#Bodega Suit

[m-sciuto]

Spider-Mans

[bumblekits]

You'll never guess what videogame I've been playing

[strwbrrypawz]

[popu-co]

happy miles day

[gabesawhorta]

double spiderman takedown

[ackoelker]

Bodega Up to 40% off new markdowns.

[capsulecomputers]

Miles Morales Bodega Cat Suit Gameplay

While Spider-Man Miles Morales doesn't have any co-op mode, there is one way to have one helpful sidekick throughout your whole web-slinging adventure. Check out this video to see what exactly we mean by that

If you enjoyed the video, be sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe!

After the events of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, teenage Miles Morales is adjusting to his new home while following in the footsteps of his mentor, Peter Parker, as a new Spider-Man. When a fierce power struggle threatens to destroy his home, Miles must take up the mantle of Spider-Man and own it

Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales Developer: Insomniac Games (Homepage), Nixxes Software Publisher: PlayStation PC LLC Website:  https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/marvels-spider-man-remastered/ Platform: Windows Release Date: 19 Nov, 2022 Price: $49.99 USD

Available now on Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1817190/Marvels_SpiderMan_Miles_Morales/

[loganlermanstanaccount]

Touch (Part 2)

Miguel O'Hara x reader

GIF by milesmoralespilled

(AO3 Mirror), Part 1, Main Masterlist

summary: Miguel tries to win you over. It doesn't go as planned.

warnings: pwp!!, light f-dom, praise kink, fem receiving oral, slight m-sub, lots and lots of begging. Miguel is a switchy mess bc i said so. 18+ Minors DNI

a/n: I am so normal about him!

wc: 2.2k

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You avoid him like the plague. 

The next day, he wakes up to an empty house with you leaving for work earlier than usual. He traipses around the apartment, looking for you before he realises he is chasing your ghost: the traces of scent left on sheets. And he is shameless when he walks into your shared bedroom, rolling around in your heady perfume and pressing the rumpled bedsheets to his nose. Aching, always. 

His own work takes him out of the apartment for most of the day, but he makes a point to slip away early. Little things, mostly: the bodega down the street for your favourite noodles, fresh lilies from a florist on the way, and some chocolate and sweet things to say sorry. He sets up in the kitchen, putting the flowers in water; hands flying on the chopping board to make dinner in time for when you come home. 

Miguel is a careful man; very particular about the way he lives his life. As such, he hunkers down a plan to apologise, showering you with affection and attention to make up for the past few weeks. He wants to be home when you get back, welcoming and warm before he slips out for his… night shift. His other job, that you are just as important as, a fact he wants you to remember.

He can hear you a couple floors down, the tell-tale click of your heels down the corridor and into the elevator. He scrambles to the front room, lounging on the sofa but ready to take your coat off and ask about your day. To go through the routine you had before all the late nights and lonely evenings. 

"Evening, mi vida." He looks expectantly towards you as you walk in. "How was work?" 

You kick off your shoes and breeze into the bedroom - without so much of a glance at him. Deflating, he watches as you shut the door behind you. Miguel sinks into the sofa cushions, sighing in frustration. 

~~~

And it stays like that for the next couple of days: you make it a point to ignore him. Short curt responses after work; Yes Miguel, No Miguel, I put it on the counter, Miguel. He misses the pout of your lips, the pet names, hell, he'd take it if you shouted and screamed at him to take the edge off. Nary a Miggy in sight. You give him nothing. 

Ever perceptive, he notices the little things. You still make his lunch when you can, and leave out food for him when he has a late night and forgets to eat. Small, gentle reminders that you care for him. Not that he ever doubted it, of course. 

When he clambers in through the back window, the one you always leave open for him, it's late. He clutches his side, groaning at a nasty bruise at his ribs. His mask comes off in the dim light, and he rubs his temples. Sore and exhausted, he pads through to the kitchen. 

Despite the lack of adrenaline, his senses are perfectly attuned. He smells it first: the sticky scent of arousal, so fresh he can taste it in the air. There's rustling, and as he pads closer to the bedroom door, he is almost bowled over by the obscene sounds of your fingers buried in your cunt. The door is slightly ajar, and he watches you on silk sheets with the light of the moon spilling onto your frame. One hand clamped over your mouth, the other curling into your pussy, and your eyes screwed tightly shut. His legs weaken at the knees when he realises you're in one of his sweatshirts, desperately humping your hand for release. 

For the past week, you've barely spoken to him, let alone touched him. He's reminded of that when his cock throbs in his suit. He palms himself absentmindedly, the heel of his hand providing juust the right amount of pressure, before catching himself. He feels like a pervert, watching you get off like this, desperate to bury his tongue between your thighs. Space, you need space, and he is trying his hardest to give it to you. Shaking his head, he tears himself away. 

Until he hears a heart-wrenching moan erupt from beyond the door, that is. You curse quietly, Spanish swear words you've clearly heard from Miguel. He doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry when you quicken your pace - trying to chase that high. You're frustrated, he can tell, removing the hand at your mouth to squeeze your tits through his sweatshirt. 

With a flash of pink tongue, he wets his lips and gently opens the door wider, leaning on its door frame. You are too occupied to notice him watching, hand on his cock through his suit. And he just waits for a moment, eyes hungry as he matches your speed when he rubs himself through the fabric. Your hips arch slightly, making his cock jump. 

"Mierda, baby." He breathes and your eyes snap open, as you remove your hand with a hiss. 

Miguel stands at your door, windswept hair, beautifully flushed and ruined - all from just watching. He continues to palm himself shamelessly, never breaking eye contact. 

"S'not enough, is it?" He says, shakily. 

He's right and you know it. You can't cum, no matter how hard you try, because it's not the same. Not the same as your boyfriend's long fingers and thick cock pounding into you, persistent. 

He stalks closer and repeats himself. "Not enough for my princesa, hmm?" 

You groan, covering your face. "Miguel-"

"-fuck off, I know, I know." He sinks to his knees in front of you, by your side of the bed. "Let me help you, mi vida."

You hesitate. He looks gorgeous in the half light: hair tousled, looking up at you through heavy eyes. Despite your better judgment, you get closer, legs spread and hanging off the edge of your bed. 

"You want me to beg? Because I will, princesa, I will. Te necesito tanto, tan desesperadamente. I need you so much it hurts. Look, please," He reaches over to paw at your thighs with big, gloved hands. The scent of your cum is overpowering this close - heady and addictive with his enhanced senses. 

"...l-look at what you do to me. Turn me into a mess, can't think about anything else. Solo en ti, princesa. Only you." 

You card your fingers in his hair and he is reverent. Migeul babbles in broken English like a madman, barely taking a breath. You feel the familiar heat of arousal in your gut. He's making you wet, without even trying. 

Cruelly, you jerk his head into your pussy, and he laps you open with a ready tongue. He moans into it, sucking at your clit and lips as you hump his face. His own hips cant at the same pace you've set, rubbing his tented lower half onto the bed frame for some relief. 

Slobbering and messy, he moans into your cunt - hands on your ass to push you further onto his face. He's eating you out like a man starved - and the noises he makes are pornographic. You squeeze your thighs around his head, and he almost cums right then, his hips bucking dramatically upwards with a groan. Watching him unravel is too much to bear, and so you tug at his hair, separated with a wet pop. Head tilted slightly back, chin and mouth glistening with your wetness, he flashes his fangs at you with a lazy grin. You're both panting, breathless from the carnality of it all. 

You clench around nothing; so, so close. 

He wipes his slick mouth with a forearm, before placing his head by your knees. 

"Look how pretty you are, mi sol." He slaps your pussy, watching it pulse in response. "So wet. Is this all for me?" 

Hesitantly, you bite your lip and nod. Miguel rubs circles into the meat of your thigh, sucking hickies into the skin. 

"I can make you feel so good," He whispers into your skin - so tender it makes you shiver. "I just want to make you feel good. Whatever you want, I'll give it to you. Sé que soy tuyo para siempre mi señorita hermosa. I'm yours… fuck… I-I'm yours…"

You won't be able to wrench him from your cunt; you know that much. When he gets like this, delirious from the heat of your two bodies together in the low light, he turns into something else entirely. Maybe it's to do with his changed DNA, something more than human at the crook of his chest - animalistic and primal. 

You cradle his cheek, so he's forced to look up at you. 

"I want you in me, Miggy. Want it to hurt."

His eyes flutter shut as he nods frantically, moving to stand up. You help him out of his suit, snug around his crotch until his cock springs free. His tip is an angry red and weeping so much precum it spills onto the sheets. His frame is delicious; broad shoulders and strong arms, stocky with the muscle of his thighs and solid middle. Miguel is beautifully tan, with the prettiest cock you think you've ever seen. Long, thick, and curved to the side. You've dreamt about the way he hits your spongy walls in all the right places. 

He helps you out of his sweatshirt, with expert fingers. He practically drools at the swell of your tits, kneading them with one palm as he clambers over you. There's a content sigh as he rubs his cock, sticky with precum, over your slit; head back and hips moving like water. He pulls a moan out of you when he finally - finally - fills you up in one swift movement. 

"Mierda, baby, does that feel good?" He croons, rubbing slow circles into your clit. His answer comes when you clench around his cock, creating a creamy ring around its base. He crouches to nip at your skin with his fangs, rolling his hips into yours. 

He knows your body better than you do, and it feels good. You claw at his back in pleasure, babbling his name into the crook of his neck. But it's not enough. It's like he knows when you're on the edge, about to come, slowing his hips until they simply grind on your clit, rutting against you. It's cruel, and it causes tears well up in your eyes. 

"F-Faster. Please." He just keeps grunting, barely speeding up. A slow, steady, relentless pace, picking up his hips until his cock is almost out of your hole, before filling you in one firm movement. 

He keeps going, and going, until your hips shake and your bodies heave with the effort. His back is red and raw with scratches as your pleas fall on deaf ears. 

"Harder, Miguel. Please, baby, I need it. F-Faster. Want it to hurt." You sob softly, drunk on pleasure.

He kisses up the tears that fall. "I know, mi vida. But it's not what you need right now, hmm?" 

He whispers soft praises into your tits, your collarbone, the fat of your cheeks. Anywhere and everywhere that needs it: so he can tell you how beautiful you are and how much he cares for you. He swallows up your moans with his lips on yours, sending you over the edge. That tight string at your gut snaps, and you cum so hard you see stars. 

He doesn't stop, picking up the pace in the aftershock of your spasms. You can tell he's trying hard not to follow, sinking his teeth into your shoulder. When your orgasm subsides, he pulls out with a shaky moan. 

"One more, f'me, baby. Una más para mí, just one more." 

You hum into his kiss, and he hooks his hands under your knees. Placing your legs over his shoulders, he sinks back into you with a satisfied grunt. Now, he pounds into you - the slap-slap of your ass against his hips resounding in your little bedroom. You make a mess, creamy cum spilling where your bodies connect. You force him deeper, harder, with a hand on his neck. 

"M'close, Miggy." You tug the hair at the nape of his neck, sending shivers down his spine. 

"Good girl, good fucking girl." His hips stutter when he feels you clench at his words. "I want to cum with you, princesa. Can I cum? Please, baby, c-can I cum?" 

Gently nodding, you wrap a hand around his throat and pull him in for a kiss - so consuming and heady it makes you want to sink into his skin. You clamp down on his cock, and his pace slurs; before Miguel spills his warm cum deep into your cunt. His hips still, and he curls into you, deepening the kiss. 

Exhausted, you separate, side by side. Still sticky with his cum, he wraps you up in his arms, pressing shaky kisses to your temple. 

"I love you." He says, gently. 

"Doesn't feel like it, sometimes." You breathe. 

You both lay there, completely still. He furrows his brow, terse with the words he wants to say but can't. All he can do is pull you closer, and envelope you in the warmth of his skin. 

"Miggy?" You say after a while. 

He hums. 

"I love you too." 

_

_

_

[moondirti]

animalic (3)

← chapter two // series masterlist

pairing: miguel o'hara x f!reader rating: mature word count: 2.2k summary: he's got a plan that neither of you like warnings: enemies to lovers, predator/prey dynamics, biting, bondage, temporary paralysis, concussions, miguel is not nice, no use of y/n notes: this was supposed to be longer but the cut off at the original point was super awkward. this chapter is super exciting for all you fang lovers out there

You really can’t catch a break. 

The city bustles with a verve rivalling your own, a kaleidoscope of luminescence dancing upon the glass facades of its skyscrapers. Their spires pierce the ink-dark cloak of night, and if you weren’t so busy running for your life, you’d stop to admire the way their aviation obstruction lights mimic the stars back home. 

(Everything has a trade off, you suppose. You remember what it was like as light pollution gave away to reveal the cosmos above, the beauty of it lost upon your own grief.)

Now, it’s fear – clinging like a shadowy spectre to your heels. The pavement is unforgiving beneath you, each step sending a jolt of energy through your bones. Despite it, you can’t go any faster. Sidewalks crowd with the humdrum of everyday life – people filtering out from work and bodegas, dressed in a slightly odd fashion, their clothes a reminder of your unfamiliar landscape. Car horns blend into one another, providing an unsteady tempo to the race of your heart. 

It’s disorienting, all of it. Times like these, you wish you’d been given the opportunity to hone your abilities. Stamina, flexibility. Web shooters in particular would have proved handy in avoiding the bustle of the ground. 

Of course, he has that advantage on you too. 

You can’t see Miguel, but you sense his proximity. It prods you, nipping at your flesh in a constant assault, intensifying goosebumps and raising hairs. Your spider sense usually doesn’t last this long, solely serving as a warning for immediate danger. Yet that’s just what he is, immediate. Dangerous. Predatory eyes track your every move, sourced from all directions. He’s everywhere; atop buildings, within alleys. Neon signs morph into twisted apparitions; serrated talons, red skulls. 

How did he track you down so fast? 

The day pass? 

You wonder if he’d brought back-up – whether there are other spider-heroes here who trust in his noble cause. Your anxiety triples, and passerby’s begin to warp too. Their hurried footsteps now strike discordant notes, amplifying your isolation. You think you see some tense their wrists, or unbutton their coats, ready to reveal their tailored suits and ensure the capture you’ve managed to evade thus far. 

It’s luck. It’s only ever been luck, and that fact changes depending on who you ask. You’ve never outsmarted him, never disabled him. You just so happen to have the power of being a pain in his ass. 

Something itches at you, though. A nagging sense of foreboding. His presence in the past has spurred chagrin, annoyance, and – admittedly – arousal. But the genuine terror that lights your nerves now is new. Perhaps because you understand him, are far more familiar with his pride than most. The logical part of you can predict that he won’t let you off so easily, not after your stunt with the kiss. You won’t – can’t – get away this time, even if it damn well nearly kills him. 

Any hope you had of a bargain dissipates, rolling back from shore and into the depths of an elusive sea. You jerk the rubber band off your wrist, throwing it into some undisclosed corner.

In a then desperate bid to throw him off, your path loses cohesion. Like a leaf seized by a tempest, you turn based on split-second instinct, weaving through the labyrinth of New York’s grid. Your body sways in frenzy, bolstered by pure adrenaline, which works to dim everything else. Your ribs haven’t fully healed yet – they’d taken a pretty bad beating upon your last fight with Miguel – but you can barely feel the ache as you focus purely on the task at hand. 

Your determination surges, recklessness taking hold of your rationale. Veering abruptly, you just about collide with the racing line of cars that flow at a green light. In fact, you think you do. Your skin prickles, and a taxi runs straight through you, blearing a loud honk all the while. Some vehicles break off, drifting around your form at the last minute. In your peripheral, you can see the glowing red of your pursuers web, stretched across the gap between two apartment complexes. 

Chest tightening, your breathing loses depth at the sight, shallowing to leave room for the distress that torrents up your system. You clamber up on the hoods of parked cars, using a mast arm pole to propel yourself forward. It’s a fruitless effort. You know it’s too late – have known it since he walked into that convenience, prowling in search of one thing. 

(A lion only catches its prey a quarter of the time. But that twenty-five percent?)

Your ankle is the first victim to his hardwearing web, wrapped in the silk and pulled out from underneath you. The back of your head smacks into the concrete below, a high pitched ring reverberating through your skull upon impact. The collision sends a shock wave of pain throughout your being, and in that harrowing moment, everything stutters to a crawl. Spots speckle behind your clenched eyelids, metallic warmth flooding your mouth.

Well, fuck. 

To add insult to injury, your atoms rip apart and splice into one another, a consequence of your abandoned day pass. The glitch aggravates the headache that begins to pound at you. You’d allowed yourself to forget how bad it could be. 

The willpower that had just played a forefront in your mind steadily starts to trickle out, absorbed by your humiliation and the ground below. 

“You really gonna give up that easily?” 

Yes. 

You make a point to never lie to yourself. In truth, you won’t ever get enough of Miguel’s cadence. Deep and resonant – it smoulders with a charred ruggedness. Commanding attention, rumbling like distant thunder, an unmistakable authority woven into each word. Yet, even amidst the rough contours, there lingers a softness, a subtle grace that soothes the edges of his threats. 

(Sharp claws, sharp teeth, sharp cheekbones. Soft voice.)

More webs bind you, erupting from an unclear point to circle your legs, chest, and secure your arms behind your back. You’re diminished to little more than an aggravated caterpillar, ensnared in a spider’s web. And, just as his little game of bondage draws to a close, said spider stalks within view, splitting through the crowd that quickly forms around the commotion. 

With his mask on, he stands as completely impenetrable. You, on the other hand, try to reduce your quivering the best you can, afraid of relaying how truly pathetic you feel. 

“Maybe I’m biding my time.” You bite back, calling on a complete bluff. “I’m sure you know how good I am at that?” It’s a low blow. Even if you could control when and where to phase out, you wouldn’t get very far before he catches up to you again. 

But Miguel doesn’t waver in his closing in – not until he towers over you, looking down at your incapacitated state. Space buckles under the gravity of his existence; you, too, can feel yourself sinking, drawn in closer by the credence that bubbles off him in flares. You wish you had a cover – your pair of makeshift goggles, a face mask, anything that could elevate you to a degree relative to his. But you’re bare, figuratively naked, and you’ve never hated him more. 

He lingers, assessing you, weighing his options. The moment he turns to survey the mass of people who look on inquisitively, you wiggle upward into a sitting position, then throw your head forwards, aiming for his crotch. His wrist gets in the way, though, blocking your pitiful attack on his only defenceless area. Your forehead cracks against his dimensional travel watch, shattering its screen. 

“Tu puta madre!” Miguel hisses, snapping back to survey the gadget while you begin to slink away. He seems to have an eye on you, however, because you’re tugged back just as soon as you make the effort.

Like a naughty cat. You shift uncomfortably at the thought. 

“Are you gonna spend all night deciding what to do with me, then? I have plans, even if you don’t.” 

“Plans. I have plans alright.” The low timbre of his threat slices you where it hurts.

With a calculated flex of his shoulders, he crouches down, gathering the webs around your arms. They serve as leverage when he hauls you upward, exercising his muscles – of which you’d suspected had been padding up to this point – with one swift motion. The world upends on itself, nausea enveloping your senses with its oppressive weight. It allows space for little else; not the uncertainty, not the trepidation. You divert all your efforts on keeping your scarce lunch down, accepting the possibility of a concussion by product of his less-than-refined manhandling. 

The journey to wherever he takes you is not at all long enough for you to recover. Before you know it, he’s busting through the creaky door of an empty storelot, carelessly tossing you to the floor. Your vision doubles. 

Yeah. Definitely a concussion. 

Like you could afford one right now. 

“You’ll stay, and you’ll listen.” He points an accusatory finger. 

“Sure. Until I’ve had enough, that is.” 

“And where would you go, exactly?” 

“Nice try, O’hara. Like I’d tell you,” Snickering, you let your head roll to face the ceiling. The action sends you back to earlier, to the robbery you’ve been seeking to suppress. How careless you’d been, letting your fortune to date trick you into thinking that any collateral was safe too. You’d killed that woman. You. “Maybe I’ll fall right through the floor. That way, you’ll never have to worry about seeing me again.” 

The notion makes him pause mid-pace, hands on his hips, tilting his head to look at you with what you imagine is the most earnest glare. The air bobs, suspended in static tension, a crackling constant that only unravels once he seems to make up his mind. 

Marching forward, he drags you along with him to a nearby wall, upon which he then pushes you upward until you have to look down to meet his eyeline. Your bound legs kick forward, but the struggle hardly affects him. 

“I didn’t want to resort to this.” 

You assume he means treating you like a toddler does its shiny new toy, hurling you across this playpen of a city. “You really didn’t have to, then.” 

He stays quiet, fists clenching tighter around you. 

“I suppose we’re past the courtesy of letting the other recover from the last fight before starting a new one? My forearm is still fucked, thanks to you. Maybe if you’d given it some time, I would’ve proved more of a challenge today.” Your words, whilst never your most steadfast allies, betray you in lieu of this restlessness, tumbling forth with unruly incoherence.

Miguel's mask pulls back, the nanotech collapsing to just above his adams apple. Your mouth moves faster. 

“Okay, I get it. The fate of the multiverse and all that. I’ll listen, whatever you want, but at least try and make the lecture original.” 

His hand cups your jaw, tightening around your chin to firmly guide it upwards. Your throat stretches taut at the motion, its smooth expanse spread across the wall – an evening repast for a party of one. The imagery breaks down an all too sobering realisation into fragments small enough for you to register. His talons rest against your cheek, bordering perilously close to your waterline. 

Traces of that patchouli aftershave hit you. His skin looks especially bronzed in the dark, highlighted at the edges from the phosphorescence outside. His curls droop where they’re plastered to a sweat slicked hairline. 

You can’t help it. Your gaze flickers down to those plush lips.

Fuck. Fuck. It’d felt so good to kiss them. 

Please let this just be a kiss. 

“O-Or go with the… the usual, y’know. I don’t–” 

Miguel lunges, sinking his fangs into the fleshy sinew of your neck.

Christ.

Your jaw hangs open, but no breaths filter in. Shock wedges itself at the site of his bite, implacable, steadfast as a barrier between logic and uninhibited emotion. Your reasoning plays no part in this, provides absolutely no valuable contribution to the series of reactions you undergo. 

It’s physical, first. The cold slither of paralytic venom distends through your nerves, neurotoxins striking their functions, rendering them useless beyond the point of sensation. Which, you’d say, is the cruellest part. Miguel’s poison doesn’t stop you from feeling anything; not the puncture, nor the burn. You can truly feel it, trekking its graceful path to all muscles in your body, taking hold of the tissue, suppressing their vitality. Your back arches, your body doing its very best to fight what it cannot prevent. It cracks up your bone, down your spine. Your toes unfurl, fingers loosening to hang lamely at your side. 

And, when you lose all executive authority over yourself, you’re pulled in to centre on his mouth again. His canines slowly retract, tongue taking their place. It’s warm – so fucking warm – and dextrous, covertly lathering the blood that beads down your nape. 

Your last proper breath is wasted on a whine; a loud, keening, absolutely wanton whine. After it, you can do nothing but hold your flat inhales to cycle in as much oxygen as possible – diaphragm weak, your resolve weaker.

Miguel draws away, letting you slump to the floor, heavy and just as useless as a sack of flour. He wipes the excess carmine from his chin, kneeling to regard your glassy eyed stare. 

“Fall through now, and you’re as good as dead.” 

(You might as well already be.)

chapter four →

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[linkneol091]

BODEGA SUIT MILS MRLES COMEBACK A YEAR LATER HORAY

[the-broken-pen]

“Oh my god—“

“Not quite, love” The antagonist smirked. “If you ask nicely, however, I may be inclined to play along.”

“You’re—“

“A villain, yes.”

The protagonist tried to stop their hands from shaking as the antagonist looked them up and down.

“Why are you in my neighborhood bodega?” The protagonist said finally, and the villain quirked a brow.

“Even famous people need to eat,” the antagonist tucked their hands into their exquisitely tailored suit.

The bag of chips in the protagonists grip crinkled, and the villain inspected them.

“Not the healthiest choice.”

They gave an unamused laugh. “The cheapest.”

The antagonist’s eyes ran over their face, as if taking in their slightly gaunt cheeks.

“Heroism doesn’t pay well, it seems.”

The protagonist looked them up and down.

“Villainy does, it seems.”

At that, the antagonist chuckled, eyes glimmering like they had finally found something to peak their interest.

Behind them, the check out counter beeped and spit out a receipt, which the antagonist promptly crumpled and threw away.

“I’ll be watching,” they said with a nonchalance that did not match the threat of stalking, and disappeared out the sliding doors.

The protagonist stood in front of the machine, slightly awe struck and slightly afraid, until a clerk sidled up to them.

“Old friend?” The clerk asked.

The protagonist glanced over at them, then back towards the door.

“Not quite,” they answered.

They paid for their chips and left, hands pink with cold by the time they got to their apartment.

Attached to their door was an cream colored envelope full of money, and a note in elegant handwriting that simply said “Buy yourself more groceries. Your fridge is a tragedy.”

The protagonist never quite got rid of the antagonist after that.

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

Imagine you're robbing a store trying to feed your family and the Bodega cat start beating your ass

how does he even get in the suit is someone dressing this cat everyday WHAT ARE THE LOGISTICS

[me-and-your-husband]

widow's bite (1) || e. williams

summary: "...the dangerous Black Widow is to be approached with caution, as the Black Widow's bite can cause death. she encases her victims with silk, then kills with poison from her fangs."

or

you're a black widow. you're sent to kill Spider-Woman. something inside of you just can't do it.

warnings: smut in future chapters, ellie is 18 and reader is 19, dreykov being gross which is canon, mentions of suicide attempt, canon death (sarah), swearing maybe? probs more, not proofread cause i'm lazy

word count: 4k

a/n: soooo i got this request and although it took FOREVER for me to write it, i was so excited that i just had to make it a series...i SWEARRR i'll try to update regularly but going back to uni is kicking my ass a little. also, ellie is basically mcu!peter. some of the avengers may make appearances. tony isn't dead.

You stood tall in front of the massive screen in his office. Videos of a girl in a red and black suit swinging through New York City illuminated your solemn features. At the top of the screen, there were only a few words: Spider-Woman: TERMINATE.

“She keeps coming so close to discovering our New York base,” Dreykov’s accent spread through the dark room. “I can’t have her getting in the way of my work. This is important.”

You nodded, eyes never leaving the screen.

“You will bring her body back to me. She seems to have some sort of abilities, abilities I can use to make you stronger. Better.” His thick hand slithered up your shoulder. “Do you copy?”

“I copy.”

His lips twisted into a sinister smile, his gross breath hot on your cheek. “Always so obedient.” He licked his lips.

He smiled, “You take off…” he glanced at his watch, “right now. I don’t want to see you again until she's dead,” he spat in your ear.

“Yes, sir.”

"Hey! Come back, mister criminal!”

Faint thwips filled the air as Ellie swung past corporate building after corporate building, chasing some burglar who happened to try robbing Delmar’s when she was ordering sandwiches for her and Joel. He would have to wait. She was just lucky she had her suit under her clothes.

He booked it down the sidewalk, cash flying out of the duffle bag, throwing pedestrians to the side as he tried escaping Spider-Woman.

She grunted as she dodged semi-trucks and cars, bikers and typical New York tourists. She almost lost sight of him when he turned a corner, but she could still hear his laboured breathing.

She could sense that he had stopped, under the impression that he had thrown her off his trail. He was resting in an alley up against an apartment building. Climbing to the roof, she perched herself on top as she looked down at him, hands on his knees as he panted.

“Hey, man, I think you forgot this!” She yelled as she dropped next to him. Before he could react, she cocooned him in webbing and left him stuck against the wall.

“You got a pen by any chance?” She asked, to which she had to dodge a ball of spit directed at her head. “Should've guessed.”

She pulled her calculus notebook out of her backpack with one of her good pens and scribbled a note on it:

“This is the one that robbed the bodega. I think you should cut old Delmar a tax break for his troubles.

Love,

Spider-Woman”

She called it into the station and webbed the note to the criminal, webbing his mouth shut too while she was at it.

As she walked out of the alley muttering “all in a day’s work”, she heard the faint pleas of a small child. Letting her heightened senses guide her, she swung until she found the source coming from an open window in a different apartment complex.

She slid the window open far enough to get inside, putting her hands out in front of her when the child noticed her and was frightened.

“No no no! Just your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Woman, not gonna hurt you! I promise,” she said, getting to the little girl's level. The girl’s eyes softened and she seemed to trust Ellie.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, lip trembling. “My sister…please help.”

“Okay, where is she now?”

The little girl pointed outside of her door, “The kitchen.”

Ellie took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m going to go help her. You stay right here, okay? Don’t move.”

Something inside of her told her that something was wrong. She brushes it off as someone else being in danger.

As she creeps out of the child’s room, she surveys her surroundings. It looked like a regular New York apartment, a little messy, but nothing her and Joel’s place hadn't seen. Everything was fine.

Until it wasn't.

She suddenly had difficulty breathing when you jumped from somewhere above and wrapped your legs around her neck, squeezing. You elbowed her head repeatedly.

She grabbed you by your hips and threw you off of her, gasping for breath. Her naivety still told her that you needed help.

Was it her naivety?

“Calm down, lady! I’m trying to help you!” she said, still gasping. She watched the girl scurry past her and over to you. “I thought I said—”

She stopped talking when she saw you hand the girl a twenty, eyes still trained on Spider-Woman.

Once you knew the child was a safe distance away, you attacked. His voice rang in the back of your head. No casualties. No witnesses.

You lunged at her, hands finding her throat.

“Woah, at least take me on a date first,” she remarked as she easily slid out of your grasp, jumping up to the ceiling and latching on. She webbed your left arm to the wall. You let out a grunt of dissatisfaction as you squeezed your fist, a blade coming out of your cuff and slicing through the web. It was installed in all of the Widows’ suits in case of capture.

“Oh. That's pretty cool, honestly,” she said as she dodged a bullet from your pistol, flipping down from the roof. You charged her again, this time taking out her legs and pinning to the ground. You threw a hook right at her jaw, to which she exclaimed “Ow!”, catching the next one with ease. Your eyes widened as she flipped the two of you over, pinning you underneath her.

“Look, I don't want to—”

Before she could finish, you had sent electric currents through your suit, effectively tazing her.

In her incapacitation, you were able to flip over again and pressure your knee against her neck. While she struggled for air, her legs flailed underneath her. She managed to knee you in the stomach, opening up an opportunity to throw you off her. You both stood up, ready to go at it again, both slightly out of breath.

“Are you gonna say something?” Silence. “Can you even talk?”

She lunged forward in an attempt to pull down the mask that covered half of your face, a piece of fabric resting atop the bridge of your nose. Before she could grab it, you grabbed her wrists, locating her web cartridges. You released another electric current, frying them.

She stepped back, trying to shoot webs, but to no avail. That's when she saw the text on the bicep of your suit: WIDOW-893. “Shit!”

You threw a swift kick into her abdomen while she was caught off guard and knocked her down to her knees. Her eyes widened as you threw punches at her face, too dazed to think of blocking. When she finally grabbed your fist, she could feel the blood from her nose leaking through her mask and could taste metal.

“You’re a Widow? Like Nat?”

You struggled to get your hand out of her grasp. Instead, you pushed all your weight forward and landed on top of her chest, pinning her arms.

You reached forward and slid your fingers under the fabric of her mask. She struggled underneath you, but you had her pinned and she wasn't going anywhere.

You basked in her struggle, slowly sliding the mask off her face.

“I was sent to kill you.”

“So you do talk. Wait—”

“And that's what I’m going to do.”

“Please don't take my mask off. Please. Please don't kill me. Oh god, I have so much to live for, please—!”

You slipped her mask off completely to be met with her perfectly curved and soft lips, her delicate green eyes, and her pretty freckles, her auburn hair messy from having it under the mask. Her brows furrowed and she squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for it to happen. When it didn't, she slowly opened one eye, and then the other. She was met with you admiring her face, gaze raking over her features.

Your eyes were wide and seemed slightly glassy, and she couldn't help but wonder why they looked so distant. Why it looked like you were trapped behind them.

She realized you weren't pinning her down anymore. She loosened an arm slowly from underneath you and brought it up to the fabric around your face, gently beginning to tug the mask down.

Your cold grasp on her wrist stopped her. “Don't.”

“Why not?” She whispered.

You tore your gaze away from her, standing up. You turned your back to her.

Looking back at her once more, you said, “Because it will end badly."

You moved to leave through the window, but a thought stopped you briefly

The truth is, you didn't know what to do. It's like you had just gained free will, like she had broken some spell. You had thought you were operating on your own terms until now.

You'd been sent to take out powerful men, some women, usually old, usually established, usually somewhat corrupt. But when you saw the fear in the eyes of a girl your age, your body shocked you back into free will.

Your back still to the girl, you just shook your head and jumped.

She coughed as she pushed herself up off the ground and shoved the mask back down over her face, wondering if she'd ever see you again. If she'd ever find out who you really are.

“This is WIDOW-893,” you said into your comm-link, talking to an obscure agent you'd probably never meet. “I need an extraction. I’m sending you my location now.”

Static sounded in your ear before a harsh male voice began, “Has the mission been completed?”

You elected to ignore the question.

“Has the target been eliminated?”

More silence as you hunted for a place to lay low for a bit.

“Widow, has the target been eliminated?!” The agent’s frustration was palpable in his voice.

You swallowed. “Negative.”

“What do you mean, negative? This mission was of utmost— Sorry? Yes, sir.” Some keyboard clicks. “She can hear you now.”

“893, why wasn't your mission completed?” Dreykov’s invigorated voice droned through the comm. You searched for an excuse that wouldn't get you terminated. Or worse.

“The target seems to have heightened senses. She was able to get the jump on me before I was in position. My identity was almost discovered so I was forced to retreat.”

Dreykov let out a pained sigh. Slowly, he said, “I’m only going to tell you this once, agent, so listen very carefully. You are disposable. The mission must proceed, regardless of your comfort. We can easily terminate you and move on to the next Widow. Copy?”

“I copy.”

“Now, if this happens again, I will have you terminated. You get a pass this time because you're one of the…finer specimens we have. You will not be sent an extraction. You will complete this mission in terminating Spider-Woman. Do not make contact until then,” he said, and you could almost feel his hands slithering up your back and around your neck. “And don't think you're not being watched.”

With that, the connection was severed.

Ellie threw the soggy McDonald’s bag down on the kitchen table as Joel stood at the sink washing dishes.

“Couldn't get sandwiches from Delmar’s. Poor guy got robbed again,” she said as she began digging in the bag for her fries.

Joel turned around to give her a shocked look. “Someone’s gotta look out for the people in this city. Lord knows the cops ain’t doin' much,” he said, shaking his head.

“Well…Spider-Woman looks out for people,” Ellie said, tearing the waters. Joel never really sided with J. Jonah Jameson from that stupid news station, but he was never really for the “vigilante” either.

He sighed. “Look, Ellie…I know you think Spider-Woman is cool and all, and I think it's good that she looks out for the normal people of New York, but I think it's irresponsible. I mean, I’m sure she's got people in her life that love her and she’s puttin’ her life at risk seven days a week,” he said as he dried the dishes and put them away.

“Yeah but,” Ellie said through a mouthful of fries, “If you had that power, wouldn't you be responsible for using it for good?”

“Yes, I suppose. But with great power comes great responsibility, Ellie. And with responsibility comes an immense need for balance. Remember that,” he said, turning to look at her.

Ellie swallowed the last few fries as she took a moment to digest what Joel had said. She gave him a meaningful smile before he turned back around to put the last few dishes away.

She couldn't help but think about your “power”. Was it given to you, or forced on you? How did you become so skilled? You were her age, or at least not far off. She’d never met someone so close to her age who held such a huge responsibility. But was it really a responsibility if you were being forced into it?

She knew she'd probably never come across you again, so there wasn't really a reason to overthink it. Right now, she just wanted to finish her Physics homework and watch The Empire Strikes Back with Jesse.

Weeks had gone by and every moment plagued your mind with thoughts of Ellie. Or rather, if you had it in yourself to kill her.

Your immense training in Covert Ops was indeed handy for situations like these. You shadowed Ellie almost 24/7. You followed her on her commute to her high school, which you noted to be Midtown. You surveilled her through the cameras you'd planted in all of her classes. You followed her after school to the alley where she'd leave her school stuff and switch to her second life. You climbed from building to building as you followed her web-slinging as closely as possible without being seen. You searched and searched for something to justify it, something to prove she's a bad person and deserves to be terminated. But nothing. Nothing when she helped old ladies carry their groceries inside, or rescue little girls' cats from trees, or stop lecherous men from harassing women on the street. Especially nothing when you spied through her living room window and saw her laughing with her dad every Sunday morning.

Three weeks after your first attempt at termination, you had stumbled across the perfect moment to investigate your target’s bedroom. She was at a field trip to the Museum of Modern Art with her class, and her dad was at work.

Around noon, you whistled as you climbed the stairs to the apartment, smiling softly as you find the right one. You knock for good measure, and when nobody answers you slide two bobby pins out from your hair when to pick the lock. Classic, but it always works.

When you open the door you lock it again from the inside so nothing would seem astray. You feel an uncomfortable, throbbing pain in your chest as you look around at the framed portraits of your target and her dad, lots from when she was young. One of her holding a medal in a soccer jersey. One of them at a planetarium together. One of them with a model dinosaur in the background, a hat atop its head, both of them grinning.

You creep through the hallway, looking for one room in particular. Opening the first door, you enter an office space. You decide it might be useful in gathering intel on her family.

You slide open a drawer of the filing cabinet labelled “records”. There seemed to be two sections, one for her father’s business, and one for their personal records. The latter had significantly less material. You slid out the folders and placed them on the desk, taking a seat in the chair.

The first folder read: ADOPTION RECORDS

You skimmed the papers and deduced that about five years ago, a man named Joel Miller (presumably the target’s father) and a woman named adopted a girl named Ellie Williams, but had fostered her long before that with a woman named Theresa Servopoulos, the word “deceased” in brackets next to her name. Anna Williams, her single mother, died shortly after childbirth and a woman named Marlene took her in. However, Marlene gave her up to a foster home once she hit school age.

Another folder read: MEDICAL RECORDS

Ellie had a long history of optometry visits prior to about two years ago, then they just suddenly stopped. There was nothing else really interesting in her file.

Joel, however, was a different story. Medical records that yellowed and flaked at the edges sat in his file from over 20 years ago. He was admitted for a self inflicted GSW to the head shortly after the death of his daughter, Sarah Miller. He was admitted to a psychiatric ward by request of his brother, Tommy Miller, shortly after.

Another file read: ELLIE’S SCHOOL RECORDS

It was evident that Ellie had excelled in school ever since she had settled in with Joel, specifically in the math and science areas. Her transcripts highlighted a bright 4.0 gpa. She had a bright future.

Now with a name for your target, you decided to search her room to gain some more personal intel. Tucking the files away and closing the drawers, you stalked out of the office and down the hall to what was Ellie’s room (the words “Ellie’s Room!” scrawled on a banner on the door making it painfully easy).

The door creaked slightly when you pushed it open. You were immediately hit with the vague sent of pine and mahogany. Dirty flannels and socks were piled in a corner or sometimes littered around the room. An empty ramen cup sat on her nightstand. Notebooks and textbooks filled with complex calculations sat open on her book. Her blankets were peeled back, revealing astronaut bedsheets. “Cute,” you thought.

The cracked open window let in a nice breeze. The light blue walls were littered in posters, photos, and banners. Next to a lesbian flag above her bed were photos of her and the two friends she was always with. Plastered around her room were covers of comics, something called Savage Starlight. There were silly math reference posters, Star Wars posters, and just about everything you would never expect from a crime fighting vigilante.

Her laptop was left open, and a few clicks and an easy password guess later, the screen unlocked to Ellie’s web browser. Her search history made your brows furrow. You expected to find “How to buy weed NYC” or “porn” at the very least.

Search: Is there more than one Black Widow?

Search: Natasha Romanoff history

Search: The Red Room

Search: Dreykov The Red Room

Search: Dreykov Russia

Search: Black Widow Assassins

Search: Natasha Romanoff Phone Number

She had been researching you. Hell, she hadn't done a very good job by the looks of it. And did she really think The Black Widow’s phone number was public information?

You grabbed a figurine from Ellie’s desk and toyed with it as you took a moment to think. Was it really worth taking the life of an innocent girl just for the sustenance of your organization? Was it even your organization? It's not like you could remember how you got there. It's not like you remembered your family, or your friends, or what it was like to have them… It wasn't so bad if you didn't really have anything to compare it to, right?

A soft pressure around your ankles made you look down. Silky webbing coated your boots.

“Sit down,” her voice came from near the window. You turned as much of your body as you could and watched as Ellie gestured to her desk chair. With no choice but to oblige, you sat. She webbed your arms to the armrests, not taking any chances.

She spun the chair to face her direction and then leaned back against the window.

“What do you want with me?” She inquired, green eyes searing into yours.

“I told you. My mission is to-”

“No. If you were going to kill me, I’d be dead already.” Good point.

You broke eye contact and looked around her room dramatically. “Cute room. I like the flag.”

“Tell me what you want with me,” she said, stalking closer to your chair. “I’m not asking this time.”

“What happened to the ‘friendly neighbourhood Spider-Woman’ I met? Do you rest all your guests like this?” You quipped.

“Yeah? Well, forgive me if I’m not so friendly to the one who tried to kill me, has been stalking me for weeks, and broke into my apartment.”

You roll your eyes.

Her large hand wraps around your jaw, forcing you to look in her eyes.

“Roll your eyes one more time and see what happens,” she growls. “Now tell me.”

You jerk your jaw away and kick her in the stomach, enough time for you to effectively sever the webs around your wrists and ankles.

“Fuck, I forgot about those,” Ellie says under her breath as she webs her bedroom door completely shut and stands in front of the window to block your exit.

“Move,” you demand.

“Nope.”

“Move. Or this won't end well for either of us.”

“Nah, I think I’ll just stay right here ‘till you tell me what you want with me.”

You charged her, attempting to throw her to the side and leap through the window she entered through, but she's stronger. She's like brick as she pushes you back.

“Just let me go. I’ve made up my mind anyways. I’m done with you.”

“No can do. I’m not in the habit of letting pretty girls who try to kill me go so easily,” she said, and you felt your cheeks heating up. She webbed the window shut and sat down in her bed, gesturing to her desk chair again. “Come on. I just want to know what your people want with me. Then you can go, I promise.”

You knew it wouldn't hurt to tell her. You'd have to go on the run from Dreykov anyways. Rip your tracker out and all. So you sat and watched as she reached into a drawer in her nightstand and pulled out a pack of peanut M&Ms.

“Want some?” She asked as she peeled it open. You shook your head and she shrugged. “More for me, then.”

“What do you want to know?” You asked.

“Start from the beginning.”

You cleared your throat. “I was given the mission to find you and-”

“No. I get that part, I’m not stupid. I want to know how this happened to you. And how I can help you out of it."

permanent tags:

@winters-fairy @idkwhattonamethisblogs

ellie taglist:

@chrry1ovr @milly-louise @dankpunks @starhrtz @pedrobaby @urlocalgingersnap @wrendermedone @kissyslut @felsweb @darleneslane

a slash thru your user means i'm unable to tag you!

taglists

[leclsrc]

stay, at least for breakfast ✴︎ cl16

genre: angst, just. angst, fluff

word count: 9.2k

You love once and miss always.

notes... internet translated ita/fre, non linear format so might b a tad confusing but thats it

auds here... this fic is a tad long sry. many thanks to mack who recommended the most painful songs to me that got me through writing the last couple of scenes. ik i said i wasn’t sure when i’d release this but here it is :)

You’re the only person Pierre knows in New York, so you’re the first one he calls. You suggest you meet just at your place, so you can smoke more freely, because so many people complain about the smell these days. You stall. You say the L train is broken. You say you’re tied up with work at the firm. But Pierre sees through you and eventually you meet anyway.

He looks the same, and just seeing him reminds you of so much. Shadows and outlines of memories long gone. You try to keep up the pretense of being okay, to remember that truly, your mind has been elsewhere lately—off everything, off the memories, on work, on cases. You try not to bring him up, even if it’s inevitable that he arises; you keep conversation to a polite minimum. 

Pierre offers a cigarette, a Camel light. You’re a fourth’s way through the stick.

“He asks about you, sometimes.” And then just like that, your world has ceased to turn.

“Oh?” A beat. “What do you say?”

“Just the usual. You’re working on this and that case for the law firm… you went to Greece in the summer.”

You and Pierre are still close, but it’s difficult to forget why. You two are connected by Charles, by a friendship so sacred it warranted a dinner for a Pierre-exclusive introduction. You’d grown close then, and when the breakup happened, it became hard for Pierre to maintain close contact with both of you. 

Selfishly, you wanted him to see how broken you were, so he could report it all back to Charles, etch every last detail of your pain. But Pierre is more mature than he’s given credit for.

“Okay.” You say blankly, unsure of how to bridge a less tense topic.

Perhaps sensing the apprehension, Pierre does it instead. “Do you remember when we bought shaving cream and made Charles look like Santa?”

It was in here in Manhattan, you recall, when Charles had dragged Pierre along with him to visit you over winter, when he’d been dating you for nearly two years at the time. Your flat was just above a bodega that had a comical amount of cheap cans of shaving cream that you and Pierre had found so absolutely silly, birthing a series of Charles-related pranks. After your grocery run, you’d returned to your place, where your boyfriend was fast asleep, mouth half open.

Shh. Quiet, you’d said, spurting shaving cream along his chin, his jaw, laughing silently.

Pierre had followed suit until finally, a beard of Nivea Men bounded down to Charles’ torso. You’d snapped a picture; the shutter sound had woken him up to a red-faced you and Pierre.

He was a good sport about it, kissed you with laughter, so you, too, had a beard of froth. Pierre took a Polaroid with a gifted camera of you on Charles’ lap, arms entwined around his neck, both of you bubbly with the cream, cheeks achy with smiles and laughter. You pretend to forget where it is, to forget that it’s tucked in a box you open once in a while. 

“I miss him sometimes, you know.” The confession rips through you, exacerbated by the cigarette.

“I know.” Says Pierre, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. You realize maybe it is.

I still have so much love for him, you wish to say. But where will I put it? Will I keep this inside of me forever? A great, monstrous, shameful thing it is, to love somebody who’s left. But here I am doing it, trying to fill a void that feels like a crater. Where do I put this love? Maybe I can give it to somebody else, somebody new—but I’d say it’s not the same.

You think you’ll always hold a torch to Charles, even when the fire burns through the wood, ash trickling onto your arm until it hurts. And even then, when the light’s gone, when the flame’s wounded you and licked deep into your heart and bones, like it has now, you’ll linger, still holding this torch, still yearning, still unwanting to let go. Still loving. How desperate, you think. How human.

You clear your tobacco-flavoured throat. “It’s em—it’s embarrassing,” you say instead, throat closing up midway, in a futile attempt to water down your intense emotions. They threaten to crawl up your throat, force secrets out of you with the ease of ripping a piece of paper in half.

“Is it?” He asks, open-ended. “N’est-il pas honorable d'être si aimant?”

“Pas si ce n’est pas réciproque.” You scoff.

But he’s relentless, persistent in his pursuit to prove a point. “No. Love isn’t embarrassing, or pathetic, when it’s one-sided. It means more that way, when it’s not reciprocated. It means you’re selfless. It means the love is real.” He turns toward you, and in a billow of smoke, asks, “Does it not?”

You stare, left speechless. All you muster is: “Va te faire foutre.” 

—

You exit the room at eight-thirty with your toothbrush still foaming in your mouth. You stretch your arms over your head, combing a hand through your bedhead. Your eyes are half-shut, and already you smell it before you see it.

Pausing in your tracks, you rub the sleep out of your eyes. “Charles?” You call out, still out of the kitchen’s view. You try to remember if he was in bed when you crawled out, but your mind was still cloudy then, and the desire to pee took precedence.

You turn toward the bedroom door. “Charles, come out here. I think something’s on fire in the kitchen. Babe!”

You speedwalk, concern taking over—you didn’t pay enough attention to fire drills in primary school, clearly. Once you peek into the kitchen, however, your concern is only exacerbated, but not nearly as much as the extreme confusion that begins to well up inside you. There, at your stove, is your boyfriend himself, clearly fully awake and conscious, and holding a frying pan in mid-air that’s billowing smoke.

Having heard your voice already, he feels your presence and turns slowly. His gaze blinks from the pan in his grip to your totally incredulous stare.

“I can…” He pauses. “I’ll try to explain.”

“Very smart save, babe,” you say, but it’s muffled by your toothbrush.

“You sound stupid,” he retorts.

You remove the toothbrush and try to speak as coherently as you can through the spearmint foam. “I don’t think you’re in a position to be giving me criticism right now.”

“Fair,” he says, flitting his gaze over to where he holds the frying pan in mid-air. “I will explain as soon as you rinse your mouth. I promise.” You narrow your eyes, wondering if maybe this is another tactic to get himself out of trouble, but you figure it makes sense. If you’re going to scold him, might as well not spray toothpaste everywhere.

You grab your phone on your way back, where the disarray has not subsided in the least. He’s wearing your kiss the chef apron, stained with grease and pancake batter, both vital ingredients to bacon and flapjacks, neither of which are to be seen anywhere.

“What’s going on, Charles?”

“I wanted to cook you a surprise breakfast. But I can’t get the stove right.”

“Tu es fou.” You laugh, inspecting the smoke-scented pan. “Pourquoi n'avez-vous pas simplement pris à emporter?”

“Je voulais être pensif!” He defends, pouting. “Sorry. I’ll clean up the mess.” He deposits a batch of dishes at the sink as you watch in amusement. Your boyfriend is usually a good cook, you’ll say—he makes a mean stack of pancakes, and anybody can cook bacon, really. You suppose this is all just one honest mistake, born from a desire to surprise you on this morning.

He’s scrubbing at the pan when you wrap your arms around him in a backhug. “Thank you anyway. You’re the sweetest, Charles.”

He turns, a bubble of dish soap on the tip of his nose and hums. “Does this get me boyfriend points?”

“Alright, Jesus, a hundred of them.” You smile fondly, meeting his lips in a soft kiss. He makes you toast as compensation, takes the time to cut the crusts off the bread and the pulp out of the orange juice and the big bits out of the jam. He does his best, perfecting the art of toast and breakfast and, by extension, making you happy.

—

“Un amaretto sour, une bouteille de rose et un dirty martini,” you order smilingly in smooth, sure French.

The waiter nods and after thanks are exchanged, he leaves your table alone. In your limited knowledge of Paris, you’ve chalked it up to a few things: many people will be rude, the serving sizes will be petite, and the men will be anything but trustworthy. You’ve tried them before and they all go the same way, slipping out of hotel rooms with disarming desolés, buttoning their polos as they go.

So here you are, characteristically silent, because your friend is flirting with a guy and you refuse to do the same. 

“You speak French?” The guy across you asks curiously. He talks like he’s always smiling, eyes turning into half-crescents. He’s accented, but you’re unsure of the origin—it sounds French, in the same way it kind of doesn’t. You nod politely.

“Ah? Où est-ce que vous l'avez appris?”

“Université,” you respond. “J’ai etudie le langue français, mais… est trés difficil.” He laughs, nodding like you’ve said the funniest thing in the world. Half-crescents.

“I’m Charles. I grew up—I’m from Monaco, so I speak it. And Italian. Joris and I.” He elbows his friend, who your friend is flirting with. Oh, Monaco. So… not French.

“I’ve never been,” you say, letting yourself loosen up a bit more. 

“It’s very small. You should go sometime.” An implication of something hangs in the air, like clouds over France. You smile, bashful, nodding along. 

“I’ll make sure to.” The drinks arrive and flow through the night, laughter passed along the table like wine. At some point you and Charles get up to dance, but are quickly put to your chairs by the waiter—you mutter some slurred remark about how why play music if you can’t dance?! 

But he is funny, and charming, and pretty. You find yourself staring at him in a very desperate, schoolgirl crush way, lip bitten and cheeks warm when he catches you.

Later that night, tipsy off the alcohol, Charles the Monegasque presses a kiss to your cheek and asks, shyly, if you’d like to come to his hotel. You tease him, just to see the half-crescents again, and then you’re in his car and in his room, top pulled off and bra unclasped, laughing drunkenly into his neck when the pleasure reaches its crux. And you hope he doesn’t ask you to leave the next day, drifting into sleep with his arm slung over your waist.

—

You like Charles’ voice in real life.

This is because it means you feel it more than hear it, a low thrum through his chest and into your ear. It lets you know he’s close by, which is the best kind of reassurance, because he never usually is. It doesn’t matter what he talks about—the day past or about to begin, racing, family—all you can really digest is the amount of love and care he puts into his words.

Most of the time you hear his voice through the layered, stuffy audio of your phone or your laptop, when they can’t quite catch up to his lips, when the Internet lag is just that awful. If you’re lucky, he sounds more like himself, but nothing compares to hearing it for real, the whispers and murmurs and roughness of it all. He’s here, and you’re home, content just to listen.

You’re in Monaco; it’s your fourth day here. You’re off school for two weeks before you dive into midterms, so you spend it in Europe, because you haven’t seen Charles in ages. Lately he’s been pixels, voice memos, bubbles of words. But now he’s Charles, real, tangible, yours.

Life has become easier when he’s around, a fact wholly owed to his presence. When he’s here, you feel at ease, like laughter is effortless and loving is natural. But there is a ticking timebomb you sleep on, and it’s your impending departure, your flight back to the city, your resuming of normal life. Of life without him.

“I’ll be in Geneva next week,” he tells you, voice throaty from having just woken up. They’re the first words out of his mouth after he hangs up the early morning phone with Andrea. It’s an invite, even if it’s phrased as a statement; he awaits your affirmation, should it come. He invites you to these things often, as a way to introduce you more into his world. The words rumble through him, slowly onto your fingertips that waltz silently across his bare chest. They skate while you formulate a response.

“Okay,” you say quietly, half-asleep still. “I have… a huge recitation coming up, so I don’t think I can make it. Criminal law.”

He tenses, and you feel it. But his words say something else. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I wish I could,” you say, as compensation. It’s what you’ve both grown used to lately, wishing. Wishes that, for all your trying, never seem to come true. I wish I could make it. I wish I could visit. I wish we could celebrate together. I wish I was there for the podium, or the grades release, or the job offer phone call. I wish, I wish, I wish, and not much of anything else. Just wishing. Wishing, wanting, never getting.

“Yeah,” he says, sighing. “I wish you could, too.”

The dissonance between the voice that rumbles through him and into you—comforting—and the words that leave—a touch too sharp—strikes through you like electricity. “I’m sorry,” you say achingly, and the morning is silent as you both fall back into ignorant, blissful sleep.

—

“Aaaaand that pretty much evens us out to a solid 12-3.”

You finish tracking the score on your Notes app, closing your phone and facing your boyfriend’s pouting face of defeat. 

As always, the loser packs up the chessboard first—the wooden pieces click noisily against each other as he folds up the game, to be won (by you, no doubt) another time. Between work and the general upkeep of a relationship that’s constantly long distance, you and Charles find it difficult to begin and maintain romantic traditions.

But there’s always the assurance of chess. To air out grievances, to pass the time, to play footsie under the table. You and Charles always play, keeping a seasonal tally of near-daily games—during flights, pre and post race, after sex, at brunches with family.

“You’ve been cheating,” he accuses jokingly, storing the chessboard and inviting you onto his lap.

You’re in Nice today, housesitting for a friend while Charles spends time off racing. He claims it’s sufficient practice for when you one day buy a place together; two, at that: one in New York and one in Monaco. The days have passed in chess games, pots of coffee, and slow dances in the kitchen while you wait for pasta to boil or rice to cook. 

“You’re just jealous,” you tease, clambering atop him. Your arms loop around his neck, his around your waist. “Don’t worry. The tally will restart in September.”

“I’ll best you then.” Here, in this still moment of silence, where the sunlight from outside filters in just right and illuminates every detail of Charles’ face, you can almost feel your heart swell to an unimaginable size. You connect the moles and freckles with the tip of your pinky, traveling lower until it rests softly against his lips. He smiles, flexing against your touch. 

“Sore loser,” you say, flirtatious, playing with his hair.

“I think I keep losing,” he starts, hands tightening around your frame, “because every time I see you, I forget how to do the most ordinary things.”

You bite back a smile. “Hey, don’t try to charm yourself into a win.”

“Can’t help it, the winner’s too pretty,” he teases back; your lack of retort leads you to press your face into his chest. He smells like he always smells, clean and woody and a bit like your own perfume, your pretty boy. You inhale, breathe him in and ground yourself. Here, miles away from Monaco, even farther from Manhattan, you are home.

—

“How do you tell people you broke up?”

“I say we wanted different things,” you reply, two puffs into your second Camel.

A white lie, a half-truth, a rehearsed answer after being asked the same repetitive question so many times. You and Charles broke up because at that point, nothing about you made sense. You were growing older, and with age came the stupefying realization that nonsense wasn’t always romantic. If it didn’t make sense, it never would. But you did want the same things, you suppose, at least to some extent.

You know you wanted marriage. After law school, it had to be, and in Europe, somewhere sunny and windy and flowery with a sea nearby. A small affair, family and friends. You know you wanted kids, two or three, a bunch of Charles lookalikes, tufts of light hair and bouts of crazy energy. You know you wanted a house—not a flat, a house, a brownstone in Manhattan, a big property in Monaco. You wanted so much of the same things.

Perhaps that is why Pierre will never understand the magnitude of the way you miss Charles. You dream of him when you’re awake, of the times you spent together that finished abruptly. You look for him in everyday objects. You keep the tissue paper conversations, you want to say, even if it’s so, so mortifying, so raw to admit it.

“But you didn’t,” says Pierre, because he knows it.

“We didn’t. But what other explanation is there?” Where a concrete summary of your breakup is supposed to be, there lies grey matter, webs of explanation spanning years and months and questions unanswered. 

“I get it,” he replies. But he’s not you, or Charles, so he doesn’t.

—

Charles looks at you and imagines your smiling face in every moment of his future. Holding a child, under a veil, half-asleep in the morning, flushed and warm after a few beers.

You’re—you’re you, and he just loves you, in a way he will never be able to articulate. He drives for a living—he looks at all kinds of statistics, worded and encoded onto machines and computer screens. But this love isn’t quantifiable. Not in numbers, not in speed, not in words, stanzas of Italian. His love for you is indescribable; it exists in a wordless plane, massive and all-encompassing, carved and chiseled finely.

When you’re absent, the world seems duller, a bit more empty. But it’s okay, he thinks—you’re here now, across the room, in nothing but lingerie, your dress pooled at your feet. You’ve both just arrived from another social gathering, with so many people, and an afterparty arranged by Max.

You’d utilized your well-used secret signal for parties that directly translated to “let’s go home”—bringing up peanut butter meant you were well past exhausted and needed to leave. One “the dessert would’ve been so good with peanut butter” later and you’re here. Years of being together means you’ve both created a vocabulary all your own, lexicon and phonetics making up a language of love and familiarity. Nobody else will ever get this, he thinks. It’s just yours.

You’re removing your makeup in the mirror, and oh, well, you’re beautiful. He wonders what he has to do now to be able to find you in the next life, to be able to meet your eyes again for the first time and fall in love with you the way he did.

You’re what he looks for after a race, after a win, after a DNF. So he can, if just for a moment, let his guard down and allow himself to be yours, yours and only yours, collapse into your arms from ache and overwhelm and find reprieve there. With you, he lets himself go, lets the façade fall, lets himself stay in your touch before he deems himself ready to be with the rest of the world.

“Hey, you,” you call, and he blinks. “Eyes up here, buddy.”

“I just love you,” he says sleepily. 

You tug on a nightshirt—his, from ages ago—and crawl into bed beside him, raising a teasing brow. “Sex is off the table.”

He laughs. “I wasn’t trying to get into your pants.”

“Good,” you half-yawn, yanking the lamplight closed and nestling yourself beside him. “I look horribly un-sexy.”

“The shirt’s kinda doing it for me.”

“Go to sleep.”

—

It’s raining today, for the first time in a dull stretch of weeks. The fall comes in angry, noisy sheets, made more furious by the wind. Wrapped in one of his hoodies, you clasp a mug in your hands, staring sullenly out the window, wondering when Charles will be home. Something has shifted in the weeks since you last saw each other, since you flew back out to New York and Charles didn’t finish in the last race.

Sometimes everything feels impossible to touch, like you don’t know what the next step is, let alone how to take it. There’s a certain uncertainty to where you stand, a possibility that, if the seconds tick just right, everything will crash down. This isn’t a feeling you’ve ever had before, but you suppose this is the only way to learn how to deal with it.

It’s comforting, then, when you hear the keys jingle at the door.

Your flat, as expensive as it is, has a quirk to it; the door only opens when you jerk it with your knee twice. You hear it, the double thump, and in almost childish excitement, you set your mug down and pad gently over to the foyer, so you’re ready for him when the door opens. Everytime you’re apart for this long, the routine is standard, and first thing you do is hug—so hard, so tight, your legs wrapped around his waist, his face in your neck.

“Hey,” Charles says, seeing you wait idly by the front door. You inch forward, but freeze. He heaves his luggage in, smiling softly, tiredly almost, pressing a brief kiss to your cheek and then disappears into the bedroom. The lump in your throat doesn’t go away when you slowly realize the hug you’d awaited, prepared for even, does not come.

You follow him instead, to the bedroom, where he’s still quiet, shirtless and picking out something from the drawers. He turns when he hears you. “Have you seen my grey hoodie?”

“Yeah, it’s in the wash.” You pause. “I used it last week, sorry.”

“I tol—it’s,” he says, inhaling, “it’s fine.”

“I’m sorry,” you repeat, taken aback by how affected he is. “I can get it dried.”

“It’s okay.” He insists, a bit sharply, tugging on a different shirt instead.

The air is thick, threatening to break, and you’re hopeless, lost, left wondering—what the hell is going on. You try your best anyway, humming as you take a seat on the bed and fold the bits of laundry you’d abandoned in the morning.

“Pascale’s inviting us over tomorrow,” you open, finishing a pair of shorts and depositing them into the drawers. Your arms wrap around him, and he holds them there. This is good, you think. This is okay. “For brunch, because Arthur’s going to be home. I told her okay—since I’m back in New York by Tuesday and you’ll be in Italy then, too. We haven’t had brunch with your family in forever. God, they’re going to be asking questions about marriage, and engagement, and ki—”

“Stop.” The room goes still. “Why did you tell her okay?” He asks, disengaging the hug and turning toward you fully. 

You’re like a deer in the headlights, confused, lost all over again.

“Charles?” You prod, gently. “Is… are you okay? I mean, we always greenlight brunch.”

You watch him pinch his nose bridge, exhale, close his eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” You echo, stepping forward. He steps back, avoidant.

“Don’t,” he says. “Please, just… don’t.”

You’ve heard this often lately. In fact, no—you’ve maybe felt this more than heard it. This—this distance, this space, this push. Every call unanswered, every flight missed, every text answered with a brief, apathetic OK. You can’t quell the fear, the panic swelling in your chest, because you can feel him floating away, just out of grasp.

“Talk to me,” you say, because it’s the only thing that can bring itself to leave your mouth. It’s weak, it’s desperate, lacking composure and firmness. “Nous pouvons travailler à travers cela.”

“Non,” he says, as if he knows it already. “This, I—I just. I think I just need some space.”

Space.

“Okay,” you say. “I’ll be in the living room.”

“No, I’ll go,” he insists, like he’s doing you a favor. I’ll save us the nasty fight, he seems to convey. I’ll go. So he does—grabs a coat and wrestles himself out of the door, with barely anything left to reassure you, just a short kiss and a hand on your hair. It’s performative, you know this, but you’ll take it. You don’t have much to accept these days.

The night passes, still and quiet, without the jingle of keys or the double thump at the door.

Even in memory and introspection you will come to find this moment and remain capable of recounting every thread of detail, ones as small as the eyes of needles, every prick of pain that pokes at you. Because even if you see him the day next, and even if he greets you with a kiss, and pulls you aside to apologize profusely, and even if you feel so loved in this very moment, with hugs from Pascale and jokes from Arthur and check-ins with Lorenzo, the fact has secured, burrowed itself into the dark crevice of your heart.

You will look back on this one day, and think, with the kind of certainty so crushingly absolute: yes, this is when it all went wrong.

—

“Is he seeing anybody?” Halfway through the third stick.

“No,” Pierre says, blowing smoke out into the air.

“Be honest.”

He snorts. “D’accord. An Italian girl, few months ago, but it’s over. It was quick. Very. And you?”

The information makes you weak in ways you refuse to share. “Just… testing things out with this guy.”

“Does he know about Charles?”

The silence is telling. “About Charles” is an awfully broad topic. 

Charles was such a big part of who you are, and who you’ve been, and what you’ve been through. How would you even begin telling somebody about you both? The bits and pieces, the great figure eight, the tiny infinity. The moments within the moments, memories within memories. The love. The way you loved, the way you sought him, the way you have yet to replicate the feeling of loving him, the way you wait for the next life, so you can seek him all over again. 

There is “does he know Charles,” and there is “does he know about Charles,” and the two are so cruelly separate and different. Anyone can know Charles; he is, after all, world-famous. You don’t know how he’s doing in motorsport these days, because a lot of the time the Google search for his name suggests ex girlfriend right beside it, and that’s enough to stun you into not searching again. But still he’s famous and renowned, so of course he’d be known. But for someone to know about him, what he meant to you—it feels like you’d be reciting a novel in an effort to explain how the both of you began, became, and ended. Reciting sonnets and stanzas of prose, of moments painfully intimate, of habits that have yet to die, of things you wished to be taught by him. 

“So, no.” You nod softly.

—

The possibility of spending Christmas with either of your families grows thin as December begins. Between final exams and racing meetings, neither of you give, discussing over hours-long calls and coordinating calendars. You find that your only common free day is the seventh of January, which is effectively well past the holidays. You’ve sunk into a pile of misery at the very real chance of spending the holidays by yourself. It’s not a pretty idea, despite the fact that you’ve befriended loneliness lately.

Outside your window, Manhattan is caked in snow; it reminds you of Santa Claus Charles, with his foamy frizzy beard and kisses of froth and the Polaroid on the fridge. You wonder if Charles, wherever he is in Europe now—traveling multiple times a day—remembers you, too, in these little mundane things.

He’d called on the third of December, when it was three in the morning in New York. You picked up after two rings, busy studying, and mumbled a sleepy hello into the receiver.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, clearly excited over something. 

“Bit early, honey.” You’d said back amusedly, highlighting phrases on the textbook.

“Just saying it now, because the next time you hear me say these words, it’ll be in New York.”

You didn’t register his words until you realized you’d tinted two entire paragraphs fluorescent yellow.

You blinked. “Wait, what’d you say?” 

“I’m there by the twenty-fifth, evening. Found a sweet spot in my calendar thanks to Joris.”

“If you’re joking, Charles, I swear—”

“I’ll see you then,” he had said; even then you could hear his smile through the scratchy audio of international calls.

That’s what you’re doing here, over your stove cooking chicken to commemorate your first Christmas together. You stick a thermometer inside it, busying your mind with thoughts of dinner instead of the fact that you haven’t spoken to your supposed guest in over a week.

Like many fights lately, this began over something irrational and grew into a serious, temperamental discussion about your future.

About moving in together and how impossible it seemed. About raising kids or getting engaged. Everything was written on different pages for the two of you. Your plans were always years too early, years too late, never aligning. Bilingual paragraphs eventually devolved into exhausted intermittent texts, check-ins if it mattered, and barely any concrete discussion at all.

It’s mortifying to have to say the phrases “like many fights lately.” You wonder what it proves about the two of you, about the relationship you share. Has it gone sour? No, you tell yourself. But this yogurt dip will, if I don’t put it in the fridge. You wipe your hands off after you do, rechecking your phone; still no texts or calls or updates. He’d texted this morning, a brief and simple see you soon, but hadn’t responded to your text.

Chicken, mashed potatoes, candles ready to be lit. You fiddle with the pink Bic, lighting and unlighting, sighing. 

You dial the airline eventually. They man both public and private flights, so they should know something about his jet. Something, anything—any tidbit of information is useful to you right now. You’re embarrassed, alone on Christmas in a dress you thought was beautiful hours ago but now only seems over the top and mocking. A woman picks up your call after it’s transferred thrice.

I just need to know the ETA of this flight, you say. Under Charles Leclerc. He gave me the flight code. 

Silence. You hear the bustle of the airport on the other end and wonder if Charles is there in that bustle, in his puffer jacket he uses in the winter, holding a suitcase and waiting for the delayed plane. Or maybe he’s already here in your timezone, in a cab bumbling with excitement, or in the elevator, or right outside, fist posed in front of the door—

A snowstorm, she says, her voice tinny through the phone. The pity in her voice makes you want to smash the landline to pieces. So sorry. If you’d gotten your husband to book just two days earlier, you two would’ve been together. Why don’t you call him, sweetie?

She is right about the unsolicited booking advice, wrong about the title. Charles is not your husband. You hang up after mumbling something you can no longer remember, too exhausted to be rude or polite at this point, and turn to face your dining room. Your texts go unanswered, and in your earlier effort to save energy, the lack of heating has caused your phone screen to grow cold to the touch. The roast chicken is getting cold now, too, the mashed potatoes cool, the sourdough stale, the butter melted into ugly coagulated puddles, the wine sweating all over the table.

You eat two bites before depositing a clean plate at the sink. The flat smells of pine and citrus; it’s stronger because you’re by yourself, with no Charles to cloud the room with his own scent. Your phone remains silent, your heart drowning slowly in a cloud of imprecise sorrow. And you realize, remembering the airline officer’s words as you unplug the lights from the Christmas tree and let the moonlight swallow the room, that Charles is not your boyfriend, either.

He texts the morning next, says he’ll make it on the next flight, twenty-six. He doesn’t apologize and you unwrap presents alone, from friends, shipped from family. You wallow in your loneliness, humiliated by your need for him, a need that is met only on the seventh of January.

—

“Are you and Charles okay?”

Lorenzo is always the first to ask. He’s intuitive, and you think maybe it comes with age, but damn if it isn’t infuriating when he knows something is up before anyone else. You purse your lips, hope your laugh is a good enough substitute for an answer.

“Are you?” Obviously, it’s not.

“We’re… we’re just working through things.” You’ve had two glasses of bourbon, and your eyesight is blurring the way your words do. You’re in a big Manhattan ballroom, just several floors underneath your hotel room. Charles is somewhere socializing, because of course he is, and you can’t take your mind off school, because of course you can’t.

“But you’re good, right?” He sounds hopeful, like your answer is the only thing that can convince him. Does he think you aren’t? What has Charles been telling him? Your breathing quickens, grows frantic.

“Yeah.” It convinces nobody, not even yourself. He nods, smart enough to drop the subject, and you’re alone again. This is the umpteenth gala you’ve been to this week alone, all for something or other along racing. You grow used to the faces, the introductions, the gentle nos when asked if you two are engaged, because why would you be? It’s a farfetched idea, engagement. 

The bathroom is half-full when you usher yourself inside in your gown, almost tripping with how fast you try to make it to the mirrors. There are two middle-aged women beside you lazily drawing lipstick onto their faces, their French accents thick as they converse.

“…So I decided to divorce him.”

You stare deep into the mirror. You look like a caricature of yourself, a puppet. Where is Charles? He overestimates your capability to be alone.

The other woman goes, “I can’t believe he didn’t see it coming.”

“I know! You’d think he would notice, no? Bah, men.”

“You’d felt it for a while then, too.”

“Tch, I really did. Just goes to show.”

Before you digest it, you’re turning and intrusively asking: “How did you know you wanted to divorce him?”

They exchange a look that’s as condescending as it is patronizing. Here you are, a naive twenty-something asking for relationship advice like you’re some know-it-all. You feel like a child suddenly, meek and curling in on yourself. Answer me, you want to say, tell me how it feels, tell me how you knew. You look petulant.

“Well,” she says, eyes meeting yours as she closes the tube of lipstick, “sometimes, dear, you just know.” It clicks closed.

“Yes,” says the other. “You just know. When you wake up one day and you feel it, that’s just it.”

Bullshit. Easy answer. You won’t know, you want to say.

No matter how stupid, how cliché, it sounds, you’ll never know this feeling. This feeling of nonchalance over a relationship lost, of laughter over unsuccessful love, of casually coloring the same lips that talk so abrasively of a lover. Because you have Charles, and Charles has you, and what else is there to know?

The rest are candles on a cake, kisses under a blanket, orange juice served over toast, arguments that end with compromise and a hug. The rest is love. These two know nothing about it. They know hurt and heartbreak and denial. They know nothing but this sad, sad feeling.

It must be sad to know, you think, even if the exact suffocating feeling crawls up your spine and wraps around your throat on the elevator ride back to the room.

—

This is boring

You scan over the scribbled phrase on the embossed, no doubt above asking price, tissue paper given at this (granted, boring) charity ball. Stifling a laugh, you fish a pen out of your purse, rereading the words and judging your outgoing response. In neater penmanship, you quickly write a message below it.

OK let’s end things.

He laughs when he reads it, eyes crinkling into half-crescents, mouth in a wide, silent smile. He mulls over a response and when you get it—

No goodbye sex? Quelle poisse. You giggle, rolling your eyes and squeezing his hand underneath the table, putting your little game on pause lest you get in trouble for not listening to the speaker onstage. This kind of lovely, comedic push and pull is what keeps you always entertained with Charles; he always, without fail, manages to make you laugh. Your easy, instant, but equally profound connection to one another constantly has you revisiting the idea of soulmates, of destiny.

Prior to meeting, your and Charles’ lives were barely entwined. You were a law student in America, Charles a racing driver based in Europe. A year ago, to the date, you’d been in Paris on vacation, when a friend invited you out to get drinks somewhere along the Seine. You had three case studies waiting on your laptop, but something tugged at you to accept the invite. 

Had you not been up for drinks in Paris that night, for instance—you’d never have met. And the drinks wouldn’t have been suggested in the first place if Charles got home from a meeting early, expressing boredom over the phone to Joris, who relayed it to the girl he was currently flirting with, who relayed it to you. You would never have talked if you didn’t order cocktails in French, prompting him to ask where you learned the language. 

And if you hadn’t, in a haze of rosé and amaretto sours, accepted the handsome guy’s invite back to his hotel—where would you be now? The series of little things make up where you are now. 

“Je t’aime,” he whispers into your hair.

But, then again, Charles has never felt like a stranger. You’re so sure that if you’d declined, or if Charles’ meeting ended on time, or if Joris was single, or if you ordered in meek English instead, you’d still be here, laughing over irrelevant tissue paper conversations, holding Charles’ hand under the table.

“Moi aussi,” you murmur. So sure.

—

God is the best scapegoat.

You first realize this when you’re ten and your favorite necklace snaps in half. You’d been running around, you moved too fast, it stuck on a branch, and became forever unfixable. You’d skipped on the usual nightly prayers as some sort of petulant, rebellious counterattack. You’re fifteen when you’re friendzoned, a first for you. You convince yourself it’s God playing tricks on you. You’re sixteen when you get an F for skipping class too often; you tweet God wtf is happening to me and you giddily watch it get thirteen likes. You’re not alone in this revolt, you think. You’re seventeen and a half when you lose your virginity; it sucks. You’re on top and you learn the art of faking. So you lay on your bed and bemoan Him for the misleading introduction to sex.

It becomes easy to blame God, moreso than usual, when the matter is one of life and death and danger. Being with Charles puts you in this position often. You curse God when something happens during a race that causes your heart to snag in itself and skip a beat or go five times faster. Inversely, it’s dreadfully difficult for you, innately unreligious, to pay thanks to God. Charles knows this, and is always the first to say “thank God” when a race goes well.

You throw around the phrase a few times, but it’s rare. Most, many, all times—it’s “oh, thank fuck” or “I’m so happy you’re safe.” It’s almost like you actively avoid the phrase, so whenever you say it, Charles is momentarily stunned; sometimes it’s after a particularly nasty circuit, or a rainy race day when you physically cannot withstand the stress of watching the love of your life drive fast under such bad conditions.

You have nothing to thank God for.

The hotel room is thin-walled and cold. Just last night you’d been tangled into each other for warmth, but now you’re throwing your suitcase onto the same bed and shoving laundry inside. No folding. No organizing. You make quick, messy work of it to avoid the conversation Charles so desperately tries to coerce out of both of you. The chessboard from last night’s game—5-7—lies abandoned, folded up at the foot of the bed. You ignore it. 

“I’m sorry I left you alone,” he says, lazy almost. He seems to say oh, fine. If you need me to say sorry I’ll say it, here.

“You don’t understand.” You say, cutting phrases short to avoid saying anything you’d rather harbor inside yourself.

“Then enlighten me,” he shoots back. “Please, really. Dis moi tout.” He sounds sarcastic.

“I don’t fit here,” you respond cuttingly. If he chooses to be sarcastic, you think—then be it. You’ll be blunt. You’ll exaggerate. You’ll be impulsive, if for once in your life, you have to be.

“Here, in your life.” You clutch a shirt to your chest. “We don’t make sense. We never did, and you know what? We never will. I honestly don’t know why we keep trying. It’s pointless to believe this could ever work. In between our careers, friends, and schedules, it takes more work for us to see each other for just a day than to push a fucking rock uphill. Ç’est inutile et tu le sais—tout ce travail pour rien.”

Your words sting, join the draft leaving through the crack in the window, turn into dew that stains the vines of the hotel exterior. The ones about to leave his mouth, though, stay put, cement themselves in the grooves of your brain. You’ll think of this exchange years from now, and the words will never blur, sore on your tender heart.

A pregnant silence follows your soliloquy, prompting you to look up and meet his eyes. He says it then. “Pourquoi se disputer pour rien? Let’s just end things.”

“Fine, let’s just end things.” You repeat. Struck, hurt, and angry, you say one last thing, in a valiant attempt to get the last word in. “Thank God.”

The seconds tick by like days, where you look at one another, thinking the same thing. So that’s it? When did it all turn to this? You push past him, bearing your suitcase and messily wiping your face of tears, pretending not to notice the hitch in his voice when he mumbles a quiet goodbye.

Your steps to the elevator tick by like hours, and you take the time to think of how you’d lived much of your relationship thinking that, with how strong your and Charles’ personalities are, a breakup would be messy. Loud. A yelled out fight, tears, thrown curses and hurtful names. You’d always thought, with much conviction, that you would end with a bang.

Many previous fights had gone something like that. There was Thanksgiving, where you ushered him out of your family home to avoid anything escalating into a yelling match. Bang.

There was post-race, where, in the throes of frustration, you two had a heated exchange and you left the paddock in tears. Bang.

There was nothing, however, that couldn’t be solved without a shag and a kiss and an apology. So, reasonably, you expected the final fight to be the loudest. The angriest. This relationship, you were so sure—this would end in a bang. Because you and Charles love the same way: strongly, with so much conviction and noise, and the line between love and spite is more frail than you think. A great big bang, where finally you collided in ways you’d never done before, every frustration, every complaint, thrown back and forth like comets, like war.

But you are wrong. It doesn’t. 

It ends with you softly sighing, arms crossed over your torso to shield yourself from the ache in your chest, tears slipping then falling unstoppingly in the elevator. It ends with a night’s sleep taking up one side of the bed. It ends with Charles deceiving himself into thinking you didn’t just thank the Lord that your relationship has just crumbled to nothing in the bounds of this thin-walled, cold hotel room.

—

“Say something to me,” you say quietly, like you’re afraid to disturb the still morning silence of Paris. “In Italian.”

It’s a corny, cheesy request, no doubt inflamed by the butterflies in your stomach when you think about the night before and one romantic comedy too many. But you ask for it, anyway, your leg bumping his under the too-thin cotton blanket of his hotel. You found yourself here this morning after a night of sweet French alcohol and slurred, flirty conversation.

“Assomigli al resto della mia vita.” He says, smiling.

“Okay. What’s it mean?”

“I won’t translate it for you, because it’s a bit cliché.” He narrows his eyes.

“All of European language is cliché.” You laugh. “Come on, tell me.”

“I will one day,” he says, “I promise. I swear!”

The promise of “one day” is upsettingly romantic. Barely a day after you first met, first bonded, first kissed, first had sex. Okay, fine, you two hadn’t really gone the traditional route of dating, but here he is waxing poetic in Italian, finger tracing your bare arm. “One day,” you say, just so you’re sure.

“Yeah. One day.”

His hand finds yours, and fingers are laced together. Words wrestle themselves out of your throat nervously, a question that might seal the morning. “Should I go?”

The question rests in the air. How do you want your eggs, he wants to ask. Or would you want pancakes or waffles or bacon? Or bread, a croissant with coffee and compote? He wants to know all these things, hear all your answers, watch your eyes twinkle with amusement at the silly questions. So he’ll ask them, he figures. He’ll ask them if you don’t go.

“Stay,” he says. “At least for breakfast.”

—

Pierre leaves after a few more hours. He says Yuki texted him about some Mexican place they need to try. The night next, he is brought up in conversation: “Who were you with last night?”

“A friend,” you explain. “He’s an old friend, Henry.”

Henry Maxwell, the Wall Street guy you’re seeing, who’s inviting you to a charity ball a month into dating. To you, that’s basically a sign to end things, but you allow him to explain his invitation. Babe, don’t you think networking in New York is a gold mine for everything great these days? Don’t you think we need to network if we ever move in together?

“Henry, n—I mean. It’s just going to be another one of those stuffy city galas where everyone tries to out-wealthy one another,” you half-joke. In truth, the reason why you’re so adamant on not going is because this is just about the worst first date idea ever conceived—from experience, you’re sure you’ll have barely any time alone to get to know each other, whisked away to socialize with groups of other people.

“Oh, lighten up,” says Henry, with a sheepish smile. “You’re my plus one on the RSVP, so you can’t complain.”

“Am I?” You ask, chuckling. It’s a bit weird. But he’s excited, and asking, and convincing, so you tug a green silk dress out of your closet and take an Uber to the hotel address. Nevermind the fact that you’ve been here before.

You squeeze Henry’s hand when you walk into the massive ballroom, and not five minutes later you’re facing a crowd of people, drowning in taffeta skirts and wool suits and champagne and snooty small talk. Henry is charming, Henry is kind, Henry is a smooth talker.

He’s the ideal prototype of a guy you should be dating right now. His hand never leaves the small of your back, playing with the satin of your dress, laughing into your neck. You’ve faced several groups of business magnates and supermodels; right now, he’s introducing you to a big journalist for the Post.

She’s in the middle of talking about some hippie retreat to Thailand or somewhere or other when your eyes glide across the room, bored, searching for something to occupy you. To be frank, you really don’t care about ayahuasca.

The hands on the clock seem to halt just for you, just for now, suspending this moment in time like a mosquito in amber. Your eyes meet—and if you’d been less careful or maybe more tipsy, you might have mistaken his gaze for a stranger’s. But your heart demands hurt, demands the memories, demands the sick, sweet nostalgia threading through you like needle to cloth. Your heart demands you to remember, but the demand is so painfully easy to obey because you’ve never forgotten. All at once hate and love arise in you, like great big waves conflicting against one another, until you feel swollen with longing and spite, finding reprieve in the green of his eyes.

Timing, destiny, God. Whatever it is, it’s decided to play some silly joke, because here you are. In the precarious balance of a memory and a figment of your imagination, here you are. In the gap between never and always, here you are. You might appear to be strangers, stranded across opposite ends of this marble ballroom, but to both of you, the idea is almost unfathomable. No, not strangers; you two are anything but.

You are you, and he is Charles, here again in the place where it all ended.

He is never a stranger, and he could never be. He is Charles, your Charles, the beautiful boy who took up years of your life and explored every inch of your heart and mind. He is Charles, who broke your heart, he is Charles, whose heart you broke. But now, he is just Charles Leclerc, racing driver and charity gala attendee, conversing with the same crowds, mingling as he always does. Did. The usage of past tense is a painful pill to swallow.

Charles feels like it’s torture, suffering, a slow punishment, to be rooted to the ground and to do nothing but look. How can he look away now? He is rooted to the tiles, thick vines keeping him here, even if his heart tells him to go, run, now. He is stuck, tacked by the stillness of the memories that play back through his head, the love and the sorrow. You’re still you, hair a little shorter, brows a little darker, but you’re still you. The you he had once, held once, loved and lost once. The you he wishes to have, hold, and love once again.

For a moment, a fleeting, short, moment, he wishes to blink, to nod and to signal for you to meet him outside, on the balcony, so he can straighten his tie and press a polite hand to this person’s shoulder and say excuse me and leave, slip quietly into the night. So maybe you can tug on Henry’s suit jacket and say I’m sorry and join the crowd of gowns and satin and leave, run, go. Because you’re you. And what a sweet lie it would be if he said he wouldn’t do anything for you.

In the end you stay, and you stare, rooted still, time moving the way grass grows. When he smiles, you smile back, and the answers to what if are quietly fabricated in the limits of your imagination.

—

“I miss you. I know it’s—I know this is weird to say, after so long. After not talking for such a long time.”

“No, I understand. I miss you, too.”

“Right… well, how have you been?”

“Same old. You?”

“Yeah, same. How’s everything?”

“It’s… it’s okay. How’s life?”

“Tough, but great.”

“I noticed you were with someone.”

“Yeah, no. That’s—it’s sort of—I don’t see it going anywhere, really. It’s kind of over.”

“Oh? Is it?”

“Listen, I’m… sorry. For—just for everything. I’ve lived the past few years thinking about everything and still hoping I could someday apologize properly. I’m just glad I’ve been given the chance. And I think things ended without… without… I just don’t think we were mature enough. And sometimes now I think—it’s you, it’s still you.”

“Don’t apologize. Can you believe it happened right here?”

“I know. It’s almost crazy—”

“You left a bottle of scent at my place. It’s… it’s still half full. Sometimes I—nevermind. I mean, I think of you a lot. Probably too much for my own good. I think of us, our past, our relationship.”

“So do I.”

“—I love you. I try to stop it, I keep trying but I always end up here. Always here, back here, loving you.”

“If you didn’t see me tonight—would you have felt this way?”

“Oh, I feel… I feel it everyday. I think I’m always going to love you.”

“I’m always going to love you, too.”

[makethatelevenrings]

Puzzle Pieces // J. Todd x f!reader

Requested? Yes!

Warnings: discussions of pregnancy, allusion to abortion, pregnancy scare, emotions

Summary: You and Jason are doing a last minute grocery run when you walk by the period products and realize that you’re late. You’re never late. One negative test, however, could change everything.

“Jay?”

It was the cadence of your voice that alerted something was wrong. A subtle hitch at the end of his name that sent a wave of icy cold chills down his spine. He turned from where he was collecting a massive amount of cup ramen and stared blankly at the thin box in your hand.

Jason was due to go out in an hour, but the two of you realized belatedly that you were out of ingredients for breakfast in the morning. There were two options: run by the corner store and grab some things or send you out alone in the morning while he slept in.

Jason Peter Todd would have to be six feet underground again before sending you out into Gotham when he knew that all the active vigilantes were fast asleep. If you were venturing out alone, it would be when someone was awake.

That found you two in the corner store near your apartment, snickering and trading jokes over your shoulders as you shuffled through the aisles. You were clad in one of his sweatshirts that practically drowned you in the cotton fabric and some basketball shorts underneath that he’s pretty sure you stole from Steph. He kept a close eye on you, his body inching around in the smallest increments to ensure that, no matter what, he was always between you and the door. He’d be damned if he lost the one good thing in his life.

“I…I didn’t realize, but then I saw the pads and…I’m late.” Panic was evident in your voice and no matter how desperately he wanted to fucking throw up in the middle of the bodega right then and there, Jason needed to keep it calm and cool right now. He quickly placed the ramen cups back on the counter and reached out, taking the pregnancy test out of your hand.

“Okay,” he said simply. One of his calloused hands came up and rested on your cheek, cradling your face. Your eyes fluttered shut at his touch, but he could feel the slight tremble in your body.

Fuckfuckfuck. He was on autopilot as he approached the counter, tossed a twenty onto the plastic shelf, and walked out with a pregnancy test in one hand and yours clasped in the other. Jason wants to say something, the right words or placating phrase that will make this all better but he can’t because he can’t fucking think about anything except for the fact that he will be the worst goddamn father on the planet.

Pregnant. Fucking hell. You could be pregnant. They were usually so careful. You were on the pill and he made sure you took it religiously. How the fuck could you be pregnant? He couldn’t be a dad. Willis had been a piece of shit who beat Catherine and basically fucked off into the sunset, leaving him and his mom to fend for themselves. Jason had been just a kid yet he picked his mom up off the ground when she was high out of her mind. Then there was Bruce…

Jason ushered you into the apartment and nudged you gently towards the bathroom. He made sure to lock up behind you and then slowly walked to your bedroom. He leaned against the doorframe and took a moment, just one single moment, to inhale deeply. He needed to be steady and calm for you. He could freak out later when he was patrolling.

Shit, he needed to be suited up and patrolling the Bowery in an hour.

“Babe?” he asked, his knuckles gently hitting the door. You murmured out a quiet welcome and he slipped in before shutting the door behind him. You were curled up against the tub, staring blankly at the wall, and the test rested on the edge of the tub face down.

Jason sat down on the floor across from you and leaned back against the sink. He stretched his legs out and motioned for you to shuffle over to him. “C’mere, sweetheart.”

You dragged yourself across the cold tile floor and settled yourself between his legs, your head resting on his chest. Pressing your ear against the warm scratchy fabric of his shirt and relaxed at the sound of his heartbeat.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“Christ, babe, why the hell’re you apologizing?”

“I don’t know,” you sobbed. “We’ve never talked about it. God, Jase, we’re barely adults ourselves. We’re still trying to figure out how to take care of Merry and Pippin, for fuck’s sake!” You were referencing, of course, the two cats Jason had rescued from a dumpster one night that now slept every night cuddled up against you. Jason had insisted that they were only staying for the night to get them out of the cold.

That had been three months ago and the furry little bastards were currently asleep on top of your pillows.

“Hey, hey.” His lips brushed across the crown of your head as he shushed you. You were shaking in his arms and he hated this. He hated not being able to protect you. Hell, he’s the one that got you into this situation.

“No matter what happens, I’m all in, okay?” His voice sounded weak to his own ears, but you needed to hear this as much as he did. “Whatever you choose, I will support you all the way, you got that?”

“But what if…”

“Sweetheart, you’re the one in control of your body. Whatever you choose will be the best choice for us.”

You fisted the front of his shirt in your hand and bit back a sob. Jason scruffed the back of your neck in a loving gesture, his other arm curling around your waist and tugging you impossibly closer. Jason felt helpless and for a man accustomed to beating the shit out of his problems, he hated that he couldn’t fix this for you.

Your phone started to sing a little chime and you sniffled, reaching over to shut it off. “That means it’s ready. I…I can’t do it.”

He soothed his hand over your hip and kissed your temple. “I’ll do it.”

Truth be told, Jason was terrified. He tried to ignore the slight tremor in his hand as he reached for the bathtub. He didn’t know how he would react to whatever that little stick said. Christ on a handbasket, one little mathematical symbol might change his entire life. He loved being a brother, not that he would ever tell the little gaggle of brats, and he loved being an uncle to Lian, but a father? Could he do that?

There was one thing he didn’t doubt. You would be the best mother in the world. Fiercely loyal, kind, caring, didn’t put up with his bullshit…he could almost picture a toddler on your hip as you smiled at it. But he didn’t see himself there.

Maybe this was a sign that he had tried clinging to his ill-fated happiness for too long.

“Bubs?” Your murmur knocked him out of his thoughts and Jason shook his head.

“Sorry, I was just thinking.”

“‘S okay,” you said. “I get it.”

Jason inhaled sharply and then flipped over the test. His shoulders dropped at the sight of the minus sign and he extended the test to you. You clasped your hands over the little stick and bowed your head.

Silence enveloped the small, cramped bathroom. Jason studied the broken tile over by the toilet and made a mental note on looking into how to recaulk the shower tiles. They needed another bulb over the sink and maybe a better shower head. Hell, maybe they should paint the bathroom. Anything would be better than the garish lime green the landlord thought would make it look “70s mod”.

“I don’t know what to think,” you finally croaked out. You shuffled out of his hold and turned to face him. His head snapped up and he met your eyes, finding them red rimmed with tears clinging to the edges of your lashes. Jason scooted forward and laid a heavy hand on your knee, his thumb rubbing back and forth.

“Talk to me,” he urged. Selfishly, he needed to hear you voice your thoughts because he was fucking terrified that one day he would come home and find all of your things gone. This life couldn’t be easy for you. He needed to stop doing this shit to you. You deserved a better life.

“I think I need some time to process,” you admitted. “Can I…can we talk about this after you get back?”

That sinking feeling in his chest now felt like leaden rock in his gut. He might prefer a crowbar to the chest instead of the dread that currently consumed him.

“I’m not mad at you,” you blurted out once you saw the wounded look cross his face before he schooled his features like he had been trained. “I’m just feeling a lot of stuff right now and I want to be able to think it out before I say something stupid. I’ll be here when you get back. I promise.”

You reached out and touched his cheek. He turned his head to lay a featherlight kiss against your palm and then stood. “I’ll be home by four.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

He was off his game all night. Jason nearly got shot twice when he finally called it quits and let Steph and Cass take on the Bowery. Dick had tried coaxing out why he was in a piss poor mood, but Jason merely muted his comms and shoved the little device in his pocket. His helmet sat next to him on the roof ledge, leaving him in just a red domino mask.

It was creeping towards three and the tiniest light began to creep across the horizon. The inky black night sky dominated Gotham still and Jason took a little solace in the fact that he was cloaked by the shadows.

It wasn’t enough to hide him from Bruce.

The large shadow of his adoptive father landed beside him. Jason didn’t bother turning to look at him and instead focused straight ahead at the slowly rising sun. Bruce silently sat next to him on the roof, his legs dangling over the side.

Side by side, just like they had all those years ago when Jason was still dressed up as a traffic light and Bruce had been…lighter, for lack of a better word.

“Pregnancy scare,” Jason finally admitted. He knew Bruce wouldn’t ask, but he also knew that Bruce wouldn’t leave until he got a clue as to why Jason was sulking on a rooftop instead of beating the face in of some wannabe trafficker.

Bruce stiffened just slightly and Jason huffed out a laugh. “Relax, it was negative.”

“I thought you would be relieved,” Bruce said. None of his kids had ever expressed any interest in reproducing. In fact, Alfred had money on them picking up his serial adoption habits. Clark was in on the bet too. Bastards.

“I’d be a shit dad,” Jason grunted. “I’d fuck that kid up in the head and probably leave it out on the streets like Willis.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Bruce said it so calmly. So matter of factly. He said it as if it was the truth engraved in granite.

Jason barked out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, and you’re father of the year, right? You get to bestow that honor on the next asshole?”

There was a slight twitch in Bruce’s jaw, one that no one would notice unless you were one of his family members. His piercing gaze stared out on the city he loved so desperately and then he looked at the son he had lost so painfully.

“You would be an amazing father because you would ensure that you didn’t make the same mistakes Willis and I made.”

Jason sucked in a sharp breath at his father’s soft words. He clenched his jaw shut and shook his head. A gloved hand landed on his shoulder and Jason raised his head, meeting the white lenses of the cowl so many feared.

“You love this city so much that you are willing to go to lengths that I can’t bring myself to do. You do things I don’t approve of, but you do it because you care so much that you feel the pain the people feel. You love deeply, Jaylad, you always have. I failed you as a father so many times. I should have never let you become Robin. I should have never let any of you out in the field. You were…you were just a kid.

But the one thing I will never regret is bringing you into our home and our family. Being your father has brought me the greatest sorrow and immense joy of my life and I would never, ever give that up.”

Bruce pulled away and stood up. “You should go home. Talk.”

Jason swallowed against the growing lump in his throat and nodded. “Right. Thanks. Fuck you or whatever.”

Batman’s lips quirked up at the corner and then he sighed. “Nice to see you too, Hood.”

Jason waited until he slipped back into the shadows before he pulled on his helmet and grappled back to the Bowery. He landed on his fire escape and quickly slid in through the window. His entry disturbed Merry who had been sleeping on the windowsill. The cat hissed at him and then hopped down, probably in search of his brother.

“Sorry,” he whispered to the cat. God, he was so whipped.

“Bubs?” Your tired voice came from somewhere in the direction of the kitchen. Jason closed and locked the window and headed towards you. All the lights in the apartment were off except for the small, single bulb that hung over the kitchen. It bathed you in a warm light, highlighting the tired circles under your eyes.

A lukewarm mug of tea and a thousand piece puzzle was scattered on the table before you, your usual routine when you couldn’t sleep and decided to stay up and wait for him. Jason stripped off his gloves, weapons, and jacket and dumped them on the floor and then he tugged off his helmet.

You loved seeing him right after patrol. Not only were you able to reassure yourself that he was safe, but you also got to see him when he was in his element. Sweat strands of hair curled across his forehead and beads of moisture trailed down his neck before seeping into the collar of his undershirt. His powerful thighs were bracketed by his tactical pants and thigh holsters and you sighed at the mere sight of his legs.

“Eyes up here, sweetheart,” Jason teased. His voice was warm, but it lacked the confidence he normally possessed. You curled your hand around the bottom hem of his shirt and tugged him closer, your lips meeting his in a delicate kiss. His hand came up to cup your jaw and he deepened the kiss.

“I want a baby.” The words spilled out of you faster than you could rein in the thought. Jason’s eyes widened and you cursed under your breath.

“You want…a baby,” he repeated.

“With you. I want a baby with you. Not right now. Not even this year. But, I want a kid someday with you. When I saw that negative, I was relieved and then I was-”

He cut you off. “Disappointed. You were disappointed because for a moment, you thought about it and realized that you actually wanted this. Just not right now.”

You nodded and pushed his curly, sweat-drenched hair back from his face. “A little boy with your eyes and smile.”

“Or a little girl with your hair and attitude.”

“I want that, bubs,” you assured him. “I want it all with you. A kid, a life, a house with a picket fence and two point five kids or whatever the fuck the American Dream is supposed to be.”

His tongue darted out to wet his lips before he replied in a choked voice. “I’m not a good man, sweetheart.”

Now you stood. You pulled his head down so his forehead pressed against yours and you rested your other hand on his chest, right over his heart.

“Don’t you dare say that to me, Jason Peter Todd,” you said fiercely. “You are the only man I love. The only man I trust. I wouldn’t want to do life with anyone other than you. I want it all, the good and the bad. You do so much for me and for this city.”

Your hand smoothed down the hair on the back of his neck. “Let me take care of you for once. Let me protect you from that mind of yours. I want to have a baby with you, bubs, because I trust you more than anyone that you would love and cherish and protect us with your entire being.”

“I would crawl out of a grave and dip into the Lazarus pit again and again if it meant keeping you safe,” he whispered fiercely.

“I know.” Tears were spilling down your cheeks. “I love you, Jason. So much.”

He clasped his hand over the one that rested on his chest. All of the doubts and insecurities started to ebb away with your gentle touch and soothing words. He burned with the very thought of you filled with a reminder of him. A signal that he was somehow lucky enough, good enough, blessed to be able to worship you the way you deserved.

Jason slid one of his hands under your ass and hauled you up so your legs wrapped around his waist. He scooted past the now cuddling cats and headed towards the bathroom as you laughed and wrapped your arms around his neck.

“What are you doing?” you exclaimed as he sat you down on the sink counter. Jason reached for the back of his shirt and shot you an incredulous look.

“What does it look like I’m doing? Strip, we need to practice.”

The sun emerged from the darkness finally and bathed Gotham in a rare cloudless sky, but it went unnoticed to the two of you. You were, well, busy.

Tag List: @khaetiin​ @mcrmarvelloki​ @gone-batty-fics​ @someoneimsure​ @perpetual-fangirl900​ @visagebrise​ @cursedandromedablack​ @alexxavicry​ @havingarebelliousstage​ @the-wayward-daughter​ @raging-trash-of-mind​ @kat-nee​ @khaylin27​

[bcyhoods]

LOVEFOOL 💌 ─── send in a character and a prompt from these lists for a blurb

peter parker + ❛ is that blood? is it yours? ❜

she’s been collecting dust because i’m insecure, but she will stay hidden no longer!! | 1.4k

warnings: blood, injury, r patching up his wounds, medically inaccurate information (we’re going to pretend it works for my sanity’s sake)

Peter doesn’t really know why he stumbles into the bodega. It’s closed, and it’s empty, safe for where you’re mopping the floors.

You move between the aisles, mouthing the lyrics to whatever song is flowing through your earbuds. He watches your silhouette through the windows, entranced as you make the most mundane chore somehow look so inviting. He knows the moment you see his face that you’d drop everything and throw your arms around him like you hadn’t seen him in weeks.

He supposes that’s why.

That, and the searing pain that shoots through his left leg is making his brain foggy.

Gripping onto his wounded thigh, he musters up the remainder of his strength to pull open the door and stagger inside. He grimaces at the shrill chime of the overhead bell. Even more so when it disrupts your bubble of peace.

“Sorry, we’re…” The rest of the monotonous statement gets caught in your throat. You stare back in his direction with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. The mop slips from your grip and bangs onto the floor.

Peter, clueless and delirious, is convinced it’s because he’s starting to stain the freshly clean linoleum. You’d just mopped and now he’s making a mess. He’s oddly expecting you to scold him before coddling him. Maybe you’ll even give him a kiss. His shoulders momentarily sag in relief.

“Spiderman?”

Shit. He’s still wearing the suit. He forgot.

“Yeah, hey,” he sings nervously, “Nice to meet you. Great establishment you’ve got here, you should be very proud.” He gestures toward the apple display before giving you a puny thumbs up.

You’re stunned, frozen in place. You don’t really notice the way his arm falls limp or the way he uses the nearby shelves as a crutch. You can’t even see the blood dripping down his leg from where you’re standing. Your mind is racing and jumbled because The Spiderman is in your store on a random Tuesday night.

Peter is never going to believe you when you tell him.

You’re abruptly ripped from your daze when he knocks over a can of tomato sauce, cursing under his breath. “Yeah…you’re here. Why are you here? And I don’t mean to kick you out, y’know, protector of the city and all—”

He laughs quietly at the wonder in your voice. He tries to take in your amazement, making note of the raised brows and the shy smile on your face, but he really can’t. His head feels heavy on his shoulders and the overhead lights are killer, even with the mask on. All he wants is for you to hold him, but he’s not Peter right now. And somehow that makes his leg sting even more.

He’s so out of it, he hasn’t even registered that you’d moved closer to him until he hears you gasp. Your expression is different now. You look mortified.

“Oh my god, is that blood?” When he jumps, you continue quieter, “Is it yours?”

“Huh? No, no, it’s not, it’s just uh…”

He utilizes the shelf to limp closer to you, but one uncoordinated shift of the hand makes his knees buckle and it sends him to the floor with a groan. A yelp involuntarily escapes as you rush to his side.

“It might be a little, yeah,” he admits defeatedly through clenched teeth.

“Here, let me help.”

He tries to protest, but ultimately surrenders to your fleeting touch as you push at his shoulders to lean up against the wall of freezers. You kneel in between his legs, ignoring the way heat rushes to your ears when he gently holds onto your forearm. It was so instinctive, so tender, like he’d done it a million times before.

Your fingers hover over the tear in his suit before you’re asking, “May I…?”

He nods. Careful of the wound, you pull and rip at the material to expose the severity of it. He makes a sound of ease, one that you’ve mistaken for worry and it shoots right to your chest.

Peter concludes it looks worse than it actually is. It’s definitely not deep enough to require stitches, but the cut crosses the expanse of his thigh. He’s fixed up worse in his dingy apartment bathroom. It’s not entirely unfamiliar, but he’s lost a lot of blood on the way here.

“Just a paper cut,” he adds cheekily to make you feel better. It doesn’t, really. When he notices the way you stare at the wound and how your hands shake with worry, he reaches to hold them. “Hey, I’m okay. Happens all the time,” he assures softly.

The frown you wear looks entirely foreign. It makes his insides burn and all he wants to do is kiss it away. To make you smile at him again like you’d done so earlier.

“A lot of people don’t really like me that much,” he says. He’s barely coherent, the words are slurred together at this point. But he doesn’t really care when he hears you scoff. It’s good enough, he decides.

“Okay. Just…just wait here.” You’re gone before Peter can grumble some smart remark about how he couldn’t go anywhere even if he wanted to.

When you reappear, your arms are full with soaking wet wash rags, a box of wound cushions, and a cheap spool of gauze. His arm is lazily thrown over his head to provide some sort of shelter from the bright lights. The bleeding has slowed down just the slightest, but it doesn’t instill much confidence.

A timid exhale is pushed from your lungs and you warn, “I don’t really know what I’m doing. It might hurt.”

“Nothing I can’t hand—oh, mmm!”

You’re immediately pulling away, the rag in your hand tinged with crimson.

“It’s okay,” he’s quick to reassure you before you can even apologize. It comes out strangled. He’s sitting up straighter, his muscles are tense, his fists are clenched beside him, but he keeps whispering it like a mantra. You’re not sure if he’s saying it for you or for himself. Maybe both.

“It’s okay,” you repeat softly. He hums.

The mumbled phrase spills over your lips every time he flinches away from your touch. It spills over his lips whenever your brows pinch in response. It echoes through the store until the beige cloth becomes red and you’re wrapping the gauze around his thigh.

He selfishly wishes you knew his secret just so you could patch him up from now on. You’re so gentle, you’re doing a much better job than he usually does. It helps that even the thought of having you around makes every worry melt away.

You’re tying off the wound and smiling to yourself with a sense of accomplishment. It’s infectious, it has Peter smiling under his mask. “Done!” Clearing your throat, you stand up and reach your arms down in an offer to pull him up with you. “You need to learn to stop getting on people’s bad side, Spiderman,” you jest.

He chuckles and shakes his head. Taking your hands, he’s staggering up and once he’s settled, puts his hands on his hips. “I think some people are just too sensitive,” he argues.

He feels miles better now, but you’re beaming at him and it makes his brain feel all fuzzy all over again. You bend down to grab the leftover materials and stick them out towards him. “For your leg. On the house.”

“Thank you,” he replies simply. He takes them from your hands, with a smirk hidden away from you. It’s such a measly offering. The box of dressings is practically empty, the gauze is tiny and already unraveling in his hands. But he’s feeling an electric current rush through his limbs and spark a fire in his chest all the same.

“Yeah…” As if a lightbulb ticks on over your head, your eyes brighten and your smile is wider, if that was even possible. “While you’re here,” you start, turning away from him and towards the counter to retrieve your phone. “My friend Peter, he um…he’s never gonna believe me, but I wanted to know if—”

The sound of the overhead bell makes you whip your head back around to see the bodega is completely empty. No evidence of any wounded superhero barging in after hours besides the bloodied floor. Before you can feel dejected, the reality settles in once more.

You just saved The Spiderman from bleeding out in your store on a random Tuesday night.

Peter is never going to believe you when you tell him.