"After a short pause, her companion added: 'You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.'" - Pride and Prejudice, ch. 58
When he can make out the shape in the dark, when he can tell it's her, what else can Peter do but understand why there was nothing waiting up here for him? He was the one waiting. Now, he's grateful for his web-shooters because they mean he can leap off the edge of the building and lower himself with webs instead of climbing down. And he barely has to take his eyes off the increasingly clear person-shape approaching from the east. The world's a washed-out blue at the edges now, the sun readying to rise at the figure's back. There's a skip to Peter's steps as he runs across the lawn. He doesn't care that his gait's transparently eager. There isn't anything else she'd want to get to walking in this direction; she has to be heading for the compound. She's coming to him.
The fog is thinning, but the air's still soaking wet. His skin's wet, his sweatshirt, his hair. Michelle's wearing her raincoat. He wants to say that was smart, but the only sound he's making is a series of shuffling crunches as he steps from the lawn onto the gravel side road, walking to meet her. She sees him and recognizing that she doesn't seem surprised is the first thing that makes Peter realize he isn't surprised to see her either.
He also thinks, for a minute, that they'll race into each other's arms. That would've been cool, but he's more than happy with the smile she gives him, gaze darting down to the road and back to his face, as they stop a few feet apart. They're in an open pocket of the slowly billowing fog. Michelle pushes her hood back and there's just enough light at the seam of the sky now to make her damp hair glisten.
"Thanks," bursts out of his mouth.
"For what?"
Yeah, you idiot, for what? Peter thinks. His brain stutters to complete the track his train of thought was traveling along.
"Finding Harley. He knows he wasn't supposed to say anything about you being in Providence, but he did, and then May told me what Happy told her, so yeah, I know you were there," he says, all in a rush. "And that's fine with me if you want to keep it quiet―I didn't tell anyone else―but I wanted you to know that I knew and, and that I think you deserve the credit for doing all that. You didn't have to."
She looks upset and he feels terrible.
"I didn't want you to know because I didn't want you to think I was interfering," Michelle explains. The sleeve of her raincoat swishes briskly against her side as she struggles to keep her gestures contained. "Like I was trying to fix your family or something."
Peter laughs.
"We need it sometimes. Harley wouldn't have come out of that situation very well on his own, and I'm sure he didn't do much to thank you for saving his ass."
Michelle mumbles something and, yes, he can hear it, but he stares at her face so long that she must think he missed it and repeats herself.
"It wasn't for him." He's about to play dumb because he's that greedy for the words she's so close to saying, but he doesn't have to. Michelle adds, "I only did it for you. You were really upset in Burlington, when you heard your brother was missing. I wanted to find him so you wouldn't worry."
God, he's giving her a really sappy smile, he can feel it. He watches her take a quick breath.
"I'm probably overstepping," she continues hurriedly, briefly closing her eyes as she shakes her head, "because you told me how you feel months ago, and maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see..." Michelle opens her eyes. "If..." She glances down, back up to his eyes as he's beginning to squint with the bright horizon warming from blue to orange. "...if that's not how you feel, anymore... if you feel something else, something better... hopefully not something worse..."
"What?" he asks, grinning and confused, but also mostly understanding.
"Ok," Michelle says first. That part's obviously meant for herself. She comes half a step closer. "I'm still in love with you. I never stopped." Her gaze moves rapidly, nervously around his face. "If you want, I can never say that again, but I had to tell you the truth because I'm just really bad at not―"
"I don't want you to never say it again."
"You don't?"
"No." Peter frowns. Did he get mixed up? It doesn't seem right for this to end on a 'no.' "Yes," he corrects emphatically. "Do say it."
She exhales a laugh.
"Why are you so confusing?
"You started it," he counters. And because her wet raincoat is shining and she's holding all her anxiety in her slim wrists and twisting fingers and staring at him like she brought this as far as she could without him, Peter strides up to Michelle and kisses her. When she trembles against him, gripping his sweatshirt with her eyes still closed, he kisses her again. "MJ," he whispers impulsively against her lips as they break apart. Her mouth returns firmly to his at that and he'd laugh if he had any breath to spare.
It takes her pressing a hand to his chest and him holding her shoulders at arm's length to actually keep them apart now that they've opened that dam. But they won't let go of each other. MJ laughs with her bottom lip between her teeth and he likes that. He... he loves that.
"I'm in love with you too," Peter finally remembers to say. "Just so you... realize that."
"Really? I thought that was a rejection kiss."
"Now? Now, you're gonna mess with me?"
"Don't tell me you don't like me messing with you," MJ warns with a smirk. "We're in way too deep for that now."
Her expression shifts to surprise, as if those last words slipped out by accident. She's right, Peter thinks, if she's reacting like that because it should be too early for depth of any kind. The first kiss is where they're supposed to wade into this, not even up to their knees. They've been apart more than together, silent far more often than they've spoken, mistaken and reckless with each other's feelings because they were convinced they'd figured each other out before they even understood themselves.
She starts to remove her hand from his chest and he pulls it back, making her laugh lightly.
"Yeah," Peter says with certainty, "I guess we are."
"I…" MJ looks at him like she doesn't know what else to say, then cups his face in her palms and dives in for another kiss. She shrugs as she draws back, a slight jump of her shoulders as his pulse pounds.
He's equally speechless, just smiling at her, clutching the waxy shoulders of her raincoat. Her body language tenses and softens and Peter tows her cautiously into a hug. He isn't scared of her saying no here. It's more like he's bracing himself for the hug to somehow go uncompleted. Like their chests will never collide or his arms will pass through air when he tries to close them around her and he'll be out here, hugging himself in the middle of the road at dawn. Probably, he could survive that. His insides might ache with the emptiness of the sensation right before a good cry. What he feels when his arms do wrap around her comes with a similar swooping feeling, but he's suddenly full, not empty. MJ throws her arms around his neck to press them tighter with no hesitation at all and Peter's almost tearing up as he rocks her against him, both hands flat on her back. She smells like the open fields she walked past to get here and the close air of the cozy living room on the Park's upper story.
"Can I drive you home?" he asks quietly, eyes shut against the ball of the sun easing into the visible sky. He doesn't want her to go, but it's wet out here and he doesn't want her to get sick, or for Wanda to wonder where she is. Although, he guesses she won't be missed yet. It can't be long after 6am.
"You can walk me," MJ suggests. She tips back from him and angles her head when she sees the sun is in his eyes, blocking it so he can focus on her face. "That'll take longer."
His cheek's wet from resting against her hair, his palms are clammy from her coat, and when he takes her hand, they could be leaving a pool, dry clothes sticking to damp skin. He can't stop smiling. They dart glances at each other that are far from furtive as the sun clears their path of fog and their shadows spill out long behind them. Peter learns that MJ likes to walk with their fingers interlocked. Maybe she's always liked that, or maybe it's just with him. There are a lot of things he'll be able to quit speculating about and actually learn. She's slightly taller, but walks a little slower, so the pace is perfect. He ends up just staring at her face for a solid five minutes because he knows his senses won't let him trip. He's so in tune with everything now, it's amazing.
"Just to be totally transparent about what happened in Providence…" MJ begins suddenly, curing his curiosity over her suddenly thoughtful expression. "I get that you know most of it, but you don't know all of it. Unless Liz told you."
"You know, Liz and I really aren't that close anymore," he jokes lightly and catches her quick smirk before she goes back to serious.
"Well, I… had a talk with her."
"I'm really sorry you had to do that."
MJ sighs.
"I mean, I wouldn't have reconciled with her if that situation hadn't made it necessary, but I think it was probably time. It felt that way, after."
"That's what you did?" Peter asks, shocked. "You guys made up?"
He halts and she stops with him, letting their hands dangle between them.
"It was ugly at first. Not, like, overtly ugly, but the atmosphere was pretty accusatory. Your brother didn't stay to mediate."
Peter can tell the comment about Harley is sarcastic and he gives MJ an appropriately I'm not surprised face.
"We didn't retread old ground," she continues. "It's still raw. What she did. With a little distance, I can tell that it was never Liz taking the money that hurt me. It was coming back after the Second Snap and feeling like she'd disrespected my parents and betrayed me. It felt like my sister did that when what I needed was her protection."
From where he stands and the connection of their hands, he feels how tender this wound is. But MJ stands straight, doesn't cry, golden light on half her face as her unfocused gaze rests over his heart.
"My aunt, Maria―Carol's wife, stepped in. She came up from Louisiana to help me sort through everything I had to do with my parents gone, lived with me until I moved into residence for college. Monica couldn't be away from work long and Carol was off-planet. Way, way off-planet. But I had somebody, you know? I had Aunt Maria, but knowing that Liz was still out there and I couldn't be near her because of what she'd done…" MJ looks up and right into Peter's eyes. "It was almost as bad as losing my mom and dad."
"It makes sense that you wouldn't want to relive all that with her the first time you guys were actually in the same room in so long," he assures her. "Especially with my idiot brother able to walk in at any moment."
"Also, selfishly, I knew if she tried to apologize and it seemed insincere that it would stop me from doing what I went there to do. I'd be too upset and I'd leave and I wouldn't have helped you."
"So what happened?" Peter asks gently.
"I concentrated on you. I told her that I didn't want her to fuck up another family, that you were good people who didn't deserve to be taken advantage of. I also said it might be a chance for her to turn things around. Liz said…" MJ huffs a bitter laugh. "She said she didn't think I cared about whether she did that or not. Can you believe that?"
"It does sound pretty untrue that you would've said my family are good people."
She rolls her eyes at him.
"Anyway," she goes on in a lighter tone, seeming not actually annoyed by his cracking a joke. "I told Liz that I still believe she can be better. Oh, I was honest and let her know that she's become someone who creates things that make the world worse and that I think it's been catching up with her and poisoning her too, that when I have thought about her, sometimes, it's as someone who's unredeemable, but… I said I'd been wrong about people before."
MJ offers Peter a shy smile.
"I think it's human to be," he says.
"It seemed to get through to Liz, at least. She told me she'd take whatever offer Stark Industries made to her seriously."
"I think the contract was very fair."
"I don't know if I want to see her again." MJ frowns and Peter instinctively pulls her a little closer by their joined hands. "I'm not sure how to have a relationship with her."
"Wait and see."
"Yeah. I guess I should appreciate the person I just gained instead of the one I lost years ago, huh?" She smiles and gives his hand a shake.
"If you wanna appreciate me, I don't mind. Tell me that thing again," he urges, grinning.
"Shut up."
But seconds later, when they've resumed walking towards the Park, MJ looks sideways at him and says, "I love you."
"I love you," he responds immediately. No teasing with the important stuff. When she puts her emotions out there, Peter wants her to know that he'll handle them with care. He's better at that than he was their first go 'round. "I'll make sure you're not wrong about me again."
MJ glances at him swiftly and it looks like her eyes are starting to well up, but that could be from the sun rising to eye-level.
"Good. I hate being wrong."
"I've picked up on that."
"Hey, by the way," she says. "Did you tell my uncle to go fuck himself last night?"
Everything on Peter's face freezes. Except his eyes, which go wide. Oh shit. Better be honest.
"Technically, I told him to get fucked."
"Oh, well, if that's all then I have no idea what Fury was so upset about," MJ says casually.
"He called you?"
"Nope. Apparently, he drove halfway home to New York and was still so mad that he turned around and drove all the way back so he could wake me up and communicate the entire story to my face." She pauses to yawn. Peter joins her. "He got pretty rant-y. Took me a minute before I could follow."
"Were you mad at him?"
"Of course. And I was mortified at the beginning when I thought he'd figured out that I'm in love with you. It sounded like that's what he'd been at the compound telling you."
"Fury was fairly tactless, but he didn't do that. If he had, I would've seen you several hours sooner instead of sitting on the roof all night thinking about you."
MJ blushes and tries to get back on track with Peter smiling delightedly at her.
"So that's how you knew I was coming."
"I like high places. I can take you up there sometime, if you want."
"Maybe a more normal date first," she counters.
"Assuming Fury's visit didn't traumatize you out of the desire to ever go on a date."
"Nah, the unadulterated rage I felt when I realized that he was trying to make my choices for me transitioned well into the desire to, um… yeah, date you." Now Peter's blushing. "All Fury did was make me want to be with you more, and sooner, based on how recently he'd spoked to you. The minute he left, I just started walking. I was afraid you'd change your mind. Hearing that you felt the way you seemed to when I read between the lines of what Fury recited of your conversation… I didn't think I'd ever hear that from you."
"You got 'I love you' between the lines of me telling Fury to get fucked?"
MJ laughs and he decides to hell with the handholding, tucking his arm securely around her waist instead. Their hips bump together.
"You're kidding, but I did. The fact that you could be that blunt with him but you hadn't said anything as blunt with regards to you and I never getting together was what sent me out the door. I didn't have a plan beyond that."
"Aw, plans are for people who think too much."
"That seems like a healthy attitude for a guy who made a career out of deliberately putting himself in dangerous situations," MJ observes sarcastically.
"Hey, I'm good at improvisation. Gotta play to my strengths." Peter's shoulders sag abruptly and he sees her look at him with concern. "Actually, I might be too good at doing damage when I just go off the cuff. That night… you said you were in love with me and, the way I talked to you… I was awful."
"Stop trying to take all the credit. I earned everything you said to me. Well, most of it. Some things you were totally wrong about," she reminds him. "But I was insensitive and horrible about your family. I just get so obsessed with being right that I hurt people in the process of trying to prove it."
"We're better at this so far. Talking to each other without blowing up."
"That's because you haven't said anything stupid yet."
"Oh, is that what it is?" He laughs lightly.
"Come on, you're supposed to say something insulting back," MJ prompts, sending a loose stone rocketing into the ditch with a swinging kick of her sneaker. "That way, I'm reminded that you can be just as much of a dick as I can. I still feel bad about that night too. I remember you saying something about there not existing a universe in which you would've agreed to go out with me."
Peter groans.
"God, I was such an asshole."
"No, you were right about that, but I only accepted it recently. It wasn't that I'd asked you, it was what a jerk I was in the process. I would've said no to me too. I'm glad you said no."
"You seemed like you hated everything about me except me so much that you wouldn't even be disappointed when I didn't say yes," he says in a small voice, not wanting to make her feel any worse. "That's probably part of why I reacted so strongly against it instead of just leaving. I want you to, I don't know, know I was there."
"Yeah, that was childish," she teases. "You actually wanted me to speak to you as a person with an opinion worth acknowledging when I just wanted to talk over you and force you to see things my way? Ugh, dream on, Stark."
"You do really like having the last word. What you wrote though? Your letter? I'm glad you bothered continuing the conversation after I drove you away."
MJ's hand twitches in his.
"God, I didn't even think you would read it. Did you believe what I wrote?"
"It took a few reads," Peter admits. "I didn't wanna believe you."
"I knew I wasn't in the best position to convince you, after all the shit I'd said the night before. I remember writing it feeling so smug and right."
"It didn't read that way. Or, it didn't read that way once I was open to what you had to say. I thought it was pretty honest. But, like, in a vulnerable way," he scrambles to clarify. "Not in a mean way."
"And I found out you were somebody with more backbone than I thought you had. I'd just been thinking about you as this person who'd probably done his best to save the world and then remembered he was the son of a billionaire and thought, 'Why bother?' I got past thinking that way about you, at least enough to start having feelings for you, but I was harder on your family than they deserved."
"It's ok to be mad, MJ," Peter offers, squeezing her waist and wanting to hug her. "My family and your family are always going to be connected in the worst way, because us not stopping Thanos soon enough is what killed them. We tried."
"I know," she says and slips her arm around him too.
Just two words and they release something inside of him that's been clenched, small and hard, since the Battle of Earth. He's had such a difficult relationship with that day. It weighed on him like a year and passed like a second, everything around him the glow of weapon fire and the splatter of blood, the crack of shields colliding with skulls and bare fists with ribs (if those beings Thanos used as an army even had ribs). A living nightmare. Peter might have been on the winning side, but everything else about that fight felt wrong. He became a killer and he thought afterwards how it wasn't the first time, how billions had died (many, many more if you counted the rest of the universe) because he didn't get the gauntlet off the hand when he had the chance, even though his whole world had narrowed to those two things. Gauntlet. Hand. It's been enough just getting that shit to leave his mind so he can sleep, function, be normal around his family. While he talked to somebody, a therapist, for a while, it was his dad who understood best. But talking through his feelings and coping mechanisms with other people, no matter who they were, didn't feel like this. It's simple: Peter never expected forgiveness. That's what MJ's handing him in a pair of syllables. He's struggled to comprehend his experiences, to contextualize and compartmentalize where he needs to. Nobody's ever made it so easy for him though, just taken the load he's been shrinking over the past six years. Just set that load down at the side of the road and let him keep walking.
"We won't let that be the only way we're connected," MJ says.
With his brain, Peter receives this statement as something comforting. Unfortunately, he's still an idiot, only now he's openly an idiot for her, so he makes a weird gasping noise when an articulate response doesn't come. Crap, now she's looking at him. And, goddammit, he looks back. So, they're both blushing. Again. Well, it beats the horrors of war.
"We, um, we have our own history now," she continues hastily.
"Mhmm. Like… like when I showed up at your cottage," is what he comes up with, immediately grimacing. "Which was probably the creepiest thing that's ever happened to you."
"Please. You know I've lived in New York."
"Well, it's gotta be up there. Weren't you angry when you saw me? The second I saw you coming up the hill, I felt like I was someplace I really wasn't supposed to be."
"I definitely wasn't expecting you, but I wasn't angry. Moron," she mutters and he laughs softly in relief.
"I honestly thought you were gonna tell me to get the hell off your property," Peter says.
"Are you kidding? I was just trying to think how I could get you to stay."
He stares at her. Boy, he'd have a tough time leaving her now. She's radiant in the dawn light, dreamlike if it weren't for her hold on him and his on her.
"Yeah, you communicated that really well when you shut that door in my face."
MJ makes an embarrassed noise and brings her free hand briefly to her forehead, letting her head drop into it as they walk. He smiles at the gesture.
"It might have taken me a minute to get over the surprise of running into you. But seriously, I just wanted to make you like me. Not even like me like me," she explains, "just think that I was decent. That I could be, anyway, when I wasn't being super unpleasant about your dad. I wanted you to know that I might have talked a lot, but I heard you too. You know, belatedly."
"Oh, so at that point your feelings for me were totally platonic," Peter summarizes, baiting her and grinning about it.
"Totally. Until I shut the aforementioned door in your face and panicked over the realization that the next thing I wanted to do was go back outside and push you against the nearest tree."
"You wanted to beat me up?!"
"To make out with you," she mumbles with her head turned away from him.
He's tempted to comment, but the Park's in view and he doesn't want to leave her embarrassed and himself flustered. He decides to ask about her friend instead and nudges his chin towards the building they're nearing.
"Is Wanda good?"
MJ glances at him with her eyebrows raised.
"You should know better than I do. Isn't she always at the compound?"
"Yeah, pretty much. Her and Vision are kinda inseparable."
"That's cute. They deserve it."
"Did you see it coming?" he wonders, watching her profile.
"I think everybody did."
"Maybe originally, back in the fall, but I wanna know if you knew it would happen when Wanda came back to the Park."
"I… had a feeling," she concedes with a slight smirk.
"Meaning you told Wanda to go for it."
"No, I didn't tell her what to do. Someone said I was too controlling with my friends." MJ gives him a knowing side-eye. "But I did encourage her to come back because I thought it would make her happy."
"That's all it took?"
"And I told Wanda I'd had the wrong idea before, when I thought Vision didn't care about her. I apologized for convincing her to leave him. I said I was sure that I had it totally backwards and that she better go get her man."
Peter's thrilled not to hear her call his brother a robot.
"So you convinced Wanda, but who convinced you? Me or Vision?"
"Are you just fishing for credit?" He shrugs and she rolls her eyes as she answers. "I watched him when Wanda and I went over to the compound the other day because of what you said, but it was how Vision acted that convinced me. Just taking someone's word for it about someone else's feelings is how those two split up in the first place."
"Good point."
"Thanks."
"I'm glad you told Wanda. And that she listens to you. It means everything to Vision, so it means a lot to me too."
"I even told her I knew about Vision being in Queens," MJ confesses. "It's the maddest Wanda's ever been at me, but it was worth it. Not that she's mad anymore. She's too busy being in love."
"I know the feeling," he says.
They're naturally slowing down as they walk up the driveway, hands sliding across each other's backs to clasp loosely again, just these last few meters. Sunlight glances off the windows and the roof of the parked car, but they step inside the shade of the alcove the front door is set into. Peter glances at the door, then back to MJ's face. She looks nervous, expectant, poised to speak. All at once.
"Do you wanna―"
"Make out?" she finishes for him.
Peter beams at the way his girlfriend gets straight to the point. The sun warmed the front of his sweatshirt as they walked and he holds MJ's hand there, over his heart, when she presses him against the brick wall and kisses him like this is a ritual, what they've always done and will always do. He should be so lucky.
Jogging home, he feels like a happy zombie―no sleep all night and then the best morning of his life. He can't tamp it down. The sun's been more of a complementary backdrop to his feelings than a way to tell the time, so he doesn't realize it's past 7:30am and walks through the kitchen to find his family eating breakfast together. They stare at him. He stares back.
"Where the hell were you?" his dad asks with an expression of amusement. "I figured you were just sleeping in. Were you outside? You look... windblown."
"There's no wind," Peter says with a shrug. He sits down and grabs a piece of toast.
His dad keeps giving him a funny look and tries to get Morgan to speculate with him about what her brother's been up to, but she's grouchy, anticipating a session with her math tutor, and won't be coaxed into giving anything but the soggy Froot Loops in her bowl her full attention.
Later that morning, after the tutoring and before lunch, Peter remembers the Frisbee and uses the hunt for where it landed as an excuse to get his siblings outside. He watches Nebula pretend she hasn't found it, intentionally leaving the discovery to Morgan. Vision seems tolerant of the exercise, but when Peter starts walking at his side as they 'look for the Frisbee,' he doesn't appear surprised. Still, it's obvious that he isn't expecting it when Peter starts with, "So, I was with MJ this morning..." All Vision does between then and when he finishes with explaining that, yeah, he and MJ are together now, is ask, "MJ?" in the same tone Peter used to bug his brother about saying 'Miss Maximoff' instead of Wanda.
"It is her name," he says, like the switch is no big deal. "She wasn't upset when I started calling her that."
"But... you are serious?" Vision checks. "Yourself and Miss Jones?"
"I think I got a hickey around here someplace if you don't believe me," Peter says, pulling at the neck of his sweatshirt and looking down, though it's impossible to see his own neck.
"That's quite alright," his brother laughs. "I don't require evidence."
"You're still looking at me like you don't believe me."
Vision's mouth opens and no words come out. He makes an uncertain gesture with his hands.
"No, man! Come on!" Peter insists, grabbing his brother's forearm. "You're the one who's supposed to believe me right away."
"That you're in love with her." Peter nods. "And she with you?"
"Yes! I swear!"
"It's only that... you've never particularly cared for her." Vision studies his face.
"That was way back when I was being an idiot. More of an idiot," he amends. "But I've loved her for ages. Really. Definitely since I saw her again in Vermont."
After several more seconds of carefully observing his face, his brother smiles.
"I believe you."
Peter exhales in relief.
"Good."
"It does make me extremely curious about Vermont though. You can't have been telling me everything when we corresponded. There was certainly no mention of falling in love."
So Peter unravels it, a lot of it out of order. He explains that he was cautious about what he was telling Vision because he didn't want to upset him by mentioning that Wanda was there. In between, he elaborates on the way his feelings for MJ developed. It's way easier to see it now than it was when it was happening. Peter's realizing and talking at the same time, picking out all the tiny moments that now seem so crucial, all the things that made him miserable to leave her and that, for MJ, were enough to get her to follow him, driving down to Providence to help Harley. Vision's expression grows solemn as Peter stumbles into that part of the story, how MJ saved all of their butts, but then Vision just marvels at the lengths she went to for their family. He genuinely, thoroughly praises her and Peter stands there absorbing it with a huge smile. After, he goes up to his room and crashes, sleeping until late afternoon.
He wakes up feeling like a little kid and can't explain the sensation. Slowly, he recognizes that it comes from his parent's hushed voices as they stand outside his room. The sound of people he loves speaking nearby. Peter rolls over and listens. They're talking about him. He picks up that his dad did rewatch that footage of him and Fury talking outside last night, eavesdropping after the fact. Though Tony seems to find it hilarious that Peter reacted so aggressively to their unwelcome visitor, he seems worried over the rest of it. Michelle Jones? Secret relationship? This is not the kid he knows. Pepper's soothing him, clearly there to stop her husband from busting into Peter's room and demanding an immediate answer to assuage his own curiosity. Peter hears her tell him that Vision said something to her earlier, implied something about where their son was that morning. Though his mom's less hard-charging about it, she's also confused. Peter groans, shifts, stretches. He gets out of bed and opens the door, rubbing a knuckle into his eye.
"Hey, guys."
"We didn't mean to wake you," his mom says, shooting an accusing glance at Tony, who shrugs from his chair. "Vision said you had a late night."
"Or an early morning. Something like that." He feels rested, but he yawns.
"Well, we just―"
"Set us straight on something," his dad implores. That earns him another sour look for cutting across his wife. "What's the deal with you and Michelle Jones?"
"Not much," Peter says, crossing his arms and leaning into the doorframe. "I'm just in love with her."
"Peter... what?" his mom asks.
Meanwhile, Tony cracks up, laughing loudly and steadily. Peter thinks he's being made fun of until he considers the specific sparkle in his dad's eye. This is his dad getting it. He knows what it's like to feel everything change from one minute to the next at the sight of a beautiful woman in a backless gown―or a squeaky raincoat, as the case may be.
"Well," his dad says. "That's that."
"That's that?" Pepper repeats, incredulous. She looks from her husband to her son.
"Don't you trust our kid?"
"Of course I trust him."
"Standing right here," Peter reminds them.
"Then look at him!" Tony urges.
"Would somebody explain this to me in words?" his mom requests.
"He loves her," his dad says, "and judging by the unusually confident exterior of the young man we see before us, I'd say she loves him back."
"I didn't think Michelle was very friendly to either of you."
"Oh, I'd say she's feeling plenty friendly to Pete now. Check out that neck."
With an embarrassed laugh, Peter jerks his sweatshirt up to cover where his dad's pointing.
"Ok," his mom says firmly, like she's putting to one side the bizarre reality of her son sneaking out early to neck some neighbour who hates them. "This makes less sense to me than Harley and Liz. She drove him to distraction. I didn't think you and Michelle even really got along, or that she was a big fan of us. 'Daddy's money'?"
Before his mom can remember anything else any of them might have passed on to her about MJ, anything critical from the benefit or the open house or Peter's time cooped up with her at the Park, he gives her the best proof available that MJ does care. He tells Pepper how she traced Harley and Liz. She looks taken aback, then her expression softens and she nods, seemingly to herself.
"I thought there was something Happy wasn't telling me."
"Never trust a Hogan," Tony offers playfully.
"Oh my god, Peter," his mom gasps. "Flash's email."
"He was mostly wrong," Peter quickly assures her. "MJ and I weren't... we were never... there was no, uh, relationship until today. This morning."
"At least he hasn't been lying to us," Pepper says to her husband, relaxing her shoulders. Peter smiles.
"It's healthy to date a woman who's at least a little scornful of you and everything you stand for," his dad jokes.
"Cool," Peter tells his parents, glancing warily between them. "Well, you guys work that out. I'm gonna go take a shower."
He gets out to find a text from MJ on his phone, inviting him over. Vision's heading to the Park as well, to steal a moment with Wanda at the restaurant between prep and service, so the two of them drive there together.
"This is nice!" Peter says, raising his voice over the stream of air rushing past his head through the open window, his hair blowing sideways.
"It is!" Vision agrees from the passenger's seat. The two of them smile like idiots the rest of the way.
Vermont, 3 months later
"I'll go find her," Peter tells Ned and Betty. "You know how she gets when she's working. She loses track of time."
Betty smiles in understanding.
"No rush," Ned says as Peter slips out of the room. "You know, take your time."
Peter nods, trying not to laugh. This is only day three of the week of holidays his best friend took from work to come up and visit and he's already pretty taken with MJ's blonde neighbour. He has a feeling they'll be hosting Ned again soon, or cat-sitting for Betty if she decides she needs to see Tribeca for herself after everything Ned's described. Peter doesn't think she'll have trouble finding a place to stay while she's there.
His phone buzzes in his pocket and he pauses in the hallway to check. It's May, confirming that she and both Happys will be coming up for the Labor Day long weekend. Peter replies, promising evenings playing cards on the deck if the weather remains warm or a bonfire on the beach if temperatures drop. He knows it doesn't matter to his aunt; she just wants to see him in his new habitat. He's excited to show her how much this place suits him. Vermont, the cottage, MJ. The two of them recently bought an apartment in Manhattan too, which MJ affectionately and jokingly named 'Daddy's Money'. Peter's been so comfortable here, retuning his senses and finding this incredible feeling of freedom inside himself, that he's ready to start splitting his time between the cottage and the city. They're planning to be in the new apartment by the end of September. For the first time in years, autumn in New York will mean changing leaves in Central Park and the red blur of their part-time Spider-Man swinging between skyscrapers. Peter thinks he can do it. He's going to try.
He doesn't need lights as he walks through the house, past the bedroom he's been sharing with MJ for the last month and a half. She's worried that what he's told her about feeling at home here already isn't solid, isn't permanent, that he'll change his mind when winter hits, start to feel too isolated. But Peter trusts the feeling. It isn't just the cottage.
The sound of Betty and Ned talking animatedly grows fainter as Peter climbs the stairs. He makes his steps loud enough that he won't startle MJ when he enters her studio. She's jumped more than once, but always been able to fix the jerky stroke of her brush as it skated away across the canvas. Tonight, she seems relaxed with her shoulders down and her legs wound through the rungs of the stool she sits on, though she doesn't look up when he comes in. Peter watches his girlfriend with a smile and weaves his practiced way around the supplies strewn over the floor to stand behind her.
"How's it coming?"
MJ makes a noise that could mean good or bad.
"You've kinda lost your light," he points out, looking at the night through the window, then up at the yellow overhead light he knows she hates, though she refuses to replace or even get a different bulb for it. He's accepted it as something that makes her home her home.
She glances up and lowers her brush, giving Peter an unobstructed view of his own face on her canvas.
"I guess I have," MJ agrees. "Pass me that jar?"
He hands her the former pickle jar, now crusted with a dissonance of dried paint streaks, but filled with clean water. He watches as she swirls the brush and red blooms from it, then pulls it out and flicks it quickly back and forth across a bar of soap before working the bristles with her fingers, dunking it into the water, and leaving it out to air dry. This is her third portrait of him since he moved in. They observe it together, Peter's hands clasped with his arms wrapped securely around her waist.
"May confirmed," he mumbles, then kisses MJ's neck.
It snaps her out of obsessing over the painting again. She twists slightly in his arms and starts to raise her hands to touch his face and shoulder before lowering them, remembering she'll need to check for rogue smears of paint first. Really, MJ should wash her arms up to her elbows, but Peter laughs as she just wipes them on her overalls instead. She touches him, takes hold, and he leans into her, pressing his cheek to hers.
"Monica's figuring out what time she'll have off in December. She wants to come up and teach you how to ski," MJ informs him.
"Oh god."
But she says, "You'll be fine. You're supernaturally well-coordinated."
"Hand-eye, maybe, not foot-eye! I can't go down a mountain with skis on my feet!"
"Just a little mountain," MJ says slyly.
He loosens his arms to let her spin around on the stool to face him. Hers cross behind his neck.
"It'd be a disaster," Peter assures her, but it's no good. She's prepared to negotiate, drawing him down for a kiss. "How little?" he sighs.
"So little. Practically a hill."
He makes a noise of consideration against her mouth. He remembers Betty and Ned.
"You know our guests are downstairs waiting for us," he reminds her.
"Ned's here for your birthday," MJ counters, kissing him again. It's true. That's in a couple of days.
"Well, if you're gonna make me be the responsible one..."
Peter hauls her up to standing and marches her to the bathroom in front of him, his hands on her hips, so she can clean up. On the way to the living room, she stops at the bedroom to change, leaving her painting clothes in a pile on the floor. He looks at them fondly.
"'Sup?" MJ asks when they walk in together. Ned waves happily towards the TV screen in explanation.
"Mmf!" Betty says, swallowing a sip of her drink and responding excitedly. "Go, MJ! It's your turn!"
"What song do you want?" Ned presses, at the ready and just as bad as Betty.
MJ looks at Peter as she decides, then walks over and picks the one she wants. Just Dance starts counting her in on "Holding Out for a Hero." Peter, grinning, goes to sit on the couch next to Betty, but his girlfriend catches his hand.
"Come on," she says. "Do it with me."
The End