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He knows what she’s going to say when he turns up at her place for the sixth time that week with a wound for her to fix - this time it's a gash along his chest. He knows that her heart breaks every time he sits down with a wince and tells her he’s okay.
“You can’t keep doing this,” she whispers, her hands pushing her hair from his face.
“Em,” he replies, hearing the desperation in his voice. He said that if she ever put a stop to this he’d say okay. He wouldn’t fight it. It’s been harder for him to heal every time he gets hurt and it takes him way too long to get back up.
He knows he has to. But it’s so much harder every time he gets knocked to the floor. But it's hard for her too.
“You know you mean the world to me, right?” she asks, and her voice cracks at the end and he feels his chest do the same.
“MJ -”
“And you’ve protected me this whole time. You always do,” she continues, moving next to him on her bed. He takes a look around at the lights and the pictures because he knows she’s going to ask him to leave.
“But you have to understand,” she says, turning to face him. And she’s beautiful. And strong. And so tired. “I want to protect you too. And that means saving you from yourself. May misses you. Ned misses you. I miss you.”
“I know, and I’m going to fix it and it’ll be fine,” he says, hearing the fight in his voice dying out because she’s right. She’s never been wrong before, so he’s not sure why she’d start now.
Strange warned him. He reminds him every time he speaks to him that he needs to end this. He needs to fix the chaos that he’s caused when the spell went awry. But to do that? To fix it all? He needs to let her go. And for all the things he can do, all the time he's the hero. It’s been because of her. And he can’t find the courage to let her go.
“You have to let go, Pete,” she says, rubbing his damp cheek with her thumb. “You have to let me forget.”
“Michelle, please . I’ll find another way, just give me -”
“There’s no time left,” she says, gripping his hands. And he doesn’t want to lose her too. It’s not fair that Michelle has to forget about him for this to work. It’s not fair that his powers caused his uncle to die. It’s not fair that he got bitten in the first place. But he did.
“I lose. I always lose.”
“This isn’t losing,” she says, eyes wet with ushed tears and he hates that she’s keeping herself from breaking down in front of him. “How can it be losing when you’re going to save the world?”
“I’m so sick of saving the world,” he murmurs, knowing it’s selfish. People need him and all he wants to do is take MJ somewhere safe and spend his time learning the books she read in freshman year and what colour she wants to dye her hair next. If she asked him, he’d say red.
“I know,” she replies, moving to wrap her arms around him. “But it can’t be me and you against the world if there’s no world.”
“I just,” he starts, holding her close.
“I know. You’re too good a guy who had responsibilities given to you that you didn’t deserve - but who else would do it so well, huh?” she asks, hands resting against his neck as if this whole issue isn’t his fault.
“God, I don’t want you to go,” he says, knowing he’s the one that needs to leave. But she understands, she always does. It’s bittersweet to think about the damage he’s created to be with her. But when it was all seemingly out of control, she was right there. He’s was going down, but he was doing it with her.
“You’re going to forget and I -”
“It’s only fair, right?” she says, a sad smile gracing her lips that he wants to kiss.
“Why's that?”
“I liked you before you even knew who I was,” she says, her fingers tightening on his suit. “So it’s your turn, right?”
He sees it now. The sadness lingering around the crease in her brows and the way she chews her lip. He sees the way her eyes always found him if only for a split second in gym class before she looked away. He sees the way she spoke to him and Ned at random times and only to say something mean and he misses it. He doesn’t want to lose any moment or shared memory with her.
But he has to. And he knows that. He’s always known that. He knew it when the enemies he’s never seen before showed up and he knew it when the spiders turned up to fight without a second thought.
He’s torn universes and timelines apart trying to keep her with him - but that can’t happen anymore and he knows that. It's not working. But it doesn’t make it any easier.
“I’ll find you. Okay?” he says in a moment of weakness or strength. He’s not sure which.
“And don’t wait,” she rushes out. “The second you’re safe, come find me.”
“What if -”
“Come find me,” she replies, pressing her lips to his hard and fast.
“Keep the necklace on, and I’ll know, okay? But if you - if you’re with… if you’re happy that’s okay.”
She gets up quickly, grabbing the drawing she made of him in sophomore year of the wall. She writes something on it and then folds it in half, and half again, placing it in his palm.
“Come find me, and tell me this,” she says, and he can see the pain etched across her face and he wonders if leaving her alone would be kinder. If he never came back - she’d be safe. He could keep his distance and avoid the hell he’s put her through every day since he told her he liked her.
He ducks his head while he thinks about a life without her. Just because there’s something in her that makes him strong, that makes him brave, makes him whole… doesn’t mean she deserves this life.
“I love you,” she whispers, and his neck snaps up so fast he thinks he slipped a disc. He hasn’t been waiting for her to say it first - kind of. It’s just that he clearly doesn’t deserve her on a multiverse level, so waiting for her to cement her love for him first just made sense.
“I just wanted you to know, maybe it’ll make you stop thinking about not coming back to me.”
“Em,” he says, forgetting all the times she read his mind before and he doesn’t want her to think there’s a universe that exists where he would ever not want to be with her.
“Go get ‘em, Tiger,” she says with a nudge and smile and he loves her.
“I love you,” he replies, hoping the ferocity with which he says it means she might remember him after all.
“I love you. I want - I just want you. I’m not the same person without you,” he whispers.
“You’ll always be the best person I know,” she says, pressing her lips to his. It’s meant to be chaste, that much he knows, but she gasps against his mouth as he holds her close to him and it suddenly feels like the last time they’ll do this. Like once they’re done, it’s over.
So he licks his tongue into her mouth and she bites his lip while she takes a breath. She consumes his every thought when they’re like this - their tongues moving together perfectly like this is practised. And it is. They’ve spent so much of their relationship hiding from everyone and it came with its drawbacks - but being with Michelle was never one of them.
“I can’t,” he sobs when she moves back. He runs his hands over her hair, twisting curls through his fingers as he tries desperately to remember every freckle on her face.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he says, eyes tracking every minuscule movement her face makes. Her bottom lip trembles just before she clamps it down with her teeth but her eyes are kind - they’re always kind.
“This isn’t losing,” she replies, rubbing her thumbs along his ribcage and he wonders if she can feel the way his heart is clawing its way out of his chest to get to her.
“This is just letting go.”
It’s been weeks since he last saw her, since he last spoke to her, since he last saw her face in anything other than his lock screen and the way he misses her is visceral.
The world’s been saved for seventy-two hours and there have been no massive black holes, and noone has even tried to kill him since he landed back in New York. He figures she’ll forgive him for being three days late, but he needed to make sure it was safe because leaving her the last time was enough heartache to last him a lifetime.
She’ll know who he is, that much was possible. She just won’t remember anything from before sophomore year. He’s unsure how much she liked him prior to that - she’d always blush whenever he asked her and he felt too awful that she was looking at him while he looked at someone else. So he never pushed for the information.
So he walks to the bakery May said she worked at, with little information into what she’s going to think. He takes her note out, rereading the words she wrote for him. Not that he doesn’t have them memorised, the letters played behind his eyelids as he slept and the words live in the folds of his heart with all his thoughts of MJ.
He skids to a halt outside Peter Pan’s bakery and he’s too nervous to laugh at the name. Maybe her picking up a weekend job with the same name as him means she’ll have been thinking of him - if only a little.
He sees her then - when he’s done reading the note that has a handful of words on at best. The note that saved him when he didn’t think he could fight anymore. It’s her. It’s always her.
Her brows are furrowed like she’s bored and her fingers are tapping the counter like she wants to be reading but she’s not allowed a book behind the register. He’s not sure what her reaction will be when she sees him - or if she’ll react to what he’s saying at all. But he can see the glimmer of a broken necklace around her neck and he almost pulls the door of the hinges when he walks in.
“Hey,” she says, face impassive but he heard the shallow intake of breath when she recognised him. Her voice soothes the ache in his chest he felt the second he left her room and he heard her muffle a sob against her hand.
“Hey,” he replies, knowing he’s blushing and his eyes are wide but in his defence, he’s using all his power to not propel across the worktop and kiss her.
“What can I get you?” she asks, drumming her fingers faster on the counter and she’s nervous. Having these nuggets of information seem unfair but he’s planning on telling her everything the second he can - so he thinks she won’t mind.
“Latte, please,” he replies. He knows she doesn’t remember everything they were - and she never will. But the familiarity of ordering the drink she used to grab for him on the way to school makes it feel like this might work out.
She smiles at him awkwardly, and he grips the paper in his hand so tight it almost rips - so he folds it back up and puts it in his pocket. He takes a deep breath as her back is turned, reciting the words in his head so he doesn’t stumble.
“Er, so what do you call an acid with an attitude?” he says, barely above a whisper because she’s going to think he’s a fucking weirdo. But she’s the one who wrote down a joke before he went to save the world so really, this awkward silence is on her.
“I dunno,” she replies, coy as anything as she places his cup down on the counter. Her hand remains grasping the cup like she might take it back when he reveals the punchline.
“A mean oh acid,” he says, smiling wide when he watches her lip become clamped between her teeth. He waits the two seconds before she can’t hold it back again and her lips burst apart with a loud ha.
“That’s the worst joke I’ve ever heard,” she replies, her smile matching his. She loves bad jokes - he knows that. He just can never tell if the jokes are truly bad or if he just has a weird sense of humour. She never used to mind.
“Yeah,” he says, beaming at her. He goes to take the coffee from her and his fingers brush hers as she takes her hand away. His eyes flick to where her lips are slightly parted and he watches the blush forming on her cheeks.
“I know a lot more jokes,” he says.
“I know, I’ve seen your t-shirts,” she replies, a small smile still tugging at the corners of her mouth even though she is trying to keep it down.
“Well not the last few days, you weren’t at school,” she says, eyes widening as she lets him know she looks out for him when he’s not around. “I think - or -”
“I’ll tell you all about it if you want?” he asks, throat tight. “Maybe over coffee, somewhere else? Or we could go to the park. Or -”
“Like - erm, like a date?” she asks, and he hears the hopefulness in her voice and he can’t believe he missed it the first time around.
“Yeah, like a date.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Cool.”
“Very cool,” he replies, waiting for her to roll her eyes at him. She does. He tells her he’ll pick her up after her shift and she hums an okay as the door goes, ushering in a group of teens.
“I have to -”
“Yeah, of course. So, I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah, see you later, Peter.”