Are You Hiding Something, Peter Parker?

6

Peter walks in again next Saturday, with a camera around his neck. When MJ takes his order, she interrogates him.

"What's with the camera, Parker." She says, leaning on the cashier with a shoulder popped forward in an attempt to look cool.

It's totally working.

Peter smiles that big smile of his and MJ thinks she might die on the spot.

"I take photos for The Daily Bugle." He responds, and that must be it. Peter took a photo and it was in the newspaper and she saw his name under it. The weird feeling was simply her forgetting.

But the tug at her mind is still there.

"How does that feel, being a high and mighty Bugle photographer." MJ asks, immediately regretting it when Peters smile drops. Come back cute puppy smile, she pleads silently.

Peter sighs. "I hate it. Johnson's a dick and they go after Spider-Man so much that it's starting to get boring. Why Spider-Man? Surely he isn't that bad?"

MJ can't help but agree. She was best friends with a diehard Spider-Man fan after all. "Mhm." She responds, and the conversation dies. She kind of misses it. The silence between them always feels wrong, somehow.

Not awkward, or tense, but not comfortable either.

Like it was never supposed to be there in the first place.

But Peter and MJ barely know each other. There's nothing to talk about. So they just wait for MJ to make Peters order, exchange polite thank you'd and your welcomes, and then go about their days.

MJ wishes she new why she had this weird feeling.

And why it had to be so painful too.