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I finished knitting a sweater and immediately wove in all the ends and blocked it. Are you proud of me?

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The haunting ancient Celtic carnyx being played for an audience. This is the sound Roman soldiers would have heard their Celtic enemies make.

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Skittles-Flavored Fear

AKA "The Batfam rescue several Gotham-U students from Scarecrow's latest hostage situation. However, Dr. Jonathan Crane becomes obsessed when one student has a strange reaction to the Fear Toxin - extreme exhilaration and giddiness." Based on this prompt!!

Danny knows Ghosts feed on intense emotion to survive; he's never had to, never wanted to because it feels... parasitic. He never thought he'd be drugged with it. Sitting among his fellow students, tied up as the Straw Man or whatever monologues about his evil plans, Danny thought the worst thing that could happen would be hallucinating a dissection table. Maybe the GIW or his parents with gleaming googles and scalpels at the ready.

He doesn't even realize they're already being gassed until Danny takes a breath and tastes... skittles? Like, taffy, frosted cream, and melty-sweet syrup. The more he breathes it in, the more he feels strangely floaty. His head feels both heavy and light, stuffed with cotton, and he can barely even hear. (If he could hear, he'd probably would be horrified by his classmates screaming, writhing in terror all around him like a swarm of buzzing locusts.)

And then somebody - The Straw Man - is looming in front of him, grabbing Danny by the face, and curiously tilting his head. After a moment of contemplation, Straw Man rummages around in his satchel before Danny gets freaking hosed in the face with a concentrated dose of Fear Toxin. And then everything gets better worse. Danny feels euphoric. He's giggling, smiling, head so clouded from the high that he doesn't even notice even Dr. Crane drags him through the crowded lecture hall. Doesn't notice when two goons grab him by the arms and start to haul him toward the exit.

What he does notice is the Straw Man's body slamming into the wall. Several figures blur in shades of black, blue, green, and red as Danny squints to try and focus on at least one of them. Then, somebody - blue and black - is at his side. Danny kind of... slides down the hero's side, legs too wobbly to hold himself up, until the hero has to prop Danny into a half-laying-half-sitting position. Danny's still giggling, slurring something and his hand somehow finds the hero's face, patting it in thanks for the rescue.

It's only when the Big Bat comes over, fits an odd-shaped mask over Danny's face, that he stops smelling candy. Instead, he smells something putrid, almost like formaldehyde, sweat, and... unmentionable body fluids. Danny's head is throbbing like brain freeze and a pressure headache, nausea so intense he can taste it in the back of his throat and cramps in his stomach. One moment he's mumbling 'm gon' throw up and the next he's ripping the mask off his face. Turns to the side and... barfs on Batman. (If he were more coherent, he'd probably be mortified. Maybe even die again of embarrassment. Worse when Nightwing cackles uncontrollably from beside him. Ancients, he'd petted Nightwing!! On the freakin' face!!)

That's the last thing that Danny remembers. He wakes up in the hospital several hours later, several texts from Jazz, Sam, and Tucker saying they're taking the next flight to Gotham. Danny flops back into the hospital bed and groans. Groans louder when he remembers what happened in the lecture hall. At least there's probably a very small amount of people who can say they barfed on the Dark Knight of Gotham and got away with it, right?

(Cue Scarecrow constantly trying to kidnap Danny and the Batfam being put on Danny-watch to make sure he's safe. Maybe also trying to figure out why Danny reacts differently to Fear Toxin, but assume he's an undocumented meta with a unique biology. Danny absolutely thinks he's being stalked by Batman as revenge.)

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DP X Marvel #8

By day, Danny Fenton was Midtown High’s hottest disaster. He was the Stark STEM Scholar—one of only three in the country—famously discovered after winning some obscure international quantum physics competition at age sixteen and allegedly giving a presentation that made Tony Stark laugh, cry, and threaten to adopt him in the same breath.

The problem was that Danny had no clue he was hot.

Like, he genuinely didn’t know. He thought people stared at him because of his weird vibe or maybe because he once muttered “parallel dimension colonoscopy” during a psych quiz and the rumor never died. He figured the occasional lingering looks were because people thought he was gonna go feral and try to bite someone (which was fair). He wore hoodies three sizes too big, drank energy drinks like water, mumbled through conversations, and ducked away from people like a scared little gremlin.

Meanwhile, the rest of Midtown was losing its mind over him.

In particular Peter Parker was losing his goddamn mind over him.

It started innocent enough. Peter had just been minding his business, doing his whole friendly-neighborhood-academically-overachieving schtick, when in walked him—Danny Fenton, with a bag slung over his shoulder, silver earrings glinting in the light like a warning sign (courtesy of Sam, who declared, “If you’re gonna be mysterious and broody, at least be aesthetically consistent.”) His hoodie looked like it had a body count. His cheekbones could slice vibranium. His eyes were dead, like truly void-of-soul dead, and Peter’s first thought wasn’t even “oh, new kid.” It was “I want him to step on me.”

Peter, poor, unsuspecting Peter, had his first-ever sexual panic as Danny plopped down in the seat next to Peter and promptly fell asleep face-first on the desk with a muttered, “If I die during lecture, bury me in a black hole.”

He was in real time was realizing he was a bisexual disaster. Danny didn’t notice. Because of course he didn’t. He just blinked at Peter like he couldn’t tell if he was real, offered a crooked half-smile, and then walked away like he hadn’t just lit Peter’s soul on fire and then pissed on the ashes.

Every day since had been a goddamn trial.

Peter had spent the first week internally screaming.

The second week, he started writing hate poetry. By the third, he was doodling “P. Parker-Fenton” in the corners of his calculus notes like a 12-year-old girl.

“Dude,” Ned had said, catching him mid-sketch. “You’re literally Spider-Man. Act like it.”

Peter flipped him off with the enthusiasm of someone spiraling.

See, Danny was not just hot. He was dangerously hot. Apocalyptically hot. End-of-days, angels-weeping-in-the-streets hot. But it was more than that—Danny had this vibe, like he could kill you or cry on you or accidentally invent interdimensional travel with a paperclip and a Diet Coke. He muttered equations under his breath, got into passive-aggressive debates with teachers, and once fixed the lab’s particle accelerator by kicking it.

And Peter couldn’t look away. Not that he was the only one.

The kicker, the absolute cherry on top of the chaos sundae? Everyone thought Danny and Black Cat had dated. The way Danny would scowl, rant, and complain like he was personally offended by Black Cat’s existence? Peak scorned lover energy.

“He thinks he’s slick, but he’s just a glorified stripper with daddy issues and too many backflips,” Danny once said in class and the teacher had to excuse herself.

“I swear I’m gonna develop a neurotoxin specifically to neutralize dumbass vigilantes with cat kinks,”

Everyone assumed Black Cat dumped him.

Peter, in his infinite genius, thought: oh my god, Danny’s still not over him.

Peter had almost passed out. Because here was the thing: he was Spider-Man. And Black Cat was his worst problem since midterms. He had arrived like a menace out of hell and a bisexual’s fever dream: black skintight tech suit (developed by who-the-fuck-knows), long white hair, with a domino mask and toxic green eyes, and with an ass so perfect Peter couldn’t even swing straight half the time.

Seriously. There’d be villains throwing grenades, and Peter would be getting motorboated by thighs. There was groping. There was flirting. There was one time Black Cat bit his ear and whispered, “Miss me, pretty boy?” and Peter crashed into a billboard.

He’d tried everything. He webbed Black Cat’s legs. Black Cat purred and called him “kinky.” He yelled. Black Cat called it “foreplay.” He threatened to arrest him. Black Cat licked his cheek and said, “Book me, officer.”

Peter had screamed into his pillow for three hours.

It wasn’t even just the flirting. Black Cat had the most obscene agility Peter had ever seen. He moved like he was born in zero gravity. Feline, fluid, and just a little too dramatic, like he knew exactly how good he looked vaulting off rooftops with his ass perfectly lit by the moonlight.

Peter hated him.

He also maybe wanted to kiss him until his lungs gave out.

Worse yet? Peter was starting to like the bastard. His timing was always perfect. His gadgets were weirdly high-tech. He had a talent for saving people and then disappearing with a little salute and a wink that made Peter’s skin itch.

And then there was that kiss.

One week ago. Midtown Bank. Hostage situation. They cleared the building together, Peter bleeding, dazed, and vibrating with adrenaline.

Black Cat had grabbed his face—grabbed his face—and said, “You’re my favorite arachnid, you know that?” and kissed him full on the mouth, through the mask.

Peter hadn’t spoken a full sentence since.

Meanwhile, Danny was in class the next day, legs crossed, sipping a disgusting Monster-Latte hybrid, and saying, “What kind of vigilante triple flips over a fire hydrant for no reason? Just run, you overdramatic bastard.”

Peter, in a cold sweat, nodded and said “yeah totally” in the voice of someone whose soul had left his body.

And Danny. Danny had no idea.

Because Danny was the goddamn Black Cat.

He hadn’t meant to become a vigilante again. The plan had been normalcy. New town, new school, no more ghost crap. He was gonna do his best, keep his grades up, pretend he was just some regular nerd with caffeine addiction and unresolved trauma.

Then a ghost tried to possess the mayor.

So. Yeah.

Ghosts were still following him. And New York didn’t have a Phantom. It had Spider-Man, sure, but Spider-Man didn’t fight intangible poltergeists or ancient Babylonian curses riding the 6 train.

Danny had no choice.

He did not name himself. He wanted to be called Specter. Or Eclipse. Something cool and ominous.

But no. Someone caught a blurry photo of his suit and labeled it Black Cat, and the media ran with it. Because of course they did.

“What part of me says feline?!” Danny groaned, head in his hands.

“You land on your feet,” Jazz offered.

“You hissed at a reporter once,” Sam added.

“Your thighs jiggle like a cat when you run,” Tucker said while texting.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, peeling into his skin-tight tech suit. “Let’s lean into the bit.”

He redesigned his suit. Added some claws. Built in some stealth mods. Accidentally made it a little too form-fitting. Like. A lot. And took notes from DC comics’ Selina Kyle’s Catwoman.

Jazz called it pornographic. Sam said it was camp. Tucker just sent a picture of the suit’s ass shot and wrote “God is testing me.”

But it worked. People were scared of him. Or thirsty. Usually both. And if Spider-Man wanted to play, then Danny was gonna play.

He didn’t expect Spider-Man to be this hot, though.

Danny had zero intentions of flirting with him at first. But then Spider-Man showed up with that stupid voice, that stupid righteous attitude, that stupid perfect thighs, and Danny’s brain short-circuited. The sarcasm kicked in. The smirks. The shameless groping.

And then he kissed him. Because why not? No one would know.

Except now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Spider-Man’s breath had hitched. His hands had clutched Danny’s suit like he didn’t want to let go. His knees almost gave out. Danny had felt it.

And now he was spiraling.

Because, uh. He was also kind of in love with Peter Parker. Like. A lot. The boy was brilliant, funny, painfully kind, and so pretty it gave Danny a stomach ache. But Danny couldn’t flirt with Peter because he was Black Cat, and he couldn’t flirt with Spider-Man because he was Danny.

His life was a joke.

Because Danny had no clue. About anything.

He didn’t know Peter was Spider-Man. He didn’t know Peter was spiraling into an identity meltdown because the boy he lowkey flirted with in calc was also the boy he highkey flirted with on rooftops. He didn’t know Peter was fantasizing about both of him like some bisexual train wreck with a death wish.

While for Peter? He didn’t know what he wanted more—Danny, or Black Cat.

The nerd with the hoodie and the caffeine addiction, who muttered to himself in code and looked at equations like they personally offended him? Or the cocky, sleek, thigh-baring menace who called him “pretty boy” and kissed him mid-battle just to watch him panic?

Peter was going insane.

Every time Black Cat landed in front of him, Peter had to actively fight the urge to sniff him like a lunatic. Every time Danny leaned over his desk to scribble notes, Peter’s soul left his body.

There was no winning.

“Someday,” Danny said one night, sitting on a rooftop as Black Cat and watching the skyline, “You are gonna figure it out.”

“Figure what out?” Peter as Spider-Man said, trying not to look directly at him.

“That I’m everything you want,” Danny purred, leaning into his space. “Hot, flexible, an emotional disaster.”

“You’re—! You’re insufferable.”

“I’m irresistible.”

Peter didn’t reply. He just screamed into the void later that night, face-planted into his pillow, and prayed for mercy.

The universe, as always, ignored him.

It all started at the Stark Foundation Fall Gala. A black-tie, red-carpet, industry-defining, media-covered event hosted in the glass spire that was Stark Tower, attended by the world’s smartest people and most insufferable billionaires—and two absolute disasters masquerading as teenage geniuses.

Danny Fenton, Stark STEM Scholar and walking espresso machine, was there because Tony Stark had personally invited him (“You’re legally required to be my prodigy now, kid, don’t argue, you signed the scholarship, it’s in the fine print”), and Peter Parker was there because he was Tony’s favorite intern, which meant “emotional support goblin” and “get me coffee, Peter” in the same breath.

Danny walked in like he’d been dragged from his apartment ten minutes before the event by the ghost of Coco Chanel—because he had. Sam had done his hair, shoved him into a black velvet suit that hugged his ass and thighs a little too perfectly, slapped silver rings on all his fingers, smokey eyeliner, and threatened him with a haunted curling iron if he so much as slouched.

Peter, meanwhile, had been hyperventilating in the bathroom for fifteen minutes.

He was wearing Armani. He had been forcibly styled by Pepper Potts herself, who had told him, “If you’re going to be Tony’s emotional support intern, you need to at least look like you’re not feral.” Peter had not emotionally recovered from being spritzed with Tom Ford cologne and told he looked “delicious.”

They spotted each other across the room like the first five minutes of a YA adaptation, except one was drinking something radioactive-green from a champagne flute and the other was clutching a tray of hors d’oeuvres like a weapon.

Danny blinked. Peter blinked.

Then they both looked away so fast they might’ve given themselves whiplash.

Which would’ve been fine if that was the end of it.

But no. God had other plans.

Specifically: Tony Stark’s plans.

“Come here,” Tony hissed, grabbing both of them by the shoulders. “You two teenage disasters are going to schmooze.”

“Tony I can’t schmooze,” Danny said, panicking. “I don’t even know what schmooze means, I thought that was a cheese—”

“And I have shrimp hands!” Peter added wildly, holding up his fingers still greasy from crab rangoons. “I can’t touch people like this! I’ll be arrested!”

Tony shoved them both forward like a mother bird kicking her children out of the nest and said, “Go. Talk. Mingle. Be charming. Or I’ll adopt you both and make you brothers and then who’s crushing on who, huh?”

“WHAT—” both of them said at once, violently red in the face.

“Bye!” Tony sang, disappearing into the crowd like a chaos goblin.

Peter and Danny stood in mortified silence for a full ten seconds.

Then:

“So,” Peter said. “Uh. You look… good.”

“Thanks,” Danny muttered, tugging at his collar. “I feel like a sexy baked potato.”

“You—what.”

“Just… overheated and wrapped in velvet.”

Peter wheezed.

They started talking. Somehow it spiraled into quantum entropy, the ethics of ghost containment, and whether Tony Stark was legally allowed to name a drone “Bitch Lasagna 3.0.”

Peter was sweating. Danny was internally combusting. They were both about five seconds from proposing marriage and didn’t know it yet.

Then came the moment.

A scream. A crash.

Glass shattered. Lights flickered.

“Fucking hell,” Danny muttered, already pulling off his jacket. “Can’t have ONE normal night.”

Peter, across from him, had already vanished.

Two minutes later, Spider-Man somersaulted through the crowd and launched himself at the glowing, oozing, screaming ghost that had torn through the ceiling.

Black Cat flipped down from the opposite direction, landing like a goddamn supermodel in latex.

The crowd screamed.

Peter screamed internally.

Black Cat smirked. “Miss me, pretty boy?”

“I don’t—this is a GALA, can we not?” Spider-Man groaned, dodging ectoplasmic debris.

Black Cat laughed, cartwheeled up a wall, and started firing anti-ghost rounds from his wrist mods. The ghost shrieked. Spider-Man nearly got crushed. Black Cat saved him by grabbing his waist and yeeting them both through a portal that landed them right in—

—the rooftop garden.

Panting. Sweaty. Disheveled.

“What the FUCK was that?!” Spider-Man gasped lifting up his mask slightly from the bottom to breath.

“I didn’t summon it!” Black Cat snapped, wiping green sludge off his face. “Ghosts have no concept of social etiquette!”

Danny after wiping his face realized his domino mask fell off but it was too late to cover up again.

Peter stared at Danny’s very familiar stupidly hot face.

Danny stared at Peter’s very familiar stupidly kissable mouth.

Peter said, in a high-pitched, cracked whisper, “You’re Black Cat?!”

Danny shrieked, “YOU’RE SPIDER-MAN?!”

They both screamed at each other. Like. Loud. Very. Loudly.

Birds flew off the rooftop.

Somewhere inside the gala, a waiter dropped an entire tray of champagne flutes from sheer sympathetic psychic resonance.

“YOU—YOU’VE BEEN FLIRTING WITH ME AS A VILLAIN!” Peter yelled.

“YOU KISSED ME ON A ROOFTOP AND THEN IGNORED ME IN CALC!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE STRAIGHT!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE BLACK CAT’s EX!”

“I AM BLACK CAT!”

Peter made a noise like a microwave about to explode. “OH MY GOD. I’M IN LOVE WITH TWO PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTUALLY THE SAME PERSON.”

Danny staggered back. “I—I’m in love with YOU! But I couldn’t SAY ANYTHING because you were Spider-Man and I was Black Cat and we were ENEMIES WITH BENEFITS—”

“BENEFITS? I GOT TRAUMA.”

“I KISSED YOU! WITH TONGUE!”

“YEAH AND IT WAS AWESOME WHICH MAKES THIS WORSE!”

They both fell silent. Hyperventilating.

Danny doubled over and screamed into the floor.

Peter clutched a potted plant and whispered, “This is a hate crime.”

There was a pause.

“…You like me?” Danny asked.

“You like me?” Peter countered.

They stared.

Then they both shrieked again, because this was TOO MUCH and NEITHER of them was equipped emotionally to handle anything.

And across the rooftop, where no one had noticed, Tony Stark was standing behind a pillar, filming the whole thing.

He grinned.

“I’m gonna play this at your wedding,” he whispered to himself, tearfully, joyfully. “God, I love being me.”

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I know they're named after him but for reasons I can't fully articulate it's hilarious that the guy who invented zeppelins was named Ferdinand von Zeppelin

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Illustration by Sophie Lucido Johnson

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[The contrast between their relationship as superhero’s versus their relationship as high school students are so wildly juxtaposed I needed to write something for you. Please understand that I’m not up to date on which villains are active or not. I’m here for funsies.]

Next Monday the students of Midtown high realize something happened the second the two have the same class together. Parker had been in the same boat as every other heart eyed fan of the walking love letter to school crushes. Now it was DANNY who kept stealing glances at Peter. It was Danny who blushed when Parker slipped him a note so clumsily that it was a miracle the teacher didn’t notice. The real kicker was when multiple students saw at lunch.

“Do you want-? And it’s ok if you don’t! But my sister invited you- well asked me to invite you- dinner?” Danny seemed to sink further into his hoodie than seemed humanly possible.

Peter stammered so much over the next thirty seconds that bystanders weren’t sure if he remembered the English language. He eventually nodded enough for Danny to realize he was agreeing.

Danny has a little more dating experience but it hardly helps. This is still pretty new to them and they are constantly walking the line between ‘I really like him!’ and ‘why am I so cringe?’.

The gossip scene was exploding! Goody two shoes Peter Parker had bagged the hottest boy in school. And it wasn’t just a fling! They were actually holding-hands-in-study-hall-meeting-the-family level of dating! Ned is so proud of him. Peter flips him off when he makes kissy faces.

Jump cut to the end of the week when Doc Ock is stealing a highly valuable piece of technology that was being transported by truck through the city. He actually grabs it and gets pretty far away before Spider-Man rocks up.

“Could you not!? I was in the middle of something!”

Black Cat slammed Oct with a convenient piece of rebarb before the villain could say anything.

“He was in the middle of ME you jackass!”

This happened in broad daylight. Every civilian ducking for cover heard Black Cat. They also heard the unholy sounds of metal scraping and a middle age man screaming. When a few peeked their cameras around corners to look they spotted Black Cat looking absolutely feral as Spider-Man webbed up the rouge scientist. The second he was done he spun around and lifted Black Cat into a bridal carry and fled the scene.

The internet exploded.

DP X Marvel #8

By day, Danny Fenton was Midtown High’s hottest disaster. He was the Stark STEM Scholar—one of only three in the country—famously discovered after winning some obscure international quantum physics competition at age sixteen and allegedly giving a presentation that made Tony Stark laugh, cry, and threaten to adopt him in the same breath.

The problem was that Danny had no clue he was hot.

Like, he genuinely didn’t know. He thought people stared at him because of his weird vibe or maybe because he once muttered “parallel dimension colonoscopy” during a psych quiz and the rumor never died. He figured the occasional lingering looks were because people thought he was gonna go feral and try to bite someone (which was fair). He wore hoodies three sizes too big, drank energy drinks like water, mumbled through conversations, and ducked away from people like a scared little gremlin.

Meanwhile, the rest of Midtown was losing its mind over him.

In particular Peter Parker was losing his goddamn mind over him.

It started innocent enough. Peter had just been minding his business, doing his whole friendly-neighborhood-academically-overachieving schtick, when in walked him—Danny Fenton, with a bag slung over his shoulder, silver earrings glinting in the light like a warning sign (courtesy of Sam, who declared, “If you’re gonna be mysterious and broody, at least be aesthetically consistent.”) His hoodie looked like it had a body count. His cheekbones could slice vibranium. His eyes were dead, like truly void-of-soul dead, and Peter’s first thought wasn’t even “oh, new kid.” It was “I want him to step on me.”

Peter, poor, unsuspecting Peter, had his first-ever sexual panic as Danny plopped down in the seat next to Peter and promptly fell asleep face-first on the desk with a muttered, “If I die during lecture, bury me in a black hole.”

He was in real time was realizing he was a bisexual disaster. Danny didn’t notice. Because of course he didn’t. He just blinked at Peter like he couldn’t tell if he was real, offered a crooked half-smile, and then walked away like he hadn’t just lit Peter’s soul on fire and then pissed on the ashes.

Every day since had been a goddamn trial.

Peter had spent the first week internally screaming.

The second week, he started writing hate poetry. By the third, he was doodling “P. Parker-Fenton” in the corners of his calculus notes like a 12-year-old girl.

“Dude,” Ned had said, catching him mid-sketch. “You’re literally Spider-Man. Act like it.”

Peter flipped him off with the enthusiasm of someone spiraling.

See, Danny was not just hot. He was dangerously hot. Apocalyptically hot. End-of-days, angels-weeping-in-the-streets hot. But it was more than that—Danny had this vibe, like he could kill you or cry on you or accidentally invent interdimensional travel with a paperclip and a Diet Coke. He muttered equations under his breath, got into passive-aggressive debates with teachers, and once fixed the lab’s particle accelerator by kicking it.

And Peter couldn’t look away. Not that he was the only one.

The kicker, the absolute cherry on top of the chaos sundae? Everyone thought Danny and Black Cat had dated. The way Danny would scowl, rant, and complain like he was personally offended by Black Cat’s existence? Peak scorned lover energy.

“He thinks he’s slick, but he’s just a glorified stripper with daddy issues and too many backflips,” Danny once said in class and the teacher had to excuse herself.

“I swear I’m gonna develop a neurotoxin specifically to neutralize dumbass vigilantes with cat kinks,”

Everyone assumed Black Cat dumped him.

Peter, in his infinite genius, thought: oh my god, Danny’s still not over him.

Peter had almost passed out. Because here was the thing: he was Spider-Man. And Black Cat was his worst problem since midterms. He had arrived like a menace out of hell and a bisexual’s fever dream: black skintight tech suit (developed by who-the-fuck-knows), long white hair, with a domino mask and toxic green eyes, and with an ass so perfect Peter couldn’t even swing straight half the time.

Seriously. There’d be villains throwing grenades, and Peter would be getting motorboated by thighs. There was groping. There was flirting. There was one time Black Cat bit his ear and whispered, “Miss me, pretty boy?” and Peter crashed into a billboard.

He’d tried everything. He webbed Black Cat’s legs. Black Cat purred and called him “kinky.” He yelled. Black Cat called it “foreplay.” He threatened to arrest him. Black Cat licked his cheek and said, “Book me, officer.”

Peter had screamed into his pillow for three hours.

It wasn’t even just the flirting. Black Cat had the most obscene agility Peter had ever seen. He moved like he was born in zero gravity. Feline, fluid, and just a little too dramatic, like he knew exactly how good he looked vaulting off rooftops with his ass perfectly lit by the moonlight.

Peter hated him.

He also maybe wanted to kiss him until his lungs gave out.

Worse yet? Peter was starting to like the bastard. His timing was always perfect. His gadgets were weirdly high-tech. He had a talent for saving people and then disappearing with a little salute and a wink that made Peter’s skin itch.

And then there was that kiss.

One week ago. Midtown Bank. Hostage situation. They cleared the building together, Peter bleeding, dazed, and vibrating with adrenaline.

Black Cat had grabbed his face—grabbed his face—and said, “You’re my favorite arachnid, you know that?” and kissed him full on the mouth, through the mask.

Peter hadn’t spoken a full sentence since.

Meanwhile, Danny was in class the next day, legs crossed, sipping a disgusting Monster-Latte hybrid, and saying, “What kind of vigilante triple flips over a fire hydrant for no reason? Just run, you overdramatic bastard.”

Peter, in a cold sweat, nodded and said “yeah totally” in the voice of someone whose soul had left his body.

And Danny. Danny had no idea.

Because Danny was the goddamn Black Cat.

He hadn’t meant to become a vigilante again. The plan had been normalcy. New town, new school, no more ghost crap. He was gonna do his best, keep his grades up, pretend he was just some regular nerd with caffeine addiction and unresolved trauma.

Then a ghost tried to possess the mayor.

So. Yeah.

Ghosts were still following him. And New York didn’t have a Phantom. It had Spider-Man, sure, but Spider-Man didn’t fight intangible poltergeists or ancient Babylonian curses riding the 6 train.

Danny had no choice.

He did not name himself. He wanted to be called Specter. Or Eclipse. Something cool and ominous.

But no. Someone caught a blurry photo of his suit and labeled it Black Cat, and the media ran with it. Because of course they did.

“What part of me says feline?!” Danny groaned, head in his hands.

“You land on your feet,” Jazz offered.

“You hissed at a reporter once,” Sam added.

“Your thighs jiggle like a cat when you run,” Tucker said while texting.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, peeling into his skin-tight tech suit. “Let’s lean into the bit.”

He redesigned his suit. Added some claws. Built in some stealth mods. Accidentally made it a little too form-fitting. Like. A lot. And took notes from DC comics’ Selina Kyle’s Catwoman.

Jazz called it pornographic. Sam said it was camp. Tucker just sent a picture of the suit’s ass shot and wrote “God is testing me.”

But it worked. People were scared of him. Or thirsty. Usually both. And if Spider-Man wanted to play, then Danny was gonna play.

He didn’t expect Spider-Man to be this hot, though.

Danny had zero intentions of flirting with him at first. But then Spider-Man showed up with that stupid voice, that stupid righteous attitude, that stupid perfect thighs, and Danny’s brain short-circuited. The sarcasm kicked in. The smirks. The shameless groping.

And then he kissed him. Because why not? No one would know.

Except now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Spider-Man’s breath had hitched. His hands had clutched Danny’s suit like he didn’t want to let go. His knees almost gave out. Danny had felt it.

And now he was spiraling.

Because, uh. He was also kind of in love with Peter Parker. Like. A lot. The boy was brilliant, funny, painfully kind, and so pretty it gave Danny a stomach ache. But Danny couldn’t flirt with Peter because he was Black Cat, and he couldn’t flirt with Spider-Man because he was Danny.

His life was a joke.

Because Danny had no clue. About anything.

He didn’t know Peter was Spider-Man. He didn’t know Peter was spiraling into an identity meltdown because the boy he lowkey flirted with in calc was also the boy he highkey flirted with on rooftops. He didn’t know Peter was fantasizing about both of him like some bisexual train wreck with a death wish.

While for Peter? He didn’t know what he wanted more—Danny, or Black Cat.

The nerd with the hoodie and the caffeine addiction, who muttered to himself in code and looked at equations like they personally offended him? Or the cocky, sleek, thigh-baring menace who called him “pretty boy” and kissed him mid-battle just to watch him panic?

Peter was going insane.

Every time Black Cat landed in front of him, Peter had to actively fight the urge to sniff him like a lunatic. Every time Danny leaned over his desk to scribble notes, Peter’s soul left his body.

There was no winning.

“Someday,” Danny said one night, sitting on a rooftop as Black Cat and watching the skyline, “You are gonna figure it out.”

“Figure what out?” Peter as Spider-Man said, trying not to look directly at him.

“That I’m everything you want,” Danny purred, leaning into his space. “Hot, flexible, an emotional disaster.”

“You’re—! You’re insufferable.”

“I’m irresistible.”

Peter didn’t reply. He just screamed into the void later that night, face-planted into his pillow, and prayed for mercy.

The universe, as always, ignored him.

It all started at the Stark Foundation Fall Gala. A black-tie, red-carpet, industry-defining, media-covered event hosted in the glass spire that was Stark Tower, attended by the world’s smartest people and most insufferable billionaires—and two absolute disasters masquerading as teenage geniuses.

Danny Fenton, Stark STEM Scholar and walking espresso machine, was there because Tony Stark had personally invited him (“You’re legally required to be my prodigy now, kid, don’t argue, you signed the scholarship, it’s in the fine print”), and Peter Parker was there because he was Tony’s favorite intern, which meant “emotional support goblin” and “get me coffee, Peter” in the same breath.

Danny walked in like he’d been dragged from his apartment ten minutes before the event by the ghost of Coco Chanel—because he had. Sam had done his hair, shoved him into a black velvet suit that hugged his ass and thighs a little too perfectly, slapped silver rings on all his fingers, smokey eyeliner, and threatened him with a haunted curling iron if he so much as slouched.

Peter, meanwhile, had been hyperventilating in the bathroom for fifteen minutes.

He was wearing Armani. He had been forcibly styled by Pepper Potts herself, who had told him, “If you’re going to be Tony’s emotional support intern, you need to at least look like you’re not feral.” Peter had not emotionally recovered from being spritzed with Tom Ford cologne and told he looked “delicious.”

They spotted each other across the room like the first five minutes of a YA adaptation, except one was drinking something radioactive-green from a champagne flute and the other was clutching a tray of hors d’oeuvres like a weapon.

Danny blinked. Peter blinked.

Then they both looked away so fast they might’ve given themselves whiplash.

Which would’ve been fine if that was the end of it.

But no. God had other plans.

Specifically: Tony Stark’s plans.

“Come here,” Tony hissed, grabbing both of them by the shoulders. “You two teenage disasters are going to schmooze.”

“Tony I can’t schmooze,” Danny said, panicking. “I don’t even know what schmooze means, I thought that was a cheese—”

“And I have shrimp hands!” Peter added wildly, holding up his fingers still greasy from crab rangoons. “I can’t touch people like this! I’ll be arrested!”

Tony shoved them both forward like a mother bird kicking her children out of the nest and said, “Go. Talk. Mingle. Be charming. Or I’ll adopt you both and make you brothers and then who’s crushing on who, huh?”

“WHAT—” both of them said at once, violently red in the face.

“Bye!” Tony sang, disappearing into the crowd like a chaos goblin.

Peter and Danny stood in mortified silence for a full ten seconds.

Then:

“So,” Peter said. “Uh. You look… good.”

“Thanks,” Danny muttered, tugging at his collar. “I feel like a sexy baked potato.”

“You—what.”

“Just… overheated and wrapped in velvet.”

Peter wheezed.

They started talking. Somehow it spiraled into quantum entropy, the ethics of ghost containment, and whether Tony Stark was legally allowed to name a drone “Bitch Lasagna 3.0.”

Peter was sweating. Danny was internally combusting. They were both about five seconds from proposing marriage and didn’t know it yet.

Then came the moment.

A scream. A crash.

Glass shattered. Lights flickered.

“Fucking hell,” Danny muttered, already pulling off his jacket. “Can’t have ONE normal night.”

Peter, across from him, had already vanished.

Two minutes later, Spider-Man somersaulted through the crowd and launched himself at the glowing, oozing, screaming ghost that had torn through the ceiling.

Black Cat flipped down from the opposite direction, landing like a goddamn supermodel in latex.

The crowd screamed.

Peter screamed internally.

Black Cat smirked. “Miss me, pretty boy?”

“I don’t—this is a GALA, can we not?” Spider-Man groaned, dodging ectoplasmic debris.

Black Cat laughed, cartwheeled up a wall, and started firing anti-ghost rounds from his wrist mods. The ghost shrieked. Spider-Man nearly got crushed. Black Cat saved him by grabbing his waist and yeeting them both through a portal that landed them right in—

—the rooftop garden.

Panting. Sweaty. Disheveled.

“What the FUCK was that?!” Spider-Man gasped lifting up his mask slightly from the bottom to breath.

“I didn’t summon it!” Black Cat snapped, wiping green sludge off his face. “Ghosts have no concept of social etiquette!”

Danny after wiping his face realized his domino mask fell off but it was too late to cover up again.

Peter stared at Danny’s very familiar stupidly hot face.

Danny stared at Peter’s very familiar stupidly kissable mouth.

Peter said, in a high-pitched, cracked whisper, “You’re Black Cat?!”

Danny shrieked, “YOU’RE SPIDER-MAN?!”

They both screamed at each other. Like. Loud. Very. Loudly.

Birds flew off the rooftop.

Somewhere inside the gala, a waiter dropped an entire tray of champagne flutes from sheer sympathetic psychic resonance.

“YOU—YOU’VE BEEN FLIRTING WITH ME AS A VILLAIN!” Peter yelled.

“YOU KISSED ME ON A ROOFTOP AND THEN IGNORED ME IN CALC!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE STRAIGHT!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE BLACK CAT’s EX!”

“I AM BLACK CAT!”

Peter made a noise like a microwave about to explode. “OH MY GOD. I’M IN LOVE WITH TWO PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTUALLY THE SAME PERSON.”

Danny staggered back. “I—I’m in love with YOU! But I couldn’t SAY ANYTHING because you were Spider-Man and I was Black Cat and we were ENEMIES WITH BENEFITS—”

“BENEFITS? I GOT TRAUMA.”

“I KISSED YOU! WITH TONGUE!”

“YEAH AND IT WAS AWESOME WHICH MAKES THIS WORSE!”

They both fell silent. Hyperventilating.

Danny doubled over and screamed into the floor.

Peter clutched a potted plant and whispered, “This is a hate crime.”

There was a pause.

“…You like me?” Danny asked.

“You like me?” Peter countered.

They stared.

Then they both shrieked again, because this was TOO MUCH and NEITHER of them was equipped emotionally to handle anything.

And across the rooftop, where no one had noticed, Tony Stark was standing behind a pillar, filming the whole thing.

He grinned.

“I’m gonna play this at your wedding,” he whispered to himself, tearfully, joyfully. “God, I love being me.”

[animalluver8153]

hey gamers I’ve started watching star trek does anyone else see the romantic tension between captain kirk and mr. spock

[animalluver8153]

reverse gaslighting where i pretend to know exactly what you are talking about

[animalluver8153]

happy gay month cuz u know u gay and stuff /ref

here’s some old sticker designs I made back in 2024 for a pride event (they didn’t end up being made because of issues with the manufacturer ☹️)