Archive of Our Own

“I don't really go to parties,” says Peter, sheepish. “Comes with the whole—”

“Anonymous superhero thing,” MJ finishes, and he glances up from the mess of Legos scattered across their coffee table, gives her that shy, sideways look. 

Ned’s still stuck on that first part. “Like, ever?”

“Aside from the housewarming? I mean,” Peter frowns, “once. That time in high school. But I wasn't really…”

“Yeah,” Ned says sourly. “You ditched me!”

“Look, it's not like we’re inviting Spider-Man,” she points out. “Sure, you're not a partier—I'm not either, honestly. You could give it a shot, if you wanted.” 

She doesn't say, You should get to give it a shot. Thinks about it, decides against pity, and then Ned’s saying, “It's a rite of passage, dude. Come on, you'll love it.”

The corner of Peter’s mouth quirks like he's biting back a grin. He glances towards MJ, reflexive—

But it's the reflex of a bygone age, nothing but a ghost now. 

The smile fades. She returns to her sketchbook. Life goes on. 

++

Because it's not like she pities him. It's not completely pity. Pity dehumanizes, and Peter’s—for all his super strength, his arachnoid mumbo jumbo, he's painfully human. 

Part of it’s guilt, in its own way, but the truth is that MJ likes him. She doesn't know him, but she wants to. He’s a good guy that got dealt a bad hand, and she just wants… she doesn't know what she wants. 

You can't save everyone, she hears, like an ultimatum. Like a death sentence. 

She's not trying to save him. That would be weird. They don't even really know each other yet—there's been years on both sides, and a lifetime past that on hers—he's just, like, visibly lonely. A bit underfed. Perpetually banged up. These are all fixable problems, to MJ’s eyes— 

There's a knock at her door. “Babe?” 

Right. The party. 

“Hey,” she says, letting in the noise pollution of the living room. Not bad, for the moment, but who knows how long that’ll last. “I thought you were running late?” 

“Last meeting got cancelled,” Paul grins. “Thought I’d surprise you.”

“Color me surprised,” she says, leaning against the jamb before she notices the bouquet. She makes grabby hands. “Those for Ned?”

“Ha ha,” he says dryly, following her into the kitchen. “You never told me you liked flowers, you know.”

MJ squints at him over her shoulder. “Because I… don’t?” 

“I didn’t think you would, but—”

“At least as a romantic gesture, they’re a waste of money and water put towards a fleeting, probably fumbling emotional transaction that—”

“It’s doubtful the receiver even cares for,” he finishes. “Yeah, I know. So I was surprised when I saw these guys still hanging around,” he taps his nails on the side of the glass vase, still holding strong on the kitchen counter. 

MJ doesn’t know why she put them there for everyone to see. Like it was a display. If it’s a display, it’s one she doesn’t even fully understand, and how pathetic is that?

“Housewarming gift,” she tells him, not quite a lie. “They’re warming the house.” 

Paul laughs. Lets the line of questioning go in favor of passing over the bouquet, and—it’s not that she’s relieved, but if she was, it’s just because she’s never liked people prying into her privacy. That’s all. 

“Man of the hour,” Paul turns to greet Ned. “Congrats on the promotion, dude.” 

Ned preens. “Aw, thanks. I kinda thought they’d pass me up for it, but… Ooh, flowers. Wait—”

MJ sneezes. 

They both look at her. She waves a hand. “Uh, it’s just—” Sneezes again. She hadn’t seen them in the bouquet. “Fucking—”

“She’s allergic to daffodils,” she hears Ned tell Paul, who sucks his teeth. “Dude, it was hilarious, there was this one time in high school when—”

He breaks off, and MJ knows, without asking. It was him. It’s always him. 

“I didn’t know,” Paul babbles, “I mean, I didn’t even know—”

That she liked flowers. And she does, even beyond the kindness of a stranger’s housewarming gift, she knows that now. It’s weird, living the last four years behind a screen, and only realizing it in hindsight. She’d known—felt—like something was missing all this time, but now that she knows the magnitude of it… it doesn’t feel like the kind of thing she can just recover from, patch together and move on. Something shattered the day she read Peter’s letter, and it feels like every day she’s stepping on new shards. 

“I should, uh, take those,” Ned extricates them from where she’s strangling the stems to death. “And I’ll just toss the daffodils? The rest should be fine.” Neither of them say anything. “I’ll be right back.” 

MJ looks down at her palms. The imprint of the thorns. Paul’s moving closer, warily, feeling for a perch beside her on the counter. Somewhere else in the apartment, without Ned’s supervision, some jackass is taking control of the aux. 

“You couldn’t have known,” she says, before he can speak. She doesn’t know what he’s going to say—but she knows she doesn’t want to hear it. Feels weirdly sick at the thought of it. “It’s fine.”

“I’ll remember it,” he promises her. “For next time. Daffodil-free bouquet, coming right up.” 

“Actually, I don’t think I’m much of a flower person,” she hears herself lie, before she can second-guess it. “You want a drink?” 

MJ’s kicking herself the entire time she puts together the vodka soda. Why did she say that? Why did she lie? She’s not a liar—friends and family have informed her they’d prefer if she dabbled in it, from time to time.

The aux-stealing terrorist waltzes into the living room before Ned can return—one of his friends, but she doesn’t remember the name—and turns on the TV. MJ’s about to shout for the remote and turn it off when she realizes Ned hadn’t left it on the Simpsons. 

She’d been watching the news last night, taking every third word with a grain of salt just to get a bird’s eye view on the situation with Peter and—? Tombstone? She doesn’t know where they come up with these names. Spider-Man won in the end, to the near-unanimous relief of New York City, and MJ put away her pint of mint chip and went to bed. 

The news’s still on, but now it’s a Daily Bugle video in the corner of the broadcast. Paul leans across the counter, arms crossed, brows drawn together—a rare enough expression that MJ shelves her distaste for the propaganda machine and turns to join him. 

“Arachnoid menace Spider-Man has been spotted wrecking a construction site on the outskirts of Jersey City under the guise of crime-fighting.” Here, the news channel added a clarification: ‘Sources place his opponent as the Lizard.’ “Is he planning to expand his dangerous empire across the tri-state—”

A deafening roar sounds on the livestream. The Bugle, the news anchor, and their living room goes quiet as someone throws a boulder at the tiny costumed Peter, quickly eclipsed beneath its weight. 

MJ says, “Turn that shit off.”

“Sorry,” the kid yelps, before the screen goes black. 

Paul turns to her along the counter. “I thought you liked Spider-Man.”

Her stomach does a flip. “You're thinking of Ned.” 

“The wall, right,” he laughs. “But you're no slouch either.” At her questioning look, he adds, “You follow the updates account on Instagram.” 

“No, I don't:” 

“I've seen it, babe.” 

Weird. She followed it last week. 

“Must've imagined it,” she says airily, before cracking a sideways grin. “Yeah, whatever, he's cool. Friendly neighborhood hero and all.” Paul nods at the TV, and she realizes. “I guess I didn't want to see someone bash his brains out in 4K.” 

He takes the lie—half-lie; she's pulling herself together—without batting an eye. “Yeah, that looked brutal. Poor guy.”

“What’d I miss?” Ned asks, walking in with the gutted bouquet. MJ grabs it before he can get a good look at her, starts hunting for the vase on the top shelf. “Whoa, who killed the mood in here?”

“The Lizard, dude,” says the guy from before, Ned-friend. “Spidey got fried. On high heat.”

“No one even says that,” MJ mutters, to a snicker from Paul. 

Ned glances at her, raises an eyebrow, but she doesn’t know any more than the next person. She wonders if this is how it felt like, before, and that—

That’s a dangerous thought. Useless. Because she’ll never know, will she? 

“Ye of little faith,” he announces. “He’ll pull it together, always does.”

“And in the meantime,” she leans across the counter, “someone put a movie on for the iPad kids in here, if music’s not enough.” 

++

Peter shows up at half past nine with a bottle of off-label wine tucked in the crook of his arm and a black eye. 

Paul’s eyes widen in her periphery. He leans close to put an arm around her and murmurs, “Should he be in the hospital?”

Probably, she thinks, and shivers as Peter’s attention strays briefly from Ned to them both on the couch. Paul might’ve done everything right—lowered his voice, hid the gesture—but he can’t account for enhanced senses. 

“Hey, man,” Ned and Peter go in for the handshake. “Glad you could make it.” 

Peter just shakes his head. “Sorry, I’m late. Work got—crazy.” 

“And then you lost a fistfight with a subway car,” MJ finishes as she strolls up, and his gaze finds hers again, sending a little zing of electricity down her spine. 

“You should see the other guy,” he jokes, hands her the bottle. She takes it with a five-second delay. 

No one notices, which she’s briefly thankful for until she realizes why. 

“I’m Paul,” he says, breaking the stand-off. Sticking out a hand. 

MJ can tell Peter’s thinking about whether to shake it, but before things can get weird, he acquiesces. Smiles the way she guesses he does under the mask when the mayor pulls him onstage. It’s not insincere, but it doesn’t give anything away. From Peter Parker, patron saint of earnestness, it’s as good as a rebuke.

Paul doesn’t know that. MJ thanks her lucky stars he doesn’t—she doesn’t think she’d know what to say if he did. 

“This is Peter,” Ned swoops in, thirty seconds too late. “We all went to high school together.” 

Paul cocks his head, but he’s too polite to say, Then why didn’t you ever mention him? 

Not to worry, MJ has a solution. Pieces of a solution. She’ll put it together in due time. 

“Ned,” he looks at her guiltily, “why don’t you show Peter where the drinks are? Take this.”

She refuses to watch them walk away, but part of her can feel it, his eyes on her back. Which one of them has the super senses? she thinks sourly. 

When it comes to anything else, anyone else, her sixth sense remains unremarkable. Mundane. It doesn’t take rocket science to puzzle out why she finds him in every crowded room. She knows rocket science, knows this is something completely different. 

It isn’t that she lied to him, that morning on the boat. She doesn’t love him. She doesn’t know him, not the way he knows her—and she can feel it in every conversation they have, every lapse in one of Ned’s old stories, every sideways glance Peter throws her way. 

There’s so much she’s missing. That girl he loves, the girl he wrote that letter for—She can’t be that for him, and she’s not cruel enough to try. 

But.

“MJ,” Paul says, with the air of repetition. “What was that? You guys never told me about a ‘Peter’.”

You never told me about him, he means. More allegations of emotional avoidance—

But she’s prepared for the inquisition now. “Yeah, ‘cause he dropped off the face of the earth.” 

This catches Paul off guard, and she rides the wave, leans back with the falsified backstory in hand. “Didn’t seem like much of a point, if I’m honest. I didn’t think we’d ever see each other again—much less have time for introductions.”

“What happened to him?” 

“The million dollar question.” It's humiliating, how little she's lying. Shouldn't she know? Wouldn't she have wanted that, more than anything? 

But Peter made that choice for her. 

“Ned probably knows more,” she says, tastes the bitterness of another half-truth. 

Paul just sighs. He’s not terribly perceptive—one of the things she likes about him; the arguments about her being withholding are reserved for when he actually notices—and this, at least, has lost its temporary interest. 

Mission accomplished. MJ pats herself on the back. 

She gets roped into dealing with missing toilet paper in the guest bathroom, spends a little too long searching. Partly by design, partly—Peter’s probably fine. He probably heals like no one’s business. And even if he didn’t, it’s not like she could—

Ned’s the one who he hangs out with until late in the night, the lights still on under the door when she comes out to grab some water. Ned’s the one who understands. She’d just make things awkward. Say the wrong thing, like she’s always done. 

Still, she makes sure their first aid kit’s still up to snuff before she steps out. If Ned asks—it’ll be there. And that’ll have to be enough. 

++

The good thing about Ned’s parties is that, at the end of the day, they’re still his. MJ has carte blanche to duck into her room whenever the crowd gets to her, and she makes use of it after the second beer pong game gone wrong, dropping into her desk chair. Winces, as the PC boots up. Her inbox is a graveyard of job offers, with her own rejections tacked on. 

Her eyes wander up to the vision board sprawling across the back wall. It’s not like she’s unaware of the job prospects for aerospace. Her classmates were dickheads of the highest caliber, and never made any secret of what they planned to do post-grad. She’d gone back and forth on it as a sophomore, because she still likes biotech. It’s interesting, and it pays well, and the ‘paying well’ part doesn’t exclusively involve war crimes. 

But it isn’t her passion. She isn’t anywhere near as good at it. And maybe that’s part of the compromise of adulthood—finding the gray area between your passions and your principles and the same twenty-four hours they all have in a day—but she hadn’t been able to stomach it back then, and she still can’t now. She knew—knows—that she can have both. 

Part of her wonders, looking up at the board, whether Peter was ever a part of that stubbornness. Logically he must’ve been. Either borne witness to it, or shared it himself. Given his line of work, she thinks he’d agree with her on the string of rejections in her inbox. 

And then she wants to tell him, craves that simple, stupid validation. She doesn't need him to tell her she's doing the right thing—she knows that; that's why she's doing it—but maybe, just maybe, it'd make her feel less alone. 

MJ winces as she steps into the living room. which is somehow more crowded than she'd left it. People are playing Yahtzee on the rug by the couch. The coffee table is pushed up against the wall, serving as a stand for ten separate drinks, although probably not for much longer. MJ removes the most precarious one on her way to the kitchen. 

The tableau that greets her is nothing short of miraculous. Peter, smiling. Paul, not overtly suspicious. Ned, without his foot in his mouth. She thinks she hears angels singing, but maybe that’s tinnitus from the idiot on aux.

“Hey,” she greets, pouring herself a new drink. Her eyes comb the assortment—beer, mostly, with interjections of soju and wine—before they fall on a familiar glass bottle. And for all that she affects a disillusionment with social norms, an ignorance of them, she knows exactly what she’s doing. 

Is it cruel? It doesn’t feel like it. To sell him a lie on the boat—that would’ve been cruel. This just feels—

She glances up from the corked bottle, takes a sip as Peter’s eyes meet hers, electric. 

Dangerous, she decides, the sparkling wine he brought burning down the back of her throat. That’s what this feels like. 

“I was just telling Paul about the Europe trip,” Ned says, blissfully ignorant. 

MJ rolls her eyes back. “That was a nightmare. Well. It would’ve been cool if we weren’t living it. At least it gave me this.”

“Iconic,” agrees Paul, and Peter’s mouth twists at one corner. “Even broken.”

“Especially broken,” MJ corrects, dropping the black dahlia pendant. “We found it in—”

Oh. Oh, wow. She doesn’t know whether to be awed or pissed off. 

“This little antiques shop,” Peter sweeps in. “Off the canals in Venice. We were looking for… souvenirs.” 

A muscle jumps in his jaw, tightening it. It’s one of his tells. The hazy fragments of MJ’s memory orbit a theory—but it’s not enough to know, when she doesn’t remember. She can imagine it in her mind’s eye—what he might’ve said, her fumbling response, the circumstances of how it’d broken—but it’s all a fantasy. All it’ll ever be is a fantasy.

You can’t turn back time, she reminds herself. She can’t drive herself crazy with half-memories, hypotheticals—it only takes one look at Peter to see how that ends. 

She’s still allowed to be mad, though. Not at Peter—not just at Peter. Ned must remember the name of the guy who did this. They’re going to have words. 

“Babe,” she hears, lifts her head to Paul’s amused scrutiny. “You good?” 

MJ nods, but Ned’s still inching away. “It was a scary look,” he tells her in defense. “Murderous. Manslaughter, at the very least.” 

“Not how it works,” Peter says, a smile in his voice. 

“You would know,” she points out, and he turns it on her. Paul’s voice cuts through. 

“Are you in law?” 

Peter near-chokes on his drink. “No. God, no. I—” 

His phone buzzes, and he sighs, long-suffering, at the caller ID. 

“What do you want, Frank?” he answers. MJ perks up. She liked Frank—he was cool. Peter scoffs. “No, I’m not working. I’m at a party. You remember those, from the bonfires you guys were throwing in the Stone Ages? Is that—I made you swear to me weren’t going after them alone, Christ alive—” Peter covers the receiver, glances over his shoulder. “Gotta take this. I’ll be right back.” 

Paul raises an eyebrow. “What did you guys say he did for work?”

“I didn’t,” says MJ, just as Ned says, “Uh, tech.”

They glance at each other. 

Right, well. Now they’re talking about it. “Bioengineering.”

“Uber Eats,” says Ned, at the same time. At their looks, he adds weakly, “It’s a new sector?” 

“I’m not trying to pry into his shit or anything,” Paul puts his hands up, looking a little awkward. “I’m gonna, uh. Step out for a smoke.”

MJ wheels around. “Uber Eats?”

“You know how hard it is to come up with a boring version of his job? I’ve been workshopping it. Lola’s asking.” 

“Just say he works in insurance.”

“Are you telling people I work in insurance?” Peter asks, flipping his phone shut. He heard all of it, didn’t he? Goddamned super senses. “MJ.” 

She throws up her hands. “It’s boring.”

“It’s cruel and unusual punishment, is what it is,” says Ned. “Just ‘cause I don’t wanna worry Lola doesn’t mean I have to do character assassination. He’s too cool for that.”

“Thanks, man,” Peter looks touched. 

“Boring, but cool,” she echoes, turns on her heel to find Paul. She needs a smoke. “Right. Let me know how the workshopping goes for you.” 

++

When the job offer comes in, she’s alone in the kitchen, thinking of a way around telling Ned. She knows what he’ll say if he hears. Take it. Consider it, for once. Maybe even negotiate—

MJ doesn’t want to negotiate. She doesn’t want to compromise, doesn’t want to compromise herself, not when she knows the cost at which that comes—

There’s a knock against the kitchen cabinets. 

She startles, and Peter takes a step back, hands up. “Sorry.”

“You’re,” her mind’s still frazzled, a thousand miles away, “really quiet.”

He cracks a grin. “Yeah, you know. Comes with the job.” 

“Creepy quiet.”

“Ouch—”

“I like it,” she tells him, and his eyes crinkle at the corners, shining a bit like a puppy’s. It’s disarming, easily. The gang leaders should be glad he keeps the mask on. “I was just…”

She trails off. She was going to tell him about the rejections, wasn’t she? But it feels even more like a pathetic plea for validation now, nothing more than an empty excuse for her to hide behind. The words don’t come, and Peter doesn’t offer any of his own. Just joins her there, clinks his empty cup against hers. 

“It’s a nice party,” he tells her, still smiling. “Thank you for inviting me.” 

Technically, it was a group effort. Ned’s probably already gotten the speech already. “Thank you for coming. I mean, like, after—” he cocks his head, “work—”

“Eh,” he says.

“There was a boulder involved,” she says, to a quirk of his mouth. “Bodega-sized boulder, Peter.”

“More like a semi.”

“Peter.”

“Compared to the aliens, that’s Tuesday. I mean, yeah, sure, it’s… Bodega-sized. But I can take it, MJ. Whatever they throw at me. That’s why I have to be the one to do it,” he looks down into his cup. “You know, for years, it was like—Wake up, check the alerts, put the bad guys away, rinse, repeat. Flowers for my aunt, Ned’s stories, those were like glimpses of light. There and gone. The boulder—there were so many boulders, so many nights like that. But a night like this,” he flicks a hand to encompass it, “I never got many of those. So, thank you.”

MJ chews at her lip. There is so much to unpack there, but—Peter’s smiling at her, guileless, and this isn’t the time. 

“You’re welcome,” she says, but the words feel flat. She can’t linger on them. “Get that asshole off aux, oh my God. Did Ned rope you into meeting the others?”

Peter stiffens, but not as much as he would've a month ago. Relaxes just as quickly. “Yeah, as much as he could.” At her look, he adds, “They were, uh, occupied. Beer Pong.”

“And you didn't join?” MJ realizes. “Oof. Unfair advantage.”

“Of the century.”

“You should still do it. They'll start bowing down, accepting you as their Beer Pong Overlord.” Peter snickers. “What?”

“Just something you used to say,” he waves a hand. 

“Tell me.”

Peter glances up, quick and startled, before it gives way to something more thoughtful. Searching. MJ sets her jaw. 

“There was this article about me, uh, using my hormones to, like, ensorcel women. You thought it was the funniest thing on earth. Called me your Spider Lord,” he laughs, a little wistful. “With this voice, and everything. It was cute.” 

It's half-reverie, unconscious, and so it takes both of them a second to realize what he's said. 

“MJ, I didn't mean,” he says, strained, “it's not like—”

“It's fine,” she tells him. “I asked.”

Not for that, they both think. But it was part of the story, the version of it that lingered in Peter's mind even now. She's glad she heard it.

Peter glances away, clears his throat. “It's cool that they came all the way down for this.Your friends, I mean.”

“Ned’s friends, mostly,” MJ says. “But he's not as close with them as he is with you.”

He looks at her sideways. “You're just saying that.”

“We've been roommates for, what? Five years now?” she shakes her head, tips the cup back for the dregs of her drink. “Nah. He's different with you. You guys are like nerd-catnip for each other.” 

Nerd-catnip, Peter mouths to himself, and smiles. 

“Besides, Boston’s not far,” she points out. “It'd be weirder if they didn't make it down for one of Ned’s parties.”

Peter winces. “We have got to tell him about internet safety.”

“Think there's a difference between knowing and caring,” she says dryly, to a hoarse chuckle, and nothing more. “Peter?”

“Mm,” he mumbles, a bit groggily. “Sorry, just. Tired. Haha. Night must be catching up to me, right? I should go steal some of Ned’s Shark Fire—”

“Peter—”

“That stuff is not a joke, though, it'll send him into cardiac arrest one of these days—”

MJ closes the distance, hands raised. “Peter—”

“And it's so expensive, for such a tiny shot. You'd’ve thought they'd give college students more bang for their buck—”

“Peter,” she snaps, and he looks at her, pupils dilated to reveal a thin sliver of honey-brown. “You're bleeding.” 

“Oh,” he says. Peers down. “Oh, shit. Your counter.”

“Forget the counter, Peter!” The first-aid kit. Okay. Okay! Thank God she'd gotten that ready. “I'll patch you up, come on.”

Peter’s scrubbing at the spot of blood on the linoleum. Is he serious? 

“What if someone sees?” he says weakly. “They'll have questions. I can't put you guys in danger again.” 

MJ draws in a breath. To catch a fish, you have to think like a fish. Is that how it goes?

“It'll be harder to clean blood off the floors,” she points out, and he looks thoughtful. “And all the shit for doing that is in the bathroom. With the first-aid kit. So we should, at the very least—”

“Yeah, okay,” Peter grunts, and she feels a little thrill of victory. 

It's past ten now, with the crowd as raucous as it'll ever get. She can't find Paul—not that it’d be easy to, in a room like this—prays they stay beneath notice as she shoves past the couple chatting in front of the bathroom. “Host privileges, coming through. There's an en-suite bathroom in Ned’s room if you need it. Come on, people, move it.” 

Peter's looking around everywhere he goes, eyes wide in a way that's probably only mostly the blood loss. Drinking in—God knows what. Half the shit in their apartment’s from IKEA if it's not from the thrift, and the guest bath’s the plainest of them all. 

She directs him to perch up on the sink. Locks the door to their backs, and hears, “That's yours, isn't it?” 

Oh. That. 

MJ crouches to get the first-aid kit out. “It's just a doodle. Ned insisted on putting it up, you know how he is.” 

“You don't draw me with my mask on anymore,” he says, fingers skating across the smudged graphite. “Ever since…”

For a moment, they're both back there. 

Anyone can draw the mask, she thinks. Someone hung it on the Brooklyn Bridge, for God’s sake. But who he is beneath it—

“I really am sorry about the letter,” says Peter, and she nearly drops the first-aid kit. “I didn’t mean for you to…”

Her stomach twists. She never knows how to feel about that. The alternate universe where she never found it, never read it, and life went on as normal, aside from the twenty-four hours she’d spent—for no clear reason—under Spider-Man’s protection. 

It wouldn’t have helped the ever-present feeling she wasn’t doing enough with her life, that’s for sure. The confusion, the lapses in her memories, the dreams she could never remember after she woke, save for the dampness on her cheeks. No, all of that probably would’ve gotten a hell of a lot worse. 

“I wish you’d given it to me before,” she hears herself say, low and hoarse. The smiley-face on the plastic box blurs against the tile. “Before MIT. We could’ve—I know why you didn’t. You were trying to protect us.”

Quietly, he says, “I did protect you.”

“At what cost?” she looks up at him. It had been easier to accept the reality of these past few years when they were on the boat, when he was—a stranger, still. A kind, funny stranger, but nothing more than an interloper in her life. But the more she gets to know him, the more she thinks— 

He frowns. “I knew what I was signing up for.”

And now? she thinks. Do you still think it was worth it?

But she’s too afraid to hear the answer. 

MJ picks herself up, sets out the relevant components of the first-aid kit to Peter’s soft instructions. She’s picking the wrapping off the antiseptic tube when she hears, “You know, I can do this my—”

“Zip it, Spidey.” A laugh, the kind she feels in her own chest. It’s enough to dull the nerves when she has to meet his gaze. “You should, uh.”

His eyes are wide, earnest. “Yeah?”

“You’d better take your shirt off,” she points out, plummeting to high school MJ levels of awkwardness, the words sticking in her mouth. “So I can—”

“Oh,” his voice comes out too high, “oh, yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Of course.” A beat, and then he’s leaning back, stripping off his—relatively undamaged—hoodie to reveal the bloodstained tee underneath, which comes off next. 

Whoa, is her first thought, once her mind reboots. And she thought he was underfed. 

“Is it the blood?” Peter says, mournful. “Listen, MJ, I can do it myself—” 

Shame kicks her in the knees. God, what is she doing? She steps back, catalogs the situation. Bruises, everywhere, but those will have to wait—a cut on his shoulder, a scrape on one side, a deeper gash scored into the other. The cuts have been smeared with Pokemon band-aids and nothing else. There's a bloodsoaked wad of gauze held in place against the gash. MJ glances at Peter for permission and slowly, painstakingly, takes the old dressing apart. 

Beneath, it’s—horrific, verging on disgusting. She can't wrap her head around it. “Did you just slap a bandage on this and walk here?”

“I took the train,” he replies, and puts his hands up. “Hey, hey, hey, I'll be fine, MJ. You think this is the worst I’ve had? I heal fast.” 

“You call this healing?” 

“I mean,” Peter shrugs. “It’s been three hours.”

She narrows her eyes. “I have no idea how she dealt with you.” 

“Not that different from this,” he says, eyes sparkling. A wince tugs at his mouth, as the wound—oozes, visibly. “Hey, could you grab the—”

“Yeah,” she says hurriedly, wiping away the excess. For the next few minutes they lose themselves in the rhythm of it—as depressing as it sounds, Peter wasn’t lying about his familiarity with the routine. 

She’s squinting at the dark line of the ointment-smeared cut when he stills her by the wrist, says, “It’ll need stitches.” 

This is where she bows out, for everyone’s sake. “What do you need?”

“Can I see the rest of the kit?” He riffles through the contents. “Hm.”

“Hm?”

“The dressing’s fine. I’ll handle the rest later,” he says, handing it back. “Thank you. Seriously. That was kinda killing me.”

She tries for deadpan, ends up somewhere near hysterical. “Oh, I could tell.” 

His lips part in the beginnings of a laugh, and—freeze there, suspended, in the second before the knock. 

“MJ?” Paul calls. “You in there?” 

Shit. 

“Yeah,” she says. 

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” fuck, “I’m good, I just—” Peter’s staring at her, wide-eyed. “It’s my period.”

Which she got, like, two weeks ago. And is generally pretty regular about. 

Thank God for Paul’s lack of observational skills. “Oh. My bad, I’ll just—”

“I’ll be out,” she promises, “just need a second—”

“Take your time!”

“Hey, is that MJ in there? MJ,” Ned’s voice comes in. “Did you see where Peter went? Can’t find him anywhere. You think he dipped?” 

No, I don’t think he dipped, she thinks numbly.

“I haven’t seen him,” she says. “Maybe he stepped out.”

“Maybe,” says Ned, dubious. “I’ll check outside.”

“You do that,” she tells him. 

Peter’s already pulled his ruined shirt back on when she glances over, is making for the newly open window. He manages a salute before he tips over the sill. When she peers past the edge, he’s gone. 

++

“You feeling any better?” Paul takes her by the elbow when she emerges, which she shakes off. His brows draw together, and MJ thinks he’s gonna say something, but he doesn’t. 

Not then, at least. The crowd begins to dissipate as they hit midnight. Commuters first, some of whom have some flavor of work the next day. Then it’s the people who left a partner, a pet, a roommate back home. Paul’s watching her through all of it, as she gives up a few rare hugs and sends off the rest, as she and Ned begin to corral the open bottles of liquor back where they belong. 

The party’s still on, when he asks her. But just barely. It’s just them, Ned, Peter, a few friends staying the night somewhere in the city, and she doesn’t know where Ned and Peter are. 

“Can we talk?” asks Paul, and she realizes they’re standing in front of her bedroom door. 

MJ forces a smile. “Sure.” 

“I just,” he’s saying as the door swings closed. MJ steels herself. It’s gonna be a fight. An argument, at the very least, but she thinks it’s gonna be a fight. Great timing. “I just wish you would tell me these things.” 

She frowns. He can’t be talking about her period. “Tell you what?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.” It’s honestly a bit frustrating, the way people will sometimes expect her to magically know— 

“Peter,” he says, pointedly. 

MJ sighs. “This, again?” 

“You said he dropped off the face of the earth,” says Paul. “Okay, sure. When did he drop back in?” MJ opens her mouth, and he adds, “I mean, like, I didn’t hear a word about him before tonight, when clearly you and Ned have been hanging out with him for, what? Weeks?” 

It irks her to give in to such an obvious rhetorical pause, but she still says, “About a month.”

“A month,” he repeats, as he turns away. “You know, sometimes I feel like I’m on the outside of your life. Like we’re not even really—”

MJ closes her eyes, feels the words land. They hurt. They always hurt, no matter how many times she hears them. 

“I forgot to tell you,” she says, eventually. “The day we met up with him.”

It’s a bad lie, one of her worst, cloaking a reality she doesn’t want to think about. The first truth—Peter is complicated. A hero, a vigilante, a missing SSN, and her ex-boyfriend, unbeknownst to her until a month ago. The second truth, the one she can’t quite face—she was hoping they’d break up before she’d have to explain all that to Paul. 

“You forgot,” he says, disbelieving.

“Between the interviews, and the attacks, and the shit on Roosevelt Island,” the lies come easily, unrehearsed. What is she doing? “This was, like, one surprising afternoon in a month of crazy afternoons, Paul. Yeah, I forgot. I tell you about the shit that matters—” she hardly tells him anything she hasn’t run through the mental filters a dozen times, “I tell you about my life, don’t I? You met him tonight. If you’re so curious about Peter, why don’t you ask Ned?”

This, she quickly realizes, was the wrong thing to say. His eyes narrow. “I did.”

“And?” 

“Couldn’t shut up about the guy,” Paul tells her. “Peter this, Peter that. Inseparable in high school, to hear him say it. All three of you, like peas in a pod. And here I thought you two were the high school best friends.”

“We are,” she snaps. 

“All these stories, stories you never even told me about—”

Because I don’t fucking remember them, she thinks, the hot sting of how unfair it all is searing the back of her throat. “I told you—”

“Did you?” he closes the gap, eyes hard on hers. “Or did you just let me come to whatever conclusion seemed easiest to deal with?” 

MJ sets her jaw. “Am I being withholding again?”

“Yes,” he says, incredulous. “Yes! How is this even a question? Why does this feel like a goddamned interrogation, when I’m your boyfriend?” 

“Because that absolves you of interrogating,” she drawls, and steps back to grab her jacket. “I’m stepping out.” 

A bitter laugh at her back. “You’re just gonna walk away?”

“We can talk about this later,” she says, knowing she’ll do no such thing. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

She doesn’t slam the door behind her, and she nods at Ned on the way out, takes the elevator up without looking at her reflection in the doors. She keeps it together. Climbs up onto the roof, finds the remnants of the black dahlia necklace under her collar, and digs her palm into the jagged edges until the sting’s too much to bear, and it’s—

It’s not enough. It’s almost enough, but like a memory too faded to fully describe, a dream stripped of dialogue, it’s—she’ll always be missing something. In every conversation, in every dream, in the threads of her own mind, unraveled and rewoven to live on without him, except that isn’t fucking working, is it? 

MJ laughs, hears the hollows in it. She must’ve loved him so much, for his absence to leave her like this. The gaping wound of it visible a thousand miles away. 

“MJ?” she hears, and curses. Wipes at her face, fast, hard. “Is that you? I’m coming down, I’ll—”

And then he’s standing in front of her.

++

“Hey,” Peter says, gentle as anything. “What happened?” 

She glares at him. It’s his fault. All this, it’s—

But, fuck. She still can’t blame him. 

“Paul and I fought,” she says, tries for flat. It’s a bit wet, but Peter doesn’t comment. The corners of his mouth tighten, though. “I’m, uh. Well, you can guess.”

“Withholding?”

“The two-time gold medalist,” MJ agrees, sniffles. Peter’s eyes drop. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be fine,” he tells her, then scratches at the nape of his neck. “Sorry. I shouldn’t—I mean, speaking of taking my own goddamn advice—”

“No, it’s—Thank you,” she straightens up. “Really. It helps to hear it. I thought you went home?” 

It’s Peter’s turn to flush. MJ narrows her eyes. “Peter. Your side—”

“Doesn’t hurt so much anymore.” She huffs. “Fine, fine, I—I was gonna head back just now, that’s why I came up here.”

“To… Oh.” The mental image is startling, and vivid from her own rather recent memory of the thwipping and the heights and—MJ steps back. “Don’t let me keep you.” 

Peter hesitates. 

“Seriously,” she tells him, “I’m fine. I’ll be just—”

“There’s a killer ice cream shop a couple blocks down. Two minutes by web. If you wanted to—?” 

MJ rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I know. A little longer than two minutes by web, but—”

“Nah, that one closed down,” he says, snorts at her wounded look. “Avengers tax. The shopfront got obliterated last year.”

“Unbelievable.”

“You’re telling me.” His smile softens. “New one’s not bad, I promise.”

She pretends to think about it. “I could give it a shot.” The rest of his offer dawns on her as he extends a hand. “Oh, God.”

“I’m not gonna drop you, MJ.” It’s as close to exasperated as she’s ever seen him. Outside of Frank. “Friendly neighborhood Spidey, remember? You calling me a slouch?” 

“This is what I get for having a healthy fear of heights,” she grumbles, taking his hand. 

“Eh, you get over it,” he tells her, and then they’re off. 

It’s not nearly as terrifying as the first time, but still in the same league of ‘things she could happily live without ever doing again’. Peter’s acclimated, over the past few weeks, to the organic webs—doesn’t murmur the soft instructions to himself that she remembers from their first few trips through Queens. 

He drops them off in an alley around the corner, batting the residual webs off the inside of his wrist. It’s still insane to her that he produces them naturally. Just the mechanics of it are—

“They’re not that cool,” he tells her.

“They’re kinda cool.” 

“Gross, is what they are,” he mutters to himself, turning the corner. 

MJ catches up with him. “I don’t mind gross.” 

“You wouldn’t,” she hears, low and fond, so quick there’s no room for a response. “Here it is. Last single under three dollars in New York City.” 

But they end up splitting a double to get two flavors, ‘cause Peter insists the vanilla’s to die for, and MJ’s not going home without trying the black sesame white chocolate truffle. 

“You always did have a sweet tooth,” he tells her, spoon sticking out of his mouth. 

The ice cream turns to ash on her tongue. 

“MJ?” 

“It’s so weird,” she shakes her head. “Not—not knowing. Not like you and Ned do. You have no idea how weird it is.” 

Peter watches her, brows drawn low. “Tell me about it.” 

“What?”

“I know…” he chews at his lip. “I know what it’s like—not to lose my memories, not like you did. God, no. That was on me, no one else. But I know a little about weird. About things so singularly crazy that no one would understand even if you laid it all out, assuming they even listened the whole way through.” Peter leans back. “But I’m listening. If you want to tell me.” 

And it’s strange, how it feels so different this time. Paul tried to make her talk, tried to pry her open, and Peter’s just… waiting. No expectations, no strings. 

Her stomach twists, again, with that feeling she’s been trying so hard not to think about, look at straight-on, but—

“My necklace,” she blurts, and he tips his head to the side, like a puppy might. “You gave it to me, didn’t you?” 

Peter nods, slowly. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I thought so. But that was just conjecture. Everything’s conjecture, now. I couldn’t remember where I’d bought it. Couldn’t remember how it’d broken, how much I’d paid. And, you know, rules of the spell. Removing you. So I can knit everything back together in my mind by way of the gaps. Weave together this story, this fiction of the life we must’ve lived, but it’s just that. A story I’m telling myself. It’s not the same as remembering.” 

MJ pokes at the half-melted cup, flavors pooling together. “I want to remember. I want to know how it felt, for her. For,” just say it, “for me. But I don’t. And it isn’t really fair if I only get to be a shadow of myself, isn’t it? This is who I am. This is the only shot I get. And he—uh, whoever did this—”

“Dr. Strange,” Peter supplies. She looks at him. “Yeah, really.”

“Dr. Strange,” she repeats dryly. “He made it so that that life—my life—it’s always going to be missing something. I’m only ever going to be most of myself.”

“MJ…” he starts. 

“I’m just being dramatic,” she scoops up another spoonful of ice cream soup. Best cheap double in New York City. She’ll give it to him. “Lamentations of an amnesiac. Probably not even the worst sob story you’ve heard this week—”

“MJ,” Peter cuts in, and she flashes back to the kitchen. They’re a cliche. She nearly misses his next words. “You’re just like her.” 

She forces a laugh. “You’re just saying that—”

“And you can take my word for it,” he tells her, painfully earnest. “Because I was obsessed with you. Still am. I don’t think—I know things change. We’ve both changed, since the spell. And I can’t promise you that I know you now like no one else in the world does, but the girl I fell in love with, the girl I wrote that letter for—the one you don’t remember—I knew her like that. Better than I knew myself, sometimes. You’re just like her. Sometimes it kills me, just being in—” 

Peter breaks off, abruptly. Jaggedly. The ice cream shop’s near empty, and the two employees on shift are too far to eavesdrop, but suddenly the conversation feels harder to pick back up. 

“That isn’t what you asked for,” he says eventually. “I’m sorry to—I got off-track. Even if you are her—and you are—you don’t remember. And I’ll always be sorry that I did that to you.”

MJ watches him. “Even though you don’t regret it.”

A jaw in his muscle twitches. 

“Even though I don’t regret it,” he tells her. 

“Yeah,” she says, too tired to even laugh. “I thought you’d say that.” 

++

They walk back, because she can’t promise she won’t hurl if they go by web. Peter swears he doesn't care, but it's funny watching him antsy with the restless energy she guesses he gets out backflipping off roofs, or some shit like that. 

He busies himself catching her up on high school. At least the bits Ned hasn't already gotten to over the last few weeks. It annoyed her, getting caught out by Paul. 

Next time she's gonna have a few fake stories under her belt. Just in case. 

“And that,” announces Peter, “is how you unmasked me, debunked Mysterio, and rejected me, all in fifteen minutes.”

MJ rolls her eyes. “It doesn’t really sound like I rejected you.”

“Felt like it,” he says. “But, uh, that didn’t last long. I gave Happy the necklace to give to you, in case… But the piece of crap broke.” 

She finds it beneath her blouse, wraps her fingers around the pendant in what’s become a pretty common self-soothing strategy. “So that’s the story.”

“That’s the story.”

“It’s a good one.”

Peter grins at her, takes it as the compliment it is. “Thank you.” 

Her stomach kicks, again, in that newly familiar way. Not butterflies, not really. Maybe demon butterflies—that sounds insanely, painfully cool, and she forces herself away from fantasizing about the logistics of their existence. 

The problem—and it’s been a problem for a while now, so long she’s almost resigned to it at this point—is that he’s beautiful. He’s kind, and sweet, in an almost unbearably dopey way, when he lets it past. She can count the amount of times he’s laughed on her fingers and toes, but the sound never leaves her. 

MJ’s not stupid. She can put two and two together. Had been in the process of it that night on the boat, with a curtain at her back. She liked him then, and she likes him now. 

But, cannily interposed between those two truths, there’s the letter. The circumstances of her finding it, the conversation that followed, his confession—a confession four, five years in the making. 

She likes him, and he’s in love with her. 

It’s baseline unethical, and that’s without even factoring in Paul. MJ knows the best thing she can do for Peter is leave him be. Not in that way—she still wants to be part of his life—but the impulses are better left impulses. Whims. He deserves more than her recklessness. 

And she deserves more than his martyrdom. 

Hell, this is the guy that voted to erase her memory and walked away willing to do it all over again. There'll always be a bigger cause, an altar to stake himself on; the city will always ask that of him, and he'll never hesitate before stepping up. If she's honest with herself, that's part of the attraction. 

They're toeing the line. She knows they are, can't keep herself from giving in. It's not quite wrong, but it's so far from right. And it bothers her, sure. 

Just not as much as it should. 

MJ can ignore it easily enough around Ned, or when they're out grabbing dinner, and until tonight, that was generally how they met up. Now she has his shirtless torso tattooed in her memory; now she knows what he looks like with ice cream smeared at the corner of his mouth. It's maddening, useless information, and it's almost certainly going to keep her up at night, which is nothing more than she deserves for wanting him in the first place. 

“MJ?” she hears. Peter raises his eyebrows. “You okay?” 

“Yep.” The actual worst lie she's ever sold. The shit she told Paul about forgetting can take silver. “Peachy.” 

“Is that why you're strangling yourself with your necklace?” 

Very casually, she loosens her grip. “I don't know what you're talking about.” 

“You want to talk about it?” I really don't think we should. “We can take the long way back.” 

“I thought this was the long way back,” she says. They're still a few blocks from the apartment. “Hey, how come we've never been to your place?”

“Asbestos,” Peter says instantly. 

MJ stares at him. 

“It was a death trap attic,” he explains. “I rent it under the table. Dirt cheap. It doesn't really bother me, on account of—”

“Spidey shit.”

“Exactly. But you and Ned,” he sucks his teeth. “I dunno. Probably shouldn't risk it.” 

She shouldn’t say it. She absolutely, one hundred percent shouldn't say it— “Must be hard to have people over.” 

“Yeah,” Peter says slowly, looking at her askance. “That's what I just—” he breaks off. Seems to recalibrate, as realization dawns. “MJ, no.”

“No,” she repeats. That is the furthest thing from what she expected him to say. “Like, metaphysically?” 

“I don't have people over,” he clarifies. “I don't have people I'd have over—”

“What about Frank?”

“You think Frank and I have tea parties?”

She crosses her arms. “Jean?”

“Off the grid.” 

“Black Widow?”

“Don't really want to deal with her dress code again, if I'm being honest.” Peter stretches his arms out. Goddamned triceps. “Long story. Look, MJ, I'll get rid of the asbestos—”

“There's never been anyone else?” 

Peter’s head turns so fast it's a miracle he doesn't get whiplash. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Mrs. Spiderman,” she says steadily, pauses to look at him. “You never, uh—”

“MJ—”

“Remarried, I know that, but,” she shrugs. “No affairs?” 

“That,” he points out, stepping closer, “is a really terrible metaphor here.” 

“I know,” she says, because she does. The knowledge is all that's keeping her tethered, and the rope’s fraying, her own personal Sword of Damocles. “So?”

“No affairs,” Peter whispers, because they're close enough for that now. Funny how that works. “No—MJ, there's never been anyone else. And there never will be.” 

The sword falls. 

++ 

 Kissing Spider-Man is a little like riding a bicycle. In a perfect world, MJ would get to say this. 

In this one, she gets in one perfunctory peck on the lips before Spider-Man is kissing her. There's a distinction there, implicit in how his hands tighten on her hips as they fetch up against the alley wall, one of them sliding up her spine to cup the back of her head from the brick. It's one part finesse, two parts devotion. 

Peter kisses her like she’ll forget him in the morning if he doesn't. Like he’s carving every word of the story they’ve buried back into her lips, back into her soul. It’s gentle, like he’s always gentle, but he can’t hide his own hunger. Every time she pulls away to breathe, he makes this gutted, wounded noise, like he could die from the lack of her. 

But he still gasps, “MJ, we shouldn’t—we can’t—”

“I know,” she presses the words into the corner of his mouth, like an endearment, something soft-voiced to make the poison go down sweeter. “Kiss me anyway.” 

MJ knows, doesn’t need him to spell it out. She’s known for weeks. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She was supposed to do the right thing, and this is, decidedly, not—

But, God, if it doesn’t feel like it.   

She’ll break up with Paul in the morning. She’ll get her shit in order, do all the emotional paperwork, figure out how to make this float. Tonight, her principles are on DND. 

As if summoned, her phone buzzes. Once, and then repeatedly. Peter pulls back, brows drawn together. His mouth is—distractingly red. “Whazzat?” 

MJ flips it open. Shuts her eyes on an overlong blink. Good God. 

“It’s Ned,” she says. “Wondering where I am. It’s been ages.” 

Peter tears his eyes from the screen with difficulty. “I should take you home.” MJ opens her mouth. “By web. It’ll be fast, I promise.” 

This isn’t one he breaks. It’s about fifteen seconds up to the roof, and another twenty over to the fire escape outside her bedroom. 

“Thanks,” MJ says, after a long, dragging silence. It’s hard to think of what else to say to someone who just had their tongue down your throat. Except, maybe— “Good night, Peter.” 

The corner of his mouth cuts up. “Good night, MJ.” 

Neither of them move. 

“I should—”

“Yeah, I’ll—” 

MJ turns, just barely, and Peter’s there. He presses her up against the brick, kisses her long and slow and deep, like a bruise. 

And then he pulls back, vaults over the edge of the fire escape.

She touches her lips. Fuck. Fuck. What did they just—?

A window shoves up, to the side. MJ startles so badly she bangs her elbow on the edge of the fire escape. 

Ned raises an eyebrow. “Dude. Where have you been?” 

MJ opens her mouth. Closes it. 

“In the morning,” she tells him, and scrabbles for her own window.