She stalked out, giving them both a dirty look on the way, and yanked the door after her so hard it bounced off the frame and swung back open.
Chapter Three
Peter wantedMargone, of course he did. She was annoying a lot of the time, and essential the rest of the time, and this was one of those days that fell equally into columns A and B. He couldn’t have handled the hospital without her, but he desperately needed her to be somewhere else for a few minutes.
But—Jesus, this guy.
Beingalonewith this guy.
Firefighters were usually hot, even the older ones who weren’t quite as buff—something about the heroism and the uniforms, and maybe all those calendars with firemen holding kittens that Peter bought every year (and wouldn’t admit to even under torture).
Anyway, this guy was something else. Thoseshoulders. Peter was a little on the twinky side, but he had a few extra pounds around the middle. One of many reasons, along with hating clubs, why he didn’t get any play on the very rare nights he tried to go out. But even with those extra pounds,Damian could probably bench-press him and still have the strength left to move his hips—and okay, no. Not going there. Because Peter was in a hospital gown, all banged up and looking his absolute worst, and Damian was Damian, and he also had to be straight, obviously, because this was Peter’s life.
He’d totally seen porn that started this way, though.Damian was staring at him, mouth open a little, head cocked to the side as if he’d just had some kind of revelation. Maybe he was, like, a tiny bit secretly bi, and Peter was the one who’d awaken new, irresistible sensations—
“Holy shit,” Damian said suddenly, ending Peter’s burgeoning fantasy with an almost audible record scratch. “Your parents named youPeter Parks? And named your sister Mary Jane. Dude, she’s Peter’s girlfriend! That’s fucking weird! And on top of that, you—” He waved a hand vaguely up and down, encompassing Peter, and maybe the hospital bed and part of the wall.
Peter’s heart sank. Dammit. He knew exactly where this was going, an endless litany of possible mocking jokes based on the similarity of his name to Peter Parker’s and his dissimilarity from anything resembling a superhero. It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard it nearly every day all through school, and once they started rebooting Spider-Man, well…game over. As a kid, he’d tried to make it his own by fantasizing about actually being an undercover superhero. Not that it worked most of the time.
Knowing where it was going, though, didn’t make it any less irritating. “I what, exactly?” Peter knew he sounded like Mar when he used that tone, and he hated it. Female, gorgeous Mar could pull off snarky. Peter just sounded like a whiny brat.
“Dude, no one’s ever told you you look exactly like the guy who’s done the last few Spider-Man movies?”
Peter blinked at him. Okay, no. That was not precisely where he’d thought that was going. Was Damian completely nuts? “I don’t look anything like Tom Holland.” Because Tom Holland was like, the Platonic ideal of a cute nerdy twink, and he looked amazing in lingerie, I mean hello, that dance performance, and Peter might have ordered a corset online and tried to duplic—no, Peter did…not look like Tom Holland.
Damian waved his hand again and let out an actual scoffing sound. Peter hadn’t thought those were real.
“Okay, you do, actually, you could be his brother, and your sister could be his twin too. But you also look like Peter from the comics. The ones from the two-thousands, not the older ones. If he’d maybe gotten enough to eat instead of skipping all his meals to go catch criminals.”
“You’veread the comics? Guys like you—and it’s not like my parents knew what I was going to look like! They didn’t name Mar because I was called Peter, and anyway they were more like siblings, I never bought their relation—hey, wait a minute. What do you mean if he’d gotten enough to eat? Are you saying I’m…”
Peter knew exactly what he was saying, but it stillhurt. It sucked enough when people who were just as average as he was dismissed him instantly with a glance, but this guy was so, so hot, ironically hot like absolute burning, and he’dhit him with a fire truck. Shouldn’t he at least be nice, even if Peter didn’t even play in the same sport—let alone league—as he did?
Damian turned bright red, his cheeks both lighting up like neon signs. “I mean you look healthy,” he protested. “And, you know, it’s more about the eyes and the hair and the glasses.”
Healthy. Because in what universe was that not a euphemism for fat?
Peter couldn’t even bring himself to answer, just stared down at the cheap blue blanket draped over his lap. First Damian went way too far in the flattery direction with the Tom Holland comparison, and then he said something honest. The contrast made Peter’s eyelids prickle with heat. He couldn’t look up. Damian might see his eyes getting shiny.
“You know, you’re all pissy because you think I said something bad about the way you look,” Damian said after a minute. “But you actually just said you thought I didn’t know how to read.”
Oh, he certainly had not. Peter was startled enough to glance up through his lashes. “I didn’t say you couldn’t read. I said I was surprised you’d read Spider-Man comics closely enough to compare what Peter Parker looked like over the years. You must’ve had better things to do when you were an adolescent.”
“Dude. Adolescent? I was reading my dad’s old Superman comics in first grade. I bought a bunch more of my own once my parents started giving me an allowance for taking out the trash.” Damian sounded…wounded? And he had the most adorable frown, like he actually gave a crap about Peter’s opinion of him.
Or like he genuinely wanted Peter to acknowledge his geekiness?So weird. And so endearing.
And the gorgeous hazel puppy-eyes and over six feet of unbelievable hotness didn’t hurt, okay. Peter knew he was weak.
“Sorry,” he said, weakly.“I wasn’t trying to insult you. I was surprised, that’s all. ‘Cause you look like the sort of guy who…” Oh no, oh no, abort. Talking about how much Damian looked like the guy Peter had a secret crush on in the sixth grade who used to make fun of him for reading at lunch would be wrong in so many ways. The biggest way being, it’d make him seem like even more of a loser. “Um, you don’t look like a nerd.”
Damian’s eyes narrowed, and he put his hands on his hips. The move drew attention to his hips themselves, but also to his biceps, and to what he had between his hips, and well, his everything, and that simply wasn’t fair. “Like the kind of guy who…?”
“Nothing,” Peter quavered. Damian simply stared, eyebrows raised. Peter bit his lip to keep any more words from spilling out. He did not do well with silences, something Mar took shameless advantage of every time he tried to keep a secret from her.
Wait, had Damian’s eyes flickered a little there? Had he been looking at Peter’s mouth? Peter licked his lips. Damian glanced down again, just for a microsecond.
Not porn, not porn,not porn, Peter desperately told his dick. How could he possibly be almost getting an erection in the hospital? Because of a guy who had maybe but probably not been looking at his mouth? People looked at movement. It was, like, instinct left over from when humans were always having to watch for saber-toothed tigers, or something. Peter had always had a comic behind his textbook in biology class.
