Kels

He flashes you a kind smile over his shoulder beneath the glugging of the dark violet ale he pours into a jeweled chalice. It sounds much louder in the quiet, along with that of your slippers whispering against the cobbles as you walk further into the unfamiliar chambers — the place you’ll likely spend the rest of your days, like a vast and gilded tomb.

“Thank you, my lord,” you say with a smile as your hands reach for the gold tie at your waist. It unlaces with one soft pull, and your fingers head next for the button keeping you wrapped in the emerald fabric. “Though… I must say… I think it looks much better like this—”

The gown pools to your feet with a soft thud, leaving you suddenly bare above the waist before him. A thin silver chain sits across your belly, holding your pale underskirt in place around your hips. The dancing firelight kisses through the thin fabric to reveal the shape of your body underneath it — the curve of your inner thighs, and the shadow of hair just between them. 

“—Don’t you?” you wonder, eyes widening in a faux-innocent sort of look.

Gwayne’s chest rises with a slow inhale as his pale eyes move slowly over the sight of you — not with desire, perhaps, but with reverence. The quiet appreciation a man might have for a fine piece of art, to be admired at from a careful distance.

“Well…” the man hums lowly, lips curling upward into an unsure smile. He abandons the untouched goblet on the table behind him and closes the remaining distance between you, lest you see the uncertainty hidden in his eyes. “You certainly do not need it, my lady…”

His pale hands are cold when they smooth around your waist, just above the thin chain of your underskirt; fingers long and calloused from decades of swordwork. You tip your chin back to meet the man halfway when he ducks softly down to kiss you. 

His pink mouth is soft and plush against yours, tasting of wine and mint and the honeyed remains of dinner.

When your hands reach for his broad shoulders, you can feel the tension coiled in his muscles as he attempts to summon a hunger all men should surely possess for a woman like you. You feel the trying within him without having to search for it — you’d been patient with men your whole life, been told of what your mouth did to them before you were old enough to truly understand the words, and how little urging men typically required for you to do so.

Though it seems to require a great deal more of that urging here now.

You kiss him deeper, licking into his parted mouth in a way that has made every man before him surrender to his knees. Gwayne exhales a heavy sigh through his nose, breath fanning warm along your cupid’s bow as his hands grip tighter at the plush of your waist. You let yours slide down the front of his emerald coat until they reach the leather of his belt. You cup him gently there just below, expecting to find him some of the way hard, but find him soft under the trousers instead.

Gwayne pulls off your mouth with a soft smack. His panted breaths fan across your cheek as he rests his forehead against yours. “Forgive me…” he laughs breathlessly, tongue darting to lick your spit from his mouth. “Must be the wine…” 

Your mouth curls upward into a sympathetic smile. “Shall I fetch Ser Criston?”

Gwayne goes rigid against you in a blink. Horror floods his pale blue eyes and wrinkles the pale skin between his brows. “…What?”

“Perhaps he could join us— I truly wouldn’t mind,” you tell him, peering at the man with eyes wide in earnest when he steps back from you. “He could help you get started until you’re—” 

His chest shudders through a trembling breath as the heat of humiliation prickles beneath his skin like burning embers. “I— I don’t know what you’re talking about...”

Gwayne turns away from you completely then. He puts the entire breadth of the chamber between you as he makes way for the balcony, inhaling deeply to drag the starry, summer night air into his tightening lungs. You watch him go as a cold feeling surges through your chest; not quite anger, and not quite hurt. You slip back into the crumpled wedding gown with a heavy sigh, fastening the emerald fabric closed once more.

“We are husband and wife now— There is no need for us to play games here,” you remind him, tying the gold lace around your hips as you step onto the balcony with him. The silken breeze ripples in your skirts as the whole of Oldtown stretches before you in flickering torchlight and salty air. Your hand settles gently over his spine, and he tenses beneath the soft weight of your tenderness on instinct. “Save that energy for the rest of court, my lord— You’re going to need it.”

Gwayne turns slowly to face you. His blue eyes have gone a paler shade from the unshed tears hiding in the very backs of them, glittering gold in the firelight. You meet his look of uncertainty with a surer smile.

“I don’t care if you want men and women equally, or if you prefer the company of men alone,” you mutter lowly with your head bowed close, words meant for his ears alone. “We can try again later, however you’d like— with a friend present, perhaps, if that eases things. Whatever you want. But for my sake, it must be done.” 

The shadow of his adam’s apple bobs in his throat through a thick swallow. “And if I cannot?” he whispers on bated breath, light eyes swimming as they dart back and forth between yours. “Do it at all, I mean?” 

Your smile does not waver in the face of his doubt. You simply shake your head at him in return. Your hand drifts up his spine until your fingers thread in the short auburn hair at the nape of his neck.

“Before you took me in, my lord, I came from a far lesser house. Where bread was counted— actually counted, so that my brothers might eat their fill and I might learn to want less… I had a father who reminded me daily what I cost to feed and clothe and keep unmarried. I wore gowns made out of scraps from my brother’s clothes before I came here,” you confess through a teary sort of laugh. “I know what it means to manage hard things, my lord. And I know there is always a way through them, if only you’re clever enough to find it.” 

Gwayne’s furrowed features loosen into a look of kinship and distant admiration. Whatever grievance he’d carried onto this balcony moments ago seems to slip from his tense shoulders entirely. As the quiet swells between you, the crowd below notices your presence on the balcony above. They call up at the two of you like barking hounds — all of them hungry for a story they might tell their children one day, of the night they watched a girl from nowhere marry among the richest and most handsome in Westeros, like a fairytale come to life.

“Smile, Ser Gwayne,” you lilt with an artificial grin of your own. You hold onto his arm with one hand while your other lifts to wave at the crowd gathering in the city below. “They’ve waited for this part all day…” 

Gwayne inhales a deeper breath; one that comes more easily to him this time. His smile seems to sit more effortlessly on his mouth, too, right before he ducks softly down to kiss you once more. Distant applause rings through the starry night when your lips meet — though there is little desire in it now, at least, not the kind the townsfolk below surely imagine there must be. 

There is only relief. The quiet alleviation of a burden finally being laid to rest; the final bow before the curtain is drawn.

The Hightower was a city built atop itself. Dungeons beneath kitchens, kitchens beneath halls, halls beneath solars, and solars beneath beacon fire that never died out. You feel more like a ghost haunting the torchlit halls than a bride of three weeks past wandering the passages of her own home. 

You slip into the kitchens on the whim of a sleepless night and come away with a square of honeyed lemon cake the cooks keep in stock specifically for you. A small theft, you think, as you take graceless bites on the walk back to your room — letting the sponge scatter in dry crumbs along the chest of your pale nightgown.

You’re three turns away from your chambers when you round another twisted corner and run directly into Lord Ormund Hightower — Gwayne’s eldest cousin of a few years or more, who stands a few inches or more taller in comparison too. He smells perpetually of the lavender-sandalwood incense from the silver pomander chained to his belt; still dressed for the day despite the late hour, with his doublet buttoned to the throat. His short dark-auburn curls are slightly mussed as though he’d been raking his hand through them, suggesting a quiet worry somewhere inside of him that he otherwise keeps hidden.

“My lady…” the man greets in a low melodic voice, and with a polite smile that shows mostly in the deepening creases beside his eyes.

With half of the cake still wadded in your cheek, you give the man a wordless look in return. One you’ve perfected over weeks of these exact encounters — a practiced, cynical, not-quite glare that makes you look half-dead behind the eyes. 

You, to put it plainly, did not care for Ormund Hightower. Gwayne had told you once, in the short way he often spoke of his cousin, that the man had a cruel streak he hid under all that piety. “He’s worn the mask of righteousness for so long…” he’d whispered under his breath, at a particularly unforgiving feast. “It isn’t any wonder how it fooled the man wearing it.”

And you believed your husband, for he had never once given you reason not to.

So it was rather dreadfully unfortunate that Ormund is, by any honest measure, an extraordinarily handsome man. More unfortunate still is how exceedingly difficult it has proved to hate such a handsome man — even as he falls into step beside you down the dimly lit corridor without invitation. Though his long legs match your even pace with an ease that irritates you more than it probably should.

“Sweets? At this hour?” he squints, nodding toward the nearly finished cake still pinched between your fingers. He flashes you a curt grin when you give him no immediate response in turn. “Though it makes sense, I suppose— that a thing as sweet as you would so often crave for them…”

You pluck the rest into your mouth with an unyielding glare. “I am perfectly capable of finding my own room, Ser Ormund,” you tell him, swiping your palms together as you swallow down the mouthful. “There is certainly no need to trouble yourself escorting me—”

“Your room?” he echoes, brows lowering until a deeper shadow is cast over his pale eyes in the dying torchlight. “Not our room?”

He flashes you a playfully confused look that you meet with nothing at all, features as still and as pleasant as smooth waters — a tentative expression you’ve grown to wear like armor, in these restless weeks at court.

“Is that because my cousin snores too loudly, my lady?” Ormund pries at your silence. “Or do you just have a taste for solitude?”

“I do enjoy a bit of time to myself, yes…” you answer lightly with a single nod, arms folding neatly at the base of your spine. “Though I’m sure the concept must seem foreign to a man as desperate for company as you seem to be.” 

“Well— desperate is a strong word,” he laughs somewhat bitterly, not missing the hidden insult in your words. “I am simply curious, my lady. Three weeks married and I have yet to hear so much as a whisper of your wedding night. Usually, there is some talk, as you know— between handmaidens, septas, and the like… And yet, there has been no word… Almost as if there were nothing to speak of…”

You keep your eyes forward and your pace steady, even when you feel Ormund’s pale eyes searing into your profile. “You seem quite interested in my marriage, Lord Ormund,” you quip lightly.

“Your marriage is quite interesting,” Ormund chuckles. “Not only to me, of course, but to the realm… It isn’t every day a lady of so small a house weds into one so great… That sort of thing always breeds interest… if nothing else.”

You turn slowly to face him, eyes narrowing with a feigned curiosity. “You’ve never married, have you, my lord?”

He falters briefly at the sudden question. The corners of his smug grin flicker slightly at the edges, as his adam’s apple bounces through a slow swallow. “No,” he answers finally and clears his throat. “I have been… unlucky in my affections, unfortunately.”

You nod to yourself and slow to a stop just outside your chamber door. Your nightgown whispers at your ankles when you turn to look at him properly for the first time since you collided in the corridor. You trade your usual glare for an artificially sweet expression — a softness where there had only been steel, a warmth where there had only been bitter cold. An expression you learned how to counterfeit over the years, though it seems to come a bit easier to you now.

You spot the exact moment he notices how differently you look upon him. The fleeting furrow of his brows; the way his gaze drops for half a second to your mouth before he catches himself again; the way his nostrils flare faintly, as though he cannot help but breathe you in. He can smell the bathing oils clinging to your skin and the floral perfume threaded in your hair from the proximity between you.

“That is unfortunate,” you murmur gently, stepping close enough towards him that it forces him to look down at you rather than past you. “Though perhaps it’s for the best— the whole notion of marriage seems to confuse you, so allow me to explain it.”

Ormund’s gaze hardens in a flicker. The dancing shadows from the dimming torchlight catch the clenching of his jaw as his ringed fingers curl into loose fists at his sides. But even still, your pretty smile never wavers.

“Your cousin is my husband by law— sealed by septon and signature and the whole weight of your family’s name behind it, so… Whatever we prefer in the privacy of our own chambers is no business of yours. Nor the realm’s. Nor anyone’s but his and mine,” you tell him with a polite grin despite the hidden venom in your words. “A woman does not require her husband’s appetite to match her own in order to be his wife, does she?”

“I feel The Seven would disagree with you, I’m afraid,” Ormund hums lowly, with the same artificially sweet tone threaded through his words. “The Father charges the husband to provide, and the Mother to nurture what is provided… The Faith is quite clear on what a dutiful marriage is for, my lady— And it is not... natural for a bride to remain a maiden three weeks past her wedding.”

The smile you give him then verges on sympathetic.

“You assume a great deal, my lord, about what you state you think I remain in,” you mutter quietly, and watch the weight of your words — the ambiguity within them — settle across his chiseled face. You tilt your head to your shoulder and drop your voice into a gentler tone. “But since you are obviously so fond of quoting scripture, perhaps you’ll recall what the Mother teaches of mercy— that even a sinner's body may yet serve a holy purpose, so long as the intention behind it is pure."

The words strike him harder than a whip across the spine. He tips his shaven chin upward, peering down at your faux-innocent stare from the bridge of his nose. 

You can see him wrapping his head around it all: a woman sinful enough to have known men before her husband, yet still somehow pious enough to wield the scripture like a sword of her own. It is unlike any expression you’ve seen from him before — a mixture of both fluster and acclaim. Your stomach twists with the sheer excitement of having put it there at all.

“Good night, Lord Ormund,” you say with a smile before slipping through the heavy door of your chambers. You shut it behind you with a soft click before he can think of the words to respond, and don’t spare a single look back at him before abandoning him in the empty corridor.

The bed you share on rare occasion with your husband is a wide, absurdly ornate thing — carved with Hightower lighthouses and shrouded by heavy velvet curtains designed to conceal the indecencies of the marriage bed; though there would be no indecencies to hide here. It was Gwayne’s room alone most nights, and on the few you actually shared it, it held nothing more scandalous between you than idle talk and innocent touches of fleeting affection.

You share one silken cushion between each other now, with your arms tucked beneath your heads and your breaths entwining on every exhale. Your legs tangle subconsciously together under the blankets like school children sharing a bed — the sort of closeness that meant nothing and expected even less.

“Do you know what Lady Merrell asked me today?” you mutter aloud into the silent bedroom, filled only by the crackling hearthfire and your shared breaths.

Gwayne exhales hard through his nose in place of a laugh; the tip of it almost brushes the bridge of yours as he shakes his auburn head against the pillow. “I hesitate to pry…” 

“She wanted to know whether I’d seen the maester about my courses,” you deadpan. “Very delicately, of course— as if she weren’t truly asking about whether or not I was capable of bearing children at all.”

Gwayne’s brows furrow. “And what did you tell her?” 

“That my blood was a matter between myself, my maester, and the fucking Seven— and that she was more than welcome to bother the other two for further detail, should her curiosity prove so desperate…” you scoff and roll onto your back. Your tired eyes trace the painted stars on the ceiling, where the gold leaf flakes slightly around the edges from time gone by. “Yesterday it was Lady Woodwright, the day before that it was your father… We’re six moons married, Gwayne, and no belly to show for it— The whispers will only get worse from here.”

“Aye… I imagine they will,” Gwayne huffs distantly, jaw flexing through a thick swallow. His soft eyes trace the outline of your profile, made weary from the long day and the particular mercilessness of court. “What about Ser Adrian?” he offers suddenly. “He’s been rather obvious about his admiration for you as of late… I daresay he’d be a rather— willing participant, should a thing be asked of him.”

Your head turns slowly until your cheek brushes the silk cushion below. Your brows lower as your eyes search his face for any hint of uncertainty or sarcasm, and find only sincerity swimming in his pale blue eyes instead. 

Your lips curl into an amused smile. “Are you offering to lend out your wife like a common whore, dear husband?”

He scoffs. “Of course not! I’m only saying that you have options, is all. If only you’re clever enough to find them— isn’t that what you said?” Gwayne quips with a sly smile, eyes narrowing in a playful look. “Though, I confess, I don’t much care for the idea of Ser Adrian’s hands on you at all… I’ve known the fool too long; and I know too well where they’ve been…”

You exhale a quiet laugh. “Careful, my lord. I’ll start to think you’re jealous…” 

“I’m only trying to be efficient, dear wife,” he quips, lifting his fingers to muss idly at the lace frills along the chest of your nightgown. He goes quiet for a long moment thereafter, gaze going distant in thought before he mutters suddenly aloud. “…What about Ormund?”

Your eyes narrow. “What about Ormund?”

“He’d certainly be the best match, wouldn’t he?” Gwayne shrugs. “He’s unmarried. And of mine own blood— Close enough in kin that whatever child came of it would surely favor the Hightower look, regardless of the getting…”

You keep your face carefully arranged into a look of mild surprise, as if the man’s name had not already been living in the back of your head for weeks now already. 

You hadn’t expected Gwayne to arrive at the conclusion on his own, to be sure — you had assumed you would need to steer him slowly there, the way you had steered so many men to so many unconscious decisions before now. You had been circling Ormund for weeks, carefully cultivating a rivalry with just enough fire behind it to keep it warm for later use; though you hadn’t been entirely sure what that use would look like until now.

“That wouldn’t trouble you?” you mutter softly.

Gwayne considers for a long moment before shaking his head against the pillow, auburn tendrils set aflame beneath the emerald silk below. 

“No,” he answers, pink lips jutting softly. “I only very much doubt we could manage it… He is not so easily led as other men, my cousin. He’s like to think it a mortal sin twice over— adultery and deceiving his own blood besides… I’d only worry that his piety, if that’s what he so wishes to call it, isn’t like to bend for something as simple as a pretty face. Even yours.”

He smiles tiredly and lifts his hand to pinch your chin between his thumb and forefinger. The slow smile you give him in turn borders on devilish in an instant. “Leave that part to me, dear husband.”

You lay awake long after Gwayne’s breathing had evened beside you, mapping out every possible avenue of subterfuge available to you. All men were similar in their own ways; they each had specific buttons to press or levers to pull that brought them down to their knees without trying — there was an air of gentle submission in all of them, should you know where to look. And Ormund’s, you figured, lay somewhere in his conviction, which he used as a sword most days. Or a shield.

There was no use in arguing a seemingly pious man out of his faith, you realized, but there was every bit of it in arguing him into believing his faith required precisely what you needed from him. 

So you find the man the following afternoon, where you know he takes his lunches in solitude on the balcony overlooking the eastern gardens. The air smells of washed linens strung to dry on the balustrade down below and the perfumed scent of lemon trees planted in a long line across the lawn. A warm breeze blows in from a cloudless blue sky, and Ormund smells you before he sees you — the sweet, musky concoction of bathing oils he’s come to associate with you alone.

He glances up from his plate of sliced bread, soft cheese, and ripe figs a half second before you turn the corner. He stills at the sight of you with his fork and knife still in hand — it was a rare sight, really, you coming to meet him on your own. Rarer still is the forlorn look etched upon your features now, that you try hopelessly to hide.

“My lady…” Ormund hums lowly, equal parts confused and delighted as he jokes, “To what do I owe the interruption of my solitude?”

“I wasn’t aware solitude required your permission to be interrupted, my lord,” you quip in response, eyes narrowing in his direction as you walk further onto the sun-bleached stone. The sharp smile you give him in turn is heavy with a sadness you do not entirely feel but let show regardless. “I believe you taught me that one, actually.”

Ormund swallows down his mouthful. The humor drains slowly from his chiseled features at the strange sound of your voice, having seemingly lost all the bite he’s come to cherish. “You are troubled,” he says to himself, neither a question nor a firm statement.

You scoff as though to dismiss him, hands folding over the back of your rustling skirts. “I’m perfectly well. Thank you for noticing.” 

“You are not,” Ormund insists with a shake of his head and gestures with his cutlery for emphasis. “Your comebacks want for their usual bite, I’m afraid. And you only argue with me when you’re in proper spirits— I’ve come to look forward to it, really, so… something must surely be amiss.

You let your averted gaze drift slowly from the greenery of the garden to his attentive eyes. You peer at the man from beneath your lashes, letting your composure crack just slightly — just enough to allow him to believe that he’s the only man in the entire realm perceptive enough to have noticed it.

You let your sheepish smile waver at the edges as you assure him with a shake of your head, “It’s nothing that concerns you, my lord. I assure you—”

“Everything at Oldtown concerns me,” he scoffs as though the statement were as obvious as any other. “Curse of the tower, I’m afraid…” 

He sets his silver cutlery to his plate with two quiet clinks and gestures to the seat across from him. “Sit,” he tells you. “Tell me what’s soured you, sweet girl.”

The nickname is not a rare one from his lips, though it strikes you warm somewhere deep in the chest as though it were the first time you’ve ever heard it. You inhale sharply through your nose, ribs straining slightly against your corset, and close the remaining distance between you. Ormund gives you the whole of his attention as you smooth down your skirts and descend into the opposite seat — the same unwavering devotion you imagine he must give to his prayers.

“It’s only the throes of marriage, I suppose,” you attempt to joke, though the humor dies somewhere in your heavy exhale halfway. Your gaze turns back to the garden below instead. “Your cousin, he… He still hasn’t…”

“Touched you?” Ormund finishes when you trail off, with very little reservation in comparison. He scoffs in amusement to himself and cuts into his fig without looking up. “Of that I’m well aware. My cousin has always lacked the appetite for finer things, my lady… But it isn’t a failing of the meal, I assure you.”  

You flash him a weak smile in return.

“I have tried... so hard to be patient with him… It’s what the Crone teaches, isn’t it? That wisdom is only ever earned in the waiting?” you tell him, hands twisting into a knot in your lap. “But I fear that I am running out of time here before the whole court decides that I am either— barren or unwanted, and either way I am ruined for it… I will have no house to run back to if this fails, Ormund— No one wants a spoiled bride.”  

“Come now, my lady,” the man croons with a teasing grin. “A rich husband who asks nothing of you in bed would sound like a mercy to most wives—”   

The quip dies in his throat when you reach across the round table between you, grasping at the hem of his coat with pleading hands. Yours are smaller compared to his larger, sun-kissed ones. His knuckles are rough against the delicate skin of your palms as you hold him gently there. 

“I have nothing, Ormund, but this marriage,” you tell him, voice trembling. “And it is— slipping through my hands no matter how tightly I hold onto it. 

Ormund tenses at the sudden contact, pale gaze flitting from your fingers caging his wrist to the teary look in your eye. “What is it you’re asking of me?” he wonders lowly.

“Nothing,” you chuckle with a teary laugh. “I guess I have simply no one else to speak to here… I try to talk to the Gods, but… The skies have not yet answered me, and I… I figured that— no one speaks for Them as well as you do… I suppose I’m only asking for a little guidance, is all…”

Ormund’s chiseled features loosen slightly, as though pleased by the words — by the obvious compliment woven inside of them. His adam’s apple bounces through a swallow as his chin tilts slightly with pride. His hand turns slowly beneath yours, until his larger, warmer fingers engulf your own.

“Guidance I can offer,” he assures you gently, with a sincere smile pulling at the corners of his plush pink mouth. “You should not go without simply because your husband cannot provide.”

The words strike you deep in the chest.

“I only wondered whether—” you continue, letting a small stammer catch in your tiny voice as your gaze turns to your entwined hands. “Whether you believed the Seven would truly begrudge a woman a child. When the only alternative is her ruin… Whether mercy might permit what… what duty would otherwise forbid.” 

A flicker of fleeting confusion furrows at Ormund’s strong brow. His eyes narrow briefly when the weight of your words finally hits him — of what you seem to be asking so suddenly of him. He inhales slowly and shifts in the cushion seat below, but never once lets go of your hands.

“Do you… Are you asking— if I…” He swallows hard, eyes glancing over your shoulder as if to check for any wandering passersby that might hear him. “If I might give you a child?” 

You meet his squinted gaze with a pair of heavy, teary ones. “No one would have to know…” you whisper to him, half-choked by a manufactured emotion. “I would be in your debt forever. Gwayne, more so, perhaps— A debt I assure you will be paid in full, however you see fit.” 

He falters briefly at your words, broad chest inflating with an inhale he forgets to let go. It is a rather beautiful thing to witness, you realize — to watch a man of conviction search the seams of his faith for a fault inside it; one that may warrant an answer he so desperately wants to provide. 

His calloused hands squeeze gently at your fingers, and you think for a moment you have him. 

“…I cannot,” he answers finally, and then clears his throat when the words nearly strangle him. He swallows and pulls back from you again, spine tensing straight in his chair. His hands ache with the urge to hold yours the moment he lets you go, but he curls them into fists instead. “It is not— holy, what you’re asking of me. Whatever mercy might excuse. And whatever animosity exists between my cousin and myself… And whatever— feelings I might have for you.” 

When his eyes lift from his half-gone plate to your pleading gaze, you let the silence sit between you for a long moment. You let him feel the full weight of having disappointed you — let the tears gathering like dew upon your lashes strangle him like two fists around his throat before blinking them away again.

You flash him a wavering smile in turn. “Of course,” you nod, drawing further away from him with a deliberate hesitance. “I should not have asked it of you. Forgive me, my lord, I— I shouldn’t have come at all.”

You rise suddenly from your seat, and Ormund follows quickly in suit. He tries desperately to catch your eyes when you turn away from him, and feels a deep panging in his chest when he fails. 

“I am sorry I cannot help you more, my lady,” he calls after your retreating figure, and only catches himself in his palpable desperation when you pause in the doorway. You spare him a weary glance over your shoulder — and fight back your own pleasure at the wounded look on his face.

“I only hope the Seven prove half so forgiving, my lord,” you smile weakly and leave him there with his forgotten meal, letting his faith and conscience wrestle with one another in the unforgiving silence you leave behind.

Ormund finds himself at the gallery window more often than he would admit to in the days that follow. 

It’s an idle habit, he tells himself — that this window simply happened to overlook the yard, and that the yard simply happened to hold you most afternoons, laughing over a cyvasse board with his nephew. You and Daeron had seemingly taken to each other with a strange sort of ease; two people planted in Oldtown soil by different hands and tasked to grow there the best you could on your own even still.

Ormund tells himself he’s watching the boy, just as he has always watched the boy, though not even his conscience can convince himself of such a glaring half-truth.

“She’d make a fine mother, wouldn’t she?” Gwayne’s low voice comes suddenly from just behind him. 

Ormund’s head whips to the side to find his cousin crossing the dim hall towards him, silent on the approach when he joins him at the stony sill. The younger man’s arms fold over his long emerald coat as he scans the bustling yard below — an instinctive fondness softens his features at the sight of you that Ormund struggles to make sense of.

“Yes…” the older man sighs and turns away, looking down at the yard from the bridge of his nose. “If only the Gods had given her a husband capable of making her one…” 

“Bold words there, cousin, from a man with no heirs and no marriage yet to speak of,” Gwayne croons with a low laugh, flashing his cousin a narrow-eyed look. “Stones, glass houses— isn’t that what your beloved scripture says?”

Ormund nods. “Aye… The scripture also says a man should attend the beam in his own eye before troubling himself with the mote in his brother’s,” he argues smoothly back with a squinted look of his own. “Strange, isn’t it? How convenient scripture can be?”

“Mm…” Gwayne hums and turns back to the window. From down below, he vaguely hears you fling a theatrical accusation of cheating at Daeron, who argues the offense through a fit of boyish laughter — the sort of laugh he rarely allows himself with Ormund around. Gwayne watches the exchange with a proud sort of smile as he wonders suddenly aloud, “Do you remember that game we used to play when we were boys? Where we’d race each other to the top of the beacon?”

“Run the Tower?” Ormund answers. “Yes, I recall quite a many number of triumphs where that’s concerned.”

“Aye. Because I let you win,” Gwayne confesses through a faint laugh. “I reckon there was no game any of us played as children that was not arranged for your victory, cousin. You were a thin-skinned twat even then.”

Ormund’s mouth curls into a slow smile, despite the fury prickling like embers in the pit of his chest. Gwayne can see the withheld rage squinting at the edges of the older man’s pale eyes, which, of course, is the exact response he’d been attempting to goad him towards.

“Well... How fortunate for me, then,” the man croons, resting his elbows on the edge of the stony sill. “That I still seem to be winning. And this time without your help at all, it would seem…” 

“Yes…” Gwayne sighs heavily through his nose, gaze turning to the open window. “For once, you might be capable of doing something that I cannot. I’d have thought you’d quite like to hold something like that over my head, to be true… And honestly, I think you’d rather enjoy it, if you let yourself.”

It’s far different, Ormund finds, to hear the words fall from Gwayne’s mouth instead of yours. It fills him with a different sort of pride that he can feel swelling in his chest just now; a victory well-earned.

“So it’s true, then?” Ormund presses and turns to face his cousin fully, with amusement glowing in his chiseled features. “You want me… to fuck your wife… because you aren’t man enough to do it yourself?”

Gwayne shrugs with jutted lips to feign an air of apathy, though he cannot deny that the words pierce him somewhere deep. “In so many words, I suppose—”

“No,” Ormund snaps, pale eyes freezing over. “Say it.”

Gwayne licks his lips and tips his chin back. His adam’s apple bounces slowly in his throat through a hard swallow as he chokes on the humiliation crawling up his chest. “I want you to fuck my wife,” Gwayne says evenly, though it takes a world of strength in him not to flinch away from the words. “Because I am not man enough to do it myself.” 

Ormund softens with warmth a moment later. His smug smile returns as he gives him a satisfied nod. “Well, since you asked so prettily, dear cousin,” he croons, patting Gwayne a little rougher than necessary on the shoulder as he walks by him, without another word shared between them.

Gwayne watches him go with his jaw clenched tight. His tense limbs relax through a slow breath through his nose. When he turns back to the window, he finds your eyes already lifted from the cyvasse ahead of you. A silent current seems to pass between the two of you as you speak without words — your brows raise in question, Gwayne’s chin lifts with a small nod to answer it, before he walks off from the window entirely.

You return to your game, and to the pleasant afternoon which has grown much heavier with a reckoning you know is waiting for you when the sun goes down.

You’re washing the long day from your skin when night falls over the Beacon. Swirls of steam rise from the soapy water, adding to the growing humidity in the room, and smelling of the rich, musky oils you’d had Gwayne deliver from the maester’s quarters — amber, jasmine, and vanilla straight from Dorne — a most sensual concoction, especially for men with keen noses. 

“Your mind is a wonder, dear wife. Truly,” Gwayne had laughed as he watched you drop equal amounts of each liquid into the bath. “God, I would put a baby in you myself right now if I could.” 

“High praise there, husband…” you crooned, tapping at the vial of rich vanilla.

“And I mean it as the highest compliment I can offer,” he grinned. 

Your body still glimmers with the remnants of the perfumed oil worked into your skin when you rise from the bath. The knock that arrives at your door in that moment is nearly lost in the water trickling from your body in shimmering rivulets — three slow raps from a slow but firm hand; soft but still slightly impatient, as though the sheer courtesy to knock took more strength than required.

You step out onto the cold cobbles below and reach for the thin robe hanging just beside the tub. “Come,” you call into the quiet as you slide your arms into the sleeves with a deliberate leisure. The heavy door creaks open across the room; Ormund passes the threshold and gets a brief flash of your bare skin — the curve of your shoulder, the line of your back, the edge of your hip — right before you tug the pale silk over your shoulders.

He falters a step as he shuts the door behind him, and clears his throat into his fist when he feels half-strangled by the sight. 

“I-I hope I’m not… interrupting,” he says in lieu of a greeting. It takes a great deal of strength from him, he finds, to keep your stare when you turn to look at him over your shoulder — as the ivory fabric clings to the wet spots of your freshly bathed body.

He can still smell it in the air — the rich, vanilla spice. He can nearly taste it on his tongue, something delicious enough to devour. His jaw tightens through a hard swallow as he chokes down the instinct watering over his tongue just now.

“Of course not,” you grin as you tie the thin sash of your robe. The frilly fabric rushes at your ankles when you turn to face him fully. “To what do I owe the… what was it you said? ‘The interruption of my solitude?’”

Ormund huffs a faint laugh, though it comes out a bit more artificial than he intended. “I’ve just… been thinking…” he starts slowly. “About our… previous conversation.”

“Have you?” you lilt, utterly unreadable. You reach for the towel hanging over the bath and drag the nettles across the exposed skin of your damp chest. “I thought the matter already settled, my lord. You made your feelings on it quite clear, if I recall.”

“Aye, I thought so, too—” Ormund nods, though the words catch in his throat when you bend at the waist to run the towel over your dripping legs, reaching beneath the slit of your thin robe. The plush of your breasts peek out over the low neckline, glittering with oils and kissed warm by the bath. He has to remind himself to breathe. 

“And yet I find I have thought of little else since… If you truly believed what you said— if the Seven would truly call something a mercy and not a sin, if it were to save someone from their own ruin…”

You rise slowly to full height again, eyeing the man from across the room. He arrived here as though to collect some sort of debt, some sort of winning, but stands now before you asking for permission to believe what he presumes was his own doing. 

“I believe…” you start slowly, bare feet padding along the cobbles as you close the distance between you like a predator to prey. “That a man like you would not have knocked on my door unless you had already searched the answer within yourself, and found something there worth trusting.”

Ormund tips his chin with a slow inhale through his nose, as though your words have smoothed out something taut within him.

“If you have to come to this conclusion on your own, entirely through your own faith, then… How could this be anything but right?” you wonder aloud with a meek shrug, curling the pale towel against your chest. “Surely, the Gods would not have sent you here if it were wrong.” 

“Mm…” Ormund hums, pink mouth lifting into a soft grin as though it were meant to be a laugh. “I told myself as much the entire way here, but… I suppose I didn’t truly believe it until you said it back to me.” 

You flash him a kind smile in return. “I suppose even the most pious of men need something physical to believe in… Something they can hold in their own two hands and know for certain a thing is true.”

Ormund’s body leans into your words, as if instinctively taking them as an invitation to hold you. He balls his hands into fists instead, trying to will himself into believing that this was an act of the Gods and not his own desires towards you. He steps past you, headed for the flagon of wine on the table beside the balcony doors.

“The scripture tells us that a man’s faith is only as good as what he’s willing to do with it,” he tells you, beneath the faint glugging of ale as he pours himself a goblet. “That words alone matter naught. That the gods judge us by what we build with our hands, not merely with what we believe in our hearts.”

His eyes catch the tub as he brings the goblet to his mouth, warm water soaking with oil and soap and remnants of filth from the day. He imagines tasting it instead of the wine that pools in his mouth, which he very nearly chokes on when your hand splays suddenly across the shoulder of his emerald coat.

“Then build me something,” you say, you plead. “Give me something the gods themselves have not, in all my prayers and patience. Give me a child, Ormund. It is the godliest thing a man can do.” 

Ormund sets the goblet down and turns fully to face you. His mouth glimmers with the remnants of wine not yet licked away. You lift the towel to his chin and dab the nettles across the plush of his mouth in a slow, deliberate touch that Ormund leans hopelessly into. He turns his head and buries his nose into the towel, inhaling the scent of you upon it — the rich musk, the earthy soap, the raw smell of your skin from where you dragged the fabric between your legs moments ago.

His eyes flutter shut as his broad chest inflates with a slow breath. When they open again, the pale blue of them is aflame with an emotion you haven’t quite seen from him before.

“Tell me to leave,” he says, as though to give you one more way out before the point of no return. “And I assure you I will.”

You shake your head. “I will not,” you answer, breath catching at the flicker of desire that passes over Ormund’s features a second later.

“Then get on the bed,” he commands in a low voice. “And take off your clothes…”

Your eyes glaze over as your body submits instinctively to his order. You walk slowly to the bed, dropping the towel on the floor as your hands work at the tie in your robe. You slide the thin fabric from your shoulders and let it pool at your feet, leaving the expanse of your glimmering body on display for him. 

Ormund tips his chin back as he watches you climb onto the lush mattress, donned with Hightower green and gold — colors which his children will wear when you bear them for him, he thinks distantly to himself, and feels pride swell in his chest accordingly.

He goes to take another sip of wine, but stops short when you mean to plant yourself on your hands and knees by the pillows. “On your back,” he calls into the quiet, then smiles at the quietly shocked look you give him over your shoulder in return. “I will look upon your face when I put a babe inside of you.” 

His words wrap around your throat and strangle you as you twist yourself upon the blankets. Your naked chest heaves with wanting breaths while you watch the man approach you. He lingers at the foot of the bed, working deliberately at the buttons of his coat and then the tie of his tunic underneath it. He lays them both neatly along the edge of the bed and smiles when your thighs squeeze together in anticipation.

“Tell me, sweet thing…” Ormund says, peering at you from the bridge of his nose as he tugs at the tie of his trousers. “Have you let a man fuck you before now?”

You shake your head with your bottom lip caged between your teeth, to conceal the vividity of the smile pulling at the corners of them. “Man would be too strong a word for who I’ve let touch me, I’m afraid.” 

His bare chest, toned from years of knighthood, inflates with a slow breath of pride — the affirmation that he was going to be the first man to touch you the way you needed, the first man who deserved to.

He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Good answer,” he deadpans and shoves his pants to his ankles. His cock hangs heavy between his scruffy thighs, favoring the left one as it twitches stiff, untouched. 

He’s not quite as long as Gwayne’s, of which you’ve seen on the rare occasion you’ve tried and failed to make children of your own, but he is quite a deal thicker. The thought of taking his girth alone makes your drooling cunt clench around nothing as Ormund climbs slowly abed, mattress dipping beneath his hands and knees. His body is lean and warm as it ascends on top of yours; you long to be crushed beneath the weight of him when he props himself upon his muscular forearm. 

His free hand caresses you with a softness you didn’t think possible before now. His calloused palm smooths gently over your jaw until the edges of his fingers thread in your hair. He tips your chin up with the pad of his thumb.

“I do hope they’ll have your eyes. Our children,” Ormund hums on bated breath. 

A delirious grin lifts the edge of your mouth as you reach for his shaven jaw. “You mean my children?” you quip, sliding your finger within the short curls gathered at the nape of his neck.

“No…” Ormund shakes his head with a breathy chuckle. “I mean mine.”

Your smile flickers faintly when his hand leaves your cheek to slide between your bodies. He gathers his hard cock in his fist and slots the weeping tip between the velvety folds of your pussy. Your breath hitches at the feeling of him; your hips twitch despite yourself. Ormund laughs through a groan in his chest.

“Whatever the court believes... Whatever anyone else calls them…” he continues lowly, wetting himself with your slick. “It’ll be my blood running through them… Wouldn’t that be beautiful? Us being the only people in the world who know the truth of our children?”

He meets your weary look with a soft, lopsided smile. 

“Yes…” Ormund hums to himself, answering his own question as his head tips to the side to smear a kiss to your palm. “Gods, you will look heavenly with my children growing inside of you.”  

He pierces you slowly then. You feel his bulbous tip pressing into your cunt, and the meandering veins of his cock as he slides further in. A distant stinging blooms within you when he mounts you fully — your strangled whine is swallowed by his guttural groan as he leans down over you again. Your back arches into his chest, and he feels your stiff nipples graze his skin. His broad nose smushes into the side of yours, lips brushing in a not-quite kiss.

“Forgive me,” he pants against your mouth. “I— I should’ve started with my fingers first, I know, but I— I couldn’t wait— Dreamt of you too long for that… And my fist only works so well, I’m afraid…” 

“Just fuck me,” you plead into the candlelit room, when the distant ache in the pit of your stomach ebbs into a warmer, fuller feeling. Your thighs squeeze at either side of his waist, hips bucking in a quiet desperation.

Ormund pulls just far enough away to smile lazily down at you, eyes glassy and glittering. 

“As you wish,” he mutters and rolls his hips back, until only the tip of his cock is caged within your clenching confines. He waits until you whimper at the cold, empty feeling before pressing back into you again — to the very hilt, with the coarse thatch of trimmed hair above his cock nestled just against your sensitive clit. 

He finds a steady rhythm thereafter, the slow drag followed by the firm push. The bedroom fills with the sound of it — the crackling candlelight, the creaking bedframe, the slapping of skin, the sounds of entwining pleasure. 

Your legs wrap around his lean waist, preventing him from pulling too far out, though your hips continue bucking wildly against his — as if you were both chasing and running from the unwavering pressure on your clit simultaneously.

“I know… I know, sweet girl,” Ormund coos half-muffled into your neck, then inhales a lungful of sweet musk and sex clinging to the air. “No one’s ever fucked you this good before, have they?” 

You answer him with a strangled whine and nails that dig crescent shapes into the skin of his broad shoulders.

“You don’t even know what to do with yourself, do you? Look at you— twitching underneath me,” he teases with a drunken chuckle. “You just can’t wait for my cum, can you? Can’t wait for me to paint that cunt with my seed— To give you my child?”

“Yes,” you whine, nodding your wild head against the pillow beneath you. “Please cum in me— I need it so bad, Ormund, please—”

He falters instantly at your words — at the very image of your submission beneath him, which before now, only ever existed inside his head. He buckles hopelessly down over you, losing all his rhythm as your pussy clenches around his twitching cock. “Gods—” he spits as he hides his face into your neck again. 

One hand curls into a fist beside your head while his other grips the plush of your thigh to keep you spread open for him. You hear a whimper sound in the pit of his throat when your weeping cunt clenches around him.

“Put a baby inside me,” you plead in a high voice, mouth brushing the shell of his ear. “Let me carry your legacy, Ormund, please— Cum inside of me.”

“Fuck—” His voice breaks halfway through as he tenses on top of you, suddenly and without warning. 

You hear him hold his breath for a long moment and then release it with a grumbled moan as a warm feeling blooms in the pit of your stomach. He groans, hips jerking through every rope he spits into your pulsing cunt. You cum around him at the feeling of it alone. Your hands grasp hopelessly at his back as your body twitches underneath his larger one. 

“That’s it…” you hear him praise through gritted teeth, fighting his own sensitivity while you milk his softening cock. “There you go, sweet girl… Take it… That’s it…” 

Your bodies are slow to relax from the remnants of your entwining orgasms. His bare, sweat-slick one sticks with yours — melting together in the blooming heat of the room. Your stomach is full with a mixture of gratitude, and dread, and his cum seeping slowly out of you. And with his body pressed so ardently against yours, you couldn’t run from any of it if you tried.

“…Do you think it took?” Ormund wonders aloud when he finally finds the breath to speak again, lips smearing across your thrumming pulse.

“Yes…” you sigh through heavy breaths, hands drifting down the sweaty expanse of his spine. “If the Gods are willing…” 

You feel him breathe out a faint chuckle in response, right before he pulls finally out of your neck. His chiseled face is flushed red with sex. His eyes are lidded and glassy; his mouth rosy and swollen as it curls into a smug grin.

“If the Gods are willing, sweet girl, they’d allow me at least a few more nights of this before they gave you my child,” he hums and ducks down as if to kiss you. Your mouth parts for his on instinct, though he only nudges the bridge of your nose with the tip of his instead. A teasing, knowing grin spreads across his mouth accordingly. 

“But… when They do…” he starts slowly, warm breath fanning across your mouth with every word. “I do intend to know my children… Whatever anyone else is told… Do you understand?”

A sick feeling twists in the pit of your stomach, where his cum is still warm in your depths, and you nod.

He barely lifted his head when he heard you gasp, the lens of his mask focusing on your figure standing there with wide eyes, wearing only an oversized shirt.

“Wrong window,” he choked, then tried to hold himself up but immediately collapsed again. “Dammit,” he cursed, waiting for you to freak out any second now. 

You could have, but instead you rushed to him and knelt beside him.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Your hands hovered helplessly over his body, trying to see how bad the damage was in the dark. “You need a hospital–”

“No!” He snapped, trying to turn away but failing miserably. “I’ll be fine, I heal quickly.”

“You still need to stop the bleeding,” you countered, folding your knees under your body so you could rest on your calves. “Listen, I can help you. I took some medical courses last year and I have a kit somewhere.”

You looked at him with pleading eyes. He’d saved the city so many times, the fucking world, it was the least you could do to give something back. 

He considered his options for a second, and to be honest he didn’t have many. His body was betraying him, and he couldn’t even get up to fix it himself like usual. 

The blood loss made him nod, and you wasted no time in getting up and finding said kit. The blood loss also made him drift in and out of consciousness as you tended to the wounds on his ribs as much as you could. 

It did not make him less cautious of you though. When you noticed the rip on his mask over a nasty gash on his neck and reached for it, his hand closed around your wrist and even half conscious, his grip was strong. 

“Please,” he whispered. Pleaded. “Keep it on.” 

The fear in his voice made you promise you would. Even if you couldn’t get to that gash properly. Even when he fell asleep on your floor and didn’t wake up for six whole hours. 

The next morning, he opened his eyes and found you sitting on your bed, still staring at him. 

His hands patted his chest, and confirmed his arachnid powers had done its job and healed him mostly. But most importantly, his mask was still in place. With no warning from E.V of it being removed. He learned that you’d spent the night making sure he was still breathing without seeing his face. 

That had been one year ago. 

After thanking you profoundly for helping him, he’d repaired your window, apologized several times, and disappeared into the apartment next door. He then considered moving into another building, but the thought was brushed away very quickly when he remembered the balance in his bank account. 

So he acted more careful instead. For a while, he only turned back home when your curtains were already closed, or he only left the apartment when you had already left for your job (because yes, he absolutely researched the hell out of you after that night.)

Then he moved to the attic of the building. Bigger space, no neighbors, no risks. No you. Or at least he thought. 

Because some nights…some delirious nights he still found your window a few stories down, and the accidental visits became less accidental. When he was too badly injured to care for himself, he came to you, even after you confessed your degree had nothing to do with medicine. 

When he noticed you understood about his equipment malfunctioning, he’d bring it for you to inspect. When he became too reckless with himself you talked his ear off about how being difficult to kill did not make him immortal.

Somewhere along the way, you became spiderman’s friend. 

Spiderman was safer. With you, spiderman was the only part of him he could let you see. Because that was the thing, you only knew the masked superhero. 

He’d spent so much time blocking away his identity, making peace with the fact that there was no longer anyone in the world who would call him Peter and know exactly who that person was. That name only belonged to the people that once knew him, and no longer existed, so he never gave it to you.

Never showed you more than a sliver of skin when his mask rode up or glimpses of his abdomen when you tended to his wounds. He always kept that barrier and you respected it, even on those nights he was too weak to stop you. Even if sometimes not knowing the color of his eyes kept you up at night. 

A promise was a promise. 

Maybe that’s why he kept coming. Why he trusted you with a certainty he couldn’t understand. Why he eventually showed you his new living quarters in the attic and let you spend time with him. Why half a year ago, he added another chair next to his desk so you could work together, or help him when he was out patrolling and needed an extra set of eyes.

“I’m officially the girl in the chair, spidey,” you joked that time as you sat next to him, spinning around in your chair.

He’d gone quiet immediately, his body tensing up enough to make you frown, but then managed a small smile and said you were. You pretended you didn’t notice him being too quiet as he worked on his inhibitor after that. 

He was wearing a hoodie, sweatpants and the mask. Always the mask that didn’t quite let you see through him. After a moment of quiet, you rolled your chair closer to his and nudged his arm playfully. 

“You know I can’t keep calling you spidey forever, right?” 

He snapped out of his trance, and the chuckle that came from under the fabric was unmistakable. 

“Why not?” He nudged your arm back, but still focused on the device he was hunched over. “I like spidey.”

You put your elbow on the desk, resting your cheek on your hand so you could lean a little closer. 

“I like it too, but it feels ridiculous after having my hands all over your body almost every night.” 

The moment the words left your lips, you realized how bad that sounded. He straightened up, turning toward you.

“Wow.” Even if you couldn’t see the smile on his face, the lenses of his mask were quite expressive sometimes. He was amused. 

“That came out very wrong,” you said immediately, before he bursted into laughter. He had been laughing more since you entered his life. “You know what I meant,” you whined, laughing too with heat flooding your cheeks. 

“I think I know,” he chuckled, making you roll your eyes. 

“I’m being serious though,” you added, a little more quietly. “You don’t have to say your real name. Just give me something.”

“Mmm…” he acted like has considering it, going back to tinkering with the piece of metal between his fingers, but then his eyes drifted to the flowers he’d bought that morning, and the name came out of his lips before he could think twice about it. “You can call me Maynard.” 

“Maynard?” You repeated, suppressing a chuckle. “You don’t sound like a Maynard. That’s like an 80 year old man’s name.”

“That’s all I can give you,” he shrugged playfully. 

You had a feeling it went deeper than that, but you’d also learned not to push it with him. 

“Alright. Maynard,” you nodded, “but don’t expect me to use that name unless you’re dying. Guess I’ll stick to spidey for now,” you chuckled, going back to your own work as he hummed in agreement. 

The conversation ended there. With him trying not to think about your hands all over his body in…different conditions. 

Peter didn’t know exactly when his gratitude became longing. He could not identify the moment the friendship, the closeness, or just your smile, shifted into something he craved everyday. 

Despite the mask and the fake name, he knew that after years of being no one to everyone, he had become someone to you. And you had become everything to him. Even if it was behind walls he’d built, you were the person who knew him better than anyone alive.

Which is why, the night he lost control of himself after an unknown dust was thrown at him in a fight, he chose not to crash land into your room. 

Peter hit the floor of the dark attic with a loud thud, as his senses went overboard. His suit was sticking to his body uncomfortably due to the sweat coating his feverish skin. The fabric was intact, with no visible wounds in his body, just that burning sensation of something running through his veins. 

And that dark part of him he’d managed to lock down with the inhibitor, trying to claw its way out. 

“What the…what the fuck is going on,” he cursed, clutching his heaving chest as he panted against the worn wood floors. “I can’t–I can’t breathe…” 

The computer’s monotone voice broke through the silence. 

“You have arrived injured. I’m letting her know–”

“NO!” He cut the AI off, “EV, don’t tell her–”

“Message already sent.”  

He glanced up at the digital clock on his desk. 2:18 am. 

He groaned, grabbing his head when a wave of migraine hit him. He knew what came after that. The black eyes. The desire to break. To take. But this time something felt different. It was like a pull, looking for something or someone…for…for you? 

Oh fuck. 

You were going to come in and you were going to see him like this. No, no–

“Spidey?” You asked from behind the door, knocking exactly twice before opening it anyways.

The air changed the exact moment you walked in, and that something inside him shifted too. It became aware that the only thing it craved to survive was in the room now. 

He needed to get to you. He needed to pin you down and– 

“Don’t!” He managed to scream, holding his hand up weakly when you scrambled toward him. 

You stopped right in your tracks, eyes wide and running all over him, searching for torn fabric, blood, or anything that would explain why he looked like every breath was painful. 

“What happened?” You frowned, when you couldn’t find any source. “Did you get hurt?” 

You instinctively stepped forward, but he waved his hand in front of him again. 

“Stop, stop, stop,” he said quickly, “don’t come any closer.” 

The harshness in his voice caught you off guard, but what sealed the deal was him dragging himself further away from you. It was barely more than a clumsy, desperate crawl, but he managed to put a decent distance between you before collapsing against the side of his thrifted couch. 

He avoided looking at you. The oversized shirt covering your body, the comfy shorts you were probably wearing, the way your hair looked messy from rolling out of bed as soon as you got EV’s warning even if you had work the next morning.

You stayed right where you were, watching him. His suit had always fit him like it was painted on his skin, but every pant made his chest rise and fall beneath the fabric so violently that you wouldn’t be surprised if it ripped at the seams. 

This reminded you too much of the changes that happened in him months ago. 

It started with a sharpened temper, then the heightened sensitivity to everything, the black covering his eyes, and moments during patrol when his reactions became simply frightening for someone who had as much strength as he did. But you were supposed to have stopped it. 

“Is it the inhibitor?” You asked, crossing your arms over your chest, “is it failing?” 

“I–I don’t know…I was hit with some dust out there,” he breathed. “I think it’s tampering with it…my head is killing me. Everything is too much.”

You nodded, turning toward the workstation. 

“I will check the programming. Just hold on.” Not your best attempt at reassuring him, but he groaned in acknowledgment. 

“EV?” 

The computer woke when you touched the keyboard, illuminating the dark attic in a wash of blue light. 

“Online.”

“Please run a diagnostic on the inhibitor and any possible interference.” 

“Beginning diagnostic.” 

You waited impatiently for the results, tapping your fingers on the desk while you watched him from the corner of your eye. 

Over there, he…he was doing his best trying to breathe. 

This obviously wasn't his first time having sensory overload. When the animal tried to take over the human part of him, everything in the city became impossible to escape. Not a single movement, or sound, or simple existence within miles was unnoticed by him. 

But this time? The rest of the city had disappeared. There were no sirens in the distance, or voices coming through the walls, or every heartbeat in the building pounding in his head. 

There was only you. 

Your rapid heartbeat echoing inside him. He felt every tap of your fingers against the wood, every slight catch in your breathing each time he made another involuntary and pathetic sound from his spot on the floor. 

Your scent…God, your scent filled the entire apartment. 

The scent he found himself coming back to so often that it scared him. He didn’t want the attachment. The possibility of having someone again only to risk losing them again. 

That same scent was making every muscle in his body react in a way he didn’t understand. It made him, and the other him, wanna do things to you he had only dreamed of in his wildest fantasies. Things he wasn’t proud of, things he wouldn’t dare to say out loud, even if he looked at you through the lenses of his mask and you couldn’t see the black in his eyes. 

He pressed the back of his head against the couch harshly. 

This was wrong. So wrong. 

His senses were supposed to consume everything when the change came. Instead, they had fixed themselves entirely on you.

He could feel the heat of your body from across the room as though you were still in front of him. Could remember with sickening detail how soft your hands looked when they reached for him. Could almost feel the burn of the touch that had never landed because he stopped you. 

What if he’d let you? What if he’d felt the way your hands ran all over his body? What if you’d moved them lower, and lower, as your mouth–

“Diagnostic complete.” 

Your heads snapped toward the screen. 

“There’s no external damage affecting the integrity of the device. I detected a foreign biotoxin in the bloodstream that may be bypassing the inhibitor, activating the suppressed arachnid hormones.” 

“What biotoxin?” You frowned. 

“Unknown. No matches found in available databases.” 

Great. He thought. He had no time to take a bath with Yelena Belova to find out what the stupid dust was. 

The screen changed, displaying a model of his nervous system. There were yellow bright lines pulsing quickly, running all the way from the base of his brain down the length of his spine. Something unknown was moving through his blood, altering the part of him he had spent months forcing into submission.

He sucked in a breath as he watched you read the screen. Your eyes were focused, and a bead of sweat made its way down the side of your forehead. 

He suddenly felt the need to lick it off. 

Wanted to run his tongue from the base of your neck to the back of your ear. Wanted to fist your hair and make your heart beat out of your chest from how good he knew he could make you feel–

“The effects remain within his enhanced tolerance. However, prolonged exposure to certain hormones can cause extreme distress without relief.” 

“What hormones?” Your voice, worried and unknowing of his thoughts only made him feel guiltier. 

It took him a second to realize what you asked, but EV threw him under the bus before he could say anything. 

“There’s a significant rise in reproductive hormones. The unknown toxin is inducing a strong mating response in him.”

Mating response. He stopped breathing. 

Your eyes slowly moved from the monitor to him, and he saw the moment your attention dropped lower to the tent of his pants. 

That suit concealed nothing on a good day. On one like this? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck–

He shifted almost immediately, but the movement only worsened the pressure, pulling a helpless groan from his throat that made your pulse jump. You looked away at once, turning back to the computer. 

“Is there a way we can…umm…stop it?” You asked hesitantly. 

“The subject is experiencing severe sexual arousal with a fixation on a nearby individual,” she explained, because fuck him if he wasn’t the unluckiest individual on earth. “Acting upon it can be a positive option to relieve sexual tension.”

He wished the floor would open beneath him, swallow him, and never ever EVER spit him back out again.  

Your pulse was absolutely hammering after that. He caught the sudden change in your scent. There was a sharp spark of surprise, nervousness, and something else beneath it that his altered senses fed on immediately.

You kept your eyes fixed on the monitor, although the data had stopped meaning anything the moment you heard fixation on a nearby individual. 

“Is that what you really feel?” You asked softly after a moment. 

His head fell forward, catching it between his gloved hands. He didn’t know how to answer without making everything worse.

Although, after what EV said, could it really be worse? 

“…Yes.” The word came out rougher than he expected. Yet still not enough for what was happening inside him. “It’s like…I can only feel you. All of you.”

Heat rose to your face once again. 

“What does that mean?” 

Don’t say anything, don’t–

“I can smell you.” Great start, idiot. He cleared his dry throat before continuing. “I can smell your shampoo…the lotion you use…the ink on your hands from your favorite pen.” 

He chose not to mention he could also smell the adrenaline on you. The heat gathering slowly beneath your skin. 

Your eyes dropped to your hands, and under the dim light of the computer, you caught the ink stains in them from your journaling session before bed. 

“I can hear your heartbeat changing every time I speak,” he added. Okay, that one slipped out.  

You swallowed. And god, he felt that in his own throat. 

The suit was suffocating him at this point. He wanted to rip it off as much as he wanted to rip off the fabric covering the goosebumps on your skin. 

“Is it only because I’m nearby?” You asked, gathering the courage to turn your chair to him.

White lenses met you across the room. He dragged in another shaky breath of oxygen made of you as he thought about his next words. He could’ve lied. He should’ve lied. But instead, chemically overwhelmed and stripped of every defense he possessed, he gave you the truth. 

“No.”

His voice was firmer this time. No hesitation in it despite the thousand red alarms pounding in his head telling him to shut up. 

“It picked you–no, I picked you for a reason,” he added. “And it’s not just me. The other…the other me wants you too.” 

His voice went lower on the last part, that told you how much it cost him to admit that. 

The silence following his confession was heavy. For a moment he wished he could read your mind. For all he could feel of you, your thoughts were unreachable. 

His own mind was a mess. The impulses didn’t feel like thoughts anymore, just his body feeding him instructions. 

Get up. Cross the room. Touch her. Breathe her in.

His palms shook with the urge to close around you. His teeth ached with the need to graze your skin. His eyes burned with the desire to see beyond fabric. 

Every part of him seemed convinced that the small distance between you was a mistake he needed to correct. That he needed to breathe you in until his lungs burned. Drag his mouth along the inside of your wrist and taste the pulse there.

He hated it.

He hated that something inside him could look at the person he cared for the most and reduce her to an answer for his pain. 

“EV, how long is this state going to last?” He asked the computer, followed by a weak cough as he clutched his side. 

“Your enhanced physiology is struggling to break down the toxin’s structure. I estimate a time between ten to twelve hours before it’s metabolized. However, neurological collapse is expected before that timeframe.”

“What?” You looked at him. “There’s no way we’re letting that happen. Maybe I can–”

“Don’t even start,” he cut you off, shaking his head profusely. 

“So what? I’m supposed to sit here betting on whether your body collapses on hour three or hour six?” 

“I’ll just pass out, big deal. I’m not putting you in danger because of this. I can handle it.”

“You’re barely handling it now. There’s no danger in trying–”

“You don’t understand what’s happening inside me right now,” he argued, raising his voice. “This other thing, the one the inhibitor controls it’s…awake. That part of me doesn’t think like I do. It doesn’t care if you're scared, or hurting–”

“You wouldn’t hurt me–”

“You don’t know that!” He snapped, his fist struck the floor next to him, hard enough to make the worn wood crack beneath his knuckles. 

The sudden noise made you flinch. He smelled the flash of fear moving through your body for only a second. 

One second enough. 

“Fuck–that is what I mean,” he cursed, covering his lenses with his hands. “I don’t…I don’t know if I’d be gentle. I can’t risk this, I can't…shit, I can’t risk you.”

The words, said with so much pain, and honesty, seemed to settle somewhere deep in your chest. 

“Okay,” you nodded, settling deeper in your chair. “But I’m not leaving you like this. I can’t risk you either.”

He shuddered a painful exhale. His head dropped to the couch again, shutting his eyes in preparation of what the next hours of torture would be. 

Except…he didn’t even last ten minutes. 

The suit was killing him, so he decided he’d be better without it. He reached desperately behind his back, clumsily undoing the zippers that tied the suit together.

He could feel your wide eyes on him as he tugged the fabric off his shoulders, peeling it off his sweaty arms. He groaned when he lifted his hips and the suit grazed his swollen crotch. In a matter of seconds that felt like eternity he managed to break free from the spandex, and threw it away somewhere in the room. He’d undressed down to his dark boxers, mask still in place, revealing the marble sculpture of his body.

You let out a shaky breath from your spot, eyes raking over a body you’d only seen partially. He was covered in wounds most of the time, but this time, he only had faint bruises from the night before decorating his chiseled abs. 

His tight muscles flexed with every rise of his chest, his bulge straining harder the more you devoured him, pressing against his pants, making him curse quietly. 

You noticed, and returned your eyes to the screen to track his vitals. 

He felt grateful that you’d given him that grace, but just you being in that room made it very hard for him to think of anything other than your existence. 

Too hard. 

Before he knew his hand drifted down the growing ache in his crotch, trying to feel some relief, but every rub he made over the fabric of his boxers sent a jolt of pain through his body instead of pleasure. 

It only made it worse when he realized you were tense at the desk, trying very hard to keep your focus on the screen and not on the whines he was letting out. 

“…I’m sorry,” he apologized instantly, breathlessly, moving his hand away. “I didn’t–”

“Don’t apologize,” you shook your head quickly, eyes still on the screen. “You…you can do whatever you need.” 

He didn’t say anything, just whined in pain again, so you took it as a chance to say it before you regretted it. 

“But my offer still stands, spidey.” 

What a polite way of saying ‘I’d let you fuck me into next week so you can control your horny arachnid hormones, spidey.’

Fucking hell. 

“I’m okay I just–God I didn’t–I didn’t think it would feel this way…” He laughed humorlessly, staring at the ceiling. “But I–I got this. Yes.”

You kept quiet, hearing him mumble to himself about a hundred times about how he had this.

“I’m okay…I’m good…it’s fine…” 

He wasn’t. 

“Fuck I don’t…I’m going to die…”

For God’s sake. 

“I think I can help.”

By the time he registered the words and looked back at you, you had already moved from your chair and shortened the distance between you, kneeling in front of him. 

His senses went from one thousand to one million. He forced his hands behind his back, trying to keep the animal from grabbing you and getting it over with. 

“What–what are you doing?” He stammered nervously, the lenses of his mask going wide. 

“Maynard,” you said quietly, ignoring the way his body tensed up at that name. “Would it make you feel better if I put my hand here?” 

You placed your hand right in the center of his chest, and your cold palm met his overheated skin. He gasped, feeling every individual fingerprint on his skin. He wanted them marked on him. Tattooed. 

His back arched from the couch, with a strangled gasp breaking from beneath the mask. The relief hit him all at once, through a simple contact that felt like salvation. 

Your hand steadied him for only a glorious second, but now that you had touched him, his body knew precisely what it had been denied.

It wanted more.

His own hand closed around yours so suddenly that you almost pulled back, but he loosened his grip the instant he realized how tightly he was holding you. 

“Sorry–”

“Don’t apologize.” You pressed harder. 

He was burning.

The heat beneath your palm scared you, but what scared you more was the violent pounding of his heart beating against your hand so so quickly. 

“Better?” You asked quietly, trying not to bite your bottom lip at the image of him crumbling under your palm. 

“So fucking better,” he said breathlessly, pressing your hand tighter against his chest. “I…dammit–”

“Breathe,” you reminded.

His head fell back against the couch. Chest rising up and down, up and down, up and down. 

Just take her, man, she’s right there–

Your free hand accidentally brushed his neck, right where the border of the mask started, snapping him right back. He grabbed your hand, not harshly, but firm enough to make your breath hitch. 

“Please.” Was all he said. 

Leave it on. 

It brought you back to that first night he’d crashed into your life. 

“I wasn’t planning on removing it,” you whispered, leaning closer. “You can keep it on. But let me help you…I really want to.”

See? She wants it. She needs it so bad. 

He hated that the other guy was right. He knew you meant what you said because he could smell the proof pooling between your thighs.

Fuck it.

In a sudden movement he reached for your waist, dragging you forward so you were straddling his lap. The bulge you landed on made you gasp, hands instinctively grabbing onto his sweaty biceps for balance when he let out a broken groan that vibrated against your core. 

His hand cupped your jaw, bringing it closer to his face, and your dilated pupils reflected on the white of his lenses. 

“I can feel that you want this,” he mumbled, tilting his head to the side. “Please, say it again…”

You shifted your hips, barely, so minimal yet he felt it travel through his whole body. He hissed, tightening the grip on your jaw. 

“I want this,” you repeated firmly, moving your head closer to his ear. “You can take whatever you need…”

You moved your hips again, more deliberate this time, pulling a broken whine from him. The toxin made every contact feel like electricity racing down his spine, straight to the heavy, aching weight of his cock under you. 

“Yes…yeah just like that…” he panted. “Just let me…”

His hands landed on your waist, moving you back and forth at a quicker pace over his bulge. You gasped at the friction, fingers digging into his shoulders, while he let out a collection of muffled words you could barely understand. 

“...M–more…” he whined, throwing his head back against the couch. “I can’t–I need…”

“What do you need? More what?” 

“More contact.”

His hands left your waist to grab the hem of your shirt. 

“Can I?” He whispered.

You nodded eagerly, gasping when his hands shifted to the collar of your shirt instead, ripping it off your body with a sharp pull. 

“Oh fuck,” he cursed when he realized there was nothing under that shirt, and saw your nipples hardening instantly under the cold air. 

He resisted the urge to bite them through the mask. 

His hands, however, wasted no time to cup your breasts with a broken whine. His thumbs played with your nipples, tugging at them as hard as he could allow himself to without hurting you. 

“Fuck you’re perfect…you’re so perfect…” he whispered, more to himself than you, pulling some soft whimpers out of you when he tugged a little harder. His hands drifted to your lower half, to the hem of the last piece keeping your body from his greedy eyes. “These too,” he said, “please, can I? I want to feel you.”

“Yes,” you nodded, already out of air. 

You didn’t even know why you tried to get off his lap to take the shorts off properly, when he just did the same as the shirt: ripped it in half where it rested on your hips, yanked it off from your body and threw the ruined pieces far away. 

You weren’t wearing anything underneath. 

“I can smell you. God, I can smell you. You’re so–oh God…”

Now he could feel your wetness drenching his boxers, dripping onto the fabric. He could almost taste it in his mouth. He wanted nothing more than to drown in it for hours. 

“Can–can I–?”

You didn’t even let him finish, you grabbed his hand and placed it right between your legs. 

Water. He found water in the middle of the dessert. 

His hand moved carefully through your wet folds once, twice, delighting in your warmth, the way you felt, the way you let out the prettiest sound he had ever heard in his miserable life. 

“Fuck…” you cursed softly, moving your hips eagerly when he kept stroking slow. Too slow. “Touch me, please.”

He obliged, fingers finding your clit in movements that had you gripping his shoulders tighter, eyes fluttering shut so beautifully he had to bite his lip to not let out a pathetic sound. 

“Been wanting this,” he mumbled. “Longer than today. Longer than tonight.”

His finger slid inside of you, making you moan when he curled it just right. 

“There were…there were nights I thought about you riding my hand,” he kept going, voice cracking as he added a second finger, stretching you more. “I’ve wanted you for so long–not just because of this shit in my blood. Because it’s you.”

Every word made you clench around his fingers. Every admission pulled another shaky moan out of your throat. You were a mess already, breathless, hips rolling down to meet the thrust of his fingers. 

“Oh my God–don’t stop, please don’t stop–”

“Not stopping, baby.” 

He kept working you open, the white lenses of the mask never leaving your face. His free hand slid up your chest, settling between your breasts. 

“I’m–I’m close,” you managed. “I’m so close–”

“Come on…you’re perfect. You’re so fucking perfect like this.”

The heel of his palm lifted to press against your clit. You were right there, right on the edge, about to come on his hand and drip down his boxers–

“Please,” he begged, unable to keep it in. “Let me fuck you after this…please. I need to be inside you. I’ve needed it for so long–just let me, after you come, please, please–”

The plea undid you.

You came with a broken cry, stopping your movements as your walls pulsed around him. The sound you made against his shoulder nearly finished him right there. 

It took you a second to just breathe again, your chest synching up with his in the search of oxygen. He kept rocking his hand slowly, not just to work you through the aftershocks, but because the friction of your pussy in his hand brought the tiniest relief to him. 

You just stayed there as the last soft waves rolled through you. 

Once you were able to see clearly again, you let out a breathless chuckle and straightened back up. 

He needed you. He needed you so badly you really thought he was going to die if you didn’t help him. 

You placed one hand on his chest as the other reached under you, slipping inside the fabric of his boxers without breaking eye contact. 

The second your bare fingers brushed him, his hips jerked hard under you. 

“You said please,” you whispered breathlessly. 

You wrapped your fingers around him and pulled him free.

His cock sprang out, heavy and flushed between your bodies, so thick and hard and painful. The head was red and shiny, with precum dripping down the vein that ran along his length. The tip brushed the skin of your stomach, leaving a warm, wet patch that made the hair on your arms go up. He could smell the small flicker of intimidation sparking inside you, but the want that followed was stronger. 

You stroked him a few times, slowly just as he’d touched you at first. 

“Oh my God, your hand–your hand–”

Another thick bead of precum welled up and spilled over your fingers. Whether it was the toxin or just his enhanced physiology, he was dripping for you.  

Flustered wasn’t enough of a word when you had his leaking cock in your hand. 

His hands slid down to your hips, gripping tighter, guiding you up as if he was about to lift you then pulling you back down immediately. 

Fuck her. Fuck her right now. 

“Please, I need–I need to feel you…” he cried out. “Let me…let me…”

You nodded just as desperately, lifting yourself up as he helped, steadying you with shaking hands until the thick head of his cock nudged against your entrance. You both exhaled hard at the same time when you started to sink down, taking him inch by inch.

He was big. Almost too much. The burn of it made your breath hitch, but the way he cursed under his breath multiple times, completely at your mercy, made you keep going until he was buried balls deep.

You sat there for a moment, breathing heavily, and so full of him. 

When the initial sting faded away, you started moving. He let you set the pace as you adjusted, holding back his need of thrusting up. His fingers dug on your skin, not lifting just holding you, but the more that you moved, the more that control started to waver. 

He could feel it coming. The change. 

You kept moaning, bouncing on top of him, completely unaware of his self restraint crumbling away. 

His grip slowly tightened when his eyes began turning completely black under his mask. That careful, pathetic boy who’d been begging disappeared beneath something more…primal. 

Fuck. Whatever had been holding him back finally snapped.

The next thing he knew, his hands slid under your thighs with sudden strength. He lifted you up in one motion until only the thick head of him remained inside you, held you there for a second as the last part of him tried to remember how to be gentle–then snapped his hips up hard.

That first thrust pulled a sharp moan out of you, but there was no chance to adjust this time. He set a relentless pace almost immediately, using pure strength to bounce you on his cock while he drove up to meet every drop of your body, buried so deep it stole your breath every time he bottomed out. 

“Oh my–May…Maynard–” the name you barely used on him slipped out in the middle of the frenzy, but his hand reached behind your head to pull your hair back slightly as he kept thrusting up. 

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped, his voice so different from just minutes earlier. “It’s Peter. Call me Peter when I’m inside you.” 

He didn’t even give you time to process, still lifting and dropping you onto his cock at the exact hard rhythm he wanted. The only one that satisfied the need inside of him. Your hands instinctively reached for the edge of the arm of the couch he was leaning against, fingers digging into the worn fabric as he hit that spot inside you over and over again. 

“Of fuck…Peter–fuck…yes…”

“That’s better,” he approved. “I was right, you’re so so perfect…taking every inch like you need it as bad as I do…”

A desperate sound slipped out of you at the praise, he could feel your walls clenching tight around him as your body went for that second orgasm, your eyes were fluttering shut, almost there–

“Nuh–uh,” he denied immediately, stopping mid thrust, holding you pressed against him as you gasped, surprised and confused. 

“What–what happened? I was about to–”

“I want you to hold it for me. I know you can.”

That twisted part of him enjoyed the slow realization on your face. 

Even if you couldn’t see his eyes, you knew the same spiderman he’d been without the inhibitor, was the one with your body at his mercy now. 

Good. 

He stayed buried to the hilt for a moment, breathing hard behind the mask. When your breathing finally slowed down and accepted that the high never came, he stood up. Still inside you, he walked you to the bed in the corner of the room. 

His bed.

He pulled out with a wet sound that made both of you groan, then laid you down roughly near the edge of the mattress. He kneeled down, strong hands hooking behind your knees and dragging your legs over his shoulders, folding you open for him completely.

“Look at the ceiling,” he ordered. “Don’t look at me.”

You obeyed, staring up at the wood beams high above you while he tugged the bottom of the mask just high enough to free his mouth. 

Peter leaned down and pressed a few soft kisses to your swollen folds. He wasn’t necessarily eating you out, just giving a few loud smooches that felt good enough to make you grip the sheets. 

“M’sorry, you were so perfect there…” he mumbled condescendingly against your most sensitive spots. “But I need you to hold on a little longer. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?” 

You nodded, eyes still fixed on the ceiling. Maybe too eager. Maybe too pathetic. Just like he’d been. Had he pumped that toxin into you? 

Either way, you didn’t care. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t like this version of him. 

He laughed right over your clit when you moaned loudly, after he moved his tongue in a slow, torturous swipe over it. 

“Was back there too much?” He cooed. “Maybe I just need to stretch you more...”

Two fingers slid inside you, so easily, but the sudden stretch still dragged a whine out of your throat. He curled them immediately, finding the spot that made your hips jerk. 

“Peter…” 

“Huh?” He acted coy, pumping his fingers with a rhythm that kept you right on the edge without letting you tip over. He added a third finger, making your back arch from the mattress. “Keep holding it in.”

Every shake of your body fed the stupid toxin inside him. Having you like this…really trying to keep your body from coming apart because he said so. 

God. He was never going back. 

“You just took my cock. I think you can take three fingers with no problem.” 

He kept the same relentless pace, chuckling when your body started twitching again. 

“Shhh, you’re perfect, absolutely perfect…”

“Peter…” you called out again, hand dropping the sheet to find his shoulder instead. “I need…need…”

“Need what?”

“Need you inside me…please I won’t–I won’t hold for much longer just–fuck me.”

He stopped altogether, a smirk you couldn’t see stretching the corner of his mouth. He pulled his fingers out with a wet pop, licking them clean before tugging his mask back in place and standing up. 

“Yeah?” 

Your legs dangled off the edge of the bed for a moment before his hands gripped your hips and turned you over. He moved you higher up the bed, grabbing one of the pillows, and shoving it under your hips, tilting your lower body up for him. 

He then climbed onto the bed behind you and knelt between your spread thighs, the mattress dipping under his weight as one hand stroked down the length of your spine. 

But something made him stop. 

“This fucking mask–” he cursed under his breath. “It’s suffocating me.”

The sweat on his forehead had pooled under the mask, making it so sticky over his eyebrows that it was affecting the lenses he was trying to see you through. 

“I need you to be a good girl for me,” he added breathlessly, yet still commanding enough. “Keep your head on the mattress. Ass up. Don’t turn around.”

You nodded. Too eagerly again. Couldn’t care any less again. 

He didn’t think twice, just yanked the mask off and tossed it aside. It landed near you, making you bury half your face on the sheets as if staring at the mask alone would be disobeying his commands. 

The sound he made when the cool air hit his face was pure relief. He swiped the sweat off with his forearm, finally seeing you clearly. Face down. Eyes squeezed shut. Already clutching the sheets. 

“You look so pretty like this,” he mumbled. “All spread out for me…waiting.”

“Peter…” you whined, lifting your ass slightly from the pillow. 

“I know, I know. You’re okay.” He couldn’t keep the smirk away when he added, “you said please.”

He reached between you, guiding the thick head of his cock between your thighs until it nudged against your entrance. You were still soft and ready and perfect. 

Peter pushed in slowly, letting you feel every inch as he sank deep and deep and deeper. 

He braced one hand beside your head and kept the other on your hip, pushing you into the mattress as his thighs hit the back of yours. Slap. Slap. Slap. The position left almost no space between your bodies, with Peter pressing his chest against your back. 

“Fuck…you feel so good like this…so pretty taking me.”

He kept going, making the mattress creak and the base of the bed hit the brick wall repeatedly. Your desperate moans ran through his body like electricity, making something inside him crack open again. 

What? What is–

The moment his rhythm stuttered, he shook his head, trying to clear it. Beads of sweat flew from his hair to your back. 

“God–you…you’re making me–” The roughness of his thrusts slowed down immediately, inhaling a sharp intake of air as he felt the change again. “I can’t, I can’t…”

He lifted his gaze to the window behind the bed and noticed his eyes had turned back to its original color. 

“Oh my god,” he gasped, stopping altogether. He straightened up, still kneeling and inside you, but panicking. “I’m…I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened I–“

“Peter!” You cut him off, pushing yourself back, closer to him, without turning around. “Shut up and fuck me.”

The order left your mouth breathless, pushing back against him even more to make the point clear. His hands twitched when they gripped your hips again. 

“Okay, okay…” he panted, groaning when you dropped back on the bed and his cock almost left the warmth of your pussy. “I’m sorry–if I was too rough, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

He picked up the pace again, but the words tumbling out of him now were pure pleading Peter again. 

“Don’t turn around–don’t turn around–fuck, fuck…” slap, slap, slap. “You can come now. Please. Please, I want to feel it–you’d come apart so pretty on me, I know you would…pleasepleaseplease–”

His final permission and the desperate way he said it made you crash harder than the first time, crying out into the mattress. The second he felt you coming around him, he knew he couldn’t last much longer either.

“Can I–inside…please, can I??…let me fill you up–”

“Yes–inside, Peter, do it inside me…” 

He buried himself to the hilt with a strained groan and finally came. The orgasm tearing out of him was harder and longer than anything he’d ever felt, holding you there, filling you up. 

You gasped against the sheets, breathless, as the waves of cum seemed to go on forever, flooding you with warm and thick ropes in every spurt as he emptied himself inside you. 

“Thank you…thank you…” His forehead dropped between your shoulder blades, sending broken gasps against your skin as he kept coming. “You are so perfect–fuck…so perfect…thank you…”

The pollen wrung him dry until he could barely breathe, and even then he kept rolling his hips weakly, chasing the last of it while he slowly softened inside you. 

When it finally eased, the pain, the need, the hunger…he pulled out slowly with a whine, and half collapsed over you. His arms held most of his weight as he planked above you, but you could feel every ridge of his muscles brushing your sweaty skin. 

Peter’s eyes fluttered shut, feeling exhausted and aching in the best way, almost lulled by the sounds of your agitated breaths. 

You both felt the warm trail of liquid leaking out between your bodies and neither of you moved or said anything for a while. He could’ve stayed like that forever, really. With your naked body under him, no masks, no barriers, just your swollen pussy leaking out his seed–

“Successful ejaculation brought down the arachnid hormone levels immediately. Inhibitor working within regular parameters now. Congratulations, Peter.” 

EV’s monotone voice cut through the silence. 

It took two seconds of shock before you both broke into breathless laughter. His teeth grazed your back as your bodies vibrated in sync from the amusement and overall flustering after everything that happened. 

“Thank you, EV,” Peter muttered. 

“You’re welcome. I gathered data and the released semen volume exceeds standard parameters by two hundred and twenty six percent due to the high hormonal concentration. Hydration, clean up and rest are advised.”

“For fucks sake…” Peter cursed under his breath. 

“Oh god…” you mumbled against the sheets. 

That was your call back to reality. 

Peter felt you move under him, reaching blindly to the side until your hand found the mask. You lifted it over your shoulder, offering it to him without looking. 

“I don’t want to,” he said, too quickly, then cleared his throat. “I…I don’t want to put it back on.” 

“Then I’ll close my eyes,” you offered instead. 

“No–I mean…you don’t have to. I don’t want to wear it around you anymore. Not after…all of this,” he admitted sheepishly. 

“But you told me to not turn around,” you reminded him, dropping the mask on the mattress again. “And that was you, not the darker you.”

He chuckled, nodding even if you couldn’t see him yet. 

“Yeah, because if I saw your face while I was balls deep inside you I would’ve busted before you came.”

There it was. He said it. No turning back now. 

At least it got a chuckle from you too. 

“Listen I…I meant everything I said. Everything. The wanting, the nights I thought about you,” he confessed. “I don’t want you to feel like I just used you when…when there was always a reason why I needed you like oxygen tonight.”

Your breath hitched, and his hand found your waist, pulling you closer to him, and when you didn’t push away…he exhaled in relief behind you. 

“So maybe…you can turn around now. If–if you want to. Know the real me.”

“I would really like that,” you whispered without hesitation. 

You tried lifting yourself up to turn around, but he did most of the job, moving away the pillow he had placed under you and helping you roll onto your back. You closed your eyes, at least until you were facing him completely, and took a deep breath. Holding onto his biceps for moral support, you finally opened them again. 

Seeing his face for the first time felt so intimate, even after everything you just did. 

There he was. The same guy who just fucked you into next week, looking more shy and boyish than you could’ve ever imagined. 

Brown eyes. Dark, curly hair sticking to his forehead. A nervous smile tugging at the corner of his gorgeous mouth. 

So young. So earnest. So yours. 

Not spidey anymore. Just Peter. 

Your Peter. 

Thank you so much for reading 🤍 I used to write Peter so much back in the day (shoutout to my starktonyx era) and I’ve missed him dearly.

Feedback is always appreciated 🕷️

Divider by @andromeda-graphics

ref from here !

You kick off your shoes and shuffle down the hallway, already pulling your hair out of the bun you'd done up that morning, now mostly falling out on its own. The bedroom door is cracked open, and when you push it wider, you find exactly what you were hoping for.

Satoru is sprawled across the bed like a starfish, still wearing his teaching clothes—black pants and a rumpled button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His blindfold is tossed carelessly on the nightstand, and his white hair is an absolute disaster, sticking up in every direction like he's been running his hands through it all day. His eyes are closed, one arm thrown over his face.

He looks as exhausted as you feel.

"Rough day?" you ask, and he groans without moving.

"The first years tried to fight a curse three grades above their level because Yuji said it 'looked easy,'" he mumbles into his arm. "I had to bail them out. Again. Then Megumi and Nobara got into an argument about mission protocol that somehow turned into a full-blown screaming match about who ate whose leftovers from the fridge. I had to separate them like they were toddlers."

Despite your exhaustion, you snort. "Sounds about right."

"And then," he continues, finally moving his arm to peek at you with one brilliant blue eye, "Yaga cornered me about paperwork I was supposed to file last week. Do you know how much I hate paperwork?"

"I'm aware." You're already moving toward the bed, unbuttoning your work pants. "You complain about it literally every time."

"Because it's the worst. I'm the strongest sorcerer alive. I shouldn't have to file incident reports."

"Mm-hmm, very tragic." You shimmy out of your pants and leave them in a heap on the floor—a problem for future you. Your blouse follows, leaving you in just your bra and underwear. "My day was also shit, for the record."

"Yeah?" He's watching you now with lazy interest, too tired to even sit up but still tracking your movements.

"My boss is an idiot, the coffee machine broke, I had to sit through a two-hour meeting that could've been an email, and Janet from accounting passive-aggressively cc'd the entire department on an email about someone stealing her lunch. Which, for the record, I didn't do, but she definitely thinks I did based on the way she was glaring at me."

"Want me to hollow purple Janet from accounting?" he offers, completely serious.

"Tempting, but no." You crawl onto the bed and without ceremony, flop directly on top of him, your full weight pressing him into the mattress. You bury your face in his chest with a long, dramatic groan. "I'm dead. This is me, dead."

"Hi, dead. I'm also dead." His arms come around you automatically, wrapping you up even though you're both too tired to really move. "We're both corpses now. This is our life."

"Our death," you correct, muffled against his shirt.

"Our death," he agrees solemnly.

For a moment, you just lie there, breathing in sync. He smells like his cologne mixed with the faint scent of the training grounds—sweat and grass and something distinctly him. It's comforting in a way you can't quite articulate. This exhausted, collapsed-together moment feels like home.

His hand starts moving on your back, slow and gentle, rubbing up and down your spine. It feels incredible, and you make an embarrassing sound of contentment that you'll deny later.

"You're tense as hell," he murmurs, fingers working at a knot between your shoulder blades.

"You try dealing with Janet's accusatory emails and see how relaxed you are," you mumble, but you're already melting into his touch.

"I'd just block her."

"You can't block coworkers, Satoru."

"You can if you're powerful enough." His hand slides lower, still rubbing your back, and you feel some of the day's tension starting to ease. "This okay?"

"It's perfect. You're my favorite human pillow."

"Just human pillow? Not devastatingly handsome boyfriend who you're lucky to have?"

"That's implied," you say, but you're smiling against his chest.

His other hand joins the first, both of them working at your tired muscles, and you honest-to-god almost start purring. This is exactly what you needed. Just this—him, the quiet apartment, his hands on you, the weight of the day slowly lifting.

But then his hands start to wander.

It's subtle at first. His fingers drift from your back to your sides, tracing the curve of your waist. Then lower, skimming over your hips. And then—

He grabs your ass. Both hands, full handfuls, squeezing appreciatively.

"Really?" you ask, lifting your head to look at him. "We're both dead, remember? Corpses don't grope."

"I'm a very motivated corpse." He squeezes again, shameless, and there's a grin tugging at his lips now. "Can't help it. You're lying on top of me in your underwear. What did you expect?"

"Self-control? Restraint? Basic human decency?"

"Baby, you know me better than that." His hands are still kneading your ass, and despite your sass, you can feel heat starting to pool low in your belly. "Besides, you love it."

"I love that you can't even wait until we've recovered from our respective terrible days before getting handsy?"

"Exactly." He's fully grinning now, that cocky, insufferable grin that makes you want to kiss him and smack him at the same time. "Your ass is the best stress relief. It's science."

"That's not science, you idiot."

"It's my science."

You snort, but you're not moving away. His hands are warm and familiar, and honestly, after the day you've had, this isn't the worst thing in the world. You let your head drop back to his chest, eyes drifting closed.

"Comfortable?" he asks, voice softer now.

"Mmm," you hum in agreement. "Don't stop."

"Wasn't planning on it."

For a while, it's just quiet. His hands keep moving—sometimes squeezing, sometimes just resting there, thumbs drawing lazy circles. You can hear his heartbeat under your ear, steady and strong. The tension in your shoulders is almost completely gone now, replaced by a different kind of warmth, something slower and heavier.

You're half-asleep when you feel it—the unmistakable hardness pressing against your hip.

"Satoru," you mumble, not even opening your eyes.

"Hmm?"

"Are you seriously getting hard right now?"

There's a pause. Then he says, "...Maybe."

You lift your head to look at him, one eyebrow raised. He has the decency to look slightly sheepish, but there's heat in his eyes now, that familiar hunger that never really goes away when it comes to you.

"We were having a nice moment."

"We still are."

"You've got a boner."

"I do…That doesn't cancel the nice moment."

You stare at him for another second before letting out a laugh.

"Seriously?"

"What?"

"I come home exhausted, use you as a human mattress for ten minutes, and somehow I'm the problem?"

"You are absolutely the problem."

"I literally haven't done anything."

"You climbed on top of me, got all comfy, made that little happy humming noise, and then fell asleep on my chest."

"I hummed?"

"You hummed."

"I don't hum."

"You do when you're really comfortable."

You narrow your eyes. "I've never noticed that."

"I have."

You glare at him.

"…Baby." He exhales dramatically, like he's carrying the weight of the world. "You're makin' me so hard."

You snort. "You're unbelievable."

"I'm trying to be respectful."

"Are you?"

Silence.

"…No." He grins without an ounce of shame. "Not really."

Despite yourself, you laugh again, dropping your forehead back against his shoulder.

"You're ridiculous."

"I know."

His arms tighten around you just a little. "But you look so comfortable."

His voice is quieter now. "So happy."

You burrow your face further into his shoulder.

"…I like when you're like this."

You feel yourself smile before you can stop it. "You're such a sap."

"Only for you."

There's a comfortable silence. Then his hands drift just a little bit lower again.

"…Okay," you mumble. "Now you're definitely not being respectful."

"No." He gives your ass another shameless squeeze. "I'm definitely not."

Before you can respond, he's sitting up, keeping you in his lap, and capturing your mouth in a kiss that's hungry and demanding. You can taste his desperation, feel it in the way his hands grip you like he's afraid you're going to disappear.

When he pulls back, his lips are already swollen, his eyes are dark with want. "I need to taste you," he says, and it's not a request. "Get up here."

"Up where—"

But he's already moving, sliding down the bed and pulling you with him. "On my face. Come on."

"Satoru—"

"Please." And there it is, that needy edge that makes your stomach flip. "I've been thinking about this all day. About you sitting on my face, riding my tongue until you come. Please, baby. I need it."

How are you supposed to say no to that?

"You're ridiculous," you say, but you're already moving, letting him position you. He's lying flat on his back now, looking up at you with such raw want that it makes you shiver.

"Not ridiculous. Desperate." His hands come up to grip your thighs, pulling you forward. "Now stop stalling and sit on my face."

"Bossy," you mutter, but you're lowering yourself down, and then—

"Oh fuck," you gasp as his tongue makes contact, sliding through your folds in one long, deliberate stroke.

He groans under you, the vibration going straight to your core, and his hands tighten on your thighs. "That's it," he mumbles against you. "Right there. Don't move."

But you're already moving, you can't help it, grinding down against his mouth as he licks and sucks and devours you like a man starving. His grip on your thighs is almost bruising, holding you exactly where he wants you, and when you try to lift up, worried about suffocating him, about being too much—he just pulls you back down harder.

"Satoru—"

"Stay," he demands, voice muffled. He pulls his face back to look up at you. "Fuck my face. Come on, baby, I can take it. Give it to me." Then he lowers his mouth to you again.

It's obscene, the wet sounds of his mouth on you, the way he's completely lost in it. His tongue circles your clit, then dips inside you, then back to your clit, and you're already shaking, already so close.

"That's it," he encourages, and you can hear the smugness in his voice even now. "You're dripping, baby. such a mess on my face."

"Shut—up," you gasp, but there's no heat in it because he's right—you can feel how wet you are, can feel it on his chin, his lips, and it should be embarrassing but it's just hot.

"Make me," he challenges, and then he's sucking your clit into his mouth, hard, and you cry out.

Your hands fly to the headboard, gripping the edge to steady yourself as the pleasure intensifies. You start to really move now, riding his face with purpose, and he moans underneath you like this is exactly what he wanted all along.

"Fuck, yes," he groans against you, the vibration making you gasp. "Just like that. Use me, baby. Take what you need."

His hands guide your hips, encouraging the rhythm, and his tongue is relentless—circling, flicking, pressing flat against you in a way that makes your thighs shake. You can feel yourself getting closer, that coil of heat tightening in your belly.

"Satoru, I'm—fuck—"

"Do it," he demands, voice rough. "Come on my face.”

His tongue flicks rapidly over your clit, and that's all it takes. Your orgasm crashes through you in waves, pleasure rolling through your entire body. You're grinding down against his mouth, riding it out, and he's groaning underneath you like this is the best thing that's ever happened to him.

When you finally come down, shaking and oversensitive, you try to move off him, but his hands tighten on your thighs.

"Not yet," he mumbles, pressing soft kisses to your inner thighs, your hip bones, anywhere he can reach. "Just—give me a second. You taste so fucking good."

"You're gonna kill me," you pant, but you're smiling.

But he's already diving back in, and you gasp as his tongue finds your clit again. Your whole body jolts at the sensitivity, but he doesn't let up—he's relentless, his hands gripping your thighs to keep you steady as he works you over. The pleasure is almost too much, bordering on overwhelming, and you're already moaning his name.

"Satoru—fuck—it's too much—"

"I know, baby," he groans against you, the vibration sending another wave through you. "But you can take it."

He's eating you out like he's starving, like he can't get enough, and your whole body is shaking. Your hands grip the headboard tighter, your hips moving against his mouth almost involuntarily. The pleasure is building again, impossibly fast, and you're gasping and moaning as he works you toward another orgasm.

"Oh god—Satoru—I'm gonna—"

"That's it," he encourages, his tongue flicking faster. 

Your second orgasm hits you like a wave, even more intense than the first, and you're crying out as pleasure crashes through you. Your thighs are shaking so hard you can barely hold yourself up, and he's groaning underneath you, clearly getting off on how much he's affecting you.

When you finally collapse, completely spent and oversensitive, he finally releases you, and you fall onto the bed next to him, breathing hard and trembling.

"And I'm dramatic?" He's grinning like he just won the lottery, his face wet, his hair a complete disaster. "That was—fuck. I love you, baby."

"You're insane," you say, but you're pulling him in for a kiss, tasting yourself on his lips.

"About you? Absolutely." His hands are already roaming again, cupping your face, then sliding down your sides. "But I'm not done with you yet."

"Oh really?"

"Really." He's kissing you again, slower this time, deeper. When he pulls back, there's something vulnerable in his expression beneath all the confidence. "You have no idea what you do to me."

"Then show me," you challenge, and his eyes darken.

"Oh, baby."

He's fumbling with his pants, shoving them down along with his boxers, and his cock springs free—flushed and hard and already leaking. You reach for him, wrapping your hand around his length, and he hisses.

"Fuck, baby—"

"What?" You stroke him slowly, base to tip, and he's already trembling.

"Your hands—shit—they're so much smaller than mine. Look so good wrapped around my cock."

"Yeah?" you tease, giving him another slow stroke.

"Yeah." His voice is strained. 

He gently removes your hand, pressing a kiss to your palm, and then he's pulling you against him. His arms wrap around you, one hand sliding up your back, the other gripping your hip possessively. You can feel him, hard and hot against your thigh, and he's just... holding you there.

"Satoru—"

"Give me a second," he murmurs, his voice already rough. His breathing is uneven against your neck, and you can feel the tension in his body—the way he's trying to maintain control. "Just—fuck—you feel so good.”

His hips shift slightly, and you feel the length of him drag against you—not entering, just the pressure of him sliding through your wetness. The friction makes you gasp, and he groans.

"There it is," he breathes. "That sound. The little gasp you make when I—" He does it again, a slow roll of his hips, grinding against you. "When I touch you just right."

"Satoru, please—"

"Please what?" His hand slides down to grip your ass, pulling you tighter against him. "Tell me what you want, baby."

"You know what I want."

"I do." Another slow grind, and you can feel how wet you are, how easily he slides against you. "But I wanna hear you say it. Love the way your voice gets all breathy when you're desperate for me."

"You're killing me—"

"Good." He's kissing your neck now, teeth grazing your pulse point. "You've been killing me all day. All week. Every time you look at me with those eyes, every time you smile at me like I'm the only person in the world—fuck, baby, you have no idea."

His voice is shaking now, and you realize he's not teasing anymore—he's barely holding on. The head of his cock catches at your entrance, and you both freeze.

"I can't—" His forehead drops to your shoulder. "I can't think straight around you. Can't control myself. You just—you exist, and I'm gone."

"Then stop trying to control it," you whisper, and you feel him shudder.

"Fuck." He shifts, lining himself up properly, and then he's pushing in—slowly, so slowly. The stretch is intense, pleasure edged with the sweetest hint of pressure as he fills you inch by inch. "Fuck, baby. You feel so good. So tight. So perfect."

"Satoru—"

"I know. I've got you." He's only halfway in, taking his time, letting you adjust. His forehead is still pressed to your shoulder, and you can feel how much restraint this is taking him—the way his muscles are tense, the way his breath comes in short gasps. "You're taking me so well. You always take me so well."

Finally, finally, he's fully seated inside you, and you both just breathe for a moment, adjusting to the feeling of being completely connected.

"Okay?" he asks, lifting his head to look at you.

"Yes baby," you manage. "You can move.”

"Thank fuck." He pulls out slowly, almost all the way, and then thrusts back in. The drag of his cock against your walls makes you gasp, and he groans. "That sound. Fuck, I love that sound."

He sets a steady rhythm, deep and deliberate, each thrust making you feel impossibly full. His hands are everywhere—cupping your face, tangling in your hair, gripping your hips—like he can't decide where he wants to touch you most.

"You're so beautiful like this," he murmurs, watching your face. "All flushed and breathless. The way your eyes get all hazy when I'm inside you—fuck, it drives me crazy."

"Satoru—"

"I love you so much." His voice is rough with emotion now, not just desire. "Love everything about you. The way you feel, the way you look at me, the way you let me have you like this—"

"I love you too," you gasp, and his hips stutter.

His eyes squeeze shut for a moment, and when he opens them again, there's something raw there.

"Say it again."

"I love you."

"Fuck." His pace falters, becomes less controlled. "You can't—you can't just say it like that when I'm inside you. You're gonna—shit—"

"You feel so good," you tell him, cupping his face. "So perfect. You always make me feel so good."

His breath catches, and suddenly he's kissing you desperately, his thrusts becoming harder, deeper, less measured.

"You're everything," he gasps against your mouth. "Everything to me. The way you trust me, the way you look at me like I'm—fuck, baby, I can't—"

"You are," you insist, and his composure cracks completely.

"Fuck—" He's moving faster now, hitting that spot inside you that makes you see stars. "Love how you fit around me. Like you were made for me. Like we were made for each other."

"We were," you gasp, and his eyes flash with something fierce and possessive.

"Damn right we were." He shifts slightly, changing the angle, and suddenly every thrust is devastating. "There it is. That's the spot, isn't it?"

"Yes—fuck—right there—"

"I know, baby. I know." His voice is breaking now, emotion and desire tangled together. "Gonna make you come again. Wanna watch your face when you—fuck—when you come because of me."

The pleasure is building so quickly you can barely breathe. Your hands clutch at his shoulders, his back, trying to anchor yourself as he drives into you again and again.

"That's it," he encourages, watching your face like he's memorizing it. "I can feel you getting tighter. You're close, aren't you? So fucking close."

"Don't stop—"

"Never." One of his hands slides between your bodies, his thumb finding your clit and rubbing in tight circles. "Come for me, baby. Let me feel it. Let me see you."

The combination of his cock hitting that perfect spot and his thumb on your clit is too much. Your orgasm hits you hard, pleasure crashing through you in waves that make your whole body tense and shake. You're clenching around him, and he groans at the sensation.

"Fuck, yes," he breathes, still moving, fucking you through it. "That's it. That's my girl. You're so good. So beautiful. Fuck, I love you so much."

When you finally start to come down, gasping and trembling, you expect him to follow you over the edge. But instead, he slows his movements, pressing soft kisses to your face.

"Satoru—"

"Not done with you yet," he murmurs against your lips.

Before you can respond, he's pulling out and lifting your legs, draping them over his shoulders. The new position opens you up completely, and when he pushes back in, he's somehow even deeper than before.

"Oh fuck—" you gasp, and he groans.

"There we go." He starts moving again, and this angle is devastating. Every thrust feels impossibly deep, hitting places that make your toes curl. "How's that, baby? That good?"

"Yes—fuck—Satoru—"

"I love you so much," he says, his voice rough. "You know that? I'm never letting you go. You're mine. Always gonna be mine."

"Yours," you agree breathlessly, and something in his expression goes even more intense.

"That's right." His thrusts are harder now, more purposeful. "Gonna take care of you. Gonna make you feel so good. Gonna love you for the rest of my life."

His hand moves to your stomach, pressing down, and suddenly his eyes go wide. He can feel himself inside you, the bulge of his cock with each thrust, and something feral takes over his expression.

"Holy shit," he breathes, completely mesmerized. His hand traces the outline, feeling himself move in and out of you, and he starts fucking you even harder, unable to look away. "Look at that. Look at you taking me so deep."

You're already building toward another orgasm, the intensity of this angle and his words and the way he's looking at you like you're the most incredible thing he's ever seen—it's all too much.

He's transfixed, watching his cock disappear inside you again and again, feeling the movement under his palm. His breathing is ragged, his movements becoming more frantic.

"Can you feel that, baby?" he asks breathlessly, his voice completely wrecked. "Fuck—I'm so fucking deep—you feel that?"

You look up at him with half-shut glazed eyes, your mouth parted open, completely fucked out. "Yes—fuck—yes, Satoru, I feel it—"

He groans at the sight of you—at how thoroughly wrecked you look, at the way you're falling apart beneath him. "You're so hot. So fucking hot. The way you look right now—fuck—I'm obsessed with you."

He's fucking you harder now, more urgently, his hand still on your stomach feeling himself move inside you with each thrust. The visual seems to drive him wild, and his movements become almost desperate.

"Come for me again," he demands, his other hand finding your oversensitive clit. "I know you can. I know you've got one more in you. Come on, baby. Give it to me."

"Satoru—I can't—it's too much—"

"You can." His thumb presses harder, circling your clit. "You can, baby. I need you to.”

The pleasure is building impossibly fast, almost painful in its intensity. You're so sensitive from your first two orgasms that every thrust, every touch feels magnified.

"That's it," he encourages, watching your face. "I can see it. You're right there. Just let go, baby.”

His voice is breaking, his control completely shattered, and then something raw escapes from him. 

"I want you—" His hips snap forward harder. "Fuck—want all of you.”

His composure finally snaps.

"They've been on my ass my whole life about the bloodline. About heirs. About duty." Another hard thrust, his voice is cracking. "And I never—fuck—never wanted it."

He's breathing hard, almost gasping between words.

"Not until you."

His forehead drops closer to yours, his movements becoming more frantic.

"Only you. Want to marry you—want to wake up to you every day—want to call you my wife and—ah—know you're mine—"

Your orgasm crashes through you even harder, triggered by his words, by the desperation in his voice, by the sight of him completely undone above you. You're clenching around him so tight he gasps, your whole body shaking with the intensity.

"Fuck, yes—" He's just… staring at you, still moving, still feeling himself inside you. "So beautiful—The way your face—the way you sound—fuck—"

The sight of you completely wrecked under him, the feeling of you clenching around him, the way you gasp his name—it pushes him over the edge.

"Ah—fuck—fuck—fuuckk—" He buries himself as deep as he can go and comes hard, spilling into you in hot pulses. His whole body shudders with the intensity of it, and you can feel him throbbing inside you, can feel the warmth spreading.

He collapses on top of you, careful not to crush you but clearly boneless. For a while, you just breathe together, sweaty and satisfied.

"Holy shit," you mumble.

"Yeah." He's pressing kisses all over your face—your forehead, your cheeks, your nose, your lips. He can’t seem to stop touching you, his hands running over your skin like he needs the contact. "You're amazing. Incredible. Best girlfriend in the entire world."

"Best girlfriend, or best pussy?" you tease, and he pulls back to look at you with mock offense.

"Both. Definitely both." He's grinning now, that soft, genuine smile that he only gives you. "But mostly you. I love you. Like, so much. An embarrassing amount."

"I love you too, you needy disaster."

"Your needy disaster," he corrects, and he's still touching you, hands running over your skin like he can't bear to stop. "Mine now. No takebacks."

"Wouldn't dream of it," you say softly, and you mean it.

He pulls you closer, tucking you against his chest, and you can hear his heartbeat starting to slow. The exhaustion from earlier is creeping back in, but it's different now—satisfied, content, the good kind of tired.

"We should probably shower," you murmur, but you're already half-asleep.

"Later," he mumbles into your hair. "Right now I just wanna hold you."

"Clingy."

"Yep." He doesn't even sound ashamed. "You're stuck with me. Forever. Hope you're ready for that."

"I think I can manage," you say, smiling against his chest.

“Red Hood updates, huh?” you quickly turn your phone off and look to the blonde next to you.

“It’s nothing, just an account I followed a while ago.”

“Hmmm, sure,” she laughs, reaching for the popcorn bucket that was sitting on your coffee table, “I’ll try to believe that.”

She goes back to watching the movie for a bit and then asks, “Hey, are you still coming with me to the gala thing next week? Cass will be there and all her brothers.”

“Yeah, sure,” you say, “I still need to find a dress, though.”

Stephanie and Cassandra invited you a couple weeks ago, you were out getting dinner for a girl’s night when the topic of Cass’s brothers came up. You knew a little bit about her background, but not much, and you could tell she didn’t want to give much, which was fine. You’d let her share on her own time. You did know that she was adopted by Bruce Wayne, though, which meant that she had an assortment of brothers that had also in some way or another come into Bruce Wayne’s care. “You should come! You can meet them all, it’ll be so fun!” Stephanie had said excited, “Tim would love it if you were there!” Tim would hang out with you and Cass sometimes, you’d also heard random stories about his brothers from him too.

“Yes, please come,” Cass chimed in.

“You can finally meet Dick, Jason, and Damian,” Stephanie winked at you. You’d heard a lot about the rest of the brothers, but you hadn’t yet met them in person.

The time would finally come when a couple weeks later when it was time to make your Wayne gala debut. You’d gone dress shopping with Steph and Cass and landed on a floor length silk crimson dress, which of course Stephanie poked fun at. “Hoping we run into a certain batboy on the way?”

“Shut up,” you playfully swat at her arm as you get into Tim’s car. Steph, Cass, and Tim had shown up at your apartment to pick you up, Tim agreeing to be your chauffeur for the night.

You’d feel out of place if your friends weren’t there that night. You weren’t used to this world of excess — gowns, champagne, tuxedos, and designer heels everywhere you looked — but everyone else handled it with ease.

The four of you found a table to set up at. At some point, Tim started waving, calling over to what you soon figured out were his other brothers.

Dick was the first to introduce himself, flashing you a killer smile that almost had you swooning. Sparkling blue eyes and a suit that was tailored just right to him, he was quick with a joke and when he talked, you felt like the only other person in the room. He was so charming it was kind of annoying.

Damian carried himself with such grace you were impressed, he was short, but well built, and all sharp features. He was quiet, but you could tell he was taking it all in, observing every movement the others in the group made. He did perk up when you referenced your cat at some point in conversation, he even asked to see a picture.

But the one who really stood out to you was Jason. He demanded your attention in a way, well over six feet tall, the fabric of his tuxedo stretching around well defined muscles, and your eyes kept drifting to the little white curls that peeked out of his black hair. You noticed scars running along his large hands when he moved to grab his flute of champagne, which made your mind wander to where he got them from. He was quiet at first, taking a bit of time to warm up, but when he did, he cracked jokes and teased his siblings.

You don’t remember how it got brought up, maybe when you made a joke about looking for your next boyfriend on the dance floor, when Steph said, “I thought you were saving yourself for Red Hood?”

“Steph!” you gasp, “why would you say that!” Dick laughs and looks away, Tim makes wide eyes at you, and Jason looks, intrigued?

“It’s nothing,” you say, trying to wave it off.

“Please tell,” Dick implores.

“Well,” you start up your story, the same one Steph and Cass heard two months ago after it happened. “I was walking home one night aftera bad date, which was my first mistake. I wasn’t really focused, I was on the verge of tears — I didn’t even notice the creep behind me until he was pretty close. I started to speed up, he did too. I call Steph, thinking that would make him go away, it doesn’t. He’s starting to get really close, I’m honestly thinking about throwing my purse at him and running away. He starts to shout at me, and then boom, Red Hood is there and he’s punched the guy, telling him not to be a — in his words, fucking creep — and then,” you hesitate for a second, “he asked me if I was okay. Said he’d walk me to the nearest subway station. I don’t know, he just showed me kindness in a moment when I needed it. It’s a silly little schoolgirl crush, nothing more.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Dick rushes to your defense, shooting a look at Jason.

“Yeah, Red Hood’s cool,” Jason says, fidgeting with the now empty champagne flute in front of him.

“Steph thinks I’m so crazy for it,” you say, relieved.

“Don’t listen to her, her taste in men is Tim,” Jason says and you laugh, glad that her brothers have your back.

At some point in the night, people drift away, leaving you and Jason at the table alone, which is also when you learn that Jason is a bit of a gossip.

“That’s Barbara, she and Dick used to date,” he points to the woman with long orange hair who Dick left to talk to, “and that” — he says pointing to the boy Damian left to talk to — “is Lois Lane’s son Jon, they’re good friends.”

You’ve really enjoyed your time with Jason, he’s funny and you mesh well. You’ve been telling him stories of your own life, how you ended up in Gotham, what you do for work, how you met Steph and Cass (the answer: your 8am lecture at Gotham University, which Steph would come late to and ask you for lecture notes).

Before you know it, it’s the end of the night, and everyone’s trickling out. Tim is rounding up you, Cass, and Steph to leave when Jason stops you on your way out, asking you for your number.

Over the course of your first year together, Jason find is endearing how much you really do love Red Hood. He thought that Steph was exaggerating, but when he saw you change your lockscreen from a picture of Red Hood to a selfie of you and Jason, he knew you were in deep.

You have little Red Hood figurines around your apartment - on bookshelves and by your bed. You wear a ratty oversized Red Hood T-shirt when you go to bed, and he, like Steph, saw your name came up as following the most popular Red Hood updates account on twitter.

He thinks it's sweet, but it also kills him that you don't know that this whole time you're harboring a secret crush on your own boyfriend. He thinks about telling you multiple different times - when he has to cancel on a lot of dates that include hanging out at nighttime, when he has to explain away random bruises and scrapes, or when he stops himself before he accidentally tells you a story that reveals his secret.

He finally decides, at some point, that he'll tell you as a part of your one year anniversary together. He figured that you stuck around with his weird excuses for long enough and that you deserved to know the truth. He also figured that you weren't going anywhere, he really loved you and he could tell that you carried that same love for him. Now, he wanted you to love every part of him, vigilante activities included.

"You ready, babe?" Jason calls from the kitchen of your apartment, dressed up for the dinner reservation that he made for your anniversary. He was supposed to patrol tonight, but he bribed Dick to take his place.

You come out of the bedroom in a red dress that Jason is obsessed with, it hugs your body in all the right places, looking through your purse to make sure you had everything you need. You looked up and smiled at him, "Yeah, let's go."

He took you to a cute little Italian place that just opened up in Gotham and then out for ice cream after. He was nervous on the way back to your apartment, not knowing what your reaction to his surprise would be. When it came to gifts, he asked you to go first. You gifted him some new penguin classics for his collection and some gear for his motorcycle that Dick helped you pick out.

Then it was Jason's turn - he gave you the standard gifts first: a beautiful necklace with a little J on it, so you could wear his initial around; and some other little trinkets that he saw and thought of you. You move in to hug him and kiss him on the cheek, "Thank you Jay, this is really sweet," he helps you put the necklace on, his large hands warm on the back of your neck. He's a bit nervous when he says, "I actually have one more surprise for you."

"Oh?" you smile at him, "What is it?"

"Just give me a second," he says, disappearing back into your bedroom. When he comes back out a few minutes later, he's dressed in his Red Hood garb, his helmet in his hands. Your jaw drops and you're silent for a couple seconds, which has him nervous, bouncing on his feet.

"What," you're still stunned, "where did you get this costume?"

"It's mine," he laughs, "I'm the Red Hood."

"Oh my god!" You jump up, covering your mouth with your hands, "is this why you're always randomly busy at night? You're out there," you move closer to him, looking at his costume and feeling all the little details, "saving people. And all the bruises, you're fighting all the time."

"Are you mad?" he asks you, eyes searching your face for an answer.

"What?" you look up at him, "Jason, you've basically just made my biggest fantasy come true," you put your hands on his chest, "I can't believe this whole time I've been dating the Red Hood."

"Do you know how hard it's been to keep this secret from Red Hood's biggest fan?"

You laugh, "So that night, when I almost got mugged, that was you that stopped him, you that offered to walk me to the subway station?"

"All me, baby," he wraps his arms around your waist.

"And Steph, she knows?"

"Yeah, she knows."

"I'm so stupid," you hide your face in Jason's chest, "that whole time she was making a big deal out of it, she knew! She was," you gasp, "she was trying to set us up, wasn't she?"

"Knowing her, probably," he laughs.

"She let me make a fool out of myself, talking about my crush on Red Hood while he was right in front of me the whole time."

"For what it's worth, I thought it was cute."

"You know what would be cute?" you raise an eyebrow at him and move your hands down his chest a bit, "if you and I went back to that bedroom and kept talking about this there."