![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: We’re Not Lovers (We Just Play Them In Comics)
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Peter/MJ, Joe Quesada, the Marvel Bullpen and Spider-Man supporting cast (yes, Virginia, there is one)
Word Count: 5,488
Summary: Editorial says the spider-marriage has to go. Peter and Mary-Jane don't take it very well.
Joe pumped Peter’s hand as eagerly as always, but his squeeze was too hard, just a tinge of desperation. Quesada was, like a lot of artists, always in search of a kindred spirit. But there were some things no one saw eye to eye with him on.
Peter Parker let go of the boss’s hand and sat. He still wasn’t used to being treated like a star, or fawned over. He wasn’t written that way. Wasn’t often he got the nod from the man upstairs. Usually it was just him and his handlers. JMS, Jenkins, David… good people. Getting a call from the EIC meant trouble. Even the unmasking had been announced to him by Millar, who he trusted from the Marvel Knights gig. Peter didn’t like to take sides, but he’d heard things about JMS and Joe. Fights so big they made Lee v. Dikto look like a John Byrne spat.
“Pete, have I got some exciting news for you!”
Peter forced a smile. “Great. Let’s hear it.”
“Well, you gotta break an egg to make omelets, so I’m gonna give it to you straight. You’ve been in a rut lately.”
“A rut? I’ve been unmasked, I’ve had organic web-shooters, I gave birth to myself…”
“I’m not talking about those storylines, those storylines were amazing. We’re undoing all of them, but at the time, they were amazing.”
Peter knew from experience not to argue with Quesada-logic. PAD had tried and look where it got Captain Marvel. “So I’m getting my old web-shooters back? Because these new ones are itchy. And they drip. It’s like having a sinus infection in my arms…”
“Yes, you’re getting the mechanical web-shooters back. And, better yet, we’re gonna give Aunt May a bigger role!”
“That’s great!” She’d been stuck in a coma for too long. But on the inside, his guts were churning. Something didn’t sound right. Give May a bigger role? As it was, his only friends were his wife and aunt. How could she have a bigger role than that?
“You’re moving back in with her.”
“Oh.” Peter scratched the back of his head. “While we hunt for a permanent home?”
“For the foreseeable future. It’s part of our new retcon.”
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Quesada was even grinning. Shitshitshitshitshit! The totem stuff, that had been bad enough… it’d all flown over his head. This was setting off his script-sense. In fact, the last time it’d rung this hard, James Cameron had tried to make a movie about him.
“You wanna bring Uncle Ben back to life?” Peter joked. “Again?”
“No. We’re going into an entirely new direction. Back to basics.” Peter didn’t ask how ‘entirely new direction’ and ‘back to basics’ could be the same thing. More Quesada-logic. “Picture this. You’re a hot, young bachelor on the prowl. Harry Osborn’s your best friend… or is he your worst enemy? You’ve got to hide your secret identity from your aunt and any bitches you might pick up at the disco…”
“People don’t go to discos anymore,” Peter said gently. God, the boss was out of touch. “And could you not refer to women as ‘bitches’?”
“Oh, come off it. This is gonna be edgy.”
“Trouble-edgy?” Peter needled. He had reasons for not trusting Millar, Millar and his politics, Millar and his sensationalism.
Quesada scowled. “Just tell me what you think of it.”
“I think your bold new direction sounds a lot like…” Peter thought about it. “The Seventies. Early eighties, tops. What does Mary-Jane think about this?”
“She’ll be dealt with.”
Peter blinked. “What, like… Captain-America-dealt with?”
“No, no. She’ll merely go from star player to… recurring. You know how it is.”
“Not really.” Peter’d never been less than a star and for as long as he could remember, Mary-Jane had been his right arm. They were like Lois and Clark, Batman and Robin, Lucy and Ethel. “I mean, I’ve done this. I’ve been there. What is there really left to say about single Spidey? And won’t I be stepping on the toes of Marvel Adventures and Ultimate?”
“You won’t be stepping on any toes. This will be what the world sees when they look for storytelling in the mighty Marvel manner.”
“So, if I’m understanding you correctly, you’re retconning my marriage.”
Quesada leaned forward, his eyes speaking of the cutthroat deals that had brought him to power. “I’m not retconning your marriage, I’m fixing it. I’m fixing your life. I’m fixing you.”
***
The cast didn’t take it well. They didn’t get many hours as it was, with JMS at the helm (even Lamont mostly took work in crowd scenes), and now there was panic in the air.
“Am I even still in continuity?” Eddie demanded. “Bad enough I had to lose my power to the fucking Scorpion… I was promised a shoo-in with the third movie… hey, hey, listen!”
Peter slammed his trailer door shut, silencing Eddie. “I miss JMS already.”
Mary-Jane was struggling to keep it together. Her own trailer would probably be full of sympathy cards and flowers. Not that they were together like, say, Clark and Lois (whose relationship had been the most widely-known secret in town until DC had finally given in and made it legal in the funnies). But they had a bond from working together so long. They knew each others’ cues, always read through their scripts together and made suggestions (MJ had a wicked sense of humor to bring to bear on Spidey’s quips), and they were just… partners. In just about every sense of the word.
There was a cot set aside for her in his trailer, although she never used it. He always insisted on her sleeping in the bed while he took the cot. And if she always fell asleep first, and he watched her lips quirk in sleep and her eyes twitch and her chest rise and fall, he’d never have a ‘Mackie-mare’ that night.
“I can’t believe this is his swan song,” Mary-Jane said, valiantly struggling to apply make-up. “I mean… I mean… this is like Pierce Brosnan’s last Bond movie being Die Another Day. Only worse, because at least Bond didn’t molest a small boy at the end of that movie.”
“I’ve never been able to watch DAD all the way through, so it comes as a relief that there’s no pedophilia in it.”
“How can you make jokes?”
Peter shrugged. “It’s how I’m written.” He sat down next to her in the bed. As always, he knew when she needed comfort and knew how to give it to her. Today was one of those rare occasions when the closeness of touch would do. He brought Mary-Jane up against his chest and let her hide herself in it. “Hey, at least you’ll finally get a chance to see what it’s like in a proper action scene, Jackpot. No more cowering or struggling in chains.”
“Oh, no one’s written me doing that in ages. I got to beat up the Chameleon.”
“Yeah, the guys have been complaining about how overpowered you are.” He made a thoughtful noise as he lifted his head up in the air. “Now she’s got superpowers.”
“I’m not a superheroine. I tried out for the Avengers, the Fantastic Four… still can’t believe Sue Storm beat me out for that, what does she have that I don’t have?”
Peter patted her on the back.
“People are gonna hate me as a superhero,” she continued. “And I’ll die and it won’t even be a good death. It’ll be a fucking Dan Didio mercy-killing, that’s what it’ll be.”
“No one’s gonna kill you. Not for long. You’re Mary-Jane Watson. The love of Spider-Man’s life.”
***
“HEEELP! SPIDER-MAN!”
Peter winced as the shrill voice assaulting his eardrums. Next to him, Mary-Jane was rolling her eyes. And at the source of the aural attack, a bleach-blonde in a miniskirt the size of a monkey’s hand was reading variations on that line. Her big innovation seemed to be “HEELP! SPIDER-MAN! PUH-LEASEEEE!”
“That’s your new love interest?”
Peter felt the line of his jaw. He’d been younging up lately, looking like a teenager again. Or a yaoi boy. “Her name’s Cindy.”
“Oh, the fangirls are just gonna love her.”
“As long as Tony’s making goo-goo eyes at the new Cap, I doubt they could care less.”
“HEELP! SPIDEY!”
“No one calls you Spidey in the middle of an action scene. It spoils the mood!” Mary-Jane groused.
“Give her a break, she’s new.”
“Tell me about it. I can still see the ink drying on her. Well, no getting out of it now.” Mary-Jane took off her robe to show her new costume. She felt ridiculous. The thing was a few psi away from cutting off her circulation, where it didn’t have goddamn bellbottoms.
“My, who is that lovely new crimefighter?” Peter said under his breath, in classic Spidey voice. “I’d like to take her for a ride… in my Spider-Mobile.”
“You don’t have a Spider-Mobile anymore.”
“Well, they’re bringing everything else back. And I always liked the Spider-Mobile.”
“Stop trying to cheer me up. You’re making me feel like a bitch for being in a bad mood while you’re trying so hard.”
He put his forehead against hers, looking her in the eye. “Play it like we’re sleeping together.”
“Huh?”
“You know. Like Dick and Roy over at the competition always do. Lots of significant glances, borderline inappropriate touching… I’ll talk to the artist about seeing if we can land on each other in a compromising position after an explosion.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Hey, we’re friends, aren’t we? No retcon could make me forget a friend.”
***
Peter buried his fist in the wall, so hard the lights fritzed on and off
“Son of a bitch!”
He was ten steps out of Quesada’s office, so it was no wonder Joe stepped out to look at him. “There a problem?”
“No. No fucking problem. Everything’s fucking fine. I’m just fucking great. I’m feeling fucking awesome. I am on like a motherfucker.”
“Watch the profanity, we have all-ages titles around here.”
“Sorry, Q. Just trying to be ‘edgy.’”
As Quesada returned to his office and Peter walked away, the only thing Spider-Man could say was “Fuckhead.”
***
“I’m joining the Initiative?” Mary-Jane repeated.
“Jackpot is. Iron Man recruits, issue thirty-five.”
“So I’m leaving the spider-titles?”
The only reason Peter refrained from pulping another wall was that they were in his trailer, and he didn’t want to push Quesada’s patience. “They’ll bring you back. They did it before. Remember, when I proposed and you left and you got this big return…”
“People die in the Initiative. Why don’t they just hand me over to Ennis to get gang-raped by some crab-people? It’s obvious they hate me.”
“You still have friends. You’ll outlast this. You’ve outlasted worse.”
“Like Gwen did?” She put her hands on Peter’s shoulders. “They said the clone would make it all better, and look what happened! They’re gonna kill me off just to prove a point.”
He stroked her hair. “Shh. Shh. No one’s gonna kill you off. They do, I will turn every issue into such an angst-fest that it’ll make the Nineties look like the Roaring Twenties!”
“Maybe that’s what they want. They think it’s your destiny to be sad.”
“What kind of sadist do they think Stan is? He would never…” He hugged her to him. “We’ll get through this. I promise you. Ten years from now, we’ll be laughing about this. This is gonna be another Maximum Carnage.”
Mary-Jane stopped herself before she could cry. “Promise you’ll miss me?”
“I’ll do guest spots every chance I can.”
“I still feel like throwing up.”
“Want me to get a bucket?”
“No, it’ll pass… it’s passing.”
They sat down on the bed.
“You feel okay to sleep in your trailer tonight?” Peter asked. “Because I gotta tell you, that cot’s a mite uncomfortable.”
“It is?”
“Usually I just make a mattress out of webbing after you fall asleep.”
Mary-Jane wiped her eyes. “God, I’m gonna miss you watching me sleep.” Peter looked shocked, and bit chagrinned. “I don’t—“ “I like it. I feel so protected, knowing I have you for a friend. I’m gonna miss being your friend. Just… going over lines and doing pin-ups and picking out costumes…” She laughed. “Remember when they first showed us your black costume? ‘This’ll be what Spider-Man will wear into the new millennium!’”
“Same thing. This too will pass.” He swallowed. “But I’m gonna miss you too. The way you play off the Avengers, the talks… and the love scenes, I’m gonna miss the love scenes.”
“You are?”
“As an actor, I mean!” Peter said hurriedly. “We had such good chemistry. Usually it’s just some exploitative bump and grind, but us…”
“I know. Like in that annual we did…”
Peter remembered. “The panel was that close and they still didn’t make us throw sheets on. I think everyone with a magnifying glass got to see your birthmark.”
“If we’re going to be talking about my ass, we need to be getting drunk too.”
She went to the deluxe refrigerator that they shared (and that insiders always pointed to as evidence of Peter’s pretty princess-ness) and found a bottle of champaign among the imported coffee creamer jugs which had Post-Its saying ‘Peter, touch this and I’ll start an all-garlic diet before our next kissing panel’.
Mary-Jane dropped back on the bed beside him, holding the bottle aloft like a sports trophy. “I was saving this for Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane’s hundredth issue, but since apparently Spider-Man loves Mary-Jane and some random ho who screams his name…”
“Hey, that kinda rhymes.” The cork popped and Peter took a Dixie cup full of wine from MJ, then they toasted each other.
“Here’s to twenty years of continuity, down the drain.”
“Salut!” Peter said glumly. “Still can’t believe they showed your ass, even from a distance.”
“They were breaking up Scott and Jean. Everything was edgy. God, was I nervous.” Mary-Jane was holding her hair in a ponytail as she drank, a lesson from the incident that had had her hair smelling like bourbon for weeks. “I picked up every facial cleaner at the store and used it on my ass. Must’ve been in the shower for two hours.”
“So… it was different for you how?”
She flicked him on the forehead.
“What? S’true. When they announced that plane crash storyline, I thought ‘Oh, she’s fine, she’s just taking a relaxing shower.’ What do you do in there, anyway? Decode the Mayan alphabet?”
“Masturbate.”
“Oh.” That’s actually what Peter had figured.
“It’s the only time I can get some privacy. Once, I was trying to do it in my bed when Felicia came in through the window to ask if I wanted to read some lines for that team-up book with Wolverine.” Peter winced. That had been an early warning sign, with a painful scene where Spider-Man had to flirt with the Cat like a twelve-year-old with his first erection. And now that was the new status quo. Fuckhead. “This was two A.M. at night. Of course, Felicia being Felicia, she’s all,” Mary-Jane made a fingering gesture, “need a hand?”
Peter laughed. “Yeah, she’s a spitfire. You know she wanted to tape our lovemaking? Even though the Internet hadn’t been invented yet, that was a sucker’s bet.”
“You slept with a co-star?” Mary-Jane wasn’t aghast, more like shocked and deathly amused. She put a hand over her mouth as she laughed. “And Felicia?”
“Have you tried meeting someone outside work? Maybe it was easy for you, supporting character who hadn’t been seen in ASM for years, but imagine how it’d be for me. How it is for me. Meet the wrong girl and Lying In The Gutters is screaming ‘Spider-Man likes oral’.”
“That’s news?”
“Giving oral.”
“Oh. You really were written to be a hero, weren’t you?”
“Are we, uh, venturing into TMI territory here?”
“No, keep going.” Mary-Jane suavely drank some champagne as she brought her feet up onto the mattress, tucked beside her in a somewhat vampy way. “I’m very interested in spider-oral.”
“Figured it out back in the day. Those were the good old days. Comics were selling like hotcakes and us A-listers were on top of the world. Of the big-time male characters, Batman wouldn’t touch anyone because he was afraid of germs, Clark would never go out with anyone whose name didn’t rhyme with Nois Nane (and that ‘Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex’ article was making its rounds at the time, so even if he wanted to…), Wolverine was still being drawn as short and hairy, and me? I was picking up the slack. Pretty soon I figured out that what made sex so much better than masturbation was having someone else to enjoy it with. I mean, when she’s writhing and moaning and screaming your name, it’s the best feeling in the world.” Peter shook his head. “I am so going to miss having someone to share this with.”
“You can always talk to Harry.”
“Oh, right, Harry.” Peter put an arm around Mary-Jane’s shoulders and drew her close, then spoke in an effeminate approximation of Harry’s voice. “’Petah, darhling, what are you doing running around with all those hussies when you can have me and my ridiculous hair?’” He ran his fingers through his own close-cropped brown hair and shook it like a luxurious mane.
“He is not!” Mary-Jane giggled.
Peter kept his arm around Mary-Jane. “There’s a reason that whole Liz Allen romance plot wasn’t handled on-panel. Then one day he just put his foot down and said ‘I’m here, I’m queer, get used to it.’ He never got over how we didn’t do the storyline about how his father hated him because of homophobia. So the word went up, and the word came down. Kill Harry Osborn.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s why he’s a bachelor now. In contract renegotiations, he said ‘I won’t do one fucking panel with Liz Allen.’ Pun intended, I’m sure.”
Mary-Jane refilled their cups. “I have a confession to make. I’m gonna miss the love scenes too. I mean, God knows what the message boards will look like after they pair me off with Iron Man or whoever. ‘Oh God, that slut’s cheating on her husband!’ No, I’m getting date-raped because the Devil slipped me a retcon mickey.”
“It’s the feel-good storyline of the year.” Peter gulped his drink down. “I have kissed Betty Brant, Gwen Stacy, Gwen Stacy’s clone, Felicia Hardy, Jean Grey… I’ve kissed a lot of people. But you are, hands down, the best. When you kiss me, it’s like I’m the only one you’re thinking of.”
“Who else would I be thinking of?” Mary-Jane drank. “Better even than Felicia?”
“She’s very… pornographic. But I’m talking about romance, not just… you know… tongue jammed down your throat, hand at your crotch, wham bam thank you ma’am.”
“Bet she screams your name really loud.”
“What do you think that racket was when we had you back for a flashback?” Peter grinned.
Mary-Jane smiled back with a shit-eating grin. “Honestly? I thought someone had ran over a moose.”
“Guess you kinda had to be there.”
“Guess so. You’re running a little low.”
“Eh?” Peter looked at his cup. “Yes, yes, I need more wine.”
Mary-Jane gave him more.
“You’re not so bad at love scenes yourself. You hold me like I’m the most precious thing in the whole world to you.”
“Method acting.”
“And you touch me like I’m… I don’t know, fine silk?”
”You feel like fine silk.”
“Are you hitting on me?”
Peter thought about it. “I think I am, yes.”
Mary-Jane affected an exaggerated Southern accent. “Mah gawd, Mister Spider-Man, I’m justa humble girl from Tennessee. Ah don’t know whay a big-time star like yoooou would be interested in little ole me.”
Peter toasted her. “It’s because you have great big tits.”
“What, these?” Mary-Jane cupped them. “She-Hulk’s make mine look like grapes. And I don’t show ‘em off all the time, like Felicia.”
“You leave something to the imagination.”
“And you imagine?”
“I’ve thought about it, yeah. If we were to do a MAX love scene… not that the boys upstairs would ever let us do that, we’re such valuable commodities. They’d never… I mean, they edited my lil sidekick out of Reign…”
“Was it really that…” Mary-Jane held her fingers a bit apart.
“No! No, no, no, no! That was just to make me look pathetic and old. The real thing is… well, I don’t like to brag. But Stan Lee knew how to hook a brother up. You know what Wally Wood did with Power Girl? Stan Lee was doing something a little bit similar during the sixties with his heroes’… inseams.”
“What was the end-result?”
They spoke at the same time. “Mr. Fantastic!” And laughed, Mary-Jane pouring a dollop of wine into Peter’s mouth straight from the bottle. He wiped the spillage off with the back of his hand and laughed a little more, the sound descending into a dull chuckle before being swallowed by their impending separation.
“But the love scene?” Mary-Jane prompted, unwilling to let a pall be cast over the evening. “If we ever did go MAX?”
“We’d probably be written by Garth Ennis. God, I hate that guy. Hello, bigot, it’s called spider-sense, I would not be fooled by a fake landmine… Where were we?”
Mary-Jane chugged wine. “Ah. Love scene.”
“Well, it’d really depend on the artist.”
“’Kay. Who’s your dream artist?”
“I don’t have any power over that. If I did, you think I’d have my life-altering fight with Green Goblin drawn by Humberto Ramos? I looked like a goddamn Pokemon.”
“You’re not…” Mary-Jane pulled his hand to her lips and kissed the spot on his fingers where the wedding band had laid for so long that they had to cover up the pale skin with make-up. “Listening. Who would you want to draw our love scene?”
Peter sobered. “George Perez.”
“Wow. Old-school.”
“No school like it.”
“Isn’t he a little old-fashioned for you?”
“He does great facial expressions. And I’d love to see the face you make when you come.”
Mary-Jane raised both eyebrows. Then she laughed in his face.
“That was a good line.”
“Yes, that was a very good line, yes,” Peter said, wiping wine off his face.
“I think I have a spider-seducer.”
“Me? Sleep with a co-star? No, I’m just a good boy who likes eating his aunt’s wheatcake and going to the malt shop with his best gal. Seriously, though, I’d want it to be tasteful, erotic… not, like, Alan Moore erotic with a little girl having sex with a fairy tale character. But, real people erotic.”
“Softcore?”
“No, that’s just T&A thrown at the screen. I’m talking, you know…” He touched up and down her arm. “Some foreplay, a few low-key word balloons… not the cheeky, Austin Powers nudity-hiding kind… maybe just, the words right over the art? A David Mack sort of thing.”
“Ooh, that would be hot. Maybe we could talk Joey Q into doing that as a sop to the fans. A sorta… Peter/Mary-Jane: Year One.”
“The first time we made love?”
“Explicitly. I suppose you’d be too nervous to make the first move, so I’d have to…”
She unzipped his pants.
They both looked down.
“So, if I touch it, will I get cancer?”
“No promises.”
She touched it.
Mary-Jane’s hand rose and fell in concert with her voice, which itself ebbed and flowed like a singer’s. “Then maybe a two-shot of our faces, and a full silhouette shot of our bodies. I know S&P wouldn’t allow your johnson, even in shadow…”
“My johnson?”
“But, hey, my hand’s wrapped around something…”
“And, because I am a manly man, I’ll be ripping your clothes off while you’re doing this?”
She lifted a hand to stop his hands.
“If I were Felicia, yes. Since I’m Mary-Jane, the love of your life, you’d be undressing me very delicately.”
Peter did. She kept touching him throughout, a steady handjob that ratcheted him up another level in nervous anticipation every time his cock slipped out-then-in of her grasp. Finally, he tossed most of her clothes to the side of the bed.
“Maybe an artsy panel of your clothes on the floor with my spider-suit symbolically among them,” Peter suggested, his voice remarkably level, considering. The faint trace of quickness to his breath was worth more to Mary-Jane than any moaning and groaning. “Like, my costume could be crushed underneath your clothes as an example of the oppressive burden of great sex and emotional support having you for a wife will give me.”
“Tell me, how would we show that I’m pumping you faster?”
“Uh! I don’t think Uh! that would translate… uh!... well!”
“Well, it’d make an interesting subtext. Especially if I did this too…” Mary-Jane reached down, cupping his balls in her free hand and gently squeezing them. Peter gasped. Then he undid her bra.
“Maybe some fanservice?”
“I do have spectacular fan servicers.” Mary-Jane let go of his dick to jiggle her breasts with her hands. “Shame people’ll only get to see the sides of them while they’re pressed against your manly chest.”
“Or…”
His hands cupped her cheeks, fingers reaching back to end in her hairline, and he brought her against him in a kiss. Then his hands flowed down her body to anchor at her shoulder blades. She was pulled up against him, his face in her cleavage. She felt his stubble chafing at her décolletage. Then she followed his gaze to the mirror beside him. In the reflection, Mary-Jane Watson was holding Peter Parker’s head to her breasts.
Peter’s smile reflected off itself. “Now, this would make a great panel. It has three beautiful things in it: Your breasts and my face.”
“If you’re done admiring yourself…?”
“Never.” He kissed her breasts. “You know, it’s going to be hard to capture me doing this without making me look like a jackass.” He sucked on a nipple, making her moan and clutch him tightly to her.
“Truth in art.”
“Mmm. And you’ll look like?” he asked as his hand roved down to squeeze a plush asscheek. Felt like Frank Cho himself had drawn it.
“A pretty pink princess, as always.” She threw her head back, hair flurrying about in an explosion of red. “And this’ll be the panel where it looks like I’m having an orgasm because you got to second base.”
“Truth in art?” Peter asked as he kissed down her rib cage, back to the teasingly light touches.
“Third base, maybe.”
“Madam, I accept your challenge,” he said as he lowered her to her back and parted her legs. Referring to the carefully trimmed pubic: “Maybe you could have a little webhead shaved into the hair up here.”
“Yeah, uh-huh, that sounds like something Sam Raimi would do if he started directing pornos.”
“Started? You’ve never heard of Sam Ram-me?”
“So he would be who directed Spider-Man 3?”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Did the Dance Dance Revolution tie-in fall through? OH!” She cried out, tried to stifle, then gave up and just screamed. It was true. He did love oral. “This would make a fucking great panel! Overhead shot… you between my legs, me just…” She squeezed his head between her thighs and moaned. “Art! It’d be like art!”
He lifted his head, no matter how hard she tried to push him back down. “No, maybe a side-view of you arcing your back. It’d make your breasts look bigger.”
“If you make ‘em look any bigger, I’d be Lady Death!”
“I’m not complaining.” In fact, a moment later, he wasn’t even talking anymore.
Mary-Jane was just fine with that. Her only regret was that Peter didn’t get to see her face as she came.
He looked up, lips and chin glistening, and said “This is the part where I take you in my arms and say something romantic.”
He took her in her arms. She took him in hers. Wiped his mouth off with the corner of a bedsheet. “So?”
“I’ve got nothing. This is why I have writers. You want me to run out and give Frank Miller twenty bucks to write something?”
“’Of all the whores in comics, you’re the one with the highest asking price.’”
“No, too soft and mushy for him.” He kissed her cheek, her jaw, her throat. “I’d probably want to say something in-character, like how beautiful you are, how happy you make me, how you give me hope for the future and atonement for the past and make my life worth living. Like, a whole page of us lying in bed, sheets all dishabilled-up so people can see nipples and some suggestive groin-shadows…”
“Those are my favorite kind of groin-shadows, Brian Michael Bendis.”
He ignored the Bendis jibe. “And we’re telling each other about our relations, our hopes, our dreams, our worries.”
“And I’d tell you that I love you.”
“And I’d tell you that I’ve always loved you. That it’s always been there, like a hole in a dyke, and only just now did I admit it to myself and let the waters flow.”
“You might wanna change that metaphor. At least change out dyke for dam.”
“Well, that’s why we pay JMS the big bucks.”
“I thought it was because he wrote Babylon 5.”
“Yeah, mostly that.” Peter rested his head on the pillow beside her. “Does it count as acting if my character’s feeling mirror my own?”
“If it doesn’t, I’d like to know what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years.” He looked at Mary-Jane, surprised. “The words were someone else’s, but the heart… that was me.”
“Me, too.”
***
“I must admit,” Peter said after so much exertion that even he’d had to catnap. His head was resting on Mary-Jane’s breasts, the sheets drifted over them like a lazy cape. “This is a lot more comfortable than a web-mattress.”
She petted his hair, loving the feel of it as it tickled her palm. Loving everything about the feel of the man that shared her bed (okay, technically, his bed). His legs were subtly parting hers, the heat of his crotch was burned into her thighs, his chest hair brushed against her abdomen at the slightest motion, and his arms twisted with hers underneath the pillows and up to the headboard.
“Why didn’t we ever do this before?”
“I don’t know… not for lack of wanting, believe you me.” He kissed between her breasts. She petted between his shoulder blades, glad that he wasn’t being drawn with scars. Made him too old. “Me, personally… I was afraid of messing something up. We had this great partnership, and bringing sex into it… I was afraid of a Moonlighting situation.”
“You weren’t afraid of that with Felicia?”
”With Felicia, I didn’t have what we have.”
Peter was obviously wondering why she had never tried to start something up.
So she told him “To be honest… I always thought you and Harry were…”
He hit her with a pillow.
“You treat your wife like that?” she said, hitting at him with her own pillow. “What is this, the Clone Saga?”
He choked and faked some very Shatnerian death-throes before she knocked him off the bed with a Pillowfight Champion Swing.
“You know, this is just my luck,” Peter said from the floor.
She dropped down on top of him, pulling the bedsheets down with her. They were silk, and ample insulation from the scratchy carpet.
“Beautiful redhead drops into your arms?”
“No. I realize I’m in love with you and you have to go away. Stan Lee couldn’t have written it better.”
“Tell me about it. Can you imagine how he’d have written the sex?”
“’Face front, true believers, for young Peter Parker has thrown his hat into the ring of passion and will be grappling with that beautiful, terrifying force that men call… love!’”
“Stop it, you’re gonna make me sportle.”
“I like when you sportle.” He wrapped his arms around her. “It’s cute.”
She rested her head against his chest. “Guest spots every chance you get?
“I’m gonna show up there so much they’ll think I’m part of the team.”
“Spider-Man join a team?” Mary-Jane asked quizzically. “But he’s always been a loner!”
They laughed.
Peter’s laugh lingered in his voice. “You know, when someone replaces Quesada-“ Mary-Jane crossed her fingers “-I’m gonna have a talk to them about love scenes.”
“And until then?”
“Until then, we play every scene like we were having hardcore sex every time the reader wasn’t looking.”
“Truth in art?”
He kissed her again. “Truth in art.” And again. And again. “We’re gonna have more subtext than the bibliography of Devin Grayson.”
“Devin Grayson, hell! We’re gonna have enough subtext to make Chris Claremont blush!”
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Peter/MJ, Joe Quesada, the Marvel Bullpen and Spider-Man supporting cast (yes, Virginia, there is one)
Word Count: 5,488
Summary: Editorial says the spider-marriage has to go. Peter and Mary-Jane don't take it very well.
Joe pumped Peter’s hand as eagerly as always, but his squeeze was too hard, just a tinge of desperation. Quesada was, like a lot of artists, always in search of a kindred spirit. But there were some things no one saw eye to eye with him on.
Peter Parker let go of the boss’s hand and sat. He still wasn’t used to being treated like a star, or fawned over. He wasn’t written that way. Wasn’t often he got the nod from the man upstairs. Usually it was just him and his handlers. JMS, Jenkins, David… good people. Getting a call from the EIC meant trouble. Even the unmasking had been announced to him by Millar, who he trusted from the Marvel Knights gig. Peter didn’t like to take sides, but he’d heard things about JMS and Joe. Fights so big they made Lee v. Dikto look like a John Byrne spat.
“Pete, have I got some exciting news for you!”
Peter forced a smile. “Great. Let’s hear it.”
“Well, you gotta break an egg to make omelets, so I’m gonna give it to you straight. You’ve been in a rut lately.”
“A rut? I’ve been unmasked, I’ve had organic web-shooters, I gave birth to myself…”
“I’m not talking about those storylines, those storylines were amazing. We’re undoing all of them, but at the time, they were amazing.”
Peter knew from experience not to argue with Quesada-logic. PAD had tried and look where it got Captain Marvel. “So I’m getting my old web-shooters back? Because these new ones are itchy. And they drip. It’s like having a sinus infection in my arms…”
“Yes, you’re getting the mechanical web-shooters back. And, better yet, we’re gonna give Aunt May a bigger role!”
“That’s great!” She’d been stuck in a coma for too long. But on the inside, his guts were churning. Something didn’t sound right. Give May a bigger role? As it was, his only friends were his wife and aunt. How could she have a bigger role than that?
“You’re moving back in with her.”
“Oh.” Peter scratched the back of his head. “While we hunt for a permanent home?”
“For the foreseeable future. It’s part of our new retcon.”
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Quesada was even grinning. Shitshitshitshitshit! The totem stuff, that had been bad enough… it’d all flown over his head. This was setting off his script-sense. In fact, the last time it’d rung this hard, James Cameron had tried to make a movie about him.
“You wanna bring Uncle Ben back to life?” Peter joked. “Again?”
“No. We’re going into an entirely new direction. Back to basics.” Peter didn’t ask how ‘entirely new direction’ and ‘back to basics’ could be the same thing. More Quesada-logic. “Picture this. You’re a hot, young bachelor on the prowl. Harry Osborn’s your best friend… or is he your worst enemy? You’ve got to hide your secret identity from your aunt and any bitches you might pick up at the disco…”
“People don’t go to discos anymore,” Peter said gently. God, the boss was out of touch. “And could you not refer to women as ‘bitches’?”
“Oh, come off it. This is gonna be edgy.”
“Trouble-edgy?” Peter needled. He had reasons for not trusting Millar, Millar and his politics, Millar and his sensationalism.
Quesada scowled. “Just tell me what you think of it.”
“I think your bold new direction sounds a lot like…” Peter thought about it. “The Seventies. Early eighties, tops. What does Mary-Jane think about this?”
“She’ll be dealt with.”
Peter blinked. “What, like… Captain-America-dealt with?”
“No, no. She’ll merely go from star player to… recurring. You know how it is.”
“Not really.” Peter’d never been less than a star and for as long as he could remember, Mary-Jane had been his right arm. They were like Lois and Clark, Batman and Robin, Lucy and Ethel. “I mean, I’ve done this. I’ve been there. What is there really left to say about single Spidey? And won’t I be stepping on the toes of Marvel Adventures and Ultimate?”
“You won’t be stepping on any toes. This will be what the world sees when they look for storytelling in the mighty Marvel manner.”
“So, if I’m understanding you correctly, you’re retconning my marriage.”
Quesada leaned forward, his eyes speaking of the cutthroat deals that had brought him to power. “I’m not retconning your marriage, I’m fixing it. I’m fixing your life. I’m fixing you.”
***
The cast didn’t take it well. They didn’t get many hours as it was, with JMS at the helm (even Lamont mostly took work in crowd scenes), and now there was panic in the air.
“Am I even still in continuity?” Eddie demanded. “Bad enough I had to lose my power to the fucking Scorpion… I was promised a shoo-in with the third movie… hey, hey, listen!”
Peter slammed his trailer door shut, silencing Eddie. “I miss JMS already.”
Mary-Jane was struggling to keep it together. Her own trailer would probably be full of sympathy cards and flowers. Not that they were together like, say, Clark and Lois (whose relationship had been the most widely-known secret in town until DC had finally given in and made it legal in the funnies). But they had a bond from working together so long. They knew each others’ cues, always read through their scripts together and made suggestions (MJ had a wicked sense of humor to bring to bear on Spidey’s quips), and they were just… partners. In just about every sense of the word.
There was a cot set aside for her in his trailer, although she never used it. He always insisted on her sleeping in the bed while he took the cot. And if she always fell asleep first, and he watched her lips quirk in sleep and her eyes twitch and her chest rise and fall, he’d never have a ‘Mackie-mare’ that night.
“I can’t believe this is his swan song,” Mary-Jane said, valiantly struggling to apply make-up. “I mean… I mean… this is like Pierce Brosnan’s last Bond movie being Die Another Day. Only worse, because at least Bond didn’t molest a small boy at the end of that movie.”
“I’ve never been able to watch DAD all the way through, so it comes as a relief that there’s no pedophilia in it.”
“How can you make jokes?”
Peter shrugged. “It’s how I’m written.” He sat down next to her in the bed. As always, he knew when she needed comfort and knew how to give it to her. Today was one of those rare occasions when the closeness of touch would do. He brought Mary-Jane up against his chest and let her hide herself in it. “Hey, at least you’ll finally get a chance to see what it’s like in a proper action scene, Jackpot. No more cowering or struggling in chains.”
“Oh, no one’s written me doing that in ages. I got to beat up the Chameleon.”
“Yeah, the guys have been complaining about how overpowered you are.” He made a thoughtful noise as he lifted his head up in the air. “Now she’s got superpowers.”
“I’m not a superheroine. I tried out for the Avengers, the Fantastic Four… still can’t believe Sue Storm beat me out for that, what does she have that I don’t have?”
Peter patted her on the back.
“People are gonna hate me as a superhero,” she continued. “And I’ll die and it won’t even be a good death. It’ll be a fucking Dan Didio mercy-killing, that’s what it’ll be.”
“No one’s gonna kill you. Not for long. You’re Mary-Jane Watson. The love of Spider-Man’s life.”
***
“HEEELP! SPIDER-MAN!”
Peter winced as the shrill voice assaulting his eardrums. Next to him, Mary-Jane was rolling her eyes. And at the source of the aural attack, a bleach-blonde in a miniskirt the size of a monkey’s hand was reading variations on that line. Her big innovation seemed to be “HEELP! SPIDER-MAN! PUH-LEASEEEE!”
“That’s your new love interest?”
Peter felt the line of his jaw. He’d been younging up lately, looking like a teenager again. Or a yaoi boy. “Her name’s Cindy.”
“Oh, the fangirls are just gonna love her.”
“As long as Tony’s making goo-goo eyes at the new Cap, I doubt they could care less.”
“HEELP! SPIDEY!”
“No one calls you Spidey in the middle of an action scene. It spoils the mood!” Mary-Jane groused.
“Give her a break, she’s new.”
“Tell me about it. I can still see the ink drying on her. Well, no getting out of it now.” Mary-Jane took off her robe to show her new costume. She felt ridiculous. The thing was a few psi away from cutting off her circulation, where it didn’t have goddamn bellbottoms.
“My, who is that lovely new crimefighter?” Peter said under his breath, in classic Spidey voice. “I’d like to take her for a ride… in my Spider-Mobile.”
“You don’t have a Spider-Mobile anymore.”
“Well, they’re bringing everything else back. And I always liked the Spider-Mobile.”
“Stop trying to cheer me up. You’re making me feel like a bitch for being in a bad mood while you’re trying so hard.”
He put his forehead against hers, looking her in the eye. “Play it like we’re sleeping together.”
“Huh?”
“You know. Like Dick and Roy over at the competition always do. Lots of significant glances, borderline inappropriate touching… I’ll talk to the artist about seeing if we can land on each other in a compromising position after an explosion.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Hey, we’re friends, aren’t we? No retcon could make me forget a friend.”
***
Peter buried his fist in the wall, so hard the lights fritzed on and off
“Son of a bitch!”
He was ten steps out of Quesada’s office, so it was no wonder Joe stepped out to look at him. “There a problem?”
“No. No fucking problem. Everything’s fucking fine. I’m just fucking great. I’m feeling fucking awesome. I am on like a motherfucker.”
“Watch the profanity, we have all-ages titles around here.”
“Sorry, Q. Just trying to be ‘edgy.’”
As Quesada returned to his office and Peter walked away, the only thing Spider-Man could say was “Fuckhead.”
***
“I’m joining the Initiative?” Mary-Jane repeated.
“Jackpot is. Iron Man recruits, issue thirty-five.”
“So I’m leaving the spider-titles?”
The only reason Peter refrained from pulping another wall was that they were in his trailer, and he didn’t want to push Quesada’s patience. “They’ll bring you back. They did it before. Remember, when I proposed and you left and you got this big return…”
“People die in the Initiative. Why don’t they just hand me over to Ennis to get gang-raped by some crab-people? It’s obvious they hate me.”
“You still have friends. You’ll outlast this. You’ve outlasted worse.”
“Like Gwen did?” She put her hands on Peter’s shoulders. “They said the clone would make it all better, and look what happened! They’re gonna kill me off just to prove a point.”
He stroked her hair. “Shh. Shh. No one’s gonna kill you off. They do, I will turn every issue into such an angst-fest that it’ll make the Nineties look like the Roaring Twenties!”
“Maybe that’s what they want. They think it’s your destiny to be sad.”
“What kind of sadist do they think Stan is? He would never…” He hugged her to him. “We’ll get through this. I promise you. Ten years from now, we’ll be laughing about this. This is gonna be another Maximum Carnage.”
Mary-Jane stopped herself before she could cry. “Promise you’ll miss me?”
“I’ll do guest spots every chance I can.”
“I still feel like throwing up.”
“Want me to get a bucket?”
“No, it’ll pass… it’s passing.”
They sat down on the bed.
“You feel okay to sleep in your trailer tonight?” Peter asked. “Because I gotta tell you, that cot’s a mite uncomfortable.”
“It is?”
“Usually I just make a mattress out of webbing after you fall asleep.”
Mary-Jane wiped her eyes. “God, I’m gonna miss you watching me sleep.” Peter looked shocked, and bit chagrinned. “I don’t—“ “I like it. I feel so protected, knowing I have you for a friend. I’m gonna miss being your friend. Just… going over lines and doing pin-ups and picking out costumes…” She laughed. “Remember when they first showed us your black costume? ‘This’ll be what Spider-Man will wear into the new millennium!’”
“Same thing. This too will pass.” He swallowed. “But I’m gonna miss you too. The way you play off the Avengers, the talks… and the love scenes, I’m gonna miss the love scenes.”
“You are?”
“As an actor, I mean!” Peter said hurriedly. “We had such good chemistry. Usually it’s just some exploitative bump and grind, but us…”
“I know. Like in that annual we did…”
Peter remembered. “The panel was that close and they still didn’t make us throw sheets on. I think everyone with a magnifying glass got to see your birthmark.”
“If we’re going to be talking about my ass, we need to be getting drunk too.”
She went to the deluxe refrigerator that they shared (and that insiders always pointed to as evidence of Peter’s pretty princess-ness) and found a bottle of champaign among the imported coffee creamer jugs which had Post-Its saying ‘Peter, touch this and I’ll start an all-garlic diet before our next kissing panel’.
Mary-Jane dropped back on the bed beside him, holding the bottle aloft like a sports trophy. “I was saving this for Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane’s hundredth issue, but since apparently Spider-Man loves Mary-Jane and some random ho who screams his name…”
“Hey, that kinda rhymes.” The cork popped and Peter took a Dixie cup full of wine from MJ, then they toasted each other.
“Here’s to twenty years of continuity, down the drain.”
“Salut!” Peter said glumly. “Still can’t believe they showed your ass, even from a distance.”
“They were breaking up Scott and Jean. Everything was edgy. God, was I nervous.” Mary-Jane was holding her hair in a ponytail as she drank, a lesson from the incident that had had her hair smelling like bourbon for weeks. “I picked up every facial cleaner at the store and used it on my ass. Must’ve been in the shower for two hours.”
“So… it was different for you how?”
She flicked him on the forehead.
“What? S’true. When they announced that plane crash storyline, I thought ‘Oh, she’s fine, she’s just taking a relaxing shower.’ What do you do in there, anyway? Decode the Mayan alphabet?”
“Masturbate.”
“Oh.” That’s actually what Peter had figured.
“It’s the only time I can get some privacy. Once, I was trying to do it in my bed when Felicia came in through the window to ask if I wanted to read some lines for that team-up book with Wolverine.” Peter winced. That had been an early warning sign, with a painful scene where Spider-Man had to flirt with the Cat like a twelve-year-old with his first erection. And now that was the new status quo. Fuckhead. “This was two A.M. at night. Of course, Felicia being Felicia, she’s all,” Mary-Jane made a fingering gesture, “need a hand?”
Peter laughed. “Yeah, she’s a spitfire. You know she wanted to tape our lovemaking? Even though the Internet hadn’t been invented yet, that was a sucker’s bet.”
“You slept with a co-star?” Mary-Jane wasn’t aghast, more like shocked and deathly amused. She put a hand over her mouth as she laughed. “And Felicia?”
“Have you tried meeting someone outside work? Maybe it was easy for you, supporting character who hadn’t been seen in ASM for years, but imagine how it’d be for me. How it is for me. Meet the wrong girl and Lying In The Gutters is screaming ‘Spider-Man likes oral’.”
“That’s news?”
“Giving oral.”
“Oh. You really were written to be a hero, weren’t you?”
“Are we, uh, venturing into TMI territory here?”
“No, keep going.” Mary-Jane suavely drank some champagne as she brought her feet up onto the mattress, tucked beside her in a somewhat vampy way. “I’m very interested in spider-oral.”
“Figured it out back in the day. Those were the good old days. Comics were selling like hotcakes and us A-listers were on top of the world. Of the big-time male characters, Batman wouldn’t touch anyone because he was afraid of germs, Clark would never go out with anyone whose name didn’t rhyme with Nois Nane (and that ‘Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex’ article was making its rounds at the time, so even if he wanted to…), Wolverine was still being drawn as short and hairy, and me? I was picking up the slack. Pretty soon I figured out that what made sex so much better than masturbation was having someone else to enjoy it with. I mean, when she’s writhing and moaning and screaming your name, it’s the best feeling in the world.” Peter shook his head. “I am so going to miss having someone to share this with.”
“You can always talk to Harry.”
“Oh, right, Harry.” Peter put an arm around Mary-Jane’s shoulders and drew her close, then spoke in an effeminate approximation of Harry’s voice. “’Petah, darhling, what are you doing running around with all those hussies when you can have me and my ridiculous hair?’” He ran his fingers through his own close-cropped brown hair and shook it like a luxurious mane.
“He is not!” Mary-Jane giggled.
Peter kept his arm around Mary-Jane. “There’s a reason that whole Liz Allen romance plot wasn’t handled on-panel. Then one day he just put his foot down and said ‘I’m here, I’m queer, get used to it.’ He never got over how we didn’t do the storyline about how his father hated him because of homophobia. So the word went up, and the word came down. Kill Harry Osborn.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s why he’s a bachelor now. In contract renegotiations, he said ‘I won’t do one fucking panel with Liz Allen.’ Pun intended, I’m sure.”
Mary-Jane refilled their cups. “I have a confession to make. I’m gonna miss the love scenes too. I mean, God knows what the message boards will look like after they pair me off with Iron Man or whoever. ‘Oh God, that slut’s cheating on her husband!’ No, I’m getting date-raped because the Devil slipped me a retcon mickey.”
“It’s the feel-good storyline of the year.” Peter gulped his drink down. “I have kissed Betty Brant, Gwen Stacy, Gwen Stacy’s clone, Felicia Hardy, Jean Grey… I’ve kissed a lot of people. But you are, hands down, the best. When you kiss me, it’s like I’m the only one you’re thinking of.”
“Who else would I be thinking of?” Mary-Jane drank. “Better even than Felicia?”
“She’s very… pornographic. But I’m talking about romance, not just… you know… tongue jammed down your throat, hand at your crotch, wham bam thank you ma’am.”
“Bet she screams your name really loud.”
“What do you think that racket was when we had you back for a flashback?” Peter grinned.
Mary-Jane smiled back with a shit-eating grin. “Honestly? I thought someone had ran over a moose.”
“Guess you kinda had to be there.”
“Guess so. You’re running a little low.”
“Eh?” Peter looked at his cup. “Yes, yes, I need more wine.”
Mary-Jane gave him more.
“You’re not so bad at love scenes yourself. You hold me like I’m the most precious thing in the whole world to you.”
“Method acting.”
“And you touch me like I’m… I don’t know, fine silk?”
”You feel like fine silk.”
“Are you hitting on me?”
Peter thought about it. “I think I am, yes.”
Mary-Jane affected an exaggerated Southern accent. “Mah gawd, Mister Spider-Man, I’m justa humble girl from Tennessee. Ah don’t know whay a big-time star like yoooou would be interested in little ole me.”
Peter toasted her. “It’s because you have great big tits.”
“What, these?” Mary-Jane cupped them. “She-Hulk’s make mine look like grapes. And I don’t show ‘em off all the time, like Felicia.”
“You leave something to the imagination.”
“And you imagine?”
“I’ve thought about it, yeah. If we were to do a MAX love scene… not that the boys upstairs would ever let us do that, we’re such valuable commodities. They’d never… I mean, they edited my lil sidekick out of Reign…”
“Was it really that…” Mary-Jane held her fingers a bit apart.
“No! No, no, no, no! That was just to make me look pathetic and old. The real thing is… well, I don’t like to brag. But Stan Lee knew how to hook a brother up. You know what Wally Wood did with Power Girl? Stan Lee was doing something a little bit similar during the sixties with his heroes’… inseams.”
“What was the end-result?”
They spoke at the same time. “Mr. Fantastic!” And laughed, Mary-Jane pouring a dollop of wine into Peter’s mouth straight from the bottle. He wiped the spillage off with the back of his hand and laughed a little more, the sound descending into a dull chuckle before being swallowed by their impending separation.
“But the love scene?” Mary-Jane prompted, unwilling to let a pall be cast over the evening. “If we ever did go MAX?”
“We’d probably be written by Garth Ennis. God, I hate that guy. Hello, bigot, it’s called spider-sense, I would not be fooled by a fake landmine… Where were we?”
Mary-Jane chugged wine. “Ah. Love scene.”
“Well, it’d really depend on the artist.”
“’Kay. Who’s your dream artist?”
“I don’t have any power over that. If I did, you think I’d have my life-altering fight with Green Goblin drawn by Humberto Ramos? I looked like a goddamn Pokemon.”
“You’re not…” Mary-Jane pulled his hand to her lips and kissed the spot on his fingers where the wedding band had laid for so long that they had to cover up the pale skin with make-up. “Listening. Who would you want to draw our love scene?”
Peter sobered. “George Perez.”
“Wow. Old-school.”
“No school like it.”
“Isn’t he a little old-fashioned for you?”
“He does great facial expressions. And I’d love to see the face you make when you come.”
Mary-Jane raised both eyebrows. Then she laughed in his face.
“That was a good line.”
“Yes, that was a very good line, yes,” Peter said, wiping wine off his face.
“I think I have a spider-seducer.”
“Me? Sleep with a co-star? No, I’m just a good boy who likes eating his aunt’s wheatcake and going to the malt shop with his best gal. Seriously, though, I’d want it to be tasteful, erotic… not, like, Alan Moore erotic with a little girl having sex with a fairy tale character. But, real people erotic.”
“Softcore?”
“No, that’s just T&A thrown at the screen. I’m talking, you know…” He touched up and down her arm. “Some foreplay, a few low-key word balloons… not the cheeky, Austin Powers nudity-hiding kind… maybe just, the words right over the art? A David Mack sort of thing.”
“Ooh, that would be hot. Maybe we could talk Joey Q into doing that as a sop to the fans. A sorta… Peter/Mary-Jane: Year One.”
“The first time we made love?”
“Explicitly. I suppose you’d be too nervous to make the first move, so I’d have to…”
She unzipped his pants.
They both looked down.
“So, if I touch it, will I get cancer?”
“No promises.”
She touched it.
Mary-Jane’s hand rose and fell in concert with her voice, which itself ebbed and flowed like a singer’s. “Then maybe a two-shot of our faces, and a full silhouette shot of our bodies. I know S&P wouldn’t allow your johnson, even in shadow…”
“My johnson?”
“But, hey, my hand’s wrapped around something…”
“And, because I am a manly man, I’ll be ripping your clothes off while you’re doing this?”
She lifted a hand to stop his hands.
“If I were Felicia, yes. Since I’m Mary-Jane, the love of your life, you’d be undressing me very delicately.”
Peter did. She kept touching him throughout, a steady handjob that ratcheted him up another level in nervous anticipation every time his cock slipped out-then-in of her grasp. Finally, he tossed most of her clothes to the side of the bed.
“Maybe an artsy panel of your clothes on the floor with my spider-suit symbolically among them,” Peter suggested, his voice remarkably level, considering. The faint trace of quickness to his breath was worth more to Mary-Jane than any moaning and groaning. “Like, my costume could be crushed underneath your clothes as an example of the oppressive burden of great sex and emotional support having you for a wife will give me.”
“Tell me, how would we show that I’m pumping you faster?”
“Uh! I don’t think Uh! that would translate… uh!... well!”
“Well, it’d make an interesting subtext. Especially if I did this too…” Mary-Jane reached down, cupping his balls in her free hand and gently squeezing them. Peter gasped. Then he undid her bra.
“Maybe some fanservice?”
“I do have spectacular fan servicers.” Mary-Jane let go of his dick to jiggle her breasts with her hands. “Shame people’ll only get to see the sides of them while they’re pressed against your manly chest.”
“Or…”
His hands cupped her cheeks, fingers reaching back to end in her hairline, and he brought her against him in a kiss. Then his hands flowed down her body to anchor at her shoulder blades. She was pulled up against him, his face in her cleavage. She felt his stubble chafing at her décolletage. Then she followed his gaze to the mirror beside him. In the reflection, Mary-Jane Watson was holding Peter Parker’s head to her breasts.
Peter’s smile reflected off itself. “Now, this would make a great panel. It has three beautiful things in it: Your breasts and my face.”
“If you’re done admiring yourself…?”
“Never.” He kissed her breasts. “You know, it’s going to be hard to capture me doing this without making me look like a jackass.” He sucked on a nipple, making her moan and clutch him tightly to her.
“Truth in art.”
“Mmm. And you’ll look like?” he asked as his hand roved down to squeeze a plush asscheek. Felt like Frank Cho himself had drawn it.
“A pretty pink princess, as always.” She threw her head back, hair flurrying about in an explosion of red. “And this’ll be the panel where it looks like I’m having an orgasm because you got to second base.”
“Truth in art?” Peter asked as he kissed down her rib cage, back to the teasingly light touches.
“Third base, maybe.”
“Madam, I accept your challenge,” he said as he lowered her to her back and parted her legs. Referring to the carefully trimmed pubic: “Maybe you could have a little webhead shaved into the hair up here.”
“Yeah, uh-huh, that sounds like something Sam Raimi would do if he started directing pornos.”
“Started? You’ve never heard of Sam Ram-me?”
“So he would be who directed Spider-Man 3?”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Did the Dance Dance Revolution tie-in fall through? OH!” She cried out, tried to stifle, then gave up and just screamed. It was true. He did love oral. “This would make a fucking great panel! Overhead shot… you between my legs, me just…” She squeezed his head between her thighs and moaned. “Art! It’d be like art!”
He lifted his head, no matter how hard she tried to push him back down. “No, maybe a side-view of you arcing your back. It’d make your breasts look bigger.”
“If you make ‘em look any bigger, I’d be Lady Death!”
“I’m not complaining.” In fact, a moment later, he wasn’t even talking anymore.
Mary-Jane was just fine with that. Her only regret was that Peter didn’t get to see her face as she came.
He looked up, lips and chin glistening, and said “This is the part where I take you in my arms and say something romantic.”
He took her in her arms. She took him in hers. Wiped his mouth off with the corner of a bedsheet. “So?”
“I’ve got nothing. This is why I have writers. You want me to run out and give Frank Miller twenty bucks to write something?”
“’Of all the whores in comics, you’re the one with the highest asking price.’”
“No, too soft and mushy for him.” He kissed her cheek, her jaw, her throat. “I’d probably want to say something in-character, like how beautiful you are, how happy you make me, how you give me hope for the future and atonement for the past and make my life worth living. Like, a whole page of us lying in bed, sheets all dishabilled-up so people can see nipples and some suggestive groin-shadows…”
“Those are my favorite kind of groin-shadows, Brian Michael Bendis.”
He ignored the Bendis jibe. “And we’re telling each other about our relations, our hopes, our dreams, our worries.”
“And I’d tell you that I love you.”
“And I’d tell you that I’ve always loved you. That it’s always been there, like a hole in a dyke, and only just now did I admit it to myself and let the waters flow.”
“You might wanna change that metaphor. At least change out dyke for dam.”
“Well, that’s why we pay JMS the big bucks.”
“I thought it was because he wrote Babylon 5.”
“Yeah, mostly that.” Peter rested his head on the pillow beside her. “Does it count as acting if my character’s feeling mirror my own?”
“If it doesn’t, I’d like to know what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years.” He looked at Mary-Jane, surprised. “The words were someone else’s, but the heart… that was me.”
“Me, too.”
***
“I must admit,” Peter said after so much exertion that even he’d had to catnap. His head was resting on Mary-Jane’s breasts, the sheets drifted over them like a lazy cape. “This is a lot more comfortable than a web-mattress.”
She petted his hair, loving the feel of it as it tickled her palm. Loving everything about the feel of the man that shared her bed (okay, technically, his bed). His legs were subtly parting hers, the heat of his crotch was burned into her thighs, his chest hair brushed against her abdomen at the slightest motion, and his arms twisted with hers underneath the pillows and up to the headboard.
“Why didn’t we ever do this before?”
“I don’t know… not for lack of wanting, believe you me.” He kissed between her breasts. She petted between his shoulder blades, glad that he wasn’t being drawn with scars. Made him too old. “Me, personally… I was afraid of messing something up. We had this great partnership, and bringing sex into it… I was afraid of a Moonlighting situation.”
“You weren’t afraid of that with Felicia?”
”With Felicia, I didn’t have what we have.”
Peter was obviously wondering why she had never tried to start something up.
So she told him “To be honest… I always thought you and Harry were…”
He hit her with a pillow.
“You treat your wife like that?” she said, hitting at him with her own pillow. “What is this, the Clone Saga?”
He choked and faked some very Shatnerian death-throes before she knocked him off the bed with a Pillowfight Champion Swing.
“You know, this is just my luck,” Peter said from the floor.
She dropped down on top of him, pulling the bedsheets down with her. They were silk, and ample insulation from the scratchy carpet.
“Beautiful redhead drops into your arms?”
“No. I realize I’m in love with you and you have to go away. Stan Lee couldn’t have written it better.”
“Tell me about it. Can you imagine how he’d have written the sex?”
“’Face front, true believers, for young Peter Parker has thrown his hat into the ring of passion and will be grappling with that beautiful, terrifying force that men call… love!’”
“Stop it, you’re gonna make me sportle.”
“I like when you sportle.” He wrapped his arms around her. “It’s cute.”
She rested her head against his chest. “Guest spots every chance you get?
“I’m gonna show up there so much they’ll think I’m part of the team.”
“Spider-Man join a team?” Mary-Jane asked quizzically. “But he’s always been a loner!”
They laughed.
Peter’s laugh lingered in his voice. “You know, when someone replaces Quesada-“ Mary-Jane crossed her fingers “-I’m gonna have a talk to them about love scenes.”
“And until then?”
“Until then, we play every scene like we were having hardcore sex every time the reader wasn’t looking.”
“Truth in art?”
He kissed her again. “Truth in art.” And again. And again. “We’re gonna have more subtext than the bibliography of Devin Grayson.”
“Devin Grayson, hell! We’re gonna have enough subtext to make Chris Claremont blush!”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 07:02 pm (UTC)Hate to ask, but was the sex scene okay? I was a little nervous how that would come out.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 09:38 pm (UTC)And I had no idea about the annual; I don't read enough Spider-canon to know you made that up. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 04:31 am (UTC)Except maybe a few of the commas.
*sporfle*
?
Who
/oblique joke
no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 05:23 am (UTC)It was a scene in Marvel Knights Punisher. Garth "superhero bigot" Ennis wrote Punisher bluffing that Spider-Man had stepped on a landmine. Of course, Peter has a spider-sense, so he should've been able to say "No, that's not a landmine." But of course he doesn't, because superheroes are TOTALLY STUPID WHEN YOU WRITE THEM STUPID, LOL!
Who
The goddamn Frank Miller.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 12:54 am (UTC)Well, it must hurt to have it thrown in your face just how pathetic you are and how little integrity you have every day when you wake up.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 08:27 pm (UTC)That was funny, sexy, smart, full of references. I adored it. ♥
no subject
Date: 2008-01-23 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-24 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-03 12:10 am (UTC)