Reckless
First thing the next morning Gwen calls the facility where Connors is locked up to request a visit. She stays on the line for a long ten minutes, drumming her fingers on her desk and listening to elevator music as they leave her on hold. She knows something must be the matter if they have kept her waiting this long, because the first time she had no trouble visiting at all.
She wonders if they are asking Connors' permission, but even if she does, she can't imagine a scenario where he says no to seeing her.
"Miss Stacy?"
Gwen has been waiting so long she starts a bit at the sound of a voice on the other end of the line. "Yes."
"I'm afraid Dr. Connors won't be able to see any visitors this week. Due to his recent illness, he has been quarantined."
"Quarantined?" Gwen repeats. "For what?"
"I'm sorry, miss, that information is confidential."
After she hangs up she stares at her blank computer screen for a long time, wondering what on earth would be so severe that Connors would require quarantining. She knows his illness was caused by the havoc the transformations had on his body, but she can't imagine that it could somehow relapse, not after the antidote essentially blanketed all of Manhattan. So if he isn't going to turn into a giant lizard, what sort of threat could his illness pose that he would possibly need quarantining?
A week passes. Gwen spends most of it catching up on her studying and staring over her shoulder—not in search of the man who attacked them, but of Peter, because she has this unshakeable feeling that he is always close by. She is almost afraid of the idea of it. He said he would protect her, that she shouldn't worry, but what does that mean? Is he really spending his spare time following her around?
Sometimes she's so certain that she has caught him that she'll creep up to the window and throw it open and peer outside, but he's never there. She'll stand there, feeling some measure of relief and another of panic—where is he, if he isn't here? She never runs into him on campus, and she won't go back to her apartment, so she hasn't seen him since he left her room that night.
She is dying to talk to him, to at least see him again. She wishes she could take back what she said but isn't the type to dwell on would haves and should haves, she just wants to find some way to make this right and move forward, but she can't with Peter hiding in the shadows like this.
The worst part is that she can hardly even look at Owen. It isn't his fault, of course it isn't his fault, but she's angry with him, too. If he hadn't been there that day, if he hadn't opened his big mouth and told Peter about it, if he hadn't existed in the first place to drive this unconscious wedge between Gwen and Peter that Gwen exploited at the first chance she got, they wouldn't be in this mess now.
One Thursday, a week or so after the last incident with the imposter Spiderman, Gwen is walking down MJ's hallway to meet her for lunch when she pauses. Something is going on in MJ's room, and the voices are so loud that she can hear them both clearly and distinctly from halfway down the hall.
"That's an awful thesis statement, are you trying to fail us again?" MJ is demanding of someone in a shrill voice.
"Sheesh, it was just an idea, I don't see you coming up with anything brilliant."
It's Peter. Gwen stops completely this time, wondering if it's wrong to eavesdrop on them, but the door is wide open, so what could they possibly have to hide?
"That's because I actually like to think through my school work, I don't just slap something down on paper and call it a day—"
"I have other things to do, you know," says Peter crossly, in an impatient, blatantly irritated tone he has never used with Gwen. Gwen can't really explain why it makes her inexplicably jealous, as if he has never been comfortable enough with her to be this mean to her, but that's a ridiculous thought. She shouldn't want Peter to talk to her like this.
MJ snaps back like a whip. "What, you have to go run around the city with your artsy camera like some self-important hipster?"
"Hey," says Peter, "I don't rag on your stupid audition songs, which, by the way, if you play anything from the Wicked soundtrack one more time, I swear to god—"
Gwen clears her throat, trying to hide the fact that she is cringing by only coming halfway into the room. She doesn't know why this conversation is making her so uncomfortable. They're angry. They dislike each other. There is clearly no threat of anything happening—it's just, Gwen has never even seen Peter talk to another girl before, now that she thinks about it, and the degree of familiarity between them is kind of unexpected. It's only been a week that they've been working together, as far as she knows.
Peter will barely look at her. MJ throws her arms up in exasperation, oblivious to the tension, exclaiming, "Saved by the bell. Beat it, Parker."
He doesn't really react to MJ's barb this time, self-conscious now that Gwen is in the room. He mumbles something about meeting up with her over the weekend and she rolls her eyes and dismisses him with a wave. Gwen watches the interaction, feeling kind of dazed, and Peter walks out with the shortest, most fleeting glance he has ever spared her.
MJ's cheeks are flushed as she slams the door behind him. "I hate him," she tells Gwen vehemently, and for some reason this only makes Gwen feel even worse. It would be one matter if MJ liked Peter, or if she simply tolerated him, but hating him takes on a whole new level of implication. It means that MJ spends time thinking about him, expels energy and anger on him, something Gwen has never seen her friend bother to do with any other boy.
"Huh," says Gwen noncommittally.
"Sorry," says MJ, taking a breath, "I know you guys are friends, but ugh."
Gwen sets down her backpack. "I brought your DVD back," she says, rooting around in the pockets for it.
"And what's worse, is it turns out we're neighbors," MJ continues.
Gwen hands her the DVD, afraid to ask her to elaborate, knowing that she will whether or not Gwen asks.
"In Queens. This whole time. I've lived right next to him for like, ten years." She sets the DVD back on a shelf full of romantic comedies and chick lit and says, "I mean, I thought a boy lived next door since I kept hearing crappy music coming out of one of the bedrooms, but I didn't know it was him."
"Yeah, well," says Gwen, desperate to change the subject but also morbidly curious about just how much MJ and Peter know about each other.
MJ waves her arms in a gesture of finality, though, and her scowl relaxes a bit, indicating that she is finished with her Peter Parker themed rant. She turns to Gwen. "I feel like I haven't seen you in forever."
"I've been home, mostly," says Gwen.
MJ winces. "And that thing with your mom … ?"
Gwen sits down on MJ's bed and starts to fiddle with one of her many stuffed animals. "I don't know," says Gwen, feeling a weird, gnawing guilt in her stomach. "I mean. We haven't talked about it, and he hasn't been around at all. My brother said that he did come for dinner once after that whole—er, blow up. And that they told the boys the whole situation with the two of them. I guess they're dating. That's weird."
"But he hasn't come over at all in the last few weeks?"
"No. I mean, I think my mom sees him, she works near his office," she says defensively, because she doesn't want to feel like the bad guy here.
MJ looks at her meaningfully, but doesn't say anything. It's rare that MJ ever takes the moral high ground on anything, and it makes Gwen feel a little bit rotten knowing that MJ is, to some degree, on her mother's side. But before she can begrudge MJ of this, she remembers MJ's own unpleasant parents and living situation and keeps her irritation to herself.
"How are you and Richard doing?" asks Gwen.
MJ purses her lips.
"Oh," says Gwen. "What happened?"
Her friend plops down next to her on the mattress and says, "Well. He decided … we should go on a break."
"What?" says Gwen, genuinely surprised. Richard doesn't seem the type to do that, at least he didn't in high school. And Gwen can't imagine any guy letting MJ get away.
"Long distance," says MJ, not quite making eye contact with her and fiddling at her sleeves. "I mean, it's bullshit, right. It's like. Just end it already, I don't know what this whole deal with a break is."
"But you didn't … end it?" Gwen elaborates.
"No. No, I didn't," says MJ, shrugging a little. There's a sort of edge to her voice, and it gives Gwen the impression that she is feeling a lot more upset about this than she is letting on. While MJ is in a career path where she gets rejected readily and often, Gwen doubts she has ever been rejected by a boy, especially not at this magnitude. She and Richard have dated since high school.
A selfish part of Gwen hates to hear about this, not because of her friend's unhappiness, but because of what she witnessed in the hallway a few minutes ago. A single MJ changes the whole dynamic of everything.
"I figure he'll come to his senses, right?" asks MJ, finally looking over at Gwen, her eyes expectant and needy, waiting for Gwen to agree.
"Yeah," says Gwen supportively. "Of course he will. I don't know what he's thinking."
They speculate about it a little longer, and MJ is appropriately hung up on the situation enough to convince Gwen that nothing is going on between her and Peter. Still, she can't stop the unwelcome gears in her mind twisting and turning and reimagining the two of them in her dorm room together, the raised voices and the pink cheeks and a passion that reminds Gwen all too well of her own. She tells herself she is being paranoid, that Peter loves her and only her and at the very least would never make a pass on her friend, but the thought of it keeps her up long into the night.
Another week passes. Gwen knows she can't put this off any longer; she needs to talk to him, he needs to know the truth about his father. As far as she knows, the imposter Spiderman hasn't surfaced in the time since she and Peter have talked, and it has served as a fine excuse shove the idea of it completely out of her mind, but it's not fair to Peter, no matter what their issues are.
So she calls him. Then she calls him again the next day, to leave a voicemail. She calls him a third time and when he still doesn't answer, she isn't sure what to do. Peter, of course, has no motivation to pick up the phone, because he knows nothing terrible has happened to her—she still has this eerie, inexplicable feeling that he's close by most of the time. But she has no other way of getting in touch with him now that he is so determined to evade her, not unless she wants to barge in on another study session and stalk him out of MJ's door like a crazy person.
The fourth time she calls him is the time he slips up. Her phone is pressed to her ear so at first she doesn't notice the rattling outside her window. The noise of it is faint but persistent, so finally she opens the window just a crack and sees a phone vibrating on her fire escape, and not so far away from it a sleeping Spiderman in the corner that's obscured from the street.
"Hey," she says instinctively.
Peter's entire body jerks, followed by an unflattering snuffling noise. She assumes he sees her through the mask because he straightens his posture and shifts just a few noticeable degrees away from her, as if she isn't going to notice him there, as if she hasn't already.
She's afraid for a moment that he might dart off into the night, but he remains there, not moving a muscle.
"You've been sleeping on my fire escape," says Gwen.
"No, I haven't," he says, faster than she would have expected.
They stare at each other for a moment. The way the mask obscures his face is maddening. She wants to ask him to take it off, but she doesn't want to ask him for anything. Instead she leans forward, just slightly, not looking away from him, and pushes the window open wide enough to slip out of it.
Peter doesn't move. She stands up and takes a few steps, hearing the roar of the city under her feet. She walks cautiously, carefully, as if she needs to keep her balance despite the supports of the railings and the wide space of the fire escape. She is aching to be closer to him but she is afraid of approaching too fast, afraid of coming off as aggressive and demanding after their last exchange, afraid that he'll use it as an excuse to leave.
She waits until she is directly in front of him and then crouches down to his level. The fire escape creaks under the shift in their weight, and she sucks in a preparatory breath, reaching forward, waiting for him to pull back.
He doesn't. She almost loses her nerve, but once her fingertips reach the seams of his mask and he still doesn't move, she takes it as permission and slips the mask off over his head.
His eyes snap up to face hers instantly. She expects familiarity, she expects warmth, but what she sees instead is wariness and anticipation.
She has waited for two weeks to fix this, and now that she's here, she doesn't know how.
He is the first to look away, staring down through the fire escape to the city below. She doesn't consciously raise her hand to touch his cheek and he doesn't seem to expect the gesture either, so when they look at each other again it's with some amount of surprise in both of their faces.
"I'm sorry," she breathes.
He gnaws at his lip and looks away from her again, and she drops her hand to her side, feeling dejected and inadequate. She is so desperate for his understanding, for his forgiveness, that she thinks she might say anything. She'll tell him he's right, that she'll leave Manhattan, that she'll never show her face anywhere near his alter ego again if that's what it takes for them to love each other.
"It's cold," she says after a moment, feeling like her voice is stuck in her throat. "Do you want to come inside?"
He shakes his head. "You should go in, though," he says, acknowledging her thin pajamas and bare feet.
"I wanted to talk to you."
"I told you, it's okay," says Peter, shifting himself again, leaning further from her. "I know you didn't mean it."
She did, though. Of course she meant it, not because she has any feelings for Owen, but because she was trying to hurt Peter, and it worked. She has always been at least somewhat consciously afraid that she has always been the one that loves too much, that she has been doomed to love him more than he will ever love her, but now that she sees the kind of pain that she can cause him—the kind she has forgotten since the days of Richard, all those years ago—she finally understands she was wrong all along.
"C'mon, Peter," she says.
He smiles at her a little sadly. "Go inside, Gwen."
"No."
He isn't surprised by her response. She doubts anything she says surprises him much anymore, because their conversations all seem to have this same pattern, this same push and pull that either ends in disaster or reconciliation. She wonders if they will defy their own set rules and end this conversation without either happening.
"You can't just stay out here like this," says Gwen. "I'm safe here. And it's the end of October. You're going to freeze."
"I'm not taking any chances," says Peter stubbornly, his attention back on the street. He takes in a breath and then lets out a long, slow sigh. "Please just go back inside."
Gwen almost just listens and leaves to prevent any more tension between them, but she came out here for a reason, one that is bigger than whatever issues they have between the two of them. "There's actually something I wanted to tell you," she says.
"Yeah?" he says, trying to sound indifferent.
"About that day the that guy attacked me and Owen," she says carefully.
"What about it?"
Gwen runs a hand through her bangs and steels herself for his reaction. She can't think about how hard this is for her, not when she is telling Peter something that will turn his entire world upside down.
"I got close enough to take off his mask, and I—well, I did."
She finally has Peter's full attention. He loses all pretense of distancing himself from her and the intensity of his full gaze on her is enough to make her stomach flip unpleasantly. She can't do this, she can't tell him with him staring at her so completely unprepared and unsuspecting of what he is about to hear.
Peter's voice is urgent. "What did you see?"
She is afraid her face might crumple. "Oh, Peter," she says. "I'm sorry. I'm—"
"What're you—"
"It was your father, Peter," says Gwen quickly, before Peter can interrupt her, before she can lose her nerve.
Every muscle in her body tenses waiting for his response, but he just stares at her dumbly, as if she has just spouted off something in another language.
"The man who has been running all over the city—"
"I heard you," says Peter weakly.
Gwen flounders for a moment, not sure what to do. If he would just react in some way then maybe she could figure out how to comfort him, but he just sits there, his expression unchanging. Tentatively she reaches a hand out to touch his, but he jerks his arm back.
"Peter," she says, letting her hand linger in the space where his just was.
He shakes his head. "You're wrong."
It takes her a moment to process what he has just said. She blinks. "Excuse me?"
Peter backs up from her, and then faster than she can blink, he's on his feet, staring at her still crouched below him. "You're wrong," he insists as she scrambles up to his level. His voice sounds mangled. "You—you haven't seen my dad in years, how would you even—"
"Peter, I know it was him," says Gwen. "Believe me. I wish it weren't."
His breathing is uneven and he clutches the railing, not facing her, still shaking his head. "I know my father. He would never do this to me. You're wrong."
She doesn't try to walk over to him, letting him have his space. "He's been missing for over a month, Peter. He's been missing ever since the fake Spiderman—"
"No," says Peter, too loudly for the fire escape. He's shaking, the muscles in his shoulders strung out and tensed. When he finally looks over at her she sees his face starting to crack, the muscles in his lips twitching and his eyes blinking in disbelief. She wants so badly to say something to lessen his pain, to be able to say that maybe she was wrong, maybe she didn't really see his face all that well through the smog, but she knows what she saw and lying to Peter won't make it any easier for him to face in the long run.
"I'm sorry," says Gwen again.
He swallows hard. "Go inside."
"Peter …"
"Please," says Peter, "please, just go inside."
She stands there for a few seconds, hesitating, watching him. He looks senseless. He looks dangerous. He looks completely beyond whatever help she can offer him.
When she turns around, she is half-expecting him to change his mind. She is half-expecting him to ask her to wait, or to sling a web on to her and reel her toward him in that quirky way he used to, because they're Peter and Gwen, and they need each other—who else in the world could understand each other's pain?
By the time she shuts the window he's out of sight, but just as she usually does, she has the distinct sense that he hasn't gone very far. She takes a few steps forward and lets herself sink into her mattress, shoving her face into her pillow as she feels the heat of the whole encounter flood her cheeks. She has never felt more useless or more uneasy with Peter before. It's deeper than the comment she made about Owen, deeper than the night they shared together, even. She wonders how she can fix something when she can't figure out what is broken; she wonders if it's worth fixing at all, if Peter can't meet her halfway.
But he is trying, in his own way. He may be cold, he may be distant, but it's her window he spends all night guarding, even when she tells him to leave. She has to believe that they can move past this, that someday they can live their lives together and not between a thick pane of glass.
Updating because FRANKENSTOORRRMM cancelled class. I mean, it's not really doing anything, but hey. I'll take it. I've had the kind of week where you wake up and realize you've bleached your teddy bear with your acne cream, the kind of week where the guy you like asks you multiple times if you're okay because you can't stop stammering every time you attempt human conversation ("Are you - how?" were words I said at one point - score!), the kind of week where you babysit an infant who is perfectly content with you singing any Top 40 song until you get to Taylor Swift and then bawls her eyes out like you've poked her with a hot poker rod. So I think I deserve to sit on my ass in my Christmas pajamas in an apartment that smells like pumpkin muffins and desperation, dammit.
Hope everyone else near the storm is being safe! But it's like, we all write and read fanfiction for fun, so when were we all going outside anyway.