Each character is introduced in their own emotional world. We see:
Their wounds, needs, and flaws
What they want vs. what they actually need
Why love is currently not working for them
This stage sets up why the romance matters.
2. The Meet Cute or First Collision
They meet in a way that creates friction, curiosity, or disruption.
This can be cute, hostile, awkward, or intense — but it must change something for both of them.
3. Attraction and Tension
They feel drawn to each other, but:
There are obstacles (external or internal)
They deny, resist, or misinterpret their feelings
Chemistry builds through proximity, conflict, or emotional glimpses
This is the slow pull stage.
4. Forced Proximity or Emotional Intimacy
Circumstances push them together:
Working together
Traveling together
Being trapped together
Sharing secrets or vulnerability
This is where emotional bonding starts, even if they don’t admit it.
5. The First Shift (Romantic or Emotional Breakthrough)
A moment changes the nature of their relationship:
First kiss
Confession
One saves the other
A moment of deep understanding
After this, the story is no longer “will they notice each other?” but “what does this mean now?”
6. The Honeymoon or Hope Phase
Things feel good. There’s closeness, trust, or passion.
The reader is allowed to believe the relationship might actually work.
This makes the coming conflict hurt more.
7. The Break (The Black Moment)
Something shatters the relationship:
A betrayal, lie, misunderstanding, or revelation
A fear or wound resurfaces
External pressure pulls them apart
This is the emotional low point of the romance.
8. The Growth and Choice
Both characters grow:
They confront their flaws or fears
They choose love intentionally, not accidentally
They become capable of sustaining the relationship
This is where love becomes a decision, not just a feeling.
9. The Reunion and Resolution (HEA or HFN)
They reunite with honesty and emotional maturity.
The story resolves with:
A Happily Ever After (HEA) or
A Happy For Now (HFN)
The emotional promise of the genre is fulfilled.
✦ Why This Structure Works
Romance isn’t just about attraction — it’s about emotional transformation through love.
Each stage:
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i used to believe love was a language of words. that it lived in the grand declarations, the poetic phrases whispered in the dark, the perfect sentiments found in cards. but i’ve come to understand that isn’t the language of love at all. those words are just the echo, the translation of something far more fundamental. the real language of love isn’t spoken. it’s acted. it’s a quiet, consistent grammar of doing.
this language has no dictionary. it’s understood in the space between people, in the small, physical truths of care. it’s the cup of tea made just before you realized you were thirsty. it’s the hand that finds yours under the table during a difficult conversation, not to fix it, but to say, i am here in this, too. it’s the silence that isn’t empty, but full of a comfortable, shared presence. it’s remembering how they take their coffee, or that they hate the sound of scraping metal, and moving through the world in a way that gently accommodates those things.
this language is in the chores no one sees. the replacing of the empty toilet paper roll. the picking up of the favorite crackers at the store, just because. the washing of a single bowl left in the sink so they won’t have to face it in the morning. these are not romantic gestures. they are humble, mundane sentences in the daily dialogue of devotion. they say, i see the weight of your life, and i will lift a tiny piece of it, so you can breathe.
for me, love lives most honestly in the unattractive, unsexy moments. it’s sitting in a waiting room with them, not talking, just being a solid presence next to their anxiety. it’s listening to the same story for the third time with the same soft attention as the first. it’s the way their body relaxes when you walk into a room, a silent exhalation of safe. it’s cleaning up a mess without complaint, whether it’s spilled milk or a spilled feeling. these actions don’t seek applause. they seek nothing at all. that is what makes them fluent.
words can be beautiful. they can also be easy. they can be promises made in a moment of feeling that the future self is not equipped to keep. but actions are accountable. they require showing up, over and over. they are the proof. when someone says “i care about you,” it is a lovely sound. when someone listens to you, really listens, until you feel understood—that is the meaning of the sound made flesh.
this is why the love that moves me most is often the quietest. it doesn’t need to perform. it simply is, as steady and essential as a heartbeat. it’s in the shared glance across a crowded room that says, i see you, and i’m glad you’re here. it’s the blanket placed over you when you’ve fallen asleep on the couch. it’s the text that says, “saw this and thought of you,” attached to a silly picture of a oddly shaped vegetable. it’s the space held for your sadness without any urgent need to make it go away.
to speak this language, you have to pay attention. you have to learn the unique dialect of another person’s heart. what makes them feel secure? what small thing lifts a weight from their shoulders? then, you do that thing. again, and again. it is a practice of quiet observance and quieter service.
so i don’t trust the language of love that is only love. i trust the language of action. the one that makes a space warmer, a burden lighter, a day easier, without ever needing to name the reason why. it is the most honest thing i know. a love that is lived, not just said, is a love that has taken root. and that is the only kind that ever truly grows.
here’s this figure that is vulnerable and easily abused and what’s admirable about it is that it doesn’t fight back and it doesn’t try to defend itself and it’s suffering is noble because it just sits there and takes it. pain is beautiful when you surrender to pain, suffering is godly when you don’t question or try to protect yourself and survival is ugly… like it is just me or is anybody else’s fucking skin crawling rn!!
you always see white americans talking about how they have "no culture" and it almost sounds like a harmless silly statement at first until you realize that leads into the very much harmful view of them being the default. the default character is a man who is white and lives in suburban america. and let me tell you you cant be thinking like that american baby
Whats rotting around me in incriminating positios of my messy past times. My Marie Antoinette hairbush, my lavander purple uni notebook, a discarded pack of Paladol, my. glasses, apple pen, blue ink pen, organized neatly on the corner of the bed.
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Existence is a dreadful fight.
Its continuance wears my body down,
punctures tears in my sentience,
raptures dreams from within my soul,
antagonize this gracious heart
'til its hues are blacke'nd and macabre.
Yet, to live and wake another day,
to test my endurance against the bone stiffing
northern attitudes of winter nights
and the dizzying rage of summer days
and the idle bouts in between that interfere
with the violent resistance which prolongates.
I don’t want to dwell in a grave for minute more,
all I do is ponder and let things pass over.
Can I stay out for a minute longer, brother?
I'd rather participate than soon be a goner.
You’ll have to know me better than I know myself. I suffer from a debilitating self-awareness that stumps me and holds me down most of the time. I am entranced by my complexities as despondent. My feverish spirits only rise when I’m with anger. The emotion fills my heart and body and tires my soul. But that’s not to say I am without joy and peace. Feelings negative and positive don’t attempt to evade me, I dare say they pursue me everyday. I am restless both inside the house and outside. And to tell you a truth that not many know, a shameful secret I keep to myself, I know much and nothing at all, but don’t dare presume I know nada. I may, or may not, be willing to listen, I may be persuaded and collect newfound views but I will do it grudgingly.
In my short time on Earth many things have happened, I keep this in mind most days. In view of myself and others yet sometimes it becomes a blind spot. It’s not that I am judgmental because rarely do I feel hatred in my soul for just anyone or anything. Words might slip from my tongue or come out in incomprehensible determinations that I might never follow through. My mind is preoccupied with the to-do’s and needs of the days that I hardly have time for much else. You’ll need to be understanding of me. I mean no harm except for the times I do. Which are fleeting moments. Throwing something to the ground because my muscles need a release, or my tongue may betray me in the sense that I always feel horrid for my atrocious behaviors because is that who I am? Consider sensibly as I have, that as it appears my flaws are affixed to me as much as my strengths.
Know I am driven by love. My heart is not big but it is full. I do not understand unwise judgments and do not participate in activities that put me in a state of silence. I rarely add fuel to a fire, but be supportive and add to mine when think fit. But you must think fit. Common sense only neglects me in the room temperature moments, like forgetting to buy a stamp for a package and throwing it with the rest of the mail, dressing up in my way afar, forming societal expectations for socially manufactured spaces and affairs, butting my way in, and having more than my share.
My values are instilled in me, but rarely thought of. I’d say my biggest focus is on my philosophy. How I go on about the world, for why I do things and confined myself to what enthralls me. My life is my pleasure to feel. For the love of God, you must keep up. I chide many things, most of them are proven to be for the worse so I criticize for the better. What good would it do us it you can’t abide by the times of day I am most sentient. Early mornings get the worm and all that, I say it’s true. Eating breakfast, having snacks throughout the day, minding a sleep routine is all proven to be good. I refuse to be the only one who minds these things. With that said, do not know better and disregard execution and accomplishment.
Now now, this is not to say to not be you. Though often I have thought to date myself, I believe I would be my perfect match up to a point, it is ultimately impossible. The closest I could get to that scenario is being with myself which I do very well already. Differences do not perturb me, rather they are something to be excited about. While I won’t budge that orange juice is better than apple juice (though I drink both), one does not need to like every single eatery (because honestly, they might sell the same stuff, but they are not the same), that day is better than night (to be productive), my adverse contempt for capitalism and this modernistic colonialism, and even my mourning for what a simple life under my own restrictions, proposal, and doctrines I could live. I lack the passion to grip things by the collar and speedboat that shit. While I often mourn for that too, my deficiency in executing, I can be influenced by a fiery heart, upbeat soul, a sculpted physique and a promising smile.
I have many loves and felt many heartbreaks. I have sought help when in the midst of drowning and helped myself to keep afloat. I am the youngest daughter with many shortcomings yet treated as the most matured of all as if I was not still ripening. It’s not complete fabrication, what they say, but to state it so outspokenly as though cooking and cleaning and taking care of oneself is something one does when reaching the age of thirty and some. While regarding that much of what I’ve learned has been from being on my own devices again and again since childhood.
Thus I wish you the bestest luck, my aspirant paramour. May you be a gentle caller of great endurance, appeal, and wisdom to embark on this endeavor. Elseway, I fear my disinterest will never retire and leave me missing the essence of a spirit never in existence and you without a single attachment to me.
With a heavy heart I leave it up to you. Can you bear such a task as forging a spot in my heart?
If it’s any consolation, I think you can. It’s not a day's labor and might be a bit of a messy business, but it’ll be fruitful as the wait for spring.
Today I realized I've been plotting my romance writing all wrong. Oops! Lucky for you, I think I figured out how to solve this problem. *Gestures to the camera* come along with me and let's figure out how to write romance plots together!
When I'm sketching out a story idea, I generally use some simplified version of Dan Harmon's story circle (ok so this link is not an endorsement of Dan Harmon as a person, but I have found this plotting device helpful), which is itself a simplified version of Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey. The double-simplified version looks something like this:
You (character in a zone of comfort)
Need (want something)
Go (venture outside the comfort zone)
Search/Adapt (adapt to the new situation)
Find (finally get what they wanted)
Take/Sacrifice (but sacrifice/pay a price)
Return (go back to the comfort zone)
Change (different than they were before)
The problem I keep running into is that I never know what goes where, especially as the number of characters and side plots increases. It's also a little hard for my brain to translate this tool that came out of adventure epics to what I need for a romance/rom-com plot. Usually I look at this list, get overwhelmed, and zoom way too far out, filling in these answers based on what I, the all-knowing author, think they should be. The end result looks a lot like (we're using Dramione as our example, but any characters will do):
You: Hermione Granger
Need: To find love.
Go: To a place where you can find love.
Search/Adapt: For/To love!
Find: LURVE
Take/Sacrifice: The love????? But sad now????
Return: With love!
Change: Loved 😍
And. Uh. That's not a plot?
Where I went wrong is that people in the story don't know they're in a story (unless they do, in which case you should probably sleep with one eye open because your characters know what you've done to them). Your characters are unreliable. They only see what's in front of them. By zooming all the way out to LURVE, I erased everything that's fun to read that gets us to our HEA (or, if you're devious, non-HEA).
So, it stands to reason you should fill out this story circle (story bulleted list?) from the perspective of your character, not you. (This is probably very basic science and congratulations if you got there way before me. You don't need this post. You should be writing this post.)
But even more important in a romance? That need, the thing your main character wants, is kind of a red herring. The character thinks this is their primary need/goal to get them out of whatever slump they start out in, but you, the author, know that what they actually need is to fall in love with the Love Interest.
Then, during the Search/Adapt phase, when your main character is looking for that thing they need or trying to achieve their primary goal or whatever, they start to learn more about the Love Interest. Their perspective shifts, and they realize they were wrong before. The Love Interest is what they actually need. This is probably where most of your story will happen. During this step, there's only one bed, the characters are fake dating, they get trapped in an elevator, etc.
Sadly, just when we think the main character has come to their senses, they are offered the exact thing they *thought* they needed the whole time. Bonus point if the thing they thought they wanted is in direct conflict with accepting the affections of the Love Interest.
During Take/Sacrifice, the main character has to choose. Are they going to pick love or the thing they thought they wanted at the beginning of the tale? In a multi-chap, you might let your character choose the original need/goal (or struggle for a while with the choice). In a one-shot, you might not have enough space for this and the character chooses love.
Next, in the Return, if it isn't the consequences of the character's own actions. A character who chose their need/goal over love during Take/Sacrifice needs to make amends to the Love Interest. The character who chose love has to deal with not getting the thing they needed at the beginning of the story. Depending on your fic's vibes, you might invent a magical solution for the character to get everything they want here. Alternately, maybe the character suffers and loses everything. This seems like a lot to cram into the end of your tale, and it is, so try not to drag it out too long. Your reader has gone on a long journey with your characters and they don't want to read fifteen chapters of sadness before the end (or maybe they do?). If they aren't already, the characters want to be together at this point, they might just need a little shove to get there.
In the final step, take a moment to show us how the character and their life have changed as a result of going on this journey. They are now in a new comfort zone / status quo and are ready for further adventures, should you so choose.
To clarify how these steps work for a romance plot, I changed the labels and made you a little graphic. Please ignore that I don't make graphics and a 12 year old on Canva could have done better.
The formula looks like this now:
You: Hermione Granger is in her comfort zone. Note: in fanfiction, you don't have to do as much character development with an established character who is behaving as expected. Use this time instead to highlight the limitations of their comfort zone. You can also use this space to set up their romantic foil, especially if that character is behaving in an unexpected way. For example, if Hermione is being very driven and high-achieving, the reader doesn't need a lot of context for her behavior; they already know this version of her from canon. But if her would-be paramour Draco Malfoy is acting kind and considerate, the reader is going to want more information since in canon his behavior is usually presented as rude/entitled/etc. Don't spoil the surprise of why he's different, just show us the ways he's not what we expect. (Reveal his secret in Step 4 - Learn).
Need: Hermione has The Wrong Goal (pass legislation, solve a mystery, avoid sleeping in the room with only one bed). This might be a very noble goal, but it's at odds with Hermione's true, secret, hidden goal of being in love with Draco Malfoy. Why? Because she doesn't know that being in love with Draco is where she's headed yet.
Go: To the place that Hermione's Wrong Goal requires. Pass legislation? Lobby all the Sacred 28s sitting on the Wizengamot! Solve a mystery? Go undercover to find out who did What in Which Room with What Object. Avoid sleeping in the hotel room with only one bed? Go to the concierge and ask for a new room. What's important is that wherever Hermione goes, she's forced to be near Draco Malfoy, the object of her true, secret, hidden, goal (to fall in LURVE).
Learn: This is where Hermione and Draco are forced to work together to solve the problem of the finding/achieving the Wrong Goal. Through this process, Hermione realizes Draco's exactly what she didn't know she was always looking for, etc. Unfortunately, her original goal is still at odds with being in LURVE with him. Cue tension. Example: They're at the concierge desk begging for a new room; he's offering all the money in his vaults, she's trying to appeal to the hotel staff's sense of human decency. She admires his tenacity. He realizes she's witty and a little bit underhanded. He likes this. She has a fleeting curiosity about how the tenacity would manifest in bed. Oh no.
Find: In this step, Hermione is confronted with an opportunity to obtain her original Wrong Goal. Example: Well what do you know? The bribe and the appeals worked. The concierge has found one other room in the hotel. Dramione are no longer forced to sleep in the room with only one bed.
Choose: Unfortunately, lurving Draco is still at odds with Hermione's original goal, so she must choose between him and what she originally thought she wanted. She might have a lot of introspection here, where she considers the merits of different choices. Maybe she even talks it out with him or someone else. If this is a one-shot with a happy ending, she has grown and developed sufficiently by now to make the right choice and choose Draco. She sacrifices the original goal for him. If this is a multi-chapter fic, she chooses the wrong original goal over him and loses him as a result. Example: They both go back to the room with only one bed. He's going to collect his things and go to the new room. They hesitate. Is it really necessary for him to move rooms? Draco has so many items, and some of her stuff is mixed in with his stuff. He looks at her with eyes full of newfound respect. "What do you think, Granger?" Hermione sacrifices her original goal, calls the concierge back, and lets them know that they won't be needing the new room after all, but "Please enjoy whatever ungodly massive tip Mr. Malfoy left you. I know I sure will."
Reap: Now it's time to reap the consequences of the choice Hermione made in Step 6. In a one-shot, maybe Hermione's all done. She heads back to her old comfort zone with her new relationship. Depending on the tone of this story, maybe there's some way that she gets to have her original goal and her relationship. However, in a multi-chapter fic, this is where Hermione has to do some work to make amends for choosing wrong (that is, for not choosing Draco). If it's a multi-chap with a happy ending, she succeeds, Draco forgives her, and they smooch. Example: They're back in the room. There it is - just the one bed. All those slightly naughty things they thought during Step 4? Oh yeah. They're going to try them all out. Fade to black, etc.
Change: Some final scene showing how things are different now that Hermione has what she really needed (the D). Example: They wake up the next morning way past check out and have to extend their stay. Bummer!
A fully worked example:
You: Hermione Granger is bored at her job at the Ministry of Magic. She unexpectedly bumps into her former archenemy, a now polite and reserved Potions Professor Draco Malfoy. She learns that Minerva McGonagall, the current Hogwarts Headmistress, is retiring.
Need: Hermione needs to prove to Minerva, Hermione's longtime mentor, that she's the right person to hire over the other candidate, who just happens to be polite and reserved Professor Malfoy, even though Hermione has never taught students a day in her life.
Go: To avoid her obvious bias, Minerva sets up a series of practical trials to determine which candidate will win the job. Hermione and Professor Malfoy enter the obstacle course.
Learn: When the practical trials start turning dangerous, Hermione and Professor Malfoy must work together to stay alive. Unfortunately, working side by side shows them they have more in common than they thought.
Find: Hermione is presented with an opportunity to sink Professor Malfoy's ship: she learns that he never finished his Potions Mastery. If she reveals this information to Minerva and betrays Draco in the process, the job of Head of Hogwarts will be hers, and the dangerous practical trials/threat to her life will be over. But what about the romantic "something" budding between Hermione and Draco? Well, that's just an acceptable loss. Hermione's career trajectory is on the line!
Choose: Is this a one-shot? Then Hermione chooses "right" at the last minute and decides to sacrifice the job for love and keeps the information to herself. Is this a multi-chapter fic? Then Hermione chooses "wrong" and decides to sacrifice love for the job. She tells Minerva. Draco is devastated.
Reap: If this is a one-shot, Hermione returns from the trials holding hands with her new boyfriend. While they were in the trials, Minerva figured out a way for them to both get the job somehow! If this is a multi-chapter fic, Hermione returns from the trials alone, with her brand new job and a hefty side of guilt. Realizing her error too late, she works to make amends to Draco.
Change: A year later, the Co-Heads of Hogwarts Hermione Granger-Malfoy and Draco Malfoy-Granger celebrate the one-year anniversary of the trials and their relationship by burning Minerva's horrible obstacle course to the ground.
I've written all this out in list format because, well, you saw the circle I made you, but the circle has the benefit of helping you visualize that where your character is in Step 8 (Change) becomes the new Step 1 (You, character in zone of comfort). If you are writing multiple scenes, you can apply this plot exercise to each scene, even if these little micro plots are very small (e.g., Hermione forgets her quill and has to ask Draco to borrow his). Hermione obviously won't have big revelations about how she doesn't really need a quill and is actually in love with Draco each and every scene, but you can still play around with your characters pursuing one goal only to realize their true aspirations mid-way through a scene using the story circle framework. Plotting this way will help you make sure everything you write leads to some sort of change in your character. And that's character development baybee!
When you're ready to level up your story circle skills, remember that in a romance you probably have at least one other main character whose needs you'll have to service. Your new job is make a story circle for the love interest! Note the ways that the two characters' needs/goals align and the ways that they are in opposition. When the characters' story circles are in opposition, you get tension, when they're in alignment, you get softness! Just make sure that whatever is keeping your blorbos apart is actually forcing them together. Meaning, if they have opposing Wrong Goals (Step 2 - Need), make sure that they still have to work together or be near each other somehow (Steps 3 & 4 - Go & Learn) to be able Find (Step 5) what they thought they were looking for. Also make sure that their true, secret, hidden goal is the same (at least for a happy ending fic): they want to end up in love with each other. The characters may come to this realization at different times, and that may guide whether they choose the Wrong Goal or Love during Choose (Step 6) and who has to make amends during Reap (Step 7).
Finally, if you're an alpha or beta reader, try making these circles/lists for the fics you're reading. It should clarify what's going on in each scene and help you identify what's missing from a story.
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Stella loved the watching the city's lights at night.
Before coming to Earth, she had always been kept company at night by the lights in Xandar. From the stars to the lit up buildings, she saw it all from her bedroom window.
That's part of the reason she watched the night sky from the apartment's rooftop. Whereas back home she had a ceiling to floor window, her room on the third floor of the brownstone had a small window that gave view to another brownstone building across the street. Sitting alone on the rooftop in a creaky lawn chair, she pretended she was still home, looking at Xandar from her bedroom window. New York held some resemblance. A very, very, very, extremely mild, resemblance.
In the daylight it was harder to compare the two than at night. Whilst New York city in the daytime was grimy and the air felt as heavy and dirty from all the pollution, the water was always dark or brown, sometimes even gray, Xandar's air was fresh and purified. There was no emission fuel coming from factories, no toxins from cars. The water in Xandar was clear and clean, and lake blue.
At nighttime New York and Xandar were almost interchangeable. From the tree-line streets and quaint streets. Only at night could Stella pretend to be back home. From the five floor brownstone she could see other buildings and apartments in the distance. Their rectangular windows lit up in warm yellows, sometimes some windows would flash with rave colors.
If Stella closed her eyes she could hear the distant roar of soaring airplanes flying low, playing more into her fantasies of back in Xandar, asleep in her house quarters but awake enough to feel the reverberations of spacecrafts leaving and entering the atmosphere. The city always lit up in colorful lights and whilst the building were big and tall, not slim and sky high, and although they were separated across all of he main city that is seen on Xandar is shaped like the emblem on the comic book hero Nova's helmet. The city is constructed on a vast system of artificial atolls. Xandar was not squished together like New York, but both places had life, energetic and full, always awake.
That's how Stella was able to not completely crumble from the feel of complete captivity in this planet. With her found degree of similarities between New York and the capital city were she lived in on Xandar, she was also able to dull the ache in her heart.
In this moment, she wasn't in New York, she wasn't stuck on Earth. She's home, faking sleep and anxiously feeling a rush of excitement as her ears picked up the rumble of a spaceship braking through the layers of the atmosphere.
With her eyes squeezed shut she could pretend her life was her own again. That her current problems didn't exist, that she wasn't under constant danger, there wasn't a new threat to her life, her new lab partner wasn't someone who looked down at her and made her feel like she didn't belong. That shield of ignorance never lasted too long. The blaring horn of cars and the zooming noise of traffic, the whining of bicycles, the barking of the neighbor's dog, sirens and alarms were all audible on the roof even at ten in the night. Whilst back home sounds would be miles away, here in this city she needed a sound machine just to obscured the noises right across the street and be able to sleep. Now that she didn't have that anymore and since not even the safety of her window helped, she had to go to bed with earphones stuck in her ears. A method she used when up on the rooftop to shut the rest of the real world out.
Sometimes it failed her, though. Stress wasn't something she could get rid of often. Between what occurred to her days ago in that back allay in Queen and her new lab partner, she felt walls closing in on her.
Stella was in the midst of changing the song on her phone when something red and blue came flaying and landed in front of her.
"Hey, it's you!" Spider-Man stepped down from the building's ledge. Stella gaped at him, too stunned by his out-of-the-blue presence that she wasn't quick to warn him of the potted plants kept behind the roof ledge from another resident. His foot stepped down on one of pots and he clumsily crashed to the floor, his hand knocking another plant along the way.
"What the hell!" Stella screamed, jumping to her feet and scurrying behind the lawn chair. Her fingers gripping the metal chair between her and Spider-Man.
"I'm so, so, so sorry," he said, sounding sincerely. "I didn't see them." He straightened one of the pots, the other one well, he ended up grabbing a single, broken piece of the terracotta clay. The rest of that pot shattered and dirt was everywhere. "Oh." Spider-Man glanced over his shoulder and went to scoop the plant from the dirt, meaning to burry it in another pot, but Stella's panic voice won his attention.
"How the fu—wha—wha—why are you here? Are you stalking me?"
The mask hero—vigilant?—she didn't know exactly what he was, she hadn't even thought about him since she left him underneath an awning in Queens— stepped away from the mess he caused and put out his hand. If he wanted her to calm down he was doing quite the opposite approaching her like that. With every step he took Stella too one back.
"What—nonono. I wasn't—I swear I didn't. . ." Spider-Man stop himself and Stella heard him suck in a breath under his mask.
"After I meet you," he began, calming his tone, threading carefully with his explanation on why he was there. "You said you didn't know me, I guess I. . .wanted to expand my horizons. I don't know if there is anyone protecting Manhattan. I know the Avengers are too busy protecting the rest of world. So, I thought—I guess, I wanted to see who was protecting this part of the city."
Stella stared back at him at lost for words...
Continue reading in AO3
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 3/30
Fandom: Marvel, MCU, Avengers, Spider-Man - Fandom, Doctor Strange - Fandom, Spider-Man Hoco, spider-man homecoming, tom holland - Fandom, peter parker - Fandom, Peter Benjamin Parker - Fandom, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Relationships: Peter parker x oc, Peter Parker x Stella Nuñez
Characters: Stella Nuñez, Peter Parker, Stephen Strange, Iron Man, May Parker, Tony Stark, Doctor Strange, Ned Leeds
Additional Tags: Tragedy, Aliens, powers, Wizards, Magic
Series: Part 1 of Voyager
Summary:
❝ I'm homesick for a place that I can never return to. ❞
Sterafeya's major life changing decisions had always been made for her. She's just an omniscient passenger in her own life whilst the Continuity Stone she carries lodged in her chest determines what she must do in order to protect it. She was no one to the world, yet had to play an important part in its future. Her life was not her own, but then came nightly meetings with a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and he made her adamant to fight to make it so.
