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They’re an hour into a two and a half hour drive when Michelle decides to drop the question.
“Isn’t it weird?” MJ asks. “Casually being invited to your boss’s house for Thanksgiving?”
Peter shrugs, but she can see the way his shoulders tense underneath his hoodie when he answers, “Maybe. Before.”
Before doesn’t need to be clarified. The Blip.
“Besides, he makes a mean turkey stuffing. I promise, that’s worth it,” Peter attempts to deflect, the barest hint of a smile directed her way.
But Michelle has never been good at leaving well enough alone. She asks too many questions, sometimes makes people uncomfortable. It’s how she got good at academic decathlon and how she (mostly) figured out Peter was Spider-Man.
“What changed?”
“Hm?”
“The Blip was traumatic for everyone in one way or another. Why did it change things with Tony?” She never refers to him as Mister Stark despite Peter rarely ever calling his mentor anything else.
“It just…did.” Peter shrugs again, eyes determinately focused on the road ahead and far away from her. “He lost me, I almost lost him, it sucked. That’s all.”
“Okay, but—“ It just doesn’t make sense to her that he was an intern at SI or a superhero colleague or whatever, and somehow it added up to…whatever this is. Schlepping up to the Catskills in Peter’s hand-me-down Toyota for a few days at the Starks’ cabin. Like, that’s just a thing that Peter has been invited to do, and he doesn’t think anything of it.
“Mister Stark means a lot to me, M,” Peter says firmly, effectively ending the discussion.
“I know,” she answers, squeezing his hand where it rests over the cupholder between them.
Looking out the window, what she thinks to herself is: do you mean that much to him?
Maybe it’s overprotective or presumptuous of her—she’s only known Peter well for a couple of years and has been dating him for less than one.
It’s just—in all that time, in all of the stories of his alter-ego’s exploits that he’s finally shared…she just can’t see how the universe-saving multibillionaire fits into all of this.
They arrive at the lake house just as the sun’s setting, the orange hues reflecting across the water.
A loud thwack breaks the relative silence that’s formed by the car’s engine turning off.
“Petey!” shrieks the high pitched voice that accompanies the blur of movement coming out of the house.
Peter’s already unbuckling his seatbelt, a smile blown wide across his face. He kicks the door open—used to the way it sometimes sticks—and just barely misses hitting the brown-haired little girl that can only be Morgan Stark in her precious little head.
“Morgie!” Peter shouts in a parrot of her tone, not bothering to shut the door behind him before he picks up the five-year-old girl, spinning them both around in circles while she screams with laughter.
“’S so good to see you,” Peter says, pressing sloppy kisses to Morgan’s cheeks. “Did you miss me?”
“Yeah! Daddy said you were coming for a whole week this time, and I have a whole list of movies that you have to watch with me, and—“
Morgan trails on, but MJ is watching Peter—his attention is zeroed in on the girl in his arms, his megawatt grin on full display. He’s comfortable with her. She called him Petey—a nickname she knows is usually reserved only for May. She knew Peter was close with Morgan, but she’d always assumed it was in that way she sees her younger cousins every holiday and they think she’s the coolest person in the world for exactly eight hours, and then they don’t see or speak to each other again until the next family event, rinse and repeat.
The girl stops herself, moving her eyes directly to MJ and locking on. She’s always kind of hated that about little kids—they look into your soul and just kind of know things.
“Who’s that?” Morgan asks, more firmly wrapping her arms around Peter, as if to protect him.
(The only danger Peter’s been in from MJ in the last three hours was during their argument about road trip playlists. Particularly, Peter’s memetic gag of repeating What’s New Pussycat? on the same playlist multiple times and thinking she wouldn’t stop it before the first It’s Not Unusual.)
Michelle decides to get out of the car and introduce herself instead of awkwardly staring through the open door. It’s a bit of a chore—the passenger door’s handle is finicky—but she gets out without landing her ass in the mud and considers it a win. She still wipes her hands on her pants as she rounds the car, trying to remove any weird, nervous sweat. She’s not worried about it. She’s fine.
“I’m, um. Michelle,” she states, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”
Morgan’s head quirks to the side, looking Michelle up and down before she screams, “Daddy, Petey brought some weird stranger to Thanksgiving!” directly into Peter’s ear.
“Ow,” he hisses, rubbing at his earlobe. “Morgan, that’s not cool, MJ is—“
Morgan doesn’t let Peter finish, sticking out her tongue and wriggling out of Peter’s arms, running off towards the house as fast as she came out of it.
Tony Stark himself opens the screen door of the cabin next, chuckling as his daughter weaves between his legs. The effects from the battle with Thanos are clear—though it’s less intense than she imagines it was a year ago. White scar tissue spindles through the right side of Tony’s face, following down under his t-shirt and transitioning into to the metal arm painted the iconic Iron Man color scheme of red and gold.
Peter showed her the specs of that arm shortly after they got together—apparently Tony finished his rehab just after their trip to Europe, and it was supposed to be a gift from Peter. Seeing it on the man himself is…daunting, to say the least.
“Sorry about her,” Tony says, easing himself down the stairs as he approaches. There’s no kind of limp, but he seems to take his time with it all the same. “She gets a little territorial with us sometimes. Pep says we need to get her around more kids her own age, but the idea of sending her off to preschool…”
He shakes his head like he’s clearing cobwebs. She has to admit, he seems more human like this, surrounded by nature, talking about his daughter, the sun showing the lighter, grey strands of his hair more clearly.
“Hey, Pete,” Tony says, pulling Peter into a hug. It’s not just a one-armed casual sort of hug either, but a full one that goes on for a minute, dramatically rocking them back and forth. “Ugh, I missed you.”
“It’s only been a few days, Mister Stark!” Peter’s laughing reply is muffled into Tony’s shoulder. When they come apart, the smile from earlier has returned. Tony’s hands—robotic and human—have moved to Peter’s shoulders.
“A week. A whole week! I can’t spend that much time away from you anymore. It aggravates my angina.”
“Now you’re just trying to be embarrassing,” Peter grumbles, reluctant when the other man runs his hand through Peter’s gelled hair and musses it up just so.
“Absolutely,” Tony admits. He turns to Michelle. “You must be the famous scary girlfriend.”
“You’re just as bad as Morgan!” Peter whines. MJ isn’t sure she’s ever heard him sound so childish in his life despite the fact that he acts like a giant, overexcited goofball ninety percent of the time.
“My reputation precedes me,” Michelle ends up replying, shaking Tony’s hand when it’s offered. For some reason she was more nervous to meet Morgan than her father. Maybe it’s just her instinct to not be intimidated by rich tycoon types. Then again…she and the rest of the world know that he’s much more than that. Still. Old habits die hard.
“Now see, she can take a joke. I like her,” Tony says, nodding at Peter. Peter’s face goes a soft red, just edging on a full blush. She doesn’t really care if Tony likes her, but Peter clearly does.
Tony hooks an arm around both of their shoulders, leading them up to the house.
“Seriously, it’s good to have you guys. I’ve kind of been dreaming about the holidays—it got me through a lot of my physical therapy sessions,” he admits. It seems to be a more vulnerable comment than he lets on—Peter leans his head onto Tony’s shoulder. He’s almost too tall for it, but it’s…weirdly sweet. Peter’s big on physical comfort, as she now knows. Apparently even Tony has gotten used to it.
“Christmas is going to be a goddamn blow out, trust me,” Tony continues, breaking their grouping to lead them into the house. “Wall to wall Avengers, a mountain of presents. I’m slowly but surely convincing Pepper to let me build a fully functioning Santa’s sleigh to put on the roof.”
“No, he’s not,” comes a voice from deeper in the house. Pepper Potts steps in from what must be the kitchen, wiping flour off on the apron around her waist. “I will accept the light-up ones that are meant to be decoration and nothing else.”
Pepper presses a finger into her husband’s chest firmly, spreading a puff of flour and accenting her point with a quick peck to his lips. It’s a surprisingly domestic scene. She looks at Peter, and he’s looking at her already, soft doe eyes and a mind probably full of gross, sweet things that are way, way in their future.
Dork, she mouths. His returning smile is predictably un-cowed.
“You kids are just adorable,” Tony comments. Pepper nudges him with an elbow on her way to Peter.
“Hi, sweetie,” she says, pressing a kiss to his head and holding her hands up. “I’d hug you but—“
“All good,” Peter replies. “Anything I can do to help?”
“No, no. You unpack, relax. I’ve got it, just—semi-literally have my fingers in a lot of pies, right now.”
“That’s code for please, god, don’t let a Parker near my cooking,” Tony whispers to her.
“Enhanced. Hearing.” Peter’s look at his mentor is the closest to peeved that he really gets. (She has to admit, though—there’s a reason they mostly go out or order in on dates. Cooking isn’t really either of their fortes.)
“Boys,” Pepper hums. It sounds like this is a common occurrence in the Stark household. “It’s nice to meet you, Michelle. Peter talks about you all the time. Again, I’d shake your hand, but—“ She holds up her palms, shrugging.
“No it’s—super awesome to meet you. Thank you for having me.” It’s actually beyond awesome. Despite her beef with Stark Industries and their ilk, she has to admit Pepper Potts is pretty high on her list of inspirational female powerhouses. She became CEO at 40 with only a Bachelor’s in Business and a Fine Arts minor, and Stark Industries entered a historic era of technology production and philanthropy under her guidance.
“Oh my god, you’re totally starstruck right now, aren’t you?” Peter questions in her ear, quieter than Tony so that only she hears.
“Shut up,” she says between her teeth, swatting at his arm without breaking her smile at Pepper.
Pepper smiles, giving Tony a look that Michelle can’t decipher. It might be flirtatious? Are she and Peter reminding Pepper of Tony and herself when they were younger? Her life is so weird, right now.
“I’ll go get our stuff,” Peter offers, out the screen door before she can argue that she doesn’t need his help. Like, it’s nice that her boyfriend can lift an entire car’s worth of stuff in one go, but she doesn’t always need him to. It feels a little…exploitative of his powers, somehow.
“I have a five-year-old to console,” Tony says, then quirks his head. “Chide? Eh, I’ll feel it out in the moment. Maybe a little of both. Make yourself comfortable, Michelle.”
Pepper watches Tony ascend the stairs, a what can you do? sort of look on her face towards MJ.
“Seriously, you and Peter have the afternoon to yourselves. If you need anything, just ask FRIDAY.” Pepper points up to the ceiling, as if that’s where the AI lives—which, maybe it does—before she turns around and attends to the beeping timer coming from the kitchen.
Michelle’s had a little experience with Peter’s AI, Karen, but the whole house being run by a super AI is something totally out of the norm. Honestly, she’ll probably just ask Peter any questions to avoid conversing with it.
She takes the chance alone to really observe her surroundings. From the outside the house looked like a pretty rustic cabin, but inside it’s a mostly-open floor plan mix of modern design and homey decor.
In particular, she notices the walls and surfaces are covered in pictures. The entryway features what can only be a shot of Tony and Pepper’s wedding day. The lake is featured behind them—Tony in a suit, Pepper in a white maternity dress that accentuates her pregnant belly.
Further into the living area there’s a larger variety of shots: Baby Morgan in Tony’s arms at the hospital, a few older shots with faces Michelle recognizes—Bruce Banner, James Rhodes, and even a group shot of the Avengers, smiling and receiving Medals of Honor from the Mayor of New York.
Nestled in a few shots of Morgan at a few different ages is a familiar face. Peter is pictured with Tony—it’s a selfie that was clearly printed, Peter making a goofy face combating Tony’s unamused expression. Next to it is a more recent picture. It appears to be from the spring shortly after the battle. Morgan is sitting in Peter’s lap, her hands covered in sticky popsicle juice while Peter is taking a lick from the offered desert over her shoulder. Clearly a candid moment.
Finally, nestled in-between a shot of the Starks teaching a younger Morgan how to swim and a press picture of Tony and Pepper from a gala she can’t identify is one of Peter and Tony on the very couch next to her, both of them asleep and pajama-clad, like they’d fallen asleep like that the night before and someone caught it the morning after.
“Ugh, that one’s so bad,” Peter says, suddenly behind her. He has a talent for sneaking up on her, one that would probably be more useful if he wasn’t always running his mouth and announcing his presence, particularly to bad guys. “Of course you found it.”
“I didn’t realize—“ she starts, but frowns, unsure of exactly what she’s thinking. It’s so…homey, here, and Peter’s clearly welcome. She knew he visited a lot, but this… “You’re all over the place.”
Peter clearly doesn’t think anything of it, shrugging. “I, um. We didn’t have anywhere to go after, you know?”
He’s never comfortable talking about the Blip or the battle against Thanos. A lot of people aren’t, but Peter in particular always stumbles through it. In the months of their dating, he’s only brought it up if she’s asked, never on his own.
“We lived here for a while. Our old apartment belonged to someone else, but May wouldn’t take any charity, wouldn’t accept the Starks’ penthouse in the city. She and Pepper looked for a place in Queens for months, but there were suddenly all of those people looking for housing…”
He loses himself for a moment. He does this sometimes too, drifting off like he’s disconnected, unable to keep himself in the here and now.
She takes his hand, and with a squeeze he comes back. There aren’t any tears, but there’s a weight in his eyes that she recognizes: guilt. For having a home when others still don’t months later. For failing at stopping Thanos the first time. For any number of other things he’s yet to reveal to her.
“Peter…” she tries, but what can she say? It’s times like this that she wishes she was…more. That she was better equipped to handle this superhero life that he’s so dedicated to. He takes the weight of the world on his shoulders, and she hasn’t figured out exactly how to give him a break, to take some of the weight as her own, or if she ever can.
“It’s fine, I’m—anyway, it was just…kind of nice, after everything that happened. Tony was recovering from here, Pepper was working from home a lot, Morgan was scared, I was…” He clears his throat, not finishing the sentence. “It was good to have everyone under one roof for a while, that’s all.”
She tucks herself into his side in a hug, unsure how else to respond. He would accept platitudes but he wouldn’t believe them. She rarely knows the right thing to say, anyway. Maybe this is the best she can do.
He pats her shoulder, breaking the quiet. “Come on, I’ll show you upstairs.”
Peter keeps his arm around her as they walk, squeezing them both up the stairs with their backpacks in hand.
“We’re staying in my room.” He stops walking, stiffening in a way that makes her feel—well, her age. They haven’t even really discussed sex, but any discussions past their first few chaste kisses have turned out a little awkward, stumbling forward because neither of them have dated before this.
“I mean, as long as that’s okay with you, I can take the couch, or—“
“No, no, that’s fine. We’ve shared before,” she mumbles, knowing there have been a few times May must have seen them asleep on Peter’s bed and let them be. She assumes his aunt’s open door policy will stay in place, likely why the Starks are okay with them sharing. Not like she has much desire to do anything in the Starks’ house, and especially with a five-year-old only a few rooms away.
“Your room?” she asks, moving them along. She assumed he and May just shared a guest bed or something that he just took over whenever he visited, not that he had a room of his own.
“It, ah—Mister Stark insisted,” Peter laughs, but mixed in with the slight embarrassment is something warm too, shown by how Peter’s gaze turns to the door clearly labeled Morgan’s Room in a pretty cursive font, likely Pepper’s work. She can hear the soft murmurs of Tony’s voice in the room, meaning that Peter can probably hear the entire conversation.
There’s a bathroom in the hall that’s a mix of Morgan’s colorful bath toys and what she knows is Peter’s deodorant sitting on the sink counter. Next to Morgan’s room is another bedroom, likely Tony and Pepper’s. At the end of the hall is where they stop, the unmarked door holding a room that is different from Peter’s in New York, but funnily enough, almost more expressive of him.
Peter hasn’t made it a secret that he doesn’t love his new apartment—it’s smaller than their old place, and devoid of the memories from his Uncle Ben’s presence. He seems to think there’s not much point in decorating it with the future expectation of college dorms ahead of them, and has apparently spilled most of his personal effects across this room instead.
The A New Hope poster on the wall is one of the nicer reproductions, framed and—signed by Mark Hamill, of course, probably a gift from Tony. A hologram is up on the desk, the Spider-Man symbol lazily floating around like a desktop screensaver. There are a few Lego sets unfinished in the corner—Peter rarely finishes them without Ned to keep them on task.
It’s Peter spilling out of every crumpled sheet of loose-leaf paper, every sneaker missing its mate.
Peter immediately takes to cleaning up the array of dirty clothes on the floor, mumbling apologies. She spies a faded hoodie with the cracked screen-printing of MIT’s logo among the mess before he scoops it up too.
“I was in a hurry last time I was here, sorry. Pepper says she won’t clean up after me because it sets a bad example for Morgan—which I totally get! But also, I mean, you’ve met me.”
It’s as self-explanatory as he makes it sound—he has a busy life. Sometimes, when stuff is crazy, a few dirty socks on the floor don’t really matter so much.
However, she also senses that some part of him likes the mess. His room in the city is a cramped box, and the charging case for the Iron Spider takes up an entire corner on its own. Here, he’s free to spread himself across the floors and up the walls as much as he likes.
“Yeah, Parker, you are kind of a mess,” she teases, only smiling more at his response of wrinkling his nose up at her.
“Anyway,” he continues with a grunt, flinging a sock into a hamper that’s overfull like he’s some kind of basketball star and frowning when it bounces into the floor instead. “Since Pepper’s kicked us out of the kitchen and Mo is being a grouch, we can do whatever. FRIDAY has any movie or show you could want—comedies, romcoms, that sad documentary about polar bears you like…“
“It’s not sad, it’s realistic.”
“What’s real is that you watched me cry about the ice caps melting for like thirty minutes, M.”
He brings her close, wrapping his arms around her waist and swaying them in place like it’s some kind of grand romantic moment, the two of them bickering in the middle of his messy bedroom at Tony Stark’s house. For some reason she has the impression that he’ll spurt into a tall and lanky mess in a few years, but for now she’s still looking down at him just a smidge, meaning he’s looking up at her all…mushy and enamored.
“As we all should,” she replies, failing to sound serious because she’s suddenly distracted by the hint of Peter’s teeth peeking out of his smile. Her boyfriend is so cute, which, yes, she knew that, but it’s just—he’s so much, Peter Parker, and she’s barely even scratched the surface after quietly watching him for years and thinking she had him all figured out. It’s intimidating, to see the open emotion on his face and know there’s even more that she’d never considered underneath.
“I—“ She takes a breath, trying to recover from the flustered blush that’s creeped up her cheeks without her permission. “Nap. I could go for a nap. That sounds good, right?”
Peter’s smile grows—he’s always so entertained when he breaks her brain like this, so smug that he’s one of the only people that can.
At her warning look, he lets her awkward stumbling drop, holding up his hands. “Yeah, MJ, that’s—sounds good.”
“That’s what I thought.”
If she picked that activity for an excuse to hold Peter close for a few hours alone after the barrage of meeting so many new people, well, no one has to know.
“Pete.” A voice she only vaguely recognizes is within the edge of her consciousness. It’s not her step-father, so she chooses to ignore it, snuggling into the warmth under her head further. “Spiiiider-baby. Kiddo, c’mon, wake up.”
Her eyes open just a slit—watery vision turned milky by the overpowering beam of light that leaks in. In the darkness of the room, she finds Peter’s face, still firmly buried in his pillow. Behind him, partially obscured by the curve of his shoulder and the powerful light from the hallway, is Tony.
He smiles when he catches her eyes. “Not the one I planned on, but hey, one out of two’s not bad.”
“Peeetey,” Tony tries Peter again, this time accompanying his calls with a touch to Peter’s head, he’s—running his hand through Peter’s hair? Is she dreaming? “Buddy, it’s time to get up. It’s dinnertime.”
“Hm?” finally comes Peter’s groggy response, slurred as he turns into Tony’s hand.
“Magic words,” Tony jokes to her, stroking Peter’s curls again, fully mussing what’s already been ruined by their nap.
“Feels nice,” Peter sighs. He squeezes the arm he has around MJ, as if for emphasis. “M’comfy.”
“Aw, they’re so cute when they’re sleepy,” Tony full-on coos, and that seems to do it, eliciting a groan from Peter’s chest against her ear.
“You’re so embarrassing, Mister Stark.” Peter bats Tony’s hand away this time, rubbing at his eyes and flitting them over to the holographic clock on the desk—6:30 PM.
“We slept a while.”
“I’ll say. I had Morgan all primed for an apology and you two were totally passed out.”
MJ removes herself from Peter’s hold, running a hand through her loosened ponytail and catching a few matted curls with a frown.
Tony turns up the lights slowly, sliding the switch to half-power.
“I negotiated that you two would watch Mulan with her after dinner, by the way. She tests people with how they react to Disney movies. Don’t ask me why.”
Peter nods solemnly, stretching his arms with a few quick pops.
“I got Tangled. Ned and I went to see it with Ned’s little sister as kids, but I still got all choked up at the whole hair-cutting scene. Cemented me with her for life.”
Peter literally rolls off of the bed, landing on his feet as if he’d simply sat up and stood like a normal person.
She and Tony are similarly unimpressed.
“The fact that you also act like her personal spidery-jungle-gym probably doesn’t hurt either,” he comments.
“You’re just mad that she doesn’t play Iron Man as much anymore.”
Tony sniffs, but doesn’t deny it. “Pizza’s getting cold. Pepper was too tired to cook anything else tonight, and I instantly agreed.”
“But have you ever had pizza for Thanksgiving?” Peter inquires, tapping his skull with his pointer finger like this idea holds the secrets of the universe. “You order the night before and eat it reheated the next day. No cooking required.”
“Just say May burned a turkey the year before and you were scared,” Tony replies. “It’s so much faster that way.”
“I’ll have you know it was Uncle Ben who was scared—“
By the time they’ve moved on to weighing the importance of tradition versus creating new traditions, Michelle has managed to brush her hair back into a more controlled ponytail and has splashed a little water on her face in the bathroom.
They’re still in Peter’s room going at it when she returns.
“You guys talk a lot,” she interrupts.
They both go silent, look at each other, then shrug. It’s like looking into a mirror, in a weird way, and she’s concerned that she’s dating half of that mirror when the other half is Tony Stark, who spent years flying around in a suit of armor and almost died on multiple occasions.
“Daddy!” Morgan thumps her way up the stairs, sliding into Tony’s legs on socked feet. “Mommy said you’re taking too long.”
Tony easily brings his daughter into his arms, bouncing her on his hip and leading them down the stairs that way.
“Oh she did, did she?” he asks, voice taking on a playful quality. “That doesn’t sound like Mommy. She usually just tells me to hurry the fu—“
“Mister Stark!” Peter interjects, slapping his hands over Morgan’s ears and awkwardly hovering over Tony’s shoulder on the stairway to do it. Honestly, it would probably be more comfortable for him to just get on the ceiling at this point.
“Oh, I’m kidding! I wasn’t actually gonna say it!”
Tony pulls Morgan out of Peter’s loose grip, moving all of them forward and almost sending Peter toppling down the stairs. MJ grabs the back of Peter’s shirt even though she suspects his feet are doing the steadying for him.
“You guys are like some kind of messed up comedy troupe,” Michelle comments, watching Peter pout and dust off his clothes as if it will rid him of any embarrassment.
Pepper shakes her head at all of them as they enter the kitchen, probably having heard at least some of that. “More like a circus,” she grumbles.
“We do have an alpaca,” Tony adds, placing Morgan onto her feet.
“I think that’d be more of a petting zoo,” Peter argues.
“Michelle, I’m sorry about them,” Pepper says. “Get whatever you want, we always order plenty for Mister-Mega-Metabolism over here.”
Pepper points to Peter, who has already unceremoniously shoved half of a slice of pepperoni pizza in his mouth and has a trail of grease slipping down his chin.
“You guys are so mean,” he sulks without bothering to swallow, meaning the words are a garbled, spitting mess. “Mister Stark’s the one that keeps nagging me about my blood sugar!”
“You’re attracted to this,” Tony says to Michelle, pointing at Peter. “This? Really?”
“He’s alright,” she answers, dragging both a slice of vegetarian and a slice of cheese onto her own plate without bothering to look at Peter’s fake-hurt expression.
“MJ, you’re supposed to be on my side, this is—I can’t even—“
In his distraction, Morgan decides to be sneaky. Only MJ seems to catch her subtle movements toward Peter, using her short height to her advantage and the element of surprise to steal what’s left of the piece of pizza from Peter’s hand. She giggles to herself triumphantly, biting into it herself.
“Morgan, sweetie, that’s—“ Pepper tries, but seems to lose the end of the admonishment that was probably about germs.
Peter only smiles, crouching as if preparing for a fight.
“Here they go,” Tony hums, expectant in a way Michelle certainly isn’t.
“You better watch out, you little—!” In a fit of laughter, Morgan sprints out of the kitchen, Peter hot on her heels. They run a lap around the living room furniture.
“Peter, leave your sister alone, she needs to eat her—aaaaand they’re already in the yard,” Tony sighs. He and Pepper seem to give up, bringing their own plates and the so far unused plates of Peter and Morgan to the table. MJ follows suit, placing herself an empty chair between the two table heads.
“I swear to god, they’re normal, like, ninety percent of the time.” Tony pauses. “Eighty-five. Solid eighty percent.”
“Did you…?” MJ feels awkward asking about it, but maybe it’s something Peter hasn’t told her yet, something she wasn’t supposed to know that just slipped out. Tony said—he called Morgan Peter’s sister. “Is there something I should know?”
Both Tony and Pepper look at Michelle like she’s not making any sense.
“What you said—that Morgan is Peter’s sister, it’s just—I can keep a secret! I just didn’t know he was, you know. Yours.“
“He wishes,” Pepper snorts into her ice water.
Tony’s responding smile is far too wide.
“I keep asking May for partial custody, but she just won’t budge!” He snaps his fingers in a very exaggerated, aw, shucks way. Pepper and Tony both laugh.
“Ah,” she lets out, embarrassed to have even had the thought that Peter might be Tony’s secret child or something, picking at her pizza toppings to avoid looking at the Starks.
“Don’t worry about it, sweetie.” Pepper pats her arm comfortingly. “Before the Blip there were articles with pretty similar lines of questioning. All shut down because they photographed a minor, of course.”
Pepper seems pretty proud of that, and MJ supposes she should be. People definitely would have made the Spider-Man connection sooner if Peter and Tony were in the paper together all the time.
More seriously, Tony says, “I’ve looked at the kid’s blood…more than I wish I had, honestly, but he gets injured, it happens. Anyway, yeah, no. FRIDAY would have figured that one out pretty quickly. DNA scanners and all.”
She nods, and the awkward silence thankfully only has to sit for a few more seconds before Peter bursts back into the house, Morgan wriggling around and squealing in his arms.
“I caught a wild Morguna!” Peter cheers.
“Is that the name of an actual Pokémon?” Tony asks, switching his gaze between Pepper and Michelle for an answer. “Did I accidentally nickname my kid after a battling monster thing? I only know like three of them, help me out here.”
Peter rolls his eyes, placing Morgan down with a quick tickle to her ribs that sends her flying towards the table.
“Come eat, Little Miss,” Tony commands, patting his hand on the chair to his right. Peter sits automatically to his left. “Michelle won’t want to watch a movie with you if you misbehave.”
“Do you like Disney movies?” Morgan probes, kicking her feet under the table and creating a light vibration.
Michelle shrugs. “Depends on which movie.”
Morgan squints, accessing. She nods.
“Good answer.”
Next to her under the table, Peter gives her a thumbs up, another piece of pizza already in his other hand.
The answer of where he got the food is clear as Tony shoves his other piece over to Morgan.
Pepper rolls her eyes and stands to presumably help re-fill his plate from the boxes on the counter.
Mulan was as good as MJ remembered it being when she was a kid.
Morgan seemed pretty pleased when she started mouthing along the words to I’ll Make A Man Out Of You, but less so when that prompted Peter to turn it into a dance number including the jumping kicks that almost resulted in a broken glass coffee table.
Despite their earlier nap, Michelle and Peter both find it fairly easy to fall asleep that night.
Still, it may be because of the nap that she doesn’t sleep as hard. She feels a disturbance, physically—Peter’s warmth leaves the bed, the steady pressure of his spine against her own is no longer there.
At first Michelle thinks it’s just a quick bathroom trip. Then she finds that she’s not as comfortable as she was those five minutes before without Peter because he keeps the room warm and he’s cool under the sheets (possibly because of the Spider-Man thing, she’s never asked).
So she waits.
She thinks about the English paper that will be her final for this semester that she only has half an idea for, and what drills AcaDec should be running for their first practice after the break, and…still no Peter.
She thinks about the pictures she spotted of Peter and Tony in the kitchen—the one of them from his internship next to one of Tony in a hospital gown, Peter on the hospital bed, his body covering Tony’s lost arm, both of them smiling with wet eyes and what it all means.
He still isn’t back yet.
She scoots over to Peter’s side of the bed and peeks her head out of the open door. There’s not even a light on in the bathroom.
Well, now she definitely has to investigate.
The cabin probably isn’t old enough for any squeaky floorboards, but she watches her step just the same, aware of every little noise in the half-dark of the night. She makes it to the stairs before she finally sees the dim glow of lights on downstairs accompanying the sound of someone talking.
“…it’s just so—messy.“
“Then explain it to me.”
She goes to her tiptoes, moving just a few steps down. On the couch she identifies the owners of the voices—the backs of Peter and Tony’s heads are silhouetted in the light of the fireplace in front of them.
“Tony…” Peter says, clearly hesitant, curling further into the couch.
“I can handle it, Pete. It’s worse for me when I don’t know what you’re going through, trust me,” Tony replies.
“I don’t even know what I’m going through,” Peter jokes, but his voice is weak, and Tony doesn’t laugh.
Peter sighs. “It was just—one thing to another. Like, I was under that building, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and then it was Titan, and I couldn’t breathe and I could feel myself—I could feel it happening and I was reaching out to you, but then you were—“
She can’t see Peter’s face, but his arm moves over his eyes, and the sleeve comes away tear-stained. He’s crying. Peter’s crying, broken, and her heart strains to do something about it, but this is—all of this is so much and she’s just overhearing it, what is she even doing?
“You were dying and I couldn’t…I heard when your heart—when you—” Peter’s words hitch into sobs, quiet and purposefully muted, like he’s scared to release them.
“Oh, buddy, no, no,” Tony brings Peter closer, his arm bundling Peter against his chest. Earlier she’d thought of what Peter might look like years from now, but now he looks smaller, younger.
The things Peter’s seen…he fought aliens in space, he was dusted and remembers it, his hero, his mentor, this man taking on Peter’s tears and pain with his whole body, his heart—another father—almost died right in front of Peter’s eyes. God, Mysterio almost put a bullet through Peter’s head for revenge—they’re still children, how can Peter handle this, how could anyone?
“Shh, I’m right here. I’m here, I’ve got you,” Tony soothes easily, like Peter is Morgan, just another one of his children seeking comfort.
“It’s okay, Pete. Everyone is okay. Just let it out, you’re okay.” Tony presses a kiss to Peter’s head, rubbing Peter’s back, so gentle, so soft, so unlike anything the world has ever shown her about Tony Stark, something precious and kind.
Something saved only for Peter, for his family.
Michelle sits at the top of the stairs for too long.
Too long thinking of every epic story Peter’s ever told about Spider-Man—the bruises he brushes off, the cuts and scrapes that he can hide away within a day, all of the times that he wins, the failures glided over as footnotes to a success story.
There’s so much she doesn’t know.
She knew he carried guilt, responsibility, but never this. This is a raw, deep wound of loss. It’s a fear scraping at him in the dark that he hides in the light. That he hides from everyone. From her.
Peter is curling into Tony for that comfort instead, burying his fears and worries into the man who brought him into all of this. If there’s anyone that could understand, of course it would be Tony.
She doesn’t know what do to with this knowing of everything she doesn’t. These are things she’s scared to know, things she wants to know anyway because they’re a part of Peter, and she wants more of him despite the sensical parts of her brain that scream for her to run off to California for college and leave dating a literal superhero that regularly risks his own life behind.
As Peter’s tears start to taper off, she stands from her place on the stairs, tip-toeing her way back up to Peter’s bedroom just as quietly as she came, leaving Tony's final whisper of, “I love you, it’s okay,” behind her.
She lies down, bringing the covers that smell of Peter's body wash up to her neck, the familiar scent comforting.
She only falls back asleep as the first dregs of sunshine begin to peek through Peter’s blinds.
Peter doesn’t come back to bed.
Unlike the day before, Thanksgiving morning is a quiet affair. A fog seems to have fallen overnight, leaving the outside of the cabin wet and hazy, matching her mood after the night before.
MJ wakes lightly a few times: the scent of coffee hits her nose, a high-pitched giggle echoes from Morgan in the hall, the sounds of doors opening and closing downstairs break the spell on and off.
If Peter enters the room to get dressed, he doesn’t wake her. She’s not sure if she wants him to or not.
There’s this—knot, buried right in the middle of her chest. Guilt for watching a private moment. Disappointed that she hadn’t thought about it sooner, that she’d let herself accept his constant assurances that he was fine, that there was nothing for her to worry about beyond the norm.
It’s Happy that ends up waking her.
“Knock, knock,” he announces, pulling open the already cracked door. Michelle doesn’t think she’s ever seen him out of a suit before now—usually he’s playing driver for them after school or hovering around Peter and May’s place, something Peter’s only become minimally more comfortable with since May and Happy's dating-ish-thing started. He’s picked a dress shirt and dark jeans instead. Not far from casually formal, but still…weird.
“Morning,” she announces from her blanket bundle, sulky and comfortable.
His eyebrow raises, wrinkling his balding hairline. “Do I wanna know?”
She shrugs.
“Okay, well, Tony and the other kids are making breakfast. Doesn’t seem like your thing, missing out on good food.”
“Are you fat-shaming a growing teenage girl?” She raises an eyebrow, her face dead serious and her tone purposefully instigating.
“Of course not, why would you—“ he catches on quickly, used to her tricks by now, her jokes that aren’t jokes. His lips hint at a smile under his goatee. “Very funny, kid.”
“I thought so.” She smiles.
“Food in ten,” Happy reiterates, turning around to shut the door.
“Happy—wait,” MJ calls, hesitant. He looks back at her expectantly, but she isn’t sure what to say without saying everything, her emotions caught in her throat.
“You—Peter’s worked with you for a while, right?”
She sits up from under the covers, ignoring the borrowed t-shirt of Peter’s hanging off of her frame and the messy wrap containing her curls. This is Peter’s family, in a way, and Happy saw her unhinged and wielding a mace back in Europe. Surely they’re at the point of being able to ignore things like appropriate dress, or whatever.
Her hands end up wringing themselves together. She’s unsure where to look—the whole room is a reminder of Peter, a collage of all the different parts—the hero, the boy, the growing man.
Happy’s facial expression questions the non-sequitur, but he redirects to Peter’s bed anyway, situating himself comfortably, probably realizing this isn’t just about what she’s asking.
“Working with, not so much. Looking after his scrawny ass…” He nudges her with his shoulder, but she doesn’t brighten up much, so he sobers.
“In the beginning, I spent a lot of time ignoring him when he needed me the most. Tony and I both did, and we both regretted it. After the Vulture, things changed. I listened to every asinine voicemail, Tony instituted lab time every other weekend…”
Happy clears his throat, his eyes honest. “Don’t tell him this, but after we lost him, I spent so much time wishing I hadn’t missed a minute of it. I kept wishing I could get him back, listen to him babble about his nerdy crap in the back of the car for just one more hour. Stupid stuff.”
“But then he came back,” she supplies.
He nods. “Then he came back. Tony was out of commission, and I promised myself that I wasn’t ever going to miss another call, even if it was just the kid rattling my ear off about free churros or a dress that he thought looked nice on you at school that day.” At the ending comment, he bumps a hand at her leg, emphasizing.
“Ugh,” she groans, but puts a hand over her mouth to hide a smile. Happy doesn’t appear fooled.
“What’s this about, Michelle?” he asks, meeting her eyes.
She sighs, crossing her arms and leaning back against the bed’s headboard.
“It’s just—after everything that’s happened, after everything you’ve seen him go through…do you think—is Peter okay?”
Something dawns on Happy’s face, followed by a somber kind of smile.
“If you ask me, the people that choose to do this kind of thing—these hero types…none of ‘em are anything close to okay. I mean, you’ve seen the kind of stuff they’re up against first hand. Weird tech, magic, aliens…it doesn’t exactly scream mental stability if you’re going towards that kind of danger.”
It’s not meant to be comforting, and he doesn’t say it as such. It’s just a fact: normal people don’t put on suits and fight bad guys and come out on the other side unscathed. That’s why so few ever do it, powers aside.
“But it does speak to a lot of heart. People didn’t understand that about Tony, when he started: you have to care about people a whole hell of a lot to want to keep saving their ungrateful asses over and over again.”
“I know that Peter cares—and I love that about him!” She blushes at the heated admission, but Happy seems content to let it go with only a kind smile. “It’s just—I didn’t realize how hard it must be on him. He doesn’t tell me how hard it is. I don’t know what to do.”
“Talk to him?” Happy suggests with dry condescension.
She frowns at him, because very clearly she’s not there yet, which is why she’s talking to him.
“I had to try,” he sighs. “Look, I know it’s hard to see someone like him going through all of this. It’s even harder when they don’t admit things are tough. Sometimes it’s just—there’s not much that you can do. We sit on the sidelines, we pitch in where we can, and when they do need us…”
He trails off, looking out Peter’s window. The lake ripples with a light rain.
“When they do need us, we show up. We show up and tell them how stupid they are for acting tough. We’re there when it matters, even when they’re being stubborn and telling us to go.”
Happy shrugs. “Well, that’s always been my tactic, anyway.”
MJ shrugs back, biting her lip. “It’s not the worst advice I’ve ever heard.”
“Tony?” he questions.
“Captain America. Those pre-recorded seminars make you want a big bag of weed more than any college stoner alive.”
Happy actually does laugh at that, patting her knee over Peter’s comforter.
“You two are good together. And I’m not just saying that cause I’m romantic or something—though I did know Pepper and Tony would be perfect together before anyone else, and you can quote me on that.” He points his finger at her, dead serious. Clearly that’s a regular argument at the Stark family get-togethers.
“He’s not going to get lost in this alone. He has too many people on his side for that. But if you need him to be more honest, you’re probably going to have to ask for it. Multiple times. Explicitly. These geniuses have concrete skulls protecting all of that brain matter.” He taps against his own head for effect.
“Yeah, I—thanks, Happy.”
“No problem,” he replies. Then he groans as he lifts himself from the bed, standing. “Now get up, or Morgan’s going to hog all of the syrup. Tony’s not above stealing from her syrup pool, but I personally think it’s an abomination.”
Despite the quiet morning, downstairs is filled with activity once she arrives, her floral dress toned down by one of her favorite grandpa sweaters, grey and a little garish.
Happy arrived with James Rhodes, apparently, as the Colonel is currently swinging Morgan around the living room like it’s a playground. Pepper and Happy are involved in something at the stove, crowded together and bickering about whatever they’re attempting not to burn. Tony is absent at the moment (out feeding their alpaca, maybe,) but Peter’s gaze finds her from his place at the counter where he’s seemingly just stealing bits of fruit out of a bowl instead of contributing.
His smile makes her feel floaty, like the department store dress and thrift store sweater are something more elegant, something he’s revering from across the room. She has value outside of his opinion, yes, but she likes his stuttering compliments, the bloom of pink on his cheeks, the tentative hand he links into her own.
Michelle likes him, might even love him one day, and she wants to get past all of this business where she’s torn up about his other life as a superhero and get back to his eager attempts to get her to full-belly laugh, holding his hand in the hallway, sneaking chaste kisses as rewards for acing flash cards.
“Hey,” Peter says, but he looks just as pensive as she feels. Maybe he knows how she’s feeling, senses it with his weird tingle-thing.
“Hey.”
They end up breaking the following silence at the same time.
“Peter, I—“
“Can we—“
She tilts her head to the porch, smiling. They’re both kind of ridiculous. “Outside?”
Peter situates himself on the porch’s bannister, swinging his legs from his perch. She chooses to lean on the wood next to him.
She’s trying to prepare exactly what she wants to say when Peter says, “I know that you were there last night. I know you heard…well, everything.”
Michelle’s eyes go wide, turning to him apologetically. Of course, his super senses. He probably heard her heartbeat.
“I really didn’t mean to pry, you just didn’t come back to bed and when I overheard you were clearly so upset and—“
“It’s okay, MJ.”
“Is it, though?” she asks curtly. “Because it didn’t seem like that was the first time something like that’s happened.”
He looks away. “It’s not.”
She nudges his side with her own, swaying him on his ledge a little.
“I’m sorry. It’s my fault, bringing everything up like I did.”
“M, no, that’s not—“
She holds up a hand, asking for his silence.
“I just feel like I kept…pushing. You don’t really talk about all of this—Tony, the battle with Thanos, everything that made you want to become Spider-Man. And I realized I never really asked, either.”
She knows that she doesn’t have to take this burden on for him, but she wants him to know she’s listening, that she cares.
“I mean—Tony Stark is kind of your dad, dude! And I had no idea.”
Peter laughs, rubbing the back of his neck as if embarrassed. He also doesn’t deny it.
“It just…it made me feel like a crappy girlfriend, ‘cause I never thought about how all of that felt for you. That’s all.”
“You’re not a crappy girlfriend,” he replies, bringing her hand to his lips for a quick kiss. “Just ask Mister Stark—for all that I like talking, telling people about my problems…” He shakes his head in distaste. “I hate it. It feels like I’m just complaining.”
“Well, I personally love complaining, and would love to hear you do it more,” she says.
He lets out a breath of a laugh through his nose, but he sobers again, keeping hold of her hand and squeezing.
“The stuff with Tony…it can be hard to talk about him without mentioning everything that got us here. It’s easier to let people think what they want to.”
MJ nods, understanding. Tony has been a public figure for his entire life. It makes sense that he’s pretty insular about the people that he considers family. Anyone important can be a liability—at least, she knows that Peter also tends to see it that way.
“It’s cute that you care about my relationship with him so much, though. I didn’t realize you were so protective,” Peter teases, hopping off of the ledge and onto the porch next to her.
“Oh, shut up,” she grumbles, swaying their still-attached hands between them.
“Yeah, yeah,” he hums, smile wide across his face. He’s used to the parts of her that go hot and cold, and takes them in stride.
It feels good to have this out in the open, a previously closed door now tentatively cracked and inviting her in. It's a step closer, she thinks. A step closer to him and his world, this family he's made for himself.
A familiar look overtakes his face, and she feels a rush of warmth in her veins.
When they kiss—really kiss—it’s always tentative, a silent game of question and answer.
Peter inches closer, slow enough that she could turn away if she wanted. (She never does.)
Michelle tilts her head, reaffirming his desire. Are you sure? (He always is, his confidence always so much easier than hers.)
Together they take the final step, their movements more confident now as they’re slowly gaining practice. The slight difference of height between them often means she catches his top lip and his hands have a way of snaking around her waist, pulling them closer.
A wolf-whistle breaks them apart abruptly.
It’s Tony, walking over from what appears to be a barn not far from the lakeside, a teasing caught-the-canary smile in place.
“Well, well, look at you two,” he says, working his way up the steps with a little more pep than the day before.
“Please don’t start,” Peter begs, shrugging off the metal hand that immediately goes to ruffle his hair.
“Hey, you’re lucky it was just me. Rhodey has a real hard-on for breaking up PDA.”
“Please never say hard-on again in my presence.”
“Say it in mine,” Michelle interrupts. “I want it on camera.”
“I mean, I’m sure it already is if you look hard enough.”
Peter groans.
“I’ve never hidden my past from you, Pete. Now, Morgan—I’m hiding as much as possible from her internet searches until she’s at least sixteen.”
“I personally love the old flip-phone one of you drunkenly dancing on a bar-top to Toxic.”
“Oh, yeah! I actually remember that. Nice girl, Miss Spears.”
“I regret introducing you two,” Peter sighs, pouting.
“Love you too, kiddo,” Tony replies, opening the door ahead of them. “Now, c’mon. Happy’s going to deep-fry the turkey and you gotta watch. It’s some real Food Network shit.”
“Mommy! Daddy said your word again!” comes Morgan’s call from the living room area.
Peter shrugs to her, a smile on his face like he’s apologizing for getting her involved in all this.
She takes his hand again, giving it a squeeze before following him back into the Starks’ lake house and shutting the door.