There was a chance Peter had already gone back home. The notice on the network had only said the Miles’ name, but that didn’t mean Peter hadn’t immediately headed over to ask someone to send him back too. Marlene wasn’t even sure if she had the new house assignment right. But she was here now and carrying a lasagna dish, and by Godric, she was going to knock.
Any second now.
It was ridiculous to feel tense. But she’d already watched so many friends leave, that each one was another reminder that she had nowhere to go and would probably never see any of them ever again. She exhaled loudly through her nose and knocked, almost dropping the lasagna from her clumsy grip in the process. “Oh for fuck’s sake, just hang on a second, will ya?” she sighed, clutching the dish to her chest.
Spidey sense was the only thing that actually got him off the sofa in his room, it’s tingling nature letting him know it was someone he actually knew rather than just some rando at the door. He probably needed the company, rather than just waiting it out, trying to pretend like it was totally okay that Gwen and Miles were gone. He wasn’t really fooling anyone, and knowing it was probably one of two people he actually liked that were still here, Peter waited at the top of the stairs, squinting, expecting a knock to come. I didn’t, but the presence was still there, so he walked forward slowly and just waited.
He was about to give up and just answer it even without the knock, when it finally came, and that had him opening the door before Marlene had even fully caught the dish. “I mean, I can wait longer if you want. Do you want me to close the door and try again?”
“Ha ha, you’re a riot,” Marlene laughed, eyes rolling. She hesitate for a second and then just squeezed by him to get inside. Presumption could at least get her that far, so she wasn’t offering him food in the bloody hallway. It also let her get right to the point, after setting the lasagna down on a side table.
“I just wanted to see if you were drowning yourself in pizza or boxing up your stuff before you left or…what.” Her arms flapped a little at her sides and then she drummed her fingers on her thighs. An apologetic wrinkle of her nose followed. “Sorry, I wasn’t sure how to go about this. I brought lasagna! So there’s that.”
His head dropped down and Peter brought a hand up to run over the back of it, trying to cover up a completely smitten smile at her nervous explanation. Because yeah, she wasn’t wrong. He was twenty minutes away from getting the speedy kid, Dash, to bring him some pizza so he could continue pretending he wasn’t wallowing in his bedroom.
“I mean, I love lasagna. Food, really.” Peter lifted it up and headed off to the kitchen, making a little gesture with his head for her to follow. “My Aunt May used to make amazing lasagna, and there’s no way this’ll hold me over to Passover, but--” Peter cut off, and shook his head as he put the dish down on the kitchen counter and glanced back at Marlene. “Thanks. For feeding me.”
“Okay, well, you’re welcome, but I feel like I should warn you that I bought this in the frozen food section and just heated it up in my oven,” Marlene admitted with an embarrassed smile as she followed him into the kitchen. Her gaze lingered on his profile, hoping to sort out how bad he was feeling. Since he often had a dragging his feet sort of vibe, even when his jokes were perfectly timed and he was in a seemingly good mood, she wasn’t sure she had the skills to read him like that.
“So.” She leaned a hip against the counter closest to him, expression softening. “Did you get a chance to talk to him or was he just...gone?”
“Eh,” Peter wasn’t bothered by the frozen food thing, “frozen food that you microwave makes up like, half of my diet. This is a huge step up.” Thanks, he left off, but it was still a nice gesture that brought him in to give her an awkward, but chaste and short peck on the cheek. Before hopping away and getting a spatula out of the drawer.
He hoped she couldn’t see his face crease up, squinting down at the food as he cut imperfect squares for them. Yeah sure, it was healthy to talk about things, but god was he bad at it. “Uh- We talked a little after Gwen, but he’d been quiet. I think he wanted to go home anyway.” Peter shrugged and scooped a piece out onto a paper plate. “He didn’t say anything before, though.”
The cheek kiss earned him a disarmed smile and Marlene’s shoulders going loose. She didn’t know this kitchen but she tried to be helpful anyway, opening up drawers until she located silverware to pull out for the both of them.
“I’m sorry. That’s shite, is what it is.” She frowned and put a fork on each of their plates before reaching past him for the paper towel rack. “Sometimes I wonder if this place isn’t a little bit of a curse. But when you don’t have much to go back to…” She lifted her eyebrows pointedly and blew a breath out through her nose. Not bothering with the whole table and chairs nonsense, she just claimed a forkful of lasagna from the plate closest to her and took a bite. Aiming for patient tended to be hit and miss with Marlene, but she’d give it a go.
Peter had to remind himself over the last few days that he wasn’t some sort of father-figure, and Miles had a perfectly loving and seemingly pretty great family at home to go to, and a purpose. He had just kind of been a weird mentor stand-in in place of a real mentor and one that likely would’ve been better as the Spider-Man in Miles’ own world.
But they had been friends, and Peter relished that, since there hadn’t been a whole lot of people he could relate to over the last twenty years.
Peter shoved some lasagna in his mouth, chewing slowly before attempting to speak - because he was polite. “Does seem like a double-edged sword, right? Hey, come help us fight a war, but we’re not really all that proactive, and everyone you love that we bring here probably won’t stick around but we can’t tell you why or try and fix it.” Okay, so his voice had gotten a little high and a little mocking, and Peter scrunched up his face in the end. “Sorry. I do better with actual plans, usually.”
Empathy flashed brighter in Marlene’s stare, but she dropped it back to her food before it could be to obnoxiously obvious. “Don’t be sorry,” she said, taking another bite and not being nearly as fussy about manners as he’d been. “You’re not wrong. The number of times I’ve considered just rolling the dice and seeing if they’re wrong about what’s back there waiting is starting to add up, I won’t lie.”
She hopped up onto the countertop. Sure it wasn’t her kitchen, but she didn’t imagine Spider-Man minded all that much. Putting the plate on her thighs, she chopped pieces away with her fork but didn’t actually take another bite just yet. “Anyway, do you? Have a plan, that is…?”
If he hadn’t been eating, Peter would’ve been stress walking back and forth. It was how he puzzled things out, walking and talking back and forth - a Spider trait, he knew that after living with two others. Instead, he drummed his fingers on the counter. “Do you mean going after them or going home? Cause-” Well, he definitely didn’t want her going back home. He had to stomp down the denial of her going after COS, too, because neither was really his call .
Peter blew out a breath and picked at his food. “I think we should at least have teams constantly searching the island for them. They’ve clearly got people here. We spend too much time training people that have trained for years and not enough time being proactive.” He paused, and squinted at her. “Unless you mean at home. Cause, uh, no, nope. Clueless there.”
“Okay, first of all…” Marlene lifted her eyebrows at his pacing before digging back into her food with a feigned nonchalance. “I meant going home. If I knew where to find them, I’d be banging on doors right this very second to rally the pitchforks.” Eating was a bit forced at this point, but going through the motions gave her something to do with her hands. Her heels knocked against the cabinets with anxiety anyway. She hadn’t come here to get into a spiral about how useless they all were here.
“And secondly, I meant do you have a plan to stay? Seeing as you’re clearly frustrated with this place – not that I blame you!” She lifted her fork and shook it in the air in a ‘Merlin, do I get it’ sort of way. “But, seeing as you’re frustrated, your people have all gone back, and you can go back…well, I thought I’d ask.”
Peter’s face darkened slightly, and he almost made a move to rest a hand on her leg, but decided not to at the last minute, and clutched his plate of lasagna a little tighter. He also wanted to stress loudly about how she definitely shouldn’t go home. No matter if he did, or if everyone did. But suppressed that one, as well, though he did open his mouth and clamp it closed again with a slightly strangled expression. This was all something he’d been working on, learning to control his big fat mouth and not tell people what to do.
But dang, it was difficult with her.
Eventually, he just ran a hand over his face. “No- No way.” Even with frustrations running high and wanting to solve things, Peter wasn’t the type to nope out of anything. “I’m not going back. I’m here until it’s over, and hell- I hadn’t even decided if I wanted to go back after anyway. Miles and Gwen come from different universes. I doubt I’ll even see them again, even if I did go back. And-” There really wasn’t much for him at home anyway, not unless he took a risk he wasn’t really sure he wanted to take, anymore.
“And….,” she prompted. His weird silence and complex facial expressions didn’t faze her. Maybe she was starting to figure him out. At the very least she’d sorted out that Peter Parker occasionally benefited from a person who didn’t just let the subject drop. Then again, sometimes she was just blunt and presumptuous for her own sake. She might have felt bad if she’d taken a second, but mostly she just kept her tone gentle and curious. There was no judgement in the tilt of her head.
“Have you decided you don’t want to win back your ex-wife?” She lifted her free hand palm out. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re staying to see this through. But as your friend, I also want you to be happy eventually,” she smirked.
“And…” Okay, her question was totally fair, given … everything. And his particular mindset in that area. Peter ended up flexing his shoulders and laying his palms out on the kitchen counter, looking down. “And maybe I’ve realized that my own happiness doesn’t have to hinge on MJ. That it’s less about her and more about-- my own anxieties and issues.”
He blew out a breath. Okay, that was a little harder to admit than Peter had expected. “So. Work in progress. Gotta multi-task saving creativity and the world, you know. Only a little time for self-care.”
Marlene smiled – the kind of smile that was only tempered in respect for the moment and the effort involved in said moment, but the grin in her eyes wasn’t subtle. She set her plate on the counter beside her.
“That’s very fair. If you sound that well-adjusted too often, I’ll have to try and catch up anyway. Nobody wants that.” She wrinkled her nose, but her gaze sobered. Hoping off the counter, she pushed forward to wrap her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his outstretched arm in a hug from the side. “Just don’t stay here because it’s easier than going back, yeah? It’s all well and good fighting for other people’s happy ending but you deserve one too.”
The hug shouldn’t have surprised him, given the fact that he was surrounded by very huggy people pretty much always, but it still made him do a double take before wrapping his outstretched arm around her. “Are you kidding? Going back home and eating pizza for the rest of my life would be way easier.” It took Peter a second to talk himself into it, but he leaned down to press a very gentle, barely there kiss to the top of Marlene’s head. “Maybe I’ve realized that I don’t need to be home to be happy.” A pause. “Or whatever.” Because he was mature and stuff.
“Keep this up…,” Marlene warned, pulling back to squint up at him. “…And I’m going to think you’ve been bodysnatched.” She didn’t give him grief about the kissing thing. Even if she knew it was a little noteworthy for an American. Particularly this American after their near miss of a hook-up. Even if it made her skin tingle. She did pat his chest and pull away to peer out of the kitchen into the rest of the house, though.
“Want to take our not-pizza into the living room and watch some mindless television?” She grabbed her plate and flashed a cheeky smile. “I think you’ve been an adult enough for at least an hour or two, yeah?”
Peter’s shoulders finally gave away, his upper body relaxing in the most yessss way possible. “Yes, please. I really need something terrible for me and mindless and, dare I say, cheerful?” He started gathering his lasagna. “.... Hopefully you like Bob’s Burgers.”