lol Help

it's been three months. barely. and there's nothing official to deserve a declaration of love. peter drops the bowl in his hands from a slightly raised position, it clatters against the ceramic.

your feelings aren't wrong. not even in the slightest. but peter thinks they might be misplaced. love? him? he doesn't deserve that, not from you.

you don't look like you're dropping a secret confession, like it's been swirling around in your head until it just blurted out on it's own. you said it soft and sweet, as if you've been saying it since the day you met him.

peter's heart is hammering in his chest, he cuts the tap and turns to face you. 'cherry, that's...' he doesn't want to say wrong, he doesn't want to say you're confused, he doesn't want to push down any feelings of yours or minimize them. 'that's a really big thing to say.'

your bottom lip goes crooked from nibbling on the corner. you think about it for half a second before shaking your head. 'no, i don't think so. i tell lots of people i love them, you're just getting added to the list.'

but under the context of things... he doesn't deserve that. he doesn't deserve your love. that should come when he's man enough to admit he wants you to love him. he hasn't earned those three words and he doesn't want them to look cheap.

'yeah, but love is a really big feeling, right? i don't know if i've earned that yet.' you laugh, a bright giggle bounces against the wall he's building over his heart. not to shut you out but to protect you from the many faults of peter parker he's been trying to hide from you.

'you're my friend, peter.' you wrap your hand around his arm. 'you're one of my best friends and my number one guy best friend. i love my friends and i tell them that all the time, why would you be an exception?'

peter taps his fingers on the counter, he doesn't know how to say it in a nice way. 'because even if we call each other friends, we're not just doing friendly things and saying you love me blurs the lines a little bit.'

your face falls a little, peter takes a small step forward. when he's about to try and soften up, open up a little and explain his position on love and relationships, you let out another giggle. it explodes, you're laughing loud and letting it echo off the kitchen cabinets.

'no wonder you're so freaked out. peter, i'm not saying i'm in love with you, i'm just saying that i love you. i love your presence in my life, i love the things we do together, i love a lot of things about you but i'm not in love with you. loving someone and being in love are two totally different things. like, i've never had a boyfriend before but even i know that.'

peter's quiet, you try and make it make sense to him. you lightly hit his arm with the back of your hand when you think of a better example. 'like ethan! you love ethan. he's your best friend, right? you love the things that make him who he is, you love spending time with him, you love talking with him for hours on end about nothing, but you're not in love with him. get what i mean?'

but there's a difference in some of the things he does with ethan and some of the things he does with you. when he gently reminds you of that, you wave him off.

'doing sex stuff with someone doesn't mean you're dating them. friends with benefits is a real thing and i think we're best friends with benefits.'

peter gives you a certain type of look you haven't been able to decode yet. 'how many friends with benefits say they love each other?'

your eyebrows furrow, lips falling into an adorable pout. it's your 'i'm right and you're going to acknowledge it' face. 'i don't care what other people do. you're my best friend and i love my friends, i'd tell you i love you if we have sex all the time or if we never do. i'm not saying you have to say it, especially if it means something different for you, but i'm going to say it and you don't need to freak out every time i do.'

peter licks his lips, you take a step towards him, your socked toes push against his. 'if my meaning of i love you changes, you'll be the first one to know.' at last, after a small battle, you win. a tiny head nod from peter was all you needed, you swallow him in a hug, wrapping your arms around his neck.

you kiss his cheek when you pull back, 'love you.' peter doesn't say it back but you don't mind, you're sure you'll soften him up eventually. you take a glance at the oven timer and struggle to lift yourself on the counter, peter helps you, you keep his hold on your waist.

'we have seven minutes to make out.'

the lines you draw are blurry in peter's vision. he's somewhere between like and love, feeling something deeper he hasn't felt the need to put a name to yet.

'seven minutes, huh?'

you nod your head, peter allows you to tug him closer by his shirt and slips between your thighs, immediately grabbing your hips and digging his thumbs under your hoodie to rest against your skin.

your kisses start slow before bleeding into something stronger, but still sweet. it's airy and light, there's a very faint chocolate taste, peter would tease you about stealing a couple chocolate chips when he wasn't looking but he doesn't want to. he doesn't want to stop this for anything.

something settles in his chest and refuses to leave, like a cat curled up in a sunspot. and for just a second, peter lets go and allows himself to forget. forget about his jaw hurting, forget about the rules he had in place, forget about your i love you meaning something different.

you pull away for a break, peter follows you and brushes his nose against yours. for someone claiming they're not falling in love, you're making it harder and harder for peter to keep that mindset because one of these days, he's going to say it back. he's going to tell you he loves you too and you'll think he's being friendly but he's already unable to picture a future without you in it.

instead of dwelling on it, peter checks the timer. four minutes. he whispers under his breath. 'is this the part where you say you love me again?' you lean into him, your lips bump against his as you answer. 'kisses first.'

Too consumed with the fake fucking, he gets a little too into it; his cock not quite grasping that he was actually asleep. It all gets slightly too real and he jolts himself awake, the feel of your body next to him quite similar to the position of you in his dream. 

He reaches under the bedding and to his semi, palming over the ache with a soft hand. He pauses and brushes his fingers upwards, running along the splotch of wet he had created on the inside of the covers. He thought he had grown out of that stage, but clearly not. 

Peter twists into your nude body curled peacefully in front of him, soft breaths and snores falling from you in that way he will never not love. Encompassing a hand around your middle, he settles his palm to your stomach, fingers pawing slowly at the squidge like he couldn't quite help himself. 

He shimmies in closer and slots his chin into the exposed dip between neck and shoulder. Peering over you, he looks at the clock on the nightstand on your side of the bed, the time reading just after four. He debates with himself for a moment, for a while really, trying to gauge just how selfish he would be to wake you; to disturb you from sleep just because he had an ache in his dick that only you could fix.

Pressing a gentle litter of kisses into the side of your neck, he listens to the change in your breathing — the pattern letting him you were growing lucid. It was accidental, to stir you. Well that's what he told himself anyway.

The kisses pause for a moment, though his mouth resumes with its lingering — lips ghosting you as his fluffy stubble grazes at you. 

"I want you," he whispers into your skin, words quiet and thick with sleep. "Can't sleep," he punctuates it with a kiss, and another, and another. "Can I put it in?" he asks and sears another kiss into your neck. "Just for a little."

You're still consumed in your rest, though there's a tinge of consciousness within you, so much so that you give him a faint hum — wordlessly agreeing seeing as you were far too tired to respond with something vocal. 

It was all he needed, that little sound. Just that little indication. And so he peels his arm from its placement across your waist and reaches down to polish the end of his cock, giving himself a few slow pumps. You're both nude from earlier on, so clothes are no such fuss for him right now. 

He itches closer and nudges the head of his dick into you from behind, moving clumsily from lack of sight and the tight angle you're laid in. Finally, he slots himself between your ass cheeks and bumps against your cunt from behind, halting when he meets a moments resistance. 

Luckily, you're still fairly wet from earlier on, residue not yet drying in and around your pussy, and so Peter slips into you rather easily. At the immediate wrapping of your cunt around him, he exhales heavily into the nape of your neck, the sound nothing short of relief. He doesn't move, he doesn't nudge or push or wind, instead he stills, keeping his dick tucked inside as he relishes in the comfort your cunt somehow brings him.

He wraps his arm back around you, slotting it across your body so he could fit a hand between your tits — mindlessly grasping onto one like again, it's a source of comfort. It's absentminded, no intention behind it; simply a way to get comfortable. Peter's heavy eyes flutter against the back of your bare neck and breaths lightly and evenly into your skin, his rapid heartbeat mellowing out against your back. 

"Thank you."

Is all he says, words earnest and tired. Relieved.

⎯ ☆ ⎯

Chapter 1: The Number You Have Dialed

"Can we turn the music down? I can't even hear myself think," Gwen shouts.

The air is buzzing with excitement as your apartment is filled with the booming sound of your go-to getting ready playlist.

You and Gwen were crammed into one bathroom, which is now an amalgamated disaster of your discarded second-choice outfits and a sickening amount of make-up products. You were anxiously dolling yourselves up for the party at Harry Osborn's house, and with the pent-up stress from work and school, both of you were dying to let off a little steam.

Luckily, and with some string pulling, your apartments were right next to each other, so you could hang out whenever your schedules allowed. It made it a lot easier for times like this, when there was a special occasion to prepare for, or you had to cram for an exam.

"That’s the point! Glasses or contacts?" You scream back, looking in the mirror with your glasses on, head tilted. She takes them, putting them on.

"Jesus, how are you not legally blind? If someone accidentally knocks these off of your face you're screwed."

You snatch them back, scoffing, and give your anxious reflection a look of doubt. You always looked up to her. She was everything you wanted to be: intelligent, beautiful, caring, socially competent, loyal... you try not to get too in your head about it.

Gwen is your best friend. Your routine often consisted of shooting the shit on FaceTime when she goes to visit her family at home or wanting to tear each other's heads off in Mario Party. She was the only one you were sure understood you the most. She could break you down by atom and reconstruct you exactly, not a piece out of place.

You met in high school, what seems like decades in the past, becoming friends as she was your partner for most classes in freshman year. It was you and her against the world. That was, until her brain rapidly outgrew yours and she was enrolled in university-level classes more proportionate to her intellect at the ripe age of 13.

Then began the start of your demise, where she introduced her new partner, the pest that you just couldn't seem to shake. One that took the form of a gangly smart-ass, a then-teenage boy as equally awkward as he is irritating - Peter Parker.

You were open to him at first, friends even. It was fun to hang out as a group, prepubescent Peter the smallest out of all of you, always needing to be defended from the weekly upperclassman bully or girls asking him out as a dare.

You and him even hung out alone from time to time, weekends spent up in his room watching scary movies and trying not to throw up Aunt May's burnt meatloaf at the gore, inevitably falling asleep a sweaty pile of limbs in his twin bed.

It was a habit that trekked through freshman and sophomore year, when you developed unrequited feelings even before he shot up in height and started growing into his features (not that that helped). You were starstruck and smitten, something you swore to yourself for months you were on the verge of confessing, until the untimely death of his uncle Ben.

After Ben’s murder Peter was like a loyal dog gone rabid. He was standoffish and cynical. A lighthearted anecdote would be met with a patronizing comment. He became easily set off and combative and in the rapidly decreasing interactions you did have, you were convinced he would do everything in his power to hurt you. Of course you forgave him for it at first, he was grieving, but after months on your end spent trying to rekindle, you gradually discovered that when Ben died the Peter you knew did too.

Those months were gruesome. As much as you tried to deny it, it was your Sisyphean task. You were ready to consume all of his pain along with yours, mix the sorrow and vitriol in a vial that coated the pit in your stomach. He didn’t let you. You lost track of the countless voicemails you left, the texts that would remain unanswered; when you dialed his number like you always did to let him know he was being thought of, to be his tether to the world when he was only an apparition - never fully there, haunting his own life - just to be met with the automated voice saying his number was no longer in service.

You were at least able to check on May, who would open the door to see you with a watery smile and grant you a maternal embrace. You and May would doze off on her well-worn love seat after a night spent laughing and crying at her and Ben’s wedding tapes.

To make matters worse it became a default for you to rearrange your own plans so that you could pick up a stranded Gwen, who’d hesitantly confess to you that Peter ditched on their plans with yet another nonsensical excuse. You started keeping track as the lies got more egregious.

As inconvenient as putting your life on hold was, that wasn't what bothered you the most; it was the disappointment in her face. Every time Peter was on the brink of being tolerable he missed one of her once in a lifetime events and gets off scot-free, leaving you to deal with the emotional turmoil. You didn’t think it was right to celebrate his sparse attendance or lament over his lack thereof, when you were the one who showed up every time. But no matter what, you were sidelined for Peter.

When it comes to yourself, you don't feel worthy enough to be anywhere, take up space, which is why you would fight tooth and nail for the little people you did have in your circle, something you thought would be common practice.

There isn't necessarily something outwardly wrong with you, but you felt that the inherent fabric of your being didn’t match the genetic makeup of others, something intrinsic that curdled you from birth. Socializing was a lot of effort and until meeting Gwen, you never left an encounter without feeling entirely alien. When you tried enough your mask was impressive, camouflaging when the environments call for it, but the imposter syndrome never leaves. It’s caused more sleepless nights than you’d like to admit wondering whether it was in a jaded eldest daughter or Patrick Bateman kind of way.

You avoid bearing your soul to others about this, especially considering the cliché, “I’m not like other girls,” epidemic that plagued 2000’s media. Gwen tells you that you need to stop overthinking so much. It was a work in progress.

“I believe it is time for us to take another shot" you exclaim, rubbing your hands together deviously.

You promptly exit the bathroom, which feels overly similar to a clown car, and beeline toward the kitchen to pour drinks.

"Let's maybe not go so heavy handed tonight, yeah?" She pats you on the back and you stick your tongue out.

"Are you talking about my ‘21st’ birthday? That was one time!"

“I can’t believe those fake IDs worked. Your ‘just turned 21’ sash was so cute. Do you remember when you got so drunk you asked the bartender if you could pour us our shots? He like, got the glasses out and everything, but you just started dumping the bottle into people's mouths. And he let you! I should've stopped it when the guy next to me threw up on the counter but I'm not gonna refuse the birthday girl. That's like, a cardinal sin. I swear that was the closest we've gotten to alcohol poisoning." She laughs goofily, and you swat her, sucking your teeth.

"That bartender was so sweet too. Long live Ed,” you reminisce.

"You know, Harry told me he got fired around then. It was probably because of you," Gwen says.

You give her a knowing look. "Oh, did he? What else did Harry say, hm? Do you have him do any extra credit?" You giggle childishly, poking her. "Oh, you're so pretty and smart. And blonde. And pretty. Did I already mention that?"

Gwen's face reddens. "He also says the Uber he so generously got us is almost here. Do you have something to say about that too?"

“Fair enough,” you concede, laughing.

Some people would argue it’s the bare minimum from an heir to billions, but we all know 20 dollars can make or break a broke college student’s week.

Harry and Gwen met through Peter, when Harry started falling behind in his classes. He originally asked Peter for help, but Peter unsurprisingly to no one, was too busy to help his friend, claiming he was already stretched thin with this semester's schedule. He volunteered Gwen to tutor him instead. The resulting crush was almost immediate, even though she tries in vain not to make it seem so obvious.

She never got a lot of romantic attention in the past which made her a little naive. The students of Midtown looked at her as the super-genius mascot, unrelatable but still nice to look at, and after the fiasco with Curt Connors they treated her like a circus act.

You remember congratulating her on her news debut, flaunting the youngest intern to grace Oscorp’s building, and watching in horror at the subsequent broadcast showcasing her narrow escape from The Lizard. She suffered the wrath of survivor's guilt and PTSD at the loss of her father, and the student body was merciless, grilling her on what it was like to work with Spider-Man and what The Lizard looked like up close.

You couldn't lie and say there weren't multiple occasions where you’ve been curious as well, but it was an asshole move to bring up trauma of that degree for your entertainment.

So, from what she’s told you, which is very little, she had no dating experience under her belt, although you were skeptical.

There was a moment where it was just you two at a table in the high school cafeteria - where really it was just you, since she was too busy giggling at her phone to acknowledge your words - you looked over her shoulder just before she could hide it to see that she was texting Peter. Not only did he never respond to you, but you didn’t even have know he had a new number, and your best friend was being secretive for him. There was nothing you could do but take that one on the chin.

It was only instinct to question how close her and Peter got during that time, as close as someone could be with him, you presumed, and she explained their likeness in the deaths of their paternal figures and the unspoken agreement that there was too much healing to be done before throwing a relationship into the mix. Your growing hatred for the boy probably didn't help things develop, either.

Nonetheless, after a few years of therapy Gwen started to open herself up again, taking an interest in Harry, who was the first of many at Empire State University arrogant enough to believe that no one is out of his league. From straying conversations in their tutoring sessions he picked up on how sheltered Gwen is and decided it was his duty to take her under his wing. You can't tell if he's genuinely soft for her or if it's all part of his playboy repertoire; but even still, he teaches her about the real world. You always warn her to proceed with caution, but they would be cute, you think. A good balance of book smart and street smart.

You hold your glass up. "To getting fucked up!"

You welcome the burn of the shot in your chest, hoping this will ease some of your anxiety.

To no avail, the ride over consisted of inconsolable jitters. You go over your mental checklist, making sure you didn't skip this morning's dose of meds. You didn't, but you were stuck in your nonverbal state regardless.

You looked out of the back seat window while Gwen continuously chattered. She’s animated, fully turned to face you in her seat and gesturing wildly about something you tuned out, even involving the driver in bits of the conversation.

I don't belong here. She’s stunning and interesting and fun. And I'm like The Duff. Fuck.

Your leg shakes more rapidly as you feel a light touch on your knee break you out of your trance.

"Hey," Gwen cuts her rant off, leaning in. "You okay?"

"Yeah," you assured, nodding your head too quickly.

She notes the faraway look in your eyes. "I don't know why you still bother lying to me. I know all of your tells, and that's one of 'em." She points, gesturing up and down at you.

You roll your eyes. "Okay. You know all. But I promise I'm fine. It's nothing a few shots can't fix."

"Good. Besides, Harry told me it should only be a few-"

The driver pulls around the block and you're hit with the sudden boom of music, cars lined up with 20 something year old's stumbling up and down the street.

"-people."

Your heartbeat quickens, instinctively taking her hand. She looks over and gives your interlocked hand a consoling squeeze.

If the view of the street was nerve wracking, getting inside was tenfold that. You take in the grandeur of Harry's house, making you feel even more out of place. It was entirely above the tax bracket you were used to, beautiful and modern, a giant living room turned-DJ-studio and dance floor, floor to ceiling windows, two glass staircases leading up to what seemed like heaven itself... It was dizzying. The smell of sweat, alcohol and weed perfuming the room did nothing to ease that. You and your group shove yourself through the swaying crowd, dodging flailing limbs or men who lean in to try to talk or grab at you.

You finally reach the kitchen which was by comparison surprisingly empty, give or take the odd couple making out or heavily petting within an uncomfortable vicinity. You welcome the sight of the copious amounts of alcohol that line the counters.

Gwen shakes her head. "He really outdid himself. I’m gonna make my rounds. Shall we?"

"Well you aren’t going by yourself. You know, stranger danger and all."

You don't like the idea of her alone, especially not with some frat boy with money to burn and his crossfaded cronies. You spot lines of what was definitely not sugar on every elevated surface and that seals it for you.

"We'll be okay. We pace ourselves and stick together and everything will be fine. By the way, I think Peter’s here and he’ll probably be with Harry. You think you two can play nice tonight?”

You stifle your eye roll and nod, giving her a disingenuous smile.

After a little more liquid courage you think you’re finally loose enough to face the night.

Gwen leads the way, and you take a second to get your bearings before you’re reabsorbed by the thrums of the music. You immediately wish you appreciated the solitude you had a mere few seconds ago.

The preppy blonde is hard to contain, striking a conversation with everyone she stumbles over. You know the past few months of drowning in textbooks and leading internships have taken a major toll on her so you have no issue with being her babysitter. With your arm around her waist, you make it up the glass staircase you were so enamored by upon your arrival.

After what seems like a million steps and a million more people to push by, you reach a hall with Harry front and center. He looks like royalty, adorning his usual aura of inescapable charisma and signature Cheshire grin.

He's about to take his turn in beer pong, being cheered on by someone who you could only assume is his partner by the way they're strategizing and uncomfortably breathing down each other's necks. His friend notices your group first, pointing.

Harry turns, face lighting up when he spots Gwen. "Hey babe, so glad you could make it. We've been holding down the table all night. Now I have my good luck charm to help me really kick your asses." He taunts his opponents at the other end of the table and is met by friendly shit-talking that becomes indiscernible when you notice Peter.

He is here after all.

You try to watch the pair in your peripheral, tongue in cheek. They're talking shoulder to shoulder and he's slightly leaned down to hear as she's gesturing vaguely. He has two open bottles of Tito's in his hands from what you could make out, and he polishes the remaining quarter off of the first before setting it down on the wet bar behind them and downing the second, head tilted back.

She swats him in disapproval and you scoff in disgust from where you're standing across the room.

Without looking he pulls her into him by the hem of her shirt seconds before an unidentified partygoer bulldozes through their path, blowing chunks into a vase that was definitely more valuable than you. You force yourself to look away. It was similar to that of a petulant child, your feelings about their interactions.

"I'm calling celebrity shot! Gwen, get in here." Harry curtsies with the ball in his hand, head bowed.

"Madame."

She rolls her eyes but her blush is almost immediate. "You are so ridiculous," she giggles.

"And you are so beautiful," he stage whispers.

You feel a stab of envy that gets locked away before it even registers. You're a hopeless romantic through and through, and you're happy for her. You still don't trust him, or any guy for the life of you, but you'll support them if it works out... whatever their "it" may be.

You bump into some acquaintances from class, smiling and nodding politely when the conversation drags for a little too long. You find an empty spot on a couch when you start to feel the effects of the alcohol working its way into you, supervising Gwen becoming a gradually overexerting task. It doesn't help that every time you look over, Peter makes eye contact with you. His smug face drives you insane.

You continue watching the game, cheering as Gwen makes her shot, when you feel a weight on the seat next to you. You're hit by what smelled like campfire smoke and mint.

Is there a fire pit here? Let’s be real, what wouldn't be here? This place is emongous. Gimongous. You turn your head a fraction of an inch, rolling your eyes.

"Parker." You state, not sparing a glance at him.

"In the flesh," he grins, solo cup in hand.

"Unfortunately."

"You can’t still be jealous I'm taking time away from you and your girlfriend.”

You turn to face him with a huff of annoyance, caught off-guard by the sight now that he’s up close. He’s put on more muscle since you last saw him at high school graduation, his t-shirt and jeans fitting snug on his filled out figure.

Your run-ins have become increasingly scarce and even less cherished over the years, so you're still acclimated to his baby face, the youthful roundness that gave way to the more angular features that sit in front of you now. He always used to remind you of a baby deer, big doe eyes and gangly limbs that somehow never failed to get in his own way.

You try to read him, even though it was an ability you lost a long time ago. He's more poised, holding himself with confidence that the Peter you were friends with never had. There's a hint of cockiness that exudes from him, sitting legs slightly open with his arm slung over the back of the couch.

His knee brushes against yours, and you’re not sure if you’re imagining things, if he’s testing the waters or if it was just a coincidence the way his eyes drink you in, a flicker of darkness in them.

You trace the upward curve of his nose. You hate that he's still exactly your type, maybe even shaped it; because of your history and the hindrances he still imposes on you in present day. You shake your head to yourself.

Such a waste of a face on the contents of such an underwhelming guy.

You've come to terms with your taste leading you astray and tuck that part of you way down, somewhere inaccessible.

"No, just sad that my best friend is still the only girl alive that feels sorry enough to talk to you. She’s really too kind.” You pout with fake sympathy.

"You’re telling me. She’s gotta be some kinda miracle worker to put up with you longer than five minutes. I know I can’t."

That would have stung if the alcohol hadn't gotten to you first.

"Color me shocked, you can’t last longer than five minutes with a girl," you retaliate childishly, your mouth faster than your brain.

"Can’t last-" he cuts himself off with a laugh at the innuendo, the same dopey smile you used to daydream about lighting up his face. "Is that where your mind goes? If I didn't know any better I'd think you were interested."

"Wishful thinking." You grab his cup, trying to hide the heat of annoyance flushing your face, and regret your boldness as soon as you swallow. He laughs, eyes crinkling as you splutter through coughs. "What the fuck is that?"

"Everything clear and a splash of coke. High tolerance,” he brags. “It’s not for amateurs."

“Ooh, it's not for amateurs,” you mock nasally under your breath. Not your best jab, but you’re still holding back coughs and your throat burns too much to think right now anyway.

“I forgot how witty you are.” He takes the cup back and chugs the rest, wiping a drop off of his lip. Your eyes follow and he notices, eyebrows raised, making you look away quickly. Next to you he pours more from the unmarked flask he had nestled in his pocket.

"What he meant to say was that he can't be around anyone for that long or he wouldn't meet his monthly quota for the people he abandons, right?" You forgot that it wasn't one of your friends sitting on the other side of you, expecting to be met with Gwen rather than the stranger you accidentally nudge.

"I don't even fuckin' know you guys," the partygoer responds before getting up to leave. Peter laughs and you cross your ams, slinking into the couch.

Your bickering stops upon getting an actual look at Gwen, who is currently stumbling over to where you two were seated. Her complexion is sickly washed out, and you imagine a scenario involving projectile vomit, your own stomach turning at the thought.

“Man, I told her not to take the jell-o shots,” he mutters.

You stand as fast as your drunk body allows, stumbling in the process, and Peter gets up as well, reflexively putting his hand on the small of your back to stabilize you. The contact sends a rush through your body and you shoo him away, hearing his hushed apology.

"I think I took those shots too fast," Gwen grumbles, glassy eyes wandering everywhere besides making contact with you.

"Yeah, you probably did. C'mon, let's get you to a bathroom.“

"I got her." He’s so close you can feel the heat radiating from his body. You ignore the goosebumps that raise on the back of your neck, shooting him a disapproving look.

“What? I’m not completely incompetent,” he jokes, crossing his arms. “Besides, I know you have a weak stomach.”

“So you can do your little Houdini vanishing bullshit? Just stay here. I’d rather feel sick than have you leave her on her own. Like you always do.” You glare up at him, a flash of hurt registering across his face, leaving as quickly as it came.

"C'mon, please," Gwen tugs at you.

"Then better go now, I give her 30 seconds. Bathroom is down the hall to the left. You can call me - for updates, you know, if - if that’ll make you feel better." He ruffles his hair nervously.

You squint critically. You haven’t heard him stutter since sophomore year, it was one of his nervous tics. "Just keep an eye on Harry.”

You’d rather die than let him know you’re taking his advice but mentally you’re counting down from 30, Gwen in tow as if she was a ticking time bomb.

"Shhh, I got you, it's okay." You're now balanced sitting on the edge of the tub with your chin in your hand, the other playing with the locks of Gwen's golden hair, her frame hunched over the toilet.

You're lost in thought, tuning out her retching. It was strange to see the same traits Peter had in the first half of high school make their appearance. He almost looked like your friend again, the one you knew before the omnipotent presence of Ben’s death clouded him, carved itself into hollowness in his eyes, the sag in his shoulders, his easily provoked nature. You had mourned just the same as he did for so long, for Ben, for May, for Peter, and when he continued to blow you off - your friendship.

That’s why you were riddled with confusion in this hundred thousand dollar bathroom, your thoughts continuing to overlap a mile a minute. He never picked up your calls when you still cared enough to try to reach out, so his offer, although Gwen would surely misconstrue as a kind gesture, is nothing more to you than a slap in the face. Especially since he went out of his way to change his number and bar you from his life.

Pathetically, even still you replay your interactions: whatever that was on the couch, him whispering in your ear. Perhaps you were just touch starved, or worse, a seedling of your teenaged affection still lived on inside of you.

Your drunkenness emboldens you, your daydream evolving salaciously. It was hard to deny yourself the satisfaction you’d get from finally getting even, degrading him, stripping him of any trace of haughtiness or arrogance and for him to finally be knocked off of his pedestal. You imagine what a whirlwind it would be with him, how it would feel to sink your teeth in…except you need to stop. He was just so frustrating, and still possibly Gwen’s territory, and you shouldn't entertain ideas about someone so inconsiderate.

It would be breaking the rules of sexual etiquette you made for yourself. You aren’t fiercely celibate, because every girl has to get their fix every once in a while, but you tried to avoid meaningless flings and hookup culture and breaking girl-code, especially with someone you didn't even like as a person. You disapprove of how transactional what should be love and romance is nowadays: dating apps, situationships, not that you knock anyone else for it, but you do always feel a bit contaminated and used after being a participant.

You don’t have an unrealistic view of love; you don't necessarily believe in soulmates, and you never believed in true love past a fantastical concept, but you have your ideas of how it should be. You'd rather keep it in your head, that way it remains untouched, unruined. You're not good enough for anyone and no one is good enough for you. It was a weird complex you had, and one you would most likely have to open up and be vulnerable with someone in order to fix, so you just left it alone.

You swat the thoughts out of your head. You'd probably look crazy in front of your party of one if she wasn't temporarily incapacitated.

Gwen groans, untangling you from your dissociation. "Okay, I feel a lot better now. Like, I could go another round better."

Your eyes furrow together, laughing. "Why don’t we actually not do that?" Scanning the bathroom, you lock in on the giant bottle of mouthwash. "I think this is our first step, I'll do it with you out of solidarity, and then we can get back out and dance. Does that sound good?"

Her eyes light up and she nods vigorously. "Deal." Gwen swishes her mouth as she hands you the cap of the bottle to do the same.

"Oh fuck," you cough. She turns to look at you, cheeks still full and swishing, eyebrows furrowed questioningly. "I just swallowed it." Gwen spits everywhere and you grip onto each other, swaying as you laugh.

After cleaning the mess, you two head back out, trudging downstairs to the dance floor hand in hand. You make your way to a further corner so you’re still able to hear each other without screaming and start to dance. You hear someone whistle but ultimately ignore it.

"Hey girls, name's Paul."

"Hey Paul! Not interested." You turn and scrunch your nose at Gwen, and she laughs.

It's not that he was unattractive, but he wasn't your type. He was too scruffy, rough. His presence was commanding in a frightening way, rather than something that lured you in. The subconscious part of your mind flashes to soft honey eyes.

"Whatever. Fuckin' dykes."

You bristle at this. "The fuck did he just say?" The indignance in her voice causes Gwen to look over.

“Don’t bother,” she responds with a dismissive wave.

"Oh that caught your attention, did it? I just call it like I see it." Paul steps closer to you, reeking of cigarettes and alcohol.

You seethed, not breaking eye contact. You give Gwen a look and hope this was one of the times you could telepathically communicate.

“She is beautiful, isn’t she?” Trying to play up the theatrics, you purr, twirling a lock of her golden hair around your finger. “But yeah, we’re absolutely carpet munchers. What do you think gave it away, babe?” You grab her and firmly plant a kiss, “Paul” still watching. Gwen’s eyes are wide in shock before she closes them, becoming pliant against you. He’s grabbed by someone you don’t recognize and stumbles away. “Jesus, hope he fucks off now. Sorry.”

“Don’t mention it. If my options were between frenching you or him, that would be an easy choice,” she nods and laughs, fixing her hair before she holds out her hand for you to dance with her. When you think the coast is clear you lose yourself back into the music, the opening beats to Hypnotize starting to play.

"That was almost convincing." You turn to see Harry, happy-go-lucky as always, poking fun at Gwen before he looks at you. “Very impressive. Looks like you had it handled before I could even get over here.”

You can see her nod as he asks if she’s okay before he begins to serenade her.

I can fill you with real millionaire shit, escargot, my car go one-sixty swiftly, wreck it buy a new one-

You roll your eyes before you laugh, both of you jeering some version of "show-off!” Peter’s a wallflower that Harry tries and fails to pry off, settling on choreographically puppeteering his arms instead. His presence is usually a thorn in your side, but you pay no mind. You feel happiness bloom in your chest seeing everyone have fun around you.

After a few more songs and more drinks than necessary, you’re losing your balance and covered in sweat. Your dance circle has completely devolved into chaos. Gwen is piggyback riding Harry, who’s desperately hanging onto her wriggling body for dear life as she spins you. The floor underneath you is slick from cheers-ing and spilling drinks so many times and you accidentally slip, your reflexes too slow to catch yourself. Your hand is still in hers when you fall, accidentally dragging them down with you. The three of you are giggling and too weak to move until you feel Gwen's hands under your arms, hoisting you up to stand. You feel like a scruffed kitten and that makes you giggle more. You make sure everyone is okay, fanning yourself.

“I’m g’na get some air.”

You think you hear Gwen’s voice telling you not to go far before you’re off on your venture back upstairs. It made more sense to your intoxicated mind to go upstairs rather than outside, since you’re probably more vulnerable on the street, but going alone was a bad idea regardless with how directionally challenged you are.

You got more than an eyeful of naked couples you accidentally walked in on in your hunt for oxygen that wasn’t tainted with smoke or sweat, and the further you wandered from your starting point the more your journey through the maze of dark hallways felt ominous.

Where the hell am I?

You look around, trying to assess your surroundings, but your thoughts dissipate when you finally come across an open bedroom with a balcony. The bump of the music is hardly noticeable as the cool outside air bites at your skin and you inhale as much as you can, feeling your lungs fill. The view was stunning. You’ve lived in New York since high school but the flurry of skyscrapers and lights on the horizon never ceased to amaze you. Your peace gets disrupted by an unwelcome voice.

“Up here all by yourself, gorgeous?”

You shudder, turning around to see Paul again, who leans against the railing next to you. You slide away, trying to create as much of a gap as possible between you two.

“I’m sorry about what I said before,” his raspy voice croaked.

“S’alright.” You don’t waste the effort of looking at him.

“You looked really sexy down there… You know, some people would say I’m offering a s-service,” he regurgitates. “I can show you what you really need. Promise you’ll be bored of girls.”

“I was just gonna go, actually.” Every step you take backwards is matched by his body stumbling closer. Your stomach turns as the warning bells go off in your head. You glance at the door you came in from and notice it's shut.

“Come on baby, don’t be like that. I know you’re just playing hard to get." He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear and you recoil in disgust. You reach for the door. His rough hand wraps around your arm, tight enough to stop the circulation.

“Get the fuck off of me,” you shout.

This time he's pulling you toward the bed and you act on impulse, biting into the flesh of his forearm until you taste blood. He lets go with a surprised yelp.

"You bitch!"

He backhands you and your ears ring, making you stumble. Your back hits the top of the footboard and you hiss in pain as you fall, trying to fight the disorientation as you crawl backward, his figure looming over as he tries again to grab you. You shove the heel of your shoe as hard as possible into his nose, bringing him to his knees, his hands covering his face to stop the active stream of blood. Standing, you wind back to kick him again when two firm hands grab your waist and pull you away. You shriek and make the harrowing realization that your voice is drowned out by the music. If this is more of his friends trying to overtake you, your fate is sealed.

“Was swallowing her girlfriend’s face on the dance floor not enough for you?"

It's Peter.

You stop thrashing in his grip and he lets you go, pulling you to stand behind him. It’s probably the first and only time in years that you’ve been grateful to see him, but right now beggars can’t be choosers.

You watch Peter’s movements, how he analyzes Paul like prey before stepping up to him, the two men looking at each other nose to nose. Even though you have a limited view of him you can see the way the musculature of his body becomes taut, like a spring in a bear trap, unreleased tension ready to burst. It was uncanny, something just a little off, and you tried to ignore your fight or flight.

"We were having fun. Jus' got a little rough, s'all," Paul slurs.

"We've gotta teach you how to take no for an answer, man. Get the fuck out. I’ll deal with you later.”

Paul huffs, his hands up in faux-innocence before walking out of the room.

You run to the balcony, white knuckling the railing as you try not to vomit, your body processesing the adrenaline.

You close your eyes and count, trying to ground yourself. What was that exercise? Five things you can see, four things you can hear. You open your eyes to see Paul stumbling out onto the street below, most likely making his way back to the filth he came from. You try to catch your breath to make your head stop spinning. You can feel Peter's eyes on you, and you work to steady the weakness in your legs before he notices. He rubs your knuckles softly, making you loosen your grip on the metal.

You give him a once-over, chalking up those predatory traits you thought you saw to be a figment of your imagination. His sudden shift in energy gives you whiplash.

"You okay?" His voice is delicate. He reaches his hand slowly to cup your chin, making you turn to look at him, the pads of his fingertips so gentle they don’t imprint into your skin.

You try to hold back the current draw you had to him, your instinct to use him as a crutch for a semblance of solace. You hope he doesn’t notice when you lean further into his palm.

He touches you as if you were a porcelain doll about to shatter, something he values. It was a devastating thought, since the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. You remind yourself that his feelings toward you were always worse than hatred. He’d have to care to hate you. Instead you were damned to the purgatory of Peter’s indifference, an object of his remiss disposing.

Your face betrays you, eyebrows pulling together, bottom lip wobbling. You shut your eyes anyway, too prideful to see him pity you like this.

“He was g’na- I think he was gonna-“ you laugh in shock, finally looking up at him, trying to pull yourself together.

“It's alright, I got rid of him. I’d never let that happen,” he soothes. He assesses the area of the assault, smoothing your cheek with his thumb.

His gentle touch was too intimate, the flood of relief you had for someone you hate too contradictory.

You slap his hand away, the remnants of unbridled rage and now shame running its course through you.

“You got rid of him? He’d probably be unconscious right now if you didn’t grab me when I was clearly in the middle of doing s’methin’. Can you not keep your hands to yourself tonight?"

You rifle through his pockets, taking a large swig from his flask to get the taste of blood out of your mouth. Your face sours again as you spit. "Fuck, that's gross."

“I could ask you the same thing," he scowls, taking it back and dumping the remainder of the liquid over the railing. "But he wouldn’t have been unconscious, not from someone of your strength, anyway. Kicking him would’ve been the wrong move. He placed his weight on his knees to pull you down, and once he got on top of you your odds of getting out unharmed were slim to none.” It’s a quiet diagnosis that makes your blood boil and he shrugs, still assessing you for injuries.

You scoff, stopping to replay the whole thing in your head, trying to recall if you even had a sliver of a fighting chance, but most of it was a blur. Truth be told no matter what the reality was you were going to argue with him. He deserves it.

“You always have to take credit for my work. Fine, everyone applaud! How could it slip my mind that you’d die without your constant adoration? Or will the way your devotees celebrate you be wrong too, O’ Peter the great and all knowing?”

You have some awareness that you’re making a total ass of yourself, rambling belligerently to an audience that doesn’t exist, but you find enough amusement in his annoyance to not care.

He shakes his head minutely, eyelashes fluttering as he blinks.

“No. No, this is great,” his voice is soft.

You notice he still has a slight lisp on some of his words when you watch his mouth, like when he had braces, his tongue darting out to wet his slightly chapped lips before he increases in volume.

“You know what? Tell me. You've kept this up for years, so right here, right now, tell me what your problem is. Go for it.” His arms are outstretched before dropping them back to his sides.

You debate ripping into him, weighing wasting your breath against jumping at the chance to finally air your laundry list of grievances. The man is all laid out before you, waiting with a look of condescension and a hint of innocent curiosity, and you take the bait.

“It’s not just what you did to me, I don’t care about me. It’s everyone else. They revere you like you’re some sort of god,” you laugh with bitterness, hands gesticulating wildly. “And maybe you are! Because whenever I needed you, when they do, you’re not there. I am, cleaning up your mess. When’s the last time you talked to May? Or you showed up to one of Gwen's seminars? Except you’re right, that’s not a big deal since you couldn’t bother to turn up to Captain Stacy’s funeral. And they forgive you, just for you to do it again. Get it through your head.”

You go to tap his skull for emphasis, but his large hand wraps around your cold wrist before you can blink. You rip it back, continuing your rant.

“I don’t need you. I’m not g’na accept that even an ounce of me needs to rely on someone that won’t be there when it counts, and neither should they. I don’t want to think that I’m not good enough for people to wanna be around, just for them to put up with you and your half-assed bullshit. Nobody else will, so I’ll be the one to say it. You’re not a god, you’re not a white knight, you’re a liar. Stop playing hero and don't try to be my friend, because you’re a shitty one.”

“So I should’ve just left you up here alone? Is that what you wanted me to do? Because if that’s the case, we can just call him back up here and I’ll leave you to it." His voice is stern, mocking, pinpricks at your skin just sharp enough to reopen old wounds.

You haven't heard him like this since you tried to talk to him after Ben’s death, and it makes you flinch.

“That’s what I thought. Who knows what would be happening to you right now if I hadn’t been here." He gestures around the room. “The things I’ve seen - what he could’ve done to you - if something happened to you that I could've stopped -“ he runs a hand through his hair, exasperated. “Forget it. You can think I’m awful all you want, but I don’t think it would kill you to thank me.”

"You lost the privilege to care a long time ago. For all I know you sent that shmuck up here after me so you can swoop in and take credit for saving the day, everyone kisses your ass and you think all is forgiven. I'm sick of it. You only hate that I hate you because it’s one less person to worship the ground you walk on. God!" you huff, pointing at him accusatorily. "You know, I used to respect you a little bit because you were always the outcast but now you're like every other self-serving pretty boy.”

His expression is incredulous and you feel a thrill course through you. Maybe you’ve finally gotten to him.

You continue. “Yeah. You have better places to be than the people you started with, and if you don’t get your ego stroked every five seconds-"

"Pretty?" He cuts you off before you can start another bout of babbling.

"What?" You snap, squinting at him.

"You know, you didn’t have to do all of this to tell me you’re into me." He leans against the railing, the corners of his mouth pulling into a smile. It was too self-assured of a statement and it made your ears ring.

"I definitely am not."

"Huh. I could've sworn that somewhere in the verbal abuse that's what you said." You shift your weight on your feet, failing to hide your thinly veiled discomfort before you attempt to clean up your mess.

“I said pretty boy. Pretty in the sense that some would say, maybe, you could be considered conventionally attractive as far as like, Eurocentric beauty standards for women go and stuff, not to me personally. It's derogatory, and kinda sexist now that I think about it-"

He chuckles.

"If that's all you got out of my speech then you’re just proving my point. All the good looks in the world can only go so far when you're such an insufferable prick."

"Alright, alright. I’ll cut the shit, I just wanted to mess with you. I know I messed everything up between us." Your words are stolen from you to take in his. “I know I did. But I just can't-“ he hangs his head, “I can't tell you why." He grabs the railing, swaying back and forth from the balls to the heels of his feet, lifting his face upward to the sky like he was tracing the stars. He blinks hard, a pained expression.

"We used to tell each other everything. I don't get it! I never understood why I wasn't worth keeping around."

He turns to face you now. "I promise that was never, never what it was about," he says breathlessly, frowning. "Don't ever think that.” He runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “After my uncle I didn’t know anything; who I was, why I was still here when he wasn’t, my purpose, if I even had one. I wouldn’t wish that feeling on my worst enemy.” He looks at you earnestly, his eyes searching for understanding. “I was taking it out on the people I care about, the people who love me. I didn’t know when I was going to feel like myself again, so I had two options: either rip the bandaid or continue to let everyone down. I chose the first."

“That was my choice to make, not yours.”

“I know. You know what they say about hindsight.”

You feel your eyes well for the second time that night, trying to fight them back.

Get it together. You look weak.

I would’ve done anything for you,” you admit shakily.

“Don’t cry, I’m nothing to cry over... I miss you. Can we-? I want- if you’ll have me.”

You feel his thumb swipe at your skin, wiping the tear that escaped as he leans closer, his lips ghosting over yours.

Your brain catches up and you shove at his chest, throwing a punch that he dodges fluidly, your fist clipping the pillar behind him instead. The pain winds you and you want to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all and Peter's wide eyed stare except you're still trying to catch your breath.

"Fuck!" You squeak, shaking your hand out, which he goes to cradle.

"I'm sorry, I thought we were having a moment. I misread. Are you okay?"

"Just stop talking," you all but groan, the pain radiating down your fingers.

"Still think you would've knocked that guy out?" Peter looks down at you apologetically, trying to ease the tension, and you glare at him.

You realize your hand is still in his, which he flips over, inspecting. "Bend your fingers." You do. "Well, good news is nothing is broken, but you're gonna have a bruise here tomorrow." His thumb rubs over the first two knuckles of your hand before swiping the base of your wrist. You try not to shiver before he drops it. “I’m sorry. I’m just gonna tell Gwen to grab you, and I'll uh... yeah. See you around.”

The boy begins to slink out and you have no idea how to feel. You’re overwhelmed, still trying to wrap your head around everything that has just happened in the past thirty minutes.

You’re overcome with a mixture of fear, desperation and guilt set off by watching him leave again. Your eyes are downcast and you're scrambling, looking every which way as if that'll help you make sense of it all. They land on a shard of wood on the floor. You match it up to the fragmented doorframe and realized that the door was locked, and realize Peter must've broken it open to get to you.

How did he know I was up here? Was he watching me?

Maybe I am too harsh.

Maybe he would be there for me and I'm too busy tallying his failures from two years ago to notice.

Maybe he set it all up just like I said, and I'm being pathetic enough to fall for something I figured out because I feel bad.

Maybe he did save my life and I'd be chopped to little pieces right now.

There’s only one way to find out.

“Peter?"

He pauses, turning to face you.

“I don’t wanna be alone. Can we get out of here?”

His face softens and he nods.

Never in your life did you think that the cumulative loathing of months, years on end would lead you here. Your conscience knocks lightly, whispering inklings of how fucked up and unexpected this entire thing was.

Leaving Harry's house was not at all that difficult, but nerve wracking regardless. You made sure to text Gwen to explain your disappearance; how comprehendible it was you weren't sure, and swallow down the lump of unease that comes with leaving a party with a rival, potentially your friend's ex, and ex-friend all gift-wrapped into one.

Peter paves a way through the swarm of people, splitting them apart easily enough for you to grab his hand and follow closely behind. He looks back like he was making sure no one steals you.

Your body tenses when you get to the front door. As if he read your mind, Peter speaks. “She’s staying here with Harry for the night. She’s safe.”

You nod silently.

The walk back was refreshing, feeling the cold air sober you. You shrink into yourself, trying to preserve your body heat.

You look up at the boy walking next to you, a whole head taller.

You have so many questions and no idea where to start.

“What is it?”

“You know how snakes shed their skin every so often?”

He chuckles, looking down at you with mild bewilderment.

“Sure.”

“No, listen. I’m just trying to figure out how to test this friend thing again,” you defend, laughing with him. “They shed all of the dead skin but the their body - the foundation stays the same. Obviously we’re the same people but it’s been long enough where we’ve shed some of our old ideas, our habits, and gotten new ones. So I think we should reintroduce ourselves.”

“Okay,” he says, following along.

“Okay,” you nod. “You go first.”

You’re walking backwards now, taking him in while he looks at you, amused. He has a wrinkle of thought in between his eyebrows. He opens his mouth before he closes it again, humming.

“What is it?”

“No. It’s stupid.”

“This is a judgement free zone, Peter. Try me.”

“Alright,” he ducks his head sheepishly before looking at you again. “Alright. I sleepwalk.”

“Interesting. And also mild. But it’s the first one, so I’ll let it slide.”

You continue your conversation until you reach Peter's apartment. You learned that he’s broken almost every extremity in his body at one point or another from skateboarding, he lives off of takeout since he’s always bouncing around from one place to the next, he’s a per diem photographer for the Daily Bugle, his guilty pleasure is the Lord of the Rings franchise, and he feeds a ragged alley cat named Murph.

“Who you might have the pleasure of meeting tonight,” he added.

His keys jingle as he unlocks the door. You use the lingering moment of silence to finally clear the air. "I am actually sorry about trying to punch you earlier, idiot. I was almost sexually assaulted and your stellar idea was to kiss me."

He turns, now leaning against the door, trying to contain his grin. He grabs your bruised hand, holding your fingers as he talks. "Few notes: One, does that count as an apology if you insult me in the same sentence?" He puts one of your fingers down. "Two, I'll admit I jumped the gun, but I did save you, and then you called me pretty. Twice. I think anyone would get mixed signals." Another finger down. You realize he's going to do this for each point.

"Don't roll your eyes," he laughs. "Three, clearly it was a stellar idea. It led you to coming back here, didn’t it? Butterfly effect. Four, you missed, not that it would've hurt anyway. Five..." he trails off as he lowers your thumb and you look at him, waiting expectantly. "Now I’m just counting, but this is how you actually make a fist instead of whatever that was you tried to hit me with."

He presses his lips gently to the bruise blooming on your knuckles, right where he predicted.

"Leave it to you to always find a way to be a pest.” You shoo at him, feigning annoyance. He ducks, laughing at you.

"I was waiting for that. The whole walk over you didn’t let me say two sentences consecutively without interrupting. Forgive me for getting excited." He nudges you, beaming childishly. You study the shape of his smile, his dimples, and get lost in the depths of his gaze, trying to find any remnants of the boy you used to know.

His smile falters, a dropped mask in an otherwise flawless performance, before he winks at you and gestures for you to go inside.

The two of you make your way from the entrance to the hallway, kicking your shoes off. “Welcome to my humble abode.” He fumbles for a light switch and guides you through the house. It’s quaint, pictures of May and Ben scoured about.

All of his appliances were dated, something he probably restored from some back alley garbage or secondhand store. He opens his bedroom door for you and if you hadn’t cried twice in front of him already, you would’ve done it again. It looked like a time capsule, the same disaster you knew, a whirlwind of laundry, textbooks and papers scattered everywhere.

You found it comforting, something tangible - his foundation. He shuts the door and you stumble through with him following suit.

The old radio on his dresser crackles softly. Static warps every word and you try to make some out, head cocked to listen.

"Spider-Man seen saving Bronx civilians from burning building tonight-"

Peter changes the channel quickly and the radio settles on a nondescript alternative station. You hum and sway along to the music, picking up the knick knacks around his room and studying them while he hurries to tidy everything.

“Why’d you change the station? I don’t care if you’re a Spider-Man fanboy.”

He chuckles, shaking his head. “Nah, guy’s overrated.”

You hum in response, distracted where you are in front of his mirror when you hear the tinkling of his belt as he strips down to boxers. He’s in the corner of his room, faced away from you. He grabs his shirt from behind his neck and pulls it off. You take in the planes of his body, your eyes tracing his muscular back as if he were a Baroque painting you were studying. Your eyes lock on the few raised scars stretching from his left hip to his right shoulder.

What happened to you?

You don’t ask about someone’s scars unless you lacked courtesy. It wasn't your place to know where they came from, so for once you bite your tongue, but you couldn't help the pang in your heart thinking about him being hurt.

Your brain is in a frenzy, still digesting that you despised this man two hours ago. Not the man per se, but his actions.

You’re lost in thought, averting your eyes before he turns around, dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt.

“Your turn,” he says, handing you a folded pile of clothes.

“Such a good host. Turn around.”

His face drops and he huffs dramatically, covering his eyes as he faces away. You’re giggling like schoolchildren.

You undress and redress quickly, making sure that he’s turned away. You make a show of loudly dropping your clothes so that he can hear the fabric hitting the floor. You notice his slight turn, his eyes peeking through his fingers.

“Dude! Now I know why Flash called you Pervert Parker.” You shove him and he puts his hands out in front of him to deflect your hits.

“Ow ow okay, I was just kidding. I never peeked into the girl’s locker room! He started that rumor,” he laughs, grabbing your hands.

You both go silent upon noticing the domesticity. He lets go of you. You clear your throat awkwardly.

“We should probably head to bed. It’s getting late.”

After a quick mouthwash and rinse, you wait for him to peel the covers back for you. It was a weird boundary to not want to overstep, making yourself at home in his bed. You were donning his clothes that smelled like him, in his room, in his apartment, but this is too far. The mind does silly things.

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” he tells you while leaning against the doorframe, gesturing to the living room. “I promise everything is clean.”

“No!”

He snaps his head, looking at you in surprise. You feel the heat rise to your face.

“I didn’t tell you earlier because I was embarrassed. But you don’t have a TV in here and um, I’m scared of the dark.”

He laughs and you glare at him.

“Okay, sorry.”

“Major upgrade from the old bed we used to squeeze into, by the way.”

You try to smooth things over with a joke. He was just being nice, it’s not like he didn’t want to lay with you for any reason personal. Don’t hurt your own feelings.

You slide over close to the wall and he shuffles in next to you. You’re both laying on your back, his hands tucked under his head. His ceiling is suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. He breaks the silence first.

“The dark, huh?”

“Don’t start. It’s one of the most common fears.”

“Judgement free,” he responds, contemplative. He speaks after a while. "Hey. That guy from earlier, did you - did you know him?"

"No," you mumble. You turn on your side to face him, your heart pounding in your chest, looking at your best friend turned enemy turned acquaintance that you were sharing a bed with.

“I’m sorry. I should’ve been there sooner. If I ever see that guy again, I swear-“

“Peter, start your apologies tomorrow. You owe me a couple of years worth.”

“You’re right,” he concedes, turning to face you.

“And thank you. For helping me.”

You’re face to face now. Everything is him. Your senses are wrapped up in his smell, his eyes, his lips, his warmth. You think he’s getting closer, your eyes flutter shut.

Your lips meet his, timidly, gently, unsure. Your head spins. You pull away. It feels juvenile, kissing in his bed. You laugh at yourself, and he laughs with you as you’re flat on your back again.

His hands find your hair, an old habit of your Peter's ghost, and you accidentally let out a relaxed sigh, the same way you accidentally slump into him.

You're drifting off quickly, finally succumbing to your fatigue from all of the excitement of one night. You barely notice as he studies the silhouette of your body, illuminated by the moonlight cascading through the crack of his open window. It was a good enough nightlight.

The radio on his dresser continues its hymn.

Where have you been?

Do you know when you’re coming back?

We were too close to the stars

I never knew, somebody like you, somebody

Fallin’ just as hard

I’d rather lose somebody than use somebody

Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise

Monday, November 11th

Finally, after days of ignoring her, you texted Delilah about everything that was happening. ‘Everything’ means ‘Peter Parker’. The little slip of paper with your name on it was burning a hole through your phone case and you had to share it with someone else, so you sent a picture of it, three crying emojis and a ‘I think I’m going crazy.’ You got a heart reaction and a ‘U so like him!!!!!’ 

No help, at all.

Class was going to be either the best news or the worst news. Dr. Howard was going to hand back the graded outlines and if you had a perfect score you would have to go to a Frat party. Something you never imagined yourself agreeing to, but alas, you did and now you’re trudging to your new seat with your too-tight glasses. 

Just as you’re about to sit, a hand tugs your seat back accompanied with a cheery Peter’s voice. “So I was thinking you should buy a new pair of shoes specifically for the frat party. It gets nasty in the foyer.” 

“Wouldn’t that mean I should wear old shoes?” You take your seat, placing your bag under the desk, pulling out your notebook. 

“But you wear all your shoes.” He says with a soft hum, scootching his desk closer before settling into his own chair. “You would be so mad if any of them were ruined.”

Of course, he was right. You had shoes for specific occasions and if any of them got ruined at the party, you would probably cry for twenty minutes in frustration. So you look over to him and sigh. “You’re being very presumptuous. We don’t even have our scores back, Parker.” 

All he does is smile, turning his attention to the front of the lecture hall.

—-------------

“Of course it was a perfect score.” You groan, gently tapping your forehead against a shelf in the hallway. “Whatcha gonna wear to the party, hmm?” Peter is laughing next to you, stupidly happy and waiting for your small meltdown to be over. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in a dress yet…” 

You let out a fake sob, closing your eyes as you think over your past decisions. How did he get a yes out of you on Friday? How in the world did he wiggle his way into your mind?

“Oh, poor baby, being forced to have fun. Like a human college student.” He laughs, his hand moving to the shelf, blocking your head from making contact again.

You lift your head slightly, giving him a mean look, you stand up straight. “It’s one party, okay? Remember that. One.” With a quick movement, you move around him. 

And, he follows. “You’re gonna have fun, okay? I promise.”

“No meeting today, I need to wallow.” You sigh, gently toying with your glasses frames, feeling a small sore spot forming by your temple. 

“Okay, I’ll see you later, Trouble.” He stops following, standing in the hallway, watching you leave. 

—-------------

Wednesday, November 13th.

Peter hasn’t left your thoughts since Monday. You’ve done everything you could to ignore the nagging images in your mind. His crooked smile, his stupid laugh that should be catergorized as a giggle and how he looks when he’s focused on you. 

The way your heart beats is the worst part. 

You have found a plethora of people attractive and been able to ignore it, but for some reason, you let him touch your forehead two days ago and instead of feeling the physical recoil, you wanted to lean into it. Feel the weight of his hand on your temple. Wanted to stare at him and return the gesture, run your hand through the bouncy brunette curls. 

It doesn’t stop in class either. His presence is like a fog wafting over you and you try so hard not to hurl from the butterflies in your stomach. As much as you hated to admit it, he was in your mind, nestled deep like a parasite. A parasite that was eating your prefrontal cortex, all your logic going with it. 

It’s so persistent that you can't even focus in the study room while you're working on your semester project. You haven’t typed but six words of the research essay, and Peter knows because it’s a shared document and you can see when he clicks into your ‘paragraph’. 

You’re getting overheated, so you take off your sweater, putting it on the table and smoothing your hair back out. 

“You okay, Trouble?” Peter’s voice is gentle, soft. It makes you feel even worse, your face flushing. “Mhmm… Just having a weird day.” You let yourself take a deep breath before you look up at him. “And seriously, stop calling me that.” There’s such a beautiful pout on his face, it’s awful. He is genuinely making you want to cry.

“Okay.” He says your name and it's exponentially worse and makes you break into a sweat from how hard you're blushing. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re getting really red.”

“I’m fine, Peter.” You say with a snap, rolling your eyes. Guilt hits you automatically but there’s no use in taking it back now that you’ve done it. 

But he still leans forward, the back of his hand pressing to your forehead and you stop breathing, watching him as his brows form a deep wrinkle. After a second his index and thumb gently touch the shell of your ear, pinching so slightly. “You’re warm… Feverish.” He sounds genuinely sad. 

“Really?” Your voice is creaky and small as you let out a breath with the word. 

“Yea. Are you sure you’re okay?” He says, his hand hovering near your skin for a moment before it drops to the table.

“I do feel a little warm, maybe I should…” You stop before you finish the sentence, glanicng at the monitor, rereading your own words.

“Yea, let me walk you back to your dorm, you need to get some rest.” He stands up and starts to pack his things before you can even respond. 

“You don’t have to do that, Peter, seriously. I’ll be okay.” You say, standing up with him and feeling frantic as you reach over to stop him from shoving his laptop into his jansport, your hand grappling his wrist. 

Peter says your name gently and shakes your hand off of his before he continues to put stuff away. “I need you to be in good health if you’re coming to the party on Friday.” He smiles, moving closer to you and gently packing your things into your bag, folding your sweater neatly and tucking it in too. 

“I’m-” You start but are immediately cut off by the look on his face. It’s an expression of worry but with a little stubbornness mixed in. 

It makes you panic so you shake your head aggressively, pulling that stupid muscle in the back of your neck and the pain shoots through you, making you a little dizzy. “I’m fine, I don’t need… a babysitter.” Your words should have been more poisonous and sharp but it all sounded sad and weak. 

“Uh-huh. Let’s go.” He says with a huff, putting his backpack on and then tugging yours close to his chest. With another swift movement he ushers you out of the study room and down the long hall. 

You feel deeply embarrassed as he is speedwalking through the library, holding your backpack in one hand as the other gently pushes your back. And he does it all the way across campus before he gets you to Siebert Hall. 

“Thank you, thanks.” You say with a smile and stop, reaching out for your bag, but he pulls away. 

“Nuh-uh. I’m walking you all the way to your dorm room.” His expression shows genuine confusion before he laughs and leads you to the doors and up the hall to the elevator, toying with the buttons.

“Seriously, you’re doing too much.” You say with a huff, a hand coming to your face as you cover a cheek. 

He looks back at you and gently touches your forehead again. “You’re getting warmer… I can’t just leave you to your devices with a fever.” It’s followed by a ‘tch’ sound as he hears the elevator ding. 

“What if you get… sick?”

“I won’t. I have a grade A immune system.”

Gently, he pulls you into the elevator, keeping you close as you ride to your dorm floor, the elevator shaky and sounding close to breaking, again. But after two minutes he pulls you down the hallway again, dropping his hand from your back and digging through your backpack, pulling out your lanyard to get your keycard and unlocking your door. 

“Okay, thank you, Peter, see you later.” You cough a bit, grabbing your bag and lanyard, pushing past him and into your room before slamming the door in his face. 

“Wait- what?” He yells from behind the door. But when you don’t respond he slowly shuffles away, sighing loudly. 

Once his footsteps are completely gone you fall to the ground and groan. “Fuck…”

You like Peter Parker. Full-blown crush. 

—-------------

Thursday, November 14th

When you got back from your classes for the day, there was a shoebox sitting in front of your door, a little note with your name on it. 

‘Swung by to give these to you, but forgot you had a class. Hope it’s not weird, but you needed shoes for the party, so… yea. See you tomorrow. 

-Peter’

When you opened the box, it was a pair of white tennis shoes. Nothing expensive but… still, the guy bought you a pair of shoes. What kind of freak does that? 

A gift for someone he barely knows? And he knew your shoe size after two visits to your dorm? Freak behavior that shouldn’t have you smiling and giddy but it does. Apparently you’re turning into a person that likes these kinds of things that otherwise would feel stalker-ish. 

Gross.

—-------------

Friday, November 15th

Peter has been texting you on and off since Wednesday afternoon, checking in on you and you gave him short answers everytime. You didn’t want to worry him but you also wanted to minimize your contact with him before the party.

Which you were getting ready for and questioning everything about yourself as you looked at your closet and wondered what someone wears to a frat house party. You sigh and give in, facetime Delilah. 

She picks up after twenty seconds and she’s got a mudmask on, her curly hair in the messiest braid ever. “Hey baby, what’s up? You’ve been a ghost the past month?” 

“I know, I’m sorry… But can I ask for your help?” You whisper into the phone, gently biting your lip as you feel a strange guilt. 

“Of, course. Mind if Reed overhears?” She asks, the camera panning over to a shaggy haired guy who also had on a mud mask. 

“Hi! I’ve heard so much about you.” He says with a big smile, the mask cracking a bit at the edges. 

“Uh, yeah. That’s fine. I need help picking out an outfit.” You say, moving half of your face out of frame. “Nice to meet you, uh… Reed.” 

There's a small squeal as you flip the camera to your closet. It’s mostly old sweaters, some baggy jeans and two or three pairs of cargo shorts. Academic chic. 

“Okay, so.. What is the occasion?” She asks, her eyes squinted as you rifle through everything that’s hung up. 

“A frat party…” You say, embarrassment dripping from your words. 

“OMG! Oh, my God. You’re going to a frat party? Since when did you do that?” Delilah sounds genuinely shocked as she stares at the camera. 

“Since I met an annoyingly persistent frat guy, I guess?” You groan, your hand gently touching the fabric of one of your favorite sweaters, using it as a calming aid. “Just… help me please?”

“Well you have to wear the tube top I bought you for Christmas three years ago. And the black pair of cargos.” She says, humming softly as she looks more relaxed. 

“And what if I don’t have the tube top on campus?” You say, scared of hurting her feelings, but you never wore it so you left it at home.

“Ughhhh, of course you left it at home.” She groans, squinting at the screen again. 

“Wear the cropped sweater then. If it’s a party you should show a little skin.” She says with a shrug. “Try it on and show us.” 

You groan, putting the phone down to get changed. 

The sweater fell just below your bra, exposing your entire stomach, and it made you feel itchy, so you grabbed a white button down to put under it before following her advice and wearing the black cargo shorts. 

You stood infront of the mirror and pointed the camera at it. “This is.. Not great.”

“Yea…” She winces, grabbing a rag and wiping off her mask before pointing the screen at Reed who shakes his head. “Definitely not.” He adds.

—-------------

The call lasted a whole extra hour than you had accounted for, which means you’re late for the party. But you had a decent outfit on. Somehow you managed to find a cropped grapic t-shirt that paired well with your oversized cardigan and the cargos. And, of course, you were wearing the shoes Peter bought you. 

You walked up to the porch and you could hear loud booming music from the otherside of the door which made you pull the cardigan tighter around yourself before pushing the door open and looking around. 

There had to have been about 100 people inside the living room alone. It was automatically overwhelming, and you felt out of place as people were dancing on each other and making out in every nook and cranny of the space. 

Without a second thought you pulled out the phone, texting Peter. 

you: i’m here.. 

After a few seconds you saw Peter’s head peek out from an archway across the room, his eyes lighting up as he saw you. Within seconds he was at your side, leaning down to talk to you. 

“You actually showed!” He sounded excited and shocked and you gave him a look. 

“Yea? I promised.” You give him a look, locking your eyes onto his and feeling that little jump in your chest as you take in the dilation in his honey eyes. His pupils almost completely take over his iris’. “Are.. you high?” 

He shakes his head and nods towards the party. “I gotta stay sober to make sure these guys don’t do something stupid to my house.” He laughs a bit before he takes in a deep breath. “Okay, time to set some rules.”

“Rules? What-”

“You don’t have to drink or smoke, not unless you want to. If this gets overwhelming my bedroom is upstairs, all the way at the end of the hall. Here’s the key.” He gently tucks a key into your cardigan pocket. “There’s a lot of douchebags here, if someone tries something come straight to me. Okay?”

You nod, dip your hand into your pocket and play with the key. The cold metal soothes you a bit, but his words make you feel completely at ease. “Okay.”

He gently grabs your wrist, pulling out a marker from his back pocket and writes a ‘P’ on the vein. 

“Did you just brand me?” 

“No, I didn’t ‘brand’ you. I simply made sure my brothers knew who you were here with.” He smiles and blows softly on the ink and a chill crawls up your spine, tickling the back of your head. 

“Ah, okay.” You laugh, tugging your sleeve back down before looking back towards the swarm of bodies bumping and grinding. 

“Go get a drink and try to dance a little.” He says it over the music before leaning forward. “I got sodas in the fridge if you wanna snag one.” His breath touches your face and then he’s pulled away by some six foot athlete to play beer pong, and you’re alone. 

—-------------

You have a coke in your hand and you’re gently swaying to the Kendrick Lamar song booming from a large speaker sitting on top of a couch. No one here recognizes you, not that you know of, but Peter has been watching you the whole night, waiting patiently to come back to you after he fulfilled his duties as host. He’s watched you swipe your thumb over your wrist at least six times in the last two minutes and it’s killing him not to be next to you. 

But you take a long sip of your coke and start shaking a bit before moving a little more, dancing a bit as the music transitions into something a bit bouncier. 

You were a little angry, he invited you to a party and left you alone to fight against drunken college students. There were at least twelve people who asked about the coke and begged you for it so they could mix it with whatever alcohol they were drinking. 

After the thirteenth, you take a deep breath, groan and down the last of your soda and shrug. “Sorry, last one.” You throw the aluminum into a bin and try to dance a bit to the music, your limbs feeling awkward and bumping into people as you try. 

But you keep going, slightly jumping up and down and closing your eyes to flow with the music more fluidly. You twist your body around, arms above your head as you try to mimic the dancing you saw in movies and music videos growing up, whimsical and smooth. But you feel weird the whole time. Until you feel a hand on your waist, and you turn around, expecting to see Peter, but it was a random blonde dude, with an ugly smirk on his face.

You stop moving completely, pulling away from him, furrowing your brows at him.

“Looks like you need a dance partner!” He shouts over the music and you roll your eyes. 

“I don’t.” You shout back, starting to walk away from him, but with the crowd around you, it was hard to make a swift escape. 

“Oh, come on. Of course you do, I don’t see a boyfriend or anyone out here with you.” His voice was dripping with something you didn’t know how to interpret. Maybe he was trying to seduce you but it wasn’t going to work considering everything. He reeks of weed and has the world's worst cologne on, the green bottle of Axe. It’s enough to make you cringe as he keeps trying to get closer to you.

“Seriously, I’m fine, shrivel dick.” You groan, pushing between a group of girls wearing pink shirts with a jumble of greek letters. 

“Shrivel dick? Excuse me?” The guy grabs your wrist and tugs at you, your mind immediately in fight or flight mode as you try and yank yourself away, but his grip tightens. “Apologze.”

This was stupid, the whole thing. You weren’t having fun at all and the only reason you came is because a stupid guy who isn’t even with you right now asked you to. And now, you can’t even dance because some douche thinks he has the right to touch and tug you. 

“No. Fuck off.” You say it a little breathlessly, feeling your body grow hot. 

You fight with him for a moment, your sleeve slipping and revealing Peter’s branding, which apparently is enough for him to drop your hand before raising his own in defense. “Oh, sorry, didn’t realize you were Peter’s.”

‘Didn’t realize you were Peter’s’, like you’re some sort of object. It’s enough to send you right over the edge you’ve been standing on all night and you slap him across the face, brows furrowing before you turn the other direction. 

Your breath starts to pick up, your heartrate follows suit and panic starts to settle into your body. It makes you nauseous and you try to push through the mass of humans, the humidity in the room adding to the awful feeling spreading over you. For a second you think you’re gonna projectile vomit all over the person in front of you. But you remember the key Peter gave you and you start shoulder checking people out of your way until you can sprint up the stairs to his room.

You unlock it quickly and slip in, breathing heavily as you assess the dark room. It’s clean, surprisingly. There’s only three places to sit: a desk chair, the bed or the rug. His bed is made and there's an admirable amount of pillows and a valentine's build-a-bear, white with pink and red hearts all over it. You take a few breaths, walking to the desk, gripping the back of it before looking over his corkboard full of pictures. A lot of them are close-up’s of plants and bugs, many of which are spider’s, those ones make your skin crawl. But there’s a few pictures, a closeup of someone's eyes, a frown, and someone’s neck line. It’s all very artsy.

You sit down and pull your knees to your chest, looking past the nature photos to the ones that are framed on his desk. A graduation photo, Peter in the middle, an older woman on his left and a blonde on right, clinging to him. They all look extremely happy, it soothes you a bit. Most of the photos were of the older woman and what looked to be her husband. Even a wallet size frame with a worn family photo of the three of them was framed. Peter couldn’t have been much older than 4 in the picture, but you knew it was him because of the lopsided smile. Next to that, there’s an obituary framed. ‘Benjamin Parker’.

For a moment you were a little lost, but as you read through the description you remembered Benjamin was the name he picked for your fake natural disaster. Of course it was an important name. According to the obit, this was the guy that raised him, his uncle. And he died when Peter was 15, maybe 16? 

You should really ask him about his birthday some day, gauge how old he was. Maybe give him support and comfort. In a moment of fog, you reach out and grab the small photo, gently touching the golden frame. 

“Hey, I heard what happened downstairs, are you okay?” Peter’s voice is a bit raised, and the sudden sound makes you jump, clutching the photo as you turn to face the door. 

You stare at him for a long moment, then look down at the picture, slowly putting it back in its spot. There's a swirl of emotions in your chest as you look at him, anger for leaving you alone, gratefulness that he’s here, sadness because you know about his uncle. And he can feel them all as he looks at you, watching your hand put the photo down. 

“Oh, so you came up here to snoop?” He says with a small smile, walking over and leaning on the desk with his hip. 

“No.” You say defensively, rolling your eyes as you look up at him and remember why you needed to escape. “You left me alone in a setting you knew I was uncomfortable in and- well you heard what happened.” Everything in you is muddled and mixed, you were still upset with him. 

He winces a little, his face dropping into a frown. “I’m sorry, I really am but as an officer I had to walk around and see all the rushes.” His hand gently runs through his hair as he looks you over. “But, I shouldve been with you… I should have invited you to walk around with me and instead…”

“I was alone, nervous, was asked a million times about my forbidden coke and then vicously attacked by a douche.” You say it, mumbling into your knees a little as you look away. If he gave you any more than the frown you might give in, stop being upset with him. 

“Ugh, I’m so so soooo sorry. Can I make it up to you somehow?” He kneels, his arm resting across the desk, his finger gently tapping your shin. 

The touch makes you get a little stupid, it's so gentle it’s almost unnoticeable, but you see it. You feel it. And it makes you feel a little less upset. “Tell me something about one of these photos.” You nod to the corkboard, eyeing the closeup of the frown. Somehow it feels… familiar.

“You want the background for one of my photos?” Peter laughs a little, following your gaze. When he sees which one you’re staring at he hums gently. 

“Yea, why not. I know about the bugs and nature, but why just someone's eyes or someone's mouth?” 

“It’s… nice. The idea that you can capture the smallest parts of someone. Just a few inches of their face or-or body language and you can still feel their emotions.” This may be the most excitement you’ve heard from him. “Like- the eyes. Those are actually Harry’s– the frat president– and you can see him smiling, even without actually seeing his mouth and… the neckline? That’s a girl from my creative journalism club, she was laughing for so long her neck got red and her shoulders were bunched up and you can just see that from her neck and collarbone.” 

“You really analyze people, huh?”

“Mhm… When you see the big picture all the time it’s nice to see the smaller bits. And…” He draws the word out, his smile growing. “The frown. That actually belongs to you.” He says it smoothly, looking back over to you. “You do that when you read my parts of the assignment. Focused and diligent to make sure I don’t mess up your shot at a decent grade.” 

It hits you like a freight train and you lean forward, your feet dropping from the chair as you reach out to grab the picture. “When- what?” You stare at the photo of, well, your mouth and take it down, staring at it to try and recognize your own feature. “That’s not my mouth… there’s no way I wouldn’t have recognized my own lips.”

“Well, those are your lips.” He sounds so, so smug, gently tugging the photo from your grip, putting it back in its place. “You just don’t look at yourself the way I do.” 

Man, he was using all of his charms and it was working. You have to be beet red as you look over at him. He still looks high, his pupils extremely blown out and his mouth in its stupid uneven tilt. But you didn’t know what to say to him. How do you respond to that? 

You were getting a headache from the pressure of your glasses and how easily Peter was able to get you from mad at him to blushing. It was like a sort of master plan.

“You okay?” He asks, his hand gently reaching out, hovering by your shoulder. For some reason, you turn the chair a bit, leaning down to get closer to his face. And you kiss him. It’s awkward and really, extremely quick, but it’s still a kiss. His lips were smooth, soft and cushiony. He tasted vaguely like blue raspberry and being this close, his cologne was overwhelming. Forest and vanilla and honey. Sweetest pine. And if you weren’t you, you’d probably kiss him again, but alas, you are you and he is Peter, and you should not be kissing him in his bedroom this late and at a frat party.

You pull back, staring down at him with an apologetic look, but he just looks… well you can’t read it. His mouth is slightly open, his eyes flicking between yours and his shoulders are slumped. “I’m sorry- I dont know why I did that.” You whisper, moving to stand up, but his hand reaches back out and stops you, pulling the chair flush against him as he stands on his knees, his arms caging you in. “Why are you apologizing?” He huffs out, leaning forward, his body slotting between your legs as he starts to look at every feature of your face, analyzing it all over again. “I want to do it again.”

With his heat pouring over you, you can’t stop yourself. Meeting him halfway, your lips brush against his before you’re kissing him again but this time it lasts long enough to actually close your eyes. There's a pressure in it that makes you feel pinned down, like if you tried, you couldn’t escape it. But, you didn’t want to escape it, you wanted more. It wasn’t something you had really anticipated, especially with the realization you liked him happening just a few days ago. Your hands travel to the sides of his neck, thumb grazing his pulse point. His response is to put a hand on your ribcage, gently squeezing before pulling away and pressing a trail of kisses from your jaw to your neck. 

It lasts a long time, his face moving between your lips and exposed skin of your neck. Between each one he whispers small words, little compliments. 

‘You’re so pretty.’

‘I’ve been waiting to do this.’

‘I’m in so much trouble.’

‘Beautiful.’

The list goes on and on and on. Until he pulls away and slowly stands up from the floor and looms over you. His hands cradling your jaw as he stares. No words, just staring. 

It all hits you at once, the entire night washing over you as a swollen-lipped Peter Parker is watching you, like he’s anticipating your next move. Which, honest to god, you didn’t know what you were about to do. 

“I’m still mad at you.” You say softly, gently pushing a hand through your hair as you stand up, keeping eye contact the entire time. 

“But I explained the photos. And, dare I say, I made you swoon with my smooth one-liner?” He laughs, his hand cupping your cheek. 

He really must have been weasled in your brain cause instead of a scoff, you laugh a little, leaning into his hand. And man, he had extremely soft hands. “Dare I say that I hate you?”

Peter hums softly and leans down again but is interrupted by a loud knock on the door and incoherent yelling. The only discernable word is ‘Peter’, which is telling. He groans, standing back straight and shouts back a quick ‘One sec’ before he looks you over. “If I leave, are you gonna disappear?” He asks, squinting at you. 

With him staring at you, it hits you that you just spent twenty, maybe even thirty minutes just inhaling his face. Even after your mean comments, distant demeanor, kissing him abruptly, he still looks at you like you hung the moon. And for some reason, there’s a deep pit growing in your stomach at it all.

“I mean… I should probably walk back to my dorm.” You respond, taking a couple of reserved steps back, a little nervous at the events that unfolded from a simple frat party invitation.

Peter’s brows jump together. He watches his mug as he fills it up. “No. Why?” 

You feel immediately stupid. You’ve overstepped. You’re nosy. You don’t mean to be. 

“I heard the door open.” 

No way to say that without sounding like a paranoid freak. You have a quiet door in a loud city. At nearly midnight, with sirens wailing and your neighbor singing in the shower on the other side of your wall, you shouldn’t have heard it. But you did. 

If Peter finds this odd, he doesn’t mention it. “Oh,” he says, dragging the word out long and slow. “Out as in out of the apartment. I thought you meant out out, like to the club or something. No, I just…I had a late night craving. Went down to the bodega to grab some chips.” 

You feel yourself frown. You hadn’t heard the door open again until a couple hours later, far longer than a trip to the bodega would take. But to ask more questions would be to admit you’d still been listening, so you don’t. Maybe Peter has some emotional attachment to a bodega in Queens. He said he was from Queens, right? 

Peter joins you in the living room. You’ve opened a window to let the air in, still warmish but getting cool enough that you can get away with running the fans and not the air conditioning, and Peter turns his face into the light as he settles in on the opposite side of the couch. You wonder if he’ll have his own dent in time, too. He doesn’t strike you as the type. 

“You were up late, too, huh?” he asks. The smell of his coffee mingles with the smells of wet pavement and car exhaust coming in through your window. 

“Sorry,” you say, before you can stop yourself, “I didn’t mean to pry.” 

“It’s cool. It’s not prying to make sure the door to your apartment isn’t left unlocked in the middle of the night.” Peter grins. Two dimples dive into his cheeks. “Were you doing homework then, too?” 

“No.” You don’t consider lying. It’s not something you feel the need to be private about, even with virtual strangers. “I just don’t sleep much.” 

Your roommate’s head tilts. The movement reminds you of a cocker spaniel. “Like, you can’t?” 

“I can’t,” you confirm. “Not usually, at least.” 

“Ouch. That sucks.” 

Peter’s sympathetic bemusement confirms for you that his reasons for being tired are not, in fact, the same as yours. Whatever they might be, you file it away as None of Your Business. You’ve asked, he’s told, that’s the end of it. You sleep not twenty feet apart, but Peter is a near stranger to you. You don’t have any right to his mysteries. 

“So,” he says into the silence that follows, “any classes today?” 

“Yeah.” You check the time on your laptop. Corner the page of your textbook. “Actually, I’d better go. It starts in twenty minutes. Do you care if I leave my mess on the coffee table?” 

Peter glances at your collection of pens and highlighters with a look that makes you think his version of mess might be different to yours. 

“Go ahead,” he says. “So long as you don’t mind my mess joining it.” 

“Of course not.” You zip up your backpack, relieved. 

“You coming back for lunch? I think I’m gonna go grab a bagel in a sec, I can bring you back one.” 

“Oh, that’s…” That’s too much. That’s more than roommate duties, and more than you want to return. “That’s okay,” you say, moving towards the door. “I packed a sandwich, I’ll probably camp out on campus between classes.” 

Peter raises his hand in a lazy salute. “Let me know if you change your mind.” 

“Uh, yeah. Thanks.” You try to mirror him. It feels weird; you let your hand drop halfway through. The door shuts nearly silently behind you. 

—

Peter plies you with meatloaf when you return. He’s been to his aunt’s in Queens and brought back enough to feed a family of four. 

“It’s not…I’m not gonna lie to you, it’s a not world-renowned meatloaf,” he says, bringing a forkful to his mouth. “But it’s food and it’s free and I can’t eat it all by myself, so.” 

You’re not in any position to turn down free food. You sit on the couch next to him. Peter’s left the cushion by the window open, and you wonder if already you each have your own spot. The meatloaf isn’t bad. 

You talk about your classes. Peter’s studying biophysics and biochemistry, two words which mean nothing to you but apparently require lots of time spent at the labs on campus. He congratulates you on the achievement of getting matched with a roommate who will make you feel like you live by yourself; his classes are only getting started, but soon he’ll be in the lab most of the time. Though your own classes are far from easy, you don’t envy him. 

Peter doesn’t need any help from you; he finishes the rest of the meatloaf in that one sitting. 

—

You get into a rhythm quickly. On campus from your first class in the morning until your assignments (or at least the ones due the next day) are finished usually sometime in the evening, cooking at home, eating on the run, plasma donation on Thursdays at seven to make some extra cash, four scoops of coffee grounds in the machine because both you and Peter need it strong. Peter brings home more meals from his aunt. Her name is May, you learn, and after the third free dinner you write her a thank-you note for Peter to bring back to her. 

Your hot water goes out. Peter sweet-talks the landlord while you send stern emails to the leasing company until it gets fixed. You bring his laptop instead of yours to campus by mistake and have to meet up at a library to swap. Peter comes from the lab, half-jogging with plastic goggles pushed up into his hair and making it stick out in every direction. It’s endearing beyond reason. You make him a sandwich to take to class when he oversleeps. He comes to pick you up from the plasma donation clinic when you forget to eat beforehand. You develop inside jokes about the flickering light above your stove, and the erratic banging you think is your upstairs neighbors having sex, and the too-good-for-this-world cashier at the bodega on your corner. No matter how Peter tries to get you in on it, you refuse to develop inside jokes about his Aunt May’s cooking. 

It’s in the dull blue of a sleepless night in September, Aunt May’s pasta pomodoro still heavy in your stomach, when you hear the lock on your front door click. It’s a quiet sound, but you’re too antsy to miss it in your otherwise silent apartment. The door opens with a shush of air. 

You wonder if Peter is going out or coming in. It’s late, but not so late for the overworked grad student population. He warned you that he’d eventually be spending long nights at the lab. 

You don’t get up with any suspicions. You only want to make sure the door gets re-locked, and you haven’t heard the second click. 

There’s an odd sound as your bedroom door opens. Like plastic ripping or cast fishing line, blink-and-it’s-over. You step out to find Peter wrapped up in your largest blanket and absolutely covered in filth. 

You blink. 

Peter blinks back at you. 

“Jesus,” you say. 

“Nope, just me.” Peter grins, but it falls short of his usual. “Sorry, lame joke. My uncle used to make it. It was lame then, too, I guess.” 

“What happened to you?” 

“Uh, there was a small accident at the lab. You should be asleep.” 

“Small? Is that soot?” 

“It’s…it’s soot, yeah.” 

You’re reeling. You turn the kitchen light on to see him better. Peter’s left footprints in from your front door. There’s soot even in his hair, tinging it a darker color. “Was there an explosion?” 

He grimaces. “It was a super small explosion. Very contained. But, you know, chemicals. Volatile stuff.” You shake your head, baffled, and his expression softens. “It was freaky, but everything’s fine now. It’s late, you should go back to sleep.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.” 

Peter’s brow furrows; the lines are more pronounced with soot etched into them. “You weren’t? It’s almost three,” he says, as if to himself. 

“What’s with the blanket?” 

“The…oh.” He looks down. “Right, yeah. The lab actually took my clothes. They’re probably not contaminated or anything, but they’re being disposed of for liability reasons.” 

You look down at your blanket, covering him toe-to-chin, and back up at Peter. “They made you walk home naked?” 

Peter blinks. “Uh. No, no, not…totally naked.” 

You raise your eyebrows at him. 

“They gave us…lab coats?” His voice tips up at the end like a question and the corners of his mouth tip up with it, sheepish. He gives a little shrug. “It’s not super modest, but it’s what they had on hand. Sort of like a slutty nurse costume situation? I didn’t want to, uh, you know, scar you as you were coming out of your room.” 

“Right.” You frown, embarrassed of the heat you can feel coming to your face. “I…appreciate that.” 

“Anytime. But you can go to bed now, seriously.” Peter starts edging towards the bathroom. “Don’t let me keep you up, I know you have that nine a.m. tomorrow.” 

You wave him off. “I’ll be fine, we don’t have any explosions in my class. Are you okay? Is there anything I can help with?” 

“Nope! No help.” Peter’s voice pitches slightly when you step towards him. He draws the blanket tighter, walking backwards until his back bumps the wall and feeling his way into the bathroom. “It’s just that I’m really basically naked. Like, so, so naked, and it’s embarrassing, so you should just go to your room and I’ll shower and then we can, uh, probably just not talk about this, if you’re alright with that. Because I’m embarrassed. Okay?” 

“Okay.” You hold your hands up peaceably. “If you’re sure.” 

“Super sure.” Peter flashes you a smile before shutting the bathroom door. “Goodnight!” 

You go back to your room and sit with your head laid flat in the middle of your pillow, your bent knees making a tent of your covers. You listen to the shower running until it squeaks off at three-thirty. 

—

Your backpack feels heavier leaving the library than it did on the way to campus this morning. Your train runs less frequently after midnight, so walking is nearly just as efficient. It’s a long, slow trudge up the hill that leads from campus to your neighborhood, past empty university buildings and through dapples of pale streetlights. A raccoon stops riffling through a trash can to look at you as you pass. You raise a hand to let him know you’re a kindred spirit. 

It’s cliché, but you sort of love the city after dark. It’s less glitzy than people think. The city may not sleep, and neither do you, and apparently neither does Peter, but some people have to. The streets are relatively quiet, technicolor dulled into grays and blues that blur together as you pass them by. Somewhere out of view, a siren wails like a ghost’s cry. 

It’s the quiet that allows you to hear the schwick and rush of air that comes before feet hit the sidewalk beside you. 

You flinch hard. Nearly send yourself tumbling into the street, but a hand whips out to catch you before you can slip off the curb. Slippery red fabric with black latticework spanning up the wrist. 

“It’s okay.” Spider-Man steps back as soon as you’re steady. He holds his hands up. “It’s okay.” 

You put a hand to your heart, feeling it beating beneath your palm. “Jesus. Don’t you know not to sneak up on girls walking by themselves?” 

“Don’t you know girls shouldn’t walk by themselves?” Spider-Man counters lightly. 

You suppose you’re meant to feel chastened, except you are a girl, and you have to get places, you can’t have a chaperone at all times. Also, this superhero speaks in a deep, rough voice that makes you think of teenage boys trying to sound tough. 

“Is this really the most pressing thing you have to deal with?” you ask him. Spider-Man’s head tilts, and you gesture around you at the empty street. “Aren’t there any bank robberies happening? Or, like, serial killers on the loose?” 

He’s wearing a mask, and yet you could swear it’s like his eyebrows raise. “How common do you think those are?” 

You shrug and keep walking, though you’re careful not to put your back fully to him. Even Spider-Man could turn out to be a bad guy to be stuck alone with. “I don’t need any help,” you say. “Thanks for the tip, though.” 

He keeps pace with you. “Are you a student?” 

You look at him sideways. “Maybe. What makes you ask?” 

He taps the pin on your backpack. “The university has a walking buddy program, you know. So students don’t have to walk home alone after long nights at the library.” 

“How long have you been following me for?” 

“What?”

You narrow your eyes at him. You don’t like that he guessed you were coming home from the library; however, on the chance that it is a guess you’re not about to tell him he was right. 

“I’m just saying.” Spider-Man’s hands are up again, in a gesture of peace. “You should think about calling a walking buddy next time.” 

“Maybe I’d rather be alone than alone with someone who’s volunteered to learn the routes to people’s homes.” You throw him a pointed look. 

Spider-Man’s casual gait doesn’t falter, but he lets out something that sounds almost like a laugh. “Are you always this suspicious of people trying to help you?” 

“John Wayne Gacy was known to lure victims by promising help.” 

“But I’m…” The voice behind the mask changes, turning younger and less polished. He lifts his gloved hands haplessly. “...Spider-Man.” 

You shrug, not allowing yourself to feel bad. “I’m suspicious of people in general. And I don’t need help.” 

“Noted. Listen, can I just walk you to your building to make sure you get in safe? I won’t know your apartment number or anything.” 

You give him an appraising look. Spider-Man walks with a respectable distance between you, his hands swinging at his sides. It’s not like you could actually make him go away even if you wanted to, but you do think he would fuck off if you said no. Ultimately, that’s what makes the decision for you. 

“Okay,” you say, tacking on reluctantly, “thanks.” 

“Hey, all in a day’s work. Until there’s another bank robbery or serial killer, obviously.” 

Spider-Man turns out to be a half-decent walking companion. He offers to give you a lift instead—but once he clarifies what he means by lift and you swiftly decline, he only continues walking beside you at a New Yorker’s amble. He asks you about your classes. You admit to having fallen asleep earlier at the library, and then staying late to make up for the study time you’d missed. He tells you about how it feels to swing through the city at night; how there are some neighborhoods he likes better than others for their calmness, but of course by the nature of what he does he tends to stick to the noisier ones. Times Square isn’t only a hotspot for crime during the day, as it turns out. He says, in a light, kind voice, that he’s glad to have the break of walking you home. He enjoys the quiet of your little neighborhood, too. 

True to his word, Spider-Man lets you go at your building. He watches you walk up the front steps, waving when you turn around briefly before buzzing yourself in. You hear the schwick of his webbing shooting out just before the door closes behind you. 

You slog up the flights of stairs to your apartment, letting your backpack drop by the door and sending a silent apology to your downstairs neighbors right after. You feel lighter without it, but still your body all but drags you to the floor when you sit to take off your shoes. You turn at the sound of a door creaking open. 

Light spills out into the hall as Peter emerges in his plaid pajama bottoms. You wince. 

“Hey,” you say softly. “Sorry, did I wake you up?” 

“No.” He shakes his head, though you obviously did. His hair is all messy from sleep, sticking out in every direction. “Did you just get back?” 

“Mhm.” 

Peter makes a face highly reminiscent of a sad puppy. “You were on campus all day?”

You shrug, like what can you do? Peter’s a grad student, too; he’ll get it. 

But your roommate looks troubled. “Did you eat?” 

“I…” You blink, realizing why, besides the late hour, you might have felt so tired on your walk home. “I guess I forgot about dinner. I fell asleep for a while in the library.” 

“Yeah?” Peter’s already moving towards the kitchen. “Sit down, I’ll make you something.” 

“Peter, that’s okay.” 

“I’m not gonna have you passing out waiting for the microwave or whatever. Just sit down.” 

You find you don’t have much argument left in you. You’re dead tired, and the couch does look like a nice place to rest. “I thought we ran out of May’s lasagna.” 

“We did. I can’t cook as good as her, but I can whip up a half decent quesadilla.” 

You fall silent, resting your cheek on the back cushion of the couch and watching as Peter puts a thin slice of butter into a pan on your stove. Your teeth worry into your lower lip. 

“Doesn’t the library close at midnight?” he asks. 

“Two,” you correct him. “It’s open twenty-four hours during midterms and finals week, though.” 

Peter glances at you out of the corner of his eye. “It’s not midterms or finals.” 

“Hence why I got kicked out.” 

He makes a chuffing sound like laughter, familiar in a way you can’t place. “Can’t believe you stayed late enough to get kicked out.”

“I know, right? It’s like bar close for students.” 

“Are you really comparing yourself to people who get kicked out of bars?” 

“Hey, we’re both committed, just to different pursuits.” 

Peter hums, ceding the point. “I guess the only difference is that you got kicked out on a Tuesday.” 

“You think the barflies aren’t there on Tuesdays?” You give him a droll look. “Wisen up, Parker.” 

Your roommate casts you a glance paired with a half-smile. “You know productivity decreases with exhaustion, right?” 

You scoff. “You don’t get to talk about healthy sleeping habits. I know you work just as hard.” He brings you a plate with a neatly folded quesadilla on it, and you soften your tone as you take it. “Thank you.” 

Peter settles into his side of the couch, putting his feet up on the coffee table. He watches you take your first couple of bites. “I just think,” he says, “that if you pass out somewhere from sleep deprivation or low blood sugar or whatever, there might be some part of our lease agreement that says I’m responsible for that.” 

You raise your eyebrows at him. “Did you read that whole thing?” 

“Oh, hell no.” 

“Me neither.” 

“I’m only saying that it’s possible. Landlords love weird clauses.” 

You hum as you chew, playing along. “Okay. That’s fair. What if I kept a note constantly on my person that said this isn’t Peter’s fault, so that if someone finds me passed out you can avoid culpability? Would that make you feel better?” 

Peter’s lips twitch. He shrugs. “A little.” 

“Perfect. That’s what I’ll do, then.” 

“You could also just come home before some poor librarian has to kick you out. Or,” he goes on, “call me to walk you home if it’s late.” 

You give him a look. “I’m not going to call and wake you up so you can come get me every time I stay late on campus.” 

“I wouldn’t mind being woken up. I might be on campus too, and anyway I’d want to help.” 

“I don’t need help.” 

Peter frowns. “If you say so.” 

You nod, trying to smile to soften the rejection. You hold up what remains of your quesadilla. “This is really good, by the way.” 

Peter mirrors your half-hearted smile. “I learned from the best.” 

“Yeah, you did. I really owe May another card.” 

“You don’t owe May anything, and if she were here she’d tell you that herself.” 

—

You feel like something is amiss. It’s not a new feeling. Some nights, you can’t stop going over things you’ve done wrong. Times you said something you shouldn’t have, acted without thinking, didn’t act and regretted it, going back as long as you can remember. It’s enough to make you hate yourself. 

Other nights, like this one, you become convinced there’s something still yet to be done. You didn’t actually hit submit on that assignment. You’ve left the stove on. Your water bottle is sitting abandoned on your table in the library, begging to be stolen. Someone’s trying desperately to call you, but you clicked your phone to silent without realizing. 

The anxieties worm their way into your weary bones until the only option is to drag yourself out of bed and quiet them. It’s not like you were going to fall asleep anyway. 

Your building is old and creaky. You take care to walk on light footsteps into the kitchen, reassuring yourself forcefully as you go. The stove is off. The freezer is shut. The heater is not turned up so high that you’re going to be surprised by a heart-stopping electrical bill. The kitchen sink isn’t leaking. Your school things are just where you left them, heaped together in your backpack beside the door. The front door is…

The front door is unlocked. 

You know you locked it when you came in. You’re sure you did, because you don’t allow yourself to put your keys on the hook unless you have and there they are. You look towards Peter’s room. 

When you text him, there’s no chime you can hear.

YOU: Hey, are you home?

PETER: Just left, forgot my laptop on campus! Everything ok?

YOU: Yeah, it’s fine. The door was unlocked.

PETER: Shit. SO SORRY!!! 

PETER: U can lock it, I have my key.

YOU: It’s fine. Locked now.

PETER: Won’t happen again. Promise!

You double-check that Peter’s key is missing from his hook before actually locking the door. You think wryly that you and Peter may have synced in your sleeping habits; you always seem to be awake at the same times. Or maybe you were simply both such terrible sleepers to begin with that the comings and goings of the other don’t make much difference. 

You run through a few more checks before going to bed. The window that goes to the fire escape is latched. The oven is off. Your laptop is charging. 

Right next to Peter’s. 

—

The next night, you’re not woken by worries but by cold. You rouse from a fitful hibernation to find yourself coiled tight like a crab within its shell, knees pressed together and chilled nose hidden beneath your covers. Early winter seeps through your apartment like a frozen kiss. 

You take your blankets with you as you stumble out of bed, bleary-eyed. You feel the chill more when you leave your room, though less in the living room. The heat is supposedly on. Peter’s door is closed, but you knock to see if it’s woken him, too. There’s no answer. 

“Peter,” you whisper. 

Still nothing, and you knock again. 

“Pete, are you up?”

When another minute of this produces no response, you turn the door knob tentatively. You know it’s a massive invasion of privacy. You know that. But your apartment feels like it’s teleported to the Arctic, and for all you know Peter could be comatose with hypothermia right now. 

It feels all the more plausible when you open the door and the air that meets you is cool enough to make your skin pebble under your blankets. Peter really might have hypothermia. If he was here. 

But Peter’s bed is empty, and his window is open. 

You decide to leave it that way in case it’s how he needs to get back in. You take more blankets with you to go back to bed. 

—

There are few things you can think of which require someone to be out in the darkest hours of the night. None of them are reassuring. Things too illicit to be exposed to daylight, risky things, illegal things. 

If you’re being honest with yourself, you probably should have realized sooner. New York is expensive, and Peter doesn’t seem much better off than you are. You’re both full-time students without jobs; everyone has to supplement their income somehow. He probably makes more doing whatever he’s doing than you do pimping out your plasma once a week. 

Peter may not seem like the type, but you don’t have to be the type to do drastic things when you’re broke. Anybody could be doing anything. Some people do yard work, some people babysit, some people buy cheap shit and resell it on ebay; you donate plasma; Peter deals drugs, probably. It’s fine. It’s…well, it’s not fine, it’s dangerous, but you can understand it. He has access to a lab and pays for school with government grants. He had to be paying for your rent somehow. 

“Hey.” Peter returns to your table with a mug in each hand. “You good?” 

You let out a little hum. “Yeah, why?” 

“You just looked kinda spacey.” He sets your coffee in front of you. You pick it up, gratified by the way it sears your tongue and seeps sweetness into your tastebuds. 

You’ve taken to spending your Saturdays together at this coffee shop, The Daily Bean. It’s big enough in size that you can always find a table in some hidden corner if you look hard enough, small enough in popularity that regulars can still stare-shame anyone who talks too loudly when everyone else is trying to work. You and Peter like that it’s walkable from your apartment, and that the chairs are comfortable, and that every mug is unique so you can debate who got the better one when your drinks come out. The icing on the cake is that if you order a simple drink, refills are free so long as you bring back your mug. You keep asking Peter to go up to the counter because you’re worried the employees are going to get angry with you for abusing their policy by camping out all day, and no one can get angry with Peter.

And that’s sort of the sticking point, isn’t it?

Peter is a good guy. He’s nice, he works hard in school, he pays rent on time. Obviously he has this other thing going on on the side, but that doesn’t make you like him any less. It’s not fair that he should have to give up sleep and put himself in god-knows-what dangerous situations just to live. Lately, the crescents under his eyes are nearly as bad as yours. You’re worried about him. 

“You do photography, right?” 

Peter looks up, blinking, from where his attention had gone back to his laptop. He’s working on something he told you about during the walk over, some report of some sciency thing. You think he could tell you weren’t grasping it even as he explained it to you. 

“I take pictures sometimes,” he says, doing a side-to-side sort of nod. “Not really the same thing.” 

“But you’re good.” 

It’s not a question. You’ve seen the photos all over Peter’s room. They’re stuck to the walls with scotch tape like he’s not even proud of them, but they’re incredible. Candids of a graying woman you imagine to be Aunt May in different locations of the same lovingly cluttered home. Stills of people in the motions of their day, on the subway and lounging on front steps and smiling at dogs. Angles of the city that make you feel like you’re flying. 

Peter makes a face. “Eh…” 

You huff a laugh at his humility. “I’m just saying, have you ever thought of charging people for that?” 

“For…”

“To take pictures of them. Or to buy your pictures, either way.” 

“I don’t know.” Peter shrugs. He looks almost like he might be blushing. “I can’t think of anyone who would want to pay for that, and anyway I’m not sure I have the time to, like, monetize it or whatever.”

“I could probably help,” you say casually. Take a sip of your coffee to sell it. 

Peter watches you, unabashed in his staring even when you won’t look back at him. “Yeah? You’d do that?” 

You lift your shoulders. “Sure.” 

“How come?” 

You meet his gaze, though it sends tingles from your ears all the way down your spine to do it. The brown eyes waiting for you are just as warm and thrice as sweet as the drink in your hand. “Because I want to,” you say. 

Peter’s mouth kicks up in the corner. “Noted,” he replies. “Thanks.” 

You make a mumbly sound of acknowledgement, going for your coffee again. Your roommate’s grin worsens. 

“Hey.” He bumps your ankle lightly with his under the table. “You want to learn something about protein misfolding and Alzheimer’s?” 

“No.” 

“Yeah, you do.” Peter shuts his laptop, setting his elbows on it to lean closer to you. “So, when proteins lose their functional shape…” 

—

Lately, the only place you can find sleep is in places it shouldn’t be. Slumped over the table of a study room, in the chair of the plasma donation clinic, in your sunlit living room between classes. When Peter finds you, you’ve started a small puddle of drool on your textbook. The fluorescent lights of the library press at your eyelids, obscuring any awareness of time in a distant outside world. 

Peter says your name with something soft curled around the syllables. 

Your eyes burn as you open them to find him crouched by your chair, one hand on your textbook and the other floating a few inches above his knee like he’d been thinking of reaching for you. His hair is sticking up the way it does when he’s run his fingers through it. 

“Peter?” 

“Hey. Hi.” He clears his throat, blinking something away from his expression. “Glad you still know my name. Since, you know, you seem to have forgotten where we live.” 

“What’re you doing here?” 

“I’m hoping to save the librarians some hassle.” His mouth curves, pink and lovely, into a little smile. “Ready to go?” 

You peel yourself off of your textbook, allowing Peter to close a pencil in it to mark your page before dropping it into your backpack. You feel like you’re moving through molasses, back clicking as you stretch; you must have been sleeping deeply. 

“What time is it?” you yawn as Peter helps you into your coat. He shoulders your backpack without saying anything. 

“One-thirty.” When you blink blearily at the near-desolate library, he touches your shoulder gently to direct you toward the elevators. You try to take your backpack from him, and Peter only hikes it up further on his shoulder. “They’re gonna put posters of you up at some point. I think you’re here more than anybody else on campus.” 

You send him a droll, sleep-addled look out of the corner of your eye. “I don’t think you get to talk about staying out late.” 

He doesn’t look at you. “No? Why not?” 

“Because you’re always at the—” You yawn hugely. “At the lab.” 

Peter huffs a laugh. If it sounds a bit relieved, you’re perhaps too tired to judge. As you step into the elevator, he hits the button for the ground floor and steps back beside you to put an arm over your shoulders. “Touché.” 

You stand still in silent uncertainty as the elevator descends. This is closer than you and Peter have been before. It feels a slight shift from bumping elbows in the kitchen or accidentally brushing each other’s knees under your table at The Daily Bean, though maybe that’s just you. Regardless, it’s going to be a cold walk home; Peter’s body is emanating an enviable warmth through his coat, and you’re just sleepy enough to consider leaning a bit on him as you walk. You stay where you are. 

“How’d you know where I was?” you ask as the elevator doors open. Peter steps out with you tucked under his arm as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“It’s almost two in the morning on a Thursday.” He waves to the librarian at the desk, pushing the front door open for the both of you. “Where else would you be?” 

“Ha ha,” you mutter. “But, like, how’d you find me?” It’s a big library. Five floors, dozens of tables, and you’d been hidden away in your own private corner chosen specifically for how rare it is for any other student to stumble across. You suppose someone outside might have seen you through the window by your table, but even that seems unlikely. It’s higher up than most people think to look. 

“I’m an efficient search committee,” says Peter. He adjusts his hold on you when the wind picks up and you step closer unconsciously, hand slipping down your arm to encourage further sharing of his warmth. “Cold?” 

“Yeah. It wasn’t this bad when I left.” 

He makes a half-smug humming noise; you feel its vibrations kiss the top of your head. “That’s what happens when you stay out this late, I guess. My Uncle Ben used to say nothing good happens after midnight.” 

“Have I called you a hypocrite yet?” 

“Only in implication.” 

“Well, you are.” 

Peter laughs, the sound wonderfully crisp. “Did you at least eat?”

“It’s not your job to feed me, you know.” 

“Seems like someone’s gotta do it.” 

“Well, for the record, I did.” 

“Glad to hear it.” 

Peter seems to gather that if you walk all the way home he’s going to end up carrying you for at least part of it, so you go down into the subway to wait for the next train. You fall briefly asleep on his shoulder waiting, and again in your seats once you get on. It’s a feat, considering you’re only a stop away on this line, but both times Peter rests his chin on the top of your head like he’s surrendered to the idea of keeping you there. 

It’s only after he’s half-dragged you up the stairs to your apartment and is digging your key out of your backpack (why he doesn’t seem to have his, you don’t bother asking) that you say, “I’m sorry you had to come all the way to campus to get me.” 

Peter makes a quiet scoffing sound, jiggling the handle until the door gives way. “I didn’t have to. I don’t mind, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” 

“You’re always doing things for me, though.” You shuck off your coat, tossing it over the back of the couch as he does the same with his. “You’re either making me food or picking me up from places or bringing me my stuff…” 

Peter’s eyebrow twitches, a teasing curve to his mouth that fits his voice to its shape. “So what, I’m not allowed to do things for you? You’re gonna rob me of that?” 

“Do you have a hero complex or something?” 

You think it’s obvious you’re teasing him back, but Peter’s expression flickers with something that makes you wonder if he didn’t catch the levity in your tone. He recovers fast. “Maybe.” 

“I’m just saying,” you try on a bit of sincerity, “you don’t have to.” 

“Hey, I know.” He moves closer, eyes dark in the low light. Neither of you have moved for a light switch, your apartment cast in the cool blue tones of the moonlight coming in the window. “I really don’t mind. I like doing things for you.” 

“But,” you ask, hesitating, “who does things for you?” 

Peter’s eyebrows lift slightly, as though he’s surprised you’d ask. When his voice lowers, there’s something about the roughness of it which tugs at a memory. “You do.” 

You feel yourself frown. Yes, you try to do things to make Peter’s life a bit easier, but that’s half out of a sense of gratitude for all he already does for you and they’re never really sizable things. A few extra pancakes left in the fridge when you know he won’t wake with enough time to make breakfast before class, a pack of twizzlers snagged from the bodega when you notice he’s running low. Is that as much care as Peter gets? It can’t be. 

You’re about to tell him that he deserves better, but when you open your mouth you realize he’s right there, and letting yourself list forward is just as easy. 

Peter kisses you like he’s breathing you in. Slow at first, the beginnings of an inhale, and then in great pulls. He cups the side of your face, stepping forward, crowding you, his other arm winding around your waist to keep you from falling when you move backwards into the couch and nearly tip yourself over the edge. A few seconds later and he’s changed his mind, sending you both over so you collapse down onto the cushions in a heap, him all on your side and you all on his. One sleepy, confusing tangle. 

“I thought you wanted me to go to bed,” you mumble against his lips. 

“Who said that?” Peter rolls you sideways, putting you to the inside of the couch so he can push your hair away from your face. “Tomorrow’s Friday. It’s basically the weekend already.” 

“Could’ve probably stayed at the library then.” 

“Too cliché.” 

His hand coasts up your back, and you find you’re out of cleverness. “Yeah?” 

“Mhm. Plus, what would the librarians think of you? You’re a big name over there.” 

“You’re such a hypocrite.” 

Peter sighs into your mouth. “Tell me about it.” 

—

Maybe it should be awkward, but it’s not. You and Peter already live together, already have your routines and your in-jokes and an ease of moving about each other in a small space, so adding kissing to the mix really doesn’t feel like so far of a leap. 

It’s not fireworks. Or butterflies or cartwheels or any of that. It’s…easy. Like slipping into a warm bath. You feel yourself unspool one inch at a time, until coming home from class to lay yourself down in Peter’s lap and go over flashcards with him is as natural as breathing. 

“It’d be over in Chelsea, so I could stay here and take the bus.” Peter’s got his glasses on, which always want to make you kiss him hard enough to get them all askew, and his hands are wandering your legs and waist as he talks, not helping matters. “And they’re doing this really cool stuff with ion channels that I could get involved in…” 

He’s telling you about an internship he’s applying to for the summer. You’re sitting in his lap trying to look engaged and not humiliatingly wanton. Really, you like the sound of this internship. It would mean you’d both get to stay in the apartment for the summer, since you’re returning to a previous internship in the city, too, and of the options Peter’s told you about this one offers the best pay. You may not understand ion channels or space radiation or half of what he talks about, but you love the idea of anything that might supplement his supplemental income. 

“Didn’t you say your internship’s in Greenwich?” Peter asks, touch coasting up your back. 

You hum in the affirmative. 

He grins, flashing a dimple you want to poke your tongue into (because you’re a nonsensical, depraved thing). “We could meet in the middle for lunch.” 

“That would be nice.” You give into your baser urges and lay a soft kiss on the side of Peter’s nose. The frames of his glasses dent into your cheek. “Where would we go?” 

“I know a good sandwich place on Eighth and Hudson,” he murmurs, pushing his glasses up into his hair to kiss you properly. Damn him. His voice hums against your lips. “Maybe lunches there sometimes, dinners at Chelsea Market.” 

“Chelsea Market?” You smile, and Peter’s quick to kiss the corner. “Are we made of money in this fantasy?” 

“Duh. We’ll have high-roller internships—” 

“Speak for yourself.” 

“—and those of us who are possibly being taken advantage of for their cheap labor and wonderful, perfect—” He mushes his lips to your face with each word. “—really very valuable brain will luckily have a lovesick biophysics intern to sponsor them.” 

You hum, sliding your finger along the curve of his glasses behind his ear. “Where am I gonna find one of those, you think? Should I start loitering on park benches reading genetics books and looking confused?” 

For someone so gentle and who spends so much of his time in labs, Peter is surprisingly strong. You’ve discovered this several times over now, enough to want to goad it out of him when you can, and still it surprises you to find yourself flat on your back against the couch cushions less than a second later. You’re giggling breathlessly before Peter even gets to you. 

“You think you’re so funny,” he mutters, a far cry from menacing as he smooshes wet kisses into the underside of your jaw. 

“Or I—I could try hanging around the three-in-one shampoo at the discount store—” Peter squeezes your waist, and you gasp out a laugh. “—or hoard all the city’s ramen so they come to me.” 

“Okay, you know I eat better than that, you traitor. Are you trying to get yourself cut off from my culinary resources?” 

You squirm, pushing at Peter’s hands and enjoying how useless it is. “You wouldn’t dare.” 

“Also” —he breezes right past the threat, because you both know he wouldn’t— “if you have a problem with my hair, all you’ve gotta do is say something. Does it smell bad?” 

He sticks the top of his head in your face, the soft ends of his hair tickling your nose. You stick your face in dutifully to take in a pull. You know the scent of Peter’s three-in-one (you live together, you’ve read the bottle), but somehow his hair always manages to smell like fresh laundry, too. You have every intention of feigning shock and disgust, except you’re overtaken by a rush of affection and the teasing mood leaves you. 

You press your lips to his forehead. “It’s perfect.” 

“Wow. Even with three-in-one in there?” 

“I’m surprised, too.” 

Peter tilts his head up, bumping your noses together. “Guess you don’t have to go on the search for some other biophysics guy to fawn over you, then.”

Fawn. That’s exactly what Peter does, fawn over you, but it’s somehow worse that he does it knowingly. 

“Maybe not,” you say, “but you know I’m not just going to let you get my lunch every time.” 

“Oh, yeah? How are you gonna stop me?” 

“I don’t know.” You heave a long, thoughtful sigh. “I guess probably start selling your photos to make my own way in the world.” 

Peter laughs. “I think probably one of the most adorable things about you,” he says, lips to your cheek, “is that you think those are worth something. They’re all yours, pretty girl.” 

“They’re definitely worth something. I’m going to make millions.” 

“Sure you are.” 

“You’ll see, when I move out of this place into a penthouse and you’re still just scraping by on your measly STEM salary.” 

Peter watches you with an analytical gaze. You’re playing at levity, but he knows by now when you’re hiding your sincerity away, and he also knows what you’ve been pushing for for weeks now. 

“Why do you want me to sell them so badly?” he asks. 

You shrug. “Because,” you say, “I’ve never seen the city the way I do when I look at them. I think other people would like that, too.” 

He mushes your hip in his hand affectionately. “They’re not that original. I’d be one of a thousand people trying to sell pictures of New York.” 

“Yeah, but yours are good.” 

“You’re so stubborn,” he mumbles, pushing his face into yours to kiss you with a vengeance, “and cute. I just don’t have the time, sweetheart.” 

“I can set you up a website.” It’s not said in haste. You’ve been trying to think up ways to get this idea off the ground for a while now. “That way you don’t have to do anything, I’ll just list them for you and handle the shipping when people buy them.” 

Peter blinks at you. It’s clear he’s caught offguard, and it aches a bit that you offering to help him out is still so unexpected. You’ve been trying to do it more—though it’s near impossible to keep up with how often Peter helps you, and it seems like he ups the ante with every attempt you make—but you wonder if Peter will ever get used to the feeling of someone wanting to do things for him. You can relate to that particular discomfort. 

“Would that make you happy?” he asks after a moment. 

“It would,” you reply honestly. 

He hesitates. “I would want to choose which ones you put up. And I don’t want you to be disappointed if they don’t sell…” 

“I won’t be disappointed.” You wave him off, already reaching for your laptop despite still being trapped underneath him. “They’ll sell like hotcakes.” 

“What even is a hotcake?” Peter muses, though he moves when you nudge at him, allowing you to sit up and open your laptop. 

“Pretty sure it’s an old-timey word for pancakes.” 

“Do pancakes sell famously well?” 

You cut him a dry look. “Then they’ll sell like Mets merch, Peter. Is that better?” 

The distracted look in Peter’s eyes diminishes, replaced by a more familiar one. “I think you’re the hotcake they were talking about,” he says, smarmy. 

“Are you saying I sell?” 

“No! No. You know that’s not what I meant.” 

“Yeah, walk that one back, Parker.” 

—

You’re halfway to a dream about holiday break and Peter’s fresh-laundry smell when the fire alarm goes off. It knocks you out of your study fugue state and knocks your coffee clean over, making you gasp and fumble for your laptop. It’s gotten all over your lap, too, but you don’t have time to think about that, ignoring the burn and the shrill wailing in favor of wiping your keyboard off on your shirt.

A moment later, and the coffee is no longer your laptop’s paramount threat. The sprinklers go off. You stow your laptop in your bag, hugging the whole thing to your chest like you can shield it with your body. It’s then that you remember what a fire alarm means. 

You’re not the only brain dead, half asleep straggler in the library who hasn’t been quick to action. There are other students just now making their way to the stairwell door; you grab your notes and follow suit. 

The alarm is deafening in the stairwell. It bounces off the walls in a painful, ceaseless screech, punctuated by flashes of bright white light. Coming down from the top floor, you’re joined by a throng of others as you descend. People shove; a girl shouts her friend’s name; someone else stops by the railing, halting the flow around them as they try to make their way back up to some forgotten item. Most heads are ducked, the sprinklers still raining down and water dripping from chins and noses. You say an apology that gets swallowed up by the cacophony when you step on someone’s foot. You wince when someone else steps on yours. You curl around your backpack and keep going. 

You’re near the back of the push down the stairs, so when Spider-Man arrives your only indication is the change in tone of the shouting below you. Cheers go up with the siren’s shriek, and you peer over the railing just as a stream of webbing shoots past you, sticking to the ceiling. The spandex-clad vigilante follows it up. He goes slowly, scanning faces as he goes by. 

“All good? Everybody okay? Let’s make our way down in a neat and orderly fashion, folks. No need to push. Where’s the fire, am I right?” 

If he wanted to go put out the fire, or even to sweep from the top floor down to make sure no one’s still not evacuating, there are surely quicker ways, but you’re a bit warmed that Spider-Man is taking the slower route to check that you’re all okay. He’s risen nearly to you now, and while some of the students around you have stopped or taken out phones, you’re still trying to get out of here. Of course, now that you’re looking at Spider-Man and not your feet, you fall straightaway onto your ass. 

It’s embarrassing. You narrowly avoid hitting your chin on the stair railing; someone near you gasps. Your tailbone and your pride both feel terribly bruised. 

“Oh, shit. Hey. You okay?” 

It doesn't help matters that you’ve pulled Spider-Man’s attention, too. 

He swings neatly over the very railing that nearly concussed you a moment earlier, reaching down to pull you upright. 

“Yeah, you’re okay. Nothing feels broken, right?” He skims touches over your elbows, your waist. It’s all too much at once, an overwhelm, but you step away quickly when he lays a probing hand at the small of your back. 

“What?” Spider-Man’s voice rings with concern just loud enough to be heard over the alarm. “That hurt?” 

You’re shocked speechless. Does he just go around touching everyone like that? It feels intimate to you. 

“Oh.” He seems to get it. His demeanor changes, a few more inches of space appearing between you. “Sorry. Are you hurt?” 

“I’m fine,” you say. 

“Can I, uh.” He looks up in the direction he was heading, then back to you. “Can I give you a lift down?” 

You feel yourself frown. “I can make it on my own.” 

Spider-Man breathes out a dry chuckle. “I forgot how suspicious you are of people who want to help you.” 

You blink, biting your tongue against the question that rises to it. You remember me? It’s difficult not to feel flattered, but you’re also just baffled. Spider-Man saves dozens of people every day, and yet he remembers a conversation with a girl he only walked home on an uneventful night?

“Just let me take you to the ground floor,” he asks. “I won’t be able to relax if I think there’s some injured bootstrapper hobbling their way down the stairs.” 

You don’t remember deciding to agree, and you certainly think you’re going to argue his bootstrapper label more than comes out, but you find yourself clinging to spandex-clad and surprisingly warm shoulders a minute later, Spider-Man’s hold far from unwelcome now as he lowers you gently to the ground. 

“Come on,” he says, ignoring the people who stop and stare in favor of guiding you outside. 

You think it’s probably a good sign that there isn’t smoke visibly pouring out of any windows you can see. The library’s fire suppression system may have worked fast enough to put the fire out before it grew too large. Spider-Man keeps you close, maneuvering you both through the gathering crowd and past the arriving firefighters to the curb across the street. 

“What happened here?” he asks you, something achingly familiar about the gentleness of his tone as he looks down at your lap. Whereas most of your clothes are speckled with dampness from the sprinklers, across your thighs is a dark, prominent splotch. 

“Coffee,” you answer resignedly. 

He hisses. “Hot?” 

“Not cold.” 

“Does it hurt?” 

“No, not really. I think the sprinklers cooled me off.” 

You try on a smile there. You think maybe Spider-Man mirrors it, his tone lightening some. 

“Is your butt okay, too?” 

“My butt’s none of your concern.” 

“Hey, I concern myself with every butt in this city. You’re all under my care.” 

It feels ridiculous, laughing while your university library is still being evacuated and alarms are still going off. It’s also nice. The laughter gathers like bubbles in your chest, fizzing and popping and disrupting the tension in there. You wonder if this is how Spider-Man does what he does, if it’s what makes him so good at it. 

“I’m fine,” you tell him. 

“Promise?” 

“Yeah. Don’t you need to…” You look at where the firefighters are running into the building. 

Spider-Man follows your gaze. “Yeah,” he says, though he doesn’t move. He glances between you and the building a few more times, fingers twitching at his sides. “I, uh.” 

“Thanks for your help.”

The dismissal is clear, and it seems to snap him out of it. 

“Right. Okay.” He finally takes a step back. “Stay put, okay? Don’t go anywhere. I’m serious. Just, I have to—you stay here.” 

“Okay,” you say. He’s already shot away on a web, and with the sirens and the shouting, you aren’t sure if he hears you. 

You aren’t sure why Spider-Man would ask you to wait. Does he plan to come back? He seemed flustered; he might not have meant it. You’re resting your head on your knees with eyelids growing heavier, but it seems rude to leave when someone rescues you and then asks you to wait up. 

“Hey.” You jolt when a hand lands on the back of your neck. “Hey, hey. It’s just me.” 

Peter’s a sight for sore eyes. His grin is tentative as he sits on the curb beside you, all soft brown eyes and hooked brows. The apprehension goes out of you in an instant. 

“Hi,” you say, warmth filling your chest. 

“Hi, sweetheart.” Peter rubs between your shoulder blades, looking you over. “What happened?” 

“There’s a fire in the library.” 

“Yeah, I think they put that out.” He offers you a small smile. “I mean what happened to you? What’s this?” He sets a hand to your thigh, over the wet spot on your jeans. His brows rise. “It’s warm.” 

“Yeah, I…” You shake your head, breathing out a sigh. “I knocked over my coffee when the alarm went off.” 

Peter frowns. “Ouch.” 

“How’d you even know about the fire? I thought you were at the lab tonight.” 

“I, uh.” He seems distracted, still looking concernedly at your burnt jeans. “I saw it on the news.” 

“Already?” 

“Yeah, the school sent out a text alert. Hey, don’t you want to get those pants off?” Peter gives you a look in exchange for the one you give him. “Not like that, you delinquent. Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean let’s go home and put some ice packs on your or something, okay? Are you good to walk?” 

You’re shaking your head before he’s finished talking. “Pete, I’m fine. But I have to…” The words shrivel up, humiliated with themselves, before leaving your mouth. 

Can you really tell Peter that Spider-Man asked you to wait here for him? Peter might like you well enough to make out from time to time, but you can’t imagine they make rose-tinted glasses thick enough to look past anything that sounds so pathetically made up as that. Why would the city’s favorite vigilante, with his very busy schedule, want you to stay put so he could come back for you after saving the day? It’s a good question. Peter said the fire is out; if Spider-Man was coming back, surely he would have already?

“What’s up?” Peter asks you. His voice is gentle. “You okay?” 

“Yeah.” You shake your head to clear a nagging thought. “Let’s go home.” 

You stand on your own, though Peter’s hands hover while you do and he gets an arm around you as soon as he’s allowed. You walk tucked close to his side, his thumb rubbing absently over your hip. 

“How’d you know I was gonna be here?” 

“Well, it’s quarter to midnight on a Friday. I was gonna go around checking the clubs first, but…” 

“Asshole.” 

“Nerd.” 

“...Did you really come looking for me?” 

“Duh. And it’s not like I was far, the lab’s just across campus. Hey, did you hurt your butt somehow?” 

“What?” 

“You’re walking funny.” 

“I am not.” 

“Yeah you are, it’s like…it’s sort of a hobble. Did you?” 

“You’re making this up.” 

“I’m not! What happened to your butt?” 

“I am not hobbling.” 

—

You find out the next day that the fire was started by some idiots who tried to smoke and then freaked and tossed their still-lit blunt when they heard someone coming. If it had fallen onto the carpet or a table it might have gone out, but of course it landed right on the corner of a bookshelf, seemingly endless kindling spread out in front of it like the promised land. The fire was put out quickly, but not before most of that shelf went up and not without incurring water damage on everything else in the library. 

You read the news article and seethe while Peter applies burn cream to your legs, doing it for you because he claims you’re neither gentle nor patient enough with yourself to do it nicely. His touch is featherlight. 

It’s Saturday, and so Peter succeeds in cajoling you into spending the day in bed, napping and touching and musing in whisper-soft voices about what you might order for dinner, but Sunday you heed the university’s call for help. 

The library is all but destroyed. The carpet needs to be ripped out, some of the furniture needs to be recovered or replaced, hundreds of books need to be inspected and salvaged. The librarians and janitorial staff can’t do it all themselves. 

You may be selfish (Peter calls it single-minded), but this isn’t something you’d normally concern yourself with; you’ve got your own shit to deal with, impending exams and a now-glitchy laptop that could use some attention. It bothers you that this was your library, though. You’ve spent a lot of time tucked away in its stacks, Peter’s spent nearly as much navigating them to come drag you home, and if the fire had been more serious you could’ve been in real trouble. You feel like you owe it something, a little bit. At least a few hours of your time. 

Peter comes to help, because Peter doesn’t need a sense of obligation to step up. He’s made of better stuff. 

You go through the shelves with other volunteers, sorting books into bins based on how damaged they are. Peter gets tasked with bringing old furniture out into the sun, stuff that should have been replaced decades ago but the school is still going to try to save, even if it’ll probably smell like mildew forever. You get periodically distracted when he walks by with some musty armchair and you can see the shapes of his biceps through his shirt. At lunchtime you run home to make sandwiches, and you and Peter eat them on the same curb he found you sitting on two nights prior, the sun on your faces and breaths clouding in front of your mouths.

You call it quits when it gets dark, though some of the volunteers switch the lights on and stay. Peter buys you both hot chocolate on the way home. He waves you off when you try to pay and teases you about being extra careful because you’ve already had enough hot drink incidents for one week. 

Despite knowing you have heaps of studying left to get through, you feel strangely energized. Peter sits down in his couch dent when you get home and pulls up his notes, and you can’t stop thinking about the library. There’s got to be a more efficient way to dry the books. Who’s making sure the staff gets meals, when they’re there supervising all day? And surely there’s a more durable flooring than carpet to put in a library. If they take it down to the hardwood, and then people donate old rugs to help swallow sound…

You go back. It becomes a part of your routine. You go to class, you study, you help at the library, you bring Peter something to eat at the lab, you study some more. Peter goes for dinners at his Aunt May’s and comes home with tupperware intended specifically for you. At night, he tries to help you fall asleep, experimenting with different things he’s read to see what works. On some of those nights you end up faking it so that he feels accomplished. Most nights, you don’t, so that he’ll stay with you for longer before eventually saying he has to go to the lab or to the bodega or to wherever before slinking off. Those nights you think you sleep the least, though it’s hard to be sure. 

You and two other students haul a donated couch up the library stairs. You learn how to wedge paper towels between the pages of the most waterlogged books, a tedious but rewarding process. You get friendlier with the librarians than you ever have been, which Peter finds ironic considering you spend half the time you used to there. One of them is married to one of your professors, and your efforts earn you a bit of extra credit, a small miracle you’d never have dared to hope for. 

“What’s this?” Peter asks one afternoon at The Daily Bean. You’re meeting between classes for a quick study session; you haven’t seen him since you left him sleeping early this morning to go to the library. Rain falls in gentle patterings outside the window, fog clinging to the panes. Autumn is having its last hurrah. Thanksgiving is next week, and the city tends to grant everyone’s wishes for snow soon after that. The last of the leaves have been shaken from the trees, and now they squelch rather than crunch under your feet. 

You look at where Peter’s turned your hand to the side. “Oh.” You roll your eyes, rubbing at the white so that it flakes off. “It’s paint.” 

“They’re making you paint now?” 

“Yeah. I guess they figure if they’re already gutting so much of the building, may as well do a full remodel.” 

“Is it starting to feel like they’re just using you for free labor?” 

“Oh, definitely,” you laugh. 

Peter’s dimples frame his smile in parenthesis. “You don’t seem mad about it,” he says. 

“No, I’m resentful.” 

“You are?” 

“I am.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yup.” 

“You seem resentful.” Peter’s grinning for real now, his eyes warm. Sometimes you think you’d say anything to get him looking at you like this. It’s addicting. “You seem ready to revolt.” 

“I might.” You take a sip of your coffee. “No, I don’t know. I don’t mind it.” 

“Aw,” he says. “You’ve gone soft.” 

“I have not. Don’t think I’ve abandoned my get-rich-quick scheme. The website is up.” 

Peter blinks. “My website?” 

“My website,” you correct him, teasing, “since you won’t sell your own photos yourself. I’m just waiting for the go-ahead from you on which ones to put up.” 

“Yeah,” he says, quieting. “We can do that.” 

“Soon?” 

“Tell you what, pretty girl.” Peter takes your hand, kissing the side of your pinkie just before the paint starts. It sends goosebumps all the way up your arm. “You find some time to pencil me in between your studying and being the school’s go-to laborer, and we’ll do it.” 

You have to look away from your roommate’s sweetheart brown eyes. He’s still holding your hand. “I’d probably have less studying to do later if we actually did some now.” 

“You can’t study now. This is a date.” 

“It is?” 

“Yeah, duh. Did you think we were actually going to study? That’s just how I get you to come to these things, loser.” 

—

“Is it, like, the suit and tie kind of dinner or the nice sweater kind?” you ask.

Peter’s exhale suggests he’s trying to be quiet about his amusement, but not very hard. “You could show up in yoga pants and my sweaty t-shirt, and she’d still think you were gorgeous.” 

“Could you try to be a little less biased?” 

“If I was being biased, I’d tell you to wear my sweaty t-shirt and forget the pants.” 

“Peter, I’m serious.” You step out of your room and into the hall where he can see you. “Is this going to be okay, or should I pick something nicer?” 

Peter turns around from where he’s standing in front of his own mirror trying to subdue a cowlick. He’s wearing a sweater and jeans, which is reassuring. It’s also new. You’re used to seeing Peter in his pajamas, or in rumpled sweatshirts he threw on in a rush to get to class, but this is…well, your roommate cleans up nice. His handsomeness is no surprise, but the new effect on you is. The green of his sweater somehow makes his eyes look an even softer color as they take you in. 

“You look beautiful,” Peter says. 

Your cheeks tingle at the bald reverence in his tone. You finger the hem of your dress. “It’s okay?” 

“Come on.” He huffs a laugh. “Are you kidding me?” 

“No.” But Peter looks like he wants to eat you, and he’s dressed more casually than you are, so you think you have your answer. You move on before he gets any ideas. “I’m thinking of trying to throw together a pumpkin pie,” you say, going to check on your rolls in the oven. Peter tails you. “I’d have to run to the bodega, though. Do you think we have time?” 

Peter leans against the counter. “What would you have to get?” 

“A pie tin, crust, pumpkin puree, eggs, and…um, I think there might be milk…” You take out your phone to check. 

Peter steals it from your hand, kissing the frown that comes to your lips. “Don’t sweat it. Your rolls are going to be more than enough.” 

Your frown persists. “It feels rude to only bring one thing and let her do everything else.” 

“It’s not rude. Are you kidding? Aunt May’s had me mooching off her since forever, she’ll be psyched that you brought anything at all.” 

“I already owe her for probably a dozen meals.” 

“Sweetheart.” Peter puts his arms around your shoulders, drawing you into a lazy hug. “You’re freaking out.” 

“I’m not freaking out.” 

“You are. And it’s sweet,” he allows, kissing your temple, “but you don’t have to. May’s already obsessed with you. She’s asked me, like, six times this week if you like green bean casserole.” 

“I like anything she makes,” you mumble. 

“I know. Kiss-ass.” 

You can’t deny it. You want Peter’s aunt May, this woman who’s fed you for the better part of a semester and now invited you to Thanksgiving at her home, to like you, obviously. And part of you suspects that Peter’s reassurances aren’t entirely empty. It’s hard to imagine anyone who raised a boy this kind being anything but loving and generous. You’ve seen pictures of Aunt May in Peter’s room; she has eyes remarkably like his, considering they’re related by marriage, and smile lines etched onto her face the way only genuine warmth can scar. It’s not so much that you’re worried she’ll dislike you for wearing the wrong thing or using the wrong fork, but she’s something to Peter and it’s becoming harder to deny that Peter’s something to you now, so you can’t help but want to make a good impression. 

“Not trying to be a kiss-ass,” you murmur, circling your arms around Peter’s waist, “but you look really nice.” 

Peter smiles. “See, that’s exactly the kind of thing a kiss-ass would say.” 

“I know. It was a risk I had to take, because I needed to tell you.” 

You get squished to Peter’s chest. You suspect it’s so you won’t see him fluster. 

“Don’t tell her the rolls were frozen, okay?” you plead. “The story is I made them from scratch.” 

“Right. With, like, yeast and wheat?” 

“And whatever else goes into bread, sure.” You squeeze him back, but your grip slackens when Peter hisses. “What?” 

“Nothing.” His voice buoys with false levity. “Sorry.” 

“Peter, what?” You retreat enough to see him, hand skimming up his side. “Are you hurt?” 

“It’s nothing,” he says again. His hand comes up to cover yours when it lands on his ribs, and you know without asking that’s the sore spot. “I just, I fell yesterday. I’m a little bruised up.” 

You look up at him. Your concern feels like a tender thing, like your guts are spilling out into the space between you. It makes you a bit sick. “What happened?” 

“I was, uh, skateboarding.” 

“You were skateboarding.” 

“Yeah.” Peter’s shrug looks bashful. “I haven’t done it since high school. Turns out it’s not exactly like riding a bike.” 

You don’t know if you believe him. You want to. You really want to, you want to think Peter would never lie to you, but you know already that he does. It used to be something you could ignore, but now it makes you too sad to bear thinking on. 

“Please be careful with yourself,” you ask him. 

Peter catches the sobriety in your tone. “I’m fine,” he says, more sincerely now, cupping your face. “I won’t do it again. Anyway, maybe I’m tougher than I look, did you ever think of that?” 

You chuff a laugh. “You’re not.” 

“Mean.” He kisses you. “You’re a meanie.” 

“Kiss-ass, meanie. Pick something to call me and stick with it.” 

When you arrive at Aunt May’s, she already knows who you are, but Peter introduces you anyway. This time, he calls you his girlfriend. 

—

On occasion, when you know Peter’s gone on one of his late-night errands, you also take the opportunity to do away with the pretense of sleep. Finals are nearly done. There’s nothing you can do for the library at night, though repairs are nearly completed and the school expects for it to reopen at the start of the spring semester anyway. There’s really not much for you to do, but your head drives you out of bed with an itchy sense of urgency nonetheless. 

This time of year, your apartment is well lit all through the night. The wattage of the city has increased tenfold, lights of white and red and gold twinkling at all hours to entice tourists and holiday shoppers into storefronts. Peter insisted on getting you a cheap tinsel tree, too. It glows warmly in the corner of your living room. 

You hear Peter’s window slide open somewhere around two-thirty. It’s a bit earlier than he usually comes back, but you hope he’s in to stay. You know Peter knows that you wake up to find him gone at least some of the time; but you don’t ask, and so neither does he. It’s…an ache. 

You imagine the silence sometimes like a physical thing, a weight balanced on a string that stretches between the two of you, pulled tight. You feel it some times more than others. You hear the slide of Peter’s window, and the string tugs at the center of your chest, impeding on your breathing room. A dull, familiar ache. 

You know from experience what will happen now. Peter will sleep in his room for the rest of the night. You might hear another few sounds—a shoe being tossed into the closet, the groan of bedsprings. He’ll come out in the morning to find you—maybe asleep, maybe still awake—on the couch, and he’ll chide you between playful kisses so as not to seem too serious, and you’ll pretend not to resent his hypocrisy, though really it’s not the hypocrisy you resent. 

You don’t expect him to come out of his room. 

You almost wouldn’t know it was him if not for the way the figure steps carefully over the squeakiest of your floorboards. Peter is wearing sweatpants and a bulky hoodie, so rumpled you almost wonder if he threw them on just now. He cracks the door to your room, peering inside. 

“Peter?” 

Peter turns on his heel lightning-fast. “Hey,” he says. He looks flustered, face mostly in shadow but the whites of his eyes are lit in your tree’s glow. “Hey, hi. What’re you doing up?” 

“I couldn’t sleep.” Your voice sounds shockingly normal for the tension crackling through the room. Peter shifts on his feet. “Are you okay?” 

He shrugs, giving a quick shake of his head as though unsure why you’d ask. “Yeah, I’m just—I had a weird feeling, so I wanted to see if you were okay. Nightmare, I guess.” 

“Oh. Sorry.” 

“So you are?” 

“Huh?” 

“You’re okay?” Peter’s acting twitchy, and it’s making you nervous. Of the two of you, he definitely seems the least okay. 

“Yeah, Pete,” you say gently. “I’m fine.” You open your arms in invitation, and Peter hesitates a moment before stepping forward. It’s a bit of an awkward hug, you half twisted to reach over the back of the couch and him bent over to get to you, but you make the most of it. 

“What’s going on?” you murmur, raking your fingers through the hair at his nape. It’s sweaty, like he’s been running. You don’t really anticipate a genuine answer to your question, but it feels important for Peter to at least know you care enough to ask. 

You feel his head shake. “Nothing,” he says. He gives you a squeeze, some other half of an excuse probably already on his tongue, but before he can get it out you both jerk apart. 

“Ow.” Your skin burns where Peter’s wrist pressed to it. 

“Shit. Sorry, baby, let me see.” 

You turn around, allowing him to pull the collar of your sleep shirt down enough to look at it. “What was that?” 

“I have, uh. I was just tinkering around with something in my room—you know me, tinkering—and this thing I was messing with sort of exploded. I didn’t realize it was still hot, I’m sorry.” He blows a bit of cool air on your skin. You turn to try and see for yourself. “Hold on, I think we still have some of that burn cream.” 

But in turning, you can now see the light on his face. “Peter,” you breathe. 

Peter must hear something in your voice, because he stops mid-pivot. The weight between you heavies. You feel the strain on your lungs. 

“What happened to your face?” 

His expression twinges. You wonder that it doesn’t reopen the cut on his lip, or if that slow seep of blood is all it can muster anymore. Your boyfriend’s jaw is marred with an ugly splotch of color, already darkening in the center. The cheery glow of your Christmas tree shows in unforgiving starkness the dried blood crusted around his nostrils and the bruise of his nose. 

“This?” Peter smiles, and now his lip does reopen. He hardly seems to notice. “I, uh…well, it’s embarrassing, but I fell out of bed.” 

“Peter.” Your voice thins. 

“I know, it’s so stupid. Didn’t put my arms out to save myself or anything, just boom—face to floor.” 

“Peter,” you say again. “Just tell me what happened. Please.” 

“I’m telling you.” He’s smiling still, like you’re silly, his silly girl, but you can see the strain around his eyes. “Babe, I think you’re more tired than you notice. Let’s go to bed, okay? I actually have to go out and get a replacement part for the thing I exploded, but—” 

“Don’t.” Your eyes are burning. You see Peter see them, his smile dissolving at the edges. “Please just tell me the truth. Who’s doing this to you?” 

“Sweetheart—” 

“No, I—I got it at first, because we’d just moved in and you had no reason to trust me. It wasn’t my business, and I got that. I didn’t—I was fine with letting you do whatever you wanted to.” Tears blaze hot paths down your cheeks, but you refuse to break Peter’s stare long enough to wipe them. “It just seems like it keeps getting worse, though, you know? Or maybe it was always this bad and I just didn’t know, but now—I don’t know, I don’t really know what this is, but it’s different than it was at first. We’re not strangers anymore, right? You can trust me. Please, I just—” Your voice splinters. “I just want to help.” 

Peter’s looking at you with something desperate in his expression. You can see the whites of his eyes again, and his chest is moving like he’s breathing harder than he needs to. He takes a step back, and the string between you pulls taut. It feels sharper than an ache now. 

“I have to—” 

“Don’t go,” you cut him off. 

Peter’s face pinches. “I have to. I have to, I’m sorry. Please go to bed.” 

“Why?” Your shoulders jump, something in you crumpling as you realize there’s nothing you can do to make him stay. Your nose runs. “Just stay here.” 

He glances toward his bedroom, then back at you. He must have left the window open; you can feel the night chill beginning to permeate your apartment. Peter’s fingers twitch at his sides. 

“Please,” you try again. 

Sirens wail outside, and Peter takes another step away from you. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I have to go right now. I’ll be back, okay?” 

You don’t reply, watching through blurred vision as he goes. 

It takes you less than a minute to come to a decision after that. You’re still leaking from your eyes and nose, so you grab a wad of toilet paper from the bathroom, cramming it into your pocket before throwing on a sweatshirt over your sleep clothes and shoving your feet into shoes. 

Peter’s not on the fire escape when you stick your head out his window. You have no clue how he climbed down so fast. You push the window closed and go out the front door. 

Your neighborhood is less quiet tonight. The sirens that make up the city’s constant white noise are closer than usual, louder, echoing down alleyways to reach your peaceful cluster of buildings. You think half-humorously that they might create an opportunity for Spider-Man to pay a visit; maybe if he’s not too busy, you can get him to help track down your runaway boyfriend and scare some sense into him. 

You hate to think of what could compel Peter to come back out here tonight, when he was already so beat up and he clearly didn’t want to. You don’t understand what role he could play. Is he making things for someone? Is that why he had that exploding thing on his wrist? Peter’s skilled, and smart, but you don’t think he’d get mixed up in anything that required him to pass off dangerous technology to anyone who wouldn’t be responsible with it. Unless he had to, at least. 

You’re so furious with him. You tear off a square of toilet paper, blowing your nose. If he gets any more hurt than he already is, you’ll tell Aunt May on him, you swear to god. 

It’s almost funny, considering how much better lit the streets are, that you don’t notice anyone around until the gun is at your back. 

“Purse,” says a voice at your ear. 

“I don’t have one.” Your voice wobbles, but mostly because of the whiplash. Christ, what a shitty day. “I don’t have anything on me.” 

“Don’t fucking lie to me.” The gun presses harder into your back. “Phone, then.” 

“I don’t have one.” 

“Don’t lie.” 

“I don’t! I left it at home.” 

“You know what—” 

“What?” Comes a voice from behind you both. A familiar voice. 

For a millisecond, you could swear it’s Peter, your heart clenching, but you turn after the mugger does to find Spider-Man standing a few feet away. As soon as the gun is trained on him, white webbing jams the barrel and it’s cast harmlessly to the side. 

“I don’t think she’s lying, man.” Spider-Man moves toward you, firing webs on the way that plaster the mugger’s feet to the concrete. “I think you just picked the wrong girl tonight.” He jerks his head at you, and you get his meaning instinctively, stepping out of the way as he moves close enough to give the mugger a shove. The other man goes careening backwards. As soon as his hands land on the ground, webs ensure that’s where they stay. 

Spider-Man takes your elbow in hand, guiding you away. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m…” Something’s nettling you. You wish for Spider-Man and he appears, is that how it works now? You have the feeling like you’re forgetting something. “This is where I live.” 

He laughs, but it doesn’t sound very amused. “I know, but why are you here? What’re you—” He pulls the waist of your pajama pants up from where they’ve started to slip. “Sweetheart, it’s freezing out. Couldn’t you at least have put on a real coat?” 

Sweetheart. 

Your voice sticks in your throat. 

“Your fingernails are gonna fall off,” Spider-Man goes on in a familiarly chiding tone (playful, so as not to seem too serious). He walks you out of the alley, ignoring the calls of the man stuck to the pavement. “What do I have to say to get you back inside? I’ll come with you, how’s that?” 

“Peter?” 

Spider-Man looks over at you. Eyes of all white, and yet everything said in the tilt of his head. “I was going to tell you when I got back,” he says, still walking towards your building, “but of course you had to go out and find trouble. You probably think I’m full of shit now.” 

“Peter,” you say. Not a question this time, but an exhalation. Something released. 

“I’m not making it up, though, I really was going to tell you. I would have told you before I left, but there wasn’t really time, I could hear the cops having a shootout and I really felt like I had to go—I actually only came home because my web-shooter caught a stray, so I needed a backup…” 

You’re reeling, you think. Or swooning. You’ve never figured out the difference. Spider-Man’s (Peter’s. Spider-Man’s?) hand has found its way around your waist, keeping you propped up against him. Silly, to be treated like you’re the delicate one when you know for a fact he’s all bruised and bleeding under that mask. There are probably other injuries you don’t know the half of. 

When Peter stops, you don’t understand why until you realize you’re standing in back of your own building. You’ve crossed streets without noticing. 

“I thought we’d take the fast way up,” he says. 

You manage a “hm?” before he’s tightening his grip on you and you’re sling-shotting up six stories. Peter sets you down on the fire escape. You grip the railing when he lets you go, the cold metal digging into your palms as he jimmies open his bedroom window. He has to gently uncurl your fingers to usher you inside. 

It’s clear one of you is more practiced at going in and out of windows than the other. You half-crawl onto Peter’s bed, stumbling a bit in an attempt to avoid getting your shoes on his pillow, whereas your boyfriend slips gracefully through and is laying down before you’ve managed to turn around. He pulls the window shut so that it hardly makes a sound. You wonder if it’s habit. 

“You okay?” Peter asks as he pulls off his mask. 

You stare. “Me?” 

He looks chastened, but says anyway, “Yeah, sweetheart. You’re shaking a little.” 

“I’m…” You reach for him. Your fingertips lay themselves over the bruised bridge of his nose. Peter’s eyes are sorry. “I’m surprised.” 

“You also just had a gun pointed at you.” 

“So did you. You probably have guns pointed at you all the time.” 

He shrugs, as though this is more or less true. “Are you mad?” 

“I don’t know what I am,” you admit. “Probably, a little.” 

“Is it okay to ask for a hug?” 

“Am I going to hurt you?” 

“No,” he promises, reaching forward to bring you to him. His lips mush to your cheek. “It looks worse than it is. Perk of the spider mutant thing, I heal fast.” 

You’re still careful with him. You hug him with your arms around his shoulders, feeling the strange texture of the webbing spread over his suit. There’s a strangeness to your senses; it feels like a tuning fork has been struck, everything reverberating and trembling its way into alignment. Your heart trembles with it.

“This isn’t what I was expecting,” you hear yourself say. 

“It’s not? I sort of thought you had it all figured out.” 

You shake your head. 

“Well, you’re taking it a lot better than I expected. If that helps at all. I kind of thought you might freak out.” 

“I don’t know how much freak out I have left.” You intend to stop there, but the next admission comes tumbling from your mouth unbidden. “I’ve been worrying for a long time.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Peter sounds genuinely apologetic, and so doting it makes your chest tight. He rubs your back like he can feel it happening. “I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t want to drag you into this, but then it seemed like you were gonna find out no matter what, and…honestly, I just thought I’d get matched with a roommate who didn’t give a shit.” 

“Bad luck.” 

“Yeah, maybe. Not really.” He pulls back enough to kiss you, bumping his nose against yours affectionately. “Hey, maybe it’s too soon, but there might be a pro to the whole dating Spider-Man thing.” 

You look at him. A face you know as well as anything, and from the neck down a suit you’ve seen mostly in news clips. He’s your boyfriend; he’s Spider-Man. He’s your boyfriend who’s Spider-Man. 

“Yeah?” you ask.

“If you really like those pictures in my room, I can bring you to the places where I took them from. It’s not, ah, something most of the public can access. Special privilege only.” 

“Oh.” You nod slowly. “Yeah, that’s cool.” 

“Too soon?” 

“Maybe. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that you work for the cops.” 

“Uh, okay, I don’t work for the cops, I work with them. I’m not some narc.” 

The incredulity in his tone is so distinctly Peter that you come back into yourself. All of the trembling pieces settle into alignment. 

“Right, it’s just. I don’t know.” Your lips give a small tug. You see a familiar amused curiosity ignite in familiar warm brown eyes, and you press a quick kiss to his lips before delivering the news. “I’ve been picturing you more or less at odds with the law. I was pretty sure you were a drug dealer.” 

“Sorry.” Now he can’t tell the difference between quiet and tight in your voice. You sound like you’re cutting off your own air. “I’m trying to chill out.” 

“What is it?” He tries to gentle his tone. There’s no existential threat here—he’d know if there was—but shit, the anxiety rolling off you has his instincts going haywire. Peter gives your shoulder a rub in hopes of reminding both of you that you’re safe. “Let me help.” 

“It’s not…” You lose a breath, the resigned sort. Untuck your face from his chest to glance over at the mother and son. Softly, sheepishly, you say, “I just don’t love this next part.” 

“Which part?” Peter is so focussed on his scan for dangers that it takes him a moment to put it together. “The blood draw?” 

The pained twinge in your expression confirms it. 

“Oh, hey.” He stoops a little, trying to catch your eye. Your heart’s beating so loud he’d bet you can feel it in your face. “It’s gonna be okay. The needles they use aren’t even that—” 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” you cut him off. Stiff, if not unkind. 

Peter only softens worse in response. Shit, at this rate he’ll be a pile of slop you’ll have to mop up to take with you when you leave. Wordlessly, he curls his arm tighter around you, halfway to fulfilling his wish of having you in his lap when you scoot closer to soak up the touch. Your fingers bunch in the hem of his shirt. Fuck, his poor girl. You really are freaked. 

“Why’re you embarrassed?” he mumbles against the top of your head. Low enough that your waiting room companions couldn’t overhear even if they were trying. 

Your reply is even lower. “It’s embarrassing. It’s something kids are afraid of.” 

“Baby,” Peter whispers, “you saw me lose my shit over a wasp last week.” (For the record, it was more than one wasp, and wasps do some pretty fucked up things to spiders, so Peter thinks his reaction was biologically valid. But he’ll simplify the matter for your sake.) You make a sound almost like a laugh at the memory. Peter hides his grin in your hair.  “I think we’re past the point of being embarrassed about that stuff.” 

“Yours was funny,” you argue, warmly. 

“Lucky for you, I’m nicer than you are, so I won’t laugh.” 

You tense when a nurse comes to the door, but it’s not for you. Even after the boy and his mother go back and the door closes behind them all, you don’t relax all the way. 

“I’m glad you told me,” Peter says conversationally. “I can at least come back with you and hold your hand.” 

“Do you think they’ll let you come?” You look up at him, unsure. Peter wants to put you in the pocket of his hoodie and keep you warm and safe and close forever. 

“Sure,” he says instead. “We’ll just tell them you need a little emotional support.” 

You learn his routine before you even realize that you’re paying attention.

He never turns on his lights at night. Instead, a flicker of blue from a laptop screen glows through his curtains until nearly dawn. You hear him pacing at strange hours. Sometimes there’s music: sad, mournful songs like he’s going through something rough. And other nights, when you press your ear to your pillow and the apartment feels too still, you hear him talking quietly to himself. Words you can’t make out. Maybe names.

Sometimes you want to knock on his door. Just to ask if he’s okay. But you’re not exactly the type who’s good at that sort of thing. You’ve always been a little shy, a little soft around the edges, all quiet glances and polite smiles. So instead, you watch him from your window, peeking behind your sheer white curtains like you’re in some black-and-white film and he’s the mystery next door.

Then, one night, it rains.

Hard.

You’re curled up in a blanket on your sofa, the kind with little eyelet trim that your grandmother gave you, and you’re sipping peppermint tea out of a pink porcelain mug. Your fairy lights are on, and there’s a sleepy kind of peace in the room, until you hear the balcony door next door slide open.

You peek through the curtain and see him standing in the downpour.

Peter.

That’s his name. You heard the mailman say it once.

He’s soaked, hoodie clinging to his shoulders, curls dark and matted against his forehead. He doesn’t even flinch when the thunder cracks. He just leans on the railing like he’s waiting for the sky to wash something off him. And then, your breath catches, he crumples forward, gripping the railing so tightly his knuckles go pale. His chest jerks once. Then again. He’s crying.

You don’t even realize your fingers are tightening around your mug until the ceramic creaks.

Part of you wants to run out there, drag him in by the hand, offer him warmth and sugar cookies and whatever kindness might still exist in this too-cruel world. But instead, you just stand there in the shadows, watching. Because you’re not sure he wants to be seen. Because you know grief like that can swallow a person whole, and the last thing it wants is witnesses.

When he finally turns and disappears inside, he leaves the balcony door open.

You don’t sleep that night, not really. You lie on your side, facing the wall, trying to imagine what kind of pain lives in a boy’s chest when he cries like that in the rain.

The next day, you bake.

Nothing fancy, just warm chocolate chip cookies, soft in the middle, the way your mom always made them. You pack a few onto a pink plate and wrap it in cling film. You stare at the door for a long time. Then, barefoot and trembling just a little, you walk across the hall and knock.

He opens the door slower than you expect, like maybe he was asleep or deep in thought. He looks surprised to see you. He blinks, eyes red-rimmed but wide and kind. “Hi,” he says, voice rough.

You hold out the plate and try not to look too nervous. “I made too many. Thought you might want some.”

There’s a long pause. You worry for a second that he’s going to say no, that this was a mistake, that you were being too much. But instead, he steps back. Just a little. Just enough.

“Do you wanna come in?”

His apartment is small and quiet. A little messy, but lived-in. There are books everywhere, on the coffee table, the armchair, even the floor. And photos. Framed and unframed, tucked into the edges of mirrors. You spot a picture of him with a girl. Blonde. Smiling, holding his hand.

You don’t ask. You don’t need to.

You sit on the floor with him, the plate between you. He eats slowly, like he hasn’t tasted anything sweet in a long time. You don’t talk much. Just watch a black-and-white movie on mute while the rain taps lightly on the window.

It becomes a thing.

Not all at once, but slowly, gently, like a new bloom in spring. He knocks on your door one night when he can’t sleep. You offer him a blanket and a quiet smile. Another time, you find a note slipped under your door, just one sentence written in neat, slanted handwriting: ‘Thanks for not asking questions.’

You keep making cookies. He starts bringing coffee. You learn that he likes his black, no sugar. You tell him you hate the sound of thunder, and he starts carrying earplugs for you, just in case.

Eventually, he tells you about her.

Not all at once. In pieces.

Her name was Gwen.

He doesn’t say how she died. You don’t press. But the way he says her name, like a prayer, like a wound, it’s enough to understand she meant everything.

You touch his hand when he says it. Just a brush. Soft. Barely there. He doesn’t pull away.

“Do you think it’s possible,” he says one night, cuddled up against you, voice barely above a whisper, “to carry someone with you, but still make room for something new?”

You look up at him, heart trembling. “I think… people like that never really leave you. But you’re allowed to feel again. You’re allowed to smile again.”

His eyes shine. He nods, slowly, and then leans forward, resting his forehead gently against yours. Your breath catches, but you don’t move. You let him be close.

He kisses you once.

Softly. Tenderly. Like he’s afraid you might vanish.

You don’t.

You stay.

And somehow, without quite meaning to, you become the first piece of light he’s let in since everything went dark.

Peter was supposed to meet you for a date earlier in the day. It was planned days ahead while you two languidly laid in bed together. He actually suggested it, which is ironic now knowing that he didn’t show up. 

No call. No texts. Just radio silence. 

You waited at the restaurant for a while. It was humiliating being all dolled up and excited to see your boyfriend who never arrived. Everytime the waitress came by you would smile sheepishly at her and say ‘He’ll be here any minute’.

You squeeze your eyes shut before opening them. You groan as you get out of bed and walk toward the window. It takes a little force to push open the window and when you do, a rush of cold air floods into your room. Goosebumps spread over your body in its wake.

That’s when you see Peter.

He’s hunched over with an arm clutching his stomach. It’s too dark to see what’s happened to him. There’s a pained look on his face when he looks up at you. You can’t register it, the smears of blood on his face distract you. 

“Peter. What the fuck happened to you?”

You step back from the window and he stumbles inside. He falls onto the floor at the foot of your bed. He winces as he adjusts himself to sit up properly. You can’t help but feel bad for being upset at him. 

You rush into your bathroom and grab your first-aid kit. When you come back you turn on your lamp and wish you hadn’t. The soft glow allows you to see the gash on Peter’s chest and the scrapes on his face. His knuckles are raw and bruised. It’s evident he got his ass kicked.

“I’m really, really sorry,” He exhales sharply, “that I missed dinner.”

“Pete, stop–-Take your suit off.”

You sit down with your legs folded under you. What does he want you to say? He clearly had more important things to do, crime fighting and whatnot. You shouldn’t be upset, that's selfish. He was saving lives. You don’t look him in the eyes.

He shoves down his suit and it settles at his waist. Cuts and bruises now fully exposed, they make you feel queasy no matter how often you see them. You pour rubbing alcohol onto some gauze.

“I should’ve told you. I wanted to tell you, but I–” He speaks softly but he’s clearly frustrated with himself. You start cleaning his cuts, he inhales sharply and his abdomen flexes.

“You were busy. People were in danger and you had to help. It’s fine.” You wish it felt fine.

He sighs and wraps his fingers around your upper arm. His grip is firm and comforting. “Hey, look at me.” 

Reluctantly, you do. There’s a small frown on your face and it makes his heart hurt knowing he caused it. He feels disgusted with himself when he imagines you dressed up, sitting at the restaurant and waiting for him.

“I should have told you that I wouldn’t be able to make it. I fucking wish I did but, I didn’t. I’ll learn to balance everything better, I swear.” He insists. 

You exhale. “It’s okay, really. Just felt a bit humiliated s’all.” It feels stupid talking about your feelings when he’s the one with the open and bleeding wounds. But, that’s Peter, always putting others before himself.

“I know babe, I’m sorry.” He moves his hand up and down your arm in a soothing motion. 

“Pete,” You shake your head softly, “You’ve got open wounds but you’re concerned about me?” 

“Yeah. I messed up. Need to rectify it and not lose the catch of the century.” He’s smiling softly.

“You’re an idiot. Can't believe I deal with you." His smile is contagious, spreading to you easily.

"I'm thankful you do."

He dips his head down and kisses you. His hand runs up from your arm to your neck, thumb running along your jaw. It's sweet and soft. All unsavoury memories from the night melt away.

Gosh, it’s hard to be mad at him.

⋆˚☆˖°⋆｡° ✮˖ ࣪ ⊹⋆.˚⋆˚☆˖°⋆｡° ✮˖ ࣪ ⊹⋆.˚

⟡

he’s late, but he’s always late.

and when he finally jogs up to you in front of the museum, hoodie half-zipped, camera bouncing against his chest and curls all windblown and ridiculous, you don’t say anything. you just raise your eyebrows. one hand on your hip. the other clutching your iced coffee like a weapon.

“before you say anything,” he pants, holding up a peace offering—a squished museum map that he probably crumpled in his back pocket three days ago—“i brought a coupon.”

you squint. “we’re both under twenty-five. it’s free.”

“okay,” he shrugs, “but it felt boyfriend-coded.”

you smile despite yourself.

he insists on doing the entire sculpture garden first.

you try to be patient, really. but peter’s in full nerd mode—taking photos from four different angles, crouching next to marble torsos like he’s interrogating them, saying things like “wow, look at the muscle tension here, that’s insane,” and “i just think it’s cool that this guy has better calves than me and he’s from like 300 B.C.”

you mostly just watch him.

you could look at the art. you’re trying to look at the art.

but your dork of a boyfriend is wearing a too-big tan jacket over his hoodie, his fingers smudged with sunscreen he clearly didn’t rub in all the way, and he keeps pushing his glasses up with the back of his wrist while talking about how hot it must’ve been in ancient greece.

and honestly?

it’s way more interesting.

⟡

inside, it gets worse.

every time you try to walk more than ten feet into a gallery, peter finds something else to comment on. or take a photo of. or pose next to like a chaotic tour guide who got fired for being too enthusiastic.

“okay, wait,” he says, catching your sleeve gently as you pass a huge oil painting of some saint bleeding dramatically into a bowl. “hold on. babe, you have to see this.”

“i’m looking at it,” you say, dry.

“no, like—look,” he points with his chin, adjusting his camera strap. “look at his hands. that’s crazy detail.”

you glance at him.

his expression is serious.

his cheeks a little pink, because he gets excited like a toddler.

he turns to you and grins.

“i wanna draw you like that.”

“bleeding into a bowl?”

“posed dramatically.”

you snort. “you’re so annoying.”

he bumps his shoulder into yours. “you love it.”

you don’t answer, but you reach for his hand anyway.

⟡ 

in the impressionist gallery, he tries to act normal.

you sit beside him on one of the little benches in front of a blurry monet, shoulder to shoulder, knees touching.

he’s bouncing his leg.

you glance at him.

he glances at you.

and then he breaks.

“so, like,” he says, very seriously, “are we gonna talk about how sexy these brushstrokes are, or—?”

you slap his thigh gently.

he bites a grin into the side of his hand.

“i’m serious,” he says. “this is very sensual.”

“you are literally the worst person here.”

“the second worst,” he nods. “the guy who took that selfie in front of the crucifixion has me beat.”

you’re trying not to laugh.

he notices. you feel him shift closer.

then, after a moment—

“you looked really pretty earlier. by the statue. with the light hitting your face like that.”

your breath catches a little.

he’s already pretending to examine the monet again.

you lean in, voice low.

“you gonna send me those pictures later?”

his ears go pink.

“i mean,” he shrugs, “if you want…”

you nudge his knee with yours.

“i always want.”

and then—just for a second—he turns his head, kisses your cheek, and lets his lips linger.

it’s quiet. safe. soft enough to settle in your bones.

⟡

when you stand up to move on, he tugs at your sleeve again.

“wait. one more.”

you glance down.

his camera’s already out, lens pointed toward you. he doesn’t even let you fix your hair.

click.

“perfect,” he murmurs.

and when you look at him again—

he’s not smiling like before.

he’s looking at you like a painting.

like you’re worth being framed.

like he still can’t believe you’re his.

⟡

you don’t even make it five feet outside before peter’s pulling his camera out again.

“babe,” you warn.

he’s already lifting the viewfinder. “no no no, wait—stand there, don’t move.”

you groan. “peter.”

“the light is literally insane right now, just let me—hold on—”

you’re halfway through rolling your eyes when the shutter clicks.

click. click click.

“gorgeous,” he says under his breath.

you blink.

he’s not talking about the sky.

you cross your arms. “what if I hate being your muse.”

he drops the camera a little, steps closer.

his voice goes quieter.

“what if I’m not giving you a choice?”

you stare at him.

his curls are all messed up from running his hands through them. there’s a tiny sunscreen smudge still near his temple. his thumb’s twitching over the shutter button like he wants to take one more.

your lips twitch. 

“you’re really pushing it, parker.”

“am I?” he says, eyes flicking to your mouth.

he’s wearing that look—the one that says I know you’re mad but I LOVE getting on your nerves!

and unfortunately, it’s true.

you take two steps toward him and pluck the camera from around his neck, letting it fall gently to your own chest.

then you kiss him.

just enough to get the smug off his face.

his breath catches.

his hands come up to your waist instantly, pulling you closer like you’re gonna disappear.

you smile against his mouth.

he sighs into the kiss, deep and soft and already a little needy.

“mm—thought you were mad at me,” he mumbles against your lip.

“shut up.”

you press your mouth to his again. slower this time.

you can feel the tension leave his shoulders. can feel the way his fingers flex at your sides, like he wants to touch more, but he’s still being good.

you’re in public. people are passing behind you.

and he doesn’t care.

⟡

you pull back after a few long seconds, breath uneven.

he’s blinking at you, dazed.

then—

“shit.”

you look down just in time to see his camera slipping off your neck.

you lunge. Peter lunges faster.

he catches it right before it hits the edge of the stone fountain.

you both freeze.

his mouth is open. your hands are still on his hoodie. a couple kids laugh behind you.

“…oops,” you murmur.

he glares at you, clutching the camera like it’s his firstborn.

“I just told you the light was perfect.”

you kiss his cheek. “you’ll live.”

“you almost dropped my soul in the fountain.”

“I almost dropped your camera, dramatic ass.”

“same thing.”

you laugh.

and when he’s not looking, you snap a photo of him.

crooked smile, ears flushed, camera strap clutched in his fist.

you tuck the camera back against your chest and say:

“I’m keeping that one.”

he narrows his eyes.

“that’s fine,” he mutters. “I already have a hundred of you in my drafts, so.”

you pause.

“…you what?”

he grabs your hand like he didn’t just say that.

“let’s go see the baroque room,” he says way too fast.

“peter.”

“you love religious trauma.”

“peter.”

“I’m buying you a keychain.”

⟡

he doesn’t stop taking pictures for the rest of the afternoon.

but you let him.

because you’ve never seen anyone look at you the way he does when his camera’s in his hands—

like he’s documenting something rare.

something holy.

something he can’t believe he gets to keep.

⟡

you sit on the grass just below the museum hill, the skyline glittering behind you, and peter’s picnic bag spread open like a survival kit for a couple lost in whole foods.

you eye the contents.

“…peter.”

he looks up from where he’s unfolding a floral blanket (may’s, obviously, it still smells like her detergent).

“hm?”

you hold up a single pre-sliced cucumber and a ziploc bag of… hot cheetos.

“what is this meal.”

he blinks. then shrugs. “balance.”

“you brought half a pack of turkey, one string cheese, four clementines and three drinks, but no bread?”

“okay,” he says, unbothered, “first of all, i panicked at the bodega. second of all, i love you.”

you raise a brow. “so you’re using affection as a distraction tactic now.”

he opens the bottle of apple juice and takes a long sip.

“yeah. and it’s working.”

⟡

you end up sitting between his legs, leaning back into his chest while he feeds you a medley of unfortunate snack combinations and random museum trivia.

he's warm behind you. hoodie soft. voice quiet against your ear.

“this hill’s my favorite part,” he murmurs after a while. “i used to come up here alone in high school and pretend i wasn’t stressed out of my mind.”

you tilt your head, looking at him sideways.

“and now you bring me.”

he meets your gaze. smile slow.

“yeah. figured if i was gonna spiral again, i’d rather do it with someone hot in my lap.”

you snort and elbow him lightly.

he laughs and holds you tighter.

you talk about everything and nothing.

you lean forward to reach the bag of chips and he whines until you lean back again.

you brush stray petals off the blanket while he hums some dumb jingle under his breath.

you eat a clementine in perfect silence, and he just watches you.

you glance over, peel dangling from your fingers.

“what.”

he blinks. “nothing.”

you narrow your eyes. “why are you looking at me like that.”

“i like your mouth.”

you choke a little. “peter.”

he sips more juice like he’s innocent.

you toss a chip at his head. he catches it in his mouth. grins like a fiend.

“still got it.”

you lunge for the bottle and take a sip.

he wipes your chin lazily with his thumb, then licks the pad of it without thinking.

your pulse stutters.

you look at him.

he looks at you.

“what,” he says again, too soft this time.

you shake your head.

“i like your mouth, too.”

⟡

five minutes later, you’re lying flat on your back and he’s on his side beside you, drawing little shapes on your stomach through your shirt.

you close your eyes. the sun’s warm on your eyelids.

“this is nice,” you say.

“mhm.”

“don’t feed the ducks, though.”

“babe, the ducks are five yards away.”

“i’m just saying. if you feed them hot cheetos, you’re gonna get cancelled.”

he laughs. and you smile.

because his laugh sounds better than the city does.

and his hand’s still on your stomach, and the grass is soft, and you’re so full of juice and snacks and him that it’s hard to breathe.

⟡

the museum gift shop is a war zone.

there’s a hundred people inside and only three aisles wide enough for one person at a time. children are screaming over art-themed plushies. someone knocks over a display of pocket-sized monet calendars. peter disappears within ten seconds of entering.

you find him by the postcards, spinning the rack like a contestant on wheel of fortune.

“okay,” he says, pulling one with a dramatic renaissance martyr bleeding into a cherub’s arms, “this one’s obviously for you.”

you take it, unimpressed.

“are you saying I’m dramatic?”

“I’m saying you’re a divine tragedy, baby.”

you roll your eyes, but keep the postcard anyway.

a few minutes later, he finds you holding a tiny notebook shaped like a bust.

“do you think this is funny?” you ask.

“I think if you don’t buy it I’ll cry.”

“you cried at the museum fountain.”

“you almost dropped my camera into the museum fountain.”

“you’re deflecting.”

he kisses your cheek quickly.

you put the notebook in the basket.

he smiles like you’ve forgiven him for every crime he hasn’t committed yet.

he keeps wandering away and then coming back to show you something else.

“okay but this water bottle says ‘hydrate and create’ and that’s a pretty solid life motto.”

“should we start collecting these little magnetic portrait frames? like, for our future fridge?”

you pause at that one.

he doesn’t notice.

you do.

you watch the way he handles the fridge magnet, carefully turning it over in his fingers, brows drawn, tongue poking out just slightly between his lips.

like he means it.

like it’s not a joke. like he wants your life to include a fridge. and magnets. and you.

“hey,” you say, suddenly soft.

he glances up.

you hold up a tiny enamel pin shaped like a camera.

“this is so you.”

he blinks. “what?”

“you should get it. it’s dorky. and it’s exactly your vibe.”

he stares at it in your hand.

then at you.

you reach forward and pin it to his hoodie without waiting.

he doesn’t breathe the whole time.

“perfect,” you say, smoothing it out.

and when you look back at him—

he’s already looking at you.

like you just kissed him. like you just said I love you out loud. like you just told him yes.

⟡

you’re halfway to the register when you glance over your shoulder and grin.

“hey, should we steal something?”

peter immediately drops the tote bag.

“what?”

“like, just a sticker. to feel alive.”

“I literally have superpowers and you wanna get your adrenaline rush from a $3 sticker?”

“don’t kink shame me, peter.”

“I—"

“you’re already an outlaw,” you say, waving the postcard, “let’s complete the arc.”

he stares at you for three full seconds.

then reaches for your hand.

“fine. but if we get caught, I’m telling them you seduced me.”

“they’ll believe you.”

“you are wearing those boots.”

⟡

you do not steal anything.

peter does buy you the little magnetic portrait frame though.

and he doesn’t stop looking at his new pin the whole subway ride home.

⟡

the subway ride home is too long.

‘’peter’s legs are too long. your skirt is too short. the plastic seats are way too hard. and yet—none of that matters. because he’s warm. and he smells like sunscreen and spearmint gum and the apple juice you shared under the sun. and you’re sitting in his lap.

his camera bag is squished under your thigh. one of his hands is wrapped around your waist and the other is barely holding onto the rail above your heads. you can feel his heartbeat in his palm.

you lean into his chest with a sigh.

“tired already?” he murmurs.

“you’re exhausting.”

“thank you.”

he kisses the top of your head.

you play with his hair idly.

he lets you.

head tilted back against the subway wall, lashes fluttering, mouth parted. he looks young like this. soft and flush-cheeked. worn out in the way boys only get when they feel safe.

you twist a little strand between your fingers.

“I love your hair like this.”

he hums.

“messy?”

“a hot, messy nerd.”

he chuckles under his breath.

“you like me for my brain.”

“I like your brain and… yep.”

his hand tightens on your hip.

“…noted.”

⟡

he taps your thigh lightly and nods toward the next stop.

“we gotta change lines here.”

“ugh.”

“I’ll carry you.”

“no you won’t.”

“no I won’t.”

you stand slowly, stretching. your legs feel like jelly.

he slaps your ass gently as you step off him.

“hey!”

“accident.”

“that’s not—!”

“momentum,” he grins.

“you’re so annoying.”

“you’re in love with me.”

you glare. he sticks his tongue out.

⟡

by the time you’re back on the bus, his legs are bouncing again.

you’re still tucked next to him, shoulder pressed to his chest.

he’s staring out the window, fidgeting with the zipper of his hoodie.

you glance up.

“what?”

“what time is dinner at May’s?”

you blink. “you invited me.”

“yeah but I forgot to ask her what time.”

“peter.”

he pulls out his phone and starts texting furiously.

you lean your head on his shoulder. watch his fingers fly.

“are we late?”

“maybe.”

“is she gonna kill us?”

“probably.”

“…oh. okay.”

he smiles.

his cheek presses against your hair. and you feel it again—that ache in your ribs. the good kind. the I love this boy so much it’s stupid kind.

you make it to May’s ten minutes late.

peter’s shirt is wrinkled. your lipstick is smudged. his pin is still clinging to the edge of his hoodie like a badge of honor.

may opens the door and looks at you both with the flat, unimpressed expression of someone who’s known peter since birth.

“you’re late.”

“traffic,” Peter lies.

“you took the subway.”

no response.

may rolls her eyes.

but when she hugs you, she squeezes you extra tight.

⟡

may’s kitchen smells like rosemary and caramelized onions and the softest, warmest kind of love.

peter sniffs dramatically.

“is that—” “meatloaf,” May says, already tired.

“meatloaf again?” he cries. “may. my body is a temple.”

“your body is 80% junk.”

you giggle and slide onto a chair at the kitchen table.

peter dramatically collapses into the one beside you, resting his head on your shoulder like he’s just been through war.

“you’re so brave.”

may sets the dish down.

it’s good.

of course it is. it’s may’s meatloaf. theres something sweet in the sauce and you’d honestly eat ten slabs of it if you didn’t have someone’s thigh pressed to yours under the table.

peter is a menace.

his socked foot finds yours.

you side-eye him.

he’s chewing with exaggerated innocence. blinking at you like he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing.

“peter,” you hiss.

“what?” he says, mouth full. “I didn’t do anything.”

you nudge him hard with your elbow. he gasps, clutching his ribs.

“may,” he groans. “she hit me.”

“she’s allowed,” May says.

⟡

you help clear the table.

Peter tries to carry too many plates at once. may tells him not to drop anything. he drops a fork. blames gravity.

you rinse. he dries.

he keeps bumping your hip. you keep elbowing his side.

your fingers brush at the counter’s edge. his knuckles are warm.

he murmurs—

“thank you for coming.”

you glance up. he’s close.

soft-eyed. flushed cheeked. little bits of sun still tucked under his collarbones.

“I like seeing you here,” he says.

you smile.

may disappears to her room.

peter practically drags you down the hall.

“I just wanna show you something.”

“your penis?”

“ok, two things.”

his room is the same as always. cluttered. cozy. full of scraps of old tech and socks that don’t match and one too many textbooks shoved under the bed.

he tosses his hoodie into a chair. flops face-down onto his bed with a groan.

you climb in after him.

he rolls over and pulls you onto his chest like you’re the most natural thing in the world.

⟡

his fingers find your spine. trace lazy lines.

your nose nudges his jaw. he sighs into your hair.

“you’re warm,” he mumbles.

“you’re heavy.”

“you love me.”

you kiss the spot under his ear.

“I do.”

he squeezes your waist. buries his face in your neck.

you tangle your legs with his. his toes wiggle against your ankle.

his voice is barely a whisper.

“I don’t want this day to end.”

⟡

his room’s dark now.

just the bedside lamp on. the kind of golden glow that makes your skin look soft and warm and kissable.

he’s looking at you like you’re lit from the inside out.

“what?” you whisper.

“nothing,” he says. “just. you.”

you’re lying beside him, head on his pillow. he’s curled toward you, one arm tucked under his head, the other tracing your waist.

his fingers keep dipping under your shirt.

warm palm, light scratch of fingernails. a little higher each time.

you press your cheek to his shoulder.

“you always smell like that.”

he smiles.

“like what?”

“clean laundry and metal and… like a boy who runs too hot.”

he turns his head. nose brushing yours. breath warm.

“I smell like you now.”

⟡

his lips find your cheek. your jaw. the corner of your mouth.

you roll closer. your legs tangle. he slips his thigh between yours.

his kiss is gentle, then a little less.

you sigh into it. his hand slides up, under your shirt, across the curve of your back.

your hips shift.

you both breathe through it.

his lips ghost yours again.

“can I—” “mmhm,” you hum.

his hand finds the underside of your thigh. your shirt rides up.

his knee nudges yours apart just a little. not enough. too much.

your hand slides up his chest. over his ribs.

he shivers.

“you okay?” you whisper.

he nods.

“just—just nervous. I always get nervous when I really, really like someone.”

your heart aches.

you kiss him, soft.

“me too.”

he pulls back to look at you.

his pupils are blown wide. his lashes are fluttering. he looks—

god, he looks gone.

“you’re so pretty,” he says, breathless.

you smile against his neck.

“you’re such a dork.”

his hand cups your waist. anchors you. your knee hitches over his hip.

“still like me?” he whispers.

⟡

you’re not even naked yet.

your shirt’s still half on. your bra too. his hoodie’s long gone but his jeans are just unbuttoned, not even off, and your skirt’s bunched around your waist like it’s scared to go.

you’re both breathless. flushed. his forehead rests against yours like he needs the contact to stay grounded.

his hips rock into yours slow.

grinding.

it’s barely anything. just pressure and the slow ache of almost.

his voice is all breath when he says—

“don’t look at me like that.”

your brows furrow.

“like what?”

he kisses you. shaky. your lips part for him without thinking.

when he pulls back, his voice cracks.

“like you mean it.”

⟡

his hands are everywhere.

your ribs, your back, the curve of your stomach. he treats you like you’re art. like he’s worried he’ll mess you up by holding too tight.

you grab his hand. press his palm to your chest.

“I want you to mean it.”

he stares at you like he can’t breathe.

“I do,” he whispers.

“then look at me.”

he does.

oh he does.

his eyes don’t leave yours after he kisses you again.

he keeps whispering your name.

his mouth on your cheek, your throat, your shoulder, your collarbone.

you squirm underneath him, soft whines in your throat, your bodies grinding harder now. your panties soaked. his cock twitching, pressed against you through his briefs.

he groans when you roll your hips up.

“god—”

“I want you,” you whisper.

“I want you so bad I feel sick.”

he chokes on a laugh. kisses your chin, your jaw, the corner of your mouth.

“you have me.”

he slides down. kisses your stomach. whispers your name again like a prayer.

his hands curl under your thighs.

“can I?”

you nod.

his thumbs hook under your panties.

he’s slow. reverent. like he’s unwrapping something sacred.

when he gets them down your legs and tosses them aside, he just—

stares.

he presses a kiss to the inside of your knee.

“fuck,” he whispers.

“I’m gonna die.”

⟡

he’s between your thighs now.

kneeling at the edge of the bed like he’s about to pray.

his hands are shaking. not nervous—overwhelmed. like he’s not sure if this is real. if you’re real. if you’ll disappear if he touches too hard.

“is this okay?” he asks, voice barely there.

“yes,” you breathe. “yes, peter. please.”

he kisses the inside of your knee again. your thigh. your hip.

his hair tickles your skin.

his hands spread your legs like you’re delicate—but not fragile.he can’t stop staring.

“you’re so pretty,” he whispers. “every part of you. I didn’t know— I didn’t know I could want someone this much.”

you nod, breath hitching.

“I’ve wanted this for so long,” you whisper.

he swallows hard.

then he lowers his mouth to you.

it’s—

soft at first.

a slow kiss to your clit. a gasp against it.

he whimpers.

like the taste of you hurts.

his hands slide under your thighs, pulling you closer, anchoring you. your hips jerk and he moans—like you just did something to him.

“peter—”

he shakes his head, mouth still on you, eyes wide.

you see it in them.

the awe. the desperation. the little bit of ruin.

his tongue flattens. licks a stripe.

then he sucks—gentle, wet, noisy.

your breath shudders.

he watches your face. watches every twitch and flutter and gasp like it’s the only thing that matters.

his eyes start to water.

“you okay?” you pant.

he nods against you. clutches your hips tighter.

“just— I’m okay. I just—” “you feel like everything.”

you try to sit up. to reach for him.

but he moans again and sucks harder.

you fall back, thighs twitching, hands gripping his hair.

“oh my god—”

you’re panting now.

he’s whining.

you feel his mouth tremble.

like maybe he’s crying just a little.

but he doesn’t stop.

he doesn’t stop.

⟡

after, 

you climb into his lap slow.

your thighs still sticky from his mouth, from your slick, from the heat of it all. his hands find your hips instantly—like they were made for it. like you were made for this.

he’s so hard it’s almost painful. cock flushed, thick, twitching where it rests against his stomach.

“do you have—?” you whisper.

he nods fast. fumbles for the drawer. his fingers tremble so bad he nearly drops the foil.

“you okay?”

“yeah— yeah,” he breathes. “just— I want this to be good. for you.”

you kiss him soft.

“it already is.”

you roll the condom down him with shaking hands.

he gasps when you touch him—like just your fingers make him weak.

you brace yourself with your hands on his chest and lower down slow.

he’s thick.

you sink onto him inch by inch, his cock stretching you open, and the second you’re seated fully, both of you still—just breathing.

his head falls back.

“fuck,” he whispers.

“you feel— you feel so—”

he can’t finish.

you press your forehead to his.

you move slow.

the tiniest rock of your hips makes him whimper.

he grips your waist like he’ll fall apart without it.

his eyes flicker open. his voice is soft.

“you love me?”

you nod.

“I love you.”

“say it again.”

“I love you, peter.”

“again.”

“I love you.”

“again—please—”

you’re grinding harder now.

“I love you.”

his breath shatters.

“I love you too,” he gasps. “I love you. I love you. I—fuck—don’t stop saying it—”

⟡

you’re bouncing now. soft and sloppy. your bodies soaked and trembling and desperate.

his arms wrap around your back.

his head presses to your chest.

“don’t leave,” he whispers.

“never,” you breathe.

“I won’t ever let you go.”

“good.”

your moans mix together.

you clench around him.

his cock twitches.

and he—

“baby— baby, I’m—”

you kiss him as he comes.

he sobs when he does.

you hold him until the trembling stops.

⟡

it’s hot under the covers.

his chest is flushed and sticky, arms wrapped around your waist, nose buried in your hair. you can still feel him twitching inside the condom, can still taste his shaky moans on your tongue.

you’re both so out of breath. so warm. so stupidly, incredibly in love.

“you okay?” he whispers.

“mhm,” you breathe. “my thighs are sore.”

he grins, lazy and smug, kissing the swell of your shoulder.

“good sore or bad sore?”

“shut up.”

⟡

you’re not supposed to be here.

may thinks you were both sleeping on the couch. you were. until peter pulled you into his room with that pouty little please like he couldn’t sleep without you. (he can’t.)

now you’re buried under a blanket in his childhood bed, still panting, trying to keep your voice down like it wasn’t the creak of his old bedframe that probably gave you away already.

“do you think she heard?”

“yes,” you whisper.

“god—”

“you were so loud, peter—”

“me?! you were—”

“shhh!”

he clamps his hand over your mouth, wide-eyed, grinning.

“you’re gonna get us caught,” he whispers.

⟡

you sneak to the kitchen an hour later.

you’re in his hoodie, in underwear. he’s in boxers and socks, looking ridiculous with bed hair and bite marks down his neck.

you both raid the fridge like kids. leftover meatloaf. cold pizza. oreos. he feeds you one like you’re royalty.

“you think she’s gonna be mad?”

“i think we should run away.”

“you and me?”

“mmhm. far away. a loft with bad plumbing and big windows.”

“ooh. sexy.”

“and a cat.”

“you’re allergic.”

“i’ll suffer.”

you eat sitting on the floor.

you, between his legs, leaning back against his chest. his arms wrap around your middle, soft fingertips tracing lazy lines across your tummy.

“you ever think about the future?” he mumbles.

you hum.

“sometimes.”

“like… moving in? waking up next to each other? cooking together? real adult shit.”

“you’d eat all the cereal.”

“you’d never do the dishes.”

you smack his chest lightly.

“you’d never do the laundry!”

he huffs, once more.

you look up at him. he’s already looking at you.

“i want it to be you,” he says softly. “all of it.”

your heart aches in that perfect, full kind of way.

“me too.”

⟡

you fall asleep in his arms, in again that night. to the sound of rain. to the softness of his breath. to the rhythm of your heartbeat against his.

quiet. loved. home.

—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-

⟡ made by @flxttershyz , please do not copy or repost without consent!!⟡

taglist: @seraphibunni @nolita-fairytale ^^

so sorry for disappearing for like for ever i got like triple whammey(ed?) by life these past weeks but i havent forgot u guys trust

The frat house was loud with one of your favorite songs, the beat thrumming through Peter’s legs as he watched the door from the top of the stairs. He threw this thing for you, made an effort to get another brother to invite you, asking your friends to help him. Everything he could to try and see you in his space again. 

It had been two months since he last talked to you and when you started ignoring his texts. He knew he had messed up with you, but he never thought he would haved pushed so hard that this was the result.

Peter didn’t need to touch you or even talk to you. All he needed was to see you, hear your laugh, watch you dance. But the party had been going for over two hours and there was no sign that you were coming. People even started to stare at him. Isack, the brother who invited you, came up to him, putting his arm around Peter's shoulders before speaking.

“You’ve been staring at the door like a sad puppy all night, Parker.”

“I’m waiting…” Peter says softly, “you invited her right?”

“Yes, I did. Let’s get a drink.” 

Peter stared at the door for a moment before sighing and nodding, shrugging his shoulders away from Isack. With his last ounce of will he left his spot and started towards the kitchen to get a cup of jungle juice, only looking back to the front door three or four times in the thirty second walk on the sticky floors. 

He knew logically you wouldn’t magically appear from him hoping and praying. But it didn’t hurt to be optimistic did it? It’s what he kept telling himself as he grabbed a red solo cup, filling it with the pink liquid. He stared at the cup for a few seconds before downing it, feeling the burn in his chest before he filled it again.

One, two.. Five drinks later and he was sitting outside, his phone in his hand as he stared at his favorite picture of you. You were in his ESU sweatshirt, sitting in his desk chair, typing out an essay you forgot was due that night. 

It took all he had to not text you that he loves and misses you, knowing better than to cross that line. You made it clear you needed time to think after what he did. 

Peter was in the wrong, he knew that, he knew that he shouldn’t have kept secrets, pushing the one boundary you asked him not to cross. But he did it anyway, so now he was paying for his own stupidity. He wouldn’t let himself push you again.

Even if this party was kind of a push… He just wanted to see you in person again, at least once before he moved on. It was getting to the point where he couldn’t sleep without checking your social media, scrolling through to see what you were up to. He felt like he was living in his own personal hell. 

He groaned and set his phone down, resting his head on his knees as he heard house music bumping just inside the brick house behind him. There was no escape from the deep, hollow, burrowed feeling in his chest. Something in him was ready to break as he looked towards the backyard and saw a familiar pair of legs. His eyes followed up until he saw your face and his breath was sucked from his lungs. 

“Peter?” You said softly before kneeling in front of him, his eyes stuck to yours as he huffed out your name. 

“I thought you weren’t coming?” He asked as he moved ever closer to you, his breath reeking of raspberry lemonade and rum. 

“Isack sent me a picture of you outside and told me you needed help?” 

He just whispered your name and reached out, touching your face, the smooth skin, the crease just under your eye. Something about you actually coming to help him made his heart break a bit more, his mouth opening like he wanted to say something but it wouldn’t come out. 

You felt the crack in your own heart deepend as you looked at a disheveled Peter, his hair was grown out, strands sticking up and a few pieces curled with sweat, his part in the wrong spot, signaling he had been playing with it like he always did when he was stressed. You knew you weren’t leaving him alone tonight, even if it was bad for both of you to stay.

“Come on, let's get you to bed.” You sigh, grabbing the hand on your cheek and standing, pulling him up with a grunt. “Jesus, I almost forgot you’re two hundred pounds of muscle…” 

“You’re here to help me to bed?” Peter says as he leans a bit, his head hanging close to yours. “Why?”

“Like I said, Isack told me to come.” 

“You sound like you’re not telling me the whole truth…” His voice is soft, and he’s right. You didn’t want to tell him Isack called you about how Peter threw a whole party to get your attention before sending the picture. 

But you just shrug and lead him back into the frat house, Peter was clinging to you like he would lose you while you weaved through the drunken bodies and humid air. A part of you did miss this life, but it was miniscule, cause you hated partying, you only started to come because you were with Peter.

After carefully leading him up the stairs and down the hall, he unlocked his bedroom door and stumbled into it, making his way to the bed but pausing as he looked back at you. His room was the messiest you’ve ever seen it, his usually neat navy sheets were wrinkled, clothes littered the floor and his desk chair, empty bottles and trash littering the desk itself. 

“Sorry for the mess I… I’ve been busy.” He says softly, looking at you and there’s the flash of unspoken words in his eyes, but you just nod and slowly close the door, walking towards his dresser, opening it and finding some clean clothes for him to wear, even if it's a struggle.

“Here,” you say as you hold out a pair of shorts and a raggedy shirt with old paint on it, “get dressed.” “I miss you.” He doesn’t take the clothes, he just looks down at you, his hand fidgeting at his side. With a sad expression, he forces a smile. “A lot.” You push the clothes towards him, raising your eyebrows, not sure how to respond. Of course you missed him too, but acknowledging it would turn this from a friend helping a friend to something else. “Get changed, Peter, please.”

The smile on his face falters before he starts to take his shirt off, grabbing the baggy one from your hands and sighing, head hanging low. There were new scars on his side and you remember the reason you couldn’t stay with him, the secrets were too much, the nights he was bruised and bandaged, his body clearly wounded from some sort of fight.

But you just turned away from him, tossing the shorts onto his bed before walking to his desk, grabbing some of the trash, finding a balled up bag to throw it in to declutter his space. After picking up a chip bag you find a polaroid sitting on his mousepad, it’s of you from a high angle. You hadn’t seen it before, so you slowly picked it up and turned it around in your hands, brows furrowed together. It was when you were eating at yours and Peter’s usual date spot by yourself, letting yourself pretend for a moment that everything was okay. 

“Peter… have you been following me?” You ask, turning around, holding the photo out to him, worry etched on your features as you examined him. His cheeks were red, his hands fidgeting slightly as he took a step closer and shook his head, looking a little ashamed. 

“One of the guys texted me they saw you in the diner and said I should talk to you… try and rekindle things but- when I got there you were smiling and talking on the phone and I just… couldn’t ruin that by ambushing you like that.” 

“But you took a picture of me? How did you even get this angle, you’d have to be on the next building's fire escape?” You ask, chewing on your lip as you feel nerves bubble in your stomach.

“Yes… I know it’s stupid, I did it on impulse.” He sounds defeated before he walks to the bed, sitting on the edge, running his hand through his hair. “It was either take a picture or tell you I love you.” He sighs, turning his face so you couldn’t see it.

And the words washed over you like cold water. He hadn’t said that before, not once, and it felt surreal to hear, even now as you stood in his room for the first time in months. “Wait, Peter- what?”

“I love you, I threw this party just for you… I dunno why I thought it was a good idea.” 

You stood there, awestruck before you walked a few feet and sat on the bed, sinking next to him as you thought about his words. Everything in you was buzzing, you couldn’t really believe he said that to you. But before you got the chance to properly react he moved and wrapped his arms around you. 

Unthinkingly, he stood quickly and made for his machine, opening the door — that looked better suited for some space craft than it did anything on earth — to stare at his blue and red suit before he realized what he had done. 

There had been no one in the room when he blocked the view of the cameras with his frame and pulled Spider-Man’s attire out of his backpack to throw it in the machine with some soap, but now he officially had an audience. 

He stole a glance — you were sitting with your back against the arm of the couch with your legs folded and a notebook balanced on your knees as you sketched and erased and sketched some more. Every once in a while your tongue would stick out between your teeth as you concentrated, only released from its hold for you to blow out a breath as you considered your work — and figured you were distracted enough.

He stole a breath himself and pulled the suit out of the washing machine, trying to restrain himself from breaking out into a full sprint across the room to the dryers lest he garner more of your attention.

It was all for naught.

“That can’t go in the dryer.” You drawled, still looking down at your notebook when Peter froze and turned to look at you incredulously.

“What?”

Your eyes flickered up first before you put your pencil down and raised your head, levelling him with a look that had him remembering himself before he quickly hid the article of clothing behind his back.

“There’s a camera behind you.” 

This had Peter spinning so that the suit was between his back and the machines. Was this an entire operation? Did laundry-sheriff aunt May have laundry-beat-cops hunting the streets for various laundry offences? Or were you just a laundry-vigilante?

“You can’t put spandex in the dryer.” You clarified, looking back down at your notebook. 

“When did laundry turn into such a protected practice?" Peter muttered quietly before turning his eyes back to you. “Why not?”  

A small breath of laughter puffed out of your nose as you looked back up at him. “Spandex loses its elasticity when exposed to high heat and leaves it vulnerable to quicker wear and tear. Not exactly ideal for the owner of that particular garment.” 

Fuck.

“Fuck.” 

You hummed in agreement and narrowed your eyes at him. 

“So how do I dry it- spandex, then?” He asked, narrowing his own eyes at you in turn. 

You scoff and roll your eyes. “Just throw it over the top of your bedroom door like every other boy your age.”

“I’ll have you know I’m a man, thank you.” 

You raise one, sceptical eyebrow at him, though he watched as you gave him an appreciative once over before nodding in cautious approval. 

“Hang to dry, or lay flat.”

“Right. Beautiful, wonderful, amazing, phenomenal, spectacular; except, you see, I can’t do that.” 

Your eyes narrowed further, though they appeared playful. “And why’s that?”

“Same reason I’m sitting in a laundromat in the middle of the night.” He offered simply. 

“And what reason is that?” 

“Oh that’s top secret, I can’t tell you. Yeah, sorry. If I told you, I’d have to kill you. It’s never pretty; these laundry concerns are highly sensitive matters, you know?” He joked, the words tumbling from his mouth with little thought as he avoided telling you he wasn’t allowed to use the washing machine at home, nor could he hang his suit lest Aunt May stumble upon it when putting away his laundry. 

“Right.” You agreed, clearly not agreeing with him at all. Peter tried not to stare at the way you pursed your lips at him before coming to some decision, turning your head back towards your notebook. “Lowest heat setting, gentle cycle.” 

Peter released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding as he did as he was told, wondering if maybe you weren’t actually a laundry-beat-cop or a laundry-vigilante, but some kind of laundry-fairy-godmother. 

“How do you know so much about fabric?” He asked once his dryer was spinning, walking slowly back over towards the sitting area. 

“I’m a design student…I work with all kinds of fabric.” You admitted, never looking back up at him. Peter wondered if he didn’t clock some bashfulness in your tone. 

“A design student, huh?” He mused, opting to take a seat on the edge of the low coffee table in front of your couch and smiling to himself when you seemed to fluster further. “Just out here fighting crime against articles of clothing?”

This managed to elicit a smile from you, though you never turned your attention back to him; he found himself a little desperate for it. 

You’re startled by the intensity in Peter’s brown eyes; pupils nearly fully eclipsing his irises as he stares at you desperately, his mouth pinched in discomfort. 

“What happened?” 

A nearly hysterical laugh leaves his lips, seemingly frustrated at the question though not at your asking it. The hand he has on your elbow remains gentle but you hear the wood of your bed frame splinter beneath his other fist as he groans, lowering his head as he takes some steadying breaths that all sound shaky to your ears. 

“I don’t know what else they can possibly have in those basements to surprise  me anymore – fucking biochemical warfare – one of the drums exploded; there was this- this, I don’t know, powder or fumes in the air; it was everywhere.”

“Are you alright?” You ask urgently, sitting up fully and swinging your legs over the side of the bed; Peter quickly makes room for you so that he’s stationed between your thighs.

“No, sweetheart, I am very much not alright right now. I’ve never been less alright than I am at this very moment, actually.”

Debatable, but you don’t argue. 

“Are you hurt?” You interrogate, your hands automatically starting at the juncture of his neck and shoulder before they start their typical journey over the plains of his lean muscles in search of injuries. They’re stopped short when Peter grasps your wrists.

“Peter, stop. Let me help you.”

“I don’t- that’s not- I’m not hurt, that’s not what I need.” He manages.

You let out a helpless laugh, feeling borderline hysterical yourself as you look at your boyfriend incredulously; his brows dipping inwards in a silent plea that you can’t decipher. “What do you need?”

“You.” 

“What is going on right now?” It’s not said like a question; a rhetorical statement falling from your lips as you shake your head as though rattling your brain might make it work again.

“Please, please.” He whispers, begging as he inches as close to the edge of the bed as possible, hands gentle as he begins to rove the contours of your body. “I need you so bad, I’m losing my fucking mind.” 

“I- what?”

“I’m sorry - I know, I know. I’m sorry. You were asleep. I’m sorry, but I need you, Y/N.”

The puzzle finally begins to slowly come together when you hear the sound of spandex sliding against cotton, and you come to realize that Peter is actually rutting into the side of the bed. 

You make to say something but all that leaves your mouth is a breath; Peter whimpers at the sound as though it burns. 

“Peter?”

“Y/N I need to fuck you so bad and like right now, right this instant, or I swear to God I think I might die. Or explode. Or explode and die; no survivors, multiple casualties.” 

It escapes your lips without your permission, and slapping your hand over your mouth does nothing to combat the look of complete and utter betrayal that spreads across your boyfriend’s face.

“You’re laughing at me.”

It’s not a question, but you answer him anyway, shaking your head as a giggle manages to squeeze through the spaces between your fingers. Peter may be painfully horny, but he isn't stupid, and you can see the outline of his tongue where it pokes into his cheek which signals that he’s onto you.

“You’re laughing at me. Great; real nice, babe. Awesome.” He scoffs, fighting and failing against a laugh-turned-groan of his own as he continues to scold you. “I’m so hard that I’m pretty sure my dick is going to snap right off and you’re laughing at me.”

There’s no hiding your laughter now, reaching out to take each side of Peter’s face; warmed pink, eyes glassy, and his bottom lip swollen from where he’s been gnawing at it. 

“I can’t believe a boner is going to be what finally takes Spiderman out.” He muses aloud miserably, closing his eyes at the way your cool fingers feel near his temples as a sheen of sweat glistens along his hairline. “Tell the press it was something cool, okay? Like, like an alien that I stopped from eating a school bus full of children or, or- or maybe a giant can of Raid.” 

You shake your head at your boyfriend’s soliloquies and lean in to rub your nose against him, startling him out of his spiral before you press your lips to his. 

“I’m not going to let a boner take you out, Peter.” You murmur against his lips, hands weaseling their way behind his neck to help him out of his suit. “What do you need?”

“You.” He almost keens as he all but rips his arms out of the suit and moves to push the rest off, leaving him in his boxers that are strained and growing damp.

“Okay,” you breathe, forcing your eyes away from the way his muscles shift as he pulls his boxers off and exposes his – as described – painfully hard cock, red and drooling as it bobs against his lower abdomen, “okay, and you sai- you said it was a powder?” 

You manage to get the rest of your question out despite the way Peter sets upon your lips like his job is to devour you whole, ridding you of your pajamas as he goes.

“Yeah, yeah. Like-” a kiss “-it was like a powder,” a nip “or maybe an aerosol?” 

He’s no sooner working on sucking a mark into your neck, hoisting you up onto his hips and forcing you to wrap your legs around his waist as you suppress a surprised yelp. 

“Okay, okay. Why don’t we fuck in the shower then, huh?” You hiss as you force him away from your jugular, intent on getting this out before things get too carried away. 

He’s groaning into the opposite side of your neck and immediately makes for the bathroom – carrying you about as though you weigh nothing – and groaning again when you squirm under his touch.

“Fuck you’re so smart and beautiful and perfect and hot I want to put so many babies inside of you.”