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Something was wrong with Peter but he wasn’t talking; to anyone, as far as MJ could tell. And normally she would leave him to that, that wasn’t any of her business. But this was different.
This was her business.
There had been a moment there which she had just let happen and now her stomach was awash in waves of acid and regret.
Flash was a shithead to Peter on a good day, and anyone could tell that his conceit came from a place of insecurity and entitlement. As such, his being a shithead at AcaDec practice was not unusual. It was kind of a normal part of the week at that point. He walked in, called Peter some names, Peter called him some names back, he and Ned high-fived, and they all moved on with their lives.
But Peter broke the cycle.
When Flash came in that afternoon and said, “hey Penis, saw you wandering around with a blind guy the other day; you cheating on your boyfriend now?”
Peter stood up.
The tension in the room went as taut as a pulled thread.
He picked up his bag, and wordlessly walked out.
Now sure, the team read Flash the riot act as soon as Peter was gone, but when they all hopped out of the classroom to find him, he was just gone. Ned didn’t put his heart into looking for him, and so MJ knew that there was something else up here.
She cornered Ned and twisted his arm, but he said that he didn’t know what it was exactly that was wrong, just that Peter had told him he’d been not feeling so hot that day.
She didn’t like that.
She didn’t believe it either; yeah, maybe you have one bad day. Maybe you have two, or maybe you have a week. But you don’t fucking walk out of school because of it.
She found Flash on the way to the parking lot and told him that if he ever fucked with Parker again, she’d make the next two years of his life living hell and she almost left it at that. Left it up to him to imagine all the horrible things she could do to him. She got a few yards ahead of him, then stopped and turned back.
The look on his face was satisfying as hell when he realized that there was going to be a round two of this.
“That man you saw Parker with,” she said once she was up in his face again, “That was my boss by the way. Pretty sure he wouldn’t take well to hearing that some kid was going around calling him a pedophile; you know, especially with his being a lawyer and everything. So maybe you wanna think twice before you go around calling people names, huh?”
She left for the second time, safe in the knowledge that Flash wouldn’t sleep that night. He’d be too busy being terrified that he was about to be arrested.
Mr. Murdock wouldn’t get him arrested for something as stupid as that, no. But maybe Daredevil could stand up for his little buddy where MJ had failed.
She told Mr. Murdock about everything that happened because Mr. Nelson was going to take the high road here and say that bullying was a part of everyone’s lives to some extent and they all needed to find healthy ways of dealing with it.
She wasn’t interested in finding healthy ways to deal with it.
She wanted direct action.
Mr. Murdock and Karen were direct action-type of people.
Matt noticed her standing in the doorway of his office and waved her in and while she explained to him what was going on, his fingers wove together and then pressed together and then shook a teeny bit with rage.
“I should have done something,” she admitted, “I’m team captain.”
“Highschool is the fucking worst,” Matt told her firmly.
“I know, but I really should have done something. Stuck up for him. I just—”
“You’re not listening, Michelle.”
She stopped. Matt’s glasses looked very red in the evening light.
“Highschool is the worst,” he repeated, “And everyone who ever told you that it ends is a liar.”
She didn’t understand. She was pretty sure highschool ended with college and, for most kids, moving the fuck out of the house.
“Not like that. I think I know what’s up,” Matt said. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Yeah, but what do I do?” Michelle asked him. He stared past her and slowly cocked his head, thinking about it.
“You tell him what you told me,” he said, “Apologies have no statutes of limitations.”
Fair.
“Go on, girl. I got this. You already dealt with the issue on your end.”
Alright, well. She believed in him, she guessed.
Mr. Nelson took her by surprise by wringing the story out of her over the filing cabinet before she left for the day. He took her by surprise, not by the wringing, but by his unexpected declaration, that “yeah no, sounds like that kid needs a Humbling.”
And here she thought Fogs would take the high road.
“Hell no, honey. I am a product of bullying; that was my life, age five to 24. Hell nah, I made a resolution after law school that I wasn’t playing any more of those games.”
“Mr. Murdock, too?” she asked, picking all the blue folders out from the others. Those ones had short-term deadlines for completion. Becky cut little inch-long lines next to their tabs so Mr. Murdock could pick them out more easily. One for short-term cases. Two for criminal proceedings. Three for civil suits.
Mr. Nelson snorted.
“You know, I was bullied because I was a chunky, l’il potato child, but Matty’s bullying was like, a whole different level. We’re talking Mean Girls cranked up to 11. He used to fight the kids in his Sunday School class out back behind the church—can you imagine? Right next to the house of God and everything.”
Ah.
Good. Well, bad. But good. If there was anyone who knew what Peter was going through then, it would be Matt.
Peter was pissed with her and like, emotionally, she got that, but logically, she thought he was being unreasonable.
This was exactly what everyone told them to do; if you see something, say something. If you suspect someone’s being bullied, tell an adult. She got that they weren’t little kids anymore, but still. Peter couldn’t seem to make this stop, it had been going on for more than a year now. And she didn’t know how to make it stop besides becoming a bully herself and personally, she liked to ride that line more than she wanted to step onto either side of it.
Still, though. Peter refused to speak to her all day. And then the next day, too.
She thought it was just him being a punk and feeling like his privacy had been violated, but then she learned from Ned that it wasn’t just her he’d cut off. It was basically everyone.
He wasn’t answering texts.
He wasn’t answering calls.
Hell, he didn’t even put his hand up to answer questions in class.
Extremely un-Peter-like behavior.
Flash found him in the hallway and tried to apologize, but Peter stared at him straight in the face and then walked away like he was nothing. No one. Like that hadn’t taken tremendous effort on Flash’s part to forsake his whole bad-boy persona and be a reasonable human being. Obviously, he should have just done that to start with, but even then, it was hella disrespectful to stomp on him when he was trying to be decent here. That wouldn’t teach him to do it again in future.
This, she ground out at Becky while viciously filing more blue files. Becky hummed and made all the right noises while blocking Karen’s Friday out in pink and green.
Mr. Murdock hadn’t come in that day due to a ‘Doctor’s appointment’ which meant that he was probably laying on his nurse friend’s floor while she stood over him and yelled. Mr. Nelson didn’t appear unusually bothered or anxious, which either meant that Matt actually had a doctor’s appointment or that the floor-yelling had been rightfully earned.
MJ hadn’t noticed him standing there, flipping through paperwork until it was too late. Turned out Becky hadn’t been making those affirmation sounds.
“You’re a good friend, MJ,” Mr. Nelson told her.
Good friend, her ass. You know who wasn’t being a good friend right now?
“Yeah, Matty said something along those lines.”
Oh excellent, he was just being a dick to everyone then.
“He said it’s a little bigger than that, though. Might be above both our paygrades, if I’m honest.”
Wait. Hold up.
Bigger than what? Bigger than Flash?
“Dunno, kiddo. Not my job to pry. Let’s go with the good ol’ ‘give him space and time’ thing and see what happens.”
She didn’t want to wait and see what happened. She wanted to fix this. To fix it now.
“I wish it was that easy, MJ, I really do.”
It could be. People just weren’t trying hard enough.
Peter didn’t show for class the next day. He continued to be incommunicado through text or messenger. Ned said he’d talked to him briefly the night before, but he’d claimed that he was fine, just tired and grumpy.
Lies.
Ned agreed.
They resolved to cheer him up. Besides, they couldn’t have him missing AcaDec practices like this, not with the upcoming competition.
Peter didn’t open the door to his and his aunt’s place when they knocked and there was the distinct possibility that he wasn’t home. Peter was more mobile than anyone at their school—probably any kid in the city, actually. No one could keep him in one place if he didn’t want to be.
Then Ned remembered that he had internship on Thursdays, so they hiked back south to Midtown and went and asked the lady at the desk in Stark Industries’ atrium if she could page their friend because they were worried.
They didn’t get Peter. They got Mr. Stark.
As soon as MJ saw him, she suddenly understood that this wasn’t just above, it was much higher than their paygrade.
“Kid’s skipped for two weeks,” Mr. Stark told them. “You guys have any idea where he is?”
Two weeks? Two weeks???
No, Michelle and Ned had thought that this had been a three day kind of affair.
Mr. Stark chewed on his tongue at this news, then looked out through the window over the city.
“He hasn’t been using the suit,” he said. “Can’t track him. I guess I’ll talk to his aunt.”
That old acid washing over MJ’s stomach started to go basic. Bitter and achy. Slowly dissolving her guts.
She and Ned left the tower and stood in the courtyard in front of it.
“What do we do?” she asked out loud.
“I dunno, he’s never done this before. Maybe he’s sleeping?” Ned thought. “Or maybe he’s just avoiding everyone or—”
“Isolating,” Michelle interrupted, “That’s called isolating. Mr. Murdock’s talked to him. Let’s go ask him.”
Mr. Murdock’s face was fucked up, swollen to hell. He’d taken a hit directly to his eye socket and, while he was saved from having ruined vision, he was still extremely uncomfortable. He also declared that he was having nothing to do with this any further and tried to close the door on them.
He was strong, but he was injured and so MJ and Ned’s combined strength managed to keep the door open until he groaned and let go to let them tumble into his apartment. He decided he needed a drink and let no one say anything until he’d poured two fingers of whiskey into a glass.
“Scotch,” he bitterly corrected.
Yeah, whatever. Whiskey.
“No, scotch,” Mr. Murdock maintained.
Okay, sure. Since he was so set on it. Scotch. Because that Gaelic blood was super important to him or whatever.
Mr. Murdock glared her way.
“Peter’s fine,” he said, “He’s coping. He’s just frustrated right now. It’s a whole thing, hard to explain if you’re not in on the whole uh. Fuck. God. Saying it out loud is literally the stupidest thing.”
“Superpowers,” Ned said for him. “It’s a superpowers thing?”
Mr. Murdock’s eyebrows flattened, even the one which was kind of frozen in place by the swelling.
“Sure,” he said, just as flatly, “Superpowers. It’s a superpowers thing.”
“How can we help?” MJ asked.
Mr. Murdock sighed and put his cup down on the counter. The glass scraped against the tile.
“Sometimes, people don’t need help,” he said, “They need clarity.”
Clarity. That sounded like some bullshit, hippy ninja nonsense.
“Therapy,” she said.
“No. No, that’s definitely help,” Mr. Murdock said, “I’m talking clarity. Very different.”
Not different at all, actually, MJ thought. Therapists help people see themselves and their behaviors more clearly. That was the definition of clarity.
“Alright, fine. Not clarity then. I don’t know how to describe it, girl. I just know that I spent 25 years smashing my head against a brick wall until whatever it was clicked into place for me.”
25 years was a long time. They hadn’t even been alive that long. And Peter wouldn’t have 25 years in him if he ran around like he did, isolating himself from all his friends and family and not getting help.
Mr. Murdock flicked at his glass self-consciously.
“It’s not as impossible as it sounds,” he said after a minute.
MJ didn’t like that tone.
“Peter’s not you, Matt,” she said. “He’s nicer and softer. He doesn’t—”
“MJ, you don’t know him like you think you do,” Mr. Murdock started immediately. He stopped and then apologized for interrupting. MJ didn’t really have it in her to be pissed. She told him to go on. He didn’t want to, but he did.
“We—people like me and Peter—there are always two faces to us. Like two people living in here,” he tapped his heart. “And that’s okay sometimes, we kind of have to live with that because we chose that path. But sometimes, sometimes, it is the worst. Actually the worst. Unspeakably frustrating. Because look, let’s say I have a rapist in front of me, for example. This friend in here--” he tapped his heart again ”—thinks that I can, could, and should beat the living shit out of him ‘til he begs for fucking mercy. But here—” he tapped his temple “—I know that that isn’t what I should do. I know and have dedicated my life to a system which I am supposed to believe in, which clearly states that this man is innocent until proven guilty by a trial of his peers and I, myself, am no judge or jury.”
“So,” he said, flicking the lip of his scotch glass with undue force, “That’s a battle that’s always raging. But that’s not the fucking point. The point is, that that’s all fine and dandy when you’re beating the crap of someone else. But what the hell happens when someone in your real-people life turns around and flips the tables on you? What do you do then? Some guy walks up to me and calls me a blind punk-ass bitch and starts waling on me: what am I supposed to do, huh? Do I count? Am I someone who the other me protects? Or is that hypocritical? Is that not just me abusing my privilege? What do we do? Seriously, what do we do? ‘Cause there is a line in the sand where I’m not going to stand by and take that shit; I’m not going to let someone belittle me just because they need the fucking power trip. But that person has no idea what I could do to them. I could kill them; end their life. Quick as that. It’s not a fair fight, but is it an important fight? Yeah. Absolutely. If you think in terms of ripples, this fuckhead who’s messing with me is probably messing with other folks, too. They’ve gotten away with it time and time again and all they’re learning is that they can get away with it, so someone needs to put them in their goddamn place. But is that what is best for me? Is that self-defense? Or is that just me making up an excuse to hit this asshole until they bleed from the goddamn gums? And just like that, you’re back to running in circles. Over and over and fucking over and all you can do is just. Stand. Still. So yeah. It’s frustrating. Inaction is frustrating. Peter’s fucking frustrated.”
Silence had no place in the day time, but it held heavy in that kitchen all the same.
“I think I understand,” Ned said softly.
Yeah, MJ did, too.
“Sorry for bothering you, Mr. Murdock. And thanks for talking to us,” Ned said, pulling MJ behind him by the elbow.
Mr. Murdock didn’t say anything; he bit his lip and nodded.
He let them go.
Peter came to school the next day and sat silently at his desk, chewing his lip.
MJ could see the green-gray of a bruise peeking out of his sleeve. He was still going out then. Just not taking the Stark suit. Did he have another one?
She touched his shoulder and he didn’t react more than to lean into it a little, defeated.
It made her teeth sour.
“I’m sorry I told Mr. Murdock,” she told him later at lunch. It felt like wading through a pond of sludge. Decades upon decades of sediment layered on top of itself. Only instead of silt, it was silence. Or rather, the lack of words. Voices all around them on campus and Peter’s quiet felt so heavy.
Ned leaned gently against his shoulder on his other side.
Peter let out a half breath and then shattered. Dropped forward into his own lap like a rag doll. His back and shoulders shuddering and rattling horribly. Ned went forward with him, tossed an arm around those shoulders and started in with the quiet platitudes.
“You’re okay,” he promised his best friend. “You’re okay.”
“I can’t fucking do anything,” Peter hiccupped, muffled by his own jeans.
MJ could see the fingers of a hand in the bruise revealed by his rucked up sweatshirt. Her eyes stung.
“Can’t fucking do anything. Ever. Nothing. Just have to take it and take it and take it. From everyone. All the time. And it’s not fair.”
His voice cracked on the word and MJ’s breath stuttered in her lungs.
“You don’t have to,” she tried to tell him.
“There is no other choice,” Peter said. He sniffed hard and wiped at his face and sat up to try to get more air in his lungs. Tried to blink the tears away at the sky. “Spiderman helps people. I made him to help people.”
So why do people do this me? Went unsaid.
Because people were horrible.
Because people were selfish.
Ungrateful. And desperate for attention of their own.
Insecure in their own abilities. Insecure in their own skins.
To see someone else doing their best with confidence was a threat to their own sense of superiority.
Hundreds and thousands of people could say that Spiderman had saved their lives or at least made them easier, but there would always be those who called him a menace, a disgrace, a know-nothing, full-of-himself, reckless brat. And those voices would be the ones which sprang through the others; which rose to the top of that pile of praise like sea shells in a bottle of sand.
Only these shells were full of nothing but rotten flesh.
And Peter was powerless to stop the voices as Spiderman and he was even more powerless to stop the bullying as Peter Parker. He’d give himself away if he stood up for himself. He’d undo everything that Spiderman stood for—his selflessness.
And would it be self-defense, as Mr. Murdock said? Or would it be an abuse of power?
If Peter cornered Flash in a classroom and told him that hey, motherfucker, you know how you badmouth me day in and day out, you know how you embarrass me on the daily in front of all the people in this room and so many more out there in this city? You know how you do that? Well, guess what? I could kill you. I could stop the breath in your lungs right now without trying. I’ve held together ferries with nothing but my hands and I saved your life in Washington D.C. and my life has saved more people in less time than yours could ever hope to, so why don’t you sit the fuck down and give me a goddamn break?
If Peter did that, would that be self defense or would it just be a means of silencing someone? Doing exactly what those people he stopped in their tracks at night tried to do to others through guns and knives and horrible threats against families.
He was stuck. Right now, he was well and truly stuck.
And there wasn’t much MJ and Ned could do but let him cry out at the injustice of it all, so that at least he knew that someone was listening.
Peter said he was quitting AcaDec a week later and immediately the team went into uproar. MJ hadn’t seen this coming. Zero warning. She couldn’t say she was that surprised, though, because the bruises on Peter’s arms had blossomed with new patterns of yellow and gray and his knuckles had been scabbing for a week now.
From Ned, she’d learned that he’d gone back to internship, three days a week this time.
Throwing himself into mechanics and numbers and data which did not judge him except when he was unable to order them such that the right ones appeared at the right moment.
“Okay,” she said over everyone else’s panicking, “You wanna tell us why or do you just want to go?”
Peter looked at her and his eyes were exhausted.
“I’ve got other priorities right now,” he said.
“Priorities like what?” Abe demanded. “Like your internship and school? Man, we’ve all got those.”
Peter’s eyebrow flickered and for a millisecond there, MJ thought he would lose it.
“Like my own well-being,” he snapped instead. “Fuck off, they’re personal. I’m out. Peace, y’all. It’s been real.”
And just like he’d done two weeks earlier, he picked up his bag and walked out that door.
The room came to a standstill when it closed.
“Alright, let’s get started,” Michelle said as evenly as she could. “Flash, you’re in Parker’s place. Congrats, you finally got what you’ve always wanted.”
Kill ‘em with kindness, Peter.
But please, don’t stay gone for long.
He meant it. He didn’t do any more AcaDec; not for two months. Two months during which his knuckles never healed. During which he got called to the office and asked if someone was abusing him. During which the whole team caught wind of this and started freaking out. Flash said he didn’t want Peter’s place. He was guilty as hell. He thought he’d been picking on this kid who’d been getting the shit kicked out of him at home, now.
That wasn’t the case. Peter had told the school counselor, in a torrent of false tears, that some guys had been hanging around his neighborhood, beating on folks who passed through. It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t have any more money or anything to give them.
The school couldn’t do much about that besides put in a tip to the police, who, of course, found nothing.
Peter let the bruises heal under too-long sleeves after that.
MJ wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but despite everything, he seemed to be standing a little taller lately. She asked Ned and he said that he did seem to be a little more at ease.
She asked Ned if he thought Peter would come back to AcaDec and he said he wasn’t so sure. Whatever it was that Peter was doing seemed to be filling the time AcaDec used to occupy nearly perfectly.
She worked up the nerve to ask Peter about it and he smiled the way that he always did and said that he was just taking a break.
“Give me six months,” he said with unusual confidence.
He was fighting, MJ knew that much. She just didn’t know where or who or how. She didn’t know why either and that made worry bloom and ebb high in her chest.
He was fighting and more and more he was smiling and she didn’t know if that unnerved her or not.
Flash finally got ahold of him, right before winter break and apologized again. He really meant it this time, he swore. He told Peter he never would have touched him if he’d known it hurt him so bad. He said that he hadn’t been thinking about how it made him feel; he’d just thought it was kind of a shared joke, that other people thought it was funny and so Peter would laugh with them.
“Yeah, no. I get that,” Peter told him. “But man, that’s so much worse. Like, would you have even stopped if you hadn’t found out that someone was hitting on me? And why would you even think that that’s funny or helpful to begin with? And why was it that it had to be my job to make you see that you were being a fucking dick, huh? Why did that have to be my job?”
Flash didn’t have an answer for him and he wasn’t looking for one.
“Dude, just like, think about your actions,” Peter said. “It’s not that hard to just shut up and let people be.”
Yeah, no. It wasn’t.
MJ resolved to let Peter be. He’d tell her and Ned what he was doing when he was ready.
He was ready the next Spring. A glorious return to AcaDec. He was welcomed with open arms and confused stares because damn. What'd you eat over break that made you so big, Parker?
He laughed and said he’s started working out.
He let MJ touch his knuckles and they weren’t raw. They were rough; skin thickened. Calloused.
“What were you doing?” she asked him.
Peter smiled at her and it made his eyes squint a little.
“Taking things into my own hands,” he said.
“How?”
“Well, a little birdie told my big bro that someone was picking on me,” he joked, “And my big bro told me to throw him down the stairs. But then my other bigger bro had a better idea.”
Oh?
She could totally imagine Mr. Murdock shoving a guy down a stairwell and hunkering down at the top to observe the proceedings in his own way in glee. He had a mean streak in him, that had come out a little more than usual in the last week or so, when an old fellow Columbia alumni had blown into the office, telling Mr. Nelson that he had to help him.
“Oh no, he does not,” Mr. Murdock had said, crammed between this guy and Mr. Nelson with his chin up high.
“Matthew,” the guy said.
“Thomas,” Mr. Murdock said back.
“Now isn’t the time—”
“My office, my partner, my case. Fogs, I got this. C’mere Mr. Wrinnings, I’ll be the judge of whether now is or isn’t the time.”
Matt threw him out the door after not even five minutes. Slammed it closed. Opened it to throw his paperwork out after him.
Slammed it closed again.
Said he’d be seeing the family Cruz now.
The whole place had stewed in smug satisfaction for nearly half an hour after his office door had closed.
Turned out Peter had taken a step back to regroup. To find himself between the realms of being Peter Parker and being Spiderman.
He asked Matt and Wade to teach him how to fight. To really teach him. The way they had learned.
Matt and Wade had been iffy about it at first, then had apparently looked at each other and shrugged.
“Why the hell not? Better us than Stark,” Wade had allegedly decided.
So Peter was bigger now, stronger somehow. He had a special diet and a long way to go, he told MJ and Ned. But he didn’t go out flailing these days. He found he could aim before taking a hit; he could protect his face without thinking too much about it. There were far fewer bruises on his wrists.
He seemed more relaxed. Or centered maybe.
“It’s not Spiderman’s job to make people kind,” he eventually explained to Ned and MJ. “It’s his job to keep people safe. So if sometimes, I need to be a little less kind to everyone involved, including myself, to make that happen, I think I’m willing to make that sacrifice.”
Huh.
Clarity.
Maybe Mr. Murdock did have a few things rolling around in that head of his.
When the others on the team asked Peter what he’d been up to over the last few months, he said he’d gotten into kickboxing, which was one way to describe the way that Matt and Wade fought. No one ever talked about it outside the much later off-hand mentioning that damn, Parker was getting tall and hot wasn’t he?
Yeah. He sure was, wasn’t he? MJ thought to herself.
Felicity noted once over drinks in college that she’d always thought Michelle and Peter were going to get together and, when Michelle laughed her off, asked her when Peter went and got so bottom heavy.
MJ didn’t have an answer so she lied and said he was kind of a gym rat these days even though Peter’s relationship with the gym was the same relationship that Michelle had with chia seeds. Yes, they were good for you, but at what cost?
Felicity informed her that she was glad to finally have an answer to the question that still haunted their AcaDec squad’s chat sometimes.
It was funny, she said, because for a second there, Abe and Flash had sworn up and down that he was Spiderman.
Yeah, so funny, MJ agreed. Ned helped her reactivate her facebook and ‘accidently’ purge the group chat’s messages for the last six years that night.
Years later, at a high school reunion, Peter stood up and ruined everything by knocking the gun out of the hand of a guy on stage trying to hold the place up. He threw the webbing without a second thought.
Everyone immediately surrounding him besides Ned and MJ, who had both taken the moment to appreciate their immense embarrassment behind the shields of their hands, froze in shock and slowly looked over to see absolutely nothing out of the ordinary with Peter, except that he had half a pig in its blanket crammed into his mouth.
Everyone else starting freaking out that Spiderman was somehow at their highschool reunion.
Peter looked back at all the folks around him, all former AcaDec kids, and shrugged.
“’S fucking crazy, the people who live in this place, isn’t it?” he said around the sausage.
“Oh my fucking god,” Abe said.