Five Issues In Search of an Arc 5

The Vulture showed up, emerging from the sewer to steal the briefcase everyone was so concerned with and disappearing just as quickly. Peter was gone too: Mary Jane had no idea how fast he was until she saw him running into an alleyway, tearing at his clothes, and a moment later Spider-Man was soaring overhead.

There was no way for Mary Jane to follow. They had to be miles away by the time she even thought of hailing a taxi. So she went home. Another night in. How could she go clubbing when Peter was in danger and his uncle was dead and there was nothing she could do about any of it? Her having a good time was less than nothing.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Still so beautiful, not that it meant anything. "Don't go getting enlightened on me now," she told her reflection. Because she was still selfish. She didn't want Peter back for his own sake, to spare his aunt anymore loss, or even so he could keep running into burning buildings and saving people.

She wanted him to touch her face again and assure her everything was alright.

Hours passed. Mary Jane bounced a ball off the wall until it missed her hand. Not that she cared. She'd slipped into a fugue state. Not sleep; it was nowhere near peaceful enough to be that. But her worries had to become nightmares to get to her and nightmares were nowhere near as vivid as what she pictured awake.

She was awakened by the shower running. Not hers. Across the windows, in Peter's room, the sound wafting out of his bathroom, along the dark footprints that led from his carpet to the open window. 

He was back. She'd missed it. Mary Jane groaned. Then she realized she had another chance. And maybe she couldn't dance, but she could still move.

Ten minutes later, Peter emerged from his bathroom, tying a bathrobe around himself. Mary Jane knelt at the windowsill, holding a tray at its precarious balance.

"If you have any lengthy thoughts about the meaning of life, don't share," Peter told her. "I'm going right back in as soon as the hot water comes back. Holy toledo, I know I signed up to fight crazies, but that'd better be the last guy who's crazy enough to go into the sewer on purpose…"

"I made you a midnight—" Mary Jane realized it was past midnight. "Food. Here. We've got grilled cheese sandwiches, we've got orange slices, we have a Sprite, and a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Always helps me when I'm on my period."

Peter made a face at that. All that saving lives and fighting evil and he was still such a boy.

Moving gingerly, Peter shuffled his way across the floor until he could sit down at the point closest to her house. He accepted a sandwich when she passed it to him.

"You literally made me a sandwich," he asked dubiously.

Mary Jane shrugged. "I figured I'd give feminism a quick, painless death instead of dragging things out." 

Peter made a noise that, if he weren't sagging so much, probably would've been a laugh, and then took a bite out of the sandwich. "I was worried for a minute that aliens had perfected their life-like Mary Jane Watson masks. They would've been unstoppable."

"Hey, I'm no sous-chef, but I do know how to cook a grilled cheese. You take cheese, you grill it. And as long as I'm able to keep the fire going from that lightning strike…"

"It's not that," Peter said with a groan, wincing as he moved to settle himself against the window frame. "Yeesh! For an old guy, he punches hard… It's not that I don't think you can cook, it's that you're being nice to me."

"I'm always nice!"

"You called me a retard."

"I was being nice by pointing out to you, as a friend, that you were being retarded."

"Much appreciated." Peter popped a kink out of his neck and then let out a sigh of relief. "Still, seems like a jump from you helping me keep track of my retardation to bringing me food."

Mary Jane planted the can of Sprite on his windowsill. "Drink that before it gets warm. You know how you said you were the only one around with powers, so you had to use them?"

"Yeah?" Peter prompted, mouth full of cheese. A boy. A boy so full of boyishness, it was amazing there was room for all that hero stuff.

"I'm the only one who knows you're Spider-Man, so if anyone's going to make you a sandwich, it'll have to be me."

Peter's shoulders shook with amusement he didn't let out, probably because it would hurt too much. "I don't need someone to make me sandwiches."

"No, you need another shower, you just spent five hours in a sewer. Eat, eat so you have the energy to stand in the shower for a full day."

Peter plunged the sandwich into his mouth.

It wasn't that she was in love with him, exactly. It was that she didn't see how anyone could not be.