Chapter Text
Except it’s – not great. Not completely.
As much as she tries to ignore it, as much as she tries not to think about it, MJ can’t help the way Gayle’s words ring in her ears for weeks after their fight. Weeks of not speaking to her sister yet still hearing her voice in her head – he’s going to ruin your life and you’re the one taking care of him .
MJ tries to ignore it, tune out the voice. She’s busy, studying for the LSAT and then taking the LSAT, starting classes and working on law school applications, and it’s not like Peter’s apartment ( their apartment, she has to remind herself) is very close to Columbia, so on top of it all she spends more time than she’d like on the subway or waiting for the subway.
Meanwhile, Peter is – Peter just sort of is . He putters around the apartment and fiddles with the broken toaster and the leaking faucet; he cooks and doesn’t sleep and wanders aimlessly. Some days he’s like her Peter, present and attentive and fun . On those days, they have sex or they go up to the roof and split a bottle of wine. She’s never been much of a drinker, but the wine takes the edge off, sometimes, and she likes watching the sunset with Peter’s arm snug around her, likes how it softens them both, likes how loose it feels when they go back down to their apartment and fall into bed together.
But most days he isn’t her Peter; most days, he’s everything Gayle ever warned her about, everything she’s always insisted he isn’t. He’s bad news , her sister said, and he’s not, really, or maybe he is, when he’s not working or going to school, when the most productive thing he’s done in a week is put away laundry. She feels like she’s drowning some days, can barely keep up with her to-do list that never seems to get shorter, and Peter isn’t exactly draining her but he’s not – he’s not helping, either.
He doesn’t even seem to notice, honestly.
As the days tick closer to the one year anniversary, dread fills MJ’s chest, and she starts sleeping fitfully, starts crying on the subway home some nights, but Peter –
Peter doesn’t notice that, either.
On the anniversary, she wakes up in tears, and Peter is on the fire escape, sipping coffee. He tells her there’s more in the pot but says nothing else.
“I’m going to my mom’s,” she tells him. He’s not listening, though; she knows that look. He’s not really here anymore. If she were less heartbroken she might be angry, but she’s too tired for that.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she says before she opens the door to go. He turns to look at her, then.
She thinks she might hate him, a little bit.
“Bye. I love you,” he says.
MJ doesn’t say anything back.
MJ doesn’t go home that night, though. She stays in her old room at her mom’s, too exhausted to want to make the trek home, too upset to want to face Peter. She texts him that she’s staying at her mom’s so he won’t worry (though a part of her thinks he might not even realize it if she didn’t), and she cries herself to sleep.
When she walks into the apartment the next morning, all the lights are off, and Peter’s pacing, phone to his ear, agitation rolling off him in waves. She flicks the light switch but nothing happens.
The clock on the stove is off.
“Right, I realize that now, I just–” he’s saying into the phone. “Okay but I do it by the end of the day–”
She doesn’t acknowledge him, walking past him to the bedroom, collapsing onto the bed and feeling hot tears prick at her eyes.
“Okay, thank you.”
There’s a pause, then Peter appears at the door.
“Power’s out,” he says.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“I forgot – bill was past due.”
“Don’t they send reminders before shutting off the power?” she asks, unable to keep the irritation out of her voice.
“I didn’t see them,” he says quietly.
“Because you’ve been so busy?”
He bites his lip and looks down.
“I’ll take care of it. Should be back in an hour or so. I’m sorry, I –”
“That’s not good enough, Peter. Fuck.” She sits up, wiping her eyes, the past two days catching up with her. She’s tired of crying, and yet she can’t seem to stop.
“I know it’s not, but it’s all I can do, so–”
“It’s not all you can do, though!”
He sucks in a breath and she looks at him. He’s holding himself back, she can feel it. He wants to lash out, too. She almost wishes he would.
“You don’t do anything , Peter, you don’t – you’re not even out doing patrol, you’ve just fucking – it’s like you’ve given up, and I can’t – I need you to be here for me,” she says, choking on those last words. His face falls and he starts towards her but she shakes her head.
“Em,” he starts. “I’m sorry .”
“You forgot,” she says, tears flowing freely. “Yesterday was–”
His eyes widen and he swears.
“MJ–”
“I know you’re going through something but I needed you and you’re not– you’re not here and if you’re not here then why am I, what am I–”
“I’m sorry,” he says, coming to her and sitting next to her on the bed, pulling her into him. She’s tired and crying and angry with him but it feels so good to be held, to be comforted like this, like she’s wanted to be. So she lets him wipe her tears and kiss her cheek and smooth her hair, lets him hold her tight and apologize and whisper in her ear all the things he’s sorry for and how much he loves her.
“What the fuck happened , Peter?” she asks after she’s calmed down a bit, after she feels she’s cried herself out, Peter holding her and pressing a kiss to her temple. When she asks this question, though, he tenses. She can feel the shift in him, but she’s tired of tiptoeing around it, needs something .
“It was bad,” is all he says.
“Like how?” She takes a deep breath. “I’m not trying to – ever since you got back you’ve been like a zombie, and I’m trying to be supportive, but – but I need support, too. I can’t –” She takes another deep breath, not quite realizing what she’s about to say. “I can’t keep doing this, if you’re going to be so– so shut off. If you’re not going to do anything. If the lights are gonna get turned off. I love you, but I – I won’t.”
He nods. Takes a deep breath in. Releases it.
“His name was Thanos and he wanted to wipe out half of — and I watched him kill – I saw Steve and Bucky, and some other people – they died, and I–”
She puts her hand on his cheek.
“Tony puts money in my account because he feels guilty but he stopped because I told him to go fuck himself the last time he tried to call me. That’s why the lights–“
MJ doesn’t say anything. It feels like too much to process.
“I’ll get a job. I’ll – I’ll work on it. I’m sorry,” he says again. “I don’t want you to leave, and I want to be here for you, so I’m – I’ll be better. I promise.”
“You don’t have – you just have to try , okay?”
He nods.
She kisses him soft, his hand coming up to cradle her face and hers tangles in his hair.
“I love you,” he says. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, too,” she says, pulling him down on top of her.
Because she does.
(The lights turn back on, and Peter gets a job at a local diner. The hours aren’t steady and he comes home smelling like grease, but he starts to become himself again, a bit more.)
(It’s progress.)
Two and a half months into the semester, just after midterms, MJ sees Gwen.
It’s awkward— enough that MJ thinks for a moment that Gwen’s going to ignore her, only to see the moment she decides not to— Gwen giving her a half-smile and awkward wave as MJ sits at Pour Over.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” Gwen says, looking at the open seat across from MJ. “Can I…?”
“Um. Yeah, yeah, that’s… yeah,” she replies, trailing off as Gwen sets her stuff down— MJ feeling as if it was a stranger joining her.
She’d gotten out of the apartment to write an essay, the library at Columbia filled with too many memories and Peter’s presence in the apartment near stifling. He’s better, he’s doing better but there’s only so much MJ is able to handle right now— a reprieve at Pour Over giving her the chance to panic about the essay she has to write and the applications she’s working on.
Right up until Gwen Stacy sits across from her.
“How are you?” Gwen asks, MJ shrugging as Gwen makes a face.
“Sorry. I’m— that’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“It is,” Gwen counters, looking at MJ steadily. “my dad died. Back when I was in high school.”
“Oh.” MJ hadn’t known that.
“So I know how stupid that is, to ask how you’re doing, when… you know,” she says, a knowing look on her face that MJ recognizes not just because she knows Gwen.
It’s the same look Peter gives her, a look of loss and of solidarity.
She doesn’t know what to make of it.
“How’s Peter?” Gwen asks instead, valiantly trying to make small talk it seems despite how little sense it makes. The two of them hadn’t talked much, if at all since MJ had moved out. There hadn’t been a reason to, their friendship all but dissolving in the months since.
(It makes MJ wonder what happened to Harry but she doesn’t feel it’s her place to ask.
It’s not as if Peter would know.
Peter wasn’t doing much if anything these days.)
“He’s okay.”
Gwen looks as if she wants to ask something else, but she doesn’t— another version of MJ would’ve been willing to push her on it, make her ask the question that she wants to, no matter what.
This version just lets the two of them sit, the awkwardness between them so stifling that MJ wonders why she left the apartment in the first place.
“So. Law school,” Gwen offers, MJ raising an eyebrow as Gwen motions to the books in front of her. “I mean, it’s obvious.”
“Yeah.”
“Anywhere you really want to go?”
MJ chews the inside of her cheek, some part of her wanting desperately to end the conversation as she says, “Stanford.”
Gwen raises her eyebrows at that, MJ continuing, “they have a lot of great clerkship connections. They have a volunteer program that works directly in restorative justice.”
MJ clears her throat, shrugging again. “I don’t know. Seemed interesting.”
“That sounds great, MJ,” Gwen says quietly, forcing MJ to look back up at her. “And Peter?”
“What about Peter?” MJ asks, Gwen hearing the edge in her voice just as much as MJ hears it herself. They’ve never talked about the spider in the room and MJ certainly doesn’t plan on doing it now— not when they’re in public.
(Not when Peter hasn’t left the apartment for anything for Spider-Man in a year.)
“Is he coming with you?” Gwen asks and it’s a simple question— one of the simplest, most basic questions.
It’s also something that MJ has never once considered as an option, something neither of them have talked about and even now— the thought of it just made her stomach twist.
“Um.”
“STACY!” The barista calls out, Gwen turning her head.
“Be right back,” she says, with a smile— one that MJ tries and fails to return as Gwen leaves to get her coffee, leaving MJ behind.
(When she comes back, MJ is already half packed up— giving an excuse that sounds fake to her own ears of having to hurry home.
Gwen doesn’t push her on it. MJ didn’t think she would.
She’s not sure if she’s glad or disappointed by that as she leaves.)
MJ takes the LSAT and submits her applications and it starts to feel okay again.
She and Peter go to May’s for the first night of Hanukkah and Peter shows her how to light the menorah as he and May sing the blessings, and they eat latkes and Peter wears a blue Santa hat with a Star of David on it. She and her mom go to Philadelphia for Christmas, but Gayle doesn’t. Work , she’d said, but MJ thinks that’s a lie. Or an excuse, at least. They Facetime on Christmas and she misses him, even as strained as things sometimes are between them.
It’s a few days before classes start up again when Peter plops down next to her on the couch, his hair wet and skin still damp from the shower, telling her he has a question.
(It can’t be normal, how her heartbeat speeds up, then.)
“What’s up?” she asks, trying to sound more normal than she feels.
“Harry text me and he’s– he’s getting a group together to go to some wine painting class,” he says. MJ raises an eyebrow.
“Wine painting?”
“Yeah, like– you go and drink wine and eat cheese and paint a sunset. I don’t know, Harry text me and he’s been trying to get me to go out,” he tells her– which is news to MJ– and he shrugs. “We don’t have to, but I thought you might like it.”
She thinks for a moment.
It’s been ages since they’ve gone out with friends– with this group especially. Back when they first started hanging out again, this group of Gwen and Harry and others had been a sort of buffer, a way for them to spend time together and feel like they weren’t rushing things. Once they’d gotten back together, though, the group hangouts sort of– stopped. And now, a year removed from her dad and Peter’s–
It’s been a long fucking time since they’ve hung out with Harry or Gwen, and the ways things were left with Gwen still feels a little raw, and she does like painting. So maybe it would be good for them.
“Yeah, okay,” MJ says. “When is it?”
Peter seems a little surprised that she’s agreed but nods.
“Uh. Saturday. That work?”
She nods.
“I’ll text him.” Peter smiles brightly at her and leans close, presses a kiss to her lips. “It’s a date.”
(She can’t help how that warms her from the inside out.)
And it’s been– she doesn’t even know how long it’s been since they went on anything resembling a date.
MJ realizes that she’s started thinking of time as Before her dad died, and After. Before he died (and Peter disappeared), they may not have gone on a lot of dates, but she and Peter did more than just stay in the apartment and have sex. After, though? It feels like they’re both treading water, like the only romance that exists between them comes in the form of Peter bringing home leftovers from the diner or MJ bringing stale scones from the coffee shop.
But they’re going out – with people, no less, like a normal couple of twenty-somethings, and so MJ gets a little dressed up, puts on makeup, flirts with Peter while he shaves and they head for the subway, hand in hand.
“Peter Parker, as I live and breathe,” Harry says in a heavy southern accent as they walk into the shop, pulling Peter into a bear hug that seems to catch him by surprise.
“How you doing, Har?” Peter mumbles. Harry pulls back and takes Peter’s face in his hands.
“Lord, I haven’t seen you since–”
“Stop being a drama queen, Harry,” Gwen says, coming up to them and rolling her eyes. MJ shoots her a thankful look and Gwen smiles softly. Her heart aches.
“Seriously. It’s good to see you, man,” Harry says in his normal voice. He turns to MJ and she can tell he can’t decide if he can hug her or not, so she takes a step and hugs him .
“Thanks for inviting us,” she says.
“Of course! The more the merrier!”
Gwen shakes her head.
“ Someone decided to pregame this event,” she tells them. This time Harry rolls his eyes.
“Paint drunk, edit sober.”
“That’s not–”
“We’re starting in five minutes so start making your way back to the easels,” calls a woman who must be running the class.
“Come on,” Gwen says, pointing to the back. “Let’s sit back there.”
MJ follows, and Peter follows her, his hand still holding hers loosely as they move through people. She sees a few more friends she recognizes of Harry’s, and she and Peter take off their coats and settle down at easels next to Gwen.
“I’ve never done anything like this,” MJ tells her, hoping that maybe this can be the sort of olive branch they need to not be so awkward around each other.
“Harry loves shit like this. We’ve come a few times.” She glances at MJ, expression wary. “I’m sure you’ll be amazing, though, given your studio art background.”
MJ bites her lip, but before she can respond, Peter is leaning over.
“You should see some of the stuff she did in high school. Watercolors. She got super into it one summer,” he tells Gwen, and MJ can see Gwen soften a little as he talks.
“Always the artist, huh?” she teases softly. MJ nods, trying to bite back tears.
(Her dad had one of those watercolors hanging in his office, when–)
But she’s spared from responding by the instructor getting their attention, walking them through the process.
They’re brought drinks and they’re given smocks, and told step by step how to draw the sunset over the ocean that is today’s painting. MJ sort of follows and sort of tunes it out, making her own color choices and embellishments along the way. She glances at Peter at one point, his canvas still almost entirely clear, focused on trying to get the sun an exact half circle.
“Relax,” she whispers in his ear. He turns to kiss her.
“I’m bad at this.”
“It’s art,” she says. “Yours can be abstract.”
He laughs loud enough that the instructor shoots him a look, but rather than look embarrassed he turns and winks at MJ, dipping his paint brush in orange and making a large swoop across the canvas.
“What do you call that one, the paint splatter style?” he asks, flicking his brush at the canvas.
“You mean Jackson Pollock?”
Peter nods, and dips the brush in a new color, flicking the paint a little more aggressively this time.
“That’s what I’m doing.”
She snorts.
As the hour drags on, MJ and Peter continue to ignore the instructor, MJ making her sunset more elaborate, Peter making his more– something. At one point, the instructor comes around to see their work and stops when she gets to Peter.
“It’s my interpretation of a sunset,” he says with complete sincerity, and it takes all of MJ’s self-control not to burst out laughing.
At the end, Harry invites them out for drinks, and MJ almost wants to go.
(Almost.)
“Peter’s got an early shift in the morning,” she says. “Maybe next time.”
They say their goodbyes and leave, canvases in hand, and Peter pulls her close and kisses her while they wait for the subway.
“I’m not working tomorrow. Or did you forget?”
“Nope.” She kisses him again, a little deeper. “Just wanted to get you home.”
“Oh yeah?”
She nods, and he’s smiling wide, eyes bright and clear and looking at her like he does, and she loves him. She loves him.
“Good,” he says, kissing her once more.
They’re handsy and trying not to be the rest of the way home, stopping to make out in the stairwell on the way up to their apartment. When they get inside they drop their canvases on the table and Peter pulls her close, nuzzling her nose as he slides his hands up her shirt.
“We have to decide where to hang our paintings,” he says.
“Mmhmm.”
“At least one of them is a masterpiece.”
“Thank you for noticing.”
“I was talking about mine ,” Peter says with a shit-eating grin. She laughs and Peter picks her up, walking towards the bedroom as she kisses him, both of them still a little giggly as they fall into bed.
She can’t remember the last time she felt like this, the two of them smiling and Peter with his dumb suggestive jokes as they undress each other. Fondness fills her as she kisses him, flecks of paint on his cheeks and paint on her fingers, too, and heat in her belly as his hands wander.
“You’re amazing,” he says softly, eyes intent on hers as he slides his fingers between her folds. “You’re smart, and you’re so fucking talented. And you make me– you make me so happy.”
She gasps, gripping his shoulders as his fingers move faster.
“You’re so– fuck – I love you so much,” Peter says, bucking against her.
She can’t get words out so she pulls him in for a kiss, freeing him from his boxers and moving his fingers away, needing him inside her, needing him closer, needing him.
He stops and leans over her for a condom, and she’s seized, once again, by love for him, kissing him harder when he finally pushes in, holding him close and gasping again as he starts to move.
“ Fuck ,” she breathes. “Don’t stop, don’t–”
“I won’t, I won’t–”
And for a second, it doesn’t feel like After, it feels like before again, and they’re young and in love and everything is okay; they’re happy and her heart feels light and nothing is wrong, like it’s always this easy.
She comes right before he does, clenching around him with the aftershocks as he collapses against her, hips stuttering, her heart beating wildly in her chest.
“You’re pretty good at that,” she says softly. He smirks and lifts his head to look at her.
“Pretty good? That’s it?”
“Well, considering you’re a shit artist–”
He tickles her and she squeals, trying to get away, both of them laughing and squirming as she tries to get him back, and it’s perfect, it’s amazing, she loves him, it’s–
MJ gets accepted to Stanford.
She had the date in her calendar for weeks, putting off the anxiety of checking it over and over again because of— of everything. Everything and nothing and so much of her life hinging on this thing that Flash still talked to her about as if it was a bad haircut, that neither she nor Peter had ever really talked about beyond his unwavering and unconditional support.
“I love you,” Peter pants out, hair sticking to his forehead slick with sweat as he pulls out, kissing her slow before moving off of her to dispose of the condom.
“Objection,” she says with a sigh, hearing Peter’s laugh as he comes over to lay beside her.
“On what grounds?”
“I love you ,” she says, soft and sweet and so utterly taken with this man— turning to her side to look at him more fully as he does the same, Peter brushing a curl past her face.
“I’m so proud of you,” he whispers, eyes searching her face and MJ feels—
Her throat constricts, Peter immediately sensing the shift in her as she chokes back a sob. He pulls her in without hesitation, sensing it seems in that way he does what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling—
(She loves him so much. Loves him because she called her mom immediately to tell her the news, called Gayle and then before she could even think of the person she couldn’t call, he pulled her into bed— comforting her and loving her and fucking her— grounding her into the moment of what she knew, not of what she had lost.)
Peter pulls her into him, MJ crying into his chest as he holds her tight— still sweaty and gross and the love of her stupid life.
“Is it always like this?” She asks and it’s not all she wants to say— can’t even begin to think of what it would be like to continue to live through all these things her dad will never get to see.
“Yes,” Peter whispers, something clenching in her chest at that— Peter holding her tighter.
There’s a text thread of people on her phone all wishing her congratulations, jokes and plans of a party to celebrate her when they’re all back in town.
There’s a grave across the city that she hasn’t visited as much as she should, flowers always fresh from how often her mom does.
There’s an ache in her chest, in her stomach, in her lungs— a gaping hole that she’s not sure she’ll ever fill.
Peter holds her close and it’s as if for a moment, nothing else can touch her. Just them, in this moment, Peter’s arms wrapped around her and pressing a kiss to the top of her head and making her feel safe in a way she knows she can’t be.
She loves this man, loves him and knows him and trusts him too—
In him, she will let herself be cared for.
In this, she will trust that their love will be enough.