Archive of Our Own

Peter comes over for a game night. He and Ned are going to play Beast Slayer.

MJ is going to dinner with Paul.

“Have fun,” Peter tells her, hands shoved in his pockets. It does nothing to hide the steel-cable tension in his forearms.

Ned shoos her off, nearly clipping the door on her heels, and his enthusiasm isn't new so it shouldn't be this irritating, having her friends—friend and Peter—wish her a good date at a nice restaurant, in her nice dress, while they nerd out on their PCs. But Paul takes her someplace where they can hear the kitchen yell, “Yes, Chef!” every ten minutes, and all she can think about is how fast those two must be rambling to each other, back home. She could be there right now, snacking in the adjacent room, getting annoyed still, but at least she'd be able to throw popcorn and backseat-game them until they yell at her to go away. 

Instead, she's twisting pasta onto her fork and feeding it to her boyfriend.

“Nothing new on the job hunt?” he asks. 

She lets him thumb the sauce off her lip. “Nothing that won't offend my mortal soul.”

“You'll find it,” he says, sweet. Always sweet on her. 

Ned and Peter are passed out in the living room when she stumbles through the door, hours later. Ned's screensaver pings across his monitors. Peter's souped-up laptop is running numbers on something, of course. Just out in the open. No operational security to speak of. Jean Grey hadn't been a trained operative, clearly.

She stands in the dark like a creep. Peter must be pretending. He’s enhanced, and her heels are at least four inches. Peter snores. She shakes the quilts out over them and slips into her room.

“Wanna go in on a pair?” she asks.

Peter, at this age, never seems to know what to do with his mouth. “You mean, like—sit next to each other?”

“Yeah.”

It's like he doesn't even realize he has a face. It just does whatever. It's glass. MJ always has the best time watching every single thought spell itself out, practically dancing across his funky little eyebrows. Does he wash his face in a violently upward motion and let it dry like that, or what?

“No,” he says.

“...Okay. ‘No,’ like you don't want to sit next to me or—”

“Sorry, I didn't mean—”

“—no, you don't want the opera glasses—?”

He rubs his ear. She’ll find out later, of course, that it was Mysterio, but right now, she’s thinking, crap, I'm going to kill myself. 

“No, I mean I'll grab us a pair.” His eyes, always darting around, linger on her. “You go ahead.”

She twists her fingers, face warm. Peter looks like such a nerd, always, with his wet-gel hair. But the suit looks good on him. Pretty.

“I'll save you a seat,” she says.

MJ wakes before the rest of the fantasy plays out. 

She had sat next to Brad on that trip. He hogged the armrest, and manspreaded too much.

She knows it was a dream, because in it, Peter looked the same as he does now, sitting on her living room floor. Disorienting, an adult's face on a teenage body. She doesn’t know what he looked like at seventeen.

“Morning. Ned left some toast on the stove.” He looks up, as if to do a quick check of her, pretty much failing the quick part of it, right away. 

She draws her robe tight, and steps over the strewn papers, sketches and schematics. Not even a week and Ned is already letting him redecorate.

“You Spider-Manning today?”

“DeWolff said she'd shoot me down if she saw a single web-line.”

MJ snorts. The toast has gone hard, but it manages to erase the taste of foie-gras in her mouth that her toothbrush couldn’t.

The way the kitchen and the couch are, Peter can’t see her unless he gets on the cushions and peers over it. From her vantage point, she can very well see how his fingers are poised over the keys, unmoving. 

She drops the plate in the sink; his pinky twitches. Honestly, this guy.

“We need to buy shrimp.” She grabs Peter’s hoodie off the back of a chair and tosses it at him. “Give me five to change.”

He clutches the hoodie. “O…kay?”

“‘Okay,’ like you’re coming with? Or—”

“Yeah! Yes, I’ll—” He scrambles to his feet, patting at his sleep shorts. “You need the bathroom or can I?”

“I have something called a bedroom,” she says, and he goes pink.

It’s just the fish market, so jeans and a low pony are enough. Peter takes one look at her, blanches, and then doesn’t look again until they’re halfway to Chinatown. He stays strictly at her back and she thinks about snagging the hem of his hoodie in her fingers, to keep him close, but he weaves through the crowd like—well. He’s fine, clearly.

“Are you ever going to invite us over?” she asks, at a stall with a shrewd-faced grandma. “Or Ned? Invite Ned over, I mean. You know he’s dying to see.”

“Oh, well yeah, but it’s a mess. Just, completely trashed. I, uh…” Peter makes a face. “I webbed it up. Kinda.”

“That better not be a euphemism.”

“It’s not! I literally—” he looks around, leans in— “had spider puberty, I think.”

“Yeah, I'm still hearing a dick joke.”

“There was a cocoon!” he hisses. “It wasn’t—it’s just clothes everywhere and I stole someone’s Juicy Couture stuff—”

She steps back from him. “You nested?”

“Wh—” His face twists. “There’s a word? How do you know the word? Why is there a word for—?”

“You buying or not?” the lady barks.

“One pound,” MJ says, pointing at the shrimp. Then, eyeing Peter, amends: “Two pounds.”

“Please don’t look at me like that.”

“Are you a minor?” she demands.

“What,” he despairs.

“You a spider—pubescent? Are you going to molt? Don’t do that in my apartment, Ned is already driving me crazy with his fish cracker crumbs.”

He presses a fist to his mouth, looking green. “I don’t want to molt. Are we just here for shrimp or can we go home?”

MJ shoves a wad of bills at the judgmental grandmother. Peter mumbles something about how she and Ned don’t have to keep feeding him, and he doesn’t shut up about it until she tells him that some dinner here and there isn’t much, for the price of Spider-Man cleaning up literal crime syndicates. She remembers a night, two years ago: Spider-Man saving a classmate from getting his head blown clean off, just for walking near an alley, on a midnight snack run while the rest of them hammered out a group presentation. MJ had been the one to ask for snacks.

Peter is quiet all the way back. 

It isn’t until he’s making his excuses to head home, laptop under an arm, that MJ realizes he wanted her to say it’s because they’re friends.

The heart of the matter is, MJ owns very little.

There's her books. Her certificates, that could be plaques if she cared to frame them; they’re in an old binder, deep in Ned's closet. She has her wired earbuds. They've weathered the years with her, and the rubber hasn't even stripped down to copper yet.

Her mind. The thing she loves owning the most. Until very recently, she thought it was entirely hers.

If it had just been Jean Grey, it wouldn't have mattered much. Mutants are a dime a dozen. MJ was just unlucky, the way a tourist is unlucky with pickpockets.

The problem is that, with the spell, she hadn't known she'd been ransacked. A whole person ripped right out of her head—and she just kept living. It's absurd. She could vomit. How could it all have kept going? Without a hitch? A missing wheel, and the car just kept driving?

Peter Parker walks around her and Ned like every step is driving knives into his feet. She feels a void by comparison.

“Thinking about having people over this weekend,” Ned says, when they're winding down one evening. MJ’s mouth flattens. “Come on, you don’t want to see Gwen or Felicia? I thought you guys were close.”

“For a definition of close.” She puts down her book and massages her temples. “How many people are we talking?”

He won’t meet her eyes, so it’s probably a hundred and fifty. “Like, ten.” See? She knew it. “I just want them to meet Peter.”

“You know you can't start telling people you're friends with Spider-Man.”

“I wouldn't!”

She crosses her arms.

“I'm serious! I just…” He puts a record on, fiddles with the speakers, shoulders hunched. “I want to introduce him. As my best friend. That I lost contact with. Or something.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. We were brainstorming backstories, you know, last night. Like maybe he was blipped overseas and got lost trying to make it back.”

She clears her throat. “For four years? With no missing persons report?”

“He's an orphan,” Ned says. “Genuinely, that guy has no parents.”

She throws a pillow at him. “Ned!”

“He suggested that one himself!”

“Well, what about me?” she asks. “Wouldn't I…because you and I went to Midtown together.”

“You want him to be your friend, too?” Ned asks. Genuinely. She must make some sort of face because he hastens to say, “Hey, I don't mean like—I know he's over a lot because I want him here and we share an apartment, but you don't remember anything, so I was just…you know.”

“It would make sense, if he was also my friend.”

Ned looks like he wants to jump out the window. “Yeah, but he's really just some guy to you, right? I'm just saying you don't have to force yourself.”

“I'm not.”

“Okay. Okay, yeah.”

“He's nice.”

Ned winces.

“I mean he's genuinely a good guy! And he's Spider-Man. Look. I don't dislike him or anything. And I don't mind that he's here all the time, and you—well, he was literally your best friend, I'm not going to ignore that he was part of your actual life. He can come over whenever.”

“That’s good. That's—thanks.” He sits back down on the couch, a whole cushion away from her. “And so do you want…?”

She picks at a loose thread. “It would make sense.”

“Yeah.”

“...But it wouldn't work,” she says. “I don't have…I don't act like you. Like I know him. People would notice.”

Ned nods. “Especially since he's kind of weird around you.”

She covers her face. “Ned.”

“Right. Sorry, I didn't mean to bring it up. I know we're all not bringing it up, and it's kind of really weird to watch, knowing what I know now, but weirder for you and him, probably, because you don't—”

“I think I'll go out with Paul this weekend,” she says loudly. “What day are you inviting people? Let's do Saturday. I'll be with Paul on Saturday. So we can just avoid—”

“Yeah! Yeah, good plan, if you're not there, people might not—?”

“Exactly.” She points her book at him. “No one will ask. Great plan.”

“Perfect. I'll let Peter know.”

“Don’t tell him I'm on a date.” She wipes her hands on her pants. “He doesn't need to—it’s kind of…”

“Weird.” Ned nods rapidly. “Totally. Will not tell him. You go have fun. Thanks for, uh, letting me use the apartment, and for…Peter, and stuff.”

“Sure.” She stands, drumming her fingers on the book. “I'm going to bed, I think. Long day.”

Ned wishes her a goodnight, visibly relieved. 

She spends the rest of the night trying to suffocate herself with a pillow.

Adjacent to the heart of the matter: MJ is still very much the girl she was in high school.

She spins tales of catastrophe in her mind before an interview, just so she can come out pleasantly surprised. She moves through a crowd like an eel. A girl at MIT taught her how to condition her hair right, lent her half her wardrobe until she figured out what she hated and what she hated less, and still, MJ catches herself wiping her clammy, charcoal-stained palms on her pants, only now, they're cotton and linen and silk. So she has to wash it off properly.

She’s always one step away from slipping back into Michelle. Michelle at the pick-up zone alone, Michelle crouching between library shelves, Michelle always picking seats near the edge—of a table, of a conversation.

When Saturday rolls around, MJ doesn't wonder what Ned will say to Peter about her absence. She doesn't think about how their college friends will receive Peter's induction to their circle, how they'll handle MJ’s connection to them if it comes up at all. 

She just makes sure she's out of the house by nine, and she doesn't come back until the next morning. And when Ned stumbles out of his room to steal pancakes off her plate, she doesn't ask how it went.

To a couple more people, Peter is now Ned's best friend. That's all she needs to know.

Nothing really changes anyway. Peter's presence in their apartment doesn't escalate any further than some loose leaf paper, a hoodie, an extra plate once a week. Presumably, Ned has a standing invite to Peter’s…cocoon habitat, going by his increased absence late at night, and his slightly gutted work station. The Man, back in the Chair.

MJ’s life remains, largely, the same.

No Spider-shenanigans, no further abductions. None of his enemies come crawling out the woodwork, sniffing after her. She doesn't stumble on a conspiracy, isn’t a spontaneous witness to a crime that she can pass onto the neighborhood superhero. Everything goes back to…normal.

In her most uncharitable moments, she wonders what Peter was so scared about, if this was all his presence in her life would amount to.

Peter yanks the curtains closed. 

“I can’t believe I gave Beck the glasses,” he groans. “He’s totally going to send killer drones after me—back up, you’re too close to the windows.”

MJ lets him herd her back towards the bed. “You had access to killer drones?”

“I didn’t want them! Not after they almost killed Brad.”

“You almost killed Brad?”

“He took a picture of me in the bathroom!”

“That was real?” she demands. “You really were naked in the bathroom with some lady?” 

“It was S.H.I.E.L.D.! Have you not heard of superhero costume changes?!”

“Could she not have stood outside? She had to be in there and—and watch?”

“Why is this what you’re focusing on?” he cries, red all the way up to his ears. He won’t look at her, scrambling from place to place, gathering gear. His superhero gear.

Holy shit, Peter Parker is actually Spider-Man.

“Look, I need to get to Fury. I’d call, but Beck’s probably tapped my phone, too.”

“You want mine?”

Peter freezes. “Like your number?”

“To—call Fury,” she croaks. “Unless, did you—?”

“No!” Peter says. “No, I mean, yes, I’d want—I mean, no, to the calling. I don’t need to call with—Beck probably has everybody in our class.”

She nods. “Okay. Okay, so you should find Fury. The…literal Director of a secret, independent military force, with…literal superheroes.”

“Yeah, I fought with them once. And against them—actually, it's kind of complicated. But I, uh, do need to warn him about Beck. Um, my suit—” he spins around.

“Over there.”

“Right, thanks,” says Peter—before stripping his shirt off right in front of her.

He's built, she thinks despairingly. Peter Parker is Spider-Man, Spider-Man is built, so Peter nerd-slick-back-hair Parker is actually freaking built. He lifts buses one-handed. Would she even weigh anything to him?

“Uh,” he says, and MJ’s eyes snap up to his face, his blushing face, because she was staring and he's undressed and built and she's going to tear those curtains open and hope to hell that Mysterio just shoots her dead—

MJ wakes up. 

She wakes up, then rolls face-first into her pillow and swears viciously. Of all things for her brain to cook up.

No way she's going back to sleep after that. There should still be a couple episodes left to that forensics series she's watching. They'll keep her company tonight and if Thor has any mercy left, the TV will electrocute that dream right out of her head.

She throws her door open and freezes.

Peter and Ned stare up at her from the floor. A half assembled Death Star sits on the coffee table. For some reason, Peter is missing his pants. Apparently, Spider-Man wears Iron Man-patterned boxers.

“Everything okay…?” Ned asks. 

She snaps the door closed behind her; he raises an eyebrow. “Yeah,” she says, hands shoved under her arms. “Yeah, of course. Everything’s great.”

“Okay. Just, you know, Peter was kind of doing that weird sense thing, so we thought you were dying.”

Peter's head whips around, cheeks flaring pink. “Dude!”

Her eyes narrow. “Sense thing?”

“Y’know, his spider-enhancements. He's got an aural radius of fifteen miles, and an olfactory radius of—”

“Whoa, hey, you can't just expose the limits of my powers, that's a strategic disadvantage!”

“It's just MJ. You going to fight MJ?”

“I—no, obviously not—”

“We did a scent tracking exercise,” Ned tells MJ. “He hunted me down like in your cringe bodice rippers that you read ‘ironically.’”

Peter's eyebrows do something they've never done before. “You—you read bodice rippers?”

“You were listening in on me?” MJ demands.

“On accident!” He raises his hands. “I wouldn't—it’s automatic and it was like, half a second, I blocked it out when I realized, I swear I—”

“I'm just messing with you,” she says, mouth tugging up. “You remember I was there for the whole inhibitor deal, right?”

Peter gapes at her. Ned muffles a laugh that turns into a yelp when Peter kicks him. 

“I forgot how much you like to wind me up,” Peter grumbles.

MJ’s smile slips. She clears her throat and edges around them to the couch. “How far are you guys with the build?”

“Oh, we're killing it. We're on a roll,” says Ned. 

“He’s definitely lost some pieces,” Peter says, dodging Ned's swipe. “He pulled my pants off because he thought I was hiding them.”

“Explains the tighty-whities,” she says. 

“They are not—” Peter takes a surreptitious glance at himself— “tighty-whities.”

“And the reason why you haven't put your pants back on, is…?”

“We’re playing Strip Lego now,” says Ned.

“I see your new hobbies are having an energy drink addiction and lying,” says Peter.

MJ gives Ned a thumbs up. “You're thrashing him. Keep it up.”

“My goal is to make him peel his human skin off and reveal the were-spider we all know is under there.”

Peter claps a hand over his mouth, green to the gills. “How many times do I have to tell you not to talk about molting?”

MJ tugs a blanket over and snuggles into it, feet on the couch cushions. “You don't want extra arms? Would make sleeping on your side harder, but the operational advantage...”

“Wouldn't they come out of his back?” Ned jumps in. “Like the time Mr. Stark gave you that suit.”

“Stop,” Peter groans, falling into his back and wrapping his arms around his middle. “Stop it, I can feel them growing.”

“What kind of spider only has four limbs anyway?” MJ mutters, toeing Peter in the side—only to shriek when Peter snags her ankle and tickles her mercilessly. “Peter!” she gasps.

“Looks like I have enough of an ‘operational advantage’ with just four,” he teases, letting her scramble away. 

Her heart is rabbiting. Aural radius of fifteen miles. She curls her hands against the hollow of her throat, face flushed.

Peter doesn't seem to notice, squinting over at Ned. “Dude, you're freaking sitting on half of our pieces.”

“Damn, will you look at that,” Ned says. “Guess you can put your pants back on.”

Peter rolls his eyes, stretching across the floor to grab his sweats. MJ stares at the far wall, determined to ignore the writhing and flashes of skin as Peter tugs them over his hips.

Ned catches her eyes and winks. 

Wow. Of course. This freaking guy. She's never telling him anything ever again.

“Seriously? Over Thor?”

“Look, all I'm saying is, when he decides to lift that cape, I'll consider it. But until then, I'm loyal to Spider-Man’s thighs.”

She clears her throat. “So did you just decide to build this at four in the morning for no reason, or…?”

Apparently, it had been a heavy crime ring case they'd been working for the past few weeks, only to stumble on the perpetrators in action while Peter had been swinging Ned around for fun. A couple hours of high-stakes capture the flag, with Ned commandeering a taxi himself, and after everything was over, their apartment was just closer to ride out the adrenaline rush.

Explains the spider suit thrown over the back of the kitchen chair. Seriously? Anyone could walk in here.

“Good job,” she tells them, except Peter shrugs it off. She shares a look with Ned, whose mouth twists.

“A couple guys landed in the ER last week,” Peter mumbles. “If I had figured it out earlier, maybe they wouldn't have gotten tied up in the whole thing.”

Ned nudges him. “You can't be everywhere, man.”

“I have to try. It's my responsibility.”

MJ scoffs. “And not the responsibility of, I don't know, law enforcement? What are our tax dollars for if they can't round up some run-of-the-mill mobsters?”

“Well, that's…I mean, these guys had more than the typical guns.”

“Okay? The municipal budget released this year was supposed to cover new arms for the force. You saying the money went missing?”

Peter shoots Ned a helpless look. Ned raises his hands, grinning. “You know she gets like this.”

“I wouldn't be surprised if it did,” MJ continues. “I mean, if you really want someone to be responsible, what about our government for outsourcing local jobs and leaving all these people to turn to the streets?”

“I mean, I would help with that but I'm a radioactive spider—man, thing,” Peter stutters. “My skillset isn't…lawmaking.”

“I think you'd be a great politician,” Ned says faithfully.

“Not a compliment, dude.”

MJ plants her hands on her knees and leans down until she's face-to-face with Peter. He shrinks back.

“If you keep thinking like this, you're going to turn into some maniacal dictator who plants chips in people's minds to monitor and influence people's moods, thoughts, and decisions,” she intones, “and ultimately, seize control of the entire world, after which, you'll move onto conquering the universe.”

He gapes at her.

Ned nods solemnly. “Like if Thanos and Flock cameras had a baby.”

MJ makes a face. “You are ruining this, Ned.”

Peter bursts into laughter.

He falls into his side, brown hair flopping onto the carpet like some heartthrob photoshoot, giggles falling from his wide smile like rain off the lip of a rose planter. Ridiculous. Stupid. What is she, Bella Swan's internal monologue?

She throws a pillow at him—and then one at Ned, for good measure. She can feel him grinning at her. 

Peter pulls the pillow to his chest and hides his laughter in it.

“See if I ever try to comfort you again,” MJ mutters.

“That was comfort?” Ned asks. “I could've sworn it was an indictment of our municipal government.”

There's a muffled snort from Peter. His eyes, when they peel out over the pillow, are wet and curved into happy crescents.

“That funny, huh?” MJ asks.

“Sorry,” he says, cheeks pink. “Sorry, I just miss—I missed you guys.”

“Oh.”

“I missed you too, man!” Ned throws himself at Peter, narrowly missing the Death Star.

MJ watches Peter grapple with a clingy Ned. “You’ve got people on your side, Spider-Man. Use them.”

He looks up at her, hair mussed and eyes bright. “You, too?”

“Someone has to be sensible around here.”

“Last week, you said crime-fighting mutants lived in our sewers,” says Ned.

“And you should've contacted them. They could've helped with the case. A reliable vigilante community is the only way none of you die alone in an alley,” she states. “God knows Frank is enough of a loose cannon.”

“Living. In the sewers,” Ned repeats.

“I could use some coworkers,” Peter jokes. “Get me their numbers. I'll put them on speed dial.”

MJ holds out a hand. “How about you start with me? We can't keep using Ned like a pigeon carrier.”

He stares at her, his smile frozen. I am going to nuke this city, she thinks, half a second away from bolting off that couch, when Ned elbows Peter so hard he hisses.

“Dude,” Ned says.

A blush blooms on Peter's cheeks, and he fumbles for his pockets. “Right! That—makes sense, that would be—”

She plucks the phone from his fingers, prays her clammy palms don't leave streaks when she gives it back. He watches her type with wide eyes, and she can't—she can't look at him. She'll never look away.

“...Thanks, MJ,” he says, hushed, when she's done.

“No problem.” Then, like an instinct: “Loser.”

He stares at her for a long moment and then, like sunlight, beams.

Maybe he just needed to hear it from her, because it's like a dam breaks after that night.

A plate becomes a permanent seat at the kitchen table; a hoodie becomes a few sets of clothes, even boxers, in their laundry basket; and sparse schematics turn into a trailing web of cables and monitors.

“Your password cannot possibly be ‘D3lm@rD3li’,” she says, walking by with a hamper on her hip.

“It's technically strong,” he responds absently. He does a double take. “Are those my boxers?”

She raises a brow. “What, you think clothes just fold themselves around here?”

He scrambles off the couch, stumbling after her. “Wait, I can—let me—I thought Ned did the laundry!”

“We alternate.”

“MJ, wait, I can—”

“Don't worry, Spidey, I won't ask what the stains are.”

“It's not—that’s Scorpion's fault!”

“TMI.”

“No, not—MJ, please, I'll fold it! MJ!”

She doesn't want to put a name to it. Coming home after a day of tutoring kids at the library, and seeing Peter scrunched up on the couch, or hanging from the ceiling, wringing his hair over some case or another. Walking up her apartment stairs, already hearing Ned's excitable voice in tandem with Peter's. She scrolls through job postings half-heartedly, just to abandon her phone when they ask her what sort of magnet would be strong enough to airlift an entire group of criminals right out of prison but covert enough to hide under clothing.

It lights something in her. She can feel it pulsing in the hollow of her throat. She goes to sleep every night hiding a grin behind her hand, so she doesn't spill the secret and ruin it.

“Should I start introducing him as our friend?” Ned asks one morning.

She slides a buttered slice of toast towards him, and pops two more in the toaster. “Oh, are we not weird around each other anymore?”

“No, you're both still definitely weird, I'm just impatient. Oh! I'll tell people you guys had a major falling out. Maybe Peter, uh…he took your dad's car and drove it off a cliff!”

“Was this before or after he blipped in Milan?”

“After.” Ned nods decisively. “No, actually, it was during. We were at your villa and he got drunk and trashed the place and then died in a shower of dust as he drove off the cliff, so we thought he was dead for real.”

“I don't have a villa,” MJ says.

“And I thought you told people I went overseas alone to, uh, find my long-lost brother?” Peter yawns, shuffling out of the bathroom. His pajamas are slung low on his hips, a dark line of hair leading down—MJ turns her back. She stirs a cup of coffee. Peter steals it on the way to his seat. She keeps her eyes on the toaster as she pours another. It's fine.

“Could've been both,” Ned mutters. “You could've been bumming off MJ’s fictional inheritance looking for traces of your family, thus stretching her hospitality thin and leading to a catastrophic breaking of bonds, resulting in your demise!”

“This isn't one of your vertical Chinese dramas,” MJ says flatly. “Who wants apricot jam on their toast?”

Peter raises a hand, eyes shut and head pillowed on the table.

Ned eyes him. “Spiders aren't nocturnal, are they?”

“No, I'm just twenty-two,” says Peter. “And I spent all last night staking out this weapons dealer. No show.”

“Think he caught wind of you?” MJ asks.

He cracks an eye open. “No one sees me coming. I'm Spider-Man.”

Ned groans and MJ rolls her eyes.

“What? No, what? Nobody does, literally! C’mon, guys!”

“I'm Spider-Man,” Ned mocks. “Dude, Tony Stark did it better.”

The smile on Peter's face flickers. He crumples a napkin and playfully throws it at Ned's face. “Not at sneaking around. Loud and flashy was his thing.”

“So you're saying you're a better stalker,” says MJ.

“Having a conversation with you two is impossible.” Peter turns his face into the wood. Ned steals a sip of his coffee and makes a face. “I heard you do that, Ned. I always hear you do anything, why do you keep trying to sneak around me?”

“You're the better stalker,” MJ confirms. “You going to be out late tonight too?”

“No, I was actually hoping if—” Peter grabs Ned's hand wandering towards his toast— “you could have a look at my data. Maybe I scraped it wrong, got the parameters mixed up? Ned, she made one for you right there!”

“I'm testing your reflexes,” Ned replies. “You're doing great, man. Now close your eyes again.”

“Christ’s sake.”

MJ takes a sip. “You need both me and Ned for this? How much data are we talking about?”

“Oh no, he's just asking you,” says Ned. “I usually would but I've got a couple errands, and I'm going out tonight. Hot date, you know how it is.”

“Your on-and-off thing with Betty is tedious and predictable,” MJ says. “Tell her congrats on landing a job with The Bugle for me.”

Peter chokes on his toast. “The—”

“She's not on the vigilante beat, relax,” Ned says. He lays a hand over Peter's. “I wouldn't consort with the enemy like that.”

“She once wore a Pacers jersey,” MJ says.

“A moment of weakness on her part!”

“You could do so much better.”

“Is this the girl you sat next to on the plane to Paris?” Peter asks. “On that school trip?”

“You know about that?” MJ asks sharply.

“He was there,” Ned says. “You just don't remember.”

Right. The spell. Only, she hadn't really realized—

Want to go in on a pair?

I can't believe I gave Beck the glasses.

“You okay?” Peter asks. He's frowning at her chest. “Your heartbeat—”

She sets her mug down. “Yeah. Yes, I'm fine. Just…bad memories, you know. Not the most relaxing trip. Nightcrawler and Mysterio and…”

“Yeah, I wondered how the spell altered that, because you guys were in the whole mess. Ned said all the pictures blurred me out.”

It's like a bucket of cold water. Pictures. She never even looked at them twice, but he’d just been—in them? Just there, and she had no clue? There's one on her corkboard, right now.

He's frowning at her again.

She clears her throat. “So, the data. I’m free now, if…”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Do you mind if we head to mine? I haven't uploaded it to the laptop here, and the suit needs patching up anyway.”

“Prepare yourself,” Ned says. “It's like if asbestos was a fraternity.”

“I cleaned up!”

“Only when I started hacking up hairballs.”

“I have a respirator,” MJ says. “Can't be worse than that time the Lizard Magical Girl Transformation Gas was released into the city.”

“That—that is not what it's called,” Peter says. “And it's not that bad! I even vacuumed the walls! I bought a vacuum!”

MJ looks at Ned, who says, “He was just sweeping like Cinderella before. His broom had like, seven bristles.”

Peter scowls, shoving the rest of his toast into his mouth and stomping off. Five seconds later, he peeks out and points a finger at MJ. 

“Wear pants,” he mutters. “I haven't deep cleaned the couch yet.”

MJ stares at a fist-sized dent in the brick wall.

“That was there when I got here,” Peter says.

She looks down. Red-orange dust lays at her feet.

“I'm still trying to figure out the vacuum,” he says. “I swear I'm not one of those wall-punching weirdos.”

He's practically wringing his hands. She's going to punch a wall; a seasoned vigilante, and he's still this cute? She's going to file a complaint.

“I didn't say anything.” She drops her bag by the couch and throws herself into the chair, spinning to take in his workstation. She whistles. “How long did it take you to set this up?”

“A couple weeks.”

“Right. And the, uh, state-of-the-art fabricator you got there?”

“I'm resourceful.” He grins and crosses his arms. 

If only that resourcefulness extended to his wardrobe; that t-shirt is going to rip around his biceps.

“So, what am I looking at, Spidey?”

“Oh, here, let me just…”

Peter bends down, brows furrowed. MJ stills. He's trapped her against the desk: if she leans away, she'll hit his chest, if she moves forward, she'll run right into his arm, and if she stays sitting right here, she's going to do something stupid like sniff him.

“Do you have a fever?” she asks.

“Uh, no?”

It must be a—a spider thing. The heat. It's fifty outside and he's in a goddamn t-shirt. No. No, spiders are ectothermic. There's no conceivable reason why he should be this hot.

“MJ? You okay?”

“It's the asbestos,” she croaks.

He shoots her a look. If his pretty face gets any closer, she's going to deck him. “I know we joke, but this place doesn't actually have asbestos.”

“How would you know, you’ve got a healing fac—”

“I wouldn’t risk you like that,” he says. “You know that, right?”

She fiddles with the mouse. “...Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

That’s the problem with Peter Parker. He’s too genuine. He can’t hide shit, and it’s ambrosia to every sorry bastard that stumbles on him. Frank. Jean Grey. Michelle-Jones Watson. Forget the radioactive spider-genes; he’d still be out there.

She clears her throat. “Have you looked into the specs for these locations?”

“No, why?”

“Well, your guy runs legitimate work in the daytime—see, he’s got these coming in this week—and if he was busy with that last night…”

“Wouldn’t he just store them in the same…” He peers over her shoulder and startles. “Oh, freezer units?”

She nods. “Some of his shipments need cold storage. You were staking out the wrong warehouse.”

He groans. “Why didn't I think of that?”

“Fresh pair of eyes.” She smiles up at him. “Cakewalk from here, though. If tonight’s manifest is right, there’s really only one place he’ll be.”

He rubs his jaw, pink-cheeked. “Now I feel silly bringing you all the way here for this.”

“I don’t know,” she hums. “Kind of want to see what that fabricator does. You said your suit got shredded?”

“I wasn’t exactly walking around naked,” he laughs. “But yeah, I was actually thinking—you’ve helped me out with so much, and I mean, if you’re not busy and you can say no, but I thought, because you said the other night—”

“Yes, Peter, I’ll help you design a new suit material.”

He opens and closes his mouth. “...It’s really unfair that you can still do that.”

She snorts and pulls up the schematics for his gear. “And it’s a really good thing you wear a mask, otherwise it wouldn’t be just me reading you like a book. Which file are we building on, you have like seventy versions—why does this one have a garter belt?”

“It’s a thigh holster for gear!” He snatches the mouse. “I scrapped that, how did you even find that?”

“I’m MJ. I always find out.”

He hip checks her chair away from the desk, sulking. She lets herself roll, staring at the red blush on his ears and trying to ignore how her mouth waters. 

His little spider lair isn’t really that bad, despite all Ned's ribbing. It’s got a good vantage point, being this high up in the heart of the borough. With his own floor and so removed from his neighbours, all of their stress tests go entirely unnoticed, and the hours pass so fast that when she goes to crack open a window, the dark sky startles her.

“Shit,” Peter mutters, coming up behind her, “I have to head out soon.”

The weapons dealer. The morning feels like a whole week away. MJ can’t remember the last time she got so invested in something, felt so satisfied. Happy, just to get her hands dirty doing something good. Something…great.

She stares out the window. At their reflection. Peter, running a hand through his hair and mumbling about weapons and the weather forecast. Her, standing next to him, and New York spread out before them. 

All of a sudden, she wants to cry.

“I’ll take you home,” he says. “Think I still got enough time to catch my mark. And I know you don’t like swinging, but—MJ? Everything okay?”

She nods. “Yeah. Yeah, just…dust, you know. Let me grab my bag.”

Every part of her feels like a hitching breath. Her palms hurt, to the bone. She slings her bag over her shoulder and keeps her gaze down when Peter comes up to her, suited up.

“You’re fast at that,” she says.

“I had practice.” He searches her face. “Hey, do you…would it be okay if I need your help again tomorrow?”

‘Okay’? As if she didn’t just realize—as if today hadn’t felt like a fracture, reset after years of her growing around it, growing blind to it, and now someone’s shoved their hand in and pushed it back into place, and she’s thinking it was that easy, this whole time. 

‘Would it be okay’?

“You’re not finishing that without me,” she says, letting him wrap an arm around her waist. Cold air rushes through the open window. “Pick me up tomorrow, same time. You’re not going out in spandex another night.”

He grins and hefts her into his arms, foot braced on the windowsill. “Roger that. Oh, could you—”

“Way ahead of you.” 

She pulls his mask over his face, thumbs brushing over the edges of his face until it sits even. He holds still the entire time. The white lenses hide nothing. She avoids his gaze. Like glass, seriously. They need to get that new suit up and running; how has no one figured him out yet?

“Don’t drop me,” she warns.

“I won’t.”

“I’m serious, not even as a joke. I’m not like Ned, no joy-swinging, alright?”

“MJ,” he says. “Do you trust me?”

He’s smiling behind the mask. She can hear it, can see it, the fabric stretching across his lips. She tucks her face into the crook of his neck, feeling the blush work up her face. “Mm.”

“MJ.”

“I do,” she whispers. “I trust you, Peter.”

He swallows. She feels it, against her arm around his neck. It’s a thrill, every time he reacts to her.

“Hold tight.”

For a split second, she thinks he presses his head to hers—and then they’re off, flying in the night, MJ’s shrieks drifting in the wind.

She wakes at the clap of thunder. She bolts upright, a scream strangled in her throat. 

Outside, a storm rages. Rain slicks the windows, wind rattling at the hinges. Blurred streetlights wash her room in a yellow cast. She’d forgotten to pull the curtains shut. She grasps blindly at her sheets, panting, sweat dripping down her chest. The duvet is bunched at her feet and a chill nips at her spine.

MJ closes a hand around her pendant. The dahlia bites into her.

She had been falling. 

She’s not one for heights. To look down and see distance, the disconnect between her feet and safe ground—it’s nauseating. In grade school, tag had been her favourite, and the monkey bars something she could only stomach when her legs grew long enough to brush the woodchips.

Lighting flashes. The glass creaks again. She almost dismisses it, when a pair of hands hook under the edge and slam it up.

“Fuck! Holy sh—Peter?!”

Peter falls to her bedroom floor with a grunt, completely drenched and shivering. He's in a pair of sweats and nothing else. Barefoot. Water pools underneath him.

MJ stumbles out of bed and shuts the window. Peter watches, eyes wild behind all the wet hair sticking to his face. His chest heaves.

“MJ,” he rasps, fingers curling loosely around her ankle. “Em.”

“What the hell, Peter.” She reaches for his elbows. “C’mon, up.”

They stagger towards her bed. Peter mumbles something about his wet pants. MJ just dumps him on the sheets and snags the towel from her chair.

“Did you seriously swing all the way here? In this weather?”

He lets her towel his hair dry, lax under the hurried patting. His skin gleams, damp, and she tucks the towel around his shoulders.

“Are you hurt?”

Peter shakes his head. His mouth is pressed tight, nostrils flaring. Shivers run through him like a livewire. He clasps his hands together, knuckles white.

“Talk to me, Parker.” She pushes his hair back. He jerks into the touch with parted lips, turning desperately into the curve of her wrist. “Hey. What's going on?”

“Sorry,” he breathes. The shadows under his eyes are deep. “Sorry, I…bad dream. You—you just keep falling.”

Her breath hitches.

A dark sky. Groaning scaffolding. Lights blurring as she plummets. Peter, diving for her, bloodied and pale and screaming, wrenched away just as their hands—

“Jean kicks me, and I drop you. I don’t catch you, I’m too late,” he says, sickened. “I—”

“Let me grab some of Ned's clothes,” she says. “You're going to catch a cold.”

He grabs her arm. “No, I'm fine, I'm okay. Sorry, just give me five minutes, just—stay. Don't go.”

How bad it must've been, to send him all the way here. Spider-Man, falling out of bed and sling-shotting himself half-naked across the rooftops, just to make sure she didn’t land without him. How desperate he must’ve been. How desperate he still is, here, tracking her so intently as she settles next to him. Their thighs brush and he shudders. It hurts to look at him. MJ’s nose stings.

“I’m sorry. I must have woken you up.” He hunches over, gripping the edge of her mattress. “I wasn’t thinking. I’ll be out of your hair soon. Sorry.”

She doesn’t want his apologies. From the moment she found out, she never wanted them. If he used his brain for half a second—

“For the love of God,” she says hoarsely, “get over here.”

She barely has to pull. He falls into her with a relieved noise, all the tension snapping in an instant. She lands on her back, Peter burrowing in her arms, the tip of his cold nose under her jaw. He’s heavy. Broad, under her hesitant hands. Her heartbeat picks up. She doesn’t give a damn. It’s far too late, now.

She closes her eyes. “You didn’t wake me. I was already…I dream about it.”

His arms tighten. “I’m sorry, she was just so fast, I…”

She hooks her chin over his shoulder and stares out the window, where the Statue of Liberty glints in the distance. Three hundred feet. 

There’s no reason for her to know how long it takes to fall three hundred feet.

“It’s okay,” she murmurs. “Spider-Man caught me.”

“It’s not really,” he says, a harsh edge to his voice. “The whole point of it was to…you were supposed to be safe, Spider-Man or not.”

Irritation sparks. “Should’ve erased your memories too, then. You were a loose end, Peter, and Jean found it.”

He doesn’t respond. It was mean of her. Knowing how his limbs loosen around Ned, how he breathes deeper in their apartment, like the air there fits his lungs better. She's seen it. 

She just doesn't understand why he didn't see it in them.

Rainwater seeps over her legs, under her arms. She shivers. Peter tries to let go and she just shoves at his waistband until he gets the message. MJ kicks the water-logged duvet to the floor and wraps them in a quilt.

“MJ,” Peter whispers.

“Shut up.”

She tugs him closer, pushes past the boundaries they've both put up for appearances. Peter shudders again, nearly panting open-mouthed against her neck. MJ goes limp, eyes slipping shut.

It’s late, she tells herself. It's dark and storming, and Peter came here half out of his mind and she—she keeps seeing their hands, half a breath apart. 

“Iron Man again?” she murmurs, knee slipping between his legs.

He nips at her jaw. “They were five bucks a pack, sue me.”

Christ. It takes her a second to recover. Peter puts his ear to her sternum to hear it happen. The ego on this guy. She tugs his ear, breathless and irate, and when he glances up, all the shadows in his face are gone.

His hands inch up her back, playing with the hem of her shirt. Thumbing the knobs of her spine, surgical. It's embarrassing, how much he wants under her skin.

She pinches him. “Get some sleep.”

“...Like this?”

“How else?”

He squirms. “Might be difficult.”

“Deal with it,” MJ mutters, halfway asleep. “Ned threw all the blankets in the hamper last night.”

Peter mumbles something, but everything's gone gauzy and warm for her, her toes tucked against his shins, the cold in her bones chased away under Peter's palms.

MJ fades away, Peter's mouth on her pulse.

If Peter dreams of the fall again after that night, he doesn't come to her bed for it. 

MJ leaves the window unlocked anyway. It never looks disturbed, but most mornings, when she stumbles out of her room, hair frizzy and missing a sock, Peter will be there, feet in Ned’s lap. 

Sometimes, he'll look at her a certain way, and she'll know it wasn't the door he used that day.

Autumn settles in. MJ’s veins stay bright with sunshine. She barely feels the chill, running home and scattering fallen leaves under her sneakers. Peter likes to cook them all dinner. Ned picks it apart every time, making like a reality show chef, baiting Peter into row after row. 

When there's a case, Spider-Man pulls her aside after tutoring and MJ will tumble through his apartment window and join Ned at the workstation. Peter finally deep cleans the couch. Ned starts leaving his fish cracker crumbs all over Peter's floors, and MJ scatters hair ties in tandem.

“How is this place messier than when I started fixing it up?” Peter despairs.

“No clue,” Ned replies, tossing a fry at MJ’s open mouth. He misses. It lands under the table with all the other fries. “You figure out that vacuum yet?”

MJ watches Peter grouse and groan, as if the crinkle in his eyes doesn't betray how he really feels. She shares a look with Ned, who grins with all his teeth. A feedback loop, the three of them. Like a teacup ride, spinning faster and pressing her into the seat, choking on laughs and wheezing. 

She's never felt more alive.

Paul notices.

“Really? All week?”

“School’s ramping up for the kids,” she says quietly into the phone. In the kitchen, Ned and Peter are rolling cookie dough, sneaking enough bites to deplete their batter by half. “I’m just…spending more time with them. You know how scholarships are.”

“And I love you for your efforts, sweetheart, but I’d love it more if I could see you.”

A clatter rings out. Peter swears and Ned’s long drawn-out “Dude” follows behind. MJ kicks her bedroom door closed, but it’s too late.

“You have people over.”

“It's just Ned and his friend.”

“The one that went to Midtown with you two? Not too busy for—Peter, was it?”

“He’s here for Ned. I just got home, I told you. Is this an interrogation?” 

“Look, it's just a little odd that you say you don't know him.”

“I didn't say—we just weren't friends then, why is that weird?”

“Classes all throughout high school, and debate club? You didn't—I don't know, get pizza or catch a show, even once?”

She drops the phone on the desk, pressing her palms to her eyes. “Could you just get to the point?”

“Michelle, I…you're making me feel like a broken record.” Shuffling, a sigh. “Why is everything a secret with you?”

Bullshit. She's never kept anything from him. Is it her fault she just doesn't know what to say, when he asks why they haven't moved in together? Is it a fault, to not know what's wrong with yourself? To feel like you're just waiting on something you can’t name?

And now when she's in the middle of figuring it out, when she finally does have something to keep to herself, to—to have, just for her, she has to explain herself?

She doesn’t see Paul that week, or the next. The texts pile up, burning a hole in her pocket, and then it’s suddenly Thursday when she hears a thwip high above her head. 

Spider-Man lands fifteen feet from her, in front of a Japanese hot dog stand. “Mrs. S,” he says. “I got a package for you!”

MJ turns her back to it, standing stock-still among a florist display with her ears peeled. Geranium petals bend beneath her fingers, as Mrs. S scolds Spider-Man for acting like her son's glorified postman.

“Aw c'mon, I got time,” says Spider-Man. “S’ just a couple deliveries a month, and you feed me for it!”

“Tch, you're too skinny. Try this. Sriracha mayo.”

Spider-Man makes a delighted noise. Someone bumps into MJ, reaching for the roses, but her mind's gone on the sound of Peter biting into something hot and tasty. Did he pull his mask up? He must've. Out on the street and he's lifted it for everyone to see his jaw, his pink mouth. Her stomach rolls, cheeks growing warm. She should go over there, yank it back down and drag him into an alley. She can't believe him. A month ago, he'd have died before showing a sliver of skin. They've changed him. Ned and MJ, back in Peter Parker's life and suddenly he's blooming like a flower.

“What would I do without you?” Spider-Man says.

“Starve,” says Mrs. S. “You want another? Take one home. You have a girlfriend, yet? You bring her here, okay? I'm getting old.”

MJ imagines taking bites out of a hot dog, trading it back and forth in the chill of a winter evening. Huddled against the side of the stand, jittering on their feet to stave off the cold, and Peter tucking her hair out of the way when she leans in.

“I'm trying,” Spider-Man says, and MJ almost crushes the geraniums in her hand. “You know I can't say no to you, Mrs. S.”

“Not if you know what's good for you,” Mrs. S says crossly. “Go on, swing away, don't you have a job to get to? And stop listening to my idiot son, he can come here himself!”

“He's got dirt on me, ma’am, my hands are tied!”

MJ tracks the streak of red and blue in the glass panes, sees the way Mrs. S shakes her head, how every face on the street turns to follow that swinging figure. Sun-hungry flowers.

She waits until she's sure that he's gone. And then she hurries home, a hand over her mouth the entire way, as if to keep her heart from vomiting itself for all of New York to see.

Ned unwinds his scarf and drops it on MJ’s head.

She sighs, reaching for the remote to rewind her show. “This is nice,” she says, rubbing the scarf’s thick wool. “Betty?”

He drops down next to her and they bounce off each other until the couch settles. They need to replace the damn thing; there's a loose spring digging into her thigh.

“You want it?” Ned eyes her pudding. “Trade you. She was worried I'd catch a cold but it's a bit…luxurious for me.”

“She's going to complain if she doesn't see you wear it next time.”

“Getting uncomfortable with how this is straying into sugar baby territory again.”

“Just stating facts.”

“Unstate them. Lie to me, what kind of friend are you?”

MJ rolls her eyes and hands him the pudding. He makes a triumphant noise, tucking into the treat while she wraps the trailing scarf around her head and shoulders. It really is nice. Very warm. That's another one of stolen Betty Gifts to add to her closet.

“Haven’t seen Paul around,” Ned says.

She looks askance at him. He raises his hands. “Betty asked.”

The wording makes her raise an eyebrow. “You don't care?”

He stuffs a spoonful of pudding in his mouth and doesn't answer. Sometimes he can be so annoying with these “meaningful silences". You go to a therapist once and suddenly you think you're the leading expert in an interrogation squad. She holds out for five minutes, which are filled with sitcom laugh tracks and Ned, slurping away at her homemade tiramisu.

“...Did he say something to her?” MJ asks eventually.

Ned sets the cup on the table. When he sits back, his arm presses down on hers from shoulder to wrist. “He showed up at the last hangout without you. Felicia was being nosy, but he wouldn't say anything. Most people put it together.”

MJ nods. She tips her head back and sighs up at the ceiling.

“It's going to be really awkward when you show up with Peter one day,” Ned blurts.

She smacks his arm, mortification thrumming through her. As if she wasn't already thinking about it. It's a cocktail of dread and anticipation. She wants to tuck her arm in Peter's elbow and drag him around to meet everyone; she wants to close all the blinds and padlock the door and refuse to let him near anyone else. So many people have gotten a piece of him these last four years. She wants her turn. She wants to hold court like Ned and chain Peter to her in front of a congregation.

“I got a position,” she says, eyes slipping shut. “R&D at a solar energy company. It’s a subsidiary of SI.”

Ned jostles her, delighted. “MJ, that's great! When are you booking an appointment with a dentist?”

“You saying my teeth stink?” she grumbles.

“If you don't want your benefits, put me on as a dependent so I can spend it. There's this massage office, they'll claim for you and you can show up like two years later, it doesn't even matter. And Judith has crazy strong hands.”

Against her will, her mouth curls into a smile. She elbows him and turns to tuck her feet under his thigh. He waggles his eyebrows at her, and she buries her face into the scarf.

“I broke up with him,” she admits. “Paul. I know we're all friends, and you guys hang out sometimes, so if you—”

“He was asking about Peter, wasn't he?” Ned interrupts.

She nods.

He hums, staring at the TV. Light and colour flicker over his face, reflecting off his glasses.

“He never even saw me around Peter,” she mumbles.

“Didn't have to,” Ned replies. “He saw me.”

She's nodding before she knows it. He's right. Ned and Peter. Just that one moment in their living room, during the whole Jean Grey mess, and she could tell they'd been friends their whole lives. And if Paul had seen it, and held that up with how close MJ and Ned had stuck together in MIT, out of some hide-brain fear, some us-versus-them mindset…

Yeah.

“Damn,” Ned sighs. “I’m going to have a hard time finding a plug with as good booze as him.”

MJ kicks him, biting down on her lip to strangle the smile.

“Is this your ‘something great’?” he asks. “The new job?”

“It's one of the better options.”

“Try not to be too enthusiastic,” Ned says dryly. “Listen, I think it's going to be good for you. SI had their weapons but they've turned it around.”

Ned's been patient. No other roommate would be as accepting of her turning down lucrative offers based on a gut feeling. All he's said on the matter was that he found it funny how she could be so emotional for someone so based in logic.

She hums an agreement. “This one feels right.”

“Yeah?”

“It makes sense. Everything.” She catches his gaze. “You know?”

Ned nods slowly, and she can see that he does know. That he gets it. They sit in that moment, just the two of them like it's always been, except now the apartment feels just that much fuller. And they know why.

He grabs her feet and slings them over his legs, hauling her in around the shoulders for a hug until she protests loudly.

“I have a good feeling,” Ned declares. “Everything's looking up for us. We're gonna kill it, the three of us.”

She slumps against him with a chuckle. “I thought your Nana said it was bad to tempt fate.”

“Well, I was half a sorcerer once, and their shtick is just saying things they want out loud. Trust me,” he says confidently, “magic is totally my thing.”

“I really hate magic,” says MJ.

Peter smiles. “Yeah. Me too.”

Expect to be disappointed. That way, you can never really be disappointed.

Here’s what MJ should do: she should expect to wake up tomorrow, and not know a thing about Peter Parker.

And then, she should expect to never know him again. She should expect him to fail her, and for her to never hear about it.

She’s old hat at this. One look at someone and she'll know how long it will take before she fades into their peripheral. MJ is about to fade into Peter’s peripheral. But he says he’ll come find them, he’ll choose them again, like how he chose Ned’s table in the cafeteria and how he chose the seat next to MJ in class, sitting hesitantly, trying not to look at her, as if he’d spook her—

He says, “I’ll find you,” and MJ believes him. 

And when he kisses her, when the sky rumbles under the spell and fear drips from his eyes, clearing wet streaks down his bruised face, she expects him.

This time, she expects hope.

It’s snowing.

MJ hears it first, the noise of the city muffled under a layer of early snowfall. Her eyes flutter open and there: fat clumps of fluff, drifting beyond her window.

She lays still. Takes stock. Her hands curled under her chin, her knees drawn up, the pillow stuffed near the top of her head, like a brace. The snow continues to swirl, beautiful and sleepy. 

MJ’s eyes fill with tears. They spill over, silent.

She takes her first breath and it rattles all the way in, feeds the ache in her throat like air to a blaze. She’s in disbelief. That it could hurt this much—was this how it felt? Four years ago, standing under that spelled sky?

Voices beyond her bedroom. The apartment door, clicking shut; Ned heading out to work. She stares sightlessly out the window and hears the gas stove fire up. Peter. He’s made Ned breakfast, and now he'll make hers. Fresh and warm.

Peter Parker is in her kitchen.

Peter Parker has left her life.

Her stomach drops.

MJ vaults out of bed. She trips on the sheets, scrambling for the doorknob and failing to twist it under shaking hands. The door slams open and she clips her shoulder on the frame, lips already forming Peter’s name.

“You’re up late,” says Peter. 

He doesn’t look up from the stove, scratching at a scar on his hip. A wicked curve of shiny red skin, like he'd barely dodged a gutting.

It stops her cold.

When did he grow up? she thinks. I’ll come find you, he said, face round and wrists boy-thin. And then he didn’t, not for years and not of his own will, and now he stands in her kitchen, calloused and unfamiliar. He could've died, at any time, and all she'd have felt is a stranger's pity. It's sick. She feels sick.

“Whoa, you don’t look so good,” says Peter. He reaches for her. “Here, sit down—”

She steps back.

“...Everything okay?” His eyes linger on her cheeks. “Nightmare?”

Yeah. For the last four years. 

“If Jean hadn’t taken that letter,” she says, “would I have ever found out that I loved you?"

Oil sizzles in the silence. Outside, someone yells, a car honks. MJ’s toes are going cold on the wood floors. A strand of hair is stuck to her cheek.

Peter flicks the stove off. “I don't know how to answer that. You have a boyfriend.”

“Did I do something?” she asks. “When we were together? Was I some—did I tell you I was only there for Spider-Man, and not Peter? Is that why?”

“No. No, I—you know I was just trying to keep you safe.” He comes around the table, hand outstretched. “Look, I made eggs. You should eat—”

She shakes her head, turning to pace the cramped kitchen. “I keep—I don't understand. Help me understand. Did you think I wouldn't believe you? I know I'm a skeptic sometimes but I would've—Peter, I—”

“MJ, you're worrying me. I thought we went over this. Will you come here?”

“No. No, I want to know why you would do this to someone you love.” She jabs a finger at him. “I asked you—I told you specifically to come find me, and you promised. But if it weren't for—for some freak events, that would've never happened. Right?”

He stares. “You're still mad.”

“Yes!” She throws her hands up. “Obviously, I—because I'm still waiting, Peter, for you to give me an explanation!”

“MJ, I have! I've told you twice now,” he says desperately. “Look, the moment somebody figured out who I was, again, they tried to kill you.”

“That doesn’t make you right!”

“No, but it makes me terrified! And I know, I know it wasn't right, I know that I—that I took from you, that you had the right to the truth, but I was so—” Peter braces his palms to the table, head dropping between his shoulders. “MJ, I was just afraid. You know this.”

“But you made a promise. Spider-Man made a promise, and—and even when he's afraid of assassins and beasts and whatever else, he still goes out there, right? But he couldn't tell two teenagers he was their friend?”

He shakes his head. His hands curl into fists, muscles bunching in his back. “Do you want me to leave?”

“What?”

“It's—I’m upsetting you. Your life. I told you all this and—and now I'm coming over every day. I get it.” He straightens and darts into the living room to grab his jacket. MJ chases after.

“Oh, you get it, do you?”

“Look, I didn’t mean for you to find out. Not like that. And I didn’t mean for it to—to make you feel like you have to do something about it, or that I’m—and I’ve been trying, okay? To not be so—I just don't get why you’re still…” He rubs his face.

“What,” she says. “Why I'm what?”

He looks at her. He puts the jacket on and tries to edge past. She steps into him. Pushes him.

“I'm going home,” he says quietly. She pushes him again. “MJ.” Again. And again, until his knees hit the couch. “MJ, we don't need to do this.”

“We do. Finish your sentence,” she says. “Why am I what?”

His jaw clenches. He's staring at her throat. Her necklace. 

“Why you're still mad that I stayed away,” he says, “when you clearly don’t like that I’m in it, now.”

She runs her tongue along her teeth, nodding. “You don't know shit.”

He throws his hands up. “Then tell me! Why are you bringing this up again? Why—”

“Because you were supposed to be mine!”

The words land like viscera. All over her, over him. Ugly, and squirming. 

Peter rocks back on his feet.

MJ trembles. “You didn’t want me to find out, Peter, I—! That letter, God, if I hadn’t read it, you would’ve just let me walk around for the rest of my life with a giant, stupid hole where you should be. Isn’t that right?”

He looks down. “...But at least you'd be—”

“Don’t you say it,” she hisses. “Don’t you—you think doing that gave me a good life? What about you, huh? Was it that nice without us, everything’s great, yeah, missing two thirds of what you were—you tell me how living like that felt!”

She shoves. He lands on the couch hard enough to skid. He's gone pallid.

“I’m not her. Your MJ. Your—if you had just told me, that day, then maybe I—” She has to look away, teeth clenched. “I don’t know anything about being her. Because you…God, Peter. Didn’t you think, for a second, that when you ripped yourself out, you took away half of what I—of what I was?”

His mouth parts. The shellshock on his face. No. No, she can see it hadn’t occurred to him, at all. 

It wasn’t enough that he removed himself from her life once, with the spell. He had to do it a second time, when he asked for that coffee.

“Four years,” she whispers. “You had four. Years.”

He closes his eyes. “MJ.”

“At least you knew. At least you got to miss us. Even that—” she covers her mouth, shaking. “Even the missing—I want it. I want—Peter, everything. Everything. Christ, you just don’t get it. You don’t—you erased your entire being, and I felt nothing.”

“Please, stop,” he says.

“You were gone and nothing about my—perception, my living—none of it. It was like—”

He hangs his head. Put his hands over his ears, until he realizes he’d have to give up her voice. He clasps them over his nape, instead, bearing down like he’s bracing for impact.

She falls to his feet. She yanks, nails scratching lines into his forearms. “No,” he’s mumbling. No, again and again, and she pushes and pulls until he’s looking at her, eyes wet, and she shoves her fingers in his curls, snags them so deep he can’t burrow away.

“How come?” she chokes. “Huh? How come it ripped you out of my goddamn heart, and it didn’t even have the decency to make me bleed for it?”

“MJ,” Peter says, like he’s dying.

“If it was anything—” She breaks off, hiding her face in her shoulder. “If this was anything like what she felt, then—and I don’t even know you, Peter, you stole yourself from me, and I still—I feel so stupid, I should’ve realized—I wanted to realize—!”

He yanks her into his lap. 

She bursts into tears. 

Peter makes a sound like she’s stabbed him. “Oh, MJ,” he says. “MJ.” Just that, just her name, over and over, as he rocks her back and forth. She clings to him, chest heaving, drenching his shirt in tears. He’s so warm, wrapped so tight around her, his thighs so solid under her. She could sit here forever. He’s ruining her. 

He smooths a hand up and down her spine. Cups her nape and squeezes; she shudders.

“I wanted you to find me,” she hiccups. “I wanted—wanted to be the MJ that wanted you back.”

He buries his face into her neck. He’s crying. “I know. I know, baby, I’m sorry. I was—I didn't realize.”

“It’s so unfair. It’s only been a month, and I already—she had years. How—how could it have felt like nothing?”

“It was magic,” he says helplessly.

“But I’m MJ.”

She feels his chest jerk with a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, you are. Why do you think I stayed away? Four years, and the moment I came through the window, you had my number within the day.”

She wipes her nose on his shirt, shameless. “I cheated.”

“My fault for leaving it out in the open like that.”

A laugh bubbles up through the tears. “We need to talk about—about your opsec. Spidey-sense, my ass, you have no—no appreciation for danger. A teenage girl got into your cocoon lair.”

“It’s not a—she’s the strongest telepath I've ever—”

“A teenage girl.”

“Okay. You’re right. I'll work on it.” 

He turns his face into her hair, smiling. He's sniffing her. He thinks he’s smooth about it, but this guy is always freaking smelling her.

“You can't leave me again,” she whispers.

“I won't.”

She grinds her forehead to his shoulder. He grunts. “I mean it. I'll come find you and beat you up, Parker, I swear to god.”

“Counting on it.” 

He kisses her temple, his palm warm on the back of her head. She tucks her nose under his ear, breathing deep. Exhaustion sinks in, all the fight and flight draining out of her. Peter's got her. She's sitting on him; he's not going anywhere without her knowing about it. 

She can't believe she almost lost this forever. She did lose this. An entire touchstone to her mortal self. Even now, it terrifies her to think of it. That Peter could keep away for as long as he did, that he could even give them up in the first place—MJ is a covetous animal. She could never. She'd give up entire worlds before she gives up Peter Parker.

“I really am sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know that you…I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

His hair is growing out. MJ plays with the ends. Her fingers brush his nape, and she thinks of the inhibitor. Good intentions. 

“It’s…well, it’s not fine, but I know May's death wasn’t…” She scrubs her eyes. “Just promise you you'll talk to us. Stop making decisions on your own, okay?”

“I promise. I’ll never keep anything from you guys again. God, MJ, it's been hell…” 

He trails off. MJ raises her head, feeling him stiffen up. “Peter?”

“May's death,” he whispers. “May. How do you…You remember her name?”

She frowns. What a silly question. Of course she remembers. Peter said he lost someone, and who else could it have been but…

A ringing grows in her ears. Has he ever mentioned it to her, after that time in Frank's bunker? He must have. How else would she have—?

MJ pulls back. 

They stare at each other. Peter barely looks like he's breathing. She casts her mind back. A stray comment Ned made while she was in earshot, maybe—if it weren't for how tense Peter gets around the subject. That part of the past remains untouched. It's all high school: classmates and teachers and video games.

She frowns at a point over Peter's shoulder. “Aunt May…she walked in on us, once. No, you—you were changing? Happy, the—Tony Stark’s guy. He was there?”

Peter's head jerks, a nod. His lashes tremble.

“We were out swinging and…and Beck unmasked you.”

And before—before that—

“—give this to me?”

“I had this whole plan, MJ, I'm sorry—”

“I kind of like it broken.”

Her hand comes up to her pendant. Peter swallows. He shakes his head. “Please,” he says.

And MJ replies: “We kissed on the bridge. You gave me the dahlia.”

“Yes,” Peter rasps. “Yes.”

He tackles her back into the couch, sobs wracking his frame. MJ cradles him close, staring distantly up at the ceiling as memories begin trickling into her mind. Slowly, one by one, until it's every moment all at once, a faucet slammed open and roaring. Pain lances behind her eyes, as Peter presses kiss after kiss to her face, her nose, her jaw, mumbling desperately into her skin.

“Is this real?” he croaks. “Do you really—? It's not a trick again? Jean—”

“She’s not that much of a jerk.” MJ winces. “Shit, that hurts. Why didn't Ned tell me that it hurts? Crap.”

Peter tips them over to the side, shoving her down so he can crawl on top. He's going to bury her in the cushions. She cups his face, thumbing at his tears. They're unending. He looks so damn happy.

“I miss—missed you so much,” he gasps, turning into her palm, brows furrowed. “Love you, I love you, love you so much, Em, MJ—”

“You're killing me,” she breathes. He really is. He's the sweetest thing she's ever seen. She'll never let him go again. “I love you too, Peter Parker.”

And this time, when they kiss, she'll remember it.

Because the heart of the matter is: there is very little that Michelle-Jones Watson owns.

Peter Parker is one of them.