dozedoffeugene

[dozedoffeugene]

death & romance⚕️⋆⭒˚.⋆

Chapter 1/10 : 4.3k words

Cross-posted on AO3

Warnings: needles/injections

Context: post-fall of Overwatch

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When you left Overwatch, you thought you were done.

You had nothing: no orders, no purpose, just some credits to your name and what was left of your pride.

That is, until you received an unmarked letter in your mailbox.

Talon, requesting your presence. No details. Just a location.

You should’ve ignored it. But you didn’t.

What you found there wasn’t just a job—it was her. Moira. Cold hands, sharp eyes, and promises too precise to be lies. She said she could make you stronger. Said there was potential in you, if you let her bring it out.

Eventually, the line between choice and control starts to blur. You keep returning to her lab. Letting her study you. Change you. The injections burn, but the way she touches you afterward: the way she watches you like you’re hers, burns hotter.

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You don’t ask where they’re taking you.

The Talon escort is silent. Helmeted, with no insignia. Just a pulse rifle slung low and footsteps that echo like a countdown.

You’ve been walking for seven minutes—down clean, windowless corridors, past red-lit doors that stay closed and most definitely hold secrets. The place smells like metal and antiseptic.

It’s all too quiet.

You’ve walked through facilities like this before. Years ago. Though with a different symbol on the walls. Different handlers, too. Back when your orders came from elected officials, men and women you once trusted.

Back when people still called you by a name.

You don’t use that name anymore.

Now, you just walk.

You’ve stopped asking where you’re being taken. If they wanted you dead, you’d already be in a body bag.

You knew what Talon was before you ever walked through their doors—whispers of blacksite labs, discarded test subjects, science that didn’t ask permission.

You told yourself you’d never crawl to them, not after what Overwatch cost you. But survival chips away at pride fast, and you were tired of bleeding for people who spoke about justice like it was clean. At least Talon doesn’t lie about what it is.

Still, your gut twists with each new turn.

Eventually, the escort stops in front of a smooth, unmarked door and types in a code without a word. The lock hisses open.

“Inside,” he says. Then he leaves.

The lab is colder than you expected. Not just in temperature, though the air has that sterile chill that clings to your skin, but in atmosphere. The lighting is low, with a soft violet cast from the wall monitors and status bars flickering quietly across machines you don’t recognize.

Tables are lined with instruments: precision tools, surgical arms, vials of iridescent liquid in subtle, pulsing hues. There’s a scanner in the corner shaped like a medical cradle, its frame dark and braced with restraints. The air smells sterile, but it doesn’t exactly feel like a place built for healing.

The room is quiet—save for the woman waiting at the far end.

She stands at the far console, back turned, her silhouette unmistakable even in the dim light. She’s tall, sharper in profile than you expected, all angles and intent. Her lab coat drapes like a shroud, cinched neatly at the waist, not a wrinkle in sight.

One gloved hand taps out something on a data pad, the other resting against her hip with unconscious control. Her hair glows faintly under the light—rusted red swept back into a signature arc, its color almost unnatural in this place.

You know who she is before she says anything.

Moira O’Deorain.

The name alone carries weight, even in whispered rumors. Ex-Overwatch. Disavowed. Visionary or villain, depending on who’s telling the story. Her reputation precedes her—but it doesn’t prepare you for seeing her in person.

“Sit,” she says, voice crisp and low, like something engineered to cut through static.

You do, watching her still.

She’s not wearing armor or a mask or any of the usual Talon regalia—just a high-collared black coat with plum accents and sleeves rolled to the elbow, exposing surgical gloves and veins traced with faint bioluminescence.

She taps a few times on the datapad, then looks you over momentarily. When she does, her eyes catch the light unevenly. One is a sharp, clinical blue, the other a deep, warm brown. You can’t decide which one feels more invasive.

“I’ve reviewed your file,” she says flatly. “Overwatch discard: Field capable. High trauma tolerance. Excellent improvisation under duress. Behavioral markers suggest a need for structure.”

You blink slowly. “How flattering.”

She finally meets your eyes.

“It’s not a compliment,” she says. “It’s an observation.”

You say nothing.

She picks up a small glass vial.

It glows a violet-gold, shimmering like it’s alive.

“This compound interfaces directly with the nervous system. Enhancing response time and increasing sensory clarity. It’s temporary—at first.”

You study it, trying to understand what she’s implying.

“You’ve been trained to survive,” she says. “But survival isn’t evolution.”

You narrow your eyes. “So what is this? A shortcut?”

Her mouth lifts, just barely. “It’s a correction.”

That lingers. Long enough that you shift where you stand, gaze trailing across the room’s cold steel edges.

Moira watches you from across the console, head slightly tilted, her expression unreadable.

“You’re treating this like I’ve already agreed,” you say.

“Hesitation is still a form of consent,” she replies. “If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”

You told yourself you were done taking orders that led nowhere. Done bleeding for people who forgot your name the moment the mission ended. Maybe that’s why you walked in here. For once, you wanted to be changed on purpose.

You swallow, pulse kicking a little harder.

“You want me to be a lab rat.”

Moira doesn’t blink. “I want to see what happens when something already dangerous stops limiting itself.”

Her tone doesn’t change—flat, composed, like she’s narrating a thought experiment.

She steps closer.

The vial turns in her fingers.

“This is the offer,” she says. “Power without doubt. Function without weakness. You’ll become what they failed to make you.”

Your mouth is dry.

You want to laugh. You don’t.

You want to tell her she’s wrong.

But she isn’t.

You’ve lived too long on the edge of usefulness. Too long pretending your silence is control.

You watch the vial in her hand for longer than you should.

It hums faintly. The light inside shifts colors—gold, violet, something in between. Not like any compound you’ve seen before, and you’ve seen more than most.

Moira watches you the way a sculptor watches raw stone, already imagining what she’ll carve away. And what will be left when she’s finished. She gestures to an exam table, clearly already prepped for you.

You approach and stand at the edge of it, fingers twitching against your side.

“This… is official, right?” you ask. “There’s a contract? Something binding?”

Moira doesn’t look up from the tray she’s prepping—syringes aligned like surgical instruments. “There’s no paper, if that’s what you’re asking.”

You wait.

She turns, finally, her tone smooth as ever. “Your consent is the contract.”

The words feel thinner than they should. Too easy to swallow, too hard to spit out.

Risky…

You glance once over your shoulder, toward the door. Then back at her.

“I could just walk out.”

“You could,” she says, then: “You won’t.”

She gestures once more to the table.

It’s nothing you haven’t seen before. You’ve bled on worse. Laid down in tighter spaces. Still, something about the clean sheet, the smooth leather straps resting neatly on either side.

It gets to you. Your stomach coils.

You climb up anyway.

You lie back, the surface colder than expected. Moira steps to your side with measured grace and takes your left wrist in her gloved hand.

“This is just for safety,” she says.

The strap clicks gently into place.

Then the other.

Then ankles.

Not tight. Not yet. But firm enough to remind you this isn’t casual.

“You’ll feel resistance,” she says, standing above you now, her gaze unreadable. “Physiological. Psychological. Let it happen.”

Your throat feels dry.

"I'm still not sure about this."

She cocks her head.

"And yet you came."

You close your eyes. Exhale once, slow and tight. You try to remember what was waiting for you outside this room. No job, no orders. The long, dull silence of a life with no purpose. And then you stop trying.

Beside you, you hear the faint, clinical hiss as she draws the dose.

“You’ll be permitted access to the facility after this,” she says. “You may come and go. No handlers. No surveillance.”

You glance up. “That’s rare.”

“You’re no prisoner,” she says. “You’re an investment.”

Moira places her gloved hand at the side of your neck, pushing your head slightly to the side. The injector is cold against your neck. She doesn’t wait, pressing it with clinical precision.

The hiss is subtle. The effect isn’t.

Your body tenses immediately, a cold rush running through your veins.

The injection surges through you like fire laced with ice—your muscles convulse, your vision blurs, and something deep inside begins to split. It feels like your body is being stripped molecule by molecule, peeled down to bone and then rebuilt in fast, clumsy layers.

You gasp, but the air won’t come right; every breath feels like it’s catching on a new set of lungs that haven’t learned how to work yet.

Moira watches your vitals spike, then level. She walks to you—measured, composed—and places two fingers to your neck, just below your jaw. You flinch slightly at her touch.

“Pulse elevated. Oxygen efficiency increasing.”

She doesn’t remove her hand.

“You’re responding beautifully,” she murmurs.

You look up at her, closer now. She doesn’t move away. Her face is unreadable. That heterochromatic gaze lingers on you just a moment too long.

For a second, you think she might say something else.

She doesn’t, instead stepping away and finding her spot at the console, adding her data.

The worst of it passes like a storm��fast, blinding, and impossible to track. Your limbs still shake, but the seizing has stopped. You blink against the overhead light, breath coming in slow, uneven pulls as sensation returns to your fingers.

It feels like you’ve been scraped out from the inside.

You don’t realize how hard you’re gripping the edges of the table until you hear the soft click of the restraints releasing.

Moira steps back, folding the data pad under one arm. “Sit up when you can.”

You do, slowly. Your muscles don’t hurt—they feel new. Unfamiliar. Like they don’t quite belong to you yet. You glance down at your hands, flex them once, twice. There’s a tremor you can’t control. Your skin is damp, flushed. Not quite feverish, but close.

“How would you describe the sensation?” Moira asks.

You swallow, tasting metal at the back of your throat. “Like… like something was trying to tear its way out of me. And build something else on the way out.”

She nods, typing. “Respiratory constriction?”

You nod. “Like drowning and overheating at the same time.”

“Good.” Her voice doesn’t praise or soften—it just records. “Can you feel any difference in your vision?”

You blink a few times, squinting toward the light. Colors seem sharper around the edges, like they’ve been turned up just slightly too high. “Clearer,” you say. “Too clear.”

Moira tilts her head. “Fascinating.”

You breathe again, slower this time, grounding yourself with one hand on the table’s edge.

Everything still feels wrong. But not in the way you expected.

“Monitor yourself for the next twelve hours,” she says. “Return if there are any hallucinations, blackouts, or signs of violent compulsion.”

You nod in response. Moira reaches into the drawer beside her console, eyes still watching you.

From the tray, she lifts a slim, dark device. It’s smooth, featureless, no bigger than a coin. She holds it out to you between gloved fingers.

“In case of failure,” she says, voice even. “Or compromise.”

You take it carefully, feeling the weight of it settle in your palm. There’s no button visible, but you know it doesn’t need one.

“It’s a tracker?” you ask, though you already know the answer.

She nods her head, just slightly. “It’s a tether.”

Her hand brushes yours as she releases it. “Press it once,” she murmurs. “And I’ll come find you.”

You take it, sliding off the table on unsteady legs and tuck it into your pocket. Every step is unfamiliar—like your body is a suit you haven’t fully grown into.

”If nothing arises, return in a week for your next dose.”

You nod again, and say nothing as you leave.

The lab’s door slides closed with a gentle click. Outside the room, you catch your reflection in the polished steel: flushed, trembling, eyes wide with something between awe and regret.

When you finally step through your own door, legs still unsteady from the dose, the silence hits harder than the comedown.

Your apartment is small: barely more than a room with a sink and a bed jammed into opposite corners. The walls are stained from old coolant leaks, and the overhead light flickers every few seconds, humming faintly with low-grade energy draw.

A cracked holo-screen flickers above the desk, half the interface permanently glitched, stuck on an outdated Talon newsfeed loop. It’s the best you could afford after going off-grid—no pension, no backup, just your name and whatever credits you hadn’t burned through staying alive.

Later that night, you don’t sleep.

You try.

The lights are off. The window’s open. Your gun’s within reach. But nothing feels right.

Your heart is still racing, but you’re not anxious. You’re... alive.

Every sound in your apartment feels amplified—the creak of the floorboards, the hum of the air vent, the tiny throb of your blood in your ears. The serum’s still in you. Still humming.

You stare at the ceiling and think about her hand settled on your throat—fingers steady, gloved, but not without sensation. You’d felt the faint press of her nails just beneath the material.

Measured. Possessive.

You think about the way she looked at you—not with attraction, but certainty.**

Somehow, that felt more intimate than anything else.

The days after the injection are strange too, but not unpleasant.

You feel sharper, like your blood’s running cleaner—muscles taut, reflexes tight, your thoughts moving just ahead of themselves. Whatever was done to you, didn’t break anything.

On the third morning, you find an envelope in your mailbox, unmarked except for a symbol you haven’t seen since your Overwatch days. Talon, unmistakably. Inside: a small stack of credits. A sum you haven’t seen in one place since you left the field.

There’s no note. No instructions. Just payment—for your body, for your silence, for your return.

It’s not a hard decision, you know you’ll go back.

Not because you were told to.

Because you want to.

You return to the lab after a week.

In the days since the injection, your body has felt like it’s finally catching up to the person you were always meant to be. Strength has become a constant hum beneath your skin. Your thoughts are clearer too, probably since you haven’t craved a drink since the day you got back.

For the first time in years, you feel like you have a future. You’ve had doubts, of course—Talon’s reputation isn’t lost on you—but you told yourself you’d know if something felt wrong.

That you’d recognize the line before it was crossed. And nothing’s felt wrong—not really.

So you come back.

The halls of Talon stretch out in cold, quiet symmetry as you follow the guard—each step clicking steady against the polished floor.

When the final door slides open, she’s already there.

Moira.

Exactly as you remember her.

Posture straight, back turned, reading something across a pane of blue-white light. Gloves on. Sleeves rolled. Hair pinned back with sharp precision.

She doesn’t acknowledge you at first. Just keeps working, tapping something on the display with long, pale fingers.

Then, without looking up—

“You came back.”

Her voice is soft. Even. Not surprised. Not pleased.

You stand near the door a beat too long.

“You told me to.”

Moira turns.

Her eyes land on you like a spotlight—blue and bronze, unnerving. She studies your stance, your breathing, your delay.

“You metabolized the first dose efficiently,” she says. “No adverse reactions?”

You shake your head. “No.”

“Good.”

She reached for a new vial—slimmer than the last. Darker, it’s yellow glow almost overpowered by the purple.

She steps toward you.

You don’t back away.

But you don’t move forward either.

“Here is your second dose,” she says, lifting the injector slightly. “Necessary for stabilization.”

You eye the vial, then her.

“What exactly am I stabilizing for?”

Moira doesn’t answer right away. She steps closer, gaze sharp with interest.

“Does it matter?” she asks, voice low, almost soothing. “You’re to reach a final form. Stability is the foundation of evolution.” She tilts her head slightly, lips just barely curved. “Unless, of course, you’d rather go back to being ordinary?”

She waits.

The thought settles fast, heavy in your chest: you don’t want to go back. Not to the dull ache of survival, to the half-life you clawed through before this. Ordinary was killing you slowly. At least this feels like becoming something.

“Lie back.”

The command is quiet. Unassuming. But it doesn’t leave room for negotiation.

You settle onto the table, the cold pressing through your spine as your body adjusts to the sterile, unwelcoming surface.

Moira’s fingers move with methodical ease, guiding the restraints over your wrists and ankles, locking them into place with a soft metallic click.

She steps to your side, her gloved hand brushing your hair back from your neck with a sterile kind of care. Then, she places her hand at the base of your throat—not rough, but steady.

The injector touches skin. A sharp press. Then the hiss.

This dose is different.

The serum tears through your veins with violent precision, flooding every nerve ending with heat so sharp it feels like you’re being stripped down and reassembled all at once. Your back arches slightly against the table—every muscle tight, spasming, then locking into new form. Your vision fractures, sharpens, breaks again. You bite down until your jaw aches just to keep from screaming, though you can help but groan in pain.

Moira observes silently. She notes your vitals without shifting her stance, her eyes flicking between the monitor and your face—studying.

When the worst of it finally ebbs, you’re left shivering, breath coming in broken pulls, your limbs molten and useless. Sweat clings to every inch of you like a second skin.

Moira tilts her head slightly. “How do you feel?”

You let out a shaky laugh, more breath than sound. “Like I just fucking died.”

Her lips twitch, just barely. “Good,” she murmurs. “Then it’s working.”

After you’ve caught your breath, she undoes the cuffs holding you down.

Moira slips a hand beneath your shoulders with practiced ease, guiding you upright like she’s repositioning a specimen.

“And your cognitive clarity?” she asks. “Any visual distortion? Maybe auditory?”

You shake your head, still catching your breath. “No distortion. Just… intense.”

She steps closer, holding a small scanner close to your temple. “How was your muscle control?”

“Bad,” you answer, rubbing your sore arms.

She doesn’t flinch. “Residual pain is expected.”

Then, quietly—she speaks to herself.

“Good retention. Stable neural response. Adrenal system… adapting.”

Her gaze flicks back to you, searching. “You’ll be operational within the hour.” She returns to the console and begins typing away.

After a moment, she speaks.

“I knew you’d return.”

There’s no smugness in her tone. Just certainty.

“I didn’t,” you admit.

You don’t mean to say it.

But the serum makes you honest.

“Yet here you are,” she says quietly, turning to look at you, “Still seeking what only I can give you.”

She approaches where you’re sat on the table.

You start to answer, but nothing comes.

Moira peels off her glove with practiced ease as she comes closer, the material slipping free to reveal skin that’s unnaturally pale underneath. Along her forearm, faint veins pulse with lilac bioluminescence, glowing subtly beneath the surface, the lines raised just enough to catch the light. It looks engineered, not healed—something evolved past human.

You don’t mean to stare, but the moment her glove comes off, your eyes lock onto the exposed skin.

Moira notices.

She doesn’t hide it. Doesn’t pull the glove back on. Instead, she lifts her arm between you, palm down, offering it like a demonstration.

“Curious?” she asks, voice unreadable.

You glance up, but she’s already watching you, observing you.

“I started with myself,” she says, letting the bioluminescent patterns catch the lab light. “Every breakthrough I’ve made since—every risk I ask of others—I earned by testing my own limits first.”

Her hand lingers in the air between you, impossibly still.

“I wouldn’t ask anything of you I’m not already willing to survive.”

When Moira reaches you, she raises her unaffected hand and lets her warm fingers trace the edge of your jaw. You hold still, refusing to flinch, though your eyes flick downward the moment her skin brushes yours.

She scans your face like she’s watching something unfold beneath the skin. A map of circuits lighting up in real time.

“What reason have you to fear me?” she asks, lips twitching in a near-smile.

She tilts her head slightly.

Curious.

Already calculating your next threshold.

Her gloved hand slips from your jaw to the back of your neck, firm but not forceful. And she kisses you.

Her lips are poised. Precise. You tilt forward instinctively, breath hitching, deepening the kiss with a hunger that surprises even you.

The warmth rushes up your neck, prickling down your spine. Her hand is firm on your neck, her fingers anchoring you in place. She tastes faintly of pine, and maybe citrus—heady, electric.

Your body reacts faster than your thoughts, heat surging low in your gut as your hands find her hips, pulling her closer.

Her other hand comes up to rest lightly against your chest, not pressing you closer, just marking the distance. Controlling it.

It lasts longer than it should.

Then it’s over.

She breaks the kiss slowly, deliberately, like drawing the final line of an equation.

For a moment, her face stays close. Her breath brushes your skin, cool and steady. You half expect her to whisper something—stay, good, again.

But she doesn’t.

She steps back like a pulse just ended.

You’re still leaning forward, breath caught, blinking like you missed a step on solid ground.

Moira turns without a word and retrieves her data pad from the counter. Her fingers move quickly, efficiently—already documenting.

“Increased cardiovascular irregularity,” she says aloud, tone devoid of judgment. “Cortical spike aligns with prior instability markers. Emotional volatility appears more responsive to close proximity stimuli.”

She doesn’t say I kissed her, it’s close proximity stimuli.

Like it was inevitable.

You don’t speak. Can’t. The shame floods you too fast, thick and hot, dragging every rational thought under. You’re not even sure what you were hoping for. Recognition? Softness?

All you’ve given her is a reaction. A hunch confirmed. Something she can name.

You sit in silence, the lab colder than before, your hands clenched tight in your lap.

Moira finishes typing.

She turns toward you, perfectly composed. “Your first mission will be in three days. You’re to report here the morning of. I’ll prepare the next dose.”

You nod once—mechanical. You don’t trust your voice.

She turns back to her console, already moving on.

You don’t know what you expected.

But it wasn’t this.

You slide off the table without a word.

Your body moves on autopilot, but your mind won’t settle. The door hisses shut behind you, and the silence of the corridor wraps around you like a vacuum.

You keep your pace steady. You don’t look back.

But every step away from that lab feels like you’re shrinking back into something smaller than what she saw.

Your apartment is, as usual, quiet when you return. Still. Clean.

You pace once from wall to wall, strip off your jacket, and sit heavily on the edge of the bed—barely able to breathe through the weight pressing into your chest.

What the hell were you thinking?

You kissed her like you meant something.

You kissed her like she wasn’t already watching every reaction you had.

You bury your face in your hands.

It wasn’t calculated. It was raw. Messy. Human.

Weak.

She didn’t even have to reject you. She just observed it. Wrote it down. And moved on.

You lie back. Try to sleep. Try to clear your head.

But you don’t.

Because every time you close your eyes, you feel it again. Her hand gripping your neck, guiding you closer, steady and possessive.

You remember the exact pressure of her mouth, the way she held you there—not resisting, just allowing, and how badly you wanted more.

You imagine her stepping in closer, slipping a thigh between yours, grinding down until your breath hitched. You see yourself yanking that lab coat off her shoulders, baring her piece by piece, worshiping every inch like she deserves.

When you wake, these thoughts make shame settle deep, low and hot.

One kiss shouldn’t make you feel so completely undone.

You roll onto your side and curse under your breath.

The next morning, you train.

You wake before dawn and work until your limbs shake. You go for a run, set up your old punching bag, and do everything you can to drown out the humming in your ears. The dose left you with more energy than you know what to do with.

At night, you try to rest.

But you don’t.

Sleep never comes clean. It’s hot, fragmented. Every time you drift off, her voice catches you in the dark. Her eyes. Her breath just barely brushing your skin.

You dream of her lips—her body pressed against yours, imagining the feel of her skin against yours. The memory is twisted now, need tangled up with shame.

When you wake, you’re sweating. Thighs pressed tight together, breath hitching from the edge of a dream you can’t speak aloud.

You don’t touch yourself. The idea of looking Moira in the eye afterward, knowing one kiss left you that desperate, that wrecked, makes your stomach twist with humiliation.

Instead, you stare at the ceiling, jaw locked, waiting in agony for the night to end.

You do this every night.

And when the third night breaks into morning, and your alarm clock ticks toward your arrival—

You’re itching to go back.

[dozedoffeugene]

take care

words: 1.2k

warnings: literally one swear word, that’s about it

content: you’re studying one night when your boyfriend spiderman comes to you for help, badly in need of some tlc, you want him to stay safe, he wants to keep being super, a small argument and fluff ensues

context: set after events of Homecoming and before events of Infinity War

After the fourth night in a row of finding Peter tapping quietly on the glass of your small apartment window, bloodied and bruised from fighting bad guys at night, you knew it was time to intervene.

It had been a particularly rough week for the students of Midtown High, with finals coming up and teachers rushing to complete their final unit before it was time to study for said finals. Peter was a naturally intelligent kid, and thanks to frequent study sessions with the boy you’ve come to call your boyfriend, your grades were not too shabby if you did say so yourself. But even the natural smarts of Peter paired with your steadfast dedication to your schoolwork was no match for the seemingly unending stream of assignments flooding in for each and every student and forcing many all-nighters.

Thanks to that, you were still awake when you heard the tell-tale tap of Spider-Man asking for permission to come into your room at 2 am. You pushed away from your desk and almost completed homework to check the hallway of the small apartment your family currently occupied. After checking to ensure that everyone was asleep you returned to your room and opened your window to let the masked boy in.

Typically, Peter would greet you with a soft, “Hi babe,” or any pet name of his choosing, but today he was barely able to mutter out a, “Hey, I-“ before all but collapsing onto you as soon as you opened the window.

“Peter?!” You hissed as his full weight fell on you.

You carefully guided the weak boy over to your bed and sat him down. After shutting your bedroom window you turned back to see Peter had removed his mask to reveal a face you never wished to see so beat up.

Bruises healing from the nights before were accompanied by red marks that you already knew would be freshly blue and purple in the morning. On top of that the split lip that had been healing from his first night this week of patrolling was now once again open and bleeding.

“I can’t let Aunt May see me like this,” Peter looked up at you with sorry eyes and you sighed. It hurt you to see him like this, abused by the dangers of the outside world, it reminded you of just how much danger he truly put himself into each and every night.

With a quiet, “Wait here,” you rushed to your kitchen and grabbed a bag of frozen corn from the freezer, making sure to swipe the first aid kit from the bathroom as you returned to your room. As you set to work with a wet wipe cleaning the bits of dirt and grime from his face he sat quietly, letting you focus on fixing him up. After pressing to his lip in an effort to stop the bleeding finally worked, you let him rest against the frame of your bed, frozen corn pressed against the worst of the bruising.

“Thanks,” Peter sighed, “You know I hate it when you see me like this, but if Aunt May saw me she’d make me stop patrolling.”

You couldn’t argue with that, his Aunt May was the most protective mother-figure a teenage superhero could possibly have, and while it was overbearing at times, seeing Peter in this state you couldn’t help but feel like her over-protectiveness was well deserved. The basic schedule of nights like these consisted of Peter coming to your room, bruised from fighting bad guys, and you, consequently taking care of the aftermath, and typically ended with the two of you cuddling and dancing around the topic of his escapades, usually preferring to talk about school, or some meme you’d both found on social media. But tonight was worse, you knew you still had at least an hour or so of work to do but Peter’s wounds made you want to swaddle him up in your arms and never let go.

“You should really take a break from patrolling if you’re gonna keep getting hurt,” You sighed again, moving to sit next to him on your bed, taking his free hand in yours. He instantly reciprocated and intertwined your fingers.

“It’s dangerous for you to go out fighting if you’re still healing from another encounter.”

Peter’s eyes went from scanning your room, taking note of the relative cleanliness despite the hot mess of school work laid out unfinished on your desk, to meeting yours as he saw the effect this was having on you. The dark creases under your eyes appeared even darker under the light of your bedroom lamp and your eyebrows were twisted up in concern.

“(Y/N) you know I-,“

“When you told me about your powers I knew it meant you got hurt sometimes but this,” You motioned up and down his tired form with your free hand, finally letting it rest against his collar as you met his eyes again, “It scares me.”

Peter looked down and exhaled, letting his thumb brush against your hand. He’d heard this lecture before and it rarely ended with you both content.

“(Y/N) you know I feel responsible for the people in New York. If people like me don’t fight to make things better, then I feel like I’m to blame when things go wrong.”

“You can’t seriously ask yourself to defend all of New York every night Peter, you’re one guy.

“It’s my responsibility.” He explained, shifting the frozen corn onto the other side of his face both to see you better and to ease the pain on the other side of his face.

“It’s ok to take a break from that, if only for a little bit,” Your eyes filling to the brim with tears at the thought of what could happen to Peter if he didn’t slow down.

“But it’s my job to look out for the little guy,” Peter implored.

“Peter sometimes you are the little guy,” You exclaimed, “Look out for yourself for once instead of killing yourself trying to look out for someone else!”

Peter froze, watching a single tear roll down your cheek before dropping the corn onto the bed and wrapping you in a big hug, letting you cling to him as you cried.

“I-I’m sorry,” He choked out, closing his eyes and holding tightly onto you, “I should have been thinking about how you felt.”

After holding each other for a while, you finally let go and pulled back to look Peter in the eyes. You intertwined fingers and brought your heads foreword to rest against each other.

“I just want you to focus on staying safe,” You breathed out, “I care about you, a lot, and just… It hurts me when you’re in pain.”

“I know I know,” Peter groaned, “Fuck I’m sorry.”

He brought his head up to look you in the eyes and you brought your hand up to softly caress his cheek, pushing a soft brown curl behind his ear.

“It’s ok, I just want you to be alright.”

“I will. I promise. Tomorrow I’ll only patrol for three hours, tops. And then we can study together,” He pulled you into another hug and let your head rest against his chest.

“Will you really?” You asked, hugging him back, happy to feel the warmth of his body against your cheek.

“For you, I’d do anything.”