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“I woke up in love with someone.”
Peter continues gnawing on his pencil and raises a brow. “Who?”
(He says it like it’s an inquiry he’s only half thought through, and the study room they’re in feels a little more vast because of it.)
MJ swallows, lets out air as slowly as possible. Her nose twitches with the movement. “Don’t freak out.”
“That’s making it hard to not.”
She sighs again, the looks him in the eye. “You.”
“…What?”
“When I woke up this morning,” she says, slower, like the world is watching, “I woke up in love with you.”
It’s like this: you wake up one day and you're in love, inexplicably, which is a little different than any other love you’ve felt.
It’s a tug towards someone you know—or don’t, but that’s rare.
Not something you can really escape, even if you try.
And many have tried.
What annoys MJ is that most of the general population doesn’t even get it.
They don’t get anyone “assigned” to them.
So much so that some theories include genetic makeup—which she thought was true, until now.
Because both family trees pointed to No Soulmate Syndrome.
(Maybe she really is adopted, like how her brother would joke? Maybe she’s not really a family anomaly—just someone not really from here?)
So she thought she was safe from this whole thing.
But life’s funny like that.
Michelle Jones meets Peter Parker in her freshman year of high school, where everything happens or nothing does.
He’s shorter than her, and more excitable, and his glasses are a little too big—but that’s okay, because he’s nice.
Friendly, maybe.
Polite, definitely.
He does not become her definition of a friend until later that year—right before summer—but she doesn’t voice that claim until mid-sophomore year, when she addresses the entire decathlon team as her friends.
She meets him and becomes his friend, all the while also somehow befriending one Ned Leeds, whose given name—Edward—is only allowed to be used by her or May Parker.
(Peter’s aunt—she’s cool, from MJ’s perspective, but not because she lets her nephew engage in questionable extracurriculars.
No, May Parker is cool because she’s a community organizer, and she and her late husband did a whole ton more for their little corner of Queens than people tend to realize.)
Anyway.
Ned is shorter than Peter, and more excitable, and doesn’t have glasses, but has a stellar hat.
He’s the first human being to realize that MJ doesn’t bite, and therefore the first person at Midtown to sass her right back on any available topic.
(She loves him a whole ton.)
(It takes her two years to tell him this.)
In sophomore year, MJ officially assumes captainship of the decathlon team.
It is also the same year Peter tells Ned that he has a soulmate.
(He does not tell MJ, nor May—the latter of which being more impressive a feat.)
In sophomore year, Liz Toomes leaves, and Peter is never the same.
In sophomore year, MJ wonders why not all soulmates are made equal.
(But that’s not the point of the story.)
The point of the story is this:
It is the end of junior year.
Peter has yet to tell her he’s Spider-Man.
MJ has yet to tell him she has feelings for him.
Ned has managed to keep his secrets.
May has managed to pretend to keep hers.
It is the end of junior year.
Half of their old decathlon team is five years older.
Peter, Ned, and MJ are not.
And one day, MJ wakes up with a tug.
“So you just told him?” Ned asks, weirdly quiet. His soup is cooling and halfway to cold, but nothing’s got more priority than the bombshell story MJ’s just gifted him.
“Yeah,” she says, eyes looking down, then up, then down again.
(Why’d she even buy a sandwich? There’s no way she’s eating anything tonight.)
“And he said…?”
She shrugs, tight and quick. “Nothing. Happy called.”
Ned’s jaw drops, the way he does when he finds out someone who shouldn’t’ve gotten through passed the current round of The Voice.
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry he’s so stupid,” Ned says, fast, monotone, disbelieving.
There’s a rush of wind that enters his living room window, fluttering the stack of napkins at center table.
MJ thinks it’s a tumbleweed, and the room a desert.
“MJ,” Ned says, a little urgent, a little calling. “I’m serious. I’m sorry he’s being a dummy.”
She frowns, face scrunched in confusion. “What? Why?”
“…I can’t say.”
“Sus.”
“No, I really can’t,” he says, buzzing, “I promised.”
“And,” she says, still, “you can’t force him to change soulmates.”
“That—”
Buzz. Buzz buzz. Buzz.
“He’s got good timing, huh?” MJ says, spotting the caller ID. She gets up, rewrapping her untouched sandwich. “Tell your parents thanks.” One foot in front of the other, over and over, until she gets to the door. “…And tell him I get it.”
Ned flounders, accepting the call and racing to his friend at the same time. “MJ! Wait, dude! M—Peter,” he squeaks exasperated-like, watching MJ stride to the corner block, “what the hell did you—what?”
Pause.
Ned balks to nothing and to everything at the same time. “You can’t—I can’t do th—why didn’t you just tell her!” Shuffle. “No! Nuh-uh! Dude! Pete, you can—Pete? Peter? Man.”
Click.
One day, MJ wakes up with a tug.
One day, MJ tells her best friend it’s for him.
One day, he leaves.
(But it isn’t his fault.)
(There just happen to be too many nasties over in a different galaxy, and Captain Marvel thinks he’s nice to have around when things go southside.)
(So.)
(Let’s flip.)
Peter Parker meets Michelle Jones in his freshman year of high school. He sees her in the crowd the minute he steps in, and two seconds later she sees him.
She’s tall, most of the way to invisible, and crazy, crazy smart.
They don’t talk that first day. They have class the next. And on the third day, they’re both in line for the decathlon tryouts.
In freshman year, he meets Liz Allan-Toomes.
In freshman year, he thinks he’s in love.
But life changes quickly.
In sophomore year, he loses Ben.
In sophomore year, he sends Liz’s father to jail.
Peter put him there.
In sophomore year, Liz leaves.
In sophomore year, Peter wakes up with a tug.
And, in sophomore year, correlation does not equal causation.
So let’s rewind that a little bit.
Peter falls in love unsteadily.
He’s a tossed boat in wild waves, sails shut and rudder broken.
He takes the beating the same way he took the falling, collapsing, decaying warehouse.
Like a champ.
And, because he wants to do right by his friend, he doesn’t tell her.
He knows how her family tree goes.
He knows she won’t love him back; not with all the stuff he messed up this year, including a very noteworthy day wherein he, essentially, stood her up for a study session at the library.
(He replays her voicemails to try to free himself on the hardest days.
It doesn’t work.)
And hey, maybe this is what superstrength is for—fighting back an ethereal force and trying to set the record straight.
Trying to keep things the same.
(But this time, he loses.)
(Over, and over, and over.)
So now: let’s bring ourselves back to the present.
To the Five Years After.
To the mess they’re in.
It’s 2AM on a Saturday morning when the world decides it hates acceptable sleep patterns for MJ.
It’s four days since she’d decided to be Classic MJ, open like a SparkNotes booklet, daring to put herself out there because she’s wasted enough time.
Seen enough ash.
She wasn’t trying to make it weird. She was hoping maybe they’d find a workaround, maybe figure out it isn’t a legit soulmate situation.
(Except, it is, and she knows it is, and she’s scared they won’t get past this.)
(Why.)
(Why did she open her stupid, stupid mouth?)
It’s 2AM and it isn’t weird, not at all, that there is now a masked vigilante on her window, perched and looking like he’s second-guessing knocking.
It’s 2AM and she beats him to it; cracks open the window and the screen and wordlessly stares up at him.
“I was gonna knock,” Peter says, whispering.
“I won’t tell,” MJ says, lacking fire in her monotone. She looks away, to the side, hugging herself. “What’s up, Peter?”
He steps in, all gentle movements and anti-gravity stepping, making sure not to make the floorboards creak.
Looks at her.
He doesn't think twice.
“Karen, suit off, please.”
And she does it.
And he’s back to a pun shirt and jeans, feet bowing inward in nervousness, the same way he’s seen her do hundreds of times.
MJ glances over.
Winces.
Curse.
“What did you do?”
Peter shrugs, hand up to the right side of his face. “It’s not that bad.”
“It looks like Australia.”
“It’ll be New Zealand in like an hour,” Peter pffs. “Really not a big—”
Poke.
“—why would you do that,” Peter squeaks, keeling. He sucks in a breath, leans on her favorite bookshelf—the one with her sketchbooks and replies from authors she’d written to.
“Because you’re a dumbass and, also, a liar,” MJ says, squinting at him. “Y’know, pathological. Almost.”
“I’m not a pathological liar.”
“Chronic.”
“MJ,” he says, voice tinny, “it’s a secret identity.”
She grins, lazy creases by her eyes showing. “Messing with you.”
“Serious conversation.”
“As all our conversations are.”
“That’s not t—” Pause. Sigh. “—you know what? Nevermind,” Peter says, shaking his head. “Not important. But this is.”
MJ furrows her brows, arms loosening their grip. “What is?”
“Us,” he says, motioning between them. “You and me. This is important.”
Wince. “You don’t have to let me down ea—”
“You’re my tug.”
MJ frowns, blinks back in a recoil.
Peter steps forward. He swallows, jaw tight and hands shaking. “M. MJ. You’re my tug.”
“That’s,” she starts, shaking her head slightly. “That’s not true. Liz is your tug.”
“Liz wasn’t my tug.”
“You—you had a whole break from Spidey after…” MJ says, fading in confusion. “You weren’t right. Not when she left.”
Peter smiles.
That stupid smile.
The one that has her tied to him whether or not the universe links them up.
She could fall in love with that smile everyday for the rest of her life, and it wouldn’t get any lighter.
Any less real.
“Yeah,” Peter says. His eyes crinkle. “‘Cause I was trying not to fall in love with you.”
MJ laughs.
It’s not mean, and it’s not jokey.
It’s soft, involuntary.
A bubble in her chest making its way to the surface, to the space between them.
From her lips up to her eyes, and over to him, calling him closer.
It’s the laugh that made him give up two years ago.
Made the thrashing waves into calm seas.
Made him come home.
(It is also the lynchpin to their first kiss, but that is neither here nor there.)
(…And if their kissing derails any conversation about Peter's ill-timed Avengers business, well, that's a talk for a later time, now isn't it?)
“I don’t know if this is better or worse,” Ned pouts, leaning forward on the counter.
“Better,” May says with a nod of finality. She watches her nephew and his girlfriend toss up popcorn at each other from opposite ends of the couch, oblivious to their seatmates taking their time at getting drinks.
It reminds her of someone she used to know.
She looks at the picture on the bookshelf by the window, smiling.
“I promise you,” May whispers, eyes locked on a memory. “It doesn’t get any better.”