Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You realize, at last, that you can change without disappearing, that all you had to do was wait until the storm passes you over and you find that—yes—your name is still attached to a living thing.”

- Ocean Vuong, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”

***

“I’m just saying, if you could keep the sewer smells— oh — out of our apartment, I would— fuck —appreciate it.”

“I know we’re working on a limited timeframe this morning,” Peter pants, hands on Michelle’s hips as she grinds down on him with a sleepy lack of rhythm but determination nonetheless. “But I would love to have sex with you and then talk about the sewer smells on my suit, if that’s— oh, God, Em — ”

“Yeah,” she breathes, moving her hips faster now with the assistance of his guiding grip as she buries her face in the crook of his neck, trails kisses all the way up his jawline until she reaches his lips and connects hers to them soundly. 

Peter hums out a sound of approval directly into her mouth and sends pleasure shooting through her body as he starts to match her rhythm with his own hips. It’s a little bit sloppy and a little bit rushed, but he drops a hand between their bodies and touches her as she digs her palms into the swell of his chest and by the time she’s collapsing on top of him as the both of them catch their breath, she still has six minutes to stay in bed before she has to start getting ready for the day. 

“We could just— stay here y’know,” Peter suggests, trailing a finger up her spine where she now lays beside him in bed, flat on her stomach with her head pillowed in her arms. “You’ve got a lot of personal days banked, right?”

“I’m banking them for our stay-at-home honeymoon,” she snorts, turning her head to look at him, the dopey grin on his face as she questions, “We are still getting married right?”

“Yeah, but months from now,” he groans without dropping the smile as he pulls himself up close to her and kisses her temple. “We haven’t had a stay in bed day in ages.”

“Not for lack of trying, huh?” she smirks into the press of a kiss, slow and relaxed with eyes closed and nothing of worry except the blinking time on the digital clock to her right before pulling away from his chasing lips and slipping out of bed entirely. 

“Cruel fiancée,” he laughs, propped up on an elbow as he watches her step into the bathroom. “Terrible, terrible love of my life.”

“Love you too!”

***

“Hey,” he says, voice muddled by the toothbrush in his mouth while Michelle quickly scrubs her body clean (hair tied up and staying out of the spray because she doesn’t have the time or energy for that this morning). “Tony keeps pestering me about pestering you about the dress, by the way.”

“Oh, God,” she bemoans, swinging the shower curtain open just enough to see him leaning up against the sink in his boxers as he brushes his teeth and offers her a sheepish grin. “Did you tell him to back off?”

Peter spits, wiping his mouth with a nearby hand towel as he meets her gaze in the mirror. 

“I told him you’d get to it when you get to it,” he acquiesces. “But to be fair—”

“Nope— no, this is not about fairness,” she cuts him off. “You haven’t seen all the websites he’s been sending me. The amount of money he’s willing to spend on this thing is ridiculous and I never even asked for it!”

“Em, you did agree to let him buy your dress,” Peter chuckles, turning back around to look at her head-on now as she keeps washing up just outside the reach of the showerhead until it's time to rinse off. “You can’t have expected anything less from the guy.” 

“I only agreed to that so they’d all chill out about the courthouse part of the thing,” she sighs. “How was I supposed to know he’s actually knowledgeable about the fucking designer wedding dress industry?”

“You don’t have to pick one of the ones he points out,” Peter suggests as though it’s that simple. (It is, Michelle knows this, knows she’s overthinking it. But she’s also actively not washing her hair this morning so there’s that.) “You can find one you like and just let him pay for it.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, finishing up rinsing off and shutting the water off, taking the fresh towel that he hands her as they switch places. “Maybe I’ll do that.” 

***

Michelle makes coffee before she does anything else. 

She stands in the kitchen in her robe and thick socks to combat against the winter chill that pierces their apartment through the glass of their windows, leans back against the countertop and closes her eyes against the gurgling sound of the coffee maker and breathes her way into the day. 

Slow and steady and familiar, it’s hard but not harder than it is on any other day like today, and it’s work, but work that she’s gotten good at over the past two years, and mostly it’s good, the life that she lives and continues to live. 

Mostly it’s good, as she hears the shower shut off and Peter rooting around in the closet for something to wear. Mostly it’s good as she pulls two mugs out of the drying rack from where they hadn’t put them away the day before. 

“Don’t forget these today,” Peter says as he sets an orange pill bottle down next to her hip where it rests against the counter, hand on her waist and a quick kiss to her cheek that stops any defensiveness she might feel in its tracks. 

Because mostly it’s good, and in all fairness she’s forgotten said meds twice in the past week and a half, and Peter’s the one that has to deal with her when she does. 

“Yeah, I’m on it,” she responds, taking his hand and squeezing it once before he pulls out of her space to finish his own morning routine. 

He flicks the television on to the morning news while she finishes making them coffee. He makes toast (one with peanut butter, one with jam) while she gets dressed. He grabs the Spider-Man suit out of the wash while she ties up her hair. 

“Are we having dinner tonight?” Peter asks as he slips his shoes on. 

Michelle has a mouthful of toast and peanut butter on her tongue, swallowing as she reminds him, “I’ve got that HR meeting and then an appointment with Ana after work. But if I get home before you leave for patrol, then yeah.” 

“Have they told you what that HR thing’s about yet?” he asks as he sits down across from her at their little kitchen table and wordlessly, but still graciously, accepts the cup of coffee she hands him. 

“I dunno,” Michelle shrugs. “Every few months we get a comment or an e-mail or something that reminds them who I am and what I’ve done and they feel like they need to have a meeting about it. But it’s usually nothing.” 

“You’ll fill me in later?” he asks as a reminder on his phone begins to buzz and he downs as much of his coffee in one go as he can before getting out of his seat. 

“I’ll fill you in later,” she agrees, accepting a quick peck on the lips from him as he snatches his toast off the plate on the table and stuffs it in his mouth. 

Michelle watches him in all his frantic movement as he tugs on his coat and his shoes, wraps himself up in scarf and hat, and grabs his backpack to sling over his shoulder. Mostly it’s good, she thinks with a smile on her face as he rushes back over, chewing on a mouthful of toast and getting crumbs on her cheek as he kisses her there, calling, “Love you! Have a good day!” over his shoulder while he makes his way to the front door. 

“Don’t forget the alarm!” she catches him right before he opens the door and sets it off, chuckling at the sight of him cursing under his breath and hurriedly typing the code into the number pad by the door. 

“Thanks!”

“Love you too, space cadet,” she tells him, getting a toothy grin in response before he’s gone. 

She finishes her toast and takes her meds and triple checks the alarm is on again before she leaves for work. 

And it’s mostly good. 

***

Michelle’s good mood carries her through a subway ride that’s hot and sticky and sweaty, carries her through the short walk to the office that she’s grown to love, and carries her right up the stairs despite the broken elevator. 

It’s good— mostly good— because she’s able to do this now without much thought. It’s easy, to forget how hard this used to be for her. When the idea of stepping out of her front door was enough to send her into a spiral, much less now living in an apartment that she shares with Peter and commuting to work like a regular person in a regular life in this anything but regular city. 

It’s good, Michelle is feeling good today— belly full of coffee and toast and love. She didn’t miss her train. She didn’t forget her meds.

Michelle is feeling good.

In hindsight, she should’ve guessed that should’ve been a sign. 

***

“I’m sorry, what’s happening?”

Michelle watches as her boss Irene looks nervously over to Patricia, the head of HR and someone who has never been a part of these meetings until now. 

“As you’re aware, there’s been a few changes in our leadership,” Irene continues, tearing her eyes away from Patricia who just looks as stoic as ever, “And some of those changes involve a— a new direction in our strategic plan.”

Michelle’s eyes narrow, looking between the two of them before asing, “I’m not sure I follow.”

Irene looks back over helpless to Patricia, a nervous feeling in Michelle’s gut as Patricia clears her throat and leans forward.

“We’re very thankful for all the work you’ve done here, Ms. Jones. You are talented and a gifted writer, especially commendable considering all that you’ve been through.”

Michelle flinches involuntarily, a gut reaction that no amount of therapy has helped work out of her— the idea that others know of that time in her life being something she very intentionally doesn’t think about. 

“That being said,” Patricia says carefully, bracing herself for something, “our new CEO believes that it would be in our— in the company’s best interest if we shy away from sensational stories.”

“What do you mean, sensational stories?” Michelle interjects, getting the very distinct impression that this conversation isn’t leading towards a check in and feeling that much more direct because of it. “You’re saying an update on the clean water initiative that middle schoolers in Harlem are doing is sensational ?”

“Not the stories themselves,” Irene jumps in, putting a hand up placatingly, “But it’s— with our renewed interest in getting into more of— more delicate topics may bring in unwanted attention to that of our staff.”

Michelle’s eyes flick between the two of them, clicking her tongue before saying, “You’re talking about politics.” 

“Not solely politics,” Irene amends, Michelle shaking her head. 

“I am more than capable of writing in any new direction that the company is going with,” Michelle says with the smallest hint of mocking in her tone, feeling reckless solely from the look on Patricia’s face that tells her exactly what this meeting is. 

“No one here has any doubt of your abilities, Ms. Jones,” Patricia placates, Michelle huffing out a laugh as she continues, “But with this new direction, we may not be able to risk the— the chance that our integrity would be compromised, considering your background.”

Michelle has the desire to dig her heels in, to make them explain in detail what exactly they mean by “her background” or what new direction they’re allegedly going in. She hadn’t been happy when the CEO of the small magazine that she worked at took control, not for his ties with Mayor Osborn or for the flashy persona that he had that prided clicks over truth. It’s laughable for either of them to be arguing about integrity, not when Michelle is the only one of them who actually has experience of what it means to be on the wrong side of people in power. 

When Michelle doesn’t answer, Patricia leans forward and says, “Your work has been exceptional, Ms. Jones and we of course would be happy to provide you with recommendations for positions that might be a better fit for you. We of course will also be offering you a very generous severance package.” 

Michelle grinds her teeth, forcing a smile that she doesn’t mean. 

“Of course.” 

***

“Can you fucking believe it?”

Ana hums, Michelle pacing back and forth in the tiny office that has served as a safe haven to her in more ways than one the past few years. 

When she first met Ana, it was when she’d just moved back to the city and was learning how to be a person again. Michelle’s feeling a little bit more like that person again rather than the well-adjusted, three-years into recovery person that she’s supposed to be as she throws her hands up. 

“They’re fucking firing me. I can’t— Pepper said it’s legal because of the fucking contract I signed and I’m just— I can’t believe I fucking let myself believe that this would actually be a good thing.”

“The job?” Ana gently probes, Michelle exhaling out of her mouth as she stops in place.

“Yeah, the job,” Michelle says, shaking her head. “I should’ve known that things were going too well for me.” 

“Michelle—”

“I know, I know,” Michelle interjects before Ana can remind her of all the lessons she feels she’s learned ten times over, “I gotta stop looking for the negative.”

“It’s not looking for the negative, it’s expecting it,” Ana says firmly, but not unkindly— forcing Michelle to lock eyes with her as Ana says, “This isn’t something that you could’ve expected.”

She laughs at that, snorting before saying, “You got that fucking right. I finally found a job that I’m fucking good at, that pays well and isn’t fucking afraid of my reputation only for the new CEO to be just like the rest of them!”

She’s yelling at this point and she knows that yelling is allowed—even encouraged— within the confined four walls of this room. 

The thing is, Michelle isn’t yelling because she needs to or wants to. She’s yelling because she feels as if she stops, she just might cry. 

The thought stops in her tracks, shoulders sagging as she walks over to the couch and sinks back down— putting her head in her hands. 

“I just— I thought I finally did it, you know?” She whispers, voice shaking and too close to breaking into something that she’s not sure she’ll be able to get back from. 

“Did what?” Ana gently asks, Michelle taking a deep breath before bringing her head out of her hands. 

“This living like a normal, regular person thing,” Michelle says wetly, feeling tears start to form and desperately wanting them to not to fall and break this sense of stability she feels steadily careening out from under her.

“I thought we had established that normal is relative,” Ana replies knowingly, Michelle laughing and swiping away a tear. “This is just a setback, Michelle. A ‘regular’ one that any other person your age would be going through.”

“You’re saying everyone gets fired by their jobs because their boss is afraid that your kidnapping and torture by a dirty politican would reflect poorly on their prospects of interviewing more dirty politicians?” Michelle asks sarcastically, Ana giving her a pointed look.

“I’m saying that while the circumstances that led to this particular event are unique to your experience, that losing a job—”

“Being fired from a job.”

“—is the kind of situation that we’re capable of working with,” Ana continues, Michelle holding her gaze. “This might be better for you.”

Michelle scoffs, incredulous that Ana would go down that path as she asks, “Are you going to tell me that everything happens for a reason?”

“You know me better than that, just as I know you well enough to see that you’re trying to joke to avoid how much you’re hurting right now,” Ana replies simply, Michelle clamping her lips together. “Are you still forgetting your medication?”

“It’s not on purpose,” Michelle says immediately, hearing the defensiveness in her tone even if Ana hadn’t been accusatory. “I just… get busy.”

It sounds like an excuse even as she says it, Ana looking at her more intently. 

“Might have a little more time now.”

Michelle blinks then laughs, Ana smiling at her more fully.

“That’s a bad joke. Are you allowed to make those kind of jokes with me?”

“I think we’ve reached that point in our relationship where it’s allowed,” Ana says simply before turning more serious— Michelle bracing herself as she says, “Though I do think this might be an opportunity for you.”

“How?” Michelle asks, wringing her hands together.

“You enjoyed the work that you were doing but if you’re allowing that work to distract you from taking care of yourself, in the long run, it’ll allow you the chance to focus elsewhere.”

Michelle picks at her fingernails, avoiding Ana’s gaze now as she continues, “You’ve done incredible work, Michelle. Both internally and professionally. This isn’t something you could’ve planned for or even something that isn’t objectively, a set back.”

Michelle bites her lip, looking back up to Ana who is staring at her knowingly. 

“But don’t let this professional setback set you back. You can’t let work be your entire life. I think we both know you well enough to know that’s not good for you.” 

“Yeah,” Michelle concedes, shrugging, “Maybe.”

“Use this time to find something good for you that’s not work, something fun. Like a hobby,” Ana suggests, Michelle pursing her lips. 

“What if I said that work is my hobby?”

Ana gives her a look.

“Yeah,” Michelle sighs again, “I thought so.” 

***

“I mean. What constitutes a fucking hobby?” she asks, pulling a slice away from the pizza in the center of the table and passing the cutter along to Ned. 

“That’s really some question,” Flash snorts into the red, plastic Coca-Cola cup he’s drinking from, a staple of this kind of cheap but delicious greasy pizzeria. There’s a smattering of unrelated decorations on the walls, only a handful of small, wobbly tables with equally wobbly chairs, and an Italian man behind the counter who knows their group’s order better than they do at this point.

Michelle loves this place, and she loves the food and she, most importantly, loves her friends, but she’s also buzzing with a lingering stress of having been fired two days ago and she doesn’t feel like going toe-to-toe with Flash tonight.

So she scowls at him. 

“You know what I mean,” she brushes off his exasperation. “Do I really look like someone who could get into needlepoint to you?” 

“You would actually be really good at needlepoint,” Betty lights up. “You have that ability to focus really hard on a thing for long periods of time.”

“I think the point of the hobby is for her to do less of that, Bet,” Ned says with a quirk of amusement in his brows and in his voice. 

“Oh,” Betty’s face falls. “My bad.” 

“No one’s bad,” Michelle sighs, slumping in her chair slightly with her elbows on the table beside her plate. “I just don’t think I’ve ever had a hobby in my life.”

“That’s not even remotely true,” Flash says, somehow flat and sympathetic at the same time. But then again, it’s Flash so she doesn’t know why she would expect anything less.

“Yeah, you like to draw,” Ned points out. “You could get more into that again?”

Michelle chews on the inside of her cheek, debates for a moment whether to be quite as honest about the whole thing as she could be, but ultimately realizing that of all the people in the world, these are the ones she trusts the most. The ones that love her unconditionally, even knowing so much about the intricacies of her convoluted brain processes. 

“Ana, um,” she shakes her head. “She thinks it should probably be something that requires me to leave the apartment? Especially since I’m— unemployed.”

Understanding settles over the table, the table out in the world where, once upon a time, they never could have had a group dinner. Because of her and because of those very mental intricacies that her friends have become so familiar with in the past few years. 

It’s only happened a handful of times in the past year, the ducking out of plans because the plans required the open click of locks and more than three steps outside her front door, but they all remember a time when she couldn’t have been expected to accept any invitation of this nature, let alone as frequently as she does now. 

So understanding settles in, but the familiarity of the understanding makes it easy to push through, Michelle finds. Easier, at least, when they’ve all figured out how to roll with it for the most part at this point. 

“What about a sport?” Betty suggests. “Physical activity and stuff might be fun?”

“Oh! Volleyball!” Ned grins. 

“What?” Michelle balks. 

“I dunno,” he shrugs. “You’re tall.”

“And so your first suggestion is volleyball?”

Ned doesn’t have the chance to defend his suggestion, however, because the glass door of the tiny restaurant is swinging open and cutting into their conversation with an abruptness that Michelle doesn’t even find annoying anymore so much as amusing.

“Sorry, I’m late, sorry, sorry,” Peter blurts out breathlessly as he comes careening through the door, little bell tinkling as he does so. He immediately drags an empty chair over to their table and crams it in next to Michelle’s, zero hesitation as he stacks two slices of pizza on top of each other, folds them in half with one hand, and takes a bite. “What’s this about volleyball?” he jumps into the conversation seamlessly and with a mouth full of food.

“We’re trying to find MJ a hobby,” Ned explains, and it really is a testament to how long they’ve known each other that Peter’s late, frantic entrances don’t even get an offhand comment anymore. 

“Oh, are you complaining about needlepoint again?” Peter asks her, much to the amusement of the other three who burst out laughing at the question. 

“Shut up,” she rolls her eyes at them. “The best you all came up with was volleyball because I’m tall.”

“Only because we know you’d rather figure it out on your own,” Flash says, too smart for his own good and earning a dissatisfied look from Michelle in return. He takes it with a smug tilt of his head and smirk on his face, “Don’t hate me just because I’m right.”

“Don’t worry, Thompson,” Michelle fires back, lifting her glass to her lips. “I hate you for lots of other reasons too.” 

Peter laughs brightly and taps his knuckles against hers where she’s holding her cup. 

“God, I can’t wait to be your husband,” he beams at her as everyone else groans and faux-gags around the table. 

Michelle just smiles back, because despite it all, despite all the anxiety, despite all the hard bits and the surviving them, she’s known for a while now that she wants to survive it all with him. 

And so she can’t wait to be his wife either.

***

Later that night, while Peter is out on patrol and she has the apartment to herself, Michelle pulls out her laptop and props her feet up on the couch as she scrolls through a series of listicles she plans to immediately delete from her search history. 

Because what kind of fucked up person needs to Google lists of hobbies? What kind of twenty-six year old doesn’t already know how to relax and have fun? 

Michelle Jones, that’s who. 

Is she a workaholic? It could be said as such. But does she also genuinely enjoy what she does for a living? Well, she at least did when she was still doing it. Even so, the fact of the matter is that she’s taking this assignment from Ana seriously, and she fully intends to do it right too. 

So she sits there for well over two hours, opens and closes and opens again dozens of tabs that are little or no help, rolling her eyes or clicking the X or even sometimes verbally saying ew.

It feels like a hopeless situation, if she’s being honest with herself. Not because there aren’t plenty of things she can see herself enjoying, but because she knows she’s overthinking it and that she’s going to keep overthinking it if she chooses something that doesn’t click right away. 

Because she may have moments of feeling utterly fucked up, but she’s also self aware enough, has done the work enough, to know how to avoid instances of such a thing a good portion of the time. 

Which means she’s also self aware enough to know the feeling of clicking when she feels it. 

“Oh,” she sits up from her slouched, laptop-on-her-stomach position so she can look at the screen more closely. 

She clicks through a few more links until she ultimately opens a new tab and searches New York animal shelters. 

It’s not something she’s ever considered as a hobby for herself, although she’s volunteered a lot of her time over the years, ever since she had been a teenager with a too-big heart, well on her way to becoming an adult with a too-big heart. 

Her mother had never so much as entertained the idea of a pet in their home, but Michelle had spent a few weeks every summer at the Humane Society, cleaning cages and building cardboard cat carriers for the lucky ones that got adopted. 

Michelle’s surprised, actually, that she had forgotten about that old habit of hers, that it had taken a listicle on the internet to remind her that she enjoyed volunteering, enjoyed helping out, and enjoyed the company of animals with their low expectations and treat-based love. 

The Humane Society, she thinks. 

Maybe not such a bad idea for a hobby. 

***

The Humane Society, it turns out, is a fucking fantastic idea. 

For starters, the volunteer manager is loud and funny and has no idea who Michelle is. 

It shouldn’t be surprising. It’s not as if Michelle is arrogant enough to believe that everyone connects the name Michelle Jones with the widely publicized but deeply uncomfortable to think about for too long political scandal of a politician who had aided and abetted in the kidnapping and toture of a civilian who ousted them. 

Especially considering that stories like hers— stories about people who looked like her— didn’t stay in the general population's memory for very long. 

She had wondered when she first called if it would become an issue considering her light stalking of Annie Reinhardt showed that she was politically active, married to her wife of six years and essentially had a zoo of animals in their brownstone in Brooklyn.

If Annie did know who she was, she didn’t give a shit— welcoming her into the Humane Society’s back room on her first day and handing her gloves, cleaning equipment and a detailed list of instructions and of the personalities for each of the animals they had in their care.

It was, to put too fine a point on it, exactly what she needed. 

The work of being a full-time and unpaid volunteer of the Humane Society was menial and redundant but cathartic— Annie having the intuition or at least the people skills to see that Michelle wanted to work solely with animals and not with people. 

Save for one, a teenager named Ria who came in every Saturday for three hours and was as quiet and as shy as Michelle had been when she was their age. 

It’s on one of those Saturdays when Michelle is walking in that Ria comes up to her— passing a note to her by way of hello.

“What’s this?” She asks, Ria shrugging in response. 

“Annie said it was for you,” Ria replied before turning to the back room— Michelle stifling back a laugh at how direct and to the point they were.

She makes a mental note to ask her friends if she had really been that blunt or if that was just a fever dream when she reads through the note, confusion and a flare of anxiety spiking through her when she sees what Annie has to say.

It’s simple and direct instructions, a request for Michelle to start writing up personality blurbs for the new round of animals they had obtained over the week to be put on their website. But it’s the writing that gets her— writing that gives her pause— especially when she can’t help but wonder if writing as part of her new hobby because she was fired from her writing job would count as cheating. 

Michelle shoves the note in her pocket and saves that as a problem for later. 

***

“I don’t see the problem here,” Peter says, pressing a kiss to her stomach, then her side, dragging his lips across the length of her as he shifts up.

Michelle’s chest is still heaving and her limbs feel like jello from where Peter’s mouth had been just a few seconds before, brushing some of the hair back on his face as she laughs.

“It’s not a problem, it just— I don’t know if it’s okay?” She asks, Peter kissing her sweetly before gently shifting so he’s on her side.

“Have you talked to Ana about it?”

“I don’t need to talk to Ana about fucking everything ,” Michelle says with a huff, only to see Peter’s careful expression out of the corner of her eye.

She shifts to her side so she’s facing him, chewing the inside of her cheek before saying, “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to her. I just… I wanna know what you think.”

“I want you to be happy,” Peter says in a tone that makes her heart ache a little, love and concern and the slightest tinge of worry that Michelle tries very hard not to feel guilty about.

It’s not a guilt that Peter places on her nor is it warranted, Michelle understanding fully that her trauma was just that— her own. 

But how she felt affected him, just as what he felt and did affected her, the steps they’d both taken in therapy— separately and together— helping them become better partners to each other. 

It’s still hard to fall out of old habits it seems, Michelle smirking as she says, “Thought you were supposed to be working on telling me what you want.”

“I am,” he says lightly before wrapping an arm around her, Michelle grinning at the feel of him all around her as his fingers trace alongside her bare back. “And I mean it when I say this, I just want you to be happy.”

Michelle leans back to look at him more fully, seeing the sincerity in his eyes as he presses forward, “And you have been. Happy. I’m proud of you, Em.”

There’s a joke that she wants to make but doesn’t— Ana’s voice echoing in the back of her mind telling her just to accept it. 

It’s a voice she listens to, at least tonight, choosing instead to kiss him and bring him closer and think more about what makes her happy. 

***

In retrospect, what happens next shouldn’t be all that surprising for any of them. 

In retrospect, it’s obvious what’s going to happen, allowing Michelle to sit with the cats day in and day out, a little steno pad in hand as she jots down notes about their personalities, keeping lists of potential names in the back few pages to give the strays that come in off the streets rather than surrendered from homes. 

There are strong names for the little ones that need a bit of a confidence boost, and there are goofy names for the ones that need a little bit cheering up. There are regal names for the ones that carry themselves like princesses and human names that Michelle just thinks are funny on certain cats. 

And as much as she had worried herself with the writing aspect of the whole thing, she enjoys it. Because it’s not so much about the writing as it is the relationships that she builds with these little creatures. Feeding them and playing with them and giving love to them even if they shy away from it at first, even if they’re not used to it, even if it takes them a week or two to butt their heads up against her hand when she opens their cages to clean them out or give them their dinners. 

It’s about something like trust, and something like love, these things that Michelle knows all too well a person can never really get enough of. 

“Incoming,” Ria says one afternoon, pushing open the door to the cat room with their shoulder as they lug in a carrier that rocks violently back and forth from its handle. “Tom cat delivery.”

Michelle finishes up what she’s doing and closes the door to one of the cages— a very pretty calico that they had gotten when an old woman died and whose name Michelle had changed from Veronica to Peanut for reasons she refuses to properly explain to anyone for fear of having a breakdown— and then turns to watch Ria setting down the carrier and shutting the door behind them. 

“Escape artist?” Michelle asks, nodding to the firmly shut door and Ria nods. 

“Doc said he’s pretty shaken up,” they explained. “He was beat up pretty bad when they found him.”

“Oh,” Michelle immediately softens, getting down on her knees to peek into the metal mesh on the front of the carrier. 

The cat inside, a mottled brown tabby, is crouched up against the far end of the tiny space and hisses at her the moment she comes into his view. 

“Hey there, buddy,” she says softly, neck craned a little as she looks at him. “I bet you wanna come out of there, huh?” 

The cat responds with a low, rolling, distrustful sort of sound, drawing it out with a defensive anger that Michelle isn’t surprised by if he’d been in as bad of shape when they brought him in as Ria said.

Michelle sits down as far away from the opening of the carrier as she can while still touching it, legs crossed in front of her and moving slowly as she unlatches the door and carefully swings it open. 

The cat doesn’t immediately bolt out like most of their new adoptables, instead making another loud warning of a sound and pushing itself even farther back into the carrier. 

“He’s gonna be trouble,” Ria says from where they lean against the wall across from Michelle and the cat. 

“He’s just a little scared,” Michelle corrects, not taking her eyes off the little guy as she asks, “Would you grab me a cup of food?” 

“You could just reach in there and grab him if you’re trying to get him out,” Ria suggests, but moves to the shelf where they keep the spare food nonetheless. 

“Yeah,” Michelle agrees. “But that would probably just scare him more. It’s gotta be his idea.” 

Ria hums out a sound of understanding, or maybe even approval although Michelle still has trouble distinguishing the difference from them sometimes, and hands her a small measuring cup half-full with dry food. 

“Okay,” Michelle speaks quietly and slowly. “I’ll give you one now and then you can have the rest when you come out.”

She puts a single kibble in her hand and slides it into the carrier, setting it right in front of where the cat cowers away from them. 

He sniffs at it for a moment, and both Ria and Michelle actively hold their breath until he opens his mouth and picks it up, crunching loudly down on it again and again and again until there is a beat of quiet. 

Another. 

And then— meow?

Like a question of a sound, a desire for more, and very much not a hiss. 

Michelle grins and plucks a few more pieces of food out of the cup, putting them right at the edge of the carrier, just outside the door. 

“Okay, tough guy,” she says. “This is the second half of the deal, remember? You get more when you come out.” 

He doesn’t start moving immediately, eyeing the food with his face crouched close to the ground and his eyes wide and flicking around the visible area. Michelle scoots back a few extra feet, staying sitting on the ground and leaving the little pile of food alone and far enough away from any people that he wouldn’t be threatened to get close to it.

It takes patience, and a lot of gentle urging on both Michelle and Ria’s part, and they end up sitting there for almost fifteen minutes while Ria reads the list of names out of the back of Michelle’s steno. 

But then, against all odds, they both still at the sight of a hesitant paw. And then another, and a whisker and a nose, nudging into the food as he steps out of the carrier entirely and chows down. 

Michelle can see him better now, in the bright fluorescents of the room, with his brown and gray fur in desperate need of a good brushing and his big green eyes and the notch that’s missing from the tip of his right ear. 

There’s a bit of fur shaved off his back leg where he’s got a clean white bandage and his tail twitches like a rattlesnake’s at even the smallest sound, but he eats and when he’s done eating he starts exploring the corners of the room farthest away from the other cats and he’s still clearly anxious, but Michelle can’t help but think that he’s also courageous. 

For stepping out into the world at all after everything he’d been through. 

“You’ve got a whole list of just foods in here,” Ria snorts down at her steno. “Guacamole, Rigatoni, Toast? Seriously? Toast?”

And Ria is clearly making fun of her but Michelle lights up at the sound of it as she crawls over to where the cat has flopped down in the corner. 

“Toast is a great name,” she offers her hand out for the cat to sniff. “You could be a Toast, couldn’t you? I mean, you’ve got the little burnt edge there and everything,” she nods to his ear. 

The cat— Toast— shows his approval of this suggestion by nudging his head against her hand ever so slightly, even letting her pet him for a full five seconds before shaking her off. 

“Yeah,” she beams, heart fluttery and soft and in love. “Toast.” 

***

It takes a day and a half after that, of spending time with Toast and getting to know Toast and playing with Toast and earning Toast’s trust to the point where he meows at her when she walks into the room every day— a greeting of a sound rather than the terrified meowls he’d been making when they first met. 

He purrs louder than any cat she’s ever known when she takes the time to scratch behind his ears, and when he doesn’t like something he very clearly shows his boundaries with a snap of his teeth that Michelle notices never once so much as graze her skin, meaning he’s actively choosing not to hurt her, this gruff street cat with the storied past. 

And she loves him. 

She loves him with her entire self and she finds herself ignoring all of the other cats in favor of spending time with Toast and it’s only kind of a problem because Annie keeps teasing her about it despite not seeming angry at all. 

It’s such an immediate love, a love at first sight that she’s never really believed in, that when Annie casually says, “You could always adopt him for yourself,” that afternoon it takes Michelle less than twenty minutes to grab the paperwork from behind the desk and build herself a cardboard cat carrier. 

Without for a second thinking about the fact that she does not, actually, live alone.

***

“Oh my God.”

She’s standing in the kitchen, watching Toast eat out of the water bowl that she had just set down for him and starting to panic. 

There’s a litter box in the bathroom and an empty cardboard cat carrier in the bedroom and a whole bag of food in the pantry and she’s gone and made a major life change, the whole time not taking into consideration the fact that she’s someone's fiancée and that she isn’t even entirely sure that that person likes cats let alone wants to live with a fresh-off-the-street tom cat that Michelle has definitely been projecting onto. 

Toast finishes drinking his water and walks over to rub up against her leg, his jittery tail wrapping around her as he turns and does the same thing from the opposite direction and fuck she loves him. It’s been less than a week and Michelle already can’t imagine living without this cat, which she realizes is dramatic and maybe some sort of coping mechanism worth exploring with Ana before adopting a living creature into her life, but it’s a little too late for that now, she thinks as she bends over and pulls Toast up into her arms. 

She cradles him like a baby and his legs stick out in funny directions because he’s not opposed to being held, it’s just like he hasn’t learned how to be yet. 

So she’s panicking and she’s got a cat in her arms and she’s going to take a breath and figure it out, only to hear a key in the front door, panic more, and practically throw Toast into the bedroom so she can shut the door and turn around just as Peter steps into the apartment. 

“Hi!” she exclaims too loudly, back pressed up against the bedroom door and not even remotely looking like an innocent person. 

“Hey?” Peter shuts and locks the door behind him, kicking off his shoes and hanging up his coat as he gives her a look of quizzical amusement. 

“Did you have a good day?” Michelle asks, not moving from where she stands. 

“Yeah…” he responds, drawn out and questioning. “Did you?”

“Great day,” she blurts so quickly that she knows it sounds like a lie, especially when paired with the way Peter stops a few feet in front of her and looks at her the way he does. 

The way she appreciates but hates simply for being necessary, the way where he’s reading her body language to try and figure out if she’s present.

“Em…” 

“Okay,” she sighs, letting go of some of the tension in her shoulders and deciding to just dive in head first. “Okay, so before you go into the bedroom, I just want you to remember that you love me— very much— and also that, um, you don’t have allergies anymore. Because of the spider.” 

Peter stares at her, utterly nonplussed for a beat before admitting, “I have no idea what to make of that.” 

“Of course you don’t,” she chuckles out a breath of self-deprecation. “Come on, then, let’s get this over with.”

“Exactly what a guy wants to hear before entering the bedroom,” Peter jokes as she opens the door and leads him in, only for his smile to turn to confusion and then to shock in a matter of three seconds flat. “Oh.”

“His name is Toast and I love him very much,” Michelle says. 

“Meow,” Toast says, from where he’s found his way up onto their bed and created a little nest out of their comforter. 

Peter gapes at the cat, and then very visibly works to school his face as he clears his throat. 

“So, uh…” he flounders. “We have a cat now?” 

Michelle makes a face, feeling the regret and the guilt bubbling up with all the added certainty that this is something she wants, seeing Toast make himself comfortable in their space the way he is. 

“Yeah,” she says, both certain and sheepish. “We have a cat now.” 

***

Peter takes it in stride, even if the newness of it that night is clunky. 

Awkward in the way he’s coming to terms not just with the fact that there’s a cat in their apartment but that it’s their cat and that Michelle brought this cat home without having ever mentioned wanting a cat in the past or asking for his opinion on the cat.

Also awkward in the way that Toast jumps up into bed with them when they’re trying to sleep, walking straight across Peter’s gut in what Michelle can only assume is a painful way from the sound Peter makes, only to plop down on the mattress right between them so he can be close to Michelle. 

She’d laugh if she didn’t feel like such a selfish partner. 

***

Michelle is actively trying to avoid Ana’s gaze, legs tucked under her and picking at the fabric of the couch.

It’s quiet and awkward, only because Michelle knows Ana well enough by now. That Michelle’s blurted out that she got a cat, that her cat’s name is Toast, and that she maybe didn’t tell Peter about it until it was already too late to back out. 

She knows it was a bad idea— an unhealthy, impulsive one— but Michelle’s not in the headspace to dive into that just yet. Had it not been for the look on Peter’s face when she brought Toast home, she would’ve cancelled this meeting with Ana to begin with. 

Michelle’s self-aware enough to recognize that had she done that, her arguments that she isn’t currently undergoing a spiral wouldn’t be believed.

So now she’s here, sitting in her therapist’s office and avoiding her gaze like she’s a kid in trouble with the principal— having a good enough guess to know where Ana will take this conversation but not wanting to be the first to break.

Ana, as a credit to her professionalism and for how well she knows her, does instead— raising her eyebrow before finally saying, “You should’ve told him before.”

“I know.”

“This is a living creature that you’re now responsible for. A living creature that both you and Peter will be in charge of,” Ana says carefully, Michelle finally looking back up to her.

“I know,” she repeats, because she knows all of this and did it anyway— because she’s taking her meds and she was fired from her job and it’s been three years since she was snatched off the street and tortured for a month and depending on the day it sometimes felt like a lifetime ago or just yesterday.

“Are you sure you want this? Does Peter want this?” Ana asks, Michelle sighing as she turns her attention back to the couch and the string that she’s pulling at. 

“I do. I know this wasn’t the right way to do it and I know I fucked up by not— not talking to Peter about it. I…” She trails off, smiling at thinking of Toast laying down on his stomach and snuggling against her the night before. “His toe beans are the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

It’s not an excuse, but it’s one that Ana doesn’t press on— huffing out a quiet laugh. 

“Can I see?”

Michelle brightens up at that, grabbing her cell phone from her pocket and swiping through to her camera roll for pictures— a dozen of her most recent ones all being Toast.

She unfurls her legs and stands, leaning forward so that Ana can see the pictures. 

She watches as Ana smiles, tilting her head and nodding as she says, “They are very cute toe beans.”

Michelle leans back on the couch, clicking her phone off and sighing. 

“I don’t want to give him up,” she says quietly, hoping desperately that Ana won’t recommend that. 

“I’m not saying you should,” Ana replies, surprising Michelle as she glances up. “But what I am saying, something I want you to remember, is that you still need to take care of yourself first. Toast is very cute and I’m glad that it sounds as if Peter is… surprised but okay with this.”

“He is. I know, I know I fucked up but I’m— I apologized and I know that’s not just an excuse or whatever but—” 

“Whatever you two decide,” Ana gently interjects, Michelle clamping her lips together, “I want to make it very clear that at the end of the day, this is a living creature that you’re taking care of. Another one.”

Michelle holds her gaze as Ana looks at her imploringly.

“Take care of yourself, Michelle. Not just Toast.” 

***

Between Peter and Michelle, the news about their new family member spreads quickly amongst their people. 

Within the first week, and after a slew of texted photos, May is already begging to come meet him. Within that same week, and that same slew of photos, Flash is talking about how he hopes they never have kids if this is gonna be the energy of it.

Michelle can’t help it though, she wants to show him off and she wants everyone to see in him what she sees in him, which is to say she wants them to be able to recognize that he’s the absolute coolest, sweetest, best cat in the whole entire world. 

Okay, so she’s maybe obsessing about him a little bit, but it’s fine because she’s still taking her meds (mostly) and she’s still job searching, but not in a frantic, overdoing it way, and she’s happy. 

She’s really genuinely happy about this development, as evidenced by every text thread with her friends and the multiple scrolls of her camera roll it takes to get past videos of Toast playing with the little birdy toy she’d bought him. 

“I didn’t even know you were a cat person,” Morgan tells her while they wait at a crosswalk on their journey from her school to the little coffee shop that makes their favorite hot chocolate. 

Morgan’s thirteen now, almost fourteen and a proper teenager too, so although they don’t spend every Friday afternoon together like they once did, Michelle still picks her up after school often enough for them to have a familiar routine. 

Farmer’s market in the summer months, hot chocolate in the winter, and relatively regular extended-family dinners to boot. 

“Is it surprising that I’m a cat person?” Michelle asks, hand on the dangling strap of Morgan’s backpack as they push through the crowd of people to cross the street. 

“I guess not,” Morgan shrugs. “Kinda surprising that you didn’t gather data on everyone’s opinion about adopting a stray before you did it though.”

Michelle frowns at the insight of that as well as the snark of it as well as the fact that Ned had said the same thing when he found out. 

“Alright,” she responds flatly, “that’s enough of that.” 

“I’m not judging you,” Morgan laughs defensively. “Like, for the record.”

“Well good,” Michelle smirks at her. “You oughta respect your elders.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she gets the brush off. “But I also— Okay don’t be mad…”

“Uh-oh,” her heart stutters at the sincerity already dripping into Morgan’s tone as she comes to a stop right outside their coffee shop. “Here it comes.”

Morgan makes a face. 

“Ugh, okay,” she says. “I may have been asked by one or both parental figures to feel out your— okayness.” 

“ Mo,” Michelle laughs a little sardonically, arms crossed as she leans back against the long window beside the door. 

“Okay, yes, they suck,” Morgan implores, “but, like, the last time you made an impulse buy it was because you’d basically dissociated for a full day.”

Michelle breathes in sharply through her nose. 

“I—” she clears her throat and forces on a self-deprecating smile, “super hate that you know that.” 

Morgan’s face and her posture both soften. 

“Only because Dad was trying to make me feel better on a bad day,” she explains. “By trying to help me see that even the people I look up to most have bad days too.” 

That’s enough to have Michelle pressing her lips together, releasing a breath heavy both in physical and emotional ways as she tugs on Morgan’s backpack to pull her forward into a tight hug. 

“I don’t want you to worry about me,” she mutters once she has that girl— that child all grown and growing— in her arms. 

“Tough shit.”

Michelle pulls away to scowl at her. 

“Language,” she admonishes but Morgan just grins. “And I’m serious— No spending energy worrying about me, I’m doing good.”

“Promise?” Morgan asks, childlike in the hopefulness of it but adult in the reasoning. 

“Yeah,” Michelle nods. “Now let’s get some hot cocoa in you, huh?”

“Okay,” Morgan laughs as she lets herself be dragged through the door of the shop. “But if you’re gonna insist on showing me more photos of you’re weirdo cat, I get a croissant too.”

“You know what?” Michelle laughs brightly just at the thought of getting to show off Toast some more. “Fair enough.” 

***

“Ok listen,” Michelle says to Toast, his tail lazily moving back and forth. “You have meds you gotta take.”

Toast meows, as if he somehow understands her and is also displeased— Michelle making a face.

“If I gotta take my meds every day, then you gotta take your meds every day.”

Meow.

“I very much doubt this is the worst thing you’ve been through,” she says, propping a hand on her hip and staring him down.

Toast doesn’t move, save for his tail, green eyes fixed on Michelle as she purses her lips. 

He needs his meds arguably more than she does, or so she tells herself. It was hard, three years in, to have to remember to take these meds and have to constantly be vigilant of what could set her off.

Some of it comes second nature— if living with trauma could ever be such a thing— to know what she has to avoid or what she can work around or through. Michelle’s forgetting her meds more often than not and it isn’t for any other reason than the simplest one— that she’s tired of taking them and tired of feeling tethered to this reminder that she’ll never really be separated from that moment in her life. 

The fact that she’s here now— staring down a cat that she never would’ve met had it not been for being fired from her job, a job she was only fired from because of said connection to an experience that very nearly killed her— is a testament to the reality that this was never going to go away.

She hates it but she also loves Toast, that love propelling her forward to make him take his medication even if she knows he’ll hate it— that she loves him too much to let him get away from it. 

The metaphor seems a little too on the nose but Michelle feels it anyway. 

***

Michelle has a better appreciation for the phrase “like trying to herd cats.”

She’s not trying to herd multiple, just the one— but Toast is just as stubborn as she is, avoiding her as she stalks him around the apartment. She pleaded with treats, then negotiated over the couch— Toast earning his title as a damn escape artist for what feels like hours.

Michelle pretends to give up, curling up on the couch and waiting for him only for Toast to hop on only to dart away when he sees the syringe, Michelle just barely missing him as he scrambles away.

It takes her much longer than she would ever care to admit to realize a workaround for their impossible situation, hearing the window slide open at sometime around midnight— sitting on the floor of the kitchen with Toast dutifully eating his food.

“Em?”

“In here,” she says softly, knowing Peter will pick up on it and hearing him walk over to her— tearing her eyes away from Toast to see him walk into the kitchen, suit still on and his eyes as big as moons.

“You… okay?” He asks carefully, Michelle wanting very much to laugh but unable to— partly because of exhaustion but mostly because she can see the worry knit across his eyebrows and the tension that he’s carrying across his shoulders.

“I’m okay,” she answers in the affirmative, holding Peter’s gaze so he can see that she’s telling the truth and that she’s here — Peter’s exhale of relief giving her the permission to look back to Toast. “We had a good night.”

“Yeah?” Peter asks, hearing him slide down to the ground. She looks back to see him just as he plops down, a surge of love in her heart for the man sitting across from her— in her space and yet giving her space, trying so hard to be there for her and this new and impulsive situation that she brought him into.

She wants to apologize again but she doesn’t know where the line is— for how much is too much and if her genuine feelings of sorrow for having crossed this line without him, without thinking of him, overrule her conflicting love for the tiny creature currently consuming his medicine infused food. 

Peter’s eyes soften as he looks from her, to Toast and then back to her, smiling gently as he says, “You want to tell me about it?”

Michelle lets out a laugh, wet and infused with more emotion than is probably necessary as she replies, “If you tell me more about patrol.”

“That… doesn’t seem fair,” Peter says with a smirk, Michelle conceding with a shrug of her shoulder. 

“Can’t blame me for trying.”

They fall into a comfortable silence, Michelle looking back over to Toast and getting lost for a moment in watching him when Peter’s voice brings her out of it. 

“Em?”

“Hmm?”

“Did you eat anything tonight?” He asks gently, carefully, reminding her a little too much like how she had been with Toast his first day at the shelter. 

She hadn’t and she forgot right up until this moment, frowning at the realization only for it to turn into a twist in the gut from the way Peter’s face falls.

“I wasn’t hungry. I had a big lunch,” she says, which is true— having had lunch with May at their favorite Italian place and spending the evening so focused on Toast and making sure he got his medication that she genuinely forgot about dinner or even feeling the need to eat something at all.

She tries very hard not to listen to the voice in her head that sounds suspiciously like Ana, warning her about focusing so much on Toast that she forgets herself . 

Peter says nothing, staring at her with a careful, forced neutrality before he makes himself smile.

“You want some toast?”

Toast turns his head at that, as if understanding that he’s been mentioned— both of them turning to him in surprise. 

“He knows his name,” Michelle says in awe, Toast now distracted away from his food and walking over Michelle’s legs until he’s in her lap— Michelle scritching behind his ears as he purrs.

“I guess so,” Peter says softly, Michelle’s eyes drifting up to him and seeing the way he’s looking at Toast— conflicting feelings of protection and guilt and understanding flowing through her when Peter finally looks up and locks eyes with her.

“I’ll take some,” she says with a nod, still not hungry but not sure of the reason why— a concession she isn’t sure is right or healthy but will do anyway as Peter slowly nods.

“Okay,” he says, effortlessly lifting himself up until he’s moved into a stand. “I’ll make us some toast okay?”

Toast meows again, making Peter laugh a little. 

“No toast for Toast. You just ate.”

Toast nuzzles his head against her hand, Michelle smiling at him then back to Peter.

She can see the storm brewing behind his eyes and watches as it gets shoved away in real time.

She wants to convince him that she’s okay— that Toast is good and good for her— even if the reminder that this was a decision she had made for the two of them without talking to him is never far from her mind.

It’s something she chooses not to think about, turning her attention back to the purring cat in her lap and to the sound of her confused, earnest fiancé making toast in their kitchen at almost midnight. 

***

It takes another solid two weeks for all of Peter’s observing, all of his obvious concern to come to a head. 

In that time, Michelle realizes that although he doesn’t seem to actively dislike Toast, that he’s wary of the cat all the same, treating him more like Michelle’s pet than theirs, which she knows is fair enough considering she chose not to consult him in the adoption process. 

But it also means that Michelle spends a lot of time trying to prove to Peter what a good addition to their lives Toast is, urging him to join her when she plays with him or putting Toast in his lap while they watch TV, only for Toast to get up and crawl over to her instead five minutes in. 

Two weeks of this later and Michelle is cleaning up her dishes from dinner (because she didn’t forget tonight, because tying her own meal times to the cat’s is a strategy she’s both employing and not telling anyone about). Two weeks of this later and she’s getting cleaned up for bed, putting on pajamas, brushing her teeth, setting the alarm on the pad by the door. 

The alarm system that they have set up in their apartment is not a building-wide installation, but instead a Tony Stark original that exists for everyone’s peace of mind, but specifically Michelle’s and specifically on her bad days when locked doors feel like the only solution. 

It’s a system attached to the front door as well as every window, Peter using the tech in his suit to scan for entry when he climbs in post-patrol at night, and it’s a system that sends out an alert to Peter should he be away from the apartment when it goes off. 

Michelle is in bed, right on the edge of sleep because she already knows Peter had been planning on a late patrol and is too exhausted to wait up; she’s even feeling good about the day she’s had, feeling relatively on top of it all and satisfied as she breathes out slow and deep, leaning into the tired right as the loud, trilling warning sound erupts throughout the apartment. 

She’s immediately awake, upright with feet on the floor and grabbing the aluminum baseball bat that leans up against her bedside table, hands only steady enough to do so because of the adrenaline coursing through her veins. 

Michelle’s not thinking about it, but later she’ll realize that her heart hasn’t gone into such an intense overdrive in probably over a year at this point, that she hasn’t felt this terrified anywhere let alone inside her own home in longer than that, and when she creeps to her bedroom door, listens through the wood, ultimately peeks out down the hall and into the living room, it’s because a survival instinct takes over and not because she feels like she’s choosing to do these things. 

In concurrence with the Tony Stark Original Alarm System is an Avengers Approved Safety Plan that she’s had drilled into her head over the past three years since they know that even if the general public forgets her name, Thaddeus Ross never will. 

The safety plan requires that she lock herself in the bathroom until someone can arrive and get her out, because the bathroom has a reinforced door to it and a clunky lock. For this reason it’s also served as a panic room on more than one occasion, and is just about to do so again when Michelle hears a confused meow echo down the hall, just over the sound of the still beeping alarm. 

Fuck.

Her brain is fuzzy with terror and her hands are sweating around the handle of her baseball bat and really she can’t be sure whether or not anyone is actually in the apartment because she hadn’t heard a door or a window, hadn’t heard any movement, and can’t see anything out of place from the doorway to her bedroom where she cowers. But her heart rate is telling her that she’s on the verge of peril and her head is convinced anything could come from around the corner at any time, and she can’t just leave Toast out there by himself while she hides. 

She can’t.

So she crouches down and calls for him softly, taps her fingers against the doorframe to get his attention, and breathes a sigh of relief when he trots around the corner and slips right into the bedroom with her, letting her pick him up under his front legs and carry him over her shoulder.

Bedroom door shut with her foot and a handful of hurried steps across the room to do the same with the door to the en suite has Michelle dropping Toast in the bathtub and locking that clunky lock behind her. 

“Fuck,” she chokes out, stumbling to sit down in the tub and pull the curtain shut, some logical part of her brain understanding that if an intruder were to make it through the door they’d have zero trouble getting past a curtain but needing the extra security of a small, isolated space just to keep breathing. 

Michelle is trembling so hard that her joints feel locked in place, she’s having such difficulty breathing that she thinks maybe the oxygen is being slowly sucked out of the room, her ears are ringing with the sound of the alarm on the other side of the door so intensely that she doesn’t even hear Toast yowling at her until he’s butting his forehead into her stomach and trying to sit down in a lap that doesn’t exist with her legs akimbo in front of her as they are. 

And she looks down at him, this stubborn, often angry bundle of clumsy paws and shaky tail, and she somehow realizes, despite already knowing this, that she’s in her bathroom, in her apartment, that she shares with Peter Parker. 

Not a cell, not a tiny box with padlocks on the outside, not the stiff cot that she had shared with a brave little girl and a courage that she relied on but never recognized in herself until much later. 

Michelle’s heart is still pounding, and she’s still having trouble breathing, but she’s crying and she knows that’s a good thing in this situation despite how it may look from the outside. 

She’s sobbing in the bathtub and clutching her cat in her lap, but she’s here and she’s now and she’s inside her body no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much the sobbing gets to be too much to the point where it feels like dry heaving, no matter how much her hands shake.

The world is real around her and so she knows that she’s home and she knows that there’s a protocol, a plan, that she just has to wait out until, until, until—

“MJ?!” Peter’s voice on the other side of the apartment, his frantic movements as he does a sweep of the living room, the kitchen, the closets and the pantry. 

Michelle buries the fingers of one hand in Toast’s fur and stutters out a sob into the palm of the other, snot on her cheeks and in her mouth, face hot and whole body sweating with the exertion of her panic, her trauma, this thing that won’t stop fucking following her. 

“MJ?” his voice is closer now, a bit calmer too although still carrying the edge of fear with it. “MJ? Can you unlock the door or should I grab the key?” 

She wants to answer him properly, get up to her feet and open the door and blow her nose and brush the whole thing off because if he’s opening the door that means there isn’t a threat outside. If he’s turned the alarm off (which he has, she now realizes, coming to terms with the fact that any remaining ringing in her ears is self-made; screaming rock music echoing at the back of her mind) then that means they’re safe and there’s no reason for her to keep reacting like this. 

But she does, because if anyone knows that safety and anxiety don’t always line up in the way they’re supposed to it’s her, and instead of getting up and letting him in she lets him push out one final, panicked, “Em, please answer me, I’m freaking the fuck out—” before she can manage to make a humming sound of discontent at the back of her throat. 

A humming sound, a choking sound, and then, “Come in,” in all its tremulous glory. 

Her shoulders turn in on themselves further, creating a concave of her chest where Toast sits, ears twitching at the immediacy of the lock sliding across itself and the door swinging open. 

“Em— Oh, thank God—” he exhales unsteadily as he slides the curtain open and falls to his knees outside the tub reaching a hand out to her only for Toast to flatten his ears back and hiss.

Loud and abrupt and enough to startle both of them, Peter’s hand shooting back and Michelle still struggling with the rhythm of her air intake as she pulls Toast back into her lap gently. 

“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s Peter, it’s okay, tough guy.” 

“Karen did a scan,” Peter tells her, dragging his eyes away from the cat and pushing through the weirdness of the moment. “It was a false alarm, the system just isn’t calibrated for— Uh— for Toast.” 

“Oh,” Michelle swallows, wipes at her face, makes a sound of dissatisfaction when that’s the extent of the response she can get out. 

“Okay,” Peter breathes. “Okay, we’re all okay. Can I climb in with you?” 

Michelle nods unsteadily through her tears and scoots forward to make space in the tub behind her, squeezing her eyes shut as Peter maneuvers his way in, a leg on either side of her hips and hands gently pulling her to lean back against his chest. 

“Just breathe,” he says with a kiss to her temple. “I’m right here, and we’re all okay, and I’ve got you.”

She lets the weight of gravity push her into his body, feels the rumble of Toast’s purring in her lap and the strength of Peter’s arms around her and uses all of it all at once to bring herself back together. 

Michelle breathes. 

She doesn’t stop breathing. 

***

“Are we— positive about the cat?”

Michelle balks, upright and walking and breathing again, but checking the locks on the door and windows while Peter watches her hesitantly from the couch. 

“What?” she asks flatly, spinning to look at him from where she stands by the window. 

“I know this isn’t a conversation you want to have, but I need you to hear me out,” he breathes, leaning forward in his seat with those big, imploring eyes taking over the entirety of his face. 

Michelle chews on her bottom lip and crosses her arms, holds back the argument that sits on the tip of her tongue because she does owe him a conversation about this, no matter how right he is about her not being remotely interested in discussing it. 

“Fine,” she nods, sitting back to lean on the windowsill, legs straight out in front of her. It’s been a very long night and it’s only getting longer, but she finds standing up and stretching her legs after something like that does actually help her. 

Peter takes a deep breath, seems about as enthusiastic about this as she is after all of the phone calls he’d had to make to let anyone else on the alarm system’s contact list know that everything was fine. 

“The cat triggered you,” he says simply. 

“The alarm triggered me,” she counters. 

“The cat set off the alarm, Em,” Peter insists, hurt saturating every piece of him where he sits in front of her— nonthreatening and overly thoughtful and the love of her stupid, difficult life. 

“Only because we didn’t think to adjust the settings!” she argues with an indignation she feels but doesn’t really mean to express so entirely. “If we just have Tony—”

“It’s not just about the alarm,” Peter cuts her off hurriedly, but at least looking regretful about it. “It’s all of it, it’s— Seeing you in there just now? Em, it hasn’t been that bad in a long time and if this responsibility of a pet is even the slightest bit responsible for sinking you into a rough patch—”

“I’m not—”

“You are!” he exclaims, not unkindly. “You’re forgetting your meds and forgetting to eat and being— impulsive and obsessive, I…” he trails off with a shake of his head. “I can see it, so please stop trying to pretend like it’s not happening.” 

Michelle clenches down on her molars, breathes deeply through her nose as she turns around to slide the curtains shut before wordlessly crossing the small space and tucking her legs under her on the couch beside him. 

She takes one of his hands in the both of hers. 

“I’m going through a rough patch,” she admits softly, struck by the way Peter’s entire posture shifts with those words. "And I'm sorry I got Toast without talking to you about it." 

“Thank you for telling me,” he responds thickly, a thumb running across hers in their tangle of fingers. 

“I need to tell you something else though,” she meets his gaze pleadingly. “I need you to know that Toast is a good thing for the rough patch. He’s helping, Peter.” 

Peter shakes his head in earnest disbelief. 

“I don’t…”

“In there? Just now?” she nods her head towards the bedroom. “I know it looked bad, but he grounded me. He grounded me better than pretty much any other techniques Ana has taught me, which I know sounds dumb and just like another one of my weird obsessions with this cat, but it’s also true, you know?” 

“I’m not saying he’s not a good cat,” Peter turns his body slightly to face her more directly on the couch. “I like him, but I just need you to be sure that it’s worth it if a night like this—”

“A night like this is not his fault,” she presses. “The only thing he consciously did was come and sit with me when he could tell I was struggling. The rest was just a fluke, because our lives are full of terrible fucking flukes, Pete.” 

He purses his lips, a wave of emotion rocking across his shoulders and rolling over his face when he takes a breath and looks at her. 

“I just really love you,” he says with a breath of a watery chuckle. “And I really need you to be okay.”

“I am,” she assures him. “I had Toast and then you came home and I had you too. I’m, like, the luckiest lady, huh?”

And even as she smiles they both know the irony of such a statement, know how often they’ve gotten properly angry at the suggestion that they should see the luck in the fact that everything they’d survived hadn’t killed them along the way. They know because they’ve talked about it, because communication like this is part of what it means to share a life and they both have every intention to share this life with each other in whatever ways, for however long they can. 

Michelle kisses him on the cheek and he responds with a kiss to the lips, his free hand coming up to cradle the nape of her neck, thumb skirting over her cheekbone. 

“I’m gonna help you bond with Toast,” she tells him definitively when she pulls away with her forehead pressed to his. “You’re gonna get it, I swear.”

“Yeah?” he smiles softly. 

“I mean, I’ll always be his favorite—”

“Obviously,” Peter goes for sarcasm but sits a bit closer to earnest. 

“— But you’ll be a close second,” she kisses the bridge of his nose, the crooked spot where it’s been broken more than its fair share of times. 

Peter’s eyes scan over her face, searching for something worth fearing, worth worrying over and seeming to, at least for now, come up empty. 

“Sounds like a plan.”

***

As it turns out, the plan actually works.

Michelle forces Peter to spend a few minutes giving all his attention to Toast every day, whether it be feeding him or playing with him or snuggling with him on the couch, and the extra attention for their love-starved tom cat seems to be exactly what’s necessary to make her two boys fall in love with each other. 

Peter has a big heart, has always had extra space for whoever wanted or needed it, but this is special in its own way, because it finally feels like Toast’s role in their lives is developing away from impulse cat and into actual genuine member of the family. 

With all the weirdness and the annoying quirks and fun and love that something of that nature carries along with it. 

“I can’t do this.”

“You want to stop?” Michelle pulls back with zero hesitation, studying his face with his flushed cheeks and red lips and not letting her gaze trail down to his bare chest. 

“No— No, I just,” he blushes and grimaces at the same time and Michelle pulls her hand out of his hair to cup his cheek, brush along his jawline. 

“We can stop, Pete,” she assures him. “That goes both ways, you know.”

“I know,” he nods certainly. “It’s really not that, I just…” he makes a face. “The cat’s in the room.” 

All of the sincerity on Michelle’s face shifts abruptly to amusement, a smirk spreading out across her lips as she watches Peter squirm. 

“You’re embarrassed,” she chuckles. 

“It’s just weird, Em,” he insists, sheepish but relishing in the humor of it just as much as she is. 

“He’s asleep in the corner,” she laughs, not actually arguing to the contrary except to tease him. “He couldn’t care less about what we’re up to.”

“I’m drawing a line,” he sits up and leans back against the headboard, arms crossed over his chest in protest. “I’m drawing a line about having sex while the cat is in the room.”

Michelle laughs with jubilation at the sight of him, at the conversation as a whole, because what else is there for her to do? 

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” she concedes as she crawls out of bed in her pajama pants and sports bra, having only just started making out and not gotten to the nudity portion of the evening yet. “Hey, Toastie, your dad says you have to go outside,” she says as she lifts a sleep-grumbly Toast off the floor and carries him to the door. 

“Don’t blame me!” Peter laughs. “As if you don’t want him out of here too.”

“I suppose we’ll never know,” she says as she sets Toast down outside the door and starts to slowly close it. “See you later, Toast,” she sing-songs, shutting the door all the way and turning to lean back against it and quirk an eyebrow at Peter. “So. Now that that’s done…”

Peter grins at her and she’s about to step back to the bed, hands poised to slip her pajama bottoms off as she does, only for a single, indignant meow! to echo from the other side of the door. 

She meets Peter’s eye and he meets hers. 

They burst out cackling. 

***

“Yes, I know you think it tastes better when MJ does it,” Peter’s soft voice carries from the kitchen down the hall into their bedroom where Michelle pauses her trek towards him, “but it’s the same food, buddy. It’s the same food when I do it.” 

Toast meows like he’s responding and Michelle leans in the doorframe, eavesdropping because it’s just too fucking cute not to. (She’s known for weeks that Peter talks to the cat when she’s not around, it’s nice to have finally caught him.)

“Yes, good point,” Peter says sagely to Toast’s meowing. “She is an awful lot prettier than I am. Why do you think I’m marrying her?”

Meow. Meooow. Meow. 

“Right, no of course it’s about more than how pretty she is,” Peter continues, as if this is an actual conversation he’s having with the cat. “But I don’t have to explain that to you— Here, eat up.”

She hears the bowl touch down on the floor and Toast’s hurried chowing down in quick succession, trying and failing to wipe the smile off her face as she finally makes her way into the kitchen, wrapping her arms around Peter from behind and kissing his cheek while he washes his hands. 

“Hey,” he says, delighted if a little surprised. “What’s that for?”

“Nothing,” she shrugs, crouching down to scratch behind Toast’s ears. “I just like you.” 

***

The call comes when she’s asleep.

It had been a good night, her and Peter eating dinner together, playing with Toast for a bit with a laser pointer Peter had swiped from one of Tony’s labs before he suited up, kissed her goodbye and went out into the night. 

She spent the rest of the night on her laptop— checking how much she still has in savings, casually looking for jobs and debating for the hundredth time if she wants to go to grad school— petting Toast when he let her and playing footsies with him when he didn’t. 

By the time she went to bed, it was after midnight— exhausted and comforted and warm, all snuggled up in a thousand blankets as their creaky heater blasted at full power. 

The call is loud, incessant, buzzing the side table so hard that it rattles her right into consciousness— groaning into her pillow and hearing Toast’s disconcerted meows.

“I know, I know, I’m—” she mutters, groaning and sitting up to reach for her phone.

It’s in those few seconds that she forgets about her life and her world and her family— forgets that there should be a reason that late night calls should terrify her for what they mean. Forgets that as her eyes blearily take in that it’s nearly three am and that her bed is still empty, that she should know why that’s the case.

She forgets and so she answers the phone, wholly unprepared for what’s waiting for her as she sleepily answers, “Hello?” 

“Michelle, are you okay?”

She wakes up a little more at that, of Tony and the urgency— every reason for why these calls terrify her coming back in full force.

“Yeah, I’m— I’m fine. What’s wrong? Is Peter okay?” She asks, already knowing the answer as she rubs the sleep out of her eye— dread pooling her stomach when she looks at the time on her phone and glances over to the empty bed, confirming that it’s three am and that he isn’t there . 

“You didn’t answer and I wanted— I just wanted to make sure you’re okay,” Tony replies, Michelle freezing because she can hear the eveness in his tone— can easily hear the deflection and the fact that he didn’t answer her fucking question.

“Is Peter okay?” She repeats, voice shaking slightly from the exhaustion or the intensity or the fact that it’s three am and she’s home alone and Peter isn’t there . 

“We’re taking him to the Compound,” Tony says, another non answer that just makes the panic start to swell in her gut, feeling it pulling her down deeper and deeper. “I’m gonna send Happy to come pick you up.”

“Happy’s in Barbados,” she says automatically, because she still has the text message in her mind— the text message that Peter had sent her. 

Peter who isn’t sleeping in their bed. Peter who is being taken to the Compound. Peter who isn’t there —

“Shit. Right, right. I uh,” Tony stammers, Michelle flinging herself out of bed at that because if there’s anything that she knows of Tony Stark it’s that he works well under pressure— thrives under it. There hasn’t been a problem too big or a situation too serious that Tony fucking Stark isn’t capable of facing head on with a smile and some snark.

If Tony is stammering— where is Peter where is Peter where is Peter — then Michelle thinks she has to move, has to stand, has to do something lest her very grasp on reality threatens to crumble underneath her fingertips. 

“I’ll call— someone. I’ll get someone. Are you at home?”

Michelle can feel the world start to slow around her, her breath catching as her chest and her lungs start to close all around her— vision narrowing as she clutches the phone.

Tony must sense the change immediately because his entire tone changes, direct and forthright as he asks, “Michelle?”

“I’ll call you back,” she squeaks out, hearing his voice fade out in the distance as she lets go of the phone— not even bother to hang up as she stumbles forward. 

Michelle works on auto-pilot, her body doing things that her mind isn’t fully in control of as she opens the drawers of her dresser— the dresser that her and Peter got at the flea market, the one they fought over for hours in trying to find a good spot for it — hands shaking so hard that she’s not even sure if she’s gotten clothes , much less if they match. 

Michelle sharply inhales, backing up until she’s against the bed before sinking down— feeling the walls of the room start to close in around her as her butt hits the carpet floor, chest heaving as she struggles to get oxygen back into her lungs and vision starting to swarm in front of her even if her eyes are still open. 

Because this is the part that she fucking forgot, this is the part of her life that wasn’t something she’d ever gotten used to— long before she was ever snatched off the street, long before she’d ever been tortured within an inch of her life and long before she’d ever wondered if she’d ever make it back home. 

This — calls in the middle of the night, calls that terrify her so much that her bones feel like they’re rattling together with the ache of it all— is why her life would never be normal, never be regular, that even if she hadn’t experienced hell on earth for a month that this is something she’d never be able to run from. 

She distantly remembers a conversation she had with Ana years ago now, of the anger and the fury of knowing that there was a Michelle Jones out there who hadn’t had a month of her life stripped from her. That there was a Michelle Jones out in the universe who lived without a laundry list of triggers and a trunk full of trauma. 

What she’s thinking about now, years and galaxies apart from that person and her own body, is that if that Michelle Jones still chose to love Peter Parker, that she would still have to live with this .

With the reality that she could lose him— at any moment, at every turn. That at any point, Peter didn’t just run the risk of never coming home— his life all but guaranteed it as a certainty. 

It’s a solidarity that doesn’t feel solid, Michelle’s tenuous grasp on herself and her surroundings and of how Peter isn’t there closing in all around her as she starts to hyperventilate— tears springing forth that she barely even fights at the wholly consuming possibility that of all the loss she’s fucking suffered that she forgot about this.

The sound of a little tinkling bell breaks its way into the shell of her wavering existence in this reality, a bell that she knows is attached to Toast’s collar because she had put it there a week ago after she kept tripping over him when he silently slipped under her feet. 

He meows at her, because he’s a goddamn intuitive cat, and because he’s seen this before, and because maybe he loves her as much as she loves him. Michelle pulls him into her lap, trying to recreate the grounding way he’d helped her during her last breakdown, stroking from the top of his head straight down his spine again and again and again as she tries to grasp onto the reality of her situation and what exactly she’s going to do about it. 

Michelle knows she has to get to the Compound, which means she has to call someone for a ride, which means she needs to get her breathing under control and slosh enough of her liquified brain back into her skull to form at least one full sentence, so she focuses on Toast in her lap. 

She focuses on the feeling of his fur under her fingers; she focuses on the sound of his purrs.

And she fixates for a moment, on a version of the future where it’s just the two of them. Michelle and Toast and the memory of a man who had loved them, because it’s too likely, not just in this case but in every case of Spider-Man getting in over his head and it’s too real, the thought of losing him now, right when they’re about to take that next step. 

Real in all the tragedy of it, because what are their lives if not a little bit tragic. 

She’s still panicking, and she’s still scared and broken and breaking, but after a handful of nondescript minutes with Toast in her lap, she’s at least able to push herself another step forward. 

She sticks out her foot as far as she can and drags her phone back across the carpet until it’s close enough that she can pick it up without ever having to leave her spot on the floor. She’s breathing again, but her hands are still shaking, and she’s terrified beyond all measure but she’s not actively dying and maybe that’s the bare minimum but it’s what she has right now. 

“Michelle? You can’t hang up on me— Are you okay? Are you at home?”

“I’m home, Tony,” she tells him, still choking on it slightly, still unsteady, but talking. She can do the talking, she can make this one thing happen. 

“You scared the shit outta me,” Tony replies with a heavy exhale, trying not to think about it too hard, the idea that she might have scared him the same way she’d been scared. “Pepper’s on her way to May’s right now and then they’re going to pick you up before coming to the Compound, okay?” 

“Yeah,” Michelle forces out. “Yeah, okay.”

“Good. Good— that’s— thank you for calling me back,” he stumbles through his words and God she can’t stand it, she can’t cope with it she can’t do it with Peter out there and hurting and dying and not here not here not here.

“What happened?” she asks desperately. “What’s the— I need— Before I see him I need to know—”

“What you need to do is focus on the fact that he’s alive,” Tony cuts her off, a bit steadier in the face of her unsteadiness it would seem. “He’s alive and we’ve got the best doctors on the planet getting ready for him, and I’m— Whatever happens I’m gonna be here, okay? I’ll be here waiting when you guys get here.”

Michelle’s chin wobbles, lower lip actually trembling with the weight of what he’s offering, more than just his support tonight but whatever happens and she can’t stand it, she can’t hold it all— the terror and the love and the tears that spill out without her consent. 

“When is Pepper gonna be here?” she asks, knowing he can hear the way her throat is closing up, the way she’s holding in a sob. 

“Fifteen minutes,” he assures her. “Soon, so get your stuff together, get your shoes on, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she gently extracts Toast from her lap and stumbles to her feet, grabbing the pile of clothes she’d dropped on the way up and still not seeing them. “I’m— yeah….”

“Here, how about this,” Tony clears his throat, something watery about his voice too, “I’ll stay on the line ‘til they get there. You don’t have to talk to me, but I’ll— be here. If you need me.” 

Michelle swallows. She drops the clothes on the mattress as Toast rubs up against her leg with a quiet, questioning meow.

“Okay,” she agrees, because Peter’s not here and he might never be again. “Okay.” 

***

She holds May’s hand in the car. 

She holds May’s hand in the waiting room. 

It’s a waiting room they’ve sat in before, the chairs familiar in their discomfort and the color of the walls one she knows so terribly well while she’s here, only to forget it all over again the minute she leaves. 

The hours pass by with Michelle’s reality shifting every time she’s left without a hand to hold onto. When May gets up to pace, Pepper takes a shift, and when Pepper goes to get them all something warm to drink, even Tony steps in— whatever happens.

And all the while the hours pass and all the while Michelle stares at that color on the walls that there’s not a name for, just a feeling, and all the while they wait. 

A mottled-together family that Michelle’s been a part of for so many years and was— and is about to become a part of in a brand new way in less than three months. 

“I’m sorry I keep stalling on the dress,” she says, frowning at the paint on the wall. 

“What?” Tony looks at her with what she can only assume is confusion based on the tone of his voice. Because she’s still looking straight ahead. 

“I— Um— You keep asking me to pick a dress,” she explains. “I’m not being difficult on purpose, I just— wanted to make sure I chose— I chose— I—”

“It’s okay,” Tony picks up her hand where he’d set it down on the armrest while he drank his coffee. “It’s not a decision you should rush, you should— take your time.”

“Yeah,” Michelle agrees, despite having simultaneous thoughts that she might be out of time and at least she didn’t make Tony spend a bunch of money on a dress she’ll never wear. 

And to think a few hours ago she was just worried about job hunting.

***

“He’s going to be fine.”

“He’s going to have to stick around for a week or so, but he’s okay.”

“Surgery went great, everything’s back where it should be.”

“You can go in, but he’ll be out for a few more hours.”

“He's going to be fine.”

***

Michelle doesn’t cry when she walks into his room, but she thinks that’s probably because she’s all cried out. 

He’s got an oxygen mask over his mouth that fogs up rhythmically to remind her that he’s still around, and a heart monitor, silent but peaking with a comfortable consistency that she watches when she’s not staring at the way the oxygen mask fogs up. 

She’s seen Peter beaten to hell and she’s seen him bleeding out in their bathtub. She’s seen him on the verge of death and she’s seen him while she was on the verge of death, and it doesn’t make this easier, but it does mean that she’s better at schooling her reactions every time a nurse drops in to check on him. 

May falls asleep on a cot up against the wall that Tony had them drag down for her, but Michelle stays in her seat by Peter’s bed, holding a bandaged hand with gentle tenderness and watching the mask fog up and fade back to clear in ongoing counts of two. 

She dozes for all of thirty minutes with her neck craned to rest her head on the mattress beside his hip, and then another nurse stops in and she wakes up again and watches. 

And waits.

And breathes. 

It’s been close before and it will be close again but for now, and for today, tonight, tomorrow, they continue to survive. Because sure, their lives are a series of little tragedies, but their lives are a series of tragedies survived as well. 

***

Peter doesn’t talk right away when he wakes up, making snuffling sounds muffled by his mask until he’s able to find some semblance of motor function and reach up to pull it to his chin, crack his eyes open at her as she scoots forward in her chair and puts on a brave face. 

“Hey, Tiger,” she speaks softly, knowing he’s still drugged up enough that he’ll probably forget this by the next time he’s awake again. “How’re you feeling?”

“Em,” he registers her, smiles underneath the bruises and the split lip and the part of his hair they had to shave to stitch up his head. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she smiles, tears in her eyes, but staying there. “Hi, you.”

“Good t’see you,” he says through the weight of everything going on with his body. 

“Great to see you,” she one-ups him with a shake of her head and a terrible love on her face. 

“Wait,” he swallows— dry and painful by the look on his face— and uncoordinatedly drags his hand across the sheets to find hers. “Wait, um—”

“I’ve got you,” she tells him, taking his hand and holding it as steadily as she can manage despite her own nerve endings buzzing with something she can’t even begin to name. “What do you need?”

“I just— What’s um…” another swallow, his eyelids heavy with the effort of being awake at all let alone trying to be coherent. “Who’s gonna feed Toast?” 

If when Michelle laughs it’s through tears, she doesn’t include that factor in the story later on. 

***

Peter stays in the medbay at the Compound for twelve days, and it’s not until day three that Michelle starts to really comprehend where they are and what’s happening inside her chest. 

Because upon first arrival it had been easy to explain away the tightness with what was going on with Peter, but now that he’s sitting up in bed and talking, if still bruised to shit and moving gingerly, Michelle knows that he’s going to be okay, and so the discomfort is maybe, probably coming from somewhere else. 

When she video chats with Ana on day five at the Compound, the answer presents itself to her in a moment of such obvious clarity that it makes her actually roll her eyes. 

Three years ago she had stepped off a Quinjet and started her recovery, had pushed aside her own feelings in favor of getting the job done, had realized for the first time that sex was going to be different now, had stumbled over herself over and again on the way towards healing. 

And now she’s back, sleeping in the same guest room when she’s not on the cot in Peter’s room, carrying a different version of Michelle Jones with her than she had been back then. A healthier version, she thinks, if still a little rough around the edges. 

It feels a little like what she assumes a high school reunion would be like— walking back into a different era, a different you with different wants and needs and issues, all the while still carrying everything you’ve learned in the years since then, carrying all that wisdom and all the mistakes that developed it. 

All of this is to say that as she helps Peter into a wheelchair that he keeps trying to refuse, kissing her as she tries to lower him down into the seat, she’s ready to go home. 

To their own bed, to their own kitchen, to the cat that Michelle will have to make sure doesn’t jump on Peter for just a little while longer until he’s actually fully healed and not just lacking the need for active medical attention anymore. 

“Thank you,” he says softly while she’s leaning over him, wrapping a scarf around his neck and tucking it into his jacket. 

When she looks up from her task she sees his eyes with all their focus on her face. 

“For what?” she asks. “I thought you hated this scarf.”

He glances down at it and grimaces, so she knows she’s right, but he shakes off the distraction and meets her gaze again. 

“Just— All of it, Em,” he tells her. “I’m sorry and thank you. Y’know?”

A deep breath. 

An exhale.

And one more tuck of the scarf for good measure. 

“I love you,” she says, lips pressing to his cheek right below a yellowing bruise. “I love you.” 

And he says it back with a kiss to her lips, but she doesn’t need him to, to know it’s true. 

***

It takes time. 

More time than Michelle would like. More time than Peter would like. 

Because they’re back in their apartment with its cheap furniture and creaky heater and cracks in the linoleum— they’re home and safe and Peter is there .

But this thing they’ve done, time and time again— more times than Michelle would ever want and yet would take it in a heartbeat for as long as it means that he’s still in her bed at three A.M.— feels different. 

It feels different because it’s the first time in a long time, the first time since Before that Peter had been that close to dying on patrol. The first time that Michelle had had to navigate the reality that the recovery she had fought so hard to work through would never be over. 

The first time, in the most banal sense, that they had another living creature to take care of when they were still mending themselves.

Toast took an extended vacation at May’s for the first week back home— a vacation Michelle didn’t want but didn’t argue, not when Peter had still been struggling to stand and when her own sense of self was too perilously close to an edge she didn’t want to fall from.

“Practice for the future,” May had said with a wink over a video call because Michelle still needed to see Toast and know that he was okay— playing with a cat toy in the background and making Peter laugh as he snuggled her closer.

“Tony said that May’s been lording Toast over him, saying he loves her more,” Peter says against her shoulder, Michelle leaning into him as he spoons her from behind. His fingers intertwine with hers over her waist, content with the knowledge that he’s there and breathing and whole as she laughs.

“Is he actually jealous that our cat loves May more?”

Peter laughs into her neck, pressing a kiss there before sighing. “Yeah, he’s gonna be insufferable when we have kids.”

Michelle laughs and leans into it and tries very hard not to think about that future— not because she doesn’t want it or because she isn’t ready, the former being a lie even if the latter was true— but because of the image she had in her mind the night Peter almost died of just her and Toast and the memory of a man that loved them both.

An image now that despite how much she desperately doesn’t want to see it, has a kid with curly hair nestled by her side as she closes her eyes.

“Hey,” Peter says, throwing her out of something that feels like a dream and a nightmare all at once, “sorry. I’m sorry. We don’t have to—”

Michelle cuts him off by way of pushing away, briefly seeing the hurt that flashes across his face before it turns into concern when turns around to face him— lying on her side and bringing him closer to her.

She stares at him for a moment, with his crooked nose and already healed bruises and the hair that’s starting to grow back before placing a hand against his cheek— a hand that Peter leans into, kissing gently as she smiles.

“If you don’t think May is gonna win that fight every single time,” she says carefully, voice wavering and watery as Peter looks at her softly, “then I’m sorry, I don’t think this is gonna work out.”

Peter laughs, Michelle bringing her hand down as he pulls her closer— acknowledging what she doesn’t say as he smiles.

“Doesn’t sound like a fair fight,” he whispers against her lips, Michelle kissing him gently before resting her forehead against his.

“Since when does life ever fight fair?” She says with more emotion than she intends, Peter squeezing her side gently.

It’s a question that he doesn’t answer. 

But Michelle wasn’t looking for one anyway.

***

When Toast finally comes back home, it’s an event— more of an event than was probably necessary but also was completely necessary, all things considered. 

Michelle makes dinner and Peter buys dessert and Tony decides he should come over to “double check the alarm system” when they all know he really just wants to properly meet Toast to stake his claim.

“Maybe we should get a cat,” he says to Pepper, Michelle holding back a smirk as Pepper sighs into her wine. 

“We don’t need a cat, Tony.”

“It’s not about need, it’s about want. And I think, considering Mo has decided to ditch every human at this table,” he says, gesturing to his daughter who is on their couch and petting Toast who is purring so loudly that Michelle can hear him from where she’s sitting, “that maybe we’ll actually see more of our daughter if we do.”

“You guys are old and boring,” Morgan deadpans, the adults at the table laughing as she scratches behind Toast’s ears, “why would I hang out with you when I could hang out with him?”

“She has a point,” Peter argues, “even if you did, it wouldn’t be half the cat Toast is.”

And it’s simple and small and stupid but hearing Peter defend Toast in the silliest of ways— that Peter is there — makes Michelle feel a surge of stupid love for the man across from her. The man who hadn’t wanted Toast solely because she hadn’t talked about getting Toast with him— the man that she had failed to communicate with and had gone through trauma with and who she’s thinks that even if she doesn’t get to spend the rest of her life with him, that he’ll spend the rest of his life with her — is the man that she will continue to choose no matter how much it hurts. 

Because they had lost and because they had survived and because they’re both there — present and together and alive. 

“Pete’s right,” she says, squeezing his hand under the table as Peter glances back at her. “Toast’s the best cat. Can’t beat him.”

For as long as she’s known Tony, she’s known that he’s never been one to back down from a challenge or from a witty remark.

Yet she’s not surprised in the least when she hears him laugh, looking away from Peter and seeing the soft look on his and May’s faces— Tony understanding the meaning behind the declaration as he cracks a smile.

“Well,” he says, clearing his throat, “can’t beat that.” 

***

On the day they get married, Michelle wakes up to rain pattering gently against the window and her husband-to-be’s arm resting heavily on her waist. 

She wakes up to a cat meowing, stretching his front paws up onto the mattress from where he sits on the floor, begging to be fed. 

She wakes up to a real life, her real life, and she takes Peter’s hand from where it rests on her stomach, lifts it to her mouth and presses a kiss to his palm. 

“Are you pretending to be asleep so you don’t have to feed the cat?” she whispers, grinning as she watches a smirk spread across his face, half-buried in his pillow and eyes still closed. 

He wraps his fingers around the hands still holding his and responds with an exaggerated snore that startles Toast into meowing louder but only makes Michelle laugh as she rolls into Peter’s space. 

“If you feed Toast,” she says, lips brushing against his bare shoulder, “I’ll marry you.”

“Hmm wow, I’m suddenly awake,” Peter stretches and grunts as he cracks open his eyes and looks at her. 

He looks at her and it’s raining outside and the cat is yowling at them to get off their asses and fill his bowl and Peter’s hair is shorter than usual because he cut it all to match the length of the bit that’s still growing back and it’s overwhelming for first thing in the morning.

It’s melancholy and beautiful and real when he kisses her forehead and tells her good morning and then grunts his way out of bed and almost trips over Toast on the way to the kitchen. 

It’s amusing and world shaking and stomach flipping when Pepper and Morgan arrive forty minutes later with Michelle’s dress in a garment bag and force Peter out the door to go get dressed at May’s place. 

It’s emotional in ways she can’t quite place when Morgan helps her decide where in her curls to put the sparkling pins that May had gotten for her and it’s emotional in ways she definitely can when she looks at herself in the mirror, barefoot and holding the flats of her palms to her stomach over the fabric of a champagne dress. 

It’s all of these complicated things, the reality of it and the ongoing trauma of a life lived as fully as she and Peter have lived theirs, but mostly? 

Mostly, it’s just good. 

***

The ceremony at the courthouse is quick, and one moment Michelle is straightening Peter’s tie while simultaneously reciting her vows and the next she’s kissing her husband— all teeth and laughter and cheers and glass breaking and camera flashes. 

Their guest list is small, and there will always be a part of Michelle who regrets not managing to rectify her estrangement with her parents before this day, but she also knows that their mistreatment of her is not her fault and when she beams out at the family that is present for this moment, she feels full nonetheless. 

Full of love and joy and later, after a full hour of picture-taking at the insistence of both May and Tony, full of champagne. 

Mismatched glasses from the back of their cabinets, full to the brim and with little slices of strawberries shining red at the bottom of them. (Morgan just sits back and eats the strawberries with a broad smile on her face. At least, when she’s not chasing Toast around the apartment, trying to get him into the little bow tie she’d bought him.

Tomorrow they’ll be at the Tower, having what Michelle can only assume will be an over-the-top party of a reception since it’s the second of two concessions they’d made to Tony, but for tonight it’s just their little family in their little apartment, drinking champagne with strawberries and laughing over the story of how the two of them had gotten engaged in the first place. 

By eleven-thirty, Michelle and Peter are alone again in the home that they’ve built, curtains drawn shut and glowing in the warm yellow light of the bulb above their stove.

The quiet permeates their world as Michelle sits down on the kitchen floor, buzzed on champagne and chuckling softly over the fact that Morgan had actually won the bow-tie battle with Toast who immediately trots over to brush up against her. 

He’s the most dapper he’s ever looked, bow-tie cock-eyed but coat of fur sleek and soft and properly brushed such a difference from how it had looked the day she met him. He’s healthy and happy and Michelle thinks maybe she is too, maybe they’ve helped each other get to this point. 

“Okay,” Peter grunts as he sits down beside her, his own bow-tie undone but otherwise still in the tux that May had insisted upon. He sets a small plate down between them with its two pieces of toast— one with peanut butter and one with jam. “I’d like to make a toast,” he grins, lifting his piece up in the air and laughing when Michelle rolls her eyes. 

“I want a divorce,” she tells him flatly, but with a smile on her face, noticing the way Peter’s eyes only get brighter at the comment. 

“Sure thing,” a peck to her temple, “but first I would just like to make a toast if that’s acceptable?”

“You’re on thin ice,” a hand on his thigh, “but I’ll allow it.”

He’s tipsy, and she can tell he’s tipsy because he kisses her soundly on the mouth instead of actually making a toast. Although, maybe that’s all that needs to be said in the moment, after years of proving their love for each other with the simple act of staying and working and trying despite all the bumps in their path. 

They don’t stop kissing until Toast crawls into their laps and they have to hurriedly eat their snacks to keep him from nabbing it straight out of their hands. 

And their laughter sounds like hope, and their kisses taste like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and even Toast’s meows ring out like congratulations, letting Michelle hold him upright in her lap when Peter pulls out his phone and says, “Family photo!”

He leaves crumbs on her cheek where he kisses her and Toast’s eyes get big at the sight of himself in the little, cracked phone screen and it’s maybe Michelle’s favorite photo ever taken of her. 

Tomorrow they’ll have a party, but she can’t know what the day after that will bring, or the day after that either. 

Because Michelle will always have a tenuous relationship with the world outside, and the world outside will always be filled with terrifying, life-ending possibilities, waiting for her on the threshold of their front door, but for now she is in love and for now there is a cat purring loudly in her lap and for now it is good. 

Almost entirely so.