(A/N)

Hello! I'm back! And this time, it's not twenty days later! I think.

So this is just a follow-up of my previous one-shot, just because I felt like I needed to write some fluff instead of the usual angst I have been thriving off of for the past... oh, I don't know... year or so?

Fear not! I already have another one-shot planned after this one, and it will be MUCH longer, with action, reveals, and - you guessed it - ANGST.

Yay!

Anyway.

I also forgot to put this in before, but here you go - the disclaimer (even though it should be obvious I own nothing, since this is a fanfiction website)!

I DO NOT OWN SPIDER-MAN. CREDIT GOES TO MARVEL, STAN LEE, STEVE DIKTO, TOM DEFALTO, AND RON FRENZ.

There.

Happy reading!

.()()()()()()().

Karen Lee sat in her office at home, regretting her choice to refrain from ingesting any more caffeine that night.

The day had started out well enough - she had gone to the hospital, treated some patients, said goodbye to her coworkers, and went home, where she greeted her husband Matt, who had just gotten back from a bank heist. He had complained about the fact that Spider-Man had never showed up, and Karen had to keep it to herself that he would have been patrolling another area at that time. Matt had then flopped down on his bed and fallen asleep immediately, not even bothering to take off his uniform. Karen simply rolled her eyes and turned her attention elsewhere: her two children, Tommy and Fred.

The boys were a boisterous bunch - always demanding something, screaming at each other, or simply running around the house and breaking stuff. At seven years of age, Karen really wasn't surprised. That didn't mean the thirty-six-year-old wasn't completely wiped out by the time she managed to get them to eat their dinner.

Tommy had announced that he was officially a vegetarian and had chucked his sausage at his younger brother (only by a few months, though), resulting in a very angry sausage fight. Karen had settled the issue by bringing out the vegetables, saying that since Tommy was now a vegetarian, he would have to eat his broccoli. Obviously a seven-year-old boy wouldn't have actually willingly be a vegetarian if he knew what it meant - he had probably gotten the word somewhere from school.

To make a long story short, the broccoli was rejected with the title of vegetarian, sausages were returned to their rightful owners, and the doctor's children ate without complaint.

Beautiful silence. Pity it only lasted for so long.

As soon as the dreaded sentence "It's time for bed," was uttered, both Tommy and Fred had gone absolutely nuts. They screamed and thrashed about as Karen heaved them onto her shoulders and brought them upstairs, pointedly ignoring their whines and pleas for just five more minutes of play time. She had dumped them on their bed, read a quick goodnight story, turned off the lights, and was about to leave when she remembered that she hadn't given them their water.

When she returned with a glass full of the heavenly liquid, she was greeted with two screaming children jumping up and down on their flimsy beds. She had yelled at them to lie down and get to sleep or they wouldn't get any ice cream tomorrow, and with that threat on their minds, she was finally able to get them to calm down.

Ah, sweet relief. Bed, here I come!

Alas, the torture was not over yet. As Karen was getting dressed for bed, she got a text from her boss at the hospital reminding her that she had to send in her full reports before midnight. Scrambling back into her day clothes, the frantic mother had opened her computer and started typing her reports. It was eight thirty when she had started, and now it was over ten o'clock.

Just a few more patients. Karen typed with furious speed, feeling the muscles cramping in her fingers as she finished up her report. Her eyes were beginning to ache because of the blue light, but she was… done. She was done!

Karen Lee slumped back in her chair, exhausted but elated. She was about to leave again when…

Shoot.

She forgot to write that important email. That is, the you-could-lose-your-job-and-pride-and-be-super-guilty-for-the-rest-of-your-life important email. And it was due - lo and behold - by midnight.

Sighing in resignation, Karen shook out her fingers and opened up her mail to write.

It was around ten forty-five that she heard the sirens, not too far from where she lived in her small apartment by the less-occupied side of the city in Queens, New York. Her phone buzzed, and a quick glance gave her a little smile as she read the headline.

Oh, Spidey, she thought in amusement, pride swelling up in her chest, You really are something, stopping a shooting.

Karen finished the last of her email and sent it quickly, making sure it was the right recipient. She even copied and pasted it to send it again, just in case.

The doctor looked out the window at the lit up city. New York truly was beautiful; many would say that the skyscrapers and constant noise was irritating and an insult to Mother Nature, but there was a sort of peacefulness in the way the city never truly slept. It reminded Karen that she wasn't alone in this world, that she would always have other people around her - it meant that people would still be around for her to heal.

Suddenly, a shape seemed to hurtle out of the shadows and straight at her window. A lean, muscular body… attached to a string?

Thump. The figure crashed into her window and began to slide down, but not before it was able to grab ahold of the glass with its fingers… gloved fingers. Karen gasped as she realized who is was and rushed over, opening the window to let him in.

"Spidey," Karen said, shaking her head, "what the hell are you doing here this late at night?"

The hero crawled inside the house and let out a deep breath, then took off his mask, revealing the teenager behind it. His brown hair was disheveled, his wide, chocolate-brown eyes wild. A wide bruise had formed around his jaw. "I told you to call me Peter," he said in a gasping voice. "As for why I'm here, well, I knew you'd be up."

"Is that so," Karen called over her shoulder as she grabbed bandages, ointment, and all the other necessary equipment. She had lost track on how many times she had had to do this already, and knew the protocol.

"Yeah. I mean, you have two extremely loud kids and a husband who is a very good cop with baddies, but not so much with children - no offense. You come back from the hospital every day at six, so you'd be done by eight or so. You were also complaining about that report you still haven't done last time we talked, and knowing you, you probably just finished about an hour ago. Then you'd have that really important email that you most definitely forgot - again, you - which would take you at least another hour."

"Wow. Nicely done."

"Of course, you probably had your caffeine to keep you up long enough for me to get here on time."

"Aha!" Karen screeched, pointing a finger at him triumphantly. "I didn't have any caffeine!"

"Then you must be really tired," Peter remarked. He let her apply the ointment to his bruises and bandage his cuts, then gratefully accepted the spare clothing handed to him. He rose and changed quickly into civilian clothes in the bathroom down the hall, then came back to Karen's office empty.

Peter was about to call - which would've woken the entire household, mind you - when he heard a noise coming from the kitchen. It sounded like mugs clinking together. Not long after, a delicious smell rose to meet his nose, and he grinned, bounding down the hall. He leaped up onto the ceiling and clung to it, crawling the rest of the way there, then dropped down behind Karen soundlessly and tapped her on the shoulder, emitting a small squeak. She whirled around and glared at him, two steaming cups of coffee in her hand.

"Gimme!" Peter's hand shot out for the mug, but she pulled it back just in time.

"Nope," the doctor said cheerfully, "not until you apologize for sneaking up on me like that, and not until you've said the magic word!"

Peter rolled his eyes playfully. "What am I, five?" He grinned at her indifferent face. "Fine. Sorry and please."

"The magic word was abracadabra," Karen said, handing him the mug.

Peter took a long sip from the coffee, sighing contentedly as the rejuvenating caffeine and warmth spread throughout his body. "This," he declared, raising his mug, "is the drink of the gods, Karen Lee."

"Hear, hear," his friend replied, clinking her mug against his.

.00000000000.

They had decided that after drinking three cups of coffee each, neither would be going to sleep anytime soon. So, to settle the issue, Karen popped in a movie. The couch was as comfortable as Peter remembered, except now it wasn't covered in blood - which was, of course, and improvement.

They cuddled close together, wrapped in blankets as the AC beat them relentlessly with cold. The movie was an old one from the '80s, but no one minded; it was a cliche romantic comedy, the best kind, and both Karen and Peter had to keep from laughing out loud in fear of waking the others.

"This is nice," Peter said after the end credits started to roll. "Relaxing, I mean. Not having to worry about much."

"Yeah," Karen agreed softly, examining the stitched fabric of her blue blanket. She thought back to the day she had first met Peter - the day she had first met Spider-Man. He had been badly injured while saving some children from a fire, and she had been in charge of taking care of him. The little stunt he had pulled - going out while still healing from a spinal injury - had lead her to figuring out his identity.

She remembered when he had fallen asleep with her in the room. He had had a nightmare; murmuring something about a girl named Gwen. I wonder who Gwen was, she thought, but one quick look at Peter's horrified face let her know that she had voiced her thoughts out loud.

"Where did you here her name?" Peter whispered. His voice broke her heart - shattered, lost, full of pain.

"I..." Karen sighed. "When you were recovering here. You had a nightmare, and said her name several times."

Peter was silent for a moment, staring fixedly at a spot on the wall. Karen played with a loose string on her blanket, not trusting herself to speak. The carefree mood seemed to disappear completely.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, Peter spoke up in a choked voice. "She was my girlfriend. The only one who knew about... who knew who I was. I... I had just finished battling Electro, and she had insisted on coming to help..." His hands started to shake, and Karen put her own over his.

"It's okay," she said softly, "you don't have to tell me."

"No." Peter shook his head. "I need to tell someone. Otherwise I'll go crazy."

Karen nodded.

"We were on the ground, both of us; I was telling her to go back, when... there was the Green Goblin, remember him? He took her, and I guess he must've seen us... he figured out who I was. So he took Gwen up to this clock tower on his flying surfboard and... and dropped her." His breath hitched, his eyes watery. "I tried... I tried so hard to save her... but it was too late. She was gone. And it's all my fault."

Karen narrowed her eyes and grabbed his shoulders. "Peter, look at me. None of that is your fault. You tried to save her, and in the end, it was her decision to help. You're not to blame."

Peter nodded, eyes wide. "I've moved on, it's just... hard sometimes."

Karen smiled and brought him into a hug. "I'm here for you. Don't you forget."

.0000000000.

Once the clock reached one in the morning, Karen decided it was time for the hero to go. He had school, after all.

Once they had said their goodbyes, with Peter swinging off into the city skyline, shooting webs from his wrists and clinging to buildings, Karen took one last look around her office to make sure she hadn't forgotten about anything. She yawned, feeling her eyelids grow heavy, and trudged into her room to change. Matt was still snoring in bed with his uniform. Karen smirked as she thought how annoyed he'd be with her for not changing him, and how he would splutter as he realized what he had just said.

She changed quickly and got into bed, burying herself in the covers. She blew a strand of brown hair out of her face and stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds before sleep started to pull her in.

You really are something, Peter Parker, was her last thought before she embraced her well-deserved sleep.