She would be lying if she said she hasn't thought about it since forever.
Even after the snap, Mj finds herself still crushing over Peter Parker, and she's just fine staying friends and doing nothing about it. Enter a handsome kid who survived the s...
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present day
It would still be Peter, though, Mj thought. If she had to choose.
She stared off into space, her mind quite not focused on the discussion ensuing in front of the room, instead fondling the folded piece of paper Brad gave her. It was dog-eared around the edges from the amount of times she opened and closed it, read and re-read what he had written.
You look beautiful when you smile.
She was supposed to be swooning over this, but honestly, all it gave her was a little smile, and only because the attention from the handsome Brad Davis was nice.
"Mr. Parker, do you know who said that famous quote?" Mrs. Tate cut through the silence in her head with the mention of his name.
"Uh," Peter started, "Louis Sullivan?" "That is correct. Very good, Mr. Parker."
It took all of Mj's strength not to glance back at him for the few seconds he spoke, but even then she couldn't help but look at him, looking back to the front just as quickly.
It would still be him, if she had to choose. She couldn't though.
The little crush Mj garnered on Peter in the seventh grade never really went away when it was supposed to, and it was hard for it to fade away when Peter was a constant force in her life. She watched him crush hard on Liz for a year, she watched him through a depressive phase when Tony Stark died, she watched him come back on his feet, all the while cheering from him by the sidelines.
He never knew. She wanted to keep it that way. She didn't want anyone to know, in fact, that she couldn't help but smile when he did, that when he laughed at her jokes it sent weird little critters in her stomach she refused to label butterflies. She was cooler than that.
There were no critters when she was with Brad, and she hated to admit it.
"You're one of the coolest girls I know, you know," he told her the other day at lunch, and she smiled. It didn't make the knots in her stomach curl, but it was good for her ego.
"You just haven't talked to that many girls yet."
Brad laughed, and she waited for the insects to crawl into her chest, tickle her from the inside the way they did when Peter chuckled, or when Peter smiled, or when Peter did absolutely anything, actually but they didn't come. They never did.
She was nearing 17 by now, and she was getting worried: not that she lived by her words or anything, but Mj hadn't done anything in Taylor Swift's song Fifteen. Was it really worth doing it if it wasn't with Peter?
***
"Mj's with Brad again," muttered Peter to Ned as they sat down on their usual spot in the cafeteria. The sight of them tugged at his heart the way it did the first time he'd seen them together. He still didn't understand why.
