Wedding of the Century update (Patreon)

Peter didn't know how, but he got the students calmed down and reading Chapter 5 in their textbooks while he took Mary Jane into the connected lab to talk privately. Privately he thought he deserved a medal for that, even though he had to concede letting the kids listen to music.

Someone produced speakers and before he shut the door to the lab, he heard an aux cord plugged in and the sound of Mary Jane herself covering Let It Go.

“No Autotune,” Mary Jane said proudly, once they were alone.

“You can’t be here!” Peter said, feeling like he was losing his mind talking to someone who already had lost her mind. “This is where I work, it’s a school, there are children here!”

Mary Jane waved him off. She had an eloquent, charismatic way of doing even that. Like she had long experience at dismissing reasonable objections. “Children love me. I literally won a Kids’ Choice Award. I got slimed.”

Peter tried not to think about that, or look at Mary Jane too hard. She'd looked good in her wedding dress, but it was like he was seeing her in the dark. Now, even if she was in a pleated skirt and a knit top, the light was on. Everything was her smile, her little graceful movements, the way she swayed where she was loose and… quivery.

He almost physically shook off that vivid physical impression of her. “Look, if you really want to talk to me…”

“I think we should, before we get married, don't you?” As sweet as her voice was, it was frosted with a hint of indignation that almost had Peter apologizing to her.

“You can do it when I'm not… young minds…” Peter finished lamely. “I was being sarcastic out of context.”

“I figured. Anyway, I hear rebound relationships never last, so imagine a rebound marriage–“

Peter gathered himself. He was a compass pointing North, no matter how charming or cute South was. It was her job to be charming, for God's sake!

“If the principal sees you here, I could lose my job.”

“The principal…” Mary Jane began whimsically. “Fat guy, big belly? Because he gave me this visitor pass.”

She held it up. And she held it up over her breasts, which the knit top was… not detracting from.

“Why would he give that to you?” Peter asked, since it was a question that had nothing to do with her cleavage.

Mary Jane hemmed. Adorably. “I may have implied I wanted to enroll my child here.”

“You don’t have any children.” Peter may not have been a faithful TMZ watcher, but he just couldn't picture this loving woman with a kid off in a boarding school somewhere.

“I could get one. Do you know how many people call me mother on Instagram?”

Peter rode his own irritation as far as it would take him against her charm offensive. “Okay, you don't take my job seriously, but I do. You, you wouldn't blow off everyone on a film set if I came over to make out with you.”

Mary Jane made a little O of her lips. “What a pessimist you are. I haven't even tried making out with you.”

That took Peter back a bit. He knew it was supposed to. It still did.

Mary Jane smiled at how flustered he was. Peter should've felt teased, but he didn't. Maybe if Flash Thompson had looked like that…

“Remember what you said to me,” Mary Jane continued with a beaming smile that Peter thought wouldn't let him remember anything else. “About getting into a rut and needing to roll with opportunities? I think meeting you is an opportunity for me. I don't want to miss out on it.”

“And that's what you're here for?”

“I also have some samples from my fashion line in the car. It's for my agent, he doesn't like me doing anything that isn't getting me more followers on Twitter. If I let him Livestream me sleeping…”

“Well, I can't cut class, I'm the teacher. And you really are disrupting my lesson plan.”

“So don't let me. You want to teach them something about covalent bonds? I can make covalent bonds interesting. I've delivered George Lucas dialogue.”

“You make 30 million a picture and you want to be my teaching aide?” Peter asked incredulously.

“Children are our future,” she quipped.

***

Coming out of the lab with Mary Jane, Peter wasn’t surprised to find some of the little darlings scrambling back into their seats. It was to be expected that there would be those who tried to listen in on what they were talking about. He was just glad that none of them had tried to take a picture for TMZ; he could just picture a selfie taken with him and MJ in the background, some teenage tool throwing up gang signs up front.

He turned off the still-running speaker.

“Class,” Peter began, next starting for his desk, only to find that Mary Jane had made a beeline there and was seated right on top of it. “Class,” he started again, “Miss Watson—”

“Don’t you mean Mrs. Parker?” someone quipped from the back of the class.

Quipping. Peter hated quipping. He ignored the wag. “Miss Watson has very generously agreed to further the cause of education in New York. She is willing to answer some questions—mature, respectful questions—for all of you. But this is still the middle of the school day, so we’ll be doing SAT prep for the rest of the period.”

Mary Jane cut in before the kids could groan too loudly. “Anyone who answers a question right gets to ask me a question.”

“A mature, respectful question,” Peter reiterated, gesturing down the hubbub.

“And after class, we can all take selfies,” Mary Jane added.

Peter ignored the cheering to go to his desk and pick up his test prep. Trying very hard not to look at Mary Jane’s stockinged legs, dangling off the edge of his desk, he tried to sort through the miasma he shared with Mr. Drake the Algebra teacher.

“Looking for something?” Mary Jane asked him, crossing her legs. She kept her voice low, as did Peter.

“Test booklet. It’ll say SAT on it. That’s spelled S-A-T.”

“Getting this close to me, I thought you were just fishing for compliments on your cologne.”

“I have a system, but usually I’m sitting in the chair, not—”

“You can sit down if it’ll help. I don’t mind.”

“I think you’re sitting on my booklet.”

“Oh.” Mary Jane nonchalantly scooted over.

Peter scooped it up and opened it to the first page before anything could register. “Question one,” he announced, and pointed to the poster of the periodic table on the east wall. “Referring to the periodic table of elements, what is the trend of valence electrons, from left to right, across a row of the table?”

Hands went up. A lot more hands than Peter usually got. He glanced at Mary Jane. She smiled innocently.

Peter picked a student at random. “Pfeifer, go.”

“They increase across the period,” Pfeifer said breathlessly.

“Correct,” Peter began to say, but he was trampled by Pfeifer talking to Mary Jane.

“I love you, you’re the greatest, I’m your biggest fan, are you happy? I want you to be happy. You’re a great actress. A great person. You’re good at being a fashion model too. And you’re a great woman. I mean, all women are great. But you’re great at being great. Everyone in my Discord server is so glad you found someone. Does Mr. Parker make you happy? Tell us if he doesn’t make us happy. We know where he lives. At least, we know where his office is…”

Peter had been walking over to Pfeifer, who looked so close to overheating that steam was practically rising off his head.

Peter put a calming hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t maybe you write a letter to Mary Jane about how you feel and you can give it to her at the end of class?”

“Okay,” Pfeifer said, nodding gratefully before scrambling for his notebook and number two pencil.

“To answer your, uh, first question,” Mary Jane said, a little hesitantly before she flashed a dazzling smile and made the world seem candy-coated. “I’m very happy, especially to be here and… giving back to the community, I suppose. I’ve really led a heck of a life. Just because I’ve had some setbacks lately is no reason to lose sight of my happiness.”

As she said it, her eyes slowly made their way from Pfeifer over to Peter.

For a moment, he felt his pulse speeding. It was ridiculous. His life had been in danger, he’d been shot at, shot down, crash-landed—you name it. He could handle that; of course he could handle this.

And in an instant, his pulse had gained the cadence of a jungle drum. Deep and even, deep and even. A coin flipped between fear and excitement.

Still silly that the scrutiny of a bunch of teenagers… and the presence of one redhead… was enough to shove him towards sweat inching down his brow and ice dripping off his spine. It made Peter ask himself… when was the last time he’d really felt alive?