Tempest ━ Peter Parker

02 | patrick-peter parker

She just walked in on Spider-Man.

Levina knew there were two main forms of response when reacting to spur-of-the-moment horrors. One was to face it head-on however rashly that may be, and the other was to head for the hills before reality could even set in. This phenomenon was aptly named fight or flight.

Levina did neither. She was not a fight nor a flight person. Considering her circumstances, she found that she was the third, arguably worse type: freeze.

She wanted desperately to go away again. It was unhealthy but she wanted to vanish into herself and never see Peter again. Her throat dried up. She was trapped. Stuck. The walls of the alley bound her in place, had her writhing inside herself as her veins burned so vividly she was sure they would rip out of her and wrap around her neck.

". . . Are you okay?"

She still could not move. She barely registered what he was saying. Can you DO something? Punch him! Run away! Pray! The familiar twinge of sparks netting her throat returned, and anything she wanted to say was caught in the crossfire. She was thinking about too many things but also nothing. What happens now oh my God what happens now where do I go from here?

"I need to go home," she croaked, tears stinging her eyes. It was the only thing she could think of. Maybe if she stared at the wall-penis long enough she wouldn't feel like crying.

"Okay," Patrick-Peter said tentatively. "Let me just—um—"

The sound of rustling made her look back. He was wrestling into his suit again, yanking it up and pressing the spider emblem on his chest, basically vacuum-sealing to fit him. If she wasn't clouded with static right now she would've been impressed.

Peter-Patrick webbed his backpack to the wall between some garbage cans. She was still paralyzed. Her eyes were blown wide and she could feel them glossing over. This was such a horrible situation for her. Because now that the shock of Spider-Man (SPIDER-MAN) had cooled, there was the realization that she had been exposed. She was lit like a fucking Christmas tree, and he was right there. Now he knew irreversibly that she was a freak of nature, a complete other, a ghost of something the people he looked up to had sought to destroy. She felt so horribly disfigured in her own skin, like she was burning off right in front of him, leaving only the viridian of her veins left to rot.

"Hold on, hold on." Peter was in front of her. His hands were up. Every part of him was covered red and blue except for his face. He looked cautious, timid, as his oakwood eyes drew from her face to her arms, to the outlines of green coming through her clothes, and back up to her again. The fear in her, the vulnerability, was mirrored through his face. And then he moved a little closer, asking in a gentle voice, "Let me take you home."

Wait, what?

She blinked. It was hard to know why he was offering, but the fact that he was even considering it meant she looked about three seconds away from death. The energy in her was unravelling and if she didn't get somewhere private soon she'd expose herself to everybody nearby. Then she noticed that he probably understood that. And it was strange to think that with what she knew now, he was maybe the only person that could.

She nodded hard. Her throat was sparking again. She felt just like she used to when those H.Y.D.R.A scientists put a shackle around her neck to hold her down.

"You sure?" When Levina nodded again, even though her gut was twisting, Peter wound his arm around her waist (eyeing the crosses of her veins the entire time) and pulled her snug against him. "Alright, hold on—oh, mask, one sec." He ran to tug it on. "Okay, for real."

Peter took a deep, steeling breath, but you couldn't tell it was him under the mask. You really couldn't. The only remnants she could see of him were the whites of the mask's eyes, squinting in and out like they were his own. Other than that it was like Levina was unlearning everything she just found out. She had to make the association all over again that the guy about to fling her thirty feet into the air was the same one that tripped over her in the elevator that all the time. She barely knew Patrick—Peter, sorry. She barely knew Spider-Man. And now both of them were going to use a mode of transportation she was already not excited for. She'd seen him swinging on the news. Not her cup of tea.