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Michelle has always existed in the periphery of his life, of everyday, always there, but blending in. The warm neutral colors of her clothes and her books fade away in the background, hide her from sight until she decides to call attention to herself.
She floats around the school, and his life, like a ghost, waiting for the set up to some joke or a pause just long enough to squeeze in. She's unnoticeable until she's all you notice.
But then she disappears.
She's still there, right there on the outskirts of every moment, but not stepping in anymore.
At first he doesn't notice, just feels something vaguely off. And then he says something extremely, ridiculously nerdy at lunch and he and Ned both pause, anticipating Michelle's jab but nothing comes.
He glances over and she's there, slumped over her book like always. But nothing comes. It's like when one step on a staircase is just a little shorter. He's stumbling before he even notices what's wrong, the absence of something he didn't realize he depended on, tripping him up.
He seeks her out now, finds her in the background instead of waiting for her to step in, and it's strange. She's always there, always was there, but she's never felt so distant.
“What did you do?” Ned asks one day. Peter frowns like he hasn't been asking himself that.
“I- What did I do?” He repeats indignantly. “I dunno. I don't think I did anything. Did you do something?”
“Maybe it's because you missed decathlon practice?” Ned asks. Peter's already thought of that.
“No, she would have just yelled at me if it was that,” Peter says.
“Well, you should fix it,” Ned decides. No kidding. “It's weird. It's like we're Luke and Leia but we're missing Han.”
“Why is she Han?” Peter demands.
“Peter,” Ned says slowly. “Peter.”
He's always considered her a friend. Even though she probably thinks he's super lame.
After Ben died, there was a full week where everyone was weird around him. He walked into a room and everyone went silent. He trudged down the hall and everyone stared at him. There were all these looks of pity and concern, and he hated every second of it.
He started eating lunch in the gym because he could only take so much of people offering condolences when he just wanted to stop thinking about it. Even Ned got to be too much, always asking if he wanted to talk, and Peter knows he meant well, was being a good friend, was grieving a little in his own way, but he couldn't take it.
The gym was quiet and empty and he ate alone and tried to think about anything else but this new gaping hole in his chest.
On the second day, Michelle found him, somehow, climbed up the bleaches two at a time. His stomach turned with the thought that he was cornered, he was going to have to say something about it.
But she didn't say anything, just settled next to him, opened her book and stole some of the apple slices May packed for him.
She didn't say anything, not even when he felt his eyes well up, not when he finished his sandwich, that tasted like cardboard, and buried his head between his knees. The bell rang at the end of the period and she didn't move to get up and neither did he.
There would be a gym classing coming in a few minutes and he had to get to Spanish, but instead they sat there.
She set her book aside and stared at him, not unimpressed like she usually is, not concerned and pitying like everyone else. Just crazily intense eye contact for an uncomfortable amount of time. He felt like he was being read, like she was scrutinizing his soul.
“It sucks,” she said finally. “I'm sorry that the world sucks.” He blinked a few times, eyes darting down even though she was still staring at him. “It shouldn't have been that bad to you.” She said it quietly and it felt heavy. She said it like a criticism of the universe, and he swallowed hard and shrugged because he didn't know what else to say.
They stood up at the same time.
For a while after that she was always there. When Ned wasn't available she walked next to him in the hall, glared at everyone who stared at him until they looked away. She teased him at lunch and sat next to him in class and still gave him the hardest questions in their decathlon drills, so he thinks she might be his friend.
Not as close as Ned, not a friend who he's ever hung out with or really talks to all that much, but someone who has his back. Someone he can trust.
He thinks a lot about DC. About seeing her jump to her feet from the park bench. About the momentary breath of relief he got. One person who was safe. One person he didn't have to worry about. On the list of people he cared about who were in immediate danger, Michelle got checked off. One down, five to go (he might as well count Flash).
But it's the first time he sees her off balance, sees her eyes wide and swallowing hard. Hears a note of panic in her voice when she says, “My friends are up there.”
She's still remarkably calm considering the circumstances, and by the time everyone is back on the ground and he sneaks back around to join their group, she's ambivalent again, making wry jokes.
“I didn't even notice,” she says. “I was reading.” Ned raises an eyebrow and Michelle shrugs. “It's a really good book.”
And Peter has to look at her like he didn't see the way her hand shook for a second there, has to pretend he doesn't know that she cares. Deep down. But there.
“Guess you and I really are the smartest, loser,” she says later, brushing past him to grab a seat in the back corner of the bus, always distancing herself, fading to the background.
He wasn't lumped into the group of “my friends” but he wonders if she felt the same small relief that he did, knowing that he wasn't up there, that one person, one of her friends, was already safe.
“My friends call me MJ,” she says to their entire table, weeks later, quiet and quick like no one will notice her display of emotion of it’s over fast.
And then she's leaning back again, looking away from him, seemingly uncaring and bored once more.
For someone never without a book in her hand, she's impossibly hard to read.
The thing about Michelle is she's either the second of his closest friends or an unusually vocal acquaintance. He wants to be her friend. And half the time he thinks that she’s willing to be his friend too.
But a verbal confirmation might be nice.
“You're gross,” she grumbles, glaring at him. It could be for any number of things. He raises an eyebrow and waits. She points accusingly at the highlighter cap he's chewing. “That's so unhygienic.”
He shrugs. “It's a nervous tick.”
“It's disgusting,” she says. “Did you pick my favorite highlighter on purpose?”
“Pink?” He asks, raising an eyebrow. “I didn't know pink was your favorite color.”
“It's not,” she says. “It's my favorite highlighter color.”
“What?”
“It stands out the best in our textbooks,” she explains, rolling her eyes.
“That's so weird,” he says.
“Your face is so weird,” she replies. “Loser. Give me my cap back.”
And it occurs to him that Michelle has a favorite highlighter color and now he knows that about her and he's probably going to learn a whole lot more as well.
It’s approaching two in the morning and he has hours of homework to catch up on and a broken arm that’s slowly mending. He can only type with one hand and his head aches from an argument with Aunt May.
He’s probably going to fall asleep with his head on the keyboard and have to come up with some excuse for why his lab report is an incoherent, incomplete mess.
Then his phone rings and he nearly jumps out of his skin. He’s getting a call from Michelle at two in the morning for some reason and he’s pressing the accept button before he can even process it.
“Hello,” he says hesitantly.
“What’s up?” she demands.
“Um, you called me,” he says.
“You sounded angry,” she says.
“When?”
“Over text just now,” she says. “I know it was you and not some robot. Your emoji use is out of control, dork.”
“I’m not angry,” he protests. “I didn't sound angry, I just asked for the lab set. I’m writing the report for it now.”
“You were totally angry,” she says. He hears a rustling from her side of the line, like a page turning. She’s definitely reading right now. “I’m psychic, I can tell.”
“Alright, I’m a little frustrated right now and tired. It’s been a long day, sorry,” he says, sighing.
“Tell me about it,” she demands.
“Um, what?”
“I’m bored. Vent a little, Parker.”
“I can hear you reading,” he says. “It’s two in the morning.”
“The prose is pretty dry,” she says. “I’m listening. Well, mostly.”
“We don’t really… talk about feelings,” he says.
“Well, I’ve never had a feeling ever, but I never said that you couldn’t tell me about your lame ones,” she replies and it's maybe one of the nicest things she's said to him in the time they've been friends.
He glances at his computer, the half finished lab report. He presses his phone up with his shoulder while he closes out of the browser.
“Um, I got into a fight with May,” he says.
“What did you do?” she asks.
“I hurt my arm,” he says. Oh great, he’s gonna have to explain it now. “Um, at gymnastics practice.”
“Gymnastics?” she echoes. He hears her turn the page again.
“Yeah,” he says, swallowing hard. “I do gymnastics sometimes.”
“Where?” she asks.
“Uh… on the street,” he says.
“Street gymnastics,” she repeats slowly. “Right. That’s totally a real thing that I’ve heard about before.”
“Yeah,” he says, cringing. “Um, so I hurt my arm at practice and May freaked out about it.”
“Right,” she says. “I hear most parents are concerned about this new street gymnastics craze that everyone is getting into. Continue.”
“We just got into this big fight about it and it sucks. I know it's because she cares and I don’t want to worry her, but we’re juniors now. We’re almost adults and sometimes she acts like I’m still a ten year old.”
“You act like a ten year old,” she says.
“Hey,” he says indignantly.
“What?” she asks. “I said I’d listen, not that I would offer any actual emotional support.”
“Thanks,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“Your aunt is an amazing woman and you should listen to everything she says,” she adds. “And if you don’t, we’re switching households.”
Somehow he feels better, feels a little calmer and less on edge. Michelle talks to him for another half hour, vents about the boring book she’s reading and about exactly why she won't stop reading it, and then she talks him through the rest of his lab report.
The next morning there’s a coffee waiting for him in his locker before first period with a middle finger drawn on the side.
He's never known anyone like Michelle before. Anyone who looks at the world the way she does, who cares so intensely about things and doesn't care about anything at the same time. Who has a favorite highlighter color and uses sarcasm as a weapon of mass destruction.
There's a space in his life that gets filled by her, free periods that he used to spend alone and Tuesday afternoons before patrols when Ned has computer lab and Saturday mornings when half the city is asleep. He may be the one who asks for permission to be friends, but after, Michelle just strolls into his life and settles in, kicks her feet up on the coffee table and curls up with a book like she's going to be there a while.
It's practically inevitable that he has a crush on her.
He doesn't even realize it at first. With Liz it was painfully evident. Every time he looked at her his stomach tied itself in knots. He stammered and stuttered and couldn't think straight. He was infatuated with her. She was so cool and so smart and so pretty and it made his brain stop working.
He doesn't really fall in love with Michelle so much as he stumbles into it. (It's unfair. This whole Spider-Man thing was supposed to make him less clumsy.)
With Michelle, it sneaks up on him, much like she does. One day, he just realizes that every time she says something he can't help but smile. Even when she's teasing him, or asking him to pass her a pencil. It's like a reflex.
She makes him smile. He thinks about her and this warm feeling spreads through him. He sees her and everything else becomes less important. It should be obvious.
He's pretty slow on the uptake.
It's at dinner on a Saturday and he's sitting at the kitchen table before dinner.
“What are you smiling about?” Aunt May asks, ruffling his hair as she passes by.
“Just something Michelle said this morning,” he replies, snapping out of this weird daze. He goes back to working on math homework and doesn't see May raise and eyebrow and doesn't realize.
“Dude, why are you smiling like that? You look like a serial killer,” Ned says, two days later. And the answer is Michelle again, the way she totally showed Flash up in English the period before. When he answers, Ned chokes on his water, and Peter still doesn't realize.
“What are you smiling at, loser?” Michelle asks, without looking up from her book with her creepy sixth sense at lunch the next day.
And the answer, for the third time in a row, is her. She's totally wearing his hoodie, the one she swore he left at the library not even two weeks ago. It doesn't go with her outfit, doesn't even fit her right, too short at her torso and too baggy around her shoulders. He likes that hoodie, and he should be mildly annoyed at the very least but instead he's smiling at her, has been for a near creepy amount of time, because it's such a Michelle thing to do.
It hits him over the back of the head like that mobster did with a chair last weekend.
He likes her. Not in a friend way, in a more way. This want to be near her and this sappy happy feeling whenever he sees her, isn't because she's now the second friend he's ever had. He totally has a crush on her.
He blames it on being a loser. He's only ever had Ned as a friend and well, he's never stared at Ned longingly for half a lunch period, but how was he supposed to know.
And oh God, Michelle could not find out.
“Um, May packed me a GoGurt,” he stammers out.
“Ah yes. That would be super exciting if I was also a twelve year old,” she says.
“Hey,” he protests, yet can't help but. Smile. At. Her.
Oh no. Oh, this is terrible. She can't find out. He can't possibly tell her. He’ll say something stupid, it'll come out all wrong, and she'll hate him forever.
He has to keep this secret. It'll pass. It's only because she's the coolest and weirdest person he knows. It's only because she's one of his best friends and they hang out all the time. It's only because she's so smart and unbelievably pretty and makes him laugh and sometimes smiles at him like she's sharing a secret and corrects him in decathlon practice and rolls her eyes every other time he opens his mouth and…
Oh, he's totally screwed.
Even if he wanted to tell her, he wouldn't know how. Michelle is… Michelle is something untouchable. She seems above every emotion beyond annoyance and fond annoyance.
How would he even compliment her? He can't think of a single thing that she wouldn't already know.
Michelle, you're so smart. No kidding.
Michelle, you're really beautiful. I know.
Michelle, every time you walk into a room I forget to breathe for a second. Yes, Peter, I'm amazing, you're a dork, Flash is an idiot. We can state facts all day.
She's confident in an uncaring way. Like you could love her or hate her and she wouldn't bat an eyelash.
She's beautiful in that she looks exactly how she wants to look and nothing anyone could say or think about her will change that, could possibly shake her. Beautiful in the way light catches in her frizzy hair like a halo. Beautiful in the bags under her eyes that means she's been reading all night. Beautiful in the ink smudged on her pinky from drawing or taking notes. Beautiful in her eyes when they're rolling and her nose when it's wrinkled and her mouth when she's smirking. Beautiful in her tight glare and her sharp smile when she's laughing at him.
Oh no, this is a problem. He is so screwed.
It's a good thing he's knows how to keep a secret.
He’ll admit it's a crush. To Ned, and maybe May. A crush is something simple enough, something that will pass. But then it starts to become more.
It becomes more when he's tied to a chair in a garage in the middle of Astoria and suddenly she's next to him and somehow it's exactly what he needs to calm down.
It become more when she gets thrown across said garage and it's like every alarm in his head, every single panic button is going off at that same time, flashing lights and blaring sirens.
When he sees her on the ground and his blood runs ice cold.
When she places her hand on his wrist on the bus ride home, like she's making sure he's there.
When his heart skips every time she calls him a loser.
When she directs a glare at Ned and he can distinguish it from the different type of Michelle Glares, dissect and interpret it, like he's starting to be able to read her language.
When she kisses his forehead in the hallway and his brain gives out.
When he can't even focus on the crazy bank robbers turned crazy magic wielders because he's thinking about her.
When he knows exactly how to organize her highlighters and sharpies and pens.
When she says, “Don't make this a big deal.” And kisses him. And he immediately makes it the biggest deal. Can't form a coherent thought. Stares at her and composes a page long poem in his head about her hair. Kisses her again and a few more times and thrums with joy and relief at a single allusion that she feels what he does.
When she leaves and he fist pumps so hard he nearly falls over and Ned bemoans his fate as a third wheel.
Oh boy, does it become more. And he is screwed.
He never really expected Michelle to like him back. If she even likes him back. He assumes she does. She kissed him first. But she seems averse to any display of emotion stronger than a sneeze.
He knows she cares about him. He notices her small gestures and can read behind the sarcasm and barbs. But it’s weird for him to not talk about it, to just sit back and let things happen.
They haven't kissed since the first time in the auditorium and he's almost afraid to ask. Like the little edge in all their interaction that seem to place them beyond simply friends is just some fluke, trick of the light that will disappear if he focuses on it too much.
He wants to say something, but she'll definitely call him a loser and definitely try to find a way out of the conversation because that's Michelle.
He leaps over the back of the couch in the living room and passes the bowl of warm popcorn to Ned.
“That took forever,” he complains.
“Just start the movie,” Peter says. Rogue One is on Netflix and they've been waiting for this for months.
They barely get through the opening credits when Michelle strolls into the living room. He's not even sure where she came from, just that suddenly he's staring at her with probably the most besotted look on his face. She sprawls across the couch, kicking her feet up in Ned's lap and resting her head against Peter’s thigh.
“Really, you nerds are watching the new Star Trek movie?” She asks.
“Star Wars-”
“Whatever, it's lame,” she says drily.
“You saw this with us in the theaters,” Ned complains.
“We had a two day debate about The Temple of the Whills,” he adds, voice amazing calm for the fact that she's resting her head in his lap.
“I did no such thing,” she grumbles. “This is slander. I could sue.”
His hand is hovering weirdly now because she's never done this before and he has no idea what the proper response to this is. She grabs his wrist and pulls it down so his fingers rest against her hair.
“Um, okay,” he says, taking a deep breath and tries to focus on the screen.
“If you mess up my hair, I'll dump you,” she says.
“Your hair’s already a mess,” Ned says, glancing over at them skeptically.
Michelle kicks at his face with her socked foot.
“Watch it, Leeds, you're on thin ice.”
And then minutes later she's asleep.
“Dude,” Ned says. “What even is going on with you two?”
“I have no idea,” Peter admits, shrugging, staring resolutely at the screen like he’ll be able to concentrate on the movie and not on Michelle and her soft hair beneath his fingers. “I've learned not to question it.”
She drools on his knee and wakes up exactly before the end fight scene like she planned it and he thinks he might be in love.
He shows up at a private school on the Upper West Side with minutes to spare before their decathlon meet starts.
“There was a thing. It might have been an alien thing. I'm not sure,” he explains to Ned, out of breath, struggling to change into his own mustard blazer. Half of his torso hurts from where he got thrown into a stop sign.
“Michelle was freaking out,” Ned says, eyes wide, holding onto his backpack while he struggles to pull off the suit. “Dude, she's gonna kill you.”
“I know,” he says, wincing. “I know. Oh man, this is gonna be so bad.”
“And then she's probably gonna kill me by association,” Ned sighs.
And then like she knows they're talking about her, she bursts into the boy’s bathroom and storms up to them.
“Michelle, hi,” he squeaks. She's glaring but she dumps three ice packs and a roll of Ace bandages in his lap.
“We have thirteen and a half minutes to get you presentable before I have to take Flash off the bench,” she says, crossing her arms. “And I will do it, Parker. I'm not losing this meet, so lose the suit.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, because it's better to not question her.
“You missed warm up,” she says, handing Ned a pack of her highlighted quiz cards. She gives him a look and he starts reading.
Michelle pushes him until he's sitting down on a closed toilet seat and starts wrapping the bruises on his torso while he rattles off answers.
It passes in a blur of Ned's steady stream of questions and Michelle's hands gentle on his skin. She hands them each a water bottle on their way out, looking weary yet satisfied in the usual understated way.
He feels actually speechless, in awe of her and also terrified of how powerful she is at the same time. She's calm and collected as always but he can tell how much she cares about this, about their team, about being a good leader.
She lets Ned walk ahead and grabs his arm.
“You can do this,” she says, hallways between a question and a confirmation.
He nods. “I'm really sorry I'm late.”
“Dude, level with me. You have a bruise on you stomach that looks like a map of Westeros.”
“That's the lamest thing you've ever said,” he notes, beaming at her. He knew deep down she was a nerd like the rest of them. No matter how blasé she acted about it.
“Peter,” she says and he realizes that she's serious. It may be the first time he's ever seen her this serious and he pauses. “Can you do this? And I don't mean can you win this. I mean can you literally, physically do this without dying… wimp?”
He nods again, swallowing hard, the way she stares at him settles in his gut. “I'm okay.”
She takes a deep breath and rolls her eyes. “Good because I would have actually destroyed you if you weren't.”
She marches off towards the rest of their team and he trails along behind her, a little shaky on his feet but ready.
She's sitting in front of his locker on a Tuesday morning with her nose in a book.
“Morning,” he says, stopping in front of her, reaching above her head to unlock his locker.
“Hey, dweeb,” she says and shoves a stack of papers into his hands.
“Um,” he says, frowning at the papers.
“I was texting May last night,” she says. “And she said you didn't get in until one and immediately passed out.”
“You text with May about me?” He says in a squeak. She gets along unnaturally well with May. He once observed an hour long conversation between them about war profiteering that went completely over his head. May loves her, always asks him when she's gonna come over again. Apparently they text.
He's not sure if it's a good thing or the worst thing that could possibly happen.
“Relax, Parker,” she says. “We only text about you sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” He echoes. He's not sure if he wants to know, or absolutely doesn't want to know.
“Anyway, she said you passed out like immediately, wimp, so you probably forgot about the history essay we had due today so there you go,” she says, and then pulls a book out of thin air and starts reading.
“What?” He asks, looking back down at the papers because there's no way.
“Don't worry. I wrote a completely different essay,” she says. Like that's what he's worried about. Like it’s less concerning that she wrote an entirely separate essay for him.
“Oh my God,” he says. “What?”
“I've been proofing your shitty history essay for like months so it totally sounds like you,” she says. “I even got the MLA annotation all wrong like you do, idiot.”
“Michelle,” he says. “I can't hand this in. This is crazy.”
“It's a perfect forgery,” she says, shrugging. “No one will be able to tell the difference.”
“But that's cheating.”
She shrugs. “Well you can't tell Ms. Davila you need an extension because you were fighting crime last night. Unless you've had a total 180 about the whole secret identity thing in the past six hours.”
“I can't hand this in. It's wrong,” he decides. Even though he completely forgot about this essay and has no feasible excuse.
“You do realize you break international law like every night as Spider-Man,” she says.
“What?” He demands. This is maybe the weirdest conversation he's ever had.
“Am I the only person who's actually read the Sokovia Accords?”
“Probably,” he says. He hands the papers back to her, takes her hand and squeezes. She looks up at him, completely unimpressed. “Thank you though. That's… I mean, that's just amazing.”
“Obviously,” she says, rolling her eyes. “What am I even supposed to do with this, though? This is a Parker A. This is useless to me.”
He smiles at her like an absolute idiot. She takes the papers and climbs to her feet.
“Also don't you dare get arrested for this Spider-Man thing. I might run for President one day and if this comes back to bite us, Future Me will divorce you.”
His entire body short circuits and he starts choking, on the air? On his own spit? Who knows? She disappears down the hall like nothing happened.
They have a good thing going here. Her head in his lap every movie night. His head on her shoulder on the train. Her lips on his temple, the same way she did the first time, always when he least expects it, always quick and then she's gone like some sort of affection ninja. He buys her a tea every Friday morning without even realizing. She squeezes his hand before he goes out in the suit and actually smiles at him when he gets back, a small subtle one that she tries to hide.
It's tentative and light, but still more that he's ever had. They're moving slow, and with everything else in his life at a Mach 5 it's nice to have something steady and simple.
He may overthink it, but he overthinks everything.
This is good. Things are good.
Michelle cares about him. He knows that. Sees it in her rare smile, in the study guides she shares with him, in the way she says his name, in her careful handwritten corrections when she proofreads an essay, in the soft hesitant way she'll touch his shoulder or his arm, in the books she leaves in locker immediately after she finished them.
But every time he looks at her it's like a supernova in his chest. It's this enormous thing that pushes at the edges of him and keeps growing.
She wears a Spider-Man t-shirt to school once and his heart stops for a full minute. She snorts at one of May’s Thai food puns and he thinks about proposing to her.
He feels so much for her and she can totally see it because he's terrible at hiding things from her apparently. And while he's becoming more proficient in her own unique language of eye rolls and squints and sarcastic insults, there are still times when he gets lost in translation.
The effort is worth it. More than worth it. They have a good thing going. The best thing going. He just feels off balance sometimes and she's always steady.
“Are we dating?” he asks. It just kind of slips out. They’re talking on the phone and it’s late, really late, even though he promised May he’d hang up and go to bed an hour and a half ago.
He told her about his patrol and she had him quiz her for their geometry test and then he geeked out for a while about the new Episode VII trailer. She had just finished a rant about transphobia in comedy and then there was a moment of silence and the question just slipped out.
“Ew,” she says after a moment, which is the equivalent of a yes, which he already knew, kinda. She probably stopped reading. He tried to picture her in her room, kicked back by her desk, phone pressed into her shoulder, book open on her lap.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know. It’s just overwhelming sometimes. Like I really, really like you.”
“Lame,” she mutters.
“You don’t even know the half of it,” he says. “Like I want to write poems about your nose or your hair, and it’s terrible.”
“Dating as an institution is stupid,” she replies. “Plus I know like everything about you and you know everything you’re allowed to know about me, so actually going on dates and stuff is pretty much pointless.”
“Plus we’re broke high school students,” he says.
“Right. Broke. I totally don't have thousands stashed in offshore accounts,” she replies slowly. He smiles up at his ceiling.
“Weirdo,” he says. He can't seem to get the sappiness out of his voice though.
“Nerd,” she shoots back.
They just breathe for a few seconds. He lets the fondness in his chest settle.
“Look, I'm going to be real with you,” she says, quiet and quick. “But don't tell anyone because I have this whole reputation I've been building.”
“MJ,” he says gently.
“I know. Who would you even tell? You're a total loser,” she says.
“Come on,” he protests and she shushes him.
“Just shut up, dweeb. Look, I haven't felt a real emotion in around eight years. And with you I feel a lot of emotions. Mostly positive. I don't usually feel things so it's weird for me. Also I'm trying to be this nonconformist who doesn't care about Eurocentric beauty standards and other misogynistic pressures put on women and that works because I don't care what anyone thinks. So it's hard since, you know with this whole lame crush thing, I value your opinion and stuff, and I care what you think and it's dumb. Anyway, it's this whole amalgamation of reasons why dating anyone is probably not a good idea for me, but I want to do couple-y things with you and that one time we kissed was pretty great.”
“Wow,” he says. That may be the most he's ever heard her say at one time. With Michelle talking mostly serves as a vessel for sarcasm and critiques of society. “Um…”
“Okay, bye,” she says, and actually hangs up on him.
There's static and he sits up on his bed, stares at his phone’s home screen in stunned silence. He's not entirely sure what to do now. Should he wake Aunt May up and ask for advice? Should he call her back?
Should he get some sleep so he's not a total zombie in class tomorrow?
He's still deliberating, seconds away from pacing across the floor of his room when she calls him back.
“So you wrote shitty poetry about me,” she says immediately. His head is spinning. He should really get some sleep.
“I didn't actually write any,” he says. He seriously considered it once or twice because he had a really great analogy about how her eyelashes reminded him of the skyline at dusk.
“You totally wrote some,” she continues. “Send it to me.”
“What?” He asks.
“Send me your poetry,” she demands.
“Really? You want to read the poetry that I did not write about you?” He asks, because while Michelle will read anything, romantic poetry seems out there.
“Entirely for mocking purposes,” she says. That sounds more like it.
“Then why would I-”
“Peter,” she says. “Peter, send me the poetry. Peter, I'm not kidding, send it to me.”
“Alright, fine,” he says and then she hangs up again with a quick, “‘Night, loser.”
They have two essays due by Friday, he reminds himself, setting his phone down to charge. He has two essays to write and now they're not gonna get done because he has to write her some shitty poetry.
Michelle has a coffee in her hand when she walks over to his locker the next morning. He already put her tea in hers so it'll stay warm until homeroom. It's one of those unspoken traditions for every time they stay up too late talking.
She closes her book when she reaches him, which is strange. He takes his coffee from her, eternally grateful, thanks her, is about to tell her where he stashed her tea when she’s stepping closer, suddenly right in front of him, and then she's kissing him.
He thinks she'll probably always catch him off guard like this, she probably prefers it this way. And then he stops thinking for a while.
Everything shrinks down to her hand on his cheek, fingertips on the sheep of his ear, and his hand on the small of her back for balance and brushing their lips together and not screwing up.
The morning bell cracks through the hall and he jumps out of his skin. She smirks at him, looking angelic in the fluorescent hallway light with the bags under her eyes and her messy ponytail.
“Loser,” she says, running her fingers through his hair briefly, the curls right on top of his forehead.
“Uh, tea’s in your locker,” he says. He has class. He also can't feel his legs.
“It better be,” she replies, kissing him on the temple before backing away carefully. She's squinting at him, like she's trying to figure something out. She's already got him pieced together and falling apart, but who knows what other mystery she's trying to solve.
“You’re beautiful,” he stammers out, catching her hand for a moment.
She raises her eyebrows. “Well, duh,” she says. “You are too. Sometimes. When you don't look like a gaping fish.”
He doesn't think he's gonna make it to first period. He may be frozen here for the next dozen years, trying to process what just happened.
“And you owe me poems, Parker,” she adds, opening her book again and disappearing down the hall.