On AO3 the real chapter 21 was a chain of text messages between Eddie and Felicia shown through images. Since of course doesn't allow image embedding, I have no choice but to skip over that chapter here and just go onto 22, which is what this one is. The proper chapter 21 can be seen on the AO3 version of this story.
xx
Even over the harsh hiss of the shower spilling water past his shoulders, Eddie still heard Symby's voice throbbing in his head.
'Just ask her.'
Just ask her… what? If she wanted to go on a date? Did criminals even do dates? If any of them did, they hadn't exactly offered any advice on how to go about it. Even if he knew what the hell to say to her, that wasn't going to get his hopes up off the ground. After all, he was… well, he was himself. Though he didn't know if it was because of who he was or who she was that made it so difficult to take ]the risk of letting himself love her. He couldn't see how to convince her to give him the chance, or what to do next when she said no or, in even more terrifying unlikelihood, if she said yes...
But, even though he couldn't even think of how to get to it, he could see a future with her. A better one. And he wanted it, for himself and for Symby. But… he doubted she'd have a better one with them.
Eddie blew out steam in a heavy sigh, pressing his forehead against the tiled wall below the shower head. Though the water was warm, he still shivered. He'd scrubbed himself with the only soap he hadn't completely used up, yet he didn't feel any better. And though he tried to wash away everything that he had to regret, if only for tonight, it all kept swirling stubbornly in his brain like the foam around his feet. If he wasn't thinking of all the ways trying to be with Felicia could go wrong, all the ways it would go wrong, then he was thinking of everything he wanted with her. Everything he couldn't have, but everything that he couldn't stop dreaming about-
"No, no! Not now!" He hissed through gritted teeth when he felt a familiar throb between his legs, and he turned so his back was flat against the wall as he turned the water temperature as far down as it would go. He'd avoided using Felicia's bathroom the last few days just because he was so cautious of getting stuck with an erection around her. There was only so much Symby could do to hide it when he had to walk around in front of Felicia. And considering its- her insistence on acting like an alien cupid for them both, he didn't trust her to do him any favours.
And yet he had to trust her to make a suit for him all evening… this was going to be a long night. It was already a long night, since he was sure he'd spent at least half an hour standing in the shower not wishing he was somewhere else, but wishing he was someone else (then again, he was used to doing that). Someone else who didn't have a raging boner, at the very least.
'These women are gonna be the fucking death of me…' Eddie inhaled sharply as icy water started flooding over him, but he endured it just to get his dick under control for once in his life. Once it was thankfully limp again, he shut the water off and grabbed one of Felicia's ridiculously huge towels. But even with how big it was, he doubted it would have managed to hide his dick at full length. He told it one last time to behave, then dried off before edging the door open just wide enough to let Symby in.
She pulled herself across the tiles like a snake, shuddering when she had to pass over puddles, but otherwise the humidity wasn't a major concern. He never really needed to keep her out of the bathroom, since she could have just hidden inside his bloodstream while he washed. He just made the excuse so she could keep an eye on Felicia for him. He didn't even know at first that they could both understand each other, but if they'd been talking since the first night he came...
Whatever it was they talked about, maybe it was why Symby liked her so much. He just hoped the symbiote hadn't told her too much about his… situation. Or anything at all, actually. The last thing he needed was her having any more reasons to pity him.
"What were you saying to her?" he asked as Symby climbed up his body, spreading over his skin while he towel-dried his hair.
"Thanking her for bringing us food. Eating with us, too." Symby knew what clothes to make, but it took her some seconds to figure out how to emulate a suit that was slightly different to any she had to make before. Eddie adjusted each part of it as it came into being.
"...Does that not count as a 'date'?" Symby asked.
"What?" Eddie loosened the tie that appeared around his neck, but that wasn't what was making him feel like he was choking.
"That's what you always called us eating together," Symby explained. "Two loved ones, enjoying each other's company. Exactly what you've been doing with Felicia-"
He shook his head stubbornly. "It's not the same thing."
"But you do enjoy her company, don't you?"
Eddie didn't answer. Oh God, had he been dating her this whole time and never even realised? Did she know that as well? Did she even see any of those nights together as dates? What if she didn't?
So many questions clogging up his cortex, but only one he could actually hear.
"Why are you so nervous, Eddie?"
Symby could have easily found the answer herself if she did a little digging into his brain. But it knew better than to go too far into that maelstrom.
"I'm not," he told her, bracing himself with his hand on the door. "I just fucking hate parties."
He stepped out, and when he saw Felicia at her dressing table he felt Symby echo his own silent gasp in his lungs.
He'd been expecting her dress to be black, but not so… well, of course he wasn't the fashion expert he'd claimed to be last night so he couldn't say what made it so enchanting. Maybe the trail of glittering diamond studs that trickled down from her neckline, curling to her left like a stray wind had caught them, following the trail of the slit in the fabric that exposed her leg. And as the diamonds showered down the black fabric their path widened, so that when they reached the hem it looked like she had torn an arm of the Milky Way right out of the night sky and wrapped it tight around her. Although, he doubted a galaxy could have been half as radiant as she was.
She was just finishing pinning her hair into place. Like a mountain made of intricate curls of snow, tightly packed and tied together with a braid of white that reached behind her skull. And from the half of her face he could see, she'd applied only slightly more makeup than usual. Not that she even needed it.
She looked better than most women did on their wedding days.
Even better than… no. He shook himself before he could remember that.
"How do we look?" Eddie caught her attention when he asked, and she spent some long seconds looking him up and down. He was prepared to hear some insincere appraisal, but when she stood she almost seemed impressed.
"Your tie's a little crooked." Felicia set to adjusting it while Eddie tried to avert his eyes from the perfect angle down towards her cleavage. He cleared his throat with Felicia's fingers so close to it, trying so so hard not to need another cold shower so soon after the first.
"Where'd you get that dress?" he asked, while still making a point of not staring at it any more.
"From a lovely little boutique in Queens that really needed a better alarm system." Felicia winked as she finished making Eddie presentable, and only smiled more when he scowled in disapproval.
"I'll hand it back after tonight," she promised dismissively. "I just don't like being stuck to opening hours. You have the invites with you?"
Eddie still frowned, but he couldn't deny that he was just glad she was wearing the dress regardless of how she got it. "Yeah. Symby kept them safe for me." The envelopes bubbled up out of his sleeve as Symby passed them to his head.
"Did Liz ever say what this party is about?" Felicia asked.
"It's some kind of fundraiser. Probably on behalf of Kingpin or someone working for him." That's what Eddie assumed, since it seemed the only politicians not on Fisk's payroll were ones that didn't last long.
"Probably." Felicia gave herself one last look in the mirror. "Come on, our ride's downstairs."
Eddie had been ready to leave through the window, so seeing Felicia actually head toward her front door was a shock. "We're not using the roofs?"
"If you wanna show up looking like you've just ran over ten blocks, then go ahead," she called from the living room.
Outside, there was a car waiting that looked like it cost more than Eddie would have paid for ten years' worth of rent, and certainly didn't look like it belonged in a city with traffic like New York.
"Since when have you owned a Lambo?!"
Felicia smirked as she took the driver side. "I don't. Just borrowing this one for the night."
"Like how you borrowed that dress?" Eddie didn't bother frowning this time as he took the other side, the leather seat creaking expensively under him.
"Exactly." Felicia grinned as Eddie rolled his eyes. He had the feeling that tonight he'd see the Black Cat in her natural environment. And that where she was concerned, he was doomed no matter what.
xx
Even though she was in a stolen car, Felicia didn't look too concerned about anyone seeing her in it. If anything, she was intent on showing it off as she pulled in right in front of the Alchemax tower. Eddie fought not to roll his eyes again, eager to get away from the stolen property before police had any more reasons to throw him in jail (he was pretty sure this whole evening would make him an accomplice to something). He was at the foot of the steps that lead to the door when he heard Felicia loudly clearing her throat behind him.
"Ahem." She'd opened her door but remained seated, with her hand stretched out as if she was expecting him to take it. Of course she was. Eddie sighed as he went back to indulge her.
"You're really milking this 'high society' thing, aren't you?" He saw her even gather up the hem of her dress so it didn't touch the ground, offering an even better look at her legs that he struggled to ignore.
"One of us has to," she answered, letting him lead her all the way up the stairs. It wasn't until halfway up that he remembered to give Felicia her own invitation, and it wasn't until they reached the top that he remembered he'd forgotten to tell her about a slight discrepancy on it.
Well, actually, he didn't exactly remember. She just saw it for herself when she opened the envelope.
"'Felicia Brock'?" She turned the invite so he'd see it right there on the front, all curly and fancy and official. Eddie fully understood why she stood there gawking in confusion, so he pulled her aside so they weren't blocking the way for everyone else looking like they'd just walked right off of the cover of a magazine he couldn't afford.
"Well Felicia 'Hardy' is still a wanted criminal," he reminded her, keeping his voice low. "And I don't know what name you use nowadays, so… I guess Liz thought it was a way to not get cops over here to arrest us both. If it makes you feel better, she gave me your last name." He showed his own invite with 'Edward Hardy' stamped on it. As if the 'Edward' alone wasn't bad enough…
Felicia still held him in place with a cocked eyebrow, but there wasn't much she could do about it now. So long as they got them both inside, what did it matter what was written on them?
As it turned out, they did get inside. Far too easily for Eddie's liking, but he supposed that he was still a familiar face around the tower.
"So I guess Symby doesn't need her own invite?" Felicia asked once the relief had passed.
"I think she counts as a 'plus one'." Eddie felt his suit tighten for a few seconds, as if she was burrowing into him.
They'd reached the main lobby which, just as Typhoid Mary described, had been transformed into a lavish ballroom. Well, it was more tacky than anything else in Eddie's opinion. He didn't recognise anyone else gathered there, not outside of their villain outfits at least (though one familiar guy was using a boomerang to shovel food off of silver trays and into his pockets when he thought no one was looking). Felicia didn't look all that impressed either, but he supposed she was used to breaking into far grander places. Instead she focused on him, specifically the arm that she'd looped through hers without comment.
"So what made 'her' switch from an 'it'?" she asked, once again (unintentionally or not) catching Eddie off guard. Symby didn't seem to mind the question, but… he didn't even quite know what the answer was. He knew Symby had always seen herself as his other half, and she knew that the closest people (or… person) in his life had all been female. It must have just been the logical step for her to take towards making their bond as strong as it could be. And it was only recently that he'd actually acknowledged it as a step, and allowed her to take it for them both.
That was all that Eddie could think of in way of explanation, since Symby hadn't really offered any for herself. All he knew was that being a 'she' made her happy. Maybe she didn't even know why. It made her happy, and that was good enough for her- and for him.
When it came to putting all of that into a simple answer for Felicia, Eddie let Symby form it for him.
"I think she took inspiration from you," he said.
Felicia's eyebrows shot up, but she looked pleased to carry the blame. "I am known to be a bad influence. But I think she makes a good lady." She looked down at her arm, where Symby reached out tiny tendrils to her in appreciation. Only for a second, just long enough for her to feel them before they disappeared back into Eddie.
"Well, no one's tried to kill us yet," he muttered, scanning the wide room for anyone who looked they might. "I think my disguise as a normal person is working for once."
"Liz doesn't look very happy to see you," Felicia pointed out, just as he spotted her. Liz's suit wasn't any more extravagant than what she always wore, but the bodyguards around her were so good at their jobs that you couldn't see much of her anyway. Eddie only saw enough of her face to know she was glaring over at him.
"Most people aren't," he said. "But she won't kick us out so long as we behave ourselves."
"I guess all the security around her is to make sure of that," Felicia added. "Almost as if she doesn't trust you to handle tonight yourself."
"She did mention something about calling in someone for backup," Eddie remembered, "but I don't-" He'd reached for a tiny piece of food that came floating past on a tray, but his hand was left empty in the air when it went by. Once he saw the familiar man standing next to Liz, he lost his appetite in a second.
"Oh, for fuck's sake..."
Of all the people in the city, in the galaxy, it had to be Flash fucking Thompson, didn't it? He seemed to have the exact same reaction to seeing Eddie, spluttering up the gulp of champagne he'd just taken. Or maybe it was from seeing Felicia, who gave him a coy wave with a flick of her wrist.
"Looks like he wants to speak to one of us," she said, noticing how Flash kept twitching his head to try and summon them over as he separated himself from Liz.
"Probably you," Eddie hoped. "If I go near him, I'll just end up bludgeoning him with his own legs."
"Now, Eddie, is that any way to treat a veteran?"
"No, but it is how I treat symbiote thieves." He kept glaring at Flash despite Symby trying to devour his adrenaline before it soaked into his bloodstream. Felicia sighed as she grabbed two champagne flutes.
"I'll go talk to him." She handed one to Eddie. "You just stand here and scowl to yourself."
"More than happy to." He gladly downed the entire glass, watching her approach Flash. Somehow she perfectly timed her pace so that by the time she reached him, he was clearly regretting asking her over.
Good.
"I wish you wouldn't be so caustic towards him, darling." Symby had given up on trying to chemically calm him down, but still let her disapproval ring out in his skull.
"I wish you never bonded with him in the first place, but we don't always get what we wish for." Eddie turned away from spying on the two exes so no one would see him talking to himself.
"I'd have thought you'd have been grateful for it nowadays," Symby said cryptically.
"And why on Klyntar would you think that?"
"Flash was once very close to Felicia." Well, that was obvious enough. Eddie looked at them both again, and saw Flash actually blushing at her. Though he supposed he couldn't blame him.
"He knew things about her," Symby went on. "Things that I also know. Things that you know, too, even though you don't recognise them. And that's why you can't stop looking at her. Why your dream felt so real-"
Eddie grunted behind gritted teeth to cut her off. "Can we… not talk about that?"
Symby retreated from his nerves, only clinging to his skin now, giving him a moment to feel her absence before she spoke again. "I'm just saying now what I said then. It doesn't have to stay a dream, love."
"...But maybe it's better if it does." Eddie went to grab another glass of champagne, with the idea that if Symby wasn't in his bloodstream then she couldn't stop him getting drunk tonight. As he gulped it down, he found himself standing in hearing range of a group gathered close to the left wall of the room, near the entrance. Not immediately suspicious, until you realised they were trying to whisper. Eddie abruptly slowed his drinking so he could linger a little longer, while Symby helped to amplify the hushed voices.
"All I know is he went out back to take a piss," one of them was saying, "and that's where his body was found."
Eddie struggled not to cough. They were talking about his kill… they must have been.
"You don't sound too broken up about it," someone pointed out to their friend.
"Why would I? He was a dick. Probably just got taken out by another dick."
"My money is on Venom," a new voice chimed in, and Eddie knew his heartrate was starting to make Symby worried. "That guy's been ambushing a lot of us recently. I heard he tried to get Shrike the night before his initiation."
"You think he's secretly in with the Hood too? Like, as some kind of enforcer?"
"Might be. Maybe 8 said something to someone he shouldn't have..."
"Yo, Herman!" The boomerang guy burst into the group, ruining the atmosphere as he clapped his hand onto a very nervous man's shoulder. "I got you some of those shrimp things. Ate most of them on the way over but- hey, why're you sweating so much? You got your quilt on under the suit or something?"
Eddie kept his eye on the nervous man. Herman, aka the Shocker, aka the one who had accidentally told Felicia about this 'gathering' that she was so focused on finding out more about. He must have thought his loose lips put him next on Venom's hit list. That at least confirmed that there was something like that about to happen.
Out of the corner of his subtle stare, Eddie caught the starry glint from Felicia's dress as she came sauntering over. He abandoned his eavesdropping to meet her halfway.
"What'd Agent Asshole want?" he asked, looking behind her to where Flash was giving his prosthetics a rest, seated conveniently close to the buffet table where he was monitoring the two of them.
"Mostly asking what the hell I was doing here," Felicia answered, "and what the hell I was doing here with you."
"And what'd you tell him?"
"That I was in a new kind of business nowadays. The 'none of your' business." She smiled as she finished off the last of her glass. "I don't think he's suspicious of me, though. He was mostly just warning me about you. Even gave me some of this." She held up a small vial between a thumb and forefinger, and the white substance inside made Symby hiss and almost lose her form around him as she squirmed.
"What is that…?" Eddie tried to soothe the symbiote so he wasn't left standing naked in the crowded room, while Felicia rotated the vial left and right to make its contents flow.
"Some of his Anti-Venom," she answered. "You won't believe the self control I had to exert to not make a joke about getting white goo from my exes."
"Yeah, I'm sure, now would you please put it away? On account that it'll literally kill us?" Eddie hissed while he remembered all too well what his own Anti-Venom had been capable of. Felicia shrugged as she thankfully concealed it somewhere in her dress, and Eddie felt Symby sag around him in relief.
"I just think it's funny how much he doesn't trust you," Felicia noted, handing off her empty glass to a tray full of them.
"Ditto." Eddie grunted, casting one last glare over to Flash who sat stuffing his symbiote-stealing face. Now Eddie was pissed and hungry. He let Symby guide his hand over a food tray and snatched up the entire contents. Whatever it was, it had enough meat for Symby to be happy. Just as he was about to shove it in his mouth, he sae another glint from Felicia standing beside him. Not from her dress this time.
"You didn't have that necklace when you came in."
She looked at him, then the hefty choker around her neck as if she'd only just noticed it was there. "Oh, this? I liberated it from a lady who had it stuffed under at least three chins. You gonna make me take it back?"
Eddie considered it, but he supposed that putting it back where it should have been was a lot harder than just taking it. "I'll just assume it looks better on you."
She smiled knowingly, and he got the feeling he'd just summoned the Black Cat's true form.
"How's the hors d'oeuvres?" she asked, pinching one of his bites for herself.
"Better than prison food." If only they weren't so goddamn small. At this rate Symby was gonna track down the kitchen in this place to devour it all for herself.
"I dunno. I kinda liked the food when I was in," Felicia admitted.
"That'll be cause I was the one who kept bugging them to serve something other than cardboard," he told her, with as little smugness as he was able to smother.
"Really?" She popped another stolen bite in her mouth as she quirked her eyebrow.
"Yep. That's what they got for making me edit the inmate newspaper." When he finally got sentenced to the Vault once separating Symby from him was deemed impossible, he figured it was to stop him going even more insane from boredom. "Only so much I could do for it though; I think whoever they had writing it didn't even know how to read."
"The women's facility didn't get a newspaper. All we got was two-ply toilet paper."
"Same thing, if you ask me."
Felicia gave a single snort of laughter, and the look of her face scrunching was absolutely adorable. "You find out anything useful while I was humouring my ex?"
Eddie shook himself while his heart kept swelling up around Symby's grip. "From what I heard, most of them are speculating about how 8-Ball got killed. Some of them think Hood knows that 8 said too much and decided to make an example of him."
Felicia nodded in acknowledgement, dusting her eyes left and right to make sure no one could hear their hushed conversation. "Better than them thinking it was you."
He grunted uneasily, deciding not to add that they did think it was him too. He just prayed no one had saw him slipping back into the bar through that same door 8-Ball left through…
He coughed to clear his throat, and went on.
"Shocker was definitely right about a gathering happening, from how anxious he looked. They've spread out around the room by now, probably casing it for what they're doing tonight."
Felicia helped herself to one last bite and look around her before dusting her hands off. "I'm gonna go eavesdropping. We should stay together. It'll look suspicious if either of us go wandering off by ourselves."
"And if you're right about everyone always ignoring couples, maybe no one'll try to talk to us." Eddie stood smirking to himself, but Felicia didn't wait for him. She'd already found somewhere to start and left him to shuffle over with Symby on his back, taking her own account of the room and the people within it.
From what she passed on, Eddie was hit with a chilling realisation.
They were watching him.
Not just Liz and Flash, eagle-eyed for any wrong move on his part. Some of them were criminals, faces that he only now recognised now that they were pointed right at him. Not all of them, but… enough. Enough to make his skin crawl so much that Symby couldn't fight the sensation off.
Maybe they knew he'd killed one of their own. Or just that he was a killer. One of them. As bad as them.
They saw what he constantly kept trying to hide from himself, and saw it as a good thing.
He heard a crunch of glass, and realised he'd still been holding a champagne flute this whole time. It was broken in half in his bloody palm. He held the two halves together gingerly until he found somewhere to covertly dump them, and fortunately by then Symby had soaked up the blood. She stitched the stinging cuts on his hand back together as he finally made it to Felicia. She was like a safe island in the sea of watching monsters.
"Help us understand something, Felicia," he asked, trying not to sound too out-of-breath (adrenaline and a symbiote too preoccupied to devote herself to your lungs was a bad combination).
Felicia gave a sideways glance at him, only giving half of her attention with the other half still on eavesdropping. "I'll do my best to."
Eddie gulped, and tried to put together something that wouldn't sound too preachy.
...A Catholic trying not to sound preachy. Ha fucking ha.
"Okay. You're… a good person."
"Debatable," she cut in.
"Well, better than us. So, how do you put up with stealing? Not in a judgemental way, just… how do you not feel guilty over it?"
She looked at him again, longer this time, and shrugged. "Simple, really. I have rules."
"Like?"
"I don't take from small stores. I don't take from people- well, people who can't afford to lose anything, at least. I take from companies, galleries, entities, because what they've got is already classed as stolen. And those stolen goods are better in my hands than anyone else's. You know most diamonds come from one mine in Africa, and the only reason they're so expensive is cause people think they're a lot rarer than they really are?"
She'd abandoned her mission for now, fully invested in Eddie's little moral quandary. Probably more invested that he actually was.
"I heard something like that," he said. "You ever break those rules?"
She looked away, then seemed to look inward as her eyes glassed over.
"...Once," she confessed quietly. "On my first night, I hit a family-owned boutique. Went back a week later to leave some money for what I took, but that week had my stomach aching from the guilt."
"What'd you take?"
She shook her head with the smile of a serial sinner filled with regret. "It was stupid. Just a silly thing my heart couldn't let go of when I saw it."
"C'mon, you didn't laugh at us so we won't laugh at you." Eddie meant what he said, and eventually Felicia believed him.
"...It was a wedding dress," she revealed, rolling her eyes at herself. "I saw it in the window, a week before my first night. I wasn't officially Black Cat by then, but that was cause I didn't have the suit ready. I went out, seeing whatever tempted me. Mostly jewelry and perfume I couldn't afford."
"So you've always had exquisite taste." Eddie was glad to see her smile grow just a bit more sincere from that. It helped fight off the memory of someone else's wedding a long long time ago.
"I happened to be nearby the store that first night," she went on. "And I was so high on the adrenaline, the thought of just disappearing with whatever I wanted… I broke in and I took it. Never wore it. Just kept it in my closet for years."
Eddie knew exactly what he wanted to ask next, and even why he wanted to. But he resisted, if only for a few seconds.
"...You still have it?"
Felicia nodded. "It's another thing that somehow managed to survive this long. Just like me."
He felt the pain in his palm disappear, and now there was nothing stopping Symby from pushing dormant words out of his mouth for him.
"Well, whoever gets to see you in it will be a very lucky man," he told her, somehow managing to get it all out in one piece.
Another smile hit him, along with another reason among hundreds to adore her. "Here I thought I only spread bad luck."
"Night's still young. Plenty of time left for some of that to show up." Though even as he said it, he felt like the luckiest man in the whole city that night just because he was spending it around her.