Something New
New York always had a certain…well, vibe to it during the autumn season.
Every year come November, the trees that lined the streets of the city were consumed in whole by vivid reds and burnt oranges, replacing the once lush, green canopy seemingly overnight. With it, the crisp air that came with each breeze was a pleasant but firm reminder that the unforgiving cold of winter was right around the corner — a subtle sign from mother nature to enjoy the metamorphosis before the cityscape would transform once again.
Peter paced back and forth, repeatedly crossing the length of the rooftop to Grimaldi’s Pizza Parlor — not because the brisk autumn wind had made him chilly. No, his spider-suit — brand new, at that — did a fine job of keeping his body temperature perfectly regulated.
It wasn’t the chill that kept him moving, rather a poor attempt at shaking off his nerves. He might as well have walked several miles just going from one side of the rooftop to the other, all while savoring the aroma of pizza dough wafting up from the restaurant below.
“Alright, you got this — you totally got this.” Peter clapped his hands together, only to shake them right after — desperate to release the bundle of energy that practically ate him alive. “This is no big deal. Nothing to sweat. C’mon Parker, you rode Captain America’s motorcycle today — you’re Spider-Man, you got this!”
His nerves only seemed to get worse every time he looked across the street; this time turning his gaze right as the lights inside Peter Pan’s Donut Shop shut off, one by one.
Despite the strong draft of wind that passed through the surrounding foliage, Peter couldn’t help but notice that he suddenly felt flushed.
Warm?
Definitely warm.
Maybe his new suit still had some kinks they needed to work out. After all, he’d only had it for a few weeks now. It wasn’t uncommon for the motherboard systems to need the occasional update. Maybe that was the issue.
Or maybe, just maybe, he was more nervous than he wanted to admit.
“Alright — just…just don’t over think this. Don’t get stuck in your head.” Peter let out a breath so heavy, most of it couldn't filter out of his mask. The smell struck him at full force, causing the eye lenses of his mask to twitch and spasm in response. “Oh, that’s gross. That’s-that’s bad.”
He really needed to start carrying breath mints around on him.
Peter shook away the thought — literally, shaking his arms for the umpteenth time, the little wiggle-wobble he did in place doing absolutely nothing for his nerves.
Across the street and through the windows of the doughnut shop, Peter could make a middle-aged man working inside, flipping over chairs and stacking them on top of the tables. Not far away from him was a much younger girl, busy wiping down the counters, with half of her face hidden behind long strands of brown hair.
Peter chewed on his lower lip, watching MJ from afar — not once looking away after his eyes gravitated towards her.
Man, was she pretty.
Really pretty.
“Hey MJ, what’s up?” Peter practiced out loud, taking a deep breath in — deep enough to pull his shoulders back and lift his chin high. “It’s me, Peter. Peter Parker.”
Nearing the edge of the rooftop, Peter casually plopped down until his legs hung off the edge, letting them dangle freely as his gaze fixated on the doughnut shop across the street.
“What’s that? I have a new suit?” Both hands grazed across his chest, gloved fingers running down the length of the black and red fabric. “Yeah, fully upgraded, new look, all new colors — why am I doing that voice?” Peter stopped talking the moment he realized his voice had deepened by five octaves, shaking his head like a wet dog to re-set his scattered thoughts. “That voice is so stupid, don’t do that voice.”
For a moment, the only response he received in turn was the occasional sound of Brooklyn traffic from down below.
MJ was talking to the middle-aged man now — with a brown paper bag in one hand, and her book-bag over her other shoulder. Her hair covered half of her face, but Peter could still make out the tiny smile beneath the thick, curly locks.
He didn’t know why, but her smile was his favorite thing about her.
“MJ, hey, it’s me.” Peter swallowed, hard, a tight V forming between his brows and beneath his mask. “Oh, this? You know, just patrolling, saving the city, nothing major — I’m still doing the voice!” A hand smacked across his face — covering the two large white eyes of his mask. “Why am I doing that stupid voice!?”
His frustration was shouted in the form of a whisper, barely heard over the breeze that passed by. And yet Peter was still flushed — there was no shaking off the nerves. The past half and hour made that abundantly clear.
“I believe that is because you are nervous, Peter.”
And for what time didn’t make obvious, there was always his AI.
“I’m not nervous!” Peter’s voice squeaked in his retort. He waved both hands out in front of him, dismissively, as if Karen could even seen his movements to begin with. “I’m not — I’m not nervous, I just…” Another deep sigh reminded Peter that he really needed to start carrying around breath mints. “I just don’t know what to say.”
The middle-aged man approached the front door, flipping the sign that once said ‘Open’ and turning it around until it said ‘Closed.’ Peter watched, a tight frown forming on his lips, as the two remaining employees inside got ready to depart.
The setting sun was making it difficult to see inside through the windows. The glare hit the glass with a bright shine, and Peter knew he wouldn’t be able to procrastinate much longer.
“That could be because your anxiety has made it hard for you to focus,” Karen said. “That is likely in part due to the fact that you are nervous.”
As much as Peter wanted to roll his eyes at Karen’s answer, he also didn’t have much ground to argue with her. She was, after all, usually right about these things.
It was strange. There was a lot Peter had confidence for — a lot of things he gained confidence for. It wasn’t that being nervous was a foreign thing for him. Hell, these days it felt like a perpetual state of his existence.
MJ made him feel…different.
A different nervous.
Almost a… good nervous.
“I really don’t wanna mess this up, Karen,” Peter spoke quietly under his breath, both hands falling into his lap as his dangling legs came to a slow stop.
There was a noticeable pause from Karen before she asked, “With MJ?”
The sunset of the evening caught the golden hues from the trees, shinning bright against orange and burgundy leaves. Peter had to squint past the light to see the front door of the doughnut shop open up, watching silently as the older man let MJ exit before he locked the door behind her.
“Yeah,” Peter, once again, spoke the words in a hushed whisper. The sigh that left his chest was heavier than his own voice.
There had been so much that happened this past year — things that, while not directly his fault, had caused a cascade of problems in their wake. Mysterio getting away in Times Square only to break into the Avengers compound, everything with Dmitri the wannabe Bond villain, all of the symbiote…
Peter could feel his heart skip a beat at the memories — his very alive, and very much beating heart that was once not beating after he literally died.
That was never not gunna be weird.
“I believe, Peter,” Karen spoke up, breaking him away from his thoughts, “if you were to mess anything up…it would be deliberately. And I don’t see any reason you’d sabotage yourself when it comes to MJ.”
Peter made a face beneath his mask — contemplation taking over every muscle in his expression, all as he watched MJ give a tiny wave to the man still inside the doughnut shop. He locked the door from the inside before she began to walk down the streets of the city, and slowly, Peter began to stand up from the edge of the rooftop.
Karen’s voice was the last thing he heard before he shot out a web and took off.
“Just be yourself.”
It took six and a half rooftops before Peter finally caught up with MJ — a lingering moment of hesitation nearly made it seven, but with all the courage he could muster up, he finally made the move to approach her.
A single strand of webbing attached on top the nearest fire escape ladder, allowing him to drop down gracefully into the alleyway, landing with a soft thud on the cement sidewalks.
Right as MJ walked on by.
“Need someone to walk you home?” Peter asked, his voice muffled by his mask and three times deeper than average.
MJ spun on her heels to face him.
And screamed.
“AH!”
“Ah!” Peter startled back, stumbling backwards until his shoulder collided with the dumpster behind him. The two lenses of his mask went from wide white to pitch black as he grabbed his arm and hissed, “AhcckKK!”
“AhhHH!” MJ’s shrill shout easily reached over his, even as she swung her book-bag around and frantically dug inside. “Stay back — I have a taser, I know how to use it!”
“Mother of fudge—!” Peter clenched his shoulder firmly with one hand, squeezing away the pain before both his eyes shot open with realization. “Wait, MJ, it’s me —!”
“Don’t make me use it!” MJ stepped forward while also somehow managing to take a step back. “I’m not afraid to use it!”
“MJ, MJ!” Peter leaped forward, using one hand to wave in front of him while the other ripped off his mask, clenching it tightly in his grip. “It’s me! It’s Peter! Peter Parker!” he hissed low under his breath, making sure to stay tucked away in the alley as he all but squeaked, “Please don’t tase me!”
If MJ had been sporting a mask like Spider-Man’s, complete with twitchy mechanical lenses, they would’ve certainly shattered with how large her eyes got — bigger than the setting sun above them both.
Finally, and completely ignorant to the brown paper bag she still held, MJ smacked her hand against his chest and pushed him further into the alleyway.
“This — this is why you’re terrible at keeping secrets!” MJ broke free of her stunned trance with four hard steps forward, pushing Peter back the entire way; looking around for the both of them to ensure no one was paying any attention. “This is exactly why Susan Yang thinks you’re a male escort!”
Peter’s nervous laugh quickly became one of incredulity.
“Susan Yang thinks I’m a male escort?” Peter only stopped walking backwards once MJ came to a stop herself, though her hand stayed firm against the spider emblem across his chest. “Wait, do you really have a taser?”
At first, MJ’s only response was a rapid nod of her head, and a sound that was most certainly supposed to be something coherent and understandable.
“Yeah!” she eventually managed, her throat bobbing hard with the clear struggle of swallowing the abundance of saliva that came with a near heart attack.
Peter’s eyes narrowed with confusion. “Yeah to which one?”
The every day ambience from the city life briefly filled the lull that fell over them, freezing time in a ridiculously exaggerated second — the kind that felt like an eternity being stretched out for dramatic effect. The honking traffic outside the alley seemed to join in on the playful suspense — Peter swore even the cars were holding their breath for who would say what next.
MJ flittered her eyes up and down — looking up at Peter, sans his mask, before her eyes flickered back down — where her fingertips pressed firmly against the black spider center on his chest.
Not a second later, and Peter looked down at that same hand. As if just now realizing MJ was touching him, and had been all along.
“This…must…be…your new suit,” MJ slowly said, tapping his chest twice before finally removing her hand entirely — making sure to keep her hold on the brown lunch bag along the way. “Very nice. The colors are…very new.”
Peter nodded as he also looked down at his suit. Why, he wasn’t sure. He just did.
“Yeah, uhm — yep. Yep.” Peter followed MJ’s lead and took a step back to give them space, all the while trying to figure out how to stand — one moment he put both hands on his hips, the next he dropped them, then crossed them over his chest, then dropped them again. “New colors. New suit. It’s all — it’s all new.”
MJ looked him up and down, and Peter couldn’t figure out if the way she chewed on her bottom lip was out of confusion, or something else entirely.
So he did what he did best.
“Besides me,” Peter rambled. “Of course. Same me. Just…new suit. Same Peter — uh, Spider-Man. Me. But, you know…new. Ish.” Peter swallowed, hard, giving a slight shake of his head before forcing his brain to start over with a simple, “Hey.”
The do-over seemed to be much needed. MJ snapped her head up, finding his mask-less face before giving a slight smirk and an equally simple, “Sup.”
The distant but audible city life leaked into alleyway with ease, mixing the noise of honking cars and hollering hoopla into a blend of commotion that didn’t seem to bother either teenager.
For a moment, their awkward but genuine smiles were the only form of communication either needed.
When the breather approached awkward terms, Peter pointed casually to the brown paper bag in MJ’s hand.
“Those doughnuts?” Or at least, he tried to point casually. He still wasn’t sure what to do with his hands yet — once again crossing them, only to then sit them on his hips, and then drop then entirely.
MJ quickly looked down at the bag in question, as if forgetting she even had it in the first place.
“Right, yeah,” she quickly said — a little too quickly, her words jumbling together in a nervous fit. “We only had a few jelly left an hour before close, and I knew jelly was your favorite, so anytime a customer came in I just faked a really phlegmy cough around the doughnut wall and it seemed to work because Mr. Walton let me leave with the last five since he was going to throw them out anyway.”
MJ was still looking down at the paper bag when she realized she’d finally ran out of things to say.
“Here you go.” Abruptly, and with no restraint of rigidness, she held it out in front of her for Peter to take.
Peter stared at it far longer than he should’ve.
“MJ, that’s — thanks, that’s really…really nice of you.” Slowly, and with a grin that spread up to his ears, Peter took it from her. The sound of crinkling paper almost overtook his quiet, but not quiet enough, “I love jelly doughnuts.”
While Peter opened the bag and eyed the inside — with a smile that somehow got bigger once seeing the doughnut, a feat considering his grin was already taking up most of his face — MJ awkwardly shifted on her feet, staring down at her converse sneakers that scuffed the dirty cement of the alleyway.
“Least I could do,” MJ kept her head low as she spoke, having to look through long strands of hair covering her eyes to catch Peter’s gaze. “For all you do.”
Though they were both quiet when they spoke, they still heard what the other said.
Peter smiled.
MJ smiled in return.
And without wasting another second, Peter dug his hand into the brown paper bag, bringing out a doughnut that dusted his black and red glove with a cakey, powdery white.
It was halfway to his lips when MJ choked out,
“Please tell me you’re not planning to eat those here.”
No sooner than the words left MJ’s mouth, a rat scuttled into the alleyway — colliding into the dumpster behind Peter before making a daring escape through the rungs of the fire escape ladder.
Wordlessly, Peter watched as the rodent made its getaway, right at the same time a drop of jelly plopped down from his doughnut and landed on the ground below him.
“Uh, no-no, of course not,” Peter stammered as he swiveled his head left and right, scanning their surroundings with an intense focus that was only rivaled by the growling of his stomach.
He really should’ve taken Ned up on his Cheeto offer. Suddenly, the crunchy, orange snack sounded like the most delectable thing in the world with how hungry he’d gotten.
An idea struck him as fast as the second drop of jelly that hit the ground.
“I have a place,” Peter eagerly announced, stuffing the doughnut back into its bag as he gestured his hand out towards MJ. “C’mon, follow me.”
MJ let him grab onto her hand — in fact, they got a whole whooping five steps further into the alley before she came to a screeching halt.
“You have a —” MJ rooted her feet to the ground in a way that would’ve made a potted plant jealous. “Whoa, whoa, whoa — like, a high up place? Like a…like a spider, high up, somewhere up-there and not down-here place?”
Peter kept his smile even as he furrowed his brows, clearly confused.
MJ noted his expression and immediately cleared her voice, pulling her shoulders back tautly as if forcing her posture straight completely erased her moment of panic from ever happening.
“Because, I just think…” It was MJ’s turn to deepen her voice, each octave growing deeper as she repeatedly cleared her throat. “It’s a really great night to…take a stroll. Down the city. With our feet…on the ground.” MJ clasped her hands together and held them that way. “Firmly. On the ground.”
Peter didn’t intend for the beat that followed to widened his grin. It was also nearly impossible not to smile at MJ’s fretful jitters.
“Wait, are you afraid of heights?” The question came without his bidding — Peter swore he didn’t realize he spoke out loud until the words were already said, and MJ’s expression changed at the drop of a hat. Gone were the nerves, in its place a pink blush that highlighted the brown undertones of her skin.
“I don’t think it should be considered a fear if the individual in question was born without wings,” she immediately defended, her lips pursed tightly as she went on to hiss, “Or wasn’t bitten by some…special spider!”
MJ’s hair flopped in front of her face with each word she spit out, and Peter smiled even more. That he regretted, especially when it was clear MJ didn’t find things quite as humorous as he did.
He couldn’t help it. MJ always kept details about herself close where others couldn’t see them — the more he got to know about her, well…
She made him feel a lot of things.
“Would you trust me?” he suddenly asked.
Peter swore, up and own and across the length of Grimaldi’s Pizza Parlor’s rooftop, that a thousand butterflies gave birth to a thousand baby butterflies in his stomach. It was the only logical explanation for why every organ inside his body suddenly leaped into his throat and nearly stole the question away from his vocal chords.
And yet, for as observant as she always was, MJ failed to notice.
“Would I — what?” she huffed out her confusion in a single breath, blowing away her hair only for it to fall right back in front of her face. “What-what do you mean, trust you?”
Peter was happy when she tucked the long strand of hair behind her ear, even if the expression he got to see was nothing but vivid and very wild confusion. And even though that confusion added to the population of newborn insects fluttering inside his stomach, Peter forced himself to swallow them down and not let his confidence waiver.
There was a lot of things he gained confidence for.
He could make this be one of them, too.
“If I took you for a swing?” Maybe. “Would you trust me?”
The stretch of silence that followed his question made Peter positive that his heart was beating fast enough to put him into cardiac arrest — and there was simply no doubt about it, Mr. Stark would kill him if he died again.
“Or, you know…Spider-Man,” Peter stammered to correct himself, shrugging enough times that both arms should’ve fallen right out of his shoulder sockets. “You can trust Spider-Man, or me, whoever. Whichever. It doesn’t matter.”
A taxi cab not far away blared their horn, holding it for a good five seconds — giving MJ enough time to process what Peter had said, and Peter enough time to throw a dirty look down the alley.
“Both are pretty trustworthy,” MJ finally said, with a tug of her lips speaking what she didn’t.
Peter didn’t need the taxi driver to stop blaring his horn to hear MJ. Even the unspoken came through loud and clear.
If his smile got any wider, it would've broken the laws of physics.
He’d barely gotten a grip on her hand again when she pulled away.
“You won’t drop me?” MJ couldn’t have been more serious if she was being sworn in for Presidency — her finger sharp and steady, aimed right at Peter’s face.
And still, Peter laughed.
“MJ!” Peter reached for her hand again, his mask tucked between his shoulder and neck as he used his free hand to secure the bag of donuts around his waist like a fanny pack. Once the web fluid was in place, he easily switched out the cartridge for a fresh one. “Of course I won’t—”
“You have to swear that you won’t drop me.” MJ took a step back and away from him — but also slid both her arms through both straps of her backpack, signaling a readiness to go.
Peter noticed that, reaching his arm out with a single digit extended.
“Pinky promise,” he smiled, even as MJ refused to take his pinky finger. “You know, it’s law binding—”
“Don’t joke with me, be like — one-hundred percent serious, because it’s not funny.” MJ kept on. “Because if you drop me or if you even think about dropping me and if I fall and if you can’t catch me and something happens—”
“—MJ,” Peter had a lot less laugh in his voice the second time around. And though his smile softened, it still stayed wide at the edges. He took one step forward, arm still reached out — this time with open invitation. “Trust me. Take my hand.”
MJ swallowed, hard enough to bounce her throat.
Briefly, and with converse sneakers still rooted to the cement, she looked down to his hand. Her eyes stayed there for a moment that lingered on the threshold of existence, with a flicker of her gaze finding his doughnut-fanny-pack — receiving a quirked eyebrow in turn — before finally latching onto Peter’s face.
By now, he’d gotten half his mask onto his head, covering his hair but leaving the brown pools of his eyes to catch the setting sun from outside the alley.
In that moment, and beyond what either of them could ever possibly explain, she saw something in his eyes. Something the sun caught onto and highlighted with a radiance.
Finally, MJ latched onto his hand, and didn’t let go.
“This is gunna be great,” Peter excitedly gushed, already unable to contain his enthusiasm as he pulled MJ close to his hip-side, lowering his mask until it was completely in place. Both lenses blinked as he looked towards her. “Hold on tight, okay?”
MJ didn’t need to be told twice. Even so, she clung to him as his one arm wrapped tightly around her waist. The other lifted high into the air, releasing a strand of webbing that landed on something with a distinct THWIP.
It was at that exact time MJ puffed out a breath of air to move her hair away from her face, and a second later when she realized —
“Wait, wait, wait! I don’t have a hair tie—!”
MJ screamed as they took off.
While New York would always have a certain vibe to it during the autumn season, not even the changing colors of fall could beat the majestic overlook that came with sitting at the top of the George Washington Bridge.
“I…am never…” MJ took a deep breath in, ending the extra long inhale on a single bite of her doughnut. She chewed three times in total before finishing, with garbled words, “…doing that. Ever. Again.”
The distant sounds of traffic, nearly four hundred feet below them, played as a backdrop to MJ’s voice. Even the wind, brisk and breezy as it was, didn’t dare interrupt the solitude that they both found on the top tower of the historical bridge.
Peter was mid-bite of his own powdery doughnut when he turned to look at her — his mask pulled up halfway over his head, freeing his mouth so he could partake in the sugary goodness.
Once he looked at MJ, he choked out a laugh, unintentionally spitting a few puffs of white sugar her way.
MJ shot him a look, one that couldn’t be seen over the tangled knots of hair that covered her face.
“Shut up.” She turned back ahead and stuffed the doughnut into her mouth, having to blow away a few pieces of straggled hair that she nearly and accidentally consumed alongside the actual food they both ate.
Though Peter didn’t stop laughing, he did go ahead and used his free hand — the one not holding the third doughnut he’d eaten so far — to whisk off his Spider-Man mask.
“Here, here —” Peter ruffled his hair with his hand, making sure it stuck up in every which direction before securing his mask underneath his thigh where it couldn’t blow away. Once done, he gave MJ a smile. “Now we’re the same.”
MJ chuckled at his near-ninety-degree hair style. “I think mine’s still worse.”
Peter kept his smile, even as he ran his hand through his hair again, smoothing it out to the best of his ability.
“You still look good,” he said, with a slight shrug. “You know. To me.”
MJ responded by avoiding his gaze, and stuffing another bite of doughnut into her mouth. This time garbling, “That was terrifying . ”
The traffic down below could’ve been far closer than the nearly four-hundred feet it was, and Peter’s laugh of incredulity still would’ve overtaken each honking horn and reviving engine.
“It was not — it’s fun!” Peter insisted, his hand outstretch to the sky across from them — as if showing his doughnut off to the entire city of New York. “You didn’t think it was a little bit of fun?”
MJ clearly went to answer, only to burp loudly into the closed fist of her hand.
“I think I can taste the jelly making its way back up,” she mumbled into the tight crease between her knuckles.
Peter grimaced, and said no more.
For a moment, the bridge activity from far away overtook their conversation — little nibbles and tiny bites creating a lull that never felt awkward or uncomfortable. The breeze that hit high above from the ground brought along a strong waft of the Hudson River, with a distinct brackish smell only a mix of fresh water and salt water could obtain.
The lights of the traffic and alongside the bridge were brighter than what little remained of the sun, with only a soft amber casting a ray of reflection across the waters surrounding them.
MJ was licking white powder off her fingertips when she abruptly asked, “You do that? Every day?” A beat. “Willingly?”
The lights illuminated along the suspension cables of the bridge gave an extra ounce of exposure to the levity in Peter’s eyes, casting an innocent excitement that never felt forced or unnatural. It just simply was.
“Gets me where I need to be, and fast,” Peter said, smiling the whole time. “Only thing that would come close would be like…a motorcycle, or something.”
MJ gave a tiny nod in response, turning back ahead towards the overlook of the bridge. A small pause followed, one where Peter used the opportunity of silence to lean over and inch closer to MJ — just enough that they weren’t touching, but his voice still hit closer to her ear.
“I rode Captain America’s motorcycle today,” he casually remarked.
MJ turned her head around so fast, the tangled knots of her hair whipped across his face.
“And here I was thinking applying to MIT was a big deal,” MJ gave a ridiculously nervous chuckle as Peter pushed some of her hair away, gently handing it back to her with a lopsided smile. She took it, a little too quickly. “Your life is…something else, Peter.”
Peter went to laugh, only for his brain to come to a stuttering halt.
“Oh, I didn’t mean too —” Peter stuffed the last tiny bit of his doughnut into his mouth, freeing up both his hands so he could hold them open-palmed towards MJ. “I wasn’t trying to brag—”
“You can totally brag,” MJ easily interrupted, and sincerely at that.
Still, Peter went on. “No, no, I’m not looking to — I don’t wanna come across as, like—” Doughnut powder got stuck in his throat, and Peter coughed. Not once, but four times in total before he regained his voice — albeit raspy and choked. “Like, egotistical or anything —”
“You’re Spider-Man,” MJ interrupted him for a second time, and Peter was too busy swallowing every ounce of saliva he could produce to keep on going. “It’s okay to be proud of that.”
The struggle to rid himself of the scratchy sensation that came from inhaled sugar gave Peter a minute to look at MJ — really look at her, and see the honesty that came with her words.
“I am,” MJ said, almost too quiet for even the solitude of them both. “Proud. Of you.”
And still, Peter heard her.
Not even the traffic of the bridge could’ve taken that away from him.
“Thanks,” Peter said, just as quietly in turn. He took MJ’s growing smile as an indication that she heard him, and when she looked back out to the view in front of them, he decided to follow suit.
As the sun descended along the horizon, its final glare of glistening, crisp harvest golds casted a warmth along the bridge. The colors reflected against the black and red of Peter’s suit, almost embedding into the fabric the same way the sun soaked up the chestnut of MJ’s skin.
Peter didn’t realize he had turned his gaze back to stare at her until she spoke again — her eyes still latched firmly onto the cityscape ahead of them.
“You can really see everything up here, huh?” she all but whispered, her tone falling soft with awe. “The whole city is just…here. In front of you.”
A hard swallow cleared Peter’s throat to speak. And yet a pause still took his words from him, briefly, as he fell out of time simply looking at MJ.
“Yeah, it’s…it’s pretty cool,” he eventually managed. Breaking his gaze came naturally as he gave a small gesture outward, turning to the view straight ahead. “This is my favorite spot to go to. Just kinda…helps me think, you know?”
The breathtaking vantage point spoke for itself, a sight not even the average New York could have privilege to witness. MJ bathed in its beauty, the fading light of the sun casting a golden glow across her face as in front of her, the urban tapestry laid out in all its wonder.
It wasn’t until a ferry glided across one side of the bridge to the next that Peter finally found his voice again, working through the nerves of anxiety to keep conversation going.
“So, you’re applying to MIT?” he decided to ask, hoping he could pick up where they left off.
The pause that came next had him doubting as much.
“Thinking about it,” MJ, thankfully, eventually answered. In-between them both was the paper bag of doughnuts, and she grabbed it with one swift move — clenching and unclenching the top fold until pieces began to break away. “I haven’t set my mind on anything in particular, and we’re still only sophomores, so it’s not like we gotta decide tomorrow. But I think that would be my first choice, of everything there is. My mom’s got me thinking a lot about colleges, lately — that’s why I said that. She doesn’t want me ending up like my dad. Which — who would? I’m pretty sure dirt is cleaner than he was.”
MJ’s fiddling hands came to an abrupt stop, barely holding onto the bag with her fingernails when she shot her head over towards Peter — her expression flat and eyes wide.
“I…just said a whole lot at once.”
Peter nodded.
And nodded.
And nodded.
“My-my parents…” he shrugged and squeaked out, “are dead.”
Slowly, matching that of the speed of a snail, MJ’s eyebrows climbed up her forehead. They may as well have reached the same height as the bridge they sat on top of.
Finally, she handed over the paper bag with a smirk. “You get the last jelly doughnut.”
Peter took it, beating her smirk with a grin that reached both his ears.
“You’d totally get in,” Peter mentioned as he dug inside the bag for the final doughnut. “If you applied to MIT? You’re so smart, they wouldn’t even second guess approving your application.”
Peter was pretty sure that the blush he saw spread across MJ’s cheeks was the same ruby red as the jelly that squeezed out of his doughnut, caught only by his fast reflexes and eager tongue.
“What about you?” MJ laid both hands in her lap and crossed her legs together beneath her, the tips of her converse sneakers briefly tapping against the steel of the bridge tower. “Any top five choices in your future yet?”
Peter took a large bite of doughnut and swallowed it down quickly.
“This year’s been so crazy,” he managed between chews, covering his mouth with the back of his hand to avoid anymore sugar-spit that may come flying out. “I haven’t had time to think about thinking about colleges.”
It was definitely the truth, despite how much of an excuse any other person might view it to be. Mysterio getting away in Times Square, everything with Dmitri the wannabe Bond villain, all of the symbiote —
“Dying kinda does that to a person,” MJ plucked the thoughts straight out of his head, so easily Peter almost didn’t believe it was her who spoke. “Or so I would assume,” she quickly followed up with a stuttering ramble and a few shrugs that rattled her jacket. “I’ve never, you know…died.”
Peter let out a breathy chuckle that was nearly consumed by the traffic of the bridge. The traveling cars caught his attention, where he turned his gaze downward and watched the vehicles zip on by.
Life always seemed so much simpler from up here. The people down below all seemed harmless, like creatures just going about their innocent, every day activities. And his problems always seemed to level out, as if looking at the grand cityscape of his home made him realize whatever issue he was having, it wasn’t as terrible as he first felt it to be.
He’d been coming out here a lot since they got back from Wakanda.
Unfortunately, not even the peace of the bridge could ease the struggles he’d taken on since then.
“Sometimes I think Mr. Stark would flip if I told him I didn’t wanna go to MIT,” Peter quietly spoke aloud — at first not intending to. MJ’s openness seemed to unlock a door of his own, and the words he spoke came naturally. “Not right away, not at first. I wanna go, I do. I just think that, I dunno…a few years at Empire State — do that first, multi-task classes and, you know, the city—”
“You wanna stay in New York for Spider-Man,” MJ read him like a book.
Peter twisted to look at her. “No! It’s not just that—”
“It’s totally that,” MJ could read a book if she was blind and didn’t know braille.
And still, Peter never knew when to stop. “It’s not just that—”
“Than what else could it be?” MJ met his gaze with her own, and the cocked eyebrow that spoke everything she didn’t was heard without question — especially as a harsh breeze tore across the bridge, blowing back her hair and exposing her expression in whole.
Peter didn’t know what it was, but there was something in that look that just made him…trust her.
“If I take on too much at once…” Peter slowly started to say, turning his eyes away until his head dropped low and his gaze locked onto his hands. His fingers tapped at the inside of his palm, repeatedly. “If I’m just…thrown to the wolves…”
Actually, legitimately dying was one thing — something that would never not be weird.
Being brought back to life?
Being chosen to be brought back to life?
No amount of time spent overlooking his home from on top of the bridge could help him settle those thoughts. And the longer he sat with them, the more they seemed to tangle and knot together. No different than MJ’s hair from a shared swing across the city.
“I’m afraid of letting everyone down,” Peter admitted, earnestly.
Mr. Stark, Steve, May, the Avengers…they all were expecting so much of him. He’d been ‘worthy’ enough to be brought back from the dead. And yet he couldn’t even get the local newspaper to say a single good thing about him.
He wasn’t sure if some friendly neighborhood Spider-Man could live up to all that pressure.
The next breeze took his voice and carried his words across the bridge, where New Yorker's went along with their lives as the day came to a close, and the lights from the city stole away any stars that may have peaked through the sky.
MJ turned to look at him, even when he looked nowhere else but at his hands.
“Yeah,” she said, with a firm yet somehow shaky nod of her head. “I get that.”
What happened next was too sudden for even Peter to process, spider-sense at all.
Her hand laid across his — both of his, forcing the tapping of his fingers to come to an abrupt stop.
“It’s gotta be a lot of pressure,” MJ gently remarked, using her free hand to tuck hair behind her ear when it threatened to obscure her face. “Doing everything you do.”
Peter drew in a shallow breath — on the verge of saying something, anything — what, exactly, he was clueless to.
Instead, he just smiled.
Even with all his problems, even with the stress of seemingly the world and all the pressures of the Avengers weighing on his back, something about MJ’s presence just made everything feel…
She made him feel a lot of things.
Mostly, she made him feel okay.
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” Peter let the words come without any forethought.
“Yeah, me too,” MJ seemed to do the same, answering without a single beat passing by.
Her hand stayed on top of his, long enough that after a passing amount of time, Peter could feel the heat of her skin through the gloved material of his suit.
Just when he was ready to muster up the courage to adjust their hands and hold hers in his —
“Did you see the new song I added?” MJ reached into her back pocket before he’d even answered, digging around for the cell phone tucked securely inside her jeans.
Peter furrowed his brows with a shake of his head.
“No-no. When did you — no, I haven’t seen — heard it.” Peter closed his eyes, muttering a few choice words to himself as MJ preoccupied herself with her phone.
“Here, lemme —” A tap, a scroll, another tap, and finally a move to untangle her ear-buds that had been wrapped around the phone. All the while, MJ explained, “Remember how you added the Scarlet Witch to the playlist, and then she went and spent time with that Sorcerer dude magician guy, and she came back and added a ton of retro songs that were there all of a sudden, like, outta nowhere?”
Peter frowned as he watched MJ scroll through her phone. “Doctor Stranger doesn’t wanna be called a magician—”
“I went listening to some other stuff this one band did and — well, here.” MJ scooted a bit closer to Peter, ensuring the ear-buds had enough length to share. “Check it out.”
Peter looked at the ear-bud before slowly placing it in his left ear, with MJ securing hers into her right.
Their heads stayed close enough that their hair practically touched, all the while MJ hit the play button on the streaming app — starting up the song with a gentle strumming of an acoustic guitar, creating sounds as warm and mellow as the setting sun over the distant skyline of New York.
▶• lıllılı.ıllı.ılılıılıı.lllııılı. Now Playing [Have You Ever Seen The Rain] 0:21 ———♡——— 2:40 ◁◁ ▐ ▌ ▷▷
♫ Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm
I know, it's been coming for some time ♫
Peter bobbed his head along to the music, his smile softening at the edges with each passing strum of guitar. “I like this.”
MJ matched the bob of his head with her own. “Yeah, it’s-it’s good.”
The song continued on, soaring with a melodic hook that immediately captured Peter’s attention. It wasn’t the electric guitar’s piercing and expressive notes that pulled him into the moment, though. It was the look MJ turned to give him, their faces so close that her hair brushed up against his, and his nose nuzzled against hers.
The urgency and passion in the song sung on as timeless as the decade it originated from, playing in their ear with the steady traffic below adding to its melody.
Peter used that hook in the notes to lean forward and lock onto MJ’s lips, kissing her with nothing more than a soft graze.
She returned the measure, twice. Long enough that the chorus became their sonic background, and the easy breeze that swept across the sky their only witness to a moment only they’d remember.
When MJ pulled away, after a moment that lasted forever and yet not long enough, she didn’t hesitate to lay her head against Peter’s shoulder — nestling up close to him until there wasn’t any space left remaining.
Peter, though hesitant at first, wrapped his arm around her with a smile that melted every tense muscle in his body.
That was, until, he remembered that he really needed to start carrying around breath mints.
Peter’s face fell flat at record speed, and as discreetly as he could, he turned his head into his opposite shoulder to try and sniff his own breath.
“That kinda tasted like jelly,” MJ wasn’t even looking at Peter when she spoke — Peter had to do a double take to ensure he saw that right.
That was the thing about MJ. She always just knew.
And as MJ smiled, Peter found himself laughing — gently, an easy chuckle that bled away all his problems, if only for the moment.
The sun had officially set, with barely a line of tangerine peaking over the edge of the horizon. MJ pointed a finger up ahead, all while staying close against Peter’s side.
“Hey, did you know that before we stole all their land and kicked them out of their own homes, native tribes called The Mohicans actually populated the Hudson River and it was only in, like, the late seventeen hundreds that things really changed where there were these two really bloody wars, the Esopus wars, where…”
Peter listened as MJ talked, hearing her voice without taking in much of what she was actually saying.
As she leaned up against him — with head on her shoulder, comfortably rambling on about her favorite historical facts — Peter immersed himself in the view of the city, all while listening to the song play out its final beats.
♫ I wanna know
Have you ever seen the rain
Comin' down on a sunny day? ♫
The nonstop, erratic clicking of a computer mouse echoed against every nook and cranny of Tony’s personal quarters — nowhere near as grandeur as the mansions that once entertained his youth, but still suitable for the occasional stay.
Even if the occasional stay had become semi-permanent ever since they moved out of the Stark Tower. And even more semi-permanent since his mansion in Malibu took a very permanent nose dive into the Pacific Ocean.
“We’re sorry to tell you—” Click. “We have given thoughtful consideration to your proposal, but—” Click. “At this time, we’ve decided that—” Click. “We have carefully assessed—” CLICK.
The rhythmic clicking sung the song of his frustrations, and without daring to open another email, Tony dropped his head into his hands — forgoing the mouse in favor of scrubbing the tender tissue of his eyes with callous fingers that didn’t press hard enough into his skull.
“I haven’t felt this rejected since I appointed a new CEO to Stark Industries and she up and quit,” he muttered, just loud enough that the microphone of his computer could pick up the sound.
“For all of three minutes!” And Pepper heard him, loud and clear, with her voice reaching far above any click of a mouse.
The live picture of her in a hotel room somewhere far away from New York took up half his screen, the other half holding the display to his inbox — and if Tony had decided to do anything else beside scrub viciously at his eyes, he would’ve seen just how unhinged her jaw had become at his remark. Falling so far down it nearly hit the desk below her.
Tony had chosen far more comfortable arrangements for their video call — his desk across the room stayed unoccupied as he let his head fall back until it collided with the stack of pillows behind him. Each fluffy brick of comfort wedged a barrier between him and the headboard of the king sized bed — allowing him to lay upright with his legs crossed and his laptop conveniently in his lap.
The large bed felt empty more days than not. Pepper spent most her time traveling for business affairs, and Tony spent most his business on-site — no different than the laptop sitting on his lap, it was convenient; what with the past year seeming to be nothing but Avenger problems stacked on top of more Avenger problems.
They hadn’t even given themselves the time of day to start looking for new property, not ever since Killian’s Extremis-powered missiles wiped his only home off the map. What became a temporary living situation — first bouncing from the tower and then to the compound — had gone on long enough that Tony could feel an itch starting to creep up along his skin. One he could no longer ignore.
There was simply too much work here. No matter what they did — no matter how many pancakes Wilson cooked, how many pots of homespun stew Wanda made. It didn’t matter how many dinners they tried to arrange together, ‘a semblance of structure’ as Romanoff insisted.
There were things he could always count on here — Rogers could always be found reading a newspaper in the lounge after his early morning runs, and Barton would always stock the kitchen, their private kitchen, with a bit of something for everyone. The stock of cereal seemed to have doubled in the last few months, and it had been long enough now that they all knew not to touch Natasha’s unsalted almonds.
Without even trying, they all did their damnedest to make things as domesticated as possible. For their sanity, it seemed.
Even Banner seemed to have planted his roots with them — as if a trip to space was enough to finally keep him still from travels, if only for a little while.
Pepper had a good portion of her belongings here, sure. Peter had room and board — granted far less extravagant in size than the other living quarters. And yeah, it always went without saying — it was a hundred acres with a lap pool.
But it just wasn’t home.
Tony wasn’t sure why that had been such a pestering notion as of late, fused to his brain like melting metal in a crucible. Living at the compound had given him the peace of resting his head somewhere he could get his thoughts straight, where he could pave the next path of his journey and create the road-map necessary to get there.
Now that he’d reached that point, it felt like it was finally time to move on. To rest his head elsewhere — to find a home, a real one.
But for once in his life, it wasn’t just him to worry about. There was a whole team behind him, now. Dare he say — people he cared about. It wasn’t just him that needed to make the move, long gone the days of the lone gunslinger act.
Tony just couldn’t figure out what laid ahead of them — what laid ahead for all of them.
And mounting issue like this certainly wasn’t helping him figure things out.
“Since when were attorney’s so picky about their clients, anyhow?” Tony groaned as he quickly rubbed at the nape of his neck, and then with double that speed, returned to his emails — clicking away on the mouse at a rate too fast to be heard.
“Since the dawn of time, I’m pretty sure.” Pepper kept her focus on her own work, even as their conversation kept on. Without much thought, she shuffled papers around in her hands, reviewing the documents with careful ease even as she spoke. “Legal merit, reputation, resource allocation, and you know — viability. That sorta has a big hand in it all.”
The clicking continued, mashing over every word Pepper said. She finally looked up into the small camera of her laptop — the frown of exasperation that followed so expressive, they didn’t need cameras for Tony to see it. Even with her halfway across the country, it was surely visible.
“How do you even know those are rejection emails, you’re going so fast.” This time, not even Pepper’s huff of incredulity could reach over the noise of his mouse.
Tony kept clicking, his eyes turning dry as he stared dead-on at the screen. “I know, I can tell.”
Pepper made a face. “How?”
Tony flittered his eyes to the camera of his laptop, the bags above his cheekbones becoming more pronounced in the dim lighting of his quarters.
“What do the kids say…” Tony wearily turned his attention back to the screen, clicking away with a pessimistically drawn out, “there’s a vibe.”
“Oh, good lord.” Pepper audibly snorted, earning at least a smirk out of Tony — short lived, but still present. “You’ve been hanging around Peter and his friends too much.”
Tony really couldn’t argue with that. So instead, he kept clicking — the flood of emails never-ending, and none producing the solution he desperately sought out.
It had been a long day. Longer than that, it had been a long year. A long few years — a long decade.
A long life.
Pepper really hadn’t been exaggerating when she said there was always a crisis. It had been one thing after another for so long, with little to no break in-between things. A big reason they kept post-poning buying new property. Where was the time? Certainly not on his watch.
At the very least, he was hoping to get some of this Osborn mess under control before the wedding. If only for peace of mind.
There hadn’t even been an inkling of doubt when they finally got the subpoena on Norman. Tony was sure of it — with all that evidence they snatched off OsCorp’s servers, there was no way the bastard wasn’t going down.
And now, here they were — right back at square one.
Tony was getting sick of looking at his emails. Yet even as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back into the fluffy barricade of his pillows, he could see them imprinted behind closed lids. Taunting him with each professionally written ‘no’ that was sent his way.
“Have you contacted the number to the firm I sent you yet?” Pepper didn’t just read him like a book — she had every chapter memorized and ready to recite on a whim.
Tony opened only one of his two eyes, going on to squint it with skepticism.
“You mean Simon and Garfunkel from Hells Kitchen?” he scoffed, so hard it rattled the laptop resting comfortably in his lap. If Pepper was bothered by the momentary shaky cam, she didn’t mention it out loud. “I’d rather get a dozen more rejection emails than bring on board two fresh faced nobodies from Columbia University with barely a case under their belt —”
“Barely a case? Tony!” Pepper discarded the papers onto the desk with enough force that the slap they made almost overtook her shout of incredulity. “They put a New York crime lord behind bars—!”
“They caught a break,” Tony interjected, without hesitation.
“A big one.” Pepper’s heated look made him wish he hesitated after all. Tony wasn’t sure which hurt more to look at — the mocking emails or Pepper’s namesake coming out on full display. “If they could incriminate Wilson Fisk, who’s to say they can’t do the same with Norman Osb—”
“—Fisk was released from prison in that same year.” Tony sat up straight in his bed, the flexibility of his sweatpants allowing him to easily cross his legs underneath himself until his bare feet were tucked underneath his knees. He adjusted his laptop to keep it still. “Sight and Shadow clearly can’t be doing that great of a job if they can’t keep the criminals in jail, Pep.”
“You know that wasn’t on them,” Pepper defended with a hefty roll of her eyes, multi-tasking as she shrugged off the dark lavender blazer that paired well with her white button down. She neatly set it to the side and out of reach. “The Albanian Syndicate take down was one of the largest quid pro quo’s New York has seen in centuries. The courts had no choice but to release Fisk for that information.”
Tony watched, without much thought, as Pepper discarded her blazer and loosened the tight cusps of her forearms sleeves. Her sharp and well dressed business attire contrasted drastically with his casual nightwear — a sleeveless tanktop along with a comfortable pair of sweats showcasing the time difference that stood between them.
It wasn’t out of the ordinary — in fact, it had become their ordinary; for one of them to be miles away, reaching out only with the aide of technology.
That didn’t make it okay for Tony, though.
It just made things feel even less like home without her around.
“So you haven’t called them?” Pepper sternly asked, not just pulling Tony out of his thoughts — she yanked him with a force only his repulsor blasts could have.
He shot his gaze back to the screen, tired frustration taking hold of his expression.
“We need a real firm on this case,” Tony said, no ounce of stress missing from his tone as he scratched absentmindedly at his eyebrow. Anything to keep his hands busy and his mind from spiraling. “And a really good lawyer. One that’ll take Norman down and keep him down.”
And take on the Prada-Wearing Python helping OsCorp ’s case, but Tony didn’t have the urge to repeat the name Jeri Hogarth in Pepper’s presence for a second time.
Her reaction from yesterday was still ringing in her ears.
“Well…” Pepper let out a soft sigh as she began to collect her paperwork, stacking it neatly into a pile in front of her. “It doesn’t seem like you’re getting many bites, now does it?”
Tony didn’t realize he was rubbing at his eyes again until a rainbow of colors caught his attention, forcing him to redirect his aggressive to his temple — where hopefully the heavy-handed massage could ease the ever-present ache that throbbed behind his skull.
“Fury and Friends really screwed us over with this one,” he muttered to himself more than anything, but like always, Pepper still heard.
“It sounds like they did what was best at the time,” she tried to console him — it was obvious in her voice. Her justifications on the matter were weak at best, though; being that she shared the same frustrations as Tony on the matter. “They found a way to keep Norman from conducting anymore experiments—”
“But he didn’t stop,” Tony coldly interrupted, his hand dropping away from his temple as if it had caught fire. The look he gave Pepper was sharp, and fierce. Holding every ounce of fatigue that weighed down his bones. “And Peter died because of it. Who’s next, Pep? Because there’s no playing Lazarus twice, and Osborn has made it clear he has no boundaries, and —”
Tony took a deep breath in to say more — so much more, a whole tangent sitting on his tongue, ready to spill over with a thousand words spoken in a minutes time.
Instead, he simply sighed.
That sigh said everything words never could.
“Hey,” Pepper’s voice was almost too soft to be heard. She pushed her papers aside, adjusting in the chair to sit closer towards her laptop — even if Tony was too busy scrubbing at his face to notice. “Don’t let this eat you up. I’m pretty sure I can see another gray hair growing in that goatee.”
“Yeah?” Tony dropped both hands away from his face and frowned at the camera, affronted — earning a genuine smile from Pepper along the way. “Where is it?”
Pepper gave a hearty chuckle as Tony leaned in to the camera, using it as his own personal mirror without a reflection to see in return.
“Right about…” Pepper pointed a finger right at her lens. “There.”
“Yeah? That one?” Tony pointed at his chin and dipped his head low, making sure his eyes were in full view when he said, “That’s from this wedding.”
Pepper’s jaw found the surface of the desk for a second time that night.
“And who did that to themselves, Mr-Let’s-Get-Married-Next-Month?”
Tony met her snarky look with his own.
“You tell me — you letting the wedding planner handle things yet?”
The pink blush that proceeded to creep over Pepper’s cheeks made each freckle on her skin stand out all the more. Tony had never told her how much he loved seeing those freckles come to life. Yet again, he was pretty sure she knew just by the way he’d smile at her, even as her frustrations grew when seeing that smile.
“Yes,” Pepper stressed, side-eyeing him briefly as she went to to say, “To…an extent.”
Tony let himself chuckle, if only because it came so naturally.
Asking Pepper not to control a situation was like asking him to give up everything about Iron Man. It was who they were. And no different than her freckles, it was one of the many things he loved so much about her.
Now if only they could get this damn wedding over with to make that love as official as he possibly could.
“They say the third times a charm, right?” Tony closed out of his inbox — it wasn’t going to do him any good tonight. “At least everything is finally taken care of. The suits were all fitted today, transposition is handled, catering is planned, the venue —”
“Boss,” FRIDAY rang through his ceilings in a way only his AI could. “You still have to make the rings—”
“Ah-ah-ah!” Tony shot his head up, a finger pressed firmly to his lips as he pushed out an aggressively loud hushing sound. “What part of private did you not understand, FRI?”
Tony didn’t need to be looking at his laptop to see the adulterated, sheer stress emitting off Pepper’s very core. As the kids loved to say, there really was a vibe.
“Tony,” Pepper drawled out, frantically pulling her own laptop closer until it was completely off the desk. “No secrets. Don’t do this, not with the wedding next week—”
Tony’s mouth curved into a wide smile as he turned back to his screen, his lips parted and words ready to be spoken when suddenly —
“Huh.”
The sound left his throat without him ever registering it.
And it wasn’t Pepper he was looking at when he spoke.
“Huh what?” Pepper echoed, staring at Tony intently through her camera — none of which he noticed, his owns eyes fixated straight ahead. The laptop may as well not have been there, his gaze intently focused on the corner of his room — where a desk remained unoccupied, and a few upholstered chairs remained vacant.
Next to them all was a crackling, orange portal.
“Surprises, not secrets,” Tony quickly responded, untangling his legs in one swift, hasty move — all but tossing the laptop onto his end table along the way. “I gotta go — kiss the screen for me, make it a wet one.”
Pepper glared. “I am not —”
“And wear something skimpier next time we do this.” Tony gave an exaggerated wink as he went to close the screen of his laptop — not fast enough to avoid hearing Pepper’s exasperated, “Tony, I swear to God—”
He’d nearly shut it all the way when suddenly, he threw the top open and spit out a hasty, “Love you!”
And then shut it for good.
Tony was across the room in practically a single stride, not wasting a second to reach the all-too-familiar vortex of a magical wormhole, spinning viciously in the air with embers that had no flames.
It was a good thing he hurried, too — by the time he got there, even by sprinting, the portal came to a close with diminishing sparks that fizzled on the carpet beneath his bare feet. It left just a single item in its departure, at first so hard to make out through the bright glimmers of flares that Tony had to squint his eyes to decipher what it was.
Surely that couldn’t be —
“That smug son of a bitch,” Tony muttered, leaning down to snatch the card off the floor.
The wedding invitation caught the glare from the overhead lights of his bedroom, even set to a dim level. One had brushed away the residue of magical sparks that still trickled onto the ground, all while the other tilted the invitation at just the right angle so he could make out the text imprinted on the back — the large RSVP letters standing out above anything else.
Something caught his eye, something below the print that was added on by hand — the ink used was sleek and shiny, but the lines of each letter jagged and shaky; written by hands that were unsteady, dancing along each T and I with a delicate tremor.
꧁༺ 𝓡𝓢𝓥𝓟 ༻꧂
𝒲𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝐵𝑒 𝒜𝓉𝓉𝑒𝓃𝒹𝒾𝓃𝑔 ☑
𝒲𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝒩𝑜𝓉 𝐵𝑒 𝒜𝓉𝓉𝑒𝓃𝒹𝒾𝓃𝑔 ☐
𝒞𝑜𝓃𝑠𝒾𝒹𝑒𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓌𝑒𝒹𝒹𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓅𝓇𝑒𝓈𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝒾𝓃 𝒶𝒹𝓋𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒
Tony found himself reading the hand-written note on the card three times in total, but it was only when he fully processed what the message said — and only then —
— did the alarms of the compound sound.
“What the—!” Tony shot his head up at a neck-breaking speed, his brows furrowing tightly together as the alarms sounded like sirens through the walls.
Always a crisis.
Pepper was never wrong.
“Oh, that’s just great!” Tony stumbled into a pair of shoes and took off like lightning, throwing open the door of his quarters at the same exact time his gauntlet came blasting down the hallway.
He threw his arm up right as it zipped on by, recoiling a few steps back when the attachment slammed against him like a wrecking ball.
He was running before the gauntlet had even finished assembling around his arm.
“FRIDAY, get me details,” Tony could barely hear himself over the alarms, the strobe lights filling the hallways in an annoyingly, blinding sorta way. Tony wasn’t sure how they were expected to handle a crisis if they couldn’t see their way to the crisis. “And shut off these damn alarms! Override code—!”
It may have been hard to see, but nothing could make it hard to see Steve Rogers barreling down the hallway, sweat pants and a tanktop outlining every muscle of his super-serum physique — with his shield swinging wildly at his hip.
Tony stuttered to a halt.
Well, that was a sight.
A draft of air rushed by, right as a figure stomped past him — following the same hallway Steve took off to, with the glisten of a metal arm catching every strobe light from above.
“What the —!” Tony balked as he watched Barnes storm up ahead, a long rifle slung over his chest as he loaded ammo into the bottom. Tony pointed a gauntlet covered finger at the weapon. “Why is that not in the armory? Why the hell do you have a gun in your quarters!?”
“Sleep with it.” Bucky didn’t break pace, marching forward and barely speaking loud enough to be heard over the alarms.
Tony wanted to roll his eyes, but he was afraid the strobe lights would cause a seizure if he looked at them head-on.
“FRIDAY—!”
“I can’t override the alarms, boss,” Friday ruefully explained, her voice following Tony once he picked up his feet; following the others, though much further behind, as they ran out of the east wing of the compound. “SHIELD authorities have set off the alarm, they’ve sighted a UFO descending our way—”
Tony wanted to make an outrageous comment at hearing UFO of all things, but upon entering the main lobby of the compound, he was swarmed with an abundance of SHIELD agents stampeding their way to their doors.
He couldn’t even hear his own thoughts, let alone anything that came out of his mouth.
What the hell was happening?
It was nothing short of a miracle that Tony managed to claw his way out with the mob of SHIELD personnel, though a few choice words and a heated repulsor on his hand certainly helped.
“Details, FRIDAY!” Tony shouted as he pushed past a flock of people, squeezing his way out the doors that lead to the outside. “C’mom, I asked for them yesterday!”
Tony never did like it when his AI couldn’t keep on top of the situation. It never meant good things.
By the time he got outside the building, Steve and Barnes were far ahead of him — and if anyone else had escaped their quarters in same amount of time, it would’ve been impossible to see their faces in the sea of SHIELD agents flooding the lawns of the compound.
Tony kept running forward even as those agents all found a place to dig their feet into the dirt, holding weapons high and keeping their eyes set on the threat.
It took far longer than it should’ve for Tony to comprehend that the threat he was looking at was very real, and this wasn’t some stress-induced hallucination taking his mind for a spin — no matter how illogical it may have seemed at the time.
Tony wasn’t alone in his shock, judging by the way Steve came to a sudden, jolting halt — with bare feet skidding into the grass of the compound’s many acres of land, stopping a few feet ahead of where Bucky had fallen to a knee and aimed his weapon high.
There was a spaceship in the sky.
There was an actual spaceship in the sky, one that was showing no hesitation in parking itself next to the compound; easily taking up the same amount of space as the parking garage that housed every single one of their aircrafts. Quinjet included.
Tony’s pace came to an abrupt abatement, nearly tripping him up as his run quickly turned into a wide-step walk. By the time he approached Steve’s side, the ship had landed and blown a gush of wind against them so hard, Tony stumbled back until Steve grabbed his bicep to steady him.
“Aim and hold your fire!”
“I repeat, do not engage until directed — do not engage until—!”
“—hold your fire, hold your fire!”
The voices shouted and blurred together from across the fields of the compound, bodies among bodies surrounding the ship with their weapons aimed right at the orange and silver hull — unwavering, even if the barrel of their gun was pointed at the wings or windows.
It wasn’t until the door — what was clearly a door — opened and ascended upward, that the SHIELD agents and soldiers holding defense across the lawn all directed their weapons accordingly.
Without so much a second thought, Tony shot his arm up high with a rigid defense of his own — the glow of his palm increased with a threatening hum as Steve held his ground with his shield in front of him.
A ramp descended slowly as the door lifted at an even slower pace, eventually creating an entrance to the confines of the ship with only a single man blocking their view of what laid inside.
The door hadn’t even completed lifting upwards when he held both hands high in the air, immediately — without hesitation.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” the voice kept on, “whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA!” When he finally stopped, and with both palms high up and outward, the man insisted, “We come in peace!”
Tony’s eyes narrowed as tightly as his brows creased. A flicker to his left, and he saw he wasn’t alone in his confusion.
“Oh, that’s just great, Quill — show ‘em your best ‘we come in peace’ routine,” a different voice came from a distance; scratchy and irritated — becoming louder with each step taken forward. “Because it worked so well the last time we got stuck on Contraxia!”
Tony wasn’t sure what got him to drop his gauntlet — his arm fell to his hip as if his strings had been cut, and it was either because of the walking, talking raccoon that was exiting the ship — or Steve’s hushed, but still audible,
“Holy shit,” he breathed out.
With a voice spoken no differently — all said in one single breath, Tony muttered, “Language.”
Though at first it was almost indisputable that the man on the ship was human, Tony was starting to doubt himself when a much bigger figure came barreling in from the right — far more human than the raccoon, but with skin much too discolored and harshly disfigured.
“This is a lie, Rocket,” his monotone voice said, with hands tucked into his belt — his muscular, threatening figure contrasting sharply with his casual stance. “The last time we were on Contraxia, you nearly lost your tail.”
“I know, Drax!” Rocket — the raccoon, Tony felt compelled to stress against the neurons of his misfiring brain — went on to yell. The claws of his dexterous paws waved frustratingly in the air. “That’s why I used the sarcastic voice, it was sarcasm — you badoon-faced flarkhole!”
Drax, the man twice the size of Captain America himself, pointed to the human who greeted them all at the entrance of the ship. “That was not sarcasm, you provided Quill with fake pleasantries of false truths—”
A young woman with two beaming antennas on her head approached from behind, and Tony noticeably took a step back as she took a step forward.
“I believe the furry one was trying to say that—”
“Call me furry one more time, bug lady,” Rocket pointed a sharp claw up at the woman, her towering height doing nothing to take away from his intimidation, “and these scut’s with guns will be the last problem either of those creepy antenna’s on your head detect — HEY!”
Rocket soared into the air with kicking legs and punching arms — helpless as a tall, powerfully sculpted woman held him by the back of his vest, refusing to drop him until she made it halfway down the ramp and away from the others.
“Leave Mantis alone,” she stressed, the green lips that spoke her words no different than the rest of her skin. She left Rocket behind, discarding her grip on his vest so she could bring both hands in the air for the soldiers and agents to see, even as she descended down the ramp. “And behave. We’re guests here.”
Even all the way up the ship, Rocket’s eye-roll could be seen.
“Oh sure, ‘behave’, because nothing says hospitality like being welcomed by an army of locked and loaded guns!” Despite his vocal disapproval of their circumstances, Rocket joined the green woman in her descent off the ship. “Yeah, just another cozy family reunion for the Guardians — right, Gamora?”
The oddly natured color of skin tones and freakish body parts that they weren’t accustomed to was suddenly the last thing either Steve nor Tony could think about.
With a wavelength only they had developed over time, they turned to each other — brows furrowed with a fierce confusion as the words ‘family reunion’ seemed to echo both their minds.
They hadn’t even turned back to the ship when a thunderous cheer erupted from inside.
“Mighty Avengers!”
Tony and Steve looked away simultaneously — Tony with enough speed to break the first three columns in his spine. And yet somehow, it still wasn’t fast enough.
“Tho—oorrRRR!”
With a strength only an Asgardian God could have, Thor enfolded Steve and Tony in his colossal arms; embracing both men in a hold tight enough to shake the ground beneath them.
“My comrades!” Thor greeted them with a hefty laugh, one that bellowed into the night sky above them.
Tony couldn’t hear any of it, not over the sound of his frantically beating pulse, hammering in his ears with a desperate cry for air.
“Buddy,” Tony choked out, tapping his fist against Thor’s back. “Cn’t breathe,”
“What a glorious occasion for a reunion of Earth’s Mightiest heroes!” Thor kept on, and with each raising echo of his enthusiasm came the additional squeeze of his hold — particularly bothersome to Tony, who was now grabbing onto Thor’s red cape and tugging on it for dear life.
“Buddy,” Tony choked out again, this time with a gasp. “Cn’t breathe!”
Thor suddenly broke away — and Tony gave a deep, deep inhale of sweet, crisp New York air. He was too busy filling his lungs with oxygen to vocalize what Steve got around to first.
“This is...a surprise.” Steve's twitch of a smile started to break away at the edges of his stress, with Thor's sudden presence clearly unsettling even his steely nerves.
The gleaming grin from Thor was what broke away his stress entirely — reminding him it was an alley, not an enemy, at their doorstep.
“Migardians, please!” he addressed the surrounding agents and soldiers all at once, raising his hand in a dismissive matter, even with the weapons all pointed their way. “These people, they come with me — they are my friends. Put your weapons down, they mean you no harm!”
It was with a handful of irritated sighs, a few reluctant standing officers backing down, and Tony’s half-heated glare convincing the remaining to do the same, that weapons began to lower from the air and safety locks sounded from all across the surrounding lawn.
Those still inside the ship took that as their go-ahead for a descent.
“See?” Quill, the most remarkably human of the bunch, tapped the raccoon against his shoulder as they walked down the ramp, side-by-side. “If you just approach these things with a leveled head and a calm way of thinking—”
“They only put their guns down cause he told them too,” Rocket snapped, a sharp claw pointing straight ahead at Thor.
Gamora threw her head around, long waves of two-toned hair briefly hiding the rage in her face as she snapped, “Will you two stop —!”
“Banner!” Thor’s thunderous shout broke through the bickering like a hot knife to butter.
Bruce hadn’t even made it halfway through the crowd of shield agents when Thor tackled him into a hug, taking him right off his feet along the way.
“Hey, Thor — ofphH! Oh gosh, okay,” Bruce kept his hands rigid and where they were, unsure of where to put them in the middle of Thor’s tightly clenched bear-hug. “Alright, we’re-we’re touching. We’re being touchy.”
Any other day, and Tony may have made a remark about how Steve purposefully turned away to hide his chuckle from everyone.
Right now, he was too busy staring at the literal spaceship that just parked on his property.
“I thought for sure you had perished on Sakaar!” Thor roared, clapping both his hands against Bruce’s back with vigorous content. “It is good to see you alive and well, my friend.”
Bruce opened his mouth to say something — or gasp for air that his lungs suddenly lacked, it was hard to say which.
Either way, Thor beat him to the punch.
“Has he told you all the story of the Grandmaster’s Genitalia wars?” Thor whipped around to the others with a grin that spread all the way across the many acres of the compound. With Bruce still by his side, he pulled the man into a side-hug and ruffled his hair excitedly with his closed fist. “Ah, another time! First, we feast in preparation for the festivities!”
In the blink of an eye, Tony stumbled on his feet when Rocket — the literal raccoon, his brain still couldn’t comprehend — pushed right past him, all so he could strut on by.
“Finally — it’s about time somebody said something worthwhile!” Rocket moved as fast as his legs could take him without running on all fours, using his one hand to hold the little twig that sat precariously on his shoulder. “I’m flarkin’ starvin’—!”
“I am Groot!”
The little twig crawled up Rocket’s head, leaving both Rocket’s arms free so he could stamped forward on all fours.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Rocket went off, “we’ll get you something to eat too — you know, if you had just ate your ration bars before we left Xandar—”
“I am Groot,” the tiny twig chanted for a second time in a row.
“Hey!” Rocket’s voice began to dwindle away the further into the crowds of SHIELD personnel he got. “Don’t use that tone with me, Mr!”
Bucky was one of the few not to go chasing after the critter, or the remaining who escorted the strangers off their ship and into the compound — friends or not, they’d be temporarily detained, monitored, and ensured to be safe for others to be around.
As he watched them all depart back into the compound, a silent figure approached him at his side — deciding to completely bypass Steve and Tony in her trek up the lawn.
“Is that tiny tree…talking?” Natasha slowly asked him, with her head cocked so far to the side she could feel her earlobe pressing against her shoulder.
“Lighten up, man!” Quill shouted from a distance, his voice dwindling with the others but the clap of his hands somehow sounding over the crowds mix-matched dialogue. “Let’s have some fun, we’re here to party! It's a wedding, feel the love! C'mon, you know the lyrics — come and get your love! Come and get your — OW, dude, that's my butt, stop it!"
Tony watched, with a jaw slacked to the grass of the ground they stood on, as SHIELD employees detained and escorted a dancing man — and that was the least weird thing of them all, as the talking raccoon and tiny tree made conversation all the way off the fields and into the building.
Twisting slightly at his hips, Tony turned to Bruce — who was in a side-hug so intense, his head was practically embeded tightly in-between the space of Thor’s armpit.
And he looked every bit discontent about it as Tony he assumed he may be.
“Told you I wasn’t mental,” Bruce said, flatly.
