Loving You Black & Blue | Miguel O'Hara x Felicia Hardy

Ch. 20: Sex and the Spider Society

[Nueva York - Earth 928]

"Felicia! Over here!"

Felicia turned her head, following the sound of Jessica's voice until she spotted the spider-woman waving from a large table on the edge of the Spider Society cafeteria. "Hey!" Felicia beamed, trotting over to where her friends, Jessica Drew and Julia Carpenter, were already seated.

"I thought we were going out to a wine bar?" Felicia said as she slid into the booth next to Julia.

Jessica smirked, reaching under the table, "In a way we are..." the spider-woman produced two bottles of wine and began to pass out empty cups that she had brought along.

"When we first joined up, we tried to find a new bar out in the city once a month," Julia was explaining, fishing out her own bottle of red wine, "But scheduling is difficult when you're in between dimensions."

Julia went by many names across the multiverse – Arachne, Madame Web, and, of course, Spider-Woman – and each title seemed to fall just short of capturing her essence. Julia Carpenter was a bad-ass. Battle-tested and no-nonsense, with a superhero resume that set her leagues ahead of just about everyone in the Spider Society. Felicia had instantly taken a liking to her when Jessica had introduced them and the two women had bonded over their shared experiences of being injected with body-altering serums and rigorous training regimens (with the minor difference of Julia training as a high-up federal agent and Felicia putting her skills towards... other interests).

From swapping war stories to sharing workout playlists, Julia was slowly becoming one of Felicia's very favorite people in the multiverse. "Don't tell the boss," Julia winked at Felicia, tossing her auburn hair back over her shoulder as she uncorked a merlot and filled Felicia's cup.

Jessica groaned, rolling her eyes underneath the gold of her goggles, "Let's not mix work and pleasure, here."

"Well, Felicia certainly does," Julia quipped with a wink.

Jessica snorted, taking a dainty sip of her wine, "Even so. I'm two shifts away from a week off and sitting on a beach with my husband. I don't want to tempt fate and suddenly have a crisis fall in my lap."

"I'd take your place in a heartbeat," Felicia sighed, "I feel like I've been domesticated. I'm just not plugged in to work, back home, like I used to be."

"To be fair, you are an entire dimension away from everything going on in E-1610," Julia kindly reminded her.

"It's not just that," Felicia continued, holding up her wrist and turning the beautiful dimension jumper Miguel had made for her, "Miguel is still weird about me using this – and you can forget any mention of tagging along on a mission..."

Jessica hummed in thought before speaking, "Technically, you are a villain in some dimensions."

Felicia rolled her eyes, she and the girls had been talking in circles on this topic for weeks, "Can we just call the situation complicated, before writing off any possibility of me maybe contributing to what you all are working on someday?"

"Okay, you're complicated," Julia relented with a heavy dose of good-natured sarcasm.

"Christ, here comes Jessie," Jessica interrupted, her voice a mix of humor and irritation.

Felicia could hear the fourth member of their party before she saw her. 'Jessie' (another Jessica Drew and Spider-Woman of the multiverse) could not be less like her more stoic counterpart. Jessie was loud and loved to laugh and every ounce of precision that Jessica held, Jessie countered with reckless abandon. The plump brunette was walking alongside a particularly strapping Spider-Man, whose Atlas physique was encased in a shining red mecha-suit.