Chapter Text
The chilled evening air hits her cheeks as MJ carries two heavy canvas bags of groceries down the sidewalk toward her dorm. Her phone is wedged between her ear and shoulder.
"Jen, I'm telling you, he's a bit unhinged. No normal feline attacks a radiator because it hissed first."
"He felt threatened!" Jen’s voice crackles over the speaker. "Buffalo is very sensitive. You know this."
"He's a terror," MJ counters, stepping onto a quieter, tree-lined side street near campus. "He ate half a bag of pita chips off my desk last month and then stared at me like I committed a federal crime."
"He's expanding his palate! Anyway, how is Massachusetts? Are you eating actual meals or just surviving on cold soup?"
"I am currently carrying two bags of vegetables and pasta, so—"
A shadow detaches itself from the alleyway between two brick brownstones. A girl in a heavy dark hoodie steps directly into MJ’s path, her hands shoved deep into her pockets. One hand is pressed against the fabric, pushing forward the distinct, hard point of a small blade.
"Phone and the wallet," the girl says. Her voice is sharp, nervous, and quick. "Drop the bags. Right now."
MJ stops in her tracks. She blinks, her eyes dropping to the pocket, then back to the girl's face. "Seriously? I'm carrying store brand pasta sauce and oat milk. You're going to mug me for grocery money?"
"MJ? What's going on?" Jen's voice tinnyly calls out from the phone.
"Gimme the phone!" the girl snaps, stepping forward and reaching out to snatch it.
Just as her hand touches the screen, a white rope of webbing shoots out from the tree canopy above, slamming into the mugger’s wrist and yanking her arm backward.
A flash of red and blue drops out of the sky, landing silently on the pavement in a crouch right between them.
MJ’s eyes bug right out of her head.
"Woah, woah, hold on," Spider-Man says, spinning around and firing another quick line of webbing that pins the mugger's wrists firmly to the brick wall behind her. "Larceny? In Cambridge? That’s really not great for the local tourism vibe."
The mugger yelps, struggling against the web, but she’s completely stuck.
MJ drops her grocery bags to the concrete, her jaw slightly open. "What the ..."
Spider-Man turns around instantly, his white eye-lenses expanding wide as he steps toward her. "Are you okay? Did she touch you? Did she have a knife?"
"I—no, I'm fine," MJ stammers, staring at the bright red suit, the dark webbing pattern, the vivid blue trim. She steps back, looking up at the lamplight reflecting off his mask. "Wait. What are you doing here?"
Softly, his gloved hands hover near her shoulders before lightly settling on her upper arms to check her. "Are you sure? You're not hurt? No cuts or anything?"
"I'm fine," she says again, but her voice trails off.
His touch is incredibly gentle. Through the fabric of her jacket, his fingers twitch slightly, lingering on her sleeves before he reluctantly pulls his hands back. A strange, heavy knot forms in MJ's chest, a sudden wave of quiet, inexplicable warmth washing over her that leaves her completely breathless.
"Good. That's ... that's really good," he says softly.
How is this possible? This isn't … He's a superhero. He's an Avenger, for crying out loud. Is there some sort of Avenger-level threat in Massachusetts right now? And if there is, why did he make a pit stop just to save her?
Spider-Man backs up a step toward the wall of the nearest building. "Well! Glad you're safe. I should ... probably head out before the local authorities get confused about my jurisdiction—"
"Hey, hold on!" MJ jumps forward, grabbing his wrist before he can shoot a line up to the roof.
Spider-Man stops dead in his tracks. He looks down at her hand gripping his wrist, his whole body freezing like he's been hit by lightning.
"You're Spider-Man," MJ says, her brow pulling down hard as she stares at his mask. "You belong in Queens. New York. The place with the skyscrapers and the Broadway shows? Why are you in here?"
"Uh. Vacation?" he offers quickly, his voice squeaking slightly. "New England in the fall is beautiful. Very seasonal. Big fan of the foliage."
"You don't take vacations," MJ says flatly, narrowing her eyes. "You fight giant rhino men and alien ink-monsters in Manhattan. You don't just randomly patrol a residential street in Cambridge."
"Well, maybe I just wanted a change of scenery! You know, crime doesn't sleep, even in college towns.” He shifts his weight, pulling his arm back gently, though he doesn't forcefully break her grip. He easily could. She knows that.
"Right. And it's just a complete coincidence that you happened to be swinging over this exact street at the exact moment some broke teenager tried to take my oat milk?" She tilts her head, her gaze searching the white lenses of his mask. "Are you tracking someone here?"
"No! No tracking," Spider-Man stammers, adjusting his posture awkwardly. "It was just routine. I was passing through!"
"Passing through. From New York to Cambridge is a four-hour drive. You swung four hours just to 'pass through' near the MIT dorms?"
He goes quiet for a long second, his head tilting down slightly. When he speaks again, his tone is quieter, stripped of all the bravado. "I just ... like to keep an eye on things. Make sure people are safe."
MJ lets go of his wrist, but she doesn't back away. She stares at him, that strange, phantom familiarity tugging at her thoughts again, buzzing right behind her eyes.
"You're a terrible liar," she says softly. "You know that, right?"
Spider-Man hesitates, his mask shifting slightly as if he's biting his lip underneath it. "Yeah. I've been told that before."
“That's not a bad thing.”
Before she can ask another question, he shoots a web line straight up toward the corner of the brick dormitory, yanking himself up into the air. He lands lightly on the lip of the roof, looking down at her again.
"You should head inside," he calls down. "It's getting cold. Do you have far to go?"
MJ shakes her head. “That’s literally my window.” She points to a window lined with purple lights and black curtains.
“Well … Have a good night.”
And then he turns and disappears into the night sky, leaving MJ standing alone under the streetlight, staring up at the empty roof.
And it hits her again. Despite knowing her life is going well, she suffers from a persistent feeling of deja vu. And now Spider-Man is here?
She shakes her head and grabs her bags.
He must just not be telling her the real reason he's here. Maybe there are aliens or something down the block. Whatever the reason, he still noticed that she was in trouble. Whatever he's actually doing here, for some reason he stopped what he was doing to help.
A small smile turns up her lips, and she looks down as if to hide it.
*******
The mole notebook MJ picked up at the campus bookstore was supposed to be for fluid dynamics lecture notes. Instead, the first three pages are covered in dense, frantic scribbles, timeline sketches, and bullet points.
- Appears in Cambridge early Sept. Why leave NYC?
- Doesn't wear a local outfit. Still full red/blue suit.
- Kept me from getting mugged.
- Why does looking at him feel like a migraine coming on?
MJ is sitting on the grassy slope outside the student center, her half-eaten sandwich sitting forgotten on her lap. Her phone is propped against her water bottle, playing a pixelated video shot from someone's balcony in downtown Boston three days ago.
In the video, a runaway delivery truck was barreling straight toward an intersection. Spider-Man dropped out of nowhere, planting his boots into the pavement and grabbing the truck's front grill.
The sound of screeching metal rattled through her phone’s speaker. On screen, the asphalt buckled under his feet. He was pushed back ten, twenty, thirty feet, the sheer momentum threatening to crush him against a concrete barrier. For a split second, his knees buckled, his arms straining so violently that MJ could see the suit seams pulling taut.
MJ gasps, her hand flying to her mouth, her heart leaping into her throat as if she were standing right on that curb. "Move, move, get out of the way—" she whispers unconsciously.
Oh **** did he die?!
With a final groan, he dug his heels in, snapping the truck's frame and forcing the vehicle to a grinding, smoking halt just inches from a pedestrian crosswalk.
The crowd in the video went wild, but Spider-Man just slid off the front bumper, collapsing onto his back in the middle of the street, chest heaving.
MJ stares at the screen, her thumbs hovering over the play button. She replays the four seconds where the truck almost crushed him, the exact moment his body gave out before he forced himself back up.
A pain throbs behind her temples, like a memory knocking violently on a locked door.
I've seen him do that before. I've seen him bleed through that suit.
She swallows hard, tapping her screen, and goes down the rabbit hole.
Thirty minutes turned into two hours. Classes faded into the background as she scrolled through years of archived footage, dashcam clips, and eyewitness YouTube videos spanning back a couple years.
She watched him get smashed through a brick wall by a giant mechanical tail, only to pop back up, crack a terrible joke about pest control, and keep fighting.
She watched him hold a ferry together with his bare hands.
She watched a news clip from Europe, a drone attack on a bridge in London, where he fought through a terrifying storm of illusions, visibly exhausted, bruised, and limping, just to make sure everyone got to safety.
His strength is insane, she notes on the paper. Physically impossible. He could snap a car in half.
But he doesn't.
That was the thing that kept her staring at the small screen, her finger tracing the outline of his red-and-blue figure. He had godlike strength, yet every time he fought, he looked terrified of hurting the people around him. He took the punches so other people didn't have to. When he saved someone, he didn't stick around for applause or hand out autographs; he cracked a quick, goofy dad joke to make sure the traumatized civilian stopped crying, checked if they were okay, and swung away before the cops could thank him.
He’s recklessly, impossibly compassionate.
And, heaven help her, he’s funny. Even when he was getting beaten to a pulp, he couldn't stop himself from making fun of the villain's outfit or complaining about the cost of suit repairs.
MJ pulls her knees to her chest, resting her chin on her arms as she watched a short video from a few months ago. It was a close-up interview a tourist took in Central Park. Spider-Man was standing on a bench, handing a little girl a dropped ice cream cone he'd caught in mid-air, bowing dramatically as if he were a medieval knight.
A smile spreads across MJ's face.
Then, her eyes drop back to her open notebook, reading her own handwriting:
Why do I care so much?
The realization hits her like a bucket of ice water, dropping straight into the pit of her stomach. Her breath hitches.
She leans back against the tree, looking up at the gray sky, her cheeks suddenly feeling inexplicably hot in the autumn air.
"Oh, no," MJ mutters under her breath, pressing her palms against her face. "No, no, no."
She’s a brilliant, cynical MIT student who prided herself on logic, skepticism, and emotional distance. She doesn't do "celebrity crushes." She doesn't do hero worship.
And yet, here she is, sitting on the quad, obsessively cataloging the noble qualities of a guy in spandex who fought crime in her neighborhood and looked at her like she was the only person in the world every time he landed near her.
MJ snaps the notebook shut, shoving it deep into the bottom of her backpack. She picks up her cold coffee, took a long sip, and stared blankly ahead.
She maaaay have a crush on Spider-Man.
With that slightly embarrassing revelation, MJ gathers up her things and heads to her next class.
By Friday, the fall wind whips through MJ’s jacket as she pushes open the heavy metal door to the roof of the downtown library. She has her mole notebook tucked under her arm, a half-empty tea in hand, and one single goal: twenty minutes of absolute silence away from the elementary field trips downstairs.
Instead, she steps out onto the gravel and stops dead in her tracks.
Sitting on the edge of the HVAC unit, his red-and-blue boots dangling over the fifteen-story drop, is Spider-Man. His mask is pulled up just past his nose, exposing his mouth and jaw as he takes a massive bite out of a folded slice of pepperoni pizza. A grease-stained cardboard box sits open on the metal housing beside him.
She feels bad for catching him like this for a moment, but shakes it off because she didn't do anything wrong.
But she should announce herself.
MJ clears her throat loudly.
Spider-Man flinches so hard he nearly drops the pizza into the gravel. He scrambles to pull his mask back down over his chin, spinning around with a quick, embarrassed posture.
“Oh!” he stammers, his voice muffled for a second before he adjusts the fabric.
"You know, there’s a cafe’ on the ground floor. They have chairs.”
"Uh—hey! What are you ... this isn't a restricted roof, is it? Because I checked for signs, and I didn't see any—"
"Relax, Spider-Man," MJ says, smirking as she walks over. "I came up here to chill. I didn't realize this was reserved for costumed lunch breaks."
He lets out a breathless laugh, his shoulders instantly dropping. "Yeah. Well. Fighting petty crime on an empty stomach is scientifically proven to lower efficiency by like, eighty percent.” He looks down at his lap, then stands suddenly. “I should go. I can go. Sorry to bother you.”
“What’s the hurry? I don’t mind the company. Unless you have somewhere to be?”
An alien invasion at the Mini-Mart perhaps?
“No, no. Nowhere to be at the moment.” Awkwardly, he sits back down. “It's uh … nice to see you again.”
“MJ,” she provides.
“MJ.”
She stops a few feet away, leaning her back against the cool brick wall of the stairwell casing. She looks down at the pizza box. "Where’d you even get that? It actually looks like real New York style."
"Oh, it is," he says proudly, pointing a gloved finger at the grease-spotted cardboard. "Pino’s in Brighton. Best thin crust in the city. I mean ... of the local options. It doesn't beat Manhattan, but it's respectable. Do you ... want a slice? I got a medium. Which is basically a personal size for someone with ... high metabolic needs."
Pressing her lips together to hide a smile (seriously, MJ, get it together), a sudden, fluttering warmth hits her chest.
"I mean, I'm not going to turn down free pizza. Thanks," she says, stepping over.
Spider-Man practically beams under the mask. She carefully lifts a hot, cheesy slice by the crust and takes a bite.
“Okay. Respectable. The sauce actually has flavor."
"Right?" Spider-Man says, leaning back on his hands as MJ sits down on the concrete ledge a couple of feet away from him, pulling her knees up. "I was prepared to be deeply disappointed by Boston pizza, but Pino's held it down."
MJ takes another bite and looks out over the autumn canopy of the city below. Orange and red leaves are blowing across the brick paths.
“So, what's the occasion? Just rewarding yourself for a hard morning of rooftop crouching?"
"Just taking a breather.” He pulls his mask back up over his mouth, taking another bite of his own slice. "Plus, the city looks cool today. Everyone's putting up pumpkin decorations down on the brownstone steps."
"Ah, yes. Halloween," MJ says dryly, taking a sip of her tea. "The one night of the year where people dress up in ridiculous costumes and act weird, instead of just ... you, every day."
Spider-Man snorts, almost choking on his crust. "Hey! My suit is functional. And highly aerodynamic."
"Sure it is," she chuckles. "You know, Halloween originally had nothing to do with buying forty-pound bags of fun-sized Snickers."
He turns his head toward her, leaning in with genuine interest. "Oh, yeah? Hit me with the dark MJ trivia."
"It comes from Samhain," MJ says, resting her chin on her knee. "It's an ancient Celtic festival. They believed that on the night of October thirty-first, the boundary between the living and the dead got completely blurred, and ghosts could come back to haunt the earth. So people wore masks made of animal skins and lit huge bonfires to hide from the spirits. Basically, if you looked scary enough, the ghosts would think you were one of them and leave you alone."
Spider-Man hummed. "So what you're saying is, wearing a mask is historically cool?”
MJ grins. “What? I thought you were supposed to be humble?”
“I'm super humble!”
This time when he laughs, she joins him.
"Though now it’s just an excuse for college kids to drink pumpkin ale and wear fake vampire fangs."
"Hey, don't knock the fangs," Spider-Man says as he finishes his crust and wipes his hands on a napkin. "Did you know the whole pumpkin carving thing was originally turnips?"
MJ's eyebrows pull up in surprise. "Turnips?"
"Yep," he says, his hands gesturing quickly as he gets into the story. "The Irish legend of Stingy Jack. This guy tricked the Devil, like, twice. So when he died, he wasn't allowed into Heaven or Hell. The Devil gave him one burning coal from the fires of Hell to light his way, and Jack carved out a turnip to put the coal in. People in Ireland used to carve terrifying faces into turnips and potatoes to scare Jack's ghost away. But when Irish immigrants came to America, they found pumpkins, which were way easier to carve."
“Wha–?” Her mouth is agape. "A hollowed-out, glowing turnip. That actually sounds terrifying. I approve."
"Right? Imagine walking down a dark alley in the 1800s and seeing a glowing, rotting turnip staring at you," he laughs, rubbing the back of his neck.
MJ watches him. The easy way he leans near her, the goofy charm in his voice, the protectiveness that seems to radiate off him like heat. Sitting here on a cold rooftop, sharing hot pizza while talking about ancient Celtic folklore, feels so bizarrely, completely right. Her chest aches with a strange, sweet pressure.
"So," MJ says softly, setting her empty napkin down. "What are you dressing up as for Halloween? Or do you just go as yourself and claim it's a very elaborate cosplay?"
Spider-Man looks over at her, his white lenses tilting downward toward where her hand rests on the concrete near his. She stiffens, bizarrely hoping he'd bridge the gap.
"I don't know," he murmurs. "I think I might just stay close by. In case anyone needs help with their turnips."
MJ smiles, looking sideways at him. "Good. I'll hold you to that.”
*******
The fluorescent lighting of the campus library basement hums, casting a pale glow over the spread of open textbooks, crumpled flashcards, and MJ’s open laptop. She spent the last three hours grinding through Multivariable Calculus problem sets, her brain completely fried.
Seeking any excuse for a distraction, she clicks open her cloud drive and pulls up a digital folder labeled High School / NYC.
She flips through the digitized memories, a rare, fond smile touching her lips as she looks at photos from her senior year at Midtown Tech. Pictures of field trips, decathlon victories, and finally, their graduation day.
MJ zooms in on a photo taken right outside the school gates. She and Ned are standing side by side in their blue caps and gowns, diplomas proudly held up.
But …
Ned is standing on the left, his body angled sharply to his right, his shoulder dipped down as if resting comfortably on someone’s upper back. MJ is standing on the right, her body tilted left, her elbow raised at a right-angle. It’s as if she’s throwing an arm over someone’s shoulder.
Except there is no one between them. Just an awkward, gaping two-foot void of empty air and green leaves.
MJ blinks, her breath catching in her throat. She quickly clicks to the next photo, a group shot in the hallway before the ceremony. The framing is completely off-center, leaving a glaring, asymmetrical hole right in the middle of the huddle. Another picture from the subway ride home: Ned facing sideways toward an empty seat, his mouth open in mid-laugh, as if reacting to a joke no one has spoken.
In every single photo … it makes no sense. It is like a ghost has been meticulously airbrushed out of their lives.
A sharp, dizzying throb pulses behind MJ’s eyes, the phantom ache returning with a vengeance.
An hour later, MJ slams her phone down onto the small laminate table at the corner coffee shop near Ned’s dorm. Ned, holding a cardboard cup of iced coffee, looks up in alarm as MJ slides into the booth across from him, her mole notebook and laptop already open.
"Okay, don't tell me I'm crazy," MJ says without greeting him, turning the laptop screen toward him. "Look at this photo, Ned."
Ned leans in, squinting at the screen. "Uh ... okay. Graduation. Man, my hair looked surprisingly good that day. What about it?"
"Look at the framing.” Her finger taps the screen right between them. "Look at where your shoulder is. Look at where my arm is."
Ned taps his lip, his brow pulling together as he stares at the image. He doesn't say anything at first. He just sits there, his smile slowly fading into a strange, unsettled quiet.
"Look at this one," MJ says, swiping to the subway picture. "And this one from the decathlon banquet. Why are we always framed like a trio, Ned? Why is there a physical gap in every single picture?"
Ned pulls the laptop a few inches closer, his eyes darting back and forth. He swallows hard, rubbing the back of his neck.
"MJ ..." He hesitates, staring down at his iced coffee before looking back up at her. "I haven't wanted to say anything because I thought I was just going crazy or, like, suffering from freshman year existential dread."
"What do you mean?"
"It’s ... everything. Like a few weeks ago, I was packing up the last of my stuff from home, and I found my old Lego Death Star. The super huge one."
"Ok.”
"Yeah, but ... I look at it, MJ, and I realize I can't remember building it," Ned whispers, leaning across the table. "I remember having it. I remember the pieces. But I swear, I have this overwhelming memory of sitting on the floor for twelve hours with someone else, handing them the little grey bricks, laughing about some stupid movie. But when I try to look at their face in my head, it’s just ... static. Like a corrupted file."
He runs a hand over his face, letting out a shaky breath.
"I'll go to order food and almost buy a second sandwich. I'll watch a trailer for a sci-fi movie and instinctively turn my head to tell to someone who isn't there. I thought ... I thought maybe I was just lonely."
MJ stares at her best friend. The cold, logical part of her brain, the part that demands proof and facts, is suddenly overwhelmed by an agonizing sense of validation.
"You're not crazy," MJ says quietly. "But I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Group amnesia?”
“Not likely.”
She turns the laptop so they can both see the graduation photo again.
"We're both leaning toward empty space. Who were we leaning on?"