Archive of Our Own

and just like a work of art

we'll tell our stories on these walls.

let the years we're here be kind, be kind.

let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide.

settle our bones like wood over time, over time.

Move in with your long term boyfriend, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.

Move in with your long-term superhero boyfriend while you’re still 300 miles away getting a hard-earned masters degree and can’t be there to sign the lease because your graduation day is the only date the realtor could do and you haven’t seen what the place looks like other than through pictures your mom sent you in a group chat with said boyfriend that shows up green because mom won’t get an iPhone, said no one ever.

But it’ll be fun, Michelle says, and does it anyway.

Her flight from Boston International to JFK is delayed 6 hours and she can barely keep her eyes open in the Uber from the terminal to the address copy and pasted and sent to her. And maybe that’s why she doesn’t think when she exits the car, just rucks a backpack up and over her shoulder, wraps her fingers around the cool metal of the luggage handle, and pushes her things, and her overtired form, up the sidewalk.

She looks between her grainy pictures from her mom and the building in front of her.

I think I’m in the wrong place, she texts.

Her mom resends the address, under a different street number.

LOL! her mother tries, and if MJ weren’t feeling the caffeine slowly leave her system, maybe she’d have the energy to eye roll, we’re two blocks over!

She huffs and pushes the handle down on the suitcase, sits atop the rigid frame, an arm crossed over her chest and pulling her jacket tighter.

After close to a decade together, Ned always said she and her boyfriend were so in sync he’d be surprised if they didn’t share a brain. I think you mutated him even more MJ, he’d say, spiders aren’t known for mind-reading.

When her phone lights up with a call and this hideous zoomed in picture he insisted she set to his contact, she can’t really disagree with her friend. He’s got a good read on the situation.

“Day one and you’re already lost?”

“I’m so tired I can’t even think of something witty to say.”

“Oh my god,” she hears his voice pull away from the phone, “Guys, we broke MJ.”

“Can you resend me the address,” she finally works up to the eye roll, her teeth on her bottom lip, “You, not my mother.”

“It’s two blocks, Em, you can do it,” he laughs, “You didn’t spend three extra years in school not to be able to figure out where we live.”

“I must have missed class that day.”

“There she is,” he sighs fondly, like she’s just professed her love and not quipped something sarcastic, “Okay fine, since you’re the one with the brains…”

“And you’re just a lowly superhero…”

“They don’t make masters for that, otherwise I’d master the heck out of hero school.” She hears something rustle on the other end of the line, and she finally resolves to move from her perch on the suitcase and start walking the deceptively long two blocks.

“Oh really? You think so?”

“Know so,” she hears him say, and it’s louder, vibrates along her skin like winter air after stepping outside first thing in the morning, and that’s when she looks up to see the owner of the voice wrapped around the top of a streetlamp, “I might have a masters in boyfriend-ing too.”

“They just give masters to anyone these days, don’t they?” Her voice is low and light, but her eyes twinkle and she tucks her phone away and looks up at Peter under dusty orange light.

“Not just anyone,” he shakes his head, and a shadow crosses the light she’s perched under, “I’m very proud of you, you know?”

“I do, I do know,” she nods, “You said as much about 47 times over text.”

“49, I think.”

“Alright, wiseass, can you spider me home?” She doesn’t quell the smile, or the warmth that settles inside her this time, as she watches him drop to the sidewalk. He never tries to hide his smiles, she notices, loves it more than she ever lets on, and feels like kissing it away immediately. Instead she settles for a raised eyebrow, “What? Am I not allowed to use spider as a verb?”

“No, I like it, I think you should use it more often.”

“Okay, so then why are you looking at me like that?” Her cheeks hurt, from holding laughter in them, and god, if this is only ten seconds she doesn’t know how she hasn’t spontaneously combusted in the last ten years.

“Nothing, nothing, it’s dumb,” he reaches out and pulls her arm around him, assumes position to swing her up two blocks.

“It’s can’t be that dumb if you’re thinking it,” she settles her arms around her waist, grips the suitcase in her left hand, then mumbles aside, “Is this safe?”

He nods, his chin bumping her shoulder, then sighs in response to her first comment, “I thought we established you’re the smart one in this relationship?”

“If you’re gonna keep this up—“

“I’m gonna brag about you for the rest of forever, Michelle,” he throws a web up on the side of the building on their left and swings her with little warning or recovery time, “I’d be even more dumb than I already am not to.”

She keeps her head tucked into the crevice of his neck if only to hide the blush that still sneaks up on her, after she’s trained it so hard not to. The nighttime air is cool, fast as the move the now deceptively short two blocks, before landing with a thump on a small, rickety fire escape.

“This is it?”

“No, I moved you from one wrong apartment, to another wrong apartment.”

“You missed class the day they taught you not to use that attitude with your girlfriend,” she nudges his side with her elbow, and listens to the way his laugh sounds on their brand new, old fire escape of their own. She uses two hands to push the window up and climbs inside.

“Please tell me the two of you know what a door is,” her mother’s voice is the first she gets to listen to in their brand new, old living room of their own. She sits smiling on a folding chair by a side wall, and points to the front door, “That thing over there? That’s how you enter and exit this place.”

“Hi mom, nice to see you too,” MJ nods and fixes the coat that’s been shrugged off her shoulders in their short flight.

“Very proud of you, sweetie,” her mom leans up to hug her when she settles in.

“Congratulations MJ!” Peter’s Aunt May sits next to her mom and gives one of MJ’s free hands a tight squeeze, “Sorry we couldn’t be there.”

“It’s all good, you saw the first one.”

“Show off,” she hears from the window, followed by the soft thud of her suitcase and two feet hitting the wooden floors, “Two graduations.”

“You literally just said you were gonna brag about me.”

“I’m gonna brag about you so that you don’t have to brag about you,” he rolls the suitcase away from the window and pushes it closed, hops and sits on the floor right next to it. She loves him, she loves him, she loves him. He isn’t even doing anything and she just, she loves this boy.

“I don’t know if Peter told you, but we figured out the live stream thing on his laptop and could watch the ceremony,” her mother speaks up again, “I think your neighbors might already hate us.”

“We got a little excited when you walked across the stage,” May squints, “I think we’re better at bragging than Spider-Man.”

“Mom superpowers,” MJ’s mom high-fives May. MJ laughs and turns to look over at Peter again, who sits with his knees under his chin, and eyes wide he mouths an animated ’Help me!’ She laughs even harder at the thought of him trapped in this tiny room with the two women all day and it strikes her again, she loves him.

“Thank you guys, really,” MJ says, even though she doesn’t quite know what she’s trying to say. The years between the ages of 20 and 25 are kind of terrifying, chaotic, messy. She barely had a clue as to what she was doing whilst she was doing it, but do it she did. She knows she’s not special, that lots of people have crises after crises in their twenties and live long enough to tell the middle-aged tale. But as she looks around her tiny living room, half of a worn out kitchen, boxes piled high and bags and belongings littered around her three favorite people, MJ gives herself a minute to feel special.

So she settles on a repeated, “Thanks.”

“We didn’t unpack anything because—“

“You’re you,” her mom finishes, eyes knowing, “But we can come back once you have orders, and then we’re getting dinner to celebrate.”

“All that’s in your fridge right now is a congratulatory cake I made,” May shrugs standing from her chair.

“Which we’re not going to eat because we want to live to see the end of this lease,” Peter quips, and MJ loves how quickly May throws a decorative throw pillow at him from a pile beside her.

“Enjoy your first night,” she huffs, eyeing her nephew, and softening into a smile when she looks up at MJ.

“I love you,” her mom wraps her in one last tight hug, then makes a show of twisting the front door’s silver handle, “See? We use the door.”

“Won’t happen again Ms Jones,” Peter nods, knocks on the locked window, and it makes both women smile.

“Smart boy you’ve got yourself, Michelle,” is the last thing her mom says before the door clicks shut behind her, and its just her, and her dumb superhero boyfriend in their tiny apartment.

She knows Ned’s onto something, when she feels the way Peter’s whole face lights up the moment the phrase ‘their apartment’ flashes through her mind. He has to have found a way in there, she’s certain. He just knows.

He bounces up to standing, the square of their living space between them, “Can you believe we’re doing this?” is the first thing he thinks to say.

“No,” she shakes her head.

“Honestly, me either,” he shrugs, and it makes her heart dance (a shrug, he literally just shrugged, and she’s, ugh.) “This is so unlike you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you never make dumb decisions,” he says, “And as far as dumb decisions go, moving in with Peter Parker is probably top of the list.”

There is chaos that you obligatorily sign up for when you turn twenty, and then there is the chaos you add when you sign up for spending your twenties with someone who fights chaos for a living. Goddammit, she’s so happy here. Chaos and all.

“I used up all my smarts on that degree,” she purses her lips, teasingly, “So this was the only option I could handle.”

“Isn’t it amazing!” He is unperturbed by her wit and proceeds to cartwheel across the small space, “We couldn’t do that in your dorm room.”

“We could not,” she agrees, a tone that reminds her of her mother, “I am still not going to do that.”

“We’re only three blocks from the movie theater where I took you on our fifth date, four blocks from that vegan pizza place you like, and 2 train stops from the library.”

And oh, she loves him, she loves him, she loves him. One, two, and a million times.

He backflips again just to show off their brilliantly little amount of space that he makes seem like a penthouse suite. “Anyway, I know you haven’t really gotten a chance to look at it all, so I’m gonna go shower,” he points a thumb over his shoulder, “The faucet looked kinda wonky so if I don’t come out in 12 minutes exactly, send for help.”

She mock salutes him off with the order, and sucks in a deep breath.

Seeing as Peter, his aunt, and her mother did all the apartment shopping while she was deep in the throes of thesis writing, there’s not much she knows about the place that Peter didn’t just tell her. She turns in a slow circle, taking the place in with her own two eyes, not a phone screen. It is small, as her first observations noticed immediately, but she doesn’t hate that fact. It feels cozy. It’s not perfect, but it feels like hers and it feels like Peter’s, so she likes it.

The walls are a warm beige and the kitchen an old, off-white. The ceiling shows years of drip stains and the hardwood floor creaks when she retreats down the small hallway, where the bathroom and bedroom are on either side. There’s a third room at the end of the hallway, smaller, that she remembers Peter and Ned planning to be his new ‘secret spider lair’. She sees his suit already flung haphazardly, peeking out the small opening of the door not fully shut, and she smiles to herself.

The thermostat has seen better days, she notices, and the wall heater needs a kick to get jumpstarted. Theres a mirror wrapped in bubble wrap propped against a wall by the kitchen, boxes stacked next to the chairs her mother and May were sitting in, a picture of her, Peter and Ned is taped like makeshift homey decor to the wall next to the window, and then there’s the last wall.

It’s hideous, is all MJ can think.

Wallpaper ripped straight from an 80s period piece TV show she and Peter had binged over FaceTime last month is draped from floor to ceiling, muted browns and outdated orange in a sort of swirl-like pattern repeats down it. It’s peeling on the edges, like whoever lived here before tried to rip it off and was successful everywhere but this one, huge, plain wall.

It’s the biggest space in the room, MJ sees, and she’s not really sure how to work around it. It’s just there, right in the middle of everything, this huge, ugly wall.

She sits with her thoughts, criss-crossed legs on the floor in the middle of the room, staring at it. She thinks about a big bookshelf, pushing their couch right up next to it, putting her undergraduate art minor to use, maybe, and painting over it. Maybe just always keeping her back to it, she decides, would be the best option.

She sits trapped in her conundrum for a little while longer, until she hears the water turn off, a light switch flick, and the already familiar creak of the floorboards.

“I was told I only had to wait 12 minutes exactly for you to get back,” MJ says, watching him rustle his hair with both hands in a white towel.

“You counted?”

“Have you met me?” she pats the space on the ground next to her and Peter drops the towel on his right, unceremoniously joins.

“So how long was it?”

“14 whole minutes, Peter,” she shakes her head, “Its terrible to leave a girl waiting.”

“Sorry, Chelle,” He rolls on his hip and drops his head to her shoulder, then drops a kiss there too, “Okay, give me the list.”

“What list?” She questions, her cheek falling onto the top of his head, curling into his touch.

“Of all the things you hate so I can fix them.”

“Very funny.”

“There’s gotta be at least six,” he says, and his voice tickles her skin,.

“There’s only two actually,” she hums, “Starting with that wall.”

She shrugs him up off her shoulder to point to the wall in front of them, and he laughs, “Oh that wall is hideous.”

“I’m glad you agree,” she says, “We should have gotten something knocked off the rent for enduring the trauma that comes with living with it.”

“I didn’t tell you about the discount?” And she laughs again. He squints at the wall while her shoulders shake, and points to the top corner, “I climbed up there before and tried to peel some off, but it really doesn’t wanna leave us.”

“Who would wanna leave us? We’re excellent company.”

“Yeah, we are,” he traces the outline of her fingers on the floor, eyes lidded down, “So, you like it?”

He sounds so open, vulnerable, like he really, really, really, wants her to love it, to make sure after everything she really, really, really loves him, too. She thinks it says enough that she trusted him to pick out a place to live all on his own while she was away, but like she said, she’s the smart one in this relationship, so sometimes she has to spell things out.

“I’ve been known to make a very smart dumb decision every now and then,” she links her pinky around his and waits from his smile to reach hers, “I think this might be one of those times.”

“Cool,” he breathes out, like she’s Ned, telling him about the new program he attached to his spider-suit. The fact that she likes him enough to live with him, she believes, is just about as cool as million-dollar tech in his eyes. She’s that cool. And that fact will never stop making her stomach flip.

“I never thanked you for the ride before,” she says, looks up at the ceiling, the wall, his boyish grin, “And I should thank you for the place too, I guess.”

“You called it home.”

“What?”

“Before, you said, ‘can you spider me home?’ And you meant here, this place,” Peter says quietly, his free knuckles knocking on the wooden floor, “I brought you home to the same place I call home.”

“Was that your dumb thought from before?”

He nods.

“I was right, as usual,” she kisses the bridge of his nose, “It’s not a dumb thought at all.”

She loves him, she loves him, she—

“I love you,” his whisper is more felt than it is heard against her cheek, their faces so close, and his eyes so bright and wide.

“I know,” she tickles him with her eyelashes.

“Of course you do, you have a masters now, you know everything.”

She hums in agreement, and kisses him square on the lips, twice, for the two extra minutes he was in the shower. His hands slide up her arms, one slipping around her neck and the other on her hip, and he feels so good and so right and she loves him and she loves kissing him and its their apartment, their home, no one else’s, so if she wants to make out with her boyfriend in the middle of the living room she can and she will. So she goes in for round three by draping a leg across his waist, turning her chest flush against his, and kissing the smirk off his lips like she wanted to down under the streetlight.

“Hey,” he breathes between lip-locks, cheeks red and pupils blown, “What was the second thing?”

“The second thing?”

“That you hated,” he says, “You said you hated two things. One was the wall, which we’ve already given up on, and two…”

“Oh, that was you,” she shrugs her shoulders up, swallows his laugh that shakes his entire body, and thus hers, as she’s perched on top of him, one finger wrapping around hair at the base of his neck, “Yeah, I had this whole little bit planned, it was actually pretty funny, but then you got soft on me and said you loved me, so I had to rework the script.”

“I hate you.”

“Like I believe that now,” she perches her eyebrows up and follows suit in his laughter, “Also, who said we were giving up on the wall?”

“I’m giving up on the wall,” he says.

“You give up so easily. And to think, they call you a hero,” she rolls her eyes teasingly and lowers her face back close to his, “I’m seeing a very obvious way to avoid the wall problem?”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, I think you’ll just have to keep kissing me so much that we have no choice but to not see the wall at all.”

“You’re very smart, MJ,” his eyes flash something bright, before he leans back up to devour her lips in another kiss. It sinks something heated and deep inside her, and she’s seeing a hot white behind her eyes that burns that hideous wallpaper away for good. Or at least, for the night.

“They don’t just give degrees to anyone these days, you know?”

When she wakes up the next day, curled onto the side of a plain mattress in their bedroom, the pieces of the bed frame stacked and yet to be pieced together in the corner of the room, she sees sunlight through the window, and smells Peter’s shampoo on her shoulder. She blinks her eyes open and sits up, but doesn’t find the boy next to her.

She’s hugged into one of his t-shirts, decidedly too tired to unpack any clothes from her suitcase, and forcing him to hand over a shirt he’ll never see again. She finds a note next to her side of the mattress that says he and May couldn’t figure out how to set up the instant coffee maker yesterday so he went out to get them something from the shop a few blocks down. She gives him a good knock every now and again for being an idiot, but she usually doesn’t mean it. Imagining him struggle with some plastic though, it tugs at something in her chest (it’s endearing?? like, he’s broken her, truly) and she might have to mean it a little.

Stretching with a yawn, she leaves the comfort of the makeshift bed, brushes her teeth and walks down the hallway. Stepping into their living room, she finds something, or rather someone, has started on his mission to block out that ugly wallpaper.

Her new diploma is pinned up in the center, blocking a good 10 inches of the dizzying pattern, but not doing much to stop the dizzying shake on MJ’s heart.

That idiot, she thinks. She loves him, she knows.

A few minutes later, that someone slips through the fire escape window.

“What did my mom tell us about the door?”

“Right, I know, but we’re on the fourth floor and I didn’t want them to get cold, and the window’s just so much faster,” the window-culprit reaches out to her, a hot cup in hand, and she takes it.

“You do some decorating this morning?” She eyes him over the top of her cup, sipping the (still hot) drink.

“I’m very proud.”

“Is that 49?”

“50, I think,” he bites the inside of his cheek and then sips from his own cup.

“Well, you should have known I’d have some decorating ideas of my own,” she quips, and pulls a paper from the floor, scribbled on in blue-ink pen. She pins it up next to the diploma.

Peter leans up and squints at the writing, “What is this?”

“Your masters of boyfriend-ing,” she shrugs simply, as if its obvious. Her penmanship could use some work, but the scrolling letters are hard to copy first thing in the morning on hardwood floors and printer paper.

He doesn’t seem to mind, laughs lightly and pulls her sideways into his chest, an arm around her shoulder, “I love you.”

“I know. That’s why you got the degree,” she smiles, takes another sip of her drink, and sinks into his side, “Now go get changed, my mom and your aunt are coming in a half hour, and I have about four pages of plans for setting this place up.”

“Ah, welcome home, MJ,” he kisses her forehead and slips down the hallway, smiling that gorgeously wonderful smile, “Welcome home.”

MJ decides her favorite spot in the apartment is the hallway between their bedroom and the bathroom. Not that this is a thing that needs to be decided, but MJ likes whole truths and nothing but the truths. Facts.

So just like she decides laundry is Peter’s chore and dishwashing is hers, and that she likes when Peter forgets his key more than when he remembers it (because she likes opening her door to see her Peter who gives her a kiss, and she’s not gonna admit it but it’s wonderful), MJ decides, about a year in, that the hallway is the best spot in the apartment.

The city sounds are muffled behind the walls, so that you remember where you are but it doesn’t drown out the leaky faucet in their bathroom, it’s slow drips like a soundtrack to Peter’s giggle, staring at her in the bathroom doorway with his toothbrush between his teeth and drool on the corner of his mouth, and the almost dead hallway lightbulb making his hair look like the halo he was born to wear.

Plus, from here, so doesn’t see any of that wall, so. Wins all around really.

This morning glory Peter she imagines when she says the hallway is her favorite spot is currently her view, as she stands directly opposite, mirroring his stance with an elbow propped on the doorframe of the entrance to the bedroom, absently pushing on the back of an earring.

“You remember when to take the garbage out?”

“Tuesday morning.”

“And we water the plants, when?”

“The ones on the windowsill are every day, but the potted one only on Sunday,” Peter recites carefully, before ducking into the bathroom to rinse the toothpaste out of his mouth, “And its my turn to clean the bathroom, going to have a killer Saturday night with that one, I walk Mrs. Davis’ dog on Monday after work, and…”

“And?” MJ smirks.

“And I have to change that little air freshener thingy in the hallway,” he resumes his position across from her, hip jutted to the side and hands attempting to smooth down his hair.

MJ laughs, “That’s good, but not what I was thinking.”

“I’ll miss you?”

“Convincing.”

“Like, only a little, obviously,” he shrugs, pinching his two fingers together in a minuscule motion.

MJ knows she should go grab her suitcase and leave if she wants to get to her train on time, but she’s just decided she can be late. Only a little, obviously. If only to look at her dumb boyfriend a minute longer.

“20 bucks says I get three voicemails with you whining about how much you miss me before I even hit Rhode Island soil.”

Peter pretends to ponder it for a minute, his head hitting the other side of the bathroom doorframe, and her heart beats in time to the leaky faucet the longer he scrunches his smile like that, “Yeah, I’d keep the joke going but if I do I’m gonna end up owing you 20 bucks.”

“I’ve taught you too well,” she shakes her head and fixes one of her jacket sleeves, “I gotta go.”

“Yeah, you do,” he sighs, but neither of them moves. Peter must decide he likes the hallway too.

“It’s four days.”

“Just four days.”

“I won’t even realize I’m missing you because I’ll be busy talking to people with generic white people names I won’t remember.”

“And I won’t even realize I’m missing you because I’ll be busy trashing the apartment with Ned.”

“You just did so good, do I need to make you recite the list again?” She huffs, a light smile hard to avoid.

“Potted plant Sunday, dog walk Monday, garbage Tuesday, voicemails about how much I love and miss you daily,” he repeats, and it makes the smile stick a little brighter.

“Okay, I really gotta leave,” she resolves, still finding the act difficult. She shrugs a bag over one shoulder and starts down the hallway.

“Isn’t this the age you’re supposed to get dates to this sort of thing?” She hears Peter behind her, following.

“I didn’t get a date because I am the date,” MJ says, “My mother’s date.” MJ’s train to Rhode Island leaves in exactly 37 minutes, taking her to the wedding of one of her mom’s old friends. MJ had not been looking forward to the long-weekend in the middle of nowhere, literally not knowing a single soul in attendance, but her mom knew just about as few people as she did, sans the bride, so MJ found it difficult to decline the invitation without it heavily weighing on her conscience.

“You still should have gotten a date,” Peter adds, joining her where she stops in the kitchen to grab her to-go coffee cup, “Your mom loves me, I’d be a great co-wedding date.”

“Yeah, and it’s because my mother loves you so much that she’s not bringing you along. It’s going to be miserable.”

“Then stay home,” he pleads, with his eyes more than his words, catching her brown ones in the middle of the small kitchen.

“I want to. So, so badly,” she sighs, bringing her coffee to her lips, “It’s an outdoor wedding so one, allergies and two, I’m gonna have to dance with all my mom’s friends’ drunk sons.”

“That’s a shame,” Peter starts, “For them, the sons. You’re a terrible dancer.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious, don’t come home with a lawsuit suing for broken toes.”

“I’ll break your toes, Parker.”

“The last name doesn’t intimidate me anymore, Jones, I’m a big boy.”

“Yeah, that prefrontal cortex of yours is all nice and developed now,” she steps forward and knocks her knuckles lightly on his forehead. He’s like putty under her touch, even when its jabbing, and she is finding it more and more difficult to leave.

“Man, I love it when you talk science to me,” he fists his hands and drops his chin like he’s overwhelmed and smitten (he is), steps closer to her.

“My man’s brain is his sexiest quality.”

“Keep going!”

“I love the feeling of your heart’s rapid systole and diastole when we’re together,” she says with a mock wist, a giggle in her voice when he presses their chests together, her coffee forgotten on the counter.

“Damn, save it for the bedroom, Jones.”

“You’re so sweet it makes my blood glucose levels spike to dangerously high levels.”

“Now I think you’re just showing off,” he eyes her.

“That was easy,” and MJ must have missed the swift way he twined their fingers together, one arm around the curve of her waist, and has them swaying in a small semi circle while they talk, “You would have gotten the question right in high school.”

“But I wouldn’t be doing this in high school,” he flits his eyes from her face to their hands, rocks them gently to the side like they’re at a dumb high school dance.

“I don’t know why we’re doing this right now,” she says, like she’s going to roll her eyes, but the way she slopes her head to rest on one of his shoulders betrays them.

“I’m teaching you how to dance for the wedding.”

She lets out a loud laugh that ripples down his back, but she keeps dancing with him anyway.

“This isn’t realistic, you’re not a drunk boy I don’t like.”

“So what I’m hearing is you like me?”

“Don’t ruin the moment, nerd,” she sighs, and sinks into him a little further. She twists a hand around his neck, runs her fingers up and down to the top of his spine, rubs her thumb over the back of his palm, smells his toothpaste.

And no, it’s not her spot in the hallway, so she can hear cars and bustle coming in from the window, and the sun glare isn’t right to make the halo affect, it prompts more of a squint, and Peter’s hand is a little soapy still and she’s in a sweats for a long train ride with her mother and not the nice dress she’s got packed for the wedding, and the 7-day weather forecast playing on their TV in the background isn’t exactly a ballad. But its so nice. It’s hers, she decides, and so she lets him keep swaying her, lets him keep her from her train.

“80% chance of thunderstorms tonight,” Peter says softly, echoing the TV in the background, “You sure you don’t wanna stay?”

“Hard pass.”

“But it’s a high of 72,” he whines, “That’s your favorite temperature.”

“You know what my favorite temperature is?”

“Course,” he shrugs, flexing his fingers in her hand, “You decided 72 was the exact perfect temperature when we were on the beach that last night in California, a few years ago, I think?”

He’s right, she remembers, it was when they went to visit Ned at school their sophomore year of college. Peter had been begging her to get to the beach by sunrise every morning they were there, and MJ had never complied, not wanting to leave the comforts of her queen sized hotel bed any earlier than 10am unless there was a pressing natural disaster, so she compromised for a sunset. She was wearing a sundress from dinner, and one of Peter’s denim jackets, and thinking about it, the warm and fuzzy feeling probably had more to do with the way Peter was holding her hand and talking about the sun and the little kisses he was leaving on her cheek and absolutely nothing to do with the 72 degree weather and appropriate outfit she was wearing with her toes in the sand. But, she sticks to the facts anyway. It was a good night. A good feel. The perfect temperature.

“I never got that jacket back,” he adds, and she lifts her chin up from where it rests on his shoulder to look at him.

“We share a closet now, Peter.”

“But would you let me take it back?”

“No.”

“See?”

“You’re not as fun with a fully developed prefrontal cortex, babe.”

“Yeah, but at least you don’t have to worry about me forgetting the long list of things I have to do while you’re away.”

“Okay hotshot,” she huffs, “Repeat it back one more time.”

He straightens up so they’re face to face, hands swinging down together in between them, “Dog on Sunday, garbage on Tuesday, no wait— garbage on Sunday—“

“Wrong, it’s all wrong!” She laughs loudly, the sound tickling his nose.

“Garbage on Monday?”

She shakes her head.

“I swear I just had this,” he bites his bottom lip, “The dog is definitely Monday though.”

“Write it down, now, before I’m late for my train and my mother murders me before garbage day.”

“Which is Tuesday?”

“Peter!”

“Okay, okay, uh, gimme a piece of paper,” he drops one of her hands and reaches around to the counter, looking for a pen, but not finding one. He quickly runs to the table by their couch, finds a pen in between the pages of a book MJ had been reading last night. He pulls it out.

“Hey, that was my bookmark!” She gasps, still laughing as Peter runs frantic.

“So I’m guessing I can’t write the list on the back cover? No?” He pouts and shakes his head, then starts to scribble something on the top of his hand.

“Don’t write it on your hands, you plan on washing them sometime within the next four days, I assume?”

He tosses his head back in defeat, “MJ, I don’t—“ but then he pauses, his eyes almost comically wide with an idea, and he grabs a sharpie off the kitchen table. Two more steps and he uncaps it, starts taking notes on his weekend chores right on the—

“On the wall?!”

“You hate this wall,” he twists his head mid-scribble, and flashes her a stomach-swooping smile, “And this way I won’t lose the list.”

“I can’t believe you—“ she starts, but catches herself and presses her lips into a thing smile, “You’re really doing this?”

“Maybe we’ll finally get the motivation to paint over it,” he shrugs, writes down his schedule for watering houseplants, a reminder to clean the bathroom and buy more paper towels for the kitchen, and holy shit, she loves this boy so much. His hand writing is sloppy, messy, dizzying on the ugly pattern of the wallpaper, right above where she sits at the table to do work from home. “Is this all, captain?”

“I think you got it,” she hums, “Can I go now?”

“I guess,” he pouts, like a child being told it’s past their bedtime, and walks her to the door.

“You go on little superhero field trips without me all the time, Peter,” she rubs the wrinkles out of his creased forehead with a swipe of her thumb when she turns to face him in the open doorway, suitcase in hand, “I survive.”

“What do you usually do while I’m gone?”

“Wait for you to get home.”

He likes that answer a lot, kisses her long to prove it, then wraps his fingers around the door, ushering her out, “I’ll miss you.”

“Save it for the voicemails, loser.”

“I love you too.”

When she makes it to the train station with three minutes to spare, her mother isn’t surprised, just pushes her onto the train car and into their open seats with a laugh, “You’ll be an hour late to your own wedding.”

“No I won’t,” she huffs, pulling her backpack into her lap, next to her mom. She says it because she knows she won’t, she’d literally make it a point to get there at least 15 minutes early because 1) she’d have lots of lists to go over when she got to the venue and 2) she only started getting so terrible at being on time to things when Peter came into the picture and started distracting her and since 3) Peter would already be up there waiting for her there wasn’t even the chance of her—

Huh. She was marrying Peter.

This isn’t something she decided. No, this feels like something decided long before she ever had any power over it, like she was always meant to end up on this exact train of thought. Knowing she’s going to marry Peter wasn’t something she decided, it didn’t come to her wrapped in a neat bow, saying “here I am, this is your future, right here, choose me”. It washed over her like the overhead light in their little apartment hallway, dripped onto her skin like their leaky faucet. She didn’t feel it until the drain ran full, overflowed, filled her up to the point where it said “you don’t get to decide to fix this leak, but you’re going to choose to anyway”. This feels bigger than her, and she hates it. Because it doesn’t fit into a truth and Peter feels like just about the truest thing she’s ever known. Its a little contradictory and makes her head swim.

It weighs her down, she drops her head onto the side of the train’s window just as the car starts rolling away.

Her mom must sense her distress, and with a soft laugh and a hand on her knee, she says, “Think any harder and you’ll get premature wrinkles.”

That’s not true, Michelle thinks, and she closes her eyes and feels the cool glass of the window.

“I decided I’m going to marry Peter,” she says, and its not true, she thinks. Because she didn’t decide, she’s always known.

Her mother gives a reassuring squeeze, “Thank god. Good tax benefits.”

MJ lets out a weak laugh at her mother’s poor humor, then says, “I know you like him better than me.”

“That doesn’t really matter if you don’t like him,” her mother chuckles, “But that’s not true is, it?”

“Nope,” she says, pops the strong ‘p’.

“You like him a lot.” MJ watches her mom settle into her seat, like she knew about this long before Michelle came to the realization herself, like she was one of the mysterious ‘Others’ who knew Michelle was going to marry Peter and didn’t want to wait for her to decide it.

But Michelle likes to decide. Like she decided to put a cactus on the windowsill some nights so Peter would stay home with her instead of patrolling, and like she decided Peter could have easily moved the tiny succulent and gone out anyway, but he never did. Like she decided to keep his denim jacket, and decided to eat lo mein out of the carton with him lady and the tramp style and love every second of it. Like she decided 72 degrees was the perfect temperature and the hallway between the bedroom and the bathroom was her favorite spot in the apartment.

So she decides, and says as much to her mom on the train to a wedding she doesn’t want to go to, “This morning we slow danced to the 7-day weather forecast, mom,” she shakes her head and snuggles keeping into the seat, “I have to marry him.”

When she gets home, Peter’s out on Spider business, but she finds a $20 bill and a note on her side of the bed because I hit four voicemails while you were still on the train. I am terrible at this ‘missing you’ thing.

He makes deciding so easy.

“Move it up a little.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Here,” MJ slides a book towards him on the coffee table, nudges it under his hand that’s trying to steady her iPhone, “Put it under this, if it’s any lower I’ll have like, three chins in the picture.”

“What?” Peter seems almost offended by that statement, “MJ, you’re incapable of taking a bad picture.”

“I already look and feel ridiculous,” she tugs at the hem of her itchy red turtleneck, flops the puffy white ball at the end of her Santa hat to the left, “So just let me have this.”

It’s 3 weeks to Christmas and apparently she and Peter missed the part where they tell you moving in with your long-term boyfriend means you have to start sending Christmas cards. They’re pushing 2 years in their apartment and the little place has made them very happy, but the lack of showing it off via glassy photo print out from the kiosk at Walgreens is making lots of great aunts and twice removed cousins very unhappy. And MJ knows they could use the cash in Christmas gifts they get in return so, she shrugs aside her dignity and instead shrugs on matching red and green sweaters with her long-term boyfriend that she lives with.

It’s cold outside and they can’t push the old space heater out of the frame of the picture because even though her boyfriend has literal super-strength, they’re afraid if they move it they’ll never get it to stand upright again, old and resurrected from the back of a closet in May’s old apartment. MJ’s tried to decorate the wall behind them for the spirit of things, hung tacky rainbow lights from end to end of the wallpapered wall behind the couch, wrapped tinsel on the armrests, replaced the plant on the side table with a small white red striped and sparkly tree (tacky, its so tacky, and Peter loves it, so she buys it), and even succumbed to wearing a pair of Peter’s loud printed socks. Its the most festive she’ll ever look, its very over the top, but MJ’s never been one to half ass anything. Over the top and to the fullest is probably her middle name.

“This is ridiculous,” Peter whines, watching the phone fall screen-side flat on the table, “Can’t we just call Ned to come take the picture?”

“No, no, we’re doing this. We’re independent adults who send Christmas cards on our own,” MJ finds his hands and tries to help him stand the phone upright again, “We’re gonna self timer the hell out of this.”

“It’s not working!”

MJ jumps back onto the couch, arm outstretched and still holding the phone. She uses her free hand to pull Peter back with her, tongue between her teeth in concentration, “Okay, I’m gonna let go when it counts down to one, just be ready, okay?”

“MJ—“

“If you don’t smile, Parker…” MJ steadies her hand and watches the timer tick down to 3, 2, then drops the phone just before it hits 1, “GO!” She yells, and signals Peter’s dorkiest smile, but the phone falls mid snapshot, and both Peter and MJ dive for the phone, bumping heads.

“Please let me call Ned,” Peter yells, wrapping an arm around MJ’s head, fingers rubbing small circles above her ear as they both laugh.

“I think it looks cute!” MJ gasps between giggles, showing him the blurry shot from the camera roll, caught mid-collision, “It’s very us.”

“I’m not sending that picture to your grandmother,” Peter huffs, swiping one finger on the screen to scroll through their other failed attempts, “Especially not that one.”

She laughs, blushes into his cheek when he points out the picture, one she’d taken when he was trying to fix her Santa hat and she’d ambushed him with a heavy mistletoe make-out session instead, “You didn’t seem to mind this picture while it was happening…”

“One more try,” he swats her off as she laughs, “And if it doesn’t work then I’m grabbing my web shooters and swinging to the North Pole, probably never returning.”

“Oh my god.”

“What, do you have a request for Santa?” Peter drawls sarcastically, pushes back and assumes his posed position on the couch.

“We’re so stupid,” MJ shakes her head, “You make webs. You’re sticky.”

“Yes?”

“Just web the phone to something, Spider-Man,” MJ waves a hand, gesturing to the wall in front of them.

“Oh we’re so stupid.”

May gets the card first, calls Peter a few days after they send it. They’re sitting on the couch again, similar to their Christmas card set up, the rainbow lights still flickering on the wall behind them, the thrum of the space heater a heavy presence, Peter’s red and green toed socks pushed between her bare ones, wrapped around one ankle. MJ has her favorite white fuzzy blanket pulled up to her chin, the blanket falling to Peter’s waist, one leg sticking out because he can’t commit and it has nothing to do with any weird spider thermo-regulation nonsense. They’re watching Love, Actually because Peter’s a sap and MJ likes to sit with her ear to his chest and listen to his heartbeat (like he can do for her from everywhere, not just when they’re laying together, which is exactly because of spider nonsense), and he only stays still long enough for that to happen if they’re watching a rom-com.

He pauses the movie to talk to May about the card. It’s a little staged, she tells them, but it’s still getting hung up on my fridge. Peter goes to great lengths to explain how many takes and trials he had to sit through before he finally produced one MJ was satisfied with. MJ laughs as he skews the truth, but lets him keep telling it (she wasn’t that picky, he just kept making weird faces or trying to hang from the ceiling like he was mistletoe and if on the chance she got him to sit on the couch with her, she suddenly had an overwhelming urge to kiss him, sue her).

It’s a good thing you love her, May jokes.

“It’s a good thing she loves me.”

MJ feels it, feels his voice when he says the words, her ear on his chest, right under his throat. It’s so simple and soothing, makes her eyes close instinctively and breathe in their stale space heater air. He loves her and she loves him.

She can feel it. Literally. Feels their love bounce and ripple and vibrate under her.

It’s a big thing, a big thing that means more to her than their Christmas card means to Peter’s second cousin, so she doesn’t really care what she ended up looking like.

She hangs up the card on their wall.

“Is it just me, or is it hot in here?”

“It’s just you.”

MJ drops her pen on her keyboard and looks up, Peter’s head tipped over the back of the couch to smirk at her, “I’m serious, I think the AC is broken.”

“No, Em, I think you’re just that hot.”

“Would it kill you to have a serious conversation with me for three minutes?”

“It might,” he shrugs, and his curls flop when he positions himself to sitting upright again, “And then you’d have Spider-Man’s blood on your hands, so is that really a risk you’re willing to take?”

“Three minutes Peter, please,” she all but whines, her forehead on the table and voice muffled when she speaks, “We’re in the middle of a heatwave.”

“Says who?”

“Every meteorologist on every news channel.”

“Meteorologists are scams.”

“Peter!”

“Fine, fine,” he stands up from the couch, “I will look at it.”

“Thank you,” MJ rolls her head to the side and blinks at him, too hot and overworked and overtired in the middle of the longest week of her life to budge from her slumped position, “Do you want help?”

“I wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself in the middle of a heatwave.”

She glares as he squats down next to her, popping open the top of the dingy AC unit that lines the bottom corner of the wall (the wall), next to the table behind the couch MJ is working at. MJ considers herself pretty expert level in the field of quick-witted sarcasm, but after so many years with her, she’s afraid Peter might be catching up. It used to scare her, how attuned to her rhythm he’d become, that a person could know her so well and be matched to her even better. But now it just feels like a familiar hug, like something warm and wonderful that her fixed AC unit couldn’t even cool down.

She pokes his shoulder with her middle finger, for effect, “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“Not a clue,” he shakes his head, coughs through a slight billow of smoke that comes from something inside the metal box, and she laughs, “For the record, this may be broken but I still think this is entirely your fault.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious!”

“No, you’re not,” she laughs, finds a very minimal amount of strength inside herself to sit up in the chair, “I’m implementing the 3-minute rule.”

“The three minute rule?”

“You have to be serious for three minutes so I can have a conversation with you where you’re not checking out my ass or turning everything I say into a science pun.”

“Those are my two greatest assets, Em.”

He’s an idiot and she loves him, she loves him, she loves him. But its not like he can know that, so she ruffles his hair and sits down next to him with her laptop, opens a tab and starts searching for youtube tutorials on how to fix their AC because they’re broke and stupid and in love and are trying to save money for some sort of tropical vacation and calling an HVAC company would put a severe dent in that fund.

“Hey, if we can’t fix it, it’s just like practicing for the Hawaiian climate,” Peter shrugs, pushing at something MJ can’t see.

“Who says we’re going to Hawaii?”

“I don’t know, you said you wanted beaches,” he says, squints at the youtube video MJ’s chosen, “Do we own a screwdriver?”

“I figured anything you could do with a screwdriver you could do with your baby hands and super strength,” MJ makes a twisty motion with two of her fingers, “And there are beaches in places that aren’t Hawaii.”

“Who’s not being serious now?” But Peter uses his fingers unscrew the top of the AC unit with little to no effort anyway, “And it’s not like I’m saying we have to go to Hawaii, I just thought you’d want to. Also you can buy me a screwdriver for my birthday.”

“Okay, we’re having like three different conversations at once right now,” she shakes her head, pauses the video.

Peter looks up from his work when the video stops and something glints bright in those baby blues. He smirks and says to her, “Let’s three minute rule it, baby.”

She’s never loved a person as much as this one in front of her. Like, she’s known it, almost for what feels like forever, but she feels it bears repeating. She loves him, she loves him, she loves him.

“Set a timer because I’m only giving you three serious minutes,” he sits in front of her, criss-cross style and hands folded in his lap. She giggles as she mirrors him.

She pulls her phone down from the table and swipes up to set her timer, “Okay, you ready?” He nods, she smiles, “Three, two… go!”

“Go what? You have to ask me a question!”

“Oh, wait, seriously? Wait, can I restart the timer?”

“I feel your three minutes slipping away, Chelle…”

“Okay, okay, okay, um…” MJ drums her fingers on the ground in front of her and bites her lip, to Peter’s amusement, “I feel like I usually have so many things I want to ask you and now that I actually get to ask them and receive serious answers, I’m completely blanking.”

“Tick tock!”

“Um, okay, this is serious,” she steadies, “I already got the plane tickets but they’re not for Hawaii.”

“What?” Peter gapes, “That’s a statement, not a question.”

“How about ‘thank you, Michelle, greatest girlfriend in the universe’?”

“Multiverse,” he feels the need to correct, “And why? I’m working overtime next weekend while you’re away on your business trip and I was gonna use the bonus to surprise you for your birthday.”

“Because I wanted to surprise you for your birthday,” she says, “But now I’m worried you wanted to go to Hawaii and need you to seriously tell me if you want to go there and not Paris because—“

“We’re going to Paris?!”

“Hypothetically,” she starts, “But be serious, don’t try to just make me feel good. Do you—“

“Yes, oh my god, yes, I want to go to Paris, dead serious,” he nods his head rapidly, and MJ feels like dying, dead serious.

“Okay, cool, I was feeling sentimental that we never got to go there and I felt like sentimental is exactly the type of thing you’d like so…”

“Are there beaches in France?”

“This is my three minutes, you don’t get to ask the questions!”

“Michelle…”

“So serious topic number two,” she ignores him, loves the way he flops his head down defeated, “Is it okay that I didn’t buy you a screwdriver for your birthday?”

“No.”

“I said be serious, Peter.”

“I am being serious,” he nods, but she doesn’t believe him.

“Okay, three, totally unrelated, but I just remembered it and I need a serious answer: I like how you do laundry because I hate it and I wash dishes because you hate it but can we swap next week, and then like at least once or twice a month because I think the soap is really drying out my hands—“

“Uh, no.”

“Serious?”

“Yeah, I uh, I mean,” he chokes, “I’ll help you wash dishes, but you don’t need to do the laundry, I’ll still do that.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she scoffs, “I can do some, it wouldn’t be fair.”

“I don’t mind,” he shakes his head, adamant, “Besides, there’s an unhealthy amount of mold in the basement laundry room we have to use and it doesn’t affect me but I don’t want you getting sick.”

Hmph. He’s being unusually weird about this, she thinks, but he’s also being usually sweet, so, she lets it go.

“Okay, last question,” she hums, looks down at the timer and shrieks, “Ah! Fifteen seconds!”

“Go, go, go!”

“Uh… Can we have sex after we fix the AC?”

“That’s what you went with?”

“Time restrictions make me nervous and you called me hot like, seventeen times in the past half hour, how am I supposed to not be turned on?”

The timer blares next to her and MJ repeats her surprised shriek, like she didn’t see it coming, even though she did, and rocks back, lost in the moment of laughing at how un-serious her serious three minutes were. But that makes sense, looking at Peter, eyes doe wide and glowing. She tucks her knees to her chest and puts a hand on the ugly wall to steady herself, notices Peter just keeps looking at her, “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he nods absently.

Every time Peter looks at her kind of feels like he’s looking at her fir the first time, trying to memorize every curve of her smile and the number of eyelashes on each eye, the rise and fall of her chest and the freckles you only see if you have advanced spider-senses. She feels it, the way he looks at her, every time she does it, tries to fix her curls so he remembers them with a slight bounce, or so he memorizes her cheeks pink-red and glowing.

But this time, sitting here next to their ugly wall in front of their broken AC, it feels different. He’s not looking at her like it’s the first time because something in his eyes tells her he’s realizing he could do this forever, like there’s no end to the firsts. It’s a soft gaze, a conscious gaze, like he knows he doesn’t have to hurry up and get her because he has her, as long as he wants there to be there. She’s there.

“Um,” he coughs, “I actually think I do have a screwdriver, and we really should fix this so…” his voice trails as he hoists himself up, walks quickly down and around the small hallway that MJ loves.

Weird, she thinks again, but to be expected. She stands up herself, and looks up and over the AC unit, letting the youtube video run again and determined to fix something without Peter’s dumb screwdriver just to make a point. She turns the dial from on to off, feels the thrum of the unit settle. She stands next to the wall and taps her fingers on top of the unit.

Peter walks back into view.

“Hey, I figured before we go to drastic screwdriver measures, we should try the old ‘turn it off then back on’ thing,” MJ says, nodding down, but Peter still looks uneasy, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, uh, can I have three minutes?” He hums, nervously.

“That doesn’t seem fair, I’m always serious with you,” MJ jokes, crosses her arms over her chest.

“Wouldn’t it be less fair if you got three minutes and I got none?” He quirks an eyebrow. Taught him too well, she knows, she’s taught him too well.

“Fine, but you’re getting the timer,” she laughs, unlocks her phone. Her chin is ducked as she scrolls up and sets the timer, slowly, finger over the start button, “Okay… go.”

And when she looks up, she doesn’t see Peter in her view.

“Okay, so I always thought this would be weird, but you’ve already got a good few inches on me standing so the extra gap right now isn’t really making a difference.” She finds his voice by tipping her chin down, “And you never realize how uncomfortable our floors until you’re on one knee.”

“Are you serious?”

“Isn’t that what the three minutes is for?”

She sucks in a breath, has to think through every single thing her body is doing. Inhales, exhales, clicks the power button on her phone and looks at the timer, “2 minutes and 34 second now, Peter.”

“Oh jeez, I didn’t realize how fast that goes, um…” he shakes his head like, is this happening? And MJ is alarmed by just how glad she is that it is. Happening. Right now. Inhales, exhales. “I should have asked for more than three minutes, because I don’t think I could possibly figure out how to say how much I love you in just three minutes.”

“2 minutes and 12…”

“Okay, okay, MJ. MJ, people spend their whole lives waiting for someone to love them the way you love me, and I found you when I was just sixteen,” he breathes, “It doesn’t make any sense, and yet, it makes perfect sense. Because tonight, you were just sitting in front of me, in front of the ugliest wall in the universe—“

“Multiverse.”

“The multiverse. And I just— all you wanted was three minutes from me, but I realized that isn’t good enough. I need all the minutes, I want all the minutes. That is such bad grammar, you’re gonna hate me for it, but it’s cute and these are my three minutes so don’t say anything.”

“I wasn’t gonna—“

“Shh,” he hums and she giggles, a hand over her mouth because she can’t believe she’s smiling this wide. “I learned pretty quickly on that when you’re in my ‘line of work’, it’s really easy to lose parts of yourself. I spend hours just giving and doing, literally swinging into other dimensions and fighting aliens and all this stuff normal people aren’t supposed to have to do, so by all accounts, after all these years I should have ended up a little hollowed out.”

She didn’t realize she started crying until a salty tear dropped on her lip.

“But that’s never happened to me, MJ, because you, you fill up every piece of me. Every time I go missing, there you are. You fit. You are everything I need, everything I’m supposed to be, everything I’m not, and everything that I am too, because, let’s be honest, whatever we think I bring to this relationship, you bring it better anyway, so it’s more beneficial for everyone involved if this is just, all you.”

She laughs, blames the cloudy vision on smoke coming from their broken AC unit and not the tears she has to wipe on her shoulder while he continues speaking.

“I didn’t plan this, it kind of just happened, so I’m sorry that none of my words are making sense right now,” he laughs nervously, eyes flitting up and down, settling on hers, “Also we don’t have a screwdriver. I was actually just going to get the ring, which I hid in the box with the dryer sheets because I knew you’d never look there because you hate doing laundry…”

“So that’s why you wouldn’t trade chores?”

“This is my three minutes, Michelle, you don’t get to ask the questions…”

“Are you going to ask the question?” She laughs, impatiently, because a yes has been on her tongue for longer than she knew how to form the quick syllable, and she wants to finally say it out loud.

“I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it, you only get to propose to your girlfriend once.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing? I thought you wanted to know if there were beaches in France.”

“Shut up,” he blushes, fiddles with the small box in his hands, feels the seal where it opens with the pad of his finger, “I really don’t think there will ever be enough minutes. Running the risk of sounding like the RENT soundtrack, if we live out the average life expectancy, there are minutes in the millions that we are going to be here to live. And even if the minutes aren’t always serious, MJ, I swear to you, there is nothing I want more than to spend every one of those minutes with—“

The phone in MJ’s hand blares and flashes to life. It shocks her so much she drops it, right where she stands, but her legs feel too shaky to even attempt to bend and pick it up.

The alarm on the timer keeps ringing until Peter, face bright red and eyes wide, pushes his small box back into one pocket and taps on the screen to silence it.

“Well, that was my three minutes, so,” he pushes his hands in his pocket, comes to standing, “I guess we’ll have to wait until my next three minutes to see where that was going,” and the little shit he is, turns and starts to walk back towards the hallway, and is he kidding? Like, the time is up so he technically doesn’t have to be serious? But?

“Peter Parker, I swear to god,” she reaches, leans on her tip toes to grab his hand and spin him back around, pull him towards her, “I was about to say yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, there are beaches in France,” she smirks, when his shoulders are squared towards hers again and he’s wearing one of those ‘kiss me’ smiles he’s almost always sporting. And Peter may have gotten good, but she’s still the master here, so she drops to one knee, “And I want to marry you.”

“How’d you know I was going to ask that?”

“I don’t like how jokey we’re being about this very serious thing,” she chokes out, her slow stream of tears starting to catch up with her as they mix with her laughs, “Because I seriously want to marry you, and I’d ask, because I’m always serious, but you’re the only one with a ring…”

“Okay, okay,” Peter drops quickly to meet her, his knee bumping hers and his hands intertwined, “Do you still want to have sex with me after this?”

“Wrong question.” (“But yes.”)

“Michelle Jones, will you please marry me?”

MJ is very mad that the only thing she can see in the picture she sends to people to tell them she’s engaged is the ugliest wall in the multiverse in the background. It’s not the ring on her finger, her middle finger, because Peter got nervous and fumbled with it while trying to put it on her, but she feels it probably suits her best there anyway. It’s not the way it sparkles, the shiny band that feels cool on her skin, but not cool enough overlook the fact that they’re in the middle of a heatwave and they still have a broken AC unit in their crappy little apartment. It’s not the sloppy kiss Peter leaves on her cheek because he can’t sit still for just one nice smiling picture to send to May, just one, Peter, please. No, all MJ sees is that she got engaged in front of the worst wall in the multiverse, it’s faded brown outdated pattern. It is one of the most wonderful moments of her life, so it makes no sense that it happened here, right here, in her baggy sweats and matted hair from the heatwave and no AC and her really fucking ugly wall. And yet, its one of the most wonderful moments of her life, and Peter kisses her on the hardwood floor like the night they moved in, so, it makes perfect sense.

MJ’s mom reacts as expected.

“About damn time”, she says to MJ, on the phone while Peter runs a soft hand through her hair on their bed, “I’ve been waiting for this since the train.”

“Last year? The train to that wedding?”

“No,” she laughs softly, “When you got off the train after your first date, that summer in high school.”

“Did you find it?”

“One sec,” MJ hears him from down the hallway, followed by something clattering and falling to the floor. For a superhero, Peter’s coordination really is lacking.

“We should have invested in a proper apartment toolbox when we discovered we didn’t have a screwdriver months ago,” he reappears, flashlight shining under his face in the dark room.

“But it’s so much more fun this way,” she giggles as he trips over the kitchen table chair, wanders his way back to her, sitting on the floor against the back of the couch, “What kind of comedic relief would we have in a long-term power outage if I didn’t get to watch you struggle.”

“That’s not normal, Em,” he croons, but slides in right next to her, their toes knocking, his hand on one thigh. At about 1 in the afternoon today, power shut off across their entire apartment complex. Thanks to a pretty nasty storm sweeping the city, Peter and MJ were among the vast majority now going on hour seven with no power, and no sign of that changing in the near future. With rain still coming down in buckets, they couldn’t even open the window to get air moving through the stale apartment. It was pitch black, muggy, eerily quiet, but not altogether bad. She’d had a really long week at work, crazy hours and little to no sleep. She had been so looking forward to a stress-free Friday night with Peter since she clocked in Monday Monday morning (yeah, that bad).  But now that seemed far from reality, as she sat on her dark living room floor. MJ’s phone had died about an hour ago, and Peter’s was soon to follow suit, so he used his last bit of power to find them some supplies for the dark night ahead.

He spreads out his findings in front of them on the floor, shines a flashlight above them, “So I got us a flashlight, a pillow… I wasn’t sure what socks you were talking about but I think these are the right ones?” She slides them over to her and they’re wrong but she puts them on anyway.

“Did you find any food? I’m starving, and pizza still says they’re not delivering.”

“Um, we can treat ourselves to this gourmet box of cereal?” He shrugs, passing her the box.

She shakes it, hears the pieces bounce against the inside of the hollow box, “This is half empty, Peter.”

“Half the calories!”

She laughs, despite her pressing need not to feed into his ego, but settles with her head tucks into his shoulder, her eyes fluttering shut.

She feels one of his hands come up and run soothing patterns through her hair, “You should sleep, we can get food when you wake up.”

“It’s 8pm.”

“You’ve had a long week,” he says, “I know you’re trying to stay up because this is the first time we’re seeing each other in a good few days, but I swear, I am not as codependent as I appear.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Yeah, I am,” his nails massage her scalp and MJ gets dangerously close to slipping into sleep, “But I can survive a quick nap without you. You’ll feel better and then I can unload over a candlelit pizza dinner when you wake up.”

“I’ll eat pizza, you can have your sorry excuse for cereal.”

“The disrespect I get under this roof,” he shakes his head at her soft laugh, “It’s like the people who live here don’t know the fate of the free world sits directly on my shoulders.”

“I’m the only thing on your shoulder, nerd,” and she snuggles into his shoulder closer, “Start talking so I can fall asleep.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know, anything,” she hums, “Just like your voice.”

“Aw, babe.”

“Don’t ruin it.”

“But you like my voice!” She swats his knee lightly, eyes still shut. He grabs her hand and continues, “Fine, fine, I’m not good under pressure though.”

“I find that hard to believe, Spider-Man.”

He laughs softly, rubbing her thumb over the back of her hand, “You know, when I was little and we lost power, I used to get so scared.”

“That’s not surprising.”

“May used to come sit in my room with me, she’d bring a flashlight, and we’d make shadows on my wall for hours,” she looks up for a minute, watches his face contort into something soft, serene, “It was like this—“ He picks up the flashlight with a free hand, unhooks his other from hers and puts up two fingers infant of the light on the wall.

“A bunny is so unoriginal.”

“Woah, MJ, this is not just any bunny,” Peter says, a mock seriousness playing at his tone, “This is Ultra Bunny. When I was 8 I thought ‘ultra’ was the most badass prefix in the English language. He saves the animal world with his mega hop and magic ears that convert into helicopter panes so he can fly over the city,” Peter twirls his fingers and runs them across the screen of the wall.

“My bad, how dare I disrespect the greatest hero of our time, Ultra Bunny.”

“His sidekick was The Bionic Butterfly, that was May’s character, you have to do it now,” he whispers aside, and MJ blinks, hands trying to form a butterfly shape as he continues, “Butterfly has the powers of telekinesis and eyes in the back of her head.”

“I’m struggling,” she flaps her hands together, looking more like a sad attempt at a clap than a butterfly.

Peter pauses his bunny hopping to hold her hands and position them. He smiles after a moment, “Look at that, you’re a natural.”

“And where are we saving the day today, Ultra Bunny?” She giggles, flaps her small butterfly wings, thumbs linked together.

“Why, I thought you’d never ask, Bionic Butterfly,” he drops his voice to an unnaturally low octave, makes MJ giggle again, “Tonight, we have to save the city from the most evil monster I’ve ever laid eyes on…”

“And who would that be?”

“Blackout Boy! His evil ways have ravaged the city and stripped all citizens of their precious power and closed all the pizzerias!”

“No!”

“Yes, and that’s not even the worst of it, Butterfly,” he bounces his shadow bunny across the wall, MJ has to bite her bottom lip from doing anything stupid like saying she loves him, “My superhero intel tells me he’s not working alone. He’s in cahoots with none other than my arch nemesis… Cereal Man!”

“Not the Cereal Man!”

“He’s made it his mission to devour half of every box of cereal in the city,” he says, drops his bunny fingers to pick up the box of cereal at his side and shake it, an ear to the cardboard like he’s listening intently, “And it looks like he’s already gotten here!”

Peter continues on his elaborate show, not pausing even a second to get his storyline together. It flows out of him naturally, has MJ wheezing with delight and squealing with laughter. He manages to prop the flashlight up so it shines on their little wallpapered wall, and MJ gets to sit back and watch, content and sleepy eyed, while Peter uses both free hands to make shapes in front of her.

It’s such a simple thing, to see the love of your life make shadow hand puppets on the wall in a blackout and know you could sit here and watch it forever. MJ lulls to a soft sleep just before Ultra Bunny roundhouse kicks Cereal Man on the roof of the supermarket, and dreams mostly of Peter, sated and warm and fuzzy.

When MJ wakes up, there is light.

“Hey, sleepy. Power’s back on,” Peter hums from somewhere she can’t see.

“I noticed,” she rubs her eyes awake, “Did I miss anything else?”

“Only the most epic ending in action sequence history,” he says, appearing with one hand propped on the top cushion of the couch, “And pizza.”

MJ starts to respond but her stomach is quicker, growling fatherly loudly and unpleasantly. Peter laughs.

“I hope you saved me at least 3 good pieces.”

“Oh, you didn’t hear,” he shakes his head, “Right before Ultra Bunny took down Cereal Man, Blackout Boy pulled out his secret weapon— Pizza Guy,” he shrugs a shoulder, “So… pizza’s gone.”

This is the man she has decided to marry, she thinks.

If only everyone could be so lucky.

“Put me down!”

“We can’t mess with tradition, MJ!”

“It is not tradition to carry your bride kicking and screaming into your apartment,” she punches his back, slung over his shoulder, to emphasize her point, “I will not consummate this marriage, Peter.”

“Okay,” she can practically hear the eye roll, as he whisks them down the hallway, “We’ll just sit in our bed fully clothed at a respectable distance like god intended.”

“You think I’m kidding now,” she kicks the top of her foot into his lower abs, knowing its impossible to do any real damage on those things, “But you won’t be laughing when you spend your first night as my husband on our couch.”

But it’s not very convincing at all, she knows, as she giggles down his back while he tries to fish for his key in his pocket at their door. The door swings open after a resounding click. Peter takes a deep breath, “And we are officially…” he jolts them with a hop through the doorway, “Over the threshold!”

He says it like he’s just won the lottery, and Michelle gets a sinking feeling like she really might have.

“Can you put me down now, please?” She laughs.

“I’m gonna just, drop you off on the bed, grab some blankets so I can set up my spot on the couch,” Peter scurries into their apartment, kicks the door shut behind him before walking down the hallway.

“Peter, don’t…” She warns, but he does exactly as he promised, drops her on their bed with a bounce and a giggle. “I’m gonna kill you,” she teases, eyes bright, as she pulls him by the collar down and kisses him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that, did you say, kiss me? Or?” And he kisses her again, slotting his legs between hers long white skirt and nudging at the thin strap on her shoulder.

“I married you?” She nudges her nose against his, holding his cheeks in his her hands.

“You did, yes, that is a thing that we just did like,” he squints and checks an imaginary watch, “Seven hours ago.”

“I think it was more than that.”

“Well, it would have ben eight maybe if you weren’t so late,” he kisses her nose, her cheek, her lips.

She giggles, squirms under his touch and holds him impossibly closer, “I never said it was okay for you to send me a novel of your thoughts before I walked down the aisle.”

“I had a lot of things I wanted to say and Ned told me my vows couldn’t be longer than three minutes!”

“You ruined my makeup, nerd,” she kisses his nose, his cheek, his lips.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to do that again, so,” he rolls off her and down the other side of the bed, “Guess I should be heading to the couch.”

“No, no, come back,” she makes a grabby motion with her hands, his bicep just out of her reach as he grabs a rogue pillow and runs with a laugh, “The joke is dead, Peter, just come back and kiss me.”

She figures he’s gone before she finishes the sentence and rolls onto her stomach, a giggle pressed into the pillow. She married him. Really, fully, and truly, that is and thing she did. She’s grateful for the minute to compose herself.

If you had asked her to plan out her life when she was just sixteen, she wants to be able to say this isn’t how she’d think it would end up. But she can’t say that’s the full truth. No, because she has wanted this more than she thinks a person should be allowed to want something. This is exactly the kind of life she thinks every person should get to have, if they’re lucky enough. A person who loves them so wholly and fully that you still feel like you’re getting asked to the homecoming dance when you’re sitting on your bed in a wedding dress.

“Hey, I made you something,” she emerges from their bedroom a few minutes later, to find Peter sitting in their favorite spot, behind the couch, feet to the ugly wall.

“Really?”

She nods, picks up her skirt to maneuver a seat next to him, and hands him a standard 8”x11” sheet of white printer paper.

He audibly gasps, “This is the greatest day of my life,” he hugs the paper to his chest, “A masters in husband-ing?”

“You earned it,” she coos, “Husband.”

“No way, say it again.”

“Husband.”

“Wife,” he giggles, throws a hand over his mouth, “That’s so cool!”

She’s never felt this giddy in her entire life, she rations, and she doesn’t know how she’s surviving it. Peter looks at her, calls her his wife like he doesn’t swing from building on the daily. Says being her husband is cool like he’s not responsible for saving the world once or twice. There is no way one person is allowed to look at another like they hung the stars and get away with it.

“I love you,” she whispers, in the quiet, stale air of their tiny apartment, the AC thrumming in the background.

“I love you more.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” she nudges her nose against his cheek.

“I don’t think you can have an opinion on that, since I’m the one with the masters in husband-ing, not you,” he says, plays with the hem of her short veil, “Hey, do you remember the night we moved in here?”

“I do,” she whispers, a smile not quite fitting on her face.

“We sat right here,” he taps the hardwood floors, “Right here, and you told me you hated that wall, and that you hated me.”

“Only one of those still holds true,” she runs the wedding band around her finger, flits her eyes up to meet his, “I think the wall has really grown on me.”

“Oh my god.”

“I’m serious, it’s kind of homey now,” she gazes up on the faded brown wallpaper, a fond smile, “You know, I had one of your vary dumb thoughts the other day.”

“Oh, please do share.”

She bites her bottom lip and sighs, “I was looking at where you wrote that little Sharpie list of chores,” she points, recalling the moment from a few years ago that once felt so monumental, she wanted to marry him, but now just feels like a blip of something warm and fond, sitting here actually married to him. “And I thought,” she continues, “About how I let you do it. But one day we’re going to have a kid who writes on that wall too, and I’m going to have to yell at them for it.”

MJ can hear his sharp intake of breath, the way his mouth falls slack just a little, “You wanna—“

“I’ve been known to have a very good dumb idea every now and then,” she shrugs nonchalantly, like this isn’t one of those crazy monumental moments thats going to fade into something tiny and tangible, like a scrapbook page in the chaos that is her life with Peter Parker.

“I would never let our kid write on the walls,” he shakes his head furiously, and MJ laughs.

“But you’ll let them climb on it, stupid spider genes.”

“You think they’ll be—“ he gapes a wide smile, “No way!”

“I don’t know how it works but probably,” she smiles “I’m signing up for like, a full mini Peter Parker here.”

“You really want that?”

“I really, really do,” she hums, “So can we go back to the bedroom now, or…”

“Yes, yes, absolutely, I was never planning on not doing that,” he swings an arm around her waist and repeats their former stance, her flung over his shoulder, “Have I mentioned how pretty you are today?”

“Only forty seven times.”

“Well, crap, I think my record is forty eight in one day,” she feels him shake his head, running them down the hallway, “You’re so pretty, Michelle.”

“Thank you,” she smiles, “Now take my dress off.”

“This is stupid.”

“Its funny, come on!”

“How many years have we been doing this? I swear every single year I’m gonna get Ned here to take the picture,” Peter pulls at his wedding bowtie and floppy Santa hat on their couch, “And May’s gonna be mad we’re cutting corners.”

“It’s called efficiency,” MJ slings her veil over one shoulder, “Its a thank you and a Christmas card all in one. Everyone likes a buy one get one free deal, Peter,” she positions herself next to him on the couch in front of their living room wall.

“One year, I’m going to get myself out of this Christmas couch picture.”

“But not anytime soon, babe,” MJ snickers, pressing the self-timer and watching it tick down from four… three… two… “You have to be in the baby’s first Christmas card next year.”

It’s objectively the best picture they’ve ever put on a Christmas card.

May loves it.

“Emma?”

“No.”

“Olivia?”

“Nah.”

“Ava?”

“Are you reading a list of the most generic baby names to me right now?” MJ quirks her head at Peter sitting at the end of the couch, her feet in his lap and her belly eight months bigger.

“Most popular,” he corrects, swipes down on his phone, “Some of them are nice names… Harper?”

“Better, but I don’t know,” she scrunches her nose and drums her fingers where they rest on her stomach.

“Okay, new list,” Peter starts, staring at the small screen, “Unique baby names. Number one: Afia, means ‘a child born on Friday’.”

“You know I would only name her that if she was born any day other than Friday.”

“Oh my god, Chelle, they have a list of Disney baby names!”

“If you click on that list—“

“Should we name our daughter Elsa? I think she’d grow up to be kind of a badass.”

“Yeah and the next one could be Anna.”

“That’d be adorable.”

“Please be joking right now.”

“Okay, royal baby names,” Peter giggles, “I think we could make a statement if we name her Humphrey.”

“Scarily not the worst idea you’ve had so far,” MJ sighs, picks her chin up, “Can you pass me the bag of chips, we’re hungry.”

“Archie,” he tries, absentmindedly handing her the bag while he continues to search, “I love Megan Markle and if the name was good enough for her, it should be good enough for us.”

“I kind of like it actually,” she shrugs.

“Really?”

“Like, I’m not 100% sold, because I think we’d find it adorable until she turned seven and then she’d hate us for naming her after a character on Riverdale.”

“Fair,” he counters, “Are you like, totally against the name having a meaning, or?”

“No, that’d be cool,” she nods, crunches a chip between her teeth, “I had always kind of thought we’d name someone at some point May, at least a middle name, but I don’t even think I could handle the cruel irony of naming a kid the same month they are born in.”

“We’ll have to schedule our pregnancy sex better next time,” he jokes, “Okay, Behind The Name dot com’s name of the day is Ludmila, it means ‘favor of the people’.”

“Screams ‘my dad is a superhero vigilante’.”

“Do we want it to scream that?”

“No, keep looking,” she waves him on, lulls her head to the side, “Actually, I have one I want you to look up.”

MJ is up for the third time in one night, which is on the lower ends of the frequency she wakes up to a crying baby ever since she brought hers home a few weeks ago. She’s an angel, between the hours of 10 am and 10pm, but everything after that is nightmarishly hard to deal with.

She doesn’t like complaining about it, because she knew what she was getting into, but there is no avoiding how much it sucks. She rolls out and off of the bed, wraps herself in one of Peters big baggy sweatshirts, the only one she likes wearing lately, and walks around the corner and into the tiny nursery (that used to be a superhero lair).

The crying coming from the crib is loud and wailing, and MJ rushes to pick the infant up and into her arms.

The good thing about having a superhero as the father of your child is that you don’t have to spend money on a baby monitor. He can hear her heartbeat, her breathing, any little sound or movement of distress from just about anywhere. He’s gotten good at rolling over in his sleep with a tap to alert her without disturbing his own sleep on her nights. The term ‘patrol’ has been looking a lot different recently, swapping armed robberies for diapers and baby mobiles.

Tonight is her night, and so MJ bounces and rocks her in place, hoping to return to her bed and her husband soon.

It’s not looking too good at the moment though.

“Shh, shh, its okay, I’m right here,” MJ coos into the top of the newborn’s head, “I can literally get you whatever you want baby girl, I just need to figure out what that is.”

MJ bounces impatiently, rubbing the baby’s back and rocking side to side, “You cannot be hungry, or, at least, I hope you’re not hungry. My boobs are tired, baby.”

The crying doesn’t cease, MJ tucks her nose down and sniffs lightly. “Your diaper’s good,” she continues to narrate to herself, “Though I do think I change diapers better than your dad so maybe that’s why you’re crying. You already know.”

She cries a little louder, “Oh god,” she whines, knowing her baby is 7 weeks old and already under the classic Peter Parker spell she fell into when she was a teenager, “I won’t say anything bad about him again, I promise, I promise, if you just stop crying for me.”

It doesn’t work, and MJ starts getting frustrated, “If I were a crying baby at 3 in the morning, what would I want?” MJ bounces some more, and paces the small room, “Okay, we’re gonna go check out some of mom’s favorite places, yeah?”

She creeps slowly out into the hallway, stops next to the bathroom door, “Okay, baby girl, welcome to the Parker-Jones household tour, flash photography strictly prohibited,” she laughs nervously.

“This is the bathroom,” MJ turns her body to door, whispering down to the infant, “One day, you will brush your teeth in there, big exciting stuff.” MJ laughs softly, “You know, your dad always uses the last bit of toothpaste and never tells me. He only admits it where were standing in front of the mirror together, and I elbow him, and he suggests we just share a toothbrush.”

She is met with a loud cry and rocks her into the small bathroom, “I know? Can you believe that guy? The audacity!” She shakes her head, “He also went through this phase, when we were engaged a few years ago, where he tried to grow facial hair. I was cleaning his dumb baby hairs for days when I finally got him to shave them off.”

“Not as cute as your baby hairs though,” she hums, spins in the room, “Remind me to give you a bath tomorrow. Or have Peter give you a bath.”

MJ exits the bathroom and spins them slowly in the hallway, “This is my favorite spot, the hallway,” she smooths one hand over her daughters small head, “I know, weird, right? You’ve got a weird mom. I like looking at your dad from the doorway. Also weird, but he looks nice. And you’re gonna look like him, I think, so… I guess I’ll like looking at you too,” she jokes.

“When I compliment you you’re supposed to stop crying,” she bounces and continues down the hallway, whispering, “Peter thinks you’re gonna look like me though, so we’ll see. I think he’s biased.”

She rounds out the corner, is greeted by the familiar bustle of the city below their window, the dull streetlamp that shines in, the gentle thrum of the (still kinda broken) AC unit, the leaky faucet that drips in their kitchen sink, and her favorite wall. Her daughter’s crying softens just slightly, she rubs her back encouragingly.

“This is where your dad asked me to marry him, kind of, it was crazy. He wasn’t going to because he’s the worst,” MJ smiles, “I mean that in a nice way, so don’t start crying more, I’m not making fun of your boy.”

“I said yes, by the way,” she continues, giggling softly, “In case you were wondering, and then we went to Paris. I’ll take you there some day.”

Yes, yes, her little sniffles are dying out, MJ can hear her bed calling her name. She traces her finger along one of the rows of patterns on the wallpaper, “You know, if it weren’t for this failed trip to Paris when we were in high school, you might not exist,” MJ blinks, “Crazy how that works, huh?”

Her daughter pushes a tiny hand up on MJ’s chest, unknowingly fiddles with the necklace around her neck, the broken black one she never takes off. MJ laughs lightly, “Oh you like this flower? You’re very smart, my girl. Definitely my kid.”

“I should make you a masters,” MJ says, walks them around the kitchen table and towards the back side of the couch, “I have one, from Harvard. No big deal. And your dad has two, from me. Which is a pretty big deal.”

Her cries soften almost fully, a soft coo leaving her lips and making MJ’s heart explode, grow three sizes, and probably just explode again. This tiny little crying, no-sleep monster is hers.

And MJ loves her, she loves her, she loves her.

She slowly crouches down, sits in her spot where the the couch has a little indent in it from all her years of sitting there, with Peter and without him, making shadow puppets on the wall and eating cold pizza, tripping over extension cords and stealing his clothes. She holds this little baby and thinks about her one day scribbling on that awful wall one day, just like MJ imagined it.

But not tonight. Tonight, she’s quiet in MJ’s arms, a soft hum, and and her fingers on MJ’s broken little necklace.

“So that’s it, that’s our home,” MJ smiles, rests her head on the couch cushion, “I know it’s not much, but I think you’re really gonna like it here. After all, in it’s weird little way, it gave me you, Dahlia.”

“One more picture, you can do it.”

“MJ, I can’t—“

“Peter, our seven month old daughter is sitting better for this picture than you are,” MJ tosses him his Santa hat, rocks the baby in her arms, dressed in a reindeer onesie her mom sent her last week, “Suck it the fuck up, dude.”

“Language!”

“She’s not listening,” MJ says, “And she already knows her father’s an idiot.”

“She takes after you,” Peter grumbles and sits on the couch, arms crossed, “Don’t you, Dahlia?”

“Smart girl,” MJ smiles, looks at her husband, “Are you gonna uncross your arms or do I need to make you hold her?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll hold her, c’mere Lia,” he sits up and reaches his hands out to MJ, and she passes the baby. If MJ ever thought Peter was smitten with her, it’s nothing compared to his pitter patter heart eyes for Dahlia. His whole body relaxes when he has the girl in his arms, bounces her tiny feet on his legs, and she giggles instantly. Peter’s smile sparkles.

“And to think, I could have been getting smiling Christmas card pictures so much sooner if I had just popped out a kid.”

“Oh my god, Chelle, can we take one of just her so I can bring it to work?”

“You’re not getting out of the picture, Peter.”

“But think of how cute! I could be one of those guys.”

“You’ve always been one of those guys,” MJ smirks, leans forward and presses the self timer with a three, two, one.

“Can we do like, seven more, while I have you here, not grumpy?”

“Has us wrapped around her little finger, Dahlia,” Peter whispers with a smile, “Like the ribbon on top of the really awesome presents Santa’s gonna bring us!”

MJ resets the timer, snuggles into the couch, her knees to her chest and her daughter’s favorite baby Grinch doll in her lap. Her life is wonderful. Peter’s gonna make them watch that movie soon, but she already knows, her life is wonderful.

“Wait, can you believe we get to be Santa this year?”

“She’s not gonna remember—“

“But I’ll remember, Em, I’ll remember.”

“And then Chris from editing tried to convince me I was the one who broke the coffee pot,” MJ says, “Little punk. They don’t make interns like they used to, Mom.”

“They don’t make bosses like they used to either,” her mom responds on the phone. MJ pulls her bag over one shoulder and laughs lightly, her mom continues, “You’re not being too mean, right?”

“Mom.”

“I’m just saying—“

“No, no, I’m not being too mean,” MJ pushes the door open to the lobby of her apartment building, “I’m the world’s greatest boss. I have the mug that says it.”

“Peter bought you that mug.”

“I think the card said it was from Dahlia…” MJ clarifies (Peter had gotten her about six other gifts when she broke the news of her promotion, and when she insisted she wasn’t going to accept any more from him, the mug from The Office was dressed from their daughter, so she couldn’t send it back.) “But the sentiment still stands.”

“I know, I know,” her mother laughs, “Am I still babysitting—“

“Yes,” MJ all but yells, overeager, “Yes, I don’t think I have slept in three weeks, I need a serious caffeine detox, and I don’t want to hear or see any talking dogs, talking trucks, talking mice, talking anything really, cartoon-wise.”

“I watched all those dumb cartoons when you were growing up.”

“You did not sit through these shows, mom,” MJ shakes her head and presses the button on the elevator, waiting for the doors to open, “I think Peter likes them.”

“I think he likes you and knows you don’t like them, so he commits to being the one in charge of watching them with her.”

It doesn’t sound far from the truth, MJ blushes as she steps into the elevator, but she says, “No, I think he just likes them. Spider-Man is looking into teaming up with the Paw Patrol.”

“Maybe you should start bringing in some stuff to show you know Spider-Man,” her mom suggests, “Then maybe those punk interns of yours will think you’re cool.”

“They’re not supposed to think I’m cool, I’m their boss.”

“The world’s greatest.”

“You know it,” MJ steps into the hallway on her floor and walks towards her door, “So we’ll see you tonight?”

“See you tonight, boss,” her mom says, as she’s unlocking the door, and ends the call.

When MJ enters her apartment, she is met by the usual: squeals from her 2 year old child, and 32 year old husband with the mind, sometimes, of a 2 year old.

Peter’s laying on his stomach in front of the open wall in the living room, Dahlia sits behind a white laundry basket stacked on its side, and crouches down periodically with increasingly high pitched squeals every time Peter tosses a t-shirt, towel, sock at her laundry fortress (with convincing sound effects!).

“Oh no, Dahl, the Sock Monster is coming! Ahh!” Peter launches a bundle of socks up and over the kitchen table. The toddler claps her hands and giggles.

“Oh, what was that? You can ‘take him’? Famous last words…” he snickers and tosses her one of MJ’s t-shirts, “Incoming!”

MJ drops her bag by the door, but neither notices her, she leans on the wall by the kitchen and smiles, “What’s going on here?”

“MJ?” Peter sits up suddenly, hair flopping wildly, “We’re uh, we’re filing the laundry.”

“Ah.”

“It’s going well.”

“I see that,” she purses her lips and squints down at him, “Looks like she’s kicking your butt.”

“Oh, obviously,” Peter nods, “Takes after her mother.”

As if on cue, the toddler peeks up from behind the Landry basket and spots Michelle, she giggles and yells something MJ doesn’t hear before scooping her up.

“Hello, my favorite girl,” MJ kisses the top of her head and spins them, “I wonder what happens if you get a brother and have to say he’s my favorite, and not your dad?”

“I could hear that!”

“I know, Spider-Man, you hear everything,” she nods, looks down at her daughter, “He’s the worst, right, Dahlia? We should probably go throw more smelly socks at him.”

“They’re not smelly, I literally just washed them!”

“They’re yours, babe, they’re always smelly,” MJ giggles as she runs her and Dahlia over to the laundry basket. And while she spends the next 20 minutes dodging wrinkled laundry and laughing until there are tears in her eyes, getting tackled by Peter behind her favorite spot on the couch, getting little kisses from her daughter all over her face, she feels like this might be it. Every time she thinks this is it, life somehow always finds a way to one up it. It gets better, and better. She is not sure she could get happier, and then she does.

But maybe, she thinks, laying there on her creaky hardwood floor behind the couch, the same spot she sat on their first night in the apartment, but this time with their little toddler on Peter’s chest, her listening to his heartbeat just like MJ’s done for years, this might really be it.

She would lay here, staring at her ugly wallpaper, playing with Peter’s dad haircut and listening to her daughter laugh, for forever, if she could.

But then she hears another episode of some Mickey Mouse show cue up on the TV and she’s very glad she’s got her mom for babysitting on standby every now and then.

“You got the kitchen stuff?”

“Boxes 1 thru 5,” May points to the stack of boxes in the living room, “And bathroom is 6 and 7.”

“You just get me, May,” MJ smiles, tucking a stack of frames into the open box she’s leaning over, “Peter just wanted to spider everything over himself, no organization.”

“It’s a shock I raised him, really,” she tapes box number 3 shut, “And that he has raised that little angel so far,” she smiles at Dahlia, running up the aisle with her action figures (do you understand how painful it is for MJ to say her daughter plays with superhero action figures, like, the irony is not lost on her, and it just has to be too much for the universe to not be having a good laugh with her).

“Mommy, look what I found under my bed when daddy was lifting it,” she reaches up and shows her a tiny plastic Spider-Man.

“Why was he lifting the bed?”

The girl shrugs, goes back to examining her toy. MJ bites her lips to keep from laughing, because this girl may have her hair, and her eyes, but she is all Peter, “Can you measure me now?”

“Right now, Dahlia, baby, I’m busy packing—“

“Go, Michelle,” May waves her off, smiles, “I can tape up some boxes. It’s your last time in here. Measure the kid.”

“Like she’s grown since I last did it 5 days ago,” but she is growing pretty fast, much to MJ’s dismay. Though still, not enough to need to be re-measured on their wall.

Dahlia runs up to the spot on the wall they’ve been marking her height since she was old enough to stand up, eases up on her toes to get an extra centimeter, “On your feet, missy.”

“I am,” she gives her a pointed look, pulls the ponytail on the top of her head so it stand sup a little taller, “I think I grew last night.”

“Did you?”

“Daddy thinks so too.”

“Well, he usually doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” MJ shakes her head and uncaps her red sharpie, “Don’t tell him I said that.”

“He probably already heard you,” she whispers, rather loudly, and it makes MJ laugh, “He told me you guys have superpowers!”

“Did he?”

“Yeah, all mommies and daddies do,” Dahlia shrugs, “He has super hearing, and really strong arms to rescue my toys. And he said you have eyes in the back of your head. Like Bionic Butterfly.”

“Oh, well, I love Bionic Butterfly.”

“When my brother comes,” Dahlia pokes at MJ’s stomach, “We’re gonna play Ultra Bunny and Bionic Butterfly together. Dady’s been teaching me how to hold the flashlight.”

“That sounds really fun, I think he’s gonna like that,” MJ’s heart swells, she makes a small mark above Dahlia’s head, “Alright, there we go. Dahlia Parker-Jones, age 4 years and 16 days.”

The girl turns and beams at the small red line, just a hair above the mark labeled ‘Dahlia Parker-Jones, Age 4 and 11 days’.

“Will you measure me in the new apartment?”

“Course,” MJ winks, “The wall will be a lot bigger too.”

“Cool,” and MJ suddenly remembers sitting in this apartment 10 years ago, boxes waiting to be unpacked instead of moved, Peter whispering that same one word to her when she said she liked the place.

“Okay, movers are ready,” MJ hears her mom click the front door open and says, “We can go once these last few boxes get put in.”

“I’ve got ‘em,” Peter yells down the hallway, runs up and picks up two boxes, like it weighs nothing, “Is this it?”

May nods and Peter quickly carries the boxes out of the apartment and down to the  moving truck.

“Michelle, you are married to every woman’s dream,” her mother jokes, and MJ rolls her eyes, “You ready?”

“Yeah, yeah,” MJ says shakily, looking around the now empty apartment, “I’ll miss it, but it’s time, you know, we needed more space.”

“You’re gonna love it.”

“I have actually seen it this time, before hand,” MJ smiles, “I’m excited.”

When Peter returns, he’s barely out of breath.

“Show off,” MJ breathes quietly. He hears her, superpowers.

“Well, looks like this is it,” May says, eyes flitting between Peter and MJ, who have settled into a quiet gaze. She smiles and grabs one of Dahlia’s hands, “We’ll go wait downstairs, by the truck, you guys meet us down there when you’re ready?”

MJ nods, absently.

“And use the door, lovebirds,” her mom says.

Peter smiles, knowingly.

“Can you believe we did this?”

“No,” MJ giggles, shrugs a tear on one of her shoulders, “I can’t believe we did this.”

“We lived together, in this shitty apartment you never saw before we bought it, for almost 10 years,” Peter says, MJ laughing at his sincerity and still wiping off tears (hormones, man), “We got engaged, married, had a kid, made another one, all in this little place,” he knocks on the hardwood floor, right behind where the couch should be.

“I really don’t believe it.”

“I do,” he smiles, “Cause I love you.”

“How are you middle aged and still managing to sound like that idiot I met in high school?”

“Perfection never dies, MJ,” he shrugs, and she laughs, tastes a salty tear.

“Do you think the new place will be as good as this one,” she asks quietly, “Like, this one was perfection.”

“MJ, if I say what I’m thinking you’ll kick me.”

“It won’t hurt you, spider-genes.”

He smiles sheepishly, “It’s a good place, but there is one thing that makes it perfect. And that thing, luckily for us, can move with us.”

She blushes, “Me? Dahlia?”

“The wall.”

MJ laughs loudly, feels like it shakes the room, “You’re kidding.”

“I’m serious, gimme three minutes,” he points for her to stay where she’s sitting, stands up and walks over to the wall, “It only took me ten years, but I finally figured out how to peel this stupid wallpaper off, like I’ve been trying to since we moved in.”

“How?”

“Superpowers, babe,” he peels at the edge of the wall, shows that he can lift it up, “And some tech from Wakanda. They’re smarter than me and I’m not too proud to ask for some help.”

“Smart boy.”

“I have a masters.”

“You do.”

He shrugs his hands in his pockets, “I just, so much of our lives are on this wall. It feels weird because I really hated it, like really, but now,” he shrugs, “I can’t think about some of the best moments of my life, and not see this hypnotizing pattern….” He smiles, “And you. Also you. Always you.”

“My husband, ever the romantic,” MJ criss-crosses her legs, stretched out in front of her, “Dahlia will be very excited I can keep measuring her every other day.”

“I personally don’t know how I’d remember all my chores without it.”

“And how will Dahlia play Ultra Bunny with her new baby brother without that very special backdrop?”

“She said that? She said she’s gonna do that?”

MJ nods.

“Also the Christmas card wouldn’t be the same…”

“I knew you actually liked those pictures,” MJ giggles.

“I plead the fifth.”

She watches him, in front of their wall, the light from outside the window hitting him so perfectly she’s not sure he’s not from another planet.

She loves him, she loves him, she loves him.

“Hey loser?” MJ pats the spot next to her, “Do you want to come kiss me one more time, in our shitty little apartment, before you spider me home?”

“And then we’ll go move into our next shitty little apartment.”

“With 3 bedrooms.”

“And you.”

“And you.”

“And our wall.”

“Love that wall. Don’t tell it I said that.”

“Gonna be perfect.”

“Yeah,” MJ says, “Now kiss me, and then let’s leave through the window to freak my mom out.”

“God, I love you.”

smaller than dust on this map

lies the greatest thing we have:

the dirt in which our roots may grow

and the right to call it home.