Summary: Junior year has just begun, and MJ is more excited to get back to school than she would care to admit. She may act like she hates school, and she does regularly protest the corruption of the American education system, but going to school gets her out of the house and gives her something to focus on... And occasionally, someone, though she would not admit it if someone held a gun to her head. Slowly but surely, MJ finds herself drifting closer to Ned Leeds and Peter Parker outside of decathlon, even though they’re total losers and she definitely isn’t at all flattered when they start inviting her to things. MJ is hoping that maybe this friendship will finally strangle the lingering obsession thing she’s had for Peter for a while, but it only seems to intensify as the pair forms a fairly unlikely and dysfunctional friendship. However, MJ’s whole world is turned upside down when she manages to catch Spider-Man off guard-- and maybe blackmails him a little. With the promise of an exclusive interview after Spider-Man manages to expose the cause of a series of child abductions, MJ finds herself more involved in the superhero-ing than either of them expected. But they can’t continue this treacherous game forever without someone getting hurt, especially with MJ’s suspicions about Spider-Man’s identity becoming stronger and stronger.
Word Count: 2,281
Warnings: Swearing, MJ being a Problematic Fave™
So, blackmailing the Spider-Man is a lot easier than it should be.
MJ stares up at the figure above her as he quickly peers from side to side, trying to see if there is any way out of his situation. She can hear him muttering under his breath. MJ focuses on listening, grateful for the particular knack for eavesdropping she possesses as an aspiring journalist. If it were not for her keener than average ears, she would not be able to make out, "Karen, initiate... Voice distortion... Software."
"Something you'd like to share with the class?"
The Spider-Man stiffens at the sound of her voice, and his head turns sharply to look at her.
"Okay, okay, so here's what we're gonna do," the hero begins. His voice is deep, much deeper than it was a moment ago. Granted, MJ could not have recognized much from a single expletive, but the change is drastic enough to be noticeable.
"What's with the Morgan Freeman thing you've got going on now?" MJ questions, arching an unimpressed eyebrow.
"Well. it's- wait, I don't sound like Morgan Freeman."
"I hate to break it to you, but you definitely sound like Morgan Freeman."
"The software wasn't designed to sound like Morgan Freeman!"
"Hmm, well, maybe I've got it wrong. You'll have to keep talking, maybe recite, I dunno, your age, address, secret identity-"
"Nice try."
"-the lines of every role played by Morgan Freeman-"
"Please, say Morgan Freeman one more time."
"Anything for you, Spider-Boy," MJ retorts. Anyone who does not know MJ would think she is just being standoffish. However, though she does not smile, there is a hint of a smirk on her lips and a glimmer of excitement in her dark irises.
Her reply seems to catch the Spider-Man off-guard. He blinks several times with those large, animated white eyes, and MJ's amusement only grows. She does not mind the moment to examine the hero further, taking in the suit and the way that the eyes seem to be mirroring whatever facial expressions are underneath. Yeah, the powers are one thing, but the suit is another... It means that Spider-Man somehow has access to extremely advanced tech, or he knows someone who does.
"You still with me?" she presses him.
"Huh? Oh, yeah," stammers the hero. She has to admit that the deepness of the voice combined with the hero's sentence structure is a bit strange. MJ decides he must be young, simply based on the way he talks. Another odd thing she notices is that he is always moving-- tapping the wall that he clings to with a finger, at the moment, until he stops in favor of slowly hopping down to stand in front of her. "Alright, so... You can have your interview, okay? I promise. But now is definitely not the time."
"See, that sounds great, except for the fact that once you leave I have no way of contacting you and you have every means of avoiding me," MJ replies, and there is no joking around now. All banter aside, MJ is a hound dog, and she is closing in on exactly what she wants. She needs a story, and if she is going to get that, she needs him.
The Spider-Man is making a strange expression, MJ can even tell through the mask. She is sure that if she took it off, she would see a grimace.
"Right..." he says slowly. "But that isn't going to be an issue, because... Um..." His mind is clearly whirring as he glances around the empty alleyway, almost as if he is turning to the dumpster beside them for ideas. "Oh, right!"
Before MJ has a chance to protest, her phone is being yanked from her grip by a thin stream of web. A startled, indignant exclamation leaves her lips, but the Spider-Man does not leave with her phone. Instead, he is typing in it-- punching in a number.
"There," he says, satisfied as he passed the phone back to MJ. She immediately snatches it back and checks to make sure he has not deleted the recording. If he has, she will have to ask one of the Midtown tech geeks to get the files back for her, and it will be quite a hassle to do that and still keep her independent reputation. "The number I put in your phone links to a burner I have. I'll text it within the next few days with a meeting place, alright? I promise. But seriously. This place isn't safe right now, and it's already almost nighttime."
MJ glances up at the sky, and her eyes widen in surprise. The masked hero is right. It isn't sunset, exactly, but it is the time of day where the sun's light comes down golden from a tilted angle, and shadows are beginning to lengthen. "Shit," she mumbles, brushing aside a lock of hair that is falling in her eyes. "I am gonna be so late for work."
"Work?" the hero says in surprise, and MJ quickly shoots him a glare.
"Yeah, I work. We don't all have time to be running around Queens in glorified red morph suits, some of us-"
"Glorified red morph suits?"
"-actually have to pay rent."
"Well, yeah, but... I mean, you're a kid."
"And yet I'm still taller than you," MJ hummed sweetly, shooting him a faux smile of serenity. "If I don't get a text on the burner in the next three days, I will post the footage online and have it edited into saying some stuff that you don't want the world hearing. I know people."
MJ is surprisingly good at editing video, to say the least. She has a reputation for it around Midtown after a particular video was posted of Principal Morita confessing his undying love for Flash Thompson. The original footage had come from a school news broadcast, but MJ had gotten creative. She will never actually doctor this footage, of course. Editing the footage and publishing it would be circulating false information, and MJ is of the strong opinion that a well-informed electorate is the key to a democracy. However, she is banking on the fact that Spider-Man does not know this.
And she is late, so she is a bit more sadistic than usual. "See ya later, Spider-Child."
"Spider-Man... W-wait, stop!" he exclaims.
MJ had been moving to leave, but she turns around to face him now. "What?"
"Look, this is big. Bigger than it looks, I think. And if you're going to get this story, I'll need your help, okay? I think it's a story that is going to need to be told. But this time, I'm going in alone. No other Avengers. And there are people that I could go to, but I need someone discreet, for help with analytics, all that. And I need to know that you'll back out, for your own safety, if I tell you to."
"And you're going to trust someone whose name you don't even know like that?" MJ hums, surprised. "Trusting a stranger could get you majorly screwed over someday."
"But you're not-" he stammers. MJ felt her own eyes widen, and he seems to realize his mistake.
"Not what?" she says slowly.
"You're not... Like... That," he finishes lamely.
"And you should be thankful for that." And then, before the Spider-Man can say anything else, MJ has turned to begin walking away. "Michelle. It's Michelle, Jones."
She leaves the Spider-Man struggling for a comeback in the alleyway.
The next day at school, MJ pays much less attention than she usually does, and that is saying something.
MJ is better at learning independently, so she usually spends class-time reading the material through herself and then waiting for the class to catch up while she sketches or reads her book. Today, however, MJ is clearly spacing out in Chemistry, not even bothering to look over her classwork. Instead, she is taking messy notes in what appears to be a legal pad. No one notices, and she trusts that no one will. They don't, until lunch.
MJ sits in her usual spot without anything but a bag of almonds in front of her. It is being largely ignored in favor of the notepad, but after a few moments, MJ feels a faint tickle in the back of her mind that tells her something is off, just a little bit, as though the scales of normalcy are slightly askew. It only takes her a few seconds to realize exactly what it is. Every day, MJ sits here while Parker and Leeds jabber about something nerdy and she tunes it out. Today, there isn't anything to tune out, so MJ looks up and finds that her eyes meet immediately with those of Leeds and Parker, both of whom are staring at her like she is currently growing another head.
"Can I help you?" MJ draws out, giving both a glance that is somewhere between annoyed and expectant as she arches an eyebrow.
"Well, um, it's just-" Leeds stammers, his eyes wide and fearful. He glances over at Parker, who looks equally flustered. MJ's heart skips a beat as she catches a glimpse of the boy with the messy brown curls and the wide, startled eyes.
Is that an arrhythmia? She's going to have to get that checked out.
"N-Normally, right, we sit here," Parker starts, gesturing to their table.
"Riveting," MJ deadpans, but before she can turn back to her book, he is talking again.
"No, no, so we're talking, right, and then you always, you know..." He is fumbling for words, and MJ can practically see the gears turning in that brain of his, the one that she can't understand because it somehow is only capable of seeing good.
"Interrupt," Ned finishes. His eyes shoot open wide when MJ shoots him a glare, and then he is stammering again. "N-no, wait, it isn't exactly interrupting, I mean... You normally just sarcasm at us from over there."
"I sarcasm at you," MJ repeats, her other eyebrow shooting up to join its partner the search for her hairline.
"From... over... there..." Ned mumbles. He looks genuinely afraid for his life.
"Not that we mind," Parker interjects, and when MJ looks at him she is extremely grateful for the fact that she doesn't blush. If any other girl were looked at that way, with the dark, round puppy eyes, they would probably just be a puddle on the floor. How the hell was Liz immune to this kid?
She wasn't MJ reminded herself as a pang shot through her chest.
"Yeah, of course not," Ned fumbles. "I mean, your rants about feminism, and the Sokovia accords, and... everything..." Peter shoots him a look that says danger, and Ned quickly pushes forward. "I mean, they're the reason I'm passing history."
"And you know more trivia about Fantasy movies than either of us combined, so it's not like we mind. But you aren't doing it today," of Parker finished.
"It's not like I care what happens in Hollywood," she mutters, looking back down at her notepad. "Celebrities are images of perfection used to entice taxpayers to give their hard-earned money over to the entertainment industry."
"Right..." Peter says slowly.
MJ stares at the both of them for a minute, and then she decides to do something incredibly stupid.
"Tom Felton's pockets had to be sewn shut to keep him from sneaking food on-set during The Prisoner of Azkaban."
"No way, really?" Ned chortles as he moves down to MJ's side of the table, bringing his homemade lunch with him. Peter scoots down to, leaning over on his elbow as he pops a slightly-charred cookie in his mouth. "Malfoy's my new favorite."
"So I've heard that Rowling personally gave Evanna Lynch her role as Luna Lovegood, is that true?" Parker asks earnestly. Part of her knows that he is only trying to keep her talking.
The other part of her doesn't care.
The question about the actress immediately plunges them into an in-depth discussion about how the cast of Harry Potter are essentially the same people as their characters, punctuated with MJ's sarcastic quips and slightly unsure pauses when MJ plunges to an end of the current conversation, only for Peter to pick up a new one. and then lunch somehow ends way sooner than it normally does. By the time it is over, MJ has somehow accepted an invitation over to Peter's house to marathon the movies the following night, which is a Friday.
MJ walks out of the lunchroom feeling a strange warmth in her chest. For anyone else, it might be described as a spring in their step or a glimmer in their eye. For MJ, it does not manifest in any outward manner. MJ would much prefer to keep her feelings pent up inside where they will never see the light of day. But something about this makes her feel buoyant, special. It feels almost sacred because MJ clicks so well with the pair of friends that have just been the two of them forever.
When MJ plops down at her seat in Pre-Calculus, she pulls out the notepad to return to the untidy scrawl of notes from her conversation from the previous night. It then that her phone buzzes in her pocket, and MJ pauses. She only leaves notifications on for news alerts and text messages, and most of the time her mother is too hungover to text. So that doesn't leave anyone else, except...
MJ pulls out her phone and presses the button.
SPIDER-MAN: (1) UNREAD TEXT
meet me at steinway st and 28th tmrw. 10 pm. come alone.
To the people "praying for Berlin" to fuel their own agendas:
first of all fuck you all the way and second i’d like to hear you preach the same old worn out anti immigrant/refugee propaganda after living a day in their shoes
