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Not exactly good ‘soulmate material’
At first Peter doesn’t even see it.
He’s patrolling around the neighborhood, when he hears a scream a few blocks away. He instantly changes direction to swing towards where the cry came from, landing on top of a building and looking down to assess the situation. Down there, in a small alley, there’s a woman cornered by two thugs armed with crowbars. A third one is cowered on the ground covering his balls and whimpering. A small, appreciative smirk stretches Peter’s lips as he slumps down from the top of the building, landing between the thugs and the woman with a small flourish of his arms.
“Why hello there, what do we have here? Sorry, before we start I have to ask, am I reading this wrong? Are you trying to teach this lady some self-defense moves?”
“If that’s what it is then I didn’t get the memo,” the woman retorts a little breathlessly, and Peter’s smile widens behind his mask.
“You’re doing great though, went straight for the killer move, good job,” he assures with an appreciative nod, pointing to the man on the ground.
“Fuck off Spider,” one of the thugs spits aggressively, “this does not concern you.”
“It kinda does though,” Peter replies joyfully, webbing the two standing guys to the wall in a second, “I was thinking about starting self-defense classes too!” The two start insulting him and he webs their mouths with a sigh and a disappointed ‘that’s not very nice’.He then turns to the third man but apparently the woman took care of him, kicking the crowbar away from him. He is still whimpering and apparently unable to move, but Peter still webs his legs down and asks Karen to call the police and let them know a small gift is waiting for them.
“I had this under control you know.”
Peter turns to finally take a closer look at the woman and make sure she’s okay, instinctively reaching back to scratch his neck with a nervous chuckle. “Yeah I know you did I just thought–”
And that’s when he sees it. She’s one of the most beautiful person he’s ever seen, true, but that’s not what takes his breath away. What does is the brown of her eyes. He’s never seen brown before. He doesn’t even know how his brain instantly recognizes the warm tone in her eyes to be brown. He’s read about this, he’s done research about this, he’s dreamed about this hundreds of times. And now there she is.
His soulmate.
He doesn’t have time to finish his sentence or start another one. His Spidey sense tingles, he hears an angry scream behind him, “She’s over there!” and he doesn’t think twice. He takes a couple of steps towards her, grabs her by the waist and shoots a web up, sending them flying in the evening sky. His brain only seems to reboot when she starts screaming, simultaneously hitting him to make him let go and grabbing him tighter to avoid plummeting to her death.
That’s when he realizes the stupidity of what he’s doing, and he lands on a rooftop, letting go of her waist and bracing himself for the hit he knows is coming – and the one he knows he deserves, too. Somehow it doesn’t come though. She stumbles back, her curly brown hair swirling wildly in the wind, her eyes filled with a mix of fear and anger. “You creep!” she screams breathlessly, reaching for her bag and for what Peter suspects is some sort of pepper spray. “Why did you do that, where did you take me, what do you want?!”
“It’s you,” he chokes out, heart pounding in his chest.
She opens her mouth, ready to scream again, but then her eyes move to something behind him and Peter catches his breath as understanding dawns on her beautiful face. Her eyes widen in shock, and he watches in awe as pink slowly spreads on her cheeks. The soft curve of her lower lip trembles a little as she takes a hesitant step back, and Peter feels his heart fall in his chest. Her reaction hurts, but then he remembers his mask so he takes the black thing off and reveals his face. A very small part of him screams at him that it’s not a good idea, that his identity has to stay a secret, but he doesn’t care because it’s her.
His soulmate.
If he can’t trust her, then who can he trust?
“It’s you,” she whispers, and if it weren’t for his enhanced senses he wouldn’t have heard her over the wind. She’s shivering, and the only thing Peter wants to do is close the distance between them to warm her, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to scare her away. He doesn’t want to start off with her the wrong way. He already kinda did.
“I’m sorry I grabbed you without asking first,” he stammers, feeling the familiar heat rushing to his cheeks, and a small part of him is delighted to know that they’re actually growing red. If he were to look at himself in a mirror he would see it. She is seeing it. “I saw you and then I, I, I heard those guys screaming and I just, I didn’t think.” He feels like her eyes are digging right into his soul, and he lets out a nervous laugh, scratching the back of his neck again. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, looking down at his feet.
“You should turn around,” she tells him softly, and Peter looks up in surprise. Her brown gaze is warmer than it was seconds ago, and it sends shivers down his spine. She nods to something behind him, and Peter slowly turns around, heart jumping in his chest as he takes on the view.
The sun is setting. Clouds have been covering the entire sky for days now, so the sun is only a blurred shape behind the thick curtain, but Peter still winces at the intensity of its light and the incredible colors it’s spreading all over the sky. Colors he’s discovering for the very first time. He’s still very impressed to be able to identify every single color he sees – he doesn’t remember ever reading something like when he was doing research on the entire soulmate thing. He loves it.The red sun, how it fades into intricate shades of oranges and yellows, coloring the clouds so beautifully his eyes are definitely tearing up.
This, he thinks, this is a very nice thing to see right as you meet your soulmate.
“Wow.”
“I know.”
Peter jumps, surprised that he didn’t even feel her get closer. She’s still a few feet away from him, leaning her forearms on the edge of the building, and he desperately wants to reach out and touch her to make sure she’s real. He doesn’t. Instead, he waits for her to look at him, and when she eventually does, he smiles a shy thing. “I’m Peter,” he says quietly, and for a moment she just looks at him, her expression unreadable.
“Michelle,” she breathes after a while, looking away to the wonderful sky unrolling in front of them. They’re quiet for a long time afterwards, enough for the sun to completely disappear behind the horizon. The colors are still here though. There’s even beautiful shades of pinks now.It’s mind blowing. Peter has to bite down his own lip to prevent himself from erupting into a rambling mess, because there is so much he wants to tell her, to share with her, to know about her. He keeps glancing at her and she’s very still, her gaze trained in front of her, and he can see how tensed she is still. He gets it. He’s probably not who she wanted her soulmate to be – if she even wanted a soulmate, that is.
“So this changes everything,” she says then, echoing his thoughts. Her voice is even and yet the tension in her shoulders and the slight frown on her face speak for themselves. It hurts a little, but then again he gets it. This whole soulmate thing is kind of pressuring. Some people choose to ignore that, there’s even dating apps and stuff for people who chose to set aside the whole soulmate thing. No one really knows how soulmates are chosen or anything, and some people hate the fact that they seemingly don’t have a choice.
It’s understandable. Peter totally gets it.
“Well I mean,” he hesitates, eyes fixed on his gloved hands. “It doesn’t have to.”
“What?”
She’s staring at him in surprise now, and he can feel his cheeks grow red again. “Well it’s just, I don’t know, some people see their soulmate, like, in a bus or something, and never see them again after and still live a great life. Or, or you know some see them when they’re toddlers or babies and don’t realize it until much later, so yeah.” She keeps quiet, her face unreadable, and Peter finds himself rambling because that’s what he always does. “Plus I mean, I know I’m not exactly good ‘soulmate material’ or whatever, with the whole uh, masked vigilante thing and everything so uh…” She’s not even looking at him anymore, and he honestly has no idea what she’s thinking right now. “So yeah, I mean uh, it’s, it’s up to you.”
She – Michelle – stays silent for so long after that, that Peter is pretty sure he somehow screwed everything up. He wouldn’t admit it ever, but he almost jumps when she speaks again. “You could add some colors now.”
He turns to her, heart pounding in his chest for some reason as he meets her gaze. She’s looking at him with a guarded expression, but her eyes are soft, their brown so rich and expressive he would want nothing more than lose himself in them. She looks away after only a second though, pinching her lips, and Peter stammers, his mouth suddenly as dry as sand: “W-what?”
“To your suit,” Michelle says, her gaze flying to him for a second before going back to her hands. He’s not entirely sure he’s seeing right, but she might be blushing. He doesn’t know what it means, but it makes his heart skip a beat.
“Oh.” Peter looks down at his black stealth suit, mind running wild at the suggestion. “Yes, yeah you’re right that would be very cool,” he says with a cautious smile, surprised to meet her gaze when he glances at her. He’s pretty sure he sees the corners of her lips moving up just a little at that, and butterflies erupt in his stomach because of it.
“Red is pretty neat,” she points out to the ever changing sky in front of them, and Peter nods instantly, wondering if he’s being too enthusiastic about this. She seems to like it though, because she averts her eyes again, biting her lower lip like she’s trying to hide her smile.
“It is yeah,” he agrees, eager to talk more but not willing to push her too much either. “Too bad there are so many clouds tonight, I’ve always wondered what blue was like.”
“Oh here, look.”
Peter turns and watches in awe as Michelle opens her black jacket to reveal a blue NYU hoodie. The color is beautiful, even better than what he’d imagined in his head all this time, and yet the only thing he can focus on is how she didn’t hesitate for one second before showing it to him. It makes his heart do funny things in his chest – which he knows is kind of ridiculous, because he doesn’t know her or anything, he’s just basing everything on the small fact that they are soulmates, and yet.
“Wow that’s cool, thanks,” he whispers, smiling shyly at her. He’s surprised to see her grin at him, a small, beautiful thing that only lasts for a second but still reaches her eyes. Then she looks away, closing her jacket again with a slight shiver. Peter really wants to reach out and offer to warm her – the heater included in his suit is pretty neat for that kind of thing – but once again he fears it would rush her or something, so he doesn’t.
“So red and blue then?” she asks after a while, and Peter is surprised that she is the one to break the silence once again. He’s probably over-analyzing everything, but he figures this is still progress. She doesn’t seem as guarded as she was earlier. Maybe she’s warming up to him a little, he thinks. That’s cool, he can live with that. His heart kind of feels like it’s about to beat out of his chest, but that’s just a detail really.
“Yeah probably,” he nods, reaching to scratch the back of his neck. He glances at her and she isn’t fast enough to hide her smirk this time. He feels his cheeks grow red a little and doesn’t add anything, looking down at his hands.
“I’m gonna paint,” she tells him. Her voice is calm, and when Peter glances at her he sees what might be longing on her face as she watches the now darker sky unrolling in front of them. He’s never heard about mental connections or anything between soulmates, but somehow learning that she’s an artist doesn’t surprise him in the slightest. He doesn’t say anything, waiting for her to elaborate, which she does after a few minutes. “I draw, all the time, but I’ve… I’ve always been curious about paint. Colors.” There’s a tangible emotion in her words this time, strong enough for Peter to feel a tinge of sadness in his heart for some reason.
There’s a connection between them, and it makes his heart swell in his chest.
When their gazes meet after a minute of silence, he’s once again not surprised to catch the brightness in her eyes. There’s something there, something he doesn’t know, something she’s not ready to tell him. He won’t pry. It’s not his place. “That’s great,” he tells her with a gentle smile, “I’m sure you’re gonna paint amazing things.”
Okay, maybe he hasn’t figured her out entirely yet. To his great surprise, Michelle raises an inquisitive eyebrow at him and scoffs. “You’ve never even seen any of drawings,” she retorts sharply, and Peter opens in mouth in shock, his ears burning in embarrassment.
“R-right yes,” he stammers, rubbing the back of his neck, “no yeah I mean I–”
“Relax loser, I’m just messing with you.” Her eyes are shining with amusement and it effectively takes his breath away. He forms a silent, relieved ‘oh’ with his lips and watches in delight as she smirks, slightly shaking her head before averting her eyes once again. “Thank you,” she says very quietly, and it sends shivers down his spine. “I’m sure you’re gonna look real flashy in your red and blue suit.”
She’s smirking again, but there is no mockery in her eyes, Peter thinks. “Ha, thanks,” he says with a chuckle, and her smirk morphs into a grin. It once again only lasts for a second before disappearing, but Peter thinks it’s now engraved in his mind forever. Alright, he might be getting overly corny or whatever, but he figures that’s okay. Give him a break, he’s just met his soulmate, right? He doesn’t know what’s gonna happen between them – if something even happens, that is. Hopefully it does. Hopefully they can end up being friends.
That would be great.
That would be really great.