When Spidey Met Oracle

"It's not like you're completely hideous," Ms. Marvel had teased him just the other day. Carol Danvers was cool and knew his identity, so hanging out in her room had been one of the few chances for him to air out his face while he was staying with the Avengers. "Maybe everyone wouldn't hate you so much if they could see you had a face..."

"I can't do the domino mask thing," he explained. "All that spirit gum is bad for the complexion."

"Bullshit," she said, pointing to her own blemish-free face.

"Well, clearly not for you," he conceded, "but I have sensitive skin!"

Carol picked up the web-themed headpiece he'd left on her dresser.

"Well how about a cowl like Cap or Daredevil?" she asked, pulling it over her face. It was a terrible fit with all that silky blonde hair, but he couldn't say it wasn't working for her. Maybe he should try a sash with his tights. Not that he had her hips...

Okay. So Peter thought she was hot. Sue him.

"I just don't understand how you can stand being cooped up in this thing," she said, shaking her web-head. "It's not very comfortable."

"It's not supposed to be," he told her. "I don't want to be comfy when I'm Spider-Man. I want that bit of unease. It puts me in the right mindset. Keeps me on my toes."

Compartmentalization. It was the only way his life worked. Even when it didn't.

When he came to on the floor, despite the darkness, Peter realized fairly quickly he was wearing the mask. That was never good. Peter only ever woke up in his mask for one of two reasons and he was pretty sure he hadn't just spent the night with Felicia. That meant Spider-Man must have been knocked out and left for dead...

Again.

He found himself forced to rethink this assumption as he sat up to check himself for bodily harm. He wasn't bleeding to death, which was a delightful surprise, but there was a sticky mess on his stomach and the bottom half of his goofy, red and blue spandex tights were down around his ankles. All of this seemed to suggest that he and the Black Cat had, in fact, been up to shenanigans...

No, Felicia's in trouble, he remembered.

There was a buzz in his head and it wasn't spider-sense as much as a humming migraine. He twisted around and found the source: Osborn's stupid machine, running like gangbusters. The rest of it clicked. This whole day with Oracle: finding the communicator at Ashley Moon's apartment, fighting Doc Ock and his crew, and then coming across Os-bot building that thing... He had thought for a second that it had sent him back in time, but that had all been in his head. That's when he must have ejaculated. During that weird, hazy dream-thing with Barbara.

"I wish I could meet this woman just once without making a mess of my costume," Spider-Man muttered, pulling up his cum-spattered pants as he stood.

"Believe me, I know what you mean," said that incessant voice in his ear. Oracle was still distorted, but he knew the truth now. The long lost Dark Damsel was the witty redheaded vixen behind the voice-filtered curtain. "Are you okay?" she asked in that deep, Darth Vader bass that shouldn't seem sexy, but did.

"I'm swell," he replied, tucking his limp dick in his tights. "Actually, it's more like I'm flaccid."

"Good," she said. "Let's try to keep it that way. What's this anti-lust frequency supposed to be?"

He did a quick mental recheck of his math before rattling off the necessary quantum of hertz and requisite amplitude for the counter-vibration he'd told her about in their shared flashback.

"I'll have it up as soon as I can," Oracle sighed. Those deep electronic sighs had been creepy before, but he was really starting to... to like it. He felt this odd, lusty thrill.

"Sooner rather than later," Spider-Man groaned. "I'm starting to feel frisky again."

"I know they're probably squishy, but try to keep it in your pants, hero," Oracle said.

"Don't listen to her," a voice called out in the darkness.

Spider-Man turned, spotting Huntress. His eyes were finally adjusting to the dark, but what he saw didn't make any sense. She had been webbed to the wall and her costume was torn.

"Oh no," he said, rushing toward her. "What happened?" The last thing he remembered before that X-rated headtrip down memory lane was trying to disable the engine. Then it was fuzzy and weird and raw.

"Just a tease," she purred, the wanton desire in her voice triggering a nerve. Spider-Man's eyes drifted down to her bared breast, the chocolate-colored nipple jutting out at him, plump and full, just begging for a pinch...

Keep it together, Spider-Man commanded himself. He successfully fought the pinching urge, but he couldn't help but thumb that thick nub as he gingerly pulled her bunched bra back down over her well-rounded titflesh. It wasn't his fault. Not completely at least. Not with her pushing her chest into his hand. He tried to ignore the deep moan oozing from her lips as the cotton brushed her olive skin.

"I-I'm going to get you down," he said shakily, leaning closer than he really needed to reach the webbing on her wrist. Before he had that chance to tear it way, she arched her back, grinding her crotch into his. There was a white flicker that ran from his mind down through his cock. A ragged muscle memory of one wondrous thrust into the hot, sucking depths of her velvet pussy...

Did that actually happen? He didn't recall doing anything like that, but he didn't remember webbing her up, either. But unless the Scarlet Spider was swinging around somewhere, he must have done that. Did that mean he'd torn her shirt, too?

"God no," Spider-Man groaned. He was going to be sick. "Whuh-what did I do to you?"

"What do you want to do?" she pouted, still rubbing his body with hers. "Don't you still want me?"

"Nuh-no," he moaned, but he wouldn't have believed him either.

"Come on, Spider-stud," Huntress moaned. "You can't get a girl going and then just leave her like this. You know we both want this..."

"No," he said again, his hand lingering on her web-bound wrist. He wasn't sure if he was trying to convince her or himself, but his dick hardened against her warm, gyrating body. When he'd woken up, he'd felt like he'd blown the kind of load that'd leave him limp for the long haul, but after less than 30-seconds of standing within fucking distance of her, his cock was raring to go. He kept telling himself that his raging erection was more a testament to the power of the device than any true desire for Huntress, but he had his doubts. She was dark and dangerous and everything Aunt May had told him to avoid. This woman was sex on fire.

"Please," she whispered as he delicately traced the length from her arm to her shoulder, "I need you." She thrust her firm breasts into his chest as his fingers crawled up her neck to caress her face, gently tickling her earlobe before he found her communicator and tugged it away.

"I think I'm just going to leave you tied up while I take care of business," Spider-Man said, tearing himself away.

"Just fuck me!" she screamed.

"Ask me again after I'm done," he groaned. "I doubt I won't still be up for it."

He hated to think that this was happening all over the city. He had to stop this and soon. He pulled up the side of his mask to his temple to jam the second comm in his ear. "Really need that counter-pulse, O-Town," he said.

"It's ready," Oracle told him, that distorted bass now in stereo. "I was starting to worry. What were you two doing?"

"Nothing, honey," he lied. That's right, keep making the dumb jokes, Pete, he told himself. Just keep thinking like Spidey. Worry about all the guilt later...

"You're right," she sighed, initiating the pulse. "Pretty sure I don't want to know..."

He barely heard her over the low, stomach-churning dirge that thrummed through his ears. If not for the fact that it was the worst sound he'd ever heard, Spider-Man might have cheered. He wondered if it was the terrible pitch itself that was killing his erection rather than any specific effect he theorized it was supposed to have on his limbic system. Nevertheless, the fog of lust lifted and he could focus his attention on Osborn's machine.

Oh, science, he thought, stumbling toward the Deimos Engine. The ladies come and go, but you? You're the love that never lets me down... He wasn't sure how long it'd been since he'd first tried to stop it, but it seemed easier now as he accessed the controls. Easier without the ticking clock to contend with.

"Is the frequency working?" Oracle asked, just barely audible through the murky Brownian sound.

"Like baseball statistics!" he shouted as the engine started cycling down. "I'm going to try to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow on this doo-hickey before we're staring down the barrel of Caligula II: Osborn's Revenge."

"You know that reversing the polarity of a neutron flow isn't an actual thing that's going to help, right?" she asked him.

"Yeah, well, 'I'm going to use Reggeon calculus to correct for supernatural inelastic collision' doesn't sound sexy," he mumbled, toggling into the settings for the atom-smashing array. "Uh, not that I still care about that kind of thing..."

"Whatever," she said, mercifully ignoring his rambling. "I'm feeding your counter-frequency into the Emergency Broadcast System. Maybe that'll stop half of New York from doing something they're going to regret in the morning. Hang on a second." She clicked off the line while Spider-Man started inverting particle acceleration equations. He was just compensating for the cell decay in the oscillating field for the reverse boost when she came back. "I've instructed S.H.I.E.L.D. Command to outfit a tech squad with earbuds so they can help you shut down the device."

"Suddenly you don't trust me on this?" he asked. "Believe me, if there's one thing I'm good at, it's killing the mood..."

"That's never been my experience," Oracle murmured to herself. "Rogers said they're ten minutes out."

"Well tell Cap they can take their time," Spider-Man announced, re-activating the revised engine sequence. The machine thrummed to renewed life and based on the lower-pitch of its hum, it appeared to be working like he had planned. "I'm done here."

"That fast?"

"I know, a little anti-climatic, right?" he said. "But it's like you said, I just act like an idiot."

"Guess I shouldn't be that surprised you're so quick on the trigger."

"Oh, come on!"

"Kidding," she said. "I thought you liked the jokes."

"I like my jokes," he explained, stepping back from the controls now that he was finished. "How long was this monstrosity running?"

"Twenty-one minutes and nine seconds," she told him.

"That's it?" he wondered. Spider-Man knew it'd be another twenty minutes at least before all the steel had been re-transmuted and the effects were completely neutralized, but he was still surprised. "It felt like we were in that psychic eddy much longer than that."

"Speed of thought, I guess," Barbara replied. "Who really knows with telepathy?"

"How did you do that anyway?" he asked. "That whole Eternal Sunshine routine in my bespotted mind?"

"It... It doesn't really matter," she said. I don't want to talk about it, was the obvious subtext, but Spidey decided not to push it.

He looked out through the broken window at the glittering lights of Manhattan. "Twenty-one minutes," he said to New York City. His city. The only place he'd ever really call home and he'd let her down in the worst way. "I just hope nobody got hurt..."

*

She was sore and exhausted and she could feel it... Every hot, fluid drop on her back. As a lady of science, she knew it was stupid, but she could swear that they burned. Just like the liquid heat still seeping from her freshly-fucked pussy. She'd cum three more times before he was done with her.

"God, Carlie," Harry groaned from the spot where he'd collapsed beside her. "That... That was..."

Weird, she thought, completing the thought he couldn't quite finish. That was unbelievably weird. But she couldn't tell him that, could she? Carlie knew she needed to say something, though...

"Thanks, " she murmured, "for... for not cumming in me..."

Warmth flushed through her face at those words. It was the first thing she could think of. Carlie wasn't always so good about taking her birth control. It's not like it had been the most pressing obligation in her hectic, sexless day-to-day routine, but Harry obviously had some strong swimmers. The broken, infant cries from the living room were pretty evident proof. She still couldn't believe she'd just said that to him. She couldn't believe she'd just done any of this. It was stupid and wrong in a million different ways. She was pretty sure she'd just fucked up her life. But god, she felt like she had needed this...

No, she told herself. She'd just had sex with the father of her best friend's baby. And worse, he was more than that. Harry was...

"I should probably go..." he said uneasily, derailing that unpleasant train of thought.

"Uh, yeah," she nodded before glancing at him. Harry tried not to look too relieved as he hustled out of the bed to collect his clothes off the floor. She didn't blame him. If he didn't want to talk about it either, that worked for her.

Carlie carefully rolled over, wincing as she sat up. She covered her breasts with an arm, feeling shy all of a sudden. Her other hand fell lower to cover her nethers, but feeling the wet mess of matted hair between her legs didn't make her feel any better. Harry's jism sliding down her back toward her sore bottom didn't either.

Carlie had asked him to spank her. Begged him to, even...

She scrambled toward the closet while he was dressing. She was just cinching her robe closed as he zipped up his trousers and sheepishly looked her way.

She saw the bite mark on his shoulder as he threw on his shirt. It was only a bruise so she... she hadn't broken his skin, but she knew it was there. Given her job, Carlie thought a lot about the physical evidence of the most terrible crimes, and that insight extended to the small ones, too. Like what she'd just done with Harry.

For the non-existent record, she hadn't intended to hurt him with that bite. It's not like he'd complained when it happened. He'd been pretty focused on what he was doing to her at the time. Before, she'd had the mattress to muffle her moaning, but then he flipped her over and everything changed. The angle was different and he was pumping into her so deeply. The things she heard herself screaming... She'd just chomped down on the nearest soft surface to shut herself up.

Their eyes locked and Carlie felt this pit in her stomach.

Honestly, she felt more alive right then than she had in years, but there was no way she was going to do this again. Not... not with Harry. He was a nice guy and all, but not the type Carlie wanted to end up with. His life was too complicated. Harry Osborn had too many secrets...

He was dressed now and ready to leave. This might be her last chance to say it... The thing that weighed so heavily on her just then...

Carlie could see he was about to say something, but she couldn't let that happen. Whatever it was, it'd just be one more variable in an equation extrapolating beyond her control.

"Please don't tell Peter," they both blurted together.

*

It had only been five minutes, but based on their proximity to the machine, he knew that was much longer than he needed to wait.

"Think you're ready to come down now?" Spider-Man asked the Huntress.

"Sure," she spat. "If you're ready for that ass-whupping I owe you."

He opted to cut her loose anyway.

"I... I don't really remember what went down..." he said, tearing the webbing away.

"Nothing happened," she told him as he lowered her from the wall. She pushed him away the second her feet touched the floor.

"I know there's no excuse for what I... for what happened, Huntress," he started to say.

"Nothing happened," she seethed through gritted teeth.

Spider-Man didn't know what he was supposed to do with that.

"Sorry about your costume," he mumbled lamely, handing her the ruined utility belt he found on the floor. "I can web it up for you if you want."

"That's just your weird little thing, isn't it, Spider-guy?" Huntress grumbled, slinging the belt over her shoulder.

He wondered what she meant by that, but had his suspicions.

"Oh, I've got your communicator, too," he said, reaching into his mask to pluck it from his ear. Oracle had signed off to de-brief S.H.I.E.L.D. but he figured she'd need it later.

"Thanks," Huntress said, flicking waxy residue from the earbud in disgust. "I feel like I'm forgetting something, though..."

"Like what?" Spidey asked.

"This," she replied, slugging him in the gut.

"Oh, right," he groaned, sinking to his knees. "That." He swore sometimes he wondered why he even had spider-sense.

"Testa di cazzo," Huntress muttered, sticking the comm back in place before walking away. "Let's go find your girlfriend."

As he struggled to his feet, Peter remembered an all too important lesson his beloved uncle had taught him... For as much as Ben Parker had always said that with great power there must also come great responsibility, there was something else he told his nephew almost as often in their quiet little home in Queens...

Don't go messing around with no Italian girls.

They found her eventually, and when they did, that terrible knot in his chest finally untangled. Felicia Hardy was alive. Death hadn't claimed another one of Spider-Man's loved ones. Why she was dressed like a janitor in a broom closet was a little beyond him, but it'd been a strange day and a half. The Black Cat was zonked out on goofballs.

"I've got smelling salts in my belt," Huntress told him, handing him a capsule from one of her utility pouches. It occurred to Spidey it might be time to step-up his own cache of gadgets. At this point, all he was packing was spare web-cartridges, some spider-tracers and his signal light, and he hadn't changed the batteries for that in months...

"Oh, Spider..." Felicia murmured sleepily once she'd been revived. "I was having the sexiest dream about you... You had four extra arms and knew exactly what to do with them..."

"Um, maybe not in front of mixed company?" he whispered, helping Felicia up while Huntress scowled at him. "You alright?"

"Norman Osborn's here," she tried to warn him, "but it isn't really him... It's a... a clone or something..."

"Life-like robotic duplicate," he corrected as he walked her out of the closet. "It's been taken care of."

"Our lives are stupid, Spider," she muttered. "Really, really stupid."

"What's new, pussycat?"

"Your tailor's an asshole," Huntress told her.

*

You'd like to believe that S.H.I.E.L.D. only took the best of the best from the choice intelligence agencies, but in truth, it took a little something more to get someone to join up. The vast majority of, say, Quantico graduates were more than content to work their way up the F.B.I. hierarchy without all the fun of flying cars and form-fitting blue uniforms that left nothing to the imagination of their co-workers.

It hadn't been a nod from that curmudgeon Nick Fury that had drawn Victoria Hand to the organization. Fury ran S.H.I.E.L.D. like the walking, talking, cigar-smoking anachronism he was, hiring as many of his friends that weren't dead yet to comprise his inner-circle and ignoring everyone else. Maria Hill had been in charge for maybe a month before Tony Stark took over, so she didn't really have a chance to change things and Stark ran the place like a budding dotcom which drew in a lot of eager young hipster idiots with no clue what they were doing. Norman Osborn's recruiting tactics for H.A.M.M.E.R. had been unorthodox, but effective. The man wasn't well, but he was a hell of an operator. Victoria was still trying to get some sense of Steve Rogers. He was old school like Fury, but idealistic in a way that was either naïve or inspiring. She hadn't decided.