Chapter Text
There is something about Peter Parker that MJ can’t quite put her finger on and it has been bothering her for days now.
It’s not just the fidgeting and the stuttering when ordering a simple coffee. Peter Pan Coffee is relatively close to a couple of schools, so a shy stuttering guy coming in alone is not as rare as MJ would like it to be. If anything, those things make Peter Parker cute. Somehow, he stands out among the other high school and college students that trickle into the small building every day.
Not that she would admit to finding him cute as it is. If Ned asks, she will deny it to hell and back and if Flash asks… well, his MIT picture will have him missing a tooth, that’s for sure.
It’s just…there’s something off about him. And not in a bad way, just … a way.
It feels like an itch she cannot quite reach. She has little time as it is to think about anything that isn’t college, finishing her high school work, and her job at the café, but Peter Parker has been squiggling his way into every little crack in her schedule.
He doesn’t show up all that often compared to the other café regulars, maybe three times a week at most. When he does, however, Michelle can’t seem to keep her eyes off him and it’s getting embarrassing. She’s getting embarrassed for herself. She isn’t the type of girl to get crushes this easily. Honestly, MJ doesn’t think she’s had a crush on anyone since middle school, and even then, that was Flash of all people; she shudders at the mere thought.
Of course she would find herself crushing on a random white boy in the middle of her senior year.
Whatever, MJ tells herself, this isn’t even a proper crush. She is just curious about him. That’s all.
Reading people is a skill she has honed for years and years, but Peter Parker is quite unreadable for someone whose face seems to display every emotion that passes through his heart. A twitch of an eyebrow can speak volumes, but it almost feels like it’s all written in a whole new language when it comes to him. It’s quite unsettling and, although Sasha has told her she should be worried about him only showing up during her shifts, MJ doesn’t think he is doing it intentionally, nor that he means any harm.
If anything, he just seems...lonely.
The kind of lonely that weights you down to your bones.
Again, he doesn’t come to the café all that often for someone she would consider a regular. When he does, however, he spends upwards of two hours sitting at a table in the corner. Usually, he has a laptop with him, and his fingers type away at the speed of light as he works through an extremely thick GED book.
Ned thinks the guy blipped and is trying to rebuild his life. MJ kind of thought the same at first the same if she’s being completely honest. But there’s something else about him she can’t quite discern.
“Maybe you’re not that good at reading people you don’t see every day at school,” Ned suggests one day after she slides him a donut, and her eyes roll so far back MJ thinks she might have seen her brain in there. “He looks like he's our age, but he’s obviously not a Midtown student, so that’s why you’re struggling.” Ned shrugs when she sends him a glare. “I'm just saying, you can never be too sure…”
MJ sighs and leans onto the counter dividing them. The café is empty enough – read: entirely empty – that the owner won’t complain about her slacking. “First, I will ignore the fact you are doubting my superpower. I spend, like, twenty hours a week in this place and I know people’s coffee orders the moment they walk through that door. It’s a talent.” Ned raises his eyebrows but says nothing – a miracle, if you were to ask her – and she continues, holding up two fingers. “Second, since that’s definitely not it, I just feel like, I don’t know, there’s something about him I can’t grasp... I feel like I’ve seen him before.” She adds after a half-second.
Ned shrugs again. “Maybe he went to Midtown and dropped out after the blip? I don’t remember him, but we could have shared a class or two.”
That is also definitely not it. Michelle knows she would remember a name like Peter Parker. It’s not everyday you get an alliteration like that. It’s too fun of a name for her to forget. Granted, it could be, like, an alias he made up. Because let’s be honest here, who the fuck introduces themselves with their full name to a coffee shop clerk?
“He doesn’t seem at all familiar to you?”
Ned actually pauses to think for a moment, staring at his donut in contemplation. Then, he shrugs. “I don’t pay as much attention as you do since… you know... I don’t have a crush on him—”
“I don't have a crush on him!”
“—but I guess? I feel like I might have seen him before, but maybe he just has one of those faces you feel you would see anywhere. You know?”
MJ bites her lips in. Is that all there is to it?
No, it can’t be. Her gut keeps telling her there’s something more to Peter Parker.
“Maybe,” she agrees after a few seconds, if only because she is not quite in the mood to try to convince Ned she is too observant to not remember someone like Peter Parker. Also, he would just go on a tireless rant about how it’s obvious she just doesn’t want to admit she’s crushing on Basic White Boy #3. “Or,” she adds with a smirk, “maybe he’s, like, one of your heroes. What if he’s Spider-Man?”
The bell by the front door rings, but Michelle just raises her voice to tell the oncoming customer to wait a second because the face Ned makes at that is priceless. “Dude,” he breathes out, giddy. “That would be so freaking awesome. Can you imagine? Like, finding out your newest crush is Spider-Man, how cool would that be?”
“He’s not my— you know what? Whatever.” Michelle ends with a stern glare but can’t contain the laugh that bubbles through in the last word. She turns back to the door and is surprised to see none other than Peter Parker himself, hand on top of the door handle, looking ready to leave before she can say anything. “Peter Parker!” She enunciates, popping the P’s because it’s fun, and it seems to startle the life out of the man in question. He turns around with widened eyes, like a deer caught in the headlights. Weird, MJ thinks, but cute. “What can I get for you today?”
“Ah—I—“ Peter stutters, turning back around to face her fully. His shoulders are tensed up, like he’s bracing himself for a punch to the face. “I—”
She raises an eyebrow at him, and it makes him close his mouth, shakes his head, and looks up with a tentative smile, now.
“I’d like a medium coffee, please.”
“Coming right up.”
MJ expects the guy to leave. He did seem to be in a rush as he walked in, but, instead, Peter Parker sets his backpack onto the floor by the table nearest the window and sets to do what he usually does. Once she realizes how much of a creep she looks like, staring openly at this stranger like this, MJ is startled back into reality. Ned gives her an unimpressed look when she makes her way back to the little island counter where he's sat at.
“So,” he starts, in a whisper. “Not a crush?”
“Shut up, Ned.”
The way Peter’s shoulders tense up at Ned’s words are probably nothing more than a product of MJ’s imagination, right?
MJ thinks she might be going insane. Either that or her neighborhood is way more dangerous than usual, which she wouldn’t be exactly surprised by, but she hasn’t heard any commotion at all in the past two weeks.
Her desk faces the window to the street and, since the beginning of December, Michelle keeps seeing glimpses of blue and red swinging by the window out of the corner of her eye. The first couple of times she chalked it up to her overactive imagination after the events at the Statue of Liberty, but by the third, she can’t believe it is a coincidence anymore. It has to be Spider-Man, right? He’s been patrolling near her house more often.
It doesn’t bother her. Quite the contrary. She may not be a Spidey fangirl like Ned, but the guy has saved her life, like, three times at this point. He deserves a degree of admiration, that’s for goddamn sure.
Ned brings up the extra Spider-Man activity one day before Winter break, all excited.
“Dude’s gotta be working overtime at this point,” he says with a grin when he meets her by her locker. “Do you think he’s, like, trying to make up for the blip? I heard rumors that he was blipped, too.”
MJ mutters, “Maybe? He wasn’t this active right after we all came back, though.”
“I mean, he probably had to get his shit together.” Ned leans against the locker next to Michelle’s. “He started really showing up again in the Spring and that’s when everyone started talking about him leading the Avengers after Tony Stark’s death. Dude exists outside the hero bubble.”
She hums. She can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to come back from the dead only to deal with two sides of your life having been put on pause for five years. Getting back to her own was difficult enough when neither of her parents blipped.
The divorce was a fun tidbit to learn.
Ned’s family didn’t blip either, so she’s happy to not have been alone through all of that.
She shakes her head. “I hope he’s not, like, getting hurt just to overcompensate. New York has new heroes, now. Daredevil, Ms. Marvel, and all that...”
Ned frowns. “What is this? Miss Michelle Jones getting worried about our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?”
“Call me Michelle Jones again and you lose your teeth.”
Ned just sends her a grin and claps her on the back. “Noted.”
That night, MJ has a weird dream.
She’s in the London Bridge after Mysterio’s drone attack, limping back from the hideout Happy Hogan took them to. She’s desperate to find something…no, someone. Limping through overturned cars and destroyed drone bits, MJ finally finds who she’s looking for, in the distance: a red and black clad figure, looking even worse for wear than she feels. Once the figure notices her presence, though, nothing seems to matter, because they start running towards her.
Once he is close enough to be more than a colorful blur among the fine dust produced by the battle, MJ can make out the symbol on his chest.
That’s Spider-Man.
Spider-Man is running towards her.
And she’s running towards him.
They meet with a tight embrace, and, through the tight suit, MJ feels the superhero’s entire form shaking in exhaustion, feels his lungs taking in large gulps of air, much in the same way her own lungs are struggling to take air in. She feels like she ran all the way to the bridge. She probably did.
When Spider-Man pulls away from the hug, she can finally make out the fact Spider-Man is not wearing his mask, and his eyes, a sweet and deep brown, are filled with longing and worry.
MJ wakes up with a gasp, bolting up on her bed. Her broken dahlia necklace is clutched tightly in her left hand.
(In the back of her mind, Michelle realizes she cannot recall who it was that gifted it to her.)
Peter shows up at the donut shop the following afternoon during the midday rush. MJ is too distracted telling an old lady that no, they are not Starbucks, so they don’t sell those disgustingly sweet cake pops, but they do sell some amazing donuts, only to have the old lady ask for the manager three times before giving up. Peter has a sheepish smile on his face when he reaches the counter and MJ finally takes notice of him.
His cheeks and nose are cherry red from the cold wind blowing outside and his lips dry for likely the same reason. He has a scarf covering his neck all the way up to his chin, but no beanie on, so his curly brown hair is sticking out in every possible direction, making it look like he just flew rather than walked all the way to the shop.
He looks so adorable it makes MJ sick.
“Peter Parker!” She greets with a small smile of her own and it makes the boy huff a laugh.
“Hey, M—uh….”
She realizes, quite belatedly considering he’s been attending the shop for over a month now, that she has never told him her name and that her manager is too cheap to get new nametags since hers and Sasha’s got lost at the cleaners a few weeks ago.
“Michelle. That’s—my name’s Michelle,” she rushes to get out, only to beat herself over the head mentally. Smooth.
Something lights up on Peter’s face, and she can’t really discern the emotion; it looks like a mix of hope and sadness. His smile wobbles for a split second before returning to its original state.
“Hey, Michelle…”
There is a fluttering in her chest at the sound of Peter saying her name. It doesn’t feel quite all the way right, but it still makes her feel something. She’s not about to ask this complete stranger to call her MJ instead – it’s her own dumb rule, to only let friends call her that, so she could, technically, overrule it, but MJ doesn’t want this complete stranger to know how smitten she is for him just yet.
So she just says, “Hey Peter Parker, what can I get you?”
“Medium black coffee, please.”
MJ narrows her eyes. Peter hadn’t struck her as the type to drink black coffee from the very first time he came into the shop, she had just never mentioned anything. But something compels her to say, today, “You don’t strike me as the serial killer type.”
Peter frowns and looks around the shop a little, as if checking if anyone else heard what she said out of worry, before he asks in a shaky voice, “What?”
She runs with it. It’s not the first time MJ has dumped random information onto the first person who will listen, “I read somewhere that black coffee is popular among serial killers. I don’t really believe it because I drink it and I haven’t killed anyone but, you know…” she trails off with a shrug, “it’s a fun fact, I guess.”
Stupid, stupid Michelle Jones-Watson, her brain berates at her. There she goes again ruining a nice moment with random macabre stuff she’s read and—
Wait.
Again?
She finds herself unable to dwell on the thought for too long when Peter just smiles at her, softly now. “Yeah. That is a fun fact.” His eyes drift downward to her neck, where the dahlia necklace sits, and then up at the menu displayed over the counter space. “Then, I’ll have a—hm… I’ll have a medium caramel macchiato?”
MJ raises a single eyebrow. “You’re asking me?”
“Ah,” Peter’s cheeks grow a darker shade of red. Then, he repeats with more conviction, “I’ll—I’ll have a medium caramel macchiato and a strawberry donut.”
She smiles. “Coming right up, Peter Parker.”
Peter’s eyes keep drifting toward MJ’s necklace as he pays for his things, and she just wants him to ask whatever is on his mind at once, because it is obvious that he is thinking about something. She may be overthinking it a little, yeah, but… “You have a great day, Peter Parker.”
This draws his attention away from the piece of jewelry and back to her face. MJ has to try and hide how affected she feels under his gaze. Stupid fucking crush. She will wrangle her own heart with her bare hands if this keeps ha— “Why do you keep saying my full name?”
The question startles her out of her thoughts. “Huh?”
Peter’s cheeks are still red, but he repeats, with a laugh, “Why do you keep saying my full name?”
She pauses for a second, willing her own cheeks not to grow pink — if the warmth slowly spreading from the tips of her ears are any indication, she is well on her way to complete failure — before shrugging. “It’s fun to say. Alliteration,” she adds, as if that makes her sound any less insane, but Peter doesn’t make fun of her or say anything about how weird it is or asks her to stop. He just hangs his head down and honest-to-god giggles a little into his scarf.
“Yeah, I guess those are not that common. I don’t mind it,” he rushes to add, as if sensing her hesitation, “I was just curious because—” he pauses and presses his lips tightly together, obviously holding back whatever he was about to add as an explanation. He shakes his head, and the sweet smile is plastered back on as if nothing had happened. He takes his coffee and gestures awkwardly to his usual table. “I’ll just—go sit.”
“Why don’t you sit at the counter?” MJ blurts out. Again with this shit, she thinks to herself. She has got to have left her brain to mouth filter at home this morning, Jesus fucking Christ…. “You don’t have to! Just—no one else is sitting here today, so I just thought…” She shakes her head. “Nevermind. You probably just want some peace and quiet.”
Peter looks genuinely shocked at the suggestion, and MJ thinks this is it, I’ve scared him away and I’ll never see his cute face again because he’ll start avoiding this place like the fucking plague and— “Yeah, that… That sounds good, actually,” Peter says, a little breathless, and it catches her by complete surprise. “I’ll just… let me move my backpack over there.”
The smile that spreads over MJ’s face is completely involuntary, she swears. And if she’s a little more distracted than usual for the two hours that ensure…well, she’s just glad her manager is not in for today.