Peter moves instinctively to steady her before checking himself and easing back out of her space; he knows it's not a great idea to touch her without asking unless she actually falls over. And even then she probably wouldn't appreciate it.
It's not that he hasn't thought about the likely intersection of MJ's inherently suspicious approach to life with Spider-Man's new sketchy reputation, especially since he can't be sure of how the spell made its distinctions: does she know she knows Spider-Man, or was that too close to knowing Peter to be allowed?
He has, in fact, thought about all of that a lot, and about the best way to handle it.
It's just that as soon as he saw that text, he couldn't think about anything else except making sure she was safe.
"That's . . . not really how super vision works?" he offers, then, "I mean it's not like you were hard to track."
The words go beyond suspicion and are downright horrified. Why would Spider-Man be keeping tabs on her? She'd met him once in Washington D.C.- ... and saw him fight Mysterio in London... and... was there something about the Statue of Liberty?
She shakes her head again. She'd never really thought about her interactions with Spider-Man before, but... what had been the likelihood of seeing him on three separate incidences, with only one of them being local? Was he obsessed with her?
Her hand goes to the necklace around her neck, a reflex she's unthinkingly picked up whenever she remembers the whole Tower Bridge thing or otherwise feels overwhelmed. Right now, her head is pounding, and she really wishes she'd drunk more water before insisting that she was good to go home on her own, and there's a superhero that some people claim is a murderer standing in front of her and telling her that she's not hard to track.
"Can you just... backtrack a little? This isn't the first time we've-... do I know you?"
Oh god, he really could not be doing this any worse, could he?
He's on the verge of panicking and stuttering out something probably even stupider when she reaches for her necklace. She's still wearing it, like she was at the bakery. She's still wearing it and she probably doesn't know why and it's important enough to her anyway for her to grab it to calm herself down.
It calms Peter down too. He takes a breath and a step back, to give her more space, and he finally thinks of something to say that might not dig this hole any deeper.
"We've run into each other a few times," he says, carefully; there's no such thing as MJ being so out of it that she won't notice if his story keeps changing. "Being Spider-Man is kind of like my job, like customer service? So when I have, you know, regular customers, I just start to notice them more. I really didn't mean to freak you out, I'm sorry."
MJ's just shaking her head, because now she's trying to remember details of their brief encounters, and she's only just realizing that there seem to be weird gaps in her memories where there's just nothing there. It's not even a matter of the memories being fuzzy or garbled by time; there's just nothing there.
"So what, I'm just some-... some-... some sort of magnet for trouble? How many regulars do you have? We were in London at the same time; what are the odds of that?" She's on the verge of a panic attack, and that hasn't happened to her since-... since-... Liberty Island? Maybe? But what had she even been doing there that night?
Having a panic attack while already feeling like crap isn't going to help anything, so she closes her eyes and focuses on slowing her breathing, practically hugging the mailbox by this point. "Sorry. Sorry, I just... I'm not having the best night, so none of this is making any sense."
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no subject
It's not that he hasn't thought about the likely intersection of MJ's inherently suspicious approach to life with Spider-Man's new sketchy reputation, especially since he can't be sure of how the spell made its distinctions: does she know she knows Spider-Man, or was that too close to knowing Peter to be allowed?
He has, in fact, thought about all of that a lot, and about the best way to handle it.
It's just that as soon as he saw that text, he couldn't think about anything else except making sure she was safe.
"That's . . . not really how super vision works?" he offers, then, "I mean it's not like you were hard to track."
no subject
The words go beyond suspicion and are downright horrified. Why would Spider-Man be keeping tabs on her? She'd met him once in Washington D.C.- ... and saw him fight Mysterio in London... and... was there something about the Statue of Liberty?
She shakes her head again. She'd never really thought about her interactions with Spider-Man before, but... what had been the likelihood of seeing him on three separate incidences, with only one of them being local? Was he obsessed with her?
Her hand goes to the necklace around her neck, a reflex she's unthinkingly picked up whenever she remembers the whole Tower Bridge thing or otherwise feels overwhelmed. Right now, her head is pounding, and she really wishes she'd drunk more water before insisting that she was good to go home on her own, and there's a superhero that some people claim is a murderer standing in front of her and telling her that she's not hard to track.
"Can you just... backtrack a little? This isn't the first time we've-... do I know you?"
no subject
He's on the verge of panicking and stuttering out something probably even stupider when she reaches for her necklace. She's still wearing it, like she was at the bakery. She's still wearing it and she probably doesn't know why and it's important enough to her anyway for her to grab it to calm herself down.
It calms Peter down too. He takes a breath and a step back, to give her more space, and he finally thinks of something to say that might not dig this hole any deeper.
"We've run into each other a few times," he says, carefully; there's no such thing as MJ being so out of it that she won't notice if his story keeps changing. "Being Spider-Man is kind of like my job, like customer service? So when I have, you know, regular customers, I just start to notice them more. I really didn't mean to freak you out, I'm sorry."
no subject
"So what, I'm just some-... some-... some sort of magnet for trouble? How many regulars do you have? We were in London at the same time; what are the odds of that?" She's on the verge of a panic attack, and that hasn't happened to her since-... since-... Liberty Island? Maybe? But what had she even been doing there that night?
Having a panic attack while already feeling like crap isn't going to help anything, so she closes her eyes and focuses on slowing her breathing, practically hugging the mailbox by this point. "Sorry. Sorry, I just... I'm not having the best night, so none of this is making any sense."