Peter's eyes slowly opened, his brain slowly awakening with him. The world around him started coming into focus as he realized he was still on the couch he had been on since returning from his encounter with Martin Li. He made eye contact with M.J, who was sitting on the floor next to him.
"How long was I out?" Peter asked.
"A couple hours, give or take," M.J. answered.
Peter tried to sit up, but a pain in his right shoulder stopped him in his tracks.
"Easy," M.J. said, putting her hands on his arms to keep him down. "That knife was in deep."
"It wasn't just the knife itself," Peter explained, laying back down again. "Martin charged it with some type of quantum energy before he stabbed me, and it hurt like no knife wound I've ever had before. He's more powerful than I imagined."
M.J. only nodded in response to him, looking down. Peter thought back to their one-sided conversation before he left to take on Martin Li. He wanted to finish that conversation, more than anything, but he also recognized that now might not really be the best time. Surely Happy told her about how things went down, so she must be...
"Where's Happy?" Peter said, remembering the bruise on the man's head that he had stubbornly insisted on driving with.
"I... insisted that he get some rest," M.J. explained. "He tried to fight me on it, but you know..."
"I know," Peter replied, letting out a chuckle. It wasn't hard for him to picture how the conversation probably went down.
"He did say that you seemed particularly shaken after you fought Li," M.J. said. "What happened?"
Peter's smile turned upside down as he recalled Martin toying with his brain.
"He... got inside my head," he replied. "Literally."
"Oh," M.J. said. "That sounds... invasive."
Peter shook his head.
"He was trying to take me over," he explained, "like he did Happy or that guy who attacked you. He showed me everything terrible that's happened recently: the Snap, who I lost, who it affected, all of it. I almost gave in too. If someone in the crowd hadn't stood up to Martin and distracted him, I don't know what would've happened."
M.J. didn't respond, and for a few moments, silence fell over the room.
"I have to stop him, M.J," Peter said. "Whatever he's planning, it involves the whole city, and I can't fail anyone else. I just don't know what I'm going to do if he gets in my head again... I don't know if I can fight it off."
He glanced over to M.J, who seemed to be processing everything, but there was something else in her look that concerned Peter.
"You okay?" he asked her.
M.J. let out a puff of air through her nose, shaking her head.
"Listen to you," she said, "all injured and traumatized, and you're asking ME if I'M okay."
"Well?" Peter insisted.
M.J. sighed.
"No, no I'm not," she replied.
Peter gave her a look that insisted she continue. He wanted to make sure that she was okay, plus it might do him some good to get out of his own head and into someone else's for once tonight.
"You asked me once why it was so important to me that you to be Spider-Man," M.J. began. "Honestly, it was never about Spider-Man to me; it was about you."
Peter tilted his head, confused. "What do you mean?" he asked.
M.J. sighed before continuing.
"Peter, when freshman year started, I saw high school as nothing but a means to an end," she explained. "I was going to go in there, make good grades, do the minimum amount of extra curriculars required to look good on college apps, and that was it. That's why I joined the academic decathlon team; it was just something to boost my resume. I basically had a list in my head of things not to get involved with, because they would be a distraction, and at the top of that list was boys."
Now Peter really wondered where she was going with this.
"At first, sticking to that was easy. Most boys at school seemed either too full of themselves, too focused on sports or clubs, or were trying too hard to impress a girl, like they viewed me as a prize or something. Then you came into the picture."
Peter allowed a brief flicker of hope to enter his mind.
"I still remember the first time I ever noticed you," M.J. continued. "I walked past in the middle of Flash giving you a hard time for no reason, and you just stood there and took it. I almost came up to him to say something, but he walked away before I could. Anyway, later that day, Flash accidentally walked out of class without his book. We had reading assigned that night that we were going to have a quiz over the next day, but he had been too occupied talking with the group we'd been assigned to that day, bragging about how he was the best to notice it. Do you remember what happened next?"
Peter smiled.
"Yeah," he answered. "I noticed too, and I ran out and took it to him, and he proceeded to tell me off, saying I kept it from him. I could tell he knew he forgot too and was just embarrassed."
M.J. smiled as she continued: "Well, for some reason that stuck with me. I still remember thinking over it that night. I mean, people at school did nice things for each other sometimes, but I had never seen someone do something good for someone else who went out of their way to make another person's life so miserable. That's when I decided to... observe you."
Peter's head tilted a little.
"Observe me?"
"Yeah," M.J. said, blushing at the admission. "Just, you know, here and there. Anyway, I wanted to try and find what about you would drive you to do something like that. What I didn't expect was that, in the process... I'd come to like you too."
Peter sat up, the pain in his shoulder barely registering to him now. He looked at M.J, his mind transfixed by what she just told him, but now he was the one finding himself unable to respond.
"If I'm being honest, I knew how I felt by early sophomore year," M.J. added. "I was still being stubborn about sticking to my plan though. I kept telling myself that, no matter what it looked like, no matter how great you seemed to be, that it would ultimately end up being a distraction towards my larger goals, just like I predicted. I thought for sure my feelings would go away, but they didn't. They only got stronger, then the Snap happened, and my world just fell apart."
M.J. paused briefly, as if to collect herself before continuing.
"These past several weeks have been the hardest of my life," she confessed, "but having you here, us going through it together... it made it just a little easier."
Peter looked to the side for a moment, running his hand through the hair on the back of his head as his brain worked through all the information he had just received. Basically, not only did M.J. feel the same way about him that he did about her, but she had felt that way long before he was ever even entertaining the idea, even back when he was hung up on Liz during sophomore year! For most of their time walking down the halls of Midtown High, here was this beautiful, strong, determined and kind young woman who was into him, and he had been too blind to see it.
"Wow," he finally said, laughing at the situation. "Here I was earlier, thinking that maybe I had made a mistake when I told you how I felt, that maybe you didn't feel the same way."
"It almost didn't feel real," M.J. said. "You said everything I ever wanted to hear you say, and I couldn't believe it was really happening."
Slowly, Peter's thoughts were starting to collect.
"So, when you said it wasn't about Spider-Man, but about me, this is what you meant?" he asked.
M.J. nodded.
"Every time Spider-Man came up in conversation, I could tell it was killing you inside that you were having a hard time going back out there," she explained. "I just wanted to do my part to help with that."
M.J.'s facial expression shifted, prompting concern to enter Peter's mind.
"You did," he said, trying to lift her spirits up. "You helped me more than you know."
M.J. looked him in the eye.
"And in the process, you almost died tonight, or worse," she said. "I spent this whole time while you were out wondering if you'd even wake up as yourself or not, and just thinking about all the ways that it could go wrong in general, and..."
Peter reached out, grabbing both of her arms. Slowly, he led them both to a standing position.
"What happened tonight was not your fault, M.J," Peter said. "I'm the one who made the choice to go out there, and it was Martin who did this to me, not you."
M.J. smirked.
"Sounds familiar," she said.
Peter smiled.
"I guess sometimes even you need to take your own advice," he said.
"I guess so," she replied, smiling back at him. "I am pretty smart anyway."
"Yeah," Peter said, letting out an awkward laugh. After that, the two of them just stared into each other's eyes for a moment, smiling at one another. Peter then inched towards her a little, and M.J. did the same. He dared to move a little closer, and she did too. They then both leaned forward, giving each other a quick peck on the lips before pulling back for a moment, still smiling. They then went forward again, this time taking their time to soak it in. For just a brief moment in time, Peter felt all his concerns and worries fade away.
They separated, and Peter took in M.J.'s dark eyes and wide smile. The whole thing, the confession, the kiss, all of it felt as if it were some out of body experience in a way, like his mind was racing to catch up with what his body was experiencing. Neither seemed to know how to proceed, then M.J. finally spoke up.
"So, umm... what now?"
That was a good question, one Peter pondered for a moment before responding.
"First, we figure out how to stop Martin Li," he said. "After that... I guess we'll find out together."
"I'd like that," M.J. said, her smile still present. "But... how do we do the first part?"
"Well," Peter responded, contemplating his options, "whatever he's planning, it's happening soon, but he'll still need time to assemble the parts he stole tonight to whatever he's building. I guess we just try and dig up what we can to find what his plan is and how to stop him."
"Is being a superhero always like this?" M.J. asked. "Where you feel like you have no idea what the bad guy wants at first, and only figure out how to stop them right at the very end?"
Peter shrugged, awkwardly nodding his head. "For the most part, yeah," he admitted. "Every once in a while, you'll run into one who can't wait to tell you his or her plan though, so that helps spice things up a bit sometimes."
"Wow," M.J. said. "I guess I have a lot to get used to."
"Yeah, I guess so," Peter replied. He was smiling, but inwardly, that statement made him a little nervous. M.J. could handle a lot, clearly, but he was already struggling with the thought that she would need to go through anything at all. That would be a discussion for a later time though.
"Right now, we should probably try and get some rest," Peter said. "We can try and pick up Martin's trail in the morning."
"Yeah, that makes sense," M.J. said. She started to turn around, but then turned back to face Peter.
"So, if Li was inside your head, does that mean he knows who you are?" she asked.
"Yeah," Peter said, realizing he'd not had much chance to process that element of the matter.
"Do you think he'll come for us tonight?" M.J. asked. "Maybe we need to be ready."
"Maybe," Peter said. "My spider-sense should give us a warning though if someone is coming, so hopefully that will give us the advantage that we need."
"Spider-sense?" M.J. questioned.
"Oh yeah, sorry; it's this sixth sense I have that warns me when danger is coming," Peter said. "It's like a little buzzing feeling I get in the back of my head sometimes."
"Oh, that's cool," M.J. said. "Any other strange powers outside of strength and wall crawling?"
"That pretty much covers it really," Peter replied. "Anyway, that should be good, plus we can get something maybe for you to hold onto or something to use just in case someone does show up unannounced, if that would help."
M.J. glanced around, realizing she still had a glass sitting nearby that she had been drinking water from.
"That should help quite a bit," she said, pointing to the glass. "I've cut my hand before on just a tiny shard of glass when I was little, so a whole one should do some real damage."
"Good," Peter said. "Sounds like you're all set."
"Yeah," she said.
"Okay, well, I guess I'll see you in the morning then," Peter said.
"Okay," M.J. replied.
Peter then pulled her into a tight hug, which she reciprocated. They just stood there, as if they were about to be separated forever as soon as they let go.
"We're going to beat him," M.J. said.
"I know," Peter replied.
They finally separated, giving each other one look before Peter turned to head in for the night. He'd considered giving her a goodnight kiss, but he feared that might be a bit too much so soon. He felt stronger though, and more determined now than ever to beat Martin Li. He was still nervous at the prospect of facing him directly again, especially If the man were to get inside his head once more. Peter didn't know how he would be able to handle it again if he did.
He would have to though, because now, M.J. would be waiting for him.
Hope you are still enjoying it!
Continuing to pray for you all; stay safe and healthy!
"Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all." Proverbs 31:29-31
