#spfic

It wasn’t that you’d woken up one morning and had fallen out of love with him, if anything it was the opposite. You loved Sweet Pea more than you thought you were capable of loving anything. You adored the way his nose scrunched up when he was concentrating, the way he used to hold you close at night, his confidence and loyalty. But no matter how much you loved him, you were growing weary. You had been living this situation for weeks and as each night went on you felt more and more detached from the relationship you held so closely to your heart.

Things you found endearing and exciting when you first entered each other’s lives made you ambivalent and dispirited. When you first met him, patching him up after a fight was exhilarating. The way he desperately knocked at your door, giving you a small, relieved smile as you opened up and ushered him into the bathroom with first aid supplies already prepared and awaiting his arrival, made you feel like the only girl in that mattered to him in that moment. You would caress his face gently, holding his hair out of the way as you dabbed away the blood and dirt. That was where you had your first kiss. It wasn’t romantic or pre-planned, but it was raw and truthful and honest. Now however, you left the first aid kit in the bathroom and left him to do it himself, turning away from him when he got into bed after. Before, you would have asked him questions about his clashes and fights, now you didn’t want to know the details. You had spent too many nights wide awake tossing and turning as he prowled the streets with the Serpents and it was taking a toll on you.

Rustling outside the door pulled you back into reality from your blank stare. The sun was coming up and you were still sat neatly on the sofa of your trailer with your coffee between your hands. You didn’t know how long you had been staring blankly mulling things over. The rustling outside of the door turned into fumbling with the front door lock and your stomach dropped, your pulse increasing causing you to sweat. The door opened, and Sweet Pea ambled in, stopping momentarily to look at you with a confused expression dancing across his bloodied face, before locking the door and trudging towards the bathroom. You hesitated and stood, following quietly behind him, stopping in the doorway of the tiled room where Sweet Pea was fumbling with an antiseptic wipe for his cuts.

“Pea,” You mumbled, your voice barely above a whisper as your heart and lungs desperately tried to stop you from starting this conversation that you didn’t want to be having. You fought the reluctance, calling his name a little louder when he didn’t hear you. “Sweet Pea.”

His head whipped around, a blank expression on his face as his eyes searched yours for some explanation as to why you were here with him. It had been weeks since you’d tended to his wounds for him. “What?”

You hesitated before answering, an uneasy feeling filling your body from your toes all the way to the tips of your fingers. “You missed some,” You replied softly, just wanting a few moments of normality before you unravelled and sacrificed everything that kept you feeling secure. You set your coffee cup down and extended a hand to take the wipe from him. You carefully cradled his head, gently wiping the blood away that had dried in his eyebrow as he rinsed his bloodied knuckles in the sink. As you looked down on his face, you could see the skin around his eye beginning to speckle with bruising and you couldn’t help but sigh quietly. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, Spyder spotted some Ghoulies on their initiation snooping around our bikes and we ended up getting into a fight with them. I’m okay though, I think one of them managed to throw a decent punch, but his luck didn’t last long,” Sweet Pea recalled, his eye twitching as you touched a particularly sensitive part of his face. His head tilted up slightly to look at you as you finished sterilising his cut and dropped the wipe into the bin. “Are you okay?”

You thought for a moment about how to answer his question; it was so simple to him but had much more weight with you. You settled with a small, “I’m tired,” as you moved back over to the counter in front of Sweet Pea where your coffee sat, getting cold.

“Well yeah, it’s 5:30am, I’m tired too,” He laughed, standing ready to go to the bedroom like any normal night.

It was now or never. You couldn’t take another night of waiting up not knowing what state he would be in when he came home, or if he would even come home at all.

“No Pea, I’m tired,” You repeated quietly, knitting your hands together nervously as Sweet Pea’s lingering grin dropped, and his eyes once again searched yours. Your heart was in your throat and you couldn’t bear to look at him any longer, averting your eyes to your hands.

“What do you mean? What do you mean you’re tired?” Sweet Pea asked quickly and worriedly, his voice quivering as he stood frozen in place. He fiddled with his rings and began picking at the fresh scabs on his knuckles as he waited anxiously for some kind of clarification from you.

You wondered whether you should give him the full truth or whether to save the details. You settled on the full truth. You had spent so long bottling this up, and he deserved to know the real reasons behind the end of your relationship, not just some excuse you could make up to save you having a hard conversation.

“You go out and get blindingly drunk or get into fights and I worry about you. I haven’t slept well in so long because you spend all your time getting into trouble. I love that you spend time with your friends- I would never ask you to stop spending time with them; but I’ve spent so many nights awake filled with dread about what could happen to you and it’s wearing me down and making me feel like a shell of myself.” You laid your cards on the table vulnerably, hoping he would understand where you were coming from. Lying awake each night waiting for him was exhausting you physically and mentally and something had to give.

“Then don’t stay up and wait for me, go to sleep. Get some sleep and you’ll feel more like you. I never asked you to wait up for me, I thought you did it because you wanted to?” He replied innocently, a confused tone lacing his voice.

You knew he didn’t mean to, but his ignorance to the bigger picture frustrated you and you could feel yourself becoming vexed. Impulsively, you bit back at his confusion with anger.

“Pea you don’t get it, it’s not that easy- I can’t just sleep! Do you not think that I would just go to sleep if I could?” You raised your voice indignantly, immediately regretting it. You knew getting irked was the last thing you wanted to happen, but you were tired and you felt aggrieved. You took a deep breath and exhaled shakily, your frustration finally culminating in sadness. You could feel your face heating up as pressure built in your throat and you let out a choked whimper. "You don’t understand what it’s like to toss and turn all night and lay there wondering how you’re going to come home. Or if you’re even going to make it home at all. I worry about you Pea and I know you can look after yourself out there but all it takes is one wrong turn for you to end up really hurt. I don’t want to have to wake up one morning to see FP and Fangs on our doorstep not knowing how to tell me that you won’t be coming back. I’ve tried to be strong for you I really, really have, but I cannot bear the thought of you coming home in a body bag.”

Your voice broke as you thought about all the times you had mentally prepared yourself for the worst and you couldn’t hold back the sobs that tore through your body. You had spent months stifling your concern and anxiety about his wellbeing, and now it was all being released at once.

“I’ll stop going out and I’ll stop getting into fights. Please, I’ll do anything- whatever it takes.” Sweet Pea pleaded with clasped hands, taking a step towards you in desperation. His chest ached at the thought of losing you and he could only muster a mere whisper as he laid his heart bare for you. “You’re the only person I can ever see myself being happy with, please don’t leave me."

“I don’t want you to change who you are for me; your fearless nature is what makes you you. It’s in your blood and your heart and it’s what made me want you in the first place, but now it just… It just causes me more stress than happiness and I don’t want us to be tainted by that.”

“Don’t you want me anymore?” Sweet Pea asked brokenly. It was somehow simultaneously the first and last question he wanted to ask and part of him didn’t even want to know the answer. His hands shook as he held his breath in anticipation of your response and he could feel a lump forming in his throat whilst tears began to gather in his eyes.

“Of course I still want you, Pea. I love so much about you, but I don’t love how this makes me feel. I've tried my hardest I really have, but just it isn’t enough anymore. I mended your cuts and bruises, but there’s nothing that can mend how I feel mentally apart from self-love and I can’t do that whilst I’m worrying so much about you each night. I spent so much time trying to keep our little flame alive because I was scared of the darkness that would come if I let it go out, but I never took the time to look up and see all the other sources of light in my life. And there are other sources of light in yours too."

“But I love you.” Sweet Pea begged, his voice trembling with anguish. You looked up at him, closely this time. He was dishevelled and his face blotchy and red as tried desperately to fight back the tears that were glazing his eyes. Guilt washed over your entire body and you wanted nothing more than to take it all back and crawl into bed with him, but you needed this for yourself. You couldn’t love someone if you didn’t love yourself.

“And I love you.” You whispered as you closed your eyes tightly in pain, opening them again to see a torrent of tears cascading down his cheeks. It wasn’t the first time you had seen him cry, but it was the first time you’d seen him cry out of anything other than anger. Seeing that was enough to make you cry harder than before.  “But I need to love myself now too, okay?"

Seeing Sweet Pea so broken made you feel like there was no oxygen in the room. Your chest felt like it was going to cave in under the pressure and it was like your lungs were being strangled. You looked at him pleadingly and feebly opened your arms. You just wanted one more embrace, a moment of closeness you hadn’t had with him in a long time. He wrapped you up in his arms almost instantaneously, your legs buckling as air finally filled your lungs again.

You both sunk to your knees. You could feel his chest heaving as he silently cried into your hair, your actions mimicking his. You couldn’t hold in your sniffles as you clung to him- he felt like home in so many ways. You stayed there with him for a while, tangled up in each other, neither one of you wanting to be the one who broke your last embrace.

He pulled back slightly and looked down at you with his bloodshot eyes and plump, sore lips, his calloused hands running over your cheeks to wipe away the stray tears that fell effortlessly. “My heart hurts so much,” He murmured, his voice gravelly and raw. “But I know you need this for yourself. I promise, I’ll wait for you for as long as it takes, until you love yourself as much as I love you. I never meant to make you feel like this.”

Safety…for now.

Thinking it can’t possibly get worse from here on out, I’mtrying to come up with an escape plan when I come face to face with the ownerof the truck. And boy he does notlook happy. Leather booted feet are propped up on the dash by the steeringwheel as he peers over his shoulder at me. In one hand, heholds a coffee pot, tilted as though on the verge of pouring himself a cup. Hewould see more confused than angry…if it weren’t for the fire extinguisher inhis other hand. Pointed straight at me.

“Who are you, and what are you doing on my bean?” His voiceis slow and even. I spot a few coffeeshop logos on his jacket, but his windswept,graying hair and distinct lack of a hairnet wouldn’t pass muster at a chain. “Coffeeburn your tongue?”

I hold up my hands, stammering. “I’m…so so sorry, I thoughtit as empty and I…I was hiding, I mean I’m running, I mean…”

“…” He narrows his eyes, thumb running over the handle ofhis coffee pot in his hand. “Gotta show the permit before you enter the establishment.”

Then with his other hand he pulls the trigger. I dive for the side as whitepowder explodes from the end of the fire extinguisher, but it’s not necessary.He’d been aiming at someone behind me, an officer who yelps and pinwheels hisarms before smacking into the counter and toppling to the floor. A carafe tumbles,and he howls as hot coffee douses his lap. He shrieks, and stumbles out asthree people pile into the crammed space of the truck, hardly giving him a glance. Atlas takes a sipdirectly from the coffee pot, and I note with fascinated horror that its contentsare far more viscous than mere coffee. “Is, is that…an entire pot of espresso?”

Before he can answer—or, more likely, frown at me silently—oneof the newcomers shouts, “We’re in a latte trouble!”

More seriously, a man in blue follows right behind. “Atlas,get the Promise running. We need to brew, now.”

“Aye, cap.”

I’m relieved none of them are wearing uniforms, but all thestained aprons and lingering scent of tea leaves suggests a crew of people accustomedto a lot of caffeine. Am I better off with the Union, or what is obviously agroup of rogue baristas?

The man in blue frowns at me. “Who’s your friend?”

“No friend of mine. Wannabe stay-awake.”

The handsome punner in red spares me a glance even as hesettles into place in front of a screen where orders are flying in rapidly. “A citygirl in search of a buzz? Who are we to deny her? Nova, care to give her aread?”

The woman doesn’t have to come close; in the cramped spacethere’s no concept of personal space. “She’s safe.”

The man in blue shakes his head, “Later – we’ve got acatering order.”

The man in red glances at a computer, and his jaw clenches. “Allwe did was find a spot in the park. It’s practically evening, what does theUnion want with all this coffee anyway?”

“Probably to give a one-star review.” Atlas grumbles.

Another order pops up on the screen. They’re pouring in, toofast to read and catch up. The woman—Nova, her nametag reads, though it’sinterestingly placed on her sleeve and not her apron—smoothly begins manningthe machines, flipping switches and flowing seamlessly between milk and waterand pumps of syrup. The man with the red apron, Jaxon, is rattling off orders, and calling in for supplies.Atlas whips down a side street, a shortcut to their primary vendor. Orion looks perfectly calm.

“Wait—wait I can help!” Quickly, I pull Cap-Pearl-cino outof my pocket, and she scuttles up to one of the espresso machines.

From the driver’s seat, I hear Atlas growl, “What are youdoing to my truck?”

Confident that I can boost the thermoblock and stabilize the brew temperature without theexpense of steaming performance and speed, I quickly get to work, murmuring orders to my dear little brewbot. “Fixing it.”

Novaspares me a glance but keeps working with fluid efficiency. Jaxon eyes thecompleted orders, arriving faster as I work, and purrs, “Well, well. Where haveyou bean all our lives?”

“Jaxon if you make onemore pun…”

“You know you love me - mugs and kisses, Atlas.”

Deleted Scenes

Atlas, stop “roasting” the new girl.

Okay self, you can do this. After all, are you an ameri-can-o or an ameri-can’t-o?

Jaxon sighed, “Come on you two, just kiss and moch-up already. I want to be able to espresso my best wishes for the happy cup-ple.”

Whoops, guess it turns out I like my food truck owners like I like my coffee - strong, dark, and super duper bitter.

Careful Atlas, your coffee-lings are showing. 

“Aunt May told us to get along.”

“You started it,” Peter grumbles.

Gwen points to the ceiling, “Evidently not.”

“Wade Wilson.”

“Did you finish it?”

Peter grimaces.

“I’ll take that as a tentative yes. What did you do. Or more accurately, how did you fuck up?”

Peter sighs loudly, “I didn’t know it said this for starters.”

Gwen hums along as Peter walks her through his tragedy of earlier that day. He’s glad that she knows about Spider-Man or he would have no one to talk about this.

“Abuse of power, Aunt May would be disappointed.”

“I’m disappointed.”

“As am I, Petey boy.” Gwen pats his shoulder but he doubts there’s much sympathy in the action. “So.”

“So?”

“You gonna go on a date with this dude or what?”

“Did you miss the part where I need to transfer to a school in Alaska and hand over the title of Spider-Man to someone worthier than me?”

“Wow Petey, that’s a lot of pressure but I know I can handle it. Thanks for thinking of me.”

Peter rolls his eyes and pushes Gwen to roll her across the carpet. Though he does believe that she would make a great Spider-Person if she had been bitten instead of him. Or if they had been bitten together. They would have made a great team.

“But seriously,” Gwen says when she rolls back over, “Do you think you can trust him?”

“I mean… maybe?”

“Good!” Gwen slaps her hand down on his chest, knocking the wind out of Peter, as she stands up. “Because you’ve already leaked your secret identity so it’s not like you’ve got much of a choice!”

Peter groans and throws his hands over his face, blocking the view of his best friend and the furniture that asks too much of him. He does not know how he’s going to show himself in Physics class tomorrow.

…

Apparently it’s in a large hoodie that definitely isn’t conspicuous at all. Wade knows what he looks like, he isn’t going to be confused by a giant hoodie sitting next to him - well actually, he’ll probably be confused but he’s one hundred percent know who’s underneath the hoodie the entire time. But Peter’s instincts aren’t exactly the best. So the hoodie is all he’s got for a defense mechanisms as he slips into his seat next to Wade.

Wade, who is already sitting in his seat. Wade, who’s eyes have been glued laser-like to Peter since he walked into the classroom. Wade, who has at least three and maybe five doodles of Spider-Man on his notebook. Wade, who is visibly sticking to his clothing in some places and having to unstick his clothes from the desk every few minutes.

It takes every bit of Peter’s willpower to keep him inside the classroom. He doesn’t know how to start this conversation and from the look on Wade’s face, Wade is waiting for Peter to be the one to start this - since he obviously fucked up their last attempt of whatever this was. His mouth unhelpfully starts with,

“So I read the furniture.”

Wade immediately starts laughing hard enough that everyone in the classroom stares at them and the professor gives them a warning look that both young men have become accustomed to, the same look that stopped them from having pranks in the classroom.

“Did it tell you how to make me unsticky?”

Peter presses his lips together, he doesn’t know how much he wants to give away. If he answers that, he might be confirming that he is indeed Spider-Man when there could be doubts. But if Wade is asking, that probably means that there are no doubts and he definitely knows that Peter is Spider-Man so what’s the point in beating around the bush?

Wade continues on, seeming to sense Peter’s hesitation. “Being bald is a blessing. No hair for that to stick to!”

Peter frowns as he watches Wade remove his hat, the one he always wears, and smooth his hand over his bare scalp. In that moment, he can tell that Wade is hesitant to do it. That he’s self-conscious about it. In all the time that he’s known Wade, which is admittedly very short, he’s never seen Wade not be entirely overconfident. It was one of his favorite things about the man, the thing that drew Peter to him in the first place. It makes Peter brave enough to lean closer and whisper,

“It’ll dissolve completely in another day or two. It won’t ruin that handsome face, I promise.”

Peter thinks he’s definitely won when Wade’s mouth hangs open in shock and a blush starts forming on his cheeks. Though he’s not sure what he’s winning. Flirting? Is Peter actually flirting with someone? With Wade?

“Holy shit,” Wade whispers. “Spider-Man is hitting on me.”

Immediately any confidence Peter had disappears and he drops his head into his hands. “This isn’t happening.”

“Oh, I think it might be. You called me handsome.”

“No, not that. I-” Peter lowers his voice and leans closer to Wade, “That I revealed my secret identity.”

“Oh that. Yeah you definitely did that. Not smooth, Parker. My room is,” Wade mimes an explosion and Peter can only imagine the chaos he left in his wake.

“In all fairness,” Peter mumbles, “You deserved it.”

“Did I?” Wade asks, leaning back in his chair, “Because I asked you out. You built an explosive device.”

“Non-lethal!”

“Tell that to my carpet.”

“It’ll… it’ll completely disintegrate. It’ll be like it was never there.”

“Ah, but I’ll know, baby boy. I’m forever haunted.”

Peter sighs, pressing his head into his arms that he’s folded on top of his desk. He feels like he should just walk out of the classroom at this point, or maybe crawl out a window, that’s more to his style.

Before he can decide on his escape route, Wade’s lips are next to his ear whispering, “If I ask you out again are you going to web me to something.”

From the tone of his voice, it sounds like Wade actually wants Peter to web him to something. He bites back a potentially damaging remark that he’s not sure he’s ready to face the consequences of and says, “What kind of a date?”

“The kind where I kiss you goodnight.”