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MJ watches the back of the strange guy that just walked out of the cafe, a coffee and a sweet, sad smile on him. Peter Parker, he'd said. And then he'd looked at her like she was—
She doesn't know. But she has a feeling she was looking at him the same way.
It's when she sees his profile on the other side of the glass door that she has an irrepressible urge to run after him. She wipes her hands on her apron, she rounds the counter, she opens the door…
But he's not there anymore.
It had started many days before, when Ned and her had gotten their miraculous admission letters to MIT. An unprecedented error had occurred, they read. They were never supposed to get rejection letters. They got formal apologies and full Engineers' packs with jackets, pants, caps, T-shirts and matching cups as compensation.
MJ was so incredulously elated that she hadn't even commented on the incincerity of it all. Not until the next day, at least.
The moment of interest here is one so objectively small that it wasn't until she was trying to connect the dots that she realized it was important.
"This is awesome! Can you believe it, dude!?"
Ned had reached for his left side, as if to put his arm around someone's shoulders, or maybe clap someone on the back, but stopped half-way through.
He had stared at the empty space beside him with such a disheartened expression that MJ hadn't been able to suppress a snort, even as she thought something was off about the whole thing.
"Did the letter affect you that much?" she teased. His face recovered its jovial amusement at once, and he laughed with her.
"Pfft! Guess I thought you were there!"
"Here," she said, handing him a dry donut with much solemnity. "For your perception issues."
They had kept talking with smiles on their lips and hope in their eyes, and that was it.
The second moment happened when she was alone.
You know how sometimes you go into a room and the second you step in, you forget what you came for? That's how simply it'd begun. MJ, being as stubborn as she was, didn't just shrug it off and trust that she'd remember later. She'd stood in the center of her bedroom, her hands on her hips as she spun around with slow steps, pinning her eyes to everything there was to see. Her bed— no. Her bookshelf— no. Her desk…
Maybe?
She put a hand on the hard wood, scanning its surface. Notepads, used pens, folders, unsharpened pencils, a stray book…
MJ frowned; nothing was it. She rummaged through the drawers, opened the folders, shook the notepads until receipts and a few dollars slipped through. Not it, not it, not it.
For some reason, the more she looked the more desperate she became to find it. She did all but tear the desk apart: pulled out drawers, emptied shelves, even searched for false bottoms, in the insane case that there was one.
Nothing.
She let out a string of obscenities that had her mom crying 'language!' from the living room. She paced the room, somehow frustrated to no end, and sat heavily on the bed.
Why did she fuzz so much about this tiny irrelevant thing anyways?
She ran a hand down her face and searched the desk all over again, just in case.
Many more moments happened between the Desk Incident and The Day Peter Parker Showed Up. Ned's camera roll saying it had 553 pictures, yet when seen only 100-ish showing up. MJ saving two seats in the library instead of one, and only realizing when someone asked if they could use the extra chair. The debate team having to find a new member in a rush because somehow no one noticed they were short of one.
It was like a piece was missing in everyone's lives, and no one knew about it.
MJ went to her bedroom after her shift The Day Peter Parker Showed Up, and by all means, everything from the walk back to the way she greeted her mom was ordinary. The way she said goodbye to Ned was ordinary, the way she yawned as she locked the cafe was ordinary, the way she opened the door to her house was ordinary.
And yet, there she was, standing still on the doorway that she should've ordinarily stepped through, but not moving an inch further.
The scratch on her forehead, the one she hadn't even thought about in days except for that one time she had to replace its band-aid, stung for a fraction of a second. There wasn't even enough time for her to get her hands on it before it was gone, not a single remaining ache left, like it was never there at all.
Like it was never there at all.
Tentatively, and very carefully, she walked towards her desk. She hadn't bothered to clean it up after her little meltdown the other day, so there it was, as messy and unkempt as it ever got. Something was different this time, though. This time, the feeling she had led her directly to the left drawer, so she didn't have to search wildly like before.
There, where before she had found nothing, sat a solitary notebook with a fine layer of dust on its cover.
Ned! she typed with an urgency she hadn't felt since she opened her eyes and she was in the middle of a battleground, with no recollection of how she'd gotten there. Need too show you something IMPORTANT meet at cafe!!! NOW.
Ned got there in record time. With a baseball bat.
"I'm here! What happened!?" he exclaimed, eyes everywhere. "You misspelled 'to'! And used three exclamation points!"
MJ didn't have time to think of how concerning it was that he seemed more worried about that than the text itself. She took him by the arm and shoved him inside, thanking the universe she had key duty that day (and every day) because Sasha was utterly incompetent.
"See these," she told him, showing him an old-fashioned photobooth picture. In it, she and a guy were making funny faces. In the last one, he kissed her cheek as she laughed.
"You used three exclamation points just to show off that you've got a boyfriend?" Ned appeared both annoyed and unimpressed at the same time. "You could've just texted it to me!"
"No! Keep looking!" she said. She took the first photo aside to reveal two more that were a bit glued together by some unknown pinkish liquid.
The first one, in order: her and the guy looking startled. The curtain opening. Ned, sliding through with three strawberry lollipops. She and the guy exchanging amused looks.
"Woah, what the hell is—"
"Keep. Looking!" she ordered. He hurried to do so.
The second one, in order: Ned struggling to sit with them, two of the three lollipops in her and the stranger's hands and the other already in Ned's mouth. She and the guy laughing as Ned fell. A blurry picture of Ned sitting up. The last one, MJ with a toothy smile, Ned with his back on the stranger's seat, laughing at the way the guy is literally upside-down, his face fitting in the little space left between MJ and Ned, and holding up (down?) two fingers to the camera.
Ned is speechless. MJ gets it.
"We look…"
"Really close?" she finished for him.
"But I don't…"
"Remember this guy at all? Same."
"And why is he…"
"Upside down? No idea."
Ned glanced at her, then at the pictures, then at her again.
"What does this mean?" he asked.
MJ held eye contact with him. She gulped, and gestured vaguely to the photos with her head. "The guy in the photos… He came here today."
"What!?"
"His name is Peter Parker."
They spent all night trying to figure out who this mysterious 'Peter Parker' character was, but for the life of them they couldn't work it out. Farthest they reached was Ned remembering he had seen him that morning, when MJ had served him. By the time she was pouring their seventh coffee, the sun peeked through the buildings and illuminated the semi-empty cafe.
They went to sleep in the two rattled, small sofas that were in the backroom, and woke up two hours later, when MJ's phone announced it was 8am and her shift would start in an hour. When she looked at Ned, she saw that he looked as shitty as she felt.
"You should go home," she told him. "We'll pick this up tonight, alright?"
"A'ight…" he managed, and zombied his way out of the coffeeshop.
MJ! came a text later that afternoon. MJ had come home after her early shift and didn't see it until the evening, when she woke up. FOUND ANOTHER ONE! CAFE!
She had 27 missed calls. "Shit," she muttered as she got dressed and stumbled out of her room. When she did, however, she saw that Ned was already there.
"Got tired of waiting," he explained in an apologetic tone of voice. MJ's mom tried to get her attention, no doubt to ask her if he was her boyfriend, so she deliberately didn't look at her.
"Come, come," MJ urged him into her room, locking the door and then unlocking it when she heard an 'I hope that door's not closed!' from the kitchen.
"This is really creepy," Ned said the second they were alone and with the loudest music she could get away with blasting in her phone. They didn't want to be heard. "I look at the pictures on my wall every day, right? Right. It's habit." He didn't expect her to answer, for he kept going right away. "But these…" He took out three photographs: one of him and Peter Parker in middle school, one of them in what appeared to be the first day of highschool, and one of Peter, MJ and him sitting at the school's rooftop. "These weren't on the wall before. Or— or I didn't see them. But how could I have not seen them? I look at that wall every day, MJ!"
MJ bit her lip and told him the desk story. He shuddered.
"I showed my lola the pictures, but she asked who the 'handsome young man' next to me was. She didn't know either!"
What was happening?
They interrogated everyone, they googled him, Ned even hacked into the civil registry (and wow, MJ did not know he could do that), as a last measure type of thing. No one knew anything, the Google search was a dead end filled with other million Peter Parkers, and the civil registry didn't have anyone about their age with that name. It was like he didn't exist.
Except the notebook where she had found the photobooth pictures had several drawings of him that only she could've made. And two weeks in, when they became desperate enough to break into the birth registration archives in the hospital, his name was there, written in one of the folders with his parents' and an old address that didn't exist anymore.
How could all that possibly add up?
Days later, MJ is alone at work restocking the shelves and getting a text from Ned that he's coming and bringing new info with him, but that he isn't sure it's a lead. They're currently in the middle of investigating the parents, Richard and Mary, in hopes that they'll dig up new information on this borderline anonymous person that they both feel is extremely important to their lives. So far, it's not going well— they've been dead for almost two decades.
She reads the text and the bell chimes. She thinks that was rather fast, but when she lifts her head with a "You don't have to text me if you're around the corner, you know…", she freezes.
The man they've been looking for Himself, he's there.
"Oh…" MJ whispers intelligently, dropping her phone on the counter.
The man looks at the spark of recognition in her eyes and seems ready to bolt. MJ can't let that happen, so she hurries: "You're the guy from the other day! Peter, er, Johnson?" she tries, pretending she hasn't been researching Peter Parker tirelessly with her best friend for weeks.
Peter relaxes visibly. "Yeah…" he mumbles. "Um, no, I mean, I'm Peter Parker." He gulps and squeezes something in his pocket. "I forg— I didn't know you had such a good memory."
He was definitely about to say 'I forgot,' wasn't he? Does Peter know them, even as they don't know him?
"That's me! Amazing memory!" she fake-chirps, and he chuckles.
There's a silence that stretches out for long enough that she's about to ask his order, only to have something to talk about, when he suddenly speaks. "I thought I would get a drink here one last time before moving," is what he says. Something in her gut drops at the words.
"You're leaving?"
"Yes," he replies. "And I love… the coffee here, a lot, so I thought of dropping by and look at— that's to say, drink it one last time, you know?"
She nods, a heavy weight on her chest, and then they just stare at each other. For a long time. She thinks it should be weird, the way her heart does a little flip and her stomach ties in knots, but she can't take her eyes off him.
Until Ned, bless him, shows up. "Hi, MJ! Gimme a coffee? Something tells me I'm gonna need—" The sentence shrivels away and dies in his mouth, which is now forming a capital O as he stares at the man who has been the center of their obsession for the better part of a month, just standing there like it's nothing. Peter sees his face and a hand shoots to his pocket once more. He starts stuttering that he's 'actually forgotten something, so…', but MJ doesn't let him continue.
"HI NED!" she shrieks. Clears her throat. Attempts not to sound so hysterical in her next sentence. "This is Peter Parker," she introduces with a forced smile, trying to get her gaping friend to get a clue. Thankfully, he sees her and snaps out of it.
"N-nice to meet you! I'm Ned!" he says, and struggles to lean on the counter naturally for a full minute before giving up and standing with his arms awkwardly by his sides. "Um, good place, huh?"
Peter Parker looks mystified. "Y-yeah…" he agrees, and takes his hand out of his pocket. MJ excuses herself to the espresso machine and steals a glimpse of the piece of paper Peter's been protecting in the second she takes to turn around.
When she gets there, she texts Ned hurriedly. He has a piece of paper in his pocket! Get it!
She peeks behind her, where Ned reads her text and then looks at her like she's crazy to think he can pull off a pickpocketing stunt. She shrugs subtly and keeps working the machine. She wishes they had more options, seriously, but they kind of don't.
Ned, for his part, is trying, but every time he so much as gets close to the guy, he seems to actually sense it, and puts a hand on his pocket to check if the paper is still there. This is impossible!
MJ, seeing Ned isn't making any progress, makes a hasty decision on her own. She walks to them, mentally apologizes to Peter, and fakes tripping so that she can pour the coffee on him, dry his jacket, and snatch the paper away like that.
Problem is, the second she trips Peter fucking teleports next to her or something, grabs her by the waist with one hand, and with the other he stops the coffee cup from tippling over.
"Are you okay?" he asks, and he has such an earnestly concerned expression on his face MJ feels like a piece of crap for almost dropping a boiling drink on him.
"Y-yeah, I am," she replies dumbly. Then they do it again: the staring thing. They keep at it for a while until Ned clears his throat and asks if he can get his coffee now.
They break apart immediately, Peter leaves an old, dirty-looking bill on the counter, grabs his drink with a stammer of 'S, sorry, it was nice to see you guys,' and, with one last glance at them, rushes out the door.
MJ is quicker to go after him this time, but she shouldn't have bothered. He disappeared just as quickly as the first time he was there.
"Fuck," she curses. She and Ned are outside the cafe now, looking at the empty street where Peter should be walking on but isn't. She turns to him. "Please tell me your maybe-lead is good," she pleads.
"Nah, it's only a phone number that doesn't work," he responds and she deflates. "I have something better though," he adds, a shit-eating grin on his face as he shows her the piece of paper that was in Peter's pocket.
MJ feels it. This time, they're getting answers.
Hi, my name is Peter Parker. You don't know me, but…