Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Despite his super strength, Peter has a very delicate touch.

Michelle muses this over as she sits on top of his kitchen island. He’s standing between her legs, his breath literally fanning over her cheek, and it might be something more romantic if he weren’t currently picking teeny tiny rock particles out of the top of her eyebrows. “There,” he finally says, pulling the tweezers away slowly. She can’t see anything in the dim light of his kitchen at one in the morning, but Peter and his super spider eyes apparently can. “I got it.”

Her head is down, staring at the pieces of her prized possession that she’s held in the makeshift basket she made out of the bottom of her oversized sweater. The agate skull, once tailored to look split open with shiny purple crystals budding out of it, is now shattered in four pieces, with shards of amethyst lost along the way. Her fingers trace against the jagged edges, the pads of her fingers catching sharp edges and burning like a paper cut. 

“MJ?”

She blinks out of her stupor, setting the pieces of skull on the counter like one might set up a jigsaw puzzle. She goes to touch the open wound, but Peter’s finger leave a feather touch to the back of her hand and she stops. “Stitches?”

He steps even closer, if that’s possible, one of his hands hooking behind her knee to drag her a little ways off the edge of the counter. He tilts her chin with his index finger to the light. “Yeah. I think that’d be a good idea. Just a few.”

She’s about to ask if that means waiting for his nurse of an aunt to come home, but then Peter pulls out more medical supplies and gets to work. His fingers are quick and nimble: she’s known for some time that Peter knew how to sew, she just didn’t know that skill extended to human skin. 

It’s only when he’s doing the fourth and final one does she flinch. “I know, I know,” he breathes out. His voice borders on pitying. “Almost done, Em.”

She takes a sharp breath and tries to think of something funny to distract herself. “Do I get a lollipop when it’s over?"

“You get two. ”

He surprises her, again, when he actually does give her two lollipops at the end. They were hidden in a cookie jar shaped like a jukebox on the counter.  Michelle doesn’t really like suckers, and she can’t imagine anyone over the age of eight actually eating one frequently enough to stash it in their home, but she unwraps the one that promises to taste of raspberry lemonade and isn’t disappointed.

After a quick taste test she tugs the candy out of her mouth with a dramatic pop, which finally gets Peter to smile, even if it’s just a shell of one. She waves it in his face, trying to look alluring without wiggling her eyebrow too much, before Peter leans forward and gives it a quick lick.

“364,” she says before she puts the sucker back in her mouth.

Peter blinks, suddenly looking very tired; the lights are casting unflattering shadows, and the bags under his eyes are more sunken than usual. “Hmm?”

“Licks. To get to the center of a Tootsie Pop,” Michelle says around the candy.

His posture slackens with an almost defeated sounding laugh. “Find this out from a personal experiment?”

She shrugs, barely concealing a wince. “Maybe.”

He lifts his head, smile less of a shell and more of a contortion, strained with his inability to fend off his tears any longer. His lips wobble and his eyes water as his fingers gently trace against her bruised cheek before they drift down, knuckles brushing against the purple shaped hand print on her neck.

“MJ-”

She pushes his hand away as gently as she can. “Can I go to sleep now, doc?” She whispers, cutting him off from the conversation that she knows is inevitable, but dreads all the same. “I’m tired."

Peter looks torn. But in the end, he gives in to her. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll - you know where my clothes are. Pick out whatever you want. I’ll just.” He throws a thumb behind his shoulder. “Make you some tea.” He leans forward and presses a slow kiss to her forehead, right above her stitches. 

As soon as he steps out of her bubble she hops off the counter, making a bee-line for his room. The clothes she’s in aren’t in any way uncomfortable - an oversized fuzzy sweater tucked into a floral skirt, but there’s blood on her shoulder. Not much, but enough to make her squirm, to want to scrub her skin in the shower until it’s raw and new and untouched by today’s disaster.

Peter has a pair of Hello Kitty pajama pants that she loves - soft and cuddly and entirely baffling to her as to why he has them in the first place, but they’re her go to choice when she rummages through his things. She finds a ratty school tee of his and slips that on as well before she messes with her hair, tying it in a knot on the top of her head. Eventually, Peter returns, a cup of tea in one hand, and a camera in the other.

Michelle frowns.

“We don’t have to talk about it right now. We don’t even have to talk about it in the morning. And if you don’t ever want to do anything with the photos, that’s fine but - I think it’s important that we take them. That you have them. In case you want them one day.”

“Peter -”

“Please,” he cuts her off brokenly. “Please, don’t make me beg.”

They have a bit of a stare off before she nods, tossing the rest of her sucker in the trash. Peter sets her tea to cool on his nightstand while Michelle pulls herself off the bed and stands against one of his walls, the one with the least amount of Star Wars posters.

“I’m just gonna do your face first.” He’s using his digital camera, the one Tony got for his birthday. She watches as he somewhat expertly takes several quick photos, some with flash, some with not. He gives her quiet directions: turn, up, towards the light, there we go. Pull the neck of the shirt down, yep, hold that.

When that’s done he lowers the camera, hesitation pinching his expression. “I don’t want to tell you to take off your shirt, but, uh -”

She rolls her eyes but bunches the hem, lifting it up so it sits right beneath her bust, showcasing her ribs in all their glory.

“ Jesus MJ,” Peter swears under his breath before he’s behind the camera once more, taking pictures of every black and blue mark that spoils her skin. When he’s done, he sets the camera on his desk with a heavy thud and hastens towards her; his fingers ghost over her ribs. “Take a deep breath.”

She does, and fights a wince. 

Peter’s no doctor, but she’s pretty sure he’s broken every rib he has more than once at this point, so he kinda knows what’s up. “I think you’ll be fine." His nose wrinkles a bit at his word choice before he amends with a, "You know. Eventually.”

Michelle nods her agreement. “Good thing he hasn't got steel-toed boots.”

The way his bloodshot eyes fall on her definitely tell her that it’s a little too soon for those kinds of jokes.

“Let me know if the pain gets worse. Ibuprofen is...” He whirls around and yanks open the top drawer of his desk. “Right here.” He tosses the off brand bottle at her. It’s a good thing her black eye didn’t completely destroy her depth perception. She catches it with ease. “Go ahead and take two.”

She does, swallowing them with a sip of scorching hot tea. Peter stares at her like a nurse, almost like he suspects she’ll hide the pills under her tongue or in her cheek. “I’m going to sleep now,” she says after a loud slurp. She sets the tea mug aside and grabs the sweatshirt hanging off the back of Peter’s desk chair: black, way too huge to be Peter’s or Tony’s, but says Stark Industries all the same. Must be Ned’s. She slips it on. “Don’t let Spider-Man kill anyone.”

Peter snorts softly, quietly setting his camera away.  He pulls out his phone from his back jean pocket, thumbing along the screen. “I think I’ll leave that up to someone else…” he mumbles absently. 

“Don’t let Iron Man kill anyone, either.”

“Don’t worry, he’ll frame it on someone else.”

“Peter.”

Peter sighs, shoulders slumping. Any trace of frustration is gone when he lifts his head again, meeting her gaze. He’s appearing more exhausted with every passing minute. “I’m not gonna go anywhere, I promise.” He stuffs his phone back in his pocket. “I’m just gonna take the couch, okay? I’ll be right outside if you need me I swear. I’m not going anywhere.”

He stares at her and it’s both so intense that it’s a promise and a warning. “I’m not going anywhere either,” she whispers, sounding a lot less like herself than she would like. “I’m not gonna slip out the fire escape just to crawl back to my house at 6am.”

“I...I know,” Peter says, sounding like he definitely does not know. “Just. If you need me.” He throws a thumb behind me. “That’s where I’ll be.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

They have another little stare off before Michelle pipes in with a, “So do I get a goodnight kiss or what?”

Peter softens at that, looking the most like his charming, bright and happy self that he has all night. His steps are slow, but heavy as lead as he comes to gently wrap Michelle up in a hug. He plants a firm kiss on her cheek. “Goodnight.” Another, right on the lips. “And sweet dreams.”

She doubts that’ll happen, but the sentiment is endearing all the same.

The sun hasn’t entirely risen when Michelle stumbles out of Peter’s bedroom to find Tony Stark whispering curses at the Parker’s coffee machine. They don’t see her yet, judging by how Peter’s hanging by the front apartment door dressed for the weather (coat, hat, boots, mittens) and looking very amused at Tony’s attempt to get the machine started.

“I’m buying you a new coffee machine,” he grumbles, finally getting the machine to start by pressing the button in a weird video game-like combo, as per Peter’s instruction. “Top of the line Italian espresso machine -”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Peter waves him off with a mitten clad hand. “Now remember everything I told you.” His voice is barely loud enough for him to hear. “She won’t want coffee, so you gotta make her the peppermint chocolate tea.”

Tony matches his volume. “Yes, Peter, I was listening.”

“Toast with chunky peanut butter. Her jar is in the cupboard. She’ll meticulously spread it on the bread and then tear it up with her fingers, but that’s when you know she’s still okay.”

“Peter -”

“And when you put on a nature documentary, make it about deep sea life or caves. The darker and creepier, the better. She’ll like anything but for the love of god, don’t let her watch the ones on the polar regions because if she sees a hungry walrus or a polar bear in an iceless environment she will either go on a rant about how Coca-Cola is the biggest contributor to plastics pollution or worse .”

“Worse?”

“She’ll cry.”

Tony finally rolls his eyes, and Michelle can’t help but roll her own as well. “Kid, honestly. Have a little faith, will you? I’m not gonna let your girlfriend blue-screen on me, I think I can handle having a conversation -”

Michelle cuts him off by making her presence known, deliberately coming out of the threshold and stepping on what she knows is the Parker’s squeaky floorboard. The boys both snap their heads their way as Michelle shrinks into herself, hiding her hands in the long arms of the borrowed hoodie and crossing her arms across her chest. She doesn’t dare look Tony Stark in the eye. “Morning,” she says.

Peter brightens before he practically skips over to her. “Good morning!” he kisses her, right over her stitches, before his fingers dance along her jaw, tilting her head into the low morning light. “How’s everything? You need more pain meds?”

Truth be told, her ribs hurt like a bitch, but it doesn’t feel dire. “Maybe after I eat breakfast.”

Peter smiles at that, but it doesn’t last long. He ends up biting his lip before admitting, “I need to go out and get Aunt May. Her car won’t start, she just got off the night shift at the hospital, so I gotta go see if I can fix it.  I didn’t want to leave you alone, so I called Tony. That okay?”

It’s the worst cover story ever. He’s passing her over to Iron Man on purpose as part of some sort of scheme. “I can just come with you, you know.”

“It’s cold,” he fires back, like it’s a line he’s been practicing. “And who knows how long it’ll take.”

“Tony could go get her.” She looks past him and braves a glance at the oh so great Tony Stark and is surprised. The usual, smug confident facade he normally wears is gone, replaced with something softer, weathered, warm. 

“He’ll make a scene,” Peter says before Tony can get in a word. “Besides, this way, I get to drive his car.”

“It drives itself,” Tony stage whispers. “He’ll be fine. Besides, I’ve been teaching him. I think he can make it.”

“No more crashing Mr. Thompson’s Audi for me!” Peter says proudly, surging forward to give her another kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

She watches somewhat numbly as he adjusts his hat and exits the apartment in a flurry, leaving her with Tony in the kitchen.

As soon as the door shuts behind him, he sighs, looking forlornly at the sad coffee machine before them. “We can go through Peter’s meticulous instructions that involve a novelty mug in the shape of Llama or we can Postmates some killer brunch.”

“...a chai latte and some donuts sound pretty good.”

Tony snaps his fingers, his phone already in one hand. “You got it, Miss Jones.” 

As he orders the food, Michelle settles onto the couch. She turns on the heated blanket and tries to make a burrito of herself before Tony takes a seat on the other end minutes later, a cup of terrible coffee in his hand. He takes a sniff, pulls a face, but starts sipping it otherwise. When he doesn’t make a move for the remote she does, turning on Netflix and finding the David Attenborough documentary on the north pole.

When the polar bears come on, swimming through massive spans of water to find ice, Michelle forces herself to be quiet.

Tony seems to do the same thing. He occasionally takes a sip of coffee before he abandons the mug entirely. Ten minutes in, he gets up and makes her the peppermint chocolate tea in a novelty Llama mug, setting in front of her without a word. It isn’t until the Postmates guy delivers the drinks and donuts that he speaks up.

“I got an eye just like that one time,” Tony says, a happy sigh escaping his lips when he gets the first sip of what he considers proper coffee. “Stitches and everything. I was ten, maybe eleven. Good old drunk Dad shoved me and I fell into the kitchen counter.”

Michelle picks up a strawberry frosted donut and starts counting the white, snowflake shaped sprinkles. 

“I remember thinking: what if he shoved me just a smidge harder? Or I hit the back of my head? My neck? What if I landed just right that I fell down and never got back up?”

Michelle keeps her eyes down, roughly tears a piece of her donut off and shoving it in her mouth. 26 sprinkles.

“Peter cares about you,” Tony says softly. “And even if you don’t believe me, I care about you, too. I know this whole pow-wow on the couch feels like a set-up -”

“-it is-”

He stops there, giving her a crooked, sympathetic smile. “This can’t be easy for you. I was in the spotlight my whole life, so leaving or speaking up didn’t feel like an option for me. But for you...kid, you can’t go back home.”

The words hit her like a freight train. Michelle’s a smart cookie, and through her women’s studies she’s skimmed the statistics of domestic and child abuse a dozen times. Her father’s been a dick ever since her mother died, but this is the first time he’s ever gotten violent. They’ve yelled, they’ve stewed in silence, but he’s never, ever, hit her like he did last night. And the logical part of her knows he’s very likely to do it again. But the irrational part of her, the part that remembers before when it was him and Mom and laughter around the dinner table, and she thinks she can stick it out. That she’s smart enough to stick it out and avoid getting hurt again.

But those thoughts feel like a sad statistic, too. 

“I know it’s scary,” Tony says. “And I know you feel like you can tip-toe around your life until senior year is over. And maybe you can. Maybe he won’t push you around ever again. Maybe you’ll be lucky. But Michelle?”

As her throat burns, she forces herself to look away from him, eyes back on the television. At this point the walruses are scaling impossibly high, rocky cliffs, as explained by David Attenborough. 

“As they get hungry,”  David says, “ They need to return to the sea.”

Tony sighs. “What if next time you aren’t?”

“And in their desperation to do so-”

Michelle watches as the walrus falls, hitting the rocks with a heavy thud.

“- hundreds fall from heights they should never have scaled.”

A single tear rolls down her cheek. Her throat feels like she swallowed an orange whole and when she tries to take a deep breath, all that comes out is a shaky, hiccup of a sob. “Did you know,” Michelle barely gets out, wiping her eyes hastily with her sleeve. “That Coca-Cola is the world’s biggest plastics polluter? Can’t have a polar bear mascot if they’re extinct.” 

She tries to go on, but her hiccups swallow her words, and her face gets buried in the sleeves of her hoodie.

And if Iron Man lets her use his shoulder as a snot rag, well, that’s nobody’s business but their own. 

Chapter Text

“She can’t stay with you.”

“Well, she can’t stay with you.”

Michelle disguises her sigh around a sip of piping hot tea; the steam is fogging up her glasses, but it’s all for the best. She’s been caught in the middle of a so called custody battle for the past three days and hearing it has been punishment enough; there’s no need for her to see it as well.

Peter, because he’s both sweet and an actual superhero in the business of philanthropy, offers Michelle a place at his apartment. May agrees readily, even though Michelle can see her hesitation. It’s not necessarily because Peter would be having his girlfriend live with him, although she’s sure that’s one of her concerns, but rather the fact that their apartment is small. Two bedrooms, and Peter’s is practically a closet as it is. Michelle would be on the couch, and that just won’t do.

Tony, because he’s Peter’s pseudo dad and in possession of half of New York’s real estate anyhow, also offers Michelle a place at his house. His wife, the great Pepper Potts, apparently agrees to it, but she seems relieved when Michelle points out that it would be a little bit messy PR wise. Besides, as completely Not Terrible as Tony Stark has turned out to be, his penthouse in Manhattan isn’t her first choice for a new home.

She doesn’t want any new home.

But you can’t always get what you want.

“We’ll think of something,” Tony eventually promises, as Michelle feels Peter pat her arm in comfort. “But first: we gotta get you out of your house. Completely.” 

She closes her eyes and lets her glasses fog over, hoping there’s no upcoming cliff for her to blindly tumble over.

Tony Stark rolls her charcoal drawings up with such care, one might think it’s the Declaration of Independence, or Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketches. 

The walls of her bedroom are white - always have been. The drawings have gone up slowly over the last several years that it isn’t until she and Peter are taking them all down does she realize how they’ve been the only form of decoration: the drawings covered two walls like wallpaper. And as they come down, they leave black smudges in their wake, a splattering that somehow reminds her of blood.

While she and Tony take care of her drawings, Peter busies himself with getting all of Michelle’s clothes out of the closet and drawers. Happy Hogan - a man of many titles including but not limited to driver, security, bodyguard, sour puss- drifts in and out of her room, collecting things she’d want from the living room, as well as keeping an eye on the door. Even though Michelle promised that her father was due for a business trip, the three boys seemed to take extreme caution into making sure she doesn’t even have to look at her father.

“You sure do like rocks.”

Michelle looks up and sees Happy holding a blue-green rock in his hand. “Yeah,” she says, lifting herself off the floor. She steps over her unrolled drawings to take it from his outstretched hand. “That’s, uh. Chrysocolla.” with a delicate touch, she turns the rock around in her hands. “My mom really liked these best. She always said they looked like crushed globes or...what Earth might look like in a parallel universe.”

Happy nods like that statement actually made sense. “Then we better pack ‘em up. Hey, Tony, you got any more bubble wrap?”

As they finish packing, Michelle becomes exceedingly self conscious. The final tally of her possessions includes several floral skirts (one for every pair of doc martens), an antique vanity she can’t part with, 72 charcoal drawings, and probably two hundred pounds of rocks.

The funny thing is Peter and Tony act like it’s normal, but it’s Happy who actually thinks that it’s cool. 

“Was your mom a geologist or something?” Happy asks, looking at her through the rear view mirror as they pull away from the street outside her father's apartment complex. Tony’s in the back with her and for some inexplicable reason they’re letting Peter drive the U-Haul. Michelle can only chalk it up to Tony being a sucker. “I feel like only a geologist would have so many - what were they called again?”

“Fluorite,” Tony answers, staring out the back window with nervous eyes to watch Peter try to pull out. “My God, he’s gonna knock over that trash can.” 

She thinks maybe Happy will let it go, but when she looks back she sees he’s still looking in the rear view mirror, smiling, waiting. “Yeah,” Michelle finally answers. “She was.”

“Cool,” Happy agrees, eyes back on the road. “I always liked geology. Physics and chem and all that shit Tony does, I could never follow - it’s a lot of letter math.”

“Letter math?”

“Yeah, you know. Math that’s mostly letters. Log this, x equals that. Very confusing. But rocks make sense. Rocks you can see, pick up. There’s no theoretical geology.”

“Well,” Michelle snorts. “There’s fossils. Some theory that goes into trying to figure out what the animals looked like before. Maybe dinosaurs were all purple like Barney, you don't know.”

Happy chuckles a little at that, the first laugh she’s heard from him all day. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Okay, stop, stop,” Tony says, and Happy presses a little firmly on the brake before he pulls off to the side. “Peter’s going to kill someone. I’ll drive the U-Haul.”

“Sure,” Happy agrees easily as Tony steps out of the car. “Want me to pick up any food before we meet you back at your place?

Tony catches the door before he let it fall shut. “Actually,” he says, sticking his head back into the car. He looks at Michelle and blinks like he’s seeing her in a whole new light - it’s the same dumb look Peter gets when he gets a fresh idea. “Let’s meet at your place, Hap.”

“You know, now that I think of it, Happy’s actually really cool.”

Michelle peeks over the pages of her book - a biography of Frida Kahlo - and stares as Peter jumps up and down like a little kid on top of his bed.

“Yeah, yeah,” he goes on, like talking aloud is something he has to do to convince himself of this fact. “I mean, he’s not cool like Tony and Pepper, but he’s really nice, you know? He’s worked for Tony for like a millennium. Plus, he’s a bodyguard, so hanging out with him always seems safe.”

“You’re Spider-Man,"  Michelle points out. “Are you telling me you feel the need for a bodyguard?”

“Well, no. I’m trying to see this from your point of view.” He defends. “Look, he seems really grumpy but -”

“- he’s not because that would be the wrong dwarf?”

Peter grins and does one more jump, complete with a flip, before he sits on his rumpled comforter. “Something like that. You guys are actually kind of similar.”

She hardly believes that. “Careful,” Michelle quips, going back to her book.

He ignores her.  “No, I mean like. Let’s see - he’s reliable, you’re reliable. He’s a meticulous planner, you’re a meticulous planner. He likes nature documentaries, you like nature documentaries -”

That surprises her, just a bit. Happy Hogan looks more like he exclusively watches the Rocky anthology or something. She lowers the book. “He likes nature documentaries?”

“Yeah.” Thoughtfulness consumes his expression. “I think he likes the ones with the coral reefs best. But I bet he could be swayed to watch some Angler fish.” 

She scoffs. “Similar tastes in Netflix categories don’t exactly make us best friend material.”

But one of Peter’s best traits is that he’s persistent. “Maybe not best friends. But definitely friends. You’ll let him call you MJ in no time.”

Long story short, in a short few weeks, Happy Hogan is named Michelle’s new foster parent.

Well, truth be told, it’s not that long of a story. In fact it’s a very, very short story. Because Peter had taken the pictures, and Tony Stark’s influence is on par with the goddamn president it feels like; the police reports, the evidence collection, the court hearings, the paperwork, it all gets top priority and speeds through the systems at light speed. Michelle’s father doesn’t stand a chance.

It feels like the bruises are barely healed by the time she’s set up in her new house in Manhattan.

As jarring as this whole situation is, the logical side of Michelle knows she’s lucky. Peter’s known Happy for awhile, and Tony’s trusted him with his life, so she’s fairly certain he’s a good guy. Without Tony’s help, she could have been stuck with someone who lived too far out from her school, with someone who couldn’t afford the tuition, with someone who didn’t really care about her one way or another. In the few times that Happy’s interacted with her, she can tell that he cares, even if it’s simply by proxy. She’s Peter’s girlfriend, and Happy likes Peter, mostly because Tony likes Peter, so yeah, sure. He likes her, too. 

“Peter took pictures of your room, before we tore everything down,” he explains as he shows her around her new bedroom. “The ceilings are a little higher, so everything’s spaced out a bit more but I tried to…uh. Make sure everything was in the right place.”

All her charcoal drawings are back on the wall. He’s even taped the few she had on her mirror back to the vanity. 

Okay yeah. He definitely cares.

“But you can move it around however you like,” he hastens to tell her. “If you want to paint, you give me the paint color and I’ll make sure it gets done. I got you a new desk but if you want a different one, I can - I can make that happen, too. Just let me know what you need kid, and it’s yours.”

Michelle sets her purse down on her new bed - a Queen, which is an upgrade from her twin - and wanders over to the new desk. Peter had taken her out all day, giving Happy and Tony time to finish decorating her room, and Michelle is silently astounded by the results. A lot of thought went into designing it like her old one, and even the new desk is evidence of that. Sure, this one has more shelving, but Happy’s arranged most of her rocks on display, using several as bookends or paper weights.

The pieces of the rock skull are arranged in a neat pile on their own shelf.

“Peter told me they’re important.”

She sighs, a full body sigh that relieves some of the tension in her back and shoulders. “They used to be. Not so sure anymore.”

Happy shuffles in place, stuffing his hands in his front pockets. “Well. I still think they’re still pretty cool even though, y’know. They’re broken.”

It’s all terribly metaphoric as her mind flashes with a scrapbook of memories: her mother laughing at a broken china plate on the floor, the two of them smiling over an improperly broken Kit-Kat bar. Her father’s broken smile with the chipped tooth that morphs into something haunting as he throws her into the fireplace brick.

She touches the black dahlia necklace around her neck, thumb coming to rest against where one of the petals used to be.

“Yeah. I guess they are.”

Routine, strangely enough, comes easy. Michelle supposes it’s part of their similarities that Peter loves to point out.

Every morning, she pulls herself out of bed at the sound of clanking and clattering pans, the sizzle of butter and bacon, the soft curses when some oil inevitably jumps off the skillet and burns him. Even though it’s over the top and way too much food, Happy Hogan makes the effort to cook her breakfast every single morning.

“You don’t have to do all this,” she manages to say around midway through the second week.

Happy shrugs, watching as the syrup falls on his pancakes in a zigzag pattern. “We both gotta eat. It’s no problem.” 

And it really does seem like that. As routine becomes more and more familiar, Happy starts adding dinner to the equation. He’s an excellent cook, and he admits he had to learn back when Tony was younger and a little more unreasonable (emphasis on little) and couldn’t seem to find a personal chef that he liked. Michelle believes him, only because she has his carbonara as evidence. But, she’s seen Tony Stark eat PopTarts for dinner, so she can’t imagine him being such a picky eater. 

Peter joins them for meals often. At first, it was just the occasional dinner, but then he started coming for morning pancakes. May tagged along soon after; Michelle remembers the first time she showed up, hair wind-swept and eyes terrified, mumbling to her nephew that she will never, ever go swinging again, no matter how many chocolate chip pancakes were at stake. After that, they begin showing up a little later, but they always seem to have time before Happy and May had to go to work, and Peter and Michelle had to go to school. 

It wasn’t until Tony and Pepper started dropping by that Happy joked that maybe he should get a minivan.

Michelle laughs when two weeks later, the nicest eco-friendly minivan money can buy is parked outside.

Happy is definitely the definition of a misnomer as Michelle rips the big red bow off the hood and snags the card tucked into the windshield wiper.  “Welcome to the Soccer Mom club,” Michelle reads before she turns it around, showing him the cartoon picture of Tony blowing a kiss drawn on one side. “Cute.”

He scoffs, but he still takes the card delicately, like he’s going to add it to a drawer of cherished Christmas and birthday cards. “I guess this means you get to drive the Audi,” he says, nodding to wear he’s parked his car.

“I don’t know how to drive. I don’t even have a learners.”

Happy blinks, before he smiles a little. “Oh. Well, I can fix that. If you want.”

Turns out, Michelle is a worse driver than Peter.

And that’s saying something considering he capsized the Thompson’s convertible. 

To his credit, Happy does an impeccable job at controlling his volume and not shouting; but he’s terrible at hiding his fear. During her first lesson he spends the entirety of it gripping the door handle and stomping on the floorboards like that’ll help.

Michelle, unfortunately, loses her Cool Guy™ exterior due to the fact that she has absolutely no idea what she’s doing. Within five seconds of being in the car, she regrets telling him that learning on a manual would be no problem at all. 

She really needs to quit being such an overachiever. 

“So the gear I need to…?”

“First.” Happy points to the floorboards. “But you need to press the clutch.”

“The clutch. Yes.”

“The other pedal -”

“Got it, got it.” There’s a noise, and then the car sounds like it literally turns off. “Wait, no -” she stares down at the steering wheel like it holds the answer. “What happened?”

“You stalled. That’s okay. You just let go of the clutch too soon.”

Michelle hates everything. “Oh.”

“Try again, slower.” She does. “Good, now press on the gas gently -” The car lurches forward when she pretty much slams on the gas. “- gently, MJ, gently!”

“Sorry, sorry!” she squeaks and then slams on the brake.

“That’s okay, just - ack.” Happy makes a sound not entirely like a cat hacking up a hairball when the seat belt catches him in their stop. “The gently thing works on the brake, too.” He winces, rubbing at his chest underneath the belt.

“Right.” She’s not entirely sure she can do this. But she promised an hour of her effort, and that’s what he’s going to get. Take Two. Or maybe it’s technically take...eight. She’s lost count. “Uh. Happy?”

“Yeah?”

“Please don’t tell Peter I’m worse than him at driving. I’ll never live it down.”

He scoffs. “I won’t have to. You’ll get it in no time. Now come on, I know you can make it a few blocks. Try again.”

“Edge piece. Where’s the last edge piece.”

Michelle is answered by a light snore in her ear as Peter’s arms tighten around her waist. She’s been in his lap, using him as a chair at the kitchen table, for the past hour. Peter nodded off about thirty minutes ago, using her shoulder as a pillow, and leaving Michelle to work alone on the 1000 piece puzzle they picked up earlier that afternoon.

She moves a few pieces around, as if holding one will magically turn it into the edge piece she so desires, before she gives up on finding for the time being. Because Peter is just absolutely hilarious, he’s chosen the world’s busiest collage of seashells, handing it over with a, “ shells for my ‘chelle.” Ironically enough, Michelle’s always liked shells. Her trips to the beach were always infrequent, but she liked them all the same.

The top left corner gets complete when Happy walks in, snorting out a laugh when he sees Peter’s position as Michelle’s chair. He whispers something about the drool on her shirt while he starts to unpack the take out he’s picked up on the way home from SI.

“Do I smell Pho?” Peter mumbles without opening his eyes.

“Pho sho,” Michelle teases and he laughs, moving his head to rest his chin on her shoulder. 

“Hey,” he says softly, “You put a big dent in the puzzle,” he marvels as Michelle stands up and heads to the kitchen island to help Happy with the food - there’s a lot; more than just for the two of them plus the alien eater that Spider-Man is. Tony and Pepper must be stopping by. Or maybe May.

Before she gets a chance to ask, Happy stretches and a pile of mail they’ve clearly neglected the last several days falls out from underneath his arm onto the counter. Honestly, it’s stuff Happy wouldn’t have if she wasn’t living here: National Geographic subscription, Bed Bath and Beyond coupon, three college info packets (one from Columbia, one from NYU, and one from Kingsborough) and a letter.

From Spencer Jones. 

Michelle snatches the letter and holds it behind her back, unsure of what else to do. Both Peter and Happy are oblivious as they set up for dinner, arguing back and forth about where to eat in relationship to preserving the puzzle covering the table. She excuses herself with a mumble and hurries to her room, locking it behind her. She leaps on her bed, ruffles up the blankets, crosses her legs underneath her and holds the letter out in front of her.

And stares.

Her fingers ghost over the edge a few times before she takes a deep breath and jams her thumb underneath the corner, making an ugly rip at the top. It’s a simple piece of lined notebook paper and when she flips up the first fold she sees the first line:

My Dearest Daughter,

She closes the letter, resisting the urge to rip it up, to toss it as far away from her like one does when something they touch burns them. Instead, she folds it up more, smaller, until it’s just teeny tiny enough to fit underneath one of her bigger slabs of kyanite on one of her shelves, there to be pressed like flowers she isn’t sure she wants to even keep.

Happy and Peter both call her for dinner, mixed with laughter that sounds like May’s, and Michelle gives the rock one last adjustment before she heads over to the door, catching her reflection in the mirror hanging off the back, haggard and tired. 

She traces the scar above her eyebrow: smooth, but bumpy looking, like the pieces of rock are still stuck in there. It’s just a trick of the light, she knows this, but when she lifts her head to feel a little more put together, her neck tightens, and she swears she sees the shadow of a hand around her throat.

As her eyes get wet, she feels no remorse for letting his words suffocate.

Michelle is careful to check the mail every day after school, and for good reason. Her father begins mailing her a letter every single week. And without fail, they get ripped open, only to have the first sentence read:

My Dearest Daughter

My Dearest Daughter

My Dearest Daughter

My Dearest -

Eventually, every hefty rock in her collection has a secret letter underneath it. The citrine geode has two. The amethyst one with the chip that ended up in her forehead has four.

It’s basic science that a lot of cool looking rocks are made under some sort of intense compression. Diamonds, pearls, fancy marbles - can’t enjoy their beauty without a lot of time and pressure.

Michelle’s pretty sure she can’t literally squish her father’s words to make a diamond, but it’s worth a shot.

If the pressure of bottling it inside doesn’t eat her alive first. 

Chapter Text

The unraveling starts more or less with two gallons of paint.

Michelle has just collected the mail on her way inside after she’s come home from school. Half her mind is preoccupied with the English essay she needs to finish as she sifts through what they have- junk, junk, and - another letter from her dad. Which is to say: junk.

So, again, she tears it open like she has the rest. But this time, something inside her stews. The tingling, numbing feeling she’s experienced before with all the other letters is replaced with something uncomfortably angry, and her blood feels like it spikes in temperature and fizzes under her skin.

The shock is gone and Michelle is left only to bask in his absolute audacity.

In a split second decision, she decides to forget doing her homework for the night. Instead, she ignores the doorman and keeps heading east to the nearest hardware store, which is several blocks away. 

Right before she slips inside the shop, she throws the letter into the nearest trash can.

The hardware store guy is nice enough - probably nicer than he needs to be, since he pretends that Michelle is a normal looking young adult instead of the crisis-suffering teenager that she is. He helps her with her selections - one blue paint and one green - and she pays for them with the credit card Happy gave her for emergencies. 

She tries to walk them home with them, but they’re too heavy; Michelle ends up camping out in front of a small shop and waits for a Lyft, using the cans as the world’s most uncomfortable bench.

Right before the car comes, she sifts through the top of the trash and grabs the letter, putting it in her pocket.

The doorman at Happy’s ends up helping her get the paint to the elevator, but she’s on her own to get it to her own door. She’s sure the security guys have a fun time watching her fiddle with her key and open the door, only to prop it open with her foot as she drags the two cans inside.

As soon as she’s inside, Happy is right there, grabbing the paint for her. “I got it, honey,” he says softly, as he sets it aside. “So you went out to get paint, huh?” Happy smiles a little.

She’s not broken curfew or any other rule, and Happy isn’t angry at all, but she can see the relief washing over him just as the guilt knots in her stomach. Michelle is very routine oriented, and she realizes that not being home when she normally is on this unsuspecting Tuesday really has worried him.  “Yeah, I hope that’s okay,” she mumbles, wiping her palms down the side of her jeans.

“Yeah, of course. I can get started on it this weekend for you.” 

“No, uh -” Michelle blurts out hurriedly, wiping her hands down again. She winces at the small blisters that already cut into the creases of her hands when she tried to carry the paints. “I was gonna do it myself. You know. Uh. Creative outlet and all.”

Happy blinks, looking a little confused and she has to look away, picking at her hands instead. “Sure thing, kiddo. Just let me know if you need help.” He nods to the kitchen. “Saved you some pizza. Got black olives on it, just like you like. No Peter to whine about how it’s a war crime.”

“Okay.” She looks up again just in time to see his smile start to slip as he really looks at her hands.

“MJ, what did you do to your ha-”

“Nothing,” she holds them behind her back, pulling on her fingers for a few moments before she gives them a preparatory shake and grabs the cans of paints. “I’m just gonna get -get started.”

“I can carry -”

“I got it. Really.”

And she does. She tapes up the walls, moves her furniture to the middle of the room, and lays down an old towel as she slowly moves around the room to paint. The first three are mint green and the last is a pale blue, the one behind where her bed rests.

It’s still wet, so she can’t scribble on it just yet. So instead, she more or less literally watches paint dry as she sits on her bed, the not-so-fresh city air wafting through her window on an unusually crisp night. 

Both the olive pizza and her English paper are completely forgotten.

The next time she gets a letter, she stuffs it in her backpack and forgets in lieu of staring at her wall, trying to conjure some creativity. The night is spent in silent limbo, the only interruptions coming from Happy politely knocking on her door to tell her dinner is ready, as well as a text from Peter relaying Happy’s message. She doesn’t come out to eat.

When she gets to school, she barely manages to make it through her classes. Her English teacher reminds her that her paper extension is due tomorrow. Michelle pushes it to the back of her mind to join her late calculus homework packet and upcoming history project as well. 

When Academic Decathlon comes around, Michelle is subjected to the horror of being in charge. That means she has to open her mouth and words have to come out as if nothing is wrong.

She’s not very good at faking it. While her demeanor is rather deadpan and quiet, even her teammates can tell something is off. She confirms it’s an oncoming migraine when Betty asks, and promises to keep going with practice for as long as she can.

The category for today is science, specifically geology, because of course it is. Michelle doesn’t have the energy to answer, which leaves a lot of silence, since it's usually her area of expertise. Well, silence except when Abraham answered the question about the oldest fossil with a slap of the bell and a shout of “Mr. Harrington!” but other than that, Michelle makes note that, eventually, she should sprinkle more earth science and ecology questions into their practice packets.

“These types of mineral compositions make up 90% of Earth’s crust,” Michelle asks as she has one hand rubbing her temple. Her eyes drift up to the clock on the back wall: they still have another hour of practice. Unbelievable.

No one says anything, so she sweetens the deal. “Person who gives the correct answer wins a prize.”

Nothing. 

Michelle sighs again, dipping her head to focus on her hands so she can pick at her blisters. “Peter, just...give me your best shot.”

His nose wrinkles a bit in thought. “Uhh...silicate minerals?”

“Dine ding ding.” Abraham follows with the actual ringing of the bell. It intensifies her headache and almost makes her go blind. “You’ve just won - interim captain.”

Flash immediately voices his objection while Peter and Ned’s eyes go wide. “Wait, what? We can just end practice if your head hurts that bad -”

“Yeah, I thought so too, until I experienced today’s deafening silence.” She walks from behind the podium and drops her notebooks on Peter’s desk. “You answered the most questions, so you win.”

“If Parker doesn’t want the job, MJ, I’d be more than happy to -”

“No,” Michelle says, meeting Peter’s eyes. “Peter’s gonna stay right here and help you guys, right?”

His mouth opens and closes like a fish for a few moments, but he seems to get the message: I need to be alone, I don’t want you to follow me. “Got it. Thanks, MJ. Feel better.”

She collects her things and doesn’t look back.

“Do you have any daisies?”

The florist nods and shows Michelle to the back of the flower shop, some place she could have easily found on her own had she bothered to look for it. But this is where she finds herself after ditching Academic Decathlon: not the library to work on her late assignments, nor a coffee shop in hopes that consuming enough espresso will bring the light back to her eyes. Nope.

Michelle’s buying flowers for her dead mother.

She ends up buying the yellow ones because she always gets the white ones, and if there’s one thing her life has proven lately, it’s that some routines can be detrimental. She pays with cash and heads for the edge of Queens.

The day of her mother’s funeral is a blur, always has been. It had been around New Year’s, and the cold had already settled. The thing that sticks out to her the most is that her father complained that Michelle’s hat and mittens were red, but she didn’t understand why he was upset they weren’t black - they were Mom’s. It was supposed to be okay, because they were hers.

He was angry all day about it. Looking back, she supposes that’s sort of how it - this - all began. 

The cemetery is soon to be closed by the time she gets there, but Michelle will take what little fifteen minutes or so she has before she has to leave. She settles in front of the gravestone, fingers skating along the engraving - Daisy Jones - and she leaves the flowers next to the others.

The wind howls in her ear she it jolts some sense into her, snaps her out of her stupor. There’s other flowers here, already. Fresh ones. Daisies - white - like they used to get.

There’s also two letters. One with Daisy’s name- 

-and one with Michelle’s. 

Her anger bubbles under her again, and her throat feels raw, like it’s been freshly burned and exposed to air. It’s not fair. Her father did his damage. And then left her, just like Mom did. Okay, so it’s not exactly the same, Spencer isn’t dead, but his sudden absence in her life sort of makes him feel that way. And even though she doesn’t want to see him, doesn’t want to talk to him, he’s trying to force his way yet again by leaving letters like the world’s unfriendliest ghost. 

Her mother’s death made her feel empty. Her father’s actions have left her feeling haunted.

It’s not fair.

After she sits in the chill in hopes that it will cool her anger, Michelle snags the letters and shoves them in her school bag to sit with all the other unread papers in there. The groundskeeper on his way to remind her that the cemetery closes in 15 minutes sort of chokes on his tongue when he catches Michelle’s face and lets her pass without a word as she stands up and hurries out of there.

She’s catching the soonest train home.

The left light flanking the front door is still out.

It’s the only thing she can concentrate on as she stands on the porch of her old home in Queens. The white paint on the old metal fence around the house stands out in the dark, and Michelle preoccupies herself with picking at the paint that’s chipping away. Better the paint than her hands. The Jones’ always had a habit of leaving lights on when one they were gone, so he may not be home; there’s no evidence of the car street parked. But he could very well be home, reading a book in the living room with the TV so low in the background Michelle can barely hear the questions being asked on Jeopardy.

Honestly, she doesn’t know what to do. Part of her wants to knock on the door and when he answers, deck him square in the face and then go home. Another part of her wants to march up to him and demand he read the letter to her face and then explain, break down every line like it’s an English assignment and it’s Socratic Seminar day. As the cold settles into her bones, she tries to come up with a satisfying speech, a single sentence to ease the pain.

She can’t come up with anything. 

She wonders if she ever will.

The doubt is enough for her to slump over and defeat, and head for the train back to Manhattan.

The neighborhood that Michelle grew up in isn’t unsafe but at the same time, she still lives in New York City. There’s a reason that they have a high concentration of vigilantes; Spider-Man is definitely needed.

Especially when she finds herself only two blocks from the train station.

Growing up, her parents always told her to do the same thing if she were ever find herself in a situation where she’s held up - throw your stuff at the bad guy, and then haul ass in the other direction. After all, they aren’t usually looking to actually harm someone. They really just want to scare people into giving them their valuables. 

And this guy is certainly succeeding when he points a gun to her face.

She’s been tugged into an alley just like all the others around, only this one is darker due to a busted street lamp. Mentally, Michelle noted she should have crossed the street, but she pressed on because, hey: what were the odds she’d find herself into trouble?

Apparently, about the same as her dating Spider-Man himself.

Awesome.

“Hand over the bag,” the man says, slightly waving the gun. He’s classic bad guy - although he doesn’t have a ski mask over his face like in the movies, the hood of his jacket is up and he’s got a plaid scarf wrapped around his mouth.

“Fine,” Michelle says, tiredly, slinging the bag off her shoulder. She’s just about to throw it when she remembers:

The letters. And not only the ones written to her, but the one written to her mother.

She can’t part with them. She can't.

Her heart rate spikes and she makes a rash decision. She kneels on the ground, the bag in front of her, and reaches for the zip. “I’m just gonna get my wallet -”

The man steps closer. “The whole bag! Hand it over, now!”

“You want the wallet, right? The rest is my school junk, man, I’m just gonna hand over the wallet and we can both - “

He steps closer, so very very close, and swipes the gun upward, using it as a weapon to knock her chin. She tastes blood as she cradles her face with one hand, the other still gripping the bag. He goes for a second hit, likely to try and knock her out, when he’s suddenly thrown sideways. Michelle sees webs in his wake as he flies into the dumpster a few feet beside them, his arm stuck to the metal. There’s another thwip! And more webs come out to trap him head to toe.

Michelle knows she sort-of-kind-of told Peter she wanted to be alone, but thank God for that Spidey sense.

“Hey!” Peter calls as he makes his appearance, swooping in from the building roof across the street. “Hey, are you okay?”

His voice wavers as he crouches in front of her, gently cradling her jaw in his hands. There’s a soft whirring from behind his mask and the eyes of his mask twitch out of sync like they always do when they’re doing some sort of biometric scan. 

“I’m fine,” she moans, but jeez does her jaw hurt. “He just clocked me pretty good.”

“Yeah, I’ll say.” He pushes some of her hair back, thumb brushing faintly against her cheekbone as if it’ll soothe the pain. “What happened to your ‘throwing the bag and high tailing it out of there’ maneuver? Your chemistry textbook should be heavy enough to induce a coma if you aim just right.”

“Spidey-” she side-eyes the crook in hopes that Peter remembers they can still be heard. “Thanks for the save, but really, I’m fine.” She bows her head and starts nervously picking at the scabs in her hands.

The eyes of his mask move again, but this time they narrow. “No, you’re not fine,” he whispers. He pulls her hands away. "Stop, stop, don't pick, Em, come on. Listen." He holds her hands in his. "Tony’s got the best first aid supplies, we’ll go check you out at his place.” 

He helps her up, slow and steady, a hand on her at all times. Michelle feels more than disoriented as Peter puts on her backpack before he takes her arms and wraps them around his neck, then her legs around his waist.

“I’ll be as gentle as I can,” he promises before he starts swinging them across the city.

And while that may be, swinging is still one of Michelle’s least favorite...sports, if one must put a name on it. She’s pretty sure she nearly squeezes one of Peter’s poor lungs right out of his chest, but he’s super nice about it (or rather super strong about it) that he doesn’t mention it.

Somehow, probably the work of Peter’s AI, Tony knows they’re coming. He’s waiting with blankets and towels and a jumbo pack of peanut M&M’s when Peter swing through the open, oversized window of his penthouse.

“You get these,” Tony says, waving them around as he helps Peter lead her to the couch. “If you’re a good patient.”

As soon as she’s sat, Peter yanks off his mask and Michelle’s heart sinks. His hair is disheveled, which is typical, but this time his eyes match the look, red-rimmed and devastated.

She made her boyfriend cry. 

But he does his best to hide it, pretend it never happened. “He hit her with the gun, trying to scare her into giving up her bag.”

Tony makes her open her mouth, counts all her teeth, despite her protests that she didn’t lose any. “And the police -?”

“Karen’s programmed to call them as soon as I leave the vicinity. Should have gotten there about five minutes ago.”

Tony nods as he takes one last look into her mouth. “Bit her cheek when he got her, but all her teeth are there. Anything loose, honey?”

Despite the intense pain it causes, Michelle runs her tongue along her teeth, checking to see if any of them wobble. “I think it’s okay. Just hurts.”

Tony gives her a sympathetic smile before he passes her a cold washcloth to press to her jaw. “Here, use this. And lie down.”

Peter becomes incredibly alarmed at that prospect. “She got hit in the head, what if she has a concussion?”

“You and I can keep an eye on her, but I think she’s okay to take a little nap. She wasn’t knocked unconscious, right?”

He’s looking at her when he asks this, but Peter answers for her anyway. “No, but -”

“I’m okay,” Michelle lies. Well, half-lies. None of this is okay but it’s not like she’s on the brink of death. “I’ve done this before, remember?”

That’s the wrong thing to say. Because Peter whines, actually whines, as he wipes at his nose with the sleeve of his suit; he tries to bury his eyes in the crook of his elbow. “MJ,” he says, brokenly, the tears slipping through. “This isn’t okay.”

“I never said it was. I said I was okay -”

“You aren’t okay, either!” 

Silence envelopes the room, save for Peter’s sniffling. When it becomes clear that no one else has anything to add, Tony clears his throat and fluffs Michelle’s pillow. “I’m gonna call Happy and let him know what happened, okay?"

Michelle presses her good cheek into the pillow. “Tell him I put up a good fight.”

“I’ll let him know I’m signing my Iron Man armor to you as we speak,” he jokes, wrapping the blanket from the back of the couch over her. “And here,” he reaches into his pocket and hands her the M&M’s. “Better eat these before the dentist tells you you’re eating smoothies for a week.”

“Dentist?” She whines. “I don’t need a dentist. All my teeth are in my mouth.”

“Tough cookies, little lady. You’re seeing a dentist first thing.” He smiles a little, giving Peter a squeeze on the shoulder as he leaves to call Happy.  Peter doesn’t react; he just sort of stands there, still sniffling, almost embarrassed. Which is ridiculous, since he saved her life. She’s the hot mess, she should be embarrassed. 

The embarrassment on her part is solidified when she opens the packet of M&M’s, pops one in her mouth, and then promptly spits it out after trying to bite down. “Ow,” she whines, looking forlornly at the half-chewed candy in her palm.

The sight of it is enough to finally crack a smile out of Peter.

She waves the bag in the air after she tosses the M&M in her palm on the coffee table. “Pete, come eat these in my stead. They’re you’re favorite.”

Peter takes a deep breath, one that heaves his shoulder up to his ears, before he settles on the couch with her. He ends up moving the pillow so she’s resting her head in his lap. He wraps the blanket more firmly around her before he starts rubbing circles into her arm. “You know,” he says, picking out the candy with one hand. “I’ve never actually gotten around to trying the peanut ones yet.”

“Then you should thank the Spidey powers for nuking your allergies. Go on. They’ll change your life.”

He ends up putting a handful in his mouth at once. “Oooh,” he says mid crunch, “Those are good. Holy hell.”

“Better than a Reese’s?”

“...I haven’t gotten around to trying that, either.”

“I’m breaking up with you.”

He leans over and kisses her. “You’re only saying that ‘cause I got your candy.”

Michelle pouts. “Not true. But I’ll consider nullifying the break up if you buy me a milkshake tomorrow.”

He grins. “Yeah?” He leans over and kisses her again. “What kind?”

“Peanut butter.”

“Okay, deal.” A third kiss, this time to one of her palms, right below the blisters on her hand. “You want to watch something until Happy gets here?”

Peter’s already turning on Tony’s fancy holographic screen of a television with nothing but a command to FRIDAY and the flick of his wrist. The documentary series Michelle has been watching comes up and Peter selects it without her even having to say anything.

The room becomes peaceful, as calm and sometimes upbeat instrumentals play as they’re taken through a vast salt flat landscape, watching as thousands of flamingos cross. 

“They’re so cute,” Peter whispers, and when Michelle cranes her head in spite of the pain, she catches his smile in the light reflecting off the screen.

But eventually, the music slows into something sad, the flamingos taper out, and David Attenborough explains:

“Some cannot keep up...the salt has solidified around their legs.”

Michelle and Peter watch as a baby flamingo stumbles around in casts of salt, falling against a rain-scorned salt flat. He’s been left behind. Forgotten. Left to fend for himself.

This time, Michelle does not cry.

But as she drifts to sleep, she feels some of Peter’s tears fall onto her own cheek.

“MJ?”

Michelle blinks awake, sunlight immediately in her eyes. She’s still on Tony’s couch, but Peter is long gone. She can’t see a clock but it’s definitely late morning, and she’s sure Peter’s gone to school.

Happy is crouching in front of her, clothes wrinkled. “Hey,” she whispers, slowly sitting up.

“Heard you had quite a night, sweetheart.” He pushes some of Michelle’s hair that’s practically in her mouth out of her face before he tips her chin up, inspecting the bruise. “The dentist is gonna be here soon.”

“To make sure I didn’t swallow any teeth?”

“Something like that. You sleep well?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” he says quietly. He keeps crouching by the couch. “MJ?”

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out before he can lecture her or say something that would, inadvertently or not, make her feel even worse. “I messed up. I know I did. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” he soothes, moving back to sit on the coffee table. “I’m not mad, kid. I’m just worried.”

“I’m not trying to make your life hard, honest. I don’t - I don’t know -”

“I know you aren’t.” Happy smiles, tired. She has a feeling that unlike her, he didn't sleep last night. “And if I’m being honest kid, I don’t really know either. Sounds like we’re both trying our best, but we might need a little help. We’re gonna figure something out, okay?”

She nods, because that’s all she can manage.

“Good. First step, breakfast. Peter texted me something about a peanut butter milkshake?”

“For breakfast?”

He shrugs. “Why the hell not? If we hurry we can have you down one before the dentist gets here. Brain freeze is basically novocaine, right?”

“I guess we’re gonna find out,” Michelle sighs. As she moves to get up, the ache of being slugged and swung around settled into her bones, Happy is quick to offer his hands.

She takes them without a thought, and she supposes that might be the real first step.

Chapter Text

On Michelle’s sixth consecutive therapy session, she announces to Dr. Sharma that she has letters she wants to talk about.

But when she sits down, she clams up, and ends up gripping them in her hands the entire session without another mention.

“Well,” Dr. Sharma says exactly fifty-nine minutes after Michelle sits down in his office. He’s not pushed the letters once, except to tell her he’s all ears, whenever she’s ready. “That’s all the time we have today. I’ll see you next week, yeah?”

Michelle sighs and looks down at her hands, resisting the urge to rip off the special gloves Tony gave her and pick at her scabs. This session was nothing like she had planned; it ended up only being polite small talk concerning things like the city’s weather and the Knicks. Just like every single one before it. She might not have her high school diploma yet, but Michelle’s pretty sure that therapy sessions are supposed to amount to more, and it’s pretty much Michelle’s fault that hasn’t happened. She’s told Peter about how she just... can’t talk to therapists, not the way they want her to, but he keeps telling her to give it time. And yeah, it probably needs more time.

But Michelle has never been slow to pick anything up before.

So all in all, this sucks.

“Look, I’m sorry-”

Dr. Sharma cuts her off with a wave of his hand. “We’ve talked about this. It’s okay. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“But -”

He smiles at her. “You aren’t doing therapy ‘wrong’, Michelle. I’ll see you next week, okay?” 

She bites her lip for the umpteenth time this session before she nods, hastily collecting her things and offering the therapist the same polite smile as she heads out to meet Peter in the lobby.

Her boyfriend is sitting crumpled up in an uncomfortable chair, sucking on a lollipop and reading an outdated issue of People Magazine that has Tony on the cover. “Hey!” he greets, scrambling out of his seat to grab her backpack. “How was today? Any better?”

Peter, Happy, and Tony don’t ever push her for details of her therapy sessions, but they have asked for surface level reviews, just to see if she finds it helpful or if she thinks another doctor would be a better fit. “No,” she says, trying not to wince. She wrings her hands behind her back. “Sorry.”

He shakes his head before he reaches behind her back and grabs her hand, lacing his fingers with hers. “That’s okay. No need to be sorry.”

Michelle’s nose wrinkles involuntarily like it always does when they talk about feelings. She nods to the abandoned tabloid on the side table. “What was the media ripping Tony up about now?”

Peter’s eyes go wide with faux shock. “Did you know he’s cheating on Pepper? With Rhodey?”

She rolls her eyes. “That rumor hits the tabloids at least once a year.”

“I know,” Peter snags the magazine back up, sticking it in the bag he’s carrying for Michelle. “And Tony adores every single one of them.”

A thought crosses Michelle’s mind. “Has there ever been a rumor that Happy and Tony were a thing?”

“Oh yeah. Cover story in 2003. Framed in his gym.”

“Hmm.” She tries to imagine if that’s true, and in the end she decides she knows Stark well enough to believe it is. She’ll have to check it out when she’s there next. In the meantime - “Can we get something to eat on the way home?”

Peter’s face lights up because 1) he’s always hungry and 2) Michelle’s appetite has been pretty nonexistent the last several days. “Yeah, of course!” 

But she knows exactly how to wipe the smile off his face. “Pizza with black olives?”

Her boyfriend throws his head back and gives a dramatic groan. “Fine,” he concedes, and it makes Michelle grin. “But next time, I get my pineapple.”

“We’ll see about that.”

They end up picking up a pie on the way to Happy’s. They camp out on the living room couch with sodas and candies as well, and Michelle lets Peter put on Force Awakens while she picks off all the olives on his pizza for herself. Rey and Finn just barely make it onto the Millennium Falcon when Peter’s phone starts blowing up with notifications from Karen.

“Shit,” Peter swears as he rolls off the couch, frantically searching through his backpack. “Robbery in progress.”

Michelle gets the amusing sight of Peter stripping down into his boxers to jump into his Spider-Man suit. “You had Karen tap into the police channels again, didn’t you.”

He slaps the emblem on his chest and the suit shrinks to fit his form. “I’m faster than a cop car,” he grins, already high off the oncoming adrenaline. “I’ll be back before Kylo kills Han.”

“Spoilers,” Michelle mumbles into Peter’s lips as he swoops in for one last kiss before he slips the mask on, opens the nearest window, and flies into the city skyline. 

Movie soon forgotten, Michelle makes some tea and settles back onto the couch, flipping through local news stations to see if Spider-Man is making any screen time. The robbery in question involves one of the most renowned jewelry stores in Manhattan, so Michelle isn’t surprised that Peter’s mask-covered face is blasted on television through waves of user submitted phone videos and the occasional news camera getting a shot. The robbery turns into a full on car chase through the boroughs, and Iron Man makes the headlines when it’s clear Spidey needs a hand. But after awhile, the reporters and the cell phones lose track of Peter, and the news begins recycling the little information they have.

“Still nothing, huh,” Happy mumbles from the window, looking out it like Peter will come up the steps any moment. Michelle’s been listening to him mumble as he texts back and forth with May. “Well, he’ll be back soon. Tony’s out there, he’ll be extra fine. Now, maybe we should watch something a little less unnerving? I found a documentary on cuttlefish you might like.”

Peter’s never not come crawling back from a fight, so while she worries, her anxiety isn’t so high strung that she has to stay awake. So she falls asleep to the first sounds of crashing waves on the screen.

Michelle wakes to voices somewhere in the kitchen. The television is off and there’s a blanket wrapped around her that wasn’t there before. She does her best not to move and stay quiet, groggy and hoping to fall back asleep.

“Ow, ow, ow-”

“Quit whining kid, you came here , remember?”

Yep. He's come crawling back.

“Yeah, because Tony dragged me. Besides, you’re supposed to be kinder with the stitches than May-”

“Kid, if you don’t stop moving, Hap’s gonna sew your nose to your ear.”

“I wouldn’t be making jokes. You’re next, boss.”

“What? No, I’m fine, just worry about the kid.”

“It’s either me or May - Peter, stop moving.”

“But it hurts - ow. ”

“Sshh! MJ is sleeping on the couch.”

She immediately shuts her eyes and concentrates on keeping her breathing level before they no doubt peek into the living room to see if they’ve woken her. But despite Peter’s whining and Happy’s insistence that he shush, they aren’t actually being that loud. Hell, she hadn’t heard them come in in the first place. She’d like to have heard the rundown on the robbers, if there was one -

“How is she, by the way?” Tony asks, much quieter. “Therapy working?”

-and she definitely wants to hear what they have to say if they’re talking about her.

Peter hisses out a breath. “I don’t think so, at least not yet. She’s not ready to give up on it, which is a good sign, but in my opinion, I don’t know if it’ll work for her.”

“Why wouldn’t it work?” Happy asks.

“She has a hard time opening up to strangers, doctor or not. I mean, I had the same problem when I had therapy, sure, but-”

“Kid,” Tony says, “it’s not quite the same situation as Skip -”

“Okay, I know that,” Peter whispers out hurriedly. “I wasn’t trying to imply that it was -”

“What? Skip? What -Who?”

“No one, no one,” Peter brushes it off. “Let’s just - don’t mention it.”

“Well,” Happy pauses, sounding sad and frustrated. “What should I do? I - I want to help her, and I can tell it’s not working yet, but I didn’t know-”

“I mean, it could. Don’t get me wrong, I just thought maybe she’d benefit from another approach. Or like. an additional approach. To said existing therapy. To nudge?"

“What she’d really benefit from,” Michelle speaks up from the couch, groggy. “Is being included in the conversations concerning her so called failed therapy.”

There’s muffled cursing followed by Peter giving a proper shout of ow! When Happy no doubt finishes the last of his stitches. Her boyfriend stumbles into the living room moments later, flanked by the adults’ arguments concerning Tony’s need for stitches. What a mess. “Hey, sorry we woke you. And sorry we were talking about you.”

Michelle shrugs beneath the blankets. “It’s fine. You all mean well, I suppose. I’ll let it slide. This time.” 

“Well, what do you think?” Peter asks, moving Michelle’s legs so he can sit on the couch. He ends up propping her feet up in his lap and massaging her arches. “Do we try a new therapist? Maybe a fuzzy one with four legs that barks?”

She snorts out a laugh at that one. “You just want an excuse to play with a dog.”

“That’s not entirely true. Mr. Wilson brought me therapy dogs when I had superhero therapy. They helped.”

“Superhero therapy?”

“It’s an invite-only group session. Kidnapped by terrorists, frozen in the arctic, crushed by a warehouse sort of deal.”

Michelle narrows her eyes at his cheeky grin. “Don’t smile when you mention the warehouse, dufus.”

Peter flexes his arm in retaliation, throwing in a wink for good measure, only to dissolve into a fit of winces and laughter as Michelle reaches up to nudge at his apparently bruised ribs. “But seriously. Dog, cat, rabbit, snake -”

“Vulture?” she says, pointedly, and Peter reaches forward to pull her into a playful headlock, dropping silly kisses to her cheeks in quick succession. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she lies, and she kisses him firmly on the mouth. “I meant it more like a gothic, vampire-esque aesthetic.” She taps the broken black dahlia necklace. “Goes with my whole vibe, you know?”

Peter hums. “Sure you did.” He winces again when Michelle pokes him in the ribs. “Owie.”

“On the other hand, not sure I like your injured and stitched vibe you’ve got going on. What happened?”

“Oh, man,” Peter breathes out, settling into the couch beside her. He steals half her blanket. “So they had guns, right? They always have guns.” He points to his ribs and mouths bullet graze as if not saying it completely out loud makes it not horrible. “And if that wasn’t painful enough, then there was this car chase. And like, I’ve been in some car chases but the car drove off the Queensburough bridge and like, yeah, I caught it, but it suuuuuper hurt and mind you, this was after a bajillion blocks of me getting dragged by my webs and dodging cars and whatnot and honestly, we saved the robbers so like woo-hoo and all of the pieces of jewelry were accounted for EXCEPT -”

“Except one.”

“Except one! Pendant. With a big ruby. Huge. Astoundingly huge. And yet, I could not find it. Checked the bad guys pockets, could not find it. Karen scanned the water, could not find it. FRIDAY scanned the water, could not find it. I borrowed Tony’s suit and went scuba diving against his wishes and threats of grounding me despite his lack of authority to do so and I -”

“-could not find it.”

“It’s forever lost. The new heart of the ocean. Never to be found.”

“Tragic.”

“Seriously. What the hell am I supposed to get you for your birthday now?”

“Therapy vulture.”

“You’re so mean to me.” He sniffs, but his smile is on full display as it reflects in the light of the television he turns on. It’s a peculiar contrast to the bruise along his cheekbone and the cut along his eyebrow. It looks just like the one she got long ago, and she resists the urge to smooth her fingers over the scar. Instead, she watches as he immediately goes through the movies, bypassing Force Awakens and going for the jewel themedTitanic. 

“What do you think-” he pauses to yawn. “-ate Leonardo DiCaprio when he sunk into the water after Kate Winslet pried his frozen fingers off that door?” He settles more snugly into the couch, looking like he might not make it through the first ten minutes of the movie. Superheroing is pretty tiring work. “Angler fish? Giant squid? Nessie? Some other terrifying creature from your nature documentaries?”

“Megalodon.”

Peter hums approvingly. “I always imagined he’d freeze like, entirely. In a block of ice. Like a marble sculpture that has yet to be chipped away at.”

“Or Han Solo in the carbonite.”

“I knew you were as nerdy as me.” Another yawn as he rests his head on her shoulder. “Wake me up when he draws her like one of the french girls.”

She snorts, but moves to make him more comfortable. “I’m waking you up when they hit the iceberg.”

“You are so not getting your therapy vulture,” he mumbles, and then he’s out like a light.

Michelle tries to stay awake, but the movie soundtrack paired with Tony’s griping when it’s his turn for stitches, puts her to sleep in no time.

Two days later, Happy picks up Michelle from school and asks her if she wants to go to the gym.

"Um. Why?"

He shrugs. "Just thought it'd be good for you. Small change of pace. What do you say?"

It’s a strange request. But as she stares at her twig arms, she figures it can’t hurt. She’s been pretty down in the dumps lately, rightfully, and she knows all the studies about how exercising equals endorphins and endorphins make you happy. So she pictures an elliptical and treadmills and weight machines and all the other boring gym stuff, and agrees.

Instead, Happy takes her to Tony’s state of the art private gym.

Complete with boxing ring.

“I can’t -” She gestures to herself, and then the ring. “Yeah, I can’t box. Or fight. My boyfriend kind of does all the fighting for me?”

“Yeah, honey, I know,” he grins. He looks odd in his workout clothes - she’s hardly seen him out of his suit. “We’re just gonna use the mats for now. I thought we could do a self-defense class?”

“You thought?” Michelle stresses, because while she doesn’t doubt that Happy cares about her at this point, this idea feels more like a Tony Stark-Peter Parker joint idea.

But he stands his ground. “Yeah, kid. I thought. I have good ideas too, you know.” He smiles. “If I can teach you to take down a guy my size, I figure you’ll be in good shape.” 

She pictures one of Peter’s fights, or the time she’s seen Steve Rogers on television from the battle of New York, tossing aliens over her back like it’s nothing. “Might take a few sessions. I’m no Black Widow.”

“Good,” Happy grins, leading her to the mats. “‘Cause last time I tried teaching Nat a thing or two, she kicked my ass.”

“You tried to teach the Black Widow -”

“I didn’t know it was her, okay? Come on, let’s give it a try, yeah?”

Happy’s never really pushed her in any way ever, and it’s not like working out is a terrible thing to ask of her. Who knows, this could be the first step to her actual participating in gym class at school. She's all in.

“I just want to walk you through a few scenarios in case the chucking your bag doesn’t work next time.”

“Next time.”

“You know what I mean. I’m not gonna teach you to deck someone. But side note,” his voice drops into a whisper. “If you’re gonna throw a punch -”

“-don't wrap my fingers around my thumb. Don’t know what good it’ll do when I punch like a marshmallow, but noted.”

Happy nods. “Okay. I’m going to go for your arm. If someone grabs your arm like this -”

He grabs her wrist.

Michelle wills herself not to flinch.

“-curl your hand that he’s got into a fist.” Michelle puts all her focus on the exercise and curls her fingers. “Then, grab your fist with your other hand. Now, point your elbow up,” He helps move her through the motion, before letting them practice a few times, “and then kind of slice downward. With all you got, use your core muscles.”

She does as shown, and easily slips from Happy’s grip.

“Good, good. Let’s try that a few times.”

A few times turns out to be so many times  but she gets the hang of it. She wouldn’t say it’s muscle memory, but it just might actually help in the case of a gunman trying to rob her next time. 

Except…

“What if he has a gun?” Michelle asks when Happy passes her some water. “The last guy had a gun.”

Happy nods, looking pained at that realization. “Yeah, I was going to get to that but maybe...later. Another day. I wasn’t trying to bring up recent memories by pointing a fake gun to your face.”

“Only fake? Where’s the fun in that.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Ha-ha. Very funny,” he deadpans before using his water bottle to gesture to some supplies across the gym. “He’s got fake guns over there. Go grab one.”

She returns with a fake, bright, red pistol that Happy immediately grabs and points at her face. “Okay, let’s say you get lucky and it’s amateur hour. He only uses one hand. People are usually right handed so we’ll go with that. First, try to distract the guy, make him think you aren’t going to put up a fight.”

“No. Please,” Michelle says as uninterested as possible. “I have so much to live for. My collection of rocks will die if I don’t water them.”

Happy breathes out a soft laugh. “Right. Now, what you’re gonna want to do is grab along the barrel of the gun with your left hand.” Michelle does so in slow motion. “While also -” he uses his free hand to tip her head to the left. “Getting your head out of the line of fire. And while you do that, take your right hand and sort of karate chop at their wrist, while bending the gun to your right. So like this.” He gives her the gun. “It’s kinda of fast, so just -” Michelle watches as Happy does all the motions at light-speed. The gun ends up pointing at her before Happy rips it from her grasp and holds it up to her face once more. “Got it?”

Uhhh, no. “I mean, not yet -” she admits. “But I’ll get it.”

“I have no doubt.” He smiles. “Like driving. Bet you’ll get it before Peter.”

Michelle frowns. “Wait, Peter hasn’t passed any sort of pseudo gun slinging course or whatever?”

He rolls his eyes. “Kid’s dodged probably 1,000 bullets at this point, but he’s still gotten grazed by maybe ten of them. One day one’s gonna get stuck in him and me and Tony are gonna have to dig it out.”

Michelle considers that image. It’s positively disgusting. “If that happens, can I have the bullet and all it’s fragments?”

He tries to fight a smile, but fails. “The two of you kids are gonna put me in an early grave, you know that? Now. Again?”

“Again.”

This goes on for what feels like forever, but is probably only thirty minutes or so. It’s upon this realization that she makes the mental decision to stop sitting out to read in gym class and actually run a lap or three hundred. Get a little more on Peter’s speed. Or, hell Happy’s. He looks a little spent but he’s not sweating nearly as much as she is.

“I mean, I’m a bodyguard. I used to be a boxer.” He points to the ring. “It’s kind of why Tony hired me,” he explains when Michelle whines about the perspiration difference.

“I knew that,” she says, and while technically that’s true, she didn’t actually spend a lot of time imagining it. “When do you teach me to throw a man over my shoulder?”

“When,” he elongates the word as he walks over to the heavy bag hanging in the gym. “You build the muscle to maybe throw a punch?”

She sneers and it makes Happy laugh. “I have to admit it’s always looked easy,” she says, “But I’m probably all wrong.” She grabs a pair of gloves and puts them on. “Should I...uh, can I try?"

For the first time since their impromptu gym session, Happy looks a bit...off. He hesitates, almost starting half a dozen sentences before he presses his lips into a firm line and nods. “Sure. Yeah. Let me. Let me get my gloves.”

Michelle ends up settling on the floor, waiting for a demonstration. In the corner, by the ring, she sees the famed 2003 magazine cover framed, along with another one concerning a rumor about him and Captain America. She’s about to ask just how much of a whore the media thinks Stark is when Happy comes back. He pulls her back off the floor and guides her to stand in front of the bag. Michelle goes to tap the bag, just a preliminary punch, when Happy blocks her.

“...Kid? Do you trust me?”

She frowns, looking up at him, trying to find why he looks just a tad nervous. “Yes.”

“You know I have your best interest at heart, right?”

“I-” she purses her lips. “Yes, I know that.”

He nods, relief slackening some of the lines in his face. “Good, good. Then trust me when I say: when you throw a punch, imagine the bag is your father.”

Of all the ideas she imagined Happy would come up (and honestly, she didn’t imagine many considering she’s pretty new to the whole gym scene) this was certainly not one of them. Michelle’s eyes nearly fall out of her head. “Um. What?”

“The bag. Picture your father when you hit the bag. You’re angry with him, aren’t you?”

“I -” She hesitates, but she figures she can’t deny it. “Sure. Yeah. I’m pretty angry with him.”

“And I don’t blame you. I just thought this would be a good, healthy way to get a little revenge.”

Michelle winces at the thought. “I dunno…”

“Why not?”

“It seems.” She gestures helplessly with the gloves on. “Counterproductive?” She pauses, thinking her own words over. “I mean, I could be wrong, I haven’t read anything on coping mechanisms of child abuse victims but-”

She nearly bites her tongue, her heart ramming in her chest. 

Child abuse victim.

She’s never said it out loud before.

“Okay,” Happy says. “Just tell me this. Tell me why you don’t want to imagine it’s your father."

Michelle bites her lip. “It’s just a bag. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Why.”

God, he keeps pushing and she doesn’t know why. “Because,” she stresses, scrambling for a reason. She rips the gloves off and tosses them on the ground. “I just can’t. I won’t.”

“Why not.”

“It’s just a bag.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s defenseless!” 

Something heavy, so so incredibly heavy unravels and lifts itself off her chest. When Michelle takes a deep breath it feels lighter, and therefore makes it all the easier for the tears in her eyes to spill out.

“It can’t defend itself,” she says, and when she takes another breath it’s broken but a wretched sob. She buries her eyes in her arm. “Why would you hit something that wouldn’t dream of hitting you back?”

She wipes her eyes and when she looks up, Happy’s crying a little bit, too.

“I’m his daughter, ” Michelle whispers. “I know when my mom died it was hard on him, but it was hard on me too! I was trying to cope too, you know? But he kept trying to give pieces of her away and I just -”

“The rocks?” Happy asks.

She buries her face in her hands, her words becoming slightly muffled. “I know some of them are ugly. I know they take up tons of room, and they aren’t easy to move around but they were hers. They were all we had left of her. It didn't take long for him at all to give that stuff away. One would be gone one week, and a few others would be gone another, and then one day -” She pauses, wiping uselessly at her cheeks. Her whole face is covered in her tears. “- He wanted to give away her favorite. Her absolute favorite one. The skull, that’s broken in my room?” Happy nods, remembering. “And I told him to stop. That he can’t do that. I’d keep them in my room, I'd put them in storage I'd do anything to keep them, he just had to fucking stop. And sure, we’d been yelling at each other for months so that was nothing new. But that night he was drunk and me talking back made him so angry-”

“MJ, it wasn’t your fault-”

She presses on. For someone who found it so hard to open up in therapy, it's suddenly so easy. “He started breaking them. Throwing them. At the ground. At me! I tried to pin him down and get him to drop the rocks. But then he yanked me. And he choked me. Before he-” she gestures off to the side. “-pushed me. Into the rocks on the fireplace. That’s how I got the split in the eyebrow.” She tries to calm down, her sobs more like sad, pathetic hiccups. “I wanted to shove him back. I wanted to use some of Peter’s strength to throw those rocks back and defend myself but-but-”

She pauses, the gym silent besides her weeping and Happy’s occasional sniffles.

“Those were mom’s rocks. She loved those. And he’s my dad. I can’t - I don’t know -”

Happy rips off his gloves and steps forward, wrapping her in a bone-crushing hug.

And Michelle, with her twig arms and marshmallow strength, tries to return the hug with the same strength. 

“I don’t know how it would even cross his mind,” she whispers in his chest, clawing at his shirt. She thinks of the letters, still secrets that litter the bottom of her bag and hide pressed beneath her rocks. “I don’t care if he’s even sorry. How could he even do it in the first place!"

Happy starts rocking them back and forth. “I’m sorry, kid. I’m so sorry.”

“Why would he do that? Why? I don't understand! I don’t know what I did wrong.”

She feels a kiss on the top of her head. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You hear me?” He pulls away, gently holding her face in his hands. “What he did - it’s unacceptable. And it’s all on him. You didn’t do anything wrong. Okay?” He wipes her tears away with his thumbs. “Say it.”

It’s hard, and it takes her a minute, but she says it.

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

He pulls her back in and as soon as she’s wrapped in another hug, the tears start up again. There's no off switch, it seems.

“I hate this,” she sobs. “I’m getting so much snot on your shirt."

“The price I’m willing to pay.” Happy gives a wet laugh. “Do you feel better?”

She feels like he sort of kind of tricked her, but she can’t deny the wonderful feeling that accompanies the metaphorical weight that’s been lifted off her chest. Looks like Peter, Tony and Happy's late night talks about alternative therapy were right after all.  “I don’t know yet. Maybe. Probably. Ask me when I stop crying,” she wails, rubbing her nose into his shoulder. “And after we get M&Ms."

"Peanut?"

"Yes, peanut!" she wails. "God, what other kind is worth it?"

"Fine, fine. Peanut M&M's it is. You gonna drive?"

"After all this?" she sniffs, and he doesn't answer. "I mean, sure, why the hell not. Might as well."

"Atta girl."

"And Happy?"

“Yeah, MJ?”

As she stands there sobbing off what experts might call a breakthrough, Michelle figures she might as well listen to all of their alternative therapy ideas. “I want a cat. For therapy. A therapy cat."

He laughs again. “Yeah, I think I can manage that.”

Chapter Text

“I think you should get this one.”

Michelle looks at the, admittingly, adorable grey kitten that Peter can’t seem to put down. As soon as he walked into the shelter, he proceeded with a Hoodie Test which is when he puts his hoodie on backwards and puts the kitten in the hood to see if it’ll stay. The grey cat is the only one that’s stayed; it’s gone so far as to fall asleep.

“He likes you way more than he likes me. Can’t have that,” Michelle reasons, looking at the other cats.

“Well,” Peter sniffs, “If that’s your criteria, you’re not gonna bring home any cat - ow!” he yelps with laughter when Michelle reaches over and tugs on his earlobe. “Babe, I’m kidding -”

“What about this one?” Tony asks from the other side of the crates. Michelle slinks over to see he’s selected one of the older cats with white fur and only one eye: a bright and mesmerizing green.

The name on the crate reads Malachite

Fitting.

She doesn’t hesitate to open the crate and coax the cat out. It takes a few moments, but she comes out without showing her teeth or claws, so Michelle considers it a success. When she goes to hold her, the cat immediately starts purring, her one eye closing in bliss.

“This one. I want this one,” she tells Happy, showing him the cat. He gives her a thumbs up, approving of her choice.

“Oooh, I think that one will pass the hoodie test,” Peter gushes before he turns all of his attention to Tony. “Mister Stark -”

Tony cuts him off with a comically deadpan, “No.”

“I haven’t asked yet.”

“I’m sorry, my bad. Please, continue.”

“Can I have a cat?”

“That’s it? That’s your pitch?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.” A pause. “No.”

Peter pouts. “Pleeeeeease?”

Tony immediately shuts his eyes so he doesn’t fall victim to the patented Peter Parker Sparkle. “I’m not getting you a cat. May will tan my hide.”

Peter’s quick to retaliate. “He can stay at your place!”

“That’s a double no,” He says with a flourish of his hands, “extra on the no.”

“It could be good for you. Us. Pepper. Cats are good therapy, isn’t that why we’re here?”

“We’re here to remedy MJ’s psychological damage. Not yours.”

Suddenly, Peter takes the kitten from his hood and nearly shoves it into Tony’s hand; the older man has no choice but to grab it. “Hold it and not fall in love with it.”

Tony looks a little scared of the kitten, if Michelle has to be honest. “Kid…”

“Hold it. Keep holding it, keep holding it.” Peter’s voice drops to a whisper as he leans over to speak directly to the cat. “Work your magic buddy, he’ll turn to mush for you in no time.”

And with perfect timing the kitten in Tony’s hands stretches and yawns before opening its eyes and giving a small meow as if to say hello.

Tony stares down at the cat, mouth slightly ajar before he groans in defeat.

“...What do you want to name it?”

Peter entertains a few amusing names: Rogers, Captain, Iron Meow. Tony likes Michelle’s choice of Vulture, but it’s the shelter volunteer that lets them know all the cats already have names, if they’re having trouble deciding.

“That’s actually one of Malachite’s babies. We call it the rock and mineral litter. The one you have in your hands is Ruby.”

As the volunteer goes to find the right paperwork for the cats, Peter frowns immensely , and Michelle can’t help but snicker at his expense. “Still can’t find it, huh?” she asks.

“No!” Peter hisses out lowly, and behind him even Tony looks upset; at least as much as one can when they are holding an adorable, cuddly kitten. Peter digs into his pocket and pulls out his phone, typing and swiping a few times until he finds the page he’s looking for. “Look,” he shows her the missing necklace in question: a rather expensive pendant with a large, red pear-shaped center, framed by several huge and valuable diamonds. “I told you, Heart of the Ocean. Look at the size of that ruby.”

“Garnet.”

“....what?”

Michelle grabs the phone from his hands and zooms in, double checking. “I mean, I think it looks like a garnet, because of the coloring, but I’m not an expert,” she shrugs.

“I mean, you kind of are. I’ve seen your room.”

Another shrug. “Yeah, but I mean - you’re the one who was told to look for the ruby at the crime scene.”

Panic seeps into every inch of Peter’s expression. “I just - I just leeched the picture off the police!” he whispers harshly. “I’m not an officer, the city doesn’t pay me, I get what info I can -”

“So you have no idea what it is.”

“It’s red! Big and red and expensive!” Peter flails. Behind him, Tony sighs deeply, murmuring something about how he needs to start checking sources from people who at least possess a high school diploma. “What else would it be besides a ruby?”

“A garnet.”

“I’m going to lose my entire mind.”

“What’s left to lose?”

Tony’s dig doesn’t faze her boyfriend in the slightest. He snorts out a laugh in agreement before he holds up his phone to his face and says, “Karen, what are the odds that when I told you to scan for rubies in the water you also scanned for other red gems?”

“I’m sorry, Peter,” Karen answers, “The mineral compositions of rubies and garnets are different. Rubies are a type of corundum that -”

“OkaythankyouKaren,” Peter whispers out harshly before he turns the phone off and cuts off his AI. He starts emptying out the rest of his pockets, dumping his keys and wallet into Michelle’s bag. “Well, looks like I’m going swimming.”

“Now?”

“Near, far, wherever it may fall, my heart will simply not go on until I find it.”

“Dramatic,” but Michelle accepts his things anyhow. “Good luck. I’ll make sure Tony doesn’t name the cat something stupid.”

“No, you won’t.” He drops a quick kiss on her cheek before he darts out the shelter.

When Michelle turns around, she finds the cat asleep on Tony’s shoulder. “I'm naming her Spider-Cat.”

“This is gonna be such a long afternoon.”

Michelle gets her therapy cat and continues with her workouts at the gym with Happy, but she also returns to the doctor’s office type therapy as well.

Eventually, opening up becomes easier. She’s able to discuss the events of that night, from the first strike, to the last stitch that Peter used to sew her up. She talks about all the moments that soured between her and her father after her mom was gone - her mother’s passing is skimmed over, another lock that she doesn’t have the key to open to quite yet, but Dr. Sharma seems pleased with her progress. Michelle is too, if her grades and sleep schedule have anything to say about it. Things are slowly getting sorted out.

Except the letters. 

She brings them every week. Every single week. But she can’t open them. Can’t bring them out to even read herself in the privacy of her own room, let alone in the session.

Michelle is able to tell Dr. Sharma that much, and when she does, she’s met with silence and a pensive look.

“I think you’re trying to reconcile with the wrong person,” he eventually says. When Michelle’s face scrunches in confusion he gives a half smile and points to the one letter that Michelle always always grips first.

Daisy’s letter.

“You’re mad at your mom.”

Michelle scoffs. Dr. Sharma’s been pretty good at his job thus far, but this time, he’s off the mark. “In case you’ve forgotten to write it down, my mom’s dead.” He makes a note on his little doctor notepad thing. “Okay, don’t actually write it down. And don’t write down deflection. I know you’re doing it. Stop it.”

He smiles just a twinge, giving a helpless shrug as he continues to write. “I’m just saying - that’s why you’re mad.”

A tiny fire ignites in her belly - not burning, but not comforting - like a warning alarm. “I’m not mad at her. She... She died. That happens. That’s not her fault.”

He looks up. “You can still be mad that she’s dead.”

“I’m not mad,” she says carefully. “I’m -”

“You’re what?”

“I’m sad.”

He nods, and the pensive look comes back. “You mentioned the funeral. About how your dad seemed peeved at you because your hat was red, and wasn’t black.”

“Yeah.”

“What else do you remember about the funeral?”

Michelle opens her mouth, but she finds she has nothing to say. She doesn’t remember anything else, at all. She just remembers lingering by her dad, but not too close so as not to anger him. She doesn’t know all of who showed up. Doesn’t remember the eulogy. Doesn’t remember if they put her favorite necklace on when they buried her.

The realization clenches her stomach and brings tears to her eyes.

“Ever since your mother died, you’ve been avoiding anger - mostly your father’s. But I don’t think you’ve dealt with your own grief in its entirety. Anger and sadness - they go hand in hand with these kinds of things. They need to be dealt with.”

Michelle hums, fighting every single urge to look down at her hands and reopen her old wounds.

“Your father is writing you letters because it’s the only way he can talk to you right now,” Dr. Sharma says. “He wrote your mother one for similar reasons.”

Michelle’s smart. She knows where this is going. “So, you’re suggesting I write my dead mother a letter?”

“It’s a suggestion, yes.”

She considers this. “What do I do with the letter after I’ve written it?”

“That’s for you to decide.” 

A few days later, Michelle finds herself at her kitchen finishing up that damned seashell puzzle. She’s in Peter’s lap, again, his arms wrapped around her waist as he snoozes on her shoulder. This time he’s still in the spider suit, and Michelle thinks she’s being used as a shield from Tony so he won’t try and stitch up another Spider-Man wound.

All in all, a typical Friday night.

“Did you ever write your dead parents letters?”

Tony doesn’t look up from the puzzle. “Does a eulogy count?”

“No.”

“Then, no.” He finds the last piece that goes to the big conch shell in the corner and sticks it in place with a small triumphant cry under his breath. “I didn’t write the eulogy either, by the way. Rhodey had to do that one.”

Michelle rolls her eyes, starts sorting her end of the pieces.

“Something you want to talk about, kid?”

“No,” she says softly. Peter lets out a soft snore in her ear and she smiles. “Just taking a survey of sorts, I guess.”

Tony hums in understanding, and the silence sweeps over them once more, briefly, like a crashing wave of the tide. “Did I ever tell you about Jarvis?” he eventually asks her.

She’s so concentrated on finishing a particular shell, she only manages a minute shake of her head.

“He was my butler, growing up. He raised me, and he’s probably why I know any good and acceptable behavior today.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Michelle quips, and Tony’s laughter fills the room, barely louder than Peter’s snores.

“He was British. Just….as British as you could imagine. The accent never wavered, even though he had lived in the states for years. I could listen to him talk all day. He never shouted. Never raised his voice. It was my favorite sound in the world. When he died...I missed it. So I made him - his voice - into an AI.”

That gives Michelle pause. She looks up, twirling a piece of the puzzle in her hand. 

Tony’s looking up at her, doing the same with his piece. “Ran my house for years. Then my suit. Now he’s in Vision but that’s -” he shakes his hand, waves the tangent away. “Anyway -”

Unable to look him in the eye, she stares at his hands as he twirls one of the last puzzle pieces.

“- Love letters are more than just pen and paper.”

Michelle doesn’t really know where to start.

Dear Daisy,- 

Dear DJ,- 

Mama, -

Mom,- 

One might say she doesn’t get very far with the whole letter idea.

As she sits at her desk, a pile of rejects beside her, she ends up staring at her mom’s favorite rock - the skull - still in clean pieces on her desk.

Well. Maybe she can start there.

“Looks nice.”

Michelle steps back from the wall, wiping at her cheek and smearing smatterings of bright yellow paint across her face as Happy walks through her open door. It’s taken quite some time, but Michelle has managed to finish the mural she set out to paint after she brazenly decided to redecorate her room so many weeks ago. Therapy has taken a small turn, and combined with her new workout routine, it doesn’t feel so hopeless.

She’s really outdone herself, in her opinion. Countless white petals and bright yellow centers, but it’s the prettiest collage of daisies she’s ever seen.

Turns out love letters are pen, paper, and maybe a splash of paint.

“Thanks,” she says, a little breathless. “Felt like…making improvements.” She gestures to the whole room, where her rocks have been rearranged and given a whole wall.

Including the skull.

“Hey,” Happy lets out quietly, walking towards it. “You fixed it.”

Fix is a generous word. She couldn’t super glue it back together, it could never be what it once was, but she got a little creative. Made it look more or less intentional: with Tony’s help, she managed to rearrange the pieces on stands to make it look like a display, like something out of a museum or lab or school. She plays with the necklace Peter gave her, chipped edges smoothed long ago.

It wasn’t whole but it didn’t look... so broken.

“Yeah,” Michelle finds herself agreeing. “I fixed it. 

She stares at her desk, a pile of misshapen papers consuming half of it. Her pen is still resting on an open blank page, but Michelle doesn’t feel so lost for words anymore. 

She’ll figure it out. 

She’ll say the right thing.

“Hey Happy?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we go to the cemetery tomorrow? I want to drop off a letter.”

“You got it, kid.”

When he smiles, the light and warm feeling in her chest blooms.

This much she knows is true: If it’s said with love, she can’t say the wrong thing at all.

She manages to write her mom that letter.

Her father’s letters will stay under those rocks, unread, for the time being.

When Peter Spider-Man’s into the living room window later that evening, he’s soaking wet and sans mask.

He’s also got a massive garnet necklace around his neck.

Before Michelle can protest Peter crawls onto her ceiling and does a dazzling flip as he drops, still soaking wet, onto her couch. He smells like every single bad thing in New York city as he waggles his eyebrows and flips his soaked bangs out of his face, announcing, “Draw me like one of your french girls.”

“You found it,” Michelle says, blandly, as she wipes her brow with the back of her hand; her fingers are coated with blue paint. With her bedroom done, she didn’t find the will to stop, and Happy’s too much of a sap to say no when she suggests she paint one of the living room walls like something out of an Aquarium.

“Wearing this,” Peter goes on with ridiculous flair, gesturing to his suit. “Only this.”

“You’re ruining our couch.”

His good mood can’t be squashed. “I spent all my free time this week looking for this! And I finally found it!” he looks down, playing with the pendant. “S’real nice.”

Michelle snorts. “You look real pretty, Pete.” He gleams, snuggling closer into the cushions and she wrinkles her nose just thinking of the mildew. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to give that back.”

“I’m gonna give it back,” Peter scoffs. “I just wanted to show you first.” His smile grows more mischievous. “Want to try it on?”

She taps the broken dahlia necklace around her neck. “I’ll pass. I like this one you gave me much better.”

His smile turns all mushy and dopey before he lurches forward and kisses her, playful and sloppy. When he leans back she swipes his cheek with a stripe of blue paint and makes him laugh. “Go shower,” she tells him, kissing him again before swiping his other cheek with more paint. “And maybe...I’ll let you stay over for a movie marathon.”

“Yes ma’am!” he says with a mock salute.

When he returns some minutes later she’s pushed aside the paints, as well as dried the cushions as best she can. Peter’s hair is still wet, but the smell of floral shampoo is much better than the river. His cheeks are clean and that necklace is still around his neck, but he still detours to the paints to dip his fingers back in and smudge it across his temple. “So we match!” he declares as he drops beside her, wrapping himself in the blanket with her. A laugh bubbles out of her when he looks at the television and groans, dropping his head on her shoulder. “Nature documentaries again ?”

“You like nature documentaries.” 

“Yeah, but I want to watch Titanic.”

“We’ve watched Titanic literally three times in the last two weeks.”

“No,” Peter refutes, reaching forward for the snacks on the coffee table. He grabs a lollipop and starts to unwrap it. “You watched Titanic three times. I kept falling asleep.”

“How is that my fault?”

“It’s not. I’m just explaining why you’re going to have to watch it a fourth time.”

Malachite, traitorously favoring Peter, hears the commotion and jumps between them, settling more on Peter’s lap.

“Fine,” Michelle concedes, and Peter lets out a soft cry of success, mainly directed to the cat in pathetic baby talk. “But after this.”

Peter more or less behaves himself as they watch. Malachite occasionally gets distracted by the shine of the insanely-expensive-still-technically-stolen necklace, and it’s quite a sight to see Spider-Man try not to let a cat claw and scratch at his neck. But like always, she gets bored and starts to fall asleep and honestly, with her head falling on Peter’s shoulder, she’s not too far behind.

She doesn’t know what sparks the thought in her head. Perhaps it’s the nature of these films, the constant symbolism of life, death, and rebirth, or simply it’s something that hasn’t really ever left her mind since she started to open up at therapy. But for whatever reason, she has to say it. “Hey, Pete?”

“Mmm.”

“I wish I could have met Ben.”

The thing about Peter is his alter ego has made him stunningly good at things that are thrown at him out of nowhere, figuratively and literally. He doesn’t appear startled or surprised. He only breathes out a small laugh, paired with a shaky smile. He kisses her temple with candy-scented lips. “Me too. He would have really liked you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m serious! I can’t imagine the teasing he would have thrown at me once he found out I had a crush on you. I’d have asked you out months earlier just to get him to shut up.”

She snuggles closer to him. “My mom would have liked you, too.”

“Yeah?” Peter’s smile brightens at that. “What was she like?”

“Quiet," Michelle says. The word isn't hushed, nor cold. It's warm. Loving. "But she never shut up? She was always talking, always saying something. I hung onto her every word. She always had an interesting thing to say. Fun facts and stuff.”

“She would have liked AcaDec, huh?”

“Kinda why I joined.”

“That’s so cool. Did she do trivia teams, too?”

“Oh yeah. She was a champ.”

“Ben too! I bet they would have been best friends.”

Her heart constrict at the could-have-been, but her eyes are dry. It’s not as painful as she thought, talking about her. The anger melts away when she thinks about the love. Talking about her like this, surprisingly, makes it feel like she could be right around the corner. Barely even gone.

It's a welcome feeling.

"MJ?" Peter asks when she zones out too long. She blinks and he pushes his bangs back, searching her eyes with concern. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she whispers. "Yeah, I really am."

His smiles, thumb rubbing against her cheekbone. "Good."

"I was just thinking," she admits. "Daisy also would have thought it was really funny if I drew Spider-Man like a French girl.”

“I knew you’d cave! Be right back.”

She wakes up sometime later to the feeling of a blanket being wrapped around her.

She’s completely on top of Peter on the couch, his suit leaving an imprint on her cheek and the garnet necklace at the corner of her mouth, collecting drool. When she turns her head she sees Happy carefully folding up her sketch book and setting it on the coffee table, clearly trying to contain a laugh at the picture.

“Hey,” she whispers, sitting up. Peter, of course, continues to snore away.

The nature series is at the end, the volume low, but she can still hear the narration clear as day as flames dance across the screen as a forest burns. “But the forest is far from dead. Within only a few months, flowers and tree seedlings will rise from the soil.”

“Hey,” Happy whispers. His eyes crinkle when he smiles. “You kids are fine. May knows he’s here. Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go to the cemetery.” 

She nods, this time settling on the other end of the couch. Again, Happy wraps a blanket around her, fluffs the couch pillow behind her head. 

“Many, in fact, would not have germinated had they not received a baptism of fire.” 

The forest fire on the screen fades and forest blooms.

As she drifts back to sleep, she swears she sees a field of daisies.