Late Night Knocking - Peter

[st_hotflashes]

Liz had ended up going out to the spot she had shown Peter months ago and she just sat and thought and cried and repeated. When she finally made it back to the inn, she took a long shower and tried to sleep, but as the night waned on and she continued to toss and turn, Liz found herself in PJ bottoms, Peter's back-up shirt he kept at her place, and his hoodie. She hovered outside his room door wondering if he was asleep. Wondering if she should knock. Wondering.

After a moment, she knocked softly.

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[st_hotflashes]

She looked at him for a moment and then her hand moved from his thigh to his arm. "She likes you." At Liz was pretty sure of that. Maria was usually easy to read for her. "Besides... I like you and my opinions the only one that really matters for that."

She offered him a small smile and then kissed him lightly on the lips.

[st_arkintern]

"Yeah, I mean... I think so, too." It's sometimes hard for Peter to know how others feel about him unless they made it really obvious, the way Flash did, but...

He got that feeling, too.

"Maria being here, though... she doesn't change your mind about wanting to go home?" It's not the question Peter quite wants to ask, but he can't bring himself to ask the one he really wants the answer to.

[st_hotflashes]

"I thought it might too." She looked out at his room. "The night she came, she slept over and it felt really nice, you know? Like we were back home and everything was just normal again. I mean like, normal-normal. Like before all the stuff in our lives started to happen." Liz and Maria had always been inseparable.

"But... even then, while I lay there. I realized - I don't know. I guess I realized that when I thought about going home I get this... tight feeling in my chest." She brought her hand up to her chest as if to demonstrate. "Like I can't breathe and if I go back I'm going to be trapped and not in control of anything anymore. And the more I thought about it, the more that feeling grew until I realized I was crying." Liz was pretty sure when you wanted to go back somewhere, you didn't feel like that.

[st_arkintern]

Peter listens. He gets it. He can't imagine he would have been overeager to return home to all that, either -- even before Maria showed up and told Liz about Tess and Alex. Still, there's a part of him -- the part of him who would knows with absolute certainty that he'd miss May and Mr. Stark and Ned and so many other people -- who can't help but wonder if she might regret it. Peter knows it's not his choice to make.

"Having Maria here... it doesn't make you realize you'd miss Maria if you came home with me?"

For a second, he stops there, as if that's all he really has to say.

"When Mr. Stark showed up... I really remembered how much I'd miss him if I never got to go back home."

[st_hotflashes]

Liz drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs as she sat on the bed beside Peter. She rested her chin on her knees.

"I missed her." She really did. "She'd be the only one I'd miss. My parents, too, but I was planning to go away for college soon anyways."

She looked at Peter's wall across the way. "I just... I don't know how to explain it. When I think about going back with you, it feels right. It doesn't feel right going back home. Like... Like that's a different me and I'm no longer that person."

[st_arkintern]

Peter dampens his lips. There's a part of him that doesn't want to give Liz false hope and a desperate part of him who wants to be mature about this, like nearly ever adult here who insists that it's impossible. (They were mature, right? Most of the time they treated him like he wasn't, so... if he acted like them, they'd think he was mature, wouldn't they?)

But in the end, he says what he wants to.

"If we can find a way..." He hesitates, but then pushes forward. "...you should come with me."

[st_hotflashes]

Liz felt stunned for a moment as she turned her head to look at him. Her shoulders relaxed at his words and there was a spark of something behind her eyes. Something that used to be there before the night she had gotten drunk.

Maybe if she had been prepared for this conversation, she would have been less readable. As it was, there was no masking what she felt. It was the first time she actually, truly, believed what Peter was saying on the topic.

She released her knees, her body unraveling and then shifting until she was straddled on his lap, knee on either side of him, and hugging him tightly.

[st_arkintern]

Liz's hug probably shouldn't come as a surprise, but in the moment, it did. At first he's stiff against her, cut utterly off-guard by the sudden show of affection, but just as he always does, he quickly relaxes in her embrace.

"Everything okay?"

[st_hotflashes]

She nodded into his neck. After a moment, she found her voice again. "Yeah. Um. Just... it felt really good for you to say that and mean it." At least she thought he did. "I means... a lot."

[st_arkintern]

"I just..."

Peter takes a breath.

"I don't want to get my hopes up in case it doesn't or can't happen."

[st_hotflashes]

"I know." She pulled back enough to look at him, her arms still at his shoulders. "I know. I think about that all the time, but... but people keep telling me to live in the here and now and when I think about the here and now - it includes a future with you."

She pressed her lips together, thoughtful. "I can't separate the two. I don't care if that makes me less grown up or - or whatever. I think... if you can't have hope here, then what's the point?"

[st_arkintern]

Peter doesn't say anything. Instead, he pulls Liz close and settles his chin on her shoulder.

"Did you talk to Maria about it?" he asks.

[st_hotflashes]

"No... Not yet." She wondered if Maria had an idea or if she thought she'd just come back. "I don't want her to think she's the one who made me think this because of what happened today... But I'm not sure how to tell her at all."

[st_arkintern]

That makes sense to Peter. As vivacious as she is, he can't imagine she'd feel good about things if right after she arrived wtih some bad news, Liz told her she didn't want to go home.

"Are you going to tell her at all?"

[st_hotflashes]

The pause probably told him more about how she didn't want to than her words.

"I have to... Eventually. It's not fair if I don't. She's my best friend." She paused again, shifting her head so she nestled against his a little. She glanced behind him to the wall. "Do you think I'm being a bad friend?"

[st_arkintern]

"I don't think you're being a bad friend," he tells her. "You don't have to tell your friends everything. I didn't tell Ned that I was Spider-Man until he found out on his own."

[st_hotflashes]

That sort of surprised her. "Was he angry at you?" About not telling him. She didn't know Ned except for what Peter said about him. She knew he was a nice guy, but that was about it.

[st_arkintern]

"No, he was just really excited about it," Peter tells her. "It was really hard for him to keep his mouth closed about it. We actually made plans to have Spider-Man show up at other-Liz's house party and fistbump him, but then I ended up having to go fight bad guys."

A beat.

"I don't think I would have gone through with it, anyway." Not after that realization on the roof.

[st_hotflashes]

That was a visual that Liz somehow had an easy and yet hard time picturing at the same time. She pulled back to look at him. There was a slight smile on her lips. The idea was kind of cute, even if she had questions. "Why did you want to do that? And, um... what's a fist bump?"

[st_arkintern]

"Ned let it out that I knew Spider-Man and Flash was being a jerk about it."

As far as what a fistbump was...

Peter takes Liz's hand and curls her fingers into a fist, then balls up his own. Then he lightly strikes his fist with her own.

"Fistbump," he says, smiling at Liz.

[st_hotflashes]

Somehow the fistbump makes her blush. Maybe it was the fact it was such a simple gesture and she hadn't know what it was - she figured it must be something that became popular in the future.

"One day Flash is going to realize you're amazing." Though she had a sneaking suspicion that maybe Flash already knew and that was why he picked on Peter. Most bullies were like that from her experience. "Not that Spider-Man isn't cool, but so is Peter Parker."

[st_arkintern]

"I don't know if I believe that," Peter admits. "He's been giving me a hard time since middle school." Flash didn't seem inclined to let up now that they were in high school together, either.

[st_hotflashes]

"Bullies are usually bullies because they feel threatened." She looked at him. "I know I'd feel a bit of competition if you and I were in some sort of competitive science thing. You're brilliant." She meant it too. She wasn't just complimenting him.

She realized she was still sitting on his lap. She leaned forward and kissed him, then carefully slipped off of his lap. "How are you and Annie, doing, by the way? I see her come into the clinic once in a while to talk to Loki."

[st_arkintern]

Peter reaches for Liz's hand as she slips off his lap.

"She's been doing okay. I--" Peter takes a breath there. "I had to persuade to leave during the fight the other day. She didn't want to go."

[st_hotflashes]

She considered that for a moment. She spent her time in the clinic which had arguably been less safe than the temple, but she remembered afterwards when Annie came looking for Peter ever so briefly.

"Sounds like someone I know." She squeezed his hand. "She did, though, right? She listened to you?"