Author's Note:

The reveals start comin' and they don't stop comin' and they don't stop comin' and they don't―

JK. It's only one chapter. How many reveals could there pooooossibly be?

XXVII

"Don't forget this one," MJ said, grabbing the shirt scrunched in the back corner of the dresser's bottom drawer and tossing it at Peter.

He knew what it was―he had to, by that colour―but he still unfolded the purple t-shirt with a groan to reveal the words on the front: 'NUTJOBS 4 THANOS.' Tony Stark had made it for him specially after Peter'd taken down those guys in Cleveland on the day of their decathlon tournament. Her boyfriend kicking terrorist butt, their team winning the tournament, her yelling at him that she loved him… So many memories from that day. Sometimes everything came right down to the wire like that, with him. Today, for example. They were in his room at the compound, getting everything packed up for his move back to Queens. He'd stayed with MJ and her mom on Thursday night and they'd laid low at the apartment all day Friday. Romanoff had contacted them every so often; like the photographer from the Daily Bugle, she'd been watching the Parkers' building, which was how she'd known to come to MJ's aid the other night. The two men MJ had fought off were apparently being processed however they processed the kind of people who went after superheroes' friends and family and there hadn't been any sign of further threats. It had left MJ feeling shaky but determined to help Peter get home and resolve his shit once and for all.

He had a lot of t-shirts.

"If you keep unfolding them all, it's going to take us twice as long," MJ complained, eyeing the pile of unfolded t-shirts on Peter's bed. He'd been reading them, chuckling, and setting them aside as she continued to pull stacks of clothing from his dresser. Idiot. They were his shirts. Anyone would think this nerd had never read these tired science jokes before.

"I thought you liked going through my stuff. Remember the first time I brought you here?"

"I remember you freaking out," she recalled smugly, "and slamming that drawer shut because those were inside." She pointed at his Spider-Man pajamas, mercifully still folded, in his open suitcase.

"Well, you didn't know I was Spider-Man then," Peter said defensively.

He started folding his clothes and MJ purposely didn't watch. She was afraid, at this point, that she wouldn't like his technique and the urge to redo it all would come over her. Her mom had turned her into a maniac for proper treatment and storage of clothing for space-saving and longevity.

"Which was a miracle." MJ took a last look in all of his drawers to ensure nothing had been left behind. She turned to her boyfriend and observed him for a minute, thinking. "Do you think you'll be relieved when everybody knows?"

"Depends on how things work out. If I confirm my identity and they just accept it, then yeah, I'll be relieved, but if people want to go on believing Jameson's stupid story about me being a murderer, then things might get harder. I'll have to start being secretive about Peter Parker."

He huffed a sarcastic laugh and MJ frowned. Standing next to him, she began packing the irregular stacks of Peter's t-shirts into his suitcase for him.

"We'll figure it out," she said, not looking at him.

"You always say that."

"And have I been wrong?"

"The reality," Peter said instead of answering her question, "is that everybody could turn against me. People aren't much kinder to heroes than they are to regular people." He stole a sideways glance at her. "Things could still be dangerous for you."

Rather than tucking them in nicely, MJ dropped the clothes she was holding into his luggage and spun to face him.

"I swear to god, Peter, if you try to break up with me after all of this bullshit―"

"No!" He put his hands up to show her his palms. "No way. I was just thinking that we might need to take extra precautions."

"Maybe," she allowed, going back to her task. "You're wrong though."

"About what?"

"People turning against you. Very few people aren't on Spider-Man's side, Peter, and the ones who are won't change their minds when you tell them he's you and you're him."

"You sound pretty sure."

"You're young, you're sincere, and you have big brown eyes like a baby animal."

"Hey!" Peter interjected.

"They'll probably try to protect you as much as you protect them."

"That'll kind of make it tough to do my job."

"Oh, they'll get over it fast enough," MJ assured him. She'd watched the media tide change daily with new press on Spider-Man this summer. "People will be taking you for granted again in no time. You notice how little most people care that there's a hundred-foot-tall green woman in the Harbor? One day you're a novelty, the next you're part of the scenery."

"I thought I… I thought I was kind of a symbol though," Peter said shyly, folding his second-last t-shirt.

She turned and smirked at him.

"You are. I have a sticker of your mask on my laptop to prove it. Did I tell you I found out where to order those? I guess I forgot during the near-death experience." She shrugged while her boyfriend appeared pained by the reminder. "I bought a bunch. We're totally plastering them all over your binders before we go back to school on Thursday."

"Definitely not."

"Oh yeah. Your locker too."

"That'd be so embarrassing," he whined.

"I'm counting on it," she explained. "That's how we'll keep you humble when everybody starts fawning all over you."

"Not sure you're gonna want to wear that one in public," Happy said from the doorway.

MJ looked from him to the pro-Thanos shirt Peter was holding up, about to fold in half.

"Come on, Happy," Peter pleaded, "gimme a little credit."

He folded it even more roughly than the rest and MJ quickly closed the suitcase on it, leaving her boyfriend to zip it up as she turned to face Happy.

"You're looking chipper," she noted.

"Just got the call from Tony at Pepper's appointment." That grabbed Peter's attention and he focused on Happy too.

"And?" he prompted.

"They're having a girl!"

"Aww, a girl!" Peter exclaimed.

MJ could only smile. From her boyfriend's texts this summer, she knew Tony'd taken to practice-parenting him, seemingly unconsciously. He'd have been a good dad to a boy, coaching his son through successes and insecurities, and yet, MJ thought about how Stark had developed a rapport with her over the last year. They'd started out rocky, and they still got on each other's nerves and in each other's faces―mostly over Peter―but he was dependable, he was decent, and he had a sarcastic ripple running through the very core of his personality that was a hell of a lot like hers. It was pretty easy to picture him raising a daughter.

"May was with me," Happy continued, "and then in the excitement right after, I told her I love her!"

Ignoring the way this bonus piece of news had tripped her boyfriend up, MJ went over and gave Happy a thunderous high-five. Maybe Peter'd made himself intentionally blind to how close Happy and May had grown since the Parkers moved into the compound, but Happy had updated MJ on his feelings and hopes for his relationship often. Too often, arguably.

"She said it back," he told her, unprompted.

"Of course she did," MJ said with a smile.

Happy, looking overwhelmed between his good luck with May and news of the baby, jerked MJ into a hug. She rolled her eyes and patted him on the back.

"Tony said it was ok with Pepper if I wanted to tell you guys about the baby, but he's planning to call…"

Peter's phone rang right then. It wasn't his old one, or a super-secret one to replace the one he'd apparently smashed against a building, but a new one he'd be able to repopulate with all his old contacts once he returned and made his big announcement to the press.

"Hey, Mr. Stark?"

MJ watched him, and then she didn't. Peter was beaming and had tears of joy in his eyes when she turned her head away to help Happy lug her boyfriend's stuff out into the main living area of their apartment.

"Morgan?" she heard him say. "That's a great name. Yeah, yeah, I really like it. Morgan."

"So, you're pretty head over heels for that dork, huh?" Happy asked as they stood there, giving Peter some privacy. She must've had some kind of look on her face.

"Look who's talking. How long have you been pining for May again?"

Happy broke, snorting a laugh.

"You know," he said, "the four of us should go on a double-date sometime."

"No."

"Oh, come on. I'll let you gloat about all the advice you gave that helped my relationship."

"No."

MJ firmly put her back to him right when Peter walked out to meet them. He looked so fucking happy that it softened the tight expression on her face like microwaved butter.

"Mr. Stark's all gooey over the baby. He told me he's proud of me for going home and looking after my people. 'Your people,' he said." He laughed in disbelief, then narrowed his eyes to take in the scene he'd walked into. "What's going on?"

"I'm saving you from unspeakable evil," MJ explained. "You should thank me."

Peter pulled her into a loose hug, hands clasped at her lower back, and nudged his nose past her hair to speak quietly near her ear.

"You know exactly how I'm going to thank you," he said.

She recalled the repaired projector and delicate, newly-crafted sensor Peter had made for their fantasy simulation. He'd shown her all the components after she'd arrived, before stealthily packing them up in a case, putting it at the bottom of a cardboard box, and piling his school stuff around and on top of it.

"Quit being so cozy," Happy complained. "Nobody wants to know what was going on those nights Peter snuck off to Queens."

They pulled apart and MJ gripped Peter's shoulder as his arm tucked around her waist. His expression was stunned.

"You knew I snuck out?"

"Are you kidding me? Everybody knew."

"What?"

"Not May; I didn't want to worry her."

"Yeah," Peter said. "But… but…!"

MJ kissed his cheek consolingly.

"Give him a minute to process," she suggested to Happy, who left with a cardboard box. Jeeze, déjà vu.

"Nobody tried to stop me," Peter said.

"They trust you."

"Still."

She didn't know what else to tell him and, luckily, she didn't have to think of anything because Peter's phone vibrated in his pocket, where her leg was pressed to his.

"Stark again?" she asked when he pulled it out.

"Ned."

So maybe he'd already added a couple of his old contacts to this phone.

Her boyfriend had only let go of her long enough to get the phone again. Answering it, he moved it to his other hand and wrapped his arm back around her.

"Holy shit, you did?!" he said abruptly, nearly pulling MJ down with him when he practically bent in half in his exuberance.

She escaped his hold and sat on a box.

"When, last night? Man, that's awesome! And everything was… ok?" Peter lowered his voice to mumble. What the fuck was he talking to Ned about that he had to act so squirrely? "Yeah, for sure, we'll talk more when I'm home. Pizza and homework on Friday night? Dude, stop, I'll schedule that shit around seeing you. I'm not just gonna do interviews all the time now and not watch Star Wars with my best friend." He laughed loudly and MJ stared at him, feeling equally fond and confused. Her boyfriend was such a nerd.

Peter raised a hand to run across the top of his head and the hem of his t-shirt lifted. Such a ridiculously ripped nerd. When he hung up, MJ questioned him with her eyebrows.

"Betty overshares with you almost as much as Ned does with me, right?"

"When the mood strikes her," she said cautiously.

"This you're gonna hear about."

"Oh god."

King T'Challa was away from the compound, doing his diplomatic thing in NYC, with whatever that entailed. Meetings and handshakes were what MJ pictured. He'd taken Okoye and another member of the Dora Milaje with him for protection. Apparently, Princess Shuri had been expecting to largely keep herself entertained in the labs (and bother Dr. Banner for as long as his patience seemed likely to stand), but she'd been delighted to change those plans to hang out with Peter and MJ instead.

She'd heard about the attack, of course―in fact, it was part of the reason her brother had left her behind today, nervous about taking her away from a place he knew she'd be well-defended by both security systems and whichever Avengers were bumming around―and approached discussion of it with care. MJ appreciated that, but she could also tell that she wasn't the only who relaxed when she and the princess began to gradually stop treading on eggshells and address the encounter in more straightforward terms. When MJ assured Shuri that she was ok, her bruises already changing colour on their way to disappearing, the princess seemed relieved. And she seemed to take it as encouragement to discuss a related topic; gleefully, she informed MJ that she'd begun brainstorming new capabilities and extensions for a Mace-y Gray Mark 2. How did MJ feel about electric shocks, Shuri wanted to know. Blades? Boomerangs? There was no way she'd give the princess anything but free reign after having her design such a sleek, effective weapon in the first place, so she was happy to agree with every suggestion. MJ held Peter's hand as his expression grew increasingly alarmed.

It wasn't all shoptalk though. None-too-slyly, Shuri brought up Cindy, asking how she was, what she'd been doing (in the whole two days since they'd met). MJ offered to give Shuri her best friend's phone number because they hadn't exchanged numbers at the stadium. That was surprising for how… friendly they'd become with each other in such a short time, but MJ figured giving out your phone number was a bigger deal for royalty than it was for the average person. Maybe Shuri didn't want to break protocol and have Okoye report it to her brother. Maybe she was genuinely just a little shy about asking. MJ didn't know how much Shuri interacted with people who weren't either royalty, scientists, elite warriors, or Avengers. Did she have regular friends? Did she date? She was pretty sure it was the latter thing that propelled the princess's interest in Cindy. Asking Shuri straight out felt a little too familiar and presumptuous. Anyway, now that she'd hopefully be texting Cindy, MJ could find out from her best friend how things developed. She was so excited for her.

For today, MJ played it cool, though she made sure to praise Cindy as often as she could without it being weird―she talked up her skill on academic decathlon, her reliability, her ambition of becoming an architect. It was easy and would hopefully give the princess some talking points when she reached out to Cindy. Peter added that Cindy was loyal and ruthless, citing the way she'd interrogated Brad Davis on the burger non-date he'd heard so much about.

They'd been killing time until Tony and Pepper got home and they could celebrate them finding out the baby's sex, but before the soon-to-be parents arrived back at the compound, Romanoff came down from a secure floor with an expression that said she meant business. She had a tablet clasped in her hands. MJ's laughter trailed off as she looked from the princess to the spy.

"What happened?" Peter was the first to ask, scrambling up from the couch.

"There's a development," Romanoff stated.

"There is?"

"Yes. Thanks to some outside-the-box thinking by the princess here, we found a new approach to tracing that footage outing Peter, going right to the source."

"The source being... Beck?" MJ guessed.

"Close," the spy allowed. "The Daily Bugle."

"You know how they got it?" Peter asked excitedly.

"We know how and we know who. Brad Davis."

"Brad Davis?" MJ echoed.

What she immediately felt was confusion. Brad? Sure, he didn't like Peter. And he'd mistakenly believed that he could somehow win her away from her boyfriend. And gotten friendly with her again the second Peter was apparently out of the picture, fleeing a potential mob of Spidey-haters. And told his co-worker that she was his girlfriend. Jesus! Brad! Maybe, in terms of motivation, he was capable of doing this to them. Maybe he seriously had zero ethics and was willing to take any action to get Peter out of the way so he could make another pass at MJ. That burger-eating, basketball-dribbling, persistent sonofabitch! She should have guessed this! But, wait, the reason she hadn't was that, as much of an asshole Brad definitely was, she didn't think there was any connection between him and that even bigger asshole, Quentin Beck. Brad had been running for his life same as the rest of them during the London attack. Besides, he'd already been proven inept once, when he tried to show her that picture of Peter with his pants down in an effort to make her suspicious of her boyfriend. Brad was a dick, not a criminal mastermind. To say otherwise would've just been flattering him.

"I get it," she concluded. "But I don't get it. How the hell did Brad manage to get his hands on that footage? And how was he not bragging about it when I went to see him at the Bugle? Was the humble intern thing just an act? It didn't seem like one."

"Well," Romanoff explained, "we also did a deep analysis of EDITH. The first time we examined EDITH's data, it was to study commands issued by Beck, during his time in possession of the glasses."

"My bad," Peter muttered. Distractedly, MJ squeezed his shoulder.

"The second time, we focused on Peter's time in control. It seems that one of his directives," the spy informed them with a smirk, "was ordering a drone strike on Brad Davis."

"What?" MJ demanded, turning to her boyfriend. "You tried to murder Brad?"

"Not on purpose!" he swore. "He was just pissing me off. He kept sitting next to you and you were so patient with him at the beginning, which he totally didn't deserve..."

Peter was getting himself wound up, so she cut him off.

"I know I made a mistake giving him the benefit of the doubt at the beginning, but a drone strike, Peter?"

He chuckled awkwardly.

"Just a little misunderstanding between me and EDITH."

"Well, what we've deduced from that attempted hit on Brad," Romanoff said, still smirking slightly, "is that Beck may have interpreted it as Brad being Peter's enemy. And of course, the enemy of Beck's enemy is, theoretically, his friend."

"That might be the one reasonable thought he ever had," Peter mused.

"Hold on," MJ interrupted. "How did Beck know about Peter almost killing Brad?"

"We assume through EDITH," the spy said.

"So then how did he get in contact with Brad?"

"He was watching your phones. Yours, Jones, plus a couple of your classmates. It was for the purpose of tracking you, using threats to your lives as leverage over Peter, but it looks like Beck got creative when he realized things weren't going his way."

"Brad didn't know," Peter said, sudden realization in his tone. "It was always Beck. He got access to Brad's phone and figured out he could use him to hurt me. Actually involving him would've been messy and unnecessary. Beck was a control freak. He acted like a team player, but it was him running the show. With me and with his people behind the scenes. Why would he tip off Brad, a random guy in my class, and risk Brad saying something or doing anything that would've screwed up his plans?"

"Beck planted the video in Brad's phone, then?" MJ asked, looking from her boyfriend to Romanoff.

"Yes," she said. "And there was something else interesting in Brad's phone. Something that would've provided even more incentive for Beck to smuggle the footage through this phone in particular. Brad Davis had recently received an email informing him that he'd been hired for a summer internship―"

"At the Daily Bugle."

Romanoff nodded solemnly.

"The footage was ready and waiting in Brad's phone, and when he connected to the Bugle's wifi, it uploaded, presumably without his knowledge."

"Then it just popped up in Jameson's inbox like a Hanukkah present," Peter guessed, crossing his arms. He looked like he was trying to contain his irritation, tucking it in close to himself. That would only hurt him, so MJ grabbed his hand and pulled it free, holding it securely in hers.

"Seed dispersal," she suddenly recalled.

"What?"

"At your party," she prompted. "Remember? What Stark said about bad guys sneaking a virus through with your homework to get at the compound's network. I thought it was just a bunch of bullshit he was saying to stop us from leaving to... Uh." MJ cleared her throat and didn't continue. No need to inform their audience that she and Peter had snuck off to bang during his birthday party. Granted, Romanoff had probably read their intention at the time, but MJ preferred not to overshare with the Princess of Wakanda too.

"Specifically," Romanoff said, getting them back on topic, "the footage popped up in his inbox through the paper's intranet, under the name of a sender we assume he would have reason to trust. A fact-checker," Romanoff clarified, glancing at the tablet she carried.

"Brad's cousin is a fact-checker at the Bugle. He told me the first time we talked about his internship."

"Sorry," Shuri said, jumping in. Incredibly, MJ had almost forgotten the presence of a princess, she was so focused on Romanoff's news. "Surely this cousin would have been asked about the email, or recognized in some way. Why would they not have said that they were not responsible for sending it?"

"I know the answer to this one," MJ volunteered, frowning. "Jameson's a human piece of garbage and a total tyrant to his staff, but he would've made whoever delivered something as valuable as the footage exposing Spider-Man's identity his new best friend. Obviously, some of us are morally upright enough to come forward with the truth no matter what, even if the truth was that we didn't know how that email came to be sent, but I bet working under Jameson really screws with your head. The cousin was probably just grateful for a reprieve. Plus, it's Brad's cousin. In that family, who knows what the moral standard was to begin with?"

"Ugh," Peter groaned.

"Ah," the princess said in comprehension.

"A team has been dispatched to collect Brad, bring him in to fill any holes in the story," Romanoff said.

"As much as I really, really hate him right now," MJ prefaced, "I have to object to Brad being snatched off the street and thrown into the back of a van. He does have certain basic rights as a human and a citizen of New York."

"Don't worry, we've done this before. He won't be harassed in any way, and, as a minor, his family and legal representation were contacted. There's no mysterious van. Not even a bag over the head."

"You sound disappointed."

"You might be projecting, Jones."

That was fair. MJ was pretty furious at Brad. This entire situation both was and wasn't his fault. If she and Peter had really broken up over Jameson's breaking news story, she would've at minimum had a shitty summer. But it was worse than that. Brad had indirectly ruined not just Peter's summer but his life. Yeah, they were fixing that, but it still made MJ want to egg Brad's house or whack him with her mace (spikes retracted, naturally). Fucking asshole.

"Brad will be interviewed," the spy said, "but then I thought Peter might like to speak with him, since he is such a close personal acquaintance." She smiled sarcastically.

"How do you know I won't just punch him in the face?" Peter wondered.

"You're better than that."

Romanoff didn't say it like a warning or an admonishment, just a fact. It was a fact that MJ strongly agreed with.

"Do you think we should go?" her boyfriend asked her as his hand tightened its grip on hers.

"Oh," she said, surprised, "I think this is just for you."

"I'm not confronting Brad without you. This has affected both of us and you're the one who's had to deal with him this summer."

MJ thought about it for a minute.

"Yeah, we should talk to him. Maybe being able to face him will give you, I don't know, closure? And we can put all this shit behind us."

He turned back to Romanoff.

"Ok," he told her. "We wanna see Brad."

He wasn't in a cell or an interrogation room or anything―just sitting in one of more than a dozen chairs in an otherwise empty conference room―when MJ walked in with Peter. The man she took to be Brad's lawyer passed them in the doorway. These signs, plus Romanoff's assurances (and MJ trusted her fairy spymother with her life), convinced her that Brad's rights were being observed and respected. She felt fully justified in proceeding unsympathetically. Maybe this was what being possessed by Cindy would feel like. Without her best friend here, MJ decided to be just as blunt, as focused, as unrelenting as Cindy would've been.

"'Sup," she began, eyes narrowed a little tighter than her casual appraisal.

"MJ," Brad said. He spoke her name in a weird tone, like he wanted to ask a question but already knew the answer, or to say there'd been a misunderstanding but had learned enough to accept the facts and his part in them.

MJ wanted to take the chair directly across from his, lean forward, and tear into him, but that honour belonged to Peter. She ceded the chair, nodding her boyfriend towards it, and sat down in the one to its right. Trying not to let the wheelie conference chair make her feel like the three of them were just a bunch of kids playacting, she drew close to the table and folded her arms on its thick glass surface. It was amazingly cold against her skin. Man, what this building's air conditioning bill must be...

"You're not gonna plead or anything, right?" was the startling launch of Peter's contribution to the conversation. "It'd be weird, Brad."

Brad laughed nervously.

"But nothing's going to happen to me," he stated, though it was clearly a question, from the anxious look in his eyes and the strained way he wasn't letting his smile drop. "None of what happened was actually my fault."

"Wasn't it?" MJ asked, giving him a hard stare. After a pause, she said, "Nah, I'm messing with you."

Peter pulled Brad's freaked-out eyes back to him.

"We understand that you didn't mean to expose me as Spider-Man―"

"Man, that's true? I knew you were shady, but―"

"Brad, just... just shut up," Peter requested. MJ fought to keep her grin contained. "Try to appreciate that I don't have to be nice or patient with you right now. Like I said, we know you weren't anything more than an ignorant tool..."

"That's you being nice to me? Fuck you, Parker."

MJ caught Peter glancing over at her from the corner of her eye, met his gaze, and looked away before the both of them could crack up.

"You'll be fine," her boyfriend told Brad seriously. "You were like... a messenger. And you didn't even know you were carrying a message. You're not gonna get in trouble for that."

"Are you sure? Because the Black Widow was giving me this stare like she wanted to snap my neck."

"That's how she makes friends," MJ joked dryly.

"Well, that's..." Brad swallowed and twitched his head. "...that's alright. As long as everyone understands that I'm innocent and, and that I never even thought Parker murdered that guy."

"I have a question. I don't know if they asked you this, but did you tell anybody that I was going to the Parkers' apartment?"

"I... I..."

"I was attacked there," she told him. "By two men. I fought them off. I mean, the bruises are mostly gone now, and my cheek isn't swollen anymore from where one of them hit me." MJ laughed a single, bitter laugh.

"Oh my god," Brad said, leaning towards her with his hands braced on the table. "MJ, I swear, I didn't repeat that to anyone. I don't know any hitmen and if I did I would never send them after you. I would never do anything to hurt you."

MJ was sure that Romanoff was probably listening to this conversation. Nevertheless, she'd make sure to let the spy know that the question of who'd tracked her to Peter's place the other night remained unanswered. Maybe someone still had access to Brad's phone and they'd treated it like a radio left on in the background, only really tuning in when any relevant information was being exchanged. Such as Cindy blurting out that MJ was visiting the Parkers'. Didn't matter how they'd found out, not really. The main thing was that they'd wanted to hurt her or take her (she was guessing not kill her, since they could've just, fuck, shot her or something instead of that whole fight). The Avengers had some more work to do, in MJ's opinion.

"Yeah, I don't think that's exactly true," she said. "You have been trying pretty hard to get between Peter and I."

"And not in a threesome way," Peter added. MJ blinked and turned her head to stare at him.

"Peter, what?"

"Sorry, I talked to Flash a lot this summer. Threesomes were a weirdly common topic for him."

"Anyway," she told Brad, "you were a total dirtbag and never respected our relationship."

"You're still together then," Brad said. "You've been together this whole time?"

He looked incredibly annoyed. Boy, what a short time it had taken from worrying about Romanoff rearranging his vertebrae to retaking his usual form as a home-wrecking asshole.

"Peter's identity being revealed and the way we had to weather the fallout brought us closer," MJ said. "That's maybe the biggest reason I believe you didn't know what was happening. You would never have intentionally done anything to strengthen Peter and I's relationship."

"Aww," Peter said, making her roll her eyes.

He reached over to take her hand, but she decided to do him one better. MJ pushed away from the desk and grabbed the back of Peter's chair, wheeling him backwards as well. Then, she sat down in his lap. She took several seconds to savour the look on Brad's face. Just as the resignation seemed to be setting in, she turned her head and kissed Peter, Spider-Man, her boyfriend. Instantly, he was kissing her back, one hand on her waist and the other deep in her hair.

"Oh, come on," she heard Brad mutter.

MJ smiled against Peter's mouth, not breaking the kiss.

Author's Note:

Thanks for reading and commenting as we approach the end! Just two chapters to go! Favourite moment in this one?

In the next chapter, the Parkers move home to Queens and Peter has something to say...

To be continued...