Chapter Text
The first thing he recognizes without even having to open his eyes is her scent, wrapped around him in a way that makes him feel held for the first time in years. Whether it's the comfort itself or the fear that once he truly wakes up, it'll disappear, has him trying to hold on as tight as he can to this limbo between sleep and consciousness.
But it doesn't last, like nothing ever seems to, and Peter can feel himself returning to his body all too soon. He opens his eyes one millimeter at a time, trying to slowly ease back into whatever horrible state he'd been pulled from, and immediately realizes that he's no longer on the roof. He's not even outside.
He sits up way too fast, biting back a groan from the headache that’s threatening to crush him, and looks around the dimly lit room. There's a poster tacked on the wall of Maya Angelou, next to one of Dr. Mae Jemison and the space shuttle Endeavor. Scraps of pencil drawings are scattered across a cork board on the back of a closet door, and he has to gaslight himself into believing that more than a few don't resemble Spider-Man the way he thinks they do.
It feels as alarming as it does intimate, waking up in MJ’s room, in MJ’s bed, getting to soak in all these little details of her life that are just freely scattered around the place she must spend most of her time.
He tries to swallow the lump forming in his throat for more reasons than he can count, feelings of grief and love and fear simultaneously welling up inside of him. There's so much of her that he didn't get to experience.
Peter quickly wipes his eyes, compartmentalizing every feeling right now into the deal with later section of his brain, and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. All he’s certain of at this moment is that he can't stay. Not when the only thing MJ knows is that he collapsed on their rooftop after crashing their housewarming party.
It was kind of a blur after he'd seen her in the kitchen with her boyfriend, if he's being honest. She seemed happy, genuinely, which is all he's ever wanted for her—even if the sight made his own vision go spotty, his stomach feeling like it had been filled with rocks. But what he didn't want, never wanted, was to have to watch her fall in love again, so up close and personal. A real front row seat. What could he do other than leave?
He didn't expect her to follow him.
Everything after exiting the party felt more awful than usual, not just his emotions but his body in a terribly physical way. His senses were dialed up at least five hundred percent more than they usually are and his head was killing him and—
And his letter.
He immediately shoves his hands in his pockets, scrounging around, only to find a few coins and empty space. It's not there.
“No, no, no…” he mutters to himself because there are only two options, and he's not sure which is worse. One is that he either lost it, dropped it on the roof when he collapsed—heartbreaking to lose the only solid proof he had that he loved someone, but manageable. Or, two...
“You're awake.”
Peter can feel his heart constrict in his chest the second he hears her voice, his eyes immediately drawn to her like a moth to light. She's standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, a sweater pulled over the dress she was wearing earlier.
“Yeah, I, um…” His mouth is so dry that he can't make it form any coherent words. “I am so sorry, I didn't…mean to—”
“Collapse in front of me?” MJ offers a minimal shrug, her arms uncrossing as she steps further inside. “I think that's the least of your offenses.”
The temperature feels like it rises about ten degrees, at least in his own body, and something like helplessness start to crash into him in waves because what could that mean, other than she's figured something out? He should've known that stepping into this apartment was going to cost him in more ways than one, but he just couldn't stop himself. Not this time, not when his friends were so close after having to watch them from a measly livestream for the past four years.
But then MJ moves forward a few more feet until he's looking up at her, her eyes glistening under the 1 a.m. light, hands outstretched and searching—until they reach his face. She tilts it back and forth between gentle fingers, examining, and now every bit of warmth in his body means something else entirely.
They haven't been this close in years, and he knows he shouldn't think this way, but it's too easy to find the amber specs in her eyes, the lightest dusting of freckles across her nose bridge, and memorize it all again—every specific detail of MJ that’s written into her face. Because the only thing his senses want to do is hone in on her.
“Are you okay?” she asks in a tempered voice, soft and audible only to him.
“I…I don't know,” Peter whispers, an admittance he wouldn't make to anyone else. Her fingers linger a little longer before dropping off, and he already misses the contact. “It must've been…low blood sugar, or something.”
“Low blood sugar,” MJ repeats after a moment, skeptical. Her lips form a straight line. “Because low blood sugar causes black eyes like yours, right? And…web fluid to leak from your wrists?”
“What?” He must have missed something. But when he looks down at his sleeves, he sees the remnants of thin white fibers stuck on the cotton, which are, in fact, still attached to his wrist. His face crumples into disgust. “Oh, my god—what the f—”
“So this isn't normal for you.” MJ turns away from him momentarily, pacing, calculating. “I thought so. I mean, this isn't normal for anyone, obviously, but Spider-Man…well, you've always had webshooters.”
“Yeah, yeah, I…” Peter snaps his mouth shut when he realizes, his entire body freezing. He doesn't even think he breathes for a whole minute. “What did you just say?”
“Spider-Man. Or, do you go by Peter Parker?” she faces him once again, but this time, her expression is considerably less soft. Her eyes narrow as she holds up a piece of paper between two fingers, and there it is. His letter in the flesh. “Or…Maynard? Which is it? We've only been introduced, what, three times?”
Peter feels his head spinning, never having imagined this would be the way this conversation would go—didn't even want it to happen in the first place. But she's staring at him with a quiet fury now, expectant and waiting.
“I can explain.” He stands up off the bed, taking a few tentative steps towards her, but all she does is hold the letter out to him.
“Read it to me. Out loud.”
He hesitates for a moment before taking it, unfolding the piece of paper and doing exactly what she wants—reads it to her, just as he would have years ago in the donut shop if he hadn't made a decision then: that her safety was more important than what he wanted, what she wanted—that he would rather live in a world where she didn't know him anymore than a world where she stopped existing at all.
Maybe it's selfish in a way, to love her so much that he can't stand the idea of being in a universe without her in it, but it's a flaw he’s accepted a long time ago.
“But the truth, MJ, is that I love you,” Peter recites quietly, not looking down at the paper because, if he's being honest, he's had these words memorized since he wrote them down. She hasn't dropped her gaze from him once, so he sees the progression of anger melting into frustration melting into something worse. There are tears in her eyes, and it breaks his heart. “And I hope that deep down, something inside of you remembers that you love me too. But until then…I’m just going to be Spider-Man.”
MJ is silent even after he stops, long enough that he has to wonder if she plans on never speaking to him again. She eventually wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and squares her shoulders.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” she asks, but he doesn't need to answer for her to read him like a book, as she's always done. “Right. So you were just going to make that decision for me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don't need you to tell me you're sorry.” She takes a step towards him, something stiffening in her tone. “I need you to tell me why you would do this to me—why you would choose this for me.”
“I lost someone,” he admits in a voice quieter than the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. He can still remember the exact moment years ago, the sight of blood leaving faster than his hands could catch, the sight of May lying on the ground in pain until she wasn't—because by then, she was already gone. He already visits her grave as often as life allows him. He doesn't want to imagine having to visit two. “And they'd still be here if it wasn't for me. I didn't read you that letter because I didn't want anything like that to happen to you.”
“That's not your decision to make,” MJ says with a shake of her head, lips downturned, yet there's empathy bleeding through the anger.
“I know it's not, but…you mean everything to me.” Peter reaches up absently, wipes the wetness from his cheek away with his sleeve. “And I’ve been trying to live my life without you, but I just—I can't. I can't let go. I can't stop loving you.”
“Have you tried?” she asks, her gaze still slightly rheumy, the distance between them smaller now as if they'd been instinctively closing it this whole time. “To stop loving me.”
“I don't want to,” he admits, and he knows wholly and completely that he would rather let himself hurt like this forever than learn what it feels like to stop wanting her. And that might say a lot about him, but he likes to think it says the most about her—about the kind of person she is, the kind of person he wants to love.
MJ nods slowly, the wheels visibly turning behind those dark brown eyes, and then she turns around, sits down on the edge of her bed. She stares at her hands in her lap, picking at a loose thread in her sweater, before she speaks again.
“There are these memories in my head that never really made sense to me.” She looks up at him and then over at her board, where the drawings are. “I could never see a face or hear a distinct voice, but he was always there when we needed him the most. In Washington, Venice, London…here.”
“Wait, so you remembered…”
“Spider-Man,” MJ finishes, nodding slowly, meeting his eyes with a steadiness that kind of makes him want to look away. “Every moment with him, whether it made sense or not. And usually, it didn't.”
Peter understands, since erasing the memory of his own identity didn't mean erasing the mask from their lives, and he doesn't know if that's better or worse. He's about to apologize again, uselessly, but then her fingers trace along the collar of her sweater and she pulls out her necklace, the two glass petals gleaming. His mouth goes dry.
“I didn't know why Spider-Man would give me this,” she says, staring at the fragility between her fingertips. “But I wanted to find out. Because, in all of the memories I had of him, he felt like…a friend. Or something more.”
“Yeah…something like that,” he murmurs, his legs almost robotically dropping him back on the bed next to her. “For what it's worth, I’m sorry again. I wish all this had been easier on you guys.”
“No, I…I’m glad you left me with something to hold onto.” MJ turns her head slightly to look at him, and they're close enough that he can hear her softly exhale, his senses tuning into her breathing like instinct. She's calm, comfortable, and that in itself eases him too. “I like being able to figure things out.”
“I know you do.” Peter’s lips curl up at the ends, eyes crinkling at the corners, the kind of smile that used to be a habit and is now a rarity, reserved for this. Reserved for her. “Have you reached a verdict?”
“Still working on it.” Her eyes have dropped to his mouth, and he suddenly feels more aware of himself and every part of his body than he has in the last twenty-four hours. “Might need more information.”
“You can ask me anything,” he whispers, throat bobbing, and she stares at him for a beat longer before reaching out, cupping his jaw with her hand, warmth traveling through him like electricity.
“Is this okay?”
“You're the one with the boyfriend.” His voice sounds hoarse to his own ears, clogged with restraint, because even the simple touch of skin against skin is enough to undo him. The least he can do is let her choose to close the distance between them. “You tell me.”
“It’s casual,” she replies simply, and he doesn't know if that's just an excuse she's telling herself to make this okay, or if maybe there's something else going on between them that he isn't privy to. It doesn't matter to him in the end, not really, not when she slowly leans forward, presses her lips against his, and he feels himself coming back to life in a way that hadn’t felt possible, even just hours earlier.
He waits a beat, ensuring that this is something they're both choosing, before tangling one hand in her hair, the other pulling her closer until there's no space left between them at all. His mouth works gently against hers at first—holding himself back as much as one can from something they've wanted more than anything—and then he's kissing her in all the ways he remembers, and she’s kissing him back in all the ways she doesn't. Somehow, muscle memory still seems to be working just fine.
“MJ,” he mutters into her mouth, his voice gravelly from want, need, every sensation he's been deprived of since she'd left his life. “God, I've missed you so much.”
She breathes out slowly, their foreheads eventually coming to rest together, and he doesn't know if he can bring himself to open his eyes. He doesn't want to be ripped away from this moment just yet, his body doing all it can to memorize every detail. His hand rubs up and down her arm soothingly, and she releases a shaky exhale, a sound of quiet grief.
When he finally manages to open his eyes, he sees hers are still closed, tears tracking down her cheeks, and his heart stutters.
“Hey, hey, are you okay? What’s wrong?” Peter immediately brings his palms up to cup her face, brushing away the wetness with his thumbs. Her eyes open, lashes damp, and she offers him a small smile.
“That felt pretty conclusive,” she says, soft and shaky, reaching up to place one hand over his where it caresses her cheek. Her gaze roves all over his face, lingering, like trying to memorize something you never want to forget again.
“What do you mean?” he asks, swallowing thickly, and she doesn't say anything for a beat. Just stares at him. And it feels different this time—different from the look of mild interest during the party, different from the look of concern on the rooftop, different from even the look of frustration and loss from just ten minutes ago. He can read the underlying ache in her expression just as clearly as before—that hasn't disappeared—but now there's something else too. A reserved type of fondness he remembers almost as clearly as yesterday, back from when they'd first confessed on the Tower Bridge.
“I didn't think it would work,” MJ admits with an uneven laugh, delicately touching her fingers to her necklace. They linger with reverence. “It wasn't even…the plan, really. I just wanted to see if…”
“If…what?”
“If my body still remembered you,” she says quietly. “It does. My mind just finally…caught up.”
“Are you saying…” Peter trails off, feeling his eyes sting with emotion as he blinks at her, rapidly. He doesn't want to hope, didn't even think he had any left after all this time, but he falls victim to it now. It overflows in him, filling his heart to the brim.
“I remember,” she murmurs softly. “I remember you, Peter Parker, Spider-Man, the good and the bad. I remember everything.”
He can't bring himself to hesitate this time, his lips crashing back into hers, inevitable and immediate. The thought of another name, another man being in his place doesn't even cross his mind—a dilemma for a different day—as he hoists her into his lap. She grips his hair fervently with one hand, the other slipping beneath the collar of his shirt, tracing the shape of his shoulders, and he feels himself physically tremble. There’s a pressure building at both wrists, faint and insistent, something he registers and dismisses in the same breath—not now, not when she’s kissing him like this—and he doesn’t let himself think about it again until much later.
“I can’t believe it,” he says in between kissing her, like he needs her lips on him more than he needs air itself. And she laughs, a wonderful, joyous sound that he decides is something he's going to hear for the rest of his life. “I can't believe you remember…”
“It feels like waking up from a really long dream,” she tells him, curls framing her face as she looks down, and all he can do is smile. “And this is my choice to be here, okay? No more trying to protect me, or you'll get a much worse reaction than you're getting right now.”
“I’m going to protect you for as long as I live,” Peter says honestly, his hand reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “But I’ll do it with you next to me. I promise.”
“Deal,” MJ says, and she leans in to drop him one more kiss before pulling back—pausing there, because his hand is still tangled in her hair, fingers catching on something that shouldn't be there. A thin white strand looped through her curls, glinting faint in the lamplight. His stomach drops before his brain even finishes the thought.
“MJ. Don’t move.”
“What?” She goes still on instinct, eyes flicking to his face first, reading the alarm there before she even asks. “What is it?”
“There’s, um...” He tugs the strand free carefully, holding it up between them like it might explain itself, and it’s only then when he notices the rest of it—the headboard behind her strung with the same fine white thread, the pillow, even a line caught on the lamp. His face goes hot. “I think I did that. To your hair. And your headboard.”
MJ twists to look behind her, taking in the mess laying across her pillows, and instead of the reaction he’s bracing for, she just huffs something close to a laugh, plucking another strand free without much concern.
“Interesting.” She holds it up between them, inspecting it like evidence. “So, I have to ask…do the black eyes and the…and this”—a small wave at the wreckage of her bed—“only happen when you’re emotionally overwhelmed, or is this an everyday occurrence?”
“Uh…” He blinks hard, turning slightly towards the window to see his reflection illuminated by her bedside lamp, and there they are, staring back at him. His eyes, drenched in darkness, not unlike the night sky surrounding them. He swallows thickly, anxious. “I don't actually know. This is a new thing. It's never happened before tonight, or at least, I don't think it has.”
She frowns, thoughtful, but doesn't back away, doesn't label him as any of the words he's starting to picture himself as in his head, because what the hell is going on with him?
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says before he can ask, squeezing his hand. “We’ll figure out what this is. Together, this time. That's non-negotiable.”
“Okay. Together,” he repeats, quieter, testing the shape of the word after years of not getting to use it. He knows that despite whatever is happening to his body, having her beside him again is more than he could've ever asked for, gratitude still eclipsing every other emotion. He leans forward into her space once more, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth just because he can.
“Hey, MJ. You know how I mentioned that I thought the Spidey tracker was malfunctioning earlier?” Ned’s voice rings out from the hallway, on the other side of her door. “I've been up all night trying to recalibrate it, but it's still saying he's in our direct vicinity. In this area of the apartment, to be exact, so I might need your brain to come fiddle with it.”
He knocks once, but her door hadn’t completely shut from when she'd initially entered, so it slowly swings open, giving them a direct line of sight to Ned and his tracker beeping.
“Hey, I’m nearby! Hey, I’m nearby!”
Ned drops the tablet on the ground, taking in the two of them tangled together on MJ’s bed, and his expression freezes, like he realizes he's seeing something he probably shouldn't be seeing.
“Um…why are there webs everywhere?”