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“What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“Funny” Felicia says, eyes still fixed on the city. “Does that line usually work for you?”
“Not a line,” Peter says, Felicia hearing him shift and then come to sit right beside her— legs dangling over the edge of the rooftop in a way that mirrors her own. “And you tell me.”
Felicia presses her lips together, deep breath in and then out as she still looks on— refusing to look at him as Peter sighs.
“Leesh. Come on, talk to me,” he says, voice low and quiet— something about the tone of it that does something terrible to her.
Terrible in how much it wants her to break.
He’s always been good at finding ways to do that.
“Don’t you have a girlfriend to go home to?” She asks, a sore subject between the two of them and a question she already knows the answer to— Peter bristling beside her as she finally turns to look at him.
It shouldn’t surprise her to see him still suited up and mask on but it does— his voice so recognizable that she wondered often how more people weren’t able to put together his secret.
People tended to underestimate him though.
Felicia understands.
They do the same to her as well.
“No,” Peter says definitively, not having to see his face to know the expression underneath it. “But you know that already, don’t you?”
She studies him, the black webbing of his suit and the white eyes of his mask before she relents— shrugging before turning away from him and looking back out to the city.
“Good for her.”
Peter sighs, says something under his breath that she can’t quite piece but doesn’t want to— not needing his pity nor willing to give any sympathy.
Whatever merry go around that he and MJ seemed to constantly be on, she wanted no part of it— tired of second best and the second choice.
She’s seen the two of them together, seen the way the two of them continued to dance around each other and seen more, the inevitability of it. If she were to ever tell Peter this, or MJ for that matter, Felicia knows they would both argue the opposite.
That they were done for good and if— when in her eyes— they ever got back together, it wasn’t anything as silly as fate. It was a choice, a bad one depending on the day but a choice nonetheless.
Easy for the two of them to say, Felicia would always think— as neither one of them were left to pick up the pieces when they were together or apart.
Felicia might not believe in such a silly thing like soulmates but Peter and MJ were wrapped up in a cycle that she was tired of riding on— tired of being pulled in and tired even more of feeling pulled down , the reason she’s ignoring Peter’s pleading looks that she knows he’s giving underneath the mask being a sense that she no longer wanted… any of this.
“What’s wrong?” Peter asks and she almost wants to tell him— dares herself to do it even, fingers gripped against the rooftop and running through all the available options in her mind.
I want you to love me. I want you to choose me. I want to leave, get out of this city, find a new place and a new lover and never think of you ever again.
She thinks it and yet says none of it, staring out over the city as a breeze gently passes over face.
This was her city just as much as it was his— the burden he seemed to have and the weight of his own responsibilities something that she understood, though didn’t agree.
Funny really, that he had called her selfish at one time when the motto he lived his life by was the most selfish of all.
How ludicrous to believe that just because you can means that you should , the audacity to believe that since you had some power that it was always within your power. It’s something that they’ve fought about often throughout the years.
She doesn’t have it in her to fight tonight.
What’s wrong? As if that’s such an easy question to figure, two words that encapsulated so much of what could and couldn’t happen for her— of how much of what she’s currently feeling is so stupidly wrapped up in him.
What’s wrong? As if she shouldn’t ask him that, ask why he didn’t go home and try to make it work with MJ— ask and push and pick at all the little buttons and edges and sides of who he is that she knows will set him off, having him yelling at her and then swinging away until he happens upon her again.
What’s wrong? As if Felicia herself could put into words, staring out onto the New York skyline and thinking that maybe what was wrong was just sitting right in front of her— unmoving despite the chaos that was surely happening across the city.
Synchronized and disorganized, a mess of contradiction but that was New York— a city unlike any other and one that just kept bringing her back. No matter how far she tried to run or how much she wanted to be free of it, something about it kept her here— a pull that she long since argued had nothing to do with the person sitting next to her.
Felicia decides not to lie to herself tonight.
“Does something have to be wrong for a girl to get a little time to herself?” She asks, playful and nonchalant because that’s what he loves best of her, isn’t? Loves her ferocity and her strong-willed— loves her in all the ways she wants him to and even still some ways he can’t.
Felicia is not so foolish to believe that love is a game to be won or as simple as a one, two step— the ease of which she’s able to admit that she loves him and that he loves her just as simple as the way she can admit how complicated that love really is.
“I’ll leave, if that’s what you want,” he says, ever the gentleman— a good man raised by a good woman. That was the hardest part, how much May seemed to like her and how much she wanted to be liked.
“But I don’t think you do,” Peter continues, pursing her lips together.
What does she want except for everything she can’t have? Able to sneak in and take nearly anything in this city except for the one thing that she’s not even sure she wants— not sure if it’s because it’s so unknowable to her or if it’s because it’s intangible that she wants it even more.
I want to be a first choice. She wants to say but wouldn’t that be the end of it? Forcing him to make said choice ruining the freedom and the desire all at once? How silly and pathetic it is, to admit such a thing— to admit that she wants something more real or maybe just more simple than the entanglements of their lives all wrapped together.
If she wasn’t who she is and he wasn’t who he was, then maybe they’d have a shot at it— only to know with certainty that they’d have never met in the first place.
She wants something real but she can’t have that, can she? Can’t even try and convince herself that the feel of him pressed against her or the way he pants when he’s inside her aren’t any less real because it doesn’t last.
Nothing lasts, Felicia knows this.
She hates herself a little for wanting it regardless.
Felicia turns to look at him, fingers still curled over the rooftop as she grins.
“Don’t I?” She asks before she leans forward, moving into free fall as the wind rushes past her.
A twhip and a strong arm wrapped around her, Felicia’s caught before she falls ten feet— swinging up and forward to the rooftop across from them.
“Felicia—“
She makes a shushing motion over his lips, still entangled in his arms as she smirks.
“Do you really want to talk about this?” She asks.
She already knows the answer from the way his hands pull her closer, already forgives herself for how easily she folds when she pulls his mask over his lips.
She catches sight of the city skyline before she closes them once again, Peter’s lips meeting hers— sliding back into old habits just as his tongue slides into her mouth.
Maybe it was easier this way. Simple.
That’s what Felicia chose to tell herself anyway.