Connor doesn't have a (chaoticduallife) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-09 12:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: marvel comics, mary jane watson, spider-man |
Who: Peter and MJ
What: Meeting up and having a chat at last!
Where: Midtown High School
When: Just after the non-fear gas was starting to wear off on the students.
Warnings/Rating: None!
Midtown High School had been host to a number of odd goings-on since the prior year, since Spider-Man had come on the scene in New York City and the Lizard ripped through their hallways and classrooms. Weird parties, Norse gods, drug-induced fearlessness, students appearing, then disappearing, then reappearing again without knowing anything in between. The school was a casualty of its setting, a holding cell for teenagers in a world dominated by radioactive and genetically enhanced super powers. But. Despite all the strange events surrounding Midtown High, despite the dose of drugs that permeated throughout the series of buildings, the high school still had that familiar electric buzz of teenagers soaking in the spring warmth and sun. Of student and teachers alike desperately itching for the school year to end. Of seniors looking forward to the next steps in life. The effects of the drugs were wearing off on most of the student body, but that didn’t mean they weren’t hidden away in the throngs of students returning to school. They were there; they just weren’t as numbered as before.
MJ didn’t notice the difference either way. In her skinny jeans, riding boots, and long sleeved plaid button up, she sat in the quad on top of a picnic table, earphones in and eyes closed, and paid no mind to the throngs of students bustling back and forth between buildings on their way to class or lunch or whatever. She didn’t care. She had a mix of severe senioritis and bitterness and jaded attitude that had her egging April and May to finish so she could get the hell out of this place. The only reason she showed up to school nowadays was to escape her drunk, abusive father, who seemed to be on more of a rampage than usual. He wasn’t impressed with Peter’s stunt earlier in the school year at all, and when she disappeared, he figured the two fuckers had done it again. She hadn’t, of course, but no amount of bargaining and pleading told him otherwise. If her dad only knew that she didn’t even know this Peter, he wouldn’t be clamoring to beat the shit out of her and take out his prideful vengeance on the kids, either.
Whatever the case, she was on a free, and she didn’t want to think about anything or anyone. Not her drunk-ass father, not Saint Gwen Stacy, not douchebag Flash or spiteful Harry, and certainly not the Peter that wasn’t her Peter Parker.
Peter hadn't had much of a chance to talk to Mary Jane, yet. Not a real talk, not a good one, and even though he still felt like he was four steps behind basically everyone he still needed to rectify that. It was like walking into a clique that had been formed years before you showed up. The big difference was that he knew them, these people, he knew what they were like and he knew where they came from, and two seconds ago he'd been as close as any of the rest. Now it was a struggle just to get a decent conversation going. Things seemed to be getting better, though. Seemed to. There was no telling how long it would take to make things as normal as normal got for a teenager with spider-powers, but he could be patient.
He wandered out after his last class. He ended at fifth, now, which was good, because the other guy had a job and he did most of his swinging by day anyway. He wasn't one of those broody night-time vigilantes, generally speaking. There was no need to rush it today, though. He'd done enough swinging for two weeks when he'd been heavily under the influence of whatever had flooded the school, and maybe he deserved a half hour off.
He approached Mary Jane from behind. She had her eyes closed, so he very maturely tapped her on her left shoulder and then stepped around to her right, so she'd need to whip around twice to see him smiling at her. "Hey."
Totally in her own, Gwen-Flash-Harry-Peter-free zone, MJ obviously didn’t realize Peter’s approach. Not that he couldn’t sneak up silently, anyway. That was a bug power, right? Her Peter could slide around without her knowing it. Regardless, she felt that tap and nearly jumped to high heaven, but recovered quickly enough. Only, of course, to be duped by the most juvenile trick in the book. Her head whipped to the left, and after not seeing a soul, she snapped her neck to the right. “Oh, c’mon, seri-.” She cut herself off, however, when her eyes landed on Peter. He still wasn’t hers, but there was a Peter there. And, maybe he could be her Peter someday. (Then again, was the others ever really hers to begin with? Gwen always put it into question, especially these days.)
“Hi, tiger,” she said smoothly, twisting her upper body to face him enough, though she kept her legs stretched out on the bench. Yeah, maybe her stomach flip-flopped a little, but she had to sternly chide herself about that. Gwen and Peter. Peter and Gwen. Whatever, she wasn’t even supposed to care, right? Her voice was that warm, raspy tone that everyone here was familiar with, but she couldn’t be certain how his Mary Jane was at all. “You can’t sneak up on me like that. I don’t have bug powers, Pete.”
Peter grinned. "Ah," he said, with a raised hand, all instruction, "But I can sneak up on you, because you don't have spider powers." A mighty revelation indeed, one that carried him around the corner of the table to sit on the edge of the bench, looking up at her on the table. "Listening to something good?" he asked, because he had no real inkling of how to kick off this conversation. He felt a little like he had the first time he'd ever spoken to her - outclassed, out of his league, the dork who couldn't stop running his mouth. He didn't know how she felt, but all he could do was cross his fingers that he wouldn't embarrass himself too severely, and maybe they could get going on a positive foot again. "Seems a lot quieter today," he added. "I didn't see even one person slamming their head in a locker just to see what happened."
MJ rolled her eyes, but a grin still blossomed across her lips as well. “You’re taking advantage. What kind of bes--.” She stopped herself quickly because who knew what kind of relationship he had with his Mary Jane, or what kind of relationship the two of them would have now. “What kind of superhero are you, taking advantage of a poor girl without any sort of powers?” She stretched her leg out to toe his leg before straightening again and pulling the earphones out of her ears. “Something probably too mainstream for you,” she teased and beamed down at him. Okay, it was some Justin Timberlake, but whatever, right? It was her way of putting feelers out. She sort of wished this guy came with a guide, but MJ was always pretty good at reading people when she wanted to.
“Oh, god, seriously.” She hadn’t been affected by the gasses at all, thank goodness, but she’d seen the effects. Gwen and Harry in the lab, Flash mouthing off more than usual. Fellow students getting themselves killed because they couldn’t muster up any sort of fear or care. “No jackasses trying to jump in front of the train this morning or anything. Do you feel better?” She looked concerned in a way that someone who didn’t really know this boy would look concerned.
Peter's smile didn't falter when Mary Jane got halfway through calling him her best friend and then dropped it. That was only to be expected. Everybody had to get reacquainted with him, and he with them. There was no way around it, and he knew she didn't mean for it to sting, even if it did, a little. "You calling me a hipster?" he asked, grabbing for her toe before oh, darn, it was out of reach again. "Try me. Just try me. Let's do this. It just can't be Taylor Swift, that's all I care about, she does not seem like a nice person."
Peter shrugged. "I'm fine," he said. "Mostly I'm just glad I didn't go swinging around the city in my skivvies or jump off a building without catching myself, you know?" It was joking, but true that things could have been much, much worse than they ended up. "I think it's pretty much out of my system. Whatever the heck it was." And that was another problem: who was responsible? There was no way to know thus far with no one claiming responsibility, and until someone did, there wasn't exactly much to go on.
“If the shoe fits,” MJ retorted with a warm grin, deftly recovering from her little faux pas as best she could. It wasn’t meant to be malicious, backtracking on the ‘best friend’ thing, and she did flash him an apologetic tug of her mouth before going right back to the mocking. “I didn’t say it, buuuut, I mean, have you seen yourself lately?” She reached over to pluck at his shirt. “You look like you strolled right out of Williamsburg. The next step is organic webs and other bug stuff, and I don’t know if I can deal.” She rolled her eyes dramatically and sighed, as if being friends with Peter was the hardest thing in the entire world. (I mean, sometimes it was, but not because of him being a wannabe hipster.) “It’s some good ol’ Justin T. I’m glad you don’t like Taylor. I take back the not being friends thing. I’ll make our bracelets stat.”
She looked down at him and tried to observe any sort of tells. She didn’t know what this Peter did when he was lying, or what he did when he was trying to hide. How he smiled when he heard something he liked. Finding this new Peter was like getting to know an entirely new person and trying to rebuild ten-plus years of friendship in the mix. “Yeah, I’m happy, too. We don’t need any Parker pancakes splattered in Columbus Circle or something.” MJ shrugged. She didn’t know the source either. She wasn’t even here. “Mr. Osborn said something about the ventilation system, but that’s all I know.” She worried her lip for a second, sitting up and unconsciously a little closer to Peter. “I just hope nothing worse happens.”
Peter pressed a hand over his chest, pressed against the fabric of his blue plaid shirt. "Hey. I'll have you know this is my best and most fair trade shirt. I will not have you disparaging it. If you make me that bracelet, though, I might, key word: might, forgive you. Even though I've never listened to Justin Timberlake."
As far as Peter was concerned, he knew Mary Jane. He knew that pretty smile of hers, and he knew there was more to her than the party girl thing she did for a lot of people for reasons he would never fully understand. She looked like her, talked like her, and walked like her. But now there was so much else going on - chunks of history to be rewritten, and some girl on the other side who had to be making things rough on her, if she'd caused her to overdose. It felt, more than ever, like someone needed to keep an eye on her.
"I do not want a Parker pancake," he said. "It wouldn't taste good, people would be sad." Then he stopped short, and his smile faltered a little as she mentioned 'Mr. Osborn', and what he'd said. "What did he say about the ventilation system, exactly?"
"I guess I'll have to think about it." MJ flashed an easy smile down at him, all warm teasing that felt kind of foreign since their Peter left and this new one slid into the vacated spot. Since MK overdosed and she and Harry had that fight in Las Vegas. Maybe it didn't matter which Peter it was. Maybe she would always feel safe and comfortable and at home no matter which Peter Parker it was. She missed the easiness between she and Peter desperately and needed it now more than ever. She could feel herself and that porcelain act she put on cracking underneath the pressure of everything going on.
She quirked an eyebrow. "I don't remember exactly. Something about a toxin being spread through the ventilation system. That's what he figured. It was right when I came back, when everyone was still crazy, and no one--." She paused for a second, catching herself before she chided him for not checking in on how she was doing after what happened with MK in Stark Tower. "No one was really themselves."
Peter listened, and tried his best not to let too much of his concern show on his face. He knew that despite Norman's general insanity being common knowledge, several of his friends still liked him. They'd liked him as Harry's father before he turned out to be crazy. Peter had wanted to like him too, once upon a time, a successful scientist with a great track record. But there had always been something weird about the way he treated Harry, and when everything had cracked open and revealed how horrible it truly was, Peter hadn't tried to like Norman any more.
"That seems...pretty specific," he said. Sure, someone could have guessed that. But it also could have been spread around the school, or in the food in the cafeteria. Why airborne? He shifted a little. "You know, MJ, Mr. Osborn is...he's not what he looks like. I know he seems nice, and everything, but he was like that where I was from, too. He'd say whatever he had to." After MK had OD'd, Peter had wanted to know how she was. But when he got news that she was unconscious in a hospital, there wasn't really anything he could do, and by the time he realized she was up and about again it was because she was writing on the journals. He didn't blame anybody for not keeping him in the loop on it - it was just kind of how things were, right now.
MJ pursed her lips, eyes darting away from Peter before she could catch any looks of concern in his eyes. She knew, a little part of her knew that he was right about Mr. Osborn. Wasn’t that what she and Harry had gotten into a fight about in the first place? Norman Osborn was supposed to fucking go nuts and kill Gwen (or in some variations, try to kill her) among countless others. He was supposed to be the Green Goblin, but he wasn’t there now. He wanted help, didn’t he? He said so himself in Las Vegas when the Goblin was nowhere to be found.
The redhead sighed. “When we all switched places, or like, were in Las Vegas or whatever? He reached out to me, I don’t know what possessed him to do it, but he reached out to me for help. There was no Goblin in his head, nothing messing with him. He doesn’t want that to happen, Pete. Who would?” Still, it was a little suspicious, wasn’t it, that he pinpointed what happened when there were nothing but variables and what ifs where the illness was concerned. “I don’t know. It makes sense though, doesn’t it? And Mr. Osborn is brilliant. He could have come up with this all on his own.”
"Right," Peter said. Osborn could have come up with all of this on his own. Spreading a toxin through a school wasn't his usual modus operandi, but he certainly had the scientific skill to create something so complex and distribute it in the most efficient way possible. He paused, then shook his head. "I'm sorry, MJ. I get what you're saying, and I'd like to think he's different here than he was where I'm from, but whatever he said when the crazy wasn't around, you heard what it did to his guy when he was on this side, didn't you? That's what he's really like, under the surface. No matter how nice he seems. He's back on this side, now, so that crazy sauce is definitely a part of him. I wish it wasn't. For Harry's sake."
MJ suppressed a sharp sigh, one that made her chest tight and had her biting down on her lip. No, but Peter didn’t get it, did he? Clearly, he didn’t get it. “But it’s not in him if we can figure out a way to separate it. Clearly it’s not just him being crazy if it didn’t carry over to Vegas, if it stayed here. Maybe there’s a way for us to get rid of it. Weirder things have happened. There’s goddamn gods walking around the city sometimes.” She shot him a pointed look as if to say and you have spider powers. “Harry doesn’t deserve that,” she said quietly, looking up and away from Peter. “That’s why we got into a fight, though. Over the fact that his dad’s a whackjob.”
Peter made a face, a 'well that would be nice' kind of a face, tilting his mouth. "I guess so," he said, but gods or not, spider powers or not, nothing was ever that easy. "Nobody's managed it as far as I know, not from the timeline...thing where I'm from, but I guess that doesn't mean it can't ever happen. Maybe stuff will be different here." He smiled a little. "You know, I keep expecting things to be more different than they are. It's weird, you'd think at least one or two things would need to be totally switched around. You know, coke tasting like Fanta, Justin Bieber being talented. Something to really let me know I'm in an alternate reality." He paused, his smiled faded a little, and he shrugged. "I don't know, MJ, Harry's our friend. If there's a way to keep his dad from being crazy, and from doing him the kind of harm he did where I'm from, I'm down." That seemed like too heavy a place to leave things, though, at least in Peter's assessment. "Come on," he said, extending a hand to help her down off the picnic table. "Let's go get some Taco Bell. I don't care that it's 10:30. Breakfast of champions."