Chapter 2: Negative Development

Summary: Things are looking up for our lovable webhead, when suddenly words get said that can’t be taken back! Peter is out of a job at the Bugle, so they’re gonna need to make this OnlyFans account work or else! Will Peter’s years of experience as a freelance photographer be enough to help Mary Jane’s OnlyFans become a hit? Not when it’s a hit already!

Contains: A Rhino Chase, The Faint Scent of Cigar Smoke in Jameson’s Office, Sexy Fun with Photography, and More Hurt/Comfort.

It was 12:29 PM in the afternoon on a Friday and Peter was already in-costume. He had hoped to sleep in a little longer after how late MJ had kept him up the night before but, unluckily for him, Rhino just had to be a morning person.

“Get back here, you wall-crawlin’ webbin’… jerk!” Rhino hollered after Spidey, who had the ever-loving nerve to not only interrupt his bank robbery but to start swinging away before the villain could pulverize him for it.

“But before you folks reading at home start to judge,” Spider-Man began, addressing the readers, “it’s a lot harder to come up with clever banter while you’re charging through 5th Avenue in your ridiculous Rhino suit than it looks - so cut the guy some slack, will ya?”

With that jab at the fourth wall out of his system, Peter brought his attention back to the situation at hand.

“And oh what a dull situation I’ve found myself in,” our lovable webhead remarked, “Gee, will I lure him down this alleyway that leads to an enclosed area? Or that alleyway that leads to an enclosed area, where I’ll trick him into hitting his head against the wall until he passes out? With options like these, it’s no wonder my escapades are the envy of the X-Men and the Avengers!”

“Are you being sarcastic up there?” Rhino questioned, “If there’s one thing I can’t stand more than do-gooders who don’t know when to mind their business, it’s do-gooders who… who…” he trailed off, winded from taking on so much dialogue at once while running so fast.

“Not so easy, huh?” Spidey quipped, grinning under his mask as he slung a web through an alleyway he arbitrarily decided was calling to him, “Why don’t you leave the talking through a high-speed chase to the professionals, Rhinoceros?” He used Rhino’s full name that time, for emphasis.

The horned hurricane on two legs gave chase, running down that cramped alleyway as best as one could do in a gigantic grey rhino suit that comic artists have been trying to find a way to make look remotely interesting since the 60’s. But while he clumsily bumped his hulking frame against the walls of the two buildings on either side of the narrow alleyway, Peter was already setting his camera up in the enclosed area that alleyway was leading to.

“Truth be told, the loving’s gotten pretty routine with ol’ Sytsevich here,” Peter remarked, apparently name-dropping what was undoubtedly a more interesting and notable villain, “no, that’s actually Rhino’s name - Aleksei Sytsevich.” What? But I told the readers his full name was Rhinoceros!

“You’ll live,” Peter assured the narrator, setting the timer on his camera with the precision of a superhero who’d fought the same fight with the same villain for too many years for a sliding timescale to ever make sense of, “but, my metaphorical love life aside, my actual love life couldn’t be better!”

He then backflipped off the side of the building, just in time to watch Rhino hit it. Landing on his feet, without missing a beat, Spidey took the opportunity to shoot his webs at the back of Rhino’s horn and pulled hard - slamming his head against the bottom of a fire escape. Rhino was too hard-headed for it to do all that much damage, but Spidey found that ticking him off a bit made their battles a little more fun.

“I’ve got the world’s best wife in the world, and she just started an Only-Pals!” Peter said, getting the name wrong on purpose this time, while any sensitive information he let out got drowned out by the enraged screams of Rhino, “Speaking of - after I turn these photos over to J.J., I’m gonna find out exactly what helping her with that’s gonna be like!

“Knowing her,” he sighed with a smile, leaping over Rhino as the villain charged toward him and causing him to hit the wall behind him, “it’s gonna be hot enough to make the Human Torch sweat!”

Every move the two of them made was punctuated by the discreet click of Parker’s camera, capturing every key moment of the fight at just the right moment, underscoring the staleness of Spider-Man’s latest tussle in stark contrast to the exciting new developments happening for Peter Parker.

“Y’know, Rhino, you’d never see Black Cat settling for the same old routine! You could stand to learn a thing or two from a go-getter like her!”

“It just… don’t make no sense,” Rhino said, having worn his voice out from yelling enough to start listening to his wall-crawling adversary once again, “you’re all puny and stuff, my lungs gotta be twice the size of yours, how come you’re not even a little out of breath?”

“Maybe it’s because I have the proportional lungs of a human-sized spider?” Spidey offered, as if that line would fly past the year 1966, “Now c’mon, Charlie Brown, I promise I won’t pull the football away this time!”

“Rrrragh! I always hated when Lucy did that! Just let him hit the football for once!!!” Rhino growled, before making his last charge toward the webhead. Flipping out of the way just in time for his camera to snap his good side, Spider-Man dodged Rhino yet again and left him to hit that wall one last time.

With that, Rhino collapsed to the ground. Spidey webbed him down for him to be found later, then crouched down on his chest to face him.

“People all around the world want to know, Rhino, what does it feel like to be the next co-star of The Daily Bugle’s latest Spider-Man article?”

“Ughhh…” Rhino responded dejectedly, “I was supposed to be loaded after today - now I’m just gonna get made fun of all over Twitter,” he sighed.

“If it makes you feel any better,” offered Spidey, “Twitter’s not lasting much longer if its new owner has anything to say about it,”

“That does make me feel a little better, actually… I think?” Rhino replied, his feelings as mixed as anyone’s would be.

Shortly after, the police arrived to take the costumed supervillain in. It… wasn’t hard to find the two of them, what with the massive footprints left all along the way.

“He’s down and out now, officers, so no need to be too rough on him - and if you are, Spider-Man will know!” Spidey remarked at the cops, deciding today was a ‘speaking in the third-person’ day for Spider-Man. He heard one last click come from his camera, which he then made sure to quickly retrieve before anyone else could see it suspended conveniently in webbing.

“What was that supposed to mean? And why was he speaking in third-person?” he overheard one of the cops say, but he didn’t pay too much attention - if he wanted to have any time for working with MJ on her OnlyFans page, he needed to hurry those pics over to the Bugle before he did anything else.

It was a dull-enough day at the Bugle. Whatever ranting Jameson had in him had likely been spent earlier that day, so everyone just kept to their work and tried not to mind the vague scent of cigar smoke that Jameson’s office perpetually had even years after smoking indoors was banned in New York.

That was the scene Parker entered when suddenly he came breezing through the doors not a day after the last time he’d done so. They’d gotten into a rhythm, as of late - he sends in his pictures, Jameson begrudgingly buys them, and everyone moves on for a couple of days.

Peter hoped it wouldn’t be too much trouble for him to ‘double-dip,’ seeing as how he didn’t really get a whole lot of pay out from the day before. He hoped he could at least start to make up for that when he walked up to Betty Brant and leaned over to grab her attention.

“Is Mr. Jameson busy, ma’am?” he asked, formally, like he hadn’t known her for years.

“Yes, but he should—Peter?” she responded, eyes wide in surprise at seeing the freelance photographer so suddenly, “He uh… no, he’s not busy, Peter - what’re you doing back so soon?”

“Just thought I’d stop by and pick up the rest of my paycheck from yesterday’s work,” Peter answered, matter-of-factly, “y’know, while I was in the neighborhood and all.

“Thanks, Betty!” he said, before she could say anything else, as he proceeded to let himself into Jameson’s office.

J.J. seemed to be in an unusually-good mood when Peter saw him on the phone - a mood that immediately soured as soon as his eyes fell on the photographer. Typical, but Parker wasn’t about to take it too personally. He was here for business, not pleasure.

“Thanks for the tip, Foswell,” Jameson huffed into the phone, before slamming it back down and barking at his ‘favorite’ photographer, “Parker, Christmas just came early. Are you one of Santa’s little helpers?”

“Uhh—”

“No? Then get out,” Jameson waved him off, causing Parker to start to ‘leave’ in just such a way that Jameson could spot a photo or two he’d taken, “hold on, you overgrown elf!” the mustached man hollered, “Lemme see what you’ve got and decide if you’ve been naughty or nice.”

“Can I just say, Mr. Jameson,” Peter remarked, as he walked back into the office and laid his photos out on his boss’s desk, “how much I never want to hear about you deciding if I’m naughty or nice again?”

“No,” Jameson muttered as he looked over each photo. It didn’t look good, from the look in his eye, though that wasn’t saying much for him.

“Crap, crap,” he judged, “all of these are crap. Get ‘em out of my face.” But as Parker reluctantly began to gather them up, one last photo caught his eye, “wait, that’s it! It’s a Christmas miracle!” Jameson declared, like the sleaziest Santa Claus in all the malls of America.

“What is it?” Peter asked, before tracing Jameson’s eyeline to… the photo of Spider-Man pointing his finger at the cops as they began to take Rhino away, “Oh, that? That one was more of an accident than anything el—”

“That one is exactly the picture I was hoping to see!” Jameson interjected, swiping the photo up, “I just heard from Foswell who spoke to the police earlier today - he said that they said that Spider-Man made a threat to them, and you just brought me photographic evidence! I’ve finally got ‘im, I can hardly believe my eyes!”

“I can hardly believe my ears,” Peter grumbled, “he was just telling them not to be rough on Rhino since the guy wasn’t a danger to anyone after he was through with him.”

“How do you know that, Parker?” Jameson questioned.

“… Because I was there, Jonah, how else would I have been able to snap the photos?” replied Parker, feeling so often like he was dealing with a child whenever he had to explain these things to Jameson. Every time, like pulling teeth.

“Doesn’t matter! In fact, I think I feel a headline coming on!” Jameson sang, before lifting his hand up to the sky and speaking that headline aloud, “Spider-Man: Soft on Crime!” Peter wasn’t necessarily surprised by any of the words that were coming out of J.J.’s mouth, but he couldn’t help feeling disgusted all the same.

“Yeah, okay, I’ll have that pic back now,” Peter said, swiping it from Jameson’s grip.

“What for?” Jameson asked, like a spoiled child who had their toy taken away, “Okay, how much do you want for it, huh? I can write you a check—hell, I’ll pay you in cash!”

It was then that Peter noticed a feeling bubbling up from inside him, that had apparently been there for quite a while but was only now making itself impossible to ignore. The next words he spoke took Jameson, Betty, Robbie, and even himself by surprise.

“I don’t think I want you using my photos for that crap, J.J.,” Peter stated, panicking more and more internally with each word he spoke.

“Ohh, I see,” Jameson chuckled, his face looking the most punchable Peter had ever seen since he was a teen, “it’s a liberal thing, then. Listen, kid, what’d I tell you about the real world and how far that liberalism is ever gonna take you?”

“You mean when I was 16?!” Peter retorted, his temper raising more than he’d ever let it before in that office, “I don’t know if you noticed, J.J., but I’ve been taking these photos for you for years and I’m not a fucking kid anymore!”

Now it was Jameson’s turn to get mad.

“So this is the thanks I get for buying your amateur hour photos, all these years?” he asked rhetorically, “Yes, Parker, I did notice you’ve been taking these photos for years - and I’d hoped I’d get to see any growth from you as a photographer in all that time, but unfortunately you’ve been content languishing in your utter mediocrity!

“You don’t want me using your photos? You think any photo you take is worth a dime without all the work I put into using it to spread the truth about that wall-crawling freak?!” he spat, each word loaded with venom toward both Peter and his alter-ego, viciously attacking him on two different fronts.

“Look at this crap,” Jameson held up each photo of the battle between Spider-Man and Rhino, before unceremoniously shoving them to Parker’s chest, “it’s the same damn shit Spider-Man did last time he fought Rhino, at virtually the same angle! You could be photoshopping this crap for all I know!”

“That’s enough, J.J. - and stop throwing photos at our photographers!” Robbie intervened, turning to Peter, “Look, Pete, that headline is not running as long as I’m editor of this paper. We always appreciate your photos, so how about we just let bygones be bygones?”

“This is a newspaper, not a democracy!” Jameson growled, turning Peter’s attention back to him, “Parker, if you keep this teenage rebellion up, you can kiss your days at this paper goodbye!”

“For crying out loud, Jonah, I’m 31!” Peter yelled, “That’s it - you go find some other spineless photographer to boss around all day long, Jameson, I’m out,” he declared, before storming out of Jameson’s office for the last time.

“Out? Pete, Pete wait up!” Robbie called after him, turning to J.J. for just a moment to say, “this discussion is not over.”

“What is this, a mutiny?! Get your asses back here this instant, both of you!” Jameson could be heard hollering, ineffectually.

Peter passed by Betty without a word, which did more to signal to her that something was seriously wrong than the mundane sound of Jameson ranting that she’d made a career out of tuning out. Robbie following after him sealed it.

He hadn’t made it that far when Robbie caught up to him, as he could still hear the vague sound of Jameson yelling after him in his office, but the words were mercifully becoming more and more indistinct with each step he took.

“C’mon, Pete, tell me there’s a way to keep you here,” Robbie pleaded, “I know neither of us sees eye to eye with Jonah, but you’ve been with us so long you’re practically part of the family!”

“Family?” Peter turned to look back, the fire in his eyes beginning to cool when they met Robbie’s, “I’m… I’m sorry, Robbie. Really, I am. But there’s nothing you can do to make this okay, to make me want this anymore. I’m sorry.”

Robbie looked Peter in the eye and sighed, placing his hand on his shoulder.

“No, Pete, I’m sorry. Sorry for what Jonah said, sorry I haven’t been pushing back more… sorry to see you go,” Robbie told him, giving him a sad smile as he resigned himself to the reality of the situation, “it’s been an honor to work with such a gifted and resourceful photographer all these years, Pete, I mean it.”

“There’s not an editor in New York with a heart as big as yours, Robbie,” Peter replied, “and don’t be sorry for what Jonah says. He can be sorry, when he’s ready - but I’m not holding my breath for that.”

“Me neither,” Betty said, walking up to Peter and giving him a hug, “Thanks for sticking up for yourself, Peter. I’m gonna miss you.”

“I’m gonna miss you both,” Peter sighed, hugging her back but pulling away not long after, “I’ve got things to do tonight. You’ll keep J.J. as honest as he can be while I’m gone, won’t you, Robbie?”

“Always,” Robbie smiled, “good luck, Peter. Whoever swipes you up after us is hitting the jackpot, y’know.”

With a chuckle at that particular phrasing, Peter grabbed his coat and headed for the door, replying,

“Don’t I know it.”

The hope was that heading out early that morning and selling more Spider-Man photos would make up for him coming up short the day before. Now Peter was coming home with no money and no job.

“Another job well-done from the science major,” Peter groaned self-deprecatingly, as he swung his way back to the apartment. The confidence that pushed him to walk away from his gig at the Daily Bugle had shriveled to nothing, and he was left with nothing but the hope that MJ would be too happy about him telling J.J. off to kill him.

But Mary Jane wasn’t like that, and he knew it. She was one of the most understanding people he’d met since Aunt May, anyone he dated would have to be. She’d probably just tease him for worrying his ‘nerdy little head’ off yet again.

And there it was, the reason this wasn’t the end of the world - it couldn’t be. Not until he’d done everything in his power to make MJ’s life every bit as blissful as she’d made his. Nothing, no supervillain’s plot or lapse in employment, could stand in Peter’s way from being Mary Jane’s husband. Nothing could ever be allowed to come between him and trying to be the best husband she could ever have asked for, and more.

She deserved nothing less.

“Well, with that pep-talk out of the way,” Peter sighed, clearing his throat as he swung back into his apartment through an open window, “I better give MJ the bad news.”

Landing with only the slightest thud, Peter slipped off his mask and took a deep breath. He could hear what could’ve been the voice of an angel coming through a crack in heaven, and suddenly the world looked a little brighter.

“Hey MJ,” called Peter, looking around to find Mary Jane as he left one room to enter another, “I uh, I made it home early today!”

“I’m in the bedroom, Tiger~” sang Mary Jane, “honestly, doesn’t your spider-sense tell you these things?”

“That’s uh, not how my spider-sense works!” Peter laughed, heading to the bedroom door, beginning to open it as he remarked, “it only tells me when something bad is about to hap—“

But as the door swung open, he discovered Mary Jane scantily-clad and on the bed. Her hair was a beautiful mess, and she had three fingers buried in her cunt as she met his gaze.

“—pen,” Peter finished.

“Well,” Mary Jane said, “that doesn’t sound very fair,” she smirked, bringing her dripping fingers out of her cunt and to her lips, tasting herself while holding eye contact with her husband.

“I-it’s,” Peter cleared his throat, “it’s saved my skin more times than I could count, getting the warning,” he explained as best as he could, blushing profusely at the steamy sight.

“I suppose,” MJ sighed, after licking her juices off her middle finger, “but wouldn’t it be nice if your spider-sense told you something good was going to happen to you, for a change?”

Smiling, Peter sat down on their bed and scooted up next to his wife, tenderly brushing her hair away from her face.

“Maybe,” he replied, “I don’t mind it saving all the good surprises for me, though.” Leaning close, he kissed those beautiful full lips of hers and moaned softly.

Peter wrapped an arm around Mary Jane as she tenderly stroked the back of his neck, keeping close to one another and letting their love melt all the stress away. When they needed to breathe, and not a moment sooner, their lips parted.

“I saw you earlier,” Mary Jane spoke, in a steady tone that didn’t give anything away, while she rested her cheek on her lover’s shoulder, “on the news, fighting that Rhino man… I guess you got your pictures for the Bugle?”

“About that…” Peter sighed, “I tried selling them to Jonah like usual, but… it was like something in me snapped…

“He was putting my work down as usual, talking about how he’d use it to make up some bullshit about Spider-Man like always, but… this time I took the pictures back, walked out, and I don’t think I’m ever going back there… I don’t know that I even could.”

There was a pause after that. His last words hung in the air uncomfortably, with him having no frame of reference for MJ’s reaction as her face was out of view.

“Did you say anything back to him?” asked Mary Jane, keeping her tone that neither threatened nor relieved Peter’s anxiety.

“Well… I told him I’m not a fucking kid anymore and that I didn’t want him using my photos for the crap he was talking about…” he admitted, before adding, “using those words, too.”

Peter buried his face in his palm and shook his head, the weight of his actions hitting him once again, but knowing full well there was no avoiding it. He couldn’t have kept working for someone like Jameson, and with Mary Jane’s big heart he knew she’d find some way to understand…

“Oh Tiger…” MJ said, lifting her head up from his shoulder, “that’s the single best thing you could’ve told me tonight!” She promptly grabbed him by his cheeks and laid a big fat kiss full on his lips, giving him another one of those ‘good surprises’ his spider-sense kept from him.

“Mmmff—!” he sounded, kissing her back gratefully but still a little in shock, “B-but MJ, I’m out of a job! It’s great and all not to have J.J. breathing down my neck anymore, but what’re we gonna do about bills?”

“You’re forgetting your other job, Peter,” she smiled knowingly, stroking circles into his chest and being utterly endeared by him worrying his little head off for no reason, “As of yesterday, you were hired to be Official Photographer of Mary Jane Watson for her massively-successful OnlyFans account! It pays better than J.J. ever did, and your boss looks way better too~” she winked, at a stunned Peter.

“So… wait,” Peter started, “you mean to tell me that you started that thing yesterday and it’s going that well?”

“Was there ever any doubt?” giggled MJ, “never doubt the power of name recognition, Tiger~” She then grabbed her phone and scooted up next to him to show him how the account was going.

Peter had embarrassingly-little frame of reference for how the platform worked, but even he knew enough to notice how good it was looking. They weren’t gonna be going out yacht-shopping in this lifetime, but those bills he was just panicking about to MJ? They were taken care of, to say the least.

“Now how about you chin up, grab your camera, and take some really exciting photos, Tiger?” Mary Jane proposed, to her decidedly unenthusiastic husband, “… I’m sorry, you’re probably tired from just getting back from work, that wasn’t a good—”

“No! No, Mary Jane, it’s not that I’m too tired… Or, maybe it is, but not like… ugh,” Peter rambled, looking away in search of just the right words, “It’s… it’s just… You’re great, you’re doing great, but I’m… I’m bad luck, I’m a jinx! I’m just gonna ruin the success you’re having if I get involved…”

“You’re not a black cat, Peter…” Mary Jane sighed, taking his cheek in her hand, “that’s someone else, first of all, and being a black cat never stopped her from doing whatever she wanted either,” she joked, causing Peter to smile in spite of himself.

Gently, she handed him the camera she used for the photos she had been taking. She looked into his eyes and quietly insisted until he begrudgingly grabbed hold of it himself.

“Just make the camera see me how you see me, Tiger, you can do it,” she told him, “you go out there and do all these amazing things every day, sometimes things you’ve never done before, and they don’t even involve what you’ve spent over a decade of your life doing.

“You’re a photographer, Peter,” she whispered, so simply, then softly backed away to give him his space.

As he held the camera in his hands, he wondered if he knew the first thing about how to take a photo. All these years, he’d just been setting it on auto and webbing it to some out-of-the-way place for it to do all the work while he did his thing, he thought.

But when he held it up and looked through the lens at his wife, it began to come back to him. Years of trial-and-error, figuring out where would even be a good place to get a good shot to begin with, setting so many different scenes with his acrobatics and making each moment perfect for every shot.

How many photographers in New York knew how to shoot in so many diverse locations and spontaneous situations? How many photographers could do what he’d made an art of doing? He wasn’t going to somehow ‘ruin’ Mary Jane’s page with bad photos, he was going to show his wife to the world the same way he’d shown Spider-Man - and she was going to look ten times as amazing while he was at it.

Like a man possessed, Peter started snapping photos. With every pose she struck, every time she shifted her weight, he found every angle to make her look even more dazzling than she did in the last shot. No words needed to be exchanged at the start, she simply moved on her own and he followed along as if they had been doing it for years.

“I feel kind of silly asking after we’ve taken so many pictures,” she laughed after a while, self-consciousness beginning to set in, “but is there something in particular I should be doing, you think?”

“You’re already doing it, MJ, don’t even think of stopping,” Peter assured her as dozens more photos were taken, “just kidding - you couldn’t stop it even if you tried,” he chuckled.

“Stop what?” Mary Jane asked, curiously, looking back at her husband and kicking her plump legs while lying on her stomach.

“Being you,” Peter answered, “you’re the subject, all we’re doing here is capturing you as naturally and authentically as possible so the people going to your page get to see exactly what they came for.”

More photos were taken, with Peter doing little things like flicking her hair and kissing her on the nose to keep her feeling loose. It felt almost like playing, to MJ, and she was having fun…

“But…” she started, “is it really that simple?”

Peter paused, lowering his camera for a moment and looking back at his wife. Something was on her mind, and the most important thing he could do in that moment was to drop what he was doing and listen.

“I’m sorry, now I’m the one getting all worried over nothing,” she laughed again, “I just get so in my head when I’m doing this alone, I was hoping doing it with you would make it better - and it is! This is great, but…”

“How about we take a break and look at the photos we’ve got right now, huh?” offered Peter, thoughtfully, getting a nod from Mary Jane in agreement. They sat down on their bed together, Peter handing the camera back to his wife for her to study.

Instead of hearing all about how crappy his photos were, Peter heard… nothing. Not a word came out of Mary Jane as she looked over each photo, her lips slowly parting as her jaw began to slack. She looked through them all and set the camera down, taking a moment to process what she had seen.

“I… I’ve never seen pictures of myself like this…” she whispered, “I didn’t know… I… I didn’t know I could look so beautiful…

“Peter, this is amazing!” she grinned, the joy of it finally hitting her, “See? What’d I tell you, Tiger!” she exclaimed, pulling him into a tight hug. Slowly, he wrapped his arms around her, resting his now-trembling hands on her shoulder-blades.

“Th-thanks, MJ…” he replied, squeezing her tightly and bringing his lips to her shoulder to muffle a sob.

“Peter…” Mary Jane sighed with a smile, knowing exactly what impact her words had had on him, then gently turned his chin to look at her, “don’t worry, you’re gonna be hearing a lot more about how good your pictures look from now on - you’re not working for an old man taking his insecurities out on you anymore, after all,” she remarked, getting a chuckle out of her husband as the tears softly flowed.

The two relaxed together, letting the relief of the moment wash over them. Whatever happened next was going to be looking a little different from how life together had looked before, but that carried with it as much excitement as it did anxiety. From that day forward they were starting a new roll of film, so to speak, in their lives.

Neither one of them could have pictured themselves the way they were then, but what’s life without the good surprises? With how this latest development was looking, it seemed like there would be a lot more where that came from.

To Be Continued

Author’s Notes: And that’s the chapter! Sorry to anyone who’s waiting on the sex to happen. There was room for it in the outline of this chapter, but the ending wound up not needing it. I've got the rest of the story outlined so I'm pretty confident I'll be able to finish this eventually.