Stiles grabs his phone and presses the button, causing the screen to light up. In the darkness the brightness burns his eyes and he closes them for a second to get rid of the glare.

11:28

It feels like he's been trying to get to sleep for hours and it's not even half past 11 yet - it's Lydia - she's been running through his mind, sprawled across this very bed, her scent lingering on his pillows in a way that has his stomach clenching and the blood rushing to his groin.

He needs something to take his mind off it – off her.


Quickly, he gets up and dressed, donning the red and blue suit that Spider-Man is so famous for.

Stiles pulls off his mask as he walks across the roof of his best friend's balcony and smiles at the same time. It had been an exhilarating journey – it wasn't often that he got to web-swing somewhere without an emergency situation awaiting him.

Slowly, he lowers himself from Scott's roof, tipping himself upside down so as to see into his room.

"AGH!"

"AGH!"

Scott - wielding a baseball bat and a terrified look on his face screams at Stiles, whose heartrate increase by a few thousand BPM.

"Stiles, what the hell are you doing?"

"Lydia was at my house earlier."

Scott looks stunned and as Stiles dismounts – with the least amount of grace possible – he asks, "the Lydia Martin?"

"The one I've had a crush on since third grade? Yes, that would be the one."

"Dude! What happened?"

Stiles pauses, deciding in that moment to tell his friend everything except the fact that Lydia was half naked on his bed and he was taking photos of her – besides the fact that it sounded really weird in his head there was also the fact that he didn't want to explain why he hadn't made a move on her. Despite the fact that Scott had been his best friend since they were toddlers, playing together in the sandpit, and possessed the moral code of Captain America, there are just some things you can't tell a friend who is also a guy. And not banging the girl you've been banging on about for the past eight years is one of them, especially when she starts divesting herself of clothes in your bedroom.

It's almost two thirty by the time Stiles collapses into bed, completely exhausted. This time he has no trouble falling asleep.


Lydia Martin sits in his room for the third time in four weeks and having completed their chemistry homework together, they sit at opposite ends of the bed. Lydia is reading the script for the new play she's in, muttering sentences under her breath. Stiles is editing new photographs of Spider-man on his laptop.

It is a peaceful moment with her, a moment when his heart doesn't feel as if it will hammer itself out of his chest with her sultry gaze.

Until she destroys the peace with a question he would never have imagined.

She regards him curiously, "how is it that you haven't tried to come on to me yet?"

"What? Wait, should I have?"

"I know you have the hots for me. And every other boy I've been friends with has tried it on before now."

"Oh."

"Do you want to have sex with me, Stiles?"

"Wha-, Lydia, wait – do you want to have sex with me?"

"I wouldn't say no. We can just keep it simple. No strings attached, right?"

"Um," Stiles rubs the back of his neck, there's a red tinge to his cheeks that Lydia finds very flattering.

"Just say yes, Stilinski."

He can't even get the word out before she straddles his lip and kisses him. He freezes. It's not like he sees fireworks or anything so cliché but it's as if some tiny part inside of him, something that's kept him tethered until now, has broken.

As his lips start to move under hers, Lydia contemplates how good of a kisser Stiles is. She can't say it was something she was expecting and to say she's pleasantly surprised is an understatement.

She's about to reach for the hem of his shirt when her phone rings.

"Shit!" Lydia curses, suddenly remembering something. "I was supposed to meet my mom for dinner." She starts to answer her phone before turning back to him, "hold that thought," she says with a wicked smile.


There's no wriggling out of a dinner with her mom, no matter how good Lydia is at twisting people around her little finger. It was precious little time they got to spend together each week and besides, Natalie knew her daughter's trickery and deception like the back of her hand.

They start the night at Lydia's favourite restaurant, the salted caramel chocolate cheesecake was almost worth ruining her plans to seduce Stiles, she thinks, closing her eyes in bliss.

"So," her mom started, "what was so important that you almost stood me up?"

Lydia could only mumble through her mouth of cheesecake.

"Was it a boy?"

"Mom!" Lydia knew that her mother had been keen for her to move on after Jackson left, especially since she didn't quite approve of the way Jackson treated her daughter in the first place.

"Okay, I won't ask," Natalie laughs. "Hey, how about we catch the late showing of that movie you've been wanting to see?"

"Sure, mom."

It's just then that Natalie's phone rings and simultaneously they hear a blare of sirens as they exit the restaurant. It's clear that her mom breathes a sigh of frustration before she answers the phone.

As Lydia walks a little way away from her mother she hears the start of the same old argument she's heard a thousand times before.

"This is the-," a pause and then, "I'm with my daughter, Miller," there's another pause, longer this time and then, "fine, I'll meet you there."

"I'm sorry, Lydia," Natalie says as she approaches her daughter.

"It's okay mom, you have to go."

"I'll only be down the street, there's a gang of thugs holding up a bank. You should still go to see the movie; I can come and join you when I'm done."

"Be careful."


Since Lydia had left a few hours earlier, Spider-Man had been putting in a double shift, swinging around the city, looking for trouble and trying to clear his head.

What exactly did a girl like Lydia Martin want with a guy like him? Stiles thinks as he strings up a small-time thief in front of the convenience store he'd just robbed.

Does she actually want me or is this just boredom? He asks himself as he easily breaks up a gang fight.

Stiles only realises that something is seriously wrong when he happens upon the red and blue lights outside of the bank. As he stops to check what is happening one of the officers receives a call on their radio stating a false alarm. Almost simultaneously an out-of-breath member of the public runs up to the host of police cars, shouting about a hostage situation at Movie Theater less than two blocks away.

Spider-man takes off before any of the police even start to act, swinging his way through the darkness.


Lydia is worried about her mom.

Despite the fact that her mother is frequently put into dangerous situations, Lydia knows that she is well able to handle the worst of the job. However, as she stands a few buildings down from the theater, debating whether to see the movie or just head home, Lydia frets.

It's only as a blur of red and blue rushes past her that she starts to feel inexplicably calm again. She doesn't even register that it was Spider-Man until the sirens follow.

Her mom arrives at the scene five minutes later, sobbing with relief when she sees Lydia, standing there, looking shell-shocked but very much alive.

"Mom, what's happening?"

"They're holding hostages in there," Natalie says, and lowering her voice adds, "Over the radio it's coming that they have some kind of explosive device."

Natalie helps the other officers to cordon off the area, telling Lydia to wait behind the police line.

"Mom, Spider-Man is in there," Lydia says, a worried look on her face.


Stiles arrives to a group of masked men threating a room of movie-goers.

"Not to butt in," he says, walking along the edge of one of the balconies, "but are you sure he knows what he's doing with that?"

The man he was referring to was clearly the one in charge of the explosive device. Even just to look at him from a distance such as Stiles was, it was clear from the sweat dripping off the end of his nose that he didn't think much to his job description.

"Looks to me like what you have there is a homemade chemical device and you should know they can be very unpredictable."

By this point Stiles has distracted them enough that the back few rows of the theater have managed to sneak out.

The men soon decide they've had enough of Spider-Man and retaliate with gunfire. As soon as they start shooting, the audience left in the theater screams and starts to run. Stiles tries to draw their fire, swinging from the ceiling of the balcony as if he's taking a lazy walk in the park.

As he does so, he spots the container of chemicals split as one of the men's gunfire goes astray. Spider-Man reacts quicker than anyone, making a speedy exit from the building just before it explodes.


Lydia, who stands in the only spot of light down the dim alleyway, the source of the brightness is the streetlight above her. She had been about to set off for home when the explosion had occurred, causing her to duck for cover and hearing a noise at the end of the alley she's stopped, squinting into the bright light. Whatever it is crawls along the wall towards her and she backs away until she can see.

Spider-Man seems to look right at her and his gaze seems so familiar. But as soon as Lydia starts to call out to him, he is gone.