A Shift in the Wind
We catch Peter swinging off the building and away from Gwen. As he zips over the building landing into a roll he thinks to himself, what does she think she's doing? Doesn't she know how dangerous what she did was? It's like she doesn't realize that I almos... nope I'm not even going to think about it. As he looks over the rooftop he realizes that he is only a few more miles away from his home so with a leap from the building and with a thwip he's rocketing towards home.
As he climbs up the wall of his apartment he spots his window and with years of practice opens it without a sound. As he climbs inside he throws his mask off into the closet. To think Gwen was here. The real question is how did she know where all my stuff is? I'll have to ask her tomorrow I guess. He eventually hears the footsteps of his Aunt making her way to his room. He quickly makes his way out of his suit, throws it under the bed, and hops into bed just as the door to his room opens.
With the creak of the door, Peter calls out, "Hey! Have you ever heard of knocking before entering?"
Without any hesitation, she opens the door all the way and steps inside the room. "Have you ever heard that this is my apartment?" Aunt May says with a mock glare. With Peter still speechless, she goes on, "Where have you been? Do you know how late it is?"
Peter then checks his clock and realizes it's past eleven o'clock.
"Oh well, you see I had to go and help Gwen with a new project that she's working on," Peter says. It's not a complete lie but it's not exactly the full-on truth.
"Well, that's wonderful. What was the project for?" May questions.
Peter looks at her blankly slightly lowering his gaze before stuttering out a response "The project... it was for um... criminal justice?"
With a slight glint of mischief in her eyes, May chuckles to herself, "Yep, I'm sure that's exactly what it was."Peter eventually meets her gaze as she sends a smirk Peter's way.
With a spark of recognition, Peter exclaims as a flush goes to his cheeks, "May it wasn't like that!"
With a dismissal of her hand and a light chuckle, she leaves the room: "Sure Peter, just be safe next time, okay? And make sure to take a shower you kinda smell."
With a groan of acceptance, Peter makes his way back to the closet to fish out some clothes before he starts his shower.
As he finished his shower and made his way back to his room feeling slightly better, he thought about Gwen and what she said before he left. Realizing his moment of anger and frustration towards the situation he didn't say anything back he quickly opens his phone before sleep overtakes him and types out.
I'm still mad but I love you too.
Without skipping a beat from the night before Gwen’s morning started just as poorly as it ended. When she finally awoke she realized that the alarm clock from her non-destroyed nightstand read 9:30 in angry red numbers. She jolts out of bed to make her way towards her closet where her feet get tangled within the sheets and falls into her drums knocking over her cymbals.
With a groan, she stands up and makes her way toward her closet pulling on the first thing she can get her hands on. She frantically throws off her old clothes from last night and switches them to a pair of sweatpants and an old Aerosmith band shirt she got at a concert. She finds her phone stuffing it in her pocket and pulls on a pair of chucks.
Before she leaves her door she realizes she may need a faster mode of transportation glancing at the web shooters and the hoodie/mask on the ground. No time like the present to learn she thinks before she makes her way up to the roof of her building.
This should be easy I’ve seen Peter do this a million times… I mean it was mostly on YouTube but still, it should be easy. How wrong she would be in a matter of moments.
“Holy….” Gwen closes her eyes and presses the trigger to the web shooter which miraculously hits a building as she makes her swing. “Peter makes this look way too eas-” Before Gwen could finish her sentence she slammed into the side of a building.
Recovering swiftly she clings to it before giving a huff and a glare to the contraptions on her wrists “Why don’t you come with a user manual!” She looks below then at the building she’s stuck to at least this part of my powers work. Then with another graceful leap, she again starts her swing debating to herself if it would just be faster to walk.
She continues swinging through the busy streets with the technique of a toddler almost hitting multiple buildings and making friends with the street below on her way. As the wind “whips” around her she mutters, “At least I’m getting into the swing of things”
Upon arrival at Midtown, she changes out of her sweatshirt and mask and places them in a hidden pouch in her backpack. As she clambers up the steps finally making her way through the doors she chances a look at the clock in the hall which reads 10:15. Well the good news is that’s a new record for getting to school as slow as possible. She gives a sigh trudging her way to her third-period class. As she steps in front of the door she takes a deep breath before grasping the handle and opening the door. She tries not to draw too much attention to herself but it's slightly hard when the most punctual kid in school is late to class.
“Miss Stacy, what is the cause of such a late tardy? The period is almost over” Mrs. Miller questions the young girl
“Well, you see I-I overslept and my alarm never went off. I’m sorry it won’t happen again” Gwen continues eyeing the floor just hoping the teacher will stop pointing her out and the heat of embarrassment she feels doesn’t help matters.
“Very well. Make your way back to your seat.” she goes on to mutter the last bit “for how little time is left”.
Gwen felt her cheeks go darker and with a quick nod made her way to the back of class to her usual spot. Even with the ten or fewer minutes she has of being here, she’s already tired of hearing the teacher's lecture. Can this day just hurry up and be over with it's been painful enough already.
Before she knows it she’s startled by the bell dismissing the class. She jolts awake grabs her bag and quickly makes her way on to the next period. While speed walking to class she keeps a careful eye out for Peter trying to avoid him and give him some space with how angry he was at her the night prior.
Throughout the school day, Gwen was mostly successful at avoiding Peter other than the few glances he shot her way and she quickly ducked into a classroom or nearby hallway. As she makes her way down the steps of Midtown she opts out of web-swinging instead deciding it would be of better use to just take the walk. She barely made it a half mile before she was quickly yanked up and in the air to a nearby rooftop.
“What the hell is wrong with you? You gave me a heart attack” Gwen exclaims as she tries to calm her rapidly beating heart.
Peter only scoffs, “Yeah well why have you been avoiding me all day?”
Finally, after steadying herself she looks to Peter who’s giving her a look of pure confusion. “Well I thought after last night you might’ve needed space to calm down so that’s what I was trying to do”
“What made you think we needed space? Don’t get me wrong I wasn’t overly thrilled with the situation but you did good. That and we need to talk.”
With just a bit of hope glinting in her eyes, she says,” Alright what do we need to talk about?”
“Well before we start talking about the extracurriculars that you’ve been taking without my knowledge by the way. You know I could’ve helped you right?” Shaking his head Peter goes on “That being said I was mad last night but did you never look at my message? I kinda felt bad” he places his hand on the back of his neck rubbing it anxiously as he looks at Gwen slightly worried.
“What message?” Gwen finally takes a peek at her phone. She pauses before continuing,” Oh I didn’t see that”.
Exasperated at his girlfriend but with a bemused smile goes on,” Alright well now that that’s settled. Are you going to be continuing these nightly activities?”
Gwen believes that Peter is trying to talk her down from helping. “I know you're gonna say it's not safe but Pete if I’m out there with you then I know I can watch you back. I also know it's dangerous but wouldn’t it be less dangerous if there were two of us out there instead of one? Plus c’mon we’d be a couple of Spiders.”
With a slight chuckle, Peter looks at his girlfriend adoringly “I know I make bad puns but that might’ve been the worst.”
Gwen fixes him with a scoff and a glare, turning her head “I’m not dignifying that with a response.”
Peter then continues,” Besides the terrible puns, the real reason I asked is because we can’t have you running around New York in a hoodie with a Sharpie spider and a mask with web shooters you stole from me.”
With frustration rising Gwen glares down at Peter slowly walking towards him” What are you trying to say, Parker”
“What I’m trying to say grumpy is if you want to build your first suit?”
The last thing Gwen ever expected to hear was building a suit with Peter. Many emotions flit across her face shock, confusion, she finally settles on happiness. She looks up to Peter looking in his eyes for any deception she knows won’t be there then beams, “I get to make my suit? When and Where?”
“We’ll have to go back to the tower Tony has things there that make it way easier to make than when I started.” He fixes her with a pointed stare, “You are not going out there in just spandex”
“Well what are we doing up here let’s go Spider-Boy and you could teach me how to web swing along the way” She goes on excitedly bouncing on the balls of her feet.
Peter finally starts walking towards the edge of the roof. He pulls up the mask to his lips so she can see him smirk. “Yeah, I saw your first attempt at it. Let's just say it's a major work in progress.”
Shock is seen on Gwen's face as she looks back at Peter's mask in her hand. “I’ve never done it before! It’s not like you were much better buddy!”
Peter takes one step back, leaving one foot on the rooftop, “Well the first lesson in web-slinging is to use your hips to aim” he leaps, pulling his mask back down and swings in the direction of Stark Tower.”
“Peter!” Gwen exclaims as she realizes he’s left her hanging. Quickly pulling the mask and hoodie on and equipping the web shooters, she leaps off the building to follow Spider-Man.
As Peter and later on Gwen make it to Stark Tower, they’re seen by the one and only Tony Stark bickering back and forth.
Gwen in mild frustration, “You know it's really rude to leave your girlfriend behind when she’s trying to learn something”
With a glint of mischief Peter chances a glance at Gwen, “Well I wouldn’t be leaving you behind if you weren’t so slow”.
Gwen just rolls her eyes at the comment,” You act like you were just naturally good at it I bet you fell on your face more times than you can count when you started”.
“You know she’s right kid. I remember a few videos of you going splat many times in the beginning”. Tony finally says making his presence known.
“Tony! Don’t bring it up if you would’ve seen the videos out now of her you’d think-” Peter is quickly cut off by Tony
“No you both were very bad but you ran into things like a bull almost. When she decides to make friends with concrete there’s a bit more grace to it”. Tony chimes in with a chuckle.”I’ll show you the videos of Mr. Parker here making a fool of himself later” Tony sends a wink towards Gwen.
Smiling evilly at Peter “You hear that Pete making a fool of yourself isn’t just a school thing”
“Before you kids go back and forth, I’m assuming you need help with something hm?” Tony questions the teens before him.
Straightening up and looking at Tony with some confidence, “Um yeah Tony would it be okay to borrow one of your labs graceful over here needs a suit cause I’m not allowing her to go out in spandex”
“Yeah that’s fine you know the way kids just don’t destroy anything like last time” Tony replies as he makes his way to a bar to make himself a drink. “I would ask if you guys would want some, but you know..”
“Yeah, thanks, Tony!”
After spending many hours in the lab designing and redesigning a suit that would fit Gwen, they finally came up with the base of one. Even with the criticism along the way from Peter about adding a hood to the suit.
“The hood would get in the way. Why do you need a hood?” Peter asks Gwen
“Hoods are cool…” Gwen mutters.
When it comes to the internal workings of the suit it was pretty much a copy and paste of Peter’s suit. That, however, was where the similarities ended. She wanted to keep true to what her homemade suit had so she stuck with the top half containing mostly white while the bottom half was black. They added pink webbing for the inside of her hood and the same was done with her forearms as the pink webbing wrapped around. The black from the bottom of her suit ran up and created spider pincers that reached the hood. Then for the mask, she continued with the pink accents, and the rim of her eyes were colored the same. Lastly, to end the touch she used a teal color where her feet look like ballet slippers. (It's essentially the suit from ATSV)
Peter looks over their hard work surprised at how it turned out. “This is good. So the next important question…’ he trails off and glances at Gwen with a smirk on his lips. 'You ready to take her for a swing?”
She looks at Peter then back towards the suit pondering before without saying a word to Peter grabs the suit and walks off. Just before the door closes she yells to Peter, “Only if you can keep up Bug Boy!”
With a shake of his head, he stands from his seat and with a chuckle jogs after his quickly departing girlfriend.