I'm on a Spider Cat Redhead kick lately

Peter was lucky in love, as hard as that was to believe. At least, he considered himself so. No matter what grave misfortunes his love life had suffered, how could he consider himself unlucky when he had people like Mary Jane, like Felicia in his life? Then there was Ana, Betty, Debra… it took a lot to make girls like that pale in comparison, but nonetheless, MJ and Felicia were goddesses to him. He was a long way from the high school dweeb who couldn’t talk to a girl without showing symptoms of some new and exciting mental disorder on every occasion.

Carol took him right back to all that. She downright intimidated him. Smart, funny, noble in a way he had to constantly aspire to. And beautiful. Unassailably beautiful. Tall, taller than him, with golden hair and a bronze tan and… well, several other physical features that fully justified a one-piece bathing suit as a costume, like that Amazon wore in all the comic books. Nothing could detract from that beauty, not anger, not battle—he’d seen Felicia get into scraps that left her with broken bones, oozing blood, and she’d slink away like a cat to get plastic surgery and do yoga and come back more herself. But all blood and bruises did to Carol was make her look even more the warrior goddess. Legs and muscles and tits and that fucking jaw, that damn smile…

Peter was a little bit in love with her. That pure, innocent, crush-love that could never come to anything. She was one of those big ‘what ifs’ that kept you curious.

And she was flying him. Peter could subvert gravity, rebel against it, play with it, and thumb his nose all he wanted, but it always caught up with him—usually after someone else had given him a going over to soften him up. But Carol made gravity fuck off. Peter found himself wishing he’d found a way to run into her over in that alternate universe. It just would’ve been nice to know what it was like… or at least how her costume looked over there.

He had to say something. “So you know about the thing with Mary Jane and Felicia?”

“They mentioned it,” she said, knowing just how much to raise her voice to be heard over the rushing wind, without being so loud as to be unladylike. It was amazing. “I think it’s a bit of a dirty trick myself, coming at someone without shooting straight like that, but it’s not really my business.”

“Isn’t it?” Peter asked. “I mean, seeing as we’re both Avengers…” And sluts, an inner voice suggested. Why had he even gotten rid of the symbiote when he had something saying that in his subconscious?

“You want to know what I think?”

“Always.”

“You should go through with it. Weird set-up or not.”

“But what about—“

Carol interrupted stridently. “You really think there’s any doubt you’ve had that she hasn’t had?”

“Well… I suppose not. But I’m not comfortable with it yet. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“It counts fine. But you should get comfortable with it.” Carol flew faster. “Because damn, do I hate to see you screwing up a good thing.”