you just hit the jackpot

( 📩 → jackpot ❤️ ): how dare u i’m vlunerable ( 📩 → jackpot ❤️ ): https://youtu.be/lg_FoEy8T_A

( 📩 → jackpot ❤️ ): https://youtu.be/Aw5NG580rBk

“They’d really go with your style,” Miguel replied, committing to a bit that really should have been DOA. He was good at that, good at throwing all of himself into things that could never be real. Sometimes he wondered if it was the only thing he was good at. MJ turned to shoot him a look that might have made a lesser man shrink back in his shoes, but Miguel had never been good at being afraid where he should have been. He eyed her, challenge in his stance as he shrugged. “You’d be surprised,” he hummed. “I can get around pretty well in heels.” Of course, it was a front — Miguel couldn’t do MJ’s job, couldn’t do any sort of job that required you to speak to people without insulting them. He was only charming until he felt cornered, and he got the feeling someone in MJ’s position at Stark felt cornered often.

There was something in her eye when she spoke, something so familiar it sent a jolt down his spine, and he wondered just how familiar she’d find his full story. Miguel grew up some fifty years after 2020, but some things never changed. No matter how many decades passed, there were always going to be parents who should have never been parents. There were always going to be children who suffered for it. Miguel’s mother had been neglectful at best, his stepfather violent and angry more often than not. And MJ… MJ had a look in her eye that said she knew what that felt like. Miguel didn’t want to like her, but he felt something soften all the same. He hated it. “Good luck catching me, Watson. I’m a slippery guy.” He’d avoided a billion dollar corp in 2099. He could keep MJ Watson from putting soap in his mouth. Right? “Oh, right. Human experimentation is a no-go. My bad.” His dry tone made it clear that the apology, if it could be called that, wasn’t sincere. Of course, MJ had no idea that the worst case scenario of experimenting on yourself had already happened to Miguel. He’d already turned himself into a monster. It wasn’t like anything more could go wrong from here, right?

“Genetics usually don’t involve fire,” he pointed out with a snort, rolling his eyes. Whatever connection they’d made seemed to vanish in an instant… but Miguel preferred it that way. He’d always liked things to be surface-level instead of genuine, and MJ seemed to agree with the sentiment. 

MJ paused for a moment, feigning thinking about what he had said, acting as if she was imagining the different outfits she could create that included socks with bells on them. She would say that she’d never wear them — but the second she thought the word never she was thinking of all the scenarios where she would. The Holidays with Peter and their friends or with Tali who, despite being such a strange child, latched onto the wildest of things (and something told MJ that bell socks would be one of them). “I’d pull them off too. And I’m sure it would be infuriating for you. At first you’d be happy because you’d hear me coming a mile away… but after a while…” She snapped her fingers. “You’d break.”

She almost snorted at the idea of Mike attempting to do her job. On the surface, it didn’t seem like a major job. It sounded like a job that was for show — as if MJ was just someone decorating the office (and it was a hard narrative to fight against considering what MJ did for a living before Stark). “I’ll buy you your first pair, something mature that only a well aged person could pull off.” As if that was the whole job. Looking cute and standing next to Tony. (And that was part of the job, but not for the reasons that people assumed. The pretty face took a lot of people by surprise, people were more willing to give her leeway because intelligence and beauty didn’t touch in the minds of most people, and MJ had perfected the blank and confused stare — what she did was art most days.) “I might also invest in some communications classes for you though. You’ll have to practice what to say when people tell you to shut up because there is nothing in your head but air. It makes for great conversation.” And generally, their fatal mistake with her. 

[????] i’m not mike! [????] BECAUSE YOU INSULTED FOOTLOOSE!! [????] no, i’m captain of the guardians. of that galaxy, that is. [????] are the emo kids a baseball team or something? [????] BECAUSE IT’S THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME!! [????] THE MORE IMPORTANT QUESTION IS WHY ARE YOU NOT TURNED UP ABOUT IT??

[😈 ➡️ Shakespeare Fangirl] Blast, I should have thought of that one! UNSENT [😈 ➡️ Shakespeare Fangirl] Well, I would have thought that was /so obvious/ that I didn’t need to say it! [😈 ➡️ Shakespeare Fangirl] And I fail to see how that is gross. Do you know how many people would disagree with that statement? [😈 ➡️ Shakespeare Fangirl] I would possibly find that phrase funny if it wasn’t /yet another/ insult towards me. [😈 ➡️ Shakespeare Fangirl] What? In what way am /I/ not humble? [😈 ➡️ Shakespeare Fangirl] DAD JOKE?? I /do not/ tell Dad jokes! [😈 ➡️ Shakespeare Fangirl] And I also hate that phrase because you do realize essentially every joke is a “Dad joke,” since there would be no jokes period if Dad hadn’t created the lot of you.

( 📩 → mj 💞💥 ): they KNOW??? what the FUCCCK ( 📩 → mj 💞💥 ): hmm. if they literally keep hitting on him while knowing that you two are dating?? i think thats VERY valid of you to knock them on their ass  ( 📩 → mj 💞💥 ): especially if they’re likely doing it on purpose. that’s just shitty. ( 📩 → mj 💞💥 ): i can always beat them up for you so peter can get at ME instead 

[📱to MJ ] i’m taking it back, this is a take back, mj [📱to MJ ] but rao omg could you imagine the hustling we could do [📱to MJ ] if reporting ever falls through, maybe i’ll take back the take back […] [📱to MJ ] good [📱to MJ ] wait, not good [📱to MJ ] do you have a job? […] [📱to MJ ] i’m okay, perfect, great even :)

(✉️ ➡️ reporter & cat mom ): no take backs kara, that’s MEAN and it’s RUDE  (✉️ ➡️ reporter & cat mom ): who the hell is rao?  (✉️ ➡️ reporter & cat mom ): please don’t tell me that’s a god from the future  (✉️ ➡️ reporter & cat mom ): shock being the new word for fuck is already too much for me to handle (✉️ ➡️ reporter & cat mom ): we could be a super dope duo! think about it

[...] (✉️ ➡️ reporter & cat mom ): i have a job (✉️ ➡️ reporter & cat mom ): i wasn’t sure because the world was up in flames and i sort of panicked but i still have a job (✉️ ➡️ reporter & cat mom ): worried about my boss all hours of the day, but i’ve got enough to pay rent at least

(✉️ ➡️ pain in the ass): ugh (✉️ ➡️ pain in the ass): how are you not skeeved out by that (✉️ ➡️ pain in the ass): can’t you tell her not to? (✉️ ➡️ pain in the ass): oh, right (✉️ ➡️ pain in the ass): yeah (✉️ ➡️ pain in the ass): lyla is my ai (✉️ ➡️ pain in the ass): she’s an asshole. i like her more than i like most people.

(✉️ ➡️ marijuana): you don’t have any straight friends? (✉️ ➡️ marijuana): wait, do i have any straight friends? (✉️ ➡️ marijuana): hm. interesting topic for another time. (✉️ ➡️ marijuana): oh (✉️ ➡️ marijuana): i mean it’s no big deal (✉️ ➡️ marijuana): and it’s probably nothing (✉️ ➡️ marijuana): but i did kind of join a revolution (✉️ ➡️ marijuana): i built an island, mj. i’m a father now. i had an island baby with mother earth. (✉️ ➡️ marijuana): and you can’t scream at me for it, legally. the law says you have to be nice to me now.  (✉️ ➡️ marijuana): don’t fact check that, just trust me.

There was a lot about the world that Danny still didn’t understand. Even before K’un Lun, he’d existed in a bubble. His family was far too rich for him to ever have had to worry about job interviews or career options — everything like that was chosen for him long before he was born. He was trying to understand everything MJ was saying… but it was difficult. It wasn’t quite as if she was speaking another language (something Danny had plenty of firsthand experience with), but… It was like she was speaking in an accent. He could make out the words, he could use context clues to solve the riddle, but it took a minute. “Some people are really into them,” he tried, trying to think back to that nanny again. “They have, uh… Oh! Special magazines. Right?” She used to read them on the couch. The memory was so faint now.

The next question she asked was far easier to answer. It didn’t require him to understand anything about acting or auditions or soap operas. It only asked that he understand something about himself, and about how he treated the people he cared about. Danny’s smile came easily, and there was no hesitation to his nod. “Yeah!” He exclaimed. “I’d definitely watch it. I’d buy the DVDs, too.” Did they still make DVDs of television shows? He wasn’t sure.

/

He was trying so hard to be supportive and MJ felt herself deflating in front of him. Special magazines. Would that be her life if she went after acting again? A discount magazine that would sit on a table in a doctor’s office, torn up by kids who didn’t have anything better to do. That was the fate he was curing her too. But he looked so warm doing it, like he was giving her a sliver of hope that her life could be what she wanted it. (And maybe if she did land a good part in a show like that — she could make a decent amount of money… but still. Stubbornly, she didn’t want that.)

The conversation easily turned and she started laughing, he would immediately jump to buying the products too. “Even collector’s editions, you could get like… a backpack or a keychain with my face on it.” Not that she’d ever will that into existence… but it was a firm possibility. But with all the jokes they made (or at least she made — Danny was supportive, like a good friend), MJ let out a small sigh. “I guess it’s just… not where I saw myself, you know? The best laid plans…”

“And I don’t look a day over it. You can thank yourself for that, Ms. Watson. A truly inspired skincare regime later and I’m a new man,” Tony deadpanned. Years ago, he would’ve avoided conversations like this as if they were the plague. Growing old was not the reserve of a man like Tony Stark, permanently young at heart, constantly chasing the next greatest thing. He wasn’t the kind of person to be held back by things like clicky knees and a sore back. Recent events proved that growing old, despite being a massive pain in the ass, was a privilege. He would take thirty more years of trying to keep up with the Joneses compared to not seeing tomorrow every day.

Speaking of preferences, he noticed how MJ almost shuddered when her phone went off. He knew what that felt like intimately, remembered coming home to a thousand messages after Afghanistan and asking whether there was only one coming from the person he really wanted to talk to. When he found out there wasn’t, everything else felt like an intrusion, like people pushing in on his personal life. “How about we disconnect?” he suggested, slipping his phone out of his back pocket. He sent off a quick text to Steve – with mj, not dead. love you – and then turned his phone off, holding it up to demonstrate. “Just you and me,” he said, “at least for a couple of hours until Pepper comes down in a fit of rage. I’m keeping the holographic shield around in case she decides to try out in the stiletto javelin tournament again.”

With MJ it felt easier than Tony expected. There was a moment of understanding almost immediately when he met her at the bar, even more when they spoke again on the park bench before he offered her the job, but it proved itself even more in moments like this. They could move seamlessly between Tony flipping her off with a grin on his face and him opening up in ways that he would’ve resented ten years ago. (Was this what family was supposed to feel like?) “Easier is overrated. If you don’t work for it, it doesn’t feel real, right?” It hardly felt real for Tony now – but it extended to all avenues of his life, including the suit, the part of him that always felt closer to the bone than Tony Stark ever could.

“We all make fools of ourselves. Thor walks around in a giant red cape. Steve appeared in a Captain America onesie to our first battle. Being embarrassing comes with the territory. It all rests on how you pull it off.” Tony grinned at her, shrugging a shoulder as he allowed nanotech to form over himself, growing from his hand up. “Sometimes you need to run before you can walk. Trust me, flying is massively cooler than shooting things.” Distraction, maybe. Tony shrugged a shoulder, giving no other credence to her statement other than that. Lingering on it would defeat the purpose, after all. “No,” he said, keeping the helmet back as the rest of the suit materialised. “I’m going to watch you learn to fly. It’s an independent process. The suit responds to everyone differently.” He waited a beat, then let the mask form. “Worst case,” he said, “you fall, I catch you. Up for it, Watson?”

She couldn’t stop herself from laughing, a small grin on her face as she glanced away. MJ had been told she was obsessed with the way she looked when she was younger, to an unhealthy degree she had been told — but it was the one thing she had. Peter and Gwen and Harry all had their brains. And MJ had copied homework and a desperate hope that she’d somehow strike it reach in her acting — only to be pulled into a world where opening her mouth was frowned upon. Modeling had made her most of her money, had created most of her brand. And Tony was standing in that light now. Anyone involved in the Accords or breathed politics around the Avengers and SHIELD would have given anything to make it illegal for Tony Stark to have a voice. “You’re damn right you owe me, that’s practically a trade secret.”

When was the last time she really had turned off her phone? Her life, and much of her job, was on social media. But Tony was turning off his, he sent out a quick message — and MJ figured it was to his ‘Swedish supermodel boyfriend’ and then showed her the blank screen. “A better idea than me smashing it,” she quipped weakly before grabbing her phone and following suit, flipping her phone around so that Tony could see that it really was off before setting it on her desk. “You think they’ll start forwarding the calls to Miss Potts?” That would be a nightmare and a half — but that was a problem for future MJ. Right now MJ was still trying to wrap her head around what the hell had happened.

A lot of them had felt empty. She had tried to love them the way she loved Peter, tried to be the person they needed — or really, the person they wanted, but it didn’t work. MJ couldn’t put her whole self into it and she was sure that anyone who had tried to be in that relationship with her had seen it too. There was no point in loving someone half-way — and no point in being loved only part way. “Yeah it just…” MJ shrugged, looking at Tony. “There were a few good ones, you know?” Ric was one of the good ones, they were both in different places and Ric and MJ would have never worked for a number of reasons, but she still had him — his back and his friendship. But everyone else in her life? It was like water. But that was so far besides the point that MJ couldn’t bring herself to keep talking about it. Instead, she crossed her arms as her shoulders dropped. “I knew before he was unmasked. I knew — for a long time. I just thought he’d tell me when he was ready and we’d talk about it and then —“ that was stolen from them. And that thought weighed on her mind more than the harassing phone calls and the circus she was trying to contain.

“Hey, obviously my deflection didn’t bother you too much. You haven’t hit me yet!” He grinned, eyes sparkling with laughter that was only half fake. There weren’t many people who understood him, and while MJ didn’t know everything (he’d never told her about the roof, about his toes hanging off the edge, about how easy it would have been for him to — ), she knew enough. She knew enough about him to justify her hating him, but she didn’t. She actually wanted to be his friend. She didn’t feel obligated to put up with him the way he knew many mutants did, didn’t love him now just because she’d loved him years ago when he was younger and less damaged. MJ was his friend of her own decision, her own conscious choice. Ric couldn’t say that about many people. “I don’t know,” he hummed, “it seems risky.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, but that was okay. She already knew he was full of shit. “You can call me Julio,” he offered. “If you want to. Just don’t go telling anybody else they can.” He had such a complicated relationship with his name, such mixed feelings. They were hard to explain, and yet — 

“You know I went to therapy once? One session. That’s as far as I made it before, you know, storming out. Guy said I had issues. About my name, about my powers, about a lot of things. Got all mad because I didn’t want him calling me Julio, and I told him only my friends got to call me Ric. Stupid shit, you know? Real entitled dude. He actually — He said to me… He said, ’Don’t you think you deserve a name?’ All deep and shit.” He laughed again, hollow. “How’s that? That close enough to something that matters, or do you want more?”

/

MJ’s eyes narrowed on Ric and she shot him a tight smile, annoyed but laced with too much sweetness for anyone else to really pick up on what she was doing. Aside from Ric, but he had the benefit (or perhaps the disadvantage) of knowing her for much longer. “You’d enjoy it too much.” As much as she wanted to reach over and smack him across the top of his head, she knew he’d be to thrilled with himself, and she’d never be able to live it down. Plus, she’d get no satisfaction out of it. But it was all fun and games until they hit something real, and the always did, often by surprise. She could call him Julio — but she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone else they could. Not that she cared much else if someone other than herself could. Being able to without getting her ass chewed out was something of a status. And not many others had earned it

But all the laughter and the bonding, it vanished in an instant. This wasn’t them hitting something real on accident, this was Ric talking about something that touched him without giving it the weight it deserved. A story followed by laughter, hollow — empty — and yet his words were full of things he didn’t want to talk about. And MJ was wishing she had a drink in her hand to lift up and pretend like this was something they could relate on. Or that it was just a simple string of words that didn’t cut as deeply as they did. “Chosen names are just as important as the names we’re given,” MJ said in a hushed voice, sure that she was supposed to let this skip on like a joke. But Ric defining himself as one and putting the other in his past? “Besides, Rictor? It’s a pretty good joke. Earthquakes… richer scales… it’s good shit.” Is that enough? MJ had been joking but clearly she had pushed up against something that mattered without meaning to. A flippant comment that led to something real. “If you got more up your sleeve, shoot — but if you start talking about parents, I’m going to need a drink.”

Nia found herself relaxing as MJ put her arm around her and pulled her closer. It was an unspoken acknowledgement that MJ still trusted her, still cared. And–Nia hoped–she wasn’t angry or upset with Nia for hiding this part of herself. For a few seconds, she leant her head against MJ’s shoulder, trying to find the right words.

“My mum’s an alien,” she said finally. “She came to Earth looking for safety. My dad’s human and I grew up here. In Parthas we didn’t have to hide what we were, but with how the rest of the world seems to react to… mutants and aliens and powers. It was safer not to say anything. I didn’t even think I would get powers until I did.” She paused. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

/

Everyone had secrets they didn’t talk about. Little things that were to close to talk about — even with friends. Like Peter with being Spider-Man. She understood that it wasn’t because he was mad at her or because he wanted to lie to her — something just… were harder to talk about. And MJ had a feeling that this thread with Nia was the same sort of thing. It wasn’t because Nia didn’t trust MJ or didn’t want her to know, it was because it was harder to talk about.

And MJ, despite having a very Avenger filled life, wasn’t always emotionally available for conversations like this. (MJ understood all of this, the resistance, the hesitance to talk about things — but it still hurt even if she understood.) “I get it,” MJ said in a whisper, “I mean — not in the same way you get it or mutants but… not telling people things like that? The things close to your heart? That… that I get.” Squeezing Nia’s arm, MJ sat up straighter. “You didn’t think you’d get powers?”