Outnumbered

Chapter 10

Tony offers to let Peter stay home from school the next morning, but Peter decides to go because it's the last day. After the final bell, he finds MJ waiting at his locker. She's in her jean jacket despite the heat, arms crossed over her chest. There's sunlight coming from the doors down the hallway, illuminating the natural highlights in her hair. Peter wants to smile at how pretty she is, marvel at how looking at her has been causing some kind of weird but contented flutter in his chest for the last week or so, but his head is throbbing to the point where he's a bit nauseous. He hates to think that he might have to cancel their hangout, that he has to decide in the next few minutes if he can tough it out or not.

Maybe he can hide it.

"Took you long enough," she jokes, moving out of the way so that he can get to his lock, but when Peter doesn't laugh back, she frowns. "Hey, everything okay?" She's trying to catch his eyes, but he avoids hers on purpose as he begins to empty the few items left in his locker.

"I-I might just head home. It's like a million degrees in here and my blood sugar's been yo-yo-ing on repeat. I'm cranky and I don't want to make you miserable. I'm not really much fun when it's like this." He feels terrible, canceling on her like this. He knows he should've texted her earlier in the day, given her a heads up, but he was hoping it'd magically improve, that his levels would stabilize like they usually do. They're supposed to have a horror movie marathon at MJ's to celebrate the start of summer, and he wants to go, has been looking forward to this since they made plans on Monday, but he can't get his brain to figure out a way to make this any better than it already is.

"You're self-deprecating right now and I won't accept it. I don't mind if you're cranky. We can go to your house instead of mine if you'd like. Or we can reschedule. Up to you. Are you high or low?"

Peter grabs his last book and places it in his backpack. "I've been high all afternoon and it's given me a headache from Hell." He goes to double-back on saying he's high, but MJ doesn't seem phased by his terminology; sometimes he forgets that he doesn't have to explain himself with her.

"High and starving?" she asks. "Or high and nauseous?"

Peter laughs softly, because this is something even Tony hasn't picked up on, and it's nice that someone is reading his mind. "High, starving, and nauseous. It's the worst combination."

She leans in closer to him and lowers her voice. "I thought maybe you had a shitty day. You seemed pretty wiped out in math and science. Not that we were doing much. You just seemed...quieter than usual. Figured you weren't feeling great."

He presses his head against the cool metal of his locker and closes his eyes. "Correction: Shitty night. It was like a rollercoaster that I couldn't get off, which led to a shitty day. I didn't want to stay home because then Tony wouldn't have let me hang out, but now I feel even worse because it's so hot in this building."

MJ pulls a water bottle out of her backpack and hands it over. It's plastic, unopened. She despises plastic water bottles, but they were giving them out for free during lunch today, so she'd grabbed one because of the heat.

"Thanks." Peter takes a long sip out of desperation, knows he should've been guzzling water all day with how thirsty he's been. He imagines his blood as a sugary sludge, slowly moving through his body.

His watch vibrates with a Dexcom alert mid-sip, which is startling and has him choking on the water.

"I hate this so much," he complains when he's done coughing. MJ holds the water bottle while he gives himself his fourth correction on his pump today. "I just want to go home and take a nap."

"I won't be mad if you do that, you know. You can cancel on me, Peter. I understand."

And he wants to, he really wants to, because MJ 100% gets it and he's feeling so cruddy, but his brain is telling him to push through it, even though he'll definitely pay for it later.