Work Text:
Reasons why Peter and MJ kind of are a thing even though they both deny it:
- Peter stays at her dorm more often than not
- Her roommate thinks they’re together like, for reals
- She flirts with people at parties but it’s always more fun with Peter
- Most parties end with them falling in bed together
- MJ gets low-key jealous whenever Peter takes someone else home
--
MJ and Peter aren’t a thing. They weren’t in high school and they’re not in college. But here’s the thing, okay? Peter stays at MJ’s room every other night because his roommate is a dick and MJ’s roommate doesn’t care what they’re up to as long as gives her a warning when non-PG actions are happening. Which is a lot but hey, they’re both young and full of energy and having sex happens to be the best way to release pent up nerves and feelings.
So what if the person she happens to have sex with is her high school friend with whom she might have been slightly obsessed when she was fifteen? They’re both adults and know what they’re letting themselves into so she honestly doesn’t spend too much time thinking about what it is that they have and more making out with Peter because let her tell you, that boy has talents and she knows how to put them to good use, sue her.
She does hook up with other people and so does he. Which is fun, but it’s just more fun to hook up with someone who knows exactly what she likes, so it’s no wonder that most nights out end with the two of them in bed together.
Tonight is not one of those nights, it seems, because Peter has been flirting with a cute girl for the past half hour and it doesn’t look like they’re about to stop soon. Or maybe they do, but only to start kissing in some dark corner of the party that they’re at.
It’s some frat party and this isn’t MJ’s usual scene but a friend of a friend of hers is in this particular frat so she decided to come as well because hey, at least there’s free alcohol. But now her preferred hook-up is otherwise engaged so she looks around if she can spot anyone to help her out.
It turns out that Maria from her poli-sci class is really good with her tongue. MJ doesn’t blush when Peter points out the hickey on her neck the next day, she doesn’t.
The next party ends with Peter pinning her against a wall, her legs around his hips and his mouth on her neck and this time round he doesn’t tease her about the trail of hickeys down her cleavage when he wakes up next to her but leaves another one before their classes start.
Gina grins when she spots the red spots and asks if her and her cute boyfriend worked things out and MJ reminds her - again - that they’re not together. Her roommate just raises an eyebrow and says, “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
--
Reasons why they’re kind of an item in year two:
- Neither of them has taken anyone else home since June
- MJ stays at Peter’s dorm more often than not
- They do a fuckton of coupely stuff together
- They share all their clothes
- They calms each other down
--
They kind of become an item during summer break.
It’s not something you can pinpoint to an exact date but it happens. They spend a lot of time lazing around in parks and at pools and anything they can find to cool down even remotely.
Ned comes home from California, where he spent the year doing really smart computer stuff that MJ doesn’t understand.
It’s mostly the three of them and it feels a bit like the summers back in high school only that now they’re older and MJ does an internship with a small political magazine for three weeks and Peter sometimes swings around as Spider-Man and does a few Avenger-things which he officially isn’t allowed to tell them about so naturally, he tells them everything down to the smallest detail.
Her and Peter only hook up with each other all summer because it would require effort to find someone else and they’re simply too lazy, so it’s a logical choice to live the friends-with-benefits thing they have to the fullest.
So what if they’re constantly touching in everyday life, so what if Ned teases them when they’re cuddling while watching a movie, so what if that lovely old lady on the second floor of Peter’s building thinks they’re a couple because she they always seem to be holding hands when they go anywhere. It’s summer, and in summer different rules apply to everything. Including not-dating your best friend.
And then classes start again.
Peter has a single room this year because Tony Stark heard about his asshole roommate and pulled some strings. Now Peter has a room for himself and MJ makes use of this to the full extent, meaning that she flees Gina and her new girlfriend almost daily, which means that sleeping with Peter happens a lot more often than last year.
And suddenly it’s October and MJ realises that she hasn’t slept with anyone other than Peter since June and she hasn’t missed anything this entire time.
Her and Peter have fallen into a comfortable routine and it should scare MJ or make her worry about the consequences for their friendship, but she honestly doesn’t care. She’s happy and she thinks that Peter is, too, so she doesn’t spend too much time mulling over what it is that they have, exactly.
What they have is a lot of things.
It’s getting coffee with Peter and having a walk around the park before they hole up in his room or the library for a study session. It’s eating lunch together every time their schedules allow it, which would seem like a throwback to high school, but now the constant that was Ned is gone and even though they eat with other friends, too, the majority of days it’s just the two of them.
They have this ritual that every once in a while they go to MJ’s (and now Peter’s) favourite bookshop and each pick out a book for the other to read. And then one day they each got their book and it starts raining. Peter takes off his jacket to hold over the two of them and MJ lays an arm around his waist to get closer to him and under the cover as they run to Peter’s dorm.
They arrive only slightly wet and with their books still mostly dry thanks to Peter’s backpack and they can’t help but laugh at the sight they must make.
Their clothes have become mingled over the past months with them being almost the same size. (MJ is still a bit taller, but Peter has broader shoulders and most of their clothes fit them both. Except for maybe the skin-tight dresses that she wears to parties.) So when they change into dry clothes she ends up wearing his sweatpants and hoodie and Peter sits on his bed in her leggings and an old woollen sweater that used to be hers before he stole it and never gave it back because ‘sweater paws are fucking awesome, MJ, why are you laughing?’ and it makes her feel all weird and fuzzy in her heart.
She ignores it, sits down next to him and cuddles into his side as he selects a movie on his laptop.
--
Peter still does the whole superhero thing. Not as often as he used to in high school, but during holidays and on weekends he’s out a lot, sometimes with the Avengers avenging stuff, and sometimes as friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man running after bicycle thieves.
He also still does the whole superhero thing in regards of nightmares and trauma.
It’s not a rare thing that MJ wakes up to him shaking next to her, calling out for someone to stop or to help him or to help her and she has to admit that even after years it’s still scary. Sometimes he’ll call her while she’s in class and she’ll excuse herself and talk him down from a panic attack because the dust in the lab he’s working in reminded him of the time a building crashed on him, which reminded him of the time he was stuck under a pile of cars, which reminded him of the time when he was fifteen and a parking lot collapsed on him.
(MJ knows all of his triggers by now, and most of the reasons behind them. He tells her about these things at night, when they’re alone in one of their rooms; she starts shaking every time he does because he’s so young and he’s entirely too good for this world and he doesn’t deserve all of this.)
She forced him to talk about it with Stark when they were still in high school and it was as good thing because he told Peter that this is something regular in their line of work and that nearly all of the current and ex-members of the Avengers go through the nightmares and the triggers and anxiety attacks.
Stark must have told the rest of the team because from then on there’s always someone to talk to when Peter needs it, be it on the phone or in person, and it doesn’t make it go away but it helps.
And MJ knows she helps, too. After years of doing this she knows exactly how to calm him down, when to touch him and when to keep her distance, and it has happened before that Peter was out on a mission and one of his teammates called her because he was spiralling.
And it’s not like MJ is a perfectly stable human being, either.
She’s a perfectionist, constantly stresses out over schoolwork and presentations; her mental health could be better, depression coming and going in waves, sometimes leaving her alone for months only to return full force over night and drag her down again.
And Peter knows this, like he knows everything about MJ. He calls in sick for her when he realises that she won’t get out of bed that morning, brings her chocolate or ice-cream or alcohol when he knows she’s had a shit day, holds her close when she wants to cry her feelings out.
People often remark that they seem to be in perfect sync, that they seem to read each other’s thoughts and emotions perfectly, and although MJ hates to give people right it’s true. Her and Peter are more than just friends or dating or whatever the thing is they’re doing. They know each other by heart and it should be scary to depend so much on a person and to have them rely on you so much in turn, but MJ finds that it’s more comforting than anything, because how could anything that involves Peter be scary?
So the next time she’s angry at some asshole that she just destroyed in a debate about politics she goes straight to him and he shoots someone a text and before she knows what’s going on they’re in the gym an underground Avenger’s facility in the area and she’s punching her feelings out on him and she might feel bad afterwards but he tells her that he’s Spider-Man and that the bruising won’t last longer than a few hours.
When she’s finished with the punching he pulls her into a hug and she leans against him, breathing heavily, and feels calm again.
--
Reasons why they kind of have a reputation by their third year:
- There’s rumors of Peter knowing Tony Stark
- MJ is fucking scary in debates
- Peter is probably the smartest kid in all of his classes
- MJ is hot af
- Peter is hot af
--
Year three starts with the two of them moving off campus into a little flat. They still don’t label the thing they have, introduce each other simply as Peter and MJ, but they’re exclusive and official and really fucking in love.
Like, it’s crazy how much MJ loves this boy. Her heart rate literally picks up every time he enters a room and holy shit, how did she end up here?
(Not that she’s complaining. She loves every second for it and she wouldn’t give it up for the world. But shit, she’s so fucking mushy sometimes it makes her want to punch something.)
It might be the case that by their third year of college they have a reputation. It’s not like everyone knows them, because there’s far too many people at this school for that, but people in their year and respective departments of study tend to know them or, at least, have heard their names before.
It probably started out with rumours that Peter knows Tony Stark, of which Peter, being Peter, did nothing to prove wrong.
And then one day Tony Stark actually comes to their school and waits for Peter in front of his mechanics classroom because he wants to discuss ‘something personal’ with him, which means either ‘Avengers business’ or ‘I feel like a Bad Dad even though I’m not your father and I want to take you out for lunch to catch up’. Usually a mix of both of them.
So Tony shows up at school, waves at MJ when he sees her outside with a few friends and leaves the building a few minutes later with Peter in tow.
People stare, as they always do when Tony Stark is involved in anything, and when MJ shoots Peter a questioning look he just shrugs and then continues his conversation with Stark.
Her friends ask her if she knows Tony Stark and she tells them she met him like, once, which is not quite true because she spent a few holidays with Peter at the Avengers facility upstate, where he trained and she hung out with Tony and other Avengers. (And met Black Panther. How awesome is her life?)
When People ask Peter about it he just shrugs and tells them he used to intern at Stark Industries back in high school. That doesn’t necessarily help the rumours, but well.
So, yes, Peter is someone that people know.
MJ is also someone people know, but that’s more because she can destroy you in debates. Those in the debate team might have spread the word that she’s a force to be reckoned with and that you should not annoy her in anyway if you hold your life dear. So while people are mostly curious about Peter, they’re fucking terrified of MJ. She loves it.
Teachers tend to know Peter too, or at least those in the science departments, because Peter tends to be that one annoying kid that knows all the answers without even trying. Teachers love him and his peers respect him and MJ knows that whenever there are group projects Peter is the first person you turn to if you don’t understand the topic.
And then there is, of course, the subject of the two of them ‘being too hot for their own good’, as Gina likes to put it.
MJ doesn’t want to brag, but she does admit that when she actually put in an effort to look good she looks fucking good.
Which has positive and negative things about it.
She loves girls telling her that they like her eyeliner and that her legs look killer in those heels and that her dress hugs her in all the right places. She does not love, however, the unwanted attention she gets, the one where drunken douchebags grab her ass or whisper weird pickup lines in her ear.
Either way, by now MJ is madly in love with Peter, so she lets all of them down more or less gently.
(Sometimes she just punches them in the nose. She is, after all, friends with the Avengers, and the perks of knowing trained superheroes and assassins is that they can teach you how to get rid of drunken douchebags.)
(Her favourite Avengers to train with are Black Widow and Barnes. Natasha because she’s the coolest person MJ has ever met, and Barnes because he’s the best at shit-talking about other Avengers, which makes training with him a lot of fun. Like, seriously, if you haven’t heard him make fun of Captain America you’re missing out.)
(Peter tells MJ that he also finds her beautiful when she wakes up in the morning with tangled hair and sleep-crusted eyes but he’s weird and gross and in love with her so it doesn’t count.)
And if MJ gets attention for looking good Peter does just as much because let’s face it, that boy is hot as fuck and she’s pretty sure that all the girls and at least half the boys in his classes are in love with him.
He still wears his nerdy shirts with the stupid puns and his (her) oversized sweaters, but he also frequently wears a leather jacket that’s tight around his shoulders and has arms that bulge every time he lifts something heavy and a smile that could get the most cold-hearted person on the planet to melt. It’s a weird combo of nerdy-hot-cute and it’s frustrating how well he can pull it off.
(MJ also thinks he has adorable puppy-dog eyes that will make you do anything for him and glorious abs to trace with her tongue and a too-good-for-his-own-good heart, but that’s just her being weird and gross and in love with him so it doesn’t count.)
So Peter is hot as fuck and people notice.
One time he asks her to keep him company in the mechanics lab while he works on a project. She kicks up her legs and reads something for her Temporary Literature class. They sit mostly in silence, only sometimes comment on the robot that Peter’s building, which she knows will end up being able to do twice as many things as it is required to.
When she finishes her assigned chapters she looks over to him and takes him in, notes that his hair is getting longer again. It’s starting to curl in the way he hates but she loves and it seems that she’s not the only person who notices that he’s looking really good today, even though (or maybe exactly because) his hair is tousled and he’s wearing an old, grease-stained shirt that she’s pretty sure used to have the Stark Industries logo printed on.
There’s a group of first years in one corner of the lab, seemingly working on a project, but their time seems to be mostly spent staring at Peter. They certainly have been for the past five minutes.
One of them catches her eye and blushes and she raises an eyebrow but can’t help grinning at the same time because really, she understands.
When she looks back at Peter again he has a small flashlight stuck between his lips as he tries to perfect some electric circuit and he seems to sense her looking because he turns his head to smile at her and she’s pretty sure the first years just collectively swooned.
She doesn’t blame them. She’s pretty close to sighing dreamily herself.
(Which, you know, is unacceptable. So she calls him a nerd and goes back to reading.)
People also ask Peter out. Of course they would, MJ can’t blame them, but she still low-key gets jealous whenever she sees someone nearing him with that look on their face.
But this is Peter she’s talking about.
He just tells them that he’s off the market with a small smile and then, when the person has left, he’ll kiss MJ and she’ll kiss back just a bit harder than usual; and he’ll take her home and he’ll touch her in all the right places and she’ll scratch her nails down his back in the way she knows he likes and she’ll realise that there really is no reason to be jealous; she’s the only one who gets to have him like this.
--
It’s years (and a fuck-ton of late-night studying and tears and stress) later and they graduate.
Peter is top of his year and he grins as he holds a speech about being honoured that he got to study here and that he it was an awesome experience. MJ and Ned, who’s graduation was a few days earlier and who flew in for theirs, clap just a little bit louder than the rest of the crowd and exchange a grin when they see Tony shaking Peter’s hand with a proud look on his face and then shrugging a what-the-hell and pulling him into a hug.
Then it’s MJ’s turn to walk on stage and she and the debate team get a shout out by the principal for winning the National Debate Contest three times in a row with her as captain. She does a quick, low-key politically woke speech and when she’s done she can see Ned and Peter and Tony fucking Stark clapping and it feels surreal.
When she gets off stage Peter runs to her and lifts her up in a hug and spins her around even though she’s technically still taller than him and wearing heels, for fucks sake. But he’s super strong and manages somehow not to make them both tumble to the floor
Ned joins them and pulls them in for a group hug and they’re all giddy, grinning wide, ecstatic.
Then they part again, move to talk to their families and friends and other graduates. MJ’s African-American Literature Professor asks her how she met Tony Stark and MJ tells her that he’s a friend and grins as she says that the best thing about him is the number of Black Panther in his phone.
Once they have made their rounds her and Peter meet up again and he pulls her in for a kiss and then smiles against her lips and tells her he’s in love with her.
She just puts her arms on his waist and smiles back and tells him she loves him, too. Then she calls him a nerd and he shuts her up by kissing her again.
--
Her and Peter both have internships lined up in a few weeks, him with Stark Industries and her with the same political magazine she already interned a few years ago and that was awesome. They spent not a small amount of their rather limited free time during the last half year apartment hunting and actually found one that is pretty much in the middle of their respective work place.
They move in a few days after graduation with help of Ned and May and maybe a few Avengers, which is great because like this MJ doesn’t have to lift all the heavy stuff. (Turns out she still has to because superheroes are naturally lazy as fuck and apparently spend half their time off missions making stupid puns and watching her work.)
When they moved everything from their old flat and the dirt of the day is more or less cleaned up they order pizza for everyone and sit on the floor in what’s to be their new living room. There’s laughter and inside jokes and people congratulating them on graduating and teasing them for acting so in love and literally being unable to stop touching for even a few minutes. For once, however, they have an excuse, because they just finished school and are starting new jobs and they’re moving in together (again), so sue them for being happy.
Later, when everyone has left and MJ is cleaning up a bit Peter lays an arm around her waist and pulls her close. They stay like that for a while, arms around each other, swaying back and forth a bit, simply enjoying being close to each other.
And then Peter whispers in her ear that he just realised that the only thing installed at the moment is their bed and the curtains in their bedroom and ‘we really should christen the apartment, don’t you think?’ MJ grins and pulls him closer and then drags him off to have celebratory sex.
(Which, you know. Holy fuck.)
It’s afterwards, when they lay in their new bed all tangled up together she realises that Peter is not only her partner but also her best friend. They know everything about each other and they created their own little bubble in the world and when she was younger co-dependency is never seemed like a good idea but what they have works, they work. And as she’s lying there, curled into Peter with his hand running up and down her arm softly, she realises can’t imagine life without him by her side anymore and that thought doesn’t make her nervous, it just excites her because there’s still so much to come.
So MJ, who has always been someone to not think about things too much and just do it, does the obvious thing you do after a revelation like this: She asks him if he wants to marry her.
(His smile is brighter than the sun or any star in the sky as he kisses her all over and repeats yes, of course, yes.)
--
Reasons why they still don’t call each other boyfriend and girlfriend after graduating:
- They’re fiancés