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The little house in Forest Hills is quiet and dark, and Felicia makes no sound at all when she eases the upstairs window—unlocked, of course—open and slips inside, moving carefully. So it takes her completely by surprise when a voice says, “Peter?” even before the light flicks on.
May Parker is standing in the doorway of Peter’s childhood bedroom, dressed in an adorably antiquated nightgown, her red-brown hair mussed, her left hand loosely gripping a baseball bat. Her eyebrows fly up when she sees Felicia, and then they catch the bundle on her hip, and she freezes entirely.
Felicia finds herself frozen, too, though this isn’t exactly an unexpected development—she would’ve had to wake May up eventually anyway. She follows May’s gaze, her heart softening even in the midst of her worry and adrenaline.
To someone who knew Peter as an adult, his resemblance to the child currently sleeping against her side would be striking, though Felicia was proud to say Walt had her eyes; the chestnut curls, the little furrowed brows, like he was thinking too hard even in his dreams, were all his father’s.
To someone who had known Peter as a baby, it must be unmistakable. May’s mouth falls open. “Oh,” she says. “Ms. Hardy—”
“Felicia,” says Felicia, feeling awkward, and takes a step forward. “Sorry about how late it is.”
“That’s alright,” says May, with the immediacy of the instinctively kind. Her eyes are still on little Walt—Felicia knows the feeling—and then she gives a little cough and looks up at Felicia. “I think we’re going to need some tea.”
The temptation to agree is almost overpowering. Felicia imagines letting May lead her downstairs, into the small, cozy kitchen where a brilliant, lonely child first learned the basic household chemistry of cooking and baking (and never really got the hang of either, despite his later achievements). She imagined accepting a steaming cup, seeing May hold Walt and coo, pouring out all her frustrations and secrets and woes to—to what? Her aunt? Her de-facto mother-in-law? Ha.
“I can’t stay,” she says instead, and tries not to let May’s immediate frown hurt. “I’m sorry. I—I need a favor.”
May stares at her, sighs, leans the bat up against the doorway to cross her arms. “Where are you going?” she asks, and her tone has shifted into something brisk and tired. No nonsense, the line of her shoulders says. Felicia realizes suddenly, fiercely, just how much she likes this woman.
She licks her lips. “Someone has something of mine,” she says. “I need to get it back.”
May cocks her head. “How long will it take?”
“A few hours at most,” Felicia reassures her. “I’ll be back in the morning, I just needed—somewhere no one would look.”
May’s eyes are relentless. “Does he know?”
She could mean about where you’re going. She doesn’t. “No,” she says. “I told him, once, but he thought I was lying.”
Because I used it to trap him in a Maggia-owned warehouse didn’t really seem like details Peter’s aunt needed to know while Felicia’s trying to stay on her good side.
“I’ll make you a deal,” May says flatly. “I’ll watch—what’s his name?”
“Walt,” says Felicia, and Walt—having slept soundly the entire hair-raising cross-borough journey over the rooftops of New York—stirs, his eyes blinking sleepily open. Felicia hoists him upward to run a gentle thumb over his cheek. “After my dad. Hi, baby.”
Walt smiles at her, small and sleepy.
“Walt,” says May, and he blinks his big eyes and turns her way, staring with interest around the room. “My name is May.”
“Hi, May,” says Walt dutifully, while Felicia unhooks him from the custom sling she’d rigged up to attach to her suit and lets him slide to the ground.
“Baby,” says Felicia, and he turns back to her, his hand seeking hers in uncertainty. She catches it, squeezes it gently. “You’re going to stay with May for a bit, okay? Just until tomorrow.”
Walt’s brows furrow again. “Why?”
“Your mother has something important to do,” says May. She steps forward and bends, holding out a hand, and Walt hesitantly detaches himself from Felicia to take it. “But we’re going to have lots of fun here while she’s gone, and then when she gets back,” she pauses, just for a split second, her gaze snapping up to Felicia’s, “you’re going to meet your dad.”
Walt’s eyes get huge. “My dad? ”
Felicia clenches her jaw. “You play hardball.”
May smiles, just a little. “You have no idea, my dear.”
“My dad? ” Walt asks again, suspicious now instead of wondering. “Where is he?”
“He’s not here, sweetheart, not yet,” says May. “But this was his room when he was about your age—well, a little older.” She straightens and sighs, and Felicia wonders if she’s remembering the deaths of her husband’s brother and sister-in-law. If she’s remembering the death of her husband.
It’s a part of aging that scares the shit out of Felicia, if she’s being honest. She’s nearly died enough times that it’s not really an active fear, anymore—something to be avoided, obviously, but some things are worth the risk. But the idea of just… lingering, while everyone you care about drops away from your life, your body and mind both slowly failing you… she shudders, squares her shoulders. Better to not rely on anyone in the first place, when you could help it.
“Felicia,” says May, for maybe the first time ever, and Felicia blinks at her. “Be careful.”
“I will,” she promises, and means it.
+
It’s mid-morning by the time she makes it back to the little house, but she’s been successful. She’s brought up short—again, startled but not surprised—to find May and Walt not there, and Peter Parker sitting in his Aunt’s cluttered, sun-drenched kitchen instead.
She hasn’t seen him since that night at the warehouse, hasn’t seen him unmasked for far longer, and she takes a moment to catalogue the little changes in his face. He doesn’t scar, but his nose is a slightly different shape, healed up too-fast from some new break. His eyebrows are twitched together, but he doesn’t look angry, just like he’s thinking too hard, and his hands confirm it—long blunt fingers fidgeting against the tabletop.
She drops through the window, and he lifts his chin, and then he’s frowning. “Felicia.”
“Good to see you too, handsome,” she says, straightening, and—half out of habit, half because she knows it’ll make him frown harder—puts a little bit of sway into her hips as she crosses to him.
“Done with your little errand?” He asks, crossing his arms.
She smirks. “I am.”
“Felicia—” he starts, and she can see the hundred questions behind his eyes— why didn’t you tell me, how dare you, what right did you have —but he just makes a frustrated noise and runs his hands over his face. “What the hell.”
“I did tell you,” she points out quietly, coming to perch on the chair opposite him.
“And then you told me you were lying, ” Peter snapped. “Don’t you know what I would have—what this would have meant to me?”
Felicia swallowed hard, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.. “I do,” she managed. “I know you would have wanted to be there for us. And I know, eventually, being there would have killed you.” Or him. Or me. Or all three. Peter takes a breath, but she doesn’t look at him. “You’re already split in half,” she continues quietly. “You’re already being everything to everyone—New York’s protector, Mary Jane’s boyfriend, Aunt May’s loving nephew, Miles’ mentor. Your shoulders are broad, darling, but not that broad.”
“They are,” he insists, and she glances at him. His mouth is set, stubborn. “And I wouldn’t have—me and Mary Jane—” he stops.
Felicia smiles at him, but it feels horrible, hollow. “You’d have dropped her, hm? If you’d known? Made,” she smirks wider, “an honest woman of me?”
“Yes,” says Peter, explosively, and it hits her like a punch. “ Yes, I would have.”
Felicia bites the inside of her cheek. She would not cry. She would not, not here, not now, not for a dream she’d long ago woken up from. “You’d have tried, maybe,” she says, and it only wobbles a little bit. “But we know how long it’s lasted before.”
He shakes his head. “I loved you, Fel,” he says quietly, and there is something horrible in Felicia’s stomach, something grasping and raw. “I—I still could, if you’d let me.”
Felicia closes her eyes, breathing deep. I can’t, she wants to say. Yes, she wants to say, more, and most of all she wants to shove him against the fridge and kiss him until they’re both mindless from it, until she can’t remember all the reasons she’s built these crumbling walls.
She does nothing, says nothing, and the moment passes.
“What was so important for you to get back that you left your— our son with Aunt May?” Peter asks. “You must have known she would make you tell me the truth.”
Felicia opens her eyes, meets his gaze steadily. “I thought it was likely,” she agrees.
“So?” Peter demands. “What’s worth collapsing this whole house of cards? A Rembrandt? A solid gold goose egg? A map to the Lost City of Atlantis? Help me out here.”
Felicia reaches up and unzips the top of her costume. She enjoys the way Peter’s eyes follow the movement, the little bob of his throat, despite himself. Incorrigible. She dips her fingers beneath the fabric and pulls out the envelope, sliding it across the lycra tabletop.
Peter tears it open and pours out three rectangular polaroids. Felicia watches flip them over, line them up.
“This—” Peter says, and stops. “Did anyone see these?”
Felicia shook her head.
Peter’s eyes are intense. “Felicia. You’re sure?”
“My penthouse was broken into last night,” Felicia explains. “Professional job, but regular Maggia professional, not capes stuff. They took most of my painting collection. Those—” she jerks her chin at the polaroids, “—were hidden between the canvas and the backing of a Klimt. They never even knew they were there.”
She expects anger— why did you even keep these, how could you let them be stolen, what the hell were you thinking— but Peter is staring down at the pictures, his long fingers tracing the corner of the third one, right under the Me and Spider ♡ in Felicia’s looping handwriting.
She remembers the night they were taken with perfect clarity—it remains one of the best of her life. It was late November, the city slipping slowly into true winter, and bitterly cold at their usual heights. They’d worked together to foil a robbery, and she’d conceded, laughing, not to complete it herself just for good measure (”We can pretend one of them got away with the goods! All the bad guys will still go to jail!”), mostly because Spider-Man correctly pointed out that a few thousand dollars from a middling fashion boutique was a little beneath her paygrade.
She’d lifted a pair of fur coats, though. Not to keep, she’d insisted, batting at his hands as he tried to tug the white stole from around her shoulders. Just to keep them warm, while they drank in the night.
Up on the roof, under distant brilliant stars, she’d pressed her cold nose to his throat, feeling him laugh, and then rolled his mask up to above his mouth so she could kiss and mouth at his jaw. He’d made a strangled sound, his hand coming up to card through her hair. “Felicia.”
“You’re warm, ” she’d explained, pressing even closer to his chest. “Is that a secondary spider-power thing, are spiders unusually warm for their size?”
“I think it’s just a me thing,” he admitted, “a me with you thing,” and he’d kissed her.
She’d slipped the polaroid camera from her pocket and taken a quick picture, his unmasked lips pressed to her smile, the dark fur around his shoulders making him look majestic, royal; a little like Kraven the Hunter. He’d made a little protesting noise and swiped it from her hand. “Where’d you get this?”
“Lifted it from a drug store earlier,” she'd admitted.
He’d regarded her, eye lenses blank. "You were at a drug store and decided to steal a Polaroid camera?"
She’d shrugged. "Pills aren't my poison."
He’d run a hand up her throat, then, thumb against her jaw. “What is?”
She hummed. "Adrenaline, probably. Same as you."
She’d half-expected him to argue, but he just stepped closer, picking her up with one arm under her ass, camera extended in his other hand. She’d wound her arms around his neck, whole body thrilling, her hands coming up to his mask, toying with the rolled fabric.
He’d frozen, just for a moment, his whole body going tense, and then he’d kissed her again—she heard the click of the camera—and said softly against her lips, “go head.”
Felicia’s breath stuttered. “You—are you sure?”
He hadn’t answered, just taken her hand in his and lifted, and the spandex of his mask had pulled up and away. She’d closed her eyes, at first, her other hand cradling his jaw, and pressed tiny kisses up his cheeks, feeling her way, mapping out new features. He’d laughed, softly, as she pressed her mouth to each of his eyelids, the bridge of his nose, then his forehead, and then pulled back, opening her eyes, to look at his face for the very first time.
“Well,” she’d said, when she could breathe again. “Well. Hot damn.”
He’d grinned at her, and, oh, the way that grin looked when she could see his eyes. “Not the worst review I’ve ever gotten,” he’d teased, and then turned her face to the camera next to his. “Say cheese, gorgeous.”
He’d slipped out her window the following morning, disappearing into a grey and drizzling sky, but the three polaroids were tucked under her pillow like a promise, the most precious, truest sign of his trust she’d ever had.
“I love you,” she’d said, then, to the empty room, and I love you, she thinks, now, as he twitches the pictures into a more precise line on the kitchen table, his eyes shuttered. I could love you, if you let me.
Peter takes a breath, and then nods, once, like he’s made a decision. “Can I meet him?” he asks, eyes still on the photographs.
She blinks at him. “I assumed May would insist.”
Peter shakes his head. “She insisted on me knowing,” he said. “She thinks I deserve that. But she won’t force you to include me in his life, not if you really don’t want to.” He rolls his head on his neck, stretching. “They went to the park,” he says, and then squints are her. “I could—we could get ice cream.”
Felicia smiles despite herself. “Planning on bribing my son to like you?”
Peter holds her eyes. “If that’s what it takes.”
Felicia takes a long breath and stands up. “Alright,” she said, and held out a hand.
With no hesitation at all, Peter takes it.