chie

The voice startles him. Everything is still sensitive, his joints and wounds and the act of occupying his body. The sound of someone else’s voice in the room triggers enough adrenaline in him to shoot out a web in the direction of the bodily presence that enters.

You frown, cringing at his attack, but you don’t look as startled as he would expect. He widens his eyes when he sees that you’ve dodged his webs completely. Sitting up, he winces from the sharp pain on his side.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Reflex.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

He doesn’t know what to do other than stare. Quite frankly, he didn’t expect to have to entertain a stranger tonight, nor did he think that his identity would be compromised in the presence of one. He’d barely remembered what had happened before he’d gotten knocked out. All he could recall was pain and the taste of blood in his mouth. Glancing at the slenderness of your fingers, he realizes that he doesn’t even remember your hands pulling him toward safety.

“You took my mask.”

“Wanted to make sure your face wasn’t broken. I didn’t take any pictures or call the cops if that’s what you think.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” he asks cautiously.

“I'm not particularly fond of them. Unless you want me to test how much ransom a loose Spider-man is worth.”

He blinks at the name, considering how ironic it is that you are the first person to see him in his most vulnerable state since his world changed for the worse. You, this unassuming stranger, who happened to have enough kindness to lug his body into your home. 

He’s on edge. Of course, he is; he feels as if he’s been kidnapped, but the acuteness of his senses feels differently than they do when his body knows a threat is in front of him. Instead, it feels like the kaleidoscope of neurons inside him collects together in clear recognition. Like he knows you in his soul alone.

“How did you– how did you even get me up here? I was in an alley, and then–”

“And then I carried you back to my apartment.”

He narrows his eyes.

“Don’t see how that’s possible,” he mutters. 

You surprise him by shooting a web from your fingertips to grab a water bottle from your desk and having it recoil into your hand without much effort.

Oh. 

He asks you your name, and you tell him. When you ask him the same, he shifts uncomfortably and doesn’t answer you. You don’t take it personally.

Christ, he needs to leave now. But he’s transfixed by your big eyes and your curious stare, and he begins to wonder about you in the same way, as if you are the wounded butterfly he’d picked up on the street instead of the other way around. 

You’re fucking weird, Peter’s decided, because, after this, you don’t ask him any more questions. Not anything that deviates from your concern about his wounded state. 

You’re rather casual, which surprises him. You make him a cup of tea, lend him some of your oversized clothes (they fit him perfectly), and force him to stay on your bed so you can attempt to tend to his wounds. (He doesn’t let you.)

Naturally, he watches you wash your dishes and he plays the interrogation game, and you let him. You tell him that you’re in Brooklyn. You negate the idea of him swinging back to his house despite how much he insists. When he asks why, you’re hesitant. 

“You’re probably safer here,” you sigh, almost impatiently.

He doesn’t argue when he feels the ache in his bones again.

“How is it that you’re like me?”

“I was also bitten by a radioactive spider.”

“Shit. There was another one?”

You don’t answer. God, your nonchalance freaks him the fuck out.

Why aren’t you fazed? What the fuck is wrong with you?

Maybe Peter will fake you out and flee, and he’ll forget all about you. He’ll never come near you again. But then there’s the warmth of your voice, and he stubbornly refuses to give in.

“I’m too fucking tired for all this interrogation, okay?” you exasperate. “You can take the bed. Or the couch. I don’t care. Just pick one.”

Why the hell are you letting a stranger crash at your place?

He doesn’t register it coming out of his mouth. You scoff.

“I’ve been through worse. And you’re barely a threat.” 

Peter should feel offended, he thinks, but mostly he’s fascinated by you. He doesn’t blame you for your crabbiness once he sees the clock on your wall read 2:45 am. There’s a nebulous pause between the two of you now, so you make the first move by turning away from him and rummaging through your drawers. You throw an oversized t-shirt and sweats toward him that he catches immediately.

Without a word, you leave the room, which leaves him confused. He thinks that maybe you’re coming back eventually, washing up in the bathroom, but after twenty minutes of examining the knick-knacks and pictures on your wall, your absence is louder than ever. He frowns when he steps out and sees your sleeping figure on the living room couch. Shit. You were serious about him taking the bed.

He peers at you again, eyes adjusting to the room's pitch-black darkness until the window's blue moonlight allows him to see your face. You look peaceful, at bliss, almost. 

Peter should just fucking leave. He contemplates this for over an hour as he lays in your bed, frowning at the ceiling because he’s not letting himself succumb to your weirdly kind offer of staying in your bed as a complete stranger. 

Yeah, there had to be something wrong with you. You’d probably taken him in to use for human meat to sell on the black market or something. The whole girl-next-door thing was definitely a facade. It was.

Fuck you and your pretty eyes and pretty hair and how he could smell it everywhere in the room regardless of whether or not you were in it. Fuck you and your soft sheets and obnoxious amount of pillows. 

Of course, once Peter is done ruminating, the sleep he has in your bed is the best he’s had in fucking weeks. 

__

Your bed smells just like you. Like your sheets are fresh out of the laundry with a hint of something citrusy. Peter can barely open his eyes, but the sunlight from your window annoyingly beams onto his bruised face. The warmth licks his face. 

He can hear the barely-there pattering of your light footsteps in the hallway. The hissing of a kettle. He emerges from your bedroom cautiously like a wild animal released from captivity. Your back is turned to him as you hum something nonspecific, some song he thinks he might’ve liked when he was in high school, but he doesn’t remember the name of it.

“Good morning, Peter,” you murmur, looking up and turning around when you notice his presence.

He furrows his brows. There’s a gleam in Peter’s eye that you can tell is untrusting. Like he’s expecting you to attack him.

“I never told you my name.”

Your gaze softens with sympathy. For some reason, you utter a soft apology.

“You already knew about me, but I didn’t know about you,” he accuses, arms crossed. “Why?”

You sigh. “Have you heard of the multiverse, Peter?”

No. No fucking way.

In a panic, he makes his way toward the front door of your apartment, but you beat him to it with two hands on his chest to block him.

“Peter! Peter, stop–”

“What the fuck is going on? Where am I?” 

He doesn’t realize that he feels short of breath, chest heaving as he clutches you by the shoulders. He also doesn’t realize the extent of his super-strength, though you don’t complain or flinch from the contact.

“I’ll explain if you just calm down,” you reply, your voice still calm. Even in crisis, you’re still so fucking soft, so placid, and Peter isn’t sure if the fact is comforting or terrifying.

Something catches in his throat when you place your warm palms on his cheeks, an embrace too loving and nurturing for a stranger like him to deserve. The entire gesture rewires his brain instantly. Despite his ragged breathing, he stills and nods slowly. 

“You’re on a different version of Earth. Okay? In this version, I’m the one who got bitten by a radioactive spider. I’m Silk.”

“I’m not supposed to be here.”

It comes out more like a question than a statement. You shake your head. 

“No. I don’t know how you got here, but I promise you’ll be able to make it back. There’s a lot of us–”

“I know about the multiverse. I’ve– I’ve met other versions. Of myself.”

“You have?” you raise an eyebrow. 

He hesitates. His brown eyes search yours, scanning your face until his gaze falls through you to fixate on your collarbone instead of your eyes. He blinks with a glassy scrutiny that bleeds with anxiety.

“I fucked things up on my Earth, and now no one knows who I am. No one knows who Peter Parker is, I mean. But why do you know who I am? How did you find me?”

“You know there are other Peters. I’ve met other Peters. After the multiverse nearly collapsed, the Spider Society was created. As a preventative measure, so that shit doesn’t happen again. All of us have the same story, and fucking it up fucks everyone else up, to put it simply. That can be something we can unpack for later. And I– I felt your presence. And I wanted to keep you safe, so I took you in..”

“There was something out there last night when I fell through. I don’t even remember how I got here. It was like waking up inside of a dream.”

The bewildered look in Peter’s eyes has you nearly as panicked as he is because you recognize it all too well. You’d seen it in the mirror yourself when you had first got bitten by that damn spider, however, at that time, you were fifteen and alone. 

“What thing?”

“Something… dark. Amorphous. I don’t know.”

You frown. Your hands are still on him. His face feels like it’s on fire.

The thing inside his body screams at a frequency he can’t understand. It’s so loud that he can’t even hear himself think. 

Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.

Shut the fuck up.

Peter jumps and takes a step back. When you try to move in tandem with him, he doesn’t let you. The voice in his head has a rasp unfamiliar to him, and it wants to overtake him. Fuck, is he hallucinating? Is he being fucking possessed?

Get out. Get out. Get the fuck out.

I don’t have anywhere else to go, Peter. 

GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BODY.

Look at her. Fucking delicious. We have to devour her. Now. NOW. NOW.

He won’t remember it later, but he runs through your bedroom door to the window, fumbling on the hinges until he nearly falls off your fire escape. When you relay this to him later, he’s bewildered, shaking. Too afraid to touch you. Too afraid to be in your apartment at all. Unsure of his memory, considering his lack of ability to recall any of this.

And yet, the warmth of your touch drinks him in, and he thinks that if he’s going to be trapped in a different universe than his own, he’s comfortable being in yours, under your roof. After he blacks out, your face is the only thing he can remember when he dreams.

__

The nightmares wake him up this time. He remembers the horrors of the night before you had found his mangled body in the alleyway. He remembers the pain, the glitch in the atmosphere that had seemed to have his body bursting through the seams, and the black entity that consumed his skin and stuck to it like glue. He remembers what it felt like to be transformed. He just doesn’t remember by what.

When Peter’s lids flutter open, he sees that his environment is sterile and sanitized. You make eye contact with him, and his honey-brown eyes darken, almost spiteful. The longer you look at his face, the more you notice he looks like a child.

He attempts to get up from the bed, but he’s restrained to it. He groans quietly, sucking his teeth.

“You’ll be out soon.”

He doesn’t say anything, though the grimace on his face says a thousand words. Instead, he scoffs.

Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.

The voice in his head is faint and raspy, though, unlike the other times, it’s barely there – much more muted than before. It comes as a passing thought, so nonchalant and quiet that Peter almost convinces himself that it’s something he hears echoed from the hallway nearby. 

Your expression doesn’t falter. You merely watch him with curious eyes. It makes his skin hot. 

“What happened?” he finally asks.

“You don’t remember?”

Peter doesn’t shake his head, nor does he look confused. He stays neutral as if he’s testing you. His jaw clenches.

“You fucking scared me, you know,” you mutter. There’s an exhaustion to your voice. How long has he fucking been here?

“Tell me.”

“It’s like you weren’t in your body,” you breathe. “Your eyes were all dark and you were trying to run away from me. You passed out after trying to jump off the fire escape. I thought you were trying to kill yourself, Peter.”

He notices that the edge in your voice is languishing, full of a distinct type of worry that he hasn’t felt from anyone else in ages. No one’s known him in over a year. But here you are, from a different universe, sitting across from him in this room with a face that almost looks like it’s about to be ruined with tears.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know.”

“Why am I here?”

“I don’t know what happened. The tests they ran on you – it’s nothing we’ve seen before. Or yet.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We use a device to send our Spider-people home based on your DNA. Or the spider you were bitten by since that’s what tethers you to your Earth. We thought you might go home and transport back to your universe, but you didn’t. The system fucking went berserk after scanning you.”

Peter’s first instinct is to say I’m sorry, but he knows that would be stupid, and the parasitic thing in his body shuts him down. He clamps his eyes shut to find darkness under all the harsh fluorescent lighting, but the hint of something sinister shakes his body in a way he can’t explain. He briefly remembers the moments before he allegedly tried to jump off the fire escape of your bedroom. Your soft eyes. Your hands on his face.

Your hand touches his now, and it makes his whole body jerk. 

(Your warmth reminds him of someone else’s, and for that, the thing in him wants to fucking kill you.)

__

Miguel doesn’t know what the fuck is wrong with Peter, either. He has other shit on his plate, like chasing misfits through the multiverse. 

Peter gets tired of the tests. It’s not like they’re doing anything because every so often, the thing inside him is lecherous and makes him feel disgusting for reasons beyond him. You are the only thing that keeps him calm. It’s like a manifestation of some curse cast upon him, a plague of a punishment.

In between the tests, he stays at yours. You don’t talk to him much because of your hours at the office, and when you’re home, you mostly eat dinner in silence. Sometimes Peter cooks and has dinner warm for you before you get home because he’s impatient and knows how to make a few basic meals from living alone in that dingy apartment.

It’s mundane. Comforting. In some stupid, twisted way, Peter wants to keep it. Keep you. Even if he won’t admit it. 

He doesn’t have to be Spider-Man on your Earth, and no one knows his identity. He almost feels like a housewife from how he dotes on you in small ways without you asking, this domesticity he’s adapted just because he can. His injuries have healed, and he works on yours instead. 

You reject his help because you’re used to it. Still, he hovers by the bathroom door when you bind your wounds.

He watches you with bated breaths, bottom lip sucked in his teeth. You have no qualms about the pair of eyes on you – at least, you don’t show it. 

“That shit’s gonna get infected.”

You roll your eyes without looking at him. Your nimble fingers work on patching up the cut under your breast instead.

“I know what I’m doing,” you huff.

“You didn’t even put Neosporin on it.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t have Neosporin in this universe?” he asks, an incredulous expression on his face.

You shrug. 

“Again, I know what I’m doing.”

“Maybe I should be out there with you on patrol.”

Your head whips around then, studying Peter’s face. He stares back at you with a seriousness that doesn’t break. You narrow your eyes.

“We’re working on getting you home, Peter. I’m not dragging you into my shit.”

“You dragged me into your shit the moment you took me in.”

You grimace, saying nothing. Your lack of response annoys him, but more than anything, it chips away at his ego. 

Maybe you regret rescuing him. The thought brings dread to his chest, guilt riding up in the caverns of the space he holds for you, which has grown bigger and bigger as the weeks go on. He thinks that if the two of you had met in different circumstances, normal ones, perhaps the two of you would be friends. 

He’d been alone for far too long. The scrubbing of his identity already turned him into a shell. The old Peter would’ve been much more proactive about this situation. He certainly would’ve been less fucking moody. But he knows there’s no one to accuse him of not being his usual self because nobody knows him anymore, except you.

__

Peter is so fucking bored of staying in your apartment. He needs something to keep him going, whether it’s crime or college. Cooped up in your home, he feels like nothing at all.

Sometimes, that feeling subsides when you’re home with him all domestic. He agrees to your movie nights despite protesting your incessant preference for horror. He likes how you curl your lip in a smirk when you tease him for being so damn jumpy.

While your relationship is mildly symbiotic, the thought of you permeates him more and more, usually at night. He has dreams of you that he’d be ashamed to relay when he’s awake. The thing inside him lurches, wants with so much zeal that he has to take measures to calm it down.

One night, when you return from patrol, your Silk suit ripped at your bicep, hip, and the space that’s supposed to cover your ribcage. He lets you patch yourself up like you always do without words other than an annoyed gruff. 

Peter can’t get the sight of your bloody wound out of his head, the exposed skin under your breast. Even the tightness of your suit allures him more than it should, which is fucking ridiculous. It’s nearing five weeks since he dropped into your universe. He should be used to you by now. 

“You good?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

“Uh-huh.”

You know that’s not true. Peter looks like he’s seen a ghost. You don’t pry. You stopped doing that weeks ago.

The second he leaves your room, he runs the shower on cold. 

You want it.

“Shut up,” he growls under his breath.

Peter has never wished for a lobotomy, and certainly not as much as he is now.

You want her. Take her.

Shivering does nothing for him. He turns the water up to hot, nearly scalding, just as he’s convinced himself to like it. The thing inside him is consuming him, getting closer and closer to his point of breaking, and he knows it. Every moment he can’t be around you for more than a minute, he knows it. 

The only thing that satiates the feeling is to take action himself. To truly quiet that dark, venomous desire, he has to touch himself for release, and he’s ashamed that you’re the thought at the apex of it every single time. Each time he reaches his peak, he can almost make out the figure expanding over his own, a viscous black substance that seems to breathe over his veins. Once he comes to bed with you, it’s gone.

__

The stupid urges make him feel animalistic. It’s never been like this. 

Images of you with your suit ripped at the seams and flashes of your bare skin reel in his brain constantly. It’s embarrassing. He’s not fucking sixteen.

You bother less with pleasantries now that it’s been nearly two months since he fell into your universe. After the initial shock of his situation, of course, he’d had a billion questions, to which you attempted to answer to the best of your ability. Proactive as ever, he’d opted to go to the Spider Society himself on several occasions without you, attempting to understand what could be keeping him tethered to your universe, and to no avail. 

After those trials and tribulations, he’d become withdrawn. 

“Wanna watch a movie?” you try one night. He shrugs. It’s an answer to most of your questions now. It’s starting to get fucking annoying.

“You mentioned you like Star Wars, right?”

“Sure,” Peter mumbles.

“I’ve never seen the prequels.”

It’s the only thing that brings light to his eyes in maybe a week, you notice. The only other times you see that lightness is when you catch Peter in secret moments cozying up to your cat, Ferris.

(Weird name for a cat, he’d remarked. You tell him you’d watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off the day you found him in the alleyway.)

Now Peter is settled on your couch with a soft black t-shirt clinging loosely to his frame. Maybe he doesn’t mean to be on the complete opposite side of the sofa, but the distance feels more apparent to you than it should. Ferris purrs in Peter’s lap. Traitor.

You pretend you aren’t fixated by the slight freckles that decorate his nose. Or his collarbone. Or the way that he smells just like you because he hasn’t bothered to ask you to buy him soap for himself.

You get bits and pieces of Peter’s personality over time. You learn that his favorite Thai dish is larb, just like you. He’s incredibly smart, which isn’t unlike you, but you certainly give less shits about the scientific aspect of the multiverse than he does. He has a guilty pleasure for sugary cereal. He loves the Velvet Underground. He has a freckle under his abs on the left side of his body. He’s annoyingly persistent in helping you patch yourself up.

When you hear the sound of your name in his voice, you wince.

“You zoning out already?”

“Huh?”

He gives you a look and you can’t help but giggle.

“You didn’t even hear anything I just said.”

“I was having flashbacks,” you shrug, blinking back at Natalie Portman on the television screen instead of Peter’s eyes. “To my Padme Halloween costume.”

“That’s stolen valor!”

“I was twelve, dipshit. It was on sale at Specter Halloween and there was nothing left.”

“Spirit Halloween?”

You furrow your brows.

“Oh my god. Nevermind.”

For some reason, this reaction makes you pull the fleece blanket from his body. You mumble a rushed apology to your cat, who scrambles off of Peter’s lap in an instant. Peter is quick to pull the blanket back immediately until the two of you end up in a tug of war. You see a flash of grinning teeth. 

“Peter!” you squeal when he yanks the blanket so hard that you nearly fall off the couch.

“Why do you have so much energy– dude!” You’re almost in his lap but he’s faster than you. You are so close to using your webs on him.

A flush of heat spreads over your cheeks when he has you pinned to the couch, arms above your head with the blanket now forgotten on the floor. His knees are on each side of you, so squirming does nothing for your cause.

“Relax,” he gruffs. 

You can’t tell if his eyes shift in darkness or if it’s just a trick of the television light. The warmth emanating from his cheeks matches yours. The way his legs are spread above yours is vulnerable, and so is the way you’re looking at him, and – fuck, can you stop looking at him like that?

You feel the grip on your wrists loosen as he shuffles to his feet, nearly tripping over the discarded blanket.

“We need more popcorn,” he mumbles.

Fixing the mess of your hair, you peer at him through the dimness. 

“That was the last bag.”

“I can get some more then.” 

He pulls on the hoodie that’s draped over the armchair – your oversized hoodie, in fact – and it’s clearly too tight on him.

“What? It’s late. Are you – are you hungry or something? I can make you food.”

“With what?” he snaps. “We haven’t been able to go grocery shopping yet this week.”

“Well, it’s too fucking late for that now.”

Silence permeates the space between the two of you. The seconds that pass feel so long. There is no void in Peter’s head, only the sound of a disgusting, gnawing desire. Grotesque wanting. He wishes you would just leave so he can scrub himself raw in the shower like he usually does.

She smells so good.

“I’ll get some stuff from the bodega. I need– I need air, anyway,” Peter stammers. “Should swing around and stuff. I’m holed up in here every goddamn day.”

The comment stings. It’s not your fault that he’s stuck here like a stray cat. He knows that, so he feels guilty when his words come out with more bite than he intends. He can’t stand to see the way your bottom lip trembles slightly as you look away from him, mumbling something of a useless apology even when you both know you have nothing to apologize for.

You flinch when the door slams behind him.

__

You don’t see Peter the next morning even though your keys hang right next to the doorway. The window by your bed is left slightly ajar, so you assume that it’s meant for him. 

It’s fine. He had already expressed his cabin fever to you, so it makes sense that he’d be out exploring the city. (This is what you tell yourself throughout the day, even though you can’t stop feeling an ache in your gut.)

Your day is mundane, but they always are, you suppose. Maybe they haven’t felt as such since you had company every day. Peter’s absence is so much more apparent than it should be. You haven’t been without him in a bit. Even at your stupid day job, he occupies your mind, and the mere knowledge of his absence sears a hole in your heart. It feels pathetic. Maybe he’s home. Maybe he’d come back after you’d left for work. 

When you get home in the evening, he’s nowhere to be found. You pretend that it’s nothing to you. You still make dinner for two.

__

Once you’re settled for bed, Peter is on the other side of town at a random bar. It’s a miracle he gets in without an official ID and all, not to mention his boyish face. A raven-haired girl who skips the line takes a liking to him, plus she seems to know the bouncer. She’s attached to Peter like a moth for the rest of the night. 

She’s daring and touchy, with a sense of humor that’s too over-familiar to appear charming. Peter doesn’t have to do much except nod and smirk to seduce her, downing shot after shot just so he can feel a buzz instead of irritation whenever the girl has her hands on him. On the dance floor, the shape of her body slightly resembles yours, maybe. She reeks of over-saturated vanilla, like the inside of a Victoria’s Secret. 

When he fucks her in her lavish penthouse, he can only think of you. He thinks her apartment is boring, lacks character, and looks soulless. It’s nothing like yours. It doesn’t even begin to contain the same warmth. Peter feels similarly about the girl, but he’d had enough shots in the bar to ignore that emptiness. For now, he feels full with his cock inside her, hearing her whiny pleas and soft moans as her face gets buried into the mattress. He only cums when he thinks of your face.

It’s not enough.

Shut the fuck up, Peter screams in his head. Shut up.

Though, we’re hungry, aren’t we? 

No.

Peter groans, digging his teeth into the girl’s neck as his fingertips press into the curve of her waist. He shuts his eyes, breathing rapidly as his body relaxes on top of hers. None of her sweet nothings registers in his brain. He holds off the violence in his head until she’s fast asleep, to his relief, because then he can return to you.

___

You’re wide awake when Peter fumbles with your bedroom window at three in the morning. He nearly trips next to your bed, but he braces himself, landing his hands on the softness of your rug. 

You hear him sigh. Maybe you’ve become too attuned to him. Every movement he makes is a small earthquake to you, so present and real as he unravels even when he’s just taking a few steps toward you. Maybe you’re imagining his breath behind your neck. Maybe you’re dreaming and you wish for it.

He assumes you’re asleep when he crawls into bed with you. This is only the second time. The first time, he’d had a nightmare on the couch and you had offered your warmth. At the moment, he’s inexplicably warm as he wraps his arms around your waist.

“Where were you?” you whisper. 

“Out.”

“You smell like a high school girl’s locker room.”

He snorts, tightening the grip he has over your middle. You feel his breath tickling the nape of your neck.

“Okay.”

“You gonna answer me?”

“Why does it matter? ‘m a big boy.”

“It matters when I’m responsible for you and I don’t know where you are.”

“I was always going to come back.”

You don’t say anything to that. You think this is too intimate, but you can’t help but admit to yourself that it’s what you need. The touch of someone else. The feeling of warmth enveloping your body.

You haven’t felt him this close to you before, at least when you’re this hypervigilant. Stretching your back slightly, you decide to turn to face him. Your body curls naturally into Peter’s without a second thought.

You notice the way he bites the inside of his bottom lip subtly. It’s dumb, how rapidly his heart beats now that you’re looking right at him. You pretend you don’t feel it from being so close to him, but it makes your heart elate.

Peter closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see your face. It’s not like the action helps him calm his heart down, because fuck, you’re so warm and soft and pliant in his arms. He’s gotten good at quieting the voice in his head lately but he’s still afraid of it consuming him. 

“Goodnight, Peter,” you murmur. 

He pretends he’s asleep. It takes everything in him to keep up the facade until he knows for sure you’ve passed out inches away from him.

___

When Peter wakes before you, something primal pushes his senses into overdrive. You smell so fucking sweet. It’s like the universe wants him to eat you.

She’s right there on a platter for you. Just for you.

He’s good at restraining it. Sucking in his teeth, his eyes scan the curves of your waist to the soft edges of your lips. 

Despite his restraint, he can’t be in the room with you right now. Certainly not in the same bed basking in your warmth. For fuck’s sake, what were you thinking, allowing him into your bed in the first place?

He already knows the answer – kindness is what fuels you—your altruism. When the mind gets the best of him, Peter curses at your character when he’s alone. Sometimes he’s on a random rooftop bombarded by thoughts of you. Sometimes he’s in your shower.

If anything, you were perfect, so perfect that Peter couldn’t stand it. So warm and pretty and pleasant that even the way he touches his cock doesn’t dirty the image he has of you in his head. You’re too pure, even when you use your nasty tongue against him, even when you fight him. 

The slightest showcase of your bare skin doesn’t help the cause. Peter retreats to the couch again even though you tell him that you don’t mind the space he takes up in your bed. He can’t tell you he’s doing it for your safety. 

Even so, he’s so attuned to you that he hears your midnightmare whines in the night as if you were right next to him. And when he guards your bed like a dog while you’re asleep, he tries not to focus on the shape of your collarbone. Of course not. He convinced himself that he was lonely, fucking pathetic. He tells himself that the mere sight of your exposed neck and the pout of your lips does nothing to him at all. 

__

Peter comes with you to headquarters. The other spiders are sympathetic to him, often over-friendly. He sticks to you like a lost puppy.

“Did Miguel figure out anything yet?”

“Huh?”

“About getting me home.”

You raise your eyebrows in surprise, though your expression neutralizes once you look away. It was stupid to hold any value towards Peter. This is what you tell yourself, at least, so you must remind yourself that his questions aren’t out of left field. 

You refused to face the reality that you’d grown attached to him, that his presence had felt normal to you after he’d stayed with you for more than two months. 

“Still working on it,” you reply, giving him a sheepish smile. 

You feel guilty despite telling the truth. No tests could decipher why Peter was immune to being sent off back to his universe. No updates to the technology had worked, either. 

(You don’t really know what he’s still doing here, especially considering how quiet it is at headquarters today. You’re only really there to assist Margo in perfecting the gizmo that helps Miguel verse-jump.)

“I got you lunch, though. And feel free to leave whenever you want, I might stay late.” 

You drop a paper bag in front of him. The contents reveal a Cuban sandwich, bread smooshed flat with extra pickles. His favorite. You’d remembered his long rant about missing Delmar’s.

The gesture is sweet. You’re sweet, even though you’re a hard shell to break. 

The voice in his head is louder than usual today. Once you’re in a separate room, he feels immediately desperate for your presence, and he can’t tell if this is one of his usual emotions. The moment he fell into your world, besides feeling possessed, the emotions he experiences within his body are unlike him. Stronger, desperate, on the brink of detonation. 

“I’m sorry you’re stuck here,” you stammer after clearing your throat. 

“I’m lucky,” Peter shrugs. His eyes don’t waver from yours. “That you’re the one taking care of me, I mean. You’re kind for letting me stay.”

For keeping me. Do you want to keep me as much as I want to keep you?

The smile you give him is saccharine as you flush. He wonders if it’s fake, secretly full of vitriol. Perhaps he’ll find out when the both of you are home. 

He decides to give you space for the rest of the afternoon. After boring himself with floating in and out of random stores in Manhattan, he returns to your apartment in the evening, jiggling your bedroom window open even though you had given him a spare key. 

None of the lights are on except a glow emitting from behind the bathroom door, left open slightly. 

Your eyes shoot open when you hear the creak of the door. In the dimness of your bathroom, the only thing that helps you see Peter’s face is the dozens of tealight candles you have around the bathtub.

He gulps, mumbling an apology as he looks away. 

“You’re home earlier than I thought you’d be,” he murmurs.

“I was having massive brain fog all day so I came home early,” you tell him. He nods in understanding without saying anything. He doesn’t know why he’s lingering.

“You clearly haven’t figured out the concept of a front door.”

He blinks at the wet sheen of your collarbone, how the candles flicker an orange light across your face, and then he looks away again. 

“Sorry. Force of habit.”

“Well, you should try it. You have a key,” you snort. 

Peter’s heartbeat races. God, you smell so fucking good. Like citrus and sandalwood and sunlight. There’s no way he’s going to be able to sleep next to you tonight.

TAKE HER RIGHT NOW. FUCKING DO IT.

“Uh, I’ll leave you be,” he rasps, accidentally slamming the bathroom door closed. 

He knows you’ll be annoyed about it later, but he unlatches your bedroom window again to get outside and feel the fresh air. He doesn’t know what to do with his energy, with the gnawing in his body, so he tries to get his breathing even on the roof of your building. 

“Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off,” Peter mumbles in succession, straining his body. 

On the concrete of the rooftop, he lies down and stares at the evening sky, trying to think of literally anything else, but he can’t. He knows that your existence isn’t a curse, that whatever it is that’s plaguing him is deep within his body, but he doesn’t know how to exorcize it. 

In a frenzy, he rips his suit from his body because the thing inside him is begging for stimulation. Thoughts of you flood his brain. Every angle of you, every memory, every scent. You would be surprised to know how much he’s memorized about you considering how rarely he likes to make eye contact.

And God, your eyes. How would you feel if you were watching him right now? Would you be disgusted? Would you be as disgusted as Peter is with himself?

It takes a minute or two of palming his dick before he finishes just from thinking about you. He groans lowly, animalistic, and there still isn’t any relief despite the mess he’s made on his suit. 

YOU’D FEEL BETTER IF IT WAS HER.

Fuck you.

Why is he so goddamn flustered? He’s literally slept next to you. And it isn’t like he saw anything when you were in the bathtub. Just your bare face, your wet shoulders–

Fuck, he’s hard again. Peter doesn’t think he’s been this hard in his entire life. 

It doesn’t take long for him to cum again even with all the overstimulation. You’re probably wondering where he is, too. He hopes to God you aren’t in your room so he can sneak back in quietly and get changed, maybe throw in a load of laundry so he doesn’t give himself away.

This is so stupid. So, so stupid.

Luck is on Peter’s side when he crawls back into your apartment. He hears you humming from the kitchen and the smell of onions and garlic wafts under his nose. He strips quietly and changes into new clothes.

“Pete?”

Sighing, he follows the sound of your voice. The smile you give him is nearly blinding.

“Where were you?”

“Uhh, checking the mail.”

“For half an hour?” you raise a brow.

He shrugs. An excuse makes its way into his mind.

“And I went out to look for cat food. We ran out. I couldn’t find the, uh, brand Ferris likes, though. Sorry.”

“Wow,” you give him a hint of a smirk. The cat in question jumps onto your shoulder as you bend down to get a pot from one of the lower cupboards. “You hear that, Ferris? Seems like Petey cares if you live or die.”

You coo at the small tabby, who meows in response. Peter rolls his eyes, feigning annoyance.

“And you still haven’t figured out how to use the front door. Do you need a live tutorial from me or what?” 

Peter bites the inside of his cheek as he sits down at the island, watching as you pour crushed tomatoes into the pot. The sight makes him awfully nostalgic. You’re the first person who’s cooked for him in years. 

“Let me be,” he huffs, the hint of a chuckle in his voice. “And you’re gonna get cat hair in the pasta sauce.”

“No. Ferris is so well-groomed.”

“Not when he sheds all over my clothes.”

“You should be thankful he likes to roll around in your dirty laundry pile. That means he likes you, you know.”

Silence stews in the room, save for the sounds of boiling water. Peter takes the liberty to unlock your phone and put one of your playlists on the speaker. 

He clears his throat. “You need any help?”

“Nah, it’s just pasta,” you shrug. “It’s the last we have, though. Wanna go on a grocery run tomorrow?”

“Of course. The fridge is pitiful.”

“I don’t need your attitude when I feed you every day, Parker.”

You smile in jest at him and of course, he avoids eye contact like he usually does. Over the weeks, you’ve been accustomed to him acting like another stray kitten, but sometimes, you wonder if there’s something about your presence or personality that makes him keep you at arm’s length. Not that you should care what a stray thinks about you.

Peter wishes he could act normal around you instead of constantly being on edge. Again, it’s not your fault. If there was a way he could make it up to you, to let you know how much he’s grateful for you, he would. Every time he thinks about it, his body takes over and shame is all that’s left. 

The bowl of pasta you put in front of him smells heavenly and looks like a page in the cooking section of the New York Times. 

“Help yourself to seconds, big boy.”

His eyes flash to your face, but you’re busying yourself with putting wet cat food onto a small plate for Ferris. 

You both end up eating on the island together. You don’t take a seat next to him, choosing to stand up across from him. Instead of conversing, the music continues to play quietly from the speaker, and you scroll mindlessly through the emails on your phone.

“I can feel you staring at me, you know.”

“I wasn’t,” Peter replies, defensive.

“You were,” you snort. “Which is funny because usually you refuse to make eye contact with me.”

“That’s not true.” (He’s lying through his teeth.)

“It’s okay. I’m not offended.” (Okay, maybe now you’re the one lying through your teeth.)

Peter scoffs, looking away, of course. 

“Thanks for dinner,” he mumbles.

He looks down, collecting his bowl and utensils. He decides to busy himself with the dishes, taking yours wordlessly without looking at your face. 

“You don’t have to do that,” you say softly. He shrugs. 

When you say his name, you’re right next to him and he feels like he might choke on nothing. Sure, he senses your presence in proximity to his own, but there’s nothing to stop you from getting close to him. 

“You’re always on edge around me.”

He doesn’t reply, even though he knows the sound of running water from the kitchen sink isn’t enough to drown out the tension between you two.

“Peter,” you try. Ugh, now you feel whiny.

“Hm?” He feigns ignorance as he glances at you, turning off the faucet.

“I– I just want you to be comfortable around me.”

“I am,” he lies. 

You don’t know what to say to break through the invisible wall he’s put between you two. He doesn’t know how to tell you that the distance is to keep you safe.

Your shoulders sag in defeat as you turn away from him and it conjures a new ache in his chest. Peter is often too caught up in his agony to notice how it might affect you. He can notice the frustration that radiates off of you – he’s not stupid. But the clear disappointment in your body language is so much more apparent than it ever was before.

“I think I might go to bed early,” you tell him, your voice just above a whisper. “Thanks for cleaning up.”

“Of course.” 

The door to your bedroom shuts quietly. 

Despite his constant uneasiness around you, Peter feels petulant now that you’ve left his side. Especially with the guilt of making you feel alienated in your own home. The trouble of explaining any of this to you feels like a burden more than anything, and you were already dealing with the burden of him staying in your apartment like he was haunting the place. 

Ferris slinks between Peter’s legs, purring. He climbs up his legs the same way he does to you and Peter welcomes him into his arms.

“You shouldn’t be nice to me, either,” Peter whispers, stroking the cat’s fur slowly. 

After Peter finishes cleaning up the kitchen, he settles on the couch for mindless television while Ferris settles on his lap. It doesn’t take him long to feel his eyes heavy-lidded, and although it should be easy to fall asleep on the couch, his body itches for your touch. Trying to sleep on your couch makes his limbs feel like they need to stretch every other second. So he surrenders and falls into your bed like he usually does. Like how you expect him to.

__

He dreams of you. He often does. 

Usually, he never remembers once he wakes up, which is probably the safest option. At the moment, the dreams are too visceral to be considered dreams to his subconscious. 

At the moment, he thinks the silkiness of your skin has to be real under his fingertips. It has to be. It would only make sense because your scent is so fucking strong, so alluring. It permeates the entire room, along with the subtle smell of sex and desperation.

Peter can see your pink mouth parting. The way your back arches. The way his name sounds when it comes from your throat, babbling its way out of your mouth, so sweetly. So fucking innocently.

It’s all rudely interrupted by the darkness that he’s attempted to keep away for so long. A black cloud that envelops the both of you, until the cloud is tangible, until it feels like a substance that could drown you. 

Where his senses only uttered your name and acknowledged your sweetness is now replaced by an insatiable hunger. One that is partially his, partially from an entity that could break you in half without a second thought. 

Now, the entity clouds him. Consumes his entire body until he’s nothing but a vast monster with sharp teeth with you underneath him. 

The look on your face is full of horror. Your naked body shudders. Peter wants nothing more than to comfort you, but he knows he can’t, not when something black and viscous has obscured his entire body. 

He is not in his body when his teeth graze the skin of your shoulder, biting hard enough for blood to trickle out of your skin. Your scream is the only thing that he can hear, maybe other than his own, once he sees your mouth spit out blood.

And then, darkness.

___

“No, nonononono, no, fuck, please–”

It all happens so fast. He doesn’t know what he does to you that makes you drop dead so quickly, and for fuck’s sake, his arms are still not his arms. 

“Peter!”

A shake in his universe breaks him apart. When he opens his eyes, he sees yours, wide and shocked and bright despite the darkness of the night.

You’re in your bed and so is he. And you’re holding him, unscathed. There is no black gore adorning his arms. 

“Peter, it’s okay,” you shush him softly. 

One hand strokes his hair while the other is splayed with fingers stretched across his warm cheek. You’re more than concerned by how shaken he looks. Like he’s in shock. You’ve never seen him like this.

“You’re okay,” he says. It’s a whisper. It sounds like a prayer.

“I am,” you nod. “I’m fine. I want to make sure that you’re fine, too, okay?”

His lashes flutter when you stroke his cheek. His breathing is heavy like a newly discovered beast, but you know that you don’t have to tame him from the way he keens to your touch. 

“I–I thought–”

“Shh, you don’t have to talk about it. It wasn’t real, okay? You just had a nightmare,” you coo. 

You can feel the way he swallows sharply and the way he struggles to breathe through his nose. He winces when he realizes that you’re wiping away a tear from his cheek.

“I was– I was terrible–” he stammers, gasping for breath. “And you–”

“Peter, it’s okay. It was just a dream. It’s okay.”

“You aren’t safe with me.”

His eyes are wild. He’s so earnest when he speaks that maybe, just maybe he could be telling the truth. 

You ignore it even though the way he says it breaks your heart.

“I am safe with you. And you’re safe with me, right here,” you try. The sound of his voice has tears brimming the corners of your eyes, too, but you don’t notice. You just want to get through to him. You swallow your anxiety. “We’re safe together, I promise. I would never let anything bad happen to you.”

He scans your face frantically until his eyes zero in on your lips. His senses are flooded with you, like he’s an animal ready to pounce on his prey, but he tries to hold back. His breathing turns shallow and he can’t help but stare at your bottom lip quivering, feeling the warmth of your palms against his cheeks. 

TAKE HER. TAKE HER. TAKE HER.

He’s not sure what the motive is for him pressing his lips to yours, whether it’s the demon inside him or the desire festering in his body. Peter knows that they’re one and the same. 

To his surprise, you surrender your mouth to him immediately. His tongue slots into between your lips without effort as his hands clasp your body with his innate strength, ranging from your hips to the undersides of your breasts.

You didn’t expect him to kiss you, but now that he has, you don’t think that you want him to ever stop.

Your hands graduate from his cheeks to the back of his head, pulling at his brown tresses as his hands roam your body with more fervor than anyone else has given you. 

You’ve been intimate with other people before, but they were always so careful, so timid with you. Maybe sometimes they were rough, but your mind was too checked out to notice. But now, the mere touch of someone else’s fingertips on your hard nipples has you squirming in your bed, making your breath hitch. Already, you feel the warmth in your core.

Peter discards your shirt (nearly rips it off) with ease as you whimper, enabling him, neither of you saying a word at all. You grab at Peter’s shirt to tug off, which he does, but when you pull at the waistband of his sweatpants, he takes your hand and slams it above your head with fingers interlocked.

Look how fun this is, Peter. Don’t you want to ruin her? Fuck her pretty little face?

Peter groans at the thought of you gagged with his cum, but he can barely fathom even taking out his cock yet. Well, he can, and although he’s thought about you like that, he doesn’t want to move too quickly. In contrast, his body seems to be moving faster than his brain.

He never thought you would want it as much as he does.

You whine when you feel Peter’s fingers creep under the waistband of your shorts and underneath your panties, immediately feeling your wetness. It pools into the fabric as he rubs your slit incessantly, making you mewl eagerly as Peter’s teeth suck on the skin of your jaw.

“F-fuck–,” you whimper, limp in his arms, preening to the feeling of his tongue on your clavicle. 

You’re so fucking wet, he could devour you in one bite if he wanted to. He could make it painless for you, but that wouldn’t be fair, would it? You wouldn’t feel any of it, none of the agonizing pleasure that should build up between your thighs from his touch alone, and he wants to see it all over your face so fucking badly. 

Do not tease us. We have an appetite to fulfill, don’t we?

I’m fucking getting there, hold on.

Sure, the monster in him wants to devour you, kill you, swallow you whole in a snap. But Peter wants to enjoy it. Wants to enjoy you. So he attempts to quiet the deep voice inside of him.

He still has your wrists bound in one large hand while his other grips your thighs hard, discarding your bottoms in the process. When he opens his eyes, he sees you splayed naked for him with a wanton expression on your face, nearly drooling. 

He also sees that somehow, he’d taken off his sweatpants and boxers, hard cock swelled up and aching as it grazes your folds slowly. 

Peter thinks he’d like to finger you, go down on you, and see how his touch makes electricity spark within your abdomen while your face contorts. He wants to see all your features twist into a sweet expression of pure pleasure, but he’s too fucking impatient. Maybe that’s the thing inside him speaking, so hungry and urgent that he can’t tell if he’s suppressing a being or his desires at this point.

He doesn’t know what currently guides his instincts. They’re all blinded, flooded by thoughts of you. As if there’s nothing else on Earth he could want, ever. 

That could be true. It probably is. But that’s something he can unpack later.

For now, he can only be influenced by the sound of your voice begging his name. He swallows down the sound of it with his tongue in your mouth, drinking in your whimpers as he bites on your bottom lip.

“Please,” you beg, lifting your hips to meet his length desperately as you squirm underneath him. “Need it— need—”

“Need me, huh?” Peter rasps. He touches his forehead to yours, hands still clutching at your wrists above your head.

“Yes.”

“So fucking clingy,” he mumbles against your mouth. You arch your back at the mere feeling of his cock prodding against your wet folds and it drives him fucking insane.

For once, the voice inside his head is only yours. He feels grateful for it.

“Were you planning this the whole time, huh? Wanted me in your bed from the beginning, didn’t you? Admit it.” He’s all teeth when he taunts you. He wonders if you’d let him spit in your mouth if you weren’t so busy pouting.

“Y-yes.”

“So fucking cute,” he sneers. “Pathetic, too.”

You don’t recognize the wrath in his voice — it’s unlike him. Even when he’s been pissed off with you. But you don’t have it in you to question it, because the darkness in it sounds like silk and crushed velvet, and the feeling of his hot breath against your neck makes you want him even more.

In the darkness, Peter’s eyes look otherworldly. Dark and bottomless, the devil incarnate.

You moan his name once more and whiplash meets the senses.

With a shaking exhale, you take the stretch of him, all of him, wincing the slightest bit as he bottoms out. It stings until he slides out just to thrust himself back in again, the resolve blatant on your face as your mouth falls in surrender.

Usually, you’d be embarrassed. It takes a bit for you to let someone in like this so intimately, and even when you’ve done it with other men, you were at least a little intoxicated.

Right now, you’re merely blissed from drowsiness, borderline euphoric from Peter’s proximity. You wouldn’t be able to admit it out loud — you knew the sweet sounds falling from your mouth were enough. Even when Peter had first settled into your bed tonight while you were asleep, you subconsciously curled into him like a moth to a flame.

Peter cups your breast in his hand harshly to latch his mouth onto your nipple, sucking and biting just to hear you whine. He’s rougher than any lover you’ve had before, so you aren’t exactly sure if he’s being sadistic with the amount of teeth he’s using. The feeling of his canines against your flesh is like nothing you’ve felt before. You’d never thought it would be a feeling you would get so fucking addicted to.

He fucks into you harder now, pulling up your legs so that his large, calloused palms are bruising the skin of your thighs. One leg ends up hitched over his shoulder so that he can thrust into you from a deeper angle, one that makes your eyes roll back into your head.

“So fucking good for me– so fucking good–”

Your hips shake when Peter inevitably reaches your sweet spot while his hand that isn’t propping you up is focused on stimulating your clit. You’re fucking brainless, listening to his filthy praises.

“Peter! Aah– oh my god–”

He’s obsessed with the way you’re rendered speechless, how you’re lifting your hips just to meet his, how you’re so obedient when you whimper his name. He’s obsessed with you. He thinks this might be another dream.

Sloppily, he nibbles at your earlobe and laves his tongue from your jaw down to your throat as he fucks into you with ease. His pleasure is a rubber band about to fucking snap. Your hushed breaths and whines nearly tip him over the edge, especially when he can feel you sucking in him so tightly.

“Cum for me, fucking cum for me,” Peter growls. “I know you can do it, baby. Can feel you’re close.”

He’s more intense with his thrusts now that he’s trying to coax your release, and truthfully, he can feel himself following you right after. 

“I’m– I’m gonna–” 

Your voice falls into a staccato of moans that dissipate into Peter’s wet mouth. Your nails dig into his back as he nearly melts into your body. 

His frantic thrusts begin to slow, his hips sloppy against yours as he groans against your neck. His mind is in such a frenzy that he thinks he might just devour you. It starts with his fingers wrapped around your throat. He revels in the sound of your voice choking on your moans.

Peter nearly smothers you with his hand over your mouth, while he bites incessantly at your neck and shoulder. The sweetness of your voice, desperate and wanton for him, is quickly replaced by something darker in his mind. A voice dormant inside him that awakens with the threat of contamination. He’s in his nightmare again, but with the aid of your body to remind him of bliss. Of power.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, fuckfuckfuck–” 

His body is so fucking heavy on top of yours, suffocating you with his desire. His teeth bite down hard enough on the juncture of your neck to draw blood, and he ignores your cry. The frenzy of war and lust and intoxication in his head is too fucking much. It’s his own personal eclipse.

His warmth spills into you. He feels his cum in between your bodies, overflowing out of your soaked cunt and onto the bedsheets. 

It takes a moment for Peter to notice that you’re crying. He knows it should hurt him. He knows he can’t stand the sight of tears flowing down your delicate cheeks because of him. But he doesn’t feel anything at all. 

In a way, both of you are changed. 

You had leaped off of a precipice the moment you let him into your bed.

Peter furrows his brows at your tear-streaked face, body stilling with shallow breaths. He cups your face in his warm hands and kisses you sweetly like a lover would and not a monster.