Chapter Text
“Psss...Michelle...hey.”
She is doing her best to ignore the incessant, annoying noise coming from her right, the voice of her classmate, instead focusing her eyes on the book laying on her lap that she carefully picked this morning before leaving for school and pretending to be reading attentively. But he is clearly not catching the drift.
“Michelle…” he keeps trying “MJ!”
“Don’t. Don’t call me MJ, Parker,” she says finally giving in. “Only my friends call me that and you are not” she punctuates, throwing a dead glare his way and then resuming her lecture.
“Oh, come on. I wanna give you a compliment,” he says pouting. But his dumb “compliments” are what put them in this situation in the first place.
She’s not looking at him but there’s no need to, she knows him well enough.
They’ve been classmates for four years now, their schedules always aligning perfectly given the similarities in their knowledge and interests. She never had a problem with him until sophomore year when he had a sudden growth spurt.
It wasn’t unexpected. They were at the age of it, but it was fast and obvious. One day Peter Parker was this scrawny sci-fi lover who wore thick framed glasses and science pun t-shirts and struggled with running a meter without fainting or going into an asthma attack. And the next week, after an awful flu, he comes back to school a head taller with thick shoulders and bulging biceps that strain on the shirts that are no longer funny or dorky but kind of hot and he decides to join the football team. And who used to be a humble and quiet regular nerd becomes a loud, obnoxious, arrogant jock. (Ned does not agree with her but he is too kind.)
It’s not that he is bad, he doesn’t bully anyone, he keeps on being friends with Ned even when they run on completely different stratospheres. And he’s still keeping up with his grades quite well, managing to balance his occupied agenda of parties and football matches with the day to day academy issues.
She knows for a fact that he would be the valedictorian if it wasn’t for her, he is smart like that, she’s been keeping tracks on him since day one (not because she is obsessed, she just needs to know her competition).
What bothers Michelle the most, is that he’s made his life goal to bother her.
Senior year was supposed to be good for Michelle as she had assured her college acceptance (Harvard is thrilled to welcome her next year, their words not hers). As a captain she led the Academic Decathlon team to their fourth consecutive winning, has a nice group of friends with whom she can hang out, and attended many more parties that the previous years (ok, previous years number was zero, but still.)
But Peter doesn’t let her enjoy herself like she wants to. He seems to be everywhere she goes at any time, and the fact that they share Ned’s friendship causes her to need to tolerate him on their movie nights, even when he’s supposed to be out and partying with his other jock friends. He invades her personal space with his stupid muscles and perfect curls and she can’t stand him.
So today, when he peeked over her shoulder to see what she was doodling in one of her sketchbooks during Mrs. Thompson’s class, she just couldn't take it anymore. It was definitely not her intention -she just wanted to tell him to fuck off- but when Michelle lifted up her head quickly to insult him, he was much closer than she thought and the back of her head ended up colliding with his mouth, causing an awful cut and some cursing on his part. She didn’t regret it.
Ok, she regretted a little when a "Fuck" and “Well, you deserved it for being an asshole” put them both in detention.
It’s a classic in a school of overachievers that the detention room is empty and that Coach Wilson uses that time to listen to Celine Dion or to sleep or both, like today.
So now Peter is sitting too close to her (clearly he has not learned his lesson) with a pouty mouth caused by her rejection of his “complimenting” and a cut lip (shouldn’t it be more wounded? how does he even heal so fast?)
“Michelle” he tries again and she wonders how many more detention hours would cost her if she just cuts his tongue off. “Mi…”
“What?!” she barks and their chaperone snores loudly “What the hell do you want Parker?”
“You look pretty,” he answers with a winning grin and an arrogant wink.
Michelle rolls her eyes annoyed, not at his words but at the effect it has on her. The way her toes curl inside her shoes and how her heart skips a beat. She’s sure that if she had the complexion for it, she’ll be red as a tomato right now.
This is another problem Michelle has with his constant presence, the compliments and subtle hand or waist touches he does on her because she wants to hate him badly, but her treacherous body has other ideas, speeding up her heartbeat and increasing her temperature, making her brain fuzzy.
“Might work on anyone else, but not with me, dude,” MJ says proudly. Like a liar.
She tries to go back once more to reading but he covers the page with his hand.
She only spares one moment to look at it, his short nails and long fingers, the bony knuckles and the popping tendons, his hands are big and soft looking. She’s a little amazed with the knowledge that the same hands that trinker with computers with delicacy and precision, also are strong enough to throw a ball across the field.
“Anyone else? What does that even mean?” Peter interrogates confusion written all over his frowned forehead.
“You know you have a reputation,” she says.
It’s true, not that she really cares. She’s not into gossip but Betty aches for them. She says it’s part of being a good journalist, being aware of the current events, so she knows that since Liz Allan moved for college a year ago, Peter has been doing nothing more than looking for a new object of affection, to call it someway, and a lot of people became aware of certain… talents that he poses.
He scoffs a laugh and something like hurt passes behind his eyes but he covers it up quickly, dropping his eyes down to his lap and avoiding her gaze. When he looks up again a mischievous gleam shines in his eyes.
“Never heard of a reputation. Please, enlighten me.”
He’s playing with her, she knows it and even though she should just tell him to shut up, she replies.
“You are a flirt.”
“Yeah, ok. What else?”
“You are not defending yourself?” she asks curiously, thinking he’d put more of a fight into it.
“I know I flirt, I wanna know what else the bad tongues say.”
She laughs at his interesting use of words.
“You have a way with your mouth,” she says, trying (but most likely failing) to be casual about it.
“A way with my mouth? Should I join the debate club?” Peter says faking a confused look and getting closer, leaning his arm on the back of her chair.
“Oh, shut up.”
Michelle looks at her sleeping teacher, trying to avoid Peter’s gaze and doing her best to ignore the way his closeness seems to warm her up.
“Tell me,” he says and licks his lips.
“You are a good kisser.”
“You don’t know that.”
“That’s what they say.”
“But you don’t know that,” he shrugs and moves one of the curls that freed itself from her ponytail behind her ear and whispers there. “Do you wanna know, Michelle?”
She can’t answer because well, yes she wants to, but also they are in detention so they shouldn’t.
“He’s asleep,” he continues, reading her mind. “Don’t you wanna know if the rumors are right? Aren’t you a truth seeker, Michelle?”
And she should stop him, she really must push his face away from hers and move to a different chair on a far corner of the class room and focus on ending her book that was (until he started putting ideas in her mind), a pretty distraction. But instead she leans a little on him, her shoulder pressing against his firm chest and closes her eyes.
He seems to take the bait because next thing she knows, he is burying the fingers of the hand lying on the chair behind her on the space between her shoulders and dropping a scatter of small kisses along her jaw.
“Can I keep going, Michelle?”
She doesn’t waste her words on an answer, not really sure if she lost the ability to talk now, and presses a curious peck into his mouth. Michelle is really a truth seeker and hates rumors… and she is also a seventeen year old with crazy hormones who is insanely attracted to Peter Parker—even if he is an arrogant ass.
Peter wastes no time and pulls her back in, tangling his hand on her curls. He tilts his head in the right angle but bumps her nose in a tender gesture on the way, and then traps her bottom lip between his. His lip feels soft but demanding and she gets lost on the feeling.
The kiss is sweet and it surprises Michelle in a good way, her previous experiences -the one time she engaged in seven minutes in heaven at one of Flash’s parties- were… bad. The guy pushed his tongue into her mouth with no warning and just left it there in her mouth while his lips pressed with too much force into hers. Terrible experience. 10/10 would not recommend it.
This instead, well, when Peter’s tongue brushes softly on her trapped bottom lip, almost like asking for permission. She opens her mouth with contentment and her hands move willingly—one to his elbow while the other mirrors his and grabs a fist of his soft brown curls.
Michelle can hear her heart beating in her ears and nothing else. It’s like every outside noise has been blocked and her only sense still functioning is touch. All she feels is Peter. Peter. Peter. Peter, everywhere sending tingles from the back of her neck to her toes - making her grateful for being seated because otherwise her knees would have given out by now- nibbling her lips, probably making them red and swollen, snaking a hand underneath her shirt to touch directly at her skin and pulling her to his lap.
The moment she stands to move from the hard school chair to Peter’s muscular but much more appealing thighs, the forgotten book lying on her lap drops with a strenuous sound that echoes on the empty room.
It takes them out of their haze and wakes up their unassuming teacher. Coach Wilson’s gaze jumps between Peter and her - she hopes that the impromptu make out session that just happened isn’t too obvious to his eyes- and finally settles on the clock behind them.
“Ok, detention is over. Get out of here.”
Michelle is thankful for their teacher's uninterest and lets out a breath she didn’t notice was holding.
“So… am I at the height of the rumors?” Peter asks low, even if Mr. Wilson is back to Celine Dion already.
“You did ok,” she huffs with fake indignation.
“Oh, I can do so much better than ok, Michelle,” Peter fights back.
He is clearly offering a second chance by the way his hand moves under the desks to grab her knee.
Looking at him with his tousled hair, faint blushed cheeks and dark red lips (and knowing she must look as disheveled as he is), Michelle has zero doubt that, for once, rumors are true and she has a lot of catching up to do.