Territory
She found it before he sat down.
Peter had one leg through the fire escape railing when Felicia's thumb landed on the side of his neck and pressed. He flinched. She held him there, one hand on his jaw turning his head, the other tracing a line from below his ear to his collarbone.
"What's this?"
He knew what it was. A thin raised welt where Cindy's web had caught him during the race two nights ago. She'd fired a line at his neck while they were swinging across rooftops and it had stuck for half a second before he pulled it off and the silk had left a mark like a friction burn. Faint. Pink. He'd forgotten about it.
Felicia hadn't.
"Cindy?" she said.
"Yeah."
"She marks you."
"She webs when she's-"
"I don't need details."
Felicia was sitting on the railing with her legs crossed and her boots hooked on the lower bar. Civilian clothes tonight. Leather jacket, dark jeans, her hair loose and white in the streetlight. No mask. She'd been coming without the costume for a few weeks and it still caught him off guard every time.
She ran her thumb over the mark again. Slow. Her nail caught the edge of the welt and he felt it in his teeth.
"Hmm."
"What?"
"Nothing."
She leaned in. Her mouth was warm on his neck and for one second he thought she was kissing the mark and then she bit down. Hard. Her teeth sank in right over the welt and the pain was bright and specific and his hand grabbed the railing and his spine went straight and a sound came out of his mouth that he would deny later.
She held it. Two seconds. Three. Her breath was hot on his skin and her hand was on his jaw holding him still and her teeth were in his neck and he could feel each one individually and the pain was doing things that pain shouldn't do.
She pulled back and looked at the result. A clear bite mark, already reddening, centered exactly on top of Cindy's web line.
"There," she said.
Peter put his hand on his neck. The skin was hot and tender and he could feel the impression of her teeth with his fingertips.
"You just- that's going to bruise."
"Good."
"Felicia."
"What." She was looking at him with her chin up and her eyes steady and her mouth slightly swollen from pressing it against his skin. Her jaw was loose, her hands relaxed.
"I want to meet her," she said.
His fingers went cold first. Then his wrists. Then the back of his neck where the bite was still throbbing.
"That's a terrible idea."
"I didn't ask if it was a good idea."
"Felicia, she's-"
"She's the girl who marks your neck. I want to meet her."
He looked at her. She looked back. The streetlight caught the edge of her jaw and her mouth was set and he knew that expression from twenty different rooftops. Every time he'd seen it she'd gotten what she wanted.
"Can we table that."
"I'm not pushing tonight." She uncrossed her legs and stood on the railing. Balanced. Her boots barely wider than the bar. "But I'm not forgetting either."
"You never forget anything."
"No." She looked down at him. "I don't."
She stood there on the railing with the city behind her, balanced on an inch of metal, her hair moving in the wind. She was the only person he knew who looked comfortable in the air.
"You coming?" she said.
He pulled the mask down and followed her off the fire escape.
Patrol was different with someone who knew his face.
Felicia had run alongside Spider-Man before. Dozens of times across Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen and the Diamond District. She could keep up on flat distances and she was better on vertical surfaces because the grappling hooks gave her angles his webbing couldn't match. But she'd always been running with Spider-Man. Tonight she was running with Peter, and the difference was in how she watched him.
When he webbed between buildings she tracked the arc. When he stuck to a wall she studied his hands on the brick. When he dropped from a ledge and caught himself one-handed on a fire escape three stories down, she leaned over the edge and watched the catch.
They crossed Sixth Avenue in silence. Seventh. Eighth. The blocks were quiet for a Thursday. A couple arguing outside a bar on 26th. A delivery guy on a bike running a red. A dog barking from a window on the fourth floor of a building they passed close enough to touch.
Felicia ran different from him. He swung. She jumped, grappled, pulled, landed. Her route was all horizontal lines and sharp catches. When she crossed a gap she didn't hesitate at the edge. She just went.
He'd asked her once how she'd learned to move like that. She'd said "My father taught me to climb before I could ride a bike." She hadn't said anything else and he hadn't pushed.
They were crossing West 28th when he heard the tires.
An SUV running a red on Seventh, doing forty at least, and a kid on the crosswalk. Maybe ten. Backpack, headphones, phone in hand, not looking up. The driver wasn't slowing.
Peter moved without thinking. Web-line to the lamppost, swing low, grab the kid by the backpack straps and pull him out of the crosswalk in one motion. The SUV blew through the intersection and the horn dopplered down the block and the kid dangled from his arm for two seconds, feet kicking.
He set him on the sidewalk.
The kid pulled out one earbud. Looked up. "Whoa."
"Check both ways, yeah?"
"You're Spider-Man."
"And you're alive because I happened to be here. Headphones off at crosswalks."
The kid stared at him for another second, then ran. Looked back once, tripped on a curb, caught himself, kept running.
He climbed back up to the rooftop. Felicia was standing at the edge, arms at her sides. Her mouth was slightly open and she was very still.
"You do this every night," she said.
"Most nights."
"For free."
"Well, the Bugle pays for photos."
"Peter."
He stopped.
"Yeah?"
"You're a better person than I'll ever be."
"That's not-"
"Don't argue."
She said it flat. No bitterness.
He shut up.
She stood next to him. Their shoulders were close. The city was loud below them and the wind had picked up and neither of them said anything for a while. A siren went east on 27th. Someone honked twice at an intersection. A pigeon landed on the rooftop's HVAC unit, looked at them, left.
"You could do this too," he said.
"I'm a thief."
"You're a lot of things."
She looked at him sideways. Her mouth pulled. "That's either very generous or very stupid."
"Both, probably."
She bumped her shoulder against his. Left it there. The leather was cold from the wind and it warmed against his suit in about ten seconds. Her hair smelled like shampoo and the wind and the city.
Below them a taxi stopped and a woman got out carrying a cake box. She walked carefully, holding it level, watching the sidewalk for cracks. Peter watched her until she went inside a building.
"One more block," Felicia said.
"You always say one more block."
"And you always follow."
They ran one more block. Then two. Then six, because Felicia didn't stop at one more of anything, and he didn't stop her, and the rooftops were cold and the wind was sharp and they didn't talk for the last four blocks and it was fine.
His room was dark when he got home.
He climbed through the window. The front door meant passing Ben's room and Ben slept light. The sill had small scratches in the paint from where he'd gripped it wrong back in October.
He pulled the mask off. Dropped it on the desk. Peeled the suit to his waist and stood in front of the mirror on the closet door.
The bite was on the left side of his neck. Red, clearly defined, already bruising at the edges. Felicia's teeth had left a specific pattern and it sat right on top of the faded pink line from Cindy's web.
On his left wrist, almost invisible now, the faint ring where Cindy had webbed him three weeks ago. She'd been holding his hand and the web came out involuntarily, wrapping around both their wrists before she pulled it off laughing and embarrassed. The adhesive had left a pale circle only visible in direct light.
Two marks. Two girls. One had bitten right over the evidence. The other didn't know the bite existed yet.
He touched the bite. Tender. Warm. He could still feel where Felicia's hand had held his jaw and her breath on his skin.
He touched the web ring. Cool. Almost gone. Cindy would probably leave another one without meaning to. The webs came out when she was happy and she was happy when she was holding his hand.
Tomorrow both of them would see. Cindy would notice the bite because Cindy noticed everything about his body. Felicia would check because Felicia always checked her work.
This is my life now.
He pulled the suit off and put on pajama pants and got into bed. The bite throbbed in the dark. He lay there with one hand on it and thought about Felicia on the railing and Cindy in the hallway and a kid running home with one earbud in.
He slept.