Chapter II has arrivedin full effect, boys and girls!Now, a dear reader pointed out the connection between THIS universe's resident bug-boy and Garfield's rendition. I'm taking after NWH Garfield more, but I just liked Emma Stone (because of her amazing personality, lol) and ended up quite enjoying Garfield as an actoroutside these movies. So, in tribute, I shall do what I do best: bastardise media.
Enjoy=D
When Peter Parker climbed through his window at seven-thirty-four, after an aching prowl around his street to make sure there were no eyes watching, he found no Mary-Jane and no May.
'I'll have to apologise to Mary-Jane tomorrow, no clue how or when but I have to.'
The coast was clear.
The coast was very clear.
As a matter of fact, the coast was so clear, so spotless, that Peter slipped a pair of headphones and jammed out to some Kanye album Ned had recommended a year or so ago.
The coast was completely free until a very much naked (bar his underwear) Peter heard a noise worse than death, torture, assault, you name it.
The door opened, not even three songs in.
Not even ten minutes in and his aunt needed something.
Peachy.
"Sorry I'm late in, May, honestly I'm trying so hard to let Jonah gimme some slightly more liberal hours but he's a bit of a- oh."
Mary-Jane Watson was behind him, staring at him with bug-eyes and her index finger on her bottom lip.
'I retract my statement.'
The two met eyes, before Mary-Jane simply shot her eyes somewhere else.
"You're not May."
The door was hurriedly closed thereafter with a muted "'m sorry", but not without a very much lingering gaze at Peter's (self-admittedly) Grecian body on her behalf and a gradually reddening face on Peter's
Opening his cupboard at record-speed, Peter dived into what Flash had called his "hipster drip" (i.e: anything that wasn't Nike Air or some other variation of Jumpman), opened the door once more and stared at the redhead's vibrant irises with intent.
"So."
MJ screwed her eyes shut with burning intensity, her face darkening three shades and her lip trembling slightly.
"Oh my god, Pete, I'm so-"
"Calculus."
She opened her eyes to Peter Parker, donning a close-eye smile, who mouthed a hurried "its fine" to her as his form of reassurance. Gradually, the redness on her face left and her eyes finally met Peter's once more.
"The work of the devil, Tiger."
Three hours later and Peter had regretted his offer of tutoring the lovely Miss Watson.
"So, Mary-Jane, what is the formula of the speed of light? Come on, don't give me the pouty look. You've been to two classes in a semester, beginner steps are necessary."
Mary-Jane continued to glower at him.
"Please? "
Her supposed anger dissipated in a near-instant, replaced by an (admittedly) stunning, pearly white smile.
"Three times ten to the power of eight, right?"
Peter smiled back.
"Of course. Now, what is the Earth's gravitation?"
Her face once again portrayed a key to her mind, the once chock-full-of-life features now rife with confusion.
"I... don't remember."
"In fact, let's call it a night for now. It's like, ten-to-eleven, you should probably go home. It's been a pleasure having you round, Mary-Jane."
MJ nodded.
"Yeah, suppose dad might flip his shit if I stay at a guy's any longer, eh?"
"Even at little ol' me?" Peter smirked.
"Someone as good looking as you would threaten everything, Pete. You'd be a walking corpse." Mary-Jane responded in kind with a smirk of her own, challenging Peter.
"Good looking? I'm flattered. You're not too bad yourself."
MJ laughs.
"Calling you "good looking" is like saying the Chrysler Building is fairly sizeable. You're a real looker, tiger."
'Wow.'
"Yeah, you're uh... quite the stunner too, Mary-Jane. Yeah, uh, I'm gonna go now. See you soon, hopefully...?"
MJ nodded.
"Soon. You free, uh... Saturday? Yeah, Saturday."
Peter nodded, dumbfounded.
"Cool, it's a date then. Twelve noon, my house, don't be late or I'llkillyou dead, Parker.Just because you're a pretty boy doesn't mean I won't killyou."
Peter gulped.
"Yes, that's... that's what killing someone means. Thanks, I guess... I'll uh... I'll see you then."
Mary-Jane gave a little wave.
"Oh," a voice began, "I like her, Peter! Your uncle would've liked her too."
Peter chuckled softly.
"Figured that as well. If I remember correctly, he always had a penchant for someone who scared me shitless."
"Language. And yes, yes he did."
"I'm gonna go sleep now, May. Thanks, for everything."
Aunt May shook her head.
"Thank you for sticking around. Night, Peter!"
Closing his door, the brunette sighed. Hitting the hay and passing out almost immediately, Peter came to find flashes of long, flowing red hair, goddesses in their thrones, tigers and Converse shooting through his mind and a voice whispering sweet nothings into his ear.
Closing his door, May smiled gently to herself, ignoring the inner conflict.
You see, May Parker had always been a bit of a worrier.
From the night that Richie chapped the door, soaked in blood and tears, to when Peter revealed he was being bullied, to when Ben-
No. Not now.
Peter was asleep, he didn't need to hear her sobs. Not now.
Never again.
May had been barely touching fifty when Richie left Peter on the doorstep. The boy was eight, he didn't know what his parents were, how they were destined to-
Sniffles, ah. Not a good sign.
The city was barely over the attacks from Loki and his strange, brutish and plain ugly minion-thingies. "Thank God I chose the most suburban bit of Queens I could find,", she'd muttered that day, seeing the death toll and damage ratio from Manhattan to Brooklyn, the billions upon billions of dollars in damages, the thousands of lives lost.
Somehow, the news had turned it into a patriotism angle. Blamed it on the heroes, blamed it on everything but themselves for interacting with something they knew was sought after by thousands.
May's worries quelled at the thought of the word "hero". Heroes were subjective, "Are you an Iron man guy?" was a question she'd been asked for years, one to which she'd answer with a resounding, "No."
"Why?" The child would always ask, red in the face with anger.
Sitting down with her coffee at the rocking chair by the window, a ghost of a smile barged onto her lips, the first real smile since Ben di-
Passed.
"Because," she'd answer as if it was the most obvious thing on God's green Earth, "Peter Parker's my superhero."
Gwendolyn Stacy was not a happy camper.
"And you're positive it was Watson?"
Nodding once more.
"Yup, as soon as I left for a second, she sees the one guy I think is cute in this God forsaken school and goes up and now they're best friends, according to him. I'm not bothered, it's just... it hurts, you know? Your own friends doing that?"
Liz Allan nods once more.
"In fact, she's becoming pretty close to Peter Parker. Little bit suspicious, hm? I don't know... maybe it's a little bit wh-"
"Look, she's our friend, so don't say that, good God, don't call her that." Gwen finished in her trademark husk.
Liz Allan, a valued part of her and Mary Jane's friend group and boyfriend to Flash Thompson, simply sighed and shook her head, before looking back at her Physics paper.
"Liz, just out of curiosity, who exactly is Peter Parker? I've heard the name, but I can't put names to faces. The guy in track and photography, yeah?"
"And my boyfriend's friend, yes. He's actually pretty chill, comes along with Flash to cheerleading practise sometimes, says hi sometimes in the hallway, can hold decent conversations about small things, quite like you in that regard." Liz pointed a blue acrylic nail in Gwen's face, and the blonde shook her head in mock fury.
"What is this, this, this... this slander?!"
Liz laughed, a bubbly, angelic sound that lingered in her throat and came out smoothly.
"Nothing, no-ow! Nothing. but honestly, you should say hello to him or something. He's cute, and he totally checked you out last week!"
Gwen shifted uncomfortably, her face flooded by a foreign warmth.
"No he did not. Nothing to check out, and you've got a horrible track record of lying when it comes to these. Do you remember September 16th?"
Liz' usually tan face resembled a ghastly white, all expression and joy drained at the thoughts of that wretched night.
"Christ, how could I not? Look, I'm not lying, I swear I'm not, just... speak to him."
"Fine. I swear to God, if you're-"
The door (very ) loudly swung open, smashing against the wall and reverberating around the normally silent lunch-time study class.
"Parker, you're late. Again. The club started seventeen minutes ago. Take a seat, I honestly don't care where at this rate."
Peter shook his head.
"Sure thing, sir."
Liz excitedly waved at the boy in the faded Metallica tee (heh, good taste) and shorts, doing what could be best described as her rendition of someone drowning.
"Here, Pete! Pete! " She whisper (yelled) across the room, gesturing towards the empty seat next to Gwen.
"Fine, fine."
His head was still down.
Jerk.
"Hey, Pete, look up from your phone for a God-damned minute."
The brunette raised his head lazily.
"What? "
"Gwen, this is the guyI told you about earlier, Peter. Peter, meet my friend, Gwen."
Peter shifted his head around Liz, attempting to get a better view of thegirl, a sight he would not come to regret at all.
'Holy hell, she's as pretty as MJ. Lord help us all.'
Beaming so to hide his shock at heradmittedly stunning beauty (dejá vu, anyone?), Peter extended a hand to her, anticipating her shaking it.
His anticipation paid off and she smiled back.
"Are you here for physics?"
Peter shook his head, smiling as he did so.
"Nah, I'm here to help people with it. I'd rather
Gwen's eyes widened at his apparent act of selflessness, before briefly returning to their average stare.
"That's kind, Peter, but you also have to pass as well. That's a pretty major miss there, if you ask me."
"Fair enough. Where to start?"
"Well, uh, I'm kind of ahead, but Neutron stars sound good."
"Nice shirt by the way, Peter. Good choice."
Peter craftily hid the fact he'd bought the tee for the design and that he knew four Metallica songs for the time being. Honesty wasn't worth it at points.
"Yeah, I know. Huge fan."
Gwen's eyes narrowed.
"Favourite song?"
Peter's heart dropped out of his chest.
"I... don't have one."
Gwen nodded.
"You've never listened to them before, have you?"
Peter exhaled deeply, shaking his head and smiling.
"Thank God, I wasn't going to go further with that. I can impress you in other ways, knowledge-wise or musically. That was not the call."
Gwen snorted, shaking her head in unison with him.
"I appreciate the honesty, Mr. Parker. Now, where were we?" She said in a faux-old-timey-high-class English accent.
"Physics, Madame Stacy. The world!" Peter responded in kind.
The two shared a look and a laugh, before resuming work.
Every day she took the climb, she had a realisation.
'I am not great at being open.'
Gwen Stacy would never admit to a single soul on Earth her feelings. Ever.
She was the big sister of the house, a popular, studious girl, someone who cared about others a lot and someone who liked to be to herself at the best of times.
She'd often pondered why she enjoyed helping others, before realising it was her father's strong moral compass and values that had instilled it.
Like daddy, she doesn't talk about feelings. It's not the Stacy way.
So when Gwen went home, and blurted that she found a guy cute, and bore with her mother's constant teasing, her brothers' songs and her father's glower of disapproval, Gwen knew that she meant every word of it.
At 4:31 in the morning on a cold Wednesday, Gwen Stacy found that she couldn't sleep.
It's not because of that stupid brown-haired nerd Peter (sounding like MJ there, Gwen), that night a few years ago or her worries about her studies, but what life might have been like somewhere else. What the other side was like.
Grass is greener in another man's garden, after all.
New York is dangerous. Our protectors, the Avengers, are in the middle of the city, and yet we feel more in danger than ever before. There's a lingering feeling in the air, something so stagnant and vile. New York is dangerous, but it's home, dammit, and I'm not going to watch it burn on the sidelines. Even after what happened all the way back. At least daddy or the Spider-Man are putting in shifts to save the city. It's a crying shame that Tony Stark or Steve Rogers sees us as far enough beneath them that they can just watch, but-
A resounding thwip banged outside her window.
'Thunder?'
The world seemed to play around her in slow motion as Spider-Man swung by her apartment at this ungodly hour, with a webbed-up criminal in one hand and a web in the other. His head seemingly turned to meet her gaze, the large white lenses of his mask greeting her stare with equivalent intensity.
Perhaps Spider-Man does even more than I thought, hm?
For the first time in her life, Gwen Stacy fell back asleep and thought happy thoughts about spiders, the unravelling web of time and a man with a deific body donning red, holding her tightly and keeping the clawing shadows out for just one more moment.
Thoughts, everyone? Trying to turn this into a deeper direction, especially with my friend's legit comic book that he's trying to write. So, RR and thank you for the growth! All your words help and I'd love to hear your thoughts and feelings on what I've cooked up!
Much love, your friendly neighbourhood FH.