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The first warning came as a pressure behind Nick’s teeth.
It was too faint to qualify as pain. More like the memory of pain, a cold metallic thread drawn through the roots of his molars while Lieutenant Benson reviewed the arrest plan for the second time. Nick stood near the service entrance of the Beaumont Hotel with his hands buried in the pockets of his coat and watched rain silver the alley beyond the loading bay. Around him, the squad listened through their earpieces to the surveillance team upstairs. A freight elevator groaned behind the wall. Somewhere beyond the kitchen doors, glassware chimed beneath the muted conversation of a charity dinner that had no idea three floors above it a seventeen-year-old girl was being held in a locked suite.
Nick pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth. The sensation faded.
Beside him, Amanda shifted her weight. She did not look at him. She had become very good at not looking at him when looking would tell everyone else too much.
“Dawes enters the suite, gives us confirmation on the girl, and we move,” Olivia said. Her voice remained quiet, though authority sharpened every word. “Until then, nobody improvises. He sees us early, he calls whoever’s inside, and she disappears through another exit.”
Fin checked the magazine in his weapon before returning it to his holster. Sonny stood near him, tall and restless in shirtsleeves, his jacket unbuttoned and his tie pulled slightly loose. He had been assigned to the southern stairwell with Fin. Nick had the service elevator with Amanda. Straightforward positions, no overlap, no reason for Nick to have spent the last twelve minutes noticing the pale strip of skin visible at Sonny’s throat.
There had been no reason for him to notice most things about Carisi before the morning he carried him over Manhattan.
Now Nick knew the exact sound of Sonny’s laughter when the ground fell away beneath him. He knew how quickly fear became wonder in his body, the moment his grip changed from desperate to trusting. He knew the weight of Sonny held against one arm, the warmth of his cheek through a mask, the way he had touched the spot Spider-Man kissed for the rest of the morning as if the affection might vanish if he stopped checking for it.
Three weeks had passed. Nick still woke remembering Sonny’s breath against his neck.
Sonny glanced over and caught him staring.
Nick looked toward Olivia before the warmth crawling beneath his collar could betray him. The mask was folded small beneath his undershirt, compressed into the hidden seam of the suit he wore under his clothes. It had been easier to flirt with Sonny while anonymous. Behind white lenses, Nick could offer him every reckless thought and make it sound like a joke. Uncovered, he could barely hold Sonny’s gaze without becoming conscious of his own mouth.
The pressure behind his teeth returned.
This time it sharpened.
Nick heard the sound a heartbeat later: a door opening on the third floor, too distant for anyone else in the loading bay to register without the surveillance feed. Then hurried footsteps. Not Dawes’s measured gait from the recordings. Lighter. Faster. Running.
He turned his head toward the ceiling.
Amanda’s eyes flicked to him. Her face stayed neutral, but her fingers touched the cuff of her sleeve twice—the unobtrusive signal they had built between them after she found Spider-Man bleeding on her fire escape and learned that keeping Nick alive required its own language.
What is it?
Nick listened. A muffled cry. The strike of something heavy against a wall. A man cursed, followed by the electronic beep of a service door being forced open.
Third floor, Nick mouthed.
Olivia lifted one finger to her earpiece. “Surveillance, report.”
Static answered.
The warning flared across Nick’s skull.
He moved before he could explain. “Rear exit,” he said, already backing toward the shadowed corridor beside the freight elevator. “Somebody’s coming down.”
“Amaro—” Olivia began.
Amanda stepped into Nick’s place, drawing everyone’s attention with the scrape of her shoe. “I heard it too,” she lied. She pulled her weapon and nodded toward the kitchen. “I’ll take the loading bay. Amaro checks the alley.”
Nick was through the door before Olivia could revise the order.
He ran past stacked crates and industrial bins, stripping off his coat as he went. The narrow passage ended beside a locked storage room. He broke the latch with two fingers, slipped inside, and closed the door behind him. His shirt followed his coat. Trousers, shoes, holster. He hid everything above a ceiling tile with the practiced speed of a man who had undressed in alleys, stairwells, public bathrooms, and once inside a refrigerated delivery truck full of cod.
The mask unfolded in his hands.
For one moment, Nick stared at it.
Then another cry pierced the floors above them.
He pulled the mask over his head and became someone the city believed could always arrive in time.
Spider-Man opened the service door, planted one foot against the wall, and ran upward.
The stairwell should have been empty.
Sonny knew that because Fin was one landing below him, because Olivia’s last instruction had been so explicit it practically came with a threat, and because their entire operation depended on Dawes believing the hotel remained secure. He knew it while pushing through the third-floor door anyway.
The man he had seen in the corridor was not Dawes. He was one of the men from the surveillance photographs, a driver who was supposed to be in Queens. He had come out of the service elevator with blood on one cuff and a phone clenched in his hand. Then he had looked directly at Sonny and run.
Sonny followed far enough to see him turn toward the west wing.
“Carisi,” Fin warned through the radio, keeping his voice low. “Wait for me.”
Sonny slowed near an intersection in the corridor. Soft gold lamps washed the hotel walls. The thick carpet swallowed every footstep, leaving the floor with a sinister, staged stillness. On one side, a linen cart sat abandoned beside a bank of service doors. On the other, numbered guest rooms stretched toward the elevators.
The driver had vanished.
Sonny touched his radio. “West corridor. I lost visual.”
Something shifted above him.
He looked up.
Spider-Man clung to the ceiling with his body folded close to the plaster, red and blue vivid against expensive cream paint. The white lenses fixed on Sonny. One finger rose where his mouth would be.
Sonny’s heart struck hard enough to hurt.
Three weeks earlier, Spider-Man had dropped into an alley and offered him a ride to work. Since then, Sonny had endured his sisters replaying footage of the precinct-window arrival at Sunday dinner, Fin asking whether his “boyfriend” planned to reimburse the department for a damaged sash, and Amanda watching him with a private amusement she refused to explain. None of it had diminished the memory of Spider-Man’s arm around his waist or the brief, gentle kiss near the corner of his mouth.
Seeing him now did not feel like surprise. It felt like the instant in a dream when gravity remembered him.
Spider-Man dropped soundlessly to the carpet.
“What’re you doing here?” Sonny whispered.
The masked head tilted. “Good to see you too, Counselor.”
Before Sonny could correct him, Spider-Man’s attention snapped toward the corner.
His entire body changed. The loose, irreverent posture disappeared. One hand shot around Sonny’s waist as voices approached from the adjoining hall.
Sonny had time to feel his shoes leave the floor.
Then Spider-Man opened a narrow service door and pulled them both into darkness.
The closet had been designed for folded towels, not two grown men and the consequences of Nick’s poor judgment.
His back struck shelving. Bottles rattled beside his shoulder. Sonny collided with him a fraction later, propelled by the same arm Nick had locked around his waist. Nick caught the back of Sonny’s head before it could hit the wall and turned them by instinct, placing his own body between Sonny and the door.
The door clicked shut.
Darkness enclosed them.
The space smelled of starch, bleach, and the clean mineral trace of rain carried in on Sonny’s shirt. Nick could see perfectly well. That was unfortunate. He saw Sonny’s eyes widen, the sharp rise of his chest, and the tiny parting of his lips before he drew breath to speak.
Nick covered his mouth.
“Not a word,” he breathed beside Sonny’s ear.
Footsteps rounded the corner outside.
Sonny went still.
Nick had held him this close before. The difference was that the sky had given them somewhere to move. Wind and speed had made necessity of every touch. Sonny had clung to him because Manhattan was six stories below, and Nick had been able to pretend that the racing heart beneath his palm belonged entirely to fear.
Here, neither of them had anywhere to go.
The shelves pressed between Nick’s shoulder blades. Sonny’s back rested against the door. Their chests met along every breath, separated by a dress shirt and the thin technical weave of the suit. One of Nick’s thighs had slipped between Sonny’s legs when he turned them. His left hand cradled Sonny’s head; his right covered Sonny’s mouth. Sonny’s palms were trapped against Nick’s ribs, fingers spread as though he had meant to push and forgotten how.
Outside, two men stopped near the closet.
“Dawes says move her now,” one of them muttered. “Cops are downstairs.”
The second man cursed. “Driver got made.”
Nick catalogued the information automatically. Two voices. One standing closer to the door, weight favoring his right leg. The faint brush of metal against wool beneath his jacket. Armed. The other carried a hotel keycard and smelled of cigarette smoke. Their heartbeats were elevated but controlled.
Sonny’s was neither.
It raced against Nick’s senses, too fast and too close, every beat traveling through Sonny’s body into his. Nick could hear the shallow pull of air through Sonny’s nose. He could feel the heat of Sonny’s breath gathering against his gloved palm. Beneath the sharp odors of cleaning chemicals were coffee, aftershave, and the warm human scent Nick remembered from above the rooftops.
His thumb rested at the corner of Sonny’s mouth.
The realization arrived slowly and then all at once.
Nick began to lower his hand.
His glove dragged lightly over Sonny’s lower lip.
Sonny inhaled.
The sound was minute. It ran through Nick like a live wire.
His hand should have fallen to his side. Instead, it settled against Sonny’s throat, fingers curving beneath his jaw as though Nick needed to feel the pulse he could already hear. Sonny’s eyes lifted to the white lenses. His pupils had widened in the dark.
Outside, a radio hissed.
Neither man moved.
The armed suspect spoke too quietly for Sonny to understand, but Nick heard the instruction relayed through the earpiece: take the girl through the west service elevator. Three minutes.
Three minutes was too long to remain like this.
It was also nothing at all.
Sonny’s fingers flexed against Nick’s ribs. The fine material of the suit transmitted the pressure with cruel precision. Nick felt the shape of every fingertip, the hesitant scrape of a thumbnail, the slight tremor Sonny tried to suppress.
Nick lowered his covered mouth toward Sonny’s ear. “Stay still.”
He meant the words as a warning. With his voice roughened by the mask and his body fitted against Sonny’s, they became something else.
Sonny’s pulse jumped beneath Nick’s hand.
Heat moved low through Nick’s stomach. He closed his eyes behind the mask, an utterly useless gesture when he could still sense every inch of the man in front of him.
The footsteps outside shifted. One suspect moved farther down the hall. The armed man remained near the door.
Sonny turned his face by a fraction. His cheek brushed the fabric covering Nick’s mouth.
“You’re the one holding me,” he whispered.
Nick tightened his grip before common sense could intervene. His fingers spanned Sonny’s jaw; his other hand remained firm around his waist, thumb anchored in the shallow curve above his hip.
“You were about to announce us to the floor,” Nick murmured.
Sonny’s mouth moved close enough for Nick to feel it through the mask. “I was gonna ask what you’re doing in the middle of an NYPD operation.”
“Helping.”
“You dragged a detective into a closet.”
“Still helping.”
The words faded, swallowed by the charged quiet between them. Sonny’s gaze searched the featureless mask as if irritation alone might make it transparent. Nick was grateful it could not. His uncovered face would have confessed everything: hunger, fear, and the humiliating tenderness that came whenever Sonny looked at Spider-Man as though the mask contained someone worth discovering.
Sonny shifted his weight.
His thigh slid higher between Nick’s.
Pleasure struck without warning—nothing more than pressure, filtered through the suit, but intimate enough to tear a breath from Nick before he caught it. His hips moved back instinctively and collided with the shelf. A plastic bottle tipped behind him. Nick caught it without looking and webbed it silently into place.
Sonny had gone completely motionless.
Nick opened his eyes.
Sonny’s gaze had dropped to where their bodies met. Color climbed from the open collar of his shirt to his cheeks. There was no possible way for the thin suit to hide Nick’s response to him, and no room in which to conceal it. Nick could only hold himself rigid, desire becoming another dangerous thing he was responsible for containing.
“Sorry,” Sonny whispered.
He did not move his leg.
Nick stared at his mouth. “You didn’t do anything.”
The words came out harsher than he intended.
Sonny’s eyes lifted. Something in them changed—not embarrassment disappearing, but being overtaken. Curiosity warmed into recognition. The air between them seemed to narrow further.
His fingers, still resting against Nick’s ribs, began to move.
They traveled upward by inches. Over the web pattern crossing Nick’s chest. Along the defined line beneath it. Sonny touched him with the caution of someone approaching a skittish animal, though Nick was the one who could bend steel and hear blood moving beneath skin. When Sonny’s palm reached the emblem at the center of his chest, it stopped directly over his heart.
Nick’s heartbeat betrayed him just as thoroughly.
Sonny felt it.
His lips parted.
“You nervous?” he asked, so quietly the question was almost breath.
Nick could have lied. Behind the mask, lying was easy. It had become the architecture of his life: excuses for bruises, invented errands, missed calls, smiling denials offered to people he loved because honesty might paint targets across their backs.
But Sonny’s hand was over his heart.
“Should I be?” Nick asked instead.
Sonny’s thumb moved once against his chest. “Don’t know. You’re the one who put us like this.”
Nick’s hand at his waist flexed. “Could move.”
He made no attempt to do so.
Sonny noticed. The faintest smile touched his mouth—not amusement, exactly, but something uncertain and emboldened by being wanted.
“Could,” Sonny agreed.
He stayed where he was.
The armed man remained outside. Nick could hear fabric shift as he leaned against the opposite wall. Any sound louder than a whisper might bring the door open. The danger should have cooled him. Instead, enforced silence stripped away every harmless place for his attention to go. No jokes. No swing through open air. No squad watching from across the room. Only Sonny’s body and the unbearable care with which he touched someone whose face he had never seen.
Sonny raised his other hand.
His fingertips found the seam of the mask beneath Nick’s jaw.
Nick’s spider-sense did not flare. His body recognized no threat. That frightened him more than any warning could have.
He caught Sonny’s wrist.
Sonny stopped immediately.
For a heartbeat, neither breathed. Nick could have pushed his hand away. Instead, he guided it higher and pressed Sonny’s palm against the side of his covered face.
The tenderness of it hollowed him out.
Sonny’s fingers curved along his jaw. His thumb rested near Nick’s cheekbone, tracing nothing but red fabric and the shape beneath it. He did not tug at the mask. He did not ask for what Nick could not give. His hand simply remained there, warm enough that Nick imagined he could feel it without the barrier.
Nick turned his face into the touch before he could stop himself.
Sonny’s expression softened.
Everything loud inside Nick went quiet.
There were people beyond the door. An operation collapsing around them. A frightened girl waiting in a hotel suite. Amanda downstairs covering a disappearance that would become harder to explain by the minute. Nick held all of it somewhere in the disciplined portion of his mind trained to keep moving through catastrophe.
But another part of him—the older, lonelier part—stood in a dark closet and let Sonny Carisi hold his face.
Sonny’s thumb swept once over the mask.
The white lenses narrowed as Nick’s eyes closed beneath them.
When he opened them again, Sonny was looking at the shape of his mouth.
Nick knew what the mask revealed. It hid his eyes and flattened his expression, but the fabric stretched close over his lips. He had kissed Sonny through it once, high on the cheek, taking only the affection he could disguise as playfulness. For weeks afterward he had remembered the give of Sonny’s skin beneath his mouth.
Now Sonny leaned forward.
Barely.
The hand against Nick’s face remained gentle. His other palm pressed more firmly over Nick’s heart, perhaps steadying himself, perhaps feeling how violently it answered. His thigh stayed between Nick’s legs. Their noses brushed, smooth fabric meeting warm skin.
Nick lowered his head.
Sonny’s breath passed over the covered shape of his lips.
One inch, perhaps less, remained between them. Nick could cross it without exposing anything except how much he wanted this. He could let Sonny kiss the mask and tell himself it belonged to Spider-Man, not the man who sat across from him at the precinct and pretended indifference. He could take the moment home, turn it over through sleepless nights, and imagine the barrier gone.
But Sonny deserved to kiss a man who was not lying to him with his entire face.
Nick stopped.
Sonny stopped too.
They hovered there, close enough that each breath became shared. The absence of the kiss acquired shape and weight. It existed between their mouths like something alive, something neither dared touch because touching it would change every encounter that followed.
Sonny’s fingers tightened at Nick’s jaw.
Nick’s thumb slipped beneath the hem of Sonny’s shirt.
It happened accidentally, the fabric displaced by the way Nick held his waist. One gloved fingertip met bare skin.
Sonny shuddered.
The movement traveled through both of them. Nick’s restraint frayed with a nearly physical sound. He wanted to place his mouth against the pulse in Sonny’s throat. He wanted to learn whether Sonny would laugh against him or go quiet. He wanted the mask gone and needed it to remain. He wanted too many contradictory things, all of them sharpened by the hand cradling his covered face as though Sonny already knew tenderness would undo him faster than desire.
The closet handle moved.
Nick reacted before thought.
He turned, covering Sonny with his body, and caught the handle before the latch disengaged. His palm adhered to the metal. Outside, the armed suspect pulled once, then harder.
Nick held the door closed without visible effort.
Behind him, Sonny’s chest pressed to his back. One hand landed at Nick’s hip. The other gripped his shoulder. His breath warmed the nape of Nick’s neck through the suit.
The suspect rattled the handle.
“Occupied,” Nick called softly.
Sonny’s forehead dropped between his shoulder blades. Nick felt silent laughter shake through him.
Outside, the man swore. His radio chirped with a sudden burst of voices. “They’re moving,” somebody reported. “Now.”
The pressure in Nick’s skull detonated.
Gunfire cracked from the west end of the floor.
The suspect released the handle and ran.
Amanda’s voice came through Sonny’s radio, clipped and controlled. “Move in. Victim’s in three-twelve.”
The operation rushed back into the closet all at once.
Nick released the door. Sonny stepped away from him, though there was nowhere meaningful to go. The loss of contact felt abrupt and strangely cold.
Nick turned.
Sonny’s hand remained on his shoulder. His lips were flushed from where Nick’s glove had passed over them. His tie hung crooked; the open collar of his shirt revealed the quick movement of his pulse.
For several seconds, they only looked at each other.
“You should go,” Sonny murmured.
Nick glanced at the door. “Probably.”
Neither reached for it.
Sonny’s mouth curved despite the tension in his face. “You gonna let me out?”
Nick’s gaze returned to his lips. “Eventually.”
The radio sounded again. Fin called Sonny’s name with considerably less patience.
Sonny drew a careful breath, then smoothed both hands down the front of his shirt. The gesture did little to repair him. Nick watched his fingers fumble once at the knot of his tie.
Without thinking, Nick reached for it.
Sonny stilled.
Nick straightened the knot with slow, precise movements. He had done this on a rooftop the morning of their flight, using tenderness because Spider-Man could touch Sonny in ways Detective Amaro never allowed himself to. The familiarity registered in Sonny’s face. His gaze narrowed slightly, thought gathering behind it.
“You always fix people’s ties?” Sonny asked.
Nick’s hands paused at his collar.
The truth was one careless answer away.
He flattened the tie against Sonny’s chest. “Only when they dress in the dark.”
Sonny stared at him.
Nick opened the closet door before recognition could find a name.
The corridor exploded into movement.
Two uniforms rushed past the intersection. A hotel guest crouched against the wall with both hands over her head. Fin emerged from the stairwell and drove one suspect into the carpet, wrenching his arms behind his back. At the far end of the hall, the armed driver raised his weapon toward the officers outside room 312.
Nick fired a web.
The gun tore out of the man’s hand and struck the ceiling. A second web caught him across the chest and flung him backward against a housekeeping cart. Towels burst upward around him in a cloud of white.
Sonny drew his weapon and moved toward the suite.
Another man came through the door, shoulder lowered, and collided with him before Nick could web his legs. Sonny struck the wall. Nick crossed the distance without remembering how. He caught the suspect by the back of his jacket, lifted him cleanly from the floor, and stuck him face-first to the opposite wall.
Then Nick turned to Sonny.
His hands went first to Sonny’s shoulders, then his ribs, checking for injuries with an urgency that belonged neither to a casual ally nor a masked stranger. Sonny allowed it for one suspended moment. His chest rose beneath Nick’s palms.
“I’m fine,” he said, voice low.
Nick knew. He could hear the steady rhythm of Sonny’s heart beneath the adrenaline. He could see no sign of serious injury. Still, his hand traveled to Sonny’s waist, returning to the place it had occupied in the closet as naturally as breath.
Sonny looked down at it.
Nick removed it.
Fin appeared beside them with the restrained driver. His gaze passed from Sonny’s disordered clothes to Spider-Man’s hand hovering uselessly near his side.
“You two done?” Fin asked.
Sonny cleared his throat. “We found the west route.”
“That what they call it now?” Fin muttered.
Before Sonny could answer, Olivia called from inside the suite. The girl had been found alive in the bathroom, shaken and bruised but physically stable. The news cut through everything else. Sonny’s expression changed at once. He holstered his weapon and went to help, desire yielding to the gentle competence Nick admired long before he admitted the admiration had become something more dangerous.
Nick watched him kneel several feet from the girl and introduce himself in a voice made soft for frightened people.
Amanda came down the corridor.
She took in Nick’s suit, the webbed men, and Sonny crouched inside the suite. Her attention settled on the pale line of lint crossing Nick’s chest where Sonny’s shirt had rubbed against him.
One eyebrow lifted.
Nick pointed toward the armed suspect. “He was trying to move the victim.”
Amanda stopped beside him. “Wasn’t gonna ask about him.”
“Don’t.”
Her gaze dropped briefly to his hips before returning to the mask. Amusement flickered across her face with merciless clarity.
Nick webbed the nearest suspect’s mouth when he began shouting.
Amanda’s smile widened. “Productive few minutes?”
“Rollins.”
“Amaro’s checking the alley, by the way,” she continued, keeping her voice low enough that only his enhanced hearing could catch it. “He’s been checking it a while. Better hope he didn’t fall in a dumpster.”
Nick looked toward the window at the end of the hall.
Behind Amanda, Sonny rose from beside the victim. His gaze found Spider-Man immediately.
The charged quiet from the closet stretched between them across the ruined corridor.
Nick stepped onto the windowsill.
Sonny moved as if he might follow, then stopped himself. His fingers touched his crooked tie.
Nick fired a web toward the opposite building and swung away before wanting could make him reckless.
Twenty-seven minutes later, Detective Nick Amaro returned to the third floor wearing his shirt buttoned too high and an expression he hoped suggested irritation rather than catastrophic sexual frustration.
The suspects had been taken downstairs. Crime-scene technicians worked through the suite. Olivia stood near the elevators speaking with hotel security while Fin collected statements. Amanda leaned against the wall beside Sonny, both holding paper cups of coffee.
Sonny’s gaze moved over Nick as he approached.
Nick felt it like a hand.
“Rear alley was clear,” he reported to Olivia.
She looked at him for a long moment. “For half an hour?”
“Security doors locked behind me.”
Amanda drank her coffee to hide her face.
Olivia’s suspicion remained, but the victim needed her attention more than Nick’s inconsistencies. She handed him a task involving hotel footage and walked away.
Fin followed after her, murmuring something about patrol officers who knew how to use phones.
That left Nick, Amanda, and Sonny in the corridor.
Amanda looked between them. Sonny’s tie remained imperfectly straight. Nick had retied his own in the storage room with hands that would not stop remembering the shape of Sonny’s waist.
“I’m gonna check on the girl,” Amanda announced.
Nick gave her a flat look.
“Take your time,” she added, and disappeared into the suite.
Silence settled.
Sonny studied Nick over the rim of his cup. There was a faint mark beside his mouth where the textured glove had dragged across his skin. Nick forced himself not to stare at it.
“You missed him,” Sonny said eventually.
Nick turned toward the technicians. “Who?”
“Spider-Man.”
The name sounded different in Sonny’s voice now. Less like admiration directed toward a distant hero. More private.
Nick slid his hands into his pockets. “Heard he helped.”
“That what Amanda told you?”
“Among other things.”
Sonny’s eyes narrowed. For one alarming moment, Nick thought Amanda might actually have told him something. Then Sonny looked down at his coffee, thumb moving along the cardboard seam.
“We got stuck somewhere,” he murmured.
Nick made his expression politely blank. “Stuck.”
“Small room.”
Heat climbed the back of Nick’s neck. “Sounds traumatic.”
Sonny glanced up. The beginning of a smile appeared, but his gaze remained searching. “Wasn’t the room.”
Nick’s mouth went dry.
The hallway bustled around them, providing cover neither man used. Sonny stepped closer—not enough to draw attention, only enough that Nick caught his warmth and the trace of aftershave beneath hotel coffee.
For one impossible second, Nick thought Sonny knew. Not the facts, perhaps, but the shape of him. The grip at his waist. The way he fixed a tie. The rhythm of dry answers offered in place of truth.
Sonny lifted one hand.
Nick held still.
His fingers stopped short of Nick’s collar, then diverted to brush a piece of white lint from his shoulder.
There was no reason for linen from a third-floor closet to be on the clothes Nick had supposedly worn in the alley.
Sonny looked at the thread lying across his fingertip.
Nick’s heartbeat struck once, hard.
Then a technician called Sonny’s name from inside the suite.
Sonny folded the lint between his fingers and slipped it into his pocket.
“Later, Amaro,” he said.
The words held no accusation. That made them worse.
Nick watched him walk away.
Near midnight, Sonny stood on the precinct roof with his forearms resting against the low wall and Manhattan spread beneath him.
Nick found him there because he had spent the last four hours telling himself he would not.
Spider-Man descended on a web without sound and landed several feet away. Sonny did not turn. Wind moved through his hair and tugged at the open edges of his coat.
“You keep hiding on rooftops,” Nick said. “People are gonna think you want me to find you.”
Sonny’s head tilted. “Maybe I wanted some air.”
“Plenty of that up here.”
“Usually less commentary.”
The familiar rhythm should have restored the distance between them. It did not. The closet remained inside every pause, close and dark and unfinished.
Nick moved to the wall beside him. Their shoulders nearly touched.
Sonny looked out over the city. “You left fast.”
“You had it handled.”
“That why?”
Nick studied his profile. The cold had reddened the tip of Sonny’s nose. His mouth was no longer marked by the glove, though Nick could see the memory of it anyway.
“The girl needed detectives,” Nick replied.
“And the closet?”
There it was.
Nick leaned one hip against the wall and folded his arms. “Needed better ventilation.”
Sonny laughed under his breath, but the sound faded quickly. He turned at last. His attention traveled over the mask, lingering on the covered mouth.
“You could’ve kissed me.”
Nick’s fingers tightened against his arms.
The city seemed to fall away below them. He heard traffic, aircraft, music leaking from an apartment six buildings over, and thousands of heartbeats layered into a vast living hum. Sonny’s remained the only one he could not push into the background.
“You could’ve kissed me,” Nick answered.
Sonny glanced down, tongue passing briefly across his lower lip. The unconscious movement tightened every muscle in Nick’s body.
“Couldn’t tell if you wanted it,” Sonny admitted.
“You couldn’t?”
The question left rougher than he intended.
Sonny’s gaze sharpened. “Hard to read your face.”
Nick stepped closer.
He did not touch Sonny. That restraint felt more intimate than touching him might have. Only a narrow channel of cold air remained between their bodies, enough to preserve the fiction that this was conversation rather than temptation.
Sonny tipped his chin upward.
Nick reached for his collar.
The fabric had folded inward beneath the coat. Nick eased it free, smoothing it into place with the backs of his knuckles. His hand lingered beside the pulse in Sonny’s throat.
Sonny held perfectly still.
“You’ll figure me out, Detective,” Nick murmured.
Sonny’s eyes searched the white lenses. “That a promise?”
Nick’s thumb grazed the edge of his jaw.
It was all he allowed himself.
He stepped backward, fired a web, and left the rooftop before Sonny could see how close he had come to breaking.
The arc carried Nick across the street. He landed badly on the next building, one knee hitting gravel, his palm skidding against the ledge. There was no danger in it. His body could absorb far worse. Still, he remained crouched there while the wind pressed cold hands against him.
Across the distance, Sonny stood where Nick had left him.
His fingers rose to the place beneath his jaw Spider-Man had touched.
Nick watched until Sonny finally went inside.
The following morning, Nick was halfway through a report when Sonny reached across his desk for the Stapler.
Their hands touched.
It was nothing: two knuckles brushing, skin against skin, a contact too ordinary to deserve attention. Nick’s body recognized him anyway. Heat moved up his arm with the same vicious immediacy as Sonny’s thigh sliding between his in the dark.
Both men stopped.
Sonny looked at their hands. Then at Nick.
Without the mask, Nick had nowhere to hide except habit. He loosened his fingers and let Sonny take the stapler.
“Thanks,” Sonny murmured.
Nick nodded because his voice could not be trusted.
Sonny returned to his desk. He sat down, opened a file, and did not read a single line of it.
Across the aisle, Amanda watched them over the top of her computer.
She waited until Sonny became absorbed in pretending not to stare at Nick. Then she rolled her chair close enough to speak beneath the room’s noise.
“How long were you in that closet?” she asked.
Nick kept his eyes on his report. “Three minutes.”
Amanda considered the answer. “Gonna be a long year.”
Nick looked across at Sonny.
Sonny was already looking back.
Neither of them looked away.