Chapter Text
The last time her husband ever kisses her goodbye, he asks her to wait.
He grins at her around a toothbrush, pulls a button-up over red and blue spandex, whistles when she throws the covers off the bed to expose his old ESU t-shirt she’d donned as pajamas the night before.
MJ thinks she laughs.
She hopes she laughed.
He leans in close, kisses her long and deep with breath that tastes like mint toothpaste, and whispers against her ear that he won’t be long.
Field trip to the planetarium today, she remembers him saying. Home by noon. You could wait.
And MJ happens to have the time, is the thing. She’s in between jobs, won’t hear back from her agent for two more days at least, isn’t expected at FEAST until three.
Four years of marriage split between two enormously busy people, golden sunlight crawling across their bedsheets through the window and no idea when the next chance for a moment like this will be, MJ tilts her head at him from where she lays against the pillows, lets her eyes run the whole length of his face and chest as she hums a non-committal sound of acknowledgement.
Peter grins roguishly at her from the doorway where he’s securing his satchel straps, like he thinks he’s won.
Back soon, he promises, or something like it, right before he’s gone.
Which means that when you really think about it, the whole thing is MJ’s fault.
Because after nine years of black eyes and missed date nights, forgotten anniversaries and limp, crushed bouquets of roses delivered with a sheepish smile hours after her final bow, she probably should’ve known better than to believe him.
But MJ can’t help it.
He asked her to wait.
“Hey! Wait up!” A voice called out accompanied by hurried footsteps. MJ hesitated, ready to prompt the lift doors to close. Moreso than when she’d ever been working in front of a camera she’s had people shouting after her and she’s never managed to quite discern their intentions from their tone.
Half the time it was a ‘Hey! Aren’t you Spider-Man’s wife? He saved me once.’ The other half was filled with more condolences, a misguided attempt to share in her grief. On the rare occasion there were a few words of vitriol spouted in ehr direction, like it was her fault that New York now had one less hero.
(There were rarer days when she believed they might be right, wondering if there was anything she should have or could have done to stop Peter from leaving.)
The even beat of the approaching footsteps faltered for half a second and before they could speak again, MJ already knew who was going to appear in the elevator doorway. “Hold the door please.”
MJ pressed her finger against the hold button, a small smile taking over her face when her suspicions were confirmed. A lot of things had changed in the building over the last six months - the elevator itself was fixed now, the irony not lost on MJ that she never minded taking the stairs but it was Peter who always droned on and on about wallcrawling being faster when they carried the groceries home; new tenants had moved into the empty apartment upstairs, another ironic twist given there was one less occupant in her place now - but despite all that, there was one thing that remained the same.
“Miles.” She said warmly.
“Thank you.” He breathes, chest heaving and forward leaning under the weight of his backpack, the school blazer that Rio complained about only being sold at one supplier in the city wrapped around his waist. Her eye drops down further, snorting when she sees that one constant.
“Your shoes are untied.”
Miles sighs exasperatedly, an attitude that he wouldn’t get away with in front of his parents seeping out of him as he slides into the elevator next to her. “It’s a look. You wouldn’t get it.”
“Oh yeah, I don’t know a single thing about fashion.” She drawls sarcastically, watching Miles’ face spread into a cheeky grin out the corner of her eye. For everyone that has treated her like glass since Peter’s passing, Miles has been a breath of fresh air. His youth granting him a certain hope that leaves her feeling just a little envious. “Thought you’d be staying at the dorms this week.”
“Got a school trip at OsCorp. Shorter journey if I leave from here. Means I don’t have to wake up as early, and I don’t have to have cafeteria food.”
“I think your dad’s cooking tonight, kid.”
Rio had warned her that she’d be on a string of night shifts over the next few weeks. With knowledge that her steady supply of leftover meals would be drying up, MJ had done the only rational thing and booked her calendar up with as many dinners out as she could - Ned, Flash and her sister were all pleased to see MJ getting out.
(It had nothing to do with the fact that MJ was still struggling to cook for one person.)
“Seriously?” Miles replies, eyes flicking over the lift buttons momentarily like he was contemplating riding the thing back down to the ground floor again.
MJ pats his shoulder solemnly, pushing him out of the elevator doors when they finally open and guiding him towards their apartments. “Say hi to your dad for me.”
“Save me?” Miles asks pathetically when she steps aside towards her own door, condemning her as she just laughs and enters her own apartment. The bright bubble that’d been forming in her chest while speaking to Miles quickly fades once the door is closed behind her.
The lights are off.
No one else is home.
Everything is exactly how she’d left it this morning. Shoes lined up by the door, jackets hanging up neatly, blankets still folded on the arm of the couch and the one mug, bowl and spoon she’d used at breakfast all dry and clean on the rack. Everything was as it should be. Not a single thing out of place.
A lot of things had changed in six months, and this might be the one she is struggling with the most. Whenever she had thought about her life without Peter, whether that was because of their numerous break-ups that thankfully ended in their marriage or something more tragic - a notion that had always lingered in the distant future, always bearing down on her but naive, she’d that it would be a future that laid out of reach at least until they turned thirty - she never thought it would be Peter’s chaos that she would miss.
When he died six months ago in the middle of a field trip it was because anyone else might let their focus be split between protecting their students and covering their own back, Peter didn’t think like that. When Spider-Man died six months ago, his name was released to the public before Matt or Tony or May or MJ could do anything to stop it. When the world learned that Peter Parker was Spider-Man and had left a wife behind, MJ thought she’d be grateful for the silence that awaited her when she finally returned to their apartment after the days she’d spent hidden away with May. She thought it would be a break from the reporters and their questions, it would be a break from the people and their condolences - every single New Yorker seemed to have a story - it would be a break from her own phone and the funeral preparations she’d been organising.
When Peter died six months ago, MJ thought she might find some reprieve in the quiet of their apartment, knowing that Peter wouldn’t be crashing through the window, leaving a trail of clothes towards their bathroom and groaning loudly as he stitched himself back together.
Instead the silence that greeted her was worse than any words that’d been spoken.
Six months since Peter had died, and the silence doesn’t bring her any more comfort than the first day she’d encountered it.
Her hand slips into her pocket while she toes her shoes off, letting them join the neat row. Her fingers curl around her phone, tugging it free from her pocket and immediately connecting her music to their speaker. Low notes echo through the empty space. She steps further into the apartment, ready to go about her evening.
Because that’s what MJ always did.
The whole thing probably comes down to the fact that MJ is rusty.
There are things you don’t realize are skills until your reason for having them is gone, after all, things like mentally filtering the Bugle for regular news versus the peculiar or checking in with your husband’s vigilante friends for the real scoop on the state of the city when you get the feeling he’s being evasive.
Michelle Jones-Watson was never just the “Wife of Spider-Man”-- at least, not until recently-- but there were certain parts involved in the being of Spider-Man’s wife that made her more observant, more aware, more vigilant when it came to rumors and whispers and sideways mentions of the nonsensical.
Michelle Jones-Watson was MJ Watson long before and after she promised ‘till death do us part, but to say she wasn’t a fundamental piece of team Spider-Man would be stupid. Would be borderline idiotic, when you think of the number of Spidey’s puzzles that had been pieced together between the two of them, whispers passed across pillows in the dark or conversations through the shower curtain most mornings.
So MJ should’ve known better, when uncharacteristic check-in messages from Foggy and a couple from Felicia start rolling in, or when the emails from the Bugle asking her for a comment on recent events re: Spider-Man get more insistent.
But she’s tired. She’s rusty. She accidentally bought Peter’s preferred coffee creamer instead of her own at the grocery store that afternoon, because he’d never buy it for himself and because he’s dead and because her arms must’ve somehow forgotten.
MJ puts the creamer in the fridge after staring at it for three unbroken minutes, then switches her phone to silent.
She’ll deal with it in the morning.
“Alright, Miss Jones?”
MJ pastes on a seventy percent genuine smile, raising a hand in confirmation to Mr. Carter’s warm expression as he peers down at where she stands in the alleyway through his window. “All good, Mr. C.”
He winks at her. “You let me and Loretta know if that changes, hear?”
MJ smiles lightly, gratitude mixing in her chest for this block and these people and their kindness as she hefts the lid of the dumpster open and calls back, “Heard.”
Mr. Carter gives a gruff nod of, “good,” and then slides the window closed, leaving MJ alone to finish the job of heaving a week’s worth of garbage into the graffiti-covered dumpster.
The warm air dances across her face as she holds her breath, as she carefully avoids the small piles of stuff littered across the asphalt with her work shoes and starts mentally writing her to-do list, because for all the fog of last week, things are better today.
Today is better, with a mind that feels clear and her aches a step farther removed from her chest than usual.
Today is better, with a full day at FEAST and lunch date with Flash to look forward to.
Today is better, right up until she drops a garbage bag full of empty tuna cans directly onto a sleeping man’s face.
Every part of MJ goes stock-still, freezing where she stands in response to the soft grunt of pain that echoes through the alleyway before she carefully peeks over the dumpster’s edge, aware of how stupid even that action is in a city whose nightlife can be described only as overly active and with the dead husband to prove it.
Heart pounding, she blinks one, two, three times. Because the picture greeting her on the other side of the sticky dumpster wall makes less sense than Ned in a tutu.
There’s a guy sitting half-buried in the pile of trash, blinking in the sunlight streaming through the newly-opened lid, expression a horrible, achingly familiar grimace as he lifts a hand to his brow and feels across the clearly long-dried dried blood caking half of it.
“Fuck,” he mutters, and MJ hears it.
She hears it, and she takes a shocked step backwards, letting the lid fall with a clatter to block out the face, the voice, the evidence in front of her that after six months of what should’ve been a private grief brought into the public eye she’s finally, actually lost her mind.
Breaths in through her nose and out her mouth, palm to her own chest, a mind racing with a steady stream of how, how, how-- MJ raises a trembling hand back to the dumpster lid to check she’s not dreaming, swallowing against a dry throat when, this time, he looks back up at her.
There’s no recognition in those whiskey-brown eyes, and he’s already opening his mouth with some explanation, excuse, apology, except--
“Peter?” MJ asks, breathes, chokes.
The eyes widen, then turn guarded, then, all at once, flicker with recognition. Maybe-Peter slumps and puts a hand to the bridge of his nose, exhaling a rough sound of something that’s a mix between pain and regret. For what feels like an eternity, he just sits there, in the garbage.
“You’re Michelle,” he finally says, not a question.
Then, tiredly:
“Shit.”