Gwen was (ex_first621) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-09-04 10:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: marvel comics, gwen stacy, spider-man |
Who: Gwen and Peter
What: Soup and kisses
Where: Dr. Banner's lab
When: The day after Gwen and Harry visited the museum
Warnings/Rating: None
Aunt May had made minestrone. It wasn’t Peter’s favorite (he liked the beef stew) but it was still really good, and somehow even better when it was reheated. He knew that Dr. Banner had a microwave in his lab, he remembered it from the last time he’d visited, and just because he had a ton more things to remember about a place--all those new Spidey senses made for little accents like how the plumbing sounded and how the ceiling smelled--didn’t mean his memory was much diminished. He would have preferred to go in a mask just because Dr. Banner’s place felt a little dangerous somehow, not to his spidey-senses (those were so chill it was ridiculous) but just... a feeling. Maybe he had bad memories from Doc Connors.'
Knock knock. Shoving his hands into his jacket pockets, Peter eyed the security pad next to the door and reflexively looked around for cameras. He knew there weren’t any there, because he’d checked before he came as Spidey, but it was just habit, and out here he felt kind of exposed and nervous. Gwen made him nervous. The situation made him nervous. The only thing that didn’t make him nervous was Billy, (who was essentially a very, very distant feeling of reassuring interest in the back of his head) and that was the weirdest thing about it. He hopped nervously from foot to foot, the shopping bag swinging from his arm. ...Knock knock, just in case she hadn’t heard it. “...Gwen?” he called through. “It’s me!”
Gwen had managed to get up, shower in the tiny shower that she was pretty sure Dr. Banner had added on to the Chinatown walk-up that served as his lab, and crawl right back onto the cot in the corner of the lab. She was still texting with Harry when Peter knocked, and she set the phone aside and reached for the thin, grey cardigan that was draped across her thighs, slipping it over the straps of the white, thigh-high nightdress she wore along with a pair of grey knee highs. Her hair was still damp, but she dragged her fingers through it anyway, and then she chided herself. He's not your boyfriend anymore, she reminded herself, as if that made any difference at all in the way the butterflies were flapping their wings in her stomach.
He knocked again, and she realized she hadn't answered him the first time, too lost in acting like a teenage girl, which she'd sworn she was not going to be around him anymore. No, he was disappointed in her, she reminded herself, in order to give herself strength and courage to- to something, she wasn't sure what yet. But when he called out, she slid off the cot and crossed the warehouse. She smoothed down the nightdress just one more time before pulling open the door, her headache a dull throbbing that had been replaced by nervousness. She leaned against the edge of the door, and she gave him a smile that was unintentionally dreamy and flirty by turns. "Peter Parker. I thought you were going to stand me up," she teased.
Peter stared for a second. He always got tongue-tied around her, and he’d never actually seen her when she wasn’t all made up and glistening like sunshine or something. Instead of taking away from her appearance, the lack of polish made his blood pressure spike. He had absolutely no idea why, and was too busy trying to control it rather than wasting energy on self-psychoanalysis. All of this wasn’t a very rapid process, and essentially he stood there for a pause with his jaw hanging open before blinking and getting his limbs in gear. “The thought never crossed my mind.” He gave her a sheepish grin, his default, all flat-planes and deep angles. He made an abortive movement to edge forward, but she was still doing this mouth-watering saucy lean on the door and he came to a stop, the shopping bag swinging again. “Are... uh. You going to let me in to the super secret lab?”
She didn't know what was going on with him, but whatever it was it made her feel immediately better about everything, as if it made Mary Jane's hair less amazingly copper, and her own a much more interesting shade of blonde. It made her cheeks go an inviting pink that she never would have been able to obtain with blush, and she stammered when he asked if she was going to let him in, not even realizing until then that she was blocking his way. "Oh. Yeah. Of course," she managed, and she stepped back and tugged the door open with her, letting it swing wide enough to let him in twice over. "The microwave is in the corner," she added unnecessarily, because she knew he'd been to the lab, and she knew Peter noticed everything, even microwaves. She stared at him a moment longer, an almost shy, but not quite shy stare, to see how he'd changed since she'd seen him. Or maybe it was just because she liked looking at him. She noticed a second later, and she cleared her throat and let the door close behind him.
Inside, Peter was too busy looking around and making a show of dealing with the groceries and his backpack to much notice being stared at. He looked very much the same as when she had last seen him, no visible cuts and bruises, nothing to immediately suggest he was anything but a sheepish kid in high school that needed a haircut. It was still warm out, devastatingly warm, and Peter couldn’t go very long or very far these days before the sweat drowned him and what felt like heat stroke threatened to take over. The money-for-suit issue was starting to get bigger and bigger, and he was eying it like a fisherman eying a tsunami.
Peter went straight over to the microwave, because yes, he had been there before, and he started pushing aside paperwork and laptop cords to clear a space for the food. He didn’t seem to find it necessary to stack such things neatly, or put them aside. Instead he cleared a certain radius and plopped the bag down in the center. “How come you’re staying here so much?” he asked, curiously glancing over and asking the awkward questions without noticing they were awkward.
She leaned back against the door and watched him safely, from a distance, one where she could quickly move if he turned to look at her. It wasn't that she underestimated his ability to move quicker than she could, but she still thought of him as the awkward boy that stood up to Flash when no one would, and she only remembered that he swung around the city in a spider suit as a secondary thing. His hair was longer, and she dreamily remembered how it felt between her fingers for just a second, before reminding herself that no, no, no, she wasn't going to make it easy for him, not when he'd been mostly a jerk in their texts.
She eventually pushed away from the door, and she went to sit on the cot, legs crossed atop the blankets and the white of the nightgown tucked demurely between them, so that an ample amount of thigh was visible, but nothing more. "Mom doesn't come out of her room very much these days, and my brothers aren't home much. They're usually at friends’," she explained, careful to keep from sounding too broken up about it. Peter felt guilty enough about everything as it was. "Anyway, Dr. Banner and I are working on some really interesting things," she said, and that sounded honest. An observant eye would notice things around "her" side of the lab. Petri dishes that features host organisms, slides under the scopes that added parasites to the equations. The books lying around were all about symbiotes and the sentience of parasites, and she even had a working model beside the cot of an attempt to separate a parasite and host with an unspecified electric charge.
Peter was an observant eye when it came to science and girls, though not necessarily a girl, especially if she was sitting there watching him. Peter was under the impression that you didn’t watch girls, that they never liked being watched unless they really liked you, and there wasn’t a way of knowing that for sure, so you had to watch out. Without, actually, watching. Of course. So he looked at the science instead. “I see that. Go go biology.” It was a little dry. The Lizard had made Peter a little gunshy of that stuff. He moved away from the scope he had bent to see, stuck the tupperware into the microwave, and pressed the button. The soup started rotating around and around, and Peter moved away again, this time toward the cot. He saw the look on Gwen’s face, hovering just out of sight under last night’s pallor, and he forgot about pretending not to watch. He sat down next to her. “Maybe your mom just needs more time,” he said sympathetically.
She watched him make his way over to the scopes without much worry. She didn't think he'd be able to put together what she was working on, even if he looked as long as he wanted. "It doesn't sound like your favorite," she said of his comment about biology, but there was understanding there. "It's actually not mine either, but it's important work," she explained, leaving it at that. She'd be lying to herself if she didn't admit that Dr. Banner's mention of Peter in connection with Venom hadn't made her even more keen on finding a fix than she'd been when it was only Flash's problem, but she knew Peter would freak out if he knew about any of it, so she kept it to herself. "We aren't splicing genomes or altering DNA, so it's safe. We're just working on removing parasites from hosts." Which she thought sounded harmless enough.
She watched as he approached the cot, a little surprise showing on her features, which were paler than normal. She thought he would stay over there, way out of reach, and the surprise melted into a warm smile as he neared. She slid her hands down over the fabric between her thighs, pressing her palms against the cot. "She'll be fine eventually," she said of her mom, hoping that would be true. "I don't expect her to get over it overnight. I wouldn't be able to."
Peter did tend to freak out about things. But it was a normal, healthy kind of freak out, he thought, the kind that made him go just a little crazy before he could handle stuff. It was his deal. How he dealt. Whatever it’s called. He opened his mouth to say that he liked biology just fine, even though chemical engineering was more interesting in the long run, but after thinking a moment, he was quiet again. He had this image of Bruce Banner sitting not far away, looking like someone had just killed his dog while having a normal conversation. Peter made the logical conclusion about parasites. He nodded thoughtfully.
Peter settled his weight forward instead of back, crossing his forearms and settling his shoulders above his knees as he rested in a pose that was a little more yogi than teenager. These days Peter was picking up Spidey habits and nobody was really around to correct him, except when he and MJ happened to be through the door and in the house at the same time. Aunt May had closed off the sitting room from the kitchen and the hall in an attempt to give MJ privacy, and Peter was respecting that privacy as much as possible. He could still hear her moving down there sometimes. She didn’t make the same sounds that Gwen did, which was unexpected. You’d think two girls would...
Peter blinked and coughed. Conversation on track. “No. Well. I guess nobody does.” An uncomfortable silence only interrupted by the whirring and cranking of the microwave as it pumped into the minestrone. Peter listened to it for a second before transferring his attention to a fly zipping around somewhere above their heads. Just to have something to look at.
She touched a hand to his shoulder when it hunched forward, over his knees. "I think only bug boys sit like that," she said with a teasing grin. She could tell his mind was somewhere else, and not there with her at all, and that cough made it just a little more obvious, so she didn't address his comment about her mom. She just watched him transfer his attention to the fly, and she let her hand fall away from his shoulder as she stood to get the soup, even though the microwave hadn't indicated that it was ready yet.
She opened the microwave door, and she grabbed a spoon from the tiny sink beside the stand and stirred the thick minestrone, as if distributing it evenly was possibly more important than almost anything. "What are you thinking?" she asked, her back to him and one grey stocking starting to roll down at her knee, which she tried to correct by bending her other leg behind her knee and pushing up at it with her toes. But she didn't turn, and she started counting. She wouldn't turn and look at him until she reached ten, she decided, and she put the soup back in the microwave as she counted in her head, pushing the buttons slowly to kill more time before turning around and looking at him.
The fly landed and Peter blinked again. Peter immediately picked up his weight off his lower half, holding it on his arms and shoulders on the edge of the cot and balancing there as he unfolded his legs and dropped them heavily to the ground. Looking embarrassed, he then stretched out in a far more human, teenage sprawl, heels spread out before him and neck tossed carelessly back. He peeked to see if she was watching him, and she seemed involved in the microwave, so he relaxed. His attention focused again to her toe on her calf, listening to the scrape of material the way he’d listened to the fly’s wings as they sputtered through the air. Peter pushed his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
He forgot to jerk his gaze away when she turned around and his eyes slid upward without the apologetic look he usually wore. Distracted again, he said, “I was thinking about how you sound.” It was very strange and truthful at the same time, and he was too distracted to notice. He put one hand farther back and picked at the seam of material on the opposite end of the cot. “So Billy thinks us being different and doing different stuff means that all these things people think they know from his side won’t happen,” he said, somewhat fiercely.
His unexpected comment was enough to make her forget all her best intentions to pretend she didn't care that he was sitting on her bed, that they were all alone, and that no one was likely to interrupt any time soon. She just stared at the new sprawl of limbs and the lazy toss of his neck, a blush-girl stare that indicated she was just starting to realize her effect on members of the opposite sex in a way that wasn't young anymore, and that she'd noticed his sliding gaze too. "What do I sound like?" she asked, and the microwave beeped and was summarily ignored in favor of the flap of butterfly wings as she awaited his response.
Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't the comment about Billy, but it didn't put her off in the way it might have a week earlier. Maybe that was part of growing up too, realizing the difference between being ignored and definitely not being ignored. "You sound determined," she said, her response to the fierceness in his voice, and it was a little husky and a little heated, and she turned and retrieved the cooling soup and brought it back to the cot with the spoon. She held both items out to him as she sat down, legs criss-crossed on the cot, and her knee against the outside of his thigh. She held her hands out for the soup, and she smiled. "Dr. Banner said the same thing."
“Cool.” Peter smiled too, though the intent line between his eyebrows didn’t fade. He was young, and he could take off real concern like a coat, though he was mature enough to let it linger there when he needed it. Anxiety wasn’t really part of Peter’s nature, and he could worry about things and yet still be utterly present and solid next to her on the cot. He put out one hand and took the soup by resting his fingertips on the corners of the bowl, palm spread. It stuck without trouble and he brought it over his lap to set it on his palm while he waited for her to sit, then offered it again in the air in front of her. It seemed to hover under his hand without effort. “I want to be able to live my own life, you know?”
"Me too, and that means not being scared of things that might happen down the line, not to me or you." She took the soup back, but only after a long stare at his splayed fingers. Sometimes the scientist peeked out from behind the girlish smile and she marveled at what he could do, what science could manage, but it only lasted a moments before she settled against the wall at her back, taking a spoonful of the warm soup. She closed her eyes after, girlish pleasure in the simple taste of a home cooked meal for the first time since her dad died. She pressed her lips together after she swallowed, licked them after, and then she looked at him again. "You never said what I sounded like," she reminded him.
Peter pressed his mouth together, but eventually the tension released and it flowed through his face, leaving behind a resigned tiredness. It didn’t have the pout and distinctive resentment of teenagers everywhere. This was thinking too long about the same thing until you’re ready to explode with it. He just wanted it to stop, and he was willing to fight for it, even if it meant believing things wouldn’t happen, believing that he was better than he was. He took in a deep breath and settled back into the curve of his spine next to her. He smelled like summer in New York, sweaty boy, clean skin, and a little bit of exhaust. Peter always smelled faintly sticky, except in the fall, when there was something crackly in the air that lingered in his hair, something like dry leaves. “Uhhh I said that?” he asked, prevaricating. He cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t know. Depends on what you’re wearing. Kind of whispery, I guess.”
"Kind of whispery?" she asked, turning just the slightest bit to look at him. Like all teenage girls everywhere, she had an internal something that said when a boy was paying attention, and any mention of clothing absolutely set that something off with a blare. "What does what I wear have to do with it?" she asked, turning a little more, and suddenly the soup was much less interesting than it had been, and her head felt much less achy. She set the soup down on the floor beside the cot, the lean making more thigh show, and she took a sip from the water bottle there, before sitting back up again. She was facing him now, her grey-covered knees against his hip and thigh, and she just watched his face and waited for clarity. She thought something might be caught in her throat, or she might stammer if she said anything, so she opted for silence and her best intently curious look.
Peter blinked several times and let his head loll a little bit on his shoulders and his spine slid further down. “Your clothes make sounds when--” Cough. “--you move. I mean. Everybody’s do. I can hear a lot of stuff now. It’s kind of funny just, you know. Hearing things.” Sideways look. His hair was thick off to that side, probably from pulling on it compulsively. “People. Stuff.” He looked twitchy. She was touching him an awful lot and that made sounds, too. Everything did. The lab was air conditioned but Peter was starting to feel warm again. He started to raise one arm but it was somewhat stuck between them so he stopped, dropped it, and lifted the other one to pull on his hair. He caught the first hand before it got anywhere on her leg and pulled that off. Oh, God, this was worse than when they’d first met.
She smiled, and it was a knowing thing of a smile. "My clothes make sounds, and they affect how my voice sounds?" she asked, knowing she was just encouraging all that stammering. It was like the day in the hallway at school, the day with his uncle, and she felt just like she did then, like she wanted to stay right there forever, and she wanted to run away and replay it over and over in her head a million times, and she wasn't sure which one she wanted more. She watched the movements of his arms, his hands, and she raised a blonde brow in question. She could let him off easy, she knew. She could grab the soup bowl and scoot away; she didn't. "What I'm wearing today," she managed, even though the blush that came with it was unmistakable, "what does that sound like?"
The tease and the knowing smile helped with his confidence. It always did. Whenever it seemed like she knew what was going on, he lost the stutter and all the uhms and ahs. He smiled too. “No, it doesn’t change your voice.” He glanced down at the soup to make sure it didn’t end up in her lap. “The... sock things you have make noise when you move.” He lifted one hand and his long fingers fluttered a little over her knees, as if to indicate the knee-highs below the thin white dress she had on under her sweater.
She put the soup aside permanently this time when he looked at it, setting it beside the cot on the floor. She looked back up just in time to watch his fingers flutter over her knee, and she edged to the end of the cot and stood, looking down at her socks for a moment, blonde hair falling into her face and hiding her features as she experimentally wiggled sock-covered toes. She glanced up at him through the pale blonde fall of hair then, and she smiled a flirt-blush smile, even as she took two steps back, and then two steps forward. "I don't hear anything," she said, which of course she didn't.
Peter consolidated like a bead of mercury as she pulled away. He pushed his right hand into his hair, turning his head to cradle it on his palm as she moved away. At first he seemed incredulous, and then he laughed as he saw her purpose. He recognized the blush for the first time since his appearance. The smile turned into a grin. “C’mere. I’ll show you.” He reached over to the place she’d been, warm with her presence even with her standing, and then he patted it. “Sit down. Take them off.” His grin turned faintly apologetic, but he didn’t say he was sorry.
"You want me to take my socks off?" she asked incredulously. "Peter Parker, and here I thought you didn't like me," she teased, unable to resist that grin of his. She sat beside him, legs off the edge of the cot, and she leaned down and unrolled one knee-high, then the next. It wasn't intentionally sensual, because she was too fluttery just then to even think about it, and there was only so much intentional sensual she had in her, but it was still a slow process, and her bend at the waist meant the thin, white fabric of the nightgown lifted almost indecently high before she sat back, the socks between her fingers. "Try not to stretch them out," she said without mock seriousness.
Peter watched. He was pretty blatant about it, but he’d asked her so there wasn’t much point in pretending that he didn’t want to. It was a slight smile, but he wore it pretty well. He sort of thought the high socks were meant to be alluring in some way, he’d never really understood how they worked. Still didn’t. It was an obscure girl’s mystery. “No, you can hold them.” Peter shifted toward her as she returned, closing the distance himself this time. Putting one set of fingers under her arm, he lifted her hand that held the socks. Peter put his thumb and forefinger up to his ear to demonstrate and rubbed them like a conjurer with a penny. “Go like this.”
Boys made her slow, she thought. No, correction. He made her slow, because she didn't realize what he was going to do until after he'd told her to keep hold of the socks herself. There was a moment of confusion on her features, and then she exhaled a little breath of understanding, one that was sucked up in the complete silence that indicated she might have forgotten to breathe for a moment when he put his fingers under her arm to lift it. This close, he smelled of boy and himself and the end of summer, which she realized was completely unscientific. She smelled of the chemicals from the slides and petri dishes, and of the lemon shampoo that was in the bathroom, and of the leftover sweetness from getting drunk the night before. But none of that mattered when it came to the socks, which she was rubbing between her fingers at her ear. She listened to the brush of the fabric, which seemed loud close up like that, and she smiled at him a second later. "That doesn't explain why I'm whispery, or is it just my clothes that are that way?"
The lab smell he was familiar with, but the shampoo brand was just a little different, or maybe the water here was harder, but she still sounded much the same. “Your clothes and your... stuff, yeah. Sometimes your hair makes feathery noises.” Peter smiled, giving a compliment, and clear about it, at least in his own mind. He nodded to indicate the socks in her hand. “You don’t think it’s whispery?” He was looking at her without blinking as much as he usually did, and he hadn’t pulled at his hair for a full minute.
"My stuff?" she asked with a teasing smile, just before looking over at her hair, which made no noise whatsoever as far as she knew. She was caught up in that when he nodded toward her socks. "I guess whispery is a good word for it. Is whispery good?" she asked him, "or does it get lost in the sounds of other girls?" She noticed he wasn't blinking as much, but she was maybe staring herself, maybe, a little.
“No. Everybody sounds different. Not like I’d be able to pick everybody out like a bloodhound, but... yeah. Different.” MJ wasn’t whispery. Even when she moved, she was not whispery or feathery. She was more direct, her movements were decided, sound-stop, sound-stop, sound-stop. The clothes she wore seemed to move less on her skin, and while she wasn’t silent by any means, there was definitely no similarity between the two. Gwen whispered and MJ... was indescribable. Peter devoutly hoped this was never a topic of conversation between the two of them. “Stuff... what you’ve got on, or you’re carrying, your bag and... and bracelets and stuff.” He was looking at her mouth now, mostly without realizing it, staring with his own lips slightly parted.
"What do you sound like?" she asked, her gaze dropping to his mouth when his dropped to hers. She scooted a little closer, all without looking away, as if to hear whatever he sounded like better. She slid one bare leg onto the cot between them, knee bent and off to the side, managing not to actually add any space between them at all. Instead, it just put her somehow closer, somehow at a better angle. She had no idea that he was thinking about Mary Jane, which was good, because she was pretty sure he was going to kiss her just then. He'd always been a really good kisser, she thought, cheeks flushing and expression lighting up with expectation as her gaze lifted to catch his gaze for a moment, before sliding back down. She'd always been the one putting the brakes on their kissing sessions, not him, and she was hoping he was still like that, that it would manage to make it through all the worry that clouded everything these days.
Peter blinked, shook his head. “I don’t know.” His eyes flicked up, down, up again. “Nothing.” He shifted forward, almost to meet her. “Or I don’t really hear it.” There was a chorus of sound as their weight shifted into one, but Peter wasn’t paying any attention. He put one hand out, palm still warm from where it had hovered over the soup and taken in the steam, and slid it over the side of her leg, lifting her knee and pulling it toward him as he leaned in. Peter was generally all enthusiasm and questing tongue when it came to kissing, but they’d kissed a few times and he got better at it each time.
She wasn't paying attention to the sounds anymore either. Her entire being was focused on his hand, which seemed to move in slow motion at first. Slow motion, that was, until it was closing over her bare knee and pulling it toward him. She was used to his kisses, but it had been weeks and weeks, and that seemed like forever at their age. She was as nervous as the first time, even though there hadn't been a lot of time to be nervous on that balcony then. But his hand on her knee felt like warmth and burning and the kind of thrill that came with being locked in her bedroom with him, back when she'd worried her dad would hear everything, and she pressed her lips to his before he managed to completely close the distance, all wistful sigh and warm breath against his mouth.
Peter just wanted Gwen again. It wasn’t right that he’d lost her (an action of his own and yet somehow without any direction toward himself). The whole time she’d been right there, and he couldn’t touch her, especially when she was hurting, and then later when he had been hurting, it had been almost unbearable. Physically, there wasn’t a lot of thought necessary. He didn’t come up for breath, and he didn’t bother trying to be subtle or gentle. Pulling her leg up with nothing more than a fraction of his strength, he put his other hand behind her back and literally set her as close as he could get her on one leg. His mouth on hers was very hungry, awkwardly wet and yet warm and familiar.
She let him pull her leg up, and she leaned against the hand at her back, getting used to the feel of his hands and the strange amount of strength in his body. She might have whimpered into the kiss, which was cautiously hungry on her side, because she'd always felt like the one who needed to stop things from getting too far when he stopped thinking. But it was harder today than it had been weeks ago, and she wasn't thinking clearly enough to realize that might be the fact that they were, physically, older than they'd been then. No, she definitely whimpered, and she used the hand on her back as leverage to slide her leg the remainder of the way over his, until she was on his lap and kissing him back as hungrily as he was kissing her. The thought crossed her mind, somewhere, that he wasn't anything like Harry, which made her feel guilty a second later, which made her ease back and slowly, reluctantly out of the kiss. She didn't move in any other way, though. She didn't climb off his lap or scuttle away. She was all loud breathing and flushed cheeks and kiss-swollen lips, and her gaze dropped to his mouth again thoughtlessly.
Peter wasn’t paying any attention to what might make her pull back from him, probably because he couldn’t think of anything that would. He had her on his lap and all he wanted was a closer press of heat and skin. His mouth moved away from hers but the kissing didn’t stop, and he tasted under her chin and along the soft curve of her cheek before searching for her mouth again. His teeth found her lower lip and he was winding his arm closer around her to prevent whatever it was that was pulling her away from him. He didn’t even bother opening his eyes, so sure that any second the kiss would resume, and whatever it was that came after.
She sighed when his mouth brushed against her chin and cheek and, by the time he sought out her mouth again, she forgot why she'd pulled back at all. The tight arm holding her against him was everything she'd wanted for weeks and weeks, and she slid closer to him, giving into the frenzy of the kiss for a few minutes longer. It felt like forever, and like it only lasted a second, and her mind didn't even wrap around the scientific impossibility of that. "Peter," she whispered into the kiss, pulling back just enough to say his name against his mouth. It was a girlish sigh, his name, and little more than that. Her fingers closed on his upper arms, and she managed to tip her head down and look at the way she was sprawled on his lap, the white of the nightgown indecently high against her thighs.
“What?” he asked, not really thinking about the question and not really searching for an answer. He took the opportunity to breathe too, letting her tip her chin away from him and sending small shivers of air over her lips. He wasn’t quite panting, but he sounded as if he had recently run a race, voice strained and out-of-place. In sudden decision, he shifted his weight entirely on the cot and settled back on his hips, bringing her with him so her knees were on either side of him. He kept an arm around her waist and looked up at her with a distinctly Peter-ish smile.
His question didn't really register until just seconds before he toppled back onto the cot, and she didn't try to get away from that hand on her waist, even though the nightgown she wore made for very poor cover. But he looked so like himself, so endearingly Peter, that she didn't scuttle back the way she knew she should. This was all she'd wanted, even mixed up with the hurt of him not being there for her when her dad had died. Then, this was all she thought she needed to get through that loss in once piece, his smile, his hand holding her tight like it was now. But none of this meant they were back together, and she knew that too, but it didn't stop her from lying down against his chest and kissing him once more, pale blonde hair clinging to his cheeks as her thighs tightened against his denim covered legs.
Peter met the kiss as the question evaporated entirely out of his mind. He dragged his lips over hers with all the pressure he could think of while his tongue made tentative twists against hers, trying to figure out whatever it was that made her want to kiss him more. Like any high school boy without any experience, Peter was game for pretty much anything, and he would go as far as she would let him until something (semi-miraculous) happened to get his brain working again. All the interesting dreams of his first couple years at school, most of them were just like this, only this was much, much better. Her weight was a little more solid than he expected, incredibly, awesomely solid, and without much thinking he spread five fingers against the small of her back and pushed her down into his jeans as he renewed the kiss with a twist of his head and arch of his spine.
It was the press of the denim that did it, or maybe the moan that escaped her lips at the unexpected heat and hard-rough friction against the bare skin of her inner thighs. She rocked down against him at first, once, maybe twice, and she possibly moaned again (the sound peppered with a gasp), and then she broke the kiss and pulled back quickly enough that she almost fell off the side of the cot. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were glassy, and she was definitely panting. "Peter," she said finally, finding her voice, and her gaze dropped to his lips again, but, no, no, no, she couldn't do that. She wanted to, oh, she wanted to, and she started to crawl forward again, before sanity and the cool air between them gave her a chance to think. He couldn't just come in here after ignoring her for weeks and, and, and- No. "Peter," she repeated, quieter, and she'd obviously lost all power of sane speech somewhere between sitting down on the cot and ending up on his lap.
The first sound of his name didn’t even sink in. Peter pulled at his stomach and brought his torso up to prevent her from falling away, and with disconcerting ease he pulled her up away from the floor and settled her again, arm unraveling slightly and both hands settling on her waist. His fingers were a little too tight and his eyes were dark. He kissed her again, this time brief, a brush of his lips against hers, a rapid press of heat soon gone again. He was completely focused on the feel of her through his jeans and he temporarily forgot that either of them were capable of speech until she said his name again. Finally, finally, it sunk in, and his voice held just a trace of impatience. “What?”
Her hand was on the center of his chest, though she couldn't remember when it had gotten there, fingers wound up tight in the fabric of his shirt. The impatience didn't surprise her; she'd heard it before in exactly this kind of situation, and she climbed off his lap and slid to sit beside him on the cot, close enough to kiss him one more time, a more chaste kiss this time, but she didn't pull back after. "We're not together anymore, remember?" she asked him, voice hopeful. She wasn't Mary Jane, who'd slept with Flash without being with him. She just wasn't that type of girl, and as much as she wanted to keep going with Peter, it wasn't going to happen without some talking, and with a good amount of effort on his part.
To his credit, Peter let her go. As she settled on her feet and rearranged her skirt to sit down at the cot next to him, Peter shifted a little in his suddenly too-tight jeans. After that he sighed and put his hands between his knees and his hips back to get his brain back into thinking mode. He had moderate success. Peter tried to avoid looking at her because otherwise the moderate success would end up total failure, but that went up in smoke when she spoke. He stopped pulling on his hair and gave her a look of surprise. “We’re not?”
She gave him a look of surprise in return. "No. You stopped talking to me, Peter. You disappeared, and you said we couldn't see each other anymore. We broke up on your doorstep, remember?" But he obviously didn't, or he didn't realize that's what had happened, and her confused look turned even more confused. "Saying you can't see me anymore is the same as breaking up with me, and not being there when I needed you means you need to at least ask me to come back about a dozen times before I can say yes." Pause. Hopeful, and she almost said 'please,' but she managed not to.
No, Peter knew they’d broken up. He was fully aware that he’d done it, caused it, whatever, and judging by his falling expression he was aware of the fact. “But you know why that had to--I mean, why I did that?” he asked, somewhat anxious now, his eyes searching hers. He shifted again on his hips awkwardly, but didn’t straighten his spine. His fingers returned to his hair and he pulled it away from his scalp. “I thought you said you wanted to try anyway,” he said, now obviously not so sure. He rubbed his lips together uncertainly.
"Was that you actually asking?" she asked, watching his fingers tug at his hair. She tried not to soften, but it was hard when he did that, and her expression did melt enough to indicate as much. "I know why you did it, but it still wasn't very nice, Peter, just to disappear like that when I needed you. Understanding why doesn't make it all better." She tipped her head, and she gave him a girlish smile. "If that's you asking, though, ask." She paused, relenting. "I do want to try. If you want to."
“Yeah, I want to. I said I did.” His expression went from confused to concerned in a second, and the tension went out of his shoulders as his brain got up to full speed. It was obvious Peter didn’t understand the real need for asking her at least fifty times, not that he wouldn’t, just because he’d thought they’d already figured that whole thing out. It was clear, as Peter sat there and the burn of the kiss was gone, that he hadn’t been as sure of this decision as maybe she was. What if she got hurt? “I still do. I’m just worried something will happen.” His hand left his hair (all directions at least two inches off his head) and he touched her arm where it was nearest him.
"Then ask me, Peter Parker," she said, a warm smile tipping up the corners of her mouth as she looked down at the hand on his arm.
Peter pondered her a moment. “Do you want to be together again?” he asked. It was a slow asking, but it wasn’t as bad as his first attempt had been. The lab was more private than a hallway and there was more between them now. He didn’t even stutter once when he asked this time, distracted with the idea that he might potentially be killing her and what he would do if it looked like they were going that way. Whatever “that way” looked like.
It was better than the last time, and it made her smile widen, even if it wasn't anything smooth or refined. That reminded her of Harry, who she didn't want to think about just then. He might not be refined, and he might not have all the money the Osborns had, but there was something about Peter that made her stomach turn over in a way she thought only happened to girls who had never taken advanced chemistry. "Yes," she said after a second. Yes, she wanted to be together again.
He smiled at her through his concern, lips pressed together and spread slightly to either side. “Okay.” The smile strengthened without widening, mostly in his eyes. He leaned in and touched his lips to hers, quiet, and then leaned into her with his shoulder against hers. He wasn’t heavy, and it seemed his token gesture of affection rather than a hug. It was easier and less of a risk, somehow, in the event that she would pull away, and now that he knew for sure that she wouldn’t, it was old habit. “You have to promise that you’ll tell me if it looks like you’re in trouble.” Peter sent one eye around the lab, brows low. This wasn’t the safest place for her to be, but neither was New York. That was why there was a Spider-man.