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MJ doesn't understand Peter. Not entirely.
She has read War and Peace in the space of a rushed three days. Impassioned and upset, she wrote a paper about just because she could.
College level physics? Done and done, without the batting of an eyelash.
Calculus at its most difficult? Not a problem, not for her.
But, Peter?
Peter is like every poetry class MJ has ever sat through, every poem she has ever read: intricately beautiful and confounding. MJ knows she could understand him if she allowed herself to see past the flowery language, to the person underneath.
"Where do you want me to put this up, Mrs Jones?" His voice is something sickening and sweet.
MJ slams the old book she is reading shut, heavy and leather-bound, the force of it rattles her desk. Her eyes roll, almost of their own accord, at the sound of Peter's voice carrying up the stairs and to her room.
"Just next to the couch is fine," Mrs Jones answers, and the image of her wiping off dry hands on the front of a slim pair of trousers is a vivid one in MJ's mind. "Ned, call MJ down for me, will you?"
She cocks her head, listens. Nothing comes and she breathes a sigh of relief. The book is pushed aside for space, and MJ empties a container filled with small red capsules onto the table.
MJ doesn't understand Peter— doesn't understand why he is always around, why he is in her house on a Friday afternoon when she knows she didn't invite him. When she knows she wants him gone for the moment because, at best, he is a distraction.
Blood! The container reads, in a font a comical bright red that takes up most of the side.
Breaking one slim capsule open against the side of the small jug, MJ watches crystalline powder tinkle delicately into the water.
It is too light and too thin to be blood, MJ observes with a slow shake of her head after she cracks the third blood capsule.
Store-bought blood, she thinks as she scribbles a note on a small previously forgotten piece of paper. You can't trust store-bought blood.
It won't be difficult for her to modify the consistency of the blood in time for Halloween, raising the jug closer to the light, MJ decides.
"You are missing out so much," Ned greets, opening the bedroom door without a second of notice.
"What—" MJ jerks her head, her hand moves with it. Thin red liquid flies over the rim, lands on the tangle that is her hair, splashes on the side of her faces and across the front of her shirt. The calm in her voice is edged with steel. "It's like you don't know what knocking is."
"MJ!" Betty pops her head around the door and gasps, eyes wide and staring.
Why are so many people at her house? Scrubbing red-stained hands off on a roughly torn paper towel, MJ absently wonders.
She hasn't invited them— or maybe she has and just can't remember.
"Is that blood on your shirt?" Ned asks, fingers flexing around the edge of the door.
"No." MJ laughs roughly, her shoulders raise in a short shrug. "Okay, maybe."
"What do you mean—? This isn't like— You're not a witch, are you MJ?" Ned trips over himself.
"First of all this is fake blood," MJ explains. "Second of all, the whole witches-kill-people-and-perform-evil-blood-sacrifices idea is born of the patriarchy. So, don't bring that anywhere near me."
Betty dips her head in a nod, a show of agreement.
"What are you doing, anyway?" Betty queries. "We've been here for about an hour now... Not to pressure you or anything, but I kinda hoped you'd taste the cupcakes I brought."
"Halloween," MJ answered lamely, throwing the brown checked shirt aside and pulling a sweater over her head.
"It's only the twelfth," Ned volunteers. "Respect."
"Did I... Did I invite you guys over, or something?"
Does she sound as rude as she thinks she sounds? Betty doesn't flinch at the question; Ned just fingers the dusty old microscope sitting on a shelf in the corner of her room.
Not a lick of tension settles in the room.
Betty adjusts the hem of her skirt. "No, you didn't. Your mother invited Peter and Aunt May for dinner. We kinda... tagged along. Sorry."
°
The banging of her door is an echo through the house. Her barefooted steps heavy as she jogs to follow Betty and Ned down the short passageway, to the living room.
Halfway down, a hand on the railing, MJ pauses. "Uh..." she sounds out, the noise tinged with curiosity.
Too bright light fills the room. It seems to emit from every surface, shine from every corner and colour over the room decorated in foreign reds and holds.
In the middle of it all, curly hair and too big sweater flecked with clumps of dust, streams of fairy lights bundled in the circle of his arms, stands Peter.
"What's going on?" MJ asks, a cautious query.
Nose scrunching, a quick cat-like folding, she sniffs at the air. The ginger and cloves smell fills her lungs with each inhale, despite herself, MJ cringes.
"Christmas." Peter smiles widely. Raises his shoulders in a gentle shrug and seems not to notice the frown blossoming on MJ's face.
Slowly, dramatically, she walks the last few steps into the open living room. "It's... still October."
"I know," he says.
May pokes her head from around the side of the sofa, where she sits crouched over a box of overflowing decorations. "It's so nice that you start decorating so early. It's always such a rush at the Parker residence," she says. Her laugh at the end is a tinkling full stop.
But it's still Halloween. MJ insists, even if only in her mind.
It's only her favourite holiday. It's only the one day a year she consistently looks forward to. It's only the day she has looked forward to since October the previous year.
It's supposed to be cheap skeletons on each surface and weirdly shaped spiders hanging from the ceiling and cheesy jack-o-lanterns.
It's not supposed to be Christmas.
MJ sighs. Knows she can't say any of these things without sounding as nothing more than a petulant child.
Her mother waves her over from the kitchen. "You smell awful," Mrs Jones says, greeting MJ with a hug and a short sniff. "You're messing around with those blood capsules again, aren't you?"
"I don't smell that bad." She pulls the front of her sweater to her nose and breathes in. "This isn't even the shirt I dropped it on."
"It's in your hair and everything." Mrs Jones tsks.
"Please stop nitpicking. I'll have a shower before bed."
"You won't. It's like you think I don't know my own child," Mrs Jones says, her eyes narrow easily and her mouth gathers into an unamused line.
The timer, set in a crook between the bread bin and toaster, goes off.
Their house is not used to having so many people within its walls— the talking, the raucous rounds of laughter, it shakes the houses foundations and rattles the windows in all of the rooms.
The timer is only heard over the collection of noises because it's ringing is shrill and awfully persistent.
Mrs Jones steps away from MJ to pull two trays from the oven.
"So..." MJ begins, awkwardly leaning against the fridge, "Christmas?"
Precariously balancing one tray in each hand, Mrs Jones places them on the counter. "Christmas," she agrees. Quick, an almost unnoticeable movement, she wipes her hands across the fronts of the jeans she changed in to.
"But Christmas... during Halloween." MJ wishes she were better at communicating; at something as simple as having a conversation.
Her mother hums under her breath. Only for a second does stay silent, does she not meet MJ's gaze.
Their eyes are the same shade of brown that people dare to call unenchanting. Their passion a fiery and unrelenting storm which finds a home in the space between their ribcages and their hearts.
But MJ is not her mother. The words that aren't born of protest lock in her throat, screaming and shaking like a woman possessed at the thought of seeing light. She is tall and carries herself in a hunch that will leave her back a crooked and mangled tangle of knots long before she is old.
And her mother is not her. "I'm not going to be around these next few months," Mrs Jones' words are an apologetic and assured utterance.
"Why?"
"I've been accepted for that promotion, J. Remember the one—"
"The one in France you didn't think you'd get. Yeah, I remember." MJ crosses her arms over her chest, looks away. "You got it? That's great... Mom, that's really great."
"I don't deserve you." Mrs Jones says. "They want me to fly out in two days."
"So,Christmas?" MJ asks, and now she looks around her and laughs. She thinks she spies a small pile of presents being brought in by Ned and Betty.
It's not so bad, actually.
Mrs Jones slides one of the trays down the counter. Piled high with sugar cookies— cartoony skulls wearing tiny Christmas hats. "I wouldn't forget my favourite person in the world, now would I?"