st_hotflashes | Aftermath (Peter)

"Yeah, I'm okay." She readied herself to out pressure on it. Her eyes ran over the toppled-over bike farther down the cliff than they had left it. Maybe there was a storm coming and the wind had picked up.

"Are you tired?"

"No, not really," Peter says. "It takes a lot to exhaust me. Cycling isn't difficult."

His superhuman stamina definitely helped here.

Peter holds the bike upright so Liz can climb on.

"Before I was bitten by the spider, it probably would have been a problem."

It wasn't right now, though.

She wondered if Peter was any different now than before he was bitten. She knew he had physically changed, but had he personality wise?

"Did it, um, happen over night? All the changes, I mean."

Liz climbed up carefully.

"Mmm," Peter says, turning his eyes skyward for a moment to think. "Probably over a week or a week and a half. The first time I realized that something'd changed about me was after the whole thing with the mugger and things continued to change a little after that."

Peter climbs onto the bike.

"I guess it was a little like going through a second accelerated puberty."

"That must have been confusing"

For some reason she flushed a little. Maybe it was because the idea of going through puberty was personal. Though the blush lingered as she spoke back.

"For the record, I would have had a big crush on you before you got bit by a spider, if we were in the same school." She fell in love with Peter Parker first and Spider-Man second.

Peter smiles at that. Really smiles in a way that kinda makes his face hurt a little.

"Yeah, it was really confusing," he says. "It didn't really make the connection to the spider until later."

Maybe if everything'd spontaneously happened immediately, it would have occurred to him quickly. But it didn't, and so he didn't come to that conclusion, either.

"I didn't come down with a rash or anything either," he says, pedaling along. "I just had a raised red bump on my hand like a mosquito bite."

"We should compare your cells, now that we have a microscope that works." She wished she could see his DNA, but even her school didn't have that equipment. They had once gone on a field trip to the local university and Liz had been excited about all options for someone interested in molecular biology.

"You know... spiders don't normally bite without a reason. So maybe there was something about you to begin with."

"Let's do that tomorrow, then," he decides. It'd be something safe for them to do. But still exciting.

"Why do they usually bite?" Peter'd done his fair share of research on spiders after he was bitten, but mostly it was him trying to determine what species might have bitten him. At the time, that seemed more important to him than the generalities.

"Usually it's a defense mechanism... like if they think you're a threat. Actually a lot of spider's, um fangs, they're too small to break skin most of the time. But the ones that do, like black widows or recluse, they release this sort of nueotoxin. Actually, you know... I know you couldn't idenitify the kind, but it sounds like maybe it could have been some mutated recluse. Normally their bites has a sort of venom that breakdown red blood cells. So maybe... maybe the one that bit you, instead of breaking down blood cells, it changed them, or something."

She paused and felt her face heat up. "We did a think on insects in 10th grade." It was a lot more eventful than last year when she had to try to get two slugs to mate and they wouldn't.

"Maybe," Peter agrees. He can't imagine Liz is wrong; strangely enough, she seems to be the spider expert here. And besides, her theory made a strange sort of sense.

"Was it a project or just a unit?"

It was probably weird of him to wax sentimental over a traditional high school, but here he was, wishing they were both attending a regular high school anyway.

"Sort of both? We did this whole unit on insects, but each group was given a different type of bug. Maria switched partners after we were given spiders, but I don't think she liked when Alex was given either." She smiled, though, at remembering. "I wish I could have recorded the faces she made when she had to dissect a beetle. At one point the whole class just stopped and watched."

Liz actually laughed. It was a fond memory she had of her best friend.

"Maria's not a fan of spiders?" Peter asks, smiling lightly. He knew many people weren't. "Who ended up being your partner?"

"She's not really a fan of any bugs. Or dirt. Or dissecting things." She smiled. "She signed up for biology so we could be in the same class. She opted out next year." Liz didn't blame her. She loved Maria, but Maria was not a science person.

"Um. Max." It felt weird to say his name suddenly. Like a distant ghost she had left behind. "That was a year before I was shot and things, you know, happened."

Her grip around him tightened a little. This would be the second time she almost died.

Peter can feel Liz's grip tighten on him and he wishes he could do something to comfort her back, but there's nothing he can really do when he's pedaling.

"Did he seem pretty normal to you then?" he asks, an attempt to divert the topic away from the sensitive subject of Liz almost dying.

"I... didn't even really think about him too much. I was dating Kyle. I mean, he'd come into the diner sometimes and Maria would tell me he was staring, but she has a really active imagination, so -"

She didn't want to hinder his ability to pedal, but for a brief moment she leaned in, just to take Peter in. She pressed her cheek to his back, closed her eyes, and took a breath, before sitting back up.

"...It feels almost the same, you know." She hadn't told Peter yet because it was something she had to do to get better, but now she thought she could tell him. "When Kashaw heals me."

Peter's not entirely sure what to think at Liz's admission. And he's not sure what to say or what to ask, either, but his mind manages to pull them together and push them out anyway.

"How does it make you feel?"

She was quiet for a moment.

"When I first got here, I accidentally came across a man trying to open a portal or something in the pool. He startled me and I twisted my ankle. He healed me and... I ran off into the desert at night, crying. Kitty came and found me."

She wasn't sure if that really answered Peter's question, but it was probably a start.

"At first I thought it was because I missed Max, but I don't think it is. I think - I think it reminds me how I don't have control over things. And that I'm weak..." The last sentence came out very quiet as if a shameful admission.

"I don't think anyone really has control of anything," Peter says, still pedaling along. "We just all like to think that we do because it's easier than thinking we don't." A beat. "The only thing we can really try to do is control the way we react to things."

And even that was tough.

His comment pulled a little smile. It might not change the complicated feelings that she felt and there might have been feelings she didn't understand either. But still, she smiled.

"You're really wise, you know that?"

Peter makes a little skeptical noise at the compliment. He thinks about what Kitty talked to him about months and months ago when she asked if he was seeing a therapist.

"You haven't been able to talk to anybody about it until you go here," he says. "Because of the whole secrecy thing."

Kinda like him not being able to talk to anyone because he was Spider-Man.

"It didn't bother me back home..." She paused, thinking. "I was never healed a second time, though. After the one time... he only used his powers on me one other time. To um... show me about what he was and their history." It had been really intense.

She looked at the back of Peter's head. She thought it was silly, but she liked the way his hair gathered in the back, even when it was damp. "I kind of wish I could do that with you. Show you things and have you feel them..."

"But it bothers you here," Peter says. That much was pretty obvious.

When Liz finally continues, Peter doesn't say anything for a minute. But then he say something that's been on his mind for awhile.

"I wish so, too," he says. "And I really wish that I could see your life, too."

Maybe that's why he wasn't really bothered by her seeing parts of his life. Even if they were embarrassing.

"You know what I'd show you?" She sounded a little thoughtful. "My grandmother... you'd have liked her." Liz missed her grandmother a lot, but she smiled remembering her.

There were more things, really. She could show him Maria. She could show him Alex. She could even show him things that happened with Max. Maybe if she shared what happened the day she got shot, he'd be able to understand.

Instead of saying anything of that, though, Liz felt herself worried all this talk was too heavy. It wasn't that she didn't think they could talk about it - they had talked about more serious things - but for some reason, as her leg slightly ached by her side, she felt herself say - "Or maybe... maybe I'd show you me slowly getting out of my uniform and taking a shower."

Peter feels his face flush red. He's not sure what makes him blush more -- the tail end of Liz's declaration, or the fact that it came right after the mention of her grandmother.

"Um," he says, because he's not sure what else to say. "You could already do that now."

It doesn't occur to him until after he says it that maybe it might come off as a proposition.

She didn't see his blush, but she ducked her head as she continued to do so herself. It did, in fact, sound like a proposition. Maybe even more so because the promise of a distraction was hastily welcomed over thoughts of mortality.

"Okay, then I'll do it." She still vividly remembered Peter's fantasy. "Or I could just keep some of uniform on while we, um..."

God what was she doing? She didn't normally say this sort of thing out loud. She definitely thought about it. A lot. But rarely did she talk about it.

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