Red In Tooth And Hair (Patreon)

Mary Jane was upset. Not angry. She was a redhead, you could tell when she was angry. This was more flustered. 

Peter could read her face. She was a supermodel, she’d had her face on billboards, but Peter didn’t think anyone had studied her face as much as he had. She was embarrassed as much as she was upset. It came from her independent she was. She didn’t like to admit she needed help. She didn’t like to slink back into his life and depend on someone else for a solution to her problem. But Peter doubted that even someone as social as Mary Jane knew many people who were as good with weird as he was. And who would do anything for her.

“So I have a problem,” she said.

“I didn’t think you needed to meet with you urgently because you had something you wanted to tell me about the Dirty Harry movies.”

They were sitting in an outdoor café, eating some godawful way of mauling cabbages that was supposed to be good for the complexion, and Mary Jane was blushing like she was wearing last year’s fashion.

Peter held up a hand. “I know, I know. You don’t mean to impose, you wouldn’t come to me if it weren’t important, it’s fine. Really. Impose away.”

Mary Jane bit her lip. He’d reassured her, but now she just looked vulnerable. “Promise me no jokes?”

“Geez, this is serious.”

Mary Jane tapped her finger on the lattice tabletop, the pad of her fingertip fleshily hitting the metal, then the tempo changed as she let her nail strike it instead. The hard enamel clicked against the hard metal for a moment. “You remember Red Sonja?”

Peter kept his face carefully blank. Despite Mary Jane having an employee discount on all the best lingerie, it would still be hard to forget the times Sonja had possessed her and instituted a very lax dress code on the new body. “Oh, she’s crossed my mind now and then.”

Mary Jane’s lips twitched toward a grin. “Seems like everyone you’re friends with eventually does either the superhero thing or the supervillain thing. Just my luck that my ancestor keeps hijacking my body instead of staying in Valhalla or wherever.”

“Yeah, but she’s gone now. She was here to deal with Kulan Gath, but we defeated him. She’s got no more reason to be here than I do to form a tag-team with Xena.”

Now Mary Jane grinned wryly. “That’s what I keep telling myself. But she keeps… Peter, you couldn’t understand. Or maybe you could. It must be like when you had the symbiote. At night, when the sun completely sets, I feel this spirit enter me. I’m different. I’m still—it’s like I’m riding a roller coaster. Or like I’m dreaming. She’s doing everything, but I’m here, and, and—“

“MJ,” Peter interrupted firmly, reaching across the table to take her hand. “What does she do?”

“Nothing. Not yet. Well, she’s, she’s trained… I wake up feeling so sore, because she does all these exercises. And she’s putting together all this armor, these weapons. It’s so fuzzy, I don’t know how she does it. I think she… senses where they are and then she retrieves them, all her gear is in museums or with private collectors around the city.”

“I haven’t heard anything about a redhead in chainmail bikini going on a shopping spree.”

Mary Jane just looked at him. “She’s not stupid, Peter. She knows enough not to get caught. Or, it’s like she knows everything I know. I can’t explain it…”

“So what do you want me to do?”

Mary Jane’s eyes narrowed. “Peter!”

“What? I’m just saying, if she really is possessing you, then shouldn’t you go to Dr. Strange or someone? And you know him as well as I do, we were married—it’s not like you need my permission to see him.”

“I don’t want to see him, I want someone I can trust, someone that sees me as a human being instead of…” Mary Jane flailed a hand about her face. “’Help! Superman!’”

“Hey, c’mon, that Lois Lane was one tough cookie.”

Mary Jane managed a weak smile. “You know what I mean. I don’t know, maybe I’m losing my mind. Just… could you stay with me tonight? Make sure I don’t Hulk out and start swinging a sword into the neighbors?”

“Of course, MJ. Anything you want.”

“Good.” Her smile faltered a little and then she was just looking at him. “I know I don’t have any right to ask and especially to ask you to have a sleepover with me when you could be saving lives, but, God… is it selfish that I’d just rather it not be me? I’ve thought about it, God knows I’ve thought about it, and if some mugger kills someone because you’re with me, I can live with it, but if it’s my hand shoving a sword through someone’s heart…”

“MJ, I’m not a doctor. I’m not on call 24/7. Anytime you want to have a sleepover, it’s fine. I’ll just call up Firestorm and ask that he look in on Queens.”

“I think he’s a comic book character.”

“God, who can tell these days? All the good names are taken. Once you would’ve thought specializing in spiders would get you some breathing room, but no, I’ve got Scarlet Spiders, I’ve got Spider-Women, I’ve got Spider-Girls… Miles is practically a Spider-Boy, except that seems racist…”

Mary Jane giggled. Peter smiled at her. 

“I’ll be there,” he concluded.

“You always are.”

***

“I hope you don’t think I make offers like this to just anyone,” Mary Jane said, bringing two steaming mugs of coffee to where Peter was sitting. MJ had constructed a serviceable breakfast nook out of her window, setting two chairs and a cute little bistro accent table at the windowsill. Mary Jane’s fame only did so much in the world of New York real estate. Her apartment was still small, but she could afford ‘cozy’ instead of ‘cramped.’ Peter could afford ‘claustrophobic.’

“Coffee?” Peter asked, taking his mug. “Seems rude not to at least offer.”

“I was thinking more of asking you to stay with me all night and watch me sleep.”

“Hmm,” Peter went, as he leaned back in his chair. “I had thought about that.”

“Watching me sleep?”

“No, you snore.” Peter watched her snort bubbles into her coffee. “That maybe this was all some elaborate way of you getting me alone, then dressing up like a warrior princess and having your way with me.”

“Yeah?” Mary Jane said. She didn’t quite believe him—she knew he’d never discount how upset she had been—but the subtext had been hanging over everything since she’d called to meet with him.

“I’m not that lucky.”

Mary Jane sipped her coffee. “And I don’t know many guys who would drop everything to watch a girl sleep when they’re not even dating.”

“Kinda feels like we are, doesn’t it?”

“How so?”

“We’re always together, we talk constantly, we trust each other… hell, I bet neither of us would bat an eye if we needed to share a bed. It’s like we’re in this relationship but it’s just not… official.” Peter set his mug down and looked away. “God, I’m an idiot—we shouldn’t talk about this.”

“Shouldn’t we?”

“Not when there’s a crisis—“

“When isn’t there a crisis?” Mary Jane looked out the window, as if to reassure herself nothing was on fire. The sun was setting, silhouetting the skyline in black outlined with gold. “It’s like you’re my… what’s the word for it? Cuddle bitch? I can rely on you, you’re my best friend… even I don’t know why it isn’t something more.”

“It’s not like I mind being your best friend, that’s not why I’m saying—“

“Of course not.”

“It’s not like I expect sex or anything—“

“No, you’d never—you do the same thing.”

“The same thing?”

“Rely on me, get supported by me.”

“I try not to…”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not my girlfriend, you didn’t want this.”

“I wanted you.”

“Not enough.”

“That’s not—“

“I know, I know, neither of us wanted it enough…”

“To get over some stupid fight—“

“To put ourselves out there—“

“Admit how much you mean to me…”

The light from the sun stretched into intangibility between them, shooting one last ray through the apartment, and then it blinked out. 

Magic was outside the laws of nature. Everything else bent the rules of physics, but magic broke it. It was like when you closed your eyes, you still knew where your hands were. Magic moved your hands when you weren’t looking. Peter’s vision blurred, his senses ran riot, and in the indescribable split-second that lasted, Mary Jane changed.

Her normal, everyday clothes were gone. A bra with two triangles of scale mail held her breasts, the armor not cupping her breasts so much as hanging off them, allowing him to see the full curvature of her cleavage, underneath her breasts and going deep between them. Here panties were similar, a loincloth of dangling scale mail that concealed her pubis and ass, but only barely. He could see the inner curves of her white thighs, and the outer edges of her buttocks. 

And her body was as lovely as ever, even more so with a gilded layer of muscles on top of her already rigorous fitness. Firming her arms, caressing her stomach with abs, strengthening her thighs into virtual weapons. It was a look, Peter would say that much.

More pressingly—depending on who you asked—she had a sword.

Sonja’s head drifted back, the bones of her neck cracking as if she were rotating them after a long, long slumber. “At last! I am myself once more! Sword in hand! The smell of battle in my nostrils! War in the offing!”

Peter was glad he’d put on his webshooters. “Uh, that’s just New York. You get used to it.”

She eyed him. Her eyes were brown instead of green. Her face—Mary Jane’s face—twisted unusually with a grim determination, a suspicious gaze, a set frown. “You strike me as passing familiar, man. Have I bested you before?”

“Oh, loaded question,” Peter said. “I… guess I’m the babysitter. You mind kicking back and watching Real Housewives of Attilan while I make some calls?”

Stowing her sword in a scabbard on her hip—he was surprised there was anywhere on her bottoms for it to sit—she stood. “I know not what foolishness you speak of. If you intended to whisper of love to my ears, know that I have pledged to the goddess Scáthach that no man may lie with me unless he first prevails against me in battle!”

“Feels like I have that rule too sometimes,” Peter said.

“Regain your wits or begone from me, it matters not. I have business needs must attend.”

“Now I’m not even sure you’re speaking in proper barbarian. Maybe we can get Thor to give you some elocution lessons?” She was making for the door. Peter reached out and grabbed her shoulder. “Hey now, hold on, not to drop names, but I’m a close personal friend of that body you’re driving and she’d really like it back in mint condition, so maybe instead of taking the Hobbits to Isengard you could just do a few jumping jacks? Please?”

Sonja drew her sword. It sounded a lot more dangerous coming out than going in. “No man touches Red Sonja and lives to tell the tale!”

Why oh why couldn’t he ever have a nice date without it turning into a fight?