Work Text:
MJ was never a morning person although she remembered a time when waking up was more manageable, she had things to look forward to she guessed. But losing that just came with growing up.
She used to get dreams when she was younger, but once middle school started they went away another wonder lost to age, or so she thought.
It all started after that night with spiderman out at the liberty statue, she had her first dream since the 4th grade. Maybe that meant something, maybe it didn’t. She couldn't even remember what happened in the dreams, really. She could just recall a feeling or a presence.
A person?
MJ couldn't always picture him, sometimes it was just a presence. She remembered a warm, heavy hand on her arm, leg or shoulder, one she welcomed gratefully against her now cool skin. She never used to be that cold.
If you asked her to picture his whole self, she could not, but describing him seemed to roll off her tongue as if she were college educated in the topic. Not that she would ever let any details of this boy leave her mouth. He was MJ’s to have alone. That she knew as if it were a born instinct.
When he did appear as a visual presence, it was with curly brown hair that framed his face so beautifully, speckled with flecks of blond and gold and it would bounce and shimmer as he talked or moved. His eyes had the essence of fire, not raging and spiteful but warm and polite. Inviting.
His touches were always gentle. He praised every caress or contact he managed to steal as if MJ would flee and hide from an exaggerated movement, or maybe he was just scared of more than passing contact.
They would just talk. About what, she didn't care. The fact of it happening set her ablaze with a light she hadn't even recalled losing. A feeling of utter despair and a desperate ache, she hadn't realised she was carrying, flowed away in a gentle breeze. This face of a boy she had never met or maybe once knew, just the sight of him would make her heart flutter, a freshly emerged butterfly on the first morning of spring.
Though sometimes, he appeared ragged, the light that once crafted his soul dimmed and cracked. His brown curls strewn over his face like a rabid animal and the flames that typically resided only in his eyes were now hopeless and would dance about his body and through his mind. He would never make eye contact when he was like that, “You might never come back.” He’d say. So she’d spend her time with her arm over his back, her hand stroking his side gently. Each time she did so, he’d shiver and flinch, scared of what the touch would make him miss, not used to the tenderness he always showed to her.
After a while, it seemed he had gained some trust, not that there was any more to gain in her, but in himself. They would lay in each other's arms with no spoken words, only tender sobs or supportive squeezes. They would take in the affection, starved and desperate for it, and would milk every moment until MJ was woken by her 6 am alarm for school.
She grew to hate that alarm. Every morning she wakes up with bittersweet tears rolling down her cheeks, her pillows stained with the same emotion. She hated being ripped from that world, that person.
She spent her days off somewhere else but still not where she truly wanted to be. She spent her days thinking about him, his comforting touch and smiles and god she hated that. She hated that she spent her time missing some stupid boy that she can't even picture in her mind properly. But she couldn't help ending up in the same headspace.
With a constantly drifting mind, she found herself lost.
Ned would call her out for it, having to nudge her shoulder or tap her hand, but she'd pull away at how barren it felt, how it wasn't his. Guilt plagued her for that, that wasn't fair to Ned. They'd been friends since freshmen year. God, it seemed so long ago, why they had even become friends, she couldn't call to mind. So many things seemed missing these days, massive puzzle pieces of her life, hidden away, unable to be found.
She would wait impatiently for night to come, which caused restless mannerisms. Tapping her foot, picking her nails, losing her mind. Her mother would scold her and ask when she’d started all that fidgety nonsense. MJ would just shrug in response, maybe accuse school, then collapse onto her bed, praying for a quick descent into sleep.
Every night without fail, he’d return. The same glowing brown hair. The same beautiful eyes. The same easy grin. They fell into a pattern of chatting, then cuddling, it felt like these dreams went on for hours, at the time, they felt vivid and real and afterwards foggy and distant. It made her want to scream. The feeling of it all being on the tip of her tongue was infuriating and made her bitter and snappy.
After too long of this dream charade, something happened one afternoon at work. Ned was sitting where he always would, doing homework and insisting the seat next to him felt too empty, constantly trying to convince MJ to join him. She was making a coffee for a weird regular when the bell above the door rang. A sound she'd heard so many times she’d learned to tune it out.
Something was different now.
Ignoring the feeling in the pit of her stomach she finished making the coffee before turning around. She spotted another figure in the corner of her eye and was blatantly conscious of it but seemed unable to make eye contact. Only once she’d smoothed out her apron and walked to the register was she able to see him. His whole self.
He looked so familiar yet she couldn't place if she had met him before or not. His hair was a curly brown that framed his face in a way that can only be described as perfect. His eyes too were brown but held a warmth that she hadn't seen in any other before, it was as if her skin was heating up by his eyes alone, although it was more likely she was blushing. Realising such, she glanced at the counter.
The interaction wasn’t exactly normal either. He introduced himself to her, Peter Parker he’d said. Which she would have found outrageously weird with any other person. With him, it made her sad.. Maybe still a little weirded out but that sense of longing she had discarded in her dreams was making itself known. The ache and despair seemed to build themselves back up again. She made him his coffee, her mind drifting back to this dream boy, his glowing curly hair, his fiery eyes, his consoling touch.
Handing Peter his coffee, their fingers only for a brief moment touched. MJ froze at the familiar sensation, unable to speak as Peter dashed out of the store, muttering a quick thank you on his way from the counter to the door. She watched through the window as he practically sprinted away, crossing the street before finally leaving her sights. He was gone.
MJ didn't dream about the boy anymore. Not that night, not the night after or the night after that. “Although maybe it was for the best.” Was all she could think to say to stop herself from breaking down.
“It wasn't like he was real anyway.”