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The sun is sinking in the sky, and the light through the windows of the lab is golden, lighting up the metal of the suit that they're working on.
"It wasn't that late," Peter is saying. "It was— hey, I was home by one, that's the deal, the no-later-than time."
Tony shakes his head and tsks. “All that spidering around… you know, junior year, you’d better be thinking about getting your grades up, right? College? You’re not thinking of CalTech, are you? Perish the thought, actually, why am I even putting it in your head, of course you’re not, you know better. You have a decent head on your shoulders, for an infant.” He squints at the sputtering arc reactor, and then he adds, figuring that he should say something vaguely wise and mentorly, “MIT’s got high standards, kid.”
“My grades are fine, Mr. Stark,” Peter says. “Besides… Stark Industries internship. I’ll get into any college I want, right?”
He grins a little, this tiny shit-eating grin. He tries to bite it back but he’s obviously not any good at keeping a straight face, God fucking help the kid, he’d better be grateful for that goddamn mask on the streets. Tony says, “You watch your mouth, I could have you kicked out. No need for just cause, your job title is my little minion and I’m Iron Man. People just listen to me, you know, I tell them to do things and they do them. Dum-E, will you— fucking—”
“Language, Mr. Stark,” says Peter offhandedly, and this time he turns back toward the severed iron arm he's been fiddling with to hide his face so Tony can’t see the shit-eating grin but he sure can hear it.
“You’re on thin ice, kid.” He stops short of waving a wrench at him, but it’s a close thing. “Dum-E, if you can’t pass me a motherfucking wrench, I swear to God—”
The sun sinks lower in the sky. Their last scheduled hour stretches on, and Tony thinks about ordering food. Kid likes takeout. He’s a teenager, all teenagers like takeout— Tony knows his aunt May can’t really afford it that often. He takes the wrench from Dum-E, finally, Jesus, then thinks over the first part of what Peter said again— he pauses, says, “Your grades are— fine? Really? With all that spidering around, skipping class? I pay attention, I know about the skipping class. What’s ‘fine’ look like to you, Parker?”
Peter says, “I dunno, straight As? I got a B in world history last year but that was not my fault, Dr. Stein had a literal vendetta against me.”
Tony sets down the wrench. “Straight As? You have straight As?”
“Uh, yeah? You’re in charge of whether I keep my prestigious internship—”
“Minionship. You’re a minion. My little minion, know your place.”
“—and you haven’t even seen my transcript?”
“I’ve told you multiple times, Happy’s your point guy—”
“I see you, like, three times a week! We’re building a suit together! That’s like, a lot of hours! And I talk, like, all the time, like I cannot stop talking, MJ’ll tell you— she says I’m a nervous talker which is like, hey, rude— I think you’ve heard me talk more than MJ has—”
“Do not bring up your little girlfriend, kid, whatever it is I’m not getting involved. High school romance… kiddie romance, kiddie feelings. Hormones. Keep it away from me. I’m never having a teenager.”
Peter really can’t wait until Morgan is a teenager. It’s going to be so funny.
He says, “Sorry.” He can’t think of what else to say, suddenly. He’s thinking about MJ.
“Put the lovesick grin away,” says Mr. Stark, in a warning tone. He’s waving a wrench at him. “I’ll count down from three. Put it away.”
Peter doesn’t intend to start to tell Mr. Stark about the date he’s planning. If he opens his mouth, though, it will just come out of him. She’s right, he thinks forlornly. He is a nervous talker. He’s so nervous about this, actually, his hands get kind of sweaty whenever he thinks too long about it. A real date with a real— MJ. Like one that is not inside of his head. That sounds creepy. He doesn’t mean it like that. He’s not a creep! He’s just thought about this, that’s all. And he’s really excited.
He blurts, “You know we’re going to, uh, I’m taking her to— like the movies? And then— it’s like a matinee, so then we’re doing a picnic after. On Saturday.”
Mr. Stark doesn’t throw the wrench at him, and he doesn’t send him out of the lab. He slides out from under the suit, sits up, feels for a rag on the nearest workbench to wipe the engine grease off his hands, and says, “Have you taken a girl out on a date before, kid?”
Peter startles. He says, “Does— does homecoming count? Then, like— because if homecoming counts—”
“That’s a no, then,” says Mr. Stark. “Alright, kid, pay attention, because I’m only going to say this once.”
***
Pepper pulls him aside on his way out and says, “Don’t listen to a word Tony says, he doesn’t know the first thing about romance.” She tells him about the giant stuffed rabbit.
Then she tells him to pay attention to everything MJ says. She tells him to remember little things about her, and reference them later in the conversation— tell her she looks pretty, and that he likes what she did with her hair. If she’s laughing at all of his jokes then he’s doing a good job; girls do that when they’re into you, even though your jokes aren’t funny.
Peter decides not to take offense to that. Pepper seems like she knows what she’s talking about.
***
“Extracurriculars,” Cindy Moon is saying. “It’s not just good grades—”
“Okay but, like, you do need good grades,” says MJ.
“Better than Peter,” Cindy says.
“I get straight As,” Peter says, wounded.
“You so do not,” says Betty Brant. Her yellow hair is pulled back with a black headband, and it falls straight and glossy down her back. Her Midtown Tech hoodie is damp with snow, and her nose and cheeks are red. “You skip like five classes a week? You get randomly blackout drunk and pass out places?”
“I don’t get blackout drunk, I get concussions,” Peter says. “Battle wounds. I get them from battles.”
“With who,” says Jason Ionello. “With Flash? He couldn’t give you concussions.”
“You get blackout drunk,” says Betty. “On, like, Wednesdays. And you do not get straight As.”
“I do too,” Peter insists. “Where’s Ned? Ned would defend my honor.”
He is debating asking MJ to defend his honor. He makes a mini pros and cons list in his head. Pros: she is his girlfriend, and his girlfriend defending his honor would be so cool. Cons: he is not sure if that’s sexist. MJ is into feminism. She might just say something really cool and smart and walk away and then he’d be embarrassed and his honor would be undefended.
“Anyway,” says Betty. “Forget about Peter’s, uh—”
“Extracurriculars,” MJ supplies.
“And his grades,” Betty goes on—
“Which are really good,” Peter insists.
Flash is in the corner, staring at his phone. He mumbles, “Kill yourself, Penis Parker,” and Peter frowns, a little disappointed. He wanted to keep defending his honor. He was thinking of dramatically pulling out his transcript to prove his almost-perfect academic record. Two-word suicide bait is like, not Flash’s best work.
“Don’t tell him to kill himself,” says Betty. She sounds frustrated.
“I’ll tell him to kill himself if I want to tell him to kill himself,” says Flash. He hasn’t looked up from his phone. He’s tapping really fast on it with both of his thumbs.
MJ says, “What if he actually did kill himself? We’ve all spent like three years listening to you tell him to kill himself. Then you’d be fucked, Thompson.”
“He’s not going to kill himself,” says Flash, tapping one spot on his phone several times very fast with a pensive look on his face, and Peter cranes his neck to get a look. Is he— is he playing Genshin Impact? There’s no way. “Which is really unfortunate. For me. Don’t call me Thompson.”
“Okay, Eugene.”
“I’ve changed my mind. You should kill yourself. Peter can live.”
Peter is wondering if Flash has body pillows of anime girls at home. He’d have the money for those, right? Maybe that’s why he doesn’t have a girlfriend. Then again, Peter has a girlfriend now. So there has to be hope for everybody.
***
“Peter, hold on, you’d said you wanted to like, join more clubs and I wanted— to talk to you—” Cindy Moon shoves her way through the crowd of students on their way out of the building, and Peter stumbles to a stop, turns to meet her eyes. “— you don’t have the internship today, right?”
“I, uh, I do, actually,” Peter says. It isn’t technically a lie, because being Spiderman counts. Or, okay, it’s the official lie? No, it’s like— he’s apprenticed to Iron Man, right, it’s superheroing, being Spiderman is like— it counts. Not a lie.
“Oh my god, you literally said you didn’t,” Cindy says. “Earlier today. I heard you tell Ned, during chem.”
“You don’t sit near us in chem?” Peter says.
“I mean Betty heard you tell Ned,” Cindy says with a frustrated sigh, and that makes more sense. Betty looks at Ned a lot. “You are such a terrible fucking liar.”
“Hey,” Peter says, wounded, and then he remembers to be nonchalant and confused. “Haha. Ha. What…? I don’t know what you’re talking about, I didn’t say that to Ned.”
Cindy stares at him.
“Okay, well, how about tomorrow?” she says, finally. “It’s Saturday. You can’t be busy all day on Saturday.”
“That’s what Saturdays are for,” he says. “Being busy. Getting stuff done.”
“You’re sixteen,” she says. “What are you busy with?”
“Uh, jeez, I dunno,” he says. “Can I say the Stark Internship again? I have to go to college, Cindy, I’ve got, you know. Extracurriculars.”
She holds up the folder in her hands hopefully and she wiggles her eyebrows up and down. “A D&D club is an extracurricular.”
Hmm. She makes a strong case. “You make a strong case,” Peter says, hoping to sound, like, smart, and also normal.
“I know,” she says brightly. “Betty wants to join— I bet MJ would, too.”
“Right, MJ,” Peter says, flushing a little. “Uh— I’m busy tomorrow, actually. Relatedly. Relatedly to MJ. But like— next week?”
Outside the sky is gray and soft, like a goose down blanket. The cold stings Peter’s face when he steps out of the big double doors. Someone’s leaning on their horn a block over, and then five more someones are also leaning on their horns— Betty Brant is meeting a little girl at the gate who has the same glossy blond hair falling down her back. She’s dressed in a pink puffer coat, and she extends one small pink mitten to take Betty’s hand.
Flash is sitting at the edge of one of the big flowerbeds, to the left of the steps, and MJ is sitting next to him.
They aren’t talking. MJ is holding Flash’s hand. Peter blinks a little bit, and he stumbles a little bit, and he gets shoved and the person who shoved him says “shit, my bad” and Peter says “uh.” He’s looking at MJ and Flash.
He walks down the stairs and decides not to talk to them. He lingers at the gate for a while, and then he walks more slowly than usual to his favorite bodega and he thinks about a sandwich with extra pickles and squished down super flat, and he thinks about MJ holding Flash’s hand.
She catches up to him when he’s just outside the bodega. He’d sort of thought she might, because they’ve walked to this bodega together a couple of times, and he thinks she met his eyes for a second when he was lingering at the gate.
She says, a little out of breath from running, “Parker. There you are.”
“Oh, yeah,” Peter says. “That’s me, here I am.” He does jazz hands, and she grins.
“You’re such a dork,” she says. Yay, Peter thinks. MJ doesn’t smile a lot, but since they started officially dating, she grins at him. He thinks about what Pepper said. Hmm.
Peter shifts from one foot to the other, prickling with discomfort. He says, “So, uh— you were hanging out with Flash.” He scuffs the front of his shoe against the sidewalk.
“Yeah,” says MJ. She isn’t looking at him; her face is turned upward. He’s noticed that her eyes change color with the sky, sort of. They’re a grayer brown today. He isn’t sure if that’s what Pepper meant when she told him about noticing things, so he doesn’t say it out loud.
“His parents haven’t been home in a week,” she says.
“Oh,” says Peter.
“His dad hits him,” says MJ.
“Oh,” says Peter, and this time his voice is choked.
MJ looks at him. “My dad used to— you know. I mean. I mean, don’t fucking tell anyone I said any of this.”
“Oh,” says Peter. “Okay. I mean— I won’t.”
He doesn’t know what else to say, but he doesn’t think saying nothing is like, the right answer, so he reaches out and— like— puts his hand in her hand. He squeezes it, and then he holds it. Pepper did not give him advice for this, but the way MJ looks at him makes Peter pretty sure that he picked the right thing to do.
***
Peter thinks about kissing her. He wonders how many dates you’re supposed to go on before you kiss your girlfriend.
“I don’t know,” says Ned. “Like, three, maybe?”
“Huh,” says Peter. “Three. Why three?”
“I would wait until date number three,” says Ned. “I don’t know. My dad told me that.”
They’re lying on the floor of Peter’s bedroom.
“Do you think Betty is into LEGO Death Stars?” Ned asks, after a couple more minutes of staring up at the ceiling. “Or like, Star Wars at all?”
“Uh, hmm,” says Peter. “I don’t know. Maybe? Oh, you know— she likes D&D.”
“What?” Ned sits up. “Holy shit. Who told you that?”
“Cindy did?” Peter sits up, too. “She wants to start a D&D club. Or— like, she heard me mention clubs, I think, and she wants to talk about starting one. She said Betty wants to join.”
“Sick,” says Ned. “We’re definitely, totally, one hundred percent joining that club.”
“We,” Peter echoes reprovingly, frowning, and then he bumps one of his hopefully-not-broken arms against the bedframe and forgets every other word that was inside of his head. (He patrolled his usual routes around the city today and, uh. They were busy! Lots of things happening that warranted Spidermanly intervention.) “Fuck, fuck fuckfuckfuck ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow—”
“You should like, get that looked at,” says Ned, frowning, after like sixty seconds of Peter sort of writhing and cursing and Ned hissing appropriately in sympathy.
“Nah, it’ll be fine,” Peter manages in response, breathing sort of shallowly because if he breathes too much it makes everything pulse which hurts a shit ton worse. “Everything kind of just goes away. Superpowers. Y’know. I’ll be fine in the morning.”
Ned stares. “God,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “That is so fucking cool.”
***
Peter shows up at MJ’s house on Saturday afternoon at twelve-thirty. He and Ned got into an argument earlier about whether twelve-thirty is technically the afternoon. Ned said that the afternoon doesn’t start until one, and anything between twelve and one is noon. Which, no, that’s ridiculous, noon is noon and after it is afternoon, it is literally in the name.
(“No, that’s ridiculous,” Ned argued. “Because— are you telling me 12:01 isn’t noon? You’re telling me if something happens at 12:02, and someone was like, yeah, it happened at noon, you’d be like— nope! Two minutes off!”
“That’s— you’re talking about rounding,” Peter argued back, “you’re literally talking about rounding, that’s not, like, a new concept that no one has ever heard of— and once you get to, like, 12:30, I think you’re like, that’s the afternoon! No one says 12:30 is noon!”
“I am literally saying it is! I am saying it, I say that!”)
Twelve-thirty— he shows up at twelve-thirty in either the noon or the afternoon, and “in the noon” sounds ridiculous, so Peter’s pretty sure that’s his point made. Twelve-thirty will give them plenty of time to get to the movie theater. He can’t drive, but she knew that already. He’s still kind of embarrassed. Flash has a car.
May helped him pick his outfit that morning. He’s wearing his nicer jeans and an AC/DC t-shirt that’s like one size too big for him, because she said that some girls think that’s cool, and she thinks MJ is one of those girls. She ironed both of them for them and laid them out on his bed, and she gave him some breath mints to put in his pocket, and he had one of them just now.
She lives in a smallish apartment, like he does. She opens the door.
“Uh, hi,” he says.
“Peter,” she says. She sounds happy to see him. “Uh— one second.”
She shuts the door most of the way, and there’s some shuffling and it sounds like something falls and he thinks he hears her curse, and then the door’s opening and she’s stepping out again with her shoes on, and her face is a little pink. She’s got her hair in two braids.
“Um,” Peter says. “I like what you did with your hair.”
She flushes, her cheeks going warm and bronzey. “Uh, thanks,” she says. “So. Movie.”
“Movie,” Peter says, and she grins at him, and he feels sort of— light.