#penned.

You glance at your phone. Seven minutes. Some awful part of you twists at the idea that maybe he’s wondering where you are, if he’s waiting for you; or if he’s being normal about it, like a normal person. Peter’s more normal than you, he wouldn’t take seven- no, EIGHT minutes to knock on someone’s door, even if his hands were clammy and his heart was thumping so loudly in his ears he thought his eardrums might burst. You’ve still got your earphones on even though you paused whatever you were listening to long ago, the sound of your breath thrumming through your head. When you move to finally take them off, you fumble and swear as they clatter loudly to the floor. 

Immediately, you cringe, wanting the floor to swallow you up as muffled movement stirs behind the door in front of you. You’ve probably got about ten seconds to pull yourself together and appear fine enough for him not to be immediately concerned - a difficult task, considering that you have dark circles the size of plates, and you’re pretty sure you’ve got some sort of stress-related rash breaking out on your hands, but the door is already opening, and life (as it turns out) isn’t merciful.

All of a sudden, Peter is there, and you’re on the floor, frantically chasing your earphones as they scatter across the lino. When you look up at him, you’re suddenly relieved to find that he’s mostly just confused. Lamely, you flap your mouth for a second, and then blurt out the first thing that pops into your head. 

“I was just about to knock.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Peter’s apartment smells like Peter - which is obvious when you think about it, but it didn’t cross your mind until this moment how painful this might be. There’s his soap, his deodorant, the faint oil fryer smell of any Joe’s uniform, which is currently half hanging out of a laundry basket near the door. It was like you were seeing him properly for the first time; this new, unknown Peter who exists beyond the confines of a kitchen. This isn’t the Peter you know or Spider-Man - this is Peter outside of Joe’s. Peter who does laundry. Peter who has a coffee mug on the drying rack that says ‘World’s Greatest Pop-Pop’, and some complicated calculations splayed out in sheets on the rickety little dining table. 

“It’s a bit of a mess right now, I haven’t had time to clean up, because of the-“ He’s babbling and flitting about, picking up different bits of odd clutter only to put them down again. His hair is damp against the collar of his sweatshirt; shiny and dark and curling up in little spirals around his ears that you had the sudden urge to wrap around your fingers. You step inside, and Peter’s pottering about the kitchen, preparing mugs and rooting through his cupboards. When you make your way into the main space of the apartment, barely a separate room, Peter looks up at you through his hatch and brightly chimes, “Would you like anything to drink?”

You quirk your brow. Suddenly, whatever haze had fallen over his face dissipates, and he blinks, dazed.

“I’m still in Diner Mode.” Peter rubs his eyes, then rakes a hand through his hair, disturbing the wet clumps of curls. No wonder it's always so frizzy, with the amount of times you've seen him tug and ruffle at it. The movement exposes the tips of his ears, shiny from the moisture, and their usual shade of flustered pink. He’s back into the cupboard in an instant, searching through boxes and jars before he finds what he’s looking for. “Okay, so I have coffee and…”

“I’m on the edge of my seat.”

“…Actually, that’s it.”

“Then I guess it’s my lucky day.”

You can’t help it, but your voice comes out dry and flat, and his eyebrows knit, something shifting in his expression. Your fingers go numb, and you remember what you came here to do - you just didn’t think you would get into it so quickly. Peter sets his shitty instant coffee on the side (and you would know it’s shitty, because you buy the same stuff) and just looks at you. You’re not sure what sort of look it is, something between his usual awkwardness, and some entirely new face you’ve never seen before. He’s planting his hands on the counter now, squaring his shoulders, and your breath hitches.

Maybe, you think, this is the face behind the mask. 

“I don’t know what to say.” It sounds awful and croaky, and it’s nowhere near covering the sheer amount of thoughts currently rushing through your head, but it’s all that comes to mind. 

What is there to say? Nothing much had really happened; coworkers hook up with each other all the time (granted, usually not on shift), but even then, you never even had sex. You can’t call him a ‘hook up’, he was somehow both more and less than that - just some guy you’ve kissed a couple times. Whatever the hell the two of you have been doing for months has never been labelled anything past ‘friends’, which you’re now quickly realising is nothing like what you actually are. You’ve been tormenting yourself, tormenting him, all because you couldn’t suck it up enough to admit to yourself that you care about him more than you want to, and because it’s easier to live with the possibility that something could, might happen. 

And now a new, worse feeling is looming over you; the possibility that Peter might not feel the same way about you.

Deep breath. Push it down. Bury it. 

“Then let me say it.” Peter is clearing his throat now, your heart rate spiking like a hummingbird, your teeth clenched shut. It takes one, two, five, seventy drips of the faucet before he speaks again - or maybe he doesn’t hesitate at all. 

“I’ve been thinking about something you said a while ago, before…” He trails off. Before everything. You grimace a little, suddenly feeling nauseous when you remember how rude you were to him, all the times you’d snapped at him when he was just trying to help. He’s the kind of person who helps people, and you’re the kind of person who pushes them away, apparently. All of the hate and grudges you’d held against him, all of the resentment, instantly falls onto your shoulders. You punished him for the crime of being happy and content, when his other job is being beaten to a pulp and worked to the bone, and you were stupid enough to not realise it was only because you hated yourself. 

“You said something about how shit happens, and Spider-Man won’t always be there. How I’m ‘just some guy’.”

“Peter, I-“ Your lungs are burning so hot you think you smell smoke again, and you try to hold your breath, even though you currently feel like you’re suffocating, “I didn’t… I don’t think that anymore. I’m-“

Deep breath. Push it down.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m fucked up.” You’re laughing, but it doesn’t reach your eyes, or Peter’s. 'Fucked up’ is an umbrella term, apparently, for having nightmares about a fire that happened over a year ago, shutting everyone out of your life, smelling smoke in every dark corner or pantry. ‘Fucked up’ covers being so desperately lonely that you have to compulsively hurt the first friend you make after isolating yourself for so long; stringing him along in some ‘will-they-won’t-they’ bullshit and letting him down every step of the way. He probably wants to cut you off. It’s probably better if he does.

“You’re not fucked up,” His face is soft, like ricotta against your tongue. Like the skin across his collarbones. “I just… About the fire-“

He’s not broken eye contact with you until now, but his gaze flicks to the dish rack, the walls - he fiddles with the faucet for a fleeting moment. You wait.

“I want to apologise for everything,” It’s slow to start, but once the dam is broken, it all comes out in a rush and drowns you. “I know we didn’t know each other then, but I want- I need you to know that I’m sorry. It’s my duty to protect people, and I didn’t protect you, and I’m sorry.”

“Peter-“

“Hold on. Last night, when you were talking about how it was your responsibility to-“ His voice wavers. You realise you’re still holding your breath. “How you had, like, a sense of duty towards Joe’s, and you were so brave, and all I could think about was how I let you down. Even before I knew you, it killed me just knowing that there was someone who needed me, and I didn’t come through for them. It- It messed me up.”

There’s a pang where your heart used to be, when you realise he’s not talking about you specifically, but just someone in general. Some poor citizen needing to be saved. There’s nothing else there, just hollowness and cold, stretching back and back into you like an abyss. This must be what heartbreak feels like, you realise; you’re not special to him, you’re just something else on his plate. Maybe, something in the back of your head leers, maybe you’re nothing to him after all.

Spider-Man, your coworker, is staring into you so intently that you can feel the weight of the city on his shoulders. 

“I nearly quit.” His voice hangs like a loose thread - like the ones on the diner tablecloths that if you pull, make the whole thing unravel. You twist your finger around it and tug, even though you know you’ll come apart too.

“Joe’s?”

“Being Spider-Man.”

“Oh.” 

Peter huffs a breath, twirls the faucet knob between his fingers with the same dexterity and fluidity he demonstrated between your legs last night, and your gut churns. The pipes groan to life, and he shuts it off again before any water has the chance to flow through. Then, he’s coming around the corner, out of the kitchen, and all of a sudden you’re in Peter’s living room, with Peter, and that's what he looks like at home. There’s no pretence, no uniform, no employee code of conduct between you. 

“I want to be just some guy. More than anything.” He’s so close to you now that you can smell lime body wash and shampoo, see a drip forming at the tip of that one curl at his left temple that’s more like a ringlet than the rest of them. And you only know it's there because you haven’t stopped thinking about him, looking at him only when his back is turned and no one could catch you staring. You can barely hear him over the shame spinning in your ribs like a catherine wheel.

“But after the fire, I sort of took it as a sign that I was meant to be Spider-Man. You were there, you lived it. It’s my responsibility to stop that from happening.”

You can’t help it, but your eye twitches. It’s the same thing that’s been bothering you about Spider-Man since before; the promise of selflessness and responsibility and duty that Peter is now forever bound to. Before last night, you would have told yourself that you hated Spider-Man because you felt like he abandoned you, because he broke some kind of stupid, city-wide promise - but now that you know it’s Peter behind the mask, blaming him feels too harsh when the world gives him enough shit to begin with.

He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve the beatings, or the sleepless nights, or the working minimum wage just to go home to an apartment that will only get more expensive to rent. And all it does is make you angry. It’s unfair - everything’s unfair - and now it feels like your life, your near-death, was the event that made him keep giving himself and getting nothing in return. At the end of the day, you’re both just two twenty-somethings, trying to keep their heads above water.

It’s your fault that he’s still here, still hurting.

He’s still staring at you when you realise you’ve been silent for some time now, your mind blank and stuttering as Peter just looks on, almost concerned. The vice that’s been slowly tightening around your chest for months gives one final clench, and some long-buried string in your heart finally, finally snaps. 

You’re so tired. 

You knew it would happen eventually; that you’d run out of steam, or your knees would give out, and you wouldn’t be able to keep this up anymore. You’d always expected it to be while you were alone, or in Sal’s office, when you wouldn’t be able to keep up with all the silly little lies you’d been telling yourself - but not here, not in front of Peter, and not like this. 

And you’re not sure you’ve ever said any of this out loud - but the same tug in the back of your head that wanted to protect him last night is now thrumming away like a rubber band pulled taut. That pull, that itch, that simmers in your lungs and makes you feel like you’re responsible for him, or that he’s responsible for you. 

When you think about it, it’s guilt. Guilt that burns hot and acrid at the back of your tongue - guilt that puts you in debt to him, to everyone at Joe’s. You don’t just owe him an apology for lashing out, and running around the diner like a shithead; you owe him the truth. 

Deep breath. 

“Peter, I have to tell you something.”

Your voice sounds miles away - echoing in his box apartment, or maybe just in your head. You try not to notice the way his face twitches, or the way he stiffens slightly, or his eyes darting over you. His voice is tense, but not quite strained when he speaks. 

“What is it?”

Something scratches at the back of your throat, squeezing, constricting, scratching. This is it, this has to be it. 

Say it. 

Say it.  

“The fire was my fault.”

You weren’t sure what was going to happen. Sure, you’d imagined this scenario multiple times, all of them ending in various, and increasingly wild forms of punishment - losing your job, being arrested, getting cut off from the people who had been your whole life for years - but you’d at least imagined some form of relief. Perhaps the relief was the driving force of this whole confession, laying yourself bare and raw and bleeding in front of Peter in the hopes that he’d do something about it, take it all away, and still like you enough to speak to you afterwards. 

Only now, in practice, the relief never comes, and Peter just keeps staring at you. Instantly, you want to vomit. 

"What?”

You can’t read his voice. You can’t read his face. To compensate for this, your brain cedes all control, and your mouth keeps moving. 

“I was smoking out the back door and Sal called me in for some stupid reason - something about the pans or the sauce, or whatever - and I forgot to stub it out, and-“

That’s done something. Peter holds his hands up, eyes drawn wide, as if you were some sort of wild animal. Maybe you are. Maybe this is all some sort of twisted defence mechanism - spilling out the one thing you swore you would never tell anybody, in one last-ditch attempt at pushing him away. 

“Hey, hey-“

“I didn’t get to see the full report, but I’m not stupid. I know it started near the back door, and that some- some spark, or something, caused it. If I'd just-“ Your voice sticks like glue in your dry throat, like you’re trying to swallow cotton. “I nearly killed people. So much of it was destroyed - stuff that had been there for decades, family pictures, wedding presents.”

You think he says your name. You don’t hear it. 

“That burn on Sal’s arm is only there because of me. Because- Because he tried to get me out of there.”

It’s all too much now - even here, even in Peter’s apartment, you can smell the smoke, feel the heat. Through the hatch into the kitchen, you swear you can see a flame, licking up the walls, swimming in your vision like molten glass. It’s burning in your eyes, curling in your throat and nostrils, burning and burning and 

“Please, look at me.” 

When you finally make eye contact, a breath forces its way past your lips. His hands are steady and warm on your forearms, slipping down to clutch at your palms, as if weighing you down to reality. It’s as if everything else had slipped away, and he’s in the middle of it all, grounding you like a tether. You cling to him. 

“I’m sorry.” It tumbles out like an impulse. Peter shakes his head, soft and smudged in the lamplight. 

“Don’t be.” He says, firmly. Every wet curl shines and shimmers as he shakes his head, and the smell of soap pushes the soot that little bit further away. Maybe if you were to look out of the window, you’d see plumes of dark smoke rising from a building a few blocks away, but your gaze is stuck to Peter’s like a magnet. “You didn’t do anything wrong."

“I did,” The awful creature that’s been churning in your chest rears its ugly head again, “I caused so much hurt. And I’ve been hurting you, too - holding a grudge for something that was my own fault. You- You don’t deserve-”

“No.” Peter hasn’t let up, watching every twitch and flicker on your face. Is this how he speaks to the maniacs he fights in the street? Is this how he handles every catastrophic responsibility that falls into his lap? “You didn’t.”

“Peter, I did-“

“You didn't.” He says again, only this time, something sticks. The look on his face, the sadness in his eyes - it snaps your mouth shut. It’s the way he hovers around it, the unsureness in his face, that almost confuses you. “I… After the fire, I did some investigating.”

Your feet have gone numb. So have your hands, and arms, and legs, and just about everywhere else. When you don’t protest or interrupt, Peter continues tentatively. 

“I got access to the NYPD files, I watched the clean-up like a hawk, I-“ He cuts himself off, clearing his throat. His fingertips worry over your knuckles, back and forth, like a pendulum. “I did some stuff I wasn’t necessarily allowed to, but I needed closure. Joe’s was- It was one of the last things I had left of Ben’s, and…”

“What do you mean?” Your voice comes from another room, another planet. How could he know something you don’t? How could he have answers that you don’t have? Sal never told you anything about the report, about the cause, about any kind of investigation. Something is clawing inside your stomach. How? How? “Peter, what are you saying?”

His voice is softer than anything you’ve ever heard when he finally answers. 

“It was a fault with a fryer. Some electrical issue.” You can barely hear him, but he keeps talking anyway, even though it sounds like he’s on the other side of Manhattan. “Suppose it’s why Sal is so insistent on fryer training now, and- hey-?”

It takes a moment to register what you're doing, but you realise that you’re laughing. You can’t help it, but you’re laughing. Peter's utterly lost, his eyebrows tangled into that familiar furrow, the one you only see when you've completely perplexed him.

All this time, all this energy, spent tying yourself in knots and swallowing bile - and it was all the fault of a fucking fryer. Even now, the relief doesn't come, doesn't take all of the pains and aches of it away. Instead, it melts and morphs into something new - awful, burning, searing shame. And there's Peter in the middle of it all, just waiting for you, wanting the best for you. There's something hot on your cheeks, and it turns out that your laughter has quickly merged into crying.

You're actually crying. In front of him. You'd probably prefer being vaporised into a million pieces by whatever supervillain is calling themselves Spider-Man's arch nemesis these days.

"Oh my God," You blurt out, every cell trembling. It sounded like the beginning of a sentence, but any other words dissolve on your tongue.

Something warm wraps around you, and of course, it's him. He's holding you, and while you've had the odd bit of skin contact with him here and there - hands clapping on your shoulders, fingertips as he passes you ketchup bottles, lips pressed to yours in the snow - you'd never expected it to be like this. This close, you can hear his heart pounding away, the scent of his deodorant drowning out any scrap of smoke or burning oil, and your hands - against your will - fist into the back of his t-shirt.

You stay like that until it subsides, whatever it is, Peter murmuring things you can't quite hear with your ears muffled by his arms. Eventually, though, he pulls back, and fixes you with a look you can't really identify. It's the same one from last night, where he'd stood in the middle of your apartment in his spandex and his mask, wanting something from you that you aren't sure you can give him.

"I know that doesn't... fix it," He says, his voice rumbling through you like a wave - like you were one of his webs, and you can feel his feet tugging at the threads, knowing exactly where he was, and how far away, with one tiny movement. Even if you weren't a web, if you weren't coworkers, if you weren't people (though you suppose, he technically isn't, at least not all the way) you'd probably still be able to find him. "But it's the truth."

Even if you could dredge up something meaningful and coherent to say, you don't think you'd be able to actually say it - not with your tongue feeling so heavy and sluggish in your mouth. You settle on the first thing that comes to mind - the onlything your mouth can remember the shape of.

“I’m sorry.”

Peter shakes his head. “Nothing to be sorry about.”

Your diaphragm is still convulsing with the aftershocks of tears, and your breath trembles in your lungs. It's all coming out now, and you don't think you'd be able to stop it if you wanted to - not now that dam is broken, and Peter hasn't gone running for the hills. Apparently, that's given your brain the go-ahead to spew out pure, babbling nonsense.

“I was awful to you.”

"You really weren't."

"I, I just-" Your breathing hitches again, your face burning hot and bleary, “God, this is pathetic. I’m supposed to be apologising to you.”

You're bowing your head, avoiding eye contact, but you can hear the way his face looks, just from the gentleness in his voice, the concern that soaks the room like gasoline, threatening to be set alight.

“You really think about yourself like this?” 

“I’m- I really am sorry Peter. I was so mean. You don’t deserve that.” 

It’s instant. It's genuine, and it's absolute. “I forgive you.”

There goes that familiar feeling again, the one that claws at you from the inside, and hates how nice he is, how soft he is when the world is so hard to him. You swallow thickly, forcing it down, and choke out a dry laugh, your face scrubbed raw from the heels of your hands. You probably look awful, but he's still looking at you like he always does - whatever that is.

“You know you’re allowed to hate me. You don’t have to be nice to me just because I’m snotting all over your couch.” 

“I could never hate you.”

There's a pang in your chest, and you're bent double, winded, by the gentleness of his tone. It hurts like a knife. 

“Don’t-“ Another shaking breath as you shake your head, “You can’t say things like that.”

“Look, I don't-" He begins, before he reshapes the words in his mouth, shuffling them like a pack of cards. That's how he's better than you, you think, he thinks before he speaks - he approaches things with kindness and care, instead of months of anger and resentment towards nothing in particular. "With the fire, even if we didn’t know each other then, when I think about what could have happened, if, if you-“

There it is, the unspoken part. The part that keeps you up at night with nightmares and the smell of ash in your hair that you can’t scrub out. Peter looks almost pained, his face screwed up as he debates between speaking his mind and holding his tongue - he seems to go on a whole journey in his head that’s plain as day across his face. He’s tense and strung tight, hands wringing themselves over and over and over, like he’s cleaning the countertops at the diner, and all of a sudden he’s your coworker again, and you think you taste bile. Eventually, he makes a decision, and speaks. 

“I guess I'm trying to say that I would miss you."

You’re almost winded by it. He says it so plainly, but it stabs you through the chest like a knife. Whatever emotion you’re experiencing right now is entirely new to you, and hurts like a bitch. 

Peter would miss you. He saves your life, he kisses you at work - and he would miss you. He just says it like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t knock the air out of you. 

It’s stupid - whether it was because he frustrated you, or confused you, or made you get that funny, swooping feeling in your stomach, you haven’t stopped thinking about him since you met him, and you’ve never even stepped foot in his house. And he looks like an angel by lamplight. And he would miss you. 

You don't remember much of the rest of the evening, between mumbles and awkward sips of shitty coffee, and the city growing louder outside as the sun sinks below the horizon.

Perhaps this is why people go to church, or believe in something bigger than themselves - in pure, desperate hopes that despite whatever they've done, there will be someone at the end who will forgive you, and treat you kindly. But Peter isn't one for spite, and his kindness is all the more special to you because of that. His forgiveness, however, is something closer to sacred - washing you over in its totality, its absolution. For the first time in a while, Manhattan's clatter and din isn't overwhelming, or undercutting all the shit going on inside your head, it simply exists; cutting through the wind and rustling the trees, like the pigeons that scavenge the back end of Joe's for pizza crusts and stray fries.

It's been a while, but when you leave Peter's, and take in another deep breath on the steps of his building - it feels clean and new. It's only on the walk home, when his voice is pinging around inside your head, that you realise - and it hits you like a train. 

He’s been more than a co-worker this whole time. 

How could you not have realised that? You used to have your head screwed on, the sensible one, and here you were; only just realising how absolutely, positively stupid you’ve been. Of course everything has felt so frustrating and complicated - you’ve been so blind to your own feelings that the realisation of it practically knocks the air out of you.

You’re not even sure when the world started looking brighter and the city started smelling sweeter, and you’re not even sure when that feeling became so all-encompassing and vast and deep and hot and cold all at the same time - but you know it’s all Peter’s fault. You want to hate him for it, at first, but you’re not sure that hating Peter would even be possible. Not when there’s no one in the world that looks at you like he does, no one who goes out of their way to make you smile. He makes you feel special, special enough for you to wonder why no one else has been looking at you like this all along. It’s not that the job has gotten easier, or the fancy coffee you can afford with your pay rise; it’s just that you’ve been stupid enough to develop stupid fucking feelings for the stupid guy you work with. 

Realising this feels like falling off of the Empire State Building. A familiar feeling, yes, when you tally up all of the emotional turmoil you’ve experienced - except now, there’s a small part of your brain that really, truly believes that Spider-Man would catch you.

beneath you, new york is awake.

it's sort of childish, the way you expect the city to sleep. the anticipation that eventually, after dark, the lights will go out and everyone will disappear, that there will be quiet. maybe in other places, but here, the streets toss and turn; lights burning brightly and the sidewalks humming with noise. in the evenings, you enjoy sitting on your fire escape, legs dangling from between the railings, nursing a cup of noodles. steam from grates and bin juice and sirens and chatter hang in the air, rising up and up past the fire escapes until the clouds swallow them up. new york smells like noise. bins and noise.

you wonder if you can smell new york from the top of the empire state building. peter would know.

but you don’t want to talk to peter right now. despite the fact that he’s currently sat on your fire escape, stuffed into your hoodie, and holding your bag of frozen peas to a bruise on his forehead. you don’t want to talk to him, but you’re sat here, hunched over a roll of body tape and gauze trying to fashion some sort of bandage to cover the cut on his cheek.

“talk to me.” he nudges at you with his foot, his legs splayed out across the grate and reaching for you as you work. you glare at him, your nail scissors nearly slipping out of your hand and onto the street below. under you, there’s a group of girls under a streetlight - arguing or laughing, you can’t quite tell - jostling under the glow like moths.

“sorry.” he sounds sheepish. like he knows you’re mad at him. like he’s doing that face he always does. you toss the scissors and the supplies back in through your apartment window and shift nearer to him.

“cheek.” you order, and he proffers it to you. you don’t look at him longer than you have to anymore, because you know if you do you’ll start going back on everything you promised yourself. it’s hard to look at him, like looking at the sun.

you concentrate on patching him up. you ignore how pretty he looks bathed in the dusk and the warm glow of streetlights, hints of far away neon casting pink and blue threads into his hair. you ignore the terse column of his neck, the slope of his nose and you certainly ignore his mouth.

he winces, a noise forcing its way between his teeth that sounds just like when you’d kiss him against the wall in his bedroom, just like when you would pull at his hair. he looks the same now, throat exposed, trusting, his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows thickly. a plea forms behind his lips, breath hitching as you-

and then you frown before you think any further.

you don’t want to think about him.

“ow.” he cringes, a hand grasping at the wrought iron railing, and your eyes dart to his fingers before peter hisses again. you, admittedly, respond harsher thank you probably have to.

“do you want me to get the alcohol again?”

“you terrify me.” even now, he’s joking. god, you hate him.

you don’t.

“good.”

you step back to review your work, his face all patched up, and then he looks up at you and you want to throw yourself over the rail. there’s some small tangle in his hair, and you move to fix it, your fingers aching to smooth over his scalp the way you know he likes it, but then you see him watching you and you withdraw. instead, you return to your seat, as far from him as you can get.

“thanks.” he says, and you sip at a mug of now-cold tea, fighting the grimace that pulls at your mouth. you sniff, pouring the rest of it into your plant pots, and avoiding his eye contact, even though it bores into your temple like a drill.

the city chugs away. there’s a murmur in the grates, some sort of hum along the jagged horizon. he’s still staring at you, you can feel it.

you give in and glance at him. he’s just staring, all wide-eyed and pitiful. it's darker now, so the lights stand out on the rises of his cheeks, casting shadows over the brick and mortar of your apartment building. the bruise on his forehead looks almost luminous, and he’s holding the peas in the wrong spot so you lean in to correct him.

his breath hitches as you brush his hand. you want to hit him. you want to kiss him.

then you’re backing away before you can do anything, like you’ve been burnt, and you scowl.

“we need to stop doing this.”

“doing what?” peter is confused. you never knew if he was just oblivious or if he was purposefully playing dumb. or if you were just expecting too much from him.

“this. i’m not your nurse anymore, peter.” well, you weren’t supposed to be. you spent your formative years in this very situation - dragging him through your bedroom window, half-conscious, and stitching whatever was left of him together again.

it felt necessary at first; you were seventeen and they were emergencies, and you enjoyed looking after him. but then it felt like choking. there was all this waiting around, just to see if he would make it back alive, and then the constant exhaustion that came from three hours of sleep afterwards. sometimes he would forget to text you that he made it home, and you’d be trawling the streets at the crack of dawn, heart squeezing at every scrap of red you saw.

“sorry, i was just in the neighbourhood-“ he stammers, one of those white lies he thinks he can get away with - to cover his own ass because he knows you’re going to be upset.

“you were up in harlem.” he was on the news earlier, stopping some atm robbery. the news is always blaring, waiting to tell you that spider-man has been killed by some lunatic in a metal suit, and it was just some college kid this whole time. you hate the news.

“i was.” he admits, caught. he looks like you’ve stabbed him. like you’ve dug your fingers into his chest, through the sinew and muscle and the column of his sternum and ripped his heart out. like it’s beating in your hand. you squeeze it, digging your nails in.

“and you dragged yourself all the way downtown to my window again.” another wince from peter, the same one as when you pierce a suturing needle through his skin without anaesthetic.

“i did.” he’s uncomfortable now, like he never should have come and though part of you is glad he did, you wish he didn’t.

“and you know i can’t keep seeing you like this. i can’t just drop everything for you to patch you up because we’re not seventeen anymore-“

“i just miss you.” he says, fidgeting uncomfortably. “i wanted to see you.”

there’s silence between the two of you, but the city drones on. the girls at the lamppost are gone now, but in the distance, the b train rattles at the tracks, stirring them into a thunderstorm. his head is dropped like a sinner in prayer, picking at the stitching on the hoodie with a thumbnail. the fabric swamps him - it’s yours from midtown high, purposefully bought about three sizes too big. he looks sixteen again, all small and lithe, like when you met him. you’d nearly concussed him slamming your locker door open on the first day of junior year.

he’d worn a jumper that was too big on him, riddled with holes. the same jumper he wore a few months later after you kissed him and cuffed the sleeves to free his hands, revealing odd devices around his wrists and a red suit underneath. he tried to pass them off as handcuffs, then as bracelets. then he confessed.

“i miss you too, peter.” true, but you don’t like to say it. he needs to hear it, you think. it's not that you don’t want to be honest with him, it’s just that it’s easier not to. maybe one day you’ll just start being horrible to him - make it quicker for him to hate you, make it easier. “but i was kind of hoping that breaking up would mean that we’d get some space from each other.”

“you want space?” his head jolts up, strands of his hair falling over his forehead. they’re damp from the condensation of your homemade ice pack, shiny and dark. you want to push them back from his face, push your fingers through his hair, trace fingertips along his jaw and kiss him. he seems pitifully, painfully eager. he loves the idea of a problem, a real one he can tinker with and fix. “you said we broke up because we wanted different things. i can give you space. i’ll go to the moon.”

sometimes talking to peter is like trying to reason with a brick wall. you can say all you want, but he’ll be so stubborn you’ll want to tear your hair out. you can’t count the times he’s ushered you away from helping with a fight or set you down on some rooftop out of harm’s way. you need to be protected, even though it’s been four years of him being spider-man and apparently he still can’t put the damn bandages on himself.

“we broke up because we wanted different things. because it was always like this.” you gesture back and forth, drawing a line in the air from your chest to his. his face barely changes expression, he just looks at you like you can fix everything. you’re tired of fixing everything. of fixing him. “i’d have to drop everything to take care of you when you got fucked up, and you would drop me to go and be spider-man.”

“i-“

peter looks hurt, but somewhere inside you want to hurt him. you twist the knife.

“we broke up because we’re adults now, and i want more from a relationship than sitting around on until five in the morning hoping you’ll turn up, and the blood on your face will be someone else’s for a change.” there’s an attempt at your name, but you speak over him. there are barbed wires in your throat, all in a tangle, scratching and slashing. something rises in your chest, flooding your eyes with something sharp.

“we broke up, peter, because you’ve missed three of my birthdays getting the shit kicked out of you - and somewhere down the line, i realised it’s important that i get to see the person i'm dating. that they’re at least around. i don't even see you between classes anymore.”

his face crumples a bit, and there’s a stab in your stomach, like you’ve gone too far. there’s a part of you that wants to take it all back, kiss him hard and tell him you love him and apologise. you won’t, but you want to.

“i don’t think that’s fair, i can’t help that i have to do this-“ he was right. his stupid moral compass is both the best and worst thing about him. you want to beg him to be selfish, to do what he wants, not the city - but he won’t.

“i know. but i-“

“i can stop if you want. i’ll do it.” he doesn’t mean it, but it sounds like a threat. peter scrambles a little, pulling himself to his feet, despite your protests. ”i’ll stop being spider-man. i can give the suit to miles, he’s ready-“

“you don’t mean that.” he follows you inside through your bedroom window, manoeuvring his aching limbs through the frame and trying his best to avoid damaging the plants on your windowsill. there’s another hiss as he twists something that’s still healing, and he stumbles, nearly a heap on the floor.

“of course i mean it. i’ll stop if you want me to.” you’re practically fleeing him at this point, trying to manoeuvre him towards your front door. he’s being difficult, like always, eyes wide and shiny, like buttons. “i’ll do anything you want me to. please.”

you’d seen him cry a few times as a kid, when you were in grade school. once, flash thompson had pushed him over at recess, and his knees were skinned raw and bloody on the tarmac. he’d tried to stifle it to be brave, but you saw him at the nurse's office, scrubbing his cheeks red while she held wet paper towels over the scrapes.

it wasn’t very frequent. he was perhaps prone to a few tears at sappy films, but you didn’t see him actually cry that often since high school. for your birthday a while ago, he spent all of his bugle money on taking you to see falsettos on broadway, with no idea of what the show was about. when the house lights came on after, he'd buried his face in his jumper, pretending that he was fine and that 'it's just dusty in here', even though he would mope around for about a week after, sighing whenever he saw a chessboard.

the first year of college, you both snuck into the student radio station, all full of alcohol and giggles, and subjected the campus to ten play-throughs of 'class of 2013'. you'd both gotten more and more passionate and emotional with each sing-along, using a mop as a microphone. it was fun at first, but then it got a bit too real - the two of you had crawled under the desk to hide from it all, waking up in the morning with your limbs in a tangle. you'd held him, his cheek pressed to your shoulder, and you pretended not to notice the trembling strung through him.

it had been bad after uncle ben, you remember. it was like hide and seek between classes; he’d be late and you’d be excused to go and look for him, finding him shrunken in on himself under staircases, shoulders heaving, hands tugging and clutching at your jacket as you comforted him - but not much since then.

yet here he was, like his knees had been scraped, like whizzer had died, like he was figuring out how to pay for his own life too, like he’d held his uncle as he was bleeding out.

you don’t say anything, just look at him. there’s a hum about him, the air vibrating with the intensity of his gaze, the tremor in his voice.

“please.”

peter’s voice cracks so painfully it makes you wince a bit. tears brim at his waterline, shining like diamonds despite the dim lamplight of your bedroom - they could spill over any second now, like ripe fruit or fresh-bloomed flowers. his skin is blossoming with that tight, uncomfortable flush, his cheeks and nose reddening by the second. the hatred that simmered under your skin dissolves so quickly you wonder if it was ever there at all. you want to take care of him properly, like you did when you were teenagers and you were hellbent on having a first aid kit on you at all times. you say the only word you can muster.

“peter.” his name is a prayer, a plea for him to leave. to get away from you before you did something really stupid. his hands, his warm, strong hands, are on your arms. holding, begging.

“i love you.” he says it like it's a reason, not a fact. like it’s a confession, even though he’s been saying it to you for years now, over and over again. but now there’s some strange, forbidden quality to it; an unmarked map, an open door, the proverbial fruit that tempted eve. he’s scrabbling for something to hold onto, a foothold, anything, before you slip away from him. he grips you as if you’ll disintegrate. the pain that comes from not saying it back is what you imagine dying feels like.

peter stares, eyes wide and glossy and searching, digging for any sign of emotion from you. you try your best to set your face into something stoic, but his chest shudders, and next thing you know there are tear trails on his cheeks. he doesn’t wipe them away or hide them like before, just stands there as if he’s forgotten how, bent at the waist like a willow, heavy in the limbs.

he repeats himself. twice. he begs you to say it back. you just stand there, limp.

you watch your hands come up from your sides, finding themselves at the corners of his jaw, clenched tense. you feel the bones and sinew as he releases the tension there, the muscles shifting under his skin, and he presses his cheeks into your palms. there’s a sob from deep in his chest, pulling at the pit in his stomach. his eyebrows are low and knitted, betraying the seed of anger, of guilt that propels him. his face turns as if trying to hide from you, burying his mouth into your hand and kissing your palms - the image of cabanel’s angel.

he’s mirroring you, you notice, his hands at the back of your neck, and he’s pulling you towards him. your foreheads press together, and he brushes a tear from your cheek. there’s arguing outside from your neighbours, but then you wrap your arms around him and you can only hear his soft sniffling, and the drum of his heartbeat. his head sinks, burying into the crook of your neck, his breath hot and damp on your collarbone. your hands card through his hair, fingernails scratching lightly, and he squeezes you tighter, letting his body be held - cupped like a handful of holy water.

and then he shifts again, and you kiss, lips melting into each other like butter into sugar and your gut twists instantly with guilt. it hurts, but it’s peter. you just stand there and breathe each other in, like it’s the last time. it probably is. it hopefully is.

you pull away, tearing away from him slowly and agonisingly, ripping the seam. he looks at you like you’ve betrayed him, some wild, dismayed look in his eyes. panic. he’s already grabbing at your shirtsleeves again.

“no, no-“

“you need to go, pete.”

“please don’t do this to me.”

he catches your gaze, forces you to look at him, and it’s painful. you’ve stabbed him in the back.

“we can’t keep doing this.” your voice is thin and watery, wavering. you're screwing your eyes shut to avoid him, even though he’s flooding the rest of your senses, wrapping around you like a cloak. “we can’t keep seeing each other because we just end up backsliding, and-“

“let’s just backslide then.”

“we can’t, pete. you can’t come anymore.”

“then stop kissing me every time i do.” he looks wrecked, eyes bloodshot and dark-ringed, his hair in messy tufts. the bruise is blooming into a sickly green-yellow, reaching its fingers across his cheek. you want to kiss him again. “don’t be kind to me. don’t- don’t feed it, because i’ll just keep coming back.”

“you used to like it when i was mean to you.” it’s a shitty attempt at a joke, and it doesn’t land with him.

he says your name. a warning.

“you don’t understand how easy you are to need.” his voice is shot, run ragged. “i’m someone else when i’m with you. not spider-man- ”

“peter.”

“not peter, either. i can’t just give that up.”

you make it easier for him. ripping open the stitches, making it bleed. making him hate you.

“get out, pete.”

something else breaks inside of him, and the splinters dig their way into your chest. it’s perhaps the worst thing you’ve ever said, and it’s mumbled out through tears that mar your vision and scald your cheeks. he shakes his head, bordering disbelief.

“no, don’t do that. don’t do that.” you’re leading him to the door of your apartment, and he’s being surprisingly non-resistant. like he’s lost his fight. the grief of losing him is already pulling at you, not all at once, but in waves and pangs. “i couldn’t handle it.”

“i’m sorry.”

you don’t remember how, but at some point, peter had migrated to his knees, under your desk, and gotten to work there.

maybe it had something to do with your job; you’d been stuck at your desk for hours, sending email after email, and it apparently wasn’t fair that you were so busy, because you were ‘too pretty’ for it. then, while he’d been begging for your attention, pestering you, and you’d told him that there was one way he could get it - you’d originally meant that you quite fancied a cup of coffee, but this was much, much better.

he was good at it, you wouldn’t lie, using that mouth of his for something better than slinging quips and sarcastic insults at new york’s finest supervillains. he was even better at it when you’d grasped a handful of those dark curls - he needed a haircut, but you certainly weren’t complaining - and tugged, the guttural moans he made vibrating through you. he liked being directed, told what to do, you think, so you guided him by his hair, tugging him towards you and grinding up, into his mouth.

“fuck.” he whines to the inside of your thigh as he pulls away, lips slick, a shiver sparking down your sides at the pitch of it, the puff of his breath hot against your skin. his skin warms you where he touches, the strength of his hands on your legs, hooking them over his shoulders as he pleases you, tugging you down in your seat. your computer was long asleep, the ghost of your reflection in the darkened screen - slumped in your seat, chest heaving, the back of peter’s head between your legs.

“jesus christ, what’s gotten into you?” you murmur as he resumes his work, pleasure sparking along your spine. he’s incredibly talented with his tongue, too talented even, and he knows it, looking up at you from under his eyelashes, pupils dark and widened with arousal. there’s some of you - well, you or him - on the tip of his nose, but he doesn’t care, too engrossed in pleasing you.

“want your attention.” peter’s rasping out, pulling away for a split second before resuming his activities, and shit, he’s not letting up with the intensity of it. it’s almost desperate, the grip he has on your thighs, the vigour with which he consumes you, like you’re hades’ last pomegranate, and he’s the starved persephone, his tongue craving every last drop of you. he keeps adjusting his grip, squeezing and grasping at you, like he can’t decide where he wants to hold onto you, and you’re slipping away from him. “want you.”

“you have me.” you answer, and he moans again, low and long, a bassy hum. the sound of it reverberates in your fingertips, and he dissolves into another cracking whine, swirling that deft tongue of his with the determination you see when he fights for new yorks safety. there’s a mumble that comes from his chest, thrumming against you, but you don’t quite catch it.

“what?”

the same noise again. he’s avoiding your eye contact, and even though the light reaching under the desk is minimal, you can see his cheeks are flushed a hot and bashful pink. he’s always been like this, since you met, burying himself in his work when he was embarrassed. he once spent a whole month avoiding you at school, all because he’d accidentally walked into a glass door while making googly eyes at you across the room. now, though, you can sense him holding back, the tension of it like a terse thread; and when he mumbles one more time, you snap it for him, the tone of your voice eliciting a pleasured whimper.

“speak up.”

“can you tell me i’m doing good?” peter blurts out, and this time he doesn’t return to you, the absence of him making your stomach tie itself in knots. the two of you just stare at each other as he cleans himself off, swiping at his chin and licking every trace of you from his mouth. he’s panting, hair mussed into a chestnut halo, eyes half-lidded and round with want. he looks wrecked, but his hands still knead and grasp at your flesh, glued to your waist, scrabbling for purchase - a heathen clung to the homily. it’s something akin to begging, the aching, longing, yearning of him straining hard against the cotton of his underwear, looking at you like you could fix everything wrong with the world - like you could break him and put him together again. “tell me i’m good. i know it’s-”

“you want to be told that you’re a good boy, peter?” you ask, and the effect of it ripples through him; a stone dropped into a pond, the pleasure shuddering his spine and shoulders. his arms flex as he draws you closer with a new vigour, diving back into you, pleading against your skin with his friction-pinked lips.

“shit, shit, yes, please, i-”

the tangle that had been growing in the pit of your stomach tightens, and your body flexes against him, your hand flying back to his head and pushing him down, further down. there’s praise running from your lips like a waterfall, hitting him full force as he bathes in it, his hips curving and stuttering, searching for friction against the thin air. the eagerness of him spurs you on, wanting to stoke his desperation, and you keep feeding him compliments, telling him that he’s a good boy, good boy, good boy, the meaning of it giving way to pure, animalistic clarity

peter swears against you again, moving with you as you twitch and gasp out, like he’s stitched himself to you, arms locked tight around your legs and anchoring you close to him. there’s a brief, explosive moment of silence, where you’re almost certain the world stops spinning, when you squeeze, forcing his head down, and his mouth opens against you. a single, soundless moan, as he devours you, lapping up your manic rhapsody with his tongue and swallowing it down.

after the ringing in your ears and the fizzing in your veins has stopped, you see he’s collapsed against your thigh, panting and looking up at you for approval, shiny with what was left of you. you’re plastered to the leather of the chair, and it squeaks uncomfortably as you prop yourself up on the armrests, hearing the barely-audible keen that comes from his chest as you make eye contact with him.