It wasn’t about that. It was never about that. Peter always thought he had the carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Everything was on him. It was his burden. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. Just once, MJ wished she would let him shoulder that burden. The bags weren’t just bags. It wasn’t about them being heavy, because they weren’t. She knew he felt like this entire incident was on him, and it wasn’t. Nothing she could say would change his mind.
If the roles were reversed and he had been in the hospital, she knew she’d be doing everything to help him. It wasn’t like she blamed him, she only wished he would let her help him help her. Peter was so bad at accepting help. It was difficult.
“I can still hold something,” she grumbled, squeezing his hand back. She gasped at that and glared at him. “I’m very graceful, I’ll have you know. I always have been.” She wasn’t here because of a lack of grace. That wasn’t what had landed her in this horrible building. Whether or not she was attacked because of who she was, or more specifically who he was, remained unanswered, but it certainly wasn’t her doing.
They left the room behind, along with the white walls and smell of cleaner, and headed down to the familiarity of a car they’d both been in many times before. MJ was eager to get away from this. If she could leave this building behind, could eventually leave behind the cast, she could move past it. As if she could sprint from the trauma, pick up the speed and run until the entire thing was behind her. Like she could outrun the dreams and the haunting and the damage done to both of them. Maybe she could run so fast, her chest heaving, that she could pretend the entire thing hadn’t happened.
What was going to become of them? She’d tried so hard to silence the worries and the pestering voice, but she saw the way he looked at her. She saw the look in his eyes, the fear behind his smile. He was so worried that she’d end up six feet under that he saw a ghost when he looked at her face instead of the very much alive woman who was just begging him to love her as Peter Parker and not Spider-Man. Just once, she wanted him to be Peter, to push aside the need to do something and hold her hand, kiss her cheek. be here.
He had a great responsibility as Spider-Man, she knew that. But sometimes he got so caught up in that, in what he thought he had to do, that he forgot the other hats he wore. Sure, Peter was Spider-Man. But he was also Peter Parker, the love of her life, the only person who’d ever made her feel safe. And not because he was strong, not because he could kill anyone if he felt he needed to. He made her feel safe because she didn’t need to work so hard. She didn’t have to prove herself to him. She didn’t have to show him she was worth so much. She could be Mary Jane with him. She could be her most vulnerable self with him. And it was okay.
Maybe that was changing. Maybe she had to be careful not to let him see how upset she was. Maybe she needed to work harder to protect him. There was a lot of responsibility in being Spider-Man’s girlfriend, and she played it off, but maybe she shouldn’t.
“You aren’t going to let me do anything, are you?” she asked, eyeing him as they reached the car. “I’m still perfectly capable, you know,” she said softly.
Peter laughed. “No, I’m not,” he said.
On paper, they didn’t make sense. A world-class nerd, maybe the only person deserving of the term dweeb in the twenty-first century; the popular, outgoing would-be movie star next door. The first time he’d ever seen her, framed by the chipped paint of the doorframe, that smile he would come to know so well playing on her lips, he forgot how to speak. It was a whole teen movie cliche, his tongue-tied bumbling, spending years watching her in silhouette, hopelessly in love with the idea of her. The only explanation anyone could come up with (and the internet had sure tried) was that MJ wanted the thrill of dating a superhero. There was no allowance made for the fact that they’d known each other long before the Spider-Man of it all, or that they’d started dating before that particular secret was out.
On paper, they didn’t make sense. But in person, they fit perfectly. It wasn’t just the way her hand locked into his like it was made for it, or the way her heart beat in time with his. She was much better at hiding it, but Peter had seen the way MJ carried the weight of the world with her everywhere she went, hiding in her laughter and her flirting and her charm. For all he’d suffered, she’d endured worse, and she hadn’t had super strength to help her out. She definitely hadn’t had Ben and May, even though they’d done their best to look out for her.
Still, she’d come out of it dazzling.
And he was going to ruin her. Just by associating with him, there was a target on her back. This was the first to come of many, he could feel it. Not spider sense, just knowing. Patterns, history, experience. As long as he was Spider-Man, and she was with him, she was in danger. (All his attachments were, really. What a horrible web he’d woven.) Bad things came in threes; it was only a matter of time.
He couldn’t carry the weight of her, but he could at least carry her bags. He could hold her hand and hold her tight and make sure this never happened again, no matter the cost. He wasn’t that dumbstruck teenage boy in Forest Hills anymore, but she was still the girl standing in his doorway, years of hurt tucked away behind a show-stopping facade. They shouldn’t have gotten here, but they had. So where did they go next?
They started with the car. Slowly, carefully, Peter released her hand to heft open the trunk and slide her bags inside. Before the spider, it had been sticky, and getting the lid to stay shut had taken a full-body slam. Now, he could do it one-handed. May jumped out of the front seat and grabbed the door for MJ, and they all slid inside, ensconced in the pilling seats and time-worn smell of the thing. Safe. Normal. Heading home. For now.
He took her hand in his again, wrapped an arm around her tightly, straining against the old ribbony seatbelts, and kissed her forehead. “Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you have to.”
