Lying Heart
The next day is Christmas Eve. Peter usually likes this day of the holiday season the most. It's the build-up to Christmas that seems much more exciting than the actual day. He gets up absurdly early and even though it's still dark out, he takes a walk around Queens, sneaking glances of little trees in people's windows, admiring the attempts at Christmas decorations in apartment balconies.
By the time he wanders back to the house it's almost daylight. Aunt May is sitting on the couch and looks up when he walks in, her expression a little nervous.
"You were—you were out?" she asks.
"Yeah," says Peter. "Not for long, I just took a walk. Look," he says, producing the donuts he bought at a bakery a mile or so away.
She accepts the donuts and gets up to tend to the kettle. "You don't stay out much these days, the way you used to," she says.
Peter mulls over the way she says it, but can't really tell by her tone how she feels about it. "I guess," he says uncomfortably, finishing off the donut he had been eating on the way home.
Aunt May pulls out two mugs for tea. "Do you just … not enjoy … skateboarding anymore?" she asks, carefully.
Peter scowls. "Of course I do," he says as evenly as he can. "It's just … sometimes …" His hands ball into frustrated fists. He doesn't like that Aunt May is questioning him, he doesn't want to think about this at all, because either way there is trouble on the horizon. Either he never gets his powers back, gets a chance with Gwen, and Spiderman never helps another living soul; or he gets his power back, loses Gwen, and continues trying to redeem himself for the impossible wrongs he has already let happen to this city.
"I've just been busy with other things," he says lamely.
Aunt May's eyes glint knowingly. "Gwen Stacy?"
"No," he says, loudly. "I mean, no." He scratches the back of his neck where the tag of his coat is itching his skin. "We were just Christmas shopping, is all."
Aunt May drops the subject, but Peter can't help but worry that she is somehow disappointed in him. He starts to consider his behavior over the past week. On one hand, he knows that if his abilities returned somehow, he would be back on the streets in an instant; on the other hand, he has done absolutely nothing to try to reclaim them, and short of strolling back into OsCorp and offering his arm to another spider he can't think of a single way to do that without the stranger's help.
He has to go back. The day after Christmas, he resolves.
In the meantime he finishes the final touches on his new suit. He sets it on a hanger and lets it hang in his closet for a moment, where he can stare at it from his bed. It is a rather conspicuous suit. He was clearly not going for subtlety when he first designed it. But here he was, with an opportunity to make it less of a screaming red and blue announcement of his presence, and he didn't change a thing.
He decides he likes it better this way. If it was dark, if it was in any way appropriate for lurking around in the night, he is sure he would seem a lot less well-intentioned than he is. And he doesn't want to give this city already filled to the gills with suspicious people any more reason to hate him.
Tentatively he gets up from his bed and touches his hand to the wall. Not even the slightest bit of tension. It's just a hand, an ordinary hand that might as well have never climbed up half the major buildings in Manhattan.
He sighs. Puts his hand down and lets his arm hang uselessly at his side. He has nothing to lose by going back to that basement and getting his abilities back—look at him. He is nothing now. He can't be Spiderman, he can't have the girl, he can't even look at himself in the mirror without tail spinning into an identity crisis that would astound even Erik Erickson himself.
He mentally rehearses what he'll say on Gwen's voicemail, knowing she won't pick up the phone, and then dials her number.
"Hey, Gwen," he starts, and then instantly forgets what he practiced. "Merry … Christmas Eve, I guess." The suit seems to be staring at him from his open closet door. "I just, I wanted to talk, I know yesterday was weird, and I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—I didn't mean to—if I made you uncomfortable …"
He knows it wasn't entirely his fault, but he doesn't want to implicate her, just wants to forget the whole thing completely. "Anyway, I'm going to be in the city today, just grabbing a few last minute things. Call me if you … want to talk."
For a few seconds he just stands there, the phone pressed to his ear, wanting to say something less wishy-washy. He can't think of anything and waits too long to hang up. He doesn't know why he told her he'd be in the city, he really wasn't planning to be down there at all, but now he said he would be and he can't help but hope that maybe she'll listen to the voicemail and call him back.
New York is bursting at the seams with people, an agoraphobic's worst nightmare. Peter has never been stupid enough to venture out in public on Christmas Eve before. He couldn't possibly imagine that this many people had delayed their shopping to the last minute. He was a teenage boy, for god's sake, and even he isn't nearly as badly off as the panicked shoppers shoving each other through Manhattan.
He checks his cell phone. No calls from Gwen. It starts to snow, which he would ordinarily find sweet and cozy from a Christmas Eve in their little place in Queens, but it only irks him now. He decides to go grab himself a cup of coffee so he can sit down and wait it out— and so does everyone else in the city. He leaves the coffee place after waiting twenty minutes in line and decides to nurse his drink by a side alley.
He checks his phone again. No calls. He checks his texts, too, just in case, and then his email, but everything is predictably, frustratingly empty.
Just then the hairs on his forearms seem to tingle, and he snaps his head up, fully alert, anticipating something. He has felt this inexplicable tug before, this weird wrenching of his gut that always seems to point him in the direction of danger, but he hasn't felt it at all since his abilities disappeared. Maybe this is it—maybe they're returning—but he doesn't have any thoughts to spare, because once this feeling overwhelms him it is almost as if he is on autopilot.
He's running. Dodging shoppers with their bags and tearing through the streets, feeling more alive than he has since his abilities left him. He screeches to a halt outside of an alley, then ducks in, just knowing that this is the place he has to be.
Sure enough, there are two men in the back of the alley, jointly holding up another guy against the brick wall. There are shopping bags strewn across the ground haphazardly, spilling with expensive gadgets, presumably Christmas presents. Peter is wary, though, and takes a moment to announce himself. He knows that people do shady business in the city sometimes, and while the man is being pressed against the wall, he might not necessarily be the one who's being robbed; but then he sees that the man against the wall is choking, literally turning purple in the face, and Peter decides to take uncalculated action before it's too late.
"Hey," Peter shouts, "put him down."
Only one of the culprits bothers to turn around to look at him. "Just some kid," he says to his partners. He turns to Peter, all six and a half feet and muscle and face tattoos. "Get outta here, if you know what's good for you, this ain't your problem."
Peter opens his mouth, wanting to retort but thinking the better of it. For some reason it's a lot easier for him to be quipping and candid behind the mask.
"Seriously," he says, feeling kind of stupid as he runs over to them, "let him go."
"Or what, you'll call the cops?"
Peter finally crosses the final few feet of space between them, sucks in a breath and in that moment, feels Spiderman's confidence creeping back into his bones. He looks the man in the eyes and says, "By the end of this, buddy, you're gonna wish I called the cops."
The man promptly socks Peter in the gut.
"Shit." Peter doubles over, panting. One of the other men laughs at him. He has never felt this kind of humiliation before. It surpasses the day he threw up during his first public speech assignment, the day drove Uncle Ben's car into their mailbox, his first kiss with some girl named Shelley who then turned around and told everyone he was gross and had cooties—no, no, these were nothing compared to this all-consuming stupidity, this heat that seems to burn all the way to his toes.
Before he can feel any more sorry for himself, the man clubs the side of his face with his shoe and Peter hits the ground. He blinks in disbelief. He is not Spiderman. He has not regained his abilities, or he has just gained the one, the ability to sense danger—but what the hell is the use of that if he can't do anything about it?
Just then there's a loud commotion over on the side of the alley where the men were previously holding up their victim. Apparently they are so distracted laughing at Peter that they accidentally loosen their grip, and the man kicks them to escape. He grabs his bags and goes tearing down the alley without looking back.
"A little help?" Peter croaks. Ungrateful jackass.
The three men go tearing out of the alley as well, for what purpose Peter isn't sure. They're about to hit the mouth of the street again, where everyone will see them, and there's no point in trying to rob him. Peter figures there's some sort of logical story behind this. But right now his head is radiating pain and he can barely stumble to his feet, so he honestly can't care any less.
He touches a hand to his face. Blood. Perfect. Now he's going to have to explain this away to Aunt May as well.
As he limps out of the alley and into the throng of stressed out New Yorkers, he checks his phone and sees one missed call from Gwen Stacy. She hasn't left a voicemail. Quickly he dials her number, fumbling because his fingers are so cold in the snow.
She doesn't pick up, but it doesn't matter, he's like a block away from her apartment anyway. He pushes past the ache in his gut and the pain in his head and decides to brave the twenty-story fire escape to her bedroom.
The climb is precarious and he isn't really thinking straight. He can't exactly blame the blow to the head, either. He's never thinking straight when it comes to Gwen. He reaches the tenth floor and has to stop to catch his breath. He has decidedly not regained his abilities; he remembers how he practically soared up here the first time he did this climb on foot.
He finally reaches Gwen's window. The blinds are open. Of course they are; she isn't mad at him, she knows it was just a moment of weakness, on both of their parts. Just a silly fleeting moment that they'll move past, and it will be easy because Gwen is going upstate all of next week, so there will be some forced distance for them to recollect themselves.
Still, he doesn't want to leave it like this before they pack up and go. He straightens himself up, peeking through her window.
His heart falls into his stomach.
There she is, in her red Christmas dress and goofy jingle bell socks and a green ribbon pulling her hair back, sitting next to Richard. Peter ducks his head down so they can't see him. He shouldn't be here. This has never happened before, he doesn't want to see this, it is totally wrong of him to be looking, not to mention completely derailing. Just as he determines that he is going to turn around, climb back down the stairs and never think about this again, it happens.
Richard leans in and kisses Gwen. And she closes her eyes and kisses him back.
He stares, not for very long, but for what feels like forever. He is running down the stairs despite the collecting ice before they break the kiss. He runs all the way down, then stands there on the street, gasping for air.
No. He was wrong about everything, wrong about Gwen, wrong about himself. He can't handle this. Neither of them can. He walks away just as the snow flurries start to die down and as he descends into a nearby subway station, there is only one thing left in the world that Peter knows for sure: he can never be Gwen Stacy's friend.
Guys, I cannot say how much I appreciate your supportive responses over the last day, and I'm so glad that it inspired a lot of you to come forward with some awesome suggestions for improvement and things to incorporate into the plot. My brain was spinning all day with ideas and it was TORTURE waiting to come home and jot them down! It's funny, this was really only supposed to be, like, a three chapter drabble fest, but woops. So thanks again, I am so excited for where this is all headed-I'm a few chapters ahead writing it, and it's certainly been a trip to see where the story decides it wants to go.
Sidenote about musical things-more than one person mentioned how Taylor Swift's "Haunted" fits into the dynamic so well and I just basically LOL'ed out of my seat because I was listening to that when I was like, huh, maybe I should write a super angsty fanfiction about this. Other songs I think tie in sort of well (in case anyone is looking for inspiration for their own fics): Skinny Love (Birdy cover-listened to it, no joke, 346 times during the writing of this), The Moment I Said It (Imogen Heap), It's About Time (Barcelona), Wanted You More (Lady Antebellum), The Last Time He Saw Dorie (no idea what the band is, too lazy to check), You Don't Know Her Like I Do (Brantley Gilbert).
And, obviously, Kenny Chesney's "Come Over," that sneaky little song fanficking devil.