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The first time MJ knows, it’s because he says something before climbing up the Washington Monument.
The second is, unfortunately, because she’s hurtling toward the ground at too fast from too high, and Spider-Man makes the idiotic mistake of yelling her nickname as he dives and chants C’MON! C’MON, NOT YOU! NOT YOU! repeatedly, as if that would make him fall faster and not miss her tumbling form with every web he shoots out.
MJ would’ve thought it was a nice gesture, if she weren’t terrified of heights and currently screaming her head off.
Thwip!
She seethes, the whiplash on her leg lasting a brief, painful moment before she finds herself in the frantic embrace of one Peter “Trademark Squeaky Voice” Parker.
MJ tucks her head into his chest, breathing quickly and shaking.
“Are you okay?” Peter asks, no doubt trying to sound like a steady anchor as they swing to (presumably) an alley a safe distance away.
Keyword: trying.
He sounds how she feels, and MJ notices the wobbling isn’t just her.
“Karen, can you check her for injuries?” he says, and she remembers a long screen of code on Ned’s laptop, left open one night when they forgot to cancel her invite and she’d stepped into the room without them noticing.
“I’m fine,” she mumbles, breath still shaky.
Peter snorts involuntarily. “Your knee’s sprained.”
MJ huffs, begrudgingly holding on tighter because she can feel it being true. “And whose fault is that, Pete?”
New personal note: don’t throw around truth bombs while midair, even if you know, logically, you won’t be getting dropped by a certain superhero, because said superhero is still a bumbling seventeen-year-old who, when nervous, misses a swing.
Peter curses, catching the next ledge belatedly. “Sorry,” he whispers, and it’s nice, kinda, to have his arm around her in a protective way.
In an I never want to let go way.
...Except she’s still midair, and she hates it.
“Can you just drop me off here?” she squeaks. Squeaks, like Ned. Or Peter.
What a morning.
This is what she gets for trying to be a tourist for a day.
Screw the Empire State Building.
“M—ma’am, your knee’s sprained. I think it’s better and safer if I take you home.”
MJ huffs again, eyes clamped shut as she props her chin over his shoulder. “Drop it already, nerd, before I make you feel more awkward by asking how you already know the way to my house without asking.”
Peter gulps, accepting defeat by way of hugging her tighter briefly. “Sorry.”
Squeeze. “Did you get him, at least?”
“Yeah, but I think Mr. Stark is gonna have to make a big donation to whoever’s in charge of their upkeep to keep me out of trouble.”
“Good,” she says, burying herself by his neck now, because shame is for people who like the view from four stories up, and she isn’t one of them. “The getting him part—less the Stark trying to keep you out of super-prison part.”
Peter shrugs, calmer now as he swings steadily. “Karen says hi.”
“Hi, Karen.”
“She says you’re doing really well for being scared of heights.”
“Thanks, Karen.”
“...Ned says hi.”
MJ almost, almost opens her eyes, but a gust of wind and a swoop of her stomach reminds her that that is a Terrible Idea, No Bueno, so she just says, “Hey, Ned—I want ten percent of whatever you’re winning for this.”
She feels Peter jerk his head back, chin tucking and jaw opening. “...You know about the bet?”
“You’re not exactly subtle.”
Peter shakes his head, and she feels like they’re nearing the ground.
“Are we in Queens already? ‘Cause that was fast,” she says, furrowing her brows.
“Nah, but I gotta pick up my backpack,” Peter says, and she feels the ground beneath her feet and the OW in her knee. “You can open your eyes now.”
“That is weird,” she says when she finds herself face to face with his articulating eye-shields. “Like, cool, but weird.”
Peter holds her steady, his height proving to be ideal for a human crutch as he helps her hop over to the wall.
“Thanks,” she says before hissing down at her jerk of a knee. She leans back on the wall.
“Yeah, no problem,” he says. He pulls his mask up halfway, stops, and blinks.
MJ feels his eyes on her and glances up, quirking a brow. “Somethin’ wrong?”
The alley is empty of video cameras and this part of town is only busy after work hours, so he’s safe. He could do it, and she knows this.
“Karen, cut comms, please,” Peter says, letting out a shaky breath.
MJ raises her brow higher, leaning on her good leg. “Am I about to die?”
“No,” he says, wringing his hands. “I just—I never, um, I never really, like, intentionally showed someone…”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I can—” MJ says vaguely, pointing up at his mask.
“Oh!” His eye-shields go cartoon-wide, and he moves closer. “If? If you want?”
She nods, the tension feeling less Big Secret Reveal awkward and more Am I Doing This Right? awkward as she reaches up and rolls back the material slowly.
There’s a light shuffling sound as Peter’s eyes come into view, then the start of his hairline. She stops there, because he’s got this dopey, toothy grin, and he looks so happy, so free, that it seems like a good checkpoint.
(That, and she needs to go back to leaning on the passably-clean wall, because whew, does her knee feel sucky.)
“Hi,” Peter says breathlessly. “I don’t skip practice on purpose, I swear.”
“You’ve skipped once,” she laughs.
Wait.
“You’ve skipped once,” she says again, warily this time. “How have you only skipped once in the past two years?”
Peter shrugs. “Incentive.”
“So my lightning round punishment does work.”
“Something like that.”
He’s still smiling, but it’s softer, and she’s not entirely sure if it’s the sun being high in the sky and reflecting all sorts of shiny things onto him or what, but it looks different.
It feels different.
“How long have you wanted me to know?” she asks, failing at sounding like she’s teasing him. Failing miserably.
“Since you started sitting with us,” he says immediately, and she slips.
Literally.
She slips.
On air, or something, and wobbles off-balance.
Peter catches her, one hand on her shoulder and the other on her hand. “Are you—”
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
“It’s Ned,” she says, her free hand pulling the phone from her bag. Click. “‘Sup, Alfred?”
“I’m not Peter’s butler.”
“You’re close enough.”
Huff. “Anyway. Are you guys on the way home, yet? ‘Cause if you are, the tracker on the suit is buggin’ out.”
“Haha. Buggin’.”
Peter helps her lean back on the wall properly, then goes to fetch his backpack from the opposite wall.
I’ll swing us back, he mouths.
Don’t drop me, she mouths back.
He shrugs like, I don’t know the future, MJ.
She flips him off.
“Yo, you still there?”
“Yeah, dude. Boy-Man just had to get his backpack. We’re leaving now, actually.”
“Oh, okay. Thought you were making out or something.”
MJ purses her lips, narrowing her eyes at the sky in the general direction of Queens. “...Mmk. Later, Ned.”
Snickering, and click.
“I could be wrong, ’cause I’ve never seen you do it before, but...are you blushing?” Peter asks, mask back down and squinting at her.
“...No.”
“Karen says there’s a ‘significant increase of heat’ to your cheeks.”
“Karen, I thought we were gonna be pals.”
“He who weareth the mask, possesseth the palship of Karen,” Peter says, to the dismay of every Asgardian lorekeeper since times past. The mask’s eyes do the smiling thing, and she knows it’s smug underneath. “So this is what you look like when you blush.”
“Dunno what you’re talking about,” MJ says, puffing up her cheeks.
“I can actually see it, you know,” Peter says. “It’s really light, but this close—”
Hey, now.
When did they get this close?
“Uh,” MJ says, exhaling. “Home? Before Ned calls again?”
Peter’s mask is looking either shocked or embarrassed, so it’s no surprise that he answers with a meek, “Yep.”
(He drops her off at her window.
She tells him thanks.
He asks, “Can I walk you to school on Monday?”
She nods silently, waving at him as he swings away, thwip-thwip-thwippin’ to the next block.)
The first time Ned knows is because Peter’s bad at hiding his feelings and overcompensates to an almost disastrous degree.
The second time is because MJ tells him, with a huff and a blank stare, when it’s just the two of them in his room trying to solve the calculus homework, because Peter passed out from exhaustion on the living room couch about an hour ago.
“I’ma be real—I wouldn’t mind being Rey right about now,” she says, glancing over at the half-open door of his room, with just enough of a view to the couch.
Ned almost says, What? An orphan and having severe parental figure issues? before he remembers that’s the name he gave his family’s new pet beagle a year ago.
His beagle, currently napping beside Peter, with the boy’s arm around her.
Ned does a slow turn to MJ, eyes widening with every passing quarter-second. “Before you try to explain yourself,” he says, annunciating carefully, “I’m not surprised you like him. I’m surprised you admitted it.”
“That’s fair,” she blanks, pursing her lips and balancing a pen on her finger. “Are you getting anything?”
“Like fifteen bucks from Cindy and a hundred from Flash.”
“And if we get together?”
Ned taps his chin, closing one eye as he mentally calculates the outcome. “Triple, plus a fifty from May.”
MJ nods approvingly, spinning her pen. “Is there a bonus for doing this before winter break?”
Ned shakes his head. “Nah, but I’m pretty sure Mr. Harrington’s gonna try to throw some pizza party to celebrate, but pretend it’s like, for a job well done, or whatever.”
“Hey,” MJ frowns. “We won Nationals again this year. I think that’s fair.”
“I don’t even know why you’re asking me this stuff,” Ned laughs lightly, rolling his eyes. “I’d need proof, and it’s not like you’re going to—”
But then she’s up, and walking, and opening the door the whole way before stepping through.
Ned flounders, tripping on the Eh, what the hell? energy emanating from MJ, and figuring crawling to the doorway is a faster and more efficient method than running out to follow her.
He makes it, missing nothing, evidently, because MJ’s gone and turned her head to check that he did, in fact, follow. Her face might’ve looked expressionless to a newbie, but he sees it.
He sees the way her shoulders are a little tighter together.
Sees her lips go from a thin line to a thin frown to a Fine, okay, I’m giddy, you caught me-thin smile.
Sees the puffed cheeks and the little nostril flare and the deep breath.
He takes out his phone, waving it around for her to see.
She shrugs, but the smile gets wider, and she turns to hide her face as Ned hits record.
MJ pokes Peter's cheek.
Peter scrunches up his face.
Ned manages to not laugh.
MJ pets Rey, and Rey turns to lie on her back, disrupting Peter’s sleep enough for him to pout as he blinks awake.
“Rise and shine, Sleeping Drooly,” MJ deadpans, but it’s got no edge.
“Uhn?” Peter replies artfully, swiping at his not-drool-covered chin. “‘m not drooling?”
(Ned clamps a hand over his mouth, shaking with laughter at the idea of what’s about to go down.)
MJ sits by Rey’s feet, rubbing her belly. “Nope. Messin’ with you.”
Peter props himself up on one arm, his free hand rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Did you guys finish?”
“No, but something came up.”
His eyes snap open. “Emergency?”
“Uh,” she says, squinting. “Not…really?”
Peter tilts his head.
“I just wanted to say that I’m about…here?” MJ says, scrunching up her face, her free hand raised above her head. “Yeah, about here. On the Peter’s Driving Me Crazy scale.”
“Oh,” he says, eyes widening. He sits up fully, careful not to push off the belly-rub-spoiled dog beside him. “What’d I do? I’m sor—”
(Ned’s glad he’s not standing, because the floor is keeping his elbows propped and hands steady, even with his bouts of silent wheezing.)
MJ puts a hand on his arm to calm him. “Not—um.” Exhale. “Like, crazy in a, er.” Pause. Her gaze drops to his lips for a moment, and she remembers every stolen glance across gyms and crowds and books and homework.
Every quiet moment and deep conversation and unnecessary movie critique and rowdy laughter and, and, and.
And simple, gut-twisting butterflies.
Because of the company.
Inhale. “...In an I really wanna kiss you kinda way.”
(Ned’s a good friend who shuts off the recording two seconds into the kiss, and resumes it after, when he’s freely cheering and laughing, and Rey’s whining about MJ’s hand being busy with Peter’s hair and not her fur.)
“Do I get to do this now?” Peter asks breathlessly, thumb drawing tiny circles on her chin.
“What? Kiss me?” MJ grins, eyes locked on his.
(She notes, for science, that Peter’s hair is extremely fun to twirl around between her fingers.)
He nods, lips twitching up.
“Previous studies suggest it would be a welcome addition to our current routine.”
“...‘Previous studies’?”
She pecks his lips. “That which happened after our paparazzi shut off the video.”
“That’s me!” Ned says, cheering again as he cuts off the second video in favor of hugging his friends, dog included. “Aw! So happy for you guys.”
“He’s getting a lot of money,” MJ blanks, leaning back over Peter’s legs and into the couch-back. “But I still definitely want to keep the kissing thing going, preferably in a dating context. It’s surprisingly fun.”
“They say it’s who you’re kissing that makes it enjoyable,” Ned says sagely, kissing Rey’s head. “Ain’t that right, buddy? Yeah? Who’s the best doggo? You da best doggo! Mwah!”
Rey stands up on her hind legs, front paws in his hands. She licks his face, tail smacking into MJ and Peter.
“First Karen, now Rey,” MJ tchs. “Betrayed for a male. I see how it is.”
Peter wrinkles his nose, laughing. “You stopped petting her to—” Blink.
MJ puffs up her cheeks again.
Cough, as he gestures vaguely to his neck and head. “—Stuff.”
“‘To stuff’?” Ned says, amused. “Is that our code?” He puts on a face befitting a sportscaster. “And word is, Ron, that Peter and MJ were off-court, to stuff before the warmups.”
“Okay, I’ve reached my daily limit for Embarrassing Social Interactions,” MJ complains, standing. She claps Ned’s shoulder. “Back to homework?”
Peter raises a hand, giving a short wave as he yawns. “And back to nap.”
Ned ruffles his hair. “Later, bro.”
MJ gives a two-fingered salute, walking off to Ned’s room. “Later, new derpface boyfriend.”
“Later, Ned,” Peter mumbles, resuming his sleeping position beside Rey’s now-curled form. “Later, new giraffesque girlfriend.”
“Together for five minutes and already having pet names,” Ned snorts, looking between them. “That true-freakin’-love.”
MJ rolls her eyes lazily, but there’s a distinct silence that accompanies the smile she tries to hide as they power through the last ten questions.
Ned just grins.
The first time Peter knows is because Ned keeps commenting about it, and at this point, the guy’s basically an MJ-dictionary, so he takes his word for it.
The second time is because he says it first—blurts it out by accident, half-daydreaming, because it’s been on his mind for months, and she just looks so in-the-zone, prattling off about minimum wage while she deposits and withdraws books from her locker.
He says it, then she says, “Uhhhhhh,” for about thirty seconds, before crashing her lips onto his in the middle of a packed school hallway, right as the bell rings, and he knows.
It’s over quick because it’s MJ and her next class is her favorite and she doesn’t want to be late, but she smiles wide and it’s so nice, really, how bright she looks, how full of joy.
How she’s definitely blushing, because he knows what that looks like, now, and he knows how to make it happen.
How the words sound coming from her lips when they're meant for him, and only him, even though if said a different way they’re also for Ned and May and her niece and Rey.
How he’s pretty sure hearing I love you from the person you wanna hang out with forever is some sort of hallucinogen, because he’s not entirely sure what class he has next anymore, even though the book he’d just taken from his locker says World History for the Modern Age.
Even though Ned’s in that class with him, and is currently trying to both wake him up and drag him to the other end of the school, with MJ walking off from them like some sort of hit-and-run rocket.
What a rush.
“Pete, you’re crying,” Ned says, but it’s edging on elated. “I didn’t even know that could be an appropriate reaction.”
Peter sniffles, grinning widely as he dots the tears off. “Dude. I’m so happy.”
Ned laughs. “Good. You should be. You deserve it.”
“Nah, no—I don’t deserve her.”
“I mean, duh,” Ned blanks, but it’s not wiping the smile off his face, “but like, to be happy, Pete. Y’know? You and MJ deserve to be happy.”
Peter smiles, slinging an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “So do you.”
Ned slings one back, cheeks high as he grins. “I am.”
MJ walks with them to decathlon practice after class, hand woven with Peter’s and arm slung over Ned’s shoulders.
“So when did you know?” Peter asks, twelve meters from the doors.
“Well, John, I’d like to pick MJ’s Emotional Status for 400,” Ned says in his Classic White Woman Getting Scammed By Telemarketers voice.
MJ nudges Ned, chortling. “Smartass.”
Ned shrugs, grinning mischievously.
“And—right before I kissed you,” MJ says, turning to Peter. “The first time.”
Ned facepalms, then glares at Peter. “I told you! Didn’t I tell you?! I told you!”
Peter curses, handing him a twenty.
MJ quirks a brow.
“Don’t act like you don’t know about the betting ring in this school,” Peter mumbles.
“I’m not,” MJ says, tilting her head. “But I don’t know what you bet on, exactly.”
“That he could’ve said it like two months ago and it wouldn’t’ve mattered,” Ned says, pocketing the cash with a satisfied smirk.
MJ laughs. “Always listen to Ned.”
Peter rolls his eyes. “I just didn’t wanna rush you.”
“It’s nice to think you’re capable of that.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I love you,” Peter says, hopping a little bit to kiss her moving form.
She wrinkles her nose, eyes crinkling. “Love you back.”
Ned sniffles.
They turn to him in tandem, raising their brows.
“I’m just so happy I called this forever ago,” he says, eyes shining as passing members of the decathlon team mumble their congratulations and slip fives into Ned’s hand.
“You’d think they’d learn,” MJ squints as they enter the practice room, surveying her team.
“Overachievers, MJ,” Peter says with a nudge.
“Next one on the list is a proposal,” Sally says offhandedly from her spot on the floor.
“Don’t mess this up for me, Peter,” Cindy warns, writing notes down on Charles’ notebook.
“Mess it up for her,” Abe stage whispers, hands cupped around his mouth. “I can’t change my bet!”
“You...all need professional help. And smaller allowances,” MJ deadpans, untangling herself from her boys to walk to the podium. She nods at Mr. Harrington. “Please tell me you didn’t…”
“Oh, I don’t gamble,” he says, hands up.
MJ breathes again.
“...Not after the fifty I just lost.”
(Ned snickers triumphantly from the stage.)
“Okay, I’m gonna pretend this is all. Not. Happening." Pause. "Because that’s easier,” MJ says, shuffling her flashcards.
The rest of the team shrug, agreeing.
Snort. “Aight, so—the term that describes the relationship between Db and C# or F# and Gb?”