A/N: I feel I should explain. This is one of the series, like Marry The Knight, that I simply get a lot of requests to continue. However, unlike MtK, its story is tangled up in Ultimacy, which is sadly slow-going. I apologize. However, people keep asking, and this did end on a cliffhanger, and I know how people appreciate having just a nice story about Peter and MJ and Felicia being happy in the middle of this BND stupidity. So, here's the thing: the 'crossover' portion of the story will appear under the Ultimacy name, when indeed it is written. This however is skipping past that and continuing the story of the non-Ultimate Peter and Mary Jane and Felicia. Don't worry about spoilers or getting lost, I've made things as clear as possible in the text, just drop a comment if you're still confused. That's also partly the reason for the new title; when all is said and done, you can go Gwen Stacy Syndrome, Ultimacy, Spider + Cat + Redhead. Clear? You're welcome!
Earth-617
Mary Jane found Felicia wrapped around the toilet. In the white, ultra-modern bathroom—the one room in the apartment where the furnishings didn't run to the extra—Felicia's pale beauty with her paler hair and her black outfit (fashion rather than costume this time) seemed like a mirage. Mary Jane hurried over, checking the floor before she stepped, but no—whatever meal Felicia had relived, it'd ended up in the toilet. Felicia was experienced with partying too hard, as experienced as her even, but even at her worst, MJ had avoided stringing together three hangovers in a row.
"Sometimes margaritas are not our friends," MJ said, kneeling down to gather up Felicia's hair while the cat burglar rested her cheek on the toilet's cool linoleum seat. The sight of it made Mary Jane very glad for her maid service. "They are our frenemies."
"I wasn't drunk," Felicia muttered, one side of her mouth muffled by the toilet seat. "I think I have a stomach flu. This is why I don't do relationships. Bad for the immune system."
Having ascertained that Felicia's hair hadn't been polluted, Mary Jane petted it, much like she would a Persian cat. "I miss Peter too. But at least you know, with him, he's doing everything he can to get back. And you don't give a shit about him being faithful. So it's not so bad. Really. It's not. Where else would he rather be than here, with us?"
"Nowhere. Obviously." Weakly, Felicia pulled her head up. "Unless there's some universe out there where I have a twin sister."
"The man knows his limitations. He wouldn't be able to handle two of you."
"What if he had six arms? He does sometimes, you know."
"Don't tell me you find that sexy."
Felicia shrugged a little, then collapsed. At least this time she did it into Mary Jane's arms rather than any part of the toilet. "How do you do this, MJ? Just...
miss him.
You can't help him, you can't
do
anything—you just have to wait?"
"It sucks," Mary Jane said.
"Yes."
"That's all. It just sucks. But maybe, I don't know—it reminds you what you have. Doesn't let you take it for granted."
Felicia was silent for a long time. "I may need a bath."
"I'll draw you one."
"And some company."
"Okay," MJ said, rising to start the bath, instantly hot water flying from the spigot. She still liked
that part
much better than the last apartment she'd shared with Peter. "But when I say I'm going to wash your back, that's all I'm doing. Unless this bath is in Listerine."
Felicia snuggled into the white rug, running a hand over her black top and leather pants. "Says the woman who was all about not taking things for granted—you should be banging me night and day while you have the chance."
"Pretty sure I've got 'the chance' on lockdown."
"Well, yeah, as long as I'm a slut and you're pretty." Felicia sighed, trying to get her top off to assist Mary Jane's bathing of her. It ended up tangling in her arms and over her face. "I hope Peter's having fun. Going on a sex tour of the multiverse. Might loosen him up a little. Finally get him to try pegging."
"And that's why I should've warned Peter about going into battle in skintight spandex with an ass that won't quit. You think you're bad, you should see some of the posts Electro's made on the internet..."
"Put in some bath salts, pwease," Felicia whimpered. "I have a backache."
"With that chest, I'm not surprised."
"And a headache."
"Now you're just milking it."
"Rub my shoulders?"
"Fine. Why do you have three taps? Hot, cold, and—"
"Milk."
"Jesus, you really are milking it."
"With this chest, you're surprised?"
***
Earth-69
For a long time after he'd arrived, Peter just stood and thought.
He wasn't on his Earth, he knew that much. It just didn't feel the same, vibrate at the same frequency. He didn't put much stock in all that Madame Web nonsense, him being some sort of Captain Britain without the cute sister. But maybe that was it. Or maybe he'd been up, down, and around New York City so many times that he just knew the real deal from any Brand Echh version.
But that wasn't what concerned him. What concerned him was what would happen when he did get back. If there was one thing his time in that odd, black leather universe where he was older than Reed Richards had made clear to him—it was that he was an idiot. Tangling himself up with Mary Jane and Felicia hadn't made them both happy, it just meant that now there were two women missing him, two women in danger without his protection. At least with
Gwen,
he'd only risked her, not her and Liz Allan too.
He knew he couldn't just ditch them. Well, maybe Ana. But he needed a wife. He was no better than Tony Stark that way—needing Pepper Potts to keep him on the straight and narrow. Just because his vices were crimefighting and guilt instead of anything fun didn't mean that he couldn't have an overdose. Go around calling himself the Spider again. Yeesh.
He had to pick one. Do the mature thing, like he should've done in the first place. But which? He loved them both, or at least, he was so infatuated with the two of them that he couldn't pick out one to draw the short straw. And what the three of them had together—the odd, but undeniably effective triangle where they had each other and Felicia had Spider-Man and Mary Jane had Peter and he had—he felt like he had everything... he loved that. Somehow
more
than he'd loved Felicia or Mary Jane or even Gwen. Maybe especially Gwen. He adored being able to help and comfort and support the two of them, with no jealousy, no recrimination, nothing but, somehow, love.
But he had to throw it away. If he was going to endanger someone, chain someone to his madhouse life, the least he could do was limit the collateral damage. Without him, Felicia would be a heiress, one hell of a private investigator, hell on heels. Without him, Mary Jane would be an actress, a model, heck, she'd even talked about buying out some struggling nightclub with Felicia's walking-around money.
Maybe he should just see if he could discretely slip away from the relationship. Leave the two of them together. Felicia was great at being a superhero, Mary Jane was great at being a superhero's girlfriend. They'd make a good team. Maybe he could—who knew—date a robot. See if Jocasta was single. Or that new Ultron looked cute. Would Hank mind him dating a robot replica of his wife? And did a robot building itself a cute naked body mean it was trans?
"Stop in the name of the law!" someone cried. Cripes, even in other dimensions. Peter looked out over the skyline, thinking that he was wearing his costume anyway. And while what happened in Vegas might've stayed in Vegas, he doubted Great Responsibility hung out exclusively in good ol' Earth-617.
The first thing he saw was the Beetle, zooming erratically through the air like Iron Man in his pre-AA days. It wasn't his Beetle, but the new girl one, with the cute look and the light brown skin that could've been patented by Starbucks. Judging from the big, science-y canister wrapped in her arms, it was easy to guess which law she'd broke.
Why didn't he get any cute groupie chicks wanting to be Spider-Girl? Well, okay, the time-traveling one had apparently been his possible future daughter (she'd seemed cool; point in favor of picking MJ), which sorta soured the whole concept. And despite the name, none of the Spider-Women were much for giving him the time of day. Maybe being the Woman to his Spider-Man was just too damn unfeminist for them. Like thinking Jeremy Renner was hot.
Spoke too soon: chasing her was Araña; sort of a fan. The last time he'd really touched base with her—well, his universe's her—had been a few years ago, when she was in her teens, and she hadn't seemed too keen on being his sidekick. But then, it wasn't like Patriot was eager to call himself Private America or anything—if only because that sounded like a film by Dinesh D'Souza.
At the time, Araña had worn a white tanktop and black pants, goggles as mask, with a headband in her reddish-brown hair. Adulthood hadn't changed her costume, but now the tank only covered half of her lean torso, leaving a generous portion of flat belly exposed, and an equally generous endowment of rounded cleavage thinly covered. Her pants similarly clung to well-sculpted legs and an ass that made Peter feel like a dirty old man for noticing it. The pants ended at her calves, leaving bare another helping of duskily golden skin down to her feet, where she wore sneakers and ankle socks. A new tattoo was on one shin, to go with the one Peter remembered from her bicep.
Something about seeing a young adult, clearly beautiful and sexual, still wearing the costume of her budding womanhood, struck Peter as slightly taboo. He wasn't sure he disapproved. It reminded him of a fantasy Mary Jane had once told him involving James Buchanan, robot arm model, wearing his old Bucky costume. The impropriety of the thought, its naughtiness, was kinda the point.
"C'mon!" Araña called after the Beetle, trying to snag a webline on the flier, but missing. "
Please
stop in the name of the law? Slow down in the name of the law? Take a breather in the name of the law?"
Admittedly this was another universe and it might be one of those annoying ones where everyone was evil: Steve, evil, Thor, evil, Tony Stark, evil (well, evil
er
). But Peter got a strong vibe of this Araña having the same heroic disposition as the one he had known, and
this
Beetle being as bad as any of the other Beetles. Besides, Beetle was tingling his spider-sense, while Araña gave him the warm vibe of a fellow web warrior (they had to find a better name) that he had become sensitized to in recent years.
"Comin' at ya from Earth-617," Peter cried as he snipered off a webline, perfectly catching Beetle by the armpit.
Her momentum suddenly redistributed, she swung in a short arc, Peter helping her along with his proportional strength so that instead of flying off free and clear, her own thrust redirected her into a rooftop water tower. It exploded in a cascade of H2O, the Beetle being washed down to the roof in a haze. She tried to pick herself up, stumbling against the shack that served as the building's rooftop access, but Araña had arrived and together, she and Peter web-bukkaked the villain, showering her with webbing from throat to belt, straitjacketing her arms and torso to the wall. Her legs splayed out from the cocoon imprisoning her, long and lean.
"Nice moves, Spidey," Araña congratulated. Good to know he wasn't a dictator in this world or anything. "Nothing like an old-fashioned superhero team-up."
She went to Beetle before Peter could object, ripping off her mask to reveal a surprisingly winsome face. As Peter had suspected, it was Janice Lincoln, her features sweetly delicate, with a hundred intricately kinky braids falling from her scalp, more like beaded artwork than hair. Her eyes, keen and searching, scrutinized Araña angrily. The fact that she was soaking wet—the pants of her costume plastered, slightly translucent, to her tanned, toned legs—did more to make her look like she was participating in a beach photo shoot than to ruffle her.
"Playa hata," she fired off.
"What'd you nab, Lincoln?" Araña demanded. "That laboratory looked pretty well-funded. I'm guessing you didn't break in there just for the coffee maker."
