Chapter Text
There is something off about Peter Parker. Not in the normal high school awkward way either. There is something that he’s hiding. MJ is just not sure what.
Despite sharing a few classes with Peter, MJ never paid attention to him before now. Sure, she knows that he’s the overly enthusiastic kid that sits a few seats down with Leeds, she knows that he wears crappy science pun t-shirts, and that he is late half the time, but until now…she’s never really looked at him.
That changes in first period AP physics. Class begins as normal with MJ arriving five minutes early and Peter hurtling in five minutes late. As per usual, he rushes through a hasty “SorryIamlateMrsWarren,” before skidding into his seat in the back. MJ doesn’t take note of it. Peter is late more often than he’s not. The reason why she remembers his name is because of how many times she’s heard a teacher sigh it when he walks through the door looking like hell is on his heels.
What is unusual though is that Peter falls asleep in the middle of Mrs. Warren’s lecture. Sure, he does that sometimes in English, but it’s practically unheard of for him to do it in physics. Some time during the discussion of electric fields, MJ notices that his head is resting on his folded arms on the table. She isn’t sure when he passed out, because she doesn’t care less about whether he was wasting his chance to get a good education or not, but she notices that Ned Leeds doesn’t seem to be trying to wake him up. In fact, since he seems to be making two sets of notes, she’d hedge the bet that he’s actually even trying to prevent disturbing Peter at all.
“Mr. Parker, can you tell the class what the EMF induced in the coil—Peter?”
Peter’s head springs off of his desk like he was hit by an electric shock as he stares up at the front of the class like a deer in the headlights. The sheer look of panic combined with the bed head has MJ quickly flipping for a fresh page in her notebook. With that, Peter Parker earns his first spot in MJ’s notebook of people in crisis. As he begins to stumble clumsily through a (somewhat impressively) correct answer, MJ begins to sketch.
It wasn’t like she meant to stare at Peter. Honestly, she’s just using him as her reference for her drawing. But every so often, as she is glancing up at the boy, she begins to notice things. He’s skinny, tiny really, even for their age. This appearance is not helped by the baggy blue sweater he has on. His upper lip has a small cut running through it, like a cat scratch. It seems to be well on the way to healing. His brown hair falls all over the place in haphazard curls. There are dark bruise-like circles under his eyes. Then there are his eyes themselves, dark brown and very expressive. Almost cute…for a nerd that is.
Peter fidgets in his seat as he works through the answer. He flips a pencil between his fingers with a surprising amount of dexterity. In fact, it really looks like he’s not paying attention to it at all as he finishes his explanation. She watches as he sinks back into his chair as soon as Mrs. Warren confirms that he is correct. Palpable relief floods his face. It’s fine though, MJ managed to capture his expression before that, she just needs to work on small details like the shirt that he’s wearing—
It is while she is doing that that it happens. The nervousness must have made him feel too warm or something, because Peter begins to take off his sweater. As he does, his t-shirt rides up for just a second with it which reveals his stomach.
Jesus Christ. Peter Parker, the boy wearing the shirt with the crappy chemistry joke, is ripped.
MJ drops her pencil. She leans down to grab it and attributes how hot her face feels to the blood rushing to her head from leaning over and definitely not anything else. Glancing around, she confirms that literally no one else just saw what she did before her eyes land back on Peter.
Peter, who is staring directly back at her.
MJ has always been good at hiding emotions. When she was little, she perfected her poker face when she realized that it was the best way to make adults take her seriously. That is to say, despite the rapid ‘shit shit shit’ her brain is screaming at her, her face falls into a very neutral expression as she stares back. She raises a single eyebrow in an expression she hopes reads as ‘why are you looking at me’ and not ‘Nothing happened. I saw absolutely nothing in the slightest. I was not just staring at your abs like a creep, that would be insane.’
It seems to work just fine. Peter stares back for only a second before his face turns very pink and he ducks back down to look at his work.
For a while after, MJ continues to look over at Peter. The drawing on her desk is completely forgotten.