Who: Teen!Sam and Goblin!Neil What: A visit gone wrong. Where: Gwen & Flash's apartment, NYC. When: Recently. Warnings/Rating: Creepy. Some minor violence.
Oscorp was where Neil had found himself when the madness hit.
In one of Norman’s off-the-record labs, deep below in the basement, and he’d barely had time to acclimate himself to his surroundings before the voice kicked in. Normally, Norman and Goblin were two halves of a whole shoved into his mind. It sucked, but he still maintained most of his sanity, and most of himself. But now Norman wasn’t there, exactly, not in the same way, and like a botched surgery Goblin had been amputated and then sewed messily onto the other half of him, Neil Donovan, like he was a fucking substitute for Osborn or something. It wasn’t just a voice in his head now. Not anymore. No, it was a part of him, and what terrified him the most was that, for as much as he wanted to fight it, he also didn’t.He wanted to embrace it. Don’t fight me, it coaxed. I’m you now. You’re me. While Norman’s gone, you and I are going to be the best of friends.
He was fighting a losing battle, that much was obvious. From his conversation with Sam, to Louis, and everything else, he kept losing, and by the time he’d made it to the address Sam had given him, well, there wasn’t a chance in hell that Neil was going to be able to stop this. He wasn’t himself here. He was different. Better, even. All the things Norman had done to himself; the experiments , the serums, he felt the effects of everything. The power he had. Why fight it, when there was so much potential here? Teenagers, all of them, and the not-Spider couldn’t stop him. Oh, he could try, which was half the fun, but he’d fail Miserably. Horribly. Messily.
Norman wanted to make the brats pay for poisoning Harry’s mind. Maybe these ones weren’t them, exactly, but he could always get a head start and let the other man finish the job once he went through the Door into Vegas. Start with the blonde, Goblin told him, and he agreed. She was step one. From her, he could get to the redhead and the football player and, finally, the little web-slinger himself.
And yet, a part of him still hesitated when he reached the apartment. He could leave, now, make himself cross, and hope Norman was harmless as a kitten in Vegas. He could, yes, but he didn’t. Instead, he knocked on the door with a smile and laughter echoing in the confines of his mind, where no one could hear it but him.
The apartment was appropriately shitty. It was the kind of place two teenagers with nothing between them could afford, and it reminded Sam of being back home, which was hella appropriate since, hello, younger. Five years, give or take, she guessed, based entirely on her hips and the size of her rack and, yeah, ok, she could do this shit. Back at this age, things had been cool. Her loser of a husband had finally let her go work at the shop with her dad and brothers, and she'd finally managed to fuck people who didn't just climb on top of her with their fat fucking bellies and groan for thirty seconds. It was before Micah, and before all the lovesick shit in Vegas, and before addictions. Oh, she could remember all that shit, but it wasn't her. She didn't fucking feel it. Yeah, she was into the old guy that was coming over - ok, so more than into, but she didn't have all the fucking insecurities that old her had. She was pretty sure Lou had swan dived off something, and she had no fucking clue where her nutter sister was, but she didn't care. She didn't have to wind herself up in other people's shit to hide her own shit, because her own problems weren't really a problem. Yeah, being a teenager again was, in short, fucking epic.
And Sam had no fucking clue that Neil was weird. He acted normal, and she thought the idea of him being older was hot. She liked the grey that was already starting to line his temples, and more of it sounded fantastic. She had no idea who he had in his head, but it didn't fucking matter. He was coming to see her, which meant everything was a-ok, business as usual.
Now Gwen's closet, that was a fucking problem for Sam. Hello skirt, hello skirt, hello fucking skirt. The girl was a total fucking snooze, but Sam managed to find an old pleated skirt, plaid, black and grey, and way too fucking short to even pretend to be decent. At least the nerd had some nice black panties to pair with it, and the knee highs were all kinds of dirty schoolgirl. Hell fucking yes. And in the end, the girl that obliviously answered the door was white knee-highs, a skirt that showed her underwear if she so much as breathed, and braless wifebeater stolen from robotdoc's not-closet.
Sam yanked the door open with the exuberance of youth, and she leaned against the frame as she looked Neil over. "Hey, baby," she said, all husk and seduction and the dirty eagerness of doing something taboo. None of her Vegas inhibitions in sight, she reached for his tie and pulled, wanting him out of the grimy hallway light, where she could see just how much older he actually was. "Fuck, you're even older than my husband," she said, and it sounded like a good thing.
The one thing Neil and Norman did have in common was a disgusting amount of wealth, which translated into only the finest, most expensive clothing. Normally, however, Neil didn’t make nearly as much of an effort as the other man, but things were different now. His clothing was crisp and impeccable, power and money and immunity all wrapped up in one human-sized package. His hair was brushed back, eyes were bright and clear, and even his typical stubble was neater than usual. Gold rings lined his fingers; not his, Norman’s, including a bulky one from back in Norman’s university graduate days, and a watch gleamed on his wrist, probably worth enough to buy this entire apartment building on the spot. Needless to say, he very obviously stood out in a place like this. He knew he did, and he just didn’t care. As for the age difference, well, it showed in a couple of ways. Neil was no longer in his twenties, of course, but there was a gap of nearly two decades between him and Norman, which meant that his face looked a little older and his hair was thinner with more grey than before showing through; otherwise, however, he was in good shape.
That had more to do with self-experimentation and genetically created superpowers, but no one needed to know that just yet.
Under different circumstances, Neil probably would have found the Sam that stood before him attractive in a mildly disturbing sense considering the age difference between them. There was still a thread of that there, beneath the surface, but he mostly just felt disgust. Disdain. Mild apathy. The longer he looked, though, the more those emotions began to fade away in light of a manic sort of glee that grey stronger by the second. She was beautifully, tragically oblivious. Silly little thing. She should have squeezed the secret of Neil’s alter out of him when she had the chance. Oh well, too late for that now. “Hey, baby,” he echoed, forcing another grin as she pulled him into the apartment. “You look good.” Good enough to eat.
"Yeah?" Sam asked, all inappropriate tease and none of the fucking concerns that normally swirled around her head. Chloe? Fuck, Chloe. Her ghetto-status? Fuck that too. The fact that he was older, richer, smarter? None of that shit mattered. And, oh, yeah, Sam noticed all that fucking wealth. It was weird for Neil, but she just assumed whoever he had was loaded. She wasn't the brightest bulb in the box when she was older, but she was more action than thought at this age. So, yeah, she didn't tear it down or pick it apart. She just whistled, her fingers (uncalloused) moving to the rings on his hands. She yanked at the bulky ring, but she didn't take the effort needed to yank it off, in the end. She was too impatient, too totally floored by the suit and the hair, and everything that was different, while being weirdly the same. It was a brash thing, the way she stepped closed and brushed her hands over that grey in his hair. She didn't keep any distance between them, because fuck that, and she was curves and impossible youth pressed against him from chest to hip, that skirt climbing higher as she stretched to reach. Oh, yeah, she could get used to this.
"Isn't this so fucking weird?" Sam asked, rocking back onto her heels, but not adding any space between them. The hotel liked to do weird shit, but this was fucked up. But it wasn't worrisome. Maybe it would have been if she hadn't known nearly everyone in the neighborhood, but this door was packed with familiar faces. And he was here. It was like she'd told Aidan; Neil wouldn't let anything happen to her, so why the fuck waste time worrying.
Fuck that, and Sam's fingers went back to his tie, which she began to loosen with more deliberate intent. She managed it after a few seconds, with the kind of struggling laziness that spoke to not loosening a lot of ties in her life. "So, I'm going to help Elise cut up some of old man Osborn's dead wife's dresses after this, and then MK is throwing a party at Stark. And I know, I know, you're going to say no drugs and no drinking, but I want to go. It's going to be fucking awesome. Come with me?" she asked, going for the buttons of that pristine shirt after, one, by one, by one, and her stocking-covered toe sliding beneath the leg of his pants with more eagerness than finess. She considered mentioning Chloe, but yeah, no. Fighting was so not in her plans for the next half hour, and he might start lecturing.
Teenage Sam wasn’t so different than the regular one to the point of being unrecognizable. She was simply more... teenager-y, Neil reflected, even as she pressed against him and ran her fingers over his hair. Maybe, if she’d been her proper age, she might have seen what she was currently so very blind to when she looked at him. Then again, maybe not. In comparison to his own superior intelligence, she was no smarter than an animal, a basic being, so very uninteresting aside from where she fit into the bigger picture. A puzzle piece in a much larger puzzle. “Yeah,” he repeated, looking down at her with raised eyebrows and a smirk twisting at his lips. He realized, almost belatedly, that he wasn’t touching her, which he should have been. Didn’t want to show his hand too soon, did he? That skirt of hers was short enough that he brushed against skin when his hands found her hips, though he’d have much rather curled them around her throat and--
That thought snapped his mind clear, just for a moment, but it accomplished nothing. In fact, temporary lapses of sanity were even worse in the sense that, in them, he realized what he was capable of, what he would do, as well as his own inability to stop any of it. He’d rather feel none of that, than feel it and be helpless in the process.
“Weird,” he repeated. “Yeah, that seems to be the name of the game around here, doesn’t it? Shit like this is always happening. Go big or go home.” He was amused by the way she worked on his tie, but then she had to go and mention Osborn’s dead wife, and it took all his self-control to keep from screaming and throwing her across the goddamn room. Norman might not have been in the driver’s seat anymore, but Goblin was fond of his little ride-along, and the guy was weird about his long-lost bride. He’d loved her, as hard as that might be for some to believe, and so Neil took it upon himself to ensure no one cut up things that didn’t belong to them. Not to mention the fact that he had no idea who the fuck Elise was; the name was only distantly familiar, so much so that it might not have been at all. “I should say no, but hey, what the hell? Why not. I’ll come.” He grinned at her, all teeth. “What’s Elise want with old man Osborn’s dresses?”A casual question, one he sought to ensure she didn’t become suspicious over by tugging her sorry excuse for a skirt lower after he’d asked it. Only fair, after all, since she was making quick work of his buttons.
The smirk wasn't super familiar to Sam. She'd seen Neil smirk once or twice, mostly joking around, but she figured this new one was one she'd missed along the way. Because, yeah, she had spent the better part of the year completely fucked up. More of 2012 was a blur than she'd admit to him normally. Their relationship was screwed up enough that he might think that meant she hadn't wanted to get with him or something, which so wasn't true. And, anyway, the smirk was kind of sexy. She smiled when his hands found her hips, and she made a sound that was all teenage anticipation. "Did you mean what was in the letter?" she asked earnestly, because she was still her enough to remember it. It didn't occur to him, not for a second, that he didn't want her. Yeah, so that was different now, but it had changed before this too. While he was busy thinking about where he'd rather put his hands, she stretched up and pressed a messy kiss to his mouth, eager and adoring by turns. "I'm really into you," she said plainly, with the fearlessness of youth, in case she couldn't nut-up and say it later.
When he agreed that this shit was weird, Sam went back to work on his shirt. Cufflinks and cuffs, and then she reached up and pushed the fabric off his shoulders completely. Tug, tug, and she had him under the bald light in the living room. She was much more brazen this way, much more willing to look at him without having to hide the fact that she was doing it. She whistled slowly, a low whistle that was reminiscent of her days in construction work back in Vegas. "It's not so bad this time. After all this shit is some people's porn. It is kinda hot," she said of their age difference. She was too young to catch all the nuanced changes in his face when she mentioned the dresses, and his agreement to party crash with her made her think nothing in the world was wrong. The grin earned him a kiss, and maybe she liked it a little when he smiled like he could possibly ever be a dangerous fucker. "Oh, she's got Harry. We're friends. Remember her from the concert? She's the one who fucked Iris," she reminded him, and when he tugged down on her skirt, she stepped out of it entirely. Black underwear, knee highs and the worn-thin wifebeater left, she nudged him toward the couch. Yeah, so, maybe subtlety was lost on her at this age.
The letter. For a long, long moment, Neil drew nothing but blanks when he tried to remember what she was talking about. He should know. He did know. Think, think, and then it hit him, and he breathed a silent sigh of relief. Whew. “Of course I did, Sam,” he reassured her, though he would have preferred to call her Samantha. He--Goblin, whatever--liked full, complete names. They felt more important, like leverage. But she’d notice if he called her that, wouldn’t she? It was wrong. He settled for repeating the name over and over in his head, Samantha, a snake’s hiss mantra, and tried so very hard not to laugh when she said she was into him. “I know you are,” he told her, and swallowed down his own disdain to return the kiss in a way entirely opposite to hers, with no sign of anything eager and adoring or similarly youthful. It was like a slow stalk in his mouth on hers, slow and purpose with only a hint of something a little too hard.
Fortunately, there was nothing beneath his shirt to suggest that anything was amiss; unlike Connors, his experiments didn’t leave behind physical scars. “No, I guess it could be worse. Much, much worse.” He let his shirt linger, half on and half off, as he looked down at her, but the mention of Harry distracted him from her kiss. Harry. Harry should have stopped her, should have done something. Or maybe not. Norman wasn’t quite as powerful as he usually was, and since Harry lacked a certain amount of strength on a good day, maybe he was entirely powerless now. No matter; the majority of his hatred was directed towards Elise herself, and Sam, and all the rest. Oh, he’d show them a party, all right. “Right, I remember her,” he recalled, as though it was all coming back to him now. When she stepped out of the skirt, he let his shirt fall, down over his arms and to the floor despite how much it had cost.
“I know your alter,” he said, as she nudged him towards the couch, “but you don’t know mine. I’ve never told you, have I?” Neil tipped his head to the side before turned to nudge her instead of the other way around, and when they reached the edge of the couch he gave her a shove, just a little one, before following suit to position himself over her. “Do you want to hear about him?”
Sam beamed when he assured her that he meant what was in the litter, all gap-toothed teenager, a little more trusting than the one he knew, and much more eager and willing to believe whatever the fuck came out of his mouth. And, yeah, so maybe the fucking letter had made her feel like she mattered, like shit was real, and like Chloe didn't matter. And that showed on her face when he said he knew that she was into him. Older her might have thought it was fucked up that he didn't verbally agree with her, that he didn't her that he was into her too. But this version of her still took the letter as proof of that and, yeah, so he didn't say it. No big. As for the disdain that might have seeped into the kiss, she had no idea what that was like coming from him, and she was too used to getting it on with him while they were both fucked up to really register anything weird about the kiss. In fact, she liked it a little. It was kind of predatory in a hot way, and ok, yeah, she could get into this. Even the hardness didn't freak her out, not like it might have in the desert, and the whimper against his lips was genuine and something way too soft for the twenty-something version of her.
The fact that he remembered Elise reassured Sam, just another touchpoint that made her not realize that he was off. She ran her hands over his bare chest as she nudged him, and she stepped all over that fucking pristine shirt of his as she did. Neil never gave a shit about his clothes, and she stole all of them to work in, and to sleep in, and he never said anything about it; she didn't think anything of stepping all over the shirt that was on the floor. She was too busy focusing on him, all greedy hunger and no capacity to hide what she wanted from her youthful features.
The mention of her alter came completely out of left field, but Sam didn't worry about it. The nudging that came right after took priority, and she could so get used to this shit. The shove wasn't hard enough to make her run or flee, and she just dropped her hands to the waistband of his trousers when he positioned himself over her. "Let me guess?" she said, all spread thighs and one knee-high scrunching its way down her leg as she wrapped it around his hip with agile youth and flexibility. "He's some old, rich fucker who owns the world," she guessed, her fingers going to the watch at his wrist and loosening the heavy thing, which she intended to claim for her own. She tugged at it, wanting to get it past his hand. "And he's a confident sonofabitch, which I'm not complaining about either," she assured him, pointing out the marked differences with pleasure, inky blue eyes bright with the game she thought they were playing. "So, are you going to fuck me, baby? Because I think I sense a dominant streak."
This was nothing short of perfection. She was so disgustingly gullible, so willing to believe only what she wanted to believe and ignore the rest, that he almost felt it was too easy. Too simple. Neil would have liked a bit of a fight, but there was still time for that. Once the blinders were ripped off, who knew what would happen? Maybe she’d kick and scream and bite, like teenagers were known to do; little feral creatures in short skirts and makeup. Deep, deep down, somewhere inside, the part of Neil that was still him cringed when she beamed up at him, but he didn’t have enough strength to gain control, not even long enough to tell her to get out and run. Not even Norman had been able to fend off inevitable insanity, so what chance did he have? She was walking right into the psychopath’s trap and there would be no Spider-Man to come to the rescue, he knew that. Even if there was, it would just make him--this thing--whatever he was now, happier. He savoured the ignorance as he kissed her, so young and sweet, just begging to be corrupted. Pity he had no interest in fucking her like she wanted him to.
His fingers dug into the fabric of the couch on either side of her, all his weight held coiled and tight above her as he looked down, watching, drinking in the sight, his prey all splayed out so pretty for him. “You’re a good guesser,” he chuckled, gleaming eyes and the sharp curve of a smile as he realized she was hitting the nail right on the head save for a few minor details. “But there’s a couple of things you should probably know, see?” When she tugged at the watch round his wrist, he pulled free from her grasp and caught her wrist instead, one and then the other, his grip tight and firm as he pressed her hands back against the couch. He effectively had her pinned with his body, and she had no idea that whatever strength he’d had before was tripled here, enough to rival Spider-Man himself, and thus making him very difficult to move should she decide, at any point, that she didn’t quite like being trapped beneath him. “My alter isn’t just some rich, powerful son of a bitch. No, he’s so much more. And he’s got a friend, a head buddy, someone who showed up after a little experiment that went wrong. But in the end, it actually turned out better than it would have if everything had gone as planned. Because now? He’s a fucking unstoppable force of nature, and I’m him.” He grinned down at her. “Ask Gwen. She knows. She told Harry all about him, didn’t she?”
He let that hang there, let her absorb the enormity of the situation, before continuing. “I’m not going to fuck you,” he whispered, straining against her so his voice was a hiss of air in her ear. “But we’re still gonna have lots of fun, sweetheart.” And he emphasized his words with a sharp nip to her ear, enough to draw blood.
That gullibility was actually trust. Sam trusted Neil, and she didn't trust a lot of fucking people. Sure, younger her was more willing to say and cling and tell, but that was only because it was him, the walls were still there for everyone else. He was, simply, the only fucker she trusted on the planet on most days. Sure, she had her siblings, but they had their own lives, and more often than not she was patching them up. The same went for her friends, and it wasn't that Neil didn't have issues of his own (she knew he did). But, yeah, she was willing to let him past the walls, and willing to actually let him close enough to hurt, which made him different than everyone else on the fucking planet. Nah, she didn't see the trap coming. Even when he leaned over her, she still saw a game, because Neil was fucking harmless.
Sam had a moment where she appreciated how he looked just then, arms braced and something indescribable in the way his body was tensed. Determination? Intent? Whatever the fuck it was, it was hot, and she realized just how far she'd come since Micah and that fucked up shit in the spring, since Tristan and her fucking bruises, and for one last brief moment, everything was right with the world. For once, the hotel hadn't fucked her over, and she figured she was so due a fucking break.
But then it all changed. Sam liked it when he caught her wrist. She liked it enough to stretch up against him when he pinned her with his body, but something wasn't right, yeah? She tugged against his hand. "Are you stronger or-" Which was all she managed before he started going on about his alter in a tone that made her actually pay attention. It took less than a second for her trusting expression to shutter, less than a second for the walls to slam up with such force that her head actually jerked. It was Gwen that filled in the rest, all while muttering about where Loki's ring was, but Sam still couldn't believe this shit, and for split second she thought, hey, no big deal. Neil would control this guy. He'd controlled Erik, hadn't he? And this wasn't actually Norman, it was Neil. "What the fuck? Hey, Neil, baby-"
But that hiss in her ear made Sam go quiet, and fuck this shit. Oh, she was scared. Terrified, but she wasn't going to sit there and cry about it. "Neil, you motherfucker," she said, anger taking over that terror of being trapped that had been so pervasive since last year. Why hadn't he fucking warned her? She couldn't get her hands free, but she could turn her wrists and dig her nails into his hand and yank hard at skin, and she sure as fuck could kick, which she did when he bit hard enough that she felt a trickle of blood along her neck. "Neil, seriously, control this piece of shit now," she yelled, her voice shaking by the end of the demand. And then she turned her head, and she tried to catch whatever part of his face she could with her teeth.
Oh, yes, Neil had controlled Erik. But Erik was not a true villain, not a sadistic thing created in a test tube by mixing the wrong chemicals in the wrong manner and being injected into a human host where it could grow, mutate, become alive. Goblin was a separate entity in its own right, and it didn’t need Norman. Not now. And, really, if the great Norman Osborn hadn’t been able to fight the insanity, there wasn’t a chance in hell of Neil succeeding where he’d failed. It was a domino row of disaster, and all it took was one little touch to set everything in motion. All this time and no one had asked, no one had wondered, and it had all lead up to this; the great reveal. “Oh, now you get it, don’t you?” Neil watched her expression change, watched all that youthful trust break apart into a million pieces and then, then came the fear. He didn’t need to see her face to know that she was afraid. But he knew, too, that she would still fight, fear or no fear. He was counting on that.
“Now that wasn’t very nice,” he admonished, and now that the pretense was done, his voice changed. Warped, really, into something that was still Neil but madder, certainly less sane, manic and tinged with sadistic glee. “You should watch that tongue of yours, Samantha, or someone might just cut it out someday. Someone like me.” He laughed, and oh, he really did like this. Pity Norman couldn’t be here to share in the fun. Too late, too late; no amount of begging or pleading was going to stop this now. Like a normal man, he felt pain when she dug her nails into into his hand, but unlike any normal man, he didn’t yell or cry or even show any sign that it hurt him. “That’s right,” he hissed. “Fight me. Try to save yourself. I’d hate to be bored.” And there was a moment, just one, when he hesitated, and his features contorted into a frown, but then the little bitch was trying to bite him and the anger that came flooding forth overrode all else.
He yanked his head back and twisted her wrists, stopping just short of snapping them like meaningless little twigs. “Sorry, honey, Neil isn’t home right now,” he spat. “Tell Gwen I say hey. See, Norman needs me, but I don’t need him. Your boyfriend is more than enough.” He sacrificed his hold on one of her wrists to grab her throat, and he barely needed to exert much pressure at all in order to display exactly what he was capable of. Who needed a gun or a knife when his own bare hands were the deadliest weapons of all? “And you, Sam, are going to send a little message for me. I want your little friends to know what’s coming for them, on this side and the other. I wonder how many I can get to before a hero swoops in to save the day. What do you think?”
Yeah, Sam got it. She didn't like it, but she got it. If she'd known he wanted her to fight, she might have stayed there and forced herself to be fucking still, just to deny him the fucking pleasure of it. Yeah, well, she would have tried. But she probably wouldn't have succeeded. This was all too Micah, too Tristan. Even without the sex, and she could still taste him on her mouth, and she couldn't help the way she started to shudder. No. She couldn't lose her shit now. She couldn't fall apart now. This couldn't be an instant fucking replay of so many things from the last year, and maybe her eyes were starting to go wet with tears of fear and anger and betrayal (god, so much fucking betrayal), but she wouldn't just give in.
It took a few seconds for her to collect her shit enough to look at him, and he was mouthing off about her tongue then. It was hard, so fucking hard to look at him and deal with him being a cruel motherfucker. She wondered if she would be able to unsee it if she lived through this, but she pushed that fucking thought away; it wouldn't do any good just then. Instead, she spit in his face. And fuck him. She could tell then, while she fought, that he liked it, but she couldn't keep herself from fighting harder. If he was going to do this (and she assumed it would be some attempt to catch some spider asshole she'd never even met), then she was going to try to keep him from getting his jollies in the process. And she intended to leave bruises behind. The anger on his face when she bit him tasted a whole lot fucking better than the blood in her mouth did, and it was almost worth the feeling of sharpness that came with his heartless twisting of her wrists. Almost.
"He's there. I know he's there," she said of Neil, but it was bluff and bravado and so much hope that she couldn't even keep him from fucking seeing it. Even then, she still had a glimmer of trust that Neil would fight through, that he would fix this shit somehow. Gwen, in her mind, just went quiet, because she'd been warned, and she hadn't listened, which Sam knew now. It made her hope slip a little, and she wondered how many times she'd talked to this asshole in the past, how many times it had been him instead of-
But then his hands were on her throat, and she fucking froze. There was a few seconds of mental repetition (Not Micah) before he made his little command. And she laughed. It was intentional, forced, that laughter. "Fuck, you," she managed, and it was hard, it was so fucking hard with the bruising at her throat and too many fucking memories rushing back. She almost couldn't look him in the face, but she did in the end. "Fuck, YOU."
Her reaction was both unexpected and intriguing, since Neil had managed to keep some things private from the duo of insanity. Namely, what Sam had gone through with Micah, though he hadn’t been able to keep her overdose and subsequent issues a secret; it was ammunition neither Norman nor Goblin should have, but fortunately they hadn’t had the chance to use it against her and, now that they couldn’t puppet his body without drawing suspicion anymore, likely never would. But then again, after this, Neil might be enough of a disaster to ensure that gaining control would be a walk in the park. At the very least, Norman and Goblin would have free reign to be through the door whenever they pleased and do whatever they pleased. Either way, they won, and poor little Neil and his friends lost.
“Aw, is someone a little upset,” he began, all cruel tease and taunt, but then she dared to spit in his face, and that froze him cold for a few long moments. He closed his eyes, counted silently to five, and resisted the urge to rip her tongue out with his bare hands. It wouldn’t be difficult. Slippery, maybe, and incredibly messy, but not difficult. That, combined with the blood that trickled down his cheek and the sting that marked where her teeth had broken skin, well, it put him in a dangerous mood. “You know... that really pissed me off,” he remarked, eerily casual. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners?” He shook his head, almost regretfully. “Forget about your boyfriend, sweetheart. He doesn’t stand a chance. It’s tragic, really, but not even the great and powerful Norman Osborn can resist me.” Not that he’d wanted to, but hey, that was just a minor little detail in the grand scheme of things.
There it was again, when he closed his hands around her throat; that look in her eyes, like he’d hit a sore spot. “I thought we already established no fucking was going to happen here,” he chuckled. “But I can spare a kiss for my favorite blond. Well, second favorite. Gwen’s got you beat, sweetheart.” He winked, and the kiss that followed was all teeth, nothing gentle, biting and hard and painful. His hand tightened around her throat, briefly, before he pulled back and dragged her with him. “Alright. Time to get up.”
Sam fought harder during that period when he was frozen because, yeah, she knew she couldn't overpower this fucker, and it was a last-ditch effort at getting to Gwen's ring in the bedroom, wherever the thing was hiding. But she was losing hope, and she was getting to the point where all she wanted was to fuck him up before he relented. She actually didn't expect him to kill her. It had to be fucking worse for him if he killed her, right? Neil would be back eventually, yeah? And maybe her being dead would make him fight this bitch off. But as much as she didn't want to believe him when he said Neil couldn't fight him off, she had lost hope of that too. In the pit of her stomach, that ached, and she'd start crying if she thought about it for more than a second, and she wasn't going to give him the fucking pleasure. No fucking way.
And as hard as she tried not to freak out, not to show weakness, not to just fall apart beneath him, that kiss pushed her over the edge. Something snapped while he was biting her mouth, and she just started screaming. Thoughtless, maddened, completely fucking insane screaming. Just like Micah, she could do fuck all to fight him off, and it was all still too raw for her to deal with it, especially with the mind of a teenager than hadn't really faced life's bullshit yet. But the madness only lasted a few seconds, though it came with flying fists and kicking legs, and by the time his hand tightened on her throat to haul her up, she had gone eerily quiet. Yeah, ok. "Messages. Fine. I'll do it, just leave me the fuck alone," she pleaded. And, oh, god, she knew she was begging. She knew she'd gotten to the point where she just weak and useless, just like that fucking kitchen, but she wanted him to go. She'd do nearly anything if he just fucking left.
No, no, killing her would indeed be very bad. He wanted Neil under his control, but he didn’t want to drive the man to do something drastic like oh, say, blow his brains out or turn himself into the cops to ensure a nice, long prison sentence with Norman and co. trapped upstairs for the duration. There was no guarantee Norman would return, no guarantee that he wouldn’t just disappear into thin air; so no, death was out of the question. Not for the others, of course, but certainly for her. All that fighting just made his grin wider, despite the pain, made it turn teasing and mocking like he was amused by her efforts. But then, then she started screaming into the kiss, and he almost choked on his own laughter. Oh, he was going to leave her with a doozy of memories, wasn’t he? She was never going to look at her precious Neil the same way again. No one would. And with the severing of ties would come true victory, which tasted so, so sweet even before it had been won. Every blow, every kick, he absorbed it, used the sting and ache to his advantage; Venom hadn’t kept him down, a teenager girl and her frenzied flailing was hardly going to do much damage.
Neil smiled down at her when she went quiet. “Good girl,” he coaxed, all sweet and honey, even as he dragged her around by her throat. “It’s simple, really. I just want you to warn your little friends. Funny, isn’t it? Sometimes the element of surprise is nice, but other times...” He trailed off with a shrug. “Anyway. The redhead, her boyfriend, and the not-Spider. Leave Harry’s alter out of it. You tell them I’m going to tear this city apart, and when I’m done, I’ll kill each and every one of them. Not all at once, of course. I’ll draw it out over days, weeks, even, until the final act. Our hero will be last. Now, the fun part is that they don’t know which side I’ll do it on. Will Norman pick up the slack, while Neil here gets a head start? Or the other way around? Who knows.” He grinned down at her. “Got it?”
That sweetness in his voice was worse than the rest, and he was right to assume he'd leave a lot of fucking baggage behind. It was fucking cruelty, really, because Gwen could have taken this shit and walked away from it, but she couldn't. It was like that weakness all the fuck over again, but this time at the hands of the one person she trusted. No, Sam wasn't going to be ok after this bullshit. But she wasn't screaming anymore. She just nodded, even as she stretched her neck to take the pressure from his fingers away, and even as she tried to fucking breathe, when breathing was the last thing she felt like she could do.
Her journal was on the coffee table, and she reached for it, even as he grinned down at her. She nodded, because fuck if she could talk with the pressure at her throat. Yeah, she'd tell them. She was trying to figure out if she could hide a message to Louis in there, if she could call for fucking help that way. Reaching for the phone, she decided to just make the thing mistakenly public, at least part of it. And she was crying by then, and she felt like such a weak, useless piece of shit. She considered appealing to Neil one more time, but she didn't have it in her, so she just began to type.