Peter Parker Imagines Book

Something Just Like This

More time passed, almost a month since you first started noticing. With a careful eye, you could slowly see Peter begin to unravel. To tear himself up on the inside piece by piece, just to turn to you and give you the brightest smile he could muster. But since it started, since the fear began to seep into him, his smiles were never real. Never reached his eyes. They were always forced. Like each one had a number.

Soon, it started to eat away at you too, and the sides of you started to conflict again. You wanted to respect Peter and his privacy as much as you could. You knew that whatever was plaguing his mind, he had to work through it. And to some extent, he was. Some days, you could see him come close to fighting through it. For him to grab your hands and tell you he needed to tell you something. You always waited patiently and told him that you would always listen. But then you saw his defense quickly unravel as he lost his nerve. The defeated look that haunted his face before he quickly masked it and made something up.

You wanted to let Peter find courage himself. To stop giving up and pretending that everything was alright. Because it wasn't. He wasn't. And it always left an empty feeling in your gut when you pieced together that the fear raging in his mind was because of you. 

You knew it was a risk when you made the decision to let him process without being forced to speak about something before he was ready, but each day, each hour, you felt yourself feeling worse and worse about never taking initiation. It was your duty as both Peter's friend and as his girlfriend, to make sure that he wasn't slowly killing himself by letting pressure just build and build before it crushed him completley. Before he became a husk of the boy he used to be. You didn't know if you could live with yourself if you ever let that happen. Because then, it would truly be your fault.

Peter's bed was small, so he held you close. 

Every touch of his hands were careful as if he was afraid of touching you any longer until his intention shifted; the palm of one hand pressed firmly against the small of your back, keeping you close to him, the other hand caressing your face, his fingers brushing against the caricature of your face, like he was trying to commit the feel of you to his memory. 

His kisses were slow and lingering, and you could feel the hesitation in the short breaths he took when he pulled away. Never long enough for you to truly question. 

But no matter how hard he tried to cover up, you just knew you couldn't go another day with this Peter. The Peter who held onto you with shaky hands. Who kissed you like he would never again. Who looked at you like each glimpse would be his last.

His fear hung too thick in the air for you to just ignore it this time. It was laced in everything he did. Every move he made. Growing stronger with every passing second. It was like that from the beginning, and you hated yourself for allowing it to get this bad. You had believed Peter could combat this himself, but you realized the hard way that some battles couldn't be won alone. He needed you, and you had deprived him of that reprieve. 

Not any longer. 

"I love you Peter, but kissing me isn't going to distract me from what you're hiding anymore," you said in the most soft and non-patronizing voice you could gather yourself to speak, cutting through the thick silence as you pulled away. 

You inhaled sharply, willing yourself and letting the reminder that you were prepared to have this conversation reverberate in your head. This needed to happen. Peter shouldn't have to hurt any longer. It had already been too long. 

Opening your eyes, you found him already staring back at you, his eyes dilating with fear as they searched yours. It was subtle, and if you weren't already expecting it, you wouldn't have caught the way Peter instinctively prepared himself to pull away from you. Gearing up for a punishment for what you didn't know yet, but he believed he deserved. You could hear your heart breaking in your chest.