15743/GED

GED
Date of Scene:	29 August 2023
Location:	Cindy's Pad
Synopsis:	Study time! Peter provides the study materials, Cindy provides the distractions...
Cast of Characters:	Cindy Moon, Peter Parker

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Cindy Moon has posed:
The only thing Cindy hated more than studying for the G.E.D. was being tutored by the only human being on the planet that she couldn't THINK around.

This whole girlfriend/boyfriend thing was only like a day old, and it was already proving to be... problematic.

On the bright side of things, Cindy was eating and sleeping again, which was good for her general health (and her webbing). After curling up with Peter in her bed and falling asleep, she'd woken up hours later and ordered a few boxes of pizza for them to munch on at their leisure.

Calories? Pfffft! Spider metabolism at its finest.

Okay, so, in truth, they hadn't even gotten around to the /tutoring/ part, yet. But Cindy had made it to the couch with her phone while she waited for the pizza to be delivered, and she was scrolling through websites to start figuring out exactly what she needed to learn.

She was wearing a black t-shirt with 'I LIKE K-POP AND MAYBE 3 PEOPLE.' printed across the front that was twice as big as it needed to be for her frame, and though she was wearing shorts underneath, the way it fit it seemed to be the only thing she was wearing.

Peter Parker has posed:
With absolutely no warning, Spider-Man sails through the narrow opening of Cindy's kitchen window. A flip and a single step and he stops almost instantly, though the carpet betrays him by lifting off the ground with a few muted *rips*.

"Oops." Spidey removes his mask and shakes his hair out, then sets about kicking the carpet back down. With that Spider-Grip, he's better than a contractor with a knee puller.

"Study materials ahoy," he tells Cindy, lifting the knapsack in his hand. He sets the straps across the back of a chair and starts unloading it. "GED Study Guide, GED exam guide, SAT prep guide-- glad I hung onto this one," he says with a wry humor, holding the book aloft. "And the--" he looks in his bag, then leans in closer and pushes some things around.

"And the thing I ... must have... dropped," he adds, looking behind him regretfully. For a moment he seems to be considering going back to look for it, and instead gives Cindy a chagrined look. "Well it's OK, it's not important."

Peter looks around, then at Cindy with a subtle spread of his fingers. "...Did I actually beat Panucci's back here?"

Cindy Moon has posed:
Cindy curls up a bit and sort of pretends to shield her face with her arms while Peter's skidding to a stop... and taking part of her carpet with him.

"Holy crap, Peter! Do I need to make you a landing strip?!"

She's watching him kick it back down with pursed lips, an accusatory lift of one eyebrow, but there's the faintest hint of a smile on her lips. It was hard to be /too/ mad at him when he'd just swung from Harlem to Queens and back to get study materials for her... faster than the pizza could be delivered.

But her eyes are following his gaze out the window and back with a curious expression.

"Was it /really/ not important though?" she asks skeptically. "And, yeah.. but only by..."

And then there's a knock on the door.

Peter Parker has posed:
At the knock Peter backflips over the low divider separating the kitchen from living area, and darts deeper to hide behind the fridge.

"I'm not here!" he hisses at Cindy.

There he hides until the pizza transaction is completed he walks back around the fridge and towards Cindy's bedroom. "I'm gonna go get changed," he explains, and ducks into the room.

A few moments later he emerges in blue boxers and a plain white tee-shirt. In his hands is his spider-suit, being pushed into a compression bag for easy travel. "Oh-- it was just a notebook," he clarifies. He looks at Cindy and shrugs. "What I dropped. I got you a, uhhhhh study... notebook. With the lines, and the schedule, and planner, an'..." he doodles in the air with one hand and trails off, letting his wrist flop against his side.

"Did they get the pizza right?" he asks with a hopeful expression.

Cindy Moon has posed:
Cindy lifts her eyebrows, smirking a little, and sets her phone down when she gets up to go answer the door.

"You know you could hide under the bed like a normal stalker. Hey, Frank."

"Uhhhh... Hey, Cin. Everything okay?"

"Yeah. Spider-Man's hiding behind my fridge."

Silence hangs in the air for a second.

"...You're kinda weird, huh?" Frank asks.

"More than you know."

"I like your shirt."

"...Thanks?" Cindy.. asks.

"Hey, I wondered if you wanted to--"

"Thanks, Frank." With something just short of a slam, the door closes in Frank's face, and Cindy's moving the three pizza boxes to the stove, setting them all out and opening them up while Peter's changing. By the time he comes back out, she's set out a couple of paper plates and some paper towels.

But then there's the description of the notebook... and Peter's standing there in boxers, her eyes sharpening as soon as they fall on him.

So, yes. They'd made a discovery. Indulging that connection made their pheromones easier to tolerate.

It did /not/ make them somehow magically immune, however.

"Uhh... yeah, they did."

Focus, Cin.

She looked back at the pizzas and brushed her long, dark hair back over her ear.

"...You... bought me a notebook?"

Somehow, that sounded like a big deal.

Peter Parker has posed:
"Yeah, I'm-- sorry," Peter says, wincing again. Then Cindy's looking at him That Way and he clears his throat, looking the other direction. Cough. Hands on hips. Motion aborted. 'Be cool, Parker, be cool'.

"Pizza, uh, smells great," he offers a little weakly. Since he's standing in the kitchen he tasks himself with digging some cold soda out of Cindy's fridge and walks over, cracking both open with a fingertip and offering one to her before setting the other at the seat across the table.

"It's hard to study without a notebook. I got piles and piles of 'em," he tells her. He picks up a slice and folds it in half to take a few quite, hungry bites. "Since you're basically just studying for one exam, you need one main notebook. Then like, others," he mumbles around the bite, covering his mouth. "One for science, an' math, and history," he clarifies with a 'and so on' gesture. "Makes it easier to keep track of what you've learned and what you still... need to learn."

Cindy Moon has posed:
/Pizza, uh, smells great./

"So do you."

It's /almost/ like the words are out of her mouth before Cindy had even seriously thought them through, but she doesn't take them back, either.

"Thanks."

She takes that can with a little smile, sneaking in a quick kiss on his cheek on the way by, before piling up her plate, too, and coming over to sit beside him on the couch.

See? They could do normal couple things.

Just look at them being... normal. So normal, the way Peter just folded up and ravaged that slice of pizza.. the cheese so thick it created long, gooey arcs of..

"Mmmhmm," she said in her best /I'm listening/ tone, chugging a bit of her soda and then letting out a long sigh as the carbonation burns its way down her throat. "Lots of notebooks. Got it."

She really /was/ trying. To be honest, she could be a /lot/ worse. There were so many jokes and innuendos she was passing up on, and she was just.. focused on eating her pizza.

"I kind of want to go back and look for that one you brought, now. Is that ridiculous? I'm.. not really used to being given things, and I feel a little bad that it didn't make it..."

Peter Parker has posed:
Peter stops mid-bite at that compliment, brows raising. No words come to mind, though that gooey cheese starts sliiiiding off the slice of pie.. and lands right on his shorts. "Oh crap," he mutters, and hastily tries to scrape the cheese and pepperoni slice off the clothing.

He clears his throat once, looks at Cindy, then does it again, and ... reaches for his soda so he can stall with a long slurp.

Fortunately, she keeps going.

"Uhh... it's a lot of ground to cover," he says, wincing apologetically at her. "It was my fault anyway, I guess I didn't close my bag tight enough," he explains. "Don't stress, really, I'll-- I'll go get another one, they're not..." he looks at Cindy, eyes narrowing as he tries to think of a smart way to conclude that sentence.

"Not that ... expensive," he admits.

Smarts have failed.

Cindy Moon has posed:
"...I know. It's.."

Cindy's attention turns back on Peter, the words barely more than whispered. She started to try to explain, her lips moving for an instant, but then there's a little shake of her head.

"You know you.. um.."

Her lower lip disappears between her teeth, her eyes sharpening again as they seem to fixate on his mouth.

"..you've got.. a little.. sauce.."

She was leaning closer, but at least between the sauce that was still on his boxers or the sauce on his face, she was closing in on his face, lips finding the corner of his mouth and.. well.. claiming that pizza sauce.

Of course, as these things tend to go.. it doesn't just stop there. A moment later, she's angling for his lips more fully.

Peter Parker has posed:
Here? This side? No? Peter is watching Cindy's face a little nervously. Not because he doesn't know what she's going to do, but because he doesn't *know* what she's going to do. And there is the small part of him that thinks to itself, 'Peter, exercise some self-restraint, we need to do study time'.

Which is why she takes him by surprise with that kiss. His attention divided, Peter can only react to Cindy's approach.

And there's of course only one way to really *react*, after all.

He had been doing /pretty/ well, all things considered, but between their dressed-down state, the comfort of her apartment, and the scent of her hair suddenly filling his nostrils... Peter hesitates for half a second, then drops his pizza back on the box without looking so he can wrap his hand behind Cindy's neck to pull her closer to him on the sofa.