My First Mutual! Can I Request Peter Walking In On You Playing Guitar And Singing And He Didnt Know You

The Sun is a Blue Moon (Part 2)

A/N: here’s part two of the sun is a blue moon! I wrote this once and hated it about 3k in so I scrapped it and started over and I’m waaaay happier with how it came out than what I originally had planned. Oh and it ended up all being from Peters third person view somehow??? yeah idk. I hope y’all like it <3

Summary: “Only the gentle are ever really strong.” - James Dean

Word Count: 5k

Warnings: violence, blood, injuries, fighting, battle, anxiety, panic, fearing the death of a loved one, gried, sadness, death

Playlist: End of the World by Nightriots

             Till Forever Falls Apart by Ashe, FINNEAS

             As the World Caves in by Sarah Cothran

read part one here

Peter looked back to his notes, checking to make sure his measurements were correct before adding the white cap into the potion, the bubbling encouraging him further. He observed the reaction before picking up his pen and jotting down what he saw on the marked up page, his pinkie smudging the still drying inscriptions on the line above. He adjusted his glasses before continuing on with his work, his mind wandering to y/n who was currently in care of magical creatures while he was in his free period, working on his own potions. His eyes flashed down to the small daffodil colored yarn bracelet that was woven in with white yarn that she had made for him. Everyone in their group had gotten one that she made them in their house color except him. He was special and got her house color. Her glowing face filled his mind and he couldn’t help but smile a little. 

Peter Parker was in love. 

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Hi! I love your new Hogwarts au series! My introverted, social anxious, Hufflepuff heart is screaming <333

Thank you for taking the time to send this 🥺 it made my morning. Social anxiety is so hard to deal with and I’ve never seen anything written on it before especially for Andrew!Peter so I had a fine I’ll do it myself moment after an anxiety attack awhile back haha. I’m working on part 2 and I’m very very excited for it!

The Sun is a Blue Moon

A/N: So this started out as a headcanon thread that was hella long until I eventually decided to just write the thing. This may be one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. Let me know what you guys think. Oh, and yes there will be a part 2 ;)

Summary: A Hogwarts AU where Peter Parker falls in love with a Hufflepuff and it’s just tooth rotting fluff the whole time really.

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: social anxiety 

“Just breathe.” y/n exhaled, staring at herself in the mirror. 

It was her first day of sixth year at Hogwarts and she was a tangled knot of anxiety and nerves. Part of her still couldn’t believe she was actually there once again. It seemed like just yesterday someone was knocking at her door and telling her parents that she was a witch and was accepted to Hogwart, a school for witchcraft and wizardry. It had been a bumpy ride at the beginning, her parents not fully believing it for quite some time but eventually couldn’t deny the obvious. It was true and they all knew it. Y/N had always been different her entire life, with strange things happening around her that always made people stare at her. It was what made her such an anxious child and what made her social anxiety bloom into what it was. 

Smoothing down her robe and adjusting her yellow tie, she left the restroom and headed for her first class, keeping close to the walls and head down and continuing on with the same routine she’d had for the last several years. Sometimes she wished she could blend in with the walls and go unseen.

Divination was her first class and she found a seat further toward the back with no one in the companion seat and she headed right for it, hoping that that companion seat would stay empty. It had happened a couple times before and she hoped that she would get lucky in her second to last year and would have at least one class where she didn’t have to worry about talking to anyone. 

It wasn’t that y/n couldn’t speak, she could, really, but she just didn’t want to. She had a hard time with attention. Public speaking? All eyes on her? Saying something that would make people think she was a freak? Taking too long in line at the grocery store? Wearing something that would make her stand out? All a huge hell no with a capital H. Some nights she would hear girls laughing in the Hufflepuff commons and wish she could be part of that but she just didn’t know how. She was sure comradely was something she’d never attain.

As she was getting settled in her seat, the chair beside her that she had been vying for to stay vacant was pulled out with a scrape against the floor and she looked to see a girl with a red tie and corkscrew black hair that fell just past her shoulders smiling at her with perfect teeth. She wore large round glasses and her fingers were covered in rings with different gemstones in them. She looked like she listened to Stevie Nicks and drank black coffee and stared up at the stars for guidance. 

“Hi! I’m Winifred but everyone calls me Win!” She chipped as she sat down, setting her books onto the table with a small thud. The scrape of her chair made y/n cringe internally at how loud it was and the books had really made her worry. She glanced around the room to make sure no one was staring and relaxed a little when she found no one was. 

“I’m y/n.” she stated with a small nod, looking back down to her book that she was opening to the page listed on the chalkboard.

“Oh my god that’s, like, the cutest necklace I’ve ever seen! Did you get it in Hogsmeade?” Win asked, eyes bright. 

Swallowing, y/n wet her lips as her hand wrapped around the golden heart shaped locket she wore everyday for the last six years. “No. It was a gift from my dad. I don’t know where he got it.”

“It’s way cute.”

“Thank you.”

The entire class, Win talked and talked, going on and on about anything. She had talked about how her father was in the ministry of magic but her mom was her best friend. She talked about how hard sixth year was going to be but how excited she was to finally be a sixth year. Y/N was silent through most of it, only giving small nods and little hums. She appreciated that Win was more than happy to provide the conversation. Her favorite kinds of people were the ones who monopolized the conversation and Win was definitely one of those people.

“You should eat lunch with me and my friends!” She gasped as they were packing up for the next class of the day. “We’re all in different houses but we don’t have a Hufflepuff yet! Do you know Gwen Stacy?”

“Oh uh I know of her but I don’t really know her.” Y/N murmured, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Well, she’s awesome and everyone will love you! We sit at the end of the Ravenclaw table. See you then y/n!”

Y/N was left blinking as Win floated out the door. She had no idea how she got roped into that and she was terrified but bubbling with excitement at the same time. She had no idea how long they would let a girl who would sometimes go days without uttering a single word sit with them in their group but she would enjoy it, if just for the one day. She usually ate lunch in the library so this would be different.

Half convinced that it was all a joke by the time lunch came around, she was ready to see no such group at the end of the Ravenclaw table, but there were several students with different colored ties right where Win had said there would be. It was real and she couldn’t back out now.

Tucking her hair behind her ear, y/n headed for the end of the table and felt a twinge when she saw that there was an empty spot next to Win.

“Y/N! Hey, girl! Come here!” Win called, eyes excited and a half eaten cookie in her hand. 

It felt easy to sit next to Win, but she struggled to keep a small smile as everyone in the group stared at her as she sat down. There was one boy in particular who she couldn’t even glance at because she knew she would be sporting red ears if she did. 

He sat directly opposite her and was a Ravenclaw, the blue tie half open and his robe falling off one shoulder. His mahogany toned hair was messy and floppy, like his hands were constantly in it but she liked the way it looked. She wanted to study his face and find the freckles she hadn’t seen in her glance at him and really find the accurate shade of his eyes- she had a thing for eye colors and finding their perfect shade. He was really beautiful and she wondered how she had gone six years without ever having seen him before. There was no way she would have forgotten him if she had. 

Win introduced y/n and explained that they had divination together. While Win chattered on, y/n’s hand wrapped around her locket, thumbnail toying with the clasp that kept it closed.

“Y/N, this is Gwen Stacy, Flash, Harry Osborn, MJ Watson, and Peter Parker.”

She waved, avoiding Peter’s stare before finally looking at him. True to her thoughts and her ears got hot and her stomach filled with butterflies. She worried if she opened her mouth they would fly out and tell Peter that she liked him so she merely waved and looked back to Win.

True to who she was, y/n stayed quiet most of lunch, nodding at times appropriate and trying to keep a smile on her face. She wanted to try and make friends and this was the best opportunity she had ever had so she was going to try and not completely fuck it up. She was almost seventeen years old and needed to try and overcome some of her shyness and social anxiety.

But she did take the risk a few times and looked over at Peter, taking in his square round glasses and the ink stains on his fingertips. How the sleeves of his wrinkled white button up were cuffed up. She had to put in effort to not pass out when he had taken off his robe and revealed his veiny forearms and rolled up sleeves. She could see the faintest bit of stubble on his chin that he must have missed when shaving. She took in the way he looked at everyone in the group, with a lax smile and warm eyes. She had decided they were the same color of the hazelnuts that grew on the tree in her parents front lawn.

It was on the third day of sixth year that y/n realized that Peter was in her astronomy class. He sat on the other side of the room with MJ. She didn’t think he noticed and she didn’t want to walk up to him randomly so she decided to wait and see if he noticed and if he cared at all. Even though she spent most of the class staring at his side profile whenever she knew he wouldn’t catch her. 

Two weeks later and y/n was walking into astronomy and Peter Parker was sitting in the seat next to hers where Romilda Vane had been sitting the last week. She stared at his back, her brain short circuiting. Maybe had wanted to talk before class started, she usually got in early since astronomy was after sunset and after dinner. She had no idea he even knew they had the same class together. They had just been sitting together at the same table not even an hour ago. He had smiled and waved at her like he did everyday. Why was he in the seat beside hers?

She walked up to her seat and as soon as she pulled her chair out, Peter looked up at her with that beaming smile that made her feel like a little bit of the sun had found its way into Peter Parker.

“Hi.” He greeted.

She bit her lip, trying desperately to find her voice that was so often lost at sea.

Peter seemed to sense your shyness. “Romilda asked to switch so she could be closer to the professor so she could hear better.” He explained. 

She nodded, sitting down and looking down with a wide grin. She knew that Romilda could hear just fine because this was the second time they were partnered in a class and she also preferred to sit toward the back of the room. 

Y/N felt like she was going to start floating at any minute because Peter, the boy she would daydream about and draw hearts around his name in her notebooks, had wanted to sit next to her and was going to be her astronomy partner for the rest of the year. Three nights a week they would spend an entire class together, and not just any class but her favorite class. She loved the night sky and the stars and she got to share that with Peter for an entire school year. 

Though she never spoke, Win’s group kept welcoming y/n to eat with them and she had even been invited to sit with them at the first quidditch game of the year. She bundled up in her Hufflepuff scarf and thickest coat but she had forgotten her gloves and her fingers were freezing shortly into the game and she blew into her hands, trying to keep them somewhat warm.

Peter was sitting directly beside her and nudged her, making her look at him in question. Wordlessly, he offered her a pair of gloves, an eyebrow raised. “I won’t need them.”

Opening her mouth to speak, she thought better and closed it before taking the knitted gloves hesitantly at first, but then mouthing a thank you with a soft smile and slipped them on. Peter smiled back at her and she tried not to notice that his fingertips were red with the cold.

The first time y/n finally spoke to Peter was in astronomy several days after they started sitting together. They were supposed to map out a specific constellation and since Peter was so smart and y/n really good at astronomy, they finished early and were sitting together by a large oak tree, y/n with her arms around her drawn up knees and Peter leaning against the trunk of the tree.

He was looking up at the sky and she kept looking at him, bathed in moonlight, fingers weaving in and out of the grass. She was starting to trust him like she’d only trusted a few people in her life. He made her feel seen and for some reason, she didn’t want to run away from it. Her entire life she had been running out of the spotlight and trying to hide in the shadows but Peter saw her and she didn’t want to hide in the shadows. At first, he made her more anxious than anyone else in the group because she liked him but now she didn’t feel anxious around him, instead she just felt safe. He didn’t ask her why she didn’t really talk or what was wrong with her and he didn’t push her to talk, either. He just took her as she was.

“What’s your favorite constellation?” She asked, eyes on the grass that she was still running her fingers through. 

Peter whipped his head down to her, lips parting and shock clouding his face. It was the first time he was hearing her speak ever. The words fell like bubbles from her rosy lips, each word careful and delicate, her voice a little rougher than he had imagined- but he still loved it just as much. He had been dying to find a way to get her to speak to him but didn’t want to push her because he knew she was just shy and probably had some kind of anxiety so he was fine with waiting until she was ready to speak. Even if she didn’t talk to him, he just wanted to be around her. Hufflepuffs always had good vibes but y/n had a warmth about her.

It was no secret within the rest of the group that he had a big giant crush on y/n, something Flash loved to tease him about. In fact, Peter had almost gotten into a physical fight with Flash when he first started teasing him about liking y/n because he thought he was making fun of him for liking her. Sure, she was quiet and didn’t really talk but he didn’t see anything wrong with that. Some people were so worried about being able to say what they wanted to say that they didn’t hear what others had to say. Y/N heard everything people needed to say, her twinkling eyes focused solely on whoever was speaking and her focus on what they were saying. She cared about what people had to say and truly listened. He had seen her kindness when he had been walking back to the Ravenclaw tower and watched her pick up a small caterpillar and find a nice home for it in the bushes, being gentle with it and patient. Maybe she didn’t speak very much but her actions spoke loud enough for him to get to know her. He always thought Hufflepuff’s were the purest of heart of all the houses.

Adjusting his glasses, he peered his head down to try and catch her eye so she would look at him. It worked and their eyes met. “It’s Perseus.”

Y/N rested her chin on her knees and nodded, one hand coming to tinker with the locket that rested below the hollow of her throat. “It’s a good one. I think mine’s Andromeda.”

“It’s a good one.” He retorted, making her chuckle. The silence took over and Peter couldn’t help but smile at her before looking at the sky again. 

“Have you seen Snape’s new haircut?”

He looked back down at her, thrilled she said something else. 

“Yeah.” He chortled. “Went a bit too short this time.”

“He’s giving Lord Farquad.”

The laugh that boomed out of Peter made y/n jump at first but then she remembered no one was around and she relaxed again, smiling wide because she had made Peter Parker laugh. It was deep and boisterous and she would probably never forget it.

“I wish everyone else knew how funny you are.” Peter mused, the remnants of his laughter still in his voice. “But I’m honored that I get to know.”

“Technically, you don't. I only said one funny thing. Maybe that’s all I’ve got.”

“Nah I know that you’re funny. Just a feeling.”

“Whatever you say, Parker.” She shrugged.

“Can I ask what made you finally talk to me?” 

Y/N thought for a moment before wetting her lips. “I guess I just really, like, trust you now. I don’t know. I’ve never felt safe around anyone before you. I feel like I could say anything to you and you wouldn’t judge me for it or think I’m weird, no matter what it is.”

“I like you too much to think you’re weird.” He blurted, before his eyes went wide and he cleared his throat, hoping she wouldn’t think too much into it.

But Peter had never been lucky and bit back a groan at seeing her eyes grow brighter and mouth fall open. “You like me?”

He couldn’t deny it, especially not to her. Not with the way she was looking at him with hopeful eyes and red cheeks and those stupid yellow finger-less gloves she wore that he always made him want to groan because it made her hands look ridiculously cute and small. Especially not under the stars when there was no one around and it was just them, the constellations ready to harbor their secrets.

“I have since I met you.” He bit his bottom lip, knowing his heart might be completely crushed in the next two seconds. “Do you…like me?” 

Y/N wasn’t afraid to open her mouth now because she could let the butterflies out. “Yeah. You make me feel safe, Peter.”

The moment was broken when they heard the call for the students to return and they stared at each other for a moment before getting up and gathering their papers that were off to the side. As they started walking back, Peter slipped his hand into hers and she looked up at him with a smile and squeezed his hand that was laced with hers. 

Peter walked her as far as he could go which was the same corridor as the kitchens. She stopped and turned to face him before pushing up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. It made his heart thump in his chest and he barely processed when she pulled her hand from his and left, heading through the corridor and down the hall. His heart felt like it might burst in his chest. 

Y/N was feeling the same, even stopping when she knew she was out of sight of Peter to lean against the wall and just stand there with a love drunk smile, Peter taking over her head and her heart. She knew they had a lot of talk about like were they boyfriend and girlfriend now? Was she allowed to hold his hand whenever she wanted? But for that moment she just wanted to hold onto the glow coming from her heart over the fact that Peter Parker liked her and he had held her hand and she had kissed his cheek. She had spoken to him and now he was her best friend and she was completely in love with him.

To her surprise, the next morning when she left the corridor to go to her first class, Peter was leaning against a wall, blue tie loose and hair messy like she loved. He caught her eye and smiled at her, letting her make her way to him.

“Can I walk you to your class?” He asked and she couldn’t help but beam and nodded, reaching up to fix his tie. “You have Mcgonagall first and you know she’ll get you for your tie.”

When it was straightened out, she slipped her hand into his. She knew a few people might look at them holding hands, but she had also laid in bed the night before preparing for a few looks if they held hands or showed any small displays of affection. It wouldn’t last forever and that was the only thing keeping her from having an anxiety attack: it was just a few people and it would only be for a little while. She could get through it.

Peter walked her all the way to Divination and parted from her with a chaste kiss to her forehead. “Meet me in the library at lunch?”

“Kay.” She agreed, knowing she would meet him in the boys bathroom if he asked. 

Her classes passed at the pace of a snail. All she could think about was meeting Peter in the library. She knew they would probably talk about…them and she was beyond anxious but in a good way. She knew they would leave that library as boyfriend and girlfriend and if she was lucky, she would have had her first kiss because she was going to kiss him. She didn’t know how or when but she would kiss him if he didn’t kiss her first. It was nerve wracking to think about but she was going to try and be a little bit more bold when it came to Peter and their relationship, whatever that may be. 

When lunch rolled around, y/n headed for the library, small chips in her white nail polish from picking at it due to nerves. She looked around, trying to find Peter and shoulders falling into repose when she saw him in an aisle, robes off and hands toying with an open book.

She made her way over and he didn’t hear her coming until she was a couple feet from him. The smile he gave her made her melt.

“Hi.” She greeted. 

“Hi.” 

He slipped his hand into hers and she pulled him with her toward the cushioned window sill, the glass cold on her back. 

“Do you want some jellybeans?” He asked, pulling a baggy of jellybeans out of his pocket. It made her giggle in amusement that he just had a bag of jellybeans in his pocket at random but she nodded, taking the portion he poured into her hand and starting to pop them into her mouth, examining the handful.

“Wait? Are these the every flavor beans?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, putting several into his mouth. “But I made sure there weren’t any gross ones for you.”

“How?”

“Got a friend who came up with a way to find out what ones were the gross ones and he showed me how this morning.”

Her mouth was parted as she looked back down the handful of sweets, beyond touched that he had sorted through the jelly beans to pick out the gross ones just in case she wanted some of them.

Looking back to him, she splayed her hand on his cheek as he swallowed and leaned in. His breath hitched in his throat and she could smell the sugar on his breath before their lips even touched. She hesitated, giving him a second to stop her if he wanted as well as give her a second of doubt before that mental “fuck it” crossed her mind and she kissed him. 

It was soft and chaste, the small sound of their lips filling the silence around them. 

With buzzing lips, she pulled away just enough to break the kiss but brushed their noses together, Peter’s hand finding her neck, his thumb grazing her jaw. 

“Will you be my girlfriend?” He breathed, giving the corner of her mouth a peck. 

“What’s in it for me?” She mused, sarcasm lacing her tone. 

Peter picked up on it and smile softly, brushing hair hair behind her ear and pulling back a little bit. “Safe jelly beans for one. There’s also unlimited free kisses, I’ll help you with all of your homework, I have a very impressive collection of books that you’re free to at anytime.”

“Well how can I turn down the books?”

The laugh that slipped out of him made her kiss him again. She didn’t think she’d ever tire of kissing him.

Peter and y/n were inseparable after that. Where she went, Peter was right behind her, that lovesick smile on his face because let’s face it he was head over heels for her. He walked her to all her classes and they sat together at meal time, his arm around her waist or her leaning against his chest, his arm around her still. He wore her spare yellow and black striped scrunchie on his wrist pretty much always. When she forgot her robe, which was often, she wore his. He picked up the habit of speaking for her when she really, really didn’t want to. Like when she had a question in class but could barely think about raising her hand to ask and have everyone look at her, her voice being the only sound in the room. So when she had a question she would write it down and nudge Peter. He would read it and ask the question for her. Punch drunk love had nothing on Peter. He was well and truly gone for the Hufflepuff girl that most people didn’t notice. And while she barely said a word to anyone that wasn’t Win or Peter, she was herself when it was just her and Peter. She had a strong sense of humor and would make the most out of pocket, dry comments that always had him in stitches. She was affectionate with him, kissing the corner of his jaw often and calling him baby. He was special enough to be allowed to really see her and it was a gift he cherished. 

She did her little things for him too like keeping wipes on her for his ink stained fingers and always reminding him of where his glasses were when he couldn’t find them; they had been on his head one time and she could only put them back in place with a small smile and kiss the tip of his nose. She had put his picture in the empty side of her locket, the other side holding a picture of her mother and father. The day she had shown Peter he knew he would love her forever.

 She was there to clean his wounds when Peter punched a kid named Draco for calling another girl Mudblood, thus starting a fight. With a bloody rag in her hand that had just cleaned his bleeding cheekbone, she confessed to him that she was a full muggle-born with no magic in her family tree. He had kissed her and told her that he didn’t care if she was related to he who shall not be named; as long as she stayed who she was he would love her no matter what. She was the sunlight in his life to which she reminded him he was the moonlight in hers.

Y/N was slowly starting to come out of her shell through the school year. It started mostly with the group in small comments that she could add in. Everyone always simmered down to be able to hear her speak when she did, and Peter could always see how big of a deal it was for her. He knew all about her social anxiety and would squeeze her hand, letting her know she could do it and that he was right there if she needed him.

In their sixth year, Peter and y/n couldn’t have been happier. That was before all hell broke loose in Hogwarts.

V, girl, I don’t even know where to start with this! I have so many feelings about it like ugh the Sunflower nickname? Every time he called her that I melted inside. The way you used the flowers for the feeling to show the way their relationship was evolving was pure genius I’ve never seen anything like that before. Also these two:

 “Peter expects you to argue, to spit venom from your lips as he knows you’re perfectly capable of doing. So when your shoulders slump and your face falls, he feels his heart shatter because watching you close in on yourself like that is worse than anything he could have imagined.”

“See,” Peter responds cooly, running a hand through his hair, the other slipping into his pocket, to stop them from shaking, “When you’re making her cry like that, it does concern me.”

Yep just put me in a grave because there’s nothing I love more than some protective Peter Parker and you wrote perfectly from the the heart shatter to the shaking hands. Also him giving er her first tattoo? I’m obessed. You’ve done it once again lovely.

The Spider and the Sunflower (tasm!Peter x Reader)

Summary: The questions continue, long past twenty-one. The more you find out about Peter, the more you want to know—he tells you that if he found a hundred dollars on the street he’d donate it to a food bank and that the TL;DR version of his life is “Art, panic, loss, and student loans.” When he asks you if you have any tattoos, you wink coyly before laughing and telling him you don’t. Then, when you ask the person he’d love to tattoo more than anyone else in the world, he returns your teasing smile and replies that it’s you. -> or, tattooartist!peter meets florist!reader Words: 9.8 k (i'm sorry!) A/N: inspired by the incredible @pardonmydubstep whose idea this is entirely based on. her own AU will be dropping in April but y'all i've read it and it's brilliant. 18+ only fem!reader; cursing; mentions of: food, tattooing, cheating, debt, grief, drugs; implied masturbation; shitty boyfriends (not peter); arguing; peter and reader are both pining idiots; sexual innuendo; smut (fingering, oral, shower sex) inexperienced!peter; there's a whole ass plot in this; not proofread. please validate me.

wisteria for welcoming

The sign goes up on a Saturday afternoon, just as you’re returning from delivering bridal bouquets to three different addresses. Ink Trails. The lettering is unassuming; the logo, simple—a black spider with extended legs that give off the impression of dripping ink. Perhaps you’d been expecting something more…gothic or biker-esque, so you’re pleasantly surprised by the artistry of it, the delicate lines and soft curves of its insectoid body.

You stifle a yawn, air conditioning barely keeping your eyes from drooping, watching from the driver’s seat of your car as an older woman carries navy blue and grey throw cushions as well as large canvases filled with photography of various New York landmarks into the shop next door. Surely, she can’t be your new neighbour. She looks far too delicate, too quintessentially motherly to—you stop yourself from the pending judgement; you know it’s unfair and decide that you’ll have to introduce yourself.

“Hello?” You step delicately into the shop, hoping you’re not intruding, immediately noting the absence of a bell or chime to announce your arrival. Briefly, you cast your eyes around the interior of what had, up until last month, been a dry cleaner’s—it’s much more aesthetically pleasing now.

To your left is a small waiting area with mismatched wingback chairs and a small table strewn with a collection of coffee table photography books. A few titles stick out to you: Dogs!, Sneakers x Culture, and Hubble. It’s an eclectic collection, to say the least, but it stirs your interest. Behind the front desk, where you stand now, is an open area with two black tattoo beds, each beside a workstation with its own metallic cabinet topped with various tools and implements you don’t know the name of.

“Can I help you, dear?”

You glance over in time to see the older woman from outside come out of a private room at the back of the shop, her hair falling from the loose bun that’s tied at the nape of her neck.

“Hi,” you greet her with a small wave, using your free arm to balance the arrangement you’d popped into your own shop to grab before heading over here. “I own the shop next door—The Greenhouse—and I just wanted to stop in and say welcome.” You hold out the arrangement in her direction as she walks over smiling so warmly it reminds you of summer afternoons spent with your grandmother.

“That’s very kind, dear, thank you.” She takes the flowers from you and sets the vase on top of the front counter, right by a list of rules that begins with Tattoos are by appointment only. “Peter is lucky to have such a friendly neighbour.”

“Peter?”

“My nephew,” she explains, “This is his place, of course, I’m just here to help him tidy and get everything set up.”

As if on cue, a young man, about your age, stumbles through the door carrying a large box labelled Random Crap and sets it down on the counter next to your arrangement. He notices it and tilts his head to the side, an amused expression tugging up at the corner of his mouth.

“Flowers, May?”

He’s talking to the older woman, his aunt, and she purses her lips at him, eyes flickering toward you in something of a warning. Peter turns to look at you and seems to notice your presence for the first time. His gaze makes you run your suddenly clammy palms over the skirt of your sundress under the pretence of smoothing non-existent wrinkles from the bright yellow fabric. His honey-amber eyes dance with something like mischief as he notices your own eyes sizing him up. He’s tall, almost unfairly so, and lean, with broad shoulders and muscled arms that are on full display given the ribbed white tank top he’s wearing. Your eyes are instantly drawn to the characters that adorn his right bicep—recognizing them as Hebrew, but unsure what they mean.

“So, you’re the flower girl?”

His aunt—May—makes an exasperated noise in her throat and you’re certain she’s about to tell him to be nice when he holds out his hand. You notice the spiderwebs that are inked onto his knuckles, stemming up his hands and culminating on his wrists where they swirl into a stunning pastiche of photorealistic images and carefully lettered text.

You take his offered hand and can’t help but to notice the way the rough edges of his fingers slip into smooth palms. His handshake is gentle but firm, his larger hand nearly swallowing yours. You focus instead on the way his messy brown hair sticks up at odd angles as if he rolled out of bed looking that good.

“I’m Peter,” he grins, his index finger playfully tapping at your delicate wrist, “Nice to meet you, Sunflower.”

carnations for fascination

Peter doesn’t mean to watch you, but in the week since Ink Trails opened, he catches himself staring every time you’re out front of your shop, fixing up the planters you keep by the entrance. There’s something about you—something that makes him feel as though you’ve enchanted him; like you put some magic spell to ensnare him in the flowers that still sit, slightly wilted, next to his register.

It’s the swing of your hips and the way you smile kindly at him every time you cross paths. The way the sunlight catches in the silver rings you wear has him fixating on your fingers, on your hands. He remembers how tiny they were in his own on that first day and the memory sends his mind into a gutter full of shame and self-reproach. It’s not helped by the sundresses you wear, seemingly designed to test the limits of his sanity with their floral prints and their curve-hugging bodices and the way the breeze ruffles them around your thighs.

Yeah, he’s under your spell.

It’s been years since he felt like this—sure, he’s found people attractive, but he’s never been attracted to them—and he blames the way you carefully tend to your plants, gently pruning them and cutting away every bit that’s no longer growing, every bit that’s stagnated into something ugly that leeches off of all the good parts. He finds himself wishing you’d do that for him—take him into your arms and tend to all the things he wants to be, rid him of all the haunted thoughts that snake around him like suffocating tendrils every time he starts to feel happy again. He blames the splash of colour, like the petals of your flowers, that you are in a world that’s otherwise been black and white for nearly a decade.

Peter almost feels guilty. Because he shouldn’t be thinking of you in that way, shouldn’t be thinking of anyone in that way, not since he chose loneliness to be his most trusted companion. If you avoid falling in love you avoid the risk of getting hurt. Of having your entire life ripped out from under you like a rug. Loneliness is safe. So he watches from a distance, ever more fascinated each time you pop open the door to his shop to tell him good morning, a cup of coffee proffered, and to wish him a good night at the end of the day.

It’s the night nine days after he’s opened that Peter lies in bed, his phone buzzing with an Instagram notification. He checks it, sees that it’s from you—a request to follow his personal account. From your personal account. He accepts, too quickly perhaps, and returns the request and no more than ten minutes later he’s scrolling through your photos.

The two of you instantly followed one another’s business accounts, that was a given. But these photos are so very different than the ones of you posed with beautiful arrangements, floral walls, blushing brides and grinning grooms. Instantly, he regrets scrolling through them. It feels invasive to see you like this—laughing and smiling in the woods, on the beach, at Coney Island; living a life outside the confines of where his days intersect with yours.

Frustrated and confused by the needy feeling in the pit of his stomach, Peter tosses his phone aside, ignoring as it clatters to the floor. He tries to sleep, truly he does. But as his hands creep below the sheets, slide under the waistband of his boxers, he can’t get your smile out of his head.

lilies for disdain

Peter’s client tells him, in a quivering voice, that they feel lightheaded. Their partner, looking quesy, meets Peter’s eye as if to say do something. Sighing, Peter pauses in his work and goes to the back of the shop, emerging moments later with an oversized tub of sour keys.

“Have one,” he offers his client—and their partner, for good measure, “The sugar helps. And it’s good that you told me. We’ll take a few minutes and then try again, yeah?”

The pair nod and Peter smiles until something outside the window catches his eye. He sees you pacing the same four sidewalk panels with enough force to erode cement. Your ear is pressed to your phone and from this vantage point he can see the way you’re wringing your hands in the sleeves of your cardigan.

“I’ll be back in a minute, okay?” Peter says, “Just outside if you need anything.” He stands, slipping into the back room once more, quickly, to grab a bottle of orange juice for his client, before he takes the sour keys and heads outside, stepping into your path. It makes you stop in your pacing, but the conversation you’re having with whoever is on the other side of that call continues and Peter can hear the frustration laced in your voice.

“What do you mean? No. No, I specifically ordered the calla lilies. Eight dozen. For Friday. Are you not hearing me?”

Your hand has travelled up to the back of your neck and Peter can see the way your fingers are trembling. Smiling softly, he holds out the sour keys to you as an offering. You glance down at them and, without reacting, turn away from him to continue your pacing.

“Listen,” you’re saying into the receiver, Peter thinking he’s never heard you sound so firm before, “If I don’t have those calla lilies I will never order flowers from you again, do you understand?” There’s a pause in the conversation and Peter watches as your brows knit together, creasing your forehead. He finds himself wanting to pull you close and smooth away your worries with his thumb. “Yeah,” you mutter finally, “3 p.m.? Perfect. See you then.”

The call ends and you slip your phone into the pocket of your cardigan, noticing that Peter is still there, a large jar of candy held out in your direction. You feel heat rise in your body, embarrassment bubbling in your veins that someone witnessed you losing your cool, even if only slightly.

“Everything okay?”

Peter asks the question with such calm earnestness that your stomach lurches and you suddenly feel annoyed at him standing there, being so…goddamn chill and holding out candy like it’s supposed to make you feel better. You ignore the fact that all you need to do is reach out and grab a sour key, roll your eyes and laugh about shitty suppliers. Instead, you’re fixated on the way Peter is looking at you, like you’re some sort of frightened animal he needs to placate. It makes you feel silly, makes humiliation rise in your throat like bile, coating the words you spit out at him.

“Don’t worry about it,” you mutter darkly, fingertips pinching at the bridge of your nose to smother what is surely an oncoming headache.

“I know candy isn’t much,” Peter chuckles, “But in my line of work, sugar helps and—”

“It’s fine,” you snap, holding your free hand up to stop him from saying anything else. There’s ice creeping into your tone, a defence mechanism you’re trying desperately to melt. “And honestly, Peter, it’s really none of your business.”

He blinks at you, surprised, then licks his lips, holding his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender. “Okay,” Peter frowns, “Sorry I asked.”

You don’t reply, turning on your heel to head back inside, too shame-faced to look at him. Peter, never one to not have the last word, calls out to you with that damn nickname he always uses—the one that sends curls of delight coursing through your body, though you’d be loath to admit it. “Let me know if you do need anything though,” Peter says, eyes narrowed, “Like help getting that stick out of your ass.”

“Bite me, Parker.” You throw up your middle finger at his retreating figure, slinking back into your shop with tears in your eyes.

geraniums for folly

It’s a couple days before you see Peter again and you notice that the tattoo shop stays dark. Part of you is still annoyed at yourself for your behaviour earlier in the week, but you find yourself also worrying that he’s sick and wondering if you could get his number from the landlord so you could check in on him.

As it turns out, there’s no need.

You’re running late Thursday morning and are entirely frazzled, realizing only as you’re getting out of the car to open the shop that your jean jacket is mysteriously missing two buttons and the client who you’re rushing to meet had sent you an email cancelling while you were weaving in and out of traffic. Fucking hell. Sweat trickles down your spine, partly from the urgency you’d been feeling and partly from sheer frustration. You reach the door of your shop and remember that your keys are buried at the bottom of your purse.

“Hey Sunflower.”

You glance over at the entrance to the shop next door to yours, pausing in your fumbling for your keys. It takes all of you not to roll your eyes at the man standing lazily against the wall, a coffee in his tattooed hands. His easy stance, his soft voice—it’s like he’s entirely forgotten the last time you’d spoken to him.

“Hi Peter,” you mutter, going back to rummaging in your bag, trying to ignore his gaze, which you feel burning into the back of your neck.

“Need a hand?” His question is light, teasing.

“Not from you,” you retort, perhaps more harshly than you mean to. In an effort to soften the blow, you look pointedly at his fingers as they tap a frenetic beat on the paper coffee cup and try your best to sound cheeky. “With all the coffee you drink, I don’t know how you even manage to tattoo anyone.”

“That’s not very nice, Sunflower,” Peter mocks, a grin playing on his lips. His perpetual grinning drove you crazy—in more ways than you’d care to admit. “My hands are always steady…when it matters.”

His comment sends a shiver down your spine, makes you want to douse yourself in cold water. Thankfully, at that moment, your index finger loops around your keyring and you pull it unceremoniously from your purse.

hyacinth for jealousy

Peter isn’t thrilled when he finds out you’re seeing someone, a picture of you and a dark-haired man showing up on his Instagram feed and making his jaw clench. He wonders, with a stab of embarrassment, how long you’ve been with this guy and how much of a fool he’s made of himself by trying—and failing—to get your attention.

He’s even less thrilled when he meets the man in question, distaste instantly coursing through his veins as though he’s got a sixth sense to detect assholes.

It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon when a man in a well-tailored suit enters his shop. Peter glances up from where he’s working on a large dragon piece for a regular. He instantly recognizes the cold eyes and sharp angles of your boyfriend’s face, but he pretends not to, pausing in his work to greet this would-be-stranger.

“Hey man,” Peter gives a short, cordial wave, “Can I help you?” He notes, with some satisfaction, how the suit looks uncomfortable in his tiny shop with its buzzing needles and cheap furniture. Good.

“I’m waiting for the girl next door,” he says with an arrogant grin, “You’re Peter?”

Peter nods, rotating his stool back toward his client. “That’s me. You know Y/N?”

“Harry,” the suit introduces himself, “Y/N’s told me about you.”

Peter has to bite his tongue to stop himself from saying Funny, she’s never mentioned you because that would be petty. Satisfying, sure, but petty.

“You’re her boyfriend?” Peter asks casually, the hum of his tattoo gun hiding some of the bitterness that’s woven into the question.

“Recently back together,” Harry replies, hands in his jacket pockets, “I called, she answered kind of thing, you know?”

Peter nods, silent and tense because, no actually he does not ‘know’. He returns to his client, tongue poking out of his lips in concentration as he begins to shade the dragon he’s inking onto the man’s back.

“I have to ask, how’s the money in this business?”

Peter exchanges a swift glance with the man in his chair, who looks over his shoulder in disbelief, a knowing grin peeking out from under a bushy grey beard.

“Enough to pay the bills,” Peter answers vaguely. Sometimes, he tacks on as an afterthought, as if he hasn’t been sleeping in the back of the shop and showering at May’s. No designer suits for him.

daffodils for uncertainty

“Did you take these yourself?”

You’re on one of the wingback chairs in Peter’s shop, a blue pillow resting atop your thighs to cover your lap, the length of your skirt making you a little self-conscious.

Peter’s latest client has just left—a chatty young woman, clearly enamoured with the lithe man inking her ribs. You’d been sitting there long enough to see that even though she was stunningly pretty, Peter did not return her advances, either uninterested or entirely inept and picking up flirty social clues. The woman had shot you a withering look on her way out as if you were to blame for Peter’s aloofness. Whatever. You’d tried not to be bothered, but it was that icy glare that had sent you reaching for a pillow to hold over your legs.

Peter glances up from tidying his work station, following your pointed finger to a large canvas of the Brooklyn Bridge. A smile tugs at the corners of his lips, something like pride making his eyes crinkle with delight.

“Yeah,” he replies, a little sheepishness creeping into his voice, “I was super into photography for a while. They’re all mine.” Vaguely, he gestures around the shop and you let your eyes linger briefly on each of the canvases.

“They’re really good,” you smile, “You’ve got a good eye. Ever thought about doing wedding photography?”

Peter snorts at the suggestion and you cross your arms over your chest, somewhat miffed at his dismissal. If he notices, he doesn’t let on, instead standing from his stool and stretching. You try not to look at the stripe of skin that’s revealed as his arms go up over his head, his Henley riding up to exposing jeans slung low on his hips and a small, scruffy patch of hair below his belly button. You decide to change the subject, distract yourself.

“She was flirting with you, by the way,” you smirk, jerking a thumb out the window even though the woman was long gone. Peter shrugs, coming over to the front of the shop and taking the seat across from you. “What?” you continue, tone light, “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice!”

“I did,” he replies, nonchalant.

You narrow your eyes at him, then nod with understanding, a teasing smirk on your lips. “You already have a girlfriend.”

“No. I don’t.” The sharp tone of Peter’s words takes you aback and you mumble an apology, suddenly feeling a stab of guilt in your chest.

delphiniums for fun

The lights flicker once before going out entirely, shrouding your workspace in darkness and making you prick your thumb on a boutonnière pin in your surprise. Hissing, you stick the injured digit in your mouth for a moment, the taste of blood metallic on your tongue. It’s not worth complaining about, so you sigh and head to the retail area of the shop where sunlight from the street streams in through the windows. There’s already a line of cars on the road, the traffic light outage clearly causing problems.

You’re about to grab your phone to see what’s going on, but then you remember that it’s dead and you’d been meaning to charge it, but every little distracting task had led you to this moment.

Resigned to an unproductive afternoon break, you lock up shop and decide to check in on Peter, hoping his tools didn’t die in the middle of a sitting. Thankfully, you find him alone, scrolling through his obviously not-dead phone and it makes you smirk that Peter was more responsible than you.

You wave as you walk into the shop, taking a seat on the chair that you’ve unofficially claimed as your own. “The power’s out.”

“Really?” Peter scoffs playfully, “I couldn’t tell.” He looks up from his phone with an amused expression and quickly flashes the screen at you, something that looks like a headline briefly entering your line of sight before Peter is pocketing the device. “I think it’s gone two or three blocks out,” he continues, “So who knows how much time will pass.”

“Maybe it’s the apocalypse,” you joke, “And we’re the last two people on Earth.”

“If you expect me to make a let’s repopulate joke, I refuse to be so crass.”

“Such a gentleman,” you tease, heart skipping a beat when you notice the flush in Peter’s cheeks. You purse your lips, suddenly feeling guilty because you have a boyfriend and here you are flirting with your neighbour. Your handsome, kind, looks like his hands could wrap around your neck, neighbour.

“Let’s play a game. 21 questions?” Peter’s suggestion pushes through your thoughts and you let out a short huff of laughter, crossing your arms over your chest. You realize, all of a sudden, that you left your sweater on the chair in your workshop and it’s cold in Peter’s shop, prickly goosebumps forming on your skin.

“Absolutely not.” You giggle, running your hands over your arms. Peter notices and slips his Henley over his head in one fluid motion, tossing it in your direction. He’s left in an old Bowie t-shirt that clings to him in all the right ways. You catch the offered shirt and wrap it around your shoulders, too timid to wear it properly because that would be intimate, right? This is just a friendly gesture. One that smells of cinnamon and fresh baked bread with a whisper of disinfectant.

“I promise I’ll keep it PG,” Peter grins, leaning back in the chair opposite you. “I’m a gentleman, remember?”

“Okay, fine.”

He looks delighted at your agreement and feigns a thinking pose, elbow on this knee, chin propped up on his fist. You try not to stare at the vein you can see running down his bicep but your traitorous eyes will not allow themselves to be pulled away.

“What’s your favourite animal?” Peter’s first question is gentle and you can only hope he’ll keep his promise to not get too personal.

You think for a moment, flashes of adorable creatures running through your mind in a way that makes it impossible to choose just one. “Polar bears. No, tigers. Or maybe horses…”

Peter chuckles, clearly amused by your indecision and you playfully flip him off. “Shut up. What’s yours?”

“Spiders.” He answers without missing a beat.

“Spiders aren’t technically animals.” You pull Peter’s Henley more tightly around your shoulders, still basking in the warmth that it’s retained from his skin.

“And you’re not technically any fun to play this game with,” he retorts.

“Ask another,” you can’t help but to laugh, the sound of it contagious so that Peter is laughing too as he lines up his next question.

“Best place to get sloshed in Queens?”

“Easy,” you crow, “The Jar.”

Peter looks taken aback for a moment, until you realize he’s smirking and there’s something cheeky about to roll off his tongue. “There’s no way you’re cool enough to go to The Jar,” Peter teases and you feign affront, putting a hand over your heart.

“That’s very ungentlemanly, Mr. Tattoo Artist.”

Peter has the sense to dramatically sweep his hand across his forehead, jesting at penitence. “I’m terribly sorry, Madame Sunflower.”

“I’ll forgive you,” you mutter, tapping a finger on your cheek as you think of your next question. It pops into your head from a now-distant memory of the first day you met Peter. “What does the text on your arm mean? The Hebrew script?”

Peter smiles a little ruefully, his hand coming up to brush over the characters you’re referring to. “It says Ben,” he tells you, “After my Uncle. He and May raised me and when he died, it was…it hurt. But I know he’s with me all the time. I’ve got his middle name. Peter B. Parker.”

“I’m sorry,” you frown, sticking the tip of your index finger in your mouth, wishing you could take back the question, “I didn’t mean to ask something so personal.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Peter assures you, smiling wide, “It was a long time ago.”

The questions continue, long past twenty-one. You learn that Peter’s favourite colour is tied between blue and red, that his favourite food is his Aunt May’s latkes, and that he imagines himself to be very useful during a zombie apocalypse. The more you find out about Peter, the more you want to know—he tells you that if he found a hundred dollars on the street he’d donate it to a food bank and that the TL;DR version of his life is “Art, panic, loss, and student loans.”

When he asks you if you have any tattoos, you wink coyly before laughing and telling him you don’t. Then, when you ask the person he’d love to tattoo more than anyone else in the world, he returns your teasing smile and replies that it’s you.

And then the lights come back on and you’re thankful because the air between you and Peter had been starting to get warm and thick with something that didn’t fit well between just acquaintances.

“One more question?” Peter asks as you get up to return to your shop. You decide to humour him and nod, opening your arms as though inviting him to interrogate you. Peter bites his lip, surveying you for a long moment, eyes lingering on your exposed neck. “What do you see in Harry?”

The question surprises you, makes a cool sweat bead at the nape of your neck. You swallow heavily, chewing the inside of your bottom lip. “Peter…” you begin, though you’re not quite certain what words you want to say.

“I mean it, Y/N,” Peter sighs in earnest, “The dude is like every stereotype of a rich kid ever rolled into a suit and hair gel.”

He’s right. You know he’s right. Yet something inside you steels, armour coating your heart to keep it from beating too loudly. “It’s complicated,” you resign yourself to delivering an unsatisfactory answer. How can you possibly explain that you’ve been lonely and you want somebody—anybody—to make you feel less like you’re floating around in the world, untethered as you take the dreams and expressions of other peoples’ love and stitch it together with flowers and greenery. You want that love, want to be like a kite that has someone holding it down to earth, a safe place to return to after every flight.

And Harry has his flaws, you know that far too well—it’s ingrained in your memory with images of text messages and photos shared with other women and seemingly sincere apologies and a grand romantic gesture to ask for another chance. Those flaws nag at you while you try to sleep next to him at night, but you know if you try hard enough you can overlook them. Not forget them, but learn to live with them.

Or so you believed. But Peter B. Parker walked casually into your life with a shabby box of Random Crap and sent you spinning, dropping, scattering into the unknown.

Peter B. Parker, who shakes his head at you now, forehead creased. “It shouldn’t be complicated,” he whispers.

“I should go,” you sigh, “Thanks for the company, Pete.” You turn tail, almost afraid of looking at him for a moment longer, and exit the tattoo parlour.

It’s only when you’re back in your own shop, brewing a tea in the back room, that you realize you’ve still got Peter’s Henley draped carefully over your shoulders.

daisies for friendship

Your shop is closed on Mondays so you can recover from your busy weekends, but that doesn’t stop you from going by Peter’s place with takeout Pad Thai around noon, knowing he’s got a full day of sittings and that he likely won’t think to put anything other than coffee in his system. Because over the last four weeks since the power outage you’ve become Peter’s friend. And friends know these things about each other and take care of one another in ways that are perfectly fit for friendship.

Peter’s face lights up with gratitude at the smell of the takeout and he gives his client a break to come over to greet you, messing his fingers around at the top of your head.

“You’re amazing, Bug,” he grins, ravenously tearing open the paper bag and pulling out the container labelled Chicken, Extra Egg. Extra Peanuts.

“I prefer Sunflower,” you scowl, reaching into Peter’s lunch to snatch a slice of carrot. “Besides, you’re the bug, Spider-Man.”

Peter glances up at you, something sharp and pained darting across his eyes. You tilt your head to the side, concerned, the carrot you’ve been chewing going down sideways. “You okay?”

Peter nods, teeth favouring his bottom lip. “Just, uh, someone I know used to call me that, as a joke.”

“Ben?” You offer the name with a smile, knowing that Peter loves to tell stories about his late Uncle. You’d gone over to Aunt May’s for supper a week earlier and the two of them had reminisced until even you were in tears at the loving way they recounted humorous moments from the past.

But Peter shakes his head once, tersely. “Thanks for lunch, Sunflower,” he whispers. “I should get back to work.”

You nod, watching him walk back to his stool and put on a fresh pair of gloves. You slip out of the shop, and back in not ten minutes later while Peter’s back is to you, a small potted plant in your hands. You set it down gently next to the lunch Peter still hasn’t touched.

Two hours later, when you’ve gone home for the day and Peter’s finished with his sitting, he returns to his cold Pad Thai and shovels it into his mouth. Then, he notices the card attached to the spiny plant you left for him earlier in the day. Curiously, he opens and reads the tiny note scrawled in your hand: Aloe. For healing. The plant receives a special place of honour in the windowsill.

holly for defence

There’s shouting outside the shop and Peter abandons the dusting he’s been trying to get through all afternoon, the distraction not entirely unwelcome—until he sees what it is.

You’re standing in the doorway to your shop, the door propped open against your shoulder. A foot in front of you, Harry stands, rapidly losing his cool. Frowning, Peter steps out onto the sidewalk just in time to hear him berating you.

“—Ridiculous, Y/N, just calm down.”

“Don’t you dare,” you hiss, tears in your eyes, “I am not imagining things.”

“Y/N,” Harry’s voice is terse, angry, and Peter feels the same emotions welling up in his chest, his fingers digging into his palms as he forms loose fists. “You’re making a scene. Let’s talk about this later.”

Peter expects you to argue, to spit venom from your lips as he knows you’re perfectly capable of doing. So when your shoulders slump and your face falls, he feels his heart shatter because watching you close in on yourself like that is worse than anything he could have imagined.

“C’mon,” Harry urges, beginning to usher you into the shop. Peter worries that if he gets you in there and closes the door he may never see you again—not in the same way that he’s seen you up until now. He takes a few steps forward, squaring his shoulders.

“You alright, Y/N?”

Your eyes flit up, meeting his, and Peter notices your bottom lip quiver, the way your lashes become lined with more tears at the sight of him.

“She’s fine,” Harry snaps, “This doesn’t concern you.”

“See,” Peter responds cooly, running a hand through his hair, the other slipping into his pocket, to stop them from shaking, “When you’re making her cry like that, it does concern me.”

Harry rolls his eyes, muttering a curse under his breath before turning back to you. You cast a quick look at Peter and he gives you an earnest look. You’ve never seen him so avid, but you can’t do this—whatever this is. Not here. Not now. You look away, staring hard at the ground.

“Don’t worry about it, Peter,” you mumble, allowing yourself to be led back into your shop, “I’m fine.”

peonies for shame

The next day, Peter is outside his shop when you walk up. You offer him a small smile, a wave, but he turns away, heading inside his door without so much as acknowledging you. It stings, because you’re ashamed. Because Peter saw the worst and weakest parts of you and decided that you weren’t worth even a fake smile between friends. You allow yourself to cry your eyes dry in the flower fridge, emerging ten minutes later shivering and lost.

petunias for anger

“You didn’t sign for the delivery?”

You storm into Peter’s shop, not even caring if he’s with a client. Thankfully he’s not, instead sitting at the front desk, drawing something. He looks up at you as you enter, eyebrows knit together in a nonchalant way that makes you want to poke him in the eye.

“I was busy.” His voice is clipped, more professional than you’ve ever heard it before. That only makes you angrier and you cross your arms over your chest defensively, glaring at him.

“I’m going to need to drive an hour to pick up those urns! We made a deal!” Your voice is growing more hysterical with every word, rage rippling on your tongue. It was a little agreement between neighbours, made a week after Peter moved in—keep an eye on things when the other had to step out. True, it was more often than not Peter watching out for your storefront while you were out on deliveries, but a deal was a deal.

“Like I said,” Peter sits back in his chair, meeting your gaze with cool indifference, “I was busy. Maybe you should ask your boyfriend to help you.”

“Oh my god,” you hiss, “You absolute asshole!”

“I’m an asshole?” Peter lets out a forced bark of laughter, that insufferable grin on his lips though you find nothing about this funny. “Guess you need to fall in love with me, since asshole seems to be your type.”

You gape at him, astounded, mouth opening and closing once, and then again, before you let out a huff, exhaling loudly. “I don’t have time for this!” You turn to leave, anger coursing through you, but Peter’s not finished.

“You’re being so stupid, Y/N!”

You whip around again as his words make you blink in surprise, their harshness at odds with Peter’s soft face, his arrogant smirk gone and replaced with something you can’t quite name.

“Stupid?” you repeat, “Stupid?”

“Yeah, fucking stupid. You deserve better than him! Why can’t you see that?”

“Oh,” you laugh sardonically, eyes narrowing, “And what? You’re better?” Your brain is screaming at you to shut up because you know this is going to end badly and your friendship with Peter has been strained as it is, whittled down to nothing but genial greetings every so often.

“That’s not what I’m saying—”

“You’re insufferable,” you continued, words falling from your lips because you’re so angry that Peter’s ruined your day but more than that you’re angry that he doesn’t love you and that if he’d just ask you to be his you would. “You’re actually a true nightmare, Peter! You don’t like Harry, I get it, but you fucked up my entire day because of it. Do you know how childish that is? How absolutely ridiculous! And then you have the fucking nerve to call me stupid? I must be, for ever trusting you. For thinking you were anything more than—”

“Shut up.” Peter has barged out from behind the counter and has you backed against the door, his face inches from yours, anger suddenly extinguished, replaced by something softer. Longing? Need? Whatever it is, you know it’s the same expression that washes over your face as he puts a strong hand to your cheek, thumb running across the soft skin under your eye.

And then, without a word, he’s kissing you, his lips warm and rough on yours as if he’s trying to communicate with you in a language neither of you quite understands.

He’s kissing you. And it feels like you’re drowning but you don’t ever want to come up for air because you’re so light that you could float away but Peter’s hands, one grasping the back of your neck, the other coming to rest on your waist, are there. Tethering you.

And you’re kissing him back, your lips molten where they melt against his, tongues rid of all their sharp edges as they find one another, give and take and give again.

Finally, as your chest begins to burn, Peter pulls away, his breath still warm on your face, familiar now.

“You taste so good, Sunflower.” His voice is little more than a whisper. You make a noise in your throat, something quiet and desperate. Peter breathes out heavily, his hands still holding you, keeping you grounded. “Let’s go get those urns,” he lets a small smile tug at his lips. “I’ll drive.”

hyssop for sacrifice

Your storefront is dark when you pull up just after midnight, tears still stinging at your eyes but shoulders feeling unburdened for the first time in weeks. On the passenger’s seat beside you is a backpack haphazardly stuffed with items that had collected at Harry’s condo over the last two months—a toothbrush, shampoo, a sweater, a few books, and a bag of decorative stones you’d forgot you bought for a personal arrangement you’d been meaning to work on.

It had been a week since you kissed Peter; since he had kissed you. For the most part, nothing had changed between the two of you. His gazes lingered a little longer on you, a little more hopefully, but he never pushed, not after that day. For six nights, you’d tossed and turned, avoiding Harry’s place as much as you could in favour of your own. For six nights, Peter’s words had echoed in your head, bouncing between your ears as you restlessly chased sleep.

When did this become your life?

Parking your car, you grab your backpack and unlock the shop door, only switching on the small pink lamp you keep in the entryway. You probably should have just gone home, but you knew sleep would be elusive and your brain had been so sluggish this past week you were behind on paperwork. Now was as good a time as ever to catch up, right?

Before you have time to even settle in, there’s a knock on the glass front of the shop that makes you jump, but when you look up, you see Peter standing and waving at you with confusion etched on his face. You return to the door, flipping the latch and opening it a crack.

“What are you doing here?” Peter asks.

“Wedding,” you reply, the lie slipping easily from your lips, though you’re not quite sure the calm demeanour with which you speak reaches your eyes.

“Tomorrow’s Wednesday, Sunflower.”

“Right.”

“Why are you really here?”

“I, uh, I left,” you confess. “For good.” If Peter wants to smile or lay down an “I told you so”, he doesn’t let on, instead nodding gently as if he understands. “Why are you?” you ask, “Still here I mean?”

“I was sketching,” Peter shrugs, “Got lost in a design I dreamt up last night.” He pauses, taking stock of your red-rimmed eyes, the dark circles that stretch out under them, and your slumped shoulders. Tentatively, he takes your hand in his, his mind instantly flying backwards several months to when you first shook his hand. It almost makes him laugh to remember how cute you’d looked when he first called you Sunflower—all playfully annoyed, nose scrunched up. But it doesn’t feel like the time for laughter, not tonight. Instead, Peter squeezes your hand softly. “Hey, I’ve got a cot in the back of the shop. You can use it if you need the night. And if you need more than the night, I’m pretty used to falling asleep on my couch.”

You thank Peter and follow him back to his shop, looking around at the cluttered back room and realizing, for the first time, that Peter seems to live here. As though he reads your mind, he shrugs. “Rent’s expensive. And May keeps my bedroom the way it was when I was a teenager, for days when I need it.”

You nod and take a seat on the makeshift bed, the sheets cool and stiff beneath your palms. Peter stands nearby, watching you, not dragging his eyes away when you look up and meet his gaze—not this time.

“Do you have any weed?”

Peter snorts, surprised by the question, and cocks an eyebrow at you.“What, because I have tattoos, I must have weed too?”

You look slightly reproached and begin to mutter an apology. “That’s not what­—”

“I know,” Peter teases, turning toward the small cabinet where you know he keeps his candy stash. “I’ve got CBD oil—helps me sleep.” You glance at him, uncertain. “Anxiety,” he adds.

“Mind sharing?”

Peter smirks and grabs a small bottle and a stopper from the cupboard before joining you on the cot, the thin mattress groaning under the extra weight. “I’d be honoured, Sunflower.”

camellia for longing

“Hold your thumb just there.”

Peter obeys, sticking his thumb at the centre of a bow you’re tying, watching as you focus on measuring the ribbon’s edges just right. He has to swallow the impulse to lean over the arrangement he’s helping you finish and kiss you like his life depends on it.

The two of you have been at this nearly all night and Peter has long since figured out where to put his thumb, but every so often he enjoys having you remind him, guiding his hand to just the right spot. His mind wanders, thinking of all the other things he wants you to show him, all the other places he wants your hands to guide his.

“Peter?” Your voice calls him back to the present moment and, realizing you’ve finished with the bow, he smiles sheepishly at having been caught in his lewd thoughts.

“I want to take your picture,” he says without thinking, eyes going wide as the words tumble from his lips. You smile and Peter feels his heart skip a beat in his chest, his lips turning up at the corners.

“Maybe you can get some new ones of me for next wedding season?” You grin, sticking your tongue out as you strike a ridiculous pose that makes Peter roll his eyes before he shakes his head, suddenly serious again, quiet and composed.

“No,” he mutters, a red hue tinging his cheeks, “I mean I really want to take your picture.” He chances a glance up at you from under his lashes, shy smile still in place. “Get you all posed for me.”

There’s a hint of something suggestive in his words, at odds with the sweet and modest way that Peter’s hand goes to the back of his neck. You catch a glimpse of his eyes as they meet yours, their dazzling honey oozing with something dark and lustful. It makes you squeeze your thighs together under the table.

“And,” Peter continues, plucking an unused daisy from the pile of flowers you’ve been working through, “With you wearing nothing but this.” Gently, he fixes the flower in place behind your ear, his fingers brushing down your jaw as they return to his pockets.

“Peter—” you breathe, voice shaky. He looks at you, hope and hunger in his stare. In an instant, his lips are on yours, his fingers tangled in the hairs at the nape of your neck, tugging at them softly to tilt your head back so he can kiss down your neck, over your collarbone, each time his lips flit across your skin something in you coming undone.

With some effort you sweep aside the clutter from the table, leaving a free spot for you to prop yourself up on, Peter giving you some assistance. Then you’re pulling him close, legs wrapping around his waist, your skirt riding up to your hips. Peter’s hands wander down toward your thighs but hesitate to slip beneath your clothing, instead toying with the hem. You tug at his shirt and he obliges, pulling it off and exposing his chest, which is surprisingly bare of tattoos, save for one over his heart—a circle of delicate ivied vines, done in white ink. You reach to run your fingers over it, but Peter tenses, so you pause, looking up at him for a cue as to what happens next.

“Sorry,” he whispers, ghosting over your waist, “It’s—it’s for someone I lost.”

“It’s beautiful,” you reply softly. Peter visibly relaxes, his fingers wrapping around your wrist and placing your hand over his heart. You feel the steady rhythm of his pulse beneath his skin and you swallow hard, words failing you. Peter kisses the top of your head and for a long moment you both remain still, his chin resting in your hair, your forehead pressed to his abdomen.

“Peter,” you whisper, placing a gentle kiss on his sternum, “Come home with me?”

poppies for pleasure

There’s a trail of discarded clothes from the door of your apartment to the bathroom. You know Peter’s nervous, he admitted as much in the car ride back to your place, his fingers tapping anxiously on your steering wheel while you stared at his hands, imagining what they could do to you, squeezing your thighs together at the feeling of wetness dampening your cotton panties.

Truthfully, you’re nervous too. Peter is somehow beyond your understanding—so marked by loss and grief, yet so giving and kind. He’s sheltered his heart, allowed it to grow weedy and windswept, and now he’s allowing you in, asking you to turn the soil and sow something new.

This excited anticipation is what makes you suggest a shower, warm water excellent for soothing nerves, the small space intimate and dim.

Pressed up against the cold glass door of the shower, you finally take a moment to drink in the sight of Peter’s entire body, desire bubbling in the pit of your stomach at the sight of him, lean and muscled and looking at you like you’re the only thing in the universe. His cock is larger than you’d imagined it, pressed between you as he leans down to kiss you, nipping at the place where your jaw trails into your neck. It’s enough to make you gasp, fingers curling around his biceps, nails digging into the inked skin and leaving tiny crescent moons in their wake.

“C’mon,” you whisper, unwillingly letting go of him for a moment to open the shower door and turn on the water, adjusting the temperature. Peter takes the opportunity of having you turned away from him to run a hand over the curve of your ass, up to your hip where he squeezes, making you giggle.

But under the water, your bodies intertwined, the laughter you’ve shared up the elevator and across the floor of your apartment, turns into a series of groans, a mess of hands and lips exploring skin, eyes roving over unfamiliar landscapes of dips and curves and lines and scars.

Peter has you pressed flush against the wall and he’s kissing you hungrily, as if you’re his last meal—a sacrificial feast to be devoured with zeal. But his hands remain tentative, slipping gently over your boobs, fingers pinching your nipples with care, drawing lines down toward your navel over the curve of your stomach, dancing over your waist and your hips.

“Peter,” you whisper, voice hoarse, “Touch me.” He groans in your ear and you seize his wrist, guiding it to the achingly empty space between your legs. “It’s okay,” you continue, kissing his neck. Your free hand tangles in his hair and you relish the way his eyes flutter closed at the sensation. “Let me take the lead.”

He nods, watching intently as you place his middle finger at your entrance, moving his wrist back and forth a few times so he’s grazing your folds. “Feel how wet you’ve got me?” you sigh in pleasure, the feeling of his calloused fingertip sending a shiver of delight up your spine. “Now, go slow. Listen to what my body tells you, okay?”

“Yeah,” Peter replies, short of breath. He continues to run his finger gently along your core, then uses his index and ring fingers to spread your folds, making your breath hitch in your throat. The sound spurs him on and his middle finger slips part way inside you, swirling gently and making you bite your lip.

“That’s good, Pete,” you encourage him, “Fuck, that’s good. Keep going.”

“Yes ma’am,” he chuckles low in his throat, finger slipping the rest of the way inside you. Peter feels your cunt clench around him and groans at the sensation, imagining how incredible it’ll feel around his cock. It takes Peter a moment to find his rhythm, to find the right angle at which to hook his fingers to elicit that perfectly tight squeeze again, but once he locates it, once he makes your squirm, he’s relentless.

“Your thumb,” you whimper, “Peter…”

He swallows at the sound of his name falling from your lips with breathless pleasure and presses his thumb into you, rubbing gently. “There?” he asks, gazing up at you with hooded eyes. Your legs shake as you spread them a little wider, glad for the way Peter’s free arm supports you.

“Just a little—a little higher,” you whimper. Peter’s hand is careful and steady—though you suppose that’s part of his job—as he probes around until he hears the telltale gasp that tells him he’s found what he’s looking for. He sets a pace that has you keening, panting, crying out because you’re so close, but you can barely stand any longer so you grab at his wrist and make him stop. You want to cum for him, with him.

Peter looks at you with eyes blown wide with lust, lips swollen with your kisses.

“You’re so fucking pretty, Peter,” you whisper, enjoying the way he flushes in response, though that might just be the warm water that’s rolling off his body, making his hair stick flat to his head.

“I want you, Sunflower,” he moans softly, “Please.”

“I’m yours,” you smirk, slipping out of Peter’s grasp and gently prodding him toward the wall, his back against the cool tiles, yours now under the shower stream. You take your time sinking to your knees, kissing down his chest, letting his cock rub between your boobs and over your chin as you settle between his legs. With one doe-eyed look up at him and a quick wink, you take his entire length in your mouth.

“Fuck!”

You smile around Peter’s dick, perhaps a little wickedly, as you begin to bob back and forth, feeling the weight of him on your tongue. He’s too large to fit entirely in your mouth, his tip already hitting the back of your throat, making it clench, so you use two fingers to stroke the parts of him your lips can’t reach.

Within minutes, Peter is mumbling nonsense, his knees shaking. You pull your lips off him with a lewd pop and look up at him with wide eyes, a string of saliva still connecting your lips to his cock.

“You’re so fucking yummy, Peter,” you grin, “I’m just gonna swallow you up.”

“Fuck, Y/N,” he pants out, groaning loud as you run your tongue over the sensitive slit at the head of his cock. Then he’s sliding down the wall, unable to stand any longer, the feeling of pleasure that’s rocking through him too much. Once he’s eye level with you, you press your forehead to his and he kisses the tip of your nose.

“I want to fuck you,” he whispers, breathless.

“I know,” you coo, kissing him again, this time between his eyes, “Gonna let me be a good girl for you and ride your cock?”

Peter glances at you with darkened pupils, but there’s a spark there that tells you he acknowledges the importance of what you just said. He smiles, helping you shift so that you’re straddling him, hot water rolling down your back.

“You’re a goddess,” Peter breathes, rolling your nipples between his fingers, “So pretty and all for me.”

You run your tongue along his jaw, nipping gently at the shell of his ear before you whisper to him. “Tell me what you want, Peter.”

“Be a good girl and let me inside you, yeah?”

It’s your turn to whimper as Peter helps you sink onto his cock, its length stretching you out as your body shapes around him, already clenching at the pleasure of the intrusion. Peter throws his head back against the shower wall as you grip his shoulders, balancing on the balls of your feet as you begin to bounce up and down on his cock.

Peter’s a quick learner because his hand slips between your bodies, finding your clit again, drawing sloppy circles around the little nub as you raise yourself almost entirely off of him before sinking back down. After a few thrusts, Peter is fully sheathed inside you and your legs, tired and weakening, need a break. Peter whispers your name, his free hand coming around to cup your ass, helping you writhe back and forth on him. Your chests are pressed together and the closeness makes Peter’s patterns on your clit tighter and faster. You can feel his cock twitching, feel your cunt clenching around him and you know you’re close.

“Gonna cum for me, Sunflower?” Peter whispers and that’s all it takes for you to cry out in delight, your head in the crook of his neck as Peter reaches his own high, spilling himself inside you with your name on his lips.

roses for love

Peter is perched on your countertop, eating out of the peanut butter jar while you’re snacking on crackers straight from the box, making a mental note that you really need to go grocery shopping.

“Remember that sketch I told you I was working on? The one from that night?” Peter asks, licking the spoon clean before shoving it back into the jar. You nod, tossing a cracker at him, which he catches deftly, smearing it with peanut butter before sending it back in your direction. “Do you want to see it?”

“Fuck yeah,” you exclaim, “I’d absolutely love to.”

Excitedly, Peter jumps off the counter and goes to retrieve the sketchbook in his bag by the door. It’s been a few weeks since you’ve officially considered him your boyfriend, but this is the first time he’s showing you a piece that he’s created himself—one that hasn’t been commissioned by a client.

You wait eagerly as Peter flips through the pages of his book before stopping, running his fingers over the paper, that frenetic tapping ever present. Then, he holds the book out to you and your jaw drops, as does the cracker you’re holding in your hand, falling to the floor.

On the page, there’s an incredibly life-like sunflower, its petals large and swirling, its face detailed with speckled seeds. Wrapped around its proud stem are gossamer strands, a spider dangling from their ends.

“Peter,” you breathe out, “It’s stunning.”

“It’s for you,” he replies quietly, “If you ever trust me enough to let me ink you.”

You roll your eyes, picking your cracker up off the tiles and throwing it at Peter’s head.

sunflowers for adoration

Peter flips the sign on his shop door to Closed. He doesn’t want any interruptions for this. The blinds are closed and it’s just the two of you under the fluorescent lights. You’re in Peter’s chair, in your underwear, a freshly shaved spot on your upper thigh rubbed with numbing gel and stencilled with Peter’s beautiful sunflower design.

“Remember,” he tells you, kissing each of your knees in turn, “Tell me if you need a break.”

“It’s been a year,” you snark, “I haven’t needed a break from you yet.”

Peter scowls playfully at you, returning to your knees, this time to scrape his teeth over their surface, making you giggle. His lips flit up your inner thighs and to your clothed core, kissing you there once, ever so softly.

Then he’s straightening his back and he’s all business once again. “Ready?” Peter asks, grabbing his tattoo pen.

You nod, smiling as you look at your boyfriend in his element. He’s already marked himself into your heart permanently—it only makes sense to have him etched into your skin as well. “Ready.”

Me with part two of the sun is a blue moon

thinking about my fic in the shower:

trying to actually write my fic:

this is me not being able to decide whether Peter’s a gryffindor or ravenclaw

It could honestly go either way! Because Peter himself is very Ravenclaw, but when he puts the Spidey mask on he becomes quite Gryffindor. And the Hat would know that! 🌻

The Sun is a Blue Moon (Part 2)

A/N: here’s part two of the sun is a blue moon! I wrote this once and hated it about 3k in so I scrapped it and started over and I’m waaaay happier with how it came out than what I originally had planned. Oh and it ended up all being from Peters third person view somehow??? yeah idk. I hope y’all like it <3

Summary: “Only the gentle are ever really strong.” - James Dean

Word Count: 5k

Warnings: violence, blood, injuries, fighting, battle, anxiety, panic, fearing the death of a loved one, gried, sadness, death

Playlist: End of the World by Nightriots

             Till Forever Falls Apart by Ashe, FINNEAS

             As the World Caves in by Sarah Cothran

read part one here

Peter looked back to his notes, checking to make sure his measurements were correct before adding the white cap into the potion, the bubbling encouraging him further. He observed the reaction before picking up his pen and jotting down what he saw on the marked up page, his pinkie smudging the still drying inscriptions on the line above. He adjusted his glasses before continuing on with his work, his mind wandering to y/n who was currently in care of magical creatures while he was in his free period, working on his own potions. His eyes flashed down to the small daffodil colored yarn bracelet that was woven in with white yarn that she had made for him. Everyone in their group had gotten one that she made them in their house color except him. He was special and got her house color. Her glowing face filled his mind and he couldn’t help but smile a little. 

Peter Parker was in love. 

He had been in love with y/n since early December when the snow was just starting to really stick to the ground and everyone wore their thickest robes. He didn’t know when it happened- there wasn’t some defining moment that pushed him off the proverbial cliff, but he realized it when they were laying together in his bed. Y/N had snuck into the Ravenclaw common room which took quite the effort on her part, having not only managed to sneak from one end of the castle to the other since the Hufflepuff dorms and Ravenclaw tower were on opposite ends of the castle, but she had also spent quite some time trying to guess the riddle that would allow her into Ravenclaw. She wasn’t good at riddles but she’d taken her time and got lucky. Peter hadn’t known she was coming and when he was woken by a small poke on his bare shoulder, he’d woken and had to blink a couple times, making sure it was girlfriend looking down at him.

“How did you get in here?” He was bewildered and looking behind him to make sure that his roommate was still asleep and sure enough he, being the heavy sleeper he was, was still out cold.

“I guessed the riddle.” She whispered with a shrug like that was all she needed to explain. 

His hand ran across his one eye. He took her in, looking for a visible explanation as to why she had taken such a huge risk to get there. He was now more awake and realized her eyes were irritated and her cheeks duller and stripped of its natural oils, suggesting she had either recently washed her face or been crying. He went with the latter once he took in her locket that was twisted around and the clasp close to the locket itself. It looked like her fingers hadn’t been able to let go of it all night. The first time he had seen her have an anxiety attack, her small first had been gripping the locket like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to earth. He always knew the days her anxiety was bad with just a look at the chain around her neck.

Instantly becoming more alert, he sat up, large hand framing her face while his other found her hand. “What happened?”

Swallowing, she sucked on her bottom lip and he saw tears start to rise in her eyes. “You know that bird's nest that’s right outside the window of the common room?”

He thought back to the birds nest saga he had been getting daily updated on for the last week. The entire house of Hufflepuff was enamored by the mother dove that had built a nest in the crook of one of the outside windows in the Hufflepuff common room. Two days ago she had laid four eggs, all varying shades of blue with brown spots of them. 

“Yeah.” He nodded. 

Her chin quivered and more tears rapidly flooded her eyes. “One of the eggs fell out of the nest earlier tonight.”

His heart dropped in his chest. “Oh, sweetheart.”

She collapsed into him and his arms enveloped her and wrapped around her tightly, pulling her further into his warm bed and throwing the blanket over her as well. She cried softly into his chest, tears hitting his bare skin as he smoothed down the back of her hair, leaving small kisses on her forehead. 

“She was so sad.” She cried softly. “She just kept looking for it in the nest.”

It was sad to hear but he didn’t quite feel it as deeply as he knew y/n did. Hufflepuffs were natural empaths and felt things deeply, y/n maybe more so than the average Hufflepuff. He knew that her heart was aching and she was feeling everything the mother bird was feeling. 

Her crying stopped after a few minutes but they didn’t barely move after. 

“I’m going to go and see if I can find the egg in the morning. I already looked for it but it’s too dark.”

He loathed the idea of her wandering the grounds at night by herself but knew why she did what she did and that at that point it didn’t matter nor was it the time to say something about it, even if the idea of it did scare the shit out of him. There were dangerous things outside of Hogwarts at night.

“I’ll go with you. We can give it a little funeral if we have to.”

She nodded, face somber. “Please.”

The gentle silence filled the space around them and Peter put a kiss on the tip of her red nose, rubbing her back to soothe her. Having her in his bed made him feel at ease in a way he didn’t know he needed. He was going to have a difficult time not having her beside him at night now that he knew what it was like. Maybe y/n could give him some pointers on how to get into Hufflepuff.

“I like this.” She confessed, her voice nearly undetectable, eyes trusting and allowing him to see right into her. He was the only person on the planet she dropped her guard in front of. A brick wall of anxiety and self consciousness had been impenetrable to everyone except for him. He had been able to find a secret door in that brick wall.

“Me too.” He whispered back. 

“Oh.” She inhaled. “I found that book on unicorns you were looking for.”

His ears perked up. “Yeah?”

“Someone misplaced it. Found it in the Wizarding War section. I checked it out for you.”

He stared at her, his thumb pulling gently at her smooth bottom lip. “What would I do without you?”

“Be without a citation.” She snarked with a small smile. “Always have ink on your face. Get into way more fights.” She listed.

He smirked at the mention of a fight. 

Two weeks prior to that he had punched a Slytherin in the face for calling y/n a mudblood. He was one of those pure blood elitists and didn’t realize that Peter had been within earshot when he said it. “I don’t know how Parker dates a mudblood” he had sneered in disgust. Peter had felt anger before. He’d even say he has felt rage before. It may not have been a very common occurrence but he was not unfamiliar with being so angry he felt red hot rage, but he had never before felt white hot rage until the moment the word mudblood fell from the Slytherin boy's tongue. It filled his body starting at his chest and going into his hands, making them pulse and his vision go hazy. He had walked up to the boy and decked him right in the face- right there in the waiting to begin classroom. It had gotten him in serious trouble but he didn’t care. He had accepted and knew those consequences would come the second the Slytherin hit the floor. He wasn’t going to let anyone mouth off about his girl, let alone in front of him and especially not when they called her a mudblood.

She had balked when he told her why his right hand was swollen and with a small break in the skin at the knuckle on his middle finger. After making him promise he wouldn’t go around punching anyone else- yes even if they did call her a mudblood, she had eagerly pushed him against the wall of the vacant hallway, taking him beyond surprise, and kissed him until he was dizzy and couldn’t think straight. If someone had asked him then for a potions equation he had already mastered he wouldn’t have been able to give them a single number. 

“See the thing about that is that after that fight you kissed me and it’s a kiss I don’t think I’ll ever forget.” Her ears went red and he could only chuckle at this. “I still can’t believe me throwing a punch did it for you.”

“It wasn’t because you punched someone.” She argued, eyes down on his lips. “It’s because you punched someone for me. You defended me and I don’t know…it’s really, really hot.”

“And you want me to not punch someone else for you when you tell me how hot you think it is?” He challenged, an eyebrow raised. 

“Just shut up and kiss me, Pete.”

“I can do that.” He chortled, closing the gap between them and kissing her, her cold hands pressing against his chest and sending chills down his spine. 

They made out in Peter’s bed for a while, the most scandalous part of it when she let him slip his hand up her shirt and cop a feel. They hadn’t gone very far when it came to intimacy, both nervous and unsure about what they were doing. Peter didn’t want to make y/n uncomfortable or feel pressured and y/n was afraid to do something wrong or be bad at it. What they both knew was that when they were ready, they wanted their first time to be with each other.

They both knew she couldn’t stay the entire night even though neither wanted her to go. 

“I’ll walk you back.”

“So you can be in even more trouble if you get caught?”

He shook his head. “I don’t care. I don’t want you walking to the other side of the castle by yourself.”

“You act like I’m going to run into you know who.”

“Don’t even joke about that.” He glared. “This isn’t up for debate.”

She sighed but didn’t argue further, though neither made any effort to move. He flittered with the idea of just staying there until the hour before sunrise and then walking her back. They could be together for a few more hours and bask in the feeling of being in a bed together. It was something he didn’t know how badly he wanted it until he had it. Having her in his arms with a thick blanket over them, their body heat mingling together and their breath mixing in the small space between them was intoxicating. He never wanted it to end. It was like nothing else existed in the world except for them in the bed. There wasn’t charms homework to stress about or people to call y/n names that made him want to punch them or curious eyes watching them. It was just them.

As he stared at her, the realization came to him sort of like a song in the background getting louder and louder until eventually he took notice of him. He realized he was in love with her. It was a lot like putting change in a vending machine; eventually you’d have enough to get what you wanted. All the pennies and nickels and dimes had added up and he was in love with y/n.

He told her when he had walked her back to Hufflepuff and she had looked at him with those big eyes that made him melt into a puddle of mush and said it back, making him wonder if it was possible to die from being in love. Peter had all but floated back to Ravenclaw, a giant smile on his face and, for the first time, holding someone’s heart in his chest instead of his own. No, his own heart was with y/n and he had hers.

The over-bubble of his potion pulled him back to the present and he shook his head, trying to salvage his work that he had been distracted from. She wasn’t even in the room and she was distracting him. She was like a mind sickness that consumed him and kept him awake at night wondering if she was thinking of him like he was her and distracted him from his potions and spells. A girl made of sunshine had put a spell on him and he never wanted it to go away. 

Class ended and he slung his robe over his arm and headed for the great hall, searching for y/n as he made his way to the table, Win and Gwen already there. He sat beside them and greeted them, neck craning around the flocks of students to look for his girl who was usually already at the table.

Just as he was about to ask Gwen and Win if they had seen y/n, he felt someone sit right beside him and knew who it was. 

“Hey.” She greeted everyone, voice chipper and eyes bright. 

“Hi, sweetheart.” He grinned, kissing her cheek and lacing their hands together. 

“Y/N, please tell me you can teach me how to do that braid.” Win gushed, eyes running up and down y/n’s hair.

Today y/n had braided her hair in a french braid, strands falling at her temples. She hadn’t done it in years but woke up feeling like it was going to be a good day so she did the braid and loved the way it looked. Peter had complimented it as they walked to her first class and she was sure she was going to do it everyday for the rest of the year. 

“Oh, for sure!” She nodded. “It’s easy.”

Win squealed just as Harry was sitting down, making him wince at the high pitched noise. “We could have a girls night! I’ll sneak you guys into Gryffindor and we can do our nails and stuff.”

They all agreed and as they talked, the rest of their ground made their way to the table. Peter noticed the small chill that ran through y/n and draped his robe around her shoulders. She always got cold in the great hall and he put his robe on her during meals. She gave him a grateful smile, tugging it closer and putting her attention back on Flash who was telling some story from their second year.

It was in Peter’s last class of that day that the loud rumble shook the entire castle like an earthquake. Everyone had gone silent and perked up, unsure of what was going on. Snape bolted to the doors only for Flitwick to burst them open, startling everyone further. 

“The school is under attack! Dumbledore wants all the children to be sent back to their dorms!”

Snape rushed out while the students followed, all heading in different directions in pure panic and lack of real guidance from adults.

Peter didn’t go to the Ravenclaw tower like the rest of the students in the blue ties. No, he headed for Hufflepuff. He had no idea where y/n was but he wasn’t going to be away from her when Hogwarts was under attack from who knows what. So many bad things could happen. Peter didn’t even want to think about what could happen. All he knew was that he had to get to her and he would do it no matter what. She just had to stay safe until he got there and then he would protect her. He knew how she felt about using magic to harm others but he didn’t know if that applied to those trying to harm her. Would she still raise her wand? He didn’t know. He couldn’t picture her raising her wand with intent to harm- it just wasn’t something he could see her doing. She saw the good in people and was someone who could talk anyone down from anything with just one look.

“I’m coming, y/n.” He breathed as he ran down the stairs, students fleeing past him and screams filling the air. It felt like he was in a nightmare or a horror movie that took place right in Hogwarts.

As he turned the corner after reaching the last step, he was horrified to see the main floor was in shambles. The east wall had been taken out completely, crushed brick and marble everywhere as death eaters flooded inside, fighting with professors and students, spells being cast from wands left and right.  

He saw a terrified first year struggling to hold their own against an enemy and knew that he had to help. He couldn’t just let them struggle. That’s not who he was. Aunt May had been so sure that he would be sorted into Gryffindor because of his lion's heart.

Wherever y/n was, he begged that she was safe for now. 

His wand out and ready, he threw an attack at the death eater that was challenging the young student. Peter battled strongly, surprised at the sheer force of his magic and the way his spells came out more powerful than the rest of the students around him. He didn’t know if it was because of how advanced he was or because of the pure adrenaline bolting through his veins or because of how he felt the need to protect every single person who couldn’t protect themselves. He’d always stood up for people before but this made him feel like he was personally responsible for the well-being of everyone. Like he was some kind of superhero. 

As he was battling alongside other sixth and seventh years as well as Hogwarts faculty, he was looking for a yellow tie and the shine of his girlfriend’s hair that he would know anywhere, even in the fight of his life. Every flash of yellow had him whipping his head in that direction, this proved near deadly a couple times, and every time it wasn’t her he felt his panic rise. It was like the music in the build up of a movie scene when the bad guy is just around the corner and the main character has no idea they’re there with an axe. With a clenched jaw and tight shoulders, he relentlessly fought his way toward the kitchens, looking for y/n as he went and trying to keep his mind together. He felt like he was being pulled in two different directions; his heart and his morals. He felt obligated to help everyone who needed it and not let anyone go without aid. It was who he was and who his Uncle Ben and Aunt May raised him to be; a good man who stopped when someone needed help. But his heart…his heart was begging with him- pleading with him to forget everyone else and find the one person that made it beat inside his chest. His heart was trying to pull him in its desired direction, his chest feeling like it was being tugged at.

At what felt like the end of the world, Peter was trying to find her. He was trudging through war and death, fighting like hell to try and get to her; to try and find her. He would fight for a hundred hours, cast a thousand spells, and travel a million miles to find her. She just needed to stay breathing until he got there. 

It was when he was just around the corner from the kitchens, so close to Hufflepuff his morals were starting to lose the battle to his heart, that he saw it.  He’d have missed it if it hadn’t been for the light reflecting off it from someone's cast spell.

On the floor was y/n’s heart shaped locket. 

Cold dread filled Peter and he could feel himself go pale. His stomach fell to his feet and his heart, the heart that had been shaking him by his shoulders and screaming at him since the damn battle had started, felt like a metal vice was squeezing on it.

She never took that golden chain off, often falling asleep with it on and only removing it to shower. It was her most important possession and something that kept her grounded and stable. She would toy with it when she was anxious, fingernail breaking open the clasp only for her to snap it right shut. The sound of it opening and closing was something that Peter had gotten used to but didn’t hear it as much as he did when they had first started dating. 

The worst case scenario ran through his head and he briefly wondered who he had helped along the way that cost him y/n. Who did he trade her for? Of the dozen or so people he had helped on his way across the castle, who had been the one that he saved while the light faded from his sunshine? He would have been able to protect her and save her but he sacrificed her for someone else.

He rushed over to it, bumping into someone but paying no attention to them as he leaned down to scrape it up. The once pristine gold now had dents and nicks, the luster dimmed, and the clasp broken. Something he hadn’t seen before was the dried blood on the chain. It nearly made him drop to his knees, his body feeling as heavy as the necklace that was in his hand.

Realistically, he knew that just because she lost her necklace didn’t mean she was dead and he was desperately trying to cling to that. But something had happened to her that made her lose her locket and something had prevented her from retrieving it. The blood on the chain had to be from her. There wasn’t blood on the floor where the locket had been meaning the blood had to have already been on it when it fell off of her. If she wasn’t…dead then she was at the very least injured and that was enough to have him seething. Even if he found her alive he would still be out for blood, determined to make them spill ten times the amount of blood that they had made y/n spill. He was going to seek justice- no, revenge on everyone that had sent their wand her way. 

Then Peter turned, ready to do just that, and the air was stolen from his lungs. 

Coming out of the Hufflepuff corridor with others behind her was y/n.

And she was magnificent.

Her hair bounced from the force of the cast of her wand and she seemed to glow gold from the light of the sun coming through the nearby window as she fought without any trace of fear, body moving with expertise and without hesitance as if Athena herself lived within her. There was a deep cut across her collarbone that was revealed by the lack of tie and partially unbuttoned linen button up and a scrape above her eyebrow. Her left sleeve was rolled up haphazardly, like she had rolled them both up seconds before her fight began but one had fallen from combat. She was a warrior and a goddess and his y/n all at the same time. And she was alive.

Seeing her alive actually did bring him to his knees, his heart having gone through too much throughout the day to support him through another whirlwind of emotion that hit him like a train. She was alive and breathing and she was arguably holding her own. It made his shoulders sag back, weak at seeing her become a goddess. He had been picturing her hiding in a closet the entire time like a small puppy; scared and wishing for him to come. Instead she was fighting back with a strength he didn’t know she had in her. She held her wand with the most confidence he had ever seen her possess, her spells stronger than his had been. She spoke clearly and boldly with no tremor or trace of anxiety in her tone. She was leading the charge in her house. How he had underestimated her placement as a Hufflepuff, a people known to be unafraid of toil. How he had underestimated her. 

Peter felt like he was watching her in slow motion and then she was looking in his direction, doing a double take at seeing him there. She sent out a forceful spell at her foe before rushing over to him and dropping down in front of him, hands cupping face and lips moving. She looked concerned, eyebrows knitted together and eyes clouded with worry. It was then that he realized she was talking to him, asking him if he was okay.

“You’re alive.” He gasped before crushing her against his chest, hands gripping her back tight and never wanting to let go. “God, I was so fuckin’ scared.”

“I know.” She breathed, fingers threading through his locks at the back of his head. “I was too. I wanted to try and find you but…”

“I know.”

Their reunion was cut short by a deatheater seeing their vulnerability and raising his wand toward them. Peter’s eyes went wide, thinking of their position. Y/N’s body was directly in front of his. She would take the hit if he didn’t make a drastic move.

But his girl- his sweet, beautiful, kind, gentle Hufflepuff surprised him again. She jumped up, her arm raised. “Expelliarmus!” She lashed and Peter watched as the enemy was disarmed. She took it a step further and cast a sectumsempra spell, harming him and causing him to turn and run. It would have been comical to see someone running away from y/n in fear if he hadn’t been so stunned and full of awe and maybe even a little turned on by the tenacity she was exuding.

Once Peter got over his shock, he was up and fighting alongside her, having her back and her having his. They defended the part of the school they could before finally it was over and what surviving enemies that still lingered realized they were losing and surrendered or escaped. 

The battle-worn students and school faculty were gathered in the great hall where wounded were being taken care of and loved ones reunited. It was a sea of tears, both of relief and grief. They met up with their friends who were all well and victorious, happy to see the couple together and just as victorious. Hugs went around as well as a few tears from Win who had been worried about the two more than anyone.

Peter and y/n walked holding hands, both physically beaten but feeling alive as ever. Y/N leaned into his side as they sat on the rows of opened up bleachers. He couldn’t stop looking at her, seeing that moment when she had emerged from the hallway bathed in golden sunlight and war over and over again in his head. He saw her in a different light. He had always known she was the sun of life; keeping him warm and putting the kick in his step. But he didn’t realize until then just how rare she was now that he was seeing the other side of the sun that didn’t usually face him. She was the all smiles, spoke to everyone like they mattered more than the world, made friendship bracelets for people, purposely picked out the ugliest looking cookie on the tray just so it would get picked kind of soul. But she was also the defend her house to the death, cast out sectumsempra spells, lead the charge of the battle kind of soul. Those kinds of people who were those two sides of the same coin were rare. Once in a blue moon kind of rare. His sun was a blue moon and the irony was not lost on him.

“What?” She asked, eyeing the way he was looking at her. 

“The entire time I was trying to get to you. You know, I was convinced that you were hiding in a closet somewhere? Then I get there and you’re…you’re not just fighting but you’re leading it. I had no idea you had that in you.” He mused, eyes dancing with pride. 

She beamed. “I didn’t either. It just kind of happened. I didn’t even think, I guess. They tried to get in and I just started fighting.”

The memory of her locket hit him and he fished it out from his pocket. “I found this on the floor. I thought something bad happened to you when I saw it there. Had me worried for a second.” That was an understatement. But she didn’t need to know about the true heartbreak he had felt for the thirty seconds he thought the sun had set permanently.

Her face fell into relief at seeing her locket in his open palm. “Oh my god. I thought it was gone forever. Some tried to put a levicorpus spell on me but it got my necklace instead. I tried to find it but there was so much going on.”

Brushing her hair to the side, Peter wrapped the necklace around her neck and clasped it on, letting it rest on her chest where it belonged.

The Sun is a Blue Moon

A/N: So this started out as a headcanon thread that was hella long until I eventually decided to just write the thing. This may be one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. Let me know what you guys think. Oh, and yes there will be a part 2 ;)

Summary: A Hogwarts AU where Peter Parker falls in love with a Hufflepuff and it’s just tooth rotting fluff the whole time really.

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: social anxiety 

“Just breathe.” y/n exhaled, staring at herself in the mirror. 

It was her first day of sixth year at Hogwarts and she was a tangled knot of anxiety and nerves. Part of her still couldn’t believe she was actually there once again. It seemed like just yesterday someone was knocking at her door and telling her parents that she was a witch and was accepted to Hogwart, a school for witchcraft and wizardry. It had been a bumpy ride at the beginning, her parents not fully believing it for quite some time but eventually couldn’t deny the obvious. It was true and they all knew it. Y/N had always been different her entire life, with strange things happening around her that always made people stare at her. It was what made her such an anxious child and what made her social anxiety bloom into what it was. 

Smoothing down her robe and adjusting her yellow tie, she left the restroom and headed for her first class, keeping close to the walls and head down and continuing on with the same routine she’d had for the last several years. Sometimes she wished she could blend in with the walls and go unseen.

Keep reading

Okay but the Peter Parker HP AU was beautiful 🥺 I’m a ravendor mostly ravenclaw but I could relate to Peter so well!!!!! AHHHHHH

Thank you for this message it was like a punch to the heart but a very good punch I’m so happy you could relate and that you like it 🖤

HIII!! I saw that you requests are open so here is mine :D What if reader got Peter flowers? <333

A/N: I love this! lets pretend I posted this yesterday on Valentine's day lol

Love, Sunshine, and Beauty

Peter was a really kind and thoughtful boyfriend. He always did like things for y/n like leaving little notes for her to find while he was on patrol and she had just gotten home from work. One time he left a small flower that he must have picked from the bush outside on the soap holder in the shower. He was always doing things to make her smile and know that he thought about her and wanted to make her smile, even if he wasn't there to see it. Being Spider-Man made him miss out on some things that he wished he could be there for like the birthday party she had last year that her best friend threw her at a bar in Brooklyn. It being at night, Peter wasn't able to make it and she understood but it bothered him a lot that he wasn't there for his girlfriends birthday party. That was when the little things had started and y/n adored them more than Peter knew. So when Valentine's day came around, she realized that this was her chance to do something sweet for Peter like he often did for her.

She'd never bought flowers before, especially not for a man so she wasn't sure what to get. She wandered around the grocery store looking at the tons of different arrangements they had but none of them stood out to her until she came across a bouquet of sunflowers, red roses, and daisies. They all meant something that was so true to Peter. It was perfect.

Their shared apartment was empty when she got home and she knew Peter was most likely at the lab still. They had early dinner plans for Valentine's day so he would be home shortly.

After putting the bouquet in a vase with some water, she left it on the counter that faced the front door with a card that she propped up to stand and a small box of chocolates before getting in the shower.

Peter closed the front door behind him, hearing the shower and knowing y/n was in it. They had dinner plans shortly and he couldn't wait to take her to the restaurant. It was where they had their first date two years ago and also the same place she had told him she loved him for the first time just a few months later.

He looked up and stopped in his tracks.

On the kitchen counter was a vase with different flowers. At first, he immediately thought that someone else had given them to her before he had a chance to give her the roses he had in had in his hand, but then he saw the propped card with his name on it.

He dropped his backpack on the empty counter space and picked up the card and opened it.

Peter, Happy Valentines day, my love. I know men don't usually receive flowers, even on v-day but I wanted to give you back some of the beauty you give to me every day. The roses are for how much I love you, the sunflowers are for the sunshine you bring into my life, and the daisies are for the beauty that is you. I love you endlessly.

                                                                  -love, y/n

Peter smiled wide and kissed the card before setting it down and taking in the flowers, seeing her meaning in each type. He knew how lucky he was to be love by her and he felt her love with the gesture and with the beautiful flowers. He was saddened that he wouldn't be able to keep them forever. Maybe he could have one of each pressed and framed. He would have to look into that before they died.

The sound of the shower stopping had him moving and he was coming into the bedroom at the same time y/n was getting out with a towel around her.

"Hey, babe." She beamed. "Happy Valentine's."

He pulled the bouquet of roses out from behind his back, his face partially hidden by them and a smile a mile wide pulling his at his lips.

"Peter." She cooed, taking them. "These are gorgeous."

"Happy Valentine's day, baby."

"Did you see yours?" She asked hopefully.

"No one's ever gotten me flowers before and I love them." He kissed her cheek, thinking back to the arrangement that was sitting on the kitchen counter fondly.

A year later, y/n walked down the aisle with a bouquet of red roses, sunflowers, and daisies.