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seriousficTitle: The Cost of Wearing Masks
Fandom: Spider-Man movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,155
Author’s Note: Betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
htbthomas. Takes place after the events of Spider-Man 2, assuming Spider-Man 3 never happened.
Previous Part: Chapter 7
Characters/Pairings: Peter/MJ
Summary: There’s a new goblin in town, and all Peter can do is wonder how much Harry hates him.
Peter was in so much pain that he came into Mary-Jane’s apartment through the door instead of the window. He just wasn’t up to web-swinging or wall-crawling; after he’d dug his way out of the wheat Hobgoblin had buried him in, he’d called a cab. The cabbie had given him a weird stare as well, with Peter dressed as he was in overalls and a flannel jacket stolen from the nearest scarecrow. He was still coughing up wheat. Luckily, he’d thought to stow his valuables in a web-satchel before changing into costume. So he had the pleasure of opening his wallet and handing over the last of his bills to the cabbie, who had spent the entire trip serenading him with how Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s marriage was destroying the Superman comics.
Inside at last, Peter sagged and tried to steel himself before Mary-Jane saw him like-
“Peter!”
Too late.
She ran up to him, fingernails bitten down to the nub. It was a bad habit he’d thought she’d conquered, but then when was the last time he’d been abducted right in front of her?
”Are you okay?”
”Well, most of me is fine, but he did kick my ass.”
She guided him to an easy chair and set him down on it, then picked up a first-aid kit from the coffee table. So she’d been waiting for him. Thankfully he’d gotten home before she lost too much sleep over him. Peter was pretty sure she had an audition sometime that week. He winced as she touched iodine to a Razor-Bat cut.
“Shouldn't you give me a bullet to bite on? Ouch!”
Mary-Jane stuck a Band-Aid to a nick on his shoulder. “Yeah, well, usually my patients are too inebriated to complain. It happens when your father's been in as many bar brawls as mine has. You know I once thought of being a nurse?”
”And the medical world was sorry to lose a prospect with your bedside manner.”
She examined his chin.
”Hmm, a smart mouth. It'll have to come off.”
She kissed him. His eyes went wide when she dabbed more iodine on him while he was distracted.
”Okay, that was just below the belt!”
”Peter, you've never seen me go below the belt. What'd he do to you, anyway?”
”Oh, nothing. He just had a few flying metal things that were very sharp.” Peter counted off on his fingers, with their bruised knuckles. “And some explosives. And the bright idea of burying me alive in wheat.”
”Wheat? Guess you don't want sandwiches for supper?”
”No. Not hungry.” He stood. “Where do you keep the Advil?”
”I don't, but there's some Tylenol in the bathroom. And some Maalox if you need it.”
Peter laughed so dry it made the Mojave Desert look wet and went to the bathroom. Dry-swallowing pills, he collapsed into the bathtub. His arms made for pretty comfortable pillows, when his head wasn’t resting on a bruise. After a few moment, Mary-Jane followed him in. She sat on the closed lid of the toilet and petted his hair, careful not to press too firmly in case she accidentally caused him pain.
”You know, I don't mind the whole ‘chucking bombs at me’ thing. I'm used to it. But that maniac ruined my best clothes.”
”You got all dressed up for me? And here I thought you didn't care.”
Peter would not have his spirits lightened. “Tomorrow I'm going to pay Harry a visit.”
Mary-Jane bit her lip. ”You think he's that… thing?”
”The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.”
”How can you say that about your best friend?” Mary-Jane asked, although inside she was mulling the possibility over herself. Even before they’d broken up, Harry had had his problems.
His relationship with his father had been so complicated, Harry so eager to please Norman and yet so desperate to assert his independence at the same time. Almost hating the man whose favor he desperately wanted to earn. Harry would do anything for a compliment he would just throw back in his father’s face. But then, Mary-Jane knew what it was like to have a father like that.
You’re so lucky, Peter. You live in a world where a parent’s love was a right, not something to be earned.
Still, Harry had been a good friend. Someone she almost could’ve built a life with if events hadn’t driven them apart. And if Peter hadn’t come along to show her that she didn’t have to settle for men who ‘only’ yelled at her some of the time.
”I think maybe you should give him the benefit of the doubt.”
”Fine,” Peter said morosely, miserably. “I'll give him a chance to explain why he tried to kill the two of us before I hand him over to the police gagged with his own tie.”
”You know, you oughta watch that mean streak of yours. It could get you into trouble someday.”
”Yes ma'am. Thanks for the check-up, Nurse Ratchet, but I have to get home. “
”You could always… stay the night?” Mary-Jane suggested.
Peter processed that for a shocked beat, eyebrows raised, before he agreed with a curt nod. He kissed her hand, the frayed fingers of his glove bringing it to his lips.
“You go on ahead. I need a shower.”
“I’ll leave the door open so you know which room it is,” she said with a casualness she didn’t feel. Her heart pounding in her chest, she gave his hair one last soulful caress and then left the bathroom. The door shut behind her with what could almost be called a chime.
Peter flattened in the bathtub, opening the faucet and letting the water pour down directly onto his dirty clothes. When he was revitalized enough, he got up and stripped off his wetted clothes. The farm clothes were, no pun intended, a wash. He dropped them in the trash. The spider-suit he hung over the shower bar. It’d take some stitches, but it could be mended. Then he picked at random from one of the dozen shampoo bottles Mary-Jane had and scrubbed himself off.
Mary-Jane had just asked him to spend the night. Didn’t about ten billion schoolboy fantasies start off this way? Or, ironically enough, with him saving her from some dire fate (which he’d done half a dozen times and yet he was still parked at first base. Parker luck struck again). Peter felt an all-too-familiar tingle in his crotch and reminded himself not to get his hopes, or anything else, up. Nevertheless, he sudsed himself up and rinsed off twice. Then he toweled himself dry and put on the bottom half of his costume, which wasn’t excessively disgusting.
There was a room in Mary-Jane’s (repulsively clean and large and well-furnished) apartment with an open door. He stepped through it, careful not to make any sound. After all his time as Spider-Man, that was rather easy. There was no light, but his spider-sense kept him from banging into anything. With slow, cautious steps he bumped into the side of the bed. Then he felt out the sheets and gingerly pulled them back. There was a presence under them, something warm and breathing that smelled of Mary-Jane. Careful not to disturb her in any way, Peter ventured onto the mattress and pulled the bedsheet over him.
His hands were sweating. He wiped them on his pants and, with a sudden thrill, felt Mary-Jane’s breath hit his chest. No way to tell if she was awake, or asleep, or in the same terrible suspense he was in. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Feeling as thought he were nearing some incredible boundary, Peter reached out to her.
She snored.
Chastened, Peter set his head down on the pillow and hugged his arms against himself.
“Good night, Mary-Jane,” he said quietly, and let his body admit all of its aches and twinges as he drifted off to sleep.
***
He woke the next morning feeling oddly refreshed. It was a shock when he glanced at the clock and saw the hour. Panic took over before he remembered. It was summer, so no classes, and he didn’t have work, so he couldn’t be late for that. He was feeling so good, he actually felt like exercising. That radioactive spider (as he liked to think of it, with radioactive in that case standing for “I don’t know, maybe some kind of virus-like entity transmitted through the venom of a genetically-engineered spider that gave me some great power to go with that great responsibility everyone keeps talking about?”) had endowed his system with one hell of a metabolism, but the right exercises worked out the muscle areas that web-swinging and crime-fighting didn’t. After a few moments of yawning and stretching, he got started. Hanging from the ceiling by an arm and a leg, he started doing a peculiarly arachnid motion.
After a few minutes of that, he felt his body had had enough. He dropped back down to the floor, landing in front of Mary-Jane. She was startled, but not surprised. Perkily, she set a clothes basket down on the bed.
“I’m gonna need your pants.”
“So that really is what she said.”
“To go with your shirt.” Mary-Jane dragged up his top from the basket. “Wouldn’t it feel weird to have dirty pants and a clean shirt?”
“I guess. You’ve got-”
“Something else for you to wear?”
Under her arm were a folded set of jeans, a long-sleeved tee, and (Parker luck) a pair of clean undies. He took them graciously.
“I stopped by your apartment. Your super’s kinda…”
Peter nodded. “Yes, very.”
Mary-Jane was already headed out the door. “I’ve got bacon on the skillet if you’re hungry.”
Peter sniffed the air. “Well, now I am. You have any Lucky Charms?”
“Yeah.”
“Yum.”
She left and Peter stripped off his pants, creased and worn from both the battle and being slept in.
Mary-Jane poked her head back into the bedroom. “Remember to go see Harry.”
Peter wasn’t hiding behind the bedpost, it just happened to be there. “It had slipped my mind, actually. But yes, I suppose it would be good to confront him on the possibility of being a psychotic arch-villain.”
Minutes later, they were eating breakfast. Peter had no idea where Mary-Jane got her energy.
“So, you let me sleep in?”
“You looked too cute to wake up.”
“I guess it comes from getting used to a sleeping place without any lumps or roaches.”
She flounced over to the oven and bit off half of a stick of bacon. “I’ll call John for you.”
”What for?”
”We’re going to have dinner with him, remember?”
”But… honey… goblin…”
”Then I suggest you get that cleared up,” Mary-Jane admonished. “Oh, your costume’s in the washing machine. But… the dryer’s broken.”
And so it was that Peter found himself ironing out his costume, which MJ had taken the liberty of sewing up with her boundless morning-person energy. Mary-Jane paced nearby, scanning through and through a script.
“Is something wrong?”
“What could be wrong?”
Peter smiled to hide his concern. “It’s just that you’re usually not this keyed up unless you’re trying to hide something.”
“Just had that dream again, with the falling and the totally unimportant.”
“Falling?”
“Like at the bridge… or the reactor. I’ve been having them since Ock… anyway, it’s not either of them, it’s just this… black.” MJ turned away from him. “Sometimes I wish I could hit bottom, just so I could stop falling.”
Peter put his arms on her shoulders. “You know I’ll catch you.”
If that consoled her, she didn’t show it. She gathered up her script and went into the other room, a cue to ‘keep your distance’ so blunt even Peter could read it. He went back to ironing before a repeat of that unfortunate incident with his first costume could occur.
He came to the mask and wrung it out like a washcloth. Then held it up to the light. Not a single stain from last night.
”For once, I’m hoping that nobody has to see you.”
***
Armored by the clean costume under his clothes, even as he felt dirtier and wearier than ever, Peter was looking up at the massive Oscorp skyscraper an hour later. Somewhere up in those heights, Harry was waiting for him. Either a disenfranchised friend or a new enemy. One that had endangered Mary-Jane in his attack.
Fist clenched, Peter crossed the street. A car nearly hit him, but he didn’t break his stride. Behind him, the car stopped in the middle of the street and a man in a dark overcoat got out. The man watched Peter carefully as he entered the building.
An arm snaked out from underneath the overcoat and slammed the car door, not with a hand, but with a metal claw attached to a long tentacle…
Fandom: Spider-Man movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,155
Author’s Note: Betaed by
htbthomas. Takes place after the events of Spider-Man 2, assuming Spider-Man 3 never happened.Previous Part: Chapter 7
Characters/Pairings: Peter/MJ
Summary: There’s a new goblin in town, and all Peter can do is wonder how much Harry hates him.
Peter was in so much pain that he came into Mary-Jane’s apartment through the door instead of the window. He just wasn’t up to web-swinging or wall-crawling; after he’d dug his way out of the wheat Hobgoblin had buried him in, he’d called a cab. The cabbie had given him a weird stare as well, with Peter dressed as he was in overalls and a flannel jacket stolen from the nearest scarecrow. He was still coughing up wheat. Luckily, he’d thought to stow his valuables in a web-satchel before changing into costume. So he had the pleasure of opening his wallet and handing over the last of his bills to the cabbie, who had spent the entire trip serenading him with how Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s marriage was destroying the Superman comics.
Inside at last, Peter sagged and tried to steel himself before Mary-Jane saw him like-
“Peter!”
Too late.
She ran up to him, fingernails bitten down to the nub. It was a bad habit he’d thought she’d conquered, but then when was the last time he’d been abducted right in front of her?
”Are you okay?”
”Well, most of me is fine, but he did kick my ass.”
She guided him to an easy chair and set him down on it, then picked up a first-aid kit from the coffee table. So she’d been waiting for him. Thankfully he’d gotten home before she lost too much sleep over him. Peter was pretty sure she had an audition sometime that week. He winced as she touched iodine to a Razor-Bat cut.
“Shouldn't you give me a bullet to bite on? Ouch!”
Mary-Jane stuck a Band-Aid to a nick on his shoulder. “Yeah, well, usually my patients are too inebriated to complain. It happens when your father's been in as many bar brawls as mine has. You know I once thought of being a nurse?”
”And the medical world was sorry to lose a prospect with your bedside manner.”
She examined his chin.
”Hmm, a smart mouth. It'll have to come off.”
She kissed him. His eyes went wide when she dabbed more iodine on him while he was distracted.
”Okay, that was just below the belt!”
”Peter, you've never seen me go below the belt. What'd he do to you, anyway?”
”Oh, nothing. He just had a few flying metal things that were very sharp.” Peter counted off on his fingers, with their bruised knuckles. “And some explosives. And the bright idea of burying me alive in wheat.”
”Wheat? Guess you don't want sandwiches for supper?”
”No. Not hungry.” He stood. “Where do you keep the Advil?”
”I don't, but there's some Tylenol in the bathroom. And some Maalox if you need it.”
Peter laughed so dry it made the Mojave Desert look wet and went to the bathroom. Dry-swallowing pills, he collapsed into the bathtub. His arms made for pretty comfortable pillows, when his head wasn’t resting on a bruise. After a few moment, Mary-Jane followed him in. She sat on the closed lid of the toilet and petted his hair, careful not to press too firmly in case she accidentally caused him pain.
”You know, I don't mind the whole ‘chucking bombs at me’ thing. I'm used to it. But that maniac ruined my best clothes.”
”You got all dressed up for me? And here I thought you didn't care.”
Peter would not have his spirits lightened. “Tomorrow I'm going to pay Harry a visit.”
Mary-Jane bit her lip. ”You think he's that… thing?”
”The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.”
”How can you say that about your best friend?” Mary-Jane asked, although inside she was mulling the possibility over herself. Even before they’d broken up, Harry had had his problems.
His relationship with his father had been so complicated, Harry so eager to please Norman and yet so desperate to assert his independence at the same time. Almost hating the man whose favor he desperately wanted to earn. Harry would do anything for a compliment he would just throw back in his father’s face. But then, Mary-Jane knew what it was like to have a father like that.
You’re so lucky, Peter. You live in a world where a parent’s love was a right, not something to be earned.
Still, Harry had been a good friend. Someone she almost could’ve built a life with if events hadn’t driven them apart. And if Peter hadn’t come along to show her that she didn’t have to settle for men who ‘only’ yelled at her some of the time.
”I think maybe you should give him the benefit of the doubt.”
”Fine,” Peter said morosely, miserably. “I'll give him a chance to explain why he tried to kill the two of us before I hand him over to the police gagged with his own tie.”
”You know, you oughta watch that mean streak of yours. It could get you into trouble someday.”
”Yes ma'am. Thanks for the check-up, Nurse Ratchet, but I have to get home. “
”You could always… stay the night?” Mary-Jane suggested.
Peter processed that for a shocked beat, eyebrows raised, before he agreed with a curt nod. He kissed her hand, the frayed fingers of his glove bringing it to his lips.
“You go on ahead. I need a shower.”
“I’ll leave the door open so you know which room it is,” she said with a casualness she didn’t feel. Her heart pounding in her chest, she gave his hair one last soulful caress and then left the bathroom. The door shut behind her with what could almost be called a chime.
Peter flattened in the bathtub, opening the faucet and letting the water pour down directly onto his dirty clothes. When he was revitalized enough, he got up and stripped off his wetted clothes. The farm clothes were, no pun intended, a wash. He dropped them in the trash. The spider-suit he hung over the shower bar. It’d take some stitches, but it could be mended. Then he picked at random from one of the dozen shampoo bottles Mary-Jane had and scrubbed himself off.
Mary-Jane had just asked him to spend the night. Didn’t about ten billion schoolboy fantasies start off this way? Or, ironically enough, with him saving her from some dire fate (which he’d done half a dozen times and yet he was still parked at first base. Parker luck struck again). Peter felt an all-too-familiar tingle in his crotch and reminded himself not to get his hopes, or anything else, up. Nevertheless, he sudsed himself up and rinsed off twice. Then he toweled himself dry and put on the bottom half of his costume, which wasn’t excessively disgusting.
There was a room in Mary-Jane’s (repulsively clean and large and well-furnished) apartment with an open door. He stepped through it, careful not to make any sound. After all his time as Spider-Man, that was rather easy. There was no light, but his spider-sense kept him from banging into anything. With slow, cautious steps he bumped into the side of the bed. Then he felt out the sheets and gingerly pulled them back. There was a presence under them, something warm and breathing that smelled of Mary-Jane. Careful not to disturb her in any way, Peter ventured onto the mattress and pulled the bedsheet over him.
His hands were sweating. He wiped them on his pants and, with a sudden thrill, felt Mary-Jane’s breath hit his chest. No way to tell if she was awake, or asleep, or in the same terrible suspense he was in. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Feeling as thought he were nearing some incredible boundary, Peter reached out to her.
She snored.
Chastened, Peter set his head down on the pillow and hugged his arms against himself.
“Good night, Mary-Jane,” he said quietly, and let his body admit all of its aches and twinges as he drifted off to sleep.
***
He woke the next morning feeling oddly refreshed. It was a shock when he glanced at the clock and saw the hour. Panic took over before he remembered. It was summer, so no classes, and he didn’t have work, so he couldn’t be late for that. He was feeling so good, he actually felt like exercising. That radioactive spider (as he liked to think of it, with radioactive in that case standing for “I don’t know, maybe some kind of virus-like entity transmitted through the venom of a genetically-engineered spider that gave me some great power to go with that great responsibility everyone keeps talking about?”) had endowed his system with one hell of a metabolism, but the right exercises worked out the muscle areas that web-swinging and crime-fighting didn’t. After a few moments of yawning and stretching, he got started. Hanging from the ceiling by an arm and a leg, he started doing a peculiarly arachnid motion.
After a few minutes of that, he felt his body had had enough. He dropped back down to the floor, landing in front of Mary-Jane. She was startled, but not surprised. Perkily, she set a clothes basket down on the bed.
“I’m gonna need your pants.”
“So that really is what she said.”
“To go with your shirt.” Mary-Jane dragged up his top from the basket. “Wouldn’t it feel weird to have dirty pants and a clean shirt?”
“I guess. You’ve got-”
“Something else for you to wear?”
Under her arm were a folded set of jeans, a long-sleeved tee, and (Parker luck) a pair of clean undies. He took them graciously.
“I stopped by your apartment. Your super’s kinda…”
Peter nodded. “Yes, very.”
Mary-Jane was already headed out the door. “I’ve got bacon on the skillet if you’re hungry.”
Peter sniffed the air. “Well, now I am. You have any Lucky Charms?”
“Yeah.”
“Yum.”
She left and Peter stripped off his pants, creased and worn from both the battle and being slept in.
Mary-Jane poked her head back into the bedroom. “Remember to go see Harry.”
Peter wasn’t hiding behind the bedpost, it just happened to be there. “It had slipped my mind, actually. But yes, I suppose it would be good to confront him on the possibility of being a psychotic arch-villain.”
Minutes later, they were eating breakfast. Peter had no idea where Mary-Jane got her energy.
“So, you let me sleep in?”
“You looked too cute to wake up.”
“I guess it comes from getting used to a sleeping place without any lumps or roaches.”
She flounced over to the oven and bit off half of a stick of bacon. “I’ll call John for you.”
”What for?”
”We’re going to have dinner with him, remember?”
”But… honey… goblin…”
”Then I suggest you get that cleared up,” Mary-Jane admonished. “Oh, your costume’s in the washing machine. But… the dryer’s broken.”
And so it was that Peter found himself ironing out his costume, which MJ had taken the liberty of sewing up with her boundless morning-person energy. Mary-Jane paced nearby, scanning through and through a script.
“Is something wrong?”
“What could be wrong?”
Peter smiled to hide his concern. “It’s just that you’re usually not this keyed up unless you’re trying to hide something.”
“Just had that dream again, with the falling and the totally unimportant.”
“Falling?”
“Like at the bridge… or the reactor. I’ve been having them since Ock… anyway, it’s not either of them, it’s just this… black.” MJ turned away from him. “Sometimes I wish I could hit bottom, just so I could stop falling.”
Peter put his arms on her shoulders. “You know I’ll catch you.”
If that consoled her, she didn’t show it. She gathered up her script and went into the other room, a cue to ‘keep your distance’ so blunt even Peter could read it. He went back to ironing before a repeat of that unfortunate incident with his first costume could occur.
He came to the mask and wrung it out like a washcloth. Then held it up to the light. Not a single stain from last night.
”For once, I’m hoping that nobody has to see you.”
***
Armored by the clean costume under his clothes, even as he felt dirtier and wearier than ever, Peter was looking up at the massive Oscorp skyscraper an hour later. Somewhere up in those heights, Harry was waiting for him. Either a disenfranchised friend or a new enemy. One that had endangered Mary-Jane in his attack.
Fist clenched, Peter crossed the street. A car nearly hit him, but he didn’t break his stride. Behind him, the car stopped in the middle of the street and a man in a dark overcoat got out. The man watched Peter carefully as he entered the building.
An arm snaked out from underneath the overcoat and slammed the car door, not with a hand, but with a metal claw attached to a long tentacle…
