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Peter groaned as he hauled himself up through the window of his apartment, fumbling for a hold on something before just giving up and letting himself fall to the floor with a grunt.
He lay there for a moment, considering the uneven, aged wooden floorboards pressing against his cheek, then heaved himself upwards, clutching at the side of his bleeding head with one hand and shutting the window with a flick of his webs from the other.
His back throbbed with pain, and he sucked in a sharp breath that made his head scream with agony, the apartment walls spinning around him as he squeezed his eyes shut and leaned against the nearest wall to reorient himself.
He really thought he had taken enough time to recuperate after Frank had shot him in the back — but maybe he should’ve conceded when DeWolff had recommended he take two weeks off, instead of just one.
In his defense, his back had hardly even ached, earlier that day; but when he’d been out on patrol that night and confronted two scumbags cornering a woman in an alley, one of them had gotten a lucky hit right over the newly-healed bullet wound, and it had painfully winded him long enough for the other to whip the side of Peter’s face with his gun.
His ears were still ringing from the blow, his back and his head throbbing in unison — though the former was ebbing slightly.
Peter was just glad his body’s senses had reacted instinctively, webbing up both men (not a moment too soon; Peter doubted that the armed man would’ve hesitated to shoot him point-blank, though only after he’d taunted him about how easy it was to take down Spider-Man) and somehow managing to get him back home. Where he had only had the wherewithal to fall through his window and take a moment to breathe, before making an effort to fix the bloodied mess on his face.
"You appear to have a moderate concussion, as well as bruising and a deep laceration along your left temporal," E.V. informed him, as he stumbled over to the overflowing cabinet where he kept his medical supplies. "You may experience headaches, nausea, confusion, irritation —,"
"Feeling that now," he grunted, and she quieted.
He raised a hand to rip off his mask, groaning as the blood that had dried peeled away from the wound, which began to ooze again as it was bared to the air. He squinted painfully at his reflection in the half-light of his apartment, illuminated only by the many computer screens and the streetlights outside, but somehow still too bright for his heightened senses — and concussion, apparently.
"Ugh . . ."
“You also have elevated inflammation in your back,” E.V. continued, the A.I.’s voice grating and loud to his sensitive ears as he grabbed the bottle of Advil from the cabinet and shook four into his palm, swallowing them dry. “Rest is recommended for optimal recovery. Per your concussion, avoid looking at screens, physical exertion —,”
“E.V., stop,” Peter groaned, and, mercifully, she went quiet again.
He closed his eyes, resting his head against the smudged mirror beside the medicine cabinet. He breathed slowly, through his mouth and out his nose; he didn’t know for how long, only that he had counted thirteen breaths before the pained ringing in his ears had subsided enough to hear a knock at his door.
A knock that he recognized.
He was really off his game, if his overloaded senses hadn't picked her up outside of his apartment.
He nearly fell over his feet in his frantic scramble to get to the door and yank it open, all of his pain immediately disregarded with his desperation to be right about this. He tried and failed to not flinch and cower horribly under the scorching hallway light, tearing his gaze away from it — and fixing his eyes, instead, on MJ.
She was standing with her hands folded behind her back, wearing a soft-looking maroon sweater and dark jeans, a bag slung over one shoulder, and the broken Black Dahlia around her neck.
Peter remembered seeing that at the party at her and Ned’s apartment; how the sight of her wearing it had made him feel as if he were choking, being strangled from the inside out.
He felt that again, now — though maybe that was also the throbbing in his skull and the (faint, but still present) aching in his back that he was staunchly ignoring, in favor of things of greater importance.
“Hi,” he croaked out.
MJ quirked a brow at him, giving him a sweeping once-over.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, surveying his bloodied, bruised face. “Now I can see why.”
“Waiting — for me?” He said dazedly, still leaning heavily on the doorframe, blinking slowly at her and squinting against the harsh hallway light. “You — you have?”
“Mhm.” She nodded. If he looked and listened closely, he could see and hear the faint edge of nervousness in her expression, in her voice, as she asked, “Can I come in? Looks like you need a little help, anyway.”
Peter huffed, mouth twitching up slightly despite his disbelief, and despite the pain in his head — and despite the deep-seated ache in his heart that never quite went away, and that was making itself very, very known right now.
He leaned wordlessly to the side and let her walk in past him, closing the door behind her and leaning against it as he watched her survey his apartment.
He felt a twinge of self-consciousness, remembering all that Jean had had to say about the state of it. But MJ just looked pensively over the empty boxes of takeout, and the pillow and blanket on the couch where he slept — and the empty coffee cup still sitting at his workstation, propping up a familiar piece of paper.
“You kept that, huh?” MJ asked, sounding pleased as she nodded towards the drawing she had done of him and Ned, building LEGOs together. If Peter had had more wherewithal about him, he would have blushed.
“Uhm — yeah,” he said nervously, blinking a little lopsidedly as he desperately kept his everything focused on her, and not on the pain still thumping at the inside of his head. He hoped she meant the drawing, and not the coffee cup; he didn’t really think he had the capacity to address the latter right now. “You — you brought it to the hospital, didn’t you? It was with all the, er, cards, and — and stuff.” Privately, he didn’t mention that it was the only thing he had taken, from all of that.
“Mm.” MJ’s expression had gone pensive once more. “I gave it to your friend. Told him to make sure you got it.”
Peter gave a tentative half-smile, at that. “I’m sure that was civil,” he joked.
MJ shook her head with a little laugh, then turned back towards him. “How is your bullet wound treating you?” She asked, as casual as anything. Despite himself, Peter felt his smile broaden. Same old MJ.
“Thought it was better,” he admitted, “but I got out there again too soon. S’ why, well . . .” Peter raised a hand and gestured at his face, wincing in pain and embarrassment. MJ raised a judgmental brow at him; when she spoke, her voice was dry.
“I’m sensing that self-preservation isn’t your strong suit.”
Peter’s heart thumped achingly at his ribs.
“Never has been,” he croaked out after a moment. MJ nodded slowly, head slightly tilted.
“Hmm.”
Peter opened his mouth to say more to her, but as he did, a fresh wave of pain throbbed across his face, piercing the side of his skull. He hissed, clutching at the side of his head with shaky hands; and then, quick as anything, MJ was at his side, taking his hands in hers, delicate but familiar. Peter froze, breath shuddering, his heart suddenly hurting enough for him to forget about the pain he was feeling everywhere else.
“Let me see,” MJ murmured, guiding him to sit down on the couch. He let her maneuver him, then swung his head down until it was nearly between his knees when she pulled away, grounding himself with the feeling of his feet against the floor as she dug through cupboards behind him to find what she needed. The ache in his back had thankfully abated enough to be forgotten about, but his head was killing him.
If it meant MJ was holding him, though . . .
Peter thought it might very nearly be worth it.
She was back at his side in a moment, pressing a warm, damp rag to the side of his head. He flinched away on instinct, then leaned into her hands with a shaky sigh, closing his eyes wearily. MJ gently wiped away the dried blood, her touch careful and purposeful, as though she had done this a thousand times before.
Or maybe just a few times.
Even if she didn’t remember it.
“You’ve got a pretty nasty gash here,” she told him as she wiped his face clean, so close that her warm breath tickled against his ear. “What happened?”
“Like you said,” Peter grunted, as she pressed the edges of the wound together with careful fingers, taping it shut with butterfly strips from his bulging First-Aid kit, squinting carefully in the half-light. “Lack of self-preservation skills.”
MJ gave him another disapproving hum. “I can tell,” she commented. “You said you didn’t give your — Frank said it was your back, right? — enough time to heal?”
Peter gave her a little, self-conscious shrug. “I thought I did,” he repeated. “It feels fine now, but . . . I was out, y’know, doing my thing, and I took a hit right into it.” He felt MJ’s sympathetic wince, her hands twitching against his skin. “Yeah. Then to my face,” he added unnecessarily, with a flippant upward gesture. “But I’ll be okay. It’ll fix itself in a few hours, really — you don’t even really need to be, er, doing this. I heal quick.”
“Well, I am,” she said matter-of-factly. “Can’t just let you sit here and bleed while I’m here, can I?”
“What — er, well, what are you doing here?” He asked tentatively, blinking crookedly up at her as she taped a Band-Aid over the butterfly strips with gentle hands and rustled through the First-Aid kit to find an instant ice pack, which she shook and went to hold to his head, over the dark bruising.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “Frank gave me your address.”
“Wha—,” Peter spluttered, taken aback. “How does he have my address?”
“He said he followed you home after you left the hospital to make sure you didn’t — his words — ‘collapse and die on your way, or whatever’,” she deadpanned, with a twitching little smile. “Kind of sweet, really.”
“Yeah, sure,” Peter grumbled, leaning into MJ’s touch as she cradled the side of his head between her hand and the ice pack. He shivered from the relief of it, even though his skull was still pounding with the reverberations of the gun slamming into his temple and splitting it open.
“But you . . . wanted to talk to me?” He prompted again, quietly hopeful despite the pain. “About — about what?”
“Well . . .” MJ sighed, looking hesitant but determined. She was still holding his face in her hands, and Peter hardly even felt guilty for the way he had gone all but limp, and was just letting her hold him up.
“I’ve been thinking about — all of this,” she said at last. “About you and me. About your letter, and . . . just, about you.” MJ gave him another small, tentative smile, and Peter felt as though he were dreaming — if it weren't for the dull throbbing in his skull, he would've thought he was, as she said: "And I was thinking that I'd like to . . . get to know you again. If that wouldn't be weird for you."
“No — no,” Peter said quickly — then hesitated, wincing a little from the pain, and from his own words.
“Well — maybe a little,” he admitted reluctantly, “but I don’t care. I would — I would love that.”
MJ’s dark brown gaze searched his; he felt his heart jump as her thumb brushed across his bruised cheek.
“You’re really lonely, Peter,” she said softly.
She always had been able to read people — to read him — so easily.
"You need people," she continued, as though Peter wasn’t still reeling just from hearing her say his name so gently, from feeling her hands cradling him so tenderly. "Can I be one of them?"
“Yes — God, yes,” he choked out, blinking painfully as he tried very hard not to cry. He gave her a wavering smile, ignoring the way it made his eyes crinkle around the edges and shot jolts of aching shocks through his skull.
“I don’t want it to be weird for you, either,” he added on after a moment, speaking through the grating feeling in his head and the choking feeling in his throat. “I — I’ll always respect you, and I understand that you aren’t — that you don’t —,”
Peter stopped, taking in a shaky breath, and he slowly drew away from her hands, reaching up to hold the cold pack on his own. His hands were rougher than hers as he pressed down, making his head throb; but he knew that if he was going to say this, then he should show it, too.
“I know you’re not . . . my MJ,” he said at last, gritting his teeth against the pain. “But I like any version of you, and having you back in my life, it — it would mean the world to me.”
She gave him a sad smile.
“You really aren’t that withholding, are you,” she said, and he laughed despite himself; despite the wetness in his gaze, and the pain in his head, and the fact that MJ’s hands were still wavering out in front of his face from where he had pulled away from her.
“I have to be, most of the time,” he said truthfully. “I mean — I told you, and you read that letter, so you know . . .” He shrugged self-consciously. “People knowing me is what ruined my life last time around.”
“Was it?” MJ asked thoughtfully, “Or was it just a series of unfortunate events outside of your control?”
Peter opened his mouth, and closed it again. Mysterio’s voice rang in his ears, and he shivered, breath hitching; he remembered the moment he’d seen that breaking news broadcast, and had known that his life was permanently changed. He just hadn’t known what the extent of that damage would be.
“Maybe,” he admitted reluctantly. “Still not not my fault, though.”
She gave him a look — and it was so familiar that the ache in his heart overtook the ache in his head, nearly making him burst from the inside out with longing and grief. It must’ve shown on his face, because her gaze shone sadly.
“The other day,” she said slowly, “you said that spending time with me and Ned was the most fun you’d had in years. Have you had . . . anyone — any family? — since . . . ?”
“Not really,” he mumbled, shrinking in on himself slightly and leaning back against the couch with a sigh, shifting his hold on the cold pack in his hand. MJ had lowered her own hands, folding them together in her lap.
“Like I said, I lost — someone.” Peter swallowed tightly, painfully. “My — my Aunt May. She was my only family, my parents died when I was a kid and my uncle died a while back, so — no family. And May was . . .” He cleared his throat, cutting himself off, because he didn’t think he could say just how much she meant to him without falling to pieces all over again. “But I guess even if I had family, they wouldn’t know me anyway, so maybe it’s — for the best.”
MJ was still looking at him so sadly. It hurt.
“I don’t mean I’m glad they’re — they’re dead, or anything,” Peter rambled on, if for the sake of filling the silence, “but it hurt bad enough seeing you and Ned not remember me, I think if May didn’t either it would’ve . . .”
He trailed off, but the words he hadn’t spoken rang loudly anyway.
Even now, he had barely survived losing MJ and Ned.
“But — it’s okay.” He blinked away the hotness in his gaze. “I’m — I’m glad you’re here now.”
MJ smiled at him, though her gaze still thoughtful and sad.
“I really am sorry,” she said, “that I don’t remember.”
“It’s not your fault,” Peter said automatically, “not at all. It’s not not my fault, like I said, but it’s definitely not your fault.”
She nodded, and, still smiling but less sadly, reached back out and rested a tentative hand on his shoulder. He nearly shivered as she smoothed her thumb along the seam of his suit, where red-black nylon met pale, freckled skin.
“I think I like you better, out from behind the curtain,” she said, and if he hadn’t known her so well, he wouldn’t have noticed the fondness in her tone — but he did know her, even if it had been four years, and he did notice, and it made his heart ache.
“No longer in the withholding club, I guess,” he replied after a moment, longing to place one of his hands on top of hers, but knowing that that was not his place. Not now.
“Well, maybe I’m not, either,” MJ said, a little shine to her gaze. Peter’s gaze searched hers, and he didn’t ask, but he did feel a different ache in his heart at the implications of her words — something like hope.
“Anyway,” MJ continued, voice soft so as to not make his head throb worse, “I was gonna ask if you wanted to have a drink with me, and talk.” She dropped her hand to open the bag slung over her shoulder, showing him a bottle of Negroni, which he would’ve appreciated more if the thought of eating or drinking anything right now wasn’t making his stomach lurch.
“But,” she added, as though reading his mind, “I think you need to rest right now.”
“What?” Peter winced, fumbling with the cold pack against his face as the exclamation made his wound pulse painfully.
“No,” he murmured, softer, “m’ fine, really. We can talk. You can drink, if you want — not that I’m — I didn’t mean, I mean —,”
“I know,” MJ interrupted, her tone dry, “but, Peter, you’re not fine. You’ve been drooping for the past five minutes.”
Peter snapped upward when he realized she was right, only to groan with pain at the sudden movement and press the cold pack harder into his bruised, throbbing temple.
“But —,” He started desperately, but she, once again, interrupted him gently.
“I’ll give you my number,” she said, “and I’ll call you. And . . . you can call me. Sound fair?”
“Sounds great,” he said dumbly.
“I know Ned gave you his,” MJ added, raising a brow, “when you came by the other day?”
Peter blinked, taken aback. “He told you about that?”
Ned had taken Peter’s explanation a lot more enthusiastically than MJ had, after that day in the corner store. Peter thought he would’ve believed him even without the muscle memory of their handshake, because Ned was just that kind of guy, and he was so glad to have that kind of guy back in his life. Even if, like MJ, it wasn’t, not fully, his Ned — but it was still Ned, just like this was still MJ, and after so long of having nothing and no one, Peter could hardly stand to complain about having his two best friends back.
“Of course he did.” MJ smiled at him. “And he’s been texting you all week, it’s hard not to notice.”
“Well, he keeps thinking of Spider-Man questions that are better than what I do when I need to piss in the suit,” Peter grumbled, “like whether or not I lay eggs.”
MJ’s brows shot up, and she let out a sound between a snort and a gag. “Lay eggs?”
“He asked me that before, actually.” Peter winced as he laughed, grinning tentatively back at MJ. “When he first found out.”
“That’s what we can talk about next time,” MJ said softly, gazing at him with something like affection in her eyes, “when you’re not concussed and exhausted.”
“What?” Peter blinked at her warily, not much wanting to think any further about the eggs business. “Ned finding out I’m Spider-Man?”
“No, me.” She rolled her eyes in fond exasperation. “I’m curious.”
“You didn’t find out from me,” he mumbled. He realized, now that she had said it, that he was exhausted, as though the emotional and physical rollercoaster of pain he’d been on for — well, the past half hour, but really the past week, and, really, the past four years — was finally coming to a screeching halt. “You figured it out on your own.”
“Doesn’t much surprise me.” MJ tossed her hair over one shoulder, beaming proudly and teasingly; for just a moment, her fingers trailed over the broken Black Dahlia around her neck, her gaze going faraway as she murmured, “I’m pretty smart.”
Peter swallowed tightly, his eyes burning. “You’re super smart,” he croaked out.
She smiled at him again, wide and happy, and he did his best to return it, because even with his head aching and his body weighed down with exhaustion, he was more joyful than anything, because MJ was here, and she was looking at him — maybe not with full understanding, but with recognition. And that was good enough for him, right now.
“Can I get you anything, before I go?” She asked him, after a long moment. “Food, or something?” MJ paused, and then: “Do you . . . do you need any help getting out of your suit?”
“Ugh, not hungry.” The thought made him shudder, and his skull throb painfully — and then his heart jumped, as he registered the second thing she’d said. “Er —,”
“Or not,” she added quickly, “if that would be weird —,”
“No, no — it’s just —,”
Peter fumbled for MJ's hand on nothing but outdated instinct, then jerked back when he realized what he was doing. In the process, he dropped the cold pack and managed to knock himself against the head by the heel of his palm, and he yelped, cringing back in on himself and the couch.
MJ hissed in sympathy, and before he could even register it, he was pressing back into her hands as she held his face in them; as she soothed his bruised, bandaged temple with the cold pack, and calmed his momentary panic with the brush of her thumb against his cheek.
“You’re okay,” she murmured, “yeah?”
“Yeah,” he breathed out, his brown eyes huge as his gaze caught hers. His mouth was dry, his chest fit to burst; if he hadn’t silenced E.V., he was sure she would have a thing or two to say about how elevated his heart rate was.
“The suit,” MJ said, slower. “Do you want me to . . . ?”
“Sure,” he whispered, licking his chapped lips, not even blinking. “There’s a — a seam along the spine, if you — if you pull there —,”
She slowly dropped one hand to slip behind his back; he leaned forward, into her shoulder, breath shuddering as his hair brushed against the sleeve of her sweater. He felt her own warm breath against his neck as she brushed her fingers along the curve of his spine until she found the seam, pulling it apart all the way down until the suit began to fold in on itself; Peter had modeled it after the first one Tony had made for him, with its convenience and speed to take it on and off helping out in a pinch.
He had never imagined — or, never believed — that it would come in handy at a moment like this.
“There,” MJ murmured in his ear, and she gently tugged the suit away with her free hand. He helped, wriggling weakly out of it while still leaning into her, and into where her other hand was still holding his face. She was so close to him, he was forgetting to breathe, only remembering when his lungs started to hurt from lack of air.
He felt small, without his suit; he felt like he had after he’d returned to Frank’s boathouse after the fight at the Damage Control center in Manhattan, and MJ had looked at him, holding up that letter, with such a look of devastated, betrayed confusion on her face. When he had pulled off his mask, and stared her full in the face, as Peter Parker, for the first time in so many years.
The same thing he was doing now, as she gently guided him to lie down, and he gazed up at her, breath shuddering painfully, heart aching so bad he forgot about the pain in his head.
“Thank you,” he croaked out, as she pulled away to drape the suit over the top of the couch. He watched her through eyes that had gone blurry, and he realized he’d been forgetting to blink, too.
“Do you need anything else?” She asked gently, trailing her hand down his shoulder. He swallowed, tight and painful, blinking forcibly up at her, now, his eyes still burning.
“No,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
“You say that a lot,” she observed, tilting her head a little with a rueful smile. “That, and I’m sorry.”
“Sorry,” he said, half-teasing, half-genuine. She laughed, shaking her head with that same edge of fondness that he saw, that made him ache so much.
“No, though, really,” Peter continued, voice lightly croaking. “Just gonna go to sleep, n’ hope that this wasn’t a dream when I wake up.”
“I’ll text you right now, and prove it’s not,” MJ said softly.
He gave her his number, and thanked her (again) for coming, and fell asleep the moment the door clicked shut — drifting away with his head against a pillow that had never seemed so comfortable, and a blanket that she had pulled over him and smoothed over his shoulder.
He woke up to a text from her, and a string of texts from Ned, and a healed gash in his forehead — and a little lighter of a feeling weighing down on his shoulders, and on his heart.
Unknown Number (10:34 PM): This is MJ :) How’s your head?
Peter (9:53 AM): Hi :)
Peter (9:54 AM): It’s a lot better
Peter (9:54 AM): Thank you for last night.
MJ (9:56 AM): You really do say that a lot, you know.
Peter (9:59 AM): Well, I really do mean it.
Peter (10:03 AM): I’m glad you came by
Peter (10:03 AM): Maybe a little warning next time though, so I don’t open the door with a bloody face?
MJ (10:05 AM): Only if you promise to work on your self-preservation skills.
Peter (10:06 AM): …Maybe.
MJ (10:10 AM): If it wouldn’t be too soon, what would you think about that drink tomorrow night?
Peter (10:10 AM): I would love that.
Ned (11:40 PM): peter.
Ned (11:41 PM): what’s up with mj coming home saying she went to see you and you were fucking bleeding everywhere ‘looking like a kicked puppy’
Ned (11:41 PM): cuz dude
Ned (11:41 PM): i swear
Ned (11:42 PM): if you get yourself killed RIGHT AFTER we got our tearful reunion im gonna break our lego deathstar on your grave
Peter (10:13 AM): LMAO
Peter (10:13 AM): …Did she really say that though