#Also reading ao3 fanfics after watching a good series is better than smoking a cigarette after sex

[her-soliloquies]

This is a cry for help. I desperately need more kdramas like Beyond Evil and The Devil Judge (yk the type with insane chemistry between the two main male leads, no unnecessary and forced romance with a female character, focusing on the plot rather than romance while also presenting very intense homoerotic scenes)

I'm very open to your suggestions

[iffeelscouldkill]

How to Be a Superhero Love Interest

Fandom: Spider-Man: Homecoming/Marvel Cinematic Universe

Pairing: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker (Spideychelle)

Summary: Twin confusing things are happening to MJ. One, she's getting an unusual amount of attention from their friendly neighbourhood superhero, Spider-Man. And two, she might be starting to develop a crush on her ridiculous dork friend and teammate Peter Parker. More to the point, she thinks he might actually... like her back?

Being MJ, it isn't long before she manages to put two and two together. After that, it's just a matter of figuring out how to be a superhero love interest.

Author’s Note: I finished Part 1 of my Spideychelle fanfic and decided to post it to Tumblr! You can also read it on AO3.

Peter Parker is obviously hiding something.

Michelle prides herself on her sharp observation skills, but it doesn’t take a person with any observation skills whatsoever to know that Peter Parker has a secret. He is, in point of fact, one of the worst, most obvious secret-havers in the history of having a secret. And in that list, she includes Mr. Medley, the librarian, who is clearly and indiscreetly having an affair with Ms. Burns from the science department. (He’s forgiven her more than a few overdue fines for keeping that one quiet).

But even though Peter is obviously hiding something, with his disappearances and his inconsistent excuses and his sketchy and conveniently vague “Stark Industries internship” that goes far beyond anything that a normal internship would require, Michelle is not going to investigate further. Because in the course of being observant, she has discovered that people don’t like it when she confronts them with her observations.

“God, Michelle, you’re like a hound dog,” her older sister, Evelyn, had groaned the last time Michelle interrogated her about why she’d come home late, reeking of cigarette smoke. “No wonder you don’t have any friends.”

“I don’t want any friends,” Michelle retorted flatly. More to the point, she doesn’t need friends, because friends make you compromise your beliefs in order to fit in. Michelle is her own person. And without friends, she also has way more free time.

Sure, Michelle has people that she’s on friendly terms with, whom she refers to as ‘friends’ for the sake of seeming socially acceptable. She sits near Peter Parker and Ned Leeds at lunch because their weirdness means that everyone else keeps their distance, and she doesn’t mind being associated with them by proxy. They’re good guys.

But for most of the time, when she walks between classes and when she walks to and from school in the morning and the evening, Michelle is alone.

It’s during one of these times, as she’s walking home from school, that she looks up and sees Spider-Man. He’s swinging her way, an acrobatic red-and-blue figure getting larger as he swoops from building to building.

The sight of him triggers a kind of falling feeling in her gut, and the world spins briefly as she’s taken back to DC and the terror of staring up at a shaking, collapsing building with her friends inside, knowing there was nothing she could do to help them.

But she also remembers a lithe, costumed figure impossibly scaling the side of the building, defying helicopters and threats to get inside and save them.

As Spider-Man swings closer, Michelle raises one hand and waves at him. She’s just one person in the throngs of people crowding the sidewalk; she doesn’t expect him to notice her. But to her surprise, at the peak of one of his swings, Spider-Man waves back.

The action causes him to fire his next web just a fraction too late and he fumbles it, missing the overhang he was aiming for and attaching to a window ledge lower down. As a result, his next swing takes him too low, and with a comical yell of shock Spider-Man goes crashing into the side of a dumpster. Michelle hears a series of clatters and a muffled, “Shit!”

She can’t help it – she giggles.

As Michelle continues on her way, she doesn’t notice a red and blue figure crawling up the side of a nearby building and perching on the rooftop, watching her go.

Michelle has a strict policy of non-intervention.

She watches, she learns, but she does not interfere. Mostly because she doesn’t care, or claims not to care, about the petty disputes her fellow students get into over whose job it was supposed to be to take the chemistry equipment to Mr. Cobbwell after class (even though she knows it was Lucy’s job, not Betty’s like Lucy claims), or when Ms. Beckett blames Jayden for writing dick jokes on the chalkboard in their English classroom when the handwriting is clearly Trisha’s.

Even on those rare occasions when she does care, she keeps her mouth shut and saves her energy for the arguments that matter. As an activist, she’s learned to pick her battles; you have to, otherwise you wind up angry and burnt out, of no use to anyone. And she’s definitely not about to start fighting anyone else’s for them.

And yet in spite of all that, when she hears Flash call Peter “Penis Parker” for the fiftieth time, she snaps.

“You know what, Flash? If you took all the time that you spend coming up with supremely unoriginal nicknames to insult people whose intelligence makes you feel insecure and channelled it into actually studying, you might be worth more to the Decathlon team than just dead weight.”

A dead silence follows her words. They’re in homeroom, five minutes before the first bell, and Flash is half-turned in his seat with one arm resting on the back of his chair, the cocky smirk sliding off his face and giving way to taut anger.

Peter, in the desk behind Flash, and Ned, next to him, are both staring at her gobsmacked, mouths hanging open.

Dimly, Michelle wonders if she just compromised her position as Declathon team captain by insulting a member of the team, but she doesn’t care. She flicks a curl of hair out of her face, plunging on before Flash can muster a response.  

“Oh but go on – insult me, too; I can take it. Because deep down I think you’re just scared of us. You see, Flash, unlike you, we aren’t afraid to be individuals. So we won’t go trailing around after you trying to kiss your ass. What a shame.” And she finishes by drawing an imaginary tear down one cheek.

There is muffled snickering from around the room. Flash’s face is slowly turning purple with indignant rage; he opens and closes his mouth, but before he can get any of the words out, the bell rings.

The tension in the room breaks, and the noise level immediately rises as people start to laugh and chatter more openly. Michelle allows herself a small victory smirk. Flash is still staring at her, but she holds his gaze, unblinking, refusing to be the first to look away, until Ms. Gardner sweeps into the room and calls for quiet.

Two seats away, Ned is grinning at her like she’s Christmas, his birthday and the Fourth of July come all at once. And Peter—

She glances over at Peter and immediately looks away, her cheeks flushing, because he’s giving her this look that she’s never seen before on another person.

It’s respect, fondness, amusement, and admiration all rolled into one. Even when Michelle’s not looking at Peter, she can still feel his gaze on her.

She stares down at the table top, aimlessly twiddling a pen and wondering why her stomach suddenly feels so weird. This is Peter Parker. Peter Parker, of the infamous puppy-dog crush on Liz Allan, which he’s definitely not over even though she moved out of state a month ago.

Peter Parker, whose brain-to-mouth filter is non-existent, whose love for science is matched only by his love for Lego and Star Wars, and who spends all his time when he’s not at school sticking together said Legos in his bedroom with his equally dorky friend, Ned Leeds, and coming up with weird new elements for the periodic table.

Ms. Gardner begins taking attendance, and Michelle answers automatically to her name. Peter eventually looks away from her, which is a relief, but her heart is still going at twice its usual rate.

It could be leftover adrenaline from the confrontation with Flash, but Michelle knows better. Flash doesn’t scare her. It has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the boy sitting in the desk behind him.

“You should’ve seen the look on Flash’s face! I thought he was going to bust a kidney!” Ned crows at lunch.

“Why a kidney?” Peter asks him.

“I dunno, but he nearly did.”

Michelle rolls her eyes and wishes she’d gone to the library like she originally planned. She’d thought that scooting her chair even further than usual away from Peter and Ned would have given them the hint that she doesn’t want to talk, but Ned had simply sat right down next to her with his lunch tray. Peter had hovered awkwardly, like he was torn between respecting her wish for space and sitting next to his best friend, and eventually followed suit.

“It was awesome,” Ned repeats reverently. “And Flash couldn’t even say a thing! I think he’s scared of you.”

Michelle snorts, though he’s right; Flash hasn’t said a word to her since homeroom, hasn’t even glanced in her direction. She isn’t going to kid herself that she’s safe, though; they have Decathlon practice right after school.

She glances over at Peter, and finds him giving her that look again. He’s also not saying anything, which from a normal person, would be weird. From Peter “motor-mouth” Parker, it might just be a sign that the world is ending.

She feels like she might claw out of her skin if she doesn’t do something, so finally she demands, “What, Peter?”

“Thanks, MJ,” he replies, with warm sincerity in every syllable.

The feeling in her stomach multiplies by about a hundred. Goddamn it.

Michelle enters the hall for Decathlon practice that afternoon with a poised calm that masks the apprehension she feels underneath. She’s not afraid of Flash, but if he tells Mr. Harrington what she said about him earlier, she could lose the team captaincy.

She’s not sure exactly why he got under her skin so badly earlier. She doesn’t like bullies, true, and she’s long thought that Flash needed to be taken down a peg. She’s sure that most of homeroom, for all that they pretend to like Flash, were secretly rooting for him to go down. But even so, the intensity of the anger that she’d felt in that moment surprised her.

Ned waves at her cheerily from the edge of the hall, which she ignores. She glances over and sees someone talking to Mr. Harrington, and her stomach lurches – but it’s not Flash, it’s Peter. He’s saying something earnestly (which is pretty much his default setting), gesturing widely with his hands while Mr. Harrington nods.

Michelle walks past them and goes up to the stage, where Abe and Cindy are mucking around. Flash is sitting off to the side, but he’s completely silent, and doesn’t look at her.

“All right, guys,” she says, and even without raising her voice, the group instantly quiets down. “Let’s run some drills.”

She tries not to pay attention to whatever Peter is still discussing with Mr. Harrington as she drills the team on general knowledge questions, but she can’t help but hear when Mr. Harrington calls Flash over to them. He looks sulky as he walks over, and only looks more so at whatever Mr. Harrington is telling him.

Peter, meanwhile, has wandered over to join the group running drills. Ned gets up to let Peter take his seat and his buzzer.

“Nice of you to finally join us, Peter,” says Michelle sarcastically. It’s no big deal really, but she wants to try and make him squirm a little bit.

“Sorry, MJ,” says Peter with a contrition that only makes her narrow her eyes more. With Liz as captain, he bailed on nationals with less remorse than he’s showing her right now. “I just had to clear something up with Mr. Harrington.”

Michelle lets it go, but after practice she corners him before he can disappear out the door in point five seconds like he usually does.

“So, what were you talking about with Mr. Harrington that was so important? And what did it have to do with Flash?”

Flash had also rejoined the group about two minutes after Peter, looking mutinous. She hadn’t said anything, and neither had he, even to make his customary snide remarks about Peter’s ‘Stark internship’. However, he’d answered several questions in the quick-fire round, and even got most of them right.

Peter grins at her sheepishly. “Well, y’know, I just wanted to clear up a couple things with him, about earlier.”

“Earlier,” Michelle repeats.

“Yeah. I figured Flash might try and get you in trouble with Mr. Harrington over what you said, ‘cause it was about the Decathlon team, so I wanted to try and make sure you didn’t. Get in trouble, I mean. So I just told him that there was an argument, you stood up for me and might’ve said some kinda harsh stuff, but you were defending me. And he said it was okay.”

“Just ‘okay’?” says Michelle.

“Well, he said it was between you guys and that you and Flash could sort it out between yourselves, without involving the Decathlon team,” Peter says with a diffident shrug. “So, y’know. No worries!”

Michelle treats Peter to a long, hard look before punching him lightly in the arm. “I don’t need you to play the hero for me,” she tells him.

“You’re welcome, MJ,” he replies with a brilliant grin.

The problem with breaking her policy of non-intervention is that when she does, Michelle always winds up getting involved. With people.

To be more specific, she thinks that she might actually be becoming friends with Peter and Ned. Not ‘on friendly terms’ friends, but actual friends.

After that day, she somehow never goes back to sitting two or three seats away from them at lunch. At first, she still keeps her distance conversationally, silently reading her book and ignoring Peter and Ned’s chatter, but then she finds herself somehow getting drawn into one of their dumb debates about which Star Wars movie is the best (Rogue One, obviously).

After that they somehow get on to debating the Lord of the Rings and Eowyn’s characterisation in the books versus the movies (Michelle has very strong opinions; Tolkien is great, but he sucked at writing women) and whether or not another set of Harry Potter movies was a good idea. Michelle is slightly unnerved to find that she has a lot in common with these dorks.

Peter and Michelle keep a whispered debate going all the way through History and up to the final bell, with Peter contending that creators should have the right to keep making new works in their franchise, and Michelle arguing that they should release the IP into the public domain so that fans can have a go at making their own versions. (“But then we wouldn’t have Rogue One, and you said it was your favourite!” Peter needles her. “We also probably would’ve got a diverse Star Wars a lot sooner,” Michelle retorts, and grins when his face falls.) She’s smiling as she says goodbye to them, and she carries on smiling all the way home.

Maybe having actual-friends isn’t so bad after all.

She’s wrong-footed, though, when Peter invites her over to watch Firefly with him and Ned at his house two days later. Ned stayed back after Geography class to talk to the teacher, so it’s just her and Peter at their usual lunch table. Peter has set his tray down next to hers but isn’t sitting down yet, nervously shifting on the spot as he looks down at her.

“…And so I thought it might be cool if maybe, you know, you came over and watched it with us? My aunt’s cool, she won’t mind. You could stay for dinner,” Peter rambles.

Michelle opens her mouth, unsure what to say. Sitting together at lunch and arguing about geek culture is one thing, but going over to someone’s house, meeting their mom (well, aunt) and staying for dinner is something else entirely. She’s a solitary person by nature, and she needs her time alone after spending the whole day around people.

Plus, she can’t help thinking it would be awkward with just the three of them – she doesn’t know them that well, not really – and it would make this whole “situation” with Peter, the one where they keep accidentally catching each other’s eyes for too long and then blushing and awkwardly looking away, so much worse. It’s bad enough at school, but in close quarters with no good escape route? Ugh. Recipe for disaster.

“I actually have this book that I really need to finish for English-” Michelle starts.

“Oh, yeah, no, of course, I get it – though I mean, you could bring it with you?” Peter offers.

“-and I have to be home by 8 o’clock anyway on a school night, my older sister is kind of strict,” she finishes over him.

It’s not a lie, but it’s a half-truth; Evelyn never holds her to the 8 o’clock curfew that their parents set, and she wouldn’t care if Michelle went out for the evening or stayed over a friend’s house. Michelle just hasn’t ever wanted to before.

“Sure, yeah, right…” Peter says, looking for all the world like a puppy whose tail she just trod on. “Maybe some other time.”

He sits down, and Michelle returns awkwardly to her lunch. Fortunately, Ned arrives before the tense silence can drag out much longer.

“Hey, guys! Sorry that took so long. So, did you ask her yet?” he says to Peter. Michelle’s face grows warm.

“Yeah, uh, I did,” says Peter in a despondent voice, not looking at her. Ned somehow fails to pick up on his tone.

“Great! So, we’ll see you later?”

“Actually, I have a- uh-” Michelle begins.

“She has stuff to do, and, um, her mom-”

“Sister-”

“Sister, yeah, sorry, is kinda strict.”

“Oh.” Ned looks between the two of them, then shrugs. “That sucks.”

Michelle leaves five minutes later, mumbling something about having to go to the library.

She doesn’t know where all this guilt has suddenly come from, but it sits in her stomach all day. The thought of another evening spent by herself in her room, reading, suddenly seems cold and empty rather than appealing.

She fidgets distractedly all through Spanish, and eventually pulls out her copy of Brave New World and skimreads the last few pages under her desk. Then as the bell rings, she pushes her way through the crowd of students in the hallway and hurries to catch up with Peter and Ned.

“-sure she didn’t mean it like that, dude, she just-” Ned cuts off mid-sentence when he sees her. “Oh, Michelle. Hey.”

“Hey,” Michelle says awkwardly.

There’s a pause, during which she resolutely forces herself to swallow her pride, then goes on,

“So I managed to finish my book during Spanish, and I was wondering if the offer to watch Firefly with you guys is...”

“Yeah!” Peter interrupts her eagerly. “Yeah, if you’re sure your sister won’t-”

“I already texted her, so it probably won’t be a big deal,” says Michelle. In fact, Evelyn’s reply to her off-handed text about spending the evening at a friend’s house had been,

what???? you???? who died and gave you a social life???

She’d decided to interpret that as an okay.

They go to Peter’s house, and she manages not to embarrass herself in front of his aunt (who is surprisingly young, and also endearingly pleased to meet another friend of her nephew’s).

Up in his room, which is just as nerdy as she had predicted, they sit shoulder to shoulder and watch Firefly on Ned’s laptop. Michelle has seen the show half a dozen times before, and she keeps up a running commentary of random trivia and dry remarks about the actors’ terrible Mandarin, which entertains the two boys to no end.

All in all, it’s not a terrible evening at all, and when Peter suggests that they hang out again on Friday night to finish the second half of the series, she doesn’t think twice before agreeing.

One problem with being friends with Peter and Ned is that it becomes a lot harder for Michelle to ignore the fact that Peter is hiding something.

But she manages to forget about it for a little while, right up until she gets to Peter’s house for the second half of the Friday marathon and Ned answers the door.

“Oh, uh, Peter had to cancel on tonight. Something came up.”

Michelle frowns. “He didn’t say anything at school,” she points out. In fact, Peter had been looking forward to their evening, and had checked with her at least three times to make sure she was still coming over. What was so important that he had to bail at 5pm on a Friday?

“Yeah, no, it was really last-minute,” Ned explains, although Michelle doesn’t really buy it.

“So… what are you doing here?” Michelle asks. The ‘this isn’t actually your house’ is implied, though to be fair, she doesn’t know anything about Ned’s home situation, so maybe half-living at Peter’s house is normal for him.

“Uh, May invited me to stay for dinner,” Ned says awkwardly.

“Oh.”

There’s a pause, during which Michelle tells herself not to be stupid; of course she’s not on the sort of terms yet that would see her invited to a guy’s house when he’s not even home. That’s lifelong-best-friend shit.

“Well, I’d better get going, then,” says Michelle, and turns to go.

“Hey, um-” Ned calls before she can get too far, and Michelle waits. “Do you… wanna stay for dinner, too? I’m sure May won’t mind, she always makes extra…”

Michelle half spins around. “I wouldn’t want to bother her, really, I’ll just head home and-”

“It’s fine, I swear – May? Can Michelle stay for dinner, too?”

So, reluctantly, Michelle steps inside just as Peter’s Aunt May comes into the front hall, drying her hands on a dishtowel. “Oh, Michelle! How good to see you again!”

She smiles, but Michelle thinks there’s something a little strained and brittle about it. “Of course you can stay for dinner.”

Michelle mentally instructs herself to stop being in observation mode; she’s been invited over as a guest, she needs to stop analysing things. “Thanks so much for having me, May. I don’t want to intrude.”

“Really, I insist! Peter should be back later, anyway; he just had to, uh, run an errand.”

‘Run an errand’? Michelle thinks. Clearly being a terrible and unconvincing liar runs in the family. But she says nothing; it’s none of her business, and whatever this weird secret is that Peter has, at least his aunt is in the know.

Dinner is a strange experience. Ned and May both seem on edge, and Ned keeps checking his phone the whole time. Occasionally Michelle will have her head bent over her food and at the edge of her vision, catch him exchanging looks with May, silently communicating something.

She could try to fill the silence, but she’s never really seen the point of small talk. Occasionally May will seem to realise that they’re acting weird and brightly inject a question about school into the silence, which Michelle answers as normally as she can. All in all, it’s sort of a relief when dinner is over.

Michelle offers to help wash up, but May waves her off. “Don’t be silly, you’re the guest! I got this. You two go upstairs and watch a movie or something.”

Ned looks at her uncertainly. Michelle likes Ned well enough, but it’s not the same dynamic without Peter around, and she can already imagine how awkward it would be sitting down to watch a movie with just the two of them. “That’s okay; I should really be getting home. Thanks again for dinner.”

Ned, obviously relieved, offers to see her out.

“So, uh, see you at school tomorrow,” he says as she shoulders her bag.

“Monday,” Michelle corrects him dryly. “Tomorrow’s the weekend.”

“Oh yeah! Right.”

“Tell Peter I said hi, when he gets back from… Whatever it is he’s doing.”

Michelle and Ned look at each other for a moment. Michelle can see in his eyes that he’s waiting for her to ask the obvious question of just where the hell Peter is and what he’s doing. A big part of her wants to ask. But she doesn’t want to hear another flimsy lie, and besides, she promised herself that she wouldn’t try and figure this out.

Even though she really wants to.

“Night, Ned.”