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adoremio · 4 months ago

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tasm! Peter pushing reader away bc he realized his deep feelings for her. He doesn't want another Gwen situation to happen, but reader reels him back and they make up?

wc: 1400 tw: g-dawg's death, peter imagines you dying, me trying to write like donna tartt and failing pretty badly

When Gwen died, it was deep into October, and New York City was at its most obscene––a cityscape draped in ochre leaves, gilded in morning frost, and stained by the cloying sweetness of pumpkin spice wafting from every corner cafe. That autumn, the sky was bright and brittle as shattered glass everywhere Peter went and the leaves fell in ghastly similarity to her.

Gwen’s death was his fault. He knew this. Knew it with the startling clarity of remembering a fever dream, and the dizzying weight of his own body pressing into the mattress on sleepless nights. Unable to outrun the guilt, he made a promise. Never again.

And then, of course, there was you.

🕷

It was early September when you walked into the chemistry lab, sunlight from the high windows casting a halo around your head. You’re not like Gwen. You don’t have her hard edges and sharp wit, more a soft kind of presence, like how the warmth of a fire hugs snow-bitten knees through a blanket. Peter had watched you drop your bag onto the bench beside him, casual, almost careless, and wondered why it made me feel like someone had struck a match inside his ribcage.

The teacher paired him with you, and you smiled like a whisper. "Peter, right?" you said. His name sounded strange in your mouth, too certain, too right, and it made him feel fourteen again, clumsy and stupid, trying to keep up.

Your voice was perfect. This thought was a wild, unwelcome one, but all the same drawn by the irrefragable veracity of his heart.

“Um, I- yeah, that’s, uh, me.”

That was the first time he embarrassed himself in front of you. Not the last, though—God, not the last.

🕷

Falling for you was a slow-motion car crash, inevitable and excruciating. He told himself it wasn’t happening. He told himself he wouldn’t let it happen. But every week, there he was—sitting across from you at the cafe near school, your laugh wrapping around his ribs like wire, your smile making him forget, if only for a moment, the constant thrum of shame in his chest.

He can remember one instance clear as day.

“You ever wonder, like, if the universe is infinite, are we already dead?”

Peter chokes a little on his coffee. “Way to have arbitrary thoughts fit for a study session.”

“No, it is though, because, if this isn’t real, then I shouldn’t-”

“Study? Yeah, I’m sure that will help your grade. ‘Mrs. Hornstock,’ I didn’t study because the universe is infinite.’”

“I don’t sound anything like that.”

“Oh my god-” He’s finally torn away from his computer to where your third finger is perched on the top of your mechanical pencil. “Don’t hold it like that, are you a psychopath?”

He tugs it out of your hand. “You click it with your thumb, see?”

He looks up when you don’t respond, seeing the lock of your eyes on where he’s still holding your fingers. He drops you like he’s been burned and you snap out of your stupor.

“Oh,” you rasp, quickly returning to your ramble with a frenetic urgency. “I just meant, like, what day is it? I don’t know, October-something, right? So-”

Peter doesn’t hear anything after that. It’s October. That hits him like a blow to the stomach, his ears ringing. It’s already been a year. He feels a nauseating sense of deja vu.

“-so like, in a hundred Octobers, when we’re both dead, today will have barely been real, you know? In the context of infinity. Are you listening?”

Peter is startled slightly. “Today will always be real.”

Nothing is scarier.

🕷

One day in February, Peter realized he liked you. And not in the safe, distant way he kept telling himself. No, this was something worse, something unbearable. Something with teeth. He liked you in a way that felt like betrayal.

That night, he dreamt of you dying. He saw it all, clear as day: the blood, the scream, the stillness afterward. He woke up gasping, the sheets twisted around him, Gwen’s name—or was it yours?—caught in his throat like a splinter. It was always the same in the dreams. The same unbearable ending, the same awful, whispering refrain: your fault.

You were waiting for him at the cafe the next afternoon, sitting at your usual table by the window. You had your phone in one hand and a paperback in the other, your bag slung carelessly over the back of your chair. The light caught in your hair, turned it into a crown of fire. He stood outside, his breath clouding the glass, and knew what he had to do.

He walked away.

The next week, the lab partners were reassigned. You ended up with someone else—a boy who always smelled faintly of Axe body spray and wore his backpack slung over one shoulder like a badge of honor. he sat across the room, meticulously measuring chemicals into a beaker, pretending not to notice the way your gaze flicked toward him every few minutes.

"Peter," you said, catching up to him in the hallway after class. "Peter, wait."

But he didn’t wait. He kept walking, his shoulders hunched against the tide of students, his heartbeat loud and erratic in his ears. He didn’t have the strength to look at you, let alone explain. What could he have said? That he was trying to protect you? That he was trying to save you from a fate you didn’t even know was possible?

You called after him one more time, your voice breaking slightly on the last syllable of his name. And then he turned the corner, and you were gone.

🕷

One day, after class ends, you corner him in the exit you knew he would take out the cafeteria.

His name escapes you, hurried like he could disappear at any second. “Peter,"

His eyes are fixed on the ground as he fidgets under the ten-ton weight of your stare. "Uh, yeah?"

Fuck. He thinks. Don't look at her, don't look at her, don't look, don't-

You shake him a bit and he reflexively lifts his head, but that’s what he’s been trying not to do, and-

Oh. You look perfect.

"Where- where have you been?” You ask quietly. “I haven't seen you since october, I’ve-"

His big brown eyes snap up to meet yours and you have to stop talking for a bit as you register how close he is. His freckled nose is just a nose away from your own, and his lips look soft and pillowy.

His lips quirk to the side in nervousness.

You’re sure if anyone else were still in the room they’d yell at you two for blocking the doors, but it’s just you and Peter. Alone in the big open space of your school's underfunded cafeteria, flickery lights highlighting him.

“Peter?” You try again.

"Huh?"

"Are you okay?” You’re not sure why that’s the question you choose, not for lack of interest in the answer but mostly because it’s really not the point of the conversation. Except maybe it is. Something in the widening of his eyes tugs at your chest.

"I- yeah. Yeah, no, I’m, I’m great.” There’s a rawness to his tone that scares you slightly, even as his mouth breaks into a fake smile.

Your thumb presses the little dent in his inner elbow in a slight indication of worry and he flinches.

His head drops into your shoulder.

“Hey, Spidey, look at me.”

His head springs up in shock.

There’s a beat of silence. He watches you, fidgety.

“You know?” “Of course I do. I know you. You think I haven’t noticed all those bruises, and the fact that you never sleep, and the fact that he looks like you?”

“Under the suit?”

“Yeah. He looks like you. Your shape, and how you move.”

“I swing from buildings like how you would expect?”

You nod, and he laughs but there’s a tremble in his lips.

“Everything’s gonna be okay.” You slide a hand over the leather jacket on his back.

“You can’t know that,” and as you’re pulling him in all he can think of is Gwen, and-

“I love you, Peter Parker.” He can hear your heartbeat. “We’ll be okay.”

🕷

omg this is my first fic i hope you like it :)) please send requests if you did

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