Archive of Our Own

Michelle Jones’ new roommate was…weird.

Well, what she knew of him anyway, which wasn’t much to be fair. And yet still–so weird.

Originally, MJ was supposed to room with Betty, a bubbly blonde she’d partnered up with for Chemistry lab their freshman year of MIT. Betty possessed a knack for exploding things that scientifically should be impossible to explode; naturally, MJ loved her. They’d been attached at the hip ever since, holed up in a dilapidated brownstone so far off campus it took three subway transfers to get to most of their classes. But it had rooftop access that they used to plant a tiny garden of tomatoes, basil, and daisies (“Because they’re cute!” Betty had crowed at the garden outlet), and it quickly became their home.

Until Betty went to that frat party and had been swept up in a whirlwind romance of grape jungle juice, Tame Impala remixes, and a singular mind-blowing makeout session on a sticky, twenty-year-old couch that lasted so long Betty couldn’t even remember what the definition of time was. When their lease ended the July before senior year, Betty tearfully grabbed MJ by both hands and confessed that she was moving in with timeless frat boy Ned so that they could make out on their own couch for as long as they wanted, whenever they wanted.

“But don’t worry,” Betty sobbed, yanking MJ into a hug that knocked the wind out of her. “I’m not abandoning you entirely. Ned has a friend–”

“No,” MJ whined. “Please, Betty, please tell me you didn’t. I’ll just find a new place.”

“You love this place, though! I don’t want you to lose it just because of me. Who will take care of our garden?”

“It’s your garden.”

“It’s our child, MJ.”

So MJ stayed; Betty moved out. A week later, timeless frat boy Ned’s friend moved in. He was two inches shorter than MJ but broad enough to fill out the thin cotton of his Star Wars t-shirt, and carried a mop of curly hair wayward enough to rival MJ’s own flopped over wide, golden retriever eyes. While she squinted assessingly at him, he just smiled sweetly, the upturn of one side of his mouth up poking into a tiny, perky dimple. Shifting the single box in his arms so that he could free up a hand, he thrust it out to her.

“Hi,” he said. His grip was firmer than she’d expected when she took it. “Peter Parker. Thanks for letting me move in.”

“MJ,” she returned, narrowing her eyes even further. He wasn’t exactly the type of person she’d been expecting from the one time she’d met Ned. “Are you sure you’re cool with this? Living with a stranger? I could be a serial killer.”

He huffed a laugh. “A serial killer? Friends with Betty?”

“Maybe she’s my beard.”

Peter shook his head, but his smile seemed more natural now, settling in deeply on both sides. “Ned mentioned you have rooftop access?”

“Uh, yeah.” MJ twisted, pointing to the door at the far end of their shoebox of a living room. The door used to be a lovely shade of robin-egg blue; over the years, sunlight had bleached it nearly gray, and all the edges had begun to peel. “Right there.”

“Cool. Then this is perfect.”

With that, Peter walked into Betty’s–now his–bedroom and shut the door.

MJ really didn’t see him in the weeks that followed. The semester kicked off again, and with it being her final year, MJ was buried under not just the usual classload but an internship with her Physics professor and applications to graduate school. She often left before the sun completely finished its rise and didn’t come back home until it’d already completely set. Occasionally, she’d hear Peter rustling about in the kitchen, pattering to their shared bathroom, and blaring music in his room. (He was into indie music–not something MJ could particularly get into, but after hearing one specific song repeat five times, her foot started to tap, and by the end of the night, she’d reluctantly added it to her Spotify.) All of it was normal, roommate-who-isn’t-your-friend business. The only weird thing MJ had noticed about him so far is that, pretty frequently, while she was fifty pages deep into her textbook, she’d hear Peter stomp across all the living room’s squeakiest floorboards, throw open the rooftop door, and disappear. For, like, literally hours. Sometimes she wouldn’t even hear him come back down, already fast asleep beneath her duvet before he managed to.

Normally, MJ wouldn’t care–not her business. She had plenty of other things to worry about. But five weeks into the semester, Peter made it her business. She was at the stove, putting the finishing touches (dehydrated basil–God, she truly was a chef) on the canned sauce of her spaghetti when Peter’s door whipped open. He was dressed casually in a black tee and some loose joggers, a backpack slung over his shoulder. Startled, MJ jumped back into the stove, nearly bumping her plate to the floor.

“Hey,” she started. “Everything–”

Racing by, Peter shouted, “Gotta go need some study time alone with roof bye!”

His ratty Converse stumbled for a second over a crinkle in their stained throw rug, but he managed to catch himself on the edge of the roof access door before throwing himself inside. A moment later, the ceiling rattled once, twice, three times, and then all was still.

“What the fuck?” she mouthed to her pasta.

While MJ had been planning on asking Peter if he was okay, his dramatic entrance and exit clearly answered that no, he very much was not. Maybe he had a really important test coming up? And just really needed to be alone? MJ could kind of understand that. Personally, she was a bigger fan of the ambient noises that cafes and libraries provided, but who was she to yuck someone’s yum? Maybe the roof was a sleeper agent of a fantastic study place? He was certainly up there often enough.

Thinking it would be roommatey and gosh, possibly even nice, MJ pulled a new bowl out of the cabinet, separated half of her meal into it, and sprinkled a generous helping of parmesan cheese on top. When she got lost in the study zone, she often forgot to eat, so she’d just leave this up there with him and let him munch whenever he felt like it. Maybe that’d help lighten his stress a little bit. It helped Betty in the past, anyway.

Humming that stupid song Peter kept on repeat, MJ skipped up the steps to the roof, juggling the piping hot bowl between her hands. An explanation was already slipping past her lips when she nudged open the door, but the words froze in the humid air as she surveyed the completely barren roof.

“Peter?” she called out. Only the honks of traffic below and a siren far, far off in the distance answered her.

Peter wasn’t there. There were just her daisies bowing in the wind and the overturned, broken pot she’d forgotten to fix after the storm last Tuesday and–wait, was that Peter’s backpack?

Setting the steaming pasta on the floor, MJ ripped open the backpack. Inside, there was nothing but the set of clothes that Peter had been wearing while he had ripped through the kitchen literally no more than five minutes ago. She double checked all ten pockets, just to be sure.

What the fuck?

After being thoroughly freaked out, MJ had zipped up the backpack and set it as exactly back as she could, took her pasta back to the kitchen, and waited. After an hour and two empty bowls of spaghetti had been washed and tucked away on the drying rack, Peter still hadn’t returned. So she grabbed her fuzziest blanket from her room and made camp on the couch, flicking on Love Island reruns. MJ was determined to confront weirdo-Parker as soon as he came back home, even if reality TV melted her brain in the process.

Except, well, the thing is, MJ had been super busy, and, obviously, really tired. She only made it through one episode before she felt her eyes start to slip. And there were only so many times that slapping your cheeks red could actually keep you up before exhaustion took over. The last thing she remembered was a screaming match over a sneaky hideaway kiss, and then she was waking up to a bird warbling with its whole chest on the windowsill.

MJ shot up, blanket dropping from its snug wrap around her shoulders to puddle around her waist, and instinctually felt for the glasses that had been on her face earlier. As fingers met the bare bridge of her nose, she spotted them folded neatly on the coffee table. She certainly didn’t remember doing that.

When she jammed them on her face, she could finally see far enough across the apartment to spy Peter’s closed door. He’d left it wide open in his rush yesterday. So he must’ve come home after–whatever possibly nude task he’d been doing and–just, like, tucked in a fully conked out MJ? What kind of game was that?

Just then, her eyes landed on the stove’s clock, which helpfully blared in a neon green that it was a full thirty minutes after when she was supposed to have left to make it to her meeting with Professor Lowell.

“Fuck!” she shouted, leaping off the couch.

Peter Shenangigans–Penanigans?--would just have to wait.

When she came home from her long day of grovellingly doing anything Professor Lowell asked and more in an effort to not be fired on the spot and wash her entire future down the drain, Peter was sitting at the kitchen table. He munched on a slice of pizza from the extra large, extra greasy box sitting in front of him, and grinned at her around the bite.

“Hey MJ,” he said. “It must be my lucky day! I almost never see you. We must have different schedules. Feel free to take some pizza.”

And just like that, he went back to gobbling while using his elbow to scroll grease-free on the phone lying face-up on the table. Oh my God–he was surfing the Am I The Asshole page of Reddit. Who does that?

Glaring at him, she let her bag melt off her shoulder to the floor, scraped out the chair opposite him, and grabbed a slice of pizza. It was pepperoni. Ugh. She picked them off.

Peter choked when she saw her dissection process.

“What are you doing?” he crowed. “That’s the best part!”

She stopped and returned to glaring at him. “I guess I could give mine to you.”

Leaning forward, he made grabby hands at her slice; she pulled it just out of reach.

“But first,” she continued, “riddle me something, Parker.”

He laughed, warm eyes crinkling. “Okay, sure. What?”

“Where’d you go yesterday?”

She saw it. It was quick, over as soon as it started, but she caught it. The slight freeze, chest sunken, shoulders raised, pupils blown. But then he was laughing again.

“What do you mean? You saw me go to the roof.”

“Yeah,” MJ drawled. “I did. And then I went to the roof, too, and guess who wasn’t there?”

He frowned. “You followed me?”

"Don't you dare dodge the question." She waved the pizza slice around like a sword. "Where were you, and were you there in the nude or not, Peter Parker?"

He choked. "Why do you think I was naked?"

"I'm asking the questions here!"

"Oh my god, you snooped through my backpack, didn't you?"

"You know, the more you avoid answering, the more I'm sure you really are a rogue exhibitionist, and I'll have to murder Ned and Betty for shacking you up with me."

"There’s no need to murder Ned," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. "I just went to the gym, is all."

She just continued wielding her pizza and glare, cocking an eyebrow.

"From the roof? How stupid do you think I am?"

"You're not stupid," he said quickly. "But maybe you've never noticed that there's a fire escape on the roof? It leads all the way down to the sidewalk. I'm afraid of elevators, so I like to climb down it if I'm already stressed."

She genuinely cannot say whether or not this supposed fire escape actually exists. It was probably real, though; there probably needed to be an escape if something did explode in this apartment, and oh God, she really should have known that while living with Betty.

"Fine, let's say that's real." She pointedly chose to ignore Peter's scoff. "Then why were your clothes left behind?"

He shook his head. "They're just extras. I have, like, a billion of the same shirts and pants to work out in. I left a spare on the roof in case I got too sweaty."

"What?"

Glancing away, Peter scratched a spot on his cheek. "In case you were still up."

MJ studied the fake wood grain pattern on the table, calculations whirring in her brain. The pizza drooped. "In case--wait. No way you were embarrassed to walk past me all sweaty."

"I've never lived with a girl before," he shrugged, shoulders all the way up to the cherry red tips of his ears.

"Oh my God, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life."

Groaning, he shoved his face into his hands.

"So stupid," she continued, "that I actually believe it."

His fingers spread, two golden retriever eyes sparkling out at her. "Sorry."

Sighing, MJ took out a second slice of pizza, carefully transplanted all five of her pepperonis onto it, and offered it to Peter. He took it with a smile and immediately tore into it; MJ nibbled on her pepperoni-free one.

"Just try not to be stupid again from here on out. You're a chill roommate. But that is, like, real loser behavior."

Peter threw his head back with an endless peel of laughter, bits of unchewed pizza obvious between his teeth. With a gag, MJ stole a second slice of pizza and took off to her room.

"I'm throwing out the pepperoni on this one out of pure spite. Chew with your damn mouth closed!"

While MJ truly did decide to believe Peter about his awkward (and also sort of endearing, not that she would admit that to anyone, even at gunpoint) story about being embarrassed to see her after the gym in all his sweaty glory, Peter just kept doing weird shit. So it wasn't really her fault when she started to get suspicious again.

First on the list was when he came home from the gym with a black eye. Just turning around with a fresh, piping hot cup of tea, he literally jump-scared her into spilling the genmaicha down the entire front of her shirt. MJ yelped, rushing to use the sink’s spray nozzle to soothe the burn; simultaneously, Peter grabbed a dishtowel and, shouting, "MJ, are you okay?" dove for the stain. At the same second, they both paused, staring down at Peter's hand, which had just been vigorously scrubbing her breast.

MJ reared her hand back and nearly gave that black eye a twin.

Later, when she'd cleaned herself up properly--without Peter's help, mind you--and their blushes had calmed down enough for them to speak somewhat coherently, Peter claimed that he'd earned the bruise by defending a girl from a creep at the gym. And while that was somewhat hard to believe considering the last couple minutes when Peter himself just creeped on her, she guessed she could see him having a stupid loser sense of a hero complex. So she let it go.

Then there was the coffee shop incident. MJ came home from an eighteen-hour day that had ended in a failed experiment and an incensed Professor Lowell tossing her out of the lab to find Peter sitting upside down on the coach, a tattered copy of “The Science Delusion” splayed over his face, shirt ridden up, bare feet lazily tapping to a beat only he could hear. Slinking over, she announced her presence by tickling the sliver of side he had exposed, dodging the kick of his foot with the reflexes of someone who’d grown up with a sister. Peter unsheathed his face and popped out an ear-bud, eyes bleary but wide.

“MJ,” he sighed. “Scared the shit out of me.”

“Let’s get coffee,” she said, not even bothering to wait for him as she turned to leave the apartment again.

While they walked the two blocks to MJ’s favorite cafe, Peter prattled on about the reading he was trudging through for his rhetoric class, and MJ played a game with herself where she tried not to step on any of the old gum melted into the sidewalk. Occasionally, she swerved too hard and brushed arms with Peter; his skin was softer than she’d imagined. Warmer, too.

“It’s your own fault for waiting until senior year to do a gen ed class,” MJ scolded when he was done complaining. “Everyone else got this out of the way years ago.”

“I didn’t want to do it then,” he whined, holding open the tinkling door to All Perked Up for her to duck inside. “There were so many cool science classes to take.”

MJ got in line behind a couple wrapped around each other like a Twizzler. “You’re doing Chemistry, right?”

Peter nodded, head tilted up to the menu. “And you’re Physics.”

“I am.”

MJ rocked back and forth, heel to toe, just watching Peter as he looked for something that called to him. He had a freckle just to the right of his mouth, just a pinprick of one. It wriggled when he twisted his mouth to the side in indecision.

Peter looked back to her, and MJ pretended to be studying a scuff on the toe of her patent flats.

“Is the hot chocolate good here?” he asked.

She twined her arms together behind her back and shrugged. “Sure, but not if you want to stay awake long enough to finish that book report, loser.”

He groaned. “How did I forget about that already?”

When they got to the register, Peter let MJ order for both of them, and then nudged MJ over with his hip and tapped his card against the machine before she could get so much as a grumbled, “Hey,” out. They stepped aside to wait for their drinks at the end of the counter, and Peter pocketed his wallet.

“Pay me back by grabbing my drink for me?” he asked. “I gotta run to the bathroom real quick.”

Nodding, MJ pointed out the corner where the restroom was; as Petter passed by her, he brushed a hand from one shoulder blade to the other. A tingle sprinkled across the center of her back, and she wiggled, trying to itch it while studying the way several wayward curls tickled the nape of Peter’s neck.

Hmph. Weirdo.

MJ tugged out her phone out to kill time. Betty had been texting her incessantly all week, begging for MJ to go to dinner with her and Ned. MJ didn’t dislike timeless frat boy Ned, but the couple together were genuinely too nauseating to stomach on their best days, so she wouldn’t exactly call a dinner with them her ideal way to spend time. But it was Betty, so, with a long-suffering sigh, MJ texted back a couple of dates that worked for her stupidly full schedule.

“Two coffees for Peter,” the barista called, setting two to-go cups on the counter.

Pocketing her phone, MJ snagged them up and cozied up at a nearby table to wait for Peter. He had to be out soon.

But the minutes kept ticking by and MJ was becoming irritated and restless and half her coffee was gone and she really needed to get back to the apartment to start brainstorming how to fix the disaster of her experiment and seriously, where was Parker?

Frowning, MJ took her phone back out to text him when she saw he’d already sent one to her ten minutes earlier, just after she’d grabbed the coffees.

Weird Loser (roommate): something came up! sorry! dont wait up

Was he fucking serious? What could possibly come up in the bathroom that was so pressing he couldn’t even pop over to speak to her first? And no apostrophe between the contraction? What, was he twelve?

MJ knocked back the rest of her lukewarm coffee and tossed Peter’s in the trash. Whatever. She had an experiment to fix and a career to secure.

It was the most recent incident, though, that really, truly made MJ want to quit speaking to Peter altogether and just huddle into her room for all eternity like an ancient tortoise until she finally finished this fuck ass thesis and could graduate and move out and never have to deal with Mystery Parker ever again.

Here’s the thing: in case it wasn’t clear, MJ wasn’t exactly the most popular person around. She had Betty. She had her mom and younger sister tucked away in a shoebox apartment in Queens that she tried to visit whenever she wasn’t neck-deep in work. And that was it, and it was okay. MJ had never wanted for more. Not since the day MJ was pulled out of lunch at 12:18pm on a random Tuesday on one of the coldest days of the year and was brought to the principal’s office where her mom wailed and clung to her like MJ was the sole life raft in the abyss of a vengeful sea. There, MJ had been told that her dad, who never went anywhere but to clock in for his eighteen-plus-hour shifts at the hospital and back home to his girls, had decided to stop at a bakery on the way home to pick up a half-dozen crullers those girls loved so much, and was mugged, shot, and killed in the alley just a block away from their front steps. She realized then and there that the more people she had, the more opportunities she had to feel as she had in that moment–like the entire world had wrenched open and swallowed her whole and nothing–nothing–would be able to pull her back out.

So she had her three people, and she loved them dearly, and that was all she needed to be okay. If Betty hadn’t essentially forced Peter into her apartment, she would have rented a studio somewhere else and been alone but would have been fine.

Two things can be true at once, though. So, here’s the other thing:

It had been nice coming home to Peter all these months as the blistering summer waned away to stiff breezes and drifting leaves. Ever since the coffee shop, he’d been spending a lot more time occupying the empty spaces in her days. They’d bump elbows in their dinky kitchen while trying to move around each other making breakfast; Peter relocated his speaker to the kitchen table and let MJ hook her phone up to it to play something decent for once while he fiddled with a new lego set; whenever one of them got takeout, they’d be sure to text the other for their order and then binge the food together on the roof while the sun set; once, Peter even texted her a meme (it was stupid and did not make her chuckle loud enough to draw a glare from Professor Lowell).

Most recently, he took to studying in the living room, spreading sheafs of paper out on the table, hunching cross-legged over them with a hand fisted in his curls, textbooks strewn around in a seance to the deity of academia. Although Physics had her heart, MJ had aced every single one of her Chem classes, and she often needed a bit of a brain break from slamming her head against the walls of her shitty data, and okay, maybe her black coal of a heart had started chipping away with all the Penanigans she’d incidentally been enduring lately. So sue her if she started to wander out, huddle beside him until their knees nudged, and help him problem-solve some of his equations.

Around one or two in the morning, Peter would start to wane, and MJ would pile the throw blanket Betty’d knitted sophomore year around their shoulders and turn on Love Island. At first, all Peter did was munch on sour gummy worms and roll his eyes at the screen, but MJ knew it was just because he’d missed all the lore of the first couple episodes of the season–he didn’t know the cast like she did. So she started a running commentary behind every pulled chat–stealing a couple gummies as recompense because she never worked for free, thank you very much–and educated him on all the important history for every single islander and the strings that attached them all. She knew she’d won him over during their fourth watch party when Peter threw his entire packet of gummies at the screen, worms exploding out and scattering into limp shrapnel around the TV stand.

“What are you doing, you absolute mug?” Peter shouted at the couple currently locking lips. “You know the terrace isn’t private! Chloe is going to see!”

MJ groaned. “He’s such a fucking idiot. Just thinking with his dick, as usual.”

It became a not uncommon accident for them to fall asleep like that, MJ with her head pillowed on Peter’s shoulder, Peter with his legs sprawled amongst papers and pencils and books under the coffee table, blanket draped over their laps. In the morning, they’d wake and stretch and, unspoken, one of them would move to the stove to whip up breakfast while the other showered; after they ate together, they’d swap, the other going to shower while dishes were washed and left on the rack to dry.

And this little ritual that they formed, as days rolled into weeks rolled into a brand new month, burrowed into an infinitesimal space in MJ’s heart and started to crack it wide open. Any time she heard through their paper-thin walls that Peter was setting up shop in the living room, her chest would tighten and she’d snap to attention like a literal fucking dog, ears perked and tilted. With bated breath, she’d watch the clock and force herself to wait five, ten, fifteen minutes–then, slow as molasses, save her work, close her computer, fix her hair, clear her throat, take a deep breath, step over to the door, swing the door open and–

“Whatcha got tonight, loser? I’m going to actually disintegrate if I look at my computer a second longer.”

Every time–every fucking time–he’d look up at her with a grin that stretched so broad, lit up so much of his face, that she genuinely needed sunglasses, and would just say, “MJ!” As if her name alone was a hymn, a gospel, a prayer, all revealed, answered, and come true.

She didn’t know what to do with it. She’d not gotten this close to somebody in four years, and with Betty, all she had to do was show up to class and the perky blond would jump the distance for her, poking, prodding, intruding before blowing something up again and distracting MJ so much that she hadn’t even realized she’d already shown Betty all her cards until it was too late.

Peter, though, never pried. Never poked. Never prodded. Never intruded. He took what she gave and met her where she was at and seemed perfectly comfortable with that arrangement. MJ was too, she thought. Of course she was. It was a very good ritual.

One night, as they were drifting off to an islander’s nasally confessional, MJ already nestled into the warm crook of Peter’s neck, he whispered, “Can I ask you for a favor?”

“Maybe,” she whispered back, because she suspected that her usual answer of ‘no’ would make him pull back, even if she didn’t really mean it.

Always taking–never asking.

He drooped against her, cheek to cheek; she could feel the faint outline of fresh stubble tickling the arch of her ear. Beneath the blanket, his hand found hers, unfurling each finger until their hands laid flush together in holy palmer’s kiss.

“Tomorrow. It’s the anniversary of my aunt’s death. Ned normally goes with me, but Betty’s parents are in town. He offered to still go, but I really want things to work between them, so–”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

She curled her fingers around his palm, squeezing tight. “Mm.”

Peter clutches back, just as tight; his cheek is still pressed against hers when she finally falls asleep.

So the next morning, they went. They bundled up in scarves and thick jumpers to ward themselves from the crisp chill lingering through the bright sunshine of the day and stopped first at a bodega to pick up a bouquet of carnations. MJ bought her own, too, and felt Peter’s smile on the nape of her neck as she fiddled with the credit card reader. Together, they sprinted down the subway stairs three at a time and shoved their way through the closing doors of their train, ignoring the shouts of the NYPD officer lingering by the tracks. Peter pushed MJ into the last remaining seat as the car lurched into motion, scooped up her bouquet into the arm already cradling his own, and then planted himself in front of her, not even bothering to hold onto one of the handlebars swaying above him.

MJ cocked a brow. “All that gym rat business must’ve given you a core of steel.”

“Hm?”

“I would have flown halfway across the car if I wasn’t holding onto something.”

“Oh!” Spine straightening, Peter snagged one of the bars. He laughed awkwardly, all squeaky and pitchy. “I guess so. Maybe, yeah, all the, uh, crunches that I do.”

MJ stared at him, studied the way his eyes flitted all about the space yet never landed even for a second on hers, glanced at his grip on the bar, which still wasn’t tight enough to actually do anything when their first stop would come up any second now.

“Right,” she drawled. “The crunches.”

Overall, their trip took longer than she’d been expecting. Peter’s aunt’s grave was in a cemetery on the outskirts of the city, nearly encroaching upon the suburbs, so they had to ride the train to the very last stop and then still walk ten more minutes until they were finally there. It was beautiful, as far as a cemetery could be. Giant oak trees hailed over their marble markers with blessings of drifting leaves as the sun streamed high overhead and mottled the dry, crunchy grass with stained glass shadows. This far out, the traffic of the city was still audible, but just a distant hum, like a radio left on low. May Parker’s grave was a simple stone with just her name, “Loving Aunt”, and the span of her sixty short years scrawled across the front. There was already a bouquet at the foot of it, long gone dead and brittle, and Peter traded it out with his new one before handing MJ the one she bought.

He smiled. “Want to give it to her?”

Nodding, MJ took her bouquet and gently set it beside Peter’s. “She was pretty young. What happened?”

“An accident.” His smile from earlier was still painted on, but his voice was rough, warbly around the edges. He cleared his throat. “It was my fault.”

MJ stared at him, brows knitted, hand wound tight in the end of her scarf. “Peter, I’m sure–”

Waving a hand, he said, “It’s okay. It was years ago, and I’ve come to terms with it. Basically.” He let out a long, strained breath. “But, yeah. There’s, uh, not a day goes by that I don’t replay what happened. Don’t think of the million things I could have done to have prevented it. Back then, it seemed like there was only one answer, but now–”

MJ watched him wet his chapped lips and swallow down his grief. Thousands of thoughts tumbled through her brain, memories of thirteen-year-old Michelle in a dress stupidly impractical for the weather in a middle-school lunch room escorted to the office by the frowning, wrinkled counselor whom she’d only met once before, her mother’s wails, the first thing she heard, before the door even had the chance to open–

And somehow what came out was, “Well, they do say hindsight is twenty-twenty, I guess.”

As soon as it popped out, she slapped a hand over her mouth, staring mortified at a wide-eyed, blinking Peter.

“That was so stupidly insensitive,” she said between fingers. “Please delete the last ten seconds from your memory. Pretend something supportive came out instead.”

But Peter, because he’s Peter, just threw his head back, corkscrew curls catching the sun and throwing it back gold, and laughed.

“MJ!” he groused. “That was such a stupid response.”

“I know,” she groaned. “I know, I know. I’m literally, like, so bad with this stuff, I’m sorry.”

“I just poured my heart out, and you–” he trailed off into another bout of giggles.

“I said I’m sorry, okay, stop rubbing it in.”

Peter reached across the chasm between them and linked his pinky around her own. The smile draped across his face seemed much more real now.

“You’re kinda right, though,” he said. “It is twenty-twenty. And I’ll never make the same mistake again. Never.”

MJ squeezed him with all the might that a pinky could manage.

Eventually, MJ stepped off to the side to let Peter speak with his Aunt May alone. She sunbathed in a swathe of afternoon light between two trees and watched him regale his aunt with stories she couldn’t hear but liked to pretend she could guess at by translating his hands flying through the air. When he finished, he kissed his fingers, pressed them against the marble, and faced MJ looking like ten pounds had lifted off his shoulders.

“I always miss talking to her,” he explained when he got closer. “I try to visit at least once a month, but still.”

“You’re better than me.” MJ heaved a huge sigh and squinted off into the distance. “I haven’t visited my dad’s grave in ages.”

Peter startled, breath catching. Then, he shook his head, wetted his chapped lips, and shoved his hands in the pocket of his hoodie.

“Your dad?” he clarified. “He’s, uh–”

MJ nodded, okay with saving him from having to say the quiet part out loud. “Middle-school. Mugged on the way home. I’ve come to terms with it. Basically.”

Peter’s lips twitched at her recall to his words from earlier, but then went right back to gazing at her with those too-wide, too-gleaming eyes, studying her like he knew exactly the way every wrinkle, crease, and freckle of hers had been formed. It tangled the threads of her heart around her ribcage and strangled her breath shy.

“Why don’t you visit him?” he whispered.

Dropping her gaze to the grass, she shrugged. “Don’t know what to say to him, I guess.” She kicked a twig and watched it roll away.

“I think that’s okay.”

MJ peeked up at him beneath her lashes. He was looking up at the sky, at an arrowhead flock of birds passing through with soft caws.

“What is?” she asked.

“Not visiting him. I mean, I visit May because I miss her, and if she was still here, this is what I’d be doing with her, just on her broken sofa with some fried rice instead. But there’s no right or wrong way to grieve, or to, you know, honor anyone. I’d be willing to bet you remember him and communicate with him in your own way.”

MJ had never thought about it like that, but suddenly, she was like a Lite Brite flickering to life one technicolor bulb at a time. She thought of the way she baked bread on the weekends when she was stressed and avoiding the Sunday scaries, the recipe an original from her dad, complete muscle memory after years of making it both with him and then alone; the way she’d smile when she’d tilt her head in just the right way in the mirror and suddenly catch the exact silhouette of her father’s nose and chin reflected onto hers; the sneaker collection her dad had started her on with a pair of vintage Air Force One’s on the last Christmas they’d spent together that she had continued to grow every single year since; the way she’d rub her brows while she sorted through a difficult problem, an exact mimic of her father’s own bad habit that she’d seen him do time and time again while pouring over bills or a book about a stupid battle she’d never care about; the way some minor inconvenience would happen like stubbing her toe against the bathroom door jam, and she’d cuss, look up to the sky, and say, really, dad?

And just like that, eight years of guilt she hadn’t realized she’d been holding onto, disappeared.

“Oh. Oh my god. MJ, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

MJ blinked up at Peter–realized he was blurry. Hand slowly drifting up, she found her cheek and, with a laugh, wiped her tears.

“I’m crying?” she asked, staring at her damp fingers.

“Uh…yes?”

“I never cry.”

“I’m so, so sorry. I was insensitive, I–”

Smiling down into his panicked face, she waved him off. “Thank you, actually. I think I needed to hear that. Wow.”

Tentatively, he returned her smile and reached forward–to do what? What had he been reaching for?

MJ would never know. At that instant, Peter’s phone pinged a notification sound she’d never heard before. Immediately, his face dropped, and he whipped out his phone, scanning it for just a second before starting to walk away backwards.

“MJ, I’m so sorry,” he said, shoving his phone away. “I have to go.”

She barked a laugh, mostly thinking he was joking. “What?”

His face was dead serious, though, a frown carved all the way down to his jaw, brows slanted so far they hooded his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

She stumbled a step forward, fingers twitching as though they wanted to reach towards him–she tangled them back up into her scarf instead.

“Peter,” she said. “You can’t just–are you serious?”

Hesitating just an extra second, he jogged back to her, took off his beanie, and stuffed it down over her wayward curls.

“Sorry. Please text me when you get home so I know you made it safe,” he said, tucking a coil tight under the brim.

And then Peter Parker turned around and sprinted out of the cemetery and out of her sight without a single other word of explanation.

MJ was left standing in front of his aunt’s grave, wind whipping icy cold against the tears still wet on her cheeks, feeling like someone had just punched the air out of her.

Because what do you mean that she’d just told him her dad had died right after seeing him talk to his dead aunt and then he had just left her alone in the fucking cemetery.

She called him five times. They all went to voicemail immediately. She went home. There was nothing else for her to do. By the time she got home to their empty apartment and buried herself beneath her sheets with her door firmly shut and locked, that heart of hers that had just begun to soften, had steeled itself right back up.

Peter came home long after the sun went down because of course he did. He knocked on her door–twice. Whispered her name when she didn’t answer. Knocked a third time as MJ pulled the duvet back over her head. And then finally, she heard his door click shut across the hall, and silence stung the apartment the rest of the night.

When she woke in the morning, Peter was already a beaming ray of sunshine, sitting at the kitchen table with a leaning tower of slightly-burnt, steaming pancakes; a cup of tea in her favorite mug waited next to a plate that had a single pancake on it with ‘sorry’ smeared across it in a nearly illegible Nutella font. MJ frowned at it.

“Please tell me your actual handwriting is more skilled than this,” she deadpanned.

His smile held strong. “Hi.”

“Hi. What is all of this?”

“An apology,” he said, ruffling the back of his hair. Finally, his obviously-plasterized grin crumbled apart, leaving Peter the man gazing balefully back at her. “I really, really, really cannot tell you enough how sorry I am, MJ.”

MJ genuinely should be indoctrinated in as a new patron saint of patience with how difficult it was to hold back her eye roll. Because, yeah, clearly he was sorry–he’d only apologized fifty million times at the cemetery, and now some more, and had gotten up early even though she knew he had a class he was skipping right now to make her this very breakfast. She knew all that. But what did it count for? She’d opened up, been the most vulnerable she’d been with a stranger in literal years, and yet it hadn’t been important enough for Peter to stay that day.

Sighing, she picked up the pancake with her bare hands and leaned against the counter with it, nibbling. It was pretty good, even if the edges were a tad too toasted.

“Where did you go?” she asked between bites.

He hesitated, eyes twitching away, lip worrying, and it made something in MJ lurch hot and violent and ugly because was he seriously going to lie to her? She had to bite down on her tongue to keep from doing something stupid like throwing the damn pancake at his stupid face.

“I had to, uh, help my uncle with something,” he said, and she swore she saw him flinch, as minute as it was. “An emergency. He probably wouldn’t want me to share too many details, sorry. But I promise it was important. I wouldn’t have left if it wasn’t, I swear.”

“Huh,” MJ said, taking another bite and chewing it slow. It tasted like cardboard now, and her stomach revolted when she swallowed it down. “Funny. Cause I could’ve swore Betty mentioned your uncle had also passed away when I told her where I was going with you yesterday. Like, years ago.”

Peter went pale as bone; at once, every single muscle collapsed in on itself inch by inch until he just hung his head over his hands where they gripped the edge of the table.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. The table creaked under the strain of his white-knuckled fingers.

“Yeah,” MJ laughed, dry as a desert, as she pushed off the counter. “Me too. It’s cool, Parker. I’ll live. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

Then she locked herself in the bathroom and forced herself to get ready like it was any normal day. It would be, too. She knew what it meant to get close to people, and Peter was just proving that right. She still had Betty and mom and Leeann. She didn’t need anyone else.

“MJ! Over here!”

Betty’s lilting soprano sang out across the whole restaurant, making it supremely easy to find her short, blonde friend waving and practically vibrating in her seat next to grinning, timeless frat boy Ned. As she wove through the tables of the dimly lit Italian restaurant, MJ couldn’t help but smile. She’d really missed her best friend. The girls tackled each other, rocking back and forth with matching giggles as soon as MJ was close enough.

“I missed you so much, girly,” Betty cooed, as sweet as the cloud of germanium perfume surrounding her.

“I guess I missed you, too.”

When they pulled back, MJ offered out a fist for Ned to bump, and then everyone settled back in, cloth menus propped open. They chatted mindlessly about classes and work while they perused the dishes–everything looked delicious, and MJ was starving after skipping lunch to help her labmate with an experiment. But as soon as their orders were placed, Betty slammed both hands down on the checkered tablecloth and leaned forward, curls swaying forward, eyes glinting.

“So tell us,” she said. MJ just cocked a brow. “You know, about Peter!”

“What’s there to say?” MJ asked, taking a long sip of her lemon water.

“Everything! Your messages about him are always so cryptic. What’s he like? Is he a good roommate? Better than me?”

Sighing, MJ set her water down and absently fiddled with balling up the straw wrapper she’d left on the table.

“Uh oh,” Betty continued in her silence, slumping back. “He’s not a slob, is he?”

MJ unconsciously glanced at Ned, mouth twisting into a grimace. Ned held his hands up in surrender.

“Oh, don’t censor yourself for me,” Ned laughed. “I’ve known him since daycare. There’s not a single bad habit of his that I don’t know and wouldn’t immediately agree with you about.”

The waitress showed up with a bread basket just then, setting it between them with a smile before puttering off.

“Okay, fine,” MJ conceded as she tore into a steaming roll. “He’s a fine roommate, seriously. Clean and quiet–well, mostly. But he’s just–”

She broke off as she chewed a bite of soft bread, trying to think of the most tactful way to put her thoughts together without offending Ned. But, well, he had said it was fine, and really, there was no other way to say it. He just really was–

“Weird,” MJ blurted.

Ned threw his head back, cackling, almost identical to the way Peter does. For the first time, MJ actually thought of them as the best friends that they were. Betty swatted at him with her napkin, bracelet stack clanking, shushing him before turning to MJ.

“What do you mean? Weird can mean a lot.”

“Like, he’s seriously just weird. He uses the fire escape to go to the gym, like, all the time, sometimes multiple times a day, and stays there for literally hours and then comes home with bruises and weird stories about defending women, like he lives in some sort of comic book, and once he literally just abandoned me in the middle of a coffee shop with his coffee that he paid for and still hasn’t really explained that, and trust me, I’ve tried grilling it out of him, but somehow he’s more stubborn than even I am.”

MJ paused, taking a deep breath and refusing to meet either of their gazes. She picked at a snag in the tablecloth.

“But, like, he’s really nice. And funny, I guess, sometimes. We were getting along and stuff, but something happened a couple days ago, and now everything’s weird again. I don’t know.”

Cocking her head to the side, she asked, “What happened?”

“You know how I told you about visiting his aunt’s grave with him because Ned?”

“Mhm.”

“He fucking left me there.”

Betty slammed her hands on the table, eyes popping out of their sockets. “What?”

“No joke,” MJ shook her head. “Got this text message, made up some stupid excuse, apologized a zillion times, and then just left me in the middle of a graveyard.”

Betty’s brows were pinched into a caricature of anger, pink mouth puckered into an adorable, doll-like pout of a frown. She was back to vibrating again, but this time in a way that promised a random combustion of something that was probably physically inflammable on a normal day.

Whirling to Ned, she seethed, “I trusted you with MJ’s new roommate! What do you have to say for yourself?”

Ned just nodded sagely and started buttering another roll.

“Sounds like Peter,” he said.

MJ threw up her hands. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

“You want honest advice?”

“Yes.”

Ned shoved his chunky glasses further up his nose. “Just accept it and question things as little as possible.”

“Babe!” Betty whined. “That’s horrible advice.”

“No, I’m serious. Peter is weird, you’re right. It’s also not going to change, and it’s really harmless, I promise. So just leave him be. Eventually, you’ll get used to it.”

“Betty’s right. That’s terrible advice.”

“Literally! He left her in a graveyard, Ned!”

Ned shrugged, chewing for a moment before brushing flour off his hands. “I really am sorry about Tuesday. That’s a little crazy, even for him. But he’s a really good guy, and I’d bet my life that the only reason he left was because of something incredibly important. He wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

“That’s the thing I can’t get over, though,” MJ said, snapping her fingers. “When I asked him what had happened, he lied to me about his very much not alive uncle having an emergency. Good guys don’t lie about their dead uncles, Ned, they just don’t.”

Groaning, Ned buried his face in his hands and mumbled something like, “Oh my fucking God, why is he like this?”

Betty tentatively rubbed his shoulder. “Babe?”

“Look,” Ned said, dropping his hands back down. “I know he is, like, the stupidest, weirdest guy in the entire universe, but I promise he’s a better person than literally anyone else I know. He thinks you’re really awesome, and funny, and pretty, and cool, and he doesn’t make friends very easily, so he’s probably just fucking everything up by trying too hard. Please try to hear him out the next time he does try to talk to you?”

MJ was stuck somewhere in the middle there, on one word in particular, actually, one that made her fingers go numb and fumble her straw.

“Peter thinks I’m pretty?”

Betty gasped, hands over mouth, and Ned buried his face again.

“I take it back, actually–I’m the stupidest guy in the entire universe.”

MJ and Peter didn’t really talk about The Cemetery Situation again. Instead, MJ took every initiative to not be in the same space with him if at all possible, and whenever it wasn’t possible, Peter spent the entire time mooning his giant, maple puppy-dog eyes at her until she snapped at him to “Quit it,” and he then he’d add twenty more tallies to his apology totals. Eventually, she got sick of it, and when he started blasting My Chemical Romance as his soundtrack to his study sessions, she decided she’d had enough.

MJ slammed open her door and seethed at him, “Could you at least attempt to be a less stereotypical moper, Parker?”

There were those two little moons again, just, mooning at her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll put in headphones.”

“Oh my God.”

Groaning, MJ stomped over to the coffee table he was pretzled beneath and loomed over him, arms crossed. “You know, you don’t get to act this way about your own actions.”

“I said I was–”

“Sorry, I know. Enough already. If you were as sorry as you say you are, then tell me for real why you left. And don’t even think about lying to me again.”

Peter throat bobbed around a gulp; nestled in the pages of his textbook, his knotted hands fiddled. “I can’t tell you, Em.”

MJ ignored the way that new little nickname bouncing off his lips skipped right off the stupid, traitorous heart she was in the middle of trying to protect. “Bullshit.”

“No, really! I–” He glanced away, lips pursing so tight they disappeared. She saw the moment he made whatever decision he was dithering with, straightening his shoulders and squaring them up to meet her head-on. “I signed an NDA.”

MJ huffed. “Again, bullshit.”

“I mean it.” Planting his hands flat against organic chemistry compounds, he pitched over the table, peering at her conspiratorially. He whispered, “It’s with Stark Industries.”

“Stark?” She wrinkled her nose. “What the hell are you doing with those assholes?”

“Assholes?”

“‘Privatizing world peace’?” she quoted, fingers curling to bookmark the words in the air. “As if.”

Peter shook his head, dazed. “We’re so going to come back to that, but later. Right now, all you need to know is that when my manager over there calls, I have to answer, and if I give even a single detail, I risk ruining everything I’ve built so far. But MJ–”

Pushing himself up, Peter crowded as close to her as he could with the coffee table still digging into his thighs. He reached out, lost courage, then bolstered himself into crossing the distance and hooking his pinky in hers, just like they had at the cemetery. MJ’s instinct was to tug away, but for the first time, Peter took and didn't let her go, just clutching her pinky tighter and letting his arm be yanked far beyond what’s comfortable.

“Peter–” she tried to interrupt, attempting another escape.

But– “MJ, you have to know that I have meant every single apology I’ve given you. I think of us as…friends. I never wanted to hurt you.”

MJ stilled and stared, the logical part of her brain whirring to life and informing her that, as an outside observer, this whole situation was actually pretty crazy. There was not a single other person on planet earth that MJ knew who would apologize so relentlessly, like to the point where his pride was beyond dead and buried. Not even her own mother had gone to such lengths before, not even in all the nasty fights they’d had the year after dad’s death. Peter had hurt her, but she could read his apologies in every crevice of his face, and could see his own hurt, too, in the violet smudges dragging down his eyes and the wrinkles crumpling the science pun on his shirt beyond recognition. Not to mention Ned’s whole spiel…ugh.

Ugh!

“Okay,” MJ relented, glaring at the ceiling as though she could cast a curse on the universe for even bringing Peter Parker and timeless frat boy Ned into her life.

Peter bloomed, eyes wide and sparkling, grin furling from one pink cheek to the other, and gravitating impossibly, unconsciousably close, like a stem to its sun. “Okay?”

“Yes, okay, fine, whatever. I choose to believe you. For now.”

Peter inhaled to reply, but she cut him off just as swiftly, swiping out of the vice grip he had on her pinky and clinging to his wrist instead, so that he might feel the force of the words she was too afraid to give voice to.

“But Peter,” she said instead. “You have to stop being so weird. I’m serious.”

You have to stop this. I don’t want to let you in if you’re just going to push me to lose you. I can be fine on my own.

Don’t walk into my life just to disappear.

Maybe Peter heard her anyway; maybe, in all those light nights drowning in the electric blue waves of the flickering TV, he’d found a way to crack her skull right open and read every buried, secret thought of hers to filth. He softened; swiped the calloused pad of his thumb over the back of her hand.

“No more weird,” he said.

A week later, MJ poured herself into her office chair, opened her email, and saw a dazzling invite to “Betty and Ned’s Housewarming Extravaganza!”

MJ had no one to blame but herself. She’s sure this idea flowered from her off-handed comment about how she hadn’t had the chance to see the two’s new place yet; around a bite of tiramisu, MJ joked that she had been surprised when they hadn’t immediately christened the move-in with a party, what with the glorious way they had met. She should’ve known that the twinkle in Betty’s eyes was bad news right then and there. MJ really didn’t want to go.

Of course, she was going to go.

Later that night, while she was scarfing down a microwaveable meal of chipotle chicken and rice over the–successful!!!--data from the redo of her experiment, Peter knocked on her door.

“Co’ i’,” she valiantly shouted around a scalding bite.

Peter’s curly mop poked in, eyes darting around the space quickly before settling on her with a grin. Ever since they’d made up, Peter had made a habit of this–showing up to her room. Sometimes with a piping fresh mug of tea, sometimes to flop on her bed and complain about a professor, and once on a very weird occasion (hadn’t she told him no more weird?), he had carried an entire new Lego set in and just started assembling it on her floor like he fucking belonged there, already halfway through rambling about how he was actually beginning to believe the conspiracy that most birds were just government spies. (“It just kinda adds up, you know? I mean, I have more evidence for it than against it these days.”)

“Hiya,” he said this time. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”

“Always, but I can pause.” She wheeled her chair around to face him better and went criss-cross applesauce. “Whattup?”’

“Did you get the invite?” Peter laughed when MJ waggled her brows in a yes and kicked the door open a smidge more to lean against the jam. She studied the way his crossed arms stretched his Iron Maiden shirt to its limit. “So I’m assuming you’re going.”

“Unfortunately, yes, I have penciled that particular death sentence into my calendar.”

“We should go together.”

He thinks you’re really awesome, and funny, and pretty–

Why did those words just pop into her head? Why had Ned said those words at all? Looking at Peter looking at her with that stupid crooked grin that made that cute little freckle of his poke up–ugh.

Was it even true? Or had Ned just been buttering her up to try to get her to forgive Peter? After all, during that last apology, Peter’d very pointedly called her a friend. Men who thought you were pretty didn’t just friend-zone you out of the blue, right? That’d be, like, the stupidest thing he could do. But….

–really awesome, and funny, and pretty–

MJ licked her lips and let her gaze rake down from Peter’s honey-warm eyes to his mismatched red and blue socks and back up.

“Together?” she purred, purposely aiming for obtuse.

Red bloomed splotchy and bright across the cords of his neck as he gulped, eyes flicking back and forth between her own. She let her lashes flutter and casually blew on the bite of food hovering on her fork. Straightening lightning-quick, he shook his hands and head frantically.

“No, no, no! Not like that–”

“So you don’t find me attractive?” she pouted.

Peter’s eyes flickered down to that pout, snagged on it for one long, honey-stretched second. In the thick silence around them, she heard one single, sharp intake of breath.

“No!” he said. “I mean, not no–you–obviously are very pretty–I just meant–friends! We’re friendly! I–jesus–this is–”

MJ laughed and threw a paper ball at him that’d been crumpled on her desk from an earlier error, hitting him square in the forehead. “I’m just joking! Relax. Obviously we’re going together. It’d be stupid to walk there separately.”

Unable to meet her eyes, Peter wailed in an impressively high pitch, wheezed, “Okay,” and then shut the door and left.

MJ, to her core, was a scientist.

And that had just been a particularly revealing experiment.

Despite her moaning and groaning, MJ found herself actually excited the night the party rolled around. It’d been ages since she’d let her hair down at an actual, real party and allowed herself to feel as mintly twenty-one as she was. So she slithered into a slinky, black dress scalloped in lace, piled her curls into a messy updo, and painted her face in smoky, dark edges.

When Peter came to retrieve her, she held up a manicured finger and toed into a pair of stilettos, straps flopping uselessly to the sides.

“Sorry,” MJ said. “I’m running a tad behind.” She rolled an ankle at him while she picked up an earring and started stabbing it into her mostly-closed-over piercing. “You can help strap me up if you don’t want to wait.”

She was mostly joking when she said it, fueled by Peter’s obvious embarrassment at her fake simpering when he busted into her room earlier that week. But, to her surprise, Peter cleared his throat, croaked a low, weak, “Okay,” and dropped to one knee.

She squeaked at the first brush of his fingers against the inside of her ankle, jerking it just out of his grasp. “I was kidding!”

Shrugging, Peter gently cupped her heel and brought toes to rest on his thigh. “S’okay. I used to help my aunt with this sometimes. Let me know if I do it too tight.”

Carefully, he poked the strap through its metal clasp, tightened it until it was snug against her skin, and looked up at her, doe eyes seeking her final approval. That gaze zapped electricity through her from head to toe, and she shivered, despite the radiator already working overtime against the evening chill. Silently, MJ nodded and turned back to get her other earring, hoping against all hope that God didn’t hate her and her blush wasn’t visible through her makeup. Peter swapped out her feet, fingers yet again skimming the sensitive skin of her ankle, and she instinctively twitched away again.

“MJ,” he scolded laughingly.

“Sorry, sorry! Ticklish.”

His brows jumped. “Oh?”

“Don’t–”

In one long sweep, Peter dragged the pad of his thumb over the hill of her arch, along the sloping valley of her bone of ankle, and halfway up the arrowheart curve of her calf until–

Squawking, MJ threw a swift kick at Peter’s head. He easily caught her back around the ankle with dancing eyes and a boyish grin split wide across his face, fingers clasped tight enough to brand her.

“Quit it!” she whined over the sound of blood roaring in her ears.

She rolled her ankle, trying to wriggle out of his grip; he just gave her a warning squeeze, brow arching as if to say, Really? Damn. He was strong. Like, really strong. And, god, his palm was scalding.

A cold sweat broke out on the nape of her neck as her stomach swooped; she stabbed at his shoulder with the toe of her already-fashioned shoe and fussed one last time, “Quit, seriously,” and it sounded pathetic even to her own ears. She didn’t even know what she’d do if he refused. Tackle him right then and there and–and–and–

Peter chuckled and tugged her foot back down to rest on his thigh again. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop. We’re gonna be late.”

He tightened the strap to the same spot as the other one, then set her steady on the floor. Groaning, he pushed himself up, brushing her knee on the way. As he passed her direct eye level, the neck of his plain red tee hung down just enough and at just the right angle. There was the barest hint of firm, tanned skin, of jutting clavicles that her eyes skated over, picturing running her fingers over them, digging her nails into the crescents, and raking him in like a thing to consume. The brief stint of feral fucking insanity bottomed her heart out into the curling toes scraping the soles of her perfectly-fitted heels.

“Let me know if you need anything else,” he said, moving towards the door. “I’ll wait in the hall.”

As he stomped out of sight across the floorboards, every single one squeaking under his gait, he called, “Don’t forget a jacket!”

MJ stared at the empty space he’d just occupied, hands drifting up and clutching the hollows of her chest, throat dry. She swallowed once, twice–twisted back to her mirror and reapplied her lipgloss just to stall an extra minute.

Why was Peter so fucking weird?

As soon as they started walking to the station, MJ realized she did, in fact, forget her jacket. She immediately started shivering in the icy bite of the October evening, arms wrapped around herself as she bravely tried to keep up her conversation with Peter about theoretical Physics without her teeth-chattering biting her tongue off. They only made it a block before Peter shrugged off his big, fluffy flannel and draped it over her shoulders. While it was a little short on her, the width engulfed her, warm as a hug; she huddled down into it gratefully with a shy sigh.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, turning her heated face into the collar away from him.

It smelled like the cologne she only ever noticed him wearing when he went out through the front door like a normal person, a toasty, amber musk. He must only use it for special occasions. She peeked at him, caught him smiling at her, and immediately turned away again.

On the subway, MJ studied him sidelong as the car rattled on, bumping them to and fro and sometimes softly into each other with every winding twist and turn. Peter, she could begrudgingly admit, although weird, was kind of sort of actually really extremely attractive. She admired how the broad slope of his shoulders melted down into firm, strong arms, and lovely, long fingers that tapped a stray beat on the denim stretched taut across his thigh. Inwardly, she sighed and forced herself to peer at the underground graffiti blurring past outside the window instead. Clearly, Peter’s freaky gym schedule worked for him. Not that it was any of her business.

No. None at all.

The ride passed pretty quickly after that, dumping them out into a tunnel exhuming the typical haze of garbage stench. The tide of the crowd washed them up towards the exit, and Peter’s hand hovered over the dip of her back, holding her steady whenever a stranger bumped her off course. Outside, they used their phones to navigate them past a 7/11, around the corner of a karaoke bar with the bass trembling against the sidewalk, and finally to an iron door with black peeling paint nestled in the pocket of an out-of-business laundromat’s brick facade. With a quick buzz and hello from the intercom, the pair skipped up the two floors to Betty and Ned’s apartment and spilled inside.

They found the party already in full swing with pounding music, throngs of people, and green LED lights setting the entire circumference of the space aglow. Peter and MJ elbowed their way through a gaggle of people lingering around the entrance until they found Betty in the kitchen pouring tortilla chips into a plastic bowl. Spotting them, Betty squealed and threw her arms around MJ, bag crinkling obnoxiously in their ears.

Laughing, MJ detached herself from Betty, shucked off Peter’s coat, and shoved it back into his chest with a smile. “Thanks for getting me here safe, Parker. Go find Ned while we catch up.”

Peter returned her smile with soft, half-lidded eyes. “Okay.” MJ went to twist back to where Betty’d already resumed her chip arrangement, but Peter linked his pinky around hers, pulling her back to him. “Promise to find me later?”

With a lurch in her gut, MJ realized Peter’s eyes weren’t locked onto her own; instead, they caressed over the bare skin of her shoulders, traced the dip of her waist, licked along every inch of her legs. Unconsciously, she crossed them, one stiletto over the other, and he drew that hot honey gaze back up to her face, not an ounce of shame or guilt for having been caught.

He thinks you’re really awesome, and funny, and pretty–

Was it true? Was he attracted to her? Did he fantasize about sinking his teeth into her flesh? The same way she…?

“Promise,” she whispered, darting between his eyes like devouring the climax of a novel.

Giving her pinky once last squeeze, he let her go and sank into the sea of the party.

MJ committed right then and there to the mission of getting incredibly, raucously drunk.

“I need something fruity!” she declared to Betty, who’d just put the finishing touches on her bowl of salsa.

“Perfect!” Betty shouted in her ear over the bass of some Disco Lines song. “Ned made a jungle juice!”

Of course he had.

Four cups later, MJ found herself recanting every single bad thing she’d ever thought to herself about the way Ned and Betty met. She’d spent the last two hours pressed between hot, sticky bodies on the living room carpet doubling as a makeshift dance floor, dancing until her skin gleamed with sweat, her hair frizzed, and her throat burned from screaming the lyrics to every single song. She became swift friends with a blue-haired girl named Delilah from Ned’s comp-sci class, the two of them shimmying shoulders and using their cups that Ned and Betty kept filled to the top as microphones. When Delilah skipped off to the bathroom during a song they didn’t know, MJ stumbled over to a bedroom where beer pong had been set up. Ned and Peter were currently competing against two people she didn’t recognize but didn’t care about interrupting, either.

“Ned!” she roared, bumping Peter to the side and slinging an arm around Ned’s shoulders. She forced him to sway back and forth with her. “Ned.”

“MJ!”

“This juice.”

“The juice.”

“I get it. I get why Betty made out with you for like, ten hours. It makes sense now. You make really good juice.”

“Ten hours?” Peter mumbled to himself behind her.

MJ beamed while Ned laughed and laughed. God, she felt good. Glitter and magic sparkled in her veins, warming her up from the inside out, and everything glowed, hazy and golden and good. Suddenly, Peter was in front of her instead of Ned. Had she done that? Had she been the one to twist into him, a planet supine in her orbit’s gravitational pull? Peter smiled, eyes crinkling, and held up a ping pong ball.

“Next shot?” he offered.

MJ clasped her hands beneath her chin and bit her lip. “I’ve actually never played.”

“Oh my god. That’s, like, the biggest college sin ever. Now you have to do it.”

Warm, warm fingers encircled her wrist, tugged her close to that amber musk, positioned her at the close end of a plastic table with one leg propped up on a Biology textbook.

“What do I do?” she asked as Peter placed the flimsy plastic ball in her upturned palm.

He hesitated for a second; his eyes dropped down to her lips. Then he stepped behind her, splayed his hands across her shoulders, feather-light, a near-caress.

“Let me show you,” he said, so close his lips brushed the curve of her ear.

Electricity bolted down her spine. Jesus. Since when had she been sensitive there?

Hiding beneath her lashes, MJ looked over her shoulder; Peter was so close that even a centimeter forward would brush their noses in a sweet Eskimo kiss.

“It’s insulting you think I need a man to teach me anything,” she said.

His brows jumped, grin tugging crooked and loving towards that little freckle at the corner.

“Not just any man,” he drawled. “The ultra legendary super all-powerful ping pong champion.”

“Humble, too.”

From across the table, one of the strangers Peter’d been playing with shouted, “Come on, lovebirds! Shoot your shot already! I’m literally decaying, this is taking so long.”

“Okay,” MJ said, turning back forward and wiggling her hips a little bit. Just because. Just adjusting her stance. “Show me what you got, ping pong man.”

Peter laughed, the broad heat of his chest bumping a staccato beat against her back. “Yes, ma’am.”

MJ would rather eat her own foot than admit she had an honest to god reaction to hearing that.

Reaching around her, Peter gently curled his hand around her wrist, lining their arms flush up against each other. She eased into his manipulations, allowing him to demonstrate the proper angle she needed to get the ping pong ball into one of the two remaining red solo cups at the other end of the table.

“Not too much force,” he said, pulling his hand back and replacing it on her hip. The silk there wrinkled beneath the press of each finger. “Nice and gentle. You’re just guiding it in.”

Taking a shaky breath, MJ closed one eye and zeroed in on one of the cups, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth in concentration. She practiced the angle a couple times, swinging her hand back and forth, and then let the ball fly. It landed perfectly in the center of the cup, a soft swoosh and splutter as beer splashed out.

“Oh my god!” MJ shouted.

Peter leveraged his hand on her hip to twist her around and then bundled her up in a fierce hug, whooping. Cackling, she threw her arms around his neck, probably squeezing a little too tight for comfort.

“Did you see that?” she asked over the other team complaining that she wasn’t even an officially registered participant of the tournament.

“It was perfect,” he said.

They both leaned back, but MJ still had her wrists locked around his neck, one hand twisting into the soft curls there without her permission, and Peter’s hands still lingered along the dip of her hips. His smile was small, but his eyes were bright and wide and flipping between hers like he was studying the universe in them. It lit a fire in the pit of her stomach, and she gasped a tiny breath in as her heart stuttered, just once, just a single, painful squeeze that she hadn’t even known it was biologically capable of without catastrophe.

As if he had heard it–impossible, literally impossible, the music was blaring, and people were shouting and singing and laughing and yet–Peter’s eyes darted straight down to her lips, pupils blown wide, the barest hint of a rosy flush creeping up sharp cheekbones.

“MJ!” Betty called. Her arm looped through MJ’s and tugged her out of Peter’s grasp, the moment shattering around them like fallen glass. “Sorry, Peter! Our song is on! I’ll return her after.”

MJ let Betty tug her back out to the dance floor, but she felt Peter’s eyes on her every step of the way until they were completely out of sight; a very loud, very large part of her brain was disappointed, yelled at her to go straight back to the ping pong room and drag him out here with her, dance with his body pressed against her, with those worshipping hands back to leaving little fires everywhere he touched.

Which was stupid. She had to be stupid. A man was so not in her success plan, and Peter was weird and also stupid and also stupidly beautiful and–

“Earth to MJ?” Betty called over the music, twirling like the disco ball she was.

“Sorry. Spacey.”

“That just means you need another drink!”

And then Betty’s drink was in MJ’s hand, and then MJ was knocking it back and hissing when it went down strong as fuck and then she was dancing again, shaking every last thought of Peter Weird Idiot Loser Ping Pong Champion Parker out of her head.

Ages had to have passed. MJ was covered in a sheen of sweat; her heels had been abandoned in a corner of the living room something like ten songs ago; her updo had completely fallen apart, curls smothering her neck and shoulders and only adding to how damn hot she was. Betty and Ned were twined together on the corner of their couch now that half the crowd had thinned out home, her stranger-turned-dance-buddy-turned-tentative-friend, Delilah had just finished snatching MJ’s phone out of her purse and calling her own number so they’d be able to chat tomorrow if they remembered anything, but was now screaming goodbye and pointing her red, coffin-shaped nail at an Uber notification and leaving with no less than a thousand waves and ‘I love you’s. And Peter–

Where was Peter?

Through the cotton sludge of her brain, MJ realized she hadn’t seen Peter in ages. Once, she was pretty sure she saw him drift past the dance floor to the bathroom, gaze as tangible as a pair of hands along the sway of her hips, but he hadn’t said hello, and she must’ve had her back turned when he crossed back through because she doesn't have a second memory after that.

With Delilah gone, though, MJ started to feel the ache in her feet, the weight of her jello-tower of a head, the sandpaper desert of her throat and tongue. She waddled over to Ned and Betty, completely ignoring the fact that they currently had their tongues shoved down each other’s throats, and rattled both of their shoulders.

“Where’s the weirdo?” she shouted.

The couple broke apart dazedly, blinking owlishly up at her.

“Who?” Betty asked.

“Peter! I wanna go home.”

“Oh, uh.” Ned glanced away, adjusting his glasses. “He left a while ago, actually.”

Suddenly, the temperature in the room plummeted twenty degrees. “That a joke?”

Ned met her eyes, frowning, eyes soft. “No. Not a joke. Sorry, MJ. He wanted me to tell you earlier, but you looked like you were having fun.”

The sweat on her skin was rapidly cooling, leaving her feeling tacky and disgusting and infinitely more tired. Her eyes were stinging, and she blinked vigorously up at the ceiling; the electric, alien green of the lights made her stomach lurch, though, so she looked down at her feet instead, curling her toes in the threadbare carpet. She’d painted them purple for tonight.

“We were supposed to home together?” she said, unsure why it came out as a question. “Where is he?”

Sensing something wrong, Betty rose tucked MJ into her side, stroking her hair. “I’m sure he had a reason, honey.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Ned said. “It was Stark Industry stuff. He doesn’t really get a say in it–they call, he goes. You know.”

No, MJ really did not know. All she knew was that Peter oscillated between being one of the best humans she’d ever encountered to being one of the worst, most soul-crushing ones. And frankly, she was so, so, so sick of it.

“‘M tired,” MJ whispered, so softly it was nearly inaudible.

“Peter told me to make sure you get home safe,” Ned said, pulling out his phone. “Let me order you an Uber.”

“No, no, no! She can crash here,” Betty said. “We wanted to start kicking people out anyway. MJ, I’ll go get you some pjs, and Ned will start blowing up the air mattress in our room. It’ll be like we’re roomies again!”

MJ had known Betty for years, could hear how much cheer and enthusiasm Betty was trying to inject in those words to distract MJ from how pitifully sad she was sure she looked. It didn’t really help, but it did make MJ love her that much more. So she nodded her cheek against Betty’s, told her okay, and watched the happy couple march off to help save the friend oozing misery in the middle of the dance floor and totally killing the vibe. MJ really loved Betty, loved even the way that Ned jumped to support Betty in loving her.

But MJ was also really tired and really wanted to go home to her own bed. So she stole a pair of Betty’s slippers on the shoe rack at the front door, already rehearsing the way she’d apologize tomorrow, and slinked out into the night.

Alone out on the sidewalk with only distant NYC traffic and the buzzing fluorescent of store signs to keep her company, it was colder than MJ remembered it being. She just wrapped her goosebump-covered arms around her middle as tight as she could and soldiered on–if she didn’t rush, Betty and Ned would be able to catch up to her when they realized she was really, truly missing and not just locked away in the bathroom or asleep under the ping pong table. So, one foot in front of the other, over and over, retracing the way Peter and her had taken all the way down to the subway to shake and shiver on the platform and wait for her train.

MJ rocked back and forth on her heels–the ground was sticky with an old, spilled soda, crinkling with every roll of her plastic soles. Behind her, one of the only three lights the city thought to supply the tunnel with was flickering in an uneven rhythm. It made her head ache. She really should have had a glass of water or two or six before leaving the party. She hadn’t been thinking clearly when she’d left, and kind of even regretted it now that she’d been out here for a while. She’d let Peter stupid fucking Parker cloud her mind. And, oh was she pissed at him. He’d promised her they’d go and leave together; had promised to stop the weird shit. Yet here he went again, abandoning her and proving just how untrustworthy he was.

God, she was so stupid to have forgiven him. She should have just told him to shove his sad fucking music where the sun don’t shine and changed her schedule so that she’d never have to see his mopey fucking puppy eyes another second of her life. She knew better–knew how this would all turn out. She was so stupid.

Suddenly, the muffled tip-tap-tip-tap of someone’s boots tottering down the stairwell echoed through the platform. Her heart stuttered, spine straightening with a jolt, and she casually repositioned herself so that her back wouldn’t be to the stairs when the stranger came down. It didn’t matter how long she lived in NYC–as a woman alone in the middle of the night, she knew there was always the looming hand of danger hovering over her, and yeah, she was a stupid idiot when it came to Peter Parker, but she refused to be an idiot in any other area of her life.

It was a man who appeared through the maw of the stairs, skinny as a bean pole, but taller than even MJ, putting him at well above six feet. He had a massive jacket on, swallowing his entire torso, hands shoved deep into the pockets. As he rounded the corner and spotted MJ, his eyes roved up and down her length, and despite it being completely empty besides the two of them, he slowly padded over until he was no more than a foot away from her.

Every millimeter of MJ’s skin vibrated with awareness. She staunchly stared forward, refusing to give him the satisfaction of her attention, but clenched her fist harder around the strap of her purse, just in case she had to slip it off and use it as a weapon.

“Cold tonight,” the man remarked in a deep timber. He turned fully to face her then, gluing an intense pair of watery, blood-shot blue eyes to her. When MJ continued ignoring him, he took a step closer, asked: “You going anywhere fun?”

MJ was too drunk for this. Every one of her thoughts came to her as though through frozen sludge, even with the adrenaline pumping a live wire of attention through her. She needed to get her shit together, needed to act like she was sober and capable of fighting and not the eight-something drinks in she actually was.

“No,” she said, and that sounded normal, she thought.

The man sniggered, swaggering bodily to the side into it, which only served to bring him an inch closer to her. “Nawwwww, don’t lie. Pretty thing like you? Gotta be goin’ somewhere.”

She didn’t answer, just counted her breaths and focused on keeping them steady. The train had to be coming any minute now; she just had to hold out until then and hope there were other passengers she could glue herself to and beg for help from if he didn’t leave her alone. If not, she was pretty sure there was a police station nearby the next stop from here. Maybe she could get off there and make a sprint for it?

“Maybe,” he drawled, tongue swiping across his upper lip. “A boyfriend’s place?”

“No,” she bit, her drunken state letting her anger at Peter bleed through.

The man hummed, leaning forward at the waist, so close that he could probably smell the sweat of her skin. “Yeah. If you’d had one, he’d’ve walked you home. Kept you ‘way from people like me.”

Startled, MJ whipped her head so hard towards him, her neck pinched. He was grinning at her, tongue poking out through the hole where one of his incisors should be.

“Oops,” he said. “Did I say that out loud?”

Before MJ could even join two synapses together, the man ripped his hand out of his pocket, something flashing bright against the flickering fluorescents–the gleaming blade of a knife hurtling down to her chest.

MJ screamed, hands instinctually throwing up to try to thwart him. Her knees gave out, and she crumpled to the cold, sticky concrete. But before anything could happen, there was a sharp thwip, and a shiny, white web tethered around the knife and yanked it back into the waiting hands of one masked hero known as Spider-man.

MJ knew about Spider-man. Of course she did–she was a New Yorker. You quite literally could not breathe in the city’s airspace for more than ten seconds without learning who Spider-man was. But she’d somehow managed to live her whole life only seeing clips of him on the news over breakfast cereal, or memes on Twitter, or really creepy AI generated pictures on Instagram of losers from high school trying to make it seem like they were dating him. To her, he may as well have been just like any other celebrity, or, hell, even as unreal as the protagonist to a popular series.

So her drunk, terrified shitless brain really could not comprehend what the hell he was doing standing in front of her.

“Spider-man?” both her and the creepy man said at the exact same time.

All three of them shared a quizzical look.

“Uh, hi?” Spider-man said, waving the rusty knife in front of his mask.

“What the fuck?” they said at the same time again.

MJ glared at the dude. Jesus. You’d think a fucking psycho murderer would be more creative than a wasted college girl.

“Alright, this is weird. I’m just gonna–” Spider-man waved the knife again. “--stop this crime now and stuff.”

Her attacker twisted suddenly on his heel, scrabbling for the exit with a muttered, “Fuckfuckfuck,” but he only made it two steps before Spider-man shot out a web large enough to slam the guy against the subway tiles and pin him there. He groaned, wheezing out a couple of pained coughs that earned him a web to the mouth, too. Sighing, Spider-man walked up to him and tucked the would-be murder weapon into the mess of webs, far out of reach of the man’s twitching hands.

Then he turned his full attention to MJ, mechanical eyes whirring wide.

“Please tell me you’re okay,” he said, helping her up from the concrete.

The suit was scratchier than MJ had expected, his fingers slightly sticky where they clasped her elbows; but his grip was careful, gentle. The whites of his eyes contracted as he scanned her head to toe, then widened back to normal as he sagged with relief.

“You’re okay,” he said.

Nodding, MJ realized she was shaking all over, tiny convulsions that just kept coming like waves in a storm. She tried to hide it, though, swallowing down the adrenaline still coursing through her and blowing out a long, slow breath.

“I was always okay,” she said. Spider-man cocked his head to the side. “I could’ve taken him.”

Surprisingly, Spider-man threw his head back in a deranged laugh, bright and biting, but with a slight warble around the edges. It tickled MJ a little, the same little niggle she’d get when spying a piece of data that jumped out but she couldn’t be sure why just yet.

Simmering down, he huffed and repeated one last time, “Yeah. You’re okay.”

Finally, Spider-man let her go, but didn’t step back. Self-conscious under the weight of being so close to a literal fucking icon, MJ averted her gaze and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to squeeze her trembles to a stop.

“But uh, thanks anyway, I guess,” she whispered, toeing at a crack in the sidewalk. “You probably handled it a lot quicker than I could’ve. So. Thanks.”

There was an awkward stretch of silence where MJ could hear both of their shallow breaths rising and falling out of sync of each other.

Then, he said, “What were you doing out here?”

The intensity in his voice startled MJ enough that her head jerked up, face scrunched; his eyes were squinted tight, too, like she could see literally see his frown even though his mouth was completely invisible.

“Uh…going home?” she said when she realized he was seriously looking for an answer.

He held up three fingers, ticking off each as he said, “It’s three in the morning, you’re drunk and beautiful, and you’re all alone in literally the only place in this city that has no one else around and weirdly ominous lighting for some reason.”

MJ just stared at him and shrugged a little like, yeah and?

“This is all a textbook crime documentary set up!” he shouted, clutching the sides of his head like he wanted to pull out his hair.

Crossing her arms, MJ leaned back and said, “Are you implying that I was asking for it?”

“No! But it wouldn’t kill you to be a little smarter about this sort of thing!”

“Hey!” She crowded him, jabbing a finger into his chest. “I’m a fucking genius!”

Groaning, his hand shot up to encircle her wrist with the instinct of swatting a bug, pinning it there between their heaving chests.

“Why didn’t you just stay with–uh–at the party or whatever you were at?”

“Because I wanted to go home and my resident body guard ditched me. And because I shouldn’t have to have a resident body guard to walk home alone without someone trying to kill me.”

Spider-man’s eyes whirred again, softening out of their severe pinch as his hand dropped to his side, still clutching MJ’s wrist.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and there it was again–that little brain tickle.

MJ tugged her wrist back, and he let go after a brief squeeze; she hugged it limply against her chest. “‘S’okay. You’re trying to make it less murdery and stuff. And that’s pretty cool.”

He laughed again, but it was just a huff, almost too soft to hear through the mask. “It’s way less cool than you think.” MJ cocked her head to the side, curious what he meant, but he just shook his head and placed his hands on his hips, suddenly serious. “Anyway, why don’t I be your resident body guard?”

“Hm?”

“I’ll take you home.”

“What? Uh, no, you won’t,” she spluttered.

“Come on, I already rescued you once. Clearly, I’m qualified.”

“No way. The train will be here any minute.”

“This line stops at one. There’s no train coming.”

Well, shit. MJ bit her lip, eyes roaming as she tried to think of a way the supremely awkward situation that would be having Spider-man walking her home. She could just go back to Betty and Ned’s–they weren’t that far away, and maybe he’d let her go if he knew it was just two blocks. She could even offer him to like, perch on a rooftop and watch her from above or something. That sounded stupid even to her drunk-self, and honestly, she really didn’t want to go back to Betty’s. Betty was probably furious with MJ at this point, and after everything that’d happened, she really, really needed to sleep and sober up before she could face that music.

“What about him?” MJ asked, jerking her head at the still webbed and wriggling psycho.

“The cops will get him soon,” he said, hand flapping.

MJ sighed long and hard, shoulders sagging.

“Fine,” she drawled. “Let’s get this over with.”

Somehow, in all of her meanderings about whether or not to accept his offer, MJ had failed to realize that Spider-man wouldn’t just walk her home.

He’d obviously swing her home.

The second they emerged from the subway platform into the nippy night, he just told her to hold on tight, then wrapped a ridiculously bulbous bicep around her waist and webbed them to the nearest building. Her scream ripped out of her so sharply it scraped her throat raw. On instinct, she clamped her legs around his hips and shoved her face into his neck, eyes jammed tight.

“Shh,” he hushed between tiny thwips. “I’ve got you.”

“I’m gonna be sick,” she moaned, clasping herself tighter to him as her stomach roiled.

“Just focus on the wind.”

She did as told, zeroing in on the way the wind whipped through her hair and slapped icy hands against her cheeks. Every inch of her skin was covered in bitingly painful goosebumps, her body quavering for even a single joule of energy to warm up with.

“Worst advice ever,” she shouted in his ear. “I’m fucking freezing.”

Just then, the swinging stopped, two booted feet dropping down with the grace of a cat.

“At least it got you to not puke on me before we got here.”

Tentatively, MJ cracked her eyes open and glanced around. She spotted her chipped, sun-faded roof door and the remnants of her garden, tarped up and ready for the winter.

“I didn’t die,” she breathed in wonder.

Spider-man laughed, staring down at her, fingers burrowing into the pliable flesh of her hip. Another brain tickle. Spurred by that niggling instinct she’d been having since he appeared in front of her, MJ bowed up into him, peering through those animated goggles. Just beyond their white netting, she found the barest hints of warm, honey brown framed in a dusting of long, delicate lashes.

Unconsciously, she reached up and swept the pad of her thumb along the edge of his goggle, brushing the apple of his cheek. “I can see you.”

At once, Spider-man shucked her off and set her on her own two feet. She wobbled, readjusting to gravity, and Spider-man used just the barest tips of his fingers on her shoulders to right her before yanking back like he’d touched the sun.

“Anyway, uh, crime’s a callin’! Don’t go out alone again, miss. G’night!”

Without waiting for her to respond, Spider-man back-flipped off the roof and disappeared. MJ’s stomach bumbled into her throat for a split, heart-stopping second, but then she spotted him reappear off in the distance, twirling around the side of an apartment building with a giant FOR RENT banner strapped to the side. Only after he was completely out of sight did she finally pry open the roof door, plod down the stairs, and dump herself in bed.

Right on the cusp of falling under, a foggy realization drifted up, bobbed along the waves of her thoughts, reminding her over and over again until everything finally went dark, that at no point had Spider-man asked MJ where she lived, nor had she given him a single direction.

The next morning, MJ woke like resurfacing from beneath water. Everything blurred around her, her entire body a unified, pounding pulse, and a single thought dripped, dripped, dripped–Spider-man couldn’t have known where she’d lived, unless–

Unless, unless, unless.

Groaning, MJ shoved herself over the side of her bed and stumbled into the bathroom. A shower. Everything could wait until after she had showered. And had a glass of water. And maybe threw up–that was still TBD.

The shower helped revive her to some semblance of normalcy, and, now knowing she wouldn’t puke all over his shoes mid-sentence, MJ huddled up inside her largest, coziest sweats, and steeled herself to knock on Peter’s door. He answered before she’d even finished the first pound of her fist, as if he’d known she’d be there, and swung the door open wide to grin at her in his usual gym getup of black sweats, black tee.

“MJ!” Peter chuckled, but it was off-kilter and didn’t meet his eyes. “Good morning! How’d you–”

“Where’d you go last night?” she asked without preamble.

“Didn’t Ned tell you? Stark Industry emergency. You should call Betty, by the way, Ned said she’s freaking–”

MJ sliced a hand through the air, shaking her head. “Yeah, I know. What was the emergency?”

“Sorry, MJ, you know I can’t tell you.” Peter frowned, and MJ noticed the toes of his bare feet wriggle before he crossed one ankle over the other. “NDA.”

“Right.”

“Sorry,” he said again, quieter, syrupy-thick like he’d never meant another word more. “I thought you were gonna stay at Betty and Ned’s. If I’d know you’d–”

She stared, unblinking, watching Peter cut himself off with pursed-thin lips, shove a fist in his pocket and glance away.

“Just...you made it home alright, right?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t you already know?”

Entire body jerking straight to attention, he whipped gargantuan eyes back to her and stuttered, “What?”

Gotcha.

MJ waved a hand to herself. “I’m standing right here? Obviously fine?”

“Oh,” Peter breathed. He leaned against the door. “Right. Obviously.”

“You good, Parker?”

“Duh. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Dunno. Feeling guilty maybe?”

“Actually,” he sighed, disturbingly earnest in the middle of the game MJ was trying to play with him. “I am. I really didn’t want you to walk home alone, Em. Can it make it up to you? Take you to breakfast?”

“Fine.” She spun to go get shoes from her room. “But I’m not changing, so you’ll have to deal with me looking like a bum.”

Now that MJ knew what she knew, Peter being Spider-man was actually so obvious that she was furious with herself for not figuring it out earlier. She watched the whole way to the diner, dissecting everything with the scrutiny she would her data, and God. As they walked, Peter would notice things that normal people really wouldn’t otherwise–glance up to a roof just to spy a lazy, leaky pipe, take MJ by the elbow and adjust her to avoid a bicyclist the moment before they popped out of a discreet alleyway, spy a heads-up penny three blocks away and rush to pick it up for MJ to wish on, stupid grin splitting his face wide.

(She didn’t make a wish, by the way. Instead, she glared at the penny dolloped on his palm, glared at him, clasped her hand over it, and forced him to swing their entwined arms between them the rest of the way. Idiot.)

((And when she snuck glances at him every five paces to make sure he was still smiling and okay with it, she was an idiot, too.))

Not to mention how much the man ate. In hindsight, she guessed it was always weird he could shove two whole pizzas down his gullet without breaking a sweat, but having not lived with a boy since her father passed, she’d just chalked it up to ignorance. At the diner for breakfast, Peter ordered three complete breakfasts to himself, plates piled high with bacon, eggs, pancakes, potatoes, and washed it all down with a glass of orange juice–MJ just nibbled her way through a chocolate chip short stack with a side of bacon. It was also now impossible not to notice that when MJ asked Peter to pass the syrup, his hand stuck to the bottle way more than any syrup really had the power to do. He literally had to use his other hand to pry the stuck one off the glass, laughing far too loudly and blushing far too much.

Man, she really had been blind.

“You know what I’ve been wondering?” MJ asked, kicking her foot out to nudge between Peter’s beneath the table.

He jumped for a second, then relaxed, shoveling another bite of egg in. “Hm?”

“You know Spider-man?”

Peter choked; he slammed a fist against his chest, trying to cough back up his bite of egg. Patiently, MJ nudged his orange juice into his elbow, and he gratefully gulped it down.

“Know him?” he wheezed after he cleared everything out.

“Of him.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean, who doesn’t, right?”

MJ nodded. “I was just thinking, though. He’s been Spider-man for years now. Like, since he was a teenager.”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Don’t you think he’d be better at hiding his identity by now?”

Peter stared at her, warm eyes round and scared as a doe in front of headlights. MJ just sipped her horribly over-steeped tea, gazing right back.

Shoulders slumping, Peter sighed and said, “How’d you figure out?”

“Forgot to ask me where I lived yesterday.”

“Fuck.”

The curse dropping from Peter so emphatically surprised MJ into peeling laughter, fully doubled over in her seat, tea sloshing. His blush raged, creeping like wildfire down his neck and disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, wiping up the tea on the table with a handful of napkins.

“I’m so stupid.”

“You are.”

The waitress came by just then, and Peter offered to settle the check. MJ didn’t really know how Spider-man got his funding, but she allowed him to pass over his card anyway–she figured it was deserved after all the lying she’d endured over the past couple months. They didn’t speak as they packed up their things and shuffled back out into the brisk midday, but MJ caught him peeking at her so many times her skin started to fray.

When they got back outside the apartment building, Peter cupped her elbow and pulled her to a stop before she could unlock the front door.

“I’ll move out,” he blurted.

MJ’s brows leapt up. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been the worst to you,” he groaned. “All I’ve done is lie to you and abandon you, and yesterday, God, I would never forgive myself if something had happened to you, Em.”

“Nothing happened, Peter. I’m fine.”

“But it could have, and it would have been all my fault again. Michelle, I care about you so much, but I keep hurting you, so–”

Fisting her hands in his shirt, she hauled Peter forward into a quick, chaste kiss. She ended it before he could even react, heart slamming in her chest, cheeks, flaming, still so close that every word she said next caressed his skin.

“So do better. Now that I know. Show me just how sorry you really are.”

And then Peter, her stupid, weird, idiotic Peter, reeled her back into his arms, tangled his hand in her curls, sealed their lips back together, and showed her exactly that.