Written for this prompt: Leave a "Drink Me" in my ask, and I will write a drabble about characters drinking, alone or with each other. Small fic about Peter and Gwen drinking, in joy and loss. Slightly AU and entirely unbetaed. My first time posting for this fandom, so please be kind.
Warnings: Alcohol use (underage), death, angst.
Characters: Peter/Gwen, suggestion of Peter/MJ.
Enjoy.
"My head feels funny." Gwen laughs, shaking her head so that her bangs fall in front of her bright eyes.
Peter rolls his eyes, downing his own shot with smooth ease. "Wimp. It's one shot!" But he presses his shoulder against hers so that she'll know he's only kidding, and the smile he gets in response makes his skin tingle. He pours her a glass of water, watches the way her eyes flutter close as she takes a sip. "Better?"
"Much."
It's late when he finds her, still wearing her funeral clothes on a park bench by the cemetery. She's been crying, of course, but he can't distinguish whether her eyes are red from the salt water or the bottle of vodka she fails to hide under her blouse.
"Gwen?" Peter whispers, pressing his hand against the small of her back, wanting to say a million different things that ultimately come down to: I'm sorry.
She startles, of course, like a cat caught with its paw dangling in the fish bowl. "Peter. You came."
"You asked me to. How are you feeling?"
Gwen pulls out the bottle, swirls it around in her hands. "Like I just buried my father in front of a thousand different people who didn't even know his favourite colour. How could they cry, like they knew…like they were…"
It's all Peter can do not to cry with her for the guilt that threatens to consume him, he pulls her close and takes the offered bottle out of her hands, taking a swig and shaking his head as the alcohol bites at his throat and stings his eyes.
"You didn't have to know his favourite colour to know he was a great guy." Peter murmurs against her hair, and swallows back the promise he made her father the night he drew his last breath, for now.
The anniversary is undoubtedly the worst day of Peter's year. It mocks him from the calendar Mary Jane has hung up on his wall. It isn't circled., or starred. But he knows it off by heart. The night Gwen Stacy died.
The night he might have killed her, but he'll never know.
MJ offers to take him out for a drink but he shakes his head and locks his bedroom door behind him. He keeps his ear pressed against it until he's sure she's left, before pulling out the bottle he keeps hidden in an unremarkable place for such occasions. For the occasion.
He gulps it down with no care for dignity, sits back against his bed and thinks of Gwen. Imagines the way her hair might feel in his fingers, the way her hot breath would caress his neck. Her laughter, deep and honest, her tears, heart wrenchingly true. Small things like the way she sipped her sodas, the way she loved him for who he was, not the mask he wore, the way he'd envisaged a life they simply would never live together.
He doesn't stop drinking until the image of her body in a pine box is erased (for the moment) from his mind.
"Peter Parker! You are getting me, totally innocent…" She'd giggled at that. "Totally innocent Gwen Stacy drunk, aren't you?"
"I think you're handling that quite well yourself." But he'd smiled as she'd clung to the chains of a swing and stared up the dark night sky. It was hard to make anything out with the city lights surrounding them. She'd laughed and laughed, a child once again if not for the beer she held tightly in one hand. She swung higher and higher, before finally leaping too high and stumbling against the bark of the park's ground. "Shit. Ow. Shit."
"Gwen!" Peter ran over, heart racing fast and face flushing red. "Are you okay?" He pulled her up, inspected her for scrapes, and leapt about three metres when she started laughing.
"I'm fine." She promised, and nuzzled her warm nose against his. "I love you, Peter Parker, you worrier, you."
He feigned a frown but was all smiles inside as his lips pressed against her forehead and the moon shone approvingly above.
When he wakes his head hurts but for a brief moment he thinks he can smell Gwen, thinks he can feel her weight beside him. He scrambles, reaching to the side of the bed he doesn't occupy and feels his heart break all over again as his hand falls into vacant space – as always.