Chapter Text
It started on a Tuesday morning, in Spanish class, when Peter didn’t have a pen, and asked to borrow MJ’s. She gave him an unimpressed look, but passed him an extra she had. Their fingers brushed. Her breath hitched slightly, and Peter’s eyes snapped to hers.
In that moment, it was like he was on Titan again, and his body was disintegrating, but instead of pain, he felt a thrumming in his body, steady and warm, overpowering .
He’d never thought of how soft her skin could be, or that her stare was so piercing. But they were, and Peter couldn’t look away, and shitshitshit.
Someone dropped their textbook, and the loud BANG snapped them out of whatever spell they’d been under. But it’d been enough.
He’d liked Liz before she left, in that innocent way that gave him butterflies and made him catch his breath. It had been a beautiful and easy infatuation that a year later he could laugh at and mock slightly. His feelings for her had been just as naïve as he had been.
But this? The yearning that had punched Peter in the stomach suddenly–there was nothing innocent or naïve about it. He didn’t need to catch his breath, looking at MJ from the corner of his eyes, because he was too aware of his every breath and hers from where she sat next to him.
He watched her as she concentrated on the worksheet in front of her and bit her bottom lip.
She looked up for a second, and the air between them crackled in confusion and a tension that made Peter want to squirm and close his eyes in a strange pleasure simultaneously.
No, this was nothing like Liz. MJ wasn’t Liz.
She was more, so much more, and the way he could hear her breath stutter a bit–
That was the moment he understood what desire was.
It made Peter a bit sad to realize that what he’d felt for Liz had never been desire, and that he’d never really understood all the things he’d thought he had.
==
Wanting MJ was stressful. It invaded his senses throughout inopportune moments in the day, like during an exam in pre-calculus, or during dodgeball in gym. The only thing that saved him was his spidey senses, but it couldn’t stop the dizziness that washed over him as she passed him by in the halls, or sat down next to him at lunch with a casual, “hey, loser.”
Wanting MJ was stressful...until it wasn’t, because he still had nightmares about disappearing, and they fucked with him more than not. In those moments, he reveled in the wanting of her.
When he woke up from a nightmare, Peter would try to breathe and think of the way MJ bit her lip when she concentrated, or pushed her hair out of her face when she ranted.
–his body started to float away –
Peter gripped the sheets tighter, thinking about the way MJ’s eyes sparkled and trailed over him, through him.
– pain and a fire unseen burned through him, crushing him, dismembering every particle in his body –
He fantasized that those eyes were under him, breathing with him, calming him.
“Your heart rate is elevated, Peter. Would you like me to contact Mr. Stark?” KAREN’s voice invaded the fantasy. He’d forgotten to take his suit off again when he got in from patrolling; it was starting to become a bad habit.
“No,” Peter rasped out. He wanted to sound firmer, but he couldn’t. It was too soon, too close to the dream in time. He just needed a few more minutes and he’d be fine.
“This is the fifth night in a row that this has happened,” KAREN reminded him as though he could forget. But stress caused him to have more nightmares, and wanting MJ was extremely stressful. “I think I should contact Mr. Stark.”
He shook his head, but AI’s can’t see. A few more minutes with MJ in his mind, smiling that small smile of hers, and he could relax.
– Mr. Stark’s eyes were so afraid, robbing him of any peace inside of death; death, death, death–he was dying. This was death, and there’d never been pain like this before –
Peter wasn’t sure how long the memory from the nightmare lasted, but MJ’s soft skin against his own finally caught him.
He’d been falling, but the thought of those hands on him, kept him grounded. But there was an actually hand gripping his arm, shaking him a bit, and Peter realized Tony Stark was in his bedroom.
The haze of dream/awakeness that had meshed and drowned him lifted completely and Peter rushed to sit up.
“Hey, easy there, kid,” Tony put some pressure against Pete’s chest.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Peter stammered as he sat up, breath a bit shallow. “KAREN shouldn’t have called you, I’m okay.”
“No offense kid, but this is the opposite of okay,” Tony frowned, and sat on the edge of the bed. “How long have you been having nightmares?”
“Depends on the day–the week,” Peter shrugged. “This week’s been harder than others, that’s all. I’m fine .”
Tony Stark sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I was the king of ‘I’m fine’ too. But you can’t keep things like this to yourself.” Peter went to object but Tony held up his hand. “This isn’t just about you, this is about the safety of everyone. You think you’re any use to anyone tired and delirious because you haven’t gotten any sleep? Out there, as Spiderman, you can just as easily injure somebody as yourself by accident because you’re exhausted. So, spare me the ‘I’m fine’ routine and tell me why you’re stressed.”
Peter wanted to tell him about the fact that he can barely focus in film class because they were talking about coloring this month, and the sunset themed films reminded him of being on Titan, and dying, and being resurrected which had hurt just as much.
He wanted to call him out on his hypocrisy because Tony looked just as tired as him. But Iron Man could take breaks–was currently on one. Iron Man could deal with his trauma on his own terms because he wasn’t in highschool and no one expected him to just be okay.
Spiderman didn’t have breaks, not really.
So, he looked towards the window that Tony had come in through and let the words flow as though it wasn’t 2am in the morning.
“There’s a girl, and she’s...kind of everything, you know?”
Tony huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, I know one of those.”
“It’s fine,” Peter shrugged and tried to push through in that awkward way of his that was half rambling and half brutal. “The world isn’t ending, and I’m not back on Titan, and I get that, but the sunset is always there, and I can’t really escape it. But sometimes I don’t want to because she looks really pretty in the sunset, you know? Her skin looks like it’s glowing against the sunset, and sometimes I think it’s okay, and everything’s okay, until it’s not. And she looks at me like she sorta, maybe, might feel the same way about me sometimes, but then maybe it’s in my head. It just kinda drives me crazy, and I close my eyes to try to escape her, but she’s in my dreams, with me on titan, disappearing alongside me, and it really sucks, you know? It sucks because it hurts, and I don’t want her to feel that kind of pain, but then I’ve got to see her, after a Decathlon practice, in the sunset, and–yeah. I don’t know. Just, it all just gets to be a bit much sometimes.”
Tony stared at Peter with concern in his eyes, but at least there wasn’t pity or judgment; there couldn’t be because he knew exactly what those dreams were like from the other perspective–the perspective of failure, watching Peter disappear, and the terror freezing him.
They were all haunted by Thanos’ actions in their own way, and pitying Peter would mean that Tony would have to pity himself. So, instead, Tony focused on what he could help.
“Have you told her how you feel?”
“No,” Peter said emphatically, as though it were the worst suggestion in the world. “What am I going to say? Hey, so, I can’t stop thinking about you, and sometimes it’s good thoughts, and sometimes it’s horrible and you die.”
“ Or ,” Tony rolled his eyes as he stood up. “You could simply stop at the ‘I can’t stop thinking about you’? Better yet, simplify it to ‘I like you. Want to go to dinner?’ I’m not Casanova, but I think that’ll do the trick with the desired results.”
“Maybe,” Peter shrugged again. “Anyway, sorry KAREN woke you up.”
“No worries kid,” Tony smirked self-deprecatingly. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been doing my fair share of waking people up in the middle of the night since Thanos too. We all have. The key is dealing with it so you can move on.”
“And have you?” Peter asked thoughtlessly. “Been dealing with it?” He felt slightly bad about pushing the question, but there’s been a burning anger towards the man since Titan that he hasn’t been able to shake fully. It’s strange, and he’s not sure why, and sometimes pushing Tony makes him feel a bit better.
Tony gave Peter a searching look that would’ve been awkward and uncomfortable in the light of day, but at 2:30am, it was just a part of the darkness and the night. “Sometimes. Sometimes, it’s just easier to focus on everything that I’ve got that’s good and let it overshadow everything else, everything dark that’s still inside me. That might always be inside of me.”
Peter nodded because he could understand that. MJ sometimes got pulled into the darkness inside of him, but she was the light, wanting her was a beacon for him that overshadowed and overcame the darkness too sometimes.
“Does your aunt know about the nightmares?”
“No, and please don’t tell her. You know how excitable Aunt May can be,” Peter pleaded, the remnants of his terrors chased away with the waves of the normal conversation.
“She won’t hear it from me,” Tony smirked. “On one condition.”
Peter knew he wasn’t going to like whatever was coming. “Anything,” he answered honestly. Because even if he didn’t like the condition, it would still be be better than dealing with Aunt May’s sad and pitying eyes, full of grief for him that she couldn’t help.
“You’re going to have sessions with Banner–twice a week.”
“What? What do you mean sessions?”
“I mean sessions . You’ll talk, and work through your shit, kid.”
“But I thought you just said that you–”
“I’m me, and you’re supposed to be better than me,” Tony said seriously. “This is one of the ways you do better than me, by learning to deal with your problems head on instead of hiding from them.”
Peter wanted to object before but he felt Tony’s words resonate within his chest just like the first time he’d said them to him.
You were supposed to be better than me .
And even though Tony wasn’t his dad, it still sort of felt like he was when he said things like that. When he gazed at him with those eyes full of expectations and understanding.
“Sleep, kid,” Tony settled himself in the rickety chair at his computer desk. Peter wanted to tell him he didn’t have to stay, but there was something solid, comforting about knowing that he wasn’t completely alone. “Dream of your girl–the good dreams, not the bad ones– and things’ll look better in the morning.”
Peter tried to smile, but exhaustion was calling to him, and as he closed his eyes, MJ’s small smile and penetrating gaze beckoned him.
His shoulders relaxed, because even though wanting MJ was stressful, sometimes wanting her was Peter’s saving grace.