Perpendicular

EPILOGUE

Two Years Later

"If you open that door, Peter Parker, I swear to god, I will murder you."

Peter nudges the door with his foot, just enough so that it gives an inch, creaking audibly. Immediately he hears the rustle of fabric, and the noise of MJ squealing in protest.

"Peter!"

"Aw, come on." A grin splits across his face. He isn't really going to open the door. Over the course of his life he's grown out of a lot of things, but he doubts that teasing MJ will ever get old. "You don't really believe in that old wives' tale, do you?"

MJ replies without missing a beat: "If you want to have any tales about your old wife, you will keep that door shut."

Peter sighs, loudly enough for her to hear, and leans against the wall that is separating the two of them. It's half past nine, and he's been dressed for at least an hour. It was MJ's idea to rent a tux—the only thing sexier than spandex, she had quipped—so Peter had obliged, but now he is itching at the too-tight collar and the stiff sleeves, wishing he had something less uncomfortable to wear. Which is probably a little ironic considering his usual getup.

Just then Aunt May's head pokes out of the door. Peter startles in alarm at the severity of her expression.

"It's bad luck to see the bride before the wedding," she chastises him.

He throws his hands up in mock surrender. "Alright, alright, I'll go."

Aunt May's expression softens slightly. "She looks beautiful," she says, glancing back.

Peter smiles easily at this. "I know."

On the first day of classes his junior year in college, Peter walked to class feeling sorry for himself. He was late, but that wasn't particularly unusual for him. It's just that this time it was because some punk had made off with the skateboard after he abandoned it to go stop a burglary—which was only typical. He saves an innocent person's stuff from getting looted, and in return he gets his only socially acceptable form of transportation swiped out from under him.

There were plenty of other reasons to be feeling sorry for himself that day—no sleep, the existential angst of having a secret identity, not to mention the torture of seeing Gwen across the hall every other day—but when he stalked toward the English room, the skateboard was the slight primarily on his mind.

Just before he reached the room he heard the slap of sneakers across the hardwood of the otherwise abandoned hall. He turned around at the racket, to see a girl with bright red hair and blisteringly red cheeks gasping behind him, making a break for the same room he was headed toward.

"Chill pill," he muttered under his breath as she passed.

He wasn't expecting the girl to stop short, her beat up converse skidding on the floor. "Excuse me?"

Peter stood there blinking at her. He hadn't meant for her to hear. "Uh."

"Listen, jerk," she said, rounding on him and pointing a menacing finger at his chest. Peter had to stifle a derisive laugh—no matter how tall she tried to hold herself, the top of her head barely reached his chin. "I just ran seventy blocks to get here and I'm in no mood for some snide comment from the peanut gallery."

Before Peter could construct any sort of response, she pushed back her admittedly sweaty hair behind her with an indignant whip, and stalked into the English room. Shaking his head, Peter waited a moment for her to clear the doorway, and then followed suit.

"Excellent," the professor drawled as he entered. "I was about to explain to Miss Watson here that the rest of the class has already partnered up for our online discussion boards."

Peter followed the professor's gaze to the angry redhead from not two seconds earlier. When his eyes caught hers, her eyebrows immediately furrowed into a scowl.

"You two will be partnered up for the remainder of the semester."

Peter nodded at the professor, making his way to the back of the room, but not before catching the girl engaged in what might have been the most melodramatic eye roll he had ever borne witness to. And of course, because of Murphy's Law, the only seat left would be the one right next to her. He ducked down his head, but he could feel the girl's scowl on him the whole way down the aisle. Great, he thought to himself. One more grievance to add to his already multiplying list.

As soon as the professor gave them a ten minute break to discuss their plans for the discussion board, the girl gave him one cursory glance and then engaged in picking off her purple nail polish with her thumb.

"I'm MJ," she said, glumly.

"Peter." He extended his hand out to shake, but if he was hoping for a chance to get off to a better start, it was dashed when she completely ignored him. Instead she rifled through her backpack, revealing a mess that rivaled Peter's own: scraps of papers, a bunch of play books, a bright purple planner whose pages were dented and stained. He took his hand back and tried again. "So what's MJ stand for?"

"Mary Jane," she said. She found the notebook she was looking for and set it on her desk with a thunk. She turned and finally looked at him, and for a brief moment he was struck by how huge her eyes were, big and green and demanding. With the red cheeks and the short stature there was something childish about her, or innocent, maybe, but just as soon as Peter had this thought she opened her mouth and said in an unnecessarily blunt manner, "I have a boyfriend."

Peter shifted uncomfortably in his chair, looking away from her. "So what?"

She tucked a strand of red hair behind her ear, and it immediately slipped and cascaded back down over her face. "He goes to Yale."

"That's … that's great. Good for him."

"Sorry. I'm just saying, because last time I had a partner in an English class he was totally hitting on me and it was really uncomfortable, so normally I try to pair up with girls. But, well." She gestured at him lamely.

He stared at her, bewildered. Of course, this girl didn't know him—she had no reason to understand that only was Peter uninterested, but that he would never be interested, even if he wanted to. The force that pulled him to Gwen was disastrously unshakeable. They may not have spoken in two years, but she was still the first thought he had when he woke up in the morning, the last he had when he fell asleep at night, and the mere sight of her unlocking the door to her apartment was enough to send him into an existential tailspin that left him sulking for days.

And even if it weren't for Gwen, it was more than a little obnoxious for this Mary Jane to think that she was so irresistible herself that she had to stop him from drooling all over her.

"I honestly don't think we're going to have a problem," he said, hoping to knock her down a peg.

She straightened her posture prissily. "Well, good," she said, sounding just a tad defensive. Maybe he shouldn't have been so harsh. But before he could find some way to soften his words, she peered at him suspiciously. "You know, you actually look kind of familiar."

Peter only shrugged. "I don't recognize you from anywhere."

"Huh." She glanced up at the board, squinting to read the assignment. Peter followed her gaze.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream," she read out loud, and then her face burst into a smile so unexpected and bright that Peter might have forgotten that mere seconds ago she had found multiple ways to backhandedly insult him. "Hah! I just took a Shakespeare intensive for drama majors, this assignment's gonna be a breeze."

Somehow Peter doubted this. "Great," he said, already betting that this semester would seem like the longest one yet.

She pulled out a copy of the play, already annotated with messy handwriting and creased post-it notes. "Face it, jackass," she said, pushing the play across her desk so he could see. "You just hit the jackpot."

Peter forfeits his spot by the dressing room door, heading for the exit to get some fresh air. It's a little church that they're in, one that neither of them are even vaguely affiliated with, but the wedding is small and the church was happy to oblige on a weekday morning.

Peter leaves out the front door and is hit by a wall of city noise. It's bustling and grating, but somehow perfect for clearing his head. Not that his head is in particular need of clearing—Peter has been confident for a long time now that this day would come, no matter the trials and obstacles that led them here. Still, there is something about the month of September, about the cool wind and the subtle shift of the city, that makes him that much more sure. September is the month of beginnings, and he and MJ are ready for theirs.

He leans against the wall of the church, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Maybe he's a little nervous. Call it rotten luck, or maybe just the Parker luck, but he can't name a single important event in his life that hasn't been somehow interrupted by a super villain, a bank robbery, or some sort of ridiculous extenuating circumstance. He ditched his own college graduation to yank workers out of a burning warehouse. He missed Aunt May's birthday to help round up genetically altered animals from the Central Park Zoo. The very moment he'd planned to propose to Gwen—

Well. It's not often that he thinks about her these days, but there it is, inevitably wedging its way in.

"Peter. The minister was wondering if you wanted him to have a copy of your vows."

He turns to his aunt. "A copy?"

Aunt May nods patiently. Her hair is done up elegantly, and she is dressed in pastel greens and pinks, flushed with the kind of joy that he wishes he saw on her face more often. Thankfully Mary Jane always seems to have a knack for drawing it out of her.

"Peter," she says, glancing at his tuxedo, as if there are secret pockets in it where something might be hiding. "Tell me you didn't lose your vows."

"I didn't write any."

"You didn't write any?" Aunt May repeats, her voice catching at the end of the question. She glances worriedly back at the church, and then to him, scolding, "The ceremony is going to start any minute."

Peter waves her off, smiling at her affectionately. "I'll be fine," he says, and he knows it's true. The thing about being in love with a girl like Mary Jane and having a night job as a masked super freak is that it's impossible to have a Plan A, or even a Plan B or C—the two of them are unpredictable, always keeping each other on their toes, and it would seem forced and trivial to try and change that now by trying to capture it all in words.

Besides, he doesn't need a piece of paper to remind him how he feels about Mary Jane. One look at her is all it will take.

There was one word that frequently popped into Peter's head whenever he saw Mary Jane that first year he knew her, and it wasn't a nice one.

"Cockblock?" Gwen guffawed when Peter finally expressed his concern. "Jeez, Peter, you'd think you could keep it in your pants for one night."

"It isn't just one night," Peter replied, his face hot with embarrassment. He wished he just hadn't said anything, but now that it was out there, in the open, he might as well commit. "It's just that every time I come over she's here. Sitting on your couch. Sleeping on your floor. Using my toothpaste—"

"She's my best friend," Gwen defended her. She leaned forward, arching her back and tiptoeing gracefully to peck him on the mouth. "You two could maybe just learn to get along? Spare me for an hour or two."

"Toothpaste."

"She said it was an accident. Let it goooo," Gwen pleaded, crossing the room to stretch out on the couch. She raised an eyebrow suggestively. Gwen was one of the few people he knew whose eyebrows were capable of moving independently of each other, which was something he only ever noted because that eyebrow raise usually meant good things for him. "Besides, we're alone right now, aren't we?"

"Not for long," he said, maybe a little unfairly—but then, before either of them could so much as remove a sock, he heard the doorknob jiggling and the sound of Mary Jane's voice in the hallway: "Let me in! It's freezing!"

Peter froze, his face an inch away from Gwen's. "I'm going to kill her," he declared in a grave voice.

"Guys! I hear you in there."

"Peter," said Gwen, swatting at him.

"I mean it," he said, as Gwen wriggled out from under him and adjusted the seams to her sweater so she could unlock the door.

It was their senior year of college, and even though Peter had plenty to complain about in the Mary Jane department, his life had otherwise drastically improved. He couldn't have imagined three years before that he and Gwen could ever be together, that they would even find some semblance of closure, let alone happiness, and yet here they were—every bit as in love, every bit as crazy about each other as they were for those brief few weeks they actually dated in high school. He hadn't imagined it, hadn't put Gwen on some inaccessible pedestal or built it up in his mind to be something more than it was. They were simply meant to be together, and it seemed to him now, looking back, that it would always have happened no matter how hard they tried to resist.

And maybe it would have felt exactly the same way it did in high school, if it weren't for the only major change that occurred in Gwen's life during their time apart: Mary Jane.

"I can't believe you two were neighbors your entire lives and never figured out you went to the same school," Gwen said incredulously, the day she was packed and leaving for a Thanksgiving trip with her family.

Peter shrugged. "Yeah, well." What he doesn't say is that he never bothered to get to know the neighbors because they were always hollering and making a racket at weird hours of the night. Mary Jane's house was the sole reason he saved up money for a speaker, and then eventually noise-canceling headphones.

"She usually spends Thanksgiving with me," said Gwen, looking a little ill at ease. "But we're traveling."

"You never invited me to Thanksgiving."

"Yeah, well, my stepdad never tried to arrest MJ in an ass-hugging circus outfit either, so."

Gwen left that night for upstate New York, and Peter took the subway to spend Thanksgiving with Aunt May. It was surprisingly uneventful as far as holidays went. For once the city had the decency not to explode at its seams with gang activity or bomb threats, and Peter actually got to enjoy a full meal without making any awkward apologies and trying to fit turkey and four helpings of mashed potatoes into spandex.

Peter might have spent the whole night in the warmth of the house if Aunt May hadn't noted that there wasn't any milk in the fridge. She never would have asked him to go out and grab some, but that was the thing about Aunt May—she didn't ask for anything. Figuring he could be back in less than five minutes if he jogged over to the corner mart, Peter darted out into the cold, not even bothering with a coat.

"—worthless, and stupid."

Peter stopped in his tracks on the porch. It was not the first time he had heard a commotion from the neighbors' house, but it was the first time he was close enough to an open window to hear what was being said. Against his better judgment he paused, barely able to hear Mary Jane's reply:

"You're drunk. Sit down."

Her father's words were slurred and unintelligible: "Wha'd'you even come back for?"

"I honestly couldn't tell you," MJ snapped back, and Peter immediately thought of Gwen that same morning, her fingers wrapped around the handlebars of her suitcase, an inexplicable anxiety on her face.

"Bitching and moaning all the time. Think you're something special? Jus' like your mother, running around Manhattan like a tramp—"

"You don't talk about my mother like that. You don't talk about her ever."

"Then go. Door's open. Jus' leave again," her father yelled, "get the fuck out."

"Gladly." Peter heard the sound of a zipper, of boots slapping against hardwood floor. He shouldn't have been, given the nature of the conversation, but he was somehow stunned when her front door flew open and he saw an angry whip of red hair. He didn't move—it was too late to pretend he wasn't standing there, but Mary Jane didn't even see him.

"I hope you rot in here," she screamed, slamming the door behind her.

Peter opened his mouth guiltily, intending to reveal himself, maybe to say her name or ask if she wanted to come in. It didn't end up mattering. She was so preoccupied with leaving, shrugging on a down coat and hoisting her bag over her shoulder, that she didn't even notice him there.

He watched wordlessly as she made her way down the street. She was so little that her purposeful steps seemed comically large. He stared after her, wondering where on earth she could be going.

"Peter?"

He turned to see Aunt May in the doorway. Her expression was weary and resigned—the kind of look he had seen far too often in the last few years, usually when she heard the blare of sirens and knew there was nothing she could do to stop Peter from leaving.

"He's only been getting worse," Aunt May commented, looking into MJ's front window, where the curtains were yellowed and frayed.

Peter still felt too stunned by the entire brief episode to move. "That was Mary Jane," he said, glancing down to the street toward the block where she disappeared.

Aunt May nodded, holding a hand to her chest, her fingers tracing the seams of her sweater. "It's a shame."

She cast a lingering glance at Mary Jane's house before she headed back inside, leaving the door open for Peter to follow. But Peter was paralyzed. He thought of every late night blasting his music, every time he ever shoved his headphones in his ears as he studied or edited photos, every eye roll and groan aimed in the direction of the neighbor's window.

That was Mary Jane.

Peter didn't see her again until the next week, but he looked for her almost every day. He lingered by the mailbox, lingered on the porch, spent as much time as he could outside to see if she might emerge from the house again, because if she wasn't there, then where else could she be? The dorms were closed and from the looks of things Gwen was her closest friend.

"What's the matter with you?" Gwen asked, the concern evident in her voice when she came back from upstate. He loved Gwen, but he hated the way she would worry, the way her eyes would sometimes do this unconscious sweep of his body like she was accounting for all of him. He hated to burden her that way. "Did something happen while I was gone?"

He opened his mouth to say no, to reassure her before she leapt to conclusions, but what came out instead was, "Is Mary Jane's dad an alcoholic?"

Gwen's eyebrows lifted just slightly in surprise. "You didn't know?"

"So he is."

Gwen pursed her lips, looking at the door MJ so frequently burst into unannounced. "It's not really my place to tell you about it. MJ's very … she doesn't tell people about him."

"Is that why she's always over here? During the holidays and the breaks?"

"Peter," Gwen interrupted, looking exasperated. "Just—yes. Yes, that's why. But please don't bring it up in front of her, okay?"

"He doesn't—like—" Peter almost didn't want to ask, and he could tell by the way Gwen was twisting her lip that she didn't want him asking, either, but he needed to know. "He doesn't hit her or anything?"

"No." Gwen shook her head definitively. "He doesn't. He—"

"Hey, Gwen!" A voice squealed from the hallway. MJ walked through the open door, looking red-cheeked and panting from the cold. She glanced at Peter and scowled. "Hey, dork squad."

"Hey," said Peter, his voice soft, completely throwing off the rhythm of their usual snarky banter.

MJ slowed her step, the scowl dissipating, looking over to Gwen. "Are you …"

"Hey, MJ," said Gwen, extending her arms to hug MJ and recovering from Peter's slip. MJ embraced her willingly, her eyes still trailing Peter with apparent bewilderment. "Did you have a good Thanksgiving?"

MJ's lie was so effortless that Peter almost found himself believing it. "Yeah, it was great. How were your cousins?"

Peter should have moved, should have busied himself with helping Gwen unpack or found some kind of snack in the fridge, but instead he was staring at the two of them as they talked, MJ's demeanor so easy and carefree. I saw you. I saw you.

At Gwen's warnings, Peter never brought it up, at least not in front of MJ. But he always remembered it—the words her father screamed that night, the way she tore out of there with her suitcase already packed, the way she must have already known her father wasn't worth her time, but tried anyway. The time came when MJ had to give up her little hole of a sublet in Brooklyn and mentioned moving back to Queens with her father, and before Gwen even opened her mouth to suggest it, Peter determined that the spare closet in their apartment already belonged to her.

"She can't go back there," Peter asserted, and watched Gwen's shoulders slump with relief, as if she had expected some kind of battle before Peter could be won over on the idea.

MJ moved in the next month, carting three giant suitcases worth of clothes, a mattress, and not much else of use. Not a day went by that she didn't irritate the living crap out of him, but not a day went by that he regretted her moving in—at some during those years he and Gwen had assumed some kind of wordless pact, that while they were protecting each other, they would protect MJ, too.

There is one part of being with Mary Jane Watson that Peter might never get used to.

"Are you Jane Watson's brother?"

Peter blinks, looking down to find a chubby-faced girl in braces staring up at him with a hopeful expression. "Uh," he manages.

The girl holds up an issue of the Daily Bugle gossip section, pushing it into Peter's line of vision. "Jane Watson," she repeats, pointing at the picture—and sure enough, there is MJ on the front page, in a pair of old jeans and some funky printed top that she had been wearing when they stopped the other day for groceries. Peter is in the photograph too, just well-framed enough, apparently, that this small fan knew to accost him.

"I'm her—" He bites his tongue. There's no use in getting irritated, even though Jameson had some nerve putting unidentified friend in the picture's caption. "I'm not her brother," he settles for instead.

The girl gives him a once-over, and then looks back down at the picture. "But this is you."

"Yeah."

She's looking past him now, into the church. "Is she in there?"

"Um—"

"Oh my god, oh my god, I just have to meet her, I love Bree—"

"Bree?" Peter echoes.

"Her character! On TV!"

Peter has only ever seen one episode because MJ forbade him from watching anything more—I hate watching myself on screen, it's weird, had been the excuse—but he has some rudimentary knowledge of the teeny-bopper series she was cast in, playing the bitchy ring leader of a group of sorority girls in some made-up college in New York. It isn't even that the series was all that popular, or that her character was one of the main ones in the cast. Peter knows virtually nothing about fashion, but apparently MJ has an offbeat sense for it that caught on, and led to these weird little pockets of fame, including and not limited to a fourteen-year-old girl stalking him outside of a church five minutes before he is set to walk down the aisle.

The girl is still blabbering on, exclaiming about characters and plots and shoes, when Peter feels the hairs on the back of his neck start to rise. The feeling is compelling and immediate and drowns out the girl completely.

Oh, god. Not today.

He has to tell MJ. Whatever it is that has gone wrong in this city that apparently isn't doing him any favors, he can't just abandon her two seconds before they're supposed to be married, not without an explanation.

Ignoring the girl, he turns to the church doors, just in time to see them burst open.

"Peter," MJ calls out.

He is paralyzed by the sight of her. MJ has always been stunning, has always had a charm and ease in her smile that made her beautiful without ever needing to try, but he has never been more floored by her than he is in this instant. She is radiant. Her hair cascades down in thick curls, her cheeks are rosy and her eyes bright. He can't believe she was afraid he might see the dress before the wedding—how could he possibly tear his eyes off of her long enough to notice anything else?

"It's Captain Johnson," she says, extending her cell phone out. "There's a huge pile-up on the GW Bridge."

He is already mapping out a route, calculating the time it will take him to get there. "Mary Jane," he says, starting an apology.

She pushes him lightly. "Go."

He knows that this will be the nail in the coffin on trying to uphold any kind of traditions on their wedding day, but he can't help himself: he leans forward and kisses her, deeply and quickly, pulling away before she even has the time to protest.

When he draws back and looks at her she's still a little breathless with surprise, her eyes wide on his.

He knows it's time to go, but he has to say it, because he doesn't say it near often enough: "God, you're beautiful."

The effect of his words is immediate, color flaring up in her cheeks like red ink blots on her skin. He hopes there will never come a day when he isn't able to make Mary Jane blush.

By the time the Green Goblin hit the scene, Peter was all too familiar with close calls. He didn't have enough fingers and toes to count the times he barely avoided his own demise, let alone those of people close to him—and with the Goblin on the loose, it was a free for all. There wasn't a way to protect anybody because there weren't any targets. Everyone in Manhattan was fair game.

Well, everyone with the exception of Spiderman, because for reasons Peter couldn't understand back then, the Goblin wanted nothing more than to make him suffer. Peter was more careful than ever to protect his identity, especially after he found Norman Osborn out. He was close—too close—but what terrified him the most was that MJ was even closer. And while they were all living in the same apartment it was a manageable fear, because he would see her come home every night, quiet and listless and not quite herself, but alive, and that was enough as far as Peter was concerned.

"I messed up. I fucked up, Gwen."

"Peter, slow down, what's going on?"

"Tell me Mary Jane is with you. Tell me you've heard from her."

The pause on the other end of the line was unendurable. "No," said Gwen carefully.

Peter ripped the mask off of his face and threw it in the alley. He knew he needed to be careful, that this was the wrong place and time to letting his emotions get the better of him, but those thoughts were far from the front of his mind.

"Shit," he exclaimed, pacing back and forth, his unease quickly giving way to panic like a molten ball in his stomach.

Gwen's voice was firm when she spoke again—only Peter could sense the fear in it, only Peter because he knew her the way nobody ever had. "Peter, what's going on?"

"I—I—" He didn't even know how to explain himself, how to confess to this. The noises, the sirens and the screaming and the car horns and the footsteps on the pavement, the gasps of other people's breaths—there was nothing in this city he couldn't hear, and yet he was straining, desperate, listening for her. "I lost her. I lost Mary Jane, I can't find her anywhere—"

"What happened? Where were you?" Gwen asked steadily, the way a 911 operator would speak to a hysterical person.

"There was an attack—the Goblin—by the old apartment," Peter stammered, "and Mary Jane was there, we were talking, and I had to leave, I—I was keeping an eye out for her, and then just like that she was gone."

Gwen's voice was like a lifeline, the only thing keeping him grounded, the only organized thought left in his head. "How long ago?"

Forever. He forced himself to consider it and said, "I don't know. An hour, maybe two."

"Where have you looked? Did you check the apartment?"

It struck Peter as a ridiculous notion that she would even ask. "No," he said. "She doesn't live there anymore."

"She still has the key."

Peter was well aware of this. He just couldn't believe that MJ would let herself back into the old apartment and then ignore call after call on her phone; she was never away from it, always checking for casting calls, for audition notices, for e-mails from directors and producers or whatever gig was paying her bills that week.

"Maybe she lost her phone?"

The idea crossed Peter's mind, but the longer it took to find her the more drastic and extreme his thoughts became. He imagined her in a hospital bed, torn up by one of the explosives—imagined her lying somewhere, defenseless, let in the street—and before he could blink and shut the image out, he imagined her on a stretcher, getting wheeled away too slowly, her face pale and her skin lifeless and that perpetual smirk on her lips set in a final, grim line.

His hands were quaking, his palm sweaty on the phone. She was just trying to talk to him. She seemed so unlike herself, so absent and indifferent. He could have tried to listen, could have been a friend to her for once, but what had he done? Yelled at her. Urged her to leave the city. Abandoned her and let her disappear.

"Peter?"

His lips are gnashing, curled under his teeth. "What if she's …"

"No. Peter? No. Go to the apartment, okay?"

He swallowed hard. He wasn't ready to open that door to an empty room, wasn't ready to accept that it might really be over, that he might have made the kind of mistake that would haunt him forever and cost Mary Jane her life.

He hung up the phone and fished his mask out of a puddle of snow, shoving it on without even feeling the bite of the ice. He left his street clothes on a rooftop, and reluctantly swung back to retrieve them, knowing he couldn't show up to the apartment in anything else. He had to travel the last few blocks on foot, running just fast enough that people started to look around in alarm—these days when people ran, it was usually not to something, but from something.

He could almost ignore out the dread still swelling painfully in his chest, could almost outrun it into oblivion, until he hit the elevator.

All I am to you is Gwen's stupid friend.

The words are loud in his ear, the guilt crushing. He had dismissed her. He had treated the remark the same way he treated all of the critical comments she made about herself, by blowing them off and not giving her the satisfaction of whatever she was fishing for. But this had been different. This wasn't just some complaint about a body part or a boy or the way she was convinced one of her eyes was slightly smaller than the other.

She had been reaching out to him, or at least she had been trying. And what had Peter done, besides alienate her even further?

And now she was gone.

The truth was, Mary Jane was like a sister to him. He knew it sounded cheesy, but it's not like he ever meant to say it out loud, or even admit it to himself. It's just that she seemed—naïve, almost. Bullheaded and stubborn and determined, so much so that Peter wondered if she was ever aware of the danger she put herself in, or if she just didn't care. How many times had he swooped by on his rounds to make sure she was getting back from one of those stupid nighttime promotional gigs and just barely stopped whatever goon he found following her? And how many unknowable times had he not been there when one of the goons caught up?

There was so much about Mary Jane that was already fragmented, thinly veiled by sarcasm and melodrama and teetering high heels. Life hadn't always dealt her a fair hand, but she just kept on throwing herself at it, daring it to slight her again. Mary Jane wasn't stupid by any means, but she was a risk-taker, without always meaning to be—and while there was a part of Peter that admired her for it, there was a much larger part of him that couldn't stand it. She reminded him of a bird, sometimes, the kind that used to wake him up by repeatedly flying into his bedroom window, thinking it could get inside—that after a hundred or so times of beating its beak and flailing backwards that the glass might just miraculously disappear so it could fly inside.

That was the thing about Mary Jane: even in the face of failure she was unstoppable, unflappable, undeterred. Unfortunately, hers was the kind of endurance that came with its own set of consequences.

So yes, Peter had always had an eye out for her, even when they fought and pissed and moaned at each other, the same way he would if he'd ever had a kid sister of his own. And over the years she had become such a fixture in his life that she had wormed herself into the dynamic of everything—and it could just be because Peter didn't have enough of a life to get any friends of his own, but if he had to honestly answer, Mary Jane was the closest thing to a best friend he had, besides Gwen.

And now he had failed her. It only took a minute, maybe less.

The elevator doors parted open and Peter stood there for a moment, still breathless, his feet planted to the molding carpets. He knew she wasn't in there, but that didn't change the fact that this was the last place he could look.

Opening the door was an unfathomable truth. The kitchen was empty, and one quick sweep told him that the rest of the apartment was, too. He shut the door behind him, and pressed his back to it, trying to steady himself.

You, me, Gwen. We'll leave the city.

The urgency in her voice, the way her cheeks brightened in the cold, the distance between them that she unconsciously closed as she spoke. Everything was heavy with disbelief, like the blood was too thick in his veins, like he couldn't lift a foot to walk forward. He needed to reach for his phone. He needed to call Gwen and tell her, tell her now, before the shame and the grief consumed him and he wouldn't be able to tell her anything at all.

Just as he reached into his pocket he heard the door to Mary Jane's old room creak open. She almost seemed like a ghost to him, pale and puffy-eyed, blinking at him in surprise. He stared back at her, his knees weak with relief, sucking in the kind of breath that plunged all the way to his stomach.

There were the beginnings of a hundred competing words trying to burst out of his throat, but just then he felt a surge of hot adrenaline, unfamiliar and pulsing magnified. "What the hell, Mary Jane."

Her eyes were defiant. They always were. "What?"

He crossed the living room without consciously deciding to, because look at her—she was fine, she was better than fine, she was holed up in this apartment the entire time while he turned over every god damn rock in New York looking for her. She jutted her chin out at him, her spine ramrod straight, all five feet of her a picture of wrath.

It took him a second to recover, and when he did he felt a carnal kind of rage. "I had no idea what happened to you, have you been sitting in here the whole fucking time?"

This seemed to rattle her, her chin just quivering slightly, but it wasn't enough. She had no idea what she just put him through. She had no idea the lengths he went to keep her safe, no idea how he had tortured himself, not just today, but every week, every other night, because the world just seemed to have it in for her or maybe she just seemed to have it in for the world, because not a fucking day went by that he wasn't worrying about her, somewhere in the back of his mind.

"You ran." He could hear the devastation in her voice, piercing him like a weapon. "You ran away, what was I supposed to—"

"Pick up the damn phone, for Christ's sake," he yelled, because he couldn't stand to look at her, at that defensive, wide-eyed, betrayed look on her face, knowing that it was all because of him. He didn't want this responsibility. He didn't want this burden, this guilt, but she was here, and somehow that was enough to splinter him. She still stared at him with that same unyielding gaze and suddenly he couldn't bear it one second longer, that she could be so cool and unaffected by his undoing—he needed to make her understand, needed her to feel the panic like bile in the back of his throat, the senselessness, the pain, and so without thinking he reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders.

"I thought you were dead."

It was so easy to hold her there. She was so uncharacteristically fragile in that moment between his hands, her breath and her fear so palpable and close.

He would never forget the way the fight left her eyes, the way she jerked back from him, her body shrinking into itself until she seemed impossibly slight. The way she bleated an apology, her face ashen, her feet unsteady as she backed into the wall. He cringed and drew his hands away, pressing them at his sides.

How could he? He knew where she came from, what kind of man her father was. And while he knew he would never hurt her, never let anybody hurt her, she had no way of knowing that.

Just when he thought his shame could not possibly overwhelm him any more, she reached up to swipe off tears that seemed to spring out of her eyes with impossible speed. He had seen Mary Jane angry, had seen her elated and furious and miserable, but never in all the years he knew her had he ever seen her cry.

For a few seconds he was too stunned to move, watching her face crack open. She was almost unrecognizable, red and crumpling and shaking her head at him. She had always been so passionate, so above the fray, so gutsy and brash—he had never considered her capable of this kind of weakness, and it scared him to see it now, scared him to know he was the one responsible for it.

He took a step forward. "I didn't meant to—jeez, Mary Jane," he tried, because he couldn't think of a single thing to say that could possibly excuse what he did.

Her words were slippery with tears. "It's fine, it's fine," she said, hugging her arms to her chest.

It wasn't. He couldn't help but stare, seeing this version of Mary Jane, stripped bare—no armor of snark or bravado to hide behind, just small and uncertain and scared. She had never let him see it before, but he had always had some suspicion of what lay just under the surface, in the way she was always trying so hard, harder than she should ever have to, and in the occasional far away look in her eyes, when she thought nobody was watching.

It was the only thing that made her human to him, those brief moments when he saw the realness of her: when she would adjust that one stubborn cowlick in her hair in the mirror over and over, or when she would sit on the couch biting the whites of her nails as she repeated the same lines from a monologue, or when she would stand in front of a pot of cooking spaghetti and stare out the window with this unspecific brand of longing.

And here it was, in full force, bursting in front of him. He couldn't think of a single time he ever hugged Mary Jane before, or even so much as patted her on the back, but his body reacted before the rest of him did. She didn't protest, pressing her face into his shirt; the sniffling stopped so abruptly that he thought she might not have even been breathing, she was so was quiet with his arms wrapped around her shoulders.

This is what he had meant, when he grabbed her earlier. To feel her there, the presence of her, to reassure himself that she was alive and he had one less disaster on his conscience. He could feel her heart beating through her skin, could hear it pulsing in her chest, heavy and fast.

When she pulled back abruptly he was almost surprised, rattled out of some comfort he hadn't meant to feel.

She wouldn't look at him, her hair swept over her eyes, her gaze on the floor. "I have to go."

She was gone faster than he could think to stop her.

It's dusk by the time Captain Johnson aims a grave and minute nod in his direction, dismissing him.

Peter doesn't linger. His relationship with the NYPD is rocky at best, and although nobody had it in them to stop him from helping this time, he won't test his limits.

The merciful part of wearing this mask is that once the danger has passed, he doesn't ever have to stick around. He doesn't have to stand by as they haul the shards of glass and the twisted metal of car hoods off the road, or listen as reporters hound the officers for information, for the number of injuries, for the death toll that even Spiderman couldn't prevent.

He thought in the beginning that he might become desensitized to this kind of tragedy. That if he swung in often enough, and did whatever he could to help, that eventually death would seem commonplace to him—not by any means acceptable, but not nearly as shocking or derailing as it was in those first few months that he started this masked vigilante gig.

The trouble is, it is every bit as horrifying the hundredth time as it is the first. Today there were probably more than a dozen people dead, most of them on impact, before he could even arrive on the scene. And while he was focused the entire time on the grueling tasks of fishing cars out of the water, balancing the ones teetering off the edge, and extricating victims from the wreckage, all the while he felt that same gut-wrenching, visceral horror—there is no worse feeling in the world than watching something terrible happen and knowing that there is nothing he can do to stop it.

He has watched the life leave so many peoples' eyes in the past ten years. He has heard the last words of so many strangers, some of them pleading, some of them bitter, all of them etched into his consciousness forever. Today is no exception. He will carry this tragedy with him always, the way he has with every one before. There is little comfort in knowing he helped, when there were so many people he couldn't.

The church is empty when Peter arrives. He pushes the door open and is met by the overwhelming silence of the church walls, high and formidable and bare. He looks in the dressing room—the tuxedo he left on the floor is gone, and in its place are his street clothes, folded neatly with a piece of paper resting on the top.

He kneads his forehead with his fingers, exhaling a deep weariness. He doesn't want to read it. He doesn't want to have to acknowledge that he has let her down again, because he knows what's in that note—some tiny forgiveness, her way of understanding, of reassuring him that it's alright—and every time that happens he loves her more, and every time it happens he is afraid that someday it won't.

Her handwriting has always been sloppy. I love you, the note reads, and nothing more. Peter shuts his eyes and lets it fall back onto the pile.

Peter didn't worry about Mary Jane after she disappeared. He wasn't capable of extending his thoughts beyond his grief. He left the apartment the day Gwen died, left Mary Jane standing there in the foyer, and as far as he knew, neither of them ever came back.

The year that passed after Gwen's death was unendurable—just long, practiced intervals of feeling nothing disrupted with spasms of anguish that threatened to consume him. It was a miracle he defeated the Goblin, because he was in no shape to fight, had no ability to use any kind of logic except to move his muscles and try to make him hurt. Osborn eventually died at the hand of one of his own bombs, trapped under some rubble. Peter wondered if he might have been able to stop it, but he was so far gone in his misery that he honestly didn't dwell on it long.

He almost didn't recognize Mary Jane when he finally saw her on the subway that day. She seemed bony, almost, and her hair was so long, and her expression so slack. It was absurd, considering how well he knew her, that he had this strange feeling of misplacement—he couldn't figure out where he knew this girl from, this girl who looked so absent and sad.

The thing that compelled him to recognize her was an all-too-familiar feeling of unease: he had to protect her. Before he even fully realized who she was, the image of Harry came unbidden into his mind, busting into Peter's apartment with wild eyes and heart-wrenching accusations and a gun, looking for Mary Jane.

He had to warn her. That was why he tried to get her attention on the platform that day. He had no idea how long she had been in the city, but it was long enough—because if Peter had seen her, it was only a matter of time before Harry did, too.

He called out her name without thinking, and watched her eyes flit over to meet his.

There wasn't any way to anticipate the slam of blood stopping in his veins. He felt his heart lurch with enough intensity that it felt like it was taking up the space of his entire chest, watching the way her eyes widened into little moons on her face, at the tiny gasp and lift of her chest.

And then he was running, chasing after a subway whose doors were already starting to shut, knowing he wouldn't reach her but unable to stop himself from trying. "Mary Jane—" he called, and the doors snapped closed in his face but he kept running, pushing past bystanders and slapping his feet against the concrete until the train was sucked into the tunnel and there was nothing left but the tracks and the sight of the train's lights fading into the abyss.

He stood there, breathing hard, eyes still glued to the tunnel.

What was that?

"Excuse you, asshole," somebody yapped at him.

Peter startled out of his trance. "I, uh—sorry," he managed, looking sheepishly back at the crowd of people he just shoved his way through. "Sorry. Sorry."

Within two minutes he was spandex-clad and swinging over every subway station he knew that her train would hit—he knew there was a chance she would grab a connecting one, but sure enough at the fourth stop she emerged, not two blocks from the building Peter was living in now. He settled on a ledge and watched her, feeling compelled, feeling thrilled, feeling a guilt that he couldn't even begin to explain.

He needed to warn her. He needed to orchestrate another coincidence, another meeting, so he could tell her about Harry and tell her to get out of the city.

But he didn't. Instead for two days he waited, and watched. Watched her leave for long morning runs that meandered around the park, watched her head to the theater in a familiar old pair of dance tights with a rip up the back of the left calf, even blew the last of his earnings from Jameson to buy a ticket and watch the show.

If Peter had to choose a moment that it started, it would be when the curtain came up on that show, and the lights filtered through the stage and illuminated her like a beacon. It was the first time he couldn't ignore it—the strange anxiety, the compulsion, the way he couldn't look away from her, remembering and appreciating every familiar gesture and angle of her face.

What he never told Mary Jane was that he left at intermission. That he couldn't bear one more second of the acute, intolerable ache of her presence, an ache that was only magnified by the weirdly secret nature of it. What had come over him? Why was he suddenly tongue-tied and at a loss for what to say, for a girl he had known for years—a girl he had fought with, laughed with, a girl who had once unabashedly walked into the kitchen and grabbed an apple he was eating right out of his hands on her way out the door?

That night, he decided. That night he would tell her to leave, and it would end this ache, this uncertainty, this growing turmoil in his heart once and for all.

Peter lets himself into the apartment, opening the door to dimmed lights and silence. He passes through their little kitchen, pulls out one of the chairs and takes a seat. The bedroom door is open but he's not quite ready to go inside.

He rests his head in his hands and looks at their little apartment, the place that they have made their home. It isn't anything fancy. They can afford better now between MJ's television work and Peter's new position at Stark Industries, but this is cozy and small and suits them just fine. He loves coming home to this place, to the smell of it, to the simplicity of it—he loves that there are traces of Mary Jane everywhere he looks, in the half-eaten yogurt perched on the counter, in the haphazardly organized pictures hung up on magnets on the fridge, in the lace curtains on the windows. He loves that there is one spare tiny room in the apartment that neither of them has touched, a room of possibility and promise, and that MJ remarked on one occasion after a glass and a half of wine was just sizable enough for a crib.

They are far from that future still, and he knows it. Look at them—even today, when they were supposed to commit their lives to each other, they couldn't manage to stay in one place long enough to say "I do." And he knows, he knows that that isn't what commitment means—that the commitment isn't a piece of paper, or a few lousy words, but the way that Mary Jane leaves takeout boxes waiting for him in the kitchen, or secretly enrolls in a sewing class to learn how to manipulate spandex—but it doesn't change the fact that there are things right now that are out of their reach. Marriage, kids, an ordinary life. He wants it someday, and he knows she does too, but they are happy now, and that is more than he ever thought he could say about his life after taking up the mask.

Deciding he has sulked long enough, Peter gets up from the kitchen table and walks toward the bedroom, careful not too make too much noise—if Mary Jane hasn't found him by now, she could only be asleep. Sure enough when he walks in he finds her strewn out on the bed, a towel wrapped loosely around her and her hair still damp from the shower.

It is rare that he ever sees her like this, in a moment of complete unawareness. Even in her sleep she usually finds some way to sleep on her back or on the side facing him; she has grown used to the scars, but even though she rarely says anything about them, he can tell that she does her best not to let him see.

Peter will never understand why, the same way he might never explain the entire mystery that is Mary Jane. They both carry scars, but what are they besides evidence of what brought them here, what they have survived? He knows that hers don't fit whatever ideal of beauty she has always striven for, in a business that is unforgiving at best, but to him she has always been the kind of beautiful that makes society's standards irrelevant. It's the way she smirks, the way her eyes crinkle at the corners, the way she hums to herself when she's picking out fruit in the grocery store. It's her fierceness, her determination, and the way it is so often punctuated by a still almost childlike joy at simple things like running into a street performance at the park. It's a magnetic kind of energy that draws people in—Peter knows that the scars were an issue in several casting decisions Mary Jane was passed up for in her early days of television work, but he also knew it was only a matter of time before they saw past it, because there was something infectious about her that made her impossible to ignore.

There is one scar that is particularly more prominent than the others, raised and jagged against the pale of her skin. It is barely exposed by the towel and the lamplight, but it is the scar that Peter crosses the room and grazes with his fingers to wake her.

She stirs just barely, sighing in her sleep.

"Mary Jane," he says softly, leaning down and pressing his lips to it, to the uneven skin between her shoulder blades.

All of the scars serve as a reminder, but this one more than all the rest. He will never forget the torture of those too-slow moments he spent holding her in OsCorp, waiting for somebody to find them as her body went slack in his arms and her eyes slid shut. He had never felt so powerless in his whole life, still too weak from the electrocution to move, too weak to do anything but watch the blood pool on the white floors.

Please, he kept telling her, because hadn't he spent every waking moment of these last few months pleading her for things she couldn't give?

There were shards plunged into her back, small and deadly, but only one that even through the smoke and the whine of panic and anguish, Peter knew had the power to end her: right between her shoulder blades, plunged right beside her heart.

There was no way to know how deep it was, whether it had hit its mark, but she faded away so quickly that he had his answer. In his nightmares he still sees her head roll to the side, the curve of her cheek slack against his arm, the barest smile curving on her lips. In his life he had felt hopelessness, had felt immeasurable grief, but in that moment he was incapable of feeling anything at all: it was over. Everything was over now, Peter was

finished, and he would be gone some way or another long before they put Mary Jane in the ground.

Peter had no idea what kind of state he was in when Captain Johnson finally busted in and found them. It couldn't have taken too long. Harry was met by a team of officers on his way out of OsCorp and immediately gave himself up, and told the police where to find them. Peter will never forgive Harry—never speak another word to him or look him in the eye, after what he did—but he knows that there was some shred of good left in Harry, and that small shred was Mary Jane. He thanks god for that, or Harry might have let her die in there that day, and Peter would have died with her.

Mary Jane stirs again, her eyelids fluttering open with a sharp intake of breath. For a moment her eyes search the room for him. Her smile is sleepy and slow.

"Hey, tiger."

He sits there on the side of the mattress, staring at her in the glow of the lamp, in an admiring disbelief of her. He reaches out, catching strands of her hair between his fingers, and says softly, "I love you, too."

Falling in love with Mary Jane Watson felt like the first few seconds of watching a car fly through an intersection, blowing a red light and coming straight for him. There was no time to prepare, only to brace himself for the impact, because after those first few times he spoke with her—after it was absolutely clear that she wasn't going anywhere, that nothing he could say would make her listen—Mary Jane became an inevitability. Every time he looked at her he hated himself a little more for not being able to overcome it, but there it was, the collision of her a little more brutal every time he tried to dismiss her.

She was like nothing and nobody, and still so many things at once. She had this quality of looking like a stranger to him from a distance, a quality that made it easy to imagine that he could detach himself from her and the unwelcome curiosity that compelled him to her, but then—then she would look up and her eyes would find him, and he could see that he had just as much power to undo her as she did him. Her face would come to life, her green eyes wide, the confidence and bravado suddenly chipped, and he knew without knowing that he was the only one she let see the truths she had spent years denying.

He knew how fiercely she protected herself, how she hid every weakness. How in their college years it manifested into the defensiveness, the whininess, the impulsiveness that used to define her. Now that they were older, now that she was much more adept at hiding the imperfections, he found himself loving her for them—he found himself favoring all of her quirks, admiring every mishap and coincidence and hardship that created her, this unlikely girl who was now the sharp focus of his muddled world.

It was strange to say the least, that they could be this much in love with each other after years of just barely being friend. Peter was grateful that they never tried to make it work in their younger days. He doubted he would have been able to handle her, because he was nowhere near able to fathom or understand the depths of her, and he doubted that MJ would have been ready to commit herself to any one person or idea after she had spent the first twenty years of her life avoiding it. It took trust, and it took time, but it was worth it, all the misunderstandings and angry words and lost chances that pulled them together.

He knew he was going to ask Mary Jane to marry him, knew the very night of the first Goblin impersonator attacks, when she was curled in his arms and asked in a quiet, careful little voice, "Please don't ask me to leave New York."

They were a far cry from being together, but Peter would always consider that instance one the one that forever altered the course of their lives. If he were a better person, he would have pushed her away. If he were a better person, he would have told her to leave the city, and he would have kept her safe.

But if he were a better person, he wouldn't be in love with Mary Jane.

He had planned a real proposal, of course. He didn't know why he bothered, because there seemed to be a higher power that found some great hilarity in Peter Parker ever making plans, but he planned it nonetheless. The opportunity was golden: whenever the city was quiet enough, Mary Jane would beg him to go for a swing, just one quick swing around the block that always turned into at least an hour of scaling the city (and usually ended in some various state of undress by the bedroom window when they finally snuck back home).

He meant to take her out one of those nights, to the rooftop of her old apartment building. He would take off the mask this time instead of waiting for her to do it, the way he did back then. He would tell her how ever since he met her, she had the power to bring out the best and the worst in him, the ability to make him appreciate the living part of his life and not just the moments he was supposed to appreciate, but every moment in between. He would get down on knee, like in one of those movies MJ would either curl up and watch, the same ones she was so frequently auditioning for. In his imagination he would be eloquent and charming, maybe even suave.

What ended up happening was only typical: the blockbuster apocalypse movie set where MJ was working as a featured extra ended up getting rampaged by another one of OsCorp's genetically enhanced experiments gone wrong, and somewhere in between knocking the creature out and barely managing to swing through the set and grab Mary Jane in time as she plummeted off of the building they had her character on, he got it in his head that it would be a good idea to shout "Marry me!" just after he basically knocked the wind out of her mid-catch.

The wind was whipping her hair in a thousand directions so he couldn't see her face, but her silence was enough to make his stomach plummet.

"No!" she exclaimed. "Peter Parker—"

"I mean it," he said, slinging another web and deftly landing on a rooftop, one clear across the city from where he had actually planned on doing this. "Marry me."

Mary Jane's buried her face in her hands, shaking her head, but not before he saw the blush rising up in her cheeks. "If this is some kind of joke, or some kind of whim, just because I almost bit it, then—"

"No. God, no, Mary Jane," he said, admittedly sounding like a crazy person, still breathless and panting and barely able to stand still. He ripped the mask off, hoping she could see the sincerity in his eyes. "I mean it."

"Peter," she said, in some mixture of embarrassment and misery. He could barely see her eyes peeking out from between her fingers.

He took a step toward her, reaching out to touch her hands, to tilt her chin up to face him. "In the second drawer down on my bedside table, under all the bills and the paperwork and the passports—there's a box, with a ring in it." She was staring up at him now, steady but hesitant, waiting for him to go on. "This isn't a whim, Mary Jane—I've known for a long time now that I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

For a moment she looked so self-conscious and thrown off by his words that it was almost laughable. She made the tiniest of incomprehensible noises leaned forward, pressing her forehead against his chest. He let her linger there for only a moment before he put he pulled back.

Windswept, mascara running, her eyes skittish and her hair in tangles, she was still so beautiful that it took his breath away.

He grabbed her hand. This was nothing like he had planned, and certainly nothing like the first time; he remembered proposing to Gwen all those years ago almost like it was a memory of somebody else's life. The sweet and reserved way she had told him yes, and then smiled and threw her arms around him, the ease and the contentedness of it.

Life with Mary Jane would never be like that. She would always be flighty and impulsive, always unpredictable, always feeling things too deeply and barely finding outlets to express them. She was honest and blunt and rough around her edges. She wasn't easy, she wasn't safe, but truly, Peter wouldn't have her any other way.

He said it one more time, firmly and slowly, squeezing her hand. "Marry me."

Mary Jane's eyes looked misty for just the slightest beat, but he knew he had her. Even if she said no right now, even if they never made it down an aisle or said any vows or signed any papers, he knew he had her always.

In that instant she laughed out loud, strident and unexpected. She nodded and he could still see the laughter dancing in her eyes as she leapt up and collided with him, knowing that he was steady enough to catch her. She curled her legs around him and as she kissed him he could feel the grin curling on her lips. When she pulled away her face was flush with excitement.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, Peter Parker. I will marry you."

Mary Jane shut her eyes sleepily. "Come here," she said, gesturing to the empty space on the bed.

Peter hesitates. "Mary Jane," he starts. "About—about today—"

She interrupts him by hooking her arm around the crook of his elbow, guiding him down to the bed until he is laying beside her, still in his shoes and street clothes. As soon as his head hits the mattress she stretches and then curls her body into his, staring at him through sleepy lids.

This is what he looks forward to, what gets him through each day. The sweet relief of holding her, of listening to her breathe, of falling asleep beside her and knowing that no matter what else has gone wrong, she will be there in the morning when he wakes up.

"Listen," he starts. "I know—I pushed for this, and then I let you down, and—"

"It doesn't matter," she says, and he waits to hear a trace of doubt, or disappointment, but all he hears is a mild, happy lilt. "We'll get married tomorrow. Or next week. Or next year. I don't care—all I really want is right here."

He still feels an unshakeable pang of guilt. He knows Mary Jane, knows that there she was once a little girl the same way all little girls are, who dreamed of fairy tale weddings and cookie cutter romances, or even just the realistic expectation of having a groom who showed up to the wedding. And maybe he would just feel better if she yapped at him right now, because that's what anyone else would do, right?

"What about the white dress—the flowers, the cake, the whole … everything?" Peter asks, as she grazes her toes across his shins and her fingers start roaming under his shirt.

She smiles deliberately, coyly. "This is the whole everything," she says, kissing him lightly, the pressure of her fingertips deepening on his chest.

"Mary Jane," he sighs, half of him trying to apologize, the other half giving in to the warmth of her palms, sliding down to the hemline of his shirt. She persists, starting to tug it off of him, and she knows she has won when he leans in and kisses her, his hands roaming the uneven plane of her back, the towel somewhere long abandoned on the bedroom floor.

As the kiss deepens for a moment his thoughts are far away, behind and beyond him. The prick of a spider bite, the inconceivable desperation of his first love, the sad, sweet smile of Aunt May in the window, watching him walk up the porch. A girl with bright red hair and a loud mouth, a couch just big enough for three, a familiar table at an old pizza joint from back in the days when they were young and unfettered and free, or at least they thought they were.

And after the loss of it all, after the grief and the darkness, a burst of light—a pair of bright blue running sneakers lined up at the door, red strands of hair clogging the shower drain, the smell of lavender soap and curve of a knowing smile. The wedding dress he can see hanging patiently in the closet, the empty room beside them, the perfect, synchronous rhythm of their bodies and breaths and everything that has happened, everything that is yet to be.

Peter has had these inhuman abilities since he was seventeen years old, but this feeling, right now with her heartbeat thrumming through her skin, this is what it is like to be invincible. The world is crazy, and sometimes wicked, but let it be. Let it be anything it wants to be, and he'll take care of it, he will do the best he can—as long as he has Mary Jane, it will be worth every bump along the way.

Well, one year and one day after first starting this enormous glob of fanfiction, I am excited to say that I officially had my first meeting with a song publisher. It's just a baby step and he really is meeting with me to keep tabs on me, but holy smokes, this time last year I was getting politely kicked off publishers' porches by chipper receptionists with intercoms. Thanks to everyone who has been reading this and sticking around for my crazy adventures :). And hey, if you have an idea for a story you want to read, let me know! Because I literally would not have even thought of writing this, except a reviewer suggested it, and here we are, approximately 150,000 words later ... woops.