Work Text:
))((
One.
The first time MJ sees Spider-Man in action, she’s just walked out of the bodega on the corner of 63rd and 10th and hears the ear-splitting, inhuman shriek first.
It carries across the gridlocked road, through the evening rush hour crowd and above the honking horns and typical New York City street hubbub.
She spots the woman easy enough – red in the face, screaming bloody murder as she flaps around. “Help! He’s taken my purse! He’s stolen my purse! Help!”
It’s a sad reflection of the city’s immunity to such scenes – especially something as commonplace and ‘mundane’ as a daylight mugging – when literally no one stops or pays her any attention. There are a few whose interest is piqued enough to swivel their heads in the direction of the hooded asshole making a run for it, but that’s as far as it goes.
No one attempts any feats of heroism, no one moves a muscle to help, until . . .
“Look! It’s Spider-Man!”
There’s a collective murmur that builds like a wave around her as everyone stops what they’re doing and points to the skies. Taxis come to a screeching halt, drivers and passengers alike stick their heads out of rolled down windows; shop-owners peer out from doorways; and even those suits usually glued to their cells, deign to look up – all just to watch the spectacle that’s about to unfold.
And there he is.
Right on time.
New York’s very own superhero, swinging in out of nowhere, shooting webs with pinpoint accuracy as he lands on the side-walk with a showy flip in front of the unlucky bastard who’s chosen today of all days to snatch some defenceless lady’s handbag.
At a distance, MJ can’t really hear what he’s saying, but it sure does look like Spider-Man’s just casually standing there – spandex clad arms folded across his chest, leaning up against a street lamp – conversing with the perp like they’re old pals and he’s going to talk him into simply handing the stolen goods over.
She can’t really see the jackass’ face, but she’s nothing if not observant and can read the body language even from a distance.
This particular coward is all about flight over fight, and she’s proven right just a second later as he turns tail and makes a run for it.
She’s learnt enough about Spider-Man and his exploits around the city these last few months to know who to put her metaphorical money on. So, of course, the idiot gets his ass handed to him.
With lightning quick reflexes, Spider-Man yanks him back with his webbing, slamming him up against a wall. With two quick-fire bursts, he has his hands and feet webbed, and renders the thief immobile. And then all that’s left to do for the city’s friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man is to return the handbag to its rightful owner.
The woman is effusive in her thanks, and if she could see under the mask, she’s sure the man under it is currently blushing beetroot by the awkward way he holds himself and scratches at the back of his neck.
It’s endearing, is what it is – although she’d deny it on pain of death. She is so not into that whole superhero thing. Nope.
Once he’s managed to wrangle himself free of his newest fan’s grasp, he throws a wave at the gathering crowd before taking off down the street with a hop and a skip, followed by a self-congratulatory little heel click, and then he’s flying once more.
MJ cracks a grin.
She hasn’t got a clue who Spider-Man is.
She just knows he’s, unexpectedly, a complete and utter dork.
And that, she thinks, is kinda cool.
))((
Two.
The second time MJ gets to see the arachnid-loving super-powered biped in action, she’s relaxing in the shade of an American elm in Central Park. It’s her favourite spot. Sometimes she just sits and people-watches, wonders about their stories, tries to glean an understanding of who they are, and who they are to the people around them, from the tiny little touches, the smiles, the frowns. Sometimes she draws them. The lonely old man, sitting on the bench, reading his broadsheet, and pretending not to notice the young family swinging their toddler between them as they walk past. The expression on his face fracturing a tiny part of her heart and feeding the tragic backstory she’s built for him in her head. Then there are the kids, the ones winding their way around on their skateboards, flying past the yuppies with cells pressed to their ears, who never stop long enough to notice life’s passing them by.
Sometimes she just watches. Sometimes she draws.
And sometimes she’s simply content to lean back against the bark of the tree and read.
Like today.
She has Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns propped open against her bent knees, index finger brushing back and forth over the corner of the page, and it doesn’t matter how many times she’s read this one, she always feels the words press heavy against her chest and a burn build up behind her eyes.
She doesn’t cry though.
No, the kid from across the park does that for her. The wailing is loud enough to disrupt her thoughts. It’s a different kind of cry from the typical scraped knee or tantrum. It’s distressed and panicked and MJ’s not the kind of disinterested asshole that’s going to ignore a distraught child. And so, she pushes herself to her feet and immediately scans the park for trouble.
She doesn’t have to look too hard, because it appears she’s not the only one whose attention has been drawn. There’s a gathering crowd and pointing fingers, and then she sees him.
A boy of six or seven, who has somehow managed to climb up to the tallest branches of a tree and has (only now) realised he’s deathly afraid of heights and can’t find a way down. His mother stands there pale-faced, ready to faint away, and not one of the idiots gaping up at the child have made any attempts to help get him down.
MJ slips her book into her backpack and strides forward. She’s not bad at the whole tree-climbing thing – long-limbed and with an inborn need to turn playground gender stereotypes on their head, has meant she’s conquered a few heights herself – and she’s more than willing to give it a try now. But before she can get anywhere near the tree, she’s pipped to the rescue.
“Excuse me, excuse me! Coming through!”
She barely hears him over the top of the crowd’s buzz, but she spots the distinctive red and blue clear enough.
The kid’s mother instantly wilts with the relief at the sight of Spider-Man.
“It’s okay buddy, I’m coming for you. Just hold tight.”
There’s something familiar about the timbre of his voice, but MJ shoves the stray thought aside and watches as he climbs the tree as if it’s nothing. In no time at all, he has the young boy’s arms wound around his neck and swings him back down onto the grass.
The tears are gone, lips split into a wide grin, wonder shining from the little boy’s eyes as he looks up at his hero.
He breathes out a, “cool!” And then, because he’s clearly learnt nothing from this: “Can we do that again?”
“Uhh . . .”
“Absolutely not! Don’t you ever do anything like that ever again Benjamin!”
Chastised by his mother, the boy smiles weakly back at Spider-Man. The lady thanks her child’s saviour with a squeeze to his arm and he simply nods back, watching as they walk away.
The kid throws him a wave as he goes, and Spider-Man dutifully returns it.
He continues to stand there long after they’ve disappeared and even after the crowd have dispersed, and MJ can’t find it in herself to move.
There’s something about him. Something in the way he holds himself. The way he hasn’t turned his gaze away from that spot in the distance that pulls at her.
She knows there’s someone under that mask, a human being hiding away behind that now infamous suit, but it doesn’t hit her until now, just how vulnerable he seems. Which is ridiculous; she doesn’t even know him.
Whatever, she thinks. She’s not in the kind of mood to contemplate a superhero’s psyche, but she’s not gonna stand here idly while he has some sort of crisis, either. Not that she knows for sure he’s having a crisis. He may have just fallen asleep standing upright, for all she knows. Or maybe he has solar panels stitched into his suit and needs to recharge his batteries like fucking WALL-E. Point is, she should really turn around and leave right about now, before she does something idiotic, like clear her throat, and say:
“Hey Spidey? You okay, there?”
Too late.
He starts at her voice, stepping back as he turns to face her and then freezes.
It’s weird, but it’s almost as if his eyes widen in recognition when he spots her, but that can’t be right. Not with that mask of his.
He stumbles back another step.
She waits, but he says nothing. There’s a long moment of awkward, painful¸ silence before he slowly sticks both of his thumbs up in answer.
She raises her brow at that, barely managing to keep a straight face, and reminds herself of what she’d learnt when she’d first seen him – the guy is a certified dork. He doesn’t help his case either when he shifts on his feet, and sheepishly scratches at the back of his neck.
MJ is struck, once again, by a sense of familiarity. It’s something in his mannerisms, the way he carries himself, but it’s only a fleeting thought that doesn’t have time to set anchor because he takes off at a run then without a backward glance.
She knows she should be offended, but instead, all she’s left with is building curiosity.
Because she thinks she’s just learnt something huge about Spider-Man today.
Something like the very real possibility he knows her.
And somehow, just like that, New York’s friendly neighbourhood super-hero got a whole lot more interesting.
Damn.
))((
Three.
The third time she comes face-to-face with Spider-Man, the pieces of the puzzle finally fall into place.
The thundering bang from the explosion is still ringing in her ears, heart thumping a wild, erratic beat in her chest as she stands there.
And all she can think is that her classmates are up there. Her friends. Yes, her friends, whether they think the same of her, those assholes were the closest she has to friends, and they were stuck up there, possibly dead or dying, and holy shit, what is she supposed to do?!
And then, as if by some miracle, a red and blue blur comes running, and she spots him in the periphery of her vision. Her attention doesn’t falter from the billowing smoke five hundred feet above them, as she tells him, fear seeping into the words;
“My friends are up there!”
“What?!” he yelps, voice high and definitely familiar, but she won’t think about it until much later. He recovers enough to throw out the words, “uh don’t worry ma’am, everything’s gonna be okay.” They’re hardly convincing, not with the poorly hidden panic lacing them, but she doesn’t think about that now either.
All she can do as she watches him go, is urge him on under her breath. “Come on, come on, come on.” And then there’s what she doesn’t say out loud but presses heavy against her chest: don’t die.
Climbing up the side of the Washington Monument is a whole different ballgame to climbing a tree in Central Park or swinging between skyscrapers in the middle of Manhattan.
MJ feels genuinely scared for him, watching until he’s the size of an actual spider the closer he gets to the top. And it’s not enough that he has gravity to contend with, he then has to deal with the idiot authorities circling him in a helicopter like he’s some criminal. Can’t the dumbasses tell Spider-Man’s trying to help? He may or may not be a dork, a little socially awkward, and a little too gung-ho and reckless sometimes, but he’s one of the good guys. MJ feels that in her bones. Knows it to be the truth with the kind of belief that had her waving her placards and marching in front of several embassies yesterday afternoon.
It's also why she knows if anyone’s going to get them out?
It’s going to be him.
And thankfully, she’s proven right – a long, torturous, half-hour later – when her classmates finally emerge, shell-shocked, and covered in debris. They’re sporting various superficial injuries, and they’re probably going to be mentally scarred for the rest of their lives, but they’re alive.
They. Are. Alive.
And she’s never been more grateful for it. Or for Spider-Man.
Peter Parker may have flaked on the team, but she’d known, without a doubt, that Spider-Man would come through for the win when it really counted. He wasn’t going to abandon them twice.
Because MJ’s also pretty sure, like ninety-nine percent certain, especially after that display, that Peter Parker and Spider-Man are one and the same.
Surprise!
Yeah . . . nope. Colour her not shocked. At all.
Because a) she’s not stupid, and b) she’s not stupid.
It’s not the hardest conclusion to come to, not with all the coincidences he’s racked up today. And if anyone paid them half a mind, they’d figure it out too.
Because Parker and Leeds? Not the most subtle.
Case in point:
“Oh my god dude, I thought we were gonna be toast, but I knew you’d come through man! I knew it!”
She sits behind them on the opposite side of the bus on the ride home. She can hear them. She can see them. They’re just lucky no one else is paying them any attention.
Parker hushes his voice, and nervously peers around, “Ned! Shhh!” And then, because he’s Peter Parker and he can’t help himself, he sighs, and says like the sappy loser he is: “Of course I wasn’t gonna let anything happen to you guys!”
MJ rolls her eyes, pops her earphones back into her ears because she’s heard more than enough, and settles back for the rest of the journey.
Yep. Peter Parker – the little dweeb she’s known since Kindergarten (who’s not so little anymore, because yeah, she’s noticed those biceps in gym, everyone has, alright?), with a penchant for nerdy t-shirts, a life-long crush on Liz Allan the size of mainland U.S.A., and a smile that’s brighter than a pride month parade – is Spider-Man.
Go figure.
))((
Four.
The fourth time she sees Spider-Man doing his hero thing, he’s failing miserably, and MJ’s watching it play over and over on the 4.7-inch screen of his own damn iPhone.
Talk about a glutton for punishment.
She creeps up behind him, sitting there with his untouched lunch tray, head in hand, slouched over, watching a replay of Spider-Man struggling to pull two halves of a several thousand-ton ferry back together again, and he looks sad.
Like kicked puppy sad, and goddamn it, but MJ is not immune to it, no matter how much she pretends to be.
“What you watching there, Nerd?”
The doofus startles at her voice, instantly slamming his phone, screen face down, onto the table.
Cos that’s not suss at all?
Idiot.
He turns slightly and looks up at her with wide eyes before looking away and stammering an unconvincing, “nothing.”
She moves around the table and plonks her tray down in front of him. The cutlery rattles against the plastic, but she keeps her gaze on him as she settles into her seat. His partner-in-crime is nowhere to be seen yet, and she figures Leeds is just running late from whatever class he’d last had.
“So, Parker?” She starts, staring him down. “What contraband are we watching today? Bootleg version of Rogue One? Nerdy vlog of Halo cheats? Oh I know, porn-”
“What?! No!” he splutters, turning an interesting shade of red.
MJ sits back in her chair, casually folding her arms across her chest, watching him squirm.
“Oh I don’t know, it’s just you’re looking a little guilty there, Peter?”
It’s only after the words come spilling out of her mouth, at the way he looks away again, gaze briefly falling to his phone and the way his fingers clench, she realises she’s hit the nail on the head with the kind of tact – and to use one of John Mulaney’s great gags – like someone’s let a horse loose in a hospital.
(Okay, maybe not that bad, cos fuck Trump, but yeah – point made.)
He doesn’t notice her shift uncomfortably as she internally berates herself.
She wasn’t trying to be an ass.
It’s just that sometimes there’s this massive disconnect between her brain and her mouth, and this is why she’s never been very good at the whole friends thing.
But she’s kinda fond of these two dorks, and she thinks that being friends with them wouldn’t entirely suck.
Plus, this conversation would then be going a whole hell of a lot smoother, because he would have confessed to being Spider-Man already.
She knows he’s got no real reason to confide in her – especially something so huge, and potentially dangerous (and MJ’s watched enough movies to get the point: the less you know, the better) – but that doesn’t stop her from wanting in all the same.
But Parker’s oblivious, as always.
“It’s just I uh forgot Ned’s birthday, and I was looking for a last-minute present.”
She narrows her eyes at such a barefaced lie. It’s like he doesn’t even try.
How the hell has he managed to keep his double identity a secret for as long as he has?
Sheer dumb luck, that’s how.
“That’s weird,” she says, leaning forwards. “Cos I could’ve sworn Leeds’ birthday isn’t for another three months.”
At that, Peter looks up at her, eyes widening just a touch in surprise and she wants to mentally slap herself especially when his lips split into a wide grin and she realises he’s taken her words to mean something else entirely, instead of the skilful shredding of his alibi that it had intended to be.
“You know when our birthdays are?”
She shrugs it off. “I know everyone’s birthdays.”
“Oh yeah? What about . . .” He scans the cafeteria, looking for a name. “Flash?”
“I know everyone’s birthdays except for asshats.”
“Aw Michelle. I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Didn’t say I knew yours, Loser.”
He just grins at her. And god, that grin is ridiculous. It’s like being bathed in warm sunshine and he needs to stop doing that. Right now. Before she does something stupid, like smile back.
But then she remembers what had drawn her here in the first place, and she realises she’s done what she set out to do. And she really should stop while she’s ahead, but her brain and her mouth are doing that whole disconnect thing again. But maybe it’s more because someone needs to say it, and it may as well be her, because who else will?
Because here’s another thing she’s learnt about Spider-Man:
Sometimes he’s just too damn hard on himself.
“Look, whatever it is that’s got you sitting here moping, I’m sure you did your best, and that’s all anyone can ask from you, Parker. You’re only human.”
She doesn’t wait around to see his face.
Just picks up her tray and walks off.
And yes, she knows she didn’t even eat a bite of her lunch, and there are children starving in the world, but she’ll tell herself then what she’d really wanted to say to him:
You can’t save everyone.
))((
Five.
The fifth time she gets a front seat to a Spider-Man save, she’s the one in need of freaking saving like some damned damsel in distress.
Which she is categorically not.
And she’ll maintain until her dying breath that she would have been fine.
Because, of course, she’d seen the UPS truck running a red light before she’d stepped onto the crosswalk. And, of course, she would have jumped out the way. The problem had been, the old lady, hunched over her walking stick, bag of tomatoes and herbs dangling off her other wrist, hadn’t.
And well, at that moment, there’d been no Spider-Man.
Just her.
Just Michelle Jones – captain of the Academic Decathlon, avid protester with two middle fingers perpetually raised at the patriarchy, sometime artist, big time bookworm, now friend to two indomitable dorks, daughter, sister, blah, blah – standing there between that old lady and her knocking on Heaven’s door.
And so, she’d stepped in.
She doesn’t remember much of what happens in that moment.
Just remembers being a mere few yards from becoming splattered across Queen’s Boulevard before she hears the unmistakeable scream of “MJ! LOOK OUT!” through the foghorn of the oncoming vehicle, and then screwing her eyes tight, and the rest of the world disappearing beneath her feet.
Flying.
It’s some weird, unnatural shit, and Spider-Man’s gravity defying stunts make her stomach churn.
It’s terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time.
He has his one arm wrapped tight around her waist, both of her own wound around his neck. And for a moment she can’t figure which image is worse – the sight of the front of a truck speeding towards her or the sight of New York flying past at this dizzying height.
She’s lying, of course.
It’s an easy choice to make, because damn if seeing the city like this isn’t pretty amazing.
Even so, her close brush with death leaves her keen to feel the ground beneath her feet once more, and so she says with the wind rushing in her ears;
“Hey Peter, you think we can land any time soon? I mean the aerial show’s nice and everything, but I think I’ve had my quota of laughing death in the face for today.”
His fingers clench a little where they’re pressing into her, before he stutters a quick, “sure. Yeah. No problem.”
And it’s only as he touches down gently onto the roof of some building, fingers still curled into her waist and she can hear him panting slightly in her ear, winded from his mid-air acrobatics, as if he doesn’t do this every damn day, that she realises something . . .
“Oh shit.”
MJ pushes away from his chest and stumbles back from Spider-Man, with his huge bug eyes, and watches as he reaches up and rubs the back of his neck in a familiar gesture, and her stomach drops.
“Yeah,” he breathes out.
Because, yeah, she may have slipped up, but he didn’t deny it either, which means . . .
“You know! You know that I know! What the hell, Peter?!”
And even though she’s been carrying around his secret for months – months where her and Parker and Leeds have somehow turned into a trio, where they’ve become friends, actual friends that curl up on each other’s sofas and binge-watch dumb sci-fi shows and sit together at lunch, and he’s continued to not tell her about being a masked superhero by night, although he’s had every opportunity to multiple times over – she’s more pissed about this secret than the actual secret.
She feels like an idiot, and she hates it.
“When were you going to tell me, asshole?”
“I was waiting for you to say something!”
She scoffs and bats back, “I was waiting for you to say something!”
“Oh,” is all he says to that dumbly.
And she really hates that mask of his right now. It gives him an unfair advantage, especially when he can see every emotion playing across her face, because right now, it’s too goddamn hard to keep her own mask in place.
Because holy crap, she almost died.
She almost died.
She staggers back with the weight of everything that’s happened, can feel her legs shaking underneath her. Her own disguise overthrown by a careless truck driver and the stupid web-slinging boy standing in front of her, who’s still hiding from her, even now. God only knows why she’d had to go and crush on Peter Parker, of all people. If she’d just learnt to ignore the dweeb like the rest of Midtown Science, she never would have paid enough attention to figure it out. She wouldn’t be here.
And she wouldn’t be here.
She’d be dead.
Fuck.
“MJ,” he calls out in alarm, stepping forward towards her.
She raises her hand to ward him away, but she falls back against the wall around the edge of the rooftop for it to have any effect. She’s seeing black spots and she doesn’t realise she’s hyperventilating right now.
“Hey, hey, MJ. It’s okay,” he says. “Just breathe. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
And it’s as she blinks those black spots away, she sees Peter Parker’s worried brown eyes staring back at her, and his mask clutched in his one hand as the other cups her cheek.
“Just breathe,” he says again softly, taking an exaggerated breath in and slowly releasing it. It’s warm against her skin, and it’s enough to snap her back to reality.
She holds his gaze steady. “I know how to breathe, dork. I’ve been doing it fine for the last 16 years or so.”
“Yeah well, looked like you were struggling to remember there for a minute.”
She raises her brow at that, her lips twitching into an almost smile and his eyes follow.
And it’s then that he realises just how close they are, and pushes back away from her, flushing red as he starts to pace.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just thought it would be safer. I honestly never wanted to tell anyone, especially not the people I care about. Ned and Aunt May found out completely by accident, I swear. It was kinda funny actually now that I think about it, they both found out in pretty much the same -”
“Peter,” she calls out then, interrupting his endless ramble. “Relax, Peter. I get it.” She takes a breath in and out, and says before she can think twice about it, “and thanks. You know, for saving me back there.”
He looks back at her with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t go making a big deal out of it or anything.”
His shock morphs into a grin. He’s practically radiating happiness at a simple show of gratitude and it does unacceptable things to her insides. And so, she does what she always does. Turns the tables.
“So,” she drawls with a teasing lilt, “you care about me, huh?”
Because as if she’s gonna let that little confession slide?
He turns a darker shade of red, and shakes his head, avoiding her gaze.
“We should get out of here,” he says instead, but MJ holds onto one thing.
He doesn’t deny it.
No, he simply covers his face again as he pulls down his mask and offers her his hand.
And MJ realises then that maybe, just maybe, Spider-Man likes her too.
“You ready?” he asks, stepping back towards her, hand hovering around her waist.
MJ closes the distance, curling her arm around his neck. “Ready.”
“You gonna keep your eyes open this time?” he teases, breath against her ear as he pulls her closer.
And damn you, Peter Parker, she thinks as her heart races in her chest, and she knows he can feel and hear every stuttered beat.
But she does it; swallows down her momentary fear and answers him just as they leap over the side of the building and she feels the rush of falling.
“My eyes were always open.”
))((
+.
“So, is that like a Spider-Man thing or a Peter thing, you turning red every time someone thanks you?”
He visibly startles at her voice.
And to be fair – she had just crept up on him out of nowhere, right after an old lady smacked her lips against his cheeks in gratitude for helping her cross the road.
“How do you know I’m blushing under this mask? I’m not by the way.”
“Sure you aren’t.”
“And why are you following me anyway, MJ?”
“Who says I was following you?” she says then with a shrug, before taking a sudden sharp left and walking away.
She looks back at him over her shoulder, and sure enough he’s standing there agog in his suit.
She winks.
He walks into a trash can.
Dork.
)(
“What the hell’s this, Parker?”
“I uh,” he shifts from foot to foot and shrugs his shoulders as if it’s nothing. “I saw it the other day, and just thought you might like it.”
It’s an old, second-hand collector’s edition of To Kill A Mockingbird.
“I already have five different copies of this.”
And all the idiot says to that with his dumb, soft, smiling eyes, is, “I know.”
Because yep, he does.
He does know her.
)(
They’re spread out on a patch of grass in the middle of Central Park. MJ lying back, bag under her head, knees bent and Converses pressing into the ground. Ned sits by her feet, cross-legged, one hand stuck in a packet of Sour Cream & Onion Lay’s, the other flipping the pages of their AP Chemistry textbook, and Peter . . .
“Where’d Peter go?”
Ned doesn’t look up, points somewhere to his right.
MJ turns her head in the same direction, and there he is – sans mask, helping some kid get his kite out of a tree.
Because of course he is.
Because Peter Parker is Spider-Man with or without that mask.
And it’s funny now that she thinks about it.
Even without all the clues.
It was always staring her in the face.
Big-hearted, kind, sweet, adorkable and always ready to do the right thing.
There’s no one else it could have been.
)(
“Look at it this way, at least you didn’t take her to some psycho murderer’s house.”
“I’m with MJ,” Ned pipes up. “How were you to know the lady had dementia and didn’t actually know where she lives?”
He grumbles under his breath as if he really had meant to know.
MJ rolls her eyes and chucks her half-eaten apple at his head.
“Stop being so freakin’ hard on yourself, Peter. You do enough for this city, already. You don’t have to be so damn perfect all the time.”
“You think I’m perfect?”
Great. She’d walked right into that one, hadn’t she?
“In your dreams, Nerd.”
He grins through the rest of lunch.
She doesn’t hate it.
)(
It takes him another 4 months, 2 weeks and 3 days before he asks her, with a familiar hand scratching at his neck, all jittery on his feet as she sits on top of one of the benches outside.
“Hey, I was, uh, wondering if you wanted to go, um, catch a movie, or something. Later. If you’re not busy, or anything. I mean it’s cool if you are, I just -”
She knows what he’s asking her, and it’s hard to keep the flurry building in her stomach tamed as she tries to keep her cool, and her face devoid of any expression apart from mild curiosity. “Sure, what time should I meet you guys?”
“Oh, uh,” he stammers. “Actually, it was just gonna be you and me . . .”
“Like a date?”
He doesn’t say anything, stutters a little, turning brighter and brighter.
“Do you like me, Peter?”
Pause. Then:
“Yes?” he ventures.
“Is that a question?”
“No.”
“Good. Cos I like you too.” She manages to say the words without giving away the fact she's screaming internally, her pulse is racing and she's this close to grinning back at him just as dorkily as he is right now.
He flushes, excited. “Really?”
“I’m choosing the movie.”
“That’s fine. Cool. I’m cool with that.”
“Help me up,” she says then, stretching out her hand.
It’s new, and she knows he knows she doesn’t actually need the help, but she waits.
And then he does.
Reaches out and grabs her hand until she’s standing beside him.
They walk like that to class. Hand in hand.
He doesn’t let go.
And neither does she.
Five for five, she thinks. Not bad.
Not bad at all.
End.