You should’ve known something was up when he specifically bought only two first-class tickets to Las Vegas and your flight was at midnight. He’d insisted the two of you sneak out of the Kyoto Jujutsu Tech compound where you’d stayed for the duration of his visit to the Gojo clan, and hadn’t bothered to inform Shoko or Utahime or Yaga.

And so, again, you reiterate firmly and resolutely: none of this is your fault.

Your predicament—standing in a parking lot behind a Denny’s at nine in the night with a small fire going in a trash can nearby—is entirely, absolutely, positively Gojo Satoru’s fault.

“I want a divorce,” you tell him.

“We’ve been married for forty-seven minutes.”

“Forty-seven minutes too long.”

“You’re burning our wedding certificate!” Satoru says. “How are we supposed to file for divorce if there’s no proof we even got married?”

“I’ll figure it out,” you say, poking at the certificate with a stick you found on the ground. The corner of it curls and blackens satisfyingly. “I’m very resourceful.”

“You’re committing a crime is what you’re doing,” he says.

“You committed a crime first.”

“Getting married isn’t a crime—”

“Fraud is.”

Satoru opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again, at a loss for words. This is a rare and precious occurrence—Gojo Satoru, speechless! You would be savouring it more if you weren’t currently a married woman in a Denny’s parking lot in Las Vegas at eleven o’clock in the night.

Satoru had told you it was a vacation. He’d shown up at your room in the Kyoto compound at half-past ten with a bag tucked under his arm and said, simply, “Come on. We’re leaving.”

“Leaving where?” you’d asked.

“Somewhere that isn’t here,” was his cryptic reply.

You’d been in Kyoto for six days. Six days of watching Satoru navigate the Gojo clan and their elders with their careful smiles and careful words. Nearly a week of watching something tight and unhappy lodge itself behind Satoru’s eyes while he pretended, convincingly, that everything was fine. You knew he wasn’t; you’d watched him perfect his act for years, after all.

So, you went. You told yourself it was because you’d never been to Las Vegas. This, at least, is true.

You’d grabbed your bag and followed him out through a side entrance of the compound at nine forty-five, and you didn’t inform any of your friends or superiors. Because of this, your phone has been periodically buzzing in your pocket for the last several hours and you’ve been ignoring it, which is a problem that is also, for the record, Satoru’s fault.

The flight was actually wonderful. First-class seats entailed warm socks and warm food and a window seat, because Satoru had graciously sat by the aisle. When you were flying over the Pacific, he’d fallen asleep with his head tipped back and his sunglasses still on. He looked younger when he was sleeping, you’d thought. More like the version of him you’d met when you were both too young and foolish to understand what being a sorcerer actually meant.

After you landed, Satoru took you to a casino and then to a fancy place for lunch, and then to another two casinos—if he wasn’t careful, he’d turn into a gambling addict soon—and then he took you to a chapel on the Strip with fake flowers zip-tied to the pews and an officiant named Francis who had red hair and smelled like cigarettes and convenience store chewing gum.

Francis had cried a little during the vows, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. Satoru had found this enormously gratifying. You, however, had been in something of a dissociative state.

“It’s not fraud,” Satoru says now, in the parking lot, watching you cremate your marriage certificate. “We did actually get married. Francis witnessed it. There are photos.”

“There are photos?”

“Francis had a camera.”

“What?”

“I think it’s just something he keeps on him professionally.”

You stare at him. He has the grace to look slightly sheepish. His sunglasses are still on. His suit jacket is open, and his tie, which had been done up neatly for the ceremony (clearly he’d planned far enough ahead to wear a nice tie) is now loosened and slightly crooked. The cheap gold ring on his finger—wrong hand; he’d fumbled it in the moment and jammed it on before either of you could correct it—catches the light from the parking lot fluorescents.

“That’s it!” you say, snapping your fingers at him. “That’s our proof to file for divorce! Take me back to the wedding chapel, Satoru.”

“No way,” he says. “I’m taking you to dinner first. We need to commemorate our first night of being married.”

“We’re behind a Denny’s,” you point out.

“I know,” Satoru says. “Denny’s is a perfectly acceptable dining establishment, but I meant somewhere nice. There’s a steakhouse on the Strip that has a three-month waitlist.”

“Then we can’t go there.”

“I called ahead.”

You gape at him. “Three months ago?”

“No,” he says. “I called ahead on the plane. You were asleep.”

“I wasn’t asleep for that long—”

“Yeah, you were asleep for, like, four hours. You even snored a little.”

“I did not—that’s not the point! The point is, you planned this. You planned all of it, the chapel, the restaurant, the—” You gesture at the ring on his finger, the ring on yours, the dying fire in the trash can—“everything.”

“Not everything. I didn’t plan for you to burn our wedding certificate in a fit of rage.”

“That’s your fault by proximity.”

“That’s not a legal standard.”

“I’m making it one.”

Satoru smiles, quick and bright. You have a long and storied history of making Gojo Satoru laugh when he isn’t expecting to, and it used to feel like winning something. It still does, if you’re being honest.

“Come on,” Satoru says, nodding towards the street. “Dinner first, Francis later. We can get the photos after and then you can file for divorce. I won’t stop you.”

“You’d better not,” you say.

“I said I won’t.” He holds his hands up, the picture of innocence. “I’m a man of my word.”

“You’re really not.”

“I’m a man of some of my word,” he amends.

The steakhouse is situated on the upper floor of one of the larger casinos on the Strip, lined with dark wood and low, hushed lighting. You are seated by a window. The Strip sprawls below you in every direction, extravagant and relentless, all that light going nowhere at tremendous speed.

“Were you really that confident I’d say yes?” you ask once the menus have been set in front of you.

“I was… hopeful,” Satoru says. It’s not a word you can recall him ever applying to himself before, in all the years you’ve known him; it sounds odd. You pick up your own menu and look at it without reading it.

What you’ve learnt about Satoru and what most people tend to miss is that underneath all the grinning and grandstanding and carelessness, there is someone who wants things very badly and has learned not to show it. You’ve known this for years. You’ve watched him want things, and watched him bury it under layers of grandiosity until it’s almost invisible. Almost.

“The elders have been at it for two years,” he says finally, without looking up from the menu. “The meetings, the candidates. They’re all very suitable women from very respectable families. Good for the clan’s interests.”

“You never told me it’d been going on for that long.”

“Didn’t want to make it a thing.”

“Satoru—”

“It’s fine. It’s just—” He sets the menu down and looks out at the Strip, all that light below. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life performing for someone who sees me as a resource. I do enough of that already. I knew it was going to happen eventually and that they were going to stop asking and start insisting. So. Vegas.”

“Vegas,” you echo.

“You were the obvious answer,” he says matter-of-factly. “You already know what you’re getting into with me. You don’t have any illusions. You—you’re my best friend. There isn’t anyone I’d rather be stuck with.”

“Stuck with,” you repeat. “Incredibly romantic.”

“I said what I said.”

The waiter arrives and Satoru orders for the two of you. You look down at the ring on your finger and think about how it came from the little rotating display by the chapel door, five dollars American. It fits almost perfectly except for being on the wrong hand.

“Er. You fumbled the ring,” you say.

“I was nervous,” he says.

Gojo Satoru, nervous. Gojo Satoru, who treats most of human experience as something happening at a slight remove, who has never, to your knowledge, shown up to anything in his life uncertain of the outcome—nervous!

“Were you,” you say.

“Briefly,” Satoru says, with great dignity. “It passed.”

“Of course.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Of course.”

The fountains in front of the Bellagio are in the middle of their routine, water arcing up in great pale columns against the dark. The light from them moves across the window in slow, repeating patterns. Satoru’s eyes catch the shifting light. You swallow hard.

“We’re not arguing about the divorce, by the way,” you tell him.

“We’ll see.”

“Satoru.”

“We’ll see,” he says again pleasantly. You’re going to say something else, something firm and unambiguous, but he’s already put his cutlery down and is walking out, and you’re already following.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #2 – BREAKING AND ENTERING.

The supposed 24/7 active wedding chapel has a sign tacked onto the front door when you arrive later, which reads, Under maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience!

“Fuck,” you groan.

“Language,” Satoru says. “Maintenance at midnight. Huh. That’s strange.”

“That’s what I’m focusing on right now, yes, thank you.”

You press your face briefly against the chapel door’s small window. The lights inside are off. Through the glass you can just make out the shape of the pews, the flowers zip-tied to their ends, and the little altar at the front where Francis had stood several hours ago and wept openly into his handkerchief. How are you supposed to get the photographs of your husband—you are using that word provisionally under extreme protest—looking at you like you’re the only fixed point in the room?

“He might live here,” Satoru says.

“Francis?”

“Some of these places have a back apartment for the officiant. We could knock.”

“We’re not knocking on a man’s door at midnight,” you say.

“It’s nearly one.”

“That makes it worse!” You step back from the door and look at the sign again. There’s a narrow alley running along the left side of the chapel, squeezed between the chapel building and the 24-hour tattoo parlour next door. You only notice it because Satoru’s already walking towards it. “What are you doing?”

“Recon,” Satoru says. “Just looking.”

He disappears around the corner. You stand on the pavement with your hands on your hips before deciding to follow him. The alley is cramped and smells stale. There’s a dumpster and a stack of plastic chairs leaning against the chapel wall. Satoru stands with his hands in his pockets, looking upward with his head tilted back.

“No,” you say.

“There’s a window.”

“I see that.”

“It’s open!”

It appears to be a casement window on the chapel’s ground floor, propped out at an angle, about eight feet off the ground and just wide enough for a person to fit through.

“That could be a bathroom window,” you say. “We’d be breaking and entering.”

“The window’s already open,” Satoru says. “Technically we’d just be entering. The photos Francis took are currently somewhere in that chapel developing in a back room, unattended.”

“If we get arrested,” you say, “I’m blaming you entirely.”

“Obviously.”

“I will give a statement to the police and it will contain your full name and a detailed account of everything that’s happened tonight, starting with the chapel and working backwards to Kyoto.”

“Sure. Boost or be boosted?” Satoru asks, turning to the chairs. “I’d say I’ll boost you, but I want it to be on record that I think you’d make a better lookout.”

“I’m not being a lookout.”

“You just said—”

“I’m coming with you.”

He pauses, glancing at you, his expression softening just a little bit. Warm and amused—gone before you can fix it in place.

“Obviously,” he says, smiling, and starts stacking chairs.

The window is, in fact, not a bathroom window. It opens into a small storage room at the back of the chapel, with folding tables against one wall, boxes of artificial flowers stacked against the other, and a mop in a bucket in the corner. Through a door on the far side, you can see the chapel proper. The dripping you can hear means the maintenance situation is a ceiling problem, probably towards the front.

“There’s a whole back operation,” Satoru says, impressed.

“We need to find the darkroom,” you whisper.

“Why are you whispering?”

“Because we’re trespassing.”

“Right, yes,” he says, lowering his voice. “The darkroom will need ventilation, so it’s probably towards the back.”

“How do you know anything about darkrooms?” you ask.

“I went through a photography phase in my second year of middle school. It was a whole thing.” He opens the storage room door and peers through into the chapel. “All clear.”

You follow him through. The chapel at night, empty and dim, is a different place entirely from what it was several hours ago. Smaller, somehow. Without Francis and the lights, it’s just a room with cheap flowers and worn carpet.

“Back room’s through here,” Satoru says softly; he’s already at the door behind the altar. You cross the chapel quickly, not looking at the pews or the aisle, not doing anything so foolish as standing in the dark and sentimentalising about a five-dollar ring and a laminated vow card.

The back room is small and smells sharply of chemicals—developer and fixer, mostly. There’s a red safelight along the wall that Francis has left running, bathing everything in a dim glow. A long workbench runs along one wall, and on it, clipped to a line strung above the bench, are your photographs.

Four of them, hanging in a row, damp and gleaming slightly under the monochromatic light. Even from across the room, you can make out the chapel and the altar. Neither of you says anything for a moment, until Satoru walks to the bench and stands in front of the photographs. You make your way and stand beside him.

The first one is mid-ceremony. You’re both facing Francis, and you can see Satoru in profile—head tilted, shoulders set. The second one is the ring exchange; you can see immediately why it’s blurry. You’d both been laughing, actually, you remember that now, because Satoru had fumbled the ring and said something under his breath, and you’d bitten down on a laugh and not entirely succeeded. Francis had captured exactly that, the two of you with your heads slightly bent towards each other.

In the third one, Francis had asked you to face each other for a photo, and while you’re looking at the camera, Satoru’s looking at you. You look—Francis had said surprised, and yes, there is that, but there’s also something else, something you would rather not name.

Satoru is looking at you the way he was looking at you in the chapel, the way he’s been looking at you in these odd unguarded moments all evening.

“We look like idiots,” Satoru says.

“Francis was right,” you say. “We both look surprised.”

“Were you?” he asks.

“Yes. Were you?”

“No,” he says, then adds quietly, “Maybe. About—about other things.”

In the fourth photograph, you are outside the chapel, looking at the ring on your hand, and Satoru is looking at you looking at the ring. Francis had captured the angle so cleanly that you can see Satoru’s full expression, soft in a way his face almost never is in front of other people, private. You realise you’re holding your breath.

“We should take them,” Satoru says.

“We can’t just take them,” you say. “They’re developing.”

“They look pretty developed to me.”

“Satoru, they’re damp—”

“They’ll dry.” He’s already carefully unclipping the first photograph from the line. “Francis has the negatives. He can print more.”

“You don’t know that Francis has the negatives, and besides, we’re stealing from him.”

“We’re borrowing from Francis.” Satoru holds the first photograph carefully by its edge and looks at it in the red light before setting it down on the workbench. “Hand me something to put these in. There should be a folder or an envelope on the bench somewhere.”

There’s a paper envelope at the end of the bench, brown and flat. You pick it up and hold it open. Satoru slides the photographs in one by one.

“We need to leave Francis a note,” you say, “and money. For the printing. For—everything.”

“How much do you think midnight darkroom theft runs these days?”

“What?”

“I’m asking genuinely.”

“A lot,” you say. “Leave a lot.”

You find a notepad on the workbench next to a jar of pens. Francis, you write. We’re sorry for the unauthorised visit. We needed the photos tonight, so please print yourself copies. Enclosed is payment for the developing, the breaking-in, the trouble, and your time. Thank you for everything. It was a beautiful ceremony.

You fold the note and put it on the workbench. Satoru takes his wallet out, removes a quantity of cash that makes your eyebrows go up, and weighs it down with the jar of pens.

You go back through the chapel and through the storage room and back out the window into the alley. Satoru drops down behind you and lands easily on the ground. The night air is warm, and the Strip is still brightly lit not thirty feet away. You hold the envelope against your chest. The photographs inside are still slightly damp.

“For the record,” you say, “this is also your fault.”

“The chapel was closed,” Satoru says reasonably. “I didn’t plan that part. Plus, we have the photos, so. Seems like it worked out.”

You look at him with his loosened tie and ruffled hair and think, He’s going to be completely insufferable about this for years. You are going to have to hear about the Vegas chapel break-in for the rest of your natural life and possibly longer.

“Come on,” you say. “You said the hotel’s three blocks away.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #3 – VANDALISM.

There is only one bed. It’s not, on its own, an unusual situation. You’ve shared sleeping arrangements with Satoru before—field missions and overnight calls that left two sorcerers and one room. You’d use a pillow wall, most of the time.

The difference is that you are currently married to him.

“You booked a room with one bed?” you ask.

“They may have assumed, given that I made the reservation under a recently married couple’s names, that we would want,” Satoru says, gesturing at the bed, “the one bed.”

The bed in question is enormous, dressed in white linen and piled with decorative pillows. There’s a bowl of strawberries on the bedside table. The whole room smells faintly of roses.

“Did you request the honeymoon setup?” you say.

“The woman on the phone seemed very enthusiastic about it.”

“That’s not an answer!” You look around the room, hands on your hips. “Well, there’s a couch. You can use that.”

It’s one of those small, decorative couches present in hotel rooms to fill a corner, hold throw pillows, and look tasteful in photographs, but not to sleep on.

“I’m not going to sleep on it, but noted,” Satoru says, striding towards the minibar, shrugging his jacket off and draping it over the back of the chair by the window. “Whiskey or gin?”

“Whiskey,” you say. “We can put a pillow wall down the middle.”

“We’re married,” he says, crossing the room with two small bottles. He sits down on the other side of the bed. “It seems a bit prudish.”

You take the whiskey from him and twist the cap off. Satoru has his own bottle balanced between both hands, still unopened, and he’s looking out the window at the city below. You’ve spent enough years watching him, but it doesn’t seem to change anything; the flutter in your heart remains the same, as does the contentment you feel in your chest.

“I want to see them again,” you announce.

Satoru looks at you. “The photos?”

You reach for the envelope on the nightstand and slide the pictures out carefully, holding them by the edges. They’re drying, stiffening slightly. You hold them in your lap and he leans in slightly.

“You should’ve warned me,” you say quietly.

“About which part?”

“All of it.” You tap the third photograph’s edge, gently. “This.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “If I’d warned you, you’d have said no.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you,” he says, not unkindly. “You’d have thought about it too long and decided it was too complicated, and then you’d have spent months being strange about it, and then we’d have gone back to normal, and—” He stops, turning the bottle in his hands. “…I didn’t want to go back to normal.”

“It’s still a bad idea,” you mumble.

“Probably,” he agrees. His hand shifts on the duvet between you, the tip of his little finger coming to rest against the back of yours. “Hasn’t stopped being true, though. Whatever it is. You know what I mean.”

You do. That’s the problem: you’ve always known what he means, even when he’s being deliberately oblique about it. You’ve known him too long and too well for any of it to not make sense anymore. Which means, you understand now, that you’ve also known you’re in love with him for longer than you thought.

You look at the fourth photograph—Satoru, standing outside the chapel, watching you look at the ring on your hand.

“You could’ve just said something,” you tell him. “At any point. Like a normal person.”

“I took you to Las Vegas and married you,” he says. “That’s me saying something directly.”

His hand turns over and covers yours, warm and assuaging, and whatever reservations you’d been carefully maintaining for years simply crumble.

You close the remaining distance. Satoru’s free hand comes up to your face before you’ve fully moved, which means he was thinking about it too—has been thinking about it, probably, for longer than tonight, longer than Vegas—and he’s kissing you.

He kisses you decisively. There’s a certainty to it that shouldn’t surprise you—this is Satoru, who does nothing halfway—but it does, a little. But what surprises you more is how easy it is. How it doesn’t feel like a change in anything so much as a long-overdue acknowledgement of something that’s been there all along.

When you pull back, his forehead drops to yours. His sunglasses are still pushed up on his head, and you reach up and take them off without asking. He lets you.

“Hi,” Satoru says.

“You’re still wearing your sunglasses indoors at midnight,” you chide.

“I said hi.”

“Hi,” you say.

He smiles; it reaches his eyes. “So,” he starts.

“Do not say ‘I told you so.’”

“I wasn’t going to. Probably.”

“Insufferable,” you say, and kiss him again, which is both a rebuke and a surrender but mostly just because you want to. He makes a sound against your mouth that might be a laugh, and his arms come around you properly this time.

The decorative pillows go first. There are seven of them, and they go in ones and twos without either of you paying much attention—one knocked off when his arm comes around you properly, two more when you shift closer, the rest sliding off the edge in a soft succession of thuds. One of the small whiskey bottles, empty now, rolls off the mattress and lands on the carpet. You don’t notice any of it; you’re somewhat preoccupied by Satoru taking your face in his hands and tilting it and kissing you until you forget what you were arguing about.

You suspect that he’s thought about this for a long time, the same way you have.

“You’re thinking,” Satoru says against your mouth.

“I’m not.”

“You are. I can tell. You get this little—” He pulls back just enough to look at you, and traces something between your brows with one finger. “Here.”

You stare at him. “I hate that you know that.”

“No, you don’t,” he says. He’s right, and you hate that too, so you tell him so by pulling him back down by the front of his shirt.

He lets you tug at him willingly—more than willingly, with an enthusiasm that sends you back against the pillows and makes you laugh, briefly, before his mouth finds your jaw, your throat, your collarbone, and the laugh turns into a gasp. His hands are at your waist, warm through the fabric.

His tie joins the pillows on the floor; you get the knot loose while he’s working on the matter of your buttons. His shirt is untucked and you run your hands on his waist, his ribs, the warm plane of his stomach. Satoru groans against the side of your neck, and you shiver. He tosses your shirt aside, too, and his eyes darken when his gaze lands on your chest. He takes his time with your nipples, rolling them around with his thumbs, before taking one of them in his mouth.

He moves lower, pressing kisses to the underside of your breasts, moving down to your navel. When he reaches the waistband of your jeans, he looks up, pupils blown wide and asks, “May I?”

“Yes, yes, please.” You nod frantically, helping him pull your jeans and panties off when he unbuttons it. You’re already wet and needy.

“You’re so beautiful,” Satoru says, gazing up at you before littering kisses on your inner thighs, so close to where you want him. 

“Satoru, please,” you say. “I need you.”

He blows on your wet core, making you shiver. “Need me to what?”

“I need you to, hah, just—”

Satoru latches onto your clit, sucking and swirling his tongue around the bud. You moan, your hands flying to his hair and gripping the silver-white strands. He alternates between quick flicks and long, broad strokes, keeping your folds spread apart with two fingers while his other hand traces patterns along the underside of your thigh.

“Fuck, fuck—” You curse when his tongue moves in a circle right around your clenching hole. Satoru doesn’t stop. If anything, the sound of your voice breaking, the way you curse his name, only spurs him on. He knows exactly what he’s doing to you. He’s always known how to push your buttons. But this is different; this isn’t a playful tease during a mission.

He dives back in, his tongue flattening out to lap at you with broad, wet strokes that cover everything from your clit down to your opening. You arch your back, your hips lifting off the mattress instinctively, trying to press yourself harder against his mouth.

“Satoru… please, I’m—”

“You’re what?” he mumbles against your skin. He doesn’t wait for an answer, sliding two fingers deep inside you. You let out a strangled cry, your toes curling. His fingers are thick and warm, and he curls them, hooking them upward to find that sensitive spot that makes your vision blur. His thumb remains locked into your clit, rubbing circles on the engorged bud.

The sensation is overwhelming. It’s too much and yet not nearly enough. You can feel the tension building in your lower belly, a tight, simmering coil that winds tighter and tighter with every second.

“Right there,” you moan, your fingers knotting into his hair. “Right there, Satoru, don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

Your breath comes out in short, jagged gasps, your chest heaving. Just as you are about to orgasm, Satoru stops. He doesn’t just slow down; he pulls his fingers out of you with a sudden, wet pop and removes his mouth from your heat entirely. You freeze, your eyes snapping open. “Satoru, what the hell—”

He’s hovering over you, braced on his elbows, his hair messy and falling over his forehead. A slow, smug smile spreads across his lips, though his breathing is just as heavy as yours.

“Not yet,” he whispers.

“I hate you,” you groan, your hips twitching involuntarily, searching for the friction he just stole from you. “I actually hate you so much.”

“Liars don’t get to come,” Satoru teases, though his hand reaches down to gently stroke the skin of your inner thigh. 

He shifts, moving upward to kiss you. He tastes like you, and you moan into his mouth, before he pulls away just an inch, his gaze dropping to your drenched core. “I want to feel you,” he murmurs. “I want to feel how tight you are around me.”

Satoru slides backward, just enough to strip off his trousers and underwear in one hurried motion. His cock springs out, thick and flushed. Your mouth waters simply looking at it, while he pumps it once, twice, thumb circling the tip. He doesn’t lie back down. Instead, he sits up, leaning his back against the headboard of the enormous bed, his legs spread wide. He reaches out, grabbing your waist with those large, strong hands and pulling you forward until you are hovering over him.

“Ride me?” he asks.

The need for friction, for fullness, for him overrides any lingering frustration. You shift your weight, guiding his cock to your entrance. As you slowly lower yourself down, the feeling of his cock filling you, stretching you open, sends a fresh wave of pleasure through you. You let out a long, shuddering moan as you sink down completely, inch by inch, your pelvis flushing against his. Satoru lets out a choked sound, his head hitting the headboard with a thud, his eyes screwing shut.

“Fuck,” he moans. “You’re—you’re so tight. I can’t—”

“Shut up,” you whisper, though there’s no heat in it.

You begin to move, a slow, grinding rotation of your hips. You watch his face—the way his jaw clenches and his nostrils flare, the way he looks at you with warmth and wonder. You quicken your movements, bouncing on his cock. Satoru’s hands move from your waist to your hips, fingers digging into your skin, helping you ride him. He thrusts upwards, tilting his hips and dragging his cock against your walls.

“Look at me,” he groans. You look down, your eyes locking onto his. “I love you,” he says.

You feel the coil in your belly snap. Your orgasm washes over you as you clench around his cock, milking him. Satoru moans, his back arching off the bed as he thrusts upwards one last time. “I’m going to come,” he says. “Let me—”

You slide off his cock and he comes, his release spurting onto his stomach, a little bit on your thighs. You collapse against his chest. He wraps his arms around you tightly, pulling you into the crook of his neck.

For a long time, neither of you speaks. Eventually, Satoru shifts slightly, kissing the top of your head.

“So,” he whispers. “Shower?”

You lift your head slightly, looking at him with tired, happy eyes. “Already?” you say with faux innocence. “I thought you’d want to fuck me on that stupid couch first.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #4 – EMBEZZLEMENT.

Hopefully Satoru didn’t mind you swiping his credit card from his wallet while he was fast asleep, one arm thrown over his face while the other was stretched out beside him. You’d wriggled out of his grasp carefully, pressing a gentle, barely-there kiss to the tip of his nose, before digging through his jacket’s pockets for his wallet and pulling out his black card.

It’s for a good purpose, you console yourself, hurrying through the streets of Las Vegas with a jewellery shop’s location pulled up on your phone. 

Las Vegas in the early morning is a different city entirely from the one that had swallowed you whole last night. It’s not quiet, exactly—it’s never quiet, you suspect—but it’s quieter, the frenetic energy of the Strip mellowed into something slower. The crowds have thinned, at least.

You walk with your hands in your pockets, Satoru’s black card tucked safely between two fingers. The morning air is warm and dry, and the sky above the glow of the Strip is beginning to lighten from black to the deep bruised blue that comes just before dawn.

The jewellery shop is three blocks from the hotel, according to your phone. It’s a small, well-lit place that stays open through the night, catering to those Las Vegas visitors who find themselves in need of jewellery at unusual hours, which you now understand is a larger demographic than you’d previously considered.

You walk and think about the rings. The ones currently on your fingers are not adequate. They’re soft metal, the gold already slightly scuffed from one night of existence, and they’ll tarnish in a week. You’d noticed this morning, while Satoru was still asleep: the way your rings sat a little loose, the way it had already lost some of its shine. It’s more of a placeholder than anything else.

The thought of replacing them had arrived while you’d lain in Satoru’s arms, listening to him breathe and looking at the ring.

You aren’t scared, though you’d expected to be. You’d expected to wake up this morning with the full weight of what’s happened landing on you like a dropped beam, and to spend the subsequent hours dealing with the considerable wreckage of your own panic. It seemed like a reasonable response to having been married to your best friend in Las Vegas by a crying man named Francis and then having the matter become rather more settled than a marriage certificate alone would suggest.

But when you’d woken up with Satoru’s arm around you and the photographs on the nightstand, what you’d felt was something almost irritatingly simple: you’d felt like yourself.

The jewellery shop is small and bright, jewellery arranged in lit display cases along the walls, a pudgy man behind the counter. He looks up when you come in, takes in the look of you—your clothes from last night, slightly slept-in, your hair not fully combed—and nods pleasantly.

“Morning,” he says. “What are you looking for?”

“Wedding rings,” you say. “Two of them, please. Something that’ll last for a long time.”

He nods again. “Do you know the other person’s size?”

You think about Satoru’s hands—the ring sliding onto his finger in the chapel, his hand covering yours on the duvet last night, the warmth of his arm around this morning. “I can estimate,” you say.

He shows you to a case along the left wall. The rings inside are simple, for the most part—plain bands in gold and silver and white gold, some with small details, most without. You find two plain bands in white gold, clean-lined and unornamented, substantial enough to last. 

“These,” you tell the man behind the counter.

He nods. You produce Satoru’s black card and spend a figure that makes you wince slightly but not reconsider, because the point isn’t the cost and you’re sure Satoru will agree with you about this when he wakes up and finds both you and his credit card gone. You leave the ship with the rings in a small white box and stand on the pavement outside for a moment in the warming air.

You pull your phone out and type in the search bar, Chapel of Eternal Love, and punch in the number attached. 

“Hello, Chapel of Eternal Love, Francis speaking—”

“Francis,” you say, smiling. “I have a favour to ask.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, ITEM #5 – MARRIAGE.

Francis, it turns out, is delighted. He’d gone quiet for a moment when you explained what you were asking, and then said, Give me an hour, and hung up before you could confirm the details. 

You make your way back to the hotel with your ring box in your pocket and the morning brightening steadily around you. The casino lobbies you pass are still going—slot machines, a scattering of determined gamblers, staff moving between stations—but the Strip itself is relatively peaceful, the night’s crowd entirely dissolved and the day’s not yet arrived. You have the pavement to yourself. It’s a strange and pleasant feeling, Las Vegas in the interstitial hour.

Satoru is awake when you get back, sitting up in bed with his hair in complete disarray and the duvet bunched around his waist. When you open the door he looks at you blankly.

“Morning,” you say.

“My credit card,” he says.

“Is fine.” You cross the room and hold it out. He takes it without looking at it, still watching you. “I needed it for a purchase.”

“What kind of purchase requires you to leave the hotel room at—” he glances at the clock on the nightstand—“six forty-seven in the morning?”

“The important kind.” You sit down on the edge of the bed and take the white box out of your pocket, setting it on the duvet between you.

Satoru picks the box up and opens it, and doesn’t say anything at all, which is the loudest thing Gojo Satoru can do. “You stole my credit card,” he says finally, “to buy us wedding rings.”

“I borrowed it,” you say. “To replace the ones we got from a spinning display rack for five dollars each.”

“I liked those rings.”

“They were tarnishing,” you say. “There’s more, by the way.”

You tell him about Francis. He looks surprised at first, and then warm, so utterly warm when he tugs you closer to him and kisses you again, and again, and once more for good measure. Satoru closes the ring box and holds it in both hands, the way he’d held the whiskey bottle last night before he’d covered your hand with his. 

“I thought you wanted a divorce last night, and now you’ve stolen my credit card and called Francis.”

“Yep.”

He looks at you for a long moment. The morning light filters through the curtains and he looks extraordinarily, unfairly beautiful, even just woken up.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” Satoru sets the ring box on the nightstand, next to the photographs. “Okay.”

Francis has decorated the chapel when you arrive. You’re not entirely sure when he found the time—it’s been barely two hours since your phone call—but the maintenance issue has apparently been resolved, because the lights are on when you arrive. The door is unlocked; when you step inside you find that Francis has replaced the zip-tied artificial flowers on the pews with fresh ones, white and small. There are candles lit along the windowsills. The worn carpet, in the warm light, looks less worn somehow, or perhaps you’re simply disposed to see it differently today.

Francis himself is standing at the altar in a clean shirt, his red hair combed and his camera in his hands. “You came back,” he says.

“We came back,” you confirm.

Francis looks at the two of you—Satoru in a fresh shirt with his tie done up neatly again, you in the best thing you could assemble from your bag on short notice—and grins. “The rings, did you—”

You produce the white box.

“Right,” Francis says. “Right, yes. Let’s—shall we?”

Here is what you think about, standing at the altar of the Chapel of Eternal Love for the second time in less than twenty-four hours:

You think about the first time, yesterday, and how you’d stood here in something close to a dissociative state, your brain running through the situation at high speed. You think about the parking lot behind the Denny’s and the small fire in the trash can. You’d meant it when you said you wanted a divorce, though you realise now that you were frightened of what being married to your best friend entailed.

Satoru had let you burn it, too. He hadn’t argued because he’d known you’d come around. Not from arrogance, but because he knew you, the same way you knew him, all the way down to the things you didn’t say aloud.

You think about the darkroom, the four photographs drying on the line in the red light. Climbing back out through the chapel window into the warm Las Vegas night and holding the envelope against your chest, the photographs still damp inside it. You think about the rings in the spinning display by the door—you can still see them from where you’re standing, the little rack with the remaining rings. They were the beginning, it turns out.

You turn to look back at Satoru. He’s smiling at you.

Francis clears his throat gently. “Shall we begin?”

The vows are the same ones from the laminated card. Francis offers alternatives—he has a small binder with options—but Satoru shrugs, so you use the same ones. When Francis gets to the rings you open the white box yourself. You take Satoru’s ring out and hold it; he holds out his right hand out of habit before catching himself and switching to his left, and you both laugh helplessly. Francis gulps and pulls out his handkerchief. You put the ring on the correct hand this time.

Satoru takes yours from the box and looks up at you—there’s that expression, the one from the photographs, the one you have a name for now. He slides the ring onto the correct finger and holds your hand for a moment after.

Francis is fully crying now. He dabs at his eyes without embarrassment and beams at the two of you over his handkerchief with radiant approval.

“I’ve never had anyone come back,” he tells you. “In twelve years, you’re the first.”

“We forgot something the first time,” you say.

Francis tucks his handkerchief away and straightens up. Smiling, he announces, “You may now kiss,” and so you do.

Spiderman!Gojo finds pleasure in your displeasure. 

The sounds of palpating rain, dragging across the streets in streaks of liquid. A body strewn under a shed without light, a noise without sound. You shifted the clear umbrella over his figure, letting the rain stop amid.

When your newly appointed residential spiderman didn’t speak, his head hung low, you hummed underneath your breath.

“I know superheroes have this mysterious aura they need to keep up, but I’d feel bad if I let the person who’s protecting my neighborhood get soaked in the rain. You’re staining the street red.”

Your voice filters among the recedes of rain water. He looks up blankly as you knelt down to his level, situating the umbrella over his figure, his mind half in its own head. 

He watches, eyes half-lidded, as you dig among your bag for an aid kit. His mind swirls as you wrap a barely adequate bandage over the bleeding part of his mid-section, hands slightly shaking - from the cold, he presumed. His brain is rushed with impeded adrenaline, taking in everything and nothing.

You’d stood up, leaving the umbrella over his head without taking it for yourself. “Thank you, Spiderman.” You’d mouthed, before hastily running off as his eyes followed you in a sense of fanatic wonder - strewn by adrenaline, drawn by reverence.

You’d saved him (save, really, is a strong word. He’d say it’s more like you aided him) from certain clutches of death with an on-hand first aid kit outside the alleyway of some fucked up run-down building – much to his personal delight, and much to your chagrin as you realized that now, you’ve inadvertently placed a spider on your back that refuses to get off. 

Spiderman!Gojo was never one to believe in miracle encounters - or placements by fate's design by which he meets another that his soul tethers to. He stopped believing in the goodness of fate once his duty was bound to the city's.

His name is Satoru Gojo - he's was bitten by a radioactive spider, and for only 4 months - he'd been the one and only Spiderman.

You know the rest.

Spiderman!Gojo, who may or may have not taken your grace as something by the fates. His mind half in a delirious state, he takes it upon himself to impede into your life.

After a few days, Spiderman!Gojo finds out where you lived (it’s not creepy! He swears! You don’t believe an inch of his words, though) and is rather determined to ‘pay back his owe’ in interest of your ‘grace-saving action’ for his mental and physical wellbeing, claiming he would succumb if your actions were not returned in earnest.

“I told you, I don’t need the help.” You frown, trying to usher the large (6’3, to be exact) spider out of the comfort of your home, swatting at his chest. 

Yet, much to your discontent, Tokyo’s spiderman stays perched on your windowsill, legs planted in a squat as his hands balance him in between. The weight distributed among his muscles, tensing on your window.

Satoru grins under his mask, crooked and all – you can imagine it’s an egoistical sight. Different from his stature under the rain – the Spiderman you are now privy of, is a man of confidence and charisma.

The eyes on the suit crinkles in the corner, prominent testament to his amusement. “What kind of hero would I be if I didn’t provide charity, sweetheart?”

You flush, tempted to push him off from the window as he finds humor in poking fun at your apparent frankly impoverished lifestyle. “There is no need for charity!”

Satoru tilts his head, raising an eyebrow in skepticism. “Your creaking windowsill begs otherwise.”

“That’s because your fat ass is sitting on it.” You scowl. “Besides – I certainly don’t need a superhero to do me any favors. I’m getting by just fine.”

“I’m repaying you,” Hums the said superhero, all smiles and amusement. “And I never let a debt go unpaid.”

You scoff, crossing your arms across your chest, slumping your back as arguments begin to fail you once you realize rejection is not in the hero’s understanding. “You don’t look like you can clean. Or cook. Or housekeeping.”

“Tsk, tsk. Stereotype, much?” He clicks his tongue, hopping uninvited into your home. Feet landing onto your carpet with a thump! – staining bits of the carpet with dirtied mud. 

“Hey–!”

You panic, he smiles and lingers around, eyes joyfully taking in your home, lingering on the framed photos on your wall. He whistles as he takes in the plants on your wall, flicking at one of the leaves. “I can fight. You know that, yeah?”

“I don’t need you to fight for me– or whatever it is you think you’re trying to do!” You hurriedly attempt to clamber at him to leave, he doesn’t budge. Not an inch. Not even as you attempt all your strength to grab at his arm and pull him towards the door. 

“What? There’s no one pissing you off?” Satoru raises an eyebrow, placing a hand on his hip lazily as he negates your puny endeavor of pushing him away. “No way! Geez, are you trying to be all sunshine and rainbows, sweetheart?”

“You’re such a– okay, number one! Stop with the nicknames.” You huff, defeated as you stand back onto your own two feet, relenting to the hero’s casual trespassing into your home against your legal will. 

Spiderman smiles – again, you can’t see it because of his mask, but he does. You could tell by the crinkles of the corner of his eyes.

“Oo, rules. Exciting.” He rubs his chin candidly, irking larger abundances of your indignation. 

You interrupt him with a scowl by holding up two fingers to his face. “Number two! If you do something without my knowledge, I’ll kill you.”

“There it is. Threats. That’s hot.” He enunciates the last word with a smug grin. You want to die at whatever implications he believes is supposedly suave.

You are fairly tempted to kick him. Though, you wager it’d be more like kicking a brick wall. “Number three, no fighting anyone.”

He pouts, jutting his lower lip out – under the mask, that is. You can only see the pitiful expression expressed by his eyes from beyond his mask. “But that’s my whole brand..”

“So you don’t know how to do anything other than fight?” You raise an eyebrow, placing two hands on either side of your hips. 

“I’m perfectly good at fighting.” Satoru throws up a ‘thumbs up!’ motion – as if it would help his cause. You frown, corners of your mouth pulling at the senselessness in his confident words. Is this really the hero who was protecting your city?

“And nothing else?” You probe.

He hums. “.. Can’t I just repay you through fighting whoever you’re beefing with for you? Listen, I can take down like 10 frat guys in five seconds, light work, no reaction. Look at this!” He emphasizes his point by making a show of flexing his biceps, the muscles bulging in its place.

You try not to gape as you swat his arms down. You’re not as disillusioned as to claim that you haven’t seen his figure. It’s hard not to – especially when he’s towering over your form in your small Tokyo apartment. His presence fills up the majority of the cramped space – yes, he has a great body and an even better build. His body crowds the spandex of his suit, permeating around the seams. You try not to drool, you make it a point not to gawk at jerks – but wow, did Spiderman make it hard. 

“I just told you I don’t need you to fight anyone!” You argue with an unfortunate red tinge around your cheeks, chest huffing in irritation. 

He theatrically holds a palm to his heart, dramatically swaying in discomfort at your words. “Aww, you’re undermining my efforts here, sweetheart.”

“I just told you to drop the nicknames, spiderman.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Satoru sing-songs, throwing his hands up in exasperation at your adorable reaction. 

He can’t help but find it cute, the tiniest discomfort of a scrunch between your furrowed eyebrows, the fire glistening in your irises as you talk to him, the downturn of your soft, tender lips, the slight tousle in your hair as you move about his impeding presence in your space, he smiles in undisguised fascination.

“Since you so insist on repayment, or– Whatever!” You rant, stomping your feet on the ground as you moved about. Satoru’s gaze shamelessly follows you and the curve of your body, tutting his lips. “I’ll let you repay me – and that’s not because I want to be repaid, in case you go twisting this little tale around.” 

Your voice tunes out in his brain like a melodic tune on replay cascading from a consonant of a fine instrument. He smiles, not quite listening, leisurely rubbing your floor as he sways back and forth in your space. 

He feels it again. It lingers, this time. As if it had clawed into his cells and dug its place into the veins of his being. Like that spider. Yet this time, the bite is less radioactive. 

It’s compulsive. It makes him want to rake his nails into flesh and scratch till the bite burns. 

He’s might be addicted to you. Satoru ponders to himself with a smile. Perhaps it was your fiery personality, perhaps it was your looks – perhaps both or none. Yet Satoru, for all his cockiness and ego, can’t will his eyes away from you. He hasn’t been able to – not since you gracefully patched his sorry self up in that alleyway with much precision of gentleness in your touch. He feels he’s already become quite addicted. 

– Satoru also feels he doesn’t quite mind the addiction in the slightest.

His mouth curves up underneath the veil of his mask in a sickened sense of delight. His chest thrums with anticipation, churning in quiet, humming elation.

“That’s good with me.”

Spiderman!Gojo finds you at your home more often than not – and you begin to think he’s not doing this as a levity for repayment. 

By the fifth time that you found him lingering on the couch of your living room (much to your horror, how many could claim the friendly neighborhood spiderman was lounging in their home uninvited?) with his feet staked on the coffee table, disregarding rectitude in the existence of manners, you begin to suspect his goal isn’t repayment. 

Spiderman!Gojo is a man with zero manners – he walks around as if the nature of propriety does not exist to someone of his status and capabilities. Humble is not a word present in any version of his dictionary, and diffidence is not a species of spider.

He eats the food in your pantry while lounging on your couch after a long fight, wearing and stretching his legs onto the length of your couch.

He digs for a post-it note of your Netflix password to watch some dumb shows while munching on your celery when you were at work, and leaves a scribbled note of paper which he took from tearing a piece of your calendar on the wall, saying: ‘Word of advice: lock your windows, and change your Netflix password >3< what the hell is password123? Also i ate ur wholeeee celery shelf. I dunno why celery is so good when ur trynna cry to Train to Busan. Oh, that show ur half finished with - the heroine dies at the end :P!!!’

(You want to murder him. You want to strangle Spiderman and have him buy you a supermarket worth of celery supply. You want to kill him even more at his unprompted spoiler – what kinda jerk spoils like that? After desecrating someone’s entire celery stock and trespassing into private property? You crush the paper in your hand, aggressively palming it into a ball to throw at your wall.)

Spiderman!Gojo sometimes stares at you from outside your workplace window from a higher building. It’s not stalking, he promises to his own hero conscience. He’s observing. He’s.. cataloguing. Stalking implies there is intent and desire. Which – he can’t lie, there totally is. But, this is different, he swears again in his head. He does like to see that agitated frown on your face when he shows up at the lobby of your firm, though. 

A job as a journalist. Cute. Adorable, actually. His eyes tended themselves to search for your figure when the press showed up after a grueling match on the city’s skies and rooftops – it never is you, though. 

Spiderman!Gojo is completely not creepy nor does he ever imply negative insinuations with his actions. He only does that to super-duper-evil villain bad guys!

.. And with the generous exception of those guys that stared at you too long in your work uniform and scribbled down their numbers onto a receipt in hopes of being the recipients of your affection, staring at you as if you were some meat to devour. He wouldn’t fault them on appreciating a view, sure, but he could very well fault them on appreciating his view. 

“Hey, guys! Whatcha doing there?” Satoru dangled upside-down, his calloused fingers grip the ledge of his webs, hanging straight down, weight distributed evenly among his shoulders as he hung above the two men with their phones whipped out. 

“.. Spiderman?! Oh– oh, this is my lucky day! I’m a huge fan of yours.” Normie #1 said, not bothering to close his phone. Bad idea. 

Normie #2 holds a receipt with a number – your number, probably – Satoru immediately notes it in his head for later uses.

“Lucky day? Sure, you could say that,” Satoru hummed, eyes lingering on the man’s open phone. A picture of you staring back at him from the dimmed phone screen. He smiled, the mask stretching with the width of it. “Say, wanna have a chat?”

Safe to say, spiderman could indefinitely expand and entail his reputation anywhere – nobody dares to question the ‘friendly’ neighbourhood spiderman about the disappearance of two middle-aged males. Besides, he didn’t do anything entirely bad that they would completely cease their function in daily life. No one said you can’t talk with a few missing teeth.

He’s told you before – his talent is in beating the crap out of people.

Spiderman!Gojo loves science. Astrophysics. Physics. Astronomy. Space. Astronaut movies in space. You tease him for it. When you found him on your couch (for the nth time, this time, you’re less surprised at his presence in your home, almost expecting it) watching Interstellar with the widest expression on his face which stretched his mask upwards, you rushed to hand your local Spiderman the title of a nerd. He relents, but prefers to think of himself as a hunk - you disagree with a disapproving look. 

"Do you even have your own apartment?" You raise an eyebrow, body expecting his presence in your home, this time. He'd make it a point to invite himself in - you stopped freaking out around the 11th time.

Spiderman leans back on the couch - his mask slightly unraveled. Not revealing his face, gosh no. Just enough to see the pink of his glossy lips, munching on a standby of popcorn, manspreading on your couch while mulling over Project Hail Mary on your television which you paid with your bills.

"Uh, obviously?" He shrugs, popping another popcorn into his mouth, before his eyes find the TV again. "Wait! Get over here! Get over here! It's the good part!"

You frown, pointing at him indignantly from the entrance of the doorway. "I haven't even watched it! Don't you dare spoil!"

Spiderman ignores your words, flicking his wrist to produce a web to attach to your waist, pulling his arm back to swing your body to his on the couch.

He grins, and you see the peeks of his white teeth prickling out from his jaw as he wraps an arm around your shoulder, pulling you to his side. "Whoops. Better close ya eyes then, it's the climax."

You punch him in the face.

Spiderman!Gojo is an insatiable man. He discovers, when he finds himself incapable of staying away from you. You’ve found it in yourself to accept that chasing Satoru away is no longer possible (not that it ever was), so you’ve made peace with his presence. Satoru, on the other hand, craves more.

“This is weird. Your suit feels so weird.” You groan, your side pressed firmly against his much broader and harder one, as he languidly draped his arms around your shoulder, head tilted back on your couch without much as a care in the world. 

The movie plays in the background, noises slurring into the backdrop soundtrack as he measures the rate of your heartbeat. Each thump! makes him tap his finger against the spandex of his thigh, creating a quiet melody from the rudimentary beats of your being.

Satoru could make a tune out of it, he thinks quietly, fingers tapping in patterns. 

Seeing that you are no longer threatening to bite his head off every time he gets so much as 2 meters close to you, he relishes in the touch you allow him to give. Similarly, delighting in every touch you initiate. 

(The first time you allowed your shoulder to bump into his own while you two obnoxiously sang to an off-pitch curated version of Britney Spear’s ‘Toxic’ in your messy kitchen, he fell on his way out of your window because he missed his web shot. He then rolled on the ground he fell on with a grin.

Onlookers are far too scared to question their residential spiderman rolling back and forth on the grass.)

“What? D’ya want me naked, or something?” He raises his eyebrow slyly, letting his words settle as he presses himself closer to you. The scent of your shampoo fills his senses euphorically. He hums, lightly sniffing the air around you.

You push his head away from coming closer to the crook of your neck. “Ew, no. I’ve seen enough depravities in my life. Naked means your mask comes off. That’s weird.”

You are past the point in your sad young adult life of miserable housing rents and harrowing job listings where you question things – so you do not question half-cuddling Spiderman, your city’s superhero, on your couch on a fine evening with La La Land playing in the background.

"City of Stars--

You are also past the point in which you question why you’re half buried in the chest of a man whose face and identity you technically do not know. 

The only thing you know is that he eats celery raw for some reason, sometimes sniffles under his mask after an ending of a sad dog movie, and spends an awful amount of time lingering in your home while pouring himself the coke that he snipped from your fridge. And you suppose his jokes are funny at times. 

Are you shining just for me?

“How is that weird? I’m handsome. Awfully, actually. Are you more scared of my face than my naked body? That hurts.” He pouts in a way that a grown man can make pouting look cute – you huff in delirium as he presses himself closer to you.

“I don’t want to imagine either, thank you very much.” You scoff, eagerly swatting away whatever concoctions your conscious decides to produce. 

“You don’t believe me? I’m extremely handsome.” He purses his lips together to garner pity and adoration – you only scowl at him from above. He pouts again. “I’m serious!”

“Yeah? Prove it.” You tilt your head, chin jutting up in a challenge. Spiderman stutters. 

“.. Maybe another time. Ugh, just take my word for it!”

You try not to sound disappointed when he sidetracks your challenge. You raise an eyebrow. “I’m just supposed to imagine it?”

City of Stars--

“Yup.” Satoru lifts his head straight, you sigh when the pressure on your collarbone is relieved. “Okay– picture this: six foot three supermodel body–”

“I find that highly unlikely.”

“Shush. Six foot three, extremely pronounced biceps and muscles that ripples with my abs when I take off my shirt to flex at the gym–”

“Ew? Girls don't like it when men do that, you know that, right–”

“Can you wait? Spiderman’s talking, sweetheart.” He obnoxiously places a finger on your mouth to shut you up. You fight the urge to bite it. “Anyway, my hair’s messy but fluffy in the best way– no products, by the way. Just genetics. My long, luscious eyelashes flutter when I blink, and my eyes are blindingly beautiful. You’d get pulled into it, trust me. Oh, and I’m super smart and charismatic and also I read feminist literature.”

There's so much that I can't see.

“Woww, color me stoked, ever heard of the word ‘humble’? You sound like every woman’s wet dream, and I also find that highly improbable. I mean, you eat celery raw.”

He groans, dropping his head back into the crook of your neck indignantly. “Will you stop mentioning that? My gorgeous, perfect body, face and personality quite overtake that slightly unbecoming quality of mine.”

“You raked my whole cabinet! How am I supposed to not mention that in this economy?”

“It’s not my fault your groceries consist of celery and spinach.” Spiderman rolls his eyes, shifting his weight onto you again despite your huff of protest under your breath. “A man gets hungry, sweetheart. And who even likes spinach?”

“You are so annoying.” You grunt, an attempt to push his head off the crook of your neck, to which it only pathetically flops down as you maneuvered.

“Annoyingly mesmerizing and charming?” He blinks a few times, poking your hip in the meanwhile as he utters an amalgamation of pathetic expressions under his mask.

Who knows?

You raise an eyebrow - you sort of believe him, but hell if you’d ever admit that. “Right, so the opposite of that.”

He whines. Digging himself a space in your body without shame. “No mercy. Whatsoever. How cruel!”

“Aren’t you popular?” You hum, a facade of nonchalance as you watch the tv screen - scratch that, watch him out of the corner of your eye. “Ask your fans.”

I felt it from the first embrace, I shared with you.

“Boo,” Spiderman laments and deflates like a popped balloon, indignation in his tone. “They’re boring.”

“Geez, narcissistic much?” You gave him an incredulous look, before a thought popped into your head. “People keep theorizing who you are underneath that mask of yours, did you know people like editing celebrity faces onto your cameo pictures?”

“They what?”

You detach yourself from his body to grab your phone on the coffee table, promptly ignorant to his breathless whine, shuffling through the likes on your profile. He wraps his arms around your waist when you return with your back to the couch as if it’s a normal occurrence – you don’t punch him or swat him away, so he takes the welcoming initiative to firmly press his face onto your shoulder, peering eyes watching your screen.

“Look.” 

He squints his eyes at the screen. “.. Is that Tom Holland’s face? He’s not even as tall as me– Andrew Garfield? Really? These are so farfetched– Tobey Maguire? Why am I white?”

You pause. “‘Cause you got a white suit.”

He grumbles into the crook of your neck. “This is why I don’t use social media.”

“No, you’re right. On second thought, Andrew Garfield is way too fine to be someone like you.”

“Excuse me?” Satoru pinches your hip with his fingers, you swat him away with a laugh that derives a grin onto his face. The mask flexes – he almost forgets it’s still there, on his face. It felt as if he was laid atop and stripped of his layers by you. 

That now, our dreams--

“You’re soo mean,” He huffs sorely at you, to which you grin. “Come on, you got the real Spiderman here.”

You shut him up immediately when your hand instinctively went to the bed of white hair on his head, fingers lightly tangling through the locks with a hint of a smile which he delights at. “Yeah, suppose so.”

Spiderman starting to find it harder to remind himself there indeed is a mask atop his expressions.

Satoru tries not to remind himself that still, the mask is all you see.

"Oh, it's the divorce arc for Mia and Sebastian."

"-What?!"

They finally come true."

Spiderman!Gojo dabbles in photography. It never really was his thing - not really. He never cared about freezing a moment of joy in time, or creating moments he could come back to because, often times, there was nothing for Spiderman to come back to in the end.

Spiderman supposes he's had a change of heart. While testing out a stupid mechanic camera he'd been experimenting on to input into the model of his suit to conveniently take pictures of criminals on the run, he'd had the brilliant idea of testing the mechanics of his creation on you.

Click!

You pause in your laughter, face turning red as Spiderman, legs crossed on your couch, lowers a budget-looking camera from his face, eyes peering into the picture taken with added wonder.

Satoru hums, reveling in the result. The picture came out sort of blurry, but candid. You mid-laugh about an overdone romance niche, it feels so so personal. The way the corner of your eyes crinkle just the slightest, the way you lips part in giggles.

"–Delete that!" You shuffle, hands frantically reaching for the camera which he took from your line of grasp. "You're such a jerk! Delete that!"

Satoru laughs, holding the camera by a hand as you crawl over his body in a feeble attempt of over-powering a superhero. "No way! Oh my god you laugh like those seals–"

"I'm starting to wish you got hit by that truck last night–"

Satoru raises an eyebrow. "Oh? You watching my news now? Don't tell me.. you're worried about me! Please, you shouldn't have." He drawls out, leaning into your personal space, fingers clasping at your wrist to stop your reach.

"That's– not the point!" You grovel, frowning.

"Don't look so pouty, I won't post it or anything."

"Yeah, right. Who knows what you'll do with it?"

He printed the photograph and placed it into the pocket of his suit, that's what.

Spiderman!Gojo is unfortunately a charming man, against your better knowledge. Because whether consciously or otherwise, you’ve become entwined with whatever the hell Spiderman is doing – which is oftentimes, a lot of bullshit (fighting pigeons on the Tokyo tower? Really?). 

Still, you find yourself wondering when he’d come home, when he’d come to you. 

You feel like a fool, at times.

“Aren’t you an idiot.” You huff, tightening the bandage around his abdomen, causing spiderman to wince in pain as he tilts his head back on the backrest of your bed.

“Be a little nice to me, sweetheart. I am injured and terribly in pain from saving the city you reside in.” Satoru sulks, eyebrows knitted together in inexplicable pain from his wounds, though he’d vehemently deny such.

“I think not. This feels like charity work.” You mimic his words from your fateful meeting on the windowsill, he frowns.

“You’re so mean. Awful. You’re mean. Is this all you do to repay your savior?” He whines exasperatedly as you tie a knotted bow from his bandages, soothing with the lingering touches of your fingers.

“Savior is a strong word, you know,” You hum, finishing the cleanup on his mess of a body, trying not to grimace at the drying blood on your sheets. “Besides, I don’t even know this so-called savior’s face.”

He winks, shrugging off your idea. “It’s part of the charm, remaining faceless and maintaining that mysterious identity. You know the saying, ‘the chase is better than the reward’, or something?”

You think it’s his deliriousness speaking, because there certainly are no phrases as such. You play along for his sake, lest he spouts more bull. “Sounds like something a fuckboy would say.”

“Hah! Is there something you wanna tell me? You’ve imagined me as a fuckboy? How scandalous, (name). That impeaches on my purity.”

You pinch his wound, he yelps. 

“It’s awkward to bandage you up when your face is the only thing covered up.” You approach the topic again, hands wavering in indecisiveness.

Satoru parries your words with ease. “Is it?” He laughs obnoxiously, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s nothing too exciting. Anyway, how about that movie we were finishing? I’ve been thinking about the ending for–”

“You’re deflecting.” You frown, opening the cupboard drawer of your nightstand, avoiding his large, white eyes, which flickers around inches of your room behind his mask. He’s staring at you. Yet, you can’t stare at him back.

“I told you it’s nothing interesting! It’s just a face.” 

You slam the drawer close, letting the sound reverberate as your shimmered fury did. “It’s your face.”

Silence draws out. You finally stare back at him, yet you aren’t, at the same time. You’re staring at the mask – you’re staring at Spiderman. You’re not staring at the man who invites himself into your home, the man who integrated himself into your life, drawing your being into the webs of his making.

You’re not quite staring at the man who loudly commentates on horrible romantic comedies he dug out from Book-off, the man who makes it a point to mess up your hair when he sees you, grinning like an idiot when you hit him for it, the man who you might’ve unintentionally fallen in love with.

Oh.

Oh.

You’re still staring at the hero. 

Not him.

Fuck, you don’t even know his name.

Spiderman isn’t a name – it never has been. It’s an identity. It’s his identity, but it’s not the identity of the man under the mask. 

Spiderman sucks a breath, his voice silently wavering, the mask captures it, placing the imprudent vulnerability back into the qualms of his open mouth. 

“.. Does that matter?” His voice goes softer. Less teasing. Less spiderman, more Satoru. The Satoru he never wanted to show you, yet his heart moves a length which he does not follow. 

You furrow your eyebrows, biting down on the flesh of your lip. “Are you serious? I’m asking you, so of course it matters.”

“Aren’t you content with this?” Spiderman’s arms shoot up, gesturing to himself boisterously. His voice is sharp, unbecoming of him – you’ve always been unbecoming for him. “What more do you want? You have Spiderman.”

“Okay, have you ever considered that I don’t want Spiderman?” You scoff, straightening yourself. You clench your palms, drawing crescents into skin from the press of your nails. 

Satoru stands up within record speed and pries your fingers away from the skin of your palm, the spandex suit over his fingers trail over your pulse, resting on your wrist with an intimacy rivaling that of tenderness. His eyebrows are furrowed again.

“.. Stop that.”

“No– no, no! You stop– whatever this is.” You furiously step back, yanking your hand away from him. His expression is pained – you could imagine in your head. The part that hopes you are something to him. Something personal.  “I never pried because something deep down I hoped that you would tell me. I hoped that I could at least chip some of those walls down because– because you’re a good person, and fuck– I’ve barely even scratched any surface!”

“You know why I don’t tell you anything. It’s dangerous–”

“Dangerous?” You could laugh. You tried – stifled laughter bubbled out, heavy in your throat. “Oh please, since when did you care?”

Spiderman straightens up with a displeased frown. “Don’t say that. I’m protecting you. I’m doing the duties of Spiderman. Revealing my identity– do you know what that does? What danger it could bring if you had that knowledge?”

You purse your eyebrows, your voice catching in hoarse shout, ignoring the rationality in his argument in pursuit of pettiness and the overwhelming stimulation of swirling emotions in your head. “I’m not asking you to– what, share your government credentials and social security number. I’m asking you to share something. Something to make it seem like I’m not just some dumb game to you!” 

“You aren’t!”

“Oh, right. I’m supposed to believe the guy who I don't even know the name of thinks I’m someone special?” You sneer, Spiderman takes a wavering step towards you – you step back, he steps forward again.

“I know I seem like I’m full of bullshit–”

You scorn under your breath. “Because you are.”

Satoru steps closer to you regardless, his feet bringing him across the mattress of your room as you back up to the wall, him stepping in front of you tentatively even as you glared him down, eyes sparked in anger. Deserved anger towards him. He frowns. 

“Right, no, you’re right. I am full of bullshit,” Satoru said slowly, as if he was finding the words as he spoke, his arms finding no place but besides his body, his eyes helplessly stare at the floor. At his feet. At anywhere but your eyes which see nothing more than a mask – your eyes which so heedingly wanting to take his mask off. 

Wanting to see him.

He fears that he would allow you, he realizes under the haze of his mind. He fears that he would not stop you had you asked to tear every little layer of his skin until your hands wring him down to his core. He fears what he’d become under the solace of your presence.

Silence stretches out between the two of you as Satoru stares blearily at the floor. As you stare at his stretch of vulnerability with invigoration. 

“.. Gojo Satoru.” Satoru breathes out. The words escaping his mouth one syllable at a time, unwilling, impulsion threaded in each tone. He finds it in himself to tear his eyes away from the ground, to meet yours as they widened to his words. “My name. It’s Gojo Satoru.”

You blink, shoulders tensing up as he towered over you. Your words leave in haste as you taste his name in your mouth. “.. Gojo, then.”

Satoru laughs softly, his hand coming up to rub at his neck – was he nervous? Spiderman? (Gojo Satoru, now, you suppose. Not spiderman, you retract.) Nervous? He’s never looked this scared, you surmised. “Call me Satoru. It’s.. personal, right? We’re personal.”

You gape in shock. “What are you–”

Satoru steps closer. Crowding you against the harsh wall behind your back. You thump into it as he takes another step, jaw clenching in action. He’s staring down at you – expression unreadable, like always. Like it always has been. He’s never shown past the facade he wanted you to see, after all.

“I get it. Fuck, I get it. Don’t you think I do? I want it so badly– to show you what’s underneath,” Spiderman stutters out, words spilling in tandem as each vowel jumps over another, prancing in heedless consternation. 

You blink, unsure of how to respond to this side of Spiderman.

“But what happens after that? What becomes of us? Of me? Of you? I’m not allowed to be lenient, (name). But you keep making me want to do all these – stupid, idiotic stuff. Like I’m some lovesick idiot that’s been bewitched and–” Satoru prattles, his rambles wavered in each word as he brings a hand up to his face, dragging it downwards as he faces you. 

“And I don’t know what to do. You’ve ruined me. You might as well have. With your stupid thirty percent rate of butter in popcorn and dumb movie takes and vanilla scented perfume– you’ve totally irrevocably ruined me. What should I even do? What should Spiderman do? Tell me.”

Oh wow.

Oh wow.

Oh wow.

Oh wow. 

If someone had told you Spiderman was going to give the most pathetic confession (was it?) a yearning desperate man could ever make in front of you 2 years ago you would’ve laughed in their face. Present you, however, is unattended in the headspace to comprehend what just transpired.

Why did Spiderman just practically say he was in love with you? Quite pathetically too, you silently note.

Why did you like that? You figured self-discoveries were being made presently, not that it was important. 

“.. Why do you keep asking what Spiderman should do?”

“Huh?”

“What about what you want to do?”

“Spiderman doesn’t get that luxury, sweetheart.” 

You frown. Hands lightly itching to reach upwards. “But you do, don’t you? Satoru has that luxury.”

“Satoru is Spiderman, and Spiderman takes precedence. It’s.. no offense, but it’s nothing you would get. And that’s for the best, alright?” He murmurs softly, tenderness lacing in his tone as his gaze traveled over you against the wall.

Him towering over you. Still masked, unabiding even as his nerves rupture for closure, burrowing for gaze.

Gaze to him.

Gaze to the man behind the mask.

But Spiderman can’t do that. Life-threatening stakes are familiar to him in his workplace, if he could even call it that. But with ‘great responsibilities comes great power’, right? How could he bare to expose you to that? He swallows loudly, throat closing up in apprehension.

“Just what are you so afraid of?” You bring your hands up to his face, to his mask. Slipping your thumb under the mask falling off on his neck, threatening to tear down every barrier he’s ever built in this sick occupation of his. “What are you so scared I will see?”

His hands come up instinctively to your wrist, holding it in place. Scared that you’ll do it. That you’ll take it off then– then, what?

Run away? Why would you run away?

His head runs in a space he cannot follow, as it always had been.

He suspects, sometimes, that it was the spider running instead of him. He’s merely catching up to the bug that idly sucked on his possession.

“That’s– that’s not it. Don’t you see? I’ve always shown you what’s underneath. Everything. Everything, but this.”

“That’s not fair, Satoru.” His name glides off your tongue with euphonious resonance. You’ve one more barrier to rid of, and greed claws like a parasite leeching. “I want everything. Especially this.”

“This is the one thing I’m not supposed to give you. Ever. I can’t – what do you think I’ve seen, huh?” His voice breaks off shakily, his hold on your wrist tightens as you keep your finger hooked underneath his mask. “Innocent people are used as leverage. Innocent people are used to draw me out. What do you think they’d do with someone I actually care about?"

“You can’t continue to keep someone out and expect them to stay.” You lift his mask up lightly. The slip of his neck is exposed, Satoru’s breath hitches at your contact against his skin. His real skin. Real. This is real, he appalled himself in the shiver of your hold. 

“– That’s all I've ever known how to do.” 

“Okay,” You hum. Calmer. You lift another inch up again. “Learn. Even spiderman could learn.”

“Pfft. Thought we were past that now. I’m Satoru to you, forget about Spiderman. That guy’s last week’s news.” The corner of his lip quirks up despite himself, his fingers on your wrist softening to a loose hold. 

“Oh?” You laugh. “The stains of Spiderman’s blood on my bedsheet are very much not from last week. Something tells me this Spiderman guy will have to do my laundry.” 

Another thumb juts another inch upwards. He doesn’t resist – not anymore. Not against this, against everything he’s ever wanted – normalcy – you. You take it as an initiative to drag the spandex of his mask further elevated. 

“No need. Satoru here can do aaalll your laundry.”

You’re angry. No, that’s not right. You were angry.

Because he’s reckless, stupid, and he’s been keeping himself locked up in walls cladded with iron. Spiderman – Satoru – you reiterate inside of your head, is still all of those things, and more– yet you can’t find fury to shimmer beneath your veins, for all you find when you dig the vessels out of your skin, is a lenient tenderness.

Perhaps you’re terrified. That must be it. If not anger, you’re terrified. Your thumb juts upwards again, Satoru’s breath hitches against the air as your fingers tenderly review his lips. Pink. A little glossy, upon your surprise. Human. 

Him.

“This is weird, huh?” Satoru laughs, and you see his mouth moving. You gape silently, the way his lips move, the way his mouth forms vowels. “I’m gonna start to think you want to kiss me if ‘ya keep staring at my lips like that, sweetheart.”

“Is this okay?” You mutter. Your fingers moving further and further up the top of his head. His fingers finally detach from your wrist, a leniency following his actions, a peace of acquiescence in his mind.

“Yeah,” Satoru’s hands wander around the air, before settling on your waist tentatively. He nods, the mask bunching up. “More than okay.”

“Just to preface,” You purse your lips in wait. Biting down on your bottom lip, before meeting him in the eye – your thumb touching his jaw, the most skin-to-skin you two have ever been. “Regardless of what you look like, I– I'll still–” Love you.

“I’ll still let you eat my celery.” Great improvisation. 

But Satoru’s mouth quirks into a boy-ish grin, a toothy smile grazing his lips. “Are you implying there was a chance that if I was ugly, I can’t eat your celery anymore?”

“Okay, I get it! Celery’s an old joke–”

Without giving you much as a moment to react, one of Satoru’s hands detached from your waist – the other bunched up around your shirt – to swiftly tuck his thumb underneath the front of his mask, pulling it swiftly off.

The first thing you noticed was– wow. His eyes are blue. They’re bright – a hint of mischief swirling as the corner of his lips tugged up, eyes curling in satisfaction. His white eyelashes are framed against his eyelid as he drunk the site of you up. As if his eyes didn’t know where to flee, now that they were out in the open. Now that they bore you in their orbiting site. 

His white hair caught on the light in your room – ruffled up, strands of hair stuck clinging to his forehead when his mask came off, sticking to a million little places. Ivory under light, snow under flash. For a moment, all you could do in your sensible brain was gape.

“Speechless already? I told you I was handsome, didn’t I?” A grin fixated on his lips, you don’t miss the way his eyes soften almost imperceptibly at the notice of your eyes running over the girdles of his face.

He was. You didn’t think you’d ever admit that – not even in your head. Those Reddit threads hypothesizing on Spiderman’s identity were right. He’s handsome. Intricately so. Your cheeks flush lightly a darker hue. 

“.. You’re such a dork.” You finally huff, hands designedly cupping his cheeks, jaw flexing on your palms. He leans into your touch, a smug roll of shoulders escaping him. 

“Yeah,” Satoru smiles crescively, his hand dropping the mask on the ground, not caring as he lowered himself to your body against the wall, his hand finding purchase on the curve of your waist once more. 

“I guess I am.” He beams, igniting an aura of inconspicuous satisfaction. “I’m your idiot though, right?”

“Yeah, that’s–” You hum, fingers drawing fingers around his jaw. “That’s debatable.”

Satoru laughs, head leaning into your touch as you hold them closer to you. Your face is a mere breath away from touching, bright blue fixated on you, pulling you into its gravitational orbit – you don’t seem to mind, anymore. You hold him closer. Paralleling his orbit with your own.

“.. You’ll stay, right?” Satoru breathes. His voice low.

You looked at him. Without the mask. Without the pretense. The surficial identity. You laugh as if you never considered the possibility of doing otherwise. “Did taking away your mask remove your brain too?”

“Of course I’ll stay.”

He didn’t even have to ask.

You were sucked into the tinsel of his webs since the day you found him bleeding. Since the day he made a point to (against your own understanding, and his own, too) make a home out of your house. You’ve been caught, tangled and wrapped around the silk of his webs since he set his eyes on you–

And you’ve never thought to pry it off.

“Good,” Satoru purrs, his hand digging further into your waist. “That’s good.”

Spiderman!Gojo is an idiot who usually fumbles – but you suppose now, he’s your idiot. 

BONUS:

“Take your mask off.”

Satoru rocked back and forth on your bed, his knees drawn together in a criss-cross-apple-sauce seating. “Whaaatttttt?”

“Satoru.”

“Ya want a kiss? Just ask, sweetheart.” Satoru grins, hooking a thumb underneath his mask, pulling up just enough to only reveal his lips, puckering them obnoxiously for you. “Here, mwwwwuaahhh—”

You ignore his obnoxious smacking of lips, and pull the rest of his mask off. Lo and behold – your residential (long-term) neighborhood superhero and (newly appointed) boyfriend with a black eye smearing his face. At the revelation, Satoru shrugs, pleading innocence as he sticks his tongue out.

You exhale. “I knew it! What did you do this time?”

Satoru had the nerve to stick a finger to his chin, pondering your question. “Mm.. my job?”

“That’s not what I–”

“Whateves, whateves. C’mere!” Satoru promptly ignored your worried glance over his injury, drawing his arm around your waist, easily shuffling you atop him, straddling his lap as his other arm braced his figure on the bed. “‘S nothing. You should see the other guy.”

You pinch his arm at the attempt of levity. “Stay here. Let me grab the first aid kit–”

“Noooo, come on. ‘M missing my vitamin k.”

You frown, endeavoring to get up, yet even with one arm, Satoru holds you down to him effortlessly. “Vitamin k? That does not exist.”

His blue eyes flash with a mischievous glint at your skepticism, drawing his face closer to yours. He relishes in the way your breath hitches as his mouth comes a near breath from yours. He brushes a stray strand of hair away from your face, reverence in his touch. “Sure it does.”

“Now you’re just making things up–” You start, but your sentence is yet to be finished before his mouth feathers over the brush of your soft lips, connecting the two of you by a soft, yet equally electrifying in-measure act. 

You groan against the plush of his lips, his mouth readily swallowing it up as he deepens the kiss, fingers pressing onto your sides as his arms move to hold you in place, situated over his lap. You try to move away – maintain what little dignity which you have – his head follows suit, lips still pressed firmly against yours as your hands move to his shoulder despite your mind’s slower protests.

Satoru kisses like a man needing water. You think, your breath losing as you attempt to pull away once more, yet his lips refuse to detach, his arms swirling you closer in contact. Yet, you begin to waver, losing the mind to move away, you kiss him back just as feverishly, needing the contact in the marrow of your bones.

You forcibly detach your lips from his when air begins to run out of your lungs, his face a dexterously red hue as he stares at you, eyes half-lidded. 

“Told you,” A grin forms onto his face as you pant, swollen lips heaving hot air, a string of saliva connecting your lips together. Satoru’s eyes glints with satisfaction. “Vitamin k. Kisses. I need those. Like, I would've died, you don't understand the severity.”

“You,” Breaths heaving out of your lungs, you send a half-hearted scowl at his smug expression. “Are so insufferable.”

Your hands situate themselves onto his shoulder, bracing your body over his in a manner which he very much appreciates, as the view of your body is one he is not attended to be shy with. “You like it.”

Satoru leans closer again, his lips a breath away, feathering the ghost of your own, swollen lips. You sigh in exasperation, a hand moving up to cup his cheek. 

“Debatable.” You hum, feeling the vibrations between your mouths, before pressing down against the creeping of his lips. Hands moving into the cradlings of his hair, tugging on his white locks, to which his hold on your waist tightened.

Spiderman!Gojo finds pleasure in your displeasure – but you can’t say wholeheartedly that you mind, anymore.

© 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐒 - all rights reserved. please do not repost, plagiarize, translate, or share my work on other platforms in any way, shape, or form without my permission. if found, you WILL be blocked.

NOTES:

- woah JJK listen i havent been in this fandom since the ripe of 2020 & it's weird being back because so many of the fans are illiterate whoops did i say that - office au gojo fic next oouhh - sorry for the dumbass jokes idk how to flirt it was lowk unfunny but a girl can try - this is the opposite to the normal spiderman x reader tropes - which in this version, reader knows spiderman before they know the man beneath the mask, as opposed to finding out the guy you've known is spiderman. Idk i wanted to see where that could lead & what it means for a relationship built up of spiderman - UGHHH THEY'RE ROUGHLY based off of Peter Parker & Gwen Stacy from the Amazing Spiderman & SORT OF Peter Parker & MJ from Spiderman: Homecoming but this time they're both adults and i wanted to go a lil different route for spiderman - this is lowk buns but we ball bcs exams r coming up & im DEAD - next oneshot reader fucking dies (JK!! i wouldn't do that! I don't like angst at all! wink. turns head slowly, hair swaying in the wind.) - The narrative changing from 'Satoru said' and 'Spiderman said' interchangeably is on purpose - the words that are more vulnerable, Satoru said it. The words that are casual or 'demeaning', Spiderman said it. - omg i love writing spiderjo FUCK I LOVE SPIDERMAN MY GOAT - Taking off the mask as an allegory for letting people in, letting people close, and opening yourself = taking your mask off - Kinda based off of the song City of Stars from La la land but i'm ngl i didn't know what to title it so I just grabbed city of stars from my playlist - Ryan gosling is the goat & Andrew Garfield is the hottest spiderman i rest my case