#I don't even have the complete lab map or any of the other goals I set for myself yet

[lauriegraham01]

i wish we could be honest

pairings: tasm!peter parker x gn!reader

summary: peters been pulling away and try as you might you wonder if there's anything left to save.

wc: 1,281

cw: angst, fighting, feeling worthless, eventual fluff at the end, hurt/comfort. based on the song "honest" by the neighbourhood.

patience test my patience

You didn't how things escalated the way they had. You and Peter constantly at each others throats, throwing hurtful words at each other and pushing past each others boundaries. You do know that things weren't always this ugly though.

You and Peter had attended the same schools for years but it wasn't until you were paired as lab partners for a chemistry class in high school that the two of you had actually gotten close. From there you two spent all of your free time together, your friendship blossoming into something beautiful until one fateful night he took you on a rooftop picnic where you could see the beautiful New York skyline and asked you to be his. From that moment on, you two became each others world and you only grew closer.

As time went on, it seemed that Peter and your relationship only grew stronger. Eagerly talking about the future and what plans you both had. You had big ambitions on moving away and attending university in Europe in hopes of becoming a lawyer. Peter had been nothing but supportive of your goals, never making you feel less than for wanting to move away and even pushing you to do your best.

I hope you find a way to be yourself someday

When Peter introduced you to Aunt May and Uncle Ben, you were overwhelmed by their instant acceptance. They were so welcoming of you and treated you as though you were apart of their family, which you were grateful for. Peter opened up to you about his past and how he came to live with his Aunt and Uncle and how grateful he was to them. So when you heard the news of his Uncle Ben's passing you knew that his world would be completely rocked. You tried your best to be there for him but he didn't always make that easy. He begun to shut himself out from everyone and while you understood where he was coming from, it still hurt. Peter and you went through a bit of a separation.

I pray for the best, I pray for the best for you

It had been weeks since you had last seen or heard from Peter. He was nowhere to be found at school and all your messages and calls went unanswered. It wasn't until you came to Aunt May with your concerns that you were finally able to get word about him. After getting an earful from his aunt, he decided to give you a call just to tell you he was alive. It was there that you had convinced him to meet you here at the pier so that you could talk things out.

You wrapped your jacket around you tighter as another cool breeze blew past you, sending a shiver through your bones. It was late and dark out, you weren't completely alone though- with a couple of other people walking and hanging nearby so it wasn't totally unsafe. Things in Queens had actually quieted down recently, crime was declining and you had your theories as to how so-mapping it out to the masked vigilante that the Daily Bugle couldn't seem to get enough of.

Letting a deep exhale and watching the fog from the cold air blow, you make out Peter's figure in the distance and you stand up slightly. It had been a long time since you were nervous to see Peter and the feeling felt almost foreign.

“You wanted to see me?” His voice came out flat and emotionless. You give him a once over and judging from the bags forming underneath his eyes you knew he wasn't getting any sleep.

“Peter, what's going on? I haven't seen you in weeks and I know you're not okay so would you tell me what's wrong?"

"I-I'm fine." He lets out a dry laugh.

"Seriously I'm good, you don't have to worry about me."

"Peter, we can't keep doing this. I cant keep doing this- pretending we're fine when were not, not when you're pulling away and shutting me out.”

“I’m not shutting you out, I’m right here!" He protested, raising his voice at you.

“No you’re not!" Volume matching his, you close your eyes and let out a defeated sigh.

"I wish you could be honest with me." Peter didn't know why but hearing that from you had hurt more than the distance he's wedged between you two.

"The truth is I…I can’t feel you anymore Peter.”

Peter closed his eyes and rolled his head back as he tried to collect himself. He wipes his hands over his face in frustration before adverting his gaze back onto you. As he looks into your eyes he can see the pain behind them. The pain that you're trying so hard to keep at bay.

The pain that exists because of his own hand.

“You have to trust me, y/n. I’m trying to protect you.”

“Oh screw you Parker! I don't need your protection, I can handle myself just fine."

“Y/n it's complicated. Please just-”

“No!” You snapped, anger laced in you voice and if looks could kill, Peter would be long dead.

"Look Peter, I love you but I'm not the type to sit around waiting on a guy to make up his mind," you explained. " I know you're hurting, but you don't have to hurt alone, Peter. Whatever it is I am here with you because I want there to be an after for us."

Peter knew that you were right, he knew that he didn't have to do it alone and that you would help him carry it, and he hated himself for it. He hated himself for having so much baggage to put on you. He always thought that you deserved better than him. Someone who wouldn't drag you down. That's why he had pulled back, in hopes of self-sabotaging his relationship and that you'd realize that you were in fact better off without him.

"I haven't been completely honest with you, y/n."

"Go on," you implore, brows burrowing in confusion.

"Okay. Okay. There's something i've been hiding, this uh-part of me if you will," he said struggling to find the right words. "I wanted to protect you because I figured the less people knew about it the better but...i'm spiderman." he looks up at you nervously.

“That's it?"

Peters stares back at you dumbfoundedly, taken aback from your lack of a reaction. He honestly expected for you to be shocked or have some sort of reaction but you seemed unphased by the confession.

"Uh-y-yea that's it."

"I've known for months now, Peter. It really doesn't take much to figure out why you end up so many bruises and why you're always tired and sneaking out at night."

“And that doesn't bother you?"

"Oh, Peter. No of course not, my love." You step forward closing some of the distance between you two. Raising a hand up to cup his cheek your thumb softly stroking his cheek. You missed the feel of him and you basked in the warmth of his touch.

"The people you've saved, the way you protect this city-Peter, you're a hero. If anything I'm amazed by you."

Peter's left speechless. He truly didn't deserve you. He was amazed by how accepting you were to his secret. As he looked into your eyes he saw nothing but love within your e/c eyes staring back at him.

"Why'd you stick around? Why'd you stay with me?"

"Because I love you Peter." You rest your forehead against his as your hands lower to find his, intertwining your bare hands within his gloved ones.

"I love you too."

[maryellencarter]

have started a new playthrough of breath of the wild with the intention of practicing the combat techniques, which i am quite bad at. (look, shield surfing and flurry rushes both require using three of the control inputs at once, i know i have ten fingers but i was never very good at playing chords on the piano either)

i don't know how far i'll get on any of these goals, but i'm also sort of vaguely considering:

* 100% run? have never finished one. there's at least one korok (near the akkala tech lab, uphill boulder golf with a lynel in the middle of the course) that i'm genuinely just not sure i can complete. i want to do this part glitchless if at all, so no seed duping allowed.

* clear all enemies no blood moon run? this is technically possible, although the timing to get the blood moon shrine to spawn without actually respawning enemies is quite tricky. there's a save-reload exploit that lets you delay the blood moon for a full cycle at a time, which would be pretty necessary for some of the night quests to be completable. my main interest in trying this is to force me to actually fight more enemies (and therefore get better at the combat) rather than rely totally on sneaking around and avoiding them. also to make weapons rarer and therefore more valuable/exciting to find, because in a normal playthrough i usually get overloaded on high tier weapons pretty quickly, especially once i get woodland tower with the respawning royal claymore. it's not actually possible to completely clear the map, because there will always be random spawns, like nighttime stalkoblins, or yiga after you defeat master kohga, but i feel like it'd be pretty entertaining to just be waltzing around past enemy camps you cleared and having them continue to have been cleared.

* all chests run? this would not be a true 100% objective because i have no interest at all in the glitching required to get "impossible" chests. perhaps "poke my nose into every nook and cranny" run would be more accurate -- there are so many tiny hidden things in BotW that even people who've spent thousands of hours in the game have never seen. this kind of goes hand in hand with the no blood moon run, because i'll definitely run out of hero's path time long before i finish any such playthrough, so the main way to tell if i've already been somewhere (other than my own memory, which *is* pretty good for BotW locations because the geology is so realistic it feels like an actual landscape and sticks in my memory the same way) will be if i already killed off the enemies there.

* no guides run. at least until like 99% completion or so. i've been playing pokemon violet with a collectibles map constantly open, which is about the only way i can enjoy that game because the geology/geography is just impossible for me, and i have played BotW the same way on other saves, but... hyrule feels, idk, homey enough? it already lives in my bones enough that i can, and want to, run around it like a real place and get to know every corner. like i did with my childhood hometown, and have not had the spoons to do irl since. i'll definitely make a great deal of use of the sheikah sensor (i've done all shrines before -- on the switch lite, which is a *trip* for motion controls shrines) and any other detection things like the korok mask, any ingame method i'm granted to find the collectibles.

* no amiibo run? this is more practicality because i left my botw amiibos at leia's. but also they always feel a little game-breaky, not even so much with the exclusive drops as just with the extra resources you get early -- i don't even remember most of the places you can find safflina in the game, just because i always get so much from zelda amiibos if i'm scanning them daily, for instance.

i'm playing on my switch lite again because the regular size switch really kills my hands in handheld mode. my beat-the-game save is also on the switch lite and i didn't want to overwrite it so i made a secondary profile. so far i have done the magnesis shrine (failed deeply at using the metal boxes in the shrine to bop the guardian on the head, which will kill it if you do it right but you have to either use motion controls to fling it down or get the guardian to stand under the box while you drop it from a great height) and almost shot king rhoam for a squirrel because he was wandering around in the forest (as the old hermit, of course) and i didn't know he could spawn there if you dick around long enough before completing the plateau. so i'm already discovering things! ^_^

(the main issue with attempting a no blood moon run is that i am absent minded and usually fail to notice it's a blood moon night until it drops the cutscene on me. that will probably be the major obstacle there. i don't expect to run completely out of weapons -- at minimum i can always get more yiga gear, champion gear, and once i have the master sword it recharges. i've never attempted trial of the sword, idk if i will? certainly not until i'm much more confident with my combat techniques)

one of my favorite things about playing video games is that there's always an intended way for you to solve whatever puzzle is presented to you. in games where the intended way is the only possible way, i get pretty frustrated, because i do not have the 30+ years of gaming history knowledge that most games assume -- i got my first controller in 2021 (for PC, so as to decide if i even wanted to get my first console, the switch, which i also did in 2021). but botw is so committed to the open-world creativity thing that there are usually a bunch of different ways to solve the puzzles -- for instance, there are many "stand on this switch and the door opens, now find something to put on the switch and hold it down so you can go through the door" puzzles, and there's always something provided like a barrel or a chest to put on the switch, but on many of them you can also use the stasis rune or 1-3 campfires (which are weirdly heavy) to hold the switch down. so it feels... idk how to articulate this... when i know i *can* just use stasis or a campfire, it's more fun and less frustrating to try to figure out what the game devs were thinking, what the intended method is and especially how they signposted it. (i have watched so many botw streams just trying to get a feel for how the devs handle signposting, because i don't have much of that assumed gaming background -- mainly mass effect trilogy, which handled signposting and loot placement extremely differently in each game -- and i'm not naturally very observant. leia says i'm high INT/low WIS, and that definitely applies to my irl perception score too :P another reason to try for an all chests type of run. getting in the habit of Perceiving things more)

(mass effect 1 is why i even bought botw though. i absolutely love the open world aspects of dicking around on the uncharted planets, except when i trip over thresher maws, so i was like "people are calling this the best open world game ever? i will Investigate" and they were correct)

(also i am very impressed that moldugas are not thresher maws. so damn many things copy dune and have their desert sand burrowing giant enemy be sandworms, complete with the blue tongues, which i always think of as thresher maws because i encountered those way before dune. moldugas are completely unlike thresher maws except for the burrowing and popping up at you. i genuinely can't figure out if there's any rl critter they're supposed to resemble, but by god they're not fucking sandworms)