Chapter Text
“Where’s Parker? We need to head out.” MJ asks no one in particular. When it came to Peter Parker it was always better to address the whole room lest she attempt one person at a time and spend her entire lunch break searching around for him. He was never consistent with who he fed his excuses to - Betty was usually a good shout. She knew everything about everyone (even MJ despite her best efforts to keep a plug on that), unfortunately, a glance towards her desk told her that she was shit out of luck.
“Wouldn’t you of all people would know that?” Graham says from the otherside of her booth. “You two are always arriving together.”
They weren’t actually. They hadn’t arrived to work together for months , a blessing that MJ was eternally grateful for. Graham was just a little shit who enjoyed winding her up. If only he put as much effort into his copy editing as he did his snide little comments and then MJ would not have to spend nearly as much time copy editing the sports section as she did. Although her newfound knowledge of the Mets and the Yankees made for interesting dinner conversation with how far out of his depths it threw her dad. Strangely, stilted and awkward conversations were where they were most comfortable so she couldn’t begrudge Graham all that much.
“Gwen broke up with him three months ago.”
Three months since their final break-up meant that it’d been two whole months since Peter was last in her apartment to see her roommate and it meant that it’d been a month and a half since Gwen had cried over a boy who couldn’t keep a date and who couldn’t be there when she needed him.
Nor could he be bothered to be at work when his colleagues needed him.
The lack of discrimination that came with his flakiness was not the redeeming quality Peter pretended it to be.
Silently, MJ thanks a god she doesn’t believe in that this break had managed to hold - just for safe measure. It wasn’t that she was happy Gwen and Peter had broken up, it was just that she believed Gwen could do infinitely better than him. It was always difficult to watch someone as stubborn and righteous as her forgive a guy like Peter for every unexplained slip-up.
Peter Parker was a nice guy. He did treat her well, but in MJ’s eyes none of that was enough to forgive him for all the tears Gwen had shed - ones that sometimes flowed even when Peter’d turned up to their dates and everything had seemed fine because she was the one who felt guilty for being upset at all.
“It is no longer my job to keep track of him.”
“Technically it is.” Graham reminds her.
MJ scoffs, rolling her eyes. It was hard to forget the reason why for a period, MJ hadn’t been able to escape Peter at work or at home; Jameson had decided that Michelle needed to ‘prove herself’ as the newest recruit in the office and Peter needed someone to ‘actually hold him accountable because I sure as hell don’t have the bandwidth to baby you anymore, Parker’.
“If he shows up, tell him I’ve headed out. Details are in his email.”
“Jameson isn’t going to like that.” Graham sings to her retreating back as she weaves in between their cubicles towards the door.
“Jameson can suck it!” MJ calls back to him. She’d dealt with tantrums far worse than his from men far more esteemed - If she can look her dad in his eyes and tell him that ‘no, moving back to New York does not mean she’ll be moving in with him’ then she can tell Jonah Jameson that she’s done with babying Peter Parker.
Her petty departure loses its weight when she discovers her Subway line is closed from an altercation between Rhino and Spider-Man. It must have been bad. Reports said that he needed help. Iron Man was said to have arrived on the scene. A declaration that she reads in a text from Jameson and not from her own father - that comes a few hours later with a promise that it wasn’t that bad and he only suited up because he ‘owed the kid a favour’.
It also explains Peter’s absence from the office. He had the eerie talent of getting photos from whatever incident Spider-Man was involved in before anyone in the office had even heard about the action. Her frustration at him not inviting her along again to report on such an event is quelled by the knowledge that her father had been on the scene too.
It’s a rare instance that she’s grateful for Peter Parker’s ineptitude.
Thinking of Tony suiting back up left her feeling more complicated than she wanted to associate with her work.
Growing up, MJ hadn’t spent a lot of time in New York. She’d only visited her dad’s house in Miami twice. It was infinitely easier for him to hide his infrequent visits to her mom’s place than it was for them to ever make it out to see him without some Paparazzi grabbing a photo of a young child entering Stark premises and concocting an accurate theory that Stark had some secret child. Whether that was a blessing or not, MJ still isn't sure, but it meant that she missed ever seeing Tony wear his suit in the flesh. She was shielded from the horrors that came with being a superhero, only ever hearing about the ethics of it discussed on television and only ever seeing the victories displayed on the news.
Truthfully, it wasn’t until she was Junior in High School that MJ really got it. Of course she’d seen footage of her dad during the battle of New York and every fight since, but he always seemed to walk away from those. The next alien invasion knocked him on his ass and into a coma. That welcomed MJ’s longest visit to New York before she moved for college. It was a rare time that her mom agreed MJ should be around her father, thought it might be good for them both if she saw him on the mend; Pepper thought it might provide the unconscious Tony some motivation to actually wake up .
The realisation that her dad wasn’t just some guy who stopped by once a month with presents and loud opinions but also a hero who was capable of dying didn’t make their relationship any easier.
It was hard for MJ to digest that this man who she’d always thought was ashamed of her existence might actually be a man that she missed.
Even now that they’re better and now that MJ is grateful to be Tony’s secret. Sitting on the other side of the glass and seeing how the press actually works, a career she’d begun out of morbid curiosity, she is thankful for all the peace that the secrecy has brought her.
Seeing Tony in action is not something that she would want.
“Sorry I’m late.” Peter huffs, out of breath when he arrives next to her. He’s turned up just in time to get photos of the winners of the science fair. Their article will be missing any photos of the projects themselves - all the demonstrations were done a few minutes before Peter got here. She’s already gotten her quote from the students and their parents, just awaiting the winner to round it out.
School science fairs weren’t exactly the gripping, investigative journalism MJ thought she’d be doing when she decided to make this her major in college. It’s not following celebrity gossip and spreading rumours about secret children so she figures that while it isn’t super engaging , her morals and soul have remained intact while she gains necessary experience in the field.
Peter likes these jobs more than the rest of them. The subjects of his photos are more willing and more polite when it comes to having their picture taken than the cops are when they’re put on the more… challenging cases. His frustration with the NYPD is one of the qualities that MJ actually admires in Peter.
“We need a photo of the entrants, the winners and one with their parents. Maybe get one of the staff too, you know the schools alway love when the teachers get included.” MJ tells him, ignoring his apology. She’d heard enough of them in the six months that she’d known him- both direct and vicariously through Gwen. A couple of times, Peter’d had the gaul to send an apology to Gwen through MJ.
Peter nods and shuffles forward slightly to snap a photo. His gait is a little lopsided, an audible hiss escaping from him when he puts too much weight on his left side.
“Are you limping?”
“Careful, you almost sound worried.” He says over his shoulder with a half smile. MJ’s frown doesn’t shift, only deepening. Avoidance wasn’t uncommon when it came to Peter. He always answered everything indirectly with not-quite lies. Today, he couldn’t hide how much the pain was getting to him. His smile tearing open a cut on his lip.
MJ might not like him, but she didn’t wish him the worst.
“Relax, I just twisted my ankle on the way here. Graham made it sound like a real emergency that I get here ASAP so I just didn’t keep an eye on the curbs.”
“You didn’t need to rush.” She says.
“Don’t go soft on me now, Watson.” He laughs, turning back to the stage and watching it through his viewfinder. “It’s not fun when you make it easy to win.”
MJ rolls her eyes.
That was all the proof she needed to know that he was fine.
“There’s no winning or losing. This is just doing your job, Parker.”
“I’d need to get paid a whole lot more for me to take this job any more seriously.”
“Turning up on time, having a good attitude, being reliable that all usually helps with being paid more, you know.”
“Jameson having the stick taken out of his ass would also help.”
MJ has to duck her head to hide her scoff of laughter. The joke was good, the looks of horror on the parents surrounding them at the ‘scandalous language’ were better. When she finally looks back up, Peter is looking back at her with a playful smile.
“Point for me?”
As ‘proof’ that he’s okay, Tony invites her to dinner for the weekend. He always does this whenever he makes the news. He makes sure to leave a few days between the event that caused her concern and the ‘please forgive me, I’m fine’ dinner to ensure that he’s healed up and she’s had time to simmer with her feelings.
MJ isn’t sure if that is in addition to or in replacement of their usual Thursday night meal so she heads over there anyway after work. Being an adult has meant that she’s confronted the horrors of growing up - roommates with boyfriends she doesn’t like, jobs that aren’t exactly what she imagined and bills on top of that all - it also means that she can actually visit her father with less suspicion being aroused from her frequent visits; children under the age of eighteen are one thing, they’re scandalous and riveting to talk about. Anyone older than could just be a rogue employee.
She isn’t sure if working in journalism has made her realise how weird it is to view her life through that logic, or if it’s just normalised it more. Living her life as someone’s secret was justified knowing how much the truth would have changed everything, that didn’t make it hurt any less. The therapist Tony pays good money for said it was okay for her to feel conflicted about her childhood, to be as thankful as she was angry at both her parents for the role they played in making her childhood what it was.
Now she’s older and trying to make her own way in the world, MJ is the one keeping the secret more than her parents. She understands the weight of the Stark name now and wants to do things as Michelle Watson, often going by her step-father’s name in some instances to avoid any association with her mom’s cinematic legacy. The shift in whose prerogative it was to keep the secret didn’t make things any easier. She feels guilty, knowing how angry she’d been as a kid.
It was complicated.
Her therapist said that was normal too. Today’s circumstances didn’t change yesterday’s feelings, they all remained valid or whatever.
MJ would think she was probably being paid a little too much for the lack of solutions that were offered if it weren’t her idea that she consistently start to visit Tony since living in the city.
“What are you doing here?” Tony asks as soon as the elevator doors open.
She squints, head tilting. A question like that is something she’ll discuss with Rebecca. Definitely something to bring up during the whole ‘feelings of being unwanted’ portion of their conversation. Maybe this was Tony’s way of making sure they got their money’s worth out of her sessions.
“Didn’t mean to sound like that.”
“Work on your delivery.” She tells him, moving past him and heading towards the kitchen - the size of which is bigger than the apartment she currently shares with Gwen. It was best not to bring that up around Tony though because he’d offer to pay for something bigger or worse, invite her to live with him again.
As she walks down the hallway, she can hear faint voices in conversation. Pepper and Rhodey, probably. It made sense that they’d congregate after her dad was dragged out into the suit. She’d interrupted a debrief and a sanity check.
“Noted, we said dinner on Saturday.”
“Wasn’t sure if that meant tonight was cancelled. Figured I’d drop in anyway. Apparently normal families do that all the time.”
“We’re normal now?”
“I’m in the mood to pretend.”
He doesn’t look any worse for wear which proves that his message was right and maybe MJ might be a little paranoid for her own good. Maybe this was a new step though, maybe she was someone that should start being invited to debriefs and sanity checks– her gut twists. She didn’t like the sound of that, it implied more excursions for him when he was meant to be retired.
Rebecca really was going to get her money’s worth this week.
“Perhaps we should start a newsletter for updates like these, it’d help me feel less wrongfooted and hey, you can use it to tell me which soulsucking piece of trash you’re working for this week.”
She’s worked for the Bugle for five months now, that hadn’t changed. Her dad just wasn’t privy to that information. It was for the best to avoid his meddling.
“They’re called papers.”
“Po-tay-to, pot-tat-o.”
“Keep talking and I might feel unwelcomed.”
“Hey! Do not tell your mother that!” Tony catches up to her step. “You’re not telling your mother that.”
“I might.” She shrugs, rounding the corner to the kitchen and expecting to see Pepper and James at the counter, instead confronted with the sight of Peter Parker perched on the breakfast bar speaking with FRIDAY like he belongs there.
MJ might not spend the most amount of time in the tower but she is fairly certain that he does not.
They speak their names in unison, staring each other down in shock. “What are you doing here?!” They both ask at the same time. Their ability to mimic one another so easily making her feel more uncomfortable than anything else.
Tony comes up behind her, clicking his tongue.
“You giving the Bugle an exclusive or something?” Peter asks him, recovering quicker than her. “It’s a terrible paper. Awful. You do not want to be featured in there.”
“Funny coming from you.” Tony says, amused for reasons that MJ can’t quite place because Peter isn’t exactly wrong. The Bugle wasn’t anyone’s end point, not anymore at least. Jameson was a legacy name in the industry and good to have on a resume even if his magazine had slowly been sinking in quality as the years went on.
The camaraderie between them is something that MJ can’t understand. It’s something she can’t place the origins of. There’s no reason for it as far as she is aware. Except– there’s a lot that she might not be aware of. Parts of her father’s life that MJ never got to see and has kept herself secluded from – work was one of them. A knot forms in her chest at the gaping hole of everything MJ doesn’t actually know about parts of her family.
“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong . Your reputation that bad, really?” Peter asks again.
Through some cosmic intervention, Peter Parker is apparently a person her father trusts enough to say, “Peter, this is my daughter, Michelle… Although, you two seem to know each other already. Anyone wanna catch me up on that?”
Peter fumbles, eyes flicking between them rapidly as if he’s trying to pick apart the similarities.
“We work together. At the Bugle.” MJ answers for him through a sigh.
“Why do you work at the Bugle?!” Peter finally speaks up. His hands fly up, suddenly animated by this revelation. “It’s a shithole, shouldn’t you be at the– the Post or The Times?! Or like… inheriting this company?!”
“You’d think.” Tony mutters, eyes casting over to her in a clear, silent message that they’d be talking about this later. It isn’t completely his fault but she blames Peter completely for the conversation and meddling that will inevitably follow.
“The trajectory of my career isn’t what’s important. Why is Peter here?”
“Internship.” Both Tony and Peter answer quickly as if they’d practised it over and over during rehearsals that she hadn’t been invited to. “But I think we’re done talking shop. Right, kid? Why don’t we get some food and you two can tell me all about your little work partnership, huh?”
Neither Peter or MJ can find the right words to discourage Tony from the idea. Their words are drowned out by his ongoing monologue about the small size of the world and how even without his knowledge he managed to be the ‘connective tissue through it all’. Once he had begun a semi-narcissistic tirade there was no stopping him, leaving MJ to wonder how Peter Parker couldn’t keep a date to save his life but he had the indisputable ability to keep inserting himself into her private life.
First Gwen, then work and now her father? Was there any escaping him?
“I’ve got a word for this.” Peter murmurs to her when they’re sitting side by side at the table. Tony and Pepper are sitting opposite with amused smiles, the pair of them enjoying the uncomfortable and awkward air of the meal far too much. “Parker Luck. Sorry to share it with you.”
The laugh that escapes her is genuine, surprised by how morose Peter sounds.
“Hey, ‘least that’s a second point for me.” He adds on.