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fic-recs-book-recs · 3 months ago

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this fic is so good it made me start using my fic rec blog again. Ma'am you're literally who people are referencing when they say they can't believe people write fanfic for free

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❤︎

#peter parker x reader #tasm peter parker #tasm peter parker x reader #fluff #tasm!peter parker x reader

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fic-recs-book-recs · 7 months ago

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Darling, Darling... Dead? - GAME KEYS GIVEAWAY 🤩

To celebrate the (soon-to-be) release of the full game of "Darling, Darling... Dead?", we're giving away 5 keys (Itch.io or Steam)! To participate in the giveaway, like or reblog the post, and on Friday, November 29, 2024, we'll pick 5 random blogs from the list. Good luck! If you are the winner, please have your Ask box or DMs open and respond to us within 48 hours. If you don't, we'll have to pick a new winner. Play the demo on Itch.io [here]!

Wishlist on Steam [here]!

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fic-recs-book-recs · 10 months ago

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How To Get Started Making Visual Novels

Wanna make a visual novel? Or maybe you've seen games like Our Life, Blooming Panic, Doki Doki Literature Club, etc. and wanna make something like that? Good news, here's a very basic beginners guide on how to get started in renpy and what you need to know going in! Before you start, I highly recommend looking at my last post about writing a script for renpy just to make it easier on you!

LONG POST AHEAD

Obviously, our first step is downloading it from their website

thankfully, its right on the home page of their site. Follow basica program installation steps and run the program. I highly recommend pinning it to your task bar to make it easier to access.

From there, you're met with the renpy app, it's a little daunting at first but let's talk about what all these buttons are for.

Projects

This part is simple, it just lists the current projects in the chosen directory. You probably won't have any in there of your own. You should still see Tutorial and The Question!

Both of those default projects are super helpful in their own ways, i highly recommend testing out the tutorial and playing around with it just to get comfortable with some of the basics.

Create New Project

The first step to actually making your game into a game!

You'll be met with a prompt letting you know that the project is being made in English and that you can change it. You can click Continue.

From here, you'll be asked to input a project name! Put in your games title, or even a placeholder title since this Information can be changed later! (this is also the title the folder will be in your file browser, be sure to name it something you won't overlook)

Now we get to choose our resolution!

If you have no idea what to choose, go for 1920x1080! This is the standard size for most computer monitors and laptops, but it will still display with moderately decent quality on 4k monitors too!

You can choose 3840x2160 as well. This is 2x the measurements of the default, with the same ration. These dimensions are considered 4k. Keep in mind, your image files will be bigger and can cause the game to have a larger size to download.

Now we get to choose our color scheme!

Renpy has some simple default options with the 'light mode' colors being the bottom two rows, and the 'dark mode' colors being the toop two rows.

You can pick anything here, but I like to choose something that matches my projects vibes/colors better. Mostly because depending on how in depth you go with the ui, it minimizes the amount of changes I need to make later.

Click continue and give it a minute. Note: If it says "not responding" wait a moment without clicking anything. It can sometimes freeze briefly during the process.

Now we should be back at our home screen, with our new project showing. Let's talk about allll that stuff on the right now.

Open Directory

This just opens that particular folder in your local file explorer!

game - is all the game files, so your folders for images, audio, saves, and your game files like your script, screens, and more.

base - this is the folder that the game folder is inside of. You can also find the errors and log txt files in here.

images - takes you to your main images folder. This is where you wanna put all of your NON gui images, like your sprites, backgrounds, and CGs. You can create folders inside of this and still call them in the script later. EX: a folder for backgrounds , a folder for sprites for character a, a seperate folder for spirtes for character b, etc.

audio - Takes you to the default audio folder. This is empty, but you can put all your music and sound effects here!

gui - brings up the folder containing all of the default renpy gui. It's a good place to start/ reference for sizes if you want to hand draw your UI pieces like your text box!

Edit File

Simple enough, this is just where you can open your code files in whatever text/code editor you have installed.

Script.rpy - where all of your story and characters live. This is the file you'll spend most of your time in at first

Options.rpy - Contains mostly simple information, like project name and version. There aren't a ton of things in here you need to look at. There is also some lines of code that help 'archive' certain files by file type so that they can't be seen by players digging in code however. Fun if you want to hide some images in there for later or if you just dont want someone seeing how messy your files are. We've all been there

Gui.rpy - where all of the easy customization happens. Here you can change font colors, hover colors, fonts, font sizes, and then the alignment and placement of all of your text! Like your dialogue and names, the height of text buttons, etc. It more or less sets the defaults for a lot of these unless you choose to change them later.

Screens.rpy - undeniably my favorite, this is where all of the UI is laid out for the different screens in your game, like the main menu, game menu, quick menu, choice menu, etc. You can add custom screens too if you want, but I always make my own seperate file for these.

Open Project - this just opens all of those files at once in the code editor. Super handy if you make extra files like I do for certain things.

Actions

last but not least, our actions.

Navigate Script - This feature is underrated in my honest opinion, it's super handy for help debugging! In renpy you can comment with # before a line. However, if you do #TODO and type something after it, it saves it as a note! You can view these TODO's here as well as easily navigate to when certain screens are called, where different labels are (super great if your game is long, and more. It saves some scrolling.

Check Script (Lint) - also super duper handy for debugging some basic things. It also tells you your word count! But its handy for letting you know about some errors that might throw up. I like using it to look for sprites I may or may not have mispelled, because they show up in there too.

Change/Update GUI - Nifty, though once you start customizing GUI on your own, it isn't as useful. You can reset the project at any point and regenerate the image files here. This updates all those defaults we talked about earlier.

Delete Persistent - this just helps you delete any persistent data between play throughs on your end. I like to use it when making a lot of changes while testing the game, so that I can reboot the game fresh.

Force Recompile - Full disclosure, as many games as I've made and as long as I've been using Renpy, i have never used this feature. I searched to see what it does and this is the general consesus: Normally renpy tries to be smart about compiling code (creating .rpyc files) and only compiles .rpy files with changes. This is to speed up the process since compiling takes time. Sometimes you can make changes that renpy don't pick up on and therefore won't recompile. In these cases you can run force recompile to force it. Another solution (if you know what file is affected) is to delete that specific. rpyc file.

The rest of your options on this right hand side are how you make executable builds for your game that people can download to extract and play later!

Sorry gang! that was a whole lot of text obviously the last button "Launch Project" launches an uncompiled version of the project for you to play and test as you go! Hang in tight because my next post is about how to utilize github for renpy, so you can collaborate easier!

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fic-recs-book-recs · 1 year ago

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paper rings

Anthony Lockwood x fem!reader

Word count: 10.2k words

Warnings: mild spoilers for the later books (this is set after TEG and they're all 18+), a LOT of mildly explicit innuendoes and sexual references, swearing

this is my Valentine's Day surprise that I've been talking about, so happy Valentine's Day to you all! <3

based on the Taylor Swift song of the same name

Anthony Lockwood masterlist

It was nearly 2 in the morning, and Y/n L/n was exhausted.

She had been on a case for the last seven hours and everything hurt and ached - including places in her body she didn't even know she had - and she just wanted her bed and an incredibly large cup of tea.

So why was she having to babysit three other agents who really should have been old enough to look after themselves?

Two of them seemed to be high on flare fumes, giggling about absolutely nothing and making weird sounds every few seconds. The third was smiling fondly at his friends and coworkers, but wasn't doing anything to stop them from getting closer and closer to the edge of their sanity.

Y/n sighed for the millionth time in the last ten minutes, and the third agent (the one who wasn't as insane as the other two - she'd nicknamed him Beanpole) looked over from where he was leaning back against the DEPRAC van with his arms crossed. Somehow he looked effortlessly cool and relaxed, despite the plasma stains and dirt covering his entire body.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I'm fine, just want to go home and stop looking after three other agents.”

“Ah, that’s fair. Wait, 'looking after’?”

“Yeah, Barnes told me to keep an eye on you three 'cause you were in trouble or something.”

“Oh, we're not in trouble,” he grinned, and although she rolled her eyes she couldn't deny the way her heart skipped a beat at his smile. “Barnes just likes being dramatic. We didn't do anything.” Somehow she didn't believe him, but the sheer amount of charm that was pouring out of him was making her disregard any concerns she had about how truthful he was being.

“So what is it that you aren't in trouble for then?” His grin only grew wider, and Y/n found herself smiling back.

“Minor property damage. But in our defence our client didn't warn us about the malignant smoke that she'd seen creeping out of the basement or even the intense waves of nausea she felt when walking past her under stairs cupboard. So we really can't take any of the blame for completely decimating her bannisters and front hall. Plus, we're insured.”

“No you're not,” Barnes interrupted, joining the conversation and holding a manilla folder. “You didn't have your DEPRAC standardised iron chains, Lockwood. Not according to this report.” That made Beanpole (Lockwood? Although that didn't sound much like a name) stand up, uncrossing his arms as a frown decorated his pretty face.

“What? But we did, I made sure after Mrs Hope's house.” Y/n didn't know what had happened at Mrs Hope's house, but from the way Barnes was frowning even more than usual and somehow looking even more unimpressed with Beanpole she figured she didn't want to know. “You can go in and check if you like, they're still in the hall.”

“Fine. L/n, you go in and check.”

“What?”

“Just check the chains are there, then come back. They managed to at least get rid of the ghosts.”

“Alright,” she grumbled, hoisting her belt up a little and trudging off in the direction of the building Barnes had pointed her to. She shouldn't even be here, since she was meant to have been at home around half an hour ago, but now she was making her way into some random woman's house to carry out a job that any random DEPRAC officer could have done (if what Barnes had said about the other agents removing the Visitors was true). She pushed open the door, glad for her gloves at the chill in the air, and scoffed when she immediately laid eyes on the thick iron chains that had been kicked to the side in the fight. Y/n picked them up, huffing under the added weight, and was about to turn and leave when her eyes caught on the state of the front hall. “What the actual fuck…” she whispered, then shook her head and closed the door behind her, choosing to ignore the mess inside.

“Well?” Barnes demanded when she'd made her way back. She dropped the chains at his feet.

“Yep. I don't know why I had to do that though, anyone could have looked.” She was being irritable, she knew, but she thought she was perfectly justified in feeling that way.

“Alright.” Barnes looked unhappy about the whole situation too, but that wasn't Y/n's fault. “Then just sign these papers and you three can go.” Beanpole was smiling smugly, and he nodded and took the papers that Barnes handed him.

“Thank you, Inspector. Luce, George, here.” They were both still laughing at something only they knew about, clutching their sides as they took the sheets of paper that Beanpole handed them.

“Can I go home too?” Y/n asked Barnes while the others signed the forms.

“Yeah. Maybe catch a ride with these three, they're your way.”

“Fine.”

A few minutes later the four of them were piled into a taxi and heading off down the road in the direction of Marylebone.

“So,” Beanpole started. The moon was shining bright on his face through the taxi window, making him look like a Visitor himself when combined with his already pale skin and the dark shadows under his eyes. He still looked effortlessly gorgeous though, and Y/n found herself wondering if he was single. “You're an agent then. Solo?”

“Oh, yeah. Never liked working for the big companies. They never really cared about the people, you know? Shit,” her eyes widened as she realised what she'd said. “Are you a company?”

“Yes, but don't worry. We have a grand total of four people at our agency. Sometimes five or six if we get extra help from others.”

“That's... very small. Is the fourth your supervisor?”

“No, our secretary actually. Holly doesn't much like being in the field anymore though, but that works out alright for us. She still gets paid a good amount.”

“So if you don't have a supervisor…”

“I'm the agency head,” he smiled, but now instead of appearing chipper and light, he looked tired and weighed down by the responsibility of running a company and looking after his coworkers. “Anthony Lockwood, Lockwood and Co.”

“Y/n L/n, formerly of Fittes.” They shook hands awkwardly in the limited space they had in the back of the taxi.

“And you left because they don't care about the people?”

“That's right. I always wanted to connect more, but I guess that's because of my Touch. Fittes were much more businesslike about it all, just going in and getting the job done and not caring about anything other than having another successful case under their belt. It just didn't sit right with me.”

“Well if you ever feel like working for a company again, you could always come and work with us,” Anthony Lockwood said. “I'm sure we could do with someone like you helping us out. Besides, we do care about the people; it's pretty much the only thing going for us other than our skill in the field.”

“First stop?” the driver called out, slowing the vehicle.

“Oh, that's me,” Y/n stated, grabbing the door handle and getting out. “Thanks for letting me ride with you.” She moved to the boot of the taxi to take her kit bag and rapier, and was surprised when Anthony Lockwood followed her, helping her to balance all the bags inside and making sure that nothing fell out. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem. And I mean it, if you ever feel like joining us on a case then just come and find us.”

“That's... that's actually nice of you, thank you.” He nodded with a smile, then clambered back into the taxi (which looked difficult with how long and thin his limbs were). She stood on the pavement for a few moments, waiting for the taxi to start moving again and waving at the three agents left in the cab as they drove off down the road.

As soon as she was inside her shared house, door firmly shut and locked and kettle boiling on the stove, she pulled up the chair at her desk and switched on her computer, typing in her password and logging in. Ten minutes later she had a mug of tea brewing on her desk while she furiously tapped at the keyboard for any information on Lockwood and Co, and was pleasantly surprised by what she found. There wasn't much, since she couldn't access a lot of the full reports of cases, but there was a decent number of newspaper articles that had been uploaded for her to read. One detailed the £60,000 fine that the company had been given for setting fire to a certain Mrs Hope's home a few years prior, and from the blurry black and white photo the blaze looked like it hadn't left much behind.

Further research provided an address for their agency at 35 Portland Row, not far away from where she currently lived. One or two articles were about the parade incident from the Black Winter and Lockwood and Co's success in protecting the people present, but other than that there wasn't much more.

She sat back in her chair, sipping the last of her tea. Bedtime for now, but when she finally woke up she'd head to the nearest corner store and pick up some food. The fridge had been nearly empty when she'd looked earlier, and she knew that Portland Row was on the way back.

She wanted to say thank you again (and totally not spy on their house), and everybody loved a doughnut.

~~~

Y/n had knocked on the door roughly two minutes ago, and nobody had answered.

She knew that they were all at home, because she could hear them arguing about who was going to answer the door, but nobody had done it yet.

Knocking once more while balancing the box of doughnuts in her other hand she sighed, waited another thirty seconds, and just as she turned to leave she heard the locks click behind her. The door swung open to reveal Anthony Lockwood, once more dressed in a suit (a lot cleaner than the one he'd been wearing in the early hours of that morning), and a wide smile on his face.

“It's you! Miss L/n, was it?”

“Uh, yeah. Just Y/n is fine though. Um, I just wanted to say thanks again for the lift last night, and for being nice and shit when you didn't have to be, and I bought some doughnuts if you guys wanted them.” She tried to surreptitiously peer around him to take a look at his front hall, but the interior was quite dark and cluttered and it was difficult to pretend to not be inspecting somebody's home when they were stood in front of you.

“Oh, you really didn't have to, Y/n.” He took the box out of her hands anyway. “Did you want to come in?”

“No, thank you. I should get back. I've got a lot of paperwork to get through and I think one of my housemates is cleaning today and wanted everyone's help, so…” she trailed off, rocking slightly on her heels while Anthony Lockwood watched her.

“Right, well, thanks for stopping by! And for the doughnuts, that was very generous of you.”

She shrugged. “I've had taxi rides with people I was actually working with and they were complete arseholes to me, so I really appreciated you not being like that when you didn't even know me.”

“Anytime.” He paused for a moment, then frowned at her. “How did you find us? I know I said that you could always drop by but I don't remember actually telling you where we live. There's not a problem with it, by the way, just curious.”

“Oh, I looked it up. Figured you meant to tell me and never got round to it. Besides, I needed to go shopping anyway and I live nearby, so it wasn't too difficult for me.”

“Ah, that makes sense. Well it was lovely seeing you again, Y/n. I look forward to our next meeting.” His smile was infectious, and she still had a grin on her face at the thought of him when she went to bed that night.

~~~

For the next few months, both Y/n and Lockwood and Co were busy with their own cases, but regularly passed each other in the street. Anthony Lockwood had taken to sending her a wink or flirty quite early on, and because Y/n believed it impossible that someone like him was single and therefore able to chase after someone like her, she ignored him. Every now and then she would indulge him, of course, flirting back to see how he would react (he was always pleasantly surprised and kept their little game going for as long as he could before he was needed), but for the most part she would walk right past him.

It wasn't entirely her fault, since many of the times they bumped into each other she was on a time schedule, and didn't have the extra minute or so to flirt with the pretty boy.

The last time had been different, though.

~~~

“Hello again, darling,” a voice said from her left, and Y/n smiled when she recognised it right away as Lockwood's. They knew each other better now, from the few times that they had been able to talk for longer and ask how the other was doing, and when he had found out that she was calling him Anthony Lockwood in her head he gave her a look of barely contained amusement and told her she could pick one.

Anthony had felt too personal, since everyone else that spoke to him seemed to call him Lockwood, and she didn't think they knew each other that well for her to use his first name.

“Come here often?” he asked, appearing in her field of view and leaning on the table she was sat at in the small night café.

“Only when I know that you're going to be here,” Y/n responded, and delighted in the faint pink tinge that came onto his cheeks.

“May I?” He gestured to the chair opposite her, and she nodded.

“Not with your friends tonight?”

“No, they're probably at home already, lucky bastards. My case ran on a bit longer than I expected, and I couldn't wait for a cup of tea. Plus, when I saw you in here I couldn't not come and see you.”

They sat there for a while, making their way through two cups of tea each before deciding to leave, and Lockwood offered to take the taxi home with her.

When they were nearly back to Y/n's house, he spoke up.

“I'll pay, if you like. I'll be paying for this stretch of the journey anyway so it doesn't make much of a difference to me.”

“Oh, Lockwood, I can pay you for my part at least, it's not a big deal to me.”

“Nonsense.” He seemed to hesitate for a moment, just as they drove around the corner onto her street. “Or… you could come back to Portland Row with me?” Their flirting had never gone as far as properly inviting the other back to their place (although there had always been the comments of 'why don't we finish this somewhere else?' or 'wanna come home with me and prove it?'), and it took Y/n a moment to realise that he was being serious.

“I mean... if you're sure? I don't want to impose or anything.”

“No, you won't be imposing, darling. George and Lucy will be asleep, I'm sure. I think there's half a bottle of wine that needs finishing off if you wanted to share? No pressure though.”

“That sounds great, actually.”

“So are you two both going to Portland Row then?” the driver called, and Lockwood nodded.

“Yes please.” He turned back to Y/n, worry starting to creep into his expression. “You did agree, right?”

“Yes, Lockwood, I did. I think I need something that's not tea to be honest.”

“You can stay the night, too. If you need to. I'll sleep on the sofa and you can have my bed.”

“I'm not kicking you out of your own bed, Lockwood. How big is it?”

“Darling, I'm scandalised that you would ask me that question. You know that size doesn't mat-” He was cut off by Y/n smacking him in the chest, and he chuckled when she glared at him.

“The bed, Lockwood, how big is the bed? If I wanted to know the size of your dick I'd ask you to strip.” She ignored the weird look that the driver cast them in his rear view mirror and focused on Lockwood's answer instead.

“Steady, darling. We're not back yet.” He yelped when she whacked him again, and caught her wrists and held them so that she couldn't attack him anymore. “It's a double.”

“Well then we can both fit, can't we?”

“Asking me to strip, getting me into bed with you? If I didn't know any better, darling, I'd say that you were trying to seduce me,” he smirked, leaning in close.

“Oh, Lockwood. I think we both know I did that a long time ago, don't we.” They were dangerously close to kissing, their lips only a couple of centimetres away from each other while their noses brushed with every jolt in the road, and then the taxi was slowing and pulling up to the curb outside 35 Portland Row.

“Alright you two, out. And use protection please, you're too young to be havin' kids.” Y/n flushed and opened the door, moving around to the boot to take out her kit bag and rapier, and when Lockwood followed a moment later after paying the driver his face was red too.

~~~

“Here,” Lockwood said, handing over a tea mug filled with wine.

“Thanks. You're sure the others won't mind us drinking this?”

“They've had plenty of time to drink it, and I own the house and therefore the kitchen and the contents of the fridge are mine too, so I say it's fair game.” His smile was slightly blinding, but Y/n had learned to see past the glare and look at his eyes instead, finding the pure joy behind the façade he put up for the world to see.

They didn't know each other that well, when everything was considered, but Y/n did call him her friend when describing their relationship, and she did feel that if asked, Lockwood would say the same.

Around thirty minutes later Y/n was nearly doubled over with laughter at some stupid thing that Lockwood had said (the wine had gone straight to her head and she had no recollection of what exactly he had said), clutching her sides as they sat in the cluttered library with the bottle of wine between them.

“You, Anthony Lockwood, are ridiculous!”

“I am! In fact, have I shown you my hat collection?”

“Is that some sort of weird euphemism? Or are you genuinely more deranged than I thought you were?”

“Not a euphemism, love,” he grinned, and Y/n in her wine-addled state thought about how he was starting to look like the deranged young man she'd just accused him of being.

“So... you actually have a hat collection? Why?” Lockwood shrugged.

“It's good for disguises when I need to do a little bit of extra research for a case. I can do accents too!”

“No offence, Lockwood, but I've heard some of your accents, and I'm very surprised that you haven't been hunted down and killed yet.”

“Believe me, people have tried!” Somehow he didn't look concerned about that, still smiling just as widely as before, and Y/n thought he looked rather nice like that.

~~~

When she woke up in the morning, Y/n realised she had never taken the painkillers Lockwood had left on the bedside table for her to use.

“Shit,” she whispered, grabbing the packet and the glass of water and swallowing the pills the best she could in an attempt to stave off the headache that had formed. After finishing off the wine, Lockwood had managed to find some more alcohol hidden away in a cupboard in the library ("It's my personal stash, so don't worry about feeling guilty about drinking this") and they had stayed up until it was nearly sunrise talking about everything and nothing. She was regretting not drinking the water before sleeping, and when she flopped back onto the bed and under the covers she realised that there was someone else in the bed with her.

Lockwood looked peaceful asleep.

While she didn't mind waking up next to him in the morning (the view was actually rather nice), not being able to remember what had happened the night before was a little disturbing, especially since she was in her underwear and, as far as she could tell, Lockwood wasn't wearing any clothes.

The bedsheets had been partially kicked off in the night, most likely because the heating was apparently on full from the very warm temperature of the room, and the duvet had bunched up around Lockwood's waist. She didn't want to wake him by trying to find out if anything had happened last night, since he probably never slept with the sheer size of the shadows under his eyes, so instead she carefully got out of bed and picked up her clothes.

Finding all of her things was difficult, since they'd been flung all around the room in what she hoped was drunkenness and not desperation, but after nearly ten minutes she was dressed and reaching for the door handle. She didn't make it that far though, because before she could leave the sounds of somebody waking up started coming from the bed, and Lockwood was asking her where she was going.

“Oh, I just... I just figured you wouldn't want me to stick around-”

“Why would you think that?” He was rubbing his eyes and sitting up, and she had to force her gaze away from where the sheets were dangerously close to revealing whether or not they had slept together.

“I don't know.” There was silence for a minute or so while Lockwood tried to wake up enough to work out what was going on, and Y/n stood by the door feeling very awkward. “Did we... did anything happen? Last night?”

“Don't think so. I feel like I would remember that, darling,” he winked, and she felt her face heat up.

“Oh, right. Yeah.”

“You don't seem convinced.”

“No, I am,” she said, very unconvincingly. There was another silence while she hesitated. “Are you naked?” she blurted out, immediately covering her face with her hands to block out Lockwood's shocked reaction. His laughter didn't help, only serving to make her feel more embarrassed than she already was, and she stayed safely behind her hands while she waited for it all to be over.

“No, darling, I'm not naked. But if you wanted me to be then I'm sure we could figure something out.” She could hear the amusement in his voice and groaned in frustration, knowing that he wouldn't ever let her live this moment down.

“I'm good, thanks.” She didn't really mean it, but it was nice to have a friend like Lockwood, and she figured that having sex with him probably wouldn't help to keep that friendship at all.

“Alright. Well if you don't want to see me in my pants then keep your hands there, I'm getting out of bed.” For the most part she obeyed, but she would be lying if she said that she didn't peek through her fingers briefly while he was getting dressed.

~~~

Luckily the other members of Lockwood and Co were not at home when Y/n left that morning, having said no to Lockwood's offer of breakfast (she would pick up something from Arif's, even if it was out of her way a little), and within half an hour she was back in her own house with a very large cup of tea and a plate of food in her favourite armchair in the living room.

When one of her housemates asked her where she had been all night, a suggestive tone to her question, Y/n simply shrugged, and replied “What's it to you?”

~~~

One week later she was running for her life.

It wasn't that this sort of thing didn't happen often, since her job required a lot of running a lot of the time, but normally she wasn't this exhausted from it. She wasn't even working on a case, either. Y/n had just been walking home from her actual case for that night when she'd accidentally taken a wrong turn in her fatigued state and had come face to face with a bunch of Type Twos.

At least she had her rapier and a few flares and salt bombs left, and her boots were solid enough that despite how much running she had already done that night, she couldn't feel the ground beneath her feet when normally her soles would be protesting in pain.

“Fuck's sake,” she grumbled, heading for the nearest iron fence she could find. Unfortunately she still had to cross a road that was surprisingly busy at this time of night (or morning? she wasn't sure where the line between the two was drawn) and then vault over the fence into the park, which was probably also infested with Visitors. Going against every action movie she had ever seen she looked back (which was precisely what she shouted at the characters for), then immediately stumbled since she couldn't see where she was going. Her brief pause in her flight allowed the Visitors to catch up a little, and within a few seconds she was seeing her life flash before her eyes and throwing up her rapier in a last ditch attempt to not die.

Then something else was flashing before her eyes, and the ghosts were being driven off.

Y/n realised with a start that the flash had been Lockwood and his stupid grin, dressed in his stupid long coat that was stupidly attractive on him, waving his rapier around in stupidly perfect motions.

“Did you miss me, darling?” She didn't even have time to respond, already ducking to not be hit by the bicycle a Poltergeist had sent flying their way, and Lockwood pushed her to the ground to dodge the railing that followed. They landed with a thump, and Y/n winced when her back hit the concrete of the pavement and then again a very brief moment later when Lockwood landed on her.

“I did, Lockwood. I really did miss you.” She hoped that he could see how sincere she was, and he looked as though he was about to say something. Unfortunately he was cut off when a badly-aimed salt bomb exploded right above their heads, and a small “Sorry!” was called out from somewhere nearby.

“Not to worry, George!” Lockwood yelled back as he got off the floor. He offered out a hand and Y/n let him pull her up, holding her breath when he pulled with more force than was needed and she fell into his chest. “Woah,” he said, voice quiet. “You alright?” His free hand had come up to steady her by the arm, and now he was gently stroking up and down. She wondered if he knew he was doing it.

“Yeah. Can we maybe run away from the death bikes?”

“I think that would be a good idea. You going home?” Y/n shook her head.

“One of my housemates has their partner over, and I'd really rather not be there. I was gonna put up with it but if you're offering your bed again I won't say no,” she teased. Lockwood's face went pink, but not from the cold or the running.

“I'm always offering my bed, darling, you should know that by now.” His smile was as blinding as the flash he had appeared in, and then he was tugging her hand and leading her away from the ghosts (which wouldn't be able to follow after a while, since she'd already run quite far from their Sources), and instead heading for 35 Portland Row.

When they made it inside (Lucy was already in bed, but Lockwood and George had been coming back from a case like Y/n), George bade the two of them goodnight, then tiredly climbed the stairs, leaving Lockwood and Y/n in the front hall. It was dimly lit, only the lamp on the hall cupboard providing any reprise from the darkness, and the yellow glow of it made Lockwood look ethereal.

He had dust and dirt all over him, staining his usually perfect white shirt and tie, and his hair was a mess from the slight wind outside, but he still wore his confidence and his charm like a second skin, and he had never looked more like Anthony Lockwood in all the time Y/n had known him.

“What were you even doing out there?” he asked.

“I was coming back from a job, took a wrong turn somewhere, and came face to face with those fuckers. I'm just really glad that you were there in time because I probably would've ended up in hospital otherwise. Or a furnace.”

“I'm glad I was there too,” Lockwood said, stepping forward. He made to move his hand, as though he might reach out and touch hers, but then his fist was clenching at his side again, fingers flexing every few seconds. “I thought you would be alright, really. Then I saw you trip - why the hell did you look back? You always get annoyed when they do that in movies. I was scared, Y/n, that you might not get back up again.” She could tell that he meant it too, from the way he was looking at her. It was almost too much, his gaze, since it was heavy with so much emotion that they hadn't even properly addressed between them, and that was probably why he kissed her.

She both had and hadn't been expecting it.

It made sense when she thought about it, because beneath all the teasing and flirting there was attraction and a real desire, and she had always figured that being with someone was easier if you knew and trusted them. But she had never thought that either of them would act on it, since both of them seemed happy to let the friendship cover up the truth because at least that meant they weren't without the other. Bringing the truth to light could ruin that, and then they might not see each other at all.

Now, though, she wondered why they hadn't kissed before.

It had been brief, a few seconds at most, but it was enough to make her realise that they had been incredibly stupid in not doing it earlier. She had had such a long night - they both had - and when he pressed his lips to hers for the second time she knew that despite the fatigue and near death experiences involving bicycles, they would be alright. Her hands had moved without her fully knowing, and when they pulled away after the second kiss she realised that they were in his hair and clutching his coat that he hadn't taken off yet. His were nestled around her waist, holding her close to him while he searched her eyes for any sign to stop.

The third kiss was the longest yet, and it took them a long time to move from the front hall to his bedroom.

~~~

Y/n had always been a fan of anything that shone, and had been called a magpie by nearly everyone that knew her.

It didn't matter if it was expensive or not, if it was shiny, then she would have it. Growing up she hadn't been used to expense, and finding trinkets on the street was her speciality, but every now and then someone would buy her something a little less on the cheap side, and she would be overjoyed.

Then of course there were the things she bought herself.

The Fittes Ball that she was on her way to had invited agents of all kinds (a rarity for solo agents who usually went forgotten), and her outfit was one of the most expensive things that she had bought yet (other than her shared house). It was worth it, though, for the look on Lockwood's face when he first saw her.

“You look incredible, Y/n/n!” Lucy gushed, immediately wrapping her new friend in a hug. George and Holly agreed, and while their fussing was nice it was Lockwood's opinion she really wanted. They hadn't spoken after the night they spent together two weeks ago, and now he had an unreadable expression on his face while he looked at her. It was ridiculous, really, how nervous she was to know what he was thinking, since she had never usually cared about what any man thought of her.

“Thank you, I love your dress, Luce! And George, are you actually in a suit? No, no, no, you look very nice! Holly, you look incredible as always,” she said, returning the compliments her friends had given her. Her gaze kept darting back to Lockwood though, and after the others had moved away to talk to someone else, he cleared his throat.

“Y/n.”

“Lockwood.” He took a step towards her.

“You know I told you you could call me Anthony.” He had, not long after he'd taken her to his bed.

“Oh, right. I didn't know if that was just... for then.” She was struggling to look at him now, so she missed the way his expression softened.

“It's for whenever, darling.”

“Okay,” she said, and the small smile he gave her made her heart beat a little faster in her chest.

“You look stunning, darling. Truly.”

“So do you, Anthony,” she replied, and this time she took a step forward to close the distance. A frown came onto her face, and when he asked her why she paused for a moment before answering. “What are we? Because we haven't spoken since... since that night, and now we're acting like we did before and I'm just quite confused.”

Instead of responding with words, he dug into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a folded paper, handing it to her a second later. She tried not to focus too much on his hands (the memories of two weeks ago were coming back to the front of her mind now) and took it with confusion, starting to unfold it.

“Oh, I'll be back in a minute, George is calling me over.” He flashed her one of his winning smiles and was off, moving in what she assumed was the direction of George. She finally unfolded the paper and was surprised to see that it was mostly blank, just one question and two little points below it. A pen had been folded into it, and she bit back a smile when she'd read the words.

Would you go on a date with me? Please circle one answer

yes

He was ridiculous, she had decided, but then again she couldn't deny how ridiculously cute it was that he'd written out this mini questionnaire and put it in his pocket, despite not knowing whether she would actually be here or not to take it from him. Why he'd left immediately she didn't know, but maybe he was just too nervous to find out her reaction right away. She clicked the pen and circled 'yes' the best she could with no hard surface to lean on, and winced when the paper punctured. He knew where to find her, but she wrote her address anyway and the house phone number, and refolded the paper. Looking around she couldn't immediately see him, but then she caught a flash of a smile that could only have belonged to one Mr Anthony Lockwood, and she made for where he stood. He blushed slightly when he caught sight of her, then his cheeks burned brighter when she tucked the piece of paper and the pen in the pocket just inside his jacket (standing much closer to him than she needed to), and walked away without a word.

~~~

Two hours later they had snuck into the Fittes building's public library, giggling about something stupid one of the stuck-up snobs who was far too old to still be alive had said while they sipped the fancy champagne that was being served.

“Do you think they get many kids in here? Like, actual kids who would need entertaining?” she asked, making Anthony look round from where he'd been perusing the shelves.

“I doubt it. Why?”

“They've got origami. Look,” she pointed, putting her champagne flute down on a sideboard and picking up a sheet. “I used to be able to make loads of things, but I reckon if I tried making a rabbit or something now it'd look like someone folded a bit of paper a bunch of times and then sat on it.”

“I used to make those snowflakes where you fold it into quarters and cut bits out. Got quite good in the end; I could make chains of them eventually.”

“Of course you're good at making paper snowflakes,” she muttered, no hint of malice behind it. “You're good at everything, I swear.”

“Oh, that's not true.”

“Really? Name one thing that you can't do.” He paused, and she could practically see the cogs turning in his head. “See? You can't do it!”

“Well, I don't think that was very fair, actually, because you didn't give me long enough to actually think about it!” She moved to sit down, picking out various colours of paper squares before settling on one she liked. Anthony sat down next to her, his thigh close enough to hers that she could feel his body heat through his suit. He chose his own square of paper, immediately starting to fold it in different ways.

“What are you gonna make?” she asked him, not looking up from where she was attempting to make an origami butterfly.

“That's a secret.”

“Alright then,” she snorted, “be mysterious. Is that because you're bad at origami and you're trying to hide it by making me guess?”

“Sure, that's what's happening.”

They sat in comfortable silence while they worked, and when Y/n crossed her legs she made contact with Anthony's knee and drew in a breath. She refocused and looked at the paper in her hands, frowning when she realised that she had no idea how to make a butterfly out of it anymore, and sat back with a huff.

“You alright?”

“Yeah, just bored, I suppose. What are you making?” He had folded his piece of paper into a thin strip, and now he was pulling the ends together, somehow making them link.

“May I?” he asked, gesturing to her right hand. She didn't answer for a moment, too busy watching the way his fingers moved. “Y/n?”

“Oh, right.” She let him take her left hand in his, holding her breath for the millionth time around him both at the tenderness of it all and at the way his hands were so cold compared to her warm ones. He lifted the origami up and slid it onto her fourth finger, tightening it by pushing the ends together further.

“You can take it off, if you want.”

She wasn't sure she was breathing. “Are you proposing?”

“What? No, if I was proposing you'd know about it, darling. I just�� I don’t know.” He looked nervous, and although he hadn’t let go of her hand, she could see that he was fidgeting.

“I love it, Anthony. Thank you.” He smiled then, small and as under as the way he was holding her hand, and she couldn’t help but ask what she’d been wondering for the last two hours.

“Did you read my response?” Somehow he softened even more, and his grip tightened ever so slightly before he nodded.

“Yes, I did.” Had he moved closer? She thought the distance between them was no longer as frustratingly large as it had been, but he was still too far away.

“Well?”

“Are you free on Saturday? There’s a great place for lunch I’ve been dying to show you for a while now.” He was definitely closer, and she could make out the small scar on his lip in perfect detail.

“Midday work for you?”

“Absolutely.” He was still holding her hand when he kissed her gently, like he thought she might leave at any moment, and when he pulled back after a couple of seconds she dragged him right back to her lips, shifting somehow even closer to him on the seat. The gift he had made that now sat on her finger felt as heavy as a gold one, filled with the promise of what could be and happy endings, and she found herself thinking that if the two of them did ever marry, she would be happy to do so with a paper ring.

They were sat there kissing for a while, not stopping until someone shouted outside the door in drunken laughter, making Anthony and Y/n jump back in surprise. Then they were laughing too, like they were teenagers sneaking off (which, she supposed, they almost were, if you ignored the fact they were legally adults now), and he pressed one last quick kiss to her mouth before he stood up. “We should head out. I’m sure the others will be wondering where we are.” Y/n stood up too, still holding his hand, and moved to straighten his tie. She had pulled on it when they were kissing, and now it was all crooked around his neck.

“I think they probably know that we’re together, though. I doubt that they’re too worried about us.” She finished fiddling with his tie and draped her arms around his neck, and flushed when he wrapped his own arms around her waist and pulled her tight against his body. They stayed that way for a while, just trading small kisses and swaying gently back and forth.

“I’m glad,” Anthony said suddenly, breaking the silence. “That we… you know.”

“Nearly died and then slept together?”

“That’s one way of putting it. I just - I’m glad.”

“I’m glad too, Anthony.” Normally accidents like having sex with her friends was something she hated, but given it was Anthony Lockwood that it had happened with, she was happy to make an exception.

~~~

That night, while Anthony finally managed to sleep next to her, Y/n stayed awake. The glow of the ghost lamp outside had woken her a few minutes ago while she had been surfacing, and now she couldn’t get back to sleep. Her dress hung on the back of his desk chair, and various parts of his suit were slung around the room in piles from where they had thrown them earlier in their haste to be as close as possible to each other.

The ring now sat on Anthony’s bedside table, and although it wasn’t light enough in the room for her to make out its shape, she still knew exactly where it was. Before the two of them got too caught up in each other she had slipped it off, saying that she didn’t want it damaged (as it likely would have been), and when she placed it to the side her eyes had caught on the photo in the frame.

“Is that us?” she had asked, grabbing the frame with both hands.

“Oh… yes. Sorry, it was just a really nice photo and we don’t get to see each other that much, and-”

“Anthony,” she interrupted, warmth flooding her face at her next words. “I’ve got cut-outs from papers that wrote about you framed, so this is perfectly okay.”

She flushed again just thinking about it, and how softly he had smiled at her, and then how softly he had kissed her afterwards. She had been dreaming about him, about both of them, and what would have happened if they had stayed in the library at Fittes for a little longer (a lot of hushed moans and whispered words, and his hair completely dishevelled).

He was the one that she wanted, she was sure of it. There had been others, but none of them had featured in her thoughts about the future like Anthony Lockwood did.

~~~

Months later, when the seasons had gone from wonderfully warm and sunny (or as sunny as England could get) to cold and biting air, Anthony and Y/n were on a case together.

She had officially become a member of the agency not too long after they started dating, and while Lucy and George had originally been worried about the logistics of living space, they quickly realised that their new hire would be sharing a bed with their boss. Y/n had settled in quickly, getting used to how her friends lived within a few weeks, and the company had settled into a nice rhythm.

“A hotel? That’s a pretty big location, shouldn’t we have Lucy and George with us?” she asked as the taxi pulled up to their destination.

“It seems to be contained to one area, from reports, and since they had a couple of actual children give statements I’m going to trust them. Just the outdoor space around the back, apparently someone - a worker, it says here - died while manning a barbecue near the large pool.”

“How do you die manning a barbecue?”

“He fell face-first into the coals, this says,” Anthony replied, waving the paper report around. They clambered out the taxi, thanking and paying the driver, and once the kit had been collected out the boot and the driver was heading back down the road, they were alone.

“Well that’s an awful way to go. Type One? Or manifesting as something stronger?”

“Everything points to Type Two, but that’s nothing we can’t handle.”

~~~

He was right, as he so often was, but unfortunately the way in which they handled the Type Two ghost of the Barbecue Man meant they ended up jumping in a pool.

The Source had apparently been one of the tiles on the ledge, where the Barbecue Man had tripped after falling face first into the coals and cracked his skull open on the edge of the pool. A delightful scene, Y/n was sure, but they hadn’t figured out what the Source was until much later. While she had been scouring the barbecue for any sign of a trigger for the Visitor, Anthony had been drawing it closer to the pool. He seemed to be having a wonderful time taunting the poor dead man, and she couldn’t help but curse him out a little under her breath. “There’s nothing here!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Anthony, I’m pretty sure!” She was just about to tell him off for questioning her when he stepped back on his right foot and made the Visitor shriek an ungodly noise. “Wait! Draw it away from where you currently are!” She wasn’t sure if he’d actually been paying attention to her words since he didn’t give any indication that he had heard her, but a moment later he started moving away, the ghost following him, and she was able to dive for the tile. The second her hands came into contact with it she felt the pain and torment that Barbecue Man had been in in the brief minutes before his death, and at the same time that she managed to dislodge the tile (it had been knocked lose, most likely from his head after he hit it) and wrap it in a silver net, Anthony jumped in the pool. When he surfaced, hair plastered to his forehead and coat and suit completely soaked, he shouted at her to jump in too, leaving the Source on dry land. She just stared at him, but then a rush of cold air hit her and she didn’t think twice. Anthony was waving his arms around, making the water move about enough to fend off the second ghost that had appeared.

Unfortunately that meant that when Y/n attempted to come up for air, she got a face-full of water.

“Anthony!”

“Whoops. Sorry, darling. Here,” he said, offering out his hand. She took it gladly, still spluttering slightly, and they hauled themselves to the opposite side of the swimming pool. The water was freezing, but it was better than being ghost-touched, and besides, Anthony hadn’t let go of her hand yet.

~~~

Her hands were turning a little blue from the temperature of the pool.

It reminded her of when they had been redecorating one of the rooms in Portland Row about two months ago. George had complained that the room was lacking something, and all inhabitants (and Kipps, although Anthony didn’t pay him much attention) agreed that they needed to update it. They had painted it blue, not too dissimilar to the colour of Y/n’s fingers in the present day, and while it had been a wonderful day it had also been the day of her and Anthony’s first fight.

She couldn’t even remember what it had been about now, something stupid and fuelled by external factors such as job stress and fatigue, but Y/n had slept in Lucy’s bed that night.

It had been a while before either girl went to sleep, instead spending the hours attempting to stop Y/n’s crying and watching the old tapes of movies and television shows from before the Problem that Lucy had stashed away on her bookcase. When the morning had come, Lucy had offered to go downstairs and sort out breakfast for them both, so that Y/n wouldn’t have to run into Lockwood, but Y/n had shaken her head, saying that the two of them needed to figure something out.

The moment she had set foot in the kitchen, seeing the back of Anthony’s white dress shirt while he stood at the counter making teas (he had made one for her too, in her favourite mug), she had started tearing up again. He’d heard her sniffling and whipped his head around to see her hovering just inside the doorway, and immediately he had crumbled and rushed over to her, wrapping her in his arms and mumbling “I’m sorry” into her hair.

Now, back from their case with Barbecue Man, they were sat in the library, Anthony pushing a cup of freshly made tea into her hands in an attempt to get them back to their normal colour. “Feeling any better?” he asked, sitting down in the chair next to hers and picking up his magazine.

“Yeah, a bit. I can actually feel things again now, so that’s good.”

“Good. Well, I’ll keep you under surveillance for a while, just until I know you’re better.” She snorted, lifting the mug to her mouth.

“Thanks, Doc. Much appreciated.” His responding smile was enough to warm her up entirely.

~~~

A few hours later she woke up feeling disorientated, most likely because she never remembered falling asleep in the first place. Anthony was still in his chair on her left, but he had fallen asleep too, magazine splayed across his chest. Y/n stretched, yawned, and checked her watch, then started at the time. It was nearly half six in the morning, and they had come back from their case at around midnight. She wasn’t sure how long Anthony had stayed awake watching over her, but she knew that the moment he did finally regain consciousness she would be sending him straight up to bed for another few hours of sleep.

She heard somebody moving around in the kitchen and went to investigate, finding George in an oversized t-shirt and no trousers putting the kettle on to boil. “Morning,” she said, shuffling further into the room and stuffing some bread into the toaster.

“Ah, morning. Lockwood still asleep?”

“Yep. He’s in the library. Did you need him for something?”

“Oh, not really. I woke up at about four and was shockingly hungry, and when I came down he was sat reading his magazine. I was just wondering how long it would be before he was up again.” It made sense for her boyfriend to have stayed awake until he literally passed out from exhaustion, given how little Anthony normally slept anyway, and she frowned when she heard the stairs creak. A few moments later Anthony Lockwood himself appeared in the kitchen, bleary-eyed and smiling like there wasn’t a thing wrong with him only getting about two and a half hours of sleep. “I need the toilet,” George suddenly said. “If you could move out the doorway, Lockwood, that would be great. Thanks. The kettle should be boiled soon, if you two wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all, George,” Anthony replied, already taking mugs out of the cupboard. “Who’s toast is this? I think it’s burning.”

“Oh, shit, that’s mine! Fuck that’s hot!”

“Not hotter than me though, right?”

“Shut up, Anthony. My fingers are burning.” He reached over and took her hand in his, not caring for the piece of blackened toast that sat on her plate on the counter, and pressed a gentle kiss to each fingertip. She had flashbacks to the last time her hands had been near his mouth in a far less family-friendly setting, and tried to stop her knees from giving out.

“Better?”

“Um… I guess. Yeah.” If anything she was worse, since now her whole body was on fire at how sweet that one gesture was. He hadn’t even thought about it, since there was less than a second between her saying her hand hurt and him kissing the first fingertip, and that had her knees weakening all over again. She took a step towards him, threading her burning fingers with his and placing the other one on his chest to grab at his collar and pull him in for a kiss. He’d had a long night, she was sure of it, and the more-prominent-than-usual bags under his eyes were giving her a solid argument. The kiss was short and sweet, and when she pulled back he followed her for a moment before realising that it was over. He pouted, his eyes practically begging for her to kiss him again, and she let out a small laugh before obliging. That kiss was sweet too, but lasted a little longer, and the third one would have gone on for longer still had George not come back from the toilet and pretended to gag.

~~~

“Anthony?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever think about just… leaving for a bit? Not completely, I don’t think I could stay away from London forever, but just running off on holiday for a while. Getting a break from the ghost hunting and constant threat of death.”

“That’s�� really? You want to ask that now? Darling, my mind is not in the right place for an actual conversation right now.” His hand trailed over her bare side and his eyes were looking at everything but her face, proving that he really wasn’t in the right mental place for a conversation like this, but she tried again anyway.

“Okay, but do you?” He sighed, reluctantly dragging his gaze up to meet hers.

“I suppose I’ve never really thought about it before.” He paused, shifting his weight to get comfortable. His legs knocked against hers and his hand hadn’t stopped tracing the skin of her body, and he had never taken off the ring he always wore. It had been a pleasant chill against her earlier when she thought she was going to combust from his touch. “I think because of the company I wouldn’t take a break. And I’d have a lot of guilt about leaving when there are people who might be in danger and I could have helped them.”

“But if you could drive away, would you? None of the guilt, or people getting hurt. Just… going off on your own for a bit.”

“I don’t know about alone. I think I would want you with me, darling.” He punctuated his statement by lowering his voice and pulling her closer by her hips, flush against his body, and although she was tired she couldn’t help but feel warm again.

“I’d be happy to drive away with you, Ant. Anywhere you go, I’m going too.”

“You mean it?” he breathed, eyes looking almost golden in the glow of his bedside lamp. He looked desperate for her answer, like he needed to know that she would truly always be with him because he couldn’t stand being left alone again.

“Of course I mean it, Ant. I want it all with you; everything. The complications and fights and of course all the good things too. The horrible Mondays where we get clients who don’t realise that what we do is a full-time job and we don’t really get weekends, the times we do get days off, and we can just be… together.” She ran her fingertips over his arms, marvelling at the hidden muscles she felt. Given how skinny and beanpole-like he appeared, the first time she had realised how toned he was she had been pleasantly surprised. It made sense, she supposed, since he was incredibly proficient with a rapier and had been from a young age, and being that good meant he had to at least be somewhat physically fit and capable (he was very physically capable in other ways, too, something else she had learned early on). She didn’t think she would ever get over how much she loved his arms, or his hands, or how they looked when he rolled his dress shirt sleeves up and folded his arms against his chest, and from the look he was giving her right now he apparently knew that she felt that way.

“You alright, darling?” Good lord, had his voice gone even lower? His eyes had gone from being a honey-golden to a dark syrupy brown, and if what she could feel against her lower half was any indication she could tell that his mind was back to being somewhere other than their conversation. She sounded out of breath when she spoke.

“I’m alright. Do me a favour?”

“Anything.”

“Wrap me in your arms?”

“Absolutely.”

She definitely shouldn’t have this much of an obsession with his arms, but the moment his arms tightened around her torso and her thigh, bringing her on top of him fully while he sat up with her in his lap and kissed her deeply, she couldn’t find it in her to care.

~~~

On their one-year anniversary, Y/n woke up early.

She didn’t want to, but the moon was shining brightly through the bedroom window, and there was a gap in the curtains that let the light through. It was landing on the books that had been stacked up on the bedside table, titles just about visible and all of them ones that she had read before. The moonlight was also resting on Anthony’s face while he slept, and he looked like he had in the taxi on that night when they had first met, ethereal and effortlessly gorgeous (but not quite so tired and weighed down by responsibility), and she found herself falling in love with him all over again.

It was probably all forms of creepy to just lie and watch him breathe while she tried to go back to sleep, but there was something oddly soothing about it: the rise and fall of his chest and the peaceful expression on his face. It was rare she got to see him so relaxed, the only other times were when he had a day off and was sat in the library with a cup of tea, Y/n sat nearby, or when they had spent time exploring each others’ bodies, hands roaming over skin and through hair while they made love.

The paper ring that he had made her just over a year ago, not long before they started officially dating, was sat on the bedside table next to the stack of books. He’d made her new ones at random points throughout their time together, but the original one that he’d folded from that piece of paper in the Fittes public library had remained in pride of place in her jewellery dish in their now shared bedroom at 35 Portland Row.

Looking at it now she was absolutely certain that he was the one that she wanted, taking him in marriage with a paper ring, putting their pictures in frames to decorate their home, and he was the one she wanted in all of her daydreams.

Anthony Lockwood was her future, and her future was looking wonderfully bright.

lockwood tag list: @anathemaloren, @anthonylockwoodandco111, @augustisintheair, @avdiobliss (hopefully you get this notification, ik it's been weird recently), @briar-rose23, @curseofhecate, @dangelnleif, @el-de-phi, @ell0ra-br3kk3r, @informedimagining (hopefully this works for you too my lovely), @karensirkobabes, @locknco, @mischivana, @mitskiswift99, @mrsklockwood, @mrsyixingunicorn10, @novelizt, @ran23sblog, @superpositvecloudshipper, @t2sh0, @taygrls, @tournesol77, @no-morning-glories, @whenselenefallsinlove, @wordsarelife, @zoom1374, @light-23, @ahead-fullofdreams

and then I'm tagging @neewtmas, @oblivious-idiot, @bobbys-not-that-small, @maraschinomerry, @uku-lelevillain, and @lewkwoodnco because I've been promising you this for a while and you just didn't know it :D

if there is anybody who wants to be added to my lockwood tag list, then please go here! I am aware that it has been a while, but from now on I will be checking this post every time I write a new fic to see who is there, so head on over to give a comment or a like and I'll pop you on for next time! <3

#anthony lockwood #anthony lockwood x reader #lockwood & co #lockwood and co #anthony lockwood x you #lockwood x reader

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fic-recs-book-recs · 1 year ago

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dear robin masterlist

PAIRING: tim drake/female!reader STATUS: on-going TAGS: childhood friends to lovers, angst with a happy ending, multi chapter

Months later, Tim mourns the death of Robin. Batman's taking his death badly, he tells you. He needs Robin. You didn't know what he meant by that back then. You were thirteen and angry at the world, at your mother for clipping your wings, but if it meant you get to keep your best friend—your only friend, Timothy Jackson Drake—then you wish you hadn’t been so angry. You wish for your best friend to stay.

or, you and tim drake throughout the years.

I. a girl and her bestfriend

II. tale as old as time

III. anti-passion, anti-communication

IV. i always want you when i'm finally fine

V. and if there was a place that i had a choose

VI. patches on my fingers that won't heal

VII. tba

#tim drake x reader #i love this series GO READ IT #tim drake #fic rec

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fic-recs-book-recs · 2 years ago

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you're the only good thing in my life

pairing: tim drake/f! reader

word count: 4,365

status: on-going

Months later, Tim mourns the death of Robin. Batman's taking his death badly, he tells you. He needs Robin. You didn't know what he meant by that back then. You were twelve years old and angry at the world, at your mother for clipping your wings, but if it meant you get to keep your best friend—your only friend, Timothy Jackson Drake—then you wish you hadn’t been so angry. You wish for your best friend to stay.

or, you and tim drake throughout the years.

I. WHAT GOES AROUND—

Timothy Jackson Drake is your first love.

But you don’t know that yet, of course, because right now you are five years old and you hate how the next-door neighbor’s son has three first names as his full name. You believe it’s so stupid for his parents to name their son such an unfortunate name, and you almost pity him, but when your mother had grilled you to never, ever say that to dear little Timothy, you hate his name even more. It’s a stupid name! Timothy Jackson Drake your ass, they should just change their surname to something cool. Like Wayne after Bruce Wayne, the richest man in Gotham! Now that’s a cool name.

A child’s honesty is nothing if not brutal, they say. And your mother had never been so ashamed of you.

In just under one minute of meeting your neighbor’s son, she found that no amount of warnings could prevent her child and her blabbering mouth from saying, with conviction, “That sounds like a stupid name.”

She had pinched you from behind with you yelping in surprise, a stiff smile on her face and a quick apology slipping from her lips at the startled expressions of Mr. and Mrs. Drake, pushing you towards the little boy whose age you think your mother lied about because he barely looks five years old like you and he even had the audacity to look hurt from your truth and now your mother is begging you to say sorry to poor Timothy Jackson Drake.

You did not regret it when the words tumbled out of your mouth—you spoke your mind and you were unafraid—but when his expectant facade gradually fell into awkwardness, and then to hurt, you tried to wash away the pang of guilt creeping up on you. Dammit.

For the first time in your life, you think you feel bad for insulting Timothy Jackson Drake.

But before you could utter out your less than sincere apologies (you still think his name is stupid, but it was now the kind of stupid you can tolerate), he rushes out of his manor’s lobby and disappears into a corner. “You’re rude!” he yells, turning his back away from you.

Even the calls of Mrs. Drake does not stop him from looking back, and you are forced to stand there with the adults—your mother who is ashamed and his parents who probably hate you for hurting their son—in awkward silence.

Without another thought, you run after him.

It felt like an eternity looking for the little boy you had insulted, and you hate to think that he must be crying right now about how you had easily insulted his name and how he should have said yours was worse instead of running off (you would have done that if someone ever told you your name was stupid, your name is beautiful!). But that is your delusion, your sole motivation to continue traversing this unknown territory known as the Drake Manor. He’s probably playing video games right now to quell his sadness, but who knows what little boys do in their lonesome.

You are gonna find Timothy Jackson Drake even if it meant opening every door in this house.

By some miracle, you find his room a few seconds later. You like to think it was all thanks to your sheer determination of needing to say your so—sor—sorry’s (foreign, the word is foreign to you) and not because of the little wooden sign hanging in front of his bedroom door that wrote, in awful kids penmanship, Tim’s Room. Totally thanks to your smarts and great sense of direction. The sign was nothing if not a distraction.

The door is thankfully unlocked, and you open it with ease. “Timothy Jackson Drake!”

“Go away!” he yells and you see the way his small stature shuffles away from the edge of his bed and to the wall (as if that would prevent you from coming closer).

You freeze in your position by the entrance, not having expected his response. No one ever told you to go away. “Oh,” you say softly, however you made no move as ordered to.

He looks like a kicked puppy, glowering at you from his bed while being wrapped around a red blanket. It’s too big for him, perfectly drowning him in its layers.

“I’m sorry,” you say robotically. Tim looks helpless, staring at you incredulously.

“You don’t sound like it,” he grumbles, anger surfacing on his pale visage. You fight the urge to roll your eyes and clear your throat.

“I’m sorry,” you say again, as if it was any better. He starts tearing up in frustration. Crap.

In your panic, you move closer towards him and rummage through the pockets of your dress. He looks at you in suspicion, gripping his blanket with hands shaking and tiny. He tries to inch away, only to be met with the wall of his bedroom on his back. He shivers.

You pull out a Batman-themed pen. “I’m sorry for calling your name stupid, Timothy Jackson Drake.”

Tim looks like he doesn’t believe you, but you have already apologized three times and even offered to give away the Batman pen your father gifted you the day before. You had claimed this Batman pen as your greatest treasure then, and now you have to find another one to stop this kid who barely even looks your age from hating you forever. Maybe having a big mouth is a problem, as it leads to things like losing your Batman pen to a snotty kid with a bad name. You hate the way Timothy Jackson Drake rolls on your tongue, but you say it anyway as if it would make him forgive you.

“It’s not my fault I was given this name,” he sniffles, and your heart almost twists at the pitiful sight. “I like my name!” he continues, but then he rubs at his eye and takes your Batman pen, without even even taking your apology! What the hell!

“Yeah,” you agree dryly, focused on watching him play with the pen—your treasure, your bargaining chip, and it didn’t even work. “It’s your parent’s fault.”

Tim looks torn. “It’s not their fault, too…”

Yes, it is, you insist inside your head, you could have been named anything else but Timothy Jackson Drake, and your parents knew that. But you don’t tell him that because then you risk having him skirt away from you and onto who knows where else. (You do not like chasing after five-year-olds who cry when their name is called stupid but you chase after Timothy Jackson Drake and his stupid name without a single thought.)

“Okay,” you concede. You crawl next to him on his bed and he makes no signal to move away, as if you had not just broken into his bedroom and insulted the most treasured gift his parents had given him the moment he was born. You sit there next to him, watching him play with your beautiful Batman pen your father gifted you the day before because you begged for it and it was supposed to be your treasure, but now it is Timothy Jackson Drake’s Batman pen and you think you’ll ask your father for a Wonder Woman pen next time.

“Did you mean it?” he asks after the painful silence between you.

You try to hide the fact that you were dozing off. “Huh? Meant what?”

“When you said my name was stupid,” he clarifies, staring at you expectantly, “did you mean it?”

This boy must be an idiot, of course you meant it! You never lie, even to little boys who are supposed to be your age but look like they are younger and who hide inside their blanket and steal your Batman pen without accepting your apology.

“No,” you lie, your smile looking strained.

Tim hands you back your Batman pen, and you look at him in confusion. “Liar,” he accuses you, and your face turns hot. You never lie (except for the one time Timothy Jackson Drake asks if you meant whatever you had apologized for and you said no because you didn’t want him to be hurt again, looking like a kicked puppy drenched in red fabric), and you’re gonna make sure he knows that.

“I’m not a liar!” you argue.

“You are!” he argues back, frowning. “It’s like me saying I hate Batman when I know I don’t! You’re lying!”

“I’m not lying! And I hate Batman!”

“No, you don’t!” Tim flushes red in the wake of his anger. “You don’t have a Batman pen when you hate Batman!”

“That’s why I gave it to you, so take my apology already!” you push it towards his chest, and he captures his clumsily. “I said your name is stupid so say my name is stupid too!”

You huff in annoyance—this stupid, stupid boy—catching your breath after your little screaming match. You raise a brow when he turns to you with this serious, disappointed look in his small face and chubby cheeks, the blanket once coddling him slipping away from his body. He’s silently grasping onto the Batman pen you had shoved to his chest at the last minute with not a single peep.

You’ve done it now, you think, arguing with Timothy Jackson Drake. This wouldn’t have happened if you had just shut up earlier, if you had just said your hello, nice to meet you and not blurting out the first thing in your mind because you do not lie and you speak what you want to speak but sometimes your actions have consequences and that is Timothy Jackson Drake hating you forever, it is him staring you down with his baby blue eyes and the Batman pen you gave him in his small hands. But even if you think of him as the boy with three first names as his full name and how stupid that is, how he should’ve just been named something like Tim Drake for simplicity’s sake—you do not want him to hate you.

You are not Timothy Jackson Drake’s friend and after this you probably will never be but you do not want him to hate you.

“Your name isn’t stupid,” he frowns. He looks down at the Batman pen, your so-called treasure because you’re a liar and you don’t hate Batman and he knows it, so he admits, “I think your name is beautiful.”

Huh.

He doesn’t think it’s stupid, but you think his name is stupid and you’ll continue thinking that but Timothy Jackson Drake and his stupid name does not think your name is stupid.

“You don’t even know it,” you respond in your dumb stupor. Tim flushes.

“Yes, I do,” he stresses, determined. He recites your full name and you startle, not understanding the way it sounds so smooth in his five year old voice. You become silent and he says it again. “My parents told me before we met.”

“Don’t lie to me,” you say. “I don’t like liars.” Go on, say my name is stupid like I did with yours.

“I’m not lying! You’re the liar!” he insists, and your heart flutters just a little bit. You slap yourself. Not good, not good at all.

He stares at you, and he must think you’re a weird, weird girl. Your face is hot, shame creeping up on you but you do not regret any of it one bit (you still would like your Batman pen back, though).

You are five years old when you meet Timothy Jackson Drake—full cheeks, pale skin, black hair, and blue eyes full of child-like wonder. You are five years old when you first heard his name and thought that it was so stupid to have such a long name only for it to be three first names in one consecutive order, and your mother told you to shut up and keep it to yourself. You are five years old when you made Timothy Jackson Drake run away, hiding in the comfort of his red blanket only to be disturbed and offered a Batman pen that you didn’t even want to give away but you just had to so he could take your apology. But he never did, so you tried to make truce by having him admit your name was stupid like his but he doesn’t and you believe he must be lying but Timothy Jackson Drake is not.

Batman pen, blue eyes, flushed cheeks, and he does not lie to you.

You did not know it then, but Timothy Jackson Drake would become your first love.

II. SUPERHERO STATIONARY

For the past three years since you’ve known Timothy Jackson Drake, you’ve never failed to continuously flaunt your new array of superhero-themed school supplies. Like your (well, Tim’s) Batman-themed pen, they are gifted by your father every new school year because it was somehow the only thing that kept you grounded. And so every year you would barge into the Drake Manor and march to Tim’s room, excitedly doing a haul on the floor of his bedroom while he observed you uninterestedly. It happens every year since he’s met you, and not once did you fail to show him what he was apparently “missing out on.”

Tim, despite being the only son of a high class family, stares longingly at your new gifts. You’re such a prick, he thinks. Girls are so mean.

“I bet you wish you should’ve asked for these instead of that stupid camera, little Timothy,” you coo patronizingly, showing off your Robin-themed pencil case. Robin is your current favorite despite only being Batman’s sidekick, and your explanation as to how that came to be was due to an incident at school that ended up with you witnessing the glory of Robin's amazing fighting skills. That and the fact you found him handsome, which you would never admit but Tim was smart enough to know based on your reactions pertaining to him.

Over the years, your obsession with the word “stupid” managed to become worse. Tim probably hears it at least fifty times a week, and yet somehow you never tire yourself of it. Something and someone is always stupid to you, but at least now it isn’t his name. You probably still think it’s stupid, but you’ve learned to keep certain things to yourself over the years. (That and the fact you admitted to getting an earful from your mother a few months into your newly-found friendship.)

“I don’t need those,” Tim responds haughtily from his position on his bed, leaning over to grab at his camera. “Take a look at this beauty, the craftsmanship—you wouldn’t understand though, since you’re so in love with Robin.”

Your face flushes. “I’m not in love with Robin!”

“You totally are!”

“Am not!”

Tim snaps a picture of you before you could do anything about it, saves the image, looks at it, and sends you a cheeky grin. “You look so stupid in this.”

“I’m gonna kill you, Timothy Jackson Drake,” you promise, pouncing on him and forgetting about your initial objective. He yelps when he feels your body land on top of his on the bed, making sure to protect his camera from any damage while you manhandle him in a way that would have your mother screaming in agony about how unladylike you are acting. “Delete it!”

“Never!”

You wouldn’t care though, because you care more about not breaking his precious camera you claimed was stupid in comparison to your superhero-themed stationary. You called Tim’s full name stupid, called his camera stupid, and called the sign on his door—which has long been upgraded to something better, something much more sophisticated for current Tim—stupid, but you would never break his precious things. So he laughs when you start tickling him—your alleged greatest weapon against a weakling such as himself, you had claimed when you were six—and he laughs harder when he manages to get an upper hand against you and reciprocates your attacks. Your laughs reverberate on the walls of his room, the camera and the superhero school supplies left forgotten. You call truce and he pulls away thanks to his benevolence, and he lays down next to you to catch his breath, skin flushed and energy spent.

Tim is eight years old when he thinks you’re his best friend.

III. FIRST SLEEPOVER

Timothy Drake Jackson’s best hobby is photography. From the moment he acquired the camera as a gift on one of his birthdays, he would take pictures of anything and everything in the world—using up all his storage from how he takes so many pictures, and refusing to delete the ugly candid shots he’s taken of you despite the thousands of times you’ve begged (read: threatened) him to do so. He claims they’re for memories sake, you think he’s using them for blackmail.

But even with your reservations about the pictures he takes of you, he proudly shows them off to you anyways. He calls them his greatest works, and with just a little editing, he claims you’ll be looking like a beauty (“just like your name!”). You didn’t believe him at all, because no amount of editing—no less a nine-year-old’s—would be able to turn you from looking like a demon devouring an O’Shaughnessy’s burger into a bonafide Disney princess.

You were proven right when Tim came into your room the next day and showed you his so-called awesome editing skills—a drawn-over crown, a gaudy dress, and the burger turned into a frog all done by Sharpie’s. You had tackled him to the floor out of pure horror, but he only laughed and continued to push you away to no avail. You remained on top of him and laughed, too, because his drawing skills were awful and you claimed you would have done better.

(And yet you had kept the photo with you anyways, tucked somewhere in your closet where no one could see its atrocity in full glory but yourself. You would keep every photo he would give you from then on, and soon you’d be forced to buy a photo book in order to keep track of them no matter how much you keep calling them stupid and ugly, but he will keep giving them to you and you will take it anyway.)

Later, after countless days of begging your mother for you to have a sleepover with Tim (who, in her horror, vowed to never let you sleep in the same room as a boy, eventually relents after you begrudgingly agreed to take on ballet classes), you lay under the covers with him after a fun evening of playing video games and gushing about superheroes—Tim drones on and on about the Blue Beetle and although you kept complaining about he’s just blue Batman, you would never admit that you liked listening to Tim geek out about Ted Kord.

Mrs. Drake soon interrupts your heated debate, calling for bedtime, and you are forced to continue your conversation in hushed whispers accompanied by side-jabs here and there. You never reach a conclusion, but you promised each other you’d finish it by morning with you proudly claiming you’d be the clear winner. You barely dodge the pillow Tim throws at you.

Gotham sleeps, but Tim doesn’t let you.

“What…” he begins, staring up at the ceiling of his room. “What would you do if you knew Batman and Robin’s identities?”

You open your eyes, blinking away the need for sleep because somehow answering your best friend’s question is more important. To mess with him, you made a show of rubbing your eyes and fake-yawning to indicate he’s disturbed you, but he waits for your response anyways.

“I dunno,” you say tiredly. “I think I’ll ask Batman for a Batarang.”

Tim frowns. “That’s not what I meant.”

You look at him and see the slight downward curve of his lips, his furrowed brows, and his blue eyes that seem burdened with something your immature mind could not figure out. You don’t like that look on his face. So instead you bring out your right hand and try to ease out the frown on his face, tutting as you did as Tim stares back at you in surprise.

“You’re obsessed,” you say, removing your hand. “I’d keep their identities to myself. It’d be my own little secret.”

“So you’re saying you wouldn’t use that to get close to Robin?” Tim teases.

You make a face before turning your back to him, tucking his red blanket up to your chin. “Goodnight Timothy, don’t bother my beauty sleep,” is the last thing he hears before you start tuning him out.

Tim smiles, hazy and exhausted. He is content with your answer for now. Batarangs, he thinks, I’d like one too.

Your best friend’s best hobby is photography. Every time you hung out he would always make a point to show you the pictures he’s taken on his way to school, on his walks, and whatever meal he had. He would show you anything and everything, even the ones you disliked and the ones you could go on and on for hours because it’s pure art, good job, Timothy.

But then a week passes and you wonder why your best friend doesn’t share his pictures with you anymore.

IV. BATMAN AND ROBIN

Another year passes. You visit the Drake Manor after every ballet lesson and complain to Tim about how much you hate it, how much you hate your mother for enrolling you in it, and Tim listens. He listens when you talk about the snobby girls in your ballet class and your snobbier teacher, and he lets you rest your tired feet on his lap while he reads his books.

But sometimes you come to his room with tears in your eyes, saying I hate my mom, I hate her so much and Tim listens to you. He pulls you in and helps you take off your pointes, and he sits next to you while you cry about how much you hate dancing. Then you’ll calm down, let Mrs. Drake knows you’ll leave after dinner, and proceed to watch action films with Tim until it is time to go.

Sometimes you find yourself staring longingly at your best friend’s camera, but you say nothing. You don’t ask him why he doesn’t share his photos with you anymore.

The next month, Tim hands you photos he developed himself of you at your dance recital. Your mother had complimented his skill, praising how he perfectly captured your form while you danced, and that had been the first time you told him ballet wasn’t so bad.

You hate ballet, but you liked to perform for your best friend because it would be the only time he’d let you go through his camera with his supervision. Nothing was ever said about why he started becoming so strict about it, why he sometimes canceled movie nights with you because he was “busy,” but you were fine with that. You’d be fine if Tim kept his secrets because you’re still his best friend, right? You’d dance for him every time, in your pointes and your tutu, and he’d listen to you infodump about Swan Lake even if he’s heard it a thousand times already.

Another year passes. Tim never misses a single one of your dance recitals. He would sit there with your parents holding his camera, taking shots of you now and then, and when it was over he would give you the bouquet of flowers he’s been holding on to since the night began, and you would fight off the blush rising to your cheeks because it was just Timothy Jackson Drake, your best friend of six years.

Then middle school starts, and you watch your whole world crumble when your mother admits to wanting to enroll you to a private, all-girls school, preferably boarding school. She claims it’s so you can grow up to be a fine, young lady, and that the ballet classes were not enough to ground you down—whatever that had meant—and neither did the dresses and the etiquette classes. She says it must have been because you spent most of your time with the boy next door, Timothy Jackson Drake, who owns multiple skateboards, plays video games, watches too many action movies with you, and fuels too many of your superhero fantasies that she’s gotten sick of seeing your superhero-themed school supplies collecting dust. Those are not for girls, she tells you, and you leave the manor in the wake of your anger. Selfish, selfish girl, you hear her mutter under her breath, and you cry in Tim’s arms (is this delicate enough for you, mother?). And as always, he listens. You drown in your shame. You leave for boarding school next month.

Another year passes, and there’s a new Robin in town. On the weekends you are home you tell Tim you liked the old one more but you don’t mind the new one so much, however he starts seeing less and less of your Robin-themed stationary. The yellow and green have been replaced by black and blue—Nightwing. Tim realizes you’ll never tire of Dick Grayson, and your mother tolerates your devotion to the vigilante.

Months later, Tim mourns the death of Robin. Batman’s taking his death badly, he tells you. He needs Robin.

You didn't know what he meant by that back then. You were twelve years old and angry at the world, at your mother for clipping your wings, but if it meant you get to keep your best friend—your only friend, Timothy Jackson Drake—then you wish you hadn’t been so angry. You wish for your best friend to stay.

Tim gifts you his camera as Star Wars plays in the background on one of your movie nights. “Keep it,” he says, and you think back to when you first met and how you gave up your Batman pen as an apology. “It’s yours now.”

“Why?”

“Just because.”

You don’t see him after that. And the day after. And the day after that. You realize you wouldn’t see your best friend for a while.

Two years pass, and Robin is back.

read full story at my ao3

#tim drake x reader #fic rec #fanfic rec #tim drake

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fic-recs-book-recs · 2 years ago

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In the mood to read something where Nikolai calls reader "Beautiful" a lot. What he doesn't know is reader is insecure and thinks he's just being charming giving everyone a nickname, but boooy he means it.

#can i be tagged if this is written #i'd be blushing and giggling like a little girl #requests

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fic-recs-book-recs · 2 years ago

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Hey gang, pinning this for awhile until the hysteria dies down, but let me be really clear regarding folks using AI to write fanfiction or taking one of their fave fics that hasn’t been updated in awhile and feeding it to ChatGPT to “finally read the ending”:

I explicitly forbid ANYONE from feeding my fics to AI generators to create their own content, even if it’s only using pieces to create a beginning or an ending.

I work really hard on my writing, and it’s incredibly disrespectful for other writers to disregard that and use AI to generate their own content or to try to “finish” someone’s fic for them because they’re upset it hasn’t been updated recently.

Writing can be frustrating and really hard. I say this as someone who hasn’t written something new in months (maybe a year?). Give your favorite writers some kudos and encouragement instead of whining that you’re going to use AI to finish their fics for them.

In the vein of using AI to write fic from start to finish, please know that AI writing isn’t good enough yet to create completely organic, new content - if you use AI to write fic, you’re plagiarizing. That’s it. Even if you have good intentions, you’re plagiarizing.

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fic-recs-book-recs · 2 years ago

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oh I wasn’t aware it was feeding the ai. I’ve inserted hundreds of fics into chatgpt for their continuation or for a different plot within the same context just for fun and out of curiosity… but I’ve never posted any of them…

Indeed, anything that is given to AI it can use later to draw from. That's why it doesn't matter if you post them or not as it has now access to those writers' texts without their permission.

~Mod L

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fic-recs-book-recs · 2 years ago

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This series was amazing. I just finished the whole thing and it made me laugh and cry i loved it

it’s never too late (to come back to my side)

ONE | two | three | finale

pairing: anthony lockwood x fem reader

series content: best friends to estranged friends?? to lovers, fake dating, she/her fem reader, second person pov, angst and fluff

word count: 4.8k

summary: lockwood needs your help after pushing you away. chaos (and kissing) and making up (and making out) ensue.

notes: title from dorothea by taylor swift. this is part 1 of a series! for the lovely @philliam-writes as promised

“You know what we have to do.”

Lockwood looked up at George, who had a serious expression on his face.

“What are you going on about?”

“I know who could help us with this. And so do you.”

Lockwood’s furrowed brow was joined by a clenched jaw when recognition clicked in his mind.

“That’s not funny, George,” he reprimanded. Lucy watched interestedly as he crossed his arms, suddenly defensive. He seemed genuinely offended by the other boy’s words, turning away from him and back to the papers on the table.

George leaned into his line of sight, adamant on not being ignored. “She’ll be able to get the blueprints. We’re going off of nothing here.”

“We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

George ran a hand through his curly hair, an act of pure exasperation. Trying to get Lockwood to change his mind on something could be near impossible sometimes.

“What is it with you? We’ve been trying to find the records for days now. And the moment we find an actual way to obtain them, you won’t even think about it.”

“We are getting those blueprints ourselves. This is not up for argument.”

George let the stack of papers in his hands fall onto the table and threw his arms into the air, like he was begging for some higher power to change his friend’s mind. Fueled by two hours of sleep and defensiveness for his other friend, he whirled around to face Lockwood.

“What, is your ego so massive you can’t even handle the idea of asking someone for help?”

Lockwood balled his hands into fists, his voice beginning to rise.

“She’s not just someone, and you know it,” he practically seethed at George.

Lucy’s eyes darted between her friends as they traded blows. She had seen Lockwood angry before. But she had never seen him silently fuming like this. His face was slightly flushed and she could see the way his chest rose and fell quickly with each breath.

“We haven’t needed her help in months, and I assure you that we don’t need it now.”

Ever eager to get the last word, he promptly turned from the room and left.

George and Lucy sat in silence for a few moments before the boy sat down with a loud sigh. His glasses clattered noisily on the table cloth when he tossed them down with a huff. Leaning his head on an elbow, he began to harshly massage the bridge of his nose.

“Well,” Lucy mused as she began to pick up the papers strewn about the table. “That was pretty intense.”

She had the feeling that their research was done for tonight.

George huffed a laugh. “Yeah.”

When the various books and documents were collected into neat piles, the Thinking Cloth was revealed once again. Lucy’s eyes sought out George’s rather rude drawing of Lockwood. He couldn’t help but smile when he saw where her eyes were trained.

Lucy thought he looked rather tired under the harsh kitchen lights. They really should be heading to bed now. This case had been taking a toll on all of them.

But her curiosity got the best of her.

“George,” she began. He let out a grunt of acknowledgement. “Who were you two talking about?”

The boy sighed for what was probably the fiftieth time in the past five hours.

He uttered an unfamiliar name, and Lucy leaned closer to him, not bothering to hide her intrigue. She had been at the company for a few months now, but she had never heard of this mystery person.

“Pray tell.”

And so he did.

“Well, as you know, by the time you first got here, I had lived with Lockwood for about a year already. She had started living here long before that.”

Lucy’s brows raised slightly. A whole other person had lived here at one point, and managed to not have been brought up once in the past couple months.

“I don’t know how many years she had lived here at Portland Row before I showed up, but I just assumed it had been a lot. She and Lockwood didn’t really like talking about it.

And they were close. Like really close. I was convinced they were dating and just not telling me about it, but she laughed when I asked her about it. Told me I was being ridiculous,” George recounted, a fond look on his face. “She was the researcher before I started here, so when I joined, we got pretty close, too. We would look through the Archives together. Lockwood’s always been a slow reader, so she told me she was more than glad I moved in.”

“She sounds lovely,” Lucy cut in.

George smiled while fiddling with his fingers. “She is. And she’s also great with a rapier. She and Lockwood used to fence together in the backyard. They were great together out in the field, too. Could handle visitors easily.” He frowned then, growing slightly sad.

“The company hit a bit of a low in the months after she left. We probably handled half of the number of cases we would’ve if she was there.”

“Why did she leave?”

He looked up at her and gave a pointed look to the drawing of Lockwood that she had been staring at earlier.

“They got into a fight. And it was bad.”

“Must’ve been. Enough for her to leave.”

He gave a half shrug, a barely there lift of his left shoulder. “Guess so.”

George went quiet, now deep in thought. Lucy sat back in her chair, expecting that to be the end of the conversation.

“It was because she got temporarily Ghost-Locked,” he said quickly, like he was trying to get the words out of his mouth as soon as possible. “I wasn’t there, but he was. He had to carry her out of Brantley’s Mansion with a broken arm and two fractured ribs,” George recalled, like he was telling Lucy what he ate for breakfast and not recounting a severely traumatic memory that their friend had gone through.

Lucy took a sip of water and tried to make it seem like her jaw didn’t just hit the floor.

“I still remember the argument,” George murmured. He gestured vaguely in the direction of the living room. “I could hear them yelling from upstairs.”

—

You had just been discharged from the hospital.

You were only kept overnight, just so the doctors could monitor you while you recovered from the effects of Ghost-Lock. You were mostly fine, the only proof of your stay in the hospital now was your broken wrist, which had since been bandaged. Unfortunately, it had been the wrist of your dominant hand, so you would be out of commission for a while.

Lockwood, on the other hand, had his left arm in a cast and still clutched his left side in pain whenever he laughed too hard.

The two of you had gotten into a disagreement before you even got home, and it was in the lobby of the hospital. You went to grab your bag full of belongings on the way out, but Lockwood insisted that he carried it. You argued that he could barely cough without feeling pain, and he argued that you had nearly died less than twenty-four hours ago.

He was forced to give in when you took the bag forcefully from his grasp and ran down the street to hail a cab.

George was kind enough to open the door for you both, and you made a sharp right turn straight into the living room. Like a wet noodle, you collapsed onto the striped couch, exhaustion threatening to send you straight to sleep. You stretched your sore limbs from end to end, feeling a bit like a cat.

You could hear hesitant footsteps as someone entered the room. You would’ve assumed it was George, because he tended to shuffle as he walked. Lockwood tended to walk with a purpose, as if he always had someplace to be. Even with the uncharacteristic change in his gait, you could probably recognize him in your sleep. You pushed yourself up to make room for him on the couch, and he sat down, his hurt side pressed close against the armrest.

You wrapped your arms around your knees and observed him silently. He had his feet planted firmly on the floor and did not lean back into the orange pillows behind him. He looked like he was sitting on a stranger’s couch, uneasy with even being in the room. His entire body was tense, like you could lay him down and use his back as an ironing board. He exhaled and you watched as he tried to hide another wince.

Your hand flexed at your side. You wished you could take away his pain. Your poor boy had been through the unimaginable in the past few days.

(You decided to ignore your usage of ‘your’ when referring to Anthony.)

He looked uncomfortable in his own skin, and it felt like a stab to your heart. Your eyes trailed to his plain looking cast, sitting in its sling. The sight of it worsened the feeling of guilt in your heart. Lockwood looking so unlike himself hurt you more than your throbbing wrist.

Unable to stand it any longer, you got up from the couch and began rifling around in the organized mess of the desk next to you. What you were looking for was at the back of a drawer.

You made your way towards his side of the couch and knelt down in front of him. He was still silent. You tapped his knee and he finally looked down at you. His gaze looked a little blank, as if he was staring through you. You knocked the marker you found against his cast.

“Do you mind if I…?” you asked. The end of your sentence trailed off as you watched his eyes get glassy. He blinked once and seemed to snap back from wherever his mind was.

“Go ahead.”

You offered him a small smile and he gave one back to you, but you could tell it wasn’t genuine by the way his eyes looked flat. That look on his face should be a crime.

He let you steady his arm in your hands, and finally, he rested his entire weight against the back of the couch.

A small win.

You picked up the marker and carefully wrote your name in small blue script. He did not miss the way you carefully chose where to etch your name. The letters were written on the inside of his arm, where it wouldn’t be seen unless someone held up his cast and did a total inspection. It was something just the two of you would know about.

He didn’t bother fighting the pull of his lips while you slipped the sling back on. You knew his smile was genuine this time.

Resting your head against his knee, your gaze was pulled towards the black backpack resting against the couch. You had dropped it in your haste to lay down, but it had both of your personal effects you had taken off during your brief stint in the hospital. With a start, you remembered that you had one more thing for him.

You leaned away from him to rummage through the bag, pushing away your dirtied jacket and his soiled overcoat before your fingers clasped around a single plastic bag. You pulled it out and held it up for him.

Something inside of it shined back at him. Inside was his plain silver ring that he usually wore on his left hand. He had to remove it when he got his cast on, and forgot to put it back on. You slipped it out of the plastic.

“Well, we couldn’t forget this,” you teased.

The two rings he wore were Lockwood staples, and you can’t remember a time when you would look over and his hands were free from them.

Not that you looked at his hands, though.

He would often roll the ring between his five fingers, a trick that he refused to teach to you. Seeing him without the band felt wrong. You reached out for his right wrist so you could slip it onto his hand without the cast, but were met with his open palm instead. You placed it in his grasp without question.

He held up the back of his right hand to you, fluttering his fingers back and forth.

“It’ll look bad if I wear it on the same hand as this one.” His other ring flashed at you. The pretty stone in the center was practically glowing.

His voice was practically a whisper when he continued. “Keep this one safe for me, yeah?”

He reached for your left hand and slipped it onto your fourth finger. You tried to ignore the fact that that’s where you would wear a wedding ring.

“I’ll protect it with my life,” you teased, but you couldn’t help but feel like a blushing school girl. Perhaps you were one.

Lockwood rubbed his thumb over where it now sat on your hand, and he wondered if you could feel the affection coming off of him in waves.

You stared at it together.

“Hey,” you whispered after a while, resting the back of your hand on his thigh.

He could feel the outline of his ring on your hand press into his leg. He fought to suppress a smile.

A bit embarrassingly, you realized you had been rubbing circles onto his good wrist for an uncertain amount of time. “I wanted to say thank you. For saving me. I wouldn’t be here without you and… if there’s anything I could do to repay you-”

“Promise me you’ll stay safe.”

Nodding, you realized that you would probably do anything he asked of you. It was a bit scary.

“I promise,” you swore readily.

He said your name firmly, and reached up with his good arm to hold your face. His palm was rough but his grip was gentle. He tilted your chin up to make you look at him, and you saw that his brown eyes were no longer glassy. “I’m serious. And don’t say thank you to me. Saving you… That’s nothing you need to thank me for.

“Anthony…” You frowned, a protest on the tip of your tongue. His gaze seemed to darken.

“If you got hurt again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, I would do it all over again. Everyday for the rest of my life. And not once would I ever ask you to repay me. So don’t even think about it, alright?”

You fought the urge to kiss him just then.

Instead, you pulled his hand from your face and pushed yourself up to sit beside him on the couch. His good arm slid behind your back and pulled you into his side. You tucked your face into his chest and sat there, just listening to him breathe. You felt so safe here, at home on the couch wrapped up with him. His hand ran over the imprint the carpet left on your knees from kneeling for so long. You felt yourself sink into the pillows and his warm embrace.

“I’m going to permanently suspend you from field work.”

You pulled back from him as if he had slapped you.

“What?”

“I’m going to-”

“No, I heard what you said perfectly fine. I mean, what are you talking about?”

You lightly shrugged his arm off of you and stood up. He stupidly looked up at you with his stupid brown eyes as if he didn’t understand what the fuss was about.

“I think it’s best if you stick to research,” he explained, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Anthony, I love working out in the field. I love working with you, where is this even coming from?”

He continued to stare at you.

“Is it because I got Ghost-Locked?”

You were met with no response.

Disbelief. “It was one mistake and it won’t happen again. You don’t have to put me on house arrest.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“It is, and you know it,” you said, the most sorrowful expression twisted on your face.

“You’ll still be working with me and George. Nothing has to change, you just won’t be taking ghosts head on anymore,” he defended, moving to his feet. He put a hand on your shoulder in an attempt to placate you. But his comforting touch was stifling right now, and you staggered back from him. His shoulders sagged.

“You can’t ask this of me.”

“I’m not asking, I’m telling you,” he said, voice steady.

“Anthony John Lockwood, I can’t even believe you right now,” you managed to say, your voice catching.

The expression on your face was carving Lockwood’s heart right out of his chest. You have to do this, he reminded himself. You have to do this to keep her safe. His resolve hardened.

“As long as you live under my roof, and are a member of my company, I will not allow you to take part in any field work. If you wish to be a field agent, you’ll have to do it under somebody else. And that’s final.”

You pressed your palms against your shut eyes, baffled at what you were hearing.

“Do you even understand what you’re saying to me right now? Have you given this even an ounce of thought?” You cried out, voice rising.

He didn’t falter. “I’ve given this plenty of thought over the last two days.”

A sob nearly crawled its way up your throat. The future you saw with your best friend was crumbling in front of you.

“Two days. The past two days.” You took a deep breath. “So while I was sitting in a hospital bed, you were already thinking about how you were basically going to fire me.”

It was a stretch and you knew it, but the feeling of betrayal was blinding your judgment. He held your stare, not wavering.

“No,” you said finally. “I refuse to let you make a mistake as massive as this one. We’re all shaken from what we went through, Anthony.”

You reached out to grab him, trying to get him to see reason. “But that doesn’t mean-”

“You’re not ready for this kind of work. I didn’t see that a few months ago, but I’m sure of it now. You’re not ready. And you will be a danger to all of us if you continue like this.”

Your outstretched hand fell limply to your side. His ring on your hand caught the light and seemed to wink at him. He ignored the tightness in his throat.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

He didn’t.

You swore you could feel it. The sensation of your heart breaking in your chest. He was playing your heartstrings like their own musical instrument.

“Alright, then,” you said, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. You willed them to go away. “I refuse to sit here and let you dictate my future like this. I’m going to be a field agent, Lockwood. And I’ll make sure to stay out of your way while I’m at it.”

You knocked into his shoulder on the way to the door. He followed after you, right on your heels.

“I’ll be back for my things,” you snapped, swinging the front door open. You cast one last cursory glance at the house before turning around.

It would be your last time here as a member of Lockwood and Co. Your last time here with 35 Portland Row as your home.

You broke down sobbing before the door had the chance to swing shut behind you.

George watched stupefied from the first landing as the lock clicked shut behind you. The sound echoed throughout the main hallway.

“What did you just do?” He asked in disbelief. Making his way down the steps and towards the door, he wrenched it back open.

He snapped his head to the left and to the right, surveying the street. You were already gone.

—

You showed up the next morning, arriving in a white van with a familiar orange stripe down the side.

Lockwood opened the front door.

“I joined Fittes,” you said simply, staring up at him. That was all there was to it.

You were pacing in front of him and George on the couch when you explained it all.

“I went to the recruitment office when I left. I showed them what I could do and they nearly accepted me on the spot,” you said, laughing like you couldn’t believe it either.

George wondered if you added that last part to spite the boy next to him, who was trying (and failing) to keep his composure. Maybe you had.

Uniformed men walked back and forth from the attic and back to the van. Lockwood watched as they held your life in their hands. He had too, a few days ago. A shiver ran down his spine as he remembered your weight slung over his back as he carried your motionless body from the mansion. He could see your favorite sweater and one of your favorite books sticking out from one box, and he suddenly felt a little sick.

He wanted nothing more than to fall to his knees and beg you to forgive him. He wanted to beg you to stay, and make you see how incredibly sorry he was. But he couldn’t, and he knew it all too well.

He had no right to ask anything of you. You had found something good for yourself, and he was in no position to hold you back.

The mask that he never used to wear around you slipped down over his face.

Lockwood brought himself to his feet, and watched as your eyes widened a little in anticipation. He stuck his hand out for you to shake. It hung in the air for only a second before you reached out to grip it firmly.

“Congrats,” he said genuinely, and you saw the way the corners of his eyes wrinkled. His pride was evident. Your hand stayed in his even after the handshake was over.

You hoped he didn’t notice.

He had.

“Good luck,” George managed to say. After his great escape from the company a few months before, he could not fathom why any sane person would want to leave their home at Lockwood and Co. for the stuffy Fittes halls. “Try not to go insane after twenty-four hours.”

George really was trying to be as supportive as he could.

You did nothing but take his comment in stride, awarding him with one of those closed lip grins you smiled, like you were fighting off laughter.

Lockwood wondered if you would ever smile like that at him again. His hand still clutched in yours, he wondered vaguely how embarrassing he was being. You were moving all of a fifteen minute cab ride away, not dying. But it sure felt like it. Leaving you with those pretentious scumbags felt like leading you to an early grave. None of them could protect you like he could.

But he wasn’t stupid. Fittes had countless benefits. They were an obvious choice of agency, the oldest and most respected one in the country. You would learn things there you could never learn with him. He wouldn’t be surprised if you were almost as good as him at fencing the next time he saw you. At Fittes, you would never have to scour the Archives to find information ever again. Knowledge would be at the touch of your fingers with their resources. After all, it was a real prestigious company. It would be great for you, and you would do wonderfully there, no doubt making your way to the top in no time.

But Lockwood wanted to be selfish, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. If you went to Fittes, you would be away from him. No more walking into your room on nights he couldn’t sleep. No more watching in awe as you fought by his side. No more late nights at the kitchen table while you and George came up with increasingly ridiculous theories about a case. No more fencing with you outside until the sun had set.

The house would be near silent without you. You had lived at Portland Row for years now, and had been a part of him for even longer. He could not remember what life was like without your laughter echoing in one of the rooms of the apartment. His grip tightened on your hand.

Before George and the company, there was you. He did not know what came before that. Your lives were so tightly intertwined that he knew your loss would feel like losing a part of his mind.

A familiar figure was standing tall in the entrance to the doorway. A man with a strong jaw, striking blue eyes, and a styled mop of hair on his head.

You slipped your hand out of his and it felt like someone punched him hard in the gut.

Lockwood could not help the look of disdain on his face before his mouth curled into a cheshire grin. “Do my eyes deceive me,” he drawled, “or is the Quill Kipps really gracing our humble home?”

You and George shared a look. Kipps matched Lockwood’s expression with an equally unsettling one.

“I’m her supervisor. She’ll be working under me for the duration of her time at Fittes.”

Lockwood’s eyes nearly popped out of his head from the pressure building in his temples.

The mutual hatred the two boys shared was not a secret. After Lockwood had reigned supreme in DEPRAC’s annual fencing competition, being in the same room as the other was enough grounds for one of them to start a fight. Absolutely anything could be turned into some sort of competition between them. Lockwood felt terrible that their feud now extended to you.

Kipps gave him the most smug and knowing look in history, and Lockwood was silent. For the first time in his life, he was so speechless he couldn’t even come up with a half baked retort.

“If you boys would excuse us, we’re late.” Kipps couldn’t resist throwing one last smirk over his shoulder before he disappeared out the front door.

In his head, Lockwood began to list the many ways the man could meet a slow demise. After the image of himself throwing Kipps into a pit of lava went through his mind, he turned to face you.

You looked sad, and he could see a torn expression on your face before it was buried into the fabric of George’s flannel. One final goodbye. He could hear you whisper something into his ear before pulling back, and two wide smiles were painted across your faces.

Lockwood’s vile thoughts of one Quill Kipps seemed to disappear at the look of unbridled glee on your face.

With nearly no time to register, you slammed into him, giving him a bone crushing hug that hurt his still injured ribs. But he pushed the pain aside as he buried his face in your neck. Your hand slid up the length of his button up before coming to rest on his nape.

He wondered if you realized you were still wearing his ring.

You had.

Your voice was watery when you spoke. “You know where to find me.”

He knocked his forehead against yours and just sat there, taking you in. The feeling of your hand on the back of his neck, your breath fanning against his shoulder. He wished he could keep you here with him forever, safe from visitors, safe from Ghost-Touch. But he would not let himself be selfish.

He squeezed you tight one last time before freeing you from his grasp. And then you were smiling at him through the front door. And then you were waving from the window of the van as it drove away. And he let you go.

—

“It was… messy, I guess you could say,” George said thoughtfully.

“I can only imagine,” Lucy agreed.

“We’re not on terrible terms with her. But I’ve always had the feeling that Lockwood’s a bit upset that she still left. And she rarely phones home, so. I wouldn’t say the situation was ever resolved to him.”

The two of them heard movement outside the door before it was pushed open lightly. Lockwood was on the other side, his expression unreadable.

“She’s agreed to meet with us tomorrow.”

part two

notes: pls bear with lockwood i wanted him to act a little crazy and insane just for fun. there will probably only be 1 more part (2 at most). if u want me to tag u in the next parts just lmk! my game of trope bingo continues in the next bit

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fic-recs-book-recs · 3 years ago

Text

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!! YOU'RE ONE OF MY FAVORITE GRISHAVERSE AND YOU'RE DOING A SOULMATE AU FOR KAZ BREKKER!!! askldjfaosdkljdfklasdj I like this one so much, you've done an amazing job with this, as usual

Waves

♡ Summary: Kaz has thoughts about soulmates, and tests his suspicions.

♡ Pairing: Kaz Brekker x Reader

♡ Fandom: Six of Crows, Grishaverse

♡ Warnings: None

♡ WC: 5k

I am in love with soulmate aus and I don't know why I don't write them more often. They itch my brain in a way nothing else can. This is kind of a tattoo mark au where everyone has a personal mark that forms when they start on a path that will lead them to their soulmate(s), whether that path starts physically or mentally. They glow and move upon linking.

Please excuse any spelling and grammar mistakes. Hope yall enjoy <3

∘₊✧──────────────────✧₊∘

The irony is not lost on Kaz. It punches him right in the gut when he least expects it, leaving him a little winded and a bit more weary than before. So he learns to expect it. And that's when it eats at him. Gnawing at every hill and valley of his brain and taking what it can of his dispersed heart.

He doesn't allow himself to think how this could have been different if it weren't for Jordie.

It's not worth it, and overall does no good to wonder. Because the past is past and he can't change it.

So he covers, and covers, and covers. For both the sake of his mental well being and not feeling an ugly kind of anger wrap around himself when he has to stare at the mark that stretches up his arms.

He blames Jordie, he holds so much resentment towards him that at times it completely consumes him. But he moves past it, and fools himself for a little while that he's forgiven him. He himself holds part of the blame too for not working on himself and allowing it to fester and worsen as time stretches on. Covering is the only way he knows to give himself some relief.

But it's still always there. Sometimes the mark feels hot in his clothes. Every once in a while he'll roll up his sleeves, letting them breathe the not so fresh Ketterdam air, and go about his afternoon.

And when it's late in the night, after he's had one too many glasses of liquor and the feather pen he's holding shakes and makes his handwriting a little messy, he looks at them in the candlelight and they're burning against his increasingly warming and perspirating skin.

The only part of his hand that's free of a mark is his palms and the bottom of his fingers, but they feel just as clammy and hot as the rest of him, so it doesn't help much.

He knows it doesn't actually burn, but it definitely feels like it.

He's been around very few people long enough for them to make comments about it other than when he's on a job.

And that's where he currently sits now.

It's a bit of a private thing; Up in a penthouse with barely more than a hundred people attending, a gathering is taking place with multitudes of businessmen and traders from across the lands. For Kaz, and you, it's all reconnaissance work.

"My my, that's a beautiful mark you got there." The woman in front of him asked.. She was on the taller side, face covered in make up with her lips painted a bright red. "Who's the lucky winner?" A hint of desire sparks in her eyes.

He exerts a chuckle. "That would be my partner." He looks over to the right, nodding his head towards you.

You were dressed in crisp cream dress clothes, a stark contrast from the ocean of blacks and reds that differ from the colorful streets of Ketterdam. Barely any makeup was applied to you before you left, just some to cover old scars and open pores. Your lips were painted black, leaving a stain on the glass of champagne in your left with another stainless one in your right.

He watched as you chuckled with a man, his hand caressing your shoulder. You let it happen, and then moved along, saying your goodbyes.

The woman in front of him turns to look where he's staring, and shifts a little when you make your way back to sit beside him. He smiles at you, telling himself he's playing a part.

"Champagne for you, my love." You purr, handing him the one you were sipping out of.

"Thank you, dove." He picks it up, placing his lips directly on the stain you made and stares at the woman. She doesn't seem the slightest bit uncomfortable.

"You two are absolutely gorgeous together, you know that?"

You chuckle from beside him. "We have gotten that compliment before, yes. But it's never tiring to hear." She chuckles as you lean toward him in your chair, folding your arms in front of yourself with the glass still held comfortably in your fingers. "Surely you should know the same. Your wife is an incredibly lucky woman."

"Isn't she?" She agrees. "She's gone to get us some treats, but I fear she gets lost easily." She glances around, shifting again as worry creeps onto her features.

"I would suggest finding her, if only to ease your spirits. I understand the worry all too well." He smirks, averting his eyes towards you. "Ghezen knows how often I manage to lose this one."

You open your mouth, a shocked expression he notes is genuine spreads across your features. "I do not!" Your hit his arm with barely enough force to hurt, then retract it immediately.

The woman smiles and stands up, offering her goodbyes and pleasantries, and then leaves.

He waits a few moments before turning to chat with you.

"What's the status so far?"

"Can't I enjoy my champagne for a few moments?" You jest. "This place actually has the good stuff unlike your club."

He shakes his head, but keeps a smile up for the crowd. "My sincerest apologies for not ordering the highest quality of alcohol the whole of Ketterdam and Ravka has to offer to suite your tastes." He picks his own glass back up and drinks some, really analyzing the taste this time.

Its not bad, if a bit fruity for his tastes. Yet he stores the information in the files of his brain. He also notes that he's drinking from the lipstick stain. He takes another sip.

"Thank you. I appreciate it." You smile a shit eating smile, and then give him the update before he has time to respond. "Several of the traders you had your eye on are here tonight, disregarding the ones you've already talked to, however two of them couldn't make it due to abhorrent weather conditions and another fell ill with a case of the common cold and decided to stay home.

Of the few that did make it, again, disregarding the ones you have met, one wants nothing to do with other people and is making a point of staying towards the corners and eating his fill of the 'snacks' as our lovely guest called them earlier, and the others are too busy chatting up the woman to really have given a care what anybody else was saying."

He set the glass down, moving the fabric of the thin cloth glove he was wearing to take a look at his watch. Almost eleven bells.

Quickly he began to calculate the pros and cons of attempting to talk to these sexually insatiable men tonight. If they're as insistent as you say they are, walking with them could be a waste of time and resources. But if their profiles had anything to say about them, then he might be able to wiggle his way in and, upon choosing his words carefully, make at least a memorable impact before their next trip back to Ketterdam.

He was about to make a decision when your fingers ghosted over the skin of his arm. His body tensed, but gave you his attention.

"Incoming, four o' clock."

Incoming from his right, he was able to make out two figures walking towards him, their connected arms glowing.

He recognizes them as Mr. and Mrs. Belldock. They were well known for their displays of physical affection that could otherwise be seen as inappropriate. He's heard stories about them, but he's never seen them in person.

The lightshow between their bodies bounced off the glasses, creating a bit of a rainbow on the table. You hold your glass up in a feeble attempt to block it, but only end up giving your wash a colorful wash of color. It makes his heart clench.

"I'm so sorry if we're intruding, but we couldn't help but notice your mark."

Kaz sighed internally, giving a shy smile externally. "Ah, it is rather out there, isn't it?" He begins to roll his sleeves down just a bit, but Mrs. Belldock places her fingers on his shoulder and his entire body tenses.

"No no! It's beautiful. I was just wondering if you've found your Soulmate yet." She quickly retracts her hand, feeling the stiffness.

"I have." He tries a smile, feeling his lungs fill with water. "That would be my partner here."

She looks over at you, her smile only growing. She offers a hand to you. "It's nice to meet you."

You nod, offering her a thanks and shaking her hand.

"So, what's your story?"

You quirk a brow. "Story?"

"Yes!" She begins to take her seat, her husband following along. "I just love hearing people's stories about how they came to find eachother. They're never the same, always a new adventure."

He watches your face crinkle, head tilting to the side before it lights up in realization. "Ooh, how we found out we were soulmates." Mrs. Belldock nods. "It's rather funny actually, the way we came to be."

You launch into a fabricated story about his and your coming together, and Kaz can't help but watch as your hands move about, working numbers to exaggerate certain parts. There's a smile on your face, genuine as it tilts to one side. He tries not to focus on the painful aching in his heart as your story goes deeper in detail.

He can feel his mark begin to burn as it usually does while the residual water in his lungs freezes him from the inside out. It both makes the situation worse and better when he rolls his sleeves back to where they were, exposing the waves that drag along his pale skin.

It's sickening, yet he yearns to see it in motion. To watch as the arms that clutched his dead brother swim in the ocean of his Soulmates hold, of your hold.

Of all the people that have ever asked about it, you weren't among them. Aren't among them. And it's strange the way that fact hurts him a little.

Jesper has asked, Wylan has asked, Nina has asked, Matthias has asked, Inej has asked, that Ravkan king, Nikolai, has asked. All who have seen his mark has asked and have received an answer that will never satisfy them.

But you haven't. You stare and stare, memorizing it with your eyes and tracing it with your fingers in the air, even drawing it out in your sketchpad when you get really bored, but never asking.

He doesn't know whether it's out of respect or disinterest in the answer, but it makes him feel like a lovesick puppy and it gets under his skin. Because feeling like that is dangerous. It's a hook that anybody could grab onto and uproot everything he's worked towards.

And yet here he is, wanting. Wanting for more than he should no matter how much he already has, overwhelmingly aware that he's not going to get it.

As he listens to you, he wants this. Not the story you're conjuring up (which has evolved into meeting on the streets in Ravka during a circus-esque performance), not in a million years. But he wants a story. A story you can tell to others with a smile just as bright as the one you're exhibiting now, if not brighter.

He's not even a hundred percent sure you're his soulmate. But he wants you to be.

Your mark in question was a bit odd in terms of what's considered normal, and it's the main reason for his skepticism.

It's currently covered utilizing Nina's quickly improving tailoring skills. It won't last much longer, he can see your skin starting to turn oil black where the mark is if he looks closely enough.

From what he's seen, the part that's on your face resembles a cardinal compass, it's north and south faces tilted. The south face points towards the second part of your mark, which he's yet to see or even know the contents of.

The only reason he knows it's not two separate marks, meaning two separate soulmates (which isn't as rare as most would think), is because there's a line, almost like a crack, extending from the point and disappearing beyond where his eyes can follow.

His own mark isn't even separate. It cascades along his back, over his shoulder blades and encompassing a major portion of the back of his ribcage before going along each arm.

You pinched Kazs glove between your fingers, the whispers of a laugh on your lips as you look at the time on his watch.

"We should be heading out now, the nanny will be starting to get anxious."

He quirked a brow, but went along with it. "It was truly nice getting to talk with you both." He held out his hand, allowing one, two hands to squeeze his before grabbing his jacket and going to follow you out.

"I hope you and your kids have a wonderful evening!"

Kaz tripped over his own shoe at the same moment you responded with a thank you and a good evening.

Kids? Multiple? Where did kids come in? There's no way he zoned out for that long... or at all.

Fuck.

--------

The walk back was silent, a stark contrast to the bustling penthouse. Claws from stray dogs scratched the ground as they chased after their meal, the meal in question yowling as it clawed its way up a pipe, turning and arching its back before hissing and scurrying out of sight. His cane provided little stealth for the hungry mutts.

"I'm sorry for touching you back there." Your voice broke the air. "I just could not remember if we were supposed to be using code names or not."

That made him smile. He tried his hardest to suppress it. "Code names were not necessary tonight." He let the silence heal itself, and then broke it again. "Though I do wonder about the names of our kids though."

You chuckled beside him. "I'm sorry, I panicked! She wanted to know our story so I just thought of the first thing I could think of."

"And whose might that be?"

"My parents." A melancholy smile rested on your cheeks. "That was their story. I can remember it like its my own. They've told it to me at least a thousand times. Granted, half of those were me asking to hear it again."

'Ask.' Kaz's mind shouted at him. 'Ask them why. Ask them /why/.' His mind refused to specify the why, a gross thick kind of anxiety slowly filling his aching limbs.

You ask. You ask others, but not him.

"I agree with her in some sense." You continued. "Other people's stories are rather interesting, even if theyre of the most mundane variety. But going around and asking strangers their story just... isn't the way to go about it."

His heart raced. "I suppose you're going to tell me the correct way?"

You shrugged. "Well, that's just it. There is no correct way."

He stayed silent, allowing you to get your thoughts together. Your shoulders were bunched, not yet coming down from their earlier movement. And when they did, it was followed by an exhausted sigh.

"I used to be just like them, asking couples left and right what the story was behind their marks, what event led up to them meeting and finding out that they were a match." You kicked a rock up the street, weaving in and away from him while you followed it's path.

"And eventually, I met a man. A really sweet elderly man, and asked about his. His partner wasn't around, but the mark was just as blatant as mine is. A large cloud smack in the middle of his forehead with a pair of lips at the center. It looked interesting, I just had to know the story. And when I asked, the change was immediate. He became angry and erratic, yelling at me to leave and about how rude I was."

You wrapped your coat tighter around yourself, all traces of a smile completely gone from your face. "Later I had found out that he and his soulmate were on two different sides of a very intense family war that ended in his partner and his brother being killed. The only time the two got to connect their marks was the night before the two boys died. They met to see each other in private for the first and last time, shared a kiss, and then parted ways." You kicked the rock, watching as it plunked into the canal. "I've never asked about anyone's mark since, no matter how much I wanted to."

He allows himself to turn to look at you, not startled but completely and utterly dazed when your eyes look at him, open and blown and pleading.

'Ask.' His thoughts run again. 'Be the one to ask.'

Better yet. Allow them to ask.

"Never be afraid to ask the questions you truly wish to know." He begins. "Just prepare yourself for the consequences." He adds, feebly trying to frame it as advice over a direct invitation. He knows it doesn't work, not in the slightest.

The feeling he gets when you smile upon hearing those words... it's not like anything he's ever felt.

It's small, but your entire face holds and releases the energy you have built. All in one breathy sigh.

The whispers of loud talking and chairs moving roughly against wooden floors tickled his ears. He looked to the crooked building that is the Slat, then motioned you along to follow.

He was met with little cheers and questions when he opened the door. Some stared between him and yourself with raised brows. A few drunkenly told him they hoped the night went well and others gave him a simple welcome back. None of it mattered.

The door to his office closed as you entered in front of him, and he tried his hardest to go about his nightly routine. Just taking off his coat and hat, setting his cane on the sink and, undressing himself to give himself a wash.

But the entire time he was distinctly aware of your presence in his office. Everytime the water trickled back into the sink, piercing the air, he thought of you. Everytime the rough surface of the cloth scratched his skin, leaving a red swatch in its wake, he thought of you. Everytime he rolled his shoulders, feeling his muscles move against his bones and water bead down to his hips, he thought of you.

He could swear he lost his heart a few times.

He patted himself dry, then grabbed his cane and dirty shirt and limped to his office.

There he saw you standing, out of your dress clothes and into some of his own.

Now he really thinks he may have lost his heart. And his breathing.

He gripped his cane, leather gloves squeaking against the metal crow head. He gives himself one, two, three seconds, and then tosses his dirty clothes into the doorway of his bedroom and limps over to you.

You're seated in a chair in front of his make shift desk, playing with a ball of thin twine he used for keeping papers together. He relished in the way your eyes widened and your face no doubt heated when you realized he was bare from the waist up.

Yet you didn't stop, eyes glued to his skin.

He turned around, allowing you to look at the back.

"I never realized it was so large." He heard the chair creak.

"That would be because you've never seen the full thing."

You chuckled, his skin prickling when he felt your breath on his back. "No shit. I just thought that maybe you had two rather than one."

"I have told others in your company that it's connected."

"No, you haven't."

"I have." He thought back briefly. "Nina asked about it for third time whilst she was drunk. You were right next to her, as alert as ever, as I told her that it's one mark."

Your silence was telling.

He caught sight of you from the corner of his eye as you slowly walked around him, eyes trailing up and over his shoulders, over his collar bone, and down his arms, taking note of everything.

Marks don't necessarily have to connect, which is why theres an absense in his mark of where youre supposed to touch. They don't have to be of a certain theme or even be where your soulmate first touches you. The only constant it seems is that your mark is personal to you, yet linking somehow, in some way, with your partner- or partners. They form in response to a change that led you to meeting them.

His was rather obvious, the freezing waves of the Reapers Barge haunting his life, making him the leader and schemer he is today.

Yours had something to do with you leaving your parents, he'd reckon, and setting your course here.

But he didn't know for sure.

Something was on your mind though, he knew, as you worried your lip between your teeth.

"As much as I loved to ask others about theirs, I don't think I've ever willingly shown anyone what my mark is- my whole mark, anyway." You said, voice small and distant. "And it's not because I didn't want to, but I think the hand print on my face scared people off from asking about it for fear it would unlock some horrible backstory."

Your hands came to the bottom of the shirt, bunching it up in your hands.

"But it's not really anything like that. I hope it's not anything like that."

The shirt continued to rise until it was exposing your ribs, the rest of the mark on full display.

They were waves. Waves not necessarily identical to his but definitely similar. In the middle was a handprint. A handprint, he realized, that was very similar in shape to his own.

"I don't reckon it's anything like that either." He couldn't tear his eyes away from it. It had to be connected to him. It had to.

But he had questions. Questions that you seemed more than prepared to ask and answer yourself.

"I didn't say anything before because I didnt think youd want anything to do with it." You rolled the shirt down, but played with the hem between your fingers. "You have goals, goals that require your attention, goals I don't want to get in the way of." You hesitated, hesitated a long while, before adding, "and it's not like we could prove it with your phobia. I didn't want to get my hopes up only to have them crushed and trigger you all at once."

Your logic was sound, but still his questions felt unanswered.

"I do believe I should have a word in this since it largely involves myself."

You picked at the hem again. "Well, yeah. I guess so but..." He felt his cane move, your hand touching the beak of the crow head just inches from his own hand. "I just thought it'd be easier to not bring it up at all rather than go through the hassle of suggesting it in the first place. You're not an easy man to suggest things to. Or ask things from."

His heart beat harder at that, a twinge of guilt infecting his blood. Only for you. For anyone else he'd scoff and say "that's the point", but it hurts when it's you. He wants your suggestions. Your questions. Anything you could give him he'd take with no qualms.

"Still, I believe my point holds some merit."

You sighed. "Yeah... you're right."

"I would not mind if..." He lifted a pointer finger, just barely making contact with your own. He could hardly feel it through the leather. "If one of these days, now even... if you wanted to test it."

The moment the words were out of his mouth, his mind that was screaming for him to reach out split in two. One side continued it's begging, cheering him on. The other begged for him to retreat and sink into himself.

But you looked at him, shocked and hopeful, and the second half became just a little smaller, a little bit more manageable.

"Kaz." You breathed. "Kaz."

He pressed his finger a little harder. "I know what I want, and I know my limits. If you are willing, then I am too."

"So just to be clear you are agreeing to this of your own volition, right?" You used your hands as you talked, holding an invisible object in front of you. "You're not saying this because you feel an obligation?"

The corner of his mouth quirked up. He lifted his cane, hooking the beak in a belt loop of your pants- his pants on your body, and pulled you forward, slowly, gently.

"Yes. Completely of my own volition. No obligation."

You smiled, a delighted giggle bubbling in the air. "Then by all means, go for it."

His heart pounded against his chest so loud, so obscenely loud, he wondered if Nina could detect it from down the stairs. If she could, he was pushing any and all of his hope towards her ignoring it and moving on with her night. He clipped his cane to his own belt, leaving his hands free.

He may not be able to handle skin on skin, but he could handle this for a moment. He peeled off the leather gloves to reveal the cotton ones underneath, much thinner but still a barrier.

There were slits in them just like the leather ones, so when he finally got his hands, arms, and brain working, and touched your face, he could feel the texture of your skin running along a sliver of his finger.

It makes him want to hurl. But he keeps pushing, your mark and his glowing the faintest light. The other hand slides into position, fingers trailing up and under your shirt, and the room gets washed in a deep blue.

The color emanates from his own mark and the waves of your own. An orange color radiates from the compass on your cheek where it spins and rocks, and the waves-

The waves. They flow around his arm like a hurricane, no other course of action. If he thinks about it hard enough he can feel them ripple and move along his flesh, his back tingling like a limb just realizing it's fallen asleep.

Your face is glowing, literally. But the light that shines and bounces at you gives him a completely new appreciation for the little things.

The show lasts no more than a few moments before he pulls back, drowning and gasping for air. He feels like he's being pulled under, but there's an anchor. A stability that wasn't there before.

So he grips it, and is pulled out like a worm on a pole. Youre shoving the leather gloves back on his hands, careful to roll them a bit so your fingers don't graze his. He corrects them when two of his appendages try and fit into one slot, and then unclips his cane for security.

When he finally has his bearings, he realizes that he's just opened a floodgate.

If the marks looked like that muddled by cotton, what brilliance would they hold if he were to take the gloves off?

It's a goal. A solid goal that he could achieve one day. A goal that you could witness /with/ him.

But for now he really, really needs a shirt and some tea.

"You've still got a stain."

What? "A stain?"

"On your lips. From the champagne."

The champagne. The glass that he drank out of, purposefully placing his lips on the stain to peeve some random lady off. Stained his lips.

He looked at his desk, and grabbed a glass of whats probably days old tea and looked at his reflection. Sure enough, there was a faint yet noticeable black smudge on his bottom lip. That's why some people were staring earlier.

Huh.

"That accounts for the weird stares we received." He put the glass down, wiping at his lip with his glove.

"Probably made it worse that we immediately disappeared up here." You retrieved a shirt from his closet, handing it to him.

"Naturally."

The silence that followed was comfortable, his mind reeling at the fact that he touched someone and that someone was you.

As a child, he and Jordie used to wonder what their soulmate was like. At the time Kaz hadn't received his mark, only about eight or nine, but Jordie had his.

One day he woke up and it appeared. It wasn't until hours later that Kaz noticed it had formed on him, the sweat drenching the shirt his brother was wearing, making the oily black tattoo stand out. It was a flock of cardinals all escaping from a central point on his lower back, the point itself being the pads of four fingers.

He thinks, it was a thought Jordie had before he went to bed that made it appear. Opportunity. Freedom.

Soulmate Marks form as a stepping stone. A reassurance you're going in the right direction.

Right now, Kaz can forgive Jordie, if only for a moment, as his mark feels lighter.

∘₊✧──────────────────✧₊∘

Tags:

@b3kk3r-by-br3kk3r @a-candle-maker

#kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker fanfic #soulmate au #soulmates #six of crows x reader #six of crows #grishaverse

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