I Can't Make You Love Me || Peter Parker x OC

Chapter 7: Retracing Steps

Peter's perspective

Part of what I spoke was a lie. I couldn't envision myself living up here. It was a marvelous home, and every part of it easily topped anything I had in May's apartment, but I hadn't known Anneliesa long enough to do that. I just wasn't comfortable yet, and I wanted to be responsible with my decisions from here on out.

But the other part, however, was unbridled truth. I cared about her safety and her happiness. I would love to stay here and keep her company, make sure that if the rooftop incident was more than she let on last night, that I was doing my job as Spider-Man to protect her. The glaring issue with that much investment was that I can't let her become more than a mission for me. I cared and respected her as a person, but she was still just a part of my job.

She could have killed herself last night, and very well may have died, had I not found her and gotten her back to her home. I was staying here now because I had to. Protocol said people in her situation mandated 72 hours of constant observation, and it is my duty to fulfil that requirement. My question to myself was whether or not I would be able to walk out of those doors after the 68 hours I had left here were up.

"Peter... Peter!" I blinked rapidly a few times to bring myself back into the moment, and I found Anneliesa sitting next to me on the couch, hand waving back and forth in front of my face from where I had apparently gotten myself entrapped in my spiraling thoughts. I snapped out of my headspace and came back to reality, a miniature guilty smile growing on my face. Anneliesa had a similar expression as she watched me descend back into reality.

"You good?"

She was smiling at me, and I couldn't help but notice the microscopic differences from when she had done so earlier. Her cheeks didn't lift into sky-high apples that made the edges of her eyes meet, but a small dimple formed near the left corner of her lips, which it never did before. All that moved from her resting face were her lips, and if I looked close enough, I could have sworn I saw a glimmer of something in the depths of her irises. The look seemed to be hard for her to sustain, but it was one of the most sincere expressions I have ever seen. She looked beautiful with a smile like that, but it was hard to overlook the pain that her eyes showed at bending her face in what seemed to be such a foreign way.

"Y-yeah. Just uhhhh... thinking, I guess." I wouldn't have had much inner turmoil in telling her what I had been thinking, if not for the fact that even I didn't knew exactly what was running through my head. She seemed to recognize enough of something to make her not push further, and she opted for sitting back into the couch, causing me to turn my whole body to face her.

"So, is there anything you wanted to do today, Peter?"

"I dunno. What do you usually do?"

"Not much, to be honest. We could go for a walk or something. I don't know if you're one of those people that like doing that, but there's this really cool cafe place that my mom used to always take me to when she was home. Any interest in going?" She threw and arm over the back of the couch, bending her elbow to rest her head upon as she spoke to me. One of her dark eyebrows raised slightly as she posed the question to me, and I couldn't help but note how well the dark hairs contrasted perfectly with her ebony-pale skin.

"Uh, sure. You should probably change into something a bit warmer, though. We're both probably a bit under from last night, and I doubt it's much warmer this morning." Without thinking, I looked down to her legs and the tight pair of shorts that adorned them. I immediately realized my mistake, but even at that point, it was too late. Anneliesa didn't seem to care in the slightest, but that didn't prevent me from worrying that I had upset her or made her feel uncomfortable. I genuinely didn't mean to do that, I was just concerned that she would get sick if she was out in the cold again.