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Peter wishes he could say he’s surprised when he comes home a week after Felicia Hardy’s death to find the felonious feline herself lounging on his beat-up couch. He’s more surprised by the baby sleeping on her chest, indifferent to her as she flips through an old magazine she dug up from who knows where. Peter stops as he comes in through his window, one foot still on the sill and one on the ground. His fingers tighten around the frame of the window.
“Felicia…” He says softly.
Her silver-blue eyes flick to him immediately. She tosses aside the magazine and raises a finger to her lips. Slowly, she sits up and shifts from holding the baby against her chest to cradling it in her arms.
“Is that…” He trails off again. It’s like being around her, in her orbit, renders him totally incapable of speaking in full sentences. He finally climbs the rest of the way into his apartment and steps closer carefully.
Felicia meets him halfway and tilts the baby in her arms so that Peter can see his face: his chubby cheeks and tiny little nose, along with the ridiculous tuft of brown hair sitting on his head. Expertly cradling him with one arm, Felicia tucks a strand of her own silvery hair behind her ear; the motion is deliberate, Peter knows, entirely meant to illustrate the baby’s hair color, and how different it is from Felicia’s.
“How do I—?”
“Know that I didn’t just steal this baby?” She finishes before he can, smirking all the while. She holds the baby out and Peter hurries to take him, mimicking the cradle of Felicia’s arms only moments prior. As she turns back to the duffel bag sitting by the end of the couch, Felicia smiles at him. “You two look good together.”
She bends at the waist—quite unnecessarily—to rifle through the bag. Peter can’t help but admire her figure for just a moment, until he remembers MJ and looks away quickly. Felicia finds whatever she was looking for and turns to face him with a couple papers in her arms.
“His birth certificate, medical records, and a couple pics of us the day he was born.” Felicia trades him the baby for the papers and Peter holds them out to examine them. His eyes land on the pictures first:
Felicia, unmistakable in her beauty and her smile, with a tiny bundle in her arms. Even with eyes red from tears and sweat matting her hair, she looks stunning. The second picture is a close up of the baby and just the corner of Felicia’s chin. The third and final pic is with both of them cleaned up, Felicia grinning exhaustedly at the camera and the baby sound asleep beside her.
Felicia doesn’t say anything as Peter looks through all the papers. Next are his medical records, and nothing seems off. No spidey powers, at least—although Peter isn’t sure what that would look like in normal, hospital records.
Then, the thing he’s been most curious about while simultaneously dreading, he looks at the birth certificate.
At the top reads, in neat and curly scrawl, WALTER BENJAMIN HARDY. Beside that is his date of birth, a signature from the delivering doctor, Felicia’s name in the ‘mother’ section and the ‘father’ section…
“It’s blank,” Peter says.
“You weren’t there.”
Anger flares up like flash bomb in his chest. “You didn’t tell me.”
Felicia sighs and turns away. She strokes a single finger over the baby’s—Walter’s—forehead, humming softly. “I know,” she says eventually. “I wanted to. Wasn’t sure how.” She smiles down at Walter. “He’s got your eyes. Not that you’d know it, with how much he sleeps.”
Peter’s hands drop to his sides as he approaches again, standing toe to toe with Felicia. “Who… How…”
“C’mon, Spider, don’t tell me we need to have the birds and the bees talk. I know for a fact we covered just about everything under the sun when we were together… Is your little redhead not putting out?”
“Felicia!” He snaps, scandalized. He doesn’t know if it’s because of the baby, or because of MJ’s dignity, or—
“Oh, chill, loverboy. I’m teasing.” She turns away and her hips sway as she moves to a different corner of the room.
“How did you sneak a bassinet in here?” Peter asks, feeling dumbfounded.
“Easily,” Felicia replies. She sets Walter down and fusses with a couple blankets before facing Peter again. “I just wanted you to see him, before we left town. Thought we’d stay here tonight, be out of your hair in the morning.”
“Where are you going?” Peter asks even though he knows it’s pointless.
“Somewhere sunny, told you that already.” She smirks. “Wally will get a nice tan.”
Peter feels like he’s constantly chasing Felicia—through the city, through life, here and now through his apartment. Even as he corners her near the bassinet, he feels out of his depth.
“You can’t hide him from me.”
“I never said he was yours.”
Peter groans and runs a hand through his hair, grimacing at the grimy feel as his hair stands on end. “You know he is. I know he is.”
Felicia lifts one shoulder in a dismissive shrug.
“Tell me the truth, and I won’t call the cops.”
That actually gets a laugh out of her, loud and vibrant and sudden. “You’d never call the cops on me, baby. You want to, but you’ll never do it.”
Peter hates that she’s right, hates that he knows it and that she knows it. He grits his teeth.
“He’s yours,” she says abruptly. Her eyes are wide all of a sudden, but her expression quickly cools into one less stricken. “He is.”
Peter nods. “Thank you.”
Felicia shrugs again.
Peter stares at her and she stares at Walter and for a long time, neither of them speaks. Eventually, Peter also looks at Walter, admires the soft expression of the sleeping baby. From the corner of his eye, he’s keenly aware of Felicia taking her fill to look at him.
He thinks about MJ, about the city, about the frankly insane amounts of wealth resting, well, probably in some offshore account by now. He thinks about how it used to be with Felicia: sharp and passionate, even the quickies took an hour, at least. They ran hot, hot, hot—until they burned each other, and Felicia took off under the cover of night.
Peter thinks about all of this, and then against his better judgement, he says—
“You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”
Felicia’s smile is almost sweet.
Peter wakes up early, his spidey-sense dimly tingling. Felicia is already climbing out of bed and moving to the bassinet. She’s clad in one of Peter’s old t-shirts with a pair of panties just barely hidden by the hem, though Peter gets a crystal-clear glimpse of the blue lace as she bends to scoop Walter into her arms.
“He’s hungry,” she explains.
Peter watches as she moves around his apartment like it’s familiar ground (which is bullshit, because he still hasn’t gotten used to his new apartment) and gets a bottle from the fridge. Peering around her frame, Peter can see a couple more bottles in his dinky little fridge.
“How long were you planning to stay?” He asks as he watches Felicia urge the bottle toward Walter. It takes a little soft cooing and coaxing but the baby eventually latches onto the rubber nipple.
“Told you, we’d be out of your hair this morning.”
Peter hesitates.
“Wouldn’t want to cause you any trouble. We’ve got sun and sand waiting for us, after all.”
“You don’t have to go.”
Felicia’s smile is sad, bittersweet. “What happens if I stay, Spider?” She puts her back to him. For a moment, the apartment is only full of the sounds of Walter eating. “What happens?” She asks again.
Peter opens his mouth to answer, but the words don’t come.
“You’ve got your little redhead, and a shiny new protege to train. If I stay, what happens? We don’t get a fairytale, lover. There’s no happily ever after here if I stick around. The cops will come, MJ will want my head on a stick. You’ll always be harping on me to do the right thing and I just can’t.”
“Not even for our son?” Peter counters immediately. He scrambles to get out of bed and over to Felicia.
“Especially not for him,” she says over her shoulder. “Not when doing the wrong thing can give him a better life.”
“What about when you end up in jail? Or worse?” Peter reaches out and his fingertips skirt over Felicia’s bare elbow. Even just the barest brush of skin sends electricity through Peter’s veins.
“My mom will take care of him. And when have you ever known a cell to hold me for long?”
She finally faces him. “I can’t be who you want me to be, Spidey. We both know that.”
Peter opens his mouth, closes it, rinse and repeat.
Felicia shakes her head. She lifts her head slowly, giving time for him to pull away. He doesn’t.
The kiss is painfully gentle. Walter is a warm, noisy weight between them. One of Peter’s hands grips Felicia’s hip, the other tangles in her silky hair. She sighs into the kiss before biting his lip and wringing a soft groan from deep in his chest. The kiss is several years coming and several years gone; it aches like an old bruise, invisible but tender. Peter kisses her harder before she can pull away but Felicia never leaves.
“Please.” Peter breathes the plea into her mouth. “Don’t go. We’ll figure something out.”
Felicia kisses him one more time, chaste. “Always the optimist, loverboy. I’ve always admired that in you. I hope Walter is the same way.”
Stay and he will be gets caught in Peter’s throat. His hand on Felicia’s hip tightens until her breathing quickens and he remembers to let go.
“You’ve got jackshit in this house for food,” she tells him suddenly. “Why don’t you go pick up some bacon and orange juice?”
Peter pauses. Felicia doesn’t slip from his grasp but he can feel her pulling away anyway. Felicia blinks her pretty, sharp eyes at him until he meanders over to where he left a pair of pants the day before. He pulls them on while Felicia watches; he throws a t-shirt on and then a hoodie over that.
“I’ll just run to the corner market,” he tells her.
“Okay.” She doesn’t promise to stick around, doesn’t say “I’ll be here.” She doesn’t say anything else.
He gives into temptation and kisses her one last time before leaving through the front door, knowing full well that she and Walter will be gone when he gets back.
The phone waiting on his gritty countertop is a surprise. It’s an old, brick-heavy flip phone. There are no numbers in the contact book, but the wallpaper when he opens the phone is a blurry picture of Walter’s face. Peter runs his thumb over the screen, then the buttons—and god, don’t those make him feel old—before slipping the phone into the pocket of his jeans.
Once that’s out of sight, there’s no evidence of his two guests at all. Not even the lingering scent of Felicia’s perfume or shampoo. His apartment feels painfully empty in their absence. He clenches his hands and lets out one long, shaky breath.
Peter wishes he had gotten a picture of the three of them before she left, but thinks, feels, somewhere deep in his chest, that he’ll get that chance sooner than he expects.