Reckless
She is glad she wakes up before Peter does.
She doesn't know why her immediate fear upon waking is that Peter won't be there. She doesn't experience any confusion, any of the usual disorientation that comes from waking up in an unfamiliar way. Before she finishes opening her eyes she remembers the entire night in vivid detail, from the moment she saw him standing drenched at her door to the moment their eyes finally drooped and the conversation got hazy and indistinct and they fell asleep tangled in each other's limbs.
Not enough time has passed for Gwen to decide how she feels about last night, but she knows that if he isn't still next to her, she might hate him forever. As she becomes more aware, though, she feels his arm under her neck and one of his calves against her toes and she opens her eyes and sees that he's still in her bed, snoring lightly beside her.
She freezes. She doesn't want to move and wake him. She wants this aloneness for a moment, for maybe more than a moment, to steel herself for what happens next.
Should she pretend it isn't a big deal to her? She doesn't want to scare him, doesn't want to make him feel like he owes her anything, but at the same time she doesn't want to risk giving him an excuse to treat last night the same way he treated all those nights he snuck into her window in high school—as something unexpected and guilt-wracking and complicated. She doesn't want last night tainted by stammered apologies and days or months or, god forbid, years of avoiding each other again. Last night was different—it wasn't just a kiss, it wasn't just falling asleep next to each other, it was everything, and Gwen might not be the most emotional girl on the planet, but if he treats this like it's anything less monumental than it is, she thinks the humiliation might be more than she can bear.
A few minutes pass. She wonders how long she can keep this up, this indecisive, torturous suspension in time. Would she do it all over again if she had the chance? Probably. Yes. Undoubtedly. God, she would, and that's the most upsetting thing about this, is no matter how he reacts to this, no matter what comes out of his mouth when he wakes up, she would do it again in a heartbeat.
With this realization she leans just slightly away from him and his eyes shoot open and she stops breathing, watching him and waiting.
"Hey," he says, his voice rough from sleep. He smiles at her, slow and easy, and she feels the muscles in her shoulders relax slightly. "How long have you been up?"
He asks it so casually that she feels inexplicably stricken and self-conscious, like she should be covering more of herself than the t-shirt she ended up falling asleep in. She doesn't know what she expected—she supposes she thought it would be like the first time they really talked, or the first time they kissed, or any of the other firsts, when he was awkward and stuttering and unsure, but he looks so at ease that she can't help the irrational fear that maybe this isn't the first time he has done this with a girl, maybe she is just one of many, maybe this isn't half as important to him as it is to her.
But no—it's Peter. She is being absurd. She knows this boy, knows him better than she knows anyone else, and she can't think of him that way. She takes a breath and says, "Not very long."
He shifts his body, prying his arm out from under her neck. She is struck again with an unwelcome, crippling fear that he will pull away from her completely, that he will untangle himself from her sheets and leave her in this apartment where every corner screams with his presence, but before the panic can fully well up in her chest he reaches forward and brushes a stray lock of hair out of her face. The gesture is so familiar and comforting that she thinks she might cry with relief.
There are a few beats of silence in which she isn't sure whether or not he expects her to say something, if one of them should initiate some sort of long discussion of what last night meant and how they're going to handle it and whether or not it will happen again, but Peter leans forward and kisses her lightly on the mouth and for the first time that morning she smiles. Maybe this doesn't have to be complicated. Maybe they can just be two normal college students, with the kind of love that is present and unplanned and doesn't require the over-thinking and worries of the last few years.
"I'm glad you came over last night," she says simply, because it seems safe and she still is feeling him out a little bit.
His grin widens. "Yeah, me too."
Gwen lets her head rest on the pillow again and they spend the morning talking and dozing and being so remarkably normal that sometimes she tricks herself into thinking it has always been this way. He tells her about the classes he mostly hasn't been attending and the job that he is trying not to neglect at the Daily Bugle, about all the terrible and occasionally hilarious things his boss says about Spiderman, about how he and his aunt learned the hard way last month that neither of them were seasoned enough to handle the jalapenos in some street vendors' lasagna. She tells him about her brothers, about how she hasn't spoken to her mother in the weeks since she caught him with Captain Johnson, about MJ and her ill-advised attempts to find legitimate auditions on Craigslist.
It's nearly nine o'clock by the time Gwen's phone buzzes on an automatic alarm. She has class in an hour, but she maneuvers herself slightly to turn it off and leaves it on the floor.
"You have to go?" asks Peter.
She shakes her head and burrows into the sheets. "Do you?"
"I probably should," he says, and it's hard to suppress the scowl forming on her face. "But I don't want to, so."
She relaxes and leans forward and kisses him again. She likes the way that he always seems surprised but pleased whenever she has done that this morning, his eyebrows shooting up like he can't quite believe it and his lips kind of curling into her kiss so she can feel him smiling.
"If I'd known getting under your skin was as easy as taking Owen up on coffee, I might have tried it a long time ago," says Gwen, feeling some of the boldness of last night creep back into her bones.
Peter tries to look indignant. "I'm not—it wasn't—I'm not jealous of Owen," he says.
"Good. You shouldn't be," she says.
"He talked about you, like, all the time," Peter groans. "I can't believe I never made the connection."
"I didn't know boys talked about girls."
"We don't," says Peter, "we talk about—sports and hammers and big cars."
"Seriously," asks Gwen, because she can't quite help herself, "what did you tell him about me?"
Peter opens his mouth and she can tell before he even gathers enough air in his lungs to speak that he's about to play dumb, so she prompts him and says, "That girl from high school who … what?"
He ducks his head down. "I didn't realize Owen knew you," he says sheepishly.
She shifts so she's leaning closer to him. "So I'll just have to ask him, then?"
"No," says Peter quickly, and when he looks up and sees that she's kidding he cracks a grin. "Sheesh, Gwen. They were good things, okay? Trust me."
"Alright," she says, feeling a little bit giddy.
They maybe spend another half an hour in various stages of sloth and laziness in her apartment before he proposes grabbing a slice of pizza from the place down the street notorious for its dripping grease. A part of her is hesitant to ever leave this apartment, to ever leave these moments they just spent here exposed and unguarded without them inside to protect them from disappearing, but she's hungry and he's slipping his arms into his jacket sleeves and she knows she has to keep moving if any of this is going to stay real.
He opens the door and waits for her as she turns to lock it. She feels something on her ear and squeals as he kisses her from behind, reeling around to face Peter and his wide, mischievous smile. She forgets about the keys and leans forward and kisses him, right there in the open hallway.
Just as the kiss begins to deepen, all the muscles in Peter's body seem to contract. She braces herself, her heart already sinking. She hasn't been able to help herself from waiting for the moment he will realize what he has done, the moment he remembers the promise, the moment that has, unfortunately, come many times before this one. She starts to pull away from him—the pattern is so familiar. He will stare at her with those sorry brown eyes and try to collect himself and look tortured when she inevitably starts to cry, then he'll stammer and apologize and leave and god only knows how long it will be until they speak again.
But when he steps back slightly, there is none of the stammering or the apologetic looks—his face is hardened and he turns and says, "Something's not—shit."
Gwen stifles a scream as she sees the needle hit Peter in the neck, then sees him near instantaneously falls down to his knees.
"Peter—" She's about to lean down and try to help him, but that needle came from somewhere. She looks around wildly but sees no one.
"Get out of here," Peter says through grit teeth. "Now."
"I—"
She feels the pressure of the needle hitting her more than she feels the pain. The heat of it seems to radiate in her elbows and her knees and all the way down to her toes, and she doesn't even feel the impact as she hits the ground, just an ominous welling of panic in her chest that does nothing to stop her eyes from sliding shut and giving in to the darkness.
This time, Gwen is not glad to wake up before Peter does.
As she starts to come to, the only thing she is aware of is how her muscles are aching as if she has run a marathon, and how her head is practically screaming in protest before she opens her eyes. The room is badly lit, but not so dark that she needs to adjust to it. The walls and the floor are concrete, and there is a basin sink across the room and a metal bar nailed to the wall, where the other end of a handcuff attached to her hand is locked. Peter is only a few feet away, similarly shackled but still unconscious.
Gwen is surprised at how calmly she is assessing her surroundings, but before she can impress herself the panic slams into her with full force.
"Peter," she says, not even considering that they might not be alone. She shakes the handcuffs against the metal of the bar, hoping the noise will rouse him, but it doesn't.
She tucks her knees into her chest and tries to breathe, but thinking about breathing makes her gasp for air, remembering everything, remembering in full force that night two years ago when she was snatched on the way from school in plain sight and woke up in the supply closet in their gym hours later. This, right here, is what Peter has always wanted to avoid, what her father always feared.
She needs to calm down. She needs to prove that she can handle this. Isn't it what she has asked for all along? To have Peter, no matter what the consequences?
And here were the consequences, coming too soon. She looks at him, pale and limp in the yellow light, and bites back angry, terrified tears. It isn't fair. She has only had him for a second, she has only ever let herself slip once, and now she is being punished in the worst possible way.
She wonders who did this to them. She wonders how they even found out—not only Peter's identity, but her connection to him, as well. She squeezes her eyes shut in an effort to block out the terror that is paralyzing her, but it's useless, she can't imagine her way out of here. There is no clever, crafty way to get out of these handcuffs or out of this place. Gwen is a confident girl, a girl who has been praised for her intelligence and quick-wittedness her entire life, so that she has come to believe in some ways that she is capable of anything, but her talents are useless here.
"Peter," she says again, louder this time. She tries to extend a foot to nudge him, but can't reach. "Peter—"
"Ah. I see that you're awake."
Gwen freezes.
"Don't worry about your friend there," says the figure. He walks through a door that Gwen hadn't noticed and when he slams it behind him it almost seems to blend into the wall. "He'll be awake soon enough."
Gwen is smart enough not to speak, or at least to delay it as long as she can. The man is fully in black, black pants and a black shirt, but from out of the holes in his sleeve and his exposed neck and head he is wearing material almost identical to Peter's Spiderman suit; if she hadn't worked on Peter's herself once, noting all the intricate details, she would never have noticed the difference at all.
His features are covered by a mask. Never did Gwen think she would look at the face of Spiderman and feel such immeasurable fear.
"You're not going to ask me why I brought you here, then?" The man has a slight accent, but Gwen is too terrified to try to identify its origins. He crosses his arms and cocks his head and even through the mask she can feel his unwelcome stare on her. "Or is it that you already know?"
Gwen swallows, hard, and tries not to look at him, but she is afraid that if she looks away she won't be prepared if he does something unexpected. Her eyes flit, just for a moment, back over to Peter, and she has a morbid thought that maybe this depressing, suffocating room will be the last time she'll see him alive.
"You know valuable information. Tell me. Tell me the identity of the Spiderman and neither of you will be hurt."
Gwen shuts her eyes, trying to recollect herself. "What?"
The man doesn't answer, and she has the impression that he is man who doesn't waste his words—although he may just be the most grossly informed man in the room. Gwen doesn't understand. If the man doesn't know who Spiderman is, why on earth would he take Peter and Gwen in the first place? What on earth could possibly incriminate them so much that it would warrant a literal kidnapping?
She opens her eyes, steeling herself to look at him and sucks in a breath. "You've made a mistake. Neither of us has any idea who Spiderman is."
"Do not try to pretend!" the man barks, and for a moment his accent becomes even more pronounced. He steps over to her and she flinches, because in the past these unpleasant situations have usually involved the even more unpleasant circumstance of having someone violate her personal space to an unforgivable degree, but to her surprise he stops about ten feet away from her. Somehow it doesn't make him any less menacing.
"I—I don't know what you're talking about," says Gwen again.
"The girl who saved Spiderman does not know who he is?" asks the man, his voice lower now. "What, and the boy who takes his photographs all over the city does not know either, does he?" he says, gesturing sharply to Peter.
"No," says Gwen as firmly as she can. "We don't know anything."
"You are in no position to lie to me now," says the man. He shifts his head just slightly and Gwen follows his gaze to Peter. "You care about this boy. He cares about you," he says, in such a cold, analytic way that it makes Gwen's skin crawl. "I wonder how many bones of yours I would have to break for him to tell me the truth."
Gwen knows if she lets herself breathe she will start gasping and give any illusion of her calmness away, so she holds her breath for a moment and listens to her heart thudding between her ears.
"You are a pretty girl. I would hate for that to change."
Gwen can't even swallow. She's afraid she might choke on the saliva collecting in her throat. "You've made a mistake," she says, sounding garbled and afraid.
He turns his back on her, but the slight relief of him looking away is quickly replaced by the anticipation of his next move. She glances over at Peter and has to suppress a gasp. His eyes are wide open and he is appears to be carefully, silently, attempting to break his shackles. For a brief moment he makes eye contact with her, just long enough to shake his head for her to turn away.
The clack of his handcuffs breaking is unmistakable. The man turns around sharply, but Peter is fast, faster than Gwen could ever have imagined. She barely even sees his arm reach forward and snap the chain holding her to the bar. She sits there stunned for a moment, with this strange, disorienting feeling that she is the one moving in slow motion as the man darts forward with unthinkable speed and tries to grab Peter by the wrist.
In an instant Peter wrenches his wrist out of the way and blocks Gwen by shoving himself between her and their captor. Gwen can't see Peter's face with his back turned or the man's face with the mask secure on their head, but there is an unmistakable beat of recognition, and then a low growl from the man: "You."
Peter lunges forward, reaching for the man's mask, but he's too quick and dodges and Peter seems unwilling to go after him and leave Gwen exposed. Gwen stumbles to her feet, anticipating the smoke before Peter does and looking wildly around the room for the door she knows is hidden against the wall. She sees a sliver of it, just a crack, and she starts running for it—sure enough, she hears a hiss as the smoke bomb goes off and sucks in a breath and holds it.
She slams against the wall and gropes for the doorknob just as the smoke surrounds her. She finds it and tugs. It isn't locked, but the door is heavy—she hears Peter croak her name from somewhere in the smog and she shoves the door open with her shoulder and screams "Peter!" with the last gasp of air in her lungs.
She turns around, trying not to double over from coughing, and perceives someone coming at her through the smoke. Someone who is too broad and too short and too angry to be Peter.
Her first impulse is to duck, and it turns out to be a horrible one. The man rams straight into her and she falls through the open door and slams her head on the concrete floor with a thud. The fall isn't enough to knock her out, but it's enough to disorient her and there's so much smoke that she can't breathe and she isn't quite sure which way is up.
When someone grabs her and tosses her across their shoulder like she is a duffel bag she opens her throat to scream but then she hears Peter croak an apology and she tries to relax, but really, this is awkward and embarrassing no matter who it is hauling her across what seems like a tremendous distance toward an exit.
They hit sunlight and spill on the pavement ungracefully, wheezing and gasping for air.
"Are you … are you …" Peter splutters. "Are you okay?"
She can't really speak so she nods through her coughs and squints at him through watery, stinging eyes. She turns back to the building they just emerged from, then out to the road, but she has no idea where they are and no idea what happened to the man so she grabs Peter by the arm and makes a limping, insistent motion for them to move down the street.
Peter doesn't budge.
She turns to him, ready to push him forward again, but his eyes are wide and fixated on the building.
"We've gotta go," she rasps.
He shakes his head. "Gwen," he says, looking at her with a haunted look she recognizes too well, the same one Peter wore for weeks after his uncle died. His whole body seems to quiver. "I think—I think he's dead. I think I killed him."
Sorry it's been a zillion years. I just had a lot of important things to do this weekend. Like nap and watch America's Next Top Model on Hulu while shoveling peanut butter in my mouth. We DID just start rehearsals for our show, though, AND I might have a job after I graduate! Because it's every little girl's dream to use her psychology degree to change the world ... as a receptionist.
My mom's like, "Why don't you just change all the names in your fanfiction and try to make it a book? Nobody would know the difference." Because web-shooting, spandex-clad teenage angst is a TOTALLY unrecognizable plot so long as I change their names to Peeter and Gwin.