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He gets the call at half past midnight. Fortunately he’s not in the middle of a fight or anything -- crime tonight has been particularly slow -- but the sound of Beyonce’s voice blaring at full volume from his pocket almost sends Peter flying over the edge of the rooftop he had been resting on out of shock.
It’s MJ. He already knew that, based on the custom ringtone he’d set for her, but that doesn’t make it any less surprising. Usually when he gets a call this late, it’s either Aunt May asking where he is or Mr. Stark telling him that sleep is necessary for teenage development and that he should go home. MJ rarely calls anyone, even him -- almost all of their communication that’s not in person takes place over Snapchat. He answers the phone with a question on his lips.
“Why are you--”
“Hey, Spider-Nerd,” MJ interrupts, and he can hear her grinning through the phone. “You busy?”
“Well… I mean, kinda? I’m on patrol, but there’s, like, nothing happening. Why are you calling me so late?”
“I figured you’d be up, and I need help with something. You should come over, if you have time.”
“That isn’t really an answer,” Peter points out, slight confusion evident in his voice.
“It’s not a big deal, you just don’t sound like you have anything better to do. If you get, like, mauled by a superpowered alien on your way over I won’t be pissed you didn’t show.”
“So reassuring.”
“That’s what I’m here for, babe.”
“I’ll be there in, like, five minutes.”
“Sick. Bye!” And with that, MJ hangs up on him. The pinnacle of romantic interaction. Peter sighs to himself.
He shows up at MJ’s apartment fifteen minutes later, letting himself in through the window to her room.
“Took your sweet time,” she says from where she sits on the floor in front of her bed. She’s wearing a t-shirt from their middle school science program and a pair of worn-out jean shorts. Peter drops to the floor and hands her a Slurpee.
“I needed my sugar fix and I’m not sorry.” He tugs his mask off and tosses it on the floor, taking a sip from his own Slurpee. “The cashier wanted to give it to me for free because I saved his daugher-in-law this past winter. The, uh, the fire I ditched school during finals to help out with? I still paid, but he gave me this free of charge.” Peter reaches into his backpack and pulls out a few packs of ramen.
“Apology accepted,” MJ says. “So, here’s what I need your help with.” She pushes a small box towards him -- hair dye.
“You want me to-- I’ve never dyed hair before, MJ.”
“It can’t possibly be that hard.” Peter slides the box back towards MJ, shaking his head.
“What if I do a terrible job and you have to cut off all your hair and never be seen in public again?”
“Oh, please. Even you wouldn’t screw up that bad. Plus, I’d look pretty hot with a buzz cut, don’t you think?”
“I mean, yeah, but--”
“No buts, Parker. Who else am I gonna ask? Ned? Look, I trust you. And you’re such a perfectionist you’ll probably take way too long and it’ll look great.” Peter sits there in silence for almost a full minute, trying to think of an excuse, coming up blank. Finally, he leans back with a sigh of defeat.
“If I stain the suit, Mr. Stark will kill me. I’ll need to borrow some clothes.”
******
MJ’s old gym shirt is far too big for him. The low-quality fabric chafes against his upper arm every time he moves it to work the dye through each section of MJ’s hair (and holy shit there’s a lot of it). The scent of chemicals and Vaseline -- they’d had to coat MJ’s forehead and neck with it, as well as Peter’s forearms, to prevent staining their skin -- is overwhelming.
“Can we get high from this?” Peter’s head spins faintly. He frees another section of hair from its pinch clip and squeezes more of the bright purple dye onto his gloved fingers. Narrowing his eyes in an attempt to fight off the woozy feeling, he begins applying the dye again.
“Peter! I didn’t think you were the type,” MJ gasps, spinning her head to face him so that Peter can see her feigned surprise and in the process sending flecks of dye splattering onto Peter’s shirt and arm.
“Hey, be careful! It’s your hair on the line here. And, I‘m only asking ‘cause I feel like I’m already sorta there.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re taking so long to finish this? Besides, I feel perfectly fine. Except for the part where my legs are numb from sitting like this forever.” She turns back around, moving her legs out from beneath her and instead sitting with her knees pulled close to her chest. She runs her fingers over the impressions that the tile of the bathroom floor left in her shins. Peter gets back to work.
“I’m the one getting a faceful of hair dye back here,” he whines, eyes watering. “I’m being very careful not to get dye on your skin, too. If I was you, I’d be grateful.”
“Was that a threat, Peter?”
“I’m just saying,” Peter shrugs as he lets the last layer of MJ’s hair loose. “Don’t sass the guy that has your future in his hands.”
“‘B-but MJ, wh-what if I make your h-hair look b-b-b-bad?’ Remember that? That was you, like, half an hour ago.”
“As much as I appreciate your theatrical talent, this would be so much easier if you would hold still for like two whole minutes.”
“If that’s what it takes to get this over with.”
“To be fair, it was your idea.”
“Eat shit, Parker.”
“Yeah, yeah, love you too.”
MJ doesn’t reply to that. She’s good at playing it cool, but Peter would have to be an idiot not to feel the way her shoulders tense up, her breathing pauses; he’d be blind not to see the way her mouth falls open just slightly before her jaw clenches shut. Not when they’re this close. He swallows over a lump in his throat that he could swear wasn’t there moments ago, ignoring the way his heart skips and his stomach flutters as he works the last of the dye in his palm into MJ’s roots.
“I’m, uh, done.”
“Great!” MJ jumps up, turning to face him. “Oh, you’ve got a bit of dye…” she trails off and swipes at Peter’s cheek with her thumb, brow furrowed. “There’s some in your hair, too.”
Peter frowns -- a glance towards the mirror confirms that he does, in fact, have one small splotch of purple dye in his hair, most likely displaced from MJ’s hair when she spun around.
“Here, I’ll fix it. Give me your gloves,” MJ says, putting her hand out expectantly. Peter obliges, almost sighs with relief when he pulls them off and wipes his sweaty hands on the soiled gym shirt.
Holding her breath, MJ squeezes the last of the dye out of the bottle and, almost delicately, works it evenly through his hair. He does his best to stand still, gazing up at MJ’s face. She’s biting her lip the way she does when she focuses on a tricky math problem, eyes narrowed with determination. Once again, Peter feels as though his heart has tripped over its own feet and is stumbling to find its balance.
“There.” It’s less of a word than it is an exhale. MJ steps back to admire her work, then smiles and leans in to kiss Peter on the cheek. “The instructions say to wait half an hour before washing it out.”
He nods, closing his mouth which he's only just realized had been hanging open, and pulls out his phone. He sets a timer for twenty-five minutes for MJ, and thirty for himself, and then follows MJ’s lead back to her room. When he finds her, she’s sitting in front of her bed, drinking from Peter’s abandoned Slurpee. The TV on the wall is turned on. She tosses something towards him, which he catches before he can process what it is -- a Wii remote.
“Dibs on Donkey Kong,” she says, straw still in her mouth, as Peter dives onto the bed.
******
Mario Kart has always been Peter’s strong suit. MJ, of course, wins all four races in the Mushroom Cup by a landslide.
“There’s no way you’re not cheating at this point,” he argues when she crosses the final finish line in first place.
“Or maybe this is you getting what you deserve for being a Princess Daisy main.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, she’s a gay icon! She’s objectively the best character.”
“Then maybe you just suck,” MJ teases, shoving another handful of dry ramen into her mouth.
“I still don’t know how you can eat that.” Peter drops himself onto the bed, flat on his back, from where he had been sitting on the ceiling fan. She doesn’t respond, only poking the bottom of his foot that now rests inches from her head.
Neither of them says anything for -- Peter doesn’t know how long. He counts the flecks of dye on the front of his shirt a few times (twenty-three) before MJ speaks up.
“Hey, so I have a question but you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.”
“Um, alright?”
“How long have you… liked me?”
Oh.
He sits upright to look at MJ where she sits on the floor still, leaning her forehead against his leg.
“I- well, I don’t- hm. I don’t really know?”
“What does that even mean?”
“I mean, I know when I realized I liked you, but I’m not sure how long I liked you before I knew that’s what it was. You could probably ask Ned, to be honest. I bet he knew way before I did.”
She tilts her head back to narrow her eyes at Peter before letting herself fall forward again. Peter sighs.
“I realized I liked you during our first physics test this past year. I kept looking up at you, so much that Mr. Ramirez pulled me aside after class to warn me about the penalties for cheating.” MJ laughs a little at that, which sends up a spark in his chest. “What about you?”
“It’s been a while--” The alarm on Peter’s phone goes off, signalling that it’s time for MJ to rinse the dye out of her hair. She cuts off her sentence and stands abruptly, turns away to dig through her drawers for pajamas.
“Don’t take too long,” he warns her. “I’m gonna be so bored.”
“Like I’d leave you alone in my room for more than ten minutes anyway. You break everything you touch,” MJ retorts, sticking her tongue out at him over her shoulder. “The bookshelves are off limits. I’ll be right back.”
“Gotcha,” says Peter, and he falls backwards onto her bed as she slips out into the hallway. Staring up at the glow in the dark stars plastered onto MJ’s ceiling, he finds it harder and harder to keep his eyes open.
A second alarm goes off five minutes later, and Peter jumps -- he had forgotten about the streak in his own hair. He turns off the alarm and checks the time. It’s 1:45 a.m. and MJ is still in the shower, so he sneaks into the kitchen and rinses his hair in the sink to the best of his ability.
That only takes him a few minutes. With nothing to do, Peter returns to the room and takes some time to look around. He’s been to MJ’s house before, but he’s never been in her bedroom for this long -- they usually stayed in the living room and the kitchen. There are bookshelves against the wall, and a smaller bookcase next to her bed. It doesn’t look particularly organized, but he’s sure she has her own system -- maybe sorted by genre or personal preference. She has a few posters up, too, although nowhere near as many as in his own room, and a desk scattered with notebook paper and pens.
She also has a dresser. He takes the opportunity to raid her wardrobe and change out of the dye-stained gym uniform now that his hair is done. When MJ finally comes back, Peter is bundled up in a pink cashmere sweater and Batman-themed fleece pajama shorts. She walks in with her hair wrapped in a towel so old that it’s falling apart around the edges.
“What’s the plan now?” he asks, fiddling with his sleeves.
“Gonna blow dry my hair and then pass the fuck out,” she mutters, rubbing her eye with her fist balled up in the sleeve of her baggy sweatshirt. She’s hunched over, tired, dragging her feet, arms crossed, dark circles overwhelming. She’s adorable, Peter thinks.
“No, I mean… should I head home?” MJ pauses for a moment, lips pursed, before answering.
“Nah, you can crash here for tonight.”
When MJ turns her back, Peter buries his face in his hands, feeling his smile stretch across his face -- he’s so delirious, because of her or maybe lack of sleep, that he can’t keep his eyes from squeezing shut and his knees from bouncing against the mattress.
Peter puts his happiness on hold just long enough to bury himself beneath the blankets, pulling the comforter up to his chin and wiggling his toes under the bedsheets. He watches MJ dry her hair, and ignores the way his cheeks start to ache from smiling. When she finishes, switching off the blow dryer and flipping her hair back as she stands up straight, MJ turns around to look at Peter, and has to fight back the corner of her lip threatening to twitch upwards.
“Loser,” she snorts, and flops down to sit on the mattress next to him. Her fingers ghost over the new streak in Peter’s hair. “It looks nice.”
He stares at her. The dim lamplight illuminates her face, catching each stray hair. This color suits her, Peter thinks; his gaze trails across the bright purple curls spilling over MJ’s shoulder as she leans over him. Even now, exhausted as she is, there’s a glow to her features, a certain radiance that she’s always possessed -- the violet tone only serves to draw it out more.
Peter looks back to her eyes and finds her studying him, too. MJ’s face betrays nothing of her thoughts, as usual, but Peter can almost feel her pulse racing. He snaps out of his hypnosis and whispers back, “You too.”
She lets herself smile at that, and slides into the bed next to him.
“Night, Peter.”
“Good night.”
MJ turns off the lamp.
The faint glow of the stars on the ceiling rests like drifting snow upon the bedroom furniture. Peter can’t sleep. He looks around for something to rest his focus on, finding a different target every few minutes. Everything appears ever-so-slightly out of place now, under the subtle green light. It makes the pale skin of his hands look sickly. He can’t tune out the ticking of the clock.
When a sudden weight lands on his chest, he almost panics. But then it’s MJ, her arm pulling him in and her leg thrown over his, humming sleepily. He almost assumes she’s not awake, that it’s unintentional, until she mutters in his ear, voice cracking and warm.
“I think I might love you, too.”
Peter finds the anxiety rising in his throat all of a sudden replaced by something softer. He rolls onto his side and presses his back into MJ’s stomach, closes his eyes and breathes in deep. The smell of her -- the dull scent of dye overridden by floral shampoo and clay and warmth -- it makes him feel at home.