Tumble and Fall

MJ is sitting listlessly in front of her window fan, listening to the sounds of the city swell from twenty floors below, when the fan abruptly grinds to a halt and every whirr and hum of the dorm sputters into silence.

"What the fuck," one of the boys living above her yells. Another one chimes in: "God damn it."

MJ sighs, already feeling the intolerable heat creeping under the seams of her tank top, damp and heavy in the mess of her red curls. She isn't all that surprised about the blackout. She's lived in New York long enough to anticipate when the city's power grid can't handle the heat, and whatever higher power of Manhattan decides to shut it down. She figures the boys upstairs did not have the same expectations.

She stretches out on her little twin bed, kicking off the comforter with the heel of her foot. It's too hot to even fathom moving right now. She knows at some point she will have to extricate herself from the mattress, stick her head into a cold shower and attempt to look semi-professional in her black waitressing top and pants (black—black!—she is going to roast to death out there), but right now there is something delicious about the laziness of flopping on the mattress, letting her eyelids slide shut and the heat radiate through her pores.

The truth is she hates this part of the summer. It's too early for the semester to start, too late for any of the fun parts of summer like the Fourth of July and summer sales and impromptu weekends to the Hamptons with her best friend Gwen's family. Now the days are just sticky and lonely and slow.

Well, she supposes there's always Peter. But ever since high school it's been a little—well, not weird, but definitely different, since he's been dating Gwen. Peter will always be her best friend but it's not like they can tell each other everything the way they used to, because MJ has very little interest in hearing about sweaty nerd sex.

And besides that, all he's capable of doing lately is mooning over Gwen, especially now that Gwen has left for London for the semester. If MJ has to hear Peter whine about it one more time she might just duct tape his mouth shut—it's not like she isn't going to miss Gwen, too, because really, what other girl friends does she have, but Peter has taken all the pissing and moaning to an extraordinary level.

Okay, okay. They're super in love or whatever and MJ knows she should be sympathetic. But Peter was fine for the first seventeen years without Gwen, was he not? So why is it completely unthinkable spending six months apart? It's not like he doesn't have anyone else to hang out with, it's not like MJ is going anywhere.

At least Gwen is finally going to London. MJ has known Gwen since they were fourteen and it was all she ever talked about, was studying abroad, going to one of OsCorp's London facilities for a semester. And even though Gwen has always been the more practical of the two, there were a few uncertain weeks after Gwen got into the program that she actually looked like she might not go, all on account of Peter.

MJ had only balked at that. She can't imagine ever making major life decisions based on a stupid boy.

Not that Peter is just a stupid boy, or at least he doesn't mean to be when he is. It just seems laughable to MJ that Gwen could be that infatuated with someone. Maybe it's just that MJ is the only one with the bird's eye view on what's happening: she grew up with Peter—dorky, mumbly, goofy Peter, who was perpetually late for class and always managing to shove his foot in his mouth. And MJ always knew Gwen as the sensible, practical type, whose metaphorical ducks weren't just in rows, but color-coded and alphabetized.

MJ just didn't see it coming, when the two of them hit it off. But it's been two years so she supposes the joke is on her.

She hoists herself up lazily, intending to buck up and get into the shower, when there's a knock on her door.

"Who is it?"

She is answered by the sound of the doorknob twisting open. She sees a familiar forearm and a frayed watchstrap before she sees Peter, and she scrambles to throw the covers back on.

"I'm sorry, I missed the part where I said come in," she says caustically. She spots her shorts on the floor and points. "Toss me those, would you?"

As he shuts the door behind him and crosses the room she doesn't look at him, opting to stare at the window fan. The thing is, at the end of the day, she's still a girl and he's still a boy, and ever since puberty—or at least, ever since Gwen—MJ has been a little self-conscious, a little careful around Peter. Not that Peter has ever noticed or paid any attention to her womanly parts, but it seems inappropriate to remind him that they exist.

But Peter takes too long to cross the room, his footsteps uncharacteristically heavy and slow. She knows something is wrong before she even looks up and when she does she feels her heart constrict in her chest.

"Peter?"

He's crying. Not just crying, but the lip quivering, bloodshot in the eyes crying, the kind of state she has only seen him in twice: once when they were kids and her mother died, and once a few years ago when his Uncle Ben was shot.

Her immediate thought is of his Aunt May. She leaps up off the bed, all sense of propriety vanished, feeling a panic swelling and stealing her breath. "Hey," she says, stumbling on her way over to him, her legs rubbery and coltish, out of her command. "Hey, hey," she says, her hands reaching up for his face, forcing him to look at her.

His eyes lock on hers like a drowning person desperate for air. He opens his mouth and she braces herself, waiting for him to tell her, assuming it was a stroke or a heart attack or something similarly unexpected, but all that comes out is a strangled, blubbering gasp of air. She feels tears starting to well up in her own eyes, feels herself dissolving with him—they grew up together, she has always been like this, her emotions easily just an extension of his.

"Peter?" she asks, her voice watery and uncertain.

She takes a step forward and he sinks into her, all six foot something of him hunching over, burying his face into her hair. A gasping, shudder of a sob escapes him, and she can feel his chest caving in with the effort to release it.

She rubs her palm on his back, her eyes wide open, still waiting. "Peter," she says again, because she can't stand it for one more second. "What … what on earth—"

The words rip out of him in a voice she hardly even recognizes: "It's Gwen."

MJ releases him instantly, clamping a hand to her mouth. "What happened? Is she okay?"

Peter recovers himself just enough to say, "She—she ended it."

"She—what?"

He shakes his head, burying his face in his fingers. He won't say it again.

MJ stands there, still shaking in her tank top and underwear. "What the fuck, Peter," she exclaims, spitting with anger.

His head snaps up in momentary shock.

"What the fuck!" she repeats. She points a quivering, accusatory finger at him. "Jesus, Peter, I thought someone was dead."

Now he has the nerve to look indignant. She can count the number of times Peter has actually been riled up in front of her on one hand, but there is something different about it this time, something stirring and unreal.

"I love her," says Peter, as if he has to convince her, as if she cannot possibly fathom his pain. "I—I was going to ask her to marry me, and she—she—"

"Oh, Jesus," MJ interrupts him, backing away and sinking into her mattress. The adrenaline surge is almost enough to make her dizzy. She can't believe he stalked in here with his tears and his angst and almost gave her a fucking heart attack over nothing. "You're both alive, aren't you?"

Peter is staring at her, in a mixture of bewilderment and fury. Maybe she is being too harsh, but it's his fault, too, for being so melodramatic. Honestly, they were twenty. It's not like dating at twenty meant happily ever after with two kids a dog and a white picket fence. It's not like dating at twenty deserves big, gut-wrenching sobs in her dorm room.

"I shouldn't have come here," Peter says bitterly.

MJ sighs, pushing her sweat-mopped curls off of her forehead, trying to slow the slam of her heart in her chest. "Look," she says, in a reconciliatory tone. "I'm sure—it's like—she's going away to London, she wants to be free, have a little fun, is all. She'll come home and you guys will work it out."

Peter shakes his head, his teeth curled over his lower lip and grinding. "Gwen's not like that. She wouldn't just … she meant it. It's over."

MJ swallows hard. She doesn't understand what the big deal is, but she really is trying. It's just that she has never felt this way about someone, enough to cry when they left her, or at least nobody's ever cared about her that way. She's had plenty of boyfriends and more flings than she is necessarily proud of, but not a single tear has ever been shed for one of them.

Honestly, more than anything she is annoyed with Gwen, who for whatever reasons just left a huge mess in her wake for MJ to clean up. That, and at the end of the day, MJ supposes that her deepest loyalties still lie with Peter. They were next-door neighbors ever since MJ could remember, best friends since the day they met waiting for the bus that first day of kindergarten, and no amount of ranting about tampon brands or staying up late watching Friends reruns with a pint of ice cream could undermine that.

Finally she just shrugs at him. She doesn't know what else to do. "I'm sorry," she says.

"I've got to go to London," he says, staring at the floor, more talking to himself than to her. "But I can't."

"Broke?"

"Yes, and—" Peter stops short, shaking his head. "I just—I can't leave New York," he mumbles.

As the blood surging through her veins starts to settle, she becomes painfully aware of her lack of pants. She is about to walk the few steps to retrieve them when Peter looks up at her and asks in a tortured voice, "Tell me—did she say anything to you? Did you know that she was going to—that she wanted to end things?"

MJ crosses her arms over her chest. "No. She never said a word to me about it."

"It just came out of nowhere."

"Doesn't it always?" she asks flippantly, grabbing for her shorts. She shoves her feet in the holes and shimmies them up onto her hips, aware that Peter is staring at her now, his eyes completely blank so that he's staring without actually looking at her. She is both relieved and annoyed at the same time, securing the zipper with maybe a little too much force.

His eyes are welling up again, his words a little less distinct. "What am I supposed to do?" he asks, looking more helpless, more pathetic than she has ever seen him in fifteen years of friendship.

There is a callous part of her that wants to roll her eyes and dismiss him. He has barely given her the time of day for the past two years, except to talk about Gwen, and duck in to invite her over for dinner whenever he went to Queens to see his aunt. Ever since the two of them started dating she felt like chopped liver. And it hasn't bothered her so much because she's been busy, too—with auditions, of course, and schoolwork, and her admittedly large and occasionally questionable social circle. It's not like she's ever lonely or left out.

It's just that when Peter met Gwen he changed so drastically and permanently that MJ felt like she never had time to catch up. He went off to some place she couldn't reach him, some place she couldn't understand, some realm of feeling or some stage of life that she either wasn't prepared for herself, or might never have a chance at.

And now he's here. Reaching out to her again, giving her the opportunity to be his friend, the way they were back then. So really, she should be glad, that he still thinks of her this way—that they're still close enough that he can show up bawling in her dorm room at two in the afternoon, that she may not be the person he cares about most, but she is a close second.

"I'm sure you didn't do anything wrong," she says. She guides him over to the mattress, sits him down and says, "Just give her some time."

He allows her to move him, leaning against the bedpost and shutting his eyes. She feels the pressure of his shoulder against hers—she normally wouldn't notice, but it's so excruciatingly humid that she feels the warmth of him like an oven. She's about to scoot away from him when he rests his head on the top of hers, the way he used to do when they were little, in the brief span of time where they were old enough that he was taller than she was, but not so old that it was weird when she slept over at his house.

He still has that clean smell to him, some kind of soap or laundry detergent that she will forever associate with Peter Parker.

"She'll come to her senses," MJ says, reaching out for his hand. She finds it, laces her fingers between his, and squeezes.

His voice is barely audible, just a rumble in his chest. "What if she doesn't?"

MJ purses her lips. She's no good at this. There are some parts of friendship she's really great at, if it means showing up to stuff or being supportive or running out to do someone a favor, but this part—this part where she is supposed to surrender a part of herself, when she is supposed to acknowledge someone else's weakness and build them back up again—she just doesn't know how. It comes out awkward and stilted and insincere.

"Then …" she starts, but she has no idea where she's going with this. She feels her body tense, already anticipating her own failure, already disappointed in herself for it.

Peter shifts just slightly. She feels the weight of his head leave hers, feels him slouch into the mattress until his face is level with hers. He is waiting for her to say something and she is completely at a loss.

"Then I guess …" she tries again, and then Peter untangles his fingers from her and interrupts.

"Mary Jane?" he asks.

He has said her name thousands of times. He has called it across playgrounds, whispered it between their bedroom windows, shouted it over the blare of her headphones, but he has never said it like this.

What, she's about to ask him, but then her eyes meet his and she is paralyzed by it. His gaze is at once so steady and so wretched, that she cannot look away, compelled in a bizarre, heated way that she cannot explain.

Suddenly it's too quiet. No televisions, no air conditioners, no footsteps pattering around on the upper floors. It feels like they are the only two people left in the universe, like they are in some kind of vacuum and there is nothing left to consider, nothing left to fill up the void but each other.

She is at once uncomfortable and overly-aware of his stare, and she should squirm away, because she has seen this look before. This is the desperation of a boy on the rebound, of someone who has nothing left to lose; MJ has dealt with plenty of boys with this same look in their eyes, but that's different, because she never cared about any of them. They weren't Peter.

"Mary Jane," he says, his voice cracking, his face leaning towards her.

She knows what's going to happen, probably knows before he does. She has every opportunity to pull back, plenty of time to stop him.

His lips are blazing from the heat, wet and warm and pressed against hers. She sinks into it, her skin buzzing with the unexpected pleasure of it, her eyes widening and then sliding shut, giving in to it without thinking.

Peter pulls away, just barely. His face is so close to hers that she can still feel his breath.

"I'm sorry," he breathes.

These are the crucial few seconds, she knows, that will change everything about their friendship forever. She is aware that this is not okay. That he is in a state of weakness, and to some degree she is taking advantage of that, and that once this happens, they can never go back to the way things once were—that this is one of those all or nothing situations and she has always, always, always been the girl who ended up with nothing—but right now there is something primal and startling stirring in her gut, and it has far more command over her than the rest of her body does.

His eyes are weary and hopeless. She shuts hers, and doesn't answer him. If he needs comforting, she will give it to him, in the only way she knows how. It wouldn't be the first bridge she ever burned.

She leans in and initiates another kiss, and then just like that, all bets are off. The kiss deepens and he presses a palm to the exposed skin of her stomach, reaching under her tank top. Her body arches instinctively and she moans out loud, writhing in the heat of his touch, and then he is so suddenly on top of her that she can't suppress the gasp of surprise that escapes her.

He stares down at her, his eyes trailing her body hungrily, desperately, in a way nobody ever has before. She hardly recognizes him in this state, but there is a hum in her bones, an ache and a desire that overpower every other sensation, and she can't bring herself to care.

She reaches forward, for the seams of his shirt, and pulls it up over his head. She hasn't seen him in this state since they were children—she has no way to anticipate the lean ripple of muscle of his chest, slick with the heat of the city, flushed with want.

"Peter," she gasps, and then he crushes his mouth on hers, stealing her breath.

Every nerve and fiber of her skin is throbbing with urgency—she wants every part of him, wants him in a way she has never wanted anything. She has always been so in control in situations like this, always the one who initiates the terms and just how much of herself she is willing to give, but he has unraveled her into a thoughtless, beautiful nothing.

His hands slide up her shirt, cupping her breasts. She inhales with a sharp and astonishing pleasure, her legs pulsing as she straddles them around his torso, closing the distance between them. She can feel his want, feel it warm and hard against her stomach.

Her fingers fumble clumsily at the zipper of his jeans. She has never been this undone, never been so raw and impatient and unpracticed. He leans down and presses his mouth to her neck and sucks the skin, and she groans with pleasure, unable to maintain any semblance of composure the way she always has. He travels further downward, his lips grazing down to her collarbone, to the curve of her chest, arching up to meet him.

"Please," she hears herself, senseless and begging. She doesn't know this girl, but Peter obeys her, his hands calloused and strong under her hips, tugging down her shorts in one swift and freeing motion.

He takes a moment to look up at her, and she is almost startled to see Peter there, to see this boy she knows so well that she can explain every childhood scar and finish every other thought that tumbles out of his head.

He is waiting for her. For some kind of permission, for some kind of consent.

Even this slight interruption is excruciating, more than she can bear. "Please," she breathes again, and then he is inside her, all of him, plunging to some unfathomable and beautiful depth that awakens her, renders her impossibly alive.

Together they rock, urgently, breathlessly, her body shuddering as it tries to process the sensation of him. She is mindless now, saying things without comprehension, his name on her lips over and over and over. It is the stifling summer heat, the smell of his sweat and his want, the crush of his lips and his unshaven stubble on her cheek; she feels her body clench, giving in to a demanding and sensational oblivion, and cries out as he tips her over the edge.

A moment later she hears him gasp out above her in release, and in those few seconds he is staring straight into her eyes, with such reverence, such astonishment, that she feels an unfamiliar kind of satisfaction. They are just staring and breathing, skin against skin, caught in this desperately fragile moment; then he slips out of her and she gasps at the sudden emptiness, the hum and the ache of her bones on the mattress.

An entire minute passes, both of their backs sweaty and pressed into the sheets, panting in the aftermath. She is scared to turn her head, scared to look at him. She wants to freeze this moment in time, before the regret, before the holy shit what did I just do sets in, but just then Peter shifts his weight and shatters everything: "Oh, god."

Mary Jane sits up abruptly, already off of the bed and scrambling to find her clothes. Her cheeks are blazing, her traitorous heart sinking into her stomach like lead. "That was really something," she says, trying to sound cool, trying to sound unaffected, trying her hardest not to look at him.

"MJ," he says. "I—I don't know what I was—"

"Catch," she says, tossing him his shirt. She swallows hard, her eyes stinging. Oh, for god's sake, it's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's just sex.

But he's staring at her, open mouthed and horrified, still slick with evidence. "I have no idea how that happened."

She rolls her eyes. "Do you really need a sex ed lesson or can you just run a google search and call it a day? I've got a shift I'm late for," she says, and what she's really thinking to herself is get out, get OUT, because if he doesn't leave right now she's afraid she is going to crack right in front of him.

He tugs back on his boxers and jeans. "I just—we should talk about this," he says, in a strained voice, that indicates to her that he definitely does not want to talk about this, and in fact she thinks it is better for the both of them if they just never talk about it again.

"It's fine," she says, waving him off, heading for the door. She opens it, and all but gestures for him to leave. "It is what it is. It's fine."

"MJ—"

"I'm not going to tell Gwen, if that's what you're scared of."

She doesn't mean for the words to sound so bitter, but they must, because Peter's eyebrows lift in surprise. "No—I wasn't, that's not what I meant."

Her facial muscles feel stiff, like they can't obey the signals coming from her brain. "I'll call you tomorrow," she says, "but really, I'm late. Skedaddle."

She is almost disappointed at how easily he goes, with an apologetic good-bye and a last lingering gaze over his shoulder before his footsteps fade down the hall. She shuts the door behind her and feels her eyes fill up with reluctant, shaming tears. She has always had a knack for wrecking things—hasn't she left behind a mess wherever she goes?—but she always thought of Peter as untouchable, sacred, something that could never be taken from her.

It only figures that she'd find a way to wreck that, too.