Translations
"Nae geoya."
She was still on his chest when she said it.
Quiet. Into his collarbone.
He waited.
She lifted her head. Her chin on his chest, her eyes on his. Her hair was stuck to her forehead with sweat and the moonlight caught the strands of webbing still connecting her fingers to the ceiling and her cheeks were flushed and she looked wrecked and she looked at him and said it again.
"Nae geoya. It means mine." She swallowed. "Or- I'm yours. Both. It's both at the same time. Korean does that." Her cheeks went from flushed to red. A different red than the sex flush, darker, starting at her ears. "Not the spider's. Not the bond's. Yours."
He didn't joke. He had three jokes ready. Two of them were good. He looked at her and her ears were dark red and she was braced for him to make it funny because that was what he did and that was what she expected and he didn't.
"Yeah," he said. "You are."
She hit his chest. Open palm, not hard.
"Say something dumb."
"You're also mine."
"That's not dumb, that's-" She stopped. Her mouth closed. Opened. Closed again. She put her forehead against his chest. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
He kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled like sweat and shampoo and sex. He was never going to tell her how much he liked that combination because she'd hit him again.
"Water," she said. "I need water."
She climbed off him and walked to the kitchen. Naked, in the moonlight, her legs still unsteady. He watched her go. He watched her come back. She had two glasses and she handed him one and drank the other standing by the bed, and the moonlight was on her stomach and her breasts and the web strands on her fingers were dissolving, going thin and translucent and fading.
She was looking at his arms.
"What?" he said.
"Your arms." She put the glass on the desk. Reached down and wrapped her hand around his forearm. Squeezed. "They're denser. Not bigger. Denser." She moved her hand up to his bicep. Squeezed again. "Like the muscle is packed tighter. When did this happen?"
"I don't know."
"It wasn't like this two weeks ago. I would have noticed." She was still holding his arm, her fingers pressing into the muscle. "Peter. You're getting stronger."
"I've been training."
"This isn't training." She let go of his arm. "Two weeks ago you needed both arms to pin me against the wall. Remember? When we were sparring and you-"
"I remember."
"Could you do it with one now?"
He looked at her. She was standing by the bed, naked, serious.
He stood up. Took her waist with one hand. Walked her backward two steps until her back was against the wall next to the window. Pressed his palm flat against the wall above her shoulder. Spider-grip engaged, his hand sticking, the adhesion taking his weight and hers. One arm around her waist, lifting, and she came off the floor and her back was against the wall and her legs wrapped around him and he was holding her there with one arm and his spider-grip and his feet on the floor and it was easy.
"Oh," she said. Looking down at the gap between her feet and the floor. Looking at his one arm. "That's- yeah. That's new."
"Apparently."
She was against the wall. He was holding her. The bond had gone from four to six without either of them deciding anything. Her legs were around his waist and her arms were around his neck and his cock was hard against her thigh.
"Stay there," she said.
"That's my line."
"I'm borrowing it."
Her hand went between them. Found his cock. Guided him. She shifted her hips and he pushed in and the angle was different from the bed, gravity pulling her down onto him, and the first thrust went deep and her head hit the wall and "'Ah-'" came out loud enough that he put his hand over her mouth.
She bit his palm.
"Ow."
"Don't cover my mouth."
"You're going to wake up the neighbors."
"There are no neighbors. Mom's at work."
"The walls are thin."
"Then make it worth the noise complaint."
He thrust up. His spider-grip held on the wall. One arm under her ass, her weight nothing with the strength in his arm, and the wall took the pressure of her spine against it and she braced her hands against his shoulders and his cock drove into her and she made the sound that meant yes.
She shot a line of webbing from her right hand. It hit the ceiling, thick, deliberate. Then another from her left. They anchored to the ceiling beam above them, two lines going up from her hands, and when she gripped them they went taut and she was suspended between his arm and her own webbing, held from below and above, and when he thrust she swung back from the anchor lines and onto him on the return.
"Oh my god," she said.
"What."
"We can DO this?" She was laughing. Actually laughing. Her head back against the wall and her mouth open and laughing because the physics of what they were doing was impossible for two normal people and they weren't normal people. The laugh broke into a moan because he pushed up while she was swinging back and the depth was different, the angle, gravity doing half the work, and her eyes went wide and the laugh and the moan mixed into a sound that was just her.
"'Ah- do that again-'"
He did it again. Thrust up as she swung back on the anchor lines. The rebound doubled the force and she slid down onto him hard and her nails dug into his shoulders and the web lines creaked but held.
They built it. Their rhythm. His push, the anchor line's give, gravity's pull, her weight swinging back. Spider-grip and organic webbing and strength that didn't belong in a teenage girl's bedroom in Queens. He held her with one arm. His other hand was on the wall, spider-grip cracking the paint under his fingers, and she was suspended on her own webbing and riding the rebound and the wet sound was loud and neither of them cared.
"'Geogi- right there- don't- 'ah-'"
Korean again. Her brain losing the English. Her fingers white-knuckled on the web lines, arms shaking, and she was getting tighter around him with every thrust. The bond was at nine. Ten. A heat behind his eyes, in his chest, the spider-sense not warning but HUMMING, the bond wide open and she was everywhere in it.
She leaned forward off the wall. Wrapped her arms around his neck. Pressed her mouth against his. He could feel her screaming before he heard it, the vibration against his lips, and her pussy clenched around him so hard his knees almost buckled and her whole body locked and the anchor lines snapped. Both of them. The webbing giving out at the ceiling mounts and the sudden weight hit his arm and his spider-grip and his grip held but the wall didn't. Plaster cracked under his palm. A chunk came loose and hit the floor.
He came. Inside her, his face in her neck, his spider-grip spidering cracks out from his hand across the wall, and the orgasm went through both of them at the same time for the first time and the bond peaked past counting and the room was white for a second.
His knees gave. He slid down the wall, her still on him, and they ended up on the floor. Her legs still around him. His hand still stuck to the wall above them. The plaster dust settling in the moonlight.
"You broke my wall," she said. Into his neck.
"You broke my web lines."
"Those were load-bearing."
"Was that-"
"Ours." She pulled back. Looked at him. Her eyes were bright and wet. "That's ours. Nobody else can do that."
"No," he said. "Nobody else can do that."
They were on the carpet. The bed was too far. He was on his back and she was on her side next to him and the floor was cold through his bare skin and neither of them had moved to get a blanket.
"Teach me something," he said.
"Like what."
"Korean. Something I should know."
She propped herself up on her elbow. Looked down at him. Her hair fell across one eye.
"Yeobo," she said. "It's what married couples say. Like honey. But more serious."
"Yeobo."
"Your pronunciation is terrible."
"Yeobo."
"Worse. You sound like a goat dying in a ravine."
"What else."
"Jagiya. Baby. Sweetheart. Casual." She poked his chest. "You'd use this one. You're a jagiya person."
"Jagiya," he said. Close enough.
"And-" She paused. Looked at the ceiling. At the broken anchor points where her webbing had been. "Arumdawo. It means beautiful."
"Arumdawo."
She went still. Her mouth was slightly open and her eyes were on his and the poking finger had stopped on his chest.
"Say it again," she said.
"Arumdawo."
"You got that one right." Her voice was quiet. "First try."
He looked at her. The moonlight was on one side of her face and the shadow was on the other and her hair was a mess and there was plaster dust in it from the wall and she was the most- he almost thought the word in English but the Korean was sitting right there on his tongue.
"Arumdawo," he said. Looking at her.
She webbed his mouth shut.
One strand, fast, right across his lips. He grinned behind it. She was red from her ears to her collarbones and she was not looking at him.
"You can't just-" She was talking to the ceiling. "You can't just say that. Looking at me. Like that. With the-" She gestured at him. At his whole situation on the floor. "That's not fair."
He peeled the webbing off his mouth. It came away clean, dissolving at the edges. Her control really was better.
"You asked me to say it."
"I didn't ask you to mean it."
He reached over and took her hand. She let him.
"I want to tell you something," he said.
She looked at him.
"My uncle almost died." He left out the transmigration, the foreknowledge, the version where Ben Parker dies on a sidewalk in every movie he'd ever watched. "Before the bite. He was sick. They thought- it was bad. For a while. And I was there and I couldn't do anything and the only thing I kept thinking was that I'd wasted every day I had with him on things that didn't matter."
His thumb moved on her hand. Her fingers tightened around his.
"He's okay now. He's fine. He sits in his recliner and does crosswords and drinks coffee and he's fine. But I remember the part where I thought he wasn't going to be fine, and it changed what I pay attention to."
She was quiet.
"That's why I notice things," he said. "That's why I showed up when you texted. That's why I'm here." He looked at her. "I don't waste days anymore."
She was looking at their hands. Her thumb moved over his knuckles. Back and forth.
"Arumdawo," she said. Looking at their hands. Not at him.
He didn't say anything. She held his hand. The plaster dust settled on the carpet. Somewhere in the apartment a clock was ticking that he'd never noticed before and outside the window the neighborhood was dark and quiet.