cv (ephemeras) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-04-12 03:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: marvel comics, gwen stacy, harry osborn |
Who: Gwen and Harry
What: Experiments (1/2)
Where: Midtown science lab
When: During the anti-fear plot
Warnings/Rating: Foreplay for science?
Gwen didn't react to this new fearlessness like some of the others did. She didn't touch her hand to the flame, and she didn't try to fly. She wasn't like Flash or Peter, who wanted to have fun in the way rowdy boys with too much power did. She was fearlessly herself. For once, she wasn't worried about being too nerdy, and she didn't force herself to be social or cute or flirty. She could say things in a way that was logical and straightforward, without fear of sounding like a scientific calculator. She could be direct, without fear of scaring off every boy that ever looked in her direction. Too, she wasn't scared of her own inability to attract anyone. Attraction - boyfriends, girlfriends, all of it - was just as much science as every other little thing in the world. And like all scientific things, she should be able to quantify it, to make sense of it.
Harry preferred Mary Jane to her, and Gwen thought (logically) that this was the perfect opportunity to learn why. Mary Jane wasn't here and, given Sam's knowledge about the things happening in Las Vegas, Mary Jane wouldn't be here any time soon. It gave her the opportunity to figure things out, and she could so so fearlessly (for once), without blushing and tripping over every word. It wasn't that her emotion had completely left the building, but she wasn't scared of it just then. She thought Harry Osborn had beautiful eyes. She thought Peter Parker was attractive, but the memory of her Peter got in the way of her pursuit there. She thought Flash reminded her of one of her brothers. Despite varying conditions, none of these boys liked her, ergo, something was faulty. Scientifically, faulty things could be corrected.
She waited in the upstairs lab, forgoing the sexy lab assistant outfit that Flash had encouraged her to wear. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a black headband, and her knee-highs were the same color. Her shirt was short, pleated grey, and she wore a thin, white sweater with it. Her one concession to the experiment was to divest herself of the undergarments worn beneath the sweater and skirt. She felt daring, and she thought she grow accustomed to the feeling. She put the undergarments in a transparent bag, and she set the questionnaire beside them, with a No. 2 pencil. Then, she sat at one of the stools to wait for Harry to appear.
Harry was a little late, although he'd never been particularly punctual in the first place. There'd been some chaos in the hallway of his British Lit class, and he'd wasted a good ten minutes breaking up a fight between two classmates. It was only after the dust settled that he was really able to recognize that something was wrong. The students hadn't been angry with one another, but rather adopted some beastly rowdiness.. and they just didn't care. They were laughing about it, knocked out teeth and all, when Harry left them and rushed to the floor with the science labs to find Gwen. He was worried about her, and that was evident when he pushed through the door, a little winded. There was a smear of blood on his green shirt, and the fabric looked black there. He didn't seem injured though, just concerned when he shut the door behind himself. "Gwen," he caught his breath with a heavy exhale. "You're right, there's something going on here.. everyone's being fucking weirder than usual."
"Are you okay?" That was the most important question, and the thing that brought him rushing up to where she sat. Initially, there was a great ignorance of the details, while he savored the fact that she looked okay. Calm, at least. He thought she'd sounded worried on the phone, and some deep part of him was pleased that she'd called him instead of Peter. As soon as he acknowledged it, however, the thought was a guilt inducing one. His smile crumbled a little around the edges, but that in itself was trademark Harry.
Gwen immediately noticed the stain on the shirt, when he came close enough. She would not melt at that breathless way he said her name, though she wanted to ask him to repeat the precise intonation so that she could make notes on it. But, no, the stain on the shirt came first, and she poked a finger at it without touching it, as she wasn't wearing safety gloves. "Is that blood?" she asked, looking at the stain, then looking up at his face. He had the bluest eyes, she thought, and then she shook her head and forced herself back into the moment. His eyes weren't as important as the origin on the stain on that green fabric. "Have you been injured?" she asked, fingers immediately moving to the buttons of the shirt. If he was injured, the injury would need to be tended to. If he wasn't injured, then the blood could contain a contagion, and he shouldn't let his body come in contact with it. Either way, it got his shirt off, which she didn't mind at all and-
Focus.
"I'm well. I feel uninhibited in a way that isn't normal. I've taken some blood, but I'll need to get to Oscorp to see if it's a bloodborne pathogen. Chances are it's aerosolized or ingested, but it doesn't hurt to check," she explained, working at his buttons. "Did you experience strange behavior in the hallway?" she asked, looking up at him and faltering in her button-progress. "You should lock the door, so we won't be interrupted while conducting our experiments. There's a pre-test form I'd like you to fill out, but the laboratory environment should be safeguarded against other male or female subjects during testing." Yes, logic, that was a logical thought. She didn't look at those open buttons. No, that would taint the experiment, and she didn't want to-
Her gaze dropped down, to where a sliver of tan skin was visible. She licked her lips.
"No, I'm fine. I mean, yes it's blood, but its not mine. I think the entire lacrosse team was starting a fight club in the hall.. " Gwen didn't seem upset, so Harry didn't bother with convincing her that he was okay. Her words were a little concerned, but it was all in the name of science and contamination. None of it went over his head, but Harry wasn't entirely sure what it had to do with why she'd asked him up here. He knew that she believed the students behavior had some kind of outside influence, and maybe she was right. Is that why she was concerned about the blood?
Momentarily distracted by her smooth words and ambitious hands, Harry glanced down when she did. Only then did he actually notice that his shirt was completely unbuttoned. Frowning, he took a slight step back, "It's fine, Gwen. Really." When she mentioned locking the door, however, he glanced in that direction. If people were losing their minds outside, maybe it was best to lock the door. Hesitantly, he drew away from her and made his way back to the lab's door. The lock clicked quietly just as some laughing voices ran past, making reckless time through the hallway beyond. He peered out the little lab window with worry creasing his brow. "I'm not filling out a damn form, Gwen. We should think about getting off the grounds, getting out of here.."
"The toxin seems to cause a lack of fear and inhibition, which could lead to the lacrosse team's violent behavior," she explained, sounding unconcerned about the myriad of problems that could come from anything that caused those symptoms. "It's possible that there will be escalated violence in the building, along with escalated risk taking and increased carelessness." Again, she said it like it was nothing to be concerned with. She felt no desire to jump off the roof, and she didn't even fear the possibility that she would get to that point. Instead, she watched him back up with a frown, because conducting her experiments would be difficult if he was not within arm's length.
But when he locked the door, her calm returned. It wasn't even fear when he'd stepped away; more frustration at the inability to complete the intended task. She realized that she wasn't sounding like herself, that her "inner-nerd" had kicked into overdrive, but she couldn't actually mask that, and she found that she didn't even care to try.
She frowned at his insistence that he wasn't going to fill out the form, all heartbroken science geek. "We can forgo the paperwork and move onto the practical experimentation," she offered, hoping to salvage some of the intended work. He was still across the room, and she was beginning to worry that this would be a lost opportunity. Logically, he was correct. If the source of the toxin was in Midtown, then removal from Midtown would make the most sense. But she didn't want to lose this sense of fearlessness. "Please, come here?" she asked. It sounded less like a request for a laboratory subject, more like a request from a friend.
He frowned at the continued mention of this so-called experiment. He failed to understand what she needed to experiment on if it wasn't his blood. Harry didn't look back at her, not immediately. His attention stayed pressed with concern against the lab's little window, observing the hallway beyond for any sign of life. Now wasn't the time for these kinds of games, and although Harry couldn't pinpoint when he'd gotten so damn serious.. it had something to do with the moment he'd heard her over the phone. That concern that wasn't fear, just the strange and disconnected knowledge that something wasn't right. He heard it again when she asked him to come back over to her, and Harry finally glanced back to Gwen.
He very nearly told her no, that they needed to leave. But her eyes looked a little sad.. not afraid. Just young and lost in a way that he didn't recognize. "Hey.." His voice broke into something soft when he studied her. Stepping away from the door and back to her side, he reached out to touch her arm. "Its okay, I'm not going to leave you. You know I'd never leave you, right? You're my best friend.." He didn't analyze when that had happened, when she'd taken Peter's place. She was just always there for him, and she never made him feel like he'd made the wrong decision. Even when he did.
Harry tugged playfully on the sleeve of her shirt to garner Gwen's attention. "Look at me.."
She watched him approach, and her blue eyes went dreamy when his voice went soft. She'd always criticized all the girls that mooned over him. She'd sat everywhere from PE to Physics listening to girls talk about him, about sleeping with him, about how his blue eyes went unfocused and how his voice turned dangerous. She'd always thought that was completely illogical. Harry Osborn's voice could not turn dangerous. He was Harry. She'd chalked every comment up to hormonal girls being hormonal, and she'd remained secure in the knowledge that Harry was her friend, and not theirs. Because she'd understood what they hadn't; that he wouldn't wake up in the morning and immediately fall in love with one of them. They all vied to be that girl, the one that won him. Harry had never looked at any of them like he'd looked at Mary Jane. But she was his friend, and that had been enough once.
She looked down at her arm when he touched her, and she looked back up into those blue eyes a moment later, when he told her to look at him. Blue eyes had lower concentrations of melanin in the stroma of the iris, she reminded herself, as if the science of it would make a difference. She replayed the words he'd just said in her mind, grasping onto his declaration that she was his best friend. It was a lead-in, one she'd normally be too tentative to pounce on, but she could do it now, in the name of science.
"I'm conducting a study on the differences between friends and lovers," she explained, which aligned perfectly with the questions on the piece of paper he'd ignored. "I want to understand what causes the delineation," she explained. "And I wanted to know if any stimuli could blur the line sufficiently to eradicate it entirely. It's-" She paused, stammering for the first time since the toxin entered her system. "It's my essay topic for Cornell." She was getting better at lying. "I'm providing random students with the survey, but since you're my best friend, and our relationship is completely platonic, I figured you could be of assistance with the practical testing."
She looked at him, and her pretty eyes were steady. That was enough to get his smile revving because she couldn't be like the others if she looked him in the eye. It seemed implausible because she seemed so here. She wasn't violent or laughing, she was still under his hand. Unconsciously, his fingers flexed on her arm where he'd been tugging at her sleeve. With realization, he dropped his fingers, and he dug them against the edge of the table where she sat. The metal was cold, he liked that.
He seemed agitated when she mentioned the study again, but it melted into something contemplative when she mentioned Cornell. Harry wasn't stupid. He had difficulty with certain classes, but was still in a high percentage for his class. As such, he understood the importance of college entrance, but he was also confused by Gwen's choice of study. He'd always thought of her as more the type to write about chemistry and biomechanics. But maybe he was wrong. Harry watched her with a bit of wonder. She'd become his best friend, but how much did he know about her, really?
"... Alright," he said softly. Somewhere deep inside, he had the paranoid ache that this was going to lead to Mary Jane. There was a time when he wouldn't have cared, when he would have shrugged against the apathy that rose inside. But he hadn't seen Mary Jane in so long, and he hadn't hung out with Peter in longer. Either way, Harry knew that Peter was supposed to end up with them both.. so did it really matter?
He hesitated at that thought, guilty for so many reasons. But right here, right now, his only allegiance was to her. ".. Alright, Gwen. We can stick around here until its over. What's the survey?"
His agitation was noted. Normally, it would have sent her backpedaling, made her take those few steps back into that safe spot where she did nothing unexpected, and where he did nothing unexpected, and where everything was as it had always been. But under the circumstance, she wasn't inclined to backpedal. She was nervous, but unafraid. He couldn't be repulsed by her, could he? He'd kissed her once. Perhaps she should have procured alcohol. There was still time, maybe? She knew students smuggled alcohol into school, and she was certain she could decipher the combination of the teacher's lockers, where confiscated things were kept, if she tried. She considered it, and then he agreed. She blinked, turning her face up to him again. She stared, the tip of her tongue pressing against the back of her top teeth. She didn't understand his concerned, and she didn't know he was in possession of any concerns. In her mind it all boiled down to chemistry, to simple preference. He didn't prefer her. And, yes, the fact that she'd believed perhaps he did, only to find out he'd been with Mary Jane in Las Vegas was still a fresh ache, something that chased all those months with her Peter.
She blinked twice. Those thoughts weren't going to help with the experiment. And now she would need to submit an application to Cornell, one accompanied by an essay on this topic, just to allay her guilt over lying to him.
She edged back toward the stool, and she slid onto it. Beside her elbow, the survey and plastic bag of undergarments went untouched. She bit her lip as she studied him, and the look on her face was reminiscent of when she tackled a particularly challenging experiment. A second later, she took his hands. "Can you tell me, given your lack of interest in the subject-" She paused, clarifying. "I'm the subject in this case. Can you tell me, given your lack of interest in the subject, if there is any increase in interest during these three states?"
"State one." She squeezed his fingers, thumb brushing innocently over his knuckles.
"State two." She took his hands and settled them on her hips, over the thick grey wool, her hands over his, her knees parting slightly.
"State three." Her voice shook a little, fear that made it into her voice, despite it not reaching her mind. She took her hands, and she slid them beneath the wool, settling them on her bare hips, making it abundantly clear that was nothing beneath the skirt.
She paused, academic blue eyes wide and unblinking as she watched his face.
He just wanted her to be okay. She seemed okay in most respects, although Harry knew that toxins could have a latent effect on the body and mind. Rabies took weeks to kick in. Harry palmed the side of her cheek, even as she was finishing talking. He wanted to see her eyes, to check the dilation, he wanted to know that he wasn't making the wrong decision by staying in this lab with her. But he knew that he wasn't as smart as her, it had always been so damn obvious, after all. So.. he had to trust that she was okay, that she'd know if she wasn't okay. If she didn't know the master plan or the final answer, who would?
He smiled a little thinking about it. Harry wasn't infected, but the affected students hadn't seemed so severe to him that alarm would have been necessary. Everything was really going to be okay.. and he knew that even when she drew his hands beneath her skirt.
Harry couldn't have gone more still, he even paled a bit. Those faint freckles stood out like starlight. "Gwen," he whispered while his blue-eyed attention diverted at last to the plastic bagged panties nearby. Her thighs were so fucking soft and smooth.. he started to instinctively pull back. "Gwen, really, come on.." He sounded almost nervous.
Gwen made a mental note of his physical reaction, the paling, the freckles she remembered counting during summer, when they were children and the sun made them both darker than normal. She made a mental note, and then she promptly forgot all of it when she finally caught up with the fact that she'd actually slipped his hands under her skirt, that he was touching her like that. Only Peter ever had, and he hadn't actually touched her, not before engaging in intercourse with her. She watched his face as he glanced toward the plastic bag, and she waited for him to look back, to answer her questions, to do something.
But when he looked back, he began to pull back, and her expression shifted from something hopeful and nervous, to something confused. "You didn't respond," she finally managed, moving her hands from his, freeing his fingers, so that he could pull them away if he wanted to. "I didn't realize it would be unpleasant for you. I understand you're not physically interested, but I thought you could answer the questions without discomfort," she said.
"Your reaction was still helpful, Harry. Thank you," she said wistfully. The effect of the toxin still made it impossible for her to regret her choice, but she could feel the pang of rejection, and it showed in her blue eyes as she reached for the survey and pen, ready to note his reaction.
Regret soared inside of him like molten steel. It made him wince, and his expression was painful when he glanced up at Gwen. "Don't do that, please.." His voice collapsed onto the sad side, and his brow wrinkled up onto the ledge of uncertainty. "Don't say that. I am physically interested," he repeated her words without really thinking to stop himself. That really isn't the way he would have said it. Even as he withdrew his hands from beneath her skirt, Harry couldn't bring himself to completely pull away. So his palms remained there, just above her knees.
Harry tilted his head to catch her eye, smiling reassuringly when she glanced away from him. But the hurt in her eyes was obvious, and Harry softened. The guilt was cold and metallic in his chest when he reached for her hand to stop her before she could reach the pen. "You're not thinking, Gwen. What about Peter? You're.. supposed to be with Peter." It was something that Harry had to remind himself of all the time.
Gwen didn't mistake his admission of physical interest for true attraction. She understood there was a difference there, progressive ladders from the girls a boy would sleep with, to the girls a boy really liked, to girls like Mary Jane. She couldn't tell how much guilt was involved in the admission, either. After all, as his friend, she knew he was disinclined to hurt her feelings. She smiled slightly, because Harry could always be trusted to want to spare her any hurt that way, when he realized that she could be hurt that way. She looked down at the hands on her knees, cornflower blue eyes curious, as if trying to quantify the feel of his hands on the skin just above her knee-highs.
When she looked up again, he caught her eye, and she considered his words as he blocked her path to the pen. She didn't pull her hand away from his. Instead, she looked at him, and she tried to boldly turn this into something that would make him stop looking guilty, stop looking like she wanted him to feel things for her that he only felt for Mary Jane. Her mind raced. "I am thinking. This is for scientific purposes," she said, and she was slow about saying it at first, because she still was terrible at lying, and she had to wrap her mind around the falsehood completely before she continued on. "Peter and I aren't together, and I don't think you and Mary Jane are together, so there's no harm in helping me with my experiment." Her mind sparked, and she pressed her lips together and glanced toward the door. "I can ask someone else to assist me, if you prefer."
The back of one of her black, chunky shoes pressed against the outside of his knee, and then against his shin, and then the other did the same. It forced her knees slightly apart, and she looked down at the hand still there, then back at the door again. "Can we try again?" she asked, "or should I-" she glanced toward the door again.
"No!" Immediate and vehement, he caught Gwen's chin when she glanced over to the lab's door. Directing her back to face him with fingers that would have bruised if he didn't let go just after that initial grip. "Nobody else is coming in here, okay?" Not with the way she was acting. It wouldn't have been responsible for him to leave her here alone. And while Harry wasn't known for being an especially responsible person, he never turned his back on a friend. He slid those fingers around to the back of Gwen's neck for a reassuring rub while he realized that she was right. She wasn't with Peter.
"Alright," he said softly. There was a nervous tick of a glance down to where her knees were parted. His other hand was still there, darker against the pale flesh of her leg. He couldn't quite bring himself to move it. "Wha-- What's the experiment? You want me to.. fill out the questionnaire?" He glanced around expectantly for a pencil before noticing, really noticing the nearby bag with her panties inside. He swallowed again, glancing back at her.
She was surprised by the vehemence. She'd never had a boy be vehement like that around her. She stared a moment, understanding how damsels-in-distress were born, because she liked how it felt. It sent a chill along her spine that was entirely non-academic in nature. She wondered what the scientific reason was for that, if it was just some leftover archaic thing from prehistoric times. Either way, she stared at him, eyes wide, when he caught her chin and tugged it back toward him. She was positive there was something she should be saying, but she couldn't remember what.
Luckily, he spoke again, and she shook her head. "No, I don't want you to fill anything out yet. You can just tell me. I'll remember," she promised. She would, even without a recording device. "Seeing as you're not interested in me, I want you to tell me if your level of physical excitement changes during these three stages."
She licked her lips, and she repeated the motions from earlier. First, she took his hands in hers and she ran her thumb over his knuckles. "One." Then, a second later, she took his hands and put them on her hips, over the wool of her skirt, where she kept them for longer that probably necessary. "Two." And, lastly, she slid his hands beneath her skirt, and settled them on the bare skin of her hips. Her voice caught, and her cheeks flushed red. "Three." She pulled her own hands away, unsure what to do with them, letting her fingers come to rest on his sleeves.
He frowned at first, unsure of why she was doing this to him. Maybe this was some kind of vengeance thing for when he'd gotten arrested with Mary Jane. It certainly felt cruel and unusual. When she took his hands beneath her skirt once more, he could have sworn that his heart was just going to beat right the fuck out of his chest. His hands were warm and still at her hips, although he dropped his fingers to the tops of her thighs when nerves got the best of him and made his arms shudder. Harry was never nervous with girls, but this was Gwen. He couldn't for the life of him figure out why she was acting like this, or why he wasn't trying to stop her.
"I don't know," he stammered before coldly realizing that he should at least try to answer her. He didn't entirely trust that she wasn't going to hop off the table and make due on that threat of finding somebody else to conduct this experiment with. Anybody else might take advantage of her curiosity. But he wouldn't. The words ran through his head over and over again. He wouldn't. Harry's attention slid down the front of her body with ample distraction, landing on the hem of her skirt where it bunched around his wrists. "Yeah, I.. am excited.. and I am interested in you, okay?" Saying it out loud, he knew it was true. He'd always been interested in her, but she deserved better. She deserved the hero.
She gasped a breath when his fingers dropped to the tops of her thighs, and her knees parted a little more, an unthinkingly instinctive reaction to the touch. She didn't know he was nervous, because she didn't have any experience with boys being nervous. Peter had been shy at first, but that hadn't lasted long, and it wasn't nervousness about touching her. Once he'd asked her out, he'd had no problem kissing her. The Peter here had been different, not nervous at all, and always pushing for sex, with her always resisting. The one time they had slept together, under the guise of the masquerade, was something she didn't like remembering. No, she didn't recognize the nervousness in him. She was too caught up in the maelstrom of sensations.
It took her a moment longer to realize he was talking and sharing his responses to the stimuli. She wanted to ask what had caused the slip from disinterest to interest, but she determined that bare skin contact was probably the defining factor. He was a teenage boy, one that she knew was sexually active, and it made sense that there would be a point where he would find her reasonably sufficient for sexual interaction. "It's the tactile sensation of bare skin, isn't it? Or is it the taboo element of not wearing panties?" she asked, cheeks going warmer. Her hands slid down to his wrists, and her fingers tugged his hands fully onto her parted thighs, still mostly hidden beneath the bunched up grey wool of the skirt. She wanted him to kiss her, but she didn't know how to ask for that under the guise of scientific study; she just stared at his mouth instead.