Marvel – I am Spiderman

Four nights since Ezekiel and Peter hadn't stopped thinking about the blank.

He thought about it intermittently. Cindy's nails on his back, Mrs. Moon's voice calling dinner. Those were physical. The blank was different. A gap in the system.

He was thinking about it on patrol when the spider-sense pinged for something that wasn't Ezekiel Sims.

West 26th Street. Chelsea. A row of converted warehouses that hadn't been converted enough, the kind with loading docks that still smelled like diesel and spaces too large and too dark for whatever the landlord was pretending happened inside them. Peter was on a rooftop across the street, three hours into patrol, and the ping was steady. Multiple people, no immediate violence, but the sense was warm in a way that meant weapons.

He dropped to the roof of the warehouse and found a vent he could see through. Four men below. Different from the museum Maggia. These guys had crates, open, and the crates had guns in them. Not holstered pistols. Rifles. Military-looking. The men were counting inventory and one of them had a clipboard and they were working under portable floodlights that made the concrete floor look white.

The fifth person in the warehouse was already moving.

He recognized the catsuit before he recognized her. Black, white fur trim. She was on the catwalk above the floor, thirty feet up, moving along the railing toward a small office at the back of the building. She was casing it. The office, not the guns. Whatever she was here for was in that room.

Peter dropped through a window on the east side. Landed on the catwalk twenty feet behind her. She heard him. She turned. Her mouth pressed flat.

"No," she said.

"Hello to you too."

"I'm working."

"You're stealing from guys with military rifles."

"I'm stealing from an office that happens to be in the same building as guys with military rifles. Different thing." She turned back toward the office. "Go away, Spider."

"Can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Because last time there were three of them and one had a pistol and you headbutted me. This time there are four and they have rifles."

She stopped walking. Looked back at him over her shoulder. The domino mask caught the floodlight from below and her eyes were green behind it and her mouth had a curve at one end.

"I didn't headbutt you because of the guns."

"I know why you headbutted me."

"Then stop bringing it up."

Below them, one of the men dropped a rifle back into a crate. The sound echoed through the warehouse, metal on wood. Another man said something in Italian and the clipboard guy laughed.

"How do you want to do this?" Peter said.

She looked at the office. Looked at the floor. Looked at him.

"I go for the office. You handle the floor."

"Four guys."

"You handled three in the museum without looking. Four shouldn't be a problem for someone who pays attention."

"Two minutes," Peter said. "Then I'm coming up."

She was already moving. He watched her go. The catsuit was the same as always. The swagger from the first night had settled. Quick, low, sure of where her weight was and where the catwalk didn't creak.

Peter dropped from the catwalk.

The four guys on the floor didn't know he was there until the first web hit the floodlight. It went sideways. The light swung and the shadows rotated and by the time the clipboard guy looked up, Peter had the second man's rifle webbed to the crate and the third man was already going down from a kick he hadn't seen coming.

Two of them went fast. The clipboard guy threw the clipboard at him and ran for the loading dock. Peter caught him at the door with a web to the ankles. The fourth guy actually raised his rifle and Peter's spider-sense gave him the angle before the barrel came level. He webbed the barrel shut and kicked the stock out of the guy's hands and it clattered across the floor.

Something crashed in the office above. Glass breaking. Then a body came over the catwalk railing and fell thirty feet and Peter caught it in a web net before it hit the concrete. Maggia guy, zip-tied at the wrists. Felicia leaned over the railing above.

"He was in the office," she said.

"You threw him off the catwalk."

"He had a knife." She held up her left arm. The catsuit sleeve was slit open from wrist to elbow and there was a thin red line underneath. She looked at the cut, annoyed. "It'll heal."

"It won't. You're not-" He stopped himself. She didn't know he healed. She didn't know he was anything other than strong and fast. "Let me see that."

"It's fine."

"It's bleeding."

"It's a scratch. Are we done here?"

She vaulted the catwalk railing. Dropped thirty feet. Caught a support beam fifteen feet down with one hand, swung, landed on a crate, dropped to the floor. She straightened up eight feet from him and the cut on her arm was still bleeding, a slow line down her forearm into the white fur trim at her wrist.

Sirens. Coming from the south. Getting closer.

"We should go," she said.

They went.

Six blocks west. Then north. Up a fire escape, across two rooftops, over a gap that she bridged with her grappling hook and he bridged with a web-line, and they ended up on a water tower platform on West 19th Street overlooking the river. The Hudson was black and flat and a barge was moving south with its lights on, slow, going somewhere nobody cared about.

Felicia sat on the railing. Her legs dangled off the edge, thirty feet above the alley, and she wasn't holding on. The cut on her arm had stopped bleeding. The blood had dried on her forearm and her fur trim was going to stain and she didn't seem to care about that either.

"You're getting better," Peter said.

"We've done this before. I know the line."

"I mean it. You vaulted the catwalk beam one-handed."

"I've been practicing." She swung her legs. The railing creaked. "You're getting better too. You didn't look at the fourth guy before you webbed his gun."

"Spider-sense."

"You keep saying that like it explains things."

"It explains most things."

She was quiet. The barge on the river reached the point where its wake caught the lights from New Jersey and the water went from black to orange for a stretch.

"You saved me," she said. "In the office. If you hadn't handled the floor, the fifth guy would have come up behind me while I was dealing with the knife."

"Don't make it weird."

She looked at him. Her mask was on. The domino, the green eyes, the white hair loose now, down past her shoulders because the pins had come out during the run. She reached up with both hands. Hooked her fingers under the bottom edge of the mask. Pulled it up.

Not off. To her chin. The mask bunched under her nose, covering her eyes and her forehead. What was visible was her mouth and her jaw and her neck.

She was wearing cherry lipstick under the mask.

The mask covered most of her face. Nobody would see lipstick. She'd put it on anyway. Cherry red, slightly smudged at the corner from the fight.

"What are you-"

She kissed him.

Her hand was on the back of his neck. She pulled him forward and her mouth found his and the cherry lipstick was waxy and sweet and her lips were cold from the wind and warm underneath and the kiss was hard. Her mouth open against his and her teeth on his lower lip and she bit down.

The pain was thin and bright and his lip was between her teeth and his hands went to her waist on the railing. He pulled her toward him and her legs came off the edge and wrapped around the platform post and she was gripping the back of his neck and his hands were on her waist and he pushed. She went backward until her spine was against the railing post and the metal groaned and her legs were on either side of the post and his body was between them and she was still biting his lip.

Two seconds.

Three.

The leather smell was everywhere. Her mouth was cherry and copper from his lip and her hand was in his hair, tight, pulling, and his hands were on her waist through the catsuit, the muscles of her stomach under the leather, and she was breathing through her nose because her mouth was still on his.

She put both hands on his chest and shoved.

Hard. He stumbled back two steps. She pulled the mask down. Eyes covered. Green eyes gone. Domino back in place. She was breathing fast, her mouth was red and smudged, and she was already reaching for her grappling hook.

"That didn't happen," she said.

He stood there. His lip was bleeding where she'd bitten it. The cherry lipstick was on his mouth. He could taste it.

"Cat-"

"That. Didn't. Happen." She fired the grappling hook. It caught the building across the street. She jumped. The line caught her. She swung across the street and landed on the opposite roof. White hair catching a streetlight, then nothing.

Peter stood on the water tower. His lip stung. Cherry and copper on his tongue. The wind was cold on his face and the barge had passed and the river was black again.

He grinned. Touched his lip. His fingers came back red.

Under his costume, on his chest, the old claw marks itched. They'd healed weeks ago. No visible mark left. But they itched now, warm under the fabric, and he pressed his hand against them the way he had that first night when his fingers came back bloody.

Claw marks. Traced spider. Headbutt. Kiss.

A pigeon landed on the water tank behind him, cooed once, and flew away. He stood there for a while longer.