Ali

any pronouns 20 Multi fandom and I switch up DAILY

[book-place-incorrect-quotes]

Y/N: *sneaking in at 3am after being out on strict bed rest because of an injury in the field*

Frank: *turning on the light* Where the hell have you been?

Y/N: I was out with Peter.

Peter: *coming around the corner* Oh fun, where'd we go?

Y/N:

Frank: Wanna try that again?

[alpinebarnesworld]

Peter you can't just betrayed me like this 😭

[tomhordy]

a film where these 3 play your guardian angels but they’re different levels of professional

[ravinaaa]

yk, I always think I'm over my marvel dr...and then I watch literally any spiderman movie and suddenly all I want is to be there as fast as possible

[spacejjunk]

seriously? you guys cant feel that?

pairing: mean!college! peter x reader

w/c: 9.7k+

summary: ever since that night-- peter cannot stop thinking about you. its bordering on obsessive. he needs to feel you again. needs the praise. needs anything that you will give him. but you? you act like you couldnt care less about him.

warnings/tags: dead dove?? enemies to something, college au, peters POV, smut (dubcon, oral m & f receiving, cum swallowing, fingering, rough sex, multiple positions, unprotected sex, cocky peter, so so much dirty talk, praise kink, degradation, cock worshipping, fight for the power & control)

a/n: you guys are feral and im living for this.

masterlist // join the taglist // part 1

The click of the front door shutting was soft. Final. Almost polite.

He waited for the sound of your heels turning back. For the key in the lock again. For your voice, sharp and mean, calling him an asshole one more time before you finished what you’d started.

Nothing.

Just the hollow quiet of an empty dorm on Thanksgiving break, and the wet spot cooling on the front of his ridiculous Juicy sweatpants.

“What the actual fuck,” he said to the room.

His voice came out wrecked. Hoarse. Like he’d been the one on his knees.

Peter shoved a hand through his hair, then down over his face. His thighs were still shaking. His cock gave a pathetic little twitch against his stomach, like it hadn’t gotten the memo that the best mouth of his entire life had just walked out without so much as a backward glance.

You’d deepthroated him like you were trying to crawl inside his ribcage. Called him a good boy in that ruined, spit-soaked voice while you choked yourself on his dick. Swallowed every drop like it was personal. And then you’d stood up, wiped your mouth, fixed your makeup, and left.

Like it was nothing.

Like he was nothing.

Peter’s laugh came out sharp and disbelieving. He dragged the sweatpants the rest of the way off, kicked them toward the laundry pile, and sat there half naked on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.

Nobody did that to him.

He was the one who left. The one who rolled over, stretched, and said that was fun, text me if you want a repeat while already reaching for his phone. He was the one who made girls stay longer than they planned, who talked them into one more round, who left them messy and smiling and a little ruined for anyone else.

You had flipped the entire script in under twenty minutes and then vanished like a fucking magic trick.

He could still feel the exact shape of your throat.

Peter’s hand drifted down almost without permission. He wrapped his fingers around himself, still slick, and gave one slow stroke just to feel the residual ache. His head tipped back on a low groan.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered to the ceiling. “Who the hell are you?”

He didn’t have an answer.

All he had was the empty apartment, the taste of your mouth still ghosting across his tongue, and the sudden, humiliating realization that he was already hard again.

Three days later he had a sophomore from the third floor bent over his desk.

She was pretty in the generic way most of them were—long hair, soft thighs, the kind of eager little moans that usually did it for him. She was wet enough that the sounds filled the room every time he snapped his hips forward. Her nails scratched at the wood. She kept gasping his name like it meant something.

Peter’s mind was somewhere else entirely.

He was thinking about the exact shade of your eyes when you’d looked up at him from between his knees. The way your voice had gone low and wrecked when you’d called him a good boy. The filthy, rhythmic choke every time you’d forced yourself all the way down and stayed there.

His rhythm stuttered.

The girl under him made a confused little sound. “Peter—?”

“Shh.” He reached forward, tangled a hand in her hair, and pulled her head back so he didn’t have to look at her face. "Just come for me sweetheart."

She did. Enthusiastically. And still it felt like nothing.

He finished with a low, frustrated sound that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with the fact that the second he closed his eyes he saw you—mascara ruined, chin shiny, staring up at him like you’d just won something.

He pulled out, disposed of the condom, and barely waited for her to get dressed before walking her to the door with a distracted smile and a “text me.”

The second the lock clicked he dropped onto the couch, dragged both hands down his face, and muttered, “Fuck.”

His phone lit up with her number less than an hour later.

He left it on read.

By the second week of December he had a system.

Friday nights— someone from the third floor. Someone who wouldn’t ask questions. Someone who would let him fuck them hard and fast and then leave without lingering.

It never worked.

Every time a girl dropped to her knees he waited for the same electric jolt that had ripped through him when you did it. Every time a mouth closed around him he waited for the exact pressure, the exact depth, the exact filthy little sounds of someone who was trying to ruin him on purpose.

It never came.

One girl tried to deepthroat him the way you had. She made it halfway, gagged hard, pulled off with tears in her eyes, and laughed like it was cute.

Peter felt nothing except a sharp, irrational flash of irritation.

“Don’t,” he’d said, voice tighter than he meant it to be. “Just—use your hand.”

She’d looked confused. He’d finished her off with his fingers out of sheer muscle memory and sent her home with a polite smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

After she left he stood under the shower for twenty minutes with the water turned as hot as it would go, forehead pressed to the tile, cock in his hand, and let himself remember.

The way your throat had convulsed around him when he’d held you down. The broken little gag that had torn out of you every time he bottomed out. The way you’d looked up at him afterward—and then just… walked away.

He came hard against the shower wall with your name stuck behind his teeth like a secret he wasn’t ready to say out loud.

Harry noticed.

Of course he did.

They were sitting on the couch one Thursday night with the TV on mute and a half-empty bag of chips between them when Harry finally said, “You’ve been weird.”

Peter didn’t look away from the screen. “Define weird.”

“You turned down that girl from your calc class yesterday and she was very clear about what she wanted.” Harry paused. “And you keep checking your phone. Like obsessively.”

Peter’s jaw flexed. “I’m fine.”

“Is this about—”

“Don’t.”

Harry held up both hands. “Okay. Not saying the name. Just… you’ve been different since Thanksgiving. And whatever it is, the revolving door isn’t cutting it.”

Peter stood up too fast. The bag of chips tipped. “I’m going for a run.”

He didn’t come back for two hours.

It was almost midnight when he finally cracked.

He was lying in bed in the dark, one arm folded under his head, staring at the ceiling while his mind replayed the same thirty-second loop on infinite repeat— the second you’d taken him all the way down for the first time. The way your nose had pressed against his stomach. The wet, helpless sound of your throat accepting every inch like it was made for it.

His cock was aching. He’d already gotten off once that night and it hadn’t helped.

Peter reached for his phone.

He scrolled to your contact—he'd stolen your number from Harry one night under the guise of a psych question— and opened a new message.

Typed.

Deleted.

Typed again.

Peter: You left your necklace.

He stared at the screen.

It was a lie. The necklace was still around your neck the last time he’d seen you. He’d fastened it himself. He could still feel the exact heat of your skin under his knuckles.

But it was something. A reason. An opening.

He hit send before he could talk himself out of it.

The three dots appeared almost immediately.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

You: I’m wearing it.

Peter’s pulse kicked hard against his throat.

Peter: Come get the rest of your shit then. Harry’s still got that charger you left.

Another long pause.

You: It’s midnight.

Peter: And?

You: And I’m not walking across campus at midnight so you can try to make me your booty call. No thanks.

His cock twitched so hard it almost hurt.

Peter: Who said anything about a booty call?

You: Your entire personality.

Peter grinned into the dark despite himself. The first real one in weeks.

Peter: Come over.

You: No.

Peter: Scared?

You: Of you? Still rather chew glass.

Peter: Then prove it. Door’s unlocked. You already know what happens when we’re alone in an empty dorm.

He waited.

One minute.

Two.

Five.

Peter stared at the three dots on his screen like they might suddenly rearrange themselves into the answer he actually wanted.

They vanished.

A second later your reply lit up the dark.

You: No.

He huffed a quiet laugh through his nose, already typing.

Peter: Come on. Building’s empty. Harry’s gone. You already know how good it felt.

You: And you already know how good it felt to walk away after. I’m keeping that win.

Peter: You’re really gonna leave me like this?

You: You’ve got an entire dorm full of options. Use one.

Peter: None of them choke on it the way you do.

A longer pause this time. He could almost hear you rolling your eyes through the phone.

You: Goodnight, Peter.

Peter: You’re seriously just going to leave me hanging?

You: Goodnight.

The screen went quiet.

Peter tossed the phone onto the mattress harder than necessary and dragged both hands down his face. His cock was still hard against his stomach, aching with the same restless, unfinished need that had been riding him since Thanksgiving.

And now you were just… gone again. Texting goodnight like you hadn’t ruined him for every other mouth on campus.

He got himself off in the shower ten minutes later with one hand braced against the tile and your name locked behind his teeth. It barely took the edge off.

Two days later he pushed the apartment door open with his shoulder, backpack half-unzipped, keys already spinning around one finger. The smell of Harry’s leftover takeout hit him first. Then the low murmur of voices from the living room.

Harry on the couch. Textbook open. And you—curled into the opposite corner like you belonged there, legs tucked under you, one of Harry’s hoodies swallowing your frame. You looked comfortable. Relaxed. Like the last time you’d been in this apartment you hadn’t left him dripping and speechless on his own bed.

Peter’s pulse kicked once, hard, against his throat.

He shut the door harder than he needed to.

Harry glanced up first. “Hey. Thought you had lab until—”

“Got out early.” Peter’s eyes never left you. He dropped his backpack by the wall, kicked his shoes off, and let the keys land on the counter with a deliberate clatter. “Didn’t realize we were hosting.”

You didn’t even look up from your phone. “We’re not. I’m hanging out with my friend. You’re just the roommate who happens to live here.”

Peter’s mouth curved, slow and sharp. He walked past the couch close enough that his shin nearly brushed your knee, the same way he had the first time you’d ever traded insults in this exact spot. “Still got that necklace on, I see. Cute.”

Your eyes flicked up then—cool, unimpressed. “It’s mine. You just happened to be the one who put it on me.”

Harry made a quiet sound of warning under his breath. Peter ignored it.

He leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, studying the way the oversized hoodie slipped off one of your shoulders. “You know, most people would’ve at least texted after that night. Common courtesy. Especially after they decided to deepthroat someone like they were trying to set a personal record and then vanish.”

You set your phone down with careful precision. “Most people also don’t act like the entire dorm owes them a thank-you note for existing. I already gave you everything I planned to. The rest is your problem.”

Peter’s grin widened, all teeth. He pushed off the counter and took two slow steps closer, stopping just short of the arm of the couch. “My problem? Baby, you’ve been my problem since you walked out of my room looking like you’d just won something. I’ve been trying to recreate that exact throat for weeks. None of them even come close. You ruined the rotation.”

Harry closed his textbook with a soft thud. “Jesus Christ. This is why you've been so weird lately? Her?”

You didn’t flinch. You just tilted your head, that same sharp little spark in your eyes that always made him want to push harder. “Then maybe the rotation needs better standards. Or maybe you’re just not as memorable as you think you are once the lights come back on.”

Peter laughed under his breath, low and mean. He dropped into the armchair across from you, sprawling like he owned the furniture, one ankle hooked over the opposite knee. “Keep talking. I like it when you pretend you’re not still thinking about how hard I came down your throat.”

Your expression didn’t change, but something flickered behind your eyes—too fast for him to catch. “I think about a lot of things, Peter. Your ego isn’t one of them.”

“Liar.” He let his gaze drag down the line of your throat, slow and deliberate, remembering exactly how it had looked stretched around him. “You’re sitting in my living room wearing my roommate’s hoodie and still you can’t stop looking at my mouth. You want another round. You’re just too proud to ask for it.”

You stood up in one smooth motion, already reaching for your bag. “I’m leaving before your self-esteem starts needing medical attention.”

Peter stayed exactly where he was, smiling up at you like he had all the time in the world. “Running again? Cute. Same exit strategy as last time. Door’s right there whenever you decide you’re done pretending this is over.”

You paused at the threshold, hand on the knob, and glanced back over your shoulder. The look you gave him was pure challenge—cool, unbothered, and just sharp enough to land.

“It’s been over since the second I swallowed and walked out,” you said. “Try to keep up.”

The door clicked shut behind you.

Peter sat there for a long moment, the smile still fixed on his face even as his pulse hammered against his ribs. Harry was staring at him like he’d grown a second head.

“Dude— what the fuck. Her? My best friend? Who— may I remind you… hates your guts?” Harry said quietly.

"Shut the fuck up."

Peter had tried the usual route for two solid weeks after you’d walked out of his apartment for the second time.

Texts that were ignored. Casual run-ins in the hallway that turned into the same old verbal sparring. One deliberate appearance at the library when he knew your study group was there, just so he could lean against the table and watch your jaw tighten.

None of it worked.

You stayed ice. Cool, unimpressed, already halfway out the door before he finished a sentence.

So he switched tactics.

He started showing up without the cocky edge.

“Your hair looks good like that,” he said one afternoon when he passed you near the elevators, voice almost soft. You’d just glanced at him like he was something stuck to the bottom of your shoe and kept walking.

“That color’s perfect on you,” he tried two days later in the dining hall, sliding into the seat across from Harry like he belonged there. You’d looked up from your tray, unimpressed, and answered, “It’s the same color I always wear, Parker.”

Even the compliments came out wrong. Too smooth. Too knowing. Like he was still trying to get under your skin instead of just… saying something decent. Every attempt landed like another cocky remark, and you’d shut him down just as fast.

By the time the last day of classes rolled around, Peter was done pretending patience was working.

Winter break started tomorrow. Most of the building was already half-packed. Suitcases in the hallways. Parents’ cars idling downstairs. He had one night left before you disappeared for three weeks, and the thought of letting you leave without getting even a fraction of your attention back made something restless and ugly twist under his ribs.

He bought the journal that afternoon.

Leather-bound. Dark brown, almost black, with thick cream pages that felt expensive under his fingers. Just clean lines and a small silver clasp. He’d stood in the stationary aisle of the campus bookstore longer than he wanted to admit, turning it over in his hands, imagining the exact look on your face when you realized he’d actually put thought into something.

He walked across the quad with it tucked under his arm, pulse already climbing.

Your door was at the end of the third-floor hallway. The one door he never dared to knock on before. He stopped in front of it, flexed his fingers once around the journal, and knocked.

Three solid raps.

Silence for a beat too long.

Then the lock turned and the door cracked open just enough for you to look out.

Suspicion hit your face immediately. You scanned him from messy hair to the scuffed sneakers, then down to the brown paper bag in his hand.

“What.”

Not a question. A demand.

Peter’s mouth curved despite himself. “Merry almost-Christmas.”

You didn’t move. “I’m not in the mood for whatever this is.”

“It’s a present,” he said, holding the bag up a little. “Not a trick. Just… something.” He paused, then added quieter, “Can I come in for a second?”

You stared at him like you were weighing the odds of him trying something. The hallway was empty. Distant music thumped from someone’s open door two units down. Finally you stepped back and opened the door wider, expression still guarded.

“Two minutes.”

Peter stepped inside.

Your room was smaller than he’d expected. Neat in a controlled way—bed made, desk clear except for a laptop and a half-empty water bottle, one suitcase already half-packed against the wall. It smelled like clean laundry and whatever perfume you wore. He took it in without commenting, because the second he opened his mouth to say something nice it would probably come out wrong again.

He held the bag out.

You didn’t take it right away.

“What is it?”

“Open it and find out.”

You exhaled through your nose, took the bag, and pulled the journal free. The leather caught the overhead light. You turned it over once, then again, thumb brushing the clasp.

Something flickered across your face—surprise, carefully masked.

Peter leaned a shoulder against the wall near the door, watching you. “Figured you might actually use it. You’re always writing something down when no one’s looking. Thought it should be something better than the cheap notebooks they sell in the campus store.”

You glanced up at him, eyes narrowed. “You bought me a journal.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

The honest answer sat heavy on his tongue. Because I can’t stop thinking about the way you looked on your knees. Because none of the other girls even come close. Because you’re leaving tomorrow and I needed a reason to stand in your doorway without it turning into another fight.

What came out instead was smoother. Too smooth.

“Because I can be nice when I feel like it. Shocking, I know.”

You closed the journal with a soft snap. “There it is.”

“There what is?”

“The part where it stops being a present and starts being another performance.” You set the journal on your desk, already half-turned away from him. “You don’t do nice, Peter. You do calculated. And this—” you gestured at the leather-bound book “—still feels like you’re trying to get something.”

Peter pushed off the wall. One step closer. Not enough to crowd, but enough that the air between you shifted.

“Maybe I am,” he said, voice lower. “Maybe I’m tired of you walking away every time I get close. Maybe I wanted to give you something that didn’t come with a smart-ass comment attached. For once.”

You looked at him for a long second. The suspicion hadn’t left your face, but something quieter sat underneath it now.

“You’re still talking like you expect me to fold,” you said. “Like one decent gift is going to make me forget every single thing that’s already happened.”

Peter’s jaw flexed. He could feel the old cocky instinct rising—the urge to push, to bait, to turn this into the same sharp game they always played. He swallowed it down as best he could.

“I’m not asking you to forget,” he said. “I’m asking you to take the journal. That’s it. No strings. No expectations. Just… take it.”

You glanced at the desk again. The leather looked expensive against the cheap dorm wood.

Outside, someone yelled down the hallway about packing tape. A door slammed. The building felt like it was already emptying out around both of you.

Peter waited, hands in the pockets of his hoodie, pulse loud in his ears.

You picked the journal back up.

Turned it over once more under your fingers.

And didn’t tell him to leave.

Peter watched the way your fingers traced the edge of the leather like you were still deciding whether to keep it or throw it at his head.

The silence stretched just long enough to make his pulse kick harder against his throat.

You looked up at him, eyes flat and unimpressed.

“Why,” you said. Not soft. Not curious. Just the single word, sharp enough to cut. “The real answer. Not the bullshit one.”

Peter’s mouth opened. Closed. The easy deflection he’d been ready to throw died in his throat.

He could have lied. Could have smirked and said something about wanting to get under your skin one last time before break. Could have kept the game going the way he always did.

Instead he exhaled, slow, and let the truth out before he could talk himself out of it.

“Because I like you,” he said. Quiet. Direct. No smile attached. “Have for a while. Longer than I’m proud of. And I’m tired of pretending the only reason I keep showing up is to piss you off.”

You stared at him.

Then you laughed.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t surprised. It was sharp and mean and completely dismissive, the kind of sound that landed right in the center of his chest and stayed there.

“You like me,” you repeated, still laughing under your breath like he’d just told the best joke you’d heard all semester. “Peter Parker. Campus revolving door. The guy who treats entire floors like a buffet. You like me.”

Something hot and ugly twisted low in his stomach.

Not anger.

Worse.

The sound of you mocking him went straight to his cock. The same way your insults always did. The same way your voice had gone mean and wrecked when you’d called him a good boy on your knees and then walked out like he was disposable.

Peter’s jaw flexed. He took one step closer, voice dropping into something colder.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do. And you’re still the same judgmental little bitch who’s been keeping score of every person I’ve fucked since the semester started like it personally offended you.”

Your eyes flashed.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” He didn’t back up. “You’ve spent months acting like you’re above it. Above me. And the second I say something real you laugh in my face like I just confessed to a crime. Classic.”

You stepped forward too, journal still clenched in one hand, voice rising fast.

“You don’t get to call me a bitch after you just stood here and tried to play the soft-boy card with a fucking journal—”

“And you don’t get to act shocked when I stop being polite—”

“Polite? You’ve never been polite a day in your life—”

“—because every time I try you twist it into another reason to hate me—”

“I don’t need more reasons, Parker, you hand them out for free—”

Peter moved.

One hand caught the side of your jaw, the other braced against the wall beside your head, and he kissed you hard enough to cut the rest of the sentence clean out of your mouth. It wasn’t gentle.It was pure frustration and heat and the same restless need that had been eating at him for weeks—lips claiming, teeth grazing, tongue sliding against yours the second you made a startled sound against his mouth.

You shoved at his chest.

He let the kiss break just enough for you to suck in a breath.

“Nope,” you snapped, already trying to turn your face away. “Not happening again. Get the fuck—”

Peter’s arm locked around your waist and hauled you flush against him before you could finish. He held you there, chest to chest, one hand still firm at the back of your neck so you couldn’t put space between you. His mouth found the shell of your ear, voice low and rough and so fucking cocky it bordered on cruel.

“You can keep saying that,” he murmured, breath hot against your skin. “Keep pretending you’re done. But we both know the second I get mean you light up like a fucking fuse.” His fingers flexed at your waist, dragging you in tighter so you could feel exactly how hard he already was. “I could tell the first time you called me a whore. Felt it again when you laughed in my face just now. Being an asshole does it for you, doesn’t it? Gets you wet every single time.”

He nosed along the hinge of your jaw, still holding you locked against him, smile sharp against your skin.

“So go ahead,” he whispered. “Yell at me some more. Tell me to leave. I’ll wait. I’ve got all night.”

Peter felt the exact second the fight left your body and something hotter took its place.

You didn’t shove him off.

Didn’t tell him to leave.

You kissed him back.

Hard.

Your mouth opened under his like you’d been waiting for the excuse, teeth catching his bottom lip, tongue sliding against his with zero hesitation. The sound that left him was pure satisfaction—low, rough, almost a growl—as both of his hands found your waist and walked you backward until your shoulders hit the wall with a soft thud.

He crowded in immediately, one thigh sliding between yours, pinning you there while he kissed you like he was trying to rewrite every single time you’d walked out on him. The journal dropped somewhere near your feet. Neither of you cared.

Peter broke the kiss just long enough to drag his mouth along your jaw, voice already wrecked and filthy against your skin.

“There she is,” he murmured, lips brushing the hinge of your jaw. “Knew you wouldn’t last. All that attitude and the second I get mean you melt.” His hand slid up your side, under the hem of your shirt, palm hot against bare skin. “Been thinking about this mouth for weeks. You always that enthusiastic? Or was that all just for little ol' me?”

He kissed you again—slower this time, deliberate, tongue stroking against yours like he was already imagining it somewhere else. When he pulled back his eyes were dark, pupils blown, that cocky little spark burning brighter than ever.

“You’re gonna get on your knees for me again,” he said, quiet and absolute. “Right here. Against this wall if I have to. I don’t give a fuck that you walked out last time like you owned me. I need that throat again. Need to feel you choke on it the way you did when you decided to ruin me on purpose.”

His hips rolled once, slow and filthy, letting you feel exactly how hard he already was against your stomach. The friction made his breath hitch.

“You had all the power last time,” he continued, voice dropping lower, almost reverent with how filthy it was. “On your knees calling me a good boy while you swallowed every inch like you were trying to crawl inside me. I know. I remember every second. And I still don’t care.” His fingers flexed at your waist, holding you pinned. “I’ll let you wreck me again if that’s what it takes. I’ll stand here and take every single mean little thing you want to say while you choke yourself on my cock. Just—fuck—get on your knees, baby. Please. I need it.”

Peter’s forehead dropped against yours for half a second, breathing hard, the cocky mask cracked just enough to show the raw desperate need underneath.

Then he kissed you again—hungry, demanding, already guiding one of your hands down between your bodies so you could feel how badly he meant it.

Peter felt the soft, surrendered sigh leave your mouth and slide straight into his.

Then you were dropping.

No hesitation. No bitchy comment. Just the quiet shift of your weight as you sank to your knees right there against the wall of your own dorm room, hands already reaching for the front of his jeans.

He didn’t waste a single second.

The button came free under his fingers, zipper dragged down hard, and he shoved the fabric low enough to free himself in one rough motion. His cock sprang out heavy and impossibly hard, the thick vein along the underside pulsing in time with his heartbeat. The cool air of the room hit him for half a second—

—then your mouth was on him.

No teasing. No slow build. You took him straight to the back of your throat in one smooth, ruthless push, and Peter’s knees nearly gave out completely.

“Fuck—jesus—”

His hand shot out to the wall above your head for balance, the other fisting in your hair as the wet, tight heat of your throat closed around him all the way to the base. The sudden stretch of your lips, the flutter of your muscles trying to adjust, the wet gag that tore out of you the second he bottomed out—every sensation slammed into him at once. His thighs shook. A broken, punched-out sound left his chest.

You didn’t pull off.

You stayed buried, nose pressed to his skin, and started swallowing around him on purpose. The rhythmic squeeze of your throat milked the head of his cock while spit flooded past your lips and ran down his shaft in warm rivulets. Another wet gag spilled out of you, louder this time, and the vibration of it traveled straight up his spine.

Peter’s head dropped forward. His voice came out wrecked and already fishing.

“That’s it—fuck, just like that. Look at you. Taking every inch again like you were made for it. Tell me how good it feels. Tell me I’m the only one who gets this throat.”

You pulled back just far enough to breathe, a thick string of spit still connecting your swollen lips to the flushed head of his cock. Your voice came out hoarse and filthy.

“That what you wanna hear Parker?,” you rasped, stroking the slick length once before sinking back down. “You're the only one who gets this throat.”

Peter’s hips jerked. His free hand tightened in your hair, just holding on like he might fall without it.

“Again,” he demanded, voice cracking into something cocky and desperate at the same time. “Say it again. Tell me this is the best cock you’ve ever had in your mouth—fuck—tell me you missed it.”

You hummed around him instead of answering right away, the vibration making his knees buckle a second time. He had to lock them or risk dropping. Spit was flowing freely. Every time you forced yourself all the way down another wet, helpless gag tore out of you, and every time you came up for air you gave him exactly what he was chasing.

“My good boy,” you praised, lips brushing the sensitive ridge as you spoke. “You're being s' good while I suck your big cock. Such a pretty cock you have. You know that Peter? Such a pretty. Big. Cock.”

Peter’s forehead pressed to the wall above you. His breathing had gone short and ragged. The cocky edge never fully left his voice even as it broke apart.

“Yeah? You like that? Like having me all to yourself? Keep talking. Tell me how much you love choking on it. Tell me I’m the only one who gets to fuck this throat this deep—god—say it. Worship it. I need to hear it.”

You sank down again, slower this time, letting him feel every inch of tight, wet heat as your throat opened and accepted him. The wet sounds filled the quiet room—obscene, rhythmic, mixed with the soft choked gasps you made every time he bottomed out. Your eyes watered. Mascara started to run. Spit poured down his balls.

And still you praised him between every deep, ruthless stroke, giving him exactly the worship he was begging for while his thighs trembled under your hands and his cock throbbed harder against your tongue with every filthy word.

You didn’t let up.

You pulled off just long enough to drag a slow, filthy stripe up the underside of him with your tongue, gathering the fresh precome that had beaded at the tip, then took him deep again— letting the thick head push past the soft palate and lodge in the tight warmth of your throat. The wet, constricting squeeze made his breath leave him in a sharp hiss.

“Fuck, look at that,” he rasped, voice low and arrogant even as it cracked. “You’re making a mess of yourself already. Wonder how wet you are under those sweatpants. Fuck— you're so hot. Fuckin' ruined me for anyone else. Goddamn succubus.”

You swallowed around him on purpose, the muscles of your throat fluttering and working in tight pulses that dragged a broken sound out of his chest. When you finally needed air you pulled back only far enough to speak, lips still brushing the sensitive ridge.

“You’re leaking so much,” you murmured, voice wrecked and low. “Can’t even stay quiet while I take it. You're getting close and you’ve barely been in my mouth five minutes.”

Peter’s hand flexed hard in your hair. The cocky edge never left his voice.

“Because it feels that good and you know it. Keep going. Tell me no one else has ever taken me this deep. Tell me this is the only cock that makes you choke like that. I want to hear it while you gag on me.”

You sank down again without warning, forcing yourself all the way until your nose pressed flat against his skin and a wet, helpless gag tore out of you. The sound was filthy—raw and involuntary—and the vibration of it made his hips jerk. He held you there for a second longer than necessary, watching the way your throat visibly worked around the intrusion, before letting you pull up just enough to breathe.

Tears were tracking freely down your cheeks now. Your chin was a complete mess. Still you kept praising him between every deep, ruthless stroke—quiet, filthy observations about how hard he was throbbing, how pretty he looked when he tried to stay in control, how obvious it was that he needed this.

Peter’s breathing had gone ragged. The arrogant drawl stayed locked in place even as his control started to slip.

“That’s it—stay down. Let me feel that throat squeeze. You’re gonna make me come and you’re going to swallow every drop like the greedy thing you are. Don’t you dare pull off when I start. I want to feel you take it all.”

You hummed in answer and took him deeper still, one hand braced on his thigh, the other stroking what little of him wasn’t buried in your mouth. The wet sounds were constant now—obscene, rhythmic, mixed with the soft choked gasps you made every time he bottomed out.

Peter’s rhythm finally broke.

His grip in your hair shifted from holding to using. He held you in place and started fucking up into your throat in short, filthy thrusts—shallow at first, then deeper, using the tight wet heat of you like it belonged to him. The cocky stream of orders never stopped even as his voice went strained and mean.

“Take it. Every fucking inch. You’re gonna stay open for me and you’re going to swallow. Look at you—ruined. Best throat I’ve ever fucked and you know it. Keep that mouth busy. Don’t stop.”

His hips snapped harder. His cock swelled thicker against your tongue. The hand in your hair locked you in place as his rhythm stuttered and then broke completely.

Peter came with a low, punched-out groan that sounded almost angry with how good it felt.

Hot, thick pulses flooded your throat in heavy spurts. He held you down through every one of them, hips pressed tight to your face, cock twitching hard as he emptied himself as deep as he could get. You swallowed around him instinctively, the muscles of your throat working to take it while more spilled past the seal of your lips and ran down his shaft in warm, messy streaks. His thighs shook violently under your hands. A second, weaker pulse followed, then another, until he was spent and still twitching against your tongue.

He kept you there for several long seconds after the last pulse faded, breathing hard, forehead pressed to the wall above you, the cocky mask cracked wide open by the force of it.

When he finally loosened his grip you pulled off slowly, gasping, a thick string of come and spit still connecting your swollen lips to the head of his cock. Your voice was completely destroyed. Your chin and chest were a mess.

Peter looked down at you like he’d just been robbed and rewarded at the same time—eyes dark, chest heaving, the arrogant tilt of his mouth already trying to find its way back into place.

“Jesus Christ,” he rasped, thumb dragging through the mess on your bottom lip. “You really just let me do that again.”

He should have let the moment settle. Should have given you the space to stand up, wipe your mouth, and tell him to leave the way you always did.

Instead the thought hit him clean and sharp: if he let you walk away again he would lose this. Whatever the fuck this was. The only way to keep you in the room—keep you looking at him like that—was to make sure you came just as hard as he had.

His mouth curved, slow and filthy.

“You’re not walking out of your own room this time,” he said, voice still rough. “Cute little exit strategy’s off the table when this is your room.”

You wiped the back of your hand across your chin, eyes narrowing. “Get out. You got what you wanted.”

Peter’s laugh was low and completely unbothered. He tucked himself back into his jeans just enough to move, then reached down, hooked both hands under your arms, and hauled you up in one smooth, unapologetic motion.

“Nope.”

You made a sharp sound of protest. He ignored it completely.

“I’m not done,” he said, already walking you backward toward the bed. “Not this time. You don’t get to choke on my cock, swallow everything I give you, and then decide the night’s over. Not in your own room. Not when I still haven’t felt you come.”

He spun you the last half-step and tossed you onto the mattress hard enough that you bounced once. The second your back hit the sheets he was already climbing after you, knees bracketing your hips, one hand planted beside your head so you couldn’t sit up without pushing through him.

Peter looked down at you with that same cocky, satisfied spark—messy hair, flushed mouth, eyes dark with leftover heat and fresh intent.

“You’re staying right here,” he murmured, leaning in close enough that his breath brushed your lips. “And you’re going to come on my fingers or my tongue or whatever the fuck I decide to give you. Then maybe I’ll think about letting you kick me out.”

His free hand settled on your thigh, already sliding higher, the arrogance in his voice never once cracking.

“Your move, Either way I’m not leaving until I feel it.”

Your thighs parted for him without a single push. No sharp remark. No last attempt to kick him out. Just the quiet, deliberate open of your legs that made something dark and satisfied settle low in his gut.

He didn’t waste the invitation.

Peter shifted down the mattress in one smooth motion, hands sliding under your thighs to drag you closer to the edge. He pulled off your sweats and shoved the fabric of your underwear aside with zero ceremony, already leaning in, the cocky little curve still fixed at the corner of his mouth even as he stayed silent.

The first long, flat stroke of his tongue dragged through you slow and deliberate. He tasted heat and salt and a sweetness behind it all. A low sound left his chest—pure satisfaction—before he sealed his mouth over you and started working in earnest.

He kept every comment locked behind his teeth.

No running mouth. No arrogant play-by-play. Just focused, filthy precision— the broad flat of his tongue working over your clit in steady pressure, two fingers sliding into you without warning and curling exactly where he wanted them, the wet, rhythmic sound of him eating you filling the quiet room. His free hand pinned one of your thighs open wider so he could get deeper. Every time your hips tried to lift he held them down and kept going, completely locked in on the goal.

You, however, could not shut up.

The second his tongue pressed harder you started talking again—voice still ruined from his cock, low and continuous and completely shameless.

“Fuck, your mouth—” A sharp inhale when he sucked. “You’re so good at this. Of course you are. F-fucking whore—god—look at you. Still hard, aren’t you? I can see it. You’re dripping on my sheets from eating me out and you just came down my throat.”

Peter’s cock twitched heavily against the mattress at the words. He didn’t answer. He just pressed two fingers deeper and flicked his tongue faster, determined to make you fall apart before he let himself react.

You kept going, praise spilling out between every broken sound he dragged out of you.

“Y-you're so fucking hot. It's unfair. Fucking- jesus. You’re going to get hard again just from this, aren’t you? Going to need my throat a second time before you leave.”

His jaw flexed. Still he stayed quiet, doubling down—tongue working in tight, focused circles while his fingers fucked into you in short, relentless strokes that made the wet sounds louder. Your thighs started trembling against his shoulders. He felt the exact moment your body began to tighten around his fingers and locked his mouth over your clit, sucking hard.

You broke into another stream of filthy, breathless praise, every word circling straight back to his cock like you couldn’t help it.

“That’s it—just like that. You know you're being such a good boy right now. Fuck—Peter—Don't fucking stop— please—”

He felt you start to shatter.

Your thighs clamped around his head. Your hips jerked against his mouth. A broken, high sound tore out of you as you came hard around his fingers, pulsing and wet and completely unrestrained. He stayed right there through every wave of it—tongue working, fingers curling, drinking down every bit of the mess he was pulling out of you—until your body finally started to go soft and shaking under him.

Only then did Peter lift his head.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looked down at the wreck he’d made of you, and finally let the smirk settle fully into place.

He crawled up your body in one slow, deliberate motion, knees bracketing your hips, the weight of him settling over you until the heat of his chest nearly touched yours. His cock—already hard again, because he couldn't fucking help it with you—dragged once along the inside of your thigh before he shifted his hips and tapped the heavy head against your clit.

A soft, wet sound. Once. Twice. The blunt pressure of him sliding over the sensitive, overstimulated flesh he’d just made come.

He watched your face the whole time, silent, that same dark little spark still burning in his eyes.

You reached down between your bodies without hesitation.

Your fingers closed around him—still sticky from your mouth, still throbbing—and guided the head of his cock straight to your entrance. You notched him there, the thick tip nestled against the wet heat of you, and held him steady. A clear dare. No words. Just the quiet challenge of your hand and the way your hips lifted the smallest fraction to press against him.

Peter’s mouth curved, slow and filthy.

“There it is,” he murmured, voice low and thick with fresh arrogance. “Couldn’t even wait for me to do it myself. You’re that desperate to feel it stretch you open.”

He didn’t give you time to answer.

One hand braced beside your head. The other locked around your wrist and pinned it to the mattress above your shoulder. Then he rolled his hips forward in one long, controlled push.

The head of him breached you first—thick, blunt, forcing you open around the widest part of him. He felt every inch of the stretch as he kept going, slow enough that you felt the full drag of his cock filling you, the wet heat of you taking him deeper and deeper until his hips finally met yours and he was buried to the hilt.

A low, satisfied sound left his chest.

“Fuck, you’re tight,” he rasped, already pulling back just far enough to thrust in again—harder this time, the force of it making the mattress dip. “Still so wet from my mouth. Dripping down my balls. Look at you. Taking every inch like you were made for it.”

He set a ruthless pace almost immediately.

Deep, steady thrusts that forced the air out of your lungs every time he bottomed out. His free hand stayed locked around your wrist. The other slid under your thigh and hauled it higher against his hip so he could get even deeper. Every stroke dragged the thick ridge of him over the same spot inside you until your body started tightening around him again.

You tried to speak.

The first attempt at praise came out broken and breathless—“You’re so—fuck—so good at—” but the next hard snap of his hips cut the rest of the sentence off into a sharp, helpless sound.

Peter’s grin was pure sin.

“Can’t even finish a sentence,” he said, voice low and mocking and completely in control. “All that pretty praise and the second I start fucking you properly you forget how to talk. Keep trying, baby. I want to hear you struggle.”

He drove into you harder, the wet, rhythmic slap of skin on skin filling the room. Your free hand scratched at his shoulder. Another half-formed scrap of praise left your mouth—“God, your cock is—” only to dissolve into a broken moan when he angled his hips and ground deep, staying buried for a long, deliberate second before pulling back and slamming in again.

Then your voice cut through, clear and sharp despite how wrecked it already sounded.

“S—slow down.”

Peter’s hips stuttered once—then stopped completely.

He stayed buried to the hilt, chest heaving, the cocky mask flickering with genuine surprise. Even with the arrogance still sitting on his tongue, some stubborn gentleman instinct under all the asshole behavior made him freeze the second the word left your mouth. He didn’t pull out. He just held still, forehead nearly touching yours, waiting.

“You good?” he asked, voice rough, the edge of concern almost buried under leftover heat.

You didn’t answer with words.

You used the pause.

One sharp shift of your weight, a shove against his chest that he wasn’t braced for, and Peter found himself rolled onto his back with you straddling his hips before he could fully process the movement. His cock—still buried deep—shifted with the new angle, the sudden change making a low, punched-out sound leave his throat.

You didn’t give him time to recover.

You planted both hands on his chest, rolled your hips once in a slow, deliberate circle that dragged every inch of him against the tight heat of you, and started riding him properly.

Peter’s head dropped back against the mattress for half a second before he forced himself to look up at you. His hands found your hips automatically, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks, the cocky spark already trying to claw its way back into place even as his voice came out broken and filthy.

“Fuck—look at you,” he rasped, eyes locked on the way you moved. “I like this game you think you're winning. 'S got you taking every inch like my cock was made for you. You’re so fucking wet I can hear it every time you sink down. Keep going. Show me how good you look when you’re using me.”

You answered with another slow, deep roll of your hips that made his abs flex hard under your palms, then started a steady rhythm—lifting almost all the way off before dropping back down and taking him to the base. The wet sound of it was shameless. His cock throbbed inside you with every descent.

And you praised him right back, voice low and continuous while you rode.

“You’re being so good for me,” you murmured, one hand sliding up to brace against his shoulder as you ground down harder. “Letting me take what I want. Such a good— perfect boy. Look how deep you are. You’re throbbing so much I can feel it.”

Peter’s grip on your hips tightened. A broken, arrogant laugh left him even as his thighs tensed under you.

“Yeah? You like that? Like feeling how hard I am for you? Keep talking princess. Tell me how good this cock feels while you’re bouncing on it. Tell me it’s the best you’ve ever had in this tight little cunt. I need to hear you.”

You leaned forward, changing the angle so every downward stroke dragged him against the exact spot that made your breath hitch. The two of you fighting for control that neither of you really have.

“Fuck princess—,” he rasped, eyes fixed on the way you moved. “Sitting on my cock like you’ve been waiting all semester for it. So fucking greedy. You’re dripping down my balls and still you can’t get enough, huh? You were just pissed you didn't get to me first.”

You answered without missing a beat, voice low and mean as you rolled your hips in a slow, deliberate circle that made his abs flex hard under your palms.

“And you've been begging for me ever since you got a taste. Can’t even stay quiet while I use you. Such a needy little thing when someone’s actually on top of you.”

Peter’s laugh came out broken and filthy. One hand slid up your side, rough and possessive.

“Keep talking shit. It only makes me harder. I'm the best you're ever gonna get baby. Tell me it’s stretching you open better than anything else you’ve taken.”

You leaned forward, changing the angle so every downward stroke dragged him against the spot that made your breath hitch, and gave it right back.

“You’re leaking so much I can feel it. S' warm. Not gonna last much longer are you? Poor baby. Can’t even keep ahold of yourself when I’m the one setting the pace.”

"F-fuck you."

"Already am pretty boy."

Peter felt the exact moment things started to change. The way your walls fluttered and clenched around him. The way your thighs began to tremble against his hips. The soft, broken sound that slipped out of you.

He didn’t need you to say it.

His hand left your hip and slid between your bodies without hesitation. Two fingers found your clit—slick, swollen, oversensitive—and pressed in tight, focused circles that matched the pace you were already setting. The second the pressure landed your rhythm stuttered.

“There it is,” he murmured, voice low and arrogant even as his own control started to fray. “I can feel you getting close. Squeezing me so tight. Keep riding. Don’t you dare stop. Come on my cock while I rub this pretty clit.”

You tried to keep the mean praise going. The words came out fractured and breathless—“Fuck—you—cocky asshole—” but the dual stimulation of his thick length filling you and the precise, relentless circles of his fingers cut every sentence short.

Peter’s hips started lifting to meet every downward stroke, fucking up into you in short, hard thrusts while his fingers never left your clit. The wet sounds grew louder. Your walls clamped down harder. He felt the first strong pulse of your orgasm start to roll through you and locked his free arm around your waist so you couldn’t pull away.

“That’s it—come. Let me feel it. Squeeze this cock like you mean it.”

You shattered around him with a broken, high sound, thighs shaking, body pulsing in tight, rhythmic waves that milked him from base to tip. The sudden, perfect pressure of you coming undone on top of him dragged Peter over the edge right with you.

His hips snapped up hard one last time and stayed there, buried to the hilt as he came with a low, punched-out groan. Hot, thick pulses flooded you in heavy spurts while your walls kept fluttering and clenching around him, dragging every drop deeper. His fingers stayed pressed to your clit through the entire thing, working you through the aftershocks even as his own thighs shook and his breath left him in ragged, broken sounds.

For several long seconds neither of you moved.

You stayed collapsed forward against his chest, both of you still twitching, still joined, the mess of come and sweat cooling between your bodies while the quiet of the empty dorm settled back in around the sound of your breathing.

Peter stayed still for several long seconds after the last aftershock faded, your weight still heavy across his chest, his cock softening inside you. The quiet of the dorm felt louder than it had any right to. Somewhere down the hall a door slammed. Someone laughed.

Reality landed all at once.

He was still inside you. Your journal was on the floor near the wall. His jeans were shoved halfway down his thighs. Your mascara was a complete disaster. And the only reason either of you had ended up here was because he’d shown up with a leather-bound notebook and a half-baked plan to stop you from leaving for three weeks without looking at him again.

Peter’s mouth curved slowly.

“Well,” he said, voice still rough. “That escalated.”

You made a quiet, annoyed sound against his shoulder and pushed yourself up just enough to look at him. The irritation was real. So was the faint, reluctant spark underneath it—the same one that had been there each time the two of you crossed the line and then pretended you hadn’t.

“You’re unbelievable,” you muttered.

“And yet.” He gestured vaguely between your bodies, still joined, still messy. “Here we are. Again. In your bed this time. You’re welcome.”

You rolled your eyes so hard it was almost impressive, then carefully lifted off him. The wet sound of it made his stomach tighten all over again. He watched you reach for the nearest discarded shirt—his, apparently—and dragged it through the mess between your legs without looking at him.

Peter finally sat up, dragging a hand through his ruined hair. He found his jeans, stood, and started pulling them back up with zero urgency, like he had every right to take his time in your room.

“You know,” he said, zipping them, “for someone who keeps telling me to get out, you have a real talent for ending up on top of my cock.”

“Shut up.”

“Just observing.” He tugged his hoodie back on, the fabric catching for a second on still-damp skin. “Merry almost-Christmas to me, I guess.”

You shot him a look that was pure warning, but the corner of your mouth threatened to give you away. The game was still on. Both of you knew it.

“Get out, Peter.”

He paused at the edge of the bed, keys already in hand, and let the full smug tilt of his mouth settle into place.

“Sure. Door’s right there.” He stepped closer just long enough to brush his thumb once across your bottom lip, like he couldn’t help himself. “Try not to miss me too hard over break.”

You held his gaze, chin tipped up, and delivered the last word with perfect, cutting sweetness.

“Merry early Christmas. Now leave.”

Peter’s grin widened.

He walked to the door, pulled it open, and stepped out into the empty hallway without looking back. The second the latch clicked behind him the smug expression dropped like a stone.

The hallway was quiet. Christmas lights hummed. Somewhere below, a car alarm went off.

Peter stood there for a long moment with his keys digging into his palm, the taste of you still in his mouth, the phantom pressure of your body still branded across his skin. The high of winning the round sat right next to something heavier and far less convenient—something that felt dangerously close to not wanting this to stay a game.

He exhaled once, sharp, and started walking toward the stairwell before he could do something stupid like turn around and knock again.

Three weeks.

He already knew they were going to feel longer than they should.

taglist:

@qardasngan @arcticmazecrystal @sylveonfx98 @lanadeleyslut69 @secretlifeofthemakz @my-fabulousness-has-arrived @justheretoread123sworld @post-its-etc @yoo0000 @rosethewarrior @uhhhj13iguess @scumbaglowlife @randomunicornontheinternet @djosprincesss @d3jecteddoll @lovinggyuno @littlelittlebear @starlockheart @iheartnostalgia @daydreamerblues @literixx @hearsaygoose @kara2708 @justinekomwriterkru

[spacejjunk]

my spidey senses are tingling

pairing: mean! college peter parker x reader

w/c: 6.8k+

summary: you have no idea how your best friend harry puts up with his roommate, peter parker. hes loud. brash. annoying. a whore. you tried to avoid him. to leave the room when he arrives. but the universe has decided on the secret third option- forcing you to spend more time alone with him than youd ever have to when you just wanted your damn necklace. fuck. requested by anon

warnings/tags: mean! peter, college au peter, forced proximity, enemies to blowjobs, smut (oral- m receiving, dirty talk, praise), the juicy sweats make their grand appearance

masterlist // join the taglist // part 2

You were sprawled across the shitty dorm couch like you owned it, one leg hooked over the armrest, half-listening to your best friend complain about his organic chem midterm while the other half of your brain was already planning the fastest escape route if Peter Parker walked through the door.

The apartment smelled like cheap laundry detergent and the lingering ghost of last night’s takeout. Harry's textbooks were stacked in a precarious tower on the coffee table, and the TV was muted on some reality show neither of you were actually watching. You’d been here for almost two hours, which was roughly an hour and fifty-nine minutes longer than you preferred to risk running into his roommate.

“I’m just saying,” Harry continued, flipping a highlighter between his fingers, “he’s not that bad once you—”

The door clicked open.

You didn’t even look up at first. You just felt the shift in the air, the way the room suddenly got smaller.

Peter Parker stepped inside like the place had been waiting for him. Backpack slung over one shoulder, hair a little damp like he’d just come from the gym or a shower or someone else’s bed—hard to tell with him. He kicked the door shut with his heel and tossed his keys onto the counter without looking. His eyes landed on you almost immediately, and that familiar, lazy half-smile curved his mouth.

“Well, well,” he said, voice low and deliberately amused. “Look who finally crawled out of their hole. Didn’t think you still knew where this place was.”

You kept your gaze on the TV, even though nothing interesting was happening on it. “Didn’t think you’d be back so early. Figured you’d still be making your rounds through the second floor.”

Harry made a quiet, warning sound under his breath. Peter just laughed, soft and unbothered, and dropped his backpack by the wall.

“Second floor’s overrated,” he said, walking past the couch close enough that his shin brushed your ankle. He didn’t apologize. “Third floor’s where the real talent is this semester. You’d know if you ever left your room for anything other than this one and judging me.”

You finally turned your head to look at him. He was leaning against the kitchen counter now, arms crossed, looking entirely too comfortable for someone who’d just been called a campus-wide whore.

“Judgment’s free,” you said. “Unlike whatever STD panel you’re probably due for.”

Peter’s grin widened, all teeth and zero shame. “Ouch. That almost hurt. You practicing those lines in the mirror, or do they just come naturally when you’re this sexually frustrated?”

Harry closed his textbook with a soft thud. “Can we not—”

“No, it’s fine,” you cut in, still locked on Peter. “I’m just trying to figure out how someone who treats the entire dorm like a revolving door still has a roommate who defends him like he’s actually a person.”

Peter pushed off the counter and took a few slow steps closer, stopping just short of the couch. He looked down at you, head tilted, that cocky little spark in his eyes that made it very clear he was enjoying this.

“Maybe because I’m fun,” he said, voice dropping a fraction. “And you’re… what, exactly? The dorm’s resident wet blanket who keeps score of who I fuck like it’s a personal insult?”

You sat up straighter, refusing to give him the satisfaction of looking away. “It’s not an insult. It’s a public service announcement. People should know the risks before they make the same mistake half the building already has.”

He laughed again—quiet, almost fond, which somehow made it worse. “You keep talking like you’ve got me all figured out. It’s cute. Really. But if you’re so disgusted, why do you keep showing up here?”

“Because some of us actually care about our friends,” you shot back. “Not just who we can get horizontal with before the weekend’s over.”

Peter’s gaze flicked, just for a second, to Harry—who looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him —then back to you. Something sharper settled behind his easy expression.

“Careful,” he said, softer now. “You’re starting to sound jealous.”

You scoffed, but the sound came out thinner than you wanted. “Of you? Please. I’d rather chew glass.”

“Mm.” He rocked back on his heels, studying you like he was deciding whether the argument was still entertaining. “Keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day you’ll even believe it.”

Harry finally stood up, hands raised in surrender. “Okay. Both of you. Enough. Peter, go shower or something. You smell like ass. And you—” he pointed at you—“stop poking the bear. He’s already insufferable when he’s in a good mood.”

Peter raised both hands in mock innocence, already backing toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “Hey, I was just saying hi. Not my fault your friend can’t handle a little honesty.”

He disappeared around the corner, but not before throwing one last look over his shoulder — like he already knew this wasn’t over.

The bathroom door clicked shut a second later. The water started running.

Harry dropped back onto the couch with a long, exhausted sigh and muttered, “I genuinely don’t know why I let you two exist in the same space.”

You stared at the empty hallway, jaw tight, pulse a little too loud in your ears.

Neither did you.

The dorm hallway was quieter than you’d ever heard it. No bass thudding through walls, no laughter spilling out of open doors, no one arguing about whose turn it was to buy more Red Bull. Thanksgiving break had hollowed the whole building out. Most people had scattered home the second classes ended. You were supposed to be one of them. The ticket price had laughed in your face, so you’d stayed, claiming the silence like it was a prize.

You were already dressed when you remembered the necklace. Black dress that hit mid-thigh, the kind that made you feel like you had somewhere better to be than an empty campus. Heels that clicked too loud in the stairwell. Hair done. Makeup sharp. You’d left the necklace at Harry’s place weeks ago after the clasp snapped during a night that ended with too much cheap wine and you insisting it was fine, you’d just leave it. He'd fixed it the next morning and texted you to come grab it whenever. You never had.

Tonight felt like the perfect window. Peter would be gone. Everyone would be gone. In and out, necklace in hand, then you’d hit the one bar still open near campus and pretend the holiday didn’t sting.

You used the spare key Harry had given you months ago and pushed the door open without knocking.

The living room lights were on.

Peter Parker was in the kitchen, barefoot, leaning against the counter with a half-eaten protein bar in one hand and his phone in the other. He was wearing a tight black crop top that stopped just above the sharp cut of his hips and a pair of black Juicy Couture velour sweatpants that sat low on his waist. The fabric clung in places it had no business clinging. His stomach was flat, a faint trail of hair disappearing under the waistband, and the crop top left zero room for interpretation about how much time he spent in the gym when he wasn’t busy being a walking cautionary tale.

He looked up the second the door shut behind you.

For half a second he just stared. Then that slow, filthy little smile pulled at his mouth.

“Holy shit,” he said, voice low and delighted. “Did hell freeze over or did you actually get dressed up for once?”

You froze in the doorway, keys still in your hand. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Peter took another bite of the protein bar, chewed, and shrugged one shoulder. The crop top rode up a fraction higher. “Could ask you the same thing, princess. Thought you’d be halfway across the country by now, crying into your mom’s stuffing.”

“Ticket was too expensive.” You hated how defensive it sounded. “I came for my necklace. HarryHarry fixed it.”

“Ah.” He set the protein bar down and pushed off the counter, walking toward you with that lazy, cocky gait that always made it feel like he owned the floor. “The little silver one. Yeah, it’s in my room. I moved it so it wouldn’t get lost in the chaos of his packing.”

You stayed by the door. “Of course it’s in your room. Because nothing can just be simple with you.”

Peter stopped a few feet away, eyes dragging down your dress in a way that felt deliberate and completely unapologetic. “You’re the one who showed up looking like that. Don’t act shocked that I’m looking. Most of the dorm’s gone. Campus is a ghost town. And here you are, all done up, standing in my doorway like you expected the place to be empty.”

“I did expect it to be empty,” you shot back. “I expected the campus whore to be off somewhere, ruining someone else’s holiday.”

He laughed, soft and mean. “There she is. Miss High Horse. Miss I-Would-Rather-Chew-Glass. You keep talking about me like that and people might start thinking you care.”

“I don’t.”

“Sure.” He tilted his head, studying the way the dress sat on your body. “Where were you even going dressed like that? Don’t tell me you had plans. On Thanksgiving. Alone.”

You clenched your jaw. “None of your business.”

“Everything in this dorm is my business when you’re standing in it looking like that.” He took another step closer. The sweatpants shifted with the movement, the soft fabric doing absolutely nothing to hide the outline of him. “You came here thinking I’d be gone. You wanted the place to yourself. Necklace, quiet, maybe a little victory dance that you didn’t have to deal with me. And instead you get this.” He gestured vaguely at his own torso, at the crop top, at the ridiculous Juicy pants. “Disappointed?”

“Disgusted, mostly.”

Peter’s smile widened, all sharp edges and zero shame. “Liar. You’re staring.”

You forced your eyes back up to his face. “I’m staring because I can’t believe you own Juicy Couture sweatpants.”

“Laundry day” he said easily. “Found them in the clean basket. Thought they were yours honestly.” He reached out and plucked the keys from your hand before you could react, tossing them onto the counter behind him. “Necklace’s on my desk. You can come get it, or you can stand there in that dress pretending you don’t want to know why I’m still here either.”

You crossed your arms. “Why are you still here?”

Peter’s expression flickered—just for a second—before the cocky mask slid back into place. “Same reason as you, probably. Money. Or lack of it. Or maybe I just didn’t feel like explaining to my aunt why I wasn’t coming home this year.” He shrugged again, but it was tighter this time. “Doesn’t matter. Point is, you’re here. I’m here. The building’s empty.”

You opened your mouth to tell him to go fuck himself.

He beat you to it.

“Necklace’s this way,” he said, already turning toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. The crop top rode up again when he lifted one arm to push his hair back. “Try not to trip over your own judgment on the way.”

You hesitated for exactly three seconds.

Then you followed him.

Peter’s room was… normal.

You stopped just inside the doorway, the words dying in your throat. You’d expected a mess—empty condom wrappers, a rotating door of half-forgotten names written on a whiteboard, the smell of sex and cheap cologne baked into the walls. Instead the bed was made. The desk was organized. A few textbooks were stacked neatly beside a closed laptop. There was a framed photo of an older woman who had to be his aunt, a poster of some indie band you’d never heard of, and a single hoodie draped over the back of the desk chair. It looked like he was actually put together. Not the lair of the dorm’s most prolific problem.

He noticed you staring.

“What?” he asked, already moving toward the desk. “Expecting a red room and a list of conquests on the wall?”

“Honestly? Yeah.”

Peter huffed a quiet laugh and opened the top drawer. “Sorry to disappoint. I keep the list on my phone.” He pulled out the silver necklace, the clasp fixed and gleaming, and held it up between two fingers. “Here. All yours.”

You stepped closer to take it. That was your first mistake.

The crop top left his arms completely exposed, and under the soft overhead light they looked unfairly good—hard muscle, the kind that came from actual work instead of just showing up at the gym for the mirror. Veins faintly visible when he flexed to reach something. Your eyes dragged over them before your brain could stop it, and something low and traitorous in your stomach twisted.

Peter went still.

You looked up and found him watching you, that slow, knowing smile already spreading across his face.

“There it is,” he said softly. “Knew it was only a matter of time.”

You snatched the necklace out of his hand a little too fast. “I was looking at the room.”

“No you weren’t.” He leaned back against the desk, arms crossing over his chest in a way that only made the muscles in his biceps stand out more. The crop top rode higher. “You were looking at me. Specifically at these.” He flexed once, deliberately, just enough to be an asshole about it. “Don’t worry. Happens a lot. Usually people are better at hiding it, though.”

Heat crawled up the back of your neck. “You’re delusional.”

“Am I?” Peter’s voice dropped into something smoother, warmer, the cocky edge still there but now wrapped in deliberate charm. “Because you’ve been throwing insults at me for months, but the second you see a little skin you’re staring like you’ve never seen arms before. It’s cute. Really. All that judgment and you’re still human underneath it.”

You turned the necklace over in your fingers, refusing to meet his eyes. “I came for this. That’s it.”

“Then why are you still standing there?” He pushed off the desk and took one slow step closer. Then another. The Juicy sweatpants sat low enough that the cut of his hips was impossible to ignore. “You could’ve grabbed the necklace and left. Instead you’re lingering in my room looking at me like that. So either you’re about to call me a whore again for sport, or you’re starting to realize the problem isn’t that I’ve slept with half the dorm.”

Your pulse was too loud. “What’s the problem, then?”

Peter’s smile turned sharper, almost fond. “The problem is you want to know what all the fuss is about.”

“I don’t—”

“You do.” He reached out and gently took the necklace from your hand again, fingers brushing yours longer than necessary. “You’ve spent so much time deciding I’m disgusting that you never let yourself admit you like what you see.” He stepped into your space, close enough that you could smell whatever clean, expensive soap he’d used. “Say it.”

You swallowed. “No.”

“Coward.” The word was soft, almost teasing. He lifted the necklace and, without asking, reached around your neck to clasp it himself. His knuckles brushed the side of your throat. Warm. Steady. “You’ve got that hungry look on your face. And still you won’t just say you think I look good.”

His hands lingered at the back of your neck after the clasp clicked shut. You could feel the heat of his palms, the quiet strength in his fingers.

“I don’t think you look good,” you managed.

Peter leaned in just enough that his mouth was near your ear. “Liar. Your eyes already told on you the second you walked in here. So either keep lying and leave, or stay right here and admit it.” His voice dropped lower, velvet and filthy at the edges. “Tell me you like what you see, and maybe I’ll stop being such an asshole about it.”

You should have shoved him back. Should have taken the necklace and walked out while you still could.

Instead you stayed exactly where you were, pulse hammering, the quiet of the empty dorm pressing in around both of you.

Peter waited, patient and infuriatingly sure of himself, thumbs brushing once along the sides of your neck like he already knew the answer.

“You look good,” he said, quiet enough that it felt private. “Really fucking good. That dress is doing things it has no right to do on a night like this. And the heels? Dangerous. You walked in here looking like you were ready to ruin someone’s entire holiday, and I’m starting to think that someone was supposed to be me.”

You stayed silent. Admitting anything felt like handing him the win on a silver platter, and you refused to give him that satisfaction.

He noticed. Of course he did.

“Still nothing?” His mouth curved, soft and wicked. “Alright. Let’s try again.” He shifted closer, the heat of his body seeping through the thin fabric of the crop top. “You’re beautiful when you’re trying this hard not to want me. All that fire, all that attitude… and still you can’t stop staring at my mouth.”

Your breath hitched. Traitorous.

Peter’s hands slid from your neck to your jaw, tilting your face up with careful, deliberate pressure. “There it is. That little crack. You hate that you like how I look in this shirt. You hate that the sweatpants are doing it for you. You hate that I’m standing this close— your pulse is going crazy under my fingers.” His voice dropped lower, coaxing, almost gentle. “Just say it. One sentence. ‘You look good, Peter.’ That’s all. I’ll even pretend I didn’t already know.”

You clenched your teeth. “I’m not giving you that.”

“Then I’ll keep talking until you do.” He leaned in another inch. His breath brushed your lips. “You smell expensive tonight. Like you actually tried. For who? Some stranger at a half-empty bar? Or did some part of you hope I’d still be here to see it?”

Your hands had somehow found the soft fabric of his sweatpants at his hips, fingers curling without permission. He felt it. His smile turned sharper.

“That’s it,” he murmured. “Hold on to me if you need to. I don’t mind.” Another step closer and your chests nearly touched. The crop top left almost nothing between you. “You’re shaking a little. Did you notice? Because I did. Your body’s already answering for you. It’s just waiting for your mouth to catch up.”

He was so close now that every word brushed against your lips. His hands tightened just enough to keep you exactly where he wanted you—tilted up, open, trapped in the quiet gravity of him.

“Say it,” he whispered, the words a soft command against your mouth. “Tell me you like what you see. Tell me the judgment was bullshit. Tell me you’ve been thinking about this longer than you’ll ever admit.”

You tried to form a denial. Something sharp. Something safe.

What came out instead was a broken little sound—half protest, half surrender—as your body finally betrayed you completely. A quiet, helpless whine slipped past your lips and straight into his.

Peter’s control snapped.

He closed the last fraction of space and kissed you like he’d been waiting months for the exact sound you just made. His mouth was hot, sure, and filthy with intent—lips parting yours immediately, tongue sliding against yours in a slow, claiming stroke that made your knees weak. One hand stayed locked on your jaw, the other sliding down to the small of your back to haul you flush against him. The hard line of his body pressed into yours and he kissed you deeper, hungrier, like he was determined to swallow every last scrap of resistance you still had.

When he finally pulled back just enough to speak, his voice was rough and satisfied.

“There she is,” he breathed against your mouth. “Knew you’d taste as mean as you talk.”

Peter didn’t pull away after the words left his mouth. He stayed right there, lips brushing yours, breathing you in like he’d already won something. The hard line of his cock pressed against your lower stomach through the thin fabric of the velour sweatpants, thick and unmistakable, and the second you felt it your brain short-circuited.

He kissed that good. Filthy and controlled and just a little mean, like he knew exactly how to make you melt and was doing it on purpose. Your hands tightened on his hips without thinking. Your body moved before your pride could catch up. You rolled your hips once, slow and deliberate, grinding against the heavy length of him, and the quiet, punched-out sound he made against your mouth went straight between your legs.

Peter’s grin was pure sin when he pulled back just enough to speak.

“There it is,” he murmured, voice low and rough. “Knew you’d start rubbing on it the second you felt how hard I got for you. Look at you. All that talk and now you’re grinding on my cock like you’ve been waiting for permission.”

Heat flooded your face. “Shut up.”

“Make me.” He rolled his hips back into yours, dragging the thick ridge of his cock against you, letting you feel every inch. “Go on. Tell me you don’t want it. Tell me that little grind was an accident. I dare you.”

You hated how easily he got under your skin. Hated that your stupid brain had flipped from get out of here to please him in the span of one kiss. You shoved at his chest—hard enough to make him take a step back—and he went willingly, still smiling that cocky, knowing smile like this was exactly the reaction he’d been angling for.

The back of his knees hit the edge of the bed. You pushed again and he dropped down onto the mattress, catching himself on his elbows, crop top riding up to show the sharp cut of his abs and the dark trail of hair disappearing under the waistband of those ridiculous sweatpants. His cock strained against the soft fabric, thick and obvious, the head of it already leaving an impression near the waistband.

You dropped to your knees between his spread legs before you could talk yourself out of it.

Peter’s eyes went dark and hungry. He looked down at you like you were the best Thanksgiving present he could’ve asked for.

“Oh, fuck,” he breathed, voice thick with satisfaction. “Look at that. On your knees already. Didn’t even have to ask.” He reached down and brushed his thumb across your bottom lip, slow and lazy. “You gonna keep glaring at me while you do it, or are you finally gonna admit you want my cock in your mouth?”

You glared up at him, hands already sliding up his thighs. “I want you to shut the fuck up.”

Peter laughed, low and filthy, and leaned back on one hand so he could watch you better. The other hand stayed on your face, thumb pressing gently against your mouth.

“Not a chance, baby. You’re about to put that pretty mouth to work and I’m gonna talk the entire time. You’re gonna hear every single filthy thing I think while you suck me. That’s the deal.” His fingers slid into your hair, not pulling yet—just resting there, possessive. “Now take it out. Show me how bad you’ve actually wanted this.”

The air in the room felt thicker. Your heart was slamming against your ribs. And still, kneeling between Peter Parker’s legs with his cock hard and waiting inches from your face, all your brain wanted was to make him sound as wrecked as he was making you feel.

You tugged the soft waistband of the Juicy sweatpants down just enough to free him. His cock sprang out with a soft thud against his stomach. Heavy and flushed, the thick head already shiny at the tip. The scent of clean skin and arousal hit you immediately. You wrapped your fingers around the base and felt him throb against your palm, hot and solid.

Peter’s breath left him in a low, satisfied sound.

“Look at that,” he murmured, eyes locked on your face. “Finally got your hands on it. You gonna keep staring or are you actually gonna do something?”

You ignored the dig and leaned in, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the underside of the head. Slow. Deliberate. You dragged your tongue in a lazy circle around the ridge, tasting the faint salt of precome that had already gathered there. His thighs tensed under your free hand.

“Fuck—” His voice had gone rougher. “Cute. Real cute. You think taking your time is gonna make me lose it?”

You hummed against the sensitive skin just beneath the head and felt the vibration travel through him. Another slow lick, this time from the base all the way up, flattening your tongue so you could feel every ridge and vein. His cock twitched hard against your mouth.

Peter’s hand shot into your hair.

He didn’t ask. He just gripped a fistful and guided the swollen tip past your lips in one smooth push. The head of him filled the front of your mouth—hot, smooth, already leaking. You tasted more of that salt-sweet precome the second it hit your tongue.

“That’s better,” he said, voice low and smug. “Just the tip for now. Look at you. Mouth stretched around me and still trying to pretend you’re in control.” His fingers flexed in your hair, holding you exactly where he wanted. “Suck. Nice and slow. I want to feel that tongue working.”

You hollowed your cheeks around the head, sucking gently, swirling your tongue under the sensitive ridge the way you knew would make him react. He exhaled hard through his nose, the muscle in his jaw jumping.

“Fuck, that’s good. Messy little thing already.” He rocked his hips the smallest amount, pushing the tip a fraction deeper before easing back. “You look filthy like this. On your knees in that dress with my cock in your mouth. All that attitude and here you are, letting me use your face.”

You glared up at him, the expression ruined by the stretch of your lips and the wet shine already coating the head of his cock every time he pulled back. He just smirked down at you, completely unbothered.

“Don’t give me that look. You started grinding on me first. You dropped to your knees. Now you’re sucking the tip like you've dreamed about this before.” His thumb brushed the corner of your mouth where it was stretched around him. “Tell me how it tastes.”

The constant stream of cocky, filthy commentary was starting to get under your skin in the worst way. Every smug word made the heat between your legs worse. You wanted him quiet. You wanted him wrecked.

So you stopped teasing.

You braced both hands on his thighs, took a breath through your nose, and sank down.

The thick head pushed past your tongue, over the soft palate, and kept going. Inch after hot, heavy inch filled your mouth until your lips met the base and your nose brushed the soft skin of his lower stomach. Your throat fluttered hard around him. Tears pricked the corners of your eyes from the stretch. Spit welled up and spilled past your lips, dripping down his shaft and onto the waistband of the sweatpants still shoved low on his hips.

Peter’s entire body went rigid.

“Jesus—fuck—” The cocky drawl cracked for the first time. His hand tightened almost painfully in your hair, but he didn’t pull you off. He held you there, buried to the hilt, while your throat worked around the thick intrusion. “Oh my god. You just—took all of it. Look at you. F-fucking look at you.”

You stayed down, swallowing around him on purpose, letting your throat ripple and squeeze. The wet, filthy sound of it filled the quiet room. When you finally needed air you pulled back only far enough to breathe, spit connecting your lips to his cock in a shiny string, then immediately sank down again—slower this time, dragging every inch along your tongue until he was lodged deep once more.

Peter’s head dropped back for half a second before he forced himself to look down again. His voice had gone wrecked and mean at the same time.

“Best fucking mouth I’ve ever had. You hear me? Best. A-and you’re still trying to shut me up by deepthroating me like a professional.” He rolled his hips up in a short, controlled thrust, fucking into the tight heat of your throat. “Not gonna work, baby. Gonna tell you exactly how perfect your throat feels while you choke on me.”

You moaned around the thick length of him, the sound vibrating straight up his cock, and watched his abs flex hard under the crop top. Spit was everywhere now—your chin, his shaft, the soft black velour of the sweatpants. Your eyes watered freely. Your jaw ached in the best way. And still you kept taking him to the base, determined to turn every smug word into a broken sound.

Peter’s grip in your hair stayed firm, guiding the pace just enough to remind you who was actually in charge even while you tried to ruin him.

“That’s it,” he groaned, voice thick and filthy. “Take it. Show me how bad you wanted this cock. Swallow around it again—yeah, just like that. Fuck, you’re gonna make me come down your throat if you keep being such a good girl.”

You pulled off him with a wet, filthy gasp, a thick string of spit still connecting your bottom lip to the flushed head of his cock. Your voice came out ruined already—hoarse and low from how deep you’d taken him.

“Look at you,” you rasped, stroking the slick length with one hand while you caught your breath. “Sitting there being such a good boy for me.”

Peter’s eyes flashed. His fingers flexed hard in your hair, but the next cocky remark never made it out of his mouth.

You didn’t give him time to recover. You sank back down in one smooth motion, taking him straight to the base again until your throat closed tight around the head and your nose pressed into his skin. The wet sounds of it was obscenely loud in the quiet room. Spit flooded past your lips and ran down his shaft in warm rivulets. Your eyes watered instantly from the stretch. You held there, swallowing hard around him on purpose, letting your throat flutter and squeeze.

When you pulled up again it was only far enough to speak, lips still brushing the shiny head.

“That’s it,” you breathed, voice thick with spit. “Just like that. Letting me choke on this thick cock like a good boy. You’re being so fucking patient for me.”

You dove back down before he could answer. Deeper this time. Your throat convulsed around the intrusion and a broken gag tore out of you, wet and raw. Tears slipped free and tracked down your cheeks. You didn’t stop. You stayed buried, swallowing repeatedly, the muscles of your throat working him in tight, rhythmic pulses while more spit dripped onto the soft black fabric of his sweatpants.

Peter’s free hand had fisted in the sheets. His abs were clenched hard under the crop top. The only sound he managed was a low, punched-out groan.

You pulled off again, panting, chin shiny and dripping. Your hand kept stroking him in long, tight twists, spreading the mess you’d made.

“Fuck, you’re taking it so well,” you praised, voice wrecked and filthy. “Letting me use your cock like this. Sitting there all pretty while I gag on it. Such a good boy for me, Peter. Look how hard you are. Look how much you’re leaking just from my mouth.”

You licked a slow stripe up the underside, gathering the fresh precome that had beaded at the tip, then took him deep once more. The stretch burned in the best way. Your throat bulged visibly for a second before you forced yourself farther, until your lips were sealed tight around the base again. Another wet gag spilled out of you, the sound filthy and helpless. Spit poured down his balls. Your mascara was definitely ruined.

Peter’s hips jerked once—short, controlled, like he was fighting not to fuck up into your throat. His breathing had gone ragged. The constant stream of smug commentary had dried up into broken little sounds he couldn’t quite swallow.

You pulled back just enough to speak against the head of him, lips dragging over the sensitive ridge with every word.

“That’s my good boy,” you murmured, the praise low and dirty. “Staying so still while I choke myself on this cock. Letting me take every inch. You’re doing so well for me. So fucking well.”

You sank down again, slower this time, letting him feel every inch of tight, wet heat as your throat opened and accepted him. The wet sounds were constant now—obscene, rhythmic, mixed with the soft wet gasps you made every time he bottomed out. Your jaw ached. Your eyes kept watering. Spit soaked the front of his sweatpants. The insides of your thighs were damp where you’d started shifting restlessly against nothing.

Peter’s hand in your hair had gone almost tender despite the firm grip, guiding you in short, shallow rocks while you kept him buried. He wasn’t talking anymore. Just breathing hard and watching you with dark, blown-out eyes like he couldn’t quite believe what you were doing to him.

You moaned around the thick length of him on purpose, the vibration making his thighs tense under your palms, and kept going—choking, gagging, praising him in wrecked little scraps of voice every time you came up for air.

You felt it the second his control started to slip.

Peter’s thighs were shaking under your hands. His cock throbbed harder against your tongue, the thick vein along the underside pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Precome was leaking steadily now, salty and constant, mixing with the spit that already coated everything. His breathing had gone short and rough. The hand in your hair tightened until it bordered on painful.

He was close.

You doubled down.

Instead of pulling up to breathe you stayed buried, nose pressed to his skin, and forced your throat to relax around him. The stretch burned. Tears kept slipping down your cheeks. Spit poured freely past your lips. You swallowed hard around the head of him—once, twice—then moaned low and long so the vibration traveled straight through his cock.

Peter’s hips jerked.

“Fuck—fuck, baby—” His voice cracked back into existence, rough and mean and desperate all at once. “You’re gonna make me come. Look at you. Throat stuffed full and still trying to milk it out of me. Such a greedy little mouth.”

You didn’t pull off. You let him take over.

Peter’s grip in your hair shifted from guiding to outright using. He held you down and started fucking up into your throat in short, filthy thrusts—shallow at first, then deeper, using your mouth like it belonged to him. The wet, choked sounds you made every time he bottomed out were obscene. Your eyes watered freely. Your mascara was a complete disaster. Spit and precome ran down your chin in shiny strings and dripped onto the floor between your knees.

“That’s it,” he growled, voice wrecked and cocky even as his rhythm got more frantic. “Take it. Take every fucking inch. You’re gonna swallow all of it, aren’t you? Gonna let me pump this throat full.” His hips snapped up harder. “Fuck, you feel perfect. Best throat I’ve ever fucked. Knew you’d be this good the second you dropped to your knees.”

You didn’t care anymore. The constant stream of filthy praise and arrogance only made you wetter. You kept your hands braced on his thighs and let him use you, throat fluttering and convulsing around every thrust. When he pushed especially deep a broken gag tore out of you, wet and helpless, and Peter groaned like the sound alone was going to finish him.

“Gonna come,” he warned, voice low and strained. “Gonna come right down this pretty throat. Stay open for me—fuck—just like that. Don’t you dare pull off.”

His rhythm stuttered. His cock swelled even thicker against your tongue. The hand in your hair locked you in place as his hips snapped up one last time and stayed there, buried to the hilt.

Peter came hard.

Hot, thick pulses flooded your throat in heavy spurts. You swallowed instinctively around him, the muscles working to take every drop while he kept you pinned. More came—another strong pulse, then another—until your throat felt coated and warm and full. Some of it still managed to spill past the tight seal of your lips, mixing with the spit already dripping down his shaft. His thighs shook violently under your hands. A low, punched-out groan tore out of him as the last weaker pulses spilled across your tongue.

He held you there through every second of it, hips pressed tight to your face, cock still twitching in the back of your throat while he rode it out.

When he finally loosened his grip you pulled off slowly, gasping, a thick string of come and spit connecting your swollen lips to the head of his cock. Your voice was completely destroyed. Your chin and chest were a mess. Tears and mascara streaked your cheeks.

Peter looked down at you like he’d just found religion and lost it in the same breath—eyes dark, chest heaving, cock softening against his stomach.

“Jesus Christ,” he rasped, thumb dragging through the mess on your bottom lip. “You really just let me do that.”

You stayed on your knees for a few more seconds, just long enough to watch Peter’s chest rise and fall like he’d run a marathon. His eyes were hazy. His mouth hung open just a little. For once, the constant stream of cocky commentary had been fucked right out of him.

You wiped the back of your hand across your mouth, smearing the mess of spit and come, and stood up on slightly unsteady legs.

Peter’s gaze tracked you slowly, like his brain was still buffering.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he rasped.

You didn’t answer. You smoothed the bottom of your dress once, then turned and walked out of his room without another word.

The bathroom was right across the hall. You flicked the light on, locked the door, and finally looked at yourself in the mirror.

Mascara streaked down your cheeks. Your lips were swollen and shiny. You looked thoroughly used and completely unbothered about it. You turned on the faucet, wet a clean washcloth, and methodically wiped your face clean—chin, cheeks, the corner of your mouth. You fixed your smudged liner as best you could, smoothed your dress back into place, and stepped back out into the quiet apartment.

Peter was still on the bed when you passed his open doorway. He’d managed to shove himself up onto his elbows, sweatpants still tugged low. He looked wrecked and confused and a little pissed that you were no longer on your knees.

“Hey.” His voice was still rough. “What the fuck? You’re just leaving?”

You paused in the living room long enough to slip your heels back on and grab your keys from the counter.

“Yep.”

Peter pushed himself fully upright, running a hand through his messy hair. “You can’t be serious. You just—come back here.”

You glanced over your shoulder, one hand already on the front door. The necklace sat cool and perfect against your collarbone. Your voice came out light, almost sweet.

“Bye, Peter.”

You opened the door, stepped into the empty hallway, and let it click shut behind you before he could get another word out.

The silence of the dorm building swallowed the sound of your heels as you walked toward the stairwell, the faint taste of him still lingering on your tongue and a small, private smile tugging at the corner of your mouth.

spiderman will return in "my spidey senses are tingling pt 2"

taglist: @qardasngan

[uhhhj13iguess]

something's off with peter parker

peter parker x reader

summary: something is wrong with your next door neighbor, and it's up to you to figure it out (from this request)

wc: 2.2k

cw: set in BND so obviously spoilers for NWH. just a lot of whump (happyish ending) with poor peter :( detailed panic attack as well as death mention, SH (aggressive hair pulling during the panic attack) (sorry i like to make peter hurt). reader is gn! so read as you please, also set pre-relationship vibes that could be seen as platonic or in a mutual pining way idc

the first sign that something was off with your next door neighbor, peter parker, showed in his texting.

in the months he'd been in the apartment next to yours, the two of you had grown quite close. it was slow, at first. this meek, fawn of a man who had moved in just before christmas, seemingly closed off to all of your friendly neighbor charms and attempts at passing conversation.

he stood no chance against your grandmother's brownie recipe.

from that cold night in january on, you saw more and more of him open up. you'd gotten his number, and discovered the list of commonalities between the two of you. as he let you into his life more, you started to even find it endearing as he spammed your phone at all hours of the night, your notifications filled with nothing but the fleeting thoughts on his mind he thought to share with you.

but suddenly, a stranger was responding to you; single words replaced his once excited paragraphs to even the most of mudane things.

may 3rd @ 2:35am

you: did you watch the nintendo direct tn???

peter parker (#1304): last night, technically

peter parker (#1304): AND YUPPPP

peter parker (#1304): already calculated how much overtime i’m gonna need to afford the new zelda and mario dlc

peter parker (#1304): see you after summer 😔

you: you literally don’t even have a switch

peter parker (#1304): no but i have the kindest most wonderful neighbor in the whole wide world who does

peter parker (#1304): 🥹

you: why the hell are you even awake rn??

peter parker (#1304): i should ask you the same question, miss.

you: touché

may 4th @ 6:23am

peter parker (#1304): dude dude dude

peter parker (#1304): wake up and look at the sunrise

peter parker (#1304): loooookkkkkkkkkk

peter parker (#1304): lets go to the roof

you: if you send me one more message at this godforsaken hour, i'm going to murder you with my bare hands

peter parker (#1304): like you could even catch me 😏

may 4th @ 12:03pm

you: do you want spaghetti or mac and cheese for dinner tmrw

you: those miiiiiiight be the only two things to my name rn

peter parker (#1304): is it the spongebob mac and cheese

you: yes

peter parker (#1304): oh fuck yeah

may 5th @ 01:12am

you: are you breaking things over there? what the hell was that noise??

peter parker (#1304): lol

you: no like, you good????

read @ 02:45am

may 5th @ 10:48am

you: no fear, i have acquired hot dogs for the mac and cheese

may 5th @ 11:55am

peter parker (#1304): can't tn

you: what!! i spent a dollar fifty on these clearance hotdogs for nothing?? guess i'll have to get food poisoning alone 🙄

peter parker (#1304): lmao

you: everything okay?

read @ 11:59am

the second sign was the fact that he had dodged your weekly tuesday night dinner.

that alone wasn't unusual, as he'd cancelled plenty of times in the few months you'd grown to know peter. the day he swan dove through your window in stark red and blue, mistaking your room for his, you had finally found out why. now when he flaked, he'd attach a local news article of the crime he'd just stopped to his apology text an hour after he was supposed to show up. sometimes, you wouldn't hear from him until he got back just before the sun broke through, knocking on your window in desperate need of whatever medical attention you could offer him.

he had dodged you plenty of times, but today was different. peter texted you around noon, when he was supposedly mid chem-lab, simply saying he wouldn't be able to make it.

it wasn't weird that he bailed on your plans. it was weird that he let you know ahead of time.

but that wasn't what caused you to crawl across your shared fire escape and force your way into his bedroom. no, it was the third thing.

the third thing was the beyond heartbreaking, soul-shattering sobs that you heard come through the wall. paper-thin walls had become a bittersweet troupe to new york, and you often had done your best to respect your neighbors privacy whenever you could hear them and... whatever they were doing. especially peter.

you hadn't heard a noise like this from him before, though.

you were out of your window and onto the fire escape before you even knew your body was moving. climbing over the rusty metal through the dark, crisp night, you fumbled your way to peter's window just a few feet from yours. you'd only done this a few other times (in daylight, mind you), and how he did this multiple times a day was beyond you.

with the fight in your system to get to peter overcoming the flight as you resisted the urge to look down at the street 13 floors below you, a silent prayer left your lips as you hit peter's window and noticed it still unlocked from when he'd returned earlier.

there was a moment of hesitation, a flash of guilt as you contemplated the insane invasion of privacy it was to enter someone's bedroom window without asking. he hadn’t even noticed you yet, for fucks sake.

the moment passed as you heard peter choke trying to catch his breath.

pulling the window up and nearly falling through, you found him in his bed, the sight utterly gut-wrenching. if peter knew you were there, he didn't show it as he laid there, curled in on himself in fetal position, crying so hard you were sure he wouldn't have a voice tomorrow. you took a step closer, steadying your own breath as you took the view in of the strongest person you knew, spider-man, for fucks sake, choking on his own spit as he had his hands grasped around his damp curls. you watched in horror as he yanked. hard.

it was too much, and you had to intervene. you tried his name a few times, but it seemed peter was far too lost in his own head to notice.

"peter?"

god he can even hear her now. he tugged his hair harder, hoping the pain would drown out the voices.

"peter, please! you're hurting yourself!"

hearing her was one thing, but feeling his dead aunt's hands on his own was a new low. he'd officially fucking lost it.

"no! you're not even real!" peter screamed as he shot up right, the sudden motion catching you off guard and sending you to your ass on the hard ground.

you hit with a soft "oof", and it knocked some sense of reality back into peter as he met your gaze on the ground just below him.

"wh-what? what are you, how did you get in here?" he croaked out, confirming your previous suspicions that he'd shot his voice.

you moved to stand, watching as peter tucked himself small again to make room for you on his bed. it was immediately clear just how embarrassed he felt as he tried to wipe away his tears and snot, smoothing his tussled hair out as you cautiously sat at the edge of his bed.

"it seemed like something was wrong. guessing i was maybe right?" you tried softly, offering him what you hoped came off as empathy rather than pity.

it was hard not to - pity him - in that moment. you hadn't yet seen this part of peter. right now, he wasn't spider-man. he wasn't peter parker, top of his class at ESU. he was a broken boy, pieces shattered and laying out in front of you. you didn't know what was wrong, but from the look on his face, maybe just being here was handing him the first piece he needed to start putting it all back together again.

peter's face crumpled, fresh tears streaking down his cheeks as he launched himself into your lap. the dam broke as he let out wails that chilled down to your bones, broken "i'm sorry"'s filling the air between his gasps.

you didn't know what to do. you didn't know what was wrong. but it didn't matter in that moment as you held him tightly, pulling one of new york's mightiest heroes into your lap fully and cradling him as though he wasn't a 22 year old man. with a hand in his hair to soothe his obviously sore scalp, you whispered soft nothings into peter's ear as he continued to sob, and nothing but unintelligible "sorry"'s left his chapped lips.

you stayed like that for god knew how long, letting him get it all out. you didn't care that his tears were starting to soak through your sleep shirt, or that he was drooling against your arm as he fought to catch his breath. you didn't care. you just cared that he was as safe as he could be in your arms right now, and that he wasn't alone anymore. it broke your heart to see him so hurt. someone who saved you from a man in an alley with nothing but the flick of his wrist and a quick-witted comment, now bawling in your lap and apologizing as if he had been the one to hurt you that day.

after a while, peter eventually began to quiet down, his cries fading into soft sniffles. his once heavy, labored breathing started to even out as he used his remaining energy to match the deep and steady pace you had set out for him long ago.

soon, it settled even further, and you looked down to see a sleeping peter parker collapsed across your lap. you smiled at the sight, relieved to see his body finally relaxed. with the upmost caution, you shifted so that peter was laying back on his bed, and tucked his blanket gently around him. reaching up to brush some of the matted, sweaty hair from off his forehead, you gave a soft smile before you went to stand, but a hand landed gingerly on your wrist, causing you to turn back.

"don't go. please." it was so broken that it made tears spring in your eyes.

"i'm not going anywhere, pete. just grabbing a few things quick, okay?"

with a soft hum and the return of his steady breathing, you got up to get some supplies: a cold rag, some meds and a glass of water to soothe the headache you knew would be there in the morning, spidey-healing be damned.

you returned to sit next to him, covering his face as gently as possible with the rag. he hummed quietly, leaning into your touch as you wiped away the hours of tear tracks that had eroded his cheeks like a river does the land. you tossed the cloth to his dirty bin, tensing as you decided on your next move.

fuck it. you'd already broken in to his literal house.

you climbed into bed next to him, shimmying your way under the covers and molding yourself against his warm, tired body. he accepted immediately, arms finding their way around your waist and letting out a content sigh as your head laid on his chest. you smiled, noticing his heart rate had finally returned back to normal.

more unknown time had passed, this time much more serene than the last lost chunk of time. you'd thought he was fully out, feeling yourself pulled under the same lull before peter's voice quietly cracked through a whisper.

"it's my aunt's birthday today."

you moved your head to look up at him, your own eyes welling as you noticed the tears in his.

peter hadn't talked about her much. you only knew that she was gone and that he loved her wholeheartedly. he flickered down to meet your gaze before looking away again, and you began to draw comforting patterns over his chest in an encouragement to continue.

"i... i lost her last year. it was my fault, i... i-i couldn't-" he was cut off by his own choked sob, and you crawled further up the bed to hold him tighter, more properly.

"shh, hey. it's okay, peter. it wasn't your fault." you didn't know what had happened, but you knew there was no way in hell this was on him.

peter shuttered an exhale as he buried his face in your neck, newly wet cheeks smushed against your warm skin. "it's her birthday. and... and for the first time, she's just not here."

his voice was barely audible towards the end, and you held him even closer at the admission. you rubbed his back and exaggerated your steady breaths for him to mimic again as you laid there with him, allowing him to simply not be alone with this.

"i'm sorry i kept you up. i'm sorry i didn't come to dinner. i'm sorry about all of this." peter sounded like he was eight years old again.

you pulled back slightly, just enough to meet his eyes. "peter, please. you don't have to apologize to me. thank you so much for telling me."

his eyes wavered in your gaze before he dropped it, nestling his head back against you with a quiet, "okay". your hand found his hair again, the other still firmly planted on his back.

"can i ask you a question?" he just hummed in acknowledgment.

"what was your favorite thing about her, pete?"

[afloweroutofstone]

I feel like I hate AI slightly less than the average Tumblr user, but it still scares the shit out of me to see how many people now engage in internet arguments by submitting their opponent’s argument to an AI bot and saying “explain why this is wrong and I am right.” It is concerning first because most AI models are sycophants that will tell you exactly what you want to hear, which makes then extremely potent delusion-confirmers. But it’s even more concerning because learning how to argue for yourself— how to evaluate claims, to assess an argument, to find and check sources, to spot flaws in someone’s case— is one of the most important skills you can have in life. If you don’t have that, you are unable to evaluate what is true for yourself. You will walk right into the arms of the first crackpot or cult that talks to you when you don’t have Claude available. Extremely grim portent that many people seem to find this acceptable

[goatsgomoo]

#filed under: ​man who argues for a living says that arguing is important

I think this gets at something that's been bouncing around in my head for a bit about how people use AI, and how others perceive that use. And maybe it's not an original thought, but I haven't seen it laid out plainly and directly.

Generally, the use of AI models is essentially delegation. Essentially, you delegate the labor that you wish to happen, but don't want to do (or can't do) yourself. As a programmer, when I see my coworkers using AI to generate code, I instinctively get a little defensive and frustrated; programming is important, interesting, and fun to me and a part of me wants to shake them and shout, "Just do it yourself!"

But of course, there are many ways to use AI as part of the profession of computer programming. Maybe there are some repetitive or nearly-trivial tasks that might as well just be shoved off onto the program that's essentially an incredibly quick intern. But it's when people are using the AI for categories of tasks because they find the task hard, and the AI can do a better job then them, where I think my frustration is more justified. Because aside from just delegating the task, they are delegating the process of learning how to do the task, and any potential long-term benefits they (and by extension, the team as a whole) might gain from them developing those skills.

Now, outside of the workplace, the situation is different. Somebody with little or no programming experience might find they want a program that can do a particular task or automation for them, but making it themselves would be more time-consuming than the end product would be worth to them, and that's before the time they'd need to develop the skills to do it themselves. So they just fire off a request to an AI and get what they want. They basically have a cheap and quick contractor they can get mediocre work out of, and (through gritted teeth), that's fine. Developing programming skills and doing the work themselves are not priorities to these people; they have other uses for their time and energy that they find more valuable.

And of course in general, this isn't something new that comes with AI. I distinctly recall in 2012, overhearing a college student in the frozen foods aisle of a grocery store say that nobody should be buying a full frozen meal that just needs to be heated as that's too lazy and reflects poorly on the purchaser. Of course this is nonsense; people must eat very frequently and not everyone has the time, inclination, or ability to spend the time and effort involved in cooking every meal from scratch (or cooking most meals from kits, or preparing any meal outside the microwave, etc). I mean, I enjoy cooking and developing my cooking skills, but I often have things I'd rather be doing, and while I can often make something that tastes better than a frozen prepackaged stir-fry or pasta-with-sauce, I'm perfectly fine regularly delegating that work to a factory that mass-produces such things so I don't need to spend an hour plus in the kitchen every night.

And I think that thinking about this in terms of delegation makes sense when it comes to interpersonal communications as well. When you have Claude compose a text message to your friend, that's basically going "I'm not going to speak with you, I'll have my personal assistant do so on my behalf." Now, I'm not going to make a moral or ethical judgement about that, but just in terms of what that tells the other person, of course that's going to be perceived as rude! You are delegating the task of maintaining a friendship to something else! You are signaling that the friendship is not enough of a priority to do it yourself.

And then, to (finally) bring it back to the topic of arguing online with strangers: this isn't even something that you need to do or get a direct benefit from. Arguing with strangers online is almost always completely optional! You do it because you want to do it; delegating this to a bot is, in addition to being rude in the sense of delegating your interpersonal communication, pointless! I would characterize it as akin to getting a bot for an online game, and instead of doing something like using it as an opponent to practice against or using it as a way to get an edge over legitimate players in game, just setting it to run on its own while you watch. Except as afloweroutofstone says, doing this arguing yourself helps develop real skills that are actually useful!

[i-am-true-believer]

Hello sweet readers just a small break in your daily scroll with a gentle reminder.

We do not know what everyone is going through, so please be kind. Comfort characters are sometimes the only thing that save us from ourselves and if scrolling through a few fanfictions or posts makes you feel better? Than no matter how strange the character is its worth it.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose out through your mouth, have you drank anything today? Im so proud of you for continuing on through the dark when you can barely stand. Your comfort character would be so proud of you, of how far you've come, on what you've been through, of how hard youre trying to keep going. In the infinite multi verse theres at least one where your comfort character adores you just as much as you adore them, deep breaths, you can do this.

Your comfort character believes in you and so do I, the random girl who interrupts your scrolling to remind you how loved you are.

❤️💛True💛❤️

[json-derulo]

having the Aviation Accident Investigations Autism™️ has actually done wonders for the way I process and respond to my own fuck-ups

[json-derulo]

And I don't just mean "oh, my little work mistake is actually nothing compared to a fiery crash that kills people," either. The reason commercial flight is so many orders of magnitude safer than any other form of transportation is because after every accident and incident, an independent regulatory body investigated it with the express goal of figuring out exactly what happened, why, and how to prevent the same thing from ever happening again—not to root out which person deserved the blame or the liability.

It's a simple, shockingly effective idea. It's also worlds away from how most people approach their own mistakes and the mistakes of others.

[json-derulo]

Because it’s never just one person’s fault. And even when it is, it still isn’t. 

The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely. 

Everyone eventually has a bad day. Every component breaks down. Every computer gets a bad a Windows update and spirals into a reboot doom loop. If it’s possible for one person’s mistake to domino into a mushroom cloud of a fuckup, then that task is too critical to be one person's sole responsibility. The accident sequence starts with the design of the system—so how do you improve the system to keep it from happening again?

[json-derulo]

oh yeah. The “modern commercial aviation is the safest form of transport” thing only applies to planes, btw. A helicopter is a beautiful metal horse that wants to break its legs and die so so so badly

[json-derulo]

and not to jump on the cultural bandwagon of making everything about AI, but this is another reason why that shit is so scary. A single point of failure without oversight is a single point of failure without oversight. What do you mean you “vibe coded” your whole app/website/etc? What do you mean you’re not a developer and have no experience and you just got ChatGPT to build your database for customer data and payment info for you with no code review or security considerations whatsoever?? What do you mean. That’s a level of trust I wouldn’t put in the most senior architect I know, let alone a calculator with a UI slapped on top that can easily be Amelia Bedelia’d into saying, “Oopsie, I made a fucky-wucky! You’re right, 2 + 2 is fish!”

[mostlymarvelgirl]

I really miss those old avengers tower fics

1. Clint in the vents

2. Bruce and Tony in the lab... science bros

3. Cap being accused and called out by his team ... either it's the "language" or "I understood that reference"

4. Loki for some reason being imprisoned in the tower by Odin to learn humanity blah blah

5. Thor and his poptarts

6. Natasha and wanda being the bestie

7. Reader either dating Loki or Bucky

8. Fury calling out reader initially as a threat as they were an orphan who was a lineage of witches type of trope. OR reader is Tony's kid.

9. Bucky randomly becoming besties with Sam and them having their own fights.

10. Peter and Shuri becoming besties with reader

11. Maria, pepper, wanda, Natasha and reader having sleepovers.

12. Tony having a party every time after a mission. Everyone ends up trying to lift thor's hammer and reader turns out to be worthy.

13. Loki teaching reader how to use magic.

And the list goes on....

[kittennextdoor]

18+ fxf | cw - scissoring & squirting

The room is warm with the echoing sounds of your shared breathing. She pulls you on top of her, legs tangled together, her hands gripping your hips as she positions you exactly how she wants. You’re both soaked. When your pussies press together, slick and hot, you both moan at the contact.

She starts moving first, slow, deliberate rolls of her hips, grinding her clit against yours in a slick, messy rhythm. The wet sounds of your bodies sliding together fill the room. “Fuck, baby,” she breathes, eyes locked on where you’re connected. “Look at us… so fucking wet.”

You rock against her harder, chasing the friction, your swollen clits rubbing perfectly with every movement. She reaches down and spreads herself open wider with two fingers, pressing your pussies even closer together. The new angle makes you whimper, hips jerking involuntarily. She gasps when you grind down harder, her own thighs starting to shake. “Keep going, just like that. I want to feel you soak me.”

The pressure builds fast. You’re both grinding desperately now, slick coating your thighs, the obscene wet sounds growing louder. She suddenly grabs your hips and pulls you down hard, rolling her hips up to meet you. You come on her first, a sharp cry leaving your lips as you squirt against her, hot and messy, soaking her pussy and thighs.

The feeling pushes her over the edge right after you. She moans loudly, body trembling as she squirts back against you, your releases mixing together in a warm, slippery mess between your bodies. She keeps grinding through it, slower now, dragging out every last pulse until you’re both shaking and breathless. When it finally fades, she pulls you down into a deep, lazy kiss, her hands stroking your back.

“God, I love when we make a mess like that,” she whispers against your lips, smiling. You laugh softly, still trembling, and kiss her again.

[splattynatty1984]

Make It Stick

Mommy!Wanda Maximoff x fem!reader

Wanda told you it was time for bed. You rolled your eyes. She gave you fifty lines. You rolled your eyes again. It's just so hard to follow the rules, isn't it? Don't worry. Mommy's here to help you remember.

content: maximommy kink, spanking, vibrator (bzz bzz), edging, faux sympathy and condescension (make brain go fuzzy)

18+ NSFW oneshot, MINORS DNI | 3.9k words

ao3

The first time you rolled your eyes, Wanda saw it.

She always saw everything, which was something you knew and had known for a long time, and which had apparently not factored into your decision-making when you'd done it anyway. She'd been in the middle of telling you it was time for bed. Reasonably, calmly, in the tone she used when she was still giving you the opportunity to make a good choice. And despite every bit of sense in you, you'd rolled your eyes so completely and so visibly that there had been a moment of silence afterward that felt like it lasted hours.

"Excuse me?" Wanda had said. She sounded almost pleased, but her face. Oh, her face. The way her smile had shifted, how her eyebrows had grown a furrow between them.

You'd known, in that moment, that you'd made a miscalculation.

She'd set you up at the kitchen table with a notebook and a pen. The instructions had been simple: fifty lines, I will not roll my eyes at Mommy, neat handwriting, every single one. She'd sat across from you with her tea and a book, and she had not looked up once while you wrote, which was almost worse than if she'd been watching you. The casual attention—like this was a minor administrative matter she'd already moved past—had made your face hot for the entire forty minutes it had taken you to complete them.

You'd handed the notebook across the table and she'd read through every line with the same close attention she gave everything, turning the pages slowly. Then she'd closed it and looked at you.

"Good girl," she'd said. "Now off to bed you go."

You'd gone to bed. You'd laid there in the dark of your shared room for approximately forty-five minutes, listening to Wanda move through the apartment—the quiet sounds of her finishing her tea, washing the cup, the soft click of the lamp in the living room. Then she'd come to bed and settled beside you. She'd said nothing and that had been that.

That had been two days ago.

Tonight, she'd told you it was time for bed again in the same reasonable tone, same calm. You'd looked at her across the living room and your eyes had moved before you'd made the decision to move them.

All the way up. All the way back down.

The silence afterward had been different this time.

Wanda set her book down on the cushion beside her with the specific care of someone who was making sure their hands were free. She looked at you from across the room. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't change her expression, exactly. But something in it shifted, settled, went very still in the way that meant something underneath it had made a decision.

"Come here," she said.

You came. Of course you came—there was something in that tone that your body responded to before your brain weighed in on the matter—and you crossed the living room and stood in front of her, trying to look like you weren't already regretting the last four seconds of your life.

Wanda looked up at you from the couch. She took her time about it. She let the silence sit for a moment, comfortable with it the way she was comfortable with most things, and then she tilted her head very slightly.

"Did you just roll your eyes at me, baby?" she asked. Her voice was warm. Genuinely, pleasantly warm. It was not anger. It was something far more composed than anger. You almost wished it was anger.

"I didn't mean to," you said.

"Mm." She looked at you for another moment. "You didn't mean to. Your eyes just went up, all on their own." The corner of her mouth moved. "Is that what happened?"

"Kind of," you said, which was not a good answer and you damn well knew it.

"Kind of," Wanda repeated, with the gentle, patient quality of someone working through something with a great deal of tolerance. She reached out and took your wrist—lightly, just her fingers curled around it—and pulled you forward one step so you were standing directly in front of her. "We did this two nights ago, baby. Do you remember that?"

"Yes," you said, huffing out a breath.

"Fifty lines," she said. "Neat handwriting. I sat right there and watched you write every single one." She looked up at you with those dark eyes, warm and steady. "And you remember what they said?"

"I will not roll my eyes at Mommy," you said quietly.

"I will not roll my eyes at Mommy," she repeated pleasantly. "And yet." She gestured at you, an open small motion of her hand, indicating the entirety of what had just happened. "Here we are."

You opened your mouth, but suddenly her face went stern. Her chin lowered, her eyes narrowed, her entire demeanor changed in one second.

"I want you to think," she said, before you could say anything, "very carefully, about what you're about to say to me."

You closed your mouth, and her expression faded back to gentle just as quick as it had shifted.

"Good girl," she said, with a warmth that was somehow more pointed than sharpness would have been. "See, you can make good choices. When you try." She let go of your wrist and sat back slightly, looking at you with an expression of mild, genuine consideration, like she was turning something over. "The lines didn't work."

You almost shot back. You came so, so close to replying with something sarcastic. But somehow, surprising yourself, you managed to keep your mouth shut.

"You know," Wanda said, knowing. "Because you just did it again. While looking directly at me." She paused. "Was it worth it?"

You said nothing.

"I asked you a question, baby."

"Probably not," you said.

"No," she agreed pleasantly. "It wasn't. And do you know why it wasn't?"

You had several guesses.

"Because now we have to do something that actually works," Wanda said, standing up.

She was not rushing. She moved through the apartment the way she moved through everything, calm and not rushed. She went to the bedroom and you followed because following was the only thing your body was currently interested in doing, and she opened the closet and took out the box from the top shelf, the one you were familiar with, setting it on the bed.

She sat on the edge of the mattress and looked at you standing in the doorway.

All she had to do was snap her fingers and point to the spot in front of her.

You closed the door, before walking to stand in front of her. She looked up at you with that same warm, patient expression and reached for the hem of your sleep shorts.

"These can come off," she said, pulling them down with practical hands, leaving you in your underwear. She folded them, set them aside, and then she looked at you again. "And those."

Your underwear followed. She set those aside too.

"There you are," she said, pleasantly. "Go on and lay across my lap, sweetheart."

"Wanda—"

"That's not what you call me," she corrected, gentle as anything, the word landing in your stomach and spreading warmth. "And what I said wasn't a suggestion. Lay across my lap, please."

You didn't attempt to argue further.

She settled you there with practical, unhurried hands—adjusting your position until you were where she wanted you, her palm resting warm and still at the small of your back. You could feel the warmth of her legs beneath you and the quiet of the room and both of those things would usually be comforting but not at this particular moment.

"Okay," Wanda said, above you, with the tone of someone beginning a project they'd thought through carefully. "So here's what's going to happen." Her palm moved in a slow circle at your lower back—not soothing exactly, not yet. "We're going to talk about tonight. And I'm going to remind you of a few things. And then you're going to tell me you understand. And then—" a pause "—we're going to make sure it actually sticks this time."

You said nothing.

"Good," she said approvingly, like your silence was a choice she found pleasing. "See, when you're not talking, it's so much nicer. Isn't it?"

"Mommy—"

"That was almost silence," she said, pleasantly. "So close." Her hand moved to your lower back and held there, fingers tapping an absent rhythm. "Let's try again. Why are we here?"

"Because I rolled my eyes," you said into the duvet, your voice almost like a sigh.

"You rolled your eyes," she said. "After we'd already addressed this. After you'd written fifty lines." She stroked her palm once down the back of your thigh—slow, light—and back up. "Do you know what that tells me?"

"No…" you said.

"It tells me," she said, "that the lines were too easy." Another slow stroke down and back. "That you could write them and not really feel them. That you need something that's going to stay with you a little longer." She paused. "Do you think that's fair?"

"Yes…" you said quietly.

"Yes, what?"

You squeezed your eyes shut for a moment, biting your cheek. "Yes, Mommy."

"Good girl," she said warmly. "That's right. It is fair. And I want you to know—" her hand rested at the top of your thigh "—that I'm not upset with you."

Something in your stomach turned over.

"I mean it," she said, pleasantly. "I'm not angry. I'm not disappointed, even. I just know my girl, and my girl needs things to be very clear sometimes. Needs to feel them." Her palm moved to your ass and rested there, warm and still. "Don't you?"

You didn't answer.

"Don't you?" she said again, pinching the skin of your ass.

"Yes, Mommy," you said, squeaking.

Wanda smiled in satisfaction.

"There she is." A pause. "And that's what we're going to do tonight. We're going to make things very clear." Her hand lifted.

The first spank landed clean and sharp, exactly over your right asscheek. You made a sound into the duvet and she rubbed slow circles over the spot immediately after, her palm warm against the sting.

"One," she said, pleasantly. "We rolled our eyes after already being corrected for it. Which means we didn't take the correction seriously." Another one, the same spot, and your breath came out in a rush. "Two. We made a choice when we could have made a different one." She rubbed the heat in after, steady circles, her touch unhurried. "Are you with me so far?"

"Yes," you managed.

"Yes, what? Honestly, your manners these days."

"Yes, Mommy."

"Good girl," Wanda said, so warmly, and she landed another, lower this time, and you grabbed a fistful of the duvet. "See, that's all I want. For you to be with me. To listen. Is that so hard?"

It wasn't a question she needed an answer to, which was good because you didn't have one. She worked through the next several at her own pace—reading the sounds you made and adjusting, rubbing warmth into the heat after each one with the attentive patience of someone who was doing this correctly and knew it. She stopped occasionally to stroke your lower back, to let you breathe, to say something calm about what you'd done and why it had landed you here.

"Poor baby," she said, at one point, with a warmth that was so clearly arch that it made your stomach pull tight. "This isn't very comfortable, is it?"

"No, Mommy," you managed.

"No," she agreed. "I imagine not." She rubbed a slow circle over where she'd just landed the last one. "Maybe next time you'll think about this when you feel the urge to roll your eyes at me." Another one, sharper, and you cried out softly. "Or maybe not. Maybe you'll need reminders. And that's okay too." She soothed it afterward, her touch warm and certain. "That's what Mommy is here for."

By the time she finished, you were trembling and your face was wet. You were gripping the duvet in both hands, your backside hot, and you felt utterly and completely undone in a way that had nothing to do with anger anymore, that had in fact been several other things for a while now, things you were dimly aware of and not currently doing anything about.

Wanda seemed to be doing something about them.

Her hand slid from your lower back to your hip and then lower, and the sound you made was immediate and embarrassing. In response, she made a sound of her own, though hers had significantly more satisfaction.

"Oh," she said, pleasantly. "Look at that."

"Wanda—"

"Mommy," she corrected, and her fingers pressed through your folds, slick and openly desperate. "You're absolutely soaked, baby. After all that." Her fingers didn't move, just rested there against your clit, lightly. "Does being corrected do this to you?"

"Mommy—please—"

"Please," she repeated, in the tone of someone savoring a word. "That's better. That's so much better than an eye roll, isn't it?" She pressed slightly, adding pressure against your now need-induced throbbing clit, and you made a sound that was not a word. "See how nicely you can ask when you try."

She helped you up—hands under your arms, lifting you with an ease that she didn't make a production of—and arranged you on the bed. On your back, propped against the pillows, and she looked at you spread out in front of her and her expression was warm but had a heat underneath it.

She opened the box.

The wand was familiar. You'd seen it before, felt it before, had extremely specific opinions about it at this particular level of wound-up. Wanda held it lightly and looked at you with those hypnotizing eyes.

"We're going to finish this properly," she said. "And then you're going to go to sleep like a good girl." She tilted her head. "And next time I tell you it's bedtime, what are you going to do?"

"Go to bed," you said, your voice pretty much a whine.

"And if you feel the urge to roll your eyes?"

"I won't," you said.

"Mm," she said, pleasantly skeptical, the sound of someone who found this optimistic but charming. "We'll see." She clicked the wand on—the low hum of it filling the quiet room—and looked at you. "Spread your legs for me, sweetheart."

You spread your legs. There was no hesitation either. You knew that if you did hesitate, you'd be left without any relief and you'd already dug yourself into one hole tonight.

She settled beside you and brought the wand to your inner thigh first—not where you needed it, nowhere near where you needed it—and the vibration against the sensitive skin there made you inhale sharply and your hips tilt toward it automatically. She watched that happen with a small, warm expression.

"Oh, already?" she said. "Greedy girl. We haven't even started." She moved the wand slightly closer and then back, watching you chase it, and made a soft cooing sound. "Look at you. After everything we just did, you're this desperate?" She tsked gently. "I don't know whether to be concerned or impressed."

"Mommy—"

"Shh," she said, extending that for longer than it truly needed, and it did in fact make you more wet. "I'm getting there. You can wait." She moved the wand along your inner thigh in slow strokes—deliberate, close but not there—and watched your hips move with helpless frustration. "Can't you?"

"It's harrrrd," you whined.

"I know, baby," she said, with such warm sympathy that it made heat pool in your stomach. "I know it's hard. That's a little bit the point." She pressed the wand to the crease of your thigh, right at the edge of where you needed it, and held it there while you made a sound into the lamplight. "There you go. Is that better?"

"Please," you breathed. "Mommy—please—"

"Oh, keep begging, my sweet one," she said, warmly. "It's adorable."

"Please—I need—closer—"

"Closer," she repeated, like she was considering the word. "Let me think about that." She did not move the wand. She watched you squirm and tilted her head with the expression of someone finding this genuinely interesting. "You know, two days ago you wrote fifty lines. And tonight you rolled your eyes again while looking directly at me." She moved the wand a fraction closer and felt you tense toward it. "So you'll understand if I want to make sure we're in agreement before I give you anything."

"We're in agreement," you said immediately. "I understand, Mommy—I'm sorry—please—"

"You're sorry," she said. "That's sweet. You're so sweet when you ask nicely."

She brought the wand to your clit, and you genuinely cried out in both relief and surprise.

She kept the setting on low—she knew exactly what she was doing—and held it steady, watching your back arch and your hands grab the sheets, your whole body reaching toward something that was building fast from the accumulated tension of everything that had come before. She kept her eyes on your face, reading you the way she read everything.

"There's my girl," she said. "See? All you had to do was ask nicely." She kept the pressure steady and watched you climb, her voice staying that same warm pleasant register. "You're doing so well. Such a good girl when you try. It's almost a shame you made it so difficult to get here." She tilted her head. "Almost."

"Mommy—" You were close already, embarrassingly close, wound up from everything prior and now the wand. "Mommy—I'm going to—"

"Are you?" she asked, pleasantly interested, and then she moved the wand away.

The sound you made was not dignified. You did not give a single fuck about that.

"Oh, sweetheart," she said, with such warm, such loving, such completely fake sympathy, looking at you in your frustration with an expression of mild, caring concern. "Did you think we were done?" She set the wand against your thigh, letting the vibration hum against the skin there while you came down from the edge, watching your face the whole time. "We're not done yet."

"Mommy—please!"

"I know," Wanda said. "I hear you." She stroked your inner thigh with her free hand, light and soothing. "You're doing so well with asking nicely, by the way. I want to acknowledge that. It's a real improvement."

"Please don't—" You took a breath. "Please don't do that right now."

"Don't do what?" she asked, with innocent warmth.

"Talk like that when I'm—" You stopped.

"When you're what?" she said, her voice too encouraging.

You closed your eyes, that feeling settling in you, the one where your head got all mushy without your permission.

"When you're desperate?" she finished for you, and the word landed precisely where she meant it to. She cooed softly. "Oh, baby. I know. I know it's a lot." She brought the wand back to your clit and your whole body responded immediately, your back arching. "But you were quite the handful tonight. So we're going to take our time."

She worked you back up slowly—starting low, building the pressure in increments, reading every sound and shift. You were gripping the sheets, making sounds that the room absorbed, and she kept her voice soft and exactly calibrated. She cooed when you were good. She acknowledged, pleasantly and at length, every time you asked nicely. She noted, with warm and gentle specificity, exactly how you'd gotten yourself here and what you could do differently in the future.

She moved the wand away a second time just as you were about to cum.

"No!" The word came out before you could manage it. "Mommy—please—no—I was so close—"

"I know you were," she said sympathetically. "I could tell." She rubbed a small circle on your hip with her free hand. "You're so sensitive, baby. You feel everything so much." She looked at you with those warm dark eyes. "That's actually something I find very sweet about you."

"Then please—"

"Mm," she hummed. "In a minute. Breathe for me."

You took a breath in and made sure she could hear it. She watched you do it and kept her hand moving in small circles on your thigh, letting the vibrator rest against your thigh and waiting.

"Good girl," she said, when your breathing had mostly returned. "See? You can be so good." She looked at you for a moment. "Are you going to roll your eyes at me when I tell you it's time for bed?"

"No, Mommy," you said, meaning it completely.

"No," she agreed, like this was a lovely conclusion. "I don't think you are." She brought the wand back—higher this time, directly where you needed it, the pressure more than it had been—and watched your back come off the mattress. "Because you're my good girl. Underneath all the difficulty." She kept the pressure steady. "Aren't you?"

"Yes—Mommy—yes—please—"

"Again with the 'please'," she said, smiling. "There it is. That's all I ever want." She increased the intensity on the wand, feeling you tense and hearing the way your breathing changed completely.

"Cum for me," she said, simply. "Go ahead, sweetheart. Whenever you can. There's no rush."

The orgasm that arrived was enormous and it came quickly. Embarrassingly quickly, but it wasn't like you were going to complain. It was the result of two edges and everything prior, rolling through you in long waves—and she held the wand steady against your clit through every second of it, watching your face with warm attentive eyes. She only eased it away when you were trembling, making oversensitive sounds and reaching for her wrist to push the vibrator away.

Surprising you, because you had half-expected her to overstimulate you tonight on top of everything else, she set it aside. She looked at you—undone and flushed, sweat dripping down from your temple to your jaw—and her expression softened into something that was still warm but different now, the fake quality gone. Just Wanda. Just your Mommy.

"There she is," she said, quietly. "There's my girl."

She drew you close and you went immediately, pressing into her and feeling her arms come around you. She was warm and safe, and she held you like you were precious, her hand moving in slow strokes up your back.

"You did so well," she murmured into your hair. "All of it. Even the difficult parts." She pressed her lips to your temple. "Especially the difficult parts."

You were nowhere near words. She seemed to know this.

"I know," she said. "I've got you." She adjusted you both against the pillows, drawing the blanket up with her free hand. "You're okay. You're right here with me."

You pressed closer and she held tighter and the room seemed to settle around you both.

"Next time you feel like rolling your eyes," she said, after a while,"you can come and tell me you're frustrated instead. Can you do that?"

"Yes, Mommy," you mumbled into her shoulder.

"Good girl," she said, and you felt her smile against your temple.

She kept her hand moving on your back in those slow steady passes and you felt yourself getting heavier with each one. You heard her heartbeat under your ear. Smelled her specific scent. Took in her general calming presence. You felt the same hands that had spanked you earlier wrap around you and keep you in safety.

"Such a good girl," you heard her whisper one final time before you drifted off. "Hopefully the lesson sticks this time."

She knew it wouldn't.

In fact, she counted on it.

[love-quinn]

— THE PARITY OF ZERO

pairing — michael robinavitch x fem! doctor! reader

summary — you’ve always had a problem integrating yourself into situations, not quite understanding how other people do it so easily. you spend a lot of time in your own head, and can confirm it’s not always a lovely place to be. it’s one of robby’s favourite places to be, if you’d just let him make space.

word count — 8.6k words

warnings — reader is very lonely, brief brief mentions of panic attacks, ermployee/boss relationship, age gap (robby’s early 50s reader’s late 20s), mentions of child loss (not reader or robby, she has a 7 year old patient who doesn’t make it), probably cringe and melodramatic but who cares

note — sorry for falling off the face of the earth whoops!! started working on this + an abbot fic + a carter fic (yay) and got tunnel vision i hope it’s long enough that it makes up for my absence <3333

The human body is mostly even.

It comes with a lot of pairs; eyes, lungs, hands, they’re all paired all the way down to the chromosomes. Bilateral symmetry develops in the womb, most human beings are reflections of each side, separated vertically. A line right down the spine - not perfect mirrors, but close enough to the naked eye. 

It shows in the way you examine newcomers. Two pupils needing checking, breath sounds are equal, two hands able to grip the same. But you don’t treat pairs. One patient at a time - well, two every hour as Robby loves to remind you. One heart, tachy but normal. One consciousness, words slurring under the morphine. One person who arrives whole and will leave uneven.

The body wants to be divisible by two. You’ve wondered why that is. Why one heart failing feels louder than two lungs breathing.

Or, in the case of the fourteen year old girl you have sitting in North-5, one lung breathing and one lung hypoventilating. You’re looking at her x-rays now, knowing you’re going to have to get her into surgery and bracing yourself to tell her parents. 

“They’re lungs.”

Robby is standing behind you, squinting down at you under the flickering hospital lights. He’s not wearing his glasses, so you almost want to hit him back with a quip about how does he know they’re lungs, old man. Your mouth is dry and you sit there for too long that it wouldn’t be witty if you did say it. 

“You okay, kid?” He presses when you don’t respond. 

You know you’re being strange, can’t help it when you feel like this (though exactly what this is, is up for debate. Amongst yourself), and you have to scramble to say something. “Yeah, hi. Sorry. Lungs.” Your voice sounds strange. Too soft. Inauthentic. 

“One’s got a pneumo?” He asks.

You nod, practically shoving the pictures into his hand. “Yeah, I’m getting her up to the OR now.” He examines the lungs for a moment, long enough that you think something must be wrong. Confidence in your diagnoses is something you struggle with - you assume (there’s still that voice in the back of your head that tells you confidence isn’t the problem, instead it’s the diagnoses that need working on). Every time Robby or Abbot or even Shen, who doesn’t really feel like your boss, checks over your work your pulse starts rushing like they’re going to decide you’re actually such a bad doctor that there’s no point in you even completing your residency so you might as well go home now. 

“Good, yeah, she needs it.” Robby nods affirmingly, passing you back the images. His eyes linger on you for a second longer than they should. You’re the one who has to break eye contact, not liking the way that his eyes seem to bare straight into you. 

You don’t like it when Robby looks at you, not like that anyway. Not in like, a HR violation way, just like he’s examining you in a way you aren’t ready to be seen in.

“We’re going to round for handoffs soon.” He speaks up again, softly. “You’re off the rest of the week aren’t you?” Robby’s voice goes high at the end of his sentence and he shoves his hands in his pockets. 

You really do like Robby, there’s a reason you turned down the night shift residency offer you got from Gloria. It had been a tempting offer too.

It’s a rare moment of quiet in the ER, and you’re hoping silently to yourself it stays that way. Not daring to actually utter the hope, not wanting to jinx it. You’re not necessarily superstitious, but you’re not going to utter the Q-word so close to the end of your shift.

“Yeah, three whole days off.” You try and say it casually, but the words don’t sound right coming out of your voice. You have a lot of different voices, a lot of pitches and tones. You genuinely have no clue which one is your natural state. 

Robby sounds even when he talks, a sound you could pick out with your eyes closed. “That’s good. You deserve it, you’ve been running on fumes.” There’s a tenderness that catches you off guard. Robby’s not a mean boss, he’s exceptionally kind. But he’s also not comforting if he doesn’t think you need it, not the type to throw out pleasantries for pleasantries sake. “Any good plans?”

It’s not something you’ve thought about, it feels kind of pathetic to admit. Like, having plans is actually something you haven’t considered. You work long hours, about sixty most weeks, so it makes sense that on your few precious days off you like to spend it resting and recuperating. Catching up on your laundry or your sleep, or even a TV show that everyone is talking about. Those things are just as important as going out and seeing friends. 

If they’re easier and more accessible, then that’s just an added bonus. 

“Uh,” you have never felt more unnatural than in this moment. You’re certain Robby can tell you’re not being entirely truthful, as if he has some sort of innate sense for when people are doing things for the first time. It’s the teacher in him. “Yeah, maybe. I’m not a hundred percent sure what I’m doing yet.”

You feel so transparent it’s as if he’s looking directly through you. Perhaps he is - already looking for ways out of the conversation, ways to speak to someone more interesting. Someone who isn’t pretending to maybe have plans. 

Someone who regularly had plans wouldn’t be embarrassed to admit they don’t have plans. It could be cool, casual: “No, not this weekend. I have a date with my couch and some take out.” Instead, you’d given what feels like the only wrong answer to a question about yourself. 

“I hope you have a good time,” Robby nods at you. 

The ER is cold, especially at night, especially in December. You’d discarded your jacket when you had entered, worried about being sweaty so early in your shift. Going to get it feels silly now, like you’d made the wrong choices. 

Most of your coworkers make something of their scrubs. Javadi has a collection of pastel hoodies she rotates between, jewellery more often than not sitting under the neckline of her top. Santos has tattoos and wears graphic tees under her scrubs rather than just the standard block colours. Mel doesn’t even usually wear scrubs, instead opting for one of her own shirts without the added layer. 

Your scrubs are standard, your undershirt is black, your winter coat is thrifted and warm but a neutral navy. You’d liked it when you bought it, but you feel silly whenever you wear it. 

You slip it on at the end of your shift, grabbing your backpack. You can hear Santos and Mateo chatting amicably about how a music artist they both listen to is coming to the city the week after next and how they both have tickets and are thinking of coordinating. 

You shut your locker, keenly aware of the other people in the room and even more astute to the fact that none of them are looking at you. 

You slip out the doors, not bothering to untangle your earbuds until you’re down the street. 

I’m not cold, I’m not cold. The woman singing has a lovely voice. It hits you like thorns down your ears, scratchy and uneven in a way that is only beautiful. The burn masks the sting of your eyes. Take my hand, take ahold. 

—

You take the train to and from work. The station is close enough to your house that the dishes in your kitchen cabinet rattle when a particularly zealous one goes past. You were told when you moved in that eventually you wouldn’t even notice the noise - it would become apart of you and you would absorb it and be able to go about your day.

You wake in the late hours of the night from the tremors, convinced you’re going to die. 

You’re not entirely sure what time the train stops running. You never check the time in the moment. 

The apartment you’ve lived in your entire residency has been good to you. You had applied for a lot of places, starting out in Allegheny west and eventually settling for Bethel Park. It’s nice and small, not too much to clean after a long week. You’re on the third floor so laundry is a bit of challenge lugging your basket to the basement but you also get a fire escape which is nice enough that you like being so high up. 

Days off have become a sort of anomaly in your life. You never quite know what to do with them. Your coworkers always have plans, both together and separately, you’ve noticed. Santos and Whitaker live together, the nurses all seem close, even Robby and Abbot talk about going to the Pirates games together.

You walked a lot when you first moved in. Pittsburgh has been your home for the last eight years - from student housing in Oakland during med school, then into your current place - but it hadn’t always been. 

There are lots of pretty places close to your apartment. Even more the further you walk, corner stores and community gardens. Sometimes you leave your phone at home and just wander, taking note of each and every street. Every facade, every storefront, every alley. It all stayed in your head. You could recreate the city in your sleep. Well, the city within an hour’s walk of your apartment.

The deli on Library road is open when you finish work. Sometimes you get off the Blue early and go sit in the stark white of the fluoros. The floor is linoleum, speckled with colours too small to identify but you know they’re there. 

You sit cross legged by the window at one of the two tables in the shop. It shakes under your elbow every time you shift, and the guy behind the counter, nametagged as Jeffrey, eyeballs you strangely every time it makes a noise. 

Your sandwich is misshapen in your hands. Red and white paper wrap up the second half, ready for you to stash it in the work fridge behind one of Langdon’s Redbulls. It’s printed real small on the bottom of the laminated menu they’ve taped to the table - $4.99 for a sandwich with a random assortment of ingredients on it. You’ve always been indecisive, this had felt like a nice way to make a choice without making a choice. 

They pick something different every time, condiments, vegetables, protein, even fruit sometimes. Once they’d given you one that included both mangoes and ranch. That hadn’t been your favourite. 

The one you have now is nice, though. Mozzarella, turkey, chips for some crunch, some other stuff you haven’t really cared to identify, all on pumpernickel. You’re not working tomorrow; you might eat both halves now. 

There’s an empty chair on the other side of your table that you’ve dumped your bag on. It’s meant for two people, and sometimes when it’s a bit busier than just you and Jeff you feel bad for taking it. You’ve got nowhere else to be though, and you’d like to sit and eat after twelve hours of not getting to do either. 

You don’t usually come on your off days, but you’d felt like you were going crazy holed up in your apartment all day. You’d done your laundry, washed all your matching scrubs and the few other clothes you wore. Tidied, caught up on your Instagram feed, and when you’d gotten to the bottom of the Hulu menu without anything jumping out at you you’d shoved on your shoes without another thought. 

It’s late, Friday night, and people are coming home from the clubs. You’re not particularly close to any, but the people who go there don’t seem to mind. Small gaggles stumble in every once in a while, giggle over the menu, and order an egg and cheese that they’ll probably barf up before they get home. 

God, you sound bitter. 

You gather your things when you finish the first half, can sense a group of drunk guys weighing up the effort of coming inside from where they hang out across the street. One of them is smoking a cigarette, and the other three seem to be caught up in a heated discussion.

It’s not snowing. You toss up taking the bus the rest of the way back. You’d walked here. 

You hear your last name, ‘doctor’ preceding it, and whirl around. On a very rare occasion you’ll get recognised on the street - people don’t tend to forget the person who saved their life, or their daughter’s or brother’s or cousin’s life. 

You’ve never seen Robby outside of work, not wearing the standard Pitt black scrubs. He looks nice in a collared plaid button down with a thick fleece over it and the top few buttons undone. You’ve never seen him wear jeans before. In your head Dr Robinavitch doesn’t exist in the same world where jeans also exist. 

You don’t know what to say to him. You end up saying nothing. Robby doesn’t even bat an eye at your silence - used to your oddness, the way it seeps into every interaction. 

“Thought that was you.” He’s smiling, wide and crooked like he does on the rare occasion he has a reason to. “What’re you doing out here so late by yourself? It’s almost midnight.”

“Dinner,” you say lamely, holding up your wrapped up sandwich. 

He looks at the checkered lump in your hand then back at your face. He looks different in the dark, the planes of his face look more severe in the light of the hospital. Maybe that’s why you like the harshness of the deli, so bright it brings you right back to work.

“You always eat so late?” He asks. You feel silly with your coat hitting your chin, your work shoes, and your sandwich in your hand. You look like a doctor - a med student. Robby looks like a man. 

The sensory feeling of the paper in your hand is suddenly too underwhelming and you can’t stop yourself from digging your nails in - needing a desperate anchor of your hand. You’ll regret that later when you go to eat it and it’s smushed, but later doesn’t matter more than the underwhelm in your palm. 

“I work in the ER,” you point out. His hands are in his jacket pockets but one of them is clutching an opaque white plastic bag with something heavy weighing it down. Robby laughs, crinkling the handle of the bag in his hand in his pocket. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you work today?”

He nods like he’d already forgotten about it. Like it did not matter to him in a moment he was not actively experiencing it. 

“Abbot’s sick- not bad, just all stuffed up.” He gestures vaguely with the hand not holding the bag at his nose/mouth area. “Only thing that ever makes him feel better is soup from PJ’s.” He nods down the street from the direction he’d just come where a neon sign is just being turned off.

“What a diva.”

Robby laughs again. “Yeah, he’d never admit it. Rather suffer in silence.”

It feels like the wrong thing to have said. You don’t know Dr Abbot well enough to make jabs at him, especially not to Robby. 

You want to be out of this situation, it all crushes you at once. You’re in the dark, fifty minutes from your apartment, talking to somebody whom you intrinsically do not understand. You are a hollow body, your skin is translucent and you can see every organelle and every shift of the movement of your organs. You can see all the hallways and gears and caves in your anatomy. Every link in every chain that tugs on each and every thought that spins through your head. How your life started from birth to now and a timeline for why every facet of your personality and your soul has ended up the way that it is.

Robby is solid, and in front of you, and you will never understand him.

You’ve broken your nose trying to walk through him - he will remember this about you for as long as the two of you know each other. That you put your words where they do not belong, and that you think Jack Abbot is a diva. 

Robby opens his mouth to say something.

“I should head home,” you jab your thumb somewhere behind you. You live in the direction Robby is standing. You’ll loop around the block to avoid passing him. “I’ll see you at work, Robby. Hope Abbot feels better.”

When you circle the street, Robby’s gone. The walk home is long, the walk up the stairs to the third floor is longer. You arrive home a little before one in the morning. You don’t bother with the lights, coming to sit on the floor in the kitchen. The clock blinks on the oven with each passing minute. 

It lights your skin up red, and if you look close, you can see the flow of your blood.

You unwrap your sandwich.

—

Shen’s on the next time you work. He greets you casually, a “good morning” around a drink from his water bottle and barely gives you a second glance. Your shift passes without incident - the other doctors treat you normally, when you speak they listen. Javadi initiates small talk with you and you do your best to return the sentiment. 

At one point Santos reads a 9 as a 6 aloud to you and gives you a look. “Whoops,” she snickers, looking at you like the two of you share some sort of secret.

You like Santos. The two of you are about the same age, you’re only a few years older than her, the same number of years further into your residency. The two of you talk sometimes between patients, but that’s bound to happen when the two of you spend so much time in an enclosed space.

She has a way of making everything feel like an inside joke. You know she struggled a little when she first started, hitting the wall with the other doctors when she first started her residency. You wouldn’t know that now, seeing the way she interacts with the rest of the people here. Her and Whitaker are so close they’re practically in a sitcom, Shen’s taken a special liking to her, and you’ve even seen her and Mel giggling by the lockers after shifts.

The two of you barely speak about anything that isn’t work. Which is fine, she’s your coworker, you guys don’t have to be speaking about your personal lives. But she has this soft little spark about her like she’s created a world to be in and it’s the most important place to be. 

“That thing you did with the guy in Central 13?” She sidles up to you towards the end of your shift, hanging behind the monitor you’re using to finish up the chart for that very patient. She lets out a heavy breath. “Wow.”

You’d inserted a double lumen tube during an intubation. Nothing super fancy, but you know that Santos probably hasn’t done a whole lot of intubations in general. Shen had raised his eyebrows at your suggestion but hadn’t stopped you, and when you’d finished he’d grabbed your shoulder and squeezed, muttering a “sick, good job,” and then heading out. 

You look up, genuinely startled. “Thanks.”

“I’d never even heard of the thing you did,” she doesn’t let up. “I wouldn’t have thought to do it. That was really cool.” Her voice drops and she looks down at your hands. You’ve gotten compliments before, but all from people above you in the food chain, Langdon, Abbot, people who are kind of obligated as your educators to give you praise. Santos is a PGY-1, so unless she’s sucking up you’re not sure why she’s being so nice. You’re not high enough up that sucking up would be worth anything.

You have fifteen minutes of your shift, no incoming ambulances, nothing urgent in chairs, all your patients are stable. 

You feel sick - not the type of sick that would get you sent home, or even to the staff lounge. It’s normal at this point. You genuinely don’t remember a time you haven’t felt like this. 

“You’re only an intern,” you say, trying to be empathetic without sounding condescending. “You’ll get there.”

She nods, low and slow. She’s already got her jacket on, thick and leather and dark brown. Santos watches you finish up your chart and you try to shake the feeling of being observed. 

“I’m, uh, I think I might head down to the Hills,” she leans her elbow on your table. “There’s this bar on Liberty street. They do live music sometimes, they have a killer plate of nachos, some cool cocktails.”

You log out of the system and stand from your chair. You’re about to round and want to head to your locker first. “That sounds great.”

Santos smiles at you, shoving her hands in her pockets. She bounces when she walks and she follows you on your way to your locker. “Yeah, I found it right when I started here. I’ve been trying to get Samira to go with me but I don’t think she likes me much.”

You open your locker. Coat on, backpack on, shut locker, look back at her. You really like Dr Mohan; she’s kinder than most of the other doctors, and the two of you started on the exact same day so you’ve always felt like a special kinship with her.

“She does,” you tell her honestly. You think she does. You don’t know Samira very well - if she disliked Trinity she probably wouldn’t be telling you about it. “She just prefers to keep to herself I think.”

Santos nods, rocking on her heels and biting her top lip. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know, I think there’s only so many times you can ask someone to hang out and have them say no before you gotta accept they’re just not into it.”

She’s not wrong. It’s very much something you have to play by ear, you’ve learned. Some people are busy, some people don’t know how to say no without worrying about sounding impolite. 

People are gathering for rounds, you can see at the end of the hallway. It’s the only thing standing in front of you and a huge nap. Santos is digging in her locker for something.

“I hope you have a good time,” you tell her earnestly. “Nachos sound great, I might have to get some on my way home.” You feel nauseous. The idea of eating anything, let alone a bunch of cheese and meat, makes your stomach turn. You just want to be home. You miss your couch. 

Santos doesn’t say anything as you walk out towards rounds. When she reenters the room, she doesn’t join you, she comes to stand shoulder to shoulder with Mel. 

—

The little girl in Trauma-2 is going to die. 

Today was meant to be a day off. Robby’d called you a little after five, apologising for waking you and asking if you could come in to cover. You’d said yes, sitting out on your fire escape and painting your nails. They’re clear - it stops you from biting them. 

It had been a fairly quiet morning. Most people won’t spend their Saturday in the ER waiting room unless they really have to so you have slightly less of the patient type that maybe didn’t have to come into the ER at all. 

Then the ambulance had dropped her off a little over a half hour ago, and you’ve been fairly convinced that she’s not going to make it since you’d seen her. 

You were the primary doctor on the case only because you were the only one around at the time. Now, Robby and Collins are there, and they’ve taken over. Robby practically shoved you out of the room and told you to take a break.

You’re sweaty. You’ve ducked into the bathroom to swap your long sleeves for a t-shirt under your scrub top and taken a well earned cry into the mirror. 

Robby’s standing outside Trauma-2 like he’s on guard. The girl’s parents are out in chairs, and you really don’t want to have to be the person to tell them. You know Robby will do it if you ask, but you don’t want to have to ask. Don’t want to have not yet asked, don’t want to ask, don’t want to have asked. 

The time will pass anyway. You just wish you didn’t have to get pushed along with it.

“Ah-ah,” Robby snaps as sharp as he can without any real bite. You’re hovering in the doorway to the room, watching as Collins works on her. “You’re not going back in there.”

You failed to save her. You are the reason that two parents have lost their only daughter. He’s not mad - can’t be mad that you did your best to save someone who couldn’t be saved. But sending you in there when you’d already done no good would be a waste of time. A change in tactic, a change in doctor, is probably necessary.

“Well where can I go?” you snap back, much harsher than he’d been. You want him to tell you, don’t want the mistake to be yours. Working in the ER and being mostly self guided you feel a lot of aimlessness. The pulling behind your navel that dulls to a low throb most of the time, signalling when you’re making a bad choice. Making Robby tell you what to do means that feeling goes away, just for a little.

Robby gets this look about him sometimes, when he’s tired and trying to brush someone off without them asking him what’s wrong. “You can get some air.” He raises his eyebrows, tone light and sarcastic. He lifts an arm to point out through the dark tunnel of night streaming through the open ambulance bay.

Your feet move on autopilot, taking you out into the cold. Your arms hurt from the change of temperature, but you made the choice to take your long-sleeves off, so you don’t complain about it even internally.

Robby follows behind you just close enough for you to hear him. “Are you okay?” He puts the emphasis in strange places in his sentences sometimes. In the middle instead of one of the edges.

You nod. “Yeah, Robby, I’m fine.”

It’s quiet in the way outside only is right when you step out into it. The noise from the ER bleeds into your veins and when the ambulance bay doors shut behind you it takes getting used to the difference. It almost feels like submerging yourself, for a brief second the world shifts, and then it goes back on kilter.

Robby looks at you for a long time. You still do not understand him, he’s impossible to get a read on. He could be waiting for you to say something.

“I’m parking you,” he says finally. 

Your mouth drops open. “P-parking me?”

“Doctor’s orders.” Robby nods with finality. “Stay here. I’ll come and get you.”

You want to shout something back at Robby as he goes inside - angry with him and grateful for him both at once. How dare he not think you’re up to doing your job? You’re not, but you don’t want him thinking that. 

You watch an ambulance pull up, both the paramedics ignoring you as they haul a gurney in through the doors. They know enough about the job that it’s clear you’re not waiting for them.

It was her birthday in three days. You’d seen it on her chart right when she first came in, the little girl who would be taking her final breaths inside the room you’d have to continue working in. Her life would end in that room. How many had? How many had died where you were standing?

Surely, with how long humans had been inhabiting the earth, someone had died on this spot. People had stood here and spoken. Perhaps a bed had been placed here, centuries before the hospital was even conceived of. A couple had laid in the grass, hand in hand, watching as the untouched space stretched on.

In a hundred years, would someone stand on this exact spot again and cry as you were trying not to?

She was seven years, eleven months and twenty-seven days old. You don’t even remember what you were doing that long ago. The thought dredges you up, lifts you like the moment right before the fall, when you’re anticipating. Awaiting another birthday.

The human body comes in a lot of pairs, a lot of symmetry, a lot of even numbers. And then suddenly it can be zero. Reduced to nothing but the meaning someone else gives it. A period, a full stop.

You take a shuddering breath in. It’s a morbid way to think of your own life, but you wonder sometimes what will continue to happen when you finally take your last breath. The last breath is usually out. An even way to close. Nothing remaining, no leftovers.

Robby’s hand finds your shoulder. “Hey, kid.”

You don’t know how long you’ve been out here. 

“I’m ready to go back in,” you say, because you feel like you’re meant to be. You’re not sure if you’ve ever been ready to go in.

Robby just shakes his head gravely. “It’s 7:03, you are officially relieved from duty.”

Relieved. It’s such a strange word. You feel like you’re bordering on pretentious. You wonder who the first person to ever say the phrase was, and how it got picked up enough that it’s commonplace now. If they had to explain themselves, or if the other person knew what they meant by it. 

Relieved implies a weight lifted from you. A lightness. Perhaps you left it in Trauma-2.

Robby follows you as you grab your stuff from your locker. You’re acting on autopilot. Tonight you will not get food on the way home. You will take the train, you will walk home, you will shower and change and climb into bed and you will wake up the next morning with your alarm. You do not have the capacity to make any more choices for yourself.

When you step back out through the ER doors, you can see Princess, Jesse, Whitaker and Santos sitting on the benches. You’ve never been to their after work wind-downs, but you’ve heard enough people usually go that it’s fair to assume there will be one after whatever shift you’re finishing. 

Robby is still behind you. “Hey,” he says. His backpack is slung over one shoulder. He’s wearing a thicker jacket than you’ve ever seen on him. It suits him. “Come on.”

You follow him. “Where are we going?”

“Dinner,” he says simply. “You haven’t eaten this afternoon, and I know how tempting it is to just want to go to sleep. You need food.” He walks like he expects you to follow behind him; you do without complaint. The sureness required to make an assumption about a coworkers needs and to be correct, you don’t think you could ever muster it. 

You walk for almost fifteen minutes, which is less than you usually walk, but by the end your cheeks are red and you’re trying to quiet your breathing. Robby walks faster than you, with a difference bounce, smoother and softer. You’re slower but it’s stilted. Unbalanced - sometimes your left knee behaves funny. He walks like where he’s going is the most important place to be, and you’d believe it. 

He stops in front of a place you’ve never seen before. A diner, real and busy, not an out of the way spot only he knows about from his wanderings. A staple; there are families here. 

“Hey,” you say as you reach the door. Interrupting the flow, trying to pause. A period, a moment, or whatever you’d been thinking less than half an hour earlier. Your feelings never make sense when you’re not actively experiencing them. It’s why you could never get into journaling. “You know you don’t have to-”

Robby doesn’t even let you get the words out. “I want to.”

Want is harder to argue with than obligation. It shuts you up in a way you’re not fond of. 

The lights are golden, warm in a way your eyes have to adjust to after the bright whites of the hospital, and there’s a handwritten sign taped to the inside of the window advertising that you can get four pierogies for a dollar. 

Robby leads you inside without another word. It smells like coffee and oil, and it’s louder than you’d expected. You’re not a huge fan of noise, but working in a hospital you’ve gotten used to it. You realise with a start that it has been so long since you’ve heard volume that stemmed from love. Parents chastising their kids for giggling too loud. a group of high schoolers that look like they’ve just come off stage from a school play - taking up two booths and beaming like they’ve just headlined the Tony’s, couples on dates.

“You come here a lot?” You ask as Robby sits down at a booth in the corner. 

He nods. “The food’s good, and they don’t look at you weird if you order something and can’t eat it.”

The vinyl squeaks with every shift of your legs, but it’s loud enough in here that it doesn’t make you feel self-conscious. Noise born from love, it wraps you in it. 

“Get whatever you want,” Robby says like it’s a no-brainer. You know instinctively that he’s not offering to pay for your dinner - though he probably would if he thought you’d want that. You don’t. Him paying obligates you to order, eat and enjoy something. He’s telling you to ignore the conscious thought, all the brain stems, all the lines shooting off in a mind map - focus on the core idea. The want. It gets clouded by the mind sometimes. 

“Soup is not a food,” he says helpfully. “Not right now at least.”

“I know that,” you say, defensively. You don’t want soup, and you know he’s suggesting you eat something solid, but it slips out before you can question why. The soup they have on the menu seems semi-clear, more like broth. Incorporeal, translucent. The essence of a food. Robby’s steering you away from it like he knows how you feel about things that are concrete. Your ego hasn’t quite recovered from trying to barrel through him with your assumptions the last time the two of you were alone together. 

“I’m sorry,” you say it because you are, not because you think you should be. The two feel indistinguishable sometimes. You should be sorry, so you are. You’re not sure where the line comes but it’s somewhere between you and Robby. “I’m not good at this.”

“Eating?” Robby asks. 

“Being a person after work.” Or before work, or during work. But admitting that means drawing attention to it, and you’d rather him think you’re oblivious. “I’m… sensitive.”

Robby doesn’t say any of the usual things; you’re not sensitive, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. You really like him for it. 

He leans forward, elbows on the table. He’s not looking at you like he’s your attending. He looks completely different in warm lighting; different in the way the noise is coated with affection. It suits him. “I like that about you. It’s not a character flaw, you know that right?”

You snort before you can stop yourself. “Yeah, okay, put it on my performance review.”

“I will,” he says dryly. When Robby laughs the sound feels like it’s had holes poked in it, gravelly and messy, the punctures letting something soulful out with the sound. “Second guesses her authority figures.”

You huff. “Wow.”

“I’m dedicated to accuracy,” he says seriously. 

The waitress understands you both immediately; the scrubs, how you’re kind of leaning on the table. Robby slaps down a ten and orders twenty pierogies and a cup of coffee. You flounder under her gaze, having not even looked at the menu, and Robby smiles at you in a way that feels conspiratorial and not polite.

“Can I get like, half of what he got?” You ask. “Is that a thing?”

She nods kindly and takes the menus from your table, ducking back into the kitchen.

With everything between you out of the way, Robby leans forward more. “One time, after a rough shift, I took apart my kitchen cabinets just so I could feel myself putting them back together. To prove I could.”

You mirror his posture. “This feels infinitely healthier.”

“Low bar, but I’ll take it.” You clasp your hands together to keep from picking at your nails. 

Robby gets you talking without you realising. First about work, then about not work. You’d read something, probably way back in college, about how some sculptors, instead of taking a block and adding their intricacies to it to make their art, they’d instead sculpt away from the finished product until all they had was art left. That’s how talking to Robby feels as you get your dinner. You talk about everything until all that is left is the little girl in Trauma-2.

“You did everything right,” he says, right when you need it. “No one could have saved her.”

“Doesn’t matter,” you shake your head. “I still didn’t.”

Robby looks at you very seriously. When he speaks, it is firm. Solid. “It mattered. It mattered that when she closed her eyes she wasn’t alone in that room. It mattered that her parents knew someone was fighting for her, that someone cared about someone that was theirs. The outcome isn’t the only metric that counts.”

You feel heat behind your eyes. “You really believe that?”

Robby nods, serious and stern, leaning forward to take your hand. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it.”

The food arrives, sitting between you two like something to share instead of something to separate you both. 

Loneliness eats at you on your worst days. You thought you knew how it felt to be real and truly lonely, and then you moved to Pittsburgh. You’re not homesick, per se, more sick for a life you feel belongs to you. You miss being tied to places, no one here holds memories with you in them.

At home, you can walk down Main street and practically provide director’s commentary: There’s the cafe I lost my scarf in when I was a kid, there’s the movie theatre I saw that in, there’s the restaurant that didn’t hire me in high school. You miss being somewhere where you are as much a part of the place as the culture is a part of you. 

In Pittsburgh, you cease to exist the moment you leave a place. 

“I’m really glad that I got to steal you from Abbot,” Robby says through a mouthful of decaf. “I know you got offered a night shift spot, and I have to admit I was a little worried for a bit. I thought you would take it up.”

That had been a long time ago, back when you were just starting your second year of residency. It was a really tempting offer. You’d declined it because, at the end of the day, you really love the people you work with, even if they exist in the bubble of the ER. 

“I thought about it,” you admit, ripping apart a pierogi in your hand. “But, to be honest, I’ve been feeling kind of… isolated?” You muse over your word choice. “Sometimes I feel so small in this city, and I figured being asleep when most of the people who live here are awake would just take me out of it that much more.”

Robby chews slowly, using it to formulate a thought. “You leave a very strong first impression.”

You blink. If you were eating you probably would have choked. “Excuse me?”

“Abbot’s always talking about you whenever you work a night,” he says, like it’s something worth holding on to, not to keep but rather to let you follow him as he keeps going. He looks so tired, always older after a shift than before one. It looks good on him, he wears age handsomely, and you wonder - not for the first time - how he fares. It feels inappropriate to think of your boss that way, especially just because he’s being so nice to you. “You were the first one that really got through to Santos, you two are clearly close” Are you? That makes you sad, that you’ve missed a closeness that you haven’t understood. It feels like something you will never get back. You have missed it. You will miss it. 

She hit a bit of a wall when she started, you’d been able to see that. You wonder, for the first time, how many times she had broken her nose trying to walk through you. 

“And I…” he flushes, scratching the hair at the back of his neck. “I worry about you.” It lands, heavy and warm. 

He worries about you. That should make you feel worried - what have you been doing to worry him? Instead, it strikes you right in the heart. Worry, as gnawing of an emotion as it is, requires space to hold it in.

Space you take up in his chest when you are not in the room. 

“You don’t have to,” you say. “I’m a hard person to be around a lot of the time.”

Robby, to his credit, does not correct you. This whole conversation he has spent not saying the things you are ‘meant’ to say to someone confiding in you, and each time he has said exactly what has sparked something in your chest cavity. 

“You’re worth the effort, though.”

You laugh, startled and a little breathless. “You make it sound like I’m like, a piece of IKEA furniture or something.”

“A kitchen cabinet,” Robby jokes. 

Robby relaxes against the vinyl, and pushes one of the containers of pierogies towards you. It sits heavy inside you as you eat, and you feel like maybe it’s filling something inside you that you didn’t realise you didn’t have. Closer to whole than you have felt in a while - almost like you’ve forgotten. Further away from zero. 

He talks more than you do, and you believe it’s a kindness. He tells you a story of a med student he had years ago who insisted on calling him Dr Robinavitch - you never realised you didn’t know Robby’s first name until that very moment, and you can tell he also realised that. “One time he had a patient throw up on him and he threw up in response.”

You’re deadpan. “Probably picked the wrong career path, I won’t lie.”

He laughs over his coffee. There’s a pile of napkins between the two of you, helping with the oil of your hands as you eat with them, not even noticing it through the conversation. 

“I mean, I’ve been there,” you say, wiping your hands for the fifteenth time. 

You’ve been there for almost an hour, unworried. The sign above the counter says they’re open past midnight, so you don’t have to worry about them closing while you’re sitting here. Robby’s been looking at you with soft eyes and pink cheeks for the better part of thirty minutes. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “Worst thing about you is your terrible self-esteem, you’re great, shut up.”

You laugh. “Bedside manner is dead,” you say, pushing your plate away from yourself, full and happy. “And we killed him.”

“Why is bedside manner a man?” Robby asks. “That feels unlikely.”

You leave a little after nine. Robby walks to the train with you and then gets on without saying anything. You have no idea where Robby lives, but you know he walks to work. The two of you share a bench, thigh to thigh. Neither one of you mention where you are at any point, how close your respective places are, where you both need to go. 

You probably do the less walking than any night in recent memory. The city has shaped itself around your solitude, your routines, almost crushing in the way it attempts to fold itself around you. 

When you stand on the T, he stands with you. He’s so close, he smells like something warm and heavy, and he seems to be drinking you in. He laughs at almost everything you say, even when you don’t mean for it to be funny. 

The conversation stays steady, it doesn’t lull like you’re always terrified of. They’re not your strong suit, speaking with people. It comes with a feeling of sparity, it’s easy to feel like you are the remaining essence. The human body is naturally paired, but your human experience is roughly singular. 

Robby walks with you like he wants to share the same space. 

You think a lot about numbers. Odd being defined almost lazily, as though no one could bother to think of a better descriptor, not being divisible by two. You wonder, in your quietest nights, if you were to be split open, would you be divisible by two? You feel often like a remainder, not to be dramatic. But everyone else seems to gravitate naturally to other people, snapping together like magnets. 

It’s something you’d always struggled with. You’re not sure what people clock about you that solidifies it. You don’t just feel uneven, you feel odd. It’s something that festered behind your ribs when you were a child and as you grew, so too did it. The version of the word lodged in your bones. Like there is a correct way to be a person, everyone else learned it - learned it enough to know which rules to follow and which to break. It takes a deep and intimate knowledge of how something works in order to go against the norms and have it still work, and it feels like everyone you’ve ever met is able to do that. 

And people notice. They’re not cruel, that’s almost worse. They’re not trying to judge, but pattern recognition dictates that it is human nature to notice when something is off. 

Robby’s arm brushes yours and he makes no effort to move away. Two feet on the pavement, two people walking together. Your footsteps are half a beat after his. 

You wonder how long until he sees the error. A small part of you hopes he has already - that this is him noticing. 

Robby says something—you don’t catch all of it—and you answer a second too late, your words stepping on the edge of his sentence. He doesn’t seem to mind. He never seems to mind. That almost makes it worse, how easily he accommodates you, like you are something fragile or precious instead of incorrect.

“This is me,” you say as you reach your apartment building. You have no idea how Robby is getting home. 

He sighs morosely. “Are you sure?”

You look up at your window, pretending to think. “Pretty sure.” He squeezes the top of your arm and in moving his hand down, almost touches your fingers. “I don’t think I’ve ever had someone walk me home before. It’s not something I usually do.”

“It doesn’t have to be a thing, if you don’t want?” His tone lightens at the end, and you’re high enough on the night air that you are determined to interpret it in good faith. Him prioritising your comfort. You become acutely aware of the space between you — not empty, exactly, but loaded. Charged. Like something left on overnight.

You shake your head. “No, I liked it. I just…” you’re going to end the night being vulnerable. Robby has done nothing to indicate he does not like you. You will not be the kind of pathetic person who argues with someone when they show they like them. “Is it selfish to say I want to matter to someone?”

Robby steps impossibly closer to you. “Not selfish at all. In fact, bare minimum.” His gaze drops to where his breath is fogging the air between the two of you. It’s freezing. You don’t feel so silly in your thrifted winter coat. “I would go as far to say you already do.”

Robby looks different under the glow of your street light - different than at work, different than at the diner. You think you might start to understand him. He is still direct in front of you, solid and unmoving. But he shifts in the light: kitchen cabinets with their doors taken off. 

There are so many things you could say to him. Thank you. I’m sorry. Please don’t forget me when the sun comes up and it’s loud again and I am still quiet. 

You think of all the times you have spent standing in this very spot, feeling temporary in your own life. 

Robby falters. You realise with a start it’s not the first time you’ve seen him do that. If anyone had asked three hours ago you probably would have answered as honestly as possible that you’d never seen it. How many times had it happened and you hadn’t seen it?

“Can I-” he stumbles over his words. Reconsiders. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

You feel rooted to place. The honesty of his voice hurts. “Are you asking permission or if I have the audacity?”

He laughs and you feel it against your face. “The first one.”

Robby smiles, warm and unmistakably fond. When he kisses you it’s soft and coursing with something you can’t name. He tastes like decaf coffee that you didn’t realise was shitty now you’re still tasting it almost two hours later. You can feel his beard against your face and the scratch is electrifying. You’re just two people. His hands settle into your waist, palms against your scrub top under your coat. It’s just the two of you and the quiet hum of the city you live in. 

“You should get some sleep,” he mumbles against your mouth. He lets you kiss him for another few minutes, seeming like he’s indulging himself more than letting you have what you want. It’s dizzying, the idea of being wanted, and by someone like Robby. 

The kind of guy you think might’ve liked you even if you didn’t like him back. 

You’re working tomorrow. You’re pretty sure he is too. You hope, as well, that Santos is and that she’s in a good mood. The seed of an idea plants itself within you hopefully, and you decide tomorrow will be the shift you ask if she maybe wants to get drinks after work. The thought of her saying no terrifies you, but the thought of her saying yes terrifies you a little less than you’d first thought. 

“I’ll see you soon,” he pulls back, flushed and seemingly just as enthralled as you. Soon. Continuously. “Text me when you get up there, need to make sure you’re awake enough to lock your door.” He doesn’t walk away until you’re up and locked away in your apartment. 

The oven clock blinks at you as you turn the overhead lamp on. You shoot him a door’s locked text that he heart-reacts to. 

The train rushes past. It rattles the handles of your drawers and the doors of your cabinets.

[icedsodapop]

'The Bear' writer, Alex O'Keefe was arrested on a train for sitting while Black;

I was arrested on the @MTA train to Connecticut today, pulled off, handcuffed, and detained. An old white woman got on the train and immediately pointed at me and told me to correct how I was sitting. I refused so she went to the conductor and complained. The conductor called the police and stopped the train. While waiting for the police to arrive, the old Karen’s friend said “You’re not the minority anymore.” The police told me to leave the train, I refused and asked what was I doing illegally. They said I was disturbing the peace by not leaving the train. They pulled me off the train and arrested me without even talking to the Karen who reported the one black person on the train. On the platform, the police detained me and interrogated me. Only black folks stayed nearby and recorded the arrest. When I demanded a lawyer and reminded them they didn’t even take a statement from the woman who complained they eventually released me. This country is growing more psycho by the day. What will you do about it?

Source: Instagram

Disheartening to know that not only did the conductor called and helped the pigs, the non-Black people also just sat by in silence. And yet, it's utterly unsurprising. Grandma snitching on a Black man for sitting unproperly is pure Carolyn Bryant behaviour and she deserves to die a slow, painful death.

And here are cops' badge numbers, dox them:

[honeytonedhottie]

how i study and stay motivated⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🍦💕

as a senior, i know that a lot of my peers are experiencing senioritis and i know that highschool can be tough in general. it's so easy to slack off and fall behind but as someone who pushed through and is graduating next year with flying colors i wanted to share some of my best tips for the dolls still in the midst of highschool...💬🎀

FIND YOUR WHY ;

what is your dream? what is your goal? why are you doing this? and be raw and real with yourself. if your having trouble deciphering your "why", find someone to compete with. now im not telling you to go up to the person and say "hey im competing with you" nor am i telling you to be weird and hostile. NO. a little healthy competition now and then is so good for you.

i like to have a little fire under to me to push me when im not feeling like doing something. if the thought of competing with someone else makes you uncomfortable, COMPETE WITH YOURSELF.

WHEN YOU LOOK GOOD YOU FEEL GOOD ;

this is a principle i literally LIVE by. i always doll myself up before school. i make sure to wake up earlier than i need to so that i have adequate time to do my hair, my makeup, give my body the love and care that she DESERVES.

looking good is literally the easiest way to feeling good. if you've been in a funky mood, i promise just taking a shower, doing your skincare and brushing your hair will make you look 100x better -> which will lead to you FEELING 100x better. not only does it make you feel better but it boosts your productivity as well.

MAKING SURE MY SLEEP SCHEDULE IS INTACT ;

if you doomscroll before bed and wake up feeling like a zombie thats so unsustainable and very un-hot. here are some tips to get your sleep schedule under control and keep it that way for GOOD.

📔 sleep with your phone across the room

🎀 as soon as you wake up, instead of not going on your phone at all, i've found that by setting a ten minute timer and scrolling a bit on pinterest really wakes me up

📔 go to sleep and wake up at the same time everyday. if you went to bed at midnight but your trying to get up at seven everyday, still wake up at seven! that way ur body is already sleepy and you'll ACTUALLY sleep on time

🎀 have a pretty ringotne when you wake up

STAY ORGANIZED AND STAY PLANNING ;

my notion and google docs have literally saved my ass TIME AND TIME AGAIN. its so easy to stay on top of deadlines, assignments etc. im so incredibly productive and i finish my work early! something that i've lived by is that if im not ahead im behind.

with that in my mind i always complete my assignments as soon as possible and at the end of the school week i'll give myself a little bit of a preview of the next lesson. here's my secret formula :

study before class + listen during class + study after class = u actually understand the material

i promise if you do this you'll understand the concepts you're learning so much better! also knowing how you study plays a huge role in highschool and academic success in general.

REWARD YOURSELF ;

because rewarding yourself for your milestones and achievements is the best way to ACTUALLY stay on track. in my google docs i made a cute little table with the grades that im aiming for and the reward i'll give myself when i achieve them.

and ofc customize this TO YOU and your goals. positive reinforcement makes success ADDICTIVE and it makes you wanna achieve your goals again and again and again.

HOW I STUDY + OTHER MISC. TIPS ;

im a huge fan of the pomorodo method (25 minutes of focus and 5 minutes of rest) and i do this until i've completed my objective. i also really love active recall! i'll read my textbook/watch my lesson and then brain dump everything i remember from it. before going back and comparing what i remember to what was actually in the lesson.

📔 i LOVE using quizlet and making flashcards, im a memorizer.

💕 i always start off with the most difficult assignment first and then save the easiest for last.

📔 use ghost deadlines, instead of putting the ACTUAL due date in ur calendar, put it a few days before it that way you're never late on an assignement.

[stop-the-world]

genuinely how i feel consuming any media bc i have fomo and MUST be there

feeling like a CHUD

always being someones child or sibling too

[prudejudee]

See i'm not a wedgie gal personally...though i had a thought.

He's got you bent over his lap, one hand stretched to have his fingers in your mouth the other hand scrunched with your underwear.

He's got your clit caught tight with your panties wedged between your cunt and ass as he tugs the fabric up and down—realizing it's rubbing you enough to get you going.

He takes his fingers out of your mouth with a laugh and uses that hand to take over on getting you off, the other hand makes it's way between your legs, he slides the fabric to the side just enough to finger you while still tugging on your clit.

And he makes you cum like that. Humiliatingly.