In Every World, In Every Story Ch. 01

"You are aware of banks selling mortgages, yes? Well, if a banker can do it, why not the Devil Himself?"

"I don't understand... what are you saying... who are you?"

"I am the one who bought your mortgage from Mephisto. Your ass belongs to me."

Peter jerked awake. Another long night, another long dream. He got out of bed, so muddled that he nearly woke Gwen, but fortunately he didn't quite manage it. Moaning, groaning, he cracked his neck, rotated the stiffness out of his joints. He'd slept wrong. These days, it seemed like all he did was sleep wrong.

He went to the bathroom, still with that lingering aftertaste of spider-sense, as if he'd actually been in danger, his nightmares real enough to ring in his ears like an alarm once it'd been shut down. He ran the tap, cradled cold water in his hands, splashed it on his bleary face. Looked at his dripping reflection.

The envy of millions. Spider-Man. A mere human with a few tricks, a few surprises, but otherwise an evolutionary dead-end. His fellow Muggles would've traded places with him in an instant, even if he wasn't actually sleeping with Mary Jane Watson—just his loving wife, Gwen Stacy.

The nightmares were a small price to pay. He just didn't know what he was paying for. Why did he see Gwen falling off a bridge, Uncle Ben's cold body huddled on the ground, George buried?

He was coming fully awake. The nightmare was fading, the good feeling was returning; the sensation of being at the cusp of something, starting, being reborn. Like when he'd gotten his powers. It was a good feeling. So why couldn't he sleep?

Peter reached for the razor. He could use a shave.

***

Gwen reached for the bar of soap, fragrant and sweet-smelling. Pine and herbs. It reminded her of the honeymoon. Peter had still been a piker then, working for it, paying his dues. The wedding had been a small one, neither of them wanting their parents to bear the brunt of the cost, and then they'd driven off in an old Buick, no plan, just driving.

The first time they'd made love had been in a creaky motel bed. She'd lain beneath him, eagerly anticipating every thrust, wide open and receptive to everything he did, wanting only that he be a little wilder, a little more unrestrained with his power. That would come in time, though on the day, she wouldn't have believed it could get any better than that unlikely wedding bed, crying out in ecstasy as she felt him driving deep into her.

Gwen opened her eyes and shivered with the remembered sensations: the air conditioner hadn't worked, so they'd opened up the windows and let the cool air relieve the stuffiness, lying on the floor under some blankets, the scent of the woods outside the motel drifting in.

Where had they gone wrong? It's been weeks since they'd been intimate, and even then, he'd toiled mechanically over her, with none of the hunger to possess her that she remembered, that he couldn't hide no matter how embarrassed the need made him. She thought it was sweet, the way he finally couldn't control himself when she successfully seduced him, or he her.

Gwen worked the bar of soap into a lather. Didn't she excite him anymore? The lather spread under her hands, traveling her firm breasts, her flat stomach, the light hair below her belly. She'd gotten a better tan this year than ever before, and she didn't think she flattered herself to say her body was every bit as good as it'd been when she and Peter had met in college, if not better. She was still much the same woman who had driven him wild, so wild that, if she were honest, the rusty old Buick had been their marriage bed, far more than the string of motels they'd toured.

She smiled softly to herself, remembering the car wash, how Peter had ably lifted her out of the passenger seat and into his lap, dropping her down onto his cock as it jutted up from his pants, through the fly she had opened herself, to pump him as they pulled into the service station.

She could remember how hard and hot he'd been in her hand.

She could remember how big he'd been when his cock slipped home inside her pussy.

Gwen stepped out of the shower, foregoing her usual beauty rituals. She wasn't in the mood now. Perhaps a lazy day would revitalize her spirits. She wiped herself down with a towel, looking around the bathroom. Peter's clothes were where he'd left them, splayed over the hamper, ready to go into the washing machine once the maid arrived.

"I see more of your clothes than you," she mused, grinding the moisture off her belly, her thighs. "If only it were the other way around..."

Her towel brushed over her sex and she felt a throb of excited response shoot through her. Her eyes shut, her head spun. She clutched the towel rack for support. She hadn't realized she was so aroused.

She needed it. And if she couldn't get it from Peter...

She stumbled to the toilet, sitting down atop the cover, squirming about until the resin warmed under her ass, feeling comfortable. She fixed her gaze on Peter's clothes. His shirt, his tie, his trousers. The underwear that held his cock.

She reached down, both hands. Some fingers spread back the lips of her labia, baring the slick pink flesh. Others ran along the revealed wetness, its tingly folds and edges, hungry for anything, anyone, even herself.

Gwen felt so degraded to have to resort to this, but what choice did she have? How many nights had she built herself up, physically and mentally aroused, only to be denied? Now it'd been summoned up again, and it wouldn't stop. Until she was satisfied, she could think of nothing else.

Her clit was stirred up, lithe and hot, and she pressed it tensely, rolling it against her pubic bone until she wanted to scream. God, that was all she needed from Peter. One finger. Couldn't he do at least that much for her? Why did he have to be so disinterested, so distant? Had he fallen out of love with her? Didn't he care?

She cared. If he didn't love her, she would love herself even harder. If he didn't take her needs into consideration, than she would, she had to! Her finger rubbed harder against her vulva, the tip darting in and out of her gate. It was a shocking sensation and she didn't know how much of it she could take when she was so keyed up. Peter knew. Peter always knew exactly how much she could take, exactly what she needed. But she could find it. She didn't need him.

"There," Gwen congratulated herself. "There!"

She penetrated deeply, passionately, shocked at how wet her finger suddenly was. It hadn't seemed so intense before she fingered herself, so wet and tight and clinging. She'd been hotter than she thought. No wonder her disappointment at Peter was so strong, no wonder she ached for him and his cock and his hands and what they all could do to her.

Two fingers inside her now, two fingers deep and stabbing and reaming into her. God, she was so tight. She had to be as snug as she was the first time she and Peter had done it. She still remembered—it'd been fantastic. His cock, big and hard and hers. All the cum, filling her up like she couldn't believe, she'd felt it slosh inside her afterwards. The sex drive that had him fucking her again and again... four times, making their one night stand at the hotel stretch into a rapturous weekend.

Friday night. All day Saturday, all day Sunday. Even Monday morning, so delightfully she'd demanded another and they'd hit rush hour when they finally got the road. Not that she minded being stuck in a car with him, him and that huge cock she'd married...

She remembered all that. She made herself forget what came after, what was now. She thought only of the two fingers, no, three now, each of them a beast roving inside her, thrusting up her slick channel, burning her ecstatically with the friction of her tight walls.

She was twisting about on the toilet, her legs stretching and curling and her hips fucking furiously at the hand that was serving as her husband. There was a throbbing in her lower body, a throbbing centered squarely on her clit.

"You too, beautiful," she panted. Her other fingers planted themselves around that lovely beacon, massaging the aching flesh around it, pressuring it from the sides. A thin, tight whine seeped from her mouth and Gwen arched her back, giving herself more and more into the action of her masturbating hands. It wasn't Peter, but it was all she had.

"Yessss..." Four fingers inside her, the thumb of that hand clawing at her clit. She felt as if she could thrust her entire hand into her cunt. Gwen laughed at the thought, sweet, silvery, seeming to match the spurts of electricity she felt radiating from her cunt. Peter had done that to her too.

She felt the onrush of orgasm, a kick in her belly, like when Peter was hilted in her, all that size and heft still just teasing her with the promise of his seed as her own body exploded deliriously around his intrusion. But she couldn't have that, he would've give it to her, and this wasn't the same. Not at all.

She missed the steady pulsation of Peter's cock as he fucked her, the way she seemed to be able to feel his excitement, his racing heartbeat in his cock. She missed the telltale twitching that always heralded him bursting, his flood covering her either inside or out. When had she last felt that?

It didn't matter. She would feel this now. She would feel herself. She wrapped her legs around the hands at her crotch, squeezing herself up into a tight knot, clamping down on her pussy as it shuddered and convulsed with delicious release. Her toes curled and uncurled, clenching and grasping at the air. Gwen threw her head back, shaking hair from her face, and gave her pussy everything it wanted. Do what you will. You deserve whatever you can get.

She rocked and rippled and climaxed, drawing it out until the entire bedroom seemed to be suffused with her aroused aroma. She kept her wet, aching fingers inside herself until her sexual muscles relaxed, feeling them grow less and less tense until it was almost depressing.

"God, seems to get better every time I do it. Practice makes perfect?" she sighed.

She wondered how much longer she'd have to rely on her own hands. What was wrong with her? What was wrong with Peter?

***

"How'd the presentation go?"

At the moment, Peter was upside-down. He quite liked it that way. Might make it hard for Uncle Ben to notice his head.

"Good," Ben said. "No reason to tear your hair out."

Peter shrugged. "I left the eyebrows."

Ben scratched his own fading hair, barely able to follow as Peter ran through another gymnastics routine. "Is this for a new movie? Because I don't think there's a big clatter for you to have a new 'do. Maybe for you to get together with that Catwoman chick—"

"Black Cat," Peter insisted.

"She's white."

"Uncle Ben—"

"Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the Spider-Man movies were about decent family entertainment."

"Uncle Ben—"

"I get it, sex appeal, Lord knows I've seen enough fan mail about your butt in that spandex, but there's taking your zipper down a notch and then there's wondering how it ever got up in the first place."

"What does that even mean?"

"The Black Catwoman costume. Could it be any tighter?"

"I think Baron Magnus asked that the last time we screened a movie for him."

"Peter, be serious—"

"I'll seriously tell you why I shaved my head if you tell me how the presentation went and stop slut-shaming Tricia."

"Oh, we're on a first name basis now, married man?"

Peter stopped on the rings, not catching them with his hands, but with his feet, and balancing so evenly on the footholds they provided that he was able to stand at his full height.

"How was the presentation?" Peter insisted.

"Great. George webbed up some racist, everybody loved it."

"And the Oscorp purchase?"

"Gwen's there now, seeing to everything. Some of the inventory's gone missing, but nothing she can't handle."

"And my surprise party?"

"How in the world—"

Peter hopped down. "C'mon. You didn't think I'd buy that it was my birthday and there'd be no party? Clearly you're planning something."

"That why the shaved head?"

Peter ran a hand over his shorn scalp. "Well, now it'll be a surprise party for all of them."

"Uh-huh. Your aunt might buy that, but I'm betting there's more to the story."

Peter was silent as he went to collect a towel and a bottle of water, wiping off his sweaty face and taking a guzzle. Then pouring it out over his newly bare head. "You know, it's cheating for Gwen to tell you this stuff."

"She didn't. She told George you were having trouble sleeping, he told me. So what is it?"

Peter sat down to go through his cooldowns. Stretching, unwinding—the soreness he'd woken up with a distant memory. "The Parker luck."

"Going bald at thirty, that's lucky?"

Peter gave him a look. "C'mon, Uncle Ben. You know our family. My parents—we've never been born under a lucky star, any of us. And now here we are. Rich, happy, famous..."

"Because you were born a mutant," Ben said. "And because you worked hard and yeah, got lucky, and that could've gone wrong at any stage of the game."

"But it didn't. How come? Doesn't that feel weird to you? I get to do whatever I want and people can't do enough for me. I feel like I don't deserve this. Like I haven't earned it."

"But you've earned being unhappy?" Ben asked.

"Maybe. I have so much, and others have so little—should I get to be happy about that?"

"Peter, c'mon, you entertain people, you give to charity... so you're not saving the world, it's not like you're a superhero or anything."

Peter puffed the air out of his lungs. "That's what I keep telling myself. Gets harder and harder to listen."

"So find someone else to listen. A professional."

"A shrink?" Peter scoffed.

"I know this sorta guilt, any sorta guilt, it isn't the easiest thing to talk about. With family especially—you feel judged, you feel like it's an open secret. Going to someone from outside... it can be better that way. You just talk to them. That's all you do. You talk."

Peter shook his head. "Going to a psychologist... talk about your mutant people problems."

"Just give it a shot. Talk to that Mary Jane girl. She knows someone who knows everyone—if she doesn't have the number of a good shrink, I'll shave my head."

"Could stand to hear the end of that," Peter replied.

"So get a wig."

***

It was a neat, tidy office, more like the setting of a play than somewhere that people lived and worked. There were French doors looking out onto a brief patio, with a desk in their light. Windows showed off more of the fifty-five story view, interspersed with rows of reference material. Hardwood floors led down the way to a collection of chairs, the traditional couch, a coffee table that was bare except for a stack of coasters.

Peter had sat down on the couch, but not wanting to be cliché, hadn't laid down. He waited patiently as the psychiatrist busied herself on the other side of the door beside the desk, then came in with her pumps drumming on the floor to set down a carafe of water and two ice-filled cups on the table. Peter poured but didn't drink. He took in the doctor as she went through the explanations one might expect; the common sense stuff anyone who knew the definition of psychology could've guessed.

Karla Sofen was a tall, eminently feminine woman. Her face showed high, diamond-cut cheekbones, a subtly pointed chin, and piercing eyes, all combining to give her a zealously striking appearance. Her blonde hair was twenty-four caret gold, falling in gentle waves down to the lapels of her comfortably elegant jacket, over an Oxford blouse that was on the thin side. Her slacks delineated long, slender legs, trim but originating from well-rounded hips. Her breasts were petite, model-like, but perfectly fitting her fine-boned body. She projected confidence and assurance in her slightly slack body language, and it persisted into her warm, smoky voice.

"So, bad dreams?" Karla asked.

"For starters."

"And they're different every time."

"They're the same in a way," Peter said, brows knitting together as he tried to define what it was that had proven so undefinable. "I'm not a construction worker or an airline stewardess... I'm always me. And it's always the same me—like I'm playing a role in a movie, but always the same movie, and the dreams are just different scenes."

"But never the same scene?"

"Usually not." Thinking of the dreams dried his throat. He reached for the water, took a greedy gulp. "It's everyone I love. It's Gwen dying, it's my uncle Ben, it's my father-in-law... I keep losing people."

"That's a common neurosis. Especially for an orphan such as yourself."

"But why now? Why've I started worrying about them now?"

"Perhaps you've done something you fear will cause you to lose them. Hand me that pen and paper, please."

Peter turned, seeing a notepad and a pen on the lampstand beside the couch. He took them and handed them across the table to Karla. Her hand touched his as she took it. Her touch was soft.

"Thank you," Karla said, and jotted something down. "I'll admit, I don't care much for celebrity gossip, but I think even I would've noticed if an actor of your stature shaved their head."

"It's a new thing."

"I see."

"Is that bad?" Peter grinned. "Do I have a phobia of hair now?"

"Doubtful. Drastic changes in personal appearance can be a sign of a larger problem—a wish to distance yourself from some thought or feeling in your past. You want to be different from who you've been."

"From the guy in the dreams? The guy who keeps losing people?"

"Perhaps. You said the dreams are usually different. Is there anything that recurs?"

Peter drank. The water tasted warmer than it had a moment ago. He set it down, wiped his mouth with the back of his fist, felt the moisture cling to his hand. "At first, I was dreaming of a scene in the movie we're making. Which, you know, it happens. But it kept being the same dream, and then I started having the other dreams, and they were so much more intense—the one we're on, me and MJ... she plays Gwen... my aunt is dying and the Devil offers us a deal to save her if we give up our marriage. And in the movie, of course, we finally tell him no. Helen Mirren's getting old, she can't play my aunt forever. We have this whole thing where she ends up moving to this retirement community where her medical condition will be looked after..."

"And in the dream?" Karla asked.

"In the dream, we take the deal. Or at least, I think we do. Mary Jane... or Gwen, or whoever... she goes up to the devil and she's telling him something. Then she slaps him, and he changes, he becomes... I don't know."

"So you're no longer married to Gwen Stacy?"

"I guess not."

"And she's never in the dreams. She's died."

"Yeah. That was one of the first, one of the real bad ones. Everything after that was like... filling in the blanks."

"And Mary Jane Watson—is she ever dead in your dreams?"

Peter raised his eyebrows. "Is that how it is? You're one of those?"

Karla's finely etched eyebrows lowered minutely. "One of what, Mr. Parker?"

"Shippers. ONTD people who think we're boyfriend girlfriend, just because we're friends."

"Are you boyfriend girlfriend?"

"No."

"So you've never thought about it?"

Peter hesitated. "She's my co-star, we act like we're in a relationship, it's not real."

Karla cracked her neck, tapping the tip of her pen meditatively on the notepad. She read the hesitancy in Peter's voice and wondered if he had, in fact, done more than fantasize about a sexual relationship with the actress.

It wouldn't bother Karla in the least if it were true. To New York high society and her peers in psychiatry, Karla was a reasonably priced counselor who occasionally volunteered her services to at-risk youth. What they didn't know was that she helped out most of them by letting them fuck her. The only reason she bothered with clients who couldn't pay handsomely was so she could have a good lay. And her secondary clientele was an endless supply of handsome young men who were almost offensively easy to use.