Disclaimer: Nope, just a fanfiction writer. I would be a man, if I owned it, wouldn't I? So nope.
Story: Penelope Parker had a habit of picking up strays and attracting the wrong kind of men.
Set after various episodes.
Spoilers: Probably.
Warnings: Cursing and violence for now…hm, just in case since I'm usually writing it, bit of crazy humor, perverted humor, morbid or sarcastic humor, and maybe some sexual situations…
Pairings: Features Fem!Peter/Various Others, (main) Fem!Peter/Flint Marko (Sandman), Fem!Peter/Norman Osborn, Fem!Peter/Dr. Connors, Fem!Peter/Kraven

Love in Hopeless Places
Chapter Twelve: Pigtails

"Hey, man, thanks for taking me in," Flash said awkwardly.

And yeah, once upon a time Flash Thompson would have been like "I don't do awkward!" But he knew full well he had his awkward moments.

Especially when it came to her.

Penny gave him a fond grin. "It's alright, Flash. You're a friend. Of course I would."

It made him feel bad about the past all over again. Honestly, though the two of them were teammates and he acted like she was the greatest thing, that hadn't always been true. Well, sort of. He'd always thought Spidergirl was awesome ever since she'd come out into being, and when they became teammates and she'd brought him to be part of SHIELD, it had been like a dream. Penny Parker on the other hand…

She was puny, geeky, and nerdy. He had mocked and jeered at her from the moment he saw her back in grade school. He hadn't known why, but something about her had just…made him want to taunt her all the time. He had incessantly dogged her heels from that first moment where he and Penny had become classmates in kindergarten and he'd seen her pigtails from behind and had unconsciously reached out to tug them. It had made her cry and he hadn't known what to do except pull on her pigtails some more.

From then on, he'd kept on antagonizing her until Spidergirl became a thing in his life and he'd wanted to be like her and be all cool and heroic and –

It made him stop picking on Penny, even if the itch to pick on her bugged him all the way until he realized Penny and Spidergirl was the same.

(That's a lie; even now he felt like teasing her incessantly and tugging at her hair.)

These days, he did still end up teasing her and poking fun at her, though now it was more easily translated as being all in fun and joking around, and him just messing around with her. But yeah, he got that urge to tease her –tease her like he used to and he'd had to stop his mouth from blurting out mean things to her like a bad habit.

It made him feel like an ass and those times he wished he could just go out to Penny and beg her to just deck him one (more than one, to pay him back for all those times he'd shoved her into a locker or did something worse). She'd been right. He had been a bully and the worst to her. And here he was now, trying to play things off these days and act like they'd always been best friends and didn't have the bad blood there should have been between them. And if Penny was a lesser person, there probably would have been and he'd rightly deserve all the payback coming to him.

Sometimes, during practice, he'd pull back on a fight against her (which was stupid because Penny can pack a punch and she fought like she'd been trained by Cap –which probably was true) just so he could get those hits from her he felt he deserved.

"Hey, I've got to head back to base to check on things, but I'll be back later. The guys are here, so you'll have company. I'll pick up some pizza, yeah? Sound good?" Penny asked him and he made himself grin at her.

"Hell yeah! Loaded all the way, 'kay Penny?" he asked eagerly.

She laughed. "Alright, alright! I'll make sure to get two large, with everything."

She helped him get comfy on the couch, placing his wheelchair next to him, then she left and it was just him. Or it was for a moment until Amadeus, Miles, and uh, Ben came into the room.

"Hey, how're you feelin'?" Miles asked, plopping down beside him and letting out a huge sigh.

Amadeus was a little more dignified as he sat down on the armchair near them, while Ben preferred to stand to the side.

"Sore, restless, mostly bored," Flash listed it off. He gestured to his legs. "Ain't used to my legs not functioning. Kinda impatient to get 'em back to normal so I can get back into the game."

"You're a pigtail puller," Ben said suddenly, staring him down. Everyone looked at him, with Flash especially giving him an odd look.

"Hey, what?" Flash asked dumbly. What was this guy on, and what was his problem?

"You're the type of guy to pull the hair of the girl he likes," Ben said matter of fact, raising an eyebrow. "I heard from Penny's older teammates how you used to bully her back in high school."

Flash flinched, but Ben wasn't done yet.

"And from what I see whenever Penny brings in a newbie, especially when it came to spider-themed heroes, you get all in a huff about it. You argued with her best friend, back when the punk wanted to be a hero and Penny had brought him in. You know, before he got all 'Anti-Venomed' up and stuck in some sort of coma."

Flash scowled and glared hard at the other boy. "I do not get all in a huff about it! And well, her best friend was an amateur!" 'And it was just supposed to be me and Penny, Agent Venom and Spidey,' Flash grumbled in his head.

Ben stalked towards him, getting in his face. "Is that right, punk? I thought I heard somewhere that guy was Venom before you were. And he did a good job, up until the symbiote went psycho on him and Penny, and wanted Spidey destroyed."

Flash's face flushed an angry red, and he almost tossed himself off of the couch (stupid idea, yeah, but he wasn't the genius on the team). But then Miles got in between the two and pushed them away from each other, causing Flash to sit back down on the couch and Ben to move a few steps away.

"Come on, guys," Miles said nervously. "Don't go starting a fight in Penny's house."

Ben made a disgruntled noise and moved off to be nearer to the window, while Flash crossed his arms and childishly kept glaring at the other boy.

What a jerk. Even if the jerk was right about things. So what if all his teasing and bullying through the years had been because he…he liked Penny? Liked her ever since they were two little kids. Had picked on her so bad because of it, more so when Harry Osborn came into the picture and all through the years in high school had thought Harry and Penny were together and it had just made him so mad and upset?

It wasn't something he was proud of, and not something he wanted some jerk to bring up. Yeah, he knew he was an idiot and he treated Penny like crap for such stupid reasons. He hadn't been able to help himself. Penny had just gotten under his skin and he couldn't just leave her well alone. Even now he couldn't and it bugged him because now there were even more than Harry to deal with and compare himself to when it came to her.

Miles started humming a song, breaking the tension and bringing Flash back to the living room. The group of teenaged heroes gave Miles varying looks of confusion and weirdness, but he just kept humming and grinning.

"How did I become so obnoxious? What is it with you that makes me act like this? I've never been this nasty!" Miles sung right to Flash, who grabbed a pillow from the couch and threw it at him.

"Shut the hell up, Morales!" But Flash was actually starting to smile a bit.

"Pleeeease don't leaaaaaaaaaaave me!" Miles' voice went off-key, making everyone start to chuckle before they all broke out laughing.

"Cut it to you, Flash-Man!" Miles head-banged and pretended to drum, before pointing at the blond.

Flash hesitated before going along with it. "I forgot to say out loud, how beautiful you really are to me. I can't be without. You're my perfect little punching bag, and I need you. I'm sorry," he warbled, though aside from wincing at how true that was, he also cringed at his voice.

Hey, his voice hadn't gotten any better since "Spidey: The Musical." And he still can't believe he played a genderbent Spidey in that…

The whole group then began to sing the rest of the song loudly and raucously, even Ben, and it was to this that Penny came home to, with three large boxes of pizza and Aunt May giggling in the background, having walked into the scene just before her niece.

"What the hell is going on?" Penny muttered to her aunt.

Aunt May smirked. "This is guys bonding."

Penny scrunched up her nose.


Flash was having a good time. The Web Warriors were digging into some good pizza, Penny was smiling brightly, and Aunt May was just the bomb.

Feeling full, he wiped his hands with a napkin and before deciding to wheel himself to the bathroom and wash his hands there, since Aunt May was at the kitchen sink. He'd only just finished when Amadeus was blocking his way and had a strange, haunted look on his face.

"Hey, Flash, can I talk to you about something?"

Flash's smile uneasily slid off his face. "Yeah, man? What's up?"

"Look, I think you're a good guy and everything, so I don't think you know about it or had anything to do with it…but when I transferred to Midtown, I heard some things."

"About all the bullying and mean things I said and did to Penny?" Flash tiredly asked.

Amadeus looked reticent. "No. You ever hear anything about your buddies on your team doing…stuff to Penny?"

Flash froze, feeling numb as he stared at Amadeus. "What?" His voice even sounded faint in his ears.

Amadeus' shoulders hunched. "I walked in on some of your jock friends one time. They were talking about something that happened. They cornered Penny or something a long time ago. Did stuff. They quit talking when I came in, but I heard enough. It's bothered me since then, but I've never said anything about it, even when I came onto the team and saw you were…you know. Agent Venom. And it's just…ever since learning about Spidergirl being Penelope Parker, the thought comes up more often these days, and I thought I should finally bring it up."

Flash's face contorted, some mess between fury and disgust and horror.

"God no! I don't know anything about that, and –shit. When was this?" He didn't even know what to say about it. Hell, why the hell didn't Penny say something to him? Why did she definitely not hate him?

"I just thought you should know, since you probably used to know them," Amadeus said softly before he left Flash.

Flash stared at the floor. Damn it, right now he felt less of a hero and more like a zero…


"So, I got walkie talkies," Penny juggled the old-fashioned walkies. "You need anything, just give a call. I'll be downstairs in a jiffy," she smiled kind of dorkily and it brought a weak smile to Flash's face. She noticed. "Hey…You okay?"

Flash opened his mouth, but he couldn't bring himself to bring up that past that he had no business knowing. He hadn't been Penny's friend then; he hadn't been close to her. He had no right to pry into it, especially when he could bet he'd been part of the problem somehow and the kind of people who did horrible stuff to her had been 'his' kind of people back then. But…

"Hey…you know I was an ass back then," Flash nudged her arm softly, biting his lip.

"Yeah, I know," Penny hesitantly listened to him.

"I'm sorry," he choked out, actually crying a bit. Gosh, what a loser he was being. But he really felt like shit then, and it had really been bottling up ever since he found out Penny was Spidergirl.

"Oh, Flash," Penny was taken aback. "Has this really been bothering you all this time? Come on. You know I don't hold it against you and I know you've been bettering yourself."

"And that's what I don't get!" he shouted, though he bit his lip harder. He shouldn't have shouted, not at Penny. And he didn't want to wake Aunt May either because he was being a loud dumbass. He spoke quietly, but still with a lot of passion. "I was a real bastard back then and yet you never retaliated, even when you got your powers and I didn't know. Even up to now, you accepted me into your team, treat me so good, act like the best friend I've never really had, and I don't deserve any of it."

Penny's face softened and she put down the walkies as she walked closer to him. She ruffled his hair.

"Flash, it's not about deserving anything. People get second chances. We do the right thing and sometimes that means letting go of the past and embracing the future. And right now, you and I, we're a team. We kick ass and take names, right?" she teased him a little.

Still, Flash's face scrunched up miserably. "I promise I'm gonna be that guy you can count on. I swear. I'm gonna be that guy."

Penny shook her head at him and smiled slightly. "I know, Flash. Don't beat yourself too hard about this anymore. I really don't care about the past, and I like having you as a friend."

Flash nodded quietly, looking up at her through a glaze of tears. He could barely see her, but he could see the blurry strands of her hair. He felt himself reach up and touch them, grabbing a piece and tugging it.

He could never really resist her hair, not even as a five year old brat.

"It's okay, Flash. You've got a shelter here that'll keep you."

"With you," he muttered sleepily. "Shelter with you…"

Started 6/20/16 – Completed 6/21/16

A/n: Yay! I'm on a roll this week, so expect an update again Friday and maybe Saturday~ I hope Ben, Flash, and Miles came out alright because I haven't written them really before (though I'm growing more comfortable with Amadeus). I hope everyone enjoyed this one. Please remember to review! They really get me going and super motivated and giddy (hehehe)!

(To be honest, I had originally was going to have Harry be too late, but then I was like nope. Someone else gets to have Penny's first time, and rightly so. Not a bunch jerks~)


Anon Reviews:

1. Leska: Thank you as always and glad you didn't end up crying :D (Or maybe it's the opposite and I have to try harder? XD)

2. Guest: Yep, it's awkward with Flash! More so with Flash, who's beating himself up about everything~