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It’s eleven P.M. on a Saturday night, and Flash is at the most miserable going away party he’s ever attended in his life. He’s been to funerals more cheerful than this. Burying his childhood dog after it got hit by a car had been a breezy little affair in comparison.
And to add another steaming load to the heap of shit this party is, he’s ostensibly the guest of honor.
“Are you a fucking idiot or something?” Gwen spits at him.
She’s on her fourth Malibu sunset and her second tirade of the night, her pretty face flushed with rum and wrath, eyebrows arched as she stares Flash down, all five-foot nothing of her, and he feels like an ant in the enormous presence of her grief and righteous outrage.
“Cool it, little lady, this is supposed to be a party,” MJ says, gallantly stepping in to defend him, but even her star seems a little dim tonight.
“You had an athletic scholarship! You had a future! You wanna help people? You could become a teacher! You could have joined the Peace Corp, for fuck’s sake,” Gwen continues shrilly, her voice breaking. “Why did you enlist in the fucking army? Seriously—please explain that to me. I still don’t understand. I can’t understand.”
“Can someone fucking check on Pete?” Harry interrupts, lying on his back on the sofa and furiously puffing away on a cigarette. “He consumed like half his body weight in primo edibles at my place before we came over, and he’s been in the bathroom for nearly two hours now. He could be dead. He could be eating the toilet paper.”
Flash gulps down his vodka and coke. He thinks Peter has the right idea. Getting zombified on edibles and eating toilet paper sounds like a grand ol’ time compared to enduring this shitshow.
“These military recruiters—they’re evil,” Gwen says, her mascara streaming down her cheeks. “They prey on people like you.”
“Oh, lord, Gwendy,” MJ says, crossing her arms over her chest and rolling her eyes.
“What, dirt poor and dumb as rocks?” Flash mutters, downing the rest of his drink. “Sorry we can’t all be rich little trust fund babies like you and Harry, princess. Some of us gotta hustle to get through life.”
“You had options,” Gwen says, clasping her hands in front of her chest and looking at him with glossy, imploring eyes. “Flash—“
“Who is gonna fucking check on Pete, huh?” Harry shouts, indiscriminately hurling a throw pillow across the room. “He could be drowning in the bathtub while we’re out here yammering like a bunch of wasted pricks.”
“God, Harry, he’s your best friend—get off your ass and do it yourself,” Flash says sourly, even as he sets his empty glass on the coffee table and then gets up to check on Peter, eager for any excuse to escape this fiasco, however temporary the reprieve.
He walks down the hallway to the bathroom where Peter had disappeared earlier that night. The door is still closed. Flash raps his knuckles against it.
“Pete, buddy, you okay in there?”
There’s no answer. Flash knocks again. “Pete, hello?”
The silence stretches on. Flash tries the doorknob only to find it locked.
“Peter, for fuck’s sake—open the goddamn door!” he yells.
There’s still no response. An itch of concern runs down Flash’s spine. He takes a step back, rubbing a hand over his chin, the itch settling in his stomach like a ball of lead.
“Shit,” he mutters to himself. He presses a shoulder to the door, applying pressure until he feels the cheap lock pop and the door give way.
It swings open—into an empty bathroom. No Peter, dead or otherwise, just the sink and the tub and the toilet, and above that an open window.
An open window….
The ball of lead in the pit of Flash’s stomach turns to ice. There’s an empty bathroom and an open window and their stupid idiot friend who was drunk and high-as-a-goddamn-kite on Harry’s ludicrously potent edibles is gone.
“Fuck! Peter, you fucking moron!” he hisses to himself, rushing forward. He straddles the toilet and sticks his head out of the window, peering down at the street below. They’re only two stories up—a survivable fall, but not one Peter’s probably gonna walk away from totally unscathed.
It’s too dark to really see anything and there’s a tree obscuring the view of the sidewalk. Flash lets out a sharp huff of air, tripping over the toilet as he spins around and hauls ass out of the bathroom, tearing back down the hallway
MJ spots him first as he stumbles back into the living room, her eyes going wide. “God, Flash—you’re as white as a ghost. What—“
“Peter,” Flash blurts out, his chest heaving. “I think he—he wasn’t—shit! I think he jumped.”
Harry frowns up at the ceiling through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Jumped?”
“Jumped! Out the goddamn window!” Flash shouts at him.
There’s a beat of silence while everyone drunkenly absorbs this information. Then Gwen starts wailing.
Harry slowly rises up from his supine position on the couch, turning wounded, red-rimmed eyes on Flash.
“This is your fault,” he accuses, jabbing a shaking finger at him. “Pete was all broken up about you enlisting in the army. He jumped ‘cause of you. You killed him.”
Gwen wails louder.
“Harry! For fuck’s sake,” MJ pleads, hugging her and rocking her back and forth.
Flash rolls his eyes, letting out an exasperated noise. “We’re two floors up, Harry, unless that fucking idiot landed on his thick head, he’s probably just lying out there on the sidewalk with a pair of broken legs.”
“Everybody needs to calm the fuck down. I’m gonna go downstairs and look,” MJ says decisively, her mouth set in a firm line as she deposits Gwen into Harry’s arms.
“I’ll come with you,” Flash says, thinking that if he has to listen to Gwen’s sobbing for one more second, he’ll jump out a window, too.
He regrets his decision to follow her the second they get on the elevator, however, and an awkward silence descends between them. MJ isn’t known for her silences, awkward or otherwise, and it makes Flash’s shoulders tense up.
“I’m sorry about your party, Flash,” MJ murmurs eventually, offering him a small, apologetic smile. “This wasn’t exactly the merry ‘go-out-with-bang’ shindig I planned it to be.”
“S’okay,” Flash replies with a shrug, looking down at the floor between his feet. “It’s not your fault.”
“I don’t think Peter jumped ‘cause of you, either. I mean...probably not. Maybe. He was very drunk and out of his mind on hash, so...but still. Not your fault. He’s funny, you know?”
Flash snorts, smiling humorlessly. “Hilarious.”
There’s another beat of uncomfortable silence. And then MJ asks, “Did you enlist ‘cause of him?”
Flash chokes on his own saliva, descending into a violent coughing fit.
“Did I…? No! Fuck, no,” he wheezes, watery eyes bulging. “Why would I—why would you think that?”
MJ shrugs. “I see the way you look at him.”
Heat prickles across Flash’s cheeks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Red,” he mutters, his eyes dropping to the floor again, his spine so rigid it hurts.
“Hey, it’s okay,” MJ says gently. “I get it, alright? I do the same thing. Kids like us...we’ve been trained to run away so we don’t get hurt.”
Flash doesn’t reply. That ball of lead is back in his stomach again, hard and heavy and ugly.
“I think, though, that if you tried to talk to him,” MJ continues carefully, “you might find that—“
She’s interrupted by the elevator door sliding open. Flash practically flies through them, like a bird who’s just realized the door to its cage has been left open.
“Come on, let’s go scrape Peter off the sidewalk,” he says, briskly marching down the hallway and pushing through the doors at the building’s entrance.
He turns right around the corner of the building, not waiting to see if MJ is keeping up. His heart is pounding again and feels like he’s on the verge of tears for some reason, and if he cries in front of her he’s gonna kill stupid Peter himself.
But he’ll have to find him first—the sidewalk under the apartment’s window is empty. Flash comes to an abrupt stop, frowning.
“Where is he?” MJ asks, coming up behind him, a line of concern etched between her brows.
“I don’t fucking know,” Flash says, scanning the area. “Maybe he crawled into the bushes.”
“Peter!” MJ shouts, her hands cupped around her mouth, while Flash searches the bushes that line the building’s perimeter, scratching up his knuckles on their sharp twigs. “Peter!”
Flash straightens up, running a hand through his hair. “He’s not here. Shit. He must’ve wandered off.”
“At least that means he’s probably not hurt too bad, right?” MJ asks, anxiously wringing her hands together.
Flash shrugs. “Maybe? Listen—I’ll get my car and drive around and look for him. He can’t have gone far. You stay here in case he comes back. Harry and Gwen are too trashed to deal with him. I’ll call you if I find him.”
MJ nods, reaching over to squeeze his hand. “Good luck, Flash.”
There’s something knowing in her expression as she says it, some subtler message in her statement that Flash doesn’t want to investigate further.
He gives her a tight smile, hoping that the universe will grant him one measly kindness and Peter will wander home on his own, and Flash can go on pretending like his head and his heart aren’t a hornet’s nest of aimless doubts.
***
Flash is thinking about how this night couldn’t get any shittier. He’s been driving around mostly empty residential streets for over an hour now in ever widening concentric circles, searching for their stupid lost friend so they can get on with the miserable business of saying their farewells before he heads off to boot camp tomorrow. MJ’s just texted him again asking if he’s found Peter, meaning she’s having just as much luck as he is.
Flash is thinking about how this night couldn’t possibly get any shittier, and then he runs over Spider-Man with his car.
Thump, thump. Both wheels, left side.
“Fuck!” Flash blurts out, yanking the steering wheel and just narrowly avoiding also hitting a stop sign.
He slams on the brakes and brings the car to a tire-burning halt. He sits there in the driver’s seat for a moment, his knuckles white on the steering wheel and his heart racing inside his rib cage.
“Okay, okay, okay,” he says breathlessly, peeling his fingers off the wheel.
It was a dog. A big dog. It was—
Flash raises his eyes to the rear view mirror. A lump is lying in the road about twenty feet behind his car.
It’s not a dog. It has two legs and two arms and is shaped like a man.
Flash feels sick.
“Shit,” he mumbles, fumbling to unbuckle his seatbelt. He pushes open his door with a numb hand, hauling himself out. He jogs down the street, deafened by the rush of blood in his ears.
Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
“Hey! Hey, man—you okay?” Flash calls out as he races back towards the downed man. “Are you—“
The limp body stirs, letting out a groan. It lifts its head and swivels it around. Two wide, white, unmistakable eyes stare out at Flash from a masked face.
Flash trips over his own feet, his stomach doing a flip-flop.
“Oh my god, I ran over Spider-Man,” he breathes out.
This, he thinks, sweating, this is how my night gets shittier.
He drops to a crouch beside Spider-Man—fucking Spider-Man!—reaching out a hand to touch him before thinking better of it. Up close like this, he can see the tracks from his car’s tires criss-crossing Spider-Man’s suit. Flash’s stomach does another flip-flop, bile rising in the back of his throat.
“Holy fuck, dude, are you okay?” he asks, his hands hovering uselessly above Spider-Man’s crumpled body. “I swear to god, man, I didn’t see you.”
Spider-Man drags himself up into a slouched sitting position, listing to one side. He coughs, his head swiveling around again and his arms hanging limp at his sides.
“Ouchies. I feel like I got run over by a car,” he mumbles.
Flash lets out a slightly hysterical bark of laughter.
Spider-Man looks at him again, drooping to one side even more. “Hey, what are you doing out here?”
Flash blinks. “What am I doing out here?”
Spider-Man raises an arm, making a vague, directionless gesture, hiccuping. “Yeah. You’re supposed to be at your party—your going away party, you mean bastard.”
Flash blinks again, rapidly. The dots connect like two bullet trains slamming into each other head-on at full speed, explosive and shattering. He drops down onto his heels, feeling weak and lightheaded and like a veil has been lifted, like the world has come suddenly into razor-sharp focus.
“Holy shit,” he says with another burst of laughter, completely unhinged and on the verge of tears once more. “Holy fucking shit—Peter?”
Spider-Man straightens up, hiccuping again.
“Huh? No, man, you’re confusing me with somebody else,” he slurs. “My name’s Spider-Man.”
Flash shakes his head, pressing his hands to his face and taking shaky, gulping breaths.
Peter is Spider-Man. Of course Peter is Spider-Man. It’s so goddamn obvious. Flash thinks he must have known on some level, deep, deep down inside, that they were one-in-the-same. The hero he admired, and the friend he—
Flash drags his hands down his face, sucking in a lungful of air. “Pete...I know it’s you…”
“You don’t know nothing, pal.”
“Yeah, I do. You gotta come back with me, buddy. Everybody’s worried about you.”
Spider-Man shakes his head, hugging himself. “Nah, man, that party sucks ass. Everybody is just, like…sad. I’m good out here, so, so good. Just been chillin’.”
Flash raises his eyebrows. “I ran over you with my car. You were lying in the street.”
“I was taking a nap, and you woke me up, you jackass,” Spider-Man retorts. He rolls onto all fours, crawling towards the curb. “You know what I wanna do? I wanna go punch some bad guys. Yeah. That sounds like a good idea.”
Flash jumps up, following after him. “Whoa, whoa, whoa—no, absolutely not. You can’t punch people like this. You’re all fucked up. You can’t even walk.”
“I could, if I wanted to. Watch me.”
Spider-Man staggers up to his feet. He takes a few clumsy steps, weaving wildly, before sinking back to his knees and then face-planting into the asphalt.
“See? Told you,” he mumbles against the blacktop.
Flash blows out a breath, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes, and then walks over to him. He squats down, laying a hand between Spider-Man’s shoulder blades. “You don’t wanna go back to the party? Okay, me neither. You’re right—it does suck ass. I hate watching Gwendy cry.”
Spider-Man turns his head towards him, masked cheek pressed to the oily ground, the lenses of his mask narrowed malevolently. “She’s crying ‘cause of you, you selfish asshole. You—you’re fucking everything up, you—“
He cuts himself off, his shoulders making a convulsive movement under Flash’s hand.
“Dude,” Flash says, frowning. “Are you crying?”
“No. Maybe. So what? You gotta fucking problem with that?” Spider-Man chokes out belligerently. “I’m in touch with my emotions, okay? I cry all the time, and I’m not ashamed of it.”
“Alright, Pete…” Flash sighs. He leans over and scoops his hands under Spider-Man’s armpits. He pulls him back to his feet, grunting under his dead, floppy weight, and starts hauling him towards the car.
“Hey! I said I’m sick to death of your stupid party and I’m not going back,” Spider-Man says, dragging his feet.
“Yeah, I got it. We’re not going back to the party—I’m taking you to my place so you can sleep this shit off,” Flash says, pulling at him.
“Your place?” Spider-Man says, meekly following along now. “You got snacks there, right? ‘Cause I got a crazy case of the munchies.”
Flash sighs again, opening the rear door of his car and helping Spider-Man into the backseat. “Yeah. I got snacks. I got whatever you want. And in the morning, you and me are gonna have a heart-to-heart about why the fuck you never told me you’re Spider-Man.”
“It’s called a secret identity because it’s secret, Eugene,” Spider-Man says, sprawled across the backseat.
“Whatever, man. You think I don’t know how to keep a secret?” Flash mutters as he drops into the driver’s seat and turns the ignition.
***
Here’s how a bad night gets even shittier:
Spider-Man is in Flash’s bed.
Peter is in Flash’s bed.
He’s in Flash’s bed, lying curled up on his side and wearing nothing but a pair of basketball shorts Flash has lent him.
Flash has had dreams—many, many wet and messy dreams, shameful dreams that he will take to the grave—about this almost exact scenario, which is why the reality is so much more nightmarish.
“God, don’t ever accept edibles from Harry. I feel like shit right now. I feel like I got run over by a car,” Peter mumbles into Flash’s pillow, weakly clutching a bag of frozen peas to the livid bruise on his ribs that is a perfect imprint of Flash’s car’s tires.
Flash snorts. “You did get run over by a car, buddy, remember?”
Peter’s brow furrows. “Oh, fuck...that explains so much.”
“Yep,” Flash agrees. His eyes keep getting pulled as if by an invisible force to the breadth of Peter’s bare white shoulders and the notches and divots of his spine and the dip where his waist meets his hip. He wants to put his hand right there in that spot, tuck his thumb along Peter’s bottom rib and stroke the sharp angle of Peter’s hip bone with his pinky. He wants to die. He feels like he is dying.
He clears his throat. “Anyway...you need anything else, Pete?”
Peter half turns over, looking up at Flash with wide, surprised eyes. “Are you leaving?”
The question takes Flash aback. He jerks a thumb towards the armchair squeezed into the corner of his tiny studio apartment. “I was just gonna go sleep in that chair. It’s late. I gotta leave for boot camp really early tomorrow.”
“You’re gonna sleep in the chair?” Peter repeats, bemused. “Why? Just sleep here with me—there’s room.”
Flash’s mouth goes bone-dry.
“I, uh...the chair’s fine, really,” he says hoarsely, stumbling over the words. His face feels hot and cold at the same time.
Peter wrinkles his nose, making a scoffing sound in the back of his throat. “So’s the bed. What’s the matter?”
“Yeah. Nothing,” Flash mumbles, ‘cause he can’t think of any excuse that doesn’t sound like some kind of toxic masculinity bullshit, but he also can’t say ’cause being so close to you but not close enough makes me want to rip my heart out of my chest.
He awkwardly climbs into bed next to Peter, not even bothering to change out of his clothes. Peter is lying on top of the comforter, so Flash decides to crawl underneath it, pulling it all the way up to his chin like a suit of armor. He regrets his decision a moment later when Peter shuffles around and pulls the comforter over himself, too, so they’re both cocooned together with their shared body heat.
Flash is dying. He’s already dead. Peter is wrong—there isn’t enough room in this bed for both of them. The distance between Earth and Mars would still be too close.
They’re not even touching but Flash can still feel the weight and shape of Peter’s body. A flush of heat spreads under his skin and his dick twitches to life, filling out against his thigh while Flash silently begs and pleads for an omnipotent power to have mercy and strike him dead on the spot.
“Why’d you enlist anyway?” Peter murmurs suddenly.
Flash stops breathing for a long, long moment.
“I dunno,” he finally murmurs back. “Just something to do, I guess.”
Peter rolls onto his back, his face turned towards Flash on the pillow. “Seriously. Why?”
The question pulls painfully, like a barbed hook caught in the center of Flash’s chest.
’Cause of you, he thinks.
“‘Cause of Spider-Man, actually,” he lies. He offers a wan smile. “You know he’s like, my biggest idol. I thought...I dunno. I wanted to help people, like him. Fight the bad guys, or...stupid, huh? I’ve always been the dumb one. If I’d known it was your disaster ass under the mask, I never woulda walked into that recruitment center and signed those papers.”
“Oh my god,” Peter mumbles, pressing his hands to his eyes and taking a shuddering breath. “Don’t fucking tell me that, please...just don’t. I can’t handle it, I can’t…”
He rolls away again, bringing his knees up towards his chest.
“Pete...hey,” Flash says weakly. He’s reaching out without thinking about it, grabbing Peter’s shoulder and scooting closer to him. “Hey--I was just kidding, for real. It was a stupid joke. I’m just mad ‘cause you never told me, alright? Sorry.”
“You’re a fucking asshole, Eugene,” Peter says thickly. He sniffs wetly, then adds, “I don’t want you to go, man. It’s like the band is breaking up.”
Flash snorts softly, shuffling even closer, his arm falling around Peter’s waist. “What do you mean? Gwen and MJ and Harry will still be around. I’ll come home on leave and see you guys. It’ll be fine. I need the money, Pete. I know you get that.”
Peter nods. He takes another shaky breath and then lays his arm along Flash’s, leaning back into Flash’s front.
Flash feels his whole body go rigid like he’s been electrocuted, his muscles locked up tight. He can’t move or breathe, and his stupid traitorous dick is rock hard again, straining against the zipper of his jeans, and please, God, don’t let Pete notice, don’t let him notice, don’t—
“Are you hard right now?” Peter asks.
“No,” Flash blurts out, the defensiveness of his tone giving away the lie every bit as much as the boner pushing eagerly against the swell of Peter’s ass.
Peter wriggles back into him. Flash chokes, his face burning so hot he feels like he’s going to spontaneously combust at any second, in more ways than one.
“You are,” Peter says, rolling over so they’re face-to-burning-face. A grin splits his mouth wide. “Is that for me? Or Spider-Man…”
Flash feels another prickle of heat under his skin, the tug of something painful and ugly in the pit of his stomach.
“Don’t make fun of me,” he mumbles.
Peter’s expression immediately changes, the grin falling away.
“I’m not making fun of you,” he says, soft and earnest. “Promise. I just…”
He trails off, his eyes dropping to Flash’s mouth. He scoots closer, their faces mere inches apart. He wets his own lips with his tongue, and if Flash wasn’t as hard as steel already he absolutely would be now.
“What are you doing?” Flash asks, a little strangled.
Peter gives him a lopsided smile, the edge of his teeth pressed into his lower lip. “I was thinking about kissing you.”
Flash can barely hear him over the rush of blood in his ears. His voice cracks as he asks, “Why?”
“‘Cause I really, really want to,” Peter replies, serious now, his eyes searching Flash’s. “Is that...okay?”
Flash can’t reply, his words stuck behind the knot that’s squeezing his throat. But he feels himself nod.
Peter smiles again. It does a funny thing to Flash’s stomach, tying it in a knot that tightens even further as Peter leans closer, tilting his face, his eyes half-lidded as he touches his lips to Flash’s.
The kiss is featherlight at first, almost chaste, and then the tip of Peter’s tongue traces the seam of Flash’s lips. He opens for him and Peter immediately deepens the kiss, humming a note of approval into his mouth that goes shooting straight to the erection throbbing in the confines of his jeans.
Flash grabs at the back of Peter’s neck, his fingers tangling in the close-cropped curls there, pulling him closer. He’s fueled by a sudden urgency, feeling like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room, like gravity has lifted and Peter—his taste, his smell, his feel—is the only thing tethering him to Earth.
Peter in turn grabs at Flash’s arms, his head, his wrists. He rolls over and presses him into the bed with his body weight, his tongue skimming over Flash’s as he grinds down into him.
He’s hard, too. Flash can feel the solid line of Peter’s dick rubbing back and forth along his thigh and the crease of his hip. It makes all of Flash’s stomach muscles clench up so tight it hurts. He lets out an involuntary groan into Peter’s mouth.
Peter swallows it and then buries his face in the side of Flash’s neck, mouthing at that sensitive spot under the angle of his jaw while his hands slide under Flash’s hips and grab at his ass.
“You’re good, you’re so good, you feel so good,” he chants breathlessly against Flash’s damp heated skin while he ruts against him.
Flash makes an embarrassing strangled noise in the back of his throat, his heels digging into the mattress as he grabs at Peter’s hips.
“God—wait—I just—“ he chokes out, feeling like he’s going to pop off at any second and come all over the inside of his pants like a teenager with a hair-trigger.
Peter pulls back, propping himself up on his elbows on either side of Flash’s head. His lips are all wet and red and swollen. He tucks the bottom one behind his top teeth and sucks it, and Flash feels almost dizzy with want.
“Too much?” Peter asks, eyebrows raised.
Flash blinks up at him, dazed. “What? No—god, please, keep going.”
Peter smiles, biting his lip again and tilting his head to one side. “You wanna blowie, big guy? A BJ for the road?”
“What?” Flash asks a second time, hoarsely. His dick catches up on the offer faster than his brain, twitching in his pants, so hard it hurts.
“You want me to suck your dick?” Peter says, carefully enunciating each word.
Flash thinks he’s dying again. His mouth opens and closes a few times.
“Yeah,” he finally chokes out. “Please.”
Peter smirks. “Please. What a gentleman.”
He shimmies backwards, nudging Flash’s legs apart as he slides off the bed. He kneels on the floor and grabs Flash under the thighs, effortlessly pulling him to the edge of the bed.
Flash sits up, feeling like he’s having an out of body experience. Peter kneels in the space between his thighs, shuffling closer, looking up at Flash through long dark lashes, a faint smile playing around his mouth.
Flash swallows hard, his mouth gone dry. How many times had he fantasized about this and silently jerked one out while his roommate slept a few feet away in their shitty dorm? How many times had he wiped his hand on the sheet and rolled over afterward, pulling his knees up to his chest, nauseous with guilt, while his father’s red wrathful face, contorted with disgust, haunted his mind’s eye like a phantom and barked his oft-repeated demand for Flash to stop being a sissy and act like a goddamn man?
But that was fantasy and this is reality, and the real deal is different. The look on Peter’s face is almost tender as he strokes his hands up and down the inside of Flash’s thighs.
“I wanna suck your cock so bad,” he murmurs.
Flash tenses up, instantly wary, his first impulse to suspect malicious intent, some awaiting joke or prank or barb at his expense, something to punish him for stupidly letting his guard down.
It never comes. Peter bows his head instead and mouths at the bulge in Flash’s jeans, humming with soft satisfaction.
The heat and vibrations cut straight to Flash’s core, stealing the breath from his lungs. He makes another strangled noise as Peter drags his tongue along the length of his cloth-covered erection, briefly closing his lips around the tip.
Peter sits back on heels, wetting his lips again, and then reaching for the button and zipper of Flash’s jeans.
Flash seizes his wrists, stopping him. Peter looks up, a question in his big dark eyes.
Flash swallows a couple of times, struggling to find his voice.
“Just, like...go slow, alright? I’ve, um…” he looks away, avoiding Peter’s eyes, his face hot again. “I’ve never done this…”
“Like…never never?” Peter asks after a brief beat of silence.
“Yeah, like never never,” Flash says shortly, looking back down at him. “Is that a problem?”
“Like not even a handjob?”
Flash makes an impatient noise. “Yeah, Pete, I’ve had a handjob, okay?”
“I mean with someone else—“
“Dude.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Peter says, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not making fun of you, I promise. I’m just surprised, is all. You had all those girlfriends. Liz Allan told me—“
“Liz was lying,” Flash says tersely, avoiding Peter’s eyes again, his knee bobbing up and down. “I haven’t...I don’t fuck girls, alright? Never have, never will. Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“I don’t care if you don’t fuck girls, Flash,” Peter says, painfully earnest. “I just care if you want to do this with me.”
Flash drags his eyes back to Peter’s face, feeling like there’s a vise squeezing around his heart. He knows what he wants to say—what he’s wanted to say for ages and ages—and he also knows if he doesn’t say it now before he leaves then he’s never going to say it at all.
“Pete...I’ve wanted to do this with you since forever,” he confesses, his voice thick. “There’s nobody else I wanna do it with. I’m like…sick for you, man.”
There’s an awful feeling in his gut after he speaks those words out loud. But the world doesn’t end. Peter stretches up and kisses him again, instead.
“I’m gonna take really good care of you, I promise,” he murmurs, sitting back on his heels and looking up at Flash with soft, shining eyes.
He reaches for Flash’s zipper again, and this time Flash plants his hands against the mattress, the lines from his wrists to his elbows to his shoulders tense with anticipation. His dick had flagged a little, but it plumps right back up again with an almost embarrassing eagerness as Peter tugs the zipper down.
Peter folds back the denim, his eyes on the outline of Flash’s dick through his briefs. There’s a wet spot on the fabric covering the tip, and Flash feels embarrassed about that, too, until Peter licks his lips again like he’s starved for it and a little guttural noise slips past Flash’s lips completely involuntarily.
He makes the noise again when Peter slips a pair of fingers into his fly and tugs his erection out into the open air, and then—Jesus fuck!—Peter’s hand is wrapped around his dick, and if this is what dying feels like then Flash is happy to martyr himself, ecstatic even, so grateful and—
“God,” he moans as Peter pumps his fist, up and down, up and down, squeezing his eyes shut and then immediately forcing them open again. He stares down at his lap, slack-jawed, watching the wet red tip of his dick disappear and then reappear within Peter’s fist.
“Feels good, right?” Peter murmurs, his own eyes flicking back and forth between Flash’s face and his dick, his pupils so blown out his eyes look almost black. “I just wanna make you feel good. Does it feel good, sweetheart?”
Flash gives a jerky nod. He forces himself to let go of the fistfuls of bedsheet he’d been white-knuckling, cupping Peter’s face in his hands instead. He leans over and presses a sloppy kiss to Peter’s mouth, all tongue and teeth, groaning into his lips when Peter’s thumb swipes little circles around that sensitive spot right under the head of his dick.
“God, Pete…” he chokes out, his hips hopping up into Peter’s fist. “Can you...will you put your mouth on it, please.”
Peter grins up at him, biting his lower lip again. Flash swears he’s going to have some kind of Pavlovian response to that in the future—Peter will do that thing with his lip and his teeth, and Flash’s dumb dick will spring up like one of those prank snakes in a can.
“You don’t have to ask me twice,” Peter says cheekily, and then he’s going straight for it, grasping Flash’s erection and bending his head to lick a long, wet stripe along the length of it, flicking his tongue against the little slit at the apex in a way that already has Flash seeing stars.
He’s barely recovered when Peter’s lips close around the tip and he starts sucking gently. The muscles in Flash’s thighs go so tight so fast that they cramp up. He moans when Peter takes him a little deeper, hollowing his cheeks and bobbing his head. He strokes the neglected inches of Flash’s dick, his fist rising to meet the flushed red ring of his lips.
Flash watches, mesmerized, wanting to absorb every second of this so he can replay it in his mind later, when he’s far away and alone with his heart—Peter’s lips stretched around his spit-slicked shaft. Peter’s wet eyelashes, long and dark against his flushed cheeks. The sharp angle of Peter’s jaw and the curls tumbling loose and damp across his forehead, Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter.
“Peter,” Flash gasps out, his fingers tangling in Peter’s hair, tugging. “I can’t—I’m gonna—“
Peter grabs him by the hips with both hands and takes him all the way down to the root, swallowing around him. Flash bucks his hips, once, twice, and then he’s coming with a low groan, shooting spurt after spurt across the back of Peter’s tongue.
Peter pulls off, sucking in a lungful of air, while Flash collapses back on his elbows, his own chest heaving and his legs trembling. There’s something cold and wet pressing against the small of his back. He fumbles for it, dragging the thawing bag of peas out from behind himself. He tosses it to the floor with limp fingers.
“Did you swallow that?” Flash asks breathlessly, looking down at Peter in a daze.
“Yeah,” Peter says, almost shyly, wiping his mouth on the back of his arm. “You can’t even really taste it when it’s back so far. So. I don’t mind. I didn’t want to leave to go to the bathroom. I didn’t wanna leave, even for a second, ‘cause…”
He trails off, wiping his eyes this time with his other arm.
Flash sits up, beckoning to him. “Hey, come here.”
Peter climbs back into the bed. Flash kisses him—slower, taking his time with it, exploring Peter’s mouth with his lips and tongue. Peter claimed he couldn’t really taste him, but Flash can taste himself on Peter’s tongue, salty and bitter.
“Spider-Man,” he murmurs as he breaks the kiss, running his knuckles down Peter’s temple.
Peter squeezes his eyes shut, letting out a soft, pained groan. “You can’t tell anybody. Not even MJ or Harry or Gwen.”
“Not a soul,” Flash agrees, rolling over on top of Peter and pressing another kiss to his mouth, more insistent this time, his tongue slipping between Peter’s teeth. Peter makes a soft sound, his hips hitching.
Flash can feel Peter’s dick pressing hard into his thigh, stirring heat low in his own belly. He presses his weight down, letting Peter frot up against him for a moment before he rolls off onto his side.
Flash props himself up on one elbow and runs his other hand across the firm planes of Peter’s chest, wanting to finally openly look at him the way he’s been yearning to for ages.
“Fuck, look at you,” he murmurs appreciatively. “You were such a scrawny little kid in high school, and now…”
“Puberty’s a hell of a drug,” Peter says dryly. “That sweet, sweet testosterone.”
Flash snorts. “Or radioactive spider bites.”
“Hey now, we can’t ever be a hundred-percent sure this beautiful beef is entirely arachnid-related.”
“I think we can be like ninety-five-percent sure it is, Pete,” Flash replies with a sardonic grin. He bends his head to flick his tongue over one of Peter’s nipples, feeling a tug in his stomach in response to the way Peter gasps.
His mouth finds Peter’s again while his hand trails down Peter’s tight, flat stomach, down and down, until the palm of his hand is cupped over the erection tenting the front of the borrowed shorts Peter is wearing. He can feel the heat of it even through the material, and he bites back a groan that rises in his throat.
“You don’t have to do that if you don’t wanna,” Peter murmurs against his lips, his breath coming in short, quick puffs.
“God, I want to,” Flash says hoarsely, sitting up. “I want to so bad, Pete. I think I might die if I don’t.”
He curls his fingers in the band of Peter’s shorts and tugs them down along with Peter’s briefs, sucking in a breath as Peter’s dick swings free of its confines to lie on his belly pointing up towards his navel. Flash pulls the waistband down under Peter’s balls so they’re pushed up tight under his cock.
“You have a really nice dick,” Flash tells him. He’s not sure if that’s objectively true—it’s probably a perfectly average dick, but it’s attached to the guy that Flash has been in love with since he was seventeen, so everything else pales a little in comparison in his imagination.
Peter snorts softly, looking amused.
“Do I? I’m gonna assume you haven’t seen a whole lotta other dicks, pal,” he teases, but there’s no heat or malice behind it.
“No. I’ve watched a lot of porn, though.”
“Oh, well, then you are definitely an expert on the matter, a cockoisseur if you will, and I am very flattered,” Peter says, his breath hitching as Flash runs a light, tentative finger along the length of his dick.
Flash is barely listening to him. He runs the tips of his fingers along Peter’s dick again, more confidently this time, and then closes his hand around it, giving it a few loose-fisted pumps to get used to the novelty of having another guy’s dick in his hand. It’s the same and yet different from jacking himself off. He shuffles around and straddles Peter’s thighs so he’s facing him, and then that’s better, the angle more familiar. He lets go briefly to spit into his palm, and then wraps his fist around Peter’s dick again, his hand making slick wet noises as he pumps it.
“Yeah, there you go, shit,” Peter breathes out, watching from under lowered eyelids, his hands folded under his collarbones. “You can hold it a little tighter.”
Flash tightens his grips, squeezing up from the root to the tip and watching Peter’s dick spit out a drizzle of milky precum. He rubs his thumb through it, swirling it around the head. Peter makes a little wounded noise, his leg twitching under Flash.
Flash swallows, his mouth full of saliva. He bends on impulse and presses a clumsy kiss to the wet tip of Peter’s erection. He sits back up, fisting Peter’s dick and licking the slick moisture from his lips. Peter tastes like him, the same salty bitterness.
He licks his lips again. “I, uh...I don’t know how to—“
“Don’t worry about it,” Peter says, carding his hands through his own hair, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Your hand feels great. Perfect. You’re so perfect, fuck.”
Flash’s dick, still hanging limp and damp out of his fly, twitches at the words, while something warm and soft and aching settles in his belly.
“Can I kiss you again?” he asks.
“Absolutely,” Peter says, pushing himself upright. He grabs Flash’s jaw in his hand, tugging him closer, giving him a kiss that’s as ferocious as it is tender. His other hand wraps around the one Flash has on his dick, setting a faster pace.
“God, I don’t want this to end,” Peter pants against Flash’s mouth, and Flash doesn’t know if he means the handjob or this last night they have together, but he agrees with both.
Peter lays his head on Flash’s shoulder, his face buried in the side of Flash’s neck. He’s making little almost hurt-sounding noises, his breath damp and rapid against Flash’s skin, and then he tenses up, the hand he has on the back of Flash’s neck tightening, and he’s filling up Flash’s palm with hot, slick cum.
“Fuck,” Peter says breathlessly when it’s over. He slips out of Flash’s embrace and collapses bonelessly to the mattress, his chest heaving and little tiny droplets of sweat shining in the hollows under his eyes.
Flash leans over and fumbles for the Kleenex box on his bedside table, only to find it empty. He wipes the jizz cupped in the palm of his hand on his t-shirt, instead, and then takes it off to hand it to Peter. He watches Peter wipe the frothy mess of spit and semen from his dick, thinking he’s never seen anything so strangely erotic in his life.
I did that, he thinks. I did that to him.
He waits for guilt and regret to arrive, for the self-loathing that always washes over him after his solo fantasies are finished, but it doesn’t. He feels like a weight has been lifted instead, like he’s looked at his deepest, most feared secret straight in the face and brought it up into the light, and nothing terrible happened.
Just Peter, in his bed and in his arms, like he’s always wanted.
“You good?” Peter asks, tossing the soiled t-shirt onto the floor by the bed.
“Yeah,” Flash says. He lays down on his back next to Peter, resting his hands on his stomach.
Peter rolls towards him, his face pressed into Flash’s shoulder.
“I really don’t want you to go,” he mumbles, smoothing his hand over the wiry red-blonde hairs sprinkled across Flash’s chest.
Flash lets out a soft, bittersweet laugh. “I don’t have much choice in the matter now, buddy. What’s done is done.”
“You get the stupid fucking irony of all this, right?” Peter asks, lifting his head, his eyes shining.
“Yeah, I get it,” Flash says with a small smile, cupping the back of Peter’s head with his hand. “And right now, I don’t fucking care. I’m leaving tomorrow, but right now I got everything I want—you, here, with me. I’ll worry about tomorrow when it comes. It’s just you and me right now.”
Peter takes a shaky breath, nodding. He lays his head back down next to Flash, his nose pressed to his cheek.
“You‘ll come back, right?” he murmurs against Flash’s ear.
“Yeah, of course,” Flash promises, sliding an arm around him, the outside world a distant thing for now.