estrela

You had apparently beaten him to it.

He noticed you because you were almost always there before him, usually occupying the same table beneath the window with enough paper spread across it to suggest you’d established residency. Books appeared in uneven stacks around your laptop, their spines filled with words like mobilization, public opinion, wartime media, and national identity. Photocopied documents disappeared beneath notebooks, while sticky notes accumulated on whatever surface remained.

Steve never tried to read over your shoulder, but he’d spent enough of his life around maps and briefing files to absorb information without meaning to. You were working on something about the war.

More specifically, you were working on something about him.

That realization nearly made him choose another café. Instead, the next time he came in, you glanced up as he passed your table, gave him a brief smile, and went right back to whatever article you were annotating. You didn’t ask for a photograph, lower your voice to whisper to someone on the phone, or watch him when you thought he wasn’t looking.

Steve sat down at the table nearby.

After that, the arrangement continued without discussion. You worked by the window while Steve took one of the smaller tables close enough that he occasionally caught whatever you were muttering under your breath. Sometimes one of you arrived first, and sometimes hours passed without either of you acknowledging the other beyond a nod. He liked that nobody expected anything from him there, and he gradually realized your presence had become part of what made the place comfortable.

Then, one rainy Tuesday afternoon, Steve caught enough of what you were muttering to yourself to finally speak to you.

“This still doesn’t prove anything,” you muttered, tapping the end of your pen against a photocopied page. “Bond sales increased everywhere. You can’t isolate the effect of one campaign from the entire national apparatus.”

Steve lowered his book slightly.

You scribbled something out. “Correlation isn’t causation just because someone put Captain America’s face on a poster, and half these sources are measuring recognition instead of persuasion. Of course people recognized him. He was everywhere.”

“They did like the show.”

Your pen stopped.

Steve immediately wondered whether he should’ve kept his mouth shut.

Very slowly, you turned toward him, then looked down at the papers surrounding your laptop as if reconsidering every decision that had brought you into the café that afternoon.

“I’m sorry. Was I talking that loudly?”

“Not that loudly.”

Your expression suggested this wasn’t reassuring.

Steve closed his book around one finger to hold his place. “But they did like the show.”

“The USO show?”

“Most places.”

You stared at him for another second before your academic instincts apparently defeated your embarrassment. “What do you mean, most places?”

Steve glanced at the papers scattered across your table. “People bought bonds at the shows, sure, but that wasn’t always because the performance convinced them to. Some came because they wanted to see the girls. Some came because there wasn’t much else happening nearby. Some already planned to buy bonds before they got there. It wasn’t the same everywhere.”

You reached slowly for your notebook, hesitating just long enough for him to notice. “Do you mind if I take notes?”

Steve considered the question, then glanced at the title written across the top of the nearest page.

Audience Reception and the American Hero: Measuring the Efficacy of Personified Wartime Propaganda, 1943–1945.

“Is this your research?”

“My dissertation.”

“History?”

You nodded. “Twentieth-century American history. Mostly political culture and media.”

One of the books nearest Steve had his shield on the cover. He looked from it to you and couldn’t quite suppress a smile. “You picked a hell of a case study.”

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it, easing the last of the tension between you. You angled your notebook toward yourself again. “So when you say people liked the show, are you talking about civilian audiences?”

“Mostly.”

“What about the soldiers?”

Steve hesitated.

The question brought memories he hadn’t expected to encounter between the hiss of the espresso machine and the rain against the windows. Mud. Canvas tents. Men who hadn’t slept enough in weeks. The first time he’d walked onto a stage in front of soldiers and discovered exactly how little patience they had for a performance that had played beautifully back home.

“That was different.”

You must’ve seen something in his expression because your pen lowered before it ever touched the paper.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

Steve looked at you. You had spent countless hours studying Captain America and had somehow found yourself sitting a few feet away from the man at the center of your case study, yet your first instinct was to give him a way out rather than press for an answer.

He liked that about you.

“I don’t mind,” he said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

Only then did your pen return to the page.

Steve shifted his chair slightly closer to your table. “I can tell you what I remember about the crowds.”

That should’ve been the extent of it.

Instead, Steve ruined one of your footnotes three days later.

You were reading through a chapter draft while he ate lunch nearby when he leaned over far enough to tap the photocopy beside your elbow. “That guy was lying.”

You looked up sharply.

“He wasn’t even in France when he said this happened.”

Your eyes moved from Steve to the author’s name and back again. “You’re kidding.”

Steve took another bite of his sandwich. “No.”

“I cited him eight times.”

“Sorry.”

The apology might’ve worked better if he hadn’t looked faintly amused.

By the following week, you had given him a copy of the chapter with a pencil and strict instructions to mark anything historically questionable. He returned it covered in notes, some useful and others irritating enough that you briefly considered rescinding his privileges.

Never heard anyone call it that.

This happened later.

Bucky would’ve hated this description.

One particularly expensive academic biography came back with a sticky note attached to a paragraph describing Steve as maintaining a rigidly formal relationship with the Howling Commandos.

Absolutely not.

You laughed loudly enough that several people looked over from their tables, while Steve sat across from you with his coffee and the unmistakable satisfaction of a man who had accomplished exactly what he’d intended.

After that, the friendship developed in increments too small for either of you to identify when the arrangement changed. Steve started asking how the dissertation was going before he even sat down, and you began texting him whenever you encountered a source that made an especially ridiculous claim. He answered with corrections at alarming speed, occasionally sending enough context that a simple complaint turned into another paragraph of notes.

When your advisor returned a chapter with enough comments to make you consider abandoning academia for a career involving significantly fewer footnotes, Steve arrived at the café carrying dinner from the place down the street.

You looked from him to the paper bag. “I didn’t ask you to bring me food.”

“You said you forgot lunch and planned to stay here until they closed.”

“That wasn’t an invitation.”

“It sounded enough like one.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, but Steve was already unpacking the food onto the corner of the table you had left uncovered. He sat across from you afterward, reading while you worked, and stayed until you finally closed the laptop for the night.

At some point, his table stopped being his table altogether. If you were already there when Steve arrived, he simply joined you, moving whatever books or papers you indicated before settling into the space across from you. Neither of you commented on the change.

The dissertation remained the excuse for the first few months. Steve helped when he could, particularly when your sources flattened people he had known into patriotic archetypes or transformed chaotic events into neat historical narratives. You helped him in different ways, usually without appearing to realize it.

You knew which museums had updated their wartime exhibits and which ones still relied on information written decades earlier. When Steve admitted he’d never actually gone inside the main branch of the New York Public Library despite walking past it plenty of times before the war, you looked so genuinely offended on behalf of the building that he agreed to go with you the following Saturday.

There was an exhibition running when you went, which Steve would later maintain was the reason the visit took so long. You blamed his lack of patience. He blamed your determination to read every word printed on every placard before moving to the next room.

Afterward, you bought sandwiches and wandered through the neighborhood until the afternoon had slipped away from both of you. Steve pointed out where a movie theater had once stood, now replaced by a luxury apartment building, and told you about going there when tickets cost less than whatever you’d just paid for lunch.

“That keeps happening,” he said as you continued down the block.

“It has been seventy years.”

“I’m aware.”

The way he looked at the next glass-fronted building made you smile. Your shoulder bumped his as you walked, and Steve found himself smiling too.

..

By autumn, Natasha knew about you.

It happened because she called Steve while he was sitting beside you in your university’s library. He stepped into the hallway to answer, leaving the study-room door cracked behind him, and had barely finished greeting her when Natasha noticed the echo.

“You’re in a library.”

“Yeah.”

“Voluntarily?”

Before Steve could answer, your voice carried through the doorway. “Steve, was Philadelphia before or after the Cleveland stop?”

He glanced back toward the room. “After.”

There was a brief silence on the phone.

“Who was that?”

“A friend. I’m helping with her dissertation.”

Natasha’s interest became obvious enough that Steve immediately regretted giving her that much. He admitted the dissertation concerned wartime propaganda and, after a little more pressure, that his own bond tour featured prominently in it.

“Interesting,” she said.

Steve recognized the tone. “Don’t.”

He ended the call before she could insist she hadn’t said anything.

Two days later, Natasha found him at the Tower and asked how his historian was doing.

“She’s not my historian.”

“Your friend, then.”

“That’s what I told you.”

Natasha studied him for a moment, apparently finding something interesting in his insistence on the distinction. Steve went back to his book before she could share whatever conclusion she had reached.

He should’ve known that would only be the beginning.

Tony was worse.

The first time you came to the Tower, it was because Steve had mentioned several boxes of wartime material that had been relocated during renovations and might contain records useful to your research. You spent twenty minutes insisting that you couldn’t simply access private archival material because you happened to know him, until Steve finally explained that the files technically belonged to him and he was the one giving you permission.

You still looked faintly uneasy when he brought you upstairs.

Tony wandered into the room halfway through your second box, took in the carefully arranged folders covering the table, then looked between you and Steve with immediate interest.

“You brought a girl home to look at seventy-year-old paperwork.”

“She’s working,” Steve said.

Tony’s expression suggested that wasn’t the part he found noteworthy, but he left without pursuing it.

You waited until the door had closed behind him before looking at Steve. “Does he think we’re dating?”

“Probably.”

“Why?”

“Tony likes making up his mind about things before anyone explains them.”

Your gaze drifted toward the door. “And he made up his mind about us?”

“Looks like it.”

“We’re friends.”

“Right.”

You said it easily.

Steve did too.

At the time, it was true.

Natasha met you properly not long afterward, when she stopped by the Tower while you and Steve were working through another box of records. The two of you got along easily enough that, by the time the Chicago conference came around, you’d started making plans without Steve involved.

Steve realized something had changed when you went to Chicago for three days.

There was a conference. Steve knew this because he’d heard about it for months, including the original proposal, the acceptance, the panic about presenting an argument from a chapter you no longer liked, and the exact sequence of events that had nearly caused you to miss the registration deadline.

He knew your presentation was Friday afternoon and your flight home was Sunday evening, which made it particularly stupid that he walked into the café on Saturday morning and automatically looked toward your table.

It was empty.

Steve stopped for half a second before remembering exactly why. He ordered his coffee and sat down, telling himself that nothing about the morning was unusual.

The café was exactly the same without you. The same music drifted from the speakers, the same smell of bread warming behind the counter filled the room, and familiar faces occupied several tables, people Steve had seen often enough over the past few months to recognize without ever learning their names.

It felt wrong anyway.

He read half a page of his book before checking his phone.

There was a message from you.

Someone just presented an entire paper arguing that patriotic superheroes functioned primarily as aspirational masculinity and somehow failed to mention enlistment advertising once.

Steve smiled before he could stop himself.

Maybe he ran out of time.

The typing indicator appeared almost immediately.

steven

He laughed quietly, earning a glance from the counter that he ignored. Your next message included a photograph of an aggressively beige conference room with this is what academic suffering looks like as the caption.

He saved the picture.

Then Steve sat there with his phone in his hand and finally admitted something he had apparently been avoiding for weeks.

The café wasn’t his favorite place anymore.

You were.

He had known attraction before, and he remembered Peggy with enough clarity that there were still memories he approached carefully. This wasn’t some mystery he lacked the experience to identify. He knew exactly what was happening, which unfortunately meant he also knew how much he stood to lose if he handled it badly.

You had become one of the few constants in his life that made New York feel less unfamiliar. You knew who he was without making everything about what he represented. You could spend three hours asking about wartime morale and then complain because he’d eaten the pastry you were saving. You invited him into ordinary places and expected nothing extraordinary in return.

Steve had spent enough of his life losing people. He wasn’t going to risk losing you because he wanted the friendship to become something more.

When you returned from Chicago and dropped into the chair across from him with a tired smile, he asked about the conference and listened while you described every paper worth remembering.

He didn’t tell you he’d missed you.

Your own realization came a few weeks later.

You had talked to Steve about your research plenty of times before, although most of those conversations had begun without warning and ended with you scrambling to write down something important he’d mentioned while discussing something else. They were invaluable to your work, but they weren’t material you could formally cite as an interview unless you documented them properly.

Your advisor eventually pointed this out, which was how Steve ended up sitting across from you in a private study room with a recorder on the table between you.

The difference was immediate.

You introduced the interview for the recording, and Steve stated his name before giving permission for the material to be used in your dissertation. When you asked the first question, his posture straightened almost imperceptibly, and his answers became careful in a way they never were when the two of you were talking over lunch.

This was exactly the kind of interview you’d spent months hoping to conduct.

Steve was articulate, thorough, and precise about the limits of what he remembered. When you asked about the bond tours, he gave you dates where he could and explained the distinctions between civilian and military audiences. He corrected assumptions without dismissing the scholarship behind them, and when he couldn’t remember something clearly enough to trust the memory, he said so rather than giving you an answer he wasn’t sure about.

It was probably the best primary-source interview you would ever conduct.

You hated it.

Steve sat straighter than usual, and his answers lacked the wandering asides you’d grown accustomed to, the occasional dry commentary that made you laugh when you were supposed to be writing, and all the small interruptions that had become familiar over the previous months. He didn’t steal the pen you kept rolling between your fingers or turn your notebook around when he wanted to see something you’d written.

You knew why. This mattered to you, so Steve was treating it with the seriousness he thought it deserved.

Somehow, that made everything worse.

Forty-three minutes later, you asked your final question. Steve answered, you stopped the recording, and the second the light went dark, some of the tension left his shoulders.

“You were terrifying,” he said.

You blinked. “Me?”

“You’ve got a professor face.”

“I do not.”

Steve smiled, and before you could defend yourself further, he reached across the table and took the pen from your hand.

The relief that moved through you was so immediate it almost frightened you. The careful distance he’d maintained throughout the interview disappeared with the recorder turned off, leaving behind the familiar ease you’d grown accustomed to without ever realizing how much it mattered.

Steve turned the pen between his fingers while explaining why one of your questions had reminded him of an argument Dum Dum had once started in a pub, and something inside you shifted abruptly into focus.

You knew Captain America.

You had written tens of thousands of words about him. You could track changes in his public image across newspaper circulation patterns and government messaging strategies, knew when his uniform had been altered for different campaigns, and understood how various agencies had changed the language surrounding him depending on the audience they were trying to reach.

None of that had anything to do with why your pulse stumbled when Steve smiled at you.

You were in love with your best friend.

The realization arrived with enough force that your hand slipped against the edge of your notebook.

Steve stopped talking. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Long day.”

His attention lingered on you for another moment before he let the answer stand. You reached for your pen, and Steve returned it without argument.

You spent the rest of the evening pretending nothing had changed.

After that, telling people you and Steve were just friends became considerably harder.

Your department had apparently reached its own conclusion months earlier. You discovered this when another doctoral candidate caught you alone in the hallway after Steve had dropped off dinner one afternoon.

“I didn’t realize you and Steve Rogers were together.”

“We’re not.”

She glanced toward the corridor where he’d just disappeared. “Really?”

“We’re friends.”

“He brings you dinner.”

“Because I forget to eat.”

“And waits until you actually start eating before he leaves.”

You opened your mouth, then closed it again.

Steve encountered similar problems on his end. Clint met you one evening when Steve asked whether you minded another person joining you for dinner, and the two of you got along exactly as well as he’d expected. What he hadn’t expected was the increasingly knowing look Clint directed his way whenever you leaned over to show Steve something or stole food from his plate without asking.

When you left the table for a few minutes, Clint waited until you were out of earshot. “You know everyone thinks you’re together, right?”

“We’re friends.”

Clint’s expression didn’t change.

Steve sighed. “Don’t start.”

He didn’t tell you about the conversation afterward, just as you never mentioned the one with your colleague. It became easier for both of you to avoid examining things too closely.

Until Boston made ignoring them more difficult.

You found out about the fellowship on a Wednesday.

Steve knew something had happened before you said anything because you were already at the café when he arrived, sitting perfectly still with your laptop open and an email displayed on the screen.

He sat across from you. “What happened?”

You looked at him. “I got it.”

Steve knew immediately. “The fellowship?”

You nodded.

For months, you had talked about a semester-long archival fellowship based in Boston. The program would give you access to a collection of private wartime correspondence that had only recently been cataloged, along with enough funding to spend the semester working almost exclusively on the final research chapter of your dissertation.

It was exactly the kind of opportunity you needed.

Steve smiled. “That’s great.”

“It is.”

Something in your voice made his smile fade slightly. “You don’t sound convinced.”

“I am. It’s just Boston.”

The words tightened something beneath Steve’s ribs, but he ignored it. “For one semester.”

“January through May.”

“That’s not bad.”

You looked at him, and for one dangerous second, Steve thought you might be waiting for him to say something else.

He wanted to.

He wanted to tell you that five months sounded significantly longer now that the fellowship was real. He wanted to ask how often you planned to come home, whether he was allowed to visit, and why the idea of walking into the café without finding you there suddenly felt unbearable.

Instead, he did what he thought a good friend was supposed to do. “You should take it.”

Your expression changed so slightly that he might’ve imagined it. “I know.”

“It’s perfect for your research, and you’ve wanted it for months.”

You closed the laptop and folded your hands over the top. “You’re right.”

Steve could feel that he had missed something important without understanding what it was. “Congratulations.”

You smiled, but it wasn’t the smile he’d expected.

“Thanks, Steve.”

You left earlier than usual.

Natasha came over a few nights later and found you still thinking about the conversation.

“He told you to go?”

“He told me I should take the fellowship.”

“And that bothered you.”

You looked down at your hands. “It’s what a supportive friend is supposed to say.”

Natasha was quiet for a moment before asking, “Is that all you wanted him to be?”

You didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

She watched you for another second. “Do you want him to ask you not to go?”

“No.” The response came immediately. “I’d be angry if he did.”

“Then what did you want?”

You hesitated before admitting the part that had been bothering you since Wednesday. “I wanted him to care that I was leaving.”

Natasha’s expression softened. “He probably does.”

“He looked happy for me.”

“He probably is.”

You looked away. “That’s the problem.”

Natasha let the silence sit for a moment before speaking again.

“When Steve bought your birthday present, he asked me whether a first-edition monograph you’d mentioned once would seem too personal. By then he’d already called three bookstores trying to find it.”

You turned toward her. “He called three bookstores for that book?”

“I’m not saying anything else.”

Your birthday had been three months ago, and Steve had handed you the book like he’d happened across it by accident. You had believed him because there hadn’t seemed to be any reason not to.

Apparently, there had been considerably more effort behind it than he’d admitted.

That knowledge didn’t solve anything.

It did make the weeks leading up to Boston more difficult.

Steve realized you were pulling away gradually enough that he could explain it at first.

You had fellowship paperwork, final revisions before the semester break, teaching responsibilities to finish, and an apartment in Boston to arrange. There were plenty of reasons for you to be unavailable, and Steve told himself he understood all of them.

Then he went four days without seeing you.

Then six.

You still texted and answered when he called, but the easy assumption that you would find time for each other somewhere in the week had disappeared.

Two weeks before you were supposed to leave, Steve walked into the café and found you at your old table. Relief came so quickly that he almost resented it.

You looked up when he approached. “Hey.”

Steve sat across from you and asked how the packing was going. You admitted that most of the difficulty was deciding which books you actually needed for the semester when taking all of them would’ve been much easier.

The conversation sounded normal enough, but the distance remained.

Steve wrapped both hands around his coffee. “When do you leave?”

“January third. I’m taking the train since the apartment’s furnished, so I’m mostly bringing clothes and books.”

He nodded, and silence settled between you in a way it never had before.

You rearranged a stack of papers you hadn’t touched since he arrived. “My advisor asked if my boyfriend was helping me move.”

Something unpleasant began collecting in Steve’s stomach. “What’d you tell her?”

“That I don’t have a boyfriend.”

He nodded again.

You let out a quiet breath. “Maybe we should stop giving everyone the wrong idea.”

Steve went still.

Since Chicago, Steve had kept quiet because he was afraid wanting more would change what you already had. Now things were changing anyway.

“What does that mean?”

You looked surprised by the question. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ve gotten a little too close for people not to assume things.”

“We are close.”

“As friends.”

Steve had used the phrase himself often enough over the past few months. Hearing it from you now made him dislike it immediately.

You looked down at your papers. “That’s what we’ve been saying.”

The fellowship conversation replayed in his head: your expression when he encouraged you to take it, the way you’d gone home early afterward, the growing distance between you ever since. Steve had thought supporting you meant keeping his own feelings out of the decision.

“I don’t want things to change between us.”

Your fingers stopped moving as you looked up. “They already are.”

That landed harder than he expected. 

Steve tightened his hands around his coffee. “Is that because of Boston?”

You hesitated. “Not because I’m going.”

He understood then.

“Because of what I said.”

You looked down at your papers.

Steve exhaled slowly. “I told you to take the fellowship because you worked for it. I wasn’t going to make you feel like staying here for me was something you had to consider.”

“I would’ve gone anyway.”

“I know.” His voice softened. “But I should’ve told you I was going to miss you.”

“I thought you wouldn’t.”

The words hurt more than he expected.

“Of course I will.”

“You looked so happy when I told you.”

“I was happy because you wanted it.” Steve leaned forward slightly, unwilling to let you misunderstand him again. “I’m still happy you’re going. I’m proud of you for getting it. None of that means I want five months without you.”

Your eyes dropped briefly toward the table.

Steve had given speeches in front of thousands of people and stood before soldiers, politicians, and cameras without notes. None of that made the next sentence easier.

“I’m in love with you.”

You looked back at him.

For several seconds, you said nothing.

Steve knew he had survived worse things than silence, although remembering any of them became increasingly difficult the longer you stared.

Then you laughed once, quietly, and lifted a hand to cover your eyes.

For one awful second, Steve wondered if he’d gotten this completely wrong. “That bad?”

“No.” You lowered your hand, and he realized your eyes were bright. “I’m laughing because I’ve spent the last two months convincing myself I was an idiot.”

He blinked.

“I’m in love with you too.”

Steve stared at you long enough that your mouth twitched despite the emotion still visible on your face.

“All this time?”

“I realized it during the interview.”

“The interview?”

“When you spent forty-three minutes sounding like Captain Rogers instead of yourself.”

Steve frowned faintly. “That made you fall in love with me?”

“It made me realize I already had.” You looked down at the table between you. “I’ve spent years studying Captain America. Sitting across from him that day made me realize how much Steve mattered to me.”

His expression softened, and he reached across the table and covered your hand with his, rubbing his thumb slowly across your knuckles.

“So,” he said after a moment. “Boston.”

You smiled. “Boston.”

“Can I visit?”

“You’d better.”

You stayed at the café a little longer, neither of you quite ready to end the conversation now that everything between you had changed. Eventually, Steve walked you toward home as he always did.

When you reached the corner where you usually separated, Steve stopped with you. For months, one of you had said goodnight here and the other had continued home. This time, the goodbye didn’t come.

You looked at him, still adjusting to the fact that you could look at him differently now without having to hide it. Steve seemed to be doing the same.

He smiled, small and almost disbelieving, and that was what finally made you kiss him.

Steve stilled for the briefest moment before kissing you back, one hand coming up to rest against your cheek. There was something almost ridiculous about how familiar he still felt when everything between you had changed in the space of an afternoon. When you pulled away, you were both smiling.

“I’m happy,” he said, before you could ask.

Any response you might’ve made disappeared when he kissed you again.

Not long after you left for Boston, Tony found out because Steve asked if he could borrow a car for the weekend. His motorcycle was fine for getting around New York, but a January ride to Boston was pushing practicality even by his standards.

“Where are you going?”

“Boston.”

Tony looked up from his tablet. “When?”

“Next weekend.”

“Why do you need a car? Take the jet.”

“I can drive to Boston.”

Tony stared at him for several seconds before understanding appeared with alarming speed.

“The historian.”

Steve immediately regretted asking.

Tony’s expression brightened. “You’re going to visit your girlfriend.”

Steve’s hesitation apparently told him everything he needed to know.

“You finally figured it out.”

“There wasn’t anything to figure out.”

“Capsicle, you spent months insisting you were friends.”

Steve started walking away, which only encouraged Tony to follow him.

“I’m serious, Steve. Take the jet. I’m not letting Captain America spend half a day sitting in traffic when you could be in Boston before lunch.”

“I can drive.”

Tony waved that away. “Go get your girl.”

Steve stopped long enough to give him a look.

Tony only looked more delighted with himself.

Steve took the jet.

Boston greeted him with snow piled along the edges of the sidewalks and enough cold that Steve briefly wondered why anyone had bothered claiming New York winters were bad.

He arrived at your apartment on a Friday evening carrying an overnight bag and a paper package from the café in New York. You opened the door and immediately recognized the logo on the paper bag in his hand.

“How are you here already?”

“Tony let me use the jet.”

Your eyes narrowed immediately. “What did he say?”

Steve handed you the pastries. “Nothing worth repeating.”

“That means it was terrible.”

“It was Tony.”

You stepped aside to let him in, still studying him suspiciously.

Steve lasted approximately ten seconds. “He told me to go get my girl.”

Your expression changed before you could hide it.

Steve smiled. “I’m never telling him you reacted like that.”

You took the pastry bag from his hand. “Then I hope you enjoyed your last flight.”

The semester passed faster than either of you expected. Steve visited Boston whenever schedules allowed, occasionally by plane but more often by Amtrak once accepting favors from Tony became more trouble than it was worth. You returned to New York twice, once for a meeting with your advisor and once simply because you missed home enough to justify the trip.

Distance changed less than either of you had feared.

You still sent Steve photographs of ridiculous academic claims and excerpts from sources that required commentary from someone who’d actually been there. He still corrected your footnotes, although he became better about distinguishing between corrections you had requested and historical grievances he simply wanted documented somewhere.

At night, you called instead of meeting at the café. Sometimes you talked for hours, while other calls dissolved into companionable silence with you working at your desk in Boston and Steve sketching or reading in New York.

Somewhere around April, your landlord emailed to remind you that your lease would expire at the end of May. You had mentioned it to Steve that night without much thought, already halfway through explaining that apartment hunting from another state was going to be miserable.

Steve was quiet for long enough that you finally looked up from your laptop.

“What?”

“You could move in with me.”

You stared at him through the screen.

He immediately looked less certain. “If you want to. I know it’s soon.”

It was, technically. You’d only been together since December, but the relationship itself hadn’t started from nothing. You’d known each other for the better part of a year and had already spent most of your free time together long before either of you admitted what it had become. Moving in together felt less dramatic when you remembered how intertwined your lives already were.

“Are you sure?”

Steve’s hesitation disappeared. “Yeah.”

You smiled. “Okay.”

Once the decision was made, Steve took care of the part you couldn’t easily manage from Boston. When your lease ended, he handled the move for you, packing up what remained, supervising the movers, and bringing everything from your old apartment to his. You still insisted on directing half of it over video call, particularly when he threatened to put your books wherever there happened to be shelf space. By the time the fellowship ended, your old apartment was empty and most of your life was already waiting for you at Steve’s.

Steve came up for the final weekend of your fellowship to help you pack the Boston apartment and travel back with you. You’d already shipped several boxes ahead, but five months had still left you with considerably more than you’d arrived with. 

When your train reached New York, Steve had claimed the heaviest suitcase, two boxes of books, and the bag containing most of your research notes. You stepped onto the platform behind him with the remaining suitcase and a tote digging into your shoulder.

“You know I can carry more than this.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you carrying almost everything?”

Steve glanced back at you. “Because I can.”

You caught up with him before the crowd could separate you, your hand finding the back of his coat as you made your way toward the concourse. For the first time, coming back to New York didn’t mean eventually splitting off toward different addresses.

Steve looked over at you as you emerged into the main hall. “Ready to go home?”

You smiled. “Yeah.”

And this time, you went home together.

Your dissertation defense took place three weeks later.

Steve didn’t attend the closed portion. He waited outside with several of your friends and people from the department, along with Natasha and, somehow, Tony.

You had specifically told Tony he didn’t need to come.

Tony had apparently decided that wasn’t the same thing as being told not to.

When the door finally opened, Steve was on his feet before anyone else. You stepped into the hallway and looked at the small crowd waiting for you.

Then you smiled.

“I passed.”

The hallway erupted.

Steve made his way through the small crowd and pulled you into his arms. Your face settled against his chest, his chin brushing the top of your head as he held you close.

For months, he had watched you build the dissertation sentence by sentence, argue with evidence, rewrite entire sections, defend interpretations, and threaten at least four separate printers. He had never doubted that you could do it.

Later, after dinner and enough congratulations to leave you visibly exhausted, you and Steve finally ended up alone.

You handed him a bound copy of the dissertation.

Steve took it carefully.

The title filled most of the cover.

Audience Reception and the American Hero: Measuring the Efficacy of Personified Wartime Propaganda, 1943–1945.

Your name appeared beneath it.

Steve ran his thumb across the lettering. “I get my own copy?”

“You contributed approximately eight thousand unsolicited corrections.”

“You asked me to read it.”

“I asked you to fact-check it.”

“Same thing.”

“It absolutely is not.”

Steve smiled and opened the cover.

You became noticeably quieter.

That was enough to make him suspicious.

He turned past the title page and found the acknowledgments a few pages in. His name caught his attention almost immediately.

For Steve, who reminded me that history is made by people before it is preserved by institutions, and who taught me the difference between knowing the record and knowing the person.

Steve stopped reading.

You shifted beside him. “I know it’s sentimental.”

He closed the dissertation carefully and held out one arm. “Come here.”

You smiled and moved into him.

Steve kissed your forehead, still holding the dissertation in his other hand.

“You like it?”

“Yeah.”

Your hand rested against his chest as you leaned back enough to look at him. “I had to acknowledge my primary source.”

Steve smiled. “Is that what I am?”

“Among other things.”

“Does boyfriend make the list?”

You pretended to consider the question until Steve kissed you before you could make him regret asking.

Nearly a year earlier, you had sat three feet away from him in a café and tried to determine whether Captain America had ever actually persuaded anyone of anything. Steve still wasn’t sure how effectively the government campaign had accomplished whatever the people behind it intended. He knew firsthand that the neat conclusions preserved in reports rarely captured everything that had actually happened.

You understood that better than most.

You had spent years studying the symbol, pulling apart polished stories and patriotic simplifications until you understood how carefully a person could be reduced to something easier for history to remember.

Then you had met the man behind it and never once asked him to remain that simple.

Somewhere between the footnotes, the dinners he brought when you forgot to eat, and five months of trips between New York and Boston, Steve had stopped being only the subject of your research and become something else entirely.

You had spent all that time studying Captain America.

You had fallen in love with Steve.

He thought that might be his favorite part of the story.

credit to @uzmacchiato for the cherry divider ❤️💛

Steve Rogers taglist: @twentytomidnight, @ferbiederbie, @i-gotta-go-so-much-bigger, @rain-the-ramblr, @dutifullyshamelesstrash, @stupidlyunhinged

“Fine, good point,” you huff. “I’m leaving.”

Closing your laptop, you shove it inside your laptop bag and work on picking up all of your textbooks and papers and shoving them back in your backpack. Ned seems happy to see you go.

“Good luck,” he hums as you walk away from the table. You flip him the bird over your shoulder and hear him chuckle as you head towards the elevator to head downstairs. 

There’s no better time than the present to find and ask Peter out, right? You may as well do it now while you have the confidence… even though, as every second passes while the elevator goes down, nerves start to creep in. 

You don’t know if Peter likes you back. You haven’t particularly been open with your crush. You haven’t even gotten the courage to flirt with him and test the waters. What if all of this ruins your friendship and you spend your last year at MIT friendless and miserable? But what if Peter does feel the same way and your last year is your happiest yet? 

Ugh, your brain won’t let you win. 

You pull your phone out of your pocket and shoot Peter a text. Hey, where r u? 

He texts back just as you’re walking out of the library. Hey just chillin at eastman court, u finished studying w Ned already?? 

Turning to head in that direction, you reply. Yup. Coming to find u now. See u soon 😝

Peter likes the message almost instantly. You spend the rest of the walk trying to convince yourself that this is a good idea. That this won’t ruin things. That once you get to Peter, you’re actually going to go through with it. Ned would be so mad if you didn’t and you kind of agree with him – you are sick of talking about your crush and not doing anything about it. 

You see Peter before he sees you. He’s laying on the grass, his backpack beside him, staring up at the sky. When he said ‘chillin’ he really meant it. He clearly isn’t as worried about finals as you and Ned are, judging by his chosen way to spend time between classes.

“Hey,” you greet as you walk up to him. 

He looks up, instantly smiling. “You made it here quick. Was Ned talking too much and getting on your nerves so you couldn’t focus on your study?”

You snort and sit down on the grass beside him, crossing your legs and dumping your backpack behind you. “No, I was the one talking and distracting him, actually.” 

“You?” Peter sits up, crossing his own legs and facing you. He leans back on his hands. There’s a piece of grass stuck in his hair and you can’t help but reach up and brush it away. You don’t miss the way his eyes track the movement. 

“Sorry,” you murmur, “Piece of grass.”

He shakes his head. “S’ fine. Everything okay?”

You knot your hands together in your lap, suddenly unable to focus on what you need to say. A few moments of silence go by. “Were you cloud watching?” You say, changing the subject and glancing up towards the sky. It’s mostly clear but there are a few clouds dotted around the blue sky. 

Peter furrows his eyebrows, confused at your change of subject, but nods. “Yeah, just trying to rest my mind a bit. Been focusing so much on all my study that it was all blurring together.” 

“Shall we do it together?” You ask, finally meeting his eyes again. You’re already moving to lay on the grass before he can say anything and when he moves to lay back down beside you, relief courses through your body. It might be easier to say what you need to say without looking him in the eyes while you do it. 

The two of you lay there for a few minutes, staring up at the sky in silence. Peter is the one to eventually break the silence. “You sure everything’s okay? You’re really quiet today.”

“I like you.” The words are blurted out so fast that you can barely even register what you’ve just said. It wasn’t at all like you intended to say it. To ease him into it. You squeeze your eyes shut and take a deep breath. It’s out there now. There’s no going back.

“Oh,” is all Peter says and you feel your nerves start to increase. 

 “I’ve liked you since freshman year, actually,” you continue, desperately trying to save the conversation before things get awkward. Maybe he didn’t realise you meant it quite like that.  “And I was wondering if you might want to go on a date with me.”

It’s silent again for a few moments and you can feel how fast your heart is beating. 

“Oh,” Peter says again, but this time the word sounds different. 

“If you don’t want to, that’s fine. I’m happy to just stay as friends,” you mutter.

“No, no, no,” Peter sits up so quickly it almost makes you jump. He spins to look at you, eyes wide and shaking his head. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just was surprised, that’s all. I didn’t realise you– well, I didn’t even think you might– cause having a crush on your best friend and having them like you back never happens to people.”

You push yourself to sit up again and look over at Peter. His cheeks have gone red and he looks utterly adorable. You have to force yourself not to reach out and touch his pink cheeks or swipe some of the messy hair off of his forehead. 

It takes all the courage you have to push past the dread sinking through you and accept the fact that Peter doesn’t feel the same way. It’s fine. You can stay friends and it can be like this conversation never happened. Today, all you did was watch clouds together. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” you nod. “Don’t stress about it, ‘kay? I think I’m gonna head to the dining hall and grab something for lunch, actually. I’ll see you around.” 

You stand up and start to grab your backpack when you feel it being pulled from your hand. Confused, you turn around and find Peter standing too, holding the strap of your backpack in one of his hands.

He lets out a long breath. “Okay, I didn’t mean that like that either,” he starts. “I meant that I’m the one who’s had a crush on my best friend and having you like me back was never something I thought would happen.” 

The shock of his words makes the grip on your backpack fail, the strap sliding from your hand and giving the full weight of it to Peter, though he doesn’t even acknowledge the fact. 

“You… like me too?” Your words are quiet, full of disbelief.

Peter nods, face full of nerves but also full of hope. “Yeah, I do. And I do want to go on a date with you. I… honestly, I’ve been trying to get the courage to ask you out all year but I was worried about ruining our friendship and I didn’t wanna make Ned feel awkward…”

You chuckle at that. “Well, when I just told Ned what I was going to do, all he said about it was finally, so he can stop hearing me talk about it… guess he meant hearing us talk about it.”

Peter smiles, one of the smiles you love seeing, one of the genuine ones, the ones that only appear when he’s with someone he really loves, someone he really trusts. “Guess we won’t be making him feel awkward if we’re holding hands or going on dates without him, then.”

He extends one of his hands to you, then, motioning for you to take it. You reach out and he entwines his fingers with yours before throwing your backpack over his shoulder and picking up his own backpack with his spare hand. “Wanna go see what the dining hall has today?” 

“Yeah,” you give his hand a squeeze. “I do. But this isn’t our first date.”

Peter shakes his head as the two of you begin to walk, swinging your entwined hands as you move. “Oh, definitely not. But we can discuss some ideas over lunch. I’ve got a few ideas in mind already, actually.”

“If us flying through the city via your webs is one of them, scratch it out.”

“I know you don’t need anyone to keep you safe,” Peter continues when you don’t reply, voice strained as he tries to put one of his legs into his jeans. “But I’d feel better being there with you.”

You smile again, even if Peter can’t see it. “Fine, you can come with me. But I already told my roommate I’ll walk there with her. Can you meet me there at 8?” 

“I’ll be there at 7:55.”

After you and Peter hang up the phone, he continues putting his jeans on and continuing to get dressed. It’s a little before 7 now, so he has plenty of time to get to the party but he wants to make sure he’s presentable – mostly for you rather than for himself. He doesn’t want to be the boyfriend who smells bad, is late, has no fashion sense… or anything that could embarrass you in the slightest, really. 

He grabs a hoodie off of the foot of his bed a few minutes later and walks out into the living room where Ned is sitting, working on a Lego Star Wars AT-AT. 

“I’m heading out, going to a party. You wanna come?” Peter offers, slipping his hoodie over his head. Thankfully, it smells clean. 

Ned doesn’t even look up from his Lego. “Cause your girlfriend’s gonna be there?” 

“I just feel like a beer,” Peter lies. He’s still not used to the fact that he has a girlfriend. That he’s casually announcing he’s going to a party on a Saturday night. Ned finds it more amusing than anything, though he’s also extremely happy that his best friend is so happy. 

“We have some in the fridge.”

Peter picks up his shoes from the shoe rack and starts tugging them on. If he’s going to make it to the frat house by 7:55, he needs to start walking. “I’m 21, Ned. I’m in college. I wanna go drink beers and socialise. And yes, my girl will be there.”

Ned looks up at him, a twinkle in his eyes. “Oh, you are so whipped, Peter,” he grins. “Don’t wake me up if I’m asleep when you get home. If you’re not alone, please try and be quiet. I have to study tomorrow.”

“Shut up,” Peter murmurs, tugging on his second shoe. He picks up his keys from the bowl on the side table by the door and says goodnight to Ned, not promising anything about letting him stay asleep or keeping quiet, and locks the door behind him as he leaves. 

He shoves his hands in the pockets of his hoodie as he walks across campus to the frat house where Flash Thompson lives and hosts all his parties. It’s a chilly October night but not as bad as it’ll be in a few months time in the dead of winter. He hopes that you’re not too cold heading to the party with your roommate and wonders if he should’ve brought along an additional layer to give to you if you are. 

By the time he gets to the party, it’s already in full swing. He’s there by 7:54 and there are already people spilling out onto the front lawn, hands wrapped around red cups and several of those cups already littering the ground. Peter dodges a very intoxicated looking couple who are somehow walking and making out at the same time and heads through the front door.

His eyes start scanning the room to look for you and he immediately wishes that he’d discussed a certain spot to meet you when he got here. He stops by the kitchen, leaning up against the counter and pulling out his phone to text you and ask you where to meet you before grabbing a beer. He’ll get a drink once he knows where you are. 

Peter doesn’t mind parties, not really. Do they get a little too crowded at times? Yes. Does he feel like he doesn’t belong there? Also yes. But he feels like he belongs more than he did when he was in high school and that’s enough for him. He prefers being at parties with you, though. He prefers being anywhere with you.

His phone buzzes in his hand and he immediately opens the message from you. 

Just got here! Meet you in the living room?? ❤️

Peter sends a quick reply and heads off towards the living room. He’s been to parties here a few times so he roughly knows his way around. It’s a big frat house, though, and with so many people in here, it’s easy to get lost. He can see the entrance to the living room in the distance as he enters the hall. And then he sees you.

You’re a little further down the hall from him, stood by one of the walls, and you’re not alone. Your roommate is nowhere to be seen and instead, there’s a man standing in front of you, his hand on the wall beside your head, and he’s close. Too close. 

Peter immediately wishes he was in his suit right now so he could use his web shooters to pin that assholes hand to the wall, and maybe the rest of his body as well, for daring to be so close to his girl.

He starts pushing through the crowd without a second thought, not even bothering to apologise when he accidentally steps on someones foot. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you the whole time, not wanting to risk you disappearing in front of him. He watches as you try and smile and laugh at things the man is saying but he notices the way you’re spinning the rings you wear around on your fingers – a nervous habit of yours.

Adrenaline is coursing through him as he gets closer to you. Once he reaches your side, he surprises himself with how confident he feels without his suit and mask. He’s used to confronting the bad guys as Spider-Man, but he’s still not so great at it when he’s just Peter. 

“You need to leave,” Peter’s voice is stronger than he expects it to be. He presses a hand to the chest of the man overing over you and pushes him back so harshly that he stumbles. He positions himself between you and the man. 

The man laughs and stands up straight again. “Don’t interrupt us, kid. We were just talking. You even know this chick or what?” He steps closer. “I was doing nothing wrong.”

“Yeah, I know her, and I know she doesn’t want to talk to you anymore, so leave before I make you leave.” 

Again, the man laughs. “Am I meant to be scared of you, kid?” 

Standing behind Peter, you reach out a hand and touch his arm gently, still standing behind him but peeking around him to look at the man who’d all of a sudden come onto you while you’d been trying to get to the living room. 

“Yeah, you should be,” you reply, voice full of venom despite the fact that you’re also a little shaky with nerves. “Now listen to what he said and listen to what I say when I tell you to leave me the hell alone.” 

Thankfully, the man scoffs, throws his hands up in the air and walks away, leaving you and Peter alone. 

Peter immediately turns around, hands going to your face, your shoulders, your arms, to check you over physically and make sure you’re okay. He doesn’t know what he’d do if something serious happened to you before he could stop it. “Are you okay?” His voice is soft, words meant only for you. “Did he touch you?”

“No,” you shake your head, adrenaline still thrumming through your veins from the situation. You knew you could handle it on your own if you had to, but you’d be lying if you said you weren’t glad when Peter intervened. “He didn’t.”

“Who even was he?” Peter asks, eyebrows furrowed. 

You cross your arms over your chest, trying to calm yourself down a little, and shrug. “I dunno. I think he’s in one of my classes? He said he’d seen me before and finally got the courage to come talk to me. He wasn’t getting the hint when I said I wasn’t interested.” 

Peter’s frown deepens. “I should’ve taught him a lesson.”

The sound of your soft laughter shakes some of his anger away. “Like what? You gonna start a fist fight in the middle of a packed frat house? It’s fine, Peter. I’m fine, thanks to you.” You step closer to him and shove your hands into the pockets of his hoodie to anchor you closer to him. “I’ve dealt with guys worse than him.” 

“You think that’s gonna make me feel better?” 

You wince. “Okay, you’re right. That doesn’t sound great. But really, I’m okay.”

Peter sighs and moves to wrap his arms around you, tugging you into a hug. You remove your hands from his hoodie to hug him back, fisting them in the material of the back of his hoodie instead and burying your head in his neck. He rests his head on top of yours and the  instant feeling of calm is almost overwhelming. 

“I don’t like the idea of guys thinking they can just come onto you like that,” Peter murmurs. The party is loud but his voice is loud enough for you to hear, his mouth close to your ear. “That scared the hell out of me and it wasn’t even happening to me.”

You push your face further into Peter’s neck. “It scared me a bit too,” you admit. It’s true that you’ve dealt with guys worse than that before, but the way in which this man had invaded your space had heightened your anxiety. Your heart had started racing and your mind had been running over every fight or flight scenario until Peter arrived. 

Peter’s grip gets tighter once he hears your words. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” you hum. “I’m feeling better every second.”

One of Peter’s hands starts slowly rubbing up and down on your back, soothing you even more. A small smile comes to your lips at the feeling. Somehow, in the middle of a crowded frat house, bursting to the seams with intoxicated and sober people, Peter is able to make it feel like you are the only two people in the world. 

“Don’t let me go yet,” you murmur, words so quiet you don’t even know if Peter will hear them. He does, though. Peter hears everything you say. 

It's debilitating. He feels so familiar. Like a memory so strong that you can smell the fresh crayons from elementary school without having touched a box of them in the last several years. Or maybe it's more of a muted blur trying restlessly to revive itself. Watching your younger self in the mirror, head bobbing side to side as you feel that humming in your chest even all these years later. When did being seven happen fifteen years ago?

Didn't you know him then? At seven? It's so convincing to go along with the idea that you did. If your brain didn't scream otherwise, you'd go along with the thought. But why is your mind so against it?

His confession is crumpled in your hands, thumb smoothing over the wrinkles and regrets folded into the pages. It stings, or burns, or… ignites something in your person.

"I'm so sorry…" His cheeks are pink, but his eyes can't leave yours. Do you remember? He can't commit to that risk. 

He's fully masked, fully guarded, standing across from you and trying his best to come up with something to say. He's had years to consider this conversation. He's replayed it countless times, but it always ends the same. Now that it's happening, now that it's not just a show of puppetry with the strings tied to the ends of hisfingers, there's something more real at stake. 

"No, don't apologize." Your reassurance is quick but comes out in a whisper. 

Maybe Peter's a fool for letting hope wash in, for focusing on your immediate response rather than the lack of conviction behind it, but he can't help himself. How many times had he passed your place, hoping you'd lock eyes like some clandestine meeting and just… know? And now you're here, just a few feet away and looking right past the Spider-Man mask and straight into his soul. It almost feels like fate. 

He's a fool that can't look away, but you're just as much a fool that can't stop seeking.

It's beyond niceties. Confrontation of the letter says something. You didn't awkwardly pretend to never have read it, or offer up a pitiful apology and wish him a good day as you backed out. You're here. Eyes turning glassy, head tilting in some faint recognition—he knows it. 

His middle finger taps rhythmically against his thumb, taking the invitation to a conversation. "I should have told you."

It's a hidden apology, an admission of doing something wrong. And it is wrong. Him pulling a trigger that you didn't even know existed, making a call that you had no clue was on the table of possibilities. Entirely unpredictable, and completely unfair. And it just aches.

You swallow, trying to solve the puzzle. "Why didn't you?"

He watches you for a moment. The temptation to run is faint, the need to curl up into a ball and cry is overwhelming. This isn't how it was supposed to be but it's been his own hands making this bed. Avoid the moon all you want, but he'd end up lying in that bed in the end. 

"I didn't know how," he admits.

"You wrote a letter," you hold the paper up. "You could've read it to me. You could've reintroduced yourself, or mailed it, or… or sent a fucking carrier pigeon, I don't know!"

Frustration cracks your ribs open, lungs shaking in a broken breath. Are you mad? It doesn't feel like anger. It's almost indescribable, an adjective on the tip of your tongue but you just can't spit it out. It tastes aged and ruined.

Whatever it is, he lets you feel it. He lets himself falter, taking a step back to shadow himself in his shame. Sinking into a depth within his mind where he knows that he'd be digging his own grave the same way he'd made his bed. Where he thinks he deserves to be, but you aren't so sure.

"I'm sorry," you murmur and set his confession letter on the table. "I'm just trying to understand this."

"No, please say whatever you feel." His voice is stronger when defending you than it was for himself. "It was wrong— it is wrong. I shouldn't have kept it from you, and I can't imagine how it must feel."

In theory, you know that his words should anger you. That you didn't owe him any utterance of an apology and that he should be groveling at your feet. In practice, you can tell he's already paid every price imaginable for his actions. You don't want revenge, you just want to fill in that blank page in your memories. 

The memories scrawled on those pages are meant to be yours, but he can tell that you don't own them anymore. He sees the desperate search that your mind has been on to somehow plug these memories back into your hard drive. It's exhausting. Something is always wrong about it. 

Peter wonders what it was like for you. If he was standing here, face revealed, would it bring back any memory? Right now, even with the mask on, are your memories of him gone entirely? Or filled in with something that never really happened? Stress is written so plainly on your face, he doesn't pry. You rub your fingers into your temples to try and self soothe, but it's a failed attempt. 

His fingers twitch, wanting reach out and try to do it for you. He knows better. His palm flattens against his thigh.

For whatever reason, you recognize his distress too. Without a face, without words, without reason. You know him. Of course, all of New York thinks they know Spider-Man. 

His attempts to put himself in your shoes, to encourage you to call him out with a vengeance. It's a little ironic after having kept the secret for four years, but he still welcomes you with open arms even if it means accepting harsh words. You see the way he has to keep his hand to himself, the way that he wants to take care of you because it's just in his nature. 

"Take off the mask." You say it more like a demand than request.

"I can't—" he pauses. 

Can't what? You already knew his name, it's in the first line of his letter to you. But his face is much different. What if it brings light to the shaded parts of your past? Both fear and excitement feast on the idea of that. 

"I think I deserve to see the face that wrote me this." Your finger taps the pages on the table. Body feeling weighted like when emerging from water, you force yourself to stand. "To see who would deny me my own memories, who would make such a huge decision for me."

"I wasn't trying to…" Peter's defense falls flat. How can he keep denying? "Does it matter? What I look like?"

"Matters enough for you to hide it." You take a small step forward, hand still on those pages.

His chest falls. You're right. Thinking on it, this is part of why he has avoided you. He has a way of intertwining right into whatever string of reasons you sent his way. Always has.

"It was magic, even if you see me you won't remember." He tries to defend his cause anyway.

You shake your head, "I never said I want to remember, I said I want to see who did this." 

"Right." His voice is hardly audible.

You deserve the dignity of knowing, he knows it. Of having a face to pin to the hole inside your head. A visual of who to blame, who to point fingers to. And he deserves the consequence of secrecy. Doesn't mean it didn't sting when you rejected the idea of remembering.

Just as he knows the sun will rise in the east each morning, he knows he will reveal himself to you again. Hesitance feels like some form of self pity. The thing is, he hasn't been the only victim to the avoidance and he can't fathom hurting you any more than he already has.

Gloved fingers rise to his neck, peeling up the fabric of his mask with a movement that he'll label as caution instead of reluctance. It'll meaning nothing, his mind offers. It will change nothing.

Your eyes are carefully kept on his form, capturing each bit of evidence possible. A freckle on his neck, short brown hair poking out from the back, a nose that looked like it had been broken one times too many. Brown eyes filled with worry. With fear. With love. With tears.

Breathing in, your spine slowly straightens. Had you expected some crashing wave? Maybe a visceral feeling that screamed, how could you forget? It just feels blank. But there is curiosity in the unknown.

"Peter Parker," you whisper to yourself. 

He feels like he himself has somehow become some personification of a fever. He melts, eyes softening into a brand of resignation he hasn't known for the last four years. Hearing you say his name encourages his heart to be excited. Maybe it's wrong, or selfish, or maybe just morally ambiguous, but he wants to hear it over and over and over.

Of course, he knows you're just tasting it. Trying his name out, or maybe committing his face and name to memory so you know who to avoid from here on out. But at least your eyes are on him again. He didn't know how badly he missed being seen by you.

His hands, unsure of what to do, both hold onto his Spider-Man mask. It somehow makes him feel less vulnerable. How is it possible to feel so naked with 90% of your body covered?

"Why didn't you just tell me?" You ask it again, and answering has become unavoidable. 

Saying the wrong thing would be incredibly easy right now. He really, really doesn't want to make you run, but also knows you're halfway out the door. He can't blame you.

"Because I was afraid," he says the truth. He swallows the lump in his throat, teary eyed but refusing to let them fall. "I lost someone very important, and it was my fault. I've been afraid of letting you know me because…"

The holes in his argument are massive, he's just as aware of that as you are. But you let him go on anyway. You offer him a level of patience that doesn't feel deserved. 

He continues, "Because knowing me is a risk. And if I lost you, I wouldn't know how to live. I couldn't." 

"A risk for me to decide on," you point out.

"I know," he nods, entirely agreeing. "I've been selfish."

"Is you acknowledging that supposed to make it okay?" Your arms cross over, hugging yourself through this uncharted territory.

"No," he says quickly. "No, it just… You wanted to know why, and that's it. It was because I can't lose someone else so important to me. I love you, that's my reason."

His knuckles are nearly white, gripping his mask with an intense concern that he's losing you anyway. Just as the prophecy read, it would be his own fault.

"I love you." He repeats. What if this is the last time he gets to say it?

You're unsure how the new confession hits you. You don't even know what else you could've expected having read the letter. Of course that's his reason or he never would've written the letter in the first place. Some part of you knows that you just wanted to hear him say it.

Those three words ring through you with a vague familiarity. You'd heard them before, you heard them just yesterday when saying goodbye to Ned before his weekend trip. But that was between friends. This just… lingers. Has been lingering. Festering. Eating your brain as you cry for the loss of something you didn't recognize. 

Your foot lifts from the metal floor, taking two steps closer to the man standing on trial. He stays planted, like a deer staring into the headlights of a crashing car. He's accepting of his fate.

The proximity feels comforting. Now that you're closer, you see the color of his eyes is brown. That somehow perfectly fits the vision you had of him. A color that is warm and gentle, fitting the persona Spider-Man had to have in order to help civilians feel safe.

His name had been perfect too. An alliteration that scratched every itch when you spoke it. It soaks into your mind, firing off neurons that tell you you aren't supposed to know that. You aren't supposed to know him. 

But how can you ignore the simultaneous tug of your heart that is begging you to step closer? Muscle memory takes over, guiding your hand to his face. His eyes watch as you near and he stays still.

You quietly ask, hand frozen less than an inch away from its destination, "Can I?" 

"Please." He whispers back. It's all it takes. 

Your fingers finally land, brushing backwards on his cheek as your hand simply knows how to find its place there. His jaw unclenches beneath your touch as if his body is allowing him to relax for the first time in ages. 

Peter feels sure that he is about to burn up as crashes back into your atmosphere. His eyes are still set straight ahead, locked with yours. But your eyes are still scanning and determining how close you'll let him get. 

First, your eyes land on the freckle to the left of his nose. Something that you figure past you had memorized away as a place to put casual kisses. Then, you look at the curls that laid messily against his forehead and can assume your fingers used to coil around them with ease. Last, you see the absolute exhaustion in his eyes that likely always ratted him out for pushing himself too hard.

Thumb smoothing the skin beneath his eyes, you connect your gaze with his again. You see it now. Really, truly see it.

"You look so lonely," you murmur the concern. 

Accuracy can be presumed by the way he leans into your touch, head guiding him to press his face flat against your hand. The tips of your fingers brush into the brown curls by his ear. Your fingers know just what to do to hold him properly, relaxing and parting around his ear. 

This is his punishment, he imagines. To feel the touch of your skin again, and immediate relief of being back in your orbit. To feel the physical acceptance that your muscles just know you used to give him, but with that reminder that your brain wasn't going to allow it. To know that, eventually, you would push him away and he'd be aimlessly floating. 

"Ah, you know… hard to feel alone when I stay busy as Spider-Man." Peter tries to shake it. It's in him to try keeping it light. 

You shake your head, thumb moving across his cheek bone now. "Lonely, not alone."

He knows the difference well. Admittedly, though, the call out is right but slightly off. Those tears that had refused to budge before let loose now. No point in avoiding it anymore.

"I think I've been both." He confesses and his chest sputters a breath. "I know I have."

Pulling him in for a hug is careful and smooth, bodies pressing together with ease. Your hand wrapped around, resting on the back of his head to cradle him through this pain. The other hand goes to his back and presses him closer to your heart. 

You could tell yourself that it's just kindness. That you are simply comforting another human in a time of need. It's so much more, though.

The beating of his heart makes it feel like it's trying to break through just to be held in the palm of your hand. The hold that surrounds you as his arms wrap around brings a desperate comfort that you recognize as one of those things you knew you were somehow missing. His fingers splay across your back, frantically gripping the fabric of your shirt and pulling you in with a fervor that begged you to stay.

Sobbing tears roll from his eyes before he squeezes them shut, desperate to focus absolutely everything on this feeling of holding you again just in case he never gets to do it after this. Trying his hardest to calm down, to not entirely fall apart in the arms of this person that hardly knows who he is, he takes in slow, staggered breaths that only stab his heart again as he breathes in your perfume. At least it's something else to hold on to.

"I'm so sorry," he cries into your neck. "I'm so sorry, I should've told you. I should've—I'm sorry."

"It's okay," you coo. 

"It was so selfish, I'm sorry." He repeats himself, not really sure what else to do. "I love you, and I've been so afraid."

Your eyes close, deciding to be fully present in the feeling of being held and holding him. "It's okay, Pete. I'm here."

There is some sense of overwhelm that is beginning to wash over you. You almost let it scare you, but it's right. It's fucked up, and it's dirty, but it's truth. 

You've felt his arms around you before, and not just on the absolutely, mind blowing-ly terrifying web swinging ride here. No. You've felt this desperate claw for comfort. You've held him through tears, and sobbing, and failures to self soothe. 

"May," you utter the name. "It was May that you lost, wasn't it?"

Peter freezes, and you do too. The names were spoken before you had even actually processed them. Pete is excused, too common of a nickname to read in to. But May? You don't even know where it came from, you just trusted your heart that it was right.

Pulling back but keeping his hands on your upper arms, he looks at you through his reddened eyes. "Where did you…"

"I don't know." You feel almost guilty for knowing the name. "Your letter must've mentioned her."

"No," he shakes his head. "No, I didn't write her name. I… I wasn't ready to write her name, I've not even been able to say it."

He's not anything but sorrowful, seeking for answers just the same as you. Hoping that he'll find the answer to it all by looking into your eyes, just like you had hoped seeing his face would unlock floodgates. What catches you off guard is that it's not a flood, but a stream. 

"It was May, I just remember." Your gaze turns itself away, realizing tears were streaming from your eyes too. Were you ready to remember?

"It was, but…" Peter's chest rises and falls with exaggerated flow. He doesn't want to get his hopes too high. "Did I say her name? Is it because of the name Parker? You helped put at F.E.A.S.T. sometimes, do you just remember her from that?"

He doesn't mean to overwhelm, he really doesn't. 

"I don't know," your voice is quiet again. 

Gripping his arms, your eyes squeeze shut like trying to regain balance just to find out that your footing is stable. Your brain feels fogged. Which… isn't anything new for these last four years. It's just that now the fog is turning acidic, biting at you and making itself known rather than concealing something's existence. 

He reacts, cupping your cheeks and ducking his head to follow your avoidance and be sure that you're okay. Again, meant to comfort you. Physically, you feel his gloved hands brushing over your skin with a tenderness that was well practiced. Muscle memory steps in again, leaning yourself into his touch because your body simply knows that you belong in his hands. 

Emotionally, you're coming undone into a million pieces. Working overtime, your brain is scrambling to build up a dam to stop a crashing wave that ends up coming out more like a trickle regardless. Why does it feel like something grand is supposed to happen?

"I just knew," you helplessly repeat. Your brain is throbbing. 

"Okay." Peter gently accepts, seeing that it's overwhelming. 

Excitement came over him. He wants you to remember, he needs you to remember. But he can't force it. 

He's glad to see your acceptance of his touch. He thought that he'd surely never get to hold you again. It's so much sweeter than he remembered, and the memory had been one dipped in honey. 

"It's okay." He speaks softly. "I'm not trying to push, I'm sorry. It's just…"

"No, I know." You slowly exhale and opt to keep your eyes shut. It feels nice to just float in his hold. 

You're grounding yourself, same method that Peter recognizes from four years ago. Slow, deep breaths, controlling your senses so you can recenter. Letting his hands be a guiding force. 

Taking the chance, his eyes scan your face. The way it looks in his touch. The way it looks when standing so close. He's missed you so terribly. 

Focus shifts, your hand coming up to press his hand closer into your cheek. The warmth feels just like returning to bed in the middle of the night. His fingertips pressing into the plush apples of your cheeks feels exactly like sipping a hot cup of tea after being showered in a relentless rain. His patient silence fills you with that same exact excitement of clicking the last piece of a thousand count puzzle into place. 

"Peter." You say it another time. This time it hurts. 

He never stopped crying. Taking one step closer, coming when called upon, the edge of his boot brushes your shoe. He almost lets his forehead rest on yours but that's your call not his. 

"Yeah?" His voice is broken, though there's a faint glow of hope. 

A laugh breaks through your overwhelming crisis. It's bitter, aimed at your own heart and memory. You want to tear yourself to shreds. 

"I've known you," you cry, gripping onto his wrist because you need to his hands to stay there. "I've known you this whole time, haven't I? You've been that void in my head?"

Is it sick to say he hopes so? 

Instead he says, "You read the letter." It allows you to process however you need. 

You shake your head, sniffling and leaning your forehead against his chest. "But I've known, in some way. I've known something was missing. I know something is missing. I know you, I knew Aunt May."

His hand cradles the back of your head. There's some sort of peace in the fact that him holding you is bringing comfort. You'd feel the pounding of his heart, but he didn't mind the way he used to. He needs to be seen by you, held by you, absorbed by you. 

Trying to brush everything off with a quick lash of doubt was becoming increasingly difficult. He had never said May's name to you, and he certainly never told you she was his aunt. How could he keep denying hope entry when the walls were being torn apart brick by brick?

Chin resting ontop of your head, he whispers, "You did. You do."

"Oh my god, I've missed you." You speak as a deep sighed cry comes out, your arms wrapping around him again but this time with a deathly grip. 

It would be more lethal… were Peter not genetically enhanced, and if he wasn't so desperate for you to never let go. Weld yourself into his ribs for all he cared, he'd bring the flame if you brought the torch. 

"I've missed you so much, this entire time. I knew." You're spewing anything just to talk to him again. 

You can't even remember each and every detail of why you missed him, it's just a sense of knowing. You love this man. You have loved this man, prior to these last four years of separation. It's the reason your life feels stalled. The explanation for why things just never felt complete. He has been missing. 

"I missed you, I love you." Your heart just lets it all out. 

Peter's brain feels nearly as thrown as yours. He can't believe the words he's hearing. It feels like a dream, or a nightmare, or one of Mysterio's cruel trick visions. It feels surreal. 

But it's you. You, in his arms, on his chest. You telling him you love him, and remembering May on your own. If it was a dream it would be immediate, and if it was Mysterio it would be over the top. It's real, and it's you. Taking time to mend the broken pieces, but that connection between the two of you letting itself be known. 

Still. He has been tricked so many times before. You read him plainly, you called out his loneliness. Was this just a stranger trying to offer someone kindness in their time of grief?

"You don't have to say that." Peter regrets feeling the need to say it. "Please don't say it unless you really mean it."

"Pete, I mean it." You pull your head from his chest, though it longs to stay. "I wish I'd known it months ago, years ago. I wish I'd seen you sooner, or read that letter, or— it doesn't matter. I've missed you."

The more you say it, the more you feel how true it is. It's a fact. You know him, and there is a giant mass of empty space in the life you've been pretending to live while he has been gone. You may not remember his favorite bodega, or how he takes his coffee, but you're absolutely certain that…

"I love you." You say it with a heavenly sigh because you get to say it at all. 

Your hands cup his face, coming in for a soft and tender kiss. Peter thinks he's dying. But your lips feel exactly how he remembers. Precisely how they've felt when he has imagined feeling it again. Even if his heart was giving out, the connection of your lips sends a spark to revive him. 

"Say it again." He says it almost silently. "Please, say it again."

You do. "I love you." Followed with another magnetic kiss. 

It isn't a crashing wave. There are no fireworks, and there is no flash of every single memory that you'd lost in this unfair story. Sure, you could make it something dramatic and theatrical, but at its core it's so simple. 

It's just you with him. It's what is right. A blissful, all consuming, lasting love that will take its sweet time to reconnect you. How thrilling, to fall in love again. 

“I know,” you sigh, “but apples are his favorite.” 

Peter’s eyes narrow, but you’re not looking, your attention on something in the book. “How do you know that?” 

“He’ll let me pet him while he’s eating apples.” 

He sighs, leaning his forearms on the counter. He’s going to have to find a way to move that raccoon to another neighborhood the next time he goes out. Before it gives you rabies.

“What’re you doing over there?” he asks you. 

“Pressing flowers.” 

“Yeah?” Peter rounds the counter, moving behind you to sit on the couch. His knees bracket your shoulders. The A/C is blasting to combat the summer heat, and goosebumps prickle down your arms. “What for?” 

“I was thinking May could bring them to work,” you say, flattening a dandelion between two pieces of wax paper. The movements are deft and routined, and Peter wonders how many flowers are already enclosed between the pages. There’s a small pile of them sitting next to you, miraculously intact despite the fragile puffs. “She was telling me about some of the kids she works with last week. I thought they might like to have them.” You shrug. “For bookmarks or whatever.” 

Peter’s insides go melty soft. “I’m sure they would.” He leans forward, setting his hand on your shoulder and his lips to your head. You only keep working. Sometimes Peter feels like a weird rock or a feather that you’d picked up somewhere, put in your pocket without a second thought. But you do love your rocks and feathers, so it’s not an awful fate. “Where’d you get these, sweetheart?” 

“I found them,” you say simply. “Parks, sidewalks, you know. They grow anywhere. Do you think I should save a few in case they want to make wishes instead of keeping them?” 

It’s said so seriously Peter can’t help but grin, turning so his cheek smushes into the crown of your head. “That seems like a good idea. Mind if I use one?” 

“Of course.” You sound surprised. “Use as many as you want, Peter. I can always get more.” 

“Just one is good.” 

He slides off of the couch, sitting beside you and picking up a dandelion. He waits until you’re looking over at him before blowing. 

You squeeze your eyes shut as the seeds rush towards you. Peter’s close enough that they get stuck in your eyelashes and eyebrows, a couple in your hair. His breath weakens as he starts laughing, the last few seeds coming off the flower by way of little puffs of air. 

“You don’t have to blow it at someone,” you say, lips stretching into a pretty smile. You blink cautiously, opening your eyes once no dandelion fluff falls in. 

He lowers the stem. “I just wanted to make sure my wish went in the right direction.” 

Your head tilts. “What’d you wish for?” 

“Okay.” You give yourself one final, disappointed look-over in the mirror before heading towards the bathroom door. “I’m serious, don’t sugarcoat anything, but do you think—” 

The door swings open, and Peter’s right in front of you, beads of water still visible on his torso and a towel wrapped around his waist. 

“—this is too slutty?” you finish, quieter, right as he blurts, “Oh my god.” 

Peter blinks. His head does a tiny shake, as if trying to rid himself of a dizzy spell. “What?” he asks. 

Probably not your best phrasing. “I just mean, is it too booby,” you try again. You have the urge to tuck your arms around your middle self-consciously, but you worry that would only make the boob predicament worse. 

“Baby.” Peter’s still looking at you like you’re speaking another language. “What?” 

You look down at your highly visible cleavage, then back up at him. “You know what I mean,” you say softly. 

“Okay, speaking from a strictly male standpoint,” Peter says, unabashed as his eyes dip to where yours just where, “I can’t condone the idea that there is such a thing as too booby. But even if I was, like, a ninety-five year old conservative woman, I couldn’t—I would still think you look beautiful.” 

Your heart balloons. It’s not a compliment you got much before you met Peter. Hot, sexy, sure, but not beautiful. 

“God.” The word slips from your boyfriend’s mouth so softly it almost sounds like a prayer. His hands find your waist, skimming down the satiny material of your dress to rest on your hips. “You’re amazing, sweetheart. Is that the eyeshadow trick you were talking about?” 

You nod, cheeks burning. “You watched me do it.” 

“It looks different with the dress on,” he agrees. “Fuck. Not to be corny, but you’re seriously taking my breath away. I can’t breathe right now.” 

A little laugh stutters out of you, and Peter smiles. He’s looking rather breathtaking himself, fresh-faced from the shower with a piece of damp hair still clinging to his forehead. You unstick it and comb it back in with the others already fluffed up after being toweled off. He smells like his shampoo. 

“Can I kiss you,” he asks, “or will I mess up your makeup?” 

“Be careful,” you warn, smiling as you lean in. 

He is, but his hands give away his hunger, bunching in the fabric at the base of your spine to get you closer. He makes a low, needy sound in the back of his throat, and for half a second you wonder if it’s for your benefit but then you remember that he was right earlier. Peter is always honest with you. 

You laugh when you pull away, going to get a bit of tissue paper to blot away the lipstick you’ve left on him. A glance in the bathroom mirror shows that yours is, thankfully, intact. 

“Are you sure this dress will be appropriate?” you ask, less insecure now but still nervous as you wipe at Peter’s upper lip. “Regardless of how much you like it, it’s still a formal thing and I don’t want to be…indecent.” You cringe. There’s no word that sounds nice. 

Your boyfriend’s brows furrow. His hands skim up your arms, and he looks like he’s about to reply when you fold the toilet paper and stick it between his lips. “Blot,” you murmur. 

He does. “Baby.” He squeezes your upper arms, a silent request for you to look up at his eyes. You find them soft and earnest. “There’s nothing inappropriate about what you’re wearing. It is a formal thing, and you’re wearing a formal dress. You look beautiful.” That word again. Your cheeks burn. Peter kisses one of them. “No one is going to have anything to say about how you look other than how beautiful you are,” he promises. 

You let the sincerity of his words seep into you, pooling like a warm drink in your belly. The inside of your lip finds its way between your teeth. Now you’re feeling bashful for other reasons. 

It’s obvious by Peter’s grin that he can tell. He gives your arms another squeeze before moving you out of the way and going to where his clothes are laid out on the bed. 

She had to be around his age, her hair tied in a knot on top of her head. She had an actual bathing suit on, unlike Yelena. But her eyes were captivating. He found himself thankful that his mask stayed on, so his eyes could drift to her as she watched Yelena explain something about potatoes to him.

“Spider boy you listen to me?” Yelena’s accent echoed through the bath, snapping him out of his daze.

“Uh yea— I was— potatoes?” Peter stammered.

He noticed the way your lips twitched up at his stuttering and it made his heart skip a beat.

Yelena looked at you, and then at him.

“Ahhhh, Spidey boy thinks my sister is pretty,” Yelena said knowingly.

“What? No no that’s not—”

“Spidey, lucky for you she is small potato, so I send her with you to help,” Yelena said with a pleased smile.

The small smile vanished from your face and you whipped your head in her direction, “Yelena.”

You said firmly, your accent not nearly as thick as hers, in fact you sounded more like him than her.

Yelena shrugged, “you help Spider… this is damage control.”

You sighed, seemingly knowing there was no discussion, once Yelena made up her mind, that was that.

You sighed again, annoyed.

“I don’t need her to come with me. I’m sure she’s… very busy,” Yelena rolled her eyes.

“She help you. Let me know when done,” Yelena said, “she will know where to find you.”

Peter tilted his head, “that’s it?”

“Da.” You and Yelena said in unison.

Peter stared between the two of you.

Yelena had already leaned back in the steaming bath like the conversation was over.

You looked significantly less convinced.

“So,” Peter rubbed the back of his neck, “do we... shake on it or…”

“No. You can leave,” you answered dryly.

“I know where you live,” Yelena said simply without opening her eyes.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably before climbing awkwardly out of the bath, he knew better than to question a widow.

Peter had barely made it back to his apartment before there was a knock on the window.

He blinked, turning to see you, luckily he hadn’t pulled his suit off yet, “seriously?”

You stood on the fire escape with one eyebrow raised, you gestured at the latch, “you going to open it or do I have to do that too?”

Your hood was pulled over your head, your hoodie oversized and dark. Your hair was slightly ruffled beneath it from whatever journey you took to get to the top floor of his building.

He hurried over, sliding the window open, “the door would have been fine.”

You shrugged, moving beside him and crawling into his apartment smoothly.

“You don't like doors?” he asked.

You gave him another shrug in response, taking in the apartment with one sweeping glance.You shoved off your sneakers, leaving them under the window, pulling your hood down.

It was just as messy as you’d expect a young bachelor’s shitty apartment to be… if said bachelor was a vigilante genius.

There were three different science projects on the table and a sewing machine.

An empty ramen cup balanced on top of a physics journal. Dishes piled in the sink.

You placed both your hands on your hips, “it’s exactly what I pictured.”

Peter frowned.

You wandered over to his workbench before he could stop you. You crouched down, squinting your eyes to get a better look at his various projects.

His heart nearly exploded, “uh thats— um—“

“Tensile polymer?” You picked up one of the cartridges, turning it over in your fingers, you looked to his notes next, running your finger down the list of chemicals, various combinations and instructions crossed out through trial and error, “if I had to guess your bonding compound is making it unstable."

Peter froze, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion, “what?”

“You've over compensated by increasing pressure,” you pointed to the line in his notebook.

He slowly walked over, “you know chemistry?” He sounded slightly annoyed by your correction.

You nodded, “I'm not trying to insult you.”

He gave you a dry laugh.

“I'm saying you're brilliant, actually,” you said simply.

He blinked, not sure how to accept the compliment.

“But brilliant people tend to complicate simple fixes,” you added.

You held out the cartridge, and he took it carefully from your fingers.

“You should stabilize the polymer before compression instead of after,” you added.

Peter stared at you for a moment before he grabbed his notebook and started scribbling barely legible notes.

“You might have just solved something I've been stuck on for like,” he counted in his head, “three weeks.”

“The Red Room taught chemistry,” you said simply.

“The Red Room taught polymer engineering?” He clarified.

“It taught me how to deconstruct a bomb, and how to reconstruct it from scratch. You can learn a lot if you read between the lines,” there was very little emotion in your voice, which confused Peter.

Before he could say anything in response, a newspaper slid under his door that made you both turn your heads.

Peter bent to pick it up.

The front page practically screamed.

SPIDERMAN FACES UNKNOWN THREAT

He frowned.

You stepped beside him, reading over his shoulder, “this your leshy?”

Peter looked at the article and nodded slowly, “this is my leshy.”

You read over his shoulder, “hm.”

You both looked at each other. It was going to be awfully hard to catch a threat you couldn’t see.

Over the next few weeks, Peter was shocked at how consistently you showed up.

Sometimes Peter was sewing his suit.

Sometimes he was repairing web-shooters.

Sometimes he was halfway through eating cereal for dinner.

You always knocked on the window, and you never used the door. He was beginning to get used to your company.

You had seemlessly sewed yourself into his web of a routine. You sat beside him atop buildings as he watched the police scanner. You listened as he told different crime fighting stories. He would patch up your injuries at the end of a fight. And you would fall asleep on his couch without invitation.

It was almost frightening how quickly you become ingrained in one another’s lives.

“Why are you helping me?” He asked randomly on Thursday afternoon.

Takeout containers sat opened and abandoned on his coffee table in front of the TV.

You were wearing protective goggles, him his mask, but you looked up from the project and met where his eyes would be. You pulled the goggles down, as if that would help you see him clearer.

You shrugged, “I’d do anything for Yelena. She says jump, I say how high.”

“But why?” He asked harmlessly.

You sighed, “she saved me… she saved me from my fate.”

You put your goggles back on, focusing back on the project, leaving no room for further discussion.

“I feel like this is a little beyond what she meant though,” he added.

“Okay, I can go?” You said, pointing to the window, your access point.

He threw his hands up in surrender, “woah woah woah, that’s not what I meant. I like having you here,” he said, trying to back pedal.

You laughed, “I’m kidding… but I like being here.” Your voice softened to a point you didn’t even know was possible.

He laughed, “good.”

Another night, you were in the same position, both of you leaning over one of his projects. He was working on making a more aerodynamic suit for you that still protected your “non spider DNAed body”as he referred to it.

You had complained about the bulkiness of yours, and your need to have easier access to your knives. He brought sketches to you that same night.

“Why won’t you take your mask off?” You asked, searching all over the red mask for any give. You often found your mind wandering to what he looked like. What his eyes would look like as they stared at you. What his lips would feel like if they kissed you… you shook your head.

It was ridiculous, his tight tank top was no match for his broad chests and huge shoulders.

Your eyes wandered a bit, and you’re sure he noticed.

“It’s a really really long story,” he said without looking up.

“We seem to have nothin but time Spidey,” you quipped back.

He laughed, “not that kind of time, trust me.”

He went back to your suit, extending his hand for the next tool, which he didn’t need to ask for because you simply knew which one he needed.

“My name is Peter, by the way,” he said softly.

You nearly jerked your head up, “Peter.” You repeated, it felt like the most intimate information he had ever given you.

You took the suit that Peter was trying to hand sew back together from his hands.

“Hey!” He said as you snatched it up.

There was a small tear in the shoulder, and you couldn’t bear to watch him keep attempting to do it. Within minutes, you reinforced the seam with smaller, tighter stitches.

Peter stared, “how did you know to do that?”

You exhaled, “the red room makes sure we’re well rounded.”

You said it quietly, and it was kind of a joke, but he didn’t press further, all he knew is any bit of information from your past that you shared with him felt like another door opening up to you potentially trusting him.

He gave you a sad smile, “well this is much better than I ever could have done, that’s for sure.”

You smiled, “well, that I know.”

You met his eyes, through his mask of course. You couldn’t help the slight flip your stomach did, but you willed it down, just like your training always taught you to do when it came to weaknesses.

You had been assisting Peter with small threats here and there in between the hunt for who you now knew to be Jean Grey.

Unfortunately for you, that also meant you were running alongside Frank Castle most days.

You were sitting at Frank’s table. All of you a little beat up after the fight you had just won.

Peter had expected yelling from Frank for how careless you had both been. But he was met with an invite for coffee.

Out Frank quietly watched as you dismantled a rifle magazine on his kitchen table.

Not because you planned to use it, but because you'd noticed a “manufacturing flaw.”

You fixed it in under two minutes. Peter was watching you in awe. Even through his mask Frank could hear his hopeless sighs, he had to be blushing.

Frank looked at Peter, then at you, and then back at Peter.

Later, when you stepped out onto the fire escape to answer a phone call, Frank took it as his chance to speak up, “what the hell's wrong with you?”

Peter blinked, “me?”

Frank nodded like it was obvious, “yeah. You.”

“What did I do?” Peter asked innocently.

Frank looked genuinely confused, “Kid, I know you’re not dumb. But let me spell it out for you. Why haven't you two admitted you're in love yet?"

Peter nearly choked, “we’re not—”

Frank gave him a look, “I mean I could tell you were blushing under your mask as you watched her with that gun.”

Peter opened his mouth but quickly closed it, not realizing how obvious he had been.

Frank continued, “she watches every exit before she sits down.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Peter says, crossing his arms.

“People like that are pretty damaged. I know because I am one. And yet when she’s around you she basically has puppy eyes. She laughs at you,” Frank glances at the door, to see if you returned.

Peter rubbed his face, “I think it’s just complicated.”

Frank leaned against the wall.

Peter looked toward the window where you stood silhouetted against the city lights. You spoke animatedly in Russian to whom he assumed was Yelena. He couldn’t help the small smile he had as his heart race picked up.

Frank's voice softened, "she's one of the strongest people I've ever met.”

Peter smiled wider, although Frank couldn’t see it, “I know.”

Peter’s smile quickly faded as he realized this all terrified him.

The last time he'd felt something like this he'd still had MJ.

And he just realized he hadn’t really thought of her since you first knocked on his window.

He was suddenly painfully aware of the emptiness she'd left behind, the emptiness you had slowly filled.

He wasn't sure he could survive that loss twice.

Frank hadn’t realized that he just encouraged Peter to start pulling away from you.

You noticed almost immediately. You were bred to be a spy after all, almost nothing got past you.

He stopped texting first. He stopped inviting you over. When you showed up, he suddenly had somewhere to be.

It quickly twisted into a professional relationship from his side, and the thought of that made you sick.

What you hadn’t expected, was it to hurt. Because after everything you'd survived you recognized someone strategically building walls.

One evening, you climbed through his window anyway. He immediately looked surprised.

“Told you I could open it if I wanted to,” you said as you climbed into the apartment you had spent so many nights laughing and feeling lighter with him.

He let out an awkward laugh, “sorry, just been busy.”

“You've been avoiding me,” you said simply.

He looked away.

You folded your arms, “if I did something wrong…”

“You didn't,” he said quickly.

“Then tell me,” you said sadly. You weren’t one to beat around the bush, and he knew that about you, so he isn’t sure why it surprised him so much.

Peter let out a slow breath, “I've been lying to you.”

You frowned, but before you could reply, he pulled off the mask. Your eyes widened at the sudden change. Your eyes met his deep brown ones. His hair flopped over his forehead, unruly from being tucked in his mask.

“Peter,” you said softly. He was even more handsome than you had imagined, even though hated to admit that you thought about it.

Your eyes looked over his nervous features. You had accepted you may never see him, that the crush you were harboring was all in your head. But now, here he was, showing you his face. His stupidly handsome face.

“I’ve wanted to do this for a while, and I’ve been in my own head the last few days, that’s why I’ve been avoiding you,” he took a step closer.

You tilted your head up, holding his gaze, not wanting to look away.

His voice became quieter, “there was someone before. I loved her.”

You stayed silent.

“And because of... things that happened,” he swallowed, “she doesn't know me anymore.”

There was grief in his eyes that looked old enough to have settled into his bones. You had questions, but you knew better than to ask him. He was opening up to you in a way you never could have expected.

He shook his head, exhaling, “I couldn't save that. There was no way for me to change it. It was lonelier than I ever could have imagined.”

Another long silence, “and then there was you,” he laughed bitterly, “you fill in parts of my life that I didn’t even know were missing something. After five whole years of feeling like nothing but Spiderman, you made me feel like Peter again. And then I got scared.”

“Why?” You said, barely above a whisper.

“Because I realized I like you,” he laughed again, “more than like you, actually.”

“I haven't felt this way since…” He couldn't finish the sentence, “so I panicked.”

You looked down for a moment.

“When I was a child,” you said quietly, “they trained us not to be loved.”

Peter listened.

“They taught us affection and the need for it was equivalent to weakness,” you looked toward the window, "I've done things I'm not proud of. And I’m no stranger to that lonely feeling you have.”

You met his eyes again, “I’m not an easy person to… more than like.”

Peter’s expression changed to one of concern and he took a step closer to you, “l don't believe that.”

You gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, “you should.”

He smiled—the genuine, crooked smile you'd been dreaming of seeing, “well I don’t. And all I know is I can't remember the last time someone made me this happy.”

The words settled between you.

Your eyes softened, “I more than like you too.”

His breath caught, “yeah?”

You nodded, “I've been trying very hard not to.”

“Why?” He asked playfully.

You tilted your head back and forth pretending to think, “pretty much… for all the reasons I just listed.”

He laughed, “can I…”

You answered by reaching for his hand first.

His fingers intertwined with yours instinctively, like they'd always belonged there.

He leaned down to your height slowly, placing his lips against yours. You kissed him back immediately, dropping his hand from yours and cupping his face. His hands reached for your waist naturally, lightly gripping onto you.

When he pulled away, you were both smiling like idiots. The world around you kept spinning, criminals continued to threaten New York, but here in his tiny little apartment, nothing else mattered.

It was just two people who had spent most of their lives believing they had to carry everything alone and quietly deciding they didn't have to anymore.

Comment to be added to my tag lists!

You had been on a total of three dates with one Peter Parker so far. Far too impatient for your own good, so you'd suggested his place this time, low-key, no pressure, you'll bring the wine, and he'd said yes fast, too fast, in a way you'd have found suspicious from anyone else. But not Peter.

You wanted, so badly, horrifically, to get your hands on him. You had wanted this since date one, technically, possibly since before date one, and you had spent the intervening weeks channeling that want into research and preparation, the same way you channeled everything, because if you were going to lose your mind over a boy you were at least going to do it efficiently.

First, you wore kitten heels for the occasion even though this is definitely not the right occasion, but you couldn't help yourself. They were the ones that made your ass perk up just-so and led to three seconds of Peter eyeing your legs up and down as you passed him into the elevator, and you even wore perfume that a very reputable and frankly life-changing article on The Cut described as the closest thing to a pharmaceutical aphrodisiac you can legally buy at Sephora. He had leaned over in the cramped elevator car and looked at you, wonderstruck and in that low, boyish voice of his, "You smell really good."

And you were, as of nine-forty-two p.m., extremely fucking frustrated, because none of it, not one single thing you've done, had resulted in the guy making a move.

The movie's some spin-off Star Wars movie that Peter had frantically explained before chucking it into his bootleg streaming site, laptop flickering slightly as he plopped next to you on his couch. God yeah, Rogue One was just so severely underrated, he says as one hand brushes against your shoulder, and you'd nodded along like you had any context for what he was talking about, and you'd had to press your knees together like that would help. You've already decided you're going to watch the other seven (eight? nine? you should probably know this) before you see him again, so that next time you can argue back instead of just making the interested noise you've been perfecting for the last twenty minutes.

You end up abandoning the heels. 

That was his idea, technically, a stammered offer somewhere around minute fifteen—you can, um, if your feet hurt, I don't know if they hurt, forget I said anything—that you'd accepted with a swiftness that surprised you both, unbuckling the little metal straps and easing your feet into his lap like you'd been waiting all night for permission.

Now his hand's on your ankle. His thumb does this thing, tracing little spiderwebs around your lateral malleolus, and you're so fine. So okay with this progression, totally.

"You can talk during it," he says ten minutes later when your feet, have decidedly fallen asleep, not looking away from the screen. "I know people say you're not supposed to talk during movies, but I like—I mean, only if you want. You don't have to. I just talk during movies, but not in like, a mean, dickish way like some people do in theaters, not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just a little disrespectful, but not in my apartment, so if you were gonna say something you don't have to feel—"

His thumb then drags one slow line up along your instep, absent, unthinking, entirely unaware of what it's doing to the rest of you, and something in your chest pulls taut like a wire about to snap.

"Peter, that's not it. That's not—it's just—I've never done this," you say, quieter now, and it costs you something to say it, you can feel it cost you something. "Any of it. I don't have a… single fucking clue. I don't know how this part goes."

"Neither do I."

"I know you don't, that's the problem, we're both just sitting here being—" You cut yourself off. Start over. "I'm not gonna say it. You have to do it."

"Do what?"

"Peter."

"I don't know what you—"

"Take what you want," you say, and it comes out low, and a little wrecked, and entirely unlike you. "For the love of God. Just—take it. Please. I'm not saying it again."

That's how he ends up fingering you over the arm of his couch, half-suspended and scrambling for purchase. A mean, relentless lover is most definitely not what you pegged Peter Parker to be. The boy who was flustered and uncertain just a mere ten minutes ago shouldn't be wrapping a stray arm around your waist to pull you closer, practically making you fuck yourself against his fingers. The boy who's now making embarrassing huffs of breath escape your lipgloss-stained lips and wrenching the oxygen out of you. 

You know, for a fact, that Peter would never, ever let you drop, but the look on his face when you turn your head over your shoulder makes you think that the ground might be a bit safer for you.

God, you've never even been fingered from behind before but the angle of it, the relentlessness, it makes you feel so thoroughly used, dizzy from the speed and the sheer force of him taking you. Combined with him dipping his head down, sucking harsh love bites into the swell of your ass, and you think you may as well have just lost your mind.

The movie's still playing when his hands force your legs wider apart, his hushed "that's right, hips up for me," lining up at the same time as Vader chokes and dismisses Director Krennic, breath hitching. You're so proud of Peter, he had mentioned how cool this scene was, and he's so focused—your cunt squeezing tight like a vice grip on his fingers. Your whole world is spinning, just an endless cacophony of Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter—and oh, oh god, when his thumb swipes over your clit, you realize that that that's all you've been saying.

"What is it? What do you need, sweet girl?" He bites harder at your neck, filing the way you twitch and heartbeat flutters uselessly. You're gonna be all marked up tomorrow, but you couldn't care less. The pleasure and pain felt like an electric current through your body, sending phantom shocks down your spine.

"M–More, please—Peter, oh, Peter—"

"Pretty girl needed someone to take care of her, huh?" His brows furrow in mock concern, even though his hands make no move to slow down. Your thoughts trail off, wondering if Peter could take care of you just like this forever. You think he might, he could, he should. You wouldn't mind. You'd let him keep fucking you until your voice ran raw, keep his fingers wet and pretty for as long as he wanted, just one orgasm into another. 

"Someone to spoil you," his tongue drags from your cheek, up to your lower back, "someone to give it to you every day," up, and up, and up your spine until his breath bears down on your neck. "I can be that for you, right, baby?"

Your whining hits a fever pitch, blissed out and on the edge of your orgasm. "Yes, of course, mmm—just don't stop."

Peter slaps your clit once, twice—fuck, and your cunt squeezes one final time around his fingers, and you're coming, your hand closing into a fist on the chenille fabric. It feels like the rest of the room is just pure nothingness, just static and buzzing and the feeling of Peter's hand coaxing you through each wave. 

"You got my hand so wet, honey," He tuts, and oh. There was no reason for that to be as hot as it was, and you're sure he can feel it too, the way you clench down on his hand and pull him further into you. You've always been told you respond like a dream.  "Such a good pussy. You're going to feel so good around my cock."

You turn onto your back when Peter gently pulls his fingers out of your cunt, still breathless and heaving from the attack on your senses and nothing ever could've prepared you from the sight before you. He examines his fingers in the light, the way they glisten–god, did you really get that wet—a small smile playing at his lips—and sucks those very fingers into his mouth.

Maybe it's only been seconds, or maybe it's an eternity, but you sit there like that, watching him in that entranced way of yours. He doesn't break eye contact with you once. It's filthy. You think you could be raring up to go again just from the way he looks at you. 

Peter hums contentedly. The sound goes straight to your cunt. This boy's gonna be the death of you.

The laptop stirs back to life at some accidental brush of the trackpad many, many moments later, Rogue One resuming exactly where you left it, some spaceship still doing something important that neither of you had ever actually been watching. 

"Oh man, we missed the ending," Peter says, squinting at the screen and dragging his mouse down to try and wind it back. 

"Really, Peter? You just made me come and you'd rather I care about the ending?"

"You're gonna care. I'm gonna make you care. I have so many more things to explain to you."

"I'm sure you do."

"Is that—was that sarcastic? I can't always tell with you."

"Fine, we can watch the movie," you say, and press your smile into his shoulder so he can't see it, and he does, mostly, in between turning to look at you every ninety seconds like he still can't quite believe you're still there, and you let him check, again and again, all night, because you're checking too. "Go ahead, play it back."

+ from mara

this was short and sweet! i haven't written anything in over a year, but after seeing tom holland's rock hard abs grace my screen, i simply had to dip my toes back in. it's been hard getting back on the horse (that is, the metaphorical writing horse) and i fear you guys will most definitely be able to tell but i hope you guys like it! IM SO SCARED but okay stream audrey hobert and support your local nurses <3

Everything behind you stopped. Completely. For a second, there wasn’t even the sound of fabric moving, and when you finally turned your head slightly, Peter’s masked face had appeared around the side of the curtain, one white lens narrowed at you while the other remained slightly wider in a look that somehow managed to communicate exhausted offence without revealing an inch of his actual face.

He stayed like that just long enough to make your mouth twitch before finishing his climb inside, landing carefully with one boot against the floor and pulling the second over the sill. Peter straightened with a small roll of his shoulder, glanced down at himself as though checking he hadn’t brought half the fire escape in with him, then looked toward you again.

“Normal boyfriends don’t usually have to explain why there’s blood on their shirt to the neighbour in 4B,” he said eventually, his voice slightly muffled beneath the mask and flatter than the dramatic defence you’d expected.

The word blood made your amusement disappear at once, your gaze dropping instinctively across the red and blue suit as you searched for whatever tear or stain he was referring to, and Peter noticed before you could even sit upright.

Both of his hands lifted immediately in a placating gesture, palms facing you while he shook his head once. “Not mine.” The tension left your shoulders almost as quickly as it had arrived, and even beneath the mask you could see the tiny shift near his mouth that told you he’d noticed.

Peter looked back toward the still-open window, hooking one hand beneath the frame before pulling it shut with considerably more care than he’d shown while climbing through it. “Also,” he added as the latch clicked into place, turning back toward you with the faintest shrug, “the window’s faster.”

You snorted and sank deeper into the cushions, watching him pretend that was the entire explanation. “You mean you don’t want Mrs. Alvarez asking whether you’ve eaten recently.”

Peter’s posture changed immediately, shoulders slumping by half an inch as though you’d found the actual weak spot. He stared at you for a second through the mask, then lowered his chin in reluctant defeat. “That too.”

He reached behind his head and caught the edge of the mask between his fingers, peeling it upward with a tired exhale until his face finally appeared beneath it, and the teasing comment already sitting on your tongue died before it could leave your mouth. Peter looked exhausted.

Not badly injured, not dangerously so, but worn down in the particular way you’d become increasingly familiar with since Spider-Man had stopped being something he squeezed between all the other pieces of his life and started becoming the thing his life seemed to orbit around.

His hair was damp around his forehead, flattened beneath the mask in some places and sticking out stubbornly in others, and a faint bruise was beginning to darken along one cheekbone beneath a streak of grime that travelled almost to his jaw. Peter caught you staring almost immediately.

His eyes flicked over your face, registered the concern there and then moved away before you could say anything, one hand rubbing awkwardly over the back of his neck while the other folded the mask between his fingers. “It looks worse than it is,” he murmured, even though you hadn’t asked, his attention suddenly fixed on the crumpled fabric in his hands.

You didn’t answer straight away. Instead, you slowly raised one eyebrow and let your gaze travel deliberately back toward the bruise. Peter caught the expression from the corner of his eye, closed his mouth and released a quiet sigh through his nose. His shoulders sagged a little more before he looked back at you.

“Actually,” he corrected himself, voice softer now, “that’s probably not true. It looks pretty much exactly as bad as it is.” The dryness of it made the corner of your mouth pull upward despite the lingering concern, and Peter’s expression softened when he realised he’d managed to get even that much of a reaction from you.

You shifted beneath the blanket and patted the empty cushion beside you, expecting him to drop there, but Peter only looked at the space for a moment before walking toward you instead. His steps slowed once he reached the couch, and for several seconds he simply stood between your knees, eyes lowered as if he were deciding whether he wanted to talk about whatever had happened outside.

Then something in him seemed to give. His shoulders dropped, his hands loosened, and Peter bent forward until his forehead came to rest against your stomach. The sudden weight of him made you sink slightly into the cushions, but your hands were already moving before you thought about it, fingers sliding through his sweaty hair and scratching gently against his scalp.

Peter’s eyes closed. His hands settled loosely against either side of your waist, not quite holding you and not quite willing to move away either. “Bad night?” you asked quietly, your fingertips moving more slowly through his hair when you felt the tension still gathered at the base of his neck.

Peter remained silent for a few moments. You could feel him breathing against your shirt, each exhale gradually becoming less tight, before he finally muttered, “Guy threw a parking meter at me.” Your fingers stopped.

Peter must’ve felt it because one eye opened and he tipped his head just enough to look up at you without fully lifting it. “Missed,” he added quickly, almost sheepishly, like he knew exactly where your mind had gone.

You stared down at him for a long second, your expression caught somewhere between concern and disbelief, until the faintest smile finally appeared at the corner of his mouth. Your hand resumed its path through his hair, gently tugging a stubborn strand away from his forehead, and Peter let his face settle against you again.

Several quiet seconds passed before his voice came once more, considerably more bitter this time. “Pigeon got my sandwich, though.” That finally made you look down properly. “Again?” The question came out with enough disbelief that Peter’s eyes squeezed shut. His forehead pressed more firmly against your stomach like he was trying to hide from the humiliation entirely. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Eventually you convinced him to eat the leftovers you’d saved, although convincing might’ve been generous considering all you really had to do was remind him they existed.

Peter disappeared into the kitchen with the heavy, reluctant steps of somebody who’d only just become aware of how hungry he actually was, and when he returned carrying the container, he dropped onto the couch beside you with the quiet weight of someone whose body had finally realised it was allowed to stop moving.

He didn’t change out of the suit. He didn’t even remove his boots at first, stretching his legs out and settling them dangerously close to the edge of your rug until you turned your head and stared pointedly at them. Peter noticed after only a second.

His gaze moved from your face to his boots, then to the rug beneath them, before returning to you with a tired expression that made it clear he knew exactly what you were asking without you saying a word. “Really?” he asked, eyebrows lifting slightly as if tonight of all nights should’ve granted him immunity. You merely continued looking at him.

Peter held your gaze for another second, then sighed and leaned forward, tugging both boots off before dropping them neatly beside the couch. “Happy?” He looked over at you while straightening, the exhaustion around his eyes making the question sound more resigned than annoyed.

You smiled sweetly and adjusted the blanket over your legs. “Very.” Peter’s lips pressed together in a way that told you he had several responses and had decided none of them were worth the energy. Instead, he sank back into the cushions, shifted the food container into one hand and reached for your ankle with the other without seeming consciously aware that he was doing it.

His fingers closed loosely around you, drawing your legs across his lap before he adjusted the blanket over them with a small tug. It had become one of those quiet habits neither of you had discussed. Peter had grown quieter after patrol over the years, less inclined to fill every empty second with nervous chatter and half-finished thoughts, but the silence never meant he wanted distance from you.

If anything, he touched you more when he wasn’t speaking. A thumb moving over your ankle. Fingers finding yours underneath a blanket. His shoulder resting against yours until he practically leaned half his body into you. Tonight was no different. He ate with one hand while the other remained curled around your lower calf, his thumb moving absently over your skin whenever his attention wandered from the television.

Several minutes passed before your gaze caught the flash of red beneath the coffee table. One of his gloves had somehow ended up there, discarded carelessly enough that you had no idea when he’d even removed it. You nudged his thigh with your heel, making his hand tighten reflexively around your ankle before relaxing again.

“You’re leaving Spider-Man everywhere again.” Peter followed your gaze toward the glove. He stared at it for a second, chewing slowly, then looked back at you with an expression of complete seriousness. “Evidence.” You frowned, waiting for the explanation that clearly wasn’t coming on its own. “Evidence of what?”

Peter swallowed, lowered the container slightly and considered the glove like he was seeing it for the first time himself. “That Spider-Man has poor organisational skills.” The complete lack of expression on his face made you laugh before you could help it, and something around Peter’s eyes softened at the sound.

He glanced back toward the television, but you caught the tiny upward twitch at the corner of his mouth. “That’s not exactly breaking news,” you told him, settling more comfortably against the cushions. Peter nodded once, accepting the criticism with surprising dignity. “Fair.”

The movie had become mostly background noise by the time Peter finished eating, although he watched considerably more of it than you did. Every now and then you’d feel his thumb stop moving against your ankle whenever something particularly stupid happened onscreen,

and then you’d glance sideways only to discover him staring at the television with that increasingly troubled expression he got whenever inaccurate physics seemed to personally offend him.

He’d mostly stopped correcting everything out loud after you threatened to ban him from choosing movies following one particularly unbearable evening involving a collapsing suspension bridge, but his face still betrayed him completely. When one character somehow survived being launched through a concrete wall, Peter’s brow furrowed so deeply that you could almost hear the lecture happening inside his head.

A few seconds later, his eyes slid toward you. You didn’t even look at him fully. “No.” Peter’s eyebrows climbed. He shifted slightly beneath your legs, his mouth opening as though he was genuinely offended by the accusation. “I didn’t say anything.” You finally turned your head and pointed toward his face with one finger. “Your face did.”

Peter stared at you for a beat, clearly considering whether this counted as a fair argument, then pressed his lips together and looked back toward the screen. The movement didn’t hide the little smile threatening at the corner of his mouth. A few minutes later another character ended up dangling upside down from the edge of a rooftop, their body swinging dramatically above several floors of open air, and your attention lingered there longer than it had on anything else in the movie.

Slowly, almost without meaning to, your gaze drifted toward Peter. He was leaning deeper into the couch now, one arm stretched along the back cushions while his other hand continued resting loosely around your ankle. The bruise remained visible along his cheek. His hair was still a complete disaster. The upper half of the suit remained annoyingly tight across his chest and shoulders, every shift of his body making the fabric move with him.

A completely unnecessary thought entered your head. You recognised immediately that it was unnecessary. You also knew that Peter would never let you forget it if you actually said it aloud. Unfortunately, restraint had never been your greatest quality around him. “Can you actually stay like that?” you asked eventually, nodding toward the screen while keeping your tone as casual as you could manage.

Peter followed your gaze. His eyes moved from the dangling character back toward you, and he tilted his head slightly as though making sure he understood the question. “Upside down?” You nodded, pretending you hadn’t given the question much thought. Peter’s shoulders lifted in a small shrug. “Yeah.”

You looked back toward the screen while his thumb began moving against your ankle again. “For how long?” This time he didn’t answer immediately. His brow furrowed slightly while he considered it, gaze drifting somewhere past the television as though he was mentally checking his own limits.

“A while,” he said finally. There was another pause. Peter’s lips pressed together, and then he corrected himself with the kind of reluctant honesty that always betrayed him. “Probably as long as I wanted.”

You hummed beneath your breath and kept looking toward the television, although you could feel Peter’s attention remain on you. He knew you too well. Worse, years of relying on tiny movements and split-second changes in body language to stay alive had made him obnoxiously difficult to fool, which meant your attempt at appearing casually interested had probably failed before you’d even opened your mouth.

Still, you pushed your luck. “Wouldn’t all the blood rush to your head?” you asked, keeping your eyes forward while you shifted one shoulder deeper beneath the blanket. Peter’s fingers slowed against your ankle. The scientific part of his brain visibly took over for a moment, his eyebrows drawing together as he considered the question properly despite the growing suspicion in his eyes.

“Not the way it would for you,” he explained, his thumb resuming its movement as his attention drifted briefly toward the ceiling. “Circulation’s different. Everything compensates pretty quickly.” You nodded slowly as though this information had been exactly what you were after.

For approximately two seconds, you almost got away with it. Then the corner of your mouth twitched. Peter’s hand stopped dead against your skin. You didn’t look at him immediately, which only made it worse, because you could practically feel his gaze move over the side of your face.

Several long seconds passed before he finally spoke. “What?” There wasn’t much amusement in his voice yet. Mostly suspicion. You shook your head, pressing your lips together harder in an attempt to flatten the smile. “Nothing.”

Peter’s eyes narrowed slightly. His grip around your ankle loosened, but his hand remained exactly where it was. “That wasn’t nothing.” The certainty in his tone made you glance toward him at last, and you immediately regretted it.

Peter was watching you with the calm, patient expression of somebody who had already realised you were guilty and was simply waiting for you to confess. You shrugged and looked back at the television. “I was just thinking it could have practical applications.” Peter went completely still.

There wasn’t an immediate joke, and that was the first thing that made warmth curl unexpectedly through your stomach. The younger Peter would’ve stumbled over five different responses before eventually choosing one, but this Peter had learned how to let silence sit between words instead of panicking and trying to fill it. His thumb remained motionless against your ankle while he stared at you, face unreadable for several long seconds.

Then his gaze moved toward the television. After another beat it travelled upward toward the ceiling. You watched the tiny crease form between his eyebrows and immediately knew his brain had started working. “Don’t,” you warned, sitting a little straighter beneath the blanket.

Peter turned his head toward you again, blinking once as if genuinely confused by the accusation. “I didn’t say anything.” You gave him a pointed look, because silence had never stopped Peter Parker from being obvious. “You’re thinking.”

One eyebrow lifted. He looked almost offended by the concept. “Usually happens.” You pushed his thigh lightly with your foot, but his hand closed more securely around your ankle before you could actually land the kick, the movement effortless and almost automatic.

A small smile appeared at the corner of his mouth when you narrowed your eyes at him. “Peter.” Hearing his name in that warning tone only seemed to encourage whatever was happening behind his eyes. He looked toward the ceiling once more, gaze tracking the exposed beam crossing part of the room before returning to you.

“What practical applications?” The question was delivered so calmly that for a second you simply stared at him. Your confidence began disappearing now that he was actually making you explain yourself. Peter waited. He didn’t rush you or start talking over the silence. He simply watched, fingers resting warm around your ankle while his expression remained deceptively neutral.

“You know what I mean,” you muttered eventually. Peter’s eyebrows rose another fraction. “I really don’t.” He absolutely did. The amusement had already started showing around his eyes even if the rest of his face remained composed. You stared him down for another few seconds before releasing a defeated breath through your nose.

“I was wondering if Spider-Man could eat pussy upside down.” The words came quickly once you finally forced them out, and the second they landed between you, your face heated enough that you immediately covered part of it with one hand.

The apartment fell painfully quiet except for the dramatic soundtrack still playing on television. Peter didn’t move. You could feel him staring at you through the spaces between your fingers, and embarrassment rushed in quickly enough that you groaned. “Forget I said anything.”

Peter didn’t laugh. Somehow that was considerably worse. Instead, his gaze slowly travelled upward toward the exposed support beam running across part of your ceiling, and his expression became genuinely thoughtful.

You lowered your hand enough to peek at him through your fingers, disbelief replacing some of your embarrassment when you realised he was actually considering it. “Oh my God.”

Peter glanced toward you. There was the faintest pull between his eyebrows, like he didn’t understand why his reaction was surprising. “What?”

You dropped your hand completely and sat straighter. “You’re actually thinking about it.” His mouth pressed into a line that was very obviously concealing something, although whether it was amusement or embarrassment you couldn’t immediately tell. Peter’s gaze drifted back toward the beam for another second before settling on you. “You asked.”

You let out a disbelieving laugh and shook your head. “As a joke.” Peter didn’t answer immediately. His eyes remained fixed on yours, and something quieter shifted behind them. Eventually, he tilted his head slightly. “Was it?” The question was soft enough that your body betrayed you before your mouth could, heat climbing further into your cheeks while you shifted beneath his stare.

You crossed your arms defensively. “Yes.” Peter gave one small nod. “Okay.” That should’ve been the end of it. Instead, the ease with which he accepted your answer irritated you instantly. Your eyes narrowed. “Why did you say it like that?” His brow furrowed, but the movement was a little too innocent. “Like what?”

You stared at him in disbelief. Peter’s thumb had started rubbing against your ankle again, slow and absent, while he tried very hard to look like he genuinely had no idea what you were talking about. “Like you don’t believe me.”

For a second he looked down at where his hand rested against your skin. When his eyes returned to yours, his expression remained calm, but the smallest spark of amusement sat behind it. “Because you’re blushing.” Your mouth fell open. Peter gave you a tiny shrug. “Observation.”

You grabbed for the nearest cushion without thinking. Peter caught it before you got halfway through the swing, one hand closing around the edge with ridiculous ease. A quiet laugh escaped him as your expression sharpened, the sound warm and surprised, like he genuinely hadn’t expected you to resort to violence.

“You’re annoying,” you informed him, tugging once at the cushion before giving up when he didn’t budge. Peter pushed it gently back into your lap. “Yeah,” he said, settling back against the cushions with a tiny smile. “I’ve heard.”

The teasing should’ve ended there, but Peter’s attention travelled toward the ceiling again, and this time you watched him properly. His eyes tracked the exposed beam, then the distance between it and the couch, and something in his expression shifted so subtly that you almost missed it.

The Spider-Man part of Peter had always been different from the Peter everyone else met. Not a separate person exactly, but a version of him stripped of some of the hesitation that followed him through ordinary life. Lately, the line between the two had become thinner. He didn’t need to posture or brag about what he could do.

Confidence simply settled over him whenever he knew exactly what his body was capable of. “It would work,” he said eventually. The statement came so casually that it took you a second to realise what he meant. You blinked and shifted your legs slightly across his lap.

“What?” Peter looked back down at you, as though the answer should’ve been obvious from the entire conversation. “What you asked.” His fingers loosened from your ankle and travelled absently higher along your calf before coming to rest near your knee.

The movement wasn’t overtly sexual, but your attention dropped toward it anyway. “Physically, I mean.” Your stomach tightened slightly at the matter-of-fact tone. “You’ve put thought into this remarkably fast.” Peter’s shoulders lifted with a small shrug. “Occupational hazard.”

You stared at him until his expression finally cracked, the corner of his mouth pulling upward. “And you’re the one who asked.” Your eyes narrowed. “I’m starting to regret it.” The response came before Peter could stop himself.

“No, you’re not.” It was quieter than everything else he’d said, immediate enough that both of you paused. Peter seemed to hear himself a second late. Something shy flickered over his face and his gaze dipped toward your legs before returning to you. He cleared his throat softly.

“I mean,” he added, suddenly looking far less certain than he had two seconds earlier, “you don’t look like you regret it.” There he was underneath the maturity, still Peter enough to talk himself straight into embarrassment and get faintly pink around the ears once he realised it.

“You’re getting awfully confident for somebody who climbed through my window ten minutes ago complaining about a pigeon,” you murmured, and the comment made Peter breathe out a laugh as he gently shifted your legs away from his lap.

He pushed himself upright and stood, stretching one shoulder until something clicked quietly beneath the suit. His face tightened for half a second at the feeling before relaxing again, and then he looked down at you.

“The pigeon caught me off guard.” His delivery was so completely serious that your mouth twitched. You gave him a pointed look anyway. “Sure.”

Peter stepped closer until his knees nearly touched yours, and the humour remained in his expression even as something warmer started settling underneath it. He rested one hand against the back of the couch beside your shoulder, leaning forward only slightly, but enough that you had to tip your chin upward to keep looking at him.

Up close, you could see every sign of the night he’d had. The small cut near his temple. The bruise along his cheek. The shadows beneath his eyes that told you sleep had probably been optional far too often lately. Yet his attention had narrowed entirely onto you now.

“You know,” he murmured, his gaze flicking briefly over your face, “you’re making fun of me, but this was your question.” You tried to maintain the same unimpressed expression even as your pulse picked up. “A hypothetical question.”

Peter’s eyes dropped toward your mouth. They stayed there for one brief second before returning to yours. “Right.” You swallowed without meaning to. His gaze sharpened immediately, because of course he noticed that too.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Very hypothetical.” You placed one hand against the centre of his chest and pushed lightly, though he barely shifted beneath your palm.

“Don’t be smug.” Peter’s brows lifted, his expression instantly innocent. “I’m not.” You gave him a look. Peter lasted approximately another second before his mouth twitched. “Maybe a little.”

His hand moved from the back of the couch to your jaw slowly enough that you felt every second of it, fingertips settling lightly beneath your chin while his thumb brushed once across your cheek. There was nothing rushed about Peter anymore when he touched you like this.

Even when some lingering patrol adrenaline remained beneath his skin, even when you could feel the strength he constantly kept restrained whenever his body moved near yours, there was a deliberate patience to him that hadn’t existed when he was younger.

He leaned closer until his forehead nearly touched yours, but he stopped just short of actually kissing you. His eyes moved between yours, waiting. You were the one who closed the distance. The first kiss was soft, almost frustratingly so considering the conversation that had led to it, Peter’s mouth moving slowly against yours while his fingers remained warm beneath your jaw.

Your hands caught the front of his suit and pulled him closer, bunching the material beneath your fingers, and a quiet breath escaped through his nose as he let the kiss deepen. His other hand settled against your knee, palm warm through the thin fabric covering you, before sliding gradually higher along your thigh.

He stopped well before reaching anywhere intimate, but the weight of his hand there was enough to make your body shift beneath him. Peter noticed. You felt the tiny pause in his mouth against yours before he pulled away just far enough to look at you.

His lips remained close enough to brush yours whenever either of you breathed. “Still hypothetical?” he asked softly. Your eyes opened fully and found him watching you with restrained amusement, his thumb still moving slowly against your cheek.

You tightened your grip against his suit. “You’re enjoying this way too much.” Peter’s eyes dropped toward your mouth again while he considered that. “A little.” Then he leaned in and kissed the corner of your lips, followed the line of your jaw and stopped beneath your ear. His breath warmed your skin there, and when your shoulders shifted involuntarily, Peter’s hand flexed lightly against your thigh. “Mostly I’m curious.”

“You’re such a fucking nerd,” you whispered, although there wasn’t much conviction left behind the insult with his mouth still lingering against your neck. You felt him smile rather than saw it, the movement pressing faintly against your skin before he lifted his head. “You brought science into it.”

You laughed softly and let your hands slide higher along his chest. “I asked whether you could eat pussy upside down. I didn’t exactly submit a research proposal.” Peter looked at you for one long beat, his eyes darkening with amusement before he murmured, “Could’ve fooled me.” You pushed his shoulder again on instinct.

Peter caught your wrist automatically before your hand travelled more than a few inches, his fingers closing around it with almost insulting ease. He didn’t pin it anywhere or tighten his grip. Instead, he turned your hand over slowly and pressed his mouth briefly against the centre of your palm.

The affection of the gesture caught you so completely off guard that whatever retort you’d been preparing disappeared. Peter seemed to notice the way your expression softened, because his own did too before he released your wrist.

He stayed standing between your knees, close enough that the fronts of his legs brushed yours whenever either of you shifted. “There are variables,” he said after a moment. You stared up at him. “There absolutely are not.”

His brows rose, and some of the scientist returned to his face. “There absolutely are.” He wasn’t babbling through the thought process anymore the way he once might’ve. Instead, he considered each thing before saying it, gaze moving briefly around the room as though he were actually planning the logistics.

“Height,” he said first, looking toward the ceiling. His eyes moved downward again, briefly measuring the space between you and the beam. “Angle. Where you’re sitting.” Then his gaze returned to your face and lingered there. “How much you move.”

Heat rushed into your cheeks immediately. “How much I move?” Peter nodded once, maintaining complete seriousness for approximately half a second before the corner of his mouth betrayed him.

“That seems relevant.” You stared at him. “You’re impossible.” His expression softened into something almost unbearably fond. “You like me.”

Before you could give him the satisfaction of answering, Peter stepped backward and tilted his head toward the ceiling again. His gaze locked onto the exposed beam, and in that instant there was another subtle change in him, the tired boyfriend who’d been sprawled across your lap quietly making room for the man who spent every night calculating distances in fractions of seconds.

He lifted one wrist. The movement was casual, practised enough that he barely needed to look before firing a strand of webbing upward with a sharp thwip, the line attaching cleanly around the beam overhead. Peter gave it one firm tug, testing the hold, then glanced toward you when you immediately sat straighter on the couch.

“Peter.” His hand stopped around the web. He looked at you over his shoulder, expression open but carrying that small spark of amusement he’d been trying and failing to hide for the last ten minutes. “What?”

Your eyes travelled from his face to the line stretching toward the ceiling and then back again. “You’re seriously doing this.” Peter didn’t answer right away. His gaze dropped briefly toward your legs, then moved back to your face, and despite all the quiet confidence from seconds earlier, a faint flush began creeping along the tops of his ears.

That tiny betrayal made your mouth curve. He caught the smile immediately and narrowed his eyes just slightly. “You started it,” he reminded you, voice softer now. Then Peter caught the web firmly with one hand, planted the other palm against the wall and stepped onto the vertical surface as naturally as somebody else might climb a staircase.

There wasn’t any theatrical flourish to it. One second he was standing beside you, and the next his body moved smoothly upward, muscles shifting beneath the suit as his hands and feet stuck effortlessly to the wall. You watched him climb, your eyes travelling farther than you intended before Peter stopped halfway toward the ceiling.

He turned his head and looked down at you. His gaze immediately caught yours somewhere around his waist before you could drag it back toward his face, and the little smile that appeared told you he’d noticed exactly where you’d been looking.

Peter adjusted his grip around the web, briefly glanced toward the ceiling as though genuinely checking the logistics one final time, then looked back down. “For the experiment,” he started, trying for clinical and failing because his voice had gone noticeably lower,

“I’m probably gonna need your underwear out of the way.” The words hung there for a second. Peter’s expression shifted almost immediately afterward, confidence giving way to sudden self-awareness as he visibly replayed the sentence inside his head.

His lips pressed together. His cheeks warmed another shade. Then he looked off toward the wall and muttered, “That sounded better in my head.”

You should’ve laughed at him, because the faint colour spreading over Peter’s cheeks after his own terrible choice of words was painfully endearing, but the amusement caught somewhere in your throat when you realised how fast the atmosphere in the room had changed.

The oversized shirt you’d thrown on earlier suddenly felt considerably less innocent where it hung loose around your body, its hem barely covering the tops of your thighs and leaving nothing underneath except the soft cotton panties already clinging wetly to your cunt.

There wasn’t a bra beneath the shirt either, because there hadn’t been any reason for one when your original plans involved a couch, leftovers and probably falling asleep against Peter before the movie finished, but now you were painfully aware of your nipples tightening beneath the thin material

and the way the shirt shifted against them whenever you breathed. Peter noticed too, because of course he did, his eyes dropping for half a second before flicking guiltily back toward your face as though getting caught staring somehow mattered after the conversation you’d just had. That tiny flash of embarrassment only made the heat curling through your stomach worse.

You shifted against the cushions without meaning to, thighs pressing together beneath the hem of your shirt, and the movement made you feel exactly how wet you’d become. Your panties were warm and damp against your pussy, slick spreading through the cotton where it pressed between your folds and dragging against your clit every time you moved, making the ache beneath it noticeably sharper.

It had happened gradually enough that you hadn’t properly noticed at first, beginning as nothing more than a little warmth when Peter started taking your stupid question seriously, building every time his voice dropped or his hand lingered against your thigh or that quiet Spider-Man confidence replaced the awkward embarrassment in his face. Now there was no ignoring it.

Your cunt felt swollen beneath the thin fabric, your clit throbbing against the soaked cotton, and squeezing your thighs together only forced the material tighter against you in a way that made your breath catch. Peter’s eyes dipped toward the movement, and the way his jaw tightened told you he knew exactly what was happening.

He was still clinging halfway up the wall when his gaze settled on your thighs properly. You watched the exact second he noticed the damp centre of your panties beneath the loose hem of your shirt, because his expression changed so slightly anyone else might’ve missed it, the amusement fading into something heavier while his mouth parted around a silent breath.

You swallowed beneath the weight of his stare and slowly let your knees fall apart by a few inches, the oversized shirt sliding higher over your skin until more of your bare thighs were exposed to him. Peter’s eyes followed the movement helplessly before darting back to your face, almost like he was trying to pretend he hadn’t just stared straight between your legs.

You let him struggle for another second before tilting your head and asking, “You gonna keep analysing it from up there, Parker, or are you actually planning on proving something?”

The words came out more confidently than you felt, and Peter’s lips parted immediately like some smart response had occurred to him, only for his gaze to fall between your thighs again and apparently wipe the thought straight out of his head.

He forced himself to look toward the ceiling instead, taking one slow breath that expanded his chest beneath the tight suit while he visibly tried to collect himself.

The pink across his cheeks didn’t disappear, but something else settled over his expression, quieter and more focused, that familiar shift where Peter stopped looking like the tired man who’d climbed through your window and started looking like Spider-Man calculating exactly what his body needed to do.

He tightened one hand around the strand of webbing he’d attached to the exposed ceiling beam and planted his opposite palm firmly against the wall, fingers adhering instantly to the surface. Peter gave the web a hard downward tug to test the hold, then another, his forearm flexing beneath the suit while he checked the angle and distance above you.

Even though both of you knew his webbing could support far more than his weight, he still treated the setup seriously, eyes travelling along the line to the beam before returning to the open space in front of the couch. Watching him turn something so filthy into a genuine logistical problem made your pussy pulse again.

Once Peter was satisfied, he pushed himself upward. One foot stuck to the wall, then the other, his knees bending as he climbed higher with that unnerving ease that always reminded you his body didn’t obey the same rules as yours.

He moved slowly enough that you could watch every controlled shift of muscle beneath the suit, hands and feet alternating against the wall until his head was nearly level with the ceiling. Peter paused there, twisted enough to look over his shoulder at you and immediately caught your gaze somewhere lower than his face.

The suit had pulled tight across his stomach and hips from the position, leaving very little to the imagination, and the slight lift of his eyebrow told you he knew exactly what you’d been looking at. He didn’t tease you for it, though. He only swallowed, glanced down toward your spread thighs again, then deliberately turned his attention back to what he was doing before either of you embarrassed yourselves further.

Peter shifted both feet from the wall onto the ceiling itself, one after the other, until he was crouched completely above you like gravity had simply stopped mattering. Both palms pressed flat against the ceiling while his knees bent beneath him, and his messy brown hair had already started falling away from his forehead.

He repositioned one hand, then slowly rotated his hips, moving one foot and then the other until his back faced the wall and his body was aligned directly above the space between your knees. The movement was controlled and strangely graceful, every adjustment precise enough that you could tell he was already thinking about where his mouth needed to end up.

Then Peter caught the webbing again with both hands and released his feet from the ceiling. His legs unfolded above him as his body gradually lowered beneath the beam, gravity pulling him straight until he hung fully upside down in front of you.

His hair dropped toward the floor immediately, soft brown strands hanging messily away from his forehead and making him look unmistakably like Peter despite the Spider-Man suit covering everything else.

He gave the web another firm pull, tested his weight, then released one hand and twisted his shoulders slightly to make sure he wasn’t going to rotate once he started moving against you. His free palm briefly pressed against the wall beside him, steadying his body while he adjusted the webbing around his wrist and lowered himself another few inches.

Peter’s eyes narrowed in concentration as he measured the distance between his face and the edge of the couch, then looked at you, down toward the floor from his inverted perspective and back toward you again. “Too high,” he muttered quietly to himself, releasing a little more web until his upside-down face was almost level with your knees.

The seriousness of it should’ve been funny, but there was something obscene about watching Spider-Man carefully calibrate the exact height he needed so he could eat your pussy comfortably.

You couldn’t help smiling at him while he made one final adjustment, and Peter caught it from the corner of his eye. His brows pulled together as he stretched one arm toward the wall again, using his palm to stop the last slow swing of his body before becoming almost perfectly still.

“What?” he asked, a faintly defensive edge slipping into his voice as though he suspected you were about to make fun of him. You shook your head slowly, letting your gaze wander down his inverted body again because there was something unfairly attractive about how comfortable he looked hanging there.

“Nothing,” you murmured, and Peter’s mouth twitched because neither of you believed that for a second. Once he was satisfied with the position, he released the wall and let both hands drop toward you, flexing his fingers experimentally while checking whether maintaining the position took any actual effort.

Apparently it didn’t. He looked almost irritatingly relaxed hanging upside down in front of you, like this was simply another perfectly reasonable way for him to spend an evening.

“Okay,” Peter murmured eventually, and his voice had gone noticeably rougher than before. His eyes travelled from your face down toward the oversized shirt pooled around your thighs, then lower still until his gaze settled on the damp cotton between them. You watched his throat work when he swallowed.

The change in him made you scoot forward without being asked, the couch cushions compressing beneath your weight as you moved toward the edge, and Peter immediately adjusted in response. He released tiny lengths of webbing at a time, lowering himself inch by inch until his face lined up perfectly with the space between your thighs.

Every time you shifted forward, he compensated automatically, like some part of his brain was mapping the distance before you even stopped moving. You’d watched Spider-Man judge impossible gaps between buildings in fractions of seconds, twist through traffic and catch himself midair without hesitation, and now every bit of that ridiculous coordination was being devoted to putting his mouth exactly where you wanted it.

When you finally reached the edge of the couch, Peter’s upside-down face was directly between your knees. His hair almost brushed the floor beneath him, and his shoulders hovered close enough that your thighs could touch them if you spread a little wider. The humour disappeared from his expression the moment you did.

You let your knees fall apart slowly, deliberately, watching his reaction while the hem of your oversized shirt slid higher and exposed more bare skin until the soaked centre of your panties was completely visible to him. Peter’s eyes followed every inch of the movement.

His lips parted when he saw how dark the cotton had become between your legs, and his breathing changed before he said anything, one deeper inhale expanding his chest before he released it slowly through his nose.

You felt another warm pulse of slick leak from your cunt into the fabric under his stare, making the already damp cotton cling more tightly to your folds.

Peter looked back toward your face for a moment, then down again like he simply couldn’t stop himself. When your own gaze travelled down the inverted length of his body in return, tracing the suit over his chest and stomach before reaching his hips, you immediately noticed the shape beginning to push against the fabric between his thighs.

Peter was getting hard just from watching you spread your legs for him. His cock thickened beneath the suit until the material stretched visibly tighter around it, the outline becoming harder to ignore every time his eyes returned to the soaked cotton covering your pussy.

Seeing that reaction made your cunt clench. Peter noticed where you were looking and let out a tiny, embarrassed sound in the back of his throat, but the flush crawling over his upside-down face did absolutely nothing to stop his cock from straining harder against the suit.

He reached for you carefully once you were settled. Both hands slid around the backs of your thighs, palms warm against your skin as he gently pulled you a little closer toward the edge until your covered pussy hovered only inches above his mouth.

The strength in his grip was obvious despite how careful he was, fingers spreading against your thighs while he adjusted you into exactly the position he wanted and then immediately loosening again. His eyes returned to your panties.

Peter’s tongue dragged slowly over his bottom lip before he hooked two fingers beneath the waistband at one hip, his knuckles brushing your skin and making your stomach tighten. “Lift up for me,” he murmured,

and the slight roughness in his voice made the request sound considerably dirtier than it needed to. You planted your hands against the couch and raised your hips, watching Peter’s gaze darken as he started pulling the cotton slowly downward.

The panties peeled away from your pussy with a damp little drag that made heat rush straight into your face. Peter’s eyes snapped toward the movement, watching the fabric separate from the slick caught between your folds before he guided the waistband over your ass and down your thighs.

You lifted one leg, then the other, allowing him to slide them completely free, and cool air hitting your bare cunt made you inhale sharply. Your thighs twitched around his head while your pussy clenched around nothing.

Slick immediately gathering glossy between your swollen folds now that nothing covered them. Peter stared. For several seconds he didn’t seem capable of doing anything else, your panties held loosely in one hand while his eyes traced every wet inch of you.

You expected him to throw the panties somewhere. Instead, his attention dropped to the fabric in his hand. The centre was visibly soaked, dark with your arousal, and Peter’s fingers tightened around the cotton almost without him realising it.

His eyes flicked toward you briefly, something embarrassed already creeping across his expression, before he lifted the panties toward his nose and inhaled. His lashes fluttered shut.

The pathetic little whimper that escaped him sounded completely involuntary, soft and needy enough that his entire body went still the instant he heard it. Peter’s eyes opened again, cheeks burning while he stared at the underwear still held against his face like he couldn’t believe his own reaction.

You bit your lip to stop yourself laughing, but Peter caught it immediately. His eyes narrowed in warning, though whatever dignity he was trying to recover disappeared when he pressed the soaked cotton more firmly beneath his nose and took another slower breath. His mouth parted.

Another tiny, broken sound caught somewhere in his throat, and his cock visibly twitched beneath the suit at the same time. “Peter,” you breathed, his name coming out somewhere between disbelief and a moan, and the sound made his eyes snap back toward yours.

There was embarrassment in them, plenty of it, but there was something hotter underneath now, a kind of needy fascination he clearly couldn’t hide.

He lowered the panties from his face but didn’t let them go. Instead, Peter’s gaze travelled between your legs again, settling on your exposed pussy where your folds were already shiny with slick.

Your lips were swollen from arousal, parted enough that he could see the wet little opening lower down and the way your cunt clenched every time his eyes lingered there.

Peter stared openly. His tongue moved across his bottom lip while his breathing grew a little heavier, and you watched another visible throb travel through his cock beneath the suit. “Fuck,” he whispered almost absently,

the word slipping out before he seemed aware he’d actually spoken. When your pussy clenched again in response, a fresh bead of slick gathered at your entrance and began sliding downward through your folds, and Peter’s eyes locked onto it instantly.

He leaned closer, but instead of putting his mouth on you immediately, the hand still holding your panties moved between your thighs. Peter folded the soaked cotton loosely around two fingers, his eyes lifting toward yours as though checking your reaction before he touched you.

The first drag of fabric over your clit was almost unbearably light. Damp cotton brushed across the swollen little bud, carrying your own slick with it, and your hips jerked forward before you could stop yourself. Peter’s lips parted around a quiet breath. He did it again, slower this time, rubbing the wet fabric directly over your clit in a small circle while watching your face with intense concentration.

The texture made everything feel filthier. The panties were already soaked from being pressed against your cunt, and now Peter was using that same wet patch to stroke your clit, dragging the soft cotton over it until the fabric became even slicker.

Your thighs spread farther around his head, and Peter’s cock twitched visibly beneath the suit when he saw you deliberately open yourself wider for him. He rubbed the panties against your clit again, applying a little more pressure this time, and a shaky moan slipped out of you before you could swallow it.

Peter’s expression changed immediately. Something pleased and slightly wrecked moved across his face, his eyes dropping toward the way your pussy glistened beneath the fabric.

He shifted the panties lower for a second, dragging the soaked cotton through your folds and pressing it lightly against your entrance before pulling it back toward your clit.

The sensation made your cunt clench against the fabric, smearing more slick into it, and Peter’s eyes went almost painfully dark when he watched your body wet the panties even further.

He brought them back toward his face without thinking, took another breath against the newly soaked cotton and whimpered again, louder this time. The sound made your stomach tighten so hard it almost hurt.

Peter looked genuinely pathetic about it, hanging upside down with your panties clutched in one hand, cheeks flushed, cock straining against the suit and eyes half-lidded because apparently smelling and touching your wet cunt at the same time had overwhelmed whatever remaining dignity he possessed.

“You like that way too much,” you murmured breathlessly, watching Peter’s expression tighten in embarrassment before his gaze returned between your thighs. He didn’t deny it. Instead, he dragged the panties once more across your clit, slow enough to make your hips chase the pressure, then let the fabric fall away from you while keeping it clenched in his fingers.

Your pussy looked even messier now, slick spread over your swollen folds and clit from the rubbing, and Peter stared at the shine covering you. His mouth opened slightly. The tip of his tongue appeared against his bottom lip. You could practically see the moment restraint disappeared.

Peter leaned closer without touching at first. Warm breath rolled across your exposed cunt, making your thighs twitch around his shoulders, and his eyes lifted toward yours from between them. The look on his face made your pulse jump.

There was still a little awkward Peter beneath it, still that faint flush along his cheeks, but the confidence had settled back over him now that he knew exactly what he wanted to do.

He closed the remaining distance and pressed his mouth directly against your pussy. The first contact was open and wet, his lips settling over your slick folds before his tongue dragged slowly from your entrance upward.

He started at the wet little hole already leaking for him, catching the slick there with the tip of his tongue before flattening it against you and licking all the way through your folds. When his tongue passed firmly over your clit, your entire body jerked.

One hand flew into Peter’s hanging hair and closed around a fistful of it while your thighs threatened to clamp around his head. Peter groaned straight into your cunt when you pulled him closer, the vibration travelling through your clit

and making your hips buck hard enough that both of his hands immediately returned to your thighs. He steadied you with effortless strength, fingers digging carefully into the soft flesh while his mouth stayed exactly where you wanted it.

Being upside down didn’t hinder him in the slightest once he found the angle. If anything, Peter seemed fascinated by figuring out what worked from the position, lowering himself another fraction on the web and turning his head until he could bury his mouth comfortably against you without straining his neck.

His tongue pushed between your folds again, licking through the slick coating you before dipping lower toward your entrance. He collected everything your body gave him before dragging it back toward your clit, smearing your arousal over the swollen bud with broad, messy strokes.

You could hear how wet you were every time his mouth moved. Soft, filthy sounds filled the apartment beneath your breathing, and Peter seemed to fucking love every one of them.

His nose brushed against your clit when his tongue slid lower, nudging it accidentally before he realised the reaction it caused. Your hips jerked. Your fingers tightened painfully in his hair. Peter’s eyes opened wider and immediately did it again on purpose, pressing the bridge of his nose against your clit while his tongue worked lower through your folds.

The combination made a broken sound tear from your throat, and Peter groaned directly against your pussy like hearing you lose control was affecting him just as badly. His cock jerked visibly inside the suit. Even upside down, you could see the thick outline trapped against the fabric, painfully hard and twitching every time you moaned his name.

When Peter finally wrapped his lips around your clit, your back arched away from the couch. He sucked slowly at first, tongue pressing against the sensitive little bud inside his mouth while your thighs shook around him.

Your grip in his hair tightened until you were practically using it to hold him exactly where you wanted him. Peter let you. More than that, the pathetic moan that vibrated against your cunt when you pulled his hair told you he fucking liked it.

His hands spread your thighs wider, fingers firm but careful, and he buried his face deeper between them until his mouth and chin were shining with your slick.

Every time you forced yourself to look down, the sight made the pleasure worse. Peter looked obscene hanging upside down between your legs, messy hair falling toward the floor while his mouth worked relentlessly against your cunt.

Your pussy was visibly swollen around his face, wet folds spreading around his tongue every time he licked upward, slick coating his lips and gathering along his chin.

Whenever he pulled away just enough to breathe, you could see your arousal glistening across his skin. Then his mouth would immediately return, like even a few seconds away from tasting you was too long.

Peter’s eyes were half-lidded but intensely focused. Whenever you made a particularly desperate sound, they opened wider and fixed on your face, watching for the exact movement that had caused it before he repeated whatever he’d done.

His tongue slid back down to your entrance, circling it slowly before pushing inside just enough to make your cunt tighten around him. Peter whimpered when he felt you clench. The sound came muffled and needy against your pussy, followed by another little twitch of his hips in the air as if his body was searching automatically for something to grind his cock against.

Your gaze travelled down his inverted body again, following the tight suit over his stomach and hips until you found the thick outline straining between his thighs. Peter was fully hard now. Painfully hard from the look of it, the fabric stretched tight enough around his cock that every involuntary twitch was obvious.

He hadn’t touched himself once. He was getting that worked up purely from being between your legs, from licking your cunt and smelling your wet panties and feeling your pussy clench around his tongue. The knowledge made another rush of slick spill from you.

Peter caught you staring at his cock. His eyes followed your gaze as much as his inverted position allowed, and for a second embarrassment flashed visibly across his face. It didn’t last long.

Something filthier replaced it, something hot and needy and almost proud when he realised you were watching exactly how hard eating you out had made him. He held your gaze as he lowered his mouth back toward your pussy. Then he wrapped his lips around your clit again and sucked hard enough to make your whole body arch.

The cry that tore from you was loud enough that Peter’s eyes widened for half a second. Then something pleased flickered across his face. He sucked again, slower this time, tongue pressing insistently against your clit while his lips pulled around it.

Your thighs shook so badly against his hands that he tightened his grip enough to keep you comfortably spread. Your fingers twisted deeper into his hair, and you ground shamelessly against his mouth, using him while he hung there between your legs. Peter moaned like the idea of being used for your pleasure was doing something terrible to him.

His cock twitched again. Hard. The movement was obvious enough that you couldn’t stop staring, and when Peter noticed your eyes drop there, another pathetic little sound vibrated against your cunt. “Fuck, Peter,” you gasped, voice breaking around his name while your hips rolled harder against his tongue.

He answered by dragging one long stroke through your pussy, licking from your entrance all the way over your clit before immediately repeating it. Your own slick coated his tongue, lips and chin, and every time he licked you clean your body seemed determined to make another mess for him.

He looked completely gone on it now. Flushed, breathless, hanging upside down with your soaked panties still twisted around one hand and his cock straining desperately beneath the Spider-Man suit while his tongue worked over your cunt like he couldn’t make himself stop.

Every few seconds his fingers tightened around the panties, almost like he’d forgotten he was still holding them until the smell reached him again. Once, he brought them briefly back beneath his nose while his mouth hovered inches from your pussy and took another deep breath, eyes closing as a shaky whimper escaped him. The sight was so fucking filthy that your cunt clenched hard enough for Peter to see it.

His eyes snapped open. He watched your pussy contract around nothing, slick shining at your entrance, and immediately dropped the panties away so he could put his mouth back on you. His tongue pressed against your clit with quicker little strokes now, then slowed deliberately whenever your hips started moving too frantically.

Peter was learning you too easily, teasing without even seeming to mean to, changing rhythm every time he felt your thighs tremble or heard your breathing break. The pleasure tightened lower in your stomach, hot and heavy and increasingly difficult to ignore.

Your head fell back against the couch. The oversized shirt had ridden high over your stomach from all the movement, leaving most of your thighs and lower body completely exposed while Peter kept you spread open for him. Your mouth stayed open around helpless sounds that only seemed to encourage him.

Every time you whispered or moaned his name, Peter’s cock jerked beneath the suit and another needy sound escaped into your pussy. He was so hard from eating you that it looked genuinely uncomfortable, but he still never reached down to touch himself.

When your thighs began shaking harder around his head, Peter tightened his grip just enough to steady them. His eyes lifted toward your face from between your legs, his expression flushed and desperate despite the control in every movement of his mouth.

His lips were wet. His chin was slick. Your panties were still clutched in one hand. His cock was painfully hard beneath the suit. He looked utterly wrecked by your pussy and somehow still completely determined to keep going until you were worse.

Whatever stupid joke had started this had disappeared completely. There was nothing hypothetical about Peter hanging upside down between your legs anymore, mouth buried against your dripping cunt while your thighs trembled around his head and your fingers pulled at his hair.

The experiment had stopped being about whether Spider-Man could eat pussy upside down somewhere around the moment he’d whimpered into your soaked panties. Now it was just Peter licking, sucking and grinding his mouth against you with his cock painfully trapped inside his suit, apparently determined to find out exactly how badly he could make you fall apart before he finally had to come back down.

Peter was so completely lost between your thighs by that point that whatever embarrassment he’d carried into the whole thing had burned away, leaving him flushed, needy and devastatingly focused on your pussy. His tongue kept working over your swollen clit in slow, wet circles before flattening firmly against it, and every time your thighs trembled around his head his fingers flexed into the soft flesh to keep you spread exactly where he wanted you.

Your hips had stopped pretending to stay still, grinding shamelessly against his mouth whenever he found the right pressure, and Peter took every movement without complaint, letting you push yourself harder against his tongue while he moaned beneath you. The slick noises coming from between your legs were impossible to ignore now, wet and messy every time his mouth dragged through your folds, and Peter seemed to get more worked up with every sound.

Your gaze kept slipping down the inverted length of his body toward the cock straining inside his suit, and this time you noticed the fabric over the head had begun to darken. A tiny wet spot had appeared where his tip pressed against the material, followed moments later by another glossy bead of precum soaking through when his cock twitched violently at the sound of you moaning his name.

Peter noticed exactly where you were staring, his eyes following your gaze as much as the upside-down position allowed, but instead of becoming shy again, he let out a pathetic little whimper directly against your cunt.

The vibration rolled through your clit and made you jerk against him, your fingers tightening in his hair while another bead of precum seeped through the suit, leaving the fabric visibly damp around the head of his cock.

He hadn’t even touched himself, hadn’t reached down once despite how painfully hard he looked, and knowing that eating your pussy alone had him leaking into the Spider-Man suit made your stomach pull tighter with pleasure.

Peter felt you getting close before you managed to tell him. Your breathing had become uneven and broken, your thighs trembling constantly instead of occasionally, and every slow circle of his tongue made your cunt clench helplessly around nothing. Your fingers twisted harder into his hair when his lips closed around your clit, and Peter answered with a hungry moan, sucking the swollen little bud while the tip of his tongue rubbed firmly over it.

Your stomach tightened painfully. Heat gathered lower and lower until your entire body felt wound around the sensation of Peter’s mouth, and when he sucked again while his tongue flicked against you, the pressure finally broke. Your orgasm hit hard enough that your body went rigid before immediately falling apart beneath it, hips bucking into his face while your pussy clenched and pulsed through each wave. Peter didn’t stop.

He groaned against you as you came, keeping his lips and tongue pressed against your clit while fresh slick spilled across his mouth, coating his tongue, lips and chin as he licked you through every trembling aftershock.

Your thighs tried to close around his head, but his hands held them apart with gentle strength while you cried his name and ground against him, too overwhelmed to care how messy you were making his face.

The sight of you cumming seemed to hit Peter almost as hard as it hit you, because his cock jerked sharply beneath the suit and another wet bead of precum pushed through the fabric, joining the dark patch already spread around the tip.

By the time the orgasm began fading, your whole body had gone loose and shaky against the couch, your clit still twitching with sensitivity every time Peter’s tongue passed over it. You had to tug gently at his hair before he finally understood that you needed him to stop, because he’d become so absorbed in licking the last of your slick from your folds that he seemed genuinely reluctant to pull his mouth away.

Peter left one final kiss against your pussy before lifting his head, and the sight of him made something hot stir inside you all over again despite how sensitive you still were. Your slick was smeared all over the lower half of his face. His lips were wet and slightly swollen from eating you, his chin glistened beneath the light from the television, and there was even a faint shine along the edge of his cheek where your arousal had spread while you ground against him.

Peter looked up at you from his inverted position, breathing heavily, hair hanging messily toward the floor and expression completely satisfied with what he’d done to you. You reached toward him before you’d even fully decided what you wanted, fingers sliding beneath his jaw and turning his upside-down face slightly toward you.

His eyebrows lifted in question, but Peter stayed perfectly still when you leaned forward and dragged your tongue slowly across his chin. The taste of your own slick hit your tongue immediately, warm and intimate from where it coated his skin, and Peter’s mouth fell open around a soft sound when you licked another stripe upward toward the corner of his mouth.

You cleaned your arousal from his face slowly, tongue passing across his jaw, chin and swollen lips, deliberately gathering every wet trace he’d left there until his skin was almost clean.

Peter watched you the entire time. His eyes were darker now, following the movement of your mouth with obvious hunger while his cock continued twitching helplessly inside the damp suit. You licked the final streak of slick from his bottom lip and sat back just enough to let the mixture of your arousal and saliva collect deliberately in your mouth instead of swallowing it.

Peter’s expression shifted as he realised what you were doing, his eyes widening slightly before dropping toward your lips. You kept one hand beneath his jaw and tipped his face toward yours. “Open your mouth,” you told him softly. Peter obeyed immediately, lips parting and tongue visible while he looked at you with the same needy openness he’d shown when he’d sniffed your panties earlier.

You leaned closer until your faces were only inches apart, held his gaze and spat the slick mixture straight onto his tongue. Peter made a quiet, breathless moan when it landed in his mouth. His eyes never left yours as he closed his lips, swallowed everything you’d given him and then ran his tongue slowly over his lower lip like he didn’t want to waste even the taste left behind.

You watched his throat move as he swallowed, and his cock jerked beneath the suit hard enough that another tiny bead of precum soaked through the already damp material. The reaction pulled a satisfied smile from you, and Peter looked almost dazed when you brushed your thumb across his wet lower lip before telling him, “Come back down.”

Peter reacted immediately, although he was noticeably less composed than he’d been when he originally positioned himself above you. He reached upward along the webbing and pulled himself toward the ceiling with one arm, the muscles across his stomach tightening beneath the suit as he brought both feet back against the surface above him.

His palms adhered beside them while he twisted his hips and shoulders, carefully turning himself from the inverted hanging position into a crouch against the ceiling. He released one hand, planted it firmly against the wall and transferred one foot onto the vertical surface before the other followed, movements still controlled despite the obvious erection trapped painfully between his thighs.

Peter climbed downward quickly, peeling one hand and foot from the wall at a time while the remaining limbs kept him anchored, until he was low enough to simply push away and land softly on the floor in front of you.

He had barely straightened before you stood. Your legs immediately betrayed you, knees wobbling from the orgasm strongly enough that Peter’s expression changed and one hand shot instinctively around your waist to catch you.

A quiet, breathy laugh escaped him, but it lasted barely a second because you grabbed the front of his suit, pulled him toward you and kissed him hard. Peter stumbled half a step before recovering, one arm tightening around your waist while the other hand slid behind your neck, and then his mouth opened against yours without hesitation. You could still taste yourself faintly on his tongue when it met yours, the knowledge of what he’d just swallowed making the kiss feel filthy in a completely different way.

There wasn’t any of Peter’s earlier shyness left once you were standing together. He kissed you with an open hunger that made it obvious how long he’d spent desperately hard while concentrating entirely on you, tongue pushing against yours while his hands moved restlessly over your waist and back.

Your body pressed flush against his, and the instant his cock was trapped between your stomach and his suit you could feel exactly how hard he’d become. You slid one hand down between your bodies and covered the thick bulge through the fabric, pressing your palm firmly against his cock. Peter immediately broke the kiss with a loud, helpless moan against your mouth, hips jerking forward into your hand before he could stop himself.

He’d never been particularly quiet when sex was involved, and now that the embarrassment was gone he didn’t bother holding back anything. Every slow stroke of your palm over his cock pulled another sound from him, sometimes a rough groan from deep in his chest, sometimes a higher broken moan when your fingers rubbed directly over the damp fabric covering his sensitive head.

You could feel the heat of him even through the suit, his cock solid beneath your hand and twitching hard whenever your thumb circled the tip. Peter rested his forehead against yours for a second, eyes squeezing shut while his mouth remained open around another needy sound, then immediately kissed you again like he couldn’t stand being separated from you for even that long.

You kept palming him while you kissed, fingers tracing the full outline of his cock through the suit from the base to the leaking tip. The wet patch of precum had spread enough that the material felt faintly damp beneath your fingertips, and when you rubbed over it Peter shuddered visibly.

His hips rolled forward on instinct, pushing his cock harder against your palm while his hand tightened against your waist. “Keep doing that,” he breathed against your lips, voice rough and broken, and you barely gave him time to finish before dragging your palm slowly down the length of him again.

Peter moaned openly into your mouth, completely unconcerned with hiding how good it felt. There was something incredibly sexual about how expressive he was, the way every touch pulled an immediate reaction from him, whether it was his breathing catching, his stomach tightening beneath the suit,

his cock jumping against your hand or another sound spilling straight into your kiss. The shy colour remained faintly across his cheeks, but it wasn’t embarrassment anymore. He wanted you to know what you were doing to him.

The oversized shirt still hanging around your body suddenly felt like far too much clothing. You pulled back just enough to catch the hem with both hands and dragged it slowly upward over your stomach, and Peter’s attention immediately dropped toward the movement.

The fabric rose past your ribs, exposing more bare skin, and his breathing changed when the lower curves of your boobs appeared. You pulled the shirt completely over your head and tossed it somewhere behind the couch, leaving yourself naked from the waist up in front of him. Peter went completely still for a second.

His cock was still pressed against your hip through the suit, his lips remained wet from kissing you, but his eyes dropped straight toward your boobs with such naked appreciation that your nipples hardened beneath the attention alone.

His hands lifted slowly, almost reverently, palms settling around the soft weight of your boobs before his thumbs brushed across both nipples. The contact made you inhale sharply, and Peter’s eyes immediately lifted toward your face to watch your reaction before returning to your chest.

He touched your boobs like he couldn’t get enough of them. His hands squeezed gently, thumbs rubbing across your hardened nipples before his fingers spread underneath and lifted them slightly in his palms. Peter leaned forward and kissed the upper curve of one boob, then another kiss lower, then another closer to your nipple until his tongue finally dragged slowly across it.

Your fingers slid into his hair as his lips closed around the sensitive bud and sucked, and Peter groaned softly into your skin when you pulled him closer. His free hand kept kneading your other boob, thumb circling the nipple before pinching it lightly enough to make your back arch toward him.

He switched sides after a moment, kissing his way across your chest and taking the opposite nipple into his mouth while his hand returned to the first. Peter looked almost drunk on touching you, mouth warm and wet over your boobs while his cock repeatedly twitched against your body.

Every little sound you made encouraged him, and between kisses he murmured how soft you felt, how pretty your boobs looked in his hands and how badly he’d wanted to get your shirt off since you’d spread your thighs for him earlier.

Eventually you had to pull him away by the hair because Peter seemed perfectly willing to spend the rest of the night with his face buried against your boobs. He lifted his head reluctantly, lips swollen and damp, eyes unfocused for a moment before landing on your face.

Your fingers travelled down the front of his suit, and the second Peter realised you were trying to get it off, his own hands immediately joined yours. He peeled the upper half away from his shoulders first, dragging the tight material down his arms and exposing his chest and stomach inch by inch.

You ran your palms over the warm skin as it appeared, feeling the lean muscle underneath while Peter breathed harder beneath your touch. The suit gathered around his hips, and he hooked both thumbs under the fabric before pushing it farther down.

You helped, dragging the material over his hips and thighs while Peter shifted his weight from one foot to the other until the suit finally released what it had been compressing for the last several minutes.

Peter sucked in a sharp breath the second his cock sprang free. It was hard enough to stand heavy against his lower stomach, thick and visibly flushed from being trapped inside the suit while he ate you out. The head was darker than the rest, glossy with precum, the slit wet enough that another clear bead gathered while you stared before slowly rolling over the rounded tip.

A thick vein ran visibly along the underside of his shaft, disappearing near the base where dark curls spread above it, and every few seconds his cock gave another involuntary twitch toward his stomach. The skin looked stretched tight around how full he was, his balls drawn close beneath the shaft from how painfully aroused he’d become without touching himself.

Peter looked down at you watching him and let out a shaky breath, but there was no attempt to cover himself or hide anymore. His chest rose and fell quickly, his hair was still ruined from your hands, his lips remained swollen from your kisses and your slick, and another bead of precum had already formed at the tip of his cock by the time your eyes returned there.

You watched it swell slowly at the slit before dragging your gaze back up Peter’s body and meeting his eyes. His throat moved in a hard swallow when he saw the expression on your face, and without breaking eye contact, you slowly lowered yourself onto your knees in front of him.

Peter went completely still when your knees touched the floor, his entire body seeming to lock around the sight of you looking up at him from beneath your lashes. For all the confidence he’d carried once he had his mouth between your thighs, this was different, because now there was nowhere for him to hide from how badly he wanted it.

His cock stood hard and heavy in front of you, thick enough that your fingers barely looked like enough when you wrapped one hand around the base, and the heat of him against your palm made your stomach tighten all over again. Another bead of precum gathered at the slit while you watched, glossy and clear, swelling slowly before beginning to slide down over the flushed head.

Peter’s breath hitched when you leaned forward instead of touching it with your fingers, and the sound broke into a low moan the second your tongue caught the bead from his tip. He tasted salty and warm, the precum spreading across your tongue as you dragged it slowly around the head, taking your time with the sensitive ridge until Peter’s hand shot out and braced against the wall beside him.

His mouth had fallen open already, eyes fixed on you like he couldn’t look away even if it killed him, and when you licked over the slit again, his hips jerked forward so sharply he immediately choked out, “Sorry, sorry.” The apology only made you smile around him, because he looked ruined before you’d even properly started.

You kept one hand around the base of his cock while the other settled against his thigh, feeling the muscle tense beneath your palm as you dragged your tongue down the underside of his shaft. He was so hard that every vein stood out beneath your mouth, the thick one underneath pressing against your tongue when you licked slowly from the base back to the tip.

Peter made a broken sound above you, not quiet or restrained, just openly needy, his fingers spreading against the wall as if he needed something solid to keep himself upright. You circled the head with your tongue again, then kissed the slick tip in a deliberately soft, filthy little gesture that made his cock twitch against your lips.

“Don’t tease,” he breathed, voice rough and already unsteady, and when you glanced up at him, his face was flushed so deeply that even his ears were red. You rewarded the plea by taking the head of his cock into your mouth, lips sealing around him while your tongue pressed firmly against the underside.

Peter’s reaction was immediate and loud, a full moan spilling out of him as his head tipped back, throat exposed, chest rising hard with every breath. The sound made your pussy clench even though he wasn’t touching you anymore, and you hummed around him just to feel the way his whole body shuddered.

The vibration nearly took his knees out. Peter’s other hand flew into your hair, not pushing, not forcing, just grabbing like he needed to hold onto something before his body forgot how to stand. You took him a little deeper, jaw stretching around the thickness of him while your hand stroked what your mouth couldn’t fit yet, twisting slowly at the base.

His cock was hot and heavy on your tongue, precum smearing against the roof of your mouth as you worked him in shallow, wet pulls. Peter kept making sounds with every motion, soft gasps turning into rougher moans whenever your lips tightened or your tongue dragged over the sensitive head on the way back up.

He tried to watch you, but every few seconds his eyes squeezed shut like the sight was too much, only to open again almost immediately because he clearly couldn’t stand missing it. Your free hand slid higher up his thigh, nails lightly dragging against his skin, and his cock jumped in your mouth hard enough to make you pause.

Peter looked down quickly, breath catching when he saw the way your lips were stretched around him, and the hand in your hair tightened before loosening again in the same second.

You pulled off just enough to breathe, letting your lips drag slowly over the head before he slipped free with a wet sound. Peter’s hips twitched toward your mouth again, desperate for the warmth he’d just lost, and you looked up at him while stroking him with your hand instead.

His cock was slick now from your mouth and his own precum, your fingers gliding more easily as you pumped him from base to tip, thumb circling the flushed head each time you reached it. “Look at you,” you murmured, voice low as your gaze travelled over his flushed face, his open mouth, the way his chest kept lifting quickly. “You were so noisy eating my pussy, and now you’re even worse.”

Peter let out a strained laugh that broke halfway into another moan when your thumb pressed directly over the slit. “Can’t help it,” he admitted, his voice rough and breathless. The honesty in it made heat lick up your spine.

He wasn’t trying to be controlled now, wasn’t trying to make some awkward joke or act composed, and when you leaned forward to lick a slow line up his shaft again, he moaned your name so openly that you felt it between your legs. You took him back into your mouth before he could say anything else.

This time you pushed deeper. Your lips slid down over him inch by inch while your hand tightened at the base, and Peter’s entire body went rigid above you. His fingers threaded through your hair again, trembling slightly as he fought the instinct to buck into your mouth, and you could feel the restraint in every tense line of him.

You hollowed your cheeks and dragged upward slowly, then sank back down, wet heat closing around him while your tongue pressed flat against the underside of his cock. Peter swore under his breath once, sharp and helpless, then immediately fell into a string of broken sounds that barely formed words at all.

His hips began moving in small involuntary rolls, not enough to take control, just enough to chase the rhythm of your mouth, and you let him because the desperation of it made your thighs press together. Saliva gathered at the corners of your lips, mixing with the precum leaking from him until every stroke sounded slick and obscene.

When he looked down again, his face went utterly wrecked, eyes dark and unfocused as he watched his cock disappear into your mouth. “You look so good like that,” he said, the words uneven and breathless, like they’d been dragged out of him against his will.

You moaned around him at the praise, and Peter nearly folded. His hand left the wall and landed on the back of the couch instead, gripping it hard while his other hand stayed buried in your hair. You pulled back, breathing through your nose, then took him deeper again, relaxing your jaw until the head of his cock pressed farther into your mouth and made your eyes water slightly.

Peter noticed instantly, his expression flashing with concern through the haze of pleasure, and his hand loosened in your hair as if he was ready to pull you off. Instead, you looked up at him and kept going, letting your tongue move against him while you held his gaze. That did something awful to him.

His mouth fell open, no sound coming out for half a second before a loud, broken moan finally escaped. His cock pulsed against your tongue, precum spilling thicker now, and you swallowed around him just enough to make his thighs tense beneath your hands. “Baby,” he gasped, the pet name sounding almost ruined, “you’re gonna make me cum if you keep doing that.”

You pulled back again, but only to lick across the head and smear the mess over your lips before taking him back in. Peter looked down at your mouth, then at your eyes, and the flush across his face deepened into something almost feverish.

You stroked the base with your hand while sucking the head, tongue flicking over the slit each time more precum gathered there, and his hips began to shake with the effort of keeping still.

Every sound he made was raw and immediate. A gasp when you tightened your lips. A moan when you dragged your tongue underneath.

A broken little whimper when your hand slid lower and cupped him gently while your mouth kept working over the tip. His cock throbbed heavily in your grip, the skin slick and hot, and you could feel how close he was by the way his body kept tensing, releasing, then tensing again.

Peter’s fingers curled through your hair without pulling, his eyes never leaving your face now, and the naked want in his expression made your own body ache. He looked like he wanted to apologise for how desperate he was, but every sound coming out of him said he didn’t want you to stop.

You didn’t. You sank down again, slower this time, taking him as far as you comfortably could while your hand worked the rest in a tight, wet rhythm. Peter’s head tipped back, throat working around a helpless moan as his stomach muscles tightened sharply.

His cock pulsed hard against your tongue, and you felt the exact moment he started losing control, the rhythm of his breathing breaking apart while his hips gave another restrained little thrust.

“I’m close,” he warned, voice strained and shaky. You answered by moaning around him and looking up, letting him see that you’d heard him and weren’t moving away. Peter’s eyes snapped back down to yours, stunned and overwhelmed, and the sight of you on your knees with your lips wrapped around him seemed to push him right to the edge.

His hand tightened in your hair, not guiding, just holding on, and he made the softest, most wrecked sound when your tongue pressed firmly along the underside of his cock. Then his whole body shuddered, his cock swelling against your tongue, and he came with a loud, broken moan, spilling hot into your mouth while his hips jerked forward once before he caught himself.

You kept your mouth on him through it, taking every pulse while Peter trembled above you. His cum coated your tongue in warm, salty bursts, and his sounds turned softer but no less desperate as you slowly worked him through the aftershocks.

His hand slid from your hair to the side of your face, fingers shaking slightly as he looked down at you with his mouth open and eyes blown wide. You didn’t pull away until his cock softened only a little against your tongue and his breathing had turned ragged enough that each exhale sounded almost pained.

When you finally let him slip from your mouth, a thin string of spit and cum connected your lower lip to the flushed head for a second before breaking. Peter stared at it like the sight might actually finish him all over again.

You swallowed slowly while looking up at him, and the tiny sound that left him afterward was almost pathetic. His thumb brushed over your cheek, tender despite the filth of the moment, and for a second neither of you moved.

Then you leaned forward and pressed one last slow kiss to the sensitive tip of his cock, just enough to make him twitch and suck in a sharp breath. Peter’s knees actually bent slightly that time, his hand dropping back to the wall for balance while he gave you a breathless, almost wounded look.

“You’re trying to kill me,” he said, voice hoarse and uneven. You smiled up at him, still on your knees, lips wet and swollen, your thighs sticky from your own earlier orgasm and your chest bare beneath the dim light of the room.

Peter looked at you like he didn’t know whether to pull you up and kiss you or collapse right there in front of you. His cock was still slick between you, sensitive and flushed, a little cum still glistening near the slit, and even though he’d just finished, the way his eyes moved over your face and boobs made it obvious he wasn’t done wanting you.

He reached down carefully and slid his hand beneath your chin, tilting your face up with a softness that somehow made the whole thing feel even dirtier. Then he bent, caught your mouth in a deep, messy kiss and moaned when he tasted himself on your tongue.

The kiss didn’t stay soft for even a second. Peter bent over you with one hand still beneath your chin, mouth opening immediately when yours did, and the taste of him on your tongue made his whole body tense like the filth of it had travelled straight through him. You rose from your knees slowly, legs still unsteady, but the second you were upright your hands went to his chest and pushed.

Peter let you move him without resistance, stumbling backward until the backs of his knees hit the couch and he dropped onto it with a breathless little sound. His cock was still flushed and slick from your mouth, softer than before but not fully down, lying heavy against his lower stomach with the head still wet and sensitive.

Peter looked up at you with messy hair, swollen lips and a dazed kind of hunger still all over his face, like he should’ve been spent but wasn’t even close to done wanting you. You climbed over him before he could say anything, one knee sinking into the cushion beside his hip and then the other until you were straddling his lap, your pussy hovering over his cock while he stared down between your bodies.

His hands immediately went to your waist, fingers spreading over your skin like he needed to feel you everywhere at once. You wrapped your hand around him, feeling him twitch weakly in your palm, still wet with spit and cum, and Peter’s breath caught when you dragged the softened head through your folds.

He made a broken sound when you pressed the tip against your entrance, his eyes snapping up to your face as if he hadn’t expected you to move so quickly. You didn’t give him much warning. You sank down slowly, pushing the slightly soft head inside your wet pussy and feeling your body stretch around the thickness of him even before he was fully hard again.

Peter’s mouth fell open. His fingers tightened on your waist, and the noise that came out of him was low and helpless, almost overwhelmed by the sensation of your slick cunt surrounding him while he was still sensitive from cumming in your mouth. “I wanna feel you get hard inside me,” you murmured, leaning down until your mouth brushed his ear, and Peter’s hips jolted upward beneath you at the words.

You took him deeper inch by inch, your pussy hot and soaked enough to pull him in despite the softness still lingering in his cock, and every little squeeze of your walls made him swell more against you. Peter’s head fell back against the couch, throat exposed, chest rising sharply as he tried to breathe through it.

You could feel the change happening in real time, his cock thickening inside you, filling you more completely with each pulse, going from pliant and sensitive to heavier, harder, more insistent as your body clenched around him. The feeling was filthy enough to make your own breath shake, because you could tell exactly when he tipped over from recovering into needing you all over again.

Once Peter was hard inside you, the stretch became almost too good. His cock filled you properly now, thick and hot, pressing deep every time you lowered your hips until your thighs trembled around his lap. You started riding him slowly at first, hands braced on his shoulders while you lifted yourself almost to the tip and sank back down with a wet, aching drag.

Peter groaned loudly, not bothering to hold back, his hands sliding from your waist to your ass so he could help guide the movement. His fingers kneaded into you, spreading you slightly each time you took him back in, and the pressure made his cock feel even deeper as your pussy swallowed him over and over.

“You feel so good,” he breathed, voice rough against your throat as he leaned forward, mouth dragging along your neck. You tipped your head to give him room, and Peter immediately took advantage, kissing the sensitive skin beneath your jaw before biting down just enough to make you gasp.

His cock jerked inside you at the sound, and you answered by rolling your hips harder, grinding down until your clit rubbed against his body and your cunt tightened around him. Peter’s mouth opened against your neck in another moan, loud and unrestrained, his teeth scraping your skin before he sucked a mark there like he wanted you to feel him even after this was over.

His hands couldn’t seem to settle in one place. They gripped your ass, slid up your back, then came around to your boobs with a kind of greedy tenderness that made your rhythm falter. Peter cupped them while you rode him, thumbs brushing over your nipples as your hips moved in slow, filthy rolls over his cock.

Every time you sank down, his palms squeezed the soft weight of your boobs, and when you lifted again his thumbs circled your nipples until they tightened beneath his touch. You moaned his name and leaned back slightly, giving him more room to look, and Peter’s eyes dropped immediately to the way your chest moved with every bounce of your hips.

He looked wrecked by it, flushed and open-mouthed, his cock twitching deep inside you as he watched his hands cover your boobs. You shifted your own hands down from his shoulders to his chest, dragging your thumbs over his nipples in return. Peter’s reaction was instant.

His stomach tensed, his hips jerked up into you and a sharp moan broke out of him before he could swallow it. You did it again, slower this time, brushing both thumbs over his nipples before pinching lightly, and Peter’s head tipped back with another loud, helpless sound as his cock pulsed inside your pussy.

You rode him harder after that, spurred on by every noise he made. The couch creaked beneath you both, the slick slide of his cock in and out of your pussy growing louder as your arousal mixed with what was left of his cum and your spit.

Peter’s hands returned to your ass, gripping you tighter now, fingers digging in while he helped pull you down onto him. You could feel him everywhere, deep in your stomach, dragging against every sensitive place inside you, and each time your clit rubbed against him another pulse of pleasure tightened low in your belly.

Peter kept kissing and biting your neck between moans, sometimes missing your skin entirely because his head would drop forward when your pussy clenched particularly hard around him.

“I can’t,” he gasped at one point, though he didn’t sound like he wanted you to stop. His hips kept rising into you, sloppy and eager, meeting every downward roll of your body like he couldn’t stand not being as deep as possible.

You threaded one hand through his hair and pulled his head back so you could kiss him, and Peter moaned into your mouth when your thumb brushed his nipple again. For a while it was just that, your bodies moving together on the couch, your pussy taking him again and again, his hands on your ass, his mouth on your neck, both of you getting close but not quite falling over the edge.

Then Peter seemed to decide he needed more. His grip on your ass shifted, fingers spreading wider, and before you could fully process the change, he planted his feet more firmly on the floor and stood with you still wrapped around him. The movement made you gasp, arms flying around his shoulders as his cock drove deeper inside you from the sudden lift.

Peter held you easily, one arm locked beneath your ass while the other hand gripped your hip, and the sheer strength of him made your pussy clench so hard that his eyes squeezed shut. “There,” he breathed, voice strained and wrecked, adjusting his hold until your back was slightly arched and your thighs were tight around his waist. Then he started fucking up into you.

The first thrust knocked the air from your lungs, his cock driving into you from below with a force the couch hadn’t allowed, and Peter’s moan broke apart against your neck as he did it again. His hands gripped your ass, spreading and lifting you so he could fuck upward into your pussy in deep, rough strokes that made your whole body bounce against him.

You clung to his shoulders, nails dragging over his skin, while his mouth found your neck again and bit down through another loud groan. Every thrust pushed him deeper, every upward snap of his hips dragged a helpless sound from you, and Peter’s control seemed to unravel completely when he realised this was what would make you both cum.

It happened fast once he was standing. Your body was already oversensitive from the first orgasm and from riding him, and now every upward thrust punched pleasure through you so sharply that your thighs started shaking around his waist. Peter felt it immediately. His grip on your ass tightened, holding you open and lifted while his hips worked up into you with desperate rhythm.

His mouth moved messily over your neck, biting, kissing, breathing your name against your skin in broken pieces. You could feel his cock swelling even harder inside you, the head dragging against that deep sensitive spot until your whole body started to go tight. “Peter,” you gasped, and the way his name broke out of you made him moan loudly against your throat.

His thrusts got rougher, less controlled, his stomach pressing against your clit every time he drove up, and that final pressure was what sent you over. Your orgasm hit while he was still holding you off the floor, your pussy clamping down around his cock so hard that Peter nearly stumbled back into the couch.

He caught himself, swore softly under his breath, then came with you, hips jerking upward as he buried himself as deep as he could and spilled inside you. His cum filled you in hot, heavy pulses while your own release soaked around him, the mixture making every tiny aftershock wetter and messier as he held you through it.

Peter collapsed back onto the couch with you still in his lap, both of you breathing hard, his cock still buried inside your trembling pussy. For a few seconds neither of you moved. His forehead rested against your shoulder, his hands spread over your ass and lower back, and every little twitch of your cunt around him made him exhale shakily against your skin.

You lifted your head first, dazed and sticky and aching in the best way, then shifted your hips carefully until just the tip of his cock remained inside you. Peter looked down between your bodies, still breathing hard, and you followed his gaze.

Cum immediately began to drip out of your pussy around him, thick and white, mixing with your slick as it slipped down over his cock and gathered messily between your thighs. The sight made Peter’s mouth part around a silent breath. You lifted yourself another fraction, letting more of it spill out of you in a slow, obscene drip, and his fingers tightened on your hips like he was trying not to lose his mind.

You slid two fingers through the mess, scooping up the mixture of his cum and your release before bringing it to your mouth. Peter watched, completely transfixed, as you licked your fingers clean slowly, tongue dragging between them until nothing remained.

You didn’t let him recover from the sight. You leaned in immediately and kissed him, pushing your tongue into his mouth so he could taste the mixture you’d just licked from your fingers. Peter moaned into the kiss, arms tightening around you as his tongue met yours, and the cum-slick taste moved between you in slow, filthy swirls.

You kissed him deeply, letting it coat both your tongues while you still hovered over his softening cock, your pussy dripping onto his lap. Peter didn’t pull away. If anything, he kissed you harder, one hand sliding up your back while the other cupped the back of your head to keep your mouth against his.

When you finally separated, his lips were wet and his eyes were unfocused, his chest rising quickly beneath yours. You stayed there in his lap, legs weak, body sticky, your boobs pressed against his chest and his cum still leaking slowly from your pussy.

Peter looked down between you one more time, then back up at your face, and the ruined little sound he made told you he was already thinking about putting his mouth back there to clean up the mess himself.

Peter didn’t just think about it. He did it.

One second he was staring down between your bodies with that ruined, hungry look still all over his face, eyes fixed on the slow mess of his cum and your release dripping from your pussy and slipping over his softened cock, and the next his hands were already moving. There wasn’t much teasing left in him now, not in the clever, shy, almost nervous way he’d had earlier.

He was too far gone for that, too warm and wrecked and needy, and the little sound he made when more cum slipped out of you was almost pained. His hands tightened around your hips, and before you could even ask what he was doing, Peter shifted beneath you and turned you carefully, one arm braced around your waist so he didn’t let you fall while he guided you down onto your back across the couch.

Your body was loose and heavy from both orgasms, legs still trembling, and Peter handled you like he knew exactly how sensitive you were, even as his expression made it painfully obvious he was barely holding onto his own restraint.

He moved between your thighs with a kind of eager clumsiness that felt so completely Peter, rushed because he wanted it so badly, gentle because it was you.

He pulled your legs up over his shoulders, one at a time, kissing your calf as he settled you open beneath him. The position folded you back just enough that your pussy was completely exposed to him, wet and swollen and messy with everything both of you had left there.

Peter stared for a second longer than he needed to, his mouth parting as his eyes followed the thick drip of cum slipping from your entrance and sliding down through your slick folds. His cock, already softening but still heavy and flushed, twitched weakly against his stomach as he leaned closer.

You saw it happen, saw the way his hips shifted against the couch cushions below him before he even reached your pussy, and the sight made your breath catch in a tired, breathy little laugh. Peter’s eyes flicked up toward your face, cheeks red, but this time he didn’t apologise.

He only turned his head and pressed a slow kiss against the inside of your thigh, then another a little higher, mouth warm and messy against your skin while his hands held you open.

The first lick made both of you shudder. Peter dragged his tongue slowly through your folds, catching the mixture of his cum and your slick where it had gathered against your entrance before licking upward with a deep, open-mouthed hunger that made your stomach tighten even though you were already oversensitive.

You gasped, fingers grabbing at the couch beneath you, and Peter groaned directly into your pussy like the taste had hit him harder than expected. He did it again, slower, tongue pressing between your swollen lips and collecting everything messy and wet from you as though he couldn’t stand the idea of wasting any of it. His eyes fluttered for half a second, and then his hips rolled downward against the floor beneath him.

The motion was small at first, almost involuntary, his body chasing friction while his mouth stayed buried between your thighs. Your legs tightened over his shoulders when you realised what he was doing, and Peter made a needy sound into your cunt as his cock rubbed against the carpet with another desperate little grind.

He licked you clean like it mattered to him. Like it was something he needed. His tongue moved slowly over every slick inch of you, dragging through your folds, circling your entrance, then sweeping upward toward your clit with enough care that he didn’t overwhelm you but still made your whole body twitch beneath him.

Each time he tasted more of the mess, his hips pushed harder against the floor. You could hear the rough little breaths he dragged in between licks, hear the quiet, broken moans he tried and failed to smother against your pussy, and every one made the scene feel dirtier. Peter Parker, still half on his knees, still bare and flushed and sticky from you, was eating his own cum out of your cunt while rutting against the floor like he couldn’t help himself.

His hands stayed locked around your thighs, thumbs rubbing your skin in little soothing strokes that didn’t match the desperation of his mouth at all. You looked down at him through heavy lashes, exhausted and turned on all over again, and whispered his name so softly it barely made it past your lips. Peter answered by pressing his face closer, tongue pushing gently into your entrance while his hips gave another needy grind beneath him.

You were too sensitive to take much more, but Peter seemed to know that without being told. He didn’t try to make you cum again. He didn’t suck hard at your clit or push you past what your trembling body could handle. Instead he cleaned you with slow, filthy devotion, licking away the cum that slipped from you, kissing your folds when your thighs shook too much, murmuring soft, breathless little sounds against your skin whenever you squirmed.

His mouth was wet with both of you now, lips shining, chin slick again, and when he finally pulled back to look at your pussy, his expression had gone almost dazed with satisfaction. There was still a little mess at your entrance, and Peter’s eyes fixed on it instantly.

He leaned in one more time, tongue dragging carefully over the spot, and his hips rocked against the floor again with a low, helpless groan. The sound made your chest tighten, fondness mixing with the heavy satisfaction still buzzing through your body. He was completely shameless now, noisy and needy and wrecked, but still so careful with you that it made your heart ache in the middle of all the filth.

When Peter was finally satisfied, he didn’t move away from you immediately. He pressed a lingering kiss to your inner thigh, then another to the other one, mouth soft and warm where he’d just had you shaking. His hands slid down from your thighs to your hips, thumbs brushing lazily over your skin as he lowered your legs from his shoulders.

You were limp enough that he had to help guide them back down, and he did it with a tired tenderness that made you want to pull him up and keep him there. Peter kissed the inside of your knee, then the top of your thigh, then slowly made his way upward. His lips travelled over your hip, across the lower curve of your stomach, and then higher still, leaving warm little kisses over every inch he could reach.

He looked exhausted now, properly drained, his hair a complete disaster, his mouth still wet, his eyes half-lidded with that soft post-sex haze that made him look younger and sweeter again. By the time he reached your ribs, his body had already started to sag with the weight of everything you’d both done.

He collapsed beside you on the couch with a heavy, breathless exhale, half on his side and half against you because there wasn’t really enough room for both of you to lie comfortably. Neither of you cared. Peter’s arm immediately found your waist, dragging you closer until your bare skin pressed against his, warm and sticky and familiar.

His face tucked into the side of your neck, and for a moment all you could hear was both of you breathing, the movie still playing uselessly in the background, completely forgotten. You were sure the apartment was a disaster.

His suit was probably in a half-peeled heap somewhere near the couch, your shirt had been abandoned behind it, your panties were still somewhere in the wreckage, and the blanket had slid halfway onto the floor. Peter shifted like he might attempt to sit up, always so painfully ready to take care of things even when he looked like he could fall asleep mid-breath, but you caught his arm before he could go anywhere.

You reached down blindly until your fingers found the blanket and pulled it up over both of you, covering your bare bodies in a crooked, warm mess. Peter let out a soft sound when the fabric settled over his shoulders, his arm tightening around you as if the permission to stop moving had finally reached him.

You tucked yourself against his chest, your legs still weak, your body still sticky, your throat still a little dry from everything you’d said and moaned, and you felt Peter press one final lazy kiss to the top of your head. “We can clean up later,” you mumbled sleepily, barely managing to get the words out before your eyes started drifting shut.

Peter’s quiet laugh rumbled against you, tired and warm and completely spent. His fingers traced one absent line up your spine beneath the blanket before coming to rest against your back, holding you close. “Yeah,” he whispered, voice rough from all the sounds he’d made for you. “Later.”

“Alright, Spiderman. There’s a bank robbery going on at 30th Avenue. Suspect is—uh, hello? Is this thing on?”

Peter laughs, already swinging through the tall buildings of New York City, zipping and flying through them faster than you can even say ‘Spiderman.’ While one arm is busy slinging out webs from building to building, his other arm holds onto a thick communications radio that looks like an amateur concoction of a walkie-talkie accompanied with old thick wires he found in a junkyard.

“Yep, I hear you loud and clear,” Peter says from his end. “I’m already a few blocks away. What does the suspect look like—”

“Spiderman? Hellooo?” Your voice cuts him off in a burst of static that makes his ears ring. “Ugh—is this radio even working? Are you still there?”

He needs to make a mental note to figure out a way for your voice to come through clearer—and preferably not through a brick of what feels like a tenth-century sad excuse for a cellphone that he has to clutch every time he wants to talk to you.

“I’m here!” Peter shouts through the mic, swinging around a corner.

“Ah! There you are!” you say, sounding like you’re smiling, if only Peter could picture what you looked like. “Missed your voice for a second.”

Peter’s face flushes under his mask.

“Detecting a sudden increase in body heat—specifically around the facial region—and a spike in heart rate despite no intense physical activity being performed—”

“Shut up, Evie,” Peter mumbles, hoping you didn’t hear him from the other end of the line.

He hadn’t gotten around to fixing the background noise integration yet, so the shitty microphone attached to the radio picks up almost everything. He hears you laugh on the other end, and he has to force down the rapid thumping of his heart before Evie calls him out on it again.

“Are you blushing, Spiderman?”

“What—no!” Peter immediately interjects, landing on top of a tall building on 30th Avenue. His eyes scan the windows of the bank directly across the street. “Just tell me what the suspect looks like, alright?”

You chuckle again. “Okay, the suspect is tall, wearing dark clothing, and probably handsome—if it weren’t for the ski mask covering his face.”

Peter rolls his eyes underneath his goggles.

“Now’s not the time to play around,” he says, already swinging through the entrance as innocent bystanders and employees run out in a panic.

He swings above the crowd in a perfectly prone position mid-air until he lands on his feet in the center of the bank. He doesn’t need your comms in here—he can handle whatever gets thrown at him at this point. His ears tingle with a warning that tells him the enemy is to his left. He turns his head to that direction, and…

“Spiderman!” A tall man in dark clothing and a ski mask holds up a rifle, pointing it directly at Peter. “You’re dead, kid!”

“Oh, jeez,” Peter says, slowly raising his hands in surrender.

“Oh, and I forgot to mention,” your voice statics through. “He’s heavily armed.”

“Yeah, good comms,” Peter scoffs sarcastically.

“Who the hell are you talking to?” the man shouts, pointing at the radio in Peter's hand. “Is that a bomb? Drop it!”

Peter furrows his brows, glancing at the object in his hand. A bomb? Seriously? The radio really looks that bad?

The man’s grip on the gun tightens, holding it in a way that lets Peter know he has clearly never held a gun before in his life. The panic among the people remaining in the building surges at the sight of the weapon, everyone shoving past each other toward the entrance.

“Come on, man. Don’t shoot—there are innocent people in here!” he tries to interject.

“Innocent dead people soon, if you don’t put that weapon away!” the man barks back.

“The police are on their way,” you explain, serious this time, through the radio. “Take care of that gun now, or he’ll start shooting like a madman once he sees the sirens. You have less than two minutes.”

“Okay,” Peter says. “Time me.”

“Starting now?”

“Starting now,” he confirms before switching off the radio’s microphone input.

The man takes the loud clicking sound as a threat, his finger hovering over the trigger with every intention to shoot—but Peter moves faster.

Extending his left hand, a thick layer of web covers the muzzle, trapping any potential bullet in the barrel. The poor man doesn’t even have time to react before Peter webs the gun, yanked it out of his hands, and tosses it aside. Just as the man turns to make a run for it, Peter pins his ankles together with a thick strip of webbing, sending him face first onto the floor before securing his wrists behind his back with another band of webs.

From where he still stands in the center of the room, Peter unclicks the microphone. “You got it, Static?”

He can practically feel you rolling your eyes at the stupid nickname. “That was fifteen seconds. Good job,” you applaud. “And are you seriously still sticking with Static? I hate that nickname.”

Peter chuckles, scanning the area for any signs of injuries, but finds none. The police finally arrive, pulling up with sirens blaring as they assess the crowd and begin scouting the area with weapons drawn. Seeing the suspect already bound by webs on the floor, they immediately move in with handcuffs.

Knowing the police will take it from here, Peter zips out of the building as if the entire fight—if you would even call it that—was just a quick pit stop.

“Well, that’s just what I’m gonna have to keep calling you, because your voice always comes through staticky,” he says, the wind picking up through the microphone and making it harder for you to hear him. “Unless… you wanna give me your actual name. Then maybe I can call you that instead.”

You pause at the other end of the radio, the silence between you filled only by the harsh wind and the snap of spiderwebs on his end.

As Peter swings his way back to his apartment, his heart pounds wildly in his chest with anticipation.

This isn’t the first time he’s teased you to get you to give up your name, and you’ve asked for his name more times than he can count on his fingers.

“Very funny,” you muse from the other end, your voice drawing out with a teasing tilt. “I could say the same thing to you.”

Peter smiles, landing on his apartment rooftop with a huff. “I don’t know—I think I like the way Spiderman rolls off your tongue.”

For the very first time since you two found each other through a stroke of pure luck—when Peter spent a night building a radio to hijack police comms and accidentally connected to you, a woman doing the exact same thing—you find yourself completely at a loss for words.

He doesn’t even know where the sudden boost of confidence came from to blurt out a flirtatious comment like that. Maybe it’s the suit, or maybe it’s that flutter of excitement he gets every single time he talks to you.

But that confidence slowly teeters away the longer you stay quiet. He grimaces, feeling like he overshot his mark big time.

Finally, he hears a slow draw of breath from the other end.

“That’s a shame,” you tease. “I would’ve loved to hear the sound of my name in your voice.”

Peter sucks in a sharp breath, his body tensing as your words travel down his spine and straight to his heart. It was the way you said it—that sultry little rasp that even the static couldn’t mask. An awkward silence takes over the both of you, and for once, Peter is grateful for how poorly he configured this radio, since he can use it as an excuse for a faulty mic.

“Dramatic increase in heart rate detected. Body heat has increased an additional two degrees, and your suit—specifically around the groin region—appears to be tighter. I am also detecting a heightened state of arousal—”

“Evie!” Peter barks suddenly. He hears your laugh come through the other end, and the sound definitely doesn’t help his situation at all.

“Got you to blush twice today.” You taunt. “I think that’s a record, Spidey.”

“I wasn’t blushing,” Peter lies. “Anyway—enough of that. Are you seeing any other criminal activity in the area?”

You hum, and he hears a faint clicking noise on your end. “Nothing,” you say. “But what’s the rush? You’re given the opportunity to relax. You should take it, considering how hard you’ve been pushing yourself.”

Peter hops onto the ledge of his building and starts idly pacing back and forth, smiling under his mask as he holds the radio close to his ear. “Aw, you don’t have to worry about me. I have Evie for that.”

You blow a raspberry, and Peter’s smile widens.

“Yeah—well, Evie is an artificial intelligence. She can only care so much. Plus, she can’t make as many good jokes as I can.”

Peter’s tongue pokes the inside of his cheek as he kicks a tiny stray pebble off the ledge, watching it fall ten stories to the ground. “Are you getting jealous of my assistant now?”

A garbled noise leaves your lips, and he chuckles as you stammer over your own words.

“God—you’re so full of yourself, aren't you?” you huff. “I’m your partner—so it’s only natural for me to look out for you.”

“We’re partners?”

“Haven’t we been this entire time?”

Peter pauses, glancing up at the sky, where the orange sun is starting to set behind several towers of buildings.

Partners. He hasn’t had anyone he could call a partner since everything happened—since he made the whole world forget who he was. He hasn’t had a real, caring partner since… them. Ned and MJ.

And now, after all that time spent in solitude, he’s finally found someone to call his partner again. Someone he’s never even seen, whose name he doesn’t even know. All he knows about you is that you’re smart—smart enough to build a radio and link up to his frequency—and that you live in New York. He could’ve passed you on his way to buy groceries, or seen you on the subway. Hell, you might even live in his building. Maybe you’re even that girl he accidentally swapped laundry with the other night.

“Spiderman? You still there?” you ask, snapping him out of his daze.

Despite your usual spunky attitude, in that moment, you sound so… small. Like you don’t want to hang up, even if there aren’t any crimes to report.

“I’m here,” he breathes, his voice coming out softer than he expected. “I’m not going anywhere.”

You smile at that. He can hear it. “Okay. Good.”

The microphone picks up shuffling noises on your end—judging by the sound, he pictures you rolling over in bed and getting comfortable.

“How about we play a game?” you ask before the radio falls into silence again.

Peter raises a brow under his mask. “A game?”

“Yeah—every time you complete a successful mission, we trade a fun fact about each other.”

He hums, taking a seat on the ledge and letting his feet dangle over the edge. “Okay, sure. And since I just finished one—does that mean the game starts now?”

You chuckle softly at his enthusiasm to play along. “Sure. Want to go first?”

Peter cranes his neck back to look at the sky. Although neither of you has ever brought it up, he has a feeling you’re both on the exact same page when it comes to secrecy. Neither of you wants to give away too much and blow your identity, but you share just enough to keep things interesting.

And by letting him go first, it feels like you’re giving him the chance to set the tone.

“Hm. Let me think.” He rubs his chin through his mask. “Okay—I’m ready. My favorite coffee is a hot Americano.”

You snort. “The first fun fact you want to share is your coffee order?”

“Hey—coffee can be fun!” Peter interjects. “Now tell me yours.”

A little laugh escapes you, and he can hear you shaking your head. “Fine. I get an extra-hot almond milk latte, with one pump of sugar-free vanilla, one pump of regular hazelnut, and two scoops of vanilla bean powder.”

The white lenses of Peter’s goggles widen, and he lets out a brief, disbelieving laugh. “Oh—so you’re pulling my leg because I started us off with a lame fun fact? Is that it?”

“What?” You giggle along. “I’m not! That’s my actual order—especially on chilly days. You should try it sometime.”

Peter imagines it: a girl—a pretty one, judging by your voice and personality—ordering that ridiculous concoction at a coffee shop while the barista rolls their eyes at how long it takes to recite. For some reason, the visual warms his chest.

“Sure. And I’d tell you to try a hot Americano—but based on the order you just gave me, I don’t think you’d like it very much,” he jokes.

You chuckle. “No, probably not.”

Silence fills the space again, and Peter kicks his legs over the edge of the ledge, trying to think of something to say before he loses you.

He clears his throat. “So, uh—”

“Can I ask you something?”

You both talk over each other, and his face warms with embarrassment. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

“Okay,” you continue. You let out a shaky breath, and he instinctively braces himself for whatever you’re about to ask. “I’ve noticed that your receiver is always on. Do you forget to turn it off?”

Peter pauses, confused by the question. “No. It’s on twenty-four seven—just in case something happens, you know?”

You hum softly. “I get that. But I guess what I’m trying to ask is… don’t you have other things in your life to worry about, instead of fighting crime behind a mask?”

Peter stays quiet for a moment.

In truth, there’s a bigger reason he keeps the radio on besides his duties as Spiderman. He could easily listen in on reported crimes just fine without your help, but he keeps it on twenty-four seven in the hopes of hearing your voice ring through—just in case you might… need him.

There have been several nights since meeting you where he tosses and turns in bed, reaching for the radio to see if your receiver is on. It usually isn’t during consistent parts of the day—meaning you’re either at work or in class. It’s usually off at night, but sometimes around three in the morning, he’ll see your receiver light up and you’ll call in, your voice completely wide awake, proving you can be a real night owl.

Ever since meeting you, it feels like he finally has a friend to talk to. The worst part of it all is that he doesn’t even know your name. And he can never meet you, no matter how badly he wants to.

Peter finally found someone he cares about—and he isn’t going to risk losing you.

“I… I guess I do,” Peter says, trying his best to tread carefully. “I always keep an earpiece in, just in case something happens. You can never be too careful.”

You hum again, and Peter knows that answer wasn’t enough to buy it.

“And I guess I also keep it on… just in case you ever want to talk.”

Shit, Peter curses to himself. If his half-assed answer just now wasn’t enough to make you switch off the line, this one definitely takes the cake. You’re quiet on the other end, and each passing second makes him want to do you both a favor and turn it off himself.

“In that case,” you speak softly, “I’ll keep my receiver on in case you want to talk to me.”

His heart stutters in his chest, feeling as though all the air has been sucked straight out of his lungs.

Peter hasn’t felt this way since high school. He’s grinning ear to ear—a smile so wide it hurts the muscles in his cheeks. He lets out a chuckle, a raspy, disbelieving sound at the realization that there’s a chance you might feel the exact same way about him.

“Don’t say that,” he says before he can stop himself, trying to inject some humor to cover up his flustered state. “You’re gonna get annoyed with me.”

“Who’s to say I’m not already?” you joke back.

And for the first time in a long time, Peter feels like the happiest man on Earth.

He looks up at the sky, watching birds fly across the orange hues as he kicks his feet like a high schooler who just scored a date with the prettiest girl in class. His heart is racing so fast in his chest and he feels so giddy that he’s actually surprised Evie hasn’t called him out on it yet.

He wants to make this last—to say something, anything, to keep this moment from ending.

Suddenly, a series of sharp beeps emits from your end of the radio. It's a sound he knows all too well, a reminder that duty calls before anything else.

“Oh, God,” you mutter quietly.

Every hair on Peter’s arms stands on end. He leaps to his feet, ready to launch himself toward whatever is happening. “What is it, Static?”

“There’s an alarm triggered at Grand Central Terminal,” you explain. “NYPD comms just flagged it—there are a bunch of hostages. It looks bad, Spiderman. Multiple armed men have barricaded the main concourse.”

Peter wastes no time, shooting a thick web line toward the nearest building and flinging himself into the sky. “How many hostages are we talking?”

“At least fifty. Commuters, staff—they were trapped during rush hour,” you answer, the clack of your keyboard clattering over the staticky connection. “I’m tapping into the security feed right now. They’re holding guns, and… it looks like there’s a heavy grade explosive right in the center, attached to the information booth.”

The wind roars through Peter’s mic as he accelerates through the air. “How much time is on the clock?”

“I’m trying to zoom in—eight minutes,” you say. “They’ve blocked all the major exits with deadbolts and wired the perimeter. It looks pretty half-assed, Spidey. If SWAT breaches the doors, or if even a piece of rubble hits that rig, the whole thing will blow.”

“Alright, no breaches,” Peter takes a mental note, his mind racing through entry points as the massive arched roof of Grand Central comes into view. “You’re my eyes in there, Static. Find me an entry point that skips the doors.”

“The skylight above the west balcony has an old grate,” you reply instantly. “It leads directly into the ventilations—high enough to keep you out of sight, but close enough to drop in.”

“Got it,” Peter replies, landing silently on the glass roof. He peers through the skylight, his eyes adjusting to the interior where dozens of terrified people are huddling on the floor, held at gunpoint by masked men with automatic rifles.

Right in the center, duct-taped to the information booth and blinking with a harsh red timer, sits the bomb.

“Okay, I’m in position,” Peter breathes through the radio. “Time me?”

He hears a soft click on your end, signaling that your timer is already running.

“Be careful, Spiderman.”

He tucks the radio against his thigh, securing it with a thick band of web.

Peter moves exactly in the direction you tell him to—he wedges his body into the dusty vents, moving with the practiced speed of an arachnid that takes him from point A to point B in the blink of an eye. He slowly lifts the grate, the poor thing held up by only a flimsy screw, and sets it down softly beside him to avoid any loud noises.

He lands gently right in the center of the terminal—but his plans for discretion don’t last when a hostage looks up and yells, “We’re saved, everyone! It’s Spiderman!”

Immediately, all the armed threats spin around, several barrels abandoning the hostages to point straight at the man in the red-and-blue suit.

“Oh,” Peter smiles. “Making my job a lot easier. Thanks.”

Before giving them the chance to shoot, Peter fires off thick strings of web into every single barrel, clogging up the firearms. With every weapon bound, he tangles the web lines together into one big knot and yanks them all out of their hands.

The guns crash into each other in a tangled mass of spiderwebs and steel. With the firearms rendered completely useless, he tosses the mess aside to focus on the men—who are now charging at him with combat knives and sidearms.

Peter quickly makes short work of the pistols, disarming the men with his webs before a stray bullet can even graze the bomb. One by one, he takes them down, firing webs with every intention of keeping them bound and completely immovable.

When Peter gets down to the last guy, slinging a thick web to pin him flat against the wall, your voice rings out from where the radio sits tucked against his thigh.

“SWAT is moving in—mind the doors and tripwires!”

“Shit,” Peter curses, whipping his head toward the exits—but it’s already too late.

The SWAT team breaches fast, shouting and gesturing for the hostages to run. Panic surges through the crowd, and every frantic step from the civilians echoes like thunder in Peter’s ears. One misstep, even one piece of falling debris, could set this entire place off. Peter snaps his head back to the bomb. Four minutes remain on the digital clock, but suddenly the numbers freeze—and a sharp high pitched frequency fills the room.

It’s quiet to everyone else, but to Peter's heightened senses, it might as well be an air siren.

“Wait!” Peter shouts, turning to vault himself away before the bomb sets off.

But it’s too late.

“Spiderman! Get out of there!” you cry out through the radio—right before a brilliant flash of red and white blinds the entire building.

Pressure and heat slam right into Peter’s chest, throwing him backward through the air and showering him in flying stone like a ragdoll. Glass shatters overhead, raining down thousands of sparkling fragments as the information booth detonates into a massive cloud of fire and smoke.

Peter crashes hard against the far wall, the impact knocking every last drop of air from his lungs. He coughs up blood, staining the inside of his mask, before sliding down a broken slab of marble. He wheezes violently as dense gray smoke fills the room. His ears ring loudly, drowning out the shouting SWAT officers, the screaming crowd, and the creaking support beams above.

Evie’s voice sings in his ear like a taunt.

“Detecting bone fractures near the lower hip. Internal bleeding. Labored breathing—”

Then, your voice comes cutting through the static.

“Spiderman! Answer me!” Your voice cuts in and out, and despite being crushed under rubble with smoke filling his lungs, he reaches for the radio at his thigh.

He lifts it with a trembling hand, and his heart stops. It’s broken, snapped open with electricity sparking near the wires.

“Please—are you there? Spiderman! Check in!”

“Time, Static,” he manages to croak out.

Even through the static, the sheer panic in your voice is unmistakable. “The ambulances are on their way. Just hold on for a little longer—”

“What’s the time, Static?” he repeats with a wet cough.

You suck in a sharp breath. “Four minutes and twenty-three seconds. Now save your breath and stop talking!”

“Peter,” he croaks, coughing up more blood.

“W-what?” you stammer through tears. The sound makes his chest hurt more than the slab of concrete resting heavy on his ribs. “You’re breaking out.”

“Our little game—remember? Every successful mission, we exchange a fun fact,” he wheezes, fighting for air. “My name is Peter Parker.”

A broken, sobbing gasp escapes you. He glances down at the radio, watching the little light that indicates his microphone is working flicker in and out.

“Static? Are you still there?”

“I can’t hear you, Spiderman.”

The blue glow of your television screen is the only source of light in your dim apartment. Outside your window, New York City keeps moving, but inside, time feels like it has been frozen for seven agonizing days.

On the screen, a news anchor stands outside Queens Hospital Center, her face grave under the studio-lit broadcast.

“…we return to our top story tonight regarding Spiderman,” the reporter’s voice echoes through your quiet room. “It has been one week since the explosive incident at Grand Central Terminal that left the vigilante in critical condition. Authorities and medical staff at Queens Hospital Center have kept tight-lipped about his recovery.”

You pull your knees tighter into your chest, your fingers trembling as they wrap around a lukewarm mug of tea you haven’t touched.

“In a shocking turn of events earlier this morning, hospital administrators confirmed that Spiderman is no longer in their care,” the reporter continues. “According to sources, when attending nurses entered his private room to adjust his IVs and monitor his severe injuries, they found the hospital bed empty. There is no security footage explaining how or when the injured hero managed to slip past guards, leaving NYPD officials baffled—and deeply concerned given the extent of his internal trauma.”

Your eyes widen, and you press a hand over your mouth as a shaky exhale spills past your lips.

He woke up.

He survived.

You keep watching, waiting to see if the reporter will expose his identity. A part of you is already annoyed that these attention-hungry journalists would stoop so low now that he’s been admitted to a hospital. But another part of you desperately wants to know—because you felt like that might’ve been what he was trying to tell you over the radio right before the line cut out.

A heavy breath escapes you when the reporter doesn’t mention a name, and the broadcast switches to a story about local stray animals. You’re not even sure if the sigh you let out is one of relief or frustration.

You glance over at the radio resting on the couch beside you.

Your receiver light blinks green—it has been on this entire time.

For the past seven days, you’ve been sleeping with the radio clutched in your hands in hopes that you’ll hear his voice one more time. Even as you walk through the hallways of your university, moving from lecture to lecture, you keep an earpiece tucked in your ear so you won’t miss him if he calls.

A few more days pass, and you’re sitting at your desk with heavy eyes. A lamp at the corner of your desk emits a warm glow over the pages of your notebook. You feel like you’ve been awake for days, running on far too little sleep and not nearly enough caffeine to keep you going.

Your head rests heavily in your palm. A quick glance at the clock tells you it’s 3:41 in the morning.

With a tired sigh, you start to push your chair back—but the sudden sound of familiar static stops you in your tracks.

A sound that is usually so grating to your ears suddenly sounds like heaven.

You quickly scramble back to your desk, your hand swiping up the radio and lifting it to your ear.

“Hello?” you say, your heart racing. “Hello? Is someone there?”

The static cuts out for a second, and you pull the radio back to check the lights. Both indicator lights are glowing green, showing that you—and whoever is on the other line—are connected. The static crackles through again, and you press the receiver tight against your ear, holding your breath as you wait for them to speak first.

“—atic?”

That voice—so familiar, so gentle—rings out. You feel your heart leap straight into your throat. You’ve been waiting for days to hear him again, but you aren't prepared for what to say now that he's actually here.

“Sta—t—ic,” Peter’s voice cuts in and out before suddenly coming through crystal clear—clearer than the very first time you ever connected with him. “This is Spiderman. Are you there?”

Your heart swells with a profound wave of relief. Tears prick at your eyes, spilling down your cheeks before you can even stop them.

“Oh my God,” you breathe, your hand trembling as you press the radio against your forehead. “You’re okay. You’re here. Thank God. I—I thought I lost you. I was keeping up with the news, and when they said you fled the hospital—I hoped you were okay. I’ve been waiting for your call all week. I—”

“Hey, hey,” Peter coos softly on the other end. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’ve been here the whole time. I’m not going anywhere.”

You hear him rustling around on the other line, the soft friction of sheets sounding like he’s lying in bed. The thought of him resting comfortably in his own room rather than trapped in a sterile hospital bed makes your heart melt.

“Where have you been?” you ask, your voice cracking as you wipe a stray tear from your cheek. “Why didn’t you call sooner?”

“I know, I know… I’m sorry,” Peter says softly, his breath catching in a faint, painful wince that he tries to cover up with a dry laugh. “My suit was pretty much trashed, and the radio got crushed in the blast. It took everything in me just to crawl over to my workbench, and a few more days to rebuild the transmitter from scratch.”

A shaky breath leaves his lips. “With the radio broken, I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to find you again. I spent all this time rebuilding it—I even fixed the signal integration so both our voices would come through clearer.”

You let out a wet, teary laugh. “So that’s why you sound like that.”

You can picture him grinning on the other end. “A lot better, huh?”

That familiar, teasing tilt in his voice sends a wave of butterflies straight to your stomach. A soft laugh escapes you, and he chuckles in return. Then, as if savoring the sound of your joy, he breathes out softly.

“I missed hearing your voice.”

Your feet carry you over to the comfort of your mattress, and before you even realize it, you’re collapsing onto your bed, kicking your feet like a giddy, hopeless romantic.

“I missed hearing you, too. You’d better not let that happen again. If I can barely handle losing you for a week, I definitely can’t bear losing you forever,” you say, trying to pass it off as a joke, but the tremble in your voice betrays you.

Peter’s grin widens where he lies in bed, staring up at the ceiling. “I’ll make sure to be extra careful from here on out, just so you don’t lose me.”

You smile into your pillow. “Good.”

A comfortable silence settles between you two—not the awkward kind from when you first met, but a warm one, wrapping around you both like a blanket despite the distance. You set the radio down on the empty space beside your pillow, and he does the same. With the microphone improvements, you can hear his steady breathing on your end, and he can hear yours.

“Were you able to hear anything I said... the last time we spoke?” Peter asks softly.

You shake your head, the friction against your pillow rustling over the mic. “You were cutting out too much.”

He pauses, the soft sound of sheets shifting as he pulls his blanket up over his shoulders.

“It was about our game—the fun facts one,” he says, his voice careful, like he’s walking on eggshells.

You couldn’t catch much before the line broke down completely. Pet... That was all you had managed to hear. But a deep feeling in your gut tells you that whatever he said was a precious piece of himself—a piece he wanted you to have in case he didn’t make it.

You hold your breath, waiting to see if he’ll offer it up again.

“And since I completed a successful mission,” he continues, swallowing hard. “I thought I’d continue with that trade.”

You brace yourself, your heart clawing in your chest as you wait for the confession—for him to finally drop his guard and lay his identity on the line, just like you plan to do with yours.

Peter draws a slow, quiet breath.

“Do you… have a boyfriend?”

You blink.

The silence stretches for a long second, the sudden change in direction catching you so off guard that your mind does a hard reset. Of all the things you expected him to say—a big secret, a superhero revelation, a tender confession about his life—that was not on your bingo card.

“What?” you squeeze out, your voice squeaking slightly.

Over the line, Peter clears his throat awkwardly, a sudden rustle of sheets betraying how fast he just sat up to bury his face in his hands.

“O-or girlfriend! Sorry—I shouldn’t have assumed! I mean, you don’t have to answer! It’s just—it’s a fun fact! A personal fact! That’s how the game works, right? You tell me something, I tell you something… or—”

A helpless, snickering laugh bubbles up from your chest, breaking off his ramble.

“Spiderman,” you giggle, burying your blushing face deeper into your mattress.

“Yeah?” he yelps, sounding like a man standing on trial.

“No,” you answer, a wide grin spreading across your face. “No boyfriend. No girlfriend.”

A long, almost dramatic exhale breezes through the speaker, followed by the soft thud of Peter flopping back down onto his mattress.

“Oh, thank God,” he mutters, trying to keep it quiet enough so the microphone doesn’t catch it—but you hear it anyway. “I mean… cool. That’s cool.”

You snort. “Okay. You know how the game goes. Now it’s my turn to ask.”

“Do I have a girlfriend?” he prompts.

You shrug, taking the opportunity to tease him. “Or boyfriend. I don’t judge.”

A playful scoff leaves his lips, and you can already imagine him rolling his eyes. He’s quiet for a few seconds, making you think he’s just too flustered to answer. But when his voice comes through shaky, almost hesitant, you feel an unfamiliar tug at your heart.

“I—um… I used to have this girl,” he murmurs. “We were dating for a while—but it didn’t work out.”

The tone of his voice sends a shiver down your spine. He speaks like a man who’s been broken again and again, carrying a profound heartache you couldn’t even begin to measure. A small, selfish twinge of jealousy tugs at you, but you know it’s not your place.

“What happened?” The words spill out before you can stop them.

Peter sucks in a sharp breath, and you wince with regret for pushing too far.

“Well, that’s something you’re gonna have to ask the next time I complete a successful mission,” he says, trying to ease the tension with a playful tone, and you’re more than happy to fall right back into it.

You roll onto your back, looking up at your bedroom ceiling. Across the city, Peter does the exact same thing.

“Deal. But let’s not jump back into all that too soon, okay? Whatever crime happens out there, let the police handle it,” you say, pulling your blanket up to your chin. “I just want to keep you all to myself tonight.”

You want to slap yourself for how ridiculous you sound. He just opened up about a painful past relationship, and you immediately turn around and sound like a clingy girlfriend.

But Peter laughs—a full, rich sound that doesn't sound at all like he just survived a traumatic experience a week ago. It’s a laugh that never fails to make you smile.

“Usually, I’d oppose the idea of ignoring crime,” he says softly. “But for you? I’ll stay. For as long as you want me to.”

You smile, nuzzling your nose into the soft fabric of your blanket. “Good. Goodnight, Spiderman.”

“Goodnight, Static.”

And for the remainder of the night, neither of you switches the radio off, letting the quiet and comforting sound of each other’s breathing lull you to sleep.

It’s a brand new day, and Peter is running around New York getting his errands done. Laundry run, check. Grocery run, check. The last thing on his list is to pick up some flowers for Aunt May.

Right next to the small bodega where he always buys his flowers sits a busy coffee shop.

The front window is large enough to see everything and everyone inside—which is exactly why he has to do a double take at the person standing near the cashier.

He stops dead in his tracks, causing a hurried pedestrian to bump into his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Peter mumbles, but the man just shoots him a dirty look and keeps walking.

Standing inside the coffee shop is a face that’s all too familiar—someone he hasn’t seen in a long, long time.

Ned.

Peter’s feet are moving before he even realizes it. He hovers near the entrance, stepping aside for a few exiting customers before pushing the door open. Slipping into an empty seat near the front, he watches Ned chat with the barista. But Ned isn’t alone.

He’s standing next to a girl—a pretty girl, at that. And one he doesn’t recognize.

Peter smiles to himself, a swell of pride washing over him seeing his best friend doing well, and scoring a pretty girlfriend to date.

“And for the missus?” The barista holds up a paper cup, pen hovering over the cardboard as she waits.

You glance up at the menu board, though you don’t really need to. You know your order like the back of your hand.

“Can I get an extra-hot almond milk latte with one pump of sugar-free vanilla—”

Peter’s heart stops.

“—one pump of regular hazelnut…”

That voice. That familiar, sing-song cadence he hears every night through a staticky radio. The last voice he listened to when he nearly died just a few weeks ago.

“And two scoops of vanilla bean powder,” Peter mumbles to himself like a mantra.

“…and two scoops of vanilla bean powder?” you finish, flashing the barista a harmless, innocent smile.

The barista gives you a disbelieving look, and you chuckle awkwardly, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. The movement gives Peter a clear view of a small earpiece nestled right inside. Everything playing out before his eyes matches the picture he’d built in his head—except for you. You being this stunning was far beyond anything he could have imagined.

The barista finally finishes jotting your order down, and you and Ned turn to search for an open table. Peter holds his breath, watching your easy smile and the natural way you interact with his once best friend.

The pang in his chest is a feeling he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. Two people he cares about more than anything... so close, yet entirely out of reach.

His heightened spider-sense gives him the ability to hear almost anything, even from across the room. Yet right now, the ringing in his ears and the heavy thumping of his heart drown out every other sound. You and Ned approach an empty table with only a single chair, but you glance around and spot the unused chair across from Peter.

“Hey,” you smile politely—a soft, courteous tone reserved strictly for strangers, not your partner in crime. “Are you using this chair?”

This is it.

Finally, for the first time, he can introduce himself to you properly. He could bring both you and Ned back into his life with a single, simple greeting.

Hi, I’m Peter. Peter Parker. The guy you’ve been talking to over a flimsy radio these past few months.

Peter looks up at you, completely frozen where he sits. Your smile fades into a faint frown when he hesitates. Then, your eyes flicker briefly to the earpiece resting in his ear—identical to yours, worn for the exact same reason.

Just in case either of you calls in.

Before he loses you, Peter clears his throat. His hand subtly moves up to scratch his ear, hiding the earpiece with his knuckles before slipping it into his palm. When he finally speaks, he deliberately drops his voice a few pitches deeper—adding a slight rasp for good measure.

“No, go ahead.”

That polite smile returns, and you pull the chair away from his table. “Cool, thanks.”

You slide the chair up to the table you’re sharing with Ned, and just like that—unaware that you’ve completely flipped his world upside down and inside out—you fall right back into conversation with him.

The barista calls out your order with your name, and the sound of it is like music to his ears.

He repeats it quietly under his breath. It sounds natural, like a name that was always meant to be spoken in his voice.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t reveal his identity to you. Telling you his real name that night—when he was trapped under rubble and bleeding out—was just a lapse in judgment brought on by desperation. But now that he’s here, looking at you and his best friend in broad daylight, he knows he can’t risk letting you into his world.

Anyone who knows Peter Parker is Spiderman is a person bound to be lost. And Peter can’t afford to lose you.

Yet as he watches you sit across from him, tossing your head back with a laugh that is painfully familiar, it feels like he’s already lost you anyway.

“So, tell me more about this party.”

“Well, it’s a housewarming party,” you explain, tucking your hands into your pockets as you walk through the night streets of Queens. “Two of my friends moved into an apartment recently—so we’re celebrating tonight.”

Peter hums, leaning back in his chair and staring mindlessly at his screens. He folds a piece of paper, fiddling with it as his mind wanders to who those friends could be. Ned? And if so, he wonders who else he could be moving in with—if not him.

“That’s… cool,” he finally answers in an indifferent tone.

You round the corner, the sounds of the bustling city nightlife picking up on your microphone. “Yeah. And since I’ll be busy socializing, I won’t have my receiver on all night. But I’ll try my best to check in with you.”

Peter huffs a laugh through his nose. “I’m a big boy. You don’t need to check up on me.” He glances at the window. “I’m more worried about you, though.”

You step aside for a pedestrian who’s rushing past. “What for?”

Peter pushes himself out of his chair with a grunt, stepping up to the small window and looking down at the city street below. “Well, you’re a woman walking all by yourself at night. I hope your friends at least know where you’re at.”

You chuckle, pulling open the door of the small corner grocery store and being welcomed by a soft bell jingle.

“Don’t worry your head, Spiderman. If I constantly worry about my well-being just because I’m a woman, then I’ll never get anything done in this city.”

You’re greeted by a frail, older lady behind the counter, and you offer her a polite smile as you walk past. Making your way to the coolers in the back, you weigh your options between beer and seltzers.

“Do you think two cases of Budweiser is enough?” You ask Peter.

The bell chimes again, and a large man with a dark hoodie pulled over his face enters. You glance at him, and he holds your stare. You look back down.

Peter’s cackle draws you back in. “And you’re drinking?”

You can’t help but grin at the worry in his voice. Grabbing two cases—one in each hand—and shutting the refrigerator door, you head to the front counter. “Yes, because I’m an adult and should be enjoying myself. And you should be, too, Spiderman. It’s Friday night.”

A bitter smile dances on his lips. He should be enjoying himself—a night out with you, instead of being cooped up in his apartment, worrying about you getting wasted at a house party surrounded by men your age with grimy hands and bad intentions.

You set the cases on the counter, and the lady begins to ring you up. The man in the dark hoodie falls in line right behind you, holding just a pack of gum in his hand.

“Okay, I gotta head out. I’ll check in with you later tonight—”

The lady at the front counter has her attention locked on the man behind you, and she sharply gasps, ducking down immediately. Your head whips around, and you find yourself face to face with the black metal of a handgun.

“You know Spiderman?” the man before you asks in a deep gravelly voice, finger poised right above the trigger.

A pathetic, broken sound escapes you. You still have Peter on the line, and you hear the sudden panic in his voice the minute your microphone picks up your heavy breathing and whimper.

“Static? Who is that? What’s happening?”

“You must be mistaken,” you raise your hands in surrender, shoulders timid, as a bead of sweat rolls down your temple. “I—I don’t know Spiderman—”

“Bullshit!” the man shouts, backhanding you with the grip of the gun.

You cry out in pain, your body collapsing hard onto the floor as your hand flies to your cheek. Your earpiece falls out, Peter’s voice ringing out loudly in sheer panic. The man huffs an incredulous laugh as he crouches down to pick it up and lift it to his ear.

“Tell me your location—where are you? I’m coming—!”

“103rd Street,” the man answers with a grin. “That’s where your little lady is at—on the floor, bleeding outta her lip.”

The wind whips loudly through the earpiece, audible even from where you’re prone on the ground.

“Don’t lay a fucking hand on her,” Peter’s voice crackles through the wind and speaker. “What do you want from me?”

The man only chuckles, turning the small earpiece in his fingers, unfazed by the threat of a friendly neighborhood superhero.

“That’s the thing with people like you who try to play hero,” the man says, his tone dripping with bitter resentment. “You stop guys like us, but what you fail to realize is that we aren’t the bad guys at all, Spiderman. While you sit in your fancy little apartment, the rest of us are out here fighting for scraps just to survive—and it’s people like you who keep stopping us.”

He looks down at you, lying on the cold floor with a trembling hand pressed against your bleeding lip.

“We’re just trying to eat,” the man spits into the receiver. “So if a guy like me has to take a little collateral to get your attention, or to get a quick payday—that’s not evil. That’s just survival. There’s a lot of money on your head, Spiderman. Money that can help an average person like me tremendously.”

The sharp thwip of a web fires through the speaker, followed by the harsh gust of the open night sky.

If it were anyone else being held hostage, maybe Peter would extend the courtesy of hearing him out. But he’s not holding just any person. He’s holding you—the only person Peter has opened his heart to in years. The only voice he looks forward to, the one that gives him hope to push through to a brand-new day. Right now, there isn’t a single shred of restraint left in Peter’s mind—not when your life is on the line because of him.

“I don’t give a shit about your excuse,” Peter spits, whipping around a sharp corner as he flies onto 103rd Street. “If you hurt her again before I get there, I swear to God—”

“It’s too late, Spiderman.”

From high above, Peter spots the grocery store below. The white lenses of his mask widen as he peers through the large front windows, catching sight of you scrambling backward in fear, hands raised in surrender.

The man above you stands straight and lifts the gun. Peter’s eyes lock onto the finger resting against the trigger. With one launch off the side of a building, he catapults himself straight through the glass windows.

The explosion of glass shatters in time with the gunshot. As the bullet travels through the barrel of the gun, Peter collides into the man, sending him flying sideways and the gun tilting upwards. The bullet hits the ceiling, the fluorescent lights exploding with electricity as the roof panel falls. You quickly scramble away so it doesn’t hit you.

Peter sends the man flying from one window to another, rolling around on the pavement outside until he lands on top. There is no amount of webs he can use to convey his anger—so he settles with his fists.

One punch after another, one hit after brutal hit. Blood flies out of the man’s face, tainting Peter’s suit with red. It splatters across his knuckles, and he delivers a hit so violent that it sprays right over the white lenses of his mask.

“Spiderman, stop!”

You shout, but the ringing in his ears is louder.

Tears prick at his eyes behind the mask as he continues raining down punches. The man lost consciousness long ago, but Peter isn’t done. He can’t rest knowing anyone who threatens to hurt you is free to walk these streets.

He can’t rest until he knows, for certain, that you’re safe from danger.

He cocks his fist back one last time, with every intention of putting this guy down for good—until your body crashes into his, your arms wrapping tightly around his shoulders. His arm freezes mid-air, suddenly weighing a ton.

“Stop! It’s over—it’s done,” you try to reassure him but your voice comes in a panicked and rushed tone. Sirens sound in the distance. “The police are coming.”

Peter looks around, his chest heaving.

Several bystanders have stopped to stare, hands covering their mouths after witnessing such a brutal act by a man who was supposed to be a savior to all.

He curses under his breath, one arm wrapping tightly around your body.

“Hold on,” he says, before slinging a web to the highest point of the building next to you and launching you both into the night sky.

You bury your face in his chest, legs wrapped tightly around his waist as you hold on to him for dear life. You’re too terrified to look down. So instead, you glance up at the man holding you—the very man you’ve dedicated your life to assisting these past few months.

He doesn’t look like the friendly Spiderman you see on television or in the newspapers.

Blood lays over his mask like a veil, and you can feel his heart racing against yours from how tightly you’re holding him.

He doesn’t say a word until he finds a discreet alleyway. Then, finally, he sets you down gently.

Your eyes don’t leave his face even as you release your grip on him. You stand in front of him, eyes wide and lips parted as you stare at the man you’ve been dying to meet for what feels like years. But while this is your first time seeing him, it isn’t his first time seeing you.

There are so many things you wanted to say, but none of them come out. You never expected your first meeting to be like this—under circumstances where he tarnishes his reputation and your face bloodied and bruised.

“I…” your voice wavers, desperate to say anything, terrified he might swing away at any second.

Peter swipes his bloodied hand against his thigh to clean it before stepping forward, gently cupping your face in both hands. The lenses of his mask are so expressive, shifting with every furrow of his brow. Even behind it, his expression is wrecked.

“Look at what he did to you,” his voice cracks, sounding so broken, like it’s all his fault.

You huff a soft laugh, resting your palm over his knuckles as you lean into his touch. “If I’d known I was going to see you tonight, I probably would’ve worn more makeup.”

You try to joke, but he doesn’t laugh. His thumb gently brushes over the torn skin at your cheekbone, then down to your busted lip.

“I can’t believe you’re right here,” he breathes. “And I’m holding you.”

Peter should get your injuries fixed up, take you somewhere safe, or even take you home, but doing that means he’ll have to say goodbye—and he doesn’t know when he’ll give himself the chance to be this selfish again.

For the first time in years, it feels like he’s found salvation. After everything, he tries to convince himself he deserves this—even if it's just for a few minutes.

“You know what I look like,” you smile painfully. “Yet, I still don’t know a single thing about you.”

Peter bites the inside of his cheek to keep from breaking down. “I’m sorry.”

You step closer, your hands slowly finding the hem of his mask resting around his neck. With trembling fingers, you slowly lift it up—giving him every opportunity to pull away if he wants to—holding your breath as you raise it over his nose. Brown curly hair decorates the nape of his neck.

As you try to tug it up higher, his hands find your wrists, gently stopping you. “I can’t.”

With a quiet nod, your hands fall back down to his cheeks, cupping them softly. Your thumb traces the curve of his cheekbone, his jawline, and the plump of his bottom lip.

The press of your thumb against his lower lip makes his breath hitch. He closes his eyes, leaning into your touch—the first grace of warmth he’s felt in forever.

His white lenses open again, and his gaze drops to your lips—bruised, bleeding, and parting softly. The tension between you two suffocates him, and without waiting another impatient second, Peter tilts his head down and kisses you.

His lips press against yours, gentle and soft. And when you return the kiss, he feels like he’s in heaven. He takes his time with you, his lips exploring yours and savoring the quiet sweetness of the moment. Your hands are warm against his cheeks, and his hand finds your waist, respectfully holding you close as his heart beats as one with yours.

You kiss until you both run out of breath, finally pulling away to rest your foreheads against each other.

Peter shuts his eyes, breathing in your scent. “I wanted to do that from the moment I first laid eyes on you.”

“I am detecting a sudden increase in heart-rate and body warmth—”

“Shut up, Evie.”

You chuckle, your teeth catching your bottom lip while heart beats wildly in your chest.

“A successful mission,” you smile up at him. “You know what that means.”

He chuckles at that, the sound sending butterflies to your stomach now that you’re hearing it up close for the first time.

“You’re right. You go first.” He prompts.

You tell him your name, but he doesn’t react the way you thought he would after hearing it for the first time. He smiles—almost boyish, with kiss-swollen lips. It feels as though he’s known your name all along.

Peter repeats it softly. “It’s beautiful,” he says.

Warmth fills you from head to toe. You were right. You loved hearing the sound of your name in his voice.

You tilt your head, leaning in until your nose grazes against his. “What’s yours—”

Frantic footsteps echo just outside the alleyway.

Peter’s senses tingle and reverberate through his entire frame. Everything in his body is screaming at him to do one thing: run.

Two people turn the corner, and he freezes at the sight.

“Oh my god, there you are!” Ned shouts frantically, catching his breath. “We were wondering why you weren’t answering our calls—then someone at the party said there was an accident happening on 103rd Street—which is where you were going—and wait, is that Spiderman?”

Standing right behind him is MJ.

“You scared us!” she yelps, running to you with a hug. You turn around with a weary smile and a relieved sigh.

“I’m okay, you guys shouldn’t have left to come find me. It was dangerous back there, and yes,” you motion behind you, “this is—”

Peter doesn’t even let you finish. He pulls his mask down and, without another word, zips up and out, moving through the dark like a ghost in the night. All the warmth vanishes like the gust of wind he leaves behind as he disappears into the air.

“God,” Ned breathes, the three of you standing dumbfounded in the alleyway as you watch him disappear around the corner. “See! It’s like I told you, MJ! He’s like Peter Pan—if you really believe in him, he’ll show up!”

“Okay—you know, your fanboying really freaks me out,” MJ says, making a face. She looks back at you. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re okay—”

A shudder passes through your body.

My name is Peter Parker.

“Peter,” you whisper with a sudden realization.

📝 first time writing for peter parker kinda nervous !! "all these things that i've done" by the killers was on repeat while writing this. for the first time in a while, i've had a lot of fun and passion writing a marvel fic again, and i hope you can feel it when you read this fic. if you've made it this far, as always thank you so much for taking the time to read my work. interactions are always appreciated, I love reading every bit of them! I do not have a tag list. to get notified for fic updates, please follow @notify-superbassbuck and turn on notifications.

When you had first met the man in the red spandex, how he came tumbling into your window with a limp and disturbing the silence you found yourself resting in. You assumed it was a one time thing, that he wouldn’t remember your face in the thousands of civilians he saved everyday; then he appeared at your window again, claiming he needed help stitching a wound on his chest and this was the first place he stumbled, or swung across.

Coming to your flat twice was a coincidence, but then he perched on your fire escaped for a third time. Three times became five. Then five times became every day for an entire week. Five months after meeting you, he had become part of your routine. A routine that consisted of Spiderman currently being lounged back on your couch, his foot nudging your own as he pestered you with questions about your upcoming article.

If you didn’t find it so endearing you would’ve kicked him out by now. But something about Spiderman made you feel seen, like he’d known you his whole life. Of course, you couldn’t say the same.

You had no idea who Spiderman was beneath his mask. You only knew what he wanted you to know about him and what the rest of New York knew about him; that he saves the city and the neighbourhood loves him. And you despised yourself for falling for a man you’ve never truly met.

FIVE MONTHS AGO

You were nose deep into an article that was due to be published the next day. Your back was aching from being hunched over your laptop and your eyes were burning from reading word after word, flickering through countless sources and making sure your work had zero to no flaws. 

Being so preoccupied with your writing, you failed to notice the superhero slumped on your fire escape. His suit was torn at the torso, drops of blood staining the skin that peeked out. He reached the hand that wasn’t clutched to his side towards your closed window and pried it open, grunting as his body protested against the movement.

You flinched as his hand connected with the glass, the sudden arrival causing you to jolt to your feet. “What the—” You yelped as Spiderman shuffled his body through the window, landing harshly against the wooden flooring.

“Oh, God.” He wheezed out, rolling onto his back and coughing as he gripped his ribs. He looked around the room until his eyes landed on you standing beside the chair that had fallen when you stood, your brows furrowed and eyes blinking rapidly as if you were trying to battle with reality and your imagination as they comprehend that Spiderman was a bloody mess in the middle of your flat.

Peter’s eyes widened as he took in your shocked state, “I’m sorry! I’m not here to hurt you!” He stumbled over his words as he tried to comfort you while his body screamed the opposite, the blood seeping into the floorboards.

“I promise I’ll clean all this up,” He gestured to the faint red marks and pulled himself up into a sitting position, “Wouldn’t want you getting in trouble with your landlord because of my mess. I know mine charges me when I—“

“Why are you in my apartment?” You questioned, your feet rooted to the spot you stood up in. “Right, I’m sorry.” Spiderman nodded and braced a hand on the window sill, “I got into this huge fight with Scorpion."

Peter stood slowly, his voice strained as he continued, “It was like, big potato stuff.” He watched you squint your eyes, “It’s— whatever, nevermind. And I was swinging back and needed a place to crash for a second, that’s all.”

You nodded and loosened the tension in your shoulders, “That’s reasonable.” You could almost see a weak smile behind Spiderman’s mask, “Do you need some help?”

Peter’s body relaxed at your question. Your voice was hesitant and soft, like you were worried about crossing a boundary with a masked superhero even if it was necessary. He liked the consideration, he hadn’t experienced it for a while.

“I’m fine. I heal quicker than…” His voice trailed off as his eyes focused on your open laptop behind you. He honed in on the names written in bold, titling your piece before his crash landing had disturbed you.

“Are you a journalist?” Peter titled his head, his voice quirking in interest. You turned to look at the article with its deadline rapidly approaching, “Yeah.” You responded.

“Writing a piece on the New Avengers?” His voice was almost teasing and for the first time that night, Peter saw a smile creep up on your face and ignored the surge he felt in his chest as a result. 

“Something like that. My boss asked me to do it but it’s practically impossible to find an image to go with it,” You repositioned your chair and sat in it, pulling up a tab that showed Yelena flipping off the cameras that spotted her own her way to her ‘office’, “Any that are appropriate at least.”

Peter laughed as he looked at the photo, “I could help you with that, if you want. To compensate for me crashing in like this." You turned to look at him and gestured towards his mask, “What? Are you a photographer under there?”

Spiderman shrugged, instantly regretting the movement as he winced in pain, “One with connections,” He watched you raise your eyebrows in interest, “Look, I’ll talk to Yelena and organise a photo with her.”

“I want two pictures.” You challenged, watching how the red mask disguised the grin that was gracing Peter’s face. “I’ll give you three.” He chuckled.

You pursed your lips and pretended to dwell on the offer, “Okay. You’ve got yourself a deal, Spiderman.” You nodded turned sideways in your seat to face him completely. “And you’re pretty lenient, maybe I should let you crash in my place more often.” You joked.

Peter, failing to pick up on your sarcasm, tilted his head in questioning, “Really?” You nodded, “Totally, I’ve been looking for a roommate.” 

You laughed to yourself and turned back to your open laptop, fingers itching closer to the keyboard as your mind switched back to its journalistic state. 

Across from you, Peter (or who you knew strictly as Spiderman) glanced around the apartment before his eyes landed back on you. He hadn’t been inside someone else’s home since everyone forgot who he was, no one knew him well enough to entrust him to do so.

For the first time in years, Peter didn’t feel like he was talking to someone through Spiderman. He was existing in the moment as Peter Parker, just behind a mask that was practically glued at the seams with past guilt. 

You treated him normally. Well, as normally as someone could do when a masked hero stumbles into their apartment when they’re in the middle of an article with a deadline glaring straight at them. 

Peter liked normality. He didn’t experience it much. He liked existing outside of the mask, to have someone talk to him and not see him the same way everyone else in New York City does, as Spiderman. To have a conversation, although brief, that didn’t revolve around himself and how he took down Tombstone with ease, or perhaps the time he was gifted with the key to the city; it was almost refreshing for Peter to dote on someone else this time, rather than receiving.

So, he took up your offer of crashing in your place more often. Whether you were serious or not (you definitely weren’t but you appreciate his company nonetheless), Peter liked having someone in his unpredictable world. 

He enjoyed having a reason to go out on patrol every night, swinging past your window to check if you were safe or hovering on the fire escape until he built up the courage to tap gently on the glass. Because seeing your face smiling up at him after a long day of glaring into eyes that wanted him dead, ensured him that everything he has ever done was worth it.

PRESENT DAY

"What if I interviewed you?"

Your words snapped Peter out of his thoughts, “What?” He laughed as you hastily removed your laptop from where it was perched in front of you and onto the coffee table, twisting your body to face the masked man lounging on your couch.

“What if I interviewed you? As Spiderman.” You repeated yourself. Although you couldn’t see his face, the squinted lenses and tilted head told you that the man sitting opposite you wasn’t understanding your proposition.

“Come on,” You groaned and shuffled closer to Spiderman, “I’ve been put on the Superhero column ever since my article about the New Avengers, but imagine if I got a personal interview with the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman.”

Peter opened his mouth to reply but you quickly continued, “I’ll make you sound good. I promise.” 

“And,” You raised your eyebrows and lowered your pitch, trying to convince the arachnid who was silently deliberating, “People read my columns. The more people that like you, the more J. Jonah Jameson gets annoyed because people aren’t falling for his whole ‘Spiderman is the root of all evil’ bullshit.” 

Peter scoffed, “I don’t care what Jameson thinks of me.” You hummed, “You definitely do, you listen to his podcast on my account, Spidey. Did you forget we share one?”

Spiderman groaned and let his head fall on the back of the couch, realising that he had been caught out and perhaps a little positive publicity would do him some good; especially after he’d grown to think the world hated him before they forgot him.

“Yeah. I’ll let you interview me.” He finally said. A wide smile grew on your face and Peter understood why a part of him wanted to agree to this in the first place.

“Really?” Your voice barely contained your excitement and Peter thanked everything that he had a bright red mask covering his face, although it told the same story as what colour his cheeks were painted as.

Peter nodded, “Sure. It'll be fun.” You practically leaped out of your seat and rounded the kitchen counter, grabbing the voice recorder from where it was tossed with your stacks of notepads and pens, fiddling with it before placing it on the coffee table in front of Peter.

“Let's do it right now.” You pressed the record button and lent back in your seat, watching as Spiderman’s head darted between the device and you.

“Are you serious? Like— Right now? Right now?” He choked out and you nodded with a barely suppressed grin. 

Peter leaned up, straightening his posture and dusting off any crumbs he had resting on his suit. He reached a hand up to fix his hair before he realised it was flattened underneath his suit. He glanced over at you looking at him with a bewildered look, “What?”

“You know this isn’t filming you, right? Just your voice.” You gestured towards him and pressed your lips together to stop the smirk from etching across your face.

Peter scoffed and relaxed his body, attempting to be nonchalant about the movement but his awkwardness betrayed him, “Totally,” He stayed quiet for a moment before pointing at the voice recorder, “Can we start again?”

You chuckled, “That can just be off the record.” The lenses in Spiderman’s suit blinked twice, “Off the what now—”

“So, Spiderman.” You cut him off, your voice turning slightly professional but teetering on the edge of teasing.

Peter stared at you for a moment before leaning forwards and resting his elbows on his knees, he responded by saying your name in the same tone. You wished you could see the smile underneath his mask, but you doubted you would be able to source a good interview if the eyes you’ve never seen, but knew were beautiful, bored into your own.

“Let’s start with the obvious,” You started, “People have noticed you’ve ditched the web-shooters, have you developed an ability to swing without them?”

Peter turned his wrist and rubbed the spot the web-shooters used to occupy, “Well, apparently my body has become more arachnid over time.” You nodded, “Are you more human or more spider then?”

“I’m—” Peter chuckled, “I’m both. Somehow." You smiled at him and gave him a reassuring nod that his response was something the fans of your column would want to hear. “I just hope I don’t get a web block like... my old friend.”

You watched as Spiderman nodded at you, silently asking to move onto the next question. “It’s been a couple of years since the first and only appearance of the Night Monkey, so tell us right here and right now, Spiderman. Was that you?”

“Nope. Not me. Not at all.” You laughed as he nodded his head enthusiastically, his words completely contradicting his actions, “Never met the guy, he seems nice though.”

“Of course you’d say that,” You shook your head at him and tried to hide your smile, leaning down and picking up the voice recorder to hold close to your mouth, “Just for reader’s satisfaction and future me writing this that can’t see him, Spiderman has something to tell you.”

You leaned forwards and held the voice recorder to Spiderman’s face, the device catching his defeated sigh, “Yes. I was the Night Monkey.” 

Peter nudged your foot with his own as you returned to your seat opposite him, a proud smile on your face and singing a teasing, “Thank you!” Before placing the device back to its spot on the table between coasters and miscellaneous trinkets.

“You know, you have a lot of young fans out there,” Peter looked over at you with a softened smile that you couldn’t see as you began your question, “If you had to give them one piece of advice, what would it be?”

Peter took a deep breath and tore his gaze off you, “Someone told me something once and it stuck with me,” He cleared his throat and felt his mind begin to wander to places that left an irreversible scar on him, “Someone that meant a lot to me.”

You didn’t say anything, you respected the silence Spiderman left as he fiddled with the fabric of his suit. “She told me once,” He swallowed the nausea that would always remain at the pit of his stomach, “With great power, there must also come great responsibility.”

Your eyes softened as you watched the man sit in a shell of someone he’d yet to introduce you to. “So… that would be my advice.” He nodded and scratched the back of his neck.

“That’s beautiful,” You smiled gently, “She sounds smart.” Peter looked at you, a grateful smile etching onto his face as you brought light onto a woman you’d never met. 

“She would’ve loved you.” Peter wondered out loud, his eyes marking the way you breathed out and the tension in your face vanished, you truly looked moved by his words. May really would have loved you.

You’ve never seen Spiderman like this before. You never knew he could feel vulnerable or open up to you like this. This was the first thing he had ever told you about himself that didn’t involve what was already plastered across billboards around New York, that wasn’t centred around which crime faction he took down before he arrived, or didn’t start with ‘I beat Scorpion again tonight and it was awesome’; it was like the bottom of his mask had lifted and you saw a glimpse of the man you’d found yourself falling for.

When Spiderman first stumbled into your apartment, it was never in your intentions to fall in love with him. Because falling in love with a superhero was stupid and irrational, but it was a trap that was so easy to fall into.

The fact that over the course of five months, he’d never found the comfort you discovered in him to be reciprocated crushed you. You’d told him parts of your life you never uttered to another, and he told you the same story about himself that you’d heard from your co-workers. It wasn’t like you expected him to tell you his life story, but the absolute refusal to even hint at his true self behind the mask felt disheartening.

You thought you were being selfish in your mindset. And perhaps you were. But you can only push yourself so far until you’re exhausted in love with a man you’ve never known.

“I’ve never—” You wanted to say, you or we’ve never seen him like this before. But a part of you bit at the thought of it being too insensitive. So you gently moved around the statement.

“You seem like a good person, Spiderman.” His lenses blinked at you, “Really.” You reassured him.

You clasped your hands together, “That person under the mask. Who is he?”

Spiderman’s eyes widened and he leapt out of his seat, hands frantically reaching for the voice recorder, “What are you doing?” He borderline yelled, his voice panicked.

You flinched at his sudden movement and slapped his gloved hand away from the device, responding in the same tone, “What are you doing?” Spiderman stumbled over his words, alternating between scoffing and mumbling incoherent words before landing on, “You can’t ask me that!”

You squinted your eyes at him and he waved his hands about exasperated, “You don’t even know my identity! I’m not gonna answer it in some stupid superhero column!”

“First of all, what’s with the hostility towards the superhero column?” You started and watched Spiderman pace down the length of your living room, “And secondly, that’s not what I was asking you!”

Peter whipped his head around and froze, “That was your exact words!” You rolled your eyes and stood up with him, “I wasn’t. I was just trying to make it sound all cool and interesting.” You heard the hero whisper, ‘Journalists and their twisted words’ under his breath.

“I was just asking what you’re like under… you know.” You sighed and gestured towards his red and blue suit. Spiderman looked down at himself and shook his head in question, “You know?” He repeated your words.

You scratched the back of your head as you thought of unprompted questions on the spot, “Like… What's the first thing Spiderman thinks about when he wakes up?” You smiled, thinking your question was reasonable and a gentle start.

“That’s— no, it’s too deep.” He immediately shut down your question and ignored how the smile instantly dropped from your face. “Are you serious?” Your voice sounded unconvinced, as if he was about to turn around laughing and answer a question with the sound of a smile in his tone.

“Yeah!” Peter yelped, “Anything I say can be incriminating! You know I have a fan club of people trying to figure out my identity and one little slip…” His voice trailed off as he mumbled the times he’d open the internet and find people drawing what they thought his face looked like.

You stood awkwardly across from him, contradicting his stressed state as you attempted to tone down the questions brewing in your mind. “Okay,” You hummed, “What’s Spiderman’s favourite take out?”

The question was stupid. It meant nothing in terms of journalism, you were just weighing out the boundary between Spiderman’s identity and his definition of ‘incriminating evidence’. He stayed silent, you could only see his jaw tighten under the mask.

You gave him another grace period of quiet as he thought of some lie he could say, something like stating his least favourite take out just so the question could be off his back.

When he stayed silent, you furrowed your brows, “You won’t even answer that?” Spiderman shook his head and leaned back against the wall near the window, “You know I can’t.”

You looked at him in disbelief before snatching the voice recorder off the table, pressing the button to pause your audio, “Okay. Off the record, what is it?” Spiderman crossed his arms over his chest, “Which question?”

“You pick.” You pressed your lips together as embarrassment flooded your veins, “You won’t even tell me?” You muttered as he refused to answer your question, let alone look your way.

Peter sighed, “I… Can we just continue with the interview? Let’s go back to the big slash small potato stuff, please?” He pointed to the recorder balanced between your fingers.

You stared at him, humiliated at the prospect of you telling him about your life every time he stopped by and him unwilling to tell you the bare minimum about himself; he didn’t like you enough to tell you what his favourite meal was. You felt like you were standing in the middle of a public humiliation ritual.

You took a deep breath, feeling annoyance brewing inside you, “Fine,” You pressed the record button and tossed the voice recorder back on the table, “Tell me, Spiderman. Why do you keep your cards so close to your chest?”

Peter’s arms dropped to his side, “Are we—” He felt guilt swarming in his chest, “Are we really doing this right now?”

You shrugged and sat yourself back down, “Just asking a question. You know, doing my job.”

“Do you hide everything about yourself to everyone?” You asked him, raising your eyebrows when his body language shifted slightly, his shoulders hunching in on himself.

When he refused to give you a verbal reaction, you pressed into the bruise that was forming, “Or just the woman you’ve practically lived with for months?”

“Don’t.” Peter mumbled. He knew you were right and you had every reason to feel angry in this moment but every time he tried to let someone in, his mind replayed the events that changed his life and the people that were no longer in it. 

He’d kept you for this long. He should be thankful for the little time you had together, but every selfish part of him wanted more.

You scoffed, “Why do you keep her at arms length and refuse to give her a reason to trust you?” Your voice remained calm but the fury etched into your face told Peter all he needed to know.

You slowly stood up and walked towards him, pointing to the window where civilians swarmed the streets. Peter followed your finger and looked down at them, walking around unbeknownst to the hero perched in the apartment above them, seconds away from losing another person he loved.

When Peter turned his head back to look at you, your eyes were slightly watery, “Or do you just see her the same way you see the rest of them?”

Peter wanted to respond. He really did. But he couldn’t fathom the thought of you, the person he’d grown to love, seeing yourself through what you thought were his eyes. And he despised himself for letting you think that way.

“This isn’t going well, is it?” Peter murmured, his heart pounding as you turned away from him and picked up the voice recorder, turning it off and saying a barely audible, “No.”

He sighed and traced his fingers against the window sill, “I should leave. You know, the city needs me.” He tried to joke but you had already rounded into the kitchen, taking his heart with you.

Peter pulled the window open and was about to crawl out before he heard your voice echo from the other room, “It’s probably for the best.” You sounded defeated. He backed away from the window and followed in your footsteps, watching as you gathered the dirty utensils and placed them in the sink.

“This wasn’t working anyway.” You sighed and turned the tap on, drawing out the sound of Spiderman’s heart dropping into his stomach.

“What do you mean?” Peter swallowed. You turned around and gestured between the two of you, “This. It’s better it ends now.”

The lenses in Spiderman’s suit blinked twice and he shook his head, “I don’t want this to end—” “You don’t get to decide that.” You interrupted him.

“Yes, I do.” Peter walked towards you, “I know that you’re the only thing I think about when I’m on patrol. Knowing that I get to come back here after is the only reason I do it—”

“I don’t even know you!” You shouted, turning the tap off and facing him completely. You’ve never seen Spiderman so still, like one wrong movement and the floor would cave underneath him. If you looked close enough, you could just about see a frown painted into his masked face.

“What?” His voice was borderlining on timid, his hand wound together like he was trying to ground himself back to the shattering reality he found the two of you in.

You sighed sadly, “I don’t even know your name. I have no idea what you look like. You don’t let me know anything about you; what you’re interests are, the life you’ve lived this entire time, who exists underneath this mask,” Your fingers gently grazed against the fabric of his masked, tracing the cheekbones you’d never see, “You’re saying all this but I only get to see the same parts of you that the rest of the world does too.”

Peter leant into your palm, closing his eyes at the contact that was blocked by the barrier that felt molded into his skin. After losing everything many years ago, Peter didn’t know how to exist as Peter Parker. He felt like Spiderman was a necessary part of him now, something he couldn’t live without.

“I’m doing this to protect you. I need you to trust me…” Peter’s hands wrapped around your wrists, keeping your hands pressed against his face just so he could savour the moment, knowing it wouldn’t last much longer.

You shook your head, “I don’t think I can give that to you.” Peter pulled back slightly so he could see your face, furrowing his brows as he whispered, “You don’t trust me anymore? Is that what this is?”

“You never gave me a reason to,” You closed your eyes and rested your forehead against his own, “And how can I trust someone I’ve never met?"

Peter closed his eyes and tightened his grip against you, trying to press you further into his embrace before he lost you for good. Maybe this was for the best. Spiderman would be far enough away to keep you from danger, protecting you just as he promised himself to do so the second he laid eyes on you.

But Peter Parker would miss you. He didn’t know if his unmasked self could handle living without you. 

Peter had lost so many people in his life, and you were another to add onto the tally. If he let you go, that was.

He slowly let go of you and detached his body and heart from you. He backed out of the kitchen, his eyes never leaving your own as you stood still. Spiderman walked towards the open window and placed a hand on it.

You watched him hover, wondering if you should try to reach him one more time. But you protested against it. 

Spiderman spared you one last glance before ducking out of the window, swinging into nearby sirens as New York called his name. It was the right decision, Peter told himself. He had to let you go, even if a selfish part of him yearned to stay.

𝐏𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐒 selfish. He was the most selfish man he knew.

Because after a day of trying to forget you and move on, Peter found himself perched on your fire escape with his knuckles tapping against the glass of your window.

The one night Peter didn’t visit you in your apartment was pure hell. He’d swung there on instinct and almost squeezed his way in before he remembered the reason his mask felt suffocating the entire day. 

He felt physically sick to see you hadn’t left the living room light on for him to welcome himself in, with your coffee machine fully restocked in the kitchen for his free use. You weren’t even in your usual spot when he passed. You’d usually be tucked under a blanket on the couch, waiting up for him as seeing him was your favourite part of the day, or it used to be.

He should’ve stayed away, it would be protecting you. But Peter was hurting you and him in doing so. 

His knuckles connected with the glass twice, his heart pounding in his chest as he watched the living room light flick on. You froze as you saw the masked hero crouched on your fire escape, a pair of flowers tight in his shaking grip.

You slowly walked towards the window, not breaking eye contact with Spiderman as you lifted the window, the chill air of New York brushing against your bare skin.

Neither of you spoke for a moment. Your eyes flickered between the flowers and him, a dreadful sense of hope accompanying your romantic heart.

“I read your column.” Peter said. Your face remaining motionless, you hadn’t expected him to keep tabs on you especially after the short break you two had from each other.

“Why didn’t you publish my interview?” Peter whispered, his grip tightening on the flowers and ignoring his worried state that the stems would snap off before he could hand them to you.

You took a deep breath, “No offence, but it was kind of a shit interview.” Peter huffed out a laugh which made you smile. Peter’s chest felt tighter as he realised 24 hours without your grin made the world seem cold.

“And I knew it would hurt you if I published it. You were vulnerable and I like you too much to do that to you.” You finished and stepped back from the window slightly, offering him to move an inch closer.

Peter leaned closer and nudged the flowers to brush the tips of your fingers, “I promise everything I’m doing is to protect you. You not knowing me is for the better and it’s the responsible thing to do.” 

“But I can’t do it. I can’t get you out of my head. Everytime I try to swing home, I always find myself heading to your place first because you consume my every thought. It’s so unbelievably selfish of me but I don’t think I can live my life without you. I’m in love with you and it kills me knowing I was the only thing standing in our way.” Peter said, his voice wavering.

You furrowed your brows, “Was?” Peter nodded and handed you the flowers, his hands wound with your own.

“I want you to know me and see my face. But honestly, I think I’ll die the second your eyes meet my own.” You laughed as Peter swallowed his nerves, “Every punch I take, I think about the day you’ll see my face stitched up and bruised, that you’ll think this was a mistake. That I’m not the one you want to be with.”

You shook your head, “I like Spiderman a lot. I really do.” You removed your hands from his and let them trace up his neck and fiddle with the area that disconnected his mask from the rest of his suit, “But you… Whoever you are under there. I know that I love you more.”

“You love me?” Peter whispered as you gently lifted the bottom of his mask.

You smiled softly, “I do.” Spiderman placed his hands on top of your own, guiding you to expose the bottom half of his face.

Peter couldn’t find it in himself to wait any longer. With his mouth and jaw visible to you, he placed his hands on your cheeks and pressed your lips together.

You gasped into the kiss and Peter’s hand drifted from your cheek to the back of your head, intertwining with your hair and tugging you impossibly closer. His lips were soft and everything you had imagined them to be. You were gentle with the bruise that was forming on the right side of his jaw, your fingers grazing the skin around it as he lost himself in the kiss.

You were about to pull back from the kiss to check if your mind was playing tricks on you and if you were kissing Spiderman, but when his lips chased your own from the split second of losing contact, you knew you were finally kissing the man you loved.

Spiderman pulled back slowly, pressing quick kisses on your lips as he forced himself back for air. He looked between your flustered face and swollen lips, every part of him yearning to lean back in.

The top half of his face was still covered. You lifted your hands to pull the mask back completely but he caught your hands mid-air. 

You tilted your head in confusion and he snatched the flowers from your hands, “I love you. I’ll be right back.” He pressed his lips to your in a chaste kiss before tugging his mask back down and swinging away from the fire escape.

You stood there dumbfounded, leaning through the open window where you once locked lips with the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman, the superhero that was in love with you.

Your thoughts were cut off immediately as you heard frantic knocking coming from your front door. You stepped away from the window and brushed your clothes, trying to look presentable to whoever showed up and trying not to look like you’d been making out with a man perched on your fire escape.

You pulled open your front door and stood face to face with the most attractive man you’ve ever seen. His brunette hair was curly, a slight mess on top of his head as if he’d appeared here in a rush. His clothes were crumpled and you were sure his jacket was thrown on inside out.

His face was adorning the most beautiful smile you’ve seen, pure unadulterated joy etched between the lines. His brown eyes stared directly into your own and you were sure you’ve seen them in some way before.

And in his hands were the flowers Spiderman had brought you. 

The words got caught in the back of your throat as you looked back up at him, his eyes watering as he looked at you. He nodded at you, heart constraining in his chest as you breathed out a laugh in disbelief, the smile of the woman he loved staring straight back at him.

“I’m Peter, by the way.” He smiled and handed you the flowers. Again.

how i feel writing for peter for the first time in 5 years / hope u liked and this didn't suck lolllll