Chapter Text
It’s the way time stops.
It doesn’t just slow down, not like it would in the movies when the protagonist and the love interest finally figure things out, finally make a move. They get together, and it’s a black and white decision. There’s none of that here, no rain or music or shooting stars.
There’s just the two of them sitting on a roof, legs dangling over the edge, feet bare, and a bottle of red wine in between. It’s a summer night, the beginning of an end if she were to look back on it now.
Michelle should’ve known what she was getting herself into, seeing as she was only there to celebrate her best friend’s eighteenth birthday. It’s been a stressful year between the two of them, the lies and excuses of a certain secret identity piling up as months have gone by, but they’ve finally been honest with each other. Gotten over it and themselves.
“Thanks so much for this,” Peter tells her with a small smile, nodding towards the wine and the view. Both Michelle’s ideas, both very irresponsible. But it’s a special occasion, and he deserves something exhilarating every once in a while.
It’s funny, Michelle thinks, saying that as if Peter Parker’s life was far from exhilarating. At times, she wishes it were less so, but it’s not up to her as he would say.
“You’re welcome,” she responds quietly, ducking her head, curls falling loose from behind her ear. “Sorry. I know it wasn’t much this year.”
“Are you kidding? It was more than enough,” he says in a tone so earnest that she almost doesn’t believe him, knocking her foot into his. “You always do so much for me, MJ. I honestly...I don’t deserve you.”
Michelle can feel her cheeks heat up, an embarrassing flush, and quickly blames the alcohol, but she still twists her head away so that he can’t see.
“Don’t be an idiot. We deserve each other in that weird...perfect way.” She looks down at her lap and the half-empty wine glass sitting between her legs. “Does being eighteen feel any different to you?”
And maybe changing the subject is her desperate attempt to drown out the thoughts that have always lingered in the back of her mind about him, about Peter. But who is she to question herself.
“Everyone makes it out to be such a big deal, and I guess it is, but I just...don’t like thinking about it.” Peter chews on his lower lip, looking at her. “I know you feel the same way.”
“Damn straight.”
“Look at us go,” he says with a smile, clinking their cups together before taking a swig of his wine. “The older you get, the less you have control of, but not us. We might just be able to get a handle on this, yeah?”
“Parker, you’re finally getting wise in your old age,” Michelle jokes.
“And you’re getting meaner in yours,” Peter huffs teasingly, knocking his shoulder into hers but not too hard. He could knock her off the building if he really wanted. “You’re the only one who can make me...”
“Feel real emotion? Feel pain?” Michelle snorts, pinching his arm lightly, and he hesitates before nodding with a stupid grin on his face. It’s meant to be a joke but then she smiles back, his own starting to melt away, and it’s not so much the idea of pain anymore.
It’s just them looking at each other.
Peter is the first to break after a moment, glancing down, a blush spreading across his cheeks as he says, “I, uh...I wonder sometimes if I dig a hole for myself by just talking to you.”
“What kind of hole?”
“I dunno. Just a hole, I guess. I’m not sure if it’s you or me who’s making it harder to climb out of,” he tells her with a half-smile, and she can hear her own heart skip a beat—knows that he can hear it too. Unfair.
“Well. Guess that’s just another team effort of ours.” She trails off at his intense gaze and immediately looks up in effort to avoid him. “Just, uh, just like boycotting the meaning of our eighteenth birthdays together.”
“Yeah.” Peter heaves a sigh, the reminder coming back to him like a slap to the face. It’s a nice reality check. He almost laughs into his wine glass. “The universe really doesn’t care about us.”
“Can’t say it ever did.” Michelle shrugs, staring down at the people walking below them as her feet swing. She wonders how many have had their fates decided already. “Do you want to make a wish?”
“What?”
“It is your birthday,” she reminds him uselessly and pulls a paper plate from behind her. “I’d say make a wish on a star, but you can’t see any over here. So, I made you a cupcake. And by made, I mean bought.”
“Michelle,” Peter murmurs, and she can’t stand the look on his face—the one that says this really means something to him—because it’ll just end up as another one tucked away in the folds of her heart.
“Stop that. I got it from the bakery, and it’s a few days old and probably dry as fuck.” Michelle sticks a candle into the buttercream icing and lights it up, the flame nearly licking her fingertips. “Wish away, birthday boy.”
Peter’s eyes flit up to hers, and she can see the light in them reflecting. He takes a breath before releasing it, the candle going out in one.
They split the cupcake, and it’s pretty terrible, but Michelle thinks it was worth it now, just to see Peter smiling up at the moon as if it’s done something for him. She must make a face because he turns to her.
“You should ask me what I wished for.”
Michelle raises an eyebrow as she says, “Why, so you can blame me for when it doesn’t come true?”
Peter merely shrugs and picks up her wine glass, pouring more in without holding back. She understands more when he brings the bottle to his lips after, tipping his head back ever so slightly.
“I know it’s not going to come true either way. Remember, the universe doesn’t care about us?” He laughs sadly down at his lap. “I wished that we could have a choice, and I know—I know that it’s never going to happen, but if we did…”
“If we did...what?” Michelle asks, hesitant to know the answer.
“If we did,” Peter prompts, taking another sip of the alcohol before meeting her gaze. He looks flushed and dilated, and maybe his next words are a side of the alcohol, but she could never tell. “If we did, I would choose you. Always. And it would only be up to me. My own decision.”
Michelle swallows the words in her throat, overwhelmed with the feelings in her heart. She watches him watching her, only the glow of the moon and the dim rooftop light illuminating his face, but it’s enough to get a glimpse of urgency. He so desperately wants to do something on his own, and she’s too familiar with the feeling.
“Treat yourself then, Parker. Make a decision of your own,” Michelle tells him quietly, but she had never expected any results.
Because this is Peter. He’s not a rule breaker, not someone who tests limits or boundaries. It’s come to the point where he knows what he can and can’t control despite his dumb superhero complex sometimes getting the best of him.
And yet, he surprises her by taking a risk.
The bottle of wine becomes long abandoned as his hands tentatively reach for her instead, warm palms coming up to trace her cheeks, cupping them. His eyes search her face as if to look for a sign that she doesn’t want this.
Michelle can’t say she has any to give, knowing that she’s just as in this as he is—that fate can go fuck itself. She moves closer so that they don’t have to strain for each other, confined to their own one-by-one square of space.
Peter’s eyes drop down to her lips for a split-second before he rests his forehead against hers. His voice is hoarse as he says, “Tell me not to, Michelle.”
“No,” she utters, swallowing the breath she’d held in her throat, and that’s all it takes for him to surge forward the extra half-inch, pressing his lips against hers. And then, well, it’s not so much a spark.
It’s the way the entirety of New York—the entirety of the world—freezes around them. Her heart sinks with the feeling, but she has half a mind to hope that this could still mean something else. This was supposed to be all their decision.
Keeping her eyes closed, Michelle kisses him like it matters, despite every sign at this point telling her it doesn’t. It was never up to them.
Peter is the first to pull away, to open his eyes, and she can see the blatant disappointment in his expression when he meets her own. He wets his swollen lips, saying, “You felt it too, huh?”
“I did. So much for that wish,” Michelle utters, picking at a loose thread in her pants as she wonders if this was just another thing the universe has wanted to ruin for her. “Does this mean…”
“You know what it means.” His tone is matter-of-fact, frustrated, upset.
It’s all explanatory in a way that Michelle hates—and has hated since she’d first learned the norms of what it all meant—but she can’t try to disprove the textbook definition of what a soulmate is.
Soulmates have been around long enough now to be set in stone, a philosophy just as accepted as the fact that the earth is round. It was the universe’s way of forcing you in the supposed right direction.
Michelle has always been told that time stops when you kiss your soulmate, a concept that she’s never grasped because it’s never happened to her. Not until now, until Peter, and if turning eighteen means getting a soulmate, she wishes they had never grown up.
“What are we supposed to do?” Her half-smile feels like a full lie. “I don’t think either of us expected to be...expected this.”
“If I had known, I would never have kissed you,” Peter whispers, and she can tell they’re both hurt by the admission. He swallows thickly, blinking rapidly. “But what were the fucking chances, Em?”
Michelle isn’t sure what to say, knowing this wasn’t the way things were meant to be. They were supposed to have soulmates that weren’t each other. Have the chance to blow off the whims of fate and get together on their own accord because that would be their choice alone.
“I don’t know, Peter, I don’t know how soulmates are assigned,” Michelle admits, never having cared enough to find out. “Let’s just forget it. We’re friends, and that was our decision, right? That’s real.”
“Is it? What if this was all planned out already? What if the whole soulmate bond is the reason we’re friends? The—the reason I’ve liked you for so long?”
“Peter,” Michelle exhales, feeling the harsh sting of the implications. She has no answer to his questions, no reasoning that could dry the wetness in his eyes.
“What if everything between us isn’t even...real?” Peter asks, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, and she heaves out a shuddering breath. This is the note their night is ending on.
Michelle remains silent, the only sound between them being the honking of vehicles from the street below. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see his chest rising and falling, the way his gaze is saddened under the moonlight.
There isn’t anything left for her to do, she thinks, knowing that while they’re sitting side-by-side, almost touching, it’s as if there’s a newly formed chasm between them. He feels so far away.
And just like that, the universe has let them down once again.
two years.
Good, old New York.
Michelle tightens her coat around her shoulders, trying to shake the feeling of disappointment attached to coming home and how it doesn’t truly feel like coming home, anymore. She walks down the streets of the lit-up city, snowflakes settling between the folds of her scarf and her winter coat.
The chill gives her a nice whiplash, though not in the same way that returning to her father’s apartment had. She’d expected to see him there, only for it to be completely empty with a half-assed apology note taped to the stainless steel fridge. Last minute, as always.
“I didn’t expect this year to be any different, Betty. It’s fine,” Michelle says, holding her phone between her ear and shoulder while opening up the door of a well-lit coffee shop that illuminates the night.
“I mean, what’s new? Impromptu business trips have always been his thing,” Betty replies, and silence falls between them, Michelle finding a table in the corner of the cafe. “Sorry. I know you were hoping this year would be different.”
“I came home for the holidays to spend time with him, and he always does this. He always blows me off, even if he doesn’t mean to.” Michelle shakes her head, resting it in her hand. A waiter comes over, and she orders a black coffee to go.
“The place is empty?”
“He even took the dog with him.” Her laugh comes out bitingly soft. “So, yeah. Quite empty. And tell me what the point of...coming home to no one is?”
Betty hesitates on her end, and Michelle can already guess what she’s about to say next. “Well, I don’t want you to be alone during the holidays. Don’t you have a plan B? I mean, I’d offer you to stay with me, but Ned and his family are visiting. It’s already a pretty full house—”
“So, what you’re saying is you don’t want me there.”
“MJ! No, that’s not it at all—”
Michelle snorts, turning her palm against her cheek as she closes her eyes, saying, “I’m just messing with you, Betty. It’s okay.”
“This absolutely...sucks, MJ. I am so sorry,” her friend says, and her tone is colored in sympathy mixed with pity. It’s not a nice sound, but it makes the most sense right now. “Hey, you know what, maybe we can make an exception. Why don’t you come over...I know it’s late—”
“No. I’m not going to intrude in on your family gatherings.” And it’s not just that, Michelle knowing the last thing she feels like doing is being the third wheel to Ned and Betty. She loves them but not enough to subject herself to that.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. But, thanks.” Michelle quirks her lips as she receives her coffee and sits back in her chair. “I’ll call you tomorrow if I remember. But I’m going to hang up now before you somehow get me to change my mind.”
“You know I love you.” Betty hesitates, like she’s reluctant to let the call end, but she eventually bids goodbye, and they hang up.
Michelle sips her coffee slowly and stares out the window, watching as the lights twinkle against the dark sky. It’s almost soothing, the way they reflect off the snowflakes falling, and she thinks if she were to watch the scene long enough, she’d drift off to sleep.
But then just as her eyelids start drooping, something in the distance catches her attention, and makes Michelle sit up on high alert. The way the flash of red and black past the cafe window immediately has her memories whirring.
She hides behind her styrofoam cup as the cafe bell chimes, Spider-Man himself walking through the door as if it were a casual thing. He orders something from the barista at the counter and it’s truly unfair how quickly he receives his drink.
It’s only when he turns around that Michelle comes to the conclusion that she doesn’t want to be spotted just yet, but her instincts are far too slow. Even when she whips her head to the side, he obviously sees her, judging by the way he freezes.
Her heart is pounding in her ears, Michelle unable to look at him or even in his general direction, and she lets out a breath of relief when he passes by to walk out the door. She doesn’t think she could handle this right now.
The relief lasts for about two or three minutes before the door opens again, bell slamming, and he marches right over to her table with some sort of misplaced determination, like he just changed his mind.
“Hey, M-Miss? Do you think you’re gonna need a, uh...an escort to get you home tonight?” Spider-Man asks, trying to be casual and failing spectacularly. He rubs the back of his neck, as if he didn’t just cause a scene.
“That’s so funny,” Michelle deadpans, looking down at her cup and finding it’s easier than looking at him. “You don’t think I can get home on my own, Spider-Man?”
“You—you know I don’t—I mean, I do think you can, but I don’t think that—”
“Try not to have an aneurysm right here and now,” she interrupts with a slight smile, something easing inside her just by knowing how easy it is to mess with him. He seems to relax, posture becoming less defensive. “I’m kidding.”
“Yeah.” He laughs, a quieter, hesitant thing. “Yeah, of course you were. I, uh, was just wondering if we could talk somewhere?”
Michelle can already feel the ache of the memories he’s bringing up by suggesting such a thing, but she nods anyway, closing her eyes as she brings her cup back up to her lips.
“I guess. You can wait until I finish my drink, right?”
His eyes narrow, probably wondering if she’s testing him, but he takes the empty seat across from her anyway as if this were just some casual outing. She finds it’s more awkward this way, but it’s not like she can tell him to go away.
Well, she could if she really wanted to.
“Um...how—how long…”
“You have somewhere to be?” Michelle takes deliberately slow sips, calculating the way his foot taps, the way his arms cross. His impatient tells have always been obvious, never a subtle guy when it comes to emotions.
“God, have you always been this…”
Michelle’s head whips up at that, and her fingers flex inadvertently around her cup before she tosses it. “This, what? Did you forget that you came to me?”
Standing up, she doesn’t even give him the chance to respond, tightening her jacket around herself while walking to the exit. She can hear his chair scrape but frankly doesn’t care if he’s following her or not.
Except, the moment Michelle steps outside the cafe, she’s immediately swept off her feet, suddenly flying through the air with an unprecedented speed. Her scream is drowned out by the wind, and she can’t do anything but bury her face in his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut.
The second they touch down on solid ground, some apartment rooftop not too far away, Michelle releases a string of curse words and pulls away immediately. She hates that he didn’t give her a choice, hates that it feels like she never gets a choice anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out, ripping his mask off, and it’s so much harder now that she can see his face clearly. “I...I know you hate that.”
“Yeah, I do.” Michelle bites back the words she’s itching to say. “No hi, no hello, just typical Parker—”
“Typical Parker behavior,” Peter finishes, quieter as he steps a bit closer. He looks older now, perhaps a little more filled out, and yet, it feels as if no time has passed. She wishes that were the case. “Hi. Hello. It’s been a while. You didn’t tell me you were back in the city.”
“I know.” She softens slightly, as she always does around him, old habits returning as quickly as they had disappeared. “I just came back for holiday break to...well. To see my father, who wasn’t there. You know how it is.”
Peter swallows, looking down. And because he is the person that he is, of course he knows everything about her. Almost. “I’m sorry that he’s terrible.”
“Me, too.” Michelle chews her lower lip before meeting his eyes. They’re the same as they were two years ago under the moonlight. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been alright.” He hesitates, wringing his mask in his hands, an anxious tick. “Kind of missed you. Believe it or not.”
Michelle rolls her eyes, giving him a slight smile before looking down at the pavement beneath her feet, recalling the past two years and the dull ache that came with them.
It’s almost funny, the way she so clearly remembers the night that had been the domino that started their gradual falling apart.
When she and Peter had first told Betty and Ned what happened, they were bombarded with accusations of overthinking. That this wasn’t as big a deal as they were making it out to be, that they should just go with the flow and accept what fate was saying.
But Michelle knew how she’d felt about soulmates long before finding her own, and the fact that they both shared the same views on the topic almost softened the blow of it being her best friend all along.
They really tried to keep a string of normalcy going, but it was obvious that neither of them were very good at that. It was getting harder and harder to even keep a conversation without wondering why or how, second guessing each interaction.
Michelle just didn’t know what the driving force was behind them anymore.
Their friendship had started to rail off more into the direction of a business transaction, and she couldn’t stand the feeling. Which is why they agreed to put anything and everything between them on hold.
They had graduated and were heading to different colleges, anyway. He had decided to stay in New York while she went to Boston, and that made it so much easier for their communication to fall the rest of the way through the cracks.
It makes Michelle’s head hurt if she thinks about the concept too long, knowing that soulmate bonds were meant to bring people together. And, yet, it had cost her one of her closest friends.
But now, Peter is here again, right in front of her, and despite both of them having agreed to let pieces of each other go, she realizes now that she’s missed him too—realizes it now only because he’s two feet away, and it’s easier to remember what they lost when they’re not miles apart.
They say time heals all wounds. Maybe that’s the case here, and maybe they would be able to return to some semblance of what they were before, but the weight of being soulmates is still hanging over their heads.
“I kind of missed you, too. Probably.” Michelle sees the way he smiles, and it’s too familiar. She doesn’t know what brought them back together again, the work of fate once more or something else.
“Do you, uh, want to come inside for a little? My apartment is in this building. I share one with a few friends from college, but they’re visiting family out of state right now,” he says, rambling just a bit. “It’s just me.”
“I probably shouldn’t,” she responds, hesitant, gaging the way he shifts from one foot to the other. Nervous. “Ten minutes?”
Peter seems surprised that she relented, and he doesn’t look away from her steady, almost challenging gaze while saying, “No more, no less.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Michelle pauses though when she realizes he’s not headed toward the rooftop door but the edge of the roof, pulling his mask back on. “Woah, hold up. Tell me we’re not…”
“Well, I can’t just walk through the hallway of my building like this. The fire escape is right below. We just have to jump.”
Michelle can feel her heart skip a beat as she mutters, “I hate you.”
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” he responds softly, and she knows that, her fear of heights telling her she should just take the stairs like a normal person. But she’s feeling spontaneous.
Pushing her hair away with a hand, Michelle shakes the nerves out of herself before jumping onto his back, arms securing around his neck, legs around his waist. She presses her face into his suit. “Ready.”
“Don’t let go.”
“Fuck off.” She can feel the moment when Peter takes the step off the roof, and her stomach drops as they do. It’s like free falling but with no one at the bottom to catch her. A terrifying thing it would be if he weren’t beneath her grasp, the only solid for her to hold onto.
After a few more seconds, Michelle hears Peter’s feet touch down on the fire escape, but she doesn’t trust herself to stand just yet. Not until he opens the window that leads into the apartment and clambers inside with a surprising amount of grace.
“MJ,” Peter murmurs, his hand lightly touching hers, the one that’s dangling right above his heart. “You can let go.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Michelle pulls away from him, snowflakes melting from her hair as she scrutinizes the place. It’s well-lit and decorated for the holidays. “Nice apartment you got here. Nice...tree.”
“It doesn’t quite fit,” he remarks with a quiet laugh after removing his mask, nodding at the pine that’s being crushed by the ceiling. “If you can’t tell, I was the one left to decorate all on my own.”
Michelle folds her lips, hands in her pockets as she walks around. “It looks like one of those overtly commercialized mall outlets. Exactly your style, Parker.”
“Should I take that as a compliment?”
“Not at all,” she laughs, ducking her head and falling back onto his beat couch. “But it’s a nice place. Cozy. How many people live here with you?”
“Just two. Gwen and Harry,” Peter says with a small smile, taking a seat next to her with a single cushion marking the space between them. “We all met during freshman orientation. They’re, uh...they’re nice.”
Michelle raises an eyebrow, slipping out of her heavy jacket as she starts to warm up. “You hesitated.”
“I…” He laughs, a sour sounding thing, and she frowns. “I mean, yeah. They’re nice, no doubt. But, god, this apartment is built for three people and there are, like, four or five here at all times? It gets annoying sometimes.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. They’re just...always bringing people home, trying to find their...well.” Peter leans forward, elbows resting on his thighs, not looking at her as he continues. “You know. Their soulmates.”
“Their soulmates,” Michelle echoes, aware that her voice suddenly sounds hollow. It knocks her back into reality, reminds her why it was so difficult for them in these past few years despite it being so easy to forget with just a few words and lingering stares. “Well. That must be fun for you.”
“Yeah. Especially when they try to drag me out with them,” he utters, shaking his head as the muscles in his jaw clench.
“You haven’t told them you’ve already…?” She trails off, unsure if the emotion churning in her gut is some twisted version of relief or something else. But that really wouldn’t make any sense at all.
“No. I haven’t. It’s just been hard for me to think about, Em,” Peter says, swallowing, twisting his head to look at her. “You’ve been hard to think about, and I know—I know it was a mutual agreement. But I still…”
“Yeah. No, I...I get it.” Michelle can feel her chest heaving as she kicks her boots off, pulling her legs up to make herself comfortable in his home despite something still feeling out of place. She doesn’t want to talk or think about this right now. “I feel like we could just...pretend we’re not soulmates.”
Peter laughs, a sardonic thing that trails off into something broken. It reminds her of that night on the rooftop, his eighteenth birthday memorable in all the wrong ways. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for two years?”
“It’s different now that I’m here. In front of you.” Michelle knows she won’t be able to stop second-guessing every little thing if they keep on like this, now that they’re no longer separated so far apart. “I’m sorry. We could’ve handled this better.”
“I doubt it.” He can’t quite meet her in the eyes, and she wishes that this weren’t so hard for them. Maybe if their brains had been wired differently, if they grew up accepting the idea of soulmates. But they didn’t.
“You’re probably right,” she whispers, closing her eyes. They are the way that they are, and they connected so nicely because of it. “Is my ten minutes up?”
Peter barely nods, his posture a tense thing. “It’s been fifteen.”
“I better go, then,” Michelle says slowly, uncurling from her position on the couch. To go from a wonderfully warm home back to her father’s cold and empty apartment, the idea must go through both of their minds.
“Or you could just stay,” he offers, his smile wry with room for hope if he would allow it. “Instead of going home. We’ve got empty rooms right now.”
“I’m here for two weeks, Peter.” She swallows, mirroring his expression. “I shouldn’t.”
“Two weeks isn’t very long, Em. Two weeks where we could just...pretend?” His voice trails off, cracks a bit as he echoes her earlier proposition. “You know we’re good at that.”
“We are good at that,” Michelle responds, sighing slowly, softly, and then finds herself conceding before really even considering what this could entail. It’s just difficult to think about, especially when all she knows is that she just wants to be here. “Two weeks where we’re not soulmates. No more, no less.”
“No talking about it. No thinking about it. No…” Peter trails off, eyes falling briefly to her lips before exhaling a small laugh. His barely-there smirk hits her. “Do you think you can handle that?”
“God, you are so annoying. And...I hate you,” she breathes with a shake of her head, and he smiles.
“No, you don’t.” His hand extends out to her, and Michelle takes it. She holds on this time, the distance between them suddenly nonexistent as he brings her into his side, sharing one section of the three-person couch. His arm around her has never felt so light and heavy at the same time.
Glancing up at his face, Michelle sees the way he closes his eyes now, cheek resting against her head. If he’s letting himself feel content, she’ll do the same.
This is what they’re good at. Pretending.