Things were going well. Surprisingly well.

The first week of classes flew by like cars on the highway, leaving Peter a little wind-swept but breathless with exhilaration.

His other two courses (calculous and biology) had already started off with a heavy workload, but Peter felt like he was managing it all pretty well. Better than managing; he was emenjoying/em it. He'd already found a spot on the third floor of the science library with the most comfortable arm chair he'd ever had the pleasure of doing homework in. He'd read ahead in the textbooks for chem and bio because he just found it all so interesting. And he'd met with Gwen again on Tuesday emand/em Wednesday after class to work on their assignment.

Peter was starting to think that maybe he was a little bit in love. Gwen was perfect. Smarter than most MacArthur Grant recipients and gorgeous and emfunny/em, too. They laughed. A lot. And had a lot in common, much to Peter's pleasant surprise. And the most shocking part of all? She seemed to like Peter, too.

Who wouldn't fall in love with a girl like that?

He'd seen his RA in passing a couple more times, and Johnny had been as friendly as ever, but they never got around to having lunch together. Peter figured Johnny was busy with his first week of classes, too, and he didn't want to bother the older student. And besides, he hadn't been able to get Loki's deceptively poisonous words out of his head. All those things he said about Johnny… And Peter… And… Sexual attraction. It was stupid, and clearly just a distraction tactic, which made Peter all the more annoyed that he couldn't stop dwelling on it.

But Loki.

Loki had continued to be unexpectedly gracious. He occasionally granted Peter a few minutes of his time, making small talk when they were both in their dorm room and answering a few more questions about the English homework Peter continued to struggle with (much to his chagrin). The sarcastic comments and drawling pessimistic wit were never in short supply, but Peter was beginning to find that he didn't mind the god's attitude. It was almost… Amusingly endearing. In a strictly objective way, of course.

So overall, things were going well.

And everything would be absolutely perfect if Peter wasn't currently going emout of his mind/em with nervous anxious energy.

It was Friday evening and Peter was perched on his bed, leg bouncing in agitation as he cast furtive, longing glances towards the bottom drawer of his dresser. Loki was at his desk, casually flipping through an electrical engineering textbook and very clearly ignoring Peter's palpable unease.

Everything was going well. Everything was perfect. Chemistry lab that afternoon had been a joy with Gwen at his side and Aunt May's visit afterwards had serendipitously coincided with Loki's four-o'clock drawing class (which Peter was ever so thankful for, as he wasn't sure he was ready to introduce his only living family to an immortal god of lies who once tried to take over the world – even if that god was his college roommate).

But now the sun had set and there were no morning classes to get up for on Saturday and it had been ten days, eighteen hours and approximately thirty minutes since Peter had last patrolled the city.

Spider-Man had taken a break. Gone on hiatus. Hung up the cape (so to speak) while Peter Parker settled into the college life. It had been the right choice to make, Peter knew, and Iron-Man himself had assured the young hero that he would keep a closer eye on NYC while he was gone, but it didn't stop him from worrying. Each day that passed with his suit buried at the bottom of his dresser made Peter wonder how many robberies, how many assaults, how many drug deals had gone down that he could have stopped.

It was a familiar guilt, wondering if he should be doing more. Even if he patrolled every night, he emcould/em do more. Push himself further. He had that power, to help more people, save more people, and a large part of him believed it was his responsibility to use that power to the fullest.

And it had been ten days. This was the longest he'd been absent from his city's streets since he was bitten by that spider over three years ago. He emneeded/em to patrol tonight. Forget the city; emPeter/em was going to fall apart from the inside out if he couldn't feel the wind through his suit as he twisted and flipped through open air. The wonderful lurching dip in his stomach at the bottom of a swing, when his web caught just so. The vibrations of a thousand taxi cabs and subway cars and footsteps and shouts tearing through the air and pricking the hairs on the back of his arms and neck. He needed it.

He'd wanted to wait until a night when Loki wasn't home, but he was too far gone for that now. With a short, tortured whine, Peter slid gracelessly from his bed to the floor and reached for his dresser drawer.

"Gods, Peter." Loki's cool crystal voice cut through his near-hysteria and Peter froze, hand hovering inches from the drawer's handle. His eyes flashed to the god's face, but he remained focused on his book. "If you really need to satisfy your human body's feeble needs that badly, you could just ask me to leave for a while."

Peter gaped at him, his cheeks instantly flooding with prickling warmth. "What? No! God, what… emNo/em Loki, I'm not… Not…"

Loki raised his head to glance sideways at him, one thin, dark brow arching perfectly above his glinting eyes. "Intending to pleasure yourself?"

He flushed an even darker shade of red, if that was possible. "emNo/em. Of course not."

"Oh." Loki turned back to his work, just a small twist of a smirk giving away the fact that he'd been teasing Peter all along. "My mistake, then."

Peter rolled his eyes and huffed out an irritated sigh, trying to brush off how much Loki had succeeded in embarrassing him.

He hadn't… done that, since moving to Columbia, in case anyone was wondering. He'd been too busy and Loki was always around and, well, public bathrooms weren't exactly the best place to… Never mind. It didn't matter. Suffice to say he wasn't engaging in such activities at the moment which may have contributed slightly to the itching aching restlessness crawling under his skin but, whatever, just, he wasn't. And he had much bigger things to worry about, besides.

Like performing his duty as New York's hero in residence. He didn't need the Daily Bugle publishing any speculating articles about Spider-Man being dead, or worse, abandoning the city. They'd gone a whole three weeks without running any stories about him, and he didn't want to give them any excuses to drag his name through the dirt again.

But all of this, all of it was beside the point. Peter wrenched open his bottom drawer and dug around in the pile of jeans and hoodies until he felt the slick, cool material of his suit brush against his fingers.

When he pulled it out, he certainly didn't miss the subtle flicker of Loki's gaze in his direction, those sharp blue eyes quickly taking in every detail they could. Ignoring the god's attention as best he could, Peter turned to grab his backpack from the bed and stuff his suit and mask into the open pocket. Not willing to waste any more time, Peter sprang fluidly to his feet and crossed the room to their window, slinging his bag over his shoulder as he went.

It was a warm September night, the dimly glowing lights from the campus pathways like a soft sheet laid over the world, tucking them in. With no effort at all, Peter could hear through the cinderblock walls to the life outside. He could hear the voices, soft with laughter and excitement. He could hear their footsteps and the deep bass echoing of music from parties big and small. It was the first Friday night of the semester. At half past nine, most of Columbia's students were meeting up with their friends, gathering under the trees to take advantage of the last days of summer, going to parties to dance and laugh and get drunk on the joy of each other and whatever substances the kids were using these days.

Peter Parker was sticking his fingertips to the glass of his dorm room window so he could slide it open and climb out onto the wall of his building, three stories above the ground, and sneak out to swing around New York on thin strings of reinforced synthetic fiber.

Loki cleared his throat softly, halting Peter before he could climb over the wooden windowsill.

"What, precisely, do you think you're doing?"

Peter sighed. He'd hoped to avoid having to actually emtalk/em about this, but the whole roommate thing was turning out to be more about communication than he'd originally anticipated.

"I'm going to patrol." He stated the obvious, turning half-way to give Loki a blank look. "There's this guy who runs around saving people sometimes. He wears red and blue like a patriotic idiot and can do some weird stuff. You know, walk on walls, lift heavy objects, dodge bullets. Ring any bells?"

Peter's best unimpressed stare had emnothing/em on Loki's flat, seriously not amused gaze. The Asgardian leaned back in his desk chair, crossing one leg over the other and folding his hands atop his thigh, the perfect picture of effortless poise.

"And why, pray tell, are you leaving through the window?"

He resisted the childish urge to roll his eyes again. "If people see me leaving and coming back every time I go out as a certain arachnid themed superhero, someone could eventually use the knowledge to sync up my schedule with his. And if I get roughed up on patrol, I can't exactly walk back in the front of the building all bruised and bloody without garnering some serious attention. emAnd/em-" He leaned forward slightly, cutting Loki off when he saw the god parting his lips to interject some comment or another. "I can't leave out the front door and come back through the window so it looks like I disappeared and never came home. Hence the coming and going in secret." He gave a short, final nod. "You can be my alibi."

Loki's eyes narrowed slightly, as if he resented the assumption that he would help in any way. Or maybe he just resented being interrupted from saying his piece. "And how," His lip curled up into just the hint of a sneer. "Is any of that worse than someone spotting you clinging to the wall of your dorm twenty-five feet above the ground dressed in civilian clothes and clearly looking like Peter Parker?"

"No one will see me."

"You can't guarantee that." He insisted.

"Yes, I can."

A tiny crease appeared between Loki's eyes, and there was an almost imperceptible tightening around the edges of his mouth. It was the mildly aggravated look he got whenever he felt that he was missing something, that someway somehow an important bit of knowledge was slipping the grasp of his clever mind.

"How?"

Peter still felt a vague, undefined sense unease about sharing specific details of his powers with Loki. It wasn't really a fear anymore, because he'd decided to trust the god and that was that. But it was like some habitually protective part of his brain objected to sharing the vulnerable secrets of his high-profile identity. Most of the avengers didn't even know much about how his powers actually worked.

But he gave in with a small sigh, tipping his chin up to stare at the ceiling for a moment. "If I pay attention, I can feel it when someone is looking at me."

It was a little more complex than that. Really, he could feel it embefore/em someone looked at him, which is exactly how he could avoid it in the first place, but he didn't want to get into semantics right now. He wanted to be outside, swinging through the air again.

Loki's eyes brightened with a tell-tale glint of interest. "Oh? Is that part of your sixth sense?"

It was too easy. "I can't see dead people, Loki. There's no plot twist at the end where we find out you've been a ghost all along." The god's blank look of complete unrecognition made Peter groan at the loss of a good quip. "Seriously? Sixth Sense? Have you watched a movie in the last decade?"

"Your spider sense, then." Loki corrected himself easily, clearly not letting his question slide.

"Spidey sense." Peter corrected thoughtlessly. "Yeah."

"How can you tell when someone looks at you? Can you feel the movement of photons in the air? Is that how you tell if they are absorbed by a pupillary structure?"

Peter stifled the impulse to smile at the god's obvious curiosity. It was almost… Flattering, in a way. And Peter hadn't had anyone else to talk to about this, except Tony who didn't have nearly as much time to give the kid his undivided attention like… He shook his head slightly. "No, no. Nothing like that. It's more – " He cut himself off, quite aware of Loki's uncanny ability to distract him. "We can talk about it later, okay? Right now I need to go."

He turned back towards the window, only to be stopped by Loki's voice once again.

"If no one will see you, why don't you put your suit on before you go? Surely finding somewhere to change outside is risky."

Peter bit down on his lower lip, stifling a frown. Loki was right, after all. It would be much easier to change before going out, like he did at home when he could wait for Aunt May to go to sleep and lock his bedroom door before slipping out the window. He didn't even know where he would change out there; wasn't it illegal to get naked on rooftops? Public indecency or something like that? But he didn't have much choice.

"I can't exactly change into my Spider-Man suit in the shared bathroom out there."

Loki looked at him curiously, one eyebrow arching again, just slightly. "And you can't change in your own room because…?"

Peter blinked at him. Change here? Oh. Well, sure. Peter had been taking his clothes to change in the restroom in the morning and at night because… Well, because Loki was always here.

Not… That it mattered…

He watched a slow, teasing smirk spread across Loki's perfect mouth, and he definitely did emnot/em feel a little warmer and slightly vindictive at the sight.

"I see." The god inclined his head slightly, raven hair brushing across his jaw as he moved. "You're concerned about preserving your virtue."

He scoffed condescendingly, irritated to feel a slight blush climb up his neck. "That's stupid." He retorted, striding back to his side of the room to sling his backpack onto his bed and rifle inside for his suit. "I don't give a fuck about my… Virtue."

Loki's antagonistic smile only sharpened. "Don't worry, young one. I promise not to look." He swiveled his desk chair to face the opposite direction, tauntingly sliding one hand up to cover his own eyes.

"Whatever." Peter frowned, grumbling under his breath as he peeled his shirt off and flung it aside, eager to get this over with. He didn't care so much about changing in front of people, really. It's just that…

He kind of didn't wear underwear with his Spidey suit.

Panty lines were a bitch, okay? And people took pictures of Spider-Man. The last thing he needed was some mortifying tabloid photo of his ass painted across the newspaper stands with a headline that read "strongBREAKING NEWS: SPIDERS WEAR TIGHTY WIGHTIES/strong."

(Not that he wore tighty wighties. But boxers wouldn't even emfit/em inside his suit, so options were limited.)

Peter sighed as he stripped out of his jeans, glancing surreptitiously towards Loki to make sure he was still looking away. He was, although Peter didn't doubt that he could have found a way to peak if he really wanted to. He was a pretty impressive magician, after all. (Or mage, as Peter had heard Loki reference once or twice.)

He slipped his boxers off as quickly as possible, careful not to trip over them as he did so, and threw them in his hamper before pulling the comfortable fabric of his suit up over his legs. It felt strange to be completely naked in the same room as someone else, very exposed (in the most literal sense of the word). Peter's heart was beating embarrassingly quickly by the time he yanked the zipper up over his back, sealing the suit over himself.

"Okay." He muttered, grabbing the mask and moving back towards the window again.

He paused before covering his face, watching as Loki's intent gaze slid slowly down and then back up his body.

Peter swallowed, paying no mind to the soft nervous twist in his stomach. "What?"

"Mm." Loki tipped his head slightly to one side, still looking at Peter like he was examining him. "Nothing." They made eye contact as the god glanced up, and the slight glint in his eyes was unrecognizable this time. "I just never noticed… It suits you."

Peter felt his lips fall softly apart, his eyes widening slightly at the unexpected compliment. This time, he was hardly aware of the dusting of pink across his cheeks as he glanced away, raising one hand to ruffle his hair self-consciously.

"Oh, uh… Yeah. Thanks." He offered Loki a small, helpless smile before tugging the mask on, flattening his hair and sliding a soft white film over the world.

He didn't wait for any more commentary from his roommate, eagerly ducking out of the open window and clinging to the wall outside. He slid the pane of glass back into place with his toe, extending his awareness outwards into the warm, dark air to make sure no one was watching as he crawled smoothly and quickly towards the roof, relishing in the stretch of muscles he hadn't used enough recently.

When he swung off into the night, towards the more densely populated areas of down town, the air tasted a little sweeter than he remembered. The storefront signs and streetlights cast a twinkling glow, reflecting into the sky to create a great dome of satin luminescence, like a luxurious blanket encompassing the city.

His city.