Silk
Cindy's room looked like a spider had moved in and redecorated.
Organic web-threads stretched between the bookshelf and the desk lamp and the hockey stick propped in the corner and the chair and the bedpost. Thin lines drying in the air, some translucent, some catching the light with a red-white sheen. The threads crossed and layered and formed a web that covered half the room and at the center of it, sitting cross-legged on the floor in shorts and a tank top with her hair pinned up with a pencil, Cindy was weaving.
Peter sat on the bed with a pair of scissors. His job was holding tension on threads when she needed a second pair of hands and cutting when she said cut and staying out of the way otherwise. She'd been at this for hours. The room smelled like her and the faint chemical sweetness of the organic silk and the ramen they'd eaten at nine.
"Tension," she said. He grabbed the thread where she pointed and pulled. She pressed two panels together with her thumbs, rolling the seam until the fibers fused. She'd figured out the technique by trial and error over the past two nights. The webbing was stronger when she pressed it warm and the thickness depended on how many layers she fused. She'd been experimenting with different weaves for stretch versus rigidity and her notebook on the desk had diagrams that looked like textile engineering crossed with spider-sense doodles.
"Cut."
He cut. She held up the panel. Red, translucent, with a white sheen where the light hit it at an angle. She pressed it against her forearm and flexed.
"Holds," she said.
"It held last time too."
"Last time I wasn't flexing as hard."
She went back to work. Peter watched her hands. The webbing came from her fingertips in thin streams and she guided it with a precision that was half instinct and half the eidetic memory cataloging every successful thread pattern and replicating it. Her fingers moved fast. The threads layered. Another panel took shape.
A panel fell off the hockey stick. She webbed it back without looking.
"I'm thinking about the face," she said. "Full coverage or partial?"
"Depends on how much of your face you want hidden."
"My mom would literally kill me if she found out. So. Full."
"Full it is."
"But I want to be able to eat while wearing it."
"You want a mouth hole."
"I want a mouth PANEL. That I can lower. For food purposes."
"Food purposes."
"Tteokbokki doesn't eat itself, Peter."
He handed her the scissors. She cut a curved edge into the face panel and held it up and looked at him through the eye holes and the silk was white with a faint sheen and her eyes were dark behind it.
She pulled the face panel down. Grinning.
"Okay," she said. "Body next."
The body took another hour. Red with black accents along the ribs and the backs of the legs. She designed it as she went, pulling from ideas she'd sketched in the notebook and from the way the silk wanted to sit on her body. She tried panels on, adjusted, re-fused seams. Peter held threads and passed scissors and at one point she asked him to press a seam along her shoulder blade while she fused the front and his hand was on her back through the silk and the silk was warm from her body and the contact registered in his hands and lower and he kept his face neutral because she was focused and this was her moment.
She finished at midnight.
She stood in the center of the room holding the full costume up. Red body, white face panel, black accents. Sleek. The silk caught the overhead light and the surface had a sheen that moved when the fabric moved and it was hers and it was made from her.
"Silk," she said.
"Not Spider-Girl?"
"Silk." She looked at him. "Smoother. Faster. My thing. Not yours."
"Silk."
"Silk."
She held the costume against her chest with both arms and she was glowing. Her eyes were bright and her mouth was open in a grin that showed all her teeth and the pencil had fallen out of her hair and the black strands were loose around her face and the room was covered in webbing and she was standing in the middle of it holding the thing she'd made.
She crossed the room in two steps and pushed him onto the bed.
He went. The mattress bounced. She was on top of him before he finished landing, her knees on either side of his hips, the costume bunched between them. She kissed him. Hard. The compass hit ten. Her hands were on his face and she was grinning into the kiss and he could feel the grin against his mouth, teeth and lips and the laugh that was building in her chest.
"We're going to ruin your suit," he said.
"I'll make another one."
She pulled her tank top off. No bra. She'd been weaving for hours in shorts and a tank top and under it was just Cindy, flushed from work and radiating heat. She tossed the tank top and it caught on a web-thread and hung there and she didn't care. She pulled the silk body panel over her head, the red-and-black costume settling on her torso like a second skin, and she was wearing the top half of Silk and nothing on her bottom half and she looked down at him and laughed.
"How do I look?"
"Like a hero who forgot pants."
She laughed harder. Her hand found his zipper. Pulled it down. Her hand was warm and her grip was confident and she wrapped around him and squeezed and his hips lifted off the bed.
"Ah-"
She shifted. Pulled her shorts aside. She was wet. She'd been wet for a while, from the adrenaline and the creation and the night and the moment, and when she sank down onto him the slide was easy and hot and she gasped and her hands went to his chest and she was wearing the Silk costume from the waist up and his cock was inside her and the compass was at ten and she started moving.
Fast. She rode him fast and joyful and she was laughing. Her head was back and her hair was loose and swinging and her hips rolled and snapped and she was laughing and fucking him and the two were the same thing. Her hands on his chest, nails digging, the silk costume tight across her breasts and her stomach and her skin flushed where the costume didn't cover and the wet sound between them was loud in the quiet room.
"Cin-"
"Don't talk." She was grinning. "Just- let me-"
She moved faster. Her thighs were strong from hockey and she used them, lifting and dropping, and each drop drove him deep and she gasped each time and the gasp turned into a laugh and the laugh turned into a sound that was beyond laughing. Her pussy was tight and wet and gripping him and the angle was hers, she was controlling everything, depth and speed and the way she ground down at the bottom of each stroke.
He grabbed her hips. She grabbed his wrists and pinned them to the mattress and leaned forward and her hair fell around his face and she kissed him and rode him and the kiss was messy and tasted like laughter and the compass was screaming.
"I made a costume," she breathed into his mouth. "I'm a hero. I caught you when you fell."
"You caught me."
"I caught you and I fought a guy with razor wings and now I'm fucking you in my costume and this is the best night of my life."
She sat up. Threw her head back. Rode him harder and her hands were on his chest and her eyes were closed and she was close. He could feel it. The tightening. Her laugh changing, going higher, going breathless.
She came laughing.
Her body clenched around him and she was laughing and shaking and her hands gripped his chest and she arched backward and the laugh broke into something wordless and her hips stuttered and she squeezed him so tight his vision went white. He came a second later, his hands on her hips, pushing up into her, and she held onto him and shook.
She collapsed on top of him. Her face in his neck. The silk costume was damp with sweat and her skin was hot through it. She was still laughing. Small, shaking laughs that vibrated against his throat.
"Best night," she said. Muffled.
"Best night."
She lay on top of him and her heartbeat was fast against his chest and the compass was at ten and the room was covered in webbing and the costume was damp with sweat and the night was good.
She modeled the full costume at one in the morning.
Face panel up, body on, legs done in a rush while he watched, black accents running down the outer seams. She stood in front of the mirror on her closet door and turned and the silk moved with her. She bent. Stretched. Did a handstand because Cindy tested things by doing them. The costume held.
"You need a test run," he said.
"Race you."
School. Tuesday. Third period.
Peter and Cindy passed in the hallway between bio and English. She was carrying her textbooks against her chest and her hair was in a ponytail and she looked like every other student at Midtown High except for the way her eyes found his from thirty feet away and the corner of her mouth pulled and her chin lifted half an inch and the look that passed between them was a conversation nobody else in the hallway could have read.
We flew last night. We fought. We won. I made myself a new name and you were there when I did.
Jessica Jones was at her locker. She was watching them. She'd been watching them for weeks and Peter had noticed because Peter noticed things and Jessica noticed things and neither of them talked about it. Jessica's eyes tracked the look between Peter and Cindy and her mouth pressed flat and she closed her locker without looking at it and the slam was louder than it needed to be.
She looked at Peter. He looked at her. Her eyes were dark and sharp and she was adding this to a list he couldn't see.
She walked away. Hoodie up. Bag over one shoulder. Peter watched her go and the hallway was loud with sneakers and lockers and someone's phone playing music too loud from a back pocket.
He had bio in three minutes. The Silk costume was folded in the bottom of Cindy's backpack and nobody in this hallway knew that the girl with the ponytail had caught Spider-Man in midair two nights ago.
He went to bio.