tensile strength
The threat of his favorite pho above him, he positions the spider-drone at the screen in record time, still keeping a close eye on the camera stream on his phone as he locks up the garage and enters the house.
“Ten, nine…” MJ smirks, already laying out the bowls at the table. “That was a close call.”
“Gimme, gimme,” he sits down, savoring the warmth of the bowl against his cold fingertips.
They eat in silence at first, content to enjoy the salty steam rising from the broth. Pete hadn’t realized how truly exhausted he was until now, struggling to keep his eyes focused as he checks his phone again. Ninety-eight percent. The home stretch. Just a couple of minutes and hopefully he should be free from the project for a couple of days; once the model is saved, the last remaining task of the past several weeks will be done.
“Hey,” MJ rests her chopsticks down for a moment. “I thought you were supposed to be on a break?”
“Yeah, from web-slinging,” he lets out a sigh, mouth still full of noodles. “This is work.”
MJ scoffs, trying to find the right words. She has wanted to talk to him about this for a while, but the conversation always shifts; it’s never the right moment. The clock ticks, and she sees Pete open his mouth, ready to change the subject.
“Most people work a proper nine-to-five, Pete,” she manages, the words still forming as she speaks them.
“You don’t,” is his immediate response.
“Touché.”
The clock ticks and with every passing second, the moment threatens to disappear.
“You’re taking a break this week right?” she pauses, a smirk spreading across her face. “A proper one.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he gives a noncommittal shrug. “As long as this stupid thing doesn’t throw a fit before it’s done, I can send it over to the team and they can get to work on the next step and I can… sleep.”
“You look like you really need it.”
“Shh. I mean, yeah I do, but please don’t hurt my ego, MJ. It’s very fragile.”
“I’m just kidding; you look great. And tired. But also great.”
“Thanks. I think.”
A perpetual insomniac at the best of times, Pete has struggled to sleep since moving into Aunt May’s place, especially on the nights where MJ has to stay closer to the heart of the city for work. He wakes some mornings, the familiar light beaming through the window of his childhood bedroom and he feels like he is fifteen again, stumbling downstairs following the distant scent of wheat-cakes and expecting to find Aunt May there in the kitchen only to be hit with the thick hot grief as reality strikes him faster than the remnants of sleep can wear off.
The grief has been hitting him harder lately, sneaking up on him when he least expects it. He had felt numb in those early days, able to focus only on rushing out into the city to tie up the loose ends of danger left behind by the waning chaos, dodging bullets and swerving punches in some messed up kind of metaphor for trying to avoid the pain.
And then there was the whole business with the Maggia and Felicia and Yuri and Hammerhead; he hadn’t taken a moment to stop, not really. The city never sleeps, and so neither did he. It helped that his new apartment at the time was nothing short of a biohazard, the walls covered in intractable black mold and an infestation of rats that would make even the most seasoned New Yorker’s blood run cold and so any excuse to be out in the city instead of inside was a good one.
And then, of course, there had been the numbness that came with the symbiote suit. A different kind of numbness; he would almost liken it to sedation, a complete closing off. He doesn’t miss a thing about that damn symbiote, but he sometimes wishes for that feeling late at night, eyes still wide despite the bone-tired heaviness of his limbs.
“Hey, still with us, Tiger?” MJ teases as she watches him, noticing his head beginning to dip in time with a weary yawn. “Careful you don’t faceplant into your soup.”
He jolts up, his body operating only on instinct and pure spite as he nods in MJ’s direction and checks his phone. A wave of a feeling he can’t quite explain comes over him as he realizes the analysis is done, the results already saved and being sent over to the team. He has been working on this project for so long, and has been stuck at this roadblock for what feels like an eternity that it had truly felt like it would never end.
He should be happy. Relieved. He should feel like he can rest easy now, at least for a little while. He wants nothing more than to settle into bed with MJ and sleep the rest of the week away, to burrow under his comforter and hibernate but despite the exhaustion, he is sure that things won’t be so simple. Now he has time to sleep, to breathe, to think and he’s not quite sure he wants it. There’s an intangible sense of discomfort bubbling beneath the surface he can’t quite find the words to describe, the sensation not unlike the antsy tenderness that precedes a fever or his Spider-Sense alerting him to danger.
He swallows the last mouthful of his pho, forcing it down his throat and senses MJ’s presence across the table.
“Hey, what happened? Did your computer blow up or something?” she teases, but her tone is slow and gentle and kind and settles him slightly. “It’s okay, you can run it again, can’t you?”
“It’s done,” he says simply, and then he repeats it, as if he can’t quite believe it’s true. “It’s done. I just got a message from Dr Ikiri that they just got the results through.”
He slides his phone back on to the table, face-down, heaving out a sigh and not knowing why his chest feels so tight.
“What is it? Are the results bad?” her expression shifts, her eyes furrowing with concern. “Does this analysis say that the pollution in NYC has reached an all time high and we need to evacuate or something?”
“I mean, probably,” he forces a half-hearted smirk. “Sorry. I’m just, I don’t know.”
She shifts to sit beside him, taking a moment to navigate the much too large dining table. He allows her to run her fingers through his hair, using her calm breaths to try and steady his own.
“You’re exhausted,” she states simply, and all he can do is nod. “You’ve been running yourself into the ground, hopped up on caffeine and sheer willpower trying to get this thing finished and now it’s over and you don’t know how to feel about it. Am I right, or am I right?”
“Yeah, yeah MJ, you’re right, as always,” he says. “Ugh. I thought it would feel good to be finished with it though, especially because the whole thing has been like hitting a brick wall and believe me, I know a thing or two about how that feels. Like, quite literally.”
All MJ can offer him is a hug and a commiserating glance, but it’s enough for Pete. Goddamn, he doesn’t know what he would do without her, and it’s moments like these that remind him of that. Even when they weren’t a couple, he thinks of all the times she had let him crash on her couch or patched up his wounds after a fight gone wrong or made sure he was fed and hydrated when the height of finals week just so happened to collide with The Shocker’s latest heist. He knows with absolute certainty he wouldn’t be alive without her, but he also knows he wouldn’t be sane without her either. The only reason he has been able to get through to the other side of everything that has been thrown at him all these years is because she has been there; they have been going through this together.
They end up spending the rest of the evening on the couch, dozing in between episodes of mindless reality television. Sleep comes in waves under blankets until they make their way to bed, where it fully envelopes them. It’s only when Pete wakes up to his alarm blaring at six the following morning that he realizes he has forgotten about something. Something very important.