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i. the hair thing
Ever since the Vulture incident, Peter’s been feeling a little... off-kilter.
It’s not a big deal, really. He just isn’t sleeping that well. And his chest gets tighter than it should in enclosed spaces. But these, in the grand scheme of things, are small issues.
All teenagers have weird sleep schedules.
He just takes the stairs now. It’s healthier, anyway.
But the acquired bouts of insomnia don’t agree with his brain. Two hours of sleep each night has shot his focus to hell - his mind wanders to places it shouldn’t; it points out details he’s never noticed before. Details that would be trivial and unimportant to people with a proper amount of sleep.
For instance - Michelle keeps her hair up with a pencil.
It’s not unusual; Peter’s seen plenty of other girls do it in biology on lab days when they forget a hair tie. But it’s the first time he’s seen Michelle do it, and the first time he’s thought of her being liking every other girl.
Because Michelle isn’t like every other girl. She’s Michelle. MJ. The smart, pretty, vaguely threatening girl who leads the decathlon team and reads books during gym. The girl who seems to exist on an entirely different plane of reality than everyone else because she’s just that level of fascinating.
She’s more captivating than Liz was, because nothing about Liz was a mystery. Liz was the book definition of the perfect girl: the brains, the charm, the looks. Liz was the girl they wrote rom-coms about; Liz was the girl your parents wanted you to bring home someday.
Michelle, on the other hand, was a mystery wrapped in mystery. An unsolved puzzle - possibly an unsolvable puzzle. Peter could keep accumulating pieces of her forever and never figure out how to put her together, which he’s pretty sure is the way Michelle wants it.
This newfound pencil-in-hair discovery is like being given another puzzle piece, the first and only normal-looking shape amongst the jagged jigsaw pieces, and it’s left Peter feeling more stumped by her than usual.
“Did you ever notice that?” Peter asks Ned once the decathlon meeting’s over and they’re already halfway to his apartment.
Ned gives him a suspicious side-eye. “No. Why are you noticing that?”
Peter doesn’t think this is the right question - he’s been noticing a lot of things that don’t have to do with Michelle. Like the fact that Ned has taken to carrying candy bars in case Peter needs the sugar. Like the fact that Aunt May waits until three in the morning to cry because she thinks he’s asleep.
A better question is why does he care? Because he shouldn’t. Michelle is off-limits in every way, and therefore, not worth thinking about in any way that extends beyond her role as decathlon leader and the school loner.
But Peter is prepared to answer neither of these questions. He doesn’t want to freak Ned out with the whole not-sleeping thing, and he would rather not give the latter question more attention than he already has.
So, he shrugs it off. “Never mind.”
He only thinks about it a couple more times. It’s not like he’s obsessed or anything.
Besides, he’s got other issues. Like the whole not-sleeping and possibly claustrophobic thing.
ii. the lip bite
She bites her lip a lot.
Not that he’s counting, but he saw her do it in history, when their teacher said the wrong date and she had to correct him; she bit her lip three times during their decathlon meeting at lunch, before she had to shut Flash up.
Peter sees her doing it now, two tables away in the library as she reads a book. Not that he’s being creepy or anything - he just really can’t get into the essay he’s supposed to be writing. And she’s right in front of him, a mere twenty feet away. Biting her lip.
Which is a totally natural, human thing to do, and shouldn’t take up as much of his attention as it does.
But there has to be a reason she does it, right? An unconscious habit she picked up somewhere, maybe? A nervous tick, perhaps?
Although, the idea of Michelle being nervous is laughable (truly a hysterical thought), so it can’t possibly be that -
“Dude,” Ned says, a little too loudly for a library.
Peter jumps out of his none-too-subtle reverie and turns to Ned, who has very blatantly been watching him watch Michelle. Peter clears his throat and flips the page of his textbook as if he’s been reading this entire time and not gawking at Michelle.
“Yeah?”
“You like Michelle Jones,” Ned whispers in awe. “Like, bad.”
“Do not!” Peter yelps. It’s so loud that it echoes, just enough for Michelle’s head to snap up and look at them with the very clear message to shut up.
“You should go for it,” Ned continues excitedly. “I’m like eighty percent sure her parents aren’t criminals.”
Peter frowns. “Why only eighty?”
“Because I was a hundred percent sure the last time, and that didn’t turn out well. I’m leaving no room for surprises this time.”
Peter looks back at Michelle. Her lip has returned to its previous place between her teeth.
“Michelle doesn’t date. She observes,” he says firmly. Quite frankly, Peter isn’t even sure Michelle would be human if given the choice. She would probably move into a cave and live with wolves if the opportunity came along - her dislike for other people is just that strong.
“Sure, dude,” Ned mutters. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Then Ned might give him a look that say he definitely knows Peter isn’t sleeping well at night, if at all. And he might be looking at the bags under Peter’s eyes that are so deep they could be used for groceries.
But Peter can’t be sure; his attention has wandered elsewhere again.
Definitely not back to Michelle, though.
Absolutely not.
iii. the apple shampoo
Ever since her rise to leadership, Peter would call him and Michelle sorta-kinda friends. He’s a little less scared of her, and she seems to tolerate him more than she did before. He’s even been to her house, albeit with the rest of the decathlon team for weekend meetings.
But now she’s standing in the middle of his apartment and he feels nervous for reasons he refuses to acknowledge.
Michelle takes in everything with a scrutinizing gaze, from the faded grape juice stain on the carpet to the thin layer of dust on the TV. But her gaze stays on him the longest, right on his collarbones, which have sharper over the last week or two.
Peter hasn’t had the stomach to eat lately - whenever he tries food tastes like plaster.
No big deal, though. It’ll pass soon enough.
If Michelle has something to say about it, she keeps it to herself for once. She simply drops her bag from her shoulder and nods to indicate the room.
“Where am I setting up?”
Peter lifts a lazy hand to the couch. “Uh, here’s fine.”
Michelle pulls out their lab packet and a notebook. She flips to a fresh page, then looks to where he’s still standing on the other side of the coffee table.
“Are you going to awkwardly stand there all night?” she asks him, eyebrows raised.
“Oh, uh. No.” He gingerly sits as far away from her as he possibly can while still being able to read their lab packet.
Michelle tolerates it all of two minutes.
“Contrary to popular believe, girl cooties is a myth created by boys who can’t get any.” She scowls at him. “I promise you can sit closer than ten feet away from me without catching any debilitating diseases.”
“I know that,” he scoffs. Peter slides close enough for their arms to brush, but only because he’s not one to back down from a challenge.
The lab is fairly simple. They’d gotten most of the work done in class, leaving only the materials and procedure left to do.
Michelle keeps talking, but Peter kind of accidentally tunes out when she leans over and her hair is close enough to smell.
He doesn’t mean to do it, but her hair is right underneath his nose and his spidey senses really do work at the most inopportune times. When he inhales, his nostrils are invaded by the apple scent of her shampoo, and even without the enhanced senses, it’s an all-consuming scent. It’s strong in a way that tells him she washed her hair recently - that morning, probably, before school.
Peter coughs and leans away, because, um, the thought of Michelle in the shower is not something he needs in his head.
Michelle glares at him. “Are you even paying attention?”
“Yeah,” he says, but he can’t even convince himself. He feels a little dizzy, and maybe even the tiny bit nauseous, but he just blames it on the apple shampoo.
(Yeah, it’s definitely Michelle’s shampoo. Not the fact that he hasn’t eaten since yesterday. Or the lack of sleep. Just the shampoo.)
Michelle gets ready to speak again, but thank god for Aunt May, who blows through the door before Michelle can get a word out.
“Hey, Peter! I was just about to make -” She stops in the threshold, looking at Michelle in surprise. “Oh, hello there. I didn’t know Peter had company.”
The scowl melts into a polite closed-mouth smile. Michelle sticks out a hand. “Hi, Mrs. Parker. We’re just working on a biology assignment.”
“Please, call me May.” May shifts the grocery bags in arms to accept Michelle’s hand. Watching them shake hands feels like watching two different planes of existence collide. Peter braces himself, but he doesn’t know for what. The world imploding, maybe.
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” May asks.
Michelle shifts in her seat; she reaches up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “I couldn’t impose.”
Oh my god, Peter thinks, somewhat amazed. Michelle is nervous. He didn’t think she was capable of feeling such a human emotion, but now he has the evidence right in front of him, and it makes him feel just the slightest bit giddy.
And a little smug, because haha, Michelle Jones, you’re just like the rest of us.
“Nonsense.” May’s already heading for the kitchen. “You’re keeping Peter in check; the least I can do is make sure you leave with a full stomach. Peter, come help put this stuff away.”
He leaves Michelle on the couch, her smirk burning a hole in his back the entire way.
May doesn’t beat around the bush. “So that’s the mysterious MJ?”
“Please don’t make a big deal out of this," Peter begs as he opens the refrigerator.
“Relax, I’m not saying anything.” May leans closer to obnoxiously whisper, “but she is pretty cute.”
“Okay, I’m done with you.” Peter finishes shoving groceries in the refrigerator and ducks out the kitchen, calling “get us when dinner’s ready!” a little louder than necessary.
Dinner comes much too soon. Aunt May is even livelier than usual, asking all the typical questions about school and extracurriculars. The presence of company keeps most of the attention off him, thank god, but he can still feel Michelle’s eyes burning holes into his face as he pushes his pasta around.
“More garlic bread, Peter?” Michelle asks abruptly when a lapse in conversation allows it. She drops a sizable piece on his plate before Peter can refuse. “Your aunt made it just right.”
Peter sighs heavily as May begins her modest thanks, chattering about all the recipes she hopes to try and blah blah blah. The last thing he wants is even more food to pretend to eat, but it will look awful suspicious if he leaves it untouched.
He sops up meat and sauce with the bread before shoving it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing as fast as possible. When he meets Michelle’s eyes again, they flick down to his plate, challenging him to eat more.
He wraps spaghetti on his fork and mechanically shoves it in his mouth, determined not to let her win whatever the hell this is.
The noodles still dissolve like cement dust in his mouth, but the sauce is good.
It’s an improvement.
iv. the daisy tattoo
Months pass and Spider-Man’s popularity spikes. Not only is the iconic spider emblem making it’s way across Queens, but it’s slowly spreading to the rest of New York (and even DC, for that Washington Monument thing).
He walks to the bus and sees the emblem emblazoned on shirts and backpacks in shop windows; he hears Flash boastfully talking about the shirt he ordered (custom-made, of course) and can’t help but picture the face Flash would make if he knew the one and only Penis Parker was the one he's worshiping.
Ned loves being famous-adjacent. He won’t stop sending Peter the various pictures he finds on the internet.
Michelle, on the other hand, seems immune to Spider-Man’s growing media attention. During their next study session - at her house this time - she threatens to boil his phone if he won’t put it on silent.
“You don’t think it’s a little cool?” Peter waves the screen underneath her nose. “Look at that. It’s a tattoo. Of his spider.”
“Wow,” Michelle deadpans. “Someone got a tattoo of something that will probably disappear in a couple years and never be heard of again. How exciting.”
“What?” Peter sputters. He nearly drops his phone because he’s just so shocked at the accusation. (And his hands have started doing this shaking thing from nerves and sleep deprivation, but it’s mainly the shock.) “What makes you say that?”
Michelle rolls her eyes. “Face it - this spider thing comes out of nowhere a year ago and swings around the city, stopping petty crimes and destroying public property. He’s not associated with the Avengers, save for that one stint he had with Iron Man on the ferry. And he’s based solely in New York - just in Queens. He’s a fad.”
Peter opens his mouth to argue, but closes it, because everything she said is completely true. He could have been an Avenger, but he gave it up. And it’s not like he can afford to save lives around the world like they do - he can barely finish his homework on time when he’s just patrolling Queens.
Michelle starts flipping through a textbook as she casually adds, “plus, this whole hero thing is going to die down once you go to college, right, Peter?”
He chokes on his own tongue, spiraling into a coughing fit that stops once Michelle heartily thumps him on the back.
“You know ?” he wheezes out, rubbing his chest.
“Of course I know. Unlike Flash, I actually use my brain.”
“But how do you know?” Peter slumps back in his chair, not caring that he is very obviously pouting. “I was careful.”
“You drop almost every after-school activity you were in, Spider-Man followed us to DC, and you come to school looking like the walking dead every day.” Michelle ticks off each point on her fingers. She looks at him hard enough to make him squirm. “Seriously, have you looked in a mirror lately?”
God, she sounds like Aunt May. “I’m fine.”
“Bullshit. You don’t eat, or sleep, and I doubt you’re talking to anyone even though clearly you need to.”
“I don’t need some shrink, and I eat and sleep as much as I need.” Which is true; he naps enough to stay on his feet. His locker is stashed with energy drinks and protein bars to keep him from blacking out. It’s not like he’s running on fumes.
“For a smart guy, you’re acting like an idiot.”
“Do we have to keep talking about this?” Peter taps the textbook in front of her. “I thought we were here to study.”
Michelle narrows his eyes at him, but doesn’t push.
They work in relative silence for half an hour, trading worksheets when necessary to check each other’s work.
Finally, Peter can’t stand it.
“Do you really think tattoos aren’t cool?” Peter asks in a voice that is nowhere close to a whine.
Michelle breathes in deeply through her nose. Peter thinks she’s just going to ignore him altogether, but she looks up at him with an annoyed eye roll.
“I didn’t say tattoos weren’t cool, I said Spider-Man tattoos weren’t cool.”
“Would you ever get a tattoo?”
“Yup.”
Peter blinks. “Really? You would get a tattoo?”
Michelle raises her eyebrows. “Why so surprised?”
“I just….didn’t think you were into that kind of thing.” He doesn’t know any kind of thing she’s into, really, except for books and correcting people.
“Well, I am.”
More silence. More pencil scratching. More page flipping and paper trading.
“What would you get?” Peter asks.
Michelle gives another sigh. “What is this? Some kind of bonding exercise?”
“I’m just curious.”
“...A daisy. On my hip.”
Peter’s about to ask why, but he gets a flash of a miniature Michelle in yellow galoshes and a denim dress disappearing before a decathlon meeting. “You’re sister’s name is Daisy, right?”
“Ding ding ding. Got it in one.”
He stops asking questions after that, mostly because he’s been stunned to silence.
Huh. Michelle has a soft side.
Interesting.
v. the plants
Ever since finding out that Michelle knows, Peter’s kind of taken advantage of having the extra person to talk to.
He doesn’t stop over during the middle of the night (mostly because Michelle forbade him to do so unless he’s bleeding out or in dire need of a kidney) but he does drop through her window after his afternoon patrols.
Normally he would hang with Aunt May until dinner is ready, but she’s been a little too watery-eyed around him lately, and it’s not something he can handle right now. So he takes his backpack and hides at Michelle’s.
He’s reclining on her window seat, mask off as he chugs a Red Bull and watches her clean her room.
“That shit is going to make your heart explode,” she tells him, stuffing clothes into her hamper.
“It will not!” Peter denies.
But then he thinks about it. “It won’t, right?”
“If it doesn’t get your heart first, one of your other organs is bound to suffer.”
“You’re just doing that passive-aggressive caring routine again, aren’t you?”
Michelle turns to him, scowling. Peter pointedly looks down at the label of the empty can.
(No one should look that good in sweats and an old Midtown School shirt. Really, it should be considered criminal.)
“You can’t live off of Fiber One bars and Red Bull,” she snaps at him. “You’re going to hit a wall - figuratively and literally.”
“It’s the only thing that stays down,” he blurts out. Then immediately wishes he could take it back because he did not plan on baring his soul today.
Michelle looks at him, head tilted. It’s not the same gooey stare he gets from Aunt May, or even the pitiful look he gets from Ned when his best friend thinks he doesn’t see him doing it. It’s calculating - she could just as well be looking at a sheet of math problems.
“Don’t move,” she commands before storming out of the room.
Peter looks out the window, but it’s just because he doesn’t want to look at the black boyshorts hanging out of the hamper. They both know he isn’t going anywhere, just because she told him not to.
He hears the slam of cupboards and drawers as she moves around the kitchen.
She’s making him food, Peter realizes with a mild start. Michelle Jones is making him food.
Who knew she had such a domestic side?
A whirring sound starts; reflexively, he flinches.
(It might have something to do with the fact that any mechanical noises remind him of the Vulture’s wings and the failing engines of the plane, but probably not. He’s just tired. And easily startled. That’s all.)
Michelle appears again with a glass in hand.
“Here. Drink up.”
Peter takes the glass she thrusts at him; it’s filled to the brim with something pink and stuck through with a straw.
“What is it?” he asks as he sniffs it.
“It’s a smoothie. And god, would you relax? It’s not like I laced it with ipecac.”
Michelle takes another exit with her hamper in hand. Peter eyes the pink drink again, then decides, to hell with it - if he throws up, it’s not like he didn’t warn her.
The smooth is sweet - almost sickeningly so. The overwhelming taste of sugar and strawberries chases away any threat of debris.
“What is in this?” he asks again when she reappears empty-handed.
“A carton of strawberries, a cup of yogurt, and about two cups of sugar.” Michelle picks up a tiny water can from the corner of her desk. She weighs it in her hand as she bluntly explains, “I figured your healing factor extends to stronger bones, so your teeth shouldn’t rot - if, you know, you brush them and stuff.”
Peter sips at the smoothie as Michelle waters small succulent plants. As he watches her, he realizes she has them everywhere - on her desk, her bookshelf, her bedside table.
“You have a lot of plants,” he tells her as she waters a purple one.
“Yup.”
“Why?”
“I read a book that said having to maintain something teaches responsibility and enforces maturity.”
Peter attempts to suck around a strawberry chunk lodged in the straw. “But why plants? Couldn’t you learn the same thing by, like, babysitting or something?”
He thinks back to Michelle’s tattoo confession and her adoration for her little sister.
“Plants can’t annoy me.” She strokes the leaf of a blue one with her fingertip. “Little kids are sticky and loud.” Michelle narrows her eyes at him. “Why do you have to ask so many questions?”
Peter slurps his smoothie, trying for innocence. “I thought we were bonding?”
Michelle makes an irritated noise in the back of her throat. “Shut up and drink.”
A week later she stops him in the hallway before homeroom and hands him a travel mug filled with another smoothie, just as disgustingly sweet as the last.
Ned looks at him quizzically as Peter screws the cap off and immediately starts slurping.
“Since when are you and MJ best buds?” he asks. He sounds a little jealous, but looks mostly relieved at seeing Peter down something that doesn’t come with a warning label.
“We’re not,” Peter is quick to refute. “She just doesn’t want to find a decathlon replacement.”
Peter’s sure that’s one reason why Michelle working so hard to keep him alive.
The other reason? Probably the same reason why she lets him hang out on her window seat in the afternoon.
But Peter’s not ready to think about that quite yet.
vi . the first aid kit
He’s in a bad way the next time he crawls through her window.
Peter grunts as he pulls himself up on her window sill, one hand gripping his side as he gets his knees underneath him.
The blood isn’t too bad, but Michelle will definitely have some stains to clean, which she’ll probably kill him for once she’s sure he isn’t actually dying.
“Open open open,” he whispers as he knocks on her window twice. It’s not terribly late, but late enough that the Joneses could have a police officer on their hands if one of their neighbors reports a dark figure hanging outside their second-story window.
Michelle appears before he has to knock again, heaving the window open.
“What the hell are you doing, Parker?” she hisses as she drags him inside.
Peter tries not to groan as the wound in his side is pulled open further. “You said not to come in the middle of the night...unless I was...bleeding out.”
She sees the hand pressing on his side and swears. “Don’t move.”
She leaves him on the floor as she exits the room.
Peter inspects the wound for himself. His shirt (one of his better ones, too) is definitely ruined, but his jeans might be salvageable if he can get the bloodstains out of the waistband.
Michelle comes back with an armful of towels. She spreads them out on the floor before making work of rolling him onto his back.
“Don’t squirm,” is her only warning before she’s pulling his shirt off.
It hurts to raise his arms, but he bites his lip to keep quiet as Michelle chucks his shirt aside.
“Well shit,” she whispers fiercely. Her fingers are freezing cold as they press against the cut; Peter jumps.
“What did I say about squirming?” she scolds him. She picks up a spare towel and wipes at the blood.
“How bad is it?” Peter asks through gritted teeth.
Michelle doesn’t answer. Instead, she climbs to her feet and turns her desk light on. She opens a desk drawer and pulls out something the size of an impressive jewelry box.
In the light, Peter can make out his blood on her hands. If she’s bothered by the bloodstains her hands leave behind, she doesn’t show it.
“No stitches, but it will hurt like a motherfucker until it heals,” she diagnoses finally.
“Would you have been able to give me stitches?” Peter asks. He needs a distraction from the pain, but he’s also a little curious. Two birds with one stone, and all that.
“They wouldn’t have looked good, but they would’ve gotten the job done.” She opens what Peter can make out to be a very professional-looking first aid kit. She pulls out different medical supplies, laying them out carefully. Weirdly, Peter flashes back to when he was kid and very meticulous about organizing his crayons in the order he’d use them.
(He’s pretty sure this is delusions from the pain finally starting to set in - good god, that knife hurt.)
“This is going to sting - try not to scream too loud.”
Peter almost bites through his bottom lip to keep a scream from escaping as Michelle sprays antibiotic on the cut. His entire body goes tense as she swabs it clean and bandages it tightly.
“There. Looks like you’ll survive.”
Gritting his teeth, he sits up. His hand goes to his side and touches the rough bandage, testing its strength. Michelle puts the first aid kit back where she got it.
She shuffles around to face him on her knees, arms crossed petulantly over her chest. “Is it not enough to swing around the city in a unitard? You have to go and get stabbed as Peter Parker, too?”
“I just got caught by surprise.” Peter grunts as he stands, wincing as his side stretches.
Michelle follows him, gliding up from her knees in a move that is surprisingly graceful and swift. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Peter blinks. “Uh, home.”
“Uh, no.” She pushes him onto her bed by his shoulders. “First, you’re going to tell me everything that happened. Then, you’re going to sleep.”
Whether it be a lapse in judgement or something in Michelle’s face that tells him there’s no getting around not telling her, Peter recalls the entire incident.
He’d been scrounging for parts in an alley behind an electronic store when a man cornered him. He looked nothing like any of the guys Peter busted. The guy looked pretty clean-cut - he was in slacks and a dress shirt with a dinner jacket. His loafers looked new. Peter thought he was the manager of the store coming to chase him off, but then he called him little spider.
“Turns out he was someone who really doesn’t like Tony Stark,” Peter explains, running his fingers over the bandage absentmindedly. “He was going after me to get to Mr. Stark.”
Which, to Peter, seems like a cheap shot. It’s not like he matters that much to Tony Stark, anyway; it’s not like Tony’s even here, so how would he even know if something happened to Peter?
“I guess he didn’t expect me to have my webs,” he continues; he pulls up a sleeve to flash a web shooter, which have become a permanent fixture on his body outside of showers and the occasional naps he takes. “I stunned him and left him outside the precinct.”
Michelle mulls over his story for a few minutes. When she speaks, her only question is, “why were you digging for parts?”
It’s probably the lack of sleep talking, but Peter finds this to be a hilarious observation. “That’s the part of the story you choose to focus on?”
She sighs, scowling in annoyance. “Just answer the question, Peter.”
“I’ve been building things at night.” Peter shifts, rubbing his neck. He can’t meet her eyes - he looks at her bookshelf instead, which looks ready to collapse underneath the weight of all the books. He can even recognize a few of the titles from seeing her carry them around school. “Nothing useful or anything. Just - stuff to keep me occupied.”
“You’re not sleeping at all?” Michelle questions skeptically.
“I sleep enough.” Well, not so much anymore. He just kind of - keeps moving. But he hasn’t, like, collapsed or fainted or anything.
Michelle tightens her arms over her chest. “You’re full of shit. Have you seen yourself lately? You look like the walking dead - and have for months. I know the superhero thing is a hard cross to bear, and that you’ve seen shit that I can’t even begin to imagine, but if you keep going like this, the only life you’re going to lose is your own.”
She takes a deep breath. “And I’m not going to just sit by and watch your wreck yourself. So if you won’t get professional help, I’m going to make you take mine.”
Michelle throws herself into her desk chair, arms still crossed over her chest, and looks at him expectantly.
“Now lay down and go to sleep."
vii. the baby blanket
That night, Peter gets a full night of sleep for the first time in months. It’s fitful, and he gets distorted flashes of waking up in the night, but he wakes up in the morning feeling refreshed. It’s become a foreign feeling from being absent for so long. But it’s good.
He’s alone in her bedroom, covered in a yellow blanket that feels heavenly soft underneath his hands. It tickles his bare legs, reminding him that he’s stripped to his boxers in Michelle Jones’s bed.
And she’s nowhere in sight.
Peter tosses the blanket aside and swings his legs over the side of the bed. The clock on the bedside table tells him it’s midmorning. He picks up the sounds of someone moving around the kitchen, but the rest of the house is quiet.
In an attempt of repayment, Peter makes the bed. He slides his jeans back on and finds the bathroom to check his wound. The cut is still an angry red stripe underneath his ribs, but it closer resembles a long paper cut than a stab wound.
He wanders into the kitchen. Michelle is at the stove, a huge bag of pancake mix sitting next to her. A measuring cup of chocolate chips waits on the counter; Peter helps himself to a handful as he walks by.
Michelle swats the spatula in his direction; he just barely dodges it.
“If eat you them all, there won’t be any left for the pancakes,” she grumbles, turning back to the stove.
Peter savors the chocolate as it melts in his mouth. In the wake of Michelle’s smoothie idea, Peter’s stuck to bingeing sweet things. He has candy bars stashed every place imaginable around the apartment; he even went as far to hide a few in the corners of school he knows will go unchecked.
“You snore,” Michelle informs him smugly. She starts a stack of pancakes on a plate.
“I do not!” Peter yelps indignantly.
“Do too. And drool.”
“You get a kick out of watching me sleep?”
“It would have looked suspicious if my mom found me sleeping on the couch when I have a perfectly good bed to use,” she retorts. She puts a stack of five pancakes in front of him with a butter dish and a bottle of maple syrup.
“Your blanket was soft,” he tells her around a mouthful of pancake. He’s drowned them in enough syrup to swim in; combined with the legion of chocolate chips, Peter can practically feel his teeth rotting.
“It’s my baby blanket,” Michelle answers flippantly. She busies herself with pouring more batter on the pan. It makes a sizzling sound that pulls a growl from Peter’s stomach. “From my grandmother, I think.”
First the tattoo, now the blanket.
“You’re a sap,” Peter exclaims giddily.
Michelle finally joins him with her own plate. Her nose wrinkles as she grabs the butter dish. “Chew with your mouth closed.” Spreading a thin layer of butter over each pancake, she shrugs. “So I like my family. Big deal.”
They eat in silence. Michelle anticipated his enhanced appetite and keeps the pancake stack high. Peter watches her get up from time to time and pretends not to notice how good she looks in just an old tee and basketball shorts.
“My mom’s at work until tonight,” Michelle says as she puts their plates in the sink. “And my sister has dance class, then goes off to her friend’s house to spend the night. That should give me plenty of time to get the blood out of your pants.”
“You’d do that for me?” Peter asks in mild awe.
Michelle gives him a look that clearly says idiot. Peter reflects that, after everything she’s done or him so far, cleaning the blood out of his clothes doesn’t seem like that big of a thing.
But still, she’s doing it because she wants to, and that’s, well - a lot for Peter to take in, really.
Michelle brings in some levity by shrugging her shoulders. “It’s laundry day anyway. Why the hell not.”
She holds her hand out. It takes a second for Peter to take the hint, but he slowly climbs out of his jeans, very aware of the fact that he’s stripping down to his boxers in Michelle Jones’s kitchen.
“There was no hope for your shirt,” she informs him as she folds his jeans over her arm. “I tossed it. You can wear one of mine home.”
And, um. He would be lying if he said some part of his brain didn’t extremely like the idea of wearing Michelle’s shirt home.
viii. the half-moon scar
Junior year arrives with the same frenzy that surrounds every new school year.
Michelle keeps true to her promise and attaches herself to Peter’s side, making sure he continues to do mundane things like eat, sleep, and keep up a decent hygiene routine. Peter uses many opportunities to complain that he “already has one Aunt May, and doesn’t need another one, MJ” but that’s hardly a strong enough deterrent to keep Michelle away.
She’s even become a semi-regular dinner guest, giving May plenty of time to get attached and drop not-so-subtle hints on how she’s basically planned their wedding.
Peter, by accident, made himself a known fixture at Michelle’s house. He would have been fine with continuing to climb through her window and hide out in her bedroom, but the one time he decides to use the door is the one time her mother and sister are both home. And, well, Peter would be lying if he said Daisy didn’t have him wrapped around her little finger upon their first time meeting.
They don’t mention to anyone the agreement they have going on - the one where Michelle helps him with the whole superhero-trauma thing as long as Peter promises to try functioning like an actual human being. Michelle described it as not being anyone else’s business, and Peter readily agreed. But Aunt May makes little comments about how Peter seems to be filling in his clothes better, and Ned asks suspicious questions about all the time he and Michelle are spending together, so people are catching on to something.
“It’s not like she’s replacing you as my best friend, Ned,” Peter reassures him at lunch when Ned asks about it again.
“Are you guys dating now?” Ned asks, a little too eager.
“No! We’re just -” Peter taps his knuckles against the table, averts his eyes to the student council poster on the wall. “ - hanging out.”
“Hanging out?” Ned repeats incredulously.
“Yes,” Peter says pointedly, and the conversation reluctantly ends there. But he can’t stop thinking about it because, frankly, he doesn’t know what they are either.
So, he asks her.
“We’re more than just friends,” he continues when Michelle decides to ignore him and keeps watering her plants. “Because my other friends don’t clean the blood from my pants and cook me breakfast. So -” He waves an all-encompassing hand through the air. “- what are we?”
“I’m the girl trying to keep you alive,” Michelle huffs as she sets down her small watering can. “Can’t that just be it?”
“But - do we like each other?”
“Do you like me?” Michelle counters.
“I - uh. Um.”
He’s hasn’t liked anyone since Liz, and with her it was easy. Because she was the girl you were supposed to like - the kind that was incredibly easy to fall in love and picture a life with. But Michelle is deeper - she’s isolated and strange and still incredibly out of Peter’s league.
“Peter.” She walks closer until she stands above him. She repeats the question slowly. “Do you like me?”
With her so tantalizingly close, it’s easy for him to pull her close by wrapping his arms around her waist. His head drops to her stomach, suddenly too heavy; this question is exhausting for some reason.
“I think so,” he answers earnestly.
She’s wearing a crop top, an oversized shirt she cut herself. It plainly shows off a scar he’s never seen before - to the right of her belly button, a half-moon shape no bigger than a quarter.
He touches his mouth to the scar; feels the shudder of his touch ripple through her.
Gently, Michelle pulls his head back so there eyes can meet.
“Let’s wait until your brain isn’t so messed up,” she says; her fingers are laced in his hair, cradling the back of his head. “Okay?”
He lets out a shuddering breath as her nails scratch his scalp. “Okay.”
It’s the best they can do for now.
ix. the rihanna song
He develops the habit of spending weekends at her house. Michelle puts him to work, usually making him help with chores and stuff he has to do around his own apartment. She also makes him talk, no matter how much he complains that he’s really not that good at it.
“Haven’t you noticed your nightmare quota has shrunk significantly since you started talking to me?” she asks him as they put dishes away.
They have, he can admit. He still has them (and his acquired claustrophobia is still going strong) but they aren’t as terrible as they used to be. He can usually get away with only waking up once most nights and going right back to sleep. But he doesn’t think that has so much to do with the talking about them as it does with knowing he won’t wake up alone.
But he’s not going to tell her that.
(If she doesn’t already know, which, because it’s Michelle, she probably does.)
“I think I’ve proven that my brain is significantly less messed up than it was a month ago,” he counters; it’s an abrupt change in subject, he knows, but he likes the triumphant feeling he gets when he sees her pause. He likes knowing he can throw her off guard, albeit not very often and never for long.
Michelle sighs, closing the cupboard doors with a heavy thump. “God, you’re impatient.”
“But, really! I could pass as a certifiable functioning member of society now.” He walks closer so that they’re inches apart. He puts his hands on the counter on either side of her. Michelle leans back and crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m sleeping, I’m basically eating. I’m even turning my homework in on time.”
Peter leans close, rubbing his nose against the length of her throat; when he breathes in, he gets immersed in the apple scent of her shampoo.
“So…?” Peter whispers into her neck. “What do you think? Am I still messed up?”
Michelle pulls him back by his shoulders. Her fingers squeeze down as she meets his eyes and says, “don’t make me regret this.”
She kisses him slow but firm. Her hands slide to grip his biceps; Peter moves his arms to wrap around her waist. When she pulls back, Peter rests their foreheads together, breathless as he tells her, “you’re really good at that.”
She laughs, a warm puff of breath across his face. “Good to know I’m still better than you at most things.”
“Hey!” Peter squawks. He wants to argue the matter further - because, uh, rude - but Michelle’s pulling him to her bedroom and the anticipation of what’s about to happen next kills anything he could think to say.
Michelle leaves him sitting on the edge of her bed as she grabs her phone. Seconds later a Rihanna song starts to play. Peter doesn’t recognize it, but it’s slow and romantic and he definitely didn’t think Michelle was the type to fall for slow pop ballads.
“I can feel you judging me,” Michelle accuses, her back still turned.
Peter chuckles, leaning back on his hands. “You’re a romantic.”
“You’re going to ruin this before it even starts, aren’t you?” Michelle sighs as she finally faces him.
“And a sap. You’re a romantic sap, Michelle Jones,” he declares giddily. Michelle climbs into his lap, trapping him with her knees as her arms lock loosely around his neck.
“Don’t tell anybody,” she threatens lightly.
“Your secret’s safe with me,” he mumbles as she traps his bottom lip between her teeth. Peter closes his eyes and lets his fingers skim her sides, keeping her in place on her lap.
“Why Rihanna?” he asks as she kisses the underside of his jaw.
Michelle groans, pulling her head back. “You pick the worst times to ask questions.”
“Is this your dream song?” he whispers in her ear. He moves one hand to the small of her back. “Do you want to walk down the aisle to this song?”
She huffs, arching her back into his grip. “Please. I just don’t like the thought of silence during a makeout session. We’d be forced to listen to our mouths smacking the entire time, which is disgusting.” She pushes him down and settles partially on top of him, entangling their legs. “Besides, there is never a wrong time for a Rihanna song.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he says. Most of her hair escaped the ponytail he watched her put it in earlier; he moves the offending strands out of her eyes.
“Do you still want to ask wildly inappropriate questions, or can I kiss you now without interruption?” Michelle asks. She props herself up on one arm and raises her eyebrows down at him.
Peter licks his lips. “Kissing. More kissing is good.”
x. the big spoon
Their first kiss doesn’t get any further than his shirt flung over her desk chair and his hand teasing the bottom elastic of her sports bra.
“You disappointed?” Michelle asks against his neck. She already sounds half-asleep, something Peter thinks is a remarkable talent.
“About what?” He flips onto his side so he can look at her face.
Michelle breathes deeply through her nose; her eyelids struggle to stay open. “About not getting into my pants. Aren’t all boys hormonal dogs looking for something to hump against?”
Peter fakes a small gasp. “Did you just make a joke?”
“I’m full of surprises,” Michelle agrees. She wiggles closer, wrapping both her arms around his waist and burying her face into the warm skin of his shoulder. “Now go to sleep before I kick you out.”
Peter settles against her, placing his hands over her arms and closing his eyes.
He knows that not every night will be like this. There will be nights that he has to spend in his own bed, alone. There will be nights where he won’t wake from a nightmare to see Michelle dozing across from him in her desk chair, legs sprawled over the arm of it. There will be nights he’ll ache to be in her arms like he is right now, underneath her incredibly soft yellow blanket.
But that isn’t tonight.
So, he doesn’t think about the inevitable.
Instead, he goes to sleep.