Spider-Man: Cumming Home - Chapter 16 (A Spider-Man Fanfiction) (Patreon)

Chapter 16: The Window

The outline took its first breath while I was still on the last step.

The gold ribs lifted off the stone. The throat opened. Air moved through a hole that did not have lungs behind it, and the lamps along the cage row dimmed for one count and came back. Gwen's chalk stopped an inch from the line. Strange already had a pin in his hand.

"Parker. Here."

I stepped in beside Gwen. The heat under my skin pulled toward the drawing the same way it had pulled toward the copper on the bridge. Felicia came in behind Jones and stopped at the worktable, catsuit tied at her waist, my mark still on her neck. She looked at the throat and went still.

"That's a receiver," she said. "Same shape as the socket on the span. He's using the floor."

The second breath was louder. Sand packed against the inside of the flask and held there. Both Ottos turned their heads at the same angle. The spare Goblin laughed once and shut up when Strange snapped a gold line across the top of his field.

A hand came up through the throat.

It was Otto's hand, four-fingered, dry, the sleeve of a lab coat caught at the wrist. The third chip hung on a chain and knocked the stone when the arm reached. It went for Gwen's chalk hand. I caught the wrist before it cleared the ribs. The grip was real. Bone, tendon, a pulse that did not belong on this floor. I wrenched it sideways and webbed the forearm to the nearest cage bar. The web smoked where it crossed the gold.

"Chip's on the chain," I said. "Felicia, if you can cut the chain without opening that hole wider, do it."

She dropped to a knee at the edge, claws out, and sliced the links. The chip hit the stone and spun. She slapped a palm over it and yanked her hand back when it burned her. Strange pinned it under the same lab glass we had used upstairs. The arm bucked. I put a second web across the elbow and hauled. The shoulder tried to follow the arm through the throat and jammed on the ribs. For a second I could see the barge lamp behind the gold, and Otto's face, close, calm, checking a measurement.

"You made the fork louder," he said. His voice came out of the throat, not out of the man on the barge. "Contact. Heat. The girl from the fall standing on the line. I don't need the bridge anymore. I have a mouth in your floor."

Gwen set her free hand on my forearm. Her fingers were cold. "If I step off the chalk, the outline loses the ruler. If I stay, he keeps a lock on my waveform."

"Step off," I said. "Both of you off the line. Jones, Felicia, back to the table."

Jones moved. Felicia moved with the chip under glass. Gwen held one more second, eyes on the gold ribs, and then she stepped back to my shoulder. The pull in my blood eased by half. The arm lost an inch of reach. Strange drove two pins through the throat, one on each side of the jaw, and dragged them together until the opening pinched around Otto's wrist.

"Now," Strange said.

I tore the webbed arm sideways. The wrist broke at the pin line. The hand and half the forearm came free of the throat and hit the stone, still flexing, the chain end swinging. The rest of the arm yanked back through the hole. The throat tried for a third breath and got a mouthful of silk. I layered webbing over the pins until the gold went dull and the ribs settled flat. The hand on the floor twitched twice and stopped.

Eight cages still held. I counted them. Two Ottos, both smiling. Two lizards. Two live wires. The spare Goblin. Sand in a flask that had packed itself into a face and was losing the face again. The ninth shape was a throat with no air in it and a ribcage that no longer lifted.

Strange crouched over the severed hand and turned it with a pen. "Dead tissue. He spent a limb to prove the floor works. He'll grow another. The chip is ours. The cleaner map is not."

Felicia stood with her burned palm open, looking at the glass. The smugness was coming back at the edges of her mouth and not reaching her eyes. "He let me steal the stained copy so I'd walk the first two notes onto his receiver. He just did the same thing with your floor. I can tell you where he'll plant the next one. I can't tell you when."

"Hours," Gwen said. She had chalk on her thumb and a shake in her wrist she was pretending not to have. "The amplitude dropped when I stepped off. It'll climb again if Peter stays in the house and keeps touching any of us. That's the mechanism. Contact feeds it."

Jones looked at the mark on Felicia's neck, then at me. She didn't raise her voice. "So we have a window, and the window gets shorter if we're in a room together."

"We have a window," Strange said. "I want the chip under three locks and the hand in a jar. Hardy, you know his receivers. You stay on this floor and you tell me if the gold moves. Stacy, Jones, Parker, you are not useful to me for the next two hours unless the outline breathes again. If it breathes, I shout. If I shout, you run."

Felicia flexed her burned hand and winced. "I'll stay. I want the third chip in a box I can see. And I want another shot at the barge when you've got a plan that isn't me walking into his socket." She glanced at Jones, and the wrecked smile finished arriving. "Your girlfriend has a thorough mouth. I'll be downstairs if the floor grows another arm."

Jones didn't answer her. Gwen wiped chalk on her jeans and followed me up the stairs when I went. Jones came last and shut the holding-wing door on the gold.

The spare room still smelled like sex. The sheet was wrecked. Felicia's suit wasn't in it. I stood in the doorway and looked at the bed, then at the two of them in the hall, and made the call before either of them could dress it up.

"Not this room," I said. "Mine. End of the hall. Door stays unlocked. If Strange shouts, we go."

Jones nodded once. Gwen nodded and didn't look at the bed.

My room was the one Strange had given me the first night, a narrow bed, a chair, a window on the yard. I turned the lamp on. Jones came in and shut the door without locking it. Gwen stayed just inside, arms at her sides, hair still knotted from the river, chalk dust on the cuff of the hoodie she'd pulled back on somewhere between the parlor and the cages.

Jones spoke first. "I said next time it was me. I meant it. She's here too. I know what she wants. I'm not pretending I don't."

Gwen's mouth tightened. "I want to stay. I already chose this house over the door. If you're telling me to leave, I'll leave. If you're not, I want him. I've wanted him since the room with the hoodie. You licked her clean in front of me on the way down. I'm not confused about what this is."

"I'm not telling you to leave," Jones said. She looked at me, not at Gwen. "I'm telling you I want tonight. I want you. I want her in the room if you want her in the room. I don't want to hear about it tomorrow like I wasn't standing here."

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at both of them. Jones in the tank and sleep shorts she'd never changed out of, collarbones sharp, mouth still a little shiny from Felicia's thigh. Gwen in the oversized hoodie and nothing I could see under the hem, bare legs, the same stance she'd had when she bent over a different bed and told me what she wanted. The pull under my skin was quieter with the throat webbed shut. It was not gone. I could feel it when either of them shifted their weight.

"Hoodie off," I said to Gwen. "Jones, shirt."

Gwen pulled the hoodie over her head and dropped it on the chair. She was bare under it. Small breasts, tight nipples in the lamp, the faint mark of my teeth still on her shoulder from the last time. She didn't cover herself. She stood with her hands open and waited. Jones stripped the tank off and let it fall. Her breasts were fuller, darker at the nipples, a scatter of freckles across the top of them I had mapped before any of this started. She hooked her thumbs in the shorts and stopped.

"These too?" she asked.

"Those too."

She pushed them down and stepped out. No underwear. A neat line of hair, the rest of her bare, thighs still marked faintly where she'd knelt on Felicia's bed. She came to the side of the mattress and put a knee on it, close enough that I could smell her, soap and the cellar and the salt of the lick she'd given downstairs.

"I've been waiting since she locked that parlor," she said. "I walked in and you were still inside her. I cleaned her because I wasn't going to leave it on her and pretend I hadn't seen it. I want it on me. I want your mouth. I want you in me. If she stays, I want to watch you fuck her after, or before, I don't care about the order. I care that it's you deciding it."

Gwen sat on my other side. Her thigh touched mine. She was wet. I could see it when she parted her knees, a shine on the inside of her thigh, her pussy flushed from standing in a room where she had already decided. She put her hand on the bed between us and didn't reach for me.

"I can feel it when you get close," she said. "The same pull as the bridge. It's stronger when I'm touching you. I'll take the risk. I want your hands on me. I want you to fuck me while she watches, if that's what you want. I'll say it plain. I want to come on your cock. I wanted it in the other room and I want it now."

I set a hand on Jones's hip and a hand on Gwen's knee. Both of them leaned in. Jones's breast rested against my arm. Gwen's breath hit my throat. The lamp threw their shadows on the wall, two shapes and mine, the bed narrow enough that somebody's shoulder was going to hit the headboard the second I pulled them down.

Downstairs, something metal clicked once and went quiet. Not a shout. Not a breath. The pins were holding.

"On the bed," I said. "Jones in the middle. Gwen on her other side. Nobody starts until I say."

They moved. Jones lay back on the pillow and opened her legs, one foot on the floor, the other bent, her pussy bare and wet in the lamp, a hand resting on her own stomach because she hadn't been told she could touch herself. Gwen lay on her side facing us, propped on an elbow, breasts against her arm, eyes on Jones and then on me. She reached across Jones's ribs and stopped with her fingers an inch from a nipple.

"Can I touch her?" she asked.

"Not yet."

I stood at the foot of the bed and took the shirt off. Both of them watched my cock come up against my stomach, still heavy from Felicia, already thickening again because they were naked and waiting and the residue didn't care about the pins in the floor. Jones's mouth parted. Gwen's thighs pressed together and opened again. I put a knee on the mattress between Jones's feet. The frame dipped. Gwen's hand hovered. Jones lifted her hips a fraction and set them back down, asking with her body, not with an order.

"Please," Jones said. "I'm right here. She's right here. We've both said it. I want your mouth on me. I want her to see it."

Gwen's voice was lower. "I want that too. I want to watch, and then I want you. Tell me when."

I leaned down. Jones's knee slid up my ribs. Gwen's fingers finally landed, not on Jones, on my wrist, light, waiting. The heat between Jones's legs was right under my mouth. I could see how wet she was, the swell of her clit, the shine on her inner lips, Gwen's face inches from mine, eyes blown, lower lip caught in her teeth. My hand was on Jones's thigh. The other was braced by Gwen's hip. One more inch and I would taste her. One word and Gwen would close the distance.

The hall stayed quiet. The door stayed unlocked. Both of them were on the bed, naked, waiting for me to start.

I opened my mouth to tell them yes.