strangetrip | [GP] Evening - Blinding you with science (and fireworks)

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[GP] Evening - Blinding you with science (and fireworks)

It had taken a good three weeks for Sora and Peter to gather enough materials and also enough nerve to put on the fireworks that Peter had felt were missing from New Year's. They'd filched, over time, a pile of steel wool pads and an embarrassing number of whisks. Why they needed those things, Sora didn't exactly know.

Once everything was gathered up, Sora and Peter met outside, a safe (probably!) distance from the Inn. Peter showed Sora how to stretch out a pad of steel wool and jam it inside a whisk, then he attached long ropes of webbing to the ends of the whisks and fastened them to the ground. While he did that, he cheerfully explained how the webbing worked and how he was sure it would stick to the ground right and everything would be fine. There was a lot of math and other things Sora did not understand at all, but he was absolutely confident that Peter was right.

Once everything was fastened properly, Peter gave the nod.

Sora called out the Keyblade, stood in the middle of the webby circle of stuffed whisks, and cast Aeroga. Swirling winds came out of nowhere to lift up the whisks and spin them in the air, held in control only by the webbing ropes. Next came Thunder - bolts of lightning to ignite the wool in the whisks as they spun. (Peter had been sure that Fire wouldn't work, it had to be Thunder. And he was so right!)

Then the boys settled, more or less, to watch their homemade fireworks spinning and throwing sparks.

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"Really?"

Peter is so surprised that for one second, he forgets that he's dangling off the ground by the strength of his own arm, and suddenly loses his grip --

-- only to fall to the floor below with a yelp.

Breathing heavily, Peter gazes up at Liz, his chest rising and falling with every breath.

"I'm all right," he says, trying to sound reassuring.

She didn't see the initial release of his grip, but with her gaze at the ground she saw him pass by her vision and hit the ground. Her eyes, which may have been a little more watery than normal, went wide and she held her breath until he called out.

Liz leaned a little to look over the hammock, but she was too high up to do anything and if she leaned any more she'd fall to the ground too. "Are you sure you're okay?" The fall had been a good distraction.

"Y-yeah!" Peter exclaims, suddenly more embarrassed about the fall than he is about telling Liz he likes her. He doesn't know whether or not to feel grateful for that, but suddenly, it feels like he might be able to pull together some composure.

"I'm fine," he says, scrambling to his feet. He waves up at her, as if to demonstrate. "Seriously, I've dealt with far worse falls than this."

But still, there's something he needs to ask. Peter looks up at her wonderingly.

"But." Peter pauses. "Why are you scared?"

When he stood up and didn't seem like he was favouring anything sore, she seemed to relax a little in her posture. She remembered he did say he survived getting dragged by a truck.

"Oh. um..." It felt a little weird talking to him about it while she sat up at the ceiling and he was so far away, although maybe the space made things easier? Him being on the ground made it hard for her to look away casually. Looking up felt weird.

"So, um... before I got here, I... well, I was seeing someone." She ended up staring at the mask on the ground, not entirely able to bring herself to watch his face as she spoke. "He.. The one that saved me. Max. But, um... so I guess, in the future, when we date it, made a bunch of things happen and then, um, then the world was destroyed and everyone dies."

This is somehow easier to talk about than what she's feeling, trying to avoid the punch line as long as possible.

"Max came back, from the future. He said... he said in order to save the world I needed to make him, um. Make him fall out of love with me... So, I did a whole bunch of horrible things and as a last resort made it look like I was - " Her gaze moved to her hands in her lap. Her expression turning sad, but mixed with embarrassment and grief. "...like I had slept with someone. Someone else."

There was a tear or two that escaped the corner of her eyes. Somehow the feeling of that night still lingered and now telling it to Peter, over anyone else, made her worry she was ruining things suddenly, but she needed to tell him everything. Tell him the truth.

"Future Max disappeared saying we saved the world, but.. well then I found myself here and I haven't been able to..." To do what, she didn't know. Did she want to apologize? To talk to Max?

"And then I met you and... and I didn't think I could like someone else. Like someone as much as - and I feel like I'm -" Like she was betraying Max, even though they weren't together and could never be together.

Liz didn't realize she was crying until the tears hit her hand. She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Now she felt mortified on top of other things.

Edited 2018-02-08 04:37 (UTC)

It's a lot. It's a lot to take in. But he just unloaded everything about his Liz and he's sure that that was a lot for this Liz to take on, too. So Peter does the one thing he can do. He listens.

And he feels bad. Not because of what she's telling him, but because he knows that Liz has been through a lot and she's been trying the very best she could. And doing all of that for the sake of the world had to be hard. Just like it was sometimes for him.

And though Peter has spent so much of his life hesitating whenever he's not wearing the spider mask, the second Liz starts to cry, he doesn't. His voice firm, he asks:

"Is it okay for me to come up there?"

Because he knows sometimes people don't want to be near other people when they're upset.

There was the briefest of pauses and then Liz nodded a few times, trying to compose herself a little better. She used the sleeve of her shirt to help dry her eyes. She was able to quell the tears, though they still threatened her at the corner of her glossy eyes. She could feel a little pit in her chest like this was it - she had shared something with Peter she could never unshare and that scared her.

Peter jumps up to catch the end of the webslinger rope and crawls smoothly and quickly up. When he's a little more than arm's reach away from the hammock, he swings himself a little closer, then sets himself down in the hammock across from her.

It's weird, being this close to her, and it shouldn't be. They had been sitting close together when he was helping her with her sketchwork, and it hadn't really been a problem then. Not that it was a problem now, either, but the situation was entirely different.

"I am so sorry about Max," he tells her, because he is. "And I know it probably doesn't help to hear it from me because I wasn't there and I probably don't know all the facts, but what you did was heroic, even if it was painful. Even though it hurt Max. You did what you had to do to save people. To save everyone."

And as Peter says it, he realizes how neatly Liz's story parallels with his own. Hurting someone else to save others. And suddenly, he can't feel as bad about the situation with Liz. Because he didn't want Liz to feel bad about her situation, either.

Don't be douchebag. Peter hears Piotr's voice as clear as day inside his head. And he knows more than anything that he doesn't want to be, and so he's not going to.

"If you don't know what you want to do, we don't have to do anything," Peter says. "Just because," Peter stops there, and swallows. He's already said it once before, but somehow, it's still as difficult the second time. "Just because I like-like you, and you like-like me doesn't mean it's not okay for us to just keep being friends."

Liz's feeling about how close they were silently matched Peter's even if she didn't know it. There had always been a pull, she felt, when she was near him. It was the first thing that indicated that she might feel something more than friends. Peter didn't feel like Alex did to her. Peter felt much different and definitely more similar to when she met Max.

She managed to look up when he started to talk. He looked so...accepting. The more he talked, the more she felt the pit in her chest recede. Her eyes seemed less glossy, too.

When he finished, she was quiet for a long moment. Her mind playing his words over and trying to decide what it wanted. Her heart seemed to answer for her after another moment when she heard herself say, "I... don't think I want to stay friends." She looked back down at her hands. She blushed a tiny bit, but it was hard to tell as her cheeks were red from rubbing them with fabric.

"When I'm near you, I just want to be closer..."

Peter can't say he doesn't feel the same, because he does. He definitely does.

And though he's terrified right now because he's never really kissed anyone, including the other Liz who was still the very first girl he'd ever gone out with, Peter somehow manages to press the words forward:

"Liz, is it okay if I kiss you?"

Her eyes slowly roam back up to meet his gaze. Liz stared at him for a moment as if considering, then she nods once, slowly. Despite having kissed before, she felt nervous too. Butterflies in her chest like someone was sitting on it nervous.

Wordlessly, Peter leans forward and kisses her.

It's not like one of the kisses in the movies, where the camera pans around and sweeping orchestral music plays. It's the kind of kiss Peter imagined having the first time he kissed a girl. Lips slightly parted, her breath hot on his mouth, his hand touching the side of her face.

And to him, it's perfect.

Kissing Peter was so very different from kissing Max. The first time he kissed her, he hadn't exactly taken it slow. The kiss was more like when she first kissed Kyle, but far less awkward.

The kiss, she realized, was really nice. It made her lips feel warm and the warmth seem to spread out slowly the longer their lips lingered together.

Liz leaned in, kissing him back rather than being passive about it.

Suddenly she saw a school that was definitely not Roswell High. She saw a pretty girl and she saw Peter run up to her. She felt how Peter felt when the girl turned around and there were tears. He felt so many things.

She gasped just a little and pulled back, staring at Peter with wide eyes.

When Liz pulls back, Peter's eyebrows furrow slightly with concern. He withdraws his hand from the side of her face, just in case something he did maybe made her uncomfortable.

His voice low, he asks: "Liz, you okay?"

Liz gave a small nod though her brow was furrowed a bit with thought. She had felt the way he felt that moment and he didn't deserve that. What she knew of Peter - well, it was unfair.

She reached out to hug him, arms around his neck if he'd let her.

And when Liz reaches out to hug him, it catches Peter off-guard. It's not the only time Peter's felt completely out of his element tonight and somehow, he's okay with that.

Peter leans against her, his arms naturally finding their proper place on her back. He can't stop thinking about how nice this is, but he's not sure if it's okay to say that, so he doesn't say anything at all.

"This," he says, his voice coming out a little hoarser than it usually is. "Isn't exactly thought how this night would go. I'm not complaining, but -- I didn't expect this."

Her eyes closed for a moment and she breathed him in. He smelled nice. Different. Not Max. He smelled warm. She turned her head a little, her face brushing against a mixture of Peter's skin and the fabric of his suit around his neck.

At his comment, her lips pressed into a smile first, then she opened her eyes, and then finally withdrew, though she didn't sit all the way back, but kept some closeness.

"I didn't even now you were going to make fireworks." A small, soft laugh on a single exhale sounded from Liz. She knew she had to tell him what happened, but as she sat there looking at him, she was a little worried it might complicate things.

She bit her bottom lip, looking at him. She suddenly wished she was more like Michael or Isabelle who could totally not say something for selfish reasons. Liz couldn't bring herself to do that.

"There's, um. There's something I should tell you. About when we kissed."

Peter is suddenly acutely aware of how fast his heart is beating beneath his chest. For a few moments, his nervousness had completely evaporated. But now, it was back in full force.

"Yeah?"

God, this was really awkward, wasn't it? It was even more awkward than when she told Max the first time, especially since Max had been able to do the same time so it made things less weird overall.

"So, um. Okay. So, sometimes - not all the time. And really I didn't even think it was a thing I could do with - um. Well, anyways. Sometimes I see things." She looked sheepish suddenly, cheeks hinting at her discomfort. Liz thought she sounded crazy even if it wasn't the first time for her.

"I, um. I call them flashes. They're like... sometimes I can see things or feel something from the other person. I can't control it and it's not like, all the time. But... um... yeah." She had tried to blatantly say she had seen something with him, but somehow couldn't manage being direct so she hoped he could piece that together.

Maybe it'd sound crazy to someone else who hadn't seen everything that Peter had seen, but Peter had seen a lot. A girl being able to see visions -- even visions that technically don't belong to her at all -- doesn't seem all that wild at all.

"Yeah," Peter says, nodding. He's not sure why she's telling him this now. But it's only a half-second later that it occurs to him that she might be telling him this because she just saw something from him.

"Did you -- did you see something from me?"

She looked a little apologetic. "I didn't mean for it to happen. I thought it was only because of, well, aliens."

Liz tried to figure out how to tell him. He did deserve to know. Her brow furrowed with a slightly scrunched up 'this is awkward, I'm sorry' expression. "I... kind of saw Liz saying goodbye to you."

She couldn't quite stop herself from continuing. She thought maybe if she kept talking it would sound less creepy. "She's, um. She's really pretty." And she was and she wondered if they would have gotten along, her and the other Liz. "But, I, well, I mostly felt what you felt." Her hand went up to her chest. "There was..." She had felt the mixed emotions and his face had pained her a little. "I'm sorry Peter."

"No," Peter says, shaking his head. "I-It's fine. It's fine. I mean, It's not like you really could help it." He didn't imagine Liz being one of those people deliberately poking into people's minds to see their secret anyway.

And when Peter grimaces, it's not the act that causes the sudden shift in expression. It's the specific memory.

"Yeah..." he says, rubbing the back of his neck. "Not really my finest moment." That much was true. "But there's not really anything I can do about that, even if I was back at home. The only thing I can really do is try to do better."

He smiles. "I guess I should be glad it was just that one," he says, laughing a little. "Karen's captured footage of things I've done that are way more embarrassing than that."

The way Peter handled the news relaxed something in Liz's shoulders. That was probably the weirdest thing about her and now he knew it and he was okay with it.

His smile brings her own back slowly. "Karen can take video?" She tried to picture how that would work. She looked down at the ground at the mask for a second, then back to him. She kind of wanted to see them, but she settled for just smiling at him with slight laughter in her eyes.

"Yeah, through the eyes. Only when I have the mask on, though." He smiles. "So we don't really have to worry about her recording us now."

That much he's relieved for. Or maybe he is. He's not sure. Maybe sometime in the future, he'd like to have this moment saved, the way some people took photographs of basically everything. But right now, he's okay with Karen not being part of this moment.

"So," he says, "How exactly do your powers work? Is it just like, whenever you touch anyone there's a small chance of it happening? Or is it just when you --"

Peter dampens his lips.

"-- when you kiss someone."

She blushed, glancing down for a second before up and nodding as she answer. "Um.. yeah. Just by... kissing." At least that was how it seemed to work. She hadn't had any experience otherwise.

She shut her eyes, though her lips pressed into a wide smile. "I know it's really weird." She laughed, putting her hand on her forehead for a minute before opening her eyes back at him. "but only sometimes. I don't know how to control it or why it happens and it only started after I... was shot."

So it's gotta be related to the aliens. That much Peter's sure of. Especially since it didn't start happening until one of the aliens saved her life.

"Well, if you want to try and see if you can get some control over it," Peter says, "I wouldn't mind doing that again sometime." Peter swallows. "The kissing," he clarifies helpfully.

[GP] Evening - Blinding you with science (and fireworks)

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