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“No.”
“Peter -”
“No.”
“You haven’t even heard -”
“I don’t need to hear it, man. You want me to go with her ?!” Peter practically spits. It’s probably the angriest he’s ever been at Ned if he’s honest and Peter doesn’t like it, so he dials it back a little.
“Okay, calm down, Rocky,” Ned scoffs, as he furiously types on the keyboard. Peter knows he doesn’t need to be his guy in the chair right now, so he’s probably talking to Betty who will no doubt be trying the same tactics on Michelle.
“You both RVSP’d with plus ones and you’re both single as fuck - or don't have any other friends since you stopped talking to each other. I’m not asking you to fall back in love -”
“Woah, woahhhh,” Peter squeaks, missing the lamppost with his web. He saves it. Kind of - he’ll pretend he didn’t see the child laughing. “Who said love? It was never love.”
Ned sighs and Peter just knows his face is a picture of annoyance but Peter holds his ground. He was never in love with Michelle. They were friends. Best friends. And sure he loved her but he wasn’t in love with her.
Well. Maybe a little tiny barely there at all amount of love.
But then, of course, he had all these feelings before he realised she was a backstabbing traitor. So. No, he doesn’t want to go to Ned’s family wedding with her. Why did he have to tick a plus one because he watched MJ do the same thing and why is Ned’s family so unforgiving about it?
“Fine,” Ned says with an obvious roll of his eyes. “If it’s not about love, then what’s the big deal? Open the door for her, hold her hand when people are watching, and try not to kill each other over the appetisers.”
“You are the worst best friend I’ve ever had,” Peter groans.
“I’m the only best friend you’ve ever had,” Ned mutters.
Peter lets it go even though Ned knows he heard him. The people next door probably heard him. The criminal Peter is on the hunt for probably heard him.
But it’s not true. MJ was always his best friend.
And it’s not like Peter doesn’t want to help Ned out, he really, truly does but there’s a part of him, a shallow, insecure part, that doesn’t want to say yes because he just knows there’s no way Michelle would ever even -
“MJ already agreed.”
Oh.
Oh -
“She what ?!”
"Nowhere in the contract I signed did it say this was for three days," MJ drawls, twisting her spaghetti around her fork. It’s not the first time Peter has seen her since the end of their friendship - he had another year of high school and they wound up in the same friend group at college. So really, he spends most of his time avoiding her unless they get into a petty argument that he knows will make everyone uncomfortable.
God, she’s the worst.
God, he's annoyed at how much he still loves her.
"MJ," Betty pleads, pinching her nose with her thumb and forefinger.
“Wow, you had to have a contract to spend three days with me?” Peter scoffs. He’s a fucking delight and she’s the one that tried to torpedo their friendship.
“Well, I tried,” she drawls, her annoyingly pretty eyes glaring at him. “But neither Betty nor Ned could guarantee you wouldn’t up and ditch me in the middle of a dinner, so.”
“Dinner with you is my least favourite activity so who can blame me?” he asks, ignoring the flash of sadness flitting through her eyes. She knows why he has to go. He would think she’d be a little more understanding about it and yet.
“There’s no way anyone will believe we're together, Betty,” MJ states. “If I wanted to be disappointed in a man all weekend, I would just watch a generic Christmas movie. I don’t have to leave my apartment for it.”
“Maybe noone would believe that dorky MJ would ever actually leave the house and try and have fun anyway,” Peter replies with a roll of his eyes.
“Don’t act as if you know me, Parker.”
“Oh no, I’m so upset I can’t listen to your commentary while trying to watch a film,” he replies knowing that's entirely all he wants.
“How would you know what I’m like watching films when you ditched me every single time we had movie night?” she asks, her eyebrow high as Betty all but slams her face into the table.
“Guuuuys,” Ned sighs around his mouthful of noodles. “It’s my sister's wedding. If you can’t be civil for three days to help me out so I don’t have to hear the complaints that you messed up the seating plan, then don’t come. Even though I save your bacon every five seconds, Peter and I helped you with economics, MJ. If you can’t just be -”
“Okay,” MJ drawls. “Sorry. I’ll be there even if I have to be nice to this loser.”
“MJ,” Ned warns.
“Sure, Ned,” Peter replies. “I can ignore MJ for a few days, it’s my whole brand.”
“Only my friends call me, MJ,” she mutters.
“Both of you are banned from talking for the rest of lunch,” Betty sighs, stealing a forkful of Ned’s noodles.
It’s fair.
“Shotgun,” Peter shouts, throwing his backpack in the car's boot. MJ rolls her eyes and Peter barely resists the urge to stick his tongue out at her half because he thinks it'll make her laugh and half because she might fo it back. She doesn't but she does try to hide her smile from him but he'd notice it anywhere. He takes MJ’s bag off of her shoulder without thinking about it and puts it into the boot next to his.
“Don’t you think Betty should go in the front seeing as it’s her car and she gets sick if she sits in the back?” MJ asks, leaning against the car, her face the picture of nonchalance but Peter can see the uptick of her lip. She’s so pretty it makes him a little feral.
“I -”
“Sorry, man,” Ned grimaces. “Betty does get really sick.”
“Yeah - yeah, of course,” Peter says with a laugh, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Sorry I was being a bit of an arsehole.”
“Why change the habit of a lifetime, huh?” MJ asks, slapping him on the chest as she moves to crawl into the backseat. Betty having a three-door car really wasn’t an issue until he realised he’d be so unreasonably close to MJ for six hours. Not with the image of her bent over seared into his mind. It’s whatever. He can compartmentalise. She’s a traitor. She hates him. She’s outrageously beautiful.
It’s fine.
He’s fine.
Peter is on edge because he’s never usually still for so long. Their one bathroom break has already been and gone and they have two hours left in the car. Betty is asleep, and Ned is listening to a podcast that sounds interesting but Peter’s senses are a little messed up right now. Maybe it's listening to the same heartbeats for four hours, or maybe the ticking of Betty’s old car, or maybe the way Betty snores on every fourth breath. Maybe it’s his tingle going off every time Ned gets a little too close to the centre of the road because he thinks he needs to ride the line.
Maybe it’s the way MJ has her eyes closed and he can’t tell if she’s asleep or not. They used to be so intuned that he’d know everything about her. If she was anxious, happy or scared, simply by the way her heart beats. But now he can’t figure it out.
He doesn’t care - obviously. They’ve said nothing that wasn’t laced with petty hatred in years. But he misses her, even if he won’t admit it out loud. He knows she was hurt when he stopped talking to her. He knows somewhere deep down he probably broke her heart but he’s not sure if she ever figured out why. If she ever knew he’d found out about how she was going to tell the Bugle who he was. He’s never been able to bring it up before - this way he can live in denial.
But life was always better with her and to have her so close is something close to torture.
He can feel himself getting a little too hot - he should just ask Ned to pull over, or for Betty to just crack her window a bit. But he’s never been good at asking for help. So he sits rigid, rubbing his hands against his thighs as he wills the ringing in his ears to stop.
“Hey,” MJ whispers, her foot tapping on the outside of his leg. Peter snaps to look at her. “You alright? You’re not going to barf are you?”
Her face is impassive as usual, but he might not know the pattern of her heart, but he knows every iteration of her face so he can tell when she’s worried.
“No,” he gets out, though it feels a little tight for how she asks. She doesn’t snap back though, she just bites her bottom lip and then shrugs, closing her eyes again. She leaves her foot resting against his leg and he lets his hand fall on top and closes his eyes.
When he wakes up, they’re at the house and he’s practically hugging MJ's legs and he’s not sure he’s ever been so comfy and he just can’t deal with the way he misses her. He moves her before she wakes up and gives him shit about it.
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Listen,” Ned starts but Peter can tell by his voice that it was always going to go this way.
“One room?” Peter asks, barely concealing his annoyance. It’s the first time he and MJ have agreed all day but now it’s nighttime and he’s barely slept and he really doesn’t want a fight right now.
“Listen -”
“I can’t be in the same room as her,” Peter whines.
“No one believes that with the way you were hugging my feet, Peter,” she replies, a yawn cutting her sentence in half. He doesn't want to avoid MJ because he can't sleep near her. He's just not sure how he's going to react. Sleepy MJ was always his favourite and he’s nervous about how he’s going to act around her. He needs to remember that she’s not his friend anymore. That because he feels better when she’s around for longer than five minutes, it doesn’t mean they’re okay. It doesn’t even mean that she likes him.
“You’re both insufferable,” Ned laughs, deliciously tired. “Get in. I’ll tell them to send your bags up.”
Peter walks into the nicest hotel room he’s ever been in and it slightly takes the sting out of having to share it with Michelle. It’s large enough for the both of them if he can get his senses to stop listening out for her every move. God, he wants to do nothing but collapse in bed right now. The bed that’s probably bigger than his entire apartment.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Peter hears MJ groan. And he knows, because of course, a hotel room this nice still would only have one bed.
“You’re sleeping on the couch,” Peter shouts as he hears MJ take her jumper off. He guesses he’ll just wait here until she comes out then.
“What did you say?” she says as she walks around the partition that separates the living area from the bedroom. His words get caught in his throat when she shakes her hair out of her ponytail, her legs never ending in her sleep shorts and a top Peter is sixty-seven percent sure is his.
“Er - I -”
She furrows her brows and blinks slowly and Peter’s so enamoured by her as she pulls the cuffs of the shirt over her hands.
“Uhm, there’s only one bed,” she says, chewing her bottom lip as she sways on her heels.
“Oh.”
“I can go and ask them to switch us,” she suggests, bringing her hand to her mouth to conceal a yawn. “But I think I heard Ned’s Lola say it was fully booked.”
“No,” he whispers, taking a step towards her on instinct. He was never sure if he was more protective of her when she was tired because she let herself be a little more vulnerable or if he just wanted to be closer because she was entirely adorable.
“It’s okay. I can sleep on the couch or you know, the ceiling,” he laughs. She smiles back at him and he thinks maybe he’s the luckiest guy in the world.
“Well,” she says, looking at the floor. “If you get tired of the ceiling then you can just - I don’t know. Sleep on the couch. Or like, uhm just get in the bed.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I mean it’s not like we haven’t slept in the same bed before. Just like, uhm, stay on your side.”
“Sure, I’m just going to brush my teeth."
“Mhmm, same.”
Peter’s arm brushes against MJ’s when he wets his toothbrush and he smiles at her when she squeezes a blob of toothpaste on his toothbrush. He tries not to look at her in the mirror but he fails and he blames it on the fact he can kinda see spots in his vision because he’s so tired. But he can’t be too mad, not when she looks back at him.
He sleeps on the left side because she likes the right and he tries his best to lay still and not fidget but honestly, he’s pretty content to just lay here and try and work out her breathing pattern again. It’s not like he’ll be able to use it - after this trip, he’ll be lucky if he sees her again before Betty’s birthday in a few months.
He listens to the sound of her heartbeat for far too long - it’s probably nearing three am when MJ stirs next to him. He’s not surprised, it’s hot in here but he always stays at a cool temperature. He’d figure out how to turn the AC on if he wasn’t too busy looking at her face and the way the moonlight dances off her skin for too long to do anything about it.
“Hey,” she mutters, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“Hi,” he responds, his voice thick with disuse.
“Can you stop it being so hot,” she asks, wafting her T-shirt and shoving the duvet down with her feet. It’s a little unfair how much skin she has on show and he’s practically in a full sweatsuit.
“I don’t think so, MJ,” he laughs, leaning to push a curl from her forehead.
“Ohhhh, you’re so chilly,” she gasps, holding his hand while she scoots closer. “Why are you always so cold?”
He wants to tell her it’s the spider’s work but ever since their falling out - he’s never spoken to her about it. Ned says she’s never bought it up with him either.
“Just one of my many talents,” he says with a flourish.
“Fake arse,” she laughs, but she bunches his sleeve up anyway and leans her forehead against his bicep.
“Here,” he suggests, yanking his top off and pulling her closer.
“Ahh, I knew these were useful for something,” she teases, running her fingers along his abs. He forgot that he’d been out the night before and lack of sleep slows down his healing but it's dark and maybe she won’t notice.
“What happened?” she asks, her voice thick with sleep and it properly throws him back to when they had sleepovers and she actually liked him. But as he opens his eyes properly, his fingers absentmindedly twisting around her curls, he remembers that’s all gone. He doesn’t get to lay in bed with her and he doesn’t get to wake up with her and he doesn’t get to make her coffee every morning and kiss her goodbye.
And it’s her fault. And he wants to forgive her anyway but she's never bought it up.
"Hmm?" He chooses to ignore it for now.
She runs her fingers over his chest where the smattering of bruises is worst. They'll be gone in a few hours but they still look dark right now.
"What happened?" she repeats.
“Nothing,” he says, clearing his throat as he unwinds their limbs.
“Peter,” she sighs but it’s too late - he was never going to be able to get to sleep anyway. So he promptly throws himself into a cold shower and collapses on the couch.
“Hey,” MJ smiles tightly as she hands him a glass of champagne. He’s been avoiding her all day, even when they had a morning event, after their strange cuddling in bed situation. She’s clearly regretful about it now but he takes the glass all the same.
“Hi, thank you,” he replies.
“Thank you,” she says with a groan. “There are so many people here that I don’t like but at least with you I don’t have to hide it.”
MJ is right. They were at a mixer earlier this morning and half of Ned’s sister's college friends are insufferable. Peter has taken a strong dislike to Harry for no reason other than he’s a little stuck up and called Peter out in front of everyone when his shirt wasn’t tucked in properly.
And maybe he’s friendly with MJ. But obviously, Peter doesn’t care about that.
“Wow, thank you, Michelle.”
“Mhmm.” She stands next to him, a little too close for his senses to chill out if he’s honest, but he tries not to flinch. It’s not that he doesn’t want to stand next to her, it’s that he desperately does even though he’s spent years avoiding her and he’s so mad at himself for falling so far just because she was nice to him one time and he’s missed her.
But he doesn’t have a choice, she links arms with him and leans her head on his shoulder.
“Can you calm down?” she asks, rolling her eyes so hard he can hear it. “Do you want people to believe we’re together or not?”
“I don’t know why you care if you don’t even like me,” he mutters.
“Do you want Lisa to come and flirt with you again?” MJ asks.
“Who is Lisa?”
“The girl that asked you five times if you wanted to split banana pancakes with her,” she drawls.
“Wait, she was flirting with me?” he asks, unsure of how he missed that because all he was thinking about was how Harry made MJ laugh for the third time in seven minutes.
“You’re so clueless,” she laughs. “You were always clueless.”
“Always? Who was trying to flirt with me in high school, MJ?”
“Well, me for one,” she says, downing her drink and then clearing her throat.
“What?!”
“Come on, Pete, I wasn’t even sly about it.”
“You liked me in high school?” he asks, feeling lightheaded and a lot like he might actually collapse to the ground.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “Well right up until you just ran out of my life I guess.”
“I’m not talking about that right now.”
“Well, why would you Peter? We were only best friends,” she scoffs.
“You’re so -” he starts, but Harry is making a beeline for them and he can barely think. He doesn't want to talk about it here and also he doesn’t want to talk to Harry at all.
Lucky for him, there’s a host of sirens outside that are calling his name. Unlucky for him, it means he’s leaving MJ with Harry. Not that he cares - obviously.
“You have to go,” MJ states, a hint of annoyance in her tone along with something else he can’t place.
“I’m sorry,” Peter starts, running his hand through his hair with a grimace.
“Where are you always going?” Harry asks though Peter’s not sure he really cares.
“He’s an escort,” MJ slips out.
“What?!” Peter squawks. “I am not!”
“Ahhh, can’t satisfy someone, huh?” she asks, her arms crossed.
“Shouldn’t he be satisfying you?” Harry remarks, his eyebrow raised as he side-steps closer to MJ. The motion has Peter’s blood boiling and he almost webs Harry’s feet to the floor.
“Well you’d -” MJ starts.
“MJ,” Peter says, somewhere between a squeal and a groan.
“Yes, honey?”
“Can you -” he huffs, feeling the tingling starting in his toes as Harry leers over MJ. He has no right to feel this way, not really. But he gestures for them to move anyway, his hand lightly against her wrist as she rolls her eyes at him.
“You’re ditching me and you’re pulling me away from company?” she drawls, though Peter knows she can’t stand Harry’s type.
“I’m sorry -”
“Whatever, Peter,” she sighs. “It’s not like you leaving me for no reason is anything new.”
“MJ -”
“Just go. Go and save a cat or buy eggs for May or whatever excuse you come up with this time. Just don’t wake me up when you get back.”
Peter sleeps on the couch because he was ever so slightly distracted last night by the thought of Harry and MJ and maybe got a tiny bit stabbed. And he really didn’t want to wake up MJ even if she’s being a little too offended at their break up of friendship for his liking. Especially for someone that was going to sell him down the river for the Bugle. But either way, he did abandon her last night and he knows she doesn’t like being at events alone.
So he sleeps on the couch and showers when he hears her stirring in the morning and he makes her coffee for when she wakes up.
He’s stirring her oat milk when she walks out of the bedroom, her face puffy and her hair messy. God, she’s beautiful.
“Morning,” he says, mainly because he needs a distraction from looking at her barely covered legs and also because he’s not sure she would have spoken to him first and he loves the way her voice is raspy in the morning.
“Hey,” she says but she doesn’t look at him. He hands her the coffee and for a second can’t be sure that she’s not going to throw it in his face.
“You didn’t come to bed.”
“What?”
“Erm,” she says, clearing her throat. “It doesn’t matter - you just, erm, didn’t come back last night.”
“I slept on the couch,” he replies, gesturing to the pillows and the towel he slept under. “I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“Oh,” she whispers, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Okay.”
“That’s what you asked me to do,” he says, though he’s not sure why. Maybe it’s because she looks so much like his MJ when she’s sleepy. When she’s too tired to keep her walls all the way up. He doesn’t mean for it to sound snappy - he’s actually tired of not being nice to her because he misses her so much it makes him a little crazy.
But she switches instantly, her lip pouting as she blinks at him.
“I don’t care where you are, Parker.”
But it’s all he’s known for so long.
“Of course, you don’t,” he huffs.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, MJ only -”
“Only my friends call me MJ.”
“Wow, so just Ned and Betty then?” he asks, more annoyed than he has a right to be, probably. But the couch isn’t as comfy as sleeping with her and he’s tired and if he’s honest he’s annoyed at himself for how easy it is to pretend she did nothing wrong. He’s annoyed at how badly he wants to spend time with her even when she’s winding him up. He’s frustrated with how much he’s supposed to hate her and yet he’s not sure he’ll ever not be in love with her.
“Forgive me for not engaging in pointless friendships, Peter. I try to keep betrayal to a minimum and you’ve already given me enough to last a lifetime,” she says, walking away and slamming the bedroom door.
God, she’s got a nerve.
Peter manages to avoid MJ until dinner when it turns out she’s still the most infuriating person he's ever met because she's entirely delightful even when she's purposefully annoying him. He can deal with her in short bursts, in the small moments he's seen her in, in recent years and he can wrap it all up in pettiness and hatred.
But being with her for hours at a time, she lets things slip through and he remembers how kind she is and how funny she is and how he was always so sure he was going to marry her.
Maybe he should talk to her about everything that happened. Maybe he should have spoken to her at the start. Maybe it would have ended as it did, but there's nothing about her that doesn't tell him that they belong together. Even now.
Now as he catches Ned’s eye as he watches Peter watch Michelle, the small smile on his face is so obvious to everyone but her.
It’s easy to let her take a sip of his drink because it’s nicer than hers and it’s simple to swap some of his fries for some of her mashed potatoes. He jumps up to pull the chair out for her when she needs to use the bathroom and he feels her hand rest against the edge of the table when he bends to pick up the napkin he dropped.
It feels natural to reach for her hand on the table and he lets her rest her foot against his shin. He shares a desert with her he doesn’t care about and he laughs when she tells a story about them at high school and he realises he wants to do these little inconsequential things with her until the day he dies.
He waits until she looks at him again for no reason and then he stands.
"Wanna get out of here?" he asks, holding his hand out to her.
“Don’t drop me!” MJ squeals as she tightens her arms around Peter’s shoulders. She’s not sure why she trusts him to run through the city in the pouring rain in dress shoes with her on his back but she does. She’s always trusted him.
“I’m not going to drop you, Em,” he shouts, his palms tight under her thighs. She buries her face in the crook of his neck anyway.
He runs to the hotel, pausing in the lobby in an attempt to keep the floors from turning into a slippery mess, she guesses and she tries to get her breathing to slow down because it’s embarrassing her heart is racing this much when she didn’t run at all.
She misses Peter. She’s always missed Peter and she wishes she had any idea what he was thinking when they stopped being friends but of course, she never asked. She always thought he’d come back - that maybe the death of Ben was just too much for him at the time and he couldn’t deal with his grief and hers on top.
Peter spins her around so effortlessly she thinks she might collapse on the spot - though she’s not sure he’d let her. She doesn’t want to get down but she’s not sure how to ask him to take her upstairs. It’s unnecessary considering she can walk and it’s only three flights but she’s nervous to break whatever spell they’re under that means they can be near each other without some scathing remark.
“I can carry you up the stairs, MJ. I saw you in gym class and I don’t want you to break your ankle on the tiles,” he teases but she can’t process anything right now, not as she settles against his hips.
“Yeah,” she breathes, her chest hitting his with every deep breath she takes.
“We’ll get you in the shower, okay?” he asks, walking up the stairs. She doesn’t feel particularly cold but she’d do anything he asked, probably.
Her feet hit the tiled floor as his hands run from her thighs to her back. Before she can comprehend she’s undoing his buttons, slowly because she’s nervous to break whatever spell they’re under. But he mirrors her actions and pulls the straps of her dress over her shoulders and lets it fall to the floor.
He pulls her closer and she wraps her arms around his neck, eager to forget everything else that happened on this trip that hasn’t ended in Peter smiling at her.
“Peter,” MJ whispers, watching the water drop off his nose.
“Yeah, Em?”
And she wants to kiss him, she’s always wanted to kiss him and it’s the perfect moment. But she can’t let herself fall when she knows he won’t be there to catch her.
“What happened?" she asks, trying to keep her chest from collapsing completely.
"What?"
"Don’t you miss me at all?” she cracks out.
He lets out a watery laugh and MJ would bet it’s the pent-up emotions rather than the shower water forcing its way down his throat.
“I miss you every second of the day, MJ.”
“Then I don’t -” she starts, her throat burning as she slaps her hands lightly on his chest. “What happened?”
“Em, come on,” he whispers as if it hurts him to say it out loud.
"Just tell me," she begs.
"I heard you talking to Jonah."
“Who the fuck is Jonah?” She must look confused because he continues, stepping away slightly.
"Jameson."
"From the Bugle?"
"Ding ding ding," he jokes, but he looks too upset for it to count for anything.
"Well I know we don't like him but was that really worth our friendship?" she scoffs more confused and hurt now than she was at the start.
"You wanted to unmask Spider-Man."
"Peter I was fifteen trying to get an internship and of course, I didn't think I was going to figure out the bugboy's identity! I said anything to get the position. I just wanted something for my college applications."
"Well, I thought you were going to out me and I -"
"Why would I narc on you?! How is that even possible? You'd have to be Spider-Man for that to even make any sense!"
" What ?!"
"Why do you even care? I know you and Ned say you know him but why was that enough to just -" she cracks out, her chest feeling like it might just cave in at any second.
"Oh, oh no," he mutters, his brows high and the tears streaming down his face.
"Why did you pick Spider-Man over me?"
“MJ -”
“Just - I have gone crazy over this too many times, Peter. I cried and I was so angry and I missed you every second of the fucking day and you didn’t come back. Please just tell me.”
And she’s not sure how she missed it if she’s obvious. The signs have always been there but she was never bothered about looking for Spider-Man. She only ever wanted Peter.
But as he leaps from the ground to the ceiling, hanging upside down by his toes and his fingertips - she should have known.
“What the fuck?!”
MJ ignores Peter’s attempts to make friends like he's done for the past few years when he just threw her out of his life. And she ignores his pleas throughout the night to talk because he didn’t bother to do that with her.
She does follow the Spider-Man Twitter account and puts an alert on her phone for if he's ever injured. Not that she cares. He can sleep at the bottom of a dumpster for all she cares.
There's an annoying lingering thought that now they know what's wrong, now everything's out in the open, now they could be together. But she can't forgive him. And she's had her heart broken by him before and she's just not sure she'd be able to cope again.
So she’s not interested in being in Peter’s life anymore. Not last night. Not this morning. Not even when she sat through the most beautiful wedding and caught Peter looking at her eight thousand times a minute.
Not now that they’re dancing together to a slow song she can’t hear the words over the thumping of her heart in her ears. Not now that his hands are wrapped tightly around her waist and her head is in the crook of his neck.
She leads him to their table once the song ends, his fingers lingering with hers as they sit down. She finds she can’t really look at him at all because she’s not sure how to say no to him.
“You two have never looked happier,” Harry mocks as he sits next to her.
“Shut up, Harry,” Peter groans, his fingers squeezing against hers. MJ forgot they were still holding hands, her thumb absentmindedly running over the back of his hand. She drops it as she looks at him.
Peter’s phone buzzes while Harry tells her they should dance together when the next slow song comes on and she nods if only to get him to shut up.
"I have to -" Peter starts, the heartbreak evident in his voice. MJ knows if she ever found out about Spider-Man that he would still have to leave her. If they were friends, he’d still leave her. The only difference would be that she would know he got home - she would know he was safe. He would come home to her.
"Leave?" Harry loudly sighs. MJ knows he's only doing it for show, Harry clearly doesn't even like Peter.
"Uhm, yeah," Peter swallows, looking guiltier by the second. Michelle doesn’t like him. She can't let herself like him. But she does like Spider-Man. She always has. And Peter doesn't deserve to feel so awful about saving people's lives.
"Oh," MJ starts, her hand against Peter's bicep. "I forgot, thanks for going to pick my Grams up."
"Su - sure," he replies, the confusion etched across his face.
"I'm going to head upstairs soon, I'm beat, so come straight up, okay?"
“Okay,” he breathes, pulling her closer like he did every other time he had to leave when they were friends. She always wondered where he went. She wonders whether she would have bothered to figure it out if she weren’t so heartbroken over him leaving her. Maybe he would have told her.
“Yeah,” she replies when his hand spreads against her lower back. It makes no sense but she’s never been particularly good at thinking when he’s this close.
“Just come back, okay?”
“I promise.”
So yes, MJ may have given Peter the wrong idea by being nice and not telling everyone he was an escort again. And yes, waking up wrapped around him again has not at all made it easier to tell him she can't be his friend.
She ignores him at breakfast when he tries to catch her gaze and she ignores him opening the car door for her and she ignores him when he tries to play the license plate game.
"Em," he says as he gets out of the car with her when Betty and Ned drop her off. She knows she probably should talk with him. She should probably apologise for checking him out while he changed last night. She should tell him she needs time.
But it's all she can do when she looks at him to not break down.
"I never want to talk to you again."
Michelle avoids Peter for the better part of three weeks and every single day she grows closer to texting him or throwing her phone in the Hudson. She’s not sure which is going to win out right now.
But then it doesn’t matter because he’s made the decision for her, much like last time. Although this time, she’s flying through the air and she’s not sure she wouldn’t just like to be ghosted again.
"Are you fucking -" MJ screams, the sound getting lost to the wind as she's pulled from the ground and into a set of arms she'd recognise anywhere.
“Sorry, I’m so sorry,” Peter mutters, his hands at the back of her head when she feels her feet touch solid ground. She has her eyes firmly squeezed shut but with the wind, she can assume she’s on a rooftop. Arsehole.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, then, “you’re okay.”
“Okay?!” she asks, shoving him away and immediately regretting it because she hates heights. He knows that, she knows that, but she doesn’t move closer anyway.
“How is any of this okay? You left me for nothing. We were best friends for years, Peter. I - I could barely fucking sleep.”
“I’m so sorry,” he begs.
“I don’t care.”
“MJ.”
“I don’t care, Peter. I loved you. I loved you when you gave me half your lunch because my dad couldn’t be bothered to make me anything and I loved you when you ditched me for movie night because you always hugged me extra tight the next morning and I loved you when you fell asleep in my sweater because it always smelt like you when you gave it back. I loved you and you didn’t even - you didn’t even talk to me.”
"We were kids," he pleads.
"And you broke my heart all the same."
“You never -” he starts, his hands in fists by his side. “You never asked me anything.”
“What?”
“I know, I know I shouldn’t have assumed and I know that it was stupid and misguided because of course there was no way you would ever, ever do that but I was terrified and I’d just lost Ben and I - I could barely think! I was getting threats about May and Ned and you . And I panicked and - and you just left -”
“I left?” she asks, bewildered at the sheer nerve of this guy.
“That’s not - it’s not your fault, none of this is your fault but you didn’t fight at all,” he says, his face the picture of heartbreak as he looks anywhere but at her. “You just said okay.”
“So you screw up and I have to come running?”
“No, Em,” he replies, his eyes wet but he attempts to blink them away. “I just - I took it as admission and I shouldn’t have. I know that. I know that now and I should have known that then but I was so wrapped in grief I didn’t even notice and I regret it and I have missed you every second of every day.”
“It’s too late, Peter,” she cries, though he moves closer anyway. She doesn’t fight him when his forehead rests against hers.
“I’ve been in love with you from the moment I met you.”
"Don't," she whispers, her fingers against his lips. She knows what he wants to say, now she knows, she can see how it's always on the tip of his tongue. But she can't hear him say it just for her to leave.
"Don't tell me."
“MJ,” he whispers. “I love you.”
“Pete -”
“I love you, I love you, I love you and I’m so sorry - if you let me, I’ll prove it to you for the rest of my life.”
She’s about to respond when she sees the flashing lights in the distance. She can’t hear them but she knows from her research that Peter heard them ages ago.
“I’m not going,” he says when she turns to watch the race past.
“Peter.”
“I don’t care, Em. I’ve lost so much to Spider-Man and I know I can’t really blame everything that happened with us on him, it’s all on me but I can’t - if there’s any way I can fix this. Then I’m staying.”
“That’s the third fire truck that’s gone past,” she whispers.
“I don’t care,” he lies. It’s obvious he needs to go and it’s unfair of her to make him wait. She doesn’t mind, she never would have minded him having to go - as long as he chooses her when he can.
“It’s okay. It’s okay to go.”
“I can’t,” he cracks out, his fingers tight against her sweater.
“Take me down,” she says, her face against his neck as he sighs. He does as she asks - as she thinks he always will.
When her feet hit the ground she knows that she’s already kept him too long. That she may love him more than New York but she’s not the one that needs him the most right now. But she leans in anyway, rolling his mask to his nose. She knows they need to talk properly and she knows she’s causing herself a night full of worrying and turmoil but she selfishly leans in anyway, her nose brushing his as he sucks in a breath.
"MJ," he mutters against her lips. He closes the distance as she hears another set of sirens scream past them but she doesn't care. Not when he tastes better than she could have imagined. Not when he’s here, with her and they’re not fighting. Not when it feels like it used to.
She only pulls back when she feels lightheaded.
"Go get 'em, Tiger."
MJ sips her second iced coffee of the day because she decided when she's heartbroken she can do whatever she wants.
Peter hasn't been in touch since he left yesterday and she knows he's alive because she's been stalking the Spider-Man tag on Twitter. She wonders if maybe she should just message him first. If he's waiting for her to ask him what's going on because she didn't before.
She's still mad at him and she thinks she will be for a while but she misses him more. He's only ever been the best person she knows and she knows, deep down, that he'd never want to willingly hurt her. That he was as hurt as she was the entire time.
But then she sees it. It's over the top and a little cringy in the best way. She hopes his webs are biodegradable because he used far too much just for this, it makes her smile all the same.
He loves her and she loves him just the same.
So she grabs her phone to call him but she snaps a photo of the webs along the bridge that spell out I love you as well.
But before she can press call she sees him swinging and he's coming right for her. She shoves her phone into her pocket and opens her arms as he collides with her.
She wants to say something smart, she wants to tell him he looks insane in that suit, she wants to tell him she missed him so much she's not sure how she survived the last few years.
All she can really do is scream and hold on for dear life until he lands on something flat.
“We can’t keep meeting like this,” she jokes, though her knuckles are painful with her grip on his suit.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she replies, a little unsure if she should just tell him she loves him right now or if he has anything else to say. But then his brows furrow and his fingers tighten against her back.
“I fucked up,” he whispers, continuing before she has a chance to agree with him. “And I should have spoken to you, I should have done anything else. I should have fought for you and I didn’t and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I’m here now and it may not be enough,” he pleads, his hands heavy against her waist.
“But I have loved you every single day since you gave me half your sandwich in kindergarten. I have loved you when you wouldn’t speak to me because you were too nervous and I loved you when you borrowed all my books and never gave them back and I loved you when you went to the dance with Micheal -”
“That was in fourth grade,” MJ replies, biting at her bottom lip to keep from smiling.
“I know and I loved you then and I love you now. And if it’s not enough, if it’s all too much that’s okay. It’s alright. But I -”
“Are you going to kiss me?”
“Ye - yes,” he stutters, but thankfully his feet are planted firmly on the bridge. “Is erm, is it okay if I kiss you?”
“God, you’re such a loser,” she smiles, rolling his mask above his nose. “And I’m so in love with you.”
“You are?” he asks, his eyes wide as he looks at her.
“Against my better judgement,” she mutters against his lips. She decides feeling his smile against hers might be her favourite thing in the world. That is until the sirens blare and he’s needed - she doesn’t mind. Not really.
“You wanna come with me?”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he laughs, kissing her quickly and then pulling his mask down. And as she jumps on his back, her legs securely around his waist she realises, there’s nothing quite like not being left behind.