Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Michelle’s been acting weird lately.

Weirder than usual, that is.

Peter Parker doesn’t usually pay that much attention to any girl but Liz Allan (and holy shit, Liz Allan!), but Michelle sits with (okay, near) Peter and Ned at lunch sometimes, and the other day she literally ate four sandwiches in twenty minutes.

That on its own was not so strange– Peter himself could definitely down a crazy large amount of food in a crazy short amount of time– but the thing was, it became a normal occurrence. Every time Michelle sat with them at lunch, she ate a lot. 

Peter’s first theory was that she was trying to gain muscle. Most of what Michelle was eating was protein, and Peter could see that Michelle had biceps now, even through her shirt, which… was surprisingly distracting on a girl. Peter did not mean to spend four whole minutes staring at the way her arms were moving below her shirt. It just… happened. 

Michelle also has shoulders now. Well, everybody that Peter knows has shoulders, so he’s not sure why he’s noticing hers all of a sudden. It’s just that they have a layer of wiry muscle on them now, and it kind of makes him want to touch them. Not in a creepy way! He just wants to touch them.

Maybe that is a creepy thing to think.

Michelle also has calf muscles now. Peter tries really hard not to look at her thighs, but, okay, those look all muscled, too. And her hair looks really good, but it’s always looked really good. Also, she smells amazing all the time now, but that could probably just be chalked up to her changing her soap, probably. 

Anyway, Peter is determined not to notice anything else.

Like the fact that Michelle could do about a million sit-ups in P.E. these days, and her shirt had kind of rode up on her body one time while she was doing that, and Peter definitely didn’t notice that she had abs. 

Or the fact that when they were in English class together, Michelle had dropped her pencil, and then casually lifted up her entire desk with one hand to find it. When Peter had snuck back in after class and tried to do the same, he’d done it– well, he’d tilted it up on a leg, at least– but he couldn’t do it crouched on the ground the way Michelle had been, and he couldn’t lift it as high as she had in any position without using both hands.

Peter shares these thoughts with Ned. Ned replies that Peter was being a little creepy.

And, okay, maybe he was being a little creepy, but this whole Michelle deal was also getting super weird! Michelle had always been in the peripheral– keeping her head down, getting her work done, and, as far as Peter knew, never really interacting with anyone outside of Debate (which she had dropped, which was crazy because Michelle was always talking about college transcripts), or AcaDec (which she hadn’t dropped (yet), but she was answering fewer and fewer questions, and last practice Peter had literally had to shake her awake because she fell asleep in the middle of a round). And now it was like she was both melting even more into the wall and coming more into focus at the same time.

And, with all of this together, Peter has an insane theory.

“She’s Spider-Woman,” he says to Ned, as the two of them go over the evidence in Peter’s bedroom.

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Ned replies, looking up from Peter’s notes (okay, maybe taking notes on all of this was admittedly a little creepy, but Peter was a scientist, all right? Theories just didn’t feel right without some organized evidence). 

“I’m not!” Peter argues. “Look.” He grabs the notebook from Ned and flips back to the very first entry. “Cynthia tells Mr. Harrington and the whole class that Michelle threw her entire locker across the hallway.”

“It wasn’t her entire locker, it was just the door,” Ned says. “It was loose.”

“Are you kidding me?” Peter says. “Do you know how expensive this school is? Michelle and I are on the same scholarship, and even with that, it’s nuts. There’s no way anything in that place is cheap enough or old enough for the door to just come off like that.”

“Riiiight,” Ned says, spinning around in Peter’s desk chair. “And what are the odds that a girl in our school is Spider-Woman? What if she’s just got family stuff going on, so she’s not sleeping, and she’s going to the gym to keep her mind off of things?”

“She lifted a desk with one hand!” Peter says. “I definitely can’t do that, I tried.”

Ned gives him an unimpressed look. “Peter, no offense, but you can’t even do one pushup.”

“But her center of gravity was all wrong,” Peter argues. “She was in a crouch. Do you know how hard it is to lift something as big as a desk with one hand while staying in a crouch like that? It was in front of her! It’s not about strength, it’s about physics! A professional weightlifter couldn’t have done that without changing their position! She should have fallen over! And she didn’t!”

“Maybe you saw it wrong?” Ned says.

“Ned!”

“Okay, okay, okay.” Ned puts out his hands. “Look. I’m not saying that I think Michelle is Spider-Woman, but maybe something’s up with her. Maybe.”

“Like her getting superpowers,” Peter says.

Ned gives him an unimpressed look. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“I wonder how she even got them.” Peter flops onto his bed to stare at the upper bunk. “Maybe it’s some kind of tech. Do you think she’d let me try it out?”

“Dude, I’m pretty sure Michelle doesn’t even know you’re alive,” Ned says. “It’s not like she hangs out with us.”

Peter sits up, indignant for reasons he could not even explain to himself. “She eats lunch with us!”

“She has to sit somewhere,” Ned says.

“Yeah, and she sits with us!”

Ned is giving him a judgmental look. “And that means that we have to figure out whether or not she’s Spider-Woman?”

“Yes!”

“Dude.” Ned gets up and puts his hands on Peter’s shoulders, looking into his eyes. “I am telling you this as your best friend. Just because you have a crush on Michelle does not mean that she’s Spider-Woman.”

“Crush?” Peter splutters for a second. “Who said anything about a crush? This is serious, Ned!”

Ned lets out a long sigh. “Okay, fine. Let’s say she is Spider-Woman. How are you going to actually figure that out?” He catches Peter’s look. “With real evidence, dude, not just staring at her arms. Jeez.”

“Uh,” Peter says. 

“We could ask her,” Ned suggests.

“No way!” Peter says. “What if we’re wrong? That would be so embarrassing.”

“Okay,” Ned says, and graciously does not roll his eyes. “We can see where she goes after school, maybe?”

“No! Dude, we can’t just follow her home, that’s so weird.” 

“And stalking her at school to figure out if she’s Spider-Woman isn’t?”

“Well– it’s not as weird.” 

“It’s definitely weird,” Ned says firmly. “Let’s just look online and see what people have been saying. Maybe she slipped up and said where she lived or goes to school or something. That might narrow it down.”

“Right!” Peter says.

“I’ll start with Twitter,” Ned says, as grimly as if he were going into battle. “You start with Reddit.”

Peter had not realized just how popular Spider-Woman was before he looked her up.

In fact, there was a whole subreddit– r/spiderwomannyc– that was dedicated to her. Peter only glanced at it– the people there seemed to be positive on her, if a little emotionally volatile:

• u/khaleesi-who-was-promised: I would not break bread with someone who doesn’t support Spider-Woman.
  • u/joss_moody: Break bread?? Just say you wouldn’t hang out with them. Some of you are way to overdramatic ffs.
    • u/khaleesi-who-was-promised: *too
      • u/joss_moody: Oh we got a grammar nazi over here
        • u/khaleesi-who-was-promised: Whatever. Going by your profile, you’re clearly a Daily Bugle reader, which means there’s no getting through to you.
          • u/joss_moody: Just because I think some of you are drama queens doesn’t mean I’m a DB reader ffs
            • [Read more…]

But nobody seemed to have much of an idea of who Spider-Woman was, her age, where she lived, or any sort of idea about who she really was. The general consensus– which Peter pointed out excitedly to Ned– was that she was a girl, probably younger than thirty, probably older than twelve.

(“Wow, a girl between twelve and thirty? Definitely Michelle,” had been Ned’s loving, yet extremely sarcastic, answer.)

It wasn’t just Reddit. Other sites were noticing her, too. Unfortunately, they also weren’t very helpful.

destiel-in-the-tardis-with-sherlock: okay okay okay everybody shut the fuck up. new york city has a new hero in town and she is my squish. she’s so cool. everybody google spider woman right now i love her she literally just wears sweatpants and a hoodie to fight crime what a LEGEND (1,402 notes)

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istomponfingersforfun: does anybody know how old spidey is?? i swear she sounds like a girl, like a YOUNG girl. where are her parents?????? (109 notes)

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sendmefeetpix: GUYSSS I MET SPIDERWOMAN TODAY SHE WAS SO NICE AND SHE WAS LIKE TEN FEET ABOVE ME HANGING ONTO THE FUCKING WALL HOW DOES SHE DO THAT WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THIS IS IT STARK TECH??????? (13 notes)

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jinx-fandom-traitor: Anyone know if this spider-lady is an avenger or smth? Does she have an official name/brand orrrrr? Like I’m sure she’s a cool person but how tf are we supposed to know if she’s actually here to help? “Superheroes” need some kind of registration list or something. Some of these mfs have some scaryass powers and how are we supposed to know that they won’t go fucking bonkers in yonkers because someone called them a mean name one time??? (98 notes)

So people were definitely noticing Spider-Woman, even if she, annoyingly, did not seem too interested in dropping clues about her real identity.

But she certainly had fans– like Flash Thompson, who Peter overhears at P.E. the next day.

“Oh, Spider-Woman and I would be totally tight,” Flash is saying, loudly enough for the whole gym to overhear, including Michelle, who is sitting quietly on the bleachers, reading a book, and Peter is definitely not watching her for a reaction. “We would be bros. I mean, I don’t wanna jinx it or anything, but if we met, she’d like me.”

“Woah,” Damien Pound, who has always been maybe a little too gullible for his own good, says. “You’d be like a sidekick?”

“For sure.” Flash crosses his arms. “I’d be her guy in the chair. Her eyes on the inside. All of that.” He finally notices Peter. “‘Sup, Penis?”

“Hey, Flash,” Peter says tiredly. Across the floor, Michelle turns a page of her book.

Peter gets so into trying to figure out Michelle that he even starts to forget to keep an eye out for Liz Allan, who Ned only tells him after school had actually sat down at the same table as them– well, all the way at the other end, twenty feet away, but still at the same table– and Peter had been so busy staring at Michelle fiddle with something in her backpack that he had completely missed it.

In his defense, it had been weird that Michelle hadn’t just taken whatever it was out of her backpack, unless she was hiding it on purpose. Maybe it was related to Spider-Woman, somehow.

“You’re getting paranoid, dude,” Ned says in Bio. “Maybe we should go touch grass.”

“We’re fine.” Peter spins around in his chair. “Maybe I should just go up to her and ask. Maybe I could be her guy in the chair.”

“Dude, why would you even want to do that?” Ned says. “Peter, if you were Spider-Woman, I’d be in your corner no problem, but Michelle doesn’t even know us. Maybe you should just try making friends with her.”

“What? No,” Peter says. “That’s terrifying, man. She’s way too intimidating for that.”

Ned gives him a look. It’s one that Peter has seen a lot over the past few days– the I-can’t-believe-you look. “Okay,” he finally says. “But Peter, one day, you’re going to look back on all of this and realize that you had a massive crush on Michelle.”

Peter grabs Ned’s arm, looking furtively across the classroom, but luckily, Flash is talking loudly to his lab partner, and Michelle is staring out the window, seeming lost in thought. “Dude! Shut up!”

Ned is laughing. “I’m just saying.”

“You’re totally wrong, anyway,” Peter says firmly, letting go of him.

“Uh-huh. Sure I am.”

“Hey,” Ned says one day before class, leaning against Peter’s locker. “Guess what I got last night?”

“Uh, no idea,” Peter says. “The new Lego Death Star?”

Ned looks disappointed. “No. God, I wish. I got a new lead on Spider-Woman. Guess what? Remember when Michelle left gym to go to the bathroom for, like, half an hour two days ago?”

“Really?” Peter says excitedly.

“Yup,” Ned says. “Spider-Woman was spotted stopping this dude from harassing a girl, right in view of the gym. I saw it on Instagram, she took a selfie with the girl afterwards. You can totally see Midtown in the background. And the timestamps line up.”

“Sweet!” Peter grabs Ned in a hug. “Thank you!”

Ned very tolerantly pats him on the back. “Yeah, I know, I’m the best. You do get that this is all super circumstantial, right?”

“She’s been to Midtown, Ned! That’s real, actual evidence!”

“Barely.”

“Dude!”

“All right, all right,” Ned says. “It’s cool.”

“I gotta know how she does all of that fighting stuff,” Peter says. “Maybe it’s, like, precognition or something. Like the Force! Maybe Michelle has the Force! Maybe that’s how she’s doing all of this!”

“We could ask her and stop being creeps,” Ned suggests.

“No, we can’t,” Peter says. “What are we gonna say, dude? That we’ve been stalking her for weeks and figured out her secret identity? We’ll end up on a list somewhere, man.”

“This is why I said this was weird, and we should just start by asking her,” Ned says.

“Well, that’s easy to say now that we have a better idea of what's going on here, but can you imagine how it would have gone if we’d just gone up to her and told her we noticed her muscles got bigger?”

“You did, Peter. You noticed her muscles got bigger. I was a gentleman who didn’t ogle her body.”

“Oh, come on,” Peter complains. “I bet everybody noticed. Michelle is super pretty.”

Ned starts laughing so hard he has to press one hand against the lockers to steady himself.

“Seriously, man,” he says once he’s done. “I think you’re right about the whole Spider-Woman thing, but you have got to reexamine what your idea of what a crush is.”

Academic Decathlon is at its usual time. When Peter and Ned get there, the first person Peter sees is Michelle, doing homework at a desk near the back, which was just what she did these days– before Spider-Woman came on the scene, Michelle was usually doodling at AcaDec practice.

And then Liz says “Peter!” and Peter’s attention is drawn to the rest of the team, sitting in a circle on the ground. And he still feels a tiny flutter in his chest at the sight of Liz’s smile, so he sits, Betty and Abe moving to make room for him and Ned.

“I’m just saying,” Flash says, “if I were Captain America, there’s no way I wouldn’t have a babe on both arms 24/7. Different girl every hour. He’s wasting his chance.”

“Except Captain America actually respects women,” Betty snaps.

“You get that I’m joking, though, right?” Flash says, in the kind of tone that suggested that Betty was in the wrong for getting upset. “You understand that I’m joking?”

“What about Hulk?” Cindy says. “Or– more Doctor Banner. He’s cuter than Captain America.”

“He’s what?” Flash says.

“Yeah, with the sweater and the glasses?” Betty says.

“Can we not talk about this?” Flash snaps.

“Agreed,” Abe says, in a way that makes it unclear if he’s responding to Betty or Flash.

“Fine,” Betty says, tossing her hair. “Did you guys see that interview Quake did?”

“Bor-ing!” Flash says. “Nobody cares about Quake. What do you guys think about Spider-Woman?”

Ned squeaks a little. Peter definitely sees Michelle’s spine go tense.

“I think she covers up her entire body, so we have no idea if she’s hot or not,” Abe says.

“Well, what powers do you guys think she has, then?” Flash says. “I think she’s probably an Inhuman.”

“She’s probably just a gymnast with some kind of suction-cup tech,” Betty says. “Like Iron Man or that arrow guy or something. Maybe she was trained by Black Widow.”

“Black Widow’s so hot,” Abe says.

“No way,” Peter jumps in. “She obviously has some kind of superpowers.”

“You think so, Doc?” Flash says mockingly. “Regular Stark Junior over here.”

“It could be tech!” Betty says. “It wouldn’t even be that hard to figure out something like that. You could probably make some kind of synthetic fiber like her webs in the labs here.”

“Except she was a superhero way before she got her webs,” Flash snaps. “Didn’t you see that video where she stopped a bus with her body?” 

“Something like nanotech could do that pretty easily,” Abe says reflectively.

“Her superhero uniform is a SWEATSHIRT!” Flash howls, getting in Abe’s face.

“Who cares?” Michelle interrupts, slamming her book shut and looking over at them all. “Nationals are coming up, remember? And Spider-Woman isn’t going to be part of it. Can we get to work, please?”

“Agreed,” Liz says, looking up from her textbook. 

“Okay!” Mr. Harrington says, clapping his hands together twice. “Coffee break’s over, guys. Back on your heads.”

“What does that even mean?” Peter hears Cindy mutter.

“Peter!” Liz says, and Peter jumps. “We’ll start with an easy one. There were two major rivers in the Fertile Crescent civilization. Name them.”

“Uh,” Peter says, head still full of Spider-Woman. “Tigris and Euphrates?”

“Good. Cindy, harder one. Who was the third person to walk on the moon?”

“Charles Conrad?”

“Close enough." Liz flips through her binder.

“Junior?” Cindy adds on.

Liz pauses. “Sure. Abe, give me the part of the brain responsible for fear.”

It’s easy to slip back into the rhythm of an AcaDec practice. Peter finds himself relaxing into it. He loves quizzes– he’s always loved that kind of thing. It comes easily to him– the studying, the memorization, the thrill of being asked a question and knowing the answer. Everyone on the team likes it– even Flash, who might be a little obnoxious in his celebrations, and even worse when he messes up, but whose mood does nothing to dim the satisfaction Peter gets from the practice as a whole. Michelle, as has become usual, does her homework the entire time, but is clearly paying attention, because whenever she’s called on, she says the correct answer without even looking up.

“I’m throwing a party this weekend at my house,” Liz says as they all head out together an hour later. “You guys should come. Relieve stress. There’ll be pizza and soda and stuff.”

“Awesome!” Ned says.

“Yeah, great, we’ll be there,” Peter says, before Liz can decide that they’re too nerdy to invite to somewhere as cool as Liz’s giant suburban house that has a pool and a hot tub.

“You sure you want these nerds coming to ruin the vibe?” Flash says.

“Dude, we’re all on Academic Decathlon," Ned says.

And then Michelle says, “Well, have fun.”

“Are you not coming, Michelle?” Peter asks.

Michelle stares at him. “Oh, no– I’m sort of… grounded.”

“Oh,” Peter says.

“Yup.”

“As long as you’re not grounded during Nationals, all right, Michelle?” Mr. Harrington says.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Michelle says, and turns away from the group to scribble in her notebook. There’s a sketch of Spider-Woman’s symbol in there– Peter makes a mental note to let Ned know.

He leaves the AcaDec room with Ned and Liz, and before he can get excited about how Liz is walking with them, she’s heading down the hallway with a wave, and Peter is so surprised by the accompanying smile that he completely misses his chance to wave back.

“Dude,” Ned says as Peter groans. “Can’t you just pick one girl to have a crush on? This is getting bad for my stress levels.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter mutters.

And then Ned has to grab something from his locker and discuss a project with a teacher, so Peter wanders towards the closest exit on his own, wondering if he has time to swing by F.E.A.S.T. and grab some candy from the stash in May’s desk, when he spots Michelle, also heading towards the door, weaving her way through the crowd of students all heading out after their various after-school programs. He can tell that she sees him, though, because her head turns towards him, and then she stops walking for several seconds– long enough for Flash to knock into her and yell “Watch it, Jones!”

“You walked into her!” Peter says immediately, wondering as he’s speaking why he’s even bothering. Flash answered to nobody, and he certainly didn’t answer to Peter Parker.

Flash rounds on him. “What do you care, Penis?”

“Come on, seriously, Flash?” Michelle says. 

“Just watch where you’re going, man, that’s all,” Peter says.

Flash sneers, but gives in and walks off, flipping them both off as he goes.

The two of them stare at each other for a few seconds.

“Well,” Michelle says, “gotta go.”

“Wait!” Peter yelps.

She raises an eyebrow, and now Peter has to think of something to ask that doesn’t begin and end with Are you Spider-Woman? in the middle of this very crowded school hallway.

“So… you going as anything for Halloween?” Peter says, and wants to kick himself. Halloween? They were in high school!

“Yeah, I was thinking Spider-Woman,” Michelle says, and Peter nearly inhales his own tongue.

“What?” he manages, after hacking his way through ten or twenty seconds, wishing he could die the entire time.

Michelle is giving him a strange look. “No, I’m not dressing up.”

“Right, yeah.” Peter decides not to share that he and Ned were planning on dressing as Captain Jack Sparrow and Barbarossa so they could binge the entire Pirates of the Caribbean series together. “Dressing up. Lame.”

“Didn’t you dress up as Luke Skywalker last year?” Michelle says, and Peter definitely wants to die.

“Oh, well, you know… I’ve matured?” he says.

“It was a good costume,” Michelle says. “The lightsaber looked pretty neat.”

“Oh, yeah,” Peter says. “That wasn’t that hard, though. I just put some LEDs in a clear PVC pipe and painted it. And put a little motor in there so it sounded like it was, you know… lightsaber-ing.” He officially feels like the dorkiest person in the world.

Michelle is grinning a little, though. “Cool.”

“Yeah! Yeah, really cool. I thought so.”

There’s a pause. 

“So, I really should get going,” Michelle says.

“Right! Yeah. I’m sure you’re busy, what with… college prep, and stuff.”

“Yup.” Michelle nods. “College prep. Definitely.”

“Well,” Peter says, trying not to stammer as he says it, “well, you know, Ned and I, we’re going through all that kind of stuff, too, I mean, I know we’re only sophomores, but obviously we both want to get into MIT, you know, like everybody at this school, so if you want a study buddy– buddies– I mean, we’d be down.”

Michelle is giving him a little half-smile now. “Yeah. I mean… that sounds good.”

“Yeah?” Peter says, trying not to sound too eager.

“Yeah.” Michelle checks her phone and winces. “I really do have to go, though. My dad kind of grounded me, and I’m seriously supposed to get home now.”

“Oh, yeah.” Peter backs up a step, gesturing to the door with both hands, and immediately regrets having arms. He shoves both hands into his pockets, which feels worse, somehow, but he’s just going to plunge ahead anyway. “Yeah, uh… good luck with that.”

“Thanks. I think I can talk him down to only being grounded until I’m thirty with good behavior, and not for the rest of my earthly life.” Michelle gives Peter a little salute. “See you around, Parker.”

“Yeah,” Peter says faintly. “See you.”

He watches Michelle leave, and nothing can bring Peter Parker down for the rest of the day. He and Michelle– and Ned– were going to study together. And Peter didn’t care what Ned said– people who studied together and ate lunch at the same table were definitely friends. And “friends” was one step closer to– well, to whatever Michelle wanted to be. With Peter. Or not. Or maybe just friends was good. A good first step.

Friends.

Peter grins all the way home.

And then Homecoming happens.