Marvel – I am Spiderman

Seven minutes turned into twelve. He knew because the space heater had cycled off and back on again and it did that every six minutes and it had done it twice.

Felicia was on her stomach. Her face turned into the pillow, white hair fanned across the cotton, her back bare. The bra had come off at some point during the negotiation about round two or the Cindy conversation or both, he couldn't pin which. One arm tucked under the pillow. The other out to her side, palm up, fingers half-curled. Her breathing was slow and even but he could tell she wasn't asleep because her thumb was moving. Small circles against the sheet. Fidgeting.

His hand was on his stomach. The ceiling had the same water stain shaped like a boot. His body was doing the cool-down thing where the air felt good on his skin and his muscles were heavy and the mattress felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Her warmth close. An inch of air between them and the heat of her hip bled across it.

He turned his head. Her back was mapped in the streetlight coming through the window. The ridge of her spine. The flex of her shoulder where she'd propped herself. The scratches from the mattress on her lower back that she'd gotten when her bridge collapsed and he'd followed her down.

The scar.

Left side, below her breast, running along the bottom edge of her ribs. He'd found it the first time. Kissed it. She'd flinched and pushed his shoulder and then let him. He hadn't asked. She hadn't offered. It had been enough to notice it existed and to put his mouth on it and move on.

His fingertip touched the top of it.

She didn't flinch this time. A small tightening across her shoulders, barely visible. He traced the line of it. Slightly raised. Old. Healed white against her skin. It ran maybe three inches along the bottom of her ribs, curving with the bone.

"When did you get this?"

Long pause. Her thumb stopped moving against the sheet. The space heater hummed. A car passed outside and the light shifted on the wall and came back.

"College." Her voice was flat. Stripped of performance. "Someone I trusted."

He kept his fingertip on the scar. Didn't push it off. Didn't draw circles. Just rested there, one point of contact on the raised line of skin. He thought about the story bible he didn't have for real people. College. Someone she trusted. Two facts and between them a gap he could fill with anything and all the options were the same kind of bad.

He brought his mouth to her ribs.

Her body locked. The same way it had the first time. Shoulders rigid, the muscle along her spine going taut. He kissed the scar at its beginning, where it started below her breast, and held there. His lips on the raised edge. Her skin was cool from the air and his mouth was warm and the scar felt different under his lips than the rest of her. Smoother. Tighter.

She exhaled. Shaky.

He moved his mouth along the scar. Following the line of it. Slow. The same trace from front to side, his lips on each inch of healed skin. Her hand came up to his shoulder and her fingers curled against his skin.

"Peter." Quiet.

He kissed the end of the scar, where it curved toward her side, and she made a sound. Low. From deep in her chest. The same honest noise she'd made the first time he'd done this.

She rolled.

Onto her back, facing him. Her hair was across the pillow and her eyes were open and wet. Her mouth was set. She was looking right at him.

"Don't make me talk about it."

"I won't."

Her hand came to his jaw. Cold fingers from the pillow. She held his face and looked at him and she was checking for the thing people do when they hear the short version. The pity. The careful voice. The sudden handling.

He didn't know what his face was doing. Probably not the right thing. He was bad at arranging his face on purpose. What he felt was a hard knot in his ribs that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with a girl who'd trained herself to fight because someone had hurt her and then the person had died before she could make it right and she'd put on a costume instead.

She must not have found what she was looking for, because she pulled his face to hers and kissed him.

Slow. Her mouth open and soft. Her fingers on his jaw loosened and slid into his hair and her other hand found his chest and lay flat against it. The kiss was different from every kiss she'd given him before. No teeth. No bite. Just her mouth on his, warm, moving slow, and the sound of her breathing through her nose against his cheek.

He put his hand on her hip. She was still in the underwear pushed to the side from before, the fabric twisted and damp. Her skin was warm where the space heater reached and cool where it didn't. His thumb drew a line along the ridge of her hipbone and she shifted into it. Small movement. Her hips tilting.

"This is different," she said into his mouth.

"Yeah."

"I don't-" She stopped. Kissed him again. Harder for a second, like she was trying to find the old rhythm. Her teeth caught his lip. Her hand fisted in his hair and pulled and she bit him and he tasted copper and her hips ground against him.

He could have matched it. Let her take it back to competitive. Let her have the engine she understood.

He didn't.

He caught her wrist. Brought her hand down from his hair. Held it against the mattress beside her head and kissed her slow and she made a frustrated sound against his mouth. Her hips were trying to set a pace and he wasn't matching it. He was moving slower than she wanted and she bit his shoulder and the sting burned and he kept going slow.

"Stay with me."

Her body stilled. Her hips stopped grinding. Her teeth released his shoulder. She was looking up at him and her eyes were wide and wet and her chest was rising and falling fast.

"I don't do this," she said. Quiet. "I don't do-"

"I know."

He reached between them. His fingers found the twisted fabric and tugged her underwear down her thighs. She lifted her hips to let him. She was wet. The heat between her legs hit him before he touched her and when his fingers slid along her pussy she was slick from round one and from this, from the scar and the kiss and the not-fighting, and the wet sound of his fingers on her was loud in the quiet room.

She closed her eyes. Her head tipped back.

He pushed two fingers inside her. She was swollen from before. Tighter than the start of round one because of the sensitivity and his fingers slid in slow and her walls gripped him and she made a bitten-off sound through closed lips.

"Nn-"

He moved his fingers. Slow. Curling. She was hot inside, hotter than the room. Her hips rocked against his hand once and then she caught herself. Stopped. Her jaw clenched and her hands were on the mattress and she was trying to hold still. Trying not to let her body decide this for her.

He pulled his fingers out. She made a sound at the loss. He positioned himself between her legs. The tip of his cock pressed against her and she was wet enough that the pressure alone started to spread her open.

He pushed in.

Slow. Every inch deliberate. She was swollen and sensitive from round one and the friction was tighter and her pussy gripped him in waves as he sank in. Hot. Slick. The sound of him entering her was a wet slide and her breath caught halfway through and her hands flew to his arms and her nails dug crescents into his biceps.

"Ah-"

All the way. His hips flush against hers. He held there. Her legs were open, her heels against the backs of his thighs, her chest rising fast. Her eyes were shut. Her pulse beat around his cock. The space heater ticked. The streetlight caught the sheen of sweat starting on her collarbones.

He moved.

Slow. Long strokes. Pulling almost all the way out and pushing back in and each re-entry she made a sound. Small. From the back of her throat. Involuntary. She wasn't performing these.

She tried to rush him. Her hips came up to meet him, trying to set a faster pace, and he put his hand on her hip and pressed her into the mattress and held the speed where it was.

"Peter-"

"Stay."

Her eyes opened. Green. Wet. Angry and scared and wanting all at the same time and her chin was trembling and she was twenty years old and she looked it.

He held her gaze and moved. Steady. Deep. Each thrust long and slow and the friction was hitting her different at this speed. She could feel everything. Her breathing told him. Deeper. Through her mouth. Her chest expanding fully with each inhale, the exhale shaking, and her hands loosened on his arms and moved to his back and lay flat.

"Harder," she said.

He went slower.

"Peter." A warning.

Slower. One long stroke that made her toes curl against his thighs and her eyes lost focus for a second before she pulled them back.

"You- asshole-"

He almost laughed. Her voice was shaking and she was calling him an asshole and her pussy was soaking wet and clenching around him in waves she wasn't controlling and her eyes were wet and angry.

He drove in deep. Held. Rolled his hips and the angle pressed against the spot where she was swollen and her back arched off the mattress and her mouth opened and she made a sound between a gasp and a word that didn't finish.

"There," he said. "Right there."

Her hands gripped his back. Her nails dragged down between his shoulder blades and the scratches burned and he pulled out slow and pushed in at the same angle and she shook.

"Don't- don't stop that- ah-"

He kept the angle. Steady. Each thrust hitting the same spot and her breathing was falling apart. She was panting. Open-mouthed, fast, shallow, her chest heaving and her ribs slick with sweat. The wet sound between them was louder now. She was dripping and each thrust was a slick sound that filled the room and she turned her head to the side.

He caught her chin. Gentle. Turned her face back.

"Stay."

Her eyes were wide. Green flooded dark. Her lips were parted and swollen from kissing and her chin was trembling in his hand. She was holding his gaze because he'd asked her to and he could see what it cost. He could see her wanting to look away, bury her face in the pillow, turn it into something she could control. She was staying.

He moved faster. The rhythm picking up and her breathing matching it, each exhale a sound now, every thrust pushing a noise out of her that she wasn't choosing.

"Ah- ah- Peter- I-"

Her legs wrapped around his waist. Her ankles locked behind him. She was pulling him into her on every stroke and her pussy was tightening around him in rhythmic pulses and the sweat between their stomachs made each shift slick and the heat where they were connected was furnace-hot.

He was close. His vision was narrowing and his thighs were burning and each thrust was tightening the coil at the base of his spine and she was getting close too because her hands were flattening on the mattress. The same thing from round one. Palms down, fingers spread. Her tell. The silence starting.

Her mouth opened. No sound. Her back arched. Her eyes were starting to go blank-

"Stay with me."

Her eyes focused. On him. Barely. She was at the edge and her body was doing the silence thing, the locked-up vibrating thing where her mouth was open and nothing came out, and she was trying. Her eyes on his and her jaw shaking and she was fighting the silence.

He thrust deep. Held. Pressed his hips against hers and rolled and the pressure on her clit made her back arch harder and her mouth opened wider and-

She made a sound.

A cracked, wet noise that was half his name and half a sob and it came out of her on a shuddering exhale while her pussy clenched around him so hard his vision whited. She hadn't known she had that sound. He could tell from her face. The surprise on it while her body was still coming apart.

He came. Deep inside her, his hips pressed flush, his hands gripping the sheets beside her head, and her body was shaking under him in waves and her legs were crushing his waist and the sound she'd made was still in the room.

Her hands came off the mattress. Found his back. Held on. Her fingers pressed into his spine and she held him there while her body shook and her breathing came in ragged pulls against his neck and her heartbeat hammered through her chest into his.

They lay there.

His weight on her. The space heater cycling. A siren somewhere outside, far away. Her breathing slowing against his ear. Her heart slowing against his ribs. The sweat cooling between them.

She was shaking.

Her arms were around him and her face was turned into his neck and she was shaking and she wasn't letting go.

He held her. One arm under her shoulders, the other hand in her hair. He didn't say anything. He didn't pull back to look at her face because she'd put it in his neck on purpose. Her breathing was wet against his skin. Her fingers gripped and re-gripped his back like she was testing whether he was still there.

The shaking slowed. Her breathing evened. She exhaled long and her whole body settled.

She lifted her face from his neck.

Her mascara was wrecked. Black smudges under her eyes, tracks where the wet had carried it. Her nose was red. Her eyes were swollen. She looked like she'd been caught in rain and hadn't bothered to find cover.

She looked at him. He looked at her.

"If you tell anyone I cried after sex I'll burn your apartment down."

"Noted."

"I mean it, Peter."

"I know."

She put her head on his chest. Settled there. Her hair was damp and tangled and it stuck to his skin and she didn't fix it. Her hand rested over his ribs, her fingers spread, and her heart was still running fast under his arm.

The stolen paintings leaned against the wall. The streetlight moved on the ceiling when a truck passed.

He pulled the sheet up over her shoulders. She let him. She didn't say thank you. Her thumb started moving again. Small circles on his ribs. Fidgeting.

"That sound," he said.

"Shut up."

"You've never-"

"I said shut up."

Her hand pressed flat against his ribs. Her head stayed on his chest. She was lying on him the way a person lies on the ground after a long fall. Testing what was broken. Figuring out what still worked.

He kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled like sweat and lavender.

"Five-minute rule," she said.

"What?"

"This. The-" She gestured vaguely with the hand on his ribs. "This gets five minutes. Then I'm putting pants on and we're not doing whatever this is."

"Whatever what is?"

"The cuddling thing."

"You brought it up. I was lying here quietly."

"You kissed my head."

"Reflex."

"Reflexes don't work like that."

"Mine do."

She was quiet. Her thumb started the circles again. One. Two. Three small circles on his ribs.

"Four minutes," she said.

He didn't correct the math. The space heater cycled off. The room got a degree cooler and she pressed closer and didn't acknowledge that she had.

Three minutes later she was asleep. Her hand flat on his chest, her breathing deep and even, her face pressed into his neck. The mascara was going to stain his skin. The scratch marks on his back burned in the cooling air.

He watched the water stain on the ceiling shaped like a boot and listened to her breathe and didn't close his eyes for a long time.