InsaneJournal

MJ & Peter Parker
Taurbucks
PG • Complete

Peter was starting to get used to Vallo. It was a lot to get used to, but so long as he accepted the weird things that happened, then it wasn’t so strange. People becoming other people because of a spell gone awry was weird, but at least he could make sense of spells gone awry. He’d gotten that job with Stark Industries, alongside a Tony Stark who was very different than the one he knew, had a bunch of people who knew him, and had fallen back into the swing (ha ha ha) of things as Spider-Man. Which, really, was a job that was possible just about anywhere.

Which meant that when he finally got a look at the woman at the till of the coffee shop, he only stared for a moment. For a second, he’d been sure she’d been MJ. But he’d met someone else with MJ’s face already – albeit with freckles and cat ears – and he wasn’t going to make an embarrassing scene about it again. It wasn’t MJ. It couldn’t be her. MJ was safe and sound in New York – or maybe in Boston by now, it was hard to say for sure – and didn’t have to deal with all the weird, sometimes dangerous stuff that sometimes came with superherodom.

Which meant that by the time he made it to the till, he hardly stumbled over his words at all when he ordered a hot chocolate and a doughnut.

Vallo was weird. Of all of the things MJ had expected to put a wrench in her life plan of ‘Go to MIT and figure out where to go with her life from there’, dropping through some interdimensional portal in her sleep and waking up in the middle of a city where a Minotaur had politely offered her a bagel (which she’d accepted, confused as she was) would not have been on her bingo sheet for the year. Her initial response had been somewhere between fear and frustration - she’d already blipped once and even with all of the help, the paperwork had still been a pain in the ass - and then fear, for very obvious reasons.

Now she had just settled at the fifth stage of grief, acceptance - nothing she could do about it. Nothing anybody could do, apparently, and as much as she was loathe to admit it, from what the network seemed to suggest she was hardly the brightest mind here and it wasn’t something she would be able to fix in a day with an apartment and the things she’d had in her pajama pockets upon arrival, so. Acceptance. The DOA helped her get a job working at a coffee shop in the city centre and while it was weird, it was a damn sight better than the donut shop she’d been working in back in NYC with the awful management and weird customers, and - speaking of weird customers.

“Oh my god, it’s you,” she stood up a little straighter from where she’d been leaning on the counter, bored during the quieter hours post-lunchtime. “You’re weird coffee dude, right? You came in, ordered a coffee in the most awkward way humanly possible and just- left after asking me about MIT. Did you follow me here, somehow??”

Peter knew he was staring, but at the moment, he couldn’t stop. He’d been convinced that it was another of what Catra had called a face twin, and he’d been fine with that. He didn’t know how to deal with the fact that MJ was here. MJ was here, and unlike Stephen, she didn’t remember him.

“Oh, right, I remember,” Peter said, as if he could ever forget. He made himself stop staring, and shook his head. “No, no, I didn’t follow you. I wouldn’t –” he started, and then stopped, because those last few weeks before he’d come here he had been following MJ. Only sometimes, as Spider-Man, her and Ned both. To make sure they were safe, and they were okay, to make sure the were happy. But he’d still couldn’t lie to her. “I didn’t follow you here,” he amended. “Promise. I don’t think anyone really had a choice coming here. I didn’t even know you were here.” He hesitated, and then asked, “Have you been here long? I don’t think I’ve seen you. Online, I mean.”

“Oh- uh, not long,” she pulled a face. “I did look at the online thing, but it’s been a little-” Loud? Weird? Everybody had been posting about their friends being replaced personality-wise by somebody else that resembled them, which MJ had just found weird. “It felt a bit like a conspiracy theory board or something for a while so I dipped,” she still checked it - the people at the DOA who had suspiciously taken her name and information had informed her it was probably a good idea to keep an eye on it to see what was going on in Vallo outside of checking the news, but that was about as far as she’d gotten to. Maybe she should post.

So, he was from her world, or vice versa. Two (relatively) normal people who’d been pulled through a wormhole to Magic City. “What do you think the chances are that this is some wild hallucination bull from another alien invasion?”

Peter’s lip twitched. “No, not a conspiracy theory board,” he said. “That actually happened. A bit of magic that went awry. I think Thor was involved? Not the Thor from our world, a different one.” Peter, at least, had had time to get used to the idea of multiple versions of people he knew. He kind of had to get used to it, given the fact that the first alternative versions of people from his world that he’d met were, well, him.

MJ, he realized, might not be so used to the idea; she hadn’t only forgotten who he was, but the other Peter Parkers as well.

He did think for a moment about her question though. It wasn’t totally out of the realm that this was some sort of mass hallucination. It probably wouldn’t even be the weirdest thing that had happened to him, all things considered. The fact that most people from his world – Wanda, Stephen, Carol – all remembered who he was tended to lend credence to that theory as well: hallucinations, after all, were supposed to be a version of the world that was better, so you wouldn’t want to break it. At least, that’s what all his sci-fi comics told him.

Except, he thought, if this was some sort of hallucination world, then MJ would remember him too. And she very obviously didn’t.

“Good theory, but probably not,” he said, after a moment’s consideration. “It’s too weird here. No one would believe it if they hallucinated that people just randomly swapped personalities, which means that it must’ve actually happened.”

“I was talking about all of this,” she opened her hands to gesture at Vallo as a general, deciding to tackle the idea that the Thor from their world was not the Thor who was here at a later date. Multiverse, after all - she definitely hadn’t spent a few sleepless nights since The Spider-man Incident thinking about what the other versions of her would be like and whether or not she would get along with them as well as the Spiders Three seemed to. “Vallo in general. It feels like a storybook or something,” and honestly, she’d read weirder things online. The Blip was weirder than the idea of hallucinating a whole city, especially after the fake monsters in London.

There was something offputtingly familiar about the guy in front of her, though. That weird feeling of deja vu, or the surety that you’ve already dreamt the events that’re about to happen. “Well, uh. I’m MJ. Even if you are weird, I guess it’s nice to not be the only person here from my world that isn’t some kind of superhero or something,” she grabbed a cup and started pulling a shot for him. “I guess it’s on the house. Whatever you want, I mean.”

Peter had been ready to argue that Vallo was just weird enough – or at least, different enough – that he didn’t think a hallucination would hold long-term – right up until MJ mentioned that she was glad to have another non-superhero from her world here.

He smiled, but it was strained. He shouldn’t be talking to MJ. It was safer for him to just order his coffee, “Just a coffee is fine,” and go away. Find other coffee shop with a punny name, that wasn’t staffed by someone who he wouldn’t be putting in danger if he got involved with him.

“I’m Peter. Peter Parker. And yeah, it’s nice to see someone else from home. I’m sorry you aren’t going to be going to MIT. Do you think you might go to college here, instead?”

Or, he could engage her in more conversation. That was a great way to make sure that he wouldn’t put her in danger again.

College here wasn’t something she’d considered, really. It almost felt like a consolation prize, which she knew was stuck up of her - she’d been so set on MIT that she hadn’t imagined actually going anywhere else, despite it being a distinct possibility if she didn’t get the scholarship she needed to attend. “I- don’t know. Maybe? I haven’t looked into it yet,” she’d been handed a pamphlet when she’d arrived but it had been shoved in her backpack pretty quickly, at the time.

“Do you? Go to college here, I mean?”

“Oh, no,” Peter said, a little embarrassed. “I still need to get my GED. And Mr. Stark offered me a job at Stark Industries when I first arrived, so… I don’t know, it just seems like kind of a waste. Not that college is a waste, I mean. Just… you know, I don’t know if I’d really have time.” Not with Spider-Man on top of everything else. “You should though. I hear they’ve got a great science program, and the technology here is pretty advanced, especially if they’re studying technology from other worlds.”

So, he was a busy guy, then. A busy guy who didn’t have his GED, which seemed odd to her, somehow - not that there was anything wrong with that, but there was something telling her that it just didn’t seem right. “I guess as far as rich dickheads go, Stark might be one of the better ones to work for,” she finished Peter’s coffee and set a lid on top of it, sliding it across the counter. “Consider it on the house for being a lot less confusing this time around,” she shot him a little smirk, hand reaching up to fiddle with the necklace that had thankfully come with her.

“Oh, Stark’s great. Or I think he is. The one back home was. I worked with him a little bit back home too. It’s a different Stark, but he’s still kind of the same, you know?”

“Thanks,” he said, smiling at her, thought his smile faltered when he caught sight of the necklace, and his voice was a little softer when he said, “You still have it.”

“I can imagine a different Stark is still a Stark,” she smirked a little, although it faltered at his next words. “I still-” she frowned a little, looking down at the necklace after following his eyes. “Uh- I’ve had this for ages now,” not that she could really remember where it came from, or why it was broken. It was important to her and for some reason, the why had never seemed as integral as the I want to keep it was. “What… about it?”

“Oh, nothing,” Peter answered hastily. He shouldn’t have said anything about it. Stupid. “I just… I noticed it last time. Back home, I mean, and I thought it was nice. Unique.”

The person behind him cleared their throat pointedly, and Peter shot them an embarrassed look, as if he’d forgotten that there was, in fact, a line behind him. “I should probably get out of your hair though, before you get in trouble.”

“It’s broken, I think,” she glanced down at it. “I think it’s better that way, though. Kinda makes it more unique.” MJ was fairly sure she wouldn’t actually get in trouble - it was probably normal in Vallo to catch up with someone from your home world in the shocking turn of events that they were also there, but she assumed that Peter was probably more just- looking for some kind of out of the conversation, all things considered. “Sure,” she shot him a half-smile, holding her hand up in an awkward little half-wave. “Uh, have a good day?”

Peter raised his hand in turn, smiled, tried to suppress it and failed, and then smiled again. "You have a good day too, MJ. I'll see you around."

He wanted to pretend that Taurbucks wasn't about to become his new regular coffee shop, but he already knew that was a lie.