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Michelle bites back a laugh, watching as Peter laces up his ice skates with rapt attention.
“We don’t have to do this,” she says, Peter’s eyebrows furrowed together as he tightens the laces so hard that she’s surprised they don’t break– a passing thought to question how often that was a problem to him before he got used to his powers as he shakes his head.
“No, no . We’re doing this,” he says, sounding just as determined as the expression on his face is. “I can do this.”
“Okay tiger,” Michelle says with a laugh, Peter glancing up at her as she grins. “Are you convincing me or yourself?”
Peter makes a face, sighing as he wipes his hands across the front of his jeans.
“Both? Maybe?” He snorts, sighing again. “I really don’t want a repeat of last time.”
Michelle works hard not to laugh at that, mainly because the mental image of what Peter had looked like the last time was enough to make the corner of her lips upturn– Peter giving her an imploring look.
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not gonna laugh.”
“You look like you want to laugh,” Peter says, holding her gaze for a beat before he smirks. “It was pretty funny.”
“It was ,” Michelle says, glad that he can laugh about it and he’s not actually embarrassed, “but you know you don’t have to like, prove anything to me right?”
Peter frowns at that, a nervous little tap of his fingers that Michelle immediately notices as he says, “I mean, not to you maybe but–”
He cuts himself off, shifting his gaze away from her as Michelle studies him.
It’d been Ned’s idea to wear the matching spidey scarves, a White Elephant gift from the AcaDec exchange that had hilariously worked out in their favor since Flash had MJ and Ned had Peter.
Neither had coordinated on the present, nor had they given them the gifts for any other purpose than an inside joke– Flash’s being the more embarrassing of the two since he’d caught her watching a video of Spider-Man in the cafeteria, Ned having already left to “go to the nurse” while Peter went off to fight some Doom bots or whatever they were on the Upper West Side.
Flash had been elated and he’d cheerfully teased her about it ever since, arguing that Michelle’s newfound love for Spidey was surely going to cause some jealousy between her and Peter.
“You know they’re the same person now, dumbass,” she’d argued.
“Like that matters! You like the mask, not the man!” Flash had argued right back, Michelle rolling her eyes and ignoring it– just as she ignored the pictures that people took of them then.
Just like she was ignoring the people staring at the two of them now.
She was starting to do that a lot more these days anyway.
He looks good in the new jacket May bought him and the scarf, wondering for a half-beat if he wasn’t somehow colder since her google searches told her that spiders couldn’t thermoregulate.
Unless that was stupid and Peter wasn’t that much of a spider.
She’d have to ask him about that later.
“I’m… you know ,” Peter says meaningfully, Michelle raising an eyebrow as he explains. “I should be able to, I don’t know.”
“Not fall flat on your ass?” She asks with a teasing smirk, Peter making a face before he goes to stand– a little too fast as he wobbles even on steady, solid, not-ice kind of ground.
“It’d be nice, you know,” he says, a little under his breath– Michelle seeing the camera out of the corner of her eye. “Especially since someone’s gonna just put this on YouTube later if I do.”
Michelle bites back a laugh as she immediately brings a hand forward, Peter taking it instinctively– only for his cheeks to flush when he does.
“You don’t have to be good at everything, Parker,” she says, Peter tightening his grip in her hand as he takes a careful step forward to the ice, resembling more like a baby deer learning how to walk for the first time than the capable, graceful superhero that he usually is.
Well, almost graceful.
He has too many fail compilation videos for anyone to really say any differently.
Michelle is blunt but she is not unkind, not to people she really cares about– seeing that he doesn’t need her snark right now as she continues, “You’re just gonna have to get used to the idea of me being better than you at something.”
“Oh, I don’t mind that,” Peter says earnestly, as if the thought had never occurred to him in the first place.
“Then?”
“I don’t know,” he says with a shrug as they carefully– slowly – move forward. “I just want to keep up with you, you know? This is supposed to be fun.”
“I’m having fun,” Michelle says, maybe a bit too quickly to be believable– though not for the reason that Peter seems to be thinking as he frowns– nodding to the crowd now very obviously and shamelessly video taping them.
“Oh yeah, totally,” he deadpans, Michelle rolling her eyes as she squeezes his hand.
“I’m having fun cause I’m, you know. With you,” she says, feeling a warmth in her chest and the same funny little feeling in her stomach from the way Peter smiles at her with that.
She likes it, that feeling– likes even more the way Peter’s hand is intertwined with hers. Likes even more at the way that he looks at her, eyes dropping down to her lips before looking back up to meet her gaze– seeing his cheeks turn an even ruddier shade of pink.
There wasn’t a lot of opportunity for the two of them to have this kind of fun, that one solid week of the two of them being official being completely thrown out of the window after Mysterio’s video was released.
Everything felt like it was turned upside down, the nerves of knowing that she’s being watched when she was the one who liked to be on the opposite end of this and the letter from MIT that she knows is still coming somewhere between Boston and her mailbox.
She wouldn’t have chosen ice skating at the park to be an outing for just the two of them, but seeing him smile at her like that made her forgive the not quite seasonally appropriate date.
“I have fun with you too,” he says softly, Michelle forcing herself to keep eye-contact with him– time feeling as if it came to a stop like something out of a cheesy holiday movie.
The moment’s broken with the whines of a loud child, the scrape of metal against the ice and the two of them startling in place as a very exhausted looking parent and said loud child move closer to them.
“I wanted the ELEPHANT,” the child nearly screams, Peter moving to stand by Michelle as the duo walks past them– Michelle holding back another laugh at how utterly annoyed the parent looks as they push their child on an animal shaped skating aid.
A lightbulb goes off just as the two make their way onto the ice, a grin breaking out across her face as she glances at Peter– seeing him connect the dots just as easily as she did as he gives her a look.
“ MJ …”
“I have an idea,” she says with a grin, pulling him forward.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Are you ?” Michelle asks, hands across the tail of the seal that they’d rented. He was already worried about this getting out on the internet and the flash of cell phones tell her that getting this almost certainly confirms that Jameson will have some kind of earful to give later.
“I don’t know, MJ,” Peter says seriously, Michelle pausing for a moment until she sees the stupid grin on his face. “Seals are actually really dangerous.”
“Think you’re confusing seals with dolphins ,” Michelle says with a laugh, pushing him forward on the ice as she starts to skate– not missing the smirks and giggles from a few of the kids who were waiting behind them.
“There’s a lot of animals that look nice but are actually terrible. Seals, dolphins–”
“Are you really going to focus on that now ?” She asks as she skates, Peter being surprisingly light as she pushes the tail of the seal– Peter gripping the front of it tightly as she laughs. “We’re supposed to be having fun.”
“I am having fun,” Peter says, glancing behind him– his smile so bright and his eyes transfixed on hers, “I’m with you.”
Michelle’s cheeks hurt from smiling so hard, pushing him forward again as she gracefully skates across the ice and says, “Whatever, nerd.”
Peter just laughs, Michelle joining him as they glide forward– holiday music playing in the background and a warm blossoming in her chest from knowing that Peter likes being with her just as much as she likes being with him.
It may not be perfect.
But it’s them.
Together.
Michelle can learn to live with that.
(Image description: Digital art of Peter and MJ ice skating. Peter is sitting on a bright blue plastic skating aid shaped like a seal, wearing black ice skates, blue jeans, a dark green jacket, a red scarf with Spider-Man faces, and a black beanie, grinning toothily. MJ is skating behind, pushing the seal. She is wearing white ice skates, dark blue skinny jeans, a purple coat, a matching Spidey scarf, and a tan coloured hat with a fluffy white tassel. She is smiling warmly. End description.)