Chapter Text
In the aftermath, they go home.
(She calls Liz on Peter’s phone once they’re in the car, tells her she’s ok, she’s with Peter, she’ll explain later.)
They go back to their apartment, climb the stairs together, lock the door behind them and draw the curtains. MJ feels dirty, feels the events of the past – day? More? – on her skin, and Peter’s not much better, covered in blood, jeans torn at the knees.
In the aftermath, they take a shower. He checks her over for injuries – “I’m fine, I promise” – and kisses the places on her wrists rubbed raw from the ropes. She holds his face in her hands, tries not to notice the blood circling the drain, tries not to wonder how much of it is his and how much is his . She washes his hair, and he runs his soapy hands over her, like he’s trying to remind himself she’s real.
They don’t have sex – not yet, anyway. They hold each other under the spray, listening to each other’s breathing and just being . When the water turns cold they step out, towel off. She leads him back to their room – their room, their bed. They climb in on their respective sides and settle, the room dark and still.
And for a long time, they just hold each other. They don’t need words then – not yet.
She falls asleep like that, with Peter, and for the first time in a long time, she sleeps well.
—
“I’m sorry.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It’s true.”
She looks at him, takes in how he isn’t looking at her. She reaches out and rests her hand on his chest, over his heart. He brings his hand up to cover hers.
“He said – you chose,” she starts. Peter averts his eyes again.
“Yeah.”
She waits.
“It didn’t feel like a real choice. You, or my memories of you. That was the choice.”
“Sounds pretty shitty,” she says, trying to sound lighter than she feels. Memories of the past weeks welling up in her chest.
“I thought – we can just, start over, maybe. You’d still be – and that was better.”
“I mean, I appreciate not dying, it’s true.” She bites her lip. “But that’s not why you’re apologizing. Is it?”
Peter sighs, rolls onto his back. MJ leans up onto her elbow to look at him. He blows out another breath but looks at her this time.
“You know me too well, you know.”
“Sucks for you, huh?”
He smiles, but then it turns sad.
“I couldn’t keep you safe,” he says softly. “So maybe – it was better for you, too. If I –”
“You’re an idiot,” she cuts him off. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t have, if the other choice wasn’t death ,” he argues, but she continues.
“But you’re gonna pull away now, right? You’re gonna – and maybe only a little, only for a little while, but – you’re gonna do your stupid saving people thing, pushing me away and telling me it’s for me .”
“No,” he says, but even he doesn’t sound convinced.
“You can’t protect me, Peter,” she tells him, reaching for him again. He laces their fingers, brings her hand to his mouth and presses a kiss to her knuckles. “You can try, and I know you will. But shit happens. No one is ever completely safe.”
“But I’m –”
“It doesn’t matter. I love you. I know what I signed up for.”
He seems to be fighting with himself, and he’s silent for a moment.
“They’re not supposed to go after you . Me, I’m fair game. But you?”
She shrugs.
“Not everyone plays fair.”
“It’s bullshit.”
“You still won.”
“It doesn’t feel like winning.”
She pulls her hand free to tilt his face up to hers.
“You haven’t lost me. You won’t.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can. I will.”
He huffs out a short laugh, then pulls her into a kiss.
“Stubborn as –”
“Watch yourself,” she teases, kissing him back.
“I love you,” he breathes, hands skimming up her sides, forehead pressed to hers, eyes soft. “I love you.”
“Love you, too,” she manages to say back, emotion welling up in her throat, eyes stinging, all of it coming back to her at once. She kisses him, desperate for the reassurance, the solidness of him, and he returns it, rolling her onto her back and kissing her deeper, hands moving, and it feels like coming home, it feels like all the comfort she needs, like everything she’s been missing –
Because it’s them , it’s still just him and her, even after everything. He kisses down her kneck and she slides her hands up his shirt, fingernails scraping over his back as he grinds against her, his name on her lips as they grind against each other. It’s desperate and heady, feels like it did when they were young and new, and she chases the feeling, chases it as she works her hand between them, finding him and reveling in the groan he lets out, laughing at the awkwardness of it all as they try to situate themselves, her hand on his dick and his fingers at her entrance, smiling as they kiss and sighing as they work each other. It’s perfect until it isn’t, until it’s not enough just to feel his fingers, to feel the weight of him in her hand, and she gasps into his mouth and lines him up at her entrance, and when he pushes in she feels everything . It’s not like the shed or the kitchen or the couch. He says her name, breath warm against her neck, and she feels herself well up but it’s not like before, it’s good . Because he’s here . He’s her Peter again.
She doesn’t say I missed you , though she did; she doesn’t tell him how scared she was for him; doesn’t say all the things she’ll probably say eventually, after things have settled a bit, after they start to feel safe again. She doesn’t need to, because he’s Peter, and he knows. Of course he knows. He knows her , and she’s sure of it as he kisses her, as their bodies move together like they have so many times before.
He pulls back to look her in the eye as he moves, cheeks flushed and hair sticking to his forehead, watching her with that look he gets, the one she recognizes, the one that means he loves her and he’s hers. He holds her gaze and it’s the most – she feels every emotion she feels for him, every memory and every piece of their story between them; she looks at him and he’s Peter , he’s her Peter, with everything that means and has always meant, and she loves him, she loves him, she –
“ Peter .”
“I love you, I love you, fuck, I –”
She pulls him into a kiss, kisses him deep, feels the warm coil of pleasure tighten and then release, gasping into his mouth as she comes, body shaking as he fucks he through it. He follows her over the edge soon after, and she presses a kiss to his temple, arms wrapped around him tight. He presses a kiss to her neck as he collapses fully against her, and she can feel his heartbeat against her chest, both of them slick with sweat, the tears still caught in her throat as she comes back to herself.
“Getting sappy on me?” he teases, and she chokes out a laugh. He lifts his head to look at her, leans in to kiss her properly.
“Your fault,” she retorts.
“Love you, too.”
“I love you,” she says seriously. “Always.”
His face goes serious, too, and he nods.
“Always.”
—
Ned, as it turns out, isn’t that upset with Peter for knocking him out and tying him up. Apparently all it took was a hit to the head for the remnants of Beck’s mind control mist (Ned’s name for it) to break.
They go to the Tower and see Tony and Happy; there’s a longer debrief between Peter and the doctors and Tony that MJ sits out. She waits for him in their room at the Tower, and holds him when he comes back, shaky and ashen.
He doesn’t tell her much at first, about the first encounter with Beck. About that house of horrors and how he ended up where he did - a concussion and no memory of her. The nightmares return, but she’d sort of expected that. She holds him, and eventually, he starts to talk.
One day they borrow a car and drive to the beach, out to New Jersey. They check into a Holiday Inn and play tourists on vacation, going down to the beach every day and eating ice cream and hot dogs on the boardwalk, having slow sex back at the hotel with the slider open and the sound of the waves coming through. MJ gets them coffee and muffins from the continental breakfast while Peter sleeps in, and they get handsy as they put on sunscreen before heading out for the day, and she feels younger and lighter than she has any right to.
She goes to auditions and appears in a perfume ad. Peter starts preparing for the new school year. They go to May’s for dinner, they see Liz, they see Ned.
Some days, it doesn’t feel real. Feels like the whole thing was a bad dream, a nightmare that she woke up from and has since tried to forget. Then other days it’s all she can think of. She’ll walk into the apartment and in the moment before Peter greets her she feels that flash of panic, that maybe he won’t remember her again.
(Some nights, he holds her so tight, a desperation to him as they fuck, that she knows he’s thinking of it, too.)
But, life goes on. They go on.
—
MJ walks into the apartment, and Peter’s at the table. He looks up and smiles at her, something nervous in his posture, and nods at her to sit.
“What’s up?” She asks, giving him a quick kiss.
“I was gonna have a plan,” he says. She gives him a quizzical look.
“For what?”
He gestures between them and then sighs, crossing his arms.
“I was gonna — I was gonna do it right. But then — and after everything, it didn’t — he fucked this up, too, except I won’t let him.”
She doesn’t interrupt him, just waits.
“You were gonna come home and I was — I was gonna plan it out, it was gonna be, like, romantic,” he says.
“I have no idea —“ she starts, but then he pulls something out of his pocket, and sets it on the table between them.
A small black box.
She feels her heartbeat quicken in her chest, is sure he must notice it, too, and she wasn’t expecting this today, but –
“It was gonna be special, but how do I do that after everything that happened? And — waiting feels — I don’t wanna wait.”
“Very Dawson’s Creek of you,” she says softly. He snorts.
“I’m trying to propose and you’re mocking me.”
“You’d think you’d be used to that by now,” she teases, because it’s easier to tease him than confront the feelings she has about what he’s saying and trying to do.
He smiles.
“It doesn’t feel fair, asking you to marry me when you’ve gone through all this shit because of me,” he starts. “But you won’t let me make those decisions for you, and I’m too selfish not to at least ask.”
She watches as he reaches out and opens the box.
“Can’t promise you fair sky above, can’t promise you kind road below. But I’ll walk beside you, love, any way the wind blows.” His cheeks redden as he shrugs. “Or whatever he said.”
MJ lets out a sound that’s half a laugh, half a sob.
Remembers a hotel in Philadelphia and his lips pressed to her fingers. It’s like wedding vows.
“So?” He prompts, taking the ring and reaching for her hand.
“Are you gonna ask me or —“
“Marry me?”
“Yes.”
—
And it doesn’t matter that they’re both still a little fucked up, it doesn’t matter that he’s still Spider-Man, that there’s always been an expiration date on their life together. Because she’s MJ and he’s Peter and it’s a choice, isn’t it? It’s always a choice.
(‘Cause here’s the thing.
To know how it ends and still begin to sing it again,
As if it might turn out this time — )
MJ knows that one day he won’t come home, or she won’t, because the world is unpredictable and Peter’s always been marked by tragedy; but she also knows that the only life worth living is the one where she loves him fully, completely.
So she takes his ring and she loves him, and is loved by him, for however long they have.
—
And we’re gonna sing it again and again
We’re gonna sing it again.