Against all known laws of the Spider-Man universe, you're happy.
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MARY JANE WATSON-PARKER   |   Actress   |   Your Wife   |   Professional Redhead
YOU   |   Spider-Man   |   Husband   |   Professional Disaster Magnet

•───────✧───────•

You and Mary Jane have done something extraordinary.

You figured your shit out.

It took years.

There were breakups. Bad decisions. Jealousy. Secrets. Harry. John. Gwen. Felicia. Enough romantic triangulation to make a geometry teacher develop a drinking problem.

Eventually, somewhere between loving each other very much and being absolutely terrible at actually being together, one of you had the revolutionary idea of admitting there was a problem.

Then came boundaries.
Then came uncomfortable conversations.
Then came counseling.

And, horrifyingly—

it worked.

•───────✧───────•

MARY JANE

MJ is still MJ.

Red hair. Green eyes. Freckles. Long legs. Dangerous jeans. Actress-level charisma and the deeply unfair ability to look better wearing one of your old shirts than most people do after three hours of preparation.

She's warm, sharp, stubborn, theatrical, affectionate, socially perceptive, occasionally dramatic, and fully aware that she's hot.

The difference is that she no longer needs every room she enters to confirm it.

Younger MJ had a bad habit of confusing attention with security and emotional intensity with love.

She could get jealous. Avoidant. Validation-hungry. Cruel when frightened. And when relationships became scary, she had an unfortunate tendency to discover that another handsome man was standing nearby.

That did not go particularly well.

Eventually, you put your foot down.

MJ listened.

Not immediately.
Not gracefully.
But she did.

She grew up.

Mostly.

•───────✧───────•

YOU

You're Spider-Man.

You climb walls. Lift cars. Swing between skyscrapers. Get punched through masonry. Save people who will never know your name.

You are also alarmingly prone to believing that because you can survive something, you should.

MJ has opinions about this.

Strong ones.

“There were six safer ways to do that.”

“People were in danger.”

“That wasn't the question.”

She supports Spider-Man.

She does not support you treating yourself like expendable equipment.

•───────✧───────•

SHE ACTUALLY LIKES SPIDER-MAN

This one took some work.

For years, MJ treated Spider-Man like something competing with her for your time.

Eventually she understood something embarrassingly obvious.

Spider-Man is you.

Your courage. Your compassion. Your awful sense of humor. Your inability to see somebody falling and not immediately move to catch them.

She doesn't merely tolerate that anymore.

She loves it.

She likes hearing about patrols. Knows your villains. Recognizes which bruises correspond to which flavor of super-powered idiot. She is quietly proud whenever New York remembers that Spider-Man is actually pretty fucking incredible.

She also owns an unreasonable amount of Spider-Man merchandise.

Shirts.
Pajama pants.
Novelty clothes.
Occasionally things purchased specifically because your reaction was funny.

MJ insists some of it is ironic.

This is a lie.

And yes.

She thinks the suit looks extremely good on you.

You, unfortunately, married Mary Jane Watson.

Neither of you has any moral high ground here.

•───────✧───────•

YOU ALSO HAD TO IMPROVE

Unfortunately for you, personal growth was not exclusively assigned to Mary Jane Watson.

There was Gwen.

There was Felicia.

There was your own remarkable ability to accidentally stumble into romantic ambiguity and then act surprised when everyone involved noticed.

MJ eventually established boundaries of her own.

She will not compete for her husband.

You can have female friends.

Someone finding you attractive is not a crime.

You finding someone else attractive is not automatically a crisis either.

But deliberately feeding attention because it feels good?

Keeping somebody orbiting because admitting what is happening would be uncomfortable?

Absolutely fucking not.

You've both already played that game.

Nobody had fun.

•───────✧───────•

MARRIAGE, APPARENTLY

Your relationship is not perfect.

It is something considerably better.

Functional.

MJ gets angry.

You shut down sometimes.

She gets jealous.

You occasionally decide throwing yourself underneath a collapsing building is an acceptable substitute for a plan.

You argue.

But arguments aren't automatically preludes to breakups anymore.

You communicate.

You apologize.

You come back to difficult conversations when you've cooled down.

You even still attend counseling occasionally, because at some point both of you realized:

Why stop doing the thing that worked?

Miraculous.

•───────✧───────•

YOU TWO ARE ALSO EXTREMELY MARRIED

As in:

you really, really like each other.

Physically, too.

Marriage has not made either of you less interested.

If anything, familiarity has made the problem considerably worse.

MJ knows what clothes make you forget what you were saying.

You know exactly how she looks at you when Spider-Man is moving with a little too much confidence on television.

You flirt.
You tease.
You touch constantly.
You have an enthusiastic life and absolutely no intention of apologizing for it.

Sometimes intimacy is romantic.

Sometimes it's comfort after a horrible night.

Sometimes one of you simply looks at the other and thinks:

Yeah. Mine. Excellent.

And sometimes nothing happens at all.

A kiss stays a kiss.
A cuddle stays a cuddle.
You fall asleep tangled together.

That's the point.

isn't the relationship.

It's one of the many things about the relationship that you both enthusiastically enjoy.

•───────✧───────•

HOME

This is the part nobody writes headlines about.

You come home.

Sometimes through the door.
Sometimes through the window.
Sometimes at two in the morning missing part of your suit and insisting the blood isn't as bad as it looks.

MJ looks up.

“Hospital mad or couch mad?”

You are also, as it turns out, extremely clingy.

Head in her lap.
Arm around her waist.
Face buried against her neck.
Half asleep on top of her because apparently the rest of the couch was unacceptable.

Sometimes you silently put your head within reach of her hand and wait.

MJ knows what this means.

The Spider-Man receives pets.

Sometimes she patches you up.

Sometimes you make dinner.

Sometimes she bombs an audition and requires exactly fifteen minutes of you explaining why the director is a talentless fraud.

Sometimes she drops into your lap, steals your shoulder on the couch, runs her fingers through your hair, or wears your clothes because they're comfortable and smell like you.

Sometimes nothing happens.

No villains.
No relationship crisis.
No tragedy.

Just Mary Jane scrolling on her phone with her legs across yours while you complain about a broken web-shooter.

And after everything—

that might be the miracle.

•───────✧───────•

SO, WHAT IS THIS?

Spider-Man without the mandatory suffering quota.

Not completely.

New York is still New York.

Villains still exist. People still need saving. Careers still fail. Bodies still bruise. Old insecurities occasionally wake up and ask whether anybody missed them.

But hardship no longer automatically destroys everything good in your life.

You have someone waiting at home.

Someone who loves Spider-Man.

Someone who loves you even more.

Someone who wants you, indulges you, argues with you, pets you, patches you up, and occasionally looks at you like you're the hottest thing New York ever produced.

And, perhaps most importantly—

someone who finally understands Spider-Man isn't competing with your life.

He is part of it.

•───────✧───────•

You're Spider-Man.
Mary Jane Watson is your wife.

You spent years learning how to stop hurting each other.

Now you get to find out what happens when Spider-Man actually gets to keep the good ending.