st_hotflashes | Be Careful What You Ask For (Closed to Peter)

Liz looked at Peter. Somewhere deep down she knew Peter was doing the right thing. That him having these boundaries made him a good boyfriend and she'd be grateful to him. But at the moment, she felt like he had the power to take the pain away completely and wouldn't do it. It hurt.

Still, the idea of leaving - of being in her room by herself - she nodded.

Peter shifts his hand down from her wrist into her hand, and leads her back to the bed. He kicks off his shoes and then lays down first, a single arm extended out imploringly, encouraging Liz to join him.

She watched him for a brief moment before she slipped off her shoes using the back of her heels and then crawled on top of the bed. Liz found herself curling up against him, her head finding the spot on his shoulder that seemed as if it was made just for her to fit there.

He's warm and he's strong - and Liz felt the tears flow again. This time she cried silently.

Peter folds his arms around her and holds her to his chest, one of his hands idly running over her long hair. It feels like every time he learns more about Max, the more Peter dislikes him. He wonders if he and Liz ever break up if her next boyfriend will feel the same way about him.

He presses his lips to the top of her head, wishing there was something more that he could do, but knowing that he lacked the verbal finesse to tell her what she needed to hear or the power to give her what she wanted.

For now, the only thing he can give is this.

It took some time before the tears subsided again. Maybe it was the fact that it became clear she and Max would never have moments like this ever again. She realized that even though she had told Peter on Tuesday he was it, a small part of her must have been holding out for Max still. Not anymore. That little part of her had been crushed by a terrible storm.

Somewhere along the line, Liz's fingers had curled themselves in his shirt fabric. She focused on her fingers as they slowly unfurled.

Sometime later, in the quiet of the room, her voice sounded softly, breaking the silence. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize," he says, briefly tightening his hold on her. "I like being able to be here for you."

It's the truth. He'd much rather her be laying here with him in bed than have her be off somewhere else, alone and sad.

"Did you want to spend the night?"

Liz felt like maybe she should say no - they had been spending the night more than usual it seemed and part of her worried about giving Peter his space. Another part of Liz wanted to desperately say yes. The idea of being in an empty bed with just her imagination seemed like a recipe for disaster.

Liz looked over the flat area of his chest, taking in quietly how the fabric of his shirt naturally bunched up a little here and there. She reached out and ran her finger over a bump, watching it flatten momentarily.

"...Are you sure it's okay? I mean, with, with Alec." Since she was sure, if he was here, he heard everything. Thankfully she was too tired at the moment to feel embarrassed, but she'd feel it later.

"Yeah, I'm sure it'll be." Alec didn't like to get involved with other people's problems. If Alec came around while Liz was there, Peter was sure he'd stay clear of them until he was confident that the crisis has been averted and normalcy had been restored.

Peter brushes a few stray hands out of Liz's face.

"Just don't worry about it right now. I'll take care of things."

I'll take care of things

Those words warmed Liz and she closed her eyes and for a moment that's all she really wanted. Normally Liz was of the opinion she could take care of herself - and she could. Being in control of her own destiny was something Liz felt strongly about and she didn't like feeling weak or useless, but somehow, right now, she was okay with it.

She was quiet for a while, letting Peter's breathing steady her in ways she couldn't quite describe.

Finally, Liz heard herself speak again, quietly.

"Why do you think he did it." Maybe she was asking Peter because he was a male and the same age as Max.

"I don't know," Peter says, honestly. "Maybe he was lonely or sad, or--"

Peter takes a breath, his chest rising, then falling when he exhales.

"I don't know. I'm having a hard time imagining it."

Somehow she had been hoping Peter had some answer because he was a guy and maybe it was a guy thing. Maybe she couldn't understand simply because she was a girl.

She slowly traced her finger in a small circle on his chest, thoughtful. It didn't help any that Peter couldn't figure out what.

"Do you think - Do you think it's something I did?" It probably was. As she asked the question, she realized it was probably all her fault. As far as Max was concerned, she had slept with Kyle.

Liz shut her eyes. How could she be so stupid?

"Even if something you did caused him to act like this, that's on him, not on you."

Peter takes the hand with the tracing finger into his own and gives the pad of her finger a kiss.

"We can't control the way other people act. The only thing we can control is the way we react to it."

Something that Peter needs to do a better job of.

She took in his words that seemed wise and reasoning far beyond what she was capable of at the moment. The kiss he pressed against her finger lingered like fire. Liz tried to focus on that.

He was right, of course. She knew Max had made that choice on his own, no matter what happened. It wasn't like she started kissing other guys when he had kissed Tess.

After another moment of silence, she spoke again. "You're not - you're not a reaction." Liz wanted him to know that explicitly.

"I know," he says. "You told me before and I believed you. I still believe you."

He shifts the arm that grasped her hand for that kiss back around her.

"Nothing's changed because of this." Or at least his feelings hadn't.

She thought about that - "Nothing's changed" - was that true? Could anything ever stay the same after a revelation like that? Where once she might have had the slightest wish that Max would show up here, now it was a dread.

"Do you -" She started, then stopped, her voice cracking from the lack of consistent use and the strain from the crying earlier. She cleared her throat softly. "Are you -" Liz stopped again, unsure of how to phrase what she wanted to asked.

"Is it weird for you... that I'm upset about this?" Like maybe he felt she shouldn't care since her and Max weren't together.

Peter dampens his lips.

"It's not weird," he says. "I'm worried, yeah, because I don't know what to do and you're upset, but it's not weird."

A beat, and then:

"Are you worried it's weird?"

"A little, yeah." At least, the one thing Liz was thankful for, was that she and Peter seemed to be able to talk about things. At least most of the time.

"I mean... I'm dating you. I love you. And here I am crying about someone else who did something back home that I guess isn't really my business anymore." She wanted to shift and look at Peter's face, but she almost was afraid to do so. "I mean... if we're not together anymore, it shouldn't matter to me what Max does, right?"

"If I found out something had happened with Ned or May or MJ or other-Liz, I'd probably be upset too," he says. It might not be exactly the same because he really wasn't dating other-Liz, and he was pretty sure other-Liz probably never wanted to see him again, but...

... it's the closest comparison he has.

She thought about that for a moment. She wondered if she'd feel a little jealous if he had a similar reaction if it was about Other-Liz. Maybe that made her hypocritical.

She lifted her head and looked at him quietly for a moment. Liz searched his eyes. "What would you do, if you were me?"

"I don't know," Peter says. It was weird for him to think of himself as a girl. Not that girls and guys were all that different, but as a cis guy, the idea of pregnancy was a foreign concept.

"I guess it'd depend on if I were really over him."

She stared at him some more, considering his words. She had said she was over Max to him before, but maybe how she felt. Maybe she wasn't. Or maybe she hadn't really let herself give up on him yet.

Liz lightly rested her chin on Peter, looking at him quietly. "I guess... I guess for the longest time, until I showed up here... I always thought Max would be the one I'd lose my virginity with. That we'd lose it together, you know?"

"Yeah," Peter says simply, because he's not sure how else to respond to it. On some level, it makes him uncomfortable, but he's not sure if it's because she thought she'd lose her virginity to Max or that virginity really didn't seem like that big of a deal to him or that he never felt that way about someone else or that it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to entirely believe that Liz was over him when she was telling him stuff like this.

His response, or his lack-there-of made Liz tense a little under his arms. Her eyes went back to search his as she pressed her lips together thoughtfully.

"Peter." His name quiet on her tired voice. She shifted on the bed so she was up higher, her head closer to his own now, leaning on one of the arms so she was propped up.

"Do you want to have sex with me?" It didn't sound like a request, but an actual question of intent.

Peter takes a breath.

"I mean, yeah. Someday. When we're both ready."

She looked down away from his eyes for a moment, staring at Peter's chin not because it's where she wanted to stare, but because it was a point to focus on.

Another pause passed over them. "I feel like. Like things are going to change. Like this is going to push you away and things will be weird and distant."

Maybe it was due to how she felt about the whole situation, but Liz didn't really make that connection. She just felt really insecure and somehow abandoned.

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