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Aside from his own ragged breathing and the milky glaze over his eyes, Peter is decently content, all melted vanilla soft serve under the summer heat. Boneless. There’s a chill creeping through his senses in steadily growing fractals, grip stiff and insistent as it tries to pull him away from the last dredges of consciousness. His body is localizing itself to two places—a sharp pain on the right side of his stomach, and a sting of cold over his left eye.
Mumbling. Muffled noise.
Something warm meets his hairline, a soft touch. There’s more talking, but it’s hidden and smothered under layers of fabric and lint; the words don’t make it from his ears to his brain. His nerves are sick of synapsing and have given up halfway into processing sounds, leaving Peter high and dry.
“—eter.”
Fingers in his hair.
“Peter.”
MJ’s face comes into focus: the sharp edges of her face, narrowed eyes framed by hazel curls. Her nose is inches from his, expression raw lemon sour as she gives his cheek a few pats.
Pretty.
The patting increases in frequency, becoming more urgent and forceful as Peter continues to stare up at his girlfriend, open-mouthed.
For a second there are two of her. The moment passes; everything sways and shifts, oscillating, until the mirror images re-coalesce.
He feels himself smiling. “Hey,” Peter says, pleased.
MJ lets out a long, long breath. Her face sags with—relief?
“Huh,” she says. “It talks.”
“Head’s freezing,” he tells MJ, not quite registering the jab. The syllables are sloppy over his tongue. “Pretty weird.”
“There’s a bag of frozen peas there for your shiner,” she replies, still rummaging through a plastic kit. MJ is always such a big help. Always telling it like it is. She lays a slim hand over his, and Peter tries to turn his palm upwards so he can link their fingers, but then she presses downwards, firm.
And fuck, that hurts. It retethers Peter in a harsh twist of vertigo, and full awareness comes to him in a painful, lighting-fast snap. Distantly, he hears a less-than-dignified sound crawl out of his own throat. Feels his own body seize.
Ohhh, damn.
It’s coming back to him, now. Peter Parker, not Spider-man, loses against razor-sharp kitchen tool while walking girlfriend home.
Getting three hours of sleep every night really gets in the way of reaction time; who knew?
Well, MJ came out of the ordeal unscathed. That’s what matters.
The bag of peas slides off his face, and MJ places it back where it belongs with a sigh before the inflammation can return.
“Sorry,” MJ says, less steadily than Peter is ever used to hearing. His mouth makes a downturn at how upset she sounds. “Keep putting pressure on the wound, okay? I know it hurts. I almost have everything, just hang on.”
“O-okay.” Peter trusts her; he does as he’s told. With a few wriggles of his fingers to suppress the urge to fidget—the more he jostles himself around, the worse he feels—he feels a cakey layer of grime over the skin of his fingers, like a film of sediment under a bed of stagnant water.
“Still bleeding?” Peter suspects that it’s largely his concussion that’s responsible for his urge to vomit at the moment, but he’ll be miffed if he’s getting the floor dirty.
“Not—not a lot anymore, don’t worry,” she reassures. “It’s kind of—just, kinda… oozing.”
“Why’s—head,” he tries, wincing as he digs out the words. “Peas?”
“You tried to headbutt the robber after he stabbed you,” MJ says. “You were already disoriented, though, and missed.” A beat. “You slammed into a pole.”
Peter frowns again; he’d made an idiot of himself in front of MJ. Like, not to toot his own horn, but Peter knows he’s a good fighter. Excellent, even. The work he does as Spider-man and with the Avengers is a testament to his agility and ability to work under pressure.
Of course he has the audacity to get bested by a pole. Screw this, and screw urban infrastructure.
He must say that out loud, because MJ says through a wry half-laugh, “We all have our off days, huh?”
“How’s—how’s the pole.”
“Dented.”
“Hell yeah.”
There’s a silver lining bordering the clouds, after all.
After a thousand years, as Peter grows more and more lucid, MJ gently pries his hand and the gauze off of his stomach. Then, the distinct smell of iodine assaults his nose, and the dull throb around his abdomen flares and shrinks to a sharp point.
“Ow.” Peter grits his teeth. His toes curl; it burns. “O—ow.”
“Sorry,” MJ says. The needle goes in again, and Peter grimaces. “Uh—nurses talk to keep patients distracted, right? Do you want me to keep talking to you while I, uh, close you up?”
“Sure,” Peter warbles. After a beat, he adds, “I love your voice.”
“Oh my God,” she whispers, incredulous. “Okay.” She takes a breath, and tugs. Doing good, doing great, peachy keen. Peter does his best to minimize his reaction, holding as still as possible and mostly succeeding. “Anyway, since this was kind of time sensitive and Happy’s out of town, I didn’t call him. I dragged you up to my apartment—if you don’t remember that—instead on account of you being a fucking mutant, which’ll probably raise more questions than it’s worth if I took you to the ER—”
“Variety is the spice of life,” Peter says.
“That saying does not apply here. That’s for fun shit; I’m not having fun. You’re not having fun,” she grouses. Her gloved hand is still prodding at his side, still not breaking focus on making sure his sutures are done properly. MJ does a little penguin shuffle, using the heel of her palm to readjust her hold on the forceps—
There’s a knock on the door.
Peter and MJ both freeze. The curved shaft of the needle hovers right above his skin.
“Michelle?” MJ’s older brother calls through the door.
Oh no, oh no. Don’t come in. Don’t come in.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” she shouts back, before adding, “Don’t come in; I’m changing.”
“Oh,” he says, “but the first aid kit is missing from the kitchen and I’m guessing you took the peas too since they’re not—y’know, in the freezer. And, uh, at the risk of sounding like a dick, I’m making stew right now, so I thought I’d trade you the bag of baby corn because I need the peas. For the stew.”
MJ’s face grows a little tight and Peter squints up at the ceiling with his one available eye.
“I’m pretty sure you’ve had these peas in the freezer longer than I’ve been alive again,” she finally says. Peter coughs back a laugh, and then remembers that he’s been stabbed and hisses, willing himself not to thrash. “Just go with the baby corn.”
They both wait, sharing a panicked look until her brother says, “Okay, sure. Uh, feel better?”
Peter hears the brother’s footsteps fade back into the kitchen, lifting and twisting his neck carefully to avoid displacing the peas. Once he’s far away enough, Peter’s head slumps back against the hard floor, lolling to the side. Stars and static glimmer and sparkle over his field of vision before they fade against the pale canola of the ceiling lights.
“All clear,” he whispers.
MJ sends him a cross between a nervous grimace and a smile before getting back to work.
“At least I’m not in my suit right now,” Peter says. “That would’ve been a lot harder to explain.”
MJ shrugs. “I doubt that you’d have been hurt this badly if you weren’t trying to protect me and pretend not to have powers at the same time.” The claw of the forceps prods at his flesh, yanking some of it upwards as MJ tries to hook the nylon through properly. Not too deep, not too shallow. “Not to mention your suit is a skin-tight onesie and would’ve been a total bitch to peel off.”
“Don’t—ow—slut-shame me,” he says mildly. “And the suit distends; you know that.”
“That’s not the part I’m complaining about.”
If Peter didn’t spill a bunch of blood on the street, he’d probably have enough to blush. His cheeks are tingling a bit, pea-induced numbness be damned. “Um, good to know.”
MJ stays hunched over, still not looking at him. “Whatever.”
Luckily for Peter (and MJ, though Peter chooses not to comment on the sweat beading on her forehead) the wound isn’t too wide. Peter counts seven stitches total before MJ tightens the final knot and wipes the area clean a final time. She drops the dirty tools into a waste bag, sealing everything up. Her hands are steady all the while.
In MJ’s rarer bouts of anxiety, her hands are always the first giveaway, far before her expression and voice catch up. Tremors would run though the muscle fibres of her wrist, diffusing up to her knuckles and the bend of her fingers.
With great effort, Peter pushes himself up, holding the frozen peas to his still-aching face. There’s condensation all over the plastic bag, now, and cool water beads at the creases, leaving globs that trickle sluggishly down the edge of his nose, towards the line of his jaw. MJ hands Peter a towelette and some disinfectant to rub off the dried blood built up on his hands and wrists.
The stitching is good—not as straight as Happy’s or the few that he’s gotten at the Avengers med bay, but it’s a scary display of competence for someone who, apparently, has never actually worked with sutures before.
Peter tells MJ just that, and she shrugs.
“YouTube,” is all the explanation he gets.
Then, MJ leans forward, and Peter almost instinctively tilts his head up for a kiss—but she changes trajectory and plants her forehead on his shoulder, hair tickling the divot of his neck. They stay that way, breaths syncing up, eyes closed. Peter feels his heart slow, content thump thump thumps.
Her hands settle on his lap, in loose fists. They’re trembling, as subtle and near indiscernible as it is.
Peter’s managed to look extremely uncool today and freak MJ out. He hates the pit in his heart that forms from the realization, a dense seed of heavy metal. It aches, the roots of the sprout poking into cardiac muscle. With his free hand, he runs is knuckles along her nape, counting to ten in his head, and her shoulders droop as they relax. Next, he brings it down to find MJ’s fingers, curling the coarser pads of his own skin around her bonier digits.
Perfect fit.
“Are you okay?”
“‘Are you okay,’ says man stabbed,” MJ mutters. “More at six.”
“Em,” he whines. “‘m okay. Thank you.”
“How bad is it?” she asks. “The pain.”
“Like, a solid five out of ten, I think? Five-point-five at most. It’s healing,” Peter says. The knife got buried deeper into his abdomen than he would’ve liked, but Peter would have noticed if it nicked anything really important by now. It’ll probably be alright in a day or so—the head injury, too—provided he gets enough fluids and food (and maybe, like, fourteen consecutive hours of sleep.) Healing factor, and all. Sick-ass powers. “Y’know. It’s me.”
“Yeah, asshole, that’s the problem.” MJ exhales harshly through her nose. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Peter drops the stupid pea bag, letting it fall unceremoniously to the side so that he can pull MJ into a hug, careful not to shift too much for fear of ripping his stitches. As he kisses her cheek, coaxing out a disgruntled smile, he murmurs, “Careful there—I might get the wrong idea.”
MJ laughs for real. A short strum of music from the base of her throat, rising like hot air and out of her mouth before she can swallow it down.
“God forbid,” MJ says, “you might think I’m interested in you, or something.”
“Ewww,” Peter says, grinning.
MJ does kiss him, this time.
_
Since they’re hardly conducive to comfort, MJ eventually gets Peter off the floorboards and into her bed. The Advil he keeps in his backpack chips away at his discomfort enough to let him rest. He sleeps, his own bloodstained top stuffed into his backpack, replaced by one of MJ’s sweatshirts while MJ joins her brother, who is none the wiser, in the dining room to have dinner.
Peter’s in for an absolute bitch of a headache when he wakes up. Right now, though, he’s warm and content, chest rising and falling to the smell of MJ’s clothes and comforter, wrapped up in lavender overtones.