mk robinson wants to be a star. (hitjackpot) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-11-14 02:19:00 |
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Mary Jane didn’t really have time for everyone else’s insanity and drama, okay? All the shouting and freaking out over the journals grated on her nerves, which were already frayed and on edge. Didn’t the rest of them realize she had a real crisis on her hands with MK? Well, Flash did, of course, but Flash also liked to stir up trouble all the time, too. It made her grit her teeth in frustration. Peter freaking out, and Gwen freaking out, and Harry doing whatever he was doing, and Flash being...well, Flash. Couldn’t everyone chill the fuck out for five minutes while she made sure her chick on the Vegas side didn’t up and kill herself? But Gwen’s insecurities ruined that, and so did Peter’s absolute rashness. She agreed with Gwen -- one of the rare times the girls ever agreed over anything -- that Peter might just do something stupid. Then again, swinging through New York City in red-and-blue spandex wasn’t on the list of the world’s smartest decisions. And, MJ had faith in Peter, maybe in a blind way and in a different way than any of the others did, so she didn’t really talk him down the way Gwen probably expected her to. Just a warning in text form, and a few moments to calm herself down. Peter Parker wouldn’t go after a Norse god, not without thinking, and there was no fucking way he was actually going to get everyone to move to the Osborns. This was Pete in freak-out mode, she knew that. (Or, at least, hoped that.) He’d take a deep breath and he’d actually use that genius mind of his to think for once, and things would get better. Still. She wanted to talk to him. About Loki, and about how strange he was being lately, and about what Gwen and Flash kept saying. That he, Peter, had feelings for her. Maybe she shouldn’t bridge it, but he and Gwen broke up because of it. (And what the fuck was that about anyway?) Either way, they had a lot to talk about, and she hadn’t actually seen him in a while despite living together, and maybe she wanted to make sure he came back in one piece, too. She was home, or what was home now -- the Parker house. That was still weird to say sometimes, that she was living with Peter and his aunt. His bedroom wasn’t locked, and after a quick sweep to make sure Aunt May wasn’t around or paying attention, she opened the door inside. Invasion of privacy? Psh. MJ believed there should be no lines between she and Peter ever, not that they really now knew everything about each other. She kicked her way through some stray laundry, and, when she reached his bed, had to push more to the edge of the bed to make a spot for her. Ha, that would definitely be another thing she’d talk to him about. Organizing better. Cleaning. With amusement, she sat on his bed, bare legs curled underneath her and hands busy flipping through a marble notebook she found. It was warmer in the city again, after all those freak storms, and her pajamas reflected the change in temperature: shorts and a snug shirt. She thought nothing of what it might look like, her waiting there on his bed, or how seeing her like this would probably make Flash and Gwen think they were right. She just wanted to talk. Really. With a clatter on the rooftop that definitely wasn’t Santa Claus, Peter came through the window sneaker heels first in one long leap. He’d crawled over the wall on the opposite side of the house to make sure Aunt May was asleep in her bedroom before coming over the patio roof to his room, and with his mind somewhat at ease there, he launched into his bedroom. He planned to come down the stairs like a normal kid, and then figure out how tell her it would be safer for her somewhere else. He was thinking of family friends, one of the women she played bridge with... something. He could tell her he joined a gang? She might believe that. Or maybe that he had gambling debts. He wasnt even sure he knew how to gamble, what if she asked what game he played? Peter didn’t realize that he was muttering all this to himself out loud, punctuating each successive idea with, Oh man, this is never gonna work, and So stupid. He twitched sideways when he heard or saw something that brought her to his immediate attention, hair a riotous disaster and his jacket hanging off one shoulder as he whirled around. “MJ,” he said, relaxing out of a battle-ready crouch with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t see you.” He’d gotten a few bruises across the face recently that he hadn’t noticed, but none were quite so dark or as deep as the ones under his eyes. It was obvious why Peter had been making so many mistakes recently, saying things he really shouldn’t have said and missing all kinds of classes: he hadn't been getting any sleep. The storm had hit and it had been nonstop since. He'd meant to get some sleep yesterday, but then he and Gwen had gotten into that fight so he'd gotten up to go see her and smooth it over. The best of intentions had been interrupted by a burglary halfway to the Osborne's, and then a murder in Queens, and the next thing he knew he was on the stupid journal talking to that jerk Loki. His eyes slid down from her face to the notebook in her hands. It had doodles in it, early concepts of the suit and outlines from Doctor Connors’ book and his father’s work. His face betrayed a transparent amount of anxiety at seeing her with it, not because he was worried about anything in MJ's hands, but that every small thing set off worried alarms in his mind. He staggered a little sideways, dropped his backpack, and collapsed next to her on the end of the bed. "You should get your stuff," he said, blearily. Maybe she should have thought about the fact that Peter was now a superhero. Maybe she should have realized it would make him jumpy and on edge, especially in the wake of Loki. But, she hadn't, and she took his battle-ready stance in with caution. She didn't move, not until he flopped down on the bed, though not because she was wary of what he might accidentally do as unconscious, second-nature sort of response. She never thought he would ever, ever hurt her because Peter never hurt her before, not intentionally. But she still watched him with apprehension, more for his sake rather than her own. When he sat down next to her, it was with a heaviness that MJ recognized from him. Exhaustion and frustration. "Peter," she said, concern bleeding into her voice as she scrutinized his face. Up close, the bruised looked ugly, and that caused her to frown, but not as much as those purple bags underneath his eyes did. She had similar ones, too, deep and purple-blue with a puffiness never really seen on her face before MK showed up in her subconscious, but not because of her lack of sleep. No, the purple and the marks up and down her arms and the pounding headache of withdrawal was courtesy of the older redhead in Las Vegas. His obvious fatigue, however, worried her greatly, and she pictured him quite vividly falling off the side of a building in his Spidey suit. She reached out a delicate hand to stroke his tender cheek. "When was the last time you slept?" she asked. The frown deepened as she scooted closer to him on the bed, completely and unabashedly unconcerned with boundaries. "You look like you're about to keel over, tiger." Her fingers reached up to try to smooth out that unruly hair of his in an attempt to get him to face her. "I'm not going anywhere," she added as an afterthought. Because she wasn't. Norse god or not. She was right. Not even half-dead would Peter ever react violently enough to hurt someone, because it simply wasn’t in his nature. The crouch was defensive, and it wasn’t as if you could kill anyone with webbing (well, that wasn’t true, but you had to be pretty deliberate about it to manage). Peter smelled of rainwater coming off the pavement, of old clouds hung too long over a harbor. There was too much wind on him to even get a hint of the warm teenage boy that usually hung about his skin, and the faintly chemical smell of the neoprene-like suit didn’t help matters. He let his eyes sink heavily down onto his bottom lashes, leaning sideways into her shoulder for support. Whatever an onlooker might think, it wasn’t a patently romantic gesture; he was simply tired, bone tired. “Few days ago. I will when things stop happening,” he mumbled. He sniffed wetly against the back of his sinuses. “You guys need to move. Here is the first place he’d come looking.” He made a faint sound of protest when she touched his face, wincing, and he brought his eyes fully open to look at her. They were bloodshot and shadowed, but they sharpened amazingly quickly as he focused on her arm where it lifted in front of his face. He reached out and gently caught the back of her wrist, the impact negligible, his speed a blur. “What happened?” His eyes moved down the bruises and lines, and it was obvious from his expression that he didn’t know what they met. Perhaps fortunately. MJ shot him a pointed look. “You’re gonna fall off the side of the Chrysler Building if you keep skipping out on sleep.” She sounded forceful, but not angry, not at him. Perhaps at the situation, yeah, and the fact that her best friend was out saving New York without thinking for a second about himself. Her fingers jumped back when he whined, hyper aware of how tender bruises could be after MK managed to leave her battered up all the time. Speaking of... “It’s nothing,” she said, slowly twisting her wrist to try to get it out of his grip and leaning away from him a little. “It’s not me. It’s MK. It’s fine.” She sighed then, because she didn’t want to worry Peter about Maddie Kate’s problems, which were a lot. “We’re not talking about me, Pete. We’re talking about you.” As always, Peter was more interested in talking about someone else. He released her, but only because it became obvious she didn’t want him holding on to her wrist, and his fingers immediately came loose in a graceless, abrupt movement. His head sagged back on the top of his spine, exposing a long column of throat. He looked like he might be asleep right there, eyes too shadowed to be brown at all. But then he spoke, and he sounded as tired as he felt. “Why won’t you guys listen to me about Loki?” He asked as if there was a solid reason, as if there was some conspiracy against him and a determination to be hurt if they wanted to be hurt, despite his best efforts. He was reminded strongly of the people who were told to evacuate because of flooding and contaminants but refused to vacate their homes. She shifted in her spot uncomfortably when he released her wrist and looked away from him for a moment to take in his messy bedroom instead. As he spoke again though, she pursed her lips and looked back over at him. “We are,” MJ said, head tilted and big green eyes taking him in for a moment. Did he not think they took him seriously? “We can’t go to Harry’s though, you know that.” Because hell if she was going to stay under the same roof as Harry, Gwen, Flash, and Peter. It was a recipe for disaster. “And, seriously? I think a god has more important stuff than a couple of stupid teenagers to worry about.” She nudged his side with her elbow and flashed him a weak smile. Peter opened his eyes to mere slits to look down at her over the top of his nose, and then he twisted his neck to one side, working a spine-tingling pop out of the joint there. He did the same with the other side, and then collapsed back against the wall that separated his bed from the open air. The dull red of his suit was just visible under the line of his collar. He didn’t react to the nudge, he just looked at her from out his swollen owl-like eyes, knees sprawled to either side, his neck and shoulder at an oddly boneless angle. “Are you willing to bet your life on that? Because the whole point of this stupid thing--” He inserted a finger into the tight spread of Spider-man’s collar under his t-shirt, “--was so that people didn’t come after the people I love. You get that, right? So if you don’t go to Harry’s, I don’t know where, but not here. Here is the first place he’d come, just to stick it to me for saying that stuff to him about his brother.” Peter could read a book on Norse mythology as easy as the next guy, thanks very much. He didn’t understand why his friends were being intentionally stupid about this. Like it mattered how much everybody hated each other, as long as they were all alive to be doing it. Truthfully, it all seemed a little unreal still that Peter was Spider-Man and that there were threats against him and the rest of them. She knew it was real, of course, because Peter wouldn’t lie and because Gwen’s dad died on that roof. But to think that Loki was going to come to Forest Hills and knock on the Parkers’ door seemed ludicrous. “Peter,” MJ breathed out more than said. She twisted her body around, propped up by one elbow, belly on his bed, and legs kicking up in the air, and she placed a light hand on his chest as if to say I’m here, don’t freak out. She would always be there for him. “I get it. I totally do. But Harry’s house isn’t yours to throw people in, and besides that, we can’t just run around scared because of every little threat.” She licked her lips nervously and glanced away for a moment. “He’s not coming here right now. You,” She looked back and poked his chest before resting her hand again, fingers splayed wide, “need to sleep on it before you do anything. You’re exhausted.” No, she didn’t get it at all. He realized it as he looked at her, so calm on the end of his bed. Peter had seen people die, watched it happen, and it probably seemed impossible to her that a whole person could be snuffed out like a light without warning. “I don’t want to throw people at Harry. He’s just the only person that I know but isn’t super obvious about being my friend.” He looked away, not wanting to make a big deal out of having friends and not having them. It hurt him that they never got along, that he never seemed to be able to please all of them and be Spider-man at the same time. And his grades probably sucked right now. He lifted one hand and rubbed at his eyes. “You don’t know where he’s going to be. Does Flash have his place yet? Gwen says he likes you. He wouldn’t mind.” What if Loki came here and he had to grab and run? Would he be able to save MJ and Aunt May both? Would he have to choose? Abruptly Peter forced himself into sitting. “I gotta go talk to Aunt May.” He looked a little wild, hair askew, eyes forced wide. MJ jumped when Peter did, popping up from her lounging position next to him to kneel on the bed. Oh, no, he wasn’t going anywhere near Aunt May, not now. “You aren’t talking to anyone right now, Peter Parker,” she said with as much force as she could muster without sounding pissed off. She shoved at his shoulders and his chest to try to make him lay back down. “You’re going to sleep on this, or I’ll knock you out myself. Seriously.” She scoffed, fully aware she had already spoken with Flash about exactly this. “And living with Flash would be the worst idea, according to him, whether he likes me or not.” She almost mentioned that she made out with him on the couch downstairs when she was coked out of her mind, but she thought better of it. No, Peter didn’t need to have more reasons to be pissed off at him. “I talked to Gwen,” she said, after a pause. “She told me you guys--that you...y’know. Broke up.” And the way she said it implied she probably thought this had something to do with his freak-out, too. At first shoving at him was pushing at a wall; a warm wall with give, but still a wall. Peter used to be as frail as the next kid, shove him and he’d go down, and with the fatigue bleeding out of his eyes, it seemed impossible he wouldn’t flatten the way he always did. With every nerve firing, however, Peter was a wiry stretch of pure muscle, and he looked at her and her efforts only belatedly, hands behind his hips on the bed. He frowned at her comment about Flash, but was unable to come up with a solid reply before she brought up Gwen. The wall immediately crumpled, and he slid back, shoulders down, when she pushed at him. He didn’t forget Aunt May, but the problem of speaking to her seemed to be less immediate. “Apparently,” he said, bitterly. She watched him slowly slide back down, pleased that at least he wasn’t up and running to drag Aunt May into the night, but the defeated look broke her heart into a million pieces. Sitting above him and looking down, he didn’t seem like some masked vigilante at all, but he clearly had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Worrying her lip, she debated whether or not to continue down the windy, treacherous path of this conversation when neither party really wanted to talk about it. “Did she tell you why?” Apparently didn’t sound so definite to her; maybe Gwen was just threatening it. "Because we're too good of friends," he said, too tired for grammar. He did keep his eyes open, though it felt like incredible effort. He was worried he was going to alienate MJ too, and honestly he couldn't afford it. "She said something about Flash and you, and I said he didn't know you like I did, and then she started crying at me on the phone." Peter rubbed at his face, pulling at his hair over his forehead. "Then she hung up on me. Twice. I was going to go over there but then that guy who killed his wife took off in Queens and..." MJ couldn’t help the frustrated noise that slipped out. That was what she was afraid of. Flash had told her, of course, but hearing it from Peter was different. She sighed, and she looked at Peter through the corner of her eye when he trailed off. “Gwen’s always worried about it. About me. It’s not fair. What does she expect?” It wasn’t fair, but MJ knew girl war, and she knew teenage girls. Gwen wanted MJ out of the picture, at least a little, but that wasn’t going to happen. “She expects all these things to happen just because of whatever those comics says, just like Flash expects it, too, and it’s driving me crazy.” Peter waved his arms above his head, frantic. "I know, right?!" He was doing all he could, really, and he and MJ were not a couple. If people would just get that. "It's like every conversation is a trap, if I mention anybody except her, I lose. Except we always talk about Harry, and Flash, and I don't know why I'm not allowed to talk about you. I do know you and we are best friends. Me and you talk about Gwen all the time!" He rolled over and screamed into his pillow. Literally. MJ laughed, mostly because Peter Parker on a good day was ridiculous, and today he was being extra ridiculous. And, maybe, it was a little bit of nerves because she had those inexplicable feelings for him that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She knew they were different than what she felt for Harry or Flash or any of the other guys, and she knew, before anything, that they were best friends. “It’s because I’m a girl, tiger.” She rubbed his back gently for a moment before falling back to lie down next to him on the bed. “I’m a girl, and girls are weird and cagey about boys they love, or so I’ve seen.” Except her because she didn’t love Peter, right? “Really weird.” The frustration seemed to be the last bit of energy that Peter had. “I’ll just have to apologize and make her see.” Afterward his eyes shut completely, and they definitely weren’t opening again anytime soon. He dropped his arms and shifted on the pillow only far enough so that he could breathe. He made a woebegone sound that started down the back of his throat and ended in his nose, then he let all the breath out and sank deeper into the mattress as she stretched out next to him. He had hung out in her room and she had hung out in his tons of times, and he thought nothing of it. Peter curled up against her shoulder, settling his head so his weight is off his neck. “Wake me up before Aunt May goes to work,” he muttered. “Yeah, I guess,” was all MJ could say about Peter’s apology to Gwen. If it was going to be so much drama, was it even worth it for them to be together? Look at what happened to Robo-doc and MK? But that thought was for another day when neither were tired to the bone. She didn’t think anything of it either, of laying in his bed and being so close to him. It was practically second nature when it came to him. She allowed him to curl next to her and rested her head on top of his, red curls tumbling over his mop of brown hair. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, fully intending on not heeding Peter’s request. She’d let him sleep as long as he liked. Her hand snaked down and reached for his, and she squeezed his fingers. “Don’t worry, Peter. Everything’s gonna be okay. Promise.” |