#to quote Juno MacGuff: 'it would be friggin' sweet if no one hit me'

[forasecondtherewedwon]

can you do #11 for spideychelle plz

Thanks to both of you, Anons!!

11. Secret relationship

find light

Pairing: Peter Parker x Michelle Jones (Spideychelle) Rating: E Word count: 13252

Summary:

MJ's got it bad for Peter Parker, but she's on track to be valedictorian while he sells weed at parties. Not the ideal person to get involved with if she wants to maintain her reputation as a serious academic. Solution? Conduct a relationship in secret until they graduate. But that only works for so long, and leaving high school behind isn't a guarantee that things will get easier.

She’s under no illusion about whether or not he actually quit smoking. When he speaks to her, there’s no hint on his breath, but the scrappy black hoodie he wears almost every day reeks of cigarettes. He has his forearm braced on the locker next to hers as he leans in. The only thing MJ’s ever felt before that’s anything like this is fear. She keeps her gaze straight ahead, sliding her textbooks carefully into her backpack behind her sketchbook. Associating with Peter Parker would be as normal or sane as walking into the shop class and gripping a live wire. Sure, she hears about him―who doesn’t?―but they do not interact. They do not talk, they do not meet. Though they’re both students at Midtown, their trajectories do not cross.

What she last heard was that he went cold turkey. That’s just a highly unlikely story for the guy who gets suspended weekly for walking down the hall with a cigarette dangling from his lips and sells dime bags at parties, making him simultaneously the most popular and most shadowy person in the room. The sanctity of her grades, among other reasons, is why she’s never approached him.

Because there’s no number of A’s that’ll make her stop finding him sexy, MJ slams the door of her locker.

It’s surprising to her when he jumps. But he doesn’t walk away.

“So,” he says, “like I’m saying, the project… Hey, asshole!”

MJ’s so wound up that she’s not sure how she manages to sigh when Peter’s attention is completely diverted by one of his buddies striding past, stopping so the two of them can perform some stupid handshake. They start talking about an upcoming house party and she decides she’s not a big enough idiot to keep standing there waiting for Peter Parker to remember she exists. She’s pretty sure he just found out when they were assigned this joint Chemistry project. Were this a different kind of joint project, she bets he’d show a little more interest. She’ll reward the teeny-tiny bit of initiative he demonstrated by coming up to her at all by doing the whole project herself. He’s astoundingly intelligent, she knows that, but he’s not the most reliable groupmate and she’d rather do double the work than receive half the grade. It’s senior year and she can’t afford that.

“No, wait, wait, wait,” he begs, briefly grabbing her upper arm when she turns to walk away. Apparently, his friend takes this as his dismissal and it’s Peter and MJ, alone again by her locker.

“I’ll do it,” she says. “Don’t worry about it.”

“What?”

“The project.”

“Shit! Would you? That’d be great!” He beams, then laughs at her expression. So it was a joke. Wow, nice one. “No, seriously, I really want to work with you.”

“No, seriously, I’ve got this,” MJ pushes back, feeling warmer the longer they talk, not only because he made a joke at her expense. His eye contact isn’t great, but when their gazes connect, it scrambles her brain.

“Well, it was assigned to both of us.”

“And both of us know who’s going to do it and who’s going to flake out.”

She stares at him in astonishment. She didn’t mean to say that out loud, it’s just that she’s never been fought on project responsibility before. Doesn’t Peter know her as the Girl Who Gets Good Grades? AKA the least thrilling Stieg Larsson novel of all time. Even if he doesn’t really register her presence as a classmate or a girl or a human being, she thought he would at least be familiar with the role she fills in their academic dystopia. If Midtown were an arrivals gate at the airport, she’d head for the welcome sign reading ‘Smart Girl’.

Peter laughs and it nearly sucks her in because it’s not designed to mess with her this time, but she walks swiftly away from him instead. No more touching. It feels too… unexpected.

“Good talk, Jones!” he calls jubilantly after her.

Nobody’s ever addressed her solely by her last name before. It sends a flutter through her as she slips outside.

―

“Ok,” Peter says the next day, spinning a chair around backwards and dropping into it. “What are we doing?”

MJ knows what she’s doing―reading Midnight’s Children in the library over lunch hour. His arrival is so visually demanding that she’s almost startled by her own proof of a sandwich in one hand and the novel in the other; beyond the disruption of sitting with her, he folds his arms on the chairback and she stares. He’s pushed up the sleeves of that trademark hoodie to expose his forearms, but what’s holding her gaze a moment too long are his hands. The rather beautiful fingers. The scarred knuckles that are his souvenir for beating the shit out of Brad Davis in the student parking lot last spring. She didn’t see the fight and doesn’t know which of the rumours about what started it is the truth. When it comes to Peter, she tries to put any information out of her mind.

“About what? The project?”

“Yeah,” he replies, ostensibly in complete earnestness. “Where are we at?”

“Like, how much have I done?”

“No, I mean who’s doing what?”

“If you really want to help, I’ll send you jot notes when I’m done and you can do the PowerPoint,” she offers sceptically.

“Can do. But what about the rest of it? Let’s start working on it.”

Finally, MJ slips the piece of paper that’s her current bookmark between Rushdie’s pages, setting down her leisure reading and her ham-on-sourdough.

“What is this?”

“This is the library,” Peter tells her with slow sarcasm. “Sorry, I thought you’d been in here before.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to pull my weight, if you’ll ever fucking let me.”

His tone’s not annoyed, it’s almost teasing. All she wants to do is press her hands to her temples and think through how she might have fallen into an alternate reality housing a studious Peter Parker.

“Why?”

“All these questions! Because that’s what you do with projects, right? Teacher assigns them, you do them, grades and shit���?” He’s motioning with one hand to emphasize the oncoming flow of stages that seem to continue past ‘grades and shit.’

“I just didn’t think…”

“Oh, I know you haven’t been thinking about me.” Disconcertingly, he throws her a wink. “You were expecting a deadbeat partner.”

His words, not hers.

“Fine,” MJ agrees, to get past that wink. “Let’s go over to the computers and start researching.”

“Hell yeah.”

She doesn’t glare at him for his oddness, but once he’s seated next to her at the computer bay, she wishes she had. Maybe he would’ve sat farther away. He’s shorter than she is, and yet he kicks his legs out beneath the table and somewhere under there they grow long enough that hers are in constant danger of brushing them or twining with them or―the thought that horrifies her most―having their shoes knock. Shoe-to-shoe contact strikes her as something exceedingly flirtatious, like sending sexts through Morse code. She tucks her feet under her chair and crosses her ankles while they work. Which they do, in unanticipated companionableness. MJ ignores every one of her urges that tell her to slip her fingers through his where he cups the mouse, to lean in and grab his shoulder for balance as she looks at the website he found, to drag her chair close enough to wrap her arms around his waist, holding tight to the sweater that, logically, she never wants to touch because it stinks.

When lunch hour ends, she finds herself flustered and relieved.

“It was cool hanging out,” are Peter’s words of farewell.

Hanging out? Did they hang out? MJ’s almost too disoriented to find her locker and stow the remains of her lunch before her next class.

―

He keeps turning up. To their Chem class? Almost never. But her locker transforms into some kind of Peter Parker homing device without her knowledge and now he’s always swinging by. One time, her eyes dart back and forth from his face to the cigarette tucked (jauntily, brazenly, and―it must be said―idiotically) behind his ear. A teacher spies it too and Peter gets detention just standing there. His broad grin at Mr. Dell and the, “Aw, man, really?” he jokingly demands put MJ’s heart in a hammock, swaying wildly and beating in question as to why only this boy has a smile like that.

She seeks solace in Cindy. Initially, MJ divulges very little and her friend assumes that her current daftness is the result of struggles to find citable sources for her Chemistry project.

“Who’s your partner again?” Cindy asks over lunch.

“Peter Parker,” MJ says quietly. She tries to let her hair hang forward to shield her blush, but she’s far too slow.

“Oh, MJ.”

“Don’t.”

“MJ. You like Peter Parker? But he’s―”

“I know.”

“Damn,” Cindy says, which is more than enough to communicate how MJ happens to feel and also far too little to provide any clue about what to do. This is not the suffering she usually expects with group projects.

“He’s a smoker,” her friend points out, trying to be helpful by stating the most obviously off-putting thing about the guy.

“I heard he’s trying to quit.”

“I heard that too. Apparently, he has nicotine patches in his locker. And mints.”

MJ just buries her face in her arms and groans.

“I’m so screwed,” she says, voice muffled. “He won’t leave me alone.”

“Maybe he likes you.”

MJ laughs sharply into her sleeve.

“Maybe he likes you,” Cindy repeats gently.

“I can’t.”

“I know, babe.” Her friend squeezes her shoulder. ��But you could.”

She lifts her head.

“I couldn’t.”

“You could,” Cindy refutes, gaining momentum. “You could do the project and then, you know, do Peter.”

“Shhh!”

They’re eating in the cafeteria and have the table to themselves, but still.

“Just a hook-up,” her friend says, as though she has any more experience with casual hook-ups than MJ does. They’re both firmly at zero.

“That would be insane. No. I’m not just going to hook up with my Chem partner. Would you hook up with your Chem partner?”

Infuriatingly, Cindy seems to truly consider this question. MJ wishes she’d focus more on the rest of the conversation.

“No. I got paired up with Betty. I find her too adorable to be hot.”

“It was a rhetorical question.”

“Well, if Betty ever asks you about me, you know what to say to let her down easy.”

MJ rolls her eyes.

“What if Peter keeps talking to me after we hand in our report and do our presentation?”

“Depends if you’re planning to nail him before or after.”

“I’m not planning to nail him at all.”

“You should at least plan a little. Use a condom.”

“Cindy, for real.”

“For real,” her friend insists, twisting to give her a hard stare. “You already got your college acceptance letters and you’re not going to let your grades drop just because you sleep with this one guy! You can do this!”

“He deals drugs,” MJ reminds her in a hushed voice.

“Not hard drugs. And you’re on academic decathlon. Lots of people have extracurriculars!”

“I can’t believe you. If this were the other way around, you would be freaking out over the very idea of being with someone like him.”

“I enjoy pushing you into things while I remain safely on the sidelines,” Cindy agrees, smiling brightly.

“This is terrible, but, if anybody found out… my parents, any of the teachers… his reputation would reflect badly on me.”

“You’re right,” her friend says. MJ drops her face back into her arms. “You’re gonna do it, aren’t you?”

MJ groans.

―

On the day of their presentation, Peter’s late, but he’s there. MJ perks up in her seat, which makes her frustrated with herself. He doesn’t even get detention for his lack of punctuality. She guesses this is because he so rarely decides to come to class at all that the staff don’t want to discourage him any further.

They aren’t up right away and their lab benches are a few apart (everyone organized alphabetically by last name), but he turns around to glance at her more than once. No backpack, but he has a binder with him, from which many loose pages poke. As long as a couple of those are their report, she’s thrilled. Although, she did also do the entire thing herself just in case. She almost feels bad for not trusting him. Then again, he was late and watching the clock stressed her out.

When they go up to present, he slaps his papers on the front desk and flips a red USB out of his sleeve like he’s flicking open a switchblade.

“PowerPoint,” he explains to the unnerved expression MJ can feel on her face. “You didn’t think I forgot, did you? If I can just…”

And he slips behind her to plug it into the port, sweatshirt brushing her back. Despite the self-assurance she has in the quality of her work, speaking in front of the class always makes her feel slightly ill, so she’s backed up nearly to the defunct blackboard when Peter makes his move around her. He could be going behind her to try to be subtle about the setup. Yeah, that’s probably why he didn’t cross in front where there’s so much more space. He smells intensely of the outdoors, like grass―grass grass―and she inhales it the whole presentation long. What was he doing before this? Playing tackle football where the field’s just been mowed? MJ delivers her portion of the information somewhat robotically, but Peter surprises her by darting around, making bonds out of chalk to illustrate the finer points of this organic chemistry assignment. His lines are brisk and sure and she stares along with the rest of the class. Yes, she does.

“That was a novelty,” he says, suddenly at her side so they’re walking through the door together when class is over.

“Which part?”

She glances back to see Cindy making an ‘ok’ sign at her, looking from Peter to MJ. MJ waves her off, trying not to get ungainly as Peter stays with her. Seems as though he’s intending to walk her all the way to her locker. She has no idea where his is, or what he keeps in it. What she can most easily picture is Bender’s locker from The Breakfast Club.

“Oh, the whole thing. Having the entire class looking at us, getting time to talk, standing up there with you.” He elbows her arm gently while he grins and MJ gives the most pitiful laugh. He’s impossible.

“You were weirdly impressive.”

Peter jogs ahead, then turns to walk backwards, watching her face as he continues to grin.

“Aw, I’m flattered. You think we did ok?”

MJ’s ready to say that of course they did when a little freshman darts down the hall. Instinctively, she reaches out and grips Peter’s wrist. Her hand slides as he halts. Their palms meet. His fingers flex around hers for a second before she shakes him off.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I think we did fine.”

He nods, now walking along at her side.

“Good.”

They get to her locker and Peter still doesn’t leave. She attempts to ignore him as she trades her Chem books for Geography, but he makes it difficult, pushing her locker door open all the way and producing a stick of chalk that she realizes he must’ve tucked into his pocket after writing on the board.

“What are you doing?” she asks when he blocks her view of the door with his arm.

“Shhh.”

He steps away after a few seconds and she sees that he’s vandalized her little magnetic chalkboard with ‘PP wuz here.’

“I need to get new initials,” he says thoughtfully.

MJ scoffs.

“What you need is a better understanding of personal property.”

“Don’t worry, Jones. Chalk wipes right off,” he informs her, like she’s unfamiliar with the substance.

She shakes her head in annoyance.

“But this you better be careful about,” Peter says, lowering his voice abruptly (goosebumps for MJ) as he deposits the chalk in the door tray that holds her Chapstick and a broken magnet. “I stole it, so it’s contraband. If anyone asks, you say you’re holding it for a friend.”

He gives her an irresistible conspiratorial smile and leaves her at her locker.

MJ doesn’t touch the chalk. She doesn’t touch what he wrote either.

“Hell,” she mutters.

―

“Your parents think you’re at my place and my parents will not be worrying about where I am until four in the morning. The greatest benefit of having an older sister,” Cindy lectures, “is that she broke our parents in on abandoning the midnight curfew.”

Still, MJ’s nervous. They’re heading to a party at Flash Thompson’s after the semi-formal dance. The lights on the bus are bright and MJ’s feet are tired from her two-inch heels, but she won’t be taking her shoes off on public transit. Uh uh.

“You just better stay with me,” she warns her friend.

“We’ll be inseparable until you shoo me away so you and Peter can be alooone.”

“Shut up. He wasn’t at the dance.”

“All that means is he’s more of a jeans-and-sweatshirt kinda guy. I bet he’ll be there. You wanna bet?”

“No, I wanna wimp out and go home,” MJ admits.

“I’m not letting you!” Cindy says cheerily, rocking into MJ’s side. “It’ll be good for you to see him outside of school. Maybe he becomes totally unappealing and you squash this crush like a bug.”

“Maybe.”

Cindy is a steadfast companion as they do a loop of the main floor at the Thompson residence. MJ gingerly carries a Solo cup Flash handed her, but she doesn’t drink. She has no idea what’s in it. She’s wary of both Flash’s taste and the sad mustache he’s trying to grow before graduation. Although she’s been to a few house parties over her high school years, arriving in a ‘60s-style burnt-orange minidress and heels makes her feel strange, obnoxious, and watched, even though everyone else is also wearing their nice clothes from the dance. Minus Flash, who has changed into party attire that strikes a balance between retro aerobics-wear and spring break in Florida.

It’s an hour before she concedes to herself that Peter isn’t here. She leaves Cindy by Betty and goes to the bathroom. Peeing, she checks her texts, which is dumb because there’s no way she’ll see what she wants to see; he doesn’t have her number. Working up her courage as she washes and dries her hands, MJ wanders through the big family room at the rear of the house. There’s a sudden burst of laughter as the back door opens―some people are out drinking and smoking on the patio, and then Peter’s stepping inside right in front of her.

“Oh,” she says.

“Michelle. Hey.”

His eyes are red-rimmed and it’s not from crying. She catches the movement of him slipping a lighter back into the pocket of his jeans. There’s something wrong with her that she finds him hot even in this state, isn’t there? It’s his looseness. The extra crinkle around his eyes as he squints tight to smile at her. He could be a cornered grizzly bear. That’s how much she feels the visceral impulse to not be around him. He will snarl and swipe and she will suffer. Rather than returning to Cindy, MJ shifts her weight, wanting to remove her shoes so she can step down and closer to Peter.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Hi,” she repeats, rigid with the fear of her own potential actions. It makes him laugh.

“You wanna go downstairs? I heard there’s pizza.”

“Yes.” It comes out strong.

It shouldn’t be this easy to go with him, to let him lead because he knows where the door to the basement is and she doesn’t. There should be checkpoints that ask if she’s sure she wants to proceed. Peter bounds down ahead of her and, at the bottom, turns to look at her. His expression is confused, then, quickly, so awed that it makes her blush and wonder if Sofía Vergara or some other bombshell is coming down the stairs behind her. But MJ’s own soles are the only sound against the carpeted hush.

“You look so gorgeous. Damn.”

The words could be meant only for himself except that he waits until she’s down the stairs and next to him to say them.

“You always look great,” he goes on before she can sever the intimate thread of the moment with a flippant remark about the male gaze equating beauty with value. “Fuck, isn’t time funny? I swear I was watching you walk down here for, like, an hour.”

You’re stoned, she wants to remind him. Why bother? Being compelled to state the obvious would only make her seem equally impaired.

“You wanna hang out with me?” MJ asks instead. This setting―the TV left on and a pile of pizza boxes on the sleek glass table the deep sectional curves around―seems more suited to it than Midtown’s library.

“Yeah.” He smiles.

MJ texts Cindy to let her know where she’s gone, then Peter eats pizza and MJ takes her heels off with a groan of pleasure that makes him sit up alertly before slumping back with a laugh. Everything makes him laugh. Missing his mouth with the pizza, the dreary Jason Statham movie they don’t bother changing the channel from, and MJ. So many times, MJ. Her dry humour rocks his THC-coated world and some of her horror at the evils of recreational marijuana use vanishes because he’s just so sweet like this, he’s so friendly. Somehow, he starts asking questions about the sketchbook he noticed she carries at school and, magically, there’s a pen in her hand and she’s doodling from his wrist up his forearm, roughing out the beginnings of a sleeve tattoo from the kooky ideas that stream from his lips. He watches her silently when she asks him to quit jerking his arm around and then it gets really quiet, apart from the occasional explosion onscreen. There are windows high up in the walls, level with the ground outside, and night sounds pulse in. Noises that are frogs and bugs but that, from childhood, MJ has always associated with the distant jingle of stars.

“I have to go now, Peter,” she murmurs when the movie’s over and he has his head resting back against the couch with his eyes closed. She collects her shoes and makes to climb over his legs, always sprawled straight out, but he catches her hand in his slack, warm grip.

MJ stares at his hand around hers and Peter opens his eyes and he stares at their hands too. An imagined scene of a haybale being pitched into a barn’s loft comes to mind at the feeling inside her chest, the sudden upward heave of her heart. She leans back and he sits forward, willingly releasing her when she half-turns away from him and grabs an empty beer bottle from the table. She lays it on its side and gives it a spin. While it’s still slowing, MJ stops it so it faces him. She can see Peter’s chest moving as he breathes, glancing from the bottle up to her eyes, probably trying to gauge her intentions. Thinking very little and feeling so much fear and want and freefall, she rests her knee on the couch between his splayed thighs and clutches the front of his hoodie in a fist that’s almost numb at the end of her arm. His eyes are locked on her mouth when she leans down to kiss him softly.

Peter’s tongue slipping into her mouth wakes her vagina up instantly.

“Uhmm,” she moans, parting her lips more and inexpertly attempting to copy what he’s doing because the pressure and the occasional sucking of her tongue are turning her on swiftly and utterly and she wants him this turned on.

His hands hardly touch her hips and she’s scrambling onto his lap, shoes cast to the floor. Peter adjusts her, lifting from below the highest part of her thigh and pulling her forward so she can’t fall backwards off the couch. She supposes. Her head’s hazy with the green-pepper taste of his mouth and the boy-smell of his skin. He seems hesitant about putting his hands any higher, since her already short skirt has hiked up around her hips with her legs straddling him, but then his palms land on her ass, over her underwear. They break the kiss, panting across each other’s tongues as MJ rocks her hips ahead and Peter’s steady, shaky hands press her against his hard groin. He makes a wild, desperate sound at her most tentative forward nudge.

She’s wet through her underwear, she knows it, but it feels so good to rub herself against the front of his jeans, knowing that she gave him that erection. His fingers caress the back of her neck, then dig up into her hairline as he Frenches her with the furious, winding nonsense of a rabid animal.

“Ah!” she gasps, clipping his tongue with her teeth as he tries to pull her in again and deeper. “Aah!”

He shifts both hands back down to her ass and steers her grinding, forcing her faster when the pitch of her voice climbs.

“God,” Peter groans into her throat when she stretches her neck, face naturally tipping upwards. “Fuck yes.”

He’s damp with sweat across the nape of his neck and down between the mounded muscle of his back where she tucks her hands. MJ drags against him until the entire inside of her body feels like it’s had tingling mouthwash poured into it and shaken around, sparkling, bliss like the scrape of a blade without puncture. She cries out, comes, then cries out again, hugging him close around the neck with her eyes clamped shut. Peter’s orgasm noise is a grunting huff and MJ draws back in time to watch his face. It looks as though his expression’s trying to melt right off his features, like she could thrust a spatula under his skin and lift his whole face off like a crêpe. She feels terrifically powerful.

After a minute of them shuddering against each other, she struggles back to her feet, feeling like someone’s grabbed her and spun her a million times. Dizzy with how fast it happened. That it did happen. Peter gives her a smirk full of the secret they now share because, yes, this will have to be a secret. She assumes he knows that.

Standing, he pulls the front of his baggy sweatshirt down to hide his crotch. MJ puts her shoes on and waits silently―brain buzzing―until he evidently understands that she wants him to go ahead of her. She has no interest in proceeding him up the stairs with the sodden underwear beneath her minidress. Her first priority after leaving this house and going back to Cindy’s is to get into her clean pajamas. When Peter turns and ducks in to kiss her after climbing to only the first stair, she’s startled but reciprocates, though the rush of getting off with him is being replaced by a different, more anxious rush as they prepare to rejoin the party. MJ nearly loses her footing at the realization of how easily they could’ve been caught. Jesus. This is exactly why Peter Parker is the guy for a hookup. A repetition is so inadvisable that he’ll never suggest it. She can’t be messing around in classmates’ basements, taking these risks. It’s not what a smart girl does.

“Wha’s happenin’ in the basement?” a guy’s slurred voice asks the second Peter opens the door.

“Pizza,” he says simply, and they escape.

MJ walks quickly away from the scene of the, well, not crime, but very private indiscretion, hunting for Cindy’s iridescent white dress in the family room, kitchen, and living room, where most people are still gathered. Disconcertingly, Peter hurries along at her side. She’s certain she feels the ghost of his hand on her waist when she stops suddenly to avoid the slosh of someone’s drink across her path. What is he doing? Doesn’t he see that they’re like spies, that they can’t be spotted together or they’ll be in danger of someone finding out? The story of her reckless kiss and the impulsive grinding it led to are in her every feature. They must be.

Aha, Cindy!

MJ taps her friend’s shoulder and leans in quickly.

“I’m ready to go,” she says.

Though she’s angled her back to shun Peter (for their own good), she watches her friend’s eyes move from her face to something behind her and knows he must be standing there.

“Ok, we’ll go right now,” Cindy agrees, reaching down and clasping her hand.

She tosses Abe and Betty a quick goodbye and they hustle to the door like the mice in Cinderella. Which reminds MJ to slip her shoes on. Just before they exit, she flings a glance back into the room and sees Peter laughing with his friend Ned, a cigarette already tucked behind his ear. Good.

―

MJ thinks Cindy’s asleep when her friend rolls over and asks what happened.

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No,” MJ assures her.

“You came out of nowhere and you had a weird look on your face.”

“Are you saying you don’t like my face?”

Cindy draws a limp arm out of the blankets and presses her hand to MJ’s cheek, lightly shoving her face away in joking response.

“But what went down?” she persists, then yawns. “You were with him, weren’t you? You don’t expect me to believe that he just came up behind you the second you came to get me.”

“No, I was with him.”

“And?”

She still feels it somehow, the unexpected, exhilarating kick of Peter kissing her and gathering her close and wanting her like that. Before he complimented her on the stairs, MJ hadn’t even known he was aware of her in that way, as anything more than a reliable project partner. If she reveals anything to Cindy, well, it’s like giving up something precious, no matter how much she trusts her friend. There won’t be a repeat of tonight. She’ll delicately wrap the memory in mental tissue paper, storing it neatly, preserving it well. She’ll be able to walk down the hall at Midtown, see Peter, and know she hit that. Non-penetratively. It counts. They are Pluto and Mercury. They do not talk, they do not meet. Their trajectories crossing was a once-in-an-infinity event that will not reoccur.

“We talked and… nothing happened.”

“Well, good,” Cindy decides. “I was thinking about you after you sent me that text and I thought―” She yawns again, triggering an echo from MJ. “―probably not the best idea. He’s just so unpredictable. You deserve more than that.”

“Yeah.”

“Man. Peter Parker.”

“Peter Parker.”

―

She doesn’t greet him warmly, or at all, when he returns to her locker. He doesn’t push and he doesn’t chase, though he definitely has the charisma for it if he ever felt like channeling that shit. Focused, his sweet charm could set a girl on fire like a kid roasts an anthill with a magnifying glass. Honestly, MJ’s surprised Peter doesn’t have a girlfriend, except that he probably prefers not being accountable to anyone but himself. She’s the same.

Even congratulating herself is stale by the day he approaches her again, there’s been such a gap between Flash’s basement and this Thursday afternoon. She’s waiting for her brother to pick her up and Peter lobs the cigarette he was smoking away. It streams thin smoke and rolls from the pavement into the grass.

“That’s littering,” MJ tells him.

For a moment, he just stares back.

“So, what’s up?”

“Waiting for my brother.”

A smile flashes and dies on his face.

“What’s going on?”

“Not much,” she says in the most casual tone, not looking at him at all. Her posture’s defensive. If someone walks out of the building and sees them, she wants them to find it impossible that they’re viewing Michelle Jones and Peter Parker talking. She wants them to believe their eyes are deceiving them.

His laugh is breathy but brutal.

“I did not think you were this girl.”

“What girl?” MJ darts an angry, sideways look at him. She won’t tolerate any ‘you’re not like other girls’ bullshit, even if he’s planning to turn it around and use it as an insult.

“Someone who messes around at parties and then acts like we don’t know each other.”

“I can’t honestly say that we do.”

“Ok, smartass,” Peter says sharply. She sees him dig in his pocket and extract a pack of cigarettes. He shakes his lighter out into his palm first, then plucks one free.

MJ looks firmly away from him before speaking.

“I heard you quit.”

“Habits, you know?”

“No.”

“No?” he presses. She hears the sound of him lighting up, like a piece of paper being ripped. Schik, schik, then the tear that goes right through. The soft blow of his first polluted exhalation. “Studying’s not a habit? Doing well in school’s not a habit? You could just quit?”

“Those things aren’t bad for you,” MJ informs him blandly, scanning the intersection a block down for her brother’s car.

“Something or somebody taught you to ditch the guy you fooled around with and that’s been bad for me, so I’d appreciate a little sympathy.”

She glances at him again, dropping her gaze to the motion of his thumb drumming his cigarette, tapping away the building ash. When he brings it back to his mouth for another drag, his cheeks pull in and further exaggerate the criminally-well-defined line of his jaw. MJ exhales with him.

“I didn’t ditch you, we ditched each other. Mutual ditching,” she explains. “I figured you’d want the same thing.”

“I don’t actually remember you ever asking me what I’d want.”

“Yeah, well, it’s done.”

“You think so?” he asks thoughtfully. He puts his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and traps his cigarette between his lips as he wanders over to the butt of the last one and stamps on it. She frowns in disbelief when he picks it up and takes it to the trash can.

MJ lifts her courage like she lifts her heavy backpack when she’s carting all of her textbooks home at once. Figuratively, she bends from the knees.

“You just want me to fuck you so that you can do the ditching after that. I’m not interested,” she says coolly.

“Uh, you kissed me. If anyone’s suppressing a desire to fuck, it’s you, Jones.”

“So you don’t want to fuck me?”

Who is she? She feels as large and obvious as Lincoln in his Memorial saying these words to Peter Parker, with his shifting eye contact and his nicotine hands.

"I’d like to fuck you,” he says, breathing out smoke and incredible nonchalance, “and I’m really into you and would definitely be down for you to stop acting like I ceased to exist the second I came in my pants for you. I don’t do that for just anybody.”

“Jesus, Parker, shut up,” she hisses, stunned. Violated. Aroused. No.

Peter abandons his easy posture and storms right up to her, turning his head at the last second to puff his mouthful of foul air over his shoulder. Minimal decency.

“Hey, if you’d told me that I was signing up for a one-off by going down to Thompson’s fucking basement with you, maybe I would’ve said no!”

“Really?” MJ blurts, too invested in the answer for it to be wise to ask.

“Probably!”

“If you’re so mad at me, then why don’t you just leave me alone?”

“Because I can’t! I can’t,” he says more quietly. He grips his hair with the same hand that holds his cigarette and she worries that he’ll burn himself, but whatever. “I happen to really like you, ok?”

She spots her brother’s car pulling into the school and immediately distances herself from Peter. They hold each other’s eyes as she gets in.

“Were you smoking?” Louis asks her while she buckles her seatbelt. “You better not let Mom smell that.” MJ rolls her eyes.

“No.”

“Good. Don’t start. That shit’s addictive.”

She looks out her window to see Peter still watching her as Louis puts the car in gear and they drive away.

―

If it would be weakness to message him on Facebook late that night and send him her number, then MJ is weak.

―

Their happy medium is smiling at each other in the halls, stopping by for a very short chat when they happen to be near each other’s locker, and making out fiercely behind the magazine shelf in Midtown’s library. MJ has this all under control. She’s admitted to herself that she’s still attracted to Peter―if there was any doubt that what happened in Flash’s basement had done anything but strengthen that attraction―and that, as long as they keep things fairly low-key, she’s curious. There’s more she’d like to do with him, but she doesn’t want the pressure or anxiety of anyone knowing what’s going on, not even Cindy. The judgement will kill what they have and what they have is chemistry in and out of the classroom. The surge MJ feels when Peter presses her back against the end of a bookshelf is incomparable.

He'd rather they were public, she knows. Fortunately, he doesn’t force her to break down point by point why it wouldn’t be a good idea. Doing that would teach her exactly how much she could hurt him and she doesn’t need that guilt. She likes Peter and she likes fooling around with him, but what she really likes is not getting caught. That, and knowing that she can stop this whenever she wants. The fact that he’s really into her means he’ll listen to what she wants from this non-relationship. MJ tries not to think of herself as manipulative, simply as someone who’s attempting to broaden their horizons in a closed-course physical agreement. She needs to believe in her own agency, especially since she saw how fast things can spiral when they kissed for the first time.

All they’ve done at school is kiss. Once, he accosted her at the end of the day on her way to decathlon practice and got his hands on her ass before they heard footsteps. They were separated, though MJ was sweating like a fiend, when Betty appeared. Peter’s presence surprised her and he had to lie about how he was considering rejoining the decathlon team to explain why he was nearby at that time of day. MJ’s glad it was a lie. Actually having him in one of her extracurriculars would be distracting and she needs to compartmentalize. Besides the Chem presentation, the little slice of her life she spends with Peter and the much larger slice that’s for school won’t overlap. Chem’s their only class together and they don’t share any friends, just acquaintances from decathlon.

Except Peter asks where she lives and it changes everything.

Technically, MJ’s aware that it’s not exactly an inspired idea to give her address to a small-time drug dealer. She doesn’t know what the precise consequences could be, but that’s the point! Control, good. Unknowns, bad. Still, she figures that Peter’s also just a seventeen-year-old like her. He’s smart, he’s cute, his hoodie stinks like smoke―except at parties, when it stinks like pot. His suspensions, aside from the Brad Davis incident, have been for dumb shit. He can’t be totally irresponsible, totally untrustworthy, or Midtown would expel him. Peter seemed to abandon his unofficial experiment on how far white male privilege would protect him after purpling Brad’s cheek and shredding the skin above his eyebrow. (She heard Brad got stitches, but the whole thing was covered by a gauze pad when he came back to school.)

But Peter makes her want things and it turns out, one of those things is wanting to know what he plans to do with her address. The afternoon she’s at home and hears clanging on the fire escape, she’s sure it’s him before she sticks her head out a window and sees him looking up at her from a story down.

“Oh, good,” he calls up. “I didn’t know which floor you were on!”

“What are you doing?! How did you reach the ladder?”

The ladder, which is tucked up eight feet from street level. The ladder, with its protective plate to prevent unauthorized users from touching the rungs for another three feet.

“Uh, jumped!”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“What else did you want? Knock knock?”

MJ rolls her eyes and retreats inside, where she drops the annoyed act and starts chipping at her flaking terracotta-coloured nail polish, heart racing as she secretly hopes she hasn’t scared him off. She paces, then strides to the living room, with its tall window that opens onto the fire escape Peter’s currently scaling. She turns her back for a second and, suddenly, his voice is much nearer.

“Hey,” he says, loudly through the glass. She spins around and he waves, smile lopsided and sweet.

A marble seems to fall down her throat and go swirling around her stomach because there’s a motion inside her that veers from ecstatic to terrified. Making up her mind, she crosses to the window and pries it up.

“What are you doing here?” MJ demands.

He looks confused by the question.

“This is where you live.”

“Nuh uh,” she says when he makes to swing his leg over and enter. “The sweatshirt is not coming inside. You’re not leaving the rank scent of that thing for my parents to smell when they get home.”

“Parents aren’t home? Huh,” Peter says, a high, sarcastic, and thoroughly dangerous noise with the way it makes her body react. Her brain starts trying to convince her it’s go time.

He behaves enough to remove his sweatshirt and knot the sleeves around the fire escape railing. Even takes his shoes off. If he behaved a little better, she wouldn’t see more than half of his bare back when he yanked the sweatshirt off and it dragged his grey t-shirt up with it. MJ has sat some major exams, held a chair during the most vomit-inducingly stressful decathlon tournaments, but seeing that much of Peter’s skin at one time is not something she feels equipped to contend with. Maybe she should tell him to put the sweatshirt back on. Maybe her parents don’t know what marijuana blended with cigarettes smells like. Maybe the scent will leave the soft surfaces of their rugs and couch before tomorrow, when Louis gets home from spending the night at his buddy’s place. Too late, Peter’s inside, and while that sweatshirt might be oversized, the t-shirt has to have been improperly laundered at some point in its life because it is tight. Is MJ breathing hard? No, it’s just the effort to shut the window.

“So, ’sup? What do you want?”

Sonofabitch laughs at her question. Not a guffaw, just a private little chuckle, as he holds her eyes.

“I had a question,” he finally says.

“About Chem homework?”

“About parameters.” She waits for him to continue. “Because, nobody knowing about you and me? I got that one.”

“That’s an important one,” MJ agrees, watching this boy like he’s something that bites.

“And that I probably shouldn’t try to do more than kiss you at school.”

She’s a little short of breath when she responds. Fucking window.

“Probably not.”

“But then, other locations. See, that’s where I get confused.”

“Do you?”

“I do, Jones,” Peter says solemnly, ducking his chin and looking up at her with eyes that promise, while he may be the sort that bites, he will most certainly not bite her. “I get confused.”

“Like Flash’s basement?” she checks, swallowing, gaze going from his mouth to his eyes.

“No. I know the rules for Flash’s basement. I’m a big fan of Flash’s basement.” He grins at her, a child’s smile. Innocent. “When I come here though, to your apartment, what happens? Do you have rules for this?” Peter takes a step towards her and they weren’t too many steps apart in the first place. “Tell me, Jones. What’s allowed?”

Her lips part for increased airflow. He’s done nothing―nothing but climb up the side of her building and request entry―but she doubts his thoughts are as inactive as his body’s unconcerned posture.

“My parents get off work in an hour. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Definitely not,” Peter agrees, still not moving. “I’m bad news.”

MJ edges towards him, eyes darting all over his face like crazy, and touches her mouth to his. She can feel him shudder. Then, Peter parts his lips wider and finds her tongue with his, everything staying slow, until they’re gripping the back of each other’s neck and clicking teeth in their haste. She feels gawky and foolish because the only kissing she’s really gotten used to is the easier pace they practice in the library so neither of them gets too worked up before having to go to class. His hands shift to cup the sides of her face and suddenly she doesn’t have to worry; he’s steering now. A moan quivers up her throat with his hold so tender and the motion of his tongue rough and confident. There’s an instinctual clench between her legs.

“Come with me,” she says, breaking away to lead him to the room right off the living room: her bedroom.

“My clothes stink, right?” he teases when he follows her in. “So I should probably make sure they don’t touch any―”

MJ kisses him quickly.

“Don’t be an idiot.”

She means it to be funny and persuasive, but there’s a moment where Peter’s expression freezes. His grin sours.

“No. Michelle Jones bringing an idiot to her room? We couldn’t have that.”

Her shoulders slump.

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” she assures him.

“Nobody does.” He smiles unconvincingly. “If I were, I’d be less disappointing. Nobody’s surprised by a stupid fuck-up.”

“You’re not disappointing. Or a fuck-up.”

Peter looks at her carefully for what feels like a long time.

“If I had you, I’d say I don’t deserve you.”

“You have me,” MJ counters. She kisses him hard, harder, until he wraps his arms around her and kisses her back. She’s proud of herself for saying, “I don’t deserve you,” before he peels his t-shirt off.

She doesn’t want him to think the sentiment’s just about his body, which it very well could’ve been because damn. He is cut. He is ripped. He is any other verb one could use to describe removing a coupon from a flyer. Peter must climb a lot of fire escapes to develop a body like that, reach for a lot of ladders to get those arms, and haul himself up and over a lot of railings to sculpt those abs. As long as he didn’t get the practice by visiting other girls―a quick knife of jealousy as he sits on her bed and she takes up the familiar position of straddling his thighs―she’s grateful.

His hands push her t-shirt up enough to grasp her hips as they kiss. When he doesn’t push for more, MJ takes a deep breath and sits back in his lap to remove her own shirt. Peter’s gaze is fast and eager and his palm is a revelation against the naked skin in the middle of her back. She’s only been touched like this in the pool, when Cindy would scramble onto her shoulders and they’d team up against Cindy’s cousins for a chicken fight, both teams inevitably toppling with a splash. This doesn’t feel like summer memories. Nor does the rigid bar in the front of Peter’s jeans that nudges between her legs when she shuffles forward.

To jump the hurdle of her inexperience, MJ decides to grope him where he obviously wants her. It’s also somehow less forbidding to rest her hand against the denim of his jeans than the warm skin of his chest or abdomen. Peter groans into her mouth when she rubs up and down the length of him, wrist twisted to position her hand right. Ok, good, she thinks. Good. Before thirty seconds are up, he’s letting go of her back to open his fly and lower his zipper.

“If you want to,” he breathes, eyes lowered like he’s either shy or staring at her chest.

MJ does want to, so she nods and grips him through his striped boxers. This is so much different. The warmth, the give at the head, and the feeling of him throbbing in response to her strokes prove that Peter truly does have a penis and it’s not just an object that she was fondling through his jeans. And, theoretically, he wants to put this penis inside her. What should be absolutely alien only makes her wetter. She kisses him to distract herself from the foreignness of holding this thing in her hand and recognizing how intimate it would be, connecting like that. Sliding her hand up, her palm runs across a damp patch in the cotton. He’s turned on, like she is.

She hesitates for a second all the same. At Flash’s, she made him orgasm. She knew it at the time and he reminded her later, in the parking lot. When it happened, he had his jeans done up, plus, she was in the middle of her own climax. In her bedroom―where her brother coming in to look for something he lost or wake her up early on weekends like an asshole has been the only young male presence since she was 12―it’s different. Undone jeans is different. All the attention on what she’s doing to him is different. So when Peter’s hands skim the waistband of her joggers, MJ’s relieved.

“Yes,” she says and closes her eyes, trying to remember to continue the handjob though her wrist is tired of this funky position, as his fingers slide under the elastic.

He has his fingertips on her abdomen, over the cotton of her underwear, then reversing, finding the edge of her underwear, and slipping beneath it. She takes in a deep breath as his hand moves lower.

And this. This is different from grinding at the party. Being stimulated by another person’s hand is strange and entirely unlike rubbing against his crotch, with the temperature of his skin less than that between the labia he’s fingering experimentally and the movements outside her control. Though MJ does buck reflexively when Peter curls a finger inside her a little ways.

“Hey,” he whispers, choking when she remembers again about her part in this and squeezes his cock, “tell me how it feels.”

Instantly, MJ clams up. She’s a bird who’s forgotten how its wings work mid-flight. Flailing, plummeting.

“Um. Fine.”

“Fine? Dammit. Sorry, I was just trying to get you out of your head and I fucked up. Here,” Peter says, pulling his hand out and grabbing her thighs, “lie down instead.”

They disentangle themselves and lie down. Then, with clear thought, he drapes his body half-over hers, hovering. Her pillow props her head up high enough that she can glance at the swell in the front of his boxers. Shifting around has dragged his jeans down a bit.

“Can I put my hand here?” he asks, almost touching her stomach.

“Mhmm.”

His palm lands, fingers tracing the strip of skin above her joggers.

“Close your eyes. I won’t make you talk.”

With that promise and his hand resting inside her pants but over her underwear for several minutes and the lazy kisses he places on her shoulder, it’s easier to accept the feelings that come. His fingers work slowly, skimming and dancing. Eyes shut, she remembers his fingers on a cigarette, a stick of chalk, propped over the back of a chair in the library. The realization that it’s those same fingers gently rolling her clit makes her gasp. Peter groans next to her head in response, exhalation blowing her hair against her ear, which tickles. She opens her eyes and takes a cautious peek at him. His gaze is hot when she meets it. He doesn’t release her as he moves his hand lower to probe at her entrance again, only this time she’s even wetter and he’s fucking staring at her, cheeks a feverish red. Rocking her hips to encourage him, she puts a palm on his chest and slides it down, touching every inch of skin from collarbones to navel before his boxers get in the way. The wet spot is cold, so she tries to grip a little lower when she takes him in hand again. He presses his forehead to her shoulder and moans.

It’s so quiet, such a normal afternoon with the light fading and homework postponed, but Peter Parker’s hips are hunched around hers like he wants to mount her and she can no longer feel any disparity between the heat of his fingers and the heat inside her exceptionally regular underwear. He adds pressure and she gasps, hips bucking off the mattress.

“Shh, shhh,” he murmurs. “God, you’re so gorgeous.”

“Heard that one before,” she says, then whimpers, sweating between her shoulder blades and behind her knees.

“Shoulda brought my thesaurus.”

“Peter! Peter!”

His fingers arc into her hard and fast and she jerks her hand desperately up and down his dick. He swears with his lips pressed to her neck.

“Now you’re repeating yourself,” he recovers enough to taunt.

MJ’s eyes slam shut as she concentrates on making his strokes work for her, but she doesn’t let him off easy. Or, rather, she does, darting her hand down to flex her fingers around his balls, then pumping him rapidly so he never has a chance to catch his breath. Peter makes a noise like he was lying on a couch and a large dog jumped on his stomach out of nowhere. It’s a good noise. MJ enjoys it almost as much as she enjoys the way he jams his thumb down on her clit when his climax hits and scrubs mercilessly until she cries out. With the temperatures matching up and the satisfying twitches and caresses of his fingers, her vagina seems to have accepted his hand as part of her body. It certainly constricts around his middle finger like it’s not allowed to go anywhere. Uh uh. That’s hers now.

“If my sheets smell like smoke after this,” she pants as they lie together on their backs, “your access to this location is revoked.”

“I’m tryin’ to quit.”

MJ wants to be supportive, but she’s not sure she believes him.

―

She falls in love somewhere between Peter sneaking into prom to dance with her in the dark hall outside the gym where no one can see and graduation. It takes a long time for love to seem like a problem because what it feels like is the best thing she’s ever experienced. The only thing she’s ever felt such thorough ownership of. On four separate occasions, she almost tells Cindy. MJ starts to feel sorry for her friend that she doesn’t know. It’s neater than feeling sorry for herself because 98% of her time is spent wanting to hold Peter’s hand and only 2% is actually holding it―never for long, always in private―or because she can’t hug him after she crosses the stage at the rented convention centre to get the rolled up sheet of blank paper that they pretend is a diploma until the school mails out the real ones. He’s not even in the building.

Thanks to his phenomenal performance on exams―because he’s gifted enough to figure out the material day-of, not because he comes to class or studies―Peter is graduating high school. Unfortunately, his suspension, in tandem with the couple dozen detentions he earned this year, denies him the privilege of the ceremony. They aren’t supposed to be on their phones while it’s happening, but MJ misses him and surreptitiously texts around the folds of her black grad gown. Apparently, what he’s decided to do with his day is get really fucking high and the couple texts he manages to send her in response don’t make much sense.

She calls him afterwards, while her parents are talking to her teachers, everyone so happy to gush over the valedictorian (she saw the title coming from a long way away and gave the speech she prepared so many months ago that, by now, it’s lost all emotion). Peter’s voice is sickeningly lazy and also something she wants in her ear right now as she cuddles up to him. What MJ believes is that they’re better together. Over the phone, he says he loves her. Stunned, she replies, “You sound really far away,” and tries not to cry when she looks up and Cindy catches her eye from across the room. She’s just so happy. Everyone is just so happy.

She’s disappointed but not surprised when Peter defers his acceptance to Columbia―where she’ll be attending―to work for a year. His grades mean a more than respectable bursary haul and still, he needs money. His aunt needs money. It’s an expensive city. MJ and Peter talk and settle on the idea that things can only be better for them now. The college won’t give a fuck about her dating life the way Midtown would have. They can have their relationship in the open, no longer ending every conversation slightly sad because coming together is wearing on them, way harder than walking away.

MJ calls Cindy, studying music, and sobs for half an hour after her first week of classes. School is going well, but she hates it. Her classes interest her, but she wants to skip them all. Peter―yes, Peter, yes, Peter Parker―didn’t help her move into her residence like he said he would and she had to buy groceries alone and carry them back to this place that is not her home alone and what is she even doing who even is she and Peter, Peter, Peter, why can’t he just be here when she needs him?

She bristles when Cindy expresses true sympathy for her heartbreak. Heartbreak? This isn’t heartbreak. Heartbreak is for something that’s over and MJ’s relationship with Peter isn’t over. She cries all over again, and more ragged, after she and Cindy fight and end their conversation with a terseness that is an unwelcome intruder on the friendliness, the sisterliness they’ve always had.

But then Peter texts her after 1am that he’s outside her building, MJ lets him in, and he holds her in his arms the way she remembers. Her scholarly prowess guaranteed her a dorm on a quiet floor with single rooms. It feels natural to use this gift for what it was intended. Not uninterrupted study, but losing her virginity. She loves him so much…

…and that certainty grows more confused with every thrust.

She tells him the look on her face when they’re done is because she’s feeling a lot. She is. Just not the things she’s probably supposed to be feeling. Her feelings are prickly things, restless things. They toddle and swoop and disturb her peace as she tucks herself into bed and into Peter’s body. Against her cheek, his heart is steady. Is this all her? Is she crazy? There’s a black hoodie on the floor that won’t let her rest.

―

Things are on a definite uptick by the end of September. The nights grow deep and cold and velvety and the two of them stay out late. The stroll the familiar paths between the buildings of her campus with his arm up around her shoulders, playing with the string of her sweater; he’s trying to quit smoking again and needs something to twiddle between his fingers. It’s dark where shadows slice away from the moon and security lights and MJ would like to melt down into water, spreading through these lanes, touching everything in this place that’s becoming hers. Peter bobs up and kisses her temple. The world is for them.

He gives her a piggyback in her Spider-Man costume on Halloween. Over winter break, he casually admits to being Spider-Man and, hey, suddenly she gets additional wears out of that costume, putting it on every single time he says he’s coming over after that, just to mess with him. They end the year at the movies, kissing over their shared bag of popcorn at midnight (Peter ducks his head inside his sweatshirt to look at his phone screen and check the time). In January, it rains a lot, in February, it snows, and by the time the precipitation’s tapering off, she’s survived year one at Columbia.

Peter starts his first year that fall under a cloud that tries to claim MJ as its creator. Because she planned to no longer live in the dorms and he didn’t care whether he did or not, feeling infinitely older than the other freshmen (despite a measly year of age difference), he asked her to share an apartment with him. The question threw her back like a shove to the shoulders. Share an apartment? Share responsibilities, split rent, see each other every day, complete second year while he did first, then third and fourth. What if she did grad school? Moving out and leaving him in the lurch to find a new place or a roommate to cohabitate in the space they’d made theirs for three years, pretending to be adults and scalding coffee to the bottom of the pot. And if they lived together for years and years, what then? A ring slid towards her between takeout boxes one day and then Peter forever.

When he asked, she fished; MJ cast the line of her thoughts ahead through a clear five years, five more years, hazier the farther she tried to look. Then, she reeled it all the way back. It ran smoothly through their cozy recent past, but soon snagged. Snagged, snagged, snagged as she tugged it insistently back to high school. How much or little have they changed since she was the cautious valedictorian-in-the-making, he the assumed burnout, skipping Spanish to take on local crime?

She turned him down and, because he’s softened since stepping out of the outline of a seventeen-year-old badass who eats Brad Davises for breakfast, Peter wears the rejection in plain sight. Every day that she sees him, on campus or on a date, there’s something in his expression or the pitiful hang of his head. Some days, even his hair looks sad, she’d swear. Most of her wants to repair this immediately, but MJ can’t quite give in. Letting him have his way would mean beginning an apartment hunt ASAP―because this idiot is still reckless enough to leave student housing partway into the year and fumble his way through trying to get some of that money back. She likes her current roommates (three girls from her program) and doesn’t want the stress of uprooting herself. Besides, he’s not really just asking to share an apartment. He’s asking for her time, her constant presence. Eventually, if things were to go as she’s forecasted, her life. It startles her that this brash, playful, independent guy needs her. More than she needs him.

For a firm two weeks, MJ steps away from their relationship of approximately two years. She feels naked. Walking down the sidewalk, she feels vulnerable and shivers in the sunlight. On the weekend, she takes a train out of town to visit Cindy. It’s been a year since their almost-fight and they’ve spoken plenty since, but MJ’s been scared to relax into their friendship, fearing it would not bear her weight. Everything in Cindy’s city is new, MJ’s never been here before, with no trace of Peter anywhere but on the clothes she packed in her bag. Everything of her is still so much him.

“So, did you break up?” Cindy asks over lunch. They’re at a place that serves sandwiches so tall that they can barely fit them into their mouths for a bite.

“I didn’t want… I don’t think… we don’t need to talk about that.”

“MJ,” her friend says softly and love floods in through MJ’s porous exterior where sun and sound have only battered her since the last time she spoke to Peter. Tears roll down her cheeks.

“I don’t even know,” she wails, glancing around in embarrassment at this public place. Cindy pats her hands and dashes from the table to pay and bring MJ back to her apartment.

Her eyes itch and her nose runs and her body’s heaving with sobs like a violent coughing fit, so Cindy redirects them to a spit of a park. A bench.

“M, what happened?”

“Nothing! Nothing―” Gasp. “―even happened! But he loves me so much and I, I can’t stand him! And I love him!”

“Ok,” her friend says soothingly, rubbing briskly at MJ’s arm. “What do you want to do?”

“Can I stay here with you forever?”

“Of course you can, babe, but I don’t think you’re going to be happy until you resolve this.”

“I’m never going to be happy,” MJ corrects, and cries harder as Cindy pulls her head down to let her bawl into her sweater.

“You will. You always know when things aren’t right.” MJ shakes her head slowly against her friend’s shoulder, sowing her tears more widely. “Yes, you do,” Cindy counters. “You do.”

―

Breakup sex is what MJ talks Peter into. She never calls it that, but he knows. He meets up with her outside his dorm, breathing hard like he ran to make it on time. It’s their final good day together―day, not night, because she doesn’t want him to expect her to wake up in the morning feeling different, like they should stay together. She doesn’t want to stab him in the heart with the probable reality that she would slip out while he slept.

They stop and start, her to shake off her trembling and him to turn his head away for more than a minute. She really doesn’t want to think that he’s trying not to cry.

His clothes remind her of their first hookup at Flash’s party: different sweatshirt, same smell. Peter never gave up weed, just smoked less, but its earthy funk rises alongside the even more offensive stench of cigarettes when she gently pulls the hoodie over his head. She doesn’t comment. His choices belong to him. She’s never going to have to worry about her husband dying from smoking-induced lung cancer because that man won’t be Peter. That’s the thought that has her crumpling to her knees before she can perceive the world tilting out from underneath her, but he catches her and hoists her into his arms.

“Steady,” he tells her.

MJ cups his cheek, staring back into his bloodshot brown eyes. She watches his jaw clench and relax. Then, MJ smooths her hand over his ear, around to the back of his head, and pulls him into a kiss. It feels like they’ve been practicing this a long time and have finally arrived at the day of their performance. The nudge of his mouth is strong without being rough and as he sets her on the bed, her palm finds his heart hammering beneath his t-shirt. When Peter joins her, she rolls on top of him. There are no accidents of him manhandling her or her accidently pushing a knee into his nuts as she shifts. Everything is intentional, including the desire not to separate, MJ laid out the full length of Peter’s body. They flop back and forth as they remove each other’s clothes. It’s not a rush so much as the gentle tumble of laundry as a dryer winds down its cycle. They are. They’re winding down.

He scoots his hips lower and his cock prods her as she parts her legs, lifting because they’re on their sides. Peter sinks in by gripping the back of her thigh and pulling her towards him rather than thrusting up. They’re forgoing a condom because MJ’s still on the pill. She doesn’t know yet whether she’ll renew her prescription when she runs out. It’s tempting to stop and flush the chemistry from her body. Seeking something deeper, she hikes her knee up his thigh and Peter grabs it, hauling it to his hip. Soon, she’s sweating with her hand still on his chest, though there’s hardly room between them. Peter huffs as he plunges himself inside her with the opening salvo that is the reliable flick of his hips. MJ’s hand clutches his pec with his first serious thrust.

At the noise she makes, Peter tips her onto her back, but stays almost suffocatingly close on top of her, skin skimming skin. His forearms are braced on either side of her head. Careful, loving fingers brush against her temples, briefly making his arms a triangle with the top of her head as its peak. MJ looks up while he’s looking down, chin tucked so far that he must be watching himself move in and out of her. His hair is nearly in her eyes. She realizes they haven’t kissed since he entered her and panics, grabbing his chin.

Peter’s startled expression scares her, but then he slams his mouth down onto hers and ratchets up the speed and force of his thrusts. She makes such a variety of sounds, all running into each other, that it takes a little while for them to streamline down to one constant, “Mmmmm,” as he bucks, shaking her body. Her legs fall open instead of wrapping up around him because the way his proximity is rubbing her clit has her twitching from toe to hip. His hands clasp hers and pin them down on either side of her head; she doesn’t think twice―like she probably should―before twisting their fingers together.

She comes like a hiccup when his pubic bone pushes down against her clit, then slides away on a withdrawal, then returns because she detangles their fingers to clasp her hands to his hips, then his ass, and yank him back to her. Her head tips back, pulling her hair where it’s trapped against the sheet, and she breathes out his name in a gust: “Peter.” Though she knows he’s close, can feel him there at the end of his rope and see the struggle in how harshly he squeezes his eyes closed, he only goes faster.

“Come on,” MJ bids, sweaty and trapped by his weight, still clutching his ass with both hands.

“No,” he pants.

“Let go.”

“Can’t.”

Peter forcefully pulls her hand into his and locks their fingers securely together. And she stares up at him, baby-faced and overextended. He zigzags between school and Spider-Man duties and looking out for his aunt, trying to kick his bad habits while the stress of everything has him craving relief that much more. He’s spiraling. Whether it’s down, up, or just kinda in place like a carousal only depends on the day. He lives his life in a circle and when MJ observes him, she feels an ache compressing her heart. She wants to be there for him, not leave him, and she has to remind herself that she has been. While he flitted all over the place―high or just high up, navigating the city rooftop-to-rooftop―she walked below him with an outstretched net. One eye was always on him. She’s been reliable, present, giving, and she can’t keep being those things alone. This will never be because she didn’t care. The truth is simple and the most awful realization she’s ever had: he was right when he said he doesn’t deserve her.

All her life, MJ’s felt like she’s done a good job of recognizing her own worth. Now she has to prove it. It feels like she’s walking up to a checkout and realizing she doesn’t have enough money on her; she never dreamed it would cost so much to put herself first.

“Peter.” She’s frustrated now, and hurt. She clenches around him to encourage him over the edge.

“Unnhhh!”

She’s trying to think of something else to say, filtering out all the ideas that are too blunt or cruel (she doesn’t want to say anything too sweet either), but Peter orgasms seconds after he made that noise of pleasure as he fought against it. When he climaxes, tightening his grip on her hand, he moans, “Love you, MJ,” which is the worst thing of all.

―

She can’t know. She puts distance between herself and anyone who might tell her how Peter’s doing. She almost changes schools until basically every person in her life lectures her not to. She’s scared enough to accept her own cowardice. She lives in the background as she hasn’t done for a while, though she steps forward slowly over time―months and years. She puts herself first. She’s valedictorian at the end of her four-year degree and considers lying about bronchitis every day up until convocation, when she gives a haphazard, heartfelt speech that makes her brother cheer riotously from the audience. Valedictorian. First again.

Then the years just pass like they do. MJ’s chronically underpaid before finding a company that values her, though the job isn’t what she really wants to be doing. After hours, she paints. Just for herself. She moves in with Louis and that’s not as bad an idea as it seems until the year they host a Halloween party and her brother (now 33) bumps into Cindy (now 28) for the first time since she was one of his sister’s dorky decathlon friends. Cindy shows up dressed as a vampire, fake fangs and all, and MJ is highly suspicious when she notices the fangs are missing after Cindy went to ‘help Louis add ice’ to the bathtub serving as their cooler for the night. Whatever. They’re married seven months later.

Life is so funny. That’s what MJ can’t communicate to her small circle of friends at their corner booth of the bar as they do their damnedest to get her shitfaced on her thirtieth birthday. She evades and redistributes drinks amongst them, but she can tell they think she’s drunk. She doesn’t normally talk this much or open up so willingly. But she’s thoughtful tonight, with one less decade left to live. She smiles to herself, looking down into the glass she keeps wiping condensation off. She knows how they look―peepers wide and dollish because alcohol makes three out of five of them into glassy-eyed babies with false lashes askew. “I used to know this guy…” MJ tells them and Cindy’s hand bumbles across the table to clasp reassuringly around her wrist.

She continues to smile. She doesn’t know why tonight’s the night he’s on her mind. The rings that sparkle on her friends’ fingers, maybe. Age. Or the way the love of the people around her calls back to another love, the only partner she’s bestowed that word on, though she’s dated since. Love, she tells her friends, unlike life, is not so funny. It’s earnest and needy. It’s the hand that holds yours and it’s the hand that comes up to slap yours away. Her friends decide she’s sad and begin talking over and across her before she can finish. Younger her would set them straight, but she’s neither a cynic nor a pedant on her birthday evening, so she lets them cart her out of the bar instead. They’re like a flurry of babysitters or lady’s maids and it’s totally ridiculous as she’s the most sober among them.

While they’re putting their foggy heads together to figure out the rideshare app on Cindy’s phone, MJ catches a red flare out of the corner of her eye. A cigarette, a smoker. Normally, she gives those a hard stare to encourage them to rethink their choices, but now, she snaps her mostly-clear head away. Unlikely, her brain tells her. Unlikely. She swallows and watches her friends, giggling and all trying to get a finger on the screen to wrest control away from the others. To be MJ’s hero and secure her ride home. With a shallow breath, she turns from them.

He’s already looking at her in a way that says he wasn’t completely sure until she turned.

Peter pushes away from the wall and the cigarette trapped between fingers that aren’t his. The other man looks mildly curious, then gets over it and averts his gaze, continuing to sprinkle ash on the sidewalk. Not that she’s perceiving him anymore.

“Happy birthday,” Peter says, eyes speaking so loud.

MJ self-consciously touches the distinguishing button the girls pinned to her dress before they came downtown, but he shakes his head.

“No,” he tells her. “I remember when it is.”

“Oh.”

“Mine’s―”

“August tenth.”

“Yeah.”

One of her friends tries to call her over and MJ jumps, glancing back at them. She sees Cindy watching her cautiously. Sees Cindy touch their friend’s arm and redirect her attention. MJ looks back to Peter. She looks at his hands and can’t see the scarring in this light. Can’t see a wedding band either, but with his superhuman side-hustle, it’s possible he just wouldn’t wear one for fear of losing it.

“Night off?” she asks. These should be prime swinging hours for Spider-Man.

“Nah, I was out there until half an hour ago.”

MJ peers at him more closely. He looks a little tired, but not wiped like he used to look when he’d show up late years earlier. She wonders if he’s learned to take better care of himself, if he’s had any major injuries.

“Do you work set hours now or did you have to stop for a hospital visit?” She’s joking without any lift to her words and spies Peter’s quick smile.

“No broken bones tonight,” he brags. “I got hungry. I grabbed some food right before this.”

She meets his eye and watches as he summons something from himself.

“You wanna go inside and get a birthday drink?” he offers, jerking a thumb towards the bar MJ and her friends just left.

Her smile is gradual and regretful without permitting room for him to persuade her.

“I can’t,” she says. “I have to get home.”

MJ puts out her hand to him and when Peter grips it, she steps slowly into him, bowing her neck to rest her chin over the shoulder of his jean jacket, which doesn’t smell like anything in particular. His free hand presses high on her back. It’s tentative, but when she doesn’t pull away, he cradles her, arm encircling her more protectively.

“It’s good to see you,” he murmurs.

Before she backs off, she tells him that she still walks the paths at Columbia some nights, in the glow of Butler Library.

“That’s funny,” Peter says, letting his arm slide down so MJ can draw back and look him in the eye. “Not funny funny, but, you know. So do I.”

more clichéd tropes and prompts