Archive of Our Own

After Spider-Man recovers, Michelle realizes she lied to him.

She does remember.

Bits, at least. She has a dream the night the news announces he’s in critical condition, the wind whipping her hair against her face, right at sunset. Her hands feeling the plated scales of his suit. She doesn’t remember the kiss but she feels every second building up to it. The cut on his chin. The sticky mint-taste of him.

Then his hand on her throat.

She wakes, clutching her necklace so hard it leaves little cuts on her palm.

#

It’s a shit economy. Her parents don’t mind sending her money, but she hates asking. Hates the fact that every company that offers her a job—even if it’s in a “good” department where she’s working on making planes more efficient, more sustainable—is still making bombs on the side. She liked her bio labs. Misses it sometimes. Still also a terrible industry: pharmaceutical companies have been poisoning the country for decades. But a little better. A little easier to close her eyes and pretend she’s doing something for the world.

What is uncomplicated, though, is Spider-Man. She’s been fucking obsessed with him. She’s never told Ned about this, because it sounds stupid, childish, impossible: a hero isn’t actually good, and the way they are, the heroes are just another part of the government, another cop with a hidden badge. Spider-Man’s different, though. Friendly neighborhood good old Spider-Man. Even when people bring up the fact that he worked with the Avengers, that he was a part of the wars, there was always something stuck in her gut, some unknown faith that he was different, he was better, he was actually helping people.

Ha.

She remembered him for years, bits and pieces so vague she was sure she’d dreamed them up and committed them to memory the way she thought she was the Evil Queen from Snow White when she was six. But how could she have known how scared she’d be, swinging along with him? She knew what zero-G drops felt like (complimentary of a defense company trying to woo its group of MIT grads with a anti-gravity flight), how her stomach felt on a roller coaster, but never the drag and catch of webs rappelling them in mid-air. She’d spent so long convinced she had some dormant psychopathic tendencies. Instead, she’d just had a shitty ex who’d rather let her live without five years of memories.

Is he, though? A shitty ex. She’s had them before. Real shitty exes. A side effect of going to every party, alcohol leeching from her pores in the middle of lecture, her gut roiling, her head aching until she drank another shot, another shot, another. Kissing guys until the feeling went away, that she’s missing something. She never used to be scatter-brained until she went to college, and her mother said it happened to everyone, but she never had trouble keeping track of her own things. It was just—

Every time she walked into a room, her heart skipped. She started sweating. Frantic. Real fear. I’ve forgotten something important.

#

For a long time, she doesn’t see him. She has Ned’s tracking app downloaded because she was one of the first beta testers, and until she had met Spider-Man, she’d liked hearing the occasional ping, but now it makes her furious. That inane little jingle. Here comes the spider man.

One day, in the middle of a coffee shop, it goes off—so do several other patrons’—and people shove against the windows, hooting and waving, hey, hi Spider-Man, we love you! We love you! We love you!

She feels disgusted. It’s not until she sees the confused barista that she realizes she’s been baring her teeth.

Webs flutter on the streetlights when she walks out, her coffee sour and over-bitter. She mouths the words: we love you, Spider-Man. Her lips can’t quite form the words. She’s never said she loved any of her boyfriends. Probably why they never liked her. I love you, Spider-Man. It tastes right, like her body’s finally agreeing with her, some twisted eureka moment.

The name on the cup says Michelle. She’s been going by it since college, when her adviser said it wasn’t professional to use a nickname on her resumé, and that’s what her boyfriend calls her, because they’re adults now. She can’t let it go, the way Spider-Man said her name. MJ. Like she was coming home. She’s drawn to him, a leashed dog salivating at the bell. And there it goes again: dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-duuun! Here comes the Spider-Man.

He’s swinging back, probably having saved whoever needed to be saved, locked away whichever gangster of the week he’s fighting. He’s so high up he’d probably never hear her. But she looks down at her coffee cup and cocks her head, judging the distance between them. She used to play softball in middle school. Still has a good throwing arm.

He jerks when the cup hits him, smoothly shooting out another web to pivot back, his free arm raised to attack. Then he sees her and his goggles blow wide, like he’s just been slapped. Instead of shooting another web mid-swing, he cuts his line and lands at the end of the block, rushing to her. He’s calling for her. MJ!

His mouth, on hers. His smile, his crooked-straight teeth. The smell of him. She’s been dreaming about it for days.

She turns and walks away, knowing she’ll be lost in the crowd. 

#

It’s hard being mad at your city’s hero. Especially such a damn good one. He kisses babies! He saves dogs! He lied to her for almost five years! What an incredible guy.

Her boyfriend keeps asking why she’s been so angry the past month. Offers his dispensary card—like, seriously, just chill out—and tuts at her when she refuses, no thanks, she doesn’t want to lose her control. Not again. Though she knows that whoever it was is gone now, thanks to her visit to Spider-Man’s hospital room, she can’t shake the fear. Something’s out there. Her skin crawls with it.

She hasn’t told him about her possession or the fights, and he hasn’t asked where she was that night, because he knows she won’t say. They’re good like that.

Adrian has been the longest-lasting of her boyfriends. A full eight months. His mother is a surgeon, his father a lawyer. They like her, but she’s heard them hissing to Adrian when she’s in the kitchen that she’s too aimless for him. He’s taking a gap year before medical school. He has goals. She’s too sharp, too angry, too lost. Not good for him. The entire time, Adrian has been on the defense. And now she knows why every time she looks at his face it pings wrong in her mind, that no matter what she always feels like she’s faking her laughter a bit.

She can’t think of a single reason any more to be with Adrian. Does that make her a bad person? Probably. There was some reason she’d made up to stay, and now she’s lost it.

She was lying to Spider-Man the other day. She doesn’t love him. She’s furious. He’s stolen from her. Made her question every dream she’s ever had—were they hers or the spell?—made her sick, made her want to run back to old habits. Made her want to drink and kiss irresponsible men. Though, now if she’s thinking about it, he’s pretty responsible. The most responsible man in the city, by a lot of people’s standards. Not hers anymore. She’s just mad.

Since the moment she started college, she’s had this insane tug towards Stark Industries. It should have repulsed her: government defense contractor with blood all over its shiny logo. And yet. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. She needed to work at Stark, needed to be there, needed something from the last baby of Iron-Man. Something had been hidden there for her. It was why she switched her major, the reason she had spent every waking minute focused on wing foil design, torsion, metal strengths, speaking the part and acting the part until she got the coveted Stark internship in her senior year. When she got the email she’d read it out loud: Stark internship, feeling the odd urge to snicker. There he goes again for his internship.

It’s been him all along.

“Michelle?”

She blinks back to focus. Adrian’s said something. So difficult to listen, to focus on what he says, because none of it seems as important as the fact that she’s been asleep for the past five years, and only now just woke up. She can’t talk about the grief, because nobody else knows. Nobody else can know. It’s just her, and Spider-Man.

“What?”

“Dinner. With my parents. Friday?” Adrian over-elocutes his words when he’s angry at her. Which seems to be now, apparently. She keeps from sighing, mentally running a tally of the last time they’d been on a date, which was two weeks ago. She usually has a line on her to-do list for this. She’s been missing things, that scatter-brained curse finally catching up to her. She’s remembered what she’s forgotten all this while. The cost of which is everything else.

“Yeah. That sounds good.” Her head pounds. “Good night.”

She ends the call before he has the chance to say, I love you.

#

The stairs creak as she moves upwards, chasing air, the sunlight. When she surfaces, gripping the cold doorknob, she sees him. The door slams shut. He startles upwards, braced as ever for an enemy, an attack. She wants to laugh, but it’s honestly sad. She can’t blame him.

“MJ,” he says, a sigh, relieved, and she’s mad again, seeing red. He doesn’t get the right to be relieved. He doesn’t get to be happy about her. “Hey.”

“What are you doing on my roof?” She narrows her eyes.

“I was, uh…” He’s sheepish. Bad liar. How does she know that?

She remembers all the Spidey-tracker pings she’s gotten the past month. He’s been here all along. “Are you seriously stalking me?”

“No! No, I—I was just. Resting.”

“How long have you been here?”

His shoulders slump. “A while.”

God damn it. Something thrills within her. Spider-Man likes her! He loves her, actually, if her memory is to be trusted. Which, it isn’t. But still. The novelty still hasn’t worn off, and neither has the knowledge that there’s been someone around her that knows who she is, who’s liked her anyway, regardless of whether she’s fitting their expectations. He probably knows about her dad. Oh, god. She shivers. None of her boyfriends have been given information about her home life. But he knows, doesn’t he?

“I have a boyfriend,” she says, instead of why can’t you let me go, or why did you never tell me, or selfish, lying bastard. She thinks it gets the sentiment across.

“Yeah, I know. I wasn’t—I wasn’t here for that.”

She cocks her head. “Then what are you here for?”

He’s smiling under the mask. There’s a shift in the fabric, a slight stretch at his chin. “I don’t know yet. But I was hoping to talk to you. That was you, the other day, right? With the coffee?”

She doesn’t know why he’s asking. He knows.

“That’s really unsafe, you know. You can’t just throw things at me. I could’ve hurt you.”

She snorts. “Like you haven’t already.”

Ooh, ouch, low blow. Smile’s gone. “MJ, I—”

“Yeah, yeah, you were trying to protect me. But that wasn’t your choice to make,” she snarls, and there are embarrassing tears starting to sting her eyes. She’s always been an angry crier. “And you didn’t have to tell me you were Spider-Man. We couldn’t even stay friends? I don’t even get that privilege?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“But you did. You took something from me. And I can’t get that time back. Nothing you do is going to give me the degree I wanted, the life I could’ve had—I spent all my time grieving you and you didn’t even let me remember that!”

He’s stunned, she thinks. Has she ever yelled at him before like this?

“And can you take that stupid fucking mask off, please?”

“You know I can’t.”

She marches to him, so angry she can’t breathe, wanting to shout at him, scream at the top of her lungs, and she finds herself gripping his chin, the tiny armor plates buckling under her grip.

“MJ,” he says. “Please, can you—”

“Shut up.”

And then it’s off, his hair sweat-damp and curled and his breath a little stale, likely from dehydration because this stupid boy was so self-sacrificing he wouldn’t spend a second to drink a sip of water. And she kisses him.

He hesitates, because now he’s afraid this isn’t her, she’s something else again. She wants to kick him. Damn it, she’s trying, and he can’t even meet her in the middle.

“It’s me, you idiot,” she hisses against his mouth. When he doesn’t respond, she steps back, flushed, furious. She opens her mouth—fine, that’s it, get out of my life—and he surges forward, his hands on her neck, her waist, her hair, pressing her against the brick wall, and finally—finally—kissing her. He’s melting into her, the big scary Spider-Man turned into putty, his muscles soft flesh instead of a weapon. He kisses her like he wants to eat her, his hand tilting her head so he can lick into her mouth, then his teeth are on her neck, dragging up to the tender spot under her ear and she shudders, arching against him. Of course he knows where she’s sensitive.

Her blood runs cold. He knows her.

“Wait—no, no,” she says, and he’s off her in an instant. Scared again. She can see he’s steeling himself, armor coming up even without the mask. She wants to scream at him. Stop leaving. How many times does she have to say it?

“I’m sorry,” he rushes to say. “Did I hurt you?”

“You and I…” She swallows. “Did we have sex? Before?”

He hesitates. “Once,” he finally says. A punch to the stomach.

She thinks she gasps, or yells, maybe, but she can’t hear anything any more. She closes her eyes. Oh god.

“MJ, did I—” He reaches out to her.

“Can you go, please?” Her eyes feel too wet. “Can you just leave me alone?”

His hand falls. He bends to pick up his mask. Good old Spider-Man once again.

#

She was a party girl. That’s the nice way of saying it. The mean way, and the true way, is that for her first two years at MIT, she found every party to get drunk at. And not, like, fun drunk. Vomiting-in-a-bush drunk. Letting strange men touch her drunk. Because she was eighteen, then nineteen, then twenty, and she had this gaping hole in her that sucked up every attempt she made at being happy and she could never, ever, fix it.

So it was fun, really, to kiss people and dance and feel some chemical happiness even if her brain couldn’t muster up its own. Serotonin’s such a simple chemical. Damn easy to synthesize. She made some in her second-year biochemistry lab. So what gives?

For years, she’d assumed that her first time had been in that mess. Her second time definitely was. Some guy had come up to her, she’d thought he was hot enough, and then she’d been changed forever. She doesn’t believe in virginity as a social concept, but there’s something terrifying about the idea of someone she’s never known having the secrets to her body. Like that possession nonsense all over again.

She’d spent so much time coming to terms with the fact that she’d wasted her first shot at adulthood on someone she couldn’t even remember. She’s not superstitious, but she’s a big believer in first impressions. Because that’s science. Her body only knew shitty sex so she had to choose her shitty exes. Operant conditioning: first semester psych. The body likes habits.

Michelle stumbles down the stairwell, stomach roiling. She can’t stop thinking about it. Was their first time bad? Then it would prove her hypothesis. If it wasn’t, then the first time that she remembered—her second time having sex—had set the rule, and her brain chemistry had followed suit, still proving the hypothesis. Damn it. She was a good scientist.

She can’t stop thinking about it. She can’t. Her skin’s still warm with the impression of his hands. She wipes at her neck. His spit, his tongue, his mouth. What is she saying? Of course it would have been good. She can just—imagine it, his crooked grin, the way he’d held her as he swung them to safety. His reassurance—you’re okay, you’re okay—and her body splits, carved open, because of course he’d make it good.

In her room, her hands strip her clothes off, numb to the sensation. She needs to sleep. She needs to know.

Had she known, by then? Probably. Right?

She thinks of his grin with his mask pushed up. If they’d had sex before she’d known, then he might have kept the mask on. But the suit? No, it would’t have worked. Maybe she kissed him with the mask, but the rest of it, she would have felt his hands, his skin against hers as he pulled her shirt off, squeezed her waist.   

When did she start touching herself?

Now, she likes being on her hands and knees. Degrading, maybe, but it was easier that way. She could just feel good instead of worrying about the other person in her bed. But would she have wanted that the first time? She liked him. She really liked him. And he kissed her like he was starving, so she would have wanted that. Maybe on her back, his hands spreading her legs open. And this stupid, self-sacrificing boy, he would have wanted her to feel good, wouldn’t he? She can practically see it, him getting down on his knees to mouth at her panties, fingers crossing the border between just friends to something more.

She moans, the sound bitten-off. He would have made it good. Not like Adrian, who licks and licks and licks until she’s raw, like she’s a bowl of milk to be consumed. He would have paid attention, watched her own hands, mimicked it, put his tongue in her and tasted her and liked it. (Adrian doesn’t mind the taste. Or the fact that she categorically refuses to shave, and only trims occasionally.) Knowing him, he wouldn’t have just stopped at one. Over-achiever, that boy.

She thinks of how he’d finally give in. His arms bracketing her body, maybe her hips straddling his, his voice in her ear—what would she have said? Would she have called him—

“Spider-Man,” she breathes out, eyes snapping open. There’s a shadow thrown on her ceiling. She jerks up, turning. He’s on her windowsill, head bowed, his body a tight string.

“MJ,” he says. “I wanted—to make sure you were—okay.”

Oh, he’s hard. The suit doesn’t hide much—never did—and she feels it deep in her stomach. He still wants her. He still wants her. Fuck.

“I should go,” he says, strained. “I shouldn’t be here. I just—I just wanted to make sure you were—”

“Do you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“The first time. We had sex,” she adds, though it feels irrelevant. “Do you?”

“Of course I do.”

She meets his eye. “Show me.”

He crosses the room in a second, pulling his mask off to lick into her mouth, his body trembling. He’s huge, different than the flashes of memories she held onto, like he spent the past five years honing himself into a weapon. None of this feels violent, though. His lips are soft, his touch so light she could almost imagine he wasn’t there. He’s leaning on the bed, his hips against hers, and it takes her a moment before she understands what he’s murmuring into her skin: I missed you.

She pulls his hands to her. “Gloves,” she says. “Take them off.”

She lets him remove them, both out of fear that she’d damage some wiring and that if she did it he’d spook. She gets it, a little. Keeping everything tight and close, just in case you get hurt. When he touches her, bare skin, she shudders hard. It can’t be possible that her body has just been keyed into his all along. She’d thought she had good sex, but every memory is paling compared to the feeling of his mouth skimming up her shoulders, his hands on her hips and breasts and—oh—her thighs, pulling her legs wider as he kisses down her stomach. He’s on his knees, looking up at her heartbroken, like it’s going to kill him if he can’t get his mouth on her in the next five seconds.

“Please,” he’s begging her, his fingers dimpling the muscle of her thighs, tongue wet and desperate. “Can I please—”

The moment she starts the nod—just a nerve impulse half-translated to her muscle fibers—he’s kissing her navel, tongue dragging up the cloth of her underwear. They’re polyester, seamless, black. Thick enough that they can act as a safeguard for her period if she needs. But now it feels like they’re nothing, every one of his touches as clear as if she was naked. He moans against her, not performative the way she’s suspected of Adrian, but so guttural and embarrassing that it has to be real, his hands clutching her hips and dragging her into him. His fingers push her panties to the side.

“God, I’ve missed this,” he says. She looks down at him. Wow. She’s never had someone want her like this. His eyes are almost all pupil, his cheeks flushed. Curiously, she curls her fingers into his hair. Nudges, just barely, but he responds like she pulled him, his tongue flat on her clit. She curls over him, her hands slipping down to his neck for leverage, and he breathes against her, just breathes, and it’s so unbelievably sexy that she wants to cry. He really, really likes her.

“You don’t have to keep—” she starts. “It takes a while for me to…”

He narrows his eyes, like it’s a challenge. To him it probably is, his screwed-up brain rewired for only his fight-or-flight instinct. Or, she supposes, fight-or-fuck. “Didn’t use to,” he says hoarsely.

He drags his thumb across her, and she can feel just how wet she is, embarrassingly wet, like she’s going through puberty all over again, her body flushing with heat and new desires. There’s a smirk on his mouth. This boy, she thinks, and stops thinking when he puts his mouth on her again, humming against her clit, a finger crooked inside. Her thoughts dissolve. All she has is warmth and wetness and pleasure.

Her first orgasm takes her by surprise, all of ten seconds of curling tension as a warning before she’s flying off the track, gasping for air. He plays her like a god damn instrument, like he knows all her settings, a maestro except it’s with her cunt. His teeth scrape lightly against her and she arches into him, scrabbling for a hold on her sheets, which are too slick for a grip, so she uses his hair instead. He groans. Her legs tremble. This is ridiculous. It’s absurd, that Spider-Man is on his knees for her and it’s better than any of her exes, better than her boyfriend. She should feel like a bad person, she thinks. Because she is. But there’s no room for it, only hot wet goodness and the aftershocks of her orgasm, which are coming too fast and, oh, there she goes again—and Spider-Man groans his approval against her.

“That’s how long it took,” he says, his lips and chin glistening. “Last time.”

She’s all at once exasperated and furiously, desperately aroused. This boy!

“Come here,” she says, pulling at his curls. “Please.” She hopes he won’t make her ask for it, because she doesn’t on principle.

“In a minute,” he says, and pulls her legs over his shoulder. He looks up at her, mouth tilted. “You taste really good.”

She loses track of time until she’s coming again with a shout, her hand barely muffling her cries, and he’s relentless, slowly rocking two fingers in her and flicking his tongue, just the perfect amount of pressure. It’s like he’s competing against every other person she’s slept with, her stupid hero who always fights to win, and she’s not sure what his definition is, but by hers, he’s won by a mile. When she slumps down, still shuddering, she clutches his hair, trying weakly to pull him up.

“Peter,” she says. “Please?”

His eyes blow open.

She didn’t consider what it would have been like if she’d known his identity, but it’s right in her face. He would have made it so, so good. He surges up to kiss her, mouth sticky and salty, but she’s never minded the taste of herself and it’s somehow so much hotter that it’s messy, his hands pulling her in so close she’s sure his suit will be stained. For some reason, this makes her shiver, and she digs her nails into his bare neck, where that inhibitor used to be, and he falls into her like he hasn’t been touched before.

Wait a second.

“How long has it—”

He ducks his head, bashful. “Um. I haven’t…”

At once, she’s filled with warmth and annoyance. If—if she does choose him, is this going to be her mantle? Taking care of the hero that takes care of the city? She doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body, and by the third time she has to act therapist for someone, she sends them a link for the university’s free counseling resources. “I’m not going to apologize for being with other people,” she says, a warning tilt in her voice.

“No,” he says, kissing her. “No, don’t be. Did they make you happy?”

She shrugs. “I guess.”

The truth is, and always has been: she’s not a happy person. It was like she was born without the concept. All her baby photos are solemn, like she’d been secretly thirty all her life. She feels ancient.

“Do I make you happy?” His eyes are too shiny. All of a sudden she wonders if he’s going to be like this forever, trailing after her like a sad puppy. There’s something to that, probably. Having that power over Spider-Man. It’s a shame she never had a real bad bone in her body.

“I was sad,” she says. “For a long time. I was missing something I didn’t know I had. And now I don’t, really.”

For a second it’s impossible to read his expression. “Thank you for not lying,” he says finally. “I know you don’t like me.”

What did it mean about him that he was here anyway? She has the urge to hit him. Grow a pair! She snorts instead. “Yeah, I really hate you. That’s why you’re here right now.”

Spider-Man cocks his head. The air turns cold, a shiver running down her back. She tamps down the primal instinct to flee. He leans forward, his nose touching hers. He’s not angry, she thinks distantly. If he was angry she’d know it. “Yeah? So why am I here?”

She wants to say—because you hurt me, and now I want to hurt you—because I want to prove a point—because I wanted to see you’ll do anything if I ask. These are all cruel things, though, and she can’t form the words in her mouth. Her anger is the kind that simmers. It never spits. Just festers, and cooks down to ash until she can forget about it. Ha. If it were only so easy.

“Because you can’t leave me alone,” she says, and darts forward to kiss him. He bites her lip, quick, but her cheeks still warm with blood. He pushes her into the bed, red suit stark against her linen.

“You still have the Spidey-tracker. Your phone goes off every time. Delete it, then, if you don’t like me.”

“Fine,” she says. No loss for her; she hates the sound of the thing. She pulls at his suit. “Get that off.”

“Nah. I think you like Spider-Man,” he says. He nudges his chin to the board above her desk, only half-taken down. I kissed him? says a note card. He took me flying? There’s photos from Google Maps, ones she’d scoured for the right skylines in her memories. Her stomach flips. She wants to cover his eyes, scream from humiliation. She’d only kept it up so she could keep pretending that everything was normal. It wasn’t. Besides, what would she hang in its place?

“I don’t like anyone,” she snaps. “Take your suit off.”

He glances down at her. “You definitely don’t like Peter Parker.”

“Does that really matter right now?”

“No, I guess not.” He pulls the top of his suit off, the armor catching the dying sunlight and blinding her momentarily. “You were right. You are different.”

She wants to bite. Oh, yeah? I guess that’s what happens when you lose your memories for five years. It was like she’d been put on pause for him. Every time she tried to leave, she’d come right back to New York. Right back to Spider-Man.

“Not that different,” she says, and hooks her legs around him. She’s telling the truth: at the end of the day, she still wants him.

#

He’s got two fingers curled in her, his mouth hovering over hers, twitching at every sound she makes. He’s attentive. She didn’t expect that. Or, well. Wasn’t used to it. Most of the men she’s been with were good for one orgasm, maybe two. He’s currently at three. Trying for a fourth.

She can’t look him in the eye because he’ll see, he’ll know instantly. Sex has never been like this, where someone put her on a bed and tried to figure out exactly how her body worked. It had always been transactional, and she’s currently in debt. He’s Spider-Man. He figures things out. That’s, like, his whole deal. He’s figuring her out, right now, and he’s going to break her into pieces.

“Come on,” he whispers. “Relax. Stop thinking.”

She shakes her head, her hair rasping against the sheets. She looks at his cheekbone. There’s a scar cutting through it. Another on his lip. “I can’t.” It’s a miracle he’s even made it to three. “I can’t. Can you please, please just—”

“Last time,” he says, low and careful, “it was six.”

What the hell, she thinks, what kind of horny teenagers were they—and the thought of it, absurdly, is what sends her over the edge, heat thumping through her. She pants, open-mouthed, and he pulls his fingers out of her with a smug grin. There’s no way. He knows her too well for it to only have been once. She pulls him close, breathes in his sweat-plasticky smell, the odd sex-like funk of his webs, a strand still lingering in his hair. “How many times?”

“Once,” he says again. He meets her eye. “It’s the truth.”

So that’s how it is. “How many times have you thought about this?”

He snorts. It’s a little odd, seeing amusement on his face. She’d thought he could only muster sad eyes or fury. “More than I can count.”

“Was it actually six?”

He shakes his head, finally caught out. “It was two. But I wanted to try.”

Unspoken: last time he thought of her, he’d wanted to make her come six times. A wave of heat runs through her. He notices, of course. Because she’s fucking a superhero. His mouth twitches.

“Condoms are on the bed stand,” she says. It’s like she’s shot him. The air is scorching, his breaths so loud she feels it in her ribcage.

“We shouldn’t.”

“Shut up,” she says, leans over, and grabs the box. He’s so tense she can count every muscle, his face screwed up tight like he can’t look at her. She knows he can hear her when she rips the packet, the oily lube slipping across her fingers. She knows he can all but see it as she reaches towards him.

“Fuck,” he says quietly. He opens his eyes to meet hers—stomach swooping, she realizes that the whites of his eyes are slowly growing back from a sea of dark—and he surges forward, pressing her against the headboard, his hands on hers, the wood frame banging with the movement. “I’ve missed you.”

Someone’s phone rings. It’s a shrieking, horrific sound. They both jerk. Then a polite voice: “Shots fired on 42nd and 8th.”

He hangs his head. “Shit.”

She grabs his chin. “You have to go? The cops can’t take care of this?”

“I have to. What if it’s Scorpion?”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m sorry. I need to go.” He’s standing in an instant, pulling his suit back on. He doesn’t look at her. “Evie, what am I working with?”

“Initial scans don’t show any gang affiliations, but the scene is still developing.”

She grabs her shirt and has it on by the time he’s pulling the blinds, the moonlight stark against his face. “Peter, don’t—”

He looks back at her. “I’m sorry.”

A second later, he’s out the window.

#

She hates date night. Especially when it’s a date night with Adrian’s family. She has to wear make-up and look lovely and nothing she does will ever make up for the fact that they think she’s a do-nothing bum. Never mind the fact that she graduated summa cum laude from MIT.

She slicks on a layer of lip gloss and evaluates her outfit from head to toe. Her hair is appropriately tied back, her dress backless but with enough fabric draping across her that it’s not really noticeable unless she walks in a certain way. Her heels are two inches, respectable, and not enough to make her taller than Adrian. She packs her clutch and walks outside—

To Ned. And Peter. They’re watching some Star Wars thing, and the speakers are blasting so loud they shouldn’t have heard her approach. But he knows anyway. Of course he does. He turns, his smile falling as he sees her. She hasn’t talked to him since that night. She’s been aching since, waking up with dreams fading away. Dreams where he’d stayed, he’d held her. Fucked her. But who’s counting?

She looks at her phone. Adrian’s still five minutes out. God, she hates date night.

Ned’s noticed her by now too, and the TV is off, the apartment empty and echoing. They still haven’t bought enough furniture.

“Did you end up going to that interview with Boeing?” Ned asks. He’s really trying. She loves him for it—he’s the one setting up the interviews, pulling every last connection he has. She hasn’t the stomach for it. There isn’t a bone in her body that would accept a blood money contract.

“I, uh. No. I’ve been trying to figure out something else.”

Peter’s leaning his chin on his forearms. “You look good.”

She offers him a thin smile. She wants to throw her clutch at him. How had he managed to humiliate her twice?

“I gotta go,” she says to the air, and doesn’t look back, even though every ounce of her is screaming to glance one last time back at the couch.

“Have fun,” Peter calls out before the door closes. She grimaces to herself. Fun. She hasn’t seen that around in a while.

#

They’re at Four Madison Park, because she’d met Adrian’s parents during one of her vegan stages, and they’d been trying to accommodate her since. It’s kind of sweet, if they didn’t make comments under their breaths about A) the cost, B) the quality, or C) the fact that she’s rapidly careening into protein deficiency. She’s not even vegetarian any more. There comes a point where you have just too much tofu in the fridge. But back to the point. They’re halfway through their soup course when phones start pinging. Dun-dun-dun! In a crowd of rich people, the excitement is less visible, but the air turns solid with chatter.

He’s here.

It takes minutes for the news to spread. A server went up to the roof and told a busboy who told the hostess who tells their waiter that Spider-Man is doing a stake-out. Yeah, right.

She’s going to kill him. He followed her. He put his suit on and followed her and is now making a scene all over her date night. Instead of a genuine conversation, her boyfriend and his family is discussing Spider-Man. 

“So, how’s the job hunt?”

Damn it. She’d prefer the spider talk. She drags her gaze back up to Adrian’s dad. He’s the nicer one. She can’t shake her itch to run, though. There’s always the urge to cringe when he looks at her. Fathers. Bad news.

“Fine,” she lies. “I’m going to a lot of interviews.”

Adrian makes a noise. He’s using date night as a study session. His MCAT is in a few weeks, which she’s been using as a desperate excuse why she shouldn’t see him. She narrows her eyes. What is it with all the men in her life?

She reaches over and taps the right answer on his tablet. He squawks. “You can’t just—”

“It was aspartate.”

“You didn’t read the question.”

“I don’t need to. They’re amino acids,” she says, and tries to sound like she isn’t scolding him. Since their junior year, she’s played tutor to him. Sometimes she wishes so badly that she’d just stayed in biochemistry. “It was the odd one out.”

Adrian’s parents watch the back-and-forth, and she knows they’ll go home talking about how terrible a wife she’d make. She’s argumentative and spiteful. They’re exhausting. All of this is. She wishes, for one miserable second, that Spider-Man would just come and save her.

#

When she opens the door to her room, there’s a streak of red laid across her window.

“What are you doing here?” she yelps, heart pounding. She’s not good with surprises.

He tilts his face up at her. His goggles whirr as he focuses in. “You looked really good tonight.”

“I’m sure you’d know all about that, Spider-Man. What were you staking out in the middle of Manhattan?”

“I have a new suspect,” he says. “Classified info.”

He’s full of shit. She rolls her eyes and drops her bag down on the desk, disassembling her outfit as he watches. Once she’s down to her dress, he says, “Need a hand?”

She whirls to face him. “You can’t pick and choose when you want to be with me.”

“I’m not choosing,” he protests. “That was an actual crime I had to solve.”

“And tonight? You just wanted to come and stalk me during my date.”

“I’m not stalking you.”

“You say you’re in love with me. You say you want to be with me,” and it’s awful of her to throw it at him, because he winces, bodily, his distress like a beacon. “And when it comes down to it, you’ll choose everything else over me.”

He pulls off his mask. He’s not mad. Not yet. Getting there. “That’s my job, yeah.”

“It isn’t your actual career! You don’t get paid for this!”

“It’s my responsibility,” he says furiously. “It is my job. To take care of the small people. Our city.”

“They don’t care about you. If Peter Parker died tomorrow, the crimes would still happen! The cops would be there instead of you. And maybe they use bullets instead of webs—but they won’t miss you.”

“I’m sorry that you’re having some weird crisis about your own career, but you don’t get to come in here and start insulting what I do—”

“A crisis? A crisis? Is that what you think this is? I lost you. For five years, I didn’t even know you existed! And you’re telling me that even now, after all this, that I still don’t get you?”

He stops. “What?”

“I don’t know,” she says, raking her hands through her hair. She slumps on her bed. “You make me feel like an idiot. The rug’s pulled out from under me. My degree was so I could find you. I came back to New York because I felt something was tying me here—and it was you. It’s like I don’t exist without you. And you don’t even exist.”

She looks up at him. He’s bare-faced, like he’s been slapped. “MJ, I—”

“I wanted to be a doctor,” she says, the memory finally unearthed. The three of them in the sun on the rooftop. She wanted biochemistry for a reason. She’d been the one to stitch up some of his wounds, wasn’t she? She glares up at him. “Get out of my room.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. He sits down on the bed next to her, warmth radiating off him. Her skin feels tight, like she’s going to explode. She wants to. Oh, god. She spent the last five years doing fuck all with her life. She got into one of the best universities in the country and squandered it. For a boy. Who can’t even choose her.

“Get out,” she says again. “Or I’ll start screaming.”

He picks his mask off the floor. “MJ,” he starts.

“Don’t.”

She hears the window creak open, then shut.

#

The question is: what to do with Adrian. If she breaks up with him, that sends the wrong signal. If she doesn’t, she has to deal with his date nights and his quiet judgement and his not-so-quiet judgement. She’s so tired of men.

She’s in Central Park when Peter Parker jogs by. He’s moving at a fast enough pace that he shouldn’t have noticed her—except he’s him, so of course he does, and he makes a pivot and jogs back to her.

“MJ!”

“What part of the words leave me alone did you not understand, Parker?”

“You said it to Spider-Man. Not to me,” he says unabashedly. There’s sweat dripping down his face. He’s in a tank and joggers and he looks like sex. Her face flushes. This boy is going to be the death of her.

She can’t lie. She hasn’t stopped thinking about it. His mouth on hers. His hands. His voice rough against her ear. There have been moments, late in the night, that she wants to kick herself for pushing him out of her room. Adrian’s in the last stretch of his MCAT studying and sex is off the menu; she’s only got her fingers and a vibrator for company, and Spider-Man is eyeing her up in broad daylight.

“I’m saying to you now,” she says. “Leave me alone.”

“You want ice cream? Let’s get some ice cream. It’s hot.” He’s somehow hustling her to the nearest ice cream vendor, tossing a few bucks while he rifles through the plastic packaging. He hands her the chocolate shortcake bar. “Your favorite, right?”

She lets it melt as they walk, her hands growing sticky with milk drips. He keeps glancing at her in disbelief—is she really?—but yes, she’s stubborn, and ice cream is small change compared to how fucking angry she is. She’s been searching up special masters programs to finish up her pre-requisites, trying to find doctors in the city to let her just shadow them. She’s lost five years already. You don’t get that kind of time back.

“You know I would, right?” he says, when they’re back at the bench where he found her. She raises her eyebrows. “I’d choose you.”

“You haven’t,” she says. She sits on the bench and tosses the sugar-tacky popsicle stick in the trash can. “That’s the thing, Peter. You haven’t.”

#

She’s thinking trauma surgery. It’s been hard work retracing the steps of her seventeen-year-old self, across the various murder mysteries and true crime novels, there’s the memoirs. The buried YouTube history, glistening hearts being cut open and drained of bad blood. There’s always something new in an ER. Especially in New York.

The call wakes her up, disoriented. It’s such an odd hour that she thinks it’s a hospital telling her someone has died.

“Where would you go?” His voice is half-muffled. He’s wearing the mask, but he’s calling from his phone. “If I wasn’t Spider-Man, and you had places you liked. Where you wanted to visit. Where’d you go?”

“This is not the time,” she groans. “What is wrong with you?”

“I need to stay awake. And I was curious.”

“Can you just, like, not do this? Please.”

“You said you wanted me.” It’s as clear as if he was standing behind her. “I’m not letting you go again. I won’t.” He takes in a breath. “I can’t live without you.”

“But you’re still Spider-Man,” she says. “And the city is always going to come first.”

She hangs up. She can’t quite sleep, sticky and hot. When she’s debating taking a melatonin, there’s a knock on her window. She freezes. Light floods in from the streets as he works the window open, and there’s faint red glints all over the walls from his suit.

“MJ?”

Maybe if she stays quiet enough he’ll think she’s asleep.

“I can hear your breathing.”

Shit.

She sits up. “Yeah?”

He’s leaning against her desk, his mask off. It’s hard to see his face, though. “You were right.”

“I tend to be.”

“It’s hard to think of anything else,” he says. “When it’s all I’ve been for so long. I’m Spider-Man. That’s me. I’m the city. Peter Parker doesn’t exist.”

“He’s real to me,” she says softly. “And Ned.”

He smiles; she can see the glint of his teeth. “Yeah.”

She reaches her hand out. It’s the kindest she’s ever felt. “Stay the night?”

#

The sun’s burning through her windows; she didn’t pull the curtains down after he came in. She’s on the outer edge of the bed (always have an escape route planned) and he’s cocooned between her and the wall, completely and utterly asleep. He’s a bad superhero. Hasn’t even woken up. It’s kind of cute, actually. He’s sleep-soft, curls messy. There’s drool on his mouth. The great Spider-Man, a sleep drooler.

He took his suit off to sleep, which means he’s almost entirely bare-skinned. He radiates heat, which, horrifically, she appreciates. It’s fall, and the apartment doesn’t have central heating. She’s still a little cold. His suit is hung on her desk chair. For the symbol of New York’s hope, it looks a little underwhelming.

She counts the scars on his face and what she can see of his shoulders out of perverse curiosity. She doesn’t like the number she’s at. With a shock, she realizes: she pities him. Then she feels annoyed at herself. She does’t need to be a part of his fanclub.

Her clock reads four PM. Oh shit. Today is Adrian’s MCAT, which means—

There’s a knock on the door. He’s back from his test.

“No, don’t!” she calls out. “I’m—uh—it’s a surprise! Don’t look!”

God damn it. Now she has to figure one out. She goes to the door and squeezes out, hoping that she’s quiet enough to keep from waking him. Adrian stands outside, already yammering about the exam, and she’s too busy thinking about a way to get Spider-Man out of her bedroom without her boyfriend catching him. She only notices when Adrian asks, “Let’s go get ice cream?”

“Yeah, sure,” she says, dazed. He’s probably going to follow her into her room, and there’s no reason that she can kick him out under the guise of changing. She has the excuses ready to fly: he got beat up last night and had to find somewhere to stay, or I called him because I was scared walking home last night, or I almost got kidnapped and he’s keeping me safe. The last bit is true. Just old.

But when she peeks through the door, he’s already gone. The only sign of him: rumpled covers and the window still cracked an inch, the breeze whistling through her curtains.

#

She’s become scarily adept at breaking into her high school. Either that or they have a shitty security guard. On the ladder up to the roof, the sun starts to set, sky bleeding orange and pink. She’s always liked sunsets. It’s a completion thing: one more day finished without disaster. She’s moving forward.

“Oh, come on,” is the first thing she hears. “This isn’t only your turf too.”

Spider-Man scrambles up from his perch, his mask half-rumpled around his chin. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting her. Oh, right. He used to be her classmate. Weird. It makes her stomach flip.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, scowling.

“What are you?”

She was trying to figure out what they’d said on that rooftop three years ago. She remembers Ned. If Spider-Man’s letter is true, then Peter Parker had to have been there too. She refuses to ask him why she’d wanted to become a doctor. He has this idealized version of her, one where she’s all soft edges and kind words and loving, somehow. She doesn’t think she’s ever been loving. Like she isn’t built for it.

“Trying to figure some things out,” she says.

“Yeah. Me too.” He sits, knees to his chest. It’s such a little-boy move that her heart hurts all of a sudden.

She stays standing, digging her hands into her pockets. “Why did I—why did I want to go to medical school?”

His goggles widen. “Uh. You really liked being in the hospital. You said the blood was really cool. And you kept stitching me up a lot. You said at least you could get paid that way. For what it's worth, I think you would have been a really good doctor.”

Would have been?

She scowls, though faintly she considers she’s always unfair when it comes to him. “What, so you don’t think I could be a good doctor now?”

“No, I didn’t mean that—I just—no, I what I meant was, you did aerospace, right? So I thought you wanted to do something different. It’s good, anyway. Less stress.”

Yes, and the blood of babies on her hands instead. No thanks. “Okay,” she says, holding back her retorts. She sucks air in through her teeth. “Okay, I’m gonna head out. Nice talk.”

“Wait, no—!” When she turns back around, he hurries to say, “Let me drop you off. It’s faster.”

He just wanted to touch her, didn’t he? She stares at him, but with the mask on, she can’t see him squirm. “Fine.”

She can see his smile through the cloth. “Great.”

#

Spider-Man has a hand on her ass and her legs are around his hips in order to hold onto him while swinging; he wasn’t particularly subtle about his offer. Though, she supposes, neither was she in accepting.

Her heart is racing, and it’s not just the height. This close, she can see his eyes through the goggles, warm brown that keeps flittering between her and the next skyscraper they’re leaping to. He’s not wearing his web-shooters, she realizes halfway across Manhattan. Weird. Interesting. She wonders if he’d let her get a sample of his webs; there have been several studies done on them, but whatever people could scrape off were all old enough to be degraded. Ned would have a bitch fit if she did a real chemical analysis on them. Spider-Man would probably say yes. In fact, she thinks if she asks him for just about anything, he’d say yes to that too.

He smells like sweat, below that a sharp clean deodorant that stings her nose. Her mouth waters with the urge to kiss him again. He’s an excellent kisser. Just the perfect amount of tongue, his mouth open enough to lick into hers, but not to seem like he was just eating her face. Their teeth never clicked. They were in perfect harmony. She realizes this is probably because their first kisses were each other. The thought makes her a little sick. He hasn’t kissed anyone else to change the way he does it.

Mid-air, he presses his mouth against her ear. She shivers. “Are you okay? You’re quieter than usual.”

“I’m fine,” she says, half-yelling to be heard over the roar of the wind. With the whole of the city their room, this is the most intimate she’s ever felt. It’s just them and the rest of the ants.

She can’t stop thinking about what he said. She had been in the hospital? Had she been volunteering? Shadowing? He couldn’t have been a part of it all—why had she forgotten? If they were memories without Spider-Man, what was the point in forgetting them?

“Our stop’s coming up.”

It was over so quickly.

They land on the roof, and she untangles her body from his, and then he says, “Let me walk you down?”

She’s a bad person. She doesn’t think twice before nodding.

Ned, unlike her, has a job, and so isn’t at home. When Spider-Man realizes this, his posture changes, the air growing sharp and thin in her nose. Her heart races. She knows he can hear. It’s odd that someone else can sense her arousal before even her. But that’s been the case all along, his knowing more about her than she ever did.

“I’ll get the door for you,” he says. Her stomach drops, the first time she’s felt nervous since he started swinging her. His gloved hands reach for the lock. Clicks it shut.

Fucking finally.

She’s not sure how they collide—both of them move—but one hand pulls her in by the waist, the other yanking his mask off, and before it’s even past his nose they’re kissing. His hair is damp from sweat, muscles straining under his suit, and he moans into her mouth in a way that should make her embarrassed for him, but only sparks heat in her navel, skin buzzing from the contact. He lifts her up, easy and secure, and walks to her room as though he does it every day.

She scrapes her nails across his scalp, curious what it’d take for her to leave a mark of her own, something that she can point at and say, that’s me, I was here, in case she ever forgets again. She’s been starting to journal though. She’s keeping her memories this time.

He presses her against her door once he closes it, his suit rough against her skin as he slips his hands under her shirt. She shudders. She’s run the memory of the last time in her head until it broke apart into a mess of touches and kisses, snapshots out of sequence. Her shirt gets discarded somewhere on the floor, his gloves yanked off, wiring be damned, his fingers dancing across her skin in a way that feels familiar and new all at once. She’s a terrible person, but god, it’s nice to be touched.

She finally meets his eyes when she gets him on the bed and straddles him. The red and blue suit against her sheets looks odd, but somehow fitting. It’s the sexiest thing she’s ever seen.

His mouth is bitten and pink, and she’s sure her hair is as wild as his looks. Slowing down to appreciate this makes her remember that she had sex with her boyfriend in this bed only two days ago, and while the sheets have changed, she hasn’t really, and the thought of this, of betraying him so fundamentally, makes her sick. But also, she doesn’t care. Spider-Man—Peter Parker—knows her, knew her all along, understand her on some fundamental level that nobody really has gotten to. It’s probably because of the stalking. She can’t seem to mind it.

“Your suit. Off,” is all she can manage, her voice dry. She pulls her hair into a ponytail and stares at his face, willing herself to remember. She doesn’t, of course. But it scares her a little, how much she wants this. Him. She is not a good person. He obeys, surging up and pulling the top of his suit off with ease. Her stomach twists at the sight of his scars, and he notices.

“It’s not your fault.”

She makes a face. “You can’t keep doing this.”

“It’s my job.”

Instead of debating this, she rolls her hips. He groans, his hands going to her waist. His eyes bleed black, then fade again. She’s curious. It’s been months—surely he’s gotten control back from the other side, but there’s a part of her that wants to provoke it. Just to see what it takes to get Spider-Man to snap.

Her phone starts to buzz. For a second they both freeze, then she snatches it off the bed stand before he can. It’s Adrian.

She picks up before she can overthink it. “Hi, babe.”

He’s glaring at her. She senses a sharpness from him, like how right before it rains you can almost taste the lightning. His hands tighten, and slowly, he pulls her down, rocking against him. She almost gasps, biting her mouth to hold the sound in.

“You want to go to dinner tonight?” She thinks that’s what he said. Adrian rattles off a set of restaurants they always go to. “Yeah, whatever’s fine.”

There’s a hand on her jeans. Unzipping. There’s a hand on her panties, a thumb on her clit. He pushes her underwear aside, the friction making her hips jerk. She keens.

“What was that?” Adrian asks.

“Um. Yeah. Pizza’s fine.” She closes her eyes, trying to focus, but he digs his nails into her thigh until she winces and looks down. Eyes open, he mouths. She glowers. Yeah, fuck this. She tries to clamber off, except his grip tightens, his arms flexing, and she can’t move. He shakes his head with mock pity and mouths, Nope.

Adrian’s said something, she thinks. It’s silent. “Sorry. I’m working on a—oh,” his hand has worked between their legs and cups her, the tips of his fingers almost dipping inside, “—job application. What—fuck—did you—say?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m—fine,” she says, the word turning into a moan. He has one hand on her waist, rocking her down onto his other hand, the heel of his palm against her clit. “I’m fine. Let’s have dinner tonight.”

He’s got his eyebrows raised. She can practically hear his expression: yeah, right.

“Are you sure? You don’t sound okay. Are you sick?”

In a way, she is. There’s no reason for this to feel so good, for her to be shaking apart so fast when he hasn’t even touched her, really. She knows she had teased him for it weeks back, that he’d thought of her, but he had. He’d probably run this exact scenario too, rehearsed it to know exactly how to touch her. How she’d react. She hates that the thought of it makes her so pleased. She’s supposed to be selfless, or something, but Spider-Man makes her want to be selfish, to hold on to him and keep him right next to her.

“I’m fine,” she gasps. Oh, she’s close. And he knows it, doesn’t he? There’s a glint in his eye, and he shifts his hands just a little to give her pressure on her left side. She’s so close.

“If you don’t want to come to dinner, just say so.”

Her phone gets pulled out of her hand by a web. Spider-Man’s got a smug grin on his face when he says,“Nah, man. She’s busy tonight,” and hangs up.

She opens her mouth in outrage, but he doesn’t give her a second to breathe before he flips her over, two fingers stretching her as he presses down just right, and she’s gone.

When she comes back to herself, he’s kissing under her ear, teeth scraping skin, and her shirt is pushed up so he can palm her breasts. She can’t breathe. He’s everywhere.

“I missed you,” he breathes into her. “So fucking much. I’m sorry for leaving then.”

“I don’t care,” she says. She can’t find it within herself to think of anything other than the heat washing over her. She feels so good it’s almost sick to think of it. Adrian’s never been like this; nobody has. There are perks, it seems, to being stalked by a superhero. “Shut up and touch me.”

He moves down so he’s kneeling, pulling her in by the legs to the edge of the bed. She shivers. She’s wanted his mouth on her for weeks, and it’s ashamed her to admit it, but for too many nights, she’s gone to bed thinking of him, one hand in her underwear, the other across her mouth to muffle her moans. He looks up for a second to grin, and that’s all the warning she gets before his tongue is in her.

“Oh, fuck,” she says, arching into him. He laughs, the vibration sending another stab of heat into her navel. She grabs his hair, pulling harshly—that’s enough smugness out of him—except he only moans against her, something desperate to the way he grabs her thighs.

Shouldn’t that be enough? He wants her, and she wants him. But no matter what, he’s always going to put the city first, and she can’t spend her life trailing after him with a first-aid kit.

Then he seals his lips around her clit and sucks and she loses all train of thought. He’s good. Really, really good.

He gets her to come again like this, slow and sweet, like he has all the time in the world, except he doesn’t. She knows that part well enough. When he pushes her legs over his shoulders to dive in again, she makes a sound of frustration and yanks him away by the hair. He looks dazed when he finally opens his eyes.

“Something wrong?’

“Come up here,” she says. “I want—” Her cheeks heat. She’s never had a problem saying it before, but now it feels too vulnerable. Like she’s split her heart open for him. “Come here.”

She gets the rest of her clothes off and pulls at his suit pants until he’s just in his boxers and her bra’s half off, her panties tangled around her ankles. Then she glares at him until he’s naked, too. It makes sense that he’s so muscled, but it’s one thing to see his suit and another to see every inch of bare skin in her bed. That’s Spider-Man. His name is Peter Parker. And he’s got a condom held in his teeth, his knees knocking her legs open, and two fingers curled in her, scissoring slowly as she grips the sheets.

When he opens the bedside drawer to throw the condom wrapper in, he finds her vibrator.

She scrambles up to try and hide it. “No, don’t—”

“Hmm,” he says, webbing it to the wall out of her reach. He leans down to kiss her, her protests muffled (“Do not touch that!”) and before she can take in another breath to yell at him again, he’s pushing into her. She gasps. His head hangs down, forehead against hers. “God, I missed you.”

The headboard starts to knock against the walls. He’s being gentle, she thinks vaguely, but can’t think beyond the sensation of his fingers rubbing her clit and the sound of his breath against her ears.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, stiffening suddenly. “Jesus, wait, no—”

His hips stutter, driving into her once, twice, and it takes as long for her to realize that he’s coming. It’s absurdly hot.

“You’re easy, Spider-Man,” she says with glee. She rocks up and he shudders, a full-body groan torn from his throat. “That’s cute.”

He glances at her, a little embarrassed. It’s so sweet she smiles. And then she realizes he’s still hard, and when he moves she moans softly.

“Yeah, gimme a sec,” he says. He pulls out, rolling the condom off and tying it. He opens the bedside drawer for another, and she grabs his forearm, flushing.

“I’m on birth control. Um. If you’re going to be using those so quickly. So.”

His eyes widen. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, well, I only have so much of those. You’re clean, right?”

“It’s only ever been you,” he says, like it isn’t the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to her. She pulls him in for a kiss before he can keep running his mouth. When he pushes back into her, she shudders, his moan caught between her teeth. She’s never been able to tell the difference between latex and skin, but from the way his face creases, the way his fingers tighten on her, it has to feel pretty fucking good.

This could be it, she thinks. The happiest she’s ever been.

“Promise me,” she says into his ear. “Promise you’re staying this time. That you won’t leave me again. Because I’m going to kill you if you do.”

He nods. “Yeah. Yes, I’m yours,” he says, and his hand’s on her again, rubbing once, twice, and she’s crying out with him, shuddering into oblivion.

#

She’s starving when she has to tap out—he’s still raring to go, clearly having pent up four years of sexual frustration—with her thighs still twitching from when he used the vibe on her. It’s freezing in her room without his skin on hers.

“I need some water,” she says, and pulls on a shirt to stumble to the kitchen. Her thighs are sticky. She hasn’t felt this good in years, maybe ever.

The water hurts her teeth, it’s so cold. She stares at her door. There’s something she’s forgetting.

Then it hits her, all of a sudden. The memory of her head on his chest, declaring: I want to save lives too. Of course she did. Of course she does.

He’s looking at her bookshelf when she comes back, his briefs slung around his hips, suit still rumpled on her chair. She’s honestly surprised by it. She thought he would have left. He turns to her, lit by moonlight and the cars outside her window.

“What, there aren’t any robberies tonight?”

“Like you said. We got cops for that. I want to stay.” Peter cocks his head. “Want some pizza?”

MJ smiles. “That sounds perfect.”