In high school, Peter had never gotten enough sleep. As far as his Aunt May knew, he went to bed at eleven pm at the latest, and got up at six every morning.
What Peter hadn’t been able to tell her, was that for his last two years at Midtown High, after he’d joined the Ultimates, he seemed to only get busier as time went by. By the time he was halfway through his senior year, he slept four hours a night, maximum.
In between regular homework, SHIELD homework, extra leader-only assignments, chores, night patrols, saving up money for university (because apparently it’s been made illegal to pay superheroes and it’s not actually listed as a legitimate job because it’s so highly discouraged, so SHIELD is allowed to give out employee benefits, but not payroll?), and weekly midnight robberies that someone had to deal with, Peter spent all his “free time” working.
So waking up after eight am on weekends was a kind of euphoria Peter liked to bask in.
Ever since he’d graduated and moved into his shared apartment with Sam, it’d been like a massive load off his back.
Gone were the SHIELD homework assignments of yesteryear. Even with all the daily patrols and deadlines at the bugle, his days felt so much longer. He hadn’t realized how taxing everything he’d been doing at the academy really was. Taking an off-year before university was the best choice he’d ever made.
So yeah, Peter liked to bask.
He rolled over in his bed and stretched his arms out as far as he could until something popped in his back and he flopped back into the pillows in bliss.
Still half asleep and smiling like an idiot, Peter threw his legs over the side of the bed to stand up. He nearly tripped over the clothes he’d forgotten to put in his dresser the night before, but his graceless recovery was a recovery nonetheless.
Light filtered through the blinds brightly enough that Peter’s tired eyes had to close against it. He turned and walked, blinking and squinting, out of his room.
As soon as he opened the door, the smell of pork, herbs, and pastry hit his nose, and he made a beeline for the kitchen. Sam always made sausage rolls from scratch, because he liked his own pork mixture better than the ones at the store. No skin off Peter’s teeth. Sam made the best sausage rolls.
Peter stopped in the kitchen doorway, leaning against it just to take the sight in.
Sam looked like he’d only woken up in the last thirty minutes. He was in the black sweatpants he’d been wearing to bed every day that week, and now they were covered in flour. His shirt was wrinkled and hanging off him awkwardly like it didn’t want to stay where it was told.
Peter laughed to himself when he saw Sam’s hair was sticking in every direction. The dork always gelled it back before Peter was even out of bed, but whenever he saw it, it sent a wave of warmth through his chest.
Sam looked good.
Peter had been cozy in the blankets, and as fall crept into New York, the apartment was falling on the chillier side, so the little rush wasn’t exactly unwelcome, but its warmth only lasted so long.
Sam looked warm.
Peter smiled to himself and shuffled, still tired, over to the little table in the corner of the kitchen, where the speaker sat. He made sure the volume was low enough and pressed play on the pre-downloaded music.
When he looked back at the stove, Sam was taking a frying pan filled with scrambled eggs off the burner. He hadn’t looked back at all, but he said, “Morning. Breakfast’ll be done in a couple minutes.”
Peter smiled. Something about that sentence had absolutely and immediately decimated his resolve. It was just- so domestic.
He stepped away from the speaker and closer to the other boy. It wasn’t too long before he was leaning forward to press his nose into the crook of Sam’s neck. Peter loved how much shorter Sam was. It made it easier to hold him in the gentle way he wanted to.
His right hand went to rest on Sam’s hip, while his left slowly worked its way between the fingers of Sam’s loose grip on a fork. Peter watched as his friend’s rough hands lowered the fork to the counter and pressed back into his own. He took in every detail he could.
Sam’s hands were dark, obviously, but the pads of his palms and fingers were lighter. As he turned the hand in his own, he felt the callouses and scars of learning to fight without his helmet. He could feel exactly where the handle of a sword or a gun had fit into his grip, and he traced over each mark with the same care he would’ve used to dress a wound.
Peter smiled and breathed deeply through his nose. He liked to think Sam could feel it against his collar.
The hand on Sam’s waist guided him to sway side to side, but Sam was the one who corrected the rhythm so they were moving in time to the music. With every few sways, Peter took a step back so Sam would move farther away from the stove.
Time passed slowly, and without notice, as the two boys moved with one another, and Peter experienced the fleeting thought that he could stay in this moment forever without a single regret.
“Oh.”
Peter thought.
“I guess I love him.”