Work Text:
It starts with a lift.
It starts with a swing, and a drop, and a whole lotta yelling.
It starts with a new suit, designed by Princess Shuri herself, and a reintegrated Karen inside.
It starts where it always starts for him, and for her—in the city that never sleeps.
In the light of day.
In serendipity.
It’s kinda stupid.
Peter’s aware of this.
It’s unnecessary, too, because her legs are longer than his, and she walks fast enough to disappear to her next class at the end of the hall right after lunch, so he knows eight blocks and three avenues would go by pretty quick with her current stride.
This could go terribly.
South.
Or down into the core of the earth.
Where people and things spontaneously combust.
That could be him.
It will be him.
But…
Some things are worth testing the inflammable properties of your suit for.
Even if it’s a little clichéd, which she can’t hold against him, really, because he’s him, and that’s not changing anytime soon.
And he knows MJ—disrupting the core fabric of a person she knows to be genuine—to be good—is not how she rolls.
And, like, she already kissed him that one time at the airport after they got home, so.
Really.
No take-backs at this point, right?
“Uh,” is how MJ greets him.
Uh, and a fumbling stop, almost running into him, because he’d swung down and flung off a street lamp, landing right in front of her speed-walking form and teetering a little forward himself.
(If he notes her walk to have been both effortlessly graceful and the epitome of nature’s wrath in his mind, he says nothing.)
“Hey!” he says, mask’s eyes squinting to follow his—embarrassingly wide—smile.
(He didn’t! Think! This! Through!)
“Hey,” she says, smiling easy and pocketing her phone.
(Ohhhh, noooo.
He wants to marry that smile.)
(This is way worse than Ned thinks.)
(...This is exactly as bad as May thinks.)
“I was just—” Peter says, pointing vaguely behind her, “—I, uh.” Ahem, as his voice rises in pitch. “Where ya headed?”
MJ does That Pout, like when she’s contemplating her answer at the speed of a render farm.
The quick one.
The Decathlon Meet Winner one.
The one he thinks caused his entire existence to brighten when he started noticing it.
Started tripping over and diving deep to meet it halfway, just because.
(Oh, man.
This was a bad idea.)
“Just—Penn,” she says, voice soft.
(It’s a little bit of a stammer and he’s filing that away forever.)
Cough. “Do you—”
(Ned is going to kill him when he finds out about this.)
“—do you want a lift?”
“Um,” she blinks, “yeah, okay.”
“Okay?” he echoes, eyes widening.
“Okay,” she repeats, stepping to his side, arms automatically wrapping around his neck. She frowns. “Do I just—”
Gulp. “Uh, yeah, yup, just—just hold on tight,” he manages to say without blacking out, looking to her a couple of times to make sure she’s holding on properly.
And.
He puts his arm around her waist.
By pure instinct.
(Instinct, he swears!)
So she scoots even closer.
“Ready?” he asks, false bravado winning over.
MJ is calm.
Collected.
Expressionless.
“Yup.”
Peter grins, feeling the mask stretch with the movement. “Okay—three, two, one…”
Thwip!
Somehow, Peter finds that MJ screaming her head off while he swings through the city is more endearing than her enjoying the view and, like, possibly doing a movie-like cutscene of her and him having A Moment™️ mid-air.
It is also freaking hilarious.
“OKAY, OOOKAY,” MJ seethe-screeches, arms tightening around his neck as she tucks her face closer to his jaw. Her voice drops to a shaky whisper. “Peter? Not. Not fun. Negative ten-outta-ten.”
He chuckles, the smile on his face likely felt on her forehead. “You know that meme where there’s like—” Thwip! “—there’s a list of characters and you—” Thwip! “—you have one that’s ‘looks like they could kill you’—” Thwip! “—‘but is actually a cinnamon roll’?” Thwip!
“I want to die,” MJ grumbles between gut-dropping screams, eyes clamped shut and legs wrapped tightly around his middle.
“You’re that meme!” Peter laughs, thwipping once more before glancing at her and asking, “Hey, Karen? Are you recording this?”
“Yes. I record everything, Peter.”
Devilish cackling as he has the audacity to look over again mid-swing—just enough to record her annoyed, petrified, non-stoic reaction to the short, swooping drop.
MJ snuggles closer, but the way her hands jab at the side of his neck makes him think it’s a threat.
Like, not a very well-thought out threat, but still.
“Do you want me to let go?” Peter teases, the smugness reaching through his mask and smile, traveling through air and hair and flesh and mind.
“Do nOT,” MJ yells after another slight drop, inflection matching their trajectory. One of her hands moves up to his head, pushing down as her other hand digs into his shoulder.
Oho.
Oh, yes.
This?
A good idea.
Excellent.
Priceless.
MJ’s legs are secure around his waist, and her hands are glued to his neck and shoulder, and her head? It’s right by his, teeth visibly clenched and eyes determined to never open again.
“You okay?” Peter asks sweetly when they land, finally, at the entrance of Penn Station.
(She’s probably not.
Karen was saying something about almost passing out and rising blood pressure around the last block, and MJ had gone mostly quiet save for the hissing curses accompanying every attempt at sticking to his body and not falling off.)
(But it’s polite to ask!)
It’s commendable, really, the speed at which she hops off and returns to a standing, aloof position, hands fiddling with the ends of her overshirt.
(It feels a little weird to have more than a foot of space between them.
Feels a little off, a little wrong.)
Gulp, visible but quickly hidden. “Um. Yeah, I’m fine. I just—never gone that high. So.”
“Good, good,” he says, nodding his head a little. He raises his hand. “Good job.”
She high-fives him, a smile breaking through her face.
(He want to melt.)
“Peter, there is an alarm going off on 40th and 3rd,” Karen says, effectively ending the moment.
“Oh! I gotta go,” he says, eyes blinking.
MJ puts her hands in her pockets, still breathless from...the swinging. Probably. “Okay,” she nods.
“I’ll see you?”
(Sue him, it sounds desperate.)
“Yeah,” she smiles, head tilted in an awkward sort of bow.
“Bye!” he says, chipper and bright, jumping over the walking crowd. Up and up, up past the streetlight’s bulb, and higher once he shoots a web out.
Too high to turn back.
Too far to see her watching him go, a proud, subtle smile on her face as she stands in front of the onlookers with their phones out.
Doesn’t matter.
He can’t stop grinning anyway.
“Karen, calculate fastest route, please.”
Ned doesn’t kill him, and yes, it’s mostly because of the footage, but he still complains that if it’s MJ who needs a ride, you become a SwUber, but when I need to get from Central Park to the Flatiron, it’s a hard pass.
To which Peter simply replies:
“What’s a SwUber?”
(It’s a “swing uber”.)
(And yes, Ned got it trademarked.)