Archive of Our Own

Peter was not one to be jealous. He believed jealousy stemmed from a sense of propriety and ownership that no human being truly had over another.

Which made it all the harder to understand why he was jealous of a woman he did not even know.

And yet, here he was, standing on the roof of a building across from the restaurant, watching her through the window as she laughed with the man sitting across from her. And she was laughing so much. 

He could make her laugh much more. 

Peter felt ashamed of himself, but he couldn’t help it. 

It had all started about two months earlier.

Not a day went by without Spider-Man saving the life of some ordinary civilian. That afternoon should have been no different. He had been moving through Manhattan on autopilot, following the familiar rhythm of the city beneath him when his spider-sense suddenly flared. A car had lost control at the intersection below, skidding across the wet pavement with enough momentum to send it straight towards a woman stepping off the kerb. Peter reacted before he had time to think, dropping from the building and catching her around the waist just as the car tore past them.

And then he touched her.

The sensation was so immediate that, for one disorienting second, Peter forgot where he was. His senses seemed to close around her. He could feel the heat of her body through his suit, the rapid flutter of her pulse beneath his hand, the uneven rhythm of her breathing as she struggled to understand what had just happened. He could smell her fear, the faint trace of her perfume, the warmth of her skin beneath it, and somehow each sensation seemed sharper than it should have been. He had caught hundreds of people. Held strangers against him as he pulled them from wreckage, carried injured civilians from burning buildings, steadied terrified children in his arms. None of them had ever felt like this. 

He felt primitive, as though he were watching himself from somewhere deep inside his own mind while his less human side commanded. His arachnid instincts had seized upon her with a fixation he could neither understand nor control. He became acutely aware of the exact rhythm of her heart, of the small tremor running through her body, of the way her breathing gradually began to slow beneath his hands. It was almost frightening, how quickly his attention narrowed until there was nothing else he could seem to focus on. 

His senses fixed on her as every part of him had suddenly decided that she was his to protect.

The thought had not come from Peter. At least, that was what he told himself. Peter did not think of people that way. He did not claim ownership over the people he saved; he protected them because they were people, because their lives mattered, because he had the power to help. But whatever lived beneath all of that seemed to understand protection differently. It did not care that she was a stranger or that he knew nothing about her. It had simply identified something vulnerable and important and instinctively wanted to keep it close.

He fought to regain control, feeling ashamed.

Before she could look up and see his black eyes beneath the visor, he forced it back.

“Thank you.”

Her voice came out almost as a whisper, still unsteady from the shock. Peter had barely regained control when the sound of it reached him, and something inside him tightened all over again. His heart clenched painfully in his chest, his senses sharpening around her as though her voice alone had given the instinct another reason to surface.

For one terrifying second, he felt himself slipping again.

Peter immediately loosened his hold on her and stepped back, putting several feet between them. The distance helped. Not enough, but enough to breathe.

“Are you hurt?”

The question came out rougher than he intended.She shook her head.

“No. I’m fine. Thanks to you.”

Her eyes remained on him, curious now rather than frightened, and Peter felt that strange pull stir inside him again.

He needed to leave.

Without another word, Peter turned and shot a web towards the nearest rooftop. The line caught, and he was pulled upward before she could say anything else.

He landed on the roof of a nearby building, crouched for a moment before straightening.

It still wasn’t enough distance to get her out of his system. 

From the top of the building, Peter watched as a few people approached her to make sure she was all right. She calmly assured them that she was perfectly fine, thanking them before continuing on her way.

Peter watched until she disappeared down the street.

He should have done the same. He had a patrol to finish, and there was no reason for him to concern himself with a stranger who had already made it out of danger.

Instead, he found himself following her from the rooftops.

He kept his distance, moving from building to building as she made her way home. He told himself it was only precaution. After what had just happened, maybe she was in shock and could end up getting hurt again. 

By the time she reached her street, Peter was already ashamed of himself.

This was not what he did. He did not follow people home. He did not watch strangers from rooftops simply because some unexplained instinct told him they needed protecting. She was safe, she had been safe for the last several blocks, and there was no reason for him to still be there.

He forced himself to turn away.

Go back to patrol, go home. Do anything but keep following her.

His body resisted before his mind could even form the thought. His senses remained fixed on her, tracking the sound of her footsteps below, listening for the slightest change in her breathing. When she disappeared through the entrance of her building, something in him urged him to follow, to make sure she was safely inside.

Peter clenched his jaw. 

No.

He stayed where he was until the light in her window came on. Only then did he finally turn away, angry with himself for having waited that long.

He had a city to protect. People who actually needed him. A routine he had followed for years without ever feeling this strange compulsion to single out one person and make her safety his responsibility.

He swung away from the building, forcing himself back towards his usual patrol route.

He would not do this again.

He had to get back to normal.

———— 

Peter had almost managed to return to his usual life.

For nearly two weeks after the rescue, he kept his distance and tried to push the strange encounter to the back of his mind. He ignored the dreams in which she was constantly in danger and he was always the one saving her, night after night, and he refused to think too much about the way his senses seemed to search for her whenever he walked through the city. For the most part, he had succeeded. Peter Parker was once again just the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman New York needed. 

Then he saw her again.

It happened by chance, truly. The moment he recognised her, something inside him stirred with such immediate certainty that it frightened him. His senses sharpened, his attention narrowing until the rest of the city seemed to fade around her. He stood there watching her, feeling that same inexplicable pull he had experienced the first time. 

After that, things began to change. At first, it was harmless enough. He would notice himself looking for her in crowded streets, taking a longer route through the neighbourhood she lived in because there was a chance he might see her, slowing down whenever his senses caught something that reminded him of her. 

Then he started following her from a distance, always with some reasonable excuse ready. He was only making sure she got home safely. He was only checking that she was all right. He was only staying until he knew there was nothing to worry about. That guy walking behind her was really suspicious, he should probably stay close.

But the excuses became harder to believe as the weeks passed. His instincts surfaced more often, sometimes so suddenly that he would find himself standing somewhere without remembering consciously deciding to go there, his senses already fixed on her before his mind caught up. The dreams became more vivid, the need to know where she was more difficult to ignore, and each time that strange part of him surfaced, Peter had to force himself back into control. He kept telling himself that he was still capable of stopping, that he could walk away whenever he wanted, that whatever was happening inside him would eventually pass. Instead, he found himself following her more often, watching from rooftops, learning the routes she took and the places she visited, always from a distance he could pretend was respectable. He was becoming someone he did not recognise, and the worst part was that the other part of him seemed perfectly content with it.

Now, nearly two months after the day he had first saved her, Peter was standing on the roof of a building across from that restaurant, watching her through the window while she sat across from another man. And he was feeling so jealous.

He knew he should leave. He knew exactly how wrong it was to stand there and watch a woman he did not know on a date, yet he couldn’t make himself move. 

Still, it wasn’t entirely true that he did not know her. Not exactly. He knew her name, where she lived, where she worked, what she liked to eat and the kind of music she listened to. He knew where she usually went on weekends, which streets she preferred to take, and the little places she seemed to return to more often than others. 

He didn’t intend to know all of that. He just couldn’t stop following her. 

The man said something else, and she laughed again. Peter’s jaw tightened as a possessive thought surfaced before he could stop it.

He wished that that man would disappear. 

The thought left him ashamed of himself, but shame was no longer enough to make him walk away.

Eventually, the two of them stepped out of the restaurant, still talking as they stood beneath the warm light above the entrance. Peter watched from across the street as the man smiled at her and said his goodnight, and for a moment he waited, expecting him to do something more. It was late. The streets were already dark, and she still had to make her way home alone. 

Surely he would at least offer to walk her there. Surely any man who had spent the evening with her would want to make sure she got home safely. But the man simply kissed her cheek, told her he had enjoyed the evening, and turned to leave. Peter stared after him in disbelief, something hot and ugly beginning to coil beneath his ribs.

Peter could almost feel the other side taking over as his senses heightened and his eyes turned black from anger. 

“He doesn’t even walk her home?”

The words left him before he realised he had spoken them aloud. His fingers curled against the edge of the rooftop as he watched the man disappear down the street. What kind of man did that? How could he leave her alone at night as though her safety had nothing to do with him? Peter knew the city better than most. He knew exactly what could happen to a woman walking home alone after dark, and the fact that this man seemed completely unconcerned about it made something inside him burn.

He watched her turn and begin walking in the opposite direction.

“He doesn’t deserve you.” 

The thought came with such effortless certainty that it took him a moment to realise what he had just said. His expression hardened beneath the mask. He had no idea who this man was. He had no right to decide whether he deserved her, and certainly no right to feel this angry about the fact that she had gone on a date with him.

As usual, Peter followed her, telling himself he was only making sure she got home safely. He knew her usual route by now: the well-lit streets, the busier corners, the shortcuts she preferred and the ones she avoided. He had watched her make the journey enough times to recognise the rhythm of it, so when she suddenly crossed the street and turned down a different block, he noticed at once.

At first, he assumed she had simply decided to take another way home, but with every turn the streets became darker and quieter. The shops grew sparse, the streetlights farther apart, and the familiar parts of the neighbourhood gradually gave way to an area Peter knew was considerably less safe after dark. He moved faster across the rooftops, his attention fixed entirely on her, while an increasingly urgent instinct inside him insisted that he should get down there and stop her. 

He wanted to drop in front of her, ask what she was doing, tell her to turn around and take the safer route. The thought brought with it a disturbing sense of relief, almost satisfaction, as though the other side of him had already decided that keeping her out of danger was his responsibility and that he had every right to intervene.

Peter forced himself to remain above her. 

She was an adult. She could make her own decisions, and he had no right to appear out of nowhere simply because he had been following her for the past several weeks and had decided that this particular decision was a bad one. He was already doing something he knew was wrong, if he started controlling where she could go as well, there would be very little left between what he was doing now and something far worse.

He told himself that he could simply watch from a distance, make sure nothing happened, and leave her alone once she reached a safer street. That was all he needed to do. Yet the farther she went, the harder it became to believe that watching would be enough.

Then she passed the mouth of a narrow alley, and Peter’s heart tightened. The alley was almost completely dark, illuminated only by a broken streetlamp farther down, and he could make out a figure shifting in the shadows. His spider-sense prickled sharply across his skin, but even before it fully registered as a warning, something inside him had already reacted. 

Every muscle in his body tensed as the urge to get down there surged through him with such force that for a moment he was barely aware of the choice he was making. He could hear everything from the rooftop: the steady rhythm of her footsteps, the quickened beat of her heart, the faint scrape of a shoe against concrete somewhere inside the alley. She was still walking, completely unaware of what was only a few metres away, and Peter’s entire body strained towards her.

He wanted to call her name, to drop beside her and pull her away from the alley if he had too. More than that, he wanted to put himself between her and whatever might be waiting in the darkness, to make certain that nothing could reach her while he was there. The intensity of the urge frightened him because it no longer felt like ordinary concern. It was deeper than that, more immediate and far less reasonable, and the instinct seemed to care nothing for the boundaries Peter’s human mind was desperately trying to maintain.

He stayed where he was, forcing himself to watch. He told himself he needed to know whether there was an actual threat before interfering, but some part of him had already decided that there was. Peter could feel that primitive instinct pressing against his control, growing stronger with every step she took towards the alley, and he was beginning to wonder how long he could keep it from taking over.

Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being loaded. Peter’s head snapped towards the alley, and before the man hidden in the shadows could even raise the weapon towards her, a web shot through the darkness and wrapped around it, yanking it violently from his hand. The gun skidded across the pavement, far out of reach, but Peter was already moving. He couldn’t read minds, but he didn’t need to. He knew what the man had been about to do, and something inside him reacted with a fury so immediate and overwhelming that this time Peter stopped fighting it.

He let the instinct through.

Peter dropped from the rooftop and landed in front of the man with enough force to make him stumble backwards. There was nothing hesitant about him now. His movements were faster, sharper, almost animalistic, every motion driven by the same primitive need that had been pressing against him since the moment she entered that street. The man barely had time to raise his hands before Peter struck him, sending him crashing against the wall. He hit him again before he could recover, then again, each blow harder than the last. The man tried to defend himself, but Peter barely seemed to notice. His voice came low and sharp when he finally spoke, stripped of the usual humour and restraint. “You would dare lay your hands on her?”

The man tried to answer, but Peter struck him again. He knew the gun was already out of reach. He knew the threat had been neutralised. He knew, rationally, that he could stop now, but the instinct inside him wasn’t interested in rationality. It had seen a threat to her, and it wanted that threat gone. Peter pinned the man against the wall, his fist clenched in his shirt as he stared at him through the white lenses of his mask. Every part of him was screaming to keep going, to make sure this man would never come near her again. 

It was only when the anger had finally burned itself out that Peter seemed to come back to himself. He stood over the man for a moment, breathing heavily, his fists still clenched at his sides. Then he looked down and felt a cold jolt of fear as he realised just how far he had gone. Peter crouched beside him and quickly checked for a pulse, his relief almost dizzying when he felt one beneath his fingers. He was alive. At least he hadn’t killed him.

Peter slowly straightened and turned around. She was still there, standing a few metres away and staring at him. For a moment, he simply looked at her, unsure of what he might see in her expression after what she had just witnessed. Then their eyes met, and something in his chest softened so suddenly that it almost hurt. The tension left his shoulders, his breathing steadied, and the harshness that had filled his voice only moments before disappeared completely.

“Are you all right?” he asked softly.

“I’m fine,” she said, though there was something distant about her voice. She seemed almost dazed, as if she were still trying to process what had just happened, and Peter assumed it was the shock. He hesitated before taking a step towards her, suddenly far more nervous about getting close than he had been about the man in the alley. He could still feel that other part of himself beneath the surface, and he wasn’t sure what would happen if he let himself get too close to her again. 

Even so, leaving her to walk home alone was out of the question.

 “Can I take you home?” he asked, keeping his voice gentle.

She seemed to consider the question for a moment before giving him a quiet nod. Peter approached carefully, watching her face as though he were looking for any sign that she might be frightened of him. When she didn’t pull away, he slipped an arm around her and pulled her close, preparing to shoot a web towards the nearest building. His heart immediately began pounding against his chest, so hard that he wondered if she could feel it through the layers of their clothes. He tried to steady his breathing and silently thanked himself for having remembered to ask where she lived. At least now he could pretend he hadn’t already known the answer for weeks.

When she told him her address, Peter nodded like it were the first time he had ever heard it. Then he fired the web and pulled them into the night. Her body pressed against his as they swung between the buildings, and for once, he didn’t try to fight the feeling it gave him. He felt lighter than he had in weeks, almost absurdly happy, and he hated how much he wanted to hold her closer. Whatever this was, whatever had been happening to him since the day he first caught her, Peter couldn’t deny one simple thing anymore: having her in his arms felt better than anything he could remember feeling in a very long time.

Peter brought them down in front of her building, landing softly on the pavement with one arm still around her. For a moment, he didn’t let go. He had to fight the instinct that wanted to keep her close, forcing himself to slowly loosen his hold until there was finally a small space between them. “Safely delivered,” he said, trying for a lighter tone, and she gave him the faintest half-smile.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, lowering her eyes as she reached into the pocket of her jacket for her keys. Peter waited while she searched for them, then stood there as she unlocked her door without saying anything more. He could tell she was thinking about something, hesitating as though she were trying to decide whether to say it. Peter didn’t interrupt her. He gave her the time she needed, secretly grateful for every extra second he could spend standing there with her.

“Can I ask you something?” she finally said.

“Of course,” Peter answered, his voice brightening slightly.

She looked at him then, her expression uncertain. “Have you been following me?”

For a moment, Peter felt the shame come over him all at once. He had thought he was careful, smooth enough that she would never notice, but she wasn’t stupid. He knew she wasn’t stupid. She had simply noticed what he had been desperately hoping she wouldn’t. 

His mind raced through the consequences of telling her the truth. If he admitted that he had been following her, watching her and learning her routines, she might never want to see him again. She might think he was strange, or worse, a stalker. He wasn’t. At least, that was what Peter told himself. Whatever was happening to him wasn’t something he had chosen.

But he couldn’t tell her that. Not if it meant losing her.

“No,” he lied.

The word came out almost too quickly, and Peter immediately hated how relieved he felt after saying it. He kept his expression calm, hoping she wouldn’t notice anything in his voice that might betray him. He had already gone too far to risk the truth now.

She nodded, seeming to accept the answer. “Well, you probably don’t remember, but you’ve saved my life twice now.”

“I remember,” he blurted out, and immediately regretted how eager it sounded. He quickly tried to soften it. “I mean, just right place, right time, I guess. I’m glad I was there.”

Something in her expression eased, and then, for the first time, she gave him a genuine smile. It was small and warm, but it caught Peter completely off guard.

His heart seemed to melt at the sight of it. He had watched her smile countless times from a distance, had memorised the way her face changed when she was amused, the little crinkles around her eyes, the way she sometimes lowered her head when she laughed. But this was different. She wasn’t smiling at someone else while he watched from a rooftop. She wasn’t laughing with some stranger across a restaurant table. She was looking directly at him, and that smile was for him.

“Thank you for bringing me home.” She paused, glancing towards the entrance of the building. “I should probably get in now. You must have a lot to do and other places to be.”

He gave a small nod “Yeah. Of course.”

Peter fought the urge to tell her that he didn’t, not if she was asking him to stay. He had nowhere else he wanted to be. Still, he merely nodded and began to turn away, forcing himself to move slowly rather than disappear into the night before she could change her mind.

“Wait,” she called.

He stopped immediately.

“Can you come back tomorrow?” Her question sent a rush through him so sudden that he could barely contain it, and he was almost certain she could somehow tell, even with the mask hiding his face. “You saved my life twice. I’d like to thank you properly.”

Peter’s thoughts slipped somewhere they shouldn’t have. The invitation suddenly felt far more intimate than it was. Her door opening for him. Her asking him to come inside. The possibility of standing in her home with no emergency forcing them together, no excuse for the closeness, no reason for him to leave after a few minutes. His mind supplied images before he could stop it: her sitting beside him, her shoulder brushing his, her looking at him without that invisible barrier of fear and uncertainty. He imagined her touching him because she wanted to, imagined what it would feel like to have her warmth against him again, and to—

The thought made something low and hungry stir beneath his ribs.

He caught himself before the thought could settle, only to hear her continue, completely unaware of the effect her words had on him.

“What does Spider-Man like to eat?”

Peter froze.

She gave him a slightly apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. What am I thinking? You must get invitations like this all the time. Forget it.”

“No, no, no.” Peter interrupted her so quickly that she blinked. He caught himself, but it was already too late to pretend he hadn’t been waiting for exactly this. “I can do tomorrow night. I mean, if you still want me to. I can definitely do tomorrow.” His voice had taken on a warmth he couldn’t quite hide, and beneath the mask his face was almost certainly giving him away too. He had to force himself not to sound as desperate as he suddenly felt.

She looked at him for a moment, perhaps surprised by his reaction. Peter swallowed and tried to recover some dignity. “It’s just…” He hesitated, then admitted, quieter, “No one’s ever actually invited me over before.”

That was only partly true, but it was the part that mattered. No one had ever invited him into their homes under circumstances like these, with no emergency and no expectations. And certainly no one he had wanted so badly. The thought of being welcomed into hers made that same restless warmth spread through him again. 

“I like pizza.”

He hoped she would not notice how badly he wanted it to be more.

“All right. Pizza tomorrow night, then. And thank you once again for saving me.”

“No need to thank me.” Peter’s voice softened, though there was still something unusually earnest beneath it. “But you really shouldn’t be walking through alleys like that, especially at night.” 

He hoped she understood that he wasn’t merely scolding her for being careless. He wanted her to take it seriously, to remember how close she had come to being hurt, and to never put herself in a situation like that again. Deep down, the thought of her walking alone through another dark street, with no one there to stop whatever might be waiting for her, filled him with a quiet dread he couldn’t quite put into words. He wanted to tell her to stay on the main roads, to call someone if she ever felt unsafe, to never make him find her like that again. More than anything, he wanted her to be safe, even when he wasn’t there to make sure of it.

“Yeah. I know.”

There was something in the way she said it that made him pause, but only for a moment. He took the words at face value, assuming she simply meant that she knew she shouldn’t have taken that route.

His attention was already caught on the promise of tomorrow, on the fact that she had invited him back and would be waiting for him.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow.”

She smiled, and Peter found himself smiling beneath the mask.

Then, finally, he turned away.

—————

By the time Peter crashed into his attic, he was exhausted. He had barely managed to get out of his suit before collapsing onto his messy bed, his limbs heavy with the aftermath of the day. He ran both hands through his damp hair, pushing it back from his forehead as his mind stubbornly returned to everything that had happened. Returned to her.

“What is wrong with me?” he muttered, sinking deeper into the sheets and pulling them halfway over his face in embarrassment. He groaned quietly, wishing he could somehow crawl out of his own skin. He had spent the entire night behaving like a man who had forgotten how to think whenever she was near him, and the worst part was that he couldn’t understand why..

E.V., however, had heard him.

“Hormone levels indicate a drastic change.”

Peter immediately lifted his head. “What?”

He sat up, pushing the sheets aside. “What hormones E.V.?” He felt ridiculous saying it aloud. Of course he should have asked. He had built E.V. to monitor his physiology, analyse abnormalities and identify changes he couldn’t detect himself. Somehow, in the middle of everything that had been happening, it had never occurred to him to ask the one system that might actually have an answer.

There was a brief pause.

“Hormone levels indicate that mating season has commenced.”

Peter went completely still.

“Mating?”

“Yes. Your arachnid-derived physiology retains a cyclical reproductive phase that is not present in baseline human physiology. The onset is associated with measurable alterations in endocrine activity, sensory processing and autonomic function.”

Peter frowned. “What?”

“The current phase produces elevated concentrations of reproductive and stress-related hormones, increased olfactory sensitivity, heightened autonomic arousal and increased responsiveness to specific biological stimuli.”

Peter stared into the darkness. “So that’s why I’ve been feeling like this?”

“Your recent behavioural and physiological changes are consistent with the onset of this phase.”

Peter’s throat suddenly felt dry. “What kind of changes?”

“Elevated heart rate in the presence of a specific individual. Increased sensitivity to individual’s scent and activity. Increased vigilance regarding potential threats to that individual and their current location. Highly increased territorial behaviour.”

Peter’s expression tightened.

He wanted to object. There were explanations for all of those things. His heart rate increased because she made him nervous. He noticed her scent because his senses were enhanced. He worried about her because she’d nearly been killed twice. And as for wanting to know where she was…

Peter stopped.

He had known where she was almost every day for weeks.

He pushed the thought away.

“And the… territorial thing?”

“Territorial behaviour is also consistent with the observed hormonal profile.”

Peter swallowed.

“How does that happen?”

“During the reproductive phase, sensory information associated with potential reproductive compatibility receives increased neurological priority. Once an individual meets sufficient biological compatibility criteria, the response may become highly selective.”

“Selective?”

“The response is not necessarily distributed across multiple individuals. In some cases, one individual produces a substantially greater neurological and endocrine response than others.”

Peter’s fingers slowly tightened.

“How much greater?”

“Significantly.”

He looked down at his hands.

“And what does that mean?”

“It indicates that your physiological systems have identified an individual as a probable reproductive match.”

Peter’s stomach tightened.

“No.”

The word escaped him before he could think about it. E.V. remained silent.

Peter shook his head, almost irritated now. “No. That’s not what I’ve been doing.”

“Your behavioural data suggests otherwise.”

Peter’s face went hot.

He thought of the first time he’d touched her. The way his entire body had reacted before he’d even understood what he was feeling, how he’d kept following her afterwards, always finding some excuse to be around. And the fury he’d felt tonight when he saw another man sitting across from her. The way he’d nearly torn another man apart for pointing a gun in her direction.

Those things could still be explained. Couldn’t they?

He had been protecting her. That was all. He’d seen danger and intervened. He’d followed her because New York wasn’t safe, because he could hear things other people couldn’t, because he would never forgive himself if something happened to her when he could have prevented it.

His intentions had never been dirty.

They had never been about sex.

Peter covered his face with one hand, his embarrassment turning into something closer to disgust.

But then he remembered how he’d felt when she had asked him to come back tomorrow. How quickly his mind had gone somewhere it had no right to go. How badly he had wanted to be invited inside. How deeply he’d enjoyed having her body pressed against his during the journey home, even after the danger was gone. 

He felt like an animal.

Worse, he felt like a pervert who had dressed something instinctive and ugly in the language of protection because it was easier to live with that way.

“No,” he whispered again, but this time there was no conviction behind it.

Peter lowered his hand and stared at the floor.

“A mate?”

“Yes.”

The word seemed to hang in the room.

Peter felt sick.

He didn’t want to be that kind of creature. He didn’t want his concern for her to be reduced to some biological drive he couldn’t control. She was a person. She was someone who trusted him, and she had smiled at him tonight because she thought he was someone who had helped her, not because some primitive mechanism inside him had decided she belonged to him.

And suddenly, the thought of tomorrow made his stomach twist.

She had invited him into her home. He had been so happy about it.

Now he wondered what part of him had been so happy.

“And if I try to suppress it?”

“You retain sufficient cortical control to inhibit behavioural responses. However, suppression will not eliminate the underlying endocrine activity or neurological association.” 

Peter frowned. “What happens if I keep fighting it?”

“Potential consequences include increased agitation, intrusive ideation, sleep disruption, elevated stress responses and intensified territorial behaviour.”

Peter stared at the floor.

“And how long does mating season last?”

“That cannot currently be determined.”

“Why?”

“Your physiology does not correspond precisely to any documented arachnid species. The available data is insufficient to establish a reliable duration.”

Peter rubbed a hand over his face.

“So basically, my body has decided I’m supposed to—”

He stopped. He couldn’t make himself finish the sentence.

E.V. did it for him.

“Reproduce.”

Peter’s face burned.

“Right.”

There was a long silence. Then Peter looked up.

“E.V, You said one individual can trigger a stronger response.”

“That’s Correct.”

“And you’ve been monitoring my levels since this started?”

“Yes.”

Peter hesitated. The answer had come too quickly. He looked toward the dark corner where E.V.’s primary sensor was mounted, suddenly aware of how much the system had recorded: every elevated pulse, every altered breath, every moment his attention had fixed on her without permission.

“Have I already chosen a…” The word refused to come out of his mouth “partner?”

“Yes, Peter. Would you like help identifying them?”

Peter’s heart began to pound.

He could hear the faint electrical hum of the equipment. The traffic far below. His own heartbeat, loud and rapid in his ears.

There was only one person E.V. could mean.

”No need, E.V. Thank you.”

__________________

Spiderman was definitely following her.

She was not immediately suspicious of him. In the days following the accident, she barely thought about him at all beyond the occasional moment when the memory returned unexpectedly, usually when she was crossing a busy road. She remembered the sound of the horn, the horrible certainty that she was about to be hit, and then the sudden feeling of an arm locking around her waist and pulling her out of the car’s path. She remembered being lifted so effortlessly that her feet had left the ground, the rush of air against her face, and then the solid warmth of his body when he caught her against his chest. 

She had been too shaken to think much about it at the time. Her knees had nearly given way when he put her down, and she had thanked him almost automatically before he stepped away and disappeared into the city. Over the next few days, she told the story several times, first to her friends, then to colleagues who had heard about the accident, until it gradually became less frightening to talk about. There was something surreal about having come so close to dying and then being rescued by Spider-Man himself, and eventually the whole thing became one of those strange New York stories she could tell with a smile instead of a trembling voice.

The first time she saw him again, she thought nothing of it. She was walking home after work when she noticed a red-and-blue figure moving across a rooftop several buildings away. She watched him for a few seconds before continuing on her way, assuming he was simply doing what Spider-Man always did, moving through the city and looking for trouble before it found someone else.

A few days later, she saw him again. This time he was standing on top of a building across from a café where she had stopped after work, and she only noticed him because she happened to look upwards while waiting for her drink. She wondered briefly whether he had noticed her, then dismissed the thought as ridiculous. There were hundreds of people on the street below him, and there was no reason whatsoever for her to be more noticeable than anyone else. 

After that, she began seeing him every now and then, but never often enough for it to seem truly strange. Sometimes she would catch him swinging between buildings while she was on her way to work. Once, she saw him crouched on the edge of a building while she waited for a taxi. Another time, she noticed a red figure disappearing over the rooftops just as she reached the end of her street. Each time, she found herself looking twice, and each time she told herself the same thing: Spider-Man was everywhere. It was hardly surprising that she would occasionally cross paths with him, especially now that she had become more aware of him.

There was something else, though, that she didn’t quite know how to feel about. Whenever she noticed him, she often had the strange impression that he had noticed her too. She could never be certain because of the mask, and she knew perfectly well that she could be imagining it, but there were moments when she would look up and find those white lenses pointed almost directly towards her. Rather than frightening her, however, the feeling sometimes brought an unexpected little rush of comfort. She knew the city could be dangerous, particularly at night, and knowing that Spider-Man was somewhere above the streets made her feel safer in a way she couldn’t entirely explain.

It was almost as though she had someone watching over her.

The thought should probably have made her uncomfortable. Instead, there were nights when she found herself looking towards the rooftops without even realising she was doing it, half expecting to catch a glimpse of him. When she didn’t, she sometimes felt a faint disappointment that she couldn’t quite justify. She had no relationship with this man. She didn’t even know his real name, and he certainly didn’t know hers. Yet there was something strangely reassuring about the possibility that, somewhere in the city, there was someone who recognised her and might notice if she were in danger.

That feeling became harder to ignore as the weeks passed. She started wondering whether he remembered her specifically or whether she was simply one of hundreds of people he had rescued and forgotten. She wondered if he ever recognised her from a distance, if he knew which streets she took home, if he could tell when she was the one walking beneath him without having to see her face. The questions were ridiculous, and she knew they were ridiculous, but once they entered her mind, they became difficult to push away.

Eventually, her imagination went further.

More than that, she found herself hoping he would speak to her again. Their first encounter had been so brief that she had barely had the chance to look at him properly, let alone ask anything about him. She remembered his voice, the careful way he had checked her for injuries, and the strange intensity of his attention, and she sometimes wondered what it would be like to stand in front of him again when neither of them was in the middle of an emergency.

The problem was that she had no idea how to make that happen.

She couldn’t exactly walk around New York hoping to bump into Spider-Man, and even if she did, she wasn’t sure what she would say. So she waited. Whenever she saw him on a rooftop, she wondered whether he might come down. Whenever he disappeared before she could get a better look, she felt an irrational little pang of disappointment. She began to think that perhaps the only reason he had spoken to her the first time was because she had been in danger, and if that were true, then there was no reason for him to ever approach her again.

It was a strange thought to have, but eventually she caught herself thinking that perhaps she wouldn’t mind being rescued again.

She didn’t want to be hurt. She didn’t actually want to be in danger. What she wanted was an excuse to see him again, and there was something almost pathetic about admitting that to herself. Spider-Man had become this strange presence in her life without ever actually entering it, a figure she occasionally glimpsed above the streets and somehow came to associate with safety, attention, and the peculiar feeling of being noticed by someone extraordinary.

So when she began to suspect that he really was watching her, the feeling was not as simple as fear.

There was uneasiness, certainly. The rational part of her knew that being followed by a masked stranger should concern her, especially when she couldn’t explain why he kept appearing in the places she happened to be. But beneath that was something she found much harder to acknowledge: the quiet, flattering certainty that if he was watching her, then she mattered to him in some way.

She had no idea what kind of way that might be.

She eventually decided that she needed to know whether she was actually being followed or whether she had simply become too aware of Spider-Man because she wanted him to be there. That distinction mattered more than she liked to admit. It was entirely possible that she had begun noticing him because some part of her wanted to believe he was watching her, and once the idea had taken root, every red-and-blue figure on a rooftop could be made to fit it. She didn’t want to mistake her own imagination for reality, so she decided, almost experimentally, to make a few small changes to her routine.

Nothing obvious. She took a different street home one evening, one she sometimes used but rarely chose, and there he was again, several buildings ahead of her. She stopped at a restaurant she had never visited before the following week, stayed longer than usual, and when she finally stepped outside, she caught a familiar silhouette moving across the building opposite. Another evening, she deliberately wandered through a different part of the neighbourhood before heading home, and she saw him again just as she turned onto the final street. The changes were small enough that she could still tell herself they meant nothing, but there were beginning to be too many coincidences to ignore.

Then she tried something more deliberate. She stayed late at work one evening, long after she had finished everything that actually needed doing. She answered emails that could have waited until morning, reorganised things that did not need reorganising, and eventually found herself sitting at her desk with nothing left to occupy her except the faint awareness that she was waiting to see whether he would still be there. When she finally stepped outside, the streets were quieter than usual, and there he was, standing on a rooftop across the street.

She stopped beneath the building and stared. He didn’t approach her, didn’t wave, didn’t even move, but somehow that was enough. She knew then that she hadn’t imagined it. He really was following her.

The realisation should have frightened her more than it did. There was something undeniably unsettling about knowing that a masked stranger had been keeping track of where she went, particularly when she had never given him any reason to do so. Yet beneath the uneasiness was a warmth she couldn’t suppress, because now she knew that all those moments had meant something after all. She hadn’t been seeing him everywhere because she wanted to. He had actually been there, watching from above, noticing her when she thought no one was paying attention.

And, strangely enough, that made her feel safer.

It was almost as though she had someone watching over her. She knew how irrational that was, and she knew perfectly well that being followed by a masked man should not have felt reassuring simply because that man happened to be Spider-Man. Yet whenever she spotted him above the streets, some quiet tension inside her seemed to ease. She began to associate his presence with safety, with the certainty that if something went wrong, he would see it before anyone else did.

It made her feel special, too.

She knew Spider-Man protected everyone. She knew there was nothing reasonable about imagining herself as somehow different from the thousands of people he helped every day, but he had saved her life and then, apparently, continued to notice her afterwards. That was difficult not to take personally. She began wondering whether he remembered the accident as clearly as she did, whether he recognised her from a distance, whether he knew which streets she normally took home. The possibility that he had been deliberately looking for her was flattering in a way she found almost embarrassing.

She started looking for him more openly after that. Not enough for anyone else to notice, but whenever she left work or stepped out of a café, her eyes would instinctively travel up. Sometimes he was there, and whenever she found him, a small thrill went through her. She began taking a little more care with her appearance, too, choosing the nicer clothes instead of whatever she would normally wear on an ordinary day and putting on makeup even when she had no particular reason to. She told herself she simply felt like making more of an effort lately, but some part of her was always thinking that perhaps this would be the day he finally came down.

She even began wondering what he saw when he watched her.

That was the thought that made things stranger. She wondered whether he had ever seen her through the windows of her apartment, whether he knew which one was hers, whether he had ever passed her building at night and happened to look towards her bedroom. There was no reason to believe he had, but Spider-Man could move through the city in ways ordinary people couldn’t, and once she knew he was watching her, it became strangely difficult not to imagine how much he might have seen.

She started wearing her nicer pyjamas because of it.

It was ridiculous, and she knew it. There was almost certainly no one standing outside her bedroom window, and even if Spider-Man happened to pass the building, he had no reason to look inside. Still, she sometimes found herself choosing the prettier set, the ones with delicate lace that she normally saved for herself, and wondering whether he might somehow see her if she walked past the curtains. The thought made her cheeks warm, particularly because she knew how absurd it was to dress for the possibility of a man she had never even seen without a mask watching from somewhere outside.

Her dreams became worse after that.

She began dreaming about him with embarrassing frequency, usually in some variation of the same scene. She would be frightened or in danger, and he would appear at the last possible moment, catching her before she fell or pulling her against him before anything could happen. Sometimes there wasn’t even any danger; he would simply land in front of her and stay, close enough that she could hear his breathing through the mask. In those dreams, he never seemed in a hurry to leave, and neither was she.

She would wake with her heart racing, still carrying the sensation of his hands around her waist. Sometimes she would lie there in the darkness thinking about him until the fantasy became distinctly sexual, imagining the masked figure leaning over her, the anonymity of his face making the whole thing feel even more intimate and forbidden. On more than one night, those thoughts had led her to touch herself while thinking about him, and afterwards she would lie beneath the covers feeling embarrassed by what she had done and, worse, already anticipating the next time she might dream about him.

She couldn’t even explain what exactly attracted her so much. She had never seen his face, knew almost nothing about him, and had exchanged only a handful of words with him. Perhaps that was part of it. The mask left so much to imagination, while everything else about him was almost impossible to ignore: his strength, the way he moved through the city, the confidence with which he appeared whenever someone needed him, and the memory of being held against him when he had pulled her out of the path of that car.

More than anything, she wanted him to speak to her again.

That desire became almost ridiculous. Whenever she saw him above the street, she hoped he might come down. Whenever he disappeared before she could get a proper look at him, she felt disappointed. She began to think that perhaps the only reason he had spoken to her the first time was because she had been in danger, and if that were true, then there was no ordinary reason for him to approach her again.

So, eventually, her mind began producing its own terrible solution.

She wanted to be rescued again, not because she needed saving, but because the first time had given her a glimpse of what it felt like to have his complete attention.

She hated how much she liked that feeling.

Because now that she knew he was really watching her, she could no longer pretend that her fascination with him was entirely innocent. Part of her was frightened by the attention, part of her was comforted by it, and another part had begun quietly hoping that he would look at her a little longer, come a little closer, and eventually give her a reason to find out what was behind the mask.

Eventually, she reached the point where wondering was no longer enough.

There was a man she had been avoiding for months, despite his repeated attempts to take her out. He was perfectly pleasant, reasonably attractive, and probably deserved a chance, but she had never been particularly interested in him. Until now. 

One afternoon, almost on impulse, she finally accepted. If Spider-Man really was following her, if he really was paying attention to where she went and what she did, then perhaps seeing her with another man would finally be enough to make him come down from those rooftops. Perhaps jealousy would accomplish what curiosity had not.

She made certain they sat beside the restaurant window, choosing the table with the clearest view of the street. She could not actually see him anywhere, of course. That was almost beside the point. She knew he could remain hidden if he wanted to, and the thought of him somewhere above the buildings, watching through the glass, made her heart beat a little faster. So she smiled, leaned towards her date when he spoke, and laughed even when what he said was only mildly amusing. Once, she caught herself wondering whether Spider-Man could tell that she was pretending. The thought made her laugh a little more genuinely.

She waited for something to happen.

A shadow moving across the pavement. A figure appearing on a rooftop. That familiar feeling of being watched becoming suddenly more immediate. Anything. But the evening passed without him coming down. Even when her date touched her hand across the table, even when they stepped outside together afterwards, there was no sign of him.

When he offered to walk her home, she refused.

It was not difficult to invent an excuse. She told him she lived close enough and would be fine, giving him some reassuring smile. He hesitated, but eventually accepted it. She watched him disappear down the street before turning in the opposite direction, her disappointment settling heavily in her chest.

So he had been watching her. She was almost certain of it now. She had changed routes, altered her routines, eaten in different places, stayed late at work for no reason at all, and somehow he had always appeared sooner or later. Yet seeing her with another man had not been enough. He had watched, just as he always did, and remained hidden.

For a while, she simply walked.

Then one of those darker thoughts she had been trying not to examine too closely returned to her. If he only came down when she was in danger, perhaps she could give him a reason. The thought was reckless enough to make her stomach tighten, and for a moment she almost dismissed it. But the disappointment of the evening had left something restless inside her, something that wanted proof more desperately than it wanted to be sensible.

So she turned.

Instead of taking the familiar, well-lit streets towards home, she began walking towards the part of the neighbourhood she normally avoided entirely. The streets became quieter almost immediately. The shops thinned out, the pavements grew emptier, and the pools of streetlight became farther apart. She knew exactly what she was doing, and with every turn she made, the little voice in her head telling her to stop became harder to ignore.

By the time she reached the alley, she was no longer certain this had been a good idea. The street was almost deserted, the buildings around her dark and silent, and every sensible part of her mind was telling her to turn around. She had deliberately chosen one of the least safe routes home, but until that moment, the danger had remained theoretical in her mind. She had imagined being frightened enough for Spider-Man to notice her, perhaps a stranger following her or some minor threat that would finally give him a reason to come down. She had not imagined the man waiting in the shadows ahead.

She slowed when she saw him, her attention drawn immediately to the object in his hand. She could not make out his face, but there was something about his posture that made her stomach tighten. Then came the unmistakable metallic click of a gun being loaded. Her breath caught, but before the man could raise it, a web shot through the darkness and snapped around the weapon. It was ripped from his grasp with enough force to make him stumble, disappearing somewhere above them before he had even managed to aim.

Spider-Man dropped down.

She had imagined this moment so many times that, for a second, it hardly seemed real. Yet what struck her most was not that he had appeared, but how quickly he had done so. He had been watching closely enough to hear the weapon being prepared, and he had acted before she had even become a target. There had been no hesitation, no opportunity for her to be frightened by the sight of a gun pointed in her direction. Whatever else she had been imagining during those weeks, she had never quite understood just how closely he might have been paying attention.

The man stared at his empty hand, then turned and ran.

She expected Spider-Man to let him.

There was no weapon anymore, and the man was retreating. From a practical standpoint, allowing him to disappear into the night would have been enough; the danger had passed, and chasing him would accomplish nothing that stopping him already had not. But Spider-Man went after him anyway. He caught the man within seconds, seized him from behind and dragged him back, and then the first blow landed.

She had watched him fight before. The Spider-Man she knew from television was fast and powerful, but there had always been control in him, even when he was angry. This was something else entirely. His body seemed to be acting before thought could intervene, his movements increasingly vicious as though driving the man away was not enough and leaving him unconscious was not enough either. She could not understand what had changed, only that the sight of someone threatening her had brought out a side of him she had never seen.

And she found herself captivated by it.

The reaction unsettled her almost as much as the violence itself. She knew she should be horrified by how far he was taking it, especially when the man was already helpless, but some darker part of her responded to the ferocity instead. 

There was something intoxicating about seeing that kind of rage directed at someone who had threatened her, about realising that whatever had made Spider-Man follow her for all those weeks could apparently become something much more dangerous when she was involved. She had wanted proof that she mattered to him. Watching him refuse to let the man escape gave her an answer far more powerful than anything she had expected.

Eventually, he stopped.

The silence that followed seemed almost unnatural. Spider-Man stood over the unconscious man for a moment, his breathing heavy, before crouching to check whether he was still alive. She watched his shoulders ease slightly when he found a pulse. Then he turned towards her, and the change was startling. The severity disappeared from his posture, replaced by a gentleness that made it difficult to reconcile him with the figure who had been beating the man only moments earlier.

“Are you all right?”

His voice was soft.

She looked at him, still trying to process what had happened, and nodded. Her hands were trembling, but beneath the remnants of fear was an entirely different feeling, one she was almost embarrassed to recognise.

Relief.

Not simply because she was safe, but because he had come.

All those weeks of suspicion had not been fragments of her imagination or wishful thinking. He had been there, watching her, and when she had finally put herself somewhere dangerous, he had not remained on the rooftops to see what happened.

He had come down the instant he realised she needed him.

———————

Peter had been standing outside her building for long enough that the neighbours had started to notice.

He could tell because curtains were beginning to move behind the windows facing the street. One woman on the third floor had already looked out twice, and somewhere above him a child had pressed both hands against the glass to get a better look. He could hardly blame them. Spider-Man standing motionless on the pavement outside an apartment building was apparently much more suspicious than Spider-Man swinging between skyscrapers, and he was beginning to suspect that the entire street was quietly trying to figure out what exactly he was doing there.

The answer was embarrassingly simple.

He had no idea whether he was supposed to ring the bell.

They had never agreed on a time. She had said tomorrow night, and he had immediately agreed without thinking to ask when. He had spent the entire day wondering whether that meant seven, eight, perhaps nine. He might be early. He might be late. He had no way of knowing, and although there was a very obvious solution to the problem, his hand remained stubbornly at his side.

He also had another problem.

He knew where she lived. Of course he did. He knew the building, the entrance, the floor and the window of her apartment. He knew far more than he had any right to know. But she did not know that, and walking into the building and confidently going straight to her door would be difficult to explain. He could hardly stand outside her apartment and admit that he had known the number for weeks because he had been following her home almost every night.

So he stayed where he was, staring at the entrance as though it might somehow make the decision for him.

The dinner had seemed like a wonderful idea when she had invited him. In retrospect, Peter had spent the entire day finding reasons to believe it was a terrible one. If what E.V. had told him was true, if she really was his… mate, then being alone with her was not something he could take lightly. He still hated the word. Every time he thought it, something primitive inside him seemed to recognise it with an enthusiasm he absolutely did not share. And that was precisely what frightened him.

What if the inhibitor failed?

What if he lost control again?

He could still remember what had happened in the alley. He had stopped the gun before it could ever be pointed at her, but after that, something inside him had taken over so completely that he had barely recognised himself. He had hurt a man far more severely than necessary simply because the man had threatened her. If that instinct could do that to a stranger, Peter did not want to imagine what might happen if it turned towards her. Hurting her was the one thing he could not forgive himself for, and the possibility of it had haunted him ever since she had invited him over.

He did not want her to be afraid of him, either. He did not want her to look at him and see something strange or dangerous beneath the mask. More than anything, he wanted one evening in which he could simply be Peter. Not Spider-Man. Not whatever E.V. had decided his biology was turning him into. Just Peter, sitting across from a woman he liked, having a normal conversation and trying very hard not to make a complete fool of himself.

If she could meet that version of him, perhaps she might actually like him.

That was all he wanted.

He had spent nearly the entire day working on the inhibitor instead of doing anything remotely resembling his usual routine. He had adjusted its frequency, strengthened its output, rewritten parts of the control system and tested it until E.V. was satisfied that the device could suppress the physiological responses he had been struggling to control. It was not perfect, but it was considerably stronger than it had been the night before, and Peter had refused to leave until he was confident enough to trust it.

He had to be able to sit beside her without his senses becoming overwhelmed by her scent. He had to be able to hear her heartbeat without becoming obsessed with it. He had to be able to touch her without that strange, frightening part of him interpreting the contact as something far more significant than it was.

He had to be safe around her.

Only then had he allowed himself to come.

Now, standing outside her building like an idiot while half the neighbourhood watched him, he wondered whether all that preparation had been for nothing.

Peter finally drew a breath and took one step towards the entrance.

Then he heard her voice.

“Spider-Man!”

His head snapped upwards.

She was leaning out of a window several floors above him, only the upper half of her body visible as she waved both arms to get his attention. Her hair fell around her face, and she was smiling so brightly that for a moment he simply forgot what he had been about to do.

It was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen.

He had watched her smile before. He had seen it from rooftops and through restaurant windows, had memorised the little changes in her expression without ever meaning to. But none of those smiles had been like that.

For him.

“You’re here!” she called, sounding genuinely pleased to see him. “I’ll open the door!”

Peter stared up at her, suddenly aware that every neighbour who had been watching him was now watching her as well. She disappeared from the window, and he could hear her moving inside the apartment.

A moment later, the building door opened.

She was standing there waiting for him.

“Come in,” she said with another smile.

For several seconds, Peter could only look at her.

Then he stepped inside.

Her eyes moved from his mask to the slightly crooked bouquet in his hands, and Peter felt an absurd amount of embarrassment over a few bent flowers.

“I brought these for you,” he said, suddenly very aware of how awkward he sounded.

She looked at the flowers for a moment, and then a smile spread slowly across her face, softer than the one she had given him from the window.

“They’re beautiful.”

Peter looked down at the bouquet. One stem was bent almost completely sideways.

“They looked better when I bought them. I swung here..”

She laughed.

Not the polite laugh she had given the man at the restaurant, but a real one, warm and effortless, and Peter felt something in his chest loosen.

Then she stepped aside, still holding the flowers.

“I really like them.” She said as she followed Peter inside her house. 

Peter could barely believe he was inside her apartment.

For weeks, he had known that window from the outside, watching its light come on at night from rooftops across the street. He had wondered what lay beyond it, what her home looked like, and now he found himself standing in the middle of it, surrounded by all the ordinary things that belonged to her. His eyes moved instinctively from the photographs on the walls to the books, the furniture, the little objects left on shelves and tables. He wanted to take everything in, but there was so much of it that his mind seemed unable to settle on any single detail.

“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling him from his thoughts. “The pizza is bought. I’m a terrible cook.” 

“Bought pizza is good for me.” Peter replied, still looking around as he sat down on her chair. 

“Sit down. I didn’t know which kind you liked best, so I ordered a lot.”

Peter looked over.

There were enough pizza boxes covering the table to feed considerably more than two people. He stared at them for a moment, genuinely unsure how she could possibly have expected one person to have a preference strong enough to account for all of them.

“I almost Googled what spiders like to eat,” she admitted.

A laugh escaped him before he could stop it.

Peter laughed, unable to help himself. The sound came out a little awkwardly, but she laughed too, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased.

She disappeared briefly into the kitchen, carrying the flowers he had given her.

Peter watched her as she moved around the room, gathering a vase and filling it with water before carefully arranging the crooked bouquet inside. He found himself following every small movement without meaning to, from the way she pushed her hair away from her face to the slight crease between her brows as she decided how to arrange the stems. He had spent so long watching her from a distance that seeing these details from only a few metres away felt almost unreal. The difference was not simply that he could see her better. It was that she was moving through the room without any idea of how much of her ordinary life he had already memorised, and Peter had to sit there and pretend that every little thing he noticed was new to him.

Her attention suddenly shifted past him.

“Oh.”

Peter followed her gaze and saw the desk tucked against the wall, its surface buried beneath papers, documents and photographs. Before he could properly make sense of what he was looking at, she was already crossing the room.

“Sorry. Work mess.”

She gathered everything into a hurried pile, trying to straighten the papers as she went before stuffing the whole collection into a nearby drawer. Peter watched her for a moment, carefully keeping his expression neutral. He knew what most of those papers were. He had seen her working late through the window often enough to recognise the familiar arrangement of notebooks and photographs, but he had never been close enough to read them.

“What do you do?” he asked, with just enough hesitation to make it sound as though he genuinely did not know.

She looked at him as she closed the drawer.

“I’m a journalist. Well, sort of. I’m new at the Daily Bugle, so I’m not exactly writing the important stuff yet.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. “Have I ever read anything you’ve written?”

“Probably not.”

There was no bitterness in her voice, only a little embarrassment.

“I mostly get the small stories. Things nobody else really cares about.” She picked up a pizza cutter and began slicing one of the boxes open. “There was an eagle that made a nest on the college campus. I wrote about that. And last month I covered the fiftieth anniversary of Papa Tony’s Burgers.”

Peter smiled.

“That sounds important.”

She gave him a look that made it clear she knew he was teasing her.

“I’ve never had a big headline. Nothing about politicians or major crimes or anything like that. Definitely nothing about Spider-Man.”

Peter tilted his head.

“I’m important stuff?”

She looked up at him, apparently surprised that he had taken the comment seriously.

“Are you kidding?”

She started dividing the pizza onto plates, still smiling.

“You’re, like, the important stuff. It’s kind of crazy that you’re sitting at my dinner table.”

Something in Peter’s chest tightened.

He had heard people call Spider-Man a lot of things over the years. Hero. Menace. Criminal. Freak. New York’s favourite wall-crawler, depending on the newspaper and the day. He was accustomed to being talked about as of he were something distant and unreal, a figure who belonged to rooftops and television screens rather than someone’s kitchen.

But she was looking at him as though she could hardly believe he was real.

Peter glanced down at the plate she had just placed in front of him, suddenly unsure what to do with the warmth spreading through him.

“Well,” he said quietly, “I guess I’ve never had pizza with a journalist before.”

She smiled.

“Then I suppose we’re both doing something new tonight.”

Peter listened as she talked about her work, but his thoughts had already begun moving somewhere else.

He had come here expecting one evening. A few hours at most, perhaps, before he would have to leave and return to the shadows and the careful distance he had maintained for so long. But now that he was sitting across from her, listening to her voice without the interference of traffic or wind or the constant awareness that he was watching her from somewhere she could not see him, the thought of going back to that suddenly felt wrong. He had wanted to be close to her for weeks, and now he understood exactly what that meant. He did not know how he was supposed to return to being satisfied with glimpses through windows after knowing what it felt like to sit at her table.

There had to be a way to make this last.

Something that would give him a reason to come back without making her suspicious. Something that would make another evening together feel natural.

His eyes settled on her.

“So, if you wrote about me,” he said, trying to make the question sound casual, “that would be a guaranteed headline?”

She looked amused.

“Pretty much.”

“What about an exclusive interview with Spider-Man?”

She laughed under her breath as she reached for another slice.

“Someone could probably steal my boss’s job if they managed that.”

Peter considered her for a moment.

“You can interview me.”

Her hand stopped.

The pizza cutter remained suspended above the box as she looked at him, and Peter immediately wondered whether he had said something wrong. He replayed the words in his head, trying to find the part that might have sounded strange. Her expression had changed, and suddenly the confidence he had felt a moment ago disappeared.

“I mean it,” he added.

She lowered the cutter.

“I can’t accept that.”

Peter frowned slightly. “Why not?”

“Because…” She hesitated, then gave him a small, almost apologetic smile. “I don’t want you to think that’s why I invited you here. I don’t want you to think I was trying to get something from you.”

The answer caught him off guard.

“No. It wouldn’t be like that.”

She looked at him, waiting.

“I mean, you bought all this pizza,” he continued, gesturing towards the absurd number of boxes covering the table. “I could at least repay you somehow.”

She smiled at that, but shook her head.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I know.”

“And I’m serious. I really can’t accept.”

Peter nodded, though some part of him resisted the answer more strongly than it should have. He had only meant to offer an interview, yet beneath the reasonable explanation was another, much less innocent hope: that she would say yes, that there would be another reason to come back, another evening when he would not have to stand across the street and watch her life through glass.

She picked up the cutter again and resumed slicing the pizza.

“Maybe in the future,” she added casually. “If the opportunity comes up, I might accept.”

Peter went still.

The words were simple. Almost an afterthought.

But his heart reacted as though she had promised him something far greater.

“In the future?” he repeated before he could stop himself.

She glanced up at him, smiling.

“Maybe.”

Peter lowered his gaze to his plate, hoping she could not see the sudden smile beneath his mask.

Maybe was enough for now.

The pizzas were finally ready, and she placed the plates on the table before taking her seat across from him. Peter looked down at the food, then back at her, still trying to adjust to the strange normality of the situation. For a few seconds, neither of them moved.

Then her eyes travelled up to his mask.

“Are you going to eat with that on?”

She pointed towards his face.

Peter paused.

“The mask has to stay on.”

He said it automatically, as though the answer were obvious. Then, a second later, he realised the rather significant problem he had somehow failed to consider.

He had spent the entire day modifying an inhibitor so he could safely sit beside her. He had worried about his senses, his instincts, his behaviour, even the possibility of losing control. He had thought about what he would say, how long he should stay and how he would make sure the evening felt normal.

He had not thought about how he was supposed to eat pizza while wearing a mask.

Peter looked at the slice in front of him.

This had not been thought through.

“I’m sorry,” she said, giving him an embarrassed little smile. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

Something in his chest tightened at the sight of her expression. She looked as though she thought she had made things uncomfortable, as of she might already be regretting inviting him into her home.

“No. No, no,” Peter said quickly. “It’s fine.”

He looked around for a solution, his mind moving faster than it had any right to over something as simple as eating dinner.

“Here. I can just do this.”

He picked up a slice and leaned his head down towards it. With one hand, he carefully lifted the lower edge of his mask just enough to uncover his mouth, keeping the rest of his face concealed. He took a bite before lowering it again.

Peter chewed in silence.

It was not elegant. It was not particularly dignified. But when he looked up, she was smiling.

“See?” he said, trying to sound as though this had been his plan all along. “Problem solved.”

She laughed softly.

“Right.”

Peter took another bite, feeling a little ridiculous, but he did not care.

At least she was smiling again

For a little while, they ate in relative silence, the awkwardness gradually giving way to something more comfortable. Peter was beginning to forget how ridiculous it was to eat pizza through his mask when she looked at him again, her expression thoughtful.

“So, what about you? Do you ever get to do anything that isn’t being Spider-Man?”

The question caught him off guard. He had spent so much time thinking about her life that he had almost forgotten she might want to know something about his. For a moment, he searched for an ordinary answer, something that would make him sound like any other young man sitting at her table, but nothing came to mind.

“I don’t really do much else,” he admitted.

She frowned slightly. “What do you mean?”

“It’s mostly just Spider-Man.”

He could tell from her expression that she was expecting him to elaborate, but there wasn’t much more he could say. There was no college to talk about, no friends waiting for him after patrol, no family he could visit or ordinary plans filling his weekends. There wasn’t even a life waiting for him when he took the suit off. Peter Parker had disappeared from the world so completely that, technically, he didn’t exist anymore.

“You don’t have any friends?” she asked.

Peter shook his head.

“What about your family?”

He hesitated before answering. “They’re gone.”

Her expression changed immediately. “I’m sorry.”

Peter gave her a small smile, hoping to reassure her. “It’s okay.”

“What about a Spider-Lady?”

Peter’s head lifted immediately.

“A what?”

She smiled. “You know. A girlfriend. Someone waiting for you when you come home from saving everyone else’s lives.”

For a second, Peter simply stared at her. The question should have been harmless. Instead, something deep inside him reacted with startling intensity. His chest tightened, his senses sharpening before he could stop them, and an instinctive thought surfaced with absolute certainty.

No.

Not just no one else. No other woman. No one waiting for him, touching him, expecting him to come home to her.

His gaze settled on the woman sitting across from him, and the primitive part of him seemed to recognise the question for what it was: an opening to something that already felt decided.

She was the only one.

Peter forced himself to look away.

“No,” he said, quieter than he intended.

She didn’t seem to notice the tension that had suddenly entered his voice. “Never?”

“Just once. A long time ago.” All of it seemed so distant now it didn’t even matter. There was no one else. 

She didn’t seem convinced, but she didn’t press him either. Instead, she looked down at her plate for a moment before asking, “So what do you do when you’re not Spider-Man?”

Peter almost laughed at the question. He looked around her apartment, at the flowers she had given him a place for, the pizza spread across the table and the comfortable little life she had invited him into.

“I guess I just wait until I have to be Spider-Man again.”

The honesty of the answer made the room feel quieter. Peter hadn’t meant to say it quite so plainly, and he immediately wondered if she was going to look at him differently now. He didn’t want her pity, and he certainly didn’t want her to see him as someone broken and lonely. He had come here because, for one evening, he wanted to forget how empty his life had become.

Instead, she looked at him with something gentler than pity.

“You really don’t have anything you do just for yourself?”

Peter thought about it before slowly shaking his head.

“Not anymore.”

She was quiet for a moment, then gave him a small smile.

“Well, maybe you should.”

Something inside Peter recoiled at the suggestion.

It was subtle at first, little more than a tightening beneath his ribs, but his body reacted before his mind could decide why. The idea of filling his time with something else should have been comforting. Instead, an unfamiliar irritation stirred at the thought of anything taking him away from this room, from her, from the quiet awareness of her presence sitting across the table. He could almost feel that other part of himself waking beneath his thoughts, not with words but with a primitive certainty that made the suggestion feel strangely wrong.

Peter forced himself to look down at his plate.

She hadn’t meant anything by it. She was trying to help. That was all. There was nothing threatening about her wanting him to have a life.

But his instincts did not understand it that way.

They had no interest in college, friends, hobbies or some ordinary future Peter might construct for himself. They cared about the warmth beside him, the sound of her heartbeat, the scent that had become so familiar that he could recognise it without seeing her. They cared about proximity. About keeping her close. About the fact that he had finally been allowed inside her home and had no desire to leave it.

The thought came so naturally that it frightened him.

Stay.

Peter’s fingers tightened slightly around the edge of his plate.

He looked at her again, and for a brief moment the tenderness he felt was contaminated by something darker. He didn’t simply want to be here tonight. He wanted this to become normal. He wanted to come back. He wanted her to keep opening the door for him until there was no longer anything strange about his presence in her home.

He wanted a life.

And some primitive part of him had already decided what that life should contain.

Her.

Peter swallowed and forced the thought back down before it could become anything more. He knew what this was. He had spent weeks fighting it, learning to recognise the moments when his instincts pushed too hard against the boundaries he had set for himself. He couldn’t let them decide what he wanted simply because his body had decided she was important.

“Yeah. Maybe.” 

Peter noticed the change in her expression and decided he had probably dragged the conversation into a darker place than either of them had intended. He didn’t want their first dinner together to become a discussion about everything he had lost, especially when she had invited him over because she wanted to thank him. He took another bite of pizza, then looked back at her.

“You know, there’s not really a lot I can tell you about myself.”

She smiled. “That’s okay. I wasn’t expecting an autobiography.”

Peter laughed softly. “Good, because I definitely don’t have one.”

He thought for a moment, then added, “But I can tell you what kind of music I like. And the shows I always end up binge-watching.”

Her eyes brightened. “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.”

Peter smiled beneath the mask. It was easier to talk about things like that. There was no complicated history attached to his favourite songs or the shows he watched when he couldn’t sleep. They were small, ordinary pieces of himself, and for once he didn’t have to worry about whether they belonged to a life that no longer existed.

He told her about the shows he could watch over and over, including the ones he had seen so many times that he knew what was going to happen before the characters did. She made fun of him for that, and he defended himself by insisting that knowing the ending made them better.

For a while, the conversation stayed there, moving naturally from music to television and then to all the small things people usually discovered about each other without thinking much of them. Peter found himself relaxing into it. He wasn’t Spider-Man saving her life, and he wasn’t the lonely man who had spent months watching her from rooftops. He was simply a young man sitting across from a woman he liked, telling her about the songs he listened to and the shows he watched when he had nothing better to do.

And for a while, they simply talked.

The conversation wandered from music to television, from the strangest things she had ever seen at work to stories Peter had accumulated during his years as Spider-Man. He found himself forgetting the time entirely. There was something almost intoxicating about being able to speak without having to think about patrols, criminals or the next emergency waiting somewhere across Manhattan. She laughed at one of his stories, and Peter was still smiling beneath his mask when her gaze suddenly drifted towards the clock on the nearby wall.

“Oh, it’s already midnight.”

She sounded genuinely surprised. “I didn’t even notice how late it got.”

Peter’s heart sank.

He looked towards the clock, although he already knew she was right. Midnight. The evening was over. Of course it was. People did not simply remain in one another’s homes indefinitely, especially not when they had only just met. There was a perfectly reasonable expectation attached to the hour, one his rational mind understood immediately.

He should leave.

The inhibitor was working. That was the first thing he noticed, almost with relief. His senses remained under control, his thoughts were still his own, and the familiar pressure beneath his consciousness had not broken through strongly enough to take over. His human mind was clear enough to tell him exactly what he needed to do.

Thank her. Say goodnight. Go home.

His body seemed to disagree.

The moment she mentioned the time, something inside him tightened with an instinctive resistance so strong that it almost felt physical. The evening had been too short. He had only just become accustomed to the sound of her voice beside him, to the warmth of her apartment, to the strange, impossible feeling of being wanted there. The thought of stepping back into the night suddenly seemed unbearable.

He wanted another hour.

Then another.

He wanted to stay until she became tired of him, until she asked him to leave rather than because the clock had told her it was time. The darker part of him had no concept of polite endings or reasonable boundaries. It only knew that she had allowed him close, and now something was taking that closeness away.

Peter’s fingers tightened slightly against his knee.

No.

He forced himself to breathe slowly. This was exactly what he had been afraid of. Not some dramatic loss of control, not a sudden transformation into something monstrous, but this quieter, more dangerous desire to refuse the ordinary limits that existed between them.

She was simply tired.

She had work tomorrow. She had given him an entire evening, welcomed him into her home, fed him, listened to him talk and laughed at his stupid stories. He had no right to ask for more.

Fighting against the strongest impulses inside him, Peter finally pushed himself to his feet.

“I should probably go,” he said, trying to make his voice sound casual. “It’s getting late, and, well… that means my shift is probably just starting.”

She nodded, but there was something in her expression that made him hesitate. It was barely there, perhaps nothing more than the natural disappointment of seeing an evening come to an end, but Peter thought he caught it in her eyes before she looked away. He held onto that tiny change in her expression, committing it to memory with the same precision he used when memorising escape routes and city streets: the way her smile had faltered, the brief disappointment in her eyes, and the possibility that, even if he had imagined it, some part of her might have wanted him to stay.

The thought warmed something inside him that had been cold for far too long. She had not said that she wanted him to stay, and she had not asked him to, but the possibility was enough to make him reluctant to leave. He tried to preserve the moment as he followed her movements, noticing the softness of her expression and the familiar details that had become associated with the evening. He knew he would remember them long after he stepped outside, though he was less certain he could trust himself to remember them without wanting more.

She stood as well. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

“You don't have to.”

“But I want to.”

There was a small smile on her lips as she moved around the table, and Peter followed her towards the entrance. The apartment seemed to contract with her beside him, leaving them close enough that he was aware of every movement she made. Their shoulders did not quite touch, but the warmth between them was impossible to ignore. His heart quickened, and he kept his eyes ahead, forcing himself to appear calm as they crossed the room.

Then she moved a little closer.

Their shoulders nearly brushed, and Peter’s hand twitched at his side before he could stop it. His fingers curled around the urge to reach for her, to place his hand against her arm and feel her warmth through his glove. For one dangerous second, his feet almost slowed. He could turn towards her, find an excuse to stay, and postpone the moment when he had to step through the door.

The certainty of the thought frightened him. His instincts did not care about the hour or the reason he had given her; they recognised only that she was close and that she was about to let him leave. Every primitive part of him wanted to close the remaining distance and prevent the separation before it happened.

Peter clenched his hand until the impulse receded.

No. He had promised himself he would not let that part of him decide what happened between them. Wanting her was one thing. Taking something from her simply because his instincts demanded it was another.

So he kept walking, one step at a time. She had chosen to walk him out, and for these last few seconds she was voluntarily giving him her company. He wanted to slow down and stretch the moment into something longer, but he forced himself towards the door, knowing that if he stopped, even briefly, he might find another reason to stay.

He was beginning to understand that the most frightening thing about the evening was not how badly he wanted her. It was how easily his body was beginning to believe that wanting her meant he should never have to let her go.

When they finally reached the entrance to the building, Peter stopped and turned towards her. For a moment, he simply stood there, trying to think of something appropriate to say. He wanted to thank her again, or tell her that he had enjoyed the evening, but every sentence sounded inadequate in his head. He was still trying to find the right words when she smiled, stepped a little closer and, before he could react, pressed a quick kiss against his cheek through the edge of his mask.

The gesture was so simple and unexpected that Peter froze. It was almost childish in its innocence, the kind of affectionate goodbye that should have meant nothing more than warmth and gratitude, yet his body responded as though she had done something far more dangerous. His senses sharpened abruptly, every detail of her rushing into his awareness at once: the warmth of her skin, the scent of her hair, the rhythm of her heartbeat so close to him. Beneath his thoughts, he could feel the arachnid, responding to the touch with a fierce, instinctive recognition that made his stomach tighten.

Peter could feel his conscience fighting to remain in control. The inhibitor was working, but it suddenly felt like he were holding something back with his bare hands, desperately trying to keep it from pushing through. His fingers curled at his sides as the darker part of him surged towards the surface, not interested in the innocence of the gesture but in the fact that she had willingly closed the distance between them. It wanted more. It wanted to hold her there, to keep her close, to answer that tiny display of affection with something far more instinctive than anything she could possibly have intended.

Peter forced himself to breathe and remain still. She was standing right in front of him, completely unaware of the battle taking place behind the mask, and the thought that she might notice even a fraction of it frightened him. He couldn’t let her see what was happening inside his head. He couldn’t let her realise that something feral had almost awakened simply because she had kissed his cheek.

“Thank you,” he managed, his voice quieter than usual. “For tonight.”

She smiled. “Thank you too. For coming.”

Peter nodded, though his thoughts were still racing. The safest thing he could do now was leave before the restraint became harder to maintain. He took a step back, forcing himself to create distance between them, then fired a web towards the nearest building.

“Goodnight.”

Before she could say much more, he was already pulling himself upwards and away from the entrance.

He swung through the city faster than he normally would, trying to put as much distance between himself and her as possible. He told himself it was for her safety as much as his own. Whatever had happened inside him downstairs, he could not risk allowing it to happen again while he was standing beside her. The sensible part of him knew that leaving had been the right decision, and for several minutes he tried to let that certainty settle his mind.

It didn’t.

The further he travelled, the more vividly he remembered the evening. Her laughter. Her voice. The warmth of her apartment. The way she had looked at him when she said she hadn’t noticed the time. And, above everything else, that brief, almost innocent kiss on his cheek. He had spent the entire evening trying to convince himself that being close to her could be harmless, that he could simply enjoy one ordinary night and then return to the distance he had maintained before.

But the night had only made the distance harder to bear.

Peter slowed in mid-swing, suspended for a moment above the dark streets as the realisation settled over him. He had lost the battle, though he wasn’t entirely sure when it had happened. Perhaps it had been the moment she invited him inside. Perhaps when she laughed at one of his jokes,or it had happened much earlier than that, the first time his senses had recognised her and refused to let her become just another stranger in the city.

He changed direction.

A few minutes later, Peter found himself back in the familiar part of her neighbourhood, landing quietly on the stairs of the building across from her apartment. He sat down in the same corner he had occupied so many nights before, looking across at the window he had promised himself he would stop watching.

From there, he could see the light still glowing inside.

Peter told himself he was only making sure she had gone to bed safely.

He knew better.

Peter watched as she disappeared into her bedroom and turned off the light. From across the street, there was almost nothing left to see except the faint outline of her figure moving through the darkness, her silhouette passing slowly from one side of the room to the other. She usually closed the curtains before going to bed. Tonight, for whatever reason, she didn’t.

He should have looked away immediately. Instead, he remained where he was, watching as her silhouette shifted again. Then, without warning, she began taking off her clothes, her back turned towards the window but the shape of what she was doing still unmistakable against the faint light from the street outside. The realisation hit him all at once, followed by a sharp wave of shame. He had no right to be watching this. Whatever excuse he had used to justify sitting on these stairs, this was something he could never pretend was about keeping her safe.

Peter stood abruptly, forcing himself to turn away from the window. His body, however, had already betrayed him. He glanced down for only a second and immediately regretted it, his face burning beneath the mask at the unmistakable evidence of his arousal beneath the suit. His stomach tightened with disgust, not because he didn’t desire her, but because he had allowed himself to remain there long enough for desire to become something he was actively witnessing rather than something confined to his thoughts.

He remained with his back turned towards the window, breathing unevenly, until the effort of resisting began to feel almost as exhausting as the desire itself.

Eventually, his hands moved back despite him. He pressed them against the front of his suit, directly over his erection, and began slowly rubbing himself through the fabric, seeking the relief his body demanded. The friction made him shudder, and he had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from making a sound. His head lowered as he surrendered further to the sensation, eyes firmly shut beneath the mask, determined not to turn around and look at her again. He would not give himself that excuse. But he could no longer pretend he was trying to stop.

His movements became steadier, his breathing increasingly uneven as the tension built and his body responded despite every attempt to regain control. He could feel his pulse everywhere, his heightened senses making even the smallest physical sensation almost overwhelming. The image of her silhouette remained fixed behind his closed eyes, and the memory of her warmth, her voice and the kiss she had pressed against his cheek only made the desire harder to suppress.

The shame remained, buried beneath the physical relief, and perhaps that was what disturbed him most. Part of him knew exactly what he was doing and hated that he was doing it, while another, older part seemed to regard the struggle itself as unnecessary. It had already chosen her. It had spent weeks following her, learning her routines, protecting her, wanting her near. Now even the smallest reminder of her was enough to make restraint feel fragile.

Peter continued until the tension finally broke. His body shuddered as he came, his breathing catching beneath the mask while he stood frozen in the aftermath, hands falling slowly to his sides. For several seconds, he could do nothing but breathe and stare at the wall, painfully aware of what he had just done.

For several seconds afterwards, he simply stood there with his hands lowered, trying to steady himself and absorb what he had just done.

He knew he had lost the fight he had been trying so desperately to win. The realisation left him with a hollow mixture of relief and disgust, made worse by the knowledge that he had never once needed to look back at her.

He had imagined enough on his own.

And somewhere beneath the shame, the darkest part of him was satisfied.

___________________

After that night, Peter was so deeply embarrassed that he decided it had to end.

He upgraded the inhibitor again, spending hours modifying its circuitry and recalibrating the settings until he was satisfied that it would suppress the physiological responses that had been becoming increasingly difficult to control. When he finally tested it, the readings were stable. For the first time in weeks, he allowed himself to believe that he had found a way out.

He was not a pervert. She was not an object. And she certainly wasn’t his mate.

The last thought was still difficult to put into words. He refused to give the instinct that much legitimacy. Whatever his altered physiology was telling him, it did not get to decide who she was to him. 

He couldn’t even imagine looking at her face again without remembering what he had done.

So he decided the only thing left to do was stay away.

He threw himself into everything he could find to occupy his mind. Patrols became longer. He repaired his equipment even when nothing needed repairing, redesigned parts of his suit, ran diagnostics that didn’t need running and filled every empty hour with some task that required enough concentration to keep his thoughts from drifting back towards her. Whenever he caught himself wondering what she was doing, he forced his attention elsewhere.

E.V. noticed the change almost immediately.

“Your current strategy constitutes prolonged suppression of the identified physiological response.”

Peter kept working. “That’s the point.”

“I would advise against assuming suppression will produce no secondary effects.”

Peter sighed. “What kind of effects?”

“Potential consequences include increased sweating, elevated resting heart rate, difficulty concentrating, disrupted sleep, reduced appetite and general autonomic instability. Prolonged suppression may also intensify the underlying response when exposure to the selected individual.”

Peter stopped for a moment, then shook his head.

“I can handle sweating.”

“Your statement does not address the complete range of potential effects.”

“I’ll handle those too.”

There was no argument in E.V.’s voice when it answered. Only the same clinical certainty that had made the diagnosis so difficult to dismiss in the first place.

“Understood. I will continue monitoring your physiological data.”

Peter returned to his work, determined not to let the warning bother him. He had spent years learning how to control himself, how to keep fear from becoming panic and anger from becoming recklessness. Whatever his body was trying to make him feel, he refused to believe it was stronger than his own mind.

He could stay away from her.

For three weeks, Peter had managed not to see her.

It hadn’t been easy. His upgraded inhibitor helped, but keeping his distance required almost constant effort. He stopped going anywhere near her neighbourhood, avoided the streets where he knew she usually went, and forced himself not to check whether her bedroom light was on when he passed through the city. He had been determined to prove that whatever had been happening to him could be controlled.

Then, completely by accident, he ran into her.

Peter had just finished a fight with two bank robbers. The police were arriving as he stepped out of the bank, the adrenaline from the confrontation still running through his body while an entire crowd of reporters gathered around the scene. Cameras flashed from every direction, microphones were being pushed towards him, and questions seemed to come from every possible angle.

Of course. The entire press of New York City seemed to be there.

“Spider-Man!”

He recognised her voice before he even saw her.

Peter turned so quickly that he nearly knocked into two journalists standing beside him. His eyes found her almost immediately, and for a second, everything else around him seemed to disappear.

Something about her face was wrong.

Her eyebrows were drawn together, and there was something strangely desolate in her expression. She looked almost sad to see him, which made no sense at all. Peter stared at her for a moment, wondering whether he was imagining it simply because he had spent the last three weeks thinking about her far more than he should have.

Then her expression changed.

Relief softened her features, and she smiled.

Peter’s heart immediately began beating harder.

He should have walked away. He had promised himself he would. He had spent three weeks avoiding exactly this moment, terrified that seeing her again would undo everything he had worked so hard to control. Yet she was standing there in front of him, calling his name, and he couldn’t bring himself to ignore her.

He moved through the sea of journalists until he was close enough to smell her perfume.

The inhibitor was working.

That was the first thing Peter noticed. His senses sharpened when he came near her, but they didn’t overwhelm him. He could breathe normally. His thoughts remained clear. There was no sudden surge of possessiveness, no violent instinct pushing against the back of his mind. For the first time since meeting her, he could stand beside her and simply exist.

She was dressed formally for work, holding a phone in one hand, her press badge hanging from her jacket. Peter looked at it, then back at her face.

“They gave you the big stuff, then?”

She smiled, and something in his chest tightened at the sight of it. Three weeks. Three weeks of deliberately avoiding that smile, and now that he was finally looking at it again, he couldn’t understand how he had ever convinced himself that staying away was something he wanted.

“They gave me a chance,” she said with a small shrug.

Peter looked at the microphone in her hand, then back at her.

“Would you like that interview now?”

She blinked, apparently caught off guard by the offer.

“Now?”

“If you still want it.”

For a moment, she simply looked at him. Then the sadness Peter had noticed earlier seemed to disappear beneath a small, almost disbelieving smile.

“Of course I want it.”

Something in his chest eased.

She glanced towards the other reporters, who were already beginning to notice that she had somehow managed to get Spider-Man’s attention. “Maybe somewhere a little quieter?”

Peter followed her a short distance away from the crowd, stopping beside the entrance of the bank where the noise of the police and reporters became slightly more distant. She adjusted the microphone in her hand and checked something on her phone before looking up at him.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

She smiled at that, then switched into the composed expression he recognised from watching her work. The change was subtle, but Peter found himself fascinated by it. He had seen her laughing at restaurants and talking across her kitchen table, but he had never seen this version of her up close. Here, she looked confident and focused, completely at ease despite having Spider-Man standing directly in front of her.

She began with questions about the bank robbery. How he had arrived so quickly, whether anyone had been injured, whether the suspects had been working together. Peter answered as naturally as he could, occasionally glancing at the phone recording audio when he wasn’t sure where he was supposed to look.

After a few minutes, she lowered it slightly.

“Can I ask you something a little more personal?”

Peter nodded.

“Why do you keep doing this?”

He looked at her.

“Doing what?”

“Being Spider-Man.” She gestured vaguely towards the chaos behind them. “You could stop. You could disappear somewhere nobody knows you and live a normal life. So why come back every night?”

Peter was quiet for a moment.

“I don’t know if I could live with myself if I didn’t.”

She watched him carefully.

“Even when you’re scared?”

“Yes.”

Something in her expression softened.

She continued with questions about the city instead. Whether he thought people were afraid of him, whether he trusted the police, whether he believed the people he saved ever really understood the risks he took for them. Peter found himself answering more honestly than he had expected. It was strange to hear his own thoughts spoken aloud to someone who wasn’t a reporter looking for a sensational headline, but a woman who seemed genuinely interested in understanding him.

Then she asked, “Do you ever think about what people will remember when you’re gone?”

Peter’s answer came more quietly.

“I don’t think they’ll remember me.”

Her brow furrowed.

“That sounds sad.”

“Maybe.” He looked towards the flashing cameras in the distance. “But that’s not really why I do it.”

She lowered the microphone again, studying him for a second longer than the question required.

The interview should have ended there, but neither of them seemed particularly interested in stopping. She found another question, then another, and Peter kept answering. Eventually she stopped looking at her notes altogether.

“So,” she said, lowering the microphone completely, “did you actually enjoy the pizza?”

Peter almost laughed.

“I did.”

“I was worried you might have regretted coming.”

He shook his head.

“I didn’t.”

She smiled, and for a moment neither of them said anything.

Peter realised then that he had spent three weeks treating distance as the solution to everything. He had stayed away from her because he was afraid of what happened when he got too close. But the inhibitor was working. His thoughts were clear. He wasn’t fighting some overwhelming biological response.

He was simply standing there, talking to a woman he genuinely wanted to know better.

The distinction mattered.

“So,” she said after a moment, “I suppose I owe you another pizza.”

Peter looked at her.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I know. I just…” She smiled. “I’d like to.”

His heart gave a hard, sudden beat.

He could have waited for her to invite him again. Instead, before he had time to overthink it, he said, “Would you want to have dinner again?”

The words seemed to surprise both of them.

Her smile widened.

“I’d like that.”

Peter felt something loosen inside him, something he had been holding tightly for weeks. He had approached her himself. No rescue, no emergency, no excuse about keeping her safe had brought him there this time.

He had simply wanted to see her.

The strange thing was that the inhibitor was working. Peter could tell almost immediately. There was no sudden tightening in his chest, no overwhelming awareness of her heartbeat beneath her skin, no primitive urge insisting that he move closer or keep her within reach. Her scent was familiar, and his heightened senses still registered it more clearly than they would have with anyone else, but it no longer drowned out everything around him. For the first time since he had met her, Peter could stand in the same space as her and feel completely in control of himself.

And yet he still wanted to stay.

That was what unsettled him most. For weeks, Peter had blamed everything on the thing inside him because it had been easier to believe that way. If the fixation, the attraction and the constant need to know where she was could all be explained by some primitive biological response, then perhaps none of those feelings truly belonged to him. He could treat them like a condition, something his altered physiology had imposed on him, rather than something personal. If he could suppress the biology, then eventually he could suppress her too.

But now the biology was quiet, and she was still affecting him.

Peter listened as she spoke about her work, watched the way her expression changed when she became passionate about something, and remembered details he had learned long before he had ever been invited to sit across from her. He liked the way she took even her smaller assignments seriously, as if they mattered simply because someone had trusted her to tell the story. He liked her curiosity, her kindness and the fact that she had never treated him as though he were merely a mask hanging over a pair of abilities. Even when she was speaking to Spider-Man, there was something about the way she looked at him that made Peter feel as though she was actually trying to see the person underneath.

Those things had nothing to do with his instincts.

The arachnid side had been the reason he noticed her. It might have been the reason his senses had reacted so violently the first time he touched her, the reason some primitive part of him had immediately decided that she was important. But it had not been the reason he remembered the way she laughed. It had not been the reason he wanted to hear her opinions, or why he found himself genuinely interested in the stories she told him. It had not been the reason he had spent the entire journey home after their dinner thinking about something she had said rather than what her scent had done to him.

For the first time, Peter wondered whether he had been looking at the problem from the wrong direction. Perhaps the biology had not created his feelings for her. Perhaps it had simply stripped away the distance that would normally have kept a stranger from becoming important to him. It had drawn his attention to her before he had any reason to understand why, but everything that came afterwards had been his own.

He could suppress an instinct.

He couldn’t suppress the fact that he liked her.

The realisation made something in him ache. He had spent three weeks deliberately avoiding her, convincing himself that distance was the only responsible thing he could give her. Yet even without watching her from rooftops, even without knowing where she was or what she was doing, she had remained in his thoughts. He had missed her conversations. He had missed the sound of her voice. He had missed the ordinary feeling of sitting across from someone at a table and being treated like a person instead of a hero, a weapon, or a ghost.

And now that she was standing in front of him again, Peter found that what he wanted was painfully simple. He wanted her to keep talking. He wanted to know more about her, to see what made her laugh, to learn the things she had never told him. He wanted another dinner, another conversation, another excuse to spend an evening in her company, even though his body was no longer demanding any of it.

That was when Peter finally understood why the thought frightened him so much.

The instinct had chosen her before he had.

But somewhere along the way, Peter Parker had chosen her too.

She hesitated for a moment, then glanced down at the microphone in her hand before looking back at him.

“You know, I realise you probably can’t give me your phone number.”

Peter’s expression shifted slightly beneath the mask. He hadn’t expected the subject to come up, and for a second he wondered if she had somehow guessed more about him than she should. Before he could answer, she reached into her purse and pulled out a small paper notebook, along with a pen. She flipped it open against her palm and quickly wrote something on the page, her handwriting becoming slightly messier as she tried to do it without stopping.

When she finished, she tore the page out and held it towards him.

“But if you ever need to talk to me,” she said, offering him the paper, “you can call me.”

Peter looked down at the number.

It was written quickly, with one digit slightly smudged where the ink hadn’t quite dried. There was nothing ceremonious about it. She hadn’t thought about it for very long or made a point of turning it into some meaningful gesture. She had simply noticed a practical problem and found an easy solution.

“You don’t have to give me your number,” he said.

“I know.” She shrugged lightly. “But if you ever need to get in touch, it might be easier than waiting until you randomly run into me.”

The irony of that nearly made him uncomfortable.

Peter took the paper and folded it once before slipping it into the inside of his suit. He knew perfectly well that he didn’t need a phone number to find her. If anything, that was precisely what made accepting it feel strange. He already knew where she lived, where she worked and enough about her routine to know when she was usually home. None of that had ever required her permission.

This did. She had given him a way to contact her because she wanted him to have one, and Peter found himself unexpectedly reluctant to dismiss that distinction.

“Thanks,” he said.

She gave him an easy smile. “Sure.”

Peter nodded, his fingers briefly touching the place where he’d tucked the paper away. It was such an ordinary thing that he almost felt ridiculous for thinking about it so much. Still, as he stood there looking at her, he couldn’t ignore the small, unfamiliar feeling it left behind.

For once, he didn’t have to find a reason to appear in her life.

“I have to get back to work now, but…” She hesitated, glancing towards the Daily Bugle car before looking back at him. “I’ll see you soon?”

There it was again, the desolate look he had noticed outside the bank. It vanished almost before he could be sure of it, replaced by something like relief when he answered.

“I’m always around,” Peter said.

The words came easily, and he almost smiled beneath his mask at the irony. She had no idea how true they were. To her, it was probably just something reassuring for Spider-Man to say, a reminder that he was somewhere in the city if she needed him. She smiled and nodded, looking relieved.

“Okay.”

Peter watched her walk towards the car, slipping the phone into her bag. She climbed inside and gave him one last glance through the window before it pulled away, and he remained there until it disappeared into traffic.

He found himself thinking about their conversation, particularly everything that had happened after the interview stopped feeling like an interview. He liked talking to her. He liked the way she listened, the way she became animated when discussing something she cared about, and how easily she could make him forget, for a few minutes, how strange his life had become. None of that had been present in his first reaction to her. Those were things he had discovered by actually getting to know her, and he wanted to discover more.

His fingers brushed against the folded paper inside his suit.

Her number.

He wasn’t simply responding to some biological designation his body had made for him. He was becoming attached to a person he actually admired and enjoyed knowing.

That was a much more ordinary feeling than anything the arachnid side had given him, and Peter found it strangely harder to dismiss.

_________________

She had known he would be there.

After Peter left that night, she went through her usual routine with the strange awareness that he was probably watching from somewhere across the street, behind one of the dark windows or higher up on the rooftops. She had tested the idea often enough to know she wasn’t imagining it. So when she left her bedroom curtains open and began changing in front of the window, she knew exactly what she was doing. Her pulse picked up almost immediately, and a flush crept across her skin at the thought of his eyes on her, even though she couldn’t actually see him.

The possibility of being watched made her breathing shallower. She moved more slowly than she normally would, suddenly conscious of every gesture, wondering whether he was standing somewhere in the darkness and following her movements. The thought of him seeing her like this sent a nervous thrill through her, but it was the thought of what might happen afterwards that affected her most. She imagined him appearing at the window, imagined him knocking on her door and awkwardly admitting that he had seen what she had done, and the image was enough to make her stomach tighten and her face grow warmer.

She knew she was deliberately provoking him, and that knowledge only made the anticipation stronger. Part of her wanted him to come through that window.

She wanted to know what he would do if he realised that she had left the curtains open for him, whether he would finally stop pretending that his attention was entirely innocent. The possibility made her heart race so hard that she had to pause for a moment before continuing, suddenly aware that she was more excited by the thought of being caught than she had any right to be.

Nothing happened that she could see.

She finished getting ready for bed and climbed beneath the covers, still watching the window. She kept expecting a shadow to appear, or a knock to come from somewhere she couldn’t explain. Nothing came. The disappointment was immediate and physical, leaving her restless beneath the sheets, unable to stop wondering whether he had been there at all.

The following evening, she looked for him again.

She told herself it was only habit. After weeks of noticing him on her way home, hearing faint movement overhead or catching the suggestion of a figure on a rooftop, she had grown accustomed to the idea that someone was keeping an eye on her. It had even begun to make her feel safer. But there was something else beneath that now, something she was less willing to admit: she liked knowing that he was interested enough to keep looking for her.

But he wasn’t there.

She checked the rooftops anyway, then felt foolish for doing so. Perhaps he was busy. Spider-Man had a city to protect, and she had no reason to expect him every night. She went inside, assuming she would see him again soon, although a small, disappointed ache remained whenever she looked towards the window.

A few days passed, and his absence became harder to ignore. Whenever she left work late, she found herself glancing upwards. On familiar streets, she slowed to listen for the sounds she associated with him. She wondered whether he was following someone else, dealing with an emergency across the city, or had simply decided she was no longer worth watching. The last possibility bothered her more than she wanted to admit, and she hated how much she wanted to be certain that somewhere above her, he was still looking.

She had never asked him to follow her. In fact, during those first weeks, she had changed routes, varied her schedule and lingered in places where he might notice her, partly to prove he was there and partly because she wanted to understand why he kept appearing. Now that he had stopped, she missed the attention, along with the uneasy comfort of knowing that if something happened, he might reach her before she even realised she was in danger. She also missed the private thrill of wondering whether he was somewhere nearby, watching her without her knowing exactly where he was.

By the second week, she was looking for him openly. She glanced towards the rooftops before crossing the street and checked outside before drawing her curtains. Once, she stood in the same place where she had changed clothes for him, staring into the darkness and remembering the heat that had spread through her body when she had imagined his eyes following her. She felt that same flutter in her stomach now, followed by a dull disappointment when the rooftops remained empty.

There was nothing.

She began to wonder whether she had pushed too far that night. Maybe he had realised she knew. Maybe the kiss at her door, followed by what she had done at the window, had made him uncomfortable. She didn’t know what he had seen or what he thought she was trying to communicate, only that he had disappeared afterwards. Part of her worried that she had frightened him away, while another, more reckless part wished she had been bolder.

By the third week, uncertainty had turned into irritation. She couldn’t stop wondering whether he had decided she wasn’t worth watching anymore. It was unsettling to admit, especially because part of her knew his attention had never been entirely normal, but she had become accustomed to it in a way that was difficult to undo. She wanted to look up and find him there again, to feel that someone above the streets had noticed where she was going, and, perhaps most embarrassingly, to know that she could still hold his attention simply by looking back.

So when her voice carried over the crowd outside the bank three weeks later, calling his name before she had properly thought about it, relief went through her immediately.

“Spider-Man!”

He turned.

And when their eyes met, she realised just how much she had missed seeing him.

After giving him her number, she tried not to think about it too much.

He had said he would call, but that didn’t necessarily mean he would. Spider-Man had a city to protect, and she was hardly the most important thing on his mind. If he wanted to talk to her again, he would find a way.

There was no point checking her phone every few minutes or wondering whether every unknown number might be him, so she made an effort to carry on with her day as though she hadn’t handed a superhero her number two days earlier and then spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering whether he would actually use it.

Two days later, her phone rang while she was working.

The screen showed Private Number.

She stared at it for half a second before answering, making herself wait just long enough that she wouldn’t sound as though she’d been sitting there hoping for exactly this.

“Hi!”

There was a brief pause on the other end.

“Hi. It’s Spider-Man.”

She smiled before she could stop herself.

“Yeah, I figured. Private number.”

“Ah. Yes. I’m calling from a payphone.”

“A payphone?”

“Yeah.” He sounded slightly defensive. “It’s practical.”

She could hear the faint awkwardness in his voice, and it made her widen.

“So you called me from a payphone.”

“I did..”

There was another pause, and then his voice became a little more certain.

“I actually called because I finally read something you wrote.”

Her attention sharpened immediately. “You did?”

“Yeah. I saw the headline first, and then I read the whole thing.” He hesitated, as though trying to decide how to phrase what came next. “Congratulations, by the way. Seriously. It was good.”

She leaned back in her chair, unable to keep the pleased expression from her face.

“Thank you.”

“And, uh…” He paused again. “I also read the interview.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

She could already hear the embarrassment creeping into his voice.

“I looked like a real idiot.”

She laughed softly. “You did not look like an idiot.”

“I definitely did.”

“You really didn’t.”

“I think I just remembered why I don’t give interviews.”

She could picture him saying it, probably somewhere in a cramped phone booth with the mask pulled up just enough to talk, looking as though he regretted every answer he’d given her.

“What was so bad about it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Everything.” He gave a small, embarrassed sigh. “You asked perfectly normal questions and somehow I managed to sound like I had never spoken to another person before.”

“That might have something to do with the fact that you’re not exactly used to people interviewing you.”

“That’s generous.”

“It’s true.”

“Still,” he said, sounding a little more relaxed now, “I read the article and thought, wow. I really need to stop talking to journalists.”

She smiled.

“You called me to tell me that?”

“No.”

The answer came so quickly that she went quiet for a moment.

Peter seemed to realise how it sounded.

“I mean… not just that.”

“What else?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Her smile returned before she could hide it.

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

For a few seconds, neither of them said anything. Then Peter cleared his throat.

“I was wondering if that pizza offer was still open.”

“It is.”

“Good.”

There was unmistakable relief in his voice.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

Later that same day, Peter was waiting near one of the quieter streets she sometimes took home from work.

When she spotted him, a smile crossed her face.

“Could I offer you a ride home?”

“A ride?”

“An unconventional one. It comes with a little swinging.”

“I’m more concerned about your definition of ‘a little.’”

“Fair. I may have undersold it.”

She laughed and stepped closer.

“Web swinging, I assume? You’re not inviting me to one of those parties are you?” She joked, although for him the thought of sharing her with another man was no joke.

Peter tilted his head.

“Definitely web swinging.”

“Good. I’d hate to misunderstand you.”

“Believe me, I’m being very specific.”

She laughed again, then moved into his arms. She had done this before, and there was no hesitation in the way she settled against him. Peter’s hand closed around her waist, the contact sending a controlled rush through him. His senses sharpened around her, the warmth of her body, the quickening of her heartbeat, but the old reaction never came.

The inhibitor was working.

He could hold her without fighting himself.

“Ready?” he asked.

She tightened her arms around his neck.

“Try not to drop me.”

“I would never.” He said, completely serious.

Peter fired the web, and the ground disappeared beneath them.

He swung them through the evening streets, one arm securely around her as Manhattan blurred below. She laughed against his chest, completely at ease as they moved between the buildings, and Peter found himself smiling beneath the mask.

Peter brought them down onto the fire escape outside her window, landing lightly on the narrow metal platform. For a moment, neither of them moved. His arm was still around her waist, hers still around his neck, and they seemed to realise at exactly the same time how close they were. They reluctantly let go of each other, stepping back just enough to breathe without feeling each other’s bodies pressed together.

“Thank you,” she said, smoothing her clothes almost unnecessarily. “For the ride.”

“Anytime.”

She reached for the window, then stopped.

“Actually…”

Peter waited.

She looked suddenly embarrassed, her gaze dropping towards the fire escape before returning to him. “About the other night. The kiss on your cheek.”

His attention sharpened.

“I was wondering if that was… too much.” She gave a small, awkward laugh. “I mean, I knew the dinner wasn’t a date. At least, I didn’t think it was. We weren’t really hanging out romantically. And I’m not even sure that’s what this is now, so…” She shrugged, clearly wishing she had found a less complicated way to say it. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.”

Peter understood immediately.

She had interpreted the way he had turned and left as rejection. She had no idea that he had left because a simple kiss on the cheek had nearly torn through every ounce of control he had. He remembered the warmth of her lips against his skin, the way his body had reacted before his mind could catch up, and the desperate effort it had taken to walk away instead of turning back.

“No,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t too much.”

She looked at him.

“In fact…” He hesitated, then decided there was no point pretending. “I would have liked the dinner to be a date.”

Something changed in her expression.

“And I didn’t mind the kiss.”

Her heartbeat jumped.

Peter heard it immediately.

She took one step towards him.

Then another.

By the time she stopped, her chest was touching his again, and Peter went completely still. He could feel her breathing against him, could hear the rapid rhythm of her heart beneath it. She lifted her hands slowly, giving him plenty of time to move away, and curled her fingers around the edge of his mask.

Peter didn’t stop her.

She began rolling it upwards, carefully and almost hesitantly, exposing the lower half of his face. He remained perfectly still as the fabric moved past his mouth. She paused for a moment when his lips were finally visible, looking at him as though giving him one last chance to change his mind.

He didn’t.

Peter didn’t move when she leaned in.

Her lips touched his softly at first, almost cautiously, and the brief contact sent a sharp warmth through him that settled low in his stomach. She pulled back only an inch, her breath catching between them, and Peter could hear how quickly her heart was beating. His own pulse had become just as unsteady. For a moment he simply looked at her, making sure he was still himself, that the inhibitor was holding, that he could choose what happened next.

Then he kissed her.

His hand closed around her waist and drew her firmly against him as his mouth met hers again, this time with unmistakable intention. The sudden press of her body into his made the thin material of the suit feel almost negligible. She made a quiet sound against his lips, surprised by the change in intensity, and her fingers instinctively tightened against his shoulders. Peter felt the reaction travel through her, the slight shiver, the way she leaned into him rather than pulling away, and something in him answered with a slow, heavy heat.

He kissed her more deeply, still careful despite the hunger building beneath his restraint. Every small shift of her hips brought her closer. He could feel the exact point where her body met his, the way the suit did nothing to hide the growing hardness pressing insistently against the soft give of her tights. He was certain she could feel it. The knowledge sent another pulse of heat through him, sharp and unmistakable. Her breath grew uneven between kisses, and when she shifted again, just slightly, almost unconsciously, the pressure increased. A low sound escaped him before he could stop it, and by the way she smiled against his lips, she seemed to enjoy it. 

Her hands moved from his shoulders to the back of his neck, drawing him closer. Peter’s other hand settled against her back, holding her securely against him as the narrow fire escape seemed to disappear around them. He could feel every small movement, every change in her breathing, every involuntary sound she made when he kissed her again. The awareness of his arousal between them should have been overwhelming, but instead it felt strangely grounding. She was here. She had not pulled away from the clear evidence of what she was doing to him. And he was still in control.

Peter heard the sound before he understood what it was.

A sharp mechanical crack came from somewhere beneath his suit, followed immediately by E.V.’s voice in his ear.

“Warning. Inhibitor temperature has exceeded operational parameters. Arachnid hormone concentration has increased by thirty-eight percent within the last six seconds.”

Peter went completely still.

He broke the kiss at once. For one second, his hands remained around her waist, as some part of him hadn’t yet understood that he needed to let go. Then he forced himself to release her and stepped back, putting space between them.

She looked at him, confused.

Peter barely saw her expression. His senses had already begun to change. Her perfume seemed stronger than it had been seconds ago. Her heartbeat filled his ears, fast and uneven, and every small movement she made seemed suddenly magnified. Worse was the urge that came with it. The desire to close the distance again was no longer soft or hesitant. It had become something harder, more primitive, stripped of the restraint that had allowed him to kiss her without fear.

“Warning,” E.V. continued. “Inhibitor output has fallen below minimum suppression threshold.”

Images flashed through Peter’s mind before he could stop them, each one darker than the last. His body knew what it wanted before his conscious mind had even formed the thought, and that frightened him more than anything else. He didn’t know what the instinct would consider acceptable now that the inhibitor was failing, didn’t know how much of himself would remain if he let it push any further.

He took another step back.

“I have to go.”

The words came out too quickly.

“No, wait.”

He shook his head, already turning away from her. She reached towards him, but he was moving before she could say anything else, firing a web towards the next building.

“Wait!”

He didn’t look back.

The first swing carried him away from her window. The second took him farther, and by the third he was already moving through the city at a speed that had nothing to do with getting home and everything to do with putting as much distance between them as possible.

Behind him, her voice disappeared beneath the traffic.

Peter kept swinging.

He didn’t stop until the buildings around him were unfamiliar and the sound of her heartbeat was finally gone.

Peter crashed through the window of his apartment and barely managed to land on his feet before stumbling further inside. He tore the mask from his face, dragging in a desperate breath as though he had been underwater. For several seconds he simply stood there with both hands braced against the nearest table, trying to slow his breathing and convince his body that he was no longer beside her.

He couldn’t do this again.

There was no suit adjustment, no new inhibitor, no piece of technology he could build that could separate him from himself. He had spent weeks believing he could engineer a solution, something that would allow him to keep the part of himself he understood under control while somehow isolating the part he didn’t. But there was no machine capable of drawing a line between Peter Parker and whatever was buried inside him. If the instinct was part of him, then eventually it would find a way through.

And now she was the one standing on the other side of that failure.

Peter closed his eyes.

He could still see her face when he had left, confused and hurt. She had called after him, and he had simply disappeared. She probably thought she had done something wrong. Maybe she thought she had kissed him when she shouldn’t have, or that she had crossed some boundary he hadn’t wanted crossed. The thought twisted something painfully inside him. She hadn’t done anything wrong. If anything, she had trusted him, and he had abandoned her without giving her an explanation.

The memory of the kiss remained painfully vivid. His lips still carried the faint trace of her perfume, and his skin seemed to burn beneath the suit wherever she had touched him. Lower, the physical evidence of how strongly he had reacted was impossible to ignore. His cock was rigid, thick and throbbing inside the tight confinement of the suit, the fabric stretched taut over the heavy length of it. Every shift of his weight made the material drag against the swollen head, sending sharp, aching pulses through his groin. It hurt, an insistent, almost sickening pressure that had only grown worse the farther he got from her. Peter looked down at the obscene outline straining against the suit and immediately looked away, jaw tightening hard enough to ache.

He wanted relief.

The thought came with frightening simplicity and zero ambiguity. If he could just get a hand on himself, if he could stroke his aching cock until he came, perhaps the pressure would ease for a few minutes. His fingers twitched against the table at the idea, the urge to shove the suit down and fist himself right there almost overwhelming. But he knew what that meant, and he knew the deeper problem wasn’t going to disappear with a messy orgasm on the floor of his apartment. He forced himself to stay where he was, hands pressing against his forehead as a headache began building behind his eyes and his cock continued to pulse, neglected.

He tried to think about something else.

It didn’t work.

Her face returned. Her mouth against his. Her hands lifting his mask. The trust in the way she had stepped closer instead of away. Then the images shifted, darker and far more explicit, flooding his mind without permission. He saw her on her knees in front of him, looking up with that same soft trust as she tugged the suit down just far enough to free his cock. He imagined the first touch of her hand wrapping around the thick, aching shaft, the way her fingers would struggle to close fully around him. He pictured her leaning in, lips parting, taking the swollen head into the wet heat of her mouth while he tangled his fingers in her hair and finally got the relief his body was screaming for. The fantasy was vivid enough that his hips jerked forward against nothing, a fresh pulse of precome soaking into the suit.

Shame hit him almost as hard as the arousal.

He had no right to think of her like that. Not after the way he had left her. Not when she had only kissed him, and he was already reducing her to a solution for the painful erection straining against his suit. The guilt twisted through the lust, sour and heavy, but it didn’t stop the images. They kept coming: her hand stroking him with deliberate pressure, her tongue dragging along the underside of his cock, the soft, wet sounds she would make as she worked to take more of him. Peter’s breath left him in a ragged rush. His cock throbbed so hard it bordered on agony, every heartbeat a demand he refused to answer.

“E.V. Tell me my current readings.”

There was a brief pause.

“Heart rate elevated. Core temperature elevated. Inhibitor function remains below safe operating parameters. Arachnid hormonal activity continues to increase.”

Peter clenched his jaw. Another heavy throb rolled through his cock, so intense it made his thighs tighten. In his mind she was still on her knees, still looking up at him while she took him deeper, and the guilt of it made his stomach turn even as his body strained toward the fantasy.

“Can I suppress it?”

“Negative.”

The answer was immediate and clinical.

Something inside him seemed to snap.

Peter stumbled backwards, striking his back against the edge of a table hard enough to send it scraping across the floor. He barely noticed. His hands went to his head as another wave of pain tore through him, pain that had nothing to do with the headache and everything to do with the relentless, swollen weight between his legs. He staggered into a chair, knocking it sideways before catching himself against the wall.

The movement forced the suit to drag over his cock again, and a broken sound escaped his throat. The fantasy refused to die. He could still feel the imaginary wet heat of her mouth, still hear the soft choke she would make if he pushed too deep, and the knowledge that he was using the memory of her trust to feed this desperate need only made the shame burn hotter.

He needed it to stop.

He needed his mind back.

But the harder he fought the impulse, the louder everything became: the memory of her heartbeat, the warmth of her body against his, the taste of her kiss, the overwhelming certainty that he should turn around and go back to her or, failing that, that he should shove a hand down the front of the suit and stroke himself while imagining it was her hand, her mouth, her body giving him the release he craved. His breathing became ragged. Precome continued to leak, soaking the material until it clung wetly to the underside of his shaft.

He struck the back of his head against the wall once, then again, not hard enough to injure himself but desperate for some sensation strong enough to drown everything else out. His hands remained pressed against his forehead as he fought for the last pieces of rational thought he could still hold onto. Below, his cock stayed brutally hard, aching with every heartbeat, demanding a relief he refused to give it while the filthy images of her on her knees kept cycling through his mind, each one followed by a fresh spike of self-loathing.

Peter hit his head against the wall again.

This time, he didn’t hold back.

Pain exploded through his skull, sharp enough to cut through the noise in his mind. The back of his head struck the wall with a heavy crack, leaving a dark mark against the paint, and his legs gave way beneath him. He slid down the wall and landed hard on the floor, one hand instinctively reaching behind his head while the other remained pressed against his forehead.

For several seconds, he couldn’t think.

Then the room slowly began to come back into focus.

The pounding in his head was still there, but the frantic noise that had filled his senses had begun to recede with it. His breathing gradually steadied. The scent of her perfume was no longer overwhelming. Her heartbeat, once so loud that it had seemed to fill his entire mind, was gone.

Peter sat there on the floor, breathing heavily, and realised with a sickening clarity what he had almost done.

He looked towards the damaged wall.

Then at his trembling hands.

The anger was gone. The instinct was quieter. What remained was Peter, exhausted and horrified, staring at the consequences of another night he couldn’t control.

He lowered his head into his hands.

“E.V.?” Peter swallowed. “Give me my readings again.”

“Neurological activity returning to baseline parameters. Arachnid hormonal activity remains elevated but is decreasing.”

He closed his eyes.

For the first time since he had left her, Peter could think clearly enough to understand the full weight of what had happened.

She had kissed him because she wanted to. And he had run from her without explaining why.

Peter leaned his head carefully against the wall, avoiding the spot he had struck, and stared blankly across the room.

Peter remained on the floor for several minutes before finally forcing himself to stand. His head still throbbed, and every movement sent a dull pulse through the back of his skull, but his thoughts were his own again. That was enough. 

He couldn’t leave her like this.

The idea of going back frightened him, not because he thought he would immediately lose control again, but because he had finally accepted something he had spent weeks trying to avoid. There was no version of this in which they could simply become a normal couple. 

He couldn’t build a machine that would make the dangerous part of him disappear, and he couldn’t ask her to spend the rest of her life wondering which version of him she was going to get. He couldn’t build a relationship around an absence of trust, keeping half of himself hidden because the truth might make her afraid of him.

It hurt more than he wanted to admit. For a little while, he had allowed himself to imagine what it might be like to have something ordinary in his life again. Dinner at her apartment, more phone calls, walking her home without pretending it was a rescue, maybe even kissing her again without immediately having to run. He had let himself believe that the inhibitor might be enough, that perhaps he could have one thing that belonged to Peter instead of Spider-Man. Now he knew better.

But she didn’t deserve to be left wondering what she had done wrong. Peter remembered her standing on the fire escape, the way her expression had changed from nervous anticipation to confusion when he suddenly pulled away. She had called after him, and he had given her nothing: no explanation, no reassurance, just a disappearing figure swinging into the darkness. The thought made his stomach twist. Whatever happened after tonight, she deserved to know that the kiss hadn’t been the reason he left. She deserved to know that he had wanted it, that he had wanted her, and that the problem had never been her.

_________________

The next evening, just after sunset, Peter swung towards her building. He had spent most of the day repairing the inhibitor one final time, checking every component twice before finally convincing himself that it would hold long enough for what he needed to do. He didn’t trust it completely, and he wasn’t sure he ever could again, but he couldn’t keep avoiding her. He had made the decision to end whatever had begun between them, and if he was going to do that, he owed her the courtesy of doing it to her face.

He landed on the fire escape with a metallic thud and immediately listened through the window. Her heartbeat reached him almost at once, familiar enough that he recognised it without having to think. She was inside. Peter stood there for a moment with his hand hovering near the glass, suddenly uncertain of himself in a way he never was when facing a criminal or a crisis. He had rehearsed what he wanted to say all day, but now that he was actually standing outside her window, every carefully prepared explanation seemed inadequate.

He finally raised his hand and tapped gently against the glass. A moment later, he saw movement inside. Her bedroom door opened, and she slowly walked towards the kitchen window, pulling the curtain aside as she approached. When she saw him standing there, she stopped, and Peter couldn’t quite understand the expression on her face. She looked sad, but there was something harder underneath it, something that might have been anger. He waited until she opened the window before saying anything.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice serious.

“Can we talk for a second?”

Her eyes stayed on him. “Are you gonna run again?”

The question hit harder than he expected. Peter swallowed and shook his head, forcing himself to meet her gaze. “I won’t. Just let me explain myself.”

She didn’t answer immediately. She stood there studying him, biting down on her lower lip as though she was trying to decide whether letting him inside was worth the risk of being hurt again. After several seconds, she finally stepped aside and gave him a small gesture to come in. Peter climbed through the window, careful not to move too quickly, and the familiar warmth of her apartment surrounded him again. 

She turned towards him and folded her arms across her chest.

“What do you want to say?” she asked, and there was something almost hopeless in her voice.

Peter took a slow breath. “I owe you an explanation, and I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I left like that. You didn’t do anything wrong, and the kiss wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t because I didn’t want you to kiss me.”

Her expression shifted slightly, but she said nothing.

“I wanted it,” he continued, his voice quieter now. “I wanted it more than I should have. And that’s exactly why I had to leave.”

Peter stood silently for several seconds, trying to find a way to explain something that had never made sense even to him. 

“I’ve been following you,” he said.

Her expression changed, but she didn’t interrupt.

“It started a little over two months ago. The first time I saved you.” His gaze dropped. “You were about to get hit by that car. I caught you, and something happened the second I touched you. Your scent, your heartbeat, the way your body felt against mine… my senses reacted before I even understood what was happening.”

He swallowed.

“I let you go, but I couldn’t make myself leave. I could still hear your heart from the rooftop. I could still smell you. I told myself I was only making sure you got home safely, so I followed you.” He looked at her. “That was the first time.”

Peter paused before continuing.

“Then I tried to stop. For about two weeks, I stayed away. I thought whatever had happened was something I could ignore if I gave it enough time. But then I saw you again.”

His expression tightened.

“And it was worse.”

He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.

“After that, I started following you more deliberately. I learned your routines. Where you worked. Where you liked to eat. The streets you usually took home. Things you liked. Things you did on weekends.” His voice became quieter. “I knew things about you that you had never told me, and I kept telling myself I was doing it because I needed to know you were safe.”

He looked away.

“But eventually I had to admit that wasn’t the whole truth.”

She remained silent.

“I wanted to know where you were,” he said. “I wanted to see you.”

The admission seemed to hurt him.

“And I knew it was wrong. I knew it every time I watched you from a rooftop. Every time I followed you home. I knew I was crossing a line, and I still couldn’t make myself stop.”

He took a slow breath.

“That was when I started trying to understand why.”

His voice shifted almost imperceptibly, becoming more precise, more clinical.

“You know what my abilities are like. The strength, the senses, the reflexes. They’re biological. My body changed when I was bitten, and there are still things about that biology that I don’t completely understand. So I started monitoring myself whenever I was around you.”

He hesitated.

“My physiology changed around you.”

She frowned slightly.

“My senses reacted to you immediately. Your scent registered differently. Your heartbeat became something I could distinguish without trying. My nervous system became more responsive to your presence. My heart rate, adrenaline, hormone levels… they all changed.”

Peter looked down.

“E.V. helped me analyse it.”

“E.V?”

“The AI in my suit.”

She nodded.

“She monitors my physiology. Heart rate, neural activity, hormone levels, everything she can measure. And eventually she found a pattern.”

He struggled with the next part.

“My body was producing unusually high levels of certain hormones whenever I was near you. The pattern wasn’t random. It was consistent with a reproductive response.”

Her expression changed.

Peter forced himself to continue.

“My organism has mating behaviour.”

The words sounded clinical, but his face betrayed how difficult they were to say.

“I’m not saying I’m incapable of controlling myself. I’m not saying I’m an animal. I’m still me. I know what is right and wrong. I know you aren’t mine, and I know I have no right to treat you as though you are.”

His voice softened.

“But there’s a primitive biological layer underneath all of that. Something that responds to certain stimuli. And when I first touched you…” He looked at her. “It responded to you.”

Silence filled the room.

“Peter shook his head almost immediately, as though he needed to make sure she understood what he meant.

“That doesn’t mean you belong to me. You don’t. You never have. That’s what I’ve been trying to remind myself from the beginning. You’re a person. You have your own choices, your own life, and none of my instincts give me the right to interfere with that.”

Peter lowered his eyes.

“I didn’t know what that meant at first. I only knew that I couldn’t stop thinking about you. That I wanted to know where you were. That I became protective. Jealous. Possessive.” His voice tightened. “And the more I gave in to it, the harder it became to separate what I genuinely wanted from what my body was demanding.”

His voice cracked slightly despite his effort to keep it controlled.

“But knowing that doesn’t make the instinct disappear.”

Her eyes moved towards his suit.

“I tried using the inhibitor. It suppresses the hormonal response. Keeps the neurological activity below the threshold where that instinct starts influencing my behaviour. It doesn’t remove anything. It just keeps the response quiet enough that I can think clearly.”

Peter gave a small, exhausted breath.

“For the most part, it worked.”

He looked at her.

“That’s why I was able to keep doing this. Why I could be around you without completely losing control. Why I could follow you and still tell myself I was making choices.”

His expression darkened.

“But last night, when you kissed me, the inhibitor overheated.”

She went still.

“E.V. warned me that the suppression was dropping. Within seconds, my hormone levels were climbing, my senses were changing, and I could feel the difference.” His jaw tightened. “The desire to stay with you stopped feeling like a decision. It became something…Different.”

He stepped backwards.

“That’s why I ran.”

His voice broke slightly.

“Not because I regretted kissing you. Not because I didn’t want you. I wanted to stay so badly that I was terrified of what wanting you would turn into if I stayed.”

Peter looked at her, his expression almost pleading.

“I know what I’ve done. I know following you wasn’t protecting you anymore. I know learning everything about you without your permission was wrong. I know I don’t get to call it instinct and pretend that makes it acceptable.”

He swallowed.

“I’m not asking you to tell me it was okay.” His voice became quieter. “I’m asking you to forgive me for not knowing how to stop.”

She remained silent.

“Please understand why I can’t be around you.”

He took another step back.

“I don’t trust the part of me that reacts to you. I don’t know where its limits are. I don’t know what happens if the inhibitor fails again, or if I get too comfortable, or if I stop being afraid of what it wants.” His eyes stayed fixed on hers. “And I can’t gamble with you just because being near you makes me happier than I’ve been in years.”

Peter’s breathing trembled.

“I know,” she said quietly.

He frowned.

“What?”

“I know you were following me.”

Peter went completely still. She held his gaze.

“I’ve known from almost the beginning.” 

For several seconds, she said nothing. Peter could see the uncertainty moving across her face, as though she were trying to decide how much of the truth she was willing to give him now that he had finally told her his.

“I knew something was happening before I knew it was you,” she said eventually. “At first, it was just a feeling. I’d be walking home and suddenly feel like someone was there, even when the street was empty. Then I’d catch movement above me, or hear something on a rooftop, and whenever I looked up, you’d be gone.”

She drew a slow breath, her fingers twisting together.

“I started noticing patterns. You were always around when I took certain routes. If I left work late, I’d see you. If I changed streets, somehow you’d appear there too. It happened often enough that I stopped believing it was coincidence.”

Peter’s shoulders tightened.

“You should have been scared.”

“I was,” she admitted. “I think that’s what confused me.”

She looked at him carefully before continuing.

“Because I knew it was strange. I knew a man following me without telling me who he was should have frightened me more than it did. There were moments when I thought I should report it, or tell someone, or do something to make you stop. But then I’d look up and realise you were there, and…” She hesitated, embarrassed by the admission. “I’d feel safer.”

Peter stared at her.

“I don’t know when that changed,” she continued. “Maybe it wasn’t one particular moment. Maybe it was just the fact that you kept showing up. You never asked anything from me. You never approached me. You just watched me. And somehow I started thinking that if you were there, nothing bad was going to happen to me.”

Her eyes dropped briefly.

“And then I started wondering why.”

She gave a small, nervous breath that almost became a laugh, but she stopped herself.

“I wanted to know why Spider-Man kept watching me.”

Peter’s gaze remained fixed on her.

“So I started testing you.”

The admission made him straighten slightly.

“I changed my routine. I took different streets home. I stayed later at work. Sometimes I’d deliberately stop somewhere longer than I needed to, just to see whether you’d still be there when I left. And every time you appeared, I knew I hadn’t imagined it.”

She looked ashamed now, but she didn’t retreat from the truth.

“I should probably tell you that I liked it.”

Peter’s expression changed.

“I liked knowing I was the person you were watching.”

Her voice was quieter when she said it.

“It made me feel noticed. Important, even. I know that isn’t a very good reason, and I know it doesn’t make what you were doing right, but that’s how it felt. Out of everyone in this city, you kept looking for me.”

She swallowed.

“And I liked being the one you looked for.”

Peter looked down, unable to hide how deeply the confession affected him.

“That date,” she continued, “wasn’t really about the man I was with. He’d asked me out before, and I eventually agreed because I thought…” She paused, searching for the least humiliating way to say it. “I thought maybe you’d be watching.”

“You went out with him because of me?”

She nodded.

“I wanted to see what you’d do.”

There was no pride in her voice now. If anything, she sounded almost embarrassed by how deliberate it had been.

“I wanted to know whether you cared enough to get jealous.”

Peter’s jaw tightened.

“And when he didn’t walk me home, I knew exactly what I was doing when I chose that other route.” She looked at him directly. “I knew it was dangerous.”

The admission sat heavily between them.

“I knew I could have made a different choice. I knew I was taking a stupid risk just because I wanted to see whether you’d come after me. And I trusted that you would.”

Peter’s expression hardened with fear.

“You could have been hurt.”

“I know.”

Her voice softened. She took a small step closer, stopping before she reached him.

“I wanted you to choose me.”

Peter looked at her as though he couldn’t decide whether the words frightened him or broke his heart.

“When you came down from that roof, I knew I’d been right. And when you took me home, I…” She paused, her cheeks warming. “I loved it. I loved knowing that you were there because of me. I loved being in your arms and knowing that, for once, you weren’t somewhere above me watching from a distance.”

Her eyes lowered.

“And then you left.”

Peter understood immediately.

“The night I kissed your cheek,” she said, clarifying it herself, “you turned around and walked away so quickly that I thought I’d done something wrong.”

His expression shifted.

“I didn’t know why. I kept thinking about it afterward. I wondered whether I’d made you uncomfortable, whether I’d misunderstood everything between us. And then you disappeared.”

She looked towards the window, remembering those three weeks.

“For the first few days, I thought it was probably a good thing. I told myself that whatever was happening between us had become too strange. That maybe I should be relieved you weren’t watching me anymore.”

She shook her head faintly.

“But I wasn’t relieved.”

Peter remained completely silent.

“I started looking for you.”

Her voice was almost embarrassed by the admission.

“I’d look at the rooftops when I left work. I’d take the streets where I’d usually seen you. Sometimes I’d stand by my window longer than I needed to, just wondering if you’d come back.”

She finally looked at him again.

“And when I couldn’t find you, I missed you.”

Something in Peter’s face softened.

“I missed feeling like you were there.” She hesitated before adding, “I missed knowing that you wanted to be near me.”

That was the part she seemed most reluctant to admit.

“After three weeks, I started wondering if I’d pushed you away. I wondered whether you’d finally decided that whatever you felt wasn’t worth the trouble. And then I saw you after the bank robbery.”

A small smile appeared on her face at the memory..

“I don’t think you understand what that felt like. I’d spent three weeks wondering whether I’d imagined everything between us, and then you were standing there again. You looked at me, you came over, you talked to me. You asked me to dinner.”

Her smile faded into something more vulnerable.

“And suddenly I knew I hadn’t imagined it.”

Peter’s hands remained at his sides.

“I know you’re afraid of this,” she said. “I know you’re afraid of the way your body reacts to me, and I know you don’t trust it. You told me what your biology is doing. You told me about the mating response, the hormones, the inhibitor. I understand why that scares you. And you’re right to be scared, that sounds crazy.”

She stepped a little closer.

“But I need you to understand something too.”

Peter lifted his eyes to hers.

“I wasn’t doing all of this because your instincts made me.”

She held his gaze.

“I chose to look for you. I chose to change my routes. I chose to go on that date. I chose to take that street. And after you disappeared, I chose to look for you again.”

Her voice trembled slightly.

“I knew it was wrong to encourage you. I knew I was making something complicated even more complicated. Sometimes I wondered if I should have stopped everything before it went this far.”

She paused, then admitted the part that frightened her most.

“And most times I didn’t regret it at all.”

Peter’s breathing slowed.

“I don’t know where instinct ends and choice begins for you,” she whispered. “And maybe that’s why this scares me. Because I’m starting to realise I don’t completely know where it ends and choice begins for me either.”

She stood close enough now that he could feel her warmth without touching her.

“I know what you’ve done isn’t something I can just pretend was romantic because I liked it. I know you crossed boundaries. I know you were watching me without my permission, and I know you could have become someone I should have been afraid of.”

She took a slow breath before looking at him again.

“But you’re forgetting something,” she said. “I should have a choice in this too.”

Peter’s expression tightened. “You don’t understand what you’re asking me.”

“Maybe I don’t understand everything.” Her voice remained steady. “But I understand what I want.”

She took a step closer.

Peter stayed where he was, though every instinct told him to create distance. He could hear her breathing, feel the warmth of her body approaching, and beneath the suit his heartbeat began to pound harder.

“And what if I want this as badly as you do?” she asked.

She moved closer still, until there was barely any space between them.

“What if I want you too?”

Her hand rose and settled against his chest, directly over his heart. The contact was simple, almost tentative, but Peter felt it immediately. Her palm was warm through the suit, and beneath it his heart beat hard enough that there was no hiding what she was doing to him.

She looked up at him.

“You’ve been so afraid of what you might do to me that you haven’t stopped to ask what I might wanna do to you.”

Peter lowered his gaze to her hand, slowly sliding down his body.

For weeks, he’d treated his fear as proof that he had to stay away from her. Now she was standing in front of him, asking him to acknowledge that she had a say in what happened next.

She let her hand travel lower, tracing the rigid planes of his abdomen through the suit with deliberate, unhurried pressure. Her fingers followed the seam of the fabric until they hovered just above the thick, insistent shape of his erection, close enough that the heat of her palm radiated against the straining length without quite touching. The outline of him was impossible to miss, heavy, fully hard, the suit stretched taut over the swollen head and the thick shaft beneath.

“I want this,” she repeated, softer now, the words almost a breath against his chest. “I want you.”

Peter felt the truth of it in every heightened sense he possessed. Her heartbeat fluttered fast and uneven against his chest, the rhythm stuttering when her fingers lingered so near the rigid evidence of his need. Her scent deepened, warm and faintly sweet with the unmistakable edge of arousal. The subtle shift of her hips toward him, the soft catch in her breathing, none of it was fear. It was an invitation, clear and unmistakable. He could smell how wet she was already beginning to get, the intimate heat of it rising between them.

The conflict inside him rose like a wave. The inhibitor hummed weakly at the base of his skull, already struggling under the flood of hormones her nearness unleashed. The primitive part of him snarled that she was already his, that the soft press of her body and the open want in her voice were all the permission he needed. The human part of him still tried to pull back, still whispered that he could hurt her, that he could lose every careful boundary he had fought to keep.

He lost the fight by degrees, one slow breath at a time.

His gloved hands rose, almost reluctant, and carefully pinched the lower edge of his mask. He peeled the fabric upward only far enough to free his mouth, the rest of his face still hidden. The air felt cool against his lips. He leaned down with exaggerated caution, any sudden movement risking the moment. Their mouths met in a soft kiss, just the light brush of his lips against hers, testing, waiting.

She answered without hesitation. Her head tilted, her mouth opening under his, and she deepened the kiss with a quiet, hungry sound. Her tongue traced the seam of his lips, then slipped inside when he parted for her. The taste of her was warm and faintly sweet; the wet heat of her mouth made something low in his abdomen tighten hard. He kissed her back more fully then, still careful, still half-afraid of his own strength, but the kiss grew denser, slower, tongues sliding and stroking in a languid rhythm that left them both breathing harder. Saliva slicked their lips. Every time her tongue curled against his, a fresh pulse of heat shot straight to his cock, making it throb heavily inside the tight confinement of the suit.

She reached for his wrists and guided his hands to her waist. His fingers settled there, spanning the soft curve of her sides, feeling the heat of her skin through the thin fabric of her clothes. They stayed like that for long minutes, mouths moving together in deep, unhurried kisses, the quiet wet sounds of it filling the small space between them. Her body pressed closer. Her breasts brushed his chest with every breath. Her hands mapped the hard lines of his chest and shoulders through the suit, then drifted lower again.

Then her right hand slipped down with deliberate intent until her palm finally settled fully over the thick, rigid length of his cock. She pressed firmly, shaping her fingers around the straining outline, rubbing slowly from the heavy base up to the swollen head trapped against his stomach. The sudden, intimate pressure dragged a low, broken moan out of him that turned into a deeper groan against her mouth. His hips jerked forward once, involuntary, grinding the hard ridge of his cock into her hand.

Something inside him snapped.

In one fluid motion he caught both of her wrists, pinned them above her head against the wall with one strong hand, and drove his body forward until she was trapped between the cool plaster and the full, hard length of him. The kiss changed, still deep, but sharper now, hungrier. He rolled his hips slowly, deliberately, letting her feel every inch of how hard he was. The thick shaft dragged against the soft give of her stomach and the apex of her thighs, the suit doing nothing to hide the heat or the insistent pulse of him. His free hand slid down the curve of her back and cupped her ass, lifting her slightly so that her weight settled more fully onto the rigid line of his cock. He held her there with the strength of his hips alone, one hand still locking her arms high, the other kneading the soft flesh of her backside as he kissed her like he meant to learn the exact shape of her mouth. Every slow grind made the head of his cock catch against the damp heat between her legs, the thin layers of fabric between them already growing wetter.

He only released her long enough to lift her cleanly into his arms. He carried her the short distance to the dinner table, sweeping plates, boxes, and cutlery aside with one arm so they crashed and scattered across the floor. Then he laid her down on the smooth wood, following her with his mouth still fused to hers, kissing her through the small, startled sound she made when her back met the table. His body settled between her spread thighs, the heavy weight of his cock pressing firmly against the soft, damp center of her through their clothes. He rolled his hips once more, slow and deliberate, letting her feel exactly how thick and hard he was, how ready.

Between the deep, lingering kisses he spoke against her lips, voice rough and almost pleading.

“Let me taste you. Please.”

His gloved hand trailed slowly down the length of her body, over the rise of her breast, the soft plane of her stomach, the curve of her hip, until it settled on the warm, sensitive skin of her inner thigh. He pressed firmly enough that she would feel the claim of it, the careful strength, but never hard enough to leave a mark. His thumb stroked once, slow and deliberate, just shy of where she was already warm and wet, the fabric of her underwear clinging damply to her folds.

“Please,” she answered, the word already soft and breathless.

Peter’s hands moved to the waistband of her pants. He unfastened them with deliberate care, then drew the fabric down over her hips and thighs, sliding it past her knees and off her legs entirely until she lay on the table in only her underwear. 

Peter sank to his knees in front of the table. He guided both of her legs over his shoulders with careful hands, settling her open and exposed before him. The scent of her arousal hit him fully then, rich, intimate, impossible to ignore,and his mouth watered. He could see the dark, damp patch already forming on the thin fabric covering her cunt. He started slowly, pressing open-mouthed kisses along the soft skin of her inner thigh, higher with each one, his tongue occasionally flicking out to taste the salt of her skin. Every brush of his lips drew her breath sharper. Her fingers curled tightly into the edge of the table. He refused to rush, taking his time with the soft, wet press of his mouth against her skin, letting the moment stretch while her thighs trembled faintly against his shoulders and the last threads of his restraint frayed thinner with every careful kiss that brought him closer to the heat between her legs.

He finally pushed the thin fabric of her underwear aside, exposing her completely, and pressed his mouth fully against her cunt. She let out a startled sound that melted almost immediately into a low, broken moan. The taste of her hit him directly, hot, salty-sweet, slick and rich, and so intensely her that every other thought in his head simply vanished. Her scent filled his lungs completely. Nothing else existed. He licked her in slow, deliberate strokes from the bottom of her folds up to her clit, then sealed his mouth over her and sucked hard, drawing another moan from her throat. His tongue worked her steadily, pressing flat against her, then circling her swollen clit with focused pressure, alternating deep, wet kisses against her entrance with long, greedy strokes that made her hips twitch and her thighs tighten around his head. Each new sound she made only drove him deeper into the singular focus of her taste and the way her body responded, growing wetter against his tongue with every pass. He kept going until her thighs trembled harder against his shoulders and her breathing turned sharp and uneven, the unmistakable signs that she was close.

He stopped at once.

She was still trying to catch her breath when he slid two fingers inside her without warning. He pushed them deep, curling them deliberately against the sensitive front wall that made her back arch hard off the table. This time he wanted his face free so he could watch every expression. He kept the lower half of his mask lifted and fixed his eyes on her face as he worked his fingers in slow, deep strokes, scissoring them slightly to stretch her, watching her mouth fall open and her body shake under the steady pressure. Wet sounds filled the quiet room with every thrust of his fingers.

With his free hand he reached up and tore her blouse open in one sharp motion, buttons scattering across the floor. The fabric fell away to expose her bra. He pressed both hands over the soft weight of her breasts, squeezing them firmly through the thin material, thumbs rubbing hard over the tight peaks of her nipples until they stood out clearly. Seeing her like that: flushed, moaning, completely open for him, was priceless.

He released her only long enough to rip the bra itself apart, the delicate fabric giving way with a soft tear. He leaned over her immediately, taking one breast into his mouth and sucking hard on the nipple while his tongue flicked and circled the sensitive tip. He switched to the other, giving it the same hungry attention, the wet heat of his mouth drawing fresh, higher sounds from her throat as he bit down gently and then soothed the spot with his tongue.

His free hand found its way back down between her legs. He pushed her underwear farther aside and stroked her clit in firm, wet circles with his thumb while two fingers continued to thrust inside her, the dual sensation making her writhe and grind against his hand. Her cunt clenched tightly around his fingers, soaking them further with every stroke.

“I’m gonna… Please, please, I need it in me,” she begged, voice breaking.

Peter stepped back, still watching her. He reached behind himself and slowly opened the zipper of his suit, peeling the tight material down his shoulders, arms, and torso until it pooled at his waist. He pushed it lower still until he stood in only the thin compression shorts of the suit and the mask. Then he freed his cock, thick and heavy and already leaking clear fluid at the tip, the shaft flushed dark and rigid. He looked at her.

“Do you want it?”

She nodded, eyes fixed on the hard length of him.

He stepped forward again and pressed the swollen head against her clit, rubbing it slowly through the slick wetness there, coating himself in her.

“Spider-Man,” she moaned.

Peter froze. Something dark and possessive surged through him.

“Call me Peter when I fuck you.”

He thrust into her in one long, deep stroke, burying himself to the hilt. She cried out in a sharp, surprised moan of pain and stretch as her body struggled to take the sudden fullness of him. Her cunt gripped him tightly, hot and wet and almost too tight, forcing him to feel every ridge and pulse of her around the thick length of his cock.

Possession, anger, and raw need flooded him at once. He reached back and touched the inhibitor at the base of his neck. The device was burning hot against his skin, but it was still functioning, still trying to hold the worst of the instinct at bay.

“Take it off,” she said, voice low and certain. “I can take it. I want it. Please.”

Looking at her like, already filled with him, her walls fluttering around his cock, he could not refuse. Every last scrap of self-control vanished the moment he tore the inhibitor free from his neck and threw it aside. He began to move inside her immediately, hard and deep and relentless, the pace fast and intense from the first stroke. His hips snapped forward, driving the full length of his cock into her over and over, the wet slap of their bodies filling the room. He watched her breasts bounce with every thrust, watched her face contort with the overwhelming stretch and friction, and felt her grow even wetter around him.

“You’re mine,” he growled against her ear, and he knew the other side of him was fully awake now.

And he was enjoying every second of it.

“I’m yours,” she answered, the words soft but certain.

She was his. She had agreed. The arachnid side of him reacted at once, a deep, possessive surge that flooded every nerve. His hand slid up her throat and pressed lightly, just enough pressure to make her pulse race under his palm and restrict her breath. Her eyes rolled back as the limited air and the thick stretch of his cock combined. He felt her walls begin to flutter and clamp down around him again, the clear sign she was about to come. He slowed his thrusts immediately, dragging his heavy length almost all the way out before pushing back in with deliberate control, and released her neck.

“Don’t come yet.” His voice was sharp, almost a command.

The mask had started to bother him. He wanted to see her fully, without the white lenses between them. His hands snapped to her sides. He pulled her off the table in one strong motion and turned her around, bending her forward so her chest and cheek pressed flat against the smooth wood, her ass raised and presented to him, her back fully exposed. The position opened her completely, letting him see the way her cunt still glistened and gaped slightly from how thoroughly he had already stretched her.

Now that she could not see him, Peter tore the mask off completely and threw it aside. He gripped her waist hard enough to leave faint marks and leaned over her, dragging open-mouthed kisses and sharp bites along the length of her spine and up the side of her neck. Each press of his teeth made her moan louder, her body twitching under the dual sensation of pain and pleasure. He licked the marks he left, then bit again, higher this time, near the sensitive junction of her neck and shoulder, sucking hard enough to bruise while his hips stayed pressed tight against her ass.

“Peter,” she moaned, using his real name. “Please.”

He obeyed at once. He lined the swollen head of his cock against her soaked entrance and drove back into her in one hard, unbroken thrust, burying every thick inch inside her again until his hips met her ass with a wet slap. The pace he set was even harder than before, deep and relentless. He fucked her with long, powerful strokes that forced her body to rock against the table, the wood creaking under them. Her walls clenched tightly around him with every thrust, hot and slick and perfect, gripping the full length of his cock as he pounded into her. He could feel every ridge and flutter of her cunt as it stretched to take him again and again. She kept moaning his name, his real name, as he drove into her, the force of each thrust making her breasts drag across the table and fresh wetness drip down the insides of her thighs and onto the floor.

He reached around with one hand and found her clit, rubbing it in firm, wet circles while he continued to fuck her hard from behind. The dual stimulation made her cry out louder, her body shaking as her cunt squeezed him even tighter. He kept the relentless rhythm, hips snapping forward, the wet sounds of their joining loud and filthy in the quiet apartment. Every time he bottomed out he ground against her for a second, making sure she felt every thick inch of him before pulling back and slamming in again.

“I’m yours, Peter.”

The words undid him. He came hard inside her the moment she said them, his cock pulsing deep as he flooded her with thick, hot ropes of come, filling her completely until it began to leak out around the base of his shaft with every continued thrust. The feeling of him spilling into her, the sudden heat and pressure of his release, pushed her over the edge at the same time. Her body locked up around him, cunt spasming violently and milking every drop as a broken, high moan tore from her throat. Her head fell forward onto the dinner table, limp and spent, while he stayed buried inside her to the hilt, still throbbing and leaking the last of his come into her, the possessive claim finally satisfied. He kept grinding slowly through the aftershocks, feeling his own spend mix with her wetness and drip down both of them, until the last pulses faded and he could finally breathe again.

He stayed buried inside her as his cock finally began to soften, the thick length still filling her while the last traces of his come leaked slowly around him. Exhausted, he let his weight settle carefully over her sweaty back, both of them breathing hard and uneven. His chest pressed to her spine, his face turned into the curve of her neck as they caught their breath together.

Peter could think much clearer now. The storm of instinct had quieted enough for his own mind to return. He lifted his head just a little and looked down at her back. It was marked with the dark prints of his bites and the beginning of bruises where his hands and teeth had been too rough. The same marks bloomed across the soft curves of her ass, and he was certain her chest and breasts carried the same evidence of everything he had done. Guilt flickered through the lingering satisfaction. He leaned in and pressed gentle, open-mouthed kisses over every mark he could reach, soft and apologetic against the heated skin.

She shifted, trying to look back at him over her shoulder. He stopped her at once, one hand settling lightly against the side of her face to keep her turned forward.

“Don’t.”

He found his mask on the floor near the table, reached for it, and pulled it back on, settling the fabric over his face again. Only then did he ease his softened cock out of her, the slow withdrawal leaving her open and wet, a thick trail of his come following as he finally left her body.

“You don’t have to,” she said, still facing away from him. Her voice stayed quiet but steady, though a faint tremor ran beneath the words. “After everything… I think I deserve to see your face. You can trust me. I would never betray you. I belong to you.” A short pause followed, then the single word that settled everything inside him. “Peter.”

He remained silent, the weight of her trust settling heavily across his bare shoulders.

She pushed herself up from the table with careful, deliberate movements. Her legs were unsteady; a soft wince crossed her face as she straightened, the evidence of how thoroughly he had taken her still present in every careful shift of her body. She turned slowly enough that he could have stopped her at any moment. He didn’t. When she faced him fully they stood only a few steps apart, both completely exposed. Come still marked the insides of her thighs. Faint red impressions from his hands and mouth decorated her skin.

Their eyes met for the first time without the mask between them. Embarrassment colored her cheeks a deep rose, her gaze flickering down for half a second before lifting again, yet she still could not look away. Peter felt the residual thrum of possession quiet under something far more fragile. He found himself thinking less about the fact that she was seeing his bare face and more about how beautiful she looked: messy hair damp with sweat and sticking to her temples, skin marked and flushed, eyes bright and open and completely unguarded.

She took a few uncertain steps closer. Her bare feet made almost no sound on the floor. When she stopped in front of him her hand rose, hovering for a moment before settling gently against his jaw. Her fingertips traced the line of it with careful tenderness, the light touch sending a slow shiver down his spine. The sight of her like this held him completely: the tangled hair, the sheen of sweat on her skin, the soft tremble still present in her limbs, the emotion in her eyes as her brows drew together.

“You’re just as I imagined,” she whispered.

She leaned in and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his lips. The contact was gentle, almost reverent. Peter closed his eyes for a few seconds, letting the simple press of her mouth settle through the last remnants of tension in his body. His hands stayed at his sides, afraid that if he touched her again the careful quiet between them might break.

“I don’t regret it,” she said when she drew back, clearly reading the tangle of guilt and wonder still moving behind his silence. Her thumb brushed once along his cheek. “And I’m fine.”

Peter did not realize what was happening until the first tear slipped free and traced a warm path down his cheek. The weight of everything, the weeks of guilt, the constant fear of himself, the knowledge of how roughly he had just taken her, crashed over him at once. His legs gave out. He sank to his knees in front of her, bare skin meeting the cool floor, tears running freely down his face as a broken sob tore from his throat. All the blame he had carried for so long finally spilled out of him in raw, shaking relief. The air between them still smelled of sweat and sex; the evidence of what they had done clung to both their bodies.

He wrapped his arms around her naked waist and pulled her close, hiding his wet face against the soft, warm plane of her stomach. His shoulders trembled with every sob. Her skin was damp beneath his cheek, still faintly sticky in places from their combined release, and the steady rise and fall of her breathing became the only rhythm that kept him grounded.

She stood quietly above him. One hand settled in his hair, fingers moving slowly through the damp, tangled strands in a steady, comforting rhythm. The gentle tug of her nails against his scalp sent small shivers down the back of his neck. She did not speak. She simply held him there, letting him break, her other hand resting lightly between his shoulder blades.

When he finally lifted his head to look at her, he knew his eyes must have looked like pure worship: red-rimmed, wet, completely open. A fresh tear slid down the side of his nose.

“I love you,” he confessed, the words rough and unsteady against her skin. “I know this is crazy. I know how I must look right now. Please don’t be scared of me. Please don’t ever leave me.” His voice cracked on the last plea. “You’re the first person in this new world who actually knows me, and you know all of him. The good and the worst. I adore you, I swear.”

She smiled softly, her hand still gentle in his hair, thumb brushing once along his temple where a tear had caught.

“Didn’t I tell you?” she murmured, quiet and certain. “I belong to you now.”