verdant

any and all pronouns | cabin 12 | certified silly little guy | blog run by a 19 y/o

[nugbrownies]

Just a boulder in a tiny floatie, no sweat.

[purplespiritimagines]

the mathematics of missing you - tim drake

request kungpaochicken15 how would the batfam react if they had a partner, but dies (up to your interpretation on how), and then, a person who comes to their earth looks like them (multiverse shenanigans) and they actually experienced the inverse (so like, their batfam partner dies in their world). like the vibe is angst and I will love you in every universe type thing. am I making sense??

content tim drake x gn!reader, multiverse!reader, hurt/comfort, angst, major character death, grief, traumatic loss, survivor's guilt, blood/injiry, graphic injury/blood descriptions, guns, you die in his arms, failed resusicitation (very hard word to spell), obsessive attempts to reverse death, self-blame, discussion of resurrection/cloning, sad pet grieving owner (sorry in advance)

word count 7.k

masterlist | tim masterlist

Tim had calculated the trajectory before the bullet left the chamber. He saw the assassin’s shoulder tense. He saw the subtle change in the angle of the weapon, the fractional adjustment made when the man realised that firing at Red Robin would accomplish nothing. Tim was already moving when the barrel swung away from him.

Toward you.

He knew the muzzle velocity of the modified round. He knew the distance between the gun and your body, the resistance of the reinforced fabric beneath your coat, the likelihood of internal ricochet depending on the point of entry. He knew that he was six feet away and accelerating, one hand reaching for your arm while the other released a birdarang with enough force to break the gunman’s wrist.

He knew everything.

He was still too late.

The birdarang struck the assassin’s hand at the same moment the gun fired. The man screamed. The weapon spun across the warehouse floor.

You staggered backwards.

For one terrible heartbeat, you only looked surprised.

Then blood began blooming through your shirt.

“No.”

The word left Tim before the rest of him understood what had happened. He caught you beneath the arms as your knees folded, lowering you to the concrete so quickly that one of his own knees cracked painfully against the floor.

The warehouse continued around him. Somewhere, Nightwing shouted. Somewhere else, metal groaned as the unstable dimensional generator in the centre of the room overloaded, spilling blue-white light across the rafters. Alarms wailed. The surviving smugglers fled or surrendered or disappeared into the chaos.

None of it mattered. There was only you.

Your eyes searched his mask as though you could see through it. Perhaps you could. You had always been infuriatingly good at seeing him, even when Tim had made an art form out of becoming invisible.

“Hey,” you whispered.

“Don’t talk.” Tim tore off one glove with his teeth. His fingers found the wound, then pressed down hard enough to make you cry out. “I’m sorry,” he said immediately, breathless and frantic. “I know. I know, but I have to stop the bleeding. The round entered beneath the ribs. It could have missed the major arteries. The angle was—”

“Tim.”

“It could have missed them,” he repeated.

Your hand rose toward his face. It trembled badly enough that you could not quite reach him.

Tim caught it and pressed your palm against his cheek.

“We need medical,” he snapped into the comms. “Now. I need an extraction route and a surgical team. Tell Leslie penetrating trauma, lower thoracic cavity, probable damage to the liver or spleen. We have less than—”

A sound escaped you.

Tim stopped.

He knew that sound. He had heard it from people dying in alleys and safe houses and emergency rooms. He had heard it through comms when he could not reach someone quickly enough. There were noises the body made when it began shutting down, tiny betrayals of flesh and blood that no amount of willpower could prevent.

“No,” Tim said again.

Your fingers curled weakly against his jaw.

The dimensional engine shrieked behind him. Light surged over your face, turning the blood at the corner of your mouth almost black.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

Your gaze had begun drifting.

He moved his face directly above yours, blocking out the fractured ceiling and the flickering machinery and the panic consuming the warehouse.

“Look at me. Stay awake.”

“I’m looking.”

“No, you’re not. Focus. Tell me what you see.”

“You.”

His throat tightened. “Good. Keep doing that.”

“You look scared.”

“I’m not.”

It was an obvious lie. You might have laughed on any other night.

Instead, you traced the edge of his domino mask with one blood-slick thumb. “Liar.”

“Save your oxygen.”

“Bossy.”

“You like that about me.”

“I love that about you.”

The word struck deeper than the bullet ever could.

Tim increased the pressure against your wound, but the blood kept coming. It moved between his fingers, warm and impossible, soaking his gloves and the sleeves of his uniform.

Nightwing landed beside him. Tim barely looked up.

“Ambulance is three minutes out,” Dick said.

“Too long.”

“B’s bringing the car around.”

“Still too long.”

Dick crouched, reaching for you.

Tim’s arm moved instinctively, pulling you closer. “Don’t.”

“Tim, I need to check—”

“I know where the wound is.”

“I know you do.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

Dick’s expression broke around the edges. That frightened Tim more than anything else.

He looked back at you. Your breathing had become shallow, every inhale catching before it could become complete.

“Stay with me,” he said.

The sentence sounded wrong in his mouth. Too simple. Too desperate. It was not an instruction supported by strategy or science. There was no plan behind it, no contingency hidden beneath the words.

It was only a plea.

“I’m trying,” you whispered.

“Try harder.”

Your mouth trembled into something that wanted to be a smile. “That’s not very motivational.”

“I’ll work on it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” you echoed.

“Yes,” Tim said it like a promise. He said it like tomorrow was a place he could drag you toward through sheer force. “We’ll go home. You’ll complain about the blood on the carpet even though it isn’t our carpet. I’ll tell you I’m perfectly capable of cleaning it. You’ll point out that last time I said that, we had to replace two floorboards.”

“You burned them.”

“It was a chemical reaction.”

“You burned them with chemicals.”

“The distinction matters.”

“Not to the landlord.”

Your eyes fluttered.

Tim squeezed your hand. “Stay awake.”

“Trying.”

“Miso will be waiting.”

At the mention of the cat, something soft and wounded passed over your face. “You have to feed her.”

“You’ll feed her.”

“Tim.”

“You will.”

“She hates it when you forget the wet food.”

“I don’t forget.”

“You forget.”

“I’ll set an alarm.”

“You already have twelve.”

“I’ll delete one.”

You let out a breath that might have been another laugh. It ended in a wet, painful cough.

Tim’s composure fractured.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

He did not know what he was asking you not to do. Cough. Bleed. Leave. Die. There were too many possibilities, and every one of them was unacceptable.

Your hand slipped from his cheek.

Tim caught it again before it could fall.

“Tell me something true,” you said.

It was an old game between you. He had begun it months into your relationship, during a night when he had come home shaking with exhaustion and unable to admit that he had been afraid. You had sat beside him on the kitchen floor and asked him to tell you something true. Not something useful. Not something that could be weaponised or catalogued. Just something real.

Tim had told you that the neighbour’s wind chimes annoyed him. You had told him that you had started leaving your favourite mug in his apartment on purpose.

Back and forth, until the truths became larger.

I missed you. I was scared. I think this is home.

Tim pressed his forehead against yours.

“You steal the blankets,” he said, voice shaking.

“You’re always cold.”

“You sing the wrong lyrics to every song.”

“They’re better.”

“You pretended not to understand chess for three months because you thought it made me happy to teach you.”

“It did.”

“You hate coffee, but you learned how to make mine.”

“Barely.”

“You put reminders in my phone to eat lunch.”

“You ignore them.”

“You adopted a cat without asking me.”

“We adopted her.”

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

The light behind them surged again.

Your pupils contracted.

Tim watched you understand. He watched the fear arrive, not for yourself, but for him.

“Oh,” you breathed.

“No.”

“Tim.”

“No. Tell me something true.”

“I love you.”

“Something else.”

“I love you.”

“Stop.”

“In every universe.”

Your voice was fading.

Tim shook his head violently. “No. Not in every universe. This one. You love me in this one, so you stay in this one.”

Your eyes shone. “I would find you.”

“You already did.”

“I’d find you again.”

“You don’t have to. You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

“Stay.”

“I’m trying.”

Your final breath left against his mouth. It was so quiet that Tim almost did not recognise it as the last one.

He waited for the next.

One second.

Two.

Three.

He shifted his fingers to your pulse. Nothing.

“No.”

He pressed harder, as if your heartbeat had merely hidden itself beneath his touch.

Nothing.

Tim tore away the lower half of his mask and sealed his mouth over yours. He breathed into your lungs, once, twice, before laying you flat and beginning compressions.

Dick said his name. Tim ignored him.

Thirty compressions. Two breaths. Check the airway. Repeat.

Your blood coated his hands.

Thirty compressions. Two breaths.

“Tim.”

He heard the Batmobile arrive. He heard Bruce running.

Thirty compressions. Two breaths.

Your ribs shifted beneath his palms. He adjusted the angle.

Thirty compressions.

Bruce’s hand closed around his shoulder. Tim shrugged him off.

“Move.”

“Tim.”

“I said move.”

“You need to stop.”

“No.”

“The medics are here.”

“Then tell them to do their jobs.”

“They can’t.”

“They haven’t assessed the damage.”

“They have.”

“They’ve been here for eleven seconds.”

“Tim.”

“I can keep the brain oxygenated until surgery.”

Bruce knelt across from him. There was blood on his gloves now, transferred from Tim’s shoulder.

“They’re gone.”

The warehouse disappeared. All Tim could see was Bruce’s face and the unbearable pity in it.

Tim swung at him.

It was not a good punch. There was no technique behind it. Bruce caught his wrist easily.

“Don’t say that,” Tim hissed.

Bruce did not let go.

“Don’t say that like it’s decided.”

Dick turned away.

Tim looked down at you. Your eyes were still open.

He reached out and closed them with shaking fingers.

Then he gathered you back into his arms. No one tried to stop him.

The dimensional generator collapsed behind them with a thunderous crack. A wave of energy passed through the warehouse, bright enough to bleach the world white.

For half a second, Tim thought he heard someone screaming his name.

Not from the warehouse.

From somewhere else.

Then the machine went dark.

Tim held you until your body became cold.

There were fourteen known methods of resurrection that had produced verifiable results.

Tim made a spreadsheet.

Lazarus Pits occupied the first row. He documented every recorded use, every psychological side effect, every instance of cellular degradation, madness, memory loss, aggression and spiritual displacement. He analysed the chemical composition of samples he had stolen years before. He ran predictive models using his own post-resurrection medical data and Jason’s.

Your name sat at the top of the file next to the word Subject.

He hated the phrasing. He did not change it.

The second row contained magic. Zatanna. Constantine. Raven. Doctor Fate. Various rituals from texts Bruce kept locked in the cave, including three he claimed had never worked and one he refused to discuss.

The third row contained temporal manipulation. The fourth contained cloning. The fifth involved an alien device currently stored in the Fortress of Solitude. The sixth involved the Speed Force. The seventh involved an experimental neural reconstruction programme once developed by the Justice League to preserve consciousness during deep-space missions. The eighth involved the dimensional generator.

Tim did not sleep for five days. On the sixth, Bruce shut down the Batcomputer remotely.

Tim bypassed the lockdown in fourteen minutes.

On the seventh, Dick came to the apartment.

Miso sat outside the bedroom door, crying.

Dick found Tim at the kitchen table, surrounded by notebooks, three disassembled drives and enough caffeine to hospitalise a normal person. Tim was wearing the same shirt he had worn beneath his uniform on the night you died.

There was blood beneath one cuff.

“Hey,” Dick said carefully.

Tim did not look up. “I found a way to stabilise the cellular decay associated with prolonged Pit exposure.”

Dick pulled out the chair across from him. “Okay.”

“If the primary complication is neurological, there are treatments. Jason’s aggression decreased over time. We could control the initial response with sedation.”

“Tim.”

“The League has a Pit in the Carpathians that hasn’t been used in at least eighteen months. The concentration should be high enough.”

“You know what you told me after Jason came back?”

Tim’s fingers stopped over the keyboard.

Dick continued before he could answer. “You said we didn’t know if the Pit brought Jason back or only changed what was already happening. You said we couldn’t treat it like a machine.”

“I was wrong.”

“Were you?”

“Yes.”

“Or do you need to be?”

Tim stared at the screen.

Subject. Status: deceased. Proposed intervention—

He closed the laptop.

Dick’s relief was immediate and therefore infuriating.

“That doesn’t mean I’m stopping.”

“I know.”

“I can solve this.”

“I know you think you can.”

“I have solved things that were statistically impossible.”

“I know.”

“I found Bruce when everyone else stopped looking.”

“I remember.”

“I brought him back.”

“You did.”

The anger drained out of Tim as quickly as it had arrived.

His hands began shaking against the table. “Why can’t I bring them back?”

Dick did not answer. There was no answer Tim would accept.

Miso cried outside the bedroom again.

Tim stood automatically.

The cat had been yours first, technically. You had found her beneath a dumpster during a thunderstorm, soaked through and furious at the indignity of being rescued. You had brought her to Tim’s apartment, wrapped in your coat and announced that you had made a small, temporary mistake.

The mistake had slept on Tim’s chest that night.

Now Miso spent most of her time sitting beside the front door. Waiting.

Tim opened the bedroom.

The cat hurried past him, jumped onto the mattress and approached your pillow. She sniffed it, circled twice and settled into the hollow that your head had once made.

Dick stood in the doorway behind him.

“She needs to eat,” he said softly.

“I fed her.”

“There’s old food in the bowl.”

“She doesn’t like that brand.”

“You bought the brand they always got.”

Tim looked toward the bag on the dresser.

He had. It was the same packaging. Same flavour. Same company.

But you had once mentioned that Miso preferred the tins from the smaller shop across town, even though the ingredients were identical. Tim had dismissed the idea as projection.

He put on his shoes.

Dick caught his arm. “I can get it.”

“No.”

“Tim, you haven’t slept.”

“She won’t eat unless it’s the right one.”

“I’ll go.”

“You won’t know which shelf.”

“Send me a picture.”

“I’m going.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

Tim did not have the energy to argue.

They walked twenty-three blocks because Tim could not bear sitting inside a vehicle.

When they returned, Miso ate.

Tim sat on the kitchen floor and watched every bite.

The first notebook began because Tim forgot the sound of your laugh.

Not completely. He remembered its general pitch. He remembered that you laughed louder when you were tired and sometimes covered your mouth when you thought you were being obnoxious. He remembered the shape of it.

But one morning, while brushing his teeth, he tried to replay the sound inside his head and could not make it clear.

The toothbrush fell from his hand.

He spent the next hour searching through every recording stored on his phone.

There were thousands of files. Videos you had sent him, voice messages, accidental recordings from patrol, fragments captured by security systems. He found your laugh in a video of Miso attacking the reflection from Tim’s watch.

The relief made him nauseous. He listened to it thirty-seven times.

Then he bought a notebook.

On the first page, he wrote: You laugh with your entire body when something genuinely surprises you.

He added the date of the video, the location, the precise circumstances and a written approximation of the sound. Beneath that, he documented the way you tended to snort when laughter caught you mid-breath.

The second entry concerned your hands. You have a scar across the index finger of your left hand from opening a tin when you were eleven.

The third, You say “interesting” when you mean “that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

The fourth, You pretend to be asleep when I come home late because you know I feel guilty for waking you, but you always move closer when I get into bed.

Tim wrote until his hand cramped.

He kept the notebook beside him at all times. When a memory surfaced, he captured it before it could disappear.

The exact expression you made when you tasted something too sour. The way you mispronounced the name of a Gotham street for two years because Tim had corrected you once, and you enjoyed irritating him. The ridiculous dancing you did when Miso accepted a new toy. The softness of your voice when you told him he did not have to earn rest.

Some memories were too large to fit neatly onto paper.

The night he told you he was Red Robin. The first time you stitched a wound in his side while berating him for trying to explain the procedure to you. The morning Tim realised he had begun thinking of every future plan in plural.

We could move. We should replace the couch. We might adopt another cat.

He wrote those memories anyway.

By the third month, he had filled six notebooks. By the sixth, there were fourteen.

Bruce found them during an emergency at the apartment. Tim had been injured on patrol and insisted someone retrieve a specific encrypted drive from beneath the bed.

Bruce found the drive. He also found the notebooks stacked beside it.

He did not mention them until Tim was conscious.

“You don’t have to catalogue them to make them real,” Bruce said.

Tim stared at the hospital ceiling. “Yes, I do.”

“You won’t forget them.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No.”

“Memory changes every time you access it. Details degrade. The emotional impression can remain while factual information becomes distorted.”

“Tim.”

“What if I forget their voice?”

“You have recordings.”

“What if the files corrupt?”

“We’ll make copies.”

“What if I forget what it felt like when they came into a room?”

Bruce was silent.

Tim turned his face away. “What if one day I can remember being happy, but I can’t remember why?”

Bruce remained beside the bed long after Tim pretended to fall asleep.

Nine months after your death, the dimensional signature returned.

Tim was in the cave when every monitor went white. The alarm sounded less than a second later.

A pulse of energy originated from the abandoned warehouse, matching the unique frequency generated on the night you died.

Tim was already on the motorcycle before Bruce finished telling him to wait.

He reached the warehouse in four minutes and seventeen seconds.

The building had remained sealed since the investigation. Dust coated the floor. Police tape sagged between rusted columns. The generator’s broken remains still occupied the centre of the room, half dismantled and entirely without power.

Blue light flickered above it.

Tim stopped.

The air opened. There was no other way to describe it. Space split vertically, as though someone had dragged a blade through the fabric of the world. Beyond the opening, Tim saw fragments of another warehouse, another Gotham, another night.

A figure stumbled through.

The breach snapped shut behind them.

Tim forgot how to breathe.

You stood twenty feet away.

Not a hologram. Not a clone. Not a hallucination.

You.

Your hair was slightly longer than it had been when you died. There was a pale scar along your jaw that did not belong to the face Tim had memorised. You wore a black coat over battered armour, and one hand gripped a collapsed bo staff so tightly that your knuckles had gone bloodless.

Tim knew that staff. He had designed it.

You looked up. The weapon fell from your hand.

“Tim?”

The way you said his name almost killed him.

Hope rose so violently inside his chest that it became pain. For one impossible moment, his mind discarded every contradiction. Every law of matter. Every month of grief.

You were here. You had come back.

Then he saw the coat.

It was his. Not the one currently folded in the cave. Another version, older and torn near the collar. The left sleeve had been repaired with uneven black stitches.

You stared at him as though he were the ghost.

“No,” you whispered.

Tim forced himself to move.

He drew his staff.

Your expression crumpled. “No, no, I’m sorry. I’m not— I didn’t know where the portal would take me.”

“Identify yourself.”

You flinched.

Tim hated himself for noticing that you flinched in the same way. Your shoulders drew inward before you caught them, an instinctive movement you had spent years trying to unlearn.

You gave him your name.

Tim’s grip tightened. “Earth designation?”

“I don’t know.”

“Method of travel?”

“Dimensional displacement device.”

“Built by whom?”

Your eyes moved over him. His mask. His chest. The staff in his hands.

“You.”

The answer hollowed him out.

Behind him, the others entered the warehouse.

Dick’s sharp inhale was audible through the comms. Bruce did not react visibly, but Tim saw the moment he understood.

The stranger wearing your face looked at all of them.

“Where are they?” you asked.

No one answered.

Your gaze returned to Tim. “Where is the version of me from this world?”

Tim could not make his mouth work.

Dick stepped forward. “They died.”

Your face went still. “When?”

“Nine months ago.”

The colour drained from your skin. “The generator?”

Tim nodded once.

You closed your eyes.

When you opened them again, you looked older.

“I’m sorry.”

Tim wanted to strike you. The impulse was sudden, irrational and vicious. He wanted to punish you for being alive. For standing in a place where he had held your corpse. For carrying your voice and your hands and your expressions while knowing nothing of the life he had lost.

He lowered the staff. “What happened to your Tim?”

Your breath caught.

You looked down at the coat around your body. “He died.”

The warehouse became silent.

“He pushed me through the portal before the generator collapsed,” you continued. “He thought it would stabilise if it only had to transport one person. He was wrong.”

Tim studied the stitching along your sleeve. “You repaired his coat.”

Your fingers closed around the torn fabric. “I couldn’t wash it for three months.”

Something in Tim’s chest shifted.

Not healed. Not softened.

Recognised.

They took you to the cave. Bruce ran every test available. DNA comparison. Bloodwork. Temporal radiation analysis. Cellular mapping. You submitted to each one with the numb patience of someone accustomed to letting grief make decisions on their behalf.

Tim watched through the glass.

Your DNA was almost identical. There were twelve minor variations, none significant enough to make you biologically distinct from the person Tim had loved.

You were not them. Tim repeated that fact whenever his mind began betraying him.

You were not the person who left tea beside his computer because they knew he would forget it was there until it went cold. You were not the person who kissed the space beside his mouth when he was too busy reading to turn his head. You were not the person whose blood had dried beneath his fingernails.

You looked toward the observation window. Even through the reflective glass, your eyes found exactly where Tim stood.

His stomach twisted.

“You should go home,” Dick said beside him.

Tim did not look away. “So should they.”

“The breach is unstable. We don’t know how to send them back yet.”

“I’ll fix it.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because you keep needing to hear it.”

Tim finally looked at him.

Dick’s gaze was tired but steady. “They’re not your version of them.”

“I know.”

“And you’re not their Tim.”

“I know.”

“Neither of you is going to behave like you know.”

Tim turned back toward the glass. Inside the med bay, you touched the sleeve of the coat again.

“I need to ask questions.”

“Technical ones?”

“All of them.”

Dick exhaled. “Try not to interrogate them about their dead boyfriend while they’re still attached to an IV.”

“They need to establish the divergence point.”

“They need a blanket.”

Tim left before Dick could say anything else.

He returned with a blanket.

The alternate version of you stayed in the manor for three days.

Tim avoided you for the first two. He observed instead.

You drank tea now, although his version of you had never liked it. You carried sugar in your pocket because your Tim had a habit of letting his blood glucose drop during cases. You checked every room twice before sleeping. You rubbed your thumb over the empty space on your fourth finger whenever you thought no one was watching.

There had been a ring.

Tim did not ask.

You did not know how to look at him. Every interaction became a collision of instinct and restraint. You would turn toward him when he entered a room, face briefly brightening before grief corrected you. Tim would hear your footsteps in the hall and expect the door to his bedroom to open without a knock.

It never did.

On the third night, Tim returned to the apartment.

Miso met him at the door, scolding him for being six minutes late with dinner. He fed her, changed her water and cleaned the litter tray. He opened his laptop. He read the same line of code seventeen times.

At eleven forty-three, someone knocked.

Miso’s head snapped toward the door.

Tim did not move.

The knock came again.

He already knew.

When he opened the door, you stood in the hallway wearing his dead counterpart’s coat.

“Bruce said you had some of the generator schematics here.”

“He shouldn’t have told you where I live.”

“He didn’t. Your address was saved in my Tim’s files.”

Tim stared at you.

You winced.

“Not this address. The version of it on my Earth. I took a chance.”

“You walked across Gotham alone.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“My version of you said the same thing.”

“And you hated it when they did.”

“Yes.”

“My Tim did too.”

For several seconds, neither of you moved.

Then Miso appeared between Tim’s ankles.

The cat looked up at you.

Your face collapsed.

“Oh,” you whispered.

Miso sniffed the air.

Tim watched her approach slowly, tail low. She circled your boots once. Twice.

Then she rose onto her hind legs and pressed both paws against your shin.

You dropped to your knees.

Miso climbed into your arms as if she had been waiting for you.

A sound tore out of you. You buried your face in the cat’s fur, shoulders shaking. Miso purred loudly and pushed her head beneath your chin.

Tim gripped the doorframe.

“Is she—” Your voice broke. “Is she called Miso here?”

“Yes.”

A sob escaped you, followed by something like a laugh. “Ours was called Pixel.”

Tim almost smiled. “Why?”

“My Tim said naming a black cat Schrödinger was statistically predictable.”

“He was right.”

“So I named her Pixel to annoy him.”

“That would have worked.”

“It did.”

Miso licked your jaw.

You shut your eyes.

“She waited by the door for him,” you said. “For months. I kept trying to explain that he wasn’t coming home, like she could understand me.”

Tim’s fingers tightened around the wood. “Miso did that for them.”

You looked up. The sight of your tear-streaked face struck every wounded part of him at once.

“Can I come in?” you asked.

Tim stepped aside.

You sat on the floor because Miso refused to leave your lap. Tim took the armchair opposite you.

For a while, the cat was the only thing either of you could safely discuss.

Pixel had been missing part of one ear. Miso hated closed doors. Pixel stole socks. Miso had learned to open cupboards. Both cats had developed a habit of sleeping on Tim’s chest and biting him when he moved.

Eventually, the conversation ran out.

Your gaze travelled toward the bookshelves. The notebooks occupied the third shelf. You recognised the handwriting on their spines.

“What are those?”

Tim’s first instinct was to lie. He had become rusty at lying to your face.

“Memories.”

You looked at him. “Of them?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-one.”

Your lips parted.

Tim looked down at his hands. “I started forgetting things.”

“Tim.”

“The neural pathways remain, but details become less accessible over time. I needed an external record.”

You shifted Miso carefully and reached toward the shelf.

Then you stopped. “May I?”

Tim wanted to say no. He nodded.

You took the first notebook. Your fingers trembled as you opened it.

You laugh with your entire body when something genuinely surprises you.

You read in silence. Tim watched your eyes move down the page. He knew every entry contained in that book, every insignificant fragment he had salvaged and pinned to paper.

You turn the shower too hot and then complain that the mirror is fogged. You never remember where you left your keys, but you remember where I leave everything. You use my shirts as pyjamas and insist they simply migrated into your wardrobe.

When you reached the final page, you pressed your hand over your mouth.

“He did this too,” you whispered.

Tim’s body went rigid.

You looked toward him. “My Tim. He wrote things down.”

“About you?”

“Everything. The first notebook started when I was injured during a mission. He said he wanted a record in case the concussion affected my memory.”

“That sounds like an excuse.”

“It was.”

“What did he write?”

You laughed wetly. “That I always checked whether he had eaten before asking how the mission went. That I couldn’t whistle. That I said his name differently when I was angry.”

Tim knew exactly what you meant.

You closed the notebook. “He made recordings, too. Backups of backups. He said memory was unreliable.”

“It is.”

“I told him love wasn’t.”

Tim looked away.

Miso jumped from your lap and crossed the room. She climbed onto Tim without invitation, kneading his thigh before curling into a tight circle.

You watched her settle.

“How did they die?” you asked. Tim’s hand stopped above Miso’s fur. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“The generator was being sold to a weapons network. We intercepted the exchange. One of the smugglers fired at me.”

You understood before he finished.

“They got between you.”

“I should have seen the change in target sooner.”

“No.”

“I had enough time.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“You weren’t there.”

“I was.”

Tim looked at you sharply.

Your face had gone pale.

“Different warehouse,” you said. “Different weapon. Same decision.”

The coat hung around your body like a shadow.

“The generator destabilised. We knew there would only be enough power to open the breach once. Ti– He calculated that the field would collapse if it tried transporting both of us.”

“You could have overridden him.”

“I tried.”

“He would have anticipated that.”

“He did.” A bitter smile touched your mouth. “He kissed me to distract me.”

Tim’s chest ached. “That wouldn’t work.”

“It did for approximately two seconds.”

“Then he needed a better plan.”

“He used the two seconds to lock the controls.”

Tim imagined himself doing it. The calculation. The necessary deception. The certainty that saving you mattered more than surviving beside you.

He hated his counterpart for leaving you. He understood him perfectly.

“What were his last words?” Tim asked.

Your eyes filled. “Tell me something true.”

The room tilted.

Tim stopped breathing. “What?”

“It was something we did. When things were bad, or when he couldn’t say what he was feeling, one of us would ask the other to tell us something true.”

Miso lifted her head as Tim’s body went completely still.

Your expression shifted. “What is it?”

Tim stood so abruptly that Miso leapt from his lap.

The notebook fell from your hands.

“Tim?”

He backed away.

His shoulder struck the wall.

You rose slowly, palms visible. “I’m not going to touch you.”

“They said that.”

“What?”

“The same thing.”

Your face drained of colour.

“Tell me something true,” Tim said. “They said it while they were dying.”

You stared at him.

Tim’s breath came too quickly. “I told them they stole the blankets. They told me they loved me. I kept asking for something else because I thought if they were talking, they were still alive.”

“Tim.”

“They said they loved me in every universe.”

Your hand rose to your mouth.

Tim had spent nine months refusing to break. He had cried, technically. His body had produced tears during the funeral and twice while listening to your voice recordings. Those had been biological reactions, brief failures in containment that he had corrected.

This was different.

The first sob hit him so violently that he folded around it. His knees struck the floor.

You moved forward before stopping yourself.

Tim pressed both hands against his face, but the sound kept escaping between his fingers, raw and humiliating and impossibly loud. Everything he had contained since the warehouse tore loose at once.

The warmth of your blood. The silence between your final breath and the one that never came. Miso waiting beside the door. Twenty-one notebooks filled with evidence that you had once existed. All the resurrection methods he had rejected because each one might bring back something wearing your face but not carrying your soul. And now there was something wearing your face, kneeling six feet away, carrying the grief of another Tim.

“I couldn’t save them,” he gasped.

You sank to the floor. “I know.”

“I tried everything.”

“I know.”

“I thought about the Pit.”

Your face twisted with understanding rather than judgement.

“I thought about going back in time. I thought about making a clone and transferring the neural pathways from archived recordings. I thought about rebuilding the generator and searching every universe until I found one where they were alive.”

“You might have.”

“It wouldn’t be them.”

“No.”

“I knew that.”

“I know.”

“I still wanted to.”

“I know.”

Tim dragged in a broken breath. 

You were crying too. “I hated him for saving me,” you confessed. “For months, I hated him. I thought he’d made the choice because he believed he could decide whose life mattered more.”

“He did.”

“Yes.”

“He decided yours did.”

“And your version of me decided yours did.”

Tim lowered his hands.

He looked at you fully. Not at your face. Not at the familiar line of your mouth or the eyes that had appeared in every dream he had allowed himself to have.

At you. A person from another universe who had lost someone with his hands, his voice, his tendency to turn love into strategy because strategy was the only language he trusted not to fail him.

“What did you tell him?” Tim whispered. “When he asked for something true?”

“I told him that I loved him in every universe.”

Something inside Tim finally shattered.

You crossed the distance.

He should have stopped you. He did not.

Your arms wrapped around him, and Tim broke against the shoulder of the person he had lost.

But you did not hold him exactly as they had. Your hand settled differently against his back. Your breathing had another rhythm. The scar along your jaw scraped faintly against his temple.

The differences hurt. The differences saved him.

You were not his. He was not yours. For one moment, neither of you needed the other to be.

Tim clutched the back of the coat that belonged to another version of himself. You gripped his uniform as though your hands remembered a body shaped like his.

“I’m sorry,” you sobbed.

“So am I.”

“I miss him.”

“I miss them.”

“I know.”

“I know.”

Miso pressed herself against both of you, purring with the determined ferocity of a creature that did not understand universes but understood loneliness.

Tim cried until there was nothing left in him but exhaustion.

You stayed on the floor beside him.

The breach could be reopened.

It took Tim eleven days to solve the stabilisation problem. He worked with you rather than around you. Your Tim’s notes filled the gaps in his calculations, the handwriting nearly identical but the methodology altered by years of different experiences.

It was unsettling. It was also the closest either of you would come to speaking with the dead.

The portal would remain open for sixty-three seconds.

Enough time for you to return. Not enough time for anything else to cross.

On the final evening, you sat with Tim on the roof of the manor. Gotham stretched beneath you, glittering and bruised.

You gave him a small data drive.

“What’s this?”

“His files.”

Tim’s fingers closed around it. “You shouldn’t give me these.”

“They’re copies.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“I know.”

He turned the drive over in his palm.

“There are videos,” you said. “Voice recordings. Case notes. Most of it won’t be useful to you.”

“It might be.”

“I thought you’d want to hear him.” Tim looked at you.

“Would you want to hear them?”

Your eyes drifted toward the city. “No.”

The honesty settled quietly between you.

Tim slipped the drive into his pocket. “I might never open it.”

“I know.”

He handed you a notebook.

It was new, its pages mostly empty. Only the first few had been filled.

You opened it.

The first line read, Your Tim loved you enough to choose a universe without himself in it.

Beneath it, Tim had written every detail you had shared about his counterpart.

He made tea and forgot to drink it. He tapped his fingers in prime-number sequences when anxious. He slept better when you were touching him, although he denied this despite overwhelming evidence. He loved you.

Your eyes blurred.

“I thought you should have a record,” Tim said.

You closed the notebook against your chest. “Thank you.”

The portal opened at midnight. Blue light filled the warehouse again.

You stood before it wearing the repaired black coat, the notebook secured beneath one arm.

Miso had been left at the apartment. Tim had not trusted himself to watch her say goodbye. Bruce and Dick waited near the controls.

The breach stabilised. Through it, another Gotham waited.

You turned toward Tim.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. Then you reached forward and adjusted the edge of his cape.

The gesture was familiar. The hesitation before it was not.

“They loved you,” you said.

Tim swallowed. “He loved you, too.”

“Do you think they knew?”

“That we’d meet?”

“That somewhere, this was happening.”

Tim looked into the portal. “I don’t know.”

You smiled sadly. “That’s unusually unscientific of you.”

“I’m working with insufficient data.”

“Liar.”

His breath caught.

You seemed to realise what you had said. Pain moved across your face.

Tim let it pass through him.

Then, for the first time, he allowed the memory to be gentle.

“Tell me something true,” you whispered.

Tim looked at you.

He considered a thousand possible answers. The universe was vast. Death was not a problem he could solve. Memory degraded. Grief changed shape but never completely disappeared.

Love, however, had repeated itself across realities with statistically impossible precision.

“They found me,” Tim said.

Your eyes shone. “Yes.”

“And he found you.”

“Yes.”

Tim stepped forward and embraced you.

Not as the person he had lost.

As the person who had survived losing him.

You held him tightly.

“I hope there’s a universe where they both lived,” you murmured against his shoulder.

“There is.”

“You can’t know that.”

“There are infinite variations.”

“That’s not proof.”

“No.” Tim closed his eyes. “But I have enough evidence.”

You pulled away. The portal began to flicker.

“Goodbye, Tim.”

“Goodbye.”

You stepped backward into the light.

Just before the breach closed, you smiled at him.

It was not their smile.

It was yours.

Then you were gone.

Tim returned to the apartment alone.

Miso met him in the hallway. She sniffed his clothes, searching for the other version of you, before making an offended sound and trotting toward the bedroom.

Tim followed. He changed into an old shirt and climbed into bed. Miso settled against his ribs, warm and heavy.

The twenty-first notebook waited on the bedside table.

Tim opened it.

For nine months, every entry had begun in the present tense.

You laugh. You sing. You steal the blankets.

He turned to a clean page. For a long time, his pen hovered over the paper.

Then he began to write.

You loved me.

The past tense hurt. It did not erase you.

Tim continued.

You loved me in this universe. Somewhere else, I loved you too.

He closed the notebook.

Miso climbed higher onto his chest. Tim rested one hand against her back and felt the small, certain rhythm of her heart beneath his palm.

He would always know how yours had stopped. He would also remember how it had beaten. The rapid flutter when he surprised you with a kiss. The slow rhythm beneath his ear on quiet mornings. The way it raced when he came home injured and pretended he was fine.

Tim had spent months trying to preserve every part of you because he believed forgetting even one detail would mean losing you again.

Now he understood that grief was not a second death. It was evidence of the first life.

The notebooks remained on the shelf. The resurrection files remained encrypted. The data drive from another universe stayed unopened inside the safe.

Tim slept.

In another world, beneath another Gotham sky, you opened the notebook he had given you.

Two people who should never have met carried memories of loves that should never have ended. And somewhere beyond calculation, beyond proof, beyond the cold boundaries of space and time, there was a universe where the warehouse remained quiet.

The gun never fired. The generator did not collapse. You went home together. Miso complained until one of you fed her. Tim worked too late. You stole the blankets. He pretended to be annoyed when you kissed his shoulder and told him to sleep.

In that universe, as in every other, he loved you. In this one, he had simply been given less time.

[jazzy-officia1]

PROPAGANDA PROPAGANDA

WIN THE RACE, VOTE GRACE

[wholesome-supervillain-reblogs]

ryland grace propaganda (go vote for him)

he called the leading scholar in his field a "staggering waste of carbon" at a unesco conference

he regularly partakes in autocannibalism. HE CALLS IT MEBURGERS.

he's aroace

he throws up almost as much as he cries

he wrote a dissertation with a section titled "the goldilocks zone is for idiots" and basically chewed out everyone who disagreed with him

he's shipped with basically everyone who's ever been to space

he puts the not in astronaut

he gets sick on the elevator

he has a codependent relationship with a crab

he wears a suit jacket and tie with blue jeans

he likes foxes

he's the cool teacher at his middle school

he teaches alien children science in their language using a modified pipe organ

his name is grace and the hail mary is full of him

his glasses are repelled from his face

he saved two planets WHILE being a bit of a bitch about it

he has a very corny sense of humor

he likes skittles

you like old men? BAM old grace old grace old grace old grace old grace old grace

he has hella burn scars

he has chronic pain

he canonically uses mobility aids

he lives in a terrarium. he likes his terrarium.

ohhh but ryan gosling is too conventionally attractiv-

WRONG. you are judging by the actor's looks. judge instead by the character's swagless aura and wet cat rizz.

[shanestyreshop]

Ryland grace propoganda time

“Oh but voting for ryland grace isn’t fun, cause ryland gosling-“

WRONG.

get that idea OUT. Ryan Gosling is a conventionally attractive actor. Ryland Grace is a nerdy stubborn fuckin little guy who formed a codependent relationship with a rock spider and is so dumb when it comes to relationships he went out for platonic dinner with his ex’s friend every weekend for years.

this man is not some blonde hunk from the front of a Calvin Klein advert. This is an awkward middle school teacher. He is a loser and i have a list on why.

Unironically said “whomp, there it is” while giving an impromptu lecture to the entire world’s leading scientists

his immediate reaction to seeing an alien was to dance horribly and see if it mimicked him

is aroace

if you don’t want him to be aroace there’s also markiplier

Or Stratt or carl or rocky or rocky and Adrian or mark fucking watney (it’s everybody)

There are currently 455 fics under the tag “ryland grace is a wet cat”

called a tube of gravy “better than sex”

named the medical robot Armando and thanks it

made rocky a paper hat for the top of his xenonite ball that said “savior of the world” and drew rocky lab goggles on his tunnel

wears shitty science pun shirts

wears his glasses so wrong it’s hard to believe they’re intact

Brought back hopecore and space and good movies all in one character

he is a loveable loser and deserves to win this.

Make the right choice!

VOTE GRACE!

[theflying-pink]

Your camera roll if you were dating Ryland Grace !

inspired by the Picture Perfect series by @gothamorphosis, check it out!

[wolfythewitch]

I lied I colored it. I think i made janine too short sorry HSSJSVSKD I was working off memory

[fluentmoviequoter]

the invite

Tim Drake x fem!reader SMAU filled with batboy shenanigans, nonsense, and fluff!

part of fmq batboy summer '26

Masterlist | DC Masterlist | Request Info | Taglist Sign-Up

yourusername

liked by dickgrayson, haljordan, and 6,005 others

yourusername coast city chronicles☀️💚

dickgrayson replied: thanks for the invite...

-> haljordan: I got invited :)

-> dickgrayson: I'm telling Barry you're bullying me

-> haljordan: I'm sorry

-> yourusername: this is more entertaining than the air show

jasonnottodd replied: tim's looking at this post like you died at war

-> yourusername: yet he never replies. sigh.

-> dickgrayson: repeat after me - he's pathetic.

-> yourusername: but he's my baby

-> jasonnottodd: ew

dickgrayson

liked by brucewayneofficial, yourusername, and 13,295 others

dickgrayson "I know a place," Bruce said. "It'll be fun," Bruce said. Bruce didn't say there was only two bedrooms and we'd be the only people on the island.

brucewayneofficial replied: You all looked pretty content to me. And you used the picture, chum. Glad you came.

-> gothamfan019: somebody sedate me

-> batmannrobin: ugh I love the waynes they need a reality show PRONTO

yourusername replied: LOOK AT MY BABY

-> dickgrayson: I'm cute, right?

-> yourusername: oh, now that you say it I see you back there

-> dukethomas: why am I the only one that sleeps in a normal position?

-> dickgrayson: @/dukethomas Dami said the 'mastah chief death pose' is quite comfortable and doesn't put too much pressure on his lumbar

-> yourusername: I'm stealing Damian

-> dickgrayson: @/yourusername you'd be doing us all a favor but heads up revoke his internet access. that al ghul accent and meme references just don't go together

yourusername added to their story

caption: if @/timdrake asks to take your picture today, say yes

jasonnottodd replied: He asks civilians for consent but breaks into my house. Double standard.

yourusername: [1 image attached]

yourusername: Why am I the topic of a murder board in your apartment?

timdrake: why you in my apartment?

yourusername: bc you asked me to water your plants

yourusername: before you abandoned me

yourusername: you left so easily

timdrake: oh right

timdrake: I named the petunias petunia :)

yourusername: tim...

yourusername: you don't have petunias

timdrake: not with that attitude I don't

yourusername: and the murder board?

timdrake: just needed to remember some things

yourusername: mmkay🤨

yourusername: WHY ARE THERE X-RAYS

yourusername: WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE

timdrake: brb

yourusername: YOU CAN'T BRB ME TIM

yourusername: is that a diagram of my scars? i genuinely don't know if i should be touched or terrified

timdrake

liked by dickgrayson, jasonnottodd, brucewayneofficial, and 800,000 others

timdrake wish @/yourusername was here

gothamuorbust replied: whoa whoa whoa

batmanstallestfan replied: IS THIS A BREAKUP POST

-> absolutegotham: my screen's blurry

-> rainbowlantern: noooo my parents😭

jasonnottodd: Why isn't she?

dickgrayson replied: 800k likes? more than me??

-> jasonnottodd: get a girlfriend everyone loves and then make a cryptic post

-> dickgrayson: on it

yourusername added to their close friends story

caption: me opening my notifs to see everyone in gotham tagging me bc apparently tim dumped me?????

stephbrown replied: cass and I made popcorn to read through the trending tag if you want to come over

-> yourusername: trending?

-> stephbrown: oh yeah. the masses are mourning

timdrake replied: it's your fault for not coming to the beach with me :(

-> yourusername: tim

-> yourusername: timmy

-> yourusername: timothy

-> yourusername: you didn't invite me

-> timdrake: I did

-> timdrake: I did not

-> timdrake: the email didn't send

-> yourusername: you were going to ask via email?

-> timdrake: it had an itinerary

yourusername

liked by timdrake, jasonnottodd, dickgrayson, and 1,001,013 others

yourusername these are the kinds of things you get when you date a wayne. stop romanticizing it.

battygotham replied: this doesn't seem like a bad thing

iheartthewaynes replied: I feel like I know who sent each one

-> yourusername: I bet you'd be wrong

-> iheartthewaynes: last one was Dick, right?

-> yourusername: no😭 it was Jason

-> jasonnottodd: et tu, brute?

-> dickgrayson: you're the only one that uses barbie reaction pics

-> jasonnottodd: barbie media is unmatched in style and content

-> iheartthewaynes: you were right @/yourusername I admit defeat

timdrake replied: you text other waynes?

-> yourusername: don't start

-> stephbrown: annnnnd you're trending again

-> yourusername: @/timdrake this is why aliens would not find you attractive

-> timdrake: but do you??

timdrake added to their story

caption: in response to the slanderous text she shared

yourusername replied: dang. i'm 'she' now

jasonnottodd replied: Hal will move in on her given thirty seconds. Tread lightly.

-> timdrake: I have too much blackmail for him to try

gothamupdates shared a poll

Do you think Tim Drake is single now? vote yes or no

jasonnottodd replied: unfortunately for her, he is not

gothamuorbust replied: we need proof of life from my otp

-> dickgrayson: she posts all the time dude?

-> gothamuorbust: not both of them

yourusername replied: he's stuck with me

-> brucewayneofficial: thank you

-> yourusername: como se huh??

-> brucewayneofficial: you're the only reason any of us are sane

-> yourusername: oh hi dami

-> stephbrown: hey damian

-> dickgrayson: hi dami

-> jasonnnottodd: demon spawn

-> timdrake: for once I agree with the small one

-> jasonnottodd: you're small too?

-> gothamsmediocrest: i need popcorn for this

-> stephbrown: you get me!!!!

brucewayneofficial: Come to the manor tonight.

brucewayneofficial: We're having dinner and planning the next vacation.

yourusername: Was that a question?

brucewayneofficial: Not exactly. We can reschedule if tonight is inconvenient.

yourusername: No, it's fine. I'll be there.

timdrake: date night?

yourusername: dinner at the manor

timdrake: how do you know about that

yourusername: Bruce told me to come

timdrake:

yourusername: he wants to plan a vacation

yourusername: and invite me I assume

yourusername: since you can't be trusted to

timdrake: i'm sorry

yourusername: kiss me and I'll accept it

timdrake: be there in 3

yourusername: you mean 30?

timdrake: I do not

timdrake: open the window

[punkrorschach]

the legally blonde mentality isnt just for law students. u can bring that attitude with you into every field of work. be the whimsical force of positive change. wear that neon outfit. snaps for us all.

[punkrorschach]

this post was inspired by my boss telling me she couldnt "take me seriously" in a pair of dinosaur print overalls. sorry i have two degrees and a dope wardrobe. you dont need to take me seriously but You Will Take Me.

[black-quadrant]

OP's an inspiration. bring on the whimsy movement!

[joy-and-whimsy-official]

Official joy and whimsy post

[sakunai]

꙼ᩚ . . . RASPBERRY PI . building a cyberdeck with bf tim !

pairings . tim drake x fem!reader ⋮ wc . 4.2k ⋮ fluff ⋮ warnings . none, pure fluff with a hint of suggestive language. nicknames used : babe, baby and sweetheart. notes . miscellaneous tech jargon + very self indulgent and sorta dialogue heavy, maybe ooc tim who knows... first tim fic kinda nervy + also new fic layout ! ⋮ art creds : @/quezartt ⋮

The rain hammered against the floor-to-ceiling windows of Tim’s penthouse apartment like it was trying to break in.

Gotham’s usual gloom had turned into a full downpour by the time the sun usually broke through the clouds, morphing the morning skyline into a blur of bruised pinks and gunmetal greys.

While inside, the world felt miles away. The only lights came from the soft glow of a few dim lamps, a monitor lazily blinking through the open door of an adjacent room, and the TV playing classics your boyfriend ever-so-graciously — albeit illegally — siphoned straight from Toonami Aftermath like premium cable television.

“Moon Princess Halation!”

The exclamation echoed from the wide flat screen and you snorted under your breath, knees tucked under you on the massive sectional as you hunched over the coffee table decorated with scattered tools. Tiny screwdrivers, flush cutters, tiny spools of wire, custom keycaps for an even tinier keyboard and a LED strip that cost more than you wanted to know.

“When’s Yu-Gi-Oh starting?”

A warm, bare chest pressed against your back while two arms slid around your waist. Tim — the boyfriend in question — groaned through a yawn as his chin dropped heavy onto your shoulder, his messy dark hair tickling your cheek. He smelled like sleep and the faint sharpness of menthol from whatever bruise cream he’d been swearing by lately.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” you murmured, not looking away from the ribbon cable you were carefully threading into the hollowed-out bottom half of an old Nintendo DS where the second LCD screen should’ve been, but was now waiting to be filled with the custom components you’d been collecting for weeks.

“Mmm. I was,” he rasped, voice still gravelly. One of his hands splayed across your stomach under the hem of your shirt, thumb stroking slow, absent circles. “Then I woke up and my favorite person wasn’t in bed. A sort of cruel and unusual punishment.”

You leaned back into him with a scoff, letting his body heat soak through your clothes, careful not to press back too hard because you remembered the look of the bruise along his ribs — that you assumed was still an ugly bloom of purple and yellow from the last time you looked at it while he slept.

“Hi, baby,” you said softly.

“Morning to you too, sweetheart.” Tim kissed the side of your neck, lazy and lingering, then peered over your shoulder at the half-assembled mess that was his cyberdeck project — or, formerly his cyberdeck project but now yours, since he was supposed to be horizontal and useless for at least two more days.

He pulled away from you only to come around the front. “You’re going too tight on that ribbon cable. The hinge is gonna pinch when we close it.”

“We?” You lifted your head just enough to glare at him. “Backseat building already and you’ve been awake for thirty seconds.”

Tim’s hair was longer now, falling into his eyes in wild strands that made him look softer — distracting enough to overshadow a dark bruise fading at the curve of his jaw, if the fact that he was shirtless hadn’t made you dizzy enough to almost not scold him.

“I’m not backseat building,” he protested, all feigned innocence, even as he reached past you to gently adjust the tension on the cable with two careful fingers. “I’m… offering emotional support. From a very horizontal-adjacent position.”

You flattened the cable in place just as his other hand reached over to try and steal the flush cutters you were working with.

“Down, boy.” You smacked his wrist and he whined, immediately dropping the tool into your awaiting palm. “This is my work station, by the way — if you haven’t realized — and I don’t want your grimey hands all over it.”

“Thought you liked my grimey hands.” He leaned over to kiss the side of your face, then your cheek, and another one right below your ear. The slight wince from the pull of his sore ribs was obvious, accompanied by the nasty bruise still on display exactly where you left it, like a painful kiss at the curve of his ribcage.

“You don’t love me anymore? Is that it?” Tim complained.

You did. Even with the bruises. Especially with the bruises, because they were proof he was home and safe enough to be annoying.

“Do not even think of sitting down, you need to get back to bed.”

On the TV, Sailor Moon struck another dramatic pose and the music swelled to a crescendo as Tim pretended he didn’t hear you at all.

“I came to watch Yu-Gi-Oh actually,” he hummed matter-of-factly while he sprawled out on the massive sectional, stretching his legs out and draping himself against your side. “Not to see you. Or the Sailor.”

You laughed, tangling one of your legs with his. “What is your deal with Sailor Moon?”

Tim’s hand lazily found your thigh, squeezing gently as he shifted closer, peeking over your shoulder. “I don’t have a deal,” he mumbled. “I just think it’s unrealistic that the bad guys wait for her to transform before the actual fight happens.”

“Right… Because Yu-Gi-Oh is so realistic.”

“Well. If you’re asking—” He stretched one long arm toward the coffee table without untangling his legs from yours, grunting at the flex of his aching muscles. “An argument can be made about its applications to any kind of strategy based initia—

“Again, I don’t recall this being a collaborative effort.” You swatted his arm away. “Shoo.”

Tim made a pathetic little sound and snaked his arms around you again, only tighter, before his hands eventually settled on your hips and pulled you closer, just until your back was flush against his chest.

“You should be recovering,” you continued. “R and R remember? Rest and relaxation—” You shifted so you could face him better, easing yourself up onto his lap gently at first, waiting for him to give you the full go ahead.

“I am recovering,” he mumbled, lips brushing your jaw. He didn’t wait another second before pulling you down onto him, stretching his legs out on either side of you with a sigh. “This is like homeopathic medicine. Skin-to-skin contact, all that stuff. Very healing.”

You shook your head, a hand reaching behind you blindly to push the hair back from his face, your fingertips brushing the faint scar near his hairline before sliding between the strands to scratch lightly at his scalp.

“You are the worst patient on the planet.”

“And you…” he whispered, pressing a slow kiss to the curve of your neck. “Are sooo pretty…” Then another. “When you’re concentrating.” And another, working his way up until he could nuzzle right behind your ear. “It’s distracting me from how much everything hurts.”

You melted despite yourself, tilting your head to give him better access. “Manipulation tactics. I see you, Drake.”

“Are they working?” He whispered. Your stomach did a flip.

“Unfortunately.”

You could feel him grinning against your skin. “Still got it.”

One of his hands wandered down to your thigh again, just to rest there, while the other slipped down to where you held the flesh cutters in your palm against a cable. This time, you let him intervene — his longer fingers sliding between yours to grip the tool a little tighter.

“Don’t backseat me,” you warned, as he guided your hand in the opposite direction you would’ve gone. “I’m serious.”

“I won’t,” he said. “Scout’s honor.”

And he kept to his promise for a little less than two minutes.

Tim’s lips puckered against the skin where your neck and shoulder met, trailing up the line of your neck until he reached the curve of your jaw, burying his face there with the tiniest kisses.

“Maybe,” he whispered. “And this is just a suggestion,” he continued, voice low. “Let’s... not use PiSugar for power supply…”

“Oh my God, you promised.” You groaned, but there was no real heat in it. His lips were too warm against your skin, his hair tickling you softly as he nuzzled closer and closer.

“I’m not helping,” he murmured with faux innocence, voice still raspy from sleep and the remnants of last night’s patrol that he was rightfully benched from midway. “Just… offering constructive criticism. From a very restful position. And I think that this… this just isn’t it, babe.”

Tim paused to shake the flush cutters from your palm, instead forcing you to pick up the little, black rectangular power cell.

You slapped his wrist in protest and he blew a raspberry against your cheek — so sloppy and wet it made you recoil with disgust and a squealed ‘Ew, you fucking creep—!’

He tossed the PiSugar cell out of the DS’ hollowed shell and toward the pile of unused tools with a victorious smirk.

“Muuuch better,” he said. “Why are we using PiSugar anyway? I’m kinda offended…”

You twisted in his lap just enough to shoot him a look as you rubbed the wetness from your cheek. “It’s cheap and it works. And I would prefer not throwing money at an overpriced battery solution, Tim.”

He made a scandalized little noise, arms tightening around your waist as he pulled you flush against his bare chest. “Now, with all due respect—”

Tim stopped himself when you glared at him hotly.

“Babe. Darling. Smartest girl in the whole wide world—” He continued. “You did not see me use PiSugar or some cheap ass LiPo pack when I made your first cyberdeck. I am disappointed.”

“Jeez, sorry Dad.” You snorted, leaning back into him despite yourself and he hugged you close. “Maybe I just didn’t wanna outsource a battery fit for a supercomputer… It’s not like I’m catching criminals as a hobby.”

“Dad?” Tim laughed softly, the sound rumbling through his chest and against your skin. “Low blow. And no— it’s reasonable and it works better. Geekworm is the go-to, baby. I’m ordering one later.”

“No,” you objected immediately, easing up and reaching for the discarded PiSugar just to make a point. “That is exactly what we’re not gonna do. It’s like fifty bucks, Tim.”

“More like eighty with shipping,” he corrected, completely unbothered, as he hooked his chin over your shoulder again, pulling you back into him. “But I’ll have it here by tomorrow if I—”

“We are not dropping eighty dollars for a battery, you capitalist freak. The PiSugar is fine.” You elbowed him lightly as you tried to squirm free from his grip. “And seriously, go away— I have to finish this—”

He made an exasperated sound, somewhere between a whine of protest and a sigh, then pressed another warm kiss just below your ear. “But I’m bored. And you’re so... so hot when you’re all focused…” Another kiss to the back of your neck, then another, and back up again to press one more against your cheek. “Let me help.”

“Leslie said intensive bed rest. And no activities that require more than ten minutes worth of focus,” you reminded him, trying — and failing — to focus as you reached down to thread another ribbon cable.

“Oh yeah?” Tim’s palms slipped under the hem of your shirt and idled over your stomach, squeezing gently, while his fingers traced silken patterns that made it very hard to keep your hands steady. “Nothing at all?” Your entire body felt hot as he whispered in your ear.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, perv. It’s not happening,” you laughed. “Wouldn’t want you to get a Charlie Horse and die.”

“Okay, mood obliterated.” He deflated. “Even doctors overreact sometimes. I am fine.”

“You came home looking like you lost a fight with a tank. Again.” You looked at him over your shoulder. “And you told Lonnie I was beating you at home, when you know damn well—”

“Firstly, that was a joke made in good faith that is much closer to the truth than you like to admit—”

“—I will ignore that because I refuse to give into the stereotype of punching you in the mouth.”

Tim continued, teeth grazing your shoulder. “Second, it was the line that failed me,” he corrected, lips brushing your jaw. “And I won—”

“You got punched into another building. Then fell from the highest floor of said building while trying to zipline your way back down.”

“Semantics.” Tim shrugged. “Your boy’s always a winner, baby.” Another kiss, this one so much sweeter, your face felt hot. “C’mon…. Let me help. Just the cable management. I’m excellent at cable management. World-class, even.”

You turned your head just enough to glare at him again.

His eyes were soft and heavy-lidded, his tousled hair falling into them, and that faint bruise along his jaw making him look unfairly pathetic, in an endearing way.

“Terrible at staying put, is what you are.”

“Please? I’ll be good.” Tim blinked slowly. “Scout’s honor? Again?”

“You were never a scout,” you laughed, your prior defenses now rendered null and void. “Like, ever.”

“Have pity on me,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to the corner of your mouth. “I’m hurting all over, you know?”

You frowned. “I’m being manipulated again, I think.”

Then another kiss, slower, coaxing. “Make me all better?” He pouted. “Please, sweetheart?”

“Tim—”

His lips met yours softly, and you instinctively turned to him for more, the kiss lazy and slow but full of heat. You could feel him smile against your mouth before he pulled away, forcing that same pout to keep his grin at bay.

Then you sighed dramatically and handed him the flush cutters. “Okay, fine, whatever. Cable management only. But if you even think about ordering that Geekworm before we finish this section, you’re sleeping alone.”

He gasped dramatically. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me, rich boy.”

“I’d like to.” Tim’s grin was immediate and devastating and you audibly boo’d him as he shifted you both slightly so you were still mostly in his lap but could both reach the coffee table easier. His longer hair kept falling forward as he leaned in, and you couldn’t resist reaching up to tuck it behind his ear.

For the next hour you worked like that—tangled together, half-lazy, trading slow kisses between crimping cables and snapping accessories shut.

His arms framed you on either side, one hand steadying the DS shell while the other passed you tools or held wires in place and every time he leaned forward, his bare chest pressed warm against your back, chin hooked over your shoulder so you were cheek-to-cheek, breathing the same air.

Whenever he reached too far and the ache in his ribs made him wince, you’d scold him gently and kiss the fading bruise on his jaw like it would help heal the rest of him. He’d just smile that small, deafeningly self-satisfied smile and pull you back in.

At one point Tim paused, peering at the exposed internals. “Hey, want an LED status light right here?” He tapped a spot near the hinge with one long finger. “Just a little power indicator. Would look sick when it’s closed.”

You hesitated, then shook your head. “Nah, it’s fine without.”

He gave you a long, knowing look, the corner of his mouth slightly curving upwards. “Uh-huh.”

Two minutes later he was carefully soldering a tiny LED in place anyway, one arm still looped around your waist to keep you steady against him while his other hand worked with that effortless precision you fell for.

“Tim...”

“Relax. I’ve got a steady hand.” He whispered, teasing. “And I know you want the blinky light, even if you’re scared of the iron.”

“I am not scared of soldering,” you lied, cheeks warming as you watched the focused pinch of his brows. The faint smell of solder mixed with the earthy petrichor drifting through one of the cracked windows, and the faintest ray of morning sunshine struggled against the rainclouds.

“Mhm. But you want the blinky light,” he murmured, blowing gently on the fresh solder joint. “I’ve got you mapped.”

“You’re the worst,” you whispered, but you were smiling as you turned your head to press a kiss to his temple. “Fucking show-off.”

“Your show-off,” Tim corrected happily, a dopey grin on his face. “And you’ll thank me when it looks sick as hell at night.”

The cyberdeck build came together slowly but surely after that with your vision and his refinements until it eventually started to look less of a disassembled mess and more like something usable.

The rain kept falling in steady sheets outside as the final Sailor Moon episode on the television faded into the opening chords of Yu-Gi-Oh.

Tim perked up slightly at the familiar theme, unable to hide the excited childlike quirk in his brows, but his movements were growing slower and heavier as the work became more about holding you than building— the little kisses pressed to your shoulder, the pads of his fingertips thrumming against the warmth of your stomach, the feel of his unclothed heartbeat against your spine took up more and more of your attention.

Between the distant sound of Yu-Gi-Oh and the occasional soft click of tools, Tim’s breathing also changed behind you, his body hunching forward against your back in a drowsy fold.

“You falling asleep on me already?” you whispered, amused.

“Halfway there,” he admitted, voice slurred and muffled against the nape of your neck. “...‘S your fault,” you felt him smile a little, nuzzling deeper into your skin, or trying to. “You’re warm and you smell like my shampoo… and you’re doing tech things…. You’re so beautiful.”

You sat the tiny keyboard down carefully and twisted in his lap to face him properly, straddling his thighs. His eyes were half-lidded, his eyelashes fluttering gently with that unguarded softness he only ever showed when he was here and all yours.

“Poor baby,” you cooed, brushing the hair back from his forehead, fingers trailing over his hairline. “Got beat up by bad guys on national television.”

“It was a local broadcast, please.” Tim deadpanned, tilting his head to catch your fingers with a lazy kiss. “And you’re supposed to be nice to me…” his teeth grazed the tips of your fingers.

“You’re spoiled, you’ll live.” You leaned in and kissed him, tasting the faint mint from his toothpaste and all those assorted flavors of him needing you. He sighed into it, one hand sliding up your back under your shirt, a warm palm splayed across your skin.

“Take me down a peg,” Tim hummed lazily, pressing another lazy kiss to your mouth. “I like that.”

“Pervert.”

Still, you kissed him again as the rain kept pouring and Yu-Gi-Oh dueled in the background. When you pulled back, his eyes were brighter despite the exhaustion and he pressed his forehead against yours with a long sigh.

“Does it hurt bad?” You asked, carefully trying to shift your body over his lap to ease the weight on him. You could feel the faint twitch of muscles every time you moved, but he never complained.

“Stay,” he whispered as his arms tightened around your waist, pulling you closer against his chest while the half-finished cyberdeck was forgotten on the coffee table next to you. “Hurts less when you’re right here.”

You hesitated, hovering just a little. “Tim… your ribs—”

“Are fine,” he murmured, already tugging you down with gentle insistence. “C’mere. I want you on top of me. Proper R and R.”

You let out a soft laugh but gave in, carefully lowering your full weight until your chest pressed against his and you were nearly melded to him. You stayed tense for a second, hyperaware of every bruise while Tim just hummed contentedly, one hand stroking slowly up and down your spine.

“See?” he whispered against your hair. “Perfect. You feel good like this.”

You relaxed bit by bit, melting into the steady rhythm of his breathing and the warmth of his bare skin as the rain drummed steadily against the windows and the low sounds of card duels came from the TV.

“Can you sleep like this?” you asked after a while, pressing a kiss between his brows as his eyelids fluttered closed. Tim murmured an ‘mhm’ and hugged you closer, his head leaned back against the cushioned sectional. “Don’t drool on me though,” you said, burying your face in the side of his neck.

“I do not drool.”

“And I’m Batman.”

Tim snorted, his nostrils flaring from amusement and you kissed his jaw.

After a quiet minute, his voice came out soft and drowsy. “We should make one like the Millennium Puzzle.”

You smiled against his collarbone, tracing patterns on his chest with your fingertip. “You seriously have a problem.”

“Hm, you’ll see my vision soon,” he said, voice low and warm. “Tell me your ideas instead. For the rest of this one, I mean. The layout, the interface, all of it. I wanna hear.”

You shifted a little lower so your chin rested on his sternum, careful not to press on the worst of the bruises.

“Okay… I was thinking the top half could have some custom acrylic designs maybe? I wanna see what I can do with that 3D printer you spent a million bucks on— I can give it a mini computer look… but I like the sort of Y2K gaming console turned high tech spyware concept in my head… if that makes sense, I don’t know—”

Tim’s hand kept stroking your back in slow, lazy circles, his breathing growing softer beneath you. “Mmm… keep going,” he mumbled, eyes already drifting shut. “What about the interface?”

You kept talking softly, describing the power cell you secretly did want just to run a bunch of gaming applications, the messaging interface you wanted to design just to sync with his cyberdeck, how you pictured the whole thing looking and operating like pure magic.

“—and that’s where the Raspberry Pi is gonna go…”

Tim’s responses got quieter, made up of little hums and half-formed words. “...Raspberry Pi.”

“…and maybe a small speaker for gaming effects, we can run an emulator for Yoshi’s Island,” you continued, grinning to yourself. “And Final Fantasy.”

You waited for his usual chuckle followed by some cheeky remark about the longstanding rivalry you two had in all things Final Fantasy concerned. But all you heard were the same slow, even breaths.

“Tim? You still with me?”

No answer. All you could feel was the steady rise and fall of his chest under yours and his arms still loosely wrapped around you like he’d fallen asleep mid-caress.

You lifted your head to get a good look at him, and his face was completely relaxed now, lips slightly parted and messy dark hair splayed across the cushiony sectional in fluffy tufts.

“Tim…” you called out to him in a whisper, but he didn’t shift. “Paging geektopia,” you giggled, nuzzling your nose against his cheek.

He twitched softly in his sleep, fingers tightening around your waist. “M’ awake…” he inhaled deeply through his nostrils, squirming tighter against you. “I’m listenin’.”

You let out a quiet, fond laugh and pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Sure you are,” you whispered, nuzzling closer.

“Sure I am.” He repeated, grinning with his eyes closed. “Just resting my eyes, sweetheart,” his fingers danced in shapes over the skin of your waist — crooked little circles, lopsided hearts, the occasional RR symbol like he couldn’t help himself.

You stayed draped over him, your weight like a warm blanket that he refused to let shift even an inch.

The rain had softened into a gentle drizzle against the windows, and the Yu-Gi-Oh soundtrack played like a lullaby in the background. Every so often Tim’s fingers would still as sleep coaxed him away, then start up again, chasing the feeling of your skin as if touching you was the gravity holding him here.

“You’re gonna build the Millennium Puzzle cyberdeck with me, right?” he mumbled after a long, quiet minute, voice thick and barely there. “We should… date night… gonna be so cool…”

“Yeah, baby,” you murmured, brushing his hair back again. “We’ll build it together.”

Tim made a soft, contented hum, the sound vibrating against your chest as he murmured to himself. “So many Raspberry Pi’s….”

You chuckled.

Then his arms tightened once more, pulling you impossibly closer. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” you promised softly, pressing one last kiss to his bruised jaw. “Sleep, baby. I’ve got you.”

When you pulled back, Tim was smiling that small, lovedrunk smile, straining his eyes open a tiny fraction. “Love you, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know….” You let your head settle against his chest. “I know…”

His breathing evened out for good after that, deep and slow as his eyelids fell closed, the faint lines of unspoken pain smoothing from his face.

You watched him for a while, peering up through your lashes at the way his jaw relaxed, the flutter of those soft eyelashes against his cheekbones, and that tiny twitch of his mouth like he was still half-dreaming about his own Millenium Puzzle like a little boy on a lazy Saturday morning.

Outside, the rain kept falling while Yu-Gi-Oh played on low and your boyfriend — your stubborn, bruised, brilliant, and finally resting boyfriend — dozed in your arms.

You stayed right there on top of him, listening to the sound of his heartbeat against your ear drowning out everything else, perfectly content to let him sleep as long as he needed.

Within the tangled warmth of your limbs and his, you whispered, “I love you too,” and the rest of Gotham remained blurred away outside the glass as sleep took you too.

🗒️ written and proofread while half asleep so this might be the best and worst thing i’ve ever written. #timnation STAND UP . art creds : @/quezartt

[honeyfuckmeeyes]

soooo cute

[moonstruckme]

Secrets for the Sleepless

summary: you’re an insomniac, and you can’t help but notice your new roommate's comings and goings at odd hours. Peter’s a not-very-good liar that gets worse as he falls in love

tasm!Peter x fem!reader ♡ 14k words

You hear the first stirrings when sunlight is already spilling warm and bright through your apartment. The groan of bedsprings, followed by a more human groan, followed by feet hitting the floor. The floor groans too, old wood with old water bubbles trapped beneath. 

It’s a short time later that Peter trudges out from his room, going immediately to the kitchen and the pot of coffee you started early this morning. The pajama bottoms he puts on for your benefit are on backwards. 

“Good morning.” You stop looking at him as soon as he looks at you, peering intently at the textbook in your lap. You’ve been on the couch since before the sun rose. The fall semester only began yesterday, and already you’re bogged down with readings and the early stages of projects. This couch is new—or new to you, you found it on a curb last week—but soon you suspect the cushion you’re sitting on will have an indent just about where you’re sitting now. 

“Morning,” Peter mumbles, tired but not unfriendly. “You’ve got homework already too, huh?” 

You give him a rueful smile over your shoulder. “I don’t think it ever stops.” 

Peter makes a noise somewhere between humorous and sorrowful and pulls a mug down from the cupboard. One of yours, but you don’t care. 

You think that if he’s this tired on the second day of classes, you’re going to hate to see him during finals. You’re tired too, but at least you have a reason. Though, you allow, you don’t know for sure that Peter’s reason might not be the same as yours. 

This is the problem with random roommates. You don’t know if it’s more likely that the person sleeping across the hall from you is a nocturnal studier or has a drug problem. 

“Did you go out last night?” you ask. 

Peter’s brows jump together. He watches his mug as he fills it up. “No. Why?” 

You feel immediately stupid. You’ve overstepped. You’re nosy. You don’t mean to be. 

“I heard the door open.” 

No way to say that without sounding like a paranoid freak. You have a quiet door in a loud city. At nearly midnight, with sirens wailing and your neighbor singing in the shower on the other side of your wall, you shouldn’t have heard it. But you did. 

If Peter finds this odd, he doesn’t mention it. “Oh,” he says, dragging the word out long and slow. “Out as in out of the apartment. I thought you meant out out, like to the club or something. No, I just…I had a late night craving. Went down to the bodega to grab some chips.” 

You feel yourself frown. You hadn’t heard the door open again until a couple hours later, far longer than a trip to the bodega would take. But to ask more questions would be to admit you’d still been listening, so you don’t. Maybe Peter has some emotional attachment to a bodega in Queens. He said he was from Queens, right? 

Peter joins you in the living room. You’ve opened a window to let the air in, still warmish but getting cool enough that you can get away with running the fans and not the air conditioning, and Peter turns his face into the light as he settles in on the opposite side of the couch. You wonder if he’ll have his own dent in time, too. He doesn’t strike you as the type. 

“You were up late, too, huh?” he asks. The smell of his coffee mingles with the smells of wet pavement and car exhaust coming in through your window. 

“Sorry,” you say, before you can stop yourself, “I didn’t mean to pry.” 

“It’s cool. It’s not prying to make sure the door to your apartment isn’t left unlocked in the middle of the night.” Peter grins. Two dimples dive into his cheeks. “Were you doing homework then, too?” 

“No.” You don’t consider lying. It’s not something you feel the need to be private about, even with virtual strangers. “I just don’t sleep much.” 

Your roommate’s head tilts. The movement reminds you of a cocker spaniel. “Like, you can’t?” 

“I can’t,” you confirm. “Not usually, at least.” 

“Ouch. That sucks.” 

Peter’s sympathetic bemusement confirms for you that his reasons for being tired are not, in fact, the same as yours. Whatever they might be, you file it away as None of Your Business. You’ve asked, he’s told, that’s the end of it. You sleep not twenty feet apart, but Peter is a near stranger to you. You don’t have any right to his mysteries. 

“So,” he says into the silence that follows, “any classes today?” 

“Yeah.” You check the time on your laptop. Corner the page of your textbook. “Actually, I’d better go. It starts in twenty minutes. Do you care if I leave my mess on the coffee table?” 

Peter glances at your collection of pens and highlighters with a look that makes you think his version of mess might be different to yours. 

“Go ahead,” he says. “So long as you don’t mind my mess joining it.” 

“Of course not.” You zip up your backpack, relieved. 

“You coming back for lunch? I think I’m gonna go grab a bagel in a sec, I can bring you back one.” 

“Oh, that’s…” That’s too much. That’s more than roommate duties, and more than you want to return. “That’s okay,” you say, moving towards the door. “I packed a sandwich, I’ll probably camp out on campus between classes.” 

Peter raises his hand in a lazy salute. “Let me know if you change your mind.” 

“Uh, yeah. Thanks.” You try to mirror him. It feels weird; you let your hand drop halfway through. The door shuts nearly silently behind you. 

—

Peter plies you with meatloaf when you return. He’s been to his aunt’s in Queens and brought back enough to feed a family of four. 

“It’s not…I’m not gonna lie to you, it’s a not world-renowned meatloaf,” he says, bringing a forkful to his mouth. “But it’s food and it’s free and I can’t eat it all by myself, so.” 

You’re not in any position to turn down free food. You sit on the couch next to him. Peter’s left the cushion by the window open, and you wonder if already you each have your own spot. The meatloaf isn’t bad. 

You talk about your classes. Peter’s studying biophysics and biochemistry, two words which mean nothing to you but apparently require lots of time spent at the labs on campus. He congratulates you on the achievement of getting matched with a roommate who will make you feel like you live by yourself; his classes are only getting started, but soon he’ll be in the lab most of the time. Though your own classes are far from easy, you don’t envy him. 

Peter doesn’t need any help from you; he finishes the rest of the meatloaf in that one sitting. 

—

You get into a rhythm quickly. On campus from your first class in the morning until your assignments (or at least the ones due the next day) are finished usually sometime in the evening, cooking at home, eating on the run, plasma donation on Thursdays at seven to make some extra cash, four scoops of coffee grounds in the machine because both you and Peter need it strong. Peter brings home more meals from his aunt. Her name is May, you learn, and after the third free dinner you write her a thank-you note for Peter to bring back to her. 

Your hot water goes out. Peter sweet-talks the landlord while you send stern emails to the leasing company until it gets fixed. You bring his laptop instead of yours to campus by mistake and have to meet up at a library to swap. Peter comes from the lab, half-jogging with plastic goggles pushed up into his hair and making it stick out in every direction. It’s endearing beyond reason. You make him a sandwich to take to class when he oversleeps. He comes to pick you up from the plasma donation clinic when you forget to eat beforehand. You develop inside jokes about the flickering light above your stove, and the erratic banging you think is your upstairs neighbors having sex, and the too-good-for-this-world cashier at the bodega on your corner. No matter how Peter tries to get you in on it, you refuse to develop inside jokes about his Aunt May’s cooking. 

It’s in the dull blue of a sleepless night in September, Aunt May’s pasta pomodoro still heavy in your stomach, when you hear the lock on your front door click. It’s a quiet sound, but you’re too antsy to miss it in your otherwise silent apartment. The door opens with a shush of air. 

You wonder if Peter is going out or coming in. It’s late, but not so late for the overworked grad student population. He warned you that he’d eventually be spending long nights at the lab. 

You don’t get up with any suspicions. You only want to make sure the door gets re-locked, and you haven’t heard the second click. 

There’s an odd sound as your bedroom door opens. Like plastic ripping or cast fishing line, blink-and-it’s-over. You step out to find Peter wrapped up in your largest blanket and absolutely covered in filth. 

You blink. 

Peter blinks back at you. 

“Jesus,” you say. 

“Nope, just me.” Peter grins, but it falls short of his usual. “Sorry, lame joke. My uncle used to make it. It was lame then, too, I guess.” 

“What happened to you?” 

“Uh, there was a small accident at the lab. You should be asleep.” 

“Small? Is that soot?” 

“It’s…it’s soot, yeah.” 

You’re reeling. You turn the kitchen light on to see him better. Peter’s left footprints in from your front door. There’s soot even in his hair, tinging it a darker color. “Was there an explosion?” 

He grimaces. “It was a super small explosion. Very contained. But, you know, chemicals. Volatile stuff.” You shake your head, baffled, and his expression softens. “It was freaky, but everything’s fine now. It’s late, you should go back to sleep.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.” 

Peter’s brow furrows; the lines are more pronounced with soot etched into them. “You weren’t? It’s almost three,” he says, as if to himself. 

“What’s with the blanket?” 

“The…oh.” He looks down. “Right, yeah. The lab actually took my clothes. They’re probably not contaminated or anything, but they’re being disposed of for liability reasons.” 

You look down at your blanket, covering him toe-to-chin, and back up at Peter. “They made you walk home naked?” 

Peter blinks. “Uh. No, no, not…totally naked.” 

You raise your eyebrows at him. 

“They gave us…lab coats?” His voice tips up at the end like a question and the corners of his mouth tip up with it, sheepish. He gives a little shrug. “It’s not super modest, but it’s what they had on hand. Sort of like a slutty nurse costume situation? I didn’t want to, uh, you know, scar you as you were coming out of your room.” 

“Right.” You frown, embarrassed of the heat you can feel coming to your face. “I…appreciate that.” 

“Anytime. But you can go to bed now, seriously.” Peter starts edging towards the bathroom. “Don’t let me keep you up, I know you have that nine a.m. tomorrow.” 

You wave him off. “I’ll be fine, we don’t have any explosions in my class. Are you okay? Is there anything I can help with?” 

“Nope! No help.” Peter’s voice pitches slightly when you step towards him. He draws the blanket tighter, walking backwards until his back bumps the wall and feeling his way into the bathroom. “It’s just that I’m really basically naked. Like, so, so naked, and it’s embarrassing, so you should just go to your room and I’ll shower and then we can, uh, probably just not talk about this, if you’re alright with that. Because I’m embarrassed. Okay?” 

“Okay.” You hold your hands up peaceably. “If you’re sure.” 

“Super sure.” Peter flashes you a smile before shutting the bathroom door. “Goodnight!” 

You go back to your room and sit with your head laid flat in the middle of your pillow, your bent knees making a tent of your covers. You listen to the shower running until it squeaks off at three-thirty. 

—

Your backpack feels heavier leaving the library than it did on the way to campus this morning. Your train runs less frequently after midnight, so walking is nearly just as efficient. It’s a long, slow trudge up the hill that leads from campus to your neighborhood, past empty university buildings and through dapples of pale streetlights. A raccoon stops riffling through a trash can to look at you as you pass. You raise a hand to let him know you’re a kindred spirit. 

It’s cliché, but you sort of love the city after dark. It’s less glitzy than people think. The city may not sleep, and neither do you, and apparently neither does Peter, but some people have to. The streets are relatively quiet, technicolor dulled into grays and blues that blur together as you pass them by. Somewhere out of view, a siren wails like a ghost’s cry. 

It’s the quiet that allows you to hear the schwick and rush of air that comes before feet hit the sidewalk beside you. 

You flinch hard. Nearly send yourself tumbling into the street, but a hand whips out to catch you before you can slip off the curb. Slippery red fabric with black latticework spanning up the wrist. 

“It’s okay.” Spider-Man steps back as soon as you’re steady. He holds his hands up. “It’s okay.” 

You put a hand to your heart, feeling it beating beneath your palm. “Jesus. Don’t you know not to sneak up on girls walking by themselves?” 

“Don’t you know girls shouldn’t walk by themselves?” Spider-Man counters lightly. 

You suppose you’re meant to feel chastened, except you are a girl, and you have to get places, you can’t have a chaperone at all times. Also, this superhero speaks in a deep, rough voice that makes you think of teenage boys trying to sound tough. 

“Is this really the most pressing thing you have to deal with?” you ask him. Spider-Man’s head tilts, and you gesture around you at the empty street. “Aren’t there any bank robberies happening? Or, like, serial killers on the loose?” 

He’s wearing a mask, and yet you could swear it’s like his eyebrows raise. “How common do you think those are?” 

You shrug and keep walking, though you’re careful not to put your back fully to him. Even Spider-Man could turn out to be a bad guy to be stuck alone with. “I don’t need any help,” you say. “Thanks for the tip, though.” 

He keeps pace with you. “Are you a student?” 

You look at him sideways. “Maybe. What makes you ask?” 

He taps the pin on your backpack. “The university has a walking buddy program, you know. So students don’t have to walk home alone after long nights at the library.” 

“How long have you been following me for?” 

“What?”

You narrow your eyes at him. You don’t like that he guessed you were coming home from the library; however, on the chance that it is a guess you’re not about to tell him he was right. 

“I’m just saying.” Spider-Man’s hands are up again, in a gesture of peace. “You should think about calling a walking buddy next time.” 

“Maybe I’d rather be alone than alone with someone who’s volunteered to learn the routes to people’s homes.” You throw him a pointed look. 

Spider-Man’s casual gait doesn’t falter, but he lets out something that sounds almost like a laugh. “Are you always this suspicious of people trying to help you?” 

“John Wayne Gacy was known to lure victims by promising help.” 

“But I’m…” The voice behind the mask changes, turning younger and less polished. He lifts his gloved hands haplessly. “...Spider-Man.” 

You shrug, not allowing yourself to feel bad. “I’m suspicious of people in general. And I don’t need help.” 

“Noted. Listen, can I just walk you to your building to make sure you get in safe? I won’t know your apartment number or anything.” 

You give him an appraising look. Spider-Man walks with a respectable distance between you, his hands swinging at his sides. It’s not like you could actually make him go away even if you wanted to, but you do think he would fuck off if you said no. Ultimately, that’s what makes the decision for you. 

“Okay,” you say, tacking on reluctantly, “thanks.” 

“Hey, all in a day’s work. Until there’s another bank robbery or serial killer, obviously.” 

Spider-Man turns out to be a half-decent walking companion. He offers to give you a lift instead—but once he clarifies what he means by lift and you swiftly decline, he only continues walking beside you at a New Yorker’s amble. He asks you about your classes. You admit to having fallen asleep earlier at the library, and then staying late to make up for the study time you’d missed. He tells you about how it feels to swing through the city at night; how there are some neighborhoods he likes better than others for their calmness, but of course by the nature of what he does he tends to stick to the noisier ones. Times Square isn’t only a hotspot for crime during the day, as it turns out. He says, in a light, kind voice, that he’s glad to have the break of walking you home. He enjoys the quiet of your little neighborhood, too. 

True to his word, Spider-Man lets you go at your building. He watches you walk up the front steps, waving when you turn around briefly before buzzing yourself in. You hear the schwick of his webbing shooting out just before the door closes behind you. 

You slog up the flights of stairs to your apartment, letting your backpack drop by the door and sending a silent apology to your downstairs neighbors right after. You feel lighter without it, but still your body all but drags you to the floor when you sit to take off your shoes. You turn at the sound of a door creaking open. 

Light spills out into the hall as Peter emerges in his plaid pajama bottoms. You wince. 

“Hey,” you say softly. “Sorry, did I wake you up?” 

“No.” He shakes his head, though you obviously did. His hair is all messy from sleep, sticking out in every direction. “Did you just get back?” 

“Mhm.” 

Peter makes a face highly reminiscent of a sad puppy. “You were on campus all day?”

You shrug, like what can you do? Peter’s a grad student, too; he’ll get it. 

But your roommate looks troubled. “Did you eat?” 

“I…” You blink, realizing why, besides the late hour, you might have felt so tired on your walk home. “I guess I forgot about dinner. I fell asleep for a while in the library.” 

“Yeah?” Peter’s already moving towards the kitchen. “Sit down, I’ll make you something.” 

“Peter, that’s okay.” 

“I’m not gonna have you passing out waiting for the microwave or whatever. Just sit down.” 

You find you don’t have much argument left in you. You’re dead tired, and the couch does look like a nice place to rest. “I thought we ran out of May’s lasagna.” 

“We did. I can’t cook as good as her, but I can whip up a half decent quesadilla.” 

You fall silent, resting your cheek on the back cushion of the couch and watching as Peter puts a thin slice of butter into a pan on your stove. Your teeth worry into your lower lip. 

“Doesn’t the library close at midnight?” he asks. 

“Two,” you correct him. “It’s open twenty-four hours during midterms and finals week, though.” 

Peter glances at you out of the corner of his eye. “It’s not midterms or finals.” 

“Hence why I got kicked out.” 

He makes a chuffing sound like laughter, familiar in a way you can’t place. “Can’t believe you stayed late enough to get kicked out.”

“I know, right? It’s like bar close for students.” 

“Are you really comparing yourself to people who get kicked out of bars?” 

“Hey, we’re both committed, just to different pursuits.” 

Peter hums, ceding the point. “I guess the only difference is that you got kicked out on a Tuesday.” 

“You think the barflies aren’t there on Tuesdays?” You give him a droll look. “Wisen up, Parker.” 

Your roommate casts you a glance paired with a half-smile. “You know productivity decreases with exhaustion, right?” 

You scoff. “You don’t get to talk about healthy sleeping habits. I know you work just as hard.” He brings you a plate with a neatly folded quesadilla on it, and you soften your tone as you take it. “Thank you.” 

Peter settles into his side of the couch, putting his feet up on the coffee table. He watches you take your first couple of bites. “I just think,” he says, “that if you pass out somewhere from sleep deprivation or low blood sugar or whatever, there might be some part of our lease agreement that says I’m responsible for that.” 

You raise your eyebrows at him. “Did you read that whole thing?” 

“Oh, hell no.” 

“Me neither.” 

“I’m only saying that it’s possible. Landlords love weird clauses.” 

You hum as you chew, playing along. “Okay. That’s fair. What if I kept a note constantly on my person that said this isn’t Peter’s fault, so that if someone finds me passed out you can avoid culpability? Would that make you feel better?” 

Peter’s lips twitch. He shrugs. “A little.” 

“Perfect. That’s what I’ll do, then.” 

“You could also just come home before some poor librarian has to kick you out. Or,” he goes on, “call me to walk you home if it’s late.” 

You give him a look. “I’m not going to call and wake you up so you can come get me every time I stay late on campus.” 

“I wouldn’t mind being woken up. I might be on campus too, and anyway I’d want to help.” 

“I don’t need help.” 

Peter frowns. “If you say so.” 

You nod, trying to smile to soften the rejection. You hold up what remains of your quesadilla. “This is really good, by the way.” 

Peter mirrors your half-hearted smile. “I learned from the best.” 

“Yeah, you did. I really owe May another card.” 

“You don’t owe May anything, and if she were here she’d tell you that herself.” 

—

You feel like something is amiss. It’s not a new feeling. Some nights, you can’t stop going over things you’ve done wrong. Times you said something you shouldn’t have, acted without thinking, didn’t act and regretted it, going back as long as you can remember. It’s enough to make you hate yourself. 

Other nights, like this one, you become convinced there’s something still yet to be done. You didn’t actually hit submit on that assignment. You’ve left the stove on. Your water bottle is sitting abandoned on your table in the library, begging to be stolen. Someone’s trying desperately to call you, but you clicked your phone to silent without realizing. 

The anxieties worm their way into your weary bones until the only option is to drag yourself out of bed and quiet them. It’s not like you were going to fall asleep anyway. 

Your building is old and creaky. You take care to walk on light footsteps into the kitchen, reassuring yourself forcefully as you go. The stove is off. The freezer is shut. The heater is not turned up so high that you’re going to be surprised by a heart-stopping electrical bill. The kitchen sink isn’t leaking. Your school things are just where you left them, heaped together in your backpack beside the door. The front door is…

The front door is unlocked. 

You know you locked it when you came in. You’re sure you did, because you don’t allow yourself to put your keys on the hook unless you have and there they are. You look towards Peter’s room. 

When you text him, there’s no chime you can hear.

YOU: Hey, are you home?

PETER: Just left, forgot my laptop on campus! Everything ok?

YOU: Yeah, it’s fine. The door was unlocked.

PETER: Shit. SO SORRY!!! 

PETER: U can lock it, I have my key.

YOU: It’s fine. Locked now.

PETER: Won’t happen again. Promise!

You double-check that Peter’s key is missing from his hook before actually locking the door. You think wryly that you and Peter may have synced in your sleeping habits; you always seem to be awake at the same times. Or maybe you were simply both such terrible sleepers to begin with that the comings and goings of the other don’t make much difference. 

You run through a few more checks before going to bed. The window that goes to the fire escape is latched. The oven is off. Your laptop is charging. 

Right next to Peter’s. 

—

The next night, you’re not woken by worries but by cold. You rouse from a fitful hibernation to find yourself coiled tight like a crab within its shell, knees pressed together and chilled nose hidden beneath your covers. Early winter seeps through your apartment like a frozen kiss. 

You take your blankets with you as you stumble out of bed, bleary-eyed. You feel the chill more when you leave your room, though less in the living room. The heat is supposedly on. Peter’s door is closed, but you knock to see if it’s woken him, too. There’s no answer. 

“Peter,” you whisper. 

Still nothing, and you knock again. 

“Pete, are you up?”

When another minute of this produces no response, you turn the door knob tentatively. You know it’s a massive invasion of privacy. You know that. But your apartment feels like it’s teleported to the Arctic, and for all you know Peter could be comatose with hypothermia right now. 

It feels all the more plausible when you open the door and the air that meets you is cool enough to make your skin pebble under your blankets. Peter really might have hypothermia. If he was here. 

But Peter’s bed is empty, and his window is open. 

You decide to leave it that way in case it’s how he needs to get back in. You take more blankets with you to go back to bed. 

—

There are few things you can think of which require someone to be out in the darkest hours of the night. None of them are reassuring. Things too illicit to be exposed to daylight, risky things, illegal things. 

If you’re being honest with yourself, you probably should have realized sooner. New York is expensive, and Peter doesn’t seem much better off than you are. You’re both full-time students without jobs; everyone has to supplement their income somehow. He probably makes more doing whatever he’s doing than you do pimping out your plasma once a week. 

Peter may not seem like the type, but you don’t have to be the type to do drastic things when you’re broke. Anybody could be doing anything. Some people do yard work, some people babysit, some people buy cheap shit and resell it on ebay; you donate plasma; Peter deals drugs, probably. It’s fine. It’s…well, it’s not fine, it’s dangerous, but you can understand it. He has access to a lab and pays for school with government grants. He had to be paying for your rent somehow. 

“Hey.” Peter returns to your table with a mug in each hand. “You good?” 

You let out a little hum. “Yeah, why?” 

“You just looked kinda spacey.” He sets your coffee in front of you. You pick it up, gratified by the way it sears your tongue and seeps sweetness into your tastebuds. 

You’ve taken to spending your Saturdays together at this coffee shop, The Daily Bean. It’s big enough in size that you can always find a table in some hidden corner if you look hard enough, small enough in popularity that regulars can still stare-shame anyone who talks too loudly when everyone else is trying to work. You and Peter like that it’s walkable from your apartment, and that the chairs are comfortable, and that every mug is unique so you can debate who got the better one when your drinks come out. The icing on the cake is that if you order a simple drink, refills are free so long as you bring back your mug. You keep asking Peter to go up to the counter because you’re worried the employees are going to get angry with you for abusing their policy by camping out all day, and no one can get angry with Peter.

And that’s sort of the sticking point, isn’t it?

Peter is a good guy. He’s nice, he works hard in school, he pays rent on time. Obviously he has this other thing going on on the side, but that doesn’t make you like him any less. It’s not fair that he should have to give up sleep and put himself in god-knows-what dangerous situations just to live. Lately, the crescents under his eyes are nearly as bad as yours. You’re worried about him. 

“You do photography, right?” 

Peter looks up, blinking, from where his attention had gone back to his laptop. He’s working on something he told you about during the walk over, some report of some sciency thing. You think he could tell you weren’t grasping it even as he explained it to you. 

“I take pictures sometimes,” he says, doing a side-to-side sort of nod. “Not really the same thing.” 

“But you’re good.” 

It’s not a question. You’ve seen the photos all over Peter’s room. They’re stuck to the walls with scotch tape like he’s not even proud of them, but they’re incredible. Candids of a graying woman you imagine to be Aunt May in different locations of the same lovingly cluttered home. Stills of people in the motions of their day, on the subway and lounging on front steps and smiling at dogs. Angles of the city that make you feel like you’re flying. 

Peter makes a face. “Eh…” 

You huff a laugh at his humility. “I’m just saying, have you ever thought of charging people for that?” 

“For…”

“To take pictures of them. Or to buy your pictures, either way.” 

“I don’t know.” Peter shrugs. He looks almost like he might be blushing. “I can’t think of anyone who would want to pay for that, and anyway I’m not sure I have the time to, like, monetize it or whatever.”

“I could probably help,” you say casually. Take a sip of your coffee to sell it. 

Peter watches you, unabashed in his staring even when you won’t look back at him. “Yeah? You’d do that?” 

You lift your shoulders. “Sure.” 

“How come?” 

You meet his gaze, though it sends tingles from your ears all the way down your spine to do it. The brown eyes waiting for you are just as warm and thrice as sweet as the drink in your hand. “Because I want to,” you say. 

Peter’s mouth kicks up in the corner. “Noted,” he replies. “Thanks.” 

You make a mumbly sound of acknowledgement, going for your coffee again. Your roommate’s grin worsens. 

“Hey.” He bumps your ankle lightly with his under the table. “You want to learn something about protein misfolding and Alzheimer’s?” 

“No.” 

“Yeah, you do.” Peter shuts his laptop, setting his elbows on it to lean closer to you. “So, when proteins lose their functional shape…” 

—

Lately, the only place you can find sleep is in places it shouldn’t be. Slumped over the table of a study room, in the chair of the plasma donation clinic, in your sunlit living room between classes. When Peter finds you, you’ve started a small puddle of drool on your textbook. The fluorescent lights of the library press at your eyelids, obscuring any awareness of time in a distant outside world. 

Peter says your name with something soft curled around the syllables. 

Your eyes burn as you open them to find him crouched by your chair, one hand on your textbook and the other floating a few inches above his knee like he’d been thinking of reaching for you. His hair is sticking up the way it does when he’s run his fingers through it. 

“Peter?” 

“Hey. Hi.” He clears his throat, blinking something away from his expression. “Glad you still know my name. Since, you know, you seem to have forgotten where we live.” 

“What’re you doing here?” 

“I’m hoping to save the librarians some hassle.” His mouth curves, pink and lovely, into a little smile. “Ready to go?” 

You peel yourself off of your textbook, allowing Peter to close a pencil in it to mark your page before dropping it into your backpack. You feel like you’re moving through molasses, back clicking as you stretch; you must have been sleeping deeply. 

“What time is it?” you yawn as Peter helps you into your coat. He shoulders your backpack without saying anything. 

“One-thirty.” When you blink blearily at the near-desolate library, he touches your shoulder gently to direct you toward the elevators. You try to take your backpack from him, and Peter only hikes it up further on his shoulder. “They’re gonna put posters of you up at some point. I think you’re here more than anybody else on campus.” 

You send him a droll, sleep-addled look out of the corner of your eye. “I don’t think you get to talk about staying out late.” 

He doesn’t look at you. “No? Why not?” 

“Because you’re always at the—” You yawn hugely. “At the lab.” 

Peter huffs a laugh. If it sounds a bit relieved, you’re perhaps too tired to judge. As you step into the elevator, he hits the button for the ground floor and steps back beside you to put an arm over your shoulders. “Touché.” 

You stand still in silent uncertainty as the elevator descends. This is closer than you and Peter have been before. It feels a slight shift from bumping elbows in the kitchen or accidentally brushing each other’s knees under your table at The Daily Bean, though maybe that’s just you. Regardless, it’s going to be a cold walk home; Peter’s body is emanating an enviable warmth through his coat, and you’re just sleepy enough to consider leaning a bit on him as you walk. You stay where you are. 

“How’d you know where I was?” you ask as the elevator doors open. Peter steps out with you tucked under his arm as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“It’s almost two in the morning on a Thursday.” He waves to the librarian at the desk, pushing the front door open for the both of you. “Where else would you be?” 

“Ha ha,” you mutter. “But, like, how’d you find me?” It’s a big library. Five floors, dozens of tables, and you’d been hidden away in your own private corner chosen specifically for how rare it is for any other student to stumble across. You suppose someone outside might have seen you through the window by your table, but even that seems unlikely. It’s higher up than most people think to look. 

“I’m an efficient search committee,” says Peter. He adjusts his hold on you when the wind picks up and you step closer unconsciously, hand slipping down your arm to encourage further sharing of his warmth. “Cold?” 

“Yeah. It wasn’t this bad when I left.” 

He makes a half-smug humming noise; you feel its vibrations kiss the top of your head. “That’s what happens when you stay out this late, I guess. My Uncle Ben used to say nothing good happens after midnight.” 

“Have I called you a hypocrite yet?” 

“Only in implication.” 

“Well, you are.” 

Peter laughs, the sound wonderfully crisp. “Did you at least eat?”

“It’s not your job to feed me, you know.” 

“Seems like someone’s gotta do it.” 

“Well, for the record, I did.” 

“Glad to hear it.” 

Peter seems to gather that if you walk all the way home he’s going to end up carrying you for at least part of it, so you go down into the subway to wait for the next train. You fall briefly asleep on his shoulder waiting, and again in your seats once you get on. It’s a feat, considering you’re only a stop away on this line, but both times Peter rests his chin on the top of your head like he’s surrendered to the idea of keeping you there. 

It’s only after he’s half-dragged you up the stairs to your apartment and is digging your key out of your backpack (why he doesn’t seem to have his, you don’t bother asking) that you say, “I’m sorry you had to come all the way to campus to get me.” 

Peter makes a quiet scoffing sound, jiggling the handle until the door gives way. “I didn’t have to. I don’t mind, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” 

“You’re always doing things for me, though.” You shuck off your coat, tossing it over the back of the couch as he does the same with his. “You’re either making me food or picking me up from places or bringing me my stuff…” 

Peter’s eyebrow twitches, a teasing curve to his mouth that fits his voice to its shape. “So what, I’m not allowed to do things for you? You’re gonna rob me of that?” 

“Do you have a hero complex or something?” 

You think it’s obvious you’re teasing him back, but Peter’s expression flickers with something that makes you wonder if he didn’t catch the levity in your tone. He recovers fast. “Maybe.” 

“I’m just saying,” you try on a bit of sincerity, “you don’t have to.” 

“Hey, I know.” He moves closer, eyes dark in the low light. Neither of you have moved for a light switch, your apartment cast in the cool blue tones of the moonlight coming in the window. “I really don’t mind. I like doing things for you.” 

“But,” you ask, hesitating, “who does things for you?” 

Peter’s eyebrows lift slightly, as though he’s surprised you’d ask. When his voice lowers, there’s something about the roughness of it which tugs at a memory. “You do.” 

You feel yourself frown. Yes, you try to do things to make Peter’s life a bit easier, but that’s half out of a sense of gratitude for all he already does for you and they’re never really sizable things. A few extra pancakes left in the fridge when you know he won’t wake with enough time to make breakfast before class, a pack of twizzlers snagged from the bodega when you notice he’s running low. Is that as much care as Peter gets? It can’t be. 

You’re about to tell him that he deserves better, but when you open your mouth you realize he’s right there, and letting yourself list forward is just as easy. 

Peter kisses you like he’s breathing you in. Slow at first, the beginnings of an inhale, and then in great pulls. He cups the side of your face, stepping forward, crowding you, his other arm winding around your waist to keep you from falling when you move backwards into the couch and nearly tip yourself over the edge. A few seconds later and he’s changed his mind, sending you both over so you collapse down onto the cushions in a heap, him all on your side and you all on his. One sleepy, confusing tangle. 

“I thought you wanted me to go to bed,” you mumble against his lips. 

“Who said that?” Peter rolls you sideways, putting you to the inside of the couch so he can push your hair away from your face. “Tomorrow’s Friday. It’s basically the weekend already.” 

“Could’ve probably stayed at the library then.” 

“Too cliché.” 

His hand coasts up your back, and you find you’re out of cleverness. “Yeah?” 

“Mhm. Plus, what would the librarians think of you? You’re a big name over there.” 

“You’re such a hypocrite.” 

Peter sighs into your mouth. “Tell me about it.” 

—

Maybe it should be awkward, but it’s not. You and Peter already live together, already have your routines and your in-jokes and an ease of moving about each other in a small space, so adding kissing to the mix really doesn’t feel like so far of a leap. 

It’s not fireworks. Or butterflies or cartwheels or any of that. It’s…easy. Like slipping into a warm bath. You feel yourself unspool one inch at a time, until coming home from class to lay yourself down in Peter’s lap and go over flashcards with him is as natural as breathing. 

“It’d be over in Chelsea, so I could stay here and take the bus.” Peter’s got his glasses on, which always make you want to kiss him hard enough to get them all askew, and his hands are wandering your legs and waist as he talks, not helping matters. “And they’re doing this really cool stuff with ion channels that I could get involved in…” 

He’s telling you about an internship he’s applying to for the summer. You’re sitting in his lap trying to look engaged and not humiliatingly wanton. Really, you like the sound of this internship. It would mean you’d both get to stay in the apartment for the summer, since you’re returning to a previous internship in the city, too, and of the options Peter’s told you about this one offers the best pay. You may not understand ion channels or space radiation or half of what he talks about, but you love the idea of anything that might supplement his supplemental income. 

“Didn’t you say your internship’s in Greenwich?” Peter asks, touch coasting up your back. 

You hum in the affirmative. 

He grins, flashing a dimple you want to poke your tongue into (because you’re a nonsensical, depraved thing). “We could meet in the middle for lunch.” 

“That would be nice.” You give into your baser urges and lay a soft kiss on the side of Peter’s nose. The frames of his glasses dent into your cheek. “Where would we go?” 

“I know a good sandwich place on Eighth and Hudson,” he murmurs, pushing his glasses up into his hair to kiss you properly. Damn him. His voice hums against your lips. “Maybe lunches there sometimes, dinners at Chelsea Market.” 

“Chelsea Market?” You smile, and Peter’s quick to kiss the corner. “Are we made of money in this fantasy?” 

“Duh. We’ll have high-roller internships—” 

“Speak for yourself.” 

“—and those of us who are possibly being taken advantage of for their cheap labor and wonderful, perfect—” He mushes his lips to your face with each word. “—really very valuable brain will luckily have a lovesick biophysics intern to sponsor them.” 

You hum, sliding your finger along the curve of his glasses behind his ear. “Where am I gonna find one of those, you think? Should I start loitering on park benches reading genetics books and looking confused?” 

For someone so gentle and who spends so much of his time in labs, Peter is surprisingly strong. You’ve discovered this several times over now, enough to want to goad it out of him when you can, and still it surprises you to find yourself flat on your back against the couch cushions less than a second later. You’re giggling breathlessly before Peter even gets to you. 

“You think you’re so funny,” he mutters, a far cry from menacing as he smooshes wet kisses into the underside of your jaw. 

“Or I—I could try hanging around the three-in-one shampoo at the discount store—” Peter squeezes your waist, and you gasp out a laugh. “—or hoard all the city’s ramen so they come to me.” 

“Okay, you know I eat better than that, you traitor. Are you trying to get yourself cut off from my culinary resources?” 

You squirm, pushing at Peter’s hands and enjoying how useless it is. “You wouldn’t dare.” 

“Also” —he breezes right past the threat, because you both know he wouldn’t— “if you have a problem with my hair, all you’ve gotta do is say something. Does it smell bad?” 

He sticks the top of his head in your face, the soft ends of his hair tickling your nose. You stick your face in dutifully to take in a pull. You know the scent of Peter’s three-in-one (you live together, you’ve read the bottle), but somehow his hair always manages to smell like fresh laundry, too. You have every intention of feigning shock and disgust, except you’re overtaken by a rush of affection and the teasing mood leaves you. 

You press your lips to his forehead. “It’s perfect.” 

“Wow. Even with three-in-one in there?” 

“I’m surprised, too.” 

Peter tilts his head up, bumping your noses together. “Guess you don’t have to go on the search for some other biophysics guy to fawn over you, then.”

Fawn. That’s exactly what Peter does, fawn over you, but it’s somehow worse that he does it knowingly. 

“Maybe not,” you say, “but you know I’m not just going to let you get my lunch every time.” 

“Oh, yeah? How are you gonna stop me?” 

“I don’t know.” You heave a long, thoughtful sigh. “I guess probably start selling your photos to make my own way in the world.” 

Peter laughs. “I think probably one of the most adorable things about you,” he says, lips to your cheek, “is that you think those are worth something. They’re all yours, pretty girl.” 

“They’re definitely worth something. I’m going to make millions.” 

“Sure you are.” 

“You’ll see, when I move out of this place into a penthouse and you’re still just scraping by on your measly STEM salary.” 

Peter watches you with an analytical gaze. You’re playing at levity, but he knows by now when you’re hiding your sincerity away, and he also knows what you’ve been pushing for for weeks now. 

“Why do you want me to sell them so badly?” he asks. 

You shrug. “Because,” you say, “I’ve never seen the city the way I do when I look at them. I think other people would like that, too.” 

He mushes your hip in his hand affectionately. “They’re not that original. I’d be one of a thousand people trying to sell pictures of New York.” 

“Yeah, but yours are good.” 

“You’re so stubborn,” he mumbles, pushing his face into yours to kiss you with a vengeance, “and cute. I just don’t have the time, sweetheart.” 

“I can set you up a website.” It’s not said in haste. You’ve been trying to think up ways to get this idea off the ground for a while now. “That way you don’t have to do anything, I’ll just list them for you and handle the shipping when people buy them.” 

Peter blinks at you. It’s clear he’s caught offguard, and it aches a bit that you offering to help him out is still so unexpected. You’ve been trying to do it more—though it’s near impossible to keep up with how often Peter helps you, and it seems like he ups the ante with every attempt you make—but you wonder if Peter will ever get used to the feeling of someone wanting to do things for him. You can relate to that particular discomfort. 

“Would that make you happy?” he asks after a moment. 

“It would,” you reply honestly. 

He hesitates. “I would want to choose which ones you put up. And I don’t want you to be disappointed if they don’t sell…” 

“I won’t be disappointed.” You wave him off, already reaching for your laptop despite still being trapped underneath him. “They’ll sell like hotcakes.” 

“What even is a hotcake?” Peter muses, though he moves when you nudge at him, allowing you to sit up and open your laptop. 

“Pretty sure it’s an old-timey word for pancakes.” 

“Do pancakes sell famously well?” 

You cut him a dry look. “Then they’ll sell like Mets merch, Peter. Is that better?” 

The distracted look in Peter’s eyes diminishes, replaced by a more familiar one. “I think you’re the hotcake they were talking about,” he says, smarmy. 

“Are you saying I sell?” 

“No! No. You know that’s not what I meant.” 

“Yeah, walk that one back, Parker.” 

—

You’re halfway to a dream about holiday break and Peter’s fresh-laundry smell when the fire alarm goes off. It knocks you out of your study fugue state and knocks your coffee clean over, making you gasp and fumble for your laptop. It’s gotten all over your lap, too, but you don’t have time to think about that, ignoring the burn and the shrill wailing in favor of wiping your keyboard off on your shirt.

A moment later, and the coffee is no longer your laptop’s paramount threat. The sprinklers go off. You stow your laptop in your bag, hugging the whole thing to your chest like you can shield it with your body. It’s then that you remember what a fire alarm means. 

You’re not the only brain dead, half asleep straggler in the library who hasn’t been quick to action. There are other students just now making their way to the stairwell door; you grab your notes and follow suit. 

The alarm is deafening in the stairwell. It bounces off the walls in a painful, ceaseless screech, punctuated by flashes of bright white light. Coming down from the top floor, you’re joined by a throng of others as you descend. People shove; a girl shouts her friend’s name; someone else stops by the railing, halting the flow around them as they try to make their way back up to some forgotten item. Most heads are ducked, the sprinklers still raining down and water dripping from chins and noses. You say an apology that gets swallowed up by the cacophony when you step on someone’s foot. You wince when someone else steps on yours. You curl around your backpack and keep going. 

You’re near the back of the push down the stairs, so when Spider-Man arrives your only indication is the change in tone of the shouting below you. Cheers go up with the siren’s shriek, and you peer over the railing just as a stream of webbing shoots past you, sticking to the ceiling. The spandex-clad vigilante follows it up. He goes slowly, scanning faces as he goes by. 

“All good? Everybody okay? Let’s make our way down in a neat and orderly fashion, folks. No need to push. Where’s the fire, am I right?” 

If he wanted to go put out the fire, or even to sweep from the top floor down to make sure no one’s still not evacuating, there are surely quicker ways, but you’re a bit warmed that Spider-Man is taking the slower route to check that you’re all okay. He’s risen nearly to you now, and while some of the students around you have stopped or taken out phones, you’re still trying to get out of here. Of course, now that you’re looking at Spider-Man and not your feet, you fall straightaway onto your ass. 

It’s embarrassing. You narrowly avoid hitting your chin on the stair railing; someone near you gasps. Your tailbone and your pride both feel terribly bruised. 

“Oh, shit. Hey. You okay?” 

It doesn't help matters that you’ve pulled Spider-Man’s attention, too. 

He swings neatly over the very railing that nearly concussed you a moment earlier, reaching down to pull you upright. 

“Yeah, you’re okay. Nothing feels broken, right?” He skims touches over your elbows, your waist. It’s all too much at once, an overwhelm, but you step away quickly when he lays a probing hand at the small of your back. 

“What?” Spider-Man’s voice rings with concern just loud enough to be heard over the alarm. “That hurt?” 

You’re shocked speechless. Does he just go around touching everyone like that? It feels intimate to you. 

“Oh.” He seems to get it. His demeanor changes, a few more inches of space appearing between you. “Sorry. Are you hurt?” 

“I’m fine,” you say. 

“Can I, uh.” He looks up in the direction he was heading, then back to you. “Can I give you a lift down?” 

You feel yourself frown. “I can make it on my own.” 

Spider-Man breathes out a dry chuckle. “I forgot how suspicious you are of people who want to help you.” 

You blink, biting your tongue against the question that rises to it. You remember me? It’s difficult not to feel flattered, but you’re also just baffled. Spider-Man saves dozens of people every day, and yet he remembers a conversation with a girl he only walked home on an uneventful night?

“Just let me take you to the ground floor,” he asks. “I won’t be able to relax if I think there’s some injured bootstrapper hobbling their way down the stairs.” 

You don’t remember deciding to agree, and you certainly think you’re going to argue his bootstrapper label more than comes out, but you find yourself clinging to spandex-clad and surprisingly warm shoulders a minute later, Spider-Man’s hold far from unwelcome now as he lowers you gently to the ground. 

“Come on,” he says, ignoring the people who stop and stare in favor of guiding you outside. 

You think it’s probably a good sign that there isn’t smoke visibly pouring out of any windows you can see. The library’s fire suppression system may have worked fast enough to put the fire out before it grew too large. Spider-Man keeps you close, maneuvering you both through the gathering crowd and past the arriving firefighters to the curb across the street. 

“What happened here?” he asks you, something achingly familiar about the gentleness of his tone as he looks down at your lap. Whereas most of your clothes are speckled with dampness from the sprinklers, across your thighs is a dark, prominent splotch. 

“Coffee,” you answer resignedly. 

He hisses. “Hot?” 

“Not cold.” 

“Does it hurt?” 

“No, not really. I think the sprinklers cooled me off.” 

You try on a smile there. You think maybe Spider-Man mirrors it, his tone lightening some. 

“Is your butt okay, too?” 

“My butt’s none of your concern.” 

“Hey, I concern myself with every butt in this city. You’re all under my care.” 

It feels ridiculous, laughing while your university library is still being evacuated and alarms are still going off. It’s also nice. The laughter gathers like bubbles in your chest, fizzing and popping and disrupting the tension in there. You wonder if this is how Spider-Man does what he does, if it’s what makes him so good at it. 

“I’m fine,” you tell him. 

“Promise?” 

“Yeah. Don’t you need to…” You look at where the firefighters are running into the building. 

Spider-Man follows your gaze. “Yeah,” he says, though he doesn’t move. He glances between you and the building a few more times, fingers twitching at his sides. “I, uh.” 

“Thanks for your help.”

The dismissal is clear, and it seems to snap him out of it. 

“Right. Okay.” He finally takes a step back. “Stay put, okay? Don’t go anywhere. I’m serious. Just, I have to—you stay here.” 

“Okay,” you say. He’s already shot away on a web, and with the sirens and the shouting, you aren’t sure if he hears you. 

You aren’t sure why Spider-Man would ask you to wait. Does he plan to come back? He seemed flustered; he might not have meant it. You’re resting your head on your knees with eyelids growing heavier, but it seems rude to leave when someone rescues you and then asks you to wait up. 

“Hey.” You jolt when a hand lands on the back of your neck. “Hey, hey. It’s just me.” 

Peter’s a sight for sore eyes. His grin is tentative as he sits on the curb beside you, all soft brown eyes and hooked brows. The apprehension goes out of you in an instant. 

“Hi,” you say, warmth filling your chest. 

“Hi, sweetheart.” Peter rubs between your shoulder blades, looking you over. “What happened?” 

“There’s a fire in the library.” 

“Yeah, I think they put that out.” He offers you a small smile. “I mean what happened to you? What’s this?” He sets a hand to your thigh, over the wet spot on your jeans. His brows rise. “It’s warm.” 

“Yeah, I…” You shake your head, breathing out a sigh. “I knocked over my coffee when the alarm went off.” 

Peter frowns. “Ouch.” 

“How’d you even know about the fire? I thought you were at the lab tonight.” 

“I, uh.” He seems distracted, still looking concernedly at your burnt jeans. “I saw it on the news.” 

“Already?” 

“Yeah, the school sent out a text alert. Hey, don’t you want to get those pants off?” Peter gives you a look in exchange for the one you give him. “Not like that, you delinquent. Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean let’s go home and put some ice packs on your or something, okay? Are you good to walk?” 

You’re shaking your head before he’s finished talking. “Pete, I’m fine. But I have to…” The words shrivel up, humiliated with themselves, before leaving your mouth. 

Can you really tell Peter that Spider-Man asked you to wait here for him? Peter might like you well enough to make out from time to time, but you can’t imagine they make rose-tinted glasses thick enough to look past anything that sounds so pathetically made up as that. Why would the city’s favorite vigilante, with his very busy schedule, want you to stay put so he could come back for you after saving the day? It’s a good question. Peter said the fire is out; if Spider-Man was coming back, surely he would have already?

“What’s up?” Peter asks you. His voice is gentle. “You okay?” 

“Yeah.” You shake your head to clear a nagging thought. “Let’s go home.” 

You stand on your own, though Peter’s hands hover while you do and he gets an arm around you as soon as he’s allowed. You walk tucked close to his side, his thumb rubbing absently over your hip. 

“How’d you know I was gonna be here?” 

“Well, it’s quarter to midnight on a Friday. I was gonna go around checking the clubs first, but…” 

“Asshole.” 

“Nerd.” 

“...Did you really come looking for me?” 

“Duh. And it’s not like I was far, the lab’s just across campus. Hey, did you hurt your butt somehow?” 

“What?” 

“You’re walking funny.” 

“I am not.” 

“Yeah you are, it’s like…it’s sort of a hobble. Did you?” 

“You’re making this up.” 

“I’m not! What happened to your butt?” 

“I am not hobbling.” 

—

You find out the next day that the fire was started by some idiots who tried to smoke and then freaked and tossed their still-lit blunt when they heard someone coming. If it had fallen onto the carpet or a table it might have gone out, but of course it landed right on the corner of a bookshelf, seemingly endless kindling spread out in front of it like the promised land. The fire was put out quickly, but not before most of that shelf went up and not without incurring water damage on everything else in the library. 

You read the news article and seethe while Peter applies burn cream to your legs, doing it for you because he claims you’re neither gentle nor patient enough with yourself to do it nicely. His touch is featherlight. 

It’s Saturday, and so Peter succeeds in cajoling you into spending the day in bed, napping and touching and musing in whisper-soft voices about what you might order for dinner, but Sunday you heed the university’s call for help. 

The library is all but destroyed. The carpet needs to be ripped out, some of the furniture needs to be recovered or replaced, hundreds of books need to be inspected and salvaged. The librarians and janitorial staff can’t do it all themselves. 

You may be selfish (Peter calls it single-minded), but this isn’t something you’d normally concern yourself with; you’ve got your own shit to deal with, impending exams and a now-glitchy laptop that could use some attention. It bothers you that this was your library, though. You’ve spent a lot of time tucked away in its stacks, Peter’s spent nearly as much navigating them to come drag you home, and if the fire had been more serious you could’ve been in real trouble. You feel like you owe it something, a little bit. At least a few hours of your time. 

Peter comes to help, because Peter doesn’t need a sense of obligation to step up. He’s made of better stuff. 

You go through the shelves with other volunteers, sorting books into bins based on how damaged they are. Peter gets tasked with bringing old furniture out into the sun, stuff that should have been replaced decades ago but the school is still going to try to save, even if it’ll probably smell like mildew forever. You get periodically distracted when he walks by with some musty armchair and you can see the shapes of his biceps through his shirt. At lunchtime you run home to make sandwiches, and you and Peter eat them on the same curb he found you sitting on two nights prior, the sun on your faces and breaths clouding in front of your mouths.

You call it quits when it gets dark, though some of the volunteers switch the lights on and stay. Peter buys you both hot chocolate on the way home. He waves you off when you try to pay and teases you about being extra careful because you’ve already had enough hot drink incidents for one week. 

Despite knowing you have heaps of studying left to get through, you feel strangely energized. Peter sits down in his couch dent when you get home and pulls up his notes, and you can’t stop thinking about the library. There’s got to be a more efficient way to dry the books. Who’s making sure the staff gets meals, when they’re there supervising all day? And surely there’s a more durable flooring than carpet to put in a library. If they take it down to the hardwood, and then people donate old rugs to help swallow sound…

You go back. It becomes a part of your routine. You go to class, you study, you help at the library, you bring Peter something to eat at the lab, you study some more. Peter goes for dinners at his Aunt May’s and comes home with tupperware intended specifically for you. At night, he tries to help you fall asleep, experimenting with different things he’s read to see what works. On some of those nights you end up faking it so that he feels accomplished. Most nights, you don’t, so that he’ll stay with you for longer before eventually saying he has to go to the lab or to the bodega or to wherever before slinking off. Those nights you think you sleep the least, though it’s hard to be sure. 

You and two other students haul a donated couch up the library stairs. You learn how to wedge paper towels between the pages of the most waterlogged books, a tedious but rewarding process. You get friendlier with the librarians than you ever have been, which Peter finds ironic considering you spend half the time you used to there. One of them is married to one of your professors, and your efforts earn you a bit of extra credit, a small miracle you’d never have dared to hope for. 

“What’s this?” Peter asks one afternoon at The Daily Bean. You’re meeting between classes for a quick study session; you haven’t seen him since you left him sleeping early this morning to go to the library. Rain falls in gentle patterings outside the window, fog clinging to the panes. Autumn is having its last hurrah. Thanksgiving is next week, and the city tends to grant everyone’s wishes for snow soon after that. The last of the leaves have been shaken from the trees, and now they squelch rather than crunch under your feet. 

You look at where Peter’s turned your hand to the side. “Oh.” You roll your eyes, rubbing at the white so that it flakes off. “It’s paint.” 

“They’re making you paint now?” 

“Yeah. I guess they figure if they’re already gutting so much of the building, may as well do a full remodel.” 

“Is it starting to feel like they’re just using you for free labor?” 

“Oh, definitely,” you laugh. 

Peter’s dimples frame his smile in parenthesis. “You don’t seem mad about it,” he says. 

“No, I’m resentful.” 

“You are?” 

“I am.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yup.” 

“You seem resentful.” Peter’s grinning for real now, his eyes warm. Sometimes you think you’d say anything to get him looking at you like this. It’s addicting. “You seem ready to revolt.” 

“I might.” You take a sip of your coffee. “No, I don’t know. I don’t mind it.” 

“Aw,” he says. “You’ve gone soft.” 

“I have not. Don’t think I’ve abandoned my get-rich-quick scheme. The website is up.” 

Peter blinks. “My website?” 

“My website,” you correct him, teasing, “since you won’t sell your own photos yourself. I’m just waiting for the go-ahead from you on which ones to put up.” 

“Yeah,” he says, quieting. “We can do that.” 

“Soon?” 

“Tell you what, pretty girl.” Peter takes your hand, kissing the side of your pinkie just before the paint starts. It sends goosebumps all the way up your arm. “You find some time to pencil me in between your studying and being the school’s go-to laborer, and we’ll do it.” 

You have to look away from your roommate’s sweetheart brown eyes. He’s still holding your hand. “I’d probably have less studying to do later if we actually did some now.” 

“You can’t study now. This is a date.” 

“It is?” 

“Yeah, duh. Did you think we were actually going to study? That’s just how I get you to come to these things, loser.” 

—

“Is it, like, the suit and tie kind of dinner or the nice sweater kind?” you ask.

Peter’s exhale suggests he’s trying to be quiet about his amusement, but not very hard. “You could show up in yoga pants and my sweaty t-shirt, and she’d still think you were gorgeous.” 

“Could you try to be a little less biased?” 

“If I was being biased, I’d tell you to wear my sweaty t-shirt and forget the pants.” 

“Peter, I’m serious.” You step out of your room and into the hall where he can see you. “Is this going to be okay, or should I pick something nicer?” 

Peter turns around from where he’s standing in front of his own mirror trying to subdue a cowlick. He’s wearing a sweater and jeans, which is reassuring. It’s also new. You’re used to seeing Peter in his pajamas, or in rumpled sweatshirts he threw on in a rush to get to class, but this is…well, your roommate cleans up nice. His handsomeness is no surprise, but the new effect on you is. The green of his sweater somehow makes his eyes look an even softer color as they take you in. 

“You look beautiful,” Peter says. 

Your cheeks tingle at the bald reverence in his tone. You finger the hem of your dress. “It’s okay?” 

“Come on.” He huffs a laugh. “Are you kidding me?” 

“No.” But Peter looks like he wants to eat you, and he’s dressed more casually than you are, so you think you have your answer. You move on before he gets any ideas. “I’m thinking of trying to throw together a pumpkin pie,” you say, going to check on your rolls in the oven. Peter tails you. “I’d have to run to the bodega, though. Do you think we have time?” 

Peter leans against the counter. “What would you have to get?” 

“A pie tin, crust, pumpkin puree, eggs, and…um, I think there might be milk…” You take out your phone to check. 

Peter steals it from your hand, kissing the frown that comes to your lips. “Don’t sweat it. Your rolls are going to be more than enough.” 

Your frown persists. “It feels rude to only bring one thing and let her do everything else.” 

“It’s not rude. Are you kidding? Aunt May’s had me mooching off her since forever, she’ll be psyched that you brought anything at all.” 

“I already owe her for probably a dozen meals.” 

“Sweetheart.” Peter puts his arms around your shoulders, drawing you into a lazy hug. “You’re freaking out.” 

“I’m not freaking out.” 

“You are. And it’s sweet,” he allows, kissing your temple, “but you don’t have to. May’s already obsessed with you. She’s asked me, like, six times this week if you like green bean casserole.” 

“I like anything she makes,” you mumble. 

“I know. Kiss-ass.” 

You can’t deny it. You want Peter’s aunt May, this woman who’s fed you for the better part of a semester and now invited you to Thanksgiving at her home, to like you, obviously. And part of you suspects that Peter’s reassurances aren’t entirely empty. It’s hard to imagine anyone who raised a boy this kind being anything but loving and generous. You’ve seen pictures of Aunt May in Peter’s room; she has eyes remarkably like his, considering they’re related by marriage, and smile lines etched onto her face the way only genuine warmth can scar. It’s not so much that you’re worried she’ll dislike you for wearing the wrong thing or using the wrong fork, but she’s something to Peter and it’s becoming harder to deny that Peter’s something to you now, so you can’t help but want to make a good impression. 

“Not trying to be a kiss-ass,” you murmur, circling your arms around Peter’s waist, “but you look really nice.” 

Peter smiles. “See, that’s exactly the kind of thing a kiss-ass would say.” 

“I know. It was a risk I had to take, because I needed to tell you.” 

You get squished to Peter’s chest. You suspect it’s so you won’t see him fluster. 

“Don’t tell her the rolls were frozen, okay?” you plead. “The story is I made them from scratch.” 

“Right. With, like, yeast and wheat?” 

“And whatever else goes into bread, sure.” You squeeze him back, but your grip slackens when Peter hisses. “What?” 

“Nothing.” His voice buoys with false levity. “Sorry.” 

“Peter, what?” You retreat enough to see him, hand skimming up his side. “Are you hurt?” 

“It’s nothing,” he says again. His hand comes up to cover yours when it lands on his ribs, and you know without asking that’s the sore spot. “I just, I fell yesterday. I’m a little bruised up.” 

You look up at him. Your concern feels like a tender thing, like your guts are spilling out into the space between you. It makes you a bit sick. “What happened?” 

“I was, uh, skateboarding.” 

“You were skateboarding.” 

“Yeah.” Peter’s shrug looks bashful. “I haven’t done it since high school. Turns out it’s not exactly like riding a bike.” 

You don’t know if you believe him. You want to. You really want to, you want to think Peter would never lie to you, but you know already that he does. It used to be something you could ignore, but now it makes you too sad to bear thinking on. 

“Please be careful with yourself,” you ask him. 

Peter catches the sobriety in your tone. “I’m fine,” he says, more sincerely now, cupping your face. “I won’t do it again. Anyway, maybe I’m tougher than I look, did you ever think of that?” 

You chuff a laugh. “You’re not.” 

“Mean.” He kisses you. “You’re a meanie.” 

“Kiss-ass, meanie. Pick something to call me and stick with it.” 

When you arrive at Aunt May’s, she already knows who you are, but Peter introduces you anyway. This time, he calls you his girlfriend. 

—

On occasion, when you know Peter’s gone on one of his late-night errands, you also take the opportunity to do away with the pretense of sleep. Finals are nearly done. There’s nothing you can do for the library at night, though repairs are nearly completed and the school expects for it to reopen at the start of the spring semester anyway. There’s really not much for you to do, but your head drives you out of bed with an itchy sense of urgency nonetheless. 

This time of year, your apartment is well lit all through the night. The wattage of the city has increased tenfold, lights of white and red and gold twinkling at all hours to entice tourists and holiday shoppers into storefronts. Peter insisted on getting you a cheap tinsel tree, too. It glows warmly in the corner of your living room. 

You hear Peter’s window slide open somewhere around two-thirty. It’s a bit earlier than he usually comes back, but you hope he’s in to stay. You know Peter knows that you wake up to find him gone at least some of the time; but you don’t ask, and so neither does he. It’s…an ache. 

You imagine the silence sometimes like a physical thing, a weight balanced on a string that stretches between the two of you, pulled tight. You feel it some times more than others. You hear the slide of Peter’s window, and the string tugs at the center of your chest, impeding on your breathing room. A dull, familiar ache. 

You know from experience what will happen now. Peter will sleep in his room for the rest of the night. You might hear another few sounds—a shoe being tossed into the closet, the groan of bedsprings. He’ll come out in the morning to find you—maybe asleep, maybe still awake—on the couch, and he’ll chide you between playful kisses so as not to seem too serious, and you’ll pretend not to resent his hypocrisy, though really it’s not the hypocrisy you resent. 

You don’t expect him to come out of his room. 

You almost wouldn’t know it was him if not for the way the figure steps carefully over the squeakiest of your floorboards. Peter is wearing sweatpants and a bulky hoodie, so rumpled you almost wonder if he threw them on just now. He cracks the door to your room, peering inside. 

“Peter?” 

Peter turns on his heel lightning-fast. “Hey,” he says. He looks flustered, face mostly in shadow but the whites of his eyes are lit in your tree’s glow. “Hey, hi. What’re you doing up?” 

“I couldn’t sleep.” Your voice sounds shockingly normal for the tension crackling through the room. Peter shifts on his feet. “Are you okay?” 

He shrugs, giving a quick shake of his head as though unsure why you’d ask. “Yeah, I’m just—I had a weird feeling, so I wanted to see if you were okay. Nightmare, I guess.” 

“Oh. Sorry.” 

“So you are?” 

“Huh?” 

“You’re okay?” Peter’s acting twitchy, and it’s making you nervous. Of the two of you, he definitely seems the least okay. 

“Yeah, Pete,” you say gently. “I’m fine.” You open your arms in invitation, and Peter hesitates a moment before stepping forward. It’s a bit of an awkward hug, you half twisted to reach over the back of the couch and him bent over to get to you, but you make the most of it. 

“What’s going on?” you murmur, raking your fingers through the hair at his nape. It’s sweaty, like he’s been running. You don’t really anticipate a genuine answer to your question, but it feels important for Peter to at least know you care enough to ask. 

You feel his head shake. “Nothing,” he says. He gives you a squeeze, some other half of an excuse probably already on his tongue, but before he can get it out you both jerk apart. 

“Ow.” Your skin burns where Peter’s wrist pressed to it. 

“Shit. Sorry, baby, let me see.” 

You turn around, allowing him to pull the collar of your sleep shirt down enough to look at it. “What was that?” 

“I have, uh. I was just tinkering around with something in my room—you know me, tinkering—and this thing I was messing with sort of exploded. I didn’t realize it was still hot, I’m sorry.” He blows a bit of cool air on your skin. You turn to try and see for yourself. “Hold on, I think we still have some of that burn cream.” 

But in turning, you can now see the light on his face. “Peter,” you breathe. 

Peter must hear something in your voice, because he stops mid-pivot. The weight between you heavies. You feel the strain on your lungs. 

“What happened to your face?” 

His expression twinges. You wonder that it doesn’t reopen the cut on his lip, or if that slow seep of blood is all it can muster anymore. Your boyfriend’s jaw is marred with an ugly splotch of color, already darkening in the center. The cheery glow of your Christmas tree shows in unforgiving starkness the dried blood crusted around his nostrils and the bruise of his nose. 

“This?” Peter smiles, and now his lip does reopen. He hardly seems to notice. “I, uh…well, it’s embarrassing, but I fell out of bed.” 

“Peter.” Your voice thins. 

“I know, it’s so stupid. Didn’t put my arms out to save myself or anything, just boom—face to floor.” 

“Peter,” you say again. “Just tell me what happened. Please.” 

“I’m telling you.” He’s smiling still, like you’re silly, his silly girl, but you can see the strain around his eyes. “Babe, I think you’re more tired than you notice. Let’s go to bed, okay? I actually have to go out and get a replacement part for the thing I exploded, but—” 

“Don’t.” Your eyes are burning. You see Peter see them, his smile dissolving at the edges. “Please just tell me the truth. Who’s doing this to you?” 

“Sweetheart—” 

“No, I—I got it at first, because we’d just moved in and you had no reason to trust me. It wasn’t my business, and I got that. I didn’t—I was fine with letting you do whatever you wanted to.” Tears blaze hot paths down your cheeks, but you refuse to break Peter’s stare long enough to wipe them. “It just seems like it keeps getting worse, though, you know? Or maybe it was always this bad and I just didn’t know, but now—I don’t know, I don’t really know what this is, but it’s different than it was at first. We’re not strangers anymore, right? You can trust me. Please, I just—” Your voice splinters. “I just want to help.” 

Peter’s looking at you with something desperate in his expression. You can see the whites of his eyes again, and his chest is moving like he’s breathing harder than he needs to. He takes a step back, and the string between you pulls taut. It feels sharper than an ache now. 

“I have to—” 

“Don’t go,” you cut him off. 

Peter’s face pinches. “I have to. I have to, I’m sorry. Please go to bed.” 

“Why?” Your shoulders jump, something in you crumpling as you realize there’s nothing you can do to make him stay. Your nose runs. “Just stay here.” 

He glances toward his bedroom, then back at you. He must have left the window open; you can feel the night chill beginning to permeate your apartment. Peter’s fingers twitch at his sides. 

“Please,” you try again. 

Sirens wail outside, and Peter takes another step away from you. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I have to go right now. I’ll be back, okay?” 

You don’t reply, watching through blurred vision as he goes. 

It takes you less than a minute to come to a decision after that. You’re still leaking from your eyes and nose, so you grab a wad of toilet paper from the bathroom, cramming it into your pocket before throwing on a sweatshirt over your sleep clothes and shoving your feet into shoes. 

Peter’s not on the fire escape when you stick your head out his window. You have no clue how he climbed down so fast. You push the window closed and go out the front door. 

Your neighborhood is less quiet tonight. The sirens that make up the city’s constant white noise are closer than usual, louder, echoing down alleyways to reach your peaceful cluster of buildings. You think half-humorously that they might create an opportunity for Spider-Man to pay a visit; maybe if he’s not too busy, you can get him to help track down your runaway boyfriend and scare some sense into him. 

You hate to think of what could compel Peter to come back out here tonight, when he was already so beat up and he clearly didn’t want to. You don’t understand what role he could play. Is he making things for someone? Is that why he had that exploding thing on his wrist? Peter’s skilled, and smart, but you don’t think he’d get mixed up in anything that required him to pass off dangerous technology to anyone who wouldn’t be responsible with it. Unless he had to, at least. 

You’re so furious with him. You tear off a square of toilet paper, blowing your nose. If he gets any more hurt than he already is, you’ll tell Aunt May on him, you swear to god. 

It’s almost funny, considering how much better lit the streets are, that you don’t notice anyone around until the gun is at your back. 

“Purse,” says a voice at your ear. 

“I don’t have one.” Your voice wobbles, but mostly because of the whiplash. Christ, what a shitty day. “I don’t have anything on me.” 

“Don’t fucking lie to me.” The gun presses harder into your back. “Phone, then.” 

“I don’t have one.” 

“Don’t lie.” 

“I don’t! I left it at home.” 

“You know what—” 

“What?” Comes a voice from behind you both. A familiar voice. 

For a millisecond, you could swear it’s Peter, your heart clenching, but you turn after the mugger does to find Spider-Man standing a few feet away. As soon as the gun is trained on him, white webbing jams the barrel and it’s cast harmlessly to the side. 

“I don’t think she’s lying, man.” Spider-Man moves toward you, firing webs on the way that plaster the mugger’s feet to the concrete. “I think you just picked the wrong girl tonight.” He jerks his head at you, and you get his meaning instinctively, stepping out of the way as he moves close enough to give the mugger a shove. The other man goes careening backwards. As soon as his hands land on the ground, webs ensure that’s where they stay. 

Spider-Man takes your elbow in hand, guiding you away. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m…” Something’s nettling you. You wish for Spider-Man and he appears, is that how it works now? You have the feeling like you’re forgetting something. “This is where I live.” 

He laughs, but it doesn’t sound very amused. “I know, but why are you here? What’re you—” He pulls the waist of your pajama pants up from where they’ve started to slip. “Sweetheart, it’s freezing out. Couldn’t you at least have put on a real coat?” 

Sweetheart. 

Your voice sticks in your throat. 

“Your fingernails are gonna fall off,” Spider-Man goes on in a familiarly chiding tone (playful, so as not to seem too serious). He walks you out of the alley, ignoring the calls of the man stuck to the pavement. “What do I have to say to get you back inside? I’ll come with you, how’s that?” 

“Peter?” 

Spider-Man looks over at you. Eyes of all white, and yet everything said in the tilt of his head. “I was going to tell you when I got back,” he says, still walking towards your building, “but of course you had to go out and find trouble. You probably think I’m full of shit now.” 

“Peter,” you say. Not a question this time, but an exhalation. Something released. 

“I’m not making it up, though, I really was going to tell you. I would have told you before I left, but there wasn’t really time, I could hear the cops having a shootout and I really felt like I had to go—I actually only came home because my web-shooter caught a stray, so I needed a backup…” 

You’re reeling, you think. Or swooning. You’ve never figured out the difference. Spider-Man’s (Peter’s. Spider-Man’s?) hand has found its way around your waist, keeping you propped up against him. Silly, to be treated like you’re the delicate one when you know for a fact he’s all bruised and bleeding under that mask. There are probably other injuries you don’t know the half of. 

When Peter stops, you don’t understand why until you realize you’re standing in back of your own building. You’ve crossed streets without noticing. 

“I thought we’d take the fast way up,” he says. 

You manage a “hm?” before he’s tightening his grip on you and you’re sling-shotting up six stories. Peter sets you down on the fire escape. You grip the railing when he lets you go, the cold metal digging into your palms as he jimmies open his bedroom window. He has to gently uncurl your fingers to usher you inside. 

It’s clear one of you is more practiced at going in and out of windows than the other. You half-crawl onto Peter’s bed, stumbling a bit in an attempt to avoid getting your shoes on his pillow, whereas your boyfriend slips gracefully through and is laying down before you’ve managed to turn around. He pulls the window shut so that it hardly makes a sound. You wonder if it’s habit. 

“You okay?” Peter asks as he pulls off his mask. 

You stare. “Me?” 

He looks chastened, but says anyway, “Yeah, sweetheart. You’re shaking a little.” 

“I’m…” You reach for him. Your fingertips lay themselves over the bruised bridge of his nose. Peter’s eyes are sorry. “I’m surprised.” 

“You also just had a gun pointed at you.” 

“So did you. You probably have guns pointed at you all the time.” 

He shrugs, as though this is more or less true. “Are you mad?” 

“I don’t know what I am,” you admit. “Probably, a little.” 

“Is it okay to ask for a hug?” 

“Am I going to hurt you?” 

“No,” he promises, reaching forward to bring you to him. His lips mush to your cheek. “It looks worse than it is. Perk of the spider mutant thing, I heal fast.” 

You’re still careful with him. You hug him with your arms around his shoulders, feeling the strange texture of the webbing spread over his suit. There’s a strangeness to your senses; it feels like a tuning fork has been struck, everything reverberating and trembling its way into alignment. Your heart trembles with it.

“This isn’t what I was expecting,” you hear yourself say. 

“It’s not? I sort of thought you had it all figured out.” 

You shake your head. 

“Well, you’re taking it a lot better than I expected. If that helps at all. I kind of thought you might freak out.” 

“I don’t know how much freak out I have left.” You intend to stop there, but the next admission comes tumbling from your mouth unbidden. “I’ve been worrying for a long time.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Peter sounds genuinely apologetic, and so doting it makes your chest tight. He rubs your back like he can feel it happening. “I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t want to drag you into this, but then it seemed like you were gonna find out no matter what, and…honestly, I just thought I’d get matched with a roommate who didn’t give a shit.” 

“Bad luck.” 

“Yeah, maybe. Not really.” He pulls back enough to kiss you, bumping his nose against yours affectionately. “Hey, maybe it’s too soon, but there might be a pro to the whole dating Spider-Man thing.” 

You look at him. A face you know as well as anything, and from the neck down a suit you’ve seen mostly in news clips. He’s your boyfriend; he’s Spider-Man. He’s your boyfriend who’s Spider-Man. 

“Yeah?” you ask.

“If you really like those pictures in my room, I can bring you to the places where I took them from. It’s not, ah, something most of the public can access. Special privilege only.” 

“Oh.” You nod slowly. “Yeah, that’s cool.” 

“Too soon?” 

“Maybe. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that you work for the cops.” 

“Uh, okay, I don’t work for the cops, I work with them. I’m not some narc.” 

The incredulity in his tone is so distinctly Peter that you come back into yourself. All of the trembling pieces settle into alignment. 

“Right, it’s just. I don’t know.” Your lips give a small tug. You see a familiar amused curiosity ignite in familiar warm brown eyes, and you press a quick kiss to his lips before delivering the news. “I’ve been picturing you more or less at odds with the law. I was pretty sure you were a drug dealer.” 

“Well, there was sort of a—wait, what?” 

[where-is-the-sam-standee]

the sam standee is in the outsiders house museum in tulsa, oklahoma!!!

The Sam standee is at the Outsiders House Museum in Tulsa, OK!

[ciqqy]

I will lock in tomorrow like nobody has ever locked in before

[ciqqy]

[darkandstormyart]

just another monday

[curtis-brothers-hug]

The gang develops a running joke that when something out of their control happens, it’s Dally and Johnny haunting them.

Steve’s car won’t start and Soda goes, “looks like ol’ Dal’s givin us a sign that we shouldn’t go to work today. We better listen, ya don’t wanna disrespect the dead.”

Darry trips on Pony’s backpack in front of the door. “Goddamn it Pony, I told you not to leave your stuff in the doorway!” “It wasn’t me. That musta been Dally messin with you.”

The next day Darry gets him back when Ponyboy is sitting on the porch writing, and a gust of wind sends all his loose pages flying across the yard. “I think Johnnycake’s tryin to tell you that ain’t your best work.”

[the-verdant-haze]

Stayin' Alive (Nine Times)

Synopsis: The gang’s reaction to having a partner who owns a cat !!

Darry Curtis:

‧⟢ Tries so hard to be responsible and mature all the time, but melts the second your cat walks over and rests itself on his lap, bonus points if it's purring. He can't resist the temptation of just a small, itty bitty nap, the cat is taking one too, after all. Please weaponize this to get him to take a break and sleep more often, because it works.

Sodapop Curtis:

‧⟢ Fawns over it like one would coddle a toddler, baby voice and everything. He supports your cat’s rights and it’s wrongs, meaning he's automatically seen by your cat as a Cool Dad since he lets it get away with swatting things off the counter tops. Talks about your cat all the time to his friends though.

Ponyboy Curtis:

‧⟢ Finally, a quiet companion he can sit and read with. Adores your cat, but won't force it to love him. Expect many, many metaphors about cats in his poetry now. Will purposefully sit in the living room instead of a closed off room just so your cat will come to rest in his lap as he reads his most recent book purchase.

Johnny Cade:

‧⟢ Finds a genuine sense of comfort in your cat, especially if it used to be a stray. It's like him, and even if it's not a human, he wants to give that cat a better home than he has. He will get Dally to steal cat treats for him so he can give them to your cat when he comes over, regardless of whether or not your cat already has treats.

Dallas Winston:

‧⟢ Acts as if he doesn't give a shit about your cat, but literally spoils that thing the second you turn around. Steals cat toys (which is hard, considering how much noise they make), and cat treats no matter if your cat already has a billion toys and twenty different kinds of treats. Thought he was a dog person until your cat fell asleep on his chest, purring.

Two-Bit Mathews:

‧⟢ While cats are intelligent creatures, yes, he talks to your cat like it can give valid input on things. He basically has full on one sided conversations with your cat. Bonus points if your cat is vocal, he will act as if your cat is either saying something that could cancel it, or making completely true and perfect comments. Will not elaborate what they are talking about.

Steve Randle:

‧⟢ It takes some time for him to learn how to be gentle with your cat, considering he’s not only a guy but also a guy who’s rowdy with his friends since that's how he was raised. Like, he doesn't understand that your cat is much more fragile than Ponyboy or Johnny. Gets used to it eventually, and brags to Soda that his partner owns a cat.

Author’s Notes: Is this also a self indulgent fic? Yes… I can't stop now 😔

[the-verdant-haze]

Surfin’ USA 

Synopsis: The gang’s reaction to having a partner who can surf !!

Darry Curtis:

‧⟢ He likes that you have a sport you're passionate about, like how he was about football, even if surfing is often overlooked as a sport. Will carry your board down to the shore for you, if you let him. He respects and supports you fully, but he’d rather be dead than actually try to surf though, he’d rather not wipe out completely.

Sodapop Curtis:

‧⟢ Finds it so hot, doesn't have any idea why. Will try it if you let him use your board, but will only get to the part where he actually has to stand up on the board after paddling out and then chickens out of it. Very supportive though, he’ll sit on the shore and cheer you on.

Ponyboy Curtis:

‧⟢ Like Darry, thinks it’s cool that you have a sport you enjoy, like he does with track, but would rather live without cigarettes and books than get on your surf board. He’ll sit under an umbrella, reading his current book on the sand, looking up every once and a while to give you a thumbs-up like a divorced dad would.

Johnny Cade:

‧⟢ He respects it, but would rather stay on the dry land. Would help you with carrying anything to and from the beach, but refuses to go in the water as if he was a spider being repelled by a peppermint plant. I feel like he has some PTSD regarding water after what happened with the Socs, so he just chills with Pony instead.

Dallas Winston:

‧⟢ Would be slightly reluctant to try it, but would anyways if you really wanted him to. He manages to actually paddle out and stand up on the board (unlike Soda), but quickly gets wiped out by a tiny wave. He's stubborn though, and tries it again, like, two more times, wiping out again both times, causing him to stop trying. This man has no sense of balance.

Two-Bit Mathews:

‧⟢ The only one willing to try who is actually good at it. Tell him what to do, hand him your surf board, and he’s doing amazing. Comes back to the shore like “that was fun,” and acts like his very real surfing skills are nothing special before getting distracted and wanting ice cream. Does not realize his potential, and does not care. Would do it again though.

Steve Randle:

‧⟢ Asks the stupidest questions regarding adding an engine to your surfboard, and then adding a jet engine to your surfboard, and then where you can buy jet engines. Drops adding an engine pretty soon though, after he sees you surfing. In the same boat as Soda in terms of him finding it hot, and trying it and chickening out after paddling out.

Author’s Notes: It’s not even spring yet, and I'm already writing summer based fics. I yearn for the warm weather 😔