strangetrip | [Friday July 5th] The Inevitable Snap (Tag Peter)

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[Friday July 5th] The Inevitable Snap (Tag Peter)

Liz was having a great time that afternoon. The heat from the summer sun wasn't terrible with the slight breeze. It also helped they had decided to go swimming which was never a hardship for Liz - Peter looked good in a bathing suit. They had been out for an hour or so now and Liz hadn't really stopped smiling the entire time.

She swam over to Peter and flung her arms around his neck. "Maybe after this, we can go have some pizza. I put a few pizzas I made the night before in the fridge. I bet they heat up well." Liz leaned over and caught his mouth in hers, slow and intense - just in case Peter forgot how much she loved him.

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"Yeah," Peter agrees and he kisses Liz's forehead. "You have a pepperoni?"

"If I didn't know to make some pepperoni by now, I should probably just get fired." Not that she had a job for it or anything, but the point remained.

In the water, she let herself float close to him then wrap her legs around his waist. She always liked the weightlessness of water. She often wondered if that would be how it felt to be out in space. "I was thinking... we should go camping now that it's really nice out. We could bring Alec, Ned, and Annie if you want. Maybe even Mr. Stark and Thor."

"Yeah? Like a campout?" Peter asks. "I haven't done one of those since I was in cub scouts." True enough, he and Liz had gone camping, but it had never been more than just them.

She nodded with a smile. "I thought it's be nice, you know? Have everyone out. Give people a change of pace..." Plus she liked the idea of feeling like maybe they were some sort of mix-matched family. She pressed her nose lightly against Peter's nose. "I don't know if you've noticed, but you smile the best when everyone's around."

Peter smiles at that and gives Liz a quick kiss.

"Yeah, let's do it. You wanna get out some invites? I can probably get together packing lists for everybody." The adults probably wouldn't need them so much; Tony tended to overpack for such occasions. Annie, on the other hand would probably find it useful.

Her smile grew wider. "Like a formal event?" Her tone probably said she liked the idea, though. The more she thought about it, the more she was excited to do it. "I think that'd be really nice." She kissed him gently. "And every time I'm under the stars with you, it's nice." And romantic. It was probably her ideal setting, if she were going to be honest.

Liz leaned in to kiss him again, intending to untangle herself from him and swim off to the other side of the pool to grab her towel, but the kiss held more than she meant it to. From the outside, Liz leaned into the kiss and intensified it as she pulled herself closer to Peter. Her grip tightened and it was as if she were intending to do much more than kiss in the pool. On the inside, Liz was no longer in the Madonna Inn at all.

The flashes of images were disorienting at first until she realized she was Peter seeing his own life in front of him. Christmas. This was Christmas.

Liz made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a moan against Peter.

She knew what was coming, but she hadn't been prepared for Peter's feelings about it all. And when she got to his death -

Tears streamed down her closed eyes. The flash released and she sank against Peter's shoulder and sobbed.

"Hey," Peter says softly. It's been awhile since it last occurred, but he knows immediately from Liz's reaction what happened:

A flash.

Peter wraps his arms around her, wondering what she might have seen to upset her; there's a few things he can think of that might have triggered this kind of reaction and he doesn't like any of those possibilities at all.

"It's okay," he says. "I'm right here and it's all over, okay?" He presses a kiss to the side of her neck, then rubs her back.

Liz had a hard time not dwelling on the way Peter had felt or how the scene had unfolded. Peter knew he was dying. She should have been grateful she was a spectator to that rather than a participant, but all she kept thinking about was why. Even Mr. Stark's reaction - the last thing she saw - had been so utterly heart wrenching.

She should have been prepared for it, but she wasn't. She knew that would happen to Peter, but she never expected that.

Around her body, green energy coalesced as she felt the panic for the boy she loved heightened. Her grip around him tightened in an urgent hug.

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

"Hey," Peter says, tightening his grip on Liz in turn; he's not sure if it's going to help or hurt here. "What are you sorry for?"

She could feel the water around them heat up a little and she realized she had been losing control. She shut her eyes tight and tried to focus on her breathing, which was hard when you were crying. Her breaths out were shaky, but slowly her body stopped trembling and the heat around her faded.

"I saw." She spoke into his shoulder and then focused on her breathing again. The green energy was there, but it was slowly down. "You when you..."

"Oh."

It had been the one memory that he had most wanted to protect Liz from. They'd gone months without her seeing it after they started kissing again and part of him thought that maybe they were safe and that it wasn't going to happen...

...but it still did.

"Thor and Tony... they're still trying to find a way to stop it," he says as encouragingly as he can manage. "It doesn't mean it's gonna happen when I go back. If I go back."

She nodded slightly against his shoulder and tried to take a few more breaths. Her crying had simmered to a quiet sniffle and soon the energy around her stopped, which meant the slight pain she had been feeling stopped too.

Liz took a deep breath and after another moment, finally lifted her head to look at him, though she didn't move to distance herself from him yet. She wanted to talk to him about the way he had felt and what she had seen, but as she looked at him, she just felt a pang in her chest. She pressed her forehead against his. "I want to be really selfish and hope you never go back."

"As long as you and Tony and the others are still here..." The briefest of pauses. "...I don't think I would mind that."

Except May and his other friends were still back home and she knew he missed them and missed being Spider-Man. She pressed her lips together and a few more tears escaped, though she wasn't full-out crying anymore. The whole thing had been overwhelming. If she could trade places with him, but she knew if she told him that, he would get upset.

Liz shifted a little in the water so her one hand came to touch the side of his face. A question suddenly burned inside her as she searched his eyes. "I want to marry you."

"Marry?" Peter manages to choke out, completely caught off-guard by the proposal. "Liz, are you sure?"

She suddenly blushed, but it didn't change the way she felt. She gave a small nod, but looked down at the water pooling between them. "It's okay if you're not ready. I just... I know that's what I want."

"It's not that I'm against it, it's just..." How does he put it? "It's really big."

"I know.. I know." But it didn't change her mind. She let her hand slide from his face to his shoulder.

Peter takes her hand into his own and kisses it.

"We're gonna be okay, Liz. I promise."

She knew he couldn't actually promise that, but she let herself believe it anyway. Liz gave another nod. Despite how sure she was of what she told him, she decided she should drop it for now. Silence washed over them for a moment, then she looked at him. "Can I... Can we still kiss, please?"

"Yeah, yeah," Peter says, nodding vigorously. "Of course." He had less of a reason now to stop her; there wasn't anything else he was worried about her seeing.

As if to demonstrate he leans in and gives her a kiss.

She kissed him back, a small, if not a little sad smile spreading on her lips. She pulled back, letting her feet finally hit the floor of the pool again and she wiped her face with her hands. People probably saw her, but she couldn't really fix that now anyways. Those images were going to stay with her for a while, but she didn't want Peter to worry. "Do you, um. You still want to go get those pizzas?"

"Yeah." Peter nods. "You sure you're okay?" Peter was definitely not okay after seeing it, so he can't imagine that Liz's totally all right right now, either. "We can go up to your room instead if you want."

There was a lot of things she wanted to do at that exact moment and her brain couldn't focus on one over another. She paused as she continued it, then gave a little nod. Her room felt like a better option. "I wouldn't mind holding you for a while..."

"Then let's do that."

Peter reaches for Liz's hand and starts to make his way to the pool steps. The truth is, he wants to hold Liz right now as much as she probably wants to hold him.

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[Friday July 5th] The Inevitable Snap (Tag Peter)

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