kittyh3adphon3s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That had been one year ago. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A promise was a promise. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The computer’s monotone voice broke through the silence. 

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

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

“Message already sent.”  

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

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

Oh fuck. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You nodded, turning toward the workstation. 

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

“EV?” 

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

“Online.”

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

“Beginning diagnostic.” 

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

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

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

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

There was only you. 

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

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

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

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

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

This was wrong. So wrong. 

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

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

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

“Diagnostic complete.” 

Your heads snapped toward the screen. 

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

“What biotoxin?” You frowned. 

“Unknown. No matches found in available databases.” 

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

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

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

He suddenly felt the need to lick it off. 

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

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

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

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

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

Mating response. He stopped breathing. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heat rose to your face once again. 

“What does that mean?” 

Don’t say anything, don’t–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He hated it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You wouldn’t hurt me–”

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

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

One second enough. 

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

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

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

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

Except…he didn’t even last ten minutes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too hard. 

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

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

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

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

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

“But my offer still stands, spidey.” 

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

Fucking hell. 

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

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

“I’m okay…I’m good…it’s fine…” 

He wasn’t. 

“Fuck I don’t…I’m going to die…”

For God’s sake. 

“I think I can help.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It wanted more.

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

“Sorry–”

“Don’t apologize.” You pressed harder. 

He was burning.

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

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

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

“Breathe,” you reminded.

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

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

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

“Please.” Was all he said. 

Leave it on. 

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

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

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

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

Fuck it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you need? More what?” 

“More contact.”

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

“Can I?” He whispered.

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

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

He resisted the urge to bite them through the mask. 

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

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

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

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

You weren’t wearing anything underneath. 

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

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

“Can–can I–?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not stopping, baby.” 

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

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

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

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

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

The plea undid you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You said please,” you whispered breathlessly. 

You wrapped your fingers around him and pulled him free.

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

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

“Oh my God, your hand–your hand–”

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

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

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

Fuck her. Fuck her right now. 

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

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

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

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

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

He could feel it coming. The change. 

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

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

Fuck. Whatever had been holding him back finally snapped.

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

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

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

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

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

“Of fuck…Peter–fuck…yes…”

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

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

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

“What–what happened? I was about to–”

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

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

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

Good. 

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

His bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Peter…” 

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

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

God. He was never going back. 

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

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

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

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

“Need what?”

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

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

“Yeah?” 

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

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

But something made him stop. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What? What is–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EV’s monotone voice cut through the silence. 

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

“Thank you, EV,” Peter muttered. 

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

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

“Oh god…” you mumbled against the sheets. 

That was your call back to reality. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least it got a chuckle from you too. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So young. So earnest. So yours. 

Not spidey anymore. Just Peter. 

Your Peter. 

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

Feedback is always appreciated 🕷️

Divider by @andromeda-graphics

The fourth one watched you.

You did not say anything. It was not proof of anything, a man looking. You were born to this forest, and you knew its people. You understood that grief did strange things, made people reach for things that felt solid. You had been patient. You had been kind in the way you were kind to all newcomers, no more and no less, and you hoped he would understand the shape of it.

He had not understood the shape of it.

-

It happened at the edge of the eastern grove, late in the afternoon when the light came through the canopy in long golden columns and the rest of the clan was occupied with evening preparations. You had gone alone to collect certain roots that only grew there, particular things Mo'at used in the healing rites. You had been focused on your work and not expecting company.

He appeared between the trees like he had been waiting.

You straightened slowly. Kept your face even.

"I have been trying to speak with you," he said.

"I know," you said. You kept your hands busy, crouching back to your work. "I have been busy."

"You have been avoiding me."

"I have been busy," you said again, and kept your voice even, and did not look up, and hoped he would take the shape of that and go.

He stepped closer. The undergrowth shifted under his feet. "You are courting the Olo'eyktan."

It was not a question. Something in the way he said it carried an edge beneath it that made the back of your neck go tight.

"Yes," you said.

"He is not Na'vi." Another step. "Not truly. He came from the sky people. He wears a body that is not his own. You are Omatikaya born and raised, you have roots in this forest that go deeper than his ever will, and you are wasting—"

"I would ask you to stop there." You stood, and turned, and met his eyes, because you had learned from watching Jake that some conversations required you to take up your full space.

"What I choose is not something I need counsel on. I am spoken for. I am not interested. I say this without cruelty and with respect for what you have lost, but I will not say it again. Go back to the village."

Something shifted in his face. Something that had been beneath the surface the whole time, waiting.

"You do not dismiss me," he said, low.

"I am not dismissing you. I am asking—"

His hand closed around your wrist.

Not gently. A hard grip, the kind that said he did not intend to let you finish the sentence or move away from him, and something cold moved through your chest that you recognized as fear. You did not feel fear often. You were Omatikaya. You had grown up in this forest and learned its dangers and faced them without flinching, and the fact that fear was what moved through you now, here, among your own trees, made something underneath the cold go very, very still.

"Let go of me," you said, quietly.

He did not let go.

You did not think after that. Your free hand came up and struck across his face, open-palmed, the heel of your hand connecting hard enough to snap his head to the side, because you had been trained since childhood and you were not without your own strength and you were not going to stand in your own forest and be held against your will.

He turned back to you slowly.

His expression was the last thing you saw clearly before everything moved very fast.

-

You walked back to the village with your arms wrapped around yourself, your eyes fixed on the path, and your jaw set in the way your mother had always said meant you were trying not to feel something.

Your lip had split. You could taste it, copper and salt. The left side of your face held a heat that pulsed with your heartbeat and would be something worse by morning. Your wrist, where he had grabbed you first, ached in the low, steady way that meant bruising was already happening beneath the skin. When you looked at your wrist, the marks of his fingers were already visible, dark against the blue of your skin.

You stopped walking and looked at it for a long moment.

Then you looked up and kept going.

You did not go to the healers. Ralu would ask questions and her voice would carry and by nightfall the whole clan would know and it would become large and loud when all you wanted was for it to be small and contained and manageable.

You did not go to Neytiri, who would read it in your face before you said a word and whose reaction would be immediate and thorough and would involve her mother and her bow.

You did not go to Jake.

You went to your own kelku and sat down against the far wall in the dark and wrapped your arms around yourself and breathed steadily. The way your mother had taught you when you were small, and the world felt too large. You were fine. You were home. You were safe in your own walls.

You told yourself this and waited for it to become true.

-

Jake found you the way he always found you, without particular effort, like something in him simply oriented toward you without being asked.

You heard his footsteps on the path and knew them immediately, two years of listening, and you turned your face toward the wall before he came through the entrance. You arranged yourself into something that looked like tiredness and kept your voice ready and told yourself the kelku was dim enough.

"Hey, baby." His voice was easy, the low comfortable register he used when the day was done and nothing was required of him. The voice that meant he had come just to find you, no reason, just because you were where he wanted to be. "Didn't see you at the fire. Neytiri said you came back early."

You kept your face toward the wall. "I was tired. It's been a long day."

A pause. Shorter than you wanted it to be.

"Yeah?" He came further into the kelku. His footsteps slowed. "You eat anything?"

"I'll eat in the morning."

Another pause. Longer.

Then, quietly: "Hey. Look at me."

"I'm fine, Jake. I just need to—"

"Look at me."

Not loud. Not sharp. Just steady and immovable in the way Jake was immovable when he had decided something, and you knew that voice, had heard it across battlefields and council fires and every kind of hard moment, and you knew it would not move.

You didn't move either. You kept your eyes on the woven wall and your breathing even and hoped.

Then he crossed the kelku and crouched down in front of you, bringing himself to your level, and you could feel him looking at the side of your face even with your eyes turned away. He didn't reach for you. He just waited, down there on your level, patient and present and not going anywhere.

"There it is," he said, very quietly. Not to you. To himself. Like he had already seen enough from the angle he had.

"Jake—"

"Look at me." Said so gently this time that it undid something in you completely.

Your eyes filled before you turned your head. You hated that. You turned anyway, slowly, and he was right there, close, his expression doing the thing it did when he was holding something very tightly inside himself so that you wouldn't have to see it yet.

His hand came up slowly, giving you every chance to pull away, and his fingers curled beneath your chin, and he turned your face toward the faint light from the entrance with a care so deliberate it made your throat ache.

He looked at your lip. Your cheek. He reached out and, with the back of one finger, moved your hair away from the bruising along your jaw.

The silence was the worst part. Jake loud was manageable. Jake quiet like this was something else entirely.

"Who did this to you," he said.

"I didn't want you to see it like this, I was going to—"

"Who did this to you."

Low. Flat. Patient in a way that had nothing to do with calm.

Your eyes spilled over before you could stop them, which you resented deeply, and the whole thing you had been holding in the walk back from the eastern grove came loose at once.

"Kertan," you said. "The lowlander. He followed me to the eastern grove and I told him to go back and he grabbed my wrist and I hit him and then he—" your voice held steady through sheer discipline, "—he did not take that well."

Jake's jaw shifted. A small movement. Controlled.

"Your wrist," he said.

You held it out. He took it in both hands and turned it over in the dim light and the bruising that had darkened there, the clear distinct marks of fingers, made his hands go very still around yours for one long moment.

"Anywhere else," he said.

"My arms. My face. Jake, I'm alright, I handled myself, he just—"

"You're sitting alone in the dark with your face turned to the wall." Said without judgment. Just plainly, the way he stated things that were simply true.

You had nothing to say to that.

He was quiet for a long moment. You watched him breathe, in and out, steady and measured, the kind of breathing that meant he was deciding something very carefully.

"I'm going to go to Mo'at," he said, still crouched in front of you. "Get what she has for the bruising. I'll be back."

"You don't have to—"

"I'll be back." Quieter. He reached out and took your bruised wrist in both hands, carefully, and turned it over. Then he lowered his head and pressed his lips to the inside of it, so gently you felt it everywhere. He held it there for a moment before he let go.

Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to your forehead. Stayed there. His eyes were closed.

He pulled back and looked at you.

"Stay here," he said. "I mean it."

You nodded.

He left.

He did not go directly to Mo'at.

He told himself he would. He walked the path toward the healer's dwelling with every intention of doing exactly what he had said, and then his feet took him past it, toward the outer edge of the village where the newcomers had been given shelter, and he did not correct them.

Tsu'tey was coming the other way on the path.

He stopped when he saw Jake. His eyes moved over his face, took in the set of his jaw and the direction he was walking, and that was all he needed. He didn't ask. He turned and fell into step beside him without a word, and Jake didn't look at him, and neither of them spoke, because nothing needed to be said. They had come out the other side of enough together that this was simply what it was.

Kertan was awake when they came through the entrance.

Jake looked at him for a moment. Kertan looked back, and started to speak, and Jake crossed the space and hit him before he finished the sentence. He went down hard and Jake stood over him and waited until his eyes focused again.

"You put your hands on her," Jake said. Low. Quiet. The voice that had nothing left in it but the thing itself. "In her own forest. You grabbed her wrist and when she defended herself you made her bleed." He crouched down, bringing himself level, and his voice dropped further. "She walked home alone and sat in the dark. That is what you did to her."

He let that sit for a moment.

"She is mine," Jake said. "I am hers. That is not a small thing and it is not something you were ever going to change." He stood, slowly. "I am Olo'eyktan of this clan. Every woman, every hunter, every child in it is under my protection. That does not stop at the edge of the village and it does not have exceptions." His voice stayed level and it was worse for it. "You will stand before this clan at dawn and answer for what you did. And then you will be gone."

He held Kertan's gaze for a moment longer. Then he stepped back.

Tsu'tey had not moved from the entrance the entire time. He looked at Kertan once, a single sweep that conveyed everything Jake had said and several things he hadn't, and turned and walked out.

When they left, Kertan was awake but had decided lying very still was his best option.

Jake went to Mo'at.

She was awake, as Mo'at always seemed to be when something had happened, and she looked at the state of his hands without expression and waited.

"One of the lowlanders," Jake said. "He followed Y/N to the eastern grove. Grabbed her wrist, wouldn't let her go. She hit him and he—" he stopped for a moment. "Her face. Her arms. She came home alone and sat in the dark."

Mo'at was quiet.

Mo'at looked at him for a long moment. "She has always carried things quietly," she said. "It is her way. It does not mean she should carry them alone." She turned to her stores and began gathering what was needed, her hands moving with unhurried efficiency. "You found her."

"Yeah."

"Then she did not carry it alone." She pressed the salve and the cloth into his hands and met his eyes. "She is well?"

"She will be."

Mo'at held his gaze, reading whatever was in it with those pale eyes that never seemed to miss anything. Then she glanced at his split knuckles, and back up at his face, and the look she gave him was not quite approval and not quite reprimand and contained both entirely.

"Good," she said, and went back to what she had been doing.

-

You were where he had left you when he came back, which meant you had actually listened to him, which meant you were more shaken than you had let on and you both knew it.

He sat down beside you without ceremony, close, his shoulder against yours, and opened the small pot Mo'at had given him. The salve inside was dark green and smelled of things that grew deep in the forest, cool and sharp and familiar.

"Give me your wrist," he said.

You did.

He applied the salve with the same deliberate care he'd used when he'd turned your face to the light, working it gently into the bruised skin, and you watched his hands and tried not to think about how much of yourself you had handed over simply by letting him in tonight.

He moved to your cheek next. Your jaw. The split of your lip, barely a touch, careful as anything.

When he was done you looked at his hands properly for the first time and saw the split knuckles. Two of them, on his right hand, the skin broken in a way that had not been there when he left.

You reached out and took his hand before he could put the salve away.

He let you.

You worked the salve into his knuckles in silence, and he sat still and let you do it, and neither of you said anything for a while. The forest moved outside, soft and dark and alive.

"He's still breathing," Jake said, eventually.

"I know," you said. "Or you wouldn't be here. You'd be in front of my father explaining yourself."

Something shifted in his face that was almost a smile and didn't quite make it. "Tsu'tey helped."

"Of course he did."

"He was already waiting."

"Of course he was."

Jake exhaled. You finished with his knuckles and held his hand a moment longer than necessary and then let go. He looked at you, and then without a word he shifted, lying down on your sleeping mat and opening his arm in the way that asked without demanding. You settled against him, your head on his chest, and his arm came around you and held on.

You leaned into the warmth of him and felt the tension still in his body, contained, managed, Jake carrying what remained of the night so you didn't have to.

"I didn't want you to see it," you said, quietly. "I didn't want it to become this."

"I know," he said. "I'm glad I saw it."

You were quiet for a moment. "What are you going to do. Tomorrow."

"What needs to be done," he said.

You thought about that. Felt something loosen in your chest that you hadn't fully realized was still wound tight.

"Good," you said.

He pressed his lips to the top of your head and held them there. "Sleep," he said. "I've got you."

You closed your eyes and listened to his heartbeat and let the warmth of him and the smell of the salve and the familiar sounds of the forest do what they did best, and sleep came faster than you expected.

-

Jake did not sleep for a long time after.

He lay still with your head on his chest and listened to your breathing slow and even out against his collarbone and stared at the ceiling of the kelku and tried to let the night settle into something he could hold.

He watched your chest rise and fall. The slow, steady rhythm of it. Up and down. Up and down.

He looked at the bruising along your jaw in the dark, the faint shadow of it visible even now, and he made himself look at it, made himself sit with it instead of looking away, because looking away didn't help anybody and he had learned that a long time ago.

You were here. You were breathing. You were warm against his side and your face was relaxed in sleep and you were safe in your own walls.

He told himself this several times. Let it work on him the way the salve had worked on your skin, slow and quiet, doing its job in the dark.

He thought about two years. About every morning you had found each other. About the way you looked when you were about to say something you found funny, about how you had never once made him feel like less for being in a body that wasn't born here the way yours was. About how you were the first thing he wanted to find at the beginning and end of any given day.

He looked at your face in the dark and felt something so large move through him that it was almost hard to hold.

He was still awake when the forest shifted from night to the earliest grey suggestion of morning. Only then did he finally let himself close his eyes.

-

He was up before you woke.

When you opened your eyes the kelku was full of pale early light and Jake was sitting beside you freshly returned from the river, and on the ground next to you was your water vessel, filled, a portion of food from the morning preparations, and the salve pot left open in case you needed it.

You looked at all of this for a moment. Then at him.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning." You sat up slowly, and before you could say anything else he was already reaching for you, his fingers gentle at your jaw, tilting your face toward the morning light the same way he had the night before. He looked at your cheek. Your lip. Your wrist where the bruising had deepened overnight into something dark and visible.

"How are you feeling," he said.

"Sore," you admitted. "Better than last night."

He looked at you for a moment longer, reading something in your face that satisfied him enough. He reached for the salve pot and worked a little more into your wrist without being asked, careful and unhurried, and then he handed you the food he had brought and stood.

"Come on," he said, holding out his hand. "You should be there."

The clan gathered the way it gathered for all things that required witness, drawn by the quiet word that had moved through the village since first light. You stood beside Neytiri, who had taken one look at your face that morning and gone very still in a way that meant she was only keeping herself together for your sake, and her hand found yours and held on.

Jake stood at the center of the gathering space. Tsu'tey stood slightly behind and to his right with his arms crossed and an expression that could have curdled water.

Kertan was brought forward.

He looked at Jake and then at the assembled clan and at the faces around him, and whatever he had thought the morning might hold for him, you could see it revising itself in real time.

Jake waited until it was fully quiet.

"You came to this clan with nothing," he said. His voice was not even now, it had an edge to it, controlled but present, the kind that made people go still. "You were given shelter. Food. Safety. The welcome of the People, which is not a small thing and is not given without thought."

He paused, and when he continued, his voice had dropped into something quieter and more dangerous. "You repaid that welcome by following a woman of this clan into the forest. By putting your hands on her. By leaving marks on her."

A sharp intake of breath moved through the gathering. Then murmurs, low and angry. Someone hissed, and it was not alone.

Jake let it settle.

"She came home alone and sat in the dark." The pause that followed was short and sharp. "She should never have had to do that."

The murmuring deepened. Around you people shifted, drew closer together, and Neytiri's hand in yours tightened.

"You are no longer welcome here," Jake said. "You will leave today. You will not come back." His eyes held Kertan's and did not move. "If I ever see your face at the edge of this forest again, you will regret it. That is not a threat. It is the only warning you will get."

The silence that followed had weight to it.

Kertan looked at Jake with something that had nowhere left to go and nothing left to stand on.

Then the eldest of the three remaining lowlanders stepped forward from the edge of the gathering. She held herself straight, her hands open at her sides, and when she spoke her voice was clear enough for the whole clan to hear.

"We ask to speak," she said.

Jake looked at her. Nodded once.

"What he did does not represent us," she said. "It does not represent our clan, or the people we were taught to be, or the gratitude we carry for the welcome we were given here." She looked briefly toward you where you stood beside Neytiri, and her expression was pained and genuine. "We are sorry. We are deeply sorry that this happened in a place that was made safe for us. It should never have happened."

The other two echoed it, quiet and sincere, heads lowered.

Jake looked at them for a moment. When he spoke again the edge was gone, replaced by something steadier.

"What happened here is not on you," he said. "You have conducted yourselves with nothing but respect since the day you arrived. The choices he made are his alone, and they will follow him alone." He held the eldest woman's gaze. "Your uturu stands. You are welcome here for as long as you choose to stay. The People do not punish the honorable for the failures of those beside them."

Another murmur from the clan. This one warmer.

Tsu'tey smiled. It was not a warm smile. It was the smile of someone who had been waiting for exactly this and found it satisfying in every particular.

Kertan left before midday.

Tsu'tey was the one who watched him go.

You found Jake at the edge of the village afterward, looking out at the forest with his arms loose at his sides and his shoulders finally down from where they had been all morning.

You came up beside him and he turned his head and looked at you, really looked, the way he had in the kelku last night with your face tipped toward the light, like he was checking that you were still whole.

"Hey," he said, quietly.

"Hey," you said.

He opened his arm and you stepped into his side without needing to be asked, and his arm came around you and held on, and for a while neither of you said anything. The forest moved around you, green and endless and breathing, entirely yours.

"You didn't have to do it publicly," you said.

"Yeah," he said. "I did."

You looked up at him.

"You tried to make it small," he said. "So it wouldn't cost anyone anything. So nobody would have to make a fuss." His arm tightened around you. "It needed to cost him something. In front of people. So everyone in this clan knows what it means to be one of them."

You held his gaze for a moment, and something in your chest that had been carefully wound since yesterday afternoon finally, fully let go.

"Thank you," you said.

He pressed his lips to the top of your head and left them there for a long moment.

"Always, baby," he said, soft and easy, the human words slipping out the way they did sometimes when it was just the two of you and he forgot to translate himself. "Always."

You leaned into him and let the forest hold you both.

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you went quiet all nervous, feeling no the need to talk over the silence. “I-I’m uhm, y/n” you blurt out, unable to hold back. You hear the blonde sigh, as if your mere voice made him want to jump off the balcony then and there. “Kento Nanami.” He said, his voice deep and gravelly, the sound leaving an odd effect to your core.

As you quietly looked over at him it was clear he was older, looked stressed and tired. He was wearing a professional suit, one that you wouldn’t normally see at some sort of party, especially not one thrown by a guy who acts like his home is a frat.

“do you need something else?” He says, snapping you out of your thoughts, cheeks burning as you realized maybe your staring wasn’t that secretive. “s-sorry—”

he stood up from the chair at the other end of the balcony, walking over and closing the small gap between the two of you. “you always this talkative? Never can shut up?” He said and you frowned. “I’ve barely said anything!”

he grinned. “And yet it was enough to irritate me.” You grumble at his words. You chug down the last of your drink, feeling the familiar buzz. You couldn’t remember what happened to get you be so comfortable to actually talk, like a lot. Not stuttering, not shy, just giggles and whatever came to your mind.

nanami didn’t say much though you could tell he was half interested half annoyed which was enough for you to continue talking. “and than In middle school I tried out for theatre, it was my favorite muscle too. But when I learned I had to speak on stage and kiss a boy, I dropped out so quick.” You giggled.

Nanami frown deepened. “Cause you had to kiss a boy?” He asked. “Well yeah, that’s awkward and weird. I’d have to practice for that.” You said, off staring down at road below you.

“practice? It’s not a damn test, Christ.” He muttered before laughing cruelly. “Have you never been kissed before?” He asks carefree like he’s expecting you to say yes. Like it didn’t occur to him that maybe you hadn’t ever even dated someone.

“w-well that’s none of your business.” You say quickly, defensive. You didn’t want nanami to think you were some innocent nerd… even if that was exactly what you were.

“let me show you.” He finally said. Your eyes widened. “W-what, seriously?” You stammer. He nods, pushing the hair out of your face. You expected the kiss to be gentle but his mouth instead crashed into yours all rough and needy. You gasp and he hums in satisfaction.

guiding your mouth with his, hands moving around. one in your hair, the other on your ass. You whined at the mean kiss. “Mmm—kento.” You whispered against his mouth when you finally got a second to breathe.

“shut up” he grunted, doing exactly what he said and shutting you up with another long bruising kiss.