MJ’s 17th
“You ready?”
“Hell yea I am, Petey.”
They crept up the corridor slowly, both with one hand behind their back, coming to a stop behind MJ who was emptying books into her locker, looking indifferent.
“You are a dancing queen,” Peter whisper sang, making Michelle swivel round to face them.
“Young and sweet,” Harley whispered theatrically, before both boys added, “Onllyyyy seventeeeeen!” MJ groaned, why did she know this was coming?
“C’mon MJ I know you know it,” Peter smirked.
“Dancing Queen,” Harley sang, “you aren’t getting your present off us unless you join in...”
MJ rolled her eyes, faking annoyance, but she was actually glad they knew her well enough to whisper sing and not yell it down the corridors. She didn’t want the attention. “Dancing queen, MJ, do you not want your gift?”
She sighed before singing lowly, “feel the beat from the tambouuriiine,” quite beautifully, but she couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic, which made the boys laugh before singing “oh yeah!” A little louder. Then Peter thrust his hand out from behind his back, at the same time Harley tried to bring it in front of him, and their arms became twisted awkwardly and MJ tried not to snort as they fiddled and tugged until Peter ducked under Harley’s arm and span all the way around so that the bag was in front of them. They were clutching a small gift bag with red polka dots on it and pushed it towards the girl so she would take it.
“Happy birthday,” Peter said happily as Harley nodded in agreement, and MJ felt a wave of appreciation for them, for her friends.
“You didn’t have to get me anything,” she insisted, but her usually strong, blunt voice was now soft and they knew that she was happy.
“Open it!!!” Harley demanded, ignoring what she had said.
Inside the bag was a thick sketchbook with good quality pages, a set of pencils to go with it, and a slip of paper that claimed her the owner of a tiger that Peter and Harley had adopted in her name. This also came with a little plushie of a soft orange striped tiger which her lips quirked up at slightly- her equivalent of cooing. She looked up at the two of them, her face still indifferent but her eyes gleaming with tears while she brushed her fingers over the endangered species leaflet that was stuck to the back of her adoption certificate, and she pulled them into a hug.
“Thankyou,” she said sincerely before letting go and moving to walk away to pull herself together so that she didn’t actually start crying. That would’ve been embarrassing. But as she gripped the gift bag she couldn’t help a small smile to grace her face when she remembered how she ranted on about humans being destructive and endangered animals and the disrespect of it almost three months ago. They had remembered too, evidently. Maybe it was because she didn’t get outwardly passionate often, and that was the most she’d spoken in one lunchtime, but she didn’t care.
She wanted to repay them, somehow. Maybe she’d use her new sketchbook to draw something for them. Oooh. No, she could draw the two of them, together, so that maybe they’d finally see how lovestruck they really were for each other. This, she didn’t really understand. They flirted relentlessly but seemed to think it was just a close friendship, which is fine, a close friendship like theirs is fine, acting like that with friends is fine, only... it usually comes without the lovey-look in their eyes when they look at the other... which kinda suggested. They were more than that.
⎊
Sally threw a house party two days after, and Ned insisted that they all go, it could be like a celebration for MJ’s birthday. She called him a loser, but agreed anyway. Peter and Harley were already bouncing in agreement before he even finished.
Later that day though, Ned, Harley and MJ sat on the sofa while loud, booming music played and Peter was nowhere to be seen. The trio had already been there for 40 minutes, and Harley was wondering if he had ditched before Ned brought up the fact that he was probably out spidermanning and would probably just be late unless there was something really important. (And he was, there was this annoying hostage situation that he had been trying to negotiate for way too long before he ended up fighting the guy anyway- waste of time, only not really because at least everyone ended up safe)
To nobody’s surprise, Harley grew restless sitting down at the party. He turned to MJ, putting on an overly sweet face and asked her, “dance with me?” To which, to nobody’s surprise, she said no. He pouted and looked at Ned, who was getting ready to shake his head before Betty came bounding over and stole him away anyway. Harley’s expression grew even more distraught. “Petey would dance with me,” he muttered, missing the smirk on MJ’s face because a voice behind his head added breathlessly, “Yeah, he would.”
He swivelled round instantly to look at a disheveled Peter, his hair mussed up, supposedly from the mask, and looking like he had rushed (swung) over, and beamed at him. “Petey boo! You made it, then?”
Peter blew out a breath, “Yeah, sorry, there was a hostage situation I couldn’t really leave.”
“You can tell me about it later. Did you know no one would dance with me? Isn’t that rude?” Harley grinned at him, already knowing the other boy’s response.
“So rude,” he said, holding out his hand for the blonde who clutched it eagerly and was pulled to his feet so that they could move towards the mass of jumping teenagers.
They swayed to the beat, belting out the lyrics and jumped around, but were gradually pressed closer together by the surrounding crowd on the dance floor that was Sally’s living room. Both of them were just in the moment, not letting themselves think, just having fun and that was the scene, MJ decided. She could kind of see them through gaps of bodies when they moved, so she kicked her feet up on the sofa and took a bite out of her randomly acquired toast and began to draw.
She mostly did sketches, as proven my her many scratches of faces in crisis, but she made sure to capture the exact atmosphere and expressions on their faces in this drawing, because they were important to her, and they needed to see how important they were to each other.
After half an hour of dancing, Harley (and Peter too, since he had been patrolling right before hand) was absolutely exhausted and he flopped his arm around Peter’s shoulders to keep upright, and Peter wrapped his arm around Harley’s waist to keep himself upright, and they stumbled to get drinks before landing back on the sofa. They gulped greedily before Peter got a glimpse of MJ’s hand movements. “Ooh, are you drawing? Can we see?” He asked enthusiastically.
“Actually,” she added a couple more strokes, “I’m done.” Then she pulled the page out of the book causing Peter and Harley to make noises of shock and protest before seeing that she was holding it out to them, not defiling her brand new sketchbook. Peter took it off her and held it between himself and Harley to see, and froze upon seeing the subject of her art.
“It-it’s us,” he stated, not looking up from the page, taking in the way his arms were thrown in the air in glee as he copied Harley’s movements, who was not inches away from him in the picture. He looked like he was trying to inhale Harley or something. He gulped. “MJ, this is- you are so talented. It’s amazing.”
“It’s for you two,” she clarified, analysing the way that Peter looked up to Harley to see if he really looked like that in real life, or whether he was really that close to him and didn’t-
He snapped his head to the left quickly when he heard Ned’s footsteps and jumped up, mumbling, “Can I talk to you,” before dragging him away before he had the chance to sit. Once they were out of earshot, Peter burst.
“I have a problem!”
“Does it happen to be your ever growing crush on ‘Harls’?” Ned teased knowingly, causing Peter to stutter before accepting his fate.
“Was it that obvious?” He grimaced.
“Yes.”
“What am I supposed to do? I tried ignoring it but that didn’t work for too long because he’s always there and I can’t exactly tell him either.”
Ned was thinking, Thor why? But didn’t betray his exasperation as he calmly asked, “Why not?”
“I know Harley would be cool about it, he wouldn’t un friend me or anything because he’s not like that, but things would be different. And I don’t want them to be, we just get each other, and I don’t want it to suddenly be awkward when we could be pranking all the avengers instead.”
“Ok, but you’re not considering the fact that Harley likes you back,” Ned tried to say smoothly, but he was pretty sure a little bit of force slipped into his tone accidentally.
“I’d consider that if we had just met and weren’t already friends. I don’t think I could risk it, Ned.”
While all this was going on, Peter had left Harley sitting with the drawing between his fingers; he still didn’t look up from it.
“Tell him,” MJ instructed, regarding him carefully.
He finally looked up at her face. “Tell him what?” He asked, confused, but he had a hint of what she meant.
“You need to tell him or it’s going to eat you alive.”
Harley sighed. “Maybe,” he mumbled, looking over to the side where Peter was chatting with Ned animatedly.