st_hotflashes | Aftermath (Peter)

Peter has had the key to Liz's room for months now, but he still raps on her door whenever he finds herself outside of his room. Maybe by now, he should feel comfortable just letting himself in, but he doesn't quite feel that way. Not yet.

When she heard the knock, she smiled a little, even if her current thoughts for opposite of that. She walked over to the door, then paused, then pulled off the headband before reaching for the handle.

When she opened to door for Peter, Liz smiled again. While genuine, it didn't seem to reach her eyes.

Peter's lips are already pulled into a smile even before Liz opens the door, but that smile is quickly replaced with surprise when he sees Liz garbed in her Crashdown uniform.

"You're not going to work, are you?"

She paused and looked down at herself like she momentarily forgot what she was wearing, then blushed a little as she stepped aside to let Peter in.

"Oh, um... no. I was just... trying it on." Which wasn't entirely a lie, but not the truth either. She limped back over to the bed and sat down. She had a cane - it was resting against the bed, actually, but it felt weird to use it in her room, so she was trying not to. Plus somehow, in front of Peter, it felt... wrong.

"I can change, if you like."

Peter presses his lips together pensively and follows her inside. He'd offer to help, but he thinks for some reason that that would just make her feel uncomfortable, so he doesn't.

Peter shoves his hands into his pockets.

"No," he says, shaking his head. "I was just worried that maybe you were just going to push yourself."

Even though she wasn't feeling 100% better.

At the words 'I was worried' Liz looked down at her hands in her lap. She curled in her fingers, then flexed them out idly, thoughtful.

"I'm sorry I made you worried." For this, but also for this morning and for... a lot of things.

She pressed smoothed the fabric of her skirt down on her thighs, trying to distract herself, but it wasn't really working.

"You don't have to apologize," he tries to assure her as he sits down next to her. He pulls her hand into his own and winds his fingers through hers.

"You feeling any better?"

Peter's hand always felt so warm. Even now as he wound fingers through hers, she felt like his hand radiated heat throughout.

She nodded a little, not quite able to look up at Peter yet. "Yeah. Kashaw, um, says it will take about a week to be fully healed. I need time to process, but I'll be fine." At least her body would be.

Liz glanced down at her foot, hidden with tensor bandages, but she knew how bruised and coloured it was. She was more black and blue down there than her regular pigmentation.

"Peter?" She paused and squeezed his hand, but she fell silent. She had thought about what she wanted to say and everything, but at that moment she just felt the sudden swell of panic and she ducked her head, still not yet looking at him, and fought back the threat of tears.

Peter turns and looks at her. Really, really looks at her. And even though she's not crying, he gets the feeling that she's on the verge of it.

He gives her hand a squeeze. A I'm here squeeze.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks. "We don't have to if you don't want to," he quickly adds. "Just... everything that happened..."

Peter trails off.

She pressed her lips together, in part, to keep herself from crying so she could steady herself and she took a deep breath. Her answer came first in a small, subtle nod and then she paused again. It was like she had the words in her head, but getting them passed her lips was hard.

She took another deep breath and pushed the words out that she had been practicing and thinking long and hard about.

"I shouldn't have been there. I shouldn't have been doing what I was doing. I shouldn't have put you in danger and I know -" Her voice quivered and she paused. She did not want to cry right now. Her grip on Peter's hand tightened as she tensed to control herself. "You should never have had to been through something like that. Me being stupid almost killed you."

"Liz, it was a mistake," he says. "I really do feel better that you're learning how to protect yourself, but I'm always, always going to want to protect anyone. Not just you."

He thinks Liz needs to hear it and know it. She's seen him in action and she knows what he's done. Even Mr. Stark doesn't know about some of it.

"Being able to protect people... and being able to help them is why I decided to become Spider-Man in the first place."

"It's not that." She knew what he did was dangerous. She knew he would always put his life on the line.

Her hand slipped out of his and went back to her lap. Her two hands curled together, fingers laced, as she squeezed them tightly. Her gaze was still on her hands as if looking down at them helped to center her.

"It's not that you put your life on the line. It's that you had to because of me. If you'd have die because of me, I'd -" Liz paused again, blinking hard. Her lips which had been in a thin, straight line turned downward now as she was losing a little more control.

"I'm just... I'm just pretending." Her voice was quieter, as if being louder was dangerous. "We're supposed to be a team... because we're together." Not because he was a superhero, but because they were dating. Being in a relationship was a two person adventure. "And I'm supposed to be there to protect you like you protect me and I - I can't do that. I can never do that, not really, and I've been lying to myself that I can. That I can be what you need me to be, but..."

Her body started to tremble a little. She was not going to cry. Her body heat suddenly seemed to rise and she felt a brief wave of nausea.

"Liz, we are a team," he insists. "Even if you think you can't actually fight or protect yourself, there's so much you do for me that no one else can."

It's the truth.

"You don't have to protect me in order to be part of my team. You don't have to fight, either. You just need to be you and if you can't believe that, that's okay."

Peter takes a breath.

"But that's really what I think."

There's the briefest of moments where there was a tremor on the bed, subtle, but there, and then Peter started to talk and it subsided. When she speaks again, it's almost a whisper.

"Do you think it will always be enough?" Her head moved a little, almost like she was going to look up, then second-guessed herself and kept her eyes on her hands in her lap.

"Yeah," Peter says, still looking at her. He reaches up and brushes her hair out of her face. "I really think that."

She looked up at him after he touched her. She hadn't cried yet, but it was there in the back of her eyes.

"I was really scared, Peter. I thought we..." She couldn't even use her brain to get out of it like she could the other times.

"I know," Peter says. He does, because he was scared, really scared that Liz was going to die and it was, on some level, going to be his fault.

He doesn't think he could live with that guilt twice.

Peter looks at her hand again. He wants to hold it, but she'd already pulled away, and he didn't want to hold hands if she didn't want to.

Liz was afraid if she touched him again, she'd cry. She wanted to lean in and kiss him. She wanted to hug him. She took a breath and hesitated.

"I really want to kiss you... But I might start to cry." Somehow that seemed important to say.

"I'm okay with that," he tells her. "If you really feel like you need to cry, you should just cry."

Liz mostly didn't want him to feel guilty, but she gave a small nod and leaned forward. Sure enough, when her lips met his and her eyes closed, the pressure pushed out the pent up tears and they escaped down her cheeks. She hadn't really reacted to what happened this morning. Not really. There hadn't been time during the moment or while in the clinic.

Liz pressed against him as she kissed him again. She was warmer than usual, like she had come from being out in the sun for a long time.

Peter kisses back with equal intensity, and when they finally pull away from one another, he brushes her tears away with the back of his hand. He looks at her, trying to take in everything she's feeling so he might have some understanding of what she's going through.

And then, when he feels that he might have some idea, Peter pulls her into his arms and holds her.

Liz practically melted into his arms and she was surprised to hear a small sob escape her lips. She hugged him tightly, burrying her face into the back of his neck that met his shoulder. Breathing him in helped to calm her a little. The idea of never being able to experience this again was overwhelmingly terrible.

There were moments like this where Liz wished she had the ability to share memories and feelings like Max could do with her. She knew that Peter knew she loved him, but she wanted him to feel just how much.

She held onto him tightly, silently, for a while, and her breathing slowed and her temperature seemed to cool down too. Liz's head shifted a little so her head was on his shoulder and not entirely pressed into his neck.

"Are you okay...?"

Peter's not entirely sure what to say. Not because he doesn't know the yes or no answer, but because he doesn't know the more messy and complicated the answer. The answer that required him to explain everything. There's so much that he feels right now that it's hard to be able to sift them out and list them out one-by-one. Even if he tried, he wasn't entirely sure he could do it.

Instead, he just gives her the answer he knows he can give and enjoys the weight of her chin on his shoulder.

"Right now?" he asks. "Mostly, yeah."

Her fingers on his back curled in, bunching some of the fabric of his shirt and tightening the shirt around him. One day she'd figure out how to take any worry away from him. She wondered if he was telling the truth, but decided of course he was.

She was silent for a few more moments as she hugged him. The embrace was nice and reassuring. She closed her eyes for a moment to soak it in.

Liz pulled back just a little to look him in the eyes. "Are we... Okay?"

"Yeah," Peter says, nodding. "Yeah, we're fine."

A beat.

"Are we fine?" He thinks they are, anyway.

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