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There is a chicken in the oven.
That shouldn’t be the weirdest part of the scene in front of him considering Gwen is wearing an apron and was the one to put the chicken in the oven even though he is fairly certain she has burnt water before, or that Harry is the only one apparently dressed ‘appropriately’ for the event by Gwen’s standards, or that Ned is trying to mix a cocktail in a shaker without the lid on, but really all Peter can focus on is the chicken because in his twenty-four years visiting and living in his aunt’s house, he is confident that he has never seen anything edible enter or exit that oven. Not when May was living here and especially not since Peter allowed Gwen, Harry, Ned and MJ to move in to help cover the bills while May was working on FEAST’s broader New York state expansion. They lived off takeout, noodles and the sympathy of their neighbours delivering leftovers. That was their whole thing.
Peter wasn’t even sure the oven worked.
So yeah, the weirdest thing in front of him right now was not whatever fucking bizzare curse had fallen upon his friends in the shape of Gwen trying to impress her new, older and ‘more mature’ boyfriend from work, but was the possibility that this house even had the capabilities to cook a chicken.
A warm hand landed on the small of his back, pulling his thoughts away from the glowing light in his oven and turning his attention to MJ. She had gone just as overboard as the rest of them, donning her dress from her last press night rather than the graduation dress that Gwen had not so subtly been begging her to wear. It's too much for the occasion, and is exactly the reason why Peter can't help but grin at her.
“Do you think that’s going to cook?” Peter asks her, nodding towards the oven and Gwen’s fretting as she preps the carrots.
“Gwen knows what she’s doing, right?” MJ questions him back with a frown and it’s another reminder that MJ is new to this circle. Her faith in Gwen stems from what she’s seen of Gwen’s work ethic and very little else. She wasn’t here for the time that Gwen Stacy decided she wanted to be a baker and that was why there was a mottled patch of cement on the kitchen ceiling.
Peter isn’t quite sure he has it within him to douse her optimism just yet, and Gwen’s patience with them all hovering in the kitchen and offering her no assistance is wearing thin.
“Thank you, Michelle. It’s nice that one of you could have some faith in me. I read five different recipes and have been seasoning that pan for like an hour, so unless you guys are going to help could you kindly fuck off–” Gwen snapped, “Ned. Lid on.”
MJ’s smile pressed into a thin line, her hand curving around his waist and pulling him out of the kitchen gently. “I just wanted to check you were still okay with me bringing a plus-one? I know it’s maybe a little weird since you’re my—” Her words trail off.
They didn’t have a label for what they were; they lived together; they shared two twin beds pushed together every night and did everything a couple did, but boyfriend/ girlfriend felt juvenile.
Or.
At least it did now that Gwen was bringing a thirty-six year old into their home and referring to him as her ‘partner’.
Gwen’s recent step (or rushed leap) towards adulthood had Peter questioning if this was this one of the areas where they needed to do that whole ‘acting their age’ thing that everyone had been begging him to do for years?
Distracting them both from that crisis, Peter quickly answers with an enthusiastic ‘yes’ that might have been a little too loud for how quickly MJ’s brows began to furrow and her lip caught on her teeth.
“I mean… Well, I mean, yes. Of course, it’s okay. I wanna meet your friends. You met mine and they’re now your friends and you live here so meeting friends is clearly a good thing, right? Hey we might end up moving in with them and it’ll be a uno reverse situation and–”
“You’re talking a lot.”
Peter nods sagely, relieved for the cut-off. “I am.” A beat. “But I’m serious.”
“Okay, but it’s just that he–”
“Pete! Where does May keep the baster?!” Gwen shouts from inside the kitchen.
“No, wait. I think we should talk about this because–”
“Peter!” Gwen shouts again.
Peter looks to MJ apologetically. Half for the interruption and half in preparation for Gwen’s crash-out when he explains he isn’t sure May ever owned a turkey baster.
Because. Well. For the very reason he had assumed from the get-go that this whole evening was going to be a disaster.
No one cooked in this house.
They weren’t those kind of people.
“Whatever it is, it’s fine, Em. We’re not the couple who freak out about that sort of stuff.” Peter told her, kissing her cheek as he moved past her. They were mature. They didn’t need to turn things like plus-ones and new friends into whole heaping conversations. They could just be.
And that was the adult thing to do, right?
Meeting Gwen’s new boyfriend, Peter can understand why she wants to pretend they are the kind of people who can cook whole chickens and have tidy homes and actually read all the books that are littered along the shelves; Caleb is the type of man to wear ironed slacks and an ironed shirt to someone’s dinner party. He is the type of person to bring a bottle of wine as a gift for them that even has Harry’s eyes widening and refusing to let go of it like he’s trying to cling on to a life he’d given up.
Gwen wants them to be those kind of people because Caleb says things like ‘Peter, your house is lovely, my ex-wife’s mother had somewhere like this in Aspen.’
Peter is pretty sure that Caleb just heard ‘Hills’ in the address and tried to compare it to the only other he’d ever seen. Forest Hills and Aspen were vastly different worlds. He didn’t think that houses in Aspen had dented floorboards where Ben had dropped his bowling ball or fried outlets from Peter’s at-home experiments.
Gwen likes him though, and Peter tries his hardest to play along, watching as his oldest friend sweeps Caleb past the kitchen and on a tour.
“Does Gwen know her boyfriend’s rolling?” MJ whispers, her breath tickling his ear and making him want to forget anything about Gwen’s boyfriend at all and take her upstairs to their room where they can focus on the fun parts of adulthood, but a part of his logical brain doesn’t completely vanish, managing to focus on her words.
“What?”
“Oh yeah. He’s gone.” Harry supplies, returning to the entryway with a glass of wine in hand, spinning the liquid around, hypnotized as it rises up the inside of the cup. Casually, he continues. “Coke or ket?”
“My money’s on coke. He’d be weirder if he was on ket.”
“Give it time.”
The pair of them talk like it was the most common occurrence in the world.
“Is your plus-one going to be on drugs? Is this the kind of dinner party we host now?” Peter asks, mildly concerned. May had made him promised to keep the house in one piece, and he had mostly succeeded. There was only one new hole in the wall and that was hardly his fault. How could he be blamed if he and Ned had decided to mess around with the suspension in his web-shooters? It was Ned who’d decided to do target practice indoors. That was Ned’s fault. Not his. No way.
MJ snorts, shaking her head, laughter tickling her next words. “He burns through them too quick for that.” Peter doesn’t get the joke. He smiles anyway. See. Mature. Normal. “Look, Pete, my friend is–”
Harry doesn’t let her finish, grabbing MJ’s arm and pulling her towards the kitchen. “C’mon. Let’s try and gently break the news of her coked up boyfriend to Gwendy.”
Neither Harry nor MJ find the words to tell Gwen that her boyfriend isn’t nearly as sophisticated as she believes. Peter follows them into the kitchen to find the pair of them grimacing and Gwen puts on an admirable show of playing chef, host and doting girlfriend all at once. The usual control that she exudes and typically embarasses them all with is fraying at the edges.
Gwen functions well as the calm within the storm. She holds her head (and sometimes her nose) up at the mess they all create for herself. Today it’s Gwen who created that mess by trying to force them all to be something they weren’t.
Even MJ, who is typically the one to pushback against Gwen’s rule, is hesitant to do anything to rock the boat and chooses to hide behind Harry at the edge of the kitchen.
“Hovering in the kitchen isn’t very welcoming, guys.” Gwen says pointedly, her eyes flicking between Caleb and her housemates who are watching them intently.
Harry starts stammering. “Well, you see.” He clears his throat. “Gwen.” He starts again. His voice softening and smile flattening. His hands encase both of Gwen’s biceps before he looks over to MJ desperately. MJ slides over to Peter, nodding encouragingly. It takes Peter all of half a second to realise that he has become her shield. “Gwendy.”
“Yes?”
“Uh. Did you want me to show Caleb around or–”
“I think I have that handled.”
Ned slides in next to Peter. “Do I want to know what we’re staring at?”
“A mess.” Beside him MJ nods sympathetically.
“Well, that was obvious enough. Gwen’s cooking.” Ned replies easily. “You should try my cocktail. It’s good.”
“I’m trying to stay sober.”
Ned frowns, tearing his attention away from the show in front of them. “Why?”
“I’m embracing the evening. Being mature. Wanna give MJ’s friend the best impression, you know?” Especially if they were— whatever they were. His eyes cut over to her, insides swooping at the fond smile she shoots him, all the morbid fascination she’d held for Harry’s conversation with Gwen is watched away into pure fondness directed solely at Peter that he doesn’t think his heart can fit in his chest anymore.
Ned laughs loudly, cutting through the tension of Harry’s failed intervention and his attempt to loop MJ into that conversation. Peter decides he hates him. They’ve been friends for practically their whole lives. He should have more faith. He should have the most faith and believe that Peter is capable of wooing a stranger.
He’s personable!
People have said that about him.
Probably.
At some point in his life.
Probably between the ages of five to eight. That was when he was at his cutest - May always said the coke bottle glasses could double as a halo.
Ned’s laughter only worsened when someone knocked at their front door. The sound causing MJ to start offering faux apologies, the one in her voice giving away just how relieved she is to be exiting that specific conversation.
“Wait, MJ– MJ Watson, you cannot–”
“So sorry Harry, gotta interrupt whatever this is and greet my guest.”
“No, no. You’re meant to be–”
“Gwen, I’m going to be a good host now, bye!”
“Thank God.” Gwen huffs, shrugging away Harry’s touch and focusing back on the food. Nobody questions where Caleb is.
Peter also takes the excuse to exit, hoping Ned’s giggles might quieten in the journey from the kitchen to the front door, but that does not seem the case.
With her hand resting on the door handle, MJ pauses, looking back over her shoulder. Her brows are drawn together and lips wet, swallowing awkwardly. “I need to warn you–”
Deciding to fight back against Ned’s disbelief, Peter steps forward. His hands go to her arms, rubbing them soothingly. “Em, whoever is on the other side of that door is going to love us. We are going to ‘wow’ them and it’s all going to be fine. You don’t have to warn us or prep us. We’re adults.”
MJ was so different to every other relationship that Peter’d had. She was calm in the face of chaos, dipping her own toe into it, and that was necessary for the life that he led. She was intense, in a good way! When she believed in something, she wholeheartedly chased after it. It was a breath of fresh air, and the pace she moved at was again, something that relieved him with how fast superherorics made his own life move.
They hadn’t labelled whatever it was between them, moving through it as it happened because– that was the more mature thing, but a small part of Peter wondered if it was because she didn’t believe in him. MJ liked him, that much he was sure of, but maybe he lacked the maturity she was looking for, maybe he had given her some kind of reason to think that he couldn’t quite commit the way she needed.
He was here to prove her wrong, to prove to everyone that he was willing to put in the work for the long haul.
“No, that’s not what I’m–”
There is a lot that can be said about Peter. His impulsivity is likely up there with the most frequently discussed because that typically goes hand-in-hand with his activity as Spider-Man which is the other most discussed aspect of his personality. Which is probably why he doesn’t let MJ finish her sentence, instead reaching around her to open the door.
The universe, of course, repays him for his brief dabble into confidence and certainty, rewarding him with the sight of Johnny Storm aka, The Human Torch, aka, member of the Fantastic Four, aka one of New York’s most irritating and arrogant heroes who’d ever worked with Spider-Man.
For a brief second, Peter thinks that his identity has gotten out. He wonders if Reed, with all his big brains and access to billion dollar technology, has gotten bored and decided Spider-Man should be the target of his interest, and they’ve sent Johnny as the messenger. If that were the case then he’d had solid proof that they must actually hate him.
He’s halfway through his mental spiral when Johnny cheers and surges forward, pulling MJ free of Peter’s grip and into a tight hug that she laughs through. The proximity fills Peter’s nostrils with the acrid smell of smoke.
“Good to see you, Emmy.” Johnny grins, bright and blinding. “Would say that I can’t believe you’ve dragged me this far out to Queens, but then I look at’cha and know the journey was more than worth the view.”
“I didn’t drag you anywhere. You overheard me talking about this and demanded an invite.”
“I don’t demand anything.” Johnny says primly, pulling back and looking directly at Peter. Fear grips him once more when a knowing look takes over Johnny’s face. “This must be Petey! You the shutterbug that’s charmed my girl here?”
“Your girl?” Peter echoes, pausing. “My name’s Peter.”
“It’s just a joke, Petey. Now, Em, who’s this fella you’re hiding behind ya?”
“Oh! I’m Ned.”
“Hi Ned.” Johnny greets, fingers waggling with another warm smile. The Human Torch is in his home, flirting with his best friend.
“What the fuck?!” Peter breathes, his head following as Johnny Storm, superhero, celebrity and all around pain in the ass, enters their home and breeze through to the dining room with a charmed Ned trailing after him.
“What the fuck?!” He repeats, head rubberbanding back to MJ who’s smile is small but clearly excited, dimples starting to press into her cheeks in a way that has his stomach doing weirder things than Johnny Storm’s appearance is doing to his head. “You know Johnny Storm?!”
MJ shrugs. “We met doing meals on wheels, I provided the meals, he provided the wheels.”
Peter wouldn’t say he’s a jealous man, which is why his mouth stretches into a very reasonably sized, very sane looking smile showing just the right amount of teeth.
“Great.” He grinds out. Johnny Storm gets to be a beloved hero. The Fantastic Four don’t get entire papers discrediting all the work they do. Johnny Storm gets brand deals. Johnny Storm gets cards which he presumably has a legal license to drive and hasn’t failed his test three times over. Johnny Storm gets to be the wheels to his girlfriend’s meals– fuck. Partner. Fuck. No.
Whatever they were.
Peter blames Johnny Storm.
“Are you okay?” MJ says, hand reaching forward to touch his bicep. “I was trying to give you a heads up. He doesn’t know anything, but we just–”
Never got a chance to talk.
Because they’re not those kind of people. Since Gwen had mentioned how she and Caleb never fought, never had conversations about ‘petty’ things, choosing to only discuss art and culture and whatever the fuck, Peter have taken that a little bit too seriously.
Every time they’d broached something that might turn into an argument– which they do a lot because Peter comes home late or leaves his suit on the ground, or MJ’s too busy between her auditions and her volunteer work to find time for a postponed date– they’ve just dodged the issue, moved on or been distracted.
Their evasion had felt like growth.
Funny how Peter now felt like he was stumbling down several stairs.
“Peachy!” Peter says before spinning on his heel and marching directly into the kitchen, yanking the oven door open and screaming directly at the chicken.
Standing up straight and brushing himself off, he exhales. That felt like a more rational use of their oven.
They were definitely this kind of people.
“Does that add flavour… or?”
“Shut up, Harry.”
“Okay…” He replies. The cup is now drained of it’s wine. The bottle on the counter half gone. “Is MJ’s plus on Johnny Storm?”
“Shut up, Harry.”
Dinner is a disaster.
“Come on, Petey. Tell me how you met my girl.”
“It’s Peter.”
“Whatever.”
“I used to call Gemma my girl.” Caleb says, his eyes far away. “Isn’t so strange that possessions are never truly ours. They return to where they once came, and we’re only a part of their journey. We’re a part of each other’s journey. This night isn’t the peak but the beginning!”
Johnny opens his mouth, closes it.
Peter can’t help himself. “Oh wow. Fantastic attempt at a fly trap there, Storm.”
“Excuse me?”
Caleb’s high reaches its peak around the same time as Peter’s fake patience frays, leading to a poorly mediated argument with Johnny Storm who cannot fathom why MJ’s boyfriend has such a grudge against him. Harry’s drunken stupor from the wine makes him lose any tact and has him whisper-yelling to Gwen that her boyfriend is high and was caught calling his ex-wife in the bathroom.
MJ manages to rip Peter away from his seat before the argument can grow too heated.
The only person enjoying himself is Ned who has discovered that he likes Cod liver pate and evening entertainment.
–
As soon as they’re alone in the hall, MJ turns on Peter. Frustration and confusion are written across her face, tugging at the pit in his stomach.
“What the hell is going on with you? I know you were a little blind-sided by this but you’re acting like you don’t regularly work with the guy. You’re acting like Flash. I feel like I’m watching two men in a pissing contest.” She tells him, indignant. Some of her hair has slipped down from the tight, slick back bun she’d been wearing all evening. If he weren’t so fired up – probably the wrong word for the situation – he might try and make a move using it.
“I was blind-sided. I was trying to keep this,” Peter gestures broadly between them. “And that.” His arm waves towards the dining room and all it’s Johnny, "Separated! I thought that would be easier on us.”
“I never asked you to do–”
Now he was on a roll, Peter can’t stop himself. The words start spilling out uninterrupted, like every single conversation they haven’t had in the last few weeks is compiling into one. “Where did you even meet him?! You hate superheroes! You have literally written think pieces on the Avengers before. The four are basically the same thing with a little less capital investment, you know. They have merchandise. Legal merchandise!”
“I don’t hate superheroes, I’m dating you.”
“Then why’d you bring him?!”
“You told me it was fine!”
“I didn’t know it was Johnny though!”
“You wouldn’t let me get a word in. I feel like everytime we’ve tried to talk recently, it’s circled round to us ‘not needing to talk’ without us saying a fucking word.”
“Yeah. Well. I was trying to be mature.”
“Great fucking job right now!”
They storm back to the table, neither looking much at each other. It’s just in time for a teary and delirious Gwen to bring the main to the table. She bestows the honour of carving the chicken to Caleb who brandishes the knife like a sword, propping one leg on the table to slice through it.
The windows are steamed up, turning opaque making it feel as though the walls are closing in around them. With how thick the tension in the air is, Peter can hardly breathe and is itching to get out of his seat once more.
Caleb makes the first slice right through the breast.The meat falls apart and–
The chicken is raw.
Harry immediately starts to giggle. His laughter gets Ned to join in. Gwen slumps in her seat, defeated as she watches Caleb pick up the meat in pure, elated fascination.
Johnny smirks, “Fine… Fine. I’ll bust out my party trick. Emmy, I would have preferred a heads up on this. I’m meant to be off the clock.”
Peter shoots up from his seat and storms out of the room. He doesn’t hear the footsteps that follow him upstairs and doesn’t register a shadow behind him until the bed dips next to him a second after he sits down.
“I hate him.” Peter tells MJ forlorn. “I— really don’t like the guy, he’s annoying and stuck up, and a pest, and irritating and– I really wish he wasn’t downstairs right now because he made this evening suck.”
MJ hums. “This evening sucked before Johnny got here.”
“Yeah, but… We were on the same page about why it sucked. We were laughing about it. It was a good night.”
“You mean when Gwen was calling us ‘immature’? That’s when it was good? When we were actually being ourselves.”
Peter immediately sees what she’s trying to say and falls back, laying flat on the bed. His head turns to look at her as she lays down next to him. This time he reaches over and tucks one of those stray hairs away from her face. The smallest smile pulls at the edges of her lips.
“What are we doing, Pete?”
He sighs heavily. “Caleb and Gwen don’t fight. We do. A lot–”
“We have intense arguments.”
“Yeah.” He agrees. “And we don’t have a label for anything. We’re just– us. And, I don’t know. I think with all this shit going on, I got in my head about it. That we weren’t together, that I was too much and not enough, that– there was room for improvement and it might break us if we didn’t fix it.”
MJ goes quiet. In the few minutes of silence as she thinks, her tongue darts out to wet her lips twice. Peter rolls on to his side to watch her more easily. This is his favourite part of whatever they are, and it feels so bittersweet to have it when they’re fighting. Or whatever the fuck they’re doing.
“There is room for improvement.” MJ agrees eventually. “But it’s not going to come in the form of Caleb and Gwen, considering their lack of arguing led to this. This night was a disaster because Gwen tried to be something she wasn’t, and so did you. I like asshole, annoying Peter. He’s my favourite, and yeah, we argue a lot, but I know where I stand with you. I don’t want someone who blindly nods along with what I say.” He nods, hope blooming in his chest. “I live with you, you absolute doofus. We’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“That isn’t… juvenile?”
“You swing around in tights, and I’m unemployed like 60% of the time. We’re juvenile. Also, it’s just a fucking label. I’m sick of all this, this is when you should call it this, and this text message is an indication of this, and situationship, relationship bullshit.” She huffs, her voice getting incriminately louder with every word she says. For a moment, her eyes are drawn away from him and towards the ceiling, her rant taking her mind completely away from the conversation. Peter’s brows raise in surprise.
“Whoaa… That came… from deep within.”
MJ exhales. “I have a lot of opinions.”
Peter smiles, soft as he watches her. She does have a lot of opinions. Sometimes the strongest of them are directed towards him, and they shout about it. If he lets himself step back, pause on his own reactions, he realises it’s what he loves about her.
Oh.
“Is now a bad time to tell you I love you?”
Peter watches as her cheeks darken, her eyes jump from the ceiling back to his studying him carefully. He knows well enough by now that this is a test. MJ leaves people waiting, like to give them an opportunity to rat themselves out as they’re left with the uncomfortable, awkward silence, but Peter holds firm. It’s true. He loves her.
“Petey.” She tells him with a broadening grin as he tries to fight off a grimace at the nickname. He needs that to not stick past tonight. “It might be the worst time possible. Our friend is having a terrible time downstairs, we should really go comfort her and kick her boyfriend out of this house, you hate my friend so we’re gonna have to kick him out too, and the kitchen is a mess. It’s hardly romantic, and we don’t have the time to follow through on it.”
He nods slowly, squirting as he waits for the rest to come. She leans over, presses her lips to his in a careful and gentle kiss. Peter lets it wash over him, his hand resting on her hip and trying his luck at deepening it. No dice.
She pulls back, but still remains pressed to his side so he counts that as a win. “So it’s a damn good thing I love you too because anyone else would hate that admission.”