The Break-Up (Patreon)

Mary Jane grinned and bore it through the curtain call. Usually she loved a standing ovation—raw attention being poured onto her, and her co-stars of course. But tonight it was hard not to notice that Peter’s seat was empty. Not even empty, but she’d told the manager not to bother reserving it and Kathleen’s brother was in town, so why not let her have an extra comped seat?

It'd been empty before, which always bothered her. Not just because he wasn’t there, her tiger, who she knew would’ve loved to see every single one of her performances like the scientist he was.

And the lover.

Both of them just wanting more of her.

But also because an empty seat meant Spider-Man was needed more than she needed Peter Parker. Which was why they were broken up and why MJ was on edge and why she couldn’t take the rampaging emotions of a theater full of screaming fans. Or, at least, applauding theater lovers.

She begged off any further curtain calls and went back to her dressing room and the first thing she saw was a massive bouquet of roses.

Mary Jane’s first thought was I hope I don’t have another stalker. She got them with some regularity, which she supposed was a bit of a compliment. Maybe she was screwed up, but anyone could get one stalker. Having four… that took charisma.

But the card said it was from Peter.

She called him. He picked up, sounding distracted. Not I’m fighting the Lizard and I can’t really talk right now but I just have to show off that I built a phone into my mask distracted, but more regular Peter distracted. It bothered Mary Jane a little that she knew him well enough to know not to tell him to shut up and get back to fighting the Lizard.

“Yello?”

In fact, he was just distracted enough that he hadn’t checked the caller ID. She knew that he knew that she hated ‘yello’—wasn’t even a real word.

“I got your flowers,” Mary Jane said, trying hard not to sound ungrateful.

“I couldn’t make it to the show,” Peter explained.

“Okay, that sounded like an explanation, but I only speak Peter, I’m not fluent in it.”

She felt Peter’s smile over the airwaves, or however the phone signal was getting to her—Peter would probably know. “Well, I could make it to the show, but I know you want your space, but I still wanted to support you since you lost those three cast members and you’re not sure about that new girl, Agatha—”

“Agnes,” Mary Jane corrected. He almost knew what was going on in her life.

She could throw that in his face, they were broken up, she didn’t have to be nice to him, make up excuses for him. But Peter did have a lot on his plate, always, and he had remembered and he wanted to remember—that was so much more than her father had ever done for her mother…

But what, she had to settle for ‘better than her father’? What kind of low standard was that?

What kind of standard is one of a hundred superheroes in the world not being good enough for you? another voice replied, somewhere in her head, so loud she almost missed what Peter said.

“I hope you don’t mind.”

“There are way more than a hundred superheroes in the world,” Mary Jane said.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said, quicker this time. “Peter, there’s like twenty flowers here. Can you even afford that?”

“I must be able to,” Peter reasoned. “I can’t go back and not be able to afford them—”

Peter logic. How did such a smart guy have such Peter logic?

“Pete, can you even buy groceries this week?”

“It’ll be fine,” Peter assured her. “I’ll go to Avengers Mansion, say I need to read up on some of their files—Jarvis will feed me.”

“You’re going to do that all week?”

“Avengers, Fantastic Four, New Warriors—there are a lot of superteams these days. I haven’t even started on the X-Men. There are so many X-Men.”

“Peter,” Mary Jane sighed. Sometimes she wished there was a switch she could throw and not care about him so much. Then again, that’d be too much temptation. “Look, I can’t take care of you right now, alright? You have to take care of yourself. Don’t worry about me.”

“I worry about everything.”

“Then make me special. Let me be the one thing you don’t have to worry about.”

Peter heaved his own sigh. “If I could worry about you less… care about you less… I don’t know if I’d even want to. But I’ll try not to spend any more money on flowers.”

“Since you don’t have any more money,” Mary Jane finished.

“Since I don’t have any more money,” Peter agreed. “But that’s not all my fault. The economy is terrible.”

“And I might bring a rotisserie chicken over. Todd works at a bodega, he can get rotisserie chickens so cheap.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, I just want to keep you away from the X-Men.”