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“Hey, I’m no curator, but I’m pretty sure visiting hours are over.”
The figure - a woman with blinding silver hair - turned back and smiled at him, clearly rather entertained by the show he had just put on with the Maggia. “You’re cute.” Under the vivid museum lights illuminating the exhibit she was currently invading, he would be lying if he said the feeling wasn’t mutual.
“And you’re breaking and entering.” She rolled her eyes, and he almost felt offended when she nonchalantly fiddled the beautiful green emerald between her fingers in front of him. “Just put that back where you found it and I can let you go.” She was quick to tuck it away in her knapsack with a smirk.
“Sorry, handsome. It matches my eyes.”
“Listen, pal, it’s been a long day, and I really don’t wanna do this. Just put the rock back and crawl away, and I won’t mention anything to the cops about a crazy lady in an uncomfortably tight-looking catsuit.”
She took a gentle bow, placing a hand on her hip and shifting her weight to one leg. “Call me Black Cat.”
“That mean I’m about to get some bad luck?”
“Well that, lover, depends entirely on what you plan to do next.”
It’s a weird game they play.
Peter doesn’t know if he can put a label on it, and Felicia doesn’t like labels. It’s not love, not if you’d ask either one of them. It’s not lust either, not entirely at least. It’s something else, something complicated, because nothing in Peter’s life can ever be anything but. It’s something somewhere in the little grey area between the two, but he’s never quite been able to nail down where.
He explains this to Harry, who doesn’t understand. “If you two want to date, just date,” he states, and Peter wishes it could be that simple.
He’s far from the first to question their dynamic: MJ, who’s looked out for him like a big sister, Lydia, who he still gets the feeling doesn’t entirely approve, Flash, who’s always gotten along surprisingly well with Felicia and given him the look on more than one occasion. Even May, who tries her best to stay out of his “teen drama”, would check in every now and then, at least until she got the message. He's never liked having to explain it to others because he truthfully doesn't really expect anyone who isn't Felicia to understand.
It’s more than sex. It’s more than the way she looks into his eyes, like she's trying so desperately to piece together the mystery he hides behind them. It’s more than the little smiles, the way their hands can’t seem to stay apart for long, the way they talk about things they can’t talk to anyone else about.
It’s passion, and it’s excitement. It’s spending long nights at her apartment, clothes scattered across the floor and fingers tracing light circles over her thighs while she tugs at his hair and whispers his name into his ear. It's waking up to her smile and lacking the will to look away. It’s addicting, and it’s forbidden, but it's theirs, and it’s fun.
But it’s not love. Peter won’t let it be. He can’t let it be.
Bad things happen to people that he loves.
He bumped into someone on his way to the dining hall.
“S-sorry, sorry,” he murmured, hands somewhat securely gripping her forearms for support. She shook her head and breathed out a small laugh.
“It’s alright.”
Her voice was oddly melodious. And she was pretty, too. Stunning green eyes, gorgeous silver hair, and a smoothness to her skin that made even the lightest of his features appear dull in comparison. She looked oddly familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it…
She must’ve caught him staring because a faint smirk stretched across her lips as she gave him a one-over. Peter cleared his throat and pulled away awkwardly with a blush.
“Sorry, have we met?” She took a second to think before responding.
“Dr. Kafka’s 9:35, right? It’s…”
He ran a hand through his hair and smiled sheepishly as her voice trailed off in thought.
“Peter. Peter Parker.”
The girl smiled, a hint of amusement in her eyes as she reached a hand out. “Felicia Hardy. Walk me to my car?”
She likes him.
Felicia likes him, in ways that she never expected to.
She likes his smile, likes his eyes. She likes the way he looks at her when they're together, even more when they're alone. She likes his attention, likes feeling like she’s always got it all to herself.
She likes that he comes to her. She likes that he talks to her, that he asks her for help, like she's his partner.
It scares her, how much she likes him. That first night together, she assumed that would’ve been the end of it. An instant of passion and nothing more, like countless other boys she’d so loved toying with before. But he’s different. He’s special.
He’s more. She let him be more.
If her father taught her anything, it was to look out for herself and herself alone. Keep moving, never stop for anyone. Life is a game, and victory goes to those who’ll take it. Attachment will only slow you down.
It’s why she hasn’t had a serious boyfriend before, why she’s slept with more boys than she’d care to admit and can’t remember any of their names to save her life. It means no disappointments, like the dad who’s never cared or the mom who’s always busy. But Peter’s different, and it scares her because she knows what different means.
Because she loves his smile, loves how he looks at her, loves even more the way he says her name, like she's the only person in his world worth saving.
Because the last time she loved someone, the only thing she got out of it was a burn.
So no. Felicia Hardy does not love Peter Parker. She just hates how much she loves being around him.
“Am I your first?”
The hand trailing up her spine missed a beat before continuing.
“No.”
She waited, hoping for a clarification, a clue to the story he’s so desperate to hide, but nothing came. His silence was deafening.
“That’s a shame,” she whispered, fingers dancing like flowers against his stomach. “One less thing for me to steal.”
Peter forced an amused huff out of it and went back to exploring her exposed back.
“Who was she?”
She could feel him tense up, as if he was waiting for that question. Felicia studied his face under shadowed light and waited, sensing the subtle shifts he tried to hide, the way his torso ran cold, the way his heartbeat quivered as his eyes made every attempt to avoid hers.
‘He won’t say’, she thought. And she was willing to leave it at that.
She felt his palm come to a rest at her small and laid her head back down onto his chest.
“Her name was Gwen.”
Peter Parker is more than he lets on.
The more time she spends with him, the more Felicia begins to take notice of this. There’s things about him she can’t help but grow intrigued by - things nobody else would think twice of yet she can’t seem to think enough of. The uneasy look in his eyes when he hears a plane flying above. The way his nose wrinkles at the distant sight of the Brooklyn Bridge.
There’s a great mystery to him, a story hidden behind glassy eyes. An enigma that she wants to be the first, the only, to solve.
Cats and their curiosity.
He told her once he had insomnia. What he didn’t mention were the panic attacks. She didn’t tell him that she already knew.
He whispers things in his sleep. Nonsense mostly, though the odd name does slip through. His body twitches, usually a leg or an arm but sometimes it’s more violent. Sometimes he groans like he’s being attacked. Sometimes he gasps.
Sometimes he wakes up, disoriented. He’ll take a second to feel himself, grasp at the warm fabric of the bedsheets below and sense the acute silence of the blackness all around him. Sometimes he’ll bury his face in his hands, or he’ll rub his eyes, or he’ll struggle to catch his breath. Then he’ll look at her, just to make sure she’s still there. Sometimes he’ll reach out and stroke her cheek. Sometimes he’ll run a hand through her hair, just to bask in the softness of it. She’ll feel his eyes, his touch, but she won’t say a word. Then he’ll go back to sleep, tugging the blanket further up his skin, and she’ll inch ever so slightly closer to him just to make sure he knows she’s still there.
He’s like this more nights than he’s not. She doesn’t mention it. She doesn’t wake him up when she feels him shaking, ask him questions when she hears him breathing. Because she gets it.
Because a long time ago, the world taught Peter Parker what it means to be alone, and though she really wishes she didn’t, Felicia knows exactly what that feels like.
“Do you have to go?”
He froze dead in his tracks, somewhere between sliding the pants of his suit back on. A part of him was looking to avoid this conversation.
“Do you have to go?” she repeated when he pulled the spandex up to his waist, like he didn’t hear her the first time.
He stole a glance at her gentle figure draped in blankets as the sirens grew fainter and felt something inside him churn. “You know I do.”
She reached out for his hand when he turned to the window and tugged it back, almost pleadingly. “Don’t go.”
His eyes lingered for a second, then shifted between her and the window. The sirens grew fainter as her discordant breaths took hold of his attention.
He weakly smiled before sliding his leggings back off and rolling under the sheets to kiss her again, surprised when she clung to him with more force than he’d taken her for, his thoughts racing a million miles a minute as he reassured himself that whatever was going on would be taken care of and shifted his focus to her uncomfortably vulnerable frame.
Peter’s gotten used to hiding a world of pain behind a fake smile. He just never expected Felicia to do the same.
Loneliness is a familiar taste.
Loneliness is going to sleep with her father kissing her good night and waking up hearing he died in a car crash. Loneliness is turning to look for a mother who can never make time. Loneliness is finding out that her dad’s alive, he’s been alive for the past seven years. Loneliness is finding out that he just didn’t want her as much as she wanted him.
There’s not many things in life Felicia’s afraid of, but loneliness tops the list.
It’s why she doesn’t call, doesn’t text, doesn’t see him all week. Not until she hears a gentle knock on her bedroom window and opens it to find him sticking to the wall, offering her a bag of takeout like she means something to him and sporting a smile that makes her heart ache.
It’s why she hates herself when she drags him into her room and kisses him hungrily, rips his shirt off and shoves him onto the bed without a care in the world for whatever fancy dinner he spent his week’s salary on to impress her.
It’s why she hates that he cares enough to stick around when they’re done, helping her with her homework and talking to her like they’re dating.
He’s a fling. Good for hot sex and a pretty face to look at when she’s bored. He’s not supposed to be more.
Felicia wonders when she started letting him be.
He wakes up wheezing.
They’re at his place this time, and it’s late, or early, or whatever. And he feels like he’s drowning, and the dark of his bedroom through quickly blurring eyes doesn't help much.
He looks to the side to see her still asleep, but he has to look away almost immediately because the light cracking through the worn-down glass on his wall makes her silver hair look so painfully golden and that deep blue cardigan she has on looks just like-
Peter’s quick to rub his eyes dry and sit up.
He doesn't know what's going through his head. Too many thoughts moving too fast for him to make sense of any of them. It's an odd mix of anger and fear, and an unnerving tingle in the back of his neck that's haunted him far longer than he’d care to admit.
There's a shuffling in the bed behind him, silent as a mouse but still enough to trip off his senses, and he tries his best to ignore the way her hair looks under the pale moonlight. She notices as much and frowns.
“You wanna talk about it?”
There’s a second where he considers telling her what he sees. Whispers in the dark, a single gunshot ringing in the distance. The distant hum of a car engine, muffled through dirty old glass doors and the rhythmic pattering of rain hitting the pavement outside. Twisted, sinister, eerie laughter, followed by the blinding flash of a pumpkin bomb.
The uncomfortable sense of déjà vu that rushes up to the tip of his spine whenever he kisses her.
Peter fakes a smile before sliding back under the blanket and gently fingering her hand. “I’m okay.”
He’s lying, and he wonders if she knows it. She does, of course, but doesn’t say anything. Because that’s just part of the game.
Neither likes how comfortable that game’s become.
She loves the feel of his face buried between her legs.
“Fuck,” she whispers out, arching her back and tightening her grip on his messy brown hair as he moves his tongue in just the right ways to make her melt into a pool of ecstacy all over him, gloved fingers digging into her bare thighs while she roughly grips his hair and struggles to recollect what little shreds of authority she still has over him in this state.
“ Peter, ” Felicia says, because their masks are lying to the side where her pants and his shirt are spread out, and it’s just them now, with a stolen diamond hiding in her unzipped jacket, and they’re high enough up that the glaring sirens are a distant hum, and nobody will ever hear the sounds she intends to hear him make, and it’s a little cold but she loves the feel of the wind against her skin, “ fuck me. Now.”
She gets off of him and crawls down till she’s by his waist, letting him catch his breath and sit up to watch her. Peter shudders as she slowly tugs his pants down till they’re barely resting at his ankles, feeling the wind blow over him in places he’d rather it didn’t. “There’s better ways to ask than robbing a museum,” he murmurs halfheartedly.
There’s a claw pressed to his lips before he can say anything else, and she tilts his chin up to face her as she straddles his lap and grips him.
"This is more fun," Felicia says, and Peter can't help but huff as her lips descend onto his once again, not giving him so much as a second to retort.
It's a fake solution, she thinks to herself. She'll keep meeting him up here, or at his place, or maybe even at hers sometimes, and he'll keep noticing those little things she tries so hard to hide from everyone else. And he'll keep giving her that look that'll almost make her want to talk it out, like normal people, but instead she'll just kiss him and fuck him until they both forget all about it. It's unhealthy, she knows.
But she doesn't want to think about that.
She doesn't want to think about why she’ll still not let him take her out, because dates are for boyfriends and boyfriends are for love. She doesn't want to think about the sense of emptiness she's left with whenever she wakes up alone. Most of all she doesn’t want to think about how close he’s getting to breaking her barriers down.
All she wants to think about is the groans he makes with every stroke of his length firming up in her hand.
“Fuck me, ” she whispers into his mouth, smiling as his arms drop down to her hips to move her in synchrony with his own gentle thrusts, a sharp contrast to the way she’s seen him punch through a wall with his bare hands. Because Peter’s never anything other than gentle with her.
She told him once he didn’t have to be. She told him she can take whatever he can give.
She’s strong. She’s unbreakable. He knows that. He loves that.
But he couldn’t bear to be responsible in case she wasn’t.
Peter groans into Felicia’s lips and lets her stroke his hair like someone else he once knew.
“You come here a lot,” she noted.
His knees were up to his chest. “Good view.” She sat down next to him, and he caved further into himself. “How’d you find me?”
She chuckled and ran a hand through the side of her silver mane. “Your head’s always in the clouds. I just guessed your body would want to follow.”
Her voice told him she was joking, but it scared him how right she was.
It hits him like a truck.
He doesn’t know when he stopped trying to keep things casual. He doesn't know when he started bringing her on these dumb triple dates with Harry and Liz and MJ and Carlie - and Flash, can't forget about Flash. He doesn’t know when she started being a part of his life.
It’s weird, he thinks, because he doesn’t know. One day they’re all together in some old-timey diner, and he’s holding her hand under the table and it just hits him. And the weirdest part is it doesn’t feel any different. The world doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow, doesn’t even blink. It’s like nobody noticed it but him.
He feels heavier. The numbness washes over him in waves, and his chest starts to cave into itself. It all feels so familiar - the subtle glances stolen when no one’s looking, the way her foot occasionally bumps into his during conversation, the ominous void left in the back of his neck when he feels like something should be wrong but nothing ever is.
She looks gorgeous, and they're holding hands, and there's a warm little wriggle in his chest, and it scares him, because he knows what it means, for himself, for her, for the empty space in the middle of his heart that he doesn’t think he has the courage or the will to fill.
But no one notices, and it drives him crazy.
The clock keeps ticking. He's just trying so fucking hard to hold it in place a little while longer.
“My aunt wants to meet you.”
Felicia looked surprised. “You told her about me?”
“I tell her about everything.”
He brought his head up to meet her eyes, eagerly awaiting her answer.
“I’m not the type of girl you bring home to your mother,” she finally found the voice to say.
She tried to ignore the look on his face, the way it made her insides churn. Instead she led him back to the valley between her breasts, moaning between gentle kisses and tangling her fingers in the roots of his hair.
“You’re the type of girl I’d want to,” he murmured just loudly enough to reach her ears.
Felicia lies sprawled out on her bed and stares up at the ceiling, fingers gripping the neck of a bottle and restless eyes fixated on a particular blotch of paint that looks darker than the rest.
She finds it difficult to sleep alone nowadays, feeling like something’s missing as she listens to the constant whirring of the fan spinning above. It gnaws away at her insides. She hates it.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She wasn’t supposed to depend on him.
He’s her boyfriend now. She takes a longer sip at that.
And she likes him, likes Peter. Likes him enough that she doesn’t like how it feels. Likes him enough that she has something to lose.
She’s not used to losing. But she knows she doesn’t like it.
She needs him to stop. She can’t afford to get any closer.
She can’t afford to lose him, too.
Felicia downs whatever’s left and reaches for her mask.
It’s an interesting game they play. Most people wouldn’t call it healthy, and to be honest some nights he’s not sure he would, either.
He’s finishing up with Matt and Elektra when he gets the alert, and he somehow just knows. Most couples would text, or call, or whatever. She just steals something and waits for him to find her.
Because talking's hard. But stealing? Stealing's easy.
Peter tells Matt he’s gotta go and thwips to Chinatown without any further explanation.
She almost doesn’t hear his feet landing behind her, legs dangling off a rooftop without a care in the world. The world’s just a little too loud tonight. “How long have you been here?” she hears him ask, but she pretends she didn’t.
Her mask is to the side, lying next to an emerald. She likes emeralds. He takes his mask off and drops it next to the emerald before sitting next to her, daring not to speak another word.
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” she weakly murmurs, unable to bear the eerie silence any longer, and Peter carefully slides an arm over her shoulders and lets her fall into him.
He feels cold, but in that way she likes to bask herself in. She focuses on that feeling. There’s a weird calmness to it, the way it washes over her. The world seems a little quieter next to the sound of his heart beating. She likes it. If she’s brave enough to let herself, she might just love it.
She thinks that maybe that’s what she wants.
He’s here to take pictures. He has to remind himself of that every now and then.
“You’re a good dancer,” Felicia says just loud enough for him to hear over the ballroom ambience, and he smiles awkwardly.
“Really? ‘Cause I’m kind of trying really hard not to step on you right now.”
She laughs, but he’s telling the truth. It’s really not his scene, black ties and jazz music. It blows his mind, how she can always look like she fits in, so put together, with a smile on her face that’s brighter than the sun itself, how effortlessly she wears the mask he’s trained himself to see right through.
His breath hitches for a second when she stares up at him, seeing the way her emerald eyes glisten under the lights. “You look nice,” he finally finds the composure to murmur.
She rolls her eyes, still smiling. “You do, too.” He feels her grip tighten around his collar. “Let’s go somewhere.”
“I’m supposed to be taking pictures,” he murmurs under his breath.
“And I’m supposed to be talking with rich snobs,” she shoots back. “But I don’t want to.”
“What do you want?” he asks, and he feels her grip around his shirt loosen as her arm drops to his shoulder.
It worries him, what that response might be. The ties that might come with it, or the ties that might not. It’s a strange game they play, dancing at the cusp of something serious, something real. Reaching out to catch that flame, but just barely pulling away when the familiarity gets too uncomfortable. Hanging on for dear life, trying to keep it together as hard as he can.
“I know what I want,” she finally says, an assuredness in her voice and a glimmer in her eyes that he can’t help but feel his heart jump at.
Peter opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. There’s so much that he wants to say, he doesn’t even know where to start. But he somehow knows that none of it really matters, in the end.
So he just forces his lips onto hers, pressing with a desire he’s kept buried for too long, and he closes his eyes. Her lipstick tastes like a memory he can barely even put together, but it doesn’t scare him anymore.
It’s familiar, but it’s different. It’s like a breath of what once was, and a sliver of what could be. It’s not really Gwen anymore, no. But, in a way, it’s everything Gwen could’ve been. It’s more. It’s her.
He thinks he likes it.
“Yeah, I think I do, too,” he finally accepts with a faint hue to his cheeks before she tugs at his sleeves to make their escape.
“You’re amazing.”
It makes her blush, and it feels almost awkward to say, but it’s all he can think as her lips descend onto him, pressing her body into his like they’re two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together.
“You’re amazing,” he repeats between breaths, as if to make sure she knows it, and Felicia breathes out a light giggle when his arms wrap around her back underneath the blanket, exploring the beautiful tapestry of tensed muscles and gentle folds waiting for him.
“Peter,” she sinks her claws into his shoulders and whispers back with tried frustration, because they’re in one of the guest bedrooms, and she knows they’ll only have a few more minutes before her mother sends one of their butlers out to look for them and bring them back downstairs, and she wants to make those precious few minutes as mutually blissful as possible but sometimes he makes it so hard to not just melt all over him and let herself fall heart-first into his web.
She kisses him to shut him up, moving her hips in rhythm with his own, and they both groan into each other when the familiar motions grow faster, less premeditated, more spontaneous. It’s the same song they’ve danced to a thousand times before, but it somehow always feels like their first, like there’s deeper layers just waiting to be unraveled.
He whispers something silently into her lips, three small words so abrupt and fleeting between sharp breaths and purposed movements, three small words that linger heavy in the air between them, and he’s not even sure she hears them until a few seconds later she whispers the same three words as he finishes within her with a gasp and he feels like finally, finally, the universe just might be on his side for once when she presses her lips to his.
It won’t last long. It’s a pattern at this point. He gets a few days, maybe a week if he’s lucky, then life reminds him just how cruel it can be and shoves him back to square one. He knows this. It’s why he doesn’t get comfortable anymore.
Maybe it’ll never change. Maybe he’ll never get things back to the way they were. Maybe he’ll always be a little broken. Maybe that’s just who he is, who the world’s turned him into.
But he thinks it’s okay, because Felicia loves him, and he loves her. And that’s somehow enough, knowing that if he breaks, he’s still got Felicia to pick up the pieces for him.