Chapter Text
He's here again, in the hivemind. He can feel the symbiote coursing through his veins, fueling his strength, his senses. He scans his surroundings. This setting; it’s familiar. The commotion from outside echoes through the tubular structure. Water drips in the background, setting the eerie ambience. He hears heavy, frightened breathing. The symbiote, Venom, it’s looking for someone.
“MJ, run,” he meant as a warning, but it made the cautionary sound like a threat. Her feet rapidly hitting the concrete as she tried to make distance between Venom and herself.
Now they were running, chasing after the woman they loved. No, the woman Peter loved. Venom didn’t love MJ. He saw her as a threat, a future victim, prey. The symbiote is getting desperate, tentacles sprouting from Peter’s pack, closing the distance between them and their prey. They hone in on her and an outstretched tentacle stops MJ in her tracks.
She’s screaming, crying, begging for Peter to snap out of it. Pleading for him to realize it’s her whom he has in his grasp. They don’t hear her.
“Peter! Stop! I know you’re still in there,” she screams, writhing against the superhero strength of the symbiote.
Kill her.
Behind the black goo, behind the suit, the symbiote, Peter watches as the alien’s mouth opens and it’s tongue traces her face. MJ looks terrified, her hands coming to clutch at her throat. Her breathing was becoming choked. Peter knew what was next. He would look down to see his hands strangling the woman, not the symbiote’s. All him. Him in control, him choking MJ.
“Pete..can’t breathe. Stop.” Her sentences became clipped, more desperate.
Kill MJ.
He tries to close his eyes, but this hell of a dream keeps his eyes pried open, makes him watch what they do next. MJ’s cries go silent, and her eyes roll to the back of her head. The hands that were trying so hard to make him let go, fall limply to her sides.
“Stop! Stop! Make it stop!” he cries out, but it’s not his voice. He doesn’t sound himself, the symbiote takes over his voice, his identity.
“Stop!” Peter gasps awake, rising in a pool of sweat. The blankets that were covering him slide off his skin, revealing the cool room air to his exposed skin. He blinks rapidly to make sense of his surroundings. Right, he’s in his room. Their room. Blanket, sheets, bed, MJ.
MJ?
Where’s MJ?
He jolts up out of the bed when he doesn’t feel her presence beside him. His Spidey-Senses go into full-alert as masks his steps walking out of the bedroom. He hears a dry cough from downstairs and his head snaps towards the direction of the sound. Peter starts to make his way downstairs, but the old house doesn’t do much for his idea of stealth. It lets out from under his light feet, creaking as he descends further. The shadowing reclining on the couch moves from the sound and Pete’s eyes focus on the shadowy mass.
It's MJ.
She’s sitting in front of her laptop, curled up in a ball of blankets sipping recently brewed tea.
Oh, she’s sick. He remembers.
He scans the environment more, subconsciously scanning for more threats. He notices the pile of tissues resting on the coffee table in front of her.
“Pete?” MJ’s voice rasps as another cough ruptures her body.
In some unexplainable way, the sounds of his name coming from her lips helps to steady the looming feeling of danger. However, Peter doesn’t respond to his name, just makes his way over to the couch, slowly, alert evident on the way his feet didn’t patter across the hardwood floor. MJ watches him carefully, trying to gauge his emotions. She scoots forward on the couch and Peter takes the invitation. He shifts behind her and MJ helps in shaping the bundle of blankets she was using as an almost tent to cover him as well. Peter’s arms come around her waist, tight, protective, and he turns his head to rest in the crook of her neck, breathing in her scent.
“Was it a nightmare?” MJ asks, trying to find reason in the sudden clinginess.
He nods into the crook of her neck, his lips lightly brushing against her pulse point. She inhales sharply.
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
Peter clutches her tighter, just when she thought they couldn’t melt any further into one another. She deems his gesture as a negative response. He just moves closer into her neck, his breathing syncing with her much more labored, sickly ones.
“Pete, baby, I’m sick. I don’t want you sick too,” she sniffles as if on cue.
“Don’t care,” he finally speaks up. His voice is raspy, dry, out of use.
“Okay,” she concedes. After a pause, she tries again, “Do you need me to get you anything?”
“Stay, MJ,” his voice strains coarsely, “just stay. I’m trying…I’m trying to calm down.”
“Ok, okay. I’ll stay.”
MJ focuses on listening to Peter’s heartbeat. It’s rapid. She’s noticed how he’s to match his breathing to hers. So, in turn, she slows down her breathing, ever so slightly in hopes to steady his racing heart. A few minutes pass and it seemed as if the incessant lub-dub of his heart had slowed to something regular.
“It was that dream again. The one where I’m it and I’m chasing you…and you,” he spills out in one breath.
“It’s okay, slow breaths, breathe. I’m here.”
He shudders.
“Pete, hey, look at me. I’m breathing.” She shifts to the side so she can partially face him. His face is crumpled in agonized defeat and tears are daring to fall over. MJ’s eyebrows crease in worry as she places her over the hands still clinging at her waist. She raises one of Peter’s hands and brings his digits closer to her chest. Carefully pressing his palm to her heartbeat, hoping to demonstrate that there was a palpable rhythm. Her heartbeat was there, strong and existent.
“Yeah?” her eyes scan over his.
“Mm,” he nods, and the tears spill over.
“Oh, Pete,” she hugs him. “I’m sorry. I wish I could take ‘em away.”
“S’not your fault, never your fault,” he cries into her shoulder.She rubs up and down his back, adopting a steady cadence. She tries to calm down the cries that start to pick up. His thoughts are going back to the nightmare.
“Peter, stop thinking about it.”
“Can’t,” he chokes.
“Why, what’s wrong?”
His head lifts from her shoulder, but he can’t bring himself to meet her eyes.
“Cause the dream’s too real, MJ. I almost…I was too close to,” he couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“But you didn’t,” she sternly declares. “You didn’t, Peter. You never would, you can’t. You could never hurt; you could never lose me. None of that. I’ll die on that hill repeating this.”
“Positive?” Peter meekly asks.
“As positive as a proton,” MJ smiles, referencing his old jokes.
“You do appreciate my jokes,” he says and he’s finally starting to sound like Peter. MJ silently lets out a sigh of relief. She settles back into their cuddle and Peter’s chin settles on her shoulder.
“What were you working on before I rudely interrupted?”
“Never, Pete,” she pats the arms that have snaked back around her waist. “I was just typing up some draft ideas for the podcast’s first episode. Not entirely there yet.”
“For the New York Truth?”
“That’s the one,” she exhales happily at his remembrance of the title she had just recently trademarked.
“Throw some of your ideas at me?”
“Are you sure? You might get bored.”
“MJ, stop. Go ahead, I’m curious.”
She reaches for the laptop she had set on the coffee table when Peter had started to round the couch after he found her reclining there. Her fingers scroll south on the touchpad. The top of the document begins to rear its head and MJ clears her throat before reading out some of her scattered thoughts. Peter’s eyes slowly close as he attentively listens to MJ’s ideas come to voice. Occasionally, he’ll hum or briefly comment on one of her ideas that resonated with him. MJ kisses his hair with each comment, rewarding him for being such a participating listener.
When her words start to run thin, Peter’s eyes open.
“Is that everything?”
“Well, yes,” she sighs, “for now. Maybe I need to go back out into the city to see if I can stimulate my brain some.”
“What? Not enough enrichment here at home?”
“As much as seeing you come out of the hot shower in nothing but a towel makes my neurons fire, Tiger,” Peter amusedly laughs at her success with a science joke, “it’s not quite enough.”
“No towel?”
“Ugh, Peter,” she mirthfully slaps at his arms linked around her. “No, but I really do think it’d do me some good.”
“Oh, okay,” he drawls teasingly.
“You wanna come with? We could get some pizza towards the end.”
“Would love to,” he kisses her temple, and she hums. MJ starts to scoot off the couch and Peter frowns from the loss of warmth.
“Let’s go back up. It’s still late,” MJ proposes as she stretches her arms above her head.
“Wait, MJ,” he reaches for her arm. MJ’s eyebrows raise, but she waits for the question. She has a hunch that he wasn’t entirely satisfied with the incident prior.
His mouth opens and closes, but he finally manages to start, “Did I scare you? I mean back in that tunnel.”
She sits back down on the couch beside him. “Well, I won’t lie. Yes, I was scared. But I was confident in one thing.”
“’Bout what?”
“That in any universe, Peter B. Parker would never so much as lay a finger on Mary J. Watson.”
The light begins to creep through the blinds of their bedroom. MJ’s eyes squint open and her hands quickly come to cover them from the ray of sun. She hears something groan and finds a waking Peter stirring at her sudden movement. She lays back on her pillow and faces her boyfriend.
“How was your sleep?” she asks.
“Better, much better. Thank you.”
MJ grins, “I’m glad. Gee, should I have moved in earlier?”
“I’m…not gonna answer that?”
“Scared I’ll get tight?”
“Yes?”
“Smart boy.” MJ applauds. She graces Peter with a quick peck on the lips.
“Can’t blame you. We were just trying to figure out our lives.”
“Yeah, but it’s still a process, Pete. Not quite finished.”
“Together as a team.”
“Always,” MJ yawns and sits up. She looks down at Peter, who’s now propped himself on his elbow. “How do you want your eggs, Parker?”
He quiets for a moment, thinking. Then he looks at her, “Scrambled, with a side of Mary Jane Watson.”
“Peter…” her head tilts, like a mother chiding her disobedient child. She starts to giggle when he pushes himself of his elbow and hovers over her.
“What?” he asks, peppering kisses all over her face.
“I’m not an item on the menu.”
“Says who?”
Her smart response is cut off when his mouth dips down to her neck and she sharply sucks in air.
“Oh, forget it,” she concedes, wrapping her arms around his neck. Peter makes a sound of rejoice before he pulls the cover over them both.
When MJ wakes again, she lazily reaches for her phone on the bedside table. The phone’s clock reads nearly noon. She places the device back on her bedside table and notices the plate of scrambled eggs and bacon resting untouched. The plate was still warm, so that meant the creator was just here. There was a sticky note stuck to the ceramic dish reading, “got called in for a subbing job!” with an elaborate, scribbly drawing of Peter’s spider-man mask. Instead of the eyes being their regular, angular shape, they were turned into comical hearts.
She cards it for later.
Eating the eggs, MJ starts to get ready for her day.