Birds of a Feather
The moment she starts to wake up she wishes that she wouldn't. It's loud.
For a few splitting moments it is louder and more overwhelming than she could have ever imagined sounds could be. Before her eyes are even open, before she regains any semblance of control over her limbs or any feeling aside from the dull, mounting ache in her head, she hears – everything.
Sirens. People screaming. Babies crying. The skid of car tires against the cement, the crackle of a loudspeaker, the pop of a bullet leaving a gun – the sound of footsteps, sneakers and heels and loafers, almost as if she can pick them out individually – and then, as she slowly fights her way back into reality, she hears frightened whispers nearly word-for-word, hears the sounds of people breathing, hears the hum of an air conditioning unit that must be at least a block away.
She is dreaming. She must be dreaming. Finally, mercifully, a voice cuts through the noise:
"Mary?"
As soon as her eyes flutter open the pain in her head is searing enough that she bites the inside of her cheek, bites it so hard that it bleeds. Her hand flies up to the tender part of her head, where she feels it the most.
"Hey, hey. Relax. You're fine."
A face swims over her – the teenage boy from before, the one who warned her that the car was coming at her. She remembers it all with perfect clarity, as if it only just happened. She wonders how long she has been out.
"I'm – shit," says MJ, trying to ease herself up onto her shoulders. Her stomach roils in protest, and the boy puts a hand on one of her shoulders, easing her back down.
"Here," he says, and there is something soft under her head, something that isn't cement.
"You should run," she tells him murkily, still unsure of whether or not this is real.
He shakes his head. "We're fine. We're safe. Spider-Man stopped him."
"Spider-Man?"
Now she knows she must be dreaming.
"Yeah. Blasted right past us down the block."
In her periphery she can see the yellow taxi cab sitting on the ground, dented from where the man in the enormous mechanized suit first smashed into it. She blows out a breath. This is already so embarrassing, to have this stranger crouching over her, to not be able to get up. And now she is having this very strange recollection …
"It's funny," she says, "I don't know what hit me, but I remember – " She laughs. She's going to sound nuts. Like she has brain damage. Maybe she does. "Right before I hit the ground …"
"Catching a flying taxi with your bare hands and dropping it on the ground?"
She blinks up at him. He's kidding. He is terrifyingly spot on, but he is kidding.
She laughs again. It hurts the back of her neck, her shoulders, which are inexplicably sore. "I couldn't have …"
"You did," the boy insists. He looks up the block and the way he scans with his eyes and the general quiet around them, she can tell that they are mostly alone. "Don't worry, I think I'm the only one who noticed."
She holds her hands up and looks at them. They are bright red, but if she looks closely, to her complete astonishment, there appear to be little yellow flakes of paint in her nails and between the crevices between her fingers.
"It's Mary, right?" the boy asks.
She is still staring at her hands. "Mary Jane," she says softly, only half paying attention to him. She puts her hands back down at her sides. It is all coming back to her, one flash at a time: running down the street, seeing the car, knowing that she would die – she should be dead – and the unfamiliar, breathtaking impact of the car against her wrists, the strength, the control.
"Right. Mary Jane," says the boy. He is frowning at her head, where she must have hit the ground.
For the first time since she opened her eyes she takes a long and scrutinizing look at him. "How did you know that?" she asks. She knows for a fact she ran out of that hostel without her wallet or her phone.
The boy tilts his head down, and there is something tragic even in that small movement, that an unconscious part of MJ realizes who he is before he says it.
"You probably don't remember me – it's been a few years. I'm Bradley," he says. "Gwen's brother."
(((())))
It takes a few minutes for her to feel steady enough to get up from the sidewalk. Bradley suggests a hospital, but one look out at the main street and MJ vetoes the idea immediately. If she is walking around and functional enough then there is no point in battling through the hysteria of the crowds, or waiting in an emergency room full of people who are much more badly hurt. And besides, right now the state of her bleeding head is the least of her worries.
"My apartment's not far – you probably remember," says Bradley, leading her there.
No wonder she didn't recognize him. It's been maybe two years since the last time MJ went to Gwen's place for tutoring, and Bradley was practically a baby then, barely fifteen with the full cheeks and the messy hair of a boy in the throes of all the terrible things puberty has to offer.
Now he is at least a foot taller than she is, his hair much shorter, his cheekbones squarer and his bones all skinny and unsettled, like he has grown too fast and is waiting for the rest of his body to catch up.
"You're a senior now?" she asks. It is almost laughable, how casual the question is when half the city is blown up and she just lifted a fucking vehicle and she is just seeing him for the first time since his sister died, but she can't think of anything else to say.
"Yeah," he says. "Almost halfway through."
He is so careful and kind with her, making sure he walks slow so she can keep up, checking on the back of her head every block or so. It makes her heart hurt, to watch him. She knows his life has been anything but easy.
"College plans?" she asks.
He grins. He has the kind of smile that looks out of practice, but genuine nonetheless. "Early admit into Stanford."
"Shit," says MJ. "I mean – congratulations. That's amazing."
"Not quite as amazing as catching a speeding car in mid-air, but I'll take it."
They are quiet for a moment. The adrenaline is starting to cool off under her skin and she is finally starting to think clearly, and grimly, of the implications of what she just did.
"About that …" she starts.
Bradley shakes his head, just once, and his voice is firm. "Trust me," he tells her, with an edge in his voice she can't quite interpret. "I'm really fucking good at keeping secrets."
(((())))
Gwen's mother is a wreck. When Bradley opens the door to the apartment she throws herself at him and practically crushes him, trying to contain all six-foot-something of him in her short little arms.
"Thank god, thank god," she mutters. Her eyes are crushed shut so she see MJ trailing behind him, but MJ sees the tracks of tears that are trailing down her exhausted face. Behind her are the two other boys, Gwen's youngest brothers whose names she can't remember, the two of them standing stricken by the couch and looking pale with relief.
When she finally releases Bradley she says, "We're moving. We are getting out of this godforsaken city. We're moving."
MJ shuffles uncertainly in the doorway. Even from here the place smells so painfully familiar, like vanilla and cinnamon and Gwen. Walking into this apartment feels like walking into a crypt, like it is somehow haunted, like she shouldn't be here.
"Mary Jane," says Gwen's mother warmly, trying and failing not to look as terrified as she is.
"Hi," says MJ weakly. She walks out from behind Bradley and shifts her weight between her feet. It occurs to her that the next social construction of this scene would be to step forward, to hug Gwen's mother, this woman who once a week would welcome MJ into her home and sometimes even bake cookies and make them tea, who asked her about boys and college plans, who treated her like a human and not a lost cause like most of the other adults in her life.
The moment passes, though, and the two of them are still just standing there, staring at each other as if they have both been ripped out of a different lifetime.
"She got knocked down pretty badly during the attack," Bradley explains, gesturing to MJ's head. "I thought I'd bring her back here."
"Go get the First Aid kit," Gwen's mother instructs one of the younger boys, who heads off obediently. She steps forward and cringes at the back of MJ's head – she is pretty sure it has stopped bleeding but it's still a sticky, tangled, throbbing mess. "Oh, sweetheart."
MJ feels some flimsy muscle in her heart weaken at the endearment. She had forgotten about this. She had forgotten about coming to the Stacy's, where there was clean smelling laundry and a mother who loved you, where there was chaos and laughter and noise. She feels likes the bones in her body are finally at ease. There is an adult in charge here. For once, somebody else will account for her.
The moment she thinks it she feels more selfish than ever. How can she for a moment think of imposing on this woman who already has so much on her plate?
"It's fine, it doesn't even really hurt that much," says MJ, but Mrs. Stacy ignores her, narrowing her eyes at the wound, picking her fingers carefully through MJ's hair.
Mrs. Stacy looks over at Bradley. "How close were you?" she asks lowly, so the other brothers can't hear.
MJ wonders if Bradley will lie.
"Not that close," says Bradley.
She doesn't press the point, concerning herself with MJ's head. "You'll be alright," she says. "But – if I'm going to get to it, I'm going to have to cut your hair."
MJ lets her eyes slip closed for just a moment. She loves her hair. It is stupid and shallow and pointless of her, but she loves the way it gleams in the sun, the way it floods on her shoulders, the way it snaps behind her in a ponytail when she runs. Ever since she was a little girl she has been proud of it. She has never cut it really, only ever trimmed it, auburn and thick and lush, just like her mother's.
She remembers being a little girl, sitting patiently on the floor as her mother set it into a braid as long as a rope.
"Mrs. Stacy, I don't want to – I mean, I'm sure you guys have your own problems, I can just wait and get it patched up later – "
"Don't be ridiculous," says Mrs. Stacy firmly. A beat later Bradley is handing her a pair of scissors. "Here. Come sit in the kitchen. There's better light in there."
MJ follows her, passing a long hallway filled with family pictures. MJ's eyes only seem to take notice of the ones of Gwen. In one she is beaming and gap-toothed, the straps of one of her overalls drooping off her skinny shoulder. In another she is wide-cheeked and acne-prone, clutching shyly to a trophy at a science fair. In the worst one of all she is grinning beatifically up at a camera that Peter must be holding, the two of them clinging to each other. Her hand draped across his chest in this assured and steady away, as if nothing in the world could ever will them apart.
(((())))
When Mrs. Stacy finishes patching her up, MJ's hair is as short as a boy's. She touches the negative space where her hair used to be, feels the unfamiliar air against the exposed skin of her neck, and tries not to tear up when she catches her reflection in the kettle propped up on the stove.
"Very few people could pull off that cut as well as you," says Mrs. Stacy, who obviously can see past MJ's nonchalance on the matter.
MJ smiles at her, but she doesn't care so much about how it looks. She just cared that it was there.
"Thank you," she says, her fingers skimming the bandage. It occurs to her that she doesn't have anything resembling insurance. If she was going to bite it on the cement, it was lucky that she did it in front of someone whose mother had years of first aid training.
Mrs. Stacy sweeps up the last of MJ's hair, which has fanned catastrophically across the kitchen floor. "The dorms are so far from here," she says anxiously, looking out toward the window. Even twenty floors up MJ can hear sirens wailing. "You should stay in the guest room for the night."
MJ's eyes widen in surprise. She is so unused to this kind of kindness that it takes her a moment to collect herself. "Oh, Mrs. Stacy – thank you, but – "
"No buts." Her voice is firm and her eyes are tired. MJ has always had the sense that having so many boys, Mrs. Stacy is not a woman to be argued with.
"I left my stuff at the hostel," MJ murmurs, embarrassed.
"Hostel?"
MJ looks up at her, reluctant to explain, but something seems to dawn behind Mrs. Stacy's eyes before she has to. MJ feels her lips curl into her teeth. She never talked much about her home life with anybody, but she always got the impression that Gwen knew more than she ever said. It's clear now from the way that Mrs. Stacy is quietly considering the situation that she did.
Mrs. Stacy shakes her head and says, "We'll worry about that later."
MJ hears the word "we" and almost forgets about the attack, about her freakishly strong arms, even about her hair. Nobody has ever assumed responsibility for her so quickly, so unconditionally. Here she is, probably drudging up old and unexpected memories of this woman's lost daughter, in a moment when their family is more vulnerable than ever – she doesn't deserve this kind of kindness. Not from these people, who were given so few kindnesses of their own.
"You can sleep in the guest room. I'm sure I have clothes that will fit you." She reaches up and sweeps MJ's new hair to the side with a tenderness and grit that silences MJ's protests and roots her to the floor. "I would feel better if everyone just stayed under one roof."
(((())))
The guest room is right next to Gwen's old room. MJ never actually went this far into the apartment, but she knows which room is Gwen's because it's the only door that stays closed, and there's a whiteboard hanging with some innocuous, stupid note about groceries in Gwen's handwriting that nobody has erased.
The Stacy family is unduly kind to her. They eat Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner – turkey and sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce and pie – and Mrs. Stacy finds an old pair of pajamas for her to wear, then settles her into the guest room. She shows her where the landline is and MJ calls the hostel to tell them to lock up her stuff for tomorrow; she considers calling her father, or even calling Peter and Harry to let them know she is alright, but she could never call either of them knowing it is Gwen's home phone number that will pop up on their caller ID.
Once MJ is finally alone, though, the panic that she has kept at bay all evening starts to seep in slowly, sinking into her bones.
She lifted a car. A fucking car.
She kicks the sheets off of her body, suddenly too hot and too agitated to deal with them. She wants to tell somebody. She wants to yell it from the rooftops. This impossible, crazy, unbelievable thing just happened to her – and there is nobody to talk to about it.
Besides Bradley, that is. She thinks back to the walk to the apartment, and what he said about secrets. She wants to believe that he'll keep hers. She knows he meant well, but she doubts that any secrets Bradley has kept have quite the same depth as this.
Eventually she flicks the light on. She isn't going to sleep tonight.
It's a ridiculous thought that she has, and she shouldn't even be entertaining it, but she walks over to the ridiculously large wooden dresser in the corner of the room. She plants her hands on either side of it and shuts her eyes, jerking her arms upward and concentrating.
It doesn't budge. She drops her arms, feeling embarrassed even though there is nobody who could have seen, and that's when she hears a soft knock on her door.
She opens it to the tall shadow of Bradley, standing sheepishly in the doorway in flannel pajamas. There is a book in his hands.
"The light was on," he says, shrugging apologetically. His voice is barely over a whisper.
She edges out of his way. "You can come in."
He shuts the door behind him thoughtlessly, and then looks over at her, wincing a little, as if he should have asked first. She tilts her head in permission. The circumstances between them have clearly transcended the social norms of needing to leave a door open.
"I, uh – well, I thought if you were awake you might want to read a book," he says, handing it to her.
She takes it. "Huck Finn?"
She smirks up at him but when she sees the wariness in his lip, the question in his eyes, she understands that the book was just a reason knock on the door. They acknowledge it in the briefest of silences, and he relaxes a bit, as if he is shaking the falsity off of his shoulders.
"Can I ask you something?" he says, and now his voice is normal again, or something close to it.
MJ sets the book down on the bed. "Sure."
"I first off just want to say, that if – that no matter how you answer this question, I still promise I won't say anything. I won't."
His pupils are wide and dark in the dim light of the room, so similar to Gwen's that for a moment MJ feels as if she is looking at a ghost.
"I know," she says. It usually takes a lot more for her to trust somebody so unquestioningly, but she has a gut feeling about Bradley, about everyone in this family.
He offers her a small but nervous smile. "Good," he says. "And, uh – don't take this the wrong way. But." He clears his throat. "Are you the Black Cat?"
MJ's first reaction is to laugh, but she sees how serious he is, how expectant and watchful.
"Oh, Bradley," she says, almost sorry to disappoint him. "No. I'm not." She sits down on the mattress next to him and curls her legs up to her chest, resting her head on her knees. "Whatever happened out there today … it was the first time it ever happened. You know as much as I do."
Bradley stares down at his lap. "Then how did you know you could do it?" he asks, as if he is hopeful that this will somehow reveal something. "When did you start being able to – you know. Do that?"
"I didn't know. I just – it was instinct, I guess, I wasn't even thinking."
He is quiet for a moment, and then shudders. "Lucky for you. I thought you were gonna bite it."
"Not today," she says mildly.
She wonders how he can be so blunt about death after everything that has happened to him. She wonders how he is still optimistic, how he has planned this bright future on the west coast for himself, and how he can still be bullheaded enough to stop and wait for MJ to wake up on the street today when there was carnage and danger all around him.
Despite everything she wishes he weren't like this. This is the same fearlessness, the same selflessness, that got Gwen killed.
"What are you going to do now?" he asks.
She shrugs. "Nothing," she says. "I mean – it was a fluke."
"One hell of a fluke."
He gets up to leave the room then, leaving the book on the bedspread. MJ picks it up and leafs through the worn pages. She sees neat annotations in the margins. There isn't single spot in this apartment that isn't haunted by Gwen.
"I just want you to know," Bradley says, turning on his heels at the door. His cheeks are inflamed and he is so adamant that she is afraid he will wake up the rest of the boys. "If you ever need anything – if you ever want to talk about it – well, I already know. The damage has been done." His smile is lopsided and a little bit sad. "You can come to me. You can trust me."
MJ feels a sharp sting in the back of her nose as her eyes water up. She swallows thickly. "I know," she says again. "And thanks."
(((())))
Mrs. Stacy puts her in a taxi after breakfast the next morning, and tells her to spend Christmas break with them – doesn't ask, tells, and does not give MJ a single inch to refuse.
After she collects her things from the hostel she heads back to the dorms – they've opened early now, after the crisis displaced half the people in midtown and luckily left the dorms unscathed. She climbs up the stairs and inhales the familiar scent of it, and walks into the room that is half hers that still has the rest of her stuff in it, her books and her photographs and her worn out dance shoes lined up in the corner.
How soon does she have before the money runs out? She doesn't even want to think about it. She can't right now. She sets down her travel bag and sits on the mattress, careful when she rests her head against the wall not to disturb the bandage on her head, which, oddly, has not so much as ached since she woke up this morning.
She hooks her phone up to the charger. Nine missed calls. She is almost relieved as she is guilty to see them there; it is nice to know that anyone is still looking out for her.
Two of them are from Harry, two from Peter, another four from Peter's house (she can only assume is from May).
One of them is from her father.
She calls May first, who picks up on the first ring.
"Mary Jane – are you alright?" she asks, without a hello.
"I'm fine, are you? Is Peter with you?"
"We're fine, he's fine, he's back at the school. We were worried when we didn't hear from you – "
"My phone," says MJ, "it—well."
May interrupts her before she lies. "And here is Peter telling me the dorms have been closed, and god only knows where you've been, I told that boy – "
"No, no, I – " She stops herself. "I'm so glad you're both alright."
"I want to talk to you but will you call Peter first, dear? He's been worrying about you since last night, and your roommate hadn't heard from you, and neither had the RA …"
MJ glances over and sees that Blake's shower caddy is gone, which can only mean that she is in the dorm.
"Mary Jane?"
"Yeah?"
"You're really alright?"
The lilt in May's voice is what finally tips her over the edge. She feels a tear slip down her cheek and swipes it away, but another one chases it, and another, thudding on the bedspread between her feet.
"Yeah," she says, keeping her voice even, and that's when the door opens.
She expects that it will be Blake, so she doesn't look up. She has seen Blake cry plenty of times by now so it's not that she is particularly embarrassed by the idea of Blake catching her in a moment of weakness, but she doesn't want to deal with it right now, doesn't want to deal with any of it, but then Blake just stands in the doorway and finally MJ looks up out of sheer confusion.
It isn't Blake.
"I, uh – I just found Peter," MJ stammers into the phone, blinking back the rest of her tears, not that it matters. He has already seen.
"Oh, good. I'll let you go, then. Good-bye, Mary Jane."
"G'bye," says MJ, hanging up the phone, staring down at it for an extra moment and praying to any god that will listen to regain her composure before she has to look up at Peter.
It doesn't work. Seeing him standing in the doorway, his eyes so warm and brown and stupidly familiar to her – like looking into a mirror – only makes it worse. She pushes the tears back with her open palm and laughs out loud, because she shouldn't be crying. There is nothing to cry over, really. At least not yet.
"Hey," says Peter. He takes a few cautious steps toward her.
The laughter bubbles up in her, becomes momentarily manic. She gathers it up and pushes it back inside of herself.
"Hey," she says back. She takes in a breath through her nose. It's weird – just seeing him, just knowing that he's in the room with her, makes her feel better, but for some reason she can't stop crying. "You're okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm … you're okay?" he asks, looking a little helpless, like he wants to help but doesn't know how.
"Yeah," she says, nodding too vigorously, trying too hard.
Peter shuts the door behind him, then crosses the room so quietly she almost can't hear his footsteps. She watches as eases himself onto the mattress, sitting beside her, meeting her gaze with the same steadiness that she used to rely on him for. She is reminded of a younger Peter, the intense way he would stare through the lenses of his glasses. He used to sit just like this. On the school bus, on the park bench, on the edge of his twin bed, those same patient, watchful eyes. Back when they could tell each other anything.
"What happened?" he asks, his voice low.
"I fell," she says, gesturing vaguely with her arms. "Then my hair …"
Peter's lip curves up on one side. "Yeah," he says wryly. "I noticed."
It takes so much to get a smile out of him at all that she can't help but smile back. "I hate it," she says candidly.
He reaches up and skims it with his fingers, in that tender, exposed spot on the back of her neck that feels naked now, without the mane of hair to cover it up. She shivers, but he still lingers for a moment before pulling his hand away.
"I don't," he says.
She eases her newly shorn head onto his shoulder, pressed against his collarbone, his chest. He shifts to accommodate her and she closes her eyes.
"We can talk about your blatant copying of my signature hairstyle later," says Peter, his voice a gentle rumble against her cheek.
She grins against his shirt. "Jackass."
"Copycat."
"You're just jealous. It looks better on me."
For a moment he doesn't say anything. She looks up at him. It's weird, seeing Peter from this angle, feeling the warmth of his neck against her forehead.
"You're right," he says, his eyelids lowering to look down at her. It makes him look sleepy. She lets her own eyes slide shut, burrowing her head further into his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It seems louder somehow. She feels like if she listened hard enough she could feel the blood rushing in his veins.
"I'm glad you're alright," she says.
He doesn't answer her, but he wraps one of his long arms around her shoulders and that's answer enough. He feels like an anchor. Like a kite handle. Like a buoy in a storm.
Like home.
(((())))
I turn 23 this week. I have been writing fanfiction for over a DECAAAAADE. If any of you young'uns were thinking to yourself "pfft it's fine I'll grow out of this and lead a fully functional adult life" WELL HERE IS A PSA: YOU WILL NOT.
(Here's another PSA: Life will be better because of it).