She was abruptly cut off. A young woman wrapped in one of those shiny emergency blankets pushed her way into frame.

"I just want to personally thank Spider-Man for everything he's done," she declared, commandeering the microphone before anyone could stop her. Then she grabbed his masked face and kissed him.

Your eyebrows shot upward. The heat that spread through your chest was immediate and unpleasant. The video ended shortly after, but you found yourself scrolling straight to the comments.

That was a mistake.

Over a thousand people were discussing how attractive Spider-Man was. How brave he was. How kind he was. How broad his shoulders looked. How deep his voice sounded.

You rolled your eyes so hard they almost got stuck.

That man had launched himself eight feet into the air and clung to the kitchen ceiling last week because there was a roach in the sink. You had to kill it with a slipper while he stared down at the scene from above.

By the time you reached a comment detailing how badly someone needed Spider-Man "biblically," you had enough. You scrolled away with an aggravated huff. 

Unfortunately, your algorithm interpreted this as enthusiastic engagement. The next video was a slow-motion edit of Spider-Man swinging through the city to bass-boosted R&B. Then came a compilation of him catching falling civilians. One focused on his hands. Another edit zoomed in on various…attributes of his suit.

You exited the app. You had officially ruined your own day.

By the time the front door opened, you were still lying on the couch, still staring at your phone with a scowl.

"Hey." Jisung stepped inside dressed in his usual clothes thrown over the suit beneath, a drink carrier in one hand and a small paper bag in the other. "I brought your favorite."

Your eyes narrowed.

"Why is there a phone number written on it?"

He blinked and turned the cup. There, written in black marker beside a smiley face, was a phone number. "I don't know."

"Did you order that as Jisung or Spider-Man?"

"Spider-Man. One of the store owners insisted I take something before I left."

You sighed dramatically and flopped onto your back, abandoning both the conversation and the drink. Jisung remained standing there, still holding the cursed matcha.

"...You good?" He scurried over and set everything on the coffee table.

"I'm fine." You sounded decidedly not fine.

He ran a hand through his hair. "Are you mad I had to cancel?" he asked cautiously. "We can still get dinner."

You considered it. Maybe leaving the apartment would be good. You'd spent the entire afternoon commiserating.

"I don't mind," you finally said. "Are you okay to go out?"

"Yeah. Today was smooth enough." He smiled a little. "Let's get ready."

You looked at him. At his fluffy hair. At the drinks he'd brought you. At the paper bag that undoubtedly contained your favorite pastries. Then your eyes drifted to the phone number still written on the cup.

Your eye twitched.

Jisung insisted you both dress nicely despite only going to the little Italian place a few blocks away. You put on a dress that had definitely gotten shorter since the last time you wore it and even slipped into a pair of heels. Jisung did his best. He wore a white button-up with a tie and the only pair of dress pants he owned. His hair remained characteristically messy and he still paired everything with his beat-up Chucks. Honestly, he looked annoyingly good.

Your mood had improved by the time you arrived. The restaurant was run by a kind older woman who remembered you from when you and Jisung had been even poorer college students. To this day, she made sure your plates were a little too full and that you never left without leftovers. She always sat you at the same tiny table tucked in the back corner, directly across from the bar.

Dinner was lovely.

It had been a while since you'd had a proper date with Jisung. You caught each other up on work, trading stories about lab mishaps and mischievous students. You updated one another on your respective theses, taking turns using jargon the other only vaguely understood. He nodded along as you explained theories and studies. You smiled through explanations of robotics and biomedical engineering. For once, everything felt normal.

Then the television over the bar switched to a news segment about Spider-Man.

"Y/n, did you see what Spider-Man did in Greenpoint today?" your waitress asked. She was lucky you'd known her since she was a teenager.

You straightened slightly. "A little."

"Girl, he took down, like, eleven people and stopped a fire. What a man."

You slowly looked at Jisung. He slowly looked up from his pasta.

"He sure is," you said flatly.

"Ugh." Teresa pressed a hand to her chest. "I wouldn't mind a man in a suit if he looked like that. He's been filling it out lately."

You tried, sincerely, to be civil. "I just noticed."

"I've been noticing," she said with a laugh.

…could Spider-Man bail you out of jail?

She turned to Jisung. "Sorry, Sung. I had to fangirl for a second."

Jisung flashed the brightest smile, like a little kid on Easter. "Nah," he said. "I think he'd like it."

You leered at him, praying lightning would strike him where he sat. He snuck a saucy smile at you.

"Oh, the things I'd say to his face." Teresa fanned herself with her order pad. "Anyway, you guys want the usual dessert?"

Before Jisung could answer, you spoke. "Not tonight. It's been a long day."

"No worries." She scribbled something onto her notepad. "I'll have the kitchen pack it to go."

The walk home was quiet. Your heels clicked sharply against the pavement, each step carrying an attitude of its own. Beside you, Jisung was beginning to grow concerned. When you reached the little park by your building, he gently caught your arm.

"You wanna sit for a bit?" he asked. "It's not late."

You didn't answer. You simply followed him toward the swings. He stood beside you while you took one of the seats. After a moment, he lightly pushed yours.

"Did you like dinner?” he attempted. The swing creaked.

"I'm not mad at you, Ji."

"Okay." He sounded half-relieved, but he gave another small push, still trepidatious. "You're mad at something, though. What is it?"

You chewed the inside of your cheek. "You have hundreds - maybe thousands - of people crushing on you."

The swing stopped. "Huh?"

"Did you not hear Teresa? Do you not check social media?"

"Oh - that.”

You turned. “‘That,’” you repeated. “So you do know!”

"I mean..." He reached out and nudged the swing again, absentmindedly. "They have crushes on Spider-Man."

You looked up at him sharply. "You are Spider-Man."

"Well..." He frowned slightly. "Technically."

"Jisung."

"What? Don't fight me on this." He lifted his hands in surrender. "They don't like me. They like the persona - concept of Spider-Man."

"Did that girl not try to kiss you today? She didn't kiss an idea."

His eyes darted away, a little guiltily at first. "You saw that?"

"Yes!" You threw your hands up. "How often does that happen?"

His expression did something strange. It softened first, then slowly shifted into something far more entertained. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Not...a lot."

You narrowed your eyes. "But it has happened before."

His lips twitched. "Y/n..."

"No, answer the question."

He wore the most insufferable grin.

"Oh my God. It has happened before."

His laugh only made your expression crumple further. “Jisung!” you started, your voice squeaking.

"Okay, okay!" He held his hands up again, still laughing. "A few times."

"A few?"

"They're usually excited. I don't think much of it."

"You don't think much of people flirting with you?"

"I didn't know they were flirting with me."

You couldn’t bare to look at him. You turned away to sneer at the little springy frog thing. He ended up reaching over, gently taking your face in both hands.

"You are jealous."

You immediately peeled his hands away. "I'm not jealous."

"You are."

"I'm not."

The grin on his face was starting to get under your skin. "Then what are you?"

You crossed your arms. "That implies I think they have a shot."

Suddenly, his expression flattened. Then one eyebrow lifted.

"Oh."

You frowned. "What?"

He looked far too delighted. "Ooh." He grabbed onto the chains of the swing. "Possessive. I like this."

"I am not possessive."

"You kind of are."

You swung at him. He leaned back with a laugh, easily dodging.

"Violent, too!" he said, giggling.

"Stop enjoying this."

"I can't!" He was positively beaming now. "You got jealous over Spider-Man."

"I’m not jealous over you."

"Right,” he said seriously, swinging you by the chains tauntingly. “Just of my admirers."

You pushed at his chest, as hard as you could, but of course he didn’t budge.

He leaned forward until he was in your space again, his smile so fond it was irritating. "You know I'm coming home with you, right?"

Your eyebrows pinched together for a moment before the realization hit. The annoyance melted away, replaced by a smile that was far too bright for your mood.

You lingered on Jisung. He didn't need his Spider-Sense to know something had changed. The second he noticed that look, he instinctively leaned back. Not fast enough - your hand found his tie, fingers curling snugly around the knot before giving it a firm tug.

Jisung lurched forward with a startled noise, suddenly not even inches away. It wasn't enough to hurt him - nothing close - but it was enough to catch him completely off guard. He couldn’t meet your eyes. You had to bite back a laugh.

"Then let's go home," you said simply.

You let go and rose from the swing, uselessly smoothing down your dress before starting down the path. Your heels clicked softly against the pavement.

Behind you, the swing creaked. Jisung remained frozen for a second, still holding on to the chains, watching you leave with the same stunned expression. Then, shaking his head to regain some sense, he hurried after you, eyes refusing to look anywhere beyond your short skirt.

By the time you two arrived at your place’s elevator, the tension had gotten palpable. Jisung stayed glued behind you, holding you by the hips so he could rub your ass against him, all while he lazily attacked your neck.

“God, you’re so hot,” he mumbled, pushing up against you brazenly. You shook slightly, trying to fetch your keys from your bag.

You barely got the door open, not with Jisung practically humping you into the frame. When you finally managed to get through, your belongings and shoes were discarded immediately. All that mattered was dragging Jisung by the tie to the couch. He followed gleefully, spread wide so you had ample room to sit on.

When you straddled him, he was already solid and warm. Your weight alone made him gasp. You grinned - it took so little to begin unraveling him.  Your lips finally crashed together within the second, hungrily. There was an unwarranted need from the both of you, something surprisingly unsatiated. The kiss was messy, loud, and aggressive.

Jisung’s hands were at your waist before you had even settled, tracing your body thoroughly like it hadn’t been his for years. At first, there was a ghost of hesitation still in his movements. He’d never totally not be on guard about his strength around you. But the way you kissed him back like you were starving made most of that vanish.

Your fingers rested in your favorite spot, his hair. He needed a haircut, so there was plenty to latch your fingers onto and tug, coaxing his lips open so you could deepen the kiss. Jisung held you close, tightening his own grip so there was no distance at all - your bodies pressed against each other perfectly, your lips inseparable.

You broke away reluctantly, but you unfortunately needed air. Your lips were swollen and his were bitten blue already. You two gasped for air like it had been denied. “Bedroom,” you huffed. “Now.”

With no effort whatsoever, he lifted you with an arm. You squeaked and held onto him tighter. He laughed heartily, allowing himself to enjoy for once how dainty you felt clinging to his chest. He threw you down on the bed with calculated strength; you bounced slightly. He meant to follow, to pin you down to the mattress but—

In a firm voice, you uttered, “Kneel.”

Knowing his place, Jisung backed up and fell to his knees, the floor cracking under the impact. You sat up and moved to the edge of the bed, where his hands slid up your legs greedily, pushing up what little of your minidress covered your thighs.

“Hands off,” you said, your face a poignant scowl.

Jisung listened quietly, absentmindedly rubbing the fabric of his slacks between his fingers. He looked up at you through wide, round eyes, his mouth curled into a pitiful pout that would've worked on anyone else.

It fractured your resolve.

Only slightly.

You leaned forward and, this time, you wrapped his tie around your fist and dragged him over so you were forehead-to-forehead. You could feel his uneven breaths against your lips.

“I don’t need to hear random broads call my boyfriend hot,” you whispered slowly.

He gulped, finally understanding.

“I don’t want them commenting on how nice your ass is or how big your bulge is.” You tugged him hard so he got even closer. You spoke into his ear, feeling him tremble in your grasp like he couldn’t easily break it. “I don’t want them touching you or kissing you when that’s my right.”

He swallowed. “That’s n-not me. That’s Spider-Man.” 

You pulled him away from your face; he yelped a high, embarrassing hiccupy sound.

“Aren’t you Spider-Man?”

Jisung grew more and more panicked with each second. “I-I am but Ji—I-I would never.”

You tipped your head to the side, mirroring his exaggerated pout with one of your own. “Peter Han seemed so entertained that I was jealous, right?”

He nodded because he knew he had to.

“You thought it was cute that I have sit around and let the world thirst after my boyfriend and I can’t even tell them to stop.”

“Baby, I’m sorry,” and you could see the sincerity in his eyes. “Let me make it up to you.”

You brought a free, mocking finger to your cheek as you pretended to mull over his proposition. Seconds dragged on painfull. “Mm, touch yourself,” you volunteered after a while like it was inspired. “Because I won’t be.” 

His eyes softened, glassy beneath the light, while his expression cycled through shock and fear and hesitation. He studied your face for any sign that you'd take it back. There wasn't one.

After slowly processing his fate, Jisung settled firmly on the back off his feet and brought a tentative hand to his crotch. His neat fingers trailed down his front slowly before he palmed himself. His breath hitched, his whole big body tensing as he squeezed himself pathetically. 

Your shoulder lifted until your cheek pressed against it, a grin you couldn't quite contain tugging at your face. His nice dress-pants had grown uncomfortably tight, obvious by how much his growing bulge strained against the fabric. A dark patch even stained beneath where he grabbed. Jisung was so worked up. His pretty curved nose was pink and he bit his lip mercilessly to keep from moaning.

“You wanna cum, honey?” you asked with all the levity of asking if it’d rain tomorrow.

“Please,” was all Jisung could get out between deep, labored breaths. He looked half-crazed and distraught from so little.

“Then do it yourself,” you sang. “Properly.”

Jisung let out what was hybrid of a choke and a sigh. His right hand was already moist from the dampness of his trousers. His other hand had been clawing into his thigh. Cheeks red and warm, he fumbled with his belt first, keenly aware of your cruel grin as his hands shook. His zipper had barely been lowered before his hard-on dared burst through his boxers. You marveled when his swollen cock finally appeared, fat, red, and shiny with precum.

Unceremoniously, Jisung spat onto his fingers, coating them before he grabbed at his shaft. He finally released a tortured, drawn-out moan as he massaged the length, finding some satisfaction. He gripped himself hard enough to make his knuckles turn white.

“You wish that was me, hm?”  you cooed. “Or the bitch you kissed you today?”

“G-god,” he stuttered. “N-never. I swear.” His voice faltered, his hand didn’t.

“I bet you wanted her to lift the mask so she could kiss you properly, right?” you continued, your voice teetering between saccharine and mean. “It probably felt good when she ran her grubby hands up your chest.”

Jisung whined, a hurt cry stuck in his throat, but he also rubbed himself harder. “No, baby.”

“I don’t think so. That’s why you can fuck your hand.”

Jisung panted through half-formed excuses, his own hand unrelenting around his shaft. He rutted into his grip. His desperation made the floor buckled with each thrust; it made the bed dip, too. The neighbors surely could feel and hear every sad tug. You relished in his babbling and the sharp slapping sound his cock made as he chased the poor replacement for own warmth.

“Go ahead, Ji,” you said lightly. “Go make a mess for me.”

A straggled sound replaced a yes. Hunched over, Jisung moaned loudly as he milked himself dry, spilling hastily all over his nice shirt and good pants and the floor. He spurted so much, it shook him. It honestly made you sad how much went to waste. Afterwards, he fell forward, his hands banging onto the hardwood with a boom that was surely going to get reported to the landlord.

Watching him catch his breath on all fours almost convinced you he'd finally reached his limit. The small smile tucked beneath his messy bangs ruined the illusion.

“Ji, come here,” you said, with a poor mask of seriousness. The way he was at your feet within the second, doe-eyes shiny and expecting - you didn’t stand a chance.

In high school, that was the face waiting on your doorstep after he'd run blocks across town because you hadn't answered your phone. In college, those were the round eyes that lingered on the train platform until you disappeared from view. Nowadays, that same gummy smile greeted you through split lips and drying blood, asking about your day while his body quietly put itself back together.

“What did you learn?” you asked, running a hand through his hair.

He melted into your touch. “Spider-Man needs to start shoving civilians to the ground.”

You smacked his head softly. “I won’t let you touch me for a month, Jisung.”

“Okay, okay,” he muttered. “I belong to my hot girlfriend.”

You couldn’t help but chuckle. “‘Belong’ is a strong word.”

“Am I not all yours, though?” He rested his head on your knee, nudging against it like a haughty cat. “Can I show you?”

“You’re real cocky for someone who was crying a minute ago.”

Jisung slowly climbed up from his prostration, his hands finding your hips and pushing you farther into the bed. He still looked a little teary-eyed, his cheeks tinged red, but he was grinning and his length was hard again already.

“Because you’re mean and you like making me cry,” he complained as he crawled above you, straddling you beneath him.

“Fight back.”

“Meh. Don’t wanna.”

He leaned down and kissed you, this time softly and leisurely as if savoring your lips. You could feel a wide smile between each one. He was having the time of his life.

You released him long enough to command, “Take your clothes off.”

He giddily followed - took his time though. He undressed all while stealing mini-glances at you leered at him, like he wanted to your approval.

Staring at that hot man jump out of his pants, with his foot caught in the pant-leg, put all sorts of pressure in your stomach. You'd spent a long time trying to be mature about it - how you felt about that new body of his. It wasn’t exactly a gift, first of all. And it wasn’t new anymore either; for a while now, he’d had broad shoulders, a wide, squishy chest, and arms he couldn’t hide in any shirt. The spider had changed him, turned your already attractive boyfriend into the sort of man strangers openly stared at in grocery stores. That bothered you just as much as the comment sections lusting over Spider-Man. You'd been noticing since high school, how pretty he was. The difference was that now everyone else had caught up.

He returned to run his hands up your sides, riding your dress up so it covered nothing. His fingers shyly settled, stroking a small patch of plump skin.

“What am I allowed to do?” He looked up at you expectantly, long lashes batting with every blink.

You laughed as you sank firmly unto the mattress, getting comfortable. “What do you think you’ve earned?”

His entire face committed to the pout while he thought. “The right to apologize?” God, he could be cute.

“Apologize, then.”

That was all he needed to hear.

He lowered down until his face was mere inches from your warmth. A shaky chuckle escaped as he realized you had been so wet this entire time. It sent a shiver up your spine, your resolve slowly crashing. He brushed a tentative thumb over your panties, the dampness cool and enticing. He continued to stroke slowly as he waited to hear you whimper or something.

A part of you really wanted to make him wait, rile him up some more even if it cost you some of your sanity. But the mattress shook as he rutted into it and his finger only got faster and faster, digging deeper and deeper through soaked folds. You finally had to moan.

It was like a starting gun had gone off - with shameless desperation, he pushed your useless underwear to the side and buried himself between your thighs. He couldn’t stop himself from diving in and prodding his tongue as deep as it could go.

“F-fuck.” You were already struggling to speak, overwhelmed in the best possible way. You tangled your fingers into his hair, keeping him exactly where you wanted him.

Luckily, he was more than happy to delve deeper, licking and sucking like he had been starved. 

“Mine,” he murmured between laps. His swollen lips stayed on your clit, moans cascading from your throat freely now. Your thighs instinctively tried to close on him, but he held them open so he could have the space he needed to switch between prodding his tongue into you and sucking your clit for dear life.

Gasping over him, it all had become entirely too much. The heat in your stomach burned and your legs shook. Your hips rolled into his face, fucking his sweaty, spitty face.

He groaned against you, vibrating you from your core. “P-please cum,” he panted, his voice rough and strained. “Cum on my face, please.”

He whined that word against your sopping pussy, finding it within himself to sink his mouth even deeper, determined. One arm reached around one leg to keep your grinding hips close while his other hand slid through the mess you made and rubbed slow circles against your clit. By that point, you choked back sobs while he only got faster and rougher.

In the end, you simply gripped his hair harder and pushed down further as the heat overtook you. Your body trembled, your moans echoing off the walls. Jisung stayed put, working you through it as gently as he could.

For a moment, all you saw were stars. Then Jisung's eyes came into focus as he leaned over to check on you, gently sweeping the hair from your face.

“You okay?” He tried his best to sound normal.

You nodded, but the weight on your leg reminded you that the night wasn’t quite done yet. Jisung caught on a second later and quickly retreated, looking almost sheepish. You offered a weak, teasing smile.

“Help me take my dress off,” you said.

He didn’t need to be told twice. You winced when the cool air washed over you, your body still warm as you came down.

Ready, you gently grabbed Jisung’s arm before he could rummage through the nightstand.

“No condom tonight,” you said simply. “You need to know I’m yours, too.”

His eyes shimmered for a moment, his mouth parted like he hadn’t been aware of that after all these years. He was impossible sometimes. Unable to stop himself, he crashed into your lips first. He had you pinned under him, his mouth claiming every bit of your skin he could find. It took minutes for him to break away.

Eventually, he released you and sat back to freed his patient, overwhelmed erection. You felt a twinge of guilt; it was so flushed.

With low, wanton hiss, he lined himself at your entrance, his swollen tip aching against the heat. He tried, honestly, he wanted to push himself in slowly, to feel you stretch open, but you were so tight and hot and you whimpered while only the head had passed through and he couldn’t help himself - he shoved his fat cock deep inside with one hard thrust.

You moaned, high and much too loud for your annoyed neighbors, as he was already up against your cervix.

“Shit, you’re mine,” Jisung choked. “Why would I want a-anyone else?”

Each word was accompanied by smooth, deliberate plunge into your wet cunt - each ram faster and harder than the last. You were so wet again already - the sound was heavenly to him and only made him want to shove into you harder, feel your tight walls suffocate him.

“J-ji,” you panted against his ear. Your voice was barely audible over the sound of your bodies slapping together. “You’re g-going to cum inside me, r-right?”

His hands stayed planted on either side of your head, his face buried in the crook of your neck. It wasn’t the night to kneed your breasts or admire your waist. He only wanted to feel you flutter against his throbbing cock - to hear you moan his name like it was only word you knew - to fill you up.

“B-baby, wanna cum inside you so much…always.”

His movements grew harsher, his hips cracking into yours madly. You whimpered with him as he slammed into your cervix repeatedly. He felt nothing - he knew nothing - outside your soaked pussy. 

“I c-can’t,” you whispered. “I can’t hold on a-any longer. Cum inside me. You’re so good.”

His pace only quickened. “Fuck, baby, I’ll fill you up. I-I promise.”

Shakily, he’d pull himself as far out as he could before pushing into you again. He did it over and over again, until he lost all rhythm and sense.  You lost the ability to form words or even sounds that weren’t guttural moans; Jisung figured out he could still get lightheaded.

“Shit, I’m gonna cum, b-babe.”

Jisung’s hands suddenly slammed into your hips as he steadied you to take all of him, every single last drop. His cock twitched, spilling so, so much of him inside you. The load was heavy and fast - it was so much too quick that it spilled back out of you, soiling the sheets.

The room was warm and quiet and comfortable, your bodies slowly relaxing into one another as you unraveled bit by bit. Jisung went slack after he pulled out, collapsing against you with a soft thud. He was so much heavier now. His head rested on your chest, weighty enough that it made breathing a little difficult. You couldn't hold him anymore.

"Ji," you murmured. "Ji, hey." You tapped the side of his head. "Scoot."

With a tired groan, he dragged himself just far enough to lie beside you, but not far. The moment he settled, instinct took over. He gathered you back into his arms, pulling you flush against him until there wasn't any space left between you. Face to face, you still felt impossibly small beneath the shelter of his embrace. You reached up and cupped his flushed cheek. His skin was warm, almost feverish from exhaustion, and his long, straight lashes brushed against your fingertips when he blinked.

"I miss your glasses," you said softly.

Jisung's face scrunched, his brain not yet ready to think yet.

"I can't get used to you without them. It feels like you're missing something."

"I don't need them anymore," he mumbled, the words barely making it out between slow, sleepy breaths.

Your thumb traced the shape of his face - the sharper jaw he'd grown into, the bridge of his nose, a long scar disappearing into his hairline that still hadn't faded all the way yet.

"It's different."

A yawn interrupted him before he spoke again. "You know what's not different?"

He shifted even closer, until you were tucked securely against his chest. You rolled your eyes, already knowing he'd sense it.

"I mean it," he murmured.

He held in his arms even closer, tight like the way someone crosses their fingers.

“You want me to get the mask out, too?” he asked with a shit-eating grin.

You tossed his own shirt at him with a baffled chuckle. Of course, he caught it easily. “All you had to say was maybe another time!” He was Spider-Man after all.

Your boyfriend, who you had known for over a decade and dated for half of that, had been keeping a secret from you for almost two whole years. When did you find out? Six months ago.

Your relationship wasn’t perfect right now. Not bad, but not good. One just doesn’t forgive dishonesty so quickly. He had left you to feel confused, doubtful. Not that your friends knew his secret, but with a boyfriend who canceled plans, disappeared without warning, then came back looking brighter and stronger, they had gotten to the point where they had less and less reasons to support your relationship. You didn’t have a lot either, even now.

But you knew him, well and long enough that even this implausible secret made sense. Of course he would do something like this. Your soft-hearted, too-kind-for-his-own-good, no-problem-is-too-small boyfriend would absolutely risk everything the second he was given the power to help.

His initial response was to go back to hiding his alter ego, keeping you and Spider-Man as far apart as possible. It barely lasted a week; you needed to know. You weren’t going to bare that hole in your chest from his not answering his phone or leaving for days at a time. If he wanted you in his life, then you needed all of him, not just the pieces he thought were safe to show.

This included him being himself, all of him, at home in your teeny shared apartment. The oversized hoodies disappeared first, no longer swallowing his frame every day. They were replaced by…very little most of the time. Jisung wandered around your tiny apartment all broad shoulders and lean muscle. His arms had gotten massive, his chest firmer, his stomach taut in a way that made it impossible not to stare.

He also moved differently. There were the obvious signs, like his insane strength and how his new favorite place to ponder was from the ceiling. But he was also quicker, lighter, in a way that felt almost animalistic. He reacted to the smallest sounds, some you couldn’t register. He seemed to be one step ahead of almost everything. He was always alert, always ready, all instinct.

He’d also stopped wearing his glasses. Turned out he didn’t need them anymore. That one tugged at your heart a little. You missed them - missed them alongside the soft, slightly too shy boy who used to peer at you through smudged lenses and overgrown bangs, who’d duck his head when you caught him staring.

That part hadn’t changed much - he barely seemed to notice what he was doing to you and, when he did, he’d be sickening bashful about it. In the mornings, he’d shuffle around half-awake and rubbing his eyes, completely unaware that messy hair and bruised knuckles did something for you. Sometimes he’d lean against a wall or a counter while talking, his huge muscles flexing absentmindedly. He’d catch you staring and just blush before putting a shirt on. Worse were the times when he’d casually use his abilities. One time he caught a brick hurtling down from a shoddy facade singlehandedly without looking, not stumbling over even one word in his rant about the Apex Legends metagame. It took every ounce of shame in you not to suck him off where he stood.

Maybe the newfound confidence came with the mask. Or maybe it came from finally not having to hide every part of himself anymore. Either way, your shy, awkward boyfriend had somehow turned into someone annoyingly attractive, and unfortunately for you, he was getting the hang of it. You were okay with that, mostly.

Jisung laced his hands together and cracked his knuckles above his head, his gloves ticking. “One more time - are you sure about this? I can’t break the webs and the solvent takes a second to dissolve them.”

You took that question as a cue to get yourself into place. You set a few pillows behind and under you, propping your head and hips up comfortably and making sure your arms weren’t too high above you. After settling, you smiled widely, all your teeth on display. “Yup! I’m quite sure.” You wiggled your feet excitedly. You’ve asked for this a few times, but Jisung was a bit hesitant to bring Spider-Man into your bedroom. But you were persistent and it couldn’t hurt to try at least once…

“Alrighty, then,” Jisung sang. With a flick of his wrist and a soft thwip, he landed a net of web on your wrists, attaching you to the headboard. Immediately, you felt pressure - you tugged on them, but they wouldn’t budge.

Jisung positioned himself gleefully, a stupid smirk plastered on his face. “Thank you for suggesting this, babe.” He currently kneeled on either side of your hips, careful not to put on weight on you. He drew soft shapes on your thighs, which made you shiver. His gloves were still cold and added an alluring bit of weight to every movement.

“We haven’t even done anything yet,” you giggled.

“Yeah, but it’s going to a long night.” His eyes sparkled earnestly. “I’m excited.”

He brought a gloved hand you face, the sensation chilling you. It was strangely cool and he felt more powerful than usual. Maybe it was the adrenaline. He cupped your face and kissed you, low, slow, yearning. Quickly, though, he overwhelmed you. His tongue slipped through eagerly, taking your breath away as it shoved its way down your throat.

Your body wanted to chase after him, but you really couldn’t move all that much, which he noticed almost immediately. He kept kissing you and backing away, watching you struggle to follow.

“Greedy,” he murmured with a grin against your lips before he snuck away.

You could only glare at him before he decided to move downward, aiming at your neck next. He bit and licked and sucked, needing you to get just as vocal as he liked. A hand crawled its way under your tank top, cupping a full breast roughly. Your breath broke against the pressure. He needed to go further - he pinched a nipple, hard. You squealed, a high-pitched cry, as he rolled it between two sleek fingers, never lightening his grip. He wouldn’t let go;he just added a hand, which kneaded your other breast just as hard.

You had nowhere to go as he finished nipping your collarbones. After, he latched up on to one of your sensitive mounds, staring at you through straight lashes as he teethed on you. He sounded so sloppy, so hungry, as he muttered praises into your skin. Nonstop, the other one was squished before his hand slid down your stomach.

Your hips bucked into his fingers while they glided down to the fabric above your center. You emitted a soft sound, already trapped by his teasing. He growled as he switched sides, his fingers still gently assessing how wet you actually were.

“Ji,” you whispered, unable to decide how to end that sentence exactly.

Jisung separated from you with a pop, lifting up to meet your eyes. He was already heavy-lidded and short-breathed, his exhales warming your face.

“Tell me what you need, baby,” he emphasized with his fingers brushing your damp panties.

You swallowed hard. You trembled beneath him, your arms desperately trying to find him. “S-stop teasing me.”

“Oh, I’m not, baby,” he smirked as he pulled rough on your nipples, tugging it and watching your breast jiggle back into place beneath your top. You gasped. “I’m enjoying myself.” His hands slithered down to tug at your underwear. “Tell me what to do better.”

“T-touch me.”

He hummed in time to a long swipe over thin fabric. Your hips bucked forward to no satisfaction. “I am though.”

You threw your head back in growing frustration. “Like, properly, Ji.”

“I can’t do that with these on, darling,” he smiled, waving his free hand innocently. Your eyes widen and your mouth hung open, failing to hide utter anguish. You rubbed your thighs around his hand, searching for something as he traced aloof shapes above your sopping hole.

“Babe, I got this. Trust me.”

Trust meant shit coming out of his mouth, but he finally and happily removed your underwear and shorts, throwing them behind him with too much enthusiasm. He dutifully repositioned himself right after, laying down in front of you, your legs on either side of him. 

“Can I?” he asked, feigning worry, as if he’d be denied.

You nod, watching him lick his lips first.

One of his few redeeming qualities, Jisung was a munch. He’d quit his job and drop of school if he could keep you pinned down under him forever. It was a pastime of his, honestly. For a long time, before he distanced himself, he’d make you lay down randomly in bed or on the couch and just stay between your legs for hours. Had a long day? He’d eat you out. Passed an assignment? Eat you out. Didn’t do that well on an assignment? Eat you out. When he was younger, eagerness made up for technique. After years, though, he prided himself on just how many times he could make you cum within an hour with only his tongue.

Tonight, he started slow, savoring you with each pass of his tongue. His eyes practically rolled in the back of his head, you were so wet and sweet. Although he was being tame, you were already out of breath. The webs dug into your skin, surprisingly stinging you, with no give whatsoever. You stayed exactly where he had left you and so did he, unfortunately. You couldn’t pull Jisung closer by the hair; you couldn’t shove his beautiful curved nose against your swollen clit. You could only grind your hips into his open mouth, searching for his tongue as it lazily yet firmly tasted every drop of you. 

Jisung could feel your frustration in the way you rolled over his face; he could hear it as you muttered half-formed curses. He’d normally do whatever you wished, as soon as you demanded. But he liked seeing you so needy, so starved, for once. He liked feeling wanted. He liked seeing your cocky, bossy self fight the urge to beg.

His gloves purred as he positioned them wide on the inside of either thigh and spread your legs broad. Jisung had stopped completely to admire his work. Your cunt was swollen and red and shining with a pretty mix of your slick and his spit. Your stomach twisted in disappointment, waiting.

“Say please,” he spouted coldly, taking advantage.

“Ji,” you exhaled. He sure was brave tonight.

He ignored you. He drummed metallic fingers against your skin, seemingly bored.

“Jisung.”

“Hm?” He blinked, peering up innocently.

“Like, c-continue! Finish!”

Jisung brought his teeth to the soft part of your thigh and started biting at the flesh, dribbling all down your leg. It made you moan, but that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t what you wanted.

“Ji,” you gasped, tugging uselessly at your binding. “Just—“

Jisung dragged his heavy fingers down your squishy muscles, slow and pressured. The metal weave was apparent as he sank his fingertips, tracing each bite he gifted. It hurt but not as much as—

“Ji, please eat me out.”

His grin was wide and gummy. “How, baby?”

“Spit on it, hit it, fingerfuck me - I don’t care! But please, Ji.”

He didn’t have to spit on anything - you were overflowing. He merely dived down and kissed at your desperate pussy. His tongue slid in and out, pausing only for him to gulp down your slick. He picked up the pace, lapping at you like he was dying of thirst, his nose buried in your sensitive bud. He got so fast, inhumanly so. You loved the way he knew exactly what to do and how to do it by your cries. You shook so much, too, he had to hold you back from crushing his skull between your pretty thighs. He broke away to kiss them, bite them again. You jumped against the headboard. 

“Jisung!”

“Baby, but you’re so soft!” he whined, his eyes locked onto you. “And maybe if you didn’t scream like that—“

On cue, he squeezed your legs, earning a yelp from you. He laughed as he went back to work. He gained a nice rhythm, in time to your cursing his name. His tongue slowed, even when he got to your clit. He circled it, several languid laps before pursing his lips and sucking. It was an obscene sound, the way he slurped you.

Your head spun, each action making you more and more undone. He wasn’t holding back today. He was always afraid he’d hurt if he wasn’t 100% aware of how much strength he used but now, he seemed to be leaning into his new gifts. It was like he needed you to feel him, each touch a mark, a promise, a statement.

“Ji, I’m close,” you babbled.

Jisung responded by retreating for a moment before returning with a wide, long, slow swipe at your sopping cunt, making you feel every second he was on you. He traveled until he found your clit once more and attached his watery mouth with no mercy. His hands easily threw your leaded legs above his shoulders, limp as he worked.

Your first organism hit you harder than you expected. You tensed and trembled, screaming at this point. The feeling of your boyfriend and the web ties, both unrelenting, drove you beyond all sense. But that didn’t make Jisung stop - he wrapped his arms around your legs and brought you closer, physically holding you so you literally rode out your high on him.

As the pleasure subsided into exhaustion, your body tried to collapse, but there was nowhere to go. You pressed into the pillows, no words capable of being uttered. Jisung only watched, admiring what a sweaty, gasping mess you already were. Your face and chest was flushed a bright pink, your chest heaving dramatically as you fought to catch your breath.

“Oh no,” he mused as he sat up and inched closer. He returned his two gloved hand to your breasts. He fondled them roughly above your shirt, ignoring your pained whines. “I should’ve gotten rid your shirt before we started. It’s in the way. How can I see how pretty you are naked with it on, baby?”Rudely, he only pawed harder with each word. “I didn’t think this through. Lemme fix that.”

Like a sheet of paper, he tore your tank top in two with easy fingers. Your jaw went slack as he peeled off what was left and tossed them to the floor.

“Better,” he smiled with a raised an eyebrow.

He got up to get your water bottle. He took a sip himself but not before he let you drink. He wiped your face with the tissues on the nightstand, giving you a small peck on the cheek when he was done. 

Jisung knelt in front of you, his big body folded in like he was praying. You had a leg on either side of him, open and vulnerable. He ran his hands up and down your thighs with little actual patience. You could see his sold, hefty hard-on fight against his boxers, begging despite his feeble voice. “Are you okay to keep going?” he asked as he bucked slightly into the mattress.

“Yes, please,” you breathed. The words had barely tumbled from your lips before he returned to kiss you deeply, letting you taste yourself on his tongue. All the while, you could feel the head of his cock through his boxers rubbing against your still sensitive folds.

“Now?” he practically whined.

You desperately nodded.

He lowered you slightly on the pillows, so you were laying down. Your hands hung achingly above you like a bell in church. He gracefully positioned his hands on either side of you and sank down you two were forehead to forehead, chest to chest.

Initially, he nudged himself into you unhurriedly, like there was still all the time in the world. You gasped with each inch, the journey as long as his cock. He eventually bottomed out and stayed there, listening to your already ragged breathing.

“Fuck…still tight,” he choked. You squeezed around him, adjusting to his size. He was obsessed how it still took you a minute to take all of him in.

He groaned deeply as he began moving. The thrusts were deep, slow, and long - he’d drag himself almost all the way out before inching his way back in. You rolled your hips in time with his, gracefully but urgently chasing his addictive length.

With each sensual grind, he kissed you passionately like your soul was in the other side of your mouth. Occasionally, if you needed to squeak or moan, he’d place a gentle kiss on your neck or a soft bite on your shoulder. Soon, one his hands traveled up to your bound wrists, added even more pressure, while the other caressed your shaking body. It was agonizing.

“You’re so good, taking me so well,” he murmured against your check. “So, perfect, so patient.”

Your hips jerked against his spastically, searching for something rougher. He only giggled, a pure sound full of malice.

“Y/n,” he cooed. “Use your words.”

You groaned, less from euphoria more from how annoying he’d grown. You gulped before spitting out, low and taunting, “Fuck me.”

You ceremoniously wrapped your legs around his waist and all he could do for a second was smiled into your neck. Suddenly, before you could protest further, he snapped his pelvis forward, ramming into you faster and even deeper. He relished your cries by burying his teeth in your neck, sucking hard enough to leave a pretty present for work tomorrow.

“Right there, Ji, right here,” you muttered into the air. Your cracking voice was just barely audible over the sound of skin slapping skin and your wet cunt squelching with each plunge.

“Right there?” He angled himself and pounded into you forcefully, earning a broken cry from your shredded throat.

You had squeezed your eyes shut, deliciously overwhelmed, but you felt a hand hold your face.

“Look at me,” he whispered. “Watch me fuck you.”

His thrusts drove into you hard and desperate. His bangs were stuck to his face and his chest was sweaty and flushed. He watched your face with a slight smirk, think you were the most beautiful creature he could ever witnessed. He kissed messily, he couldn’t help himself. You were even more gorgeous as you sobbed into his mouth, getting closer and closer.

“Cum, baby.” Broke away just along to praise you. “Cum all over me again like a good girl.”

You came harder, clenching around his length, arching your back to be even closer to him. You moaned his name loudly as refused to slow down, fucking you as he chased his own high.

You went slack beneath him, but he reached down to rub your clit, fast and rough. You cried, a strangled sound, but he wanted you sufficiently wrecked before he cummed deep within you. He railed a few more jagged thrusts before spilling thick, hot ropes all in you. He kept moving, though, pushing each drop in so you would be properly full. At this point, his name was a fragmented prayer for the neighbors to hear.

Jisung slumped into you, his head resting on your shoulders, his arms hugging you. You could feel his chest heave into yours as you struggled to calm your heartbeat. He stayed inside you, warm and sweaty, for a moment, but not long enough.

“Babe, baby,” he babbled into your ear between shaky, ragged breaths. “Can you let me try something? Please? Just one more thing, I promise.” Each whimper was accompanied by a slow, languid rut into your sensitive, aching cunt.

Lost for words, you nodded feebly, weak to how needy he still felt and sounded. As long as he begged, you’d do anything. You’d find the will. You’d muster the strength. He carefully removed himself from in and on you and retrieved the solvent. He poured only a few drops, but immediately the webs started to fizzle away. It took a minute or two to fully dissolve. During that time, he cleaned you up - he toweled you down, tucked your hair behind your ears, and got you some water.

After you reassured him that you were okay, he kissed your sweaty forehead and gently guided you unto your knees, making you look away from at the wall above the headboard. A quick thwip could be heard behind you, followed by his cold, metallic hands gingerly wrapping a thin cord around your wrists, behind your back.

“Is it too tight?” he asked.

“N-not at all.”

He pulled a little more so your wrists were flushed together, tight.

He got behind you and unwrapped a condom this time, still wincing slightly from the overstimulation as he rolled it on. This was a scenario he’d imagined for a while now. He patted your ass, assuringly but a tad bit hard. You were too good for him.

He positioned himself at your entrance, standing firm behind you. Oh, how what a sight. Your ass was something he was secretly obsessed with. Your pretty cunt was red and swollen and glistening with him, too, thighs bitten and blue. He was tempted to taste it once more this night. “Can you even take my cock again, baby?” he drawled.

“Of course,” you breathed. “Anytime, Spidey.”

That woke him up fully, a new exhilarating feeling. Unannounced, he slid himself in once more, quietly alarmed by how you could still invite him in. He grabbed your hips and sank all the way in, earning a yelp from you.

“Fuck,”he drawled. He was not exactly frantic this time; he went slow enough but made sure to bottom out with each thrust, pushing himself right into your sore hole. You shook beneath him instantly, but he only gripped harder, his gloves marking you more. You weren’t going anywhere. His cock slammed inside you over and over.

“Jisung,” you straight up cried as you buried your face into the mattress. The sound of your slick, mixed with moans and whines from the both of you, was deliciously dirty. You fought against the web binding; it stung just as much as when he slapped your ass, but it was entrancing, getting to feel his strength so up close.

“Shit, you’re too good for me, baby,” he moaned. “Letting me tie you up like you’ve done something wrong.”His cracking voice didn’t match how he was still mercilessly picking up the pace. “You can do nothing but cum for me.” A hand slid between your thighs. “That’s all my baby can do right now, take my cock and cum.”

His cool fingers found your desperate clit and finally rubbed fast circles. His gloves offered a sensation you’d never felt before - they were rough and hard but smooth and cold and glided over with your slick with ease. You dripped down his knuckles.

As his other hand squeezed your ass and didn’t let go, you screamed into the mattress, a pure, throaty shriek. Jisung could’ve cum right there, but he instead he held your hips against him, so you clenched around every inch of him.

“I’m going to cum,” you screeched, tears staining the sheets.

“I’m right there with you, baby,” he whimpered. “Cum with me, y/n.”

You made no attempt to muffle the scream ripped from your throat as you came for the third time that night. Jisung didn’t let up as he slammed into you one last time, stammering praises and thank you’s as he filled up yet another condom inside you. His fingers faltered a little, but continued to pleasure you as he milked every drop and tear out of you.

When he finally pulled out after several minutes of twitching inside you, he fell to his knees, the bed sinking loudly under him. You collapsed without his balance onto your side, too exhausted to even properly sob.

“Hey,” he mewled as he crawled over to the night stand to get the solvent again. As it simmered, he threw away the condom and he took off the gloves and tossed him to the floor with an unceremonious thud. Once you were free, he repositioned you like a doll so he could hold you in his arms, staring over you with thinly disguised worry. 

“You okay?” he whispered. He knew he did a lot, probably too much. You hummed a sound that was meant to be a yes. You were too overwhelmed to even nod. He wiped your tears with his real fingertips and you leaned into the warmth. He kissed your face lightly as you panted still.

It wasn’t lost on either of you that in another world, it was often Jisung that finished these type of nights snotty and blubbering instead. Now, he looked like he only ran a slightly cumbersome jog. He was shiny and red in the cheeks and lips, but he looked too idyllic, like a painting, after everything. You reached shaky fingers to his perfect bangs, covering his wide pupils.

A lot had changed. Only recently had you really, truly noticed. But his fingers felt like home as they entangled into yours. They felt human and familiar and that was what mattered to you the most.

You cracked one eye open. "Jisung, your Spidey stamina has seriously warped your perception of reality." You propped yourself up on your elbows. "I’m a mere mortal. I can't keep up with you all the time."

"What?" His eyes widened. He shot upright so fast it almost made you laugh. "No! God, that's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

"I wanna show you something." He said it like a secret. 

You made a face, still a little too worn out to catch on.

"Please." His voice came out softer this time. "It'll make sense when we're there." There was something boyish in the way he said it. Not pleading, exactly. Just hopeful.

Jisung climbed out of bed first. He spent a moment locating the same pair of jeans he'd abandoned on the floor earlier. You watched him move around the room, unhurried and familiar, while the city lights filtered through the windows. After pulling them on, he crouched beside the ugly IKEA bag shoved against the wall and rummaged through it. Out came the red gloves, then the mask. He tucked the mask into his back pocket and slipped the gloves on with practiced ease.

Eventually, you dragged yourself up as well. You observed him and copied - jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a jacket. After a second thought, you grabbed a thin scarf from the back of a chair.

By the time you were ready, Jisung was standing beside the large window separating the kitchen from the living room. His back was turned to you. He was fiddling with the latch, brows furrowed in concentration, wearing the same expression he usually reserved for math problems way beyond your scope. Suddenly, the pieces clicked into place.

"I'm going with you?" you asked slowly. "Like...around the city?"

A smile tugged at his mouth. "Yeah." He finally pushed the window open, and distant traffic drifted inside with the cool night air. "Kind of like a joyride."

Your stomach twisted. There were about a hundred different feelings tangled together, none of them easy to name. A lot of them you didn’t want to discuss.

Jisung noticed immediately.

"We don't have to. I mean it." He glanced away before looking back at you. "I just thought..." His shoulders lifted in a small shrug. "I wanted to show you what it looks like from up there."

You shook your head in silence, bracing yourself before facing him again. The smile you managed felt small and uncertain, but it was enough. You were trying.

Jisung's expression softened. Of course he understood. He always did.

His hand found yours and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Okay, you're gonna climb onto my back." He said it carefully, like he was guiding one of your students. “Then you need to hold on as tight as you can. You won't hurt me."

You focused on getting onto his back, ignoring that little slip of confirmation. He crouched to make it easier. You settled your arms around his shoulders. Then tighter. Then tighter still. He was right.

Jisung adjusted his footing. "I'm climbing to the roof first, okay?"

You nodded.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

The moment he moved, every instinct in your body screamed that something was wrong. Not dangerous - wrong. People weren't supposed to accelerate like that. There was no gradual buildup of momentum. No preparation. No warning. Not even that sickening jolt like at the start of a roller coaster. You wrapped yourself around his neck reflexively.

Despite the force, Jisung landed on the edge of the window frame so lightly it barely made a sound. His very body absorbed the impact so completely you would have been confused if you had moved at all if it weren’t for the breeze hitting you from the window. You ducked automatically, convinced your head was about to collide with the glass, but it never came close. His movements were too precise for that.

Before you could fully process it, he moved again.

Forward.

The motion yanked at every organ in your body. Cold air slammed into your face. For a brief, horrible moment, you felt yourself tilt away from the building, first outward…then downward.

You felt yourself flung in an arch, the world rushing at you in the opposite direction. You saw the horizon vanish before your sight, followed by the street below now above your head.

Then Jisung stuck. The stop came so abruptly your teeth clicked together. You stared at brick, inches away from your face. His hand was attached to the facade.

His feet dug in next. The building became a floor. Your stomach lurched. Every part of your brain rejected the image. You were perpendicular to the ground. You knew you were, but your body couldn't make sense of it. It kept waiting for gravity to remember its job.

Jisung started climbing instead. His shoulders rolled beneath your arms. One hand. One foot. The other hand. The other foot. Each movement was smooth and practiced, almost casual. To him, the wall offered the same resistance as a ladder rung.

You found yourself staring at his gloves, morbidly fascinated at the impossible ease with which they released and reattached, at how he never hesitated. He never checked his footing or searched for a handhold. He didn’t pause when he shut the window closed with his foot. He simply knew he would stick. The realization was almost stranger than the height.

Jisung couldn't have reached the roof fast enough. The second his feet touched concrete, you fell off his back and stumbled away from him. Your legs barely worked. The roof pitched beneath you, your stomach still trying to catch up to the fact that the world had stopped moving.

"Y/n."

You took another step back.

"Y/n," Jisung said again, immediately hearing something wrong in your breathing. "I couldn't go the way I normally do. Not with you on my back. I had to—"

You doubled over. You barely made it three steps before vomiting. The rough concrete scraped your knees as you dropped down.

Somewhere behind you, Jisung swore. "We're going back inside." His voice was closer now. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." The words tumbled out too fast. "We'll go back. We don't have to do this. I'm sorry."

He sounded panicked. You couldn't answer. Your stomach churned again despite of yourself.

The image replayed behind your eyes. It wasn’t necessarily the height or the danger that unnerved you. It was the familiarity of it. There had been no caution in his movements. No adjustment. No thought. It was as natural as watching someone walk down a hallway. A peculiar feeling settled heavily in your chest knowing that he was now so fundamentally different.

Jisung didn't follow you. For once, he seemed afraid to. He simply waited, holding back his feet and the guilt which threatened to overtake him.

When your stomach finally settled, you sank back on your knees. The city stretched endlessly beyond the ledge. Office towers glowed in the distance, their windows clustered together like constellations. From down below, they had always looked impossibly far away. Now you knew they weren't. Jisung could reach them in minutes.

The thought made your stomach ache again.

Still, slowly, you pushed yourself back to your feet. Jisung hadn't moved. His eyes were red. His hands were clenched so tightly at his sides that his knuckles had gone pale.

He looked exactly like Han Jisung.

"I'll be okay," you said, your voice rough.

He dragged his hands over his face and he shook his head. "No, don't do that."

"I'll be fine."

He looked at you then. Miserable. Exhausted. Terrified. "You don't have to be fine right now."

The wind tugged at your jacket and scarf as you stood in silence. Then you crossed the distance between you. Jisung immediately went still. You pressed your hands against his chest. His heartbeat was racing.

"I think I'm allowed to be a little freaked out."

His eyes squeezed shut. You felt his chest rise sharply beneath your palms.

"I'm scared," you admitted quietly. "Not of you."

That got his attention. His eyes opened.

"Just of..." You searched for the words. "Everything else."

Jisung gulped hard. Then, very carefully, he covered one of your hands with his, like he was still checking whether you wanted him to touch you.

"I don't want you hiding from me," you said quietly.

Jisung looked down. “I don’t want you running away.”

"I’m not. I'm grateful you want to share this with me. I really am." You swallowed. "Just...let me do it scared."

For a moment, he didn't say anything. Then he nodded. His breathing was still rough. "Okay."

The word barely left his mouth before he reached into his back pocket. You watched him pull out the mask.

"Here. Wearing it makes me feel less afraid."

Before you could argue, he carefully pulled it over your head. The material tightened and shifted against your skin. Tiny motors whirred. Something clicked near your temples. You startled as lights flickered to life across the lenses. Information flooded your vision. Numbers. Symbols. Graphs. Maps. None of it meant anything to you. You wondered for a second how it offered comfort, all the lights and sounds. But suddenly a voice spoke directly into your ear.

Hello. Jisung, do we have a guest?

You nearly jumped out of your skin. "Why is there a person in here?"

"There isn't." Jisung ran a hand through his hair. "That's Geomi. She’s an AI assistant Stark installed to look after me.”

I prefer co-pilot.

"I’d prefer it shut up."

"Geomi," Jisung interrupted, "is there a guest setting or something?"

Mr. Stark installed the Lover's Protocol three months ago.

Jisung groaned. "Of course he did."

Would you like it activated?

"Please."

The displays vanished instantly. The endless stream of information disappeared. The lenses softened into a faint glow. Everything became quiet. When you blinked, the mask responded with a subtle mechanical flutter that sounded strangely cute. You blinked again just to hear it.

Jisung watched you. "Better?"

You looked out at the city. Without the flood of data, the mask felt less like a machine and more like a window.

"Yeah." Your voice was a little muffled.

His shoulders loosened slightly. 

"Are you?"

For a second, he looked like he might lie. Then he took a long breath.

"Yeah," he said. "A little."

Jisung took your hand and led you toward the edge of the roof. This time, he moved slowly.

"Okay." He pointed across the skyline. "See that water tower?"

You followed his finger. "I think so."

"Good. That's our first stop."

His voice had shifted into the careful, methodical tone he used whenever he was trying to solve a problem…or prevent one.

"I'm going to web onto it and swing us over." He glanced at you. "Normally I'd use both web-shooters, but I need an arm free to hold you, so it'll be a little rougher than usual."

The lenses of the mask blinked loudly.

He immediately winced. "'Rougher' is the wrong word."

"It is."

Jisung groaned. "That’s not fair. You know I’m really bad at reassuring people."

You gave him a thumbs-up you didn’t mean.

That earned a snort. "Thank you. That's very encouraging." Then he stepped closer, scooping you up effortlessly. His arm slid beneath your legs while the other steadied your back, lifting you onto his hip like it was the most natural thing in the world. Your stomach did a small flip. You wrapped your arms around his neck automatically. Jisung adjusted his grip until you felt secure against his side.

"You comfortable?" he asked.

"No."

"Fair." You felt him laugh, but his arm tightened slightly around your waist. "You will tell me when you want to stop." The joking edge disappeared from his voice.

It was there again - that carefulness. That determination to make sure you always had a choice.

You looked at the distant water tower. Then at the drop waiting beyond the edge of the roof. "You're going to let me scream a little."

Jisung nodded immediately. "Absolutely."

“Good.” You eyed the edge of the roof. "Also…does Geomi have a protocol if I throw up in the mask?”

I do.

"Oh my God."

Emergency decontamination procedures are available upon request.

Jisung made a horrified noise.

"Why does that exist?" you asked. 

Because he has thrown up in the suit before.

"You promised not to bring that up!”

You stared at him through the mask. Jisung stared straight ahead. "...let's go."

Thwip!

The web shot out before you could fully understand the sound. It was impossibly fast. A thin line of white disappeared into the darkness, and Jisung's hand moved with it, precise and automatic. The echo bounced between buildings, too loud in the quiet of the night, like a starting gun.

"Three,” he announced firmly. His grip tightened around you.

"Two." Your stomach dropped before anything happened.

"One."

He ran, only a few steps, then the roof disappeared beneath you. For one long second, there was no sensation at all. No falling. No wind. No sound. No weight. It felt like the world had slowed down just enough for you to notice everything. The mask sharpened the city, almost impossibly so. You could see every window, every streetlight, every car moving below. You could see your neighborhood under you like snapshot.

Then gravity found you. It still did not feel like falling; it felt like being caught, like being yanked you downward all at once. Your body reacted before your brain did. Your grip tightened. Your breath vanished. The street rushed closer. And then—

Thwip!

The fall stopped instantly. The force snapped through your body as the web caught and redirected you back up. Your stomach stayed behind while the rest of you swung forward. You didn't even have time to scream.

Shoot. Grab. Release. Shoot. Every swing was a calculation. Every movement depended on timing. The angle of his wrist. The distance between buildings. The exact moment to let go. It was a rhythm.

He could feel how scared you were. Your arms were locked around him. Your heartbeat was racing. Your breathing came fast through the mask. He hadn't heard the lenses blink once. You were scared.

Then you laughed.

A startled, breathless sound that surprised both of you. Jisung looked over to you. You were still holding on, still terrified, but you were looking. Through the lenses, you saw the city the way he did.

Somewhere between the fear and the rush, there was something magnetic, a deep-seeded thrill that made you understand why he kept coming back. Despite everything, this felt a little like flying.

Jisung landed on the rooftop of one of the newer high-rises near the bridge, the kind with glass walls and rooftop lounges. He hit the ground with barely a sound and no stumble, no adjustment. You, however, were still trying to convince your body that you had just stopped moving. You didn't even jolt in his arms.

Jisung lowered you carefully until your feet touched the roof. Beyond him, the city stretched out. Brooklyn behind you. Manhattan ahead. The skyline burned across the river, every window glowing like a scattered field of stars.

"Hey." Jisung's voice pulled your attention back. "How’re you doing?"

He sounded far too worried. His hands hovered near you like he wasn't sure if he should steady you or give you space.

Her vitals are elevated, but still within a normal range.

"Geomi," Jisung muttered through clenched teeth. "Not now."

"I'm fine." Your voice came out thinner than you wanted. "I think."

Jisung studied your face through the mask. "That's not a very convincing answer."

"How am I supposed to feel?" There was no accusation in your voice. You were genuinely asking because he was the only person in the world who knew how you felt.

Jisung was quiet for a moment, looking out over the skyline. "The first time I made it somewhere on purpose, I ended up at that old laundromat by the Puerto Rican place."

You laughed softly. "Of course you remember the exact location."

"I remember everything. I tested the webs and the shooters before I ever tried anything," he continued. "I thought I knew what I was doing, but it's different when you're actually moving."

You could hear commotion from the bridge.

"I was scared shitless." A small smile pulled at his mouth. "But it was a rush." There was a hint of guilt in his expression, like he was apologizing.

You noticed. "Hey."

His eyes came back to you.

"I get it." You smiled sadly. There was nothing else like it.

Jisung watched your face carefully. "Do you..." he hesitated. "Do you want to try again?"

"Back home?"

"No." He held out his hand. "I want to show you my favorite spot."

You smiled immediately. Then remembered.

"You can't see my face."

A laugh escaped him. "I know you're smiling."

"How?"

"I just do." He scratched the back of his neck. "Are you ready, though?"

You nodded with your entire body.

He laughed again. "Okay."

He picked you up once more. This time, you settled against him almost automatically. One arm circled his shoulders while one of his tightened around your waist. The movement felt familiar already, safe.

Thwip!

The web vanished into the night and he followed. You fell then swung then rose. Again - fell then swung then rose. The motions no longer felt like separate events; they blended into one another until they were melodic. The drop in your stomach. The pull forward. The slow climb upward. It felt strangely like a playground swing.

The river appeared. Your breath caught. From above, it looked endless. Black and glassy, stretching between the boroughs like another sky. The bridges seemed impossibly delicate from here, their lights suspended over darkness.

By the time you reached the other side, your pulse had calmed. The journey hadn't lasted long. You landed on top of one of those newer buildings in Lower Manhattan - another luxury tower your city had somehow decided it needed. Jisung touched down softly. Again, you barely felt it.

This section of the roof was unfinished and bare. No rooftop lounge. No decorative greenery. Just concrete, vents, and maintenance equipment hidden from the people paying absurd amounts of money several floors below.

Jisung set you down. Then he immediately started walking straight toward a small metal door near the center of the roof. He grabbed the handle and shook it once. The door rattled.

"Still broken."

You and the mask blinked.

"I accidentally webbed it shut one time," he explained. "I guess maintenance never doesn’t care enough to fix it." He sounded weirdly pleased about this. "No one's ever up here."

The way he said it made you look at him, hard. He wasn't admiring the skyline. He wasn't looking around. He was checking things - the door, the ledge, and the vents like someone making sure their room looked the same as they left it.  Then he finally relaxed.

You realized, with a small start, that he'd been here enough times to have habits.

He looked at you instead. A little smile appeared. "Welcome.”

He helped you down. Sitting on the ledge may have been the hardest part of the night. Every instinct objected to it. Your legs felt unsteady as they dangled over open air, your hands planted firmly against the concrete as though you might slide off. But Jisung stayed close and the view was worth it.

Slowly, you removed the mask. The city looked dreamlike with your own eyes. To one side, Manhattan rose in clusters of glass and steel, every window lit. You'd been inside skyscrapers before, had looked down from observation decks and office buildings, but this was different. You weren't looking through reinforced glass. You were just... here. On a ledge you had absolutely no business sitting on.

"See the little dip in the lights?" You followed where Jisung was pointing. A break in the skyline. The towers suddenly lowered, the lights becoming softer and more scattered.

"Yeah, I do."

"That's our neighborhood."

You looked again. A small smile touched his face.

"In the mask, I can zoom in stupidly close." He scratched his cheek. "If the air's clear enough, I can see our apartment."

His words felt warm in your chest. You looked at the distant patch of Brooklyn. From here, it seemed stitched together from every kind of light imaginable. New glass buildings stood beside old brick ones. Streetlamps glowed amber between dark stretches of tree-lined blocks. It looked ancient and brand new at the same time. Like a galaxy someone had built by hand.

You looked at Jisung. "Do you come here a lot?" He was still staring across the river.

You wouldn't say you were used to him being Spider-Man. You were still a long way from that. It remained uncomfortable, to put it mildly, to reconcile the boy beside you with the person on the news. The secrets still stung. The whole thing still felt impossible some days. And getting Jisung to talk about it was like pulling teeth.

His mouth flattened into that familiar line he always made when he was thinking. "It's quiet here."

You almost said something mean. Isn't it quiet at home? But you looked at the mask in your hands instead. The lenses reflected the city lights in soft, distorted shapes.

"When I first got..." He stopped.

You waited. He always did this. He hated talking about what had happened to him. Hated describing what he could do. Every explanation seemed to embarrass him.

"When I first got my abilities," he tried again, "I didn't really want to be in the neighborhood."

He looked out at Brooklyn. "I got the web-shooters working pretty quickly. They weren't hard to build, so I could leave whenever I wanted."

You glanced at his gloves. They weren't the prototypes. You'd never seen those.

"I'd just come up here sometimes." The wind lifted a few strands of his hair. He looked at you then, expression soft and oddly serious.

"I never liked leaving."

You stared at him, not breaking your gaze. You sure you didn’t hide the surprise well.

"I don't know if I've made that clear."

You thought about all the missed dinners. The unexplained disappearances. The unanswered calls. The nights he came home bruised and exhausted from work supposedly. No, he hadn't made that clear.

But sitting beside him now, with Brooklyn glowing across the river and his favorite rooftop beneath you, you believed him immediately.

He looked back toward home. "I just needed somewhere to think for a while."

You mulled over his words. “What about now?”

A smirk tugged at his mouth. "Oh, I've still got plenty to think about." He leaned back on his hands. "There's a first aid kit in that vent." He nodded toward the large metal unit behind you. "Tools, too."

You looked over your shoulder.

"What?"

"Sometimes I don't want to explain to the lab why I did something stupid to the suit."

You only raised your eyebrows; another time you’d laugh. You looked down at the mask in your lap. Jisung had never said it outright, but you knew this thing complicated him. The mask was freedom. The mask was loneliness. The mask was the reason he could do impossible things and the reason he'd had to keep so much of himself hidden. You weren't sure how you felt about it either. You ran your thumb over one of the lenses.

"Pass it over for a sec."

You looked up. He was holding out his hand.

"What for?"

"I'm gonna grab something."

Your eyes widened. "You're leaving me here?"

He shrugged. "Just for a second. I promise."

You couldn’t make your disapproval clearer on your face. "Jisung."

"You're fine." His laugh only got bigger, but he took the mask gently from your hands anyway and pulled it over his face. The lenses flashed.

Lover's Protocol suspended. Host confirmed.

Then he stood and jumped. You gasped. He was gone almost immediately.

Without you in his arms, he moved differently. Faster. Lighter. He disappeared around the corner of the building in a blur. 

Silence settled over the roof. You made the mistake of looking down. Your entire body seized. You were absurdly high. The streets looked fake from here. The cars were little beads of light moving between buildings. The few people out weren't people anymore. Just motion. You swallowed and looked away.

This was where he came to think. You tried to imagine it. Winter snow collecting on the concrete. Summer nights thick with humidity. Rain soaking through his clothes. Jisung sitting exactly where you'd been sitting, alone.

He'd said he could see your apartment from here. The thought settled deep in your chest. On those nights you'd woken to an empty bed and turned on every light in the apartment while waiting for him to come home - had he seen them? Had he watched your windows glow from across the river? Had he sat here while knowing exactly where you were?

You looked back toward Brooklyn. The distance suddenly didn't feel so large. How much of his life had existed up here? And how much of it had he wanted to show you all this time?

You weren't sure how long you sat there thinking. Not long enough. A pair of sneakers landed softly on concrete behind you.

Jisung returned carrying a brown paper bag. He held it up proudly. "There's still a deli around here. I stopped a car from getting thrown into their storefront once, so they feed me for free."

You raised an eyebrow. "They just... feed you?"

"Yeah,” he said like it was normal and obvious. “A few places do as thank you’s. One of the few perks of the job."

Before you could ask any more questions, he dropped onto the ledge beside you with astonishingly little regard for the height. You weren't going to get used to that. He pulled off the mask and handed you a wrapped bagel and a cold can of Coke.

You stared. "A bagel with cream cheese and extra chives?" you asked.

He looked confused. "Yeah."

"You remembered my order."

He looked even more confused. "Of course I did." Then he pulled out his own sandwich. A bacon-egg-and-cheese that had to be at least twenty-five percent grease.

For a while, the only sounds were wrappers crinkling and the occasional hum of traffic drifting up from somewhere impossibly far below. Then the light changed. You looked up. The sun was beginning to rise. Its first rays climbed over the bridge and spilled between the buildings. Beside you, Jisung had gone still.

"I've always felt kind of guilty watching the sunrise by myself." He said it around a bite of sandwich. “It's really pretty."

You followed his gaze. He was right. The city looked entirely different in daylight. The bright yellows and soft oranges turned every glass building into glittering towers. Windows flashed with reflected light. The river caught the sunrise and held it, shimmering gold between Manhattan and Brooklyn. The whole city looked like a jewelry box someone had forgotten to close.

Neither of you spoke between bites. You just sat there, eating breakfast on a rooftop you never would have found on your own, watching the world wake up beside Spider-Man.

You broke the silence first. "Did you ever see me?"

Jisung looked over. "What?"

"When I turned all the lights on."

He frowned.

"You said you can see our apartment from here."

Understanding slowly crossed his face. "Oh."

You looked back toward Brooklyn. "I used to wake up and look for you."

For a while, he didn't answer. The city continued to brighten around you.

"Sometimes," he said quietly.

You looked at him, expectingly.

"Sometimes I'd be up here and the lights would come on." He swallowed. "I didn't know what to do about it.”

Your bagel suddenly had an aftertaste. 

"I still don't know how I feel about any of this,” you said after a sip.

"Okay."

You glanced at him. That was all he said. No explanation. No apology. No attempt to convince you otherwise. Just okay.

“You don’t look for me anymore, right?” he asked. He tried to sound easy, He took your Coke.

"No. I didn't know where to." You took it back.

There was a slight edge to your voice that you hadn't meant. You weren't trying to be accusatory, not now. You had spent months trying to understand him and, most days, you thought you did. But sometimes it was hard not to think about how much of himself existed somewhere you couldn't follow.

"Why did you bring me here?" you asked quietly.

Jisung's cheeks were still stuffed with food. He panic-swallowed. "It makes me happy."

The answer came so quickly it almost caught you off guard. His smile turned sheepish.

"I don't hate being Spider-Man. Not all the time." He glanced out over the city. "I wanted to show you that there's good stuff, too."

You copied his gaze. The skyline. The sunrise. The city slowly waking beneath your feet. Then you looked back at him. The sun had caught in his hair. It was getting too long again. His smile was still crooked when he got nervous.

For all the ways Spider-Man had complicated your life, this was still Jisung.

After a moment, you asked, "Can I come here again?"

The sunrise caught in his eyes, you stared wide at you. "You want to?"

You formed a half-smile. "I think so."

Jisung looked back toward Brooklyn. Then at the roof beneath you. Then at you.

"Yeah," he said softly. "I'd really like that."

Her little finger pushed the green button happily. She spoke with gusto. “Ms. Y/L/N’s room. How may I help you?”

Your head snapped up before you ran up from behind teacher table. “Small child,” you said, badly hiding your own amusement, “you can answer the classroom phone - not mine!”

The room erupted in a fit of tiny giggles, their attention way past the two sentences they had to write in their science notebooks.

“Hi! Be careful - there’s an audience,” you said quickly.

“Sorry!” Jisung whispered for some random reason. “I thought you were at lunch.”

The whisper only made the children more curious.

"Is that Mr. Han?"

"Hi, Mr. Han!"

"Ms. Y/L/N's boyfriend!"

A dozen little voices joined in before anyone else could. You raised your hand, giving the well-practiced signal that meant absolute silence or the Skittles are going to your siblings in third grade. Miraculously, it worked.

“We had to switched lunchtimes with fourth grade because they had a field trip. What’s up?”

“I’ll be quick,” he said, still whispering. “Tony called me. He hooked us for a dinner reservation. So, get ready as soon as you get home.”

You had a billion questions and none of the privacy to ask. “Okay,” you said simply. “Thanks for letting me know. I gotta go - we’re in the middle science. Is there anything you wanna say to the kids?”

You almost didn’t move the phone on time as Jisung abandoned the whisper entirely. "CHECK YOUR WORK! DON'T FORGET YOUR PERIODS! LISTEN TO YOUR TEACHER! AND WASH YOUR HANDS!"

The kids couldn’t contain themselves - Jisung had been a celebrity to them all year.

"BYE, MR. HAN!"

"We love you!"

"COME VISIT!"

"I DID MY HOMEWORK!"

You laughed as you pulled the phone toward from your ear again. "I'll talk to you later."

"I love—" He caught himself just in time. "Bye."

You grinned. "Bye."

You all but sprinted out of school the moment dismissal duty ended. You had been looking forward to tonight all week, even before Tony Stark decided to involve himself. It had nagged at you that Jisung finally had guaranteed time off and you spent most of it at work. For once, there was nowhere he had to disappear to, no emergency that could steal him away halfway through dinner. He'd be exactly where he said he'd be.

You nearly stumbled through the apartment door, a little out of breath from hurrying home. Your hair had surrendered to the humidity, your tote bag threatened to slide off your shoulder, and your cheeks were still pink from rushing up the stairs.

The bathroom door opened at almost the exact same moment. Jisung stepped out with a towel slung low around his waist, another draped over his shoulders as he scrubbed at his damp hair. He caught your expression immediately.

"The shower's free," he said with a crooked grin.

You looked anywhere but directly at him. "Good to know."

He laughed quietly. "You ran home."

"I did not." You dropped your bag with an exaggerated sigh and pointed toward the bathroom. "Move."

He stepped aside with an overly gentlemanly flourish. "My lady."

You rolled your eyes as you passed him, though you were smiling before the door had even shut.

You took your time. Not a normal shower - you took an everything shower. Hair mask. Shave. Exfoliate. Four different moisturizers. The expensive shampoo and conditioner you kept saying you'd use sparingly. By the time you emerged over an hour later wrapped in a towel, your skin was warm, your hair smelled like a bakery, and you finally felt like the workweek had washed off with the steam.

Your bedroom looked as though someone had attempted to rob only one side of the closet when you entered. Shirts covered the bed. Pants hung over your desk chair. Three jackets had somehow made it onto the floor. Jisung stood in front of the cheap Ikea mirror wearing slacks and absolutely no confidence. He tugged at the sleeves of a dress shirt before looking at you with genuine distress.

"Why didn't you tell me none of my nice clothes fit anymore?"

Your head tilted to one side. "They do."

"They don't!" He stretched his arms experimentally. "Everything's tight. My shoulders are stuck."

You crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, trying not to laugh. "They're not stuck."

"They're compressed."

"They're fitted."

"They're suffocating."

You looked him up and down, amused.

"I think you've just gotten bigger since…you know.”

He folded his arms, his biceps flexing through the material. “Not that much bigger.”

“Well, you were kind of..." You hesitated.

His eyebrows climbed. "Kind of what?"

You pointed vaguely at him. “…you kind of scrawny before.”

He gasped with genuine offense. "I was lean."

"You've just,” your smile softened, “filled out. It’s not a bad thing.” You meant that wholeheartedly

Jisung glanced at his reflection again. “Do I look okay? It’s a really nice place Tony got for us.”

You got up and stood behind him, peering at him through the mirror. His messy, floppy hair, the way his trousers sat at his tiny waist, the shirt he didn’t want to button, and the baffled look on his face - he looked fine.

You patted his chest. “Don’t change. Just iron your clothes. Now leave. It’s my turn to freak out.”

By the time you were both ready, the sun had begun its slow descent behind the buildings, painting the street in warm gold. The dress Felix had insisted you buy swayed at your thighs as you locked the apartment door behind you. Jisung glanced over almost immediately, then looked away just as fast.

"You look nice," he mumbled.

"You've said that like three times already,” you laughed.

He scratched the back of his neck, cheeks dusting pink, and quietly accepted defeat. “Just reminding you.”

Together, you wandered out to the sidewalk.

"So," you asked after a minute, "what exactly are we waiting for?"

"Tony said he was sending a car." Jisung checked the street, then his watch. "Unless it's late."

Assigned transportation is approximately one hundred feet away, Geomi informed him.

A long, black sedan rolled silently around the corner. There was no one behind the wheel. You looked at the car. Then at Jisung.

Then back at the car.

Respiratory rate indicates mild apprehension, Geomi observed. The vehicle is under JARVIS control.

Jisung smiled sheepishly. "It's a really nice car."

You stared another second before breaking into a grin. "You know what?" You stepped off the curb. "Sure."

Jisung hurried ahead of you anyway. He reached the door first and pulled it open with an exaggerated flourish, offering a small bow that was just dramatic enough to make you laugh.

“After you.”

You dipped into a matching curtsy. "Why, thank you."

He held the door until you climbed inside, unable to hide the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Some things, superhero or not, were simply nonnegotiable.

If the car had been impressive, it did little to prepare you for where it stopped.

The restaurant sat tucked into the West Village overlooking the Hudson, hidden behind an unassuming brick façade that gave no indication reservations had to be made nearly a year in advance. Inside, everything glowed. Warm amber light reflected off polished walnut and brass. Soft conversation floated beneath quiet jazz while servers somehow appeared the moment anyone even considered needing something.

You and Jisung looked thoroughly underdressed despite spending hours getting ready.

A hostess led you to a table by the windows. "Celebrating anything tonight?" your waiter asked pleasantly as he poured water.

You looked at each other.

"Not really," you answered.

"Actually," Jisung said at the exact same time. His eyes batted, embarrassed. "Sorry."

"No, go."

He smiled sheepishly. "I'm on vacation."

The waiter beamed. "Oh! Visiting New York?"

You pressed your lips together, damming a giggle.

"Sort of?”Jisung, bless him, committed to the misunderstanding with all the confidence of someone who had already accepted his fate. "We've...seen a lot this week."

"The city's wonderful in the spring,” the waiter mused.

"It is."

"You two picked a great neighborhood."

"We did."

"Any plans while you're here?"

Jisung looked helplessly at you. You lost the battle with your composure first. By the time the waiter walked away, you were laughing hard enough to wipe tears from your eyes.

"You are terrible at lying." Ironic.

"I wasn't lying."

"You absolutely were."

"I was...omitting."

"That's called lying." That was more truthful.

Dinner arrived one tiny plate at a time. Neither of you could pronounce half the menu, but that only made ordering more entertaining. Every course came with another explanation neither of you entirely understood and another drink you insisted on trying anyway. By dessert, you'd decided that fancy restaurants simply made normal food smaller and adjectives longer.

Neither of you minded. You talked about work, your students, your team, about a new caterpillar incident (not the confused with the old one). Jisung nodded when appropriate and laughed when he was supposed to. He asked questions and added a comment every so often. But mostly...

...he watched you.

The candlelight caught the shimmer in your makeup every time you turned your head. Tiny rhinestones on your hastily applied press-ons flashed whenever your hands punctuated another story. You laughed louder after each drink, your smile growing easier as the week finally loosened its grip on your shoulders.

You were beautiful when you dressed up. You were beautiful when you wore his old T-shirts. You were beautiful grading papers with a flare pen tucked behind your ear. You were beautiful asleep on his chest. The dress had very little to do with it.

"Ji,”you called out.

He suddenly snapped back into reality, fumbling with his glass too.

“You've been staring at me for like..." You glanced at your watch dramatically. "...twenty minutes."

His round eyes blinked. "Have I?"

"Han Jisung.” You folded your arms in faux annoyance.

He smiled into his glass. "I think I just like looking at you."

You looked down at your plate to hide the smile that betrayed you anyway.

Jisung had always been unflinchingly earnest.

As a teenager, that meant he never learned to soften an opinion. He corrected teachers without a second thought, admitted when he hated something, and asked questions everyone else had the sense to keep to themselves.

It also meant he spent an embarrassingly long time believing it was perfectly ordinary to tell one particular friend she looked pretty. Or that she had a nice laugh. Or that he liked when she wore her hair down. Or that he'd thought about something she'd said three weeks ago because it was interesting.

Everyone else figured it out long before he did - he'd been hopelessly gone for you years before he ever thought to call it love.

Everyone except you.

To you, it had all felt perfectly logical. He was your best friend.

Of course he was the first person you wanted to tell when something wonderful happened. Of course he knew every embarrassing story, every terrible grade, every impossible dream before anyone else. Of course he was the one you sought out after class, the one you argued with in the cafeteria, the one who stayed until your parents reminded him it was getting late.

Best friends spent entire afternoons wandering with nowhere to be. Best friends studied until sunrise in silent libraries. Best friends memorized each other's coffee orders and train schedules. Best friends reached for each other's hands without thinking. You never stopped to ask why yours was the only hand he reached for.

Maybe that was why everything that came later hurt so much.

Dinner came to an end far too soon. The check never arrived. Your waiter simply smiled as he cleared the last dessert plate.

"Taken care of."

Neither of you had to ask by whom. “Tony..." Jisung muttered into his napkin.

You laughed. "At least say thank you on Monday."

Instead of calling the car back immediately, you wandered into the West Village. The sidewalks had emptied since dinner. Strings of café lights glowed between brick buildings, and warm conversations spilled through open windows as people lingered over late-night drinks. The Hudson carried a cool breeze inland that finally reminded you it was still only spring. You instinctively drifted closer to Jisung. He smiled to himself before resting a hand against the small of your back.

"Cold?"

"A little."

His thumb rubbed absent circles through your jacket.

"You still get cold?" you asked suddenly.

He smiled, but there was a nervous edge to it. "That's kind of random."

"I know." You stopped at a crosswalk, turning to look at him instead of the traffic light. "But do you?"

He laughed through his nose. "Yeah. I still get cold."

You narrowed your eyes suspiciously, accentuating the pink tinge to your cheeks. "You have antifreeze."

"What?"

"You definitely have antifreeze."

"I don’t—I don’t know.”

"You've never proven that?”

"I don't know how I'd even—"

"You never wear jackets anymore,” you said airily.

He opened his mouth, closed it again. "Huh." Your lack of filter when you drank would never not fluster him.

"I get spider videos all the time," you continued matter-of-factly. "Some of them basically hibernate. Some don't mind the cold and have a kind of natural antifreeze. Some die if you put them in a freezer."

"Please stop watching those,” he said in an embarrassed whisper.

You giggled. "I think they're neat."

"I think they're horrifying."

You reached over and intertwined your fingers with his. “I’m just curious. You don't really..." Your voice softened. "...talk about it - or him - much."

About him. About Spider-Man. About what it all felt like.

The two of you slowed as you passed a shop window framed with warm Edison bulbs. For a moment, the glass reflected only the two of you - a version at least.

You hadn't changed all that much since high school. A little older. A little surer of yourself. Shorter hair. Softer edges.

Jisung had changed enough for both of you. He'd long since outgrown the skinny teenager who used to hide inside oversized hoodies. His shoulders filled every jacket now. Old scars caught the light if you knew where to look. Even the bruise fading across his cheek belonged to someone who carried a life you could never quite imagine.

He absently rubbed at it. "I don't really feel cold unless it's below freezing," he admitted after a while. "Heat's worse."

"Worse?"

"I get lethargic.” He shrugged. "Everything slows down."

You nodded as though he'd just explained the forecast. "Okay."

He glanced sideways. "That's it?"

You smiled. "I wasn't trying to study him.” Your fingers squeezed his hand. "I was asking about Jisung."

He just smiled to himself. "I like talking about him better anyway."

Your walk never really found a destination. Every few blocks, one of you would slow to admire a storefront or a dog or some tiny detail of the neighborhood until the conversation wandered somewhere new.

"So," you began, your fingers swinging between his, “what's the heaviest thing you've ever picked up?"

Jisung made a face. "Do you want the technical answer or the answer that's cooler?"

"There are two?"

"There are spreadsheets involved."

You groaned. "The cooler one."

He laughed.

That led to another question. Then another.

How high had he ever climbed?

Did heights still feel high?

How far could he jump?

Why hadn't he gotten taller after the bite?

Could he accidentally stick to people?

Did he ever get dizzy upside down?

Each answer came easier than the last. You asked with the same quiet curiosity you reserved for his work at Stark.

He caught himself blinking too often, smiling too easily. It was...nice. Almost fun.

By the time you found a bench overlooking the river, neither of you noticed how much time had passed. You stayed there long enough for Geomi to quietly summon the car on her own.

Jisung told you how absurdly precise the web-shooters had to be before they would stop jamming. He rambled about adhesive forces like he was defending a doctoral thesis, complete with hand gestures and imaginary diagrams in the air. Somewhere in the middle of explaining jump trajectories, he became distracted by his own train of thought and started wondering aloud whether crosswinds affected him.

You let him. His eyes always lit up a little differently when he forgot he was explaining something impossible.

The ride home was much the same. Questions that turned into stories. Stories that turned into theories. By the time the apartment building came into view, neither of you were talking about Spider-Man anymore. You were just listening to your favorite nerd explain something he loved.

Getting home, you both thanked the JARVIS-operated car far louder than the quiet street warranted.

"Goodnight, JARVIS!"

"Thank you for the ride!"

The sedan pulled away without so much as a honk.

The moment it disappeared around the corner, Jisung turned toward you with a look that should have warned you.

"What?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he slipped one arm behind your knees and the other around your back.

You let out a surprised squeal as your feet left the sidewalk. "Jisung!"

"I've been informed," he announced with exaggerated seriousness as he started toward the apartment building, "that walking is optional."

"You are so embarrassing."

"So are you."

"I can walk!"

"I’m aware."

"Then put me down!”

"No."

You dissolved into laughter, instinctively looping your arms around his neck anyway.

He carried you all the way through the lobby, grinning every time another laugh escaped you. By the time he nudged your apartment door open with his foot, your giggles had begun echoing down the hallway.

Your neighbors, you were fairly certain, had long since accepted that Apartment 4B occasionally forgot other people existed.

Or, at least, they would have to tonight.

You had only just hit the bed before he followed, his imposing body over yours with all the enthusiasm of a madman. His eyes were crazed and his lips were warm and parted in anticipation. The springs of the mattress squeaked in shock on your behalf.

He leaned into you quickly, his hat awkwardly grazing against your skin as he trailed wet, hot open-mouth kisses down your neck and chest. You gasped from your very core. One arm propped him up, the other wandered from the ridden-up hem of your dress up your ribs toward the curve of your breast. His fingers traced the swell eagerly before wrapping around it and thumbing where he could feel a little peak harden.

“Oh, you’re beautiful,” he breathed between his tongue and teeth.

You were already trembling under him. It never took much. You barely managed to take his hat and jacket off, much to his own frustration. He needed to be attached to you; every atom within him just had to be pressed as tightly against you as he could manage. He would swiftly find you again, sinking sharp teeth into soft skin. His breath was hot and shaky as he greedily sucked at your neck, determined to gift you blooming bruises your parents would surely pretend not to see tomorrow. Your fingers slipped into his hair feebly in a vain attempt to slow him down, to catch a break, but he simply took it as an invitation to travel down to your collarbones. You moaned with each bite, addicted to the sting. 

He was already heavy against you. Your hips grinded up to meet his excitement and he gladly slammed his back down towards you. Your dress rode up high on your stomach at this point and offered no resistance, no barrier. You were slick and warm from the short, desperate thrusts of his that collided into you in frantic bursts. The bed already pounded loudly into the floor with no apparent tempo.

“Oh god,” you rasped. “D-don’t stop. Please.”

He wasn’t planning to. The way your spine bowed off the mattress felt he was receiving an offering. His was mouth never left your chest; the sounds he made against you were wet and hungry. They mixed deliciously with each whimper you let slip. He hooked the hand that wasn’t kneading at your breast around one of your legs, so that you could wrap around his waist.

The new angle was torture. His erection dragged heftily over soaked, flimsy fabric; you could feel his thick tip pull at your wet folds. The friction brought tears to your eyes. He kept ramming into your sensitive clit. You tried to satisfy your growing desperation by grinding small, tight circles, your legs steadying yourself, but the way he alternated between attacking your chest and hammering his weighty cock into you had you seeing stars. You couldn’t take much more.

“J-ji,” you gasped. “Stop real quick. S-stop.”

He broke away immediately, his eyes wide and glassy.

“Are you okay?” he asked too quickly, the words tumbling from his puffy lips. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.” Your heartbeat stole the breath from your lungs. You leaned back on your arms as he stayed knelt over you. “I’m fine. You’re fine. I just—“

He held his breath, his stare never once leaving your face.

“I-I wanna suck you off.”

He sank down almost instantly with a pained laugh, his head falling into your lap. You scratched your fake nails against his scalp as he let out a low, frustrated sound from his throat.

“You scared me,” he whispered.

“So, let me make it up to you.”

You tugged on his hair to lift him and you finally met his lips. He melted into you - all was forgiven. With no time wasted, you crashed in to each other sloppily. His hands tried to find to your waist, but that was when you broke away. He gone already, his pupils were blown and his chest heaving against yours.

You had always preferred to work from your knees. He sat on the edge of the bed expectantly as you prepared yourself. You took off your boots and jacket off, tucked your hair away and positioned yourself between his knees. He swallowed hard watching you. You were so pretty from down there.

You started by running hands over his strong thighs, dragging your nails over the sleek fabric. He bit his lips to keep from moaning from so little. You noticed and laughed softly. When they reached the very top, where you could feel his fat bulge rest heavily, you pushed yourself up instead.

He groaned.

You laughed in his face before kissing his jaw. You left a line of wet kisses as you undid his tie. Jisung squeezed his eyes shut, very literally biting back moans.

It didn’t last for long. You unbuttoned his shirt down to his abs. His breath hitched from how lightly your fingertips grazed him. You took your time admiring his fit, honey-colored chest. You couldn’t stop touching him or the muscles that tortured you from beneath his useless clothes. Eventually, you grew tired of your teasing. You brought your lips to him.

There, a low, guttural sound left him. It emboldened you; you kissed harder. Your hands roamed freely and slowly…

…until they finally found his crotch. Then, you ran a thumb roughly over the tip the that pressed desperately through his trousers. Jisung hissed, his own hands white-knuckled and gripping the sheets behind him.

You giggled between kisses against him. He had been so sweet tonight. It wasn’t the day to keep him waiting for long. You pulled away and sank back down with a coy grin that was misplaced for the what you were about to do.

Slowly, because everything is a little more cumbersome with long nails, you unbuckled his belt. Jisung itched to help to you, but he secretly loved how concentrated you looked, how determined you seemed to ruin him.

At last, you moved on to freeing his poor erection. He had barely been unbuttoned and unzipped before it pushed violently against his boxers. Your silvery giggles resounded deep within his chest as you tugged the waistband down, letting the head peek through. It was so red and sickening sticky from precum.

“I love how big you are,” you sighed. “I’ve always been really lucky, haven’t I?”

A painful groan broke through Jisung. His hands curled into fists to keep himself from grabbing your pretty face and fucking your little mouth raw.

You pretended not to notice how shallow his breaths were. You finished lowering his damp boxers and pants. You double-checked that your hair wouldn’t bother you.

Then, you wrapped a delicate hand around him. He let out a broken moan. Leaning down, you patiently waited for him to finish. He knew he needed to be still and quiet first. Only then did your slick tongue drag slowly up his length, from the base by his balls to his throbbing tip.

“Fuck,” he gasped, his voice gravelly and bassy. His hand found your hair instinctively. His grip was a lame attempt at caution; he pushed you down slightly, a signal for you to finally take him.

You didn’t for a while. You savored in how long he was, licking passively every inch of him. You also wanted every bit of precut gone first.

Jisung’s fingers twitched in your hair. “Y/n,” he choked. “I don’t think—“

“Hm?” you paused to look him in the eye. You had manners.

“Sh-shit.” He threw his head back to whine petulantly. “I can’t wait.”

The way his voice sounded all strained and high almost had you rutting into the rug under you. With no announcement or flair, you squeezed him harder and took him in. He was so heavy in your mouth and warm, too. It almost hurt your cheeks.

A strangled groan cascaded from him. “Y-yes, yes.” His hand pushed you further into him. “Good girl.”

Your eyelashes fluttered immediately. You let another inch of him slide down, but your pace wasn’t rushed. God no, you needed him to buck shyly into you and whimper each time he didn’t have the guts to go harder.

Even then, he was completely wrecked. “Your mouth—your mouth—“ His words fell apart before they could leave him. You pulled away to laugh, to quip something a little mean, but he didn’t allow it. His fingers clawed at your roots and he pulled you closer until he hit the back of your throat. You choked from the rough movement.

“I can’t—I need—I’m sorry.” He couldn’t even manage a full sentence.

And that drove you insane. You relaxed your mouth and throat and picked up the pace. You took him deeper and sucked messier, spit dribbling down your chin unto his aching balls.

His moans grew louder and louder, his own rhythm choppier and less controlled. He just wanted to feel you mewl around him, to feel how well you let him thrust into your pretty face a little harder each and every time. He unclenched his eyes long enough to watch you - you were flushed with a teary, half-lidded gaze. You were beautiful getting your face fucked.

“Let me,” he panted, “let me cum in your mouth—“

He pleaded, but it was never a question. You didn’t stop and he had no intention of letting you. He rammed a few more times into your tight throat before his body tensed and a choked moan spilled from his just as hard he did into your mouth. It was hard and messy and he kept you close so you could accept all of it. You did so gratefully. You whimpered against him, drinking as much of him as you could. Even when he released himself, you gingerly held his sore cock, licking and sipping every drop. He hissed and whined every time your tongue passed over him, sensitive and overstimulated, but this was your favorite part. He tasted so good and he was so wiggly in your grasp.

It took several seconds for him to even find the energy to slip out of you and fall unto the mattress. You slumped forward right after him, forehead against the bed frame as you caught your breath. You sounded so small and spent from below; it made him shoot up so he could lift you up and lay you down next to him.

“I’m sorry,” he panted. “That was too much.”

“Five minutes,” you croaked. Your eyes were shut tight and your chest heaved with every inhale. Your makeup was ruined.

“What?” He gently guided your chin so he could look you in the face.

“We’re not done,” you said like it was obvious between gasps. “Give me five minutes and we’ll continue.”

He seemed to forget you had gotten better at being Spider-Man’s girlfriend.

𑣲⋆ thurs. | sat. ⋆

Before heading to Stark Laboratories, Jisung stopped at Minho's apartment. It was the middle of the afternoon, meaning Minho had every right to be furious after being dragged out of bed hours before his night shift. Groggily, he swore at Jisung the moment he opened the door, but then he actually looked at him. The irritation vanished instantly.

It was a miracle Jisung's ribs and spine weren't splintered, but it wasn’t like it he got off easy either. The black eye was already swelling shut and the hearing loss on his left side hadn't improved since the fight apparently. Minho checked his pupils twice before stepping back with a grim expression.

"Go to the lab. Immediately."

He grabbed a notepad and scribbled down a list of imaging studies and examinations before shoving it into Jisung's hands.

"If they act like they're too poor to run every one of these," he said, "call me."

Jisung got checked out first. He hated going to the physicians at the lab. Not because they weren't good at what they did - they were exceptional. He respected medicine more than most people at work and he thought Minho was one of the smartest people he'd ever met. This wasn't medicine though. His dedicated team descended on him with the quiet enthusiasm of ants in the midst of a picnic. They poked, prodded, scanned, and debated, speaking over him more often than to him. Every injury was another fascinating problem to solve, every bruise another opportunity to observe how his altered body behaved. Jisung always walked out patched together; whether he'd been treated like a patient or machinery was harder to say.

As soon as they finished, he headed straight for Tony's office. Whether he happened to be there or not hadn't really mattered. Luckily, he was.

Jisung dropped the reusable grocery bag onto the worktable with an unceremonious metallic clatter. Tony looked up from his tablet. He glanced inside the bag, prepared to be irritated. Instead, his expression tightened.

Red and blue vibranium fabric spilled over twisted alloy plating, shattered web shooters, cracked lenses, and fractured armor segments. Several million dollars' worth of research had been reduced to scrap.

Tony reached in, lifting a broken forearm plate before letting it fall back into the bag. "You know, Peter," he said after a moment, "sometimes you've just gotta walk away from a fight you can't win."

"Kind of hard when he had me by the legs," Jisung deadpanned.

Tony set his tablet down with a thud.

"And I did win."

"Sure." Tony snorted. "At the cost of roughly the GDP of Maine. Little Yang's gonna kill you."

Yang Jeongin had designed almost every offensive system integrated into the current suit. It also was his job to collect ideas and prototypes from the rest of the team, refine them, and somehow turn them into a system of equipment that could survive missions he wasn’t totally allowed to be privy to. Seeing months of work reduced to twisted metal and shredded fabric was going to break his heart. Jisung felt guilty.

"Peter," Tony said, eyeing the heap in the grocery bag, "this thing is totaled. That's not a patch job, and you know it."

Jisung chewed his lip. "I figured."

"So here's what's going to happen." Tony looked him squarely in the eye and pointed at him. "You're taking the week off."

Jisung frowned. "...From the lab?"

"From the lab, from Spider-Man." Tony stepped around the worktable until they were standing face to face. "You look like hell."

Jisung instinctively opened his mouth to argue. Tony didn't let him.

"I'm serious." His voice softened, but only slightly. "You've been sprinting for a long time. At some point you stop being able to tell the difference between taking responsibility and running yourself into the ground."

Jisung sighed, revving up.

"The city's not going anywhere."

"No, but—"

"Pete." He waited until Jisung met his eyes again. "It's easy to forget there's a person underneath all this." Tony gestured vaguely between the battered suit and the bruises blooming across Jisung's face. "You're allowed to be him for a while."

Charged silence hung between them.

"Don't come back until Monday," Tony said. "Your team's more than capable of rebuilding the suit without you." He gave the grocery bag a small shove across the table. "Go home."

The subway ride home unnerved him more than it should have. Past four in the afternoon meant crowded platforms and packed train cars, with parents herding tired children home from school and office workers checked out for the day. It had been so long since public transit was his primary way of getting around that sitting still felt unnatural. The car was too loud, too cramped, too full of strangers.

His eyes wandered instinctively, cataloging loose backpacks, blind corners, emergency exits, people arguing at the far end of the carriage. Every screech of the tracks made his shoulders tense. Every raised voice pulled his attention. He could already imagine half a dozen things going wrong; the unsettling part was knowing he couldn’t do anything if they did.

After three stops, he'd had enough. He got off early and walked the rest of the way home. The familiar route calmed him a little. He passed the neighborhood Indian restaurant and ducked inside, ordering enough for both of you. You'd be home soon anyway.

For once, he beat you there. He couldn't remember the last Monday afternoon he'd spent inside the apartment before sunset. With nothing else to occupy himself, he unpacked dinner onto the kitchen counter, straightened a few things that didn't really need straightening, and switched on the speakers. Quiet music drifted through the apartment, filling a silence that suddenly felt much larger than it used to.

The front door clicked open. You stepped inside, setting your keys in the bowl by the entryway before stopping short. "Jisung?"

He popped up from the kitchen.

Your surprise immediately gave way to analysis. His left eye had already darkened into a spectacular bruise, but the oversized sweatpants and faded hoodie told you everything else you needed to know. Those were his recovery clothes - the ones he wore whenever patrol had gone badly enough that he had no interest in talking about it.

"You're home early,” you decided on saying. It was a neutral enough statement.

"Stark sent me home for the week," he said quietly.

The way he said it caught you off guard. There wasn't any excitement in his voice. If anything, he sounded disappointed. Usually, you knew better than to pry after what was clearly a bad day. This time, you couldn't help yourself.

"So...you're off?"

"Yeah." He busied himself with serving from the takeout containers, shoulders drawn tight as he carefully avoided your eyes. "From the lab and Spider-Man."

He seemed to weigh his next words carefully, so you busied yourself getting drinks from the fridge. It took a few seconds.

"The suit..." He hesitated, searching for a gentler way to phrase it. "...needs more work than they can do overnight. So they're rebuilding it."

"And until then?"

"I'm grounded."

You nodded slowly, trying very hard not to let your relief show. A week - you couldn't remember the last time he'd gone even a full day without either disappearing or getting called back to the lab. If the suit needed that much work, then whatever had happened today couldn't have been good.

Your eyes drifted to the bruise spreading beneath his left eye before you caught yourself. He noticed anyway. Neither of you said anything as you brought the plates back to the table.

Jisung sank into his chair with a long, unguarded sigh. He stared at his dinner for a moment before shaking his head. "...I'm not gonna lie."

You looked up.

"I feel really weird."

The admission pulled a soft smile from you. "I’m sure."

"No, I mean..." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "I feel like I should be somewhere else - like I'm forgetting something."

"You aren't." You hoped you hid how much that sentence hurt, but you couldn't help but be a little defensive.

He frowned. "I forgot how to take a break." His shoulders dropped another inch. His conversation with Stark replayed in his head.

"It's been over two years, Ji." You settled into the chair across from him, reaching for your fork. "You've been through a lot."

He let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. "Yeah." It wasn't funny; that was the problem.

"I'm not...ungrateful." He said it like he was apologizing. "It's not that I want to be out there, but..."

"I know." You did, truly.

He picked at the rice with his fork. "I just wish you were off too."

A smile tugged at your mouth. "I can't exactly disappear for a week."

"You can’t say you caught a cold from the kids?”

"The school's already annoyed that I'm taking a four-day weekend for your brother's wedding."

"That's in April."

You looked at him. "It's in May."

"...Right."

You nudged his foot beneath the table. "You'll survive four afternoons without me."

He hummed skeptically. "I don't know."

"We'll do something this weekend."

"And until then?"

You pretended to think about it. "You could bother Minho."

That finally pulled a real laugh out of him. "He'd love that."

The rest of the evening was...normal. After dinner, you cleaned the kitchen together, trading dishes back and forth without much conversation. He wiped down the counters while you packed away leftovers. A dying plant got watered. Someone remembered to take the trash out.

Later, the two of you ended up on opposite ends of the couch. You resumed your latest reality show obsession while Jisung insisted it was intellectually bankrupt.

"You know this is scripted, right?"

"Mhm."

"And they're all terrible people."

"Mhm."

"So why are you watching it?"

You didn't look away from the television. "Because they're terrible people."

He sighed dramatically. "That's horrifying." Twenty minutes later, he was the one asking who had been eliminated.

An early dinner caught up to both of you before long, so you wandered down to the neighborhood bodega for ice cream instead. It was cool enough outside to linger on the apartment steps afterward, eating in comfortable silence while the neighborhood settled into the evening. Incredibly normal.

At least, it looked that way. Every so often, Jisung's attention drifted. His gaze would flick toward the skyline. His shoulders would tense for half a second before relaxing again. Once or twice, his hand found his watch on instinct. He never said anything. He probably didn't even realize he was doing it, but you did. This was usually the time he'd disappear - if he came home at all.

Truthfully, you weren't much better. Having him home because someone had made him stay home felt strangely different from getting lucky on a quiet night. He hovered awkwardly while you answered a few work emails, wandered the apartment looking for things that didn't need fixing, paced for a minute before remembering he didn't have anywhere to be, like he had energy with nowhere to put it.

By the end of the night, some of it had rubbed off on you. You couldn't explain why. Your hands trembled just enough to notice as you laid out tomorrow's clothes and packed your work bag.

"Want me to make your lunch?"

You glanced over. Jisung was already standing in front of the refrigerator.

"Sure."

"Leftovers?"

"Please."

He hadn't packed your lunch since you were a teaching assistant, back when meal prep meant throwing together sandwiches for a few days.

Your nightly routine followed almost automatically. Toner. Serum. Moisturizer. You rubbed the excess into your hands before making your way into the bathroom. Jisung wandered in behind you, toothbrush already in his mouth.

"Ji."

He looked over.

"You're in my way."

His eyebrows gathered. "The sink's big enough."

"Not once you factor in your elbows."

He laughed through a mouthful of toothpaste and shuffled sideways until his back was against the wall. In the mirror, you caught sight of the two of you - matching pajamas, matching toothbrushes, one spectacular black eye. He wasn't wearing a shirt so you could plainly see deep, blue and purple bruises as long as his torso, wider than your hands, blossom along the side of his ribs. You looked away.

You were already in bed by the time he finished in the bathroom, propped against the headboard with a book while you double-checked your alarm for the morning. The mattress dipped a moment later. You looked up. Jisung had stopped beside his side of the bed. He looked...uncertain as if he'd forgotten what came next.

"You're actually sleeping?" you asked before you could stop yourself.

He blinked. "Yeah?"

You closed your book.

"I'm not leaving tonight," he said quietly. It was such an obvious statement.

Why couldn't you believe him though?

"Not even for a walk?"

He smiled faintly. "No. I promise.”

The bedside lamp clicked off. Darkness settled around the room. Silence found you again, as it often did. You could feel the tension in him without touching him. Every muscle seemed reluctant to let go, his body still waiting for an alert that wasn't coming. Somewhere beneath the blankets, his watch vibrated softly against his wrist before falling dormant again.

He rolled onto his side. You were already facing him. Without thinking, your hand found his beneath the covers. Your fingers slipped between his. He squeezed once. You squeezed back.

Jisung fell asleep beside you.