#spider-man x silk

[cadhla182]

Patreon pieces for the month of June! NSFW alts up for Patrons: https://www.patreon.com/Cadhla182

[the-kr8tor]

Silk & Cologne

Hobie Brown x Silk!Reader Relationship Headcanons.

Pairing: Hobie Brown x Silk! gn Reader/ Spider-Punk x Silk! gn Reader

Word count: 3.8k

Tags: No use of Y/N, No specific physical description of the reader, TW blood, TW needles, TW injuries, canon typical violence, fluff, hurt/comfort, Kinda soulmate AU.

*I don't consent to having my work translated/ published on other platforms*

You meet Hobie while you're running away from his team of spider-people.

You are an anomaly who accidentally entered a different dimension from yours, but you didn't know that at the moment. Your biggest worry right now are the various spider-people going after you for some reason. 

Running and swinging from unfamiliar rooftops, you feel an invisible rope tug at you, this is probably your silk sense telling you where to go, you thought, so you follow it on instinct.

Unbeknownst to you, Hobie Brown aka Spider-Punk feels the exact same invisible rope pull him towards somewhere. He just got out of the inter-dimensional portal when he felt an unfamiliar feeling.

Also thinking it's his spidey senses keeping him on his toes, he follows it. He ignores all the calls from his comms to follow his instincts. 

You both swing towards the mysterious pull, until you both almost collide in the air with each other. 

You and Hobie both lean away last minute from each other to prevent the collision.

Your eyes lock with his for the first time.

You both feel the invisible rope stop pulling, it's replaced by longing and an unidentified urge.

As you both swing in the air you get a good look at each other. Time seems to be in slow motion as you both swing in a circle just watching each other. 

The others catch up to the both of you, stopping at a nearby rooftop, watching you both curiously. 

"What the hell am I watching?" Gwen Stacy asks as she watches you circle each other. 

"Looks like some sort of mating dance" Peter B. Scratches his neck. 

"Oh God, they're a silk variant, Lyla, Get Miguel and tell him to bring the silk blockers, this could get ugly" Jess says in her comms.

"Ohh, Dramaa. Miguel's on his way" Lyla reports.

It seemed to be hours just circling each other, waiting for either one of you to make a move. 

Suddenly you both get tackled at the same time, landing on a dirty rooftop, you bite and scratch at the assailant. 

You see from your peripheral that he's getting manhandled by someone in a blue suit, you watch as he quickly injects something in him, that makes your stranger go limp. The same invisible pull you felt dulls a little bit. 

You turn back to the woman holding you down, your eyes widen before she plunges the needle with the same color in your neck.

Darkness wraps you immediately. The last thing you see is the sunlight bouncing off the metal on his suit.

You wake up from the noise of different voices arguing. 

You're in a futuristic prison of some sort, you listen to the conversation for some answers, the magnetic pull seems to get stronger every second.

"Hobie you didn't see how they reacted, they're like feral or something!" Gwen pleads.

"Yeah, because you bloody tackled them!" Hobie uncharacteristically screams at Gwen.

"Let them go now" He demands Miguel.

"Don't you see Hobie, you're already captivated, it's because you were both bitten by the same radioactive spider, it created an irresistible attraction between you two, it will overwhelm you once the blockers I injected in both of you wears off" Miguel pinches the bridge of his nose "You two are linked together. You need to take this pheromone blocker to see reason" 

You see him hold a blue pill. 

"Take it before you become a danger to yourself and them" Miguel points at you. 

They all look towards you, now awake, your pupils blown up like a balloon, with all the eyes on you, your only attention is on the leather clad form. 

Hobie looks at you then to the pill, every second he wastes not taking the medication, he feels the pull towards you get stronger, it's almost painful. 

Listening to Gwen, he grabs the pill quickly downing it. 

He sighs as the pressure subsides.

Hobie feels like himself again.

You sigh as you feel it too, the pain without him next to you dulls. It's like an itch you can't scratch. 

Hobie crouches next to you. 

You lock eyes, the attraction still there, but you both don't have the animalistic need to be with each other.

"They need to take it too, so the medicine can take full effect" Miguel gives Hobie an identical pill. 

"Where am I? Who are you?" You meekly speak for the first time. 

"My name's Hobie Brown, apparently we were bitten by the same spider, we're linked with each other," Hobie looks towards Miguel "open it, they won't do anything" 

"How'd you know?" Miguel raises his brow.

"I just know" 

Miguel deactivates the orange glow around you.

You stand up to your full height, Hobie mirrors your movement. He hands you the pill, your hands brush against each other, electricity cackles around Hobie's hand. 

You swallow it down dryly. Feeling the pressure completely alleviate, you finally feel normal. 

Hobie feels the same, he still feels connected to you, somewhat. Like a lingering aftertaste. But there's no feeling of suddenly jumping your bones in front of everyone.

"Okay, now where the hell am I?" You push past Hobie, he gets surprised with your sudden change of tone.

Miguel gives you the spidey orientation added with some context on silk variants. 

Learning that you were bitten by the same spider feels kinda weird. Like how Lyla put it simply "it's like your soul mates, kindred spirits" then she sighs while holographic hearts float above her head.

Then finding out what you both felt hours ago, was actually an animalistic urge to mate? That is the weirdest thing ever.

After hearing the word mate leave Miguel's mouth, you take a step further away from Hobie, you just met the man and you were ready to rip off each other's clothes the second you saw each other? 

Miguel, the boss of the entire spider society, you just learned, offered you a place in their elite group. As long as you and Hobie keep taking the medication of course.

You accept the offer. A few hours ago, you thought you were the only person with spider powers, being locked in a bunker alone for almost ten years makes you lonely. Now that there's an entire team who understands you and a man who's basically your soulmate you cannot say no. 

You don't want to be lonely ever again.

You've been part of the spider society for a few weeks now, becoming friends with the other spider people. 

You were afraid of coming out of your assigned room for the first few days just in case there's another spider-person out there who was bitten by the same radioactive spider. You definitely don't want to ever feel that way again. 

Miguel tasked you to train so you could hone your skills. 

In your surprise you see Hobie in the training room, honestly you were avoiding him, with how weird you two first met, who wouldn't?

"O'hara, really?" You glare at Miguel. 

Weirdly enough, you and Miguel have become fast friends, probably because he keeps you closely monitored in case your 'charms' go haywire again. 

You call it your 'charms' since you didn't like that everyone called it pheromones, it gave you the ick.

"Being in close proximity to each other helps in training you in keeping your urges in check" Miguel informed you both, "you've taken both your meds, right?"

"Yes bossman, otherwise I would be all over them right now" Hobie teases you both. 

You almost broke your own neck with how fast you turned to look at Hobie.

Miguel sighs "Whatever just keep it PG" He leaves, the doors hiss closed once he stepped outside. 

"I like your suit" Hobie breaks the ice as he roams his eyes over your form. 

"Thanks, I made it from my own webbing" you lift your arms to show it off.

"That's -"

"Please don't say hot" 

"I was gonna say punk rock, but that works too" 

Ignoring his last comment, you walk towards the console to start up the training simulation.

"You've been avoiding me" he says matter-of-fact. 

"Hmm, I wonder why" you play with the console's settings, continuing in ignoring him.

Suddenly you feel strong arms caging you in, you turn around, and find yourself trapped by Hobie, your back gets blocked by the console so you don't have anywhere else to go. 

Your breath hitches in your throat. You can feel his warmth with how close he is. You look up at him through your eyelashes. 

"It bothers you then? Our connection" Hobie tilts his head in question. 

"No it doesn't, it's just weird and awkward. I've already wasted ten years of my life locked up, I don't want a spider defining the rest of it, do you?" Despite your brain telling you to just swing away, you fight it off and speak your mind. 

Hobie smirks, oh how he likes that fire, he intends to feed it, let it spread, he would let it burn him as long as he gets to see the real you without the pheromone fog clouding his thoughts. 

"No I don't, but we've both been away from each other for a while, and yet you still feel it don't you? The want to be near each other, the need to protect each other" Hobie rambles on, "I think it's our shared spider senses telling us something, it would be a shame to not explore it" 

"What a shame, then" taunting him, you lean up closer, your breaths mixing with each other. 

Suddenly Miguel's booming voice surrounds the large training grounds "LEAVE ROOM FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT!" 

You both pull away snickering at Miguel's comment. 

No matter how hard you try to ignore what Hobie said you can't, because he's right, even though you take the medication, you still feel him. Every time he goes back to Nueva York, for some reason you feel his presence even though you didn't see him around the building; same goes for when he leaves, you feel some sort of emptiness inside you. 

You ask Miguel whether his medication isn't completely working. 

"It's not the medication's fault, there'll always be that lingering feeling. You're connected to each other, whether you like it or not" Miguel has his back turned to you, "best to just ignore it" 

You huff at his comment, dissatisfied with his answer.

You try to ignore him, you do but it's basically impossible since you're friends with his friends and you both work at the same place. You keep seeing him EVERYWHERE.

Hobie does it on purpose though, whenever another spidey gets partnered up with you on a mission, he convinces them to swap with him. 

"You, again?!" You scoff. "Lyla said I would be partnered up with Noir this time"

"He had something come up," Hobie shrugs. "Right Lyla?"

Lyla appears suddenly "yep, some goons to punch and what not" 

"Ugh!" You swing away.

Hobie winks at Lyla as she shapes a heart with her hand. 

Whenever you come to the mess hall with a long line of hungry spider-people, Hobie's already sitting down with an extra tray of food next to him. He nonchalantly looks at you with a smug smile on his lips. 

You would ignore his invitation but he's always with backup, he would be with Gwen or Pavitr, whom you have grown fond of over the last few months. So you reluctantly swing towards them.

It also doesn't help that he's your assigned trainer, all the lingering looks and touches when he's correcting your form, wakes up the butterflies in your stomach. 

You spend so much time with him, it's impossible to ignore the feeling.

Hobie loves leaving you cd's of movies and music you missed from the last decade in your dimension. He drops it on your doorstep every chance he's got.

One time you got hurt while on a mission without Hobie, you tried to hide the deep gash on your shoulder from your team, but of course you stubbornly deny it.

Entering the inter-dimensional portal, you feel the stabbing pain on your shoulder. Ignoring the pleas from your team, you give them a pained smile, telling them that your enhanced healing will fix it. 

When you reach the hallway where your room resides, you see Hobie leaning on your door, you feel the magnetic pull towards him. With no choice but to confront him, despite the pain, you saunter towards your door with your head held up high. 

"I don't remember ordering a doormat" You tease him, You felt a chill run through your body from the pain and blood loss. 

"I felt that y'know, the cold" He stares at you seriously. "I felt the exact moment you got injured, I never want to feel that ever again" he straightens up, anticipating what comes next.

"Hobie I'm - " You feel nauseous, you fall towards him, he catches you in one swift motion. 

"Stop being so bloody stubborn. Let me help you please" He softly says right next to your head.

You shift your head to look at him directly, memorizing every detail of his face, counting every single one of his piercings. 

He shakes you out of your stupor, "Oi, stay awake for me, yeah?" 

You swallow down the pain, "Okay, Hobie, you can help me" 

Without missing a beat he carries you towards the med bay, expertly weaving through spider-people. 

The entire time you were in the med bay, he was there with you, with every stitch to close your wound, he was there. You instinctively reached for his hand to hold on to. 

When you finally woke up, he was sitting on a chair next to your bed, asleep. You take note of his hand still holding yours. You watch him, his chest moving up and down, taking note of every single detail of his suit, every crease of his boots; the different pins he has on his vest. You count every callus he has on his fingers.

 Oh

When Miguel finally approves your proposal to finally go back to your own dimension. Now that you're both stable enough to be around each other; your stomach flips when you remember it's also Hobie's dimension. 

With your reintegration back to society, you ask Jess, (the only adult you trust) to help you in finding a place to live in. And possibly a Job, to feel like a normal human again.

Thanks to Jess your transition back to your own dimension was pretty smooth. You still feel the pull here and there, but now you've gotten used to it. So used to the feeling and his presence, you didn't notice him perched on your windowsill. 

"Nice place you got here" Hobie whistles.

"Christ!" 

"Just me, lovey" he takes off his mask and enters your abode. "D'you need a doormat?" Hobie holds a brown rectangle in his hand. 

"What?" You take it from hobie with a raised brow, "Come back with a warrant" laughing once you read it out loud. 

"Glad you liked it, nicked it from another flat" Hobie smiles hearing your laugh, he goes towards your fridge to rummage through it.

"Wait, what! Please don't tell me it's from a neighbor" You follow him, opening the freezer, showing him different kinds of soda he can choose from. 

" 'Course not, got it from another building in a nicer neighborhood" he opens a can of orange soda. 

"So you basically swung around the city, holding this" you hold up the doormat. You must like me a lot. You wanted to add but you bite your tongue.

"Yeah, what of it?" He rummages through your cupboards. "You got any food in this dump?" 

You roll your eyes, knowing his schedule you hand him a packet of biscuits for his patrol. You wish he could stay though.

Whenever you're both free from your responsibilities and obligations, Hobie mysteriously appears in your flat, holding a dvd of another movie you missed and a large bag of popcorn, three feet tall, how and where in the world did he even get that? 

Sometimes though you're the instigator, instead of movies and a comically large popcorn, you bring him to different places around the city. Museums, a walk in the park, cafés, and concerts of bands that Hobie likes (that you like too but you don't specifically tell Hobie that)

When you're swinging together on patrol, you point at places that have changed since you were in your bunker. Telling him stories about your experiences in some places. 

Whenever you feel hungry, sad or in pain, Hobie feels it too. He's there waiting for you and you do the same thing for him. You take care of each other.

Once you two got bored in your flat and decided to make a conspiracy/theory board on how and when you two got bit by the same spider. Both of you were so invested in it, you didn't sleep till five am. 

You woke up from the soft snores and the strong arms around you. You force one eye open, the first thing you saw was the large board you two made, riddled with pins, and pictures of places you've both been to all connected with red strings tied around the pins. 

You hear him snort in his sleep, you smile softly. Cuddling further onto his chest. He hugs you tighter, half lidded eyes looking down on you.

"First I was a doormat, now a pillow" He says in his gravelly voice from just waking up. 

"Go back to sleep or you'll be a punching bag next" 

You were in Nueva York, just hanging around with Gwen, when suddenly you felt a painful pang in your chest. You hold on to a nearby wall to steady yourself.

"You okay?" Gwen asks.

"I think -" another stabbing pain but in your skull this time. Your eyes widen in realization. 

You look up at Gwen "Hobie" you gasp, swinging towards Miguel's command center. Gwen following your move.

You didn't waste a second once you landed in his area. "Where's Hobie?!" You scream in your urgency for him to answer you quickly. Miguel's up on his platform, his back turned.

"They didn't ask for backup, stand down, Silk" he watches his numerous monitors.

"I don't give a shit, O'hara! Tell me which dimension!" You demand. 

Miguel finally turns to you, he looks down on you menacingly "I said stand down" 

You feel the pull again, a lot stronger this time, it's a primal need to protect him. 

Gwen, noticing the tension in the air, decides to simmer it down. "It's okay Miguel, we uh, understand we'll wait for them to call for backup" she stares at you to wordlessly say: play along.

"Fine" you say, faking a smile. 

Miguel grunts and finally turns around back to his monitors.

Gwen subtly knocks your shoulder with hers.

Lyla appears on a nearby table, hiding behind a console, she beckons you over. 

You crouch in front of her, she puts her index finger on her lips, she summons a board out of thin air, written on it is the dimension where Hobie is. 

You mouth a thank you to Lyla. She makes a heart with her hands. 

Wasting no time, you run away from Miguel, finding a spot to open a portal, Gwen and you swing towards it quickly. 

Once transported, smoke and chaos greet you. Your eyes roam around the area where various spider people swing around the giant mech of an octopus, clambering up the buildings. 

You panic, not seeing the familiar glint of his spikes. 

"Gwen go help the others, be careful" you instruct her.

"Go find him" She nods.

Without being able to see him, you panic, so you use the invisible web that ties you both together. Closing your eyes, you concentrate on finding the other end of the web. You try to remember his smell to help you in locating him. 

Reaching the end of the rope you finally feel him, you can hear him breathing out slow breaths, you feel every cut and bruise on his body. A tear slides down your cheeks, but you don't have time, so you swing towards him.

Dodging mechanical octopus arms, you ignore Miguel's orders ringing from your armband. 

You finally reach him inside an abandoned restaurant. He's sitting down on the floor, back against the cashier counter, his head down low, chin on his chest.

He looks up at you the moment he feels your presence. 

"You come 'ere often?" He jokes despite the pain. 

"Hobie Brown, you're an idiot" you walk towards him. 

"Yeah, but you're the one who came here, so who's the bigger idiot?" He coughs out the last part of his sentence. 

You carefully grab his chin to assess the damage. His mask torn from the side, his brilliant brown eyes now dull, you get a glimpse of a dark red gash on his chest. 

"Let's get you out of here, okay?" You hold his face, keeping him awake with your touch. 

"Have I ever told you that You're the most gorgeous person I've ever seen?" He managed to get out. 

"No, but you show it often," you smile. "Will you let me help you?" 

He gives you a blood soaked smile, "Yeah, you can help me, love" 

You both feel the tug and pull of the web, straining against itself, now taut, it finally breaks. 

You kiss him on his bloodstained lips, ignoring the taste of iron. He kisses you most fervently. 

You feel like a dam just broke in you, overflowing your senses with just Hobie flooding every fiber of your being. 

Hobie feels rejuvenated, like he can get back out again and fight the giant octopus by himself. 

You both pull away for air. Gasping and staring in each other's blown out eyes. Hobie leans forward and kisses you again, as if he hadn't seen you in years.

"We need to take out doc oc" Hobie whispers against your lips. 

As if on cue, the octopus mech falls down on the ground with a loud crash, followed by the cheers of the spider-people. 

"Guess they didn't need us" you chuckle. 

You hold him up by his arms, slinging one on your shoulder, you help him up. 

The sunlight greets you both as you step out of the building. 

You hear Gwen yell out your names. She drops down gracefully. 

"You're both Okay!" She bounces on her feet in happinesses.

"It takes more than that to kill me, Gweny" Hobie holds on to you tighter. 

Gwen opens a portal back to Nueva York. You all step in. 

You sigh in relief when the three of you finally reach the med bay. You get Hobie admitted, you hold his hand the entire time he gets treated. Thank goodness for 2099 medicine. 

He finally falls asleep, still holding your hand. Miguel enters the room, one angry look from you, he grunts as if to say 'another time then' before leaving you both. 

When he woke up you made sure that the first thing he sees is your face. 

"Hey, trouble" his gravelly voice making you smile in relief.

"You're okay?" Tears threaten to spill over your eyes. 

"Come 'ere," Hobie brings out his arm so you don't crush it as you lay down next to him. He moves his head towards you for a kiss, you close your eyes, anticipation flooding your senses.

His kiss reminds you that you'll never be truly alone in this world.

A/n: that awkward moment when you realise that you almost accidentally wrote an a/b/o fic lmao I had so much fun writing this! Couldn't even sleep without finishing it up. Is this still technically a headcanon when it's this long lol. Hope you liked it! As always comments, likes, and reblogs are appreciated ❤️

*image above is from pinterest*

[spyderschaos]

Wish lesbians were real

[tikiki05]

Rating the ATSV adults based on how I think they’d be at a drag show (heavily based on one of my fanfics)

Rio: 300/10- Super enthusiastic, tips a lot, all the queens love her

Jeff: 6/10- A little uncomfortable, not really his scene, but having a good time with Rio

Aaron: 10/10- Fantastic ally, tips, this is so canon to me you guys you don’t get it-

Miguel:  8/10- Also a little uncomfortable, definitely not his scene; gets flirted with and teased a lot by the queens but he laughs and takes it gracefully

Peter B: 7/10- Supporting by getting food and drinks from the bar, a lot of the jokes go over his head but he still laughs, maybe just a *tiny* bit trying too hard as an ally, just an itty bitty bit though

Hobie: 12/10- Gets dressed in drag too, sings along to the songs and cheers loudly, brings great vibes

Jessica: 9/10- Sings along also, having a good time with Rio and Jeff (yk ignoring how she helped hunt down their son hhhh-)

Ben: 9/10- Probably gets drunk but has a great time and doesn’t cause trouble; also gets flirted and teased a lot by the queens and relishes in it

said fanfic✨✨- Prowls for Silk

[maddieautobot273]

Silk & Cologne (54)

A Miguel O'Hara X OC Fanfic - link to AO3 (X)

Chapter 54: Dawn - previous chapter (X)

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x Female! Spidersona OC

Words: 5.8K words

Warnings: PG for injury and implied weapon of mass destruction

Summary: Lisa and her friends shut down the poral threatening to collapse Earth-1218.

//////

We all stared up at the portal in the sky, watching as it slowly sparked and crackled. It was becoming unstable. If it collapsed, would it simply be over and done with? It would go out in style and take my universe with it?

“What do we do now?” Noir asked, raising his voice as a large and loud gust of wind rush passed us. 

“We need to figure out a way to contain it!” Miguel yelled back, using his body to brace and shield mine from the wind, or try to at least. 

Panic rattled in my mind about the multitude of things that could go wrong. Even if we do contain it, what about the authorities? People would talk, ask questions. What about the national guard? The military? 

Come to think of it, where are they? 

A wave of guilt washed over me, “I probably shouldn’t have been too quick to kick Chameleon to the curb.”

“If you hadn’t, he would have taken me to God knows where,” Kasey shook her head as she glanced my way, her arms raised to shield her face from the wind. “You saved me, Lisa.”

“Don’t ever apologize for something like that,” Miguel reassured me. “In fact, I may have an idea on how to stop this. Well, two actually!”

“Let's hear it then before we’re blown away like leaves!” Gwen screamed, trying to keep herself and Touga from falling over. 

“Lyla,” Miguel brought his gizmo up to his face, trying to scroll through the touch screen. “Remember Project: Reset? Back in the old Alchemax days?”

“Oh, do I!” Lyla grins as her holoform appears, rubbing her hands together like an eager grasshopper before cycling through the database on her personal screen. 

“What’s Project: Reset?” I asked him.

I watched as a small portal opened beside Miguel and he reached inside it. He pulled his hand out, holding a strange looking sleek white baton. “Back during my early days in Alchemax when I first started, my old boss would have me occasionally work with the company’s R&D department. They were experimenting with a weapon that– with enough charge– could wipe and realtor people’s memory on a massive scale.”

“Sounds like a weapon of mass destruction to me!” Toya commented. 

“It was, which was why I convinced my then boss at the time to shut it down before more could be made,” Miguel responded. 

“Okaaay, but how does that help us with that?” I asked again, pointing at the portal as the integrity seemed to be getting worse. 

“With the portal? Nothing.” Miguel yelled over the wind as he began to tweak and make altercations with the device. “Lyla, Margo, and Gabriel can work their magic from HQ and contain the blast, sending it directly back to Harry’s dimension and doing a number on his lab. At the same time, I can trigger this device to alter the town’s people’s memories so they won’t remember anything from the invasion.”

“That’s brilliant!” Hannah beamed, gripping onto Touga to keep still. “A little terrifying, but brilliant!”

“But what about everyone else all over the world that was watching the festival online or on TV?” Kasey asked. “They’ll know something is off if the people of New York suddenly act like this all never happened.”

“Remember the part I mentioned about charging the device?” Miguel recalled. His eyes scanned the area, looking up to the top of the Statue of Liberty, specifically the tip of the flame torch in Lady Liberty’s hand. “If I can get high enough, I can pick up the broadcast signal and transmit the wipe to everyone that was watching the show!”

“Perfect, let’s do that!” I exclaimed, eyes widening in relief. 

“But there’s a catch,” Miguel quickly added, hooking his arm around my shoulders to stop me from blowing away. “I need to replace the memory of the invasion with something else-!”

“Like a fake memory or an actual event?” Noir asked. 

“Definitely the ladder!” Miguel answered back in earnest. 

“Like. . . like a canon event?” My mind was racing as I tried to figure out what new memory we could create to replace the one of the invasion. 

I could sense the gears in his head turning as Miguel looked over at me. “Kind of, yeah!”

“We’re always saving the canon from breaking, so this will be a wonderful change of pace!” Gwen grimaced and pushed against the wind. 

“So what kind of canon event?” Toya asked, his voice yelling over the wind. “It has to be something big right?”

Think, Lisa, think! 

All of those people, in the audience and watching on TV, their phones, laptops, why were they all tuning in in the first place?

Then it hits me. How could I have been so blind?

“What about our show?” I suggested, looking out towards the team. 

“The show?” Kasey repeated with more emphasis. 

“Yes, the show. Our dance, you guys!” I exclaimed, my gaze washing over Kasey, Hannah, Toya, and Touga specifically. 

My Webslingers. 

“Everyone came to see our show, so let’s give them a show!” I fought against the wind with an encouraging smile as I took my mask off so they could see my face. 

My friends looked at each other, silently debating what to do. 

“But wait, you said it alters people’s memories,” Kasey spoke up, a look of worry on her face. “Does that mean our memories will be changed too?”

Miguel hesitated briefly as the eyelets of his mask drooped to a sad expression, his voice laced with apology. “The device has been altered to protect only those wearing a gizmo. So, yes. . . your memories will be altered.”

“Then. . . that means you guys won’t remember everything that’s happened. You all finally getting the chance to see the real Miguel. The real me. . .” The realization hit me as I felt my heart drop to my stomach. 

My body suddenly felt heavy and limb. For a second, I thought I wouldn’t have to hide such a big secret from them anymore. I thought I’d be able to finally be my complete self around them.

I felt the grip of Miguel’s arm tighten around my shoulders, his silent apology plucking at my heartstrings.  

“If by the odd chance this does work. . . might as well go out with a bang, right?” Touga shrugged with a contagious smile. 

“What?” My voice was barely a whisper being carried out into the wind as I looked up towards my friends. 

“Considering all of the crazy stuff that we’ve seen in the last hour?” Hannah gawked at her friend before sharing a glance with me and the rest of the group. “I’m in! I think this can work!”

“If Hannah’s in, I’m in!” Toya grinned, grabbing her hand before looking over at Kasey. “What about you, K?”

Kasey glanced between everyone else before her gaze fell upon me. My eyes poured into hers, pleading for her to trust me. She suddenly laughed, hysterical even, before waving her hands in the air. “You’re our friend, Lisa. Super hero or not. What the hell! This day can’t keep getting any weirder, right?”

I grinned in relief before looking over to Miguel, nodding my head. “Let’s go with your plan.”

“Alright, team, repair the stage as best as you can and get a camera set up. I’ll contact HQ and establish the signal at the top of the statue,” Miguel relayed his orders like the organized leader I knew him to be, watching as the Spiders set off to do their task. His gaze fell upon me and my friends. “Webslingers, do what you do best.”

I looked out to my friends, smiling confidently as I used my powers to leap for them, gathering them in my arms before web-slinging us closer to the stage. 

“Gabriel, are you there? Did Lyla fill you in?” Miguel spoke in the background as he began running for the statue. 

“Yeah, she did, but still struggling to believe it,” his little brother’s voice spoke through the com-link. “Project: Reset? Are you serious? You must be really desperate to whip that out all of a sudden.”

“Don’t start with me,” Miguel grumbled, muttering something else in Spanish that I couldn’t decipher, although I couldn’t help the faint smirk that formed on my lips when my friends and I arrived on the stage. 

We quickly helped the others clean up the stage while they patched up broken and loose panels with their webbing. There was a lightning crackle like noise as I whipped my head up to the statue of liberty to see another portal open up just feet away from Harry’s portal. It was a portal from Spider Society HQ. 

“Our portal is stabilized, Miguel,” Margo’s voice spoke up through the com-link. “Ready to go on your mark.”

“We’re just missing one more piece to this puzzle,” Miguel uttered softly in the com-link before raising his voice. “METRO! Are you still around?”

“Right here, boss man!” A new voice fluttered through the com-link as a white and black dressed spider swinged up onto the stage. 

METRO’s spider suit had a black and white colour scheme that almost reminded me of the anti-venom spider-suit, but this one felt more personalized with a white spider necklace hanging low on his chest and a black with white spider webbing bandana wrapped around his forehead. The top part of his head was uncovered, giving way to his immaculately tailored dreadlocks of black and light aubrey brown coloured hair. 

Wait a minute, METRO BOOMIN?!

“Wait, he’s a Spider-Man too?!” I gasped, eyes wide as I looked between him and the small speck of Miguel’s body clinging onto Lady Liberty’s torch. “But you said originally no spider-person could actually exist in my dimension!”

“That’s right.” Miguel responded quickly. “He’s not from your dimension.”

“Huh?” I gawked, my head trying to wrap around the concept as METRO quickly fixed and set up his DJ player and sound mixer. 

“It’s true, Muse! I’d do the whole ‘Okay let’s do this one last time’ speech, but clearly we don’t got time for that,” METRO chuckled anxiously as he finished setting up. “I’m from Earth-101, I developed a psychic connection to my other dimensions personas. It’s how I’m here. Call me Metro-Spider.”

“O-Okay?” I wasn’t sure exactly how to respond to that, but I at least offered him a reassuring thumbs up. 

“Okay, we’re ready!” Hannah exclaimed as she and the others joined me on stage.

Leave it to Hannah to accidentally leave her bag backstage with backup costumes for all of us in the event something horribly went wrong. Loose stitching? Fabric got ripped? Trying escaping an enemy anomaly invasion and potential dimensional destruction. 

“Okay, Miguel, we’re in position!” I exclaimed through the com-link as I looked around the newly rebuilt stage, held together miraculously by our spider friends webbing and looked over as they each got cameras set up aimed towards us. 

“Cameras are primed and ready to roll!” Gwen chimed in, attaching the reset adaptor to the camera and the little device blinked green, indicating its connection to Miguel’s wand. 

“Here goes nothing!” Miguel took a deep breath. “But if this doesn’t work–”

“It’s going to work, Miguel,” I insisted, my gaze locking on to his body. “Trust me.”

I could feel our gazes locked on to one another, even at such a long distance apart. I felt a long caress down our bond, soothing me, both of us, as I breathed in and out slowly. In that moment my mind flashed back to when we danced together for the first time, he way he held me close, and when he whispered to me those same words I sent out to him through our bond. 

‘Do you trust me, Miguel?’

‘With my life, Lisa.’ 

“Let’s do it!” I called out as I launched a web to connect with the webbing along the stage, my player syncing with METRO’s sound system. 

“We’re coming to you live!” Noir announced with a signature radio actor voice, signaling us to start. 

I suddenly felt a tap on my wrist. I glanced over to see Kasey had leaned in closer to me, whispering, “If you still want to tell us about the whole super hero spider thing after all this is over, just come talk to us. We’ll think it’s crazy, but I know you’ll convince us otherwise.” 

I smiled softly at her, giving her hand a squeeze. “Thanks Kasey. I’m glad to have you as my friend.”

She smiled back before pulling away. 

Music started to play, the familiar violins and drum beats fluttering our ears as my friends and I started to dance, picking it right up from where we left off before the world seemed to go to shit. 

“I'm still fighting, I don't fear I've lost

Am I dreamin', is there more like us?

Got me feelin', like it's all too much

I feel beaten, but I can't give up!”

I cast a comforting glance to Kasey who was startled at first, expecting us to start from the beginning. After giving her an encouraging nod, motioning for her to follow my lead, she immediately stepped up and danced in sync with us. 

“Here we go!” METRO yelled excitedly. 

“I can't find it in myself to just walk away

I can't find it in myself to lose everything!” 

I closed my eyes, and it was like we were back in our dance studio, learning this dance for the first time. 

We all turned, forming a circle as Touya, Touga, Hannah and I surrounded Kasey. We all reached our arms out towards her as she crossed her arms over her chest, something similar to the Wakanda Forever salute before flexing her arms down to her sides. As she did that, the rest of us dropped to one knee, kneeling as we bowed our heads to her.

Just like before. Just like we practiced. 

“You’re doing great,” I whispered softly to them all. 

“Feel everyone's against me, don't want me to be great

Things might look bad, I'm afraid to look death in the face!”

“One, two, three, LET’S GO-!” Metro-Spider shouted, a fist in the air. 

That’s the signal. 

I could hear the ringing of Miguel activating the reset device and quickly soon after, wave after wave of pulsing blue energy soared across the sky of the entire city, and with any luck, the entire world. 

The beat dropped as Kasey then propelled herself forward, sliding along the floor. Hannah and I steered clear of her entrance. As we faced in her direction, Toya stepped behind Hannah and Touga stepped behind me, the boys hoisting us up to our feet and became our dance partners. The pair of us did a sweet waltz as Kasey was up front performing her own solo.

“I'm good now, who's really bad? 

I choose me now, what's wrong with that?

Wish you could see me

Now, now, mm, who had my back, baby?

Know no love lost, good always will win~”

I looked up into the sky, towards the portal to Harry’s dimension. The waves of energy from Miguel’s reset wand and the counteractive sparks from the conduit portal Lyla, Margo, and Gabriel created fought back against the enemy portal. It started to shrink, contorting violently. 

It’s working!

“Just a little more power and we can shut it down!” Gabriel’s voice rang through the com-link.

‘Finish it strong for me.’ Miguel’s voice purred through the bond. 

He had said the same thing when we were fighting Isabella in Noir’s dimension, and I felt the same surge of confident, motivative energy as I poured my heart out into the last steps of the dance, my voice reaching out. 

“Not done fightin', I don't fear I've lost 

Am I dreamin', is there more like us?

Got me feeling, like it's all too much

I feel beaten, but I can't give up!”

Kasey stepped aside, pulling up to the front of the stage as she and the others danced behind me. I was confused at first, but seeing her encouraging nod gave me the push to keep going. Together, I danced along with my friends as I sang the last set of lyrics to help me focus, my heart pounding in my chest. 

“I'm still fighting, I don't fear I've lost

Am I dreamin', is there more like us?

Got me feelin', like it's all too much

I feel beaten, but I can't give up!”

The enemy portal shrank smaller and smaller until it blipped into a tiny spec. There was a blink of light before the energy dispersed and sparkled in the sky like a giant firework. It gave us the perfect backdrop as we closed out the song. 

“Can't give up

Can't give, can't give up

Can't give, can't give up

Can't give, can't give up

Can't give up!” 

The music faded and the shimmering spectacle of the exploding portal faded into nothingness, giving way to the stars and the beautiful night sky. I took in deep breaths, my chest rising and falling as I lowered my fist from pounding it into the air with my finishing pose before my friend's dog piled me to the floor of the stage, their cheers and exasperated laughter filling the air. At the same time, Noir and Gwen cut the live broadcast feed and turned off the cameras. 

“Holy shit we actually did it!” Kasey laughed with a beaming smile. 

“That was like something out of an anime, oh my god!” Touga chuckled over Toya’s cackling. 

Hannah hugged me tightly, her thin arms wrapping around me. “We did it, we did it! You were amazing!” 

“Yeah. . .” I exchanged bewildered looks with each of them, the moment slowly processing in my mind before I reached my arms out to pull them all into a group hug. “I love you guys!”

I didn’t know why I was suddenly getting so emotional, but when my friends each returned their own embrace, I felt like my beating heart finally got the chance to slow down. Swift movement caught my ear as I looked up to see Miguel land near us on the stage, his mask evaporating from his face to show off his stunning eyes filled with pride. “It worked!”

“It did!” I beamed. 

When I moved to stand up, I suddenly felt a horrible, aching pain in my ankle as I immediately dropped back down to the floor, whining in pain. “OW!”

My friends immediately backed away, startled. But Miguel moved in, kneeling in front of me but was careful to not completely overshadow my form and gave me room to breathe. “What’s wrong?”

“I think– I think I sprained my ankle.” I hissed, my hand brushing down to find the source of the pain before retracting itself quickly. 

Miguel’s eyes looked me over, his eyes pleading silently before speaking, “May I?”

I nodded and watched as Miguel’s fingers gently, carefully skimmed down the calf of my left leg and as soon as his rough fingers brushed over my ankle, I bit my tongue as I held back a pained groan, fighting the urge to recoil from the touch. “That's definitely a sprain. You’d be screaming in pain if it was broken.”

“Obviously,” I couldn’t help but laugh as I shook my head. “Out of all of the things that happened tonight, this is what brings me under?”

“I’m glad it was something like this and not worse.” Miguel stated firmly, but a ghost of a relieved smile formed on his lips. 

He carefully stepped around me before gently scooping me up in his arms, and lifted me up from the floor. He held me close to his chest and I pretended to not see Hannah quietly squealing at the action, hiding behind Touga as my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. 

“Lyla tracked your home addresses through your phones,” Miguel spoke as a portal opened up behind my friends. “You’ll have another minute or so before the memory reset takes effect. I’d like you all to be in the safety of your homes when it happens.”

“Thanks for the free ride, Miguel,” Kasey grinned, offering him a salute. “We’ll see you around?”

Miguel offered Kasey a small smile as he nodded. “I’ll be around.”

“Good. After tonight, I think you owe us all a little group dinner night out,” She grinned, “You should come hang out with us sometime.”

“It could be fun.” I encouraged him softly with a soft brush of my fingers against his jawline. 

Miguel chuckled softly at the action before nodding again. “Fair enough. My treat then, just set a date and time.”

“So. . . I guess we’ll see you later?” Toya offered us a small wave. 

“See you later.” I waved back with my own smile. 

See you after your memories are erased and you won’t remember anything that happened tonight. 

One by one, I watched as my friends jumped through the portal. Kasey was the last to leave, offering me one more friendly farewell before following behind the others. The portal closed quickly after her departure. 

“Lyla, what’s the status of the dimensional integrity?” Miguel asked as Lyla’s holographic form appeared beside him. 

“Earth-1218 is slowly stabilizing, Miguel!” Lyla reported with a salute. “Margo and Gabriel will continue to monitor it for the remainder of the night to make sure there’s no setbacks, but all things considered, Project: Reset appears to have worked flawlessly!”

“So. . . no one in my dimension will remember what happened tonight?” I asked Miguel, staring up at him as the rest of the spiders regrouped at our location. 

“No one, except for you,” Miguel confirmed with a nod before his hold on me tightened ever so slightly. “But that doesn’t diminish what you accomplished tonight.”

“You did good kid,” Noir approached, patting my head gently. “Real good.”

I smirked over at him. “Aren’t I older than you?”

“I’d argue I’m more mature and older in spirit!” Noir jabbed playfully. 

“Okay, wise guy,” Gwen came up to his side, nudging his shoulder. “Do you want me to steal and hide your hat again?”

“The technical term is fedora and no!” Noir clutched his hat close to his head, making me laugh. 

“Alright, alright, settle down,” Miguel coaxed the group to ease up with a cautious stare. “I believe our work here is done. Spiders, let's go back home.”

Miguel swiped his finger along the screen of his gizmo, activating another portal. The familiar orange and yellow swirls and hexagons were a comforting sight as Gwen started running a head. 

“I’ll go a head and let Doc know to get a bed ready!” She chimed in. 

“Thank you, Gwen-!” Miguel could barely finish his thanks before Gwen was already through the portal. 

“Kids these days, they can never stay still,” Noir shook his head before running after her, disappearing into the portal. 

With just the two of us remaining, Miguel looked down at me with a softened expression. “You mind if I bring you back? Just so Doc can take a look at you?”

I nodded softly. “That’s fine. I don’t know how a normal doctor would react if two spider costumed people showed up to an ER in the middle of the night.”

“Wouldn’t that just be a regular Saturday night for them?” He grinned back. 

“Oh, hardy har har,” I mocked, rolling my eyes. 

Miguel started walking towards the portal, his arm that held up my shoulders lifting up to bring me closer to his face. “All that said, I really am proud of you, Lisa. You were spectacular, Spider-Muse.”

I grinned back at Miguel, cupping his cheek. “You weren’t so bad yourself, Spider-Man.”

The look he gave me made my heart flutter as his eyes seemed to sparkle just like the stars above. “Come here,” he whispered, before capturing my lips in a tender kiss as we phased through the portal. 

**********

“Oh I feel so awful for missing it, I just don’t know what happened!” My mother apologized profusely for the umpteenth time as Miguel and I stood with her at the departure gate at JFK international airport. 

It was now the early afternoon the following day since the Marvel Day festival ended, specifically just over 12 hours since myself, my friends and the Spider Society saved my dimension from complete and potential annihilation. 

Miguel’s plan with Project: Reset worked. After Spider-Doc looked me over and gave me some pain meds to sleep it off for a few hours, I woke up to check the news on my phone and for a second I thought I had woken up from a dream. It was like the anomaly invasion never happened, and all the news reported on were highlights of the Marvel Day festivities. 

One of the bigger highlights was The Webslingers performance. 

The firework-like explosion of Harry’s portal was played off as just that. Fireworks and special effects, which was why due to safety reasons, we didn’t have an audience physically with us. Nobody was expecting such a grand display, and as it turned out the animators and special effects crew working behind the scenes were so burnt out from the work that they “didn’t remember doing all of this but must have done it in their sleep”, and since then there’s been a call online to give their industry better pay. 

Honestly, good for them. 

When it came to my friends, when I first woke up this morning, the group chat was lively with reactions to our performance and watching the live playback. According to them, we had celebrated together briefly before we quickly realized I had done something to my ankle. They said they had seen Miguel take me to a nearby hospital and kept them all updated as they had their own little party back at the twin’s penthouse before returning home in the wee hours of the night. 

It was only then did the memory reset really sunk in for me. They really don’t remember anything that actually happened last night. The invasion, Kasey’s kidnapping and rescue, fighting Oscorp with Miguel and the others, seeing my powers in action. . . 

Perhaps it was for the best. 

As for my mom on the other hand, when Miguel and I arrived at her hotel room to check on her, the poor woman was so frazzled. Miguel’s reasoning behind her fainting was due to a sudden episode, or at least that’s what the “doctor’s” had told him when he said he had immediately handed her over to the local authorities to be brought to a nearby emergency room and they had contacted him. She didn’t remember arriving back to the hotel, and so I had explained that after I got my ankle checked out, between her fainting and the medication the nurses gave her, she passed out, and that we personally drove her back to let her rest. 

Speaking of my ankle. 

“And your ankle! Oh, I’m just happy you had Miguel and your friends with you, dear,” Janet hugged me tightly, and for a second I thought she was going to crush me. 

“Mom, I’ll be okay, really!” I reassured her with a gentle laugh as I attempted to return the embrace. “You’re acting like this is the first time I’ve injured myself.”

“I know, I know, it’s just been awhile, that’s all,” She shook her head, pulling away from me as she offered me an apologetic smile. “I know I can always watch your show online, but I would have loved to see the whole thing in person.”

“You showed up mom,” I took her hands in mine, squeezing them tightly. “That’s what matters to me.”

That part wasn’t a lie or made up memory. It was the truth and nothing but the truth. 

“You’ll be alright on your flight home, Janet?” Miguel asked with concern in his eyes. 

“Oh, yes, Miguel, don’t you worry!” Janet smiled reassuringly as she patted her fanny pack. “I’ve got my gravol with me so I won’t even know if I’m feeling sick on the plane as soon as I’m on board.”

“Or as dad liked to call it, the gravol haze?” I teased with a knowing look, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Oh hush you!” Janet glared at me with a playful grin. 

There was an announcement overheard that a certain flight would begin boarding soon. My mom’s eyes lit up as she quickly checked to make sure she had all her bags with her. 

“Oh, I should get going.” She sighed, grabbing her purse as she looked over towards Miguel and I. She had a soft smile on her face before she suddenly looked at me with this look of. . . longing. “But before I leave, honey, may I talk to you for a moment?”

My eyes lit up at the recognition in her words. Growing up I quickly learned if my mother ever gave me that look, she wanted to talk to me in private. Usually it was always something important, so I never kept her waiting. I should know, the first time she ever gave me that look was when she first told me when dad got sick all those years ago. 

“Sure, mom, just don’t miss your boarding time.” I nodded softly before glancing up at Miguel. “Give us a minute?”

“Of course,” Miguel smiled softly as he squeezed my shoulder, leaning in to peck my temple before stepping away. 

Once he was far enough where I convinced myself that he wouldn’t be able to hear our conversation, I stepped closer to my mom. “What’s going on?”

Janet was silent briefly, her eyes shifting as if she were choosing her words carefully. But when she spoke, she was calm and collected. “Would you feel comfortable if. . . if I showed Jin your performance?”

I could feel my nerves become static, my grip on her hands tightening. My pupils went wide, my eyes searching hers to try and find out if she was joking or not. But when it came to my mother, and topics like this, she never joked. 

Other than her updating me on his therapy progress every now and then, I haven’t physically seen or heard from my step-father since I cut contact with him. Just over 2 years ago. But if she could update me on his progress, then I could just as easily update him on mine. 

I want to show him how far I’ve come since then. 

“Sure,” I nodded softly. 

Janet’s eyes lit up in surprise, her jaw nearly dropping to the floor. “Wait, really?!”

I nodded again, squeezing her hands tightly. 

“Oh, that’s great, sweetheart, I’m so happy to hear that!” She even bounced a little in excitement. “He really has been doing better. I think watching it will just be the thing he needs to show him how strong and powerful you are and how far you’ve come. Show him what he’s been missing.”

What she said suddenly made a lump form in my throat, tears swelling in my eyes. “Oh, mom. . .”

“I know, I know, I overdid it,” she grinned, pulling me into another hug. “There’s also one other thing. This one, you don’t have to decide now, if you need time to think about it.”

My heart suddenly skipped a beat as I pulled back, anxiously awaiting to hear what she had to say. “Yes?”

“How would you feel about. . . flying down to Korea for a few days?” Janet suggested, her eye meeting mine with a genuine expression. “To come see him?”

If I thought I was frazzled before, I definitely was now. “When?”

“Anytime you want to, sweetie!” Janet quickly reassured me, squeezing my hands. “Again, it’s entirely up to you, but I was with your step-father for his most recent session and his therapist suggested the idea. He believes Jin is about ready to. . . make amends.”

My eyes widened at that. “And is. . . Jin ready for it?”

“I’m not sure if he’ll know for sure until it happens,” Janet shook her head with uncertainty. “But he does wish to see you. Even just for a few minutes.”

My mind was racing as the multitude of possibilities swarmed in my head. All the things that could go right, or wrong. Why did it feel like one weighed more than the other?

Even still, there was this sudden burning sensation in the pit of my stomach.  I met my mom’s gaze, offering her a small smile as I spoke softly, “I’ll think about it.”

She smiled back at me, holding me close. “Take as long as you need dear. I love you.”

Janet hugged me one last time as another announcement chimed over the speakers. She gathered her bags and I saw her off as she waddled to the security checkpoint. As I lowered my hand from waving at her, Miguel’s footsteps caught my ear as I turned to glance at him. “I’m okay.” I quickly reassured him. 

“Are you sure?” He asked me with a hint of worry in his eyes as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, his hand reaching up to wipe a stray tear from my cheek. 

I nodded softly, leaning into him. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Alright,” Miguel gave me a tight squeeze, kissing the top of my head before he motioned to the side. “Let’s get going, and don’t forget~”

“I know, I know,” I rolled my eyes in an annoyed manner as I reached over to a pillar and grabbed the walking crutch I had left on the side while seeing my mother off. I hooked it under my left armpit, holding Miguel close with my right. “Do I have to keep this cast on for 4 weeks? Didn’t Spider-Doc say this could heal in half the time thanks to the healing factor of the spider powers?”

“Yes, but because of the reset, your friends and family don’t know about your powers anymore,” Miguel reminded gently. “So you have to keep up the façade of being your friendly neighborhood self.”

“Did you just make a Spider-Man joke?” I gawked at Miguel.

Miguel didn’t hide his cheeky grin and I caught a small glimpse of his fangs as he spoke. “Maybe I did.”

I groaned, rolling my eyes again as we stepped out into the main entrance of the airport. “Your–”

“An asshole?” He quickly chimed in, leaning in closer to me. 

I smirked back at him, bringing my hand up from his hand to cup his chin. “My asshole.”

“No lo olvides, mi Mona Lisa.” Miguel's tone was flirtatious as his hand caught the small of my back, his warm breath fanning my lips before he kissed me in the sunshine. - Don't you forget it, my Mona Lisa

///////

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[comicwaren]

This week on Marvel Comics (6th September 2023):

Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 6 #033

Black Panther Vol. 9 #004

Doctor Strange Vol. 6 #007

Fantastic Four Vol. 7 #011

Ghost Rider/Wolverine: Weapons of Vengeance Omega #001 (One-shot)

Immortal X-Men #015

Moon Knight Vol. 9 #027

Scarlet Witch Vol. 3 #008

Silk Vol. 5 #005 (Finale)

Spider-Gwen Annual Vol. 2 #001 (One-shot)

Star Wars Vol. 3 #038

Star Wars: Dark Droids #002

X-Men Vol. 6 #026

[usaigi]

Hot take but when it comes to comic books, good adaptation > accurate adaptation.

[karmaspidr]

Peter and Cindy: Flirting in a not-so-casual way.

Laura: It's just pheromones. It's just pheromones. It's just pheromones. It's just pheromones.

Peter and Cindy: Lean in for a kiss.

Laura: NOW YOU'RE JUST PUSHING ME!!

[donnatroyprincessofthemyscira]

ComicList: Marvel Comics New Releases for Wednesday, July 26, 2023, by Charles LePage.

All-New Marvel NOW Point One #1 (Facsimile Edition), $7.99

Amazing Spider-Man #30 (Cover A Ed McGuinness), $3.99

Amazing Spider-Man #30 (Cover B Nick Bradshaw), AR

Amazing Spider-Man #30 (Cover C Skottie Young), AR

Amazing Spider-Man #30 (Cover D Betsy Cola Hellfire Gala Variant), AR

Amazing Spider-Man #30 (Cover E Mike Vosburg), AR

Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection Volume 9 Spider-Man Or Spider-Clone TP, $44.99

Avengers #3 (Cover A Stuart Immonen), $3.99

Avengers #3 (Cover B Mark Brooks Corner Box Variant), AR

Avengers #3 (Cover C David Baldeon Hellfire Gala Variant), AR

Avengers #3 (Cover D Joshua Cassara), AR

Avengers Beyond #5 (Of 5)(Cover A Greg Land), $3.99

Avengers By Jason Aaron Volume 4 HC, $44.99

Avengers Omnibus Volume 2 HC (Alex Ross Book Market Cover), $100.00

Avengers Omnibus Volume 2 HC (John Buscema Direct Market Cover), $100.00

Black Panther #1 (2nd Printing Cover A Chris Allen), $4.99

Black Panther #1 (2nd Printing Cover B Rahzzah), AR

Captain America By Ta-Nehisi Coates Omnibus HC (Alex Ross Book Market Cover), $100.00

Captain America By Ta-Nehisi Coates Omnibus HC (Alex Ross Direct Market Cover), $100.00

Cosmic Ghost Rider #5 (Cover A Valerio Giangiordano), $3.99

Cult Of Carnage Misery #3 (Of 5)(Cover A Skan Srisuwan), $3.99

Cult Of Carnage Misery #3 (Of 5)(Cover B Leinil Francis Yu), AR

Danny Ketch Ghost Rider #3 (Of 5)(Cover A Ben Harvey), $3.99

Danny Ketch Ghost Rider #3 (Of 5)(Cover B Sergio Davila), AR

Daredevil And Echo #3 (Of 4)(Cover A Phil Noto), $3.99

Daredevil And Echo #3 (Of 4)(Cover B Rod Reis), AR

Daredevil And Echo #3 (Of 4)(Cover C Maria Wolf), AR

Daredevil And Elektra By Chip Zdarsky Volume 2 The Red Fist Saga Part Two TP, $15.99

Deadpool #9 (Cover A Martin Coccolo), $3.99

Deadpool #9 (Cover B Pablo Villalobos), AR

Deadpool #9 (Cover C Nick Dragotta Hellfire Gala Variant), AR

Ghost Rider #16 (Cover A Bjorn Barends), $3.99

Ghost Rider #16 (Cover B Gerald Parel Hellfire Gala Variant), AR

Ghost Rider #16 (Cover C E.M. Gist), AR

Hallows’ Eve #5 (Of 5)(Cover A Michael Dowling), $3.99

Hallows’ Eve #5 (Of 5)(Cover B Bengal Hellfire Gala Variant), AR

Hellcat #5 (Of 5)(Cover A Pere Perez), $3.99

Hulk By Donny Cates Volume 2 Hulk Planet TP, $17.99

I Am Iron Man #5 (Of 5)(Cover A Dotun Akande), $3.99

Incredible Hulk #2 (Cover A Nic Klein), $3.99

Incredible Hulk #2 (Cover B Bryan Hitch Hellfire Gala Variant), AR

Incredible Hulk #2 (Cover C Leinil Francis Yu), AR

Incredible Hulk #2 (Cover D Joshua Cassara), AR

Invincible Iron Man #8 (Cover A Kael Ngu), $3.99

Invincible Iron Man #8 (Cover B Bob Layton Connecting Variant), AR

Invincible Iron Man #8 (Cover C George Perez), AR

Invincible Iron Man #8 (Cover D George Perez Virgin Variant), AR

Invincible Iron Man #8 (Cover E Junggeun Yoon), AR

Invincible Iron Man #8 (Cover F Kris Anka Hellfire Gala Variant), AR

Marvel Masterworks The X-Men Volume 1 HC (Jack Kirby Book Market Cover)(ReMasterworks), $75.00

Marvel Masterworks The X-Men Volume 1 HC (Jack Kirby Direct Market Cover)(ReMasterworks), $75.00

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[starbaby107]

My Spiderverse wallpaper. A bit chaotic but full of my favorite spider people.

[silkscream]

angel unaware

ꨄ︎ pairing: peter parker x silk!reader

ꨄ︎ synopsis: you’ve known peter since you were fifteen, shortly after you were both bitten by the same spider. it was too obvious that you’d end up loving him. as you drift apart during your first year of college, you’re not sure how much longer you can keep dancing in circles with him.

ꨄ︎ genres: best friends to lovers, angst, idiots in love, slowburn, mutual pining, hurt/comfort

ꨄ︎ tags: rated explicit/18+ (smut), alcohol usage, mention of drug usage, unprotected sex, oral sex (f receiving), characters are 19, mild violence, gun violence (there is a school shooting in the beginning but there aren't too many details)

ꨄ︎ wc: 13.8k

ꨄ︎ notes: omg. happy valentine’s day y’all. i’ve been working on this Big Bertha for literal MONTHS and i’m so happy to finish it and share it with you. thank you for being around even though i haven’t been the most active; this is a gift to you <3

ꨄ︎ listen to the playlist!

The spider bit you first.

It isn’t until you’re fifteen that someone else finds out about it.

In many ways, you should’ve known. The symptoms, the hypervigilance, the strange, gradual transition of filling out your body. You blame puberty first, but this feels more than abnormal. It's almost as if it's bursting through your skin. The only other person who seems to mirror your coming of age is Peter Parker, whose twitchy nature exacerbates the longer high school goes on.

You keep your head low because there’s no reason for you to tell anyone about your powers. Not even the boy about whom you’re positive shares the same curse as you.

But then the videos come out. Red and blue lycra flying through buildings, a blurred figure saving cats from trees, webs shooting and swaying as onlookers stare like it’s a circus act. He calls himself Spider-man and you think it’s awfully corny.

You’d be a fool to think that you were safe from the antics of Avengers propaganda, rubble, and ash blocking your way to school on more days than not. You’d be a fool to think that you could evade the classic tropes of American violence that force the president to lament about "unthinkable tragedies" multiple times a year. At this moment, you’re a fool for getting yourself locked in a janitor’s closet while there’s an active shooter at Midtown High.

Your breath hitches when the doorknob jangles in front of you. On instinct, you stick yourself to the ceiling, far in the corner with your senses on fire. You’ve never actually had to attack anyone before. You aren’t entirely sure how this would play out with a gun involved.

Peter Parker’s labored breaths fill your eardrums, and without thinking, you shoot your webs directly at him. He stumbles, clumsily tripping over an empty mop bucket. He looks up at you in confusion. He’s wearing half of his suit.

"You. You just–"

"Shut the fuck up," you hiss, covering his mouth with your palm. In the darkness, your eyes widen. Someone is near.

It’s a stupid ordeal. The crime happening, this meet-cute, the way your senses feel haywire being this close to him. Both of you are holding your breath, your heart is pounding erratically in your chest, and blood is rushing through your ears.

The day ends with you and Peter making it out of the closet through a vent and the shooter getting subdued by the police. A troubled sophomore who barely knew how to use the gun in the first place made it easy for Spider-man to intercept the weapon the moment the kid raised his arms.

Peter follows you home that afternoon like a stray cat, babbling over a game of twenty questions that you aren’t in the mood to entertain. Somehow, his presence leaves your chest feeling warm and light, and you realize that you don’t mind the company. Twenty questions become routine.

He’s the only one who gets it, of course.

He tells you about the Avengers, ignoring the way you scoff under your breath. Secretly, you’re only a little jealous. Not because you want that kind of prestige or even a fancy suit, but because at least there’s a group of freaks out there who know.  "How come you didn’t tell me?" Peter asks you. He looks small on your couch despite his sixteen-year-old sleeper build and the fact that he’s taking up more than half of your space.

"What do you mean?"

"If you knew about Spider-Man this whole time… why didn’t you say something?"

"What, like I was supposed to seek you out on the street with a mask on?"

He gives you a pointed look. "You had a feeling about me. In school. Didn’t you?"

You don’t answer, which, to Peter, is an answer in itself.

"I didn’t want to be any trouble. It’s my burden to deal with," you say slowly, blinking up at him.

Burden. Peter smooths the word over in his mind and watches the way your nimble fingers pick at the threads of your sweater. He suddenly feels guilty for pestering you with questions, especially after the trauma of today.

"It’s not a burden," he says carefully. You don’t protest, but he knows there’s a certain level of repression inside you that won't let you give this part of yourself up. As if his knowing about your powers would only be that — knowing. He keeps staring at your fingers.

"You don’t have web shooters?" He gestures to your hands.

"Comes from my fingertips."

"No fucking way. You gotta show me."

"You saw it today," you chuckle as you take a breath.

"Not really," he pouts. The amber-brown of his eyes is annoyingly irresistible, and you know it because of how hot the back of your neck suddenly feels. There’s a hint of a taunting smile on his face, as if he knows.

You take him to the fire escape outside your bedroom window. It’s barely past five and it’s already gotten dark. Luckily, your bedroom faces an empty alley.

"I’m not some circus act, just so you know," you warn him.

"Please," he tuts. "If anything, we both are. Two arachno-freaks."

"You should rebrand as that," you say with a grin.

You shoot a web to the fire escape railing above you, holding yourself up and swinging like you're in P.E. climbing a rope. You feel ridiculous, to say the least. You quickly shoot more webs after a quick scan of your surroundings to swaddle yourself in something resembling a cocoon. It hangs like a playground swing from the metal above.

"Holy shit! Does it ever… run out? Do you get web blocks? Does it come out of anywhere else–"

"I’m not answering that." Your cheeks heat up at the insinuation.

"Sorry, just curious." He holds his palms up in defense, then reaches to touch a fingertip to the silk holding you together. It feels soft like cotton candy and is much less sticky than what came out of his web shooters.

He asks you to swing with him, and for some reason, you say yes. You don’t like to swing very much, and if you do, you try to look for construction sites or abandoned scaffolding to evade attention. Tonight, however, the New York City lights look warm against the velvety backdrop of the sky, and you decide that flying through the air with someone else feels better than doing it alone.

____

He doesn’t understand your desire to stay under the radar. Whenever he brings it up, you take the opportunity to bring up the New York City disasters that have gone underway before the two of you even graduate. If anything, you’ve been a decent backup, but you refuse to be in the public eye. You don’t want to be Spider-girl.

But you don’t mind swinging around the city in your handmade suit, spun and woven together with the silk that flows straight from your fingertips. It’s one thing that Peter’s jealous of, but it helps him when he needs to patch up a wound when he’s on the go with you.

Peter comes through your window with a red gash on his thigh. You can smell him before you see him.

"Ugh, you broke the streak. Five days without a scratch. That’s a record for you, Parker," you sigh, already rummaging through your drawers for the usual first-aid kit.

"I’m fine." He winces as he crouches down carefully on the floor. You’ve gotten good at minding your business and not asking about his wounds, at least not ones that aren’t too deep into the flesh. He knows it would only hurt you if you knew.

"And yet you’re here."

"I wanted to see you. You know I always want to see you."

You open your mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. You kneel before him, pouring hydrogen peroxide onto the gash as you dab gently with a hand towel. He hisses and grabs your forearm with more force than he intends to.

"You’ll be fine," you reassure him gently.

"Yeah. I could've done it, you know," he says as he carefully holds your gaze.

"‘S’fun sometimes," you reply without looking at him. Carefully, you wrap gauze around his leg. "When I was little, my neighbor and I used to play House, but it always turned into, like… Hospital. And I’d pretend to be a nurse and take care of her, I’d tuck her into bed, and I’d give her lollipops from my Halloween stash for being a good patient."

Peter chuckles. He wobbles slightly as he stands up with your help.

"Am I a good patient?"

"Mm. A very brave boy," you say as you pat his cheek.

"What, I don’t get a treat?"

"Your treat is staying alive." You take him by the wrist towards your living room couch.

He doesn’t know what he’d do without you. It’s not right for him to think of you as an extension of himself, but he often yearns for your presence like a phantom limb whenever you aren’t on patrol with him. He realizes you're the yin to his yang.

It excites him, the images of you two that end up on the Internet. How good you look together. You, on the other hand, dread any semblance of perception by the world.

"People are catching on, you know. Ned found a subreddit on you the other day," Peter murmurs into your lap.

You snort, rolling your eyes the way you always do. You fiddle with the soft strands of his hair. It’s second nature to you. "Ned needs to reduce his screen time tenfold."

"Rabbit."

You sigh dramatically at the nickname. He’d adopted it after the many jumpscares he’d give you when he’d sneak into your room at night. You’d become so accustomed to him that your spider-sense would dull when it came to Peter. He was your source of comfort.

"What, Pete?"

"Why don’t you patrol with me?"

"You know why." It’s too stressful. Too public. Too many run-ins with death that you can anticipate.

"It’s better when you’re around."

"You’re a big boy, Peter," you murmur. Your hand slides across his scalp again, this time with your fingertips settling in the space behind his ears. You aren’t looking at him; instead, you are watching the documentary on the television at a low volume. He crumples at your touch.

"May says you’re my guardian angel. Every time something really bad has happened, it always worked out because you were there."

"I mean, it probably helps when you have another Spider-person as a backup."

"I think she’s right, though."

You don’t say anything. You’re tempted to reply with something sardonic or self-deprecating. You put too much faith in me. But you can’t – he’s looking at you with something that you can’t fathom. Something earnest and entirely too fragile. You have to look away.

He hums, sighing into a tattered copy of Hamlet. "I can’t deal with any more Shakespeare."

"You’re such a slow reader despite being a goddamn genius."

"Did you just say something nice about me?" Peter raises a brow.

"Oh my God, relax, Big Bang Theory."

He scoffs and swallows down a smart-ass remark. A grin lingers in his mouth as he settles back into the book.

____

You’re apart from Peter for the first time since age sixteen. You don’t tell him – you don’t tell anyone – but you decide on an out-of-state university because you don’t want to feel tethered to him. Your friends consider you and Peter a package deal, and yes, he’s probably the first real best friend you’ve ever had, but the gnawing inside of you telling you that distance is needed doesn’t stop.

You, the black sheep, are the antithesis of your hero of a best friend, despite being bitten by the same spider. You’ve always wondered if your story was supposed to play out like some sort of Shakespearean tragedy because of your bond with Peter, so you decide to take your mind off of it. At least it won’t be as painful as severing it completely.

It feels free to be away from all the chaos. In Rhode Island, you can focus on your art and fold your feelings away in a neat little envelope. You’d rather die than let any of that out, especially when Peter insists on such frequent FaceTime calls.

Sometimes, you fall asleep to the sound of his voice. He tells you about taking a train down to Providence in the middle of September to visit you like some kind of long distance boyfriend. The thought makes something in your stomach bloom and stagger in the same way. He doesn’t keep his promise – chem labs are already kicking his ass halfway to Thanksgiving break, not to mention the crime rate in New York City rockets beyond normal.

Thanksgiving comes, and both of you are the same. Peter is exactly as boyish as you left him three months ago, though his brown hair has grown longer and he wears blue-light readers to help with the mild headaches he gets from staring at screens.

He isn't attached to your hip like you expected. Your week off is filled with missed texts and a marathon of TV shows about broken women—the kind with dark humor and falling in love with priests.

The next time you see him, your roommate is out of town. It's not an unusual occurrence given how little she spends time in the dorm, always elsewhere with her new boyfriend.

Peter takes up so much space in your bed that you almost offer to push the two twin beds together, but the feeling of his warmth is too comforting. Propped against the wall, you’re hip-to-hip with him as you scroll through Netflix on your laptop.

You can feel him staring. It becomes routine, or maybe it’s your senses, but you can always tell when he’s merely observing you, watching you carefully like ripples on a pond. You've never really chastised him about it, but it doesn't help that you know he can tell when you're nervous. He has you memorized.

He likes the way you look when you concentrate. Sometimes, when you’re deep in thought, he likes to take his thumb and smooth out the ridges of your furrowed brows even though you end up swatting him away. When he does this now, you look up at him with wide, doe eyes.

"Still as indecisive as ever."

"I have to be, otherwise you’ll just put on Gilmore Girls," you scoff.

"You’re the one who showed me that!" Peter protests.

"And then it was the only thing you wanted to watch to the point where I genuinely considered locking you out of my Netflix account!"

He doesn’t bother to argue, instead resorting to poking you in the side. You squirm immediately, yelping as he continues. He flashes you a leering grin as you whine in dissent, flinching from the feather-like touch of his fingertips dancing across your skin.

"You’re so annoying," you huff, curling your body toward the wall.

"And you love it."

More than you’d ever know.

You pause, rolling your eyes at him. You contemplate kicking him again just to get a rise out of him, anything other than the short silence between you that feels more present than it should be. Your stomach feels warm at his proximity, but then again, Peter’s built like a human furnace anyway.

When you attempt to playfully shove him, he catches your wrist with quick reflexes until the two of you are tangled together. It’s easy to fight with him when you’re both running off the same biological fuel. When he ends up on top of you, you forget how to breathe.

The two of you stare at each other like this, as if frozen in time. It’s you who looks away first, then back to his big brown eyes, settling a palm to his cheek. You can feel how hard he is. You wonder if he knows.

It’s something you’ve only thought about in your subconscious, in dreams, or in moments when you’re bandaging his wounds. How would it feel to have his skin all over yours? It’s a selfish thought, but it rings in your brain without warning at times like these, times of such closeness. The spider bit the two of you for a reason. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

It’s a curious thing for sure, but there are doors you don’t want to open yet.  

"One episode and then I pick a movie," you mumble.

____

You don’t tell him about transferring when you come back for Christmas break. It feels embarrassing, despite knowing that he’d be ecstatic about the news. RISD proved to be too difficult for your one-track mind as you found yourself sleeping in more and more, flaking on the most rigorous of classes due to your mood. You’d successfully gotten into Pratt for the next semester and were fully moved out, thankfully. But when you see Peter in the arms of another, you wish you hadn't left.

You should’ve expected it, maybe. Peter had always had a thing for Michelle Jones but could never quite get past the friend zone. It seems as though your absence has nudged him further.

No, that feels too selfish to say.

But it’s still too difficult to bear in the loneliness of December, knowing that when the New Year’s parties hit, you’re still the black sheep. Even in a shiny little dress.

You don’t see him much over winter break, but he gets you a silver necklace for Christmas with a spider pendant hanging on it. It’s more sentimental than you expect, and it’s the nicest gift you’ve ever received. It certainly beats the Lego set you’d gotten for him.

Now, in your black cocktail dress, you smile dopily at Ned Leeds as the rest of the room counts down at the television, waiting for the ball to drop. It’s bittersweet when you remember last year’s countdown, in which Peter insisted the two of you swung out to Manhattan to watch the ball drop in person. You remember how much you wanted to kiss him then, but you didn’t. Thank God for his hero's anonymity and the impediment of his suit.

"Five, four, three, two, one – Happy New Year!"

Makeshift confetti falls to the ground as you watch him and MJ kiss. There’s enough champagne in your system for your heart to grow warm at the sight of it.  

____

January is cold. Desolate. Even if you have your friends around you in New York, the place that feels most like home, you’ve come to realize. But there’s still something missing, something lacking. Like you’re inside a familiar place inside a dream.

You ignore the itch, learning to numb it with champagne. It worked on New Year’s, and now it’s been working for several weeks. You don’t leave your apartment.

Even though Peter Parker is a text or phone call away, you fade into the background of his life, watching him through newsreels and YouTube videos. You’re on his mind more than you’d expect. He doesn’t know why, though he does realize that your absence bothers him in small ways.

Sometimes, when he’s on patrol, he’s frustrated by his loneliness, especially in the dead of winter. You were never one to play the hero – he knew that – but it was still comforting to have someone to patch up his wounds or soften his fall. The webs that flow from your fingertips have always been strong, enough to form hammocks in between the corners of his bedroom or a makeshift suit.

And then there are the dreams. They feel real, vivid, and much too physical for something that his mind could conjure in his unconscious. You had only kissed him once before (in real life, that is), at a stupid basement party in the ninth grade, before the two of you were friends, but shortly after the initial spider bite. Although it’s something that’s only been brought up as a joke these past few years, Peter remembers vividly how hard his heart was pounding when the glass bottle landed on you after what felt like an excruciatingly long spin. He could never forget the feeling. He wonders if you feel the same.

It’s not something he should be thinking about right now. Especially when you’re not his girlfriend. He’d rather die a thousand deaths than have you know what you do to him in his dreams when you’re nothing but a reverie of your own silk-spun webs and soft, bare skin. You treat him like prey. He loves it.

Peter can nearly smell you, that sandalwood-citrus shampoo of yours, and your warm breath over his face. Your little whispers of praise, your tiny whimpers. The image of your eyes struggling to stay open while you’re underneath him is burned into his brain.

"I missed you," you say breathlessly. "Missed you so much."

God, how is this a dream? He can feel you so clearly. Until he doesn't, and he wakes up with a groan, an exhale, and an excess of sweat on his brow. Not to mention a dampness below him.

"Fucking Christ," he curses under his breath.

The ghost of you is on his bedroom ceiling, in the corner of his room. Something nearby smells like you, even though you haven’t been in his room in ages. This makes something in his chest hurt until he decides to get out of bed.

He wants to see you, but he feels guilty knowing what he's just dreamt about. He can’t help that the person that makes him feel the most human is the only other one who shares the venom in his blood.

Sometimes he follows you. It feels almost meditative for him to sit on a rooftop and watch you from the window of your favorite cafe, reading and writing and breathing. The brightness of his phone screen illuminates his face as his eyes scan over your contact. Your face smiles back at him, but there’s a distance considering the lack of texts between the two of you over the past month. He sighs as he zooms in on your location – the two of you had shared each others’ years ago and only found it convenient to keep.

Peter doesn’t know why he’s feeling all this yearning all of a sudden – sometimes he recognizes the feeling in his body and he thinks of you and he thinks of safety. Other times, like now, he knows that it only breeds guilt.

But he misses being quiet with you, misses the mundane intimacies of him poking you and you fixing his hair. All the small expressions you make with your face that only he notices. There’s something empty in the space he usually holds for you in his heart, and he doesn’t know why.

He has to see you. Maybe then, something in his brain will click, or he’ll see you as the old friend you’ve always been, and he can blame the heat in his body on his subconscious.

You’re predictable with your routine, because this afternoon, he finds you in your usual spot by the window at your favorite cafe again. You’re writing in your journal with your noise-canceling headphones on, so Peter’s presence is completely unknown to you. After he gets his coffee, he watches you from afar, just for a little bit.

As if on cue, you already know. The moment you skip a song and a millisecond of silence fills the space in your head, you feel him immediately. You always know when he’s around.

"Peter," you murmur without thinking. Your gaze is soft but carries the surprise of a deer caught in headlights.

"Hey," he smiles. "Mind if I sit here?"

He gestures to the armchair across from you, and you nod.

Peter knows how to coax your warmth from you, because within minutes, he has you talking about school, what’s on your mind, and why it feels better to be holed up in a cafe than sit miserably at home. You do the same for him, though you notice he’s more reserved for some reason – he’s tight-lipped about MJ, and doesn’t delve into the details of his hero work. He prefers to bombard you with questions instead, listening intently to your most recent fixations or the newest movie you saw alone in theaters.

"You replaced me yet, Rabbit?" he teases you.

"Never," you scoff, tipping your coffee cup to hide any embarrassment on your face. You haven’t heard him call you that in so long. "You know me. I’m a lone wolf."

"Pratt seems like your crowd though, no? No one at Midtown High was a match for you. You were way too cool."

"Mmm, true, yet you’re my best friend."

"Hey!"

Your laugh is like a song to him; he can’t help but smile ear to ear when he hears it.

"The only person who talks to me at school is this guy Cam from my ceramics class. He’s actually from Brooklyn so we took the train together to get home and he’s around for break, which is cool."

Peter’s face nearly goes cold at the sound of someone else’s name, though he stays composed.

"Fun. Are you two…" He gestures vaguely.

"We hooked up like, once, but I don’t really know where it’s going." You say it so nonchalantly like it’s an afterthought. You’re not even looking at Peter.

"If he fucks anything up, you know where to find me."

You smile, rolling your eyes in that bashful way you do when you shrug things off, and it’s more apparent to Peter now how much he adores all your little quirks and mannerisms. He realizes that he might have them all memorized.

"We’re actually going to a party tonight if you want to come. A friend of a friend’s birthday party in Manhattan, I think? I think her name was Anna?"

"Oh, my friend Gwen knows her and invited me!"

"Small world." You swallow down the image of Peter at the party with an ESU girl for a second, and it feels rough in your throat. But you’ll manage. You always do. "Is MJ coming?"

Peter shakes his head. "Ah, she’s in Philly visiting family. I’ll probably go with Gwen and her boyfriend Harry, though."

You feel shame in your relief. It’s sickening how much you have to bury your desire and your tenderness because you know better. You know that even though the two of you were bitten by the same spider, it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily compatible. Sometimes you think your attraction to Peter is some biological fluke determined by the cells in both of your bodies. And then you think, God, how can anyone look into his brown eyes and not feel a thing?

You're both warm in your chests as you part ways, waiting for your next meeting.

____

The night of the party, Peter revels in the sight of you wearing your spider necklace, which sparkles under the flashing lights of the penthouse apartment you’re both in. His mood dampens when he notices the tall boy attached to your hip like a guard dog.

It’s a stupid game and he knows it. The way he pretends not to see you or acknowledge your presence is cruel, but it feels safe for now. He doesn’t feel ready. He’s high off some gummy that Harry had given him an hour earlier, and it’s still fogging his senses, and even though he can be cloudy and nonchalant at this party, his paranoia precedes him. It feels like you’re everywhere.

He shouldn’t feel this way. Why does he feel this way? You’re his best friend and you have your own life that’s separate from his – he knew this would happen the moment he found out you were going to different colleges. Despite that, there’s a piece of you tethered to him that he can’t bear to cut off. It makes him feel sane, the parts of you that you’ve given him.

But now, he sees you laughing and swaying your hips with someone else’s hands resting on your waist and it makes his face burn.

"Dude," Gwen snaps her fingers in front of his face. Peter blinks back at her. "Are you good?"

"Yeah, sorry."

"Harry wanted to do a shot, you want to join?"

Peter nods numbly, following the blonde to the kitchen. He watches everyone else in the kitchen pour shots and drinks like they are rehearsed marionettes. Harry snaps him out of his daze once he slams down a shot glass full of vodka in front of him.

"Drink up, Parker!" Harry cheers.

The alcohol burns Peter’s throat, but he feels the head rush and the warmth. It feels good, makes him feel looser. Malleable. Invincible, maybe, if he took two or three more. But he knows he has to pace himself. He hates that his default setting is to look for you no matter where he is. But when he scans the room this time, you’re downing a glass of champagne alone.

Your body feels heavy at the moment, so you don’t register him plopping down on the couch next to you. You wake up to the sound of his voice as you always do.

"Hey, you."

"Hey."

Your glass of champagne is empty, so you take the beer bottle out of Peter’s hand without saying a word, and he lets you. He watches you gulp a bit of it down. Maybe you’re a little too drunk. Maybe you’re imagining the way his eyes scan your body.

You’re drunk enough to feel social, but truthfully, you’re deathly afraid of being alone with anyone right now. Being alone with someone would make you feel much too raw and vulnerable, so you convince Peter to introduce you to his friends that you’ve never met, and you try to cope with the fact that they look like they were cut straight out of a magazine.

"Peter talks about you all the time," Gwen gushes, sipping from her champagne flute.

"He does?" you ask, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course," she nods incessantly.

"Only incredible reviews all around," Harry nods, drunkenly slinging an arm around Peter’s shoulders. The brunette smiles sheepishly, bashfully. You raise an eyebrow at him along with a coy smile.

"Should hope so," you tease. "He wouldn’t have gotten through high school without me."

It’s mostly a lie considering Peter was the star student and you were barely second to him. Maybe fifth or sixth. In a way, your words are true, because Peter’s agreeing with you.

You zone out as he starts a story from junior year and you have half the mind to chime in when needed. Harry suddenly puts a whisky coke in your hand and you don’t want to refuse out of politeness, but you know the mix of different alcohol will have your head banging in the morning. Peter downs half of his within a millisecond.

"What?" he asks when he notices you making a face.

"Since when do you drink so much?"

"It’s a party," he shrugs.

"Peter, when I brought you to your first party, you refused to drink anything that wasn’t a fruity canned cocktail. You won’t go near wine let alone whiskey."

"A semester at ESU changes you," Harry interjects. "He’s still a little fruity, though."

Peter chastises him as you and Gwen laugh. As the boys bicker, Gwen gets your attention. She asks you mundane questions, like your major, your zodiac sign, and what you thought of the season finale of White Lotus. You’re grateful when she beckons you to follow her to the kitchen to make another whiskey coke.

Her glossed lips twist to the side, eyes bright with a teasing glance. She has the ability to make you feel calm, almost excited to be there.

"He is obsessed with you," she sneers.

"What do you mean?"

"He just talked about you so much when we met him that I had to stalk your Insta, and I was like Jesus Christ, that makes so much sense. If I wasn’t with Harry I’d snatch you up myself. And then when I met his girlfriend and I was confused that it wasn’t you. Unless you’re doing that, like, exes-that-are-still-best-friends thing."

You blush and nearly choke on your drink. "Peter and I never dated."

"Seriously?"

You say nothing, only forcing an amused smile. You don’t know where to put her assumptions, but you sure as hell can’t keep them.

"I’m actually, uh, here with someone," you mutter, pretending to look around. Briefly, you lock eyes with Peter on the couch, who’s pretending to listen to Harry's rambling. Your eyes flit away quickly. "I think I might step outside for a smoke and look for him."

You don’t have to turn around to know that Peter’s eyes are following you. Or maybe you’re just drunk and projecting. Gwen’s bubbly nature makes her seem like the type to gossip, and just because your best friend happened to talk about you doesn’t mean that there was anything under the surface. But then you notice his slightly nervous energy tonight, the silver necklace around your neck, and the last time he visited you months before, when his body was so close to yours.

A pair of hands situate themselves on your waist and it makes you jump. The warmth feels different, as does the sudden smell of sharp cologne, and then you feel your heart drop the slightest bit when you hear his voice.

"Was looking for you," Cam slurs. You can smell the beer breath as he exhales on your neck, making you shiver.

"You sure? Because you’ve been MIA for like forty-five minutes."

You try to keep your voice even, sighing when he plants a kiss on your neck. Any animosity in your tone is completely ignored.

"I was catching up with some people that I wanted to introduce you to," he says, tugging you along by the wrist like a child. You pull up a chair to a firepit surrounded by a group of strangers, and the charade of icebreakers returns. There’s no point in remembering anyone’s name.

You think about returning inside to look for Peter or maybe Gwen and Harry, but being on Cam’s lap is distracting you. At some point, a joint a passed around, and the feeling of the boy’s arms around you makes it easy to melt into nothing.

____

You’re right. You always are. Peter Parker doesn’t drink, and he’s never drunk this much in his entire life. He’s been sitting in the bathtub for… how long? He doesn’t know. All he knows is that his senses were dulled to the point of detachment and he needed to get alone to ground himself.

He’s so out of it that he doesn’t realize someone’s knocking on the door of the bathroom, and his reaction time is too slow before Harry barges in.

"Are you hiding in the bathtub?" Harry squints.

"No, I’m just… hangin’ out," Peter stammers.

Harry snaps out of the facade of a confused daze and shrugs, unbuckling his belt with nonchalance in front of the toilet.

"Dude!"

"What? I’m turned around!"

Sighing, Peter looks around his surroundings. Generic brand shampoo and conditioner. A deformed bar of soap. A red solo cup with clear liquid. He remembers suddenly – he’d filled an empty cup he found with sink water before getting in the tub.

His brain swims with dizziness and mild nausea that mix up his stomach. Gulping down the water, his throat burns immediately, only to realize that it isn’t water at all. It’s fucking vodka and seltzer. Harry’s turned around again, cackling before washing his hands.

"Idiot."

"Fuckingshitjesusfuckingchrist," Peter groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You should just drink straight vodka at this point, man."

"Oh, I do," Harry agrees. He crouches down, squatting to meet Peter at eye level. A warm palm taps Peter’s cheek. "You good, bro?"

"Mmm," Peter nods. His breathing turns shallow as he hunches over, pulling his knees into his chest.

"Jesus, you need to get home, don’t you?"

"‘m fine. You go home."

"Gwen’s been nagging me to for the past ten minutes, so I might. I’d let you crash on the couch, but we’re getting up early to go upstate. How are you getting home, bro?"

Harry frowns when he realizes Peter is barely listening. "Pete!"

He grimaces at Harry’s constant fidgeting. With an annoyed sigh, he shoos the other boy away with flailing arms.

"Heard you," he slurs. "I’ll– I’ll share an Uber with Y/N."

Harry sighs with exasperation, pulling Peter’s arm forcefully to get him out of the tub and down to the living room of the house. Peter is dizzy in his vision, clumsy in his movements, but finds clarity when he glances towards the couch and sees you sitting there with furrowed brows.

"Peter? Are you okay?" you ask.

"Yeah, absolutely not," Harry says. "Gwen and I gotta head home and we’re leaving early tomorrow so he can’t crash. You guys are like, neighbors, right?"

You swallow a lump in your throat, briefly turning your head to glance back at Cam, then back at Peter. He looks at you with a guilty cadence, though his eyes lull with a tiredness that is unusual for him. He’s corpse-like, still hanging onto Harry’s shoulder like a lifeline. It makes the pit of your stomach stir.

It’s unlike him, to be this drunk. The only other time Peter has been this drunk was once in high school, when he was slurring his words all night and determined to clutch you like a teddy bear in his twin-sized bed. You recall his warmth and how his post-puberty figure appeared gargantuan to your body. Foreign, but warm. Comforting. When you think about taking Peter home tonight, you feel like you aren’t allowed to lay next to a body that doesn’t belong to you.

"Yeah, I’ll take him home."

____

"Coulda swung home myself," the boy mumbles. You hit him on the arm and give him a chastising look. Thankfully, your current Uber driver speaks a limited amount of English, not to mention the radio is on blast.

"You couldn’t have. You’re so fucking drunk, you’d kill yourself," you hiss in a low tone.

"Not if you were with me."

"Well, I wouldn’t be. I wasn’t even gonna go home tonight."

"Ah. Of course. Cam,” he exasperates. “Is he your boyfriend?"

You sigh. "No, he’s not."

"Right, you don’t… you don’t do boyfriends," Peter murmurs, rubbing his face with the palm of his hand.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

The car stops in front of Peter’s apartment building.

"Thank you," you say stiffly to the Uber driver as you drag Peter out of the car. The elevator ride is awkward and quiet, as is the fumbling of keys when Peter tries to unlock the door.

He leans on your body as you coerce him into his bedroom, with him thumping onto his bottom bunk.

"Jesus. I feel like if Richie Rich called you an Uber himself you could’ve easily made it up the elevator by yourself. Right, Pete?"

"Mhmm. He’s such. A worry wart. For some rea–" Peter makes a gulping sound that makes your face pale. Immediately, you grab his trash bin and place it between his feet.

"‘m not gonna puke."

"I think you might, Peter."

He pauses and examines you as you kneel in front of him. He’s so drunk, so awfully drunk, but he has enough sense in him to take the caution that the anxious voice in the back of his head commands. But fuck, you look so pretty. He doesn’t know what to do about it.

Peter takes a strand of your hair in his hands and curls it around his finger. His shallow breaths feel louder than they should be. Or maybe they’re yours. He can’t really tell.

"What?"

"Nothing," he shrugs. "I won’t vomit. I promise."

You sigh.

"I should get going–"

"Can you stay for a little?"

Swallowing, you nod. You get into bed with him, because, quite frankly, you’ve had your fair share of alcohol tonight, and laying down in Peter’s warm bed makes you want to melt off the bone.

"I'm sorry for fucking up your night." Peter turns to lie on his side and drapes an arm carefully around you. His hand is feather-bare on your hip.

"You didn’t."

"You were gonna go home with Cam."

"It’s fine, Peter. I wanted to make sure you were safe."

"Like a chore."

"Not like a chore."

"Yeah, okay."

He does that thing again – holds a strand of your hair in his hands. He runs his fingertips nimbly across your scalp as if he’s handling an injured bird. As if he’s afraid you’d bite.

Your eyes are huge, like flying saucers. He used to say that all the time, especially whenever you came to his apartment after experimenting with any new drugs. You only felt safe with him – you had told him that – and he took care of you and your big eyes and your tendencies toward erratic behavior. He always knew how to calm you down. And now, in your adult lives, you were doing it for him.

You let him keep his hands in your hair and he doesn’t know why. There’s a theory he wants to test – one that he dreams about even when he knows he shouldn’t. He thinks about it in vulnerable moments. He considers that maybe this is a vulnerable moment.

His fingertips trace your face between the edge of your eyebrow and the baby hairs on your hairline. He taps along your temple gently, smoothing across the softness of your skin until he sculpts down your cheek and jaw. He blinks once, then twice. And then he rests the pad of his thumb on the corner of your mouth.

Almost automatically, you part your lips. Your mouth is pink, dusted with a purplish-red in the center from the merlot you’d drank hours before, and he wants to lick it off you.

He feels your heart beating, too, and you can hear his. It's a loud bang that resonates in between your eardrums. It’s that shared venom that makes your bodies so acquainted with one another. You briefly consider whether a human body can overheat and burn away simply by being touched by another. You wonder how human the two of you can really be.

You close your eyes.

"What are you doing?" you whisper. Your voice is gossamer-thin, barely there, but you’re so close to him that he hears it so clearly.

"Whatever you want." His voice is dripping honey.

You shake your head, still with your eyes closed. Peter’s hand descends to your jaw, thumb on your bone, with the rest of his fingers warming up your neck. You feel like you might just choke on the feeling of it.

"No, that’s not fair. That’s not… okay."

"What?"

"You’re drunk, Peter. Don’t do that to me. Please."

"What am I doing?"

Your face scrunches up as your eyes open to look at him with a pained expression. You have to close them again. You don’t want to look at him. You want his hands off of you, so you push them away.

"You’re with MJ."

"I… I know."

Your face is crumpled as you inch out of his bed. You’re back to kneeling on the floor in front of him.

"Please don’t leave," Peter whispers.

"I’m tired. I’ll sleep on the top bunk," you mumble. You try not to let him catch you sniffling.

"Goodnight.” You don’t respond.

He falls asleep shortly after and smells your perfume even in his dreams. When he wakes up, he smells you. But you’re nowhere to be found. There’s only the cold air coming from a crack of his window left slightly open.

____

It’s not your fault, but you’ve broken his heart a million times. The night of the party was the most recent one. To be fair, he had also broken your heart. He was just too fucking drunk to remember most of it.

You’ve become a ghost, barely texting Peter back, and when you do, your responses are short and clipped. You don’t have much time to hang out, and he realizes he doesn’t either, not when he has MJ to spend time with along with his Spider-Man duties.

But he would make time for you if you wanted it. He wonders if you know that. He feels too ashamed to tell you that himself.

It’s been like this before, and he’s been able to cope. The way you’re on his brain and won’t leave —stuck on him like a parasite. It’s his fault, he decides, not yours. He knows he’s not being fair. Not to you, not to MJ, not to himself. But he keeps it all in and hopes it doesn’t boil over.

Truthfully, Peter wants to avoid everyone. He understands now why you abhor winter to the degree that you always have. The desolation is too much to bear when there’s not much sunlight in January to activate dopamine receptors, so Peter sleeps in longer than he should. Late enough for Aunt May to get on his case about it.

"Something’s up with you," MJ accuses him on a Thursday evening. It’s one of their ritual movie nights with pizza and wine.

"Huh? Nothing’s up," Peter shrugs.

"No, I know you. Something’s wrong."

"I’m fine, Em." A lie.

It’s a miracle that Michelle Jones sees through Peter’s bullshit because it means that she has the incentive to protect herself from any future bullshit that may break her later on. Peter is too numb to process any of it. There was the refusal of admission, the attempt to keep up the wall of his emotions, which crashed down soon enough by the time MJ was out of the door.

He thinks he should call you, but he doesn’t.

____

Peter is used to scrapes and bruises. He’s seen more than enough charred flesh than a nineteen-year-old should. You had never asked to be his caretaker, but over the course of years, that was what you became. His guardian angel.

He used to make excuses to come over after patrol, trying to coax you out of your nest of a room for just an evening. He'd always known you were far more talented than you gave yourself credit for when it came to spider abilities, but it felt more like a curse than a gift for you to bear.

Some nights, he dreams of you falling stories beneath him. Your face is covered in rubble and ash, and although his nightmares often start with this, he knows that somehow, it’s his fault. It feels visceral, the burning in his calloused hands. Torn lycra to show the dirt underneath his fingernails. Hot tears dripping.

He starts taking that Ambien you gave him years ago.

After that, each day passes like he’s trapped in a nightmarish purgatory. No, that’s an exaggeration. He’s just a victim of a New York winter, and he misses you more than he wants to admit to himself or anyone else.

"I can take care of myself." And with that, the image of you disappears.

"I know," he murmurs softly. He’s always known. It is insignificant in comparison to how badly he wants to take care of you if you let him. Your voice echoes in the cavern of his room. You get farther away by the second until you disappear completely, and he evidently wakes up.

Even in your worst state, he’s obsessed with your honeyed skin. It doesn’t matter the number of bruises or cuts – he caresses them all with his nimble fingertips, and he’s ready to kiss them until they heal. He thinks about this sometimes, how much he cares for you and your body. What he'd do if you just let him in, let him devour you however he pleases, and it disgusts him.

In his dreams where you’re hurt, he’s willing to sacrifice whatever he can so that you can revert to your clean, unbothered state. I’d never let anyone break you. It’s a prayer for him. One that he whispers in your ear whenever he can, at least in these dreams. In reality, he knows that he has to let you go because he knows you. Knows how much you want to be free and alone. How you can take care of yourself. You’re not a damsel in distress – you never have been. But Peter feels like he was made to care for you. It would gut him all the same regardless of whether you loved him or not, and he was willing.

When it’s real, he doesn’t know what to do. He didn’t ever think the two of you would be in this position.

He’s been in enough battles to know how these things end. Mr. Stark had walked him through it all and been by his side while the rest of the Avengers repaired the other broken bits of the universe.

Right now is one of those unique times, the quiet and wretched ones, where Peter is contemplating breath after breath before imagining the full picture. Shambles of the street he’s in. The ache of his bruised body and the blood that he sees from yours, that he shouldn’t have seen, because you said it yourself. You’re not a fucking hero. So why is your blood streaked on the palm of his hands?

The distance between you and Peter doesn’t matter – it never does. The moment you’d felt a dread stirring in your stomach, there was a sharp pain in your head that refused to leave unless the working adrenaline in your body was satiated. It wasn’t the same adrenaline that circulated within you from a night of debauchery – instead, it felt like poison. A compulsory kind of pain, a sharp jolt to your senses. Tonight, you’d felt Peter in danger, and it would’ve killed you if you couldn’t get to him. He'd been the destination you'd been dead set on by the end of the night because of your spider instincts.

The police broadcast was too muffled for you to understand much of it, but you picked out the parts where Spider-Man was mentioned and followed through on them. Although you didn’t fall into the shadow of his hero work, you still kept enough tabs on Peter to know where he would usually be on patrol. It wasn’t like he knew, or that you’d ever told him, but when he was starting out as another guard dog for the Avengers in high school, you needed to at least know his approximate location in the event that something went terribly wrong.

An explosion blasts in the center of a park, where the two of you would meet in the middle between Queens and Stark Tower. This is where you lay your courage down. This is where you find Spider-Man’s mangled body before anyone else does.

"Peter," you huff. "S’gonna be okay. You with me? I’m gonna make sure you’re okay."

He’s just less than conscious, the stretch of his animated eyes limited by his weakness. When he sees your face, however, his face glows – not that you can see it through his mask.

He says your name with a fervor that surprises you. His voice is raspy.

"‘m fine. I have to stay," he grunts, his pain palpable. You know that he’s telling the truth, but you don’t want to leave him alone in his misery.

"Peter. You’re hurt."

"You go home. I’ll come find you later. Just let me–"

"You’re fucking limping."

You had always carried yourself like a feather-like, lithe ghost. Quiet, whereas Peter was bold, despite the fact that his anxious nature had rendered him a boyish thing all these years. This is why he’s surprised that you carry him easily with your supernatural strength. He forgets that you have the same abilities as him. If anything, he’d think you were stronger than him in every way.

Even with his thick skin, he melts into something malleable, comfortable. The solace of your arms makes him feel better already.

A pang of small guilt rots away within him, knowing the circumstances of your last meeting. You’re too good. He didn’t deserve to be saved by you, to be patched up with your nimble fingers like he had been treated when he was younger and more naive.

"I can make it to my place, it’s okay," he rasps gently.

You don’t have to say anything, because bullshit radiates through the stern expression of your eyes, your mouth in a grimace. You had always been stubborn and today isn’t an exception. With your webs, you crochet a path for him toward your home, lifting and catching the boy effortlessly as you swing.

A gentle sigh escapes his mouth when the two of you crawl into the safety of your fire escape. The night is quiet behind you. When he looks at you, you have to look away, fixing your hair nervously or occupying your gaze anywhere but in his direction. His eyes are poignant in their longing, though you’re unsure of what he could be thinking. If he’s sorry about before. If he’s ashamed.

Your wispy webs wrap around the parts of him that hurt, but you wince when you check on him to see that the white fibers are slowly saturated with the dark crimson of his open wounds.

"Peter, you have to wash up," you whisper. "Shit’s gonna get infected. I can put some gauze on you after you shower."

He nods wordlessly when you ask him if he can manage the shower on his own. He feels vulnerable, and although your presence is always desired by him, he finds relief in the hot steam of your shower, alone with his thoughts. He’s still shaken from the explosion. Not completely catatonic, but tense. As if he isn’t in his body at all.

When Peter emerges from the bathroom, he looks like a stranger. Scars adorn his sides. Your face crumples at the sight of his fresh wounds.

"C’mere."

It doesn’t take you long to fix him up, cleaning his cuts and wrapping gauze around his stomach and chest. His quiet grunts startle you, as if he's a wild animal. Eyes screwed shut, brows cinched in pain. A heavy exhale and a mumbled apology followed.

You forgive him with a soft touch and a hushed whisper. He wishes the ache would stop. He wishes he could lie on your bed and have you whisper in his ear all night until the sound of your voice lulls him to sleep.

There aren’t many words exchanged, and you want to ask him why. If you did something. But then you think about the images on the news and his withered face, and you decide not to probe the sphere of trauma surrounding him. Peter has probably gone through more in the last twelve hours than you have in a week.

You stop him before he tries to make it out of your bedroom door and towards the living room.

"I don’t mind sleeping on the couch, I’ve done it before."

"It’s like sleeping on a rock, Parker. You just gone through God knows what," you chide. "Just… get in here."

As he breathes in and out, he nestles in your shoulder, his clean hair tickling your bare skin. There’s a nasty guilt that lurches from your sternum. As if you were the reason for his pain. For the state of his body. And you think back to the desperate look in Peter’s eyes the night you took him home from the party. Were you too cruel, then?

It’s like he steals the words from your mouth. He beats you to it.

"I’m sorry," Peter murmurs. His amber eyes blink up at you, unfathomable. You flash him a downturned grin.

"For what?"

"I feel like… there’s been a distance between us lately. And I don’t want that, because you’re my best friend. And now you’re taking care of me when you don’t have to. I just wanted you to know that I really appreciate it. That I, um, lo–," he stammers. He chews on his bottom lip. "You’re really good."

"‘m not all that good, Peter."

But of course, you are, he protests in his head. You are the moon and the stars and everything in between.

"I’m sorry for not being around."

"Not just your fault," you shrug. "Phone works both ways."

He knows you better than you think because, within seconds, his palm rests softly on your cheek, where he feels a hot tear.

"What’s up, Spidey?" he asks you. It makes you laugh.

"Shut up." You shake your head, trying to hide your face. The feeling of his thumb rubbing your cheek makes the tears flow even more. "I wouldn’t know what I’d do if something bad happened to you. If I couldn’t get to you. Or if you – if you were gone."

"I’m okay, Rabbit. We’re okay."

"Yeah," you chuckle, trying to hide your tears.

"Couldn’t get rid of me if you tried."

You feel warmer in his grasp. His small breaths fall on your arm as his body curls up next to you. He’s bigger than he’d been before back when you were teenagers. The jaw is chiseled and sharp. Not as soft and boyish as you once knew. With your senses, you can discern the steadiness of his heartbeat as his chest rises and falls into slumber. You fall asleep soon after, dreamless but full of warmth.

____

Waking up next to him is nothing new, but it’s been years. You never thought anything of it when the two of you were sixteen, staying up all night reading creepypastas and watching movies until you’d fall asleep on top of each other by four in the morning.

After a night’s sleep, Peter's sullen face is a bit brighter despite his dark circles. His limbs are entangled in yours, bodies fused together. Yin and yang. You can only assume that this is how it will always be.

You keep mental notes of him like trinkets. The uneven slant in his left eyebrow. The faint freckles dotted along his nose, the one near the corner of his mouth. The faint shadow of hollowed-out cheeks. Peter is still half-boy to you, and half-man, but you didn’t want to come to terms with it. Maybe he was something else. Half-ghost. Half-angel.

Slowly, over the course of a few weeks, he comes back to you again. Sitting together and reading at a cafe. The occasional 3 am swing. Walking around high at the 7-11.

"Did you like Rhode Island?" he asks over a joint one night.

You hum for a second, trying to come up with an acceptable answer. It wasn’t that you hated being in Rhode Island. It was that you hated being away from him.

So instead, you shrug. "It was nice to get away from everything. Providence is still a city, but it isn't as large as all this–”

You trail off, making a vague gesture with your hands. Chaos, Peter presumes.

"Less overwhelming?"

"Sure," you say, nodding. "I missed being home, though."

I missed you.

Peter passes you the joint. His brain feels fuzzy. Warm. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He massages your ankle absentmindedly.

"I get it," he says, breaking the silence.

"You get what?"

"Wanting to leave. I've been thinking about it," Peter shrugs, his eyes squinting in the late afternoon sun. "Sometimes I wish we could pack our bags and go to the countryside. See some cows and shit."

We. We. We.

"There are cows upstate," you snort.

"You know what I mean."

"We can do a road trip."

"You can’t drive."

"I am aware and perfectly fine with being a passenger princess. In fact, I’m looking forward to it," you grin.

He yanks your ankle this time, causing you to slip from where you’re sitting on the pavement. Giggling, you swat away his hands, but he’s too quick, untying your shoelaces as you kick and thrash.

"Honestly, it’s probably better for society if you never get behind the wheel," Peter teases. He dodges you when you try to kick him in the shin.

"Oh, but you can be? You get so distracted so easily! Whenever you’d practice driving, you’d miss so many exits or be too anxious to merge on the highway."

"Okay, well, you’re just a force of distraction," he shrugs, throwing his hands up in defeat. "You have that effect on people."

You look at him quizzically, your eyes narrowing. If there’s anything behind his statement, he doesn’t show it on his face. Peter knows his cheeks are burning, however.

There are more moments like these. Ever since you’d rescued Peter that night, he’s grown accustomed to spending hours of his day idly looking for you, learning your class schedule, and following you home like a pet when it’s time to unwind. He stays for hours like he used to when you were kids, and although he always thinks he’s overstaying his welcome, you don’t seem affected.

You curl into him more these days, like a sunflower stretching toward the morning glow. There are more lingering touches, here and there. You have to remind yourself not to get too comfortable, but God, he makes it so easy.

So the burning question pops out during a marathon of Chainsaw Man.

"Does MJ care that we hang out so much?" you blurt out. He looks at you like you have three heads. Also, his mouth is full.

"Um, webrobrup," he mumbles. He frowns as he looks down. Hot Cheeto fingers.

You mock him, of course.

"English, yeah?"

He chuckles as he finishes scarfing it all down. He shyly licks his fingertips, and you have to stop yourself from staring at the way his fingers enter his mouth. Ugh, gross. This is hardly supposed to be hot.

"We broke up."

You keep a straight face. It’s not like you’re excited or anything. You realize you shouldn’t be surprised because… why else would he be so available to you lately?

"Shit. You really fumbled, then."

"Shut up," he laughs.

"Seriously. Who else is gonna wanna put up with you?" You both know the answer to that.

"It was mutual," he says, shrugging. "I’ve got all my Spider-man shit, she’s getting into a bunch of extracurriculars and even a research internship even though we’re literally first years."

"Classic MJ."

"Yeah."

"We’ll get you back on the market, buddy," you tease, patting his head like a dog. A coy smile lights up your features. It makes something inside him melt.

"I’m not a piece of meat."’

You click your tongue.

"Oh, right, you’re an insect."

"Hey, so are you!"

____

You used to think it was a kind of twin telepathy, the magnetism to Peter that you felt. Bitten by the same spider and entangled in the same web. You realize as you grow older that it’s more than a platonic bond. It feels like wanting to share the same skin.

Or maybe it’s the wine talking.

It’s not your job to keep Peter afloat at the party right now, but both of you remember too well how the last party went. He continually sips water in between gulps of whiskey like a paranoid freak, which you tease him about. Maybe it’s just the darkness of his eyes under this light, but his pupils look wide and dilated.

It’s almost March. You’d both endured a proper New York winter, which usually extends until April if you’re lucky, but global warming has other plans. It's warm enough for you to pair one of your favorite dresses with an oversized Carhartt jacket that used to belong to Peter before the bite bulked him up significantly. You fiddle with the black velvet wrapped around your body as you pretend to listen to banal conversations, leaning your head into Peter’s bicep.

You keep picking at loose threads obsessively. You think about your fingertips and their webs. You think that maybe you should take up crocheting to distract your hands from their restlessness.

Peter grabs your hand away from you, squeezing it slightly, not even looking at you. His flushed palm rests against yours. Gently rubbing your thumb between your finger divots

If you were a cat, Peter would imagine you purring right about now. He wants to take you into his lap, stroke your hair while the alcohol subsides in both of your systems. The thought of you on top of him causes his cock to twitch slightly. His rose-colored cheeks are from the whiskey, he reassures himself. An affirmation. He lets go of your hand.

He knows that this isn't the time or place for such thoughts, so he makes an effort to push the desires down. He knows they'll come up again when the whiskey leaves his veins, but at least he'll be of sober mind.

Christ, he feels like he's at a middle school dance. Especially when you run off with a spring in your step to socialize with some girls you recognize from school. The smell of your hair lingers next to him. It's sweet and slightly floral, a scent that makes him think of when you were kids.

His ears perk up like a dog's when you call his name, reaching out to him so that you can introduce your best friend. He has the right mind to be polite, even funny at times, but he knows he pales in comparison to your current charisma, which contrasts with your usual wallflower nature.

Peter likes watching you talk, and you like that he watches you so intently. When you know he's watching, it's easy to deadpan some drunken jokes and elaborate superfluous tall tales from your high school days. His eyes are bright, and his bottom lip is chewed in between his teeth.

Suddenly, he gets to be alone with you in the kitchen. Your scent permeates the air. He could drown in it.

“Rabbit," you whine petulantly. "Swing me home."

"How drunk are you?" he chuckles with adoration.

"Not very. Just tired, s'all," you respond with a yawn. You scrunch your nose. "Can I sleep at yours?"

Peter looks at you with a soft gaze. "Of course, angel."

Angel. He's never called you that before. You decide that you like the sound of it.

By the time midnight comes around, you're barefoot in his bedroom, black velvet spinning loosely around your figure. In Peter's blurred vision, you look like a friendly apparition, one that particularly favors "Champagne Coast" by Blood Orange.

"Come into my bedroom, come into my bedroom," you quietly sing along as you sway your hips.

"You're already in my room."

Your smile beams at him, huge and illuminating, and impossible to look away from. Peter wishes that he could bottle up this moment to revisit it, or maybe live in it for the rest of his life. The sweetest way to exist.

Your body sinks to his level -- no, collapses -- as you roll over his heavy frame and rest yourself on your back. Your hair fans out like you're underwater. Your lips are red and wine-colored, freshly bitten. When you turn your head toward Peter, his hand plays with the exposed nape of your neck, fingertips grazing the creases of your skin.

"You used to be so gangly, you know," you murmur. Your voice is lower than usual.

"Okay, well, I'm not anymore."

"I could totally still take you in a fight." Still refers to the times when the two of you would attempt something along the lines of combat training, if combat training was just you unleashing your hotheadedness with your mutant powers instead of with your fists. If you weren't so agile, maybe Peter would've had a chance of winning.

"I'd like to see you try, angel."

It's decided -- you are on top of him, knees bent around his waist as you wrestle. The fabric of your dress pools around your waist in a way that feels sacrilegious. Peter has his hand on your thighs, and his touch feels white-hot to both of you, so he closes his eyes, tries to focus on swatting you away like a bat instead. When he opens his eyes, he meets your devilish ones, gleeful that you've managed to pin his arms above his head.

It would take two inches to break this spell of separation. He keeps trying to keep this bubble intact because the last time he tried to pop it, the look on your face made him want to dig a hole and lay in it forever.

Peter feels sorry for many things. He feels sorry for the times he's intruded, when he's made Mr. Stark angry, for the times he couldn't be there for you. He feels sorry that you had to take care of him when he wanted to do that for you.

Right now, however, Peter doesn't feel sorry at all. The slight twitch of your pulse, the way you smell, the curve of your bare shoulders -- it's all too tempting for him to feel sorry for. So he kisses you.

He's surprised when you nearly bite him back. You inhale sharply, pressing your body against him as you let go of his wrists and rest your palms on his jaw instead. Your kiss is fervent, desperate.

His brow cinches in confusion when you pull away.

"Wha--"

"Fuck."

"What is it?" He frowns.

"I owe Ned twenty bucks."

"What?"

"I just remembered. At graduation, he was like, teasing me that we were gonna get together, and we bet on who would make the first move. I was just entertaining him, but you know how that kid gets about twenty dollars."

"So you thought you were going to make the first move, then?”

“I mean, yeah. How was I supposed to know that MJ was going to cuff you before I did?”

“You snooze, you lose, I guess,” he deadpans.

“You don’t even fucking deserve me, you little freak,” you taunt, tickling his exposed midriff.

“God, I know. I’ve known that for a while. Too bad I want you regardless.”

He smiles as he captures your lips again, tasting sweet and smoky at the same time. He coaxes you onto your back and you revel in his body heat and the way his large hands grab the plush of your thighs, pushing and pulling your skin taut. It’s so erotic that it almost feels dirty.

You kiss him back like he’s your last meal while you roam your hands under his shirt, then to his protruding collarbones, then experimentally, to the tufts of his chestnut hair. You pull a bit too hard due to your eagerness and he lets out a mewl that you never could’ve imagined to come out of him.

“You like that, don’t you?” you taunt darkly. “Is that why you always want me to scratch your head when we watch movies?”

“I don’t care what you do as long as you’re touching me,” he breathes out, like a confession. “Don’t care how you touch me, s’long as it’s you.”

A tepid blush soaks your face. You shut him up with another kiss. He licks at your bottom lip, groaning softly at the feeling of your soft body against his.

“You’re so pretty, Peter,” you whisper.

“You are.”

Before you can react, you hitch a breath in surprise when you find that his hands have fully reached above the hem of your dress and onto the bare skin of your hip, toying with the elastic of your underwear. You part your legs, bending your knees so that you can pull the fabric off.

He sighs as his fingers tease the slot of your cunt, which grows wetter and wetter with every touch. Your sensitivity makes you squirm a little. He can tell so easily that you’re falling apart for him. He loves it.

You nearly whine when he takes away his fingers from you. Instead, he towers over your body, pulling your legs toward him as he pulls up the hem of your velvet dress and cascades kisses on your knees. He slowly works his way up to your thighs, biting gently, then hard. Meanwhile, his hands roam the perimeter of your chest and your ribs, all soft and pliable for him. You’ll be delighted when you wake up to a bruise on your thigh stuck in the shape of Peter Parker’s mouth.

A shiver lacerates your lower body all the way up to your neck – you feel it, viscerally. All from his mouth. He slots his tongue onto the bud of your clit going slowly just to watch you squirm.

“Please,” you beg.

“Please what?” His eyes are as dark as the sky. As dark as your dress.

“Your– your mouth. I need it. Please. More.”

Peter’s grip on your thighs tightens as his face moves closer to your center, licking incessantly as you cry out. You attempt to muffle your sounds with your hand covering your mouth, biting the skin on your palm. Your blood is hot, pumping hard, all the way down to your swollen clit, and he treats you like a man starved.

“Oh my God,” you gasp. “More, please. Pleasepleaseplease.”

He listens to you, forcing his ring and middle finger into your cunt and curling upward. Your legs shake involuntarily when he does this and it takes everything in him to not stop just so he can see the look on your face head-on. You look so beautiful right now.

“Gonna cum, Pete. Fuck.”

He closes his eyes as he savors your sweet taste. He feels it when you cum as if it’s happening in his body, too. A jolt to the sense. A vivacious rumble. Your mouth is slack, jaw falling open with your eyes screwed shut as you finish, and Peter towers over you to watch. He’s never seen you like this. He wants to keep the image of it forever.

You thank him with a messy kiss, not caring about the remnants of your lipstick. Your hands attack him, teeth nipping at his earlobe as you help him undress. Soon enough, the two of you are naked together, limbs entangled and kissing without paying any mind to oxygen.

You take his jaw in your hand as if he’s a delicate thing. Easy to break. It’s your turn to tease, now.

“What do you wanna do?”

“You’re such a little shit,” he mumbles, but he can’t help but grin.

“Tell me about it, Spidey.”

“Want you, Rabbit, want to make you feel good.”

“And how exactly will you do that?”

“Gonna fuck you. I’ll make you cry if you keep being a little shit like this, too.”

There’s no time for a reaction. He’s on top of you, pinning you down, and he licks your collarbone up to your jaw as you whine like a newborn kitten. He spanks your ass and you have to your bottom lip to keep from being too loud.

“You want it that bad, huh?”

“Yeah,” you respond breathlessly. He melts at the sound of your voice, cooing softly as he playfully bites the skin of your cheek.

You love him like this, a burst of passionate energy focused on you and you only. His little angel. You remember your rabbit heart caged in your sternum fragile and thumping like an earthquake for him.

He pauses to give you another kiss, this time sweet as he licks up the bottom of your lip. You can feel him at the crux of your legs and you can feel the want pumping in your veins. Patience. Patience. Patience.

“You want me to go slow?”

“Of course not.”

You’re so relaxed in his grasp. Gooey with your desire that it might disgust you if you weren’t so enamored. You keep your eyes on him when he enters you – you want to see the look in his eyes.

Peter feels selfish wanting to tease you like this. He’s slow when he enters you, listening to your sweet exhales.

“Easy,” he warns. “‘m gonna take care of you, don’t worry."

Please floods your entire body like a heat stroke. You bend your knees upward and rake the smooth terrain of his back, lifting your hips up at the same time. He thrusts once, then twice, and already, he feels like he’s ready to unfurl completely.

“Fuck,” he groans. You’re so goddamn wet. Soft. Velvety.

“Don’t be shy, Peter,” you murmur. “C’mere.”

You keen into the way he buries his nose into your shoulder, shallow breaths uneven and erratic as he continues, losing control bit by bit as he goes on. His pleasure is the knife you twist inside yourself.

You gasp at the way he can carve you out, the way he knows exactly where to put his hands as he grasps for your body, like he’d molding you from clay. He drinks down your moans with his mouth, eyes fluttering at the impact of your cunt clenching him.

Peter props himself up now, moving his body backward so he’s perpendicular to your core. He holds you by your hips a little too hard, but you’d always liked it rough. You liked it when he would cuddle you or play with you or put his entire body weight on you. To smother was to be encased in something akin to love.

“Fuck,” he hisses, getting the hang of a constant rhythm. His hips slot with yours as his cock thrusts deeper into you, until he can feel the slight tremble of your thighs.

“You okay?” he asks, chest heaving.

“Yes, keep going. Keep going.”

You underestimate how fragile you are. A rough thrust almost has you there, until he pulls out of you like a stolen breath, and it leaves you whining.

“Pete.”

“Shh, I’m just trying to pace myself,” he breathes, jaw slack and glistening with sweat. “You feel too fucking good.”

“Come back or I’ll break your wrists.”

He chuckles, but you’re dead serious. You lift your body to him so you can pull his down, kissing him with a ragged hunger that’s all teeth and lust. He’s quick to match your vigor but with more tenderness than desperation. It makes you melt, how natural it is, how this is how it might’ve felt in a past life. Your bodies entwined in a way that’s proverbial.

He listens to you. Fucks you much rougher than before, giving in to what he wants, because he’s not sorry about how much he wants you. Your broken moans curl out of your throat and into his mouth and the feeling of him deep in you makes you feel like a balloon ready to burst from the pressure.

It’s like Peter reads your mind, because suddenly, his hand is around your throat. You’ve never looked more angelic to him than you do now, eyes half-lidded and your reddish mouth all lax.

“So fucking beautiful, I love you,” he mumbles against his mouth.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

All of Peter’s muscles are tense from holding back. Fuck, he doesn’t want to cum until you do.

Luckily, the way his cock stretches you out has you nearly drooling underneath him. He touches the deepest parts of your insides like he belongs there, like he was meant to be there, as if the way he turns his hips toward you is a vow in itself. You whimper at the feeling of it all and he nearly loses it.

“I’m so close,” you pants. Thank fucking God.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Cum for me,” he coos. “You’re doing so good. Fuck.”

Your gaze lingers on the shape of his mouth. You think about how his voice sounds when he calls you angel.

Your orgasm comes like a flower blooming, like a beam of light in the darkness. He feels it, too, so vividly like he shares your body. It feels strange how much he feels that he hasn’t felt before, and it makes him come undone right after you.

He pulls out of you and spills onto your stomach unceremoniously with something in between a grunt and a whimper. He’s all over you. You want to bury your body into his.

“Peter,” you whisper, your gaze languishing.

“Yes, angel?”

“I think I owe Ned fifty bucks now.”

He looks at you incredulously but you can’t keep the facade, bursting into laughter as he groans in annoyance and flops his body on top of yours.

“Ew, clean me up, at least,” you complain.

“Right,” he says, nodding. And he does, with a spare t-shirt from his floor absentmindedly while he shares a grin with you. “You serious, though?”

“Of course not,” you scoff. “Ned Leeds will never get anything over twenty bucks from me.”

He laughs and it sounds like heaven.

“You said you loved me,” you tell him.

“I do love you. I’ve always loved you.”

You could cry right now. Surely the influx of endorphins in your body is breaking the rest of your brain.

“I love you, too.”

You kiss him again, open-mouthed, teeth sucking slightly as his lips. He takes a fistful of your hair while his other hand caresses your jaw. It excites you when he breaks the kiss by pulling your hair. His cheeks dimple the slightest bit when he smiles at you.

“Don’t do that, you’re gonna get me hard again.”

“You have the stamina,” you shrug, hugging one of his oversized pillows to your chest.

“You’re cute.”

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“How come you call me angel now?”

Peter shrugs. He rubs his hands on your calves.

“You’re my guardian angel. Always have been. And you’re not allowed to complain about it being corny because it’s true.”

Peter is shy all of sudden as if he hadn’t just fucked you. His brown hair is tousled to bedhead perfection, messy and slightly frizzy, and the warmth of his skin radiates from the way his whole body seems to blush in front of you.

“I have a proposition.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Come on!” You nudge him, kicking him with your feet. You get off of his bed to rummage through his dresser drawers for an oversized t-shirt, just dodging his attempts to grab you by the waist.

“Okay. What is it?”

“We should use our webs next time.”

He blinks, smirking, indulging you for a second.

“Deal.”

tagging mutuals: @meliapis​ @cutetomholland​ @userholland​ @sparklingsin​ @tomdutch​ @userholland​ @vendettaparker​ @selfcarecap @simplykenni​ @uhlxis​ @cordiformity​ @sapphicsoie​ @seolaseoul​ @honeyspidey​ @logangarfield​ @justapurrcat​ @arachine​ @cocoamoonmalfoy​ @ohcaptains​ @aniqua

[fandomnerd9602]

Scarlet Delivery

a Scarlet Webs story

Wanda Maximoff x Spider-Man!Reader

Wanda was hyperventilating. Her cell phone was buzzing just waiting for you to pick it up.

“Hello?” You manage to answer.

“Detka, where are you?!” She managed to say in between her hyperventilating breaths.

“Currently…rush hour” you said sticking to the front of a police car. The perp was Mac Gargan. “You shouldn’t worry, baby. I’ll be there.”

“Promise?” Wanda said, tears streaming down her cheek.

“I promise.” A gunshot went off. You narrowly dodged a bullet, “gotta go. Hey! Can’t you see I was taking a phone call!?”

And with that you had to hang up and jump back into the fray. You hated having to do patrol without Wanda. But circumstances had changed the flow and now you were solo again. Nothing changes when you’re the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Meanwhile, Wanda’s tears were still flowing as a portal opened behind her. And out of the portal comes this universe’s Doctor Stephen Strange.

“It’s time,” he says gesturing for your lovey witch to follow. She does so, all the while hoping that you’d keep your promise.

You land on the hood of Mac Gargan’s stolen vehicle. “License and registration, sir?”

Blam! Another shot goes off, you jump onto the roof of the car. A couple more shots ring out. You dodge each bullet flawlessly.

“Can we wrap this up?” You mockingly whine, “I have prior engagements!”

You web up Mac and yank him out the car, webbing him to a nearby streetlight. The car barrels towards a nearby crosswalk where a little old lady with a Walker is currently trying to cross.

“Of all the times!” You jump onto the hood and spray it with various webs before jumping onto the back and yanking the car back with all your might, bringing the car to a dead halt mere inches from the elderly lady.

You give a quick salute and swing off. You knew the location. You knew where Wanda was gonna be. It was all a piece of cake right?

Well then came the Vulture. He tries to slice at you once, twice. “Not now Toomes! I have some place to be.”

“Yes. The morgue!” He tries slicing at you again. You swing thru Times Square and web the winged foe in a giant spider web.

“Yo! Spidey!” A citizen calls out to you.

“Yeah?”

“Where’s your lady? The Witch?”

“I’m trying to get to her now!” You call out before swinging off again into the city. Why did it have to be on the other end of New York?

You land on a rooftop. You quickly web a couple silk lines to your suit, forming a makeshift pair of wings.

“I’m coming Wanda,” you shoot out two web lines and slingshot yourself across the city. Catching a wind current, you sail thru the open air of the city.

You see your destination: the Sanctum Sanctorum. You dive bomb and land right in front of the building. Wong quickly answers the door.

“How far?” You ask.

“You made it just in time.” He smiles and leads the way. You nearly run the way to the little room.

You run in to find Wanda in a relaxed position, still hyperventilating. Nine months pregnant and she still looked beautiful as ever. Dr Strange was readying his medical scrubs.

“Detka!” Wanda exclaims, tears of joy streaming down her face. You run up to her, kissing her gently.

“I promised I’d be here, right?” You ask with a little smirk. Wanda giggles and kisses you again.

“Okay Wanda,” Strange intones, “it’s time. Now push.”

“Sure you got this, Doc?” You ask.

“It’s not surgery. I’m just catching the babies. I won’t drop them.”

“Drop them and I will kill you” Wanda say through gritted teeth.

“I believe you” Strange answers back. “Now focus and push.”

It ended up taking the rest of the day and into the night but Wanda delivered two healthy baby boys. You and her were so excited.

“My boys,” Wanda said with fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “Billy. Tommy.”

“They’re amazing,” you kiss the top of Wanda’s head, “thank you baby.”

“Thank you. I love them so much already,” Wanda let out a little tired laugh. She actually had her boys in her arms. This wasn’t some conjured up version of them. This wasn’t some other universe’s version of them. This was them, flesh and blood. She had a loving spouse, two handsome little babies, a nice little home in Queens.

Wanda finally had the life she always wanted. And best yet, she got to have it with you, her Spider Monkey.

Tags: @tokufighter @ma1egamer @jacelion @lifespectator @aloneodi @holiday-house-of-m @family-house-of-m @multi-fandom-enjoyer @iamnicodemus @rroyale-109 @scarletquake-n7 @moonpheus

[vagabond-umlaut]

⁙ ensnared

No matter what the world says, no matter what the world believes in, Gojo is nothing but a puny fly to the wily spider that you are. Flying headfirst into the gossamer web your skilled fingers have spun, time after time after time— The silk threads, perfectly tailored. Just for him.

▸ Gojo x Wife!Reader; Tooth-Rotting Domestic Fluff; Very Very Suggestive Themes; Nudity; Mentions of Food & A Plant Dying; Gojo calls his wife 'cookie'; Everything is fair in love and war ;) [This Fic's Rated Mature -> MDNI!!! ^_^]

▸ This is for you, Dilay! *MWAH MWAH MWAH* @roseqzpd

For all that is said about him, Gojo is a man who succumbs to only two temptations.

One:

Sweet dishes, regular intake of which will put anyone into a hyperglycemic crisis. [Good thing, he isn't just 'anyone'.]

And the other one:

You. His wife. His sweet, sweet, sweetest wife, who's currently peering up at him from his lap, wrapped in nothing except a way too tiny bath towel— however– he instructs himself the nth time since you emerged from the bathroom– you are a temptation he refuses to cave in to... just for now.

Strangely cognizant of his mind [like you are, more often than not], Gojo watches you intently stare at his lips for a full two seconds. Then repeat the request you made less than thrice today, but your husband already feels his defenses crumbling.

"'Toruuu," you whine, wrapping your arms round his neck and pressing closer, "Won't you help your wife choose a pretty outfit for today's get-together? I'm so confused... You want your wife to look the best among all the ladies there– tell me, don't you?"

"'Course, I do, cookie!" he exclaims, indignant as to how you could ever think anything otherwise— before a sudden ping! from his laptop sends him careening to the ground like a deflated balloon.

The poor man sighs. "But there's still so much work left to be done–"

"– which you can always complete once you've helped me, 'Toru," you cut him off with a pout, that slowly gathers a playful tinge as you ask, "Why are you behaving like this, though? Usually, you jump at the faintest chance to get out of paperwork. But now..."

Eyes growing comically wide, your voice sinks to a conspiratorial whisper. So worried, so cute. "Did anyone threaten to leak where your secret sweets stash is, 'Toru? If you– you know– submit these reports too late like always, eh?"

The only response your husband manages to eke out for your query is a very strained chuckle... 'cause, yeah, that's right.

Nanami promised to do exactly that– telling his very dear but having-black holes-for-stomachs students where his foreign sweets are stored– besides telling you how the white-haired man hogged ten chocolates one day despite his allowed daily two– and how your favourite star cactus didn't die from age but from him overwatering it, that week you were on a mission in France two months back– should he submit anything late ever again... But, no, wait.

You were on a foreign trip when he was given this ultimatum, and returned only last night. And Nanami promised to not tell you these yet– at least, not any time before that damned deadline's over. So, how...

"'Toruuu," Your petulant self, very adorably so, draws him away from his musings. And Gojo swears, if he wasn't losing before, he certainly is now. Your watery eyes, lower lip jutted out just the right amount and your nails leaving a delicious trail on his undercut— they've always been too strong for the world's strongest sorcerer.

Groaning, he leans forward to rest his forehead on yours. And darts his eyes to bore into yours lest they travel to your soft skin peek– NO, DON'T GO THERE. NOT NOW. PLEASE.

He huffs. "Okay, fine."

You open your mouth, probably to screech in delight, but your husband shushes you with a finger to your lips. He continues, shifting his tone to a graver timbre, "But only to help you choose your outfit– nothing else."

Lips curving into a wide smile behind his finger, your eyes gleam in terribly concealed delight. He has to actively stop himself from kissing you right then and there— there are still three mission reports left to be filed.

"And if I catch you trying to change the stream to anything else," he warns. You nestle closer into him, blinking your gorgeous eyes up at him in silent wait. A chuckle [which sounds more embarrasingly choked than anything] leaves him.

Features shifting into something brighter than a supernova, you push his finger away. And giggling, say, "You won't go easy on me— right, 'Toru?"

[In hindsight, though, Gojo thinks he should have recognised this plan to be yours.

From the way you step out the bathroom, not in your usual bathrobe but a towel... To the way you beg him to help decide your dress, in spite of knowing well how he leans towards only white or light blue choices... To the way your towel– pretty conveniently and accidentally, of course– slips lower not even ten minutes into the task...

To the soft 'Oops!' you exhale but make no move to cover your exposed chest, a mute thrill clear in the curve on your lips as you watch him watch, drink in, mentally devour the delectable sight before— your ever-present coyness nowhere to be found even as he strips you, nothing hiding you anymore from his starving gaze...

To the smug smile you're offering him now, the next day, after he's been thoroughly chewed out by Yaga for submitting his work a whopping four hours late...

Your wicked, brilliant, bewitching eyes go from him, to the mountain of empty candy wrappers on the centre table, to the empty pot of soil on the windowsill– the one that had your annoying, attention-hogging desert plant– then return to him.

A shudder runs down his spine— which doesn't take long to transform into a shiver of excitement. And a very, very warm burst of fondness right in the middle of his chest.

The man shakes his head with a laugh, 'cause—

For all that is said about him, Gojo is a man who succumbs to only two temptations.

And he'll be a fool, if he is to mess with the second– and more important of the two–

You.

His sweet, sweet, sweeter than the sweetest sweet dish, but startlingly sharp wife.]

[Also, no joke, but isn't your 'Toru insanely in love with you, even more for that?]

Gojo, some time later: My cookie is sooo smart– did ya know that, Nanamin? Hehe. Nanami: Why TF do you always hide in my office every time your wife is mad at you?

▸ Divider by @hitobaby. Header from Pinterest. I don't own the characters used here.

▸ masterlist

[maddieautobot273]

Silk & Cologne (3)

A Miguel O’Hara x OC series - AO3 link (X)

Chapter 3 - Introductions - Previous Chapter (X)

Pairing: Miguel O’Hara x Female OC

Words: 2.4K+ words

Rating: PG - For slowburn fluff, made up spider-medical jumbo and depictions of body shaking/reactions. 

Summary: Miguel brings Lisa back to the Spider-Society to receive medical attention. 

//////

Miguel and Peter B. decided to split up. Peter B. would take the unconscious guards back to their dimension to stop them from glitching and causing a rift in the canon event and their dimension from potentially collapsing, while Miguel escorted the bitten woman back to HQ. 

Miguel carried the woman in his arms as he rushed through the portal, informing Lyla to have Spider-Doctor prepare the sick bay for his arrival. He could hear her pain, mumbling in her sleep. It appeared she was still experiencing the side effects of the transformation. Her head rolled around her shoulders to lean against his bicep, the touch causing Migel to look down at her briefly as he breezed through the Going Home facility, not even glancing at Spider-Byte as she yelled out, “What happened?!” 

Miguel’s expression remained stoic and serious as he kept running down the hall, passed the multitude of Spider-Persons who looked on with a mixture of confusion and concern and there were some who gladly stepped out of his way so he could continue on with no issue. Although he couldn’t help it, there was a hint of sympathy in his eyes. Of all the dimensions in the multiverse, nothing was supposed to happen in Earth-1218. Nothing of this magnitude, and now an innocent civilian was bitten and he blamed himself for it. 

He’d to make it right. By any means. Like he always did. 

He ran through the automatic doors of the medical bay, his mask destabilizing as he caught his breath, looking around frantically. “Doc?” 

“Over here, Miguel!” A Spider-Man wearing a lab coat and stethoscope around his neck waved him over towards a free bed. 

Miguel jogged over, setting the woman down gently as the Doctor attached some IV’s to her and dabbed a wet washcloth on her forehead to clean the sweat off her. 

“How long has she been like this?” The Doctor asked. 

“Almost two hours, I believe,” Miguel nodded slowly as he ran the numbers in his head, reliving the events over and over to make sure he was accurate. 

“Doesn’t like a female Parker,” Spider-Doc commented as he checked for swelling or bruising along her skin. “What dimension is she from?”  

“Earth-1218,” Miguel hissed with a ping of disappointment in his voice. 

“What?!” The Doc’s eyes widened through the mask. “But I thought with their dimensions physics and laws..?”

“It’s not supposed to happen, to never happen in fact, tienes razón,” Miguel sighed with his hands on his hips. “But it did. A Spider from another dimension escaped into that one,” - You’re right. 

“Do you still have it?” Doc asked with a sense of eagerness. “We could analyze it. We don’t know how the venom will react with her body from a dimension so pure,” 

Miguel reached into his suit, pulling out the small case with the dead spider in it as he handed it to the doctor. “Their Oscorp scientist mentioned that extracting the venom could kill her if she loses too much blood. I don’t want to imagine what will happen if it stays inside her and reacts horribly,” 

“My fluids will help her body fight any infection, but I think I can formulate a blood transfusion with her blood and the spider to create an antidote to stabilize her. She’ll have the venom, but it won’t kill her,” he explained as the eyes of his mask came to life, scanning and analyzing the spider. 

“Do whatever you need to do. I’m not having anyone die on me,” Miguel commanded with a firm point to the woman. 

“I’ll get started right away!” Spider-Doc carefully extracted a drop of blood from the woman’s arm, carrying the blood sample and the spider to his work station. 

As he worked, Miguel looked down towards the woman, watching her as she groaned, through the pain. He had no idea if she was even coherent enough to know what was happening around her.

He took a quick glance of her form and noticed her hand began to twitch. Sparks flew as her fingers and skin morphed into different shapes and colours as she hissed violently from the pain before returning to normal. She was glitching. 

“Someone get me a day pass, now!” He barked an order. 

One of the nurses ran over, grabbing one from a bin and handing it to him. He snatched it with his fingers before slipping it on the woman’s wrists, snapping it tightly on. The glitching immediately seized as the woman breathed heavily. Miguel began to pull his hands away, but almost instinctively, the woman’s fingers latched on to him for dear life. 

“What’s— happening?” She panted through the pain, struggling to open her eyes. 

Miguel saw something flash before his eyes and his first immediate thought was to yank his hand away out of fear, snarling. But hearing the pain in her voice. . . She was scared. He had to remind himself that it wasn’t her fault. 

“Just. . . Hang on. Just a little longer,” he breathed as he tried to relax himself. He pulled one hand away from her arm, but allowed his fingers to stay intertwined with the other. 

Maybe it was the sympathy talking, witnessing an innocent woman go through such pain.  But he didn’t pull away. He couldn’t. 

“Miguel!” Peter B. came running into the medbay, jogging towards him. “We got another problem with the mission,” 

“What kind of problem?” Miguel’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. 

“Those guards we took down? They never glitched when they were in Earth-1218,” Peter stated as he pulled out a chunk of worn out day passes from his pockets. “They were wearing these,” 

“Day passes?” Miguel gawked at the sight as he tried to control his anger. His breath hissing as his hand squeezed the woman’s fingers, but not too tightly. “How did they get those?” 

“I don’t know,” Peter B. shook his head. “I think. . . There’s a mole in the Society. I’ve asked Byte to look into it,” 

“A spy? Someone is foolish enough to pull something like this from under me?” Miguel growled as he could sense his anger building, and only then did he remove his hand from the girl’s fingers before clutching them into a fist. 

“Hey, hey, hey, easy! It’s just a theory,” Peter B waved his hands frantically. “Someone could have accidentally taken more than one and dropped them?”

“Considering the security protocols I put in place, I find that very hard to believe, Peter,” Miguel snarled, cursing under his breath. “Is this another one of Hobie’s stupid pranks?”

He tried to keep his voice down out of respect for Spider-Doc who was hard at work on the antidote, and the woman who was slumbering on the bed next to him. 

“Whoa, okay, switching the ketchup vendors with hot sauce, maybe, but slipping day passes to villains in other dimensions is straight up evil, Miguel, come on,” Peter B. shook his head tiredly. While he understood why Miguel would accuse him, Hobie did like causing trouble once in a while but never to that extreme. “He’d never do that,”

“I hope you’re right,” Miguel responded with a seething breath out of his nose. “Have Margo inform me as soon as she hears something,”

Peter B. nodded at his boss before he looked down at the woman. He saw the bandage on her hand where the spider bite came from as he listened to her pained mumbling. “Yeah, I’m definitely glad I didn’t bring MayDay over today,” 

“I got it!” Spider-Doc came running back, holding a vial of a colourful liquid. “I got the antidote!”

“You were quick,” Miguel commented with an impressed raised of his brow. 

“I am when it comes to potentially saving the lives of my patients,” He proclaimed. “Now this could get a little messy. Miguel, hold her down on your side, Peter, on the other, and gently please,”

The two Spider-Men did as they were told, each taking a gentle hold of the girl's shoulder and arms as the Doctor poured the antidote into her I pouch. They all watched with bated breath as the liquid seeped its way down the tube and into the woman’s body. 

“She’ll have a slight reaction, but this will help stabilize the venom,” The Doc explained as he brought out a monitor for her vitals. 

Miguel and Peter B. watched her closely before suddenly her body started to shake. Her fingers curled into fists as the sensors started beeping and while in her sleep, it was as if she were trying to physically fight the antidote as Miguel and Peter B. kept her pressed down on the bed. 

“This is slight?!” Peter B.’s voice strained as he tightened his grip ever so slightly. 

“Now’s not the time for jokes,” Miguel growled as the hand that was on her arm carefully moved to her waist as he pressed down on it gently. He watched the way her mouth twitched, wanting to speak, scream, do something. “No luches contra eso. Abrázalo,” - Don’t fight it. Embrace it.

He glanced up at the monitor as one side displayed a visual projection of the antidote coursing through her bloodstream, while the other showed her vitals as they slowly went back into the green. 

“It’s working! She’s stabilizing!” Spider-Doc gasped. 

////////

I felt like I was trapped in some sort of weird nightmare. I was running, and then I fell through the floor and into what I assumed was water, but it tasted awful, almost like poison. I could feel myself sinking deeper and deeper. I tried to swim back up to the surface but it was like I wasn’t making any progress. I was just stuck. 

Am I dying? Is this how it ends?

“No luches contra eso,” 

I stopped when I heard the voice. It was slightly muffled, but. . . I knew that voice. It sounded like it was one of the Spider-Men that saved me. 

“¡Abrázalo!” The voice spoke up more clearly again. 

It really was him! I remembered seeing his face before I passed out. His strong posture, chiseled cheekbones and jawline, his hair and those eyes. . . 

“Wake up,” 

I stopped trying to swim. My brain and body embraced it all, and I quickly realized it really was a dream. That I wasn’t drowning. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes. Slowly, it was like the liquid drained and I stood on solid ground once again and as I slowly opened my eyes, I was met with a blinding light. 

/////////

I opened my eyes to find myself in a hospital bed. I blinked a few times to adjust my eyes to the harsh lighting, but everything was coming out so blurry. I could see there were people around me, but I could hardly see them. 

“What— what’s going on?” I slowly reached my hands up to my face, taking my glasses off and my vision cleared. 

Standing before me were Spider-Man, the navy blue Spider-Man who I realized was more bulky and taller looking than the original, and then there was another classic Spider-Man except he wore a doctor’s uniform. 

“Ha, ha, you’re awake!” The Spider-Doc quickly switched places with Spider-Man as he brought out a flashlight pen, carefully flashing it in my eyes. “How are you feeling?”

“Um. . . kinda weird, but, okay, I think?” I mumbled softly as I was adjusting to everything I was clearly seeing around me as the doctor pulled away. 

I glanced down at my glasses, completely dumbfounded. I had to wear them for years but now it’s as if I can see perfectly without them. 

I heard a quiet laugh as I looked over towards the classic Spider-Man as he removed his mask, revealing a white skinned male with short brown hair, a faint stubble beard and green eyes. “The glasses thing got me too,” 

I stared at him briefly, my mind still coming to terms if that was actually who I was seeing and speaking to. “Peter. . . Parker?”

“Peter B. Parker, ma’am,” He introduced himself with a wave. 

I looked up towards the Spider-Doc and our eyes met briefly. “Also, Peter Parker?” I asked slowly. 

He nodded gently before typing away at a console to log his results. I then slowly turned and came face to face with the other Spider-Man that saved me. He looked completely different than the others. Different person, different suit. “Not Peter Parker?”

A small scoff groaned from his lips, but there was a very faint smile on his face. As if he were relieved. “Not Peter Parker,”

“Who are you?” I asked him softly. 

“I am Miguel O’hara,” Miguel introduced himself with a polite nod, “Spider-Man 2099,”

“2099? Like in the future? Are we in the future?” I asked him, my eyes widening at the notion. 

“We’re in my dimension's future,” Miguel clarified. “Your name is–?”

“Lisa. . .” I spoke slowly. “Lisa Kendrick,”

“Well then, Miss Lisa, welcome to Earth 928, Miguel’s dimension,” Peter smiled. 

“Wait,” I exchanged looks between the two. “You’re saying. . . we’re not still in New York?”

“Not your New York of Earth-1218, unfortunately,” Miguel answered. 

“So, I’m really in another dimension? This is all real?” I asked, my breathing slowly turning into panting. 

“As real as it can get. Don’t know how else to explain it,” Peter B. nodded. 

I exchanged one more look between the two before I stared back down at my glasses, clutching them tightly. 

“I know, this must be a lot to process and take in,” Miguel started as he leaned into his chair, his arms resting against his thighs. “But if you’ll allow me, I can explain everything in more detail when you’re cleared by our doctor–” 

A loud gurgle from my stomach stopped Miguel from speaking any further as his eyes instantly went to my face to see my expression had morph, and my skin began to turn green. 

“Oh, I know that look,” Spider-Doc strained as he reached for something. “Bucket!!”

He grabbed a bucket and handed it over to me, trading my glasses for it as I hunched over, putting my head into it as I barfed inside. The noise I made was loud and grotesque as both Miguel and Peter B. Parker recoiled back. 

“We got a barfer, I’ll get another washcloth,” Peter B. stood up as he scampered across the room to the supply shelf. 

I breathed in and out heavily as my cheeks burned from the embarrassment of what I just did in front of them, and when I gaze found Miguel’s again, realizing he didn’t leave with Peter and continued to watch me, my blush turned darker as I suddenly felt the urge to hide my face in the bucket. 

//////

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[comicwaren]

This week on Marvel Comics (26th July 2023):

Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 6 #030

Avengers Vol. 9 #003

Cosmic Ghost Rider Vol. 2 #005 (Finale)

Cult of Carnage: Misery #003

Daredevil & Echo #003

Deadpool Vol. 9 #009

Ghost Rider Vol. 10 #016

Hallows' Eve #005 (Finale)

Hellcat Vol. 2 #005 (Finale)

I Am Iron Man #005 (Finale)

Incredible Hulk Vol. 4 #002

Invincible Iron Man Vol. 5 #008

She-Hulk Vol. 4 #015 (Finale)

Silk Vol. 5 #003

Spider-Man: India Vol. 2 #002

Star Wars: Darth Vader - Black, White & Red #004 (Finale)

Ultimate Invasion #002

Venom Vol. 5 #023

Wolverine Vol. 7 #035

X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 #001 (One-shot)