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notaparty-trick · 4 years

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Spideychelle Week: You Ain’t Living Until You’re Loving

Day 2: Soulmate AU

A/N: Hello guys!!! Have my crazy contribution to Day 2 of the Spideychelle event @spideychelleweek rife with awkward teen romance and the wildest soulmate reveal I could dream up :)

I have to go watch TV with my family now so enjoy the fic, bye!!!!

Summary:

Pulling back the sleeve of her shirt, MJ gapes at the sight of a name slowly etching itself into her skin in a fierce red. Peter Parker.

When she darts her gaze upwards, it’s clear to see that Spider-Man - Peter, he must be called - has figured it out too. Tugging at the tear in his suit below his neck, he reveals Michelle Jones in a blocky script of deep aquamarine over his collarbone.

“What’s it doing? What does it say?” he demands breathlessly, tapping a gloved finger over the mark.

“Michelle Jones,” she tells him haltingly. “I’m… I’m Michelle.”

---

MJ and Peter meet at an inopportune time and discover an unexpected tie between them which proves the situation even more difficult. Cue the most awkward romance of the 21st century.

Characters

Michelle Jones, Peter Parker, May Parker

Word count

4631

Warnings

Guess what? Almost none! Just swearing :)

Upon waking in the morning, it is impossible to be certain of exactly what the day will entail. The spontaneity of life is arguably what makes it exciting, fulfilling.

Right now, as MJ clutches desperately at the handrail of the subway train as it hurtles towards oblivion, she would argue the opposite.

It’s just her luck to have ended up in the very front compartment, the one that’s precisely where the ground will be when the tracks end and they plummet to the ground at around 80 miles an hour.

Don’t think, just act.

At the very least, she is blessed with a modicum of common sense that none of the other horror-stricken passengers seem to possess.

“Get back!” she cries, shooing people towards the carriages closer to the back. “It’s safer in the back carriages!”

Nobody argues. They resemble a herd of spooked sheep as they shuffle away.

MJ has a more-than-basic knowledge of physics: she’s aware that the impact of hitting the ground is likely to splatter every single occupant of this lousy train. But she has to do something.

Not like she has anywhere better to be. Like, you know, going about her life. Arriving home from school in one piece.

Climbing towards the very front of the train, she finds the space where the conductor should be sitting utterly wrecked, sparks flying, the stick she supposes controls the speed rattling around on the floor. Great. Awesome. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. She’s starting to run out of options.

Any semblance of logic in her mind drops away as she sticks her head out of the front window and finds Spider-Man.

“Um. Hello?”

“Oh - uh, hello, ma’am!”

The first thing MJ notices about Spider-Man is that he’s surprisingly… short. She has to look down on him.

Not that that’s important.

For a good few moments, they stand there, watching each other, MJ feeling her mouth open and close soundlessly. She’s expecting Spider-Man to do the talking, but he’s just waiting around, stuck to the front of the train, his suit torn at his collarbone and abdomen - damn, those abs - and silent as yet.

“So… you got any bright ideas?”

He jumps to attention. “I, uh, I tried a bunch of things already. Just… trying to think of something that’ll actually work.”

The voice coming from behind the mask is startlingly young-sounding.

“The controls are busted, aren’t they?” he ventures.

To affirm his remark, MJ stoops and grabs the loose accelerator stick and thrusts it into his hands. As she does so, however, a sudden surge of what she can only describe as liquid gold thrums through her veins, sparking from her hands where they’d brushed Spider-Man’s gloves. It’s overwhelming, enchanting, and for a moment even the fact that she’s speeding towards almost certain death is forgotten over the glow that overcomes her.

“What the - wow.” She blinks, clearing the heavenly fog from her mind, and startles at a sharp itching sensation at her wrist.

This is when she realises.

Pulling back the sleeve of her shirt, she gapes at the sight of a name slowly etching itself into her skin in a fierce red. Peter Parker.

“What’s it doing? What does it say?” he demands breathlessly, tapping a gloved finger over the mark.

MJ has never been this shaken in her life. She’s half-sure she’s going into cardiac arrest. Too many surprises for one day.

“Michelle Jones,” she tells him haltingly. “I’m… I’m Michelle.”

The eye lenses of Spider-Man’s suit widen in a manner that would be comical in any other situation. “Oh. Oh my God. Michelle.”

“Your name is Peter?”

“Michelle, we’re - we’re--” he points to himself, then her, then him again.

“Call me MJ,” she tells him dazedly. Really, it’s unfair that he gets to wear a mask right now while her inability to comprehend what’s going on is painfully exposed.

“MJ.”

Neither of them have said anything of substance for a long time, and it’s cost them.

Because when she looks over Spider-Man’s shoulder MJ gets the reality check of her life.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Not a thousand metres ahead of them is the end of the tracks. Oblivion.

“I’m just gonna yeet out a bunch of webs and hope for the best, okay? Hang on!”

She’s too dumbfounded to do anything but crouch down, bracing her arms against the metal walls on either side of her. Only now does panic really begin to set in.

“Oh, shit,” she whispers to herself, squeezing her eyes shut. “I didn’t wanna die today, I didn’t wanna die today. I was just going home from school.”

“You’re not gonna die today!” comes Peter’s voice again, strained but fired with a resolve at odds to his prior uncertainty. And they begin to slow down.

All around MJ is the nerve-shredding sound of webs stretching. Please hold, please hold.

Spider-Man begins to cry out. MJ can’t even comprehend the fact that he’s intercepting the force of an entire fast-moving train right now - doesn’t know whether to think about her family and friends she might never see again, or the fact that she might just meet her end on the very subway she hates commuting on so much, or the glaring name on her wrist that both tells her Spider-Man’s secret identity and reveals that Spider-Man is her soulmate, or the fact that she’s met her soulmate just seconds before she’ll probably die, or, at the very least, sustain some substantial long-term damage to her nerves or bones or something crazy.

“Oh, crap,” she catches Peter muttering to himself between grunts of exertion, “Harder - than it - looks.”

“You got this, Spider-Man,” she calls to him with an unexpected level of hesitancy.

The only response is a long, agonised yell.

The train screeches and judders. The front windows shatter simultaneously, sending a spray of glass shards into her hair. Then, in a movement that sends her heart plummeting, her carriage dips downwards, sending her thudding against the frontmost wall, frozen in a swell of panicked nausea. There’s a duet of groans from the underbelly of the carriage and from Peter.

Silence reigns.

The train has stopped.

MJ waits a moment in her braced position, wondering what kind of alternate universe she’s in where she just survived that.

Gathering her wits, she rises to her feet - with difficulty, because the whole carriage is at an angle now - and turns to see Peter still standing in front of the carriage. He’s eerily still, in fact.

“Spider-Man? Peter?”

Just as she reaches him, he begins to list towards the ground.

“Oh - woah--”

She lunges for him before he can fall out of the train, grabbing him awkwardly under his armpits, and winces as they both thud to the ground under his deadweight. A noise of protest emanates from the train at the sudden impact.

“So,” MJ reasons shakily with herself. “That was crazy.”

And now her soulmate is passed out in her arms in his spandex super suit.

Right.

MJ is logical, so she takes his pulse first; although she doesn't really know what to make of it - she's no doctor - at least it's there. Next, she tries tapping on his shoulder, his cheek, his chest. "Spider-Man? Pet-- should I be calling you that? You know what, you could answer that if you woke up right about now."

The urge to take off his mask is overwhelming. Nobody's around. He's passed out. And - for fuck's sake, he's her soulmate.

And yet her hand stills just over his neck.

As much as she wants to know what he looks like - oh God, what if he's way older than me? - it would be an invasion of trust just moments after they'd met. If there's one thing MJ is certain of, it's that she doesn't want to screw this up.

"Spider-Man, wake up."

He jolts awake at last, hands flying to his biceps to grip muscles that MJ can imagine are unbelievably sore right now.

He squints up at her. "What's...? Did it work?"

"Yeah." She smiles nervously, then recoils at her own behaviour. Yuck. Don’t be ditzy.

"You saved us," she tacks on eventually.

"Oh. Cool."

MJ can practically hear the dorky grin behind that remark; she's at least eighty percent sure that no fully-grown adult would speak like that.

He pulls down his suit at the collarbone again, trying to crane his neck to see the script there; then he meets her eyes, the eye sockets of his suit expanding. "Uh - so..."

"Yeah."

Then ensues a charged moment unlike anything MJ has experienced before. Peter, still on the floor, simply gazes up at her, and she studies him. It's silent, still, but she feels her heart pattering furiously against her ribs all the same. She offers her wrist to him; when he circles it with his hand, a heady, blissful rush of content spreads through her with the indulgent movement of honey.

Her huffed-out laugh is mirrored by one of his own, a high-pitched, pealing thing that draws a smile from her.

He shyly guides her hand to his collarbone next; she watches him sink into the floor a little further at her touch, tension she hadn't even noticed melting from him, and feels like she could move a fucking mountain.

"Can I...?" she begins.

"See me?"

"If that's - I don't know how your secret identity works, but... we are soulmates, I guess."

"Yeah, yeah, of course." With stiff, halting movements, he pushes himself into a sitting position, then casts a cursory glance around the carriage.

"Everyone’s evacuated, I think," MJ tells him.

Spider-Man nods.

He peels off his mask.

MJ's first thought is thank God it's not a fully-grown man who just quips like a kid.

Her second is he's cute.

Her third is Spider-Man is a kid?

There's an air of anxiety to Peter's expression as if he's awaiting a negative response.

"I, I don't know what to say," she professes honestly.

"Then, uh... just don't say anything." He laughs sheepishly. "It's just me. Peter.” He hesitates, pulling at the hair at the nape of his neck. “Are you - you go to school, right?"

"Yes, I'm a sophomore."

"Oh! Me too." Peter's wide brown eyes flick up then down as if he's wondering whether or not to keep eye contact with her.

MJ finds herself staring unabashedly at him. His eyes are pretty dreamy, she has to admit. The way his hair settles in waves around his head, sweaty as it is, is cute too. His jawline could cut glass, and yet there's a youthful softness to his face. Also, he has dimples, and fuck are they sweet.

"We should..." she gestures to the derailed train they're still sitting in. "We should probably get out of here."

"Good plan."

After much teetering from side to side on MJ's part and a chorus of stifled grunts of pain from Peter, they make it to their feet. Screwing up her courage, MJ pulls his arm over her shoulders and allows him to lean on her.

"Thanks.” He coughs a little, then says defensively, "Usually I come out of patrol looking cooler than this."

MJ has seen the YouTube videos. That’s mostly untrue.

"Mm-hm.”

"I do."

The atmosphere between them lightens a little, to what MJ suspects is the relief of them both.

They exit the train tracks, Peter securing them to the floor with his sticky feet - MJ has so many questions to ask about that - and her helping him hobble along. The further they move, the more Peter seems to loosen up, too, extricating his arm from her shoulders. Perks of being a superhero, she supposes.

"Hey, let me walk you home," he offers earnestly when they're back on solid ground.

Oh, so he's one of those guys.

"I can take myself home. I don't know about you, though."

"I'll be alright." He shrugs, but the motion is punctuated with a wince.

"No, c'mon. Let's upend the patriarchy. I'll take you home."

Spider-Man seems dumbfounded by that. "I, uh, I - okay."

"Okay."

"I should, I should change first. If that's alright."

"Where do you usually change?"

Behind a dumpster in the nearest alleyway, it transpires.

He's only been out of her view for a moment when she hears, "MJ?"

"What is it?"

"Is there, like... a Walmart or something nearby?"

"What for?"

"I don't have any clothes."

She can't help it: some irreversible dam is burst in her at the embarrassed remark, and she bowls herself over in a sudden fit of laughing.

She laughs out the speeding train, the warm rushes of connection between her and Peter - who is also fucking Spider-Man, she's never gonna get over that - the taste of unbridled fear in her mouth, the day of school she's going to mark herself absent for because her entire life has just been derailed, like the train, but - she hopes - in a wholly more miraculous way.

"MJ?" Peter asks again, his voice tinged with amusement this time in response to her impromptu bouts of laughter.

It's just the cherry on top of the cake when he steps back into view and - he's done something ridiculous to the suit so it hangs all baggily on him as if he's lost three hundred pounds in under a minute.

"What the hell did you do to the suit?" she wheezes. She's crying. There are literal tears leaking from her eyes. As hard as she tries to stifle her bursts of cackling, they won't abate on her terms.

Peter looks down at his loose suit, glances back up, then sputters out a laugh himself.

There they are, laughing like maniacs in a gross alleyway. MJ couldn't expect anything else from a day like this.

Then the suit begins to slip from Peter's shoulders. He doesn't appear to notice, lost in his laughing, until it's around his ankles.

Michelle bites her lip. "Um."

Logically, she shouldn't be surprised, but Peter is ripped. And yes, that makes her mind white out for a little while.

She's an advocate for choosing partners based on their personality over any physical attributes, of course. Of course.

But - come on.

"Oh. Uh." Peter fumbles to pull the slippery fabric over himself, his face reddening, and all of a sudden MJ feels bad for ogling him.

Oh, Christ. Awkward.

"There's a store just across the road. Um - yeah. I'll go."

She storms through the aisles and picks out the first t-shirt and pants she sees. At least she has the presence of mind to stop by the medical aisle and grab a tube of muscle relief cream.

When she arrives back in the alleyway, Peter’s suit is skin tight again, suggesting the shape of muscles she’d seen in all their glory just a few minutes ago.

Oh my God, stop being so fucking horny!

As he shakes out the outfit, Peter shuts his mouth with an audible click.

“Oh, that’s - you, that’s an… interesting choice…”

She squints suspiciously. What have you done this time, MJ? “I just grabbed whatever.”

By way of an answer, he holds the t-shirt against his chest so the text across it faces her. I’m a slut for science! it proclaims.

She recoils. “I - I didn’t--”

“It’s, uh, it’s fine, you paid - I like science - I’ll just… okay.”

Eager to avoid further conversation on the matter, she moves away and sits with her back to Peter to give him some privacy.

“So,” she begins, leaning back against the dumpster - she just almost died, give her a break - “We’re soulmates.”

“We are.”

“Isn’t that crazy?”

“Yuh-huh.”

A moment of silence ensues, broken only by a muted hiss of pain from Peter which is followed by a whispered declaration of “Shit, this is gonna ache tomorrow.”

“So - you’ve been Spider-Man for…”

“About a year.”

“And you’re a sophomore.”

Peter’s tone becomes bafflingly flippant. “I mean - the stuff I do, it’s not, like, boom, ka-pow, massive explosions, Avenger stuff. I’m pretty down on the ground. I’m not just risking my neck all the time. It’s--”

“You literally just risked your neck.”

“Okay, well, that was an… outlier.”

MJ likes to cut right to the truth, and today is no different. Drumming her thumbs against her pulled-up knees, she states, “You know, not to make a bad first impression, but you’re really boneheaded about this.”

He takes her comment the wrong way - understandably; she can be pretty blunt. “I, um - ouch?”

MJ realises she might have to be gentler around Peter. There’s a softness, a receptibility to him that’s both alluring and terrifying. If she leaves too sharp of an imprint on him, chews him up and spits him out in the way that she seems to do to everyone around her, she fears it could hurt him for good.

“Because you don’t give yourself enough credit,” she corrects.

“Oh.” There’s a blistering brightness to the syllable. “Uh, thanks.” He pauses, then changes tack. “Are - are you alright? After everything today?”

“Actually? Yeah. I’m alright. Thanks.”

“That’s good,” he returns simply.

Swallowing her fear and cutting to the chase, she sighs. “I just - we should think about how this is going to work.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

He emerges from around the dumpster then, clad in the I’m a science slut! t-shirt but seemingly unaware of it as he comes to a halt and proceeds to stare dopily at her.

“Peter.”

He just smiles, completely sincere. “Sorry, I’m just - I’m really lucky.”

“You sap.”

She slaps his arm lightly, but can’t help the grin that tugs at the corners of her mouth.

He spots her expression instantly and inclines his head towards it. “You like it.”

“You’re off-topic,” she gripes mildly.

Borne out of the alleyway by a shared instinct, they make the slow journey side-by-side towards what MJ presumes is Peter’s place. Unless her soulmate also happens to be a creepy kidnapper.

“Well, what do you want to say?” Peter prompts her, his quirky left eyebrow climbing up his forehead. Fuck that eyebrow. Fuck the cute, spiky little thing.

“Well…”

The uncomfortable subjects are bound to come up at some point, so MJ reasons that it’s best to lay down some rules before they start walking blindly into anything. Okay, she doesn’t reason. Reason is pretty far out the window now. She kind of just wants to know. “I know we’re soulmates, but that doesn’t - automatically mean we’re dating, right?”

He’s quick to assuage her fears, even through a fit of stuttering that MJ does not find endearing in the slightest. Not at all. “No. No. Of course not. I’d never wanna…” He looks over at her then as if trying to figure her out. “Well, not if you don’t want to.”

Boys.

That’s unfair, though, because Peter is - and MJ cringes to say it, but it’s true - he’s not like other boys.

“I just feel like it would be too fast,” she admits.

“Yeah. That makes sense. You’re not…?”

“Dating anyone? Nah.”

Although she’s had a shot with both boys and girls, dating hasn’t ever really been her thing. Her soulmate, however? That’s a different thing altogether.

“I’m not. I’m really not. I’m the opposite of taken. I’m the most single guy you’ll ever meet. I’m as much of a virgin as it gets.”

His eyes widen.

“I’m saying way too much.”

MJ decides to be merciful and save him from his own motormouth. “How far is your place?” she offers, rolling her shoulders back and forth to relieve the dregs of tension lingering there after the train incident.

“Just a couple minutes. The train actually took me in the right direction.”

She sneaks glances over at him, trying to drink in the way he scuffs his sneakers rhythmically against the sidewalk, the small smiles he shoots her, the curling lock of hair that hangs over his forehead, the deep pools of his eyes, trying to get a good picture of Peter Parker before they’re parted.

Peter opens and shuts his mouth a few times; she stays quiet and lets him speak in his own time.

“MJ - I know literally nothing about you. I mean, I’m sure - I, I hope we’ll have time to get to know each other - but, just… tell me something about yourself?”

There’s an undertone akin to desperation in his words, and it makes MJ uneasy.

“Is this an icebreaker?” she deadpans, hoping to put him at ease.

Peter just makes a face at her. He’s relaxed a little in the half-hour MJ has spent around him; whether that’s from an eventual lack of near-death situations or a growing confidence around her, she can’t quite tell, but it’s less stressful for the both of them.

“My name is MJ. I’m sixteen years old… the last book I read was Of Human Bondage… I’m the chair of Debate Club at Brooklyn Visions. That’s where I’m at school. And I… I like Deacon Blue.”

“Deacon what?”

“Yeah, nobody’s heard of them. They’re a band. Actually - wanna hear them?”

Peter nods his enthusiastic assent; within a minute she has her phone microphone pressed to both of their ears, their heads inches apart as they travel down the sidewalk, listening to one of her all-time favourite songs.

Down in the streets, they're walking and kissing

All he sees are the lights in her eyes

She feels his hands, smells his warm breath

Looking up, all she sees is the night sky

Peter’s hand comes up to steady the phone and brushes against her own fingers, inciting a slight twinge from the mark at her wrist. It’s a stupid moment, one MJ’s seen and scorned in countless rom-coms, but in the moment it’s something stupendously, ludicrously thrilling.

She chalks it down to the chemical element of the soulmate tie.

He saw her standing there alone

She saw him walking, the whole town behind him

He loved to whisper gently to her

She heard the whole world shouting and screaming

She can’t help but sing along to the chorus under her breath. Peter’s face is close enough to hers that she swears she can feel his smile.

Oh, since first we met

My dark sweet silhouette

Oh, nothing, nothing you forget

In your heart, my dark, my--

“Oh, wait! My apartment. We just passed it.”

They’re mostly silent in the elevator. There’s everything and nothing to say. Why start on everything when they only have seconds left?

Only once they’re hovering in front of Peter’s apartment door does MJ pluck up the courage to speak into the silence Peter seems unable to break.

“I got you this,” she blurts, handing him the cream.

From the way his face lights up, you’d think she’d handed him a bushel of stars, not some lousy muscle lotion. “Thank you,” he says softly; she finds herself arrested by those earnest brown eyes.

“You know what, I told myself I’d never do this with someone I just met, but - can I kiss you?”

Peter falls - yes, he actually falls - against the wall a little at that. He goldfishes a little again in that almost panicked way of his then manages to stutter out: “Yes, uh, yes. Please.”

Their first kiss is - well, MJ goes right back to her accustomed distrust of rom-coms, because it’s an awkward, overly hesitant bumping-together of their lips. It’s… not actively awful, she supposes, although the impact of their faces colliding causes them both to flinch back a little and then close back in which almost physically makes her cringe, because once they figure it out a little flutter ignites in the core of her chest, which she presumes is a good thing. She gets the feeling, too, that there are better kisses to come. It’s just… a little disappointing.

“I think we gotta work on that,” Peter chuckles ruefully.

MJ just twists up her mouth and nods.

“Okay, so… I’ve, I’ve gotta go, I guess.”

“Yeah. Take care of yourself.” MJ doesn’t know who is controlling her speech right now, making her sound caring and sincere and nice, but she’s not mad about it.

“You too. Maybe take a break from, uh, from public transport.”

They share a confidential smile.

Peter opens the door and MJ instantly gets a glimpse of the bright little apartment that belongs to her soulmate, complete with a gorgeous middle-aged woman who starts up from the central couch.

“There you are!” she cries, enfolding him in her arms, and MJ feels an unidentifiable ache settle deep inside her.

“Sorry I’m late,” he grins into her embrace, which is eventually relinquished in favour of a puzzled once-over, the woman picking at his unfamiliar clothes. “Did you see the news?”

“You mean, did I see you strong-manning an entire subway train? I definitely saw that. But I didn’t see this young woman who you’ve… left at the door?”

“Oh, uh, May? This, this is, she’s--”

“Peter?” she says, rounding on him with a widening smile.

“No, she’s just - this is MJ.”

MJ waves sheepishly.

“I’m Peter’s aunt. Why don’t you come in, honey?”

“Oh, no, I’m alright. I just thought - Peter, should I--” aware that her next words might incite further embarrassing reactions from Peter’s aunt, she meets his eye in a silent plea for him to come back over instead. “I should get your number, right? So we can - keep being... friends.”

“Yeah.” Eyes lighting up, Peter grabs a pen from the table and presses it to his skin. “I always wanted to see if this worked.”

And sure enough, one thing goes right for them: scrawled digits begin to materialise on the same section of MJ’s forearm.

“Cool,” Peter murmurs just as she says, “Dope.”

“Don’t you dare abuse this privilege,” she adds.

“Only if you don’t either.”

“I will not have dicks drawn on me without my knowing consent.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His face quirks into a grin. "Oh. I should pay you back."

"It's nothing."

"I should, though."

He's stubborn too.

"Really, Peter. It's fine. I don't want you to pay me back."

He deliberates over her answer for a moment, but her insistence wins out. “Okay, well, yeah. That’s… it? I guess?”

“I’ll call you,” she tells him, and for once in her life, she’s not being at all sarcastic.

“Awesome,” he breathes.

They’re both smiling as he gently shuts the door.

What an insane day.

But a split second before MJ heads towards the elevator again and goes home to sleep for a day, she hears a raised conversation starting up from inside Peter’s apartment and can’t help but dawdle by the door a while longer.

“You’re suddenly dating? What did you do, pick her up from the trainwreck?”

“I mean - we’re not - and, and I didn’t just…”

“Peter.”

“It’s not like that, okay! I promise nothing weird is going on. She’s, she’s, uh, my soulmate.”

Silence.

“Holy shit.”

“I know.”

“Where’s the mark?”

“Just here. It literally appeared while I was on the train. I didn’t know what to do - May, I need all your advice, and I need it now. Because, like - how do you kiss people? Should I text her back straight away or am I supposed to be cool about it? Should we go on dates? Where do I take her? What happens if--”

“Okay, okay, slow down.”

“I just - I really wanna do it right. She’s amazing.”

That’s enough eavesdropping, MJ thinks.

She exits the apartment block with a shit-eating grin on her face she has no wish to conceal.

Right now, she thinks she likes the spontaneity of life.

#spideychelle week 2k20 #spideychelle #peter parker #michelle jones #spiderman #fanfiction #soulmate au

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