marsh madness

You had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Someone had muttered behind you annoyed, and stepped around your laundry bag. The city kept moving in every direction, yellow cabs pushing through the intersection, steam curling from a grate, somebody laughing too loudly outside a bodega. But your attention had narrowed to that blinking dot.

You had only meant to look. Just for a second. Just to see if the app was accurate, because people exaggerated online all the time and half the sightings turned out to be drones, cosplayers, or blurry red jackets photographed from four avenues away.

Then something had swung overhead.

A blur of red and blue cut between the buildings, so quick your breath caught before your mind could name him. The air shifted with him. People on the sidewalk looked up in scattered bursts, phones rising, mouths open, one man yelling, “Yo! Spider-Man!” like he was calling to a friend across the street.

You had craned your neck so hard it hurt.

He landed on the side of a brick building as if gravity had simply made an exception for him. One hand stuck to the wall, knees bent, white lenses angling down toward the street. Below him, a black SUV fishtailed hard around the corner, its bumper half-torn loose, sparks spitting from beneath the frame.

Spider-Man pushed off the wall.

Your bag split somewhere behind you. A white sock escaped onto the curb. You didn't bother going back for it.

You had run.

Not toward the SUV exactly, because you were not stupid enough to run into traffic on purpose. Not then, at least. But you ran in the same direction, weaving through pedestrians, shoes slapping pavement, pulse climbing higher with every shout and honk. 

By the time you reached the next block, the SUV was webbed to a lamppost, the driver was dangling upside down from a fire escape, and Spider-Man was crouched on top of a dented mailbox with one hand pressed to his ribs.

He looked smaller up close than you expected. Not small, exactly, but strangely human. 

Breathing hard. Shoulders rising and falling. Suit scuffed dark along one thigh. A tear near his side showed a thin line of skin beneath before he twisted away from the cameras.

You stood behind the police tape with everyone else, hair sticking to your face, lungs burning, and one sock missing from your laundry life forever.

He turned his head.

For half a second, those white lenses landed on you.

You knew he couldn't have recognized you. There was nothing to recognize. You were just another girl in a city full of people who wanted to see a miracle and then post about it before the adrenaline wore off.

Still, your stomach dropped.

Then he lifted two fingers in a quick salute to the crowd, shot a web, and vanished between buildings.

You downloaded two more tracking apps that night.

After that, seeing him became less of an accident and more of a bad habit you pretended was harmless.

You learned the patterns the way other people learned train delays. Robberies traveled fast through comment sections. Sirens became invitations. Helicopters meant something serious. If three different users posted the same grainy red-blue blur within five minutes, you grabbed your jacket before the app could refresh again.

Sometimes you missed him completely and arrived only in time to see cops clearing debris or tourists replaying videos at full volume. Sometimes you caught him from far away, a streak against the gray of the sky, no closer than a rumor. But sometimes you got lucky.

Lucky meant standing across from a jewelry store with shattered glass glittering over the sidewalk while he webbed a man’s wrists to a parking meter.

Lucky meant watching him swing down to stop a delivery cyclist from being clipped by a fleeing van.

Lucky meant hearing him talk.

That was the part nobody could capture right in videos. The way he sounded in person. Younger than the headlines made him, sharper when he was annoyed, and funny even when he was clearly in pain. He filled dangerous moments with words, like if he talked fast enough nobody had time to panic.

“Okay, so, quick note,” he told a guy holding a crowbar outside a pawn shop one wet Thursday evening, “if your getaway plan involves running directly into a bike lane during rush hour, I do think maybe crime isn’t your strongest career path.”

The guy swung at him.

Spider-Man ducked, webbed the crowbar to a street sign, and added, “Oh-kay, so that was a growth opportunity that you just missed.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself.

His head snapped toward you.

You were standing too close. Not past the tape, not exactly in the line of fire, but close enough that a cop had already told you twice to move back. Rain dotted your cheeks. Your hood kept sliding off. Your phone was clutched against your chest, recording nothing because you had forgotten to press the button.

Spider-Man stared at you for one beat too long.

Then he pointed at you.

“You,” the words were barely clear to your ears. 

Your face warmed so fast it felt humiliating. “Me?”

“Yes, you. With the…” He gestured vaguely at your entire existence. “The enthusiastic crime tourism thing.”

A few people nearby turned to look at you. Someone snorted. You should have been embarrassed enough to leave. Instead, you smiled.

“You noticed?”

His lenses narrowed. Somehow, they managed to look exhausted. “That is not the takeaway I was hoping for.”

You lifted your chin as if that proved something to him. “I’m behind the tape.”

“You are practically dating the damn tape.”

“I respect boundary lines!”

His tone turned slightly incredulous. “You followed a man with a crowbar into a rainstorm.”

The correction came quickly on your lips. “I followed you.”

“That is relatively worse.”

It should have ended there. He should have swung away and become a story you told yourself later, replaying every word until the edges wore smooth. But the man webbed to the street sign started yelling about unlawful restraint, the cops moved in, and Spider-Man hopped backward onto the side of a parked van.

Before he left, he looked down at you again.

“Go home,” he said as if you needed the reminder. 

You had grinned like an idiot. “Will you be there?”

There was a pause.

Not long, just enough for him to register the line, process it, and decide he absolutely did not want to touch it.

“Nope,” he sighed, voice flatter than before. “Wow. Okay. Definitely go home.”

Then he was gone, leaving you with rain in your eyelashes and the distinct, dangerous realization that Spider-Man could be flustered.

Peter remembered you after that.

He didn't mean to.

He remembered plenty of people in flashes: New York was made of recurring characters if you paid attention long enough.

But you, you became hard not to notice.

You were at the edge of too many scenes, always just outside safety, and always pretending you had arrived by coincidence while breathing like you had sprinted ten blocks. Sometimes your hair was pulled back messily. Sometimes you wore work shoes that were really not made for running. Once, you showed up with a grocery bag still looped around your wrist, and had a bunch of cilantro sticking out the top while an armored car smoked behind you.

He saw the app open on your phone once when he swung low past a bus shelter.

That made his stomach twist.

The city had always watched him, but the tracking apps made it worse. They turned danger into a scavenger hunt. They pulled kids, tourists, thrill-seekers, and people with too much faith in his reflexes toward scenes they should have been running from. 

Peter hated them in the abstract way he could. 

He hated yours specifically because you looked at the screen like it was a promise.

He told himself he was not responsible for your choices. He told himself he had bigger problems than one reckless woman with quick comebacks and bad self-preservation instincts. He told himself a lot of things while dragging stolen cars out of intersections, yanking weapons from hands, and getting punched in the same bruised shoulder three nights in a row.

Still, every time Peter landed somewhere and spotted you in the crowd, his first reaction was not annoyance.

It was relief.

Then anger, quick and hot behind it, because relief meant he had started looking.

“You’re here again,” he sighed again one night, landing on the fire escape above you after a group of teenagers tried to rob a closed pharmacy.

You looked up, breath fogging in the cold. There was a knit scarf wrapped around your neck and one glove missing from your hand. You had probably lost it running.

Your response came instinctive in its quickness. “You say that like you’re not also here again.”

Peter pinched at the bridge of his noise as if that could stifle his second sigh. “I’m working.”

“So am I.”

He tilted his head, looking down at you with clear disbelief. “Your job is standing under active crime scenes?”

Your chin tilted back up in a counter measure. “My job is none of your business.”

“Fair. Is your hobby standing under active crime scenes?”

You tucked your ungloved hand into your sleeve and looked around with fake surveying. “Maybe I’m a concerned citizen.”

His words came out too quick and too impulsive. “You are a concerning citizen.”

That got a smile out of you, small but entirely pleased, and Peter hated how quickly he noticed the shape of it. He was hanging upside down from the railing, one knee hooked around metal, and blood drying uncomfortably under the torn fabric near his elbow. The cold bit through the suit where it was damp. Below, police lights washed your face blue, then red, then blue again.

“You’re bleeding,” you faltered slightly when your gaze caught on the blood. 

He glanced at his arm and the white lenses dilated before going back. “It’s not mine.”

You gave him a look that had him sighing. “It’s mostly mine.”

You stepped closer before you were cut off. “Do you need—”

“No.”

A scoff left you. “You didn’t even know what I was going to offer!”

Peter felt the need to run his hands through his hair to stifle the whirlwind of exasperation you made him feel instantly. “Unless it was ‘a renewed commitment to staying several blocks away from felonies,’ no.”

You shifted your weight. The crowd had thinned behind you. People were still filming from across the street but the immediate danger had passed, and with it came that strange hollow quiet after a loud thing ended. Sirens faded. Glass crackled under people's boots. 

You looked up at him with your scarf covering your chin, your gaze narrowing suddenly. 

“Do you ever get tired of doing that?” 

“Bleeding?”

“Deflecting.” The word landed too cleanly, you saw it in real time. 

Peter’s fingers flexed against the railing. The easy answer was right there. A joke about reflective surfaces, maybe. Something stupid and quick that would let him swing away before the conversation took on weight.

Instead, he looked past you toward the pharmacy windows. Fluorescent lights flickered inside. A display of cough drops had toppled near the door, someone would have to sweep all of that up. Someone would have to call insurance. Someone would wake up tomorrow and deal with the ordinary consequences of extraordinary panic.

“Go home,” he repeated, though it was quieter this time.

Your expression changed, not much. Just a pause around the eyes. “You always say that.”

Peter's exasperation came back tenfold. “Because you never do it.”

A face got made instantly at the words. “I do eventually!”

“Eventually is not good enough.”

You hugged your arms around yourself, and the words came out light. “You worried about me?”

“Yes,” he scoffed before he could stop himself.

The answer sat between you, plain and unarmored.

Your mouth parted slightly at the unexpectedness of it.

Peter pulled himself upright too fast, his boots sticking to the fire escape. “I mean—generally. In the way I worry about all civilians who make terrible decisions near blunt objects.”

“Right,” you nodded, but your voice had taken a slight tone that had Peter instantly regretting the words even more. 

He pointed toward the subway entrance with intensity. “Home.”

You glanced at his arm again, seeing the material start to soak up the darker redness. “You too.”

Peter let out a humorless little laugh. “Yeah. Sure.”

He swung away before you could say anything else, before he could do something stupid like ask your name.

You told yourself the chase was harmless because Spider-Man always won.

That was the lie at the center of it.

You knew he got hurt. You had seen him limp. You had watched him press a hand to his side and pause on rooftops when he thought nobody was looking. You had noticed how he changed after harder fights, how the jokes thinned out, and how his head turned sharply at sudden noises. 

He wasn't invincible.

But he survived so consistently that survival became part of the spectacle. People cheered before the danger fully ended. Phones came out before the weapons were down. The city trusted him with the unreasonable ease of people who needed someone to trust.

You were worse than most because somewhere along the way, your fascination had stopped being abstract and freeformed.

It was not just the suit, though the suit did something humiliating to your ability to think clearly near him. It was not just the swing of him between buildings, the impossible strength, the quick hands, or the way he landed with a dancer’s balance and a boxer’s readiness.

It was the pauses he had. 

The way he crouched beside frightened strangers and made his voice gentler. The way he checked on shop owners after the crowd moved on. The way he sometimes stayed an extra second after saving someone, hand hovering near their shoulder but not actually touching unless they leaned in first. The way he seemed both everywhere and entirely alone.

That was what kept pulling you closer to him. 

The app buzzed late on a Friday, when the city had already loosened into nightlife. You were in a corner booth at a diner, poking at fries that had gone soft with vinegar, half-listening to your friend complain about a coworker who microwaved fish in the break room.

Your phone lit up.

Three alerts. Then five. Then too many.

SPIDEY SIGHTING NEAR 42ND. BIG GUY WITH TECH??

STAY AWAY FROM 9TH AVE. EXPLOSION HEARD.

Your friend stopped talking.

“No,” she reached for you immediately when she saw you were already reaching for your jacket.

She grabbed at your sleeve with intent. “Are you serious?”

“It’s close.”

A groan left her from knowing you too well. “That’s the problem.”

“I’ll stay back!”

She didn't seem convinced. “You always say that.”

The echo of his words should have slowed you.

It didn't.

Outside, the air was sharp with exhaust and fried food from a halal cart. You ran until your lungs burned, cutting through clusters of people spilling out of bars, and ignoring the tightness that formed under your ribs. The closer you got, the more the city changed. Laughter thinned. Traffic tangled. People moved in the opposite direction with their heads turned back, faces lit by emergency lights.

Then something slammed into the side of a parked car half a block ahead.

The impact folded the roof inward. Windows burst. People screamed and scattered.

You froze.

For once, your body understood before your obsession did.

Spider-Man hit the pavement hard beside the car, rolled, and barely got a hand under himself before a heavy metal device skidded after him, sparking violently. It looked homemade and expensive at the same time, all black plating and unstable blue light. A man in a reinforced jacket limped into view, one arm fitted with some kind of mechanical brace that whined when he lifted it.

Peter saw you from the ground.

Even through smoke, flashing lights, and the chaos of running bodies, he found you standing beside a newspaper box with your phone in your hand and fear finally catching up to you.

His blood went cold.

“Move!” he shouted with a loud rasp.

You did not.

Not because you refused, but because for one terrible second, you couldn't even tell where to go. People shoved past you. A cab jumped the curb. The device near Spider-Man pulsed brighter, high-pitched and wrong, and the man with the brace swung his arm toward the street.

Peter fired a web at you before he thought about gentleness.

The strand hit your waist and yanked.

Your feet left the ground and the world snapped sideways. Your shoulder clipped something hard, maybe a signpost, maybe somebody’s elbow. You gasped, more startled than hurt, and then you were against him, one of his arms locked around you as he twisted midair and slammed both of you behind the concrete mouth of a subway entrance.

The street exploded white-blue.

Heat washed over your back and the sound swallowed everything.

For a moment there was only his body curved around yours, the texture of his suit under your fingers, the hard rise and fall of his breathing. Dust rained over the steps. Someone was crying nearby, your ears rang so badly the world seemed underwater.

Spider-Man lifted his head first.

“Are you hit?” he demanded with his grip tightening to pull you back enough to look at you. 

You stared at him, and apparently it must've been a flatter look than you had tried to express. 

“Hey.” His hand came up to the side of your face, not tenderly, not quite. He turned your head enough to check you, fingers firm along your jaw. “Are you hit?”

The world returned to you in pieces and you shook your head enough to move. “I—no. I don’t think so.”

Peter's voice came out strangled before he tried to reign it in. “You don’t think so?”

You emphasized better. “I’m not.”

His white lenses narrowed and the hand at your jaw stayed for half a second longer than necessary, then dropped.

He pushed himself up and looked over the edge of the subway entrance. The man with the brace was running now, injured but still moving. Peter’s shoulders tensed with the need to follow.

Then, he looked back at you.

You were covered in dust. Your phone was certainly gone. There was a scrape along your cheekbone where something had caught you, and your eyes were too wide, your breath coming shallow in a way that finally made you look as scared as you should have been all along.

The anger hit him so hard it almost steadied him.

“Stay here,” he all but demanded

You nodded because it seemed like it was necessary to do so. 

He pointed at you, sharper now. As if you weren't truly listening. “No. I need you to hear me. Stay. Here.”

“I heard you.”

“Because if I turn around and you are not exactly where I left you—”

“I’ll stay.”

Peter really didn't believe you.

But someone shouted from the street, and the brace whined again, and it was clear he had to go. He launched himself back into the fight with his teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.

You stayed.

For three minutes, maybe four, you sat on the subway steps with dust in your mouth and your hands shaking in your lap. You heard the impacts, webs snapping tight, and Spider-Man’s voice cutting through the noise in strained bursts.

“Hey, buddy, quick question—did you build that in a garage, or was there a coupon situation?”

A crash came next.

“No? Cool, cool, just asking because it’s very explode-y for something near civilians.”

Another loud noise of impact.

You pressed your palms together to stop them from trembling.

The fight ended with a sound like metal tearing away from itself, followed by a heavy thud and a chorus of relieved shouting. When Spider-Man came back where he left you, he was limping.

Badly so.

He dropped into the subway entrance hard enough that one hand hit the tiled wall to steady himself. His suit was scorched along one side. Dust clung to the webbing pattern across his chest. One lens had a faint crack through it, thin as a hair.

You stood up too quickly, instincts taking over. “you’re hurt.”

Peter laughed but it was entirely without humor. “You have got to be kidding me.”

The frown came instantly. “I’m serious.”

His answer came too quick. “So am I.”

The space between you seemed smaller than it had before. The city kept roaring above, but down here everything echoed: footsteps, sirens, your breathing, his. 

He stepped closer.

“What is wrong with you?”

The words were not shouted. That made them even worse somehow. His voice was rough, scraped thin at the edges, and controlled only because he was forcing it to be.

You swallowed because he seemed actually upset this time, and you figured it wasn't time to poke the bear. “I know—”

“No, you don’t. You don’t know.” The words had your head flicking up in surprise for their intensity. “You keep showing up with your phone and your big eyes and your little comments, and you think because there’s a crowd, because there are cops, because I’m there, that nothing can happen to you.”

Your throat tightened and you opened your mouth but shut it when he pointed up toward the street. “That was not a photo op. That was not a cute story. You almost got turned into collateral damage because you ran toward an explosion.”

“I didn’t know it was going to—”

“That’s the point!” His voice cracked around the words. He stopped, breathed hard, and tried again. “You don’t know. You never know. Hell, I barely know half the time.”

You looked down at his hand because the movements caught your attention. His fingers were flexing open and closed, like he wanted to grab something and couldn't decide whether it should be the railing, his own temper, or you.

“I’m sorry,” you stopped him from going further and he went still.

Maybe it was because you had never said it before. Not really. You had flirted, teased, and smiled your way around his warnings until they became part of the game. But there was no game left in your voice now because there wasn't in his. 

“I am,” you continued quieter and immediately hated it because of how exposing it felt. “I know it’s stupid. I know you keep telling me to stop.”

Peter's voice loudened before he could've controlled it. “Then stop!”

You looked up again quickly with widening eyes. 

There was dust on his shoulder, a rip near his ribs, and a dark stain spreading slowly through the fabric at his side. He was standing in front of you like he could hold the entire city back by force if he had to, and yet he would not give you one ordinary piece of himself. 

Not a name. Not a face. Not the truth behind the voice that kept finding you in crowds.

“I just wanted to know you,” the words came out smaller than you meant them to.

Peter forgot how to breathe.

Not because nobody wanted to know Spider-Man. Everybody wanted that. They wanted the picture, the secret, the headline, the face under the mask. They wanted proof, access, even ownership. They wanted to solve him.

But that was not how you said it.

You said it like you had already noticed the part he worked hardest to hide. The pauses. The pain. The loneliness that leaked through the jokes no matter how quickly he patched over it.

You said it like knowing him didn't mean unmasking his whole identity. 

You said it like you had been chasing danger for the stupid, impossible privilege of standing close enough to ask if he was okay.

Peter hated how easily that worked on him.

He hated that after everything, after the blast and the blood and the fear still souring his mouth, some tired part of him wanted to believe you.

“You don’t,” he scoffed, but it was smaller this time. 

Your brows drew together immediately at the insinuation. “I don’t what?”

“Want to know me.”

You made a face, and answered just as quickly as he stopped. “I do.”

“No.” He shook his head once, and even the movement had him straining, you could tell by the way he held himself in tension. “You want the guy who swings in at the right second. You want the banter and the upside-down thing and whatever version of me lives in your phone notifications.”

You stepped forward again and forced a huff away when he shot you a pointed look that had you stopping short. “That’s not fair—”

Peter cut you off. “It’s accurate.”

You found your voice again, because you kept letting it be cut off by him. “You don’t know what I want.”

“I know you don’t want the rest.”

You stared at him, anger beginning to push through the shock. Good, Peter thought. Anger was safer than that open, aching look you had given him.

“The rest?” you asked with your brows twitching together in a face that wasn't clear in its expression. 

He laughed again, though more bitterly this time. His head kept moving, looking around the emptiness of the place between you too as if that gave him a refuge.  “The blood. The missed calls. The lies. The never showing up on time. The disappearing without explaining because if I explain, someone gets hurt. The fact that I know where you live because I’ve followed you home twice to make sure you got there safely, and I hated myself both times.”

The confession landed badly.

You blinked blankly, the movement was fast and clearly unexpected.  

Peter realized what he had said half a second too late when your lips parted. “You know where I live?”

“No.” His answer came too quick and that only spurred you on more. 

Your lips opened and let out a puff of air. “You just said—”

Peter's hand went up to the back of his neck, immediately cutting you off again. “I said a lot of things. Head injury, probably.”

“You followed me home?”

He looked up to the sky and felt his eyes shut tightly. “Not in a creepy way.”

You threw him a well deserved glance of judgement. “That is exactly what someone says when it is a creepy way.”

“I was making sure you were safe.”

Your expression shifted. The fear had not left you completely, but something warmer and more reckless, moved beneath it. You took one careful step closer.

“You know where I live,” you repeated, breathless now, almost vindicated by the confession. 

Peter pointed at you again, but there was less force behind it. His jaw strained again just from listening to you throw his words back at him. “Do not make that sound romantic.”

You kept going, your voice turning more observational by each passing second, but not losing its tone. “You noticed me that much.”

“I notice threats.”

“You think I’m a threat?”

His answer came swift. “To yourself? Constantly.”

“To you?” He didn't answer fast enough.

Your gaze moved over him, slower now that the immediate danger had passed. He felt it through the suit in a way he should not have. The cracked lens, the torn fabric, the blood near his ribs, even the tense line of his shoulders. He knew what he looked like after a fight. He knew people saw the damage and either flinched from it or turned it into a bigger moment.

You looked at him like the damage made him harder to ignore, not less.

“Let me help,” you softened again because it was hard not to when looking at him. 

The response came expected, but still unwelcome. “No.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I noticed.”

You let out an exasperated groan,  one hand coming up to knead through your hair and the other stretching it towards him. “Then let me do something.”

“You can do something.” Peter willed his voice to be sharpened again. “You can stop chasing me.”

Your jaw tightened and a scoff escaped you. “You keep saying that like it’s easy.”

“It should be.”

“Well, it’s not.” The honesty of it hung there, inconvenient and too human.

Above you, officers shouted to each other. The subway tiles gleamed under harsh fluorescent lights, grime caught in the grout, and had old posters peeling at the corners. Peter could smell smoke, rain, metal, and the faint sweetness of your perfume beneath the dust.

He should have left.

He should have just webbed up to the street, given one last warning, and removed himself from whatever this was before it became another thing he could ruin.

Instead, the only thing that came out was, “You’re impossible.”

You let out a shaky breath that almost became a laugh. “So you’ve mentioned.”

“I’m not joking.”

You finally quieted down when he did, the air felt still. “I know.”

“Do you?”

Not entirely, but you just nodded. “Yes.”

He stepped closer this time.

You had to tilt your head back to keep looking at him. Up close, he was all controlled tension, every line of him caught between staying and going. The white lenses hid his eyes, but they didn't hide the way his attention dropped briefly to your mouth and snapped back up.

Your pulse jumped and you figured Peter saw that too.

“Don’t,” he rasped out quickly after you opened your mouth again, but the word had no clear target. Maybe it was to you, or maybe to himself.

You lifted your hand slowly, giving him time to move away. And when he didn't, your fingertips touched the center of his chest, light enough that it should not have mattered.

It mattered.

The suit was warm from his body, textured beneath your fingertips, and damp in places from rain and sweat. His chest rose sharply at the contact.

“You’re really here,” you let slip out with your voice barely above a whisper.

His laugh was low and strained. You had a feeling his expression mirrored that. “That explosion did a number on you.”

Your voice hadn't lost its lightness,  but you paused for a moment. “I’m serious.”

Peter let out a wry exhale to himself. “That’s what worries me.”

Your fingers drifted, not very far, just over the red fabric where dust had settled into the raised black lines. He caught your wrist before you reached the torn place near his side. His grip was firm, but not painful though.

It was a warning with a pulse.

“Careful,” he murmured and the word ran through you in a way it should not have, roughened by exhaustion and the edge of pain.

You looked at his hand around your wrist. It felt tingly for all the right reasons. “You always sound like that when you’re mad?”

His fingers flexed slightly against you.“No.”

“When you’re hurt?”

Peter attempted repetition for it to stick. “No.”

You decided to push more. “And when you’re trying not to be?”

He went quiet.

That was answer enough for you.

You should've apologized again. You should've stepped back, let him have the distance he kept asking for, promised to delete the apps and mean it. Some responsible part of you knew that. And some part of you was still sitting on the subway steps with shaking hands, understanding far too late that your fantasy had edges sharp enough to cut.

But he was still holding your wrist.

And, he hadn't let go.

“Tell me to leave,” you all but challenged him and Peter didn't bother containing the groan that left him. 

“I did.”

“Tell me again.”

Peter’s grip tightened for half a second. You felt his fingers twitch against the inner area of your wrist. 

Under the mask, his jaw shifted. You could see the shape of it where the fabric clung to him, could see the movement of his throat when he swallowed. He was close enough now that you heard the faint hitch in his breathing, and betraying close enough that the city above felt less real than the narrow pocket of space between your bodies.

“You need to leave,” he said instead, but still, he didn't move away. 

Neither did you.

The misunderstanding was almost laughable, except neither of you laughed or probably could've. His words said one thing. His hand said another. His body, angled toward yours despite every reason not to be, said something else entirely.

You reached up with your free hand.

This time, you touched his jaw.

Not skin, not yet at least. Just the mask, the red fabric pulled taut over the hard line of him. His whole body went still, frighteningly still, like even breathing had become a choice.

“Don’t take it off,” he commanded and the intensity of him sent prickles up your spine.

Your fingers settled where his jawline rested, and your head tipped back slightly when your eyes fluttered shut.“I wasn’t going to.”

Peter tilted his head slightly at you from the proximity, his face did a funny thing that mixed genuinity with suspicion. “No?”

“No.”

That seemed to undo something in him more than if you had begged for his face.

You did not want the reveal, not right now. Not in this way, in a dirty subway entrance with sirens overhead and blood drying beneath his suit. You wanted what he was willing to give. The covered jaw beneath your palm. The breath he was trying to control. The impossible nearness of him.

Peter let go of your wrist only to catch your waist.

The motion was sudden enough that you inhaled sharply. He turned you, backing you against the tiled wall beside an old transit map, his hand braced near your shoulder before your spine met cold ceramic. He left you space to pull away. Barely, but still enough that the choice remained yours and his restraint remained visible in the strain of his posture.

“Tell me no,” he exhaled and you had to tear your eyes away from where the material of his suit strained against his shoulders. 

Your voice came out unsteady. “No to what?”

“To this.”

You looked at him then almost incredulous, at the cracked lens, the scorched suit, and the careful violence of how still he held himself.

“I’m not saying no.”

Peter's head dipped on bodily instinct the second his ears registered the words. 

He stopped an inch from you.

The pause was unbearable. Awkward in the way real wanting often was, full of breath and doubt and the tiny adjustments of two people realizing they had crossed a line before either had agreed where it was. Your hand slid from his jaw to the edge of his mask.

Peter caught your fingers again.

“Mask stays on,” he murmured with warning. 

Your voice came breathless in its agreement. “I know.”

“I mean it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He searched your face for something. A trick, maybe. Regret. Fear. A demand he could refuse so he could return to familiar ground. You gave him none of those things. You were breathing too fast, still dust-streaked, but your gaze held steady in truth.

Peter reached up and tugged the mask just high enough to bare his mouth and jaw.

Only that.

The reveal was smaller than you had imagined and somehow more intimate for it. A cut marked his lower lip. His jaw was tense, faintly shadowed, skin flushed from exertion. He looked painfully real in pieces.

You didn't reach for more despite your inner voice. 

His mouth found yours before you could say anything.

The kiss was not gentle at first. It was too full of everything that had nowhere else to go: anger, fear, adrenaline, the weeks of him telling you to run and you refusing, the awful second when he had seen you frozen in the path of the blast. Peter kissed you like he was still furious with you for almost dying. Like he was furious with himself for caring. Like the only way to stop the argument was to take it apart with his mouth.

You made a small sound against him when he nipped at you with the sharpened corners of his teeth, and he pulled back immediately. “Too much?”

You shook your head, fingers curling into the front of his suit. Your eyes were blown wide by the chain of actions and the unmistakable grip of him on you. “No.”

“You sure?”

You nodded again, almost embarrassingly eager and his breath left him unevenly. “You are so bad at self-preservation.”

“You keep saving me.”

Peter pulled away despite his best efforts to stand still, and felt that familiar pathetic exasperation creeping back in. “That is not a plan.”

Your lips pulled into a lazy grin as you tried to chase the space he made away. “It’s worked for me so far.”

He gave you a look, or he tried to. With the mask half-up and the lenses still covering his eyes, the effect should have been ridiculous. It wasn't because his mouth was still too close for your to.focus on anything else. His hand at your waist was too warm and his voice had dropped into something lower, rougher, stained by the night.

“You’re so not funny,” Peter shut his eyes behind the mask and looked back to the sky as if that would prove his point more heavily. 

You disagreed with that. “I made you pause.”

His scoff came absentminded, and so did his words. “You make me do a lot of stupid things.”

You smiled despite the tremor still living under your skin, and Peter was already weary of that smile even more now. The path you fingers trailed up on his abdomen was careful, as if trying to coax a street cat into staying longer. “Like what?”

He answered by kissing you again.

This time, it built slower. Still hungry and edged with frustration, but less like impact and more like surrender dragged unwillingly into the open. His gloved hand slid along your waist, then stopped, fingerpads flexing once as if he had to remind himself of the shape of restraint. Your hands moved over his chest, careful around the torn places, less careful when he made a quiet sound into your mouth and pressed closer.

The tile was cold through the back of your jacket. His body was warm everywhere he touched you. Smoke clung to him and rainwater dripped from the ends of your hair. New York kept shouting above, honking, and demanding. Down here, your world shrank to the scrape of his breath, the brush of his bare jaw against your cheek, the strange intimacy of being kissed by a man who still wouldn't even let you see his eyes.

When he pulled back, his forehead almost touched yours. The mask’s fabric brushed your brow.

“You have to stop chasing me,” Peter found the words finally after catching his breathe. 

The words were softer now, which made them harder to deflect. You looked down at your fingers that were still hooked in his suit, holding on like he might disappear if you didn’t. “I know.”

“I’m serious.”

“I get it.”

“You could’ve died tonight.”

You sighed with your head tipping back against the solid frame behind you. “I said I get it.”

Peter exhaled through his nose, frustrated by your agreement because it left him nowhere to put the rest of his fear. His thumb moved once against your waist before he seemed to realize he was doing it.

“You can’t know me by getting yourself killed,” he said and you looked back up at him.

There it was again. Not the superhero or the symbol, just the simple person beneath the suit, saying the closest thing to please that he would allow himself.

“Then let me know you another way,” you let out quickly and instantly regretted it when you saw his mouth tighten alongside his jaw. 

For a second, you thought he would step back. Pull the mask back down. Make a joke mean enough to end the moment. It would have been easier for him, maybe even kinder in the long run.

Instead, he lowered his head until his mouth brushed the corner of yours.

“You don’t even know what you’re asking,” Peter murmured and found himself crazy for even leaning back in. 

You closed your eyes for half a breath. “Then tell me.”

His silence moved over you slowly.

He didn't tell you his name or give you any truth clean enough to hold. Maybe he couldn't. Maybe that kind of trust did not arrive all at once in a stairwell after sirens and smoke.

But his hand left the wall and settled against your cheek, careful of the blooming scrape there. His thumb hovered near the bruise without touching it. The tenderness of that restraint did something to you more than the roughness had.

“I’m not good at this,” Peter finally spoke up once more when he realized you were waiting. 

Your reply came back softer. “At what?”

“Letting people stand this close.”

Your fingers loosened against his chest and a stupidly placed smile grew on your lips. “Yeah, I can tell.”

He huffed a quiet laugh, the sound was tired and real against your ear drums. “That obvious?”

You gave a merciful nod. “A little.”

“Great.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s really not.”

You smiled faintly because you knew what he meant. “No. Probably not.”

That earned you another silence, but this one was different. It was less defensive. He stayed close enough that you could feel the warmth of his breath when he spoke.

“I’ll take you home,” Peter inhaled once, quickly and reminding. 

A lighter breath left you alongside the silent, almost wondrous laugh that bubbled from your throat. “You know where that is.”

He groaned and did that thing where his jaw tensed and head tilted back in resignation. “Please never say that with that tone again.”

“What tone?”

“The tone that says you’re about to make my severe boundary issues into some sort of a compliment.”

You bit your lip, mostly to stop the small smile that grew because there was no telling if he wouldn't run off just yet. “You have severe boundary issues?”

Peter fought and lost the urge to throw you a disbelieving glance. “I wear spandex and fight strangers on rooftops. What do you think?”

“I think you’re avoiding.”

“I think you’re concussed.”

“You asked if I was hit.”

His words came back mumbled. “And I’m revising my assessment.”

You laughed then, breathless and completely unsteady, and some of the tightness in his shoulders eased.

He looked at your mouth again.

You noticed.

This time, Peter didn't pretend he hadn't.

The kiss that followed was quieter than before, but it carried more danger because it felt less accidental. Your hands slid up to his shoulders, feeling the strength there and the tremor of fatigue beneath it. He leaned into you for one brief second like he needed the support, then seemed to hate that he needed it and kissed you harder.

You gave back as much as he took.

That surprised him. You felt it in the way his breath caught, the way his fingers tightened at your waist, the way his mouth paused against yours before continuing with darker intent. He was careful with his strength, but not soft. He let some of the frustration show in the press of his body, in the angle of your chin guided by his gloved hand, and in the low sound he made when your fingertips traced the edge where his mask had been pushed up.

“Careful,” he said again.

This time, you understood he was not only warning you about him. You were both quiet for a moment. Then you decided to break the silence, “I don’t need to be another person with a video of you.”

His hand stilled on impact of your words. 

“I don’t want proof,” you continued bevause it felt necessary. “I don’t want your face because I won some game. I just…” You searched for the right words and found none that didn't sound too exposing. You tried again.  “I wanted you to feel real. And then you did. And I didn’t know how to stop wanting more.”

Peter listened without interrupting.

That felt worse to him somehow. It was easier when he was joking. Safer when he was pushing back. But he only stood there with the mask covering most of him and his bare mouth pressed into a line, taking in what you said like it had cost him something too.

Finally, he cursed faintly and tried to circle back, “You can’t use danger to get close to me.”

“I won’t.”

His voice came low and questioning. “You mean that?”

You nodded with more energy than you'd expected. “I mean it.”

He studied you for another long second. Then, he leaned in, not quite kissing you yet, and said, “If I see you at another active crime scene—”

You cut him off with that all too familiar pleased look. “You’ll lecture me?”

Peter scoffed at your sheer ability to get on his nerves all over again. “I’ll web you to the nearest bus stop.”

“That seems really excessive.”

“Yeah? I’ll leave a note too.”

You tilted your head, the movement making his own tip into yours. “What would it say?”

“Please return reckless civilian to sender.”

You smiled against his mouth before he kissed you again, and this time there was something almost relieved in it. It was still heated and messy. Still far too much for a subway stairwell while police lights strobed faintly above. But beneath the hunger, there was a fragile shift, a thread pulled taut between warning and permission.

Peter did take you home.

Not immediately, though.

The route blurred into faint fragments: his firm grasp around your waist, the startling lift of your feet leaving the ground, and your face tucked against his shoulder because the height stole the breath from you. Wind tore tears from your eyes and the city flashed beneath you in streaks of light and shadow, rooftops silvered by old rain, and apartment windows glowed with lives that had nothing to do with yours.

Peter moved differently while carrying you.

Less flashy and more controlled. He avoided the busiest streets and landed twice to check his side, though he insisted he was fine both times in a tone that made the lie obvious.

By the time he reached your building, your nerves stopped feeding into the adrenaline. 

Mostly.

He landed on the fire escape outside your apartment window with a soft metallic creak. You stared at him, then at the window, then back at him. 

A laugh escaped you before you could control it.  “You really do know where I live.”

Peter scrubbed a palm at his temple. “I am begging you to focus on the part where I brought you here safely.”

Your brows twitched together slightly. “You brought me to my window.”

“It seemed less awkward than the lobby.”

The question came with instinct now. “You’ve thought about this?”

“No.” A pause. Peter cursed when he met your diluted pupils.   “Not in a way I’m discussing.”

You laughed softly, and he looked away toward the alley like the brick wall had suddenly become intently more fascinating.

The window stuck, as usual. You had to shove it twice before it groaned open. The ordinary annoyance of it grounded you so abruptly that you almost felt embarrassed. Your room waited beyond the sill, cluttered and warm, a sweater thrown over a chair, a half-empty glass of water on the nightstand, even shoes abandoned near the closet. 

Evidence of a life Spider-Man had no business knowing and yet somehow did.

You climbed in first, turning back when he remained crouched on the fire escape.

“You’re not coming in?”

Peter looked at the window frame, then at you with clear weariness. “That is a bad idea.”

You pointed it the obvious. “You’ve had a lot of those tonight.”

“You were most of them.”

“Still.”

His mouth twitched up before he willed it away. The mask was still pushed up just enough to show it.

You reached out before you could overthink it, fingers curling lightly around his wrist. Peter could have resisted without any real effort on his part. But instead, he let you draw him closer to the window.

“Just for a minute,” your lull came strong. 

Peter knew that was how bad ideas survived. They dressed themselves as small things. One minute. One kiss. One exception. One person who looked at him and didn't ask for the mask.

He really should have said no.

But your room smelled faintly of laundry detergent and whatever candle you had burned earlier. Your cheek was scraped because of him and not because of him. Your fingers were warm around his wrist. The city had spent the whole night taking pieces out of him, and here you were, offering one quiet moment where he didn't have to be a symbol or a headline or a blur in someone else’s footage.

Peter climbed through the window before reason could take hold of him.

The room felt too small with him in it.

Not because he was larger, though he seemed broader here than he did against the skyline. It was the impossibility of him among ordinary things. Spider-Man standing beside your desk. Spider-Man ducking slightly to avoid the curtain rod. Spider-Man glancing at a stack of books and a mug with chipped paint as if he had crossed into a place more dangerous than the street outside.

“You’re nervous,” you couldn't help but gape at the clear display of nerves bundled in red and blue. 

“I’m injured.”

You made a face and tilted your head with an all too pleased expression. “That’s not what I said.”

Peter scoffed with little humor. “It’s what I’m choosing to answer.”

You stepped closer.

He watched you do it.

The air changed again, slower than before. There were no sirens here. No crowds. No urgent reason to pretend this was only adrenaline. Your radiator hissed, a car passed below in the street, and somewhere in the building, a neighbor’s TV murmured through the wall.

Your hand rose to his chest, then paused.

“Is this okay?” you asked hesitantly,  more hesitant than you'd have imagined. 

Peter looked at you for a long moment, then he covered your hand with his.

“Yeah,” he cleared at his throat, rough and quiet. “It’s okay.”

The kiss in your room felt different from the ones taken in the subway, less stolen from disaster and more chosen in spite of it. Peter backed you toward the edge of your bed, stopping when your knees touched the mattress, giving you that narrow sliver of space again. You took it away yourself, pulling him closer by the front of his suit.

A low sound left him.

“Still terrible at self-preservation,” he muttered when your hand reached for anything that could be used to pull him in closer. 

Your hand landed on the back of his neck, with your thumb pressing into his collar to bring him in nearer. “You like it a little.”

The refusal came expected once again. “I absolutely do not.”

Peter kissed you before you could smile any wider.

His gloved hand slid to the back of your neck, careful but firm, angling you up to meet him. The mask stayed where it was, bunched above his mouth and tight over his nose, his eyes still hidden behind white lenses that made every exposed inch feel more deliberate. You kissed the corner of his mouth, then the cut on his lip lightly enough that he went still.

“That hurt?” you whispered against him.

“No.”

A laugh escaped you, all quiet and breathless. “You liar.”

“Maybe.”

Your thumb brushed his jaw and he turned his face into the touch despite himself, and the motion was so tired, so unguarded for one brief second, that your chest ached.

Then his hand caught your waist again, and the softness sharpened into heat.

He kissed you deeper quickly after that. Your back met the mattress, and he followed only as far as you pulled him, bracing one hand beside your shoulder so his weight didn't crush you. The suit rasped beneath your palms. His breath came unevenly against your mouth. Every time you touched too close to an injury, he flinched and pretended he had not, which made you slow down until he grew impatient and kissed you harder for it.

“You’re impossible,” he said again, but this time it sounded less like an accusation.

“You keep kissing me.”

His mouth hovered above yours.

For a moment, neither of you moved after that.

The truth of that sat in the dim light between you. He had come back. Again and again. To warn you, to argue, to make sure you got home. 

Peter lowered his head until his covered forehead rested near your temple.

“You can’t chase me anymore,” he said it softer this time, catching your attention more than any other shout could. 

Your tongue slid over your teeth and finally exhaled when his silence felt defeating. “I won’t.”

Peter pushed. “You swear?”

“I swear.”

“And if you see me on that app—”

You turned your head up to point a finger up at him to answer. “I’ll close it.”

He lifted his head slightly, giving you a such a pointed grasp of his silence that you could only sigh. “I’ll delete it.”

“Now.”

You blinked, his request caught you off guard. “Now?”

“Yes.”

Your tongue looked at the inside of your cheek now, clearly trying to stall under the weight of his stare. “You’re very demanding for a man bleeding on my comforter.”

Peter didn't take the bait just yet. “I’ll bleed less judgmentally after you delete it.”

You stared at him in confliction, and despite everything, you laughed.

He climbed off you enough to let you reach for your phone with begrudging fingers. The screen was cracked from where it must have hit the pavement, but it still worked. You opened the app under his silent, watchful stare. For a second, your thumb hovered over the icon of the app.

It felt strange to let it go.

Not because you needed the app itself, but because deleting it meant admitting that what you wanted from him could no longer be taken by chasing red dots across a map. If he came back after this, it had to be because he chose to.

You deleted it.

Then the second one.

Then the third.

Peter said nothing while you did so. 

When you set the phone down, he was looking at you with an unreadable stillness that made your pulse climb again.

“There,” you let an exhale of breath out and narrowed your eyes at him with no real spite.  “Happy?”

“No.”

You rolled your eyes at that. “Of course not.”

“I’m…” Peter stopped, like the word he wanted to find was difficult to translate through the mask. His bare mouth pressed together, then softened. “Slightly less actively horrified.”

Despite your better judgment, you let your grin form again. “That’s romantic.”

“I’m known for that.”

You reached for him again and this time, he came willingly.

The kiss deepened slower, then became not slow at all. His restraint was still there, visible in every careful placement of his hands, but the darkness you had sensed in him edged closer to the surface. It was something more conflicted than plain cruelty or defensiveness. It was hunger tangled with fear. 

He held you like he was still deciding whether he was sure he could and you kissed him like the decision had already been made. And for you, it had. 

Peter's mouth crashed back into yours with a low sound that vibrated through the mask and straight into your chest. The second your lips parted he pushed his tongue in, deep and wet, tasting every inch like he was starving for it. Your back sank deeper into the mattress under his weight, the mattress springs creaking as he braced one hand beside your head and let the other slide down your side.

His suit scraped against your palms when you grabbed at him again, your fingers curled into the textured fabric over his ribs. You tugged hard, trying to work it up, but the material barely budged. Peter made a rough noise into your mouth and suddenly caught both your wrists, pinning them above your head with one hand.

"Nuh-uh," he muttered against your lips, his voice low and amused. "You don't get to strip me just because you're feeling greedy."

“That can't be fair.” You scoffed and tried to twist free, your hips rolled up to grind against the hard line of his cock through the suit. The pressure dragged a hiss out of him. He pressed his hips down in answer, grinding slow and deliberate to let you feel every inch of him trapped behind the fabric. The suit was warm from his body heat, slightly rough where it rubbed your inner thighs.

"Fuck, look at you," he breathed out with forehead pressed to yours. "Already trying to climb me like you can't wait five seconds."

“You're hard, isn't that contradicting?” You bucked harder, chasing friction and he smacked your hands away again, this time letting them fall to the sides so he could shove his knee between your legs and grind it up against you through your clothes. The pressure was perfect and not nearly enough. 

You gasped into another kiss and Peter swallowed the sound, and had his tongue sliding deep again while his hips kept that slow and punishing roll.

Every time your fingers crept back toward the edge of his suit he caught them, smacked them away, or pinned them down. The teasing only made you even more worked up. You could feel how pent-up he was in the way his breathing stuttered every time you ground up against him. It was in the little involuntary jerks of his hips when you would moan into his kisses.

"Fuck," you whispered with your voice shakier than you'd meant it. "Please—"

"Please what?" He dragged his mouth down your jaw and had his teeth scraping against your skin. "Please let you rip my suit off so you can ride me? Not happening. You get what I give you."

Peter rocked his hips harder, grinding the thick line of his cock right against your clit through the layers between you. Your back arched and he caught the movement and pressed you flat again with his body, one hand sliding under your shirt to palm your breast, thumb flicking over your nipple until you squirmed.

"You're so fucking eager," he groaned and his voice cracked with how turned on he was. "Been driving me crazy for months and now you're just—fuck—spreading your legs the second I touch you. You like this? Like me holding you down, keeping the suit on, making you work for it?"

You nodded frantically and had your hips jerking up to meet every grind in tandem. Peter kissed you again, deeper and messier this time, the mask brushed against your cheek every time he tilted his head too high. His free hand slid down to grip your thigh with his fingers digging hard as he rocked faster, keeping the friction building until you were panting into his mouth and clutching at his shoulders.

"That's it," he whispered against your lips, though it was followed by a chuckle that had your stomach tightening. "Be a good girl and take it. Show me how bad you want it. Maybe if you keep being this eager for me I'll let you come like this, grinding on my cock through the suit. Maybe."

He kissed you again before you could answer, he tried to swallow every desperate sound you made while his hips kept that relentless rhythm that had you completely at his mercy.

“You're annoyingly mouthy.” A weak scoff escaped you and your fingers found the hem of your shirt. You peeled it upward in one impatient motion, tossing it somewhere off the side of the bed. The cool air hit your skin just before his palm did, landing firm and flat against your ribs.

"Slow down," Peter muttered, the words half-laugh, half-warning. His hand slid lower, smacking lightly at your hip. "Lift."

You lifted up obediently, hips rising off the mattress. He hooked his fingers into your waistband and dragged the fabric down your thighs in one slow, deliberate pull, leaving your panties exactly where they were. The cotton clung to you, already damp, and Peter made a low sound when he saw it.

"Look at that," he inhaled with his voice tight. "Soaking through already."

"Maybe stop teasing me then," you shot back, breath hitching when he pressed his palm flat against your sternum and shoved you back down flat. The mattress dipped under your weight. His hand stayed there, pinning you in place while his other hand worked the last of your bottoms off your ankles.

"You're the one who can't keep still," he only answered, reaching for the pillow beside your head. He shoved it over your face without ceremony, muffling your next protest. "Keep that there. If it comes off, I'm gone. You won't see me again. Understand?"

You nodded hard against the pillow, fingers clutching the fabric on either side of your head. The threat landed somewhere between fear and heat, making your thighs press together. Peter watched the movement, then pushed them apart with his knee again.

"Good girl," he repeated quieter now. His hand left your sternum. You heard the faint rustle of fabric shifting, then felt the mattress dip as he settled lower between your spread legs.

The first press of his mouth landed through the thin cotton of your panties. Hot, open, and unhurried. He licked a slow stripe from bottom to top, pressing the fabric against your clit until it was plastered to you. The wet heat of his tongue dragged again, firmer this time, soaking the material until it clung obscenely. You moaned into the pillow, hips twitching up toward his face.

Peter cursed under his breath, the sound was rough and conflicted. His tongue flattened and dragged again, then curled, tracing the shape of your folds through the soaked fabric like he was trying to memorize it. Every pass made the cotton wetter, until you could feel every ridge of his tongue pressing through. Peter sucked at the fabric, pulling it tight against you, then released it with a wet sound that made your face burn.

"Fuck," he hissed, pulling back just enough to hook two fingers into the side of your panties. He tugged them aside, exposing you to the cool air for half a second before his tongue was back. This time there was nothing between you. The flat of his tongue dragged up through your folds in one long, messy stroke, then curled at the tip to flick over your clit. He did it again, slower with his lips sealing around you while his tongue worked in deep, filthy strokes.

“Fuck, woah—don't, don't do that!” Peter breathed out a chuckle when he felt you shake under him, your thighs trembling on either side of his head. Your grip on the pillow tightened until your knuckles ached. Every time his tongue curled just right you whined into the fabric, hips rolling up to chase the pressure. Peter didn't let you have it easy. He pulled back when you got too close, licked around your clit instead of on it, then dove back in with that same hungry rhythm.

The mask came off.

You felt the shift in pressure first, the way his hand shoved the pillow harder against your face as he used the other to yank the fabric up and over his head. The sudden absence of the mask's texture against your inner thigh made you gasp into the pillow. Your body went loose for a second, boneless, before instinct kicked in.

One hand stayed obedient on the pillow. The other reached out blindly, fingers searching for his shoulder, his hair, anything. You barely brushed skin before his hand snapped around your wrist, grip tight enough to make you still.

"No," Peter stopped, and had his voice raw and mean. "You don't get to touch. Keep that hand on the pillow or I stop."

“Fine, whatever. Just, fuck—don't stop.” You nodded frantically, pulling your hand back to clutch the fabric again. Your whole body trembled as he lowered his mouth once more, tongue dragging through you in those same messy, desperate movements. Peter groaned against you like he hated how much he wanted it, the sound vibrated straight through your core.

Your moans came out muffled and broken now. Every time his tongue curled just right your hips jerked, and every time he pulled back you whined like you were begging without words. He kept you right there, shaking and soaked until your thighs were quivering and your grip on the pillow was the only thing keeping you from reaching for him again.

“Holy shit, I'm so close—” Your fingers dug into the pillow, flexing and twitching as you tried to form words, but every attempt dissolved into broken moans that the fabric swallowed whole. Your hips rolled up against his mouth, chasing the pressure, and the tension coiled so tight in your belly that when it snapped it hit like a live wire.

You came hard, thighs clamping around his head as your whole body jerked. The orgasm tore through you without warning, soaking his face in a sudden rush that hit his cheeks and chin, dripping down his jaw. Peter groaned against you, his tongue still working through the mess, and his lips parting to lick at the slick coating his mouth. 

Every flick of his tongue sent another twitch through your over-sensitive folds, and he gave your clit a few light, wet smacks with his fingers, watching the way your hips jumped at each one and the slick connecting at his fingertips before breaking apart in stands. 

The sound of fabric shifting reached you through the haze. His suit peeled away in sections, the material sliding over skin until you felt the sudden press of bare warmth against your inner thighs. His chest, his stomach, the hard line of his cock brushing your slick folds. You reached again, one hand lifting off the pillow in desperate need to touch, and he caught your wrist with a low, raspy laugh.

"Fuck, you're shaking," Peter breathed out with his voice turning rougher by the second. He brought your palm to his mouth and kissed it, lips dragging over your skin before he let your hand slide down his side. Your fingers traced the hard muscle of his abdomen, feeling the heat of him, the faint tremor in his body as he held himself back. He let you explore for a few seconds longer, then shoved your hand back to the pillow and pressed down harder on the fabric covering your face.

"Keep it there," Peter warned, though the edge in his voice wavered. "Didn't I tell you that already?"

“Shit, sorry—” The apology came mindless, distracted by the frantic muffled agreement vibrating against the pillow. He shifted between your legs, the blunt head of his cock dragging through your soaked slit in one slow, teasing pass. 

The contact made him hiss through his teeth, and had hips jerking forward like the restraint was finally cracking. He pushed in deep on the next stroke, burying himself to the hilt in one rough thrust that knocked the air from your lungs.

The pace turned brutal fast. Deep, heavy strokes rocked you up the mattress, each one forcing a broken sound out of you that the pillow barely contained. He watched the way your body jolted with every thrust, the way your tits bounced, the way your thighs trembled around his hips. Peter's hand stayed firm on the pillow, keeping you blind and muffled while he fucked into you like he'd been starving for it.

"God, listen to you," he murmured with a humorless chuckle. "So fucking wet. You like this? Being held down, can't even see me, can't touch?" He drove in harder, the slap of skin on skin echoing loud in the room. "Been holding back too long. Lonely too long, God I'm going insane. Fuck—"

Your hands went slack against the pillow, fingers twitching uselessly as the intensity built again. He noticed the moment your grip loosened and pressed the pillow down harder, the fabric smothering every whimper. The control should have felt demeaning, but it only made the heat spike hotter, making you clench around him like your body was begging for more even as your mind spun from the overwhelming sensation.

Peter kept the rhythm punishing, having hips snapping forward with a desperation that matched the conflict in his voice. Every thrust pushed you closer to the edge again, and every time you tried to reach for him his free hand caught your wrist and pinned it back down. The threat hung between you, unspoken but heavy: touch him and he'd stop. Don't touch and he'd keep going until you couldn't think straight.

Your moans turned frantic, muffled and wet against the pillow and he answered with a low groan that vibrated through his chest as he drove into you again, chasing the feeling without letting himself finish just yet.

He finally pulled out with a wet drag that left you clenching around nothing, the sudden emptiness making your hips twitch back toward him. And before you could even form a protest his hands were on you, gripping your waist hard enough to leave marks as he flipped you onto your stomach. The mattress dipped under his weight when he pressed your knees apart and yanked your hips up, forcing your hips into the air while your face stayed buried in the pillow.

"Fuck, look at you," Peter exhaled, and his voice cracked between a laugh and something unintentionally darker. "So eager. You want it this bad?"

You tried to push up on your elbows, twisting to look back at him, but one of his hands slid up your spine and pressed between your shoulder blades, pinning you back down. The other hand gathered at the base of your neck, tugging just enough to arch your neck as he leaned over.

"Can't fault you. I'm not doing much better," his voice hit your ear though the words came out shaky. His cock dragged through your folds again, the head catching on your entrance before he sank back in with one rough thrust that stuttered the air away from your lungs. The angle was deeper like this, hitting something that made your thighs shake. "God, you're tight. Squeezing me like you don't want me to leave."

His hips snapped forward in a punishing rhythm, skin slapping wetly against skin while his free hand roamed under your body to grab at your tits, squeezing hard before sliding lower to rub tight circles over your clit. Every thrust rocked you forward, your muffled moans vibrating into the bedspread as he fucked you like he was trying to crawl inside.

"This is so fucked," Peter breathed out against your spine with his lips dragging hot and open-mouthed down the curve of your back. He kissed each vertebra like he was apologizing for how hard he was pounding into you, even as his cock kept driving deep enough to make your vision blur. "I shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be doing this. But fuck, you feel too good. Can't stop."

You managed to prop yourself up on your elbows again, and your voice was hoarse when you gasped out, "Then don't stop. Please, keep going—"

His hand tightened in your hair, yanking your head back as he slammed into you harder, the pace turning almost frantic. "Don't say it like that," Peter groaned to himself, conflicted and desperate all at once. "Makes me want to stay. Makes me want to ruin you."

The hand under you kept working your clit in tight, relentless circles while his cock pistoned in and out, the wet sounds were obscene in the quiet room. Every time you tried to push back against him he shoved you forward again, controlling the angle, the depth, the pace. His breath came in ragged pants against your skin with his lips still trailing kisses down your exposed skin even as his thrusts grew rougher and more desperate.

"Been too long," Peter admitted between thrusts, and he could hear his voice turn thick with frustration. "Lonely too long. And you—fuck—you're so wet. So fucking perfect. I can't—"

His words cut off into a broken moan as you clenched around him. Your body responded to every rough stroke with another rush of slickness. He pressed his forehead between your shoulder blades, having his hips stuttering for a moment before he caught himself and started at you even harder, like he was trying to outrun whatever guilt was eating at him.

"Tell me to stop," he rasped, even as his hand in your hair pulled tighter and he drove in deeper. "Tell me this is wrong. Because I can't make myself leave."

“Told you, don't stop—” the words hung there frantically in their plea, and you pushed back against him, meeting every thrust with a desperate roll of your hips. The sound he made was half-laugh, half-groan. "Yeah," Peter breathed against your shoulder. "That's what I thought.”

His fist tightened in your hair again, yanking your face up from the pillow until your neck arched and your spine bowed. The sudden pull made your vision swim, but you kept your eyes squeezed shut, forcing yourself to obey even as every instinct screamed to look back at him.

"Good girl," he rasped against the shell of your ear and his voice shredded. "Keep those eyes closed. You feel that? Feel how fucking deep I am?"

You nodded frantically, a broken whimper escaping as he dragged out slow and deliberate before slamming back in. The angle had you seeing stars, each thrust punching the air from your lungs in sharp little gasps.

"Fuck—I'm—"

"Don't look," Peter tried to warn again, but his voice cracked on the words. His lips found the back of your neck, having his teeth scraping before he sucked hard enough to bruise. The wet pull of his mouth made your clench around him, and the groan that tore from his chest vibrated straight through your spine. "Christ, you're squeezing me so tight. Like you want me to lose it."

You tried to be good. Really tried. But when his teeth sank into the side of your throat, just below your ear, your hand twisted back on instinct. Your fingers found his hair, soft, sweat-damp curls that brushed against your knuckles, and you buried your hand in them, tugging him closer even as your eyes fluttered open for half a second.

"Fuck, I knew it," Peter breathed, catching your wrist and pinning it to the small of your back. His pace never faltered like his voice, hips continuing to snap forward in that relentless rhythm that had your thighs shaking. "Told you not to touch. Told you to be good. But you can't help yourself, can you?"

"I'm sorry," you gasped and your voice was hoarse, you shook your head at nothing as you continued. "I won't look, I swear! Just—please don't stop. Please, I need—"

His forehead dropped between your shoulder blades again, his exhales came breathless and ragged against your skin. "I shouldn't have taken the mask off. This is so fucking stupid. You could—god, you feel too good. Been too long since anyone—fuck—"

The words dissolved into a guttural curse as you clenched around him again, your second orgasm building fast and sharp in the pit of your stomach. Every thrust dragged across that perfect spot inside you, and the lack of allowance from him made it worse. It made every touch electric. You could feel his cock throbbing, feel the way his rhythm stuttered when you squeezed him, and feel the desperate way his free hand grabbed at your hip hard enough to bruise.

"You're close," Peter groaned into your ear, and he sounded completely wrecked now. "I can feel it. Fuck, you're dripping everywhere. Making such a mess."

Your eyes rolled back despite yourself, and a broken moan tore from your throat as he bit down on your shoulder. The sensation of his teeth marking you while he relentlessly pounded into you pushed you right to the edge. Your hand twisted in his hair again, fingers tightening in frenzied motion and this time he didn't stop you.

"That's it," Peter panted and cursed wordlessly when his hips stuttered at the feeling. "Come on my cock. Let me feel it. Been so fucking lonely, and you—god, you're just fucking insane—"

His words cut off into a choked groan as your orgasm crashed over you, your cunt pulsing around him in rhythmic waves. Your whole body seized; your thighs shook violently as you came with a broken cry, and the feeling of you clenching around him dragged a wrecked sound from Peter's chest.

"Fuck—fuck—fuck—" His hips jerked erratically, his pace faltering as he fought to hold back. "You're gonna make me come. God, I can feel every fucking pulse. Don't—don't look back, fuck."

Peter buried his face in your neck, sucking another bruise into your skin while his cock throbbed inside you. His hand stayed tangled in your hair, keeping your face turned away even as his body trembled against yours, every muscle tight with the effort of holding back his own release.

"You're too good," he whispered against your ear, all hoarse and desperate. "Too fucking perfect. I can't—"

His hips snapped forward one more time in a loss of control, burying himself to the hilt as he fought to regain control, his breath coming in harsh pants against your marked throat.

A broken gasp tore from your throat as his hips stilled, the thick length of him buried to the hilt inside you. Instead of pulling back, he ground forward, rolling his pelvis in a slow, deliberate circle that forced another inch of him deeper. Your walls fluttered around him, oversensitive and raw, and the sensation made your vision blur even with your eyes squeezed shut.

"Fuck, too much—" The words came out ragged and barely coherent. Your body had gone limp in his grip, head only held up only by his fist in your hair and the arm banded around your waist. Every nerve ending sparked like live wires, the stimulation making your head spin.

"I know," Peter groaned against your ear with overwhelming rasp. "I can feel you shaking. God, you're so fucking tight around me. Can't stop—need to feel all of it."

You tilted your head back desperately, blindly seeking his mouth. "Please, need—"

His palm came up rough and warm, fingers splaying across your eyes to keep you from looking, and then his lips crashed into yours from the side. The kiss was messy, uncoordinated, all teeth and tongue and shared gasps. Peter swallowed your whimpers as he started to grind again, short, shallow rolls of his hips that kept him buried deep while the head of his cock dragged against that oversensitive spot inside you.

"Fuck, fuck—I'm—" His voice cracked. You could feel it happening from the way his abs flexed hard against your back, the tremor that ran through his thighs, and the way he throbbed inside you like a heartbeat. His rhythm stuttered with his hips jerking in shallow pulses as he came with a guttural groan that vibrated through your spine.

You felt every pulse of it. Hot, thick spurts flooding you, filling you until it leaked out around his cock with each weak thrust. Peter kept fucking it deeper, grinding the mess back into you while his hand stayed clamped over your eyes and his mouth devoured yours in desperate, open-mouthed kisses.

"God—god—" He panted against your lips, and his hips kept twitching in movement.

Your hand reached back blindly, fingers finding his hip and your nails dug into his skin as you held onto him. He was shaking against you, every muscle tight, his breath coming in harsh pants against your neck. The hand over your eyes softened, thumb stroking your temple as he slowly came down, his cock still twitching inside you with aftershocks.

"You okay?" Peter whispered with his voice strained after the moment quieted down, his high climbing down in shallow breaths. His forehead dropped to your shoulder against your marked skin. "Did I—fuck, tell me you're okay."

You nodded weakly, still floating in feeling, still feeling the slow leak of him between your thighs. "Don't pull out yet," you managed with your voice barely audible. "Just—stay. Please."

Peter's arm tightened around you, pulling you closer even as his own breathing started to even back out. The hand he had over your eyes slid down to cup your jaw, gentler now, and his thumb brushed your bottom lip. "Yeah, okay," he murmured. "Just for a while."

The room was quiet except for your mingled breathing and his lips pressed soft kisses along your shoulder, soothing the bite marks he'd left, and you could feel the tension slowly bleeding out of his body as he held you through the afterglow.

The last thing you registered was the slow drag of his cock easing out of you, the wet slide of his cum following in its wake, and the gentle press of his lips against your shoulder. Then everything went soft and dark.

You didn't even feel yourself slipping under.

Consciousness returned in pieces.

Firstly, it came with the weight of the sheets tucked up to your chest, cool cotton against your bare skin. Then, with the faint ache between your legs, a deep, pleasant throb that pulsed in time with your heartbeat. Your thighs felt sticky, but when you shifted, the sensation was clean. There was no dried mess, just the ghost of it cleaned away.

Your eyes cracked open.

The room was dim at first, the only light filtering in from the streetlamp outside your window. The space beside you was empty, the sheets cool. And he was gone.

You pushed yourself up on one elbow, wincing at the pull in your hips, and spotted the bottle of water on your nightstand. Beside it, a folded piece of paper with your name scrawled across the front in handwriting you recognized: messy, rushed, and unmistakably his.

You reached for it, unfolding the note with fingers that still trembled.

Drink water. Eat something. Don't let me see you at any more crime scenes.

Beneath it, smaller, almost an afterthought:

P.S. If you behave, maybe you'll see me without those stupid apps.

A laugh bubbled up in your throat immediately after reading it, all hoarse and disbelieving. You pressed the note to your chest, letting your head fall back against the pillows with a soft thud.

"Well," you muttered to the empty room, voice scratchy from use, "guess I finally deleted the right thing."

Your body sank deeper into the mattress, sore in all the right places and light in a way that made no sense. The ache between your legs was a reminder, the faint scent of him still clinging to your sheets. You closed your eyes, the note crinkling softly against your skin, and smiled.

The ball was in his court now, and you couldn't wait to see what he'd do with it.

Don’t even get me started on their kiss or the smut. You write their kissing scenes (especially in the subway) like a fucking pro. I’m completely gone. I will be reading this again.

How am I supposed to be a human today after reading this

The big door of the garage is rolled up, letting in the afternoon light. Eddie's got a rag thrown over his shoulder as he crouches in front of a tattered cardboard box that looks like it hadn't been opened since before each of the girls were born. His hair's tied back loosely in one of your hair ties, greying at the temples. 

Alice is sitting on the steps by the door into the house, leaning back on the palms of her hands. Roan walks back and forth slowly, kicking a loose bolt on the cracked concrete every time she passes. "This is insane, dad." Alice sighs, leaning her head back on her shoulders to stare at the ceiling above her. "You know that, right?"

Eddie shuffles around, grunts when he stands, and moves the box to another area of the garage. "Enlighten me." 

"You're famous!" She says, exasperated as she sits back up straight. She’s sure that one little detail should end this conversation right there. "You're rich! You could hire someone to do this." 

Roan nods, agreeing with her sister as she kicks at the bolt again, watching it bounce out of her vicinity this time. "Yeah, dad. This is a job for like… some guy named Gary. Not us." 

Eddie glances at them, raising his brows as he tries to find exactly where the audacity is coming from. This was just a regular Saturday in April back at Gareth’s for him, when Mrs. Mara Emerson would bribe them into a month’s worth of cleaning with the promise of their favorite burgers and a pineapple upside down cake. "Gary?"

"Yeah." Roan shrugs.

Eddie leans back against your car, crossing his arms over his chest. "That's pretty specific for two teenage girls who get anything and everything they could ever dream of." He shakes his head, "and also offensive to the many hardworking non-Gary's out there." 

Alice groans, loudly, in response, "daaaad."

"What?" He frowns and dips his head, throwing his hands up, palms to them. "Maybe I like cleaning my own garage."

"You don't." Roan challenges.

"You don't know me." Eddie chuckles and shakes his head, pushing off the car to move towards another stack of soft and worn cardboard boxes. "I’ve been gone for two months. Maybe I want to spend some time with my kids, whom I love and cherish and wish that I could see more. Ever think of that?"

Alice snorts, pushing herself off the stairs and then lowering herself down in front of the built-in shelving until she can reach the bottom shelves. "Spending time with us? Or getting free child labor?"

Eddie rolls his eyes, sorting through a bit of knick knacks, "You're welcome for the time you get to spend with your old man." 

Alice shakes her head, running her hands along the bottom shelf until she comes across a little blue tin. She pulls it out, confused, "I didn't know mom had sewing stuff." She shakes the tin, it doens't rattle in the way needles and thread would rattle. She looks at Roan.

Roan drops down beside her. "Open it." 

"Don't open it. Your mom doesn't sew for fun. It's probably some of her doll shit." He says automatically, not looking towards them. "And if it's something spooky she picked up from a yard sale, I really don't have time for that today."

Alice rolls her eyes and pops the lid on the tin despite the judgement. 

Roan tries to look over her shoulder, "what is it?"

"Pictures." Alice says and shrugs, reaching in to pull out a small bundle. The edges are worn and yellowing. She looks at the photo on the top of the stack. There's a red mustang in the background— much like her dad's that’s tucked away under a tarp in the second opening of their two car garage— the sun glaring off the windshield. There's a woman leaning against it with a little boy on her hip. She's wearing sunglasses, her hair dark brown and wild, just like her own. "Dad?" Alice glances over her shoulder at him. 

Eddie turns his head to look at her for a moment, before turning his attention back to the box, distracted. "Yeah?"

She holds up the photo, staying quiet. Quiet enough that it gets him to look up again. He squints and steps a bit closer. "Let me see that." He says softly, holding his hand out. Alice hands it over quietly. When his eyes fall over the photo, something in his face softens. His thumb brushes over the worn in edges of the photograph and he chuckles, almost to himself. The girls watch him quiet and curious. "Girls… That is my mom." He says softly, pointing to the woman. His smile is so kind, the girls aren’t sure if they’ve ever seen him look like that before. Then he points to the kid in her arms, "and that's me." 

Roan leans in, letting her eyes scan over the photo face. "You were pretty tiny."

"I was adorable once. Hard to believe, I know." He jokes softly.

Alice glances away from the photo and into the tin again, holding it up between them. "There's more in here."

Eddie glances down at it, "yeah?"

She nods and starts pulling photos out one by one. One's his mom, sitting on the hood of that same mustang in denim shorts. There's another one of her at a kitchen table somewhere with a man that looks a whole lot like Grandpa Wayne. His arm is slung around her shoulders and she has a lit cigarette between her fingers. In the final one they look at, she's holding who the girls decide is, Eddie, as a baby. He's cradled to her chest and she's looking at him like he was the best love she had ever felt in her life. 

Roan smiles at that one, taking it gently from her sister. "She's pretty." 

Eddie huffs out a breath that turns into another smile, nodding, "She is."

Alice looks at the photo, pinning down the kind brown eyes, dimples, and dark curls. The way she smiles, the same lines and dimples. "She looks like you."

Eddie laughs and shakes his head a little. "Other way around, kid."

Roan traces the edges of the photo in her hand as Eddie continues to peek through the stack. She bites the inside of her cheek and looks at her dad. "Why haven't we seen these before?"

Eddie leans his hip against the workbench along the back wall, not looking up from the photos in his hands. "Didn't know where they were." He says softly. "Thought I lost most of 'em when I moved out of Grandpa Wayne's before you girls were born, if I'm being honest."

Roan and Alice exchange a look, he hadn’t seen pictures of his mom in that long? “How did she die?" Roan asks softly.

"She got pretty sick." Eddie says quietly and leaves it at that.

Roan nods a little, looking at the pictures again. Her heart stinging for her dad's younger self. She knew her grandmother had been gone for a long time. But she couldn't imagine life without you, her mom, and she's 14. "How old were you?" She asks.

Eddie glances over where his own red mustang sits under the white canvas, "six."

Alice sucks in a breath and starts to stack the photos back up to place back into the tin. "That sucks."

It's blunt and honest, but Eddie nods. Laughing lightly at the way it’s said, as he shrugs. "Yeah, It did suck. Just a bit."

From inside, the three of them hear your voice call out the door for dinner. So Alice scoops the photos Eddie isnt holding back into the tin, carefully, and tucks it under her arm. She smiles at Roan, nodding her head towards the door to give signal to her to let Eddie have a minute. They make their way inside and the door swings shut behind them. Eddie sighs softly.

He pushes himself off the workbench and pins the photo of him and his mom in front of her car onto the board hanging on the wall, right next to a picture of you and him at his first big Corroded Coffin show, Alice's first day of kindergarten, and one of Roan covered in spaghetti from head to toe. All his favorite girls in one place.

He looks around, giving the garage one last once over, before walking into the kitchen. Cleaning this up can wait until Gareth’s free and until he can bribe his wonderful wife into making a pineapple upside down cake almost like Mrs. Emerson’s. He smiles at the family waiting for him at the table, the blue tin of photos sitting on the counter, waiting for him to comb through when the time is right. 

You could hardly believe it, but there was something good about Hawkins. The tiny community college boasting the town’s name was what you could consider a diamond in the rough. Situated on the outskirts of town, the relatively new campus harbored three lovely new buildings that offered a variety of entry-level college classes for the wayward student seeking direction. It helped that it was primarily financed from some well-to-do donors, who made their identities no secret, as many of the rooms (or buildings themselves) were named in honor of their generosity. It didn’t matter to you how or why Hawkins Community College was built because you were grateful for it, as it offered a reprieve from the ever present shitshow that was your home life and a distraction from your ever-present anxious mind.

Your mother was unsurprisingly against it at first, citing finances (how original of her) as reason to forego higher education. She had a hard time arguing, however, when the multiple financial aid and scholarship applications you filed actually returned with some good news. Your first semester of Fall 1985 would be covered, primarily by First Financial Bank of Hawkins, as long as you were employed part time as their intern. It was an ideal situation: you chose to take classes that you were actually interested in, and you were making some money on the side.

Granted, as an intern, it wasn’t much, but any little bit was helpful. You weren’t really sure how much longer Susan would hold on to her job, anyway. It was going to be nice to have some money stashed away to get you and Max through the inevitable tough times.

Sorry. Inevitable tougher times.

Every weekday, you dropped Max off at school before making your way across town to the community college. Classes were Monday through Thursday mornings, ranging from the really boring Introductory Agricultural Economics (another stipulation of your FFBH scholarship) to the really cool Applied Music Instruction: Sound and Recording. Something fluttered deep in your belly at the thought of the Applied Music class, and it may have had something to do with how you were looking forward to telling your new partner in crime all about it tonight when he got home from school.

Maybe it would lead to actual recording sessions for Corroded Coffin and actual demo tapes full of your songs. Hell, their songs, too. If, that is, you were able to figure out what the shit to do in the actual studio. But that was what the class was all about, right? You could learn because you wanted to. Not that you wanted your songs to go anywhere—those were just for you and Eddie.

That was something, though. The realization hit you abruptly as you drive home from your Monday afternoon shift at the bank about a week after making your deal official with Eddie: Corroded Coffin is a band. With other members that are real, live people. Yes, you had the lead guitarist/singer on board with your plan—but did you have the others? You had their feelings to consider. The very last thing you wanted to do was step on toes.

You knew Eddie gave a shit about you, clearly empathetic to your mental and emotional struggles. The likelihood that the other members would care enough to be okay with some random chick thrusting a bunch of shit lyrics in their faces and making them use their valuable band time to write you some chord progressions was pretty low. This probably should have been considered more before you opened your damn mouth.

You mentally added this to the list to discuss with Eddie as you sit patiently in your spot on the picnic table, pen in hand busy molding phrases and verses into lyrics while the cicadas sang to you their last songs of summer.

It could have been a minute, or an hour; you were so engrossed in the progress you’d made on your newest page of lyrics that you almost didn’t hear the sound of crunching gravel pinging against the wheel wells of Eddie’s van as it careened way too swiftly into the trailer park. Bark at the Moon blasts heavily from the speakers, Ozzy’s patented sound permeating the air more clearly as Eddie cranks the window down.

“Mayfield!” he hollers at you over the music. “Get in, we’ve got somewhere to be!”

Your eyes widen, eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “Um, what are you talking about?” You had to yell just as loudly back, and by Eddie’s reaction, it was clear he hadn’t heard a thing. You roll your eyes as you start towards his van, thumb and index finger snapping in the air to indicate to him to turn the fucking volume down. His eyebrows shoot up, mouth forming an O as he jerks across his seat to hit the stereo’s power button. Your ears whine with the abrupt loss of sound.

“Elder Mayfield, let’s go. We’re late!” Eddie shouts a little too loudly through his open window as you approach.

“Eddie,” you say as your forearms came to rest on the frame of the door. “You need to use your words. Exactly where am I supposed to be going with you?”

He tosses his head back over his right shoulder to indicate the large guitar case that inhabits the majority of his second row bench seat and meets your inquisitive eyes with a huge, jovial grin. Your eyebrow quirks, and Eddie lets out an exaggerated groan.

“You are impossible, Mayfield. We’re going to practice. C’mon.”

“Like band practice?”

Eddie’s face falls into a deadpan stare. “Y’know, for as genius as your lyrics are —”

You hold up your hands to stop his teasing. “Yeah, okay, I could be a huge dick and ask where you were all day.”

Eddie’s eyes glint. “Ah, you wouldn’t wound me so, sweetheart. You like me too much.” He throws in a wink for good measure, and you softly groan in mock indignation as your head rolls back on your shoulders.

“Just give me a moment, I have to tell Max where I’m going.” You hustle over to your trailer, and after informing Max of your whereabouts (and the leftover chicken and rice casserole in the fridge), you run back outside to see that Eddie has turned the van around and is waiting on the passenger side for you, door open and hand outstretched.

“Your chariot, princess.”

You fight a grin as you take his hand, eyes fixing on the clunky rings that adorn his hand as the cold, smooth metal chills your fingers. He helps you in, and you're on your way. Better now than never, right?

You drive in silence for a few minutes, before curiosity gets the better of you. “So, does the rest of the band know I’m crashing your practice?”

Eddie throws in a nod as he bobs his head to the rhythm of the song. “They know that I’m bringing the genius that wrote Nightmare and Welcome to the Family, but ah, no. They don’t know who you are, exactly. I thought that would be fun, you know—element of surprise.”

You don’t exactly share the enthusiasm. “Eddie, I don’t know. . .”

“Oh, don’t get cold feet now, Mayfield! You don’t even know how practice has been this last week! I’ve never seen us so,” his hand waves in front of his face, helping him search for words, “synchronized? United? Possessed?!” You can’t help the snort that escapes.

Eddie’s words come as rushed as the van hurtles down the road, “I don’t know. I just can’t describe it. But it’s been different. There’s a fire that’s been lit, Mayfield, and it’s your words that did it.”

You stare ahead, silently, contemplating. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all? Maybe you were worrying over the band’s reaction over nothing. It was a comforting thought, but comfort wasn’t exactly something you were accustomed to feeling, having it ripped away at nearly every turn in recent years. It was easier to expect the worst.

You appreciate Eddie’s repeated glances over to where you sit, concern spreading across his face. His foot eases off the gas and the van slows.

“Um, tell me what you’re thinking there, sweetheart. It makes me nervous when you go all quiet like that,” Eddie speaks slowly and softly, voice wavering like his confidence in his plan.

He really thought it was a good plan. If only you’d been at their practice yesterday, he knows you wouldn’t be so far inside that head of yours right now. After last night, he knew without a doubt that you had to be at their next one. Plus, the guys were thrilled to throw in an extra Monday evening session and even more excited to meet the maker behind these lyrics that Eddie had brought to them a week ago. Grant had been out of his mind on the drums, and Gareth hadn’t shred on rhythm guitar like that, ever. These songs had breathed a new life into Corroded Coffin. You had to see it, you just had to.

You meet Eddie’s gaze with softness in your eyes that he hasn’t seen before. “I’m glad you’re bringing me. I’m just nervous, is all. Always expecting the bottom to drop out,” you confess.

Your vulnerability twangs Eddie’s heartstrings. “Ah, not with us, princess. Nothing is dropping or falling or going anywhere.”

His hand closest to yours twitches on the steering wheel, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by you. You feel the sweet beginning of a smile start to tug at the corner of your mouth as he rounds a turn into a rather upscale neighborhood.

To be fair, all of them are rather upscale by your and Eddie’s standards. Something about it, however, looks familiar. The question is out of your mouth before you know it.

“Uh, does Nancy Wheeler live around here?” You can’t quite control the way your mind drifts back to the events of the previous fall. You hadn’t known where Nancy Wheeler lived, either, until then. Life has a funny way of changing things.

Or, maybe just living in fucked-up Hawkins has a way of changing everything.

He chuckles. “Yeah. She does. Her house is actually at the end of this lane.”

Your interest is piqued as a tiny ember of something—jealousy?—threatens to burn in your belly. “How do you know where Nancy Wheeler lives?”

“I’m a known associate of a different Wheeler,” he explains absentmindedly as he maneuvers the van to reverse down a long driveway into an open garage adjoined to a modest white ranch home. And just like that, the ember is extinguished.

“Oh, I see,” you hum, smirking. “Karen?”

Eddie practically jumps in his seat, his eyes wide, and a falsely scandalized expression dances across his features. “Mayfield, was that you giving me some sass?” His hand splays over his heart.

You snigger. “You lobbed me a pretty decent softball.”

Eddie’s eyes roll dramatically as he leans over his seat and throws his arm behind yours to back up the van.

“Sports metaphors are dumb,” he mutters as he pokes his tongue out between his lips in concentration.

Maybe it was the confidence in his movements, maybe it was that the scent of Eddie hung heavily in the air around you, or maybe it was the small dopamine dump from the witty back-and-forth you’d just had with him, but as he expertly maneuvers his vehicle down Gareth’s drive, you feel a slight shift within yourself. You find yourself actually looking at Eddie Munson as if you were seeing him for the first time, and how you feel more than surprised you. He’d always been objectively handsome to you, sure. A fair amount of guys were at Hawkins High. However, there really wasn’t ever one that interested you enough to turn objective appreciation into genuine attraction. It wasn’t until Eddie threw that arm across your seat that you wondered how it might feel across your shoulders, or how much more you could inhale his scent if you were pressed against him, or what that tongue that pressed against his soft, ample lips could do to—

Wooooah. You feel your cheeks flame and you angle yourself away from him as he brings his arm around to throw his van in park. No, no, no. None of that.

He wiggles his eyebrows at you, nudging your shoulder gently. “Are you ready for Corroded Coffin to rock your world tonight, sweetheart?”

Jesus. He probably could not have chosen phrasing worse than that in this moment. You blanch slightly and your heart pounds as you stammer, “Um, y-yeah. Sure?”

He throws you a wink. “Don’t be nervous, seriously. It’s just the guys. Trust me, they want you here, too.” Then, he’s out the door and circling the van around the front to open yours and help you out. He grabs your hand, leading you toward the crew as they finish setting up their instruments in the garage. The contact threatens to further muddle your mind, and you muster up the energy to settle yourself down. You’re far from being ready for actual real-life, complex feelings.

Just stick to the feelings on paper, for now.

You can feel their eyes on you as you stumble behind Eddie, your eyes narrowing as you enter into the harsh fluorescent lighting of the garage. You appreciate Grant’s—or is that one Gareth?—wide-eyed expression as Eddie tugs you upright next to him.

“Gentlemen! May I have your attention—” Eddie addresses the band with his typical grandiosity, which Grant-or-Gareth is quick to interrupt.

“You always have the attention, man,” he jests as he stands from behind the drum set.

“Eddie, what is she doing here? No groupies allowed,” the shorter, curly-haired member says, his tone purposefully unpleasant as his eyes narrow fractionally at you. He looks familiar from school and you feel badly that you can’t place his name.

Eddie is a little taken aback. He shakes his head. “Uhh, not a groupie.”

“Well, I thought we agreed girls aren’t allowed to be at practices, man,” curly-hair retorts with frustration as he shoulders his guitar.

“YES!” Eddie’s toothy grin returns as he sneaks a glance at you before replying, “however, I believe an exception can be made for this fair maiden, Gareth.”

Ah. So that one’s Gareth.

Eddie is largely unbothered by his bandmate’s clear disdain for your presence. His excitement is a stark contrast to your apprehension; this is exactly what you were concerned about.

“Everyone,” Eddie’s arm splay out wide as he slightly bows to indicate your presence behind him, “this is—”

“I know what her name is, Eddie,” snaps Gareth, interrupting him for a second time. “What is she doing here?”

Eddie is now visibly annoyed. “She’s the reason why we called this extra practice.”

“Oh, so you can show your new girlfriend our new songs?” Eddie blanches and Gareth presses on. “Dude, that’s so lame. We have a no girls agreement.”

“Yeah, as you've said like a thousand times. That no-girls agreement goes out the goddamn window when the girl is a badass songwriter! SHE is THE badass songwriter!” Eddie argues and his praise again brings a hot flush to your cheeks. You step behind him slightly, hiding yourself out of view of the cantankerous guitarist.

Gareth’s jaw clenches and he folds his arms across his chest. The other two, however, register what Eddie has just said and begin talking loudly over one another.

Eddie flails his arms wildly to catch Grant and Jeff’s attention. “GUYS! If you would just give me two seconds to introduce Elder Mayfield? Jesus H. Christ, I’m surrounded by a bunch of assholes and children.”

The bassist snickers. “Arguably, I think there’s only one asshole here. Hey, I’m Jeff. I think we had Econ together last year.”

You lean around Eddie and crook a soft smile as you give him a little wave. You open your mouth to reply when it’s abruptly cut off.

“Hey, I’m Grant,” the drummer calls to you, a little too loudly. He stumbles over himself slightly as he comes around his drum set. “It’s so cool you’re here, I can’t believe it’s you that wrote all of those songs, Eddie showed us that notebook last week; well, I guess then it’s your notebook that he showed us—”

“Ohhkay, there Grant, slow down there buddy. Don’t scare her off, she just got here.” Eddie tosses his arm across your shoulders and protectively pulls you flush against him. “So, as you’ve learned, Jeff is our bassist and Grant is on the drums. The asshole standing over there is Gareth, and he’s our rhythm guitarist. And, of course, you already know me, sweetheart.” Eddie’s crooked smile reaches those doe-eyes of his and it’s hard to stay nervous when he looks at you like that.

“And songwriter,” Gareth mutters.

Eddie grits his teeth. “And songwriter. Yes. Gareth the Man-Child songwriter and I write a lot of our stuff. Fuck, man, you were the one that was most excited to work on Nightmare this past week! What the hell is your problem?”

Gareth’s eyes are locked with Eddie’s. It’s a tense moment before Gareth relents and meets your gaze.

“We just don’t typically have chicks here.” He shrugs, like it’s a viable explanation for his behavior.

Eddie throws up his hands. “Jesus. Fucking children.”

“Hey, uh, are you Max Mayfield’s sister?” Grant asks as he maneuvers back to his place at his drums.

A shy smile sneaks across your face at the mention of your sister’s name. “Yeah,” you huff softly. “That’d be me.”

“Oh, is that the one Lucas is dating?” Jeff asks as he goes to plug in his bass.

You’re a little more than surprised at that. “I—maybe? They did, but I don’t know if they still are. How do you know that?”

“A few of the freshmen have joined our Hellfire Club,” Eddie explains. You raise your eyebrow. “It’s our D & D group? Lucas is one of them,” Eddie’s voice drops low so it’s only you that can hear, “Mike Wheeler is another. Hence my aforementioned association with the Wheelers, you wiseass.”

You bite your lip to stifle a chuckle. Suppose he got you there.

Gareth speaks up, and his tone is noticeably more even. “Hey, do we want to show her what we’ve been working on, or do you just wanna stay in here and keep chatting like freakin’ cheerleaders?”

Eddie snaps to attention and motions his finger guns at Gareth. “Absolutely, my friend! I, ah—gotta go get my guitar.” He turns and jogs swiftly back to his van.

Jeff rolls his eyes. “C’mon man, you were already late!”

Eddie returns and shushes Jeff. He tosses his head in your direction. “Have a seat over there, sweetheart. We’ll show you what we’ve got so far.”

He finishes setting up his guitar, and counts the band in. Eddie’s fingers pluck a gentle, mesmerizing melody for several frames before he and Gareth dive into the heavy, almost disorienting mirror image of the intro. It’s almost as if you’re hearing a lullaby played here, and then played again as a maddened version created by the Upside Down.

It was frightening how fucking fantastic Eddie was able to capture exactly what you wanted out of this song, and he wasn’t even eight frames in. You’re standing up, head bobbing and body swaying to the wicked tempo—like you could actually sit as your song comes to life. Grant plays like a man possessed, the way he crashes across his drums is otherworldly and Jeff’s bass sends vibrations through you that’re all consuming. Eddie’s vocals are disquieting and magnetic at the same time; you couldn’t tear your gaze away from him if you tried. You watch as his gritty voice belts your lyrics, eyes closed in concentration, head banging and shaking his curly mane in time with the beat.

You almost lose your balance when Eddie starts shredding the guitar solo about four minutes in. Your eyes can’t widen enough to take in the sight in front of you—the lightning fast efficiency of his fingers have you riveted and you’re completely unaware that you bite your bottom lip as you watch him play. Jeff clocks your reaction and grins widely as they dive into the bridge.

It’s an intense call-and-answer spin on your lyrics, and it’s beyond your expectations. Eddie’s eyes lock with yours as he growls,

Lost

Hit the wall

Watch you crawl

Such a replicable liar

He gets to his self-proclaimed favorite line, and that fucker gives you the most heart-stopping crooked smile as he winks — he throws you a goddamn wink — before launching into the final rendition of the chorus.

The song ends, and it feels like your life begins. The last chords hang in the air as the men of Corroded Coffin await your reaction.

“So,” Eddie breathlessly asks as he wipes his bandana across his sweaty forehead. “Does the Elder Mayfield approve? Did we do your Nightmare justice?”

You take a couple of steps toward the lead singer. “Elton,” your voice is hoarse with emotion, and you look to the other members so they know you mean them, too, before settling in on Eddie. You jab your index finger into his leather clad chest. “Not ‘my’ any longer. That’s our fucking Nightmare.”

Eddie’s nostrils flare and his eyes flash with something unrecognizable before he cackles and wraps you in a bone-crushing embrace. Even mushed against his guitar, you can feel the hammering of his heart, and you find yourself returning the hug. Over your mingled, lingering laughter, you hear Gareth bark a sardonic laugh and exclaim,

“Did she just fucking refer to our lead singer as Elton fucking John?”

The Beginning ✨

Next Chapter ➡️

He had three extremely overprotective big brothers constantly by his side making sure he didn't do anything dumb, but they also made sure he didn't do anything at all.

"Promised your mom we would watch out for you," Jeff said.

"Last thing we need is you getting involved with some girl and ruining the band," Frankie said.

"Don't rush it, man," Eddie said.

But Gareth was now 20 years old and had never even kissed a girl. Or a boy, he didn't know what he was into. How could he? None of them would leave him alone long enough in the bars he was technically too young to get into to try.

Tonight. He would find a way to shake them tonight. He'd find a girl in the crowd, he'd buy her a drink, and he'd hope that she'd at least be willing to check this one thing off his list.

If he was gonna be a rockstar, he should get to kiss someone.

They were playing a smaller venue tonight, opening for a band that was bigger than them in theory, but not in talent. Story of their lives.

Hopefully, everyone would be distracted by the main act to not pay attention if he slipped off.

He was dripping sweat, cursing the fact that these small venues never had decent ventilation or fans for them to cool off, and the stage lights were always too close, building up a furnace on the stage.

His drums were packed, his shirt rolled up to help him cool off the best he could while he sipped on water. He hadn't even gotten a beer tonight, a nervous flutter in his stomach that he didn't want to make worse with feeling bloated from the combination of hops and heat.

"Gare!" Jeff's voice interrupted his walk towards the bar.

Dammit.

"You wanna head out? We're all so fuckin' hot."

"Yeah, yeah, let me just grab another water. Feeling kinda lightheaded."

That was definitely not the right thing to say. Jeff's mouth turned down in a concerned frown.

"Well, let's get you outside then. You need some fresh air. Eddie!" Eddie yelled back in acknowledgement. "Get Gareth a water!"

"I'm okay, I can get it." He argued, desperate to let his plan work. "You guys head out, be there in a few."

"Like hell am I leaving you alone when you're not feeling good," Jeff wrapped his arm around his shoulders and started pulling him towards the door. "You gotta speak up sooner."

"Jeff. Please."

Something in his voice must have alerted Jeff to the seriousness of his plan because he quickly pulled his arm away.

"What's going on?"

"I just need to be alone for a bit. Please?" Gareth wasn't afraid to pull out the pout. The pout worked on his mom every time. It had to work now, too. "Just for a little bit?"

Jeff searched his face, probably trying to see if there was something he should be worried about.

"I'll distract them for 15 minutes. But that's all I can guarantee," he finally agreed. "Whatever it is you're planning, please be safe. Please."

"What the hell could I possibly get up to in 15 minutes?"

Jeff sighed. "Don't ever ask that question to Eddie or Frankie."

He walked away and Gareth watched as he convinced them both to walk outside, probably to get some fresh air. He probably didn't have to be that convincing.

God, it was so hot.

The bar area of the venue was crowded, a lot of people taking the break between sets to throw back a shot or chug a beer. He genuinely did just need a water, so he forced his way through the people and got the attention of the bartender.

"Not a fan of beer?" A woman in a black dress and leather jacket asked him. She was smiling, sipping on something that could be water, might be a vodka tonic. The lighting wasn't good enough to see bubbles.

"Not a fan of being hot," Gareth smiled.

"Awful confident of you."

Oh. Oh shit. Was she flirting with him?

"Trying something new tonight, I guess."

"Oh? Anything in particular?"

Gareth liked her smile, her eyes. She seemed a few years older than him, closer to Eddie's age.

"Well…I've never actually kissed anyone before," Gareth figured honesty was the best policy.

"Never?" She didn't believe him, but that was okay. She'd figure it out if she let him make a move.

"Never."

"Let's give it a go then."

So he did.

She leaned in, closed her eyes, and he was having his first kiss. He didn't know her name, he was surrounded by hundreds of people, and he was certain that stars were exploding behind his eyes.

She pulled away after a few seconds, smiling, winking, and walked away.

"Damn, she didn't even give you a name?" A guy to Gareth's left asked, watching as she walked away.

Gareth shook his head. "Didn't need it."

The guy touched his arm and smiled at him, much like the woman had before.

"I'm Evan. You're the drummer, right?"

"Sure am."

"You wanna have a kiss with someone you know the name of?" Evan asked.

Gareth wasn't about to pass up this opportunity, so he nodded.

When Evan kissed him, he saw fireworks.

Stars and fireworks.

"Wanna come outside?" Evan asked.

Gareth shook his head.

"Eddie," Gareth says, and they've corralled Eddie. Cornered him, and now all they can do is watch him rage. He's destroying his hotel room. But none of them are about to tell him to knock it the fuck off. Not today. Not over this. 

He bounces off the wall and Goodie braces for impact. Catches and releases him in one fluid motion.

"Eddie, you can't do this," Jeff says, but Eddie's not listening. 

But Eddie's got a temper, a short fuse, always has. But it's never manifested like this before. 

"You're too old to act like this!" Gareth screams, and fuck if he isn't right.

But they've also never dealt with anything this personal before, either. And it spiraled into a major scandal in one afternoon. Their PR is working on a spin, but Goodie's not sure how they're gonna get Eddie out of this one. Enough of it's true, a straight denial is never gonna work. Eddie is on the birth certificate of a brand new baby. With a woman married to someone else. Living in the suburbs, with three other kids at home. 

Those are just facts. There's no getting around 'em. Everything about this is bad optics. 

It's just the context these fucking vultures don't know, and honestly, don't deserve to know.

Chrissy's been married to Steve for nearly twenty years, but he's been with Eddie longer. Chrissy, with Robin. Those kids? Shared in a way Goodie can't understand. It's a fucking mess, and not anything Goodie would want any part of, personally, but they did what they thought they needed to do back then. And until now it had worked. 

Only this time, they used Eddie's sperm and his name on the birth certificate. Not realizing people would dig around, gleefully releasing that info. 

A good marriage, as lavender as it may be, about to be blown to fucking smithereens. 

Eddie, slandered, shamed. 

Steve's not here. Steve's in the fucking Palisades, at home. Probably getting ready for a PTA meeting or practice. The perfect stay-at-home dad, with the perfect wife, who loves her job and works long hours.

Eddie screams at the top of his lungs, and they're gonna get complaints. Even in the middle of the day. 

Gareth goes in, wrapping his arms around Eddie, trying to hold on, trying to calm him down. But Eddie shoves him off, and Goodie takes a fucking knee with a thud that fucking hurts, goddammit, but he makes it down in time to catch Gareth. The last thing they need is Gareth with two broken arms from catching himself on the floor under this thin carpet.

"Thanks," Gareth breathes, hands squeezing both of Goodie's shoulders, sprawled on top of him. It knocked the wind out of Goodie, but neither of them are hurt, and Jeff helps both of them right themselves. As much as they can, right now, anyway.

They might be done for a little while. This might not blow over. Eddie might get arrested if he can't pull his shit together. Quick.

Goodie supposes that depends on the route Steve and Eddie and Chrissy and Robin want to take. Come clean, or batten the hatches and take the onslaught until something more scandalous comes along in the news cycle.

"Sorry," Eddie says, reaching for Gareth, and Gareth reaches back, wrapping him in a hug. One that Eddie is ready for, this time. "I'm just so mad," he says, under his breath, but it's enough for them all to hear. "I know," Jeff says, "we'll find a way to fix it. We will. You'll see."

Goodie goes back to his own room and calls Steve.

"Oh, yeah, they're here," Steve says, and describes the paparazzi standing outside of the gated house. 

"At least they aren't on the lawn?"

Steve laughs, and Steve's not worked up in the slightest, it seems.

"Eddie's having some sort of mental breakdown, and you're just, what, fine?" Goodie asks.

"I'm not fine, but there's no reason to get so fucking worked up. Can you put him on the phone?"

"He's not in here, but I'll get him to call you."

"Tell him it's fine. We're fine. Whatever happens, it's all fine. I'm fine. Chrissy's fine. The kids are fine. Robin's fine. Tell him we're all good over here."

"I will," Goodie says, and he's not sure Eddie will accept good as an answer today, but he'll try.

They are past the point that being queer is gonna tank Eddie's career. So, Goodie doesn't think it's the coming out that has Eddie in such a goddamn tizzy. Goodie's pretty sure it's the loss of normalcy for the kids, for Steve, Chrissy, and Robin that he's furious about, that he's mourning. Steve loves Eddie, but he wanted a family, a life and a home.

He didn't want to spend a lifetime on the road. So, a plan was hatched. A deal in place, and it's worked so damn well. For decades. Eddie had a homebase nobody knew about, Steve has his three kids and a pool-full of age-groupers to coach.

Maybe if they were coming of age now, they wouldn't have taken this route. Adoption for two queer men would have been an option. But, twenty years ago, this was the best idea they had. 

And now here they are. Freaks. Front page news.

Goodie basically scruffs Eddie like an angry cat, even if he's not currently shredding the curtains, and marches him right to his phone.

"Call Steve. He's good. You'll feel better after you do."

"What if our phones are bugged?" Eddie asks.

"Jesus H. Christ, Ed, so what if they are? Fuck 'em. There's no tap dancing out of this one. Some sort of the truth is gonna have to be announced. Don't fuck things up with your family because you're mad things aren't exactly as you want them to be."  

That's a problem Eddie has, and they all know it. It's his way, or the highway, always. And they've all stupidly catered to it maybe a little too much over the years.

But Goodie watches him dial, and waits until he's sure he's connected and calm. 

"Hi," Eddie says, then adds, "Anything new going on?"

And Goodie can hear Steve laughing through the phone, and Goodie's blood pressure plummets back to normal. It's gonna be fine.

Steve's got it from here. 

Back in the safety of his own room, Goodie crashes into the chair, and pulls out his own phone. It's finally cooled down, though the battery is depleting.

He calls home, too.

"You're famous," she says, and he laughs.

"Fucking Eddie. My knee hurts," he says, and then starts gossiping in the way you only can with your spouse. Telling her everything he knows.

Eddie padded over to where you stood at the stove, his plaid pajama pants slung low on his waist and drawstrings untied. He haphazardly scratched at the wispy hairs on his bare chest before resting his hands on your hips. 

“Morning, baby.” You kissed him softly, relishing the way his stubble tickled your chin. “Breakfast is almost ready. We got eggs and toast—”

Eddie shook his head, his messy curls swaying back and forth in indignation. 

“Don’t want that,” he grumbled. His fingers curled into the hem of the t-shirt you’d worn to bed. It was just an oversized Corroded Coffin shirt; when Eddie’d moved out of his uncle’s place, he’d brought the box of the band’s old merchandise with him. “Want you.”

You raised your brows. “Right now?” Your gaze dipped down to your own sweatpants, baggy and stained and not the least bit sexy. Decidedly unsexy, in fact.

“Mhm.” His lips brushed your collarbone. “Wanna eat you up. Lookin’ so damn good.”

In truth, this was all Eddie ever wanted: the stability and tranquility of a domestic life. He’d spent his early twenties playing in dive bars, finding women to sleep with every so often. But after a while, there was a hollowness that followed; sex was great, but he longed for something more. 

And now he had it: a house of his own and a wife who made it a home. 

“Eds…I…” you scrambled for words, “at least let me shower first.”

“No.” Eddie growled, his voice raspy with sleep and desire. “Just like this.”

With one smooth movement, he flicked off the stovetop burner. The eggs sat lamely in the pan, unevenly cooked, but Eddie couldn’t be deterred.  

“You’re so…fucking…beautiful like this.” He punctuated each pause with a kiss to your neck. “My pretty…little…wife.”

A shiver slipped down your spine as his hands trailed beneath your shirt. His fingertips danced higher until he reached your breasts, cupping one and teasing the nipple of the other.

Your body instinctively pressed against his, melting into his needy touch. His pajama pants did nothing to hide his arousal, nor did he make any effort to conceal it. No, he wanted you to know exactly what you did to him.

Eddie groaned when your own hand slid under his waistband. “No underwear, Munson?” You asked, a teasing lilt in your voice, well-aware that he never wore underwear to bed. 

“N-Nuh-uh,” he stammered. “Just…fuck, keep touching me.”

You stroked him, running your thumb through the pre-cum that leaked from his tip. “What’s got you all worked up this morning?”

He choked out a laugh. “You,” he admitted, “looking all perfect.”

“I look like I just crawled out of a cave!”

“You look perfect,” Eddie insisted. He kissed you deeply before tugging your shirt up over your head and tossing it aside. “Wish I didn’t have to work so I could wake up to this every day.”

You bit back a grin. “We kinda need the money for food, electricity…”

“We’ll live off the land,” he protested weakly, still fighting to focus with your hand wrapped around his erection. “Forage or whatever. And we’ll keep ourselves warm. Body heat and all that–holy shit.” 

His train of thought veered off the track when you got on your knees in front of him. You figured he’d let you pull his pajama pants down and take charge, but to your surprise, he grabbed your wrist before you could take them past his thighs.

“I got a better idea.” 

He helped you to your feet and practically flung you into the bedroom. You laid atop the unmade bedsheets, expecting Eddie to climb over you, but he once again threw you for a loop:

“Flip over.” 

You did as he instructed, assuming the position for doggy-style. Eddie chuckled from where he knelt behind you.

“No, baby. Lay on that cute tummy.” He playfully smacked your ass, still clad in sweatpants. “There ya go.”

You felt his weight on top of yours, immediately embracing his warmth. Maybe skimping on the electricity bill wouldn’t be that bad if it meant staying like this… 

One of his callused hands grabbed your hip while the other snuck below your panties. He didn’t even need to look to find your clit, expertly pressing circles against it.

“Love the way you shiver,” Eddie mumbled in your ear. “Every time, too. Lets me know I’m doing somethin’ right.”

Right didn’t even begin to explain the pleasure coursing through you. Right wasn’t strong enough; Eddie’s touch was exquisite. He knew exactly how much pressure, the speed, and the finger position needed to make you crumble in a matter of minutes.

“Mhm, f-fuck, s’good,” was all you managed. Eddie gently nipped at your earlobe, his cock nudging against the curve of your ass. You needed him inside you, needed him filling you entirely, needed him to claim you as his and only his.

Your legs trembled as you came, moving your hips into Eddie’s touch. His stroke slowed, bringing you down from the high of your orgasm. 

“Eddie…” you whined, carelessly reaching behind you to yank at his pants. You didn’t care how his pants came off, as long as they did.

He got the message, shucking them down his legs and letting them fall off the edge of the bed. He pumped himself, groaning under his breath the moment his hand wrapped around his length.

“You want it, honey?” Eddie cooed, sliding his cock through your wetness. “Fuck, ‘m gonna give it to ya.”

He pushed into you, moaning your name as he sank deeper. 

“Oh, fuck, baby.” Eddie moved slowly, settling in before finally bottoming out. “Y’always take me s-so good. My good girl. W-Wanna mark you up. Make you mine forever.”

You nodded, clenching around him needily. “Yours. ‘M yours.”

“Gonna keep you mine.” Eddie’s hair brushed your bare back with each thrust. “My pretty wife. Wanna make you a mommy.”

You stilled. It’s not that you didn’t want kids; Eddie never felt strongly about parenthood one way or the other, and the conversation hadn’t gone much farther than that.

Certainly, he’d never talked about making you a mommy.

“Wanna see you grow my baby in that cute tummy,” Eddie continued. “And everyone’s gonna know that you’re my girl.”

“Y-Yeah?”

“Mhm.” He growled, fingertips digging into your sides with enough force to leave half-moons behind. “Wanna come home and see my pretty little wife growin’ my baby.”

His hips snapped forward, burying every godforsaken inch of himself in your walls. You’d never seen him this feral before; not even after he’d worked nightshifts for a month and your schedules hadn’t allowed time for sex. Tonight was something different, almost primal.

“I-I’ll grow your baby.” As you said the words, you realized just how true they were. Nothing sounded more perfect than having his baby, one with his soft brown eyes or dark curly hair. “Give me your baby, Eddie. Make me a mommy.”

Eddie let out a string of curses, emptying himself into you with a few punctuated thrusts, 

“That’s it. Fuck, that’s it, sweetheart. Take it.”

His fingers snaked around, finding your clit again and sending a shockwave of pleasure through your body. 

He spoke through panting breaths. “Heard it’s more likely to take if you come, too.”

If that was all that was needed, he’d get you pregnant right away. You came harder than you did the first time, raveled up in the feeling of him inside and out.

The two of you laid there, unmoving, until Eddie finally worked up the energy to speak.

“You, uh…you’re still taking those birth control pills, right?” He asked sheepishly.

“Uh-huh.” You stretched out, careful to keep him inside you even as he softened. 

Eddie sighed with relief. “Thank God. Because the thought of actually chasing around after a little rugrat…gonna need a second to think that through.”

“Same,” you agreed. “But we can still pretend until we figure it out, right?”

After a few years of marriage, you didn’t even need to look at your husband to know he was smiling.

“Oh, hell yes.” Eddie pressed a kiss to your shoulder blade. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be ready to practice again.”