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

Chapter 18: All Night Long

Anneliesa's perspective

If he had hoped that we would go elsewhere while we were out, Peter wasn't in for much of a treat. In our defense, across the few hours we were out, we did go to a few other buildings, but they acted more as pit stops to keep me safe because I was really distracted still and I kept slipping. Bless his heart, Peter did everything in his power to make me as secure and safe as possible, and by some miracle had managed to get us both back to my apartment building relatively unscathed.

But that was well over 12 hours ago, so dwelling on it more wouldn't do either of us much good. We made sandwiches for lunch, and then just lazed on the couch and watched movies for the rest of the day. By the time we got around to watching the second 'Kingsman' movie, my eyes were starting to get droopy and I found my head settling on Peter's shoulder over and over again as I sat sleepily next to him.

I only vaguely remember seeing the end credits of that movie and the first few minutes of Jurassic World before I was gone to the world and asleep with my head on Peter's lap. I hope he didn't mind too much, but he didn't have much of a choice.

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Peter's perspective

There was too much going on in my life right now for my brain to shut off and feel secure enough to fall asleep. Plus, there was still some unresolved things that Mr. Stark and I needed to talk about. I noticed that Anneliesa hadn't moved since she settled her head on my legs like a pillow. Looking away from the surprisingly large screen that was in front of us, I saw a strangely endearing sight. She was curled up into a loose ball, a blanket covering up to her chest, and her breaths slow and melodic. She looked so innocent and docile in this moment, but I couldn't let myself forget the things that she was capable of, and I couldn't let myself get any more involved with her, as that would be irresponsible.

I waited about 20 minutes to make sure that she was deep in slumber before I dared to move. Being agile about the whole process, I replaced my legs with an actual pillow so that she hopefully wouldn't notice my absence. Once I made sure she was still dead asleep, I grabbed my suit out of bag again and put it on for the second time today.

About half an hour after I sent my first message to him, Mr. Stark sent a brief reply back to me. In summary, he just told me to be careful, reassured me that he and May would get stuff taken care of, and that I should call him tonight when I was available. I don't know when else an opportunity as good as now would arise, so I figured I might as well take advantage of it.

Before too much light could seep out into the darkened living room and possibly wake her up, I exited Anneliesa's bathroom with my whole suit on. I have myself a few moments of pause to ensure that she was still heavily sleeping, which she was, before I proceeded. As silently as I could, I opened the latch on the window and climbed out, scaling the wall until I was up on the roof.

At this point, it was just past 2 am, but I wasn't worried about waking Mr. Stark. If there was one thing above all else that we had in common, it was our inability to sleep through the night. According to him, he had a form of PTSD because of the events of the New York invasion battle, and from a lot of other things that had happened to them, and he would go to the labs to work on projects that would take his mind off of things.

When I would stay the old Avengers Tower during the week, and more recently when I visit the compound on the weekends, we would always seem to stumble upon each other in the dead of night when neither of us could sleep. Countless hours, more than either of us would feel comfortable admitting to others, were spent down there, in our pyjamas, eating popsicles and other junk food while working on whatever we could get out hands on.