warnings: smut!!! explicit!!! minors DNI!!! p in v (protected), porn with plot, fingering, oral (female receiving), extremely rough sex, biting, dirty talk, slight masochism I think, dominate Peter because of the DNA change, set in the Brand New Day era so spoilers... some sad parts oops...
summary: you'd always had a crush on Spider-Man, so when he saves you one night and the two of you slowly build a friendship, you can't deny how badly you want to help him when he comes to you in need of something...
word count: 8.6k
a/n: ok sooooo I've never written for Peter, crazy I know. but I saw the movie and my Spiderman phase has fully returned. for some clarification, reader is basically the MJ in this. if you know you know. and whatever maybe his DNA change wouldn't make him super dark and dominate and animalistic but to me, it does. so let it happen. it's super long, I love this SO MUCH. just read it I guess, I can't explain everything without spoiling it. just know the smut is soooo worth it.
~~~
For as long as you could remember, you'd been obsessed with Spider-Man.
You'd first heard of him in your sophomore year of high school. Everyone had seen the YouTube videos of the strange hero in red spandex swinging around the city. When MJ would criticize him—he's probably an old man, or even worse someone our age—you'd always be quick to defend. He was a good person, an Avenger. That meant something.
You'd never grown out of it. Not really. Even now, at twenty-one, with a shitty apartment in Queens and a job that barely paid rent, you still felt that flutter in your chest whenever you caught a glimpse of red and blue against the skyline. MJ still teased you about it, but at least Ned understood your fascination.
Spider-Man had saved your life numerous times. In Washington during your decathlon championship, in Europe one summer. He'd been there for you and all your friends in the times when it counted. But it wasn't just about the mask or the mystery or the fact that he'd happened to save you a few times. It was about what he represented. Hope. Safety. Someone who gave a fuck about the neighborhood.
However, the world had changed in many ways since you were fifteen—in some ways you couldn't quite explain. Sometimes you felt as if there were gaps in your memory, holes where something important should have been. You'd go through old photos on your phone—group shots from high school with faces you recognized and one you... didn't? Couldn't? A blurred figure in the background, or a space where someone should have been standing. The feeling was unsettling, like trying to remember a dream that slipped away the moment you woke up.
There were other gaps too. Muscle memory that didn't make sense. You'd reach for your phone to text someone and then forget who you wanted to text. You'd wake up reaching across the bed for a warmth that wasn't there. Sometimes you'd catch yourself trying to remember someone you couldn't remember.
Your phone felt too dry. Your bed felt too empty. And you couldn't explain why.
But you remembered Spider-Man. Everyone did.
That's why, when he saved you a month ago, it felt like fate.
You'd been walking home late from your shift at your part-time job—a bar a few blocks from your apartment—cutting through an alley you'd taken a hundred times before. This time, though, three men had other plans. They'd cornered you against the brick wall, and your phone was already on the ground, screen cracked, useless. Your heart had been hammering so hard you thought it might burst.
This was it. This was the moment when your worst fears would finally come true.
But then he was there.
A flash of red and blue, the sound of webbing, and suddenly your attackers were stuck to the wall, struggling and cursing. Spider-Man landed in front of you, and even though you couldn't see his face, you felt his attention lock onto you like a physical touch.
"You okay?" His voice was younger than you'd remembered. And somehow achingly familiar in a way you couldn't place.
You'd nodded, unable to form words, and he'd stepped closer. Tilted his head. "Are you sure?"
"No—I mean yes," you'd stumbled over your words, starstruck. "I'm good."
Something shifted in his posture. His hand came up like he was going to touch your face, then stopped halfway. Dropped. "Okay. Good. That's—that's good."
There was something in his voice. Something that sounded like relief and grief all tangled together.
"I've—" God, this was embarrassing. But your heart was still racing and he'd just saved your life and the words tumbled out. "I've kind of had a crush on you since I was fifteen."
You couldn't see his expression, but his whole body went still. When he spoke, his voice was almost...pained. "Yeah. I—yeah. I know."
You blinked. "You know?"
"I mean—" He rubbed the back of his neck. An oddly familiar gesture. "You've told me before. Whenever I've saved you. You mentioned it."
That made sense. Sort of. Except you couldn't remember telling him that before, and the way he said it sounded like he meant something else entirely. You also found it hard to believe Spider-Man remembered saving you. He saved hundreds—if not thousands of people all over the world. But you didn't think too much of it.
Spider-Man had walked you home that night. Insisted on it. And then he'd come back the next night. And the night after that.
At first, it was innocent. He'd perch on your fire escape and you'd talk through the open window. He'd ask about your day, tell you stories about his patrols. You'd make him tea that he'd sip through a straw slipped under his mask. It was sweet. Comfortable. Almost... familiar.
Too familiar.
He knew things he shouldn't have known. That you took your tea with honey, not sugar. That you had a habit of tucking your hair behind your left ear when you were nervous. That you hummed when you were concentrating. Little things. Intimate things. Things only someone close to you would know.
"How do you know that?" you'd asked once, when he'd mentioned you always kept your window unlocked.
He'd frozen. "I—patrol this area a lot. I notice things."
As if that wasn't strange enough, you noticed something was changing beyond that.
You noticed it in the way he looked at you—or seemed to, even behind the mask. The way his body would tense when you laughed. How his fingers would flex and curl like he was fighting the urge to reach for you. He started sitting closer. Touching more—a hand on your shoulder, your arm, once brushing hair from your face with a gentleness that made your breath catch.
"Sorry," he'd said quickly, pulling back. "Sorry, I shouldn't—"
"It's okay," you'd told him. And you'd meant it. More than okay. His touch felt right in a way you couldn't explain.
Last week, he'd shown up with a cut on his shoulder, visible through a tear in his suit. You'd insisted on cleaning it, and he'd let you. Your hands had been shaking as you'd dabbed antiseptic on the wound, hyperaware of the heat of his skin, the way his muscles moved under your touch.
"You're always taking care of everyone else," you'd murmured as you worked. "Who takes care of you?"
Your fingers had moved with practiced ease, like you'd done this before. Like you knew exactly how to tend to his wounds.
His hand had caught your wrist. Gently, but firm. When he spoke, his voice was wrecked. "You do. You always—" He'd stopped himself, released you abruptly. "I should go."
But he hadn't gone far. You'd felt him out there, on the roof, for hours.
Tonight, you weren't surprised when you heard the window slide open.
You were in your bedroom, wearing an oversized t-shirt and sleep shorts, your hair still damp from the shower. You turned to find him climbing through—not the window in your living room where he usually appeared, but your bedroom window.
"Hey," you said softly. "Everything okay?"
He didn't answer right away. Just stood there, chest rising and falling like he'd been running. Or fighting something.
"I shouldn't be here," he said finally. His voice was strained. "I should—I need to go."
But he didn't move an inch. You continued to stare, your confusion probably written all over your face. His chest was still heaving, and suddenly you noticed that his fists were clenched at his sides—hard. Something was wrong.
"Is it your head?" You moved to take a step toward him, and he simultaneously took a step back. "What's going on?"
"Don't." The word came out sharp. Desperate. "Don't come closer."
You froze. "Did something happen? Are you hurt?"
"No. Yes. I don't—" He took a deep, shaky breath. "Something's wrong with me. Has been for a while. It's getting worse."
"What do you mean? The headaches?"
"Yes, sort of—I haven't been completely honest. The spider that bit me. The DNA. It's... changing things. Changing me." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "It started with the headaches but it's getting worse. My senses get overloaded, and now I keep—fuck I can't stop thinking about you. Can't focus on anything else. I know where you are every second. I can hear your heartbeat from three blocks away. I know when you're scared, when you're happy, when you're—" He cut himself off. "It's not normal. It's not... human."
Your heart was pounding now. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying it wants to—" His voice dropped to something almost guttural. "I want to touch you. Mark you. Claim you. Make you mine. And I know that's fucked up. I know I sound like a psycho, we're just... friends, but I can't—I can't make it stop."
The words lingered in your head for a moment.
Mark you. Claim you. Touch you.
To anyone else, such words would cause fear or at least a sense of being uncomfortable. But you didn't feel any of that. Instead, you suddenly felt too warm, heat pooling deep inside you. And something else. Something that felt like recognition.
Mine.
That word specifically rang through you like a bell. Like an echo of something you'd heard before.
"That's..." You swallowed, and you saw the way he clenched his fists even harder at the sight. "Alright. Okay. And what if... what if I want that too?"
His head snapped up. "You don't know what you're saying."
"Yes, I do." You took another step forward. "I've had a crush on you for six years. You think I'm going to run away now?"
"This isn't—" He backed up until he hit the wall. "This isn't some romantic fantasy. I'm barely holding on here. If I touch you, I don't know if I can stop."
"Then don't stop."
"Fuck." The word was punched out of him. "You can't—you can't just say things like that."
"Why not?" You were right in front of him now. Close enough to touch. "I'm an adult. You're—however old you are—"
"Twenty-one," he said hoarsely. "Same as you. I'm—we're the same age."
Something about the way he said it made your chest ache. We're the same age. Like it was important. Like it meant something.
"Then we're both adults. And I'm telling you I want this. I want you." You placed your hand on his chest, felt his heart racing beneath the suit. "Whatever this is, whatever you need—I'm saying yes."
For a moment, he didn't move. Didn't breathe.
Then his hand came up to cover yours, pressing it harder against his chest. "You have no idea what you're agreeing to."
But his thumb was stroking across your knuckles in a pattern that felt familiar. Soothing. Like he'd done it a thousand times before.
"So show me."
The last thread of his control snapped.
He moved faster than you could track, spinning you around and slamming you face-first against the wall. The impact knocked the breath from your lungs—not enough to hurt, but enough to make your heart race. His body was a solid line of heat against your back, one hand splayed possessively across your stomach, the other braced beside your head, caging you in.
"Last chance," he growled against your ear, and his voice was all wrong—too deep, too rough, barely human. "Tell me to leave. Tell me to stop. Because if you don't, I'm going to fuck you until you can't remember anyone else. Until the only name you know is mine."
Your knees went weak. "Stay," you breathed. "Please stay."
"Fuck." The word was guttural. His hips pressed forward and you could feel how hard he was, the thick length of him grinding against your ass through his suit. "You have no idea what you're asking for. What I want to do to you."
"Tell me," you said, your voice barely above a whisper. "Tell me what you want."
His hand slid under your shirt, fingers spreading across your bare skin, and you gasped at the contact. His palm was burning hot, almost feverish. "I want to mark every inch of you. Want to bite you, scratch you, make you bleed just a little so everyone knows you're claimed. Want to fuck you so hard you feel me for days." His other hand came up to wrap around your throat—not squeezing, just holding, a promise of control. "Want to make you scream my name until your voice breaks."
"Yes," you whispered. "Yes, all of it, whatever you need—"
"Jesus Christ." Suddenly his voice changed. It went higher—the voice you had learned to know over the past month. The hand on your throat jerked away like you'd burned him. "Wait, wait, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—that's too much, that's way too much, I shouldn't have—"
You turned in his arms to face him. Even through the mask you could sense his panic. "Hey. Look at me. I want this. I want you. All of you, including whatever this is. I want to help you in any way I can."
"You don't understand." His hands were shaking. "I could hurt you. I'm so much stronger than I used to be and I can't—when I get like this I can barely think and—"
"Then we need a safeword," you said firmly. "Something I can say if it's too much. If I need you to stop."
He went very still. "You... you'd do that?"
"Red," you replied. "If I say red, you stop immediately. No questions, no hesitation. Okay?"
"Okay." His voice was rough. "Okay, yes. Red means stop. I can do that. I will do that." His hands came up to frame your face, thumbs stroking your cheekbones with a gentleness that contradicted everything he'd just said. "Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure you want this? We've never really—I mean have you ever done anything like this?"
You went still this time. You knew you'd had sex before, but the only real memory you had was a random hookup with a guy in your freshman year of college. It had felt wrong, almost as if something inside you knew you shouldn't have done it. But you couldn't remember any other experiences, despite a lingering feeling inside of you telling you that you had done it countless times.
"I don't think so," you finally answered. You reached up to cover his hands with yours. "But that doesn't matter, I've never been more sure of anything. I want to help you—to do whatever I can. You've saved my life multiple times, maybe this time I can save yours."
The way he touched you then—gentle, reverent, like you were something precious—made your chest ache with a longing you couldn't name.
The sound he made was barely human—a low, possessive growl that vibrated through your entire body. "Mine," he breathed. "You're mine. You've always been—" He caught himself. "You're mine."
"Yours," you agreed. "Now stop holding back. Take what you need."
He kissed you the moment you said it.
Somehow, the lower half of his mask had shifted before you could even register it, leaving his mouth and chin exposed. His mouth found yours with a desperation that stole the breath from your lungs—not gentle, not tentative, his lips moving against yours like he was trying to remember something. Like he was starving for it. You made a sound against his mouth and felt him shudder in response, his hands coming up to frame your face with a gentleness that didn't match the intensity of the kiss at all.
Then he pulled back just enough to breathe.
"Off," you managed. Your fingers had moved to the fabric of his suit. "Can you—get this off?"
"Yeah." His hands were already moving to the spider emblem at his chest, pressing something that made the suit loosen all at once, peeling away from his torso. He shrugged it down to his waist. "Is this—"
"Yes," you cut him off. "I want to see you."
You'd imagined it, of course. With six years of fantasizing about Spider-Man, you couldn't not have imagined what he looked like under the suit. Everyone had imagined it. But imagining and seeing were two entirely different things. He was extraordinary—not necessarily in a photoshopped, magazine-cover way, but in the way of something built for a specific purpose.
Every line of him was functional, precise. His shoulders were broad, his chest defined, his stomach a ladder of muscle that flexed with each breath he took. Scars scattered across his torso in pale constellations—healed clean but numerous, evidence of everything he'd survived.
You reached out and ran your palms up his arms. He went impossibly still under your hands, like touch was something he'd been holding his breath for. His muscles jumped under your fingers.
Then something changed.
It wasn't gradual. One moment he was watching you with barely-restrained control, the next his hands were on your shirt and the fabric gave way with a sound like tearing paper—not a slow rip but an immediate, total destruction. The shirt fell from your body in two pieces before you'd fully registered his hands had moved. The cool air rushed over your bare skin and you felt your heart stutter.
He was looking at you.
The silence stretched for three full seconds.
"You're perfect," he said, and his voice cracked down the middle. "God. I've—" He stopped. Swallowed. Something moved across his expression. Despite the mask still covering half his face, you could tell. Something complicated and aching. "You're beautiful. That's all."
Before you could ask what he'd almost said, his hands were on you again.
His palms slid up your sides with a pressure that wasn't quite bruising but wasn't gentle either, and when they cupped your breasts the touch was firm and certain and made you gasp. His mouth dropped to your neck immediately, kissing down the column of your throat with an intensity that felt desperate, his lips and chin warm against your skin—the only parts of his face you could feel. His teeth grazed your collarbone and you tilted your head back on instinct.
His mouth moved lower.
When his mouth closed around your nipple, you expected warmth, suction, the usual mechanics of it. Instead his teeth sank in with sudden, sharp force and the pain that shot through your breast was immediate and bright and it made you cry out before you could stop yourself.
He didn't pull back. He bit harder.
The sound you made surprised you both. Not a protest—something more complicated than that. The pain was radiating through your chest, throbbing, and underneath it something else was building that you didn't have a name for. Heat. A low, spreading ache between your thighs that had nothing to do with pain. You could feel yourself getting wet and the realization disoriented you.
He moved to your other breast and this time you knew what was coming. You braced for it—but bracing didn't help your extremely sensitive skin. The sharp clench of his teeth made your back arch and your fingers fly to his head, gripping the back of his mask.
"You like this," he suddenly said against your skin, and his voice had gone low and certain. "You like when I hurt you."
"I don't—" You were breathing far too hard. "I don't know. It's—I've never—"
His thumb and finger found your abused nipple and pinched, and the word you'd been about to say dissolved entirely. You squirmed against him, your thighs pressed together, and he made a sound that wasn't quite human.
He moved you. Not a suggestion—a fact. His hands gripped your waist and he walked you backward until the backs of your knees hit the edge of your mattress and you fell. He followed you down before you'd finished falling, his body covering yours with a weight that was extraordinary. Not crushing—controlled—but you became quickly aware that this was not the weight of a normal person. This was something else. Something that knew its own strength and was managing it carefully.
His hips settled between your thighs as if they belonged there. Naturally. Without adjustment.
You could feel him through the remaining material of his suit—how hard he was, the length of him, and the slow grind of his hips against yours made your breath escape in an embarrassing rush.
"I remember—" His mouth was at your jaw, your throat, his voice barely above a murmur. "I remember the sounds you make when I—" He went still. His whole body locked. "Fuck. I'm sorry. I don't know why I keep—"
"Keep what?" You breathed. "What do you mean you remember?"
"Nothing," he responded tightly. "I just—you're so responsive. I mean—can I keep going?"
"Yeah—don't—" You took a deep breath. "Don't stop."
He made a low sound and moved down your body, his mouth dragging over your sternum, your stomach, your hip, each spot left with a mark. His hands hooked into your shorts and underwear together and yanked, and the motion was so effortless it startled you. One smooth pull and they were gone, somewhere on the floor behind him, and suddenly your thighs were exposed to the cool air.
He parted them with both hands.
You felt suddenly, completely exposed. The dark eyepieces of his mask caught the low light and for a moment you felt the full weight of the strange position you'd gotten yourself into. Spider-Man, the hero of your city, and your celebrity crush, was in your bedroom, his hands on the insides of your thighs—
His mouth found you and thought dissolved.
The first stroke of his tongue pulled a sound from you that you'd never made before. Long and slow and devastating, and you grabbed for his head on instinct, your fingers finding the edge of his mask and gripping. A desperate sound left him then, and he moved his tongue again, and you couldn't breathe.
There was no hesitation in him. No searching, no adjustment, no learning curve. He moved like he was reading from a map—tongue circling, pressure shifting, finding the exact angle and rhythm that made your thighs shake within seconds. When he sealed his mouth around your clit and sucked, you cried out loud enough that you distantly registered the embarrassment of it and immediately stopped caring.
"I've dreamed about this," he said, muffled, his voice thick with something that sounded like grief and want tangled together. "Every night. The way you sound. The way you—" A sharp exhale against your skin. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be talking."
"What do you mean you've dreamed—" But then his fingers pressed at your entrance and pushed inside and you lost the question.
Two fingers. Thick and stretching and immediate. He curled them as he thrust and found the spot that made your toes curl hard, and his mouth was still on your clit, and the combination was—
"Oh God," you gasped. "Oh—"
He worked you with the same focused, already-knowing precision, his fingers finding the right angle like muscle memory, his tongue in that specific rhythm that climbed you toward the edge faster than you'd thought possible. Your thighs were shaking so hard it would be embarrassing if you weren't so lost in the pleasure. Your free hand was fisted in the bedsheet.
"Say my name," he murmured against you, and his voice broke on it. "Please, I just—" Then, quietly: "Never mind. Just let me make you feel good."
"I don't—" The pressure was almost unbearable, the finish line right there. "I don't know your name—"
"I know." His voice was wrecked. "I know you don't."
His fingers drove deeper and his tongue pressed flat against your clit, and suddenly you were crossing that finish line, cumming with a cry that scraped your throat, your thighs clenching around his head. Pleasure crashed through you in waves, and he worked you through every second of it. Every aftershock, every clench, until you were pushing weakly at his head, oversensitive and shaking.
He pulled back.
"Red?"
"No," you said, your breath ragged. "Not red. Just—I need a second."
His hands stroked the outsides of your thighs, slow and gentle. The contrast with everything that had come before was dizzying.
"Take your time," he mumbled softly. Something moved into his voice—something quieter and more careful than the dark thing that had been there before. "I used to love watching you come down from it. The way you'd go all soft and—" His voice caught. "Fuck. I'm sorry. I keep—"
"Kept doing that," you said. "You keep saying things like that."
"I know." He pressed a single, careful kiss to the inside of your knee. "I know I do."
You looked down at him—at the mask, at the exposed lower half of his face, at the tension in the set of his jaw.
"I want you," you admitted. "I still want you. Don't stop."
He made a sound like something wound too tight finally giving way.
His hands went to the suit at his hips, working it down, and then he was free and you subconsciously held your breath at the sight of his cock. He was bigger than you'd prepared yourself for—thick and flushed and already leaking with pre-cum—and the nervousness that moved through your chest was real.
"Is this—" His voice cracked. "I could get a condom, I think—"
"IUD," you managed. "And I'm clean. I don't really do this."
"I know," he said, and then froze. "I mean—the spider bite, it makes me clean. Immune to most things. But if you want me to use one anyway—"
"I want to feel you," you cut him off. "Just you."
"Christ." He dropped his forehead toward yours, stopping short of contact, the mask a barrier between you. "You have no idea how long I've—" He stopped. Breathed. "Tell me if it's too much. The second it's too much tell me. Promise me you will."
"I will," you agreed. "I promise."
With that, you reached between your bodies and wrapped your hand around his cock and he jolted, a rough exhale escaping him, his hips pressing forward into your grip. He was hot and very hard and pulsing. You felt the specific way his breath hitched when your thumb moved over the tip.
"Please," you mumbled.
His hand covered yours and guided himself to your entrance. Then he pushed in slowly.
The stretch was immediate and intense. You made a choked sound. He stopped.
"Too much?"
"No." You breathed through it. "Slow. Just—slow."
He did as you said, slowly. Inch by careful inch, his breathing shallow, his arms braced on either side of you holding himself above you with a rigidity that told you how hard he was working to stay controlled. You could feel the restraint like a physical thing—like pressure before a storm.
"You feel—" His voice was barely above a breath. "Perfect. God. Just like—" He caught himself. "Perfect. That's all."
When he was fully seated inside you, you both went still.
The fullness was overwhelming. Not just physically—something else, too. Something that felt disorienting and familiar all at once, like a word on the tip of your tongue you couldn't quite reach.
"Okay?" he asked.
"Yeah. Keep going," you answered.
He pulled back and thrust slowly and you made a sound that surprised you both. He did it again. The rhythm he set was deliberate and measured, each movement hitting that spot that made you practically see stars. Even holding back—even barely giving you anything—it was already more than you'd had before. Your fingers found his shoulders and held on.
"Is this good?" His voice was strained to breaking.
"Yes," you said breathlessly. "But you're still holding back."
"I know." His forehead dropped toward yours, stopped short of contact. Every line of him was coiled. "If I stop—"
"Don't." You dug your heels into the backs of his thighs and pulled him deeper and felt him shudder to his core. "Take what you need."
One of his hands shot up to your headboard.
The wood cracked.
Not bent—cracked, a sharp splitting sound, and the entire bed frame shuddered under you as his fingers closed and sank into the wood. You looked up and saw deep impressions gouged into the headboard where his knuckles had gone in, splinters peeling away from his grip like paper. His hand was shaking.
Then he moved.
The thrust drove the air from your lungs completely. Not slow, not careful—deep and sudden and overwhelming, his hips snapping forward with a force that rocked yours up off the mattress. You made a sound you could barely recognize as your own voice. He did it again before you'd recovered, and again, setting a brutal pace that was nothing like before—relentless and enormous, each movement forcing sounds from you that you couldn't contain.
The headboard cracked further. A second fracture, spiderwebbing out from where his grip had sunk in.
"Oh God," you gasped.
He didn't answer. Despite the mask, you knew he was watching your face with something that went past human—pupils blown wide and dark, tracking every flicker of expression, adjusting angle with each thrust until he found the place that made you make a sound that was completely involuntary and raw. His whole body responded, another deep shudder moving through him.
"There," he said, low and certain.
He thrust again, hitting the same place deliberately.
"There."
His voice had changed. There was nothing tentative in it anymore. Almost nothing human in it anymore.
The pain when he drove deeper was sharp and bright and knocked a cry out of you—real pain, immediate, blooming through your whole pelvis. He stilled.
"Red?" The word was ragged.
"No." Your voice was shaking. The pain was flaring, white-edged, and already beginning to dissolve into something else—something liquid and spreading and overwhelming in a completely different direction. "Not red. Don't stop."
A sound came from low in his chest. A warning. One last chance to reconsider.
Then his free hand locked around your hip.
You felt his fingers press in—really press in—and the pressure was immediate and total, deep bruising force moving through your hip bone, the kind of grip that had nothing in common with what a person was supposed to be able to do. You knew he wasn't trying to hurt you. He'd simply stopped calculating.
He moved.
This was different. This was him—whatever the deep, instinct-driven part of him was—finally off the leash, nothing held back. Each thrust rocked you hard up the bed and you grabbed the headboard above his hands on pure reflex, your own fingers finding the wood just above where he'd already destroyed it. The frame slammed against the wall in a rhythmic, structural way that suggested neither the headboard nor the wall was going to win. You could hear the cracking—low and continuous—beneath every impact.
"Mine." His mouth was at your temple, his voice a growl that vibrated through your skin. "You're mine. You've always been mine."
You clenched around him without meaning to—reflexive and overwhelmed—and the sound he made was pulled from somewhere so deep in his chest it barely sounded human. His thrusts stuttered, then redoubled.
He thrust so hard the headboard gave. Not cracked—gave, a chunk of wood breaking free with a sound like a gunshot, hitting the wall hard enough to leave a mark. You heard it distantly through the rushing in your ears.
Neither of you stopped.
His grip on your hip shifted and tightened and you felt the bruising go deeper and the heat that followed was frightening in its intensity. You'd never wanted anything like this. You'd had no idea you were capable of wanting anything like this—the force of him, the roughness, the impossible sense of being completely held down and claimed. Your body was responding in ways you were still catching up to, heat pooling low and urgent, wetter than you'd thought possible. Every thrust was edging you back toward something unbearable.
As if he could hear your thoughts, his fingers found your clit.
Immediate and precise, no adjustment, and you gasped so sharply it scraped your throat raw.
"Right here," he murmured, and it was entirely the dark voice, certain and intent. He worked tight, deliberate circles and the pressure built almost instantly—embarrassingly fast—your hips rolling into his hand against your own will.
He kept moving—deep, relentless, hitting the same place on every thrust—while his fingers worked in counterpoint, and the combination was devastating in the best way possible. You could hear yourself. The sounds you made were unfamiliar and unguarded, pulled from somewhere you hadn't known existed in you, and you couldn't stop them even if you tried.
"I'm close." You could barely speak. "I'm—"
"Cum for me." His voice was rough and urgent against your ear, his breath hot. "Please. I need to feel you. I've missed—" His rhythm fractured. A crack in the dark voice, something real bleeding through beneath it. "I've missed the way you feel around me when you cum. The sounds you make. The way you—please. Please cum for me."
"What do you mean you've missed—"
His fingers pressed harder.
The question was forgotten. Everything was forgotten.
You came with what could only be described as a scream, your whole body seizing, clenching around him so hard your vision practically went black at the edges. He groaned—broken, wrecked, desperate—and his rhythm truly stuttered for the first time.
"Fuck," he moaned.
He held there, buried deep, his forehead dropping to the crook of your neck. You could feel his heart pounding through every point of contact. His breathing was ragged and uneven. The hand still locked on the headboard had gone white-knuckled, the remaining intact section of wood groaning continuously under the pressure.
Then he pulled out and you made a sound of protest before you'd even decided to.
He flipped you onto your stomach in one motion.
Effortless. You weighed nothing to him. The repositioning took less than a second—one smooth, total movement—and he pulled your hips back toward him and pushed back inside of you and the angle was completely, devastatingly different.
You cried out into one of your pillows.
He was deeper like this than you'd thought possible. You felt him everywhere, the fullness of it making your eyes sting, your fingers clawing at the sheets.
"Like this," he said suddenly, and his voice was the dark thing now, nothing hesitant remaining in it. "I need you like this."
Both hands locked on your hips. Thumbs pressing hard into the small of your back, fingers wrapping around your hip bones, and he set a pace that was brutal and utterly relentless. With each thrust, the headboard—or at least what was left of it—hit the wall. The frame groaned beneath you in a way that told you the structural integrity of the bed itself was a question mark.
Suddenly, the remaining intact section of the headboard gave with a sound like a crack of thunder. A piece of it hit the floor. Neither of you registered it as anything worth stopping for.
It was too much. The force of him, the depth, the bruising weight of his hands, the sensation of being fully pinned and overwhelmed. Your eyes were burning and your thighs were shaking so hard you knew if he weren't holding your hips, you'd collapse. You could no longer tell where the pain ended and pleasure began because they had become the same thing, indistinguishable, braided together into something you had no prior reference for.
And you didn't want to stop.
The realization hit you almost as hard as everything else. You didn't want it to stop. You caught yourself pushing back into him, meeting his thrusts, your body having made a decision your mind was still catching up to. You had stopped bracing against it somewhere along the way and started reaching for it, and you didn't know what that meant, but you knew it was true.
"Red?" Sharp, tight, dragged out of him like it cost something.
"No," you whimpered. "Don't you dare stop. Please—please—"
One of his hands tangled in your hair and pulled your head back.
The sting at the roots was sharp, and the sound you made when it hit made him moan in response and thrust harder. His other hand came to your shoulder—not painfully, just holding, just pinning—and he was moving again with something renewed, and you were crying into the pillow you'd somehow managed to get a hold of through all of this, genuinely crying, overstimulated past any point you'd ever reached before. Your whole body was wound so tight your teeth ached with it.
"I've missed this." His voice cracked. Not the dark thing—his normal voice, young and grief-stricken and real. "Missed you. Missed—all of you. I've missed—" His pace faltered, unsteady. "I'm sorry. I can't stop saying it. I don't know why I can't stop."
"Don't be sorry," you practically sobbed. You didn't understand it. You didn't understand any of it. But the grief in his voice was doing something to your chest even as his body drove thought from your head. "Don't be sorry, just—please—"
He moaned and his hand moved from your shoulder to your clit, finding it immediately, and you were already so over-sensitized that the first touch made you convulse.
"Where?" he gasped, his pace erratic.
"Inside," you told him. "Inside—"
He drove in deep and held there, and the noise he made was broken and reverent and devastated all at once. You felt him—felt the heat of it, the pulse of him—and it crested into something that swept through you in waves so intense you stopped being able to hold yourself up. Your arms gave out and you went flat and he followed you down, still deep inside you, one hand pressed flat to the mattress beside your head.
Then his mouth found the curve of your shoulder.
A half-second where you felt only his lips—just his lips, warm and soft, and something in you registered it as tender, as familiar, as something you'd felt before.
Then his teeth closed down.
The pain was white and total and entirely separate from everything that had come before, a completely different register of sensation—sharp and breaking and real. You cried out. He bit harder, gone completely, nothing human left in the moment, and you felt the skin give and the wet heat of blood and then—
He stilled.
One second.
Two.
He released.
His whole body went slack against yours, heavy and trembling, and the sound he made against your shoulder was quiet and horrified and very, very young.
"Oh God," he whispered frantically as he pulled out of you and away from your body entirely. "Oh God. Oh god. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I hurt you, I lost control, I shouldn't have—I would never have done that, I've never—" His voice fractured entirely. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Stop—stop apologizing. I'm okay. I wanted it," you mumbled, despite the wet tears that were still escaping your eyes.
"I left marks." His voice was devastated. "I can see them. Your hips. Your—" He exhaled, broken, as if he were about to cry too. "I bit you. Oh my God, I can taste it. You're—you're bleeding."
You reached back weakly and touched your shoulder. Your fingers came away with a thin smear of red. The pain was a dull, distant throb now—present but separate, like something happening to someone else.
"I'm okay," you reassured.
"You're not," he said quietly, not arguing, just stating a fact. "I could've killed you. Oh, Y/N, I'm so sorry. Let me—let me fix this. Please."
Only then did you notice the full extent of what had happened to your room. The headboard was no longer a headboard so much as a wreck of splintered wood, one broken section lying on the floor where it had struck the wall. The bed frame had buckled beneath the mattress, which had shifted almost completely out of place. He looked from the damage to you.
"I'm fixing that," he said immediately, voice shaking. "The bed, the wall—everything. I'll fix all of it."
You felt his presence disappear for a moment, then you heard the tap run in your bathroom. The sound of it was ordinary in a way that felt surreal. No one had been in your bathroom before, not so naturally, at least. And yet, it didn't feel wrong.
When he returned, he had a warm washcloth, and he cleaned you with hands that were steady and careful and nothing like the hands that had gripped your hips almost hard enough to break the bones. As he moved the cloth over you, you hissed once and he stopped immediately.
"Sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, tell me where—"
"It's alright, really. I'm just sensitive." You looked over your shoulder and gave him a weak smile. "Keep going."
He did, and when he finished he set the cloth aside. Then he turned you gently onto your back. Even through the mask, you could feel the weight of his attention as he looked at you—really looked at you—cataloguing the marks he'd left. His expression, what you could see of it at least, was undone.
"These are going to bruise," he mumbled, his voice full of shame. His fingertips hovered over your hip bones without quite touching. "Bad."
"I know."
"And your neck, all these hickeys, they're going to be really sore."
"I know."
"You should be angry with me."
"I'm not."
He sighed, frustrated, and stood. It was then you realized he was wearing a pair of your sweatpants—the pair that you'd had forever that was far too big for you, the pair of men's sweatpants, and somehow ended up in your closet without you remembering how. You watched him cross to your bathroom again, heard the soft thud of cabinet doors. When he came back, he had the arnica gel from the top shelf of your medicine cabinet—not the bottom shelf, not the drawer under the sink. The top shelf. He'd gone straight to it without searching.
"How did you know where that was?" you asked.
He paused his movements.
"Lucky guess," he answered. But he didn't look up.
He sat on the edge of the mattress and began applying the gel to your already forming bruises with the same careful focus he'd used to clean you—tender, delicate, his thumbs moving in slow circles across your hips. His touch was so impossibly gentle now. Nothing held back in either direction.
"You've been saying things all night," you said quietly, unable to stop yourself. "That you've missed this. That you remember how I sound—how I feel. That you've dreamed about it." You watched his hands still on your skin. "What did you mean?"
He didn't respond for a long moment.
"I can't tell you yet."
"Why not?"
"Because—" His voice frayed at the edges. "Because if I tell you, everything changes. And if I tell you before you've actually... met me, before you know who I am, it won't mean the same thing. And I can't—" He pressed his lips together. "I need to not be Spider-Man when I tell you."
You hesitated for a few seconds before you weakly sat up. "Then take off the mask."
The room went very quiet.
"You sure?"
"I let you—" You gestured at the destroyed headboard, the empty space on the wall where a piece of it had struck. You gestured at the bruises that were already visible on your body, the bite mark on your shoulder. "I think there's enough trust established between us now. Take it off, if you want to."
He exhaled a long breath, his hands moving to the edge of his mask. They were shaking—visibly, the fine tremor of someone trying very hard to hold themselves together. After a few seconds that felt like hours, he pulled it off in one motion.
For a moment, your mind refused to make sense of what it was seeing.
Brown eyes. Messy curled brown hair, pressed flat from sweat and the mask and springing back unevenly. A face that your chest recognized a full second before your brain did—something clenching and lurching, some deep memory firing before the name arrived.
He smiled. Nervous and hopeful and terrified, the exact smile you had found utterly adorable.
The name came out of you like a breath.
"Peter."
And then it wasn't like remembering. It was like a wall coming down.
You remembered him all at once—not in a sequence, not carefully, but in a flood that hit every sense at the same time. The smell of his cologne. The specific warmth of his hand. The way he laughed at something stupid you said in chemistry class, ducking his head like he was trying to hide it. The day he sat next to you and said, totally unprompted, "your hypothesis is wrong but I like how you got there," and you'd thought, I'm going to like this person.
You remembered the friendship. The late study sessions. The nervous flirting because you were both fifteen, and you had no idea how romance actually worked.
You remembered him walking you home one night after studying had gone a little late. The streetlight. The way he'd been so quiet for the last block that you'd thought you'd said something wrong, and then he'd just—kissed you. Soft and clumsy and then less clumsy, his hands on your face. How he'd pulled back and looked at you with an expression like he wasn't sure if he was allowed to be this happy.
I've wanted to do that for a long time, he'd said.
You remembered the Empire State Building at night, the city spread below you, the wind cutting cold through your jacket. The way he'd been nervous about something the entire train ride and finally turned to you and said he needed to tell you something. And you'd looked at him and known—not in the way you'd guessed or theorized, but in the bone-deep way of something you'd always known and just not let yourself name.
You're Spider-Man, you'd said.
The look on his face. The absolute undoing of him.
How long have you known?
Long enough.
You remembered the first time Aunt May had let you stay the night, the awkward talk she'd given you and Peter, and the box of condoms with a strict instruction to be quiet. A year into the relationship, the two of you tangled on his narrow bed, him asking permission at every step, apologizing twice before you'd even started. You'd taken his face in your hands and said, Peter, I want this. Stop apologizing. You remembered the way he'd looked at you after—stunned, like something he'd been afraid to want had actually happened.
I love you, he'd said, in this quiet disbelieving voice. I've loved you since the day we met.
You remembered loving him back. The weight of it. How easy it had been.
It hit you then, finally. Spider-Man, Peter Parker. You had never been in love with Spider-Man, you'd been in love with the boy underneath the mask.
You remembered, and the remembering was so total it left no room for anything else.
"Oh God." Tears were already forming in your eyes again. "Peter. We were—"
"Yeah." His voice was barely audible. "We were."
"I forgot you." The tears started falling, hot and fast, and you couldn't stop them and didn't try. "I forgot all of it. How did I—how did I forget you?"
"There was a spell." He reached for you, his hands cupping your face with a care that was so familiar it made your chest ache. "To make everyone forget me. To keep everyone safe who was associated with me. Do you remember the last thing I told you?"
You thought for a moment. Mysterio revealing Peter's identity, May dying, Peter two and three, the battle, the decision to erase Peter Parker so no more villains would come after him. His last words to you:
I'll come find you when the time is right. I promise. I love you so much, it'll all be okay.
A sob escaped you and you did the only thing you could think of, finally, after four years. You pulled him into a tight embrace, your arms wrapped around his neck, your face buried in his chest as your tears continued to fall.
"Oh, Peter," you cried.
He was crying too, you could feel the wetness of his tears falling into your hair. "And I really am so sorry about tonight. I would never have—the way I was tonight, I've never—that's not me. That's not how I ever—"
"I know," you cut him off. "I know it's your DNA, you said so earlier. It's okay, Peter. I promise. You did scare me for a second, yeah." And you saw the flash of shame instantly show on his face. "But you checked with me. You gave me a way to stop you. You stopped when you realized I was actually hurt. You're still you. That's still you."
"I made you bleed Y/N."
"I know." You pulled back to look him in the eye, and the sight of him crying made your chest ache. "And I'm telling you I'm okay now. I chose the intensity. I chose to keep going. The bite was different—but you stopped, and you're taking care of me now." You held his gaze. "You're still the same person. You're just dealing with something new. Something hard. And we'll figure it out together, like we always did."
For a long moment he just looked at you. Then something gave way in him—a sound that was barely a sound at all, grief and relief pressed into the same exhale—and he pulled you back into his arms.
"I love you," he said into your hair. "I've loved you this whole time. I've been watching you not know me and I—" His voice gave out. "I love you so much."
"I love you too," you replied, and it was true in the way that the oldest things are true—not discovered but remembered, like something that had been waiting in you the whole time, untouched by the spell because it was too deep for a spell to reach. "I never stopped. I just forgot."
You pulled back just far enough to find his mouth and kissed him slowly, the way you remembered—soft and unhurried, the specific warmth of him, the way he sighed against your lips like every time was still something he couldn't believe he was allowed to have.
This. This was the Peter you'd remembered. The one who was careful with you. Who apologized too much and asked permission and held you like you were something worth being gentle with.
You kissed him again. And again. Relearning the shape of his mouth, the way he tilted his head, the small sound he made when you bit his lower lip softly and felt him smile against your teeth.
"We have a lot to talk about," you said finally, forehead pressed to his.
"Yeah," he agreed. His hands were moving through your hair, slow and careful. "We do."
"Not tonight though."
"Not tonight."
Tonight there was only this—his arms around you, the weight of him, the soft press of his mouth against your temple. The rest of it could wait. The spell, the DNA, the years of missing him without knowing why. All of it could wait until morning.
Except.
"I expect a whole new bed frame from you by the way," you mumbled as the two of you laid beneath your sheets, engulfed in each other's arms.
He made that awkward sound he always used to before responding. "Yeah, of course. First thing I'll go get tomorrow morning."
Summary: Falling in love with your neighbour, Peter Parker, was easy. Accepting him as Spiderman? Still easy. Dealing with his change into arachnid Spiderman? Still easy. But dealing with the fact that he still loves MJ, that she still comes first? Not so easy. When he saves her over you, can you ever forgive him? (8.8k)
Pairing: BND!Peter Parker x fem!reader
TW: 18+ MDNI, NSFW; Sex scenes containing p-in-v, mentions of oral, the bed breaks;Angst; Some liberties taken with the Jean Grey possession thing; Peter has a choice between saving MJ and saving Reader and chooses MJ; Peter has to win the Reader back over; Covers their meeting, relationship and then the heartbreak just so it hurts more; dual POV; when Peter is arachnid Peter, the only one who breaks through is the Reader kind of like Natasha and the Hulk (or Cardan and Jude when he's the snake); Bruce Banner is a prof at NYU rather than Empire State for the sake of my narrative.
Credit: GIF made by @manny-jacinto
The building is strangely quiet, that’s the first thing you notice as you climb up the stairs, a stack of two cardboard boxes in your arms, chin resting on the very top of one, just enough that you can see the next stair. Because of course the elevator wasn’t working on the day that you need to move in. Because life is just like that.
“Woah, hey!” a voice calls out from behind you, deep and light in the same instance, the sound a shock from the previous silence, your body seizing, shaking, a slight jump, the top box sliding off your arms and falling, hitting the stair ahead of you with that peculiar thump of cardboard against, well, anything.
“Shit!” you hiss, looking down at the box on the step, at the one in your arms before glancing over your shoulder, looking for the owner of the voice, the one who startled you.
“Let me help,” the voice says again, this time from beside you and you turn, startling again, breath hitching but not just from fear because there beside you is one of the single-handedly most attractive men you’ve ever seen with dark curly hair, curls falling onto his forehead, partially obscuring the dark brown colour of his irises, the corner of his lips curled up into a half-smile. A kind of crooked grin that sets your heart alight.
He bends down, lifting the box from the stair in front of you, your breaths ragged for a moment more before you blink, shaking off the daze and forcing yourself to smile, the kind of practiced smile that you learned long ago for school pictures and talks with older people who always want to tell you how to live your life.
“Thanks,” you tell him and he smiles at you, a full smile, one that sets your heart alight as the two of you climb the stairs, a comfortable silence descending. He seems like the type of guy who would never push for conversation, who is okay with silence, familiar with it.
“What floor?” he asks you as the two of step onto the fifth floor landing.
“This one,” you tell him, stepping forwards, your back against the heavy metal door, pushing against it, pushing it back, swinging it open and holding it while he steps through. You step away from the door and out into the floor, stepping around him, shifting the box to one arm, reaching for your keychain in your pocket, pulling the bright, bedazzled SOURcharm from your hoodie, flipping it to grasp the key, stepping forwards and slipping it into the lock of 502.
“We’re neighbours,” he says from behind you and you turn towards him, pushing your door open, keys slid back into your hoodie pocket.
“Are you new here?” you ask him, one eyebrow arching as you step backwards into your new apartment, him following you with the last of your boxes.
“To the building?” he asks you, his voice confused, eyebrows knitting together, nose crinkling and you can’t help but roll your eyes as you step into your kitchen, setting the box down on the counter by the sink.
“No,” you call out as he follows you, setting the second box beside the first, “to New York. Because if so, you’re neighbours with the right person.”
“Why?” he asks, his voice growing suspicious. Like he suspects that you’re hitting on him, which objectively he’s attractive enough to be hit on, you are just not the kind of person to do said hitting on. “Because you’ll show me around?”
“No,” you reply, drawing out the word, making it as long and dramatic as possible, your eyes drifting around your crappy apartment, a true New York experience. “Because I’m new and haven’t you always wanted a buddy to explore a new city with? You know, experience everything with someone who also has no experience with said things? Because, honestly, it’s scientific at its base. You experience one thing and the other experiences something else and you’ll get the clearest picture of New York by comparing the two new experiences.” Your voice has risen and sped up in the way it does when you get excited, your hands moving with your words, gestures always arising when you’re interested in a topic, an experiment.
But this guy…he doesn’t look annoyed by it, rather the way his lips are curved into a smile that seems soft if a smile can be such a thing, suggests that he…he might like it.
“Yeah,” he whispers, one hand reaching up to brush his curls back from his forehead, showing eyes the colour of melted chocolate glimmering in the dim lighting of your apartment, “I’m new.”
“So,” you say, both eyebrows arching as you peer at him, “buddies?” His smile widens, dimples showing in a way that makes your breath hitch, but you ignore it, simply reaching your hand forward for his. You’re good at ignoring things especially when they’re related to your feelings.
“Buddies,” he agrees, taking your hand in his, the callouses on his skin rubbing against yours in a way that is strange, but not unpleasant. His grip is firm, his hand is warm and the smile he gives you bright. He’s like sunshine in a person.
“Well,” you tell him, letting go of his hand and walking towards your door, putting it between your body and him, using it as a shield against emotions you’re going to need to tamp down, ignore, shove past and aside. “Thanks for your help.” He nods, stepping out of your apartment and turning, eyes narrowing as you begin to close the door.
“Peter!” he calls out, the words loud and echoing in the hallway, his face flushing a deep red, face shifting into embarrassment as he continues, his voice barely audible, barely a whisper as he says, “my name…it’s…it’s Peter.” He sounds so nervous as he says it that a small smile blooms across your face as you look at him, at the way he’s glancing down and away from you, cheeks flushed bright red.
“My name’s Y/n,” you tell him and he looks up, the motion abrupt and rapid, so fast you worry that he’s going to get whiplash.
“Nice name,” he whispers, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he waves, watching as you close the door, the sound of the latch clicking ominous and final. Not really, because no sooner have you closed it than have you wrenched it open again, seeing him still standing there, looking slightly frozen.
“You want to find a place to get hot dogs?” you ask him and he startles, like you did on the stairs, nodding and you nod once, back at him, ducking back to your kitchen, pulling your wallet from your bag and tucking it into your pocket before slipping out and closing your door, locking it behind. “Let’s go, buddy!”
“Sooo,” you say, your legs hooked over the fire escape ledge, your hot dog in one hand, the other pressed against the metal grate beneath you.
“Sooo what?” Peter asks, his mouth slightly full, the sounds of the words off and you glance over at him, a smile threatening to form on your face at the way mustard is smeared on his cheek.
“Um…you have a little something,” you say, taking the napkin from your lap and leaning forwards, wiping it away, his eyes locked on you, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows, hard. “Anyways,” you continue, looking away from him, back to the New York City skyline, the napkin set to the side, “I was going to ask what you do.”
“I, um, I’m going to NYU,” he says and you look back at him, a smile blossoming on your face, the kind of smile you have when you’re genuinely excited, when something has genuinely made you happy. A smile you’ve kept smiling at Peter.
“Me too,” you tell him, your voice light in a way that it rarely is, in a way it hasn’t really since you packed up all your stuff to move alone to the city of your dreams. The city that’s strange and rings with a hollow sort of loneliness, except for right now on a fire escape ledge, the skyline twinkling like stars. “What are you studying?”
“Engineering,” he says, his voice quiet, unsteady, just a little unsure, his gaze turned away from you as he sets the wrapper from his hot dog down beside him, brushing his hands together, brushing crumbs off of them.
“What’s your specialty?” you ask him and he glances back at you, surprise glimmering in his warm eyes, eyebrows knitting together, lips quirking up just a bit like he’s pleased that you’ve surprised him.
“Hold up,” he says, “what are you studying?”
“Engineering,” you tell him, your smile growing wider as the surprise shifts to a pleasant kind of shock in his eyes, like he didn’t expect to have something in common with you. “Specifically,” you continue, “biomedical engineering focusing upon neuroengineering.”
“A brain girl,” he says and you nod, the smile pleased as you turn away from him, back to the skyline of the city that never sleeps. The city you used to dream of as a kid. You lean back, your back slumping against the grated brick wall of the apartment building, your wrappers set aside, hands in your hoodie pockets, gaze trained on the blinking, twinkling lights of the city. “I’m in biotech,” he says and you let out a low whistle as he turns back to look at you, his body leaning forwards against the railing. “What?”
“And I thought I was a nerd,” you tell him and he tosses a balled up napkin at you, one which you swat away with a laugh, one light and bright that has him pausing, just looking at you like one looks at an oasis in the desert. “What?” you ask, a familiar heat flooding your face the kind that comes from embarrassment. Or the fear of it. “Do I have something on my face?”
“No,” he whispers, scooting himself back over the grating to slump beside you. “I just haven’t had something like this in a long time.”
“Well,” you tell him, letting your head rock to the side, rock to face him, eyes blinking once before focusing on him, tiredness seeping into your bones, to your eyelids, “you have it now.” The smile you give him is hesitant, but he returns it, taking your hand in his, palms against one another, his fingers closing around the sides of your hand, a slight, gentle squeeze given.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess I do. We do.”
“Yeah,” you agree, your gaze darting away from him, flutters in your stomach that are unfamiliar, but also familiar. “We do.”
Peter knows that he should stay away from you, that he should avoid you if he knows what’s good for him. That all knowing you will cause is danger, put you in harm’s way the way it did Ned and MJ, but he doesn’t want to stay away from you. You, the girl who didn’t look at him for a one-night stand, but a friend. Someone to experience New York City with for the first time.
You were lonely, but braver than he’s ever been and you were so…enthusiastic about the comparing of experiences that how could he ever say no to you. He just couldn’t. There’s just something about you that drew him in and the late night talks that keep happening, legs dangling over the fire escape, whispers carried to one another on the breeze, watching as New York lives on, gleaming and twinkling, just make him want to stay more.
Like last night, when you fell asleep beside him and he lay you down, your head on his lap, his hand smoothing down your hair over and over while you slept on, safe and content beside him. He’d whispered to you then, even though you couldn’t hear him, that he should stay away, but he just couldn’t seem to close the door on you.
“You know,” he’d said, “I should stay far away from you and keep you safe but…something about you keeps drawing me back. Like I can’t stay away from you, pretty girl.” That’s what he’s called you in his head, pretty girl, because you are. You’re pretty and you’re nice and you’re smart and you laugh too loud and too long and it’s just perfect and he knows in some way that he’s falling even when he wishes that he wasn’t.
Because he’ll just bring harm to you. That’s the nature of his life, isn’t it?
But can’t he have a friend? Does he have to be alone? he wonders as he swings his legs over the edge of his bed, standing up on slightly shaky legs, tired from the fight yesterday and the classes he rushed to get to.
“PETER!” he hears you call, your voice echoing through the thin door of his apartment, palm flat, slamming against the door and he sighs, an annoyed sounding sigh even when he’s not really annoyed, but happy, excited. Excited in the way you make him because you live and you’re dragging him along with you.
“What?” he rasps as he pulls the door open, the clock reflecting 5:00 AM at him from its perch beside the door. You’re fully dressed, jeans and boots and an Olivia Rodrigo t-shirt on, a trench coat thrown over, arms crossed.
“It’s Saturday,” you tell him and he closes his eyes, sighing again, this time real as he leans his forehead against the door, tired and sore and so not in the mood for this.
“I’m aware.”
“Then you’re aware of the fact that we’re looking for the best place to get breakfast,” you say, one eyebrow arched in the way you have when you’re annoyed, your hips canting, weight resting on your left foot, right loose.
“Right,” he sighs, pushing himself off the door and holding up four fingers to you, closing the door, saying, “four minutes!”
“I’ll be waiting!” Maybe that’s what keeps drawing Peter in, the fact that you wait, that you never push, that you plan. That you’re so different from MJ, the girl he still loves, can’t entirely forget, can’t entirely erase no matter how hard he tries. Most of the time he still remembers that goodbye, holding her tight, but when he’s with you…he can see that there is a future. One where he’s okay.
“Why NYU?” he asks you, his hand wrapped around yours, the two of you walking on a path in Central Park, raincoats on, the sky grey and overcast, clouds hanging low, swollen with impending rain. “I mean,” he continues when you look back at him, your expression quizzical and so, so pretty that his breath catches in his throat, “why not MIT if you had the grades?”
“I did have the grades,” you tell him, tipping your head up, eyes closing for a moment as you breathe in the smell of the rain. He knows that you do this often, that you like the stormy weather, has watched you climb out onto the fire escape when it rains to just stand there, arms wide, the rain soaking into your clothes. “I got into MIT, Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia and Cornell, plus of course, NYU. But as a kid,” you pause, your head tipping back down, gaze falling on the cracked pathway, the lines of breaking. “As a kid, I dreamed of New York and NYU because…I don’t know…I just felt that it was right.”
“Gotta say,” Peter says, squeezing your hand, breath hitching as you look over at him, lips curled into a soft smile, the kind you reserve for him, “that I’m glad you chose NYU.”
“Me too, buddy,” you tell him, knocking your shoulder against his, his skin tingling, feeling alive in a way it hasn’t really. It’s felt like rubber stretched over bone and now it feels like skin, like he’s alive.
But is it selfish to love you?
“Hey! Puppies!” you cry, tugging him along behind you, taking off towards the animal shelter set-up, puppies tumbling over one another and as he follows, as he watches you scoop a wriggling rottweiler mix into your arms, as he watches that puppy lick your face, eliciting a giggle, one that rings through the park and his heart, he finds he doesn’t care if it’s selfish to love you because he’s fallen anyways.
And he can love you from afar, be your friend. It doesn’t change that.
It won’t.
It can’t. Right?
The stadium is packed full, your baseball cap pulled low, a newly bought Yankees jersey on, Peter beside you, his body radiating heat as the game goes on. You don’t entirely understand what’s going on having never been a baseball fan before, but it’s the Yankees and it’s iconically New York so you dragged Peter with you after saving up for the tickets.
It’s been six months of being buddies with Peter and it’s a sweet kind of torture because every minute that you spend with him, the more you learn about him, the more you feel for him. You don’t know if it’s love, if it can be quantified as such but it’s something. It’s something and you know you should stop hanging out with him, just give your heart a break, but something about him means that you can’t stop.
He just keeps drawing you back in. You’ve gone shopping with him, picking out books for one another based on vibes. You’ve spent hours together poring over engineering books and formulas, doing homework side-by-side and every time, there’s that moment when he looks at you with pupil-blown eyes and you think maybe, just maybe but then the moment passes and you curse yourself every time.
You curse the heart that just can’t stop hoping. It hurts to hope yet it doesn’t stop.
“HOLY SHIT!” Peter yells, standing up and pulling you with him, a baseball flying up at you and you shriek, lifting your hands to bat it away from you, but rather your fist closes on it and you’re left staring at the baseball in your hand. “YOU CAUGHT IT!” he cries and then his arm is around your shoulder and for a moment you can’t breathe because to breathe is to smell him, his uniquely Peter scent of vanilla and sandalwood and nutmeg.
The casual touch is the worst part of this torture.
“What…what do I do with it?” you ask him and he looks at you, face incredulous before he curls your fingers tighter over the ball, the fingers that had opened, holding the ball out to him like an offering.
“You keep it,” he tells you and there’s another moment. Another one where you think maybe, just maybe, his gaze dropping to your lips, his lips parting, but then he blinks and turns away, neck muscles rigid and you can feel that deflating, that crushing. That loss of hope.
“Will do,” you whisper, your eyes on him, on the line of his neck, of his jaw. Of him. You really hate hope.
The street is lit by the streetlights, dark descended while you were still in the stadium watching a game you didn’t really understand, holding a ball you didn’t mean to catch in your hands.
“Let’s go here,” you tell Peter, the two of you looking for a place to eat something sweet, a bakery just off to the side with lights blazing.
“No,” he says. “They suck.”
“You’ve been there?” you ask him, lips curving up as you look at him, watching as his expression blanches, eyes go wide, calculations occurring in that wonderful brain of his.
“Yeah,” he says and then he tugs on your arm, pulling you towards a dimly lit diner, an overhang in red and black obscuring a sign that glimmers, refracting at you. “And this place is good.”
“And how would you know that?” you ask him, tone leading, high-pitched in the way it is when you know something and you’re trying to pry what you already know from someone.
“Um…well…uh,” he swallows hard, gaze focused solely on the diner as the two of you run across the street, rushing just as headlights come up to the side, the two of you stepping onto the cracked and falling apart sidewalk as the car rushes past, a breeze blowing by you.
“You’re from New York, right?” you ask him and he looks over at you, shock writ upon his features as he pulls the door open, the two of you stepping into the diner, knocking dust and street litter from your boots on the mat.
“How’d you know?” he asks and you roll your eyes, sighing as the two of you cross to a table, him sliding in on one side of the booth and you frozen for just a minute. A part of you wants to sit beside him, but you know you shouldn’t, but as you go to slide in across from him, he pats the seat beside him and you slide in beside him, your side pressed against his, heart racing, racing, racing.
“No one just finds all of those places on the first try,” you tell him. “Plus…you have this look about you, like the city isn’t a marvel, but rather home. I don’t have that.”
“So, you just knew?” he asks, his elbow on the table, cheek resting on his palm, attention locked upon you. “You just knew?”
“I told you I’m smart,” you tell him and he smiles at you, your body alight with feelings and sensations and you look away from him, picking up one of the grease-covered plastic menus, the red binding fraying, plastic cracking in a way that tells you this place is good, well-loved.
“What will it take to earn your forgiveness?” he asks and you glance up at him, eyebrows knitting together, your heart climbing into your throat as you look at him, at the way he’s looking at you. Looking at you like you matter.
“You don’t have to earn it, Peter. I’m not mad, just curious. Why’d you lie?”
“Because you were so…enthusiastic and I…I was enamoured by it and didn’t really want anyone else to be your buddy.” You swallow hard, your throat thick, tears stinging your eyes because of what can never be.
“Oh,” you whisper and he takes your hand in his, the one beside him, interlacing your fingers with his, resting the joined hands on his thigh.
“Do you want to go out with me?” he asks you, stare intense and you can feel your skin heating up, flushing, heart racing and you swallow hard again, mouth just a little bit dry.
“Aren’t we kind of already?” you ask him and you like how he ponders what you’ve said, his stare changing, shifting as he considers.
“I guess so,” he says. “I mean, we spend all our time together. We might as well just make it official.”
“Official?”
“Will you be my girlfriend?” he asks, his cheeks a bright red and you nod, the gesture fast and excited and then he’s letting go of your hand, shifting, hands coming to rest on your cheeks, pulling you to him and pressing a soft and lingering kiss against your lips.
It’s a kiss that tastes of first chances, of hope and promise.
It’s a kiss for the ages.
“I don’t want anything to really change between us, Peter,” you whisper one night, your body curled into him on the fire escape, the two of you watching the skyline of New York, entranced by it.
“Then it won’t,” he whispers and you lift your head from his chest to look at him, at the way his face is relaxed, his body safe and warm and not tense like it sometimes is.
“Promise?” you ask and he nods, leaning forwards, his lips pressing against yours, open-mouthed and hot, tongue sliding in like a promise, his grip tightening on you like he never wants to let you go. Never wants to lose you.
“Promise,” he vows, breaking away from the kiss, his forehead pressing against yours, his eyes closing like you’re his safe space.
You think you just might be.
“Jesus!” you cry out, your back arching off the bed as Peter thrusts in for the first time, sliding in with ease, but the stretch still burns a little bit no matter how long he spent with his face buried between your legs, wanting to make this first time with him the best. It’s a good kind of burn though, a good kind of pain.
“’m sorry,” he breathes out, hips rolling slow and steady, the rickety bed still creaking beneath him.
“Don’t be sorry,” you whisper, your nails digging into his back. “Just go harder.” He looks at you, concern etched upon his face before he nods and it’s like he’s had restraint and then just lets go, driving in and out of you with force you didn’t really know he had.
It’s hard and fast and relentless, stimulating every part of you as he drives in and out, your body moving with the force, his lips hot on your neck and chest as he sucks hickeys into your skin, marking you, the bed creaking and creaking and creaking.
Honestly, the warning signs were all there, but you were too fucked out to notice and Peter was too obsessed with the feel of your walls clinging to him, to the taste of you on his tongue and the way you cry out his name, but the bed creaks one more time as Peter thrusts in and then it feels like the ground has given way, the bed breaking, landing on the floor with force.
“Shit,” Peter whispers, pausing in his rhythm, hands running over your body, not to turn you on, not to make love to you, but to check for injury. “You okay?” he asks and maybe it’s the way he asks, but you can’t help but let out a small giggle, one that grows as he looks at you with such horror on his pretty face. “Why are you laughing?”
“We broke the bed,” you tell him, your voice high, a giggle itself.
“And that’s funny? Because I’m still inside of you and you laughing is not doing much for my confidence,” he tells you and you’re still giggling as you lift one hand to his cheek, his head moving into your hand, pressing in.
“I just think it’s funny that we broke the bed, Peter. We were already going to get noise complaints,” you tell him and his expression darkens, but not in an angry way, rather a horny way.
“We’re gonna earn those noise complaints,” he tells you and that’s all the warning you get before he’s thrusting back into you without abandon, your back arching up and into him again, the giggles turning to cries of his name.
It’s later, after, the two of you curled into each other on his broken bed when he rests his hand upon your cheek that he whispers, “I love you.” It’s like the world has stopped, your heart in your throat, tears stinging your eyes, but the good kind of tears.
“I love you too,” you whisper and he pulls you even closer against him like he’s trying to fuse the two of you together, just burrow into you.
And it’s the best sleep you’ve had in ages. The first time you’ve ever felt safe.
Peter’s tired as he swings into his apartment, ready to just peel his suit off and fall into his bed, the attic apartment better for his arrivals, better because it goes unnoticed, it’s not right next to your apartment. He can’t drag you into this if you don’t know.
He lands in his bedroom, hands drifting to his mask, pulling it off and preparing to toss it onto his bed when he shrieks, a figure sitting on the bed, arms crossed.
“Who the fuck are you?!” he yells, shooting a web at the figure only to hear your muffled groan of distaste. “Pretty girl?! Is that you?!”
“Yeah, it’s me,” you tell him, voice flat with distaste, your figure pushing off the bed, rising and walking towards him, expression irritated, arms stuck to your torso by webs.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice gentle as he walks to you, pulling the webs from off your body, tossing them aside, his hands, still gloved in his costume, resting on your upper arms, grip warm and your expression softens.
“I figured out that you were Spiderman weeks ago and I’ve been waiting for you to tell me, but you haven’t and I was tired of waiting so I…you know, broke in.”
“You broke into my apartment?” he asks and you nod, your hand coming to rest on his cheek where a bruise is forming from where the bad guy hit him. He hisses as you touch it, your touch achingly gentle but the skin so sensitive.
“I wanted answers,” you tell him and he walks the two of you backwards towards his bed, pulling you onto his lap, your body curling into him, fitting to him in a way that makes his heart ache in good ways and bad, guilt seeping in.
It’s a guilt that made him write a letter weeks ago to MJ, one to never be sent. He feels this deep guilt because he worries that he moved on too soon. But when he’s with you like this, feeling alive, feeling loved when to the rest of the world he’s naught but a ghost, he doesn’t feel guilty at all. He feels like he’s right where he belongs.
“Are you mad?” he whispers and you look at him, shock and hurt on your face as you press a soft, gentle, tender kiss against his lips, the taste of your cherry lip gloss slipping into his mouth.
“Never,” you whisper and he relaxes, your hand tracing shapes on his still suit covered chest. “It’s just…can you tell me everything about Spiderman or…” you trail off, your gaze falling away from him, brow furrowing and he lets go of your thigh to reach up, pulling your face to him, making you look at him, his lips pressing against yours in a harder kiss, one that says forever. That says everything he needs it to say.
“I don’t want to have secrets from you,” he whispers and then he tells you everything. He tells you about his parents, the spider bite, the first villain, the meeting of MJ and the Europe debacle; Aunt May’s death, the other Spidermen, the erasure of himself from everyone’s memory.
He doesn’t know what he expected when he finished, but it wasn’t this, the way you hold his cheek so tenderly, so preciously, like he’s everything, your eyes warms and glimmering, full of love.
It wasn’t you whispering, “I know you, Peter. You’re not a ghost. Not to me. I didn’t know you before but I know you now. I don’t think that’s nothing.”
“It’s not,” he whispers, pressing his forehead against yours. “It’s everything because you’re right. I’m a ghost to everyone, but you and I love you. More than that, I’m in love with you.”
“Me too, Peter. I’m in love with you too,” you whisper and that’s how the two of you fall asleep, curled into one another, his suit still on.
And when he wakes in the morning, he doesn’t move, doesn’t shift, just pulls you closer. You, the only person in the world who knows him. All of him.
He wouldn’t trade that for the world.
“Peter!” you squeal as he swings into his apartment, scooping you up and running to the bathroom. “Put me down! You need to shower!”
“I know,” he says, closing the door behind, peeling his suit off, standing there in nothing but his boxers before you, a tent noticeable. “You don’t expect me to do this alone, do you?” You laugh as he strips entirely naked and pulls your clothes off, guiding you into the shower and under the spray.
It’s not rough sex or fevered sex. It’s slow and gentle and full of kisses, lips gliding along skin, tongues against tongues. Him tracing the lines of your body with his mouth, whispering I love you against your body with every kiss.
It’s hot and sweet and perfect. Just like him.
You didn’t go looking for the letter, you went looking for your notebook that you left at Peter’s place two days ago, but you found the letter anyways. The letter written for the girl who forgot him, the girl he apparently never got over.
And sometimes, Spider-Man has to do the hard thing. Even if it breaks Peter Parker's heart. Maybe I'll never read this to you. Maybe I'm just writing this for me. Maybe that's my responsibility, to live alone with the truth. But the truth is I love you.
And I hope that deep down, something inside you remembers you love me too.
You didn’t go looking for the letter, but you found it anyways when it fluttered out of the pages of his favourite book. Almost four years of being with him, of knowing him, every piece of him and it’s not enough.
It’s not enough because someone else holds his heart and you are just the other woman. You are the one warming his bed until some miracle occurs and she remembers and they can live happily ever after together. And you’ll be nothing but a footnote in his story.
An adventure without her.
The truth is I love you.
How many times has he said that to you, you wonder, your tears soaking into your pillow, body shaking with your sobs, blankets pulled up to your chin.
Logically, you know it could be old. That it doesn’t matter, that things changed, but you…don’t believe that. You have spent nearly four years loving him and he hasn’t loved you. Maybe he doesn’t even now.
Maybe he’s never loved you. How do you know? The problem is you don’t.
All you know is that your skin is seared with tears, throat thick, heart racing, chest constricting, lungs burning as you cry. As you cry everything out, sobs hurting your body, destroying you because you know that even after that, you will not leave him. Because you love him.
Because how can you leave him when you don’t know the truth of the letter? Maybe it’s old. Maybe he does love you.
And life is good, isn’t it?
You just need to cry right now. That’s all.
“Peter?” you call out, pushing his door open, stepping into his apartment in the attic, webs everywhere. You’ve been avoiding him for a week, the hurt of the letter still too fresh. It’s why you’re here now, you want to talk to him about it, get the truth behind it, but the apartment…it looks destroyed.
Furniture knocked over, webs on every surface, over all the walls. Nail marks on the walls, deep gouges.
“Peter?!” you call out, your voice urgent, worried, your heart beating a frantic rhythm as you step deeper into the apartment, hearing a strange sound from his room. “PETER!”
“Go away!” you hear him yell, his voice hoarse, halfway between his voice and a deeper sound, a growl. “Just go away!”
“No,” you call out, heart beating both out of fear and anger because you are here because you need answers and you’re not just going to be turned away. “No, come out here!” You hear him stand, shuffle out towards you and your breath hitches when you see him, eyes black, just black. “Peter? What’s wrong?”
“I’m not…me,” he rasps, the black leaching away as he looks at you, body sweating, shaking, stumbling towards you. “I’m worried I’ll…hurt you.”
“You won’t,” you whisper and then he’s there, pulling you against him, his body shaking as he holds you, his nose buried into the crook of your neck, breathing you in.
“It’s like…the world is dark…” he whispers. “Like I know…nothing. Nothing but you. Always you.” And then he’s pulling you down onto the floor, his body holding yours, tight, tight, tight like he can’t let you go. Like if he lets you go, he’ll lose you.
Like you’ll leave him.
And if he knows nothing but you…doesn’t that mean he loves you?
“Peter,” you whisper, “is this because I’ve been avoiding you?” His grip tightens, a growl sounding deep in his throat.
“Mine,” he whispers and you swallow hard, guilt leaching into your bones as you shift, your hands brushing his hair back from his face, the black in his eyes leaching back to the warm, soft brown. “I think…maybe…it was a trigger. For my…change.”
“Peter,” you whisper and he looks at you, warm brown eyes filled with tears. “I’m not leaving you. I’m not. I was dealing with some stuff and didn’t know what to do, but I’m not leaving you. I love you.” And that’s your truth—you love him. Deeply, like it’s a piece of you.
“Don’t leave,” he whispers and you press your forehead against his, hands still smoothing his hair back, his body shuddering beneath you.
“Never,” you whisper and that’s how you stay, held tight by him all night. Because he needs you.
And you need him too.
“What if we…inhibit whatever is changing you?” you ask him the next morning, seated on the only intact chair in his apartment, pencil moving on the scrap piece of paper, formulas spilling out, a design sketching across the paper. “Like…Professor Banner did one. If we could inhibit this change in you, chemical or biological and prevent it from controlling you…that would be good right?”
He turns from where he’s been struggling to make coffee around all the webs and destruction. “God, I love you,” he says and you roll your eyes, a pleased smile growing on your lips nonetheless.
“Well come on, biotech engineer! Can’t do this without you!”
Peter knows nothing when the arachnid comes over him, takes over. It’s like the world is dark and everything is strange and foreign and so much. Too loud, too strong, too bright. It’s like he’s possessed, the real him shoved down, but one thing he does know.
You, always you. It’s like he’s engineered to know you, designed to love you.
He always knows you.
The arachnid in him always whispers mine and when Peter wakes up…he can’t argue with it. Because he’s never loved anyone like he’s loved you.
Peter doesn’t know how Jean Grey got into his apartment, but she did. She found the letter he wrote three years ago to MJ, back when he was feeling guilty, back before he’d spilled everything to you. Back before you became his everything.
But Jean Grey found the letter to MJ and once again he’s put her in danger. Because he loved her once, because he knew her. Because he misses her, not as a girlfriend, but a friend. The person he used to know. And he feels so guilty over putting her in danger again.
Which is why he’s here, at MJ’s apartment, bursting in only to see you there too, sitting and talking with her, that soft smile on your face, the one he fell in love with all those years ago.
“Babe?” he calls out and you turn, a question in your eyes.
“Why’d you ask me here?” you ask him and he can feel the ground shift underneath his feet as he looks at MJ, a smile on her face that he doesn’t know. One that’s wholly not her.
“You’re in MJ aren’t you, Jean?” he asks and the grin only widens as she nods, stepping around the kitchen counter, a knife in her hand. “Come on! Stab me, I can take it.”
“It’s not for you, Peter,” Jean says, but it’s MJ’s voice and it hurts, hearing her voice say his name. “It’s for your girlfriend.” He barely has time to breathe, to speak before he’s watching MJ (Jean) plunge the knife into your stomach, your body bending into the gesture, folding in, a silent scream leaving your lips.
“NO!” he yells and he can feel the arachnid claw up into him, the inhibitor not yet finished as he crosses the room to you, your body falling into his arms.
“Peter, Peter. Peter,” Jean says, her words in a parody of MJ’s voice, dark and cruel and unrelenting, teasing and taunting.
“WHAT?!” he roars, turning, his arms still holding you, tears slipping down his cheeks.
“I’m giving you a choice,” she says and he realizes just how close MJ stands to the open window, the one that if she fell out of would kill her. “You choose one of them to save. There’s a right choice and a wrong choice, Peter. The right choice saves them both, the wrong choice has one die. Who’s it gonna be, Peter?” He watches as she climbs onto the window ledge, turning, preparing to jump, that cruel smile on her face.
“Peter,” you whisper, your hand reaching for him, your blood soaking your shirt, soaking the floor and he feels his body hitch, fold in on itself because he wants to stay with you, call the ambulance and save you, but he knows that MJ is the right choice. Because he failed her once and he can’t fail her again.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers and he lays you down on the floor, gentle and takes off, jumping out the window, arms wrapped around MJ, webs shooting up and out, carrying her away, carrying her to safety in Castle’s hideout.
“Wrong choice, Peter,” Jean whispers and then she’s gone and in her place is MJ, scared and terrified MJ who he explains some things to and she relaxes, going with him. He drops her off and then he’s rushing back, his heart feeling like it’s breaking as he races against time back to MJ’s apartment, hurrying and breaking, bursting back into the window, your body unconscious, the blade removed, a giant pool of blood beneath you.
“NO!” he cries, falling to his knees beside you, shooting webs into your stomach, using them to hold you together, the sound of the ambulance roaring, the webs soaking with blood and he holds you against him, crying, your pulse so weak. “NO! STAY! I LOVE YOU!”
And he stays with you until the EMTs take you away and then he leaves the apartment, needing justice. Needing to finish this.
For you.
“Why’d you do that to me, Jean?” you ask, your body lying flat in the meadow. A memory of yours that you’re in, that she’s in too.
“To show Peter the truth,” she says and you sit up, turning to look at her, a redheaded girl no older than you are, her face worried and tear-stained. “That sometimes you make the wrong choice and you have to live with that. With what it does.”
“So, you killed me for that?”
“No,” she says, sinking down beside you in the swaying grass. “No one was ever going to die. I called the ambulance as soon as he made his choice. I just need him to understand.”
“Why Jean?” She looks at you, utterly broken.
“Because I have answers that I need and I keep making wrong choices. And I have no one.”
“Not true,” you tell her and she looks at you, brows knitting as you reach for her hand, taking it in yours. “You have me.”
“I almost killed you.”
“But you were never going to let me die,” you tell her and watch as a single tear slips down her cheek. “You know, there’s this story I read once about sisters forged in blood. And I don’t know your story, Jean. But I can be that if you need it.”
“Why?” she asks you, her voice not breaking so much as already broken.
“Because everyone needs someone. And you’re not evil, Jean. You’re just…you need someone and that can be me.”
“I’d like that,” she says and the two of you lay back into the meadow, the ring of ambulance sirens just cutting through along with the echo of someone yelling stay. “I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah,” you tell her. “Later.” And she disappears and you’re left with the knowledge that Peter didn’t choose you ringing in your heart, tears slipping down your cheeks until the light flares bright and pain flares stronger and the meadow winks out and the hospital lights wink in.
“She’s back!”
But back to what, you wonder. What’s there for you now in a city where you’ve only really found pain?
When you got discharged from the hospital, the first thing you did was pack up all your stuff, the acceptance to Oxford for your Ph.D finally chosen. Two weeks before you fly out. Two weeks before you leave New York behind for good.
You took your stuff to your best friend, Gwen’s house where you’ve been ever since, camping on her couch, alternating between crying your eyes out and going out only when you know that Peter will be busy with work. The times where you’ll never cross paths.
He didn’t choose you. He chose MJ. He had the chance to save you both and he saved her because he didn’t see the fact that he could have caught her with a web while staunching the flow of blood from your wound. Choosing you was the right choice but he didn’t think at all. He just said sorry and took her to safety.
He left you to die.
He left you to die like you were nothing.
You can’t stay around him because when you look at him, how will you ever see anything but the man who left you to bleed out? How can you forgive him?
You can’t.
You just can’t.
So, you’ll bide your time before you fly out, before you leave New York, leave the fucking country behind, finding safety at Oxford, at the hallowed halls you’ve always wanted to be at.
You’ll leave Peter behind and move on with your life.
Because you deserve that.
Because he didn’t choose you. He’ll never choose you. You were just the Other Woman.
Peter didn’t want to meet with Ned, but he’s spent weeks moping over you, over the fact that everywhere he looks you’re not there. The arachnid is not happy, but it can’t do anything, not now that Peter can control it. Not now that he knows that it’s him.
He went because he just wanted to know if he could remember him and he wasn’t expecting that spark, the handshake or the way Ned cried after he said Peter. He wasn’t expecting him to remember.
“You really love her?” Ned asks now, the two of them in his attic apartment, piecing Legos together to form the Millenium Falcon.
“I really do,” he answers, pressing a block down and Ned sighs, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head at him.
“Then dude! You have to get her back.” Peter looks at Ned, red just tinging his vision, the urge to smash the work of several weeks still there, the darker side always going to be there.
“How, Ned? I chose MJ and she thinks I left her to die! I doubt she’ll believe anything I have to say.”
“If you really love her,” Ned says, leaning forwards in his chair, arms resting on his knees, hands folded under his chin, “then show her. Put everything on the line for her and tell her everything. Even if it means leaving it all behind.”
“But what if she still says no?” Peter whispers.
“But what if she says yes, man?”
The airport is far too loud for this early in the morning and you’re still sad, that particular sadness of leaving your life behind swirling in your gut, the sight of Gwen’s teary face as she waved goodbye still eating at you now while you sit, waiting for the time to board. Waiting for the time to leave it all behind.
At least that was until you heard your name being called in a voice you never wanted to hear again. You turn in your chair, taking in the sight of Peter, his curls brushed out of his face, hooded jacket on, dark blue jeans and the Rolling Stones shirt you bought him one Christmas on his frame.
He looks good. And that hurts. You turn back around, ignoring him, hoping he doesn’t come closer, but of course you aren’t that lucky, his footsteps, his unique rhythm echoing behind you as he steps around to sit down beside you, his hands folded in his lap, attention focused on the large windows exposing the planes.
“When Harry Met Sally,” he says and you glance at him, surprise etching on your face, throat thickening and lungs burning as you look at him.
“What?” you ask, your voice thick in that way a voice is when you’re holding back tears, that image of his masked face whispering sorry still too strong.
“Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, blue, popcorn and milk duds. You hate coding but you love calculating. You love watching sunrises but hate watching sunsets. You like the moon more than the sun but the sun more than the stars. You hate sleeping with the windows open. You love sleeping with your arms out of the covers. You love when we cuddle. You love coffee, so much so that if we cut you open, you always say that you’d bleed caffeine.”
“Peter,” you whisper and he looks over at you, his face creased with pain, tears slipping down his cheeks over and over again, his face carved with the rivulets of grief. “Peter, you didn’t choose me. You left me to die. How can…How can I-I forgive you?” Tears are slipping down your cheeks now and he sighs, reaching for your hand, fingers interlacing through yours.
“I chose wrong,” he whispers. “I know that now. I could have saved you both, but all I thought in that moment was that I had already failed MJ and that I didn’t want her to die because I felt guilty. But I went right back for you. I must have broken a thousand speed records to get back to you.
“I held you as you bled. It were my webs that saved you, staunching the blood flow. I held you until the EMTs arrived. I yelled and begged and pleaded for you to stay, but you were unconscious, you didn’t hear me. But I was there.” He looks at you with such pain that you reach forwards, hands cupping his cheeks, thumbs wiping away his tears.
You look at him and in his eyes, you see the truth there. You know he’s not lying. You know he loves you. That he would do anything for you. That he loves you. That it wasn’t fake.
You weren’t the other woman after all.
“Peter,” you whisper, your voice still hitching with the tears, “I forgive you…but I can’t stay here. I can’t stay in New York.”
“I know,” he whispers and then a figure steps up beside him, two carry-on bags on his shoulders.
“I’m Ned,” he says and you can feel a bit of shock in your system, this man, Peter’s best friend. The one who forgot him. “And yeah, I remember.”
“I’m coming with you,” Peter says.
“While, actually,” Ned says. “We’re coming with you because he’s following you and I’m following him because I’ve gone four years without my best friend and not any more. Also, I’m mission control so… you know. He needs me.” He sits down beside Peter and Peter elbows him, a choked giggle escaping from your throat as you wave at Ned. Peter whispers, “Shut up” at Ned and it only makes you laugh harder.
“But what about Spiderman?” you whisper and he looks at you with such love as he pulls you against him that it feels for a moment like you’re complete.
“I’m always gonna be him,” he says. “It’s not the city that matters. It’s you. I can be Spiderman anywhere so long as my home is there. As long as you’re there, because, pretty girl. You’re all that matters to me. Where you go, I go.”
“I hope you like rain,” you whisper and he pulls back, pressing his forehead against yours.
“I love it,” he whispers and then he’s kissing you, hard and deep and fast and you were wrong before. Your first kiss wasn’t a kiss for the ages.
synopsis: after the world forgets who peter parker is, he convinces himself that being alone is the only way to keep people safe. but when his stubborn neighbor accidentally discovers that he’s spider-man, the walls he’s spent years building around himself slowly begin to crumble—just as a new threat sets its sights on the one person who managed to get close enough to break them down.
word count: 11k
warnings: mild spoilers from spider-man: brand new day, some inaccuracies from the film lmao, angst
a/n: hello everyone! i just watched spider-man: bnd a few days ago and i just had to write something lol. if you'd like to check out my other works, you can check the pinned post in my blog :>
i hope you'll like this fic! happy reading!
ִ ࣪𖤐ᝰ.ᐟ
There was something strangely comforting about hearing other people through paper-thin apartment walls.
The sound of someone dragging groceries across the hallway. The distant hum of a television from two floors below. Laughter echoing from somewhere down the corridor at two in the morning because apparently, unlike you, some people in New York actually had functioning sleep schedules.
The elevator dinged as you stepped inside, your backpack hanging off one shoulder and an iced coffee clutched in your hand. Your morning lecture had been canceled, which meant that, for the first time in weeks, you could actually go back to your apartment and catch up on sleep.
Just as the doors were about to close, a hand shot between them. The doors slid back open.
Peter Parker stepped inside.
You had seen him around enough times to know that he lived on your floor, only a few doors away from yours. You also knew that he was probably around your age, spent an alarming amount of time outside at ungodly hours, and had a habit of looking like he hadn’t slept in three business days.
You didn’t know much else. Mostly because Peter Parker was impossible to talk to.
“Hey.”
Peter looked up from the floor, startled for some reason, before offering a small nod. “Hey.”
The elevator doors closed.
You shifted your weight awkwardly. “Early morning?”
Peter glanced down at the watch on his wrist as if he’d somehow forgotten what time it was.
“Uh, yeah. Something like that.”
You smiled. “You look exhausted.”
He let out a quiet laugh, rubbing a hand over his face. “Thanks.”
“That wasn’t supposed to be an insult.”
“No, I know.”
The corner of his mouth twitched upward, but the smile disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared.
The rest of the ride passed in silence.
By now, you’d gotten used to it.
It wasn’t that Peter was rude. In fact, whenever you ran into him in the hallway or outside the building, he always smiled politely and held doors open for people. He just never stayed long enough for a conversation.
The elevator stopped on your floor. You stepped out first, Peter following close behind.
“You know,” you said, turning toward him as both of you walked down the hallway, “one of these days, I’m actually going to get more than two sentences out of you.”
Peter nearly dropped the keys he was trying to fish out of his pocket. “What?”
You laughed. “I’m serious. We’ve lived on the same floor for, like, months now, and somehow I still know absolutely nothing about you.”
He finally found his keys, although judging by the way he almost dropped them again, the victory was short-lived.
“Maybe I’m just boring.”
You stopped in front of your apartment door and frowned. “I don’t think boring people come home at four in the morning.”
Peter froze for a split second.
You immediately regretted saying it. “Oh my God, that sounded creepy. I’m not keeping track of your schedule, I swear. The walls are just really thin.”
To your surprise, Peter laughed. Like, actually laughed. “No, it’s okay.”
For the first time since you’d met him, he looked relaxed.
And then, just as quickly as the moment appeared, it vanished.
“Well…” he said quietly, turning back toward his apartment. “I’ll see you around.”
Before you could respond, he disappeared behind his door.
~~~~~
The next few weeks went exactly the same way.
You’d run into Peter in the elevator. You’d try to make conversation. He’d answer politely. Then he’d retreat back into whatever corner of his life he kept hidden from everyone else.
It became a routine.
“Long day again?”
Peter, standing in the elevator at midnight with dark circles under his eyes and a suspicious tear in the sleeve of his hoodie, blinked at you.
“You have no idea.”
You raised an eyebrow. “That’s concerning.”
“I’m choosing to ignore that comment.”
“Thanks.”
For some reason, despite how painfully awkward he could be, you found yourself looking forward to those tiny interactions.
Maybe it was because Peter was one of the only people in the building who was around your age.
Maybe it was because you recognized loneliness when you saw it.
Or maybe it was because every now and then, when he thought you weren’t looking, you’d catch glimpses of someone different beneath all those walls he’d built around himself.
Like the night you came back from the library carrying way too many books and nearly dropped all of them in the lobby.
Peter had somehow appeared out of nowhere. “Whoa, here.”
Before you could protest, he’d already grabbed half the stack from your arms.
“Thanks.”
“You know they make backpacks for a reason, right?”
You scoffed. “I have a backpack.”
Peter looked down at the single notebook sticking out of it.
“That’s impressive.”
“Oh, don’t judge me, Parker.”
“I’m not judging.”
“You absolutely are.”
“I’m silently criticizing your organizational skills.”
You laughed, pressing the elevator button. “Wow. So you can talk.”
Peter looked away, unsuccessfully hiding his smile.
The elevator doors opened.
As the two of you stepped inside, you glanced at him. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Having a conversation.”
Peter leaned his head against the elevator wall, looking exhausted. “You make it sound easier than it is.”
The elevator stopped. Peter handed your books back.
“Thanks,” you said softly.
“Anytime.”
You hesitated before speaking again. “Hey, um… if you ever need anything…”
Peter looked up.
“I mean, we’re neighbors, right? So… sugar, coffee, someone to complain about school to—”
He smiled, smaller this time. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
You grinned. “Good.”
“I’ll see you around,” he said.
~~~~~
He wasn’t even supposed to be here, but Peter found himself standing across from Ned on the subway.
Ned was carrying two bags filled with drinks and snacks, occasionally checking his phone and smiling to himself. Peter had spotted him by complete accident, and before he could stop himself, he’d followed him onto the train.
He knew it was stupid.
Four years had passed since Doctor Strange’s spell. Four years since the world had forgotten Peter Parker.
And yet, here he was, trailing his former best friend through New York like some creep who couldn’t let go of the past.
Unfortunately, Peter couldn’t. Not when that past was all he had left.
The train finally came to a stop, and Peter followed Ned from a distance as he made his way toward an apartment building in Brooklyn. By the time Peter reached the top floor, music and laughter were already spilling out into the hallway.
A party.
Peter stood outside the door for a moment, staring at the crowd inside. He should leave.
He really, really should leave.
Instead, he gripped the bouquet of flowers that he’d bought as an excuse tightly.
“Housewarming gift,” he muttered to himself, staring at the bouquet. “Totally normal.”
He entered the room, blending in easily amongst the crowd of people he’d never seen before.
The apartment was filled with people, conversations overlapping with music coming from the speakers in the corner. It felt warm and alive in a way that Peter’s own apartment hadn’t felt in years.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it.
Pinned to the wall beside a room was an entire collection of newspaper clippings, blurry photos, and handwritten notes—all centered around Spider-Man.
Peter slowly walked closer.
Pictures from different sightings. Articles about unexplained events around the city. Strings connecting random details that shouldn’t have made sense to anyone else.
And yet his former best friend had put them together.
“You believe in all this stuff too?”
Peter turned around to find Ned standing beside him, holding a drink.
Peter looked back at the wall. “Oh, hey. You made all of this?”
Ned shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s weird, but ever since I was a kid, I’ve always felt like… I don’t know, like Spider-Man means something to me.”
Peter felt his chest tighten.
Ned laughed awkwardly. “Sounds crazy, right?”
“No,” Peter replied quietly. “Not crazy.”
For a brief moment, Peter allowed himself to imagine what life would’ve been like if things had been different. If the spell had never happened. If he could’ve stood beside Ned and laughed about all of this instead of pretending to be a stranger.
But reality had a way of pulling him back.
Across the room, Peter spotted MJ walking towards them. For a moment, it almost felt like nothing had changed.
Peter watched her slowly, holding out the bouquet. “Housewarming flowers.”
MJ blinked in surprise before taking them from his hands. “Oh, wow. Thanks.”
“Yeah. No problem.”
“Do you two know each other or…?” MJ’s brows furrowed, eyeing Peter and Ned.
Peter chuckled nervously. “Oh, uhm. Not exactly. I’m Mayne—Maynard.”
“Nice to meet you, Maynard. I’m gonna put these in water.” She smiled politely, thanked him again, and disappeared into the kitchen to put the flowers in water.
Peter watched her go.
Then he saw him.
A guy standing beside the sink, smiling as MJ walked over to him. She nudged his shoulder playfully, and the guy wrapped an arm around her waist as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Peter immediately looked away.
He had spent four years telling himself that he’d made the right choice. That letting them go had been worth it because they were safe.
But standing in the middle of that apartment, surrounded by people who used to know him, Peter couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d truly let them go—or if he’d simply been left behind.
Suddenly, the room felt too small. Too loud.
Without saying goodbye to anyone, Peter quickly slipped out of the apartment and made his way back onto the streets of New York.
The city was alive around him—cars honking, people laughing, music pouring from open windows—but Peter barely registered any of it. His mind was still back in that apartment, replaying every smile, every laugh, every reminder of the life he’d lost.
He leaped across buildings. By the time he reached his neighborhood, the pain in his wrist had started again.
At first, it was only a dull ache. Then it spread up his arm like fire.
Peter stopped abruptly, grabbing onto the nearest wall as he hissed through clenched teeth.
“Not now,” he muttered.
The pain only grew worse.
He pulled his sleeve back just enough to see the distended veins on his wrists.
His breathing quickened.
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Panicking, Peter rushed toward his apartment building, nearly tripping over his own feet as he fumbled for his keys. The pain had become unbearable by the time he stumbled through his front door.
On the other side of the wall, you were sitting at your desk, absentmindedly reading through your notes when you heard something crash.
At first, you ignored it.
Peter was a strange guy. For all you knew, he’d dropped a lamp.
Then came another noise.
Your eyebrows furrowed as you pulled your headphones off. “Peter?”
You were just about to put your headphones back on when a scream echoed through the wall.
Not the kind of scream someone lets out after stubbing their toe.
A scream of pain.
You shot up from your chair so fast that it nearly toppled over.
For a moment, you stood frozen in the middle of your apartment, trying to convince yourself that you’d imagined it.
Then you heard it again.
Without another thought, you ran for the door. You didn’t even bother putting on your shoes.
The scream echoed through the hallway again, louder this time, and whatever hesitation you had vanished the moment you reached Peter’s door.
“Peter?!”
You knocked once.
No answer.
“Peter, are you okay?!”
Silence.
You pressed your ear against the door, trying to make sense of the sounds coming from the other side. Something crashed into a wall, followed by what sounded like muffled groaning.
Your heart dropped.
You grabbed the doorknob, fully expecting it to be locked. Instead, the door swung open.
The first thing that hit you was the mess.
Peter’s apartment, which you’d never actually seen before, looked like a tornado had torn through it. Papers were scattered across the floor, tools and wires hung from the ceiling, and pieces of machinery sat abandoned on tables in the corner. It was nothing like you had imagined.
And then there were the webs.
They stretched across the walls, clinging to lamps and cabinets, covering entire sections of the room as though a giant spider had made the apartment its nest.
You stopped in the doorway, unable to process what you were looking at. “What the hell…?”
Another groan pulled your attention toward the living room.
“Peter?”
You rushed forward, carefully stepping over broken pieces of metal and strands of webbing stuck to the floor. It wasn’t until you rounded the corner that you finally saw him.
Peter was collapsed beside the couch, one hand gripping his wrist so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. His breathing was uneven, and more strands of webbing slowly releasing from his arm.
For a few seconds, you simply stood there, frozen.
Nothing about this made sense.
The webs. The machines. The strange red-and-blue fabric crumpled beside the couch.
Your eyes darted back to the fabric.
A mask. A Spider-Man mask.
You stared at it, then back at Peter, then back at the mask again.
Your brain was trying to connect the dots.
There was absolutely no way.
And yet, as you looked around the apartment, surrounded by webs and gadgets and the unmistakable suit lying only a few feet away, there was no other explanation.
“Oh my god.”
Peter shifted slightly at the sound of your voice. His eyes slowly opened, unfocused at first before eventually landing on you. For a split second, confusion crossed his face.
Then came realization.
You watched the panic wash over him almost instantly.
“Y/n—” His voice was weak, barely above a whisper.
You immediately knelt beside him. “Peter, what is happening? Are you hurt? Do I need to call someone?”
“No.” The answer came too quickly. “No, don’t—don’t call anyone.”
“Peter, you’re literally lying on the floor!”
“I said don’t call anyone.” The harshness in his voice caught both of you off guard.
Peter shut his eyes, taking a shaky breath as if he regretted snapping at you.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Just… don’t.”
You looked down at the hand clutching his wrist.
Your gaze drifted toward the mask again. The bruises that always seemed to appear out of nowhere. The nights he came home at impossible hours. The way he always looked exhausted.
Every weird thing about Peter suddenly made perfect sense.
Your mouth went dry. “Peter…”
He already knew what you were about to ask. You could see it in his expression. He turned his head away, staring blankly at the ceiling.
You swallowed hard, trying to ignore the way your heart was pounding in your chest.
“You’re Spider-Man?”
Peter didn’t answer. He didn’t deny it either.
The silence was answer enough. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Despite everything, Peter actually let out a weak laugh.
It lasted all of two seconds before another wave of pain shot through his arm. He doubled over, gripping his wrist again.
“Peter—”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re obviously not okay!”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’re covered in webs!”
Peter opened his mouth as if he wanted to argue, but whatever he was about to say never came out. Instead, his eyes fluttered shut.
“Peter?”
No response.
“Peter!”
You grabbed his shoulder, shaking him gently.
Nothing.
Your eyes widened. “Hey, don’t do this right now.”
You glanced around the apartment, completely lost. You had absolutely no idea what the hell you were supposed to do in this situation.
Normal people didn’t have emergency plans for when their neighbor turned out to be Spider-Man and passed out on the floor.
After a few moments of panicking, you managed to drag a blanket off the couch and awkwardly pull it over him. It wasn’t much, but it was better than leaving him on the cold floor.
Then, after what felt like ten straight minutes of struggling, you somehow managed to move him onto the couch.
By the time you collapsed into the armchair across from him, you were exhausted.
You glanced over at him again, watching his chest rise and fall.
“You’re seriously Spider-Man,” you whispered to yourself. Within minutes, exhaustion finally caught up with you too.
The armchair wasn’t comfortable in the slightest, but after the night you’d just had, you didn’t really care.
As sleep slowly overtook you, one last thought crossed your mind.
Tomorrow morning was going to be a disaster.
~~~~~
The first thing Peter noticed when he woke up was that his wrist didn’t hurt anymore.
For a few blissful seconds, he simply lay there, staring at the unfamiliar angle of his living room ceiling, too exhausted to think about why he was on the couch instead of his bed. Then, slowly, the events of the night before came rushing back to him.
Peter shot upright so fast that he nearly fell off the couch.
His eyes darted around the room in a panic. The apartment was still covered in webs. His suit was laying openly on his working table. One of his web-shooters was dangling from a lamp.
And there you were. Curled up in the armchair across from him, your head resting against the side cushion, you were still asleep.
Peter stared at you in horror. You were actually here. In his apartment.
After everything you’d seen.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself, dragging both hands down his face. “Okay, okay, okay…”
He stood up from the couch and immediately got a strand of web stuck to his hoodie.
“Seriously?” The frustration in his voice was apparently enough to wake you.
Your eyes slowly fluttered open, and for a moment, you simply blinked at the room around you, still half-asleep.
Then you saw Peter standing in the middle of the apartment, trying to untangle himself from his own webs.
You sat up so quickly that Peter froze. He looked like he’d rather jump out the window than have this conversation. You honestly weren’t doing much better.
“You’re awake,” you finally said.
Peter glanced down at the floor. “Yeah.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
An awkward silence settled between the two of you.
You looked around the apartment. In the daylight, the whole place somehow looked even more ridiculous. You looked back at Peter.
He was still avoiding your eyes.
“So…” you began carefully.
Peter visibly tensed. “So?”
You gestured vaguely to literally everything around you.
“Do you maybe want to explain…” You paused, looking up at the web-covered ceiling. “…all of this?”
Peter let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like defeat. “You weren’t supposed to see this.”
You blinked. “Peter, you passed out on your living room floor.”
“I know.”
“You were screaming.”
“I know.”
“There are webs on your refrigerator.”
“I know.”
You stared at him for a moment before letting out an incredulous laugh. “Okay, wow. We’re really glossing over the fact that you’re Spider-Man, huh?”
Peter finally looked up.
The panic in his expression from the night before was gone, replaced by something quieter. “I was kind of hoping you’d think you imagined it.”
You snorted. “Yeah, because giant spider webs covering your apartment are a perfectly normal hallucination.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of Peter’s mouth despite himself.
You studied him for a moment, suddenly realizing that he looked exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with lack of sleep. The dark circles under his eyes were still there, and now that you thought about it, so was the same expression you’d seen on his face every time he stepped into the elevator.
You leaned back against the chair. “You’re Spider-Man.”
Peter swallowed. “Yeah.”
It was the first time he’d admitted it out loud in years.
“You know,” you said, “this actually explains a lot.”
Peter frowned. “Like what?”
“The bruises.”
“I walk into things.”
“You absolutely do not walk into things.”
“I could.”
“Peter, normal people don’t come home at dawn with cuts on their face.”
Peter shrugged. “New York is weird.”
You stared at him. “Did Spider-Man just try to convince me that New York is weird?”
“I think Spider-Man would know.” He hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure how to continue. “Listen, you can’t tell anyone about this.”
You blinked. “Who exactly am I supposed to tell? ‘Hey, guys, by the way, my neighbor is secretly Spider-Man’? People would think I’ve lost my mind.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“No, Y/n, I—”
“You really think I’d tell someone?”
Peter opened his mouth, but no words came out.
You sighed, standing up from the chair.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on with…” You gestured toward his wrist. “Whatever happened last night. And I definitely don’t understand why your apartment looks like a spider nest. But I’m not going to tell anyone.”
Peter looked unconvinced.
You crossed your arms. “Besides, keeping secrets apparently isn’t exactly new territory for us.”
That made him pause.
You immediately regretted saying it.
Peter seemed to understand exactly what you meant because he quietly looked away. “I’m sorry.”
The words caught you off guard. “What?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets, staring at the floor.
“For lying.”
You frowned. “You didn’t really lie.”
“I kind of did.”
“You just left out the part where you spend your nights swinging around New York.”
Peter let out a quiet laugh, but there was no humor in it. “Yeah.”
You hesitated before speaking again. “Can I ask you something?”
He looked up.
“Why do you always push people away?”
The question slipped out before you could stop it. Immediately, you wanted to take it back.
Peter froze. “Y/n—”
“No, no, forget I asked that. You don’t have to answer.”
Peter stayed quiet for a long moment. Then, almost too quietly, he said, “It’s safer that way.”
You frowned. “Safer for who?”
Peter didn’t answer. Instead, he glanced toward the window, his expression distant.
You opened your mouth to ask another question, but Peter suddenly stood up. “I should clean this up.”
You looked up at the ceiling.
“Yeah, I was actually wondering how you planned on explaining the fact that your entire apartment looks like an outdated Halloween decoration.”
Peter laughed under his breath, shaking his head.
You smiled, relieved that the tension had eased, if only a little.
As you made your way toward the front door, you stopped and turned back around. “Hey, Peter?”
He looked up from the mess of webs tangled around his coffee table. “Yeah?”
You hesitated for a moment before saying, “For what it’s worth, knowing that you’re Spider-Man doesn’t really change anything.”
Peter stared at you.
You shrugged. “You’re still the weird guy who lives next door.”
For the first time that morning, Peter smiled.
“Wow,” he said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” You grinned, opening the door. “And maybe next time you decide to pass out dramatically, try not to do it alone.”
Peter rolled his eyes, but you caught the smile he was trying to hide. “Noted.”
You nodded once before stepping into the hallway.
~~~~~
The next few days were, without a doubt, the weirdest days of your life.
Not because you had assignments piling up or because you had somehow managed to survive on instant noodles and iced coffee for three consecutive days. No, the weirdest part was that your next-door neighbor—the same guy who once spent an entire elevator ride pretending to be fascinated by the floor numbers to avoid small talk—was Spider-Man.
You had barely stepped out of your apartment when Peter’s door swung open at the exact same moment. The two of you froze, staring at each other from opposite ends of the hallway.
“Hey,” you said.
“Hey.”
An awkward silence followed.
Usually, this was the part where you’d ask him about his day and he’d mumble something before disappearing into the elevator. But things were different now. You knew why he came home at impossible hours. You knew why he always had bruises on his knuckles and dark circles under his eyes.
“So…” you began, falling into step beside him as the two of you walked toward the elevator. “Did you get all the webs cleaned up?”
Peter glanced at you, horrified. “You said you weren’t going to bring that up.”
“I said no such thing.”
“You absolutely implied it.”
The elevator doors opened, and you stepped inside together.
“I’m just saying, if I found out my neighbor was secretly Spider-Man and then immediately discovered that his apartment looked like a spider’s house, I’d be a little disappointed.”
Peter let out an exasperated sigh. “Please never call it that again.”
“No promises.”
The elevator doors opened on the ground floor, and the two of you stepped out into the lobby.
“Well,” you said, adjusting your bag on your shoulder, “good luck saving New York today.”
Peter nearly tripped over his own feet.
You stared at him. “Did Spider-Man just almost fall because of a joke?”
“I didn’t almost fall.”
“You absolutely almost fell.”
“I stepped weird.” Peter rolled his eyes, though you could see the faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “You know, you’re surprisingly annoying.”
“Thank you. I’ve worked very hard to achieve that.”
“I can tell.”
You grinned triumphantly. “See? That was practically a compliment.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It definitely was.”
Peter shook his head, muttering something under his breath as the two of you stepped outside. The morning air was cold, and for a moment, neither of you spoke.
Then, just as you were about to head in the opposite direction, you heard Peter clear his throat.
“Hey, Y/n?”
You turned around. “Yeah?”
Peter shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, staring at the sidewalk. “I just…” He paused, struggling to find the words. “Thanks. For not freaking out.”
You blinked.
“Peter, I did freak out.”
Peter laughed softly. “You did.”
Your smile softened. “You know, you don’t always have to deal with things by yourself.”
The words left your mouth before you could stop them.
Peter’s expression changed almost instantly.
You wanted to push further. You wanted to ask him why he always looked so sad whenever he thought nobody was paying attention, why he insisted on carrying everything alone, why he acted like letting people get close to him was the worst thing in the world.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
~~~~~
For the next week, things settled into something that neither of you knew how to define.
You still ran into each other in the hallway before you left for class. Peter still came home at absurd hours with new bruises that he insisted were “nothing.” You still made fun of him for having the social skills of a brick wall.
The only difference was that now, whenever he disappeared halfway through a conversation or showed up looking like he’d just fought for his life, you actually knew why.
Well, partially.
Because despite the fact that you’d discovered his biggest secret, Peter Parker was still, somehow, the most secretive person you had ever met.
It was almost midnight when you found him sitting on the fire escape outside your apartment building.
You had just gotten back from the cafe after spending six straight hours pretending to understand a lecture that absolutely nobody understood, and the only thing on your mind was sleep.
That was, until you looked up and saw Peter sitting one floor above you, elbows resting on his knees.
For a moment, you considered pretending you hadn’t seen him.
Then again, this was Peter. If you didn’t start the conversation, there was a ninety-percent chance that he’d sit there in silence for another hour before disappearing back into his apartment.
“Please tell me you’re not brooding up there.”
Peter looked down, startled. “I’m not brooding.”
You crossed your arms. “You’re sitting alone on a fire escape in the middle of the night, staring dramatically into the distance.”
“I’m just thinking.”
“That’s exactly what a person who’s brooding would say.”
Peter rolled his eyes, but you caught the smile that flashed across his face.
“You coming up or are you just going to insult me from down there?”
You blinked. “Was that an invitation?”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“Oh, it’s already weird.”
He laughed quietly, shaking his head as you climbed up the stairs and sat beside him.
For a few minutes, neither of you spoke.
Below, New York buzzed with life. Cars moved through the streets, people spilled out of restaurants, and somewhere in the distance, a siren echoed through the city.
You leaned back against the brick wall behind you.
“I used to think New York would feel bigger.”
Peter frowned. “Bigger?”
“Yeah.” You shrugged. “Before I moved here, I thought it’d be this huge, exciting place where I’d constantly be meeting people and doing cool things.”
“And?”
You let out a laugh. “And now I spend most of my nights crying over assignments and eating instant noodles.”
Peter snorted. “Sounds about right.”
You nudged his shoulder. “I’m serious.”
“I know.”
You stared out at the city lights. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought it’d be easier.”
Peter was quiet for a moment. “Easier to do what?”
“To be alone.”
The words slipped out before you could stop them. You immediately looked away, embarrassed by how honest you’d just been.
“That sounded sadder than I meant it to.”
Peter didn’t laugh.
Instead, he looked down at his hands, almost like he was thinking about whether or not to say something. “You get used to it.”
You turned toward him. “Being alone?”
He nodded.
“No offense, Parker, but you don’t exactly sound convincing.”
That earned a small smile from him, but it disappeared almost immediately.
“You don’t get used to it,” he admitted quietly. “You just learn how to deal with it.”
The way he said it made your chest ache. “Is that why you push people away?”
Peter let out a breath, his eyes fixed on the street below.
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
He was silent for so long that you thought he wasn’t going to answer. “Have you ever made a decision that you knew was right, but you hated yourself for it anyway?”
You frowned.
Peter laughed bitterly to himself. “Forget it. That’s a stupid question.”
“No, it’s not.”
He glanced at you, surprised by how quickly you’d answered.
You shifted slightly, pulling your knees closer to your chest. “I think people do that all the time.”
Peter looked away again. “Yeah. Maybe.”
You weren’t sure what came over you, but before you could stop yourself, you asked, “Did it have something to do with someone?”
The question hung in the air between you.
Peter froze. And immediately, you regretted asking.
“You don’t have to answer that,” you said quickly. “Sorry, that was way too personal—”
“It did.”
Your voice caught in your throat.
Peter wasn’t looking at you anymore. His eyes were fixed somewhere beyond the skyline, somewhere far away.
“Her name’s MJ. We used to be… close.”
The understatement almost made you laugh. “Close?”
He smiled sadly. “Yeah. She’s very special to me.”
You didn’t push. You could tell just from the way he was speaking, that this wasn’t a story he told often.
“There was this guy too,” he continued. “Ned. My best friend.”
Then Peter leaned back against the wall, staring up at the sky.
“A few years ago, something happened. Something really bad. And the only way to fix it was…” He stopped, swallowing hard. “The only way to fix it was to make everyone forget who Peter Parker was.”
You stared at him.
“What?”
He laughed quietly, but there was no humor in it.
“Yeah. Crazy, right?”
You didn’t know what to say.
Because suddenly, everything made sense.
“Wait.” You turned toward him. “You mean they literally don’t remember you?”
Peter shook his head. “No.”
“Not even MJ and Ned?”
“No.”
You stared at him, completely speechless. “Peter…”
He shrugged, like he was talking about the weather instead of the most heartbreaking thing you’d ever heard.
“It was my choice.”
“But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”
The words escaped before you could think twice.
Peter’s expression softened. Then he let out a quiet laugh and shook his head. “You’re the first person who’s said that.”
You frowned. “What do you mean?”
“It’s always about how I saved the world or how I did the right thing.” He looked down at his hands. “Nobody ever talks about what it cost.”
The vulnerability in his voice caught you off guard. For the first time, you understood.
Peter Parker hadn’t isolated himself because he wanted to. He’d isolated himself because he genuinely believed that loving people meant losing them.
You reached over and gently nudged his shoulder.
“Well, I think what you did was incredibly selfless.”
Peter smiled weakly. “Thanks.”
“But I also think you’re an idiot.”
He turned to you so fast that you almost laughed. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Wow. Harsh.”
“I’m serious.” You sat up straighter. “You keep acting like the solution to everything is to shut people out.”
“Because people get hurt.”
“People get hurt regardless, Peter.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but you didn’t let him.
“You think pushing everyone away protects them, but all it’s doing is making you miserable.”
Peter stared at you.
“And before you say anything, yes, I know that’s hypocritical coming from the girl who spent the first three months in New York eating canned goods alone in her apartment.”
That got a laugh out of him.
“I’m serious, though.” You smiled softly.
The two of you sat there for what felt like forever, the noise of the city filling the silence between you.
“You know, when we first met, I thought you were way too friendly.”
You gasped dramatically. “Way too friendly?”
“You kept talking to me in the elevator.”
“God forbid someone tries to have a conversation with their neighbor.”
“I thought there had to be some ulterior motive.”
You laughed. “And now?”
Peter looked at you. “Now I think you just hate awkward silences.”
You smiled. “You’re half right.”
“And the other half?”
You hesitated before answering. “I saw someone who looked lonely.”
Peter’s expression changed instantly. The teasing smile disappeared, replaced by something softer.
Because the truth was, you’d been right all along.
He was lonely.
You simply sat beside each other, watching the lights of New York flicker in the distance. Somewhere below, taxis disappeared into traffic, distant sirens echoed through the streets, and the summer air carried the sound of laughter from people walking home.
For the first time in a long time, Peter didn’t feel like he was carrying the weight of the city by himself.
Beside him, you absentmindedly rested your chin on your knees, staring out at the skyline.
“Do you ever stop thinking?” you asked quietly.
Peter let out a small laugh. “Not really.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
You smiled sympathetically. “Well, I think you deserve a break every once in a while. Fighting off bad people every other day isn’t healthy.”
Peter glanced over at you, about to make some self-deprecating joke, when suddenly, something felt… wrong.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. His expression immediately changed.
You frowned. “Peter?”
He didn’t answer.
His eyes darted toward the street below, instinct taking over before his mind could catch up. There was no obvious danger—just passing cars, people crossing the road, cyclists weaving through traffic.
And yet, every nerve in his body was screaming at him that someone was watching.
“Peter?” You followed his gaze, confused as he abruptly stood from the fire escape. “What is it?”
“I…” Peter scanned the street, his heartbeat picking up. “I don’t know.”
Down below, parked across the street, a dark car sat between two taxis. Through the windshield, he could barely make out the silhouette of someone sitting in the back seat, their face hidden by the reflection of the city lights.
For a split second, Peter thought he saw the figure turn toward him.
Then the engine started. The car pulled away from the curb, disappearing into the traffic before Peter could get a better look.
He remained frozen, staring after it.
“Did you see someone?” you asked, standing beside him.
Peter hesitated. “I think so.”
“You think so?”
He shook his head, frustration creeping into his voice. “I don’t know. It just felt like…” He stopped himself.
Like someone had been watching him.
You glanced down at the now-empty street before looking back at Peter.
“Maybe it’s just your superhero paranoia.”
Peter let out a breathless laugh, though the uneasy feeling in his chest refused to disappear.
“Yeah,” he muttered, still staring into the distance. “Maybe.”
~~~~~
It was barely nine in the morning when you opened your apartment door and nearly ran face-first into him.
Peter stumbled backward, a paper bag clutched awkwardly in his hands. “Oh—sorry.”
You blinked. “Are you just permanently stationed outside my apartment now, or…?”
“What? No.” Peter looked genuinely horrified. “I was just—I wasn’t—”
You crossed your arms, trying to suppress a smile as he completely lost the ability to form coherent sentences. “Relax, Parker. I’m kidding.”
He let out a relieved sigh. “You really need to stop doing that.”
“And deprive myself of the joy of watching Spider-Man panic? Absolutely not.”
Peter rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
Only then did you notice the coffee cup sticking out of the paper bag. You narrowed your eyes.
“…Is that coffee?”
Peter immediately looked down at the bag as if he’d forgotten he was holding it in the first place. “Uh, yeah.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And why are you standing outside my apartment at nine in the morning holding coffee?”
Peter stared at you for a few seconds, clearly debating whether or not he could still escape this conversation.
“I, uh…” He scratched the back of his neck. “You said you had an exam today.”
Your eyebrows shot up. “You know that?”
The second the words left your mouth, Peter looked like he regretted everything. “I just—I overheard you talking on the phone in the hallway last night.”
“Oh, so you’re spying on me.”
“I’m not! I have heightened senses, you know?”
You laughed, reaching for the coffee he was still awkwardly holding hostage. “Well, thank you.”
He shrugged, suddenly fascinated by the floor. “I figured you’d need it.”
You looked down at the cup before glancing back up at him. “Okay, this is actually really sweet.”
Peter almost choked. “What?”
“I’m complimenting you.”
“You’ve spent the last week bullying me.”
“I tease you because it’s funny. Completely different.”
Peter shook his head, mumbling something under his breath as he started walking toward the elevator.
You immediately followed him. “Oh, no. You don’t get to do something nice and then escape before I properly thank you.”
“Pretty sure I do.”
“You absolutely do not.”
The elevator doors opened, and the two of you stepped inside.
“Did you sleep at all?”
Peter leaned against the wall. “A little.”
“Yeah, right.”
“What?”
“That’s a lie.”
He glanced over at you. “How would you know?”
“Because you look like you fought a bear.”
“You’re judgemental.”
“Answer the question.”
Peter sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “There was some stuff going on downtown.”
“Some stuff?”
“Yeah.”
You stared at him. “You’re literally Spider-Man. ‘Some stuff’ could mean anything from stopping a robbery to fighting an alien invasion.”
“Okay, first of all, that’s only happened once.”
You raised an eyebrow.
“Twice, maybe.”
You laughed, shaking your head. “I can’t believe this is my life now.”
“Imagine how I feel.”
The elevator doors slid open, and the two of you stepped into the lobby.
Outside, New York was already awake. People hurried down the sidewalks, taxis filled the streets, and somewhere in the distance, someone was yelling at a delivery truck.
You took a sip of your coffee. “Okay, serious question.”
Peter looked over.
“How do you balance all of this?”
He frowned. “Balance what?”
“You know…” You gestured vaguely. “Spider-Man stuff. Life.”
Peter laughed softly. “I don’t.”
“No, seriously.”
“I am serious.”
You stopped walking. “What do you mean, you don’t?”
Peter shoved his hands into his pockets. “I mean exactly what I said.”
For the first time that morning, the teasing tone disappeared from his voice.
“Half the time, I’m in front of my desk, fixing my suit. The other half, I’m too exhausted to focus on anything.” He shrugged. “I’ve kind of accepted that I’m bad at balancing things.”
You frowned. “That’s not healthy.”
Peter opened his mouth, prepared with another joke, but stopped when he noticed the look on your face.
You were actually worried.
Peter looked away first.
“You know,” you said softly, “you’re allowed to take care of yourself too.”
He let out a quiet laugh.
“Funny. You sound exactly like my aunt May.”
The moment the words left his mouth, his expression changed. The smile disappeared.
“Oh.” Your voice softened. “Peter…”
“It’s okay.”
You weren’t sure whether to say something or pretend that the conversation hadn’t just shifted into dangerous territory.
Before you could decide, Peter shook his head and forced a smile. “Anyway, good luck on your exam.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Nice try.”
“What?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Am I?”
“Very obviously.”
Peter laughed, stepping backward onto the sidewalk. “Seriously, though. Good luck.”
You stared at him for a moment before sighing in defeat.
“Fine. But this conversation isn’t over.”
Peter smiled. “We’ll see.”
You pointed at him accusingly. “No, don’t ‘we’ll see’ me, Parker.”
He laughed and started walking backward down the street. “Go ace your exam, sweetheart.”
The second the nickname left his mouth, both of you froze.
Peter looked just as surprised as you did.
Your eyes widened. “Did you just call me sweetheart?”
Peter stopped walking. “I—”
“You did!”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You absolutely did!”
He buried his face in his hands. “Oh my god.”
You couldn’t stop smiling. “Oh, this is never leaving my memory.”
“Can we all agree to pretend that never happened?”
“Absolutely not.”
Peter groaned as you laughed, continuing your walk toward campus.
He shook his head, turning to leave in the opposite direction, but even from several feet away, you could still see the embarrassed smile on his face.
~~~~~
You tried not to think too much as you walked home from campus that evening, convincing yourself that he was probably just busy with superhero things. It wasn’t unusual for him to vanish for hours at a time.
Still, there was an uneasy feeling in your chest that you couldn’t explain.
By the time you reached your apartment building, the sun had already disappeared behind the skyline, painting New York in shades of orange and blue. You stepped into the lobby, fishing your keys out of your bag and nearly jumped when you saw Peter standing completely still in front of the elevators.
“Jesus Christ, Parker.”
He turned around so quickly that you almost took a step back.
For a moment, he just stared at you.
“Peter?”
He blinked a few times, as if he were forcing himself back into reality.
“Oh. Hey.”
You frowned.
“Hey? That’s all you have to say after ignoring me all day?”
“I wasn’t ignoring you.”
“Peter, I sent you three texts.”
“You sent me three memes.”
“They were funny memes.”
Peter let out a distracted laugh, but something was off.
He looked more exhausted than usual. His hoodie was damp from the rain, his hair was a mess, and there was a fresh cut just above his eyebrow.
You immediately noticed. “You’re hurt.”
“What? No.”
“You literally have blood on your face.”
Peter instinctively touched his eyebrow before dropping his hand. “It’s nothing.”
You crossed your arms. “You know, for someone whose entire job is saving people, you’re really bad at taking care of yourself.”
Peter looked away, jaw tightening.
The elevator doors opened with a ding, but neither of you moved.
“Peter?”
He swallowed hard before finally speaking. “Have you ever felt like someone’s watching you?”
The question caught you off guard. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “For the past few days, everywhere I go, I keep feeling like there’s…” He hesitated. “Like there’s someone there.”
You frowned. “Someone following you?”
“Maybe.”
“Have you actually seen anyone?”
Peter thought back to the fire escape. To the dark car disappearing into traffic before he could get a good look at it.
“Not really.”
You stepped a little closer, lowering your voice. “Peter, are you sure you’re okay?”
He opened his mouth to answer—
“Behind you.”
The voice wasn’t yours.
Peter froze.
His head snapped toward the lobby entrance, but there was nobody there except an elderly man struggling with grocery bags.
“What?” you asked.
Peter stared at the doors, his heartbeat suddenly pounding in his ears.
The old man looked up.
“You’re easier to find than you think, Peter.”
Peter’s blood ran cold. The voice wasn’t the old man’s. It was someone else’s, speaking through him.
The smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by confusion as the man adjusted his glasses and continued walking.
“Peter?”
He turned back toward you, panic flashing across his face.
“Did you hear that?”
You blinked. “Hear what?”
Before Peter could answer, a woman stepped into the lobby, talking on the phone as she walked past the two of you.
“Everyone has a weakness.”
Peter stiffened.
The woman stopped walking.
Slowly, she turned her head toward him. “You know that better than anyone.”
The air left Peter’s lungs. “What the hell…”
“Peter?” You grabbed his arm. “What’s wrong?”
He couldn’t answer. Because now, all around the lobby, people had started looking at him.
One by one, they turned toward him.
And they all smiled.
“You lost your aunt.”
“You lost your friends.”
“You lost the girl you loved.”
The voices overlapped, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
Peter stumbled backward, his breathing becoming uneven.
“You found someone new.”
Peter’s eyes immediately darted toward you.
“So that’s why you’ve been smiling lately.”
Your grip on his arm tightened. “Peter, you’re scaring me.”
Instantly, every face in the lobby returned to normal.
Peter stood frozen in the middle of the lobby, chest rising and falling rapidly.
“Peter, talk to me.”
He looked at you, but it was obvious that he wasn’t really seeing you. His mind was somewhere else, replaying the words over and over again.
You found someone new.
“No,” he whispered, more to himself than to you.
“What?”
Peter grabbed your wrist.
The sudden movement startled you.
“You can’t stay here tonight.”
You frowned. “What?”
“Pack a bag.”
“Peter, slow down—”
“I’m serious.”
“What’s going on?”
He looked around the lobby one last time, searching for any sign that whoever had done this was still watching.
“I think someone’s trying to get to me.”
You stared at him.
“And I think…” His voice cracked slightly as he looked back at you. “I think they know about you.”
For a moment, neither of you moved.
Then you shook your head. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Neither do I.”
Peter finally had something left to lose again.
And whoever was out there had just figured that out.
~~~~~
By the time Peter finally explained what was happening, the two of you were already halfway across New York.
Well “explained” was a generous term.
According to Peter, there was someone out there who could somehow speak through other people, someone who had spent the last few days following him, taunting him, and apparently taking a concerning interest in the fact that he’d started spending time with you.
According to you, that sounded completely insane. “You realize how crazy this sounds, right?”
Peter tightened his grip on the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the road ahead. “Trust me, I know.”
“No, because from my perspective, I went from studying for finals to being shoved into a car by Spider-Man because some random woman might be stalking us.”
“I’m not shoving you anywhere.”
“You practically dragged me out of the apartment.”
“You had, like, five minutes to pack.”
“Exactly.”
Peter let out an exhausted sigh.
The city lights reflected against the windshield as silence settled between you for a moment. You glanced over at him, finally getting a good look at his expression.
He looked terrified.
You looked away, staring out the window. “Who is she?”
Peter hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know her name?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“You’re Spider-Man.”
“Yeah, and believe it or not, I don’t actually know every single person in New York.”
You rolled your eyes, but the joke barely landed. It was obvious that his mind was somewhere else entirely.
The city slowly disappeared behind you, replaced by quieter streets and the dark outline of the harbor. After another few minutes, Peter pulled into a small dock.
You stepped out of the car and immediately froze.
Floating a few feet away from the pier was what looked like a tiny house sitting on top of a boat.
“Where are we?”
“It’s safer than the apartment.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Peter ignored you, already walking toward the dock.
“Peter!”
“I’m serious, Y/n.”
You quietly followed him down the dock.
The house itself was small, warm lights spilling out from the windows onto the water. Peter knocked twice before the door swung open, revealing a man who looked like he’d been expecting him.
The man’s eyes immediately landed on you. Then they shifted back to Peter.
“…You brought company.”
Peter sighed. “Frank, not now.”
“Oh, it’s definitely now.”
“Frank.”
You watched as Frank crossed his arms, trying to suppress an amused smile.
“So, let me get this straight.” He pointed between the two of you. “The world is apparently ending, and this is who you decided to bring to my place?”
“She’s my neighbor.”
Frank raised an eyebrow. “Uh-huh.”
Peter groaned. “Can you please not do this right now?”
“I’m just asking questions.”
You bit back a laugh as Peter shot Frank the most exhausted look you’d ever seen.
Frank stepped aside, letting the two of you inside before he disappeared into the kitchen.
“So,” he called out, “you want tea? Coffee? Emotional support?”
Peter buried his face in his hands. “Please stop talking.”
“I’m sensing coffee for the kid and emotional support for Spider-Man.”
You snorted.
Peter glared at both of you.
An hour later, after Frank had finally stopped making fun of him, the three of you sat around the tiny dining table.
Well, technically, Frank was sitting.
Peter had spent the last twenty minutes pacing back and forth.
“Peter, you’re making me dizzy.”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re stomping.”
He ignored you.
Frank looked up from his coffee. “Kid, sit down before you wear a hole through my floor.”
Peter stopped pacing, but only because his phone buzzed.
He immediately grabbed it, eyes scanning the screen.
Nothing. Just a news notification.
You watched as he exhaled, disappointed. “You’ve checked your phone seventeen times in the last ten minutes.”
Peter frowned. “No, I haven’t.”
“You absolutely have.”
Frank looked between the two of you. “You guys do realize that you’re acting like a married couple, right?”
You nearly choked on your drink.
Peter looked ready to throw himself into the ocean. “We are not acting like a married couple.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
“Frank.” Peter stood up so abruptly that his chair nearly fell over. “I need some air.”
Without another word, he stepped outside onto the dock.
You hesitated for a moment before quietly following him. The night air was colder now, carrying the scent of the ocean and the distant sounds of the city.
You walked up beside him, leaning against the railing.
For a few moments, neither of you spoke. Then, quietly, you asked, “How bad is it?”
Peter didn’t answer immediately. “I don’t know.”
You looked down at the dark sky in front. “You really think she want to hurt me?”
Peter’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know what she want.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
For the first time that night, Peter looked at you. The fear in his eyes caught you off guard.
“I can’t let anything happen to you.”
The words came out so quickly that it almost sounded like he’d been holding them in for hours.
You stared at him.
“I mean it.” He shook his head, frustrated with himself. “I spent years convincing myself that being alone was the only way to keep people safe, and then you came along and suddenly—”
He stopped himself.
Suddenly, he didn’t want to be alone anymore.
Suddenly, he had something to lose again.
The silence stretched between you.
You took a step closer. “Peter, look at me.”
He did.
“I’m scared too.”
His expression softened.
“But you don’t get to decide things for me.”
Peter frowned. “What?”
“You keep acting like you have to carry everyone else’s pain by yourself, like it’s your responsibility to decide who gets hurt and who doesn’t.” You shook your head. “But that’s not fair.”
“Y/n—”
“No, listen to me.” Your voice softened. “I know you’re trying to protect me. I know that. But I’m here because I chose to be here.”
Peter looked away. For a moment, neither of you spoke.
He stepped forward and gently squeezed your hand. Just for a second. Just long enough for both of you to freeze.
Peter pulled away almost immediately, looking just as shocked as you felt.
“I should go.”
And before you could respond, he turned and disappeared into the darkness, leaving you standing alone, watching the only person you’d ever trusted with your heart swing back toward a city that never stopped needing him.
~~~~~
The first thing Peter noticed was the silence.
It was wrong.
His suit was torn near the shoulder, bruises bloomed across his ribs, and every muscle in his body ached as he limped down the dock toward Frank’s home. The morning had blurred together into a mess of adrenaline and panic: tracking Jean across the city, realizing she had taken control of the Hulk, barely escaping the destruction that followed, and worse was that Jean managed to escape.
The lights inside the houseboat were still on.
Peter frowned. “Frank?”
No answer.
He climbed the last few steps and pushed the door open. “Frank, I’m back—”
The words died in his throat.
The living room was a disaster.
A chair had been knocked onto its side. One of the lamps lay shattered on the floor, glass scattered across the wood. Your backpack was gone.
And Frank was unconscious on the ground.
Peter’s heart stopped. “Frank!”
He dropped to his knees beside him, shaking his shoulder.
“Frank, hey, wake up. Come on, come on—”
Frank groaned, slowly opening his eyes. “Kid…?”
Peter let out a breath of relief, but it lasted less than a second. “Where’s Y/n?”
Frank blinked, still disoriented.
“She…” He winced, trying to sit up. “She was here.”
Peter felt the blood drain from his face. “What do you mean, ‘was here’?”
Frank looked around the room as though trying to piece everything together. “There was someone at the door. I thought it was you.”
Peter’s stomach dropped. “No.”
Frank swallowed hard. “Next thing I knew, she was acting strange. Said she had to go home.”
Peter stood up so fast that the room spun around him. “No, no, no—”
“Hey—”
“No.”
He was already reaching for his phone, hands shaking so violently that he nearly dropped it.
Twenty-three missed calls.
And then a message.
Sent ten minutes ago.
From you.
hey :) im back at the apartment. can you come over? we should talk.
Peter stared at the screen. Every instinct in his body screamed at him that something was wrong. You never used smiley faces.
Frank had managed to sit up now, watching Peter’s expression darken. “What’s going on?”
Peter was already backing toward the door. “She’s not there.”
Frank frowned. “What?”
“That’s not her.”
The realization hit him all at once.
Jean hadn’t been captured.
And while Peter had been busy trying to save the city, she’d gone after the one person he had been trying to protect.
~~~~~
The city became nothing but streaks of light as Peter swung through the night.
His breathing was ragged beneath the mask, every thought in his head collapsing into one singular fear.
You.
Every second felt like an eternity. Every red light, every building, every street corner seemed to move too slowly.
Please be okay.
He landed outside the apartment building so hard that several people on the sidewalk screamed and jumped back.
He sprinted through the lobby, ignoring the confused stares around him as he practically launched himself into the stairwell.
The elevator would take too long. By the time he reached your floor, his lungs were burning.
The hallway was empty. Your apartment door was slightly open.
Peter’s heartbeat pounded in his ears. “Y/n?”
No answer.
He stepped inside cautiously. The lights were off except for the glow of the city spilling through the windows. The apartment was silent.
“Y/n?” Then he saw you.
Standing by the window. Your back was turned toward him, your silhouette framed by the lights of the city below.
Relief crashed over him so quickly that his knees nearly gave out. “Oh my God.”
You slowly turned around.
For a brief moment, everything seemed normal.
“Peter.” The sound of your voice almost made him collapse.
He took a step forward. “Are you okay? Frank said that you left and then you texted me and I—”
“I’m okay.” Something about your tone made him stop.
It was your voice. But it didn’t sound like you.
Too empty.
Peter’s entire body tensed. “Y/n…”
“You’re worried.” You tilted your head slightly.
Peter took another cautious step. “Come away from the window.”
A smile spread across your face.
Except it wasn’t your smile.
“No.”
The room suddenly felt ten degrees colder.
Peter’s heart sank. “Jean.”
Your smile widened. “There he is.”
Peter felt sick. “Get out of her head.”
“Oh, Peter.” Jean’s voice echoed through your lips. “You’re making this far too easy.”
Peter couldn’t take his eyes off you.
You were standing much too close to the edge.
“Whatever you want, this has nothing to do with her.”
Jean laughed. “Nothing to do with her?”
Your body turned slightly, glancing out at the city below.
“You spent years convincing yourself that isolation would protect the people you love.” Jean’s voice softened. “And then she smiled at you in an elevator.”
Peter’s chest tightened. “Stop.”
“You let her in.”
“Stop talking.”
“You gave yourself something to lose.”
“Jean, stop!”
For the first time, something flickered in your expression.
For a split second, Peter saw you.
Really saw you.
Terrified. “Peter?”
The fear in your voice was unmistakably yours. Peter immediately stepped forward. “Y/n, listen to me. I’m right here.”
Your eyes darted around the room frantically. “W-what’s happening?”
Then your expression changed again.
Jean was back. And this time, she was smiling.
“Tell me, Peter.” You took a step backward. Right onto the ledge. “How many people can Spider-Man save before he finally fails?”
Peter’s blood ran cold. “No.”
“How many times can Peter Parker lose the people he loves before he breaks?”
“Jean, don’t do this.”
For the first time all night, Jean’s voice lost its mocking tone.
“I just want you to understand.” Instead, she sounded almost sad.
And then you fell.
“Y/N!”
Peter didn’t think. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t hesitate. He ran.
The window shattered behind him as he launched himself into the open air, diving after you as the city lights blurred together beneath him.
Wind roared in your ears. For a moment, there was nothing.
Then suddenly—consciousness.
You blinked. And realized you were falling.
The scream that tore from your throat was filled with pure terror. “Peter!”
You couldn’t breathe. The ground was getting closer. And then strong arms wrapped around you.
You collided against Peter’s chest as he wrapped his body around yours and shot a web into the nearest building, swinging both of you away from the street below.
You clung to him instantly, shaking so violently that you could barely form words.
One hand held the web. The other was wrapped so tightly around you that it almost hurt.
You buried your face against his shoulder, tears streaming down your cheeks.
“I don’t—I don’t know what happened—”
“I know.”
“I was in the boat and then—and then—”
“I know.” Peter’s voice cracked.
Because for one horrifying moment, he hadn’t known if he’d make it in time.
And as he held you against him, thirty stories above New York City, Peter Parker made himself a promise.
Whatever happened next, whatever it took, he would never let you go again.
~~~~~
The rooftop was silent except for the sound of your uneven breathing and the distant hum of New York below.
Peter still hadn’t let go of you.
Not since he’d caught you.
Not since he’d felt your fingers clutch desperately at his suit thirty stories above the ground.
You sat beside him now, shoulders pressed together, both of you staring at the skyline as the first hints of sunrise painted the clouds orange.
Neither of you knew what to say.
Because how were you supposed to act normal after something like that?
“Peter…”
He didn’t look at you. “I’m sorry.”
You frowned. “Why do you keep apologizing?”
“Because I should’ve protected you.”
“You did protect me.”
“No.” He shook his head, his voice cracking. “I was supposed to keep this from happening in the first place.”
You turned toward him. “Hey, that’s impossible.”
He laughed bitterly, staring down at his hands. “Yeah, well, I’ve spent the last four years trying to do the impossible.”
The words hung between you.
You watched him quietly, noticing the way his shoulders sagged beneath the weight of everything he carried.
“You know that’s not your fault, right?” you whispered.
Peter finally looked at you. The expression on his face almost broke your heart.
“After May… after MJ and Ned…” He swallowed hard. “I promised myself that I would never do this again.”
“Do what?”
Peter let out a shaky breath. “Care.”
You felt your heart stop.
“Because every single person I’ve ever loved…” His voice dropped to almost a whisper. “I’ve lost them somehow.”
“Peter—”
“And then you showed up.”
He laughed softly, shaking his head.
“You kept talking to me in elevators when I clearly didn’t want to talk. You kept making fun of me. You kept showing up with coffee and stupid jokes, and…” He looked at you, eyes shining in the early morning light. “Somehow, you made me forget what it felt like to be alone.”
You couldn’t speak.
“I tried to stay away from you.” He shook his head. “I really did.”
Your eyes welled with tears.
“But every time you smiled at me, every time you waited for me to come home, every time you sat next to me on that fire escape…” He laughed weakly. “It just got harder.”
The silence between you became unbearable.
And then Peter whispered the words he’d spent months trying not to feel.
“I love you.”
The world seemed to stop. Peter immediately looked away, almost like he regretted saying it.
“I know it’s selfish,” he continued quickly. “And maybe I shouldn’t have said anything because everything in my life is complicated and dangerous and honestly, I don’t even know what tomorrow looks like, but when I saw you falling—”
His voice broke.
“When I saw you falling, the only thing I could think was that I never told you.”
Peter let out a shaky breath, staring at the city because he couldn’t bear to look at your reaction.
“I love you,” he whispered again. “And that’s the scariest thing that’s happened to me in years.”
For a moment, neither of you moved. Then you reached for his hand.
Peter looked down, almost surprised to find your fingers intertwined with his.
“Peter Parker,” you whispered, squeezing his hand, “you are such an idiot.”
He blinked. “That’s not exactly the response I was expecting.”
You laughed and shook your head. “Because I’ve been in love with you since before I even knew you were Spider-Man.”
Peter just stared.
“You brought me coffee before my exams, sat with me when I was lonely, and somehow made me feel at home in a city that never felt like mine.” You smiled softly. “I didn’t fall in love with Spider-Man.”
You stepped a little closer.
“I fell in love with the awkward guy from the elevator.”
Peter’s eyes immediately filled with tears.
And for the first time since the spell, since May, since losing everyone he’d ever loved, Peter allowed himself to believe that maybe losing people wasn’t the only ending he deserved.
He laughed shakily, pressing his forehead against yours.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day becomes much more wholesome when you remember that Jon and Tom filmed each others’ auditions for Frank Castle and Peter Parker. They both helped each other get into Marvel, now they’re in the same movie as the characters they auditioned for.
pairing: peter parker (brand new day) x fem!reader
summary: you don't know why you kept the sweater. you don't know why the headaches come in the same place every time. you don't know the guy two floors down, not really — except your hands seem to, and that should probably scare you more than it does.
word count: ~4.5k
warnings: angst w a happy ending, canon-typical violence/injury description, blood, panic attack mention, referenced grief + memory loss, mutual pining , non-graphic mature content near the end
a/n: un-beta'd, we die like peter's civilian identity. happy birthday pete!
You'd been wearing the same sweater for three days before you noticed.
It was two in the morning and you were sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter because the chairs were all buried under laundry you hadn't gotten to, eating cereal dry out of the box because you were too tired to deal with milk, trying to get through a chapter on post-op cardiothoracic complications before your six a.m. rounds. You pulled at the sleeve without thinking about it — a habit, worrying the frayed cuff between two fingers while you read — and it was only when you looked down and registered the exact gray of it, the way it swallowed your hands whole, that you realized you'd had it on since Tuesday.
You didn't remember putting it on Tuesday. You didn't remember not having it on since. You frowned at it for maybe four seconds, in the specific dim way you frowned at things you'd learned not to chase too hard, and then your phone buzzed — an exam reminder, cardiac path in nine hours — and the sweater fell out of your head completely.
That was how normal it was to you. Not a mystery you turned over at night. Just a fact of your body, like your blood type, like the two moles on your left shoulder blade.
The headaches were the same way. You'd had them long enough that you'd built your whole life to accommodate them without ever really examining why they were there. You knew the tells — a tightening behind your right eye, a sudden oversensitivity to sound, like your skull was bracing for a hit you couldn't see coming. Your therapist knew. Your attendings knew, vaguely, enough that nobody blinked when you stepped out of a lecture hall for ten minutes and came back pale. You'd stopped asking why a long time ago. Asking why had never once gotten you an answer, and you had finals.
You met Peter on a Thursday, hauling the fourth of six boxes up a stairwell that had clearly been designed by someone who hated med students, when a guy came down two at a time and stopped dead at the sight of you like he'd walked into a door.
"You need a hand with that?"
"I'm okay." You weren't. Your arms were shaking.
"You're not okay." He was already reaching for the box. "I live two floors down. I've basically got nothing better to do."
You gave it up because your shoulders were screaming, and he carried it like it weighed nothing, which — you'd learn, much later, for reasons that would make you furious — it kind of did.
He introduced himself on the landing, a little breathless even though the box clearly hadn't cost him anything. Peter. Just Peter, no last name volunteered, and something about the way he said it made you look at him a beat too long, like your mouth was trying to remember a second syllable it already knew. You didn't think anything of it. People's names did that sometimes. You said your own name back and he went very quiet for exactly one second too long, something moving behind his eyes that you had no context for and no reason to chase, and then he smiled, easy, a little crooked, and said it was nice to meet you, and helped you carry the rest of your life up four flights of stairs.
What you didn't see, because you had no way to, was him standing in his own doorway twenty minutes later with his back against the frame and his eyes shut, breathing like he'd just taken a hit clean to the chest. You didn't see him say your name out loud, once, quiet, to the empty apartment, like he was testing whether it would still hurt the same way it had every single time he'd said it to himself for the last four years. It did. It always did.
It became a thing, after that. You needed help with a leaking faucet; he showed up with a wrench and absolutely no idea what he was doing and fixed it anyway through sheer stubbornness. You made too much pasta one night and knocked on his door because it felt wasteful not to, and he ate two full plates like he hadn't had a real meal in a week, which, you'd learn, he mostly hadn't. He was always a little threadbare — same three hoodies in rotation, a phone with a spiderwebbed screen he never fixed, the kind of thin that wasn't about vanity. He told you once, dry, no self-pity in it, that he sold photos to a tabloid editor who screamed at him twice a week and paid him just enough to keep doing it. You asked why he didn't just quit. He said it was complicated. You didn't push. You got the sense, early, that it was a door better left shut, one of several.
You mentioned the gaps to him on a Tuesday, offhand, over coffee that had gone cold an hour ago because neither of you had noticed the conversation running long.
"It's stupid," you said, turning the mug in your hands. "I did this internship in high school — Stark Industries, if you can believe that, I basically patched up random employees who tripped over their own lab equipment — and I remember, like, the building. I remember the badge. I remember Tony Stark handing me a scholarship packet like it was a pizza menu. But there's whole stretches of it I can't get to. People. Faces. I know something happened there that mattered, I just can't—" You made a vague gesture at your own skull. "It's like reaching for a word that's right there and it's just gone."
Peter had gone very still across the table.
You didn't notice, because you were still looking at your coffee. "Anyway. My therapist thinks it's stress-related dissociation, whatever that means. I don't know. It's not, like, a big deal. I've had it my whole life."
"Yeah," Peter said, and his voice came out wrong, too careful, though you wouldn't clock that until much later, turning the memory over with everything you knew by then. "That sounds — that sounds hard."
He didn't tell you. He would think about that moment for weeks afterward, replaying the exact shape of your face while you talked about him like he was a stranger you'd misplaced, and he still wouldn't tell you. Not that day. Not for a long time after.
You started doing things around him you didn't examine. You took food off his plate without asking, and he never once complained, just pushed it toward you before you'd even reached. You fixed his collar once without thinking, straightening it in the middle of a sentence about something else entirely, and his whole body had gone rigid under your hands for a second before he relaxed into it like it was the easiest thing in the world. You fell asleep on his couch more than once, mid-conversation, and woke up with a blanket over you that you hadn't put there yourself.
He almost called you something once. You were half-asleep against his shoulder, his arm gone tense and careful around you, and he started to say a name that wasn't your name — something soft, something with an old shape to it — and caught himself so hard you felt him flinch.
"What?" you mumbled.
"Nothing." His voice was rough. "Go back to sleep."
You did. You didn't think to ask what he'd almost said. There was a version of you — an older, sharper version, one you didn't have access to yet — that would have caught it immediately. That version of you was still locked somewhere behind a door you didn't know existed.
The injuries started small enough that you let them go. A split lip. A bruise blooming green-yellow along one forearm. He always had an explanation loaded and ready, delivered a beat too fast — fell down some stairs, walked into a door, got jumped outside a bodega — and you let him have them, because four years of clinical training had taught you that people confess on their own timeline or not at all, and pushing only ever taught someone to stop showing up.
But it kept happening. And it kept getting worse. A wound along his ribs that looked, under the antiseptic light of your bathroom, unmistakably like it had come from something with claws. A dislocated shoulder he tried to walk off. One night he showed up so pale you nearly called an ambulance before he begged you not to, said it would cause more problems than it solved, wouldn't explain what that meant, just sat on your bathroom floor sweating through his shirt while you set his shoulder back into socket with hands that were shaking worse than his.
"Bike accident," he said afterward, staring at the ceiling, breathing hard.
"Peter." You sat down across from him, worn through. "I'm not going to ask you to tell me something you're not ready to tell me. I've never once made you do that. But I need you to stop pretending you're not hurt. Just — stop doing that part. You don't have to give me the truth. Just don't hand me a lie and expect me not to notice."
Something in his face cracked open, fast and total, like you'd hit a nerve you didn't know was exposed. He didn't say anything for a long moment. When he did, his voice wasn't steady.
"You used to say that to me," he said. "Almost — almost exactly that. Word for word."
"When?"
He looked at you like the question cost him something enormous. "A long time ago."
You noticed, some weeks into all of it, that he got a specific look sometimes — jaw tight, two fingers pressed hard into his temple, gone still in a way that had nothing to do with the injury you were currently working on. You asked if he was okay. He said it was just a headache, said it like it happened often, said it like it wasn't worth the conversation. You let it go, filed it next to your own, and didn't think about how strange it was that you'd both apparently been carrying the same unexplained ache for years, on opposite sides of a door neither of you knew was locked.
You let it go, because you always let things go with him, and because some instinct you didn't have language for told you that this was a door he'd close the second you pushed on it. You didn't know yet that you'd spent years learning exactly how far you could push Peter Parker before he ran. You'd relearn it from scratch, slow, the way you'd once learned it the first time.
It stopped being just checking on him and started being something with your hands in it. Tilting his chin to check his pupils after a bad night, thumb along his jaw, close enough to feel his breath change. Him falling asleep sitting up while you changed a bandage, head tipping slow onto your shoulder, and you let it stay there instead of waking him. You started noticing the shape of his mouth when he was trying not to smile at something you'd said. He started noticing everything about you, though he'd been noticing everything about you for four years and simply never had anywhere to put it.
You heard him for the first time on a Wednesday, sitting beside him on your couch while you highlighted a pharm textbook and he scrolled his phone in silence.
She still bites the inside of her cheek when she's stressed.
You looked up. He hadn't said anything. His mouth was closed, eyes on his phone, but the thought had landed in your head with a weight and a texture that didn't belong to your own internal voice — clearer, warmer, unmistakably his.
"What?" you said.
Peter looked over, startled. "I didn't say anything."
"You—" You stopped, because there was nothing to finish the sentence with. You must have imagined it. Overtired, underslept, three cups of coffee deep. You went back to your highlighter and didn't mention it again, though your hand had gone to your jaw without meaning to, checking — and you realized, distantly, unsettlingly, that you had in fact been biting the inside of your cheek.
It kept happening after that, in small, deniable ways. A wash of someone else's grief when you brushed hands with a stranger on the subway, so total it left you gripping the pole to stay upright. A headache that arrived, sharp and specific, every single time Peter walked into a room — not before, not after, only when he was close enough to touch. You started to wonder, quietly, privately, if something in your brain was coming loose.
You went to his apartment on a night he'd taken the worst hit yet — something about his ribs that made you genuinely afraid to move him, so instead of dragging him upstairs you knelt on his floor and worked with what he had, and while you were digging through his bathroom cabinet for gauze you didn't find, you found a shoebox instead, half open on a shelf, spilling a thin silver bracelet out onto the wood.
You picked it up without deciding to. Small chain, a crooked little spider charm hanging off one link, cheap in the specific way of something bought by a teenager with a teenager's budget. The second the metal touched your palm, the pressure behind your right eye detonated into something total, a white flash and then — hands. Someone's hands, younger, clumsy, fastening a clasp around a thinner wrist than the one you had now. Laughter, yours, high and unguarded in a way you hadn't heard your own voice sound in years. Gone, before you could hold onto any of it, the door slamming shut again the same seamless way it always had, leaving you on your knees on a stranger's bathroom floor with your heart going too fast and no idea why.
"Hey." Peter's voice, close, worried, from the doorway where he'd dragged himself to check on you. "Hey, are you okay—"
"Where did you get this?" Your voice didn't sound like yours.
He looked at the bracelet in your hand and something in his face went through about four different kinds of devastated before it settled on careful. "You gave it to me."
"I don't even know you." It came out sharper than you meant it to, panic dressed as anger. "I've known you for eight months, Peter. I would remember giving you jewelry."
"I know," he said, quiet. "I know you would. That's — that's kind of the problem."
You didn't understand him. You didn't push, because pushing had never once worked on him, but you left that night with the bracelet still clutched in your fist without either of you commenting on it, and you didn't sleep, and every time you closed your eyes you heard your own laugh in a voice that felt older than you and younger than you at the same time.
You started noticing everything after that, the way you notice a single loose thread and can't stop pulling at the sweater it's attached to. The way Peter flinched, minutely, every time you called something "stupid" the way you apparently used to. The way he knew you took your coffee with too much sugar before you'd ever told him. The way he sometimes looked at you like he was checking you were still there, a full-body kind of relief that made no sense for someone who saw you nearly every day.
"Have we met before?" you asked him one night, point blank, no runway. "Before the stairs. Before any of this."
He didn't lie to you, not outright. That was almost worse. "Yes."
"How long have you known me?"
He was quiet long enough that you felt the answer before you heard it, some old animal part of you bracing.
"A long time," he said finally. "Longer than you'd believe."
"Peter."
"I can't," he said, and his voice broke on it, actually broke, and you'd never heard him sound like that, not even bleeding on your bathroom floor. "Not because I don't want to tell you. Because I don't think you'd survive it the way I'd be telling it. I need — I need to figure out how to do this right."
You left angry that night, angrier than you'd been in longer than you could remember, and you didn't talk for eleven days. You counted them. You told yourself you weren't counting them and counted them anyway.
The call came at three in the morning from a number you didn't recognize, a stranger telling you there was a man down on the corner of your block, that he'd asked them, barely conscious, to get you, only you, described your apartment number before he passed out. You ran four blocks in scrub pants and no coat and found him in the mouth of an alley in a suit you'd never seen — red and blue, torn open across one side, mask half pulled from his face — and every single injury you'd patched over the last eight months rearranged itself in your head into a shape that finally, sickeningly, made sense.
"You're—" You were on your knees beside him, hands already moving, already doing the only thing you knew how to do with the terror that had swallowed you whole. "You're Spider-Man. You've been — this whole time, every bruise, every — Peter, oh my god—"
"'M sorry," he slurred, eyes not quite focusing. "Didn' want you t' know like this."
"Shut up. Stay awake. Look at me—" Your hands found the worst of the wound, pressing hard, and under your palms you felt something that had nothing to do with anatomy — his pulse, but also something under the pulse, some current that reached for you the second you touched him, raw and unguarded because he was too far gone to keep his walls up. Fragments came through, not words, just weight: don't leave, don't let this be it, not before she knows, she has to know—
Something in your chest answered without your permission. You felt it happen — a kind of pressure building behind your sternum and pouring outward, instinctive, ancient, like a muscle you didn't know you had flexing for the first time in years. It wrapped around him. You couldn't have described it if someone had asked. It felt like your own hands, except bigger than your hands, holding the frayed edges of him together while his mind slipped.
And then you weren't in the alley anymore.
You were sixteen, in a lab bay that smelled like antiseptic and burnt solder, watching a scrawny kid with a split lip laugh so hard at something you'd said that he nearly fell off the exam table. You were sixteen and seventeen and looking at that same boy on a rooftop with his mask pushed up to his hairline, both of you too nervous to move first, and then moving first anyway. You were the one who put the spider charm on his wrist because he'd said, quiet, almost embarrassed, that he liked knowing something of yours was always with him, and you'd laughed and said that was the single dorkiest thing you'd ever heard and done it anyway. You were sixteen in a stairwell with an alarm going off somewhere above you, Peter thrown sideways into a wall by something you never saw clearly, blood at his temple, and you remembered — really remembered, whole and total — the exact moment something tore open inside your own chest and threw itself between him and whatever was coming, a shield made of nothing but sheer refusal, the first time you understood your body could do something like that at all. You saw every year after. Fights. Reconciliations. An apartment with two toothbrushes. His hand in yours at a funeral neither of you had the strength to stand through alone. You felt him loving you in a hundred ordinary ways you'd never gotten the chance to remember losing. And then — the spell. A gold light and Peter's face wrecked with a decision he was making for both of you, and the last thing that reached you before the door slammed down for a second time was Peter, four years later, standing outside your building in the rain with his hand raised to knock, and lowering it again, and walking away, because he'd promised himself he wouldn't make you carry something you never agreed to carry. Dozens of nights like that one. Dozens of times he chose your ignorance over his own loneliness because he thought it was the kinder thing.
You came back into your own body on your knees on concrete with his blood on your hands and his heartbeat, faint but steady, under your palms, and you were sobbing before you'd even fully surfaced — the kind of crying that comes from somewhere with no name, heaving, your whole body shaking with it, four years of unexplained grief finally handed a face and a name and a decade of history to go with it.
"You're alive," you managed, barely, "you're alive, you're alive, don't you dare—"
His eyes found yours, glassy, barely there. "You remember."
"I remember everything." Your voice broke apart completely. "I remember you."
He was in your care for two days before he could stand without your hands under his arms, and you didn't leave, and you didn't talk about it until he could, because some habits — apparently — went back further than either of you had access to.
When he finally could, sitting up against your headboard with color back in his face, you sat across from him with your knees pulled to your chest and asked him the only question that mattered.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I already took one thing from you," he said, and his voice was raw in a way that told you he'd rehearsed this a thousand times and it still wasn't enough. "The spell — that was my choice. I asked for it. May was already gone by then, and I was about to lose everyone else too, so I asked for it, and it worked, and it took you and Ned and MJ and every stranger who ever knew my name, all in one go. I didn't ask you first. I didn't ask anyone first. I just took your whole memory of me because I thought it would keep you safer, and it did, probably, but I never got to find out what you would've chosen for yourself. I still watch MJ's posts sometimes, from an account she doesn't know is mine. I write Ned letters I never send. And then I found you again, living two floors up like the universe had a sense of humor, and I thought — if I tell her, I'm doing the exact same thing all over again. Deciding what you can handle instead of letting you decide it yourself."
"So instead you decided for me that I couldn't handle the truth," you said, and it came out sharper than you meant, four years of unexplained grief finding somewhere to land. "You decided I couldn't handle missing you, so you let me miss you anyway, just without a name for it. Do you have any idea what that did to me? I thought I was losing my mind, Peter. I kept a stranger's sweater for four years because some part of me knew, and I never got to ask it anything."
"I know." He didn't defend himself. "I know, and I'm sorry, and I don't have a version of this where I did it right. I just — I wanted you happy. That was the whole thing. That was always the whole thing."
"I don't need you deciding what my happy looks like." Your voice cracked. "I needed you to let me choose. That's all I ever needed from you, apparently, both times."
He was quiet for a long moment, and when he spoke again his voice had gone very small. "So what do you want now?"
You thought about it, actually thought about it, because you owed both of you that much honesty. "I don't want the years back. I can't have them back, and I don't think I'd know what to do with them if I could. I don't want you handing me the girl you lost like she's still in here somewhere waiting to take over." You pressed a hand, briefly, to your own chest. "I want to know you. Now. Whoever you turned into while I wasn't looking. I already know I loved you once. I'd like the chance to find out if I still do, as myself, not as some memory you've been keeping alive for four years by yourself."
Something in his face came apart, gentler this time, more relief than grief. "Yeah," he said, rough. "Yeah, okay. I can do that."
"Good," you said, and closed the distance between you before either of you could talk yourselves back into caution.
It wasn't the same as whatever you'd had before — you'd made sure of that, out loud, deliberately, because you'd meant what you said about not wanting to be handed someone else's memory of you. It was slower in some places and faster in others, careful in a way that first love rarely bothers to be, both of you relearning each other's hands like the shape was familiar and the details weren't. H
e asked before he did anything, every time, like the asking itself mattered more than the answer, and you understood, without either of you saying it, that this was its own kind of apology — the choosing, given back to you, over and over, until neither of you could tell the difference between tenderness and repair.
Somewhere in the middle of it you stopped being able to separate the ache from the relief, and you cried again, harder this time, and he stopped instantly, always, checking, and you pulled him back down every time and told him this was the good kind, the kind that meant something was finally being let back in instead of walled off. He held you like a held breath finally released.
You held him back the same way.
You woke before he did, gray early light through a window that still didn't have curtains, and found the sweater where you must have dropped it the night before, folded now — he must have done that at some point, in the dark, without waking you, the same careful hands that used to fix your collar in a life you didn't remember yet.
You knew exactly whose it was now. You picked it up, held it a moment, and folded it properly, corners squared, the way you'd apparently done a hundred times before in a decade you were only just getting back — and set it down next to the rest of his clothes, where it belonged, where it had always been trying to get back to.
