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“Remind me again why we signed up for this.”
“We didn’t sign up for this. They signed us up for this,” Peter responds under his breath, through his gritted teeth, and she can feel the annoyance radiating off of him. Just as it is with her, but she’s better at concealing.
“Because you wouldn’t stop—” Michelle cuts herself off when the camera pans by, stereotypical game show music playing in the background as the audience claps. It’s impossible not to be blinded by the studio lights. She lowers her voice. “Because you can’t keep a damn thing to yourself, Parker.”
Peter whips his head towards her, and she can see right through his charming smile, teeth and all. No crinkle around the corners of his eyes, no sincerity in his expression. “Oh, so this is my fault?”
“Yes.” Michelle blinks, feeling the way her eyes burn slightly from not enough sleep. It’s hot and uncomfortable and her throat is dry. She glances at him, finds Peter already staring. “If it weren’t for you, our problems would just be our problems. Not our friends’, and certainly not the—”
“And here we are! Welcome back to the show. Let’s meet our…” The host gestures to their row, each pair sitting behind their own microphone. “Newlyweds for today!”
Michelle’s smile tightens. She feels sick to her stomach, knowing how far from the truth that statement is. Can’t even bring herself to imagine it, knowing the rift between her and Peter has made it impossible.
It’s not as if they’re strangers, Michelle having known him since their freshman year of high school. They’d grown up together, Peter being one of the few people in her life that she could consider family.
He was the type of person that would sit in her dorm at college and read back her essay out loud because she didn’t think it was her best work. He could quote her, any time, any day, and he would say he remembered because it’s her and he always listens.
He would be the one she could come home to, the one she could be honest with, the one who would hold her words in his hands like they were something precious.
They’re friends and they’re close and Michelle loves him as a person. Loves every part of him.
Just not the part that lies to her. It hadn’t been a constant, not since their freshman year of high school when they first met. And she could understand it back then, back when he first became Spider-Man and he didn’t know her enough to trust her. It was new, his powers and their friendship.
But recently, the lying has spiked again, and it hurts to think they’d grown out of it after six years when they really hadn’t. He was coming to her dorm every night, and then he suddenly wasn’t. She asked him what was going on, never getting a straight answer in return.
The excuses were poor, becoming poorer by the day, and Michelle had wished it wasn’t so easy to see through him. The bruises and eye bags weren’t concealed well by foundation—so much that even the news channels had better coverage.
She saw that Spider-Man was dealing with multiple armed robberies committed by escapees of the Raft every other night. She knew that he wasn’t telling her so she wouldn’t worry, but she thought they were past this.
The night they fought was when she was frustrated beyond belief, couldn’t keep waiting for him to come clean and be honest. They’d exchanged words with raised voices and piqued anger, equally cruel to each other despite their best intentions, and it hurt all around.
Whatever argument was between them has de-escalated since, the only thing left behind being pettiness. Michelle won’t apologize to him first, not when she’s certain it’s in her right to know if her best friend is out there getting himself pummeled.
Worrying about each other is what they do, and he had the audacity to cut her out of the equation. It stings, not just knowing that she was supposed to be kept in the dark, but that she was the only one.
Michelle would’ve loved to keep their fight just between them, as it should be, but Peter brought it to the table with their friends.
Ned and Betty are not the type to let them sort their shit out on their own, and it’s because of that reason that they’re here now. Somehow signed up for a newlyweds game show with the world involved.
“You guys fight like a married couple,” Ned always told them.
“It’ll be a great way to bond again and heal. Better yet, you’ll be surrounded by all that love,” Betty had said before sending them off with a smile and a wave.
But they’re not married—not even dating, in fact—which means they’ll be embarrassed on live television when they can’t answer a single question.
“Couple number one!” The host points at them. “They met when he almost fell down a flight of stairs of their high school because he was trying not to knock the stack of books she was carrying to the ground. What a gentleman! Michelle and Peter Parker!”
Michelle flushes, her face red from embarrassment even as she partially hides behind her hand. She feels regretful, knowing how much true information the host has about them, and can’t even look at Peter.
The host introduces the rest of the couples, leaving Michelle to stew in her anxiety for the next minute. All she can focus on is the way Peter’s leg is bouncing up and down, hitting her knee.
“Now that introductions are out of the way, let’s start with question number one. Write your answer down on the card, husbands, and we’ll see if it matches your wives’. Describe your first reaction to them in one word.”
Michelle would be lying if she said she wasn’t trying to look at Peter’s card, only to preserve her own sanity and not guess something completely out of the blue. But his arm is blocking it, and her mind is drawing a blank.
“Yeah, I, uh...I have no idea,” she utters when the host asks her for an answer, face hot and mouth dry. This has never been something that’s crossed her mind, never been something she’d thought to ask Peter.
“Alright, let’s see, couple number one.”
Peter hesitates before flipping his card around, and Michelle can see the word ‘pretty’ written down in his messy scrawl. She swallows, looking down as he probably just wrote whatever came to the top of his head.
“It was six years ago, and I remember seeing you coming around the corner of Midtown. You had all those books in your hands. But I saw your face first. I don’t know. What else was a teenage boy supposed to think?” he says, not meeting her eyes, but the faint dusting of pink to his cheeks makes her wonder.
“I’m pretty, and therefore I have value?”
Peter’s gaze snaps up to hers as the audience begins whispering, and it feels like an overused laugh track would on a sitcom. Somewhat theatrical, completely unnecessary. “What? No, of course not—”
“Relax. I’m just messing with you.” She pauses before smiling slightly—just to play it up. They’re supposed to be married as of today. “You looked pretty, too.”
“Hah. Thanks,” he replies weakly, the host not even paying them attention anymore, having moved on to Liz and Harry already.
Michelle’s head feels heavy. She wishes she knew what the questions were beforehand so she could have planned this out. Instead, the world is going to see her as a terrible fiancée, and she has to be okay with that.
She only knows Peter as her best friend.
“Okay, next question! Wives, get your paper ready. Write down what the first movie you two saw together was.”
Michelle doesn’t have to think twice about the answer. It’s simple and straightforward. Their first movie night without their friends was in her apartment, him coming over with the chocolate and mandarins. He sat next to her all evening on the ratty couch, her feet in his lap, and he peeled a few oranges for them as they watched the Black Dahlia.
It wasn’t as good as the book, and she told him why. He couldn’t form any opinions on that, hadn’t read it yet, but he promised to afterward so they could compare. She still has the sticky notes he’d left in the copy she’d lent him.
“The Black Dahlia,” Peter mumbles when the host points at them, and Michelle lifts the paper to reveal an identical answer.
“And team Parker is on the scoreboard with five points!”
Michelle looks at Peter, sees that he’s breathing a sigh of something close to relief. His gaze floats to hers, and he smiles. Just a little, but it’s enough to make her smile back. Maybe they won’t publicly humiliate themselves too badly.
The next few questions aren’t exciting, more so because they both knew the answers easily. Which of you is worse at driving? Peter, who can’t seem to stay in his own lane. What is your spouse’s favorite color? She likes forest green. Who is the tidiest? Neither. They both have to clean up after each other all the time.
“If your spouse could have a superpower, what would it be?”
Michelle folds her lips inward and writes her answer down. She’s only talked about this once to Ned, him not so subtly asking her questions of what she thought about the Avengers during freshman year. She wasn’t even friends with Peter at the time. If they don’t get it right, at least they’ll be in third place.
“Um. I’m—I’m pretty sure you would want to turn invisible? Because you said once that you’d rob a bank,” Peter says with a small laugh, and she doesn’t know how he knew. Maybe Ned said something, but her heart thrums anyway. “Who even admits to that?”
“Well, it’s not like I’m not going to do it,” Michelle responds with a roll of her eyes, lifting her sheet to hide her face from the audience. “I don’t actually—”
“Have superpowers,” he finishes, eyes crinkling around the corners, and she bites her cheek to stop from smiling.
They’re still in second place, right behind Gwen and Felicia. She isn’t sure how they’re above two couples who are actually together, but Michelle won’t question it. She feels warm at the fact that they know each other like a married couple enough to be on the scoreboard.
“Last few questions!” The host grins a cheesy smile at the camera before glancing down at his card. “Between the two of you, who is more honest?”
Michelle is aware it feels like she got drenched in a proverbial bucket of ice. She wets her lips as his marker scrapes across the paper. The answer should be clear—she wants to say herself, knowing how Peter’s dishonesty is how they’d gotten here in the first place—but if he isn’t so straightforward, she’ll get it wrong.
And Michelle feels that he didn’t put her name down, seeing the way he’s staring at her now. Eyes wide, pleading just a little. He taps his fingers against the table, constantly kneading his lips, and turns the paper face-down.
“I have no idea,” she answers slowly, away from the mic, when the host asks. Her heart is beating in her ears as Peter just nods.
“I put neither of us. I just—I think we’re equally honest. And we equally lie to each other.” He exhales, folding the corner of the sheet absently. “Maybe not about the same things, but for the same reasons? Protecting each other. Protecting ourselves.”
Michelle schools her expression. She can’t look at the camera or the audience, but she doesn’t particularly want to look at him either. “I don’t know...what you think I am possibly lying to you about.”
Peter swallows. Glances down, frowns. “No. Of course you don’t.”
She hears a reduction of their points, but it feels so unimportant in the moment. As the host steps away to the next couple, Michelle is frustrated that she doesn’t know what Peter is talking about. Frustrated even more at the fact that he’s comparing his lying to hers.
Sitting back in her seat, Michelle pushes her fingers through her hair. She feels warm and slightly tense, especially now as Peter keeps giving her these looks. Like she’s missing something. She knows that she is, but he’s not coming out and saying what.
“It’s not the same,” Michelle suddenly tells him, covering the microphone on the table with one hand. This isn’t for the world to hear. “You lied to me about what you were doing each night. Constantly.”
“Em,” he responds under his breath, soft, and her eyes prickle. “I didn’t want you to worry. Because if you worried, then you would involve yourself, and—”
“And what, Peter?” She swallows the lump in her throat. The way he makes her emotional over every little thing isn’t funny. “I would get in the way?”
“No. No, not at all, but you would be at risk.” Peter blinks, and he seems sincere with his bottom lip caught between his teeth. “Even Ned is at risk, and he has a sideline job as my Guy in the Chair. I’m sorry. I just, I couldn’t…”
“What makes me so different from Ned?” Michelle asks, watching the way his fingers flex, brush against her hand that’s dangling by her side. She feels her face heat as she waits for an answer. “Peter?”
“I thought you knew.”
That’s not what Michelle wanted to hear. It feels like an excuse now. They have to finish this game that’s trivializing their relationship, so she shakes her head, looks away. Out of the corner of her eye, he is still staring at her. His hand twitches as if he wants to reach for hers, but he turns to face the front instead.
Betty and Ned must have known how he feels. Why else would they send them to a show meant for newlyweds when they’re so far from it.
“Last question! This might just determine our winner. Gwen and Felicia are in first with Abe and Cindy not far behind. Michelle and Peter are in third, and Liz and Harry are taking up the rear. Alrighty. When...did you know that your significant other was the one?”
Michelle closes her eyes, feeling them burn. She has to write her answer down on paper, make it solid and real. Peter has never been the one for her, not in the way the host is insinuating, but she knows he’s more than she’d like to admit.
When they’re friends, she does love him as a person. He’s the type to leave her voicemails when she’s feeling homesick and can’t bring herself to call. He will write a letter to her, even if he just hands it over with the stamp still on. He’ll put bandaids on her ankles when she walks far too long in the wrong shoes.
The way Peter hugs makes her feel warm, feel supported and cared for, one hand always cradling the back of her head as she leans on him. He’s her best friend, and he reminds her of that constantly with his actions but less so with his words when she looks at him, finds that he’s staring but not saying a thing.
But when they don’t act as friends, when they fight, Michelle knows it’s easier to hate him, just like anyone else, for what he’s done and what he’s said.
Leaving the only difference between Peter and anyone else being the way she finds she can still love him while hating him.
Michelle exhales softly, knowing she’s denied any and all feelings she’s had for quite some time, figures he’s probably aware of that as well. She can’t lie and make up an answer now, especially when she’s not sure what to put.
“Alright, couple number one. What do you think your wife put down, Mr. Parker?”
Peter swallows, rubbing his lips together. He looks like he’s at a loss, probably figuring she made it up or wrote down something cruel like ‘never’. “I...have no idea. I’m sorry.”
Michelle thinks that’s fair, knows they’ve lost, but she flips her paper over anyway. Just for him and no one else to see. It’s not blank, and maybe it should’ve been, but she thought this was as close to the truth as it could be.
His eyes widen, but it doesn’t look like he believes her. She can’t blame him.
“You want to get out of here?” Michelle asks, and he doesn’t answer with anything more than an imperceptible nod.
The host waves his hand. “Hey, now, wait a minute, the game isn’t over—”
“Please, we already know Gwen and Felicia are going to win,” Michelle says, standing up and ducking her way behind the heavy curtain. It’s cooler in the backstage area, but her face is still hot as he follows.
“You don’t really mean that,” Peter eventually speaks up, gesturing to her paper and what she’s written down. He smiles, a sad thing. “It’s fine, you know. We weren’t going to win, anyway.”
“No. I didn’t mean that.” Michelle lets the paper that says ‘here and now’ fall to the ground, and he blinks. His eyes are shining with hurt.
“Okay.”
“It’s not...I didn’t just realize now. We’ve been friends for six years.” She hesitates, watching how his eyes flit across her face. “And maybe I’ve known for all six. Maybe five or four or...I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. But it’s not a new or sudden thing.”
“It’s been a long time, MJ. For me. And I thought maybe you might’ve...” Peter trails off after his voice cracks. He inhales sharply, apologizes, but she doesn’t know what for. “But you know, it’s okay if you don’t.”
“You called me a liar,” Michelle reminds him, seeing the way he winces. He opens his mouth, but she doesn’t let him apologize again. “I mean, you were right. I lied to myself and to you and I’m sorry it’s taken this long to say it.”
“I just...I really like you,” he admits with a small laugh, sheepish and red. She finds herself smiling, cheeks warm, and it feels like they’re in high school all over again but they’re finally doing it right this time.
“I really like you, too.”
Peter’s expression softens, and when he takes a step forward, Michelle thinks he’s going to kiss her. She would’ve been prepared but is less so when he simply wraps her in his arms, rests his chin on her shoulder, and hugs her. It’s familiar, the way she leans on him all the same.
“I’m sorry that we fought and everything that I said...I didn’t mean it, obviously. It was stupid,” he murmurs against her skin, and she closes her eyes.
“I agree, it was stupid. Seeing as I’ve stopped lying to you, I’m expecting no more bullshitting me when you’re going on patrols.” She pulls back slightly to look at him. “Unless you feel like being pawned into playing the Newlywed Game with someone else.”
Peter merely smiles, and she can hear applause coming from behind the curtain, but it’s drowned out when he leans in, kisses her gently. It’s barely there, brief and light, fingers grazing her cheek.
“There’s no one else I’d rather play with.”