Breaking the Void

Chapter 36 - Anniversary Dinner

(Your POV):
When we arrived back at Peter's, May was gone and Peter immediately headed into the kitchen. Curious to know what we were going to have for dinner, I followed him and set my nearly-empty hot chocolate cup on the counter.

"Can I help with anything?" I asked, watching as Peter began to put together ingredients that had been set up for his use, probably by May.

Peter shook his head, "nope, I'm going to make dinner for you, you can just relax. You've told me you have to feed yourself every night, so I want to give you a break from that."

"It's really not that bad, most of the time I just heat up food anyways, I don't really have much time to cook with all of the constant work we have for school."

Peter suddenly interrupted, "and we're not talking about school tonight, either. We're finally on vacation and we're going to enjoy it."

I snorted at his comment, "babe, you can't say we're on vacation once you see the amount of AP English work I was assigned, not to mention all of my other classes. I have a feeling I will be working through Christmas this year."

"No you won't because you'll be joining May and I this year, and not through FaceTime like last year, we want you here in person."

"Are you sure? I mean, I really don't want to intrude-"

"(Y/N), you're family, you could never intrude."

A warm sensation flooded my body as I found myself lost in Peter's eyes, "do-do you really think that way of me?"

His lips pulled up into a smile, "of course I do, (Y/N/N). And May does too, she's already planning our wedding. You don't mind getting married somewhere tropical, do you?"

"Trust me, she's already assured me it's ok that I can't cook because at least my future husband can," I laughed, loving May despite her persistence to see us walking down the aisle together.

"Speaking of cooking, I need to finish this up so that we can eat. Now go relax, I've got this handled," Peter assured me, placing a peck on my cheek.

I sighed as I gave in, taking a seat on the counter and watching him work. It didn't take him too long to produce the most heavenly-smelling rendition of (your favorite dish), placing its on the table for us to share.

"Oh Peter, you really shouldn't have gone through all of this trouble. But it smells absolutely amazing, why didn't I know you were such a great chef?"

The tips of his ears turned pink as he began to dish me out some, "well, I'm actually just mediocre, but I've been practicing this dish for weeks."

"Pete, you really didn't need to do that, I am more than happy just spending the evening with you."

"Yeah, but I wanted to make it special, it's the least that you deserve."

I flashed him a smile, "well you have certainly succeeded on that front."

The meal tasted just as good as it looked and I couldn't help but wonder how many hours he had put in making it perfect. It was just another reminder that I didn't, and wouldn't ever, deserve him.

After we finished eating and I finally managed to convince him to let me take care of the dishes, we settled down in the living room so that we could exchange gifts. Peter disappeared into his room to grab his, but came back a minute later with the present in hand while I had his gift sitting in my lap.

Nervously, I handed the present over to him, hoping that he would like it while he did the same to me. Curiously, I looked inside the bag, discovering a drawing of the two of us ice skating earlier in the evening.

"Peter, how on earth did you do this while I was standing right there?" I asked in shock as I pulled it out of the bag so that I could get a better look at it.

"Well, I when I went to grab hot chocolates, I also picked this up from the rink artist. I, um, sorta let him know in advance so that you could have this memory forever and I thought maybe it would be more meaningful than a picture."

I noticed how nervous Peter was so I placed my hand on his thigh and smiled, "I absolutely love it, Peter, thank you so much!" I placed my lips against his in a fleeting kiss before returning my gaze to the gorgeous drawing. The artist had managed to capture the look of adoration in Peter's eyes that always made me fall deeper in love with him and I had never seen myself look so happy before.

"There's another thing in there too," Peter spoke up, pulling me out of my fascination with the drawing.

Curiously, I peered back into the bag, finding a small rectangular paper resting on the bottom. I fished it out and discovered that it was an invitation to another one of Stark's parties, this one his Christmas Eve get together at the Avengers Tower.

"I-I wasn't exactly sure that you would want to come, I mean I know parties aren't exactly your thing, but you seemed to enjoy yourself last time," Peter explained, clearly very uncertain if I would like his gift.

I gave him a reassuring smile, "I would love to go. Besides, I know parties aren't really your thing either, but you would never dream of turning down Tony. So I guess I just have to be your plus one, now don't I? And at least there's always the promise of great food."

He broke out into a relieved smile then turned his attention to the gift I had gotten him. The first thing he pulled out was a sweater, which he looked at quizzically so I immediately jumped in to explain, "that is the sweater that you gave me when we were out on the balcony at Harry's party. Well, it's not the actual one because I stole that, but I wanted to get you a replacement because I don't think I'm ever actually going to give yours back."

"I was wondering where it went," Peter teased with a smile, kissing my cheek before removing the other present from the bag. He burst into laughter as he saw the Spider-Man socks that I had found in a store one day and simply could not resist the temptation to buy them for him.

"(Y/N), I love these so much," he finally managed to compose himself enough to say. "Now everyone will just think I'm obsessed with Spider-Man and not actually him."

"Just make sure to show them to Flash when we get back, you might make him a little jealous."

"I still try to avoid Flash as much as possible, although he has definitely toned down his bullying now that I have a personal bodyguard that scares the living hell out of him."

I ran my fingers through his curls, "is that all that I am to you? Just some muscles to keep the bullies away?"

"Well you certainly do have some great muscles, but no, you know you're much more than that to me."

I hummed at his response, "then perhaps I should give you my last anniversary present. Unfortunately I wasn't able to fit myself into that gift bag."

-

(A/N): Presents are honestly my least favorite things to plan because I want to think of thoughtful gifts but I feel that I personally am a bad gift giver so that just makes things complicated (for example me trying to plan something to give my dad for his birthday while in quarantine so I can't just meander through shops was so hard because I basically had to rely on Amazon). Anyway, obviously Peter also doesn't have money, so I thought a drawing would be cute (just please don't point out that rinks usually don't have artists because this is the MCU and they do there ok, Kevin told me this personally)

Also, I have two ideas for Loki fanfictions that are simmering in my head and I had questions to ask you (I know y'all might just read Peter fanfics but like please still vote). So one would be Earth-based taking place after Avengers and the other would be Asgard-based before Thor so yeah let me know which one you think I should pursue first. And then the second thing is should I make it LokixReader or LokixOC? Please let me know even if you have no plans of reading it!