Be Careful What You Ask For (Closed to Peter)

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Liz walked numbly through the Inn after having spoken with Emma. It was as if her body were on autopilot as her mind couldn't really focus or process anything directly. What it all meant, how she felt, if she was around to see it happen - these questions were like vague fog in her mind that she couldn't quite grasp.

She thought, ever so briefly, that she might find herself in front of Kitty or Piotr's door, but it was Peter's door she came to a stop at. Liz swayed a little as she stood there, staring blankly at the door. She did that for a good five minutes before she was able to will herself to lift her hand and knock. It was a quiet two rap knock.

When the door opened, when she lay eyes on Peter, the numbness seemed to ebb a little. She stared at him silently, then slowly her face began to twist and contort as anguish spread through her features. She didn't move an inch except for her face. Everything suddenly felt intense and Liz stood there, stiff, and started to cry unabashedly. Cried with every fiber of her being.

Comments

[st_arkintern]

"You should sleep in when you can," Peter says, stretching. "I kept an eye on them this time. With the oven light, so I wasn't opening it and screwing up the temperature."

Peter reaches for a muffin and pulls off the wrapper. "You sleep okay?" He's not going to ask if she dreamed about Max.

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She wasn't going to bring up that she cried when he fell asleep.

"Yeah." She looked like maybe she wanted to tell him something. She thought about talking about her dream or, at the very least, mentioning he was in one.

Liz reached for a muffin as well. "Your bed is really nice." Or maybe it was just wherever he was sleeping, really. She brought the muffin up and picked a piece off, hiding her sheepish expression a little as she ate the piece she pulled off.

[st_arkintern]

Peter takes a bite of his muffin.

"Yeah, I like it. I'm still not really used to having a room this big, though."

Liz was right, the muffins didn't just look better, they also tasted better.

"You can spend the night whenever you want," he says. Not just the nights she was feeling sad.

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She paused, looking at Peter over the top of her muffin, and then a slow, but very happy smile crept over her face, if not a little shy for some reason.

"Yeah, okay."

Somehow the invitation seemed major. "You can too. For my room." Though that probably went without saying since he had come back to stay a second night before.

Liz took another bite of the muffin. "...What does your room look like, back home?"

[st_arkintern]

"It's, well, it's a lot smaller. I had a bunk bed and a chess board and --"

Realization suddenly dawns on Peter.

"Do you want to see it? I've worn the Spider-Suit inside my room before." Plenty of times, actually. Before and after sneaking out. "I'm sure if we ask Karen, she can bring something up."

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Her eyes widened a little, but she didn't look like that was a bad idea. "Um. Yeah, sure." She hadn't spoken to Karen since the space station. She wondered if it was weird to be nervous to talk to an AI.

She also thought Peter pulled off the Spider-Man thing way better than she did.

[st_arkintern]

"You don't have to wear the whole suit if you don't want to," Peter says quickly. He sets his half-eaten muffin in its wrapper back on the table and scrambles for the his dresser.

He pulls the Spidey mask out of the second drawer, then offers it to Liz.

"Here," he says. "You should be able to just ask Karen to show you."

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Liz took the mask tentatively and, after a moment, slipped it over her head. She was sure she looked a little silly with her hair sticking out of the mask around her shoulders. At least it was better than if she had her hair in a ponytail, right?

"Um... hi, Karen."

Hello Liz.

Liz looked over at Peter tentatively. Could he tell she was looking at him?

"Could you, um. Peter and I were wondering if you could show me a video of Peter's room?"

Certainly

Suddenly in front of her eyes there was video and it wasn't of Peter sitting in front of her in the Madonna Inn. It was like she was crawling into a window to a small room. Liz saw Star Wars stuff and a bunk bed. It looked exactly like what a teenage boy's room, but with touches of Peter everywhere.

She jumped suddenly out of surprise when the video changed to a different clip. She was... staring at Peter and he was upside down.

"Um..." But then she heard another boy talking. Peter was talking about an evil layer and then the feed cut out.

"...Thank you Karen. Um. Bye." It was polite to say bye, right?

Liz pulled off the mask, blushing because she was sure her bed-hair was now also hat-hair. "Your room is very... you."

[st_arkintern]

"It's small and kinda crowded, but I like it a lot," he says. "I don't think I would have been able to describe it very well."

A picture's worth a thousand words.

Peter takes the mask from Liz. "What was your room like?" he asks as he pads back to the dresser.

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Her thoughts still lingered on his room and how he had looked so casual and at home there. Then briefly on how she would probably never get to set foot in it herself.

"oh," She realized he asked a question and looked over to him. "I have, um. double bed. There's some of Maria's mom's artwork - she went through this whole 'artist' phase. Lots of books and star decorations. A poster or two of boys bands who aren't probably popular in your time." She blushed at that part. "My window leads out to the roof. It's like a balcony, really."

[st_arkintern]

Peter sits down in the chair and grabs his muffin again. And as Liz talks, he tries to imagine what her room looks like. It's probably nothing like how it really looks, but it's a nice image. The sort of place he could see there being a lot of space for homework and reading.

"That's really awesome," Peter says. "When I was a kid, I always wanted those glow-in-the-dark stars that you put up on your ceiling." By reflex, his eyes turn up to the ceiling of his new room. "I wanted to actually put them up like the actual constellations."

Peter was a bit of an astronomy nerd.

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She smiled back. "Me too." Sometimes it surprised her how much she and Peter had in common. It was a nice surprise though.

"My parents got me a telescope instead because my dad didn't want to be the one to climb back up to the ceiling to take them down when I got over my 'phase'." Liz did air quotes.

Jokes were on them. The stars we're apparently always going to be part of her life.

"Would you still like them?"

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Peter smiles to himself at Liz's admission. Sometimes, it was really nice knowing that they were both on the same wavelength.

"I don't know," Peter admits. "I haven't really thought about it since then until just now."

Peter pours himself a glass of juice. "If you got some, I could put them on the ceiling for you," Peter says. And remove them if she ever got over her phase.

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Her smile widened and she drew her feet up onto the chair as she picked away at the muffin was that quite delicious.

"This is going to sound really embarrassing, but - I think it's really, um, attractive, when you use your powers." She blushed, but her knees up near her acted almost as a barrier for her embarrassment... A little.

"When I dream about you, sometimes we're in, like, a lab doing some experiment and then sometimes you're um. You know, Spider-Man."

She wasn't sure why she was sharing, but she was. Maybe it was because she had dreamt of Max yesterday and felt a little guilty.

[st_arkintern]

Peter takes a long swig of his juice.

"I don't think it's embarrassing," he says. "I'm just glad that you like them and aren't... weirded out by them."

Which was definitely a concern early in their relationship.

"What are we doing the other times?" he asks.

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Her eyes widened a bit and she blushed. Other than being lab partners and Spider-Man stuff, what was left was usually a lot of making out and sex.

Liz ducked her head and pulled on a memory of a dream she has written down recently. "This one time... There was this bad guy in the city and you were fighting him and I showed up" she blushed and buried her head against her knees. Somehow this was more embarrassing than if she was telling him how one time in a lab dream Peter lifted her onto the table and took her in the middle of the room.

"I had my own, um, costume. I looked sort of like you, but different. And I guess we worked together"

[st_arkintern]

Peter found himself really liking this mental image. He'd never really thought about Liz potentially being a crime-fighting super-partner, but now that he thinks about it...

"Spider-Woman?" he asks. "I just hope you wouldn't need to get bitten by a spider for it to happen."

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She peeked over her knees. He didn't seem like he hated the idea. Like how Kyle used to scoff at the idea of Liz playing football with him, not that she ever particularly wanted to.

She watched him for a moment, taking in his expression. "I mean... It's not like I have any powers for that to really happen." Unless she went around making out with people hoping to see if she flashed on a crime.

"...you wouldn't mind that, though?" Somehow that question seemed important even though it wasn't in any realm of possibility.

[st_arkintern]

Peter shakes his head no. No, he wouldn't mind it at all.

"Ned didn't have any powers either, and he helped me."

Peter doesn't think she told her this story, so he decides now is as good a time as ever to tell her.

"When I found out who the Vulture was, I grabbed my old suit from beneath the lockers and ran outside. The Shocker -- one of the Vulture's lackeys -- was waiting for me and I didn't see it coming. He knocked me back and my web-shooters went flying before I could even do anything."

Peter smiles at the memory.

"And Ned -- Ned grabbed my web-shooters and shot webbing at the Shocker's mechanical gauntlet thing and I -- I was able to take him down because he did that."

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Liz tried to keep the worried concern off her face, but it probably wasn't successful. "I'm glad he was there, then." And not for the first time, Liz wished she could meet him.

"I guess because of who The Vulture was, he knew where you went to school, huh." She thought about the few times they had been threatened at school.

[st_arkintern]

Peter sets his glass of OJ back on the table, then rubs the back of his neck. He could probably tell her everything -- about stepping into other-Liz's house, their awkward interaction there, the tense car ride to the dance, the "dad talk" that happened afterwards --

But he doesn't.

"Yeah," Peter says instead. "Ned helped me track the Vulture down using my cell phone, too, nd tried to contact Happy for me while I was chasing him down in Flash's dad's car."

That had been a disaster.

"Even without powers, there's plenty you can do."

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She smiled back at him. "I'll have to try harder, then. So far I've only been really good at falling off roofs and balconies." Liz's smile turned a little self-deprecating as he lowered her feet back down and reached for some orange juice herself

[st_arkintern]

"You're good for more than that," Peter insists. "Back at the space station? That stuff you did there? You saved my life, Liz."

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Liz was pretty sure anyone with some science background could have done it. She didn't think it was her scent that helped him snap out of it. It could have been anyone of the opposite gender.

"I'm glad it worked." There was a small smile there. "Sometimes I wonder if the next Otherworld is going to be as, um. Exciting."

[st_arkintern]

"Yeah," Peter says. "I want it to be exciting, but not too exciting."

Peter refills his glass. "It's great to be able to go somewhere different, but I think I'm okay without bombs for awhile."

Peter takes a sip, then looks at Liz. "You, uh... you still wanna be my Spider-Woman?"