Author's Note:

Past me is taunting present me with all the references to air conditioning in this chapter. Today's a hot one.

XXII

She spent the better part of a week experiencing two very distinct types of suffering. One was the guilt/rage/confusion combo left over from her confrontation with Flash on Monday. The other was the yearning that Peter (that sick bastard) was causing on purpose by hinting at B.A.R.F. every so often. MJ felt like an old book, glue crumbled away, unstuck from her binding. He wasn't supposed to be able to tease her like this. The majority of the time, that power was hers. It made her antsy to see her boyfriend, though she also didn't want to disturb him too much before this little project was complete, so she felt generally sweaty and restless. The weather wasn't helping with that. It was like the city was trying to determine how hot it could possibly get―reminding them that, unlike Flash's parents, the rest of them weren't alternating between the on-deck pool and a Caribbean beach. MJ wanted to move, she wanted to… fucking run (in spite of her usual lack of enthusiasm for Gym class and all it entailed), but she had also decided as recently as the day before that the air conditioning in the apartment was her best friend and they could not be parted without good reason.

Unfortunately, her mom came up with a fairly good reason to separate MJ and her habit of lying flat on the cold tiles of their kitchen. It wasn't until June threw the idea of the human best friend into the plan that her daughter managed to peel herself off the floor and agree. They were going back-to-school shopping and taking Cindy along.

It was the second-last Saturday of the month (and before school started), neither June nor MJ was expected at the hospital, and Cindy only shadowed her dad's job during the week. Before the Joneses left their apartment (and the air conditioning) to meet her, MJ texted Peter. She meant to send him some kind of hi-bye-talk-to-you-later, but she couldn't resist scrolling up to their older texts first, making herself totally flustered, and resulting in a text that was almost threateningly affectionate. I love you, she added, and left the spy-phone/Peter-phone at home like she always did.

"What about your hat?" June asked, grabbing her keys.

"Nobody knows who I am, Mom."

"Your boyfriend is still big news."

"But as far as anyone else is concerned, we broke up," MJ reminded her. "Besides, the media finally seems to be investigating Quentin Beck."

"Fishbowl man."

"Right."

"I thought I'd been seeing his face more," her mom said thoughtfully. She herded her daughter out the door in front of her, touching the wavy mass of hair MJ had piled on top of her head. There wasn't room for a hat even if she wanted one; she needed her neck unsmothered by hair just in case a tiny, merciful breeze passed by. "No offense to Peter, but I would've known that man was up to something. Unnatural look in his eyes."

"Why don't you be Spider-Man then?" MJ groaned, too irritated by the heat on their way downstairs. They weren't even outside yet.

"We're going to be together all day. Don't you get grumpy with me, Michelle. Anyway, I don't like how that Beck man slicked his hair back."

"I don't like how he framed my boyfriend for murder," she grumbled back. June either didn't hear her or pretended not to.

Cindy was standing outside the shoe store they'd agreed to meet at, licking an ice cream cone. MJ gave her mom a hard look; June had said they weren't stopping for snacks until lunchtime. She contemplated faking heatstroke. God, that would've worked so much better if her mom wasn't a doctor. For now, she stared sadly at her friend's ice cream.

"Cindy, baby, you can't bring that in the store," June said.

"It's ok. I'll be done in a minute. It's melting really fast."

June laughed and hauled the door open to enter without them while MJ remained next to Cindy on the sidewalk. She didn't care about this first stop anyway. Did she really need new running shoes? She hadn't exactly worn her old ones out in gym last year.

"What's new with you?" MJ asked, watching the ice cream disappear. That's what she was getting for lunch. One ice cream for the main meal, another for dessert. Fuck, it was hot out. Everything Cindy didn't catch with a lick was evaporating, which was probably why the air felt so sticky.

She shrugged.

"Buildings and shit. You?"

Working fast, Cindy got down to the cone, crunching and nodding as MJ replied, "I got into a fight with Flash."

"Badass," her friend said in a muffled voice as she chewed.

"No, it was pretty stupid actually. I think I might have picked it on purpose."

Stuffing the end of her snack into her mouth, Cindy gave her a look that seemed to ask why.

"Because I miss Peter. I guess."

"If you feel bad about Flash, we could ambush Brad again and you could take it out on him," Cindy suggested cheerfully, scrubbing at her palms with a napkin.

"Uh, the last time we saw Brad, he almost ended up blackmailing me into dating him, so I'd rather not approach him voluntarily."

"Just an idea."

MJ held the door for her friend, sighing in relief as they slipped into the cool embrace of air conditioning.

Although it took a little while for MJ to warm up to the shopping (though not physically, as they continued moving in and out of air conditioned spaces), her mom and Cindy were in the correct mood immediately. They'd gotten along well for as long as they'd known each other; MJ almost expected her best friend to ask June for ideas on how she could go about wooing Saoirse Ronan, but it didn't happen. She knew Cindy had talked to her parents (not about Saoirse specifically) and it had gone really well. That didn't mean she was ready to start providing everyone and their mother―literally―with an update on her sexuality. MJ would respect that and say nothing until Cindy did. Anyway, it was enough just to keep up with the two of them. Her mom bought her the running shoes she had the least vacant expression while wearing, plus some for herself in a much more aggressive colour palette. After the mugging attempt that Peter had foiled, she'd joined a gym in the last year, taking kickboxing classes, putting the treadmill through its paces, and generally doing a lot more to wear through her soles than MJ had ever done with half-hearted crunches and pretending to pull herself up a rope.

Cindy had gone out shopping with her own mother the previous weekend and still showed more enthusiasm than MJ managed. Part of this was because her best friend had only been supplied with the basics; standard blue ballpoints, suite of binders in primary colours, one new pair of jeans. It was sufficient, but it wasn't Cindy. Her dad's company didn't pay her a salary for coming to work with him all summer―she was more like a student, there to learn rather than do―but he did furnish her with an allowance for her dedication and interest. When she hauled MJ sideways into a stationary store while her mom looked at cookware next door, she made it rain. MJ took a picture of Cindy wide-eyed over an array of post-it notes in every shape and colour and sent it to Betty. They reached a shelf of highlighters and Cindy made an ungodly noise; some nerds preferred post-its, while others were content to streak their notes in four different shades of orange.

MJ's least favourite item on her mom's shopping agenda was accomplished before right before lunch―strategic, she suspected, with June planning to placate her with ice cream as soon as they were done. It was trying on jeans. MJ loved jeans, but she didn't love jeans when her body was at apex non-ill temperature and she had to risk heat exhaustion just pulling them on. Again though, she didn't feign symptoms because that kind of thing didn't work on her mom. She did give June a flat stare that would've made any of her peers back off and had zero effect with her mom. June also didn't brook arguments about MJ liking that the jeans she already owned were several inches short (that was how MJ liked them), insisting that her daughter had grown too tall for them. "You'll thank me in the winter," she said as MJ slouched to the dressing room with three pairs to try on. She caught Cindy's eye and received a compassionate smile from where her friend was standing by a table strewn with pale-blue acid-washed denim. Oh boy, her friend's mom would never go for that.

For a few minutes, MJ just stood in the dressing room in her underwear, shorts folded on the bench, and enjoyed being barefoot on concrete that was icy cold thanks to her best friend, air conditioning. Being more thoroughly cooled made her generous. Generous enough to concede to a new pair of jeans and to take a picture of her bare legs for Peter. Not too high up―she knew a shot of her legs would do the job. She didn't have the right phone with her to send it now, but she'd save it until either she saw him in person, or until this fucking murder conspiracy was over and they could go back to texting each other from their usual phones.

Refreshed, she exited the dressing room and let her mom pay. Cindy stared wistfully at the pile of acid wash as they left the store; she'd talked herself out of them for now.

Once MJ got her ice cream at lunch, all was right with the universe. Her friend began regaling her mom with the story of the last time the two of them went out for lunch. That had been with Brad. Threatening glares didn't chasten Cindy into silence and she explained all about how that lunch had been an intervention after Brad told some people (she was cautiously vague here, at least, though MJ could tell leaving out details was killing her―Cindy prided herself on her ability to retain minutiae) that MJ was his girlfriend. Cindy also omitted the fact that MJ being secretly photographed had started that whole chain of events. June would never again allow wearing the baseball cap out of the house to be optional. Anyway, she was sufficiently irritated that this Brad character had called her daughter his girlfriend. When there was an awkward pause in her mom's impromptu discourse on consent, MJ realized her mom and Cindy didn't know whether the other knew that she was still with Peter. She cleared that up and they spoke more freely. Though not too loudly.

"I'm assuming Brad isn't in on the secret," June said.

"No," MJ replied at the same time that Cindy said, "Definitely not. Not that MJ already being in a relationship would necessarily have stopped him. It didn't in Europe."

June raised her eyebrows at this reported audacity.

"Then I'm sure the two of you set him straight," she said.

MJ snorted.

"One of us certainly didn't hold back. I think Bad Cop over here―" She pointed at Cindy. "―would've had Brad in a chokehold if we'd stayed much longer."

"Oh please," Cindy said, rolling her eyes. "I was subtle."

"You called him an asshole," MJ reminded her.

"I implied it." She waved a dismissive hand. "He was too dizzy from the tornado of my rhetoric to notice."

"Nice work," June praised before the two of them could debate Cindy's effectiveness any further.

"Thank you."

"How about one more stop and then you two can go back to the apartment and lie on the floor and watch a movie?"

"You're not coming?" MJ asked.

"Hey, this is my shopping day too. Some of us can handle a little heat," her mom bragged.

"This isn't 'a little heat,' this is like walking through hot soup."

"Good," June shot back. "I love soup."

MJ groaned.

"What's the last stop?" Cindy piped up.

"MJ needs a new backpack. She left hers in England."

"Don't say it like that."

"Like what, Michelle?"

"Like I did it by accident because I'm careless," MJ complained. "I had to leave it. The airline would never have let me bring it back as a carryon. It reeked of smoke. There were the explosions on the bridge and before that, the lava dude in Prague."

"There was a lot of fire on that trip," Cindy said thoughtfully.

"And you probably managed to stay away from it," June guessed.

"Well, it wasn't my boyfriend who was always right in the middle of it. It was very selfless of MJ to try to help, even if her backpack was a casualty."

June glanced from Cindy to MJ with a smile. She secretly loved it when her daughter's friends stood up to her, MJ knew, because it proved that MJ was forming good friendships.

"Ok," her mom conceded. "Let's get the martyr a backpack."

While they completed this final errand, MJ considered getting a new backpack for Peter too. His hadn't faired any better. Though she and Ned had planned to look after it after Peter left for Berlin, it somehow disappeared between their departure from Prague and their arrival back in New York. Oh well, if they couldn't escape with their luggage, at least they'd escaped with their lives. She ended up passing on a backpack for her boyfriend; seemed like something Tony Stark or one of Peter's other super-sitters could take care of if May put her foot down and refused to get him another one.

She and Cindy went back to the apartment and did indeed lie on the tile for a while, until MJ remembered there were freezies. Then, they stretched out on the floor sucking freezies, cutting the corners of their mouths on the sharp plastic as they squeezed the ice up the sleeves and attempted to wring the last of the liquid from them once the ice was gone. They showed each other their tongues―MJ's red, Cindy's blue―then MJ heaved herself up to get them another round of freezies to consume while they watched TV.

They settled on rewatching season three of Stranger Things. She had to interrupt Cindy's Ally Sheedy binge, so she was swapping Sheedy out for another late-20th-century female film icon: Winona Ryder. MJ didn't say that out loud though, or that she'd purposely selected something late in the actress's existing oeuvre to remind Cindy that these women were no longer teenagers. Whatever. They both enjoyed the Pied Piper-ish, rat-luring flesh-monster from this season. Additional motives were unnecessary.

Between episodes two and three, while Cindy was in the bathroom presumably peeing blue raspberry, MJ's phone rang. She grabbed it off the table and slumped back into her spot on the couch. Though it wouldn't be Peter calling since this was her regular phone, it could be her mom. Maybe she wanted Cindy to stay for dinner and was calling to ask where they wanted takeout from. But when MJ checked the screen, her mom's name hadn't come up. Actually, there wasn't a name displayed. There wasn't even a number. She scootched up a bit and glanced over the back of the couch in the direction of the bathroom. Should she wait for her friend to come back? It was probably just a telemarketer or something, but the lack of information on the screen made her paranoid. Then again, the last time she'd thought someone was out to get her, it had turned out to be a photographer for the Daily Bugle, just doing the (creepy, invasive, Big-Brotherly) job he'd been assigned. She swiped to answer.

"Oh good, you picked up!" said a cheerful, accented voice. It was definitely no one MJ knew and she frowned. On the plus side, she didn't think an anonymous threat would begin with so much pep.

"Yeah... hi. Who is this?"

"I'm a friend of your boyfriend."

Ok, MJ was back to being suspicious that this was some kind of threat, if not of violence then of an imminent and doomed attempt at boyfriend-stealing. After a second of silence, she realized the bigger issue was that this person seemed to know―not just think because there was a level of certainty in their tone―that she and Peter hadn't broken up. Still, you never told someone who might be threatening or tricking you exactly what they wanted to hear.

"I'm single," MJ said as Cindy walked back in and pointed questioningly at the phone. MJ shrugged. Her friend sat on the arm of the couch, elbows on her knees and face cupped in her hands as she watched.

"Of course. I respect that you are being careful. I, too, am being careful, which is why I didn't say my name. Apparently, it is not allowed."

"Princess!" a second voice snapped in the background.

"You have given it away!" the first person responded. "Now you've undercut your own scheme."

"It was not a scheme. Your brother has set in place certain security protocols―"

The caller must have pressed the phone against her hand or something, because for a minute there were only rustling noises. It gave MJ some space to think, but what she was thinking seemed very unlikely. A friend of Peter's. Security protocols to withhold her identity. Addressed as 'Princess'? Had Peter given out her number to Wakandan royalty? She knew they'd arrived in the country a week ago and her boyfriend hadn't said anything about them having left yet. Wakanda? she mouthed to Cindy, whose eyes went wide.

"―and I don't care if he wants to call it that because as far as I am concerned, a trip to America is a holiday and I am not going home without seeing the Statue of Liberty! Sorry about that," the princess concluded, this part apparently directed at the phone.

"I think I know who you are," MJ blurted. She liked to have things out in the open. Or, as in the open as they could be where privacy and royal discretion were concerned.

"Perfect! That will save a lot of time, though I did prepare a list of questions for you to ask me, sort of like the game Twenty Questions..."

"Princess!" The voice was less sharp this time, but more aggravated.

"It is your own fault for not playing it with me on the flight here. Do you think I will ever be allowed to go on a real road trip? No. And still, you do not indulge me." This, again, had seemed meant for the person who wasn't MJ.

"What can I, um, do for you, Your Highness?" MJ wasn't sure that was the correct address. She was just happy to get the words out with how dry her throat had become since guessing the caller's identity. Cindy, clearly equally in awe, slipped off the arm of the couch and down onto the cushion.

The voice―Princess Shuri―laughed.

"No, MJ," she said, and MJ freaked out on the inside at the sound of her nickname, "I have done something for you, but all will soon be revealed. Please tell me, do you already have plans for breakfast tomorrow?"

Author's Note:

There's one scene in this fic that I was picturing vividly when I began and it's in the next chapter. If you put the name "Blake Edwards" together with Shuri's enquiry, there's your preview!