May, Peter, and Pepper (Make a Family)
At the end of dinner, they go to part at the door, and Peter gives Pepper and May a chance to have a private conversation to themselves by heading to the kitchen and starting up the washing and drying of the dishes that he and May normally do together on the rare night that they don’t eat directly out of take-out boxes.
Leaning against the doorjamb for just a moment, Pepper says, “Y’know, he reminds me of Tony a lot—though only the good bits, don’t worry. You have a really great kid on your hands, dear.”
As much as May’s heart blooms to hear the pet name from Pepper’s ears—seems as if there’s never an age where sweet things stop making your heart beat like a teenager’s—there is something wistful in Pepper’s smile as she says it, and it’s only now that May really starts to think about the fact that it really does seem like her girlfriend is in love with two people at once.
See, it’s not like May and Ben. Ben is dead and gone.
Tony is right there, and yes, Pepper and him are broken up, but she’s learned enough about their relationship by now to know that their relationship goes through cycles like this, where they break up due to superhero-related issues but that they’re always, inevitably, drawn back to each other, because they love each other too much to let go.
And May can’t begrudge Pepper from having a heart large enough to love two people, can she?
(What she can be worried about, though, is something similar happening to Pepper as happened to her. Losing the ones she loves to danger and superheroes and the like. May would never want Pepper to have her ghosts like May does.)
Pepper leaves with a kiss at the door, the sort of kiss that tastes just a bit of new beginnings as it does of endings, of nebulae as much as supernovas, and May heads back to the kitchen, where she finds Peter helping wash the dishes.
May doesn't want to admit how her heart is in her mouth as she says, “So, what do you think, sweetheart?”
There is a reassurance on the tip of May’s tongue: I’m not trying to replace Ben. She’s never going to replace him, not really. But she makes me happy, and so do you, and—
“I like her,” Peter says, “She makes you laugh.”
-aletterinthenameofsanity, wishing I was gone, going home (where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me)
Written for Day Twenty-Five of @monthlywritingchallenges' MoonJune: Halo.
kianamaiart
gummygunk
andulkaphoto
titsay
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
stormborns
