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spider-man-199999 · 7 months

Text

No need to hide it pt 2

pairing: college!Peter Parker x Fem!Reader; Post nwh; not too canon

word count: 6,4 K

warnings: underage drinking for USA citizens; mentions of sex

summary: Peter thought no one remembered him after the spell, however you did, but not for the reasons he was afraid you would. Now that you two are something like an item, you find out about his secret.

a/n: very cheesy, fluffy things going on here.

Part1!

“Hi, stranger.” You said as you entered the lab, looking at a very concentrated Peter in a lab coat and glasses, looking at something on the table.

Out of all the places you expected him to be at 10 pm on a Wednesday night, the lab was the last one. You made your way to him, wrapping your arms around his waist to hug him from behind, your head peeking over his shoulder to look at what he was doing. He had an open notebook with chemical compounds scribbles chaotically all over the pages. It wasn’t something unusual really, to have Peter stay after class so he could do extra work in the lab. He seemed to like it. It started a few weeks ago, after you passed your first exams. He told you he needed some extra time to work on a project of his and managed to persuade the professor into letting him use the lab after classes were done. You had no idea how he did that, but you wouldn’t have it any other way, it was better than having to worry whether he was flirting with other girls at parties or not.

“Hi, dove.” he replied once you hugged him, still looking at the notebook and flipping the pages.

“Did you just call me a pigeon?”

He shrugged, taking a few tubes and some chemicals from the rack. He gave the notebook one more look before he started mixing things in the tubes.

“What are you making?” you asked, letting go of him and reading into the notebook with more concentration this time.

The formulas he had written there were something you had never seen before, whatever this was, it was supposed to be something like a superglue that could dissolve completely after a certain period of time. You furrowed your brows, not sure you were getting the compounds and processes right. Chemistry was definitely not your strongest subject so you weren’t too confident in what you understood.

“Just experimenting.” He replied, mixing the white goo in a tube.

“Why would you need a temporary super-glue?” you asked him, making him stop his mixing.

“You could read that?”

“Well your handwriting sure didn’t make it easy but yeah, I can. Why?”

“Just asking.” He continued mixing until the goo was thick enough for his liking. He poured it into a container and shoved it in his backpack.

“You’re being weird.” You told him, sitting on top of the table as you watched his movements.

He looked at you, taking the glasses off and getting closer. He stood in front of you, his hands wrapping around your waist and pulling you closer, placing a peck on your lips.

“Right, sorry. I was too concentrated to register that the most beautiful girl was in the room.” He said.

“I was waiting for you at the party.” You mumbled against his chest.

It was true, with most of the finals being over and spring break right around the corner, the whole campus was partying. Every frat house was going at it. You definitely partied more than he did, and neither of you minded that as long as you came home to him. Most of the time you would actually text him to pick you up, which he did happily. But tonight he promised to be there for the whole night, which was a pretty rare occasion.

“I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?” He asked, letting go of you.

You shrugged, looking at his worried eyes. You smiled at him, your hand resting against his upper arm, squeezing his biceps through the fabric of the lab coat and his flannel.

“Taking me to one of your boxing workouts is one of the things on my bucket list.” You teased him.

“Okay, how does next friday sound?” he asked, kissing your cheek.

“Wait really? I was prepared to have to blackmail you and whine for 15 minutes before you said yes. I had a whole scenario.”

“Anything for you, you know that.” Peter said, taking his lab coat and hanging it back on the rack.

The boxing was actually a white lie he told you weeks ago. He took a pretty rough beating one night, it was his first ever encounter with Kraven the Hunter as Spider-man and things didn’t go exactly to plan. He came back with a black eye, sprained wrist, and multiple bruises and cuts pretty much everywhere on his body. As the panic rushed in his brain when he saw your shocked and worried face, he had to think of something fast. That’s when it just happened, the words just left his lips like it was the most natural, most logical explanation to his state. Anything felt like a better idea than telling you about his secret identity. He hated lying, especially to someone who he grew so attached to, who he even dared to say he started loving. It was for a good cause, or at least that’s what he liked telling himself late at night when he stared out of the window, not being able to sleep because the spider mask, casually thrown on the back of his office chair, was staring back at him.

—-

He walked you back to your dorm, making sure you got home safe and you weren’t locked out like every other day. The second you were out of sight, he was googling “boxing gyms near me” and researching them as he walked home. It was a vicious circle of lying and covering up his tracks in front of you and his roommates. He didn’t want either of you knowing about his secret. It was something he had vowed to himself - to not mix the two lives together ever again. The boxing lie was convenient enough for him to keep it up, if you were to call him when he was on patrol he would just say he’s training. If he ever came back with bruises, he could blame it on a bad sparring session. It was working out perfectly. And now he just had to make it real. He already knew how to fight, obviously, and he had the needed reflexes to take on anyone on an average spar, he just needed to find a gym, go there for a week straight and get to know as many people as he could, and make it seem like he was a regular there in front of you. Sounded simple enough.

“How do I always end up in the most ridiculous schemes?” he muttered to himself as he unlocked the front door of his shared apartment, walking in, eyes still fixated on the glowing screen. No one was in the apartment, the guys were probably still at the party that Peter had managed to conveniently avoid tonight. He was too busy for them anyway, he only went because he didn’t want you to be there on your own.

Now that he was alone in the whole superhero business, he had to figure out a way to enhance the web fluid and somehow manage to make as much of it to last him a month, preferably. He liked the formula he had originally come up with, it was simple and easy to make, but he felt like it could be improved. Him and Tony had talked about upgrading it for a long time before but never managed to get to it. He had to figure it out on his own, along with his personal life and his studying. It was starting to get a bit overwhelming. At least he wasn’t alone socially, he had a wonderful girl that shared his feelings, roommates that were like his brothers and enough acquaintances to have someone to talk to in all his classes.

Peter threw himself on the bed, screenshotting a gym he liked enough to try out tomorrow and fell asleep, still in his clothes.

—-

It was Tuesday night the next week. Peter had been training hard in the gym, socializing, staying late in the lab. It was so hard to get a hold of him in the past few days that you felt like he was purposely avoiding you. He still hadn’t told you what he was doing so late in the lab, no matter how much you asked. You just wanted to hang around with him, watching him work. You enjoyed looking at him like that, concentrated, his brows furrowed in confusion, pacing around nervously while he was thinking, fingers going through his hair. It was entertaining but up to a point, though. And boredom had pushed you into trying experiments of your own. Since you didn’t really know what to do in particular, you opened the textbooks for your shared chemistry class and just started ahead with the material. Upside to this was that Peter was always there to help you just so you wouldn’t kill yourself by mismeasuring. Downside was that Peter was there to see you fail.

You trying to do your own work made him really happy. He always believed more in your skills than you ever did yourself and he knew that putting in extra hours would give you a massive boost in confidence. But micromanaging you along with trying to develop a new web fluid formula was stressing him out. He loved spending time with you and helping you, but constantly worrying about you accidentally burning your skin off with chemicals and him not being able to do anything about it was freaking him out.

“Babe?” He said, his weight rested on his arms he stared at you across the table. “Come over for a second, please.”

“Since when do you call me “babe”?” You asked, taking off the glasses, looking at him. Was he bulkier than before? You could see the outline of his arms through his lab coat.

“Since now. Why are you always displeased with the pet names I call you?”

“Because you pick the funniest pet names out there, first it was pigeon, now it’s a baby.” you giggled, going around the table to get to him. He placed an arm around your waist, pulling you to his chest.

“Okay, I’ll call you my little spider then.”

“Spider? It got even worse!”

He laughed, resting his chin on top of your head.

“Hmmmm, what do you want me to call you then?”

“I don’t know…” you said, thinking about it for a second. Your heart started pounding in your chest. You knew exactly what you wanted him to call you - his girlfriend, but you weren’t sure you had enough courage to say it. It had been months since you started “dating” but he never officially called you his.

“Actually “babe” is fine, kind of generic but I don’t hate it.”

“Glad that’s out of the way then. Would you mind grabbing us something to drink? I’m kind of thirsty.” He asked, reaching for his back pocket and giving you his wallet.

“You’re going to send me alone at night to get you a drink?” you asked, fake shocked to tease him.

“I’m literally sending you to the vending machine outside of the door.”

“Fair enough. What do you want?”

“Surprise me.”

You nodded, heading out to the vending machine outside to get something to drink. It bought Peter just enough time to jog over to your side of the table and switch out the acid you were about to use in your work with the one you were actually supposed to use. He wasn’t sure this was the right way to go about this situation, he knew how upset you got whenever he corrected your mistakes. He also didn’t want the liquid to overflow too rapidly for you to comprehend and burn you, which was exactly what was going to happen. Once he made sure things were in order, he went back to his own notebook, flipping through the pages for the millionth time. You walked back with two iced teas, one with lemon for you and one with peaches for him. You placed the bottles next to him so he could open the two of them.

“Thank you.” He kissed your cheek, taking a sip from the iced tea. He wasn’t that thirsty really, but he had to go along with it.

“How’s the research going?” you asked, sitting on the table with a small jump.

“Could be better honestly.” he replied, closing the notebook and turning to you.

You smiled at him, your hand resting on his shoulder and squeezing it softly to encourage him. He placed his opposite hand on top of yours, holding it gently as he looked at you.

“How are you so pretty, seriously?” he asked out of the blue, making you blush with the words.

“I’ve already told you, braces, accutane and nicely shaped eyebrows.”

He walked up to stand in front of you, taking his gloves off. You smiled at him, your own hands wrapping around his neck. Peter kissed you, his hands resting on your hips, pulling you closer. One hand dug into his hair, the other was gently stroking the back of his neck. His lips danced with yours, making you forget about everything else around the two of you.

“We should go home, it’s late.” He said after the kiss.

“But I haven’t finished!” You whined, your hands resting on his shoulders while he looked at you.

Peter seemed tired, like he hadn’t gotten much sleep lately. His shoulders felt tense under your touch, his eyes had this tired gaze that lazily traced the features on your face, trying to read your expression. His hair was really messy now, which made you reach out to fix it for him.

“Okay. Finish up and we can go rest.”

You nodded, jumping off the table and making your way to your corner of the table. Things went surprisingly smooth with your experiment, which seemed somewhat suspicious at first but you chose to ignore it. You were too happy and proud of yourself to really question it.

—-

You had never been to a boxing gym before. A regular one? Sure, hundreds of times, but never a one specifically designed for boxing. Everything seemed so amusing and interesting, your attention was constantly shifting from the boxing bag, to the ring, to someone doing the ropes. Your head and eyes were moving so fast you could hurt your neck. And then your eyes fell on Peter. It made you freeze on the spot, staring at him. You just had to stare. He had just walked out of the dressing room, wearing shorts and a plain black t-shirt. His hands were wrapped. He ran a hand through his hair nervously, making his way over. You gulped as you made eye contact, the blood rushing into your cheeks. You just couldn’t take your eyes off of him. It felt like that one scene from movies in which the girl is standing on top of the stairs with a gorgeous dress on and the male lead finally realizes how in love with her he is. Except Peter was the pretty girl this time. Someone walked past you, you didn’t even notice until the person gave Peter a fist bump. The two of them shared a laugh, the other guy looking at you and nodding his head.

“I think the chick just fell in love with you.” He laughed, making Peter laugh as well.

You snapped out of your trance, like drooling over Peter wasn’t embarrassing enough already, you had to be called out on it. Your head shot down in shame, looking at your trainers. A dumb smile was spread across Peter’s face while he looked at you fidget nervously under their gaze. He patted the other guy’s shoulder, sending him off as he finally made it over to you, pulling you in a hug.

“How do you like it here?” he asked you as you took the opportunity to hide your flustered face in his neck.

“I’ve been here for 10 minutes and people are just now starting to make fun of me. By my standards it’s good.” you told him, a soft sigh escaping your lips. Peter laughed with your comment, patting the top of your head.

“I didn’t hate what he said.” He admitted.

“Of course you wouldn’t.” You rolled your eyes. He wasn’t the one who got caught staring, he wasn’t the one humiliated by someone random.

“Come on, I brought some extra wrist wraps for you.”

“Wait. I’m training too?”

“Well, obviously, why else did you come? To stare?”

“Actually…”

He laughed again, taking your hand and leading you to the nearest bench. He pulled the wrist wraps from his shorts’ pocket, carefully wrapping your hands in them. You observed every motion, the way the fabric was sliding along his fingers, how his hands moved. Like he had done this a million times before. Or at least it seemed that way. He hadn’t. But patching himself up after a bad fight had given him enough experience to make it seem like he was a pro. After he was done he got up, offering you his hand. You took it, letting him lead the way to a corner where the two of you could train in peace. He greeted a few people here and there, still holding your hand.

“I’m going to show you some basic moves.” He started, standing in front of you at a safe distance. “This is your guard. Your hands need to be like this at all times. It’s for protection.”

You nodded, trying to copy what he was showing you. It wasn’t too hard to do, but watching him was making it hard to fully concentrate.

You spent a good portion of time going over the basic punches, he even gave you a pair of gloves and made you spar with him. The workout had absolutely drained your energy, 30 minutes in and you couldn’t breathe, your legs felt like they couldn’t carry you anymore. Most of your fitness was usually morning jogs a few times a week, if you weren’t too busy with studying or sleeping over at Peter’s. You weren’t completely out of shape, but “fit” was definitely not a word you would confidently describe yourself as. You sat down on a bench, Peter helping you take your gloves off.

“I thought the whole point of this was to watch you train, not torture me.” You said as you were unwrapping your hands. Peter was drinking from his water bottle, sat next to you. He bumped his shoulder into yours, smiling.

“Don’t you do enough Parker-watching in the lab already?”

It made you blush and turn your head away. Truthfully, you had been “Parker-watching” since you started high school and it still wasn’t enough. You started to wonder when exactly you had transformed into this clingy little girl, drooling over him.

“Yo, Pete! Ready for a rematch? I can’t believe the way you kicked my ass last time, I’m taking you down today, tough guy.” Someone from across the room was shouting.

Peter got up, placing one hand with a glove on your shoulder. You looked up at him, he hadn’t even sweat yet, perfect. Your head turned to look at the other guy, slightly taller than Peter, light hair and brown eyes. He was lean, wearing a black snapback, no top, black shorts. You thought he looked like the perfect visualization of a frat guy - tall, sporty and handsome, probably arrogant too.

“You wanted to see me work out, right?”

You nodded, looking back at Peter.

“Then you have to cheer for me extra hard.”

“That’s a little bit cringe but sure, whatever gets you going…”

The guy came up to the two of you, brofisting Peter and then offering you a hand.

“Harry, nice to meet you.”

“Y\N.”

—

You were on your toes the whole time they fought. You stood by the ring, holding your breath whenever a punch was thrown in Peter’s direction. He was undeniably hot with the tight fitting clothes, his curls falling on his face. Being short has its advantages, he was way faster than the guy, he even avoided some punches you were absolutely certain would land, knock him out even. But your boy was like lightning on that ring, he was like a professional. Harry was sweating, running after him, very obviously trying his hardest to hit him, but he just couldn’t. It was impressive, to say the least.

“Come on bro, I’m still warming up.” Peter teased him 15 minutes into the spar.

“Parker, how are you even doing this?”

Peter laughed, his guard still up, he was jumping in front of him like the characters in mortal kombat did. Harry tried punching him again, Peter dodged and went for the ribs. He hit. Harry was on the floor, gasping for air.

“Oh, god, are you alright?” Peter panicked, he got on his knees next to his friend, taking his gloves off to help him. You climbed onto the ring as well, placing a hand on Harry’s shoulder who was laying on the floor, his arms across his chest. You looked at Peter and he looked back, terrified. “This happens all the time, right?” you asked, as Harry curled up in a ball. “He’s okay, right?”

“Fucking show off.” Harry laughed, but the laugh hurt him even more and soon he was in agony again.

—

“I can’t believe this happened.” You said, sitting next to Peter on the stairs in front of the ER.

You had bought an ice cream sandwich and broke it in half, giving him the half that was your favorite, his as well, but you thought he needed it more tonight.

“He’s fine, nothing is wrong with him.” You told Peter, who was blankly staring at his feet, holding the ice cream in his hand and not eating it. “They gave him an x-ray, nothing is broken, he just never took a beating before.”

“I wasn’t even going hard on him..” He mumbled.

You were eating the sandwich, not worried about Harry at all.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“Hey, it’s okay. Harry is completely fine, he’ll be out in a minute.” You told him, kissing his cheek. “I don’t know what is going on in that pretty head of yours, but whatever it is, I assure you it's wrong.”

He nodded at your words, finally eating from his ice cream. He didn’t know how you managed to do this, but whenever he felt like this, whenever it got really bad in his head, you managed to pull him right out. Maybe it was how cheerful you were around him, and how you made him feel like you could figure it out together. You would get anxious and worried in most situations too, but somehow you made him feel like as long as the two of you were together, you could figure it out. It always brought him back to the night you called him drunk and crying because you got locked out of your dorm room. You were a whole anxious mess, begging him to save you and once he was there you just calmed down. Like you knew he was really there to save you. Peter felt like the world’s most important hero that night, even more than the times he was Spider-man.

You rested your head on his shoulder, finishing up your piece of the ice cream sandwich. You let him sit like that in silence, which was odd to you because your memories of Peter from high school were in many ways completely opposite to him now. You couldn’t help but remember with nostalgia how open and emotionally vulnerable he was. He would openly tell and show his friends he loved them, and his ex-girlfriend too. You missed that dork, the one that would go in straight for a hug the first day he meets you, but he grew into the awkward handshake dude. Something about him now was very closed off, like there was this wall between the two of you that you didn’t dare jump over. He was still funny and charming, very communicative too, but he rarely talked about how things made him feel. He rarely even shared what was actually going on with him, why he would get so little sleep or what that damn project he’s working on is about. It was putting a lot of distance between the two of you, which you were noticing now after the initial euphoria of dating your high school crush was over. You were trying to build a foundation on top of a sinkhole with him .

The two of you were so lost in the silence, in the train of your own thoughts, that you didn’t even hear Harry standing behind the two of you.

“Are you communicating telepathically?” he asked, making the two of you turn. Peter had the sandwich in his mouth while he stood up, hugging his friend. You stood there by them awkwardly.

“I’m so sorry.” Peter told Harry after he let go.

“I’m not going to ask for a spar with you, ever again. You’re way too good at this, you should teach me!”

Peter scratched the back of his neck, laughing nervously.

“No, I’m not that good, I’m just short.”

“Man, you have to be professionally trained, or a monster at the gym. I've been training since I was 12, I’ve seen hundreds of opponents. No one of them have hit me this hard. And I got my jaw broken on the ring. Twice!”

At that point Harry had started walking on the sidewalk and the two of you subconsciously followed him because of the conversation.

“And you’ve been doing it for a week? I’m not buying that, you’re lying!”

“A week?” you asked, looking at Peter confused. “He’s been doing it for months.”

“Months? This guy showed up at the gym for the first time on Saturday, it hasn’t even been a full week.”

You and Harry stopped, looking at Peter for answers. His lies caught up to him and he panicked, he panicked a lot this time. It was easier when it was just you to lie to, because there was no one who could catch him red handed. You crossed your arms in front of your chest, looking at him with squinted eyes. He felt like a deer caught in headlights under your gaze. You had never questioned anything he said before and he was afraid you were about to start.

“He means that… It’s the first time I’ve been to his gym.” he said finally “I used to go to a different one but the guys there… were bullies to me. Remember?”

He was a ball of nerves, placing his hands in his pockets to try and hide it. Peter’s body got stiff and he was trying his best not to lose his composure but he just started blurring out a made up story to save himself.

“You’ve never told me about anyone bullying at the gym.”

“You can’t have forgotten about that one time I came back with a black eye and all… They were just really… bad? I thought that if I got stronger and tougher they would stop but they di-” you interrupted him with a hug, squeezing him tightly.

You knew he was uncomfortable with all of this, and it was hard for him to talk about his feelings and what he was going through. You had to reassure him this was not an attack but a safe conversation. It explained his weird behavior to an extent. He was bullied in high school too and you hoped those days were over for him. Being bullied as an adult is something completely different than the childish jokes in school, that’s why you thought part of the reason he was so closed off now.

“It’s okay, Pete.” You mumbled. “You don’t have to talk about it, I believe you.”

He finally breathed out, hugging you back.

“It’s okay, I’m tough. I almost broke Harry today.”

“Too soon, Parker.”

—

It was a normal Monday evening for you, late hours in the lab, the soft sizzling of something on the stove, the heavy chemical smell in the air. Your palms felt sweaty inside the rubbed gloves and the goggles you were using were recently regulated by someone with a smaller head, which resulted in an uncomfortable squeezing of your head, which was about to give you a headache soon. The only thing that was missing in this scene was Peter. In the last few days he had been coming very late to the lab dates. You didn’t think much of it really, he had told you about wanting to spend more time with his new friend - Harry. He felt incredibly guilty about the whole almost-breaking his ribs situation recently and as a compensation, Peter offered to train him. It left you with even more time on your hands, which resulted in a lot of boredom. You were so ahead on class work that there was no point in continuing, you were not trying to graduate early. The second best thing you could think of was helping Peter with his very secret project, and hiding that from him, of course.

You spent enough hours watching him, observing the chemicals he was using, the way he was combining them and the nervous scribbling in his notebook. You read that notebook a dozen times, filled with chemical compounds, processes, results that were circled in red or scratched out. Most of the research didn’t seem like it was going smoothly for him, he had written things like “failed” all over the pages. And even with chemistry not being the strongest of your subjects, you knew that things were going wrong for him mostly because he had tunnel vision. He had written the key ingredients he was using down and most of his work was based around them - in different proportions, different ways of mixing. But none of them were giving the results he was seeking. After a good amount of time brainstorming you decided this whole thing needed a different approach. The issue was, you thought, in the key ingredients themselves. That’s how you secretly ended up developing your own version of the web fluid formula. You had been trying to use things which you had read would give similar, and preferably better, results in the experiment. For two weeks now you had been using the free time away from Peter to do just that - help him in his work. And it was going well, so well that you actually considered yourself ready by the beginning of the third week. You made sure to write everything down, following his example, so you wouldn’t forget something important.

You took the jar that had white goo in it, softly bubbling up over the fire and mixed it up with a metal stick. The white goo had risen like dough and it was sticking to the metal as you were stirring it around. You pulled the metal stick up, the white substance all over it, stretching after it. In this exact moment the door opened and Peter barged in, almost out of breath. You head turned, looking at his messy hair, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he was trying to calm his breathing before greeting you.

“Hello, beautiful, sorry I’m late.” He told you, throwing his bag on a chair and putting a lab coat on.

“Hi.” You smiled at him, placing the jar down on the table.

He seemed distracted and in a rush, like usual. You walked over to him as he was putting some gloves on so you could fix the collar on his lab coat that got flipped over. He placed a soft kiss on your forehead while you did that.

“What have you been up to in here?”

“Actually, your work.”

“My work?” His brows furrowed in confusion, making you bite your lip before you took his hand and led him to the table.

“Well, you’ve been silently working on this whole project for so long now, it’s been months. The one you are very sparse with the details with. But I took the time to read over you notes, plus I've seen your experiments like a million times…” you said, grabbing the jar again and lifting it up for him to see. The metal stick was still inside, you pulled it up and the white substance inside followed it, sticking to it but still moving like melted cheese. “I tried a different approach.”

He took the jar from your hands and inspected himself, playing around with it, touching it with his fingers even.

“How even-”

“The technology I used is slightly different to yours. And the ingredients too. From what I could understand, you were trying to replicate the functionality and durability of an actual spider web… designed to suit human weight of course. With that being said, the results shouldn’t be absolutely permanent as well, like this thing, it should dissolve after some time, right?”

He nodded, listening to you with a lot of attention.

“So… I developed this formula, the whole mixture is activated by heat, of course, but once activated it can be stored in these particular qualities, in containers for example. But it does lose these qualities over time, especially when it’s hit by direct sunlight.”

“How much time does it last?”

“Depends on the conditions but… Two to four hours from what I’ve tried.”

He was staring blankly at you, still holding the jar in the palm of his hand. He didn’t really know what to say or do, all kinds of thoughts were running around in his head. He was amazed, absolutely stunned by the way you managed to do this. Peter was also incredibly proud, he could say that much. But the fear of being exposed as Spider-man was bubbling up in his chest, his heart was beating fast, his palms were starting to sweat.

You were looking at him, waiting for him to say something, anything at this point. You were starting to get anxious. Did you fuck up? Did you cross a line you were not supposed to? Was he upset with you? He never asked for your help but you did it anyway. Did you ruin the whole thing for him? The only thing you could hear at this point was the ringing in your ears.

“You’re a genius!” He exclaimed finally, a smile spreading across his lips as he looked at the worried expression on your face. Your features softened up, a sigh of relief escaped your lips after he spoke.

“Can I look over your notes?”

“Yeah, definitely!”

You turned around and grabbed the notebook you had been using to write down your research. He skimmed over it, flipping through the neatly written pages.

“You’re actually brilliant!” he told you after he was done reading it, placing the notebook on the table. “I need to run a couple of tests to check for a few other things but your formula looks so much better than mine.”

“Yeah, sure, take it. I made it for you anyway.”

“Look at you, making your own web fluid formula and you were scared to even do the lab experiments during class a few months ago.”

“My own what? Web fluid?”

It had just slipped out of him. His eyes widened, all the blood left his face. He looked as if he had just seen a ghost. And in reality he had seen a ghost - the ghost of his past, coming back to haunt him again. There was no coming back from this, he was caught red handed and it was his own fault. Not that he wanted it to happen, but he was tired, overwhelmed and overworked.

It didn’t take a degree in math to put 2 and 2 together and a lot of things were starting to make sense for you now. All the time he was spending in the lab developing a “web fluid”, the random disappearing from time to time, his past Stark internship, the link between Spider-man and the Avengers. It was all adding up.

“You’re working for Spider-man!” You finally said, like you had come to the most logical conclusion there was.

“I’m what?” He asked almost immediately. His head was a mess, trying to come up with the best possible lie to cover himself up.

“It all makes sense! He knows you from the Stark internship you did back in high school, and he asked you to develop a new formula, right?”

Peter was finding it hard to believe his ears or his luck. Of all the things he could have come up with on his own, none of them could beat the thing you just did. He was sure you would have figured it out by now, after this fatal error he made. And somehow your brain was so overcomplicating the situation so much that you couldn’t come up with the right answers. You had such blind faith in him that even for a split second you didn’t question any excuse he had given you before. He was blinking silently, looking at you. In his mind he was debating whether he should finally tell you the truth and break the most sacred oath he had taken in front of himself. Or if he should continue expanding the web of lies he had created until he himself gets caught up in it.

“Absolutely, you got me here.”

Shallow and disgusting, he thought to himself, a bitter taste on his tongue as the words echoed in the room. He chose a lie, a dirty lie to the only person who cared for him so deeply, the person who trusted him so blindly. Would you accept him and continue loving him if you knew the truth? And the issue for him at this point wasn’t about the truth anymore, it was about the way he was treating you. His heart shattered when you smiled and hugged him.

“I knew it! You’re so smart that the actual Avengers need you! You have so many great things ahead of you!”

Your soft giggle felt like a direct stab to the heart. His shaky hands wrapped around your waist while you hugged him. He held you close, closer than ever before because there was an uneasy, heavy feeling in his stomach that if he let go now, he would never touch you again.

taglist:

(apologies if I missed anyone)

@zeeader @groundclueless @ivyquill @bitchyycapricorn

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