Vibrant Vitals

"Again?"

"Yes again."

"Don't you ever watch anything else?" MJ protested.

Peter could almost hear her thoughts: another movie night and the nerds want to watch star wars- figures.
But he smiled, he knew she was teasing.

"We can start with Rogue One," Peter responded, trying to make his voice sing song and tantalizing. He knew that Rogue One was her favorite of the new Star Wars movies (they'd watched the originals last week-and two months ago, and six months ago).

"Fine," MJ responded with little enthusiasm, but her mouth quirked up a bit at the edge.

"Must you always flirt so obviously?" Ned lumbered into the room, weighed down by the many snacks in his arms. "Every movie night it's like this! Yeesh."

"We... hu... we're not flirting," Peter huffed. "Flirting is silly, well not silly but... anyways we're not flirting, we're just, we're just," he looked at MJ as if asking for backup. She just blinked at him. A silent refusal to dig him out of his self made hole.

"Peter," Ned faced him, dumping the snacks on the coffee table, "you are most certainly flirting." He picked up a fallen bag of chips as he continued over Peter beginning to protest again, "but it's okay, you are allowed to flirt with your girlfriend! Of course, as your best friend, I am allowed to make fun of you for it."

Peter turned red, but flicked his eyes at MJ after Ned said 'girlfriend.' It was a fairly new term for them. His love struck grin as his gaze flicked back to Ned made both Ned and MJ roll their eyes as they sunk into the couch. Although it was hard to tell if MJ was rolling her eyes at the grin, or just the antics in general. Finally, after all three of them were settled on the couch (Ned at one end, Peter at the other, and MJ leaning into Peter's side), each with a snack of some sort in hand, Ned (closest to the remote) clicked play on the movie. After the opening credits, when the first person began talking, MJ piped up:

"Hey loser, can you turn the sound up?" she asked across the couch, turning her head back to Peter as she said it to check if it would still be comfortable with his spideysenses. Despite her constant condemning of clinginess and sickenly sweet couples in romcoms, she was often very attentive (a side effect of her observation skills, obviously) and considerate of him, which always made Peter's heart flutter.

"Sure," Ned said, grabbing the remote with cheese puff orange fingers. He poked the remote, but instantly realized his mistake as the channel changed instead of the volume.

"Dude," Peter exclaimed, "how'd you even do that without changing the input?"

"It's fine I'm fixing it!" Ned defended, throwing a cheese puff in the air and catching in his mouth.

"Nice one!" Peter commented, easily sidetracked.

"Thanks!" Ned responded. "Wait, so you said I have to change the input?" he continued, already doing it.

"No, I thought you already did. Wait! Don't do it now," Peter started. As the two began squabbling over the remote and how to get back, the channel they'd ended up on came back from commercials, it was the news.

"Emergency vehicles continue to stream into Queens as the situation in the Spring Skies apartment building is beginning to escalate. A fire of unknown origin has trapped dozens of residents on the upper floors, and reports have begun to raise questions over how long the building's integrity can last," the news reporter spouted from the screen.

Just as MJ started to poke Peter to get his attention, his head whipped around to listen to the news reporter.

"Dude, maybe you should go," Ned said, eyes glued to the TV.