Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: So I've got a surprise for y'all – today is gonna be a double update! I was writing this and I realized this chapter is kind of an interlude, so I thought I might as well continue where we left off in chapter 4 too. Plus, I hit 400k posted words this year, thought you guys deserved a treat for it. ;)

This chapter title comes from Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy by Queen. I was gonna use it later, but I needed it here. You'll see why.

Next chapter will be posted within 5 minutes. If you got here as soon as I posted this one, refresh your page by then/when you finish reading.

Hope you enjoy,

TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~primis, omega, superhero, genius~

~somebody to love~

~chapter 5: good old-fashioned lover boy~

Once upon a time, not long after her parents died, Penny learned what a pack dynamic was.

She was only eight years old, and the deaths of her mother and father still smarted. Uncle Ben and Aunt May, they were great...but they weren't the same. They hadn't celebrated Hanukkah like her parents had, hadn't really celebrated it at all, and neither of them could really cook to save their lives. There was a lot of dry chicken or slightly burnt spaghetti in their house or, on the nights when one of them botched something beyond repair, which was often, takeout. Not to mention, they had a tendency to listen to old music way too much. Bands like Queen, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and the Bee Gees. Singers like Elton John, Neil Diamond, and Madonna.

(Later, she would come to love these bands so much they would be all that she listened to, her favorite most of all being Queen. But that was later, not now.)

Another thing that made Ben and May different from her parents was how they watched the news every single night for an hour after dinner. After that hour, she was free to watch whatever she wanted until it was her bedtime, but they had to have their hour of news.

This was how she heard the term "pack dynamic." She was curled up against May's side, tired from a day at school and a full belly, her aunt's fingers carding through her hair when the news turned to a short story. Apparently, for the first time in over a hundred years, a pack with a theta as the..."primis" had been registered with one of the world governments. She was from Italy, lived there with her "scent matches," of which she had three. One alpha, one beta, and one omega.

Curious at all of the terms the reporter was using that she didn't really understand, she looked up at her aunt. "May?" she asked. "What are they talking about?"

"They're talking about something...special, sweetie," her aunt said after a moment. "Something that only happens for one in a hundred million. It's when you meet someone who smells better than simply being an alpha, beta, omega, or theta. Or, if you're the primis, three or four someones...usually. And you smell really good to them, too."

Penny, being an eight-year-old child, tried to fit this into terms she could understood. "So they're like your soulmate?"

She'd heard that term before, at school. Stories of triads or more that had formed because they were destined to be together. She didn't understand it at the time, but they were the same thing as the scent matchings.

Ben, from the other side of May, chuckled. "Some people call it that, mimma," he said, reaching down to ruffle her hair back into a mess. She squawked and tried to move away from him, but was too tired to do much else. "And scent matches usually work out better than most couples. But they're not the end-all, be-all. Just look at me and your aunt. We get along pretty okay."

May snorted. "'Pretty okay?'"

"You know what I mean."

"Sure I do, Mr. 'Pretty Okay.'"

Penny's nose wrinkled at this. She was getting to that age where any and all displays of PDA were kind of gross. Still, she wondered, "Will I have a soul...a scent match one day?"

"It's very unlikely, bambina," May replied, smiling. "Remember what I said. One in a hundred million."

Ben winked at her. "But you've always been our lucky Penny."

Later, she learned, most prima of pack dynamics were alphas, with only some being omegas and hardly none ever being thetas (but they were rare, so this made sense) or betas. But, that was alright with her.

She dreamed of the day she would meet her own scent match, theoretically not really caring if she would have to share him or her. She imagined an alpha, tall, strong. Sometimes, they were a man, with a charismatic smile and short hair she could run her hands through. Other times, they were a woman, with captivating eyes and red hair (she had a thing for redheads, okay) that smelled lovely. Their gender didn't matter to her. Nor did, really, their designation, but she had a feeling, deep in her bones. She wasn't going to be an alpha. She was going to be an omega. (With her parents' genetics, it truly was 50/50.)

And she was right.

When she was fourteen, an opportunity to become the intern of one of the scientists at Oscorp came up. Ben and May encouraged her to apply, which she did, even if she didn't really think she would get in. But the scientist, a Dr. Curt Connors, had known her parents (as scientists, not SHIELD agents), and he accepted her application at once.

That first month, she liked working for him. Dr. Connors was a kind man. Smart, understanding.

But then.

The spider bite.

It was an accident. Dr. Connors never noticed how one of the spiders they were working with that day bit her, and she wasn't keen on letting him. She just shrugged it off, smiling as if nothing had happened, because they were just spiders...right? He had said they weren't venomous.

(Only radioactive.)

That night, while she felt like she was melting from the inside out, she presented as an omega.

Her first heat lasted two weeks. It was awful. There was nothing Ben or May could do to help her, as she burned in the dark because otherwise the light would be too much too much too much. Ben was an alpha; every time he tried walking into her room it...didn't go well, and those events were never to be repeated. May was a beta; she had heats, but hers weren't nearly as bad as the average omega's, and even for omegas with the worst heats, theirs only lasted for a week at most. Not fourteen days.

When it was over, Penny could suddenly do things she'd never been able to before. Like see without her glasses and not need her inhaler wherever she went, or be able to stick to walls and have a sixth sense that alerted her to danger. She thought about telling Ben and May of these things many, many times. But she never did.

Ben died when she was fifteen. It was her fault. There were no "ifs" or "whats" about it. He bled out on the pavement because she had the abilities to do something, but she hadn't.

Thus, Spider-Woman was born.

Slowly, her fantasies about scent matchings and pack dynamics, the fantasies of a child, faded away, her responsibilities as a superhero replacing them. She still thought about them from time to time, but there were so many better things to worry about. For example, Dr. Connors turning himself into a giant lizard.

On the first day of her sophomore year of high school, her homeroom teacher had them arranged in alphabetical order. She sat down behind a boy with brown hair and brown eyes, who had aristocratic features and smelled like an alpha. During role, the teacher proclaimed his name to be, "Harry Osborn."

She didn't want to like him at first. He was the heir of Oscorp, and that company had already taken so much away from her. It'd given her a lot, too, but she missed Ben every single day. He'd been dead for almost a year, but her heart had not recovered from the loss. It felt like it never would.

But then, that same day at lunch, Harry gave her, Ned, MJ, and Gwen a shy, but charismatic smile as he awkwardly held his lunch tray in his hands. "Mind if I sit here?"

But then, he started talking about Star Wars with her and Ned seamlessly.

But then, he complimented the Queen shirt she wore one day and asked her what her favorite album was. When she said A Night at the Opera, he grinned and said, "Okay, but I'm In Love With My Car sucks, right?"

"And The Prophet's Song is the best."

"Love is still the answer, take my hand."

"Oh God," MJ muttered. "Somebody else who speaks her language."

Penny stuck her tongue out at her friend. "You say black, I say white."

"You say bark, I say bite," Harry finished for her.

But then, one day in December, he handed her a bouquet of roses and asked if she wanted to go iceskating with him at the Rockefeller Center.

"I don't get why you're freaking out," Gwen told her that afternoon, her and MJ lying on Penny's bed as the omega paced on her ceiling. Both of them and Ned had been in the know for some time now, but he'd had to help out his lola with something so he wasn't with them.

"You know why she's freaking out," MJ returned.

"Is it because a) she's Spider-Woman and his dad's company is the reason why she can stick to the ceiling, b) her killer heats, or c) she still has this fairytale idea of romance?"

Penny groaned.

"Oh, I would say it's d) all of the above," MJ commented.

She glared down at her friends. "You're not helping."

"No, but we will," Gwen replied, sitting up. "You're going on this date, Pen, whether you like it or not. Harry might not be your scent match, but he's the perfect guy for you and I won't hear otherwise."

A few days later, she met Harry at the Rockefeller Center. He smiled as she approached him, and kept on doing it the entire night. Even when she said, "You know, you being a rich kid and all, I would've thought you'd go to a private school."

"Oh, I did," he responded. "I got myself kicked out of it."

She tried not to gawk at him. "What? Why?"

He shrugged. "It's not the real world, you know? The kids there are all rich kids, like me, who've never known anything outside of that. I wanted a taste of the actual experience, but my father wouldn't let me. So, I filled the headmaster's car with glitter. He was a prick, anyways."

"To the top?" she asked disbelievingly.

"Yep, to the top. You don't know how much it cost."

She started to laugh. "Oh my God, Harry."

"He had to get a new car afterwards. The air conditioning spat out glitter every time he turned it on."

"Harry!"

They went out on more dates after that, like to restaurants that were as expensive as the rent for her aunt's apartment and to the movies, but he never treated her as "less than" because of it. They talked on the phone, too. A lot. He would call her up at least three nights a week, and they would chat for hours, discussing this and that. She felt like an omega from a stereotypical teenage movie, kicking her legs in the air as she twirled with the cord of her landline, her cellphone never having the battery to last for the entirety of their conversations. What was more, she liked it.

Before she knew it, she was falling for him.

May approved of their relationship. She liked Harry, declaring him "the one exception" to the "snotty-nosed rich people"she hated so much. Norman was a little less enthusiastic about his son dating her, but he thought she was smart. That had to count for something.

In June, after six months of them dating, she sat him down. "What are you going to tell me now?" he joked. She'd already told him she was Spider-Woman a while ago, and he'd taken it well. As well as one could, anyways. May had practically had a conniption when she'd found out.

Penny bit her lip. "I want to share my heat with you."

She knew she wasn't exactly asking for something traditional. Beta women, omegas, and theta weren't supposed to share their heats with anybody until they were married or bonded.

But Harry didn't care about that. "'Your heat?'" he repeated, his pupils dilating at the very thought.

"Yes," she said. "But, um, Harry, my heats aren't exactly...normal."

"Because of the spider bite?" he guessed, pulling her into his lap.

Her arms wrapped around his neck. "Probably," she admitted. "I didn't present until after so I don't exactly have a point of reference, but...yeah. And I think you should know what all sharing a heat with me will entail before you agree to it."

He gave her a crooked half-smile. "How bad can it be?"

She told him.

She didn't think he believed her, not until her heat came. She only had them twice a year thanks to suppressants, the gynecologist May had found that showed some...discretion to the matter, being a mutant himself, not wanting her to have them for more than that. In the aftermath, as the gauze left her for the final time for that heat, she looked up at him from where she was sprawled over his torso. "You okay?"

"...Yeah," he breathed, his voice strangled. "Holy shit, you really weren't lying."

Laughing, she kissed his cheek. "Does that mean you don't want a repeat?"

"No!" he hurried to say. He ran his fingers down her spine, his touch like sunshine on a grey, cloudy day. "I'll be your good old-fashioned lover boy, as long as you'll have me."

"Dork."

"Only for you."

In August, two months after her heat, May started to act...odd. Penny didn't know how else to describe it. Her aunt started to forget things she shouldn't've, from simple things like the date to not-so-simple things like her and Ben's wedding anniversary. Her hands became shaky, her eyes dazed and unfocused a lot.

Penny was already fearing the worst by the time she found her aunt collapsed on the floor when she came back to the apartment after her first day of junior year.

"May? May!" she exclaimed, rushing over to her. She was already getting her phone out of her pocket, dialing 911. "May, talk to me!"

"Just...resting," the beta woman told her sleepily.

Harry hurried over to her in the hospital, where she was sitting on a chair with her head held in her hands. His hands clasped around one of hers. "Penny, what happened?"

"I – I don't know," she babbled. "I came home and she – she was just like that! She's been acting weird for a while, and I was scared, but I – I didn't think it would be this – !"

They waited. Together.

In the end, one of the doctors told her. Her aunt had cancer.

Cancer.

And she hadn't even told Penny about it.

Because she'd known for a while now, apparently. The cancer had spread all throughout her body well before she'd been diagnosed months ago, but she hadn't said anything. Hadn't told her niece that she was dying. Hadn't told her she probably wouldn't make it to Christmas.

That was all she could think about as she walked into May's room what felt like a lifetime later, her body heavy and leaden with the news. As soon as her aunt saw her expression, her own crumbled. "Oh, baby."

"May, why didn't you tell me?" she sniffled, propping her head on her arms on the hospital bed. "Y – you're dying, and you didn't even – !"

"You know why," her aunt replied, smiling sadly. "You're not eighteen yet, Penny."

"So what?" she huffed angrily.

"When I die, you'll be put in foster care. You know what that'll mean, honey."

Foster care wasn't good for anyone, but it was even worse for omegas. Because while yes, there were lots of good families out there, and yes, it would only be for less than a year, there were people out there who only signed up to be foster parents because they wanted to abuse omegas. Forcibly bond them. Rape them. Put a baby inside them.

"I can take anybody who tries to hurt me," she said.

"And reveal your secret?" May retorted.

She didn't answer her.

The beta woman sighed. "I'm sorry, Penny. I really thought I could last until your eighteenth birthday. Now the doctors are saying I won't see November."

When she explained to Harry what was going on, he was so sympathetic. "I'm sorry," he whispered, squeezing her hand. "Is there anything they can do for her?"

Stifling a sob, she shook her head. "It was stage IV months ago."

He held her as she cried. The tears were hot, ugly. As she finally began to stop at what was over an hour later, he drew circles into her back. "You know," he murmured softly, so quiet even with her enhanced hearing she almost didn't hear him. "You don't have to go into foster care."

Wearily, she twisted around to face him. "Huh?"

"We could get bonded," he said simply.

Penny's eyes widened.

Ben had always said after she'd presented to never get bonded early. He and May had, and they'd had thirty-five wonderful years together, but he'd also said theirs was far from the norm. He'd wanted her to fall in love, he'd said, completely and utterly, without the cloud of "teenage hormones" coloring her vision.

But Ben had died. May was dying.

She was going to be alone.

Except, here was Harry, offering himself up to her, heart and soul.

"I know we've only been dating for eight months," he spoke, his cheeks flushing a red that spread down his neck and underneath his shirt. "But Penny, I love you. There's nobody else I'd rather spend the rest of my life with. And I don't want you going into foster care. I know you can handle yourself, but you shouldn't have to."

Could she say "yes?"

She remembered her childhood dreams of being scent matched to someone. They seemed like the concoctions of a little girl, and she supposed they were. With a one in a hundred million chance, she was far likelier to die in thousands of different ways than to ever come across someone who smelled so extraordinary to her.

Moreover, Harry wasn't her scent match, no. But he was pretty damn perfect. She loved him, too, in hundreds of different ways.

She could see herself spending the rest of her life with him. She wanted to.

"Please, Penny," he said. "Marry me."

"Yes," she responded without another thought. "Yes, I will."

Their wedding was small. MJ and Gwen were her co-maids of honor, Ned was Harry's best man, with the only other witnesses being her aunt and Harry's father. They gave their permission for them to be married, since they were both still minors. She wore a vintage wedding dress, not an expensive one, but one a beta or omega woman actually would've worn several decades ago.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Osborn," the priest intoned after they'd said their vows. "You may now kiss the bride."

That, Harry did.

"Welcome to the family," Norman congratulated her afterwards. He nodded to May, who was now confined to a wheelchair. "We'll treat her well, Mrs. Parker."

Her aunt gave him a smile which didn't quite reach her eyes. "I know you will."

Her aunt died three weeks later.

Penny, Harry, Ned, Gwen, and MJ all graduated from Midtown with honors. Gwen was the valedictorian of their class, she the salutatorian. The five of them decided to go to Columbia together. The press had a field day with her when she was out and about on campus, a middle-class omega who'd married one of the alpha elite when they'd still been underage and had no baby to show for it. She and MJ, her fellow omega, laughed at the articles written about her, demeaning her value to nothing more than her womb. It was all they could do.

Sometimes, she and Harry did talk about children. "I know this sounds cheesy, but I want a girl like you," he said once, his brown eyes all bright and full of love. The sap. "We could call her May, after your aunt."

"Mmm, how about Emily May? After your mom, too?" she hummed. "And I want a boy. We could call him – "

" – Ben," they spoke in unison.

She grinned. "Well, that settles it then. Ben and Emily May."

But they never did have children.

Because she never could give Spider-Woman up. Well, it wasn't like they would've had children right then anyways even if she did, as they were in college, but. She felt she had a duty to the city, to Ben, to protect it. A responsibility. It led her to fighting various monsters and villains, from Dr. Octavius to Max to Flint. Then, finally, in the penultimate battle, Harry's father himself, Norman, who revealed her identity to the world.

Which led to the final battle, where Harry was killed by the Green Goblin.

Shortly after, Norman, realizing what he'd done, killed himself.

There was more to the story than that, so much more. Tales involving Nick Fury, Phil Coulson acting as the principal of Midtown, her meeting Carol Danvers and the Skrulls, her encounters with the sorcerers and the Ancient One's girlfriend/nemesis Agatha Harkness, and etcetera. But, this part was all she could think about in the week following Harry's death.

She didn't want to live in a world without him. They'd only been married for four years, together for five, but as far as she was concerned, he'd been it. There was no moving on from him, she refused to. Hell, she was barely keeping herself from doing what Norman had as it was, which was to slice her abdomen open with a knife and let her intestines spill out.

This caused her to enter her next train of thought: maybe, if she couldn't make herself move on from Harry, she could make the world move on from both of them. It wouldn't be hard. All she would have to do was pay a visit to Bleecker Street, which she did.

And shortly after that –

"...Mrs. Osborn."

"Wong. Where's the Ancient One?"

"She's not here. She's busy."

"Too busy for the person whose life she ruined?"

"The Ancient One did not ruin your life. Your husband's death was an Absolute Point in – "

"Ah, Ms. Parker. I've been expecting you."

– Penny Parker was forgotten by the entire universe.

Word Count: 3,766

Next Chapter Title: seven wonders