strangetrip | [backdated to March 4] Room with a View (closed to Peter)

For a brief moment Liz pictured Peter's hands on her and she flushed. It wasn't the first time she thought about it, her first coming to her in a very vivid dream.

She bit her bottom lip and then reached out with her arms to hug him from behind, arms over his shoulders. Liz's head rested on his broad back, cheek pressed between his shoulder blades.

"...is this okay?" She just couldn't quite bear to leave him feeling awkward alone, even if she was blushing like mad too.

"Yeah, it's fine," Peter says. But really, it was better than fine. Or okay. He really liked it. Her leaning against him, her arms around him.

After a few moments, Peter finally speaks again.

"We're not really doing much stargazing," he says with a quiet, nervous laugh. "Not that I mind it, I just -- I didn't think that we'd be talking about this today."

"Sorry" she smile against his back. She knew it was technically her fault. Maybe she should have talked about the whole almost naked thing before their date today.

"But.... I'm glad we talked about it. I'm glad... I know how you feel." And she was glad he knew how she felt, too.

"Don't apologize," Peter says. And this time, when he shifts away from her, it's so he can shift himself around so he can look at her again. "I'm just glad we could be here together, no matter what we ended up doing."

Besides, there'd be plenty of time for them to look up at the stars together. Maybe not this up close and personal, but how important were the stars when he had Liz sitting here right in front of him?

Peter reaches out for her hand and holds it with both of his. This is kinda like the hair thing. He liked the feel of her hands so much that all he really wanted to do was touch it. They were so much smaller and softer and smoother than his were.

"Are you feeling better now?" he asks. "Because I'm feeling better. A lot better. Still embarrassed, but. Better."

She liked it when Peter held her hands too. His were bigger, and stronger, and warmer.

Liz suddenly laughed softly and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah I am." And she was still pretty embarrassed too, but somehow it seemed kind of okay when it was with Peter.

She sat there, holding his hands, and paused. He had worked so hard to find this place for them.

"Lie down and close your eyes."

Peter shoots her a curious look, but doesn't object. He lays down, then closes his eyes, just like he was instructed.

"okay... No peaking." Liz trusted Peter not to peak as she stood up. She had a hunch about the room and she hoped she was right as she walked around until she found a panel on the wall. It took her a few minutes to figure out how to use it. It was like Peter's cellphone but bigger. "Just - just another minute."

Liz managed to get the lights in the room to turn off. There was only the dullest of light being emitted from under the bed which, she figured, was a safety light. As she walked back to where Peter was lying down, she smiled and knelt back down. There was a part of her that wanted to kiss him again, but he had been through a lot and she didn't want to make him embarrassed again.

So she liked down beside him on her back instead, her shoulders practically touching his. With the room dark now, it was hard to tell there was a big window on the ceiling. It looked as if they were thrust out into space among the stars.

"Okay, you can open them."

Peter didn't peek, even as he felt Liz step away from him. When he felt her lay next down to him, he still waited for her orders.

And then they came. Peter opened his eyes and his mouth fell a little. "Whoa," he says up at the ceiling. It was hard not to feel completely awestruck by the sight.

It takes Peter a few minutes to finally pull his eyes away from the sky to turn and look at Liz. He reaches for her hand again.

"How much do you know about stars?" he asks.

His reaction relaxed her a little. Maybe they could salvage this date after all. She took his hand an squeezed, enjoying his proximity.

"Not a lot. I was sort of anti-space for a while since I've been around it my whole life." With her parents' diner and all. "I only just started reading more about it last year. I know a couple of the constellations... It just takes me a while to find them."

He smiles at that. He was looking for constellations, too, hoping that maybe something out there would look familiar. But there wasn't anything that looked like the stars he knew from Earth.

"Some of the stars in the sky are already dead," he says, turning his gaze back up to the sky. "The closest star is Alpha Centauri, about four light years away, but most of the stars are pretty far out there. Even with most stars living billions of years, it's likely that there's a few out there that have turned into black or white dwarfs or neutron stars or black holes. And when that happens, all we're seeing from Earth is their light before they burned out."

He turns back to Liz. "I always think about that when I look at the stars. I know it probably seems kind of morbid, but I think it's nice. That even after they're dead, they're still shining really far away."

She looked at the stars as Peter talked and thought the way he spoke about it all sounded really nice. He definitely knew more than she did which was probably ironic since she was from Roswell.

Liz turned her head when he did and looked at him with quiet whimsy. "You make it sound really pretty... Like everything in this world matters, even after it stops working."

"Yeah, I mean, even if I just remain Peter Parker and don't really do anything significant with my life other than the whole Spider-Man thing," Peter says. "I hope that everyone at least remembers him. And maybe they're inspired by him, the same way I was by Iron Man."

He looks back up at the sky. Maybe all these serious conversations are ruining the mood, but laying here, sprawled out next to Liz somehow makes these things easier to talk about.

"I guess, ever since I became Spider-Man, I just -- I don't think that I'm going to die of old age. Just one of these days, it's just going to be a fight, and -- you know," he says, thinking of that time he was pinned under all that rubble by the Vulture. "I might just not be good enough."

He might be looking at the stars, but Liz was still looking at him and as he continued to talk, her heart siezed a little. The thought had crossed her mind a few times since they had started dating, but she never really let the thought sink in. When he said it, it felt real. Liz frown in the dark.

She wasn't quite sure what to say, but she turned in her side, letting go if Peter's hand so she could move it around her so she was on her side, next to him, and her head found it's place on his chest. The thought of him disappearing from the world was a heavy one.

"I don't think anyone could forget you. Peter or Spiderman." Her palm, which rested flat on his chest, curled in a little, clunching gently the fabric of his shirt.

Peter smiles a little at Liz's answer. "I hope not," he says, wrapping an arm around her. "But you know, I'm okay with that. Going down trying to help people. So it's not really something to get sad about."

It certainly seemed better than getting old. Sure, Peter wanted to live as long as he could, but it didn't really make any sense to do that if it meant not being Spider-Man.

"I know you'd remember me. And May, and Ned, too. I'm sure Liz's dad would with everything that happened."

He leans forward -- as much as Liz's body will allow, and gives her a kiss at the crown of her head, then lays back down.

When he laid back down, Liz would have sworn she could feel the kiss linger there on her head for a while, slowly dissipating like how ice melted on a warm day.

"Kitty told me once. She told me the worst thing I can do is to put myself in a position where you'd need to save me." And she already had, it seemed. She felt guilty about it and would probably have to tell Kitty, at some point, as if to admit her mistake.

"She said doing that could get you killed." This part was said a little quieter because the idea of Peter dying, despite his candidness about the whole thing, for Liz was hard.

"I just...I want you to know, I'm going to try never to do that... again."

Peter wishes Kitty didn't tell her that. He knew that he was concerned, but the last thing he wanted was for Liz to obsess over every little thing because she was worried about him getting killed.

And even if Kitty didn't think so, he could handle it. And if he couldn't handle it, he would ask for help. Just like when he had Ned to phone Happy when he knew the Vulture was gonna hijack the plane in the middle of moving.

"Sometimes, people get into trouble. Sometimes I get into trouble and people have to help me. There was this one time, when I was fighing the Vulture, and he just dropped me into Willow Lake--" Or was it Meadows Lake? Peter can't really remember, because they're so close to one another. "--and my parachute went off when I went a certain height, and Iron Man had to fish me out because I was tangled up in the parachute in the lake."

Well, Iron Man's armor came to fish him out.

"So, you know, even superheroes need help sometimes. I don't want you to spend your life just worrying about whether or not you're going to get in danger. Because yeah, I'm going to try and get you out of it, but if I need help, I'm gonna ask for it."

She lifted up off his chest, propped by her elbow, to look at him. She might never tell him since she figured guys wouldn't take it as a compliment, but he had the best eyes, she thought. When you looked into them, you could tell he was a good person.

"Me too, you know." Her eyes wandered down to where her hand was still on his chest. Her fingers played with the fabric of his shirt lightly as she moved her hand side to side. It was only a few days ago he had gotten one of his shirts ruined by claw marks.

Her eyes trailed back up to his gaze. "If I can, I'll be there to help you, or save you." He wasn't alone and she wanted him to know that.

"I know," Peter says, raising a hand up to her face. He runs a thumb across her cheek. Because he did know, and he trusted her, and even before they started going out, he was sure she was a good person. The kind of person he could rely on if he needed to.

"And uh," he begins, because this seems like a good time to talk about it, and he should probably let her know. "I talked with Karen and she told me about the things that happened when we were out here. I just -- I hope it was okay."

Her brow furrowed a little and she felt, maybe, a little twinge of worry. "What do you mean? What, um... what did she say?" Liz tried to think back but a lot of the in-between parts were pretty blurred because her adrenaline was pumping. Plus, she wanted Karen to like her and maybe she didn't.

"She said you asked some questions about me," he said. "I mean, I don't mind you asking her questions, but if you have any, you can always ask me. I can't promise I won't get weird about it, but I'll at least try and answer them for you."

"Oh." She felt herself blush at that. "Right..." It hadn't even occurred to Liz that Karen might talk to Peter, but it made sense since Karen was a) Peter's and b) and computer program.

"I just... I just wanted to know if you were, you know, um. Happy. With, well, with everything."

"You mean with us?"

The question is rhetorical; Peter doesn't bother waiting for an answer. "Yeah," he says. "Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

Also, a rhetorical question.

"That day when we were sitting up in the hammock together is one of my favorite memories." And Peter's sure that -- even despite the initial embarrassment -- this will be one of them, too.

She smiled at his answer, head dipping down for a brief moment before looking back at him.

"Me too." The day she found out about who Peter really was and they kissed - it was definitely up there in her memories for sure.

Liz shook her head a little though. "But.. I mean, with everything. Being stuck here without Ned or your Aunt or even just New York."

"I mean, I miss it?" Though he means to state it like it's a fact, it comes out sounding a little like a question. "But I'm used to living here now. And I know now that Ned is taking care of May, and that the Avengers are taking care of everything I can't now that I'm here."

If he's not there too. That's a possibility he's considered.

"What about you?" he asks. "Are you happy?"

"I'm.. yeah, actually. I am. I'm happy." She smiled at him. "I mean... I miss my parents and Maria and Alex, but... " Like him, she had started to get used to living here.

"I think... You're a big reason why I'm okay with being here." Her smile widened and she flushed a little that probably didn't show in the darkness.

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