Morning
He woke up with her back against his chest and her hair in his mouth.
The hair was the first thing. Long, black, smelling like the coconut shampoo she used and the particular warmth of someone who'd been sleeping under covers for eight hours. He pulled the strand out from between his lips and his arm was around her waist and her body was tucked against his, her back flush against his chest, her ass pressed against his hips. His hand was on her stomach. Flat. Warm skin under his palm. She was wearing one of his t-shirts and nothing else and the shirt had ridden up to her ribs in the night.
The room was grey. Early. The alarm clock on the nightstand said 6:47 and there was enough light through the blinds to see the shape of things. His bedroom. His bed. Cindy Moon in it.
May's rules: door open, no weeknights. Wednesday was technically a weeknight and the door was shut and he could already hear the lecture forming downstairs in May Parker's brain. But Cindy's back was warm and the morning was cold outside the blankets and his cock was hard against the curve of her ass and the lecture was a problem for a future version of Peter who didn't currently have Cindy Moon's body pressed against every part of him.
Threads on the pillowcase.
Thin. Almost invisible in the grey light. Silk webbing, organic, trailing from her fingertips in delicate lines. She did this when she was deeply asleep. The conscious control she'd built over the last year vanished when her brain went all the way under and the webbing just happened. Like talking in your sleep except instead of words it was silk. He'd found threads on his sheets, on her pillow, once in a thin line from her hand to his wrist like she'd tethered herself to him while they slept.
He traced one with his fingertip. Fine, almost gossamer. It would dissolve in an hour.
She shifted. Her hips pressed back against him and she made a sound that was still more asleep than awake. A low "Mmm" into the pillow. Her hand found his on her stomach and her fingers laced through his and pressed his palm tighter against her skin.
"Mmm. Good morning."
Her voice was rough from sleep. She didn't open her eyes. She pressed back again, deliberate this time, and his cock settled against her through the thin fabric of her underwear and her hips rocked once, lazy, testing.
"Morning," he said.
She rocked again. Slow. Her ass grinding back against him with the unhurried rhythm of a person who didn't plan on going anywhere. His hand slid from her stomach down to her hip. Her underwear was cotton, plain, and when he hooked his thumb under the waistband she lifted her hips enough for him to pull them down to her thighs.
The air was cool where the covers had shifted. Her skin was hot. He pressed his hand between her legs and she was warm, not wet yet, just warm, and when his fingers slid along her she exhaled and her thighs parted a fraction.
"That's nice," she said into the pillow.
He rubbed her with his fingers. Slow circles. She was getting wet. The warmth turning slick under his fingertips and she made a sound, quiet, a catch in her breathing that meant her body was waking up faster than her brain. Her hips pushed back against his hand and then against his cock and the dual pressure made him harder and she could feel that because she did it again.
He pushed his boxers down with his free hand. His cock pressed against her bare skin and the heat of her was immediate and close and she reached back between them and wrapped her fingers around him and guided him against her. She rubbed him along her pussy. Wet now. The slide was easy and she was coating him with it, lazy, unhurried, her hand loose around him, spreading the wetness along his length.
"Just-" She angled her hips. "Like that."
He pressed in.
Slow. She was tight in the morning, her body still waking up, and the first inch made her breath catch. He held there. Let her adjust. She exhaled against the pillow and pressed back and he slid deeper and the heat and the wet and the grip of her around him made his eyes close. He knew this body. The angle she liked from this position. The depth that made her breathing change.
She was holding the pillow. Her fingers curled into it and thin threads of silk appeared along the cotton, trailing from her fingertips. Unconscious. She didn't know she was doing it.
He moved. Slow. Long strokes, pulling almost out and pushing back in and each re-entry she made a sound. Quiet. Into the pillow. "Mm." "Ah." Lazy sounds. Morning sounds.
His hand was on her hip. The other arm was under her, wrapped around her chest, his fingers on her collarbone. She was warm everywhere. The t-shirt had ridden up to her chest and his arm was across her bare stomach and the covers were around their waist and the room smelled like sleep and coconut and the sheets were warm from their bodies.
She reached back. Her hand found his hip and pulled him closer and the angle shifted. Deeper. She made a sharper sound, a caught "Ah-" that was louder than the others and she pressed her face harder into the pillow.
"Right there?"
"Mm-hm. Don't- don't change that-"
He kept the angle. Steady. His hips flush against her ass on every stroke and the wet sound between them was the only sound in the room besides her breathing. She was panting into the pillow. Short fast breaths that fogged the cotton and her hand was gripping his hip and pulling him into her on every thrust.
Her fingers were leaking silk. Threads across the pillow, across the sheet, thin lines trailing from her hand to his hip where she gripped him. She'd be embarrassed later. She always was. The webbing when she couldn't control it was the thing she hated most about her powers and he found it endearing and the argument about that was an argument they'd had four times and would have again.
He moved faster. Her breathing sped up. She was making sounds on every thrust now, muffled into the pillow, rhythmic, her voice going higher as her body tightened around him. Her hand on his hip gripped harder and the silk threads multiplied and the pillow was getting a web-pattern pressed into it from her clenched fingers.
"Peter- ah- right- right there- don't stop-"
Her voice was breaking. The words were dissolving into sounds. She pressed back against him hard, her back arching, her ass pushing into his hips, and he drove deep and held and she went tight around him, her pussy clenching in waves, and she said his name into the pillow and the cotton swallowed half of it and the other half came out cracked and breathless.
He came with her. His hips pressed flush, his arm tight around her chest, his face in her hair. The warmth of her body, the scent of coconut, the silk threads on the pillow, the sound of his name still caught in the cotton. His vision went blank for a second and he held her and she was still clenching around him in slow waves and her hand was still on his hip and her fingers were still trailing silk.
They lay there. Her back against his chest. His arm around her. The covers had fallen to their knees. The room was lighter now, the grey turning blue, and the alarm clock said 7:12 and the house was quiet except for the sound of them breathing.
She lifted her head from the pillow. Looked at it. The silk threads.
"Dammit." She picked at a strand with her fingernail. "I did it again."
"I like it."
"You like it because it's not YOUR pillowcase." She pulled a thread and it came away in a long strand and she wound it around her finger. "Your aunt is going to find webbing on the sheets and she's going to think we're into something really specific."
He laughed. She rolled over to face him. Her hair was a wreck and her eyes were sleepy and her cheeks were flushed and she was smiling at him.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi."
She kissed him. Slow. Morning breath and neither of them cared.
She made coffee. He made toast.
The kitchen was bright now. May had left a note on the fridge: DOOR STAYS OPEN — LAST WARNING. Underlined twice. Cindy read it while holding her coffee mug and her face went through about four expressions in three seconds.
"Your aunt definitely heard us."
"The door was closed."
"That's literally the problem, Peter."
"I'm saying she didn't hear anything."
"The door was CLOSED. She KNOWS the door was closed. She checked the door. She checks the door every night. She told me she checks the door."
"She told you she checks the door?"
"She told me she checks the door."
He stared at the note. LAST WARNING. Underlined twice. He had a sudden vivid image of May Parker standing in the hallway at 7 AM, finding the door closed, pressing her lips together, going downstairs, writing this note with the calm precision of a woman who had chosen to address the situation through stationery instead of confrontation.
"We're dead," he said.
"YOU'RE dead. I'm the guest." Cindy sipped her coffee. "She likes me."
"She does like you."
"More than she likes you right now, I bet."
He couldn't argue with that.
They ate toast. He burned his. She ate it for him because she ate anything and she was cutting the crust off her own toast with a knife because she was seventeen and still cut the crust off and he was never going to let her forget that.
"I found something," she said.
She was still holding the crustless toast but her face was different. Focused.
"Ezekiel's company. Sims Incorporated. He owns a building on the Upper West Side, tall, converted it into his headquarters. But that's not the thing." She put the toast down. "He's been buying properties. Quietly. Through shell companies. I tracked seven purchases over the last eighteen months. All different neighborhoods. No pattern in the real estate."
"So what's the pattern?"
"The Web of Life." She pulled out her phone. Showed him a map she'd drawn. Seven dots on a diagram of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens. "These aren't random locations. They're ley lines. Totemic energy lines that connect to the Web of Life and Destiny. It's the thing he keeps talking about, the spider-totem mystical infrastructure. He's buying buildings directly on top of the intersections."
Peter looked at the map. The dots were spaced across the city, connected by lines Cindy had drawn in red. The pattern looked like a web. Of course it looked like a web.
"He told us the Inheritors were a threat," Peter said. "That we needed to be careful."
"And I think that's true. I think the Inheritors are real and they hunt spider-totems and everything he said about the danger is accurate." She picked the toast back up. Bit it. Chewed. Swallowed. "But he's also buying millions of dollars in real estate on totemic ley lines and he hasn't mentioned that once."
"You think he needs us."
"I think he needs spider-totems. For whatever he's building on those ley lines. He's not lying about the threat. But the protection thing isn't his only agenda." She looked at him. Her eyes were sharp and awake now. "He needs us for something and he's not telling us what."
Peter's stomach tightened. She was right. Ezekiel had been helpful and honest and every one of those things could be true while also being a screen.
"What do we do?"
"We keep watching. We don't confront him yet. He's still useful and he's still telling us real things about real threats. But we watch what he buys and we watch who he talks to and we don't give him what he wants until we know what that is."
She bit the toast. He looked at her. Seventeen years old, sitting in his aunt's kitchen in his t-shirt with silk still on her fingertips and a map of totemic ley lines on her phone.
She caught him looking.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You're doing the face."
"What face?"
"The proud face. Stop it."
"I'm not doing a face."
"You're doing a face and it's embarrassing and I will web you to that chair."
He drank his coffee. She ate her crustless toast. The silk was dissolving from her fingers in the morning light and May's note was on the fridge and somewhere on the Upper West Side Ezekiel Sims was buying real estate on ley lines and not telling them why.
The toast was burned. He ate it anyway.