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That was the thing about the new edges of him. The mutation hadn't settled cleanly after everything. It had sharpened in odd places, overcorrected in others. Sound arrived layered now: the scrape of chalk, someone’s gum clicking against a molar three rows back, the pulse in the throat of the guy beside him who had definitely not done the reading. The city beyond the lecture hall kept pressing itself into his skull in a dozen distant frequencies, sirens and pipes and pigeons beating frantic wings beneath the eaves.

And then there was your pen.

Cheap black ballpoint. Cap chewed, not recently. A faint crescent of teeth marks near the clip.

Peter picked it up before he thought better of it.

You turned in your seat, a little embarrassed but not enough to make a performance of it, your brows rising when you realized someone had retrieved it. “Oh. Thank you.”

Your voice did not do anything impossible. It didn't rearrange him. It just sat warmly in the air between you, lower than he expected, slightly hoarse like you had been up too late or had laughed too much the night before.

Peter gave you the pen. “No problem.”

You smiled, quick and polite, and turned back around.

That should have been the end of it.

Peter knew that. He knew it with the same blunt clarity he knew not to crawl across ceilings in public or listen through apartment walls just because he could. Some lines were simple because crossing them made everything else complicated. You were a person in one of his classes. He had handed you a pen. That was all.

For nearly four minutes, he managed to leave it there.

Then you tapped the pen twice against your notebook, paused, and wrote something in the margin instead of on the lecture line where everyone else had written CRISPR and informed consent and somatic inheritance. Peter saw the movement from the corner of his eye. His vision caught too much when he let it. A tilt, a shadow, a word half-formed before your hand covered it.

He should not have looked.

He still looked.

You had written: who decides what counts as damage?

Peter stared at the back of your head for one second too long.

The question stayed with him after class, needling under his skin while students packed laptops and shoved water bottles into canvas bags. You stood slowly, stretching your fingers once before sliding your notebook away. Someone called your name from the aisle. You glanced over your shoulder and gave a tired little laugh when a girl with chipped blue nail polish asked if you were coming to the library later.

“Maybe,” you said after you gave a few experimental blinks.  “I have work first.”

Peter bent over his backpack, pretending he had not heard.

He had heard too much.

Your keys clinked inside the front pocket of your bag. Your phone buzzed twice. You smelled faintly of vanilla shampoo and rain-damp wool, though it had not rained since morning. Your heartbeat was steady, quicker when your friend mentioned a party, slower when you said, “I’ll see how dead I am after closing.”

Normal details. Human details. None of them belonged to him.

He walked out ten paces behind you anyway.

Only because the door was in that direction, he told himself. Only because everyone was leaving through the same narrow hall, shoulder to shoulder, voices bouncing off institutional beige walls. ESU’s biology building had bad ventilation and worse fluorescent lighting. It made everyone look slightly ill. You squinted against it, one eye narrowing more than the other.

Peter noticed that too.

He hated that he noticed that.

Outside, late autumn had made the campus restless. Leaves skittered over the pavement in dry little bursts, trapped briefly against bike racks before the wind worried them loose. The sky hung low and silver behind the brick buildings. You tucked your chin into your scarf and walked toward the Square with your friend still talking beside you, one hand moving as she described something, the other hooked around the strap of your bag.

Peter stopped at the stairs.

He could have gone the other way.

He had laundry. He had a chemistry problem set. He had a rent reminder folded under a magnet on his fridge and a suit stuffed behind a loose panel in his closet that still smelled faintly of smoke from a warehouse fire in Queens.

You crossed the quad and his senses followed before his body did.

Your laugh carried back once, loose and surprised, and Peter felt something in him lean toward it. Not physically. Worse than physically. Some quiet, starved part of him that had been living on memory and obligation and the bruised discipline of not needing anything.

He watched until the crowd took you.

Then he went home and searched your name.

He didn't call it that at first.

Peter called it checking. Curiosity. Normal curiosity. The kind people had when they met someone in class and wanted to know whether they had mutual friends or if they posted notes online or if maybe they were in a study group. He sat at his small desk with the radiator clanking beside him, his laptop open beneath the yellow cone of his lamp, and typed in the name he had heard your friend say.

The first result was an ESU page with your department listing: Undeclared concentration, biology track. A campus volunteer archive from last spring. A photo from a charity 5K where you stood at the edge of a group shot, squinting into the sun and holding a paper cup too tightly. Your social media accounts were not private enough.

Peter exhaled through his nose and sat back.

“No,” he spoke aloud to his empty apartment and the only response to his words was the radiator hissing. 

He closed the browser.

For about eighteen seconds.

Then he opened it again.

By midnight, Peter knew you worked three evenings a week at a bookstore café two neighborhoods over. He knew you liked old horror films but hated jump scares. He knew you reposted stray cat videos when you were stressed. He knew you had once written, in a post from two years ago that made his stomach pull tight with secondhand tenderness, that you hated how easy it was to become background noise in other people’s lives.

Peter shut the laptop so hard the sound cracked through the room.

He stood, paced three steps, turned, paced back. His hands flexed at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling with leftover strength he had nowhere to put. The window showed him his own reflection layered over the city: too thin, too tired, hair still damp from a shower he barely remembered taking.

“You’re not doing this,” he told himself with restriction, and even his reflection looked unconvincing.

You did not think about Peter Parker after class.

Not really.

You remembered the pen only because you found it later at work and noticed the cap had a little dent from where you always chewed it during exams. You remembered his face in the vague way you remembered classmates you saw twice a week: brown hair that looked like he had dragged a hand through it one too many times, gentle eyes, shoulders folded slightly inward like he was trying not to take up space.

Cute, maybe.

But cute in the background way. The kind of cute you acknowledged and then forgot because a customer had spilled oat milk on the pickup counter and your manager was muttering about inventory under her breath.

By eight-thirty, your feet hurt. The bookstore smelled of damp coats, burnt espresso, dust, and cinnamon syrup. Someone had abandoned a paperback facedown on the windowsill. Outside, people hurried past with collars lifted against the wind, their reflections smeared across the dark glass.

You were restocking the staff picks table when the bell above the door chimed.

You glanced up because it was habit and Peter stood just inside, shaking cold from his hair.

For a second, he looked as surprised to see you as you were to see him. Then his face softened into recognition, bashful and easy enough that you almost smiled before you realized you were already doing it.

“Hey,” he greeted and his voice hit your ears with a peaceful calm. “You’re in Menken’s class, right?”

You straightened, a book still in your hand. “Yeah. Peter, right?”

His smile widened a little, and it did something irritatingly pleasant to his whole face. “Yeah. And you’re…?”

You gave him your name and he repeated it, not too quickly, not too slowly. Like he cared about getting it right.

That was your first mistake, though you wouldn't know that for weeks. You noticed the care and mistook it for kindness. Maybe it was kindness, in part. That was the inconvenient thing about Peter. He wasn't lying every time he was gentle.

He bought a coffee he barely drank and a used copy of a short story collection you had placed on the staff picks table that morning. When you rang him up, he looked at the handwritten card tucked beneath the stack.

“Your pick?” he asked with his eyes moving over the loop of the script. 

A small puff of air left you as your mouth twitched. “Yeah. It’s weird.”

“I like weird.”

“You say that now.”

He glanced up through his lashes, and there was an awkwardness to it that made him seem younger, more human than he had been in your mind. “Is that a warning or a recommendation?”

You huffed a laugh more visibly this time. “Both.”

Peter nodded as if that settled something important. “Then I’ll take it seriously.”

You liked that he didn't try too hard to stretch the conversation. He thanked you, dropped his change into the tip jar, and moved to a table near the window with the book and untouched coffee. He read for almost an hour.

At least, you thought he read.

Peter had read the same paragraph six times.

The book sat open beneath his hands, but you kept shifting around the café in the warm spill of overhead lights, and his attention kept betraying him. You wiped down the counter with economical movements, pushed loose hair back from your face with your wrist, nodded when customers spoke but went distant the second they turned away. You had a habit of pressing your tongue to the inside of your cheek when you were trying not to react to something. You disliked the register drawer because it stuck and made you use more force than you wanted. You hummed under your breath when the espresso grinder drowned out the room.

None of this was information anyone needed.

Peter collected it anyway.

He had promised himself he would only look. In person, that sounded even worse. He knew how it sounded. He could hear a familiar voice in his head, dry and unimpressed, though any real familiarity was gone from his life in all the ways that mattered now. He could hear May too, not in words, just in the old shape of disappointment.

But it had been a bad week.

That wasn’t an excuse, he hated that his mind reached for one so quickly.

It had been a bad year, or rather, years.

Worse.

The world had forgotten him in pieces so cleanly it felt surgical. He still had photographs where people stood beside him with no memory of the moment. Peter still knew birthdays no one invited him to, inside jokes that died the second he tried to speak them aloud. He still woke up some mornings with his hand reaching across the bed toward nothing because loneliness had become muscle memory.

And then there was you, chewing on a pen in class and writing questions that made the room seem less airless.

Peter watched you laugh with your coworker behind the counter, your head tilting back for half a second before you caught yourself. Not loud or careless, but real.

Something in him ached with it.

Peter should have left.

Instead, when you came by with a rag and asked, “Everything okay over here?” he looked up too fast.

“Yeah. Sorry. I’m probably overstaying.”

You waved him off without much thought. “No, you’re fine. We don’t close for another hour.”

“I can go if you need the table.”

You glanced around the mostly empty café with a ghost of a smile on your lips. “Peter, there are seven tables.”

He laughed, a little embarrassed, but not nearly as much as he should've felt. “Right. Good point.”

You smiled at him fully now. This time it lingered. His pulse kicked hard enough that he felt ashamed of it.

The second time he came in, you were not surprised.

The third time, you teased him about the coffee.

“You know you don’t have to keep ordering it if you hate it.”

Peter looked down at the cup like it had betrayed him. “I don’t hate it.”

You looked up at him through the table unsure. “You’ve taken two sips in forty minutes.”

“I’m pacing myself.”

“You ordered an iced coffee in November.”

“I can contain multitudes.”

You snorted before you could stop yourself, and he looked so pleased by it that you looked away first.

It was not instant. That mattered, later. You didn't fall into it without thought. You were busy, and careful in the way people became careful when they had learned affection could come with hidden invoices. You had classes, work, rent, a roommate who left wet towels on the bathroom floor, and a mother who texted at odd hours asking if you were eating enough.

Peter became familiar gradually.

A chair near the window. A brown jacket with a frayed cuff. Fingers stained faintly with ink because he wrote equations on his hand when he ran out of paper. A voice that went soft when he asked questions and quicker when he forgot to be nervous. He seemed to know when not to interrupt you. He remembered that you disliked caramel syrup but liked cinnamon. He started bringing you the extra banana from the convenience store near campus because you once said your blood sugar crashed during evening shifts and you always forgot to pack food.

“That’s weirdly thoughtful,” you made a face and said the first time.

Peter shrugged with his eyes lowering when he spoke. “It was two for one.”

You knew that was not the whole truth, but it was close enough to something charming that you let it pass.

From Peter’s side, every small success made him feel worse.

He really hadn't meant to learn your schedule exactly. Not at first. But once he knew the bookstore shifts, his brain filled in the blanks with humiliating efficiency: Menken’s class Monday and Wednesday. Lab on Thursday. Café Tuesday, Friday, Sunday. Library most Wednesdays after six, second floor if you were alone, basement if your friend came with you because she liked the vending machine down there.

Peter didn't need to know that.

He especially did not need to know that you always took the longer route home when the weather was mild because you liked passing the laundromat with the orange cat in the window.

The first time Peter followed you all the way back to your building, he almost turned around six times.

Almost was becoming a dangerous word.

He stayed across the street, hood up, hands in his pockets, moving with the practiced absence Spider-Man had perfected. He told himself it was only because the neighborhood had been rough lately. Two muggings near the park. A stolen car three blocks away. He had reasons. Responsible reasons. Hero reasons.

Then you stopped beneath the awning of your building and turned suddenly, looking back down the sidewalk.

Peter froze behind the corner of a closed bodega.

For one wild second, he thought you had felt him there. Not heard, not seen. Felt. The way people sometimes sensed weather changing in their bones.

But you only searched your bag, found your keys, and went inside.

Peter waited until the lobby light swallowed you.

His hands were shaking when he got home.

He stripped off the mask he had not needed and sat on the floor beside his bed, suit half-unzipped, chest rising too fast. The room smelled of dust, old laundry, cold takeout. Somewhere upstairs, a couple argued about dishes and somewhere outside, a siren split the night and faded.

Peter pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, the pressure doing little to relieve him. 

“You’re scaring yourself,” he whispered and that should have helped.

It did not.

Because the next morning you came into class with tired eyes and a bandage wrapped around one finger, and Peter noticed before you even sat down.

Paper cut, he guessed.

No. Too clean. Knife slip. Cooking? No, the angle was wrong. Box cutter at work.

He started hating the part of him that solved you like a problem.

During lecture, Professor Menken asked a question no one wanted to answer. You lifted your hand after three seconds of silence.

Peter watched you speak with intent.

You were not perfectly confident. Your voice caught often and you glanced at your notes too often. But you had a way of thinking aloud that made uncertainty seem active instead of weak, like you were willing to stand inside the unfinished part of an idea and invite everyone else to look at it with you.

Peter stared at his notebook and wrote nothing. After class, he found you outside the building, wrestling with the zipper of your bag.

“Hey,” he said when you came into view casually enough for him to do the same. 

You looked up with no real hurry. “Hey, coffee multitudes.”

Peter laughed, surprised by the nickname. “That’s going to stick, huh?”

“It might.”

“Then I should probably earn it.”

You raised an eyebrow and looked him over. “By drinking coffee?”

“By asking if you want to get some. Somewhere I actually finish it.”

There it was. The moment Peter had arranged too carefully to pretend it was spontaneous. He had known your next class had been canceled because he had seen the department email reflected faintly on your laptop screen the day before. He had chosen this window. He had planned the route. He had checked the café he suggested to make sure it had the tea you liked, the kind you mentioned once in a post from eight months ago and again at work when you complained your roommate stole the last bag.

He was disgusting.

Peter smiled anyway, small and nervous because he was also still himself.

You hesitated, it wasn't long enough to be cruel, but it was long enough to be honest.

“Now?” you asked and your hand twitched to a still around your bag

“Only if you’re free.”

“I am.” You shifted your bag higher on your shoulder. A small twitch of your brows came and went when the familiar phantom of a smile touched your face. “Actually, yeah. That sounds nice.”

Nice.

The word landed in him with such undeserved warmth he nearly forgot to breathe.

The café was crowded, too narrow and overbright near the counter, with little tables pressed close enough that everyone became part of everyone else’s conversation. You ordered tea. Peter ordered coffee and drank half of it out of sheer determination.

You talked about class first because that was safe. Menken’s refusal to upload slides. The guy in the front row who treated lectures like a personal podcast interview. Your mutual dread of the upcoming exam.

Then, the conversation loosened.

You told him about the bookstore café and the regular who came in every Sunday to rearrange the mystery section “by vibes.” Peter told you about taking photos for the Bugle, then stumbled when you asked if he liked it.

“Sometimes,” he settled for after fumbling for his words. 

“Only sometimes?”

He turned the paper sleeve around his cup. “It’s hard to like something that mostly pays you to be hated.”

You frowned and it was so genuine it made Peter feel disgusting all over again. “That sounds miserable.”

“It builds character. Probably. Or joint pain.”

You laughed, but softer this time and he looked up for it.

You were watching him with a kind of attention he hadn't expected. Not the polite attention people gave when waiting for their turn to speak. You were actually looking, as if you had noticed some seam in him and were deciding whether to touch it.

Peter felt the old panic start. The instinct to deflect. To become funny, harmless, and too quick to pin down.

Instead, he took a breath and decided for, “It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

You didn’t ask what else he was used to.

He liked you more for that.

Your first date was not officially a date until halfway through, when your knees bumped beneath the table and neither of you moved immediately.

After that, things gathered speed without feeling rushed.

A walk through campus after class. His jacket over your shoulders when the wind turned sharp, even though you protested you were fine. A late-night diner where he stole fries from your plate only after asking and still looked guilty each time. A movie at your apartment with your roommate passing through twice and giving you looks so obvious you threatened to throw a pillow at her.

Peter was almost unbearable in his thoughtfulness.

Not grand, that would have made you suspicious sooner. He didn't flood you with flowers or declarations. He learned the small things and acted on them with quiet precision. He sent you a picture of the familiar street cat when you were stuck at work. He remembered which movie sequel you thought ruined the original. He ordered your food without onions after you mentioned once that you hated the texture, then looked genuinely confused when you stared at him.

“What?” Peter asked when you stared at him so openly in surprise. 

“You remembered.”

His fork paused halfway to his mouth. “Was I not supposed to?”

“No. It’s just…” You looked down, smiling despite yourself. The words came out quieter than, like they weren't for him. “Most people don’t.”

Peter smiled too, but something flickered beneath it. Not guilt, exactly. Not anything you knew how to name.

You reached for your drink and let the moment pass.

From his side, the flicker had been a wound reopening.

Most people don’t.

He should have been most people.

He should have learned you at the pace you gave yourself. Through conversations, through mistakes, through the natural awkwardness of two lives coming carefully closer. He should not have known about the onion thing because you had complained in a forgotten comment thread under a photo of takeout from last winter. He should not have known your favorite seat in the library because he had followed your location once after convincing himself it was only to make sure you got home. Peter should not have known your ex’s name, your rent split, the brand of melatonin in your bathroom cabinet because your roommate posted a mirror selfie with the bottle blurred but readable.

He was not always hacking.

That was another excuse, and he hated it because it was technically true. Most of the time, people gave themselves away without needing to be broken into. Public accounts, careless apps, tagged photos, reused usernames, browser autofill flashing in reflections, notifications blooming on lock screens. The city was full of open windows, and Peter had become very good at looking through them.

But sometimes, he did more.

The first time he accessed one of your accounts, he threw up afterward.

It was not dramatic. There was no thunder outside, no cinematic collapse. Just Peter hunched over the tiny sink in his bathroom, one hand braced against cracked porcelain, breathing through nausea while the laptop sat open in the other room.

He told himself he had only wanted to know why you had gone quiet.

That was how Peter framed it at first. You had canceled plans with a too-bright apology and then stopped answering texts for five hours. Five hours was nothing. People had lives. You had work. You had friends. You had the right to be unreachable.

His body did not understand that.

His senses had made emergencies out of smaller things. A skipped heartbeat, a distant scream, glass breaking four blocks away. Absence became data. Silence became threat. He tried cleaning. He tried going on patrol. He stopped a bike theft, webbed up a drunk man trying to punch a parking meter, helped a kid find her mother outside a pharmacy, and still your unread text sat in his head like a lit match.

So, he checked.

Not with tools he would ever have explained to you. Not in steps he let himself think about for long. A shortcut here, an old breach there, one soft digital door after another until the screen opened on enough of your life to make him feel both relieved and monstrous.

You were not ignoring him because of him.

You were in a group chat with your friend, talking about a fight with your mother. Nothing catastrophic. Nothing he needed to know. Your last message had been: I just don’t want to be a person today.

Peter read it three times.

Then he closed the laptop and hated himself with a clarity that should have changed him.

The next morning, he brought you soup from a place you liked but rarely ordered from because it was overpriced. He stood outside your building in a gray hoodie, hair damp from the rain, holding the paper bag awkwardly when you came downstairs.

“You said you didn’t feel great,” he greeted with that comfortable thread of familiar concern and composure. 

You hadn't said that to him.

Not exactly.

But you were tired, and the soup was warm against your hands, and Peter looked so quietly worried that the difference dissolved before your could examine any holes in his story accurately.

“You’re kind of insane,” you scoffed, but gently when your eyes softened at him. 

Peter cleared at his throat. “Bad insane?”

You looked at him for a moment. Rain gathered in the ends of his hair. A drop slipped down his temple, and he did not seem to notice.

“No,” you said after a moment,  and his mind latched into that with great energy. “Good insane.”

His smile hurt to look at.

Peter stayed in your life.

That was how it felt from your side. Not that he entered suddenly, but that he remained. Peter was there in the margins of your days until the margins felt less empty. You started expecting his texts. You started saving little stories for him because you liked the way his face changed when he listened. He had a habit of going very still when you spoke, like he was afraid to miss a word.

You had dated people who made you feel edited. Too loud here, too sensitive there, too difficult when you asked for basic decency. Peter made you feel observed, and at first you mistook that for being understood.

Maybe part of it was understanding.

He didn’t push when you were quiet. He made jokes when you needed room to laugh and went serious when the joke would have landed wrong. He was late sometimes, often with flimsy excuses and a bruise hidden badly beneath his collar, but he apologized like he meant it. He washed dishes at your apartment without making a performance of helping. He made friends with your roommate by fixing the kitchen cabinet hinge and pretending it had been easy.

Still, there were moments.

A book you never remembered mentioning appearing in his backpack.

A song you had listened to alone showing up in a playlist he sent you “randomly.”

His face changing before you told him bad news, as if he had sensed it through the phone.

Once, while walking back from dinner, you stopped outside a bodega because the smell of oranges by the door reminded you of your grandmother’s house. You hadn’t said that to him yet. You had barely said it to anyone.

Peter bought two oranges without asking and handed one to you.

“You looked like you wanted one,” he had told you. 

You held it in your palm, thumb brushing the textured peel. “You notice too much.”

He went quiet.

Only for a breath, but you felt it.

Then he smiled, crooked and a little sad. “Occupational hazard.”

You laughed because you thought he meant photography.

Peter loved that about you and hated himself for loving it. The way you filled in the blanks with something better than the truth.

By December, the city had gone hard with cold.

Snow came early in thin, dirty gusts that melted along curbs and froze again overnight. ESU students moved in bundled clusters across campus, hunched over coffee cups and exam notes. The bookstore café hung paper snowflakes in the window that curled at the edges from the heater. Your apartment radiator screamed every morning at six.

Peter spent more nights at your place, never officially staying over at first. He would fall asleep on the couch after a movie, wake at two, apologize, and kiss your forehead before leaving. You began telling him he could stay. He began pretending to refuse before giving in.

The first time he slept in your bed, you woke to him sitting upright in the dark.

You blinked at the shape of him, bare shoulders tense, head turned toward the window.

“Peter?”

He didn't answer immediately.

Outside, a truck rolled over a pothole and hit Peter's ear drum loudly. Somewhere down the block, glass clinked in a recycling bag. Your room was cold beyond the blanket, the air smelling faintly of your body wash and the laundry detergent your roommate bought in bulk.

“Sorry,” he rasped out finally. His voice was rough. “I heard something.”

You pushed yourself up on one elbow, still half asleep. You gave a few hard blinks to try and even out your blurry vision, your fingers moved without instruction to thee side of his bare arm. “In here?”

Peter's voice was still rough with sleep, and something else you couldn't grasp. “No. Outside.”

You listened in a pause, your fingers stilling on his forearm. 

Nothing.

Peter looked embarrassed, almost boyish in the dim light. “I’m a light sleeper.”

You believed him because there was no reason not to.

You tugged gently at his wrist, your skin meeting his. An exhale escaped you as the disruption did little to drain you off your drowsiness. “Come back.”

For a second, he didn't move. Then,  he let you pull him down beside you. His skin was cool where the air had touched it. You pressed your face against his shoulder and felt him go very still before he carefully settled his arm around you.

“You’re safe,” you murmured after a moments still, barely awake, because you decided it was needed. 

His hand tightened once at your back and you pressed into his side deeper at the action. 

The words should have comforted him.

Instead, they ruined him.

Because he knew exactly what kind of safety he had made. A curated one. A watched one. A version of closeness built from stolen context and real affection tangled so tightly he no longer knew where one ended and the other began. Peter knew the quickest route from your apartment to the hospital. He knew which neighbor left his door unlocked. He knew your roommate’s schedule, the building’s fire escape pattern, the loose latch on the roof door, and even the dead zone in the security camera by the mailboxes.

He knew too much.

You fell asleep against him after a few more breaths and smooths of his hand at your back and Peter stared into the dark until dawn diluted the room.

Later that week, you fought.

It was small at first, which immediately made it worse. He canceled on you again, this time fifteen minutes before you were supposed to meet. Something about work. Something about a last-minute assignment. The lie was poorly built because Peter was tired and bleeding under his shirt from a fight with a guy in a mechanized suit who had tried to rob an armored truck in Midtown.

You heard the strain in his voice and assumed the wrong thing.

“Do you actually want to see me tonight?” you asked into your phone and frowned so visibly you saw it in the mirror that reflected you all ready for your now cancelled evening. 

Silence.

Then, “Of course I do.”

Your voice felt smaller than it was. “Because it’s fine if you don’t.”

“It’s not that—”

“You keep saying that.”

Peter closed his eyes on the rooftop where he crouched behind a water tower, one hand pressed against his ribs. His spider-sense still fizzed faintly from leftover adrenaline. Snow blew sideways across the tar paper and some of it landed cooly on his shoulders

“I’m sorry,” he only apologized after a tired noise escaped him. 

You hated how sincere he sounded. It made anger harder to hold cleanly. “I’m not asking you to be available all the time. I just need you to stop disappearing and then acting like I’m supposed to understand without you telling me anything.”

Peter breathed in sharply, and for a moment you thought he might finally say something real. Instead, he said, “You’re right.”

The answer was too neat. Too controlled.

You laughed once, humorless. “That’s not a conversation, Peter.”

“I know.”

Your voice came more pointed now. “Then have one.”

He looked out over the city. A siren wailed far below. Three blocks away, someone screamed, but it was laughter. Six blocks away, not laughter. His body turned toward it before his mind caught up.

“I can’t right now,” he immediately winced at how it sounded coming out 

Your voice went immediately quiet. “Okay.”

That one word did more damage than shouting would have.

Peter heard you hang up.

He should have let you be angry. He should have shown up the next day with honesty or at least enough humility to deserve your attention.

Instead, fear did what fear had been doing to him for months. It found a door and opened it.

He checked your messages again.

You were texting your friend. Not cruelly or even dramatically, but so visibly tired. 

I like him, you had written. I really do. But sometimes it feels like he’s already decided what I need before I say it. I don't know how to feel about that. 

Peter sat on the edge of a rooftop while snow collected in his hair and read the sentence until the screen dimmed.

It was the closest you had come to seeing him.

Not the suit. Not the powers. Him. The shape of the thing he was doing.

He wanted, suddenly and violently, to confess. To climb through your window, kneel on your worn rug, and hand you every ugly piece. To say he had been lonely in a way that made him dangerous. To say he had turned care into surveillance and called it love when he was too ashamed to name it properly. To say you could hate him if you needed to, but please, please do it with your own voice.

Then, another message appeared.

He’s also really good to me though. Like scary good. He knows me better than anyone has in a long time.

Peter’s breath caught.

The city kept moving beneath him. Traffic lights changed. Steam rose from a manhole cover. A woman tugged a child across the street by one mittened hand. Somewhere, somebody needed him.

Peter put the phone away amd he went to help.

He came to your apartment the next night with a split lip and flowers from a deli bucket, the cheap kind wrapped in crinkly plastic with one stem already bent.

You opened the door and stared at him with the expectation of clear cut annoyance but it stuttered when you saw him. 

He looked awful. Pale beneath the bruising, hair flattened by weather, and eyes rimmed red from no sleep. The flowers trembled slightly in his hand.

“I’m sorry,” Peter only said what you needed to hear. 

You crossed your arms, the indentation of where you bit at the inside of your cheek had his eyes fluttering across your face. “For which part?”

He flinched, and you hated that it softened you.

“For making you feel like you were asking for too much.” He swallowed then went on. “You weren’t—you aren’t. I’m bad at explaining where I go. That’s on me. Not you.”

It was not enough, everything in you knew it was not enough.

But he didn't make excuses. He did not tell you that you were overreacting. He didn't punish you for being upset. He stood there in the hallway looking like someone who expected the door to close and thought he deserved it.

You sighed, and it sounded tired all the way through. “Come in before my neighbor starts listening.”

“She already is,” Peter said before he could stop himself.

Your eyes narrowed and he blinked at his abruptness. “I mean—the door across the hall. It opened earlier.”

You glanced past him. Mrs. Alvarez’s door was indeed cracked half an inch. Despite yourself, you laughed.

Peter smiled faintly, relieved and ashamed.

The flowers went into a chipped vase on your desk. You ordered takeout and ate sitting on the floor because your small table was buried under textbooks. The apology became a conversation, halting but real enough around the edges. He told you he had trouble letting people worry about him. You told him that was not noble, just annoying. He laughed into his noodles, then winced because of his lip.

You touched his chin lightly, your face softened by several degrees and you made sure to be careful with your pressure. “Who did that?”

The reply came instantaneous. “Work thing.”

“Peter.”

He looked at you and your frown made is way back to your face, doing that horrible thing to his heart. 

For one second, the room thinned around the truth. Then he exhaled, “I promise I’ll tell you someday.”

You should have pushed.

Instead, you let your thumb skim once beneath the bruise, gentler than either of you deserved.

“Someday better not be a scam,” you said and the frustration in your words were poorly hidden. 

“It isn’t.” Peter meant it, which was almost worse.

By Christmas break, you were not officially in love with him.

You avoided the word because it felt too large and too easy to misuse. But you missed him when he left. You saved the corner of your blanket for him without thinking. You caught yourself looking at his hands when he talked, the long nervous fingers, the faint scars, the way he touched things carefully despite being strong enough to break them.

Peter was strange. Sweet. Frighteningly perceptive. Too private. Too self-sacrificing in ways that made you want to shake him. He apologized too much and withheld too much and kissed you like he was grateful and guilty in the same breath.

On New Year’s Eve, you took him to a party he clearly did not want to attend.

It was in someone’s too-small apartment near campus, crowded with students wearing glitter and cheap cologne, the kitchen floor sticky with spilled drinks. Music pulsed through the walls. Someone had taped tinsel around a bookshelf. Someone else had brought a dog wearing a bow tie, and the dog looked more composed than anyone else there.

Peter stood close to you without crowding, his hand resting at your lower back only when you leaned into it first. He watched the room the way he watched everything: lightly, and constantly. You saw his eyes track exits, open windows, and even drunk strangers moving too quickly.

“You okay?” you asked with a small tilt of your head. 

He looked down at you, refocusing. “Yeah.”

You weren't easily convinced. “You look like you’re planning seventeen escape routes.”

“Only twelve.”

You smiled. “Progress.”

Peter leaned closer so you could hear him over the music. His voice didn't reach you louder, it came as soft as it always tried to land. “I’m not great at parties.”

“I noticed.”

“But you wanted to come.”

“I wanted you to come with me.”

That landed somewhere visible in his face. A small astonishment, gone quickly but not before you caught it.

“Well,” he paused, cleared his throat, and his voice softened, “then I’m good.”

You believed him.

At midnight, everyone shouted too early, then corrected themselves, then shouted again. The countdown dissolved into laughter. A stranger bumped your shoulder. Confetti popped weakly from a tube and scattered over the floor.

Peter kissed you at twelve.

Not like a movie. Someone’s elbow knocked his arm and you laughed into his mouth because the dog started barking. His nose was cold from where you had stood near the window. The kiss started awkward and turned warm, one of his hands lifting to your cheek, and his thumb careful near your jaw.

When he pulled back, you exhaled, “You know me so well it’s kind of unfair.”

You meant it lightly.

A little intoxicated by the room, by the year turning over, by his mouth and his attention and the fact that he had come even though crowds made him tense.

Peter went still.

Not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough for you to feel the pause beneath your palm where your hand rested against his chest.

Then he smiled, but it took work. “Is that a complaint?”

You shook your head. “No.”

“Good.” He kissed you again before you could see his face too clearly.

Later, walking you home through streets rinsed blue-black with cold, Peter listened to your steps beside his and tried not to come apart.

You know me so well.

The words looped, soft and damning.

Snow had begun to fall again, thin flakes catching in your eyelashes. You tucked your hands into your sleeves and complained about your toes going numb. Peter offered you his gloves. You refused. He only offered again. You took one glove and made him wear the other, which was impractical and ridiculous and somehow made his chest hurt more than anything else.

At your building, you lingered beneath the awning.

You looked tired, happy, and a little wind-burned. Real in a way his stolen images of you had never been. The glow from the lobby light turned one side of your face gold.

“Do you want to come up?” you asked and you smiled up at him with an expression that did little to help his constantly spiking pulse. 

He did.

God, he wanted to badly.

But Peter also knew what waited inside him if he did. The lie beneath every comfortable silence. The stolen knowledge under every thoughtful gesture. The way wanting had taught itself to wear the face of care.

“I should head home,” he forced the words out and they felt beyind wrong exiting him.  Your expression shifted, just a little.

Peter felt it like a physical blow.

“Okay,” you whispered in the night air, and even you seemed surprised at how small it seemed. 

He needed the clarification to stick desperately. “I had a good time.”

“Me too.”

Peter touched your hand, his own reddening fingertips grabbing your own cold ones. “Text me when you’re inside?”

You gave him a look that made him feel stupid and wanted all at once. “I’m literally going upstairs.”

“Humor me?”

“You’re ridiculous.”

The chuckle that escaped him camd freely at just how accurate you were. “Historically, yes.”

You smiled, leaned up, and kissed him once. You lingered there for a moment, suddenly turning to nervous to face him, then repeated the action once more and pulled away. “Goodnight, Peter.”

“Goodnight.”

He waited on the sidewalk until your apartment light came on.

Then he waited another minute.

Then, another.

His phone buzzed.

inside. still alive. tragically glove-deficient.

Peter laughed under his breath, alone in the snow. He typed: I’ll survive with one cold hand.

Your reply came quickly.

brave little toaster.

He stared at it until his fingers hurt from the cold. Then, the little typing bubble disappeared.

He should have gone home.

He didn't, that had become an unsavory pattern for him.

Peter climbed.

Not to your window, not this time. He told himself that mattered somehow. He went up the side of the building with practiced silence, fingers finding brick, and his shoes sticking lightly where they touched. The city dropped away beneath him in a wash of headlights and wet pavement. He reached the roof and crouched near the ledge, close enough for his senses to map your apartment in fragments.

Water running..Your shower. A cabinet opening. Your roommate not home. A towel drawer sticking. You humming the chorus of a song from the party, off-key and sleepy.

Peter closed his eyes and exhaled a cloud of air into the cold night. 

The right thing was to leave.

He stayed until the shower shut off.

He stayed while you moved through your room, while fabric whispered over skin, while your phone clicked against your nightstand. He didn't look through the window, he kept his eyes on the roof gravel beneath his hands. That restraint felt obscene because he wanted credit for not doing the worst thing while doing something terrible.

His breath fogged faintly in the cold.

“I’m done,” Peter whispered out loud and the city did not answer.

“I mean it.”

He didn't really know who he was promising. You. Himself. The ghost of every person who had loved him before the world forgot how.

Below, you laughed softly at something on your phone and Peter’s head lifted before he could stop it.

That sound.

It moved through him with humiliating force. Warm, private, and entirely unguarded. He thought of you in the café, in class, in his jacket, on your floor eating noodles, under party lights with confetti caught in your hair. He thought of all the ways he had already ruined the clean thing he wanted.

Peter stood abruptly.

He crossed the roof, dropped into the alley, and landed soundlessly beside a stack of abandoned boxes dusted with snow. His ribs ached. His hand throbbed from where he had split the knuckles earlier that week. He pulled his hood up and walked away without looking back.

For almost three blocks, Peter believed he could really stop.

Upstairs, you finished drying your hair with an old towel that had gone rough from too many washes.

Your apartment was quiet except for the radiator knocking beneath the window and the muffled bass of someone’s music two floors down. The party had left glitter along your collarbone, one stubborn fleck near your wrist, and a faint headache tucked behind your eyes. Your skin still held the clean heat of the shower. You wore an oversized shirt and sleep shorts, your damp hair brushed the back of your neck as you climbed onto your bed and tucked one leg beneath you.

You checked Peter’s text again.

I’ll survive with one cold hand.

You smiled to yourself, biting lazily at the edge of your thumbnail.

Sweet, impossible Peter.

He was always saying things like that. Small things. Harmless things. Little jokes that sounded clumsy enough to be real. You liked that about him, the way he made awkwardness feel almost deliberate, the way he carried tenderness like something he had stolen and still wasn’t sure he was allowed to keep.

You set your phone down, and then after a few paused moments, you picked it back up.

For a moment, you sat still, listening.

Not to anything specific. The building settling. Pipes clicking in the walls. A car passing below, tires hissing through dirty snow. The soft ordinary life of the city stacking itself around you. You could still feel the ghost of his glove on your hand, the warmth he had given up without making it a whole noble thing.

You opened your phone again.

The screen lit your face in the dark. Peter’s last message sat at the top of your conversation, sweet and plain, but you swiped away from it and opened the app folder buried between weather, notes, and a language app you hadn't used since September.

His location refreshed after half a second.

A small blue dot moved underground, following the subway line away from your neighborhood.

You watched it for longer than you needed to.

There you go, you thought, something soft and fond turning over in your chest. Going home like he'd promised.

Your thumb hovered near the map. The little dot stuttered once, then continued. Queens-bound. Alone. Probably standing instead of sitting because he always did that, always gave up seats without looking around to see if anyone noticed.

You smiled again.

Then you opened the second page.

Recent searches loaded beneath a synced browser tab.

Your name. Your bookstore café. Your old campus volunteer archive.

Your social media username with two letters transposed from the first time he had guessed wrong.

A search about whether ESU library study rooms had exterior cameras.

Another about the laundromat near your apartment.

Another about the orange cat in the window, which made you press your lips together to keep from laughing because that one was so painfully, pathetically cute you almost wanted to forgive him on the spot.

Almost.

You scrolled slowly, thumbnail caught between your teeth.

Peter had tried to be careful. That was the adorable part. He deleted things late, never immediately. He cleared histories in batches. He used different browsers for different kinds of guilt. But he was tired too often, distracted too easily by whatever terrible, secret life kept putting bruises beneath his clothes, and sometimes he left little openings behind him.

You'd only needed one.

After a minute, you reached for your laptop in your bedside table. 

The screen woke too bright in the dim room. You lowered the brightness, entered your password, and opened a folder hidden two layers beneath a boring label from last semester’s statistics course.

No full name sat at the top.

That had been one of the first strange things you had found out. 

There should have been more. A student record with a clean history. Tagged photos. Old classmates. Family posts. Some trail of a boy becoming himself in public, even if it was messy, even if it was private, even if most of it had been half-abandoned and badly archived.

Instead, there were gaps.

Not empty, exactly. Emptiness had a shape. This was far stranger, a life with the identifying edges rubbed raw. Campus systems recognized him enough to place him in classrooms, but old references thinned out when you pulled too hard. Public databases returned fragments. Security logs showed a face without a stable story attached. Search results curved away from certainty.

So you had named the folder yourself.

coffee boy.

You clicked it with familiarity and the profile unfolded across the screen with neat, patient organization: screenshots, timestamps, saved browser activity, transit pings, campus camera stills, bookstore security clips, location trails, and blurry street footage collected from public-facing feeds he probably assumed no one would bother checking. There were no tidy records calling him anything with a true name. No clean archive of a life before you. No easy explanation for why the boy in your biology class seemed to appear out of nowhere with old grief in his eyes and no one behind him looking for him.

But, there were patterns.

A brown jacket crossing ESU’s north quad at 8:12 a.m.

The same jacket outside your café at 6:47 p.m., eight minutes after your shift started.

A hooded figure lingering across the street from your apartment on the night you had closed alone.

A campus camera catching him turning his head before anyone else reacted to a car backfiring near the curb.

A security feed from three weeks ago, grainy with snow and bad lighting, showing someone dropping from a brick wall into an alley with impossible ease before pulling on that same brown jacket and walking into the street with his head down.

You dragged the timeline forward a few seconds.

There.

His face turned toward the camera.

Half-shadowed. Bruised. Undeniably him.

Your room reflected faintly in the laptop screen. You didn't look frightened in the reflection.

You looked tired. Curious, almost fond.

Because really, what were you supposed to do with him? 

Poor Peter, watching you from corners and rooftops and café tables, thinking his wanting made him monstrous because he had not yet understood that wanting was only ugly when it lacked imagination. He had searched your name like a confession. He had tracked your schedule like a prayer. He had learned your tea order, your walk home, even the little pauses in your texts.

He knew you so well.

It was sweet.

Not good, not harmless.

But sweet, in that sad, crooked way he was sweet when he brought soup and pretended it had been a normal thing to do.

Your phone buzzed.

Peter: Sleep well.

You glanced at it, and your smile came slowly, private enough that no one else would have known what to call it.

For a few seconds, you only sat there in the blue-white wash of the screen, hair damp against your shirt, thumbnail resting between your teeth.

Then, you looked back at the laptop.

His location dot kept moving. His searches waited beneath your cursor. And the paused footage held his face in the alley, caught between who he pretended to be and whatever he became when no one was meant to see remained awaiting you.

You kept scrolling.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re very untrusting?” She raises a brow playfully. 

Your eyes narrowed, already preparing another comeback when the heavy grated iron door groaned open from the other side of the room. Years of training settled over you before you even realized it had happened, your gaze snapping toward the entrance before flicking immediately to Yelena.

“Were you expecting company?”

She made an exaggerated show of thinking about it, lips pursed and finger tapping thoughtfully against her chin before her expression broke into an impossibly smug grin.

“Oh. Right.”

A figure in bright red stepped hesitantly through the haze, stopping just inside the doorway as though he wasn’t entirely convinced he’d walked into the correct room. Spider-Man looked between the two of you, then back toward the hallway as if debating on running. As if seeing two naked widows was the biggest threat he’d seen all day. 

Yelena didn’t give him the chance. “Take off your clothes.”

“W-what?” 

“You don't wear clothes in the banya, ditch the leotard.” She ordered. 

“This is not a leotard.” He shuffled awkwardly, his arms moving around his sides aimlessly. “Uh, your tech told me this was your office?” 

Yelena’s arms went up, “This is my office. Get in.” 

His entire body tenses, “I’m fine thanks-“ 

“Waa, waa.” Yelena laughs, “My office, my rules.” 

He’s not biting, which makes you stifle a laugh. The silence stretched just long enough that you had to bite the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from laughing.

Yelena leaned forward conspiratorially, as though she were making him the deal of a lifetime.“You get to enjoy a very nice, relaxing soak..“

You finally took pity on him, and picked up where she intentionally left off. “And we get confirmation you aren’t carrying any weapons. Everybody wins.” 

His masked head turned toward you, the eyes on his suit getting animatedly larger. 

“…Seriously?”

You smiled sweetly. “Seriously. I’ve learned to stop fighting her on it, it’s very nice in here.” 

His shoulders sagged in the unmistakable posture of someone realizing resistance was entirely pointless. With a defeated sigh, he shuffled toward one of the wooden stalls. The stall door clicked shut behind him, and almost immediately the muffled rustle of fabric echoed through the room. At the same time, Yelena lazily stirred the water with one hand, looking altogether too pleased with herself.

“He said it was some small potato problem,” she murmured, effortlessly slipping into Russian. “Figured two Avengers could help him with intel.” 

You hum, “Why didn’t you tell me he was coming by?” 

“I forgot.” 

“I don’t believe you.” You rolled your eyes, earning another satisfied grin from her just as the wooden stall creaked open. Spider-Man stepped out clutching a white towel around his waist with both hands like it was a lifeline. His shoulders were tense enough to rival a man walking into an execution, his face hidden behind the mask he’d somehow insisted on keeping despite surrendering the rest of the suit.

You had expected him to be lean, scrawny almost. 

Instead, you found yourself staring for half a second longer than intended.

The suit had done him absolutely no favors. Beneath it were years of relentless training, packed onto a frame that looked carved from stone, broad shoulders tapering into a narrow waist, every muscle defined by years of keeping the city safe. His arms alone looked capable of lifting a car without much effort, his biceps so absurdly large you were fairly certain one of them rivaled the size of his own head.

You caught Yelena watching your expression from the corner of your eye. The smug little smile spreading across her face told you she had noticed your momentary lapse immediately. 

Yelena burst into laughter, which stopped abruptly when she realized he was in fact not actually going to take the mask off. 

“Wait, you’re serious? You’re not going to take it off?” 

He slips into the water, “It would defeat the whole anonymous thing.” 

“Even for your girlfriend, or boyfriend, or whatever.” She trails off, “You know there’s fanart-“ 

You tuned her out almost immediately, letting the words fade into meaningless background noise while she enthusiastically listed the bizarre piece of online fan art she’d stumbled across. You had long ago accepted that Yelena somehow found herself on the strangest corners of the internet imaginable, usually against her own will and yet somehow always with enough curiosity to constantly send links to the group chat. Bucky had blocked her long ago. 

The first night she downloaded Twitter, she had run into the common room, her tablet clutched in her hand her eyes searching for Bucky as he very innocently was eating his popcorn. “Barnes, have you ever heard of Sambucky? Or a website called AO3?” 

You’re pulled out of the memory when Spider-Man speaks up again. 

“- Look, I don’t have anyone. I kinda keep to myself.” 

“All by yourself? All the time?” Her voice falls. “No wonder you’re so sad.” 

“I’m not so sad.” He lies, his voice rising a pitch. 

“A little bit.” She mumbles, then her shoulders straighten as if she just got the idea of a lifetime. “You know, my sister here is very lonely too. She says she is not, but yet every weekend she is with me or eating ice cream pretending we cannot hear her watching those horrible American movies through the walls.”

You turn your head to her, expression blank. “Yelena.”

“Can we talk about what I came here to talk about? The attack on Damage Control. ” Spider-Man buts in, making you nod in agreement. 

“Yes, can we?” 

“Right,” The shit-eating grin is still wide on her face, “So that is more your area. Like small potato, whereas the New Avengers are focusing on big potato stuff.” 

“Right, there’s more to it than that.” He adds. Going on about what he had learned the past day and giving details of the incident that had not been made public yet. 

The warmth of the water settled around you as you absentmindedly dragged your fingers across its surface, watching small ripples spread between the three of you while you pieced together everything he was saying. After a long moment, you glanced toward Yelena.

“So you think it’s something like what they used on us?” you asked quietly. “The conditioning. Whatever they did to the other widows.”

“That was my first thought,” Spider-Man admitted, looking toward Yelena.

“It’s not,” She replied without a second’s hesitation.

Spider-Man frowned beneath the mask. “You’re sure?”

”It is more like possession."

You hum, your hands still moving the water around in front of you as they talk, letting Yelena fill the two of you in on what she knew. Unfortunately, every road ended exactly where it had begun. The New Avengers had no additional intelligence, no active investigation, and no plans to divert resources toward Damage Control while larger threats occupied their attention.

Spider-Man didn’t argue, but disappointment settled visibly across his shoulders all the same. The hopeful energy he’d arrived with slowly disappeared beneath the weight of another dead end, and after sitting quietly for a moment, he let out a long sigh before pushing himself up from the water.

“Fine,” he muttered, reaching for the towel he’d left folded on the bench. “I’ll just go ask Damage Control myself.”

You very intentionally kept your eyes fixed somewhere above his shoulder, refusing to acknowledge the beads of water slowly tracing paths over abs that the suit had done an excellent job of concealing. Or the way the veins in his muscles flexed when he pulled himself up. Or the way his boxers clung to his thick thighs. 

“You know,” Yelena said with far too much innocence to be trusted, “you’re not completely anonymous anymore.”

Spider-Man paused in the middle of grabbing his clothes. “What?”

“I’ve seen your belly button.”

All you could do was sigh, letting your body sink further into the water until your chin was covered. 

“…Uh,” Spider-Man finally managed after several painfully long silent seconds, “okay.”

“Goodbye, Yelena,” he said, already halfway through the doorway before remembering to glance toward you. “And… goodbye, Y/N.”

The heavy iron door barely had time to swing shut behind him before he was gone, leaving a trail of wet footprints stretching down the hallway outside. You waited until the echo of his footsteps disappeared before leaning over and bumping your shoulder against Yelena’s.

”You’ve scared him off.” 

“Hmm, something is telling me you’ll see him again.” She smirks.

Before you had the chance to ask what exactly that was supposed to mean, Yelena slipped beneath the surface without another word, disappearing completely beneath the rippling water while you were left staring after her, equal parts amused and unconvinced.

News of the attacks seemed impossible to escape days later. Every television hanging in an airport terminal, every radio crackling through military transports, every phone notification carried another version of the same story, each one somehow more unbelievable than the last. 

 The majority of your updates came from Yelena, whose texts arrived at all hours of the day with the urgency of someone who had remembered a detail halfway through another conversation. It was a lot of, “Just talked to Spider-Man;)))))) u wish this was u huh?????” 

You and Bucky had spent the better part of the week chasing leads that dissolved into nothing before you could ever get close enough to investigate. Reconnaissance, surveillance, more reconnaissance, another anonymous tip that turned into an abandoned warehouse with little more than stale coffee cups and dust to show for it. By the time your transport finally touched back down stateside, you felt like you’d spent more time staring through binoculars than actually accomplishing anything. 

“Remind me why people still choose to live in New York,” you muttered as you dropped a thick stack of mission reports onto Val’s desk with enough force to make the folders slide apart. “

“I’ve stopped wondering.” Bucky admitted, “It was nicer in the 40s.”

You sighed, rubbing absentmindedly at the side of your neck where the edge of your Kevlar vest had spent the last several days digging relentlessly into your skin. The movement earned an immediate wince as the irritated patch protested beneath your fingertips.

“You should put ice on that,” Bucky said, noticing before you’d even finished reaching for it. He shrugged off his own tactical vest with considerably more irritation than necessary before tossing it onto the chair beside him. “Couple more days in these things and it’s going to rub you raw. These vests are garbage.”

“They’re definitely not sized correctly.”

“They’re not sized correctly because procurement buys whatever’s cheapest.”

A tired laugh escaped you. “I think Val just hates us.”

“I’ll have her order us different sizes,” he continued, already looking toward her office despite knowing she was deliberately never here. “These are shit.”

You smiled despite yourself, unfastening the last strap before setting your own vest aside. “Thanks, Bucky.”

“So what’s next?”

“I think…” You stretched your shoulders until your back gave a satisfying pop. “I might stop by Yelena’s office.”

He raised an eyebrow knowingly. “Checking on your sister?”

“And Spider-Man.” You said casually, “Heard he got shot, she’d know how he’s doing” 

“Oh? That’s it huh?” 

“I just want to know how his Damage Control adventure went.” You defended yourself, despite there being no reason to. 

Bucky laughed quietly through his nose. “Good luck with that.”

“Yelena?” you called as you nudged the heavy iron door open with your shoulder, expecting to be greeted by either an insult or something thrown in your general direction.

Instead, silence answered you.

The bath sat empty, steam lazily drifting through the room while the familiar scent of cedar, herbs, and eucalyptus lingered in the warm air. The water rippled softly beneath the lantern light, untouched except for the occasional drip falling from the ceiling into the pool below. You still wondered how this building managed to keep up with the humidity. 

You frowned, pulling your phone from your pocket.

I’m at your office. Where are you?

The typing bubble appeared almost instantly.

running 2 get food

Another notification popped up before you could even lock your screen.

do u want blini

wait no dumplings

there's an ice cream cart do u want 

of course u want why do i ask

Then another.

I'll get them all brb

there's new vodka stashed under the third bench, landlady got a new bottle from home country 

You couldn’t help smiling. 

thanks. I’ll warm the bath for you. bring me a tea 

Her reply came so quickly you wondered if she’d been holding the phone the entire time.

yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy girly time 

Chuckling to yourself, you slipped your phone onto one of the dry benches before slipping your clothes off in an untidy pile until all that remained was the comforting humidity wrapping around your skin.

You eased yourself carefully down the stone steps until the water climbed past your ankles, your knees, your waist, every aching muscle loosening a little more with each inch. The heat seeped deep into your bones, unraveling tension you hadn’t even realized you’d been carrying since boarding the quinjet days earlier.

By the time the water reached your shoulders, the exhaustion finally caught up with you.

A quiet, involuntary moan escaped your lips as you leaned your head back against the smooth stone edge of the bath, your eyes slipping closed while the warmth wrapped around every sore joint and bruised muscle. For the first time in what felt like days, your breathing slowed, your shoulders finally relaxed.

So completely, in fact, that you never heard the heavy iron door slowly creak open behind you.

”Uh, Ms. Y/n?” A timid voice spoke, making the tension rise back in your shoulders as you jumped. The bright red suit made your heart race out of shock and a weird sense of nervousness at being here alone with him.

“G-God, I’m so sorry,” he blurted, spinning around so quickly he nearly lost his footing on the damp stone. His back was to you before you’d even managed to respond, his hands raised awkwardly as if surrendering. “I didn’t mean to walk in on you. Yelena said she’d be here today and I just… I thought…” He groaned quietly to himself. 

You couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped you.

“It’s okay,” you said, your voice softer now as the adrenaline finally ebbed away. “Really. She’s just getting food. She should be back any minute.”

“I’ll just wait here.” 

“Spidey,” You pout playfully, splashing the water to beckon him in, “Join me.” 

“Are you sure?”

”Yes.”

“I was actually…” He hesitated, sounding almost embarrassed to admit it. “I was kind of looking forward to the soak.”

That pulled a genuine laugh from you. “Right?”

He glanced over his shoulder just enough that you caught the sheepish grin tugging beneath the edge of the mask. 

“I wasn’t sure if it was weird that I was, I’ll just change.”

“It took me a while too,” you admitted, as he disappeared into the stall, “The first time Yelena dragged me down here I thought she’d finally lost her mind. Now I’m her after almost every mission.”

”Man,” He says through muffled fabric, equipment dropping on the wood bench, “I’d love to come and soak after a long day.” 

“I’m sure Yelena would allow it, as long as you don’t throw a party in here or tell anyone or make a mess.” You drag on, smiling as he came into view. This time with no towel wrapped around him, just his boxers clinging expertly to him as he stepped inside the water.

He leaned back against the stone edge with a contented sigh, finally allowing his shoulders to drop. For the first time since you’d met him, he looked… peaceful.

It was then your eyes caught the scar.

Angry red tissue stretched across his side just beneath his ribs, the wound still fresh despite already being sealed shut. The edges remained inflamed, the skin surrounding it slightly pink from rapid healing that no ordinary body should have been capable of.

He followed your gaze and instinctively looked down at himself. “Oh, that.”

One hand brushed lightly across the mark before he flexed experimentally, watching the skin pull without discomfort.

”I was going to ask, how you were doing. Yelena was giving me updates.” 

“Doctor’s said it will leave a nasty scar, but I heal faster than most.” His voice is quieter now, reflective as you stare at him. “I can barely feel it.” 

“This was a gunshot that almost killed you, just days ago?” 

He nodded, sensing your hesitation. “You can touch it.” 

He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d offered. Maybe because it didn’t hurt anymore, or maybe because the concern written so plainly across your pretty face made something warm settle in his chest. There was something strangely comforting about it, enough that he found himself hoping you would say yes before he’d even realized he’d been hoping at all.

You held his gaze through the mask for a brief moment, silently asking if he was certain, and when he gave another small nod you pushed gently through the water until barely a foot separated the two of you. The movement sent soft ripples across the surface, brushing against his shoulders as you lifted your hand. Instead of pressing your palm directly against the wound, the backs of your knuckles grazed lightly across the newly healed skin, careful enough that it almost wasn’t a touch at all.

“I heal faster due to a diluted version of the serum they give us widows, but nothing like this.” Your fingertips traced lightly around the edge of the injury without putting pressure on it, fascinated by how smooth the tissue already felt. “But nothing like this. This shouldn’t even be closed yet.”

“Y-Yeah…”

The word caught somewhere in his throat.

A visible shiver rolled across his shoulders, one that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature of the water. It was the realization that you were standing impossibly close now, naked underneath the murky water, and close enough that he could count the droplets of water clinging to your shoulders, close enough that every sensible thought he’d had moments earlier evaporated into steam.

His eyes betrayed him.

For only the briefest second, they dipped downward before he caught himself, snapping immediately back to your face with an expression that could only be described as horrified with himself.

“I’ve…” He cleared his throat a little too forcefully. “I’ve been having some issues with my DNA and the spider thing.” 

“The spider thing.” You echo, urging him to continue.

He rubbed the back of his neck, grateful for the excuse to look anywhere but directly at you.

“It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, but my arachnoid DNA started climbing way higher than it’s supposed to. I was acting… not exactly like myself for a while.” He gestured vaguely with one hand, struggling to summarize weeks of bizarre mutations. “I’ve started shooting webs out of my actual wrists instead of using web shooters, and apparently that’s only one of the side effects. Everything is stabilizing now, though. I’m… mostly normal again.”

Your expression shifted from amusement to fascination almost instantly. “Out of your wrists?”

Before he could answer, your hand had already slipped from his side to his forearm. Your fingers wrapped gently around his wrist, turning it over in the warm water until the small opening nestled against his skin came into view. 

“I used to make web fluid, but now it’s all homegrown.” He jokes, but goes silent when you don’t laugh instead you’re too fascinated. 

“Do you shoot webs from other places?” 

“Oh, no. Absolutely not. No, no.” He shook his head so quickly a few damp curls escaped the edge of the mask. “Just… just the wrists. I’m very normal everywhere else.”

A small hum escaped you, thoughtful more than anything else.“That’s a shame.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“I said that’s a shame.”

“No, I heard you. You sound… disappointed.”

“I’m not disappointed,” you corrected with a sheepish smile, finally releasing his wrist. “I just think it would’ve been kind of interesting.”

For a long second he simply stared at you.

“What? I like spiders too, you know?”

Then a laugh escaped him, bright and completely unrestrained, echoing warmly off the cedar walls. He shook his head, still smiling to himself as he looked down at the water between you.

“You widows,” he shook his head, “You guys are something else.” 

“Hmm, and what about you, Spidey? What are you?” 

He pauses for a moment, his mind going back to the first night he officially met you in this bath, the towel clutched around him while Yelena spoke enough for the both of you. 

“I am lonely,” he admitted at last, the confession coming softer than he’d intended. There wasn’t any self-pity in his voice, only a quiet sort of acceptance. “It’s… gotten better lately. A lot better, actually. But your sister was right.” He laughed weakly to himself, shaking his head. “I hate giving her that satisfaction.”

Your smile widened despite yourself. “So do I, but alas she keeps being right.” 

He shifts a little closer, either consciously or subconsciously you don’t know. Close enough that you could make out the constellation of freckles scattered across his shoulders. Close enough to hear the steady rhythm of his breathing over the gentle splash of water against the stone. Close enough that every time either of you shifted even slightly, your knees threatened to brush.

For reasons neither of you could explain, the room suddenly felt much warmer than it had a moment before.

“I’m not very good at… this,” Peter admitted with a nervous smile, gesturing vaguely between the two of you. “Talking to people, getting close to people. I mean I think you’re the first person to touch me in years. Is that depressing?” 

“A little.” You admit with a playful smile. “But I understand. Our lives, it’s impossible to have normal relationships.” 

“You don’t know the half of it.” He breathes out, and neither of you move. You both just sit there, relaxing against the concrete wall. The tension between the two of you is electric, it’s like every drop of water is drawing you closer to him.

The silence is only broken when he decides to speak up, “She sure is taking a while.” 

“She sure is…” You turn to him, “You really never take the mask off for anyone?” 

He shakes his head, “I try not to.” 

You watch the fabric strain against his lips, and you yearn to see how plump they are. What shade of pink, how they’d feel against your own. You wanna see his nose, feel it pressed against your skin, to watch his eyes as you touch him.

“Not even a little?” You ask, your palms moving up to cup his cheek. 

“It’s easier this way.” He says and he’s not sure if he’s telling you, or trying to convince himself. His body ignites with each rub of your fingers against the fabric. 

You sit up, your hands falling to his shoulders.

“Is this okay?” 

“More than okay.” He whispers, in awe as you practically tangle yourself in his lap. He holds you gracefully, and respectfully as you straddle him. You can feel his boxers against your inner thigh as his hands hover respectfully on the outside of your ribcage to keep you balanced. 

Your fingertips trace the outline of his face, trying to memorize the feel of his cheekbones. 

“I’ve spent so long wondering what you look like under there,” you admitted, your voice barely louder than your own breathing. 

“Just like anyone else.” He managed to get out, his mouth going dry as he all but melted underneath your touch. 

“I find that,” You lean forward, pressing a kiss to his fabric-covered forehead, “Very hard to believe.” 

He shivers, fingers digging into your skin as you press long kisses down his cheeks right to where the mask ends and his skin begins. 

“Would you,” The warmth of your breath makes the hair on his neck stand up, “Be willing to move the mask up about, an inch or two?” 

“I-“ 

“You don’t have to.” You remind him, leaning back to catch his eyes again. “I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable-“ 

One hand leaves your skin, pulling the mask up just enough to expose his plump and waiting lips. There’s barely enough time to stare at the new part of him before he's pulling your lips into his. It’s a little clumsy at first, awkward with the bunched-up mask rubbing against your nose, but you make it work. His lips were warm against yours, opening his mouth at the first swipe of your tongue against it. 

He pulls away with a gasp, “Can I touch you?” 

You’re nodding before he can get it out, letting his head drop down so his mouth could suck and bite at your chest. Your nipples are pebbled by being exposed to the cool air, only warming once he pulls one into his warm and waiting mouth. 

One of his hands is already guiding your legs apart, his fingers slipping in between your folds. 

“You’re so wet.” He whispered against your tits. 

“We’re in water.” Your eyes were closed, relishing the feeling of the gentle circles he was rubbing into your aching clit. 

“And I’ve been able to smell you since I walked in, you can’t hide from me.” 

Your heart rate picks up, and he no doubt feels that too as he slips a finger inside of you. You’re all but grinding against his fingers, your clit brushing against the raised spot on his wrist. 

“F-fuck,” You cry out, “Can feel your wrist throbbing against me.” 

“It wants to shoot webs at you, wants to wrap you in them. Keep you all for myself,” He whispers, “You’d like that wouldn’t you? You want me to fuck my webs into you.”

There’s no shame to be had at the fire that licks in your lower belly at his words as you nod frantically. 

In a split second you’re being pulled up from the water, and laid down on a towel. Your head propped up by his discarded suit bunched up as he hovers above you. 

He leans down and licks a strip of water droplets from your tits, before his hand travels back down to your cunt. 

There’s a soft hiss as his webs disperse onto you, they’re warm and sticky and practically dissolve into your wetness as he slides two fingers inside of you. With each brush of your clit against his wrist, he dribbles out fluid that only makes him fuck into you faster. His fingers curl expertly, and the sounds bouncing off the walls of the bath are lewd. 

“You’re so dirty,” He growls against your skin, feeling every nerve on his body stand up. The inhibitor did little to quell just how feral he felt pressed against you. His cock was hard in his boxers, rutting against the soft skin of your leg to dull the ache. “You know, this is how spiders mate. They roll their sperm into webs and fuck them into the female.” 

Your moan is broken off into confusion as you watch him, a small smile on his lips. “Yeah?” 

“Sorry,” He whispered, his fingers still prying the nastiest sounds from your heat. “This is really hot.” 

“You know, widows kill their mate after sex.” You manage to stutter out. 

“Are you gonna kill me?” He asks, pressing harshly against your clit with another messy ooze of his webs. 

“G-god no, I’m gonna cum.” You’re all but gasping as he pries an orgasm out of you 

Your legs are shaking, chest heaving by the time you come to. He’s still sitting between your legs, boxers still on as he presses gentle kisses to your thigh. 

You try to take him off guard by flipping him over onto his back, as gently as you could. He lands with a huff, and you pretend he didn’t see that coming. The view of you on top of him has him reeling, your tits bouncing as you tug briskly down at his boxers, pressing your lips to his.

“I can’t,” He pulls away from your lips reluctantly, “I can’t take the mask off.” 

“I don’t care.” You sigh pressing your lips harshly against his again. 

When he pulls away this time, a thread of spit connects your mouths. “I'm sorry, I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable if you can’t see me-“

”I don’t care,” You echo, “I just wanna feel you.” 

“The mask stays on.” He asks, once more to confirm. 

“The mask stays on.” You agree, digging your nails into his shoulder blades as you reach down to guide his aching cock to your entrance. You slide down on him with a satisfying hiss, gasping at the stretch of him. His cock is so thick, you have to pace yourself before your hips meet his.

“God.” He seethes through his clenched jaw, his eyes rolling back into his head. You wished so badly to see the pathetic, fucked out look on his face. “You feel so good.” 

“You’re huge.” You sigh contentedly, rocking your hips lazily against his as his tip presses gently into your sweet spot each time. 

You ride him slowly, relishing the moans leaving his glossy lips. Or the way his abs tense every few seconds as you bounce and grind against him. It’s frantic, but intimate as you fall apart above him. 

“You’re so beautiful.” He pants, watching your thighs shake as the thick curve of his cock pressed against the deepest parts of you. 

“Spidey.” You moaned, your palms heavy on his chest as you tried to keep up your rhythm, failing when the pleasure overtook you.

“Right there, baby. Fuck.” The term of endearment leaves his mouth recklessly as he leans up, the soles of his feet hitting the ground as he fucks up into you. His hands are on your tired hips, picking you up and fucking yourself on his cock as if you weigh nothing. He hit every single spot inside of you, the bulge of him pressing deep against your stomach as you cried out for him. 

“I’m gonna- I’m gonna-“ 

“I got you,” He cooed, “Cum for me, let me feel you.” 

He felt every second of it, as you spasmed and came around him. It wasn’t too long before he followed behind you, letting your cunt milk him for every drop of his cum. It was warm, and thick. You’ve never felt this full before, it felt like he was coating your insides, claiming you as his. 

“Spidey,” You mumbled, “That was…” 

“I know…” He sighed dreamily, rubbing gentle circles into your hips from where he still lazily held you.

You pull off of him with a lewd pop, his release dribbling down your inner thighs. 

“It’s so thick.” You stare in amazement, a finger gliding through the thickened cum.

He sits up quickly, head tilting in confusion. “That’s- it’s not webbing.” 

“Definitely not normal.” You giggle like a schoolgirl,. “Don't worry. I’m into it. Majorly.” 

He shakes his head in disbelief, watching each sway of your hips as you slide into one of the shower stalls. He just lays there, chest still heaving in disbelief that the past twenty minutes have even happened. 

“You not gonna clean me up, Spidey?” You speak through the haze of the shower spray and a smirk falls on your face when you hear his feet frantically slapping against the wet concrete.

That’s how Yelena finds the two of you, your back pressed against the metal of the stall door. The water long gone cold as Spider-Man had your eyes shut in pleasure while he fucks up into you harshly, blubbering out pathetic moans of your name. 

You’re still sensitive and so full from his last release by the time he slides into you again. He leaves no stone unturned as he urges you to come apart around him again, and again. 

“Yes, yes,” He grunted, “Is this okay?” 

“Yes.” You cried out, your legs locking around his ass to prevent him from stopping, as if he’d ever dream of it, “Please don’t stop. I’m right there, right fucking there.” 

The metal stall was shaking with the ferocity of it, the sound of his hips slapping against yours drowned out by your cries. 

“Are you gonna cum?” He panted, his fingers already rubbing at your swollen clit, “I need you to cum for me.” 

“I’m gonna cum,” You nod, “Just keep going. Yeah, like that fuck. Fuck, Spidey I’m cumming.” 

“M’behind you.” His hips stuttered as your cunt suckled him in and drank in every drop of thick cum he released deep inside of you. 

“Fuck.” You laughed lazily, pressing your sweaty temple against his shoulder. He shuddered when he tried to pull out, his cum plopping out of you and clinging to his cock like glue. “Guess you gotta stay inside of me.” 

“There’s worse places to be.” He laughed, pressing a gentle kiss to your head. 

The blissful afterglow was interrupted by a loud throat clearing, Yelena’s voice carrying through the steam.

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. 

Tiny, microscopic potato, she would say.

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 desert. 

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

"What?" He mumbles, the word falling soft out of his cotton mouth.

You stir slightly in response to the grazing of his touch, and it kicks Peter-Tingle on high-alert that this was not a figment of his imagination. He's quick to un-hand you, scooting backwards towards the edge—and tumbling harshly onto the floorboards with a loud thump, snatching the sheets with him.

The noise echoes in his eardrums, curls splaying out over the floorboards, and Peter is completely frozen. In absolute cold, drowning terror, he watches you stir fully, turning around and stretching at your limbs—a dissatisfied frown perched in your lips at the sudden loss of warmth.

What has he done?

"Spider-Man?" You mumble, voice groggy, almost muffled as your nose dips deeper into the pillow, the one he occupied seconds ago.

Your gaze finally peers open, one palm coming to rub at your undereyes—before meeting his own widened, nearly terrified expression.

"You're awake." You state, as if his existence within the walls of your apartment is a daily, common occurrence. Even if he hasn’t stepped foot into his most favourite apartment, in years. "Hm, you've got brown eyes, who would've thought?"

Why is he here? Why are you so calm about this?

“I’m—so, so sorry.” His words fumble over each other, ears reddened at the tips. Feeling awfully exposed, he wraps his arms around his knees as he lifts himself into a sitting position, caving in on himself as he averts his gaze. “I don’t know why—or how—oh god. Was I hugging you? How did I even—I’m so sorry, I swear I have no clue on how I ended up here.”

Worse, he wasn't wearing a mask. Or much of anything really, aside from an old t-shirt, and Hello Kitty shorts that barely fit his thighs. As his fingers grip at the edge of the shirt, running over the hem, it hits him that these are his clothes. Ones he never stole back from your place, that he had merely assumed was lost to time.

Nothing could have prepared him for this situation, no prep-time or warnings from E.V.I.E.. He didn't have the protection of being Spider-Man and the mask that's become his second skin. No, he had landed bottom-first as bare-faced, shell-shocked Peter.

"You really don't remember how you got here?" You question, lashes fluttering shut as you struggle to stir awake. "Damn, I was wondering if you could tell me."

"No—I swear, I completely blacked out." He scrambles for a response. "Next thing I knew, I was in your bed—I can't believe I just said that."

Running a hand past the bridge of his nose, he hides pathetically behind his fingers, his best attempt of a mask against the chaotic churn of nerves bundling through his gut. He had promised to keep you safe by staying as far away as he could—aside from the daily checking of your social media pages and the occasional swing down your usual coffee shop just to see if your favourite order remained the same, but this? How was he ever going to forgive himself for it?

He hears shuffling, in the normal sense and not the heightened echoes he’s used to ever since his arachnid side started spinning out of control. Strangely, his senses have been dialed down to normal since he regained consciousness—and he can’t dumb it down to just a good rest. It has to be cause of you.

His lashes flutter against the pads of his fingers as he meets your gaze through the gaps. You face him head-on, sitting cross legged right in front of him, head tilted in innocent curiosity.

“You’re a cuddler.” You hum in acknowledgment.

He was genuinely going to be the first Spider-person to ever die of shame, not that he's met many, but he's sure Peter 1 and Peter 2 have never unknowingly climbed into the bed of their special someone because they couldn't control their own DNA evolution. A low sound escapes his throat, clenched through his teeth—completely at a lost for words.

He has no clue on what he’s supposed to do, not when there's no routine or steps to fall back on. Be Spider-Man (Mask's gone). The man the city actually wanted (One who preferably doesn't have panic attacks wearing Hello Kitty pants). Stay far away from his previous life (Scored a huge FAIL here). Get flowers for May (Done). Scroll through your social media pages (..Done). Feel the thrumming vibrations of the washing machine after patrols (Skipped, was too nauseous). Rinse and repeat.

There’s no coming back from this, and it wasn’t even in his control. He hadn’t meant to find you. The last thing he could recall before passing out in his apartment was—he had just wanted to go home. He swore that was all he intended.

“Hey.” Your voice, soft and warm, finally coaxes him out of his thoughts. He hadn’t even realised just how tight he had been clenching his eyes shut—as his gaze takes a few seconds to adjust back into colour with you in his full view.

Slowly and gently, your own fingers raise to pry his away from his face. He’s sure he has hand marks all over his skin, but you look at him with such a soft expression—he nearly keens.

“I got you. You're safe.” You reassure, repeating it as a mantra. “You’re safe here.”

His Adam’s apple bobs harshly, and he feels the tightening of his chest nearly burst at the seams. God, he missed you. All he wanted was to hug you, and tell you he was sorry—for all of it. That he hadn’t gone a single day without wanting to hear your voice, to be exactly where he was right now—that this was all he needed if he wasn’t so weak. If he wasn’t cursed.

“Sorry.” That’s all that comes out, a croak in his voice that he failed to swallow back.

Your lips quirk into a soft smile, and you look like home. He feels his muscles physically deflate in tension at the sight, something no inhibitor or invention could ever replicate. His life has been spinning out of control, and you've just set the needle aside without even blinking.

“You’re all good, Spidey.” Your voice is warm, comforting. “Aside from hogging the blankets, it wasn’t half-bad for my first sleepover with a vigilante.”

His lips part, a laugh caught in his throat—half shattered, half hopeful.

“Could you—I don’t know, explain to me what happened?” He raises his hands, gesturing to your apartment. “I can’t believe I lost control—I don’t remember anything.”

Your lips part, a small grin tucked between your lips. "If you insist."

A loud crash resounds behind you, kick-starting your frightened senses. Head whipping to the window, you spot your window ledge shoved half-way with brutal force, and a body covered in deep reds and blues on your wooden floorboards.

"Holy shit." You mutter to yourself, skillet pan still in hand, the oil coating its surface bubbling into tiny pops.

Spider-Man is in your living room. Spider-Man is spread out across your floorboards, seemingly knocked out cold, in your apartment.

Another sizzling pop snaps you out of your stump, and you realise the collapsed vigilante is your responsibility. Your fingers fumble to switch off your stove with a click, skillet haphazardly placed over the stove burner—apron still hanging around your neck as you rush towards the body. God, you hope it wasn't an actual body.

"Spider-Man?" You call out tentatively, and you're struck by how his body moves in response, the stretch of his back with that familiar logo disappearing to reveal a mop of dark brown curls.

He wasn't wearing a mask. You didn't know what you expected from a hero who seemed nearly indestructible on the news, even when in the process of being smashed into buildings by tanks, but Spider-Man looks much younger than you expected, ahead of you by at most a couple years—bearing a youth that is almost frightening.

He certainly did look battered. Bruises littered his cheek, as if he had slammed himself into bricks or concrete on the way, before he had landed himself in your apartment. Dark circles pooled as a dark shadow under his eye-bags, and his hair was a wet, clumped mess from the rain.

You didn't know where to begin—if you were even allowed to touch him to check if he's hurt, or to call a professional. Did the professionals even know who he was, of his true identity? What if you doomed New York City's most beloved vigilante to his fate, just because you made the wrong call?

Your knees meet carpet, hands trembling in indecision and nerves, coming to rest on his shoulder. At your touch, a hiss escapes his lips and you immediately snatch your hand back, clutching it at the wrist. Who were you kidding, you were the last person equipped to save a person's life—much less a hero's.

You rise halfway, head swinging around to locate your phone—when you feel an insistent pull of your apron, tripping you back to land on the carpet.

"Don't go." He whispers.

Your gaze snaps back to his face, and find his eyes open. Or at least, that's where his pupils should've been. He must be half-unconscious, with the way his eyes are blown into a darkened void, lips parted in some sort of daze.

"I'm going to get help." Your words form despite the panic arising in your chest at the state of him. Is this poisoning? What else could explain the blackened sclera, the way darkened veins coated his skin in an almost bluish-purple. "I'll be right back." You promise.

He shakes his head, almost insistently stubborn, jaw clenching in panic. "No, don't go." His grip tightens almost instantly, and you're swept by his abnormal strength with a sudden tug, tumbling on top of him. "Please."

You freeze, feeling the wet raindrops from his suit seep into the cotton of your apron. Before you even have a chance to push yourself off, his arms wrap around you protectively. Squashed between his broad chest and the tight grip of his hold, your nose is buried into the crook of his shoulder. You smell fresh detergent, sweat, and something so achingly familiar—it churns your senses into mush that it takes you a few seconds to register.

He's shaking, and almost feverishly warm.

"Spider-Man." You plead. "Listen to me. You don't look good. And I do not want a dead Spider on my conscience, so please—you have to let me go so I can find some professionals, just someone to check if you're alright."

His touch is a sizzling heat as the warmth envelopes you, almost like a weighted, heated blanket.

"No. Stay." He pleads. "Please, I don't want—I just need you."

He sounds so exhausted. Why wouldn't he be? Before he had suffocated you into this strange circumstance of a hug, his entire face had been dull in colour, sweat pooling at the curls over his forehead, and he just looked—fragile. Completely unlike the hero of the city you're used to seeing on screen, whether it be receiving the keys to the city or those cheerful quips that make its frequent rounds through the internet when he swoops in to save the day.

"Spidey." You call him gently, trying to think of how to persuade him. "—I won't leave you alone, I promise. Just let me get up, to at least fetch you a change of clothes. You're soaked."

The seconds passing by without a response, or the loosening of his muscles, feel like the longest beats of your life. Your own heart thumps along with the rise and fall of his chest, waiting with bated breath.

"Promise?" He murmurs weakly.

"I promise." You whisper. "I'm not going anywhere."

You feel the slow release of warm breath against your skin, the way his fingers tremor over the small of your back. Something in him relaxes just enough, and his arms give in, thumping heavily at his sides. You rise instantly, palms pushing at his chest and falling back onto the carpet. Feeling the wet residue of the rain coat your apron, and the side of your cheek that had been buried in his shoulder—your cheeks grow impossibly hot.

You need to snap out of it. He needs clean clothes. Yeah, that's a start.

Stumbling in your step, you rush towards your wardrobe—digging through the unorganised mess for a bag of clothes you had kept hidden in the most corner nook. One you hadn't thrown out since your first discovery of its existence, containing Hello Kitty shorts, some old, faded T-shirts—choices you would've never purchased for yourself but had for as long as you could remember.

You had run through a list of reasons for its existence, seemingly packed for an overnight guest. Maybe from that house-warming party you had thrown once before deciding you much preferred your space being reserved for only you, and someone had left their clothes mistakenly. Despite whatever plausibility or excuse—you never found the strength to throw them away. Even when you had every reason to, your mind instinctively buries the thought and the bag remained exactly where it was, kept in a zip-locked bag for it to be used by someone.

Apparently, today was its much-needed day.

Hoisting the bag over to the living room where he still laid, cheek pressed to the carpet, you’re relieved that the tension that previously consumed his expression has faded somewhat, with his lips parted slightly in slow exhales. His body seemed to be recalibrating, instinctively calming down right in the centre of your home.

Your hand comes to rest on his cheek, tapping it gently. Although his eyes with that dark void don't open, a low rumble escapes his throat—convincing you that he's still somewhat conscious.

"Hey, Spidey." You whisper. "I brought some clothes. Do you have the energy to change?"

He doesn't respond, and you poke your tongue into your cheek, analysing the length of him with dawning dread. It's no big deal, you just have to peel off this ridiculously tight suit with no zipper in sight without making it weird, and attempt at successfully pulling a T-shirt over his head.

Making your choice of a 'I Survived My Trip To NYC' graphic tee found at the top of the pile inside, your gaze switches back to the sprawled vigilante. From how heavy his arms had been earlier, rendering you immobile when pinned under them, you wouldn't dare make the mistake of assuming his weight would be easy to flip over. You could attempt to at least expose his back for you to take off that suit—assuming the costume even had a zipper.

Your long calculation apparently does the job for you as Spider-Man senses you near, and his arm curls protectively around your thigh, burying his nose into the crook below your knee. Your entire body stills, a tight grip over the tee as he gently rests his head over your knee, the soft texture of his curls brushing goosebumps against your skin. HIs body turns just enough to expose the expanse of his back—and the sight of a hidden zipper beneath that familiar symbol is a good sign.

Okay, sure. You could work with that.

He was ripped. You should've expected that, but the slow rise and fall of his chest expands the muscles across his exposed torso. You force yourself to tear your gaze away from the sight, reassuring yourself that your eyes were purely looking for possible injuries. You wouldn't go that low to check out a vigilante who was passed out in your living room.

Your fingers press into the sides of his cheeks, maneuvering his head so you could fit the opening of the tee over his head. Curls run through the white fabric before landing over his shoulder blades. It's strangely intimate, the way he's easily pliable in your hands—trusting you so completely. His lashes flutter once every few seconds, but he remains exactly where he is, body wrapped almost completely around yours—acting as a human barrier to you and the outside world—as you dress him in something soft and clean.

He's not supposed to be here, and you're not supposed to feel this protective over a stranger who dresses in two primary colours. Yet, seeing him at rest—makes you feel calm. The quiet of the apartment is a low hum rather than the empty chasm you’re used to, and your fingers run through his hair almost habitually.

You can't just leave him on the floor. There's also the latter half of his suit you don't want to deal with.

"Spidey." You whisper.

He lets out a low groan, wincing as his eyes shut tighter—burying himself deeper into your skin.

"No-no." Your hands come up to gently cup his cheek, coercing him.

His lashes part, and you're met with that same, expansive void, finding your own reflection in his gaze. He's still not quite himself, you believe—but he is able and willing to listen to you.

"I need you to put on these shorts." You gesture to the Hello Kitty pants you laid out for him. "Then, I need you to come to bed."

His brows furrow, lashes fluttering slowly as he processes your request. "Bed."

"Yes." You repeat. "You're exhausted, and I'm not leaving you on my floorboards. It's not too far, so please—help me out a little, Spidey."

His gaze doesn't blink, but you feel the shift in his muscles at your command. He stumbles as he raises himself, body slumping into you—but you steady him with your own grip. His nose buries itself once more into a crook to inhale your scent, this time being your shoulder.

"Okay." You mutter. "That's progress. Come on, up."

It takes you a couple minutes, mostly because he clings to you with every step and he is made of heavy weight. Whatever they feed the heroes of New York, it was clearly something out of limits from your measly grocery bill. By the time he managed to slip himself into those Hello Kitty shorts while you kept your gaze heavily fixated on the ceiling, making sure only to look when the waistband was tight around his torso, it wasn't long before he tripped himself face-first into your blankets. Your own body collapses beside him—equally tired as he is.

You attempt to form a pillow fort in your daze, a barrier of sorts. More for him than you, as you're sure in the morning once this side of him disappears—he'll have a much different reaction to waking up in an apartment with a stranger he doesn't know.

It gets demolished within seconds.

As if the pillows have formed a personal vendetta against him, they're thrown aggressively onto the floorboards. Your hand reaches out to grab them because you had just put them in the laundry—but your wrist is snatched too and you're tugged into his embrace.

You land back into the sheets, cheek smothered against his chest, and there he goes again, wrapping himself around you like a cocoon.

Here in your bed with his arms wrapped around you like you're his only anchor, brows furrowed tight—Spider-Man looked so human. Soft, and incredibly vulnerable. His arm still grips limply onto you even if you can feel his consciousness fading, as if the lack of contact would have you disappearing completely from his reach.

"Those pillows were meant for you, y'know." You mutter, unable to hide your amusement.

His lips curl into a stubborn pout. "Don't want them." He grumbles, words nearly incoherent with the small parting of his lips. "In my way."

You snort softly, before noting the dirt that coats his cheeks. With such a close proximity, you see everything. The soft lines at the corners of his eyes, the bridge of his nose, and just how beautiful he was.

"You've got dirt on your face." You whisper softly. "I should help you with that."

His grip tightens considerably, and you're dragged up so close to his face that your noses nearly bump into one another.

"Okay-okay. I'm not going anywhere." You feel the need to remind him, hand slowly lifting to press against his bruised cheek.

If the press of your finger-pads against the bruise was painful, he didn't show it—only burrowing his face deeper into the curve of your palm, a relieved sigh escaping his lips. The crease between his brows finally unfolds, and the years coated on his expression fades with it—leaving him looking impossibly young.

"Smells like you." He grumbles lowly, pressing the tip of his nose deeper into your palm.

Your heart skips a beat, traitorously even when you're sure he won't remember any of this by the morning.

“Do you have anyone?” You ask gently. “Someone I need to call?”

It’s heart-breaking, the way he immediately shakes his head, his curls ruffled against the sheets. For someone so beloved by the city, even in such a weakened state, he still believes that he has no one.

"Why are you here?" You murmur more for yourself, gazing openly over the fanning of his lashes over his darkened circles.

If it weren't for the expansive heat seeping from his broad chest through the cotton tee you tugged over his head, you would've believed yourself to be in the thick of a sweet, non-sensical dream.

You expect him to be fully asleep, but you hear it, low and almost inaudible. "Home."

Your heart tremors, barely able to comprehend it. "What?"

His words grow muffled against the sheets, the mess of his curls sinking deeper into the pillows—but you hear it. “Wanted to come home.”

Peter watches as you wring a cloth of its excess water over the sink, and the familiarity is dangerously luring. How many times has he sat here on your couch, watching as you prepped a medicine kit or a towel after his patrols? It’s almost unfathomable how quickly the new routines, rigorous with repetition and duty, all that control—that responsibility that leashed him tight falls apart the second he is in your proximity. Where old overpowers the new, because there is nothing he craves more than this. The past—the memories that became more present than reminder, when his own life had pressed ‘pause’ the moment he lost you.

He should’ve insisted on leaving when you offered to clean up the dirt that still coated his face. He should’ve shattered the hope that gleamed in your eyes when he gave you the barest nod, knowing how dangerous that fleeting belief could be when his own had never held value.

He did none of what he was supposed to do—and he didn’t even have the gull to feel ashamed for it, taking in the sight of you with unconditional hunger, absorbing every trace of movement and the way your voice resonated in the hearth of your home. He belonged in your life once, the same way the remains of his old t-shirts were kept in your wardrobe, or how the bathroom door still has the replaced hinges he fixed once on your third home date. There’s him all around, and the sight was its own guilty pleasure that the universe hadn’t completely stripped away the parts of him that used to exist in your life.

"You didn't do anything." You reassure him from across the kitchen counter. "Trust me, when you showed up in my apartment—you weren't in a state of anything other than being near-collapse."

His expression contorts. As if he needed more reasons to hate these new changes to his body—messing up all that is predictable. Predictable is good. It's safe. What isn't within even the remote levels of safe, is forcing you to look after him the entire night because he isn't even in control of his own body.

You stop in front of him, brushing some magazines and half-littered candy wrappers to the side as you sit on the coffee-table, knees brushing against his.

"Breathe." You murmur softly, eyes crinkling with a soft teasing expression.

He hadn't even realised he was holding his breath, being so close to you that it makes him feel faint. Oxygen swoops back into his lungs, his chest rising and falling as he stares at you openly with his mouth slightly gaped.

The cloth in hand raises to press against his cheek, and he feels the slight sting of its cool temperature against the warmth of his skin, the bruise above his cheekbone.

It doesn't truly register for him, not when you're staring at him so keenly he feels the need to ask. "What?"

"I just didn't expect Spider-Man to be so—" You struggle to find the words. "Human. I don't know. I suppose that sounds stupid, but you could pass by me in a coffee shop and I'd just sum you up as a cute stranger I'd never see again, not an actual crime-fighting vigilante."

The two of you were together, so it shouldn’t have struck him with elated surprise to hear it, but the admission that you still found him—he feels sixteen again, taken back to when you had first pressed a kiss onto his cheek and he understood immediately on what it meant to fall in love so completely that you could never look back.

You're too focused on dapping the wet cloth to notice his widened gaze, or the way he swallows dryly—licking at his lips. "You think I'm cute?"

"I mean—this entire time, I half-expected Spider-Man to be at least half-spider. Plus, I have eyes." You tease, your fingers gently brushing the wet cloth over the darkened soot across his cheek, rubbing off the marks. "I meant to do this last night, but you kept protesting when I tried to leave the bed. Clinging onto me—"

"Okay, okay." He raises his hand, catching you by the wrist. He's definitely flustered now. "I don't need to hear the details. I believe you."

You snort softly. "Thought you wanted the full story."

"Yeah, summed up—minus the details." He splutters. "I'm already dying inside from shame, and I've definitely ruined my impression with you forever."

"That's not true." You hum.

He blinks slowly, processing your words.

"There's no shame in reaching out for help, hero or not. I know you’re under a lot of public scrutiny but—it doesn't change who you are, y'know? You're deserving of support, just as much as everyone else. Even if the world expects you to be a hero—" You state. "You're still a person, and it seemed like you really needed someone."

He stiffens, jaw tightening as his eyes avert from yours to pinpoint his focus elsewhere—anywhere but you.

"You're not just someone." He mumbles lowly.

The press of the cloth against his cheek falters. "What?"

"You're—" His voice trails off, jaw clenching tight. “You weren’t scared of me?”

He understands how he can get when he loses control. The way his vision blacks out, and how his mind caves into silence—with his body moving on instinct rather than command. The reflection of a monster in the mirror, everything he swore not to be. The version of him that snuck into your apartment, clinging onto you as a lifeline—was stripped of the rules and promises he had made to keep everything together.

It was him at his most selfish—doing what his instincts pleaded—no, begged for him to do, and he had caved in for all of it. That's why he's here, and why you're staring with an expression he didn't dare uncover.

“I think you’re a lot more scared of yourself right now than I am.” You answer truthfully. “You were in a lot of pain. The last thing I would be was scared, when all you needed was someone to look out for you. Even if it's just for a little while.”

"I—" What is he supposed to say to that? That you're right on, and you've always been even without knowing who he is, and that he's been losing himself ever since he lost you? He swallows thickly. "I haven't been myself lately."

Your fingers tighten imperceptibly, grounding him. "You're still you, maybe you've just been putting aside what reminds you of that. I'm no vigilante, but working yourself to the bone and collapsing in a stranger's apartment—I think that's a signal for a horrible work-life balance."

"I have been resting." He argues. "I get enough hours, I have proof."

"Yeah, that's definitely why you slept like a log last night."

His lips part, gaze finally meeting yours, staring at you wordlessly. Eventually, a laugh escapes his lips, deepening the lines near the corners of his eyes. It's a little sad, and you wonder just how much he had to carry on his own—for a laugh to sound that broken.

"This is hard. I'm not supposed to—" He mutters, and that's the closest thing to raw honesty that you've pulled out of his mouth. "You're way too good for me."

Your smile deepens, and your fingers trace gently over his cheek where the bruise was finally fading. That must've been the mistake of it—the familiarity of muscle memory after a long patrol. He leans in, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek in thank you.

It’s only when he spots your frozen expression that he realises what he's done.

"I was not supposed to do that." He mutters to himself, widened eyes locked onto the spot where he left the kiss.

You blink, and he follows the movement—staring at each other in complete silence. His expression contorts, and you can't help the giggle that bubbles out of you.

"That was—wow." You choke back on your laughter. "I think you're running out of things you're not supposed to do, Spidey."

His own gaze crinkles into a smile, abashed. "I'm sorry, I just—I wanted to thank you. It was out of habit."

"Habit—you crash into people's apartments often and give out these free kisses?" You tease. "Is it part of the job description?"

He shakes his head immediately, terrified by the suggestion. "No—no. I swear this is my first time ever doing anything like this. I got the habit from my aunt, she used to—um..."

His expression dampens considerably. "Kiss my cheek for good luck."

Your gaze softens. "She sounds sweet."

"Yeah." His laugh churns awkwardly with a wince. "You would've loved her."

You watch him, and you sense it again—that chasm that ran deeper than the surface of his winced smiles. The way he shook his head when you asked if he had anyone, and even now, the way he fumbled with his fingers as if he didn't quite know what to do with himself in your gaze—and how he hadn't suggested once since waking up that he wanted to leave.

He was waiting, the way one waits for permission to exist in a room when they haven't been invited in one for years.

"Spidey." You call out.

He whips his head to look at you, pupils still widened in some perpetual disbelief, over the fact that he was in your apartment—that you were right in front of him.

"I'm going to make breakfast." You start, not leaving room for argument. "And you're going to help me."

He blinks once, then twice in astonishment. He swallows dryly. "O-Okay."

Your smile loosens into something reserved for a vigilante you had stayed up all night checking his temperature for.

You find that Spider-Man is pretty good in making pancakes, and that he easily maneuvers himself around your kitchen as if he had already memorised the layout. Of where your favourite mugs are, and how he didn't question twice when taking out the ice-cream tub without you needing to say it.

You could narrow it down to Spidey-senses, or whatever theories that's come up on your feed for his inhuman capabilities—but could it really just be that? Could his super-human abilities be the only reason behind why the warm hazel of his eyes light into the tiniest fireworks as he watches you scourge on your pancake, smiling at him with butter at the corner of your lips—as if the sight of you eating breakfast was the most beautiful thing he's ever seen?

Or why he picked you as his destination for home, or the slip of his tongue on how you meant a great deal more to him than just a someone who so happened to let him stay the night.

You have so much to uncover, but for now, he's just a boy in a NYC graphic tee that’s his exact size, and fluorescent shorts that do nothing for his thighs. He catches your gaze on his peculiar outfit, and his own lips purse in amusement.

"Any reason for the outfit choice?" He murmurs, a knowing smile covered by his fist as he rests his chin over his wrist, head tilting slightly as he gazes at you. "It's inventive."

"Oh—" You blink. "I don't know. I kinda always had them. They don't belong to me, but I just didn't see a need to throw out free clothes."

Your lips quirk up, teasing. "Suits you though. Think you'll keep it?"

He shrugs. "I don't know. I think I'll have to return it."

"Why?"

"So I can borrow it again." He suggests slowly.

You stare at him, unable to hide your growing grin. "Smooth, Spidey. Real smooth."

His gaze lights up. "Better than the cheek kiss?"

"Tons better. You could try it again—I'll see if I can adjust the scores." You tease.

"Really?" He stutters, akin to a flustered high-schooler.

"Yeah, but you'll have to tell me your name." You gesture with a point of your fork. "Can't go around giving free kisses without ID."

You meant it as a joke. You're no expert in superhero protocols, but you're sure the codenames meant no personal information spilled outside their work-life. Even when you've already seen his face, and shared a bed with him, and let him take your second favourite mug though he can't possibly know that last one. There's lines you've certainly crossed, but his name?

You part your lips to take back your impulsive request, to brush it off—only to find genuine consideration forming in his expression. Your smile falls slack in wonder. No, he wouldn't. He couldn't possibly.

Yet, he looks at you, almost peering deep into your soul. He looks at you as if he knows you, all boyish and unguarded. Whatever he sees, past the bed-hair and ice-cream smothered lips—it's worth it to him. It's worth something honest, and sacred—a truth he'll never be able to take back. It's a genuine, soft thing—a precious smile that lifts his lips, one you have no idea how brave he is for keeping. He has made his choice, and you're a part of it, always.

Peter looks at you, and he sees the only present he'll ever want. Past spells and starting-overs and stupid choices—at the centre of it all, it all becomes so simple. You—who his body sought out of instinct, who inhabited his mind with your own personal island, who had taken his heart from the first time he saw you. You're home, and no rules or lines drawn could've stopped him from returning back to you. His everything.

"Peter. Peter Parker."

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you're fussing and cooing as he collapses onto your couch. specifically for this scenario, you'd decided to keep a changeable blanket over the couch at all times. and you were glad for it, because the gash on peter's side was anything but pretty, and anything but clean. droplets of blood trickled down his skin, and you quickly dabbed at it with a cotton pad before disinfecting the wound. peter hissed, eyes screwed shut as he sprawled on your couch with the flair of a man who was used to being tended to by you.

truthfully, you don't really know how you formed this bond—alliance, if you will. all you knew was that spiderman had saved you from some very creepy men on a late night, even though he was already limping from some other fight he'd gotten into. in return, you had insisted he let you drag him to your apartment to take care of him, ignoring his awkward stuttering resistance of not wanting to bother or intrude. later, the other, more pressing reason for not wanting to spend too much time with you as spiderman had clicked in your head.

because peter parker was spiderman, and while you didn't have an iq of einstein's level, it didn't take long for you to connect the dots between the friendly neighbourhood superhero and your upstairs neighbor, the one who spend his friday nights in your apartment watching lord of the rings with you after having prepared an arsenal of snacks together, or his sunday mornings lounging on your couch while you finished the crossword puzzle in the paper.

and peter parker was many things, but he was not a good liar. so when your suspicion rose and you started putting pressure on certain points, asking all the right questions that spiderman couldn't answer nor evade in a way that was anything less than suspicious, it only took one face-to-face confrontation with peter to unearth the mystery all of new york was so desperate to uncover: who is behind the red and blue mask?

peter denied, of course. in typical peter style, but you saw straight through him anyway, and when you started searching his apartment, he only grew more frantic in his denial. when you held up his suit—he really didn't hide it that well, but then again, he probably didn't have a lot of house-searches anyway—his mouth clamped shut and denial was out of the question.

from that day onward, you became spiderman's self-appointed guy in the chair. peter was dead set on not letting you in on any of the actual dangerous stuff, claiming just knowing him was already dangerous enough, but he couldn't deny it was nice to have someone look out for him again, someone to come home to and someone to worry about him.

which is why he let you move him around, cleaning his wounds and fussing over him like he was a kicked puppy, even though he really wasn't in that bad of a state. maybe he liked being taken care of every once or so, sue him.

"does it hurt much?" you question when he hisses, feeling whatever medicine you're using trickle into his wound.

"'ve had worse," he mumbles, twitching away involuntarily.

you roll your eyes, pressing a little harder into the wound than strictly necessary.

"ow!" he yelps, pouting at you in hopes of it softening your resolve again. he chooses to ignore the pull he felt in his groin when the pain shot up his side. that was a psychological question he doesn't have the will to find the answer to right now.

you continue to work in silence after that, finally bandaging his side fully. the wound has already ameliorated significantly, his superpowers doing their work. you skim your hands over the bruises on his face and neck, and peter has to suppress a shudder at the feeling.

you're sitting up now, much closer to him than you'd anticipated, and for a moment, the breath gets sucked out of your lungs.

his face is so close. you can see every little cut, every freckle, every stubble and mole and imperfection that make him so beautifully him. your eyes drop down to his lips, at last, immediately flicking up again with every intention to move yourself away from him when you notice the look on his face.

much like yours, his eyes have dropped, too, almost mesmerized as he watches your tongue flick over your lips, wetting them.

throwing all caution in the wind, you surge forward to capture his mouth with yours, startling him enough to punch out a small gasp from his lungs. it takes a moment for the action to register in his brain, but when it does, peter kisses you back with such intensity, pouring all of the want and need that has been building for months into your heart through your connected lips.

you move quickly, overtaking by a haze and a want that has been lingering for far too long now, straddling his lap. he leans back on the couch, planting a hand on the back of your neck to take you with him and keep your feverishly hot lips against his.

the kiss is messy, and uncoordinated, and you're pretty sure your teeth full-on clank against his at some point. but peter doesn't seem to care, moving a hand to your waist to pull you even closer. with the roll of your hips against his, a groan tumbles out of his mouth and into yours as he feels the pressure on his cock.

and that's when the magic happens; you shift to find a more comfortable position, and lose your balance just slightly. your hand shoots out to stabilise yourself, landing right on the wound you've just bandaged.

and peter groans, loud and unchecked, immediately sparking a sense of worry in your chest because oh no, you've just basically pressed into his wound and he's in so much pain and—

you feel something twitch against your thigh, and your eyes flick up to his face. he does look like he's in anguish; brows furrowed, eyes glazed over like he's about to cry and his teeth clenched. he's gripping your hand with a bruising force, you're sure your wrist will feel a little sore tomorrow, but instead of trying to push you off like you'd expect, he's pressing your hand down harder.

oh.

"now what do we have here," you muse slowly, and peter's eyes flick to yours from whatever nothingness on the ceiling they were staring at. he lets you go like he's been burned, abruptly, breathing shallowly. it looks like he already came and is just coming down from an orgasm, but no, you've only just begun.

"i'm—i don't know," he pants, trying to sit up a little straighter, holding your waist to keep you seated.

"do you like it," you start slowly, trailing your hand down his side again, "when i do this?"

and when you add just the slightest pressure... peter's body sags, his head falling back against the couch. his mouth opens but no sound comes out, no answer to your question. you nudge your hips forward tentatively, and his clothed cock bumps your clit, causing a jolt of pleasure to shoot up your spine.

"you do, huh?" your other hand moves to carress his face, and peter keens, leaning into your palm like a puppy.

when he still doesn't give any verbal answer, you grab his cheeks, squeezing them together.

"speak up, parker."

so he nods, as best as he can with your grip on his face. "yes."

you press down on his bandaged side more forcefully, still grinding your hips over his erection, and his back arches off the couch as a whimper escapes his lips. "what, yes?"

"i like it!" he cries out, nearly knocking you off his lap with the way his hips buck up suddenly.

"oh." you have to close your eyes briefly at the admission, because your poor heart really can't have him saying stuff like that, looking like this. and then you're kissing him again, and it's a kiss with vigor, with authority, one that pushes his head deep into the soft headrest of the couch. peter moans against your lips, into your mouth, letting you take and push and prod all you like.

you let go of him, then, removing your hands from his side and face. you lean back to take a good look at him, to commit this vision to memory, and a vision it is. peter's still panting, eyes fluttering open when he feels you move away, chest going up and down rapidly while his hips twitch. when his eyes lock onto yours, you notice the wetness around them. did he actually cry? maybe you've gone a little too rough on him.

you brush a strand of hair from his forehead, whispering, "are you okay? did it hurt?"

"well, yeah," he admits, before awkwardly adding, "but i liked it."

"oh man," you grin. "you are fucked up."

"hey!" a flush creeps up his neck. "don't bully me."

"hm." you lean closer, brushing your lips over his, and his eyes droop. "i think it's hot."

"oh," he punches out, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides like he doesn't quite know where to put them. "...you do?"

"yeah," a smirk pulls at your lips, and you move down to kiss over his jaw. "i think you look really hot when you're gasping and crying out in pain."

"and you call me fucked up," he scoffs. "pervert."

you cup him through his pants unexpectedly, and peter's hips jolt up at the sudden feeling.

"you're the one who's been hard since before we even kissed," you murmur against his jaw, before tracing a path with your tongue toward his ear that has him shuddering.

"well— what do you expect, when i have a pretty girl basically sitting in my lap while she's patching me up!"

"and pressing on your bruises, let's not forget." you hum, pondering for a moment. "so you think i'm pretty?"

peter scoffs weakly. "don't let it get to your head."

"too late," you grin. "it's already in my head."

he shakes his head at you, but a dopey smile spreads on his face nonetheless. in a moment of affection, he surges forward to place a soft kiss on your lips, one that makes you forget how pent up you are and how delicious he's looking. one that reminds you it's peter, your best friend, your upstairs neighbor, new york's most selfless superhero. and you smile softly at him when you part, before pressing a kiss on the corner of his mouth, and then one on his cheek, his jaw, his nose, his forehead, just anywhere you can reach.

you pepper his face with kisses until he's practically giggling underneath you, the hand on his bulge long forgotten.

that is, until you squeeze him again. the laugh dies in his throat, making way for a sharp gasp as his eyes widen. peter's hips jolt up involuntarily, like he's been struck. you have to bite back a smile.

"you want something?" you murmur against his lips, and once again, peter gives no verbal response. he only bucks his hips again, grinding his erection against your hand. his body makes it clear what he wants exactly, but he's too flustered to say it out loud.

so you take your hand back, instead placing a gentle slap on his cheek. the impact leaves a print, barely there, but noticeable enough. it was meant to chastise him for not answering, but instead, his hands shoot out to grind your hips against him as his head snaps to the side with a loud groan.

god. you didn't even smack him that hard.

"wow," you grin, and you really want to add more, to tease him, poke a little fun at him, but the words die in your throat when he finally talks.

"do— do it again," he pants, finally connected his eyes with yours. "please."

"oh, so now you can speak?"

instead of doing as he asked, your hands make quick work of unbuttoning his pants, and peter's eyes widen in anticipation. because you're really here, in his lap, indulging all his fantasies and about to touch his cock.

however, you don't. when you've shoved his boxers down just far enough to free him to the slightly cold air of your living room, you sit back on his thighs.

"talk to me, peter."

he closes his eyes briefly, trying to compose himself. "touch me," he pleads softly, locking his eyes with yours again.

"touch you where?" you push, dissatisfied. you want to hear him say it.

a flush creeps up his neck, but he manages to croak out, "touch my— my c-cock, please."

you can't hold back your grin. "yeah, parker? you want me to make you come?"

and when he doesn't answer, only squeezes his eyes shut tightly, your hand strikes him once again.

"yes!" he yelps, even though he doesn't really feel it that much anyway, with his enhanced DNA and high tolerance for pain. but it's the thought that gets him going. "want you to make me come," he groans, hands kneading your thighs like they're his own personal stressballs.

"alright, then," you smile sweetly, and then you're stroking his cock, fast and mean, giving him no time to ease into it. peter's hips immediately thrust up, fucking your fist in sync with the movement of your hand. his breathing is shallow, and his hands are shaking slightly where they're holding you. he bites his lip softly, trying to muffle any more pathetic sounds, but you'll have none of it.

your other hand wanders, and he feels it skimming down his body but is too out of it to anticipate what you're gonna do. only when he feels a sharp twinge of pain shoot up his side, the sensation traveling all the way to the back of his head, beautifully numbing, does he register that you're pressing on his wound again.

he releases his lip, a broken sob clawing its way up his throat and into the open air between your mouths. he looks devastatingly gorgeous like this; eyes red and rimming with tears, hips bucking up uncontrollably as his cock twitches, hands switching between gripping your thighs, your waist, the couch.

before he knows it, the coil in his stomach is building, and he's teetering on the edge already. he leans forward, wanting to kiss you again, and you can't find it in yourself to deny him. your lips connect, moulding together as you moan into his mouth. and peter's gasping, continuously. short, whiny breaths that get punched out of him with every stroke of your hand.

"please," he mewls, breaking apart just enough to get the word out. "can i— please, can i come? wanna, ah, wanna come, please, ple—"

he interrupts himself with a helpless whimper, because you've just dug your fingers into the wound again. his cock twitches harshly in your hand.

"come for me, peter," you murmur softly, "be a good boy."

and that's what does it for him, a drawn-out cry escaping him at the praise. the coil in his stomach snaps, and he paints your hand and his shirt with his cum.

when he's coming down, he notices that his wound is almost completely healed—superpowers, and all that. but the tingling sensation of your bruising hands stays with him for much longer.

“Holy–”

“Fuck!” you say, throwing yourself backward with a shout. You bring your hand to your chest, pressing your heart back behind your ribs as the blur of colour comes to a stop on the edge of the roof. 

“Sorry!” Spider-Man says. “Jesus, you didn’t see me? I’m kind of, you know, brightly coloured?”

“You came out of nowhere! You’re going sixty miles an hour!”

Spider-Man rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “I got places to be. Well, most of the time.”

You feel your heart jumping under your palm. Spider-Man shifts, his head tilting down as though he’s squinting at you assessingly. 

“Hey, are you okay? I didn’t mean to scare you.”

You swallow your nerves. “Yeah. Yes, I’m fine. You scared me, s’all. Sorry for cussing. And yelling.”

He giggles brightly, plonking down on a creaky lawn chair, unperturbed by its green moss. “Yeah, you should be sorry, potty-mouth. Kiss your ma with that mouth?”

You laugh without thinking. “Sometimes.”

Spider-Man lays back in the chair and folds his arms over his stomach. It strikes you that you wouldn’t know if his eyes were open or closed, he looks relaxed, like he could doze. He looks tired, actually. He gives a long sigh and sits up some. Eyes open, decidedly. 

“What are you doing up here?” he asks. 

“Oh, I’m reading.”

“Reading what?” 

You refuse to tell him that it’s a silky sweet romance with a besotted leading man and a beautiful girl, but struggle to think of a lie. The silence lingers until it’s awkward.

Finally, Spider-Man waves a hand at you, his voice genial as he says, “Keep your secrets.”

“Are you okay?” you ask. 

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

It might be more apt to ask him what it is that he’s doing up here. Surely Spider-Man has more important things to get too than sitting in a rinky-dink chair waiting to snap beneath any weight at all on your dreary rooftop in the cold weather. And more that he doesn’t know you, hasn’t ever spoken to you, no matter how many times you’ve seen him around the city. 

“You look tired,” you say softly. 

“I’m okay. But, hey, thanks for asking.”

“Sure.”

Awkward silence lingers again. Your blatant confusion as to his presence becomes obvious, and Spider-Man looks away, rubbing at his neck again with that same nervous hand. 

“You looked lonely,” he says. “I guess I wondered if you wanted company, or– or a shoulder to cry on, or something. Anything.”

“Is that something you do often?” 

“What good is looking after the neighbourhood if everybody in it goes home sad?” Spider-Man shrugs. “You don’t have to tell me anything, I’ll only sit here if that’s cool.” 

“Don’t let me stop you.”

You’re thinking about Peter again. It’s ridiculous, there’s a superhero on your roof and you’re thinking about Pete, but you can’t help it. Spider-Man reminds you of him, his height and build, even his voice, though Spider-Man is all bravado and gruffness where Peter’s a tiny bit shy. It’s what made becoming his friend possible—he’s shy and you’re worse, you’re immovable, you struggle to talk half the time. If Spider-Man hadn’t scared the fuck out of you scaling up the building, you wouldn’t have been able to open your mouth. 

“I have a friend,” you say, buckling under the pressure of the quiet. “And I like him. And I don’t know what to do, so. That’s why I’m all messed up.”

“You don’t look messed up,” he says, bringing a hand to his chin to hold like he’s pondering something deeply. “You like someone? That’s a good thing.”

“I don’t think he likes me back.”

“That sucks, but– okay, sorry if this is weird, but you’re beautiful.” Spider-Man straightens in his chair. “Like, you’re really beautiful. And your voice is so nice, I’ve barely heard it and I already know it’s addictive.”

You laugh again without meaning to, a sputter of sound. 

“You’re really pretty. If he doesn’t like you back, I’m sure you can find somebody else.”

“Thank you, Spider-Man, but I don’t want anybody else,” you say softly. “He’s really perfect. Have you ever–” You clear your throat, picking at a scagged thread on your pajama bottoms and avoiding his gaze. “It’s stupid.”

“I bet it’s not.”

Nobody’s ever called you beautiful before. Nobody’s ever… 

Peter makes you feel beautiful. Tips your chin up with his pinky finger to get your eyes, takes a good look at you when he’s seeing you for the first time in a while, but he never says anything about it. He smiles and he's sweet, but he doesn’t call you beautiful. 

“He makes me feel like the only person in the world,” you confess. “He’s not perfect, like I said. He lashes out, and he forgets all the time, he’s late constantly, but he always says sorry, and you know he really means it? He’s the most genuine person. And he’s–” pretty, you want to say, but you look sideways at Spider-Man and can’t bring yourself to say it. “I want more of him than he wants to give me, is all, but I don’t mind. I like being his friend.”

“You want more,” he says, as though turning the words over in his mouth. 

“That’s the hard part.”

“That’s a nice love story.” He exhales slowly. “Lucky guy.”

“It’s not a love story,” you say, trying for happy acceptance and sounding weak. 

“It could be. Have you told him how you feel? I don’t see how a guy could hear all that from a girl like you and not at least try to make it work?”

You bring your knee up and rest your nose on the fabric there. “I don’t usually talk to people like this. I find it really hard.”

“Oh, so I’m special?”

“You’re an exception.”

“You don’t talk to this guy?”

You press your face fully to your knee, thighs aching. 

“Peter doesn’t answer the phone,” you mumble, hoping Spider-Man won’t hear you. “Can’t talk to him about anything. And what would I even say? I know we’ve been friends for years and all but I like you now, and I’m prepared to make things awkward between us forever?” You whine quietly. “Everything’s so hard.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Spider-Man sounds flustered. Sounds like he took a long plunge from a tall skyscraper. You look up, perplexed, and he’s facing you completely still. It’s like he’s been turned to stone. 

“You–” He swallows. “This Peter guy, you really like him?”

“I’ve had a crush on him since forever! And he never notices me, ever!” You scrub at your face. “I know it’s stupid and childish and high school, I know I should tell him how I feel even if there’s not the slightest chance that he’d ever want me back–”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

You squint at him. “You don’t know Peter.”

He laughs, still sounding all flustered and weak. “Okay.”

“Sorry. I guess I’m being really corny, huh?” 

“No.” His voice is higher, too, almost like he’s holding his breath. “It’s not corny, it’s nice.”

“He’s really pretty,” you say, lamenting your sad lonely life without him. And now you’ve made a mess all over Spider-Man’s generous listening. If there was a chance he’d come to see you again, you have surely ruined it. 

Spider-Man squeaks. 

You stare at him. He’s pulling at the edge of his mask, fanning himself, giving you rare glimpses of his pale skin. 

“Are you okay?” you ask.

“I’m sorry, I’m– super warm.”

“Oh. Is the suit hot?”

“It can be, yeah.”

“I guess I don’t know how to move on,” you say, breaking your gaze to stare at the gravelly rooftop instead. “He’s a great friend, and I didn't always want it so badly. I don’t know why… why it got so much worse lately. I see him and I wish he’d grab me and– and kiss me–” You bite your tongue. “Sorry, Spider-Man. That’s too much information."

“Kiss you how?” he asks. 

You jolt a little. “Uh, you know. Just kiss me. A real kiss. He’s kind of affectionate, like, sometimes he tries to hold my hand before we cross the street, and one time he did kiss my cheek, but it was, like, a bit. I want a real kiss.” 

“Huh.”

“It’s lame.”

“Love is kinda lame. Corny and cheesy,” Spider-Man sounds oddly pleased. “But maybe he’s got all these lame feelings too, and didn’t want to push you. You seem kinda shy. Maybe he’s worried he’s not reading things right. If you’re the kind of girl who’s easily flustered, how can he know if it’s because of him or not?” 

“But what do I do?”

“I don’t know.”

You laugh. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry, but whatever you do, if he gets the signal, he’ll reciprocate.”

“How do you know?”

“Girl as pretty as you?” Spider-Man’s voice goes soft as butter. “He’d be an idiot not to.”

—

By the time you’d made it back inside that night, Peter had replied to your message. 

In fact, Peter had spammed you. Answered everything you said with detail and then launched into an apology for not responding, cos he had a bunch of stuff to do and Aunt May had the car and his phone died on the subway home, yada yada. 

He then asked you out. 

Alright, he didn’t. He asked if you wanted to come over and watch a movie the next day, which is pretty standard Peter friendship activity, but has you smiling like a loser at your phone. 

Yes, you’d texted him, would love to, I’ll bring dinner?

Do not!!!! I will order in for us when you get here :D 

You’re standing in your nicest skirt, a pretty pink thing that ends at the knees and, and your newest converse, which aren’t all that new. Your cardigan is charcoal wool and buttoned all the way up to fight the sudden chill. It’s later than you realised; you spent an hour panic-changing your clothes and lamenting your response Spider-Man’s advice. You have to give Peter a signal, right? 

You are dressed very cute for a movie at his place, and you smell delicious. You’re gonna give him a wide-eyed flirty stare and who knows, maybe he’ll finally get the message. 

Or he’ll wonder why you’re so overdressed. 

The door finally opens, and Peter’s already smiling. His cheeks are red like spring cherries with a flush that crawls down his neck and probably stains his broad chest, too, his hair in order for once, his usual hoodie and jacket traded in for a plain white t-shirt that’s a little tight. Shows the indents of his chest, the lines of firm muscle there. 

“Hey, beautiful,” he says. 

You want him to call you beautiful forever. “Don’t,” you say instead. He should know better. You fluster at anything. 

Peter stands aside to let you in. You’ve been to the Parker house a ton of times, but it’s noticeably clean, and dimly lit. There are a couple of candles lit in the living room and a bowl of popcorn stands on the coffee table, filling the room with the smells of toffee and butter. 

“Was it cold?” he asks. 

You nod hurriedly. “So cold. I thought it was supposed to be summer.”

“We’re not that lucky. Make yourself comfy, okay? I gotta grab your drink.”

You unlace your shoes and leave them by the doorway, padding into the living room in your socks. The couch is fitted with enough throw pillows to turn a three-seater into a two-seater. You’re forced to plop yourself somewhat in the middle, but you’re too tempted by the popcorn to worry. You sneak a piece while Peter’s gone, humming as the sweetness breaks out across your tongue. 

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he calls. 

“For what?”

“For not answering you!” His voice echoes nearer, and he grimaces his way through the hall into the living room, two glasses of your favourite in his hands. “I’m awful. I’m an idiot, and I never check my phone. I’m sorry.”

“Peter, it’s fine.”

“You sure?”

Your eyes widen of their own accord as he sits down next to you, thigh to thigh, so close you can see the little bits of amber that swim in his irises, all that brown fragmented by shards of sunlight.

“I–” You nod oddly. “Am sure. Of course. I don’t expect you to drop everything–”

“I know you don’t, but still. I have my phone with me. I can answer you more, and you’re important to me. I get distracted.”

“Did you get all your errands done?” 

“Sure.” He hands you your glass and puts his own on the coffee table. “Thanks. You’re an angel.”

“You’re not so bad,” you say. 

You relax. Peter lets you choose the movie, and you feel warm sitting there pointing his remote at the TV, flicking unsurely through everything, but he’s Peter. You put on Cado Lake and hand him the remote, sure he’ll enjoy a sc-fi flick, and are instantly gratified when the movie hooks his attention. Not too much, though. He’s clear of mind enough to put the popcorn bowl in your lap and nip you with little questions. Who’s that again? Hey, she looks like May. Wow, you smell good, what is that? 

You’re about an hour into the movie when Peter’s hand sews itself behind your back. 

It’s warm, and big. His fingertips skate over the mall of your back until he’s found your side, where it curls, and he pulls you gently toward him. Your head drops into the space between his shoulder and head, the TV a colourful blur in front of you, your hand paused dead in the nearly empty popcorn like you’ve been frozen. 

“Okay?” he murmurs. 

“Yeah,” you say. You’re fine. 

He’s warm. He’s solid beside you. 

“You’re letting me eat all the popcorn…”

His laugh is a huff against your head. “I’ll make some more.”

“No.” You rest your cheek on his arm. Bliss flits through your entire body like a wave. “It’s okay. I won’t eat your share.”

“You do what you want,” he says, and you wonder if he’s relaxing beneath you, too, heat of his body seeping through his clothes and into your skin as his fingers rub gently into your side. “Get you a sack of popcorn, if you want me to.”

“This is nice.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. This is good.”

You struggle to pay attention to the movie for the next few minutes, wondering if this is really what you think. It’s not exactly friendship-level affection to wrap your arm around someone, is it? But Peter’s so lovely, it could be nothing. Why would it mean anything? What could Peter want with you? Of course you have a crush on him, he’s gorgeous, but Peter has no such motivations about you. Does he? 

He’s quiet for a while. You think the movie might’ve really snagged him, but then he turns to you with a shy smile that brightens exponentially when you sneak a glance at him and end up smiling back. 

He doesn’t look away. 

It gets so hot you wish you could peel out of your cardigan, but you don’t wanna move and displace the moment. 

“You’re missing the movie,” you whisper. 

“I’ve missed so much of it,” he says. 

“What?”

“Look.” He swallows. “Look, I don’t know if I’m– maybe I’m way off base here, and all, but,” —his hand climbs your side, folding over your, pulling you even closer— “maybe I’m not? I don’t know.”

“Off base about what?”

“You know.”

“Do I?” you ask. You can hardly speak above a breath, but Peter hears it. 

Peter’s gaze darts down. 

You lift your chin. Spider-Man, you think, watching as Peter’s brows knit like he’s in pain and his pupils turn to dimes, sunshot brown melding dark, this better work. 

Peter inches his face down until your noses are touching, your eyelashes forced shut in a flutter at his proximity. 

He lingers there, in the quiet, breathing the air your exhale and holding his tongue as he raises his hand to cup your cheek tenderly. His fingers slip beneath your ear and his thumb drags over your cheek, distending your lips, and his lips brush against yours so softly you aren’t sure if he really has kissed you, or if you want it bad enough to conjure the sensation. But then he presses in for a proper kiss, and the quiet in the room gets replaced by the pounding of your heart in your own ears. 

He tips your head a little and kisses upward, parting his lips to encourage you to let him in. You suck in a breath as he wades in for a real kiss, the heat of tongue and the soft plush give of his lips on yours. He encourages your head back quick, your eyes squinting ever so slightly, but he’s only moving you to wade in for the same kissing at a new angle. His nose tip scrunches into yours. 

Your thoughts are electric. Your hand vies for a place to anchor, grasping tightly at his shirt, screwing the fabric over his chest into a ball. 

“Holy crap,” he says, pulling back a touch. 

His eyes are shining. His mouth is damp with spit, but you aren’t certain if it’s yours or his.

“I can’t believe I had the willpower to wait this long for that,” he says, running his thumb over your bottom lip. “Shit, you're just as perfect as I thought.”

You laugh in a tangle. “What?” you ask breathlessly. 

“I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long. Wow, you taste like toffee.”

“I’m sorry–”

Peter gets his thumb under your chin to tip your face up. “For what? For being perfect?” 

“For tasting like popcorn.”

“That is the least of my worries.” He does a one-eyed squint at you, stroking your chin and cheek with his thumb, a caress that makes your stomach ache as much as the kisses had. “Sorry it took me so long to kiss you. You’re a hard girl to read.”

“I know,” you mumble. 

He kisses your cheek and ducks his face into the side of your head, gathering you in for a hug that’s strong but careful, too, your thigh curving into his lap. He doesn’t seem to notice the way he’s dragging you onto him as he breathes in your hair. 

“Pete?”

“Yeah?” 

You struggle out of his arms. “Can you kiss me again?” you ask. 

“Yes. Yeah. Oh my god, absolutely.”

Your laugh as he bends your backwards into the mountain of throw cushions is ecstatic. Then smushed, quickly, but it’s fine. The kiss is worth getting cut off. 

—

(One month later.) 

“I was going to tell you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Seriously, I was! But I didn’t want you to be embarrassed."

“Right.”

“And I didn’t want you to be mad.”

You stare at Spider-Man in your boyfriend’s bedroom, unmasked, Peter Parker with hair like a dandelion and eyes so sorry he’s almost winning you over, the mask clasped in hand. 

“You knew who I was talking about,” you say, crossing your arms over your chest, “and you still made me give you a signal? Do you know how hard that was for me?”

“You can do hard things!”

“Peter.”

“I wanted to be sure. I have a huge crush on you, you know that? It was just as scary for me as it was for you.”

You sniff indignantly. Spider-Man drags himself from his window to take your hands, pouting like a loser for your forgiveness. 

“Can you please forgive me?” he asks. “Don’t you think it would’ve given my secret away if I turned up at your door and planted one on you? You do not understand the strength it took to wait.”

“Peter, it wasn’t even twenty four hours.”

“You’re really pretty,” he mumbles. 

You forgive him already, not that he needs to know that. You have more important questions to ask. 

“So, what’s with the webs?”

“D’you like ‘em?”

“I didn’t say that.”

He whines. 

You plant a little kiss on his jaw and make for the bed you’d been planning on napping in before his impromptu return through the open window. “Come hold me while I nap,” you say, moving back his sheets, “please. And maybe I’ll think about forgiving you.” You’re too tired to think about this in depth. 

Peter throws himself into the mattress. You crawl into his arms. 

“You kinda smell like street,” you mumble, nuzzling his neck, a hint of forgiveness to settle his bad nerves. 

His head falls back as he lets out a relieved sigh. “You smell perfect,” he says.