Gwen Stacy Syndrome

A/N: Betaed by Spring, Nomani, and Sonia. If you have an idea for a story you'd like me to write, send me a PM.

*

"I need your help." Four little words. The only reason they nearly stopped Peter's heart was that they came from Mary Jane Watson, the woman he'd almost married.

He was about to go on patrol with the Human Torch when he got the text. A cold sweat gripping him, he sent a text to Johnny telling him to go without him (he was pretty sure the patrol was just an excuse for Torch to drag him along to a new nightclub anyway). Then he remembered to text MJ back.

Where RU?

On my way.

Peter threw his clothes back on over his costume and instinctively looked to see if he had any web-cartridges to hide before remembering, oh yeah, he didn't have to hide things from MJ.

She came through his door like a hurricane. It'd been days, weeks, since they'd seen each other last—MJ wanting him to drive her home from her play after she threw up between acts. She'd recovered, and as always, she took his breath away. Living with her, he'd somehow managed to stop wondering what a girl like that could ever see in a guy like him, but with their relationship at on-again, off-again,

again,

it took him back every time he saw how gorgeous she was.

Took him back to college, in fact, remembering the tight mini dresses, the make-up that didn't even try to look natural. She'd been a predator back then. Now, she saved that for the clubs and the afterparties, and tended to dress—elegant.

He'd always thought the people who thought of her as trashy or gauche were crazy, but she'd grown into a kind of glamour, grown better with maturity like a fine wine. The beach waves hairstyle, the London Fog coat over a purple dress that a pin-up might've worn, even the go-go boots (Peter was sure they weren't called that). He didn't know what half of them

were

exactly, but like a master painter's art, all the different techniques and elements came together to form a masterpiece.

Now, if only he could

say that

without feeling like a complete idiot.

Entrance made, Mary Jane slipped off her vintage Ray-bans to look around his place. Most of it was Ock's stuff, boxed up and ready for a one-way trip to Goodwill. Peter would never judge another nerd's fandoms, but—so much My Little Pony merch.

So much.

He was keeping the 4K TV, though. He'd take it in lieu of Otto paying rent for his body.

"Nice telly," Mary Jane said, taking off her coat. Her dress was—yes. Good dress. "Gave away your superstrength when you had to haul that thing up the stairs?"

"One advantage of having a foreign exchange program with Doc Ock's brain—he has good taste in electronics. So what's up? Stalker? Creep boyfriend? Something else that can be solved with copious application of webbing?"

Mary Jane sprawled on his couch, which Peter had gone to great trouble to get back from the junkyard after Ock had tossed it out. "Beating up your ex's current? Isn't that the kind of thing that could give away your spider-secret?"

"I'd send Daredevil or someone in my place. Keep it on the down low."

"Oh, you're delegating jerk boyfriend duties. Smart."

He caught her sarcasm. "Not boyfriend problems then."

"Just the one." She gave him a look. "Guess again? It's really interesting how you view my life."

"Uh, I said stalker already, right? Another stalker?"

"Peter, I've only had four."

He sat down beside her, protectively inclined against the armrest on her far side. "'Only'."

"Yes, only. Count yourself lucky I've never been on one of Joss Whedon's shows. Alyson Hannigan has about three hundred. They have a tumblr they all go to. 'Fuck Yeah Stalking Willow.'"

"Jealousy, Watson? Of a

sitcom actress?

"

MJ harrumphed. She'd been in Lobsterman. "Actually, I've been muling drugs for a cartel and it's gotten me in a

bit

of trouble."

He pointed a finger at her, half-grinning.

God,

it was so easy not being

serious

with her. "Now you're joking."

"Oh, you don't think I could be a drug mule? I'm hurt."

"No, you could do it, but you're a smart lady. You wouldn't get in over your head."

"Aww." She patted his arm. "So sweet. No, I do not need the footie pajamas on this one."

"It's a uniform," Peter protested, sputtering a little. "

Captain America

has called it a uniform."

"Mmmhmm, this is seeming like a dumb question, but you're still a huge nerd, right?"

Peter scratched his cheek thoughtfully. "Well, I don't play Minecraft, watch My Little Pony, or own a Playstation 4, so now I'm only a medium nerd."

"You have an X-Box One."

"Ock got it. He's evil, so..."

MJ regarded the TV. "X-Box, power on, go to Call of Heroes: Soulfire, load gamer profile Notplan87, and continue from last save point."

"Whoa," Peter said, watching the console shoot through her commands. "It did exactly what you told it to."

"Yeah, it's almost like having a boyfriend again." She smiled at him. "Yes, I'm single. Hard to believe, right?"

"Very."

Mary Jane got up to go to the console and—Peter was a gentleman—but he was at least

aware

that she bent down to get the controller rather than crouching. "Hate to be a stereotype, Petey, but while I can do five Ophelia monologues from memory, I just cannot kill the

fucking

Dark Lord of Dorkonshire."

"With the flame attacks?"

Straightening up, she tossed him the controller. "Yeah. The computer is a dirty, filthy cheater, and I want you to teach it a lesson for me. You've beaten Ultron, so this should be easy." MJ faced the console. "You hear that, you little AI bitch? This motherfucker here eats Sentinels for breakfast. He's gonna kick your ass and get an Achievement for doing it."

"And this is—" Peter hit pause as MJ's game finished loading. "This is what you needed help with?"

"Well, yeah. I could also use help getting my life together and not being a travesty in general, but I think this'll do me for the afternoon."

"Okaaay." Peter unpaused the game, then went to the inventory screen to check what was equipped and MJ's (or, Princess Bonafina, as she'd dubbed herself) stats. "Did you equip the Sword of Unus?"

"

Yes,

I'm not an idiot."

"Alright. Auto-aiming off?"

"Not a noob either."

"Wow, you put a lot of points into Charisma."

MJ crossed her arms proudly. "Yeah, and I got the Shah of Kamal to kill the Warlord Tyran for me instead of having to fight both of them."

"You know, if you go stealth route..."

"We're not going stealth route like a band of bastard pussies. We're killing the Dark Lord of Dorkonshire in a fair fight."

"Fair except for handing the controller to a guy with the proportionate speed and reflexes of a spider?"

Mary Jane grabbed his face in both hands and forced him to look her in the eyes. "

There's an unskippable cutscene before the boss fight. I owe this game nothing."

God, she's beautiful, Peter thought, then frantically hoped he hadn't said that aloud. He coughed. "Okay, cool. Yes. Cool. Let's, uhh—let's go on a quick side-quest. This mission is a lot easier if you have some magic arrows in your quiver."

Mary Jane cuddled up to him—that instinctual seeking of togetherness that had used to drive him crazy. She did it at coffee shops and burger joints, stealing fries from people she'd just met, like that much skin pressing together could ever be platonic. But it was something he loved about her. She really was fearless.

"Put some magic arrows in my quiver, tiger," she pleaded, giving him the puppy dog eyes.

Do not get an erection,

Peter told himself firmly.

He concentrated on the game. MJ had put together a good character: well-balanced, with a nice set of combos, and he had to say, remarkable fashion sense for a bunch of polygons. His own +5 Helm of Slaying always seemed to clash with his Poison-Resistant Gauntlets. He tried out a few of her finishing moves on some of the lowly Russian mercs, disemboweling them with gusto.

"How'd you do that?" MJ asked.

"It's just A-B-A-B-X-Y."

"No, I mean, how could you do that? What if that guy had a family? They won't even be able to have an open-casket funeral now."

"That? That's nothing. Watch this: B-X-X-Y-Y..."

Mary Jane covered her eyes with her hands. "Oh no!" she cried, but with good-natured horror. "If he has to die, let it be clean and painless!"

"That jerk, he deserved it. He texted during movies."

MJ linked her arm around Peter's, making him adjust his stance to keep working the control pad. "That really is a great TV. And I'm assuming the TV is

all

you're keeping from your little... Ocktoberfest."

"Oh, yeah. Breaking a lot of appointments. Last few weeks, I've had more hookers knocking on my door than Jehovah's Witnesses. Keep telling them that I've started following the Kabbalah and I can't pay for sex anymore. I think I've disrupted the economy of New York's Asian-American community."

"Kabbalah," Mary Jane muttered. "And no... surprises?"

"Nah, Reed Richards gave me the all-clear. For all his sins, Ock was a big believer in safe sex. I still have a closet half-full of condoms."

"Good to know."

In a few minutes of speed-run, skipping the dialogue with half a dozen townspeople, Peter was getting the magic arrows from the Qquo'ran Priestess. She was wearing one of those outfits that made Peter ashamed to be a gamer (when a woman was in the room).

Mary Jane broke the tension. "I think I saw Emma Frost in that the other day..."

"So you're not wearing that for Halloween?" Peter asked, looking to MJ as he skipped through the conversation. Unfortunately, he'd just hit a dialogue tree, and the response he selected was Smooth. Too smooth. Tony Stark smooth. The priestess took off her clothes, which only took a half-second.

"So, uh," Peter said with a suddenly dry mouth. "That was an accident."

"Maybe," Mary Jane said , his almost-wife, the almost-mother of his children, a million almosts and a thousand realities, "they have the right idea."

She kissed him. And the awkwardness, the haze of wrongness, the discomfort he'd felt in his own skin—all the

shit

that had been piled up in his life since he got it back—it was all gone. This was real. This was right. He'd still been mostly dead, but she brought him back, defibrillators to the heart, a shot of adrenaline, transfusions, transplants, all that and more.

That's why it was a temptation.

"Was that weird for you?" Mary Jane asked when it was over, her head tilted against his like she was iron drawn to a magnet. "It wasn't weird for me." She giggled. "God, that felt so... normal. Not bad, indie-film normal. Good-normal. Happy-normal."

"I can't," Peter said quickly. "

We

can't."

"Peter, I'm being serious. This isn't a party. It isn't a one-night stand. It's what I want. I love you."

He just shook his head. "

How?"

"Pete, you ever feel like the Fates or God, whoever's writing our story—they need an editor, because this shit is demanding a rewrite? And when you forget what you were going to say, it's the author backspacing? No, never mind, forget that. I don't think we ever should have broken up. I want to get back together."

His head just shook and shook, like clockwork. "It's not that I don't care about you, it's not that there's something

wrong

—I'm just not good for you. For God's sake, MJ, look at the boxes." He rapped his knuckles on a nearby hunk of cardboard. "I had Doctor Octopus in my head for

months.

Imagine if you'd been living with me. If you'd found out. He could've done anything to you..."

"Or I could have gone to our friends and gotten you help that much sooner. You can't do this alone, Peter. You know that. You have teammates, you have friends—why is your heart any different?"

"Because I can't lose you. Not like I lost Gwen."

Mary Jane worked in pictures. She could tolerate bullshit. But only so much. "Oh, but you can lose Carlie Cooper? Actually, that'd be okay..."

"I'm serious, MJ. I won't let you into my life when my responsibilities are so dangerous, any more than I'd let you get behind the wheel of a car when you'd had too many drinks."

MJ stood. On the TV, the love scene continued. Her body blocked it from Peter's view. "Oh, so you're sober and I'm intoxicated? Is that how this relationship—our friendship—works? You know best and I just do as you say, everything's peachy?"

"It's not like that... you don't know the risks like I do..."

"Don't know the risks? Go back five years, find me every night you went out there, and tell

your fiancé

that she doesn't know the risks. Because that was all I could think about. Whether you were getting killed by a Spider-Slayer or the Scorpion or Venom or just some lucky goddamn asshole with a gun." She scooped up her coat from the back of the couch. "I can't talk to you when you think you're being noble. I'd almost prefer you with Carlie to thinking you're the only person in the world who—forget it."

She stormed out. On the TV, the minigame was over. Peter hadn't responded to any of the button prompts. The lovemaking was a pitiful failure.

Face it, tiger, you just got two bars and a lemon.

***

Maybe it was immature. Maybe it was trashy, even. But Mary Jane's prescription for jerk boyfriends, no matter what their vintage, was to hit a club, take more shots than a firing range, and masturbate to an early Christian Bale movie.

Fists

was technically a nightclub for bisexuals, but eh, MJ had done enough photoshoots

writhing

with Brooklyn Decker that she thought she should get credit. The inside of the place was as misty as Silent Hill, but with more laser lights, rap rock, and surely, even in Hell the drinks didn't cost

this much

. She ordered her special from the cutest barkeep—one part bourbon, one part triple sec, and one part Jägermeister. The Redhead, with an exotically herbal aftertaste from the Jäger that was all Watson.

"That looks good," Felicia Hardy herself said, coming out of the haze of various smoke. Mary Jane just stared at her as she leaned against the bar, enchanting the bartender with a look. "I'll have the same."

"It's an acquired taste," Mary Jane warned.

"I was talking about your ass. This," she gestured to the bartender's mixing, "looks like shit. But, sisterly solidarity."

MJ looked Felicia over. Whatever restraint she'd practiced in the past had fallen prey to the Y2K virus. Her Maple Leafs T-shirt was tight with a V-neck that had seen a scissor, her leopard-print skirt was short, and her breasts seemed to have gotten larger. Or maybe Mary Jane was just better at noticing them since her time with Brooklyn.

Felicia took her drink, toasted MJ (or possibly her rack, it was hard to tell), and sent it down the hatch. She blew appreciative air out of her black-lacquered lips. "I take it back. You're a woman of good taste."

"Still talking about my ass?"

"God, no. Cats are tidy creatures. But if you were to turn around just..." With her foot, Felicia shifted the stool MJ was sitting on. "One-hundred-and-eighty degrees..."

"Not that drunk, Hardy."

"I'll start us a tab, then." As Felicia conveyed that in barhopper sign language, she eyed MJ in turn. Saw her hand on her drink. Bored into her ring finger. "Oh, I see. My favorite redhead has a case of the Peter Parker blues."

"I'm your favorite redhead?" Mary Jane said with a hand on her heart, mock-touched.

"Jean Gray died. Come on, girlfriend. I'm not the only one who noticed his Facebook status reads Single, and neither of us wants him on

Carlie Cooper's

arm." Felicia gave a disgusted shudder.

"She's not that bad."

"She once tweeted that she didn't see why the Holocaust was a 'huge deal'."

"Okay, she's awful."

"Now you—" Felicia leaned forward, her slit neckline cutting down to her black bra and its infamous prisoners. "You, I would not mind seeing Peter with. You're awesome. Smart, funny, nice ass, good head on your shoulders... you're even a halfway decent actress."

"

Thanks."

"We're like two kung-fu guys. It's an honor to lose to you, sister. But this Carlie Cooper slash Peter-being-alone-with-his-pain shit, that's like the guy who brings a gun to a wire-fu fight. No honor."

Mary Jane raised her glass. "Preach. And honestly, that whole thing with Carlie 'belongs' with Peter because they're both smart—that's, like, racist."

"I know you didn't mean to say that, but I know exactly what you mean. Hotass bartender guy, we need more drinks! Make it a Peter Parker this time."

"Peter Parker?" MJ asked.

"Two parts Campari, one part vermouth Cinzano rosso, and one part pinot Chardonnay Cinzano. Build it in a double rocks glass with ice, garnish with a slice of lime. Discovered it when I messed up a Negroni. Looks sweet and fruity, tastes bitter as fuck."

"Now you're being mean."

"Is it mean when it's my favorite drink?" The order arrived. Felicia slid it over to MJ. "Try it."

Mary Jane hit it. Not a drink she'd want named after

her,

but very... arachnid. A little heroic, even. "I take it I'm not the only one with the Peter Parker blues?"

"Oh, no, sweetie. The man has left a trail of broken hearts behind him. You should try being Chameleon's sob sister."

"Chameleon?"

"One-way thing. Let me ask you this, red." Felicia laid a hand on Mary Jane's knee—the touch bold and understated at the same time. The message clear: Felicia was willing to seduce her. Only MJ didn't know if she was willing to be seduced.

It would be fun to go home with someone, but this close to the thing (the nebulous, sinister

thing

) with Peter, it would feel like cheating. But did that count if it was another woman? Not being a lesbian, how far would it even go? Some kissing, some foreplay, big spoon-little spoon? MJ could use some of that. Just being

touched...

Felicia went on, watching the thoughts roll around Mary Jane's face like a tennis ball at a match. "Have you read The Phoenix Principle by Emma Frost?"

"Can't say that I have," MJ replied, leaving Felicia's hand right where it was.

"It's a magnificent treatise. The idea is that there's only one real philosophy in life. Only one way to be happy. Figure out what you want and go for it head-on. And I want Peter Parker. I want other people, sure, but them, I just want to fuck. Peter... I want all of him." Mary Jane laughed, her Redhead working its magic. "I'm serious. I want to have his children and read books with him by the fire and join the Avengers with him. It's an important realization."

"You're in love with Peter. That's your big, uh, revelation?"

"I didn't believe in love until two weeks ago. Then I realized, hey, maybe it's not bullshit that I feel happy when I'm with this guy, sad when I'm away from him, happy when I'm

thinking about him.

" Felicia threw her hands up, nearly spilling her Peter Parker. "What the fuck are you gonna do?" She sucked on her straw.

"So you're in love with Peter—" Mary Jane said, a little distant.

"Yes. And he's single; also not possessed by a fat Germanic scientist anymore. I work out a little, squeeze into the old costume, foil a few muggings while I look for him. Boom. I find him on a rooftop. He has his back to me. His

ass

looks—you know how his ass looks."

"I nearly married that ass," MJ said between drinks.

"He's just standing there, staring at a bridge—"

"Oh no..."

"I go up to him, hit him with some bon mots—I have my zipper down to my belly button—I'm practically letting him be my ob/gyn."

"Oh

no...

"

"What? Have you been spoiled for this story?" Felicia jolted forward, her hand sliding up MJ's leg. "

Did he tell you about this?"