Talking with Bucky leads to talking to Steve, really. Peter hadn't even meant for it to be that way; it was just... Captain America, despite their rough patches in Germany and what followed, had been a sort of idol to him. Maybe not in the same way that Iron Man is (because how do you top someone who saved your life when you were little?) but still someone he looks up to. Maybe that was a silly reason not to expose your vulnerabilities to someone who'd entirely understand you, but it was and is his thought process. However, between telling Bucky how the night sky scares him and how sometimes he doesn't feel real, Mr. Rogers shows up with a bunch of doughnuts from his favorite liquor store downstate. And then it becomes a night of him slowly and nervously spilling his guts about everything. He's still scared — like, all the time, but it's not like a primal fear; it's a weird gnawing one, the kind that makes you hover mid-step and sends you walking away from everything.
That was something Bucky related to a lot, he finds out. Mr. Rogers says that sometimes he doesn't feel like he's really in this time on occasion, like he's just dreaming in his bunk somewhere. They say it so bluntly, without doubt or hesitancy. It leaves him reeling a little. By the time he starts his way back to his hospital room for some important sleep, May's texted him a few times in concern — all quickly replied back to, of course, because he doesn't want to cause her anymore pain than he already has. He asks if they can do this again before he goes, maybe. They don't stutter on the 'of course, kid'.
It leaves him feeling... better? He thinks? Or at least not like he's drowning in his own body.
He still has a hard time sleeping, though.
He lays awake after pretending to sleep so May would go to bed, first. Then he stares at his ceiling with dread deep in his bones like the night before. Humans are kind of ridiculous, aren't they? They need to sleep to survive, or they'll die sooner or later; in the 60's there was this high school kid who tested the world record for longest time awake, and he ended up hallucinating, having memory problems, speech problems — all that jazz. Yeah, human brains need sleep to perform. And yet the human brain also assaults itself with nightmares. How backwards is that? How screwed up is evolution? And don't even get Peter started on the one hole used for breathing is also conveniently the same hole used for eating. It's like nature wanted everything to choke to death.
Anyway, he hardly sleeps. Sleeping reminds him of the dark he'd drifted through. Sleep reminds him of another side he can't get to, despite being its hostage for years. When he wakes up, it's from a groggy half-sleep that leaves him feeling drained and less than eager to meet the day. May leaves him to rest up in bed and gives him the okay to not move a muscle if he so chooses until she's back from work, but Happy is the one who forces him to get up and get dressed. "You're really going to skip out on a lunch date with Michelle Jones? Are you nuts? She'll kill us all."
He'd almost forgotten. And he feels instantly guilty that his tired never-ending loop of issues had nearly pushed his friend to the back of his everything. She'd only just barely gotten back to New York after visiting relatives, so they'd been texting on Peter's fancy new Stark phone (the other had been, to Peter's devastation, lost forever; he had voicemails saved on that damned phone, and it almost makes him wanna cry), so it wasn't like it was his first contact with her, but it was sparse. Awkward. Incomplete.
Happy nudges Peter to get to his stool, still labeled for him much to his embarrassment in front of the other Avengers. Pepper serves him some pancakes. Nat — she told him Nat is fine — sits beside him and seems to be watching him in her periphery. He gets through half a flapjack and a few bites of hashbrown, much to Bruce's concern as he's sipping hot coffee. "You know, I took that tube out because you could eat again. I don't have to put it back later because you stop, do I?"
"M'sorry, Dr. Banner. I just have a meeting with my — um, my old friend today. I'm just nervous."
"Oh, that's good; it's important to get back out there, kid," Rhodes says with a nod. "You gotta be sick of that hospital room by now."
"Oh, I am. I really am," he groans.
But really, the outside world still seems so terrifying. He'd spent so long trying to see just this place with clear eyes — he'd stopped even considering the city that waited for him beyond this facility. But it waited all the same, and so did MJ, even if he didn't deserve to interrupt her life with the newly risen ghost of him. So he walks into one of the community bathrooms and changes into some clothes that May had brought him: an old sweater, dragged over one of those science pun shirts he won at a science fair raffle. He laced up some new sneakers conveniently left in his room and brushed his hair the way he liked it, concealing childish curls and making him feel a little more like the Peter Benjamin Parker who boarded a bus for a field trip in 2018.
The drive is in the back of one of Happy's cars, because the man refused to let him get there any other way — "not going by yourself, not on my watch", quote, unquote. Some of his panic eases the longer they drive, and once they pass Mr. Delmar's re-opened bodega Peter manages a fond smile. They pull up to the cafe with his hands sweaty and his stomach is in knots regardless, and before he can utter a hoarse request to turn back and tell MJ he's just not feeling well, he's practically booted out of the car.
"Pete," Happy says from the driver's window. "I know you can do this. Alright? And if you really, really can't — I'll be around the corner, just over there. But I'm not gonna let you not try, because that's how you end up in an apartment with thirty cats and agoraphobia, ordering another pizza three nights in a row and wondering where your life went."
"That's — That's oddly specific and dramatic, but thanks."
Alright. Alright, fine. I don't want thirty cats. I don't want to have nightmares about the vastness of screaming souls.
He forces one foot in front of the other. It's a really nice little place, with rows of fresh flowers lining the iron cross-hatched windows; he's not sure if there's really a Delilah as an owner or it's just a cute little namesake, but the sign definitely needs a new paint job. It smells like coffee and some mysterious fragrance on the inside, which eases his shoulders a fraction. He checks his watch — 12:00 p.m., on the dot. MJ's usually super punctual, especially when she's got a time specifically picked of her own accord, but he doesn't see her yet as he scans around the room with owlish eyes. "Okay, Peter. It's okay. You're okay. It's just—"
His voice sticks in his throat, as he rounds the corner to the rest of the tables and chairs. There she is, sitting patiently with her fingers laced together in front of her as she studies something outside the window. Sunlight floods in just right, leaving just the perfect picture of the girl he'd started falling in love with years ago; unlike Ned, who had decided to buzz his hair short and trade T-shirts for button-ups, MJ looks stunningly unchanged (and why would she be changed that much to cause concern? it's been two years, peter, get a grip). Under her hands is a book, unsurprisingly, tented in half with its words pressed against the aged wooden counter. His sharper, inhuman vision picks up a title on the spine when she shifts her hands away — How to Survive the End of the World (When It's All in Your Head).
It pulls a laugh out of him, soft but enough to completely shift the scene as she turns to look at him.
She stares. He stares back. He clears his throat and tries to remember English.
"Whatcha — whatcha' lookin' at?" is all he can drum up.
"... Someone scratched a tiny dick on the window," she replies.
She hasn't changed even a little bit, and a smile pulls at his lips like a sail dropping on a ship's mast, carrying him towards the small table. She stands to meet him with something difficult to read in her eyes, just before she hooks her arms around him and pulls him close. There's no crying, though he feels like he might, and there's a heavy silence in the underused section of the cafe that leaves them in their own little world. MJ doesn't let him go for a while, not until the tick-tick-tick of her watch continues on for a good sixty clicks. Then she motions for him to sit. He doesn't run out screaming for Happy to take him away, no — he just takes a seat and sits in the sunshine with her, as conversation pours out of them. They talk about how MJ's family has been coping, about what Midtown Tech was like the year before the last, about these couple of political protests she'd been to now that the government was kind of still in fuck-me-up-fam mode.
Usual MJ stuff. It feels so incredibly normal.
Even the way he has to sneak around the topic of Avengers, or why he took an extra six months to come back.
"... So you're doing art school, right?" He jabs a thumb over his shoulder. "That really fancy one they converted from a hospital not that long ago?"
"Oh, yeah — I mean, mom wanted me to do something with the science and math angle, but after half your family and friends go poof and life as you know it is utterly devastated, you get to pick things the folks usually wouldn't go for." Usually, topics of such somber stuff leaves Peter icy inside, lost for words, but the way MJ talks about it always seems to settle the uncomfortable plume of bad air that would have followed. "Anyway... You're alive again. Congratulations."
"Thanks, it's super swell."
"It is," she says more softly, smiling. He smiles back with a throbbing heart. "So — what're you gonna do now, smarty pants?"
"Umm... I'm not... really sure? I guess go back and finish high school. I'm back at Aunt May's tomorrow officially, and I'll probably need to figure out how... birthdays and stuff work. Am I nineteen-going-on-twenty now? Or am I seventeen still? It's not like I've aged since I died, but now when I tell people I was born in 2001 they're gonna get all sorts of confused. But I guess everyone's had to adapt to that, right?"
"Oh, yeah, it's a shitshow. You're gonna just have to get used to telling people you're missing some years."
He huffs a laugh, scraping his spoon along a plate where a lemon meringue pie slice used to be.
"... I don't really feel like I'm seventeen."
"Because you remember the other side of it. The place full of souls, you said."
He nods slowly, the sound of his metal spoon against uneven glass drawing him from the world. Everything's so loud — the colors, the smells, the way car horns blare or the tick-tick-tick of her wristwatch... Sometimes it's so much. He misses the soft winds that blew through the soul world, through his and Gamora's oasis, away from inky black starscapes which housed the glimmering lights of the dead. Looking at her, he can't help but say the first thing that comes to him, caught in a sad daze. "MJ... I just... You know — I loved you. Um. I loved you like..."
"I know," she says, watching him patiently. The spoon bends a little under the pressure behind his pale fingers. She reaches out, stops his hand, and plucks the spoon away. "I loved you, too."
"I was gonna ask you to prom," he says miserably.
"I was gonna ask you, too," she replies, with a nod.
"... I wish I could've been there with you."
"You're here with me now," she murmurs, appeased. "And even when you weren't, you were."
"... The thing is... I can't stay here. Not yet." He looks up finally, meeting her eyes. "MJ, I — I know what I have to do. To make it all hurt a little less. To feel like I can keep going, and stop... being so afraid. It's gonna take me kinda far away from here for a little bit, though, and I just... don't want to hurt anyone who's waiting for me to catch up. I don't wanna hurt Aunt May anymore than I already have, leaving her all alone again... She doesn't deserve that. She deserves to have me here if she wants me here, but I also..."
He huffs in frustration. MJ cups her hand over his as they shake. Dammit, he thinks. Dammit, he's not sure why this is messing him up so much now.
"This whole obligation thing you're feeling... Does this have anything to do with being Spider-Man?"
He looks up sharply, his breath caught. "You—"
She looks absolutely exasperated. "Peter, if you honestly thought I didn't figure it out by the end of sophomore year, you're a moron. I practically stalked you and Ned that entire year, and you're the literal worst at keeping your mouths shut. The sneaking out of classes? The shitty excuses for skipping out on things? The rushed texts? Or how you'd magically vanish around dumpsters? C'mon. I didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery."
It was Spider-Man, in the alleyway, with the candlestick.
He almost laughs at how ridiculous it is, that he was surprised. "It's not just a hero thing. But yeah, he's involved. Him and Peter Parker. They've both got an obligation. Far from home."
She licks her lips, letting him sit in his awe for a little bit before patting the back of his hand.
"Well, Spider-Man... if whatever it is you have to do brings you back to May and the rest of us in one piece and all the better for it, then you need to do it, right?"
"Y-yeah, well... my brain's been warring with me on it, so I..."
She reaches over the small table, gritting her knuckle across the thump-thumping sound in his chest.
"But what is your heart telling you?"
He smiles tiredly at her. "That I have to do this."
She leans in more fully and presses her lips gently against his brow, his eyes fluttering closed from the softness of the gesture. It's not romantic, not exactly. It's love, and it's warm, and it's a bond, and it's not yet molded into anything with a label yet. It's a frozen teenaged romance, one that never got to grow beyond that small bud on the tree — something that may never be. Or may be something, someday, somewhere, in the maze-like streets of New York City. Or maybe it'll be someone else for her. Someone who isn't Peter. And maybe it'll be someone else for him, someone who isn't her. And that would be okay. That would be fine, as long as she was alive and happy and reminding him of what it was he protected — protects — here.
But he likes the softness of her lips against his brow, and the rare but earnest kindness that sometimes edges her usually dry voice, and how her hair falls in her face as she draws. He used to talk about all those little things with Gamora, and she'd just smirk at him like she knew exactly what was pulsing through his adolescent heart. "When I come back, and — and if you're still here and... I mean, if you're still..."
She puts her whole palm over his mouth, rolling her eyes.
"I'll be around, when you get back. And even if we end up doing our own thing and finding other people we're into, I'll always be there for you, you loser... Me and Ned, we're yours for life."
He watches her with adoring eyes, some measure of peace in his expression.
Then it's settled.