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When Spidey Met Oracle	By : littleblackduck Category: zMisplaced Stories [ADMIN use only] > Spiderman Views: 37996 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: The Spider-Man universe and characters are owned by Marvel. The Oracle universe and characters are owned by DC. I make no profit from this work. This is a sequel to "When Spidey Met Batgirl." I think you should read that first, but that might just be

Chapter List
- 12
- 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Long Time Coming
It was weird for him to see her like this. Not just the wheelchair or the fact that he was looking up at her from the floor. When Peter Parker thought of Barbara Gordon, he tended to think of her as Batgirl or the hot older chick in the stodgy pajamas that still somehow came off as totally foxy. But honestly, he usually focused on the naked sexpot with the tussled red hair rolling around with him in a sweaty tangle of limbs and genitals and light, lusty banter.
Whatever the case -- whichever Barbara Pete chose to remember -- it was a far cry from the woman looking down on him now, dressed to the nines in a sharp charcoal sweater over a plain white shirt and shapeless beige slacks, that lustrous crimson mane pulled up with a clip, her bright blue eyes flashing at him behind her glasses. And yet, he couldn't deny there was something strangely familiar about this version of her, too. Something he'd almost forgotten about…
"Yeesh, you just barely pull those punches, don't you, Parker?" she mused, rubbing one of the wrists she'd used to effortlessly block one of his strikes. "If I'd known you were so hot for a fight, I'd have brought wrist guards... Or maybe not come over at all."
And with that, mulling the far-flung past seemed all too moot.
"Right," Peter grumbled, trying to sound cavalier as he sat against the fridge. "But you came anyway... because all of a sudden you want to talk. That's different… What changed your mind?"
He wasn't sure why he bothered with the bravado. He'd just lost the fight, after all. Somehow he doubted he was about to impress this mysterious Babs of today with gruffly barked tough guy sarcasm... especially when he was still slurring his words.
It was a well-known fact that the Caped Crusader and his motley crew of bat-people could beat the pants off of super-powered guys like him pretty casually -- and Spidey certainly had enough personal experience to verify that -- but come on! He knew the Way of the Spider now! And she'd taken him out sitting down? It's not like she'd really knocked the crap out of him or anything, but she'd certainly bested him.
Shang-Chi would have been so disappointed.
Then again, Peter hadn't been in the best shape before his little sparring match with America's favorite former Dark Damsel. He'd come home for a little ad hoc medical attention in the first place. Actually, this little bit of kung pao paralysis he was reeling through seemed to help with the pain. The cuts and burns he'd been worried about when he first walked through the door -- well, dropped through the skylight -- certainly didn't seem so bad now and at this point most of the numbness had subsided to a dull, stabbing ache at the back of his head...
"I didn't say that I wanted to talk," Barbara corrected. "I just said that it's probably time."
"What, exactly, is the difference?"
"I've been avoiding this conversation for years, Parker, but you know who I am now," she explained. "So I figure it's only a matter of time before Spider-Man's tapping at my window. I thought I'd save you the trip and we can just have it out now and get it over with."
"Have it out?" he sputtered. "What's that supposed to mean? What are we getting over with? I just wanted to talk to you…"
"We already talked!" she groaned. "We talked for hours that day. What's left to say?"
"You know what I mean," he told her. "I wanted to see you."
"Well I didn't want to see you," she said. "I thought I made that obvious enough."
"I'll say," he muttered. "I didn't get a chance to say it at the lab earlier, but you don't look too bad for a dead woman."
"Believe me, I've got my fair share of old war wounds," she assured him.
"Why are you being like this?" he asked, but the answer seemed fairly obvious now. "I just don't understand you, Barbara… You knew who I was the whole time I was running around doing your comm-link-bidden bidding after you'd been cyber-stalking me for years -- which is kind of creepy, by the way…"
"In my defense, cyber-stalking's kind of become my whole deal…" she shrugged.
"You're making jokes now?" he asked, incredulous. "Glad this is so funny to you..."
"Are you seriously trying to lecture me about inappropriate humor?" Barbara balked.
"The whole time we were looking for Black Cat you treated me like an idiot," he sighed brushing past the fact she had a fair point. "And then you tried to ditch me. What did I do to deserve that?"
"I had to keep my secrets, Parker," she explained. "Because they're not just my secrets. You of all people should understand that."
"Oh no," he chortled darkly. "Don't try to pull that on me. This was about more than the usual secret identity bullshit we all pretend is so precious between us. I've had the 'I can't tell you the truth to protect the people I care about' conversation. Both sides of it. A lot. This was never really about that, though... was it?"
"Right, because you're the only one with something to lose, right?" Barbara bristled. "It's all just bullshit if it isn't about you getting what you want, right, Parker?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I know what you did," she told him. "I remember you on TV telling the world who you were, but then one day soon after I didn't and every scrap of data I had on you was gone. I couldn't even remember your face."
"That... That was different…" Peter protested.
"You screwed with my brain!" Barbara seethed. "You hacked my systems! That's all I have left now, and you tore them apart without a second thought, Parker. So explain to me why I should have trusted you..."
"I put my faith in the wrong person trying to do the right thing and things fell apart," he said. "I had to fix things."
"Simple as that, right?" Barbara huffed. "You screwed up, so you deserve a do-over."
"No," he told her. "Not simple. You have no idea how hard. I don't either… I don't know how Doctor Strange put the genie back in the bottle, but what he did had to be done. All I ever told you was my first name. Anything else you learned about me -- and it seemed like a lot -- you got later, on your own. I didn't know that then. But I had my reasons, and I'm sorry, but they were more important than you."
"Well then you should understand what to expect from the rest of the world," Barbara put frankly. "But you still just had to see me, right?"
"You still remembered me," he shrugged. "Despite everything. No one was supposed to. Strange said no one would. I thought maybe…" Peter sighed. "Call me curious, I just wanted to find out why, so, yeah, I wanted to talk."
"Well, I didn't want to do that."
"I know," he said. "You said that already. A lot."
"God damn it, Parker," she sighed, breaking. "I never wanted you to see me like this."
Peter didn't respond at first because he was out of things to shout and he suddenly felt so weird about pushing her. "Why?" he asked, exhausted. "You didn't think I'd understand?"
"Of course you'd understand," she fumed. "Everybody understands."
"Barbara…" he started to say.
"Don't," she insisted. "Just… no."
"Okay then, good talk I guess," Peter groaned. He felt his strength return with this fresh surge of irritation, forcing himself up onto his wobbly legs. "I guess I'll just go tend to a few minor injuries and you can just disappear all over again. We'll both just forget this happened."
"Sit down, Parker," Barbara insisted as he stalked past her. "You need to give yourself more time to recover. Cobra's Lingering Bite should have knocked a man your size out for at least an hour."
"Proportionate recuperation of a spider," he mumbled, but considering the syrupy drawl of his words, Barbara doubted that was a real thing. She expected him to fall down unconscious after five steps, but watched him stagger on in silent shock. "I'm sure you know the way out," he muttered before ducking into the bathroom.
Barbara had only been in his apartment for all of five minutes before he'd come home -- she would have been there sooner if she hadn't kept talking herself out of going through with this house call during each step of tracking down his address and entering the building -- but she certainly knew her way out. She just wished that was all that she'd worked out in her time here. Unfortunately, Barbara Gordon was a cop's daughter who spent her time with the world's greatest detective. There were some things she couldn't turn off.
She couldn't not notice the thirteen-to-twenty-inch strands of red hair anymore than she could un-see the scorch marks on his ceiling. Based on the undisturbed dust in common high traffic areas, it was obvious that Parker didn't spend all that much time in his apartment, which made sense. Between his time as Spider-Man and his hours at Horizon this should have been a place for him to sleep, to say nothing of the fact that the psych profile for a man of his intellect would have indicated a much less tidy place if he spent the time to actually nest here.
It didn't appear, however, that the time he did spend here was spent alone. Based on the faint, porky smell of burnt flesh and fine ash, the Human Torch had spent considerable time here in the last four days at least…
So had the supermodel. Barbara didn't get that from the smoky aroma as much from those hairs on his sofa. If Dinah or Helena had been here and Babs had pointed them out, the girls would have insisted they were just some of her own from when she first came in -- it was one of the reasons she hated when they insisted watching that silly Sewn Up show on Barbara's 70-inch high def flat-screen in Kord Tower.
"You should do your hair like that, Babs," Dinah so often insisted. "You and Mary Jane Watson practically have the same hair."
"You've got to do something," Helena would agree. "At least pretend you don't spend all of your time in front of a computer."
Barbara personally felt there were a hundred subtle differences to her shade of red to Watson's. This kind of thing was a point of redhead pride, honestly. Babs was more of a warm and sunny, fiery copper-colored ginger while Watson had a silky, bouncy auburn rust shiny with top-shelf product and completely devoid of the kind of split ends Barbara often found herself plagued with. And every time Babs saw old pictures of herself with bangs of her own, she thought she looked awful. Barbara had often wondered if Watson's hair was a dye-job, but right now, she was oddly much more curious just how much time she and Parker spent together...
Peter, of course, had different concerns.
By the time he made it to the bathroom, all those tiny little injuries had come flickering back to painful life and the injured web-head suddenly realized just how much he didn't want to do this on his own.
He had other options, he supposed, but none of them seemed too promising.
There was always the Night Nurse -- an E.R. physician with a secret clinic that specialized in emergency care for superheroes -- but she was all the way over in Brooklyn, so he hardly considered the trip worthwhile for anything less than a gunshot wound these days. Anyway, he doubted he could web-swing over there in his current state thanks to Barbara's little pressure point prank.
Carlie had once dressed his wounds after he had tussled with Firefly when Hammerhead had hired the arsonist to turn up the heat on a rival gang, but that, of course, was before she knew Peter was Spider-Man. "It's weird," she had said. "I've seen burn-patterns like this before… on a cadaver when I was examining one of the Scorcher's victims…" And the way she looked at him when he explained that he burned himself getting a frozen pizza out of the oven, he knew he'd better not risk asking for her help again until he was ready to tell her the truth -- or at least until he came up with more plausible lies. And while his secret identity wasn't an issue any more, Carlie wasn't really in the mood to do Pete any favors these days. Besides, she was in Chicago right now for that stupid convention.
He knew better than to call Mary Jane. Even in their best days as a couple it was only in the direst circumstances that she played Florence Nightingale. There was that time a couple years back when she popped his dislocated shoulder back into place with a towel leveraged against a radiator. It hurt like hell, but it was oddly one of his favorite memories of MJ. She said she'd picked that trick up from The Learning Channel, but what Peter heard at that moment was that she was willing to take all of him. Even the nasty spidery stuff. He'd always tried to cover up the injuries before… Sometimes to his utter detriment -- like that case of vertigo stemming from an inner ear imbalance that'd almost killed him thrice over because he didn't want to admit he needed help that might scare her. But there she was jerking his socket back into place with household items and that dazzling smile. Right there and then he thought they'd make it work. He thought they'd figure everything out and live happily ever after.
But that was maybe a month before he joined the Avengers and it suddenly seemed like he was fighting other superheroes instead of the bad guys every other month for the flimsiest reasons…
And again, this was when Mary Jane loved him best.
Whenever he stumbled home too beaten up in those days, she still just wanted him to stop all the Spider-Man insanity, give up his burden and be with her.
If only he had. If only he could.
In those scant few months when Aunt May knew the truth about him, she'd done her fair share of medic duty. May had been there to get him through that day he first put Osborn in jail -- the man had actually bitten Peter for fucksake! Then there'd been that night after the SHRA task force had raided the Night Nurse's clinic and he had nowhere else to go, so his aunt had to stitch up this nasty gut-slash from the Creeper. She'd been a trooper, taking ten minutes to look up some things online before she returned with bandages and crazy glue and a sewing kit ready to do what needed doing. It'd be great if May Parker had this gritty but uplifting back-story of being a nurse back in "the war" or something, but honestly, she'd always been a housewife as far as Peter remembered. That said, she'd been the same housewife who kissed his boo-boos and stung him with bactine his whole childhood. So in those truly dark moments when he was lying on her kitchen floor, convinced he was bleeding out and finally facing the end of the long, stupid story of Spider-Man, Peter could be brave for her.
Hell, she was the woman who'd first taught him how.
Don't tell Aunt May the truth again, don't tell Aunt May the truth again, don't tell Aunt May the truth again, Peter kept telling himself as he staggered toward his medicine cabinet. It's the only way to keep her safe.
He got the aspirin out without too much difficulty, but getting the bottle open was a little beyond him. He could make his arms work, but his fingers -- usually so dexterous -- were still giving him a hell of a problem.
"Don't tell Aunt May what?" he heard Barbara ask from the doorway.
Crap. Peter thought, turning toward her. Did I say that out loud? I'm still just so woozy...
"Yes, you said that out loud," she sighed, rolling into the bathroom. "I told you not to push yourself, idiot. Nerve cluster strikes tend to come back in waves. You think you've shaken it off, then the adrenaline dissipates and all of a sudden you're discombobulated all over again."
"Discombobulated," he thought. That's a great word but how often do you really get to use it in a sentence?
"Not that often," she agreed.
Is she reading my mind? he wondered, dazed.
"I'm not reading your mind, Parker, you're babbling," Barbara insisted snatching the aspirin out of his hand to pop it open for him. "Try to focus on one train of thought… What were you saying about your aunt?"
"She can't know about this," Peter said through the fog in his head. "She can't know about any of this..."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want her to get hurt..." he sighed."She's the reason your memory of me had to go, Barb… Because she has to stay safe... Bad things happen because I'm Spider-Man... Bad things have always happened because I'm Spider-Man, but somehow they never happen to me... It's been hard to hold down a job and my relationships have all been disasters... but that's all just dumb shit... you know? My uncle died when I got these powers..."
"I know," Barbara told him, handing him a few pills. "I read the story in the Bugle. That's how I figured out who you were. The loss of a parental figure like that... Batman went through something similar. Nightwing, too. I'm sorry, Peter, I really am. It's bad, but it… it happens. That doesn't make it your fault."
"But it was my fault," he insisted, gulping them down. "I… I could have saved him... My uncle's killer ran right past me, committing a crime, and I could have stopped him... I had all these stupid powers, but even without them... I could have tripped that guy or something... But I let him go because I thought dealing with something like that was beneath me." He slumped down against the sink. "That's the real reason I do what I do now... but even when I do what I do the people I care about still get hurt."
"What are you talking about?"
"There was this girl… I loved her," Peter sighed. "I loved her so much, Barb... and she died because of me and what I do... Because of Spider-Man. I did everything I could to save her, but she's just gone... and worse... I'm pretty sure that she died because I tried to save her... She'd had this whole life that had nothing to do with me, but in the end, all of that just… just disappeared so a madman could use her as a prop... It's sick what I do... It's wrong the way my life works..."
"I'm sure you didn't want to her hurt, Peter," Barbara said.
"It doesn't matter what I want," he blathered on. "I hurt everybody I meet in some way or another… People get hurt. People die. People I love. Sometimes people I just… I just know. And I can't stop it… I'm not fast enough or strong enough or smart enough... I've let so many people down… I get to save strangers… I even get to save my enemies… but anyone who makes my life worth it -- the ones I love? I ruin their lives..."
"Pull it together, Parker…"
"Aunt May almost died… And Betty got mugged... Harry had to fake his death and then later he had to leave… Flash lost his legs… And MJ… Poor Mary Jane just can't… She…" His eyes rolled back as another wave hit him.
"Peter!"
He perked up then. "All these bad things happen to the people I love, but they don't happen to me, Barbara," he mumbled again, shrugging it off. "And I'm the one who actually deserves it..."
"Why?" she asked. "Why do you deserve it anymore than them?"
"Because I didn't stop that burglar," Peter said, "and he's been gunning down everybody else ever since... I've got to do this on my own... Alone."
Barbara wanted to let that stand on its own, but she couldn't help herself. "So I guess that means you're not back together with the supermodel…?"
"Supermodel?"
"Mary Jane Watson."
"Oh, right. 'The supermodel'..." Peter shook his head with a chuckle. "You know, it's hard to believe that's how everyone sees her... For so long she was so much more than that to me, you know? And before that… she was just this flighty friend of mine... Everything between the day my aunt told me about this girl she desperately wanted me to meet to now and supermodel's always the last thing I think of..."
"You're right," Barbara said. "That is hard to believe."
"Mary Jane Watson doesn't want any part of this side of me," he sighed. "She understands it… But she doesn't want to see it… Because she knows it's going to kill me and she doesn't want to watch me die over this… And I do it for her… And for May… And for everyone else I've let down… That's why it's over with me and her. I want to go out there and make sure that she's safe, but she just wants to be with me..."
"Why don't you just tell her how you feel?"
Peter just smiled then. That sad smile he was so good at. "She knows," he said. "And I know how she feels. But we just reached this point where knowing how we feel about each other doesn't change anything. Has that ever happened to you with someone you loved?"
"Yes," she confessed. "But I never figured out what comes next."
"Maybe you figure it out with somebody new then," he shrugged. She looked at him then, but he looked away. "Maybe you don't."
Always an out for Peter Parker, Barbara figured. Beyond that, she really didn't know what to say. This little visit certainly hadn't gone the way she'd expected.
For as long as she'd known the truth about Peter Parker, she always thought the web-slinger was just like the Dark Knight… That he'd personally seen one terrible tragedy firsthand and it defined him -- from that day forward, he was committed to making the broken world better. It was obvious to her now that it was different for Parker than it was for Bruce. Peter was driven by a far sicker monster entirely. He'd been older when his uncle died than Bruce was when he lost his parents, of course, which she realized now would make a significant difference to his mental state in response to such an event, to say nothing about the psycho-physiological impact of gaining extra-normal abilities at that delicate stage of adolescence. And this thing about having encountered the killer before -- that insane twist of fate...
Bruce Wayne was doggedly, destructively determined to save Gotham in honor of the memory of his murdered mother and father, but he had somehow built a new family around that goal. Peter Parker, by contrast, blamed himself for every bad thing that happened to everyone around him and felt compelled to keep them at a distance because of it. She knew people thought Batman was broken, but Spider-Man was just this walking death wish. No wonder he had to make some stupid joke every ten seconds. How else could someone live like that everyday?
As much as she thought she'd understood him before, this revelation cut her to the quick. There was nothing Barbara wanted to do right then more than find some way to save him… Huntress had once accused her of obsessing over fixing damaged heroes, and maybe Helena had been more right than wrong. And while Babs now knew better than to try to make Peter Parker her new project, she figured the least she could do was patch him up.
"Somebody punched you," she said eventually.
"Yeah," Peter replied. "That was you… about eight minutes ago."
"I mostly used defensive blocks after you attacked me, remember?" she scoffed. "And I meant before that."
"Lots of people have punched me," he sulked.
Barbara rolled her eyes. She'd heard the rumors for years. Parker seemed to rein it in a bit the two times they'd worked together, but there was no denying it: Spider-Man was a whiner... which was making this whole newfound desire to save him somehow rather difficult. "Someone cut you, too," she observed.
"The Hobgoblin might have gotten a few licks in," he finally admitted.
"Looks like more than a few licks," Barbara informed him, rolling closer to survey his injuries. "I'm seeing at least three slashing burns on your back, most likely shallow cuts from some kind of plasma-powered blade, and if I had to guess from the ragged gashes and the dispersal of shrapnel wounds on your thighs, you almost took a direct hit from a low-yield fragmentation grenade with organic casing."
"Wow," Peter whispered. "That's kind of hot."
"I assume you mean the burns on your back," she mock-whispered in reply. "And seriously, what kind of goblin uses a flaming sword?"
"That's what I've been saying!"
"What's the point of cutting someone with a weapon that's just going to cauterize the wound?"
"Well, I can tell you personally that it hurts like hell."
"You've been doing this long enough that I have to assume you have a first aid kit."
"Well, duh…" he shrugged. He was clearly still feeling sluggish, because he did it one shoulder at a time.
"Go get it, have a seat, and take off your shirt," Barbara instructed.
"What training do you have in this kind of thing, exactly?" Peter asked, pulling a sizable emergency medical trunk from under his sink.
"Just what I've picked up from a former British soldier turned MI-5 agent with an extensive background in combat medicine who's been patching up Batman since he skinned his first knee," she answered as he handed it to her. "That good enough, nerd boy, or should I have brought my CV?"
"Still with the 'nerd boy', huh?" he smiled, slumping onto the toilet.
"I let you get away with Spider-Man the first time we met," she said, "so sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, you're nerd boy forever..."
Barbara suddenly rethought that assertion when he stripped off his top. She'd spent a lot of time with Bruce and the boys in a rarefied field where gorgeous pecs and washboard abs were the impossible norm, so Peter's rugged physique should have hardly been a surprise, especially when you considered the fact that he was peeling off spandex for god's sake, but all that web-strand styling was distracting.
"Wow," she said softly. She immediately regretted it, blushing as she hoped he hadn't heard her. Maybe this was a case where her impeccable memory wasn't doing her any favors. In her mind, Peter Parker was still the scrawny, teenage version of himself from all those years past, not some well-defined hunk who'd clearly filled out from a decade of wall-crawling cardio. If Barbara took a moment to really think about it, she'd have realized that she had certainly seen more brawnily toned torsos in her day, but he'd just tacked on so much muscle… And even more remarkably, besides his recent wounds -- like the burns on his back and that bruise over his eye -- his skin was more or less flawless. She'd seen Bruce's naked back on several occasions and the vast patchwork of scarring always made her wince and she'd spent a few nights tracing her fingers along every faded wound Dick still had from his lifetime of crime-fighting, but Peter Parker still appeared so pristine and unmarred. Either he'd been extremely lucky in his time as Spider-Man, or his regenerative spider-powers healed his wounds much more thoroughly than unaugmented, human vigilantes...
Than people like her.
"It's not that bad, is it?" he asked, noting the ashen look on her face.
"Uh… no," she replied, desperate to cover her fluster while she dug through his med kit. "You're fine -- You're, um, going to be fine."
A bit of blood had started dripping from this scalp -- a gash from his fall from the ceiling which was, she acknowledged, actually her fault, so she decided to tend to that first.
Despite the little funk he'd thrown himself into moments before, Peter couldn't help but brighten a little as she wiped the blood from his forehead. It'd been quite some time since he'd had a nursemaid at home. Barbara noted this bit of gratitude in his eyes that was only slightly tainted by swelling around his right eye socket.
"That's probably going to become a hell of a shiner," Barbara observed, appraising his burgeoning black eye. "You got a steak in the freezer?"
"Don't bother," he said. "I heal pretty quick so it won't last more than a day or two and I don't have to go out if I don't want to. Max gives me pretty flexible hours."
"Well what if Batman, Incorporated needs you for a consultation?"
Peter quirked the offending eyebrow, confused.
"Thanks to the deal I just made with Horizon, we practically have you on retainer now, Parker," she explained. "We own you -- or have an option to lease on occasion, at least -- and we're expecting some anti-Man-Bat ordinance ASAP…"
"I have some ideas," he told her uneasily as she cleaned the gash that was already closing. "I knew this kid once when I first became Spidey… He had a similar chiropteran mutation, but I managed to stop him before he hurt anyone. He wasn't really trying to, though… But I've done some work with refractive sonics that should be useful against biosonar and a lot of Curt Connors cross-species genetic research is probably applicable as far as cures go…"
"I was kidding, Parker," she sighed. She'd meant it as a joke to lighten things up, but was instantly sad when he took it so seriously. Barbara had gotten into the super-hero game when she was all grown up, but the guys who grew up with it… Like Dick and the other old school Teen Titans... They didn't know when to turn it off. Or maybe they just didn't know how. "How's your head?"
"Still a little funked up, but I'm feeling a little more lucid," Peter nodded. "Sorry if I was a rambling, sad mess for a bit there."
"Don't worry about it," she told him, dabbing a cut on his shoulder. "These moments when you're real are a nice little break from the desperate wisecracks."
"Folks love my jokes!" he insisted. "I busted this carjacking ring last week, and they were still laughing as the cops packed them into that paddy wagon."
"I'm sure they were," she murmured.
"So what happened to you?" he asked.
Barbara stiffened then. She'd been dreading this, of course. It'd been a while since she'd been through it, but it was the same thing every time she ran into someone from her old life. A million questions about her damn wheelchair. "Well..." she started to say, eager to just get it over with.
"It's just that I thought you were supposed to be this super mysterious worldwide web-head hiding in the digital shadows or something," he recalled. "When did you pack it all in and go totally corporate? I mean Wayne Enterprises? Really?"
This was a little unexpected. "Are you calling me a sellout?"
"If the private jet fits," he shrugged. "Batman must be pretty hard up for cash if he's willing to play along with this lame incorporation publicity stunt Bruce Wayne cooked up..."
"Parker…"
"I'm just surprised he managed to rope all the old sidekicks in, too."
"You're an idiot."
"Look, I'm not saying Bats is using the money for ski-trips or anything fun, because I've met the guy and think I know him better than that, but how many different black muscle cars does one burly obsessive really need?"
"Oh, and the world needs noise reduction headphones retailing at $39.99?"
"I've got them down to earbuds now," Peter beamed. "Noise reduction earbuds, Barbara!" She didn't seem impressed. He would have brought up the lightweight impact-resistant polymer he'd developed that was better than Kevlar, the thermo-reactive foam for firefighters, the cryonic cube technology for medical organ transportation, or any of the other innovations he'd whipped up during his time at Horizon, but he was pretty sure she knew all about it. Barbara was clearly a bit of a ballbuster. "Seriously, though, what's the deal?" he asked. "Why give up the whole IT-for-superheroes gig? Despite the fact that I hadn't heard of Oracle until eight months ago, apparently half the capes in New York don't know what to do without you..."
"I didn't give it up," she told him. "I just scaled it back a bit because I got too big and that became a distraction. In order to do what I do as best as I can I had to make a few sacrifices."
"S.H.I.E.L.D. said you were dead," he said quietly. "I thought you were dead. Was that just to avoid a conversation?"
Barbara laughed at that. Not that bright titter he remembered so well. This was darker. Sardonic. A snicker verging on a scoff almost as ominous as that creepy distorted Oracle voice from the comm-link. "No," she said when she was done scaring him. "I did that to protect myself from this asshole who'd been coming after me and mine for a while... If I threw you off my scent, that was just a bonus."
"Because you never wanted to see me again."
"I thought I explained that, Parker."
"You really didn't."
"Then I guess I'm not going to," she said.
"So explain to me how a woman who knows everything about me but wants nothing to do with me manages to walk into my place of business and not expect to see me?"
"I didn't walk," Barbara sighed.
"Sorry, figure of speech," he grimaced. "But you know what I mean…" She didn't respond. She just silently fished through his medical supplies. "Barb...?"
"Maybe after what happened the last time we... whatever... I took a little break from keeping tabs on you," she admitted. "How was I supposed to know you'd get your act together?"
"You told me to!"
"I didn't think you'd listen!" she replied. "And even if you did, what were the chances you'd get this on the ball that quickly? I know how capable you are, Parker, but Horizon Labs? Maybe an internship, sure, but the Lucky 7? You don't even have a doctorate!"
"Fair enough," he supposed. But that only got her the briefest respite. "So, how long was this break from cyber-stalking me?"
Barbara only hesitated a moment. "It ended about two hours ago."
"I really got to you, didn't I?" Peter beamed.
"Shut up and turn around," she sighed. "Those burns need treatment."
"If you say so…"
"Where'd you get this ointment?" Barbara asked, desperately trying to change the subject. "It's the absolute best for burns..."
"Parting gift from my infamous supermodel conquest," he told her. "Apparently it's also good for a dab under the eyes without the pore-clogging worries of petroleum jelly. I've got more stashed away somewhere if you want to take some home with you."
"No need," she said. "As you can imagine, I don't get roasted as much as I used to. Besides, I know the billionaire playboy who bought the Guatemalan company that makes this stuff."
"Of course you do," Peter sighed.
"This has another application I like," Barbara informed him matter of factly.
"What's that?" Peter asked.
"Be a good patient and maybe I'll show you someday," she teased.
Peter fell silent, puzzled, as Barbara slathered the three strips of burnt flesh with that cooling salve. The quiet between them grew steadily uncomfortable as her fingers lingered on his back.
God. What was she doing? Was she flirting with him? Hadn't she been yelling at him ten minutes ago?
"Are you okay?" he asked her then.
"I… I'm not sure what you mean."
"Is he still coming after you?"
"Who?"
"The guy you faked your death for."
"The Calculator? He's been dealt with."
"'The Calculator'?" Peter laughed. "They're really running out of names, aren't they? Thank god I got to Spider-Man before somebody else snatched it up. I ran into that Nightwing guy once when he was in the city. He got me confused with some scumbag called Black Spider. I was wearing a different costume back then, though."
"You should try staying consistent, Parker," Barbara said, trying not to imagine how close he and Grayson might have gotten during this little encounter. "And I assure you, the Calculator's not the joke he started out as. Honestly, I'm surprised I have to take this much shit from a guy who has his hands full with guys called Kraven and the Hypno-Hustler."
"I'm so tired of taking crap for the Hypno-Hustler," Peter groaned. "It's not like I picked the guy's name! And I've fought him maybe two times. He's hardly my arch-nemesis… And we're straying from my point... This Calculator guy's not an issue anymore?"
"Not really."
"But you were just fine with me still thinking you were dead, too?" he asked her then. "You really didn't want to see me, that much?"
"Yes," she insisted again.
"Why?"
"You want the truth?" she asked. It was obvious now he wasn't going to let this go. "Ever since... since I stopped being Batgirl, everyone looks at me differently, because of this..." she told him, gesturing toward her chair. "I've done everything I can to prove to them that I can still play my part, and I know deep down that they respect me, but it's still through this fog of guilt. Everyone I know and love in the world pities me, Peter, and there's not a whole lot I can do about that."
"Barbara…"
"There was always you, though," she sighed wistfully. "Out there in the world, swinging over a street on a web, kicking some asshole in the face that deserves it. Doing all the insane things I used to do... The things I still dream about… My crazy one night stand from back in the old days. The one person who'd always think of me without that little cloud of sadness. And I hate myself so much for needing to have just that one person out there who could, but I did. I… I do. Just one person who thinks of me and just... just thinks I'm amazing... Who doesn't feel sorry for me..."
"I don't feel sorry for you!" Peter insisted, twisting around, but the look she gave him when he said it -- the contempt -- set him back, compelling him to honesty. "Okay, okay, I do feel sorry, Barbara," he admitted, turning away again. "God, I just feel for you. And I get why you didn't want to see me now. I understand what you mean about needing someone out there, because I always liked to think that there was at least one woman I'd been with that I hadn't completely screwed up yet. One who walked away unscathed before it went wrong..."
"Goddamn it, Parker, this isn't about you!" Barbara groaned. "What happened to me belongs to me, so please, don't make it about this imaginary cosmic curse in your life. That's just self-loathing and… and narcissism."
"Narcissism? I'm not a narcissist," Peter said. "What about all the self-deprecation?"
She ignored him. "I've spent so much of my time with brilliant idiots who think the world revolves around them and that they actually have control of everything, but they just don't. Neither do you. Nobody does. You didn't do this! This... this isn't on you. God, it wasn't even really about me... So don't... This isn't about you."
Some bit of time passed before Peter let himself speak. "I'm…" he started to say, but she cut him off, grabbing his shoulders to swivel him toward her.
"Just today, just for right now, I need you to be completely different from so many of the other men in my life," she told him then. "I need you to actually respect me for me -- an actual person -- and not as some... some extension of your own ambitions and failures. Do you think you can do that?"
She studied his face before he spoke, because for Barbara Gordon this was the measure of a man.
He started to say something but stopped himself, taking a deep breath. "I'm not sure," he finally admitted, "but I'll do my best."
"Honest but optimistic," she sighed. "That's the right answer." Then she kissed him.
It was something she'd never asked, but it was always at the back of her mind…
She liked to believe that Blue Beetle would have been honest but optimistic given the chance. There was so much about Parker that reminded her of Ted Kord. Or maybe, she started to realize, so much of Ted that had reminded her of Peter when she learned that the Beetle was her secret internet friend a few years back. She wasn't sure. Though there had been times in the beginning when Babs almost wondered if the "Beeb" in her chatroom was the bug boy she remembered and still wondered about. Eventually, she did the research, and of course, it turned out that during one of their late night gabfests, Spider-Man had been fighting the Scorpion with pictures by Peter Parker to prove it in the next day's Daily Bugle.
Barbara did know that she didn't want to make the same mistake now she made back then with Ted when they met in person. She told him she just wanted to be friends, but she'd just been so scared. When he said the same thing at the same time, that just scared her even more.
When she was with Dick things were different. He was one of her oldest friends, not somebody she needed to get to know better. Dick Grayson was always honest and optimistic. She would have married that brilliant idiot if she hadn't been so worried that he wasn't really ready… that he hadn't really figured out that the man he already was more than anybody else would ever need... that he wasn't still under Bruce's shadow. Because Dick had this weird urge to be Bruce without being Bruce and there was no way to do both... As far as she knew, no man could dedicate himself purely to saving Gotham without it consuming everything else. Her father certainly hadn't. But Barbara believed in her heart of hearts that if anyone could figure out how to do that impossible thing, it was Richard Grayson... but he couldn't do it and be her husband at the same time. Not then. Not yet. Maybe someday, but not anytime soon…
Barbara consciously pushed all that to the back of her mind as she grabbed Peter Parker's shoulders to draw him close. Parker, for his part, seemed dumbstruck by all of this, which was good. She knew he had been about to say something and that it was probably going to be stupid and this seemed the best way to shut him up before he ruined the moment. That said, it was one of her favorite things about him. There were so many men she'd met who had to posture and parade around to show everyone how smart they were. Granted, most of them had been supervillains or corrupt politicians, but the good guys weren't exactly immune to massive egos. Peter wasn't like that. He was a genius, but never had to flaunt it for his sense of self-worth. He said the most moronic things sometimes and was fine with it. Like he had nothing to prove. She worried briefly that this came from his outlandish self-doubt, but decided to ignore that thought, too. There were only so many things she could save him from at once.
So she kissed him. Her soft lips brushing his before parting slightly to tease out the tip of her tongue. Barbara felt the brief flutter of his surprise as his mouth opened to hers. She vaguely suspected he thought he wanted this as much or more than she did, but he couldn't be more wrong. As his tongue met hers, Barbara tried to tell herself that she hadn't come to Parker's place for this -- to be with him -- but she had to wonder. No. She'd come here to settle accounts. For closure. But how had she really expected this encounter to end? She could have rolled right out of his door... God, she never had to come here in the first place.
For so long she'd told herself a lot of lies why she'd avoided Peter Parker, but at the end of the day, maybe the real reason was that she wasn't sure she could keep her hands off of him. As much as she'd tried to ignore it, that undercurrent of desire was always right beneath the surface. It'd been there when he was just a voice in her ear or a grainy blur on a screen, and now with him right in front of her in the flesh, here it was, again, boiling up. Barbara pushed Peter back when she heard herself moan, taking the moment to study his face once more, and she found this look of bewildered wonder that just made her want to kiss him again.
"I'm not exactly sure what's happening right now," Peter confessed. "Maybe I'm still a little foggy..."
"Do you like where this seems to be going?" Barbara asked. She leaned forward to kiss that tender spot where his jaw met his neck.
"Uh, so far so, um, spectacular…" he said. "Be honest… This isn't a hallucination brought on by that bump on the noggin, is it?"
"How honest are your hallucinations?" she asked.
"They don't usually feel this good," he acknowledged, "but Mysterio's been able to whip up some real doozies..."
"Don't overthink it, nerd boy," she suggested before leaning in again. Barbara knew it'd been a while for her, and now started to suspect that this was true of him as well when his arms encircled her without hesitation, drawing her up from her chair. She still didn't realize he'd scooped her up until the snag. Peter broke their lip-lock, confused why the chair was dragging behind her.
"Catheter," she explained with a wince.
"Right, I'm an idiot," he apologized, setting her back down.
"Please don't watch this," she begged before going to the delicate task of removing it. "There are a few, um, connections I've got to take care of."
"Anything else I need to worry about?" Peter asked, with a hand over his eyes.
"Just a few… hundred little insecurities I have about my body that I do not want to talk about at all."
"Good thing I'm only in this for my own selfish gratification, then," he said lifting her out of the chair again once she was done. "You can feel as shitty about yourself as you want while I do stuff to you."
"You're an asshole," she laughed as he carried her out of the bathroom.
Then this... this smile spread across his face.
"What?" she asked him then. She was worried he was about to pretend not to know what she meant -- one of Peter Parker's go-to moves, she'd started to realize -- but he didn't.
"You... you just ran away from me so long," he told her. "But here you are."
Barbara smiled then, too. She couldn't help it. "Here I am," she said. "You got me. So what do you want to do with me? I believe there was some mention of 'stuff' a moment ago… What exactly did you have in mind?"
"I think it's probably better if I just show you."
"Well in that case, we should definitely bring that jar of burn ointment…"
"Oh, you still want to play doctor, huh?" Peter asked, turning back toward the bathroom, transferring Barbara to a fireman's carry over his shoulder as he went back for the salve.
"Something like that," she smirked, enjoying the view of Parker's ass from her perch facing his back while he hauled her through his apartment like some Neanderthal pal of Vandal Savage dragging some poor cavegirl away to rut.
"I thought we were going to your bedroom," Barbara said, confused when he tossed her down on his living room sofa.
"I can't wait that long," Peter told her, setting the jar on the coffee table.
"It's maybe forty feet away, Parker," she protested.
"Actually I think it's only thirty," he guessed climbing over her now, "but I really can't wait."
"You're ridiculous," she sighed. Barbara reached up to take off her glasses but Peter grasped her wrist gently.
"Leave them on," he said.
"Oh, that's right," she grinned. "You wanted the 'naughty librarian'."
That's when it clicked for him. Why this all-business version of Barbara had seemed so familiar. "It was hotty librarian," Peter corrected. "You called me 'weird nervous nerd' -- not much of a compliment, by the way -- and I called you 'hotty librarian'."
"Didn't I make up for that later?" she asked, sliding a hand down his abdomen.
"Nuh-not my point," he informed her, her fingers playing along the web-cartridge belt on his waist. "You were a hotty... not naughty."
"We'll see…" Barbara whispered, grabbing his dick through his tights.
"Okay, n-naughty," he stammered, wobbling slightly. "D-definitely naughty."
"Does... Does that mean I'm not still a hotty?" Barbara asked innocently, tickling his nuts.
Bending over her to kiss her neck, Peter suspected she knew his answer but told her anyway. "You're the hottest, naughtiest librarian, Barbara…"
"Well in that case, I'd better do the job right," she said, snatching a book from the coffee table.
"What are you doing?" he asked, sitting back.
"Oh mercy, this book is just so long overdue, Mr. Parker," Barbara responded. "Maybe somebody needs to teach you to return your library books on time..."
"It'll never happen again, ma'am," Peter swore, getting in on the act as she flipped through the pages.
"Goodness gracious," she gasped dramatically, peering over her glasses as they slid down to the edge of her nose. "Have you been... dog-earing the pages?"
"Please forgive me, Ms. Gordon," Peter mock-begged. "Oh god, how bad are my fees?"
"I'm afraid the fines are quite severe," she primly informed him, righting her spectacles as her gaze grew stern. "Especially since you've damaged the book. Creasing the pages, Mr. Parker? Have you no respect for the printed word? For your fellow library patrons?"
"It's not my fault," he insisted. "I can't afford proper bookmarks!"
"I'm afraid that's no excuse, young man," Barbara said, shaking her head in dismay.
"There must be some kind of payment plan we can arrange," he pleaded. "Maybe I could work it off somehow." Peter set himself over her. "I'm sure you have some shelves that need dusting..."
"Oh brother," she just guffawed setting the book back on the table. "You can't really be that into this…" she started to complain, but it was swallowed as he kissed her. Apparently, he could. This wasn't soft and slow or tentative like before. This was hungry and hot. His hands roamed her body as he explored her mouth with his tongue. Eventually she remembered to do the same, running her fingertips lightly along his arms to his back drawing him close.
That initial urgency slowly faded, Peter taking his time to caress her stomach, but after a while, she needed more. She felt his fingers climb her ribs, just beneath her breasts but no higher. It was like making out back in high school. He'd insisted before that he couldn't wait, but now she could only conclude he couldn't wait to slowly work her up into a frenzy.
Instead of telling him what she wanted, Barbara just pushed him back and started to unbutton her cardigan, hoping he'd pick up on the visual cues.
She was still in the same clothes she'd worn for the presentation at Horizon, so she was dressed to seduce if necessary. Nothing too risqué -- just the things she usually wore when she needed to buy new equipment. A crisp white blouse tucked under a grey cardigan to keep things classy at first, but by the time she got down to negotiating price, if the salesman wanted to play hardball, things tended to go a bit smoother when she slyly slipped out of that sweater. She kept her hair up in a bun that she'd shake out just for a little more of a flourish if she had to go so far as to take off her glasses -- not that most men were still looking her in the eye by that point. Without the cardigan, the black push-up bra she wore for these occasions was fairly visible under her blouse, and Barbara had usually used some of those sly ninja skills of hers to subtly undo a button or two to reveal a tasteful bit of skin by the time she was ready to ditch the sweater.
Sophisticated with the vaguest hint of slutty, she liked to call it...
Despite the careful thought and consideration she'd put into this little production so often before, Barbara didn't take a lot of pride in this kind of thing. She certainly doubted her father would approve of such tactics, though she suspected her other two mentors might. "Whatever it takes to win," Bruce always said. "If I had your figure I'd be running S.H.I.E.L.D. by now," would probably be Waller's remark.
Barbara had worn this more out of habit today than any actual tactical advantage, however, as she couldn't really go the tacky route with the lads at Horizon. Babs wasn't exactly Max Modell's type and she was pretty sure the only interest Uatu Jackson had in anything under her sweater would have been if she'd been wearing her old Batgirl costume. The kid was nuts about superheroes and maybe a smidge too young for a well-bolstered set of C cups to hold much sway -- not that she had any desire to test that theory. She felt icky enough when she tried it on grown men... Usually.
Barbara obviously hadn't expected to run into Peter Parker today, but she was suddenly so glad she was wearing this right then. She vaguely wished she'd gone for the black pencil skirt and high heels instead of the corduroy slacks and sneakers, but given the laid-back atmosphere at Horizon, she thought an upscale geek casual look was her best bet on blending in. But it certainly seemed that this whole hipster chic sultry schoolmarm thing was still doing it for him.
Good lord. Had she based this whole ensemble around him?
The first time she met Parker at Gotham City Public Library, this was basically what she'd been wearing, she recalled -- minus the minor fashion faux pas of a black bra under a white shirt -- and young nervous nerd guy had just seemed so smitten. It wasn't the first time some random patron had taken a shine to her on the job. On those rare occasions when it happened before, she had only just grown out of her lonely gawky years and still felt this stupid, desperate gratitude that someone thought she was pretty, but with Peter it was different. She had finally come into her own. Not just as Batgirl, but as Barbara herself. That night at the library with him was maybe the first time she'd realized the power she held over some men when she was all dolled up. She realized she had a choice.
Hell, she turned him down when he asked her out, hadn't she?
Of course, that had been out of good sense and decorum. She'd assumed he was some high school kid, and she hadn't been wrong. Besides, she had a long night ahead of her watching over Gotham… Yet despite all that, a few hours later, he was tearing her pajamas to shreds before eating her out at her emphatic instruction. Perhaps naughty librarian had defined her perfectly right then, but things were different now -- Peter Parker was a grown man and she was a long way off from that young woman just coming into her own...
"You can't just rip my clothes off this time," she told him, unclipping her hair before she carefully folded her sweater and placed it on the coffee table. "I need this outfit for work."
"Wouldn't dream of it," he said, untucking her blouse and deftly unfastening the bottom button. His fingers seemed to work well enough now, Barbara noted as he went to work opening her shirt, exposing the toned expanse of her midriff. He stopped to kiss the pale, creamy skin under each button as he made his way up. It wasn't just that he'd clearly shaken off the last of his numbness. That first time in her old Gotham Heights rowhouse, when he'd opened the top of her jim-jams, his hands were shaky, like he was scared.
Back then, this was a guy who'd faced down the Hulk on two separate occasions, but he'd seemed terrified to touch her, which Barbara had found almost as adorable as she found it thrilling. She felt completely in control in that moment. That had obviously changed. He had changed. His hands were so steady now as he undressed her. Maybe this was why she'd never reached out to him after that morning, because now here she was and it was like the whole dynamic has shifted. What if all the magic between them had been used up that one night?
"You're different than I remember," she said softly.
"Well, it's been, what, seven or eight years?" he asked, drilling his tongue into her navel. "A guy has to grow up a bit, doesn't he?"
"I-It's not just that," she frowned as he continued his ascent. "It's something else."
"Is it bad different," he asked, working the last button, "or good different?"
"I'm not sure yet," she replied as he kissed between her breasts. "Just… uh… g-give me a second to think…"
"Okay," he nodded pulling her shirt open. "I'm just going to take off my pants while you mull it over. You just tell me when you've figured it out..."
Barbara hadn't taken the time to deal with the cuts on his legs, but as he stood up and dropped spider-trou, she saw now that they'd been rather superficial. They only looked like burns because his tights had been charred, but the skin underneath had little more than a sunburn. Her eyes rose to the bulge thickening in his boxer briefs as he undid his little utility belt, letting it fall to the floor. His underwear quickly followed and he climbed back onto the sofa right after peeling them off.
One look at his hard shaft was all it took for her to make up her mind. Yes, she could definitely work with this new, superior Spider-Man...
Barbara felt a fluttering twinge of nervousness she couldn't explain right then. It wasn't her first time, obviously, and it wasn't even her first time since the Joker had shot her, but it had been a while. God, not since J'onn.
After she'd been paralyzed, when Barbara eventually decided she wasn't done fighting crime, she'd been trained by Richard Dragon, a former thief turned world-class martial artist. The idea was for her to learn eskrima, the Filipino art of stick fighting, because after a run-in with a particularly malicious cyber-thief, she knew she had to find a new way of defending herself. Of course, as all these kind of quests often went, she ended up learning much more than she set out to at first. Dragon didn't just teach her how to fight without her legs if she needed. He taught her to accept that her body had changed -- how to shift her focus from living in spite of her paralysis to living with it… A seemingly meaningless distinction to some, but a whole new world for someone who actually does it.
Maybe things had gotten out of hand. One minute he'd been leading her through some deep breathing and meditation after testing her Baliog Pomali technique during their last session together, the next they were tumbling around the matted floor of a dojo he'd borrowed from the Sons of the Tiger and Barbara finally realized that physical relations with a man weren't as off the table as she assumed because of her injury. It had only been a one time thing, and Barbara was a little embarrassed, which is why she'd only ever told Dinah about it. Still, that had been an important step in her recovery. Up until then, Barbara just knew that she had to move on, but it still seemed like this impossible task she'd be puzzling through for the rest of her life. That afternoon with Richard showed her it'd be a long process to be sure, but one made up of a lifetime of simple steps... Like each long and lingering kiss Peter had made up from her belly to her breasts.
Peter, now pantless, picked up more-or-less where he'd left off, pressing his face into her breasts. As he trailed his way to her shoulder and then to her throat, Barbara remembered that the greatest of Dragon's lesson was to live in each moment. Before she'd been shot, sex had always been at least partly about getting where she wanted to go or worrying that she wouldn't, but afterward, whenever she was intimate with someone, Barbara managed to let all that go and stay present.
Peter's fingertips on her skin felt rougher than she remembered. The slight rasping of all those hard little calluses from a decade of scaling brick walls were a complete contrast to the soft warmth of his trunk flush against hers. She focused on that and the thrum of a moan rising up her throat as he squeezed one of her breasts. When she felt his other hand slide beneath and behind her open shirt, reaching for the clasp of her bra, that was the limit.
"Not just yet," she scolded, playfully slapping him away. "Juh-just keep doing what you were doing."
Barbara certainly hadn't meant for him to halt his slow and sensuous trek up her neck with his lips, but when he kissed her chin briefly before completely reversing track, she was intrigued. He kissed down her chest, his fingers running down her arms, drawing her shirt sleeves along with them as he shuffled down. Peter paused briefly as she slipped free of her blouse before he started back down each ridge of her ribcage to the ticklish length of her waist. He sat back and turned to tug off her shoes -- a pair of simple white canvas low tops. Babs remembered the brand being rather comfortable, not that this mattered much to her these days.
"You're not going to stop me doing this, are you?" he asked, unbuttoning her slacks after flippantly tossing her shoes and socks over his shoulder. She just shook her head no. Peter grinned as he slipped the corduroy down her legs and Barbara looked away as he bared her legs.
Oh god, she groaned internally, remembering suddenly that she was wearing grey granny panties -- the one grievous chink in hotty librarian's sophisticated-with-a-hint-of-slutty sexual armor. Despite the relative insensitivity to that part of her body, she could feel his stare sear into her drably cotton-covered nethers. She had racier panties, of course... Things she used to wear when she was with somebody, but at the end of the day, Barbara had never been the type to go out into the world in a thong, so she tended to just slip on something functional. Besides, the whole point of this little ensemble was the suggestion of sex. Presenting a little eye candy was one thing, but it's not like she'd actually blow some guy at Circuit City for an extra %15 off the asking price of a new motherboard, and believe it or not, she'd never actually had a relationship with anyone else who was into this whole librarian thing.
Not that Dick hadn't had a fun kink or two. She might have dolled herself up in his old Blüdhaven police blues a few times, but the former Boy Wonder had always managed to ply her with a bottle of high end pinot and the best Spaghetti alla Carbonara in Gotham before Patrol Officer Babsy McNaughty made an appearance... And there was just something about snapping those cuffs on his wrists that really just did it for her.
Right now, stone cold sober with a man she hadn't seen in person for almost eight years was a different story.
"Not exactly sexy, right?" Barbara murmured covering her face with no small amount of embarrassment. She bet that Mary Jane Watson, supermodel-next-door, always wore sexy panties…
"I think you pull them off nicely," Peter said, caressing the sides of her thighs just below the hem, "and whether you agree or not, I know I'm going to." His hands slipped under the shapeless grey cloth and up until he reached above her hips. Barbara gasped as Peter's sandpaper fingertips brushed her hips at just the edge where she lost sensation before he stretched them outward to loosen her briefs. She finally looked down to see a dark wet spot on her panties as she watched him draw them down her thighs, unveiling her pussy. Barbara gaped in horror at the damp clump of red hair framing her puffy pink lips. In the heady rush of lust swimming in her mind, she'd managed to forget about this, too, but the sight was undeniable.
There was no way the Heidi Klum wannabe let her bush grow this hairy.
"Probably should have shaved," she winced, somehow even more embarrassed than before... more than she ever thought she could be. "Let me go shave," she pleaded, trying to sit up to push him back. "Or we... We could do it together even..."
"Stop it," Peter insisted with a ragged sigh before he kissed the center of her mossy red beaver. "I told you, Barbara... I can't wait."
Peter figured this was one of those insecurities she'd mentioned before, but it just seemed so silly to him. He could certainly understand how she might be self-conscious by some of the changes to her body since they'd last met, but her panties and a bit of hair? How shallow was he supposed to be? Did she really not know that she was the woman he'd been waiting to be with again his entire adult life? "You are so fucking sexy, Barbara Gordon," he assured her.
Her cheeks burned as he stroked the furry bit of soft scarlet with his fingers, the hair soaked and matted. She still got wet when she was turned on. Barbara knew that every female paraplegic wasn't so lucky. "So goddamn gorgeous." Barbara watched him lick her pussy. "Gorgeous and juicy, too." She couldn't feel his lips on her flesh, but she felt a flush through her chest at his words all the same. This wasn't just flattery. She could tell that he meant it.
"You're just the sweetest little pervert, Peter Parker," she grinned as he proceeded to kiss his way back up her body all over again. There was this snarky, cynical part of her that wanted to tell him he'd done all this before, but none of that mouthy sarcasm spoke to the pure, silent joy of being desired, or understood that she lived and loved in each moment now.
Peter looked up at her expectantly as his fingers played along the edge of her left bra cup, begging to peel it down, but Barbara shook her head no again. If he was disappointed by her denial, he didn't show it, straddling her hips and bending over her breasts to return his lips and attention to the exposed flesh before him. His tongue plunged into the expanse of her cleavage.
"Mmm... yes," Barbara whimpered, coaxing him on with a fist gripping his hair. She reached down between them to stroke his cock with her other hand, still grimy from when she'd treated his burns. She vaguely hoped that working down from his head to his balls might not work him up too much, but from the way he pulsed and twitched in her grasp, she'd clearly been fooling herself. Shifting as little as possible so Peter could still feast on her breasts uninterrupted, she grabbed the jar from the coffee table, slathering her hands so she could continue to coat his dick.
As distracted as he was with her tits, Peter couldn't help but wonder why she seemed so intent on this. If his pertinent equipment had been seriously burned, none of this could be happening, but there she was, smearing every inch of his swelling erection nonetheless. He remembered her saying there was another use she'd found for that balm of his, but judging by the sweet, tangy taste lingering at the back of his throat from his earlier attention, lubrication wasn't going to be an issue for what he had in mind. He still wasn't complaining, of course. Peter Parker just had an enquiring mind. But as Barbara palmed the head of his cock with a liberal handful of goo, certain idle curiosities escaped him in a lurching surge of phallic-centered felicity.
His mouth pressed into her skin with an increasing intensity that eventually peaked when it settled over her cloth-covered teat and he greedily sucked through the satin and foam. "Oh… Ohhhh… Oh yes," she purred at the sudden suction. "F-fuck… Peter…" she groaned, "I… I w-want you to fuck them."
"What?" he mumbled around her frustratingly padded nipple. "Fuck who?"
God, she fumed internally. Still that dumb puppy sometimes. "My… my tits," she sighed happily, now swabbing salve into her cleavage. "Fuck my tits, Parker."
Pete got the idea rather quickly then, shifting up the couch to mount her torso. Barbara glanced down and noticed he was still wearing his little spider-booties and couldn't help but laugh as his hands fell upon her bra-bound bounty just as his thick dick slapped onto her stomach with a wet smack that sent a thrill down her spine. Peter squeezed her plump tits a few times before reaching down to tap his cock against them and she shivered at the heated thump of his manhood, even through the heavy material.
"Noooo don't tease them," she gasped, titillated by even this brief bit of contact… "Just fuck them, Peter," she begged him then.
"Whatever you wish," he said. Her bra held her full, supple mounds in place as he nudged his slippery tip under the black cups oh her pushup and into the crevasse at the soft undersides of her satin-encased bosom. "Bibbity bobbity boobs…"
"Yessssss," Barbara hissed as his dick was slowly enveloped by the warm skin of her ample assets. "Just like that… Does that feel good?"
"Oh goddamn, you're so soft," Peter groaned as his dick slid into the buttery sheath.
"Mmm... and you're so hard..." Barbara hummed in reply, caressing the tight sinew of his chest and abs as he slid home. Her toned biceps framed her breasts, pressing them inward as she fondled his hips, guiding him forward.
"Is this your first tittywank, web-head?" she asked with a coo, his prick pushing through the warm pocket of creamy skin to pop out of her cleavage.
"Nuh-not exactly, b-boobs -- er -- Babs…" His cock disappeared into her buxom fullness again as he drew back.
"Oh, I should have known," she chided at his Freudian slip as his dick slid back through her cleavage. "You're just another guy who's into fucking big boobs, aren't you?"
"Yuh-you just know all my secrets, don't you…" he murmured, reveling in the plush warmth surrounding his cock before he pushed forward again.…Barbara felt his hard, wet cock throb between her tits, the raw heat boring into her pillowy skin as he reeled back and thrust forward, faster this time.
"Not much of a secret, Peter," she whispered with this sinful grin as he started to pump his hips up off the couch, fucking her rack. Her bra's considerable contents hugged him snuggly as Peter thrust harder. That liberal application of balm made for a smooth ride between her tits and Peter picked up the pace, watching her fulsome curves jostle under their confinement. Little drops of pre-cum dribbled into her chest as his balls dragged up and down her stomach, slapping into the bottoms of her breasts in time with the emergence of his swollen cockhead from her cleavage... actually jutting her chin when he got especially spirited. "I can tell you just love it," Barbara said, leaning into his next thrust. She dropped her grip on his hips to gather her heavy breasts in her hands, clutching them together, further enfolding Peter's hot pecker up in her rack. He fell forward, seizing the back of the sofa for leverage, humping harder as he plowed her curvaceous valley.
"Oh gaaaaaawd…" he groaned.
Barbara smiled as she started to really work his cock, tugging her cups to and fro in rhythm against him. "That's right, Spidey," she gasped, fucking him back with her tits. "You ready to cum for me?"
She pinched her hard nipples through the padding between her fingers, mashing her creamy globes, rocking them faster to get Peter off… "Yes," he affirmed. "Yes... Yes..." His prick twitched under her bra, his balls jerking up off her ribcage into the the soft bottoms of her breasts. "Spider-nuts tingling," he grunted and she laughed that girlish little giggle which sent these delightful shockwaves up through the lush, pliant softness of her tits that sang around his manhood. Barbara tipped her head forward, her chin pressing into the top of her chest, ready for his glistening head to pop up toward her mouth…
"Oh fuuuuck," Peter grunted, as she stuck out her tongue to lick his tip. "Oh fuck I can't hold it!" he croaked, his cock erupting in her face.
Thank god she was still wearing her glasses or there'd have been so much spunk in her eyes. She tossed her head back, jism dripping from her lips and cheeks and pooling on her clavicle as Peter pulled his spewing dick back. Another thick rope of cum lanced out, smacking her chin before his cockhead was smothered once more by her breasts -- out of sight, but nowhere near out of mind as she felt it pumping thick globs of hot liquid heat between her tingling tits.
"Oh fuck that's right, Peter," she cried out, closing her eyes as he rammed back through her cleavage one last time with a grunt, his cum-coated shaft lurching as his balls churned their last. She crushed her tits around his bucking staff as load after frothy load spurt over her face and neck. "Mmm..."
Peter pitched forward on weak knees, throwing his hands out to cling to the sofa arm behind her head to stop himself from collapsing on top of her.
She sensed him tense above here as the last of his jizz creamed the hollow of her neck and collarbone. "Oh shit," Barbara sighed with a shudder before biting her lower lip in a vain attempt to mask her arousal while she watched his thick, milky seed spread over her breasts through half-lidded eyes and a flush of happy bliss radiated up from her breasts and shoulders and then down to her belly.
Peter had to look away from her then or he feared he'd never stop cumming.
Eventually his dizzying spasms ceased and he came down from this insane high, carefully extracting himself from Barbara's spunk-splattered bosom and lowering himself beside her. In that fleeting, blissed-out moment Peter Parker worried he might never get hard again in his life. Watching Babs lick his hot cum off her chin, however, he realized just how ridiculous that notion was. He felt even dumber when she scooped some from her neck and sucked it off her finger.
Peter tried to swear right then but it came out as "Fom."
"I trust you enjoyed that," Barbara grinned, casually rubbed her freshly fucked boobs together, smearing her gooey cleavage with his warm seed.
"Gurf," he grunted, still out of breath and struggling to form actual words while Barbara dragged herself down to kiss the wet head of his limp dick.
"Has it been a while?" she whispered before her tongue wagged out to lap the length of his cum-sticky cock, licking it clean. Peter just nodded as Barbara Gordon, the first woman to ever blow him, dipped down to slurp up a few milky globules gathered in the wiry tufts of hair at the base. "Me too," she confessed, making one clean sweep along his scrotum.
"R-Really glad I treated the couch with... with that environmentally friendly stain repellent Bella developed at Horizon," he breathed looking down at the mess they'd made on his sofa. Good. A complete sentence. With complex words, even. He wasn't brain dead now after all. Peter bristled with pride and relief as Barbara shifted up onto him."But th-that was just… duh." Uh-oh. He was starting to slip again. "You liked it, I could tell…"
"My breasts have grown a little more sensitive over the years since I was… since we last saw each other," she confided tracing a finger on his chest. "But it's more of a psychological thing than physical, you know? Just the feeling of getting someone off... I just love that. Didn't the supermodel ever do that for you? Or our mutual friend in the catsuit?"
"It was different with them," Peter told her. "They knew that I liked that kind of thing, so they didn't mind, but it's not like they ever asked for it. Well, Felicia did once but we had just fought the Kingpin and she was just trying to…"
"Maybe now's not the time to talk about old girlfriends," Barbara said, punching his shoulder. He was briefly worried he'd pissed her off, but she smiled.
"I see your point," he admitted, judiciously deciding even in these fading moments of blissful stupidity not to mention the fact that she'd brought them up. Instead he just watched her wipe a smear of his cum off one of her lenses and touch it to her tongue. He gulped and she noticed.
"Big tits and glasses." She rolled her eyes, playfully pinching his nipple as she lay against him. "You're just this tired cliché, Mr. Parker…"
"I am sooo sorry you turn me on," he said solemnly, grinning back at her.
"You don't really seem it," she replied, feeling the briefest twitch of his cock against her tummy beneath her. There was no way he was ready to go right now -- not after the way he'd just frosted her tits -- but Barbara now had some inkling that he'd be up for a second round… given time and enticement. Thank god for the proportionate recovery of a spider, she thought, finally believing it real as she scooped a bit more of his thick, gooey cum from the really creamy stuff still cooling between her breasts. "You know, as tasty as this is, I'm not actually going to swallow this whole load, spunky," she said, making a show of licking her fingers clean.
"Right," Peter murmured, scrambling to find the closest bit of cloth he could without hopping off of the couch. He only hesitated for a moment before he set to cleaning the mess he'd so happily made.
"Still making a mess of your tights around me, I see," Barbara observed, rolling off of him to prop herself on her elbows to push out her chest as he dabbed at her exposed cum-kissed flesh with his singed and tattered spandex trousers.
"I just knew you were going to bring that up," he groaned, while he sopped up the mess on her neck and what had dripped onto him. His poor little spidey-pants were now 0-for-3 as far as surviving encounters with this woman untainted. "Now I regret not using your sweater…Or maybe those bloomers of yours. They're certainly big enough…"
"Asshole," Barbara laughed. "Now I'm not letting you keep them."
"That's not fair," he whined. "I had plans for those later…"
"I don't even want to know, Pervy Parker," she said. "Especially since I know what kind of messes you make in your own shorts."
"I'm starting to think you never let it go because it turns you on," he sighed, kissing her cheek right before wiping one last errant dollop of from her chin.
"Of course it does, dummy," she told him.
Peter dropped his soiled pants to the side, taking a moment to appraise his clean-up job. She was still wearing the bra, but it was slightly askew now due to all of that repetitive motion. He could just make out a sliver of her areolas at the edge of both cups. Peter made another play for the clasp at her back, much more subtle this time, but she pushed him away and rolled back onto the couch.
"That stays on for now, boob boy," she told him, shaking her head with a prim, sultry turn of her lips as she slipped off her glasses, "but these have to go. You got them absolutely filthy." Despite her earlier attempt to wipe them clean, there was still this hazy film that was blurring her view, and Barbara wanted to see him clearly. Her eyes weren't really that bad, especially with him so close, she just spent too much time staring at monitors. Besides, it was time to expand his horizons. "I'm not some fantasy pin-up girl here to service your carnal impulses, Mr. Parker."
"Of course not," he agreed. "You're just here to collect all my overdue books…"
"You're just making my point, funny man," she smirked. "I'm a real person, Peter."
"I know that," he said reaching to touch her bra again, the front this time. Her chest rose as she prepared to swat him away, but he wasn't trying to take it off this time. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe …" Peter started to ask while Barbara just barely held back a gasp as his fingertips slowly skirted the edge of a cup, lighting brushing the bit of dark pink pitted skin he could see before he adjusted to cover it back up, "…you're this stunning, real woman who inspires those fantasies?"
Barbara had obviously considered this. The same way she once worried she might have taken his cherry, she also worried that she'd had a devastating effect on his preference for the fairer sex. Sure, he probably ran around with so many women in tights because who else was a guy like Spider-Man going to meet, but all the same, the man had almost married a redhead. She had done things as Oracle she wasn't proud of, but she'd always been able to tell herself she'd done those things for the greater good. None of the things she'd ever done as Batgirl ever quite reached that murky depth of grey, but the Parker problem went deeper than that. The things she'd done with him were things she'd done more or less as Barbara Gordon. There were consequences to taking a younger man to bed. Responsibilities she tried not to take lightly.
At the same time, maybe that had always been part of the myth of Peter Parker for her. Not just that there was this guy out there that only remembered her how she once was, but that even now, after all this time without her, he was still kind of hung up on her, too. Trying to fill this Barbara Gordon shaped hole. She'd been keeping track of Spider-Man long before she became Oracle and amassing information on meta-humans became her raison d'etre. Figuring out Spider-Man's secret back when she was Batgirl was that first seedling of the woman she was now. Perhaps she was less concerned by the impact she'd had on him as much as the lasting impact he'd had on her. Was that why she'd really come to see him? Because she had to prove that he could still want her now that he'd seen her again and how much she had changed?
"Thank you," she said quietly, before nodding down to her chest, "for respecting my wishes."
"Just because you won't let me see them doesn't mean I won't play with them," Peter informed her seriously, palming one of her tits.
"Fair enough, I suppose," she moaned, closing her eyes as he squeezed softly. Barbara suddenly didn't care what impact she might have had on the loves of Peter Parker's life. She just wanted him now, no matter how much he might have changed.
Barbara wasn't sure why she wasn't letting him strip off her bra right this second. At first, she'd just wanted to tease him a bit, and afterwards, she knew the bra would help keep things in place, but with that naughty bit of fun having reached its inevitable conclusion, there was little reason not to ditch this last barrier between them. As his lips returned to her breasts, there was nothing more she wanted than for him to suck her bare nipples. She'd been able to cum from that alone when she was with Dick, but so much of what she and Peter could do together was out of her control. Maybe she wanted to keep that last boundary so she still had some power. Then she hadn't just given herself over completely.
That's when she felt this sudden, cold shiver of doubt…
"Parker," she said, before softening. "Peter… be honest with me…" He seemed so intent on kissing her neck and playing with her tits she worried he wasn't listening, but she pressed on. "This isn't just a pity fuck, is it?"
He just started laughing then. Hard and long. So much so that it disrupted the cozy atmosphere completely.
"What is wrong with you?" she hissed, pushing him back.
"I… I'm sorry," he chuckled, cupping her face with his hands so he could gaze into her eyes. "It's just… I was about to ask you the same thing…"
She kissed him to keep herself from laughing. Then she kept kissing him because it was clear to her now, that Peter still wasn't done with her. Not the way he pulled her into him. Not the way his fingers clung to her skin. Barbara wasn't done with him either, desperately trying to feel every bit of him as their tongues danced between them. As his mouth sought her neck and cheeks and his hands roamed her tits, Barbara lost track of time before her own explorations placed her dainty fingers around his newly hard cock.
"If this was ready and waiting, why didn't you tell me?" she wondered with a gasp.
"Maybe I was enjoying myself…"
"There's something we can do with this now that I think you might enjoy a bit more," she whispered in his ear, thumbing the dewy drop of pre-cum budding on the slit of his dick. "You've got a condom, right?"
Peter groaned in appreciation as his armed snaked down to the floor to seize his spider-belt.
"Do I want to know?" Barbara asked as he fetched one from one of the compartments.
"I'm guessing no," Peter shrugged as she snatched the foil away. He probably should have run off to the bedroom nightstand for one of the condoms he kept in the bottom drawer, but again, he couldn't wait. "I wasn't all judgmental when you had them last time."
"Well it's not like I had a box stashed in my utility belt or anything," Barbara lied, tearing it open with her teeth. "Besides, you were just happy you were getting laid."
"Yes," Peter freely admitted while she rolled the latex over his stiff prick. "Yes, I very much was." He drew her toward him when she was done, running his fingers along the indents of her spine, down from her neck to the tangled web of scar tissue just over her ass. When he grazed the old wound, he felt her tremble before she rolled away from him.
"You don't have to tell me," Peter told her, spooning behind her. "Not if you don't want to."
"Thank you," she whispered. "I don't like…" Barbara stopped herself. "It was the worst day…" She stopped herself again. "Thank you."
He swept her long hair away and kissed the back of her neck, his arm snaking around her slight frame to caress her tummy... As good as that felt, Barbara still tensed, sensing his uncertainty. She knew that the worst was still coming. As much as she didn't want to talk about the day she'd been shot, there was something else she didn't want to discuss even more.
"You said I might enjoy this," he breathed softly into her ear. "Does... Does that mean that you can't?"
And there it was. The thing Barbara dreaded about sex now most of all. The whole conversation about what she could feel… The long process of convincing someone she wanted to be with that she wasn't going to break. Of course, ironically, she was actually about to have it with someone who had every ability to break her this time.
"No," she said, twisting to face him. "It doesn't mean that I won't enjoy this… It's just different…" She looked him in the eye, tracing a finger along his jaw. "I can't really feel it exactly, but it still feels good, if that makes sense," she tried to explain. "Not just the closeness… There are… are other things that happen... with my body…" She would have gone on to explain the physiology behind this, but that type of lecture usually killed the mood.
"There haven't been a lot of conclusive studies on the subject, but I understand that women with spinal cord injuries can experience varying sexual stimulation based on reflexogenic neural response," Peter said, kissing her hand. "Sometimes, touching them in the right sympathetic nerve structure can be almost as pleasurable as licking their slit...
Barbara had obviously forgotten whom she was talking to. This was nerd boy, after all…
"That completely ignores the far more successful psychogenic stimuli," she murmured in response. "Sometimes, just seeing a big dick inside a girl while a big strong man has their way with her is enough to turn on the right parts of her brain." She grabbed his cock again, stroking lightly. "Especially if she knows how much he wants her… Or she can remember every moment of him inside her before… The way he felt fucking her legs in a far away fantasy…"
"No one ever thinks that science is sexy," Peter said as she fed him into her pussy. He groaned as he pushed into her, thrilled to be inside her again. This time it wasn't a dream or a telepathic hoax or an imaginary story. Barbara was here with him. For real. Right now. "Just tell me what you like," he said to her. "I just want you to feel good."
"I like the same things I used to," she told him, kissing his lips. "You mean you don't remember?"
"I remember things," he insisted, seizing her hips.
"Like what?" she asked, her eyes lighting up.
"You liked it when I looked at you," he recalled.
"Yes," she whined. "I still do... What else?"
"That time in the bathroom."
"Oh god yes," Barbara said, as he bottomed out inside her.
"You wanted me to take it slow at first," he reminded her. "You wanted me to know that we could take our time."
"Can we take our time now?"
"I've got nowhere to go," he smiled, pulling back. "You're the one always running off."
"I can't run off now, Peter," she breathed, "and even if I could I wouldn't."
"I have a confession to make," he told her then.
"You wish I was wearing the costume?" Barbara guessed.
"No, Little Miss Sass-Mouth," Peter sighed.
"What did you want to confess then?"
"This is the real reason I wanted to talk to you," he told her, thrusting forward, hard.
"Oh, fuck," she sobbed and Peter stopped right there. She sounded hurt.
"What's wrong?" he asked, stroking her cheek.
"Nuh-nothing," she whimpered, burying her face in his shoulder. It had started out as this ball of tension at the pit of her stomach. She thought it was just all that nervousness at first, but then she realized all that throbbing heat was centered somewhere lower… Like something was wedged up within her. "It's just… I… I can feel you, Peter."
If she was honest with herself, Barbara thought she had felt this the last time she'd had sex -- with the Martian Manhunter -- but she hadn't trusted it. She hadn't trusted anything from that night. It'd been like this weird, sexy fever dream. So much of what she'd shared with J'onn had been in her head as he plumbed the depths of her mind for her lustiest thoughts and drew them to the surface while he was inside her. Her most cherished memories… Her deepest, darkest fantasies… The things she never would have shared with anyone… That she tried to bury deep…
It's possible that Peter Parker had popped up a few times.
Even crazier, there'd been moments with J'onn when she was no longer a girl from Gotham. She was him. She was making love to his wife, M'yri'ah, on the bright Martian morning they conceived their daughter, K'hym, or she was Detective John Jones, spending a stolen moment with his partner, Diane in interrogation room 4 in the police station at Middleton, Colorado. It'd been like nothing she'd ever experienced before… So you could maybe understand how she might miss this one thing in the swirling sensory maelstrom.
"Are you okay?" Peter asked, wiping a tear from her eye.
"Oh gaaaawd, yes," she beamed, closing her eyes so she could focus on the burning lump between her numb, useless legs. "It's amaaaaaazing… I just didn't expect... OH!"
Peter pumped into her again, filling her with his cock once... twice... and in the shock of that alone, in the overwhelming surprise of feeling him fuck her, throbbing within her cunt, that was enough. She'd been building herself up this whole time in her old way… The way she could cum without feeling him, and now this was just too much…
"Haaah!" Barbara cried as she came. Peter hugged her close, the muscles inside her rippling around him. "Oh fuck oh fuck oh god oh fuck," she whined in short little exhalations of ecstasy. Barbara had regained some limited use of her toes a couple years back… she'd even been able to wiggle them. But this was the first time in a while since they'd actually curled involuntarily.
"Well, that was easier than I remember," Peter observed, easing out of her.
Barbara was too happily tingly to smack him again right then. "Brainiac," she sighed, still reeling through the aftermath of her orgasm. "I... I made the mistake of mentally interfacing with a corrupt copy of his programming once. It… It almost killed me but…"
"But it also enhanced some of your neural pathways, right?" Peter guessed. "Extra-terrestrial entities like that will often latch onto the neural network of an optimal human host to cement a bond, usually by augmenting synapses in a kind of pseudo-symbiotic relationship to mask their greater goals until they've gained control of the higher functions and it's too late. I've got to say, though, coaxing axons to innervate neurons connected to the sensory dermatomes to facilitate genital vasocongestion is more than I ever got from my alien costume, and well beyond prior studies..."
"That something you learned from Mister Fantastic?" she asked now that she'd caught her breath.
"Actually, it's one of the studies I'm running through this Future Foundation initiative Johnny Storm's set up," Peter said. "We talked him out of calling it Sex Lab Four, but--"
Barbara clamped a hand over his mouth.
"Stop killing the mood, Parker, and fuck me," she ordered.
"You don't find science sexy anymore?" he asked through her fingers.
"Not as sexy as, say, this right now, no," she decided, grabbing his dick again.
"As a former biology teacher, that insults me," he informed her.
"Well, can I encourage you, as a man lying next to a woman in need, to take it as a compliment?" she asked, pumping him once with her fist. Barbara was actively tugging him toward her. God, if she could just mount him, she would have by now.
"You make a compelling argument, Miss Gordon." Peter nodded.
"Oh!" she yipped as he rolled her on top of him in a flurry. She found herself straddling his thighs, his hard cock poking up before her, still wet with her girl cum. "Wh-what are you doing?" she asked, his powerful hands seizing her hips and lifting her into a kneeling position over his torso.
"Go ahead and get comfortable," he told her. She only hesitated for a moment before she tucked her legs to each side of him with her arms. It was a little surreal. Babs wasn't heavy by any stretch of the imagination, but the way he was holding her over him with only a slight incline of his arms -- steady and effortless -- was something else. Yes, she was well aware that there were supermen among us, as she had personally witnessed many a fantastic feat of strength in her day… But she almost always had clothes on when that happened.
Despite her long crime-fighting career, she'd only ever had sex with one other metahuman, and technically the Martian Manhunter wasn't a metahuman as much as he was an extra-terrestrial. But again, things with J'onn had gone beyond the simply physical. J'onn hadn't kept a consistent form the whole time, for one thing, his body constantly morphing into her former lovers.
Again, Peter Parker may have popped up...
"Maybe give me a hand here?" Peter suggested after she got herself situated. Barbara planted a palm square on his chest.
"Oh my god..." she murmured, feeling his steely pecs.
"What?" Peter panicked.
"N-nothing," she stammered, her fingertips testing once more the unyielding cords of muscle beneath his smooth, hairless skin. "You're just an impossible man, Peter Parker…" She took his meaty width in her other hand as he lowered her onto his erection. Barbara couldn't resist fondling the tip, pearlescent film trickling onto her fingers as she lined it up with her hot molten core.
"Jeeeeeeeeesus," he exhaled. "Are you trying to finish me off already?"
"Sorry," she apologized, releasing his cock and sinking onto it. "Haaaah..." she sighed pleasurably, sliding down his shaft. "You feel so good in me, Peter."
"Hold on," he told her, filling his hands with her ass. As she braced herself on his rock hard chest with her arms, he used his unnatural strength to lift her lithe form up and down the length of his manhood.
"Oh! Ah! It's like -- oooh! -- It's like I'm doing it…" she groaned. "Just like… like back then."
"J-just like back then," he repeated.
"You're amazing, Spider-Man," Barbara sighed. The pace was a cozy memory, right down to the little swivel of her hips at the end of each downward plunge…
"Holy honeytrap, Batgirl," Peter groaned beneath her as her velvety cunt milked his prick.
Barbara started at the phrasing. Dick had tried this type of thing with her back when they were together. Between their combined physical strength and the grab bars over her bed in the old Clocktower, it wasn't impossible, but somehow, with all the effort and coordination necessary, it felt more like work than making love which just drained all the heat out of it for her… What Peter was doing with her now wasn't the frantic circus act she used to attempt with the Man Wonder.
Barbara had no sense of her long legs straddling his hips, or even her folds sinking around his dick, but she had the fullness of Peter inside her and the heave of her breasts with each long, drawn out rise and fall as he railed her along his prick. And god, she loved drumming her fingers against a man's chest, the beat of his heart at her fingertips. Her hair swept along her back when she rolled her head in blissful abandon. She had always loved being on top, but the exquisite joys of riding a cock at her own pace had become a distant memory in the years since her injury.
"Tuh-tell me how it fuh-feels," she whimpered.
"You're still -- uhn -- still so tight," he groaned, hoisting her slightly higher now, the way she used to hold back when she felt a guy getting too close.
"Ah! Ah! Wuh-what else?" she asked.
"Hot," he told her. "Your cunt's so hot and moist, Barbara."
"Nooooo," she whined, as he slammed her down and up and down again. "I -- uhn! uhn! -- hah! haaaaaate that word."
"Cunt?"
"Mmmmoist.."
"I -- uhn -- just -- uhn -- don't -- uhn -- understand -- uhn -- women," Peter chuckled.
"Stuh-stop st-stating the -- ahn! ah! -- obvious and tell me hah! hah! how wet I feel," she said.
"So wet…"
"You make me wet, Peter," she groaned as he ground her against him. "You make me so fucking wet I can't stand it…" Barbara could tell she was getting carried away so she bent down to kiss him just to shut herself up. The crush of her tits into his chest sent this fresh flush of delight through her… But something was missing.
No. Worse… Something was in the way.
She'd put this off long enough. There was so much of this that was the same, but… but not enough. When this used to happen, there were hands on her tits. And his were busy…
Barbara rode him for a moment while her arms worked their way to her back.
Peter's eyes were closed when he felt the cloth fall onto his chest. This little balancing act with Barbara had been easy enough at first, but the longer it'd gone on, the harder it'd been to focus on the mechanics instead of the hot, wet cunt around his cock. He wanted this to last, and the feeling of her was one thing, but to actually watch Barbara ride him at the same time he was drawing her pussy all the way to the tip of his prick was too much. But the thick, foamy concaves and tangle of straps draped on his midriff could only be one thing and he had to see for himself. The sight that met Peter's eyes was worse than he feared: sex incarnate. Barbara was squeezing one of her freshly bared breasts but he had an unobstructed view of its twin hanging down from her chest, bobbing freely with each deep, penetrating stroke.
He'd just been intimate with them in the best possible way, but somehow, finally seeing her pale white breasts -- nipples and all -- sent a thrill thorough Peter Parker that flashed back down to his dick.
"Oh goodness, Mr. Parker," she gasped. He was fucking her so hard now she had to drop both her hands to brace herself on his shoulders. Before, he'd just been railing her up and down on his cock. Now he was thrusting up into her sopping hot pussy while pulling her down, too.
Babs didn't have his special talent for grip on her best days and her fingers were still slightly greasy with balm, so on one of his harder boosts, her hands slipped past his sweaty shoulders into the plush sofa cushions behind and beneath him. This left her leaning just over him now, her boobs swaying oh so enticingly in front of his face, one of those puckered pink nipples dangling mere inches from brushing his lips.
"Hello, girls," he groaned before burying his face in her tits. "Petey's missed you." And then he started motorboating them like a horny teenager.
"Buh-big tuh-tits and gluh-glaaaassssses," Barbara moaned in reply. God. She was fucking a goofball...
Peter forgot himself then, surging forward to take her right nipple between his teeth, chewing gently and flicking his tongue across the distended bud. As he sat up, Babs started to fall back, frantically wrapping her arms around his neck. As much as she had enjoyed riding him, Barbara wasn't too put out. With this new position, she could use the considerable strength of her arms to rise up a bit on his shoulders then force herself down onto his lap, pounding into him. She wasn't just his pliant little fuck toy now. She was a wickedly wanton participant.
"AHH! AHHHH!" she moaned, tossing her head back as he plunged into her hungry snatch again and again while mouthing her tits. "Oh god," Barbara shuddered as he sucked her hard nipples. She pitched herself toward him and the long copper-colored curtain of her hair enveloped them both as they fucked.
"Peter," she whispered, clinging to him desperately, alone in their world of two. "P-Peteeeeer... I... I..." She didn't get to finish her thought before he unlatched from her teat so he could kiss her pouty, panting mouth. She was glad she'd been interrupted. She didn't even know what she was about to say. Something unbelievably embarrassing, no doubt... But it all fell away with his tongue rolling wetly against hers and his brawny arms around her. Barbara kissed him back with everything she had left. She couldn't say whatever she'd meant to, but she hoped she could express it somehow with this, with him. She could feel his thrusts slow beneath her. Without him driving her up and down, she obviously wasn't bobbing as much and that raging rise in her chest was falling.
Damn it, she thought. She'd been so close…
Maybe it was her fault, since she'd shifted her arms from his shoulders. She'd grabbed the back of his hair with one hand for what she'd thought at the time would be leverage but she now realized was just lustful desperation and her other had shifted under his arm to clutch at those thick muscles on his back.
She reluctantly pulled away from his lips. "F-fuck-focus, Parker," she panted, her heavy breath kissing his lips since she couldn't right then. Luckily, he understood right away, and she felt that sharp, piercing rise followed by a long, deep plunge right before she crushed her mouth back to his. Barbara felt his hands on the small of her back now, still clinging to her skin in that inhuman way of his and still driving her pleasure.
"Oh! Keeping going," she begged as he kissed her throat. "Oh! Ah! Don't stop…."
He didn't. Whether it was per her instruction of pure primal instinct, she couldn't say. She couldn't say much of anything now that she was cumming again, the strange, ineffable language of orgasm squirming out of her in a squeal of nonsense as she shivered. She fell into it. Into him. All of that training about holding onto the moment completely escaped her as her satiny walls closed on his cock and a fire roared up from her belly. When she came back to reality, Peter was still inside her, hard as ever, but she was on her back now and his pumping had slowed.
When did we roll onto the floor? Barbara briefly wondered before impulse took over.
"Hah! Oh! Fuuuuuck! Barbara," Peter grunted as he fucked her in earnest, shoving relentlessly into her cunt now… "Buh-Barbara Gordon…"
"Noooo…" she whined. She realized instantly what he was doing. He was telling himself that he wasn't just inside her. He knew her. The thought terrified Barbara as she felt another climax threaten to claim her the same way he was trying to -- and worse, it thrilled her to the core at the same time. She couldn't help herself. She was still fighting this… Still fighting him and all that she felt for Peter Parker. "Uff! Uh! Uhn! Uff! Ah! Oh god..."
"Uhn! Uhn!" he groaned, pumping away at her cunt. As deep and as hard as he pistoned into her, she could still tell he was holding back, fighting to restrain himself from fucking her right through the floor. "I... I'm gonna cum," he told her.
"I want to… I need to feel it…" Barbara whimpered. In that brief, stupid moment she wished he wasn't wearing that condom. She wanted to feel him flood her cunt the same way he'd plastered her tits. She wanted Peter inside her in the worst possible way, but she fought all that desire to push him back, to get his dick out of her pussy. Her frantic fingers clutched at his slippery prick, desperately trying to peel off his rubber.
"Yowtch!" Peter grunted as she whipped it off. Before he could object, she drew his bare cock back into her cunt.
"Fuck me," she begged, her fingernails digging into his ass as she pulled him as deeply as she could. "Fuck me, Peter!"
"What?" Parker grunted. Whatever confusion was reeling through his mind, his body hadn't caught on, pushing into her without hesitation. Barbara felt his cheeks clench between her fingers with each rolling thrust into her. Honestly, Peter's naked cock didn't feel much different to her at first, but when she closed her eyes, the ridged veins of his shaft seemed to register… It might have been her imagination, but just the knowledge that he was fucking her raw made her shudder.
"Oh fuck," Peter bellowed above her with a guttural grunt. "Oh fuck, you're so wet…" Maybe it was all in her head, but it wasn't just in his. It couldn't just be in his, too, and that made a difference.
"Cuh-cum in me, Peter," she pleaded, tugging on him so hard her hips rose off the floor. "Cum inside me pleeease!!!"
Thick ropes of his seed lanced up into her. She wasn't making that up at least, she figured as his hot cum coated her insides. "Oh! Oh! Oh gaaawwwwwd!" She came again, writhing beneath him as he pumped her full of his jism. He slumped against her when he was done.
"W-Wallopin' web-snappers," Peter panted, rolling off of her. "That was kind of fantastic."
"It always is with you," Barbara murmured as quietly as she could. God, why had she said that? Why had she done this? Actually, she had a pretty good idea why she'd done this… That didn't mean it was the smart thing to do. "Duh-don't…" she said to herself… to him… to anyone who would listen... "Don't fall in love with me, nerd boy," she begged. He couldn't. She couldn't.
"Forgive me if I might be a little bit past that," he whispered, drawing her close.
"Maybe," she admitted, shifting herself over him so she could look him in the eye. "This won't end well for either of us..."
"Story of my life." He kissed her again. And she let him. Barbara was done fighting. At least for now.
Barbara closed her eyes, her attention enrapt by his lips against hers as his arms encircled her. She wasn't so distracted this time not to notice he was lifting her up and carrying her out of his living room.
"Where are we going?" she asked dreamily.
"I'm taking you to bed," Peter smiled.
"Oh no, Mr. Parker," she gasped. "What makes you think I'm that kind of girl?"
"I won't touch you, I swear," he promised, setting her down on his bed. "I'm kind of worn out."
"You and me both," she sighed.
"So it was okay?" he asked.
"I know I've lied to you in the past, Peter, but I don't go out of my way to fake orgasms."
"That's not really an answer."
"Only better once since… since it happened," she sighed. "I… I fucked this shapeshifting alien..." The second she said it she regretted the confession, but her head was still reeling and she was too pleasantly dazed to lie. She glanced up into his eyes, expecting shock or hurt or disapproval, but Peter just looked at her steadily.
"Been there," he replied. "It messes you up, right?"
Barbara wanted to mount him right then, but even if her legs weren't an issue, she really didn't have the energy for another round. "Just… just hold me for a bit," she said instead, kissing his chest.
"Go to sleep, Babs," Peter sighed.
"Think I'm a little too wired for that," she said. "You know how it's weird but you're tired but completely awake at the same time?"
"That's when I usually go web-slinging, but I'm afraid if I do that now, you're not going to be here when I come back."
"So instead you're just going to hold me prisoner instead?" she smiled, snuggling into him. "How ever will we pass the time?"
"There's one thing we could do, but you might think it's a little nuts," Peter said after a while.
"Like what?"
"Nothing too crazy," he swore, sensing her apprehension. This is how this always started, so Peter pressed on, telling her what he was thinking.
The look she gave him when he was done said it all, but she said it anyway. "I don't know, Parker…" He wasn't surprised. That was Barbara all over. And worse, she was calling him Parker again. That wasn't a good sign.
"It's going to be fine," he tried to assure her as he rolled out of bed on his unsteady legs. "I can almost promise you'll enjoy it." He scrambled to set everything up. "No one's ever regretted it afterwards."
"You've done this with… with other people before?" she asked just before he was about to start so he stopped.
"Lots of them," he confessed. "Mary Jane... Ms. Marvel... They loved it. So did Wolverine."
"You did this with Wolverine?"
"It was after this thing with the Avengers," Peter explained. "Logan got pretty messed up. The Crime Syndicate doesn't exactly play nice, you know? I took him back here to spend the night while his body knit itself back together because he wasn't ready to go back to San Francisco with the X-Men. It was right before they completely imploded. Logan's kind of a dick, but he's had my back in the past and I really just wanted to show him a good time… He had a few beers, loosened up a little and..."
"You're scaring me."
"Do you trust me?" he asked her.
There was a long pause before she nodded, but he put it on anyway.
"This is probably going to seem really weird for the first twenty minutes, but just go with it, and I promise, you're going to like it." As soon as he heard himself say this out loud, Peter was terrified he was about to ruin a good a thing… but right then, he really wanted to share this with her.
"Could we get something to eat first?" she suddenly asked him. "I'm starving."
"I can order out, but it's probably not going to get here before we're done," he sighed. "We could just get started now while I'm on the phone, Babs."
"I'm not doing this with you while you're on the phone, Parker."
"Fine!" he relented. "But I'm telling you, we'll be done before it gets here."
He was wrong of course. Barbara insisted on falafel and there was this great Mediterranean grill around the block Johnny used to order from all the time when he was living there that had this weird tendency to rush over whenever he called. The Human Torch was what Uncle Ben would have called a truly irresponsible tipper. "Anything over 20% and they get the wrong idea," the old man would constantly tell Peter. It was right up there with "Don't go messin' 'round with no Italian girls" and that thing about power and responsibility. Despite this sage wisdom, now that Peter was a member of the gainfully employed, he felt compelled to match Johnny's reckless generosity.
Pete had been right about one thing, though. When Humphrey called up from the lobby about the delivery thirty minutes after they'd started, Barbara hadn't wanted to stop. That's just how it was with the first episode of Dog Cops. You watched the first two-thirds in jaw-dropped horror, but by the end, this wall around your heart came tumbling down, and you were in love.
"The pug dies in the pilot?" Barbara exclaimed when Peter returned with their dinner as the credits rolled. "But he just made detective!"
"Don't worry, you see Jake again in all these really poignant flashbacks for the rest of season," Peter assured her. "But I don't want to ruin it for you."
"Nobody who ever says that actually means it," she told him. "My dad's been begging me to watch this stupid show for a year. He just kept saying it was the most realistic police procedural he's ever seen, but he's got this weird soft spot for Columbo and Law & Order, so I didn't trust him. And who's got time for television?"
"I always thought TV helped with the crime-fighting," Peter shrugged. "How else are you going to come up with the funny pop culture references while you're hauling in the bad guys?"
"My dad's a cop, Pete," she sighed. "They don't focus on making jokes when they bring somebody in as much on silly things like Miranda Rights and evidentiary chain of custody. It's serious business. It's like Dog Cops so far. They benched the Doberman when it was obvious he was personally involved with the witness, and we don't see him again the rest of the episode, even though he's their best detective. None of that 'Come on, Captain, who knows this case better than me?' nonsense they usually peddle… "
"Your dad's a cop?" he asked, setting the food out on the bed.
Barbara blanched at the realization that while she still knew so much about him, he still didn't know that much about her. And yet she'd fucked him again… "He's the Police Commissioner in Gotham," she told him. Now that he knew her last name, he'd figure out that much from the clumsiest internet search. She'd taken innumerable steps over the years to make sure someone couldn't google "Oracle" and come up with anything too impressive, but she could hardly eliminate Barbara Gordon's digital footprint entirely. "Commissioner's Daughter Shot by the Joker" didn't have quite the notoriety of "Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?" but it was still out there.
"Deep down, I always thought that I should have become a cop at some point," Peter told her. "Or a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent or something legit. When I was a kid with weird powers who just wanted to help people, the Spider-Man thing almost made sense. I thought I could do the right thing without making a huge mess of my life, but now I know how that worked out, but by the time I grew up, I kind of thought it was too late…"
"And then there was your aunt."
"Never thought she could handle it, but I've learned my lesson," Peter said. "You underestimate May Parker at your peril. I guess I stopped worrying about it after I joined the Avengers. If Captain America gives you the nod, it's hard not to assume that you've been doing something right despite all the screw-ups. But that got crazy, too... Probably why I unmasked for Tony. I thought that would fix things but it just made it all worse..."
"Never tell them the secret, Peter," she said. "That's the first thing Batman makes you promise."
That said, she still wasn't sure why it seemed so much easier for him to tell her these kinds of things than it was for her. It couldn't have just been that they were only his secrets to share and he trusted her. She'd made mistakes, too, of course. Things she could tell him about without it leading back to anyone but her. It wasn't about protecting Bruce's secret. The fact that everybody hadn't figured it out since the Batman, Inc. launch pretty much proved the world just didn't want to know. So what was it really? Was it just that she was too guarded… or that she still needed him to think she was completely amazing? That she'd never let any of her friends or family down?
When she was Batgirl, she'd been constantly terrified she was making mistakes, but when she looked back on it now, it all seemed so simple. So straight-forward. When she became Oracle, at first, the risk had seemed so miniscule. She was safe behind a screen, buffered by firewalls… And that's when other people got hurt, and worse, that's when it started being her fault.
She'd been trained to pretend that she was so much less than she was -- the same way Bruce played the dim-witted playboy -- but at the same time, Barbara had felt compelled to show the people who knew her that she was more than they thought she could be -- to bury those moments when she'd just been so afraid so they never imagined that she still felt so vulnerable now. Like how Barbara wasn't willing to admit that she was still scared of the Joker, because there was this terrible fear in the back of her head that if she told Dick or Bruce, they'd make her stop being Oracle, which was crazy. Logically, she knew they wouldn't. Stubbornly, she knew they never could -- but it was there. This insane terror that if she ever said those words out loud -- to anybody -- that those two would find out and it'd be the end of a life that meant everything to her.
She couldn't tell Peter that then. She didn't even want to, but would it have been all that much of a risk to tell him that she'd always wanted to be a cop? That her father had always opposed it? That this was why she became Batgirl? After all of this, what possible reason was there not to let Peter Parker in?
"Peter…" she started to say.
"It's okay, I know…" he told her, kissing her forehead. "We can watch the next episode."
Barbara had an out, but she didn't want it. She wanted to tell him something real the way he'd just told her. She desperately wanted to tell him this little bit about her right then so that he could know that she wasn't some closed book to him... That she was more than willing for him to get to know her. She was all set to do just that until she saw something that made the last forty-two minutes of implausibly live-action canine police procedural drama all the more bizarre…

"Why are they getting briefed by a cat?" Barbara asked as she watched a calico in an undeniably adorable feline-sized police cap address a roomful of dogs.
"That's Sgt. Whiskers," Peter informed her. "Nobody on the force likes him because he's an affirmative action hire, but they'll learn to respect him and so will you."
"Okay, just… just pause it a second," she insisted, grabbing the remote away from him to just do it herself.
"What?" Peter asked. "You don't want to watch the next one?"
"Not just now," Barbara sighed.
"Why not?"
Barbara knew she couldn't explain it to him just then. Not the way a pure scientist like Peter Parker might understand. She knew she wasn't really an oracle. She couldn't actually see the future, but she had a good head for patterns and human behavior and access to the secret things they thought no one else knew, so more often than not, she could make a pretty good educated guess…
They'd keep watching Dog Cops until one of them couldn't take it anymore and they started screwing again. And they'd probably keep doing that until the excitement waned and exhaustion caught up with them and they finally passed out.
Sometime after sunrise, she'd wake up in this bed, briefly confused. Perhaps in his arms, perhaps not. Maybe he'd have gotten up early because his spider-sense told him he was needed or something -- she didn't really know how that worked yet. No matter what, whether he was with her or not, she'd feel self-conscious about her bed-head and morning breath, which -- if he was there -- he'd insist he didn't mind, but with her chair still in the bathroom, there wouldn't be a lot she could do about it either way.
Barbara was sure of one thing, though. She was going to eat wheatcakes tomorrow morning, because Peter Parker had once promised to make her wheatcakes -- whatever the hell those were -- and if she'd learned anything about him, he was a man who tried to honor his vows.
Beyond that, there was no telling. A multitude of factors could come into play -- everything from an attack from his considerable rogue's gallery or an early morning pop-in from one of his old girlfriends. She was sure that she'd get some call from Lucius Fox about her absence from her cubicle at WayneTech. And then there were all of the things completely beyond them. Mental manipulation from old foes with new tricks… Multiversal shifts they might not even notice…
Right then and there, Barbara Gordon was happy where she found herself… with Peter Parker..
Even if, with all of her skills, she couldn't predict the future, it wasn't like she didn't have an active imagination… And in that moment, she just wanted to imagine the best future for the two of them. One where she could tell him the secrets that frightened her still.
Plus, she'd done the math, and based on the height of his dresser by the window, if he plopped her down on it, the two of them could "do stuff" rather comfortably...
"I'm not always right," Barbara told Peter, leaning her head on his shoulder. Her hair still smelled like strawberries. "Maybe you can fall in love with me, nerd-boy."
THE END
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When Spidey Met Oracle