For 30+ Advance/Early chapters :p
atreon.com/ScoldeyJod
The morning after was a quiet revelation. Peter woke to the feeling of being utterly and completely known. He lay tangled in the messy sheets of his own bed, in his own room in Queens, the early light filtering through the blinds, illuminating the beautiful, chaotic landscape of his life. The air was thick with the scent of them—a complex, musky perfume of sweat and sandalwood that had transferred from her skin to his sheets, a ghost of her presence.
He turned his head. The other side of the bed was empty, the pillow indented. He had a hazy, dream-like memory of stirring in the pre-dawn darkness, of feeling a soft kiss pressed to his forehead, and hearing the whisper-quiet click of his door closing. She had gone, a silent departure back to her own world, leaving him to his healing sleep.
The vulnerability he had shown her, the complete, shuddering breakdown... he expected to feel a morning-after wave of shame. But he didn't. He felt... settled. Known. He pushed himself up, his body a symphony of dull aches, and saw it. On his cluttered nightstand, a single, perfect glass of water sat waiting for him, the condensation beading on its side. A simple, thoughtful gesture that was more intimate than any of their passionate encounters.
He showered, the hot water a blessed relief on his bruised torso, and dressed with a new, deliberate calm. The frantic energy that usually defined his mornings was gone, replaced by a quiet sense of purpose. When he looked in the mirror, he still saw the same nerdy kid from Queens, but something in his eyes had shifted. The constant, hunted look had been replaced by a quiet, steady confidence. The house was silent around him, a stark reminder that May was still out of town, and that for a few precious hours, this solitary space had been a sanctuary for two.
His commute on the subway was a return to reality. The quiet intimacy of his house was replaced by the roar and rush of the city. But the bubble remained. The rhythmic clatter of the train was a familiar soundtrack, but the world outside the window seemed different, sharper, more vibrant.
He didn't need to text her or call. There was an unspoken agreement, a new, instinctual magnetism between them. He walked straight to the library steps, their spot, and she was there, as if she had been summoned by his thoughts. She was waiting for him, a book in her hand, the morning sun catching the deep, almost blue-black sheen of her hair. She looked up as he approached, and a slow, warm smile spread across her face. It was a smile of pure, uncomplicated happiness, a smile that seemed to erase the noise and grit of his commute and replace it with a profound, humming calm.
"Good morning, Peter," she said, her voice a low, melodic thing that seemed to calm the very air around them.
"Morning," he replied, his own voice soft, a wide, unrestrained grin spreading across his face.
They fell into step, walking towards the library entrance. The space between them was no longer charged with the electric hum of unspoken desire or the awkwardness of a new relationship. It was a comfortable, humming bubble of shared intimacy. As they entered the building, Diana reached over and, without breaking stride, took his hand. Her fingers laced with his, a simple, public gesture that was a profound declaration. It was a choice, made in the clear light of day, to acknowledge the bond forged in darkness and tears.
They found their secluded carrel, the space now feeling as much theirs as any private room. The pretense of studying two different subjects was gone. They sat side-by-side, a shared island of focus. For hours, they actually worked on their biophysics midterm, a comfortable, productive rhythm settling between them. He would explain a complex metabolic pathway, and she would, in turn, offer a different philosophical perspective that somehow made it click in his mind. They were a perfect, symbiotic team.
It was during a break, as Peter scrolled through a news aggregator on his laptop, looking for anything to distract him from the Krebs cycle, that the outside world intruded again.
"Hey," he said, his voice suddenly serious. "Look at this."
He turned the laptop towards her. The headline was from a tech journal, more detailed than the television news had been: "Third High-Tech Heist in a Month: A.I.M. Suspected as AccuTech's Cryo-Condenser Vanishes."
"A.I.M.?" Diana asked, her brow furrowing as she read the article. "Advanced Idea Mechanics?"
"Yeah," Peter said, his fingers flying across the keyboard, pulling up other articles, his movements a blur of practiced skill. "They're a high-tech arms dealer. A whole collective of evil geniuses who think science is just a tool for world domination. They're usually more into... you know, giant killer robots. This is different. It's subtle."
He pulled up the articles on the other two thefts—a next-generation power core from Hammer Industries and an experimental bio-restorative agent from an Oscorp subsidiary.
"Look at the targets," he said, his mind racing, the familiar thrill of the hunt taking over. "A power source. A biological compound. And now, a high-capacity cooling system. These aren't weapons. These are components."
Diana leaned closer, her focus absolute, her mind working in parallel with his. "A person does not gather ingredients unless they intend to cook a meal," she murmured, repeating her own words. Her finger traced the three headlines on the screen. "An engine... a fuel... and a radiator to keep it from overheating."
He stared at her, a jolt of chilling clarity passing between them. "It's a life-support system," he breathed. "Or... or a containment unit. Something designed to sustain a highly unstable biological or energy source."
They looked at each other, the implications of their discovery a heavy weight in the quiet of the library. This wasn't a series of random thefts. It was a project. A.I.M. was building something, and the component list was terrifying.
"What could require that much power, and that much cooling?" she asked, her voice a low, grim whisper.
"Nothing good," he replied, his gaze distant. "Something powerful. Something... unstable."
The academic world of their midterm faded away, replaced by the stark, dangerous reality of their other lives. The quiet, tender lovers of the morning were gone, replaced by two heroes staring at the first concrete clues of a gathering storm. Their hands found each other on the table, their fingers lacing together in a tight, reassuring grip.
They were no longer just Peter and Diana, the unlikely campus couple. They were a team. An investigative unit. And their first case had just officially begun. The city was humming with a new and dangerous secret, and they were the only ones who seemed to be close to figuring it out.
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