Breakfast at MJ's
Peter wakes with a plan. MJ is still asleep, he would have woken up if she had moved otherwise. It seems he rolled on his back at some point in the night but she remained on her side, tucked up in his arm and on his chest, her own pillow abandoned. His arm tingles a little; none of his limbs went numb the same way a normal human’s would anymore but it was definitely uncomfortable now that he was awake. He slowly removes her from his arm so that she falls back on a pillow, and she rolls over in her sleep so that her back was facing him. Feeling more well rested and refreshed than he has in who knows when, he rises from the bed gently as possible to avoid that damn creaking and wanders into the kitchen. Quietly he prepares coffee and considers getting the almond milk out for cereal, but he isn't in the mood for sweet food. Too many donuts lately. Peter decides on omelets with green peppers and tomatoes, and he hears the bed creak obnoxiously while he's turning the omelets that have now crumbled into scrambled eggs in a pan. MJ pads into the kitchen in ratty slippers that he didn't notice she had last night.
"G'morning?"
"Good morning," he chuckles, suddenly nervous. But the nerves leave as quickly as they'd arrive because she looks so funny standing there, disoriented. MJ's squinting, like she's only awake because he is, and she can't decide if she hates him for it or not. She sees the pan and sobers up, eyes wide and a small frown on her face. "Oh no, you're cooking, I'm sorry." She moves for the refrigerator. "I didn't tell you I was a vegetarian---"
"I know," he laughs softly. He can't stop smiling.
MJ opens the fridge. "You know?"
He has got to think more often before he speaks. "Oh, well, yeah." Peter shrugs, waving the spatula in her general direction. "You didn't have any meatballs in your spaghetti last night, there's almond milk in there and no bacon, so I just kinda figured."
MJ smiles over her shoulder from the refrigerator as she shuts it. "Observant."
She then approaches the coffee machine to find it already plugged in with two steaming mugs next to it on the counter, and she eyes him comically as she returns to the fridge.
"Are you okay with almond milk for creamer? Or do you think soy boys are the downfall of the West and that we should only drink raw milk," she jokes.
"I'm more of an I'll-eat-anything-in-sight-munching-machine than anything else." Peter laughs with his shoulders as she unscrews the cap on the carton. He's so comfortable.
MJ stirs their coffees, he trusts her to make it better than he could anyways.
They sit at the small table by the window in the living room, both of their phones turned off and on the floor beneath the pull out bed. Peter doesn't even know what time it is. He doesn't want this to end. He could just exist here, in this liminal space of comfort and overcooked eggs and MJ's knees touching his under the table. She has such long legs.
"I've got work this evening. Do you want me to call Ned and tell him to come so you guys can finish your LEGO set? Or. Restart your LEGO set, I don't know how you want to explain how it got destroyed."
Oh, right. They have to talk about this again. It's okay, Peter thinks.
"You don't have to tell Ned anything that you don't want to tell him.”
"No, no. You're right, I know. Thanks. Uhm, I think I'll tell him. It should be okay to talk about this, and he deserves to know what that guy's deal is, since he'll be back anyways."
"Of course," she agrees. "If that's what you feel is best for you."
What's best for him is going back in time just before their trip to Europe, but alas, that's not an option. Not even because time travel is impossible, but because it's not available right now. How inconvenient for him.
Stop it. Stop doing that, stop thinking like that. What's best is right now. This is what's best. And telling Ned. And putting Skip back behind bars. He proceeds to tell her about the idea he had when he woke up this morning, because he will need Ned. Ned is simply a more intuitive hacker than he is.
"Do you think you need to go home?" She asks once he's explained.
Peter's caught off guard. "Why?"
"To change clothes, water plants, you know," MJ laughs.
Right, that makes sense. There's not a single reason for him to have gotten worked up so quickly. He bookmarks that reaction in his mind, but doesn't know how to prevent it next time it might crop up.
"If you want to hang out here longer, we could just swing by your place so you can change while I go to work. Unless you have anything else to do, I'm not trying to take over your day. I've got some homework I'll do later tonight but that's it."
"No, I'll probably head home."
Peter rises to wash their dishes, and his mind revisits their conversation about vengeance and justice last night. Apparently, MJ is thinking about it as well.
"What would you want to do?" She tests the air. "I mean, if saying that helps. I feel like I might've shut you down last night with questions about justice when you might've just needed to vent."
"Oh, no, it's alright." She really hadn't shut him down, every word in her presence is welcome. He tries to think about what he wants to do the most, what he should say, worries about scaring her. Remembers her true crime playlists and laughs internally for thinking he could scare her off with this. Images of Skip's hands fly through his mind uninvited.
"In my ideal world, I'd chop off his hands and fingers and mail them to the first ten useless-ass police precincts I can think of, then patch him up and ship him off to Alcatraz or something so he has to live with it." He loses confidence as he speaks, feels childish. There's no catharsis.
He's silent as he dries his coffee mug, and MJ moves from leaning against the refrigerator behind him to leaning on the sink instead, arms crossed and eyeing him.
"That's not so bad."
Peter scoffs. "I know. I'd bet it's even corny."
"A little."
She's so close that her shirt sleeve brushes his as she uncrosses her arms, and he knows she wants to wind them around him. Awkwardly, he steps aside. Last night was too comfortable, too full of hope for him and he needed to focus on the now to prepare for the road ahead. He'd jumped far too quickly, tempted by comfort and fleeting feelings of safety that he knew he didn't deserve and especially couldn't grant himself at the expense of others. At her expense.
MJ stiffens.
"Well," he announces. "I need to go water my plants and stuff." The guilt and discomfort of rejecting her is too tangible and he needs to escape.
Peter had left his clothes in the bathroom, and there he locks himself in, leaning against the door staring into nothing long after he's dressed.
MJ eventually knocks, waking him from his trance. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah. I'm coming."
Peter exits the bathroom and swiftly moves for the front door. He takes the LEGO set with him, even though MJ could have just brought it to work herself.
"I'll see you this evening," MJ says as she stands in the doorway. She smiles reassuringly in spite of how he's shut down. "To talk about your master plan."
Now that he's a comfortable distance from her, he can look over his shoulder and laugh. "Yeah, I'll see you."
Back at his apartment, Peter fleshes out his plan, jotting things down in the leftover pages of his old calculus notebook. He considers showering, but he'd already changed out of MJ's shirt and didn't want to scrub away whatever comfort lingered.
He waters the houseplant he bought on his way home from MJ's apartment before heading out for the donut shop.