Building Momentum

Pete tries to focus on breathing and braces himself, running through the rolodex of potential lectures from MJ that loom as Miles helps him inside; he’s pretty sure he has heard everything under the sun, but he has faith that somehow MJ will manage to rustle up something new for this occasion. 

The warmth of the house hits him as he crosses the threshold and he stumbles away from Miles, ripping off his mask and planting himself on the couch. He closes his eyes, sleep already threatening. Deep breaths, or as deep breaths as he can take when his ribs feel tight on every inhale. Miles takes off his own mask, and Pete can’t tell if the look on his face is one of judgment or concern or both. 

He has little recollection of the journey home, but he remembers debating the options with Miles. Calling a cab? Probably the safest bet, but too expensive to take one all the way to Queens. Taking the subway? Pete expressly refused setting foot on public transport, fearing that he’s potentially contagious. Swinging home was by no means his wisest idea, but it was the quickest option and he knew that the promise of sleep just moments ahead of him would be enough to keep him from nose-diving into the concrete again.

“Hey MJ!” Miles calls out as he walks into the kitchen, peering his head around the door to the laundry room to look for her. 

“Oh hey Miles, you guys are home already?” she appears at the top of the stairs. “Give ‘em the ol’ one-two and get back in time for breakfast, huh?”

“Something like that,” Pete chokes out a laugh.

MJ winces upon hearing Pete’s voice, sensing instinctively that something is wrong before she even has a chance to take in his appearance. She is no stranger to seeing Pete’s face bearing the effects of his hero duties but it is the blankness in his expression which unsettles her. 

She joins Pete on the couch, feeling him lean against her in an instant as Miles fills her in. Her hands rifle through his hair and he sinks his aching forehead against her palm, the pressure of her fingers against his skin changing when she realizes he has a fever. He nods and shakes his head in response to the questions that proceed regarding how he is feeling, but he struggles to summarize it in any other way than just bad. He feels bad. Unexplainably, terribly, painfully bad.

“You want to try taking something?” she raises an eyebrow, hand shifting to his neck now.

He shakes his head. In lieu of any valid empirical test, he’s never quite figured out the whole medication thing since becoming Spider-Man; increased dosages seem to work, but he avoids it if he can, having had a couple of bad experiences and unable to verify if playing amateur pharmacist is safe.  He’ll throw back something if he’s desperate, bruised and beaten from a fight or to stave off a headache, but with his enhanced metabolism, he’s not convinced that the relief from pain is because painkillers are actually working, or if it’s just a placebo. Right now, he mostly refuses because he’d need to eat something so he’s not taking them on an empty stomach, and eating something takes time; time he would much rather spend lying horizontal right now. 

“Okay, maybe later,” she whispers, moving to allow him to lay down with his head in her lap. “I think there’s a blanket just out of the dryer.”

“On it,” Miles grabs it from the laundry room and delivers it to MJ. “You better give him a mean talking to when he wakes up, or else I’ll get my mom to tell him what’s what.”

“Not sleepin’ yet,” Pete mumbles. “Can still hear you.”

“Shut up and go to sleep already,” MJ teases. “I’m not afraid to take Miles up on that offer to call Ms Morales if you don’t.”

“You just want her to make more of that soup she brought to the potluck last month.”

“Asapao de pollo,” Miles confirms. “Hey, if you listen to MJ, I’ll see what I can do.”

Confident that Pete has been returned home in one piece and is in good hands, Miles finally takes a look at the notifications that have been pinging from the FNSM app and takes this as his cue say his goodbyes and to pull his mask back on, swinging onto the porch to call Ganke and continue the day’s patrol. 

The rest of the morning, Pete sleeps, making up for the hours he had lost being jolted awake so early. It’s a peaceful sleep, or as peaceful a sleep as it can be when he feels like his head is filled with water, like his bones have turned to lead, like his blood has been replaced with tar. Daytime television plays in the background and Pete allows himself the liberty to rest for what feels like the first time in months. MJ tries once or twice to coax him into bed, knowing well that Pete will be bemoaning that his back hurts from the couch when he wakes, but her efforts prove futile. He’s soothed by her presence there; the slow tip-tap of her fingers on her laptop’s keys as she redrafts the script for an upcoming podcast episode, the way she lowers her voice when she dips into the laundry room to take a call so as not to wake him. 

He knows it’s silly, but the thought of waking to find himself in his childhood bedroom in his current state is kind of overwhelming. He knows he could redecorate, move things around, make it feel more like home for him now in his late twenties instead of living in a time-capsule of his teenage years but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to consider this yet. All he has been able to bring himself to do is upgrade from a twin-size bed to a king now that MJ has moved in. 

He knows also that it’s probably time to move to the master bedroom, but he still sees it as Aunt May’s. He’s barely touched a thing in there, besides for hunting out legal documents and dusting the windowsill; it remains a shrine to life before, laundry still in the basket he can’t bring himself to wash and donate, a receipt in the trash can, the book she was reading still bookmarked halfway through on the bedside table. 

Around midday, MJ has to go out to interview a guest on her podcast. Pete wakes just before she leaves to say goodbye and to eat something. He feels a little more human after some rest, less like his bones are on fire, less like a candle burnt out at both ends. He would sleep some more, but hunger outweighed the desire for more sleep and his dreams were edging towards the more intense side of vivid; images of Stromm’s men above him, of Miles yelling at him and telling him he’d fucked it all up, of the moment before hitting the ground repeating over and over again like a stuck tape. 

Once food has been consumed he gets changed, clammy and unable to tell if his fever has fully broken yet as pulls on the sweats that MJ has left out for him. He collects some supplies, hoping to optimize the time that he is on his feet so that once he parks himself back on the couch he won’t have to get back up again; snacks, more blankets, water, his laptop, his phone charger. One of those judge programs is on the television, something about some guy suing some other guy about something Pete can’t parse out because he’d slept through the context and now the two men are just yelling over each other whilst the famous TV judge bangs her gavel calling for order. 

By the second, it makes more sense to him why he has never been one to take sick days; they’re boring. Mind-numbingly, painfully, horrifically boring. When he had been sleeping he had been fine; dead to the world, able to savor the rest he had been yearning for all morning. He would sleep if he could, and it’s not for lack of trying; he tosses and turns, kicking the blankets and trying to get comfortable, but sleep does not come, his efforts leaving him sweaty and uncomfortable and still wide awake. The boredom is almost worse than how he is feeling, or perhaps it is the combination; the ache of his brow unable to focus on the screen, the ring in his ears amplified by the tinny voices from the TV, his stiff muscles tight from being unable to get comfortable. 

He resists looking at the FNSM app at first, but with nothing else to do, he checks it almost on Pavlovian impulse. There’s a couple of requests but they’re small jobs for the most part, nothing that Miles can’t handle without backup and he’s able talk himself out of recklessly accepting one and getting suited back up. 

Miles was right. As hard as it is to sit still, he has to put his own mask on first, and in this case, that means keeping his Spider-Man mask off for today. He can’t trust his senses, not after what happened this morning. It’s unsettling still; his Spider-Senses are as natural to him as breathing, and it shakes him to the core of thinking that they failed him today. He keeps playing that feeling over in his mind, blinking and testing his vision, his hearing, his awareness of the world around him; his senses not so much dulled, but harder to interpret, like his normally speedy reflexes are half-a-second behind. 

Bouncing his leg, he shifts his laptop onto his lap. To his credit, he fully intends at first to use it for purely recreational means. He’s months late to playing the game Miles and Ganke designed, Speed Nonagon, and thinks that considering he’s benched for the day, it might be a good time to take a look at it. Except he has to update something to even open it, and the download gets stuck in the twenties for a good while. The progress bar teases him as he stares at it, an image all too similar to the work related efforts of last week that have likely landed him in this very situation. Unable to bear looking at it for a second more, he opens his emails, hoping that channeling his boredom into something monotonous like clearing his inbox of old emails will at least allow him to zone out for a bit. 

That’s his first mistake. His second mistake is refreshing his inbox to check for new emails. His third mistake is allowing himself to read the newest one from Dr Ikiri, asking for Pete’s assistance with part of the report.

He opens the attachment, at first just curious about what they have so far, and desperate for something to occupy his mind until MJ gets home. He has references he needs to organize, and figures that this is a low-enough intensity task to pass the time; checking they’re in the right formatting, putting them in order, making sure they’re all there. 

This isn’t the same task MJ finds him doing a few hours later. She opens the door quietly in case Pete is still sleeping, arms laden with grocery bags that obscure the couch from view at first. She puts the groceries away and grabs a soda, expecting Pete to be resting but instead she finds him in the spotlight of his laptop screen, open to a scientific paper on one side and a word document on the other. 

“I see you’re feeling better,” she says, half-sarcastic.

MJ guesses he’s been working since not long after she left, the notes he’s been taking already filling four pages of the document in chunks of text. 

He looks worse but MJ can’t quite place in what way exactly. Bleary eyed, muscle aches evident in his posture as he cracks his neck, unable to relieve the pain spreading across the back of his skull.

Part of her wants to scoop him up and hold him in her arms and tell him it’s all going to be okay, and part of her wants to scream and to wring him out and throw all the expletives she can fathom in his direction. 

“Yeah,” Pete responds sheepishly, the delay in his reply and his hoarse voice evidencing the fact that he is very much not feeling better. 

“What are you working on?” she says, feigning ignorance as she peers over his shoulder. 

“Just some work stuff. Dr Ikiri-” he pauses to clear his throat, and it takes him a good moment for him to be able to continue his sentence. “Sent over some stuff for me to look at, said they needed me to check something.”

“Did you tell them you’re sick? I’m sure they’d understand, ask if someone else could help out or something?”

“I’m fine, MJ.”

“Sure, if this-” she gestures to him as he winces, clearly in pain as he reaches to place his now closed laptop on the coffee table. “Is your idea of fine.” 

He sits back in the chair, winded in defeat. He hadn’t meant to work, not really, but there was stuff to do, and the team were sending emails about trying to get things done by a deadline, and he’d already been the one to push the deadline back and when he tried to put it down, to rest, guilt would begin to cloy in his throat and he would find himself unable to stop. 

“Please MJ, I’m fine,” he looks back at her, but she still doesn’t look satisfied despite him putting the work aside. “I’m sorry.”

She moves to sit on the opposite end of the couch. She hesitates again, toying with letting it go, at least for today. Fuck, she thinks; he looks beat. A lecture is the last thing he needs when he looks like he can barely string a sentence together, and she knows fine-well that Miles has already said it all. 

“You’re… This is… I can’t believe…” she stops and starts. “I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” he pleads again; this time his voice breaks, and MJ can’t quite tell if it’s because he’s hit breaking point, or he’s starting to lose his voice, or somewhere in between. “Believe me, I’m sorry. I know. I know.”

“I’m not trying to chew you out, and I’m not mad at you, I just don’t know how many more times I can say it, and we’ve had this type of conversation more times than I can count.”

“I know.”

They sigh in unison, the heaviness deep in both of their bones. Pete dips his head, his breathing hitching a little. MJ reaches forward and grasps onto his hand. 

“Aren’t you tired Pete?” her voice softens. 

Exhausted, he wants to admit, but he stays quiet, focusing on his breath and the sound of MJ’s voice. 

“Ten years you’ve been running yourself into the ground,” she says. “Giving everything you have to this city.”

“I’m taking a break,” he squeaks out. “I’m trying.”

“And this year, with what happened. With the suit.”

Guilt twists in his stomach harder than Pete ever thought it could. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again. 

“You lost yourself,” her voice hovers, a tremble brewing.  “And even if… Even if there was no symbiote, even if everything that happened didn’t happen, you would… You couldn’t keep it up any longer, Pete. You’d given it all to this city, but you had nothing left to give.”

A pause. 

“And now I’m watching you make the same mistakes with the foundation.”

MJ hears something change in Peter’s voice as she shifts to wrap her arms around him; a strange tremor in his voice she isn’t used to hearing as he burrows his head into her shoulder, a coughing fit shifting to a sob. It would be comforting that he’s finally being honest with her, being honest with himself if it weren’t so goddamn painful seeing him break down like this. He lifts his head away for a moment, tears staining his red cheeks. She hasn’t seen him cry like this since after Aunt May’s funeral. 

“I have to. For… For Harry. For M-May. To finish what he started. To honor h-her name.”

This sets her off too, and they cry together; the type of cathartic cry that hurts bone deep, where each tear exorcises the pain that has been building up inside. It feels like hours, but is in reality only minutes and by the time they emerge from their sobs, there’s a silence in the air; like the world has stopped for a moment.

“Peter, they wouldn’t want this,” MJ says, swiping the remnants of tears from her cheek, her voice strengthening with sudden resolve. “You really think May would want to see you work yourself to the bone like this?”

“No,” he nods, deflated. “She wouldn’t.”

“And Harry? You think this is what he wants?”

“I’ve got to keep this thing alive for him, this company; the work that we do.”

“And you can’t do that if you’re not also focusing on keeping yourself alive too, Pete,” she says, the statement holding some sort of finality. “I get it, believe me. It’s like there’s this fire inside you and if you’re not all systems go then it feels like it’s going to fizzle out, but you’ve got to tend to it Pete; you’ve got to slow down, give it fuel and keep it burning.”

Pete nods. She has said variations of this before, and she knows that they’ll both probably have to draft new versions for each other again in future. They rest for the rest of the night; truly rest. Balance is a journey, not a process but right now, things finally feel like they are reaching some semblance of equilibrium and for that, they are both thankful.