Chapter Text
MJ likes driving at night and tonight is no different.
Homecoming dances have never been super important to her, but after the blip-- after it was made painfully clear how quickly everything could be taken away-- she’s started to make space for these moments.
Fresh off a mission and definitely with at least 2 broken ribs and a busted lip that had healed by the time they had left MJ’s house, Peter had shown up on her doorstep, half crushed corsage in hand. She hadn’t wanted to go, but Peter insisted and MJ compromised (caved).
They only spent 20 minutes there– at the dance they had no business going to at all, but MJ will cherish the memory anyway.
She looks over at Peter, feeling a swell of love? MJ hasn’t ever been with someone before Peter and she struggles to see how she could have anyone after him.
The warm contentment that spreads through her when he smiles at her? The constant urge to hold his hand, press her shoulder to his just to feel him there and solid beside her?
Is that love?
She guesses it’s as good as. And she probably could’ve spent another few millenia trying to figure it out, but then Peter stirs next to her where he’s been sleeping in the passenger’s seat.
MJ swings open the door without hesitation once Peter texts her that he’s finally outside- not that she’d needed the confirmation.
She’d seen Happy’s car pull onto her street from where she’d been reading next to the window and definitely not keeping a lookout for said car.
“Peter, you promised you wouldn’t-” her words drop off abruptly when her eyes finally find him and Peter thinks the little crease she gets in her forehead is unfairly endearing.
Whatever irritation she had been stacking up to throw, crumbles in an instant and in that same moment she’s stepping out onto her porch, hands cupping gently to his bruised cheeks.
The touch is barely there, a whisper of fingertips across his skin. It’s almost like she’s afraid to press too hard- like Peter is something delicate. But he doesn’t need delicacy– doesn’t want it after the day he’s had so he tugs her forward, fitting her tightly into his arms until she relaxes into him and hugs him back.
His ribs feel like they might be bruised (broken he’ll come to learn later), and he knows there are tiny cuts dotting along his knuckles and wrists, but Michelle has her hand clutched at the small of his back, suit jacket in a death grip even as her lips leave a feather light kiss, just at his temple.
It isn’t the first time he’s been silently grateful that she's a little taller than he is.
“Sorry I’m a little late,” he says right into her ear and MJ makes a small noise of protest as she steps back.
She presses her lips in a thin line as she surveys him more fully, but it’s not the flat look she’s come to be known for. Her eyes shine in a way that tells him she could cry if she wanted and her concern is evident.
Peter leans in to kiss her then, hoping to distract her from her current assessment of his injuries and MJ wrinkles her nose at the taste of blood on his lips, but can’t find in herself to pull away.
She’s never been able to.
MJ is pulling him through the door a moment later, leading him up to her bedroom with clasped hands.
“I won’t make you go to the hospital, but we are going to at least clean these cuts,” she says pointing sternly. “I don’t even need you to strip.”
(Peter helpfully assures her he is always ready and willing to strip for her.)
“I wish you were more careful,” she tells him a few minutes later with his head cradled in her lap as she diligently cleans the tiny cuts dotting his face. The breeze of her exhale tickles him and he opens his eyes when she leans in close again, satisfied enough with her efforts to take a moment to just enjoy their closeness.
MJ misses him every time he goes.
Whether it’s two hours or two days, she misses him an equally devastating amount because there is a price that goes along with all the beauty of being seen by someone and of wanting to be seen by someone.
She worries. She cares openly and in that love, she both gives him the power to hurt her and trusts him enough to know that he won’t. Somehow she just knows that he won’t.
And that might be the scariest part because this is all so new– the feelings, Peter, their relationship. In her wildest dreams she’d never imagined she could have this.
MJ blinks down at him, lashes fluttering slowly like time has slowed down just long enough to give them this moment. Her lips graze against his brow before she plants them gently, playfully to his nose and then his forehead as her lithe fingers tangle into his messy curls.
She takes her time pulling away.
Peter’s smiling when she opens her eyes but it’s not soft like she was expecting, it’s more of a smirk and there’s that mischievous glint in his eyes so the next words he says don’t surprise her.
“You missed.”
He’s almost pouting.
She doesn’t tease him though, and she can tell he was expecting her to, instead she readjusts and leans down just as slowly to kiss his lips.
“I had a dream about you.”
“Oh, yeah?”
MJ very deliberately keeps her eyes on the road as she says it. There’s a certain quality to his voice right as he’s waking up– a gravely rumble that always brings heat into her cheeks. That and Peter’s always especially syrupy after a nap and tonight is no exception.
“Yeah…” he yawns, still clearing away the fog, “I always do. It's like your face is burned on my brain.”
She knows he’s smirking at her even with his eyes half shut because, unfortunately, Peter is no longer oblivious to the effect his words have over her.
“That’s literally not possible, Peter,” she deflects, staring steadfastly ahead even as she allows him to tug her right hand into his to tangle their fingers together over the center console. “The brain doesn’t have any light–sensitive cells.”
He’s playing with the ring on her index finger and it’s making her a little bit flustered in a way that is entirely not helped when he simply agrees with her and says in that same sleepy voice, “You’re so smart, MJ.”
Her eyes don’t stray from the road except for once at the single red light they encounter, and that brief moment of eye contact had ended with someone behind them laying on the horn when the light changes and she’s too preoccupied to notice, and Peter half across the console despite her protests.
(“Peter, your ribs are broken. Sit-mmph!”
“Shh, it’s helping,” he murmurs against her lips).
The rest of the ride is spent mostly in silence, Peter still occasionally stroking the back of her hand, her fingers, and MJ putting forward what could only be described as a particularly earnest attempt at a driving instruction video with how focused she is on driver safety after being honked at.
“You’re a menace, Spider-man.” MJ means it as an admonishment, but she’s still a little breathless as she says it.
Peter presses a kiss to the tip of her thumb and she breaks her own rules at the next stop light and turns to look at him because she can’t resist the urge to see it with her own eyes.
He keeps his lips pressed there even when their eyes lock and when the light changes again she mumbles in good-natured exasperation as she refocuses on the road. “Menace.”
Peter thinks the smile he sees tugging at the corner of her lips, despite MJ’s best efforts, is worth the trouble.