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

Chapter 21: Distance Makes a Fractured Heart Shatter

⚠️Content Warning ⚠️

Mild profanity and insomnia-related thoughts.

Anneliesa's perspective

Night befell Peter and I before I could even get a grip on what tomorrow would mean for us. Since he would have to go to school tomorrow, Peter wanted to take another shower before he went to bed. To me, that was perfectly understandable, but the one thing I couldn't figure out was why my brain refused to relax for even a second. Hundreds of scenarios flashed through my mind's eye, like some kind of horror movie from hell.

I was currently sitting cross-legged on my bed, fingers toying absently with the sheets that spread out beneath my bare legs. The whole world faded from in front of me, and the only things that existed were my thoughts, and me.

Physically, I was aware that my gaze was fixed on my bedroom door, but I wasn't actually seeing it. My eyelids seldom met, and when they did, I had to forcibly pry them apart again. It was a vicious cycle, so I was just as thankful as I was surprised, that is to say very, when Peter suddenly popped up in front of me, breaking my everlasting loop of concentration.

"You good?" His chest was opened to me as he layed a hand on my shoulder cautiously. The whole fact if display was made ten times better by the fact that he wasn't wearing a shirt.

Biting my lip to keep myself from pouncing on him right here and now, I smiled to the best of my abilities and nodded.

"wha-oh, yeah. Just zoning out a little, sorry."

I presented him with a smile, one that was close-mouthed and moderately real. I made sure that my dimples would show with my smile, in hopes that it would get me a few more bonus points in his counter of attraction. All I told myself that I wouldn't try to have sex with him tonight, I never said anything about taking the night off in terms of making him fall deeper in love with me.

Turning away from me, I ogled him as he went over to the drawer I told him about and picked out a shirt that he could wear. The muscles in his back contracted as he pulled the cloth over his head, and my breath hitched in my throat as I watched him run his hands through his still-damp hair.

Needing to give myself a break from staring at him, laid back on my bed, staring up at the ceiling and calming my breaths. I heard laughter rise up from my left as Peter approached me. He bent one of his knees and put it on my bed, touching my side with it as a way of letting me know that he was there.

"I'm going to bed so that I have some energy for tomorrow, but I promise that I'll wake you up and see you before I leave in the morning, okay?"

I turned my head to look at him as he started to speak, but found it too painful to see his face and imagine it gone by morning. My eyes found their way back up to the ceiling, refusing to blink in fear of tears making their presence known to the rest of the world. Footsteps padded against my floor as Peter made his way back out, presumably to the living room.

After last night, I had a sort of revelation. Sleep was not something that I enjoyed doing, because I didn't like the way that all of my thoughts seemed to turn on me while I tried to recharge my mental batteries. If I wasn't battling with my mental demons, then I was being aggressively confronted by the one time in recent memory that I can remember having a pleasant time whilst sleeping, which was when I had Peter there to protect me.

Now I can't imagine doing it any other way.

There was a lot of self-doubting and serious questioning that went into it, but I forced myself to come to a conclusion and stuck with it without shame.