get hooked on anything,” he said, more worried about the present than the future.
He was quiet for a minute, and he took another bite. “I went home and Aunt May was there. Or I thought it was Aunt May, but it wasn’t. I turned around and she was him. He’s this paste-y tall thing, really dark. I expected somebody hulky and blond, kind of like Thor and... well. Norse people. I dunno if you’ve ever seen Thor on TV or something, but he’s like this big smiley surfer dude that could crush you on accident. Loki’s not like that.” He fell silent for a little bit, breathing shallow.
She wasn't sure what was more comforting, his arm around her or the fact that he didn't argue about them not making it to twenty-two. But then Peter had never believed any of their futures were already mapped out in comics, and he'd never put much stock in them either. "Sam is less than intelligent about some things, and almost everyone I know here has the same kind of people in Las Vegas; Unsmart ones. Is yours stupid too?" she asked of his person through the door, because it was impossible to deny that Mary Jane, Harry, Flash and her all had people through the door that were less than smart, all in different ways.
“Billy? I don’t think so. He seems really cool and collected about stuff. He notices when I’m really beat up and we write messages to each other on the journals when we need to know things. He doesn’t really hear me and I don’t hear him. We’re kind of... like pen pals.” Peter shrugged helplessly. “I think we’re trying not to get involved in each other’s problems. He talks to me kind of like a big brother, so he must be older.”
She leaned into him a little more, and his explanation of what happened sparked something or, actually, deciding something for her. She reached down into her bag, and she pulled out the ring from her stocking. Tucked inside the ring was a note, which she handed to him as well. (Press a finger to the stone on this ring with intention, and I will come to prevent your untimely death from any of the various ridiculous troubles that seem so prevalent in this world, and which you seem so very fond of throwing yourself in the path of. Do so without real danger, and I will know.). "You should keep that. I think it's from Loki."
He took the ring without thinking and examined it with his fingers, very gently, moving the pads over the circle of the metal and feeling it out since he couldn’t see what it was clearly in the dark. Trading the note for the pop tart, he took out his cell phone to light up the paper so he could read the note. His expression became coldly furious, laced with flickers of lightning-like confusion that cut through his words. “Loki? Why would Loki give you something like this?” He immediately put it in his pocket and crunched the note into his fist. “It must be a trick.”
Gwen didn't say anything about Billy. She just made a sound of acknowledgement, something a little envious. That must be nice, having someone older who didn't cause trouble. But she left it alone, and she watched the ring transfer from her hand to his instead. She was almost surprised to see the brilliance of the cellphone, but then she remembered he had probably brought it across charged from Las Vegas. "I don't think it's a trick. Sam's brother has Loki in his head. I think he's promised to keep her from getting hurt, which means I get a ring," she explained, looking back down at it. She didn't think anything of, basically, telling him who Loki was in Las Vegas. She trusted Peter not to go after anyone innocent, and it never occurred to her that he might tell the Avengers or anything. "He's a good guy, Sam's brother. He keeps trying to help her."
The eerie blue glow from the cell phone cut off abruptly and Peter’s expression was once again plunged into darkness. He shifted onto one hip and pocketed the cellphone once more, an automatic possession he had retrieved from his aunt’s house and not yet noted was useless. It made sense to Peter that a brother would try to protect a sister, but not why Loki was cooperating. It said something about who Peter was that it didn’t cross his mind to make an attempt to interfere with Sam’s brother just to do something to Loki. Instead he thought maybe Billy might be able to ask the man what they could do to stop the god. Something non-lethal, obviously. It was a fairly encouraging thought, anyway. He’d ask Thor.
Peter thought about it a little while. He took the ring out again, squinting one eye against the pull of skin against healing burns. “You think it will work? Save you from something?” he asked, looking at her instead of at it.
It wasn't the reaction she was expecting, and even in the low-filtering moonlight that was evident. Her cornflower eyes went wide, then narrowed a little, and her features were confusion and mingled youth. "I want you to keep it," she finally said, and her tone said she had a litany of logical reasons why he should keep it all set to go, should he refuse. "He hurt you. You can use it to trap him and depower him or something. If we can build a suit to help contain Venom, then there has to be something we can do to Loki." It didn't occur to her that Peter (or anyone) would hurt Loki. She didn't think of Peter as anyone who could be lethal, no matter what happened to him. And, in her scientific mind, this was just another problem to solve, and solving it meant no more bruises like the one on Peter's face.
That thought reminded her of her previous worry, about bruises elsewhere, and she turned her body toward him, giving up the warmth of his shoulder in favor of squinting at him more closely in the dark. "Come back to the penthouse with me?" she asked. Not Mr. Osborn's, and not the lab. Home, where she could at least make sure he'd taken care of anything that hurt. Her mom wouldn't care if he was there, and it would be easier to go home with someone, instead of going alone.
He was quiet through her suggestions and explanations, but he was listening. It was easy to tell when Peter was listening and when he wasn’t, because he stopped twitching and shifting so much when he wasn’t crafting something to say. He just sat with his back to the fountain in the freezing air and listened to her, holding the ring between two fingers and blinking very slowly as if he didn’t want to erase anything behind his eyes. He was messy and clean, and he kept his shoulders from hunching, but there were shadows that didn’t belong on his face. When he spoke he sounded older than he should. “If I want Loki to be somewhere it’s pretty easy to do. You insult him enough and he’ll come right for you. Or Thor could have a party, and Loki’s sure to crash it. He’s not as smart as he thinks he is. But if Sam’s brother is legit, then the ring is for you and it’ll do more good that way then any other.”
Slowly he straightened as she pulled away, giving his hair a shake that eventually traveled all the way down his spine. “Hold it while we’re on the move,” he said, forestalling any argument with the simple expedient of turning the topic. He held the ring out to her. “I can get us there faster than walking.” His teeth lit up in the moonlight as he revealed them into a Peter Pan grin.
She didn't like that he wouldn't take it, and it showed on her young features. "But if you use the ring, you could surprise him," she said, which wasn't contradicting him. She actually agreed that it would be pretty easy to lure Loki, at least based on the Norse god's current pattern of behavior. "And surprising him means you could get the upper hand," she insisted, but she sighed reluctantly at the end of it all. "Sam's brother is legit," she admitted. "He's not very good at it, but he tries to help her out." But that just made her think of Loki again, and she wanted to ask how he'd gotten from Loki to Goblin, and how things had gone with Flash. She wanted, too, to tell him about older Harry Osborn and things in the woods. But she hated the thought of bringing up bad stuff right then, so she didn't say the things she should have maybe said right away.
Instead, she watched him straighten, squinting in the almost darkness. She smiled a flirty thing of a smile when he shook his hair, and then she looked at the ring before finally giving in and taking it. "I'm not agreeing yet, bug boy," she cautioned, because she knew he was trying to win the argument by handing it to her, but it didn't matter as much as it might have if he wasn't standing there, looking like he looked. Gwen Stacy, don't be stupid, she told herself. Literally, she told herself, the internal chiding cut short when he grinned. "You haven't taken me webslinging in forever," she said, very much the wistful teenage girl just then.
He helped her pack up the remains of the Pop Tarts (really helping by cramming an entire half into his mouth whole toward the end there) and then made sure the bag was closed before he held it up to put it over the crown of her head and settle it comfortably over her shoulder. At his full height he was again taller than her, but somehow less substantial, as the twitching was back. He could hear some people on the other side of the park, through the trees, and he kept turning his head in that direction. They weren’t doing anything bad, just making noise, and he was distracted the same way you would be if someone was having a separate conversation across the room.
Finally he shifted his eyes to find hers in the dark, and then he took her hand to lead her out onto the street and toward the nearest skyscraper that had a path toward the sky as clear to him as day. “Because I was worried about somebody seeing. Nobody’s going to see you in this dark.” He was grinning through it, his hand warm and clinging hard to the joints of her knuckles.
She grinned a stupid little grin when he shoved the Pop Tart in his mouth. She knew, logically, that it was gross. If they made it as far as being old together, she'd probably grow annoyed with that kind of thing. But right then, she wasn't annoyed. She didn't even think to chastise him about chewing properly or anything; he was just a cute boy, and that was all. Tall and thin and... twitchy? She looked past him, trying to hear whatever he heard, but it was useless (of course). She wondered at how spider DNA manifested into something like augmented hearing, and she wondered at the science behind it. For a split second, she wanted to stick him beneath a microscope, but then he looked back at her, all boy again, and nothing mattered but the way that one lock of hair fell against his forehead.
It was a silly reaction, the way her heart sped up from him sliding his hand against hers and led her toward the street. She refused to be silly. Well, logically she refused, but her heart (beating a quickquick beat in her chest) didn't seem to be communicating with the logic center of her brain, and she just gave him the flirtiest of looks. "Peter Parker, you make it sound like we're going to do something we shouldn't do in the dark," she teased, but she still remembered making out with him on the edge of an old building after just such an offer, and her cheeks went bright red in the darkness. She shuffled her feet, the tip of one chunky shoe digging against the sidewalk and the wool of her stockings rubbing together.
What Peter called hearing was not just hearing but additionally augmented vibrations, something that also helped with the strange extra sense he called his spidey sense because no one had actually asked him about any of his capabilities and he wasn’t really interested in writing an autobiography any time soon. He wasn’t Captain America or anything, but he was still pretty cool. When everything was working, anyway. He still couldn’t figure out what the deal was with Flash and his new super-goo.
Peter’s grin went harmlessly nasty, the way teenage boys get when there’s space to do it. “We are.” He paused significantly. “Climbing up buildings, definitely not something we should be doing.” He led her down an alley, far enough away now from the park that conversation was gone, but traffic was still echoing from the few streets that intersected off into the darkness. He spoke quieter here because it felt more isolated, and after a short hesitation he put an arm around her waist. “Hold on to my neck. Be careful you don’t grab my arms. It’ll...” He had to think of something. “Get in the way of the webs.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but it was all girlish flirt behind the determination not to melt. "Climbing up buildings is nothing. I steal things lately. Beat that, Peter Parker." And, of course, it wasn't any real threat. One piece of machinery from Oscorp didn't count as the gateway to a life of crime, and the smile in her blue eyes definitely indicated that she was playing, an obvious thing even in the dark shadows of the alley. As for his badly constructed order that she keep her arms around his neck, that took a little bit longer to register than it should have. But his hands on her waist became the thing just then, and she logically tried to convince herself that his hands couldn't possibly be warm enough that she could feel heat through the layers of winter clothing she wore. "I have done this before," she reminded him, finally, blushing as she slid her hands over his shoulders and tried to ignore just how close he was. She wasn't thinking about not grabbing onto his arms, despite his cautionary words. The webs had never been a problem before, and she didn't think any of it would be a problem now. Instead, she just pressed a slow, long kiss to his lips.
"Take me home, Peter."