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It’s his whole livelihood. It’s the stretched-out necklines in the clothes slung around his apartment, the worn headphones around his neck, the fingerprints in the dust on his windowsill.
It’s all so inadequate.
“I’m sorry about the mess,” he says, grunting as he forces his rusty window to push up enough to get some fresh air into the room. It’s the far one that looks right over a coffee shop that charges nine dollars for a basic latte. He’s never been.
Behind him, MJ walks a circle on the hardwood. Her shoes are gentle on his floor, like she’s taking care with each step. “I don’t mind.”
“I do,” he mutters under his breath. A pigeon flying by briefly considers landing on his open windowsill and he makes a face at it to shoo it away.
“It’s not messy,” she adds. “It’s…comfy.”
A snort escapes him. It’s the loud kind that Aunt May would swat him for. “Okay. Don’t patronize me,” he says, turning around, and her hands are already up in the air, brows to her hairline.
“I’m not!” she protests. “Look, I live with Ned. Things can get ugly sometimes.”
“Yeah,” he says, to cap the conversation, and then it’s silent.
He wracks his brain for something more to say. Something nice, but not creepy—but also smart. He doesn’t want to come off as an idiot. After all, she went to MIT. He doesn’t even have a college degree.
Another point of inadequacy.
“Do you want something to eat?”
“Uh…no thank you,” she says. She’s settled in the center of the room, where the sunlight hits best, and it makes her glow. “I just got lunch with Anila.”
“Anila?”
For a second, she looks like she’s been stopped by a stranger on the street. She blinks for a second, startled, before chuckling lightly at herself. “Oh, I—Sorry. I forgot you don’t know the name and backstory of every single character in my life.”
“Just everybody you met before college,” he supplies, leaning against his desk, and she nods.
“...Right. Well, Anila’s an environmental engineer, but she’s also kind of a raging bitch, so. My kind of woman.”
“Uh-huh,” Peter agrees, just to get her to keep talking. He loves her voice. He misses it so badly, rewatching videos of her on Ned’s page just to close his eyes and pretend they’re in the room with him. He almost shuts his eyes now, but then remembers she’s right there. Right. “Look, MJ…”
“Ned told me he remembered you,” she says abruptly. “I’m…” she laughs humorlessly, gesturing at the unfamiliar room around her. “I’m still clueless. Obviously.”
“I only lived here later,” he reassures her pointlessly.
She nods, but she’s not really listening.
“It’s okay that you didn’t remember,” he lies.
“But it’s not,” she presses. Her brows furrow and she paces over to his desk, staring at the various tools and screens like they would hold any kind of answer. “I don’t get why Ned remembers and I don’t. I almost feel…crazy.”
“Ned thinks it’s because of the Jean Gray psychic blast thing, so…maybe if we asked her to check one more—”
“I am not letting another psychic inside of my head,” MJ grits through her teeth. “That was one of the worst things—the first time was, whatever; I was terrified but I didn’t remember anything. This time it was like my ribcage was split open, like my lungs and heart were being eaten out of my open chest and all I could do was watch.”
“Oh, wow,” Peter utters softly, eyes widening. “That’s descriptive.”
“It was a very vivid experience.” Subtly, she shudders. Peter can sense it more than he can actually see it. “It was awful.”
“I’m sorry, MJ,” he says quietly. “It’s not fair, how wrapped up you are in this. I wish I could have—”
“Don’t even start,” she says, dismissing him with a frown. “I’m an adult. I make my own decisions. And the psychic blast would've happened to Ned and I anyway. So don’t martyr yourself.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m jealous of him,” she admits, looking wryly at Peter. “You know how—when you go to sleep, the next day you can try as hard as you want to remember the exact moment where you fell asleep, but you can’t? You can’t remember it. You just remember being awake. And, you know you had to have fallen asleep at some point. Of course you did. But you don’t have that memory. It doesn’t matter how long I meditate on it; to my brain, it’s like it never happened.”
“I can’t pretend I get the memory stuff,” Peter admits. “But I get wanting to understand how it happened. When he remembered me, my first thought was about you. I hoped you remembered too. And then we saw each other that night and it was obvious I was still just some unknown guy to you. When I move, you lean away, not towards me. And when I talk, it’s like you don’t know where I’m going to go next. I’m just unfamiliar to you.”
“And you can’t force that,” she agrees. “I was recruited to join a sorority multiple times at MIT. I never took it. I didn’t think that forcing everyone to pretend to be best friends was how to make real friends.”
“Yeah.” Another lull. “Do you want a beer?”
“Sure,” she says, and as he goes to the kitchen, he hears her sit in his desk chair. He grabs two cold cans from the fridge and brings it back. He doesn’t have to ask which brand is her favorite.
“You’re not,” she says as she takes the drink from him.
He stares at her, confused, as she pops open the top. “Not what?”
“An unknown guy,” she clarifies after she sees his face. “I said I wasn’t in love with you. And that’s true. But this kind of thing is a spectrum. I would say we’re friends.” She shrugs a little and takes a sip of her beer. He hasn’t even opened his yet.
He feels his lips growing into a smile. “Friends is good,” he says, nodding. “No, yeah, friends is great.”
She sighs and looks him in the eyes. Brown eyes meet blue. “But I can’t promise anything beyond that,” she tells him quietly. “Like I said, we can’t force this. It’ll go nowhere. But I’ve been settling for shitty guys for a while…I’m willing to be open to this. I don’t know if I can trust that my past high school self was a pretty good judge of character, but I know Ned is. I can trust that. And I’d like to think I can trust the friendly neighborhood spiderman.”
Despite the niggling doubt and fear in the back of his head, Peter grins and raises his can. His teeth feel too big for his mouth. “Let’s see where this goes, then?”
She raises hers too, and they bump their drinks together. They don't clink; aluminum against aluminum. “Let’s see,” she echoes.
Her smile lights up the room, burning the inadequacy away.