Days of Pretending

Chapter 4: Daisy Chain Jane

It was three weeks later. Yes, three very wonderful weeks had passed since their sunset-lit slumber, and things were going better than either Mary Jane or Peter expected. Satisfaction could be guaranteed after all; never before had either of the two been more complete, more overjoyed, more content. Both marveled at the amazing experience of a kiss, the incredibility of a smile, the sensation of being together.

Peter had spent many nights thinking of the time they had spent together. He recalled picnics in Central Park under a great oak tree, the leaves falling around them, the blue blanket fluttering in the breeze as they shook the dirt from it. He remembered snuggling with hot coffee under a quilt in front of old reruns. Peter thought about sitting in ancient cafes, reading books to each other, laughing over comics. He remembered the curves of her fingertips, the way their hands fit together, the lines on her palm.

So, three weeks later found Peter Parker tapping on Mary Jane's apartment door, this memories that were so close running through his brain. He was begging in the thumping to be allowed in. The door flew open promptly. "Peter!" she exclaimed, craning her flushed head out of the doorway. He could not get over the way she looked, the beauty of her smile, the elegance of her form and manner. Her grin lit up his life. He took a step towards her.

It was then that she gasped.

Peter stood holding the prettiest bouquet of flowers she had ever seen. The colors of the rainbow bloomed before her, wrapped in red tissue paper. She swallowed a very strong emotion in the back of her throat and snapped her jaw back into place. "Peter?" she asked incredulously, motioning to the blossoms.

"Yeah, for you," Peter said proudly, thrusting them into her stunned hands.

Shakily, she brought the package to her face and sniffed the exotic aroma, amazed. Things she had felt recently, like knots deep inside of her, choked her voice into an inaudible whisper. "You shouldn't have," she said with a smile.

Peter blushed and scuffed his foot along the floor, embarrassed yet overjoyed at Mary Jane's reaction to the flowers he had bought her. She again buried her face in the red and purple petals and inhaled the sweet aroma, her eyelashes fluttering as the smell weakened her.

"Well, it is your birthday," he explained, fidgeting. "I wanted to, anyway."

"They're beautiful," she told him, her eyes meeting his. "Thank you, Peter." Her smile brightened.

 "Can I come in?" he asked, dragging a hand through her hair softly.

"Maybe," Mary Jane responded with a grin. "If I said that you couldn't, would you swing in through my window?" she asked him. Her eyes penetrated him, her lips smirked, and she dared him to answer. Thunder answered her deep inside his chest.

"Yeah," he admitted, scooting himself up to her. "You think a lousy window would keep me out of your house?" He made a pass to step into the apartment, but she gently forbade him to enter by keeping her ground in front of him. She was very close.

"But that would be breaking-and-entering, Mr. Righteous," the redheaded woman reminded him, her whispers trailing on his neck. Her eyes danced down to his parted lips.

"Watson, you're thinking very logically," Peter teased, running a thumb over her cheek. "But you've forgotten something entirely." He closed in on her, his lips an inch away, his hands playing with the hair at the base of her neck.

"What's that?" she breathed, her eyes fluttering up to gaze into his own blue orbs. Her spare hand ventured up his chest, fiddling with his tie, tracing little circles.

 "Why would you ever lock me out in the first place?" he asked her cockily yet quietly, his fingers weaving into her fiery red mane. She smiled, but soon her expression softened. The longing in his eyes reached deep into the pit of her soul.

Mary Jane reached out to tug on his red tie and drag his face and lips down to hers. The pale and dark blossoms brushed against his shirt as they kissed, the leaves spilling over the paper they were wrapped in, a spare daisy falling to the floor, unnoticed. Lips lingered. When the paper made a slight crunching noise, they broke the kiss, not wanting to squish the beautiful plants. "If I am thanked like this every time I give you flowers, I'll buy you flowers every day," Peter told her flirtatiously, laughing in unison with his girlfriend.

"Being saucy like that might get you locked out," Mary Jane said jokingly, drawing him in by his tie. Peter smirked at the way she led him around like a little puppy dog, like she possessed him. He stepped on the fallen flower, crushing it obliviously.

She laid the bouquet down on the counter and kicked the door closed behind them, still gripping his tie. "Are you going to let me go?" he asked with mock suspicion in his voice.  She glanced up at him as she moved the flowers away from the edge of the counter.

"No," she responded mischievously. "I kind of think this is fun."

"Oh, c'mon, MJ, please?" Peter Parker begged, laughing. He was silenced when she kissed him again, her lips covering his own, swallowing his words just as he spoke them. He felt himself give a little bit under her mouth as she tempted him with her kisses along his cheek and the edge of his jaw.

"Will you stop being so tense?" Mary Jane whispered in her lover's ear. "I'd like to put you at ease."

"Whatever you're doing, it's working," he said cautiously, letting his eyes fall close as her lips dances across his face, touching as lightly as butterflies might.

Mary Jane smiled. "I just want to thank you for always looking out for me, for taking care of me. I just thought that you ought to rest and have someone else look after you for a while. You really need a break," she told him insistently, pressing a kiss upon his forehead. "Now, you go lay on the couch while I put these lovely flowers in a glass or something." He obeyed, taking off his tie and unbuttoning the top button of his shirt.

Mary Jane arranged the flowers with celerity in a plastic vase that she had purchased a long time ago. She turned back to see Peter tossing his tie on her coffee table. The red of his costume peeked out from underneath the shirt's collar.

"Peter," she said, motioning with a hand. "Your costume is showing," she explained to his confused look.

He glanced down. "Oh!" he said with surprise, promptly buttoning up the shirt again.

"Why don't you just take off the costume?" she asked him with a shrug, coming to sit down next to him.

"I can't," Peter answered with a shake of his head. He finished buttoning the collar up. "What if I have to run off at a moment's notice to help someone? I can't do it without my costume and be seen. It would lead to too much publicity, to too much confusion." He raked a hand through his hair.

"I thought you were supposed to relax," she said with a faint smile, laying a hand on Peter's own. "Remember?" A little part of her cringed, knowing Peter might have to leave abruptly at any time. He was right, of course, but it frightened her to think of him as such a puppet of the city. 

"I know. But it's hard," Peter told her. "I just guess I can't get away from it, from Spider-man."

"It might help to take it off for a while," Mary Jane suggested. "Just for a little bit, maybe?" She gave him hand a slight squeeze, her eyes encouraging him.

"No," he said with a sigh. Please don't push me further, Mary Jane. I don't want another person to end up like my uncle because I didn't feel like getting up.

Her face fell. "Tell me, Peter, what happens when you're in the shower and your costume is off and you can't get to it and someone calls out for help?" she asked. She had not meant to use an example with such graphic imagery inside her head. It made them both duck their heads and blush.

"It hasn't happened before," he said with an uneasy shrug.

"And if it did?"

"I would jump out of the shower as fast as I could and hope I got there in time," he responded.

"And if you didn't?"

"I-" His breath caught in his throat. His hand quivered beneath her hand. She did not see from his eyes, understand the way he had helplessly watched his uncle die, or cry when he saw a robber get away. She did not understand what it was like to lose an uncle who was more than a father. "I would feel awful."

"Why?" she asked him, leaning in. "Why would you feel so bad? You were not the one who committed the crime. It would not your fault," she argued.

"Yes, it would be," he responded, his eyes flickering with an emotion she had never seen him possess before. "Don't you see? I would be just as bad, because I have the power to do something, and in doing nothing with that power, I would be guilty." There was a long pause while Peter shifted in his seat, looking out of the window with a very longing look in his eyes. "My uncle said to me once that if I had a great power, I had to use it. So I do." Mary Jane bit her lip, regretting that she had brought up such a topic.

The redhead was silent as she held Peter's hand, feeling the warmth of his touch to be very comforting, even when he was the one who seemed to need the consolation most. After a moment, he got up awkwardly. "I think I'll take it off, just to see," he told her. He didn't know why he wanted to remove the costume. He rarely did, only to shower and to wash it and to sometimes sleep. He wanted to know what it felt like to not wear it, regularly to not be Spider-man underneath. A part of him had forgotten what it was like to be weak and powerless, what is was like be a normal human being rather than a goddamn freak show to be marveled at. Didn't he miss being just the average kid? Maybe being Spider-man was better than being teased or getting beat up; and, yet, perhaps it wasn't.

He just wanted to remember who he had been, the boy next door to Mary Jane who talked about dreams across the gate, the one who used to study and feed off of science as if the study were his life force, the young man approaching adulthood who still had to deal with things like facial hair and prom dates.

He wanted to go back, maybe for five minutes. It might be nice to reminisce.

Mary Jane nodded and he left, going into the bathroom. She sat there for a very long minute while Peter removed the costume, twiddling her thumbs, still sick with regret and so carelessly bringing up the sore subject. In the bathroom, he removed his shirt and pants and finally the costume. He threw it onto the floor, letting the different pieces of the ensemble sit there, forgotten, while he put his ordinary pale blue shirt and dark gray slacks over his underclothes.  He looked in the mirror, feeling naked without the red suit on. It was on the floor, not on him, he reminded himself.

Peter exited with the costume in his hands. Mary Jane twisted to see him come out and put the costume defiantly on a chair behind him, where he couldn't see it. "It… it does feel good to have it off," he told her honestly, making a tiny smile at her. He exhaled deeply and powerful, feeling like he was free of a very large burden for a very short time.

He wasn't Spider-man. He did not have to save the city, rescue human race. He was just a young man trying to get through a regular old life now. He was not Spider-man for five minutes!

Mary Jane nodded and bit her lip, her eyes watering up just as his own did. "It feels… really, really good,"
he added, his voice lighter. A huge smile suddenly sprang across his face. "It feels great." Mary Jane jumped to her feet and ran to him, skidding on the cheap tiles to slide into his arms. He let out a choked sob into her shoulder as they collided before being reduced to soft sniffles and gasps.

"Mary Jane, I hate Spider-man. I hate him. He suffers too much. It feels so good to not be him at all," Peter told her, wiping his eyes on his shirt cuff. Mary Jane shushed him, soothed his whimpers, running a hand over his muscled shoulders. Her heart leapt into her throat to realize that there was no faint raised web design under the shirt, no red and blue fabric acting as a middle man. There was skin under it, real skin, real flesh and bone, the kind she knew and recognized, the stuff that was important and palatable to her. There was a real human, not Spider-man, underneath his clothes.

Perhaps Peter realized it at the same time, because right then he took the chance to kiss her passionately, all his rage and his love and his fear flowing out through his lips as she took away all his thoughts and relaxed him, melted him.

"Mary Jane," he said, breathless, forgetting what he'd meant to say exactly. "Mary Jane, I love you."

Mary Jane threw back her hair and laughed, the red hair spilling like a waterfall down her back in a gentle cascade, because it felt so damn good to hear Peter say it. "Oh, Peter, I love you, too," she replied as she laughed, taking him up in her arms and kissing him again wherever her lips happened to fall.

"C'mon," she begged him, wrapping both Peter's hands in her own in some unidentifiable knot that wouldn't ever untangle, "come with me." Mary Jane dragged him down to the couch and just held him, arms across his back and shoulders, rocking him back and forth as he lay in her arms like a little babe, a newborn who was just realizing for the first time who he really was inside the mess of a world. Sometimes she did murmur little things, words of love and thanks and praise, but Peter liked it when Mary Jane was silent, too, when he could just concentrate on their sounds of their breathing together. He fell to daydreaming about the verdant hue of her eyes.

It seemed like it had been gloriously endless days when they at last parted their embrace. Softly, Peter kissed Mary Jane's petal-soft lips, thanking her with tongue but no words. She yielded to his advance, hanging to him for strength and hope. Peter broke their kiss unwillingly, hesitantly, looking into her eyes for reassurance. She smiled very faintly and ran a hand against his face. "Peter, you never cease to amaze me," she told him in a voice that was softer than angel wings flapping in the wind. "You are so good-hearted, so gentle." She giggled. "Kiss me again, please. You're a good kisser."

"Am I?" he repeated, leaning down to capture her lips yet again as they unfolded.

"I can vouch for you," she whispered out between the kiss. That made him laugh.

If anyone was in need, Peter did not hear them calling. Maybe it was the costume, which lay discarded carelessly on the floor, that blocked out anything. But Peter did not mind the silence, because he was deaf for hours to everything but the sweet whispers and chuckles of the beautiful woman who had taken everything away.  

But it was watching him with its dead silver eyes. The mask cast a knowing glance across the room, beckoning, undeniably right. After all, as much as Peter loved being free of the damned thing, he never could be ever again, not after knowing that he could be Spider-man and do good. The costume laughed, throwing back its ugly red head and rearing up triumphantly, knowing it would always prevail in the depth of Peter's mind.

Slipping into darkness as the moon plunged up into the well of the night sky, Peter and Mary Jane fell apart from each other's presence like vines torn from the soil. Peter could not help but feel his entire insides welling up in denial and procrastination as he saw the costume on the other side of the room. He looked away from its cursed color back to Mary Jane.

"I need to go put my costume on," he said. He was right, unfortunately. He had to do it. He could never forget to put it on. He could never forget it, not ever, just like he could never forget the look in his uncle's eyes, or the dying smile, or the gunshots. It would always call him, beckon with webbed fingers curling, its mouth-less face grinning.

Peter unwound Mary Jane's hands from his bare back, retrieved his shirt – which had somehow ended off of him – and turned to the costume. Mary Jane watched his face fall as he looked at it. She knelt on the floor in front of the couch, her arms resting upon its seat, her unusual position about as out of place as the fire-engine red suit in her living room. Peter picked it up swiftly, his brows knitted together, and made a grand entrance into the bathroom.

When he returned, Mary Jane could have cried. He was buttoning the top button as he came out, and she could see the red peeking out over the edge. A glow in his face had diminished to a steady flickering that was lessening more and more. He looked caged, captive, aloof. She did not like the way he looked at all. He was Peter, but he was Spider-man now, too. A very wretched part of her thought that maybe she loved Peter less this way.

"I had best be going. How about you come over to my place for dinner Tuesday night?" he asked her very serenely as the maelstrom of thoughts whooshed through his brain.

"Yeah, that'd be nice," she said with a smile, helping herself to her feet. "Thanks for the flowers."

"Happy birthday," he said to her, extending his arms to her and embracing her choppily. He had forgotten how restricting the fabric could be; it wasn't skin, after all. They kissed solemnly, very carefully, because there was another person in the room, watching them, a person without a face, only eyes. She released him slowly, fingers unpeeling, grasp loosening but never really letting go until he was so far away she couldn't touch him. Mary Jane smiled and Peter returned the motion before making his way to the door and looking back, eyes meeting hers. It was strange, like there was something he couldn't say or do, like he was only half of himself. The whole thing was formal and tight and messy. Something was missing.

You're not the same now. It was a mistake to take off the costume, wasn't it? Because now you know. Now you know what it would be like to not be Spider-man, and you want it again, but you can't have it. That longing's going to be destructive. It's going to ruin you, because you can never attain the impossible, and it's going to make you explode inside. Peter, I'm sorry I said it. I wish you had remained naïve, but I am too convincing for our own good, she thought bitterly and angrily as he fell back from her.

"Bye," he said, taking a step and then turning back to face her. He fumbled for the door handle behind him, opened it, and stepped out backwards, not wanting to break the contact their eyes had. Mary Jane, he thought with the words he couldn't manage to say, don't be angry at me. I can't react now. I'm two people again, and it feels a little weird, a little strange. I feel like I can't give all of myself to you. What's with that? But I love you. That's enough. Don't think I'm an oddball for not knowing what to feel, but I feel like a traitor, knowing that I'm limited by who I am.

"Bye," she whispered, and the door closed. She sat there, not knowing quite what to do. She got up and went to admire the flowers. She plucked out a daisy, looking at all the petals, their crisp whiteness. They really were beautiful.

Mary Jane remembered her childhood, cold days of sorrow outside of the house she did not like at all, and how she spent lonely afternoons sitting out in the back yard with flowers in her hair. She remembered chains she would make of daisies, how she went parading through the grass with her crown of dandelions, and the way the air smelled on those free days when she was not herself. It was those times she wanted to escape things she couldn't understand.

So she started to weave, making a daisy chain, knotting together a few stems.

The flowers bloomed against her pale hands as she tied together a few more stems. The daisies were white and large and elegant, with pale porcelain faces that had no expression and were open for interpretation. The chain was getting long. The daisies spread across the table in a linked cord. There was about three feet of it, and she held the creation up and examined it.

He loves me, he loves me not, she thought. It was silly to ask. Of course Peter loved her. But could he? There was suddenly the realization that Spider-man curbed things in the relationship. She did not like where things were heading.

She plucked a flower. "He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not," she said as she yanked off a few petals. She ended on "he loves me." The petals blew off of the table as she sighed against her will.

Doesn't he? Yes. He loves me. He's willing to sacrifice everything for me. He loves me, he does, but why did I feel for a moment there like he didn't, like he didn't know if he did or not? Peter, why is this so weird suddenly? she thought with a cry echoing inside of her mind. Spider-man is making things weird. You love me, but you feel bad because Spider-man holds a part of you still. You still have to be cautious and silent. You must remember that Spider-man brings trouble.

"Damn it all to hell!" she screamed suddenly, picking up the chain and rushing to the window. She threw the thing out, letting it fall. Petals – and Peter – knew nothing about love. They did not know what was right to do, what was wrong to do. They didn't know anything at all.

~~~

AN: At long last, chapter 4 is finally complete.  Hurray! Well, hand me some tissues right now, kiddies, 'cause I might just cry for a number of reasons:

1.) I love this chapter. It kind of is cliché, I know. God, I hate it when my things come out that way, but there's just some sappy lines that just seem very unrealistic, but you know, that's life. This chapter is really sad, though, at least in my humble opinion. I mean, they're so helpless to circumstances. Peter just cannot escape Spider-man and everything that Spider-man represents, everything Spider-man is responsible for. He hates it, but he feels too damn bad to give up being the masked man. And MJ just can't get enough of Peter, and she's getting a little tense, a little awkward, a little disoriented. I feel bad for both MJ and Peter, though I can't say I feel worse for either of them. Poor kiddies! Why the hell am I torturing them? Because trial leads to something great, silly kids.  

2.) I got so few reviews last chapter. What was it, like 3? Those of you who wrote to me, I love you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But that really upset me that I got so few reviews. Cheri, you are a goddess because you recommended me. I cannot possibly be any more appreciative of that! Please, folks, talk about me. *cough* It would be nice if you said good things, but, sure, I'll take criticism over nothing any day of the week. You're all so kind!  

This was one of those chapters where I knew what I wanted to happen, what feelings I wanted to be felt, but I wasn't sure how I was going to get to that point. The flowers for her b-day came out as being a really cliché sort of boyfriend-thing. Blah to that. But, well, the rest came out kind of good, maybe slightly cliché. I liked how it turned out with her loving him more with the costume off, somehow. It was meant to be very symbolic. People do actually think in that way, sometimes. I can't think of an example right now, but people make teeny weenie brain associations, don't you think? Anyways, the ending was my favorite. Best line of the whole thing: "A very wretched part of her thought that maybe she loved Peter less this way."

I am so big on symbolism in this story. I'm just so excited. I have the best plan. Let's just say that I love parallel situations (when the same sort of situation occurs again but the characters react differently). This fic right now doesn't seem to have a definite conflict as of now, though you might see one forming by this point. Look around the story. There are so many things that are just screaming "symbolism" and "foreshadowing" for a special hint.

Yes, because I have not yet said this, Spider-man and all related characters and plotlines do not belong to me, but to Marvel Comics and Stan Lee, etc. I do not own them; do not sue me, etc. Thanks a ton for reading my abbreviated disclaimer.