InsaneJournal

Who: Peter & MJ
What: Judging Peter's life choices and hanging out
When: Earlier this month
Where: Stark Residence
Warnings: Nope!

Staying temporarily at the Stark Penthouse Manhattan instead of Queens was a transition, but Peter was slowly adapting to it - and among the things he was getting used to was the occasional stint as a babysitter. While Happy didn’t often leave him and Morgan alone (they couldn’t be trusted together, he said), today he was less bothered to head out on some brief errands, and Peter didn’t doubt it was because MJ was there too. Morgan seemed less inclined to coercing Peter to hanging upside-down on the ceiling when there was someone more responsible around.

After an hour of dealing with a very energetic five year old and a pile of legos, the elevator doors dinged and Morgan took off to greet Happy in the kitchen. Peter looked over from where he sat on the floor, glancing at the doorway and back at MJ again. As much as he loved Morgan like the little sister he never had, a breather was nice.

“I think we’ve got alone time?” Peter said hopefully. Morgan hadn’t sprinted back, at least, meaning Happy had probably brought back an early dinner or something equally as distracting. He took advantage of the quiet to lean over and kiss MJ’s cheek. “Finally.”

Hanging out in the Stark penthouse was still a little overwhelming for MJ. Her relationship to Peter introduced her to a whole new world that she never imagined being part of. It was cool though. Tony and Pepper were super down to Earth and she liked them both a lot. Especially because they were so good to Peter.

She liked Morgan too, though she was glad when Happy returned and the little girl ran off to spend time with him. Not because she wanted to make out with her boyfriend or anything, though she wasn’t opposed to that, but because she and Peter really hadn’t gotten to talk about what he’d done and she was kind of angry with him for his carelessness.

Still, she leaned in and let him kiss her rather than pulling away. MJ knew that Peter had a good heart. Too good, honestly. He could stand being a little more cynical. She’d work on that.

“Finally,” she agreed, flashing him a smile that had just a bit of tooth to it. If Peter was really paying attention, he wouldn’t be surprised by what she said next. “Now we can talk about you making reckless and stupid decisions.”

There had been a lot of conversations about his stupid and reckless decisions over the past few days. He’d gone over every detail with Tony, and had even been honest with May about the whole thing - which after her initial response (‘You did what with Loki?’) turned out to be semi-productive. He promised to be honest with her going forward, and yet it was a hard balance to keep when most of the time he kept the truth away from his aunt to protect her.

He’d tried that once with MJ, too, but it was like being observant was her superpower. He wasn’t about to mess with that.

“I wish I could say the stupid and reckless stuff was something new, but…” Going to Germany, the Staten Island Ferry incident, going after Toomes alone at Homecoming, heading into space to fight Thanos with Tony, trusting Beck - he wasn’t any stranger to acting impulsively. The consequences were always the hardest part to get through, especially when they fell on other people aside from him.

“I should’ve listened to you.” Though talking about ‘should have’s’ wouldn’t really do much. “I mean, I should listen to you.” In the present, future, all that. “You see the stuff that I don’t.”

“That’s because I’m smarter than you,” MJ said, the corners of her mouth turned up into just enough of a smirk that Peter would know she was kidding. Mostly. He was plenty book smart, she simply had more common sense. They complemented each other well that way.

She did soften her words by reaching over to take his hand though. “Did you find out anything useful?” If the stupid and reckless decision at least gave them something worthwhile, it wouldn’t be quite as bad. Though that might encourage him to repeat said actions in the future.

“One of the smartest people I know,” Peter said with a grin, and though MJ might have been teasing, he wasn’t. It was part of what had drawn him to her in the first place - and he liked telling her that, too. There were times when he wanted to tell the whole world that, honestly.

With his free hand, Peter reached for his phone and scrolled through some ridiculous selfies of he and Ned on his camera roll before landing on a photo of the particle generator piece. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but the guy in there said one wrong screw could take out blocks. Hammer Industries and the government are in on whatever this thing is together.”

It wasn’t easy to say if it was all worth the trouble or not yet. Peter frowned in thought as his thumb swept over the back of MJ’s palm. “That’s what sucks about it. If the government can fund weapons like that and get away with it, then who keeps them in check? I know I should be thinking about finals and school and everything with summer coming up, but it’s hard to focus on anything else when that stuff is still out there.”

For someone who believed in conspiracy theories as long as she remembered, knowing that this sort of thing was actually happening, that it wasn’t all theory, left MJ feeling unsettled. Even though it hadn’t gone as well as Peter planned, she couldn’t deny she was glad that he got that information out and to the Avengers.

“I’ve been telling you all for years that you can’t trust the government,” she reminded him. There wasn’t any real conviction behind her words though because as much as MJ enjoyed being right, she was not actually happy to be right about this. “What did Tony say?”

She actually did trust the Avengers to do the right thing.

“Tony said he and Bruce and Hope were going to take a look at what I brought back and then decide where to go from there. I think they want to play it safe and slow with that.” Which Peter understood, since it was the government they were talking about - a collective enemy that no one wanted to make, especially after what happened with the Asgardians. But if he was working on this on his own, he’d probably be planning on infiltrating again to find out more about what kind of threat the city was facing here.

And…that would be another one of those reckless, stupid decisions, so it was a good thing he had others like MJ to keep him in check. Sometimes his urge to help made it hard to see things clearly. “Maybe we could do our own research. Not physically or anything, but we could see if anyone’s left paper trails online?” There might not be anything to find that the Avengers hadn’t already, but it couldn’t hurt to look.

“We could make a date night out of it.” He smiled a little, leaning over to give her a quick kiss. “Like ‘Investigate the corrupt government and chill’.”

As fun as that sounded, and as much as she liked the kiss, MJ had her doubts that it would be a good idea. She rested her hand on his knee, returning the kiss for a moment, before pulling back and giving him a skeptical look.

“How do you suggest we investigate the government without getting you in more trouble?” she asked. It wasn’t like either of them had elite hacking skills and even if they did, she suspected that the types of databases they would need to dig around in would have security measures that would send up red flags.

The question MJ asked poked all the right buttons to bring Peter back to focus. Maybe if Ned helped them out they could sneak around detection, but he didn’t want to get his best friend involved when he was still unaware of the alternate universe. And, aside from that, there was the more logical reasoning that there were times to let things be. And after the recent chaos, that was now.

“Or you,” Peter said with a brief frown. If he got MJ in trouble, that would be even worse. “I’m…bad at this. At stopping. It’s like - even when I can’t go out in the suit, I still feel like I should be doing something.” Because if he could, and he didn’t, in Peter’s head that put him at fault.

“But yeah. Being normal for a few weeks? Or trying to be? I should probably give that a go before anything else.”

“You’re such a good person, Peter,” she said. Better than almost anyone else she’d ever met, honestly. Better than her, for sure. She was bitter and cynical and had no faith in humanity. Peter was pretty much her exact opposite. Maybe that’s why they worked. “But you need to accept that you can’t fix everything.”

Since he needed help with that, MJ would have to figure out ways to keep him distracted from what was going on and focused on other things. “We can definitely do normal,” she said. “Together.”

Accepting that would be easier said than done, but Peter was willing to try a lot of things - well, anything for MJ. And right now, a few weeks of attempting normality didn’t sound too bad at all as long as she was close. “That sounds like a plan we can both get behind.”