Window
He changed his sheets at eleven. Not because the old ones were dirty. Because they were the Star Wars sheets May had bought him two Christmases ago, before he'd arrived in this body, and they had X-wings on them and he was not going to have sex for the first time on sheets with X-wings on them.
The replacement set was plain blue. He found them in the hall closet next to Ben's old Pentax and a stack of towels that smelled like lavender dryer sheets. He made the bed. Remade it. He stood in his room in a t-shirt and gym shorts almost midnight and looked at the bed he'd just made twice and thought about how this was the most nervous he'd been since he woke up in someone else's body.
May was in bed. Ben was in bed. The house was quiet after ten, the radiator clicking and the Watsons' TV through the shared wall, too faint to make out.
He sat on the edge of the bed. Stood up. Sat down again. Checked his phone. No new texts. The last one was still there: Don't fall asleep.
He wasn't going to fall asleep.
Close to midnight he heard her. Her heartbeat. Spider hearing picked it up from about half a block away, fast, getting closer. Then the soft scrape of hands on brick. The specific sound of spider-grip on the exterior wall, a faint tacky peel with each handhold.
She appeared at the window.
Hoodie. Shorts. Hair down. The last time he'd seen it down was the day he'd shown up at her house, when she'd been standing in a webbed bedroom with dark circles under her eyes. This was different. It was loose past her shoulders and she had one hand on the window frame and the other on the sill and she was breathing hard from the climb and she looked at him through the glass.
He opened the window.
"I couldn't sleep," she said.
"Me neither."
She climbed in. Her bare knee hit the desk and she winced and he caught her elbow and she straightened up and they were standing in his bedroom a foot apart. The window was still open. The air coming in was cool and it smelled like the street and her shampoo was already filling the room.
She was looking at his bed. At the blue sheets. At his room, the posters and the desk and the model and the ceiling. Then at him.
"You changed your sheets."
"They had X-wings on them."
Her mouth twitched. "I would have been fine with X-wings."
"I wouldn't have."
She laughed. Quiet, through her nose, her shoulders shaking. Then she stopped laughing and her hands were on either side of his face and she kissed him.
Slower than the couch. Her lips moved against his and her fingers were on his jaw and she was being careful. Deliberate.
He put his hands on her waist. The hoodie was soft and thin and her body was warm underneath it and the bond hummed between them, quieter now, lower.
She pulled back. An inch.
"Are you sure?" he said.
"If you ask me again I'm webbing your mouth shut."
"That's a yes?"
"Peter."
"I'm just being-"
She put her finger on his lips. "I took the Q56 at eleven PM on a Saturday. I climbed the side of your house. I'm sure."
He closed the window.
His shirt came off first. She pulled it. He helped. It went over his head and she dropped it on the floor and looked at him. His chest. His stomach. Her lips parted and her eyes tracked from his collarbone to his waistband and she swallowed.
"Your turn," he said.
She grabbed the hem of her hoodie and pulled it off in one motion. No bra. Nothing underneath. Just Cindy, bare from the waist up, arms at her sides, chin up, looking at him and daring him to make a joke.
He didn't make a joke.
Her chest was small and tight, the muscle underneath from hockey visible in her shoulders and arms. Her nipples were hard from the cool air from the window he'd just closed. Her stomach was flat, a line of definition down the center.
"I know they're small," she said.
"Shut up."
"They're-"
He kissed her. Put his hands on her ribs and pulled her in and kissed her and she made a sound into his mouth and her bare skin was hot against his bare skin, the heat where their chests pressed together running from his sternum to his stomach.
They hit the bed. He went down first, pulling her with him, and she landed on top and her thighs locked around his hips. Spider-strength. The squeeze was hard enough that his ribs creaked and a normal person's would have cracked and the force of it drove the air out of his lungs.
"Stop being careful," she said. Her face was close. Her hair was hanging around them. "I'm not going to break."
"I know."
"Then stop acting like I will."
He rolled them. She let him. His weight pressed her into the mattress and her legs wrapped around his waist and all of her against him, stomach to stomach, her thighs gripping his hips and the heat of her through two thin layers of fabric. He kissed her neck. The spot below her ear. The one that made her loud.
She bit the side of his neck. Where it met his shoulder.
Her teeth sank in and the pain was sharp and real, spider-strength jaw on spider-healing skin, and her teeth broke the surface and he felt it, the sting and the wet warmth of blood and the clamp of her mouth muffling the sound she was making. The sound she didn't want May to hear.
His hand was between her legs. He hadn't planned it. One second his hand was on her hip and the next it was sliding down her stomach and under the waistband of her shorts and her underwear was damp and he pressed his fingers against her through the fabric and she bit harder.
"'Nn-'"
He pulled the underwear aside. She was wet. His fingers slid against her and the slickness was immediate and warm and she shifted her hips to give him a better angle and he found her clit and pressed and her whole body jerked.
"'Ah- right-'" Muffled into his shoulder. Her teeth still in his skin.
He worked his fingers. One pressed inside her, slow, and she was tight and hot and her hips rocked against his hand and his thumb circled her clit and her breathing was in his ear now, fast, shallow, bitten off. She was trying to be quiet. May was one floor down and a hallway over and the house was quiet and every sound in this room carried.
Silk on the sheets. Her left hand was gripping the pillow and threads of webbing leaked from her fingertips and stuck to the cotton and the headboard behind it.
"Sorry," she whispered.
"Don't be."
He added a second finger. She made a noise that wasn't quiet. He kissed her to catch it.
"I want-" she said. Against his mouth. "I want you to-"
"Yeah."
His shorts came off. Her shorts came off. Her underwear, damp, stuck to her thigh for a second before she kicked it free. He was hard and he'd been hard since she came through the window and she looked down between them and her eyes went wide and she looked at his face and then back down.
"Okay," she said. Quiet.
"We don't have to-"
"I said okay."
She was on her back. Her hair was spread on the blue pillow. Her knees were up and her thighs were parted and she was looking at the ceiling and her chest was rising and falling fast.
He settled between her legs. Lined up. The head of his cock pressed against her and she was wet but the angle was wrong and it slipped and he adjusted and it was still wrong and he shifted his hips and she reached down and guided him and the tip pushed in.
Tight. The first inch was tight and slow and her breath caught and her hand was still between them, her fingers wrapped around him, controlling how much, how fast. He pushed. Another inch. She winced.
"Ow."
He stopped.
"Don't stop. Just- the angle. Move your- left. A little."
He shifted left. She adjusted under him. Her hand guided again and he pushed and this time the angle was right and he slid in further and her mouth opened and her eyes closed. "'Ohh-'" Low. Long.
The third thrust found it. Whatever the right angle was, the right depth. She gasped and her fingers left him and grabbed the sheets instead and her hips tilted up into him and the tightness was everywhere, wet and hot.
"There," she said. "'There- don't move- just- there.'"
He moved. Slow. A careful pull back and a push in and she was tight around him and the friction was different from anything his hands or her grinding had been, hotter, wetter, the full length of him inside her and every inch of the stroke registered. Her legs came up around his waist. Spider-strength. His ribs creaked again and the pressure locked him in deep and her heels dug into his lower back.
The first few strokes had been tight, resisting, and now she was slicker and each push was easier and wetter and the sound it made was soft and rhythmic and she heard it and her cheeks flushed but she didn't stop this time.
He found a pace. Slow, then less slow. Her breathing matched his thrusts, a sharp intake on each push, a shaky exhale on each pull. Her hands were on his back and the silk was leaking from her fingers, thin strands sticking to his skin, his shoulder blades, the dip of his spine. The threads hardened as they cooled.
His mouth found her ear. Below it. The spot. He pressed his lips against it and breathed and she went still.
Completely still. Eyes open. Wide. Her hips stopped moving. Her fingers stopped pulling. She stared at the ceiling and her mouth was open and no sound came out.
Then it came out.
"'AH-'"
He got his hand over her mouth. Her eyes were still wide and she was shaking under him and the sound kept going against his palm.
"Shh. Shh. May's downstairs."
"'Mmph-'" Her hips were moving again. Grinding up against him. The hand over her mouth wasn't slowing her down. Her fingers dug into his back and the silk was everywhere, sheets, headboard, his skin, and her nails raked down his spine and the pain was bright and real because spider-strength nails went through spider-healing skin and he felt the cuts open and the warm trail of blood down his back.
"Do that again."
She did it again. Harder. Four lines from his shoulders to his lower back. He hissed and drove into her and she arched and the sound against his palm was Korean, broken syllables he didn't know.
"'Joh-a- geo-gi- ah- Peter- geogi- mmph-'"
The pace stopped being careful. He was faster now and she was matching him and the bed was making noise and the headboard tapped the wall once and he shifted his angle to stop it and the new angle hit something inside her and her back arched off the mattress. Her nails dug in. More blood. His back was a mess of cuts that were already healing and opening again every time she gripped.
The wetness was loud now. Wet slick rhythmic sounds with each thrust and her breathing was gone, replaced by constant broken noise against his hand, Korean and English mixed, his name in there somewhere.
She came. Her face pressed into his neck. Her whole body shook, thighs locked around him so hard his ribs popped, her pussy clenching around his cock in waves that squeezed him and released and squeezed again. Korean whispered into his throat, quiet, fast, the same syllable repeating. Her fingers were in the sheets and the webbing was everywhere and her body was rigid and shaking at the same time.
He lasted about four seconds after that.
He pulled out. Just barely. Just in time. Came on her stomach, her hip, the mess landing warm on her skin. His arms gave out and he caught himself on his elbows and his forehead pressed against her collarbone and he stayed there, breathing, his back stinging where the cuts were closing.
The room was quiet. The streetlight came through the window. His heartbeat was loud in his own ears and slowing down.
Cindy's hand was in his hair. Gentle now. The webbing was sticky and drying and her fingers moved through it carefully, touching his scalp without pulling.
"Sorry about your sheets," she said.
He looked. The sheets were webbed to the mattress. Silk strands from her hands connected the cotton to the headboard, the wall, the pillow. Some of it was thick enough to hold weight. The blue sheets looked like a spider had moved in.
"They'll dissolve."
"Yeah." She was quiet. Then: "I wanted to leave marks."
He looked at her. She was looking at his back. At the scratches that were already fading, pink lines going white, spider healing eating the evidence.
"They heal," she said.
"Mm."
"That's what I mean." Her thumb traced one of the disappearing lines on his shoulder blade. "I wanted to leave marks. And I can't."
He lay next to her. The bed was small and they were both sweaty and the sheets were stuck to the mattress and her leg was against his and the bond was quiet.
Her shampoo. Salt. The two of them. The room smelled like sex and he'd need to open the window before morning.
He didn't open the window.