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The first time Peter talks about his secret girlfriend, MJ isn’t sure why it makes her so mad. There is no reason for her to have such a pit of anger in her stomach, at least no reason that she’s willing to delve into right now. All she knows is that Peter’s got a crush on a girl that she’s never met before, never seen before, never even heard of before. And it’s driving her crazy.
He’d met her at Tony Stark’s funeral. At least, the first time he brought her up to Ned was right after the funeral, right after all the blipped kids had returned to school and tried to find some semblance of normal. MJ had been not-so-subtly eavesdropping into their conversation from their table in the corner (some punk kids had stolen their old table while they were gone). It had become a lot easier to listen to their conversations after they’d invited her to sit with them instead of simply tolerating her presence at the end of the table.
Everyone knew that Peter had lost the Stark Internship a few months before the Blip had happened, which subjected Peter to relentless teasing from Flash even though Peter looked incredibly torn up about the whole thing.
Sometimes she really wanted to punch Flash in his stupid teeth.
A lot of people who had been skeptical about Peter's position at Stark Industries beforehand were even more skeptical then, but apparently Peter had given Tony Stark one heck of an impression because he gave Peter an unheard-of second chance at the internship.
Which was when MJ started to get suspicious.
But then Peter disappeared off of their field trip bus, she nearly had a panic attack, and then she woke up five years later without having aged a day and was lucky to find out that Peter and Ned had both suffered the same fate.
Unfortunately, some people didn’t make it back. A lot of people had been in airplanes or boats or submarines when they’d dusted away, and came back at 10,000 feet above or right at or 5,000 feet below sea level. Some people had been in cars. Lots of people had been in hospitals, and reappeared in their old beds which were now occupied and the equipment wasn’t there and there were a lot of casualties, even though a lot of people got to come home.
There were three in particular that the whole world mourned: the first, Natasha Romanov. The Avengers had yet to release an official statement, but they assured the general public that without her sacrifice, they would not have been able to do what they did. Second, Captain America disappeared without a trace, and everyone pretty much assumed he died. Finally, the world mourned the death of Tony Stark, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist who gave his life to bring back all those who had been blipped.
The first day they all came back to school, Peter saw Ned and nearly collapsed on him, hugging him so tightly that Ned had trouble breathing afterwards. Peter had tears in his eyes when he pulled back.
He seemed to take the death of Tony Stark very hard, and apparently had grown close enough to him during his internship to be invited to the funeral.
And as thankful as she is for Tony Stark for saving her life (bringing it back?), she can’t help but resent him (just a little! just a tiny bit!) for creating the opportunity for Peter and his secret girlfriend to meet.
“Dude, are you okay? You’ve been staring off into space for like, five minutes.” Ned’s voice snaps her out of her stupor.
“What? Yeah, I’m fine. What are you talking about, loser?”
“Nothing.”
She settles back into her thoughts and tries to ignore the anger pooling in her gut. Peter is free to like whoever he wants to. She’ll be fine.
The second time Peter mentions his secret girlfriend is right before decathlon practice. MJ walks into the room briskly, uncharacteristically late, too busy sketching the poor people in crisis in detention to consider the time. Her position as the head of the decathlon team is dangerously slipping out of her grasp (she barely managed to get it back when all the blipped kids returned and the team itself had nearly doubled in size) and she doesn’t have time for mistakes, so the fact that she’s running late is definitely a mark that she can’t afford to have on her record. She’s busy running through facts and dates and names in her head and making sure that she has everything she needs for practice, but when she walks past Peter and Ned to get to the stage she can’t help but overhear him speaking quickly in excitement.
“...everyone treats her like the princess she is and she’s freakishly intelligent too, like smarter than Tony is-” he chokes on his words here, and the pool of anger in her gut at his gushing subsides for a different twist, one that is decidedly Not Good, one that makes her want to go up to him and punch him in the arm or something and tell him that everything’s alright, or that he’s kind of cool, or whatever, and his voice gets all quiet as he corrects himself, “-was.”
She has to forcibly stop herself from looking back, from watching him, from making sure he’s okay, because that would mean she actually cares and she’s hoping she won’t have to admit that to anyone (including herself) for at least another month. She takes a deep breath and walks up to the stage, trusting Ned to comfort his best friend so that she, an uninvolved third party, can officially start practice. The best thing for her to do at this point would be to treat everyone as if everything is normal, as if half of the people in the decathlon aren’t new students who aren’t new at all. Technically they’re the new ones. She tries to clear her mind, clears her throat, and calls everyone’s attention.
And if the sound of Peter’s voice breaking replays itself in her head over and over again, so what? She’s observant. Sometimes stuff like that happens. She’ll try to ignore the Not Good feeling that happens every time she thinks about it.
The third time Peter talks about his secret girlfriend, MJ realizes she’s jealous.
Over what, she’s not exactly sure. Maybe she assumed that, as one of Peter’s closest friends, he should have been paying attention to her. She’s been there for him, in her own way, giving him intelligent banter and deliberately avoiding topics that might be difficult for him to talk about. By now she’s got some idea of where Peter spends a lot of his time, and it all seems to line up with a specific person who’s always on the news as either a hero or the city’s greatest menace (depending on which news source she decides to watch that evening). His reaction to Tony’s death seems to make more sense, but she can’t understand why he would want to date someone who he met at the funeral of one of his greatest heroes. Shared grief? Maybe she thinks this girl isn’t good enough for him, but then, who is?
It’s a good question. Peter Parker is probably one of the sweetest (albeit most awkward) boys that she knows. He’s kind, funny, smart- everything that any girl would want in a guy. And this girl, this crush that he has, she’s obviously good enough for him because from the way that he talks about her, she’s gotta be perfect.
“She’s amazing, dude. I took her for a swing and she completely owned it, it was great. She wasn’t even scared at all.”
Sometimes MJ thinks the boys don’t remember that she exists. It hurts, just a little bit, since none of them really existed for a while there, and before the Blip even happened she was making good progress on actually having friends and actually talking and getting to know people outside of the moments they happened to be in crisis. She knows that the boys are best friends, and being the least favorite in a group of three has never been a good place for her, even though she constantly finds herself in that position. At least these two talk about things that are actually interesting (and apparently are supposed to be secrets, which they suck at), so for the most part she uses these opportunities to learn things. Things she could only learn by stringing together bits of information like why Peter wasn’t in the elevator in Washington, why Peter disappeared from the field trip the day of the Blip, why he takes Tony’s death harder than pretty much everybody else, and why he uses phrases like “took her for a swing.”
And why hadn’t he taken her on a swing? She frowns. Was it something reserved for only his girlfriend? MJ’s stomach twists awkwardly at that specific realization, and she decides she doesn’t like it, so she puts that entire train of thought into the train station and lets it rest. Only to come back to it a few days later when Peter walks into school with a cut on his lip and walks out of first period with it completely healed.
Not that she was looking at his lips, of course.
The fourth time he talks about this girl, MJ realizes two things.
One: She may or may not be crushing on Peter Parker.
Two: Peter Parker may or may not be Spider-man.
Three: She may or may not be crushing on Spider-man.
She’s more sure about the first one. He’s talking about his girlfriend and how funny she is and how smart and brave she is and MJ realizes for the first time just how much she wants him to be talking about her.
And why shouldn’t she? She’s confident, secure enough in herself to admit that yeah, Peter Parker is conventionally attractive (and built like a brick house) and sure, she doesn’t mind being on the receiving end of one of his brighter-than-the-sun smiles. And if he can’t stop smiling when talking about the girl that he knows through possibly being Spider-Man, she’s totally allowed to wish that he was smiling because of her. She can admit that she has a crush on him. That’s easy. There’s no way she likes him, though. Liking implies something deeper than a crush, and MJ hasn’t felt anything like that since the third grade when some kid named Harry gave her his last Oreo from his lunchbox.
She’s still not quite over that lad. Maybe if he still went to her school she wouldn’t have to deal with Peter Parker and his possibly secret powers and double life and any of the complications that came with them.
Unfortunately, Harry moved away a really long time ago, so inevitably she’s whisked back to reality at the mention of her name.
“MJ?”
It’s the boy who’s been ruining her life for a few months now. She resents him, just a little bit, for making her heart speed up every time he’s near her.
“Hmm?”
“I was just saying I like her so much because she reminds me of you.”
Well, that was probably the worst thing he could have possibly said. MJ tries to write it off as him being a good friend, but she replays Peter’s subtle grin and sincere eyes and eager voice over and over again and makes a very futile attempt to stop imagining that it means he likes her, he likes MJ, and the only reason he’s dating this other girl is because he thinks MJ doesn’t like him that way.
So it’s the fourth time she hears him talking about the girl that she realizes she does.
The fifth time Peter talks about his secret girlfriend is actually when the two of them are hanging out, without Ned since he was busy helping his parental figure do something or other, and something in a store window catches Peter’s eye.
“Oh, man, she’d love that.”
The window in question is filled with bows and brightly colored pastels (which doesn’t even make any sense and yet somehow they manage it), including a few dolls and lots of kid-sized art supplies.
MJ doesn’t get it. She raises an eyebrow because really, a girl dating Peter would want something so childish? Then she realizes that it’s probably ironic or an inside joke and then she has to stop for a moment because she’s well past the point of denying her feelings and listening to him talk and think about another girl while she’s right there hurts . She refuses to look in the window, gritting her teeth so hard that she feels a shot of pain in her jaw and winces with an audible, “ow.” Peter turns back with concerned eyes, and of course he’s concerned, he’s Peter Parker, good friend Peter Parker who notices when people are in pain and cares about his friends.
“Are you okay?”
Of course she says she’s fine. What else is she going to say? “Actually, I really don’t like your girlfriend and I would appreciate it if you just never ever mentioned her at all, thank you very much.”
A beat passes and she panics because crap, did she say that out loud?
But then she realizes that while no, she didn’t say that, she also hasn’t actually said anything at all. So she tells him it’s nothing and they continue walking towards the sub shop.
She knows he’s going to go back to get his secret girlfriend whatever it was he saw, and it kills her.
+1
The one time MJ learns the truth about Peter’s secret girlfriend is when they’re on the bus, headed to the airport for their field trip to Europe. She doesn’t really like buses, not after five years ago when Peter disappeared and then half of the world disappeared. Buses remind her of apocalyptic events, and as much as she loves daydreaming about dystopian realities the reality that she lived through one is not something she likes to revisit.
They’re all pretty excited about the trip. MJ can’t wait to see Paris and the catacombs and even though it’s petty and probably morally questionable she’s most excited to spend time with Peter a whole ocean away from his girlfriend. She can only hope that he won’t talk about her too much.
So far that prospect is looking bleak.
Currently, she’s trying to sleep away the bus ride so she doesn’t have to think about giant rings in the sky and a certain hero she may or may not know risking his life and ultimately losing it, along with her losing her own life and she’s not very good at sleeping in cars and her two best friends chatting away in the seat in front of her is not helping. She nurses a water bottle and tries to drown them out, but it is not easy.
“I’m just really glad we’ll be back for her birthday. I can’t wait for her to see the present I got her.”
“What is it?”
MJ finally learns what it was that he was looking at in the window, and it makes less sense to her then than it did in the moment when she was staring at all the options for what he could have gotten her. And instead of asking why or what the joke is, Ned just nods as if his gift of choice makes all the sense in the world. Is he in on the joke? MJ wishes he would’ve asked, but apparently Ned only has one question on his mind.
“How old is she turning, anyway?”
MJ presses her water bottle to her lips and takes a swig. This is not a conversation she wants to be listening to.
“Morgan’s turning five.”
MJ very quickly loses the water that’s in her mouth, coughing it up all over the cushion in front of her and generating very concerned looks from Peter, Ned, and a few other passengers on her least favorite vehicle. She waves them off and tries to feign nonchalance, but inside she is absolutely screaming.
She’s five? The girl is five? For a moment she thinks, absurdly, that she’s found Peter’s one fatal flaw: he’s a pedophile.
Almost immediately she disregards that option and, as she’s reassuring the guys that no, really, she’s fine, and they turn back towards the front, a smile settles onto her face. The jealousy and guilt and guilt over that jealousy and everything that’s been building up over the past few months melts away, leaving her with nothing but a little bit of hope.
Maybe this trip will turn out even better than she’d expected.