cassiecasluciluce - Tumblr blog

cassiecasluciluce · 20 days ago

Text

Death Wish: Bi-Han x Reader

summary: You, a princess from a rival clan was harder to resist than Bi-Han could have anticipated. But what was even harder to predict was your willingness to strike a deal, which soon led to a night of passion in your bed, right where you wanted him to be. (ao3)

warnings: drinking, SLIGHT voyeurism + exhibitionism, smut, pnv, unprotected sex. The usual, the works, you know how it be. essentially smut with plot. i had to cut it off or i could've kept going;; to the 20 Bi-Han fans out there, i hope you enjoy!!

word count: 9.5k

∘∙∘☾𖤓∘∙∘

All it took was one glance at you to make his heart beat faster.

Across the lounge, you stepped inside alone. A smile appeared on your face as the staff warmly greeted you. There was a familiarity between you and them, and Bi-Han considered it respectful friendliness.

Yet he noticed how it disappeared once they were out of sight. And then it appeared again as you approached the bar, calculated and aware.

Aware of everyone and everything besides him. At least, that was what he assumed. But maybe just the sight of you scrambled his instincts.

The rumors of your beauty were proven true. The way your hair fell perfectly around your shoulders, the subtle tattoos that decorated your arms, and the elegance of your dress only furthered your mystifying nature.

As the head of the Lin Kuei clan, Bi-Han was raised to think that feelings were forbidden. Having a sudden interest in the princess of an enemy clan felt foreign and wrong—it was a death wish. But there was just something about you he couldn’t shake. It wasn’t just your beauty that intrigued him; it was how you held yourself, as if you knew how strong you were. A sign of an influential leader, what a princess should exude.

For the first time in many years of war, Bi-Han wanted to end the enmity to have the slightest chance of getting to know you.

A frown etched across his face as he watched you sit at the bar. It had only been a few months since you’d taken a position in your father’s clan, not only as a princess but as one of their best fighters, a woman blessed with terramancy.

And he couldn’t tear his gaze away from your body, unable to ignore how he could see the outlines of taut muscles through the fabric of your dress.

A shiver ran down his spine.

This high-end bar was on neutral grounds, providing the perfect place to mingle with friends and foes. Despite that, you had to be confident to come there alone and without your entourage.

Bi-Han nursed his drink, leaning back against the couch, content with watching you from afar. He knew he had to stay away from you, but with each passing moment, you were more challenging to resist. Every move you made entranced him, and the Grandmaster felt a sharper desire to cross the lounge and offer you company.

You were the most beautiful woman there. And others were taking notice. The lingering eyes of other men did not go unnoticed by Bi-Han. Those who knew your title were respectful, some politely nodding at you as they passed. But others, like the clearly inebriated man heading right toward you, wanted something more, something he could never be entitled to.

As the man attempted to grab your shoulder, one of your arms simultaneously shot out and pushed him back before his hand made contact.

Drunk, he stumbled backward and grumbled. “What the hell was that for?-”

“-I’m in no mood to get out of my chair,” you interrupted, not even glancing in his direction, continuing to watch the bartender make your drink, who seemed just as unconcerned as you, as if this was a regular occurrence.

The man took one unbalanced step closer.

“Touch me, and you die,” you warned, tone light with annoyance at the inconvenience. But still, your pretty lips softened the blow of your threat as a smirk graced your face. The female bartender rolled her eyes but chuckled knowingly.

You may have sounded sweet, but that only made it clear that your words weren’t empty. Of course, you didn’t look threatening tonight, but it would be foolish to assume you weren’t. If your beauty was deadly, surely other parts of you were, too.

You frustrated Bi-Han. But what frustrated him more was that he didn’t want to resist you like he knew he should. Seeing another man in your proximity alone threatened to boil his blood. And when the drunkard stumbled forward again, Bi-Han’s resolve vanished as he moved at lightning speed, closing the distance between him and the stranger within seconds.

It was too easy, and Bi-Han exhaled in annoyance. He squeezed the man’s wrist hard, refraining from using ice to burn against his skin. The Grandmaster wanted to snap his wrist clean off with a simple twist, but knew it was best not to. Incompetent, pathetic. This poor excuse of a man thought he could get away with this? Never.

“She said no,” Bi-Han sneered, shoving him backward so roughly that he slammed against the tile with a loud thud.

Immediately frightened by the sinister look in the Grandmaster's eyes, the drunkard desperately scrambled back when Bi-Han took another step forward.

“Leave.” Bi-Han's voice was rough and undoubtedly final. The man didn’t need to be told twice. He quickly rose to his feet and rushed for the exit.

Bi-Han exhaled deeply; part of him wanted more of a fight, but the other part was satisfied with how easily the situation was diffused. It was to protect you, after all.

Slowly, his gaze shifted back to you.

You raised your eyebrows when you realized who your protector was. The Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei? He was the last person you expected to be there, as his reputation was known to be cold, aggressive, and relentless. Your eyes drifted to where the creep had once lain splayed across the floor. The aggressive part definitely checked out.

“Thank you,” you said to cover up your surprise and hesitation, offering him a polite smile. “I didn’t want to get my hands dirty tonight.”

Bi-Han was immediately enraptured by your smile, accompanied by a voice so light that it was almost like a whisper. The sincerity of your words caressed him, causing a shiver to ripple down his spine. How was this possible? He’d never felt like this before… so weak and willing.

He cleared his throat, slightly embarrassed by his hesitation. “It was the right decision to interfere,” he replied, his voice deep and matter-of-fact. “I couldn’t allow him to touch you.”

When he said allow, it hinted that the Grandmaster did know who you were. And despite that, he still came to your rescue.

Your eyes trailed across his body, and you chewed on the inside of your cheek somewhat nervously as you realized how handsome he was. It was an instant attraction. Maybe it was confidence or your naivety, but your gut insisted he was feeling the same pull.

“Buy me a drink?” you asked. Though inviting, your tone left little room for him to refuse.

Bi-Han paused, surprised at your boldness but realizing how open the two of you were to the rest of the crowd. You weren’t just flirting with him; you were warning him.

More intrigued than before, his gaze momentarily lingered on you before answering. Up close, you looked even more ravishing, the dress fitting perfectly and accentuating your curves. A work of art, he presumed.

Forcing himself to look away, he met your eyes again. “Of course, Princess,” he said before gesturing to the bartender, who seemed to be knowingly smirking at the two of you. “Another of what she has at table 77.”

Smart. You thought. A genius tactic. What woman would want to say no to such respectful assertiveness?

Pleased, you rose from your seat as Bi-Han held out his arm for you. You took it, staring at him intensely, almost as if your eyes were dissecting him through your gaze alone, noting the curvature of his muscles before brushing your fingers against them.

He towered over your smaller frame, a man built for kombat, built for leadership and domination. But instead of fear, excitement was coursing through your veins. What you wanted was to dominate him. To have him underneath you. Lustful thoughts swirled in your mind. It was ridiculous and so unlike you. But it made you giddy.

Tonight wasn’t about making connections for your clan. Every once in a while, a princess could indulge… right?

So, you followed him into a more secluded part of the lounge, which was seemingly empty. The lights were dimmer, and the atmosphere was calmer and intimate.

“You came here alone?” you asked the Grandmaster, smoothing out the wrinkle in your dress before sitting across the table from him. As you crossed your legs, your heels brushed against his legs.

“Yes, I came alone.” Bi-Han exhaled deeply. “And you?”

“Against my father’s wishes,” you sighed, then chuckled as the bartender rounded the table and handed you a martini. Once she left, you leaned forward and inspected your drink, dipping your finger in the liquor and tasting it quickly for any hints of poison. “Don’t get me wrong,” you hummed, pausing to take an elongated sip. “I understand why, but I’m not a little girl anymore. If he wants me to lead in the future, he must let me make my own decisions.”

Bi-Han raised his drink to his lips, taking a few sips as he listened to you.

“He’s worried about you,” he replied calmly as his gaze returned to your figure. “That’s natural,” he said, seeming to get distracted before reeling himself back in. “But you strike me as the type of woman to challenge such wishes.”

Giggling into your glass, you playfully rolled your eyes. “I listen to my father plenty. He’s a wise man, but nobody can get everything right.”

You leaned back in your seat, gazing at the Grandmaster. “I think you, out of everyone, would know what that pressure feels like, no?”

A slight shadow fell over the Grandmaster’s face. “I know. I’ve carried the weight of this clan on my shoulders for many years, and it hasn’t been an easy path.”

Admittedly, Bi-Han hadn’t expected such wisdom and insight from you. Though you weren’t much younger, you were a new leader. Perhaps it was his own bias, but you far exceeded his expectations.

"Why?" He put the bottle aside and leaned forward. His gaze met yours. "What do you wish to know?"

"Anything you'd like to reveal…” You offered, tone suddenly sultry and inviting. To close some of the distance, you leaned over the table, your dress revealing more of your cleavage from the angle, right under his lingering gaze. And for a moment, he indulged greedily.

It was intentional, and he knew it. But you weren’t stopping him. What man wouldn’t want to enjoy such a pretty view?

“You’re smart,” he sighed. It was tempting, indeed. You were tempting, witty, and calculated. Most men wouldn’t even notice or care what you were trying to do, only that you were giving them attention.

“I appreciate the compliment,” you said quickly, knowing you’d been caught. “I’m glad you can enjoy something else about me besides my looks.”

His intense gaze refused to lose yours. “I prefer to know what type of woman the rivaling clan leader is,” he said, his response smoother than you anticipated. “The rumors of your beauty ring true… but your competence is still undetermined.”

You took another sip of your drink to suppress the smile that threatened to break your mask. Once you set it down, your finger slowly traced the edge. “I haven’t heard rumors about your appearance… But I happen to like what I see.”

When you finally met his gaze again, your eyes were darker than before, hungrier than he could anticipate.

“But I’ve heard how cruel and cutthroat you can be, with no hesitation to kill. You want more power, and you want to lead. Your abilities, too, are frankly unbeatable. You’re rarely seen in public, let alone in an establishment like this. And I happen to frequent this place,” you paused, pretending to be deep in thought, when all you were thinking about was how he would taste and feel against you. It felt naughty, risky, yet undeniably intoxicating.

The Grandmaster thought he was being subtle, but you sensed his lingering gaze the moment you stepped into the bar.

And tonight, you had time. Not only to entertain a sworn enemy, but also to convince.

“You know your facts quite well,” he grunted in response, but kept his expression neutral.

“You came here to see me, didn’t you?” you asked, tilting your head, the glisten of your eyes hinting that you found it amusing. The lengths he went to see you, even from afar, impressed you. Your father would undoubtedly have his head if he knew about it, so his initiative could only be applauded.

It also meant that whatever Bi-Han wanted from you had to be worth it, and he had to be desperate.

“I shouldn’t have underestimated your knowledge of me, Princess,” Bi-Han replied, the only hint of his surprise being the slight quirk of his eyebrows. But his deep brown, almost black eyes gave him away. The way he looked at you made it hard for you to resist him, and you didn’t know why. You shouldn’t even be speaking to him, but you wanted to. It was forbidden and irresponsible, but damn, was it exciting.

“Keep your enemies closer, they say, right?” you simpered.

Bi-Han knew what you were doing, but he wouldn’t stop you. Not when you looked so ravishing, sitting across from him so pretty, with such a clear and lustful stare for him in your breathtakingly beautiful eyes. When was the last time he’d been able to sit with a woman like you and enjoy his drink? Though calculated on your end, Bi-Han knew and didn’t care.

And he let his eyes roam, following the curve of your breasts, the dips of your collarbone, the way your hair swayed across your shoulders as you moved. How gorgeous your skin would look covered in his hickeys.

After a long moment, he forced himself to look back up at your face. Bi-Han reached for his beer and swallowed hard, finishing the rest before continuing.

“That’s right,” he replied in a low voice, trying to hide the desire infusing his tone. “And are we enemies?”

“I don’t want to be,” you mused before you became distracted and flagged down a waiter for another drink. As they approached, you plastered a bright smile despite the conversation. “Another martini for me and a beer for him. Can you also bring two shots of your most expensive sake?"

Smirking at your request for something stronger, Bi-han questioned you once the waiter was out of earshot. “Are you sure you can handle that, Princess?” he asked.

“I intend to drink longer with you anyway,” you said matter-of-factly, though your smile deepened when you glanced back at him.

Bi-Han chuckled in response, his way of accepting your invitation. “I don’t think I’ve ever kept a princess company before,” he replied smoothly, trying to conceal his relief. He wanted to spend more time with you and was surprised by how easily you tore down his walls and resolve.

"Do you not want to?" you replied coyly. "It seems like you're enjoying yourself."

Before Bi-Han could say anything else, the bartender from before returned with a tray containing your drinks.

“Thank you.” You smiled as she handed you the drinks. “We won’t be needing anything else. The Grandmaster will come up to pay when we’re done,” you said, purposefully mentioning his title to ensure you wouldn’t be bothered.

She nodded in agreement, flashing a wink that only you could see. “Of course, Princess.”

You chuckled in response and focused your attention back on Bi-Han. Delicately, he began to pour the sake into a shot glass for you.

Successfully, you’d gotten him alone, but he didn’t mind. It was quieter on this side of the building, more secluded. And having you all to himself was making him bolder. Your flirtations, too, were intriguing.

“Does it amuse you to drink with my money?” he asked as he raised his glass to you.

Clinking your glass with his, you giggled at his question. “And what if I said yes?” you replied before tipping your head back, exhilarated as the liquor burned down your throat.

Bi-Han smirked, watching you down it with ease. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint a woman like you.”

You could feel his eyes all over you, and it was exciting. A feeling blossomed in your chest that you hadn’t felt in a long time, and you knew it wasn’t just the alcohol. But still, you remained slightly cautious of him even if you didn’t show it. There was a fine and dangerous line to balance when it came to the Lin Kuei. Though you didn’t know or understand why, the strained relationship between your clan and his had happened long before you came into power.

Watching him pour another shot, you brought the conversation back before you were interrupted. “So why did you come to see me?” you asked.

“Curiosity,” he admitted, sliding the cup before you. “Some of my most trusted allies speak highly of you. And when I got word of your father stepping down, I wanted to see for myself.”

“Well, I’m not preparing any armies, since you’re so curious.”

Bi-Han chuckled. “As if you could defeat the Lin Kuei.”

Rolling your eyes, you leaned back in your seat and took the shot he poured for you. A shiver rippled through your body.

“I also never had any intentions of defeating the Lin Kuei,” you sighed, locking eyes with him again. “I feel that would be a waste, no?”

“Agreed.”

“I’m optimistic that we can strike some sort of deal to end this decades-long feud that neither of us particularly cares about. In fact, I think our factions could be stronger together. What really matters is outworld threats…”

You paused, eyes drifting to his bulging, crossed arms. “Would you consider peace? Or a mutually beneficial merger?”

Bi-Han listened as you spoke, staring directly at you. He was slightly surprised to hear your words. Peace? What a strange thing to admit. You were so optimistic and positive... he wanted to say naive, but he couldn't. You were anything but that, and you played your games well. Good enough to intrigue him, to lure him.

Despite all those warning signs that blared in his mind, Bi-Han could only concur that you were being genuine with no hidden agenda. If anything, he respected the boldness you exuded. Most people were too timid in his presence to ask.

“You truly are different from your ancestors,” he mumbled, placing his elbows on the table and leaning forward.

His eyes were fixed directly on yours.

“You really want peace between our clans?”

“Don’t you?” you asked, your gaze flickering with hope. “We can sit here and share a drink together, a Princess and a Grandmaster.” You took a slow sip of your cocktail before continuing, trying to gauge his reaction. “I think that’s a step in the right direction, probably more than anyone else has bothered to take in decades.”

Bi-Han fell silent. Somehow, he could decipher that your words were honest and sincere. It was something he didn't expect.

“A fair point.” He paused. “But that’s to say if you get what you want from me.”

“Bingoooo,” you drawled.

“So what do you want?” he scoffed, a displeased grunt leaving him as he watched your smirk deepen.

“I want to merge our clans. Organization and the division of power can come later, but I expect to remain queen. I want the authority to continue training the women of both your and my people. Neither of us can decide without consulting the other,” you paused. "Quite simple."

“Sounds awfully like marriage.”

“That could be arranged.” You shrugged. “Would that be your preference?"

A vixen, you were, presenting yourself as awfully innocent, speaking sweet nothings, and offering a better life, a united front that could not be overpowered by another. You made it seem so simple. And perhaps, it could be that way under your rule.

“I’ll admit it has a nice ring to it," Bi-han said.

Satisfaction crept into your expression, and so did your desire. "I'm thrilled you think so." A moment passed as you collected yourself, encouraging your lucidness for a bit longer. It was so easy to slip away and become infatuated with the Grandmaster before you.

Another sip of your drink settled your wandering thoughts.

“No man will ever strip me of my power.” You smiled sweetly, masking the previous pondering. “That is the one rule you will have to respect.”

Intensely, his eyes met yours again. In a deep, enticing tone, he whispered, “I can conquer you in other ways, dear princess.”

You hummed lightly in response. "So is this a deal?"

Bi-Han slightly tilted his head, trying to determine the cause of your excitement. “Does the idea of peace please you so much?”

“Yes,” you conveyed, reaching across the table and taking his hands in yours. The Grandmaster didn't shy away; you felt him relax from your touch. And as you decided to intertwine your fingers with his, they surprisingly fit perfectly. “We can be stronger this way, instead of fighting amongst each other. If we are unified, we can take on stronger outworld opponents.”

When was the last time Bi-Han allowed someone to touch him so casually? He couldn't remember, and his reaction betrayed his inner thoughts. It only fueled you further, but you remained still, waiting, your thumb brushing his knuckles.

“You’re very passionate about this,” he finally said, his dark, apprehensive gaze focused on your delicate hands.

One thing you were good at reading was body language, and Bi-Han had one unlike any other. When you showed happiness or touched him, he was shocked and almost uncomfortable, but then he wasn’t. For some reason, he allowed your advances. His eyes told you what you needed to know—desire.

What type was still unknown. But you would figure it out. You’d already gotten this far, and his compliance was easier to gain than you thought. A man rumored to be aggressive and stubborn was holding your hands and agreeing with you. He’d helped you even if it would be wise of him not to.

It felt like fate. Some would call it a death wish, but you persevered.

“I’m passionate about many things, Grandmaster…” you replied, voice faint and alluring as your thumb ran over his knuckles again. “But yes, I have dreams of something better for myself and your people.”

Something about how you touched him sent unfathomable jolts throughout his body. What was he supposed to do? The last thing he imagined was having a woman like you by his side. Yet, that was what he craved, despite all his training and how he was raised.

Your voice was soft and almost suggestive, but each word had meaning. Bi-Han knew that he shouldn’t be doing this. But he couldn’t bring himself to pull his hands away from yours.

From his silence and hesitation, you studied him further. A battle was ongoing in his mind, betrayed by his lack of eye contact, which had been so obvious before. What you missed was that confidence. That drew you to him initially, not just the rumors, but seeing him in action. He was a warrior and a leader, and you knew he was missing a woman's touch.

“You do not have many moments of peace, do you?” you whispered, encouraging him to meet your eyes.

Bi-Han knew you were perceptive, but he hadn’t expected you to be able to read him so easily. His face betrayed no expression, but his eyes spoke volumes.

The Grandmaster swallowed harshly.

“No,” he replied in a low voice, his hands finally curling around yours. “Few and far between.”

“You’re too hard on yourself, Bi-Han.” You frowned, this time genuinely. It saddened you to hear that someone as strong and powerful as him could also be suffering.

Had anyone ever been gentle with him? Did he ever smile or feel even fleeting moments of happiness?

“Let me help ease your stress.”

He didn’t know how to react to your words. No one had spoken to him like this in a very long time.

“How could you help relieve my stress?” he asked, his voice taking on a strained edge.

“In whatever way you want,” you trailed off. “I don’t have anywhere I need to be for quite some time…”

Bi-Han was silent, staring at you. He could feel the tension rising between you. Your words were seductive, a way to entice him. And to his own surprise, he couldn’t resist their power.

He could feel his self-control slowly slipping away; he could practically feel the alcohol rushing through his veins. The Grandmaster flexed his jaw, his eyes searching your face.

“And if I said I wanted you?”

“I know you do,” you replied with an all-knowing smirk, desire darkening in your eyes. What better way to soften a deal of peace than to have him all over your body?

Leaning forward across the table, the hemline of your dress sagged down slightly to reveal your cleavage once again. You watched his eyes move with your body, entranced.

“I haven’t had company in a long time… and I’m quite needy.”

Bi-Han's gaze was fixated on your body, hungrily scanning every inch. He swallowed, feeling a strange heat rising in his chest. He hated losing control. He should be the one in control. He should be giving the orders.

But there was just something about you that entranced him, that made him act differently… kinder… softer. All Bi-Han could do for a moment was close his eyes and exhale heavily. It took too much willpower to resist your temptation. And now that there was an invitation, all his fortifications crumbled.

“Do you want me to satisfy your neediness, Princess?”

“Please,” you whispered honestly.

Bi-Han opened his eyes, studying you carefully for any signs of deception. But no, he wasn’t wrong; it was clear that you wanted him badly. Your alluring voice and the look of desire in your eyes caused his blood to rush to the lower half of his body.

“Then come here. Sit on my lap," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper, but there was a demand.

A sudden wave of heat tightened in your abdomen from his tone. For no other man were you so keen to submit to.

With a lustful gleam in your sparkling, fox-like eyes, you stood up and walked around the table, heart pounding as you sat sideways in his lap. One of his hands immediately latched onto your waist to support you, pulling you closer with ease. He could hear you inhale sharply as he positioned you on his covered, hardening length.

“Is this what you imagined, princess?” he asked, somewhat cockily, as if he recognized his advantage, not only over you physically in this moment, but also over the average man. Perhaps over any man you’d been with before.

He wanted to be the best. And how quickly you nodded in response only fueled his ego more.

Gently forcing you to still against him, one of his hands slid forward to feel the soft warmth of your inner thighs while the other crept teasingly slow up your waist, pausing just below your bra.

Biting down on your lip to suppress a moan, you leaned back into him, the sweetness of your perfume and the plushness of your curves engulfing him.

He grunted, feeling his cock throb. “Are you this obedient for any man that comes along, princess?”

“N-No…” you stuttered as his finger teasingly played with the wire of your bra, his hand cupping your covered breast, beginning to fondle you excruciatingly slow.

“Must have caught me at a bad time,” you whimpered as you felt his hot breath fan down your back. Bi-Hans’s free hand reached up and beckoned your hair over your shoulder, giving him access to your uncovered neck.

“I wonder what a pretty girl like you is doing without a man to satisfy her desires,” he murmured, his voice hoarse and entirely consumed with lust. A need he'd been suppressing since the first time he heard your name. “Is that why you come here?” he asked. “You want men to look at you?”

“I…” you almost moaned from his teasing touch and tone alone. He knew what he was doing, nearly as payback… making you squirm like you had with him before. “I want to be satisfied,” you whined. “Only by a man like you.”

Bi-Han enjoyed the sound of your desperately pathetic whimpering. Having this power over you, having control over the clan leader’s daughter, drove him crazy. But it was more than that. He wanted to, almost feeling like he had to.

His hand continued to move, finding the edge of your panties. Pulling them back, the strand snapped against your skin when he released. “Then let me satisfy you, Princess.”

In public? Your cheeks flushed red, but your pussy pulsated with need in response to the fabric lifting off your neglected clit.

“Grandmaster…” you whispered in warning. “We can’t do that here…”

Bi-Han chuckled at your weak attempt, warning against what he was about to do. He knew it was too risky, too dangerous. If someone saw you like this, it could ruin all diplomacy between your clans.

But he didn’t care.

His fingertips only danced lower, moving against your delicate lace panties.

“Are you telling me what I can and can’t do, Princess?”

Before you could answer, his thumb pressed into your clothed clit, causing you to curse weakly under your breath.

“S-Shit…” you stuttered as he began to run agonizingly slow circles against your sweetest spot. It has been so long since you’d been touched like this. It was too much, and you were still paranoid. What if someone saw the two of you? Then what?

A part of you didn’t care, and a piece of you was turned on by the fact that the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei would make love to you in front of a crowd, but you knew better than that.

“A princess needs privacy…” You bit down on your lip to stifle a needy moan. “We can’t be seen doing this…”

He knew you were trying to maintain some control, but he wouldn’t let you do that. “A smart princess would follow the Grandmaster’s command,” Bi-Han replied in a low, husky voice, lips brushing against the sensitive skin on your throat, placing a slow kiss there. So much pleasure was being derived from him at the sound of your whines alone.

“Please, Grandmaster,” you whimpered. “I want you so bad…”

“Quiet, Y/N, and let me satisfy you here first.” It was the first time he’d used your name, but it barely crossed your mind before he pushed a finger inside your leaking cunt.

A moan attempted to leave your lips before his free hand clamped over your mouth. "Shh..." he cooed, kissing your neck and beckoning you in. Silenced, you melted against him. “I won't let anyone see you.”

Instinctively, your legs spread open wider. As you did so, he added another digit, which your cunt granted eagerly.

“Shit,” he muttered, slowly pumping his fingers in and out of you, able to feel how you clenched around him. “So needy from being so neglected.”

For a moment, all you could feel was him. The way he played with you was all you could focus on, and you were completely engulfed. You writhed against him, whimpering into his hand, wishing you could lament about how amazing he was making you feel, wishing you could beg for his cock. It was torture, but you knew you couldn't release.

Not yet... not here…

A sudden wave of euphoria panged hard in your abdomen, and you twitched against him, whining loudly.

You were so close, and he was greedy, but you managed to break free from the hedonistic trance. A weak attempt was made to pull his hand away, and Bi-Han obliged.

He almost protested, but you obviously couldn't handle much more. You stood up immediately and pulled down your dress.

"Follow me," you said, masking the need you craved to convey.

Reputation was important, but you also deserved satisfaction. Every once in a while, you could live a little. For once, you didn't care what your clan would think. And you were inclined to believe that Bi-Han agreed. Despite your desire to have sex with him, you knew you would get what you wanted from him regardless.

And right now, all you could think about was how he would feel inside you.

The Grandmaster rose from his chair hastily, lightly smacking your ass before pulling you closer to him. An erotic, surprised squeal etched from your lips, unheard by others under the blaring music.

You were confident that nobody important would see you leave with Grandmaster Bi-Han, but you didn’t want to take any chances or give anyone leads.

Nobody else needed to know about a passionate and consensual night between two adults who happened to be leaders. Perhaps it was true of what your clan often said about you—that you were impossible to resist.

That was precisely what Bi-Han was thinking as you grasped his hand and pulled him through a secret back exit. Every rational part of him was screaming to resist and not trust or follow you, but he couldn't help himself. At the end of the day, he was just another man who couldn't pass up the opportunity to take you to bed.

Despite his stoic demeanor, his mind was consumed by thoughts of what would come and what he planned to do to you. Bi-Han felt a strange desire for you growing within him, unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

Once the two of you were outside, you turned around to look at him and released his hand.

"I'm renting a room at the hotel," you rushed out. "You're welcome to come with me, or I will see you later."

Bi-Han’s dark gaze settled on you as the night air enveloped you. He was utterly entranced by the sight of you that he hardly heard what you said. You radiated beauty so heavenly in the moonlight that the last of his composure faltered.

In fact, he seemed frozen. And you gently set your hand on his chest, gazing up at him with a sudden concern about his lack of response. There was a primal undertone in his stare, one that you found hard to resist and ignore.

“Bi-Han?” you asked hesitantly, trying to gauge his reaction.

But instead, he leaned down and took your lips in his.

You tasted precisely as he imagined; it was so sweet, so temptingly submissive, and so his. A spark ignited within Bi-Han that he’d never felt before. An intensity, a reverence he knew could not be found elsewhere.

"Talk after," he mumbled against your lips, his hands finding your waist and holding you against him like you would escape too soon. His tongue slipped into your mouth, desperate for more, for whatever you would give him.

Giggling into the kiss, you wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him down slightly so you didn’t have to reach as far.

Bi-Han groaned in the back of his throat at how eagerly you responded to him. He could feel the heat coming from your body, and he felt like he was going crazy with desire.

Eventually, you pulled away after making out with him in the alleyway for what felt like hours.

His thumb glided over your swollen lip. His mouth parted as if to say something, but he was too lost in admiring you.

“Come with me,” you said gently, taking his hand and leading him down the alleyway. Once you reached the next block, you stopped and pointed. “I’m on the second floor. I’ll meet you at that window.”

Bi-Han shook his head, releasing a light laugh. Your urgency was evident in your voice and demeanor. “I can do that, Princess.”

“Give me one minute,” you said, pulling out your room key and flashing it at him. “I would bring you through the front, but my father knows the staff.”

And then you turned around and headed toward the front entrance. Bi-Han observed you until you disappeared into the building, watching how your hips swayed, knowing blades were strapped underneath your dress. You flipped your hair over your shoulders, looking back at him briefly before the doors slid open. God, was he lucky to spend the night with you.

Bi-Han would make it worth your while. Quickly, he scanned the fire escape and calculated the swiftest way up. With a deep breath, he climbed the wall and found you already waiting by the window once he reached it.

Sliding it open, you stepped aside as he crawled through. Hardly a moment passed before he went for you, crashing his lips back onto yours.

Bi-Han lifted you into his arms, and you gladly wrapped your legs around his waist. He easily supported your weight and reached back quickly to slam the window shut with a satisfactory thud.

Then, he smacked your ass as he groped you, lips curling against yours in a raffish smile.

"May I have you, now?" he mumbled against your lips, pulling away to gaze at your face to ensure you wanted this. A part of him still couldn't help but wonder if this was some sort of trick or ploy. It was rare for a woman like yourself to hold so much power yet indulge in such a hedonistic way.

It excited him; it intrigued him. You were a woman who knew exactly what you wanted and needed. And you were unafraid to demand it of him. You deserved to be ravished, and you knew it.

All Bi-Han could think about was granting and exceeding your desires. He had fallen entirely under your spell.

A moment passed as you gazed into his dark, glossed-over eyes. "Show me why you're so deserving of your title," you dared, somehow knowing how to rile him even further, how to make him absolutely crumble underneath your touch, yet still wholly intent on your pleasure.

It made him break.

"You'll never think of another man again when I'm done with you, Y/N," he whispered as he lured you back to his lips.

The confidence in his words and the all-consuming taste of him caused you to shiver. And all you could manage was a satisfied whimper before he set you down on the bed.

Gazing up at him, you bit down on your lip. "Gentle," you cooed. It had been quite some time since you'd been with a man of his physique, let alone strength.

Of course, he would start out gently. But soon, he would have you begging for more.

Bi-Han lowered himself to his knees, watching you with lust-filled eyes as he first reached for your heels and slid them off with ease.

A hum of approval left you as he first kissed your ankles and moved up to your thighs, leaving light-peppered kisses that seared across your skin. As he rose further up you, his hands came to the back of your dress, and he pulled the zipper down.

"Bare yourself to me," he beseeched, hoping you would submit to him in turn.

His tone and the desperation in it made you still. Your eyelashes fluttered as he slowly slid your bra straps down your shoulders.

Your chest heaved as your breasts were revealed. Bi-Han swallowed hard as his eyes lingered, more than pleased at your endowment. Perfect—his for the night and eventually forever. That was what he was going to do. No other man deserved to see you like this. No other man would be able to enjoy your body like he was about to.

The Grandmaster couldn't wait, could hardly control himself as he leaned forward and attacked your breasts, leaning against you until you laid flat on the mattress.

"Don't rip it," you moaned, head tossing back as his tongue swirled around your nipple. In the next movement, your dress had been shimmed down your body and discarded to the floor. The dress would be fine, but as for your panties, he smirked against your skin before ripping them off you.

"Grandmaster!" you gasped, jolting briefly, legs spreading as he snaked between them, hovering over you.

"I can spoil you with something better."

Reaching forward, you fidgeted with his belt as he pulled his shirt off. He tossed it aside, and you were entranced by his contorting muscles, causing a rush of desire to pang in your abdomen again. By the elder gods, how badly you wanted to be dominated by him.

How sinful was this? Was it too indulgent?

As his cock sprang free, you hummed in approval, reaching out for it before you could stop yourself. Bi-Han had made you feel appreciated all night, and it was your turn to give him something unforgettable.

You knew that was what he wanted as your hand ran across the veins of his swollen shaft. His breath was sparse, and for a moment, he froze, only watching you, waiting, okay with letting you take the lead for a moment.

Leaning forward, you placed a kiss, beginning to tease him with tantalizingly slow pumps.

"So big..." you murmured, staring up at him through heavy-lidded eyes, rolling your tongue over his tip, already leaking with pre-cum.

"Too big for that pretty little mouth of yours?"

"Never," you whined through your exhale, hot breath searing down his shaft before your mouth covered him.

Instantly, his head tossed back as he groaned deeply, clearly relishing in the warmth of your mouth that enveloped his throbbing desire.

But it wasn't enough; nothing but your everything would be enough. Bi-Han watched you suck him, bobbing your head and trying to take all of him, eyes trained on yours as you brought him closer and closer like you weren't even trying.

Pumping the length you couldn't fit in your mouth, you moaned, batting your eyelashes, growing more desperate by the second.

"Y/N..." he groaned your name deeply as if in a trance.

If anything, he was wrapped around your finger. The Grandmaster knew you were his for the taking from the moment he glimpsed you. A perfect fit. And what he needed, what he craved, was your sloppy, desperate pussy. Watching you struggle against him was vivifying.

What wonders he would find when he was connected to you.

He shoved himself far and hard into your mouth, and you choked, pulling away in a gasp. Bi-Han was close and knew it, but he didn't want to risk it. The absence of your warmth pained him, and he was desperate to get it back.

"Lay down," he commanded.

And you listened, perhaps too eagerly, but it was what you needed.

"Can't let another man have you," he grunted, hands continuing to worship your body, squeezing and groping in a perfect balance of domination and attentiveness. It was like Bi-Han was trying to make you fall in love with him. This somehow felt like a promise, a glimpse of a potential future.

"Too perfect to let an unworthy man taint you," he added, leaning forward to gently take your lips with his. Your eyes widened, but you kissed him back, gripping his shoulders to steady yourself, the need for all of him panging deeper.

It was like he knew exactly what you wanted. What you craved.

“And do you think you’re worthy?” you asked, hardly above a whisper, eyes too filled with desire and anticipation to stop yourself, getting off on his words alone.

So selfish… so desperate and needy.

The Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei had already conquered you like he boasted he would, yet he was unable to take his eyes off you as he ran his hands across your waist again, positioning his cock at your entrance. Nothing mattered in this moment but you.

“I know I am, Y/N…” he tried to say confidently but faltered as he ran his cock teasingly through your slick folds. “Let me satisfy you.”

Meeting his eyes again, you nodded slowly, heart pounding inside your chest. “Please…” you whispered. So flustered, so incredibly desperate for a cock you shouldn’t have. You were pathetic, but you didn't care.

Watching you beg, Bi-Han could only grant your wish.

A whimper of elation escaped your lips as he pushed himself inside you slowly, letting yourself sink against his throbbing cock, feeling the length stretch your walls until it was impossible to go further. Watching you struggle against him made him grunt with satisfaction. Your pussy felt too good, a prize he'd been pining over for months. The best he ever had and will only have from that night onward.

“Feel good?”

"Y-yes, Grandmaster…ah!" you cry out again, back arching against the mattress as he continues to pump in and out of you greedily.

It was so good, like a drug, and now that Bi-Han had a taste, he could no longer go without you.

Your pussy was pulsing erratically, so wet and welcoming for him. What Bi-Han really wanted to do was fuck you senseless, claim each and every inch of your body. Teasing him all night, making him consent to deals that would benefit you more than him... what a vixen you were.

A low, possessive growl rumbled from his chest as his pace increased, losing himself in your arms, lips ravishing your neck, wanting to cover you in him. To mark you, to claim you.

Bottoming out, Bi-Han hoisted you farther up, and you compliantly wrapped your legs around his waist. He hummed in response as your walls squeezed his cock. A whimper escaped your mouth as your hands fell to your sides, hair fanning across the silk pillowcases. A fiery blush dusted your cheeks.

Angelic.

"Tell me who you belong to," he demanded, staring down at you with a feral gleam in his dark eyes.

It was hard to think about anything else as you tried to adjust to his length. He was huge, and you were already a stuttering mess.

"Y-You, Grandmaster,” you forced out, followed by a pathetic, needy whine. Hardly able to reply before he pulled his cock all the way out and then slammed it back in, burying himself deep inside your pussy, a groan of ecstasy leaving his lips at the way your walls coddled him so tightly, so perfectly, like you were made just for him.

Moaning, you stared deeply into his eyes as he pounded into you over and over again, to the point where you swore you could see stars. Bi-han was huge, fucking you until your moans were mixing with his, the sound of your pussy squelching, taking him fully until he was balls deep, causing a devilish grin to spread across his face.

He was consuming you, feeling his cock twitch inside of you as he glimpsed your breasts bouncing wildly underneath him. You felt too good, heavenly, the best he'd ever had.

"B-Bi-han!" you cried, hardly able to choke out his name in your euphoria, climbing higher and higher, your walls constricting, building. "I can't take it—ah—yes!" you choked out, unable to control yourself from the relentless pace, causing you to orgasm all over his unyielding cock.

He smirked, satisfied at how quickly he could make you unravel. "Look at you, Princess, loving the way my cock splits you open," he groaned, not slowing his pace or relenting, helping you ride out your high before he was going to throw you into another body-shaking orgasm.

"More...." you sobbed, tears clouding your vision, the sound of his skin slapping against your now-drenched pussy causing blood to pound louder in your ears. You could barely breathe, completely cock drunk and fucked-out.

"This is what you wanted the whole time, huh?" Bi-Han teased, barely, feeling himself lose control as he glimpsed the look of intoxication on your face. "What a harlot you are, princess."

His sensuality was music to your ears, and all you could do was moan, nodding with parted lips, body rocking back and forth against his relentless pace.

Your beauty enraptured the Grandmaster. How well and eager you took his length, how your nails scratched down his back, only edging him on further. "M'gonna breed your pretty little pussy, gonna make you mine..."

"Please, Bi-Han," you whimpered, grasping onto his arms that caged you underneath him for support. You were unraveling in his grip, and he couldn't be more satisfied. "S-so much..."

"Take it," he groaned an order, ramming into you over and over again. Your back arched against the bed as the Grandmaster hoisted your legs up higher around his waist, your ass cupped in both of his hands, thrusting right into your already inflamed g-spot.

All you could feel was him; all you could think about was him. Opening your eyes, you saw his eyes narrowed, determination in his expression. He looked so handsome above you, focused on ruining your body for his pleasure. He was finally all yours. And the memory of it caused the pressure in your abdomen to tighten once again.

“Fuck-oh-Bi-han!” Another cry was loudly called into the night, as you came again. It was hard. Violent. Bi-Han watched as your entire body shuddered, your legs trembling as you squirted against him.

At your quick and vocal release, Bi-han found himself unable to breathe, unable to even mutter a word as he plunged into euphoria, releasing his load into your sanctified cunt just seconds after you finished for the second time.

It felt too good, it felt like heaven. You must have put a spell on him, for he realized there was no other way to feel so... enraptured. These emotions, this feeling, having you in his arms...

You were so pretty for him, so angelic. You were the type of woman men went to war for.

"Fuck, Y/N," he groaned, so needily that his desperate tone only elongated your orgasm.

Your legs dropped from his waist, but he remained inside of you, his hands still gripping your waist.

"That was..." you trailed off, chest rising and falling in deep, recolecting breaths. Your body and mind were on fire, still trying to reconcile what had happened.

Amazing. Bi-Han wanted to say, but all he could do was sink farther into you, hands massaging up your sides before pressing a kiss against your forehead.

As he pulled back, you gazed up at the Grandmaster with rapture in your eyes, satisfaction pulling at your lips. When he pulled out, his load started to leak from your core.

He simpered, admiring how beautiful you were like this, a smile on your face, skin glistening with sweat, his cum painting your pussy alabaster.

And finally, he spoke. "How beautiful you are."

For the first time in a long time, he was satisfied. Having you like this, a princess who submitted to no one, relieved his stress, it made him optimistic for the future. His prize, his greatest conquest.

It wasn't just your reputation or what you'd just given him. Deep in his heart, he knew it was more than that, even if he struggled to clarify precisely what.

The understanding that rang true in his mind, was that if you were by his side, the two of you would be unstoppable. And perhaps he was lovestruck enough to ensure that happened.

The same epiphany coursed through your body.

∘∙∘☾𖤓∘∙∘

When the sunlight peeked through the single window in your hotel room, you groaned in displeasure.

Your muscles were sore, your hair was a mess, and your head was aching from the remnants of last night. But at least the bed was cozy, so soft that you didn't want to reach for the glass of water beside you. You wanted to fall back asleep, forget your duties for one more day, and pretend your entire clan didn't depend on you.

A heavy, warm, and muscular body stirred beside you.

“Grandmaster?” you gasped, immediately shooting up from the bed and disregarding your previous thought. You hadn’t expected him to stay the night.

A sleepy, content smile etched across his face before he opened his eyes. Clearly, he found your reaction amusing. "Princess."

“Why didn't you leave?” you questioned, gesturing your hands out exasperatedly, though your urgency landed on deaf ears. You were still naked, after all, and it was a sight for him to see the first thing in the morning. "What if others see?"

Bi-Han wanted to get used to it.

“Let them.”

Your eyebrows narrowed, tone slightly sharper than before. "You don't get it; unless there's rumors of an engagement we cannot be seen together-"

"Do you want to marry me?" he interrupted, rising from the bed, the sheets sliding down his broad chest, making you fall silent. God, you were no better than a simple man when gazing at Bi-Han. Your thoughts seemed to wander, your control slipped, and your intent would falter. It was irritating how much power the Grandmaster had over you.

In turn, he was also irritated that you assumed he wouldn't understand your position and intentionally disrespect it. "Or did last night not mean anything to you?"

"Of course it did," you replied, crossing your arms over your breasts. "But we cannot be hasty in our decisions. Last night was fun, but my proposal was serious. If your intentions are elsewhere, I cannot be seen leaving with you."

How stubborn you were. But also smart. Bi-Han must not have shown you how serious he was about making you his. You didn't just want to submit to him without him doing the same in turn.

"My intentions are with you," he replied. For no one else would he be this honest, so open and irrecoverably entranced. Could you not see that he was trying? It was harder to admit than he would have thought. His life had been harsh and cruel; there was no gentleness or compromise. But you gave him a taste of something better, something he always wanted but thought he would never get. What he'd assumed would be a death wish, had now turned into a hopeful promise.

Bi-Han didn't care if it was too soon, hasty, or foolish. He wanted you by his side as his equal.

You analyzed him carefully, realizing he wasn't one for much expression. But it was in a slight way that his eyes softened as he glanced back at you. It was as if he meant everything he said, as if he was offended you were cautious.

“I will send a marriage proposal to your father by tomorrow.”

Surprised, your eyes widened. "Marriage?" But a faint pink dust darkened your cheeks, like you were hoping for him to agree to that alternative.

"I don't like to share," he huffed. To hell with all the formalities. What you'd proposed initially was precisely what he wanted and needed.

You chuckled softly, sitting back down on the bed beside him. A moment passed when you just stared at him in comfortable silence, taking his features in entirely for a second time. It was unforeseen that someone as cautious and headstrong as you, a respected and fawned-over warrior princess, would align yourself with the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei.

But you liked to keep your enemies on their toes.

"Do you trust me?" you asked, knowing you were asking a lot. But if you were to also pledge your loyalty to him in the future, you needed to know if that potential was there. That mattered most. "You really want me to be your wife?"

Bi-Han's expression hardened, trying to suppress the embarrassment that threatened to be revealed without breaking your gaze. His eyes exposed what he struggled to say aloud. "For some reason," he managed to whisper.

A giggle escaped you as you tilted your head. "We'll work on that."

Reaching out, Bi-Han tucked some loose strands of your hair behind your ear. He couldn't fully see your face or sparkling, beautiful eyes. The back of his hand trailed down your cheek as he appreciated your features, a stunningly ravishing woman who deserved whatever she pleased.

And if you wanted him, the Grandmaster would accept that blessing.

"For you, I'll try," he said before leaning in to capture your lips.

Sighing blissfully, you wrapped your arms around his neck as he pulled you back to the mattress, lips tethered to yours, bodies melting back together in their rightful place.

That morning was filled with a slow, appreciative passion, unlike anything you had experienced before. A promise, a unity, a vow.

One that soon came true and remained until your dying breath.

#bi han x reader #sub zero x reader #sub zero #bi han sub zero #mortal kombat 1

142 notes · View notes

cassiecasluciluce · 3 months ago

Text

Oh my GODDDDD this is so good why can’t he be real

𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐧

Things between you and Peter change with the seasons. [17k]

c: friends-to-lovers, hurt/comfort, loneliness, peter parker isn’t good at hiding his alter ego, fluff, first kisses, mutual pining, loved-up epilogue, mention of self-harm with no graphic imagery

｡𖦹°‧⭑.ᐟ

Fall

Peter Parker is a resting place for overworked eyes, like warm topaz nestled against a blue-cold city. He waits on you with his eyes to the screen of his phone, clicking the power button repetitively. A nervous tic.

You close the heavy door of your apartment building. His head stays still, yet he’s heard the sound of it settling, evidence in his calmed hand.

“Good morning!” You pull your coat on quickly. “Sorry.”

“Good morning,” he says, offering a sleep-logged smile. “Should we go?”

You follow Peter out of the cul-de-sac and into the street as he drops his phone into a deep pocket. To his credit, he doesn’t check it while you walk, and only glances at it when you’re taking your coat off in the heat of your favourite cafe: The Moroccan Mode glows around you, fog kissing the windows, condensation running down the inner lengths of it in beads. You murmur something to do with the odd fog and Peter tells you about water vapour. When it rains tonight, he says it’ll be warm water that falls.

He spreads his textbook, notebook, and rinky-dink laptop out across the table while you order drinks. Peter has the same thing every visit, a decaf americano, in a wide brim mug with the pink-petal saucer. You put it down on his textbook only because that’s where he would put it himself, and you both get to work.

As Peter helps you study, you note the simplicity of another normal day, and can’t help wondering what it is that’s missing. Something is, something Peter won’t tell you, the absence of a truth hanging over your heads. You ask him if he wants to get dinner and he says no, he’s busy. You ask him to see a movie on Friday night and he wishes he could.

Peter misses you. When he tells you, you believe him. “I wish I had more time,” he says.

“It’s fine,” you say, “you can’t help it.”

“We’ll do something next weekend,” he says. The lie slips out easily.

To Peter it isn’t a lie. In his head, he’ll find the time for you again, and you’ll be friends like you used to be.

You press the end of your pencil into your cheek, the dark roast, white paper and condensation like grey noise. This time last year, the air had been thick for days with fog you could cut. He took you on a trip to Manhattan, less than an hour from your red-brick neighbourhood, and you spent the day in a hotel pool throwing great cupfuls of water at each other. The fog was gone just fifteen miles away from home but the warm air stayed. When it rained it was sudden, strange, spit-warm splashes of it hammering the tops of your heads, your cheeks as you tipped your faces back to spy the dark clouds.

Peter had swam the short distance to you and held your shoulders. You remember feeling like your whole life was there, somewhere you’d never been before, the sharp edges of cracked pool tile just under your feet.

You peek over the top of your laptop screen and wonder if Peter ever thinks of that trip.

He feels you watching and meets your eyes. “I have to tell you something,” he says, smiling shyly.

“Sure.”

“I signed us up for that club.”

“Epigenetics?”

“Molecular medicine,” he says.

The nice thing about fog is that it gives a feeling of lateness. It’s still morning, barely ten, but it feels like the early evening. It’s gentle on the eyes, colouring the whole room with a sconced shine. You reach for Peter’s bag and sort through his jumble of possessions —stick deodorant, loose-leaf paper, a bodega’s worth of protein bars— and grab his camera.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m cataloguing the moment you ruined our lives,” you say, aiming the camera at his chin, squinting through the viewfinder.

“Technically, I signed us up a few days ago,” he says.

You snap his photo as his mouth closes around ‘ago’, keeping his half-laugh stuck on his lips. “Semantics,” you murmur. “And molecular medicine club, this has nothing to do with the estranged Gwen Stacy?”

“It has nothing to do with her. And you like molecular medicine.”

“I like oncology,” you correct, which is a sub-genre at best, “and I have enough work without joining another club. Go by yourself.”

“I can’t go without you,” he says. Simple as that.

He knew you’d say yes when he signed you up. It’s why he didn’t ask. You’re already forgiven him for the slight of assumption.

“When is it?” you ask, smiling.

—

Molecular medicine club is fun. You and a handful of ESU nerds gather around a big table in a private study room for a few hours and read about the newer discoveries and top research, like regenerative science and now taboo Oscorp research. It’s boring, sometimes, but then Peter will lean into your side and make a joke to keep you going.

He looks at Gwen Stacy a lot. Slender, pale and freckled, with blonde hair framing a sweet face. Only when he thinks you’re not looking. Only when she isn’t either.

—

“Good morning,” you say.

Peter holds an umbrella over his head that he’s quick to share with you, and together you walk with heads craned down, the umbrella angled forward to fight the wind. Your outermost shoulder is wet when you reach the café, your other warm from being pressed against him. You shake the umbrella off outside the door and step onto a cushy, amber doormat to dry your sneakers. Peter stalks ahead and order the drinks, eager to get warm, so you look for a table. Your usual is full of businessmen drinking flat whites with briefcases at their legs. They laugh. You try to picture Peter in a suit: you’re still laughing when he finds you in the booth at the back.

“Tell the joke,” he says, slamming his coffee down. He’s careful with yours. He’s given you the pink petal saucer from the side next to the straws and wooden stirrers.

“I was thinking about you as a businessman.”

“And that’s funny?”

“When was the last time you wore a suit?”

Peter shakes his head. Claims he doesn’t know. Later, you’ll remember his Uncle Ben’s funeral and feel queasy with guilt, but you don’t remember yet. “When was the last time you wore one?” he asks. “I don’t laugh at you.”

“You’re always laughing at me, Parker.”

The cafe isn’t as warm today. It’s wet, grimy water footsteps tracking across the terracotta tile, streaks of grey water especially heavy near the counter, around it to the bathroom. There’s no fog but a sad rattle of rain, not enough to make noise against the windows, but enough to watch as it falls in lazy rivulets down the lengths of them.

Your face is chapped with the cold, cheeks quickly come to heat as your fingers curl around your mug. They tingle with newfound warmth. When you raise your mug to your lips, your hand hardly shakes.

“You okay?” Peter asks.

“Fine. Are you gonna help me with the math today?”

“Don’t think so. Did you ask nicely?”

“I did.” You’d called him last night. You would’ve just as happily submitted your homework poorly solved with the grade to prove it —you don’t want Peter’s help, you just wanted to see him.

Looking at him now, you remember why his distance had felt a little easier. The rain tangles in his hair, damp strands curling across his forehead, his eyes dark and outfitted by darker eyelashes. Peter has the looks of someone you’ve seen before, a classical set to his nose and eyes reminiscent of that fallen angel weeping behind his arm, his russet hair in fiery disarray. There was an anger to Peter after Ben died that you didn’t recognise, until it was Peter, changed forever and for the worse and it didn’t matter —he was grieving, he was terrified, who were you to tell him to be nice again— until it started to get better. You see less of your fallen, angry angel, no harsh brush strokes, no tears.

His eyes are still dark. Bruised often underneath, like he’s up late. If he is, it isn’t to talk to you.

You spend an afternoon working through your equations, pretending to understand until Peter explains them to death. His earphones fall out of his pocket and he says, “Here, I’ll show you a song.”

He walks you home. The song is dreary and sad. The man who sings is good. Lover, You Should’ve Come Over. It feels like Peter’s trying to tell you something —he isn’t, but it feels like wishing he would.

“You okay?” you ask before you can get to your street. A minute away, less.

“I’m fine, why?”

You let the uncomfortable shape of his earbud fall out of your ear, the climax of the song a rattle on his chest. “You look tired, that’s all. Are you sleeping?”

“I have too much to do.”

You just don’t get it. “Make sure you’re eating properly. Okay?”

His smile squeezes your heart. Soft, the closest you’ll ever get. “You know May,” he says, wrapping his arm around your shoulders to give you a short hug, “she wouldn’t let me go hungry. Don’t worry about me.”

—

The dip into depression you take is predictable. You can’t help it. Peter being gone makes it worse.

You listen to love songs and take long walks through the city, even when it’s dark and you know it’s a bad idea. If anything bad happens Spider-Man could probably save me, you think. New York’s not-so-new vigilante keeps a close eye on things, especially the women. You can’t count how many times you’ve heard the same story. A man followed me home, saw me across the street, tried to get into my apartment, but Spider-Man saved me.

You’re not naive, you realise the danger of walking around without protection assuming some stranger in a mask will save you, but you need to get out of the house. It goes on for weeks.

You walk under streetlights and past stores with CCTV, but honestly you don’t really care. You’re not thinking. You feel sick and heavy and it’s fine, really, it’s okay, everything works out eventually. It’s not like it’s all because you miss Peter, it’s just a feeling. It’ll go away.

“You’re in deep thought,” a voice says, garnering a huge flinch from the depths of your stomach.

You turn around, turn back, and flinch again at the sight of a man a few paces ahead. Red shoulders and legs, black shining in a webbed lattice across his chest. “Oh,” you say, your heartbeat an uncomfortable plodding under your hand, “sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? I scared you.”

“I didn’t realise you were there.”

Spider-Man doesn’t come any closer. You take a few steps in his direction. You’ve never met before but you’d like to see him up close, and you aren’t scared. Not beyond the shock of his arrival.

“Can I walk you to where you’re going?” Spider-Man asks you. He’s humming energy, fidgeting and shifting from foot to foot.

“How do I know you’re the real Spider-Man?”

After all, there are high definition videos of his suit on the news sometimes. You wouldn’t want to find out someone was capable of making a replica in the worst way possible.

You can’t be sure, but you think he might be smiling behind the mask, his arms moving back as though impressed at your questioning. “What do you need me to do to prove it?” he asks.

He speaks hushed. Rough and deep. “I don’t know. What’s Spider-Man exclusive?”

“I can show you the webs?”

You pull your handbag further up your arm. “Okay, sure. Shoot something.”

Spider-Man aims his hand at the streetlight across the way and shoots it. He makes a severing motion with his wrist to stop from getting pulled along by it, letting the web fall like an alien tendril from the bulb. The light it produces dims slightly. A chill rides your spine.

“Can I walk you now?” he asks.

“You don’t have more important things to do?” If the bitterness you’re feeling creeps into your tone unbidden, he doesn’t react.

“Nothing more important than you.”

You laugh despite yourself. “I’m going to Trader Joe’s.”

“Yellowstone Boulevard?”

“That’s the one…”

You fall into step beside him, and, awkwardly, begin to walk again. It’s a short walk. Trader Joe’s will still be open for hours despite the dark sky, and you’re in no hurry. “My friend, he likes the rolled tortilla chips they do, the chilli ones.”

“And you’re going just for him?” Spider-Man asks.

“Not really. I mean, yeah, but I was already going on a walk.”

“Do you always walk around by yourself? It’s late. It’s dangerous, you know, a beautiful girl like you,” he says, descending into an odd mixture of seriousness and teasing. His voice jumps and swoons to match.

“I like walking,” you say.

Spider-Man walking is a weird thing to see. On the news, he’s running, swinging, or flying through the air untethered. You’re having trouble acquainting the media image of him with the quiet man you’re walking beside now.

”Is everything okay?” he asks. “You seem sad.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah, you do.”

“Maybe I am sad,” you confess, looking forward, the bright sign of Trader Joe’s already in view. It really is a short walk. “Do you ever–” You swallow against a surprising tightness in your throat and try again, “Do you ever feel like you’re alone?”

“I’m not alone,” he says carefully.

“Me neither, but sometimes I feel like I am.”

He laughs quietly. You bristle thinking you’re being made fun of, but the laugh tapers into a sad one. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the world,” he says. “Even here. I forget that it’s not something I invented.”

“Well, I guess being a hero would feel really lonely. Who else do we have like you?” You smile sympathetically. “It must be hard.”

“Yeah.” His head tips to the side, and a crash of glass rings in the distance, crunching, and then there’s a squeal. It sounds like a car accident. Spider-Man goes tense. “I’ll come back,” he says.

“That’s okay, Spider-Man, I can get home by myself. Thank you for the protection detail.”

He sprints away. In half a second he’s up onto a short roof, then between buildings. It looks natural. It takes your breath away.

You buy Peter’s chips at Trader Joe’s and wait for a few minutes at the door, but Spider-Man doesn’t come back.

—

I don’t want to study today, Peter’s text says the next day. Come over and watch movies?

The last handholds of your fugue are washed away in the shower. You dab moisturiser onto your face and neck and stand by the open window to help it dry faster, taking in the light drizzle of rain, the smell of it filling your room and your lungs in cold gales. You dress in sweatpants and a hoodie, throw on your coat, and stuff the rolled tortilla chips into a backpack to ferry across the neighbourhood.

Peter still lives at home with his Aunt May. You’d been in awe of it when you were younger, Peter and his Aunt and Uncle, their home-cooked family dinners, nights spent on the roof trying to find constellations through light pollution, stretched out together while it was warm enough to soak in your small rebellion. Ben would call you both down eventually. When you’re older! he’d always promise.

Peter’s waiting in the open door for you. He ushers you inside excitedly, stripping you out of your coat and forgetting your wet shoes as he drags you to the kitchen. “Look what I got,” he says.

The Parker kitchen is a big, bright space with a chopping block island. The counters are crowded by pots, pans, spices, jams, coffee grounds, the impossible drying rack. There’s a cross-stitch about the home on the microwave Ben did to prove to May he could still see the holes in the aida.

You follow Peter to the stove where he points at a ceramic Dutch oven you’ve eaten from a hundred times. “There,” he says.

“Did you cook?” you ask.

“Of course I didn’t cook, even if the way you said that is offensive. I could cook. I’m an excellent chef.”

“The only thing May’s ever taught you is spaghetti and meatballs.”

“Hope you like marinara,” he says, nudging you toward the stove.

You take the lid off of the Dutch oven to unveil a huge cake. Dripping with frosting, only slightly squashed by the lid, obviously homemade. He’s dotted the top with swirls of frosting and deep red strawberries.

“It’s for you,” he says casually.

“It’s not my birthday.”

“I know. You like cake though, don’t you?”

You’d tell Peter you liked chunks of glass if that was what he unveiled. “Why’d you make me a cake?”

“I felt like you deserved a cake. You don’t want it?”

“No, I want it! I want the cake, let’s have cake, we can go to 91st and get some ice cream, it’ll be amazing.” You don’t bother trying to hide your beaming smile now, twisting on the spot to see him properly, your hands falling behind your back. “Thank you, Peter. It’s awesome. I had no idea you could even– that you’d even–” You press forward, smushing your face against his chest. “Wow.”

“Wow,” he says, wrapping his arms around you. He angles his head to nose at your temple. “You’re welcome. I would’ve made you a cake years ago if I knew it was gonna make you this happy.”

“It must’ve taken hours.”

“May helped.”

“That makes much more sense.”

“Don’t be insolent.” Peter squeezes you tightly. He doesn’t let go for a really long time.

He extracts the cake from the depths of the Dutch oven and cuts you both a slice. He already has ice cream, a Neapolitan box that he cuts into with a serrated knife so you can each have a slice of all three flavours. It’s good ice cream, fresh for what it is and melting in big drops of cream as he gets the couch ready.

“Sit down,” he says, shoving the plates with his strangely great balance onto the coffee table. “Remote’s by you. I’m gonna get drinks.”

You take your plate, carving into the cake with the end of a warped spoon, its handle stamped PETE and burnished in your grasp. The crumb is soft but dense in the best way. The ganache between layers is loose, cake wet with it, and the frosting is perfect, just messy. You take another satisfied bite. You’re halfway through your slice before Peter makes it back.

“I brought you something too, but it’s garbage compared to this,” you say through a mouthful, hand barely covering your mouth.

Peter laughs at you. “Yeah, well, say it, don’t spray it.”

“I guess I’ll keep it.”

“Keep it, bub, I don’t need anything from you.”

He doesn’t say it the way you’re expecting. “No,” you say, pleased when he sits knee to knee, “you can have it. S’just a bag of chips from Trader–”

“The rolled tortilla chips?” he asks. You nod, and his eyes light up. “You really are the best friend ever.”

“Better than Harry?”

“Harry’s rich,” Peter says, “so no. I’m kidding! Joking, come here, let me try some of that.”

“Eat your own.”

Peter plays a great host, letting you choose the movies, making lunch, ordering takeout in the evening and refusing to let you pay for it. This isn’t that out of character for Peter, but what shocks you is his complete unfiltered attention. He doesn’t check his phone, the tension you couldn’t name from these last few weeks nowhere to be felt. You’re flummoxed by the sudden change, but you missed him. You won’t look a gift horse in the mouth; you won’t question what it is that had Peter keeping you at arm’s length now it’s gone.

To your annoyance, you can’t stop thinking about Spider-Man. You keep opening your mouth to tell Peter you talked to him but biting your tongue. Why am I keeping it a secret? you wonder.

“Have something to tell you.”

“You do?” you ask, reluctant to sit properly, your feet tucked under his thigh and your body completely lax with the weight of the Parker throw.

“Is that surprising?”

“Is that a trick question?”

“No. Just. I’ve been not telling you something.”

“Okay, so tell me.”

Peter goes pink, and stiff, a fake smile plastered over his lips. “Me and Gwen, we’re really done.”

“I know, Pete. She broke up with you for reasons nobody felt I should be enlightened right after graduation.” Your stomach pangs painfully. “Unless you…”

“She’s going to England.”

“She is?”

“Oxford.”

You struggle to sit up. “That sucks, Peter. I’m sorry.”

“But?”

You find your words carefully. “You and Gwen really liked each other, but I think that–” You grow in confidence, meeting his eyes firmly. “That there’s always been some part of you that couldn’t actually commit to her. So. I don’t know, maybe some distance will give you clarity. And maybe it’ll break your heart, but at least then you’ll know how you really feel, and you can move forward.” You avoid telling him to move on.

“It wasn’t Gwen,” he says, which has a completely different meaning to the both of you.

“Obviously, she’s the smartest girl I’ve ever met. She’s beautiful. Of course it’s not her fault,” you say, teasing.

“Really, that you ever met?” Peter asks.

“She’s the best girl you were ever gonna land.“

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I guess so.” After a few more minutes of quiet, he says, “I think we were done before. I just hadn’t figured it out yet. Something wasn’t right.”

“You were so back and forth. You’re not mean, there must’ve been something stopping you from going steady,” you agree. “You were breaking up every other week.”

“I know,” he whispers, tipping his head against the back couch.

“Which, it’s fine, you don’t–” You grimace. “I can’t talk today. Sorry. I just mean that it’s alright that you never made it work.” You worry that sounds plainly obvious and amend, “Doesn’t make you a bad person. You’re never a bad person, Peter.”

“I know. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You don’t need me to tell you.”

“It’s nice, though. I like when you tell me stuff. I want all of your secrets.”

You should say Good, because I have something unbelievable to tell you, and I should’ve said it the moment I got home.

Good, because last night I met the bravest man in New York City, and he walked me to the store for your chips.

Good, because I have so much I’m keeping to myself.

You ruffle his hair. Spider-Man goes unmentioned.

—

He visits with a whoop. You don’t flinch when he lands —you’d heard the strange whip and splat of his webs landing nearby.

“Spider-Man,” you say.

“What’s that about?”

“What?”

“The way you said that. You laughed.” Spider-Man stands in spandexed glory before you, mask in place. He’s got a brown stain up the side of his thigh that looks more like mud than blood, but it’s not as though each of his fights are bloodless. They’re infamously gory on occasion.

“Did you get hurt?” you ask. You’re worried. You could help him, if he needs it.

“Aw, this? That’s a scratch. That’s nothing, don’t worry about it. I’ve had worse from that stray cat living outside of 91st.”

You look at him sharply. 91st is shorthand for 91st Bodega, and it’s not like you and Peter made it up, but suddenly, the man in front of you is Peter. The way he says it, that unique rhythm.

Peter’s not so rough-voiced, you argue with yourself. Your Peter speaks in a higher register, dulcet often, only occasionally sarcastic. Spider-Man is rough, and cawing, and loud. Spider-Man acts as though the ground is a suggestion. Peter can’t jump off the second diving board at the pool. Spider-Man rolls his shoulders back in front of you with a confidence Peter rarely has.

“What?” he asks.

“Sorry. You just reminded me of someone.”

His voice falls deeper still. “Someone handsome, I hope.”

You take a small step around him, hoping it invites him to walk along while communicating how sorely you want to leave the subject behind. When he doesn’t follow, you add, “Yes, he’s handsome.”

“I knew it.”

“What do you look like under the mask?”

Spider-Man laughs boisterously. “I can’t just tell you that.”

“No? Do I have to earn it?”

“It’s not like that. I just don’t tell anyone, ever.”

“Nobody in the whole world?” you ask.

The rain is spitting. New York lately is cold cold cold, little in the way of sunshine and no end in sight. Perhaps that’s all November’s are destined to be. You and Spider-Man stick to the inside of the sidewalk. Occasionally, a passerby stares at him, or calls out in Hello, and Spider-Man waves but doesn’t part from you.

“Tell me something about you and I’ll tell you something about me,” Spider-Man says. “I’ll tell you who knows my identity.”

“What do you want to know about me?” you ask, surprised.

“A secret. That’s fair.”

“Hold on, how’s that fair?” You tighten your scarf against a bitter breeze. “What use do I have for the people who know who you are? That doesn’t bring me any closer to the truth.”

“It’s not about who knows, it’s about why I told them.” Spider-Man slips around you, forcing you to walk on the inside of the sidewalk as a car pulls past you all too quickly and sends a sheet of dirty rainwater up Spider-Man’s side. He shakes himself off. “Jerk!” he shouts after the car.

“My secrets aren’t worth anything.”

“I doubt that, but if that’s true, that makes it a fair trade, doesn’t it?”

He sounds peppy considering the pool of runoff collecting at his feet. You pick up your pace again and say, “Alright, useless secret for a useless secret.”

You think about all your secrets. Some are odd, some gross. Some might make the people around you think less of you, while others would surely paint you in a nice light. A topaz sort of technicolor. But they aren’t useless, then, so you move on.

“Oh, I know. I hate my major.” You grin at Spider-Man. “That’s a good one, right? No one else knows about that.”

“You do?” Spider-Man asks. His voice is familiar, then, for its sympathy.

“I like science, I just hate math. It’s harder than I thought it would be, and I need so much help it makes me hate the whole thing.”

Spider-Man doesn’t drag the knife. “Okay. Only three people know who I am under the mask. It was four, briefly.” He clears his throat. “I told one person because I was being selfish and the others out of necessity. I’m trying really hard not to tell anybody else.”

“How come?”

“It just hurts people.”

You linger in a gap of silence, not sure what to say. A handful of cars pass you on the road.

“Tell me another one,” he says.

“What for?”

“I don’t know, just tell me one.”

“How do I know you aren’t extorting me for something?” You grin as you say it, a hint of flirtation. “You’ll know my face and my secrets and even if you tell me a really gory juicy one, I have no one to tell and no name to pair it with.”

“I’m not showing you anything,” he warns, teasing, sounding so awfully like Peter that your heart trips again, an uneven capering that has you faltering in the street.

Peter’s shorter, you decide, sizing him up. His voice sounds similar and familiar but Peter doesn’t ask for secrets. He doesn’t have to. (Or, he didn’t have to, once upon a time.)

“Where are you going?” Spider-Man asks.

“Oh, nowhere.”

“Seriously, you’re out here walking again for no reason?”

“I like to walk. It’s not like it’s dark out yet.” You’re not far at all from Queensboro Hill here. Walking in any direction would lead you to a garden —Flushing Meadows, Kew Gardens, Kissena Park. “Walk me to Kissena?” you ask.

“Sure, for that secret.”

You laugh as Spider-Man takes the lead, keeping time with him, a natural match of pace. It’s exciting that Spider-Man of all people wants to know one of your useless secrets enough to ask you twice. The attention of it makes searching for one a matter of how fast you can find one rather than a question of why you’d want to. It slips out before you can think better of it.

“I burned my wrist a few days ago on a frying pan,” you confess, the phantom pain of the injury an itch. “It blistered and I cried when I did it, but I haven’t told anyone about it.”

“Why not?” he asks.

He shouldn’t use that tone with you, like he’s so so sorry. It makes you want to really tell him everything. How insecure you feel, how telling things feels like asking for someone to care, and half the time they don’t, and half the time you’re embarrassed.

You walk past the bakery that demarcates the beginning of Kissena Park grounds across the way. “I didn’t think about it at first. I’m used to keeping things to myself. And then I didn’t tell anyone for so long that mentioning it now wouldn’t make sense. Like, bringing it up when it’s a scar won’t do much.” It’s a weak lie. It comes out like a spigot to a drying up tree. Glugs, fat beads of sound and the pull to find another thing to say.

“It was only a few days ago, right? It must still hurt. People want to know that stuff.”

“Maybe I’ll tell someone tomorrow,” you say, though you won’t.

“Thanks for telling me.”

The humour in spilling a secret like that to a superhero stops you from feeling sorry for yourself. You hide your cold fingers in your coat, rubbing the stiff skin of your knuckles into the lining for friction-heat. The rain has let up, wind whipping empty but brisk against your cheeks. Your lips will be chapped when you get home, whenever that turns out to be.

“This is pretty far from Trader Joe’s,” he comments, like he’s read your mind.

“Just an hour.”

“Are you kidding? It’s an hour for me.”

“That’s not true, Spider-Man, I’ve seen those webs in action. I still remember watching you on the News that night, the cranes. I remember,” —you try to meet his eyes despite the mask— “my heart in my throat. Weren’t you scared?”

“Is that the secret you want?” he asks.

“I get to choose?”

Spider-Man throws his gaze around, his hand behind his head like he might play with his hair. You come to a natural stop across the street from Kissena Park’s playground. Teenagers crowd the soft-landing floor, smaller children playing on the wet rungs of the climbing frame.

“If you want to,” he says.

“Then yeah, I want to know if you were scared.”

“I didn’t haveI time to be scared. Connors was already there, you know?” He shifts from one foot to the other. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it before. I wasn’t scared of the height, if that’s what you mean. I already had practice by then, and I knew I had to do it. Like, I didn’t have a choice, so I just did it. I had to save the day, so I did.”

“When they lined up the cranes–”

“It felt like flying,” Spider-Man interrupts.

“Like flying.”

You picture the weightlessness, the adrenaline, the catch of your weight so high up and the pressure of being flung between the next point. The idea that you have to just do something, so you do.

“That’s a good secret.” You offer a grateful smile. “It doesn’t feel equal. I burned myself and you saved the city.”

“So tell me another one,” he says.

—

Maybe you started to fall for Peter after his Uncle Ben passed away. Not the days where you’d text him and he’d ignore you, or the days spent camping outside of his house waiting for him to get home. It wasn’t that you couldn’t like him, angry as he was; there’s always been something about his eyes when he’s upset that sticks around. You loathe to see him sad but he really is pretty, and when his eyelashes are wet and his mouth is turned down, formidable, it’s an ache. A Cabanel painting, dramatic and dark and other.

It was after. When he started sending Gwen weird smiles and showing up to the movies exhilarated, out of breath, unwilling to tell you where he’d been. Skating, he’d always say. Most of the time he didn’t have his skateboard.

You’d only seen them kiss once, his hand on her shoulder curling her in, a pang of heat. You were curdled by jealousy but it was more than that. Peter was tipping her head back, was kissing her soundly, a fierceness from him that made you sick to think about. You spent weeks afterwards up at night, tossing, turning, wishing he’d kiss you like that, just once, so you could feel how it felt to be completely wrapped up in another person.

You’d always held out for Peter, in a way. It was more important to you that he be your friend. You were young, and love had been a far off thing, and then one day you suddenly wanted it. You learned just how aching an unrequited love could be, like a bruise, where every time you saw Peter —whether it be alone or with Gwen, with anyone— it was like he knew exactly where to poke the bruise. Press the heel of his hand and push. The worst is when he found himself affectionate with you, a quick clasp of your cheek in his palm as he said goodbye. Nights spent in his twin bed, of course you’ll fit, of course you couldn’t go home, not this late, May won’t care if we keep the door open —the suggestion that the door being closed might’ve meant something. His sleeping arm furled around you.

Now you’re nearing the end of your second semester at ESU, Gwen is going to England at the end of the year, and Peter hasn’t tried to stop her, but he’s still busy.

“Whatever,“ you say, taking a deep breath. You’re not mad at Peter, you just miss him. Thinking about him all the time won’t change a thing. “It’s fine.”

“I’d hope so.”

You swing around. “Don’t do that!”

Spider-Man looks vaguely chastened, taking a step back. “I called out.”

“You did?”

“I did. Hey, miss, over there! The one who doesn’t know how to get a goddamn taxi!”

“I like to walk,” you say.

“Yeah, so you’ve said. Have you considered that all this walking is bad for you? It’s freezing out, Miss Bennett!”

“It’s not that bad.” You have your coat, a scarf, your thermal leggings underneath your jeans. “I’m fine.”

“What’s wrong with staying at home?”

“That’s not good for you. And you’re one to talk, Spider-Man, aren’t you out on the streets every night? You should take a day off.”

“I don’t do this every night.”

“Don’t you get tired?”

Spider-Man’s eyelets seem to squint, his mock-anger effusive as he crosses his arms across his chest. “No, of course not. Do I look like I get tired?”

“I don’t know. You’re in a full suit, I can’t tell. I guess you don’t… seem tired. You know, with all the backflips.”

“Want me to do one?”

“On command?” You laugh. “No, that’s okay. Save your strength, Spider-Man.”

“So where are you heading today?” he asks.

There’s a slip of skin peeking out against his neck. You’re surprised he can’t feel the cold there, stepping toward him to point. “I can see your stubble.”

He yanks his mask down. “Hasty getaway.”

“A getaway, undressed? Spider-Man, that’s not very gentlemanly.”

You start to walk toward the Cinemart. Spider-Man, to your strange pleasure, follows. He walks with considerable casualness down the sidewalk by your left, occasionally letting his head turn to chase a distant sound where it echoes from between high-rises and along the busy street. It’s cold and dark, but New York is hectic no matter what, even the residential areas. (Is there such a thing? The neighbourhoods burst with small businesses and backstreet sales, no matter the time.)

“Luckily for you, crime is slow tonight,” he says.

“Lucky me?” You wonder if your acquainted vigilante flirts with every girl he stalks. “You realise I’ve managed to get everywhere I’m going for the last two decades without help?”

“I assume there was more than a little help during that first decade.”

“That’s what you think. I was a super independent toddler.”

Spider-Man tips his head back and laughs, but that laugh is quickly squashed with a cough. “Sure you were.”

“Is there a reason you’re escorting me, Spider-Man?” you ask.

“No. I– I recognised you, I thought I’d say hi.”

“Hi, Spider-Man.”

“Hi.”

“Can I ask you something? Do you work?”

Spider-Man stammers again, “I– yeah. I work. Freelance, mostly.”

“I was wondering how you fit all the crime fighting into your life, is all. University is tough enough.” You let the wind bat your scarf off of your shoulder. “I couldn’t do what you do.”

“Yeah, you could.”

He sounds sure.

“How would you know?” you ask. “Maybe I’m awful when you’re not walking me around. I hate New York. I hate people.”

“No, you don’t. You’re not awful. Don’t ask me how I know, ‘cos I just know.”

You try not to look at him. If you look at him, you’re gonna smile at him like he hung the moon. “Well, tonight I’m going to be dreadfully selfish. My friend said he’d buy my movie ticket and take me out for dinner, a real dinner, the mac and cheese with imitation lobster at Benny’s. Have you tried that?”

Spider-Man takes a big step. “Tonight?” he asks.

“Yep, tonight. That’s where I’m going, the Cinemart.” You frown at his hand pressing into his stomach. “Are you okay? You look like you’re gonna throw up.”

“I can hear– something. Someone’s crying. I gotta go, okay? Have fun at the movies, okay?” He throws his arm up, a silken web shooting from his wrist to the third floor of an apartment complex. “Bye!” he shouts, taking a running jump to the apartment, using his web as an anchor. He flings himself over the roof.

Woah, you think, warmth filling your cold cheeks, the tip of your nose. He’s lithe.

Peter arrives ten minutes late for the movie, which is half an hour later than you’d agreed to meet.

“Sorry!” he shouts, breathless as he grabs your hands. “God, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. You should beat me up. I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck happened?” you ask, not particularly angry, only relieved to see him with enough time to still catch the movie. “You’re sweating like crazy, your hair’s wet.”

“I ran all the way here, Jesus, do I smell bad? Don’t answer that. Fuck, do we have time?”

You usher Peter inside. He pays for the tickets with hands shaking and you attempt to wipe the sweat from his forehead with your sleeve. “You could’ve called me,” you say, content to let him grab you by the arm and race you to the screen doors, “we could’ve caught the next one. Why were you so late, anyways? Did you forget?”

“Forget about my favourite girl? How could I?” He elbows open the doors to let you enter first. “Now shh,” he whispers, “find the seats, don’t miss the trailers. You love them.”

“You love them–”

“I’ll get popcorn,” he promises, letting the door close between you.

You’re tempted to follow, fingers an inch from the handle.

You turn away and rush to find your seats. Hopefully, the popcorn line is ten blocks long, and he spends the night punished for his wrongdoing. My favourite girl. You laugh nervously into your hand.

—

Winter

Spider-Man finds you at least once a week for the next few weeks. He even brings you an umbrella one time, stars on the handle, asking you rather politely to go home. He offers to buy you a hot dog as you’re walking past the stand, takes you on a shortcut to the convenience store, and helps you get a piece of gum off of your shoe with a leaf and a scared scream. He’s friendly, and you’re getting used to his company.

One night, you’re almost home from Trader Joe’s, racing in the pouring rain when a familiar voice calls out, “Hey! Running girl! Wait a second!”

Him, you think, as ridiculous as it sounds. You don’t know his name, but Spider-Man’s a sunny surprise in a shitty, wet winter, and you turn to the sound with a grin.

He jogs toward you.

You feel the world pause, right in the centre of your throat. All the air gets sucked out of you.

“Hey, what are you doing out here? Did you get my texts?”

You blink as fat rain lands on your face.

“You okay?” Peter asks, Peter, in a navy hoodie turning black in the rain and a brown corduroy jacket. It’s sodden, hanging heavily around his shoulders. “Come on, let’s go,” —he takes your hand and pulls until you begin to speed walk beside him— “it’s freezing!”

“Peter–”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Peter, what are you doing here?” you ask, your voice an echo as he drags you into the foyer of your apartment building.

Rain hammers the door as he closes it, the windows, the foyer too dark to see properly.

“I wanted to see you. Is that allowed?”

“No.”

Peter takes your hand. You look down at it, and he looks down in tandem, and it is decidedly a non-platonic move. “No?” he asks, a hair’s width from murmuring.

“Shit, my groceries are soaked.”

“It’s all snacks, it’s fine,” he says, pulling you to the stairs.

You rush up the steps together to your floor. Peter takes your key when you offer it, your own fingers too stiff to manage it by yourself, and he holds the door open for you again to let you in.

Your apartment is a ragtag assortment to match the one next door, old wooden furniture wheeled from the street corners they were left on, thrifted homeward and heavy blankets everywhere you look. You almost slip getting out of your shoes. Peter steadies you with a firm hand. He shrugs out of his coat and hangs it on the hook, prying the damp hoodie over his head and exposing a solid length of back that trips your heart as you do the same.

“Sorry I didn’t ask,” Peter says.

“What, to come over? It’s fine. I like you being here, you know that.”

All your favourite days were spent here or at Peter’s house, in beds, on sofas, his hair tickling your neck as credits run down the TV and his breath evens to a light snore. You try to settle down with him, changing into dry clothes, his spare stuff left at the bottom of your wardrobe for his next inevitable impromptu visit. You turn on the TV, letting him gather you into his side with more familiarity than ever. Rain lays its fingertips on your window and draws lazy lines behind half-turned blinds. You rest on the arm and watch Peter watch the movie, answering his occasional, “You okay?” with a meagre nod.

“What’s wrong?” he asks eventually. “You’re so quiet.”

Your hand over your mouth, you part your marriage and pinky finger, marriage at the corner, pinky pressed to your bottom lip, the flesh chapped by a season of frigid winds and long walks. “‘M thinking,” you say.

“About?”

About the first night in your new apartment. You got the apartment a couple of weeks before the start of ESU. Not particularly close to the university but close to Peter, your best, nicest friend. You met in your second year of High School, before Peter got contacts, ‘cos he was good at taking photographs and you were in charge of the school newspapers media sourcing. You used to wait for Peter to show up ten minutes late like clockwork, every week. And every week he’d barge into the club room and say, “Fuck, I’m sorry, my last class is on the other side of the building,” until it turned into its own joke.

Three years later, you got your apartment, and Peter insisted you throw a housewarming party even if he was the only person invited.

“Fuck,” he’d said, ten minutes late, a cake in one hand and a whicker basket the other, “sorry. My last class is on–”

But he didn’t finish. You’d laughed so hard with relief at the reference that he never got the chance. Peter remembered your very first inside joke, because Peter wasn’t about to go off to ESU and meet new friends and forget you.

But Peter’s been distant for a while now, because Peter’s Spider-Man.

“Do you remember,” you say, not willing to share the whole truth, “when you joined the school newspaper to be the official photographer, and you taught me the rule of thirds?”

“So you didn’t need me,” he says.

“I was just thinking about it. We ran that newspaper like the Navy.”

Peter holds your gaze. “Is that really what you were thinking about?”

“Just funny,” you murmur, dropping your hand in your lap and breaking his stare. “So much has changed.”

“Not that much.”

“Not for me, no.”

Peter gets a look in his eyes you know well. He’s found a crack in you and he’s gonna smooth it over until you feel better. You’re expecting his soft tone, his loving smile, but you’re not expecting the way he pulls you in —you’d slipped away from him as the evening went on, but Peter erases every millimetre of space as he slides his arm under your lower back and ushers you into his side. You hold your breath as he hugs you, as he looks down at you. It’s really like he loves you, the line between platonic and romantic a blur. He’s never looked at you like this before.

“I don’t want you to change,” he whispers.

“I want to catch up with you,” you whisper back.

“Catch up with me? We’re in the exact same place, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know, are we?”

Peter hugs you closer, squishing your head down against his jaw as he rubs your shoulder. “Of course we are.”

Peter… What is he doing?

You let yourself relax against him.

“You do change,” he whispers, an utterance of sound to calm that awful bruise he gave you all those months ago, “you change every day, but you don’t need to try.”

“I just… feel like everyone around me is…” You shake your head. “Everyone’s so smart, and they know what they’re doing, or they’re– they’re special. I don’t know anything. So I guess lately I’ve been thinking about that, and then you–”

“What?”

You can say it out loud. You could.

“Peter, you’re…”

“I’m what?” he asks.

His fingers glide down the length of your arm and up again.

If you're wrong, he’ll laugh. And if you’re right, he might– might stop touching you. Your head feels so heavy, and his touch feels like it’s gonna put you to sleep.

He’s Spider-Man.

It makes sense. Who else could have a good enough heart to do that? Of course it’s Peter. It explains so much about him, about Peter and Spider-Man both. Why Peter is suddenly firmer, lighter on his feet, why he can help you move a wardrobe up two flights of stairs without complaint; why Spider-Man is so kind to you, why he knows where to find you, why he rolls his words around just like Pete.

Spider-Man said there are reasons he wears his mask. And Peter doesn’t tell you much, but you trust him.

You won’t make him say anything, you decide. Not now.

You curl your arm over his stomach hesitantly, smiling into his shirt as he hugs you tighter.

“I was thinking about you,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“You’re quieter lately. I know you’re having a hard time right now, okay? You don’t have to tell me. I’m here for you whenever you need me.”

“Yeah?” you ask.

“You used to sit on my porch when you knew May wouldn’t be home to make sure I wasn’t alone.” Peter’s breath is warm on your forehead. “I don’t know what you’re worried about being, but I’m with you,” he says, “‘n nothing is gonna change that.”

Peter isn’t as far away as you thought.

“Thank you,” you say.

He kisses your forehead softly. Your whole world goes amber. He brings his hand to your cheek, the thought of him tipping your head back sudden and heart-racing, but Peter only holds you. You lose count of how many minutes you spend cupped in his hand.

“Can I stay over tonight?” he utters, barely audible under the sound of the battering rain.

“Yeah, please.”

His thumb strokes your cheek.

—

Two switches flip at once, that night. Peter is suddenly as tactile as you’ve craved, and Spider-Man disappears.

He’s alive and well, as evidenced by Peter’s continued survival and presence in your life, but Spider-Man doesn’t drop in on your nightly walks.

You take less of them lately, feeling better in yourself. Your spirits are certainly lifted by Peter’s increasing affection, but now that you know he’s Spider-Man you were waiting to see him in spandex to mess with his head. Nothing mean, but you would’ve liked to pick at his secret identity, toy with him like you know he’d do to you. After all, he’s been trailing you for weeks and getting to know you. Peter already knows you. Plus, you told Spider-Man secrets not meant for Peter Parker’s ears.

You find it hard to be angry with him. A thread of it remains whenever you remember his deception, but mostly you worry about him. Peter’s out every night until who knows what hour fighting crime. There are guns. He could get shot, and he doesn’t seem scared. You end up watching videos on the internet of the night he ran to Oscorp, when he fought Connors’ and got that huge gash in his leg. His leg is soiled deep red with blood but banded in white webbing. He limps as he races across a rooftop, the recording shaky yet high definition.

It’s not nice to see Peter in pain. You cling to what he’d said, how he wasn’t scared, but not being scared doesn’t mean he wasn’t hurting.

You chew the tip of a finger and click on a different video. Your computer monitor bears heat, the tower whirring by your thigh. Your eyes burn, another hour sitting in the same seat, sick with worry. You don’t mind when Peter doesn’t answer your texts anymore. You didn’t mind so much before, just terrified of becoming an irrelevance in his life and lonely, too, maybe a little hurt, but never worried for his safety. Now when Peter doesn’t text you back you convince yourself that he’s been hurt, or that he’s swinging across New York City about to risk his life.

It’s not a good way to live. You can’t stop giving into it, is all.

In the next video, Spider-Man sits on a billboard with a can of coke in hand. He doesn’t lift his mask, seemingly aware of his watcher. You laugh as he angles his head down, suspicion in his tight shoulders. He relaxes when he sees whoever it is recording.

“Hey,” he says, “you all right?”

“Should you be up there?” the person recording shouts.

“I’m fine up here!”

“Are you really Spider-Man?”

“Sure am.”

“Are you single?”

Peter laughs like crazy. How you didn’t know it was him before is a mystery —it couldn’t sound more like him. “I’ve got my eye on someone!” he says, sounding younger for it, the character voice he enacts when he’s Spider-Man lost to a good mood.

Your phone rings in the back pocket of your jeans. You wriggle it out, nonplussed to find Peter himself on your screen. You click the green answer button.

“Hello?” Peter asks.

You bring the phone snug to your ear. “Hey, Peter.”

“Hi, are you busy?”

“Not really.”

“Do you wanna come over? I know it’s late. Come stay the night and tomorrow we’ll go out for breakfast.”

“Is Aunt May okay with that?”

“She’s staring at me right now shaking her head, but I’m in trouble for something. May, can she come over, is that allowed?”

“She’s always allowed as long as you keep the door open.”

You laugh under your breath at May’s begrudging answer. “Are you sure she’s alright with it?” you ask softly. “I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You never, ever could be. I’m coming to your place and we’ll walk over together. Did you eat dinner?”

“Not yet, but–”

“Okay, I’ll make you something when you get here. I’ll meet you at the door. Twenty minutes?”

“I have to shower first.”

“Twenty five?”

You choke on a laugh, a weird bubbly thing you’re not used to. Peter laughs on the other side of the phone. “How about I’ll see you at seven?”

“It’s a date,” he says.

“Mm, put it in your calendar, Parker.”

—

Peter waits for you at the door like he promised. He frowns at your still-wet face as he slips your backpack from your shoulder, throwing it over his own. “You’re gonna get sick.”

“I‘ll dry fast,” you say. “I took too long finding my pyjamas.”

“I have stuff you can wear. Probably have your sweatpants somewhere, the grey ones.” Peter pulls you forward and wipes your tacky face. “I would’ve waited,” he says.

“It’s fine.“

“It’s not fine. Are you cold?”

“Pete, it’s fine.”

“You always remind me of my Uncle Ben when you call me Pete,” he laughs, “super stern.”

“I’m not stern. Look, take me home, please, I’m cold.”

“You said it wasn’t cold!”

“It’s not, I’m just damp–” Peter cuts you off as he grabs you, sudden and tight, arms around you and rubbing the lengths of your back through your coat. “Handsy!”

“You like it,” he jokes back, his playful warming turning into a hug. You smile, hiding your face in his neck for a few moments.

“I don’t like it,” you lie.

“Okay, you don’t like it, and I’m sorry.” Peter gives you a last hug and pulls away. “Now let’s go. I gotta feed you before midnight.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Apparently, nothing is.”

Peter links your arms together. By the time you get to his house, you’ve fallen away from each other naturally. May is in the hallway when you climb through the door, an empty laundry basket in her hands.

“I see Peter hasn’t won this argument yet,” you say in way of greeting. Peter’s desperate to do his own laundry now he’s getting older. May won’t let him.

“No, he hasn’t.” She looks you up and down. “It’s nice to see you, honey. And in one piece! Peter tells me you’ve been walking a lot, and I mean, in this city? Can’t you buy a treadmill?” she asks.

“May!” Peter says, startled.

“I like walking, I like the air,” you say.

“Can’t exactly call it fresh,” May says.

“No, but it’s alright. It helps me think.”

“Is everything okay?” May asks, putting her hand on her hip.

“Of course.” You smile at her genuinely. “I think starting college was too much for me? It was hard. But things are settling now, I don’t know what Peter told you, but I’m not walking a lot anymore. You know, not more than necessary.”

She softens her disapproving. “Good, honey. That’s good. Peter’s gonna make you some dinner now, right?”

“Yeah, Aunt May, I’m gonna make dinner,” Peter sighs, pulling a leg up to take off his shoes.

Peter shouldn’t really know that you’ve been walking. He might see you coming back from Trader Joe’s or the bodega on his way to your apartment, but you haven’t mentioned any of your longer excursions, and everybody in Queens has to walk. That’s information he wouldn’t know without Spider-Man.

He seems to be hoping you won’t realise, changing the subject to the frankly killer grilled cheese and tomato soup that he’s about to make you, and pushing you into a chair at the table. “Warm up,” he says near the back of your head, forcing a wave of shivers down your arms.

He makes soup in one pan, grilled cheese in the other, two for him and two for you. Peter’s a good eater, and he encourages the same from you, setting a big bowl of tomato soup (from the can, splash of fresh cream) down in front of you with the grilled cheese on a plate between you. You eat it in too-hot bites and try not to get caught looking at him. He does the same, but when he catches you, or when you catch him, he holds your eye and smiles.

“I can do the dishes,” you say. You might need a breather.

“Are you kidding? I’m gonna rinse them, put them in the dishwasher.” Peter stands and feels your forehead with his hand. “Warmer. Good job.”

You shrug away from his hand. “Loser.”

“Concerned friend.”

“Handsy loser.”

”Shut up,” he mumbles.

As flustered as you’ve ever seen, Peter takes your empty dishes to the kitchen. When he’s done rinsing them off you follow him upstairs to his bedroom and tuck your backpack under his bed.

You look down at your socks. Peter’s room is on the smaller side, but it’s never been as startlingly small as it is when Peter’s socked feet align with yours, toe to toe. Quick recovery time, this boy.

“There’s chips and stuff on my desk. Or I could run to 91st for some ice cream sandwiches if you want something sweet,” he says.

You lift your eyes, tilt your head up just a touch, not wanting him to think you’re in his space no matter how strange that might be, considering he chose to stand there. “I’m all right. Did you want ice cream? We can go if you want to, but if you want to go ’cos you think I do then I’m fine.”

“That’s such a long answer,” he says, draping an arm over your shoulder. “You don’t have to say all of that, just tell me no.”

“I don’t want ice cream.”

“Wasn’t that easy?” he asks.

“Well, no, it wasn’t. Saying no to you is like saying no to a puppy.”

“Because I’m adorable?”

“Persistent.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” He drapes the other arm over you. The soap he used at the kitchen sink lingers on his hands.

“Peter…?” you murmur.

“What?” he murmurs back.

You touch a knuckle to his chest. “This– You…” Every quelled thought rushes to the surface at once —Peter doesn’t like you as you desire, how could he, you aren’t beautiful like he is, aren’t smart, aren’t brave, no exceptional kindness or goodness to mark you enough for him. It’s why his being with Gwen didn’t hurt; she made sense. And for months now you’ve wondered what it is that made him struggle to be with her. And sometimes, foolishly, you wondered if it was you. But it’s not you, it’s never you, and whatever Peter’s trying to do now–

“Hey, you okay?” he asks, taking your face into his hand.

“What are you doing?”

“What?” He pushes his hand back to hold your nape, thumb under your ear. “I can’t hear you.”

You raise your voice. “Why did you invite me over tonight?”

“‘Cos I missed you?”

“I used to think you didn’t miss me at all.”

Peter winces, hurt. “How could you think that? Of course I miss you. What you said to May, about college being hard? It’s like that for me too, okay? I miss you all the time.”

You bite the inside of your bottom lip. “…College isn’t hard for you.”

“It’s not easy.” He frowns, the fallen angel, his lips an unsure brushstroke. “What’s wrong? Did I say the wrong thing?”

You’re being wretched, you know, saying it isn’t hard for him. “You didn’t. Really, you didn’t.”

“But why are you upset?” he implores, dark eyes darker as his eyebrows tug together.

“I’m not–”

“You are. It’s okay, you can be upset. I just want you to feel better, you know that?” He settles his hands at the tops of your arms. Less intimate, but something warm remains. “Even if it takes a long time.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

“How would you know?” you finally ask.

Peter stares at you.

“I know you,” he says carefully, “and I know you aren’t struggling like you were, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or that you have to be a hundred percent better now.”

“I didn’t realise that I was,” you say, licking your lips, “‘til now. I didn’t get that it was on the surface.”

Peter pulls you in for a gentle hug. “I’m here for you forever, and I’ll make it up to you for not noticing sooner,” he says, scrunching your shirt in his hand.

After the hug, he tells you to change and make yourself comfortable while he showers. So you put on your pyjamas and climb into Peter’s bed, head pounding as though all your energy was stolen in a fell swoop. You press your nose to his pillow and arm wrapped around his comforter, gathering it into a Peter sized lump. The shower pump whines against the shared wall.

Things aren’t meant to be like this. You thought Peter touching you —holding you— was the deepest of your desires, but you feel now exactly as you had before he started blurring the line, needing Peter to kiss you so badly it becomes its own kind of nausea. Why are you still acting like it’s an impossibility?

When he comes back, you’ll apologise. He hasn’t done anything wrong. He does keep a secret, but don’t you keep one too? He’s Spider-Man. You’ve had deep, complicated feelings for him for months. They are secrets of equal magnitude, and are, more apparently, badly kept.

You wish you could fall asleep. Your heart ticks in agitation.

Peter returns as perturbed as earlier.

“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?” he asks, raking a hand through his hair. A towel hangs around his neck.

“I’m sorry for being weird.”

“You’re not weird,” Peter says, bringing the towel to his hair to scrub ruthlessly.

“It’s just ‘cos things have been different between us.” And, you try to say, that scares me no matter how bad I wanted it. because you’re not just Peter anymore, you’re Spider-Man. I’m only me, and I can’t do anything to protect you.

Peter gives his hair a long scrub before draping the towel on his desk chair. He rakes it messily into place and sits himself at the end of the bed. You sit up.

“Yeah, they have been. Good different?” he asks hesitantly.

“I think so,” you say, quiet again.

“That’s what I thought.”

“I don’t want you to feel like I don’t want to be here. I just worry about you.”

Peter uses his hands to get higher up the bed. “Don’t worry about me,” he says, “Jesus, please don’t. That’s the last thing I want from you, I hate when people worry about me.”

You curl into the lump of comforter you’d made. Peter lets himself rest beside you, his back to the bedroom wall, tens of Polaroids above him shining with the light of the hallway and his orange-bulbed lamp. His skin is glowing like it’s golden hour, dashes of topaz in his eyes, his Cupid’s bow deep. How would it feel to lean forward and kiss him? To catch his Cupid's bow under your lips?

You brush a damp curl tangled in another onto his forehead.

You lay there for a little while without talking, listening to the sound of the washing machine as it cycles downstairs.

“Am I going too fast?” Peter murmurs.

You press your lips together, shaking your head minutely.

“Is it something else?”

You don’t move.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks.

“No.”

Peter rewards you with a smile, his hand on your arm. “Alright. Let me get this blanket on you the right way. You’re still cold.”

You resent the loss of a shape to hold when Peter slips down beside you and wrangles the comforter flat again, spreading it out over you both, his hand under the blankets. His knuckles brush your thigh.

He takes a deep breath before turning and wrapping his arm over your stomach, asking softly, “Is this alright?”

“Yeah.”

He gives you a look and then lifts his head to slot his nose against your temple. “Please don’t take this in a way that I don’t mean it, but sometimes you think about things so much I worry you’re gonna get stuck in your head forever.”

“I like thinking.”

“I hate it,” he says quickly, a fervent, flirting cadence to his otherwise dulcet tone, “we should never do it ever again.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Would you? For me?”

You laugh into his shirt, feeling the warmth of your breath on your own nose. “I’ll do my best.”

“Good. I’d miss you too much if you got lost in that nice head of yours.”

You relax under his arm. You aren’t sure what all the fuss was about now that he's hugging you. “I’d miss you too.”

May comes up the stairs about an hour later. To her credit, she doesn’t flinch when she finds you and Peter smushed together watching a DVD on his old TV. He’s holding your arm, and you’re snoozing on his shoulder, half-aware of the world, fully aware of his nice smells and the shapes of his arms.

“Door open,” she says.

“Not that either of us want it closed, May, but we’re adults.”

“Not while I’m still washing your clothes, you’re not.”

He snorts. “Goodnight, Aunt May. The door isn’t gonna close, I promise.”

“I know that,” she says, scornful in her pride. “You’re a good boy.” She lightens. “Things are going okay?”

Peter covers your ear. “Goodnight, Aunt May.”

”I have half a mind to never listen to you again. You talk my ear off and I can’t ask a simple question?”

“I love you,” Peter sing-songs.

“I love you, Peter,” she says. “Don’t smother the girl.”

“I won’t smother her. It’s in my best interest that she survives the night. She’s buying my breakfast tomorrow.”

“Peter Parker.”

“I’m kidding,” he whispers, petting your cheek absentmindedly. “Just messing with you, May.”

You smile and curl further into his arms. His voice is like the sun, even when he whispers.

—

To your surprise, Spider-Man comes to find you after class one evening. A guest lecturer had talked to your oncology class about click chemistry and other molecular therapies against cancer, and the zine book she’d given you is burning a hole in your pocket. Peter is going to love it.

You pull it out and pause beside a bench and a silver trash can, the day grey but thankfully without rain. The pages of your little book whip forcefully in the wind. It’s chemistry, sure, but it’s biology too, wrapping your and Peter’s interests up neatly. If it weren’t for Peter you doubt you’d love science as much as you do. He’s always been good at it, but since you started college he's been a genius. Watching him grow has encouraged you to work harder, and understanding the material is satisfying, if draining. You take a photo of the middle most pages and tuck the book away, writing a quick text to Peter to send with it.

Look! it says, LEGO cancer treatment!!

The moment you press send a beep chimes from somewhere close behind you, all too familiar. You turn to the source but find nobody you know waiting. Coincidence, you think, shaking yourself and beginning the trek to the subway.

But then you hear the tell tale splat and thwick of Spider-Man’s webbing.

You wait until you’re at the alleyway between Porto’s Bakery and the key cutting shop and turn down to stop by one of the dumpsters.

“Spider-Man?” you ask, shoulders tensed in case it’s not who you think.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

You gasp as he hops down in front of you, his suit shiny with its dark web-pattern caught by the grey sunshine passing through the clouds overhead. “Shit, don’t break your ankles.”

“My ankles?” He laughs. He sounds so much like Peter that you can only laugh with him. What an idiot he is for thinking you don’t know; what a fool you’d been for falling for his put upon tenor. “They’re fine. What would be wrong with my ankles?”

“You just dropped down twenty feet!”

“It’s more like thirty, and I’m fine. You understand the super part of superhero, don’t you?”

“Who said you’re a superhero?”

“Nice. What are you doing down here?”

“I was testing my theory. You’re following me.”

“No, I’m visiting you, it’s very different,” he says confidently.

“You haven’t come to see me for weeks.”

“Yes, well, I–” Spider-Peter crosses his arms across his chest. “Hey, you’re the one who told me to take a day off.”

“I did tell you to take a day off. It’s not nice thinking about you trying to save the world every single night. That’s a lot of responsibility for one person to have.”

“But it’s my responsibility,” he says easily. “No point in a beautiful girl like you wasting her time worrying about it. I have to do it, and I don’t mind it.”

“Do you flirt with every girl you meet out here in the city?” you ask, cheeks hot.

“No,” he says, fondness evident even through the mask, “just you.”

“Do you wanna walk me home? I was gonna take the subway, but it’s not that far.”

Spider-Man nods. “Yeah, I’ll walk you back.”

He doesn’t hide that he knows the way very well. He takes preemptive turns, crosses roads without you telling him to go forward. You can’t believe him. Smartest guy at Midtown High and he can’t pretend to save his life.

“Are you having a good semester?” he asks.

“It’s getting better. I’m glad I stuck with it. I love biology, it’s so fucking hard. I used to think that was a bad thing, but it makes it cooler now. Like, it’s not something everyone understands.” You give him a look, and you give into temptation. “My best friend got me into all this stuff. I used to think math was hopeless and science was for dorks.”

“It’s definitely for dorks.”

“Right, but I love being one.” You offer a useless secret. “I like to think that it’s why we’re such great friends.”

“Me and you?” Spider-Man asks hoarsely.

“Me and Peter.” You elbow him without force. “Why, do you like science?”

“I love it…”

“You know, I really like you, Spider-Man. I feel like we’ve been friends for a long time.” You’re teasing poor Peter.

He doesn’t speak for a while. He stops walking, but you take a few steps without him. When you realise he’s stopped, you turn back to see him.

Peter’s gone so tense you could strike him with a flint and catch a spark. It’s the same way Peter looked at you when he told you about his Uncle, a truth he didn’t want to be true. Seeing it throws a spanner in the works of all your teasing: you’d meant to wind him up, not make him panic.

“What’s wrong?” you ask. “Can you hear something?”

“No, it’s not that…” He’s masked, but you know him well enough to understand why he’s stopped.

“It’s okay,” you say.

“It’s not, actually.”

“Spider-Man.” You take a step toward him. “It’s fine.”

He presses his hands to his stomach. The sun is setting early, and in an hour, the dark will eat up New York and leave it in a blistering cold. “Do you remember when we first met, the second time, we swapped secrets?”

“Yeah, I remember. Useless secret for another. I told you I hated my major. It’s not true anymore, obviously. I was having a bad time.”

“I know you were,” he says, emphasis on know, like it’s a different word entirely.

“But meeting you really helped. If it weren’t for you, for Peter,” —you give him a searching look— “I wouldn’t feel better at all.”

“It wasn’t his fault?” he asks. “He was your friend, and you were lonely.”

“No–”

“He didn’t know what was going on with you, he didn’t have a clue. You hurt yourself and you felt like you couldn’t tell anybody, and I know it wasn’t an accident, so what was his excuse?” His voice burns with anger. “It’s his fault.”

“Of course it wasn’t your fault. Is that what you think?” You shake your head, panicked by the bone-deep self loathing in his voice, his shameful dropped head. “Yes, I was lonely, I am lonely, I don’t know many people and I– I– I hurt myself, and it wasn’t as accidental as I thought it was, but why would that be your fault?”

“Peter’s fault,” he says, though his head is lifted now, and he doesn’t bother enthusing it with much gusto.

“Peter, none of it was your fault.” You cringe in your embarrassment, thinking Fuck, don’t let me ruin this. “I was in a weird way, and yes, I was lonely, and I really liked you more than I should have. You didn't want me and that wasn’t your fault, that’s just how it was, I tried not to let it get to me, just there were a lot of things weighing on me at once, but it really wasn’t as bad as you think it was and it wasn’t your fault.”

“I wasn’t there for you,” he says. “And I’ve been lying to you for a long time.”

“You couldn’t tell me, right? Spider-Man is your secret for a reason.”

“…I didn’t even know you were lonely until you told him. He was a stranger.”

You hold your hands behind your back. “Well, he was a familiar one.”

Peter reaches out as though wanting to touch you, but your arms aren’t in his reach. “It’s not because I didn’t want you.”

“Peter,” you say, squirming.

He steps back.

“I have to go,” he says.

“What?”

“I have to– I don’t want to go,” he says earnestly, “sweetheart, I can hear someone calling out, I have to go. But I’ll come back, I’ll– I’ll come back,” he promises.

And with a sudden lift of his arm, Peter pulls himself up the side of a building and disappears, leaving you whiplashed on the sidewalk, the sun setting just out of view.

—

You fall asleep that night waiting for Peter. When you wake up, 5AM, eyes aching, he isn’t there. You check your phone but he hasn’t texted. You check the Bugle and Spider-Man hasn’t been seen.

You aren’t sure what to think. He sounded sincere to the fullest extent when he said he’d come back, but he didn’t, not ten minutes later, not twenty. You made excuses and you went home before it got too dark to see the street, sat on the couch rehearsing what you’d say. How could Peter think your unhappiness was his fault? Why does he always put the entire world on his shoulders?

Selfishly, you worried what it all meant for his lazy touches. Would he want to curl up into bed with you again now he knows what it means to you? It’s different for him. It isn’t like he’s in love with you… you’d just thought maybe he could be. That this was falling in love, real love, not the unrequited ache you’d suffered before.

But maybe you got everything wrong. All of it. It wouldn't be the first time.

—

You and Peter found The Moroccan Mode in your senior year at Midtown. The school library was small and you were sick of being underfoot at home. When you started at ESU, you explored the on campus coffeehouse, the Coffee Bean, but it was crowded, and you’d found yourself attached to the Mode’s beautiful tiling, blues and topaz and platinum golds, its heavy, oiled wooden furniture, stained glass lampshades and the case full of lemony treats. The coffee here is better than anywhere else, but the best part out of everything is that it’s your secret. Barely anybody comes to the Mode on purpose.

You hide in a far corner with a book and an empty cup of decaf coffee, a slice of meskouta on the table untouched. Decaf because caffeine felt a terrible idea, meskouta untouched because you can’t stomach the smell. You push it to the opposite end of the table, considering another cup of coffee instead. It’s served slightly too hot, and will still be warm when it gets to your chest.

The sunshine is creeping in slowly. It feels like the first time you’ve seen it in months, warming rays kissing your fingers and lining the walls. You turn a page, turn your wrist, let the sun warm the scar you gave yourself those few months ago, when everything felt too big for you.

Looking back, it was too big. Maybe soon you’ll be ready to talk about it.

The author in your book is talking about bees. They can fly up to 15 miles per hour. They make short, fast motions from front to back, a rocking motion. Asian giant hornets can go even faster despite their increased mass. They consider humans running provocation. If you see a giant hornet, you’re supposed to lay down to avoid being stung.

You put your face in your hand. Next year, you’ll avoid the insect-based electives.

Across the cafe, the bell at the top of the door rings. Laughter falls through it, a couple passing by. The register clashes open. A minute later it closes.

You don’t raise your head when footsteps draw near. A plate is placed on the table, pushed across to you, stopping just shy of your coffee.

“Did you eat breakfast?” Peter asks quietly.

His voice is gentle, but hoarse.

You tense.

“Are you okay?” he asks, not waiting for your answer to either question. “You don’t look like yourself. Your eyes are red.”

You lift your head. Wet with the beginnings of tears, you see Peter through an astigmatic blur.

“What are you reading?” He frowns at you. “Please don’t cry.”

You shake your head. Your smile is all odd, nothing like his, no inherent warmth despite your best effort. “I’m okay.”

He nudges you across the booth seat and sits beside you. His arm settles behind your shoulders. He smells like smoke and soap, an acrid scent barely hidden. “Can you tell me you didn’t wait long for me?”

“Ten minutes,” you lie.

“Okay. I’m sorry. There was a fire.” He rubs your arm where he’s holding you. “I’m sorry.”

“Will you go half?” you ask, nodding to the sandwich he’s brought you. It’s tough sourdough bread, brown with white flour on the crusts and leafy greens poking between the slices. You and Peter complain about the price. You’ve never had one. He passes you the bigger half, holding the other in his hand without eating.

“I know you’re hungry,” you say, tapping his elbow, “just eat.”

You eat your sandwiches. Now that Peter’s here, you don’t feel so sick —he’s not upset with you. The dull pang of an empty stomach won’t be ignored.

Peter puts his sandwich down, which is crazy, and wipes his fingers on the plates napkin. You’ve never seen him stop before he’s done.

“It was in the apartments on Vernon. I– I think I almost died, the smoke was everywhere.”

You choke around a crust, thrusting the rest of your half onto the plate. “Are you hurt?” you ask, coughing.

He moves his head from side to side, not a shake, but a slow no. “How long have you known it was me?” he asks, curling his hand behind your back again, fingers spread over your shoulder blade, a fingertip on your neck.

You savour his touch, but you give in to your apprehension and stare at his chest. “The night you caught me outside in the rain in November. You called me ‘running girl’. The way you said it, you sounded exactly like him. I turned around expecting,” —you whisper, weary of the quiet cafe— “Spider-Man, and I realised it’s him that sounds like you. That he is you.”

“Was that disappointing?”

“Peter, you’re, like, my favourite person in the world,” you whisper fervently, your smile making it light. You laugh. “Why would that be disappointing?”

“I thought maybe you think he’s cooler than me.”

“He is cooler than you, Peter.” You laugh again, pleased when he scoffs and draws you nearer. “I guess you’re the same person, right? So he’s just as cool as you are. But why would being cool matter to me? You know I like you.”

“You flirted pretty heavily with Spider-Man.”

“Well, he flirted with me first.”

You chance a look at his face. From that moment you can’t look away, not from Peter. You like when he wears that darkness in his eyes, the hint of his rarer side so uncommonly seen, but you love this most of all, Peter like your best memory, the way he’s looking at you now a picture perfect copy of that moment in a swimming pool in Manhattan with cracked tile under your feet. His arms heavy on your shoulders. You didn’t get it then, but you’re starting to understand now.

“I’ve made a mess of everything,” he says softly, the trail his hand makes to the small of your back leaving a wake of goosebumps. “I haven’t been honest with you.”

“I haven’t, either.”

“I want to ask you for something,” Peter says, a fingertip trailing back up. He smiles when you shiver, not teasing, just loving. “You can say no.”

“You’re hard to say no to.”

“I need you to talk to me more,” —and here he goes, Peter Parker, flirting and sweet-talking like his life depends on it, his face inching down into your space— “not just because I love your voice, or because you think so much I’m scared you’ll get lost, but I need you to talk to me. We need to talk about real things.”

We do, you think morosely.

“It’s not your fault,” he adds, the hand that isn’t holding your back coming up to cup your cheek, “it’s mine. I was scared of telling you for stupid reasons, but I shouldn’t have let it be a secret for so long.”

“No, I doubt they’re stupid,” you murmur, following his hand as he attempts to move it to your ear. “It’s not easy to tell someone you’re a hero.”

His palm smells like smoke.

“That’s not the secret I meant,” he says.

You take his hand from your face. Peter looks down and begins pressing his fingers between yours, squeezing them together as his thumb runs over the back of your hand.

“So tell me.”

The sunshine bleeds onto his cheek. Dappled orange light turning slowly white as time stretches and the sun moves up through a murky sky. “You want to trade secrets again?” he asks.

“Please.”

“Okay. Okay, but I don’t have as many as you do,” he warns.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I don’t. It’s not a real secret, is it? I’ve been trying to show you for weeks, we…”

He tilts his head invitingly.

All those hand-holds and nights curled up in bed together. Am I going too fast? You know exactly what he means; it really isn’t a secret.

“I’ll go first,” he says, lowering his face to yours. You try not to close your eyes. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for weeks.” He closes his eyes so you follow, your breath not your own suddenly. You hold it. Let it go hastily. “What’s your secret?”

“Sometime I want you to kiss me so badly I can’t sleep. It makes me feel sick–”

“Sick?” he asks worriedly.

You touch the tip of your nose to his. “It’s like– like jealousy, but…”

“You have no one to be jealous of,” he says surely. He cups your cheek, and he asks, “Please, can I kiss you?”

You say, “Yes,” very, very quietly, but he hears it, and his smile couldn’t be more obvious as he closes the last of the distance between you to kiss you.

It isn’t the sort of kiss that kept you up at night. Peter doesn’t hook you in or tip your head back, he kisses gently, his hand coming to live on your cheek, where it cradles. It’s so warm you don’t know what to make of him beyond kissing him back —kissing his smile, though it’s catching. Kissing the line of his Cupid’s bow as he leans down.

“I’m sorry about everything,” he mumbles, nose flattened against yours.

You feel sunlight on your cheek. Squinting, you turn into his hand to peer outside at the sudden abundance of it. It’s still cold outside, but the Mode is warm, Peter’s hand warmer, and the sunshine is a welcome guest.

Peter drops his hand. “Oh, wow. December sun. Good thing it didn’t snow, we’d be blind.”

“I can’t be cold much longer,” you confess. “I’m sick of the shitty weather.”

“I can keep you warm.”

He smiles at you. His eyelashes tangle in the corners of his eyes, long and brown.

“Did you want my meskouta?” you ask.

Peter plants a fat kiss against your brow.

You let the sunshine warm your face. Two unfinished sandwich halves, a mouthful of coffee, and a round slice of meskouta, its flaky crumb and lemon drizzle shining on the table. You would ask Peter for his camera if you’d thought he brought it with him, to take a picture of your breakfast and the carved table underneath. You could turn it on Peter, say something cheesy. This is the moment you ruined our lives, you’d tease.

“You never told me you met Spider-Man, you know.”

You watch Peter lick the tip of his finger without shame. “They could make a novella of things I haven’t told you about,” you murmur wryly.

Peter takes a bite of meskouta, reaching for your knee under the table. He shakes your leg a little, as if to say, Well, we’ll work on that.

—

Spring

“Sorry!”

“No, it’s–”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m– shit!”

“–okay! All legs inside the ride?”

“I couldn’t find my purse–”

“You don’t need it!” Peter leans over the console to kiss your cheek. “You don’t have to rush.”

“Are you sure you can drive this thing?”

“Harry doesn’t mind.”

“I don’t mean the car, I mean, are you sure you can drive?”

“That’s not funny.”

You grin and dart across to kiss his cheek, too. “Nothing ever is with us.”

Peter grabs you behind the neck —which might sound rough, if he were capable of such a thing— and pulls you forward for a kiss you don’t have time for. “If we don’t check in,” —you begin, swiftly smothered by another press of his lips, his tongue a heat flirting with the seam of your lips— “by three, they said they won’t keep the room–” He clasps the back of your neck and smiles when your breath stutters. You squeeze your eyes closed, kiss him fiercely, and pull away, hand on his chest to restrain him. “And then we’ll have to drive home like losers.”

Peter sits back in the driver's seat unbothered. He fixes his hair, and he wipes his bottom lip with his knuckle. You’re rolling your eyes when he finally returns your gaze. “Sorry, am I the one who lost her purse?”

“Peter!”

“I can’t make us un-late,” he says, turning the key slowly, hands on the wheel but his eyes still flitting between your eyes and your lips.

“Alright,” you warn.

He reaches for your knee. “It’s a forty minute drive. You’re panicking over nothing.”

“It’s an hour.”

Your drive from Queens to Manhattan is entirely uneventful. You keep Peter’s hand hostage on your knee, your palm atop it, the other hand wrapped around his wrist, your conversation a juxtaposition, almost lackadaisical. Peter doesn’t question your clinging nor your lazy murmurings, rubbing a circle into your knee with his thumb from Forest Hill to Lenox Hill. There’s so much to do around Manhattan; you could visit MoMA, Central Park, The Empire State Building or Times Square, but you and Peter give it all a miss for the little known Manhattan Super 8.

It’s been a long time since you and Peter first visited. You took the bus out to Lenox Hill for a med-student tour neither of you particularly enjoyed, feeling out future careers. It’s not that Lenox Hill isn’t one of the most impressive medical facilities in New York (if not the northeastern USA), it’s that all the blood made him queasy, and you were panicking too much about the future to think it through. He got over his aversion to blood but chose the less hands-on science in the end, and you worked things through. You’re a little less scared of the future everyday.

You and Peter were supposed to get the bus straight back home for a sleepover, but one got cancelled, another delayed, and night closed in like two hands on your neck. Peter sensed your fear and emptied his wallet for a night in the Super 8.

The next morning it was beautifully sunny. The first day of summer that year, warm and golden. The pool wasn’t anything special but it was invitingly cool, blue and white tiles patterned like fish below; you clambered into the water in shorts and a tank top and Peter his boxers before a worker could see and stop you.

It was one of the best days of your life. When you told Peter about it last week, he’d looked at you peculiarly, said, Bub, you’re cute, and let you waste the afternoon recounting one of your more embarrassing pangs of longing. A few days later he told you to clear your calendar for the weekend, only spilling the beans on what he’d done when you’d curled over his lap, a hand threaded into the hair at the nape of his neck, murmuring, Tell me, tell me, tell me.

He’d hung his head over you and scrunched up his eyes. Cheater.

The best thing about having a boyfriend is that he always wants to listen to you. Peter was a good listener as a best friend, but now he has his act together and the secrets between you are never anything more than eating the last of the milk duds or not wanting to pee in front of him, he’s a treasure. There’s no feeling like having Peter pull you into his lap so he can ask about your day with his face buried in your neck, sniffing. Sometimes, when you text one another to meet up the next day, you’ll accidentally will the hours away babbling about school and life and things without reason. Peter has a list on his phone of your silliest tangents; blood oranges to the super moon, fries dipped in ice cream to the world record for kick flips done in five minutes. It’s like when you talk to one another, you can’t stop.

There are quiet moments. You wake up some mornings to find him awake already, an arm behind you, rubbing at your soft upper arm, fingertip displacing the fine hairs there and trailing circles as he reads. He bends the pages back and holds whatever novel he’s reading at the bottom of his stomach, as though making sure you can see the words clearly, even when you’re sleeping.

There are hectic, aching moments —vigilante boyfriends become blasé with their lives and precious faces. You’ve teetered on the edge of anxiety attacks trying to pick glass from his cheek with a tweezers, lamented over bruises that heal the next day. It’s easier when Peter’s careful, but Spider-Man isn’t careful. You ask him to take care of himself and he’s gentle with himself for a few days, but then someone needs saving from an armed burglar or a car swerves dangerously onto the sidewalk and he forgets.

He hadn’t patrolled last night in preparation for today.

“Did you know,” he says, pulling Harry’s borrowed car into a parking spot just in front of the Super 8 reception, “that today’s the last day of spring?”

“Already?”

“Tonight’s the June equinox.”

“Who told you that?”

“Aunt May. She said it’s time to get a summer job.”

You laugh loudly. “Our federal loans won’t last forever.”

“Harry’s gonna get me something, I think. Do you want to work with me? It could be fun.”

You nod emphatically. It’s barely a thought. “Obviously I want to. Does Oscorp pay well, do you think?”

Peter lets the engine go. The car turns off, engine ticking its last breath in the dash. “Better than the Bugle.”

You get your key from the reception and find your room upstairs, second floor. It’s not dirty nor exceptionally clean, no mould or damp but a strange smell in the bathroom. There’s a microwave with two mugs and a few sachets of instant coffee. Peter deems it the nicest motel he’s ever stayed in, laughing, crossing the room to its only window and pulling aside the curtain.

“There it is, sweetheart,” he says, wrapping his arm around you as you join him, “that’s what dreams are made of.”

The blue and white tiled pool. It hasn’t changed.

It’s about as hot as it’s going to get in June today, and, not knowing if it’ll rain tomorrow, you and Peter change into your swim suits and gather your towels. You wear flip flops and tangle your fingers, clanking and thumping down the rickety metal stairs to the pool. There’s nobody there, no lifeguard, no quests, and the pool is clean and cold when you dip your toes.

Peter eases in first. Towels in a heap at the end of a sun lounger, his shirt tumbling to the floor, Peter splashes in frontward and turns to face you as the water laps his ribs. “It’s cold,” he says, wading for your legs, which he hugs.

“I can feel it,” you say, the cool waters to your calves where you sit on the edge.

“You won’t come in and warm me up?” he asks.

You stroke a tendril of hair from his eyes. He attempts to kiss your fingers.

“I’m trying to prepare myself.”

“Mm, you have to get used to it.” He puts wet hands on your thighs, looking up imploringly until you lean down for a kiss. The fact that he’d want one still makes you dizzy. “Thank you,” he says.

“You’ll have to move.”

Peter steps back, a ripple of water ringing behind him, his hands raised. He slips them with ease under your arms and helps you down into the water, laughing at your shocked giggling —he’s so strong, the water so cold.

Peter doesn’t often show his strength. Never to intimidate, he prefers startling you helpfully. He’ll lift you when you want to reach something too tall, or raise the bed when you’re on his side to force you sideways.

“Oh, this is the perfect place to try the lift!” he says.

“How will I run?” you ask, letting your knees buckle, water rushing up to your neck.

Peter pulls you up. He touches you easily, and yet you get the sense that he’s precious with you, too. There’s devotion to be found in his hands and the specific way they cradle your back, drawing your chest to his. “I don’t need you to do a running start, sweetheart,” he says, tilting his head to the side, “I’ll just lift you.”

“Last time I laughed so much you dropped me.”

“Exactly, you laughed, and this is serious.”

The world isn’t mild here. Car horns beep and tyres crunch asphalt. You can hear children, and singing, and a walkie talkie somewhere in the Super 8’s parking lot. The pool pumps gargle and Peter’s breath is half laughter as he pulls you further from the sidelines, ceramic tiles slippery under your feet. In the distance, you swear you can hear one of those songs he likes from that poor singer who died in the Wolf River.

He’s a beholden thing in the sun; you can’t not look at him, all of him, his sculpted chest wet and glinting in the sun, his eyes like browning honey, his smile curling up, and up.

“You’re beautiful,” he says.

You rest an arm behind his head. “The rash guard is a good look?”

“Sweetheart, you couldn’t look cuter,” he says, hands on your waist, pinky on your hip. “I wish you’d mentioned these shorts a few days ago. I would’ve prepared to be a more decent man.”

“You’re decent enough, Parker.”

“Maybe now.”

“Well, if things get too hot, you can always take a quick dip,” you say.

You’re teasing, but Peter’s eyes light up with mischief as he calls, “Oh, great idea!” and lets himself drop backwards into the water. You pull your arm back rather than go with him. You can’t avoid the great burst of water as he surges to the surface.

He shakes himself off like a dog.

“Pete!” you cry through laughs, wiping the water from your face before the chlorine gets in your eyes.

“It just didn’t help,” he says, pulling you back into his arms, “you know, the water is cold, but you’re so hot, and I actually got a pretty good look at them when I was under, and you’re just as pretty as I remembered you being ten seconds ago–”

“Peter,” you say, tempted to roll your eyes.

Water runs down his face in great rivers, but with the dopey smile he’s sporting, they look like anything but tears. “Tell me a secret?” he asks, dripping in sunshine, an endless summer at his back.

A soft smile takes your lips. “No,” you say, tipping up your chin, “you tell me one first.”

“What kind of secret?”

“A real one,” you insist.

“Oh…” He leans away from you, though his arms stay crossed behind you. “Okay, I have one. Ask me again.”

You raise a single brow. “Tell me a secret, Peter.”

He pulls your face in for a kiss. His hand is wet on your cheek, but no less welcome. “I love you,” he says, kissing the skin just shy of your nose.

You’re lucky he’s already holding you. “I love you too,” you say, gathering him to you for a hug, digging your nose into the slope of his neck as his admission blows your mind. “I love you.”

Peter wraps his arms around your shoulders, closing his eyes against the side of your head. You can’t know what he’s thinking, but you can feel it. His hands can’t seem to stay still on your skin.

The sun warms your back for a time.

Peter lets out a deep breath of relief. You lean away to look at him, your hand slipping down into the water, where he finds it, his fingers circling your wrist.

“That’s another one to let go of,” he suggests.

He peppers a row of gentle kisses along your lips and the soft skin below your eye.

You and Peter swim until your fingers are pruned and the sun has been blanketed by clouds. You let him wrap you in a towel, and kiss your wet ears, and take you back to the room, where he holds your face.

“I’ll start the shower for you,” he says, rubbing your cheeks with his thumbs, each stroke of them encouraging your face from one side to the other, just a touch, ever so slightly moved in the palms of his hands.

“Don’t fall asleep standing up,” he murmurs.

Your eyes close unbidden to you both. “I won’t.”

He holds you still, leaning in slowly to kiss you with the barest of pressure. Every thought in your head fades, leaving only you and Peter, and the dizziness of his touch as he lays you down at the end of the bed.

｡𖦹°‧⭑.ᐟ

please like, comment or reblog if you enjoyed, i love comments and seeing what anyone reading liked about the fic is a treat —thank you for reading❤︎

#tasm peter parker #tasm peter x reader #tasm peter parker imagine #tasm peter parker x you #tasm peter parker x reader #tasm x reader #peter parker x reader #tasm!spiderman x reader #tasm!peter x reader #tasm!peter imagine

6K notes · View notes