Parker And Jones Are Big Bois

Chapter 6 - Heavy Holidays

Spider-Man always gets back up...

Peter was still on the ground in the next days.

He didn't speak with MJ since she left him after the AcaDec practice. He wanted to write to her or to call her countless times, but he didn't know what could he have said. Not telling her about his secret identity clearly didn't work. He could lie about it, but... Like, come on: he couldn't. Not to MJ. So that left him with the last option, that he told her the truth. It was tempting. He wanted to do it so many times, he even found himself with MJ's contact opened on his cell on occasions. He was one tap away from calling her and telling her everything... But he could never bring himself to it. If MJ knew about who he was, she would constantly be in potential danger. That, he couldn't bear. Not a chance.

How will he have a future life with anyone, while he has this secret?

Peter traveled home to May for the Holidays and tried to put on a happy face for her, but it was miserable, really. He went to bed feeling lonely and guilty and got up with newfound desperation every night and morning. He saw no way out of the situation.

He had no idea what to do. He knew he should have told it to May long ago because she was always amazing with advice, but he just didn't want to talk about it. Not yet... It felt like he was the bad guy in the situation, but in reality, he couldn't tell if that was true or not, so he was just wasting away, day to night, thinking about what could he have done differently, and how could he solve the problem. Needless to say, he got no good ideas at all.

Sometimes he tried to distract his thoughts. He tried watching movies, but that didn't really work, so then he tried reading a book, but that just reminded him of MJ, so at the end, he always wound up curling up on his bed, listening to Boulevard Of Broken Dreams and other generic said music. Just facing the ceiling, zoning out, eating cookies, and not thinking about anything at all. That was possibly the only good way to deal with the situation. He was on the ground, indeed.

Christmas Eve found him sitting at their dinner table with May and Happy – the man started visiting them during the holidays in the last couple of years – fixing his eyes on the dish in front of him, and catching little parts of the two adult's conversation.

"...Peter?"

"Yeah? Um... Yeah, sorry, what?" he asked, looking up at them, not even knowing which one of them called his name.

"What's got into you, kid?" asked Happy, frowning. "I haven't seen you this quiet since... Never, actually."

"He won't talk about it," answered May softly instead of Peter. She was fixing her eyes on his face and Peter felt like she was seeing right through him. "I've tried everything, but he is in a bad mood."

"There's a girl I really like, and she is angry with me," confessed Peter. It was about time he talked about it, and he already felt a bit better, just saying it out loud. Not much better, though. And was it really a good idea to tell it to them...? It was Christmas after all. They should have all been happy, instead of minding his private little problems.

"Okay, I'm gonna pretend that didn't hurt," responded May, nodding.

"Sorry I didn't tell it to you before," apologized Peter. "I wanted to forget about it, and have a nice Christmas with you..."

"Aw, sweetheart," cooed May. "You should have told me the day you arrived."

"Why is this girl angry with you?" asked Happy before Peter could say anything.

"Well... She knows that I'm doing something. And also, that it's a secret. But I can't tell her what it is, so she can't understand why it's so important, and now she's getting mad whenever I'm late or something and I won't tell her the reasons."