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forasecondtherewedwon · 3 years

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Do You Tree What I Tree?

Pairing: Peter Parker x Michelle Jones (Spideychelle) Rating: T Word Count: 8730

For @justmattycakes! Happy holidays!!! Massive thanks to @spiderman-homecomeme for organizing this Spideychelle Secret Santa!

Summary: Home from their various colleges for winter break, MJ and her friends make a day out of going to cut down their own Christmas trees. Being alone in the woods—just her, Peter, and an axe—seems like the perfect opportunity to admit that her feelings for her friend have changed.

“Wine and cider!” Peter announces, jabbing a finger at the car window as they pass a rustic-looking roadside sign.

MJ smirks to herself. His touch will probably leave a smudge on the glass, which Flash will painstakingly wipe clean later. She likes Flash much more now than she did in high school—they all do—but she likes to build up a little vindictiveness towards him in advance, for when he inevitably says or does something douchey.

“Whine inside her, is that what you’d do if you could actually get a girlfriend?” Flash asks immediately. Sweet justification for MJ, though she rolls her eyes.

Flash is driving, but Betty trusts his skill enough to smack his arm from the passenger seat, then turn to smile back at Peter.

“That sounds nice. We should definitely stop on the way back.”

“Yeah,” Ned pipes up. “Maybe they’ll have a fireplace too, where we can thaw our fingers.”

“Babe, I won’t let your fingers get cold.”

“Aw, babe,” he croons, reaching over his girlfriend’s shoulder where she sits in front of him to tangle their fingers together.

“Back to your intense lack of dateability,” Flash persists. MJ swears his original asshole persona comes out so much more whenever he slides behind the wheel of his dad’s Cadillac Escalade. “Are you having a lonely winter, Parker? With only your cold lab bench to keep you warm?”

Next to MJ, Peter sighs and mutters, “Same old Flash.” She thinks he says it only to himself, but he darts a look at her and they share a smile.

“Well, I don’t have your L.A. weather,” he allows, artfully changing topic.

Flash will talk for an hour straight about the numerous perks of attending UCLA, including the constant sunshine, the short-shorts, and the absence of his current listeners. The last they all recognize to be a blatant lie, but they like him enough to let him get away with it. MJ has a special sympathy for Flash in those moments; she’s still growing from the girl she was when they were all at Midtown together, when she found it so much easier to edge away from other people or, when she did interact, to speak defensively, insultingly, and with liberal use of the middle finger. Her communication skills have flourished with not being able to see these people in person every day. She’s actually amazed with how she’s clung to them, certain she’d failed to develop the kind of solid relationships people were supposed to form in high school and that she’d just stagger forward through her fine art degree (PoliSci minor) with a wild hope of connecting to other humans through the doodles that she’s developed into graceful sketches, from sketches to oil paintings with sweep and verve.

The five of them are in their second year at their respective centres of learning now and it feels really nice to gather after living by too-brief text exchanges, missed calls, and videocalls that somebody’s roommate inevitably arrives home in the middle of, loud and invasive. When MJ’s speaking to Ned or Flash, they can push through. They have the boisterousness and, in Ned’s case, natural good nature, to conduct two separate conversations at the same time. Betty prefers to hang up and try at a better time, when they can speak uninterrupted. Peter’s different from all of the above. MJ always sees how he blushes, as though he’s being caught talking to her. It makes her flush in return. There’s no reason for them not to be as close as either of them are with any of the others, but conversations with him make her feel different. Without meaning to, their voices lower and they wander away from whatever topic they start with; on some nights, into the most intimate tracks of their inner lives. She gets why he feels caught to be interrupted because it’s disorienting for her too, being dragged back to the larger world, hearing a voice other than his in her ear. She likes traditional phone calls with him the best because she can lie in bed with her phone pressed to her ear and he doesn’t have to know.

“Are we almost there?” Ned says when Flash pauses in his rhapsodizing of Venice Beach.

MJ, sitting in the middle of the backseat, watches her friend unlock her phone and check the map.

“Yes. Under two miles to go.”

“And we’re super sure about this place?” Ned checks.

“Mhmm. A friend of a friend in my French workshop went last year and got the most spectacular Fraser fir,” Betty assures him. “I saw it at her Christmas party. That’s the one you couldn’t go to because you got the flu, remember?”

“Ugh,” he agrees.

“We passed a tree farm awhile ago,” Peter ventures. “That wasn’t it?”

“Betty told me the owners of that farm own this lot too. It’s cheaper to get your tree here because they don’t tend the lot in the same way,” MJ informs him. She likes the look on his face when he listens. She likes the feel of his leg bumping against hers as they traverse the uneven gravel sideroad.

“Yeah, I think I’ll be making up the cost difference paying for a paint job. I can hear the stone chips!” Flash complains. As if he’s ever paid for so much as a tank of gas.

“It’s an adventure, moron,” she says.

“I wasn’t prepared for stone chips.”

“I told you everything in an email last week, when we were planning this,” Betty calmly reminds him. “We should all be prepared.”

It isn’t visible to her right now, but MJ knows her friend has a shiny, compact saw at her feet, tucked into a neat black case, looking bizarrely like a tennis racket. Her own axe is trapped beneath Peter’s shoe so it doesn’t slide forward under Flash’s seat and slice the soles off his shoes. It’s quite sharp. She made sure.

“Listen,” Flash demands, “I’m the transport. Someone else can take care of the less significant details.”

“That is so fucking dumb,” Peter mumbles.

“What?”

“I said, I hope your feet don’t go numb,” he says more loudly. MJ turns her head, like she’s trying to follow the gentle backwards sweep of falling snow with her eyes when she’s really trying to hide her smile from Flash’s suspicious gaze in the rear-view mirror. “Did you wear waterproof boots and warm socks?”

“Of course. About to make winter my bitch.”

Betty twists to catch MJ’s eye.

“You wanna take this one?”

“Go for it.”

While Betty educates Flash on why that is not an acceptable thing for him to say—not with two of his female friends in the car, or ever—MJ drums her fingers on her knees. Her mittens are piled in her lap for now; despite her natural inclination to insult Flash’s ride, it heats up nicely. Plus, she’s tucked between Peter and Ned. She glances to her right to check on the latter and finds him huffing a warm breath on the window. He traces his finger through the resulting condensation, drawing a heart and writing ‘B+N’ in the middle. MJ glances at Peter and he’s already looking at her.

“So, tree?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’ve been told to keep it under six feet. A measuring tape and a ladder might’ve been helpful, but there wouldn’t have been anyplace to put the ladder once we got the trees on the roof of this thing.” She smacks the SUV’s ceiling and Flash goes, “HEY!”

“You can just choose a taller one,” Peter suggests, “and then cut it shorter.”

“I feel bad about the waste though. It’s a living thing.”

“I can help you with that.”

“Oh yeah?” MJ’s genuinely curious. She knows May prioritizes Hanukkah customs to keep Peter’s connection to both his ethnoreligious traditions and his lost love ones strong, so she doesn’t know how a Christmas tree fits into that.

“Right before you guys picked me up, May had an idea. She thought it might be nice just to get some pine branches for, like, generic winter decorating and to make the apartment smell good.”

“That’s a really good idea.”

“Yeah. I was gonna grab scraps from where other trees had been cut down, but I can get them off whatever tree you pick instead. Or you can. You have the axe.”

“I’ll give you a turn with it if you help me drag my tree back to the car,” MJ bargains with a smile.

“I can definitely help.”

Of course he can. He could probably carry a dozen trees if he felt like it. Over his head. With all the roots and clumps of frozen earth still attached. But the thought of him hauling the tree back with her rather than for her is something she appreciates. As she nods, she gets the fluttery feeling she’s been experiencing more and more whenever he’s called her this term. Their calls have gotten longer. A younger version of herself would be amazed at the way she can now talk for hours without noticing the time slipping past. And it never feels wasted. Actually, when they aren’t talking, MJ misses Peter. She can’t completely put it into words and so she hasn’t. What she’s done, besides continue to answer every time he calls, is offer him a chance to swing the axe she brought. Romantically, there’s room for improvement.

Their overlapping winter breaks are going to end in another week and she’s scared the calls, as treasured as they’ve become to her, won’t be enough.

“There!” Betty cries. She flings her arm across the dash to point.

“That’s the woods,” Flash says, brushing her off.

“No, that’s the driveway! You’re going to pass it!”

The jarring, inelegant jerk of the wheel as he takes Betty’s directions at the last moment tips Ned into MJ and MJ into Peter. They all groan in discomfort, but Flash seems supremely pleased with himself as he straightens the tires. Off the gravel, their passage between the trees is muffled by the packed snow on the laneway other cars have driven over. There’s a dusting on top as today’s thin flurry continues to fall. As she sits up straight following Flash’s terrible Baby Driver impression, MJ feels Peter’s hand on her back, through her coat, and her face gets hot. Unable to meet his eyes in thanks, she leans towards Ned instead and the two of them stare out at the picturesque scene where low drifts spill over the ground and every pine, spruce, and fir—all dusted in white—looks like the perfect Christmas tree.

“Hats on,” Betty instructs as Flash pulls to a stop next to a pickup truck with a tarp already laid out in its bed, awaiting a tree. “Shoelace check. Gloves and mitts secure.”

“You sound like you’re prepping us to jump out of an airplane,” Flash laughs.

He swings his door open while Betty’s trying to get back into her winterwear checklist with the rest of them, letting in a gust of cold air that disturbs the warmth MJ’s hoarded as well as Betty’s good temper. She reaches across the center console and shoves Flash with both hands, pushing him straight out of the vehicle with a “WHOA!”

Betty’s nonchalant as she flips her mirror down and adjusts the positioning of her pompom hat before stepping out of the SUV herself. Peter and Ned pile out, laughing, and MJ climbs out Peter’s side. Flash is next to the car, brushing himself off.

“I’m going to get sick,” he pouts.

“Say cheese!” Ned encourages, snapping a picture as Betty runs into shot to pose next to her victim, cupping his face between her gloved hands.

“Maybe this’ll make him change his mind about the cider place,” MJ notes to Peter hopefully.

“I feel like we’d be stopping there no matter what,” he muses. “It was either making Flash fear hypothermia or Betty sneaking back to the car first and tampering with his brake line or something.”

“So, which way looks good, babe?” Ned asks his girlfriend.

As she told them, this lot isn’t the manicured family attraction the last place was. There aren’t any employees standing around—easily spotted even as they drove past the tree farm down the road in their orange crossing-guard-style vests—or a map marking which areas are which type of tree. There’s just sort of a main track that’s been tramped down by passing feet leading between trees. It’s easy to see for a ways, but beyond that, the forest grows denser. MJ knows Betty did her homework and can identify tree varieties, and she doesn’t actually care which type she gets. She’s here for the experience, and for the idiot next to her who gives her a thrill every time the nylon sleeves of their winter coats rush against each other.

“Hmm,” Betty says, and strides forward through the narrow entrance. From there, things fan out. She taps her bow saw, now loose, against the side of her leg. “Well, what would everyone like to do?”

“I’m going wherever you are,” Ned vows. She shoots him a soft smile.

“Me too,” Flash decides. “You’ll get us in and out of here fast so we can get warm. Not like Parker, who’ll probably get lost in the first five minutes.”

“What?” Peter asks, insulted. “Will not.”

“Oh yeah? How’s your sense of direction without that robot lady in your head?”

“Karen is not a robot lady, she’s an AI.”

“Same diff.”

“It is not. A robot lady is like what they have on The Jetsons.”

“Whatever. Point is, without your GPS, I don’t trust you.”

“Well,” Peter counters, “we can just look at our phones.”

“Already tried that,” Flash informs him. “I don’t get a signal out here.”

Regardless, the rest of them check.

“That’s alright,” Betty persists, trying to be chipper to maintain group morale, MJ’s sure. “It’s daylight, the snow’s not coming down hard, and nobody’s going off alone. Now, Flash, Ned, and I are going that way.” She points, then glances from MJ to Peter. “Do you guys want to stick with us, or…?”

MJ opens her mouth and looks to Peter, shuffling beside her and doing some sort of best-friend telepathy with Ned, based on the stupid, scrunched up looks on their faces. Is he going to say something? He’ll probably want to stay with Ned. It’ll be weird if she speaks up for both of them. But if she doesn’t, when are they going to talk, just the two of them? Since they’ve all been back in the city, everything’s been done in a group—buying presents for friends and relatives, going skating, getting hot chocolate, attending Flash’s ugly holiday t-shirt party (L.A.-themed, so no sweaters allowed). The woods though. The woods are quiet and friendly and private. Snow muffles sound, fresh air and cold wake her up and fill her lungs until they burn with everything she’d say to Peter if she just had this opportunity. No Ned and Betty hanging back to offer encouraging looks, no Flash to ruin everything with a terribly timed innuendo. MJ just needs Peter. Just her and Peter. Please, dork, she thinks, don’t say Ned.

The words come from her.

“I think Peter and I’ll go that way,” she declares, nodding sharply in a direction that isn’t Betty’s.

“Yeah,” Peter adds.

Oh, thank god, MJ thinks.

“He’s gonna get you lost,” Flash warns. He’s already stamping his feet like he’s freezing to death on the spot, though the cold isn’t that bad with the tree cover. “Then he’ll go nuts in the woods.”

“I have an axe,” MJ reminds him flatly. She glances at Peter. “Bring it.”

Peter snorts a laugh.

“No one will be re-enacting anything that remotely resembles The Shining,” Betty instructs. “Meet back here in, how long, do you think?”

“Depends,” Flash says. “How long should we wait before declaring those two missing and sending out a search party, of which I will not be a member, but will be happy to direct from the comfort of the Escalade with a hot drink in my hand and my feet against the heating vent.”

“Dude, don’t do that,” Ned pleads. “You’ll make the whole car smell like your feet.”

“My ride, my rules.”

“Should we just…?” Peter asks MJ. She nods.

“Let’s go.”

“Ok, um, an hour!” Betty decides.

Peter gives her a thumbs up and the two of them follow the path as it diverges, then cut away again, wading through ankle-deep snow where no other tree-hunter has walked today. The sound of Flash goading the other two fades. MJ stops for a minute and turns to watch them march into the trees. She takes a deep breath in and out.

“You good?” Peter asks.

“Yeah.” She hefts the axe onto her shoulder to look more lumberjack-esque (and so she doesn’t slice it into her calf as she walks). “Come on.”

Despite promises to share, she refuses to surrender the tool any sooner than she must. Soon enough, she’s huffing, face passing through damp clouds of her own breath and chilling her flushed cheeks and frozen nose. Balancing her temperature out here is a tricky thing; as long as they keep moving, as they are, she stays warm, but with Peter crunching along in the snow beside her, she’s too warm. MJ bites her mitt between her teeth and unzips her coat a little to let the brisk air circulate around the back of her sweaty neck.

“You’re not gonna catch cold?” Peter asks solicitously.

She shakes her head.

“Ok,” he says, “but it’d be just like you to get sick and say nothing about it while Flash complains all the way home that he is sick when nothing’s wrong with him.”

“The only thing he’s suffering through is his body’s natural rejection of us. He spent too many years thinking he was better than we are just to end up right here, hacking down Christmas trees together.”

“Probably caroling,” Peter guesses.

“Probably. He claims his favourite holiday song is the instrumental version of ‘Carol of the Bells,’ but that has to be a lie.”

“My money’s on something super cheesy.”

“Mine too,” MJ agrees with a grin.

Gradually, she slows, taking in the pine trees around them. Her guesstimation is that some of these go up to ten or twelve feet, but there are shorter options tucked in between. Younger, or those that maybe didn’t get as much light as they grew. She wipes the back of her mittened hand across her forehead, pushing her slipping fleece headband back where it’s been sliding forward.

“So,” she asks, “any of this look good to you?”

She lowers her gaze to find Peter hastily averting his from her face.

“That one?” he says, pointing to a tree at random.

“Peter, that one’s longer than Flash’s SUV.”

“Oh. Right. Um, ok…”

Focusing now, she watches his upturned face and the serious expression that sinks into it, the way snow’s been sinking into her hair. Maybe Betty was right about wearing a hat, though Betty’s hair is also significantly flatter than hers and thus more conducive to hat-wearing. Well, it’ll be fine. They aren’t stranded or anything and the snow’s not getting to them as much as it was when they had to walk across the clearing to reach this stand of trees. They’re sheltered here. As MJ hoped, it’s quiet.

Instead of asking Peter how much of his remaining holiday he’d like to spend with her, or how he feels when she forces him to hang up the phone first (he must notice), or why, exactly, he was so quick to agree to go off into the woods with her when he could just as easily have insisted they all stay together, she criticizes the first tree he takes genuine interest in.

“Crooked.”

“Too dense.”

“Too sparse.”

“Weird empty area.”

“I swear to god, something moved in there, Peter. I do not want a fucking National Lampoon Christmas, ok? My mom will freak out if I bring a live squirrel into our home.”

He’s laughing at her when they finally spot one that looks pretty good: shorter but not squat, full but with soft, long needles rather than nasty ones bent on treating them both to non-consensual acupuncture if they stand too close. It doesn’t look sickly or as though it’s currently inhabited by birds or rodents.

“So young,” MJ does note, assessing its size in comparison to a taller tree a yard away. “Oh well.” She raises the axe and adjusts her grip.

Peter goes scrambling backwards, almost slipping, then tries to pretend he was only calmly moving out of the way, that he is not afraid of the radius of her swing. When he starts babbling about how quickly his body could probably heal from an axe wound (though, with all the crazy shit he gets up to, that’s actually not something he’s experienced yet), she finally laughs at him.

“Relax,” she says. “You can just hold the branches up at the bottom while I chop through the trunk.”

Fearless—and even more determined to prove it now that she’s given Peter a scare—MJ drops to the snow and wriggles under the tree, as close as she thinks she should be while still being able to swing the axe. Peter’s hand makes her jump. She whips her head around, nearly getting a clump of needles in the eye, but he’s only skimming her coat by accident as he gathers the lowest branches away from her. As she asked. Right, he’s not touching her on purpose and he’s not even doing the not-touching activity on purpose but because she told him to. He’s trying to help. Frustrating.

She props herself up on her elbow and takes an awkward whack at the tree. The blade sinks into the bark like it’s supposed to, but it’s still somehow surprising to feel the give. MJ takes a few more tentative swings and the axe sinks deeper, requiring some force to yank it out again. She grunts and hears Peter crouch down behind her.

“Is it going ok? Can I do anything?”

“Umm, maybe be prepared to pull the top of the tree in the other direction so it doesn’t fall on my head. I think I’m almost halfway.”

“Yes, please don’t make it fall on your head,” he requests.

“It won’t as long as you do your job,” she promises gruffly, hewing in once more.

“Do you think this would be easier with a saw?” Peter’s voice is higher now, coming from the other side of the tree. Though the branches fell when he changed position, she can feel them only resting lightly on her as he holds the top of the tree away. Probably standing on his toes.

“Don’t say anything against my axe.”

“I’m not! I was just thinking out loud!”

“A saw,” MJ informs him with another swing, “is not as badass.”

“Good point.”

But is he just agreeing because the tree’s starting to topple and the final swings to break through it take her blade closer to his shins as he dances out of the way? Maybe.

She clambers out and, with the tree now on an angle, is able to chop from an upright position, down on a diagonal until she buries her axe in the snow, then yanks it free.

“Oh, you can lay it down,” MJ tells Peter when she realizes he’s standing there with his arms full of tree, face hidden as he keeps his head pulled back from the branches.

He does so gently and then they stand there in triumph. MJ hurls her axe into the ground.

“Would you quit that?” Peter requests, jumpy.

She grins.

“Sorry. Just really feeling this.”

“I can tell.”

They took their time making their selection and can do one of two things next: either trim the branches for Peter to take home to May right here or drag the tree back to Flash’s SUV and perform the necessary amputations there. They do neither. MJ shrugs her shoulders and flexes her fingers inside her mittens, exorcising the tension of gripping the axe’s handle. She turns, glancing casually around, but really looking for something invisible—a reason to stay. A rational delay before rejoining the others.

“Hold still,” Peter says, as she’s looking back the way they came. The way she thinks they came. They stomped around this area, circling every tree, for a while, so the footprints are a little confused.

“What? If you try to tell me there’s a squirrel in my hair, I’m not going to believe you.”

He smiles softly.

“No squirrel, just snow.”

She stares at her friend warily as he approaches, then sweeps snow from her headband. That’s when she realizes one side of her coat is soaked from lying on the ground. It can’t get through though, it’s just the outer layer. Still, Peter walks a complete circle around her, wiping snow away.

“There,” he says.

MJ sighs.

“Peter…”

“Yeah?”

His face is so open as he looks at her, flakes flying around and between them. Her heart squeezes almost painfully because there have been so many days of not seeing his face without the assistance of a screen. Now that he’s here, it’s too much.

“Umm… how many branches do you think May wants?”

MJ crouches and puts her back to him, feigning being deep in concentration over the fresh Christmas corpse splayed out in the snow. She feels like a detective at a crime scene. Peter exhales heavily behind her, then drops to her level.

“More is probably better, right? She’ll probably take some in to work or try to give them to the neighbours anyway.”

“True.” They both reach for the axe. “Go ahead,” MJ says, quickly withdrawing her hand.

Peter shaves off what he thinks May might like—plus at least an armload more—in quick slices and snips.

“Jeeze, this thing is sharp.”

“I know,” she says proudly.

“I want one. For the suit, I mean. You think that could work?”

“Well, you already have a bunch of less probable-sounding features, so why not a spider with an axe made of webs?”

“Ned’s gonna be so excited when I tell him.”

“I’m excited,” she says, maybe a little too forcefully. It’s not a competition. She doesn’t think he’s already forgotten about her. There’s just some kind of glitch in her brain-to-mouth connection that no Spidey tech could possibly fix.

“I think we’re ahead of schedule,” Peter tells her.

He pulls out his phone to check the time while MJ cleaves into the fallen tree’s trunk, cutting it down to a size more suited to transport and her family’s apartment.

“We could do this in two trips,” he presses. “Take the tree and come back for the branches? Or vice versa?”

“I think we can manage it in one.”

She glances at him and he looks mildly frantic.

“Or two,” MJ amends. “Two would be better.”

Are they finally going to talk? That has to be the reason for Peter stretching this out, doesn’t it? But he moves quickly to grip the lowest branches of the tree, down where MJ severed it, and she grabs those on the opposite side of the trunk. After a jerk to get it going, they slide the tree smoothly over the snow, leaving a fine trail of needles. It occurs to her, as they walk, that she was worried about this part on the way in here, that the tree might pick up dirt from where others have walked, but the ground looks fresh and sparkling in the sun. That’s not familiar.

“Peter? Are we going the right way?”

“What? Yeah. Aren’t we? We have to be. Because the sun was…”

He gestures very unconvincingly overhead and her heart plummets in her chest. For once, not because she’s scared of saying something about her feelings for him and hearing they aren’t reciprocated, but because what Peter’s not saying directly is that they might be lost. And the worst part of that scenario is Flash being right. No, no, no, Peter will not make Flash right, not today.

“It’s been snowing,” she reviews. Stupid and obvious, but facts are soothing to her. “How much do you think it’s snowed? Not that much, right? It can’t have. We must’ve just started walking the wrong way.”

“Definitely. Ok, let’s turn around.”

So, they swing the tree with them and strike out in the opposite direction, not going very quickly as they navigate the trees. They pass the stump they lately created and MJ plucks her axe from the snow on the way past. It just makes her feel better, having it.

Unfortunately, this way isn’t correct either.

“Alright,” she says slowly. “What the fuck.”

“Let’s leave the tree for a minute.”

They set it down. She realizes she’s sweating.

“How could we be lost? How could you be lost?”

“There aren’t exactly landmarks,” Peter says. “It’s just… trees.”

“Maybe we should’ve gone to a place with signposts and neat little rows.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

He wanders over to her, watching her with careful eyes.

“I wasn’t this cold when I called today an adventure.”

“Maybe you should zip your coat back up.”

But she’s too warm and uncomfortable to do that just to challenge how he’s calling her bluff.

“Are you scared?” he asks. “You don’t need to be scared. I think we did a lot of circling. We didn’t walk too far in any one direction. I could climb a tree and look around?”

“Climb a tree? One of these trees? The ones covered in snow with the thin branches and the spiky needles?”

“Hey,” Peter jokes, hitting her arm with his elbow, “you’re supposed to be cheering me on.”

“I…” She closes her mouth. He frowns.

“Is something wrong?”

“We’re lost and Flash is going to gloat.”

“Besides that.”

“You’re trying really hard to get us out of here.” That should be a compliment, a commendation, but it sounds accusing as it leaves her mouth. MJ feels on-edge, heart beating all wrong.

“…Should I not be?”

God, she’s being strange. She can feel herself being strange. Everything’s aligning to buy her more time and she’s panicking trying to work out what to do with it. The snow is falling softly all around and she’s auditioning to play the most awkward protagonist in the history of Hallmark holiday movies.

“Are you looking forward to going back?” MJ asks abruptly.

“To the car?”

“To school. In January.”

“Umm, kinda? I mean, it’s going well. But you know that, we talked about this stuff the other day when you and Ned were over at May’s.”

“Yeah.” She’s thinking, staring down at her cut tree, debating how to mention that there’s one thing they didn’t talk about, that she couldn’t bring up, because she felt strange about doing it with Ned there. She goes to continue, unsure of her phrasing, but ready to push onward, when Peter answers, looking thoughtfully up at the pale-grey snow clouds.

“It’s really nice to be home, but I also don’t like living in the past.”

He glances at her to see what she thinks. She’s noticed that he does that a lot, when they’re on a video call. Sometimes, she teases him about it—the way he makes certain assertions sound like questions because he wants her input, values her opinion, thinks of her as wiser than him (she is) though he’s the genius playing around at the upper end of the grading curve in all of his classes.

“Sorry, what were you gonna say?” he asks, spotting the unfinished thought in her expression, how she holds her eyebrows a little too tightly together.

MJ shakes her head.

“It’s nice to have you home.” As Peter’s beginning to smile, swaying slightly towards her, she rambles on, “It’s nice to have everyone home. I mean, I could go longer between having to see Flash in person, but what can you do, right? It’s worth it to have Ned home. And Betty. And you.”

She swallows.

“There!” he shouts, pointing past her. She squints.

“What is it?”

“Our tracks.”

Trusting his superior eyesight, MJ troops after him. Sure enough, their deep treads from earlier are still faintly present—now gentle indents as the snowfall works to even everything out again.

“But we don’t have to hurry back,” Peter says. She avoids his eyes.

“Except we probably do, now that we’ve wasted time being lost.”

“We were never actually lost.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself so you can sleep at night, Spider-Man. Help me with the tree.”

He does, then hightails it back to collect May’s branches once MJ’s in the clearing with only the little trail left between her and the makeshift parking lot. She pulls her bounty along and through the gap, suddenly back with the rest of her friends.

“Did you manage to lose Parker out there?” Flash asks immediately. “Nice. Up top.”

She rolls her eyes instead of meeting his hand in a high five.

“He just had to go back for something,” MJ explains, expressly for the benefit of Ned and Betty.

“What’d he do, drop some of you guys’ sexual tension in the woods?”

Flushing with the sting in the air and self-consciousness, she walks past Flash. Just close enough to drag the tree over his feet and make him start whining about getting dirt on his blindingly-white designer snow boots. When his complaints cut off, she knows she’s in trouble. It’s like the sudden silence in a horror movie that you just know means nothing good.

“Never mind,” Flash says loudly. “Sexual tension present and accounted for.”

MJ whirls around to see Peter’s arrived and is staring at her with a pleading look on his face. Or he was, until Flash’s words sunk in. Surely, Peter’s fast enough to snatch his keys, toss them to Betty, and have them all climb into the SUV and wheel outta here, leaving Flash behind? But during the holidays? She’d feel bad. He’s lucky.

“Can we just get the trees loaded?” Peter asks, moving to help MJ pull hers closer to demonstrate that it’s not so much a question for Flash as a demand for him to shut the hell up. Flash probably doesn’t understand. He’d need tact for that.

“Fine. And not a scratch on the Escalade,” Flash commands.

He opens the trunk to reveal a set of carefully folded tarps; they’re too ratty to actually belong to him, so MJ’s betting that they’re Betty’s or Ned’s. Those two went on a big, romantic camping trip together right after high school graduation, so these could be remnants. The first tarp crinkles in Peter’s hands as he pulls it out and unfolds it. Beneath the second—removed by Ned—there’s a Burberry blanket protecting the SUV from the tarps. Honestly. Momentarily forgetting about their awkward moment in the forest, MJ catches Peter’s eye and nods at the blanket. The two of them start laughing and soon, Betty and Ned have spotted them and are laughing too. Flash is perplexed, which, as always, is when he gets grouchy and defensive.

“Can we pick up the pace, people?” he requests. “I need a hot drink and an even hotter fire. I can barely feel my fingers.”

“Wait.” MJ frowns and pauses in assisting Peter with dragging the longest tarp onto the roof of the SUV. “I have a tree, Ned and Betty each have trees… Flash, where’s your tree?”

She turns her head and notices Ned just cutting off a gesture of slicing a hand across his throat to insist on her not finishing that question. Betty sighs and explains.

“Flash’s service came back while we were out there.”

“Dude,” Peter huffs, stretching to reach and finish tugging the tarp into place, “you had service? You could’ve texted us to see if we were, I don’t know, lost.”

“This should come as no surprise to you, Parker,” Flash says snootily, “but I had other priorities.”

“Oh yeah?” MJ questions suspiciously.

“He went online and bought an artificial tree,” Betty says with a roll of her eyes.

“Sacrilege.”

“More like brilliance,” Flash corrects. “It has snow-encrusted branches, pre-strung lights, and the thing isn’t gonna die in a week, so it’s better for the environment.”

“Isn’t it plastic?” MJ checks in a slow voice, waiting for him to catch on.

“Yeah.”

“Then the process used to produce it created harmful emissions and when you find it next year and decide to throw it out because you’re no longer ‘feelin’ it’ or whatever excuse you have, it’ll go straight in the trash and from there to one of the many, many local and international landfills that house our city’s waste.”

“You’re pretty judgy for a girl who just fucking murdered a tree.”

“I did my research,” MJ counters easily. “This is a sustainably managed forest. They maintain the trees, protect new growth and transplant saplings every spring to ensure the health of not only the cash crop, but the forest as a whole. Pre-light that, dickhead.”

Feeling flustered, she goes to give Betty and Ned a hand with positioning their tree on the roof. MJ stands on the ledge offered by the open trunk and stabilizes the tree while the others guide it into position.

“Tension,” she hears Flash diagnose under his breath. He’s smart enough to not meet her eye when she glares down at him.

They encounter a small problem while loading the second tree: both Betty and Ned have selected especially full specimens. Side by side, they take up the entire roof, and MJ’s tree is still on the ground with Peter’s mountain of branches, waiting to be slung onboard.

“I don’t think it’ll fit,” Ned says after jumping into the air twice to take a look at the available space (none).

“Neither do I,” she agrees. “Guess it’s going in the trunk.”

“In the trunk?” Flash is there in a, well, flash. He slipped into the driver’s seat, ostensibly to doublecheck their route home, but really to start his seat-warmer and turn the Christmas radio station back on. His distress is juxtaposed against a jazzy rendition of ‘Winter Wonderland.’

“Yeah. There’s nowhere else.”

“Guys, please. Are you trying to get back at me for the sexual tension comment? It’s forgotten. I lied. No tension here. Cut the act and tell me that thing’s going on the roof with the others.”

“While ‘that thing’ is a capitalist nexus, it’s also a precious symbol of everything I love about Christmas,” MJ says firmly, “and it’s going in the trunk of this SUV.”

“Guys?” Flash glances at the other three, but nobody sides with him.

“Don’t worry, Flash,” Betty says kindly. “We won’t use the second tarp to go on top of the roof trees, we’ll line the trunk with it instead. There won’t be any needles, I promise.”

That is definitely not a promise she can make, and MJ’s sure her friend is aware, but she’s taking a shortcut to winning this standoff and MJ admires that. The placating seems to wash over Flash like the spirit of Christmas over Scrooge McDuck. Suddenly, he’s smiling.

“Yeah. We can do that. Of course. But.” Oh no. The smile’s warping. Flash is about to be an asshole again, MJ can see it coming fast on the horizon. “The tree’s going to take up more space than just the trunk.”

MJ peers into the SUV. Shit. He’s probably right.

“Oh,” says Betty, not getting the issue, “well, we can fold the seats down, right? The tree isn’t that tall. Come on, guys, we’ve had real problems. This is nothing!”

She beams at them and Ned wraps an arm around her, hugging her to his side.

“We’ll lose a seat in the back,” MJ says.

She’s profoundly annoyed by the satisfaction on Flash’s face as she’s the one to say the words, point out the obvious. Isn’t she always? It feels like her role in this friend group and she never minds that, never has until this very situation and its inevitable conclusion.

“Somebody’s gotta sit on somebody else’s lap,” Flash singsongs. “And it’s not me because I’m the driver!”

The other four look at each other.

“Betty,” Ned begins, “you and I could…”

“But she needs to be in the front to navigate,” Flash irritatingly points out, “and before you say it, you shouldn’t double up in the front. It’s not safe.”

Maybe they can back over him when they steal his ride and drive out of here, MJ theorizes. She sighs. Loudly. Vexedly.

“I’ll sit on Peter.”

She proceeds to make eye contact with none of them, just fishes a sloppy coil of rope out of the back and works with Betty to feed it over the trees and through the windows. Some cold air will blow into the SUV, but that won’t matter so much to her, she guesses, since she’ll have the benefit of Peter’s body heat. Who needs a seat-warmer when you can have an actual human lap? Ugh, no, not funny, but she tried to consider it in a way that doesn’t make her want to volunteer to sit in the trunk with her tree.

Finally, they lift her tree and Peter’s branches inside, position them, and shut the trunk. Flash is whistling ‘Carol of the Bells’ as he practically skips to the driver’s seat. Betty, far more compassionate, gives MJ a reassuring look before she gets in. Then Peter climbs into the back, taking the middle seat, and glances at her, lingering in the snow. She groans to herself and folds into the car as Ned gives her an encouraging pat on the back.

Maneuvering is awkward. Peter cranes his neck back like his whole body is leaning to make room for her, but it’s not possible—he’s already pressed back against the seat. She sits. He rustles beneath and behind her. Before she can panic and insist on walking home, Ned gets in and slams the door closed (Flash complains).

“Uh,” Peter starts, “do you wanna shift forward so I can buckle my—”

“Absolutely not. If we’re sharing a seat, we’re sharing a seatbelt. I don’t want to end this excursion by flying through the windshield when Flash swerves the car off the road because he sees a snowdrift that looks like a butt or something.”

“Hey! I’m an excellent driver,” he complains, starting the car.

“I could just, like, hold onto you?” Peter offers.

MJ’s heartbeat rockets. She presses the top of her head to the ceiling to ground herself.

“No. We’re using the seatbelt.”

Peter stretches it away from the seat and holds it for her to grab; she passes it back for him to fasten. The second it clicks into place, Flash throws the SUV into reverse and hits the gas. Peter must move his head away from behind hers because MJ’s genuinely surprised not to feel his nose break against the back of her skull.

“Excellent driver, huh?” she questions flatly.

“There was ice.”

“Sure there was.”

Flash winks at her in the rear-view mirror and instead of siding with her, MJ catches Ned chuckling.

“I’m sorry, but it’s funny. You guys look ridiculous seatbelted together,” he says.

But she doesn’t feel so much ridiculous as confused and on alert, swaying with Flash’s accelerations and decelerations (thankfully minor compared to how he started off). Every time, Peter’s hands jump to grab her: shoulders, waist, legs. Once, he grabs her hands and even though she still has her mittens on, dripping melting snow onto the seat on one side and the tree branch she’s clutching on the other, it’s startling.

“Sit still,” Peter tells her when she jerks out of his hold.

“You sit still.”

He laughs.

“I can’t go anywhere—you’re sitting on me.”

“Then try having less bony legs,” she suggests, though they both know the nerd has more muscle mass in one of his legs than the rest of the SUV’s occupants have in their entire bodies combined.

“Right up here!” Betty directs. “We have to pay.”

MJ sags gratefully into Peter, relaxed for the first moment of the short drive from the lot to the tree farm. She tenses up again when they pull in and Betty offers to be the one to hop out and pay for their trees. There is no reprieve from Peter’s lap. She hands over her cash to her friend with a sigh and listens while the trees are removed from the roof, shaken by a machine to rid them of loose needles, and replaced for transport home. When the trunk opens and the tree farm guy slides MJ’s little tree free, she shivers at the cold air blowing in.

“Take off your mitts and put your hands by the vent,” Peter suggests.

MJ looks around and sees that the only vent she can reach is the one their feet are bracketing, down by the floor. She fights the grip of the seatbelt to bend forward. Ah. Hot air on her freezing fingers, plus, she’s out of the draft coming through the open trunk.

“This is better. Thanks, dork.”

She glances back and spots the stricken look on her friend’s face as he watches her, still seated on his lap, but now bent over. MJ sits swiftly upright.

“I’m actually not that cold,” she says, spine rigid beneath her coat and her sweaters.

Peter sighs and, while Ned’s looking out the window to watch her tree get vibrated and wrapped, tentatively offers MJ his hands. If Ned notices that they’re holding hands when the SUV is completely repacked and they’re on their way to the place with the wine and cider, he doesn’t say a word about it. It’s shared body heat. It’s a survival tactic. That’s what MJ tells herself as she finds her and Peter’s fingers moving gently from a perfunctory clasp to intertwining.

They stay that way until Flash pulls off the road at the cider spot, which turns out to be an apple orchard. Well, more than just the orchard; there’s a whole barn here, but fancy, with a designated lot and possibly a restaurant inside.

“This is so cute!” Betty says.

MJ concentrates on shaking her hands out of Peter’s before Flash puts the SUV in park and turns around to see them.

The two of them are the last out of the car and she’s stiff with the silence, listening to their friends laugh and gripe about the cold (Flash) as they wait with Ned’s door open. Before MJ can push through her thoughts and fears to say anything, Peter’s arm comes around her. Her eyes widen. …And he unbuckles the seatbelt. Probably just because she was taking too long. She slips over into Ned’s vacant seat and is about to scramble out when Peter catches her hand. MJ turns.

“Will you tell them we’ll meet them inside?” he requests.

Heart hammering, she relays the message, then looks on as Ned and Betty hustle Flash through the doors before can make another of his unwelcome comments or otherwise interfere.

“I think we really need to talk,” Peter says, after MJ pulls the door closed to preserve what little heat is left in the vehicle.

“We talk all the time,” she argues. She thinks, Yes, please talk to me.

“About a lot of stuff. You know, most stuff.” He wedges his fingers under the edge of his hat to run them nervously through his hair.

“That’s a generalization, but a fair one.”

“But, you know, lately, I’ve been, uh, wishing that we could talk about…”

“…even more stuff?” MJ guesses, hopes.

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

“You know, our schools aren’t that far apart,” he says, like it’s the first time he’s realizing this.

She smiles wryly.

“I’m aware. That’s why I came out for Thanksgiving first year when you couldn’t make it back to Queens. Even if we did eat take-out shrimp Pad Thai instead of homecooked turkey.”

“And,” Peter adds, “it’s why I showed up at your dorm to help you study for that midterm you were stressing about in October.”

“And why I picked up when you called me every night,” MJ says, quieter. He smiles softly.

“I was talking about the distance.”

Summoning her courage, she looks him right in the eye and lets her still-uncovered hand sneak back over his.

“What distance?”

“You’re my best friend,” Peter starts. “You and Ned.” MJ frowns. Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, she’s misjudged this, seriously misjudged this.

“Oh. Well. Great. Cool.”

“No, MJ!” he says quickly, noticing the look on her face. He flips his hand under hers so their palms meet. “I’m definitely in love with you, I just mean… Well, oops, I guess I said it.”

She’s pretty impressed with her own control over her facial features—maintaining a slightly-happier-than-neutral expression—when half of her brain is setting off fireworks that seem to be landing and fizzing around on the other half. He’s in love with her. Definitely.

“For as fast as your mind works, your mouth always manages to get ahead of it,” she observes.

Peter’s expression goes from tortured and fumbling to sharp and decisive.

“That’s good advice.”

“What? That wasn’t advi—”

He darts forward and kisses her, hand emphatically clutching hers. There’s a humorous smack when their mouths separate.

“Oh my god,” Peter says, “I forgot to ask if it was ok to do that.”

MJ smirks.

“My only complaint is that you beat me to it when I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that all day.”

“I did wonder,” he admits with a small smile.

“And you couldn’t have helped me out?” she asks, exasperated.

“A big part of being friends with you is knowing you rarely need help. You’re good, like, ninety percent of the time.”

“What do you do the other ten percent?”

Peter shrugs.

“Kiss you and ask if you have plans for New Year’s? By the way, do you have plans for New Year’s?”

He tries to adopt a casual expression but now that MJ thinks about it, she can’t recall the last time her friend looked at her with anything like mild interest. He can’t pull it off anymore, if he ever could. Apparently, she wasn’t always watching that well, because she clearly didn’t know everything.

Peter loves her. He loves her.

“I have a feeling I’ll probably be available,” she tells him. “I have a bad habit of trying to be where you are.”

“I love that about you.”

MJ kisses him quickly, then shoves him away, nearly into the pine tree resting on his other side. Whoops. It’s just that she can feel how easy it would be to get caught up in this moment, and they’re still in the back of Flash’s SUV. People are waiting for them. She takes a deep breath and gives Peter a searching look.

“If we walk in there like this—” She shakes their clasped hands. “—what do I say?”

“Tell them your hands were cold.”

“I… I don’t want to hide it, I just…”

“I know. It’s ok. It’s new.”

“Yeah.”

Peter nods sympathetically. He’s her friend first; he’s not going to push her to speak before she’s ready. (He probably knows he couldn’t if he wanted to.)

She hauls the door open and they stride through the snowy parking lot together. The sun’s already struggling to come out and flakes whip high into the air, catching in the light. They step inside the building to see brightness streaming through the windows, their trio of friends crowded around a table. Flash seems to be making Ned sprinkle cinnamon into his hot apple cider while he films it—presumably to post for the enjoyment of the Flash Mob. (That’s still going. He has a shocking number of followers.) Betty turns and her gaze slips down to their joined hands. She smiles.

MJ has the excuse ready. When Flash and Ned glance over, she’s prepared to tell them her hands were cold.

She opens her mouth.

“Peter’s my boyfriend now.”

#my writing #spideychelle secret santa #spideychelle #spideychelle fanfiction #peter parker #peter x mj #peter x michelle #peter parker x michelle jones #michelle jones #ned leeds #betty brant #Flash Thompson #nettypot

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madmadmilk · 4 years

Note

Ned finishing his peach cobbler from ffh 🙈

Ned: “I remember when Betty and I first fell in love. We were eating peach cobbler and—....”

Turns out idk what peach cobbler looks like and couldn’t be bothered to look it up 😂 but anyway this is them eating some peach cobbler after they land back home 💕

send me sketch suggestions 〰️✍🏼🌈💕✨

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peterflopker · 4 years

Text

Everytime JJJ posts slander on Spider-Man, Flash and his Spider-Man fanclub spams his inbox with “Okay Boomer”. JJJ gets irrationally angry.

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incorrect-ironfamily · 5 years

Text

Ned: L is for the way you look at me !

Betty: O is for the only one I see !

Peter: V is very very... extraordinary <3

MJ: Egg

#incorrect far from home #incorrect peter parker #incorrect michelle jones #incorrect ned leeds #incorrect betty brant #incorrect petermj #spiderman far from home #far from home #spideychelle #petermj #nettypot

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milkmeharry · 4 years

Text

spiderman trio in quarantine

a/n: i was bored and wondered what mj, ned, and peter would be doing. this is my first headcanon so bear with me ! enjoy :)

ALSO for those of you who don’t know of zoom it’s online program where you can have video conferences (it’s mainly used for school or work related call but you can totally have zoom calls with friends and family) and kast is an online program where you can screen share a movie or show with other people while on a video call and chat

- so shelter-in-place was put into effect for nyc and midtown school of tech went online

-peter's immune but could be a carrier to aunt may

- definitely limits going outside at first

-but he notices how much he's really needed out there

-he spends his days getting and giving out groceries to those who need it

-maybe helping out clinics make sure things are going smoothly

-or maybe swinging around new york to entertain the kids stuck in their apartments

-of course, crime doesn't stop even during a pandemic

-so spiderman is still out there

-maybe he'll post on his official social media

-and promote social distancing

-he'd probably bust people for going outside and lecture them on social distancing

- at home, he'd stick to staying in his room

-and the few times he'd leave his room he'd watch a movie with may or cook with her because she missed him

-knowing peter he'd probably try to build ventilators to donate to hospitals

-he'd split his time between school, mj, spiderman duties, and building the ventilators

-speaking of mj

-they miss each other

-only got a few months to really be together

-so there'd definitely be plenty of zoom dates with mj

-maybe they change the background of their zoom call to both be paris

-and peter tries to make a joke like "well we finally made it to Paris"

-and mj giggles

-they'd probably spend all night talking to each other

-and fall asleep on call

-they'd really miss each other's hugs

-and kisses

-peter would probably visit her

-and stand outside her window on the fire escape

-but he wouldn't dare go inside

-mj would head to the window and talk to him

-but they'd stay 6 ft apart bc social distancing

-they'd get creative though

-maybe peter would set up a makeshift table on the escape

-and mj would set up a table in her room

-they'd both bring their own meals

-a little battery-powered candle would be sitting on both of their tables

-maybe even a little flower in a small vase

-and they'd have a candlelit dinner

-or maybe mj would pull up a chair

-and read to peter through the window

-ORRR she'd bring her sketch pad and draw peter

-she'd give it to him and he'd hang it up in his room

-speaking of mj in quarantine

-she would probably have ordered a bunch of books before the shelter-in-place order

-and use the time to make a large dent in her list of books she wanted to read

-her sleep schedule would be the WORST out of all of them

-staying up at all hours of the night to read

-or draw

-she'd practice her writing skills

-we all know mj has a stan account

-she'd finally update her ongoing spiderman fanfic

-of course, she'd be interrupted by the group chat blowing up her phone

-it's mainly ned's hourly "well shit, what are y'all up to" texts

-mj would mostly ignore them

-peter would send a picture of him swinging

-the group chat would pop off at weird times of the day

-it'll be like 2:11 AM and ned would spark a random convo about star wars

-of course, they'd all be awake

-peter and ned would go back and forth

-mj would just stare at her phone

-until midway into their convo

-she'd text "go to bed dorks"

-and then all of them would go off about how each other should go to sleep

-only to ignore each other and be up for another hour

-bickering about everything and nothing at the same time

-maybe even group kast calls

-where they screen share a movie

-so they can all watch

-because they finally want mj to watch the series

-mj, of course, did not care

-but for peter, she did

-ned would most likely be building more lego sets

-take this time to finish the sets he never even started

-he'd probably feel a little lonely

-spend some time going through pictures from last summer

-he'd most likely come across pictures of him and betty

-he'd probably go back and forth with himself on whether he should text her

-in the end, betty would end up texting ned

-maybe a funny meme she found that reminded her of him

-or a news article about star wars or whatever

-and the pair would fall for each other again just as they did last summer

-since midtown is online they'll have online zoom classes

-Mr.Harrington most likely doesn't know how to use zoom

-so every zoom call starts with a 5 minute silence from everyone

-except Mr.Harrington is just staring at the screen

-trying to figure out if he's doing it right

-he'll most likely close the tab and spend another 5 minutes pulling it back up

-the class is probably going to draw over his screen and he won't know how to turn the feature off

-flash would most likely draw a penis and write penis parker on it

-Mr.Harrington would probably mute himself halfway and no one would say anything

-probably try to crack a joke about how lonely it would be without his ex-wife

-needless to say everyone is lonely

-but they all have their ways to try setting a new norm for the time being

a/n: requests are open btw!

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diazevan · 5 years

Photo

Countdown to Spider-Man: Far From Home [10 days to go] ↳ Ned & Betty

#marveledit #mcuedit #spidermanedit #ned leeds #betty brant #ned x betty #n #nettypot #nedbetty #nedleedsedit #bettybrantedit #spideycentral #ffhedit #far from home #ffh spoilers #countdowntoffh #i'm so excited for these two #libby's creation

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littlejeanniebean · 4 years

Text

In Which Peter's Being Weird Again

A/N: Sequel to Shuri’s secret tumblr. Basically AU post-Endgame where Far From Home hasn’t happened yet.

Inspired by a post of @trinity-blaze’s, I hope you like Fluffy McFluffles :) Xhosa is courtesy of Google Translate, so if anyone knows better, please let me know!

- J xx

“What’s up with you, man?”

“Hmm?” Peter looked up from his phone, “Sorry, Ned, what were you saying?”

“Look, I know the whole Liz thing hit you hard and all and then Mr. Stark just…” Ned waved his arms around but couldn’t find a tactful way to finish his sentence, “Anyway -”

“Who is she?” MJ cut in.

“Who wha...? I never said anything about anyone, who are we talking about?” Peter tried not to choke on the pudding he'd been eating. Even with his weird tingle-power thing, he never knew what to expect from MJ. How long had she been sitting there?

“You’ve found another unhealthy obsession. It’s a classic case of transference.”

“I - I - It’s not - I’m not - we’re just friends!”

Ned gasped, “So there is someone! Good for you, Pete!”

“We’re just friends. I’ve known her since junior high.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the other boy held up his hands dramatically, “I’ve known you since junior high, which means I must know her, who is this chick?”

“Uh, degrading much?” Betty joined MJ’s table holding a tray of Mediterranean salad with a side of Caesar salad and a fruit cup for desert.

“Yeah, Ned, you gotta show some respect,” said Peter.

“You can’t be a feminist of convenience, Peter Parker,” MJ dog-eared her page. This was getting good. “We can educate Leeds, here and get you to spill the tea at the same time.”

The boy set his jaw, “Are you saying I can’t have a platonic relationship with an intelligent, funny, sensitive...”

“No, no, go on, you were saying?” the observant girl smirked.

Suddenly, the top floor of the museum next door gave way to a gigantic marble statue that might’ve been a war horse before it’s head got broken off. The building began to topple.

“Holy sh-where’d Peter go?” Betty was the first to turn back around.

“Uh, his aunt said she wanted to see that exhibit today - he must’ve gone after her!” Ned thought quickly, grabbing her hand, “But we’ve gotta run before -”

Spider-man held the building upright while a massive Ant-man fought off what looked like a swarm of very persistent bees. The gigantified headless war horse, however, moved inch by inch towards the windows of Midtown’s cafeteria.

MJ thought briefly that Ned was getting better at making up excuses for Peter’s weird behavior before she started running for her life.

After saving thirty-nine civilians mid-fall and securing the main structural supports the young hero was out of web, but the stupid war horse was still slipping. “Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh nononono -”

“Hey, Spider-boy, hook me up!” an unfamiliar and decidedly human voice with a cute accent entered his comms.

“Who-”

“Above you!”

A jet so soundless and practically invisible save for rainbow-rings like those you see in oil puddles hovered above him. It’s belly didn’t open for the landing gear so much as morph into it. “Attach the horse to the chassis! I can conduct a molecular-destabilizing current through your webs and - Ndenza umsebenzi wakho! - Sorry, that was my brother. You got it?”

“I’m out of web fluid! But…” Peter glances at the window to his chemistry lab fifteen meters away, “I can make more! Give me two minutes?” he leapt away.

“Oi! What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” she yelled at him, but hers was a short-range comms hack, not because she couldn’t do better but because time was off the essence, and yet off Itsy-Bitsy goes without so much a warning, leaving her to - “What, Brother?”

“Can I say it?” T’Challa rumbled, amused.

“I know where you live,” she bit back.

“I’m coming to you.”

“You’ll do no such thing, if you leave those talks now, Mother will have your head and then mine!”

"I'm back!" Peter swung in and did his bit.

"That took, like, thirty seconds! You said two minutes! I was having a straight-up meltdown!" she scolded, even as the statue disintegrated, "Dude, what are your webs made of? I'm only reading 15% damage!"

"It was a conservative estimate. And it's a custom carbon isomer with some stuff I got from toothpaste, superglue and whatever preservatives they put in those weird sticky buns you can get on ninety-second, but I - Hold up, how do I know you're one of the good guys?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe because I just saved your arachnid ass. Anyway, this was fun! We should team up again sometime -"

"Wait! What's your name? I mean, clearly your tech isn't from around here…"

"... It's Shuri."

"Holy sh-"

"Iknewit! Iknewit! I knew I shouldn't have said anything! You're probably some old dude with a weird cosplay fetish -"

"Do I look like an old dude?" Peter checked his toned torso and limbs self-consciously. He supposed he had put on some weight since the Blip, eating his feelings with May and yeah, maybe not doing as much friendly neighborhood patrols as he used to - then Peter got an idea. A really, really dumb idea. Or a really good one, but before he can decide which, his mouth is moving, "My name is Peter Parker."

Shuri was silent.

"Nice to meet you, Princess," he did an awkward bow-curtsey on the roof of the museum.

"Peter Parker?" she asked softly, "As in sciencepunsarelife on Tumblr, Peter Parker? Who I was just talking to about the inefficiency and unhygienic nature of your so-called transportation system?"

"How do you - nevermind, you're a genius. Not that I didn't think you were a genius before, but now I know exactly which genius you are - holy sh-"

"Yeah, yeah, don't make it weird, okay?"

"Too late, weird is my middle name. Peter Weird Parker. That's what they call me. Literally. Ask MJ or Betty or Flash - I'm gonna stop talking now. Have a nice, uh… day? Trip? I hope the global partnership talks go well!"

"Thanks, sci! I mean, Spider-Man! I mean, Peter! You know who I'm talking to. Because I'm talking to you - Ndiyazi ukuba kufuneka ndiyeke ukuthetha! - Sorry, I should go. I think our fans have enough pictures."

"Huh?" Peter turns to look at the crowd gathered in the street below, spotting Flash filming for his vlog, "Oh, yeah… so, uh… I'll message you?"

"Yeah," her ship glided away with the grace of a swan, as though it were moving through water instead of air.

"You know, you never describe the Quinjet with that many metaphors."

"How long have you been listening?” Peter didn't realize he had been thinking out loud. “Ned, that was a private conversation!"

"I'm your guy in the chair! I'm your wing-man! It's kind of my job."

Peter could picture him swivelling in said chair in the computer lab and hoped he'd spin out and fall on his nosy face. "Well, then where were you when I was tangled in my own tongue and slipping in my own saliva back there?"

Honestly, Ned was enjoying the free entertainment, but he said, "Young love is supposed to be nervous. And it needs to come naturally. A good wing-man knows when to hang back."

"What do you know? You haven't kissed a girl since seventh grade!" changed back into his civilian clothes in the boy's washroom back at Midtown.

"And you've kissed a girl when?"

Peter hung up on him.

"Peter Parker," MJ stopped just short of smacking into him as he rounded the corner.

"Oh, no."

"Oh, yes," Betty, ever the journalist, stood five feet of pure intimidating next to her.

"Who is she?" MJ did the MJ-squint.

Still running on his heroics-high, he lied. To MJ's squint-face. He was gonna die. "Ugh, fine, she's from Wakanda, met her through the Stark Internship, but I'm not supposed to talk about what we were working on, so don't ask anymore questions and - and this is the important part: We're. Just. Friends."

"Is he lying?" Betty stage whispered.

The MJ-squint intensified, "We shall see. We shall see, Peter Parker."

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shakespeareanqueer · 4 years

Text

MJ’s Exes (one-shot)

Pairing: Peter Parker x reader / MJ x reader (former/platonic) / Spideychelle (former/platonic) / Nettypot / MJ x Glory Grant

Summary: MJ’s punk band plays a special concert at Stark Tower

Word Count: 3,704 words

My Masterlist

Contents: Mentions of domestic dispute and suggested domestic abuse. Flash is a dick, but he gets his dues.

A/N: This is for @hollandraul Jazzy’s 400 Followers Writing Challenge! My prompt was “You don’t have to leave so soon.” Thanks for letting me participate and congrats again on the milestone!

Edited additional A/n: In this au, the events of Far From Home happened but not the end credit scenes. So, MJ and Peter dated, but the world didn’t find out about Peter’s identity. Also Betty and Ned never broke up because I said so.

Photo by Amer Miftari on Unsplash

This was a weird idea. MJ had a lot of weird ideas, but this was one of her weirder ideas. But it was MJ and you could never say no to her, so here you were, in a soundproof auditorium in Stark Tower, staring at a robot as it set up your drum kit.

“His name is Dum-E,” you heard just over your shoulder, which startled you.

You and the speaker flinched as Dum-E dropped a drumstick onto the cymbal.

“I’m Peter, by the way.” He extended his hand and you shook it.

You nodded knowingly. “MJ’s ex.”

MJ and you had something very important in common: your bluntness, and your refusal to dance around the truth for the sake of anyone else’s comfort. It’s why you got so close after you moved into her apartment building.

You nearly tripped over her on the stairs, because she was wearing all black and blending into the dank wall. You were all ready to curse her out for being in your way, but then she looked up at you with big chestnut eyes through her crimped bangs and the breath was blown right out of your bi-ass lungs.

“You’re in 435,” she stated simply.

“Yes,” you replied.

“You play the drums really loudly.” You couldn’t read the expression on her face as she recounted this fact. In your defense, it’s really hard to play the drums any way other than really loudly. “It annoys everyone, especially Mrs. Leary in 437.”

You just nodded, your lips curled up into your teeth in one of those smile/grimaces, like you’d give someone you barely know when you pass them in the hallway at school.

She flipped through the yellow sketchbook in her lap, in which she’d been carefully shading something when you’d stumbled across her. When she reached a certain page, she held it up to you. It was a sketch of Mrs. Leary, her face contorted into an expression of anger, like a boiling kettle about to explode. You laughed raucously and it rang and echoed through the stairwell. After a few dry chuckles, her laugh became as hearty as yours, until someone in one of the apartments just off the stairwell a few floors up poked their head out and screamed,”Keep it down!”

You both flipped them off in perfect unison.

It was then you knew that you’d be great friends.

Peter laughed, more than used to MJ’s bluntness at this point, but rarely expecting it from anyone else and therefore still taken aback. “Are you… making a statement about me or introducing yourself?”

You gave a single chuckle and said, “Both, I guess.”

Your friendship blossomed quickly after your stairwell encounter. You sent each other conspiracy theory articles back and forth via email, because neither of you were on any social media platforms. She spent a lot of time in your apartment because her parents argued, which was the one fact that neither of you ever just out-and-out stated.

When you first heard her beautiful voice humming in the stairwell on her way up to her apartment after school one day, you knew she just had to join your punk band. You ambushed her and rushed her into your own apartment, buzzing with excitement. Though you both had dry senses of humor and give-no-shits attitudes, your energy levels typically surpassed hers, but she found it infectious.

She’d given in after about ten minutes of pleading, and you gave her a big squeeze, which she realized was the first hug she’d received in a long time. She liked it, and craved more of it, but she didn’t want to admit why. That was the beauty of your friendship with MJ; you would mention unnecessary truths to every other person on the planet for no communicable reason, but you never needed to with one another, subsisting entirely on a nonverbal plane of communication. So she took to hugging you randomly, grabbing you awkwardly and stiffly, at random times. You would just smile and wrap your arms around her waist or shoulders and squeeze affectionately. Sometimes you would press a kiss to her temple if you were conveniently placed, and she would blush.

Sophomore year, she was finally invited to a party, her first. You went to a different school and had a different group of friends, so you were more experienced with these kinds of events. Her friend on the academic decathlon team, Liz, was hosting. Though she hadn’t phrased it as ‘friend.’ She had just said teammate. She wouldn’t say so, but she was nervous. So you helped her pick out an outfit.

You found an old dress in the back of your closet that you’d worn to a punk festival you’d performed in, taupe and strapless with lots of ruffles. She tried it on and the breath left your lungs. She stood in front of the floor-length mirror on your closet door, fiddling with the layers.

You came up behind her, ready to grip her shoulders and tell her how stunning she looked, when you noticed a blossoming bruise on her upper back.

You remembered the day before when she had come racing through your door, tears streaming down her face but trying to hold them back and just launched herself face first into your bed. You’d gone to lay a hand comfortingly on her back and she had jerked out of the way, her eyes wild with what almost resembled fear. You let her initiate all touching from that point forward in the evening, careful to avoid her back.

This was one of those moments where, with anyone else, you would have stated with no decorum, “You have a bruise on your back.” It wouldn’t have held any judgment, merely a statement of fact, but you were socially aware enough to know that most people would perceive judgment anyway. MJ knew you well enough not to perceive judgment that didn’t exist, but your friendship was also such that you didn’t need to have the exchange at all. You locked eyes in the mirror and her face dropped. She had clearly gotten psyched about the dress, and your sad look after looking at her bare shoulders told her everything she needed to know.

But you you refused to give up. “It’s autumn anyway,” you said, turning to your dresser. “Try it over a long-sleeve tee. It’ll also make it less fancy. It sounds like a pretty low-key high school house party.” You held up a black tee triumphantly. “Besides,” you smirked. “You don’t want your host having to clean too many jaws up off the floor.”

MJ did that thing that always made you melt. She glanced down at her shoes, clearly trying to suppress a smile and a blush, then glanced up at you nervously through her bangs. You died.

She returned that night to your room instead of her own, because before she even stepped through her door she could hear her parents engaged in a.…heated debate. She found you lying on your bed in a long t-shirt and no pants, which took her off guard, so she needed a minute. But you had recognized the look in her eyes when she walked in that she had some gossip to spill, so you scooched over in your bed to make her space. Once she collected herself and cleared her throat, she peeled the dress off, leaving her in the shirt you’d lent her and leggings, and crawled into bed next to you.

“So Peter Parker-” she began.

“The friend you sit with at lunch?” you interjected for clarification.

She cleared her throat again and avoided your gaze, fiddling with your comforter. “Well, I mean. I wouldn’t call us friends.”

You furrowed your brow. “Don’t you sit with him every day at lunch?”

“Yeah, ‘cause we’re both losers and I don’t have any friends,” she mumbled, trapping her lip in her teeth.

You grabbed her face with both hands and turned her to you. She looked startled but let you. “Listen here, Michelle Jones. You are not a loser. You’re not cool or popular, but the people who are, they’re the losers. You’re totally rad. And I can’t speak to your relationships with others, though they sound like friends to me, but either way you always have at least one friend, you got that? You have me.”

You let go of her face. “You got that?” You poked a finger right at her. She nodded, a smile tugging at her lips.

You leaned back against the pillow. “So your not-friend Peter Parker…”

“I’m Y/N,” you introduced yourself. The robot that had not-so-gracefully set up your drum kit wheeled itself over to you and gave a little whirring noise. You patted it on the grabby thing that seemed to be its main tool and said, “Thank you, Dum-E.” It whirred with satisfaction and rolled away.

Your reaction to the little robot had been exactly what Peter’s always was. You treated it like a person but not like a child. You weren’t condescending, nor were you weirded out by its anthropomorphism. Peter smiled at that. “Nice to meet you, Y/N.”

“You’re the one with,” you tapped your ear. “Sensory sensitivities.”

Peter cleared his throat. There was your bluntness again, but again with no judgment lacing your voice.

When MJ had, at the first rehearsal after her return from Europe, told you she wanted her boyfriend to be able to hear the band that meant so much to her, but that punk concerts were way too overwhelming for him, you were quick to recommend a private concert where the amp could be turned way down and he could wear dampening headphones.

When, only a few weeks later, MJ told you she and Peter decided to break up, that they weren’t as good a match as they figured and Peter was way too busy with his ‘internship,’ you had been very supportive. Perhaps too supportive. She insisted she was fine, and you could read her pretty well and she seemed perfectly fine, but you seized the excuse to hold her close to you and just snuggle her (for reasons of friendly comfort, obviously). You assumed the private concert was canceled, but didn’t say anything.

A few weeks after that you made your move. You dated for a few weeks also, but both of you quickly realized that you missed just being physically affectionate friends and the added pressure of romantic involvement was unnecessary and nerve-wracking. You’d stated it out loud to each other in mutual relief and watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire like the past few weeks hadn’t happened.

By the time she finally mentioned the concert again, you’d forgotten about it to be totally honest. She told you to pretend to be shocked that Peter was able to get a space in Stark Tower even though he was just a lowly intern, but you knew his secret. You’d been the first she told when her suspicions arose that Peter was Spider-Man, and the first she texted when they were confirmed (and that if she died that night, to under no circumstances tell anyone at the funeral about her crush on Peter).

All this to say that though he’d never met you before, you knew lots about him. You knew why he had sensory sensitivities, that it was because of his being Spider-Man, but it wouldn’t have mattered regardless.

“Let’s get this show on the road!” Glory Grant, your keyboardist, brushed past you, making a beeline for her instrument.

You smiled at Peter and headed for your drums. He put a pair of clunky headphones on—as did you, as the drummer and therefore receiver of the brunt of the ear-damaging decibels— and settled into a seat in the front row of the little press auditorium Pepper and Happy had let him rent.

Others in the audience included Peter’s best friend, Ned Leeds, Ned’s girlfriend, Betty Brant, and Glory Grant’s ex-boyfriend, Flash Thompson. Flash was an asshole, but Glory invited him everywhere, even after they broke up, out of pity, because he had a shitty home-life. He acted like that gave him an excuse to be a dick to everyone though.

You played a few songs, some of your collective favorites. Your ‘greatest hits,’ you could say. MJ sounded amazing; she had such an incredible singing voice. It was a miracle Glory hit all the right keys what with all the staring at MJ she was doing, not that you could blame her.

And you nearly got off beat twice when you caught a glimpse at Peter. It wasn’t because he was looking at you special or anything. He was barely looking at you at all. His gaze flitted around the stage, darting between the members of the band and their instruments, riveted by every aspect of the performance.

He was such a dork. He was rocking his head to the beat, slightly off at times but doing his best, undeterrably enthusiastic. He had a goofy grin spread across his face, his eyes wide and sparkling with excitement. MJ was belting and screaming and he was just bopping along. There were little crinkles by the sides of his eyes and his hair flopped in his eyes when he tried to lightly head bang. He was the picture of adorableness and you couldn’t help the smile that crept onto your face as you watched him, letting your muscle memory lead you through the song.

When the final song was over, as indicated by MJ sticking the mic back in the stand and you dropping your drum sticks, the reaction was somehow way more gratifying than an entire bar of hollering drunk strangers.

Betty and Ned clapped politely, perhaps a bit louder than usual to make up for the dearth of people in the audience, but nothing beyond hands slapping together. Peter, on the other hand, stood up and whooped and hollered, clapping boisterously before raising one fist in the air and pumping repeatedly while he whistled. He jumped up and down and cheered raucously, his smile spread so wide you could see his gums. His unbridled enthusiasm, his full, unwavering support of his friend, his refusal to be embarrassed by the pure act of enjoyment; it made your heart swell.

Flash was sitting with his arms crossed. He rolled his eyes.

He looked right at Glory when he said, “Penis Parker’s just being nice. It was a lot of loud noise.”

Most people in the room rolled their eyes in unison.

“If punk isn’t your thing, then why did you even come, Flash?” Betty asked.

Flash shrugged. “Didn’t have anything else going on; wanted to see if Parker could really get a room in Stark Tower or if he was just lying again, like he did about knowing Spider-Man.”

MJ was seething, her hands held in tight fists at her side, her jaw clenched.

You began to stand from your drum set. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

“What? I’m just telling the truth, regardless of if it hurts people. Isn’t that your thing? Don’t you and MJ get off on that or something?”

In one swift move, so fast you could barely comprehend what was happening, MJ leaped off of the stage and her fist made contact with Flash’s jaw.

Your visceral reaction to the gut-wrenching sound of bone crunching was to crouch to the ground and turn away muttering, “Ooooh no no no no no.”

Betty and Ned were frozen to the spot, both staring at Flash as he tumbled to the ground, making noises you could only describe as squealing. The shocked expressions on the couple’s faces were identical, with their mouths agape and their eyebrows in their hairlines.

MJ stood there, shaking her hand. A quick glance in her direction confirmed that it ached, and might bruise later, but was fine.

Peter, ever the kind-hearted soul, instantly moved towards his injured bully. He crouched down on the ground and tried to get Flash to move his hands away from his jaw so he could assess the damage. But Flash was writhing around on the ground, making inhuman noises of pain and suffering that were almost certainly overdramatic.

Glory nearly knocked her keyboard over in her rush to run over and place a big ol’ kiss on MJ’s lips.

Being honest with yourself, what motivated you to go over and help Peter help Flash was not that you actually wanted to help Flash. It was because Peter was hoisting the human embodiment of a lice-ridden suede couch abandoned on the side of the road to his feet using an unreasonable amount of strength for his relatively small frame. His Spider-Man strength. It was your knowledge of that and your desire to keep Peter from outing himself that propelled you forward to place Flash’s other arm around your shoulder. You were barely supporting any of the weight, but you made a good show of it, helping drag Flash towards the medical wing. He was still whimpering but made little show of resistance.

When you finally reached the medical bay, doctors still had to be summoned. Very few people were in the tower at all that day, let alone medical staff. Flash laid back in a hospital bed, and when he quickly fell unconscious due to the pain, you felt just a little bad for believing he was being overdramatic.

Peter plopped down in the chair next to the bed, sighing and running his hand down his face in exhaustion. You hesitated for a moment, but ultimately sat down in the chair next to his.

Peter’s features registered shock—as much as they could with the tiredness seeping through them, anyway. “You-you don’t have to stay,” he stammered.

“I know,” you said. “I want to.” You elbowed him in the ribs. “In case you fall asleep before the doctors get here, I can let them know what’s up.” You glanced at Flash’s form in the bed. “Besides, if he’s a dick when he wakes up, I have a feeling you would let him walk all over you, but I’m not afraid to deck an asshole even when his jaw’s already broken from one punch.”

Peter laughed but made no further objections, opting instead to lean back further into the seat and closing his eyes.

Under your breath, you mumbled, “Can take out superheroes, but refuse to lay a hand on a bag of dicks in your class.”

Peter’s eyes shot open. “What?” he breathed.

Well, shit. Even while telling him off about his super-hero secret, you forgot about his enhanced hearing. Which was the exact reason you were even here to begin with. Whoops.

You smiled guiltily at him.

He directed his gaze to his lap. “Did MJ tell you while you were dating?” he asked quietly. He supposed he couldn’t expect anything less. One tells their significant other everything. He certainly did when he was dating MJ.

“No,” you answered quietly.

Oh, that was kind of worse. She’d told you when you weren’t dating. She’d betrayed his trust. How many other people did she tell?

It was like you could read his mind. “She didn’t tell anyone else.”

“Oh?”

“She only told me ‘cause she kinda had to. She’d told me her suspicions, so she had to tell me when they were confirmed same as she would’ve told me if they’d been proven false. So, no, she didn’t tell me while we were dating. If anything, she told me when you were dating,” you explained.

“Oh,” he said again.

There were several awkward beats.

“I’m a huge fan, by the way,” you finally offered into the silence. “You’re probably my favorite Avenger.”

Peter’s cheeks flushed pink and he scoffed. “You’re just saying that.”

You shook your head firmly. “I don’t just say things. I’m like MJ. I always tell the truth, even when I shouldn’t.” You stared at your lap, guilt flooding your veins. Flash’s accusation hadn’t been completely off the mark, and it made you feel like a bit of a hypocrite for wanting to punch him. “You heard Flash,” you mumbled

Peter swallowed. “Oh, well, then… thanks.”

After a few more awkward moments, you rose to stand. “I’ll just-” You made a vague gesture towards the door, unable to make eye contact, tears beginning to well in your eyes at how badly you’d messed up. MJ had told you in confidence, had made you swear not to let Peter know you knew. Guilt and regret were gnawing at your bones for multiple reasons, and you felt like you might be sick.

Peter’s gaze sought yours relentlessly, until you had no choice but to stare into his kind chestnut eyes. “You don’t have to leave so soon,” he urged sincerely.

You gave a small, sad, grateful smile and settled back down into the chair you had vacated.

“You sounded really amazing today, by the way. And I’m not just saying that either.”

You knew he wasn’t. You could hear the sincerity leaking through his tone, and it made pride swell in your chest and tears well in your eyes again, making it difficult to speak your response. But you managed to whisper, “Thank you.”

Even despite the shock that had flooded adrenaline into his system when he heard your off-handed comment, exhaustion was quickly dragging Peter down. He nodded off within minutes, and as it turned out, the tiredness was infectious. By the time you woke up to the sound of a nurse finally entering the room and rousing Flash, your head was on Peter’s shoulder, and you could feel his deep, even, sleepy breaths through your hair.

Despite the fact that Flash’s resumed whining and moaning was the background noise to your idyllic little scene, a scene that one could almost call romantic, you smiled.

#my post #jazzy400writingchallenge #fanfic #my arachnidumbass #spider-man #peter parker #mj jones #ned leeds #betty brant #glory grant #flash thompson #spideychelle #peter parker x reader #nettypot #fanfiction #mcu #marvel

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spideychelleforever · 4 years

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Ned: MJ please, we know about your feelings for Peter.

MJ: Feelings-fe-feelings? Of rage and annoyance at how dorky he is?

Betty: Nope, your love for him!

MJ: I don’t love him! I’m the exact opposite actually.

Ned: You hate him?

MJ: Yes!

Ned: Well say it then. “I hate Peter Parker.”

MJ: I-

MJ: I-ha...well... I..

MJ:

MJ: ............

Ned and Betty: :)

MJ:

#spideychelle #michelle jones #zendaya #mj #peter parker #tom holland #tomdaya #spideychelle headcanon #zendaya coleman #michelle #spideychelle is canon #nedbetty #jacob batalon #betty brant #angourie rice #nettypot

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forasecondtherewedwon · 4 years

Text

Beyond a Seasonable Doubt

Pairing: Peter Parker x Michelle Jones (Spideychelle) Rating: T Word count: 7478 @spideychelleweek

Spideychelle Week Day 2: Soulmate AU

Summary: Peter's been living in winter for 17 years. A single smile from his soulmate would bring him into spring. Today, he finally has a real conversation with MJ, the girl he's pretty sure is the one.

Every day, Peter Parker wakes up certain of three things: that he won’t leave himself enough time to finish his cereal, that he should dress for snow, and the (probable) identity of his soulmate.

Ok, the first one’s not a certainty per say―sometimes he has microwave oatmeal or blueberry toaster waffles―but the second one’s been true his whole life. Every single day, for the past seventeen years and change, he’s been swaddled for winter weather. Could be January when he’s three years old and his puffy snowsuit looks totally appropriate as his mom pushes him down a slushy sidewalk in his stroller. Could be August 10th just last year and he’s wearing a woolen fisherman sweater (inherited from his Uncle Ben) and two pairs of socks to his own birthday pool party. Until his soulmate is confirmed, he won’t be part of the regular changing of the seasons that, up to this point, he’s only heard about and seen pictures and video of. For all intents and purposes, in Peter’s world, it’s winter. Some people say the date they’re stuck on bothers them. Personally, he doesn’t know how it could, since he’s never known anything different. You just have to layer up and get on with it.

His arm’s deep in his backpack, feeling around for the scarf he could swear he stuffed in there yesterday, as he walks into the kitchen. It’s a rare day; both Happy and May are at the table, working from home today. With ambivalence to the inevitability that he’ll be dumping half of it in the sink, Peter starts in on his Cheerios. He’s less apathetic about watching his dining companions. They haven’t had the easiest path, so he studies them for clues. May’s first soulmate was Uncle Ben. That’s not up for debate. Within 24 hours of when they met, the seasons adjusted themselves and two more people joined the rest of the world’s matched soulmates in enjoying the proper rotation of the earth around the sun. After Ben’s death, May told Peter that the seasons continued to change for her, but they slowed. Once a couple of years passed, there was a noticeable lag. She fell out of step with the world. When Happy came on the scene, things got back on track. Voilà, soulmate number two. From what Peter’s read, it’s not that unusual to find another soulmate if you lose your first, but honestly, he’d be happy just to get one.

May and Happy are dressed for mid-spring.

“Rain today?” Peter wonders, spooning Cheerios into his mouth.

“It’s holding off for now,” his aunt informs him.

When he turns to look out the window, there’s a cottony haze of thick snowflakes, like all of Queens is having a pillow fight on the rooftops. He sighs with acceptance rather than despair. Nothing was going to change overnight. It couldn’t, not without her, whoever she is. (He thinks he knows.)

“Cool.”

He leaves in a rush, slopping milk into the sink, and pulling on a hat.

A season isn’t much of a clue, but that’s not exactly how everyone experiences their pre-soulmate life. Instead of cycling through an entire spring, for example, and then starting again, each person exists in the weather as it was on the day their soulmate was born. The universe was kinda against Peter from the first. Snow, in his mind, goes with winter, but of course, in their New York climate, snow isn’t trapped between the boundaries of December and March. It wasn’t until he got his second clue that he figured out the first. The second clue was that this one girl would never smile at him. Soulmates need to smile at each other. That’s it. Just smile and everything else falls into place. No more dressing for the same temperature every day or involuntarily shivering when they see people in shorts and t-shirts in a world they observe to be covered in snow. Most people who haven’t found their soulmate yet smile a lot, trying to catch everyone’s eye, in the hope of locating the right person, so the fact that this one girl refused to smile at him (and continues to refuse) made Peter curious―curious enough to do some research to find out her birthday. End of November. Meaning autumn, not winter. He checked the weather for the year he was born, assuming he’s got the right girl and they share a birth year. Bingo. Big cold front, unexpectedly heavy snowfall that day. Plus, this girl dresses like it’s the peak of summer, which fits with when his birthday is, and he’s never seen her wear an outfit for cooler weather or hang around with any one person in particular (soulmates, especially those his age, tend to cling).

So, the third certainty. Peter’s pretty sure he knows who his soulmate is. What he doesn’t know is why the hell Michelle Jones won’t smile at him.

―

Every day, Michelle Jones wakes up certain of three things: that the inevitable sweat patches in the armpits of her uniform shirt will aid her in bullying Coach Wilson into letting her sit out during gym, that Peter Parker is her soulmate, and that she’d really prefer that he wasn’t.

People think she’s rude, which is maybe correct in the effect she has on them but not in the intention of her actions. She doesn’t like acting a certain way because it’s how she’s supposed to act. She doesn’t like etiquette, she doesn’t like rules, and she doesn’t like soulmates. Doesn’t want one, doesn’t need one. It’s an opinion adults condescendingly informed her she’d grow out of―as if accepting that she’s being denied free will is the kind of thing she’d mature into―until she quit voicing it. People love the system as long as they believe it’s working for them. What’s childish, as far as MJ is concerned, is placing complete faith in something as pervasive as soulmates simply because it seems too big to fail. That expression always makes her think of the Titanic.

She knows it’s not the cotton candy fantasy everyone wants to believe it is, and she’s not just disillusioned because she wakes up to a heatwave every day and has to carry deodorant with her all the time. Like most people, she was born the child of two soulmates. They met, they smiled, they took the soulmate bait, hook, line, and sinker. And then, even though they loved each other and got married and made MJ, her mom became mildly depressed. Her doctor thought it was the consequence of the seasons. MJ’s dad was a late-April baby, so maybe her mom was just one of those people who took longer to get used to variations in temperature and hours of daylight. The doctor thought she’d snap out of it when winter ended and nice weather came again. The problem was that MJ’s mom packed up and left in February. MJ’s never going to know for sure if it was the weather that made her go, but she does know that the soulmate bond wasn’t enough to make her mom stay. It taught her that, if a person’s determined enough, they can override destiny.

So she’s thankful to her mom, wherever she is, for that.

Based on her motives for distrusting the soulmate influence, the reason she doesn’t want Peter should be because she doesn’t want anybody, but no, it’s him in particular that MJ’s pretty much convinced she could do without. He’s smart, funny on occasion and mostly by accident, and he’s experienced family tragedy that’s different from hers, so they could connect over their messed-up pasts without too much overlap. All of that is more than she wants to deal with. If the universe attempted to shack her up with some trust-fund-having, loafer-wearing, future-frat-house-keg-meister, she could’ve worked with that. She would’ve smiled at the silver-spoon-suckling to confirm they were soulmates, then let that puppy-dog trail her from protest to protest while she told him when to pull out his chequebook and how many zeros to put down. There would’ve been a clear, Robin Hoodian purpose to that relationship. There’s not a point to Peter, besides him being someone she could very probably, very quickly fall in love with. Obviously, she can’t do that because soulmates are bullshit and true love is a con and long-term monogamy is a doomed enterprise.

…And she’s going to be late for her first class, Biology. Ugh, Peter always does this to her―intentionally walks slow to try to trick her into catching up with him. All that does is make MJ take a longer route and misjudge how quickly she needs to move. She wishes he’d knock it off. He’s backed off on a lot of other things for her sake (that’s an assumption based on observation because, of course, she’s never initiated a conversation with him), like sitting across from her in the cafeteria and dropping out of marching band (he plays trombone, she plays euphonium, and the brass section was too cozy a space for successfully avoiding someone). That second one was a waste because she was about to quit anyway, so now neither of them are in it and the whole band’s off balance. Too many fucking flautists. If Peter would commit to doing one or the other―pestering her or ignoring her―that would be convenient, but he’s inconsistent and she’s annoyed.

Oh, here’s another thing that happens every day: MJ hopes her displeasure will protect her from the urge to smile at the adorable, well-intentioned pain in her neck that destiny wants to tie her to until one of them drops dead or, marginally less dramatic, runs out on the young family they’ve created. It really pisses her off that Peter seems like he’ll be a great dad in another decade or two.

“Hey, MJ,” he says, when she finally makes it to Bio and slides behind the lab desk in front of his.

“Kiss my ass, Parker,” she mutters back.

He’s the reason for the sweat running down her spine. MJ pinches the front of her t-shirt and flaps it away from her skin, trying to stimulate enough airflow to make it through the period.

―

“You could trick her into smiling at you,” Ned suggests. They’re sitting together at lunch and Peter has a glumness hangover from MJ ignoring him (again) that morning.

“Babe,” Betty admonishes.

“Babe, he’d only feel bad if MJ really is his soulmate. If she’s not, then at least they know for sure and they can quit being weird with each other.”

“I’m not being weird with her,” Peter objects. “I’m just being nice! And I told you, I know it’s her.”

“You get that feeling?” Ned checks. “That warm feeling like I got the first time I saw Betty’s beautiful face?”

“Aw, babe!”

Their arms are already linked as they eat, but now Betty lays her head on her soulmate’s shoulder. If they get much closer, she’ll be in Ned’s lap, at which point Peter will have to make himself scarce. Though love is cute, it’s also kind of an affliction with a lot of messy symptoms.

“I don’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong!” he blurts out in frustration, jabbing at the salad May made him for lunch. “How could we be so incompatible?”

“You’re not though,” Betty counters. “You’re totally compatible.”

“Yeah, but we haven’t even taken the first step.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t think of it as the first step,” Ned suggests, being all wise.

“What do you mean?” Peter asked cautiously.

“Babe, you couldn’t be more correct,” Betty gushes. Peter sighs impatiently. He shouldn’t―they’re trying to help him―but it’s hard having paired up friends while his own soulmate stays just out of reach.

“Elaborate please,” he prompts.

He shifts in place and shivers when he accidentally moves out of the space his butt’s been warming. Meanwhile, here are Ned and Betty in their lightweight sweaters and sneakers. Peter’s boots clomp under the table.

“Well,” Ned posits, “isn’t confirming you’re soulmates more like the final step? You’ve done your waiting and now you get to be together?” Betty kisses his cheek in agreement.

“Maybe,” Peter allows.

“If you accept that confirming your bond isn’t the very next step, then you can start considering what is the next step. What do you think that might be, Peter?” Betty asks.

“I should… get MJ to tell me why she isn’t ready or interested in confirming it. In a respectful way that doesn’t pressure her,” he adds when Betty narrows her eyes judgementally.

“And how do you plan to achieve that?”

“Babe,” Ned intercedes, “let’s give him a minute to think about it.”

Peter tries to do that while he finishes his lunch. There are a lot of vegetables in here and they’re seasonal, just not for the season he’s experiencing. May’s always trying to load him up with vitamin-rich foods, since most of his day’s snowy; the clouds clear for a while around the time he gets out of school, allowing him some sun on his face as long as he doesn’t dawdle or land in detention. That train of thought makes him realize that detention would be the perfect place to talk this out with MJ, except that he’s against Ned’s plan of tricking her into becoming his soulmate and making sure she landed in detention with him would probably involve tricking. He knows she used to hang out there voluntarily from time to time, but not since they became aware of their connection. Now, she seems to avoid any place she might get stuck in and be cornered by Peter.

Ugh! He’s so ready to love and be loved! It’s super awesome to have people to love and worry about and have breakfast with. Love and breakfast are precious, in Peter’s opinion, and so is time. Getting enough of it isn’t something to be depended upon. After his parents and then Uncle Ben, he can’t trust quantity―he gives and gets quality love these days. He doesn’t know everything about Michelle Jones, but he’d like her to understand that, the irreplaceable value she represents to him. If she’d just be a plain envelope, he’d do all the work; put on the stamp, write out the address, compose the note it would hold. Right now, she’s like a sheet of paper, he guesses, one that they fold up into an envelope. She hasn’t been cut out or had that gross glue strip applied and it seems like it might be a long time before she’s ready for a letter or, like, a Happy Bar Mitzvah card. MJ might not want to be his envelope person, or she just might not know the things he could be for her (glue-licking, stamp-applying, Mazel Tov!-writing). If she at least knows, then he’ll concede that he’s done everything he can. If she knows, it’ll hopefully be enough for her to make a decision. Peter can’t force her to decide in his favour, but even if she understands and decides that she needs another five years before she wants to talk to him about the probability of their being soulmates and maybe revisit the smiling thing, he’ll know something too. Waiting is really tough.

―

“Don’t smile at me,” Peter requests, both hands up, when MJ shuts her locker to see him standing there.

She rolls her eyes. Nothing about the one person she’s actively avoiding hanging out at a place she has to be makes her want to smile. Did he decide that if he couldn’t be her soulmate he’d settle for being her stalker?

…Probably not. He’s way too good a person for that. Seriously, she tries to make these made-up accusations stick to him, but he’s just not that guy. That doesn’t mean she accepts, likes, or appreciates this latest move to get her attention.

“Are you trying reverse psychology now?” MJ demands.

“I’m just trying to make it extra clear that, whatever your reasons are for not smiling, I respect them.” He shrugs his shoulders and she glances down at the lunchbox he’s carrying. She wonders what he ate today.

“What if I’m not smiling because I’m plotting a bank heist in my head? Do you respect that? Do you respect theft, Peter?”

His expression is so satisfyingly startled that she almost does smile. No, fuck this. There are only ten minutes or so left in the lunch hour and she can wander the halls until the next class starts. She goes to step around him, but their shoulders brush and she feels something. It’s more aggressive than the welcoming warmth the bond (that’s what she attributes it to) usually makes her feel when she sees him. This is pure affection and it’s really hard to put her back to it. MJ pauses, facing away from Peter, and she’s almost got the new feeling under control when he turns and starts walking beside her.

“I think we can figure this out,” he says eagerly. Dammit. His enthusiasm for learning is one of the traits she finds most attractive in him. Can’t he just lay off with that fucking fated appeal?

“I think I already have,” she shoots back, not looking at him. “The universe wants to play sock puppets and guess what? We’re the sock puppets.”

“Look,” Peter says. He’s shockingly persistent today as he jumps in front of her and catches her eye. “We don’t have to play by its rules. We can make our own.”

“You wanna be with me?” she asks point-blank. Her chin jerks up instinctively when she questions him, eyes appraising. Either the question or the blunt stare makes him blush.

“Yeah, I, I think I probably do.”

“You want me to fall in love with you? For us to get married? Live together? Have kids? Me and you against the world, forever?”

“Maybe?”

“Well, you can’t just want one thing, Peter,” MJ tells him. Her fingers grip hard at the books in her hands. “There’s no shallow end of the soulmate bond. Its plan is not for us to casually date and let things plateau if it doesn’t work out.”

“But it would work out.” Poor thing looks confused.

“Says who?”

He shrugs.

“Everybody.”

“Check your sources.”

She hangs a left into the girls’ bathroom before Peter can respond, but he’s waiting in the hall when she returns.

“You can’t ignore it,” is the first thing he says to her, pushing off the wall. This time, MJ plants her feet.

“Or you, apparently, if you keep stalking me.”

“I’m not trying to. I just want us―”

“To talk,” she finishes for him. “Which is pointless. You’re not going to gain any ground with me, Peter. I have no ground for you to gain on this issue.”

“Maybe, if you told me why you won’t smile, you’ll feel better.”

“I feel fine.”

“You do not. You’re trying not to let someone care a lot about you when it’s guaranteed that they would. He would. I would,” Peter rambles. He takes a deep breath and looks her firmly in the eye. “Isn’t that, like, the one thing everybody wants? To be able to count on someone caring?”

“I’m not broken just because I don’t want what everybody wants,” she bites back, feeling herself flush with annoyance and, beneath that, embarrassment at being assessed.

“I would never call you broken,” he swears in a quiet voice. He is not going to make her tear up right now. She’s softening though, she can feel it. Stupid sincere soulmate. “I mean, if anything, I’m broken, so I could never judge, even if I wanted to. I know people try hard to find their perfect match, but I feel greedy sometimes with how badly I want it to happen to me. I know it’s not fair to you, I’ve been coming to terms with―”

“You’re not broken, Peter. Wanting someone to love you doesn’t make you broken. Or, if it does, then most people are. You’re not alone just because you don’t have me.”

Clearly, the time to stop herself was one sentence sooner. Because the jerk smiles at her and the next thing she does is agree to discuss this further after school.

―

There was something she said, while they were talking after lunch, that has him considering their potential as platonic soulmates well into third period. That’s what soulmates are for some people―they want all of the kindness and support of the bond with none of the romance, and the universe gives them what they need. When MJ said that stuff about marriage and babies and forever, Peter began contemplating whether they could achieve the third thing without the first two. Almost immediately, he ruled it out. He knew what attraction felt like. Sure, being soulmates was probably influencing him towards MJ, but she wasn’t the only person he found attractive. He used to have a crush on Liz. One day, when his Business class was on a field trip and it rained, he saw Flash with all the product washed out of his hair and was attracted to him (right up until Flash made a few loud comments about getting ‘Penis’ out of the cold weather before he shriveled up).

The conclusion he comes to is clear: Peter’s definitely hot for MJ. While marriage can wait, falling dizzily, hopelessly in love―and properly, in the kind of love they could have with their soulmate bond confirmed―is something he can only ever half-heartedly postpone. He wants to give her presents with love on her birthday. He wants to hug her and feel a new kind of complete. He wants to be her Valentine.

When Peter sees MJ hanging back to wait for him once the final bell rings, he’s relieved. Then tense. Not screwing this up might literally be the most important thing in his future. Trying to reassure her that he isn’t planning some sort of ambush to force a smile out of her, he suggests they talk someplace where other people will be around. She flat-out refuses to go to a coffee shop with him because it would be way too date-like. (Yeah, he gets that, picturing an awkward moment in which he attempts to pay for both their orders, or their shoes bump under the table.) They agree on the gym, where the girls’ indoor soccer team is having practice. Together―him in flannel-lined jeans and her in shorts―they thud up the bleachers to sit at the very top. MJ catches her foot and Peter notices that, when he instinctively reaches out to steady her, she shies away with a regretful look on her face. He really doesn’t expect her to explain, but then she does as they sit down.

“It does something to me,” she says, jerking her head as though to reference their near-contact.

Peter shrugs.

“Yeah, me too, but I’ve never been trying to avoid that feeling. I’ve gotten used to, like, um,” he stammers, “leaning into it. But I’m sorry. I won’t touch you.”

“Well, you know that I have the opposite habit.” MJ takes a deep breath, and Peter gets the sense that this would be the moment for her to be vulnerable with him and explain why she works so hard to ignore him. Ultimately, volunteering that information appears to be too much of an emotional effort. She decides to ask, “Is that something you’re interested in knowing more about?”

“Anything you wanna tell me,” he says quickly. He’s been waiting forever for this opportunity. “You can ask me things too. Open book.”

“I’m… not used to just spilling stuff about my life.”

He considers that.

“Why’d you say yes to this?”

She sighs and leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees. Then, she cups her face in her hand and turns to meet his eye.

“I’m tired of the way seeing you is always such a big deal. The bond says it’s wonderful and my brain hates it. I don’t want to be so torn all the time.”

“So…” he begins uncertainly. “Which outcome are you hoping for? Thinking I’m wonderful or hating my guts?”

The speed with which MJ turns her face away from him makes him wonder if she’s hiding a smile. He wasn’t trying to be funny.

“Quit twisting my words,” she requests, straight-faced as she stares straight ahead to where the soccer players are booting around what looks like an oversized tennis ball. “I didn’t say I hate you.”

“Just your brain.”

“Mhmm. My brain hates the idea of you.”

“MJ,” Peter says earnestly. She looks at him. “Why?”

“You control my whole life!” she says abruptly. “I’m sweating from climbing these stupid bleachers because of you. I have the urge to smile right now, when I’m irritated, because of you. Your existence tells me what to wear even when I’m not with you and how to feel whenever I see you.”

“I’m sorry―”

“And I can’t even seriously blame you because it’s not actually your fault!”

The girls’ team has quit weaving and shooting the ball, heading and passing it. Peter gets that MJ wanted a public place, but now he knows they’re being eavesdropped on. He’s quiet, though not because of the potential listeners; he doesn’t want to stop MJ from saying whatever she might tell him next. He’s been longing to hear her thoughts for ages.

“And that’s just, like, surface stuff!” she huffs. She’s flushed. If he could hold her face between his hands, the warmth might stay with him all the way home while he trudges along the sidewalk, ploughing snow aside with his shins.

“Please,” Peter says softly, “tell me more. Tell me anything you want.”

―

She went into it knowing she wouldn’t be allowing her soulmate to make her smile, but MJ didn’t anticipate letting him see her cry. He’s so open and she’s fortified her defenses against this topic for such a long time. Apparently, that’s enough for discussing her emotions and fears to make her crack like an egg. Peter doesn’t rush her or tell her that her feelings are the wrong feelings and the whole time he watches her face with a startling amount of attention. Has anybody looked at her like this? Really looked at her? Ever? She feels like a mom would’ve, but she can’t remember if her mom did. And that’s who she’s talking about, that’s the part of the story she’s at, when she feels the tears dribble out and tilts her head to let them drain away over her cheek. God, this is embarrassing. At least the soccer team packed up and left before she felt her throat getting thick.

“I don’t know if I’m still just letting my mom decide whether or not I get to be happy,” MJ admits, face wet until she catches her tear tracks with the back of her wrist. “I’m trying to do this, ignore the soulmate bond, for me, but maybe… I don’t know…”

“You’re forcing me away from you?” Peter suggests.

“Yeah. I’m abandoning you before we can get attached.” Somehow, this dork has Kleenex in his backpack and hands her one. She blows her nose hard, then crumples the tissue in her hand. “Pretty fucked up.”

“Ok, this is gonna sound really stupid, because we’re not even together, but I don’t think I’m the kind of person who could leave you.”

“You can’t promise that though,” MJ says―so, so quietly. She wants her words to run away and hide under the bleachers with the dust bunnies.

“Would you rather have nothing?” he asks.

Coming from someone else, she’s pretty sure that would be an ultimatum, some kind of threat to accept him as her soulmate now or never get another chance. Peter asks it with as little agenda as he’s asked everything else, easing her through her memories and her dreads.

“I’m not sure,” she says.

“Can I tell you something? I’m not sure I could be with someone whose goal was to resist getting or giving love. I mean, I’ve heard everything you’ve told me and I can see why you’ve been dodging the soulmate thing, but if you get to look way ahead and worry about things that are only possible and far in the future, like me leaving you, then I get to look ahead too.” He pauses and she nods to indicate that, yeah, that’s fair. MJ thinks this is very brave of him, stepping out of the situation for a second to consider what he might need later when what he wants is to be with her right away. “I don’t wanna be left either. I don’t want you not to be able to overcome the idea that soulmates are bad and wrong. Maybe it doesn’t matter if you think that in general, but if it’s a part of our relationship, then you’re always going to be expecting things to end. It would be like you were trying to think your way out of it instead of enjoying whatever we could have. And what we could have, by the way? I don’t think the bond has anything to say about that. Does it encourage us to get together? Yeah, sure, fine, it does and we accept that’s how it works. Once we are together though, isn’t the rest on our terms?”

Finally, Peter takes a longer breath and some of the intensity fades from his expression.

“You’re looking at me funny,” he notes. “I know I talked a lot. Are you gonna say something?”

“Just that you sounded smart and it’s pissing me off.”

He gives her dry joke a sad smile.

“Losing people sucks.” His voice is like a rock falling, falling, falling through deep water. “For as much as you don’t want me to make promises, I know that I’d try really fucking hard not to lose you. You can’t hate me, or your brain can’t hate me, for that. It’s the human element of this whole thing, which should be the part you like, since you’re so anti-destiny.”

Looks like Peter’s raised his own spirits enough to offer a conspiratorial little smile at the end there.

“Another repulsively astute point,” she says flatly and watches his smile broaden. Fuck, it makes her heart feel like a marshmallow that’s melting onto a s’more and simultaneously being stretched until it tears into sticky ribbons.

He checks his watch and gets to his feet.

“I gotta get home.”

“Did I miss the soulmate-decision deadline?” she teases. Feels weird. She stands too and they clomp back down to the gym floor.

“No! God, no, I wasn’t trying to rush you by looking at the time!”

“Parker, I’m messing with you. Chill.”

She eyes his winter clothing.

“Or maybe don’t. Looks like you’re chill enough already. Sorry for being born during a blizzard. My dad told me he and my mom barely got to the hospital in time for me to not be born in the car, the roads were so bad.”

Peter appraises her right back.

“Sorry for being born during a heatwave. I wish I could ask my mom what that was like, but you already know about my parents.”

“Shit, I didn’t mean to start comparing…”

“No, I know,” Peter says. “I miss her, but it’s not always the worst, having a certain moment make me notice that I could’ve learned something from her here. It’s actually easier to appreciate than forget, even if it’s sad for a little while.”

“If I promise to try it, will you cut it out with the insightful bullshit?”

Instead of answering that question, he springs something else on her.

“For the record, I know the only reason you didn’t smile at me is because you were trying so hard not to.”

Immediately, MJ turns her back on him and smirks as she heads for the far exit.

―

Peter’s seen a lot of snow. Almost all the weather he’s ever seen is snow, and even at the point in his day when the snowfall takes its lunchbreak, there’s over a foot on the ground and dense grey clouds up above. He thinks it’s crazy how snow fills people with wonder―mainly in Christmas movies and holiday episodes of TV shows. The way he feels about snow is probably how people living in late-spring-to-early-fall weather feel about grass. It’s just there, the base layer of their environment.

Except tonight Peter has his blind up, watching the thin sprinkle the blizzard has slowed into catch the light from other people’s apartments, a clean, meltable glitter. He’s tired and can’t sleep, but it’s a quiet comfort of sleeplessness, not the kind where he stresses and twists around between his sheets. The weight of the day keeps him flat on his back in bed as he thinks it all over. His feelings, MJ’s, the satisfaction of finally having a long talk with her, the biting pain of seeing her cry. In his mind, since he first guessed it might be her who’s his soulmate, he’s been tailoring their love. Their potential love. He didn’t know what it would look like before having her to mould a concept around. Learning that she was probably his soulmate, studying her, Peter decided they were meant for a slow love. Love would be something that slipped gradually across them, like pulling up the sheet on a bed or stepping into a long summertime shadow.

He’s surprised at the kind of love MJ envisioned; from the berth she gave it when she talked that afternoon, it sounded big and powerful and immediate. Faster than an avalanche, ringing through their lives louder than a thunderclap. He wanted them to confirm their bond soon so that unhurried love could begin to develop and she was afraid that the second they started would be the second they were swept away. No wonder she avoided him, Peter thinks. The love she anticipated would equal an act of god and he isn’t ready for that either. He turns his face away from the direction of the window and stares at his dark ceiling.

Peter has plenty of forceful love in his life―he can’t consider it enough forceful love, because there’s no such thing as enough love, is there?―thanks to May. She took on the mom-ish role of caring for him after his parents were gone, then the single-mom-ish role of raising him into approaching adulthood without Uncle Ben. While her aura is soft, her whole attitude has been very roll-up-your-sleeves where he’s concerned. May faced down his extreme need for parental TLC like it was a battle and continues to love him fiercely, even if his steadily increasing age and Happy’s calming presence temper her a little these days. So Peter’s covered in the department of that kind of love. He hopes his forever person doesn’t feel the need to bombard him with a truckload of love from the start; it would make him feel pitied, somehow, like they were putting all their effort into making up for the fact that he doesn’t have parents anymore. Peter knows he doesn’t have parents, he doesn’t want or need to be smothered to make up for their absence.

This chance (it still isn’t a solid thing) with MJ could let him grow into devotion. He’s kinda longing to know what that feels like. The theoretical adjective he’d attach to it is normal. Whatever the universe’s input here, Peter really believes the most normal thing after confirming their bond would be to allow things to develop however felt right. And with the bond backing them, technically anything they do would be right, right? He wants them to grow up together and grow into each other. He doesn’t want MJ to be the bond or a love lightning bolt, zipping down to fry him. The assurance that they’ll fall in love is enough to start. It’s an invaluable forecast, as dependable as the weather he’s been experiencing all his life.

When his phone buzzes on his nightstand, Peter feels as though he’s being retracted like a telescope―thoughts way far out in space drawing back to his building, his bedroom, his body. He rubs his eyes with his knuckle as he looks at the screen.

So… you were unexpectedly deep today, MJ’s text reads.

They never exactly exchanged numbers, but he got hers from Betty one time and saved it just in case. His heart beats faster at the thought that maybe MJ did the same.

And you’re still mad about it? Peter guesses, tapping out his reply.

Oh, you are up.

There was a lot to think about, he tells her honestly. Why are you still awake?

Because the day you were born must have been the most humid day of the year. It’s too hot to sleep.

Also, MJ tags on, that crap you said about thinking.

―

She lets her phone drop onto the thin cotton sheet of the mattress and uses its light to help her see as she rips nervously at the skin around her fingernail. Texting Peter wasn’t even really a thought―she just found herself doing it, surprised by how natural the instinct felt and despite the fact that she really doesn’t reach out to people. That she would reach out to the one person she was utterly vulnerable in front of less than 12 hours ago is something MJ would never have expected of herself. But she’s let him in this far.

And you decided to talk to me about it? Peter finally responds, postponing further anxiety.

I know. My boundaries are completely fucked after this afternoon. I might never be able to bottle up my feelings again. Hope you’re happy, loser.

Well, Peter texts, you don’t have to do that. If you need to empty the bottle every once in a while, I get it. I can be your glass. Or your straw?

You want to suck up my feelings? Like some kind of feelings-vampire?

God, she is fucking this up so severely. He’s going to wish she’d just kept ignoring him instead of caving to his persistent friendliness and that look he gets that’s all eyes, totally impossible to say no to. Amazingly, her last stupid text isn’t enough to make him say he’s going to sleep now, or worse, not respond at all.

Just a feelings-relief, he corrects. Unless you like the idea of the feelings-vampire better.

You don’t need to bend to my will like that, Parker. Suddenly, MJ’s kind of angry.

Don’t give me what you think I want just because you feel bad about seeing me cry, she continues. Or because you think you can make this work by doing whatever I want. Never appease me.

I care, he says simply.

Wow, she feels like a jerk.

Because destiny told you that you could take that care and trade up for the promise of eternal love? she snarks back, apparently not quite done with the jerk thing.

I had no idea texting you would be even more fun than talking in person.

Is he… is he being sarcastic with her? MJ smiles at her phone. Incredible.

I’m fun in all mediums, she says, not having a clear idea of what she means and looking forward to Peter trying really hard to interpret it.

Knock knock, is his response.

Who’s there?

Ummmm idk.

‘Ummmm idk’ who?

No, I seriously don’t know, he says.

MJ snorts in confused laughter and shifts around to find a cool spot on her sheet; she wasn’t lying about the heat.

Why would you send me the beginning of a knock-knock joke with no joke? she asks.

I thought I’d think of the rest of it in the moment. I know that’s dumb. It just felt like we were maybe in a zone there and I wanted to keep it going.

Relax. I’m not going to strike you out for one ill-conceived knock-knock joke.

What about two?

I wouldn’t test your luck, MJ counsels, still smiling.

She can see that he’s composing a reply, but she beats him to it: I was thinking about what you said about destiny. Actually, what you said about the opposite of destiny, the thing about the human element.

And?

She can practically sense his tension as she holds her phone in her hand.

I think it’s a good thought. That two people can still make a relationship theirs.

Ned said something to me today.

How unusual.

Shut up, Peter quips back. He said that confirming you’re somebody’s soulmate is like the last big step.

Oh?

Yeah, I think he’s totally wrong.

So do I.

Replying that way felt like a huge leap and yet, MJ took it. It doesn’t take long after that for her to start getting tired, blinking long and slow until she’s only opening her eyes when her phone vibrates against her fingers. Peter says he’s tired too and they wrap the conversation up. There’s a suggestion of seeing each other at school the next day. It shouldn’t have any special meaning―it’s a throwaway farewell, less than a promise―but she reacts to it with her last bit of focus. See you in the morning, are her exact words.

She cranes her phone out over the side of her bed with her arm, then lets it go just a little too far from the floor. Probably fine, though it clatters against the surface. Protected by the night and her closed eyes, MJ feels around inside her mind, looking for the taut tug-of-war rope that should be telling her that, one, she doesn’t want to meet with Peter because he’s probably her soulmate and soulmates are a lie and a scam, and two, that she does want to meet with Peter because he has a cute smile that he shows her even when she doesn’t give him much reason to. Then she thinks about how much she prefers first steps to last steps.

―

He could be a clone. He could be a clone in a programmed world, living his programmed life the same every day, but with, like, fake memories that fool him into believing in variety. Because he does believe in it. Today, Peter wakes up and change seems possible.

There’s snow on the ground outside and he has to get his socks on before putting his feet on the floor and he’s eating his breakfast too slowly and the way his aunt and Happy are dressed says it’s still spring. Peter asks about rain. May says, “Any time now,” and keeps reading the paperwork she has folded open on the table as she scratches absently at her arm.

“Amazing,” Peter replies, meaning it, as he picks up his bowl and slurps the rest of his cereal until milk runs down his chin.

His aunt glances up to give him a funny look. He’s pretty sure it’s not about the milk, but there’s no time to ask. If he hurries, he’ll leave ahead of his usual schedule, thanks to this new breakfast hack. He wants to get to school. School is such a great place to be.

Peter races out of the apartment and down the stairs like he’s 10 minutes late instead of 3 minutes early. It’s in the building’s entryway that he gets a feeling. Four feet from the glass door that he sees her standing on the sidewalk, snow she can’t feel partway up her mostly-bare legs. Pushing the door open when she quits looking away down the street and stares straight back at him instead. When MJ smiles, Peter smiles back. It could be a life-changing moment, or it might just be a reflex. Because they started to let each other in, he’ll probably never know the answer. Anyway, why does there only have to be one?

“I’ve been waiting,” she says. “I thought you’d be down sooner.”

He laughs self-deprecatingly.

“I tend to cut my timing kinda close in the morning. You wanna get going?” Peter jerks his head to the side.

“Yeah, we should. You’re probably getting cold just standing there.”

With his timing slightly off, they’re ahead of schedule for the bus he’s usually running to catch, so they decide to walk up to the next stop. As they approach the intersection, the light changes to yellow.

“We can beat it if we run,” Peter suggests, trying not to strangle himself by catching his scarf as he hikes his backpack higher on his shoulders.

But MJ goes, “Wait,” so urgently that he stops at the corner.

“What is it?”

“I thought I just…” With a puzzled expression, she extends her hand, palm up. Not towards Peter, but away from him. “…felt a raindrop.”

They lock eyes.

“You want my coat?” he offers. MJ smiles again.

“I’ll let you know.”

#my writing #spideychelleweek2k20 #spideychelle #spideychelle fanfiction #spideychelle fic #peter parker #peter x mj #peter x michelle #peter parker x michelle jones #michelle jones #May Parker #happy hogan #may parker x happy hogan #ned leeds #betty brant #ned leeds x betty brant #nettypot

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