Who: Gwen and Peter What: Noodles and lots of blushing. Where: Mooncake Foods in SoHo When: Recently Warnings/Rating: Kissing. AVERT YOUR GAZE
Gwen's apartment in Herald Towers was a tiny corner studio on the tenth floor. If she'd asked her mother, she could have afforded something more significant with a nicer address, but she hadn't wanted to ask. Her inheritance was still sitting there, untouched. Her full-ride to Stanford had ensured that she didn't need help during her four years in college. Even that first year, when work had been impossible and she'd had a hard time even keeping up with classes, she hadn't called home, and she hadn't asked for an advance on the money that would come to her when she turned twenty-five. Now, with a job, she really wasn't going to ask for financial assistance, not when she had a good salary about to kick in. And the location wasn't as good as where she'd grown up, but 34th wasn't a bad neighborhood. It was small, but safe, and it was hers.
Over the past four years, Gwen had only seen Mary Jane face-to-face, and she'd only seen the redhead a few times, for a few minutes. Upon being home, she could have chosen who she wanted to see first. Harry had invited her for dinner, and Flash had invited her for cartoons and yogurt. Billy would have met her somewhere and, while Mary Jane was acting strange, Gwen was fairly sure the redhead would have met her somewhere, if Gwen had given any indication the meeting would be a welcome one. But Gwen had picked Peter, and she'd picked Peter for a reason.
Despite the loss of her Peter, and despite all the differences in this Peter, Peter Parker still managed to make her feel like there was nothing about her that needed changing. He didn't leave her bewildered or embarrassed, like Harry did, and there was still that slice of chemistry that made his opinion more valuable than Flash's. It was ridiculous science at work, and there was no logic behind it, but Gwen hadn't changed that much. She was good at putting forward a very put-together front to the world these days, professional and sleek, but she was still that socially awkward girl she'd been. She was just better at channeling that into cool professionalism and banter. Seeing Peter, who liked her, would be a good lead-in to meeting up with Harry, who she would need to apologize to for her clinical patheticness when they'd last seen each other.
She made it back to the apartment late, having worked two extra hours in the lab, and she was still in the mid-thigh length dress she'd worn to work, along with knee-high black boots that accompanied it. She opened the window beside the bed before she ducked into the closet to find something more appropriate for webslinging.
Peter arrived at Gwen's basically exactly on time, and yes, maybe he swung most of the way there with a backpack full of clothes. He'd gotten so used to getting dressed on other people's roofs by now that it seriously felt second nature, and while it was going to get too hot pretty soon to wear a spidey suit under a layer of clothes, some sacrifices had to be made, for great power and things. And it was faster than the subway.
He hopped down the fire escape still pulling on his left shoe. He didn't bother to tie it until he was one floor up, checked his phone, and saw that he was indeed right on schedule and thus could take the time to put some rabbit ears on that sucker. He wore a loose, light button up and the only halfway decent pair of pants he owned. Weekend lab work and weekday photography only paid so much, after all.
The last four years had been strange, hectic, fun, dangerous, and a little lonely. Sure, he was able to see Mary Jane and Harry every once in awhile, and sometimes Flash was around and they'd kind of worked the kinks out of that bromance, but it wasn't the same as having everyone together the way they had been in high school. He knew that was kind of the deal - you went to college and met new people - but it felt different, somehow. They weren't just his friends, they were people who knew his big secret, who helped him hide fun stuff like gunshot wounds and internal bleeding from his aunt, who covered for him in class. Without them around, being Spider-man was a little more isolating, a little more removed. He couldn't just call someone up for a decompression session every time he almost died. Maybe that was a good thing - it made him rely a little more on himself than he had in the past, to learn how to calm his own neurotic self down when the Rhino almost tenderized him into Spider sauerbraten on Fifth Avenue. Maybe he was a tougher, better person, more self-reliant. Mostly, though, it just felt kind of lonely.
Now that everyone was rolling back into town, though, things were looking up. And he had in fact made friends during college - just not the same kind of friends. He would have been lying through his teeth if he tried to pretend he wasn't nervous to see Gwen again, but he was going to just be on his best behavior and cross his fingers. Hard. He took the last few steps down to her window and promptly plopped down beside it, as if ready to have a nice siesta right there, leaning one arm on the window sill. "Hi." She looked beautiful. "You look beautiful." Wait, had he said that out loud? "Wait, did I say that out loud?"
She looked back at him, and she smiled. It was a genuine smile, not obstructed by concern about maintaining appearances or getting the things she said right. It was bright blue eyes and a warm tip of glossed lips, and she left her clothing hunting behind for a moment and walked over to the open window, kicking her boots off as she went. And, sure, the dress was a little formal, but she'd always liked classic fashion, and it only made her feel more confident as she grew older. In college, everyone else had preferred jeans and shorts, but she'd never been that girl, not in New York, not in California. Anyway, Oscorp came with a lab coat with her name on it, and whatever she wore beneath the coat was barely visible anyway.
Once she reached the window, she reached through and tugged on his arm. "Get in here, Peter Parker," she said, cheeks blush warm. "If you're going to make me blush, you need to let me get a good look at you," she informed him, pulling on the fabric of his sleeve and forcing herself not to look at him too closely out there, not when she couldn't take in all the ways maturity had changed him in the intervening years. Scientifically, she would be able to categorize every change. She could make a study of it, if she wanted to. But she didn't. Mostly she just wanted to see the things that the occasional, blurry Skype webcam session hadn't shown her.
As for being beautiful, she tugged on his arm again. "Beautiful is a word you save for people like Mary Jane," she teased, but there wasn't the old jealousy there. It was just a reminder of her own high school stupidity. And maybe the insecurity was still there, but she had resolved not to make envying Mary Jane her entire adulthood. It had consumed her final year of high school, and she wasn't going to let it steal any more of her time. After all, she had a Noble Peace Prize to win. She stepped back. "Get in here, and stand up straight, bug boy."
Peter slipped through the window, bending down and standing just where he set his feet down inside. She looked even better when he could see her top to bottom. He'd never seen Gwen wear something with a neckline like that and he couldn't help but notice. He was only human, after all, if slightly augmented by spider DNA. Her face, however, was distracting enough. She definitely looked older, and different, a little more self-possessed.
He was definitely nervous, but, despite the incident just now on the fire escape, he'd gotten a little better about hiding it over the years. He still ran his mouth, of course, but not as much as he once had. And he did look older, and more like a man than a boy, though there was still all kid in that halfway grin, like he was doing just now. Still wiry, still the skinniest superhero in all the land with all the tight cords of muscle of a ballet dancer, and a little more leaping power to boot. "I don't save that word for anyone but the people who deserve it," he said, and while it was a little embarassingly effusive, it was true. He looked down at her shoes for a second and felt another wave of nervousness.
"Don't mind me if I pass out," he said. "I haven't been in a girl's apartment in forever. This is a big event for me."
The nervousness was so patently Peter Parker that she couldn't help but smile. She saw more similarities, just in that moment of him standing in her room, between her Peter and this one than she'd ever seen before. Her Peter had been impossibly shy. Not with bullies or lizards, but with girls, and she could still fondly remember his toe scuffing and the way he'd rubbed the back of his neck when he didn't know what to say to her. He'd never lost that boyish shyness, not until they'd ended up here, and then he'd changed so much that she sometimes didn't recognize him. But standing there, this Peter reminded her of the one before all this mess, and her smile warmed and her cheeks went pink. "You've grown up," was her final verdict, after looking at him too long to be absolutely necessary.
"Sit down on the bed. It'll reduce the probability of lack of oxygen or blood flow to your brain," she said, glad to have teasing to fall back on. She turned toward the closet before waiting for him to move, because she was twenty-one years old now. She wasn't in high school, and she wasn't going to act like silly little Gwen Stacy. Despite the fact that she was acting like silly little Gwen Stacy. And she hadn't done that since- Well, it had been a long time.
She tugged at the dress' zipper as she went, disappearing into the tiny closet, which was a tight squeeze, after baring an unthinking expanse of pale skin along her spine. She emerged a few minutes later, a pair of cropped linen pants in tan, and a thin, crop-necked sweater in cream. She stepped into a pair of brown flats, and she pushed her hair out of her face with a headband, and then she stopped in front of the bed. "Ready. Go easy on me, bug boy. It's been awhile, and I'm not sure I'm as flexible as I used to be," she teased.
"Never. I don’t grow up. I'm Spider-Pan," he said, and sat down on the bed as instructed. He bounced lightly, once, testing the spring of the mattress, mostly to do something with himself. "I like it," he said, realizing as he said it that telling a girl you liked her bed was probably easy to misconstrue. "I mean, it's comfortable. For sitting on. With my butt. And no other parts."
And then Peter stopped talking, because Gwen was pulling down the zipper on the back of her dress, and suddenly that question of blood flowing to his brain was a total no-go because it had other places to be! And he was going to die, looking at that impossibly long v of cool, creamy skin before she disappeared into the closet.
He bounced again. Right. He needed to keep his cool. Good luck.
When she came back out he stood up sharply. "Hey," he said, and it took him a long moment to remember what she meant. "Oh! Yes." Good thing he'd kept the suit on under his clothes. "I didn't want to come to your window all indecent," he said, even as he reached for the zipper on his pants. "Don't run," he said, while taking them off, "Not a perv, just a superhero, got a suit on under here I promise."
He was sort of an expert at getting his clothes on and off over his suit now, not for sexy reasons unfortunately, mostly for trying not to die reasons, so it only took him a few seconds to ditch the pants, the slacks, and the shoes and stuff them in his bag. The mask was in there, the old trooper crumpled at the bottom, and he tugged it out and zipped up the pack. "You get to carry the magic bag," he said, and handed it to her to sling over her back. "I hope you feel special." Then he hopped into the window sill and tilted his head down. "Do I get to sing Aladdin while we do this?"
She rolled her eyes at his theatrics about sitting on the bed, and her voice was closet-door muffled as she called back to him. "Sitting on other parts wouldn't be ergonomically sound," she informed him, before waiting for him to go through the process of getting out of his clothes. "I can carry a backpack. I haven't developed any spinal deformities in the past four years," she assured him. It made her think of nights webslinging when she was a teenager. Those never came with the suit. Peter had just used the shooters, but it had been hoodies and jeans all the way, along with midnight picnics on the edges of the tallest roofs New York had to offer. "I've seen you naked, Peter Parker," she reminded him, mostly to frazzle him, because she had forgotten how much fun it could be. She hadn't spent any of her time in college dating, but time had made it easier to banter about everything, sex included. And it wasn't the same Peter, but she figured his reaction to the teasing would be statistically identical.
She slung the backpack over her shoulders. "I insist you sing," she told him, a smile that was genuine and very reminiscent of the girl she had been for years earlier. "I'll make notes, and point out all the tonal deficiencies once we get to McDonalds." She took his hand.
She succeeded in frazzling Peter, and good for her! He could acknowledge a smoothly executed ribbing when he saw one. "The things you forget about in four years," he said, and tsked, and turned a little red.
Peter didn't forgo the suit much anymore, not when he was swinging around. There was steadily more, not less, at stake, and getting recognized because the wind blew a hood off wasn't going to do anyone any favors. That smile got him ten kinds of distracted, and he reciprocated as she took his hand. He gave it a quick squeeze, then pulled her in.Yeah, maybe he took advantage of needing to be sure she was anchored tight around him to pull her close as could be.
And then they were off, swinging over rooftops and through alleyways, around sharp corners with stomach deadening drops, then arcing high up over cement, concrete, and traffic lights. It took him a minute to adjust to her added weight, but when you had the proportionate strength of a spider and everything she was practically nothing at all. He started to sing ‘A Whole New World’ after they went flying around a corner at seventy miles an hour toward downtown, the buildings getting taller and the jumps between the hissing fire of webs getting longer, momentum carrying them down entire city blocks. He didn’t have a great singing voice, but he made up for it in commitment to remembering all the lyrics while carrying Gwen and swinging between buildings.
There was a moment of grown-up panic when his arm slid around her waist. Somehow, slinging around on a thin web seemed more frightening now that she was older, as if the immortality of youth had left the building. She didn't even realize she'd had the sense of immortality that was pervasive in the young, not with the expectation of bridges in her future. But she definitely felt more uncertain about the entire webslinging business than she'd had when she was younger. She clung too tight, and she squeezed her eyes shut in a way that was not at all appropriate for a doctoral student, and she might have even made an unintended sound that resembled a squeak. She could justify it as the compression of oxygen through- No, it was definitely a squeak.
But his off-key singing, after her heart had stopped threatening to leave her body, made her laugh, and she wasn't holding on quite as tightly after a few blocks. There was even the possibility that blood was circulating in her fingers again. "You're crazy, Peter Parker," she said against his cheek, a smile on her lips despite the fact that she felt more than a little ridiculous. It was, possibly, the most carefree thing she'd done in four years, and it hurt to smile as much as she was smiling.
"You know," Peter said, over the wind, as they swung deliriously over the hundredth building, coming almost tragically close to the heads of a group eating at a rooftop restaurant, "You're the first non-supervillain to say that to me!"
The threat of the bridge loomed eternally around the corner. He knew Gwen thought of it, and he did too, but what could they do? Norman was here, and he was still alive, but so was Gwen. It was supposed to have happened years ago now, and it hadn't. That didn't mean he trusted Norman, or that he didn't still have the occasional nightmare, his brain trying to catch up with the concept, envisioning it in horrifying detail so he could repeatedly rehearse how to save her without breaking her neck. Because there had to be a way, right? He could save half of New York, and he had. If he couldn't save Gwen Stacy, what good was he?
Those thoughts were blissfully far from him at that particular moment, though, too preoccupied with multitasking swinging and singing and talking and making sure she was anchored to him as tight as could be. "I should sell tours!" he shouted, as they came dangerously close the ground and then swooped up again, the world's biggest carnival swing ride. "See New York on the back of a dashing spider boy!" Then he let go and they were flying freely upward. And it was almost as good as just being able to fly with no strings, enough that he sometimes forgot, for half a second, that he couldn't.
A minute and a half later and they came in for a landing. "Get ready," he advised. "Landing gear locked - and -" Peter dropped to the rooftop from a few feet up, releasing the string of webbing that had fired from his wrist and running, then walking to a stop.
"Air Spidey is now disembarking," he informed her. "Don't forget your baggage."
It had never occurred to her to consider how his failure in the "bridge scenario," as she'd dubbed it in her mind, would have affected him. During all those months of worrying once she'd ended up in high school here, secure in the knowledge that her days were numbered in a way she hadn't been previously aware of, she'd never stopped to consider. She'd only seen her continued existence as an impediment to his eventual future with Mary Jane. She had to die for his story to progress, and that was how she'd always viewed the situation. He wasn't with Mary Jane now, and she wondered how much of that was because she and Flash hadn't met the fates that were destined for them. The perpetual scientist in her balked at the notion of any predestination, but it had given the girl she had been nightmares.
She didn't try to scream past the wind that whipped by in order to counter his tourism plan. She waited until her feet were on the rooftop, and until her hands were settled on his shoulders. She waited for gravity to catch up with her, and she didn't shy away from him like she might have done years ago. A strand of blond was tucked behind one ear a moment later, and she handed him his backpack a moment after that. "You're going to have to stop referring to yourself as a boy, Peter Parker. You've outgrown that designation," she explained, looking up at his full height and making a point with the tip of her chin and the smile on her lips.
She looked down over the edge of the roof next, down to where the New York traffic bustled on the sidewalk below. "Are you going to bring me a Big Mac with no true nutritive value, or are we climbing down?" she asked, cheeks red from the webslinging and a hand reaching back to squeeze his fingers unthinkingly. She almost wanted to bounce on her toes, which she was fairly sure was inappropriate reaction to anything after the age of twenty; but she wanted to do it anyway.
Peter had a moment, just a moment, as they came to a stop, where he was able to look over his shoulder at her as she swung to a stop and tucked her hair behind her ear. The sun was going down slowly and the light caught her hair in just the right way. Then she handed the backpack to him and he jolted back to reality. Right. "I'm a boy on the inside," he insisted, pulling the mask off and ducking down to fetch his clothes from the backpack. "Just not in as creepy a way as that sounded."
He got his clothes on and slipped his feet into his shoes (laces already tied for general quick change efficiency). When she took his fingers and squeezed, he smiled a sideways kind of smile. "We're going down," he said. The building wasn't all that tall, only five stories or so, the restaraunt on the first floor. They’d made it all the way to SoHo on their citywide trip, based on the surroundings."Old school fire escapes are one of my favorite things," he informed her walking over to the edge with her hand still in his. "It's funny, the things that find their way into your heart when you're on rooftops on a regular basis." He turned to face her again just in front of the ladder leading down. "Want a ride down, or are you going to brave the ladders, nice lady?"
"I refuse to be a girl on the inside or the outside," she admitted. "I did really badly with that the first time around, and I'm starting to think I wouldn't do any better this time." She'd prepared for coming home in every logical way she'd been able to think of, but she was quickly realizing that New York made it too easy to go back to being herself, and that wasn't actually what she'd intended after four years away from the people here. Her visions of returning confident and beautiful and nowhere near as socially awkward as she had been were quickly fading, and the smile she gave him when he pulled off the mask was slightly shadowed.
She looked down at the ladder, then at the sidewalk again, and she noticed the dearth of golden arches. After quirking a blonde brow, she let go of his hand, and she answered him by climbing onto the fire escape. "I'm still a New York gir- woman, bug boy," she said, the smile brightening her features again. "Fire escapes are a way of life." And even rich neighborhoods, like the one she'd grown up in, that'd been true. Granted, using the fire escape from her parents skyline condo hadn't been fun, and she'd only done it once in her life, but she'd done it.
She climbed down in silence, not saying anything until she dropped down in front of Mooncake Foods. She'd never been inside the place, because she'd always been too uptown for places like the red storefront, but she'd heard of it. She waited for him, and she grinned when he joined her. "This isn't McDonalds," she chided, as if she'd been looking forward to her nutritionally bereft Big Mac.
"I do so hate to disappoint," Peter said, as he landed beside her. "But I think you could ask them for a burger and see what happens? Pretty sure this place is run by hipsters, so asking for a burger at an asian food place might just turn their ironic cranks all the way to 'fun'."
The restaurant was a hole in the wall, but clean and just dim enough to feel appropriate for dinner. Everything on the tables looked good as well, and Peter felt a general sense of relief that Yelp hadn't lied to him. What, was he supposed to get all his information from web-slinging flybys? After you’d seen one kitschy cafe-esque storefront in SoHo they all became a blur. He gave their name to the guy up front, who informed them it'd be ten minutes. "They don't take reservations," Peter told her, sliding past the crowd of people toward the bar. "Because that would be too functional. Too easy. No challenges to getting the food."
He pointed to a seat at the bar. "We should sit. You can order a drink if you drink which I have no idea if you do and this is a chance for me to learn a new fact about you."
"I expect reservations from Harry Osborn, Peter Parker. I don't expect them from you," she said, a smile in her voice as she followed him to the bar. And that was one of the many things that set Peter and Harry apart. Harry had always been smooth as silk, wealth and popularity and not even the slightest hint of shyness or uncertainty. Even as a child, when Harry had been so willing to please, he'd been confident about it. Peter, on the other hand, had always been scuffed toes and shy smiles. She wondered, as she slid up onto the barstool and ordered a glass of white wine.
"I don't drink," she said, once he placed his own drink order, and once she had the stem of the wine glass between her fingers. "I haven't touched a drop since high school, which you can lecture me about, if you want. Peter always hated when I had anything to drink," she told him, and that had been the foundation of a few good arguments back then. She could go on to explain all the negative effects of alcohol on the human body, like the fact that it was actually a poison, but the truth was that she could use the stress relief tonight. She took a long sip, and she looked at him over the rim of the glass. "Does it bother you that we're all back here?" she asked him, wondering if he'd been glad to be free of all the drama they brought with them.
"I can be organized," Peter said, gravely. "I regularly organize my physics textbooks, okay? I sold back all the other ones, but the physics ones stay for bedtime reading."
Peter's thrilling drink was for a coke with grenadine and a bendy straw, and he slid onto the seat next to her with all the nervous enthusiasm of a 50s teenager at his first soda shop date. His mouth continued on without him, as it tended to do, best indication that he was, indeed, nervous. "Peter like another Peter, the other guy? You're giving me a complex, here, I'm going to get multiple personalities or something." And then he thought of Harry and he almost winced, but didn't. "I don't really care," he said, honestly. "I don't, but everyone else doesn't have to...be on call all the time, or whatever. Have as much as you like. Have an entire bottle of cherry flavored vodka. Except don't, I tried that stuff once, it's disgusting."
The bartender delivered Peter's doctored soda with a look, and Peter reciprocated with a weak smile, a smile that said, I know, I know, it's not mixology. He took a sip of his very sweet cherry coke. "No?" he said. Crap, voicing that as a question probably sounded weird. "I mean, it doesn't bother me. I'm glad everyone's back. I'm actually surprised that you would think that would bug me, hence the question in my voice. It wasn't because I couldn't decide. How's Harry, by the way?" Subtle segue! "You mentioned him earlier," he said. "I haven't talked to him in a while."
"I keep forgetting that you were a dork once," she said with playful wistfulness. It was a lie, of course. Right around the time that she'd decided that Peter Parker was the cutest guy in her class, she'd also noticed that he was the closest contender when it came to GPA and her eventual goal of Valedictorian. That had been two weeks into freshman year, and while she hadn't realized he was Spider-man until he'd webbed her hip on her parents' balcony, she had watched his GPA slip steadily since junior year. At the time, she hadn't thought anything of it, secure in her own academic superiority, and still convinced that he was the cutest guy in school. By the time graduation came around, she'd started to seriously worry about his academic future. But he'd managed, and she was glad, and she thought keeping physics books was kind of cute. Cute, she was sure, was supposed to be left behind in high school, but the word would probably always apply to Peter Parker.
She finished her wine, glad for the warmth and the soft buzz. She needed that after a few stressful days back in New York. "Peter, like that other guy. Let's assume, with Peter being a fairly common name, that I've known two people with the same designation," she suggested, a smile in her pale blue eyes. Cherry vodka made her pull a face, because that sounded terrible, and she almost laughed at the look the bartender gave his soda. "Once, I told you that it wasn't your job to save everyone, and you told me I was wrong. This time I'm going to tell you that you can take a day off every once in awhile." She knew he was going to disagree with that too. Her expression, her smile, clouded as soon as he mentioned Harry. "I haven't spoken to him since prom," she admitted. She fiddled with the stem of the empty wineglass. "It was an embarrassing night. I begged him to kiss me, and he said he wouldn't, and I forced a kiss on him anyway. I don't blame him for not keeping in touch," she said honestly, if mortified.
There had been a lot to worry about in high school, what with managing classes and saving the city, and his attendance had slipped as a consequence. His grades had followed suit, and regular lectures from his teachers, of course, hadn't changed anything. College had been easier to manage - he'd kept his classes to the early daylight hours, caught sleep in the afternoon, and headed out to patrol the streets on lunchbreaks and at night after work. He hadn't slept a whole lot, but he'd done a lot better the second time around with the whole school thing. "In a galaxy really close to this one," he said.
"Got it." It really was easier just to think of the Peter who had been there before him as some other person everybody had known with the same name. Not accurate, but easier. He smiled halfway when she reminded him it wasn't his job to save everyone, and took a sip of his really sweet soda when she informed him that he could take a day off sometimes. He shrugged. "I know, but it's really important to me to keep up that sort of Steve Jobs work ethic, you know? I don't know what his was, but it must have been really good. He invented the iPhone."
Then Harry came up, and he watched as her face dropped. He didn't realize what had happened still stung her badly enough that bringing him up would make her wince. "I didn't know that," he said. He didn't know why, but he always assumed they must have patched things up at some point. Harry had seemed normal enough, so it was too strange to think that he'd gone four years without so much as dropping Gwen a line. Admittedly, her description of events cleared it up a little. "That's...kind of messed up," he said. "Not on your end, I mean. On his. I know he really liked you. I don’t know why he would have said no." After everything that had happened with the video, though, maybe that explained his reluctance. In fact, it never occurred to Peter that Harry’s feelings for Gwen might have gone beyond ‘like’, and if Peter had seen any evidence of that, he wouldn't have asked Gwen on a date tonight. "Do you still...are you still interested in him?" They weren't kids anymore, and if dinner was just dinner and not a date, that was fine. But it would be good to know that, before he got ahead of himself. He wasn’t going to get between his friend and another friend. Not if they were both into each other, no way.
"Maybe you can get your dork mojo back," she suggested, pointing at his drink and asking for one of her own, when the bartender came back and gave Peter that completely unimpressed look again. Solidarity, the smile she gave Peter said, and the fluttering of lashes that she would have considered so superficially pointless in high school made the bartender smile sheepishly, almost apologetically as he gave her the sweet drink. Maybe she was still socially awkward on the inside (and sometimes on the outside), but she'd done a lot of observing in college, and she'd learned her fair share. After all, every good scientist knew that observation was the key to getting to the bottom of any problem, even how to fit in. As for his work ethic, she gave him a look over her soda that would have normally included a smack to his arm, except they were in public, and she was trying to act non-buzzed and completely mature. "Steve Jobs died," she reminded him. There was no proof that webslinging caused cancer, but it seemed like a valid argument, since no one had disproven it either.
His acknowledgement that he didn't know about her completely embarrassing last words with Harry Osborn made her smile slightly. "At least he didn't pronounce it to the world," she said, twirling her straw between two fingers. "Harry and I were friends from preschool. I made things unbelievably weird, and it's my solemn vow not to carry that weirdness into the workplace." When he asked if she she was still interested in Harry, she looked up from the straw and regarded him. She'd practiced answering this question in a million witty, well-thought out ways. Most of her responses had been charted out for maximum coolness, because that was how people dealt with supremely embarrassing things in their pasts. But she couldn't look at that crooked smile at him and feed him a line, and she hadn't been honest with anyone in years; she kind of wanted to leave that part of college life in California. "It was really bad the first year. You know all those scientifically unprovable things that people say about heartbreak? It was like that. I was so unbelievably pathetic," she said truthfully. "Then it got better. And, eventually, I got to the point where I just missed my best friend."
She smiled, and when their name was called, she swiveled gracefully on the barstool and placed her feet on the floor. "Why, Peter Parker? Does that matter to you?" she asked flirtily; she'd watched people doing that too. She'd never be Mary Jane Watson, bright red and dynamic, but she could hold her own these days, at least that's what her practice sessions in the mirror told her.
Peter wiggled one arm. "I think I'm feeling the mojo return. I have to dig out my pocket protector when I get home." He liked that smile, and the flutter of lashes that came with it. "He did die. But from cancer, not from working," Peter pointed out, before she had a chance to bring up slinging and cancer cause-effect as a hypothesis. "So you've got some bad variables working against you on that theory."
Peter had somehow completely forgotten that Gwen was going to work for Oscorp, and he was faced with a dilemma when she brought it up. Leave the subject alone and preserve the mood, or bring it up and kill the fun? "Or you could just work somewhere else and then you wouldn't have to worry about it!" he said, all cheer. The hostess called their names and he hurriedly grabbed his drink, saving himself from needing to go into any further detail just yet.
Once they were sitting down, in a small booth near the corner of the room, he set his drink down. "I think I'm going to get to be the crazy conspiracy theorist about Norman Osborn until I start making two hour videos on youtube like those truther people," he said, wistful and sheepish but the worry bleeding through. He knew how he must sound, and he knew what it seemed like, but he also knew what he'd seen Norman Osborn do. He knew what he was supposed to do to Gwen, or supposed to have already done. And he knew what Norman had done to Harry, where he'd come from. "He's just not...safe," he finished, lamely. Gwen's description of her feelings for Harry seemed like a good enough reason to shift off the topic. Preaching against Norman wasn't going to win him any favors with anyone, because even if he had a goblin in his head that made a guy crazy that one time, apparently he could still be a saint.
Peter listened to Gwen talk about Harry and wasn't sure what he felt. He hadn't realized her feelings for him had been so serious that it had taken her years to get over it, and it made him feel guilty. If he'd known that when he asked her to prom, he wouldn't have. He'd have told her to go with the guy she liked. "I get that," he said. "Are things better after talking to him?"
Peter actually flushed, just a little, when she asked if it mattered to him, and he laughed. "Maybe?" he said, looking up at her. "Not...if you don't want it to matter?" The waitress appeared at just that moment, and Peter looked down at the menu he hadn't even glanced at yet before asking for another minute. When she was gone again, he was a little more collected. Still a touch pink in the cheeks, though. You could take the dork out of Queens... "I guess my answer depends on your answer." He was hopeful, but there was real concern there too. "If you guys are working things out, there's no way I'm getting between that. That's way too Jersey Shore. I don't know if that show is even on anymore."
"There's no proof that webslinging isn't detrimental to your health," she pointed out, once they were seated, and once she'd glanced down at the menu long enough to order noodles with tofu. "You can come be my lab rat for genetic modification," she said, lowering her voice for privacy. "Talk about an impressive doctoral thesis." She took a second longer to address his comment about Oscorp, because she knew he wasn't alone in feeling that it wasn't the safest job choice. "I've wanted to work at Oscorp since I was a little girl, Peter. If Mr. Osborn really can't control his problem, then Harry will take over. Either way, he's not going to throw me off of anything because of Mr. Donovan. He won't do it," she assured him, because she'd decided that was how she'd survived high school and college and, hopefully, how she would survive into the future. Mr. Osborn seemed to like his current situation, and killing her would threaten it.
"I don't know," she admitted, when he asked if things were better after e-mailing with Harry. "He got snappy with me part way through, but I probably brought back all kinds of bad memories," she admitted, glad when the food arrived, because it gave her something distracting to do. The noodles were twirled around her chopsticks, then untwirled, and she finally looked up at him and smiled when he said maybe. "Peter, there's nothing for Harry and I to work out. I was into him, and he made it very clear that he wasn't interested in me at all. It hurt for awhile, but I'm not going to chase Harry Osborn for the rest of my life," she told him, and it felt true just then. Just then, she felt like maybe Harry didn't matter as much as he once had. "I just want to apologize and make peace, and I want to maybe get to the point where he can be my friend without having horrible flashbacks of the way I threw myself at him."
Maybe it was too honest, but it felt good to say it. If she'd said the same words to Mary Jane, she would have given her some line about how Harry was crazy. Flash would have said something about Harry being out of her league. Neither thing would have made her feel any better. She had a feeling Peter wouldn't go either of those routes, and maybe it was just easier to talk to him about some stuff than it was to talk to the others. She took a bite of her noodles. "Which means you can ask me out to dinner next time."
Peter raised a brow as his own food was slid onto the table. "That would be a coup. All the scientific journals would want to know how you got -" he paused, waiting for the waitress to wander away again. "Spider-man to pee into a cup," he said, as soon as she was gone, with a sweet smile.
He wouldn't tell her, but hearing her say she'd dreamed of a job at Oscorp made him feel tired. This was going to be a long haul, convincing her it wasn't safe to stay there. But he smiled anyway, for her sake. "Okay," he said. "I hope you're right, about Harry." He was starting to feel like a broken doomsaying record who told people things they didn't want to hear.
It was, at least, good to hear that Gwen wasn't still hung up on Harry, if it was true that he wasn't interested. "You're sure?" he asked, because he had to be. "Hey, that's really great. I really hope you can still be friends. I would hate to be torn between the two of you and have to make some kind of dramatic rose giving decision." It was a joke, but it was true. He needed to have a talk with Harry, make sure that Gwen was right about him not being into her, then or now. Peter didn't tell her Harry was out of her league, because he wasn't, and he didn't tell her Harry was crazy, because that got into too literal a realm, too close to home. Harry could not be interested in Gwen romantically and not be a jerk, and still want to be her friend. He hoped that was the case.
To the news that he could ask her out next time, Peter appeared affronted. "Are you suggesting I didn't take initiative?" he asked. He snapped apart his chopsticks and began dropping toppings into his pho. "If I was still in grade school, my report card would have some stern notes on it about my behavior."
"I could ruin your squeaky clean image and say I got you to pee in the cup by holding it," she teased, and her cheeks still went red with the joke. Okay, maybe she should stay away from things that were too suggestive, she decided; she couldn't pull them off believably. She made the determination to not pursue that particular line of teasing any further, but she did give him a smile when he backed off about Mr. Osborn and Oscorp.
As for being sure about Harry, she pointed her chopsticks at him. "Stop that, Peter Parker. Yes. If he doesn't want to be my friend, I won't push him. But I'd like it. And I really do want to move on. The end of high school was really hard for me, and the first year of college was terrible. I'm here now, and I want to start fresh, okay?" Which meant that she didn't want to spend every waking moment evaluating the feelings she'd very intentionally put aside for Harry Osborn. She could have continued to explain all the empirical evidence that existed about Harry's disinterest in her, but that would only sound petty and hung up, and she didn't want to do that either. She was an adult now, and she was going to make choices for herself, not because of her teenage love for Harry Osborn. And she'd loved Peter - her Peter. Before Harry, she'd loved Peter in that can't sleep at night kind of way. She knew there was more to life than Harry Osborn.
She gave him a little smile that said well?, when he asked if she thought he hadn't taken the initiative, but she turned her attention to her noodles. She ate quietly for awhile, and then she looked up at him curiously. "You could have asked me out in high school. Why didn't you?" It wasn't a vain question, as indicated by the pure confusion in her gaze. If she was reading him right, then he was letting her know that he was at least slightly interested in getting to know her, and she had a hard time believing that seeing her for all of two hours could have changed his opinion of her so greatly. She couldn't help but think things might have been different, had he said something then. Maybe she wouldn't have- But, no, that was a useless thought. She just waited for his answer instead, folding her napkin and setting it on the table.
Peter liked that Gwen still blushed when she made even the mildest of dirty jokes. It made him feel like, whatever else had changed, she hadn't really changed at her core since she'd been away at college, and she wasn't really all that different at all from the girl he'd known before he came to this version of the world, where he'd had to start out a stranger to everyone again. She was still Gwen, red in the cheeks at a naughty joke. "Did J.J. offer you a tell-all or something?" he asked, with a real smile then.
Peter hadn't actually meant whether she was sure Harry didn't want to be friends. He wanted to be sure Harry was as disinterested in her as she assumed. But he was willing to trust her on this one, even if he would gently broach the subject with Harry later. At the very least, he had to be making her think he wasn't interested. Of course, with Mr. Disapproving for a father, there were always other reasons why Harry might feign indifference. "Okay," he said. "No more inquisition. Promise."
Her question caught him a little off-guard, and his smile softened when he saw your confusion. "I...I think I thought I did," he said, that smile gone a little wistful and hesitant. "I asked you to prom. Do you remember? But then we all went as a group, and then...that was it, you were off at college.” He laughed a little, and tried not to look as self-conscious as he felt. “It took me a couple months just to get up the courage to ask you that. We were like strangers, almost, even though I knew you. It was still all pretty new. Once you were off at school, I figured...” he grasped for words. He didn’t know quite how to explain it to her without it sounding too thoughtful, or too strange. “I figured you’d find somebody at college,” he said. “Or patch things up with Harry. Either way, I wasn’t going to...you know, get in your way. It wouldn’t have been fair, asking you to sit on your hands at college for me. You barely knew me.” It was as honest as he could be. When Gwen had slipped through his fingers and left town, he’d always assumed that was the end of it. How could he be so lucky as to get a second chance when she was such a catch? Surely she’d find somebody at college, and go somewhere he couldn’t follow.
"Now you know my secret," she said of J.J. and a tell-all. "I'm going to sell my story of webslinging with Spider-man to ensure my perpetual notoriety. When I accept my Noble prize, I'll mention my famous webslinging expose, and I'll hope it eclipses the surfacing video files from my high school indiscretion," she said, perfectly willing to poke fun at her own embarrassing experience, and just as willing to accept the fact that one afternoon in the Midtown High science lab was going to affect her entire future in ways that she couldn't even share with anyone. She wanted to talk about it, but every time she'd considered confiding in someone over the past four years, she'd stopped herself, and she wasn't even certain what it is she feared. Not Harry, because she honestly believed Harry Osborn wouldn't care. But still, she kept her secrets close to the vest, and she gave him a smile that matched his honest one. "I care about Harry, Peter," she said, her closing statement, "but I want to move on. I don't want to be the nerd that sits around pining and adopting cats into middle age."
Her smile warmed a little when he promised the inquisition was over. It wasn't that she minded his line of questioning, but talking about Harry's lack of feelings for her really wasn't how she wanted to start things in New York. His reminder that he had asked her to prom made her sit back a little in the booth and regard him, her nearly empty bowl of noodles pushed away from her. "I remember, and we really didn't go as a group. We went together in a limo, and then we all broke apart," she said, but that was indicative of their entire high school experience. They had all considered themselves connected, but she wasn't even sure they had liked each other very much as a whole. "I concentrated on my schoolwork in college," she admitted. "Flash says it's because he wasn't around to force me to be less robotic, which likely has some truth to it," she admitted. "I was- I was sick a lot my Freshman year, and I never made up the lost time as far as friendships." Which amounted to college being quiet, but lonely, especially after living with Flash Thompson. She grinned a little wider when he said it wouldn't have been right to ask her to sit on her hands. "You can ask me on a date without proposing matrimony, Peter Parker," she said, folding her napkin on the table and pulling enough money to pay for both meals out of her pocket. After all, she'd asked him out.
Peter smiled. "Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much," he said. "There's a guy in Congress now with naked pics. By the time you're accepting your Noble prize, you won't need to smear my webslinging name to get people to forget about it." He firmly believed that Gwen was brilliant enough that the quality of her work had to shine through. It just had to. Maybe it wouldn't for everybody, but it would for the people who mattered, the people not stupid enough to believe sexual mores had any effect on a person's capability to do a good job. "Bu you're so good with cats," he said, with a wince of disappointment in her unwillingness to adopt them. He shook his head. "So many cats without homes," he added, with a sad, guilting twist of his mouth.
He swallowed another few mouthfuls of noodles and spicy broth as she spoke. Maybe pho hadn't been the best polite date food to choose, but damn, it was tasty. "Basically," he said, of her recollection of prom. He'd had a date, and then he'd had no date, and in the end prom had ended up being a lot of him talking to his friends one more time before they skipped town for greener pastures. Not so much what he'd been hoping for, but hey, a few years earlier he'd expected prom would amount to him going without a date, probably tagging along with Harry and whatever girl he'd picked up, and then standing off to the side praying somebody got really desperate after their boyfriend passed out drunk or something and they wanted a dance partner. All things considered, things had improved a lot.
"Sick a lot?" he asked. He didn't remember her ever mentioning that when they talked intermittently on skype, that was for sure. "Why?" As she laid money on the table, he swept it up himself. "You say we're not getting married, but we clearly already have a joint account if you're paying for me," he said. "Thanks, by the way. One for you, and one for you." He counted out the bills, laying hers back in front of her in two neat piles, and tossed his debit card to the startled waiter when he swung by with the check. "Think fast!"
"Your webslinging name will still distract people from my orgasm face, Peter Parker," she said, blushing a bright pink as she said the words, then laughing at her own ridiculous and virginal reaction to a perfectly natural body function. "Society puts such negative stigma on body functions," she said, which just made her blush worse. "And I've managed to regress to high school in one dinner. Way to go, Gwen Stacy. You'll be adopting those cats in no time."
Prom made her feel a little sheepish, because she'd been young and so in love with someone who didn't even want to dance with her, and she was fairly sure she'd just ended up hurting Peter without meaning to, and without even realizing she was doing it. After all, he'd never shown any interest in her, and she was terrible at reading social clues without Flash to interpret them for her. The only reason she could even see it clearly now was because he was being candid enough that she couldn't miss it. It was a science experiment, all the words in the proper places and enough accompanying notes so that she could work her way through without needing to interpret the data herself.
She just nodded when he asked about being sick. "We can talk about that another time," she said, after he stole the money and tossed the debit card, which she tried (and failed) to swipe mid-air. "You're in for it, bug boy," she said, all high color in her cheeks and a smile on her lips. But she didn't follow through just then. She waited for the debit card receipt to be signed, and then she led the way outside and breathed in the New York air, which was so different than California. When he joined her, she leaned over and kissed his jaw. "Thank you."
Gwen's put off about being sick was a bit on the mysterious side, but her earnest blushing wasn't, not even a little bit. She even got him a little with the mention of her 'orgasm face', and he grinned, surprised she'd go so far. "You have grown up," he said, as fond of it as it was funny to see her blush so hard. "It's okay. Don't worry. I bet you're going to be the best cat owner ever. You'll get all the magazines and buy them whatever food they want. There are going to be some very happy cats in New York."
She got him in return, however, with that failed swipe, and then the kiss to his jaw. If there was any evidence at all that he was still he same Peter Parker despite growing up some, it was in the color in his cheeks after she kissed him. Just a little, but it was there, and it came with a smile down at her. "Well, hey," he said, briefly, for just a second there, speechless. "I mean...I think terrorizing the waiter was worth it just for that.” He looked down at her, and went for a move he would have been too afraid to in high school, tucking her hair behind her ear so he could see her eyes a little better. “You’re welcome.” He took two steps down from the door with her, just onto the sidewalk, and kissed her. It was light enough, and chaste enough, but she we just too...Gwen Stacy, with her blush and her sharp blue eyes. He would have been an idiot not to.
His assurance that she had grown up felt nice. She knew she shouldn't need that kind of reinforcement, and that she might lose her feminism card if she even admitted to liking it, but after being away for four years and dreading the return to this place, with all its painful memories, it was nice to have someone who seemed to be pleased with the ways in which she'd changed. Even still, she wasn't expecting the kiss. Maybe she should have been, because her Peter had never needed alcohol to kiss her; that had only been Harry, and yet it had stayed with her longer than any of Peter's youthful interest. But her toes curled in her designer shoes, and she kissed him back, one hand coming to rest on the center of his chest, because gravity could play strange tricks. It was like being back in high school, but not in a bad way, and she gave him a long, searching look as she pulled back. She tried to re-tuck the strand of hair that he'd already tucked away behind her ear, and the realization of what she was doing made her laugh nervously. "Take me home, bug boy," she finally said, sliding her arm through his and motioning toward the cab. "The old fashioned way."