Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Michelle Jones is a people person.

More specifically, she loves to people watch. It’s one of her favorite pastimes. That, and drawing in her sketchbook. Watching people and drawing are two of the things in life that keep her going. Sitting on a park bench sketching people in crisis is something she could, and does, do on a weekly basis, and sometimes she finds herself making up backstories for the people she sees. Sometimes, she types out lists in her Notes app about people she encounters more than once– not that she’s obsessed with people, or anything. She’s just observant. 

She’s also a pretty big sports fan. She supposes the people watching plays into that a little, because she can watch just about any team play and get invested in the outcome. The Mets are her favorite, of course, and that’s only partially due to the fact that watching a Mets game in her living room is about the only time she really gets to spend time with her grandfather. Sometimes, she likes to sit on the couch opposite of her grandfather’s recliner and pretend they’re bonding over baseball. Often, she realizes that that’s kind of a sad reality, but she tries not to think about the sadness too much. 

But above all else, Michelle loves to create. She’s a creator. She’s a drawer, first, but she also loves to paint, and sometimes she likes to sculpt, and most recently, she’s gotten into knitting. Sure, kids at school make fun of her under their breath when they pass by for “being an old lady” when she knits during lunch, and her grandfather is endlessly exasperated by the fact that she spends all of her money on yarn, but she finds the act of knitting to be a very calming, grounding experience.   

She’s working on her third ever scarf one early autumn evening. It’s almost finished, even though it’s way too long already, and she thinks it might make a good Christmas gift for someone. If she had any friends, that is. Maybe her cousin’s kid would like it, the one that lives upstate, but he’s nine and she’s not sure if nine-year-olds even wear scarves or not. 

It’s raining hard outside tonight. The rain is one of her favorite sounds. She’s a fan of the way it can drown out the noise of the busy city streets below, or the sounds of her neighbors fighting downstairs, or her own thoughts. Michelle is about three rows from finishing her scarf when there’s a crash and a thump right outside of her window, startlingly loud over the sound of the rain. She jumps to her feet, her yarn and nearly-finished scarf falling to the ground while her fist tightens around one of her knitting needles as her fight instinct kicks in. She peeks out her window, heart pounding, and through the rain she can make out something in a heap out on the fire escape– something that looks suspiciously like a person. There’s a moment where she thinks about grabbing her phone, but that would mean taking her eyes off the maybe-person that’s outside of her window, so instead she grips the knitting needle tighter in her hand and uses her other hand to unlatch her window, sliding it up as quickly as the stiff track allows. 

The heap, which is definitely a person, starts to stand up, and Michelle gasps when she sees what they’re wearing. It’s familiar, and she’s seen it on the news a hundred times, but the red and blue suit is stunningly detailed up close.  

“Spider-Man?!” 

Spider-Man jumps at her words, spinning around with both hands in the air in front of his face, like he’s shielding himself. A second later, he groans and hunches over, wrapping one arm tightly around his midsection. Michelle can see the rain slide down his suit in big, fat droplets and briefly wonders if it’s waterproof. 

“Who are y-you?” Spider-Man asks. The white eyes of his mask go wide. He sounds slightly disoriented. He also sounds cold, his words coming out weakly from between chattering teeth, and Michelle can see that he’s shaking all over. 

“You’re the one on my fire escape,” Michelle replies, feeling somewhat disoriented herself. 

“ Oh ,” Spider-Man says. He peers at her as if he’s just really seeing her. “H-hi!” The eyes of his suit widen slightly more, then narrow. “Ma’am,” he adds in a somewhat lower voice. 

Michelle smirks. “ Ma’am ? How old do you think I am?”

“Uhh...sorry…miss?” 

He’s dropped the lower voice already, and Michelle is surprised at how young he sounds. She loosens her grip around her knitting needle a little, then looks down at it, nearly laughing at herself for how absurd the situation is and how little a knitting needle would actually do against a regular intruder, let alone Spider-Man. She looks back up at Spider-Man, watching him shiver relentlessly for a moment, and wonders how dumb it would be to invite him inside.    

“So…Spider-Man can get cold just like the rest of us, huh?” 

“I’m not c-cold,” he replies, and he’s immediately contradicted when a violent shiver runs down his spine, followed by a gasp and then three sneezes, one right after the other, masked-face tucked quickly into the crook of his elbow.  

“Um…bless you?” 

Spider-Man blinks at her. He shakes his head a little, shivers hard again, and then groans. “Thanks.” 

“Sounds like Spider-Man can get sick just like the rest of us, too,” Michelle finds herself saying. She’s not usually this much of a talker. “I’m starting to think you’re not the real Spider-Man.” 

As soon as the thought that he’s not the real Spider-Man crosses her mind, Michelle takes an instinctive step back away from the window. It’s still raining pretty hard, and her floor is all wet now, along with her windowsill and curtains. What if some strange man climbed up to her fire escape dressed up as a superhero and she’s about to be murdered?  

“I am!” Spider-Man insists. “I’m the real Spider-Man, I promise.” He straightens up and takes a step backward. “Thanks for letting me crash for a sec! I’ll get out of your hair now.” He starts to turn away, stretching one arm out toward the street, and Michelle takes a tentative step forward. 

“Wait!” She’s not really sure what comes over her. She’s still not entirely convinced that this whole interaction isn’t some kind of weird dream. Spider-Man pauses, waiting, and she goes over to where her scarf is sitting on the floor. She picks it up, quickly finishes off the row of stitches, and ties a knot in the end. It’s a bit sloppy, and she’s still learning how to properly cast off, but the blue yarn is speckled and more forgiving than a solid color. She trims the yarn at the end, tucks the end into the scarf, and then carries it over to the window, holding it out toward the hopefully-not-a-murderer on her fire escape. “This might help keep you warm out there,” she offers.

Spider-Man stares at her for what feels like an eternity. Finally, just as Michelle is about to change her mind, to apologize for being silly, he reaches out tentatively, his gloved fingers wrapping around the scarf. He takes it from her hands and wraps it twice around his neck, seeming to melt into the warmth even though she knows there’s no way it’s actually warm enough to provide any shelter from the cold or the rain. 

He starts to turn again, and Michelle catches sight of a backpack slung over one of his shoulders. It’s unzipped about a quarter of the way, and there’s a royal blue sweatshirt inside, one sleeve dangling outside of the backpack and soaking up all of the rain. She gets a glimpse of a yellow emblem on the sweatshirt, but before she can make out exactly what it is, Spider-Man faces her head on again.   

“Thank you,” he says, and then with a little wave in her direction, he turns around, shoots a web out onto a nearby streetlight, and hurls himself off of her fire escape and into the rainy night. 

It isn’t until later that evening, when Michelle is putting away her laundry before bed, that she’s hit with a sudden wave of recognition while she’s folding her school sweatshirt. Her royal blue school sweatshirt with the gold Midtown logo on the front. It looks suspiciously similar to the one that had been hanging out of Spider-Man’s backpack. Why would someone carry a backpack, unless they’re a student? It isn’t the most sound logic, of course, as plenty of non-student probably carry backpacks, but as soon as she thinks it, Michelle can’t get the idea out of her head.   

Spider-Man goes to Midtown School of Science and Technology.

— — — 🕸️- - - 🧶- - - 🕸️— — —  

After her interaction with Spider-Man, Michelle starts to knit more often. She tells herself that she’s making Christmas gifts, but again, she doesn’t really have any friends to give Christmas gifts to and she soon finds herself with a growing pile of scarves that she doesn’t know what to do with. 

Except, she keeps thinking about Scarf #3, and how every time she sees Spider-Man on the news, he’s not wearing it. Did he lose it? Does he hate it? It was silly of her to think that a superhero would even need a scarf, especially one that she hastily knitted herself. Still, she finds herself hoping it’s the first option– that he simply lost the scarf, which is totally understandable when you’re swinging around the city fighting crime. And if there’s really a high school aged superhero out there, who’s vulnerable to the cold, what if he doesn’t have a home or someplace warm to sleep? What if he doesn’t own any scarves of his own? Besides, there’s always the possibility that if she runs into Spider-Man again, and gives him another scarf or something, it will help lead her to more clues about his identity. 

She’s still in disbelief that Spider-Man isn’t really a man at all, but a high schooler . A high schooler who goes to the same school as her. There’s no other explanation. Spider-Man is never spotted during school hours, and he sounds young– definitely young enough to be in high school, even though Michelle had initially placed him in college.  

There’s also no way someone in the sophomore class is Spider-Man. Everyone she knows would blurt out that secret so fast. Her bet is on a senior, but after a full week of watching the seniors, trying to spot one that has a wet backpack or a wet sweatshirt, she still doesn’t have any suspects.

She pulls out her phone, opening her Notes app and starting a new note that she titles ‘spiderman’.

spiderman

goes to Midtown

can get cold like the rest of us

loses things or hates scarves??

She closes her phone and sets it, along with her half-finished rainbow scarf, on her desk and grabs her sketchbook. Flipping to a page that’s half filled with a drawing of a man that she’d seen on her way home from school earlier that day feeding a one-legged pigeon, Michelle puts her pencil to the page and draws a doodle of Spider-Man wearing a Midtown sweatshirt. She falls asleep before she can add a scarf around his neck.

— — — 🕸️- - - 🧶- - - 🕸️— — — 

The next time Michelle sees Spider-Man, she’s walking the short distance between the subway station and her apartment. Academic Decathlon practice ran later than usual today, and it’s already growing dark outside. It’s also windy, which is the worst kind of weather, and it’s pretty cold, and by the time Michelle is a block away from home her face is stinging from the biting wind.

There’s a sudden, startling commotion across the street, and Michelle spins to see a man who’s running along the sidewalk get swept off his feet and hoisted up into the air by a long white rope that’s wrapped around his legs, seemingly out of nowhere. As the man swings back and forth underneath an awning, a figure clad in red and blue drops down onto the sidewalk holding the other end of the rope. It’s not a rope, Michelle realizes, but a web, and Spider-Man, who’s holding the web, secures the other end of it to the building with a flick of his wrist as sirens sound in the distance. 

For some reason, before he swings away, Spider-Man turns and looks right at Michelle, and she feels herself backing up a few steps. He jogs across the street without even looking in either direction for cars, dodging in between traffic like he can sense where the cars are going to go before they even get there. He steps up onto the sidewalk and gives her a little wave. He looks somehow shorter than he had that night on her fire escape.

“Um, hi,” he says, and Michelle swears she can hear his teeth chattering. 

“Hi,” Michelle says back. “I wasn’t, like, staring at you. It’s just…” She gestures at the man still dangling from the strand of webbing across the street. 

“Oh, yeah, that.” Spider-Man tilts his head to one side. “He was trying to steal someone’s purse.” 

Michele nods, then reaches into her backpack and pulls out the red hat she’s been keeping in there. “I noticed you lost your scarf,” she says, swallowing hard against sudden nerves. “I made you a hat. You don’t have to wear it, but, uh, it’s pretty cold outside today.” 

“Oh! Thanks!” Spider-Man takes the hat and pulls it over his head. It looks a little funny, over his mask, and it’s a little bit big so it covers the tops of the white eyes. It’s nearly the same shade of red as his suit.

“You’re welcome.” 

Spider-Man gives a little nod, and then another little wave, and then turns and jumps onto the nearest light pole, clinging to the side like he has glue on his hands and feet. “I didn’t lose it, by the way,” he says before leaping into the air and swinging up and away, and it takes a moment for Michelle to realize he’s talking about the scarf. 

She pulls her phone from her pocket and opens her note on Spider-Man.

spiderman

goes to Midtown

can get cold like the rest of us

loses things or hates scarves??

She deletes the last two lines, then thinks carefully for a moment before adding two more.

spiderman

goes to Midtown

always cold

kind of short

Chapter Text

The best place at school to people watch is detention. Michelle has never gotten detention before, but she finds herself in Room 34 on the days she doesn’t have marching band or Academic Decathlon team practice. There are two kinds of high schoolers that end up in detention: those who break the rules on the regular, and those who break a rule once and then spend the entirety of detention having a teenage crisis over it.   

The second best place at Midtown to people watch is the cafeteria. Lunchtime is when students let their guard down the most, or when some kids put up their guard completely, and it’s interesting to see how her peers interact with those who are a part of their clique while completely ignoring everyone else around them.  

Michelle always sits in the same spot, at a table on the edge of the cafeteria with the best view of the student body. The only other people who sit at her table are Ned Leeds and Peter Parker, two sophomores who she’s technically known since middle school, but never really paid attention to until this year. 

This year, Ned and Peter are in both on the Academic Decathlon team and in band with her, though Peter quit marching band just last week for unexplained reasons. Her guess is that it has something to do with his rumored internship with Stark Industries. No one really believes that he has an internship, and Peter hasn’t ever outright confirmed or denied it, but Michelle thinks that out of all the students in their class, Peter is the most likely to land something like that. He’s the smartest kid in their class, maybe even in the whole school, and it would be kind of a weird thing for someone like Peter to lie about.

Not that she knows Peter super well. Not yet, anyway, though she’s learning more and more about him and Ned everyday at lunch. Turns out, the three of them actually have quite a bit in common. For one, they all live in the same neighborhood. She’s not quite sure exactly where Ned and Peter live, but they all take the same train on the subway and get off at the same station in Queens. Their family dynamics are similar, too– she’s an only child, and so are Ned and Peter. Michelle also learns that neither of them live with either of their parents. Ned lives with his lola, and she isn’t sure if his parents are still alive or not, but Peter lives with his aunt, and she’s heard him mention that both of his parents died when he was young. It’s another thing they all have in common; Michelle’s dad was never around, and her mom died when she was only a baby, so she’s lived with her grandfather ever since. 

Really, they’re three peas in a pod. A trio of gifted, orphaned only children. 

Today, she’s sitting at her end of the table, and Ned and Peter are sitting at their end of the table talking about Legos, and she thinks about how their conversation would make a funny cartoon. She pulls out her sketchbook and her pencil and starts to draw. 

Ned’s getting excited like he always does, getting way too into their after school Lego building plans, and Peter’s listening to Ned like he always does, somehow paying close attention while his eyes dart around the cafeteria instead of being focused on his friend. 

“Not so loud, Ned,” Peter mumbles. “People are going to think we’re weird.” 

“Too late,” Michelle says before she can stop herself. 

Ned and Peter turn their heads to look at her, their eyebrows rising in unison.

“W-what?” Ned stutters finally.

“You guys are losers.”

Ned and Peter exchange a quick glance, and then Ned turns back to her, frowning slightly. “Why do you sit with us, then?” 

“Because,” Michelle replies. “I don’t have any friends.” She tips her sketchbook toward them. “Besides, you two are perfect for my cartoon about...” Michelle stops herself from saying ‘a couple of sad dorks’ and goes for something a little less mean. “...about Lego nerds.”  

“That’s…kind of mean,” Peter says anyway. “We’re not nerds just because we like Legos.” 

“You’ve been drawing us?” Ned asks, looking surprised.

Michelle narrows her eyes at them and lowers her sketchbook. There’s a stretch of silence between them, all three of them eyeing each other, and then the bell rings. 

“If you wanted to be our friend, you could have just said so,” Ned smirks, and he and Peter stand, shouldering their bags and picking up their lunch trays and exchanging some kind of complicated-looking secret handshake before parting ways. 

The next day, and the day after that, Michelle finds that she can’t stop watching Ned and Peter. They’re an interesting pair. Ned is the louder of the two, always giggling and always moving, constantly talking about Legos, and Michelle’s pretty sure he’s a tech genius with the way he’s always rambling about computers. 

Peter is softer, quieter, and he’s always moving too, but in a way that’s completely different from Ned. He’s a little more subtle, a little more shifty, and it’s like his body can’t decide between being agile and being clumsy. She’s caught sight of him a few times in P.E., when he thinks no one but Ned is watching, and Michelle is positive he’s far stronger and far faster than he lets on. 

Peter is also always cold. He spends an inordinate amount of time hunched in on himself, shivering, and he always keeps his hands in his pockets. He wears multiple layers, even in the warmer months, but it’s almost December and his usual outfit is a hoodie over what Michelle is sure is a long-sleeve shirt, or maybe even another sweater, plus a puffy jacket that’s a size too small for him on top of everything. Not counting the fact that the long-sleeve shirt plus sweatshirt combo is a recipe for an endlessly uncomfy sleeve bunching situation, Michelle finds Peter’s whole helpless, shivery deal to be somewhat… endearing . 

She tries not to think about why that is, too much. It makes her face feel hot when she does. Instead, she pulls out her latest knitting project, which is another red hat, similar to the one she had given to Spider-Man. She’s not quite sure what she’s going to do with it when she’s finished. The thought of leaving it on some rooftop in Queens with a note had crossed her mind, just in case someone might happen to be swinging around up there and get cold, but she also could just keep it for herself.  

Or, maybe, she’ll give it to Peter. 

Michelle sighs. If she gives it to Peter, maybe she’ll make one for Ned, too. She can’t really picture Peter in red, though, so she’ll have to make him a whole new hat, probably in a shade of blue. Ned would look good in a warm color, maybe a golden yellow or even a rust, but she could also see him in olive green or purple.

After school, she stops by detention, but instead of drawing the poor group of theater students who are there in mid-crisis, she doodles a picture of Ned and Peter sitting side by side, wearing comically oversized knit hats with giant pom poms on top.  

— — — 🕸️- - - 🧶- - - 🕸️— — — 

By Friday at lunch, Michelle is finished with the hats for Ned and Peter. In the end, she decided to skip the pom poms, and now both hats are sitting in her backpack feeling like a heavy weight. She considers sneaking the hats into Ned and Peter’s locker anonymously, or maybe just not giving them the hats after all, doubt and nerves settling into an uneasy feeling in her stomach and making her second guess every life choice she’s ever made up to this point.

Before her last shred of confidence slips away, Michelle heads quickly to the cafeteria after third period. At the beginning of the school year, they had all stuck to their separate far ends of the cafeteria tables at lunch, but Michelle noticed Ned and Peter sitting closer and closer to the middle as the weeks went by. Today, she gets there first, and decides to sit about a third of the way down the table. Not the middle, but not her usual spot near the wall. Close enough to give them her creations, but not too close if she decides to change her mind about giving her maybe-friends the hats they probably don’t even want anyway.  

As Ned and Peter approach the table, Michelle notices that Peter is cradling his arm to his chest, and Ned is carrying both of their lunch trays. When Peter sits down, he winces a little, breathing heavily through his nose while Ned arranges his lunch tray and carefully slides Peter’s backpack off his shoulder for him, basically fretting over him like a mother hen.

“Did you break your arm or something?” Michelle asks Peter after a moment. 

Ned and Peter exchange glances. 

“No,” Peter replies hesitantly. “I just…fell off my bike. I’m fine.” 

“Okay…Anyway, I have a question. Don’t be weird about it, losers. What’s your favorite color?”

“Red,” Peter answers immediately. There’s a smile teasing at his lips. 

Ned takes a little more time to give his answer. “Hmmm.” He taps his chin thoughtfully. “If I had to choose, I’d say yellow? Pretty much any shade. Why? What’s your favorite color?” 

Michelle ignores the question, opening her bag and pulling out a yellow hat for Ned first. She hands it over to him without a word, then turns back to her bag. The red hat is still tucked next to her textbooks, but she pulls out a blue one she made instead. Peter just doesn’t seem like a red kind of guy.

“I made these for you. Y’know, since it’s freezing outside.” She tosses Peter the blue hat, which he catches with his non-injured hand.  

Without making eye contact with either of them, Michelle stands and gathers her stuff. She has to leave before she can see their reactions. She won't be able to handle it if they don’t like them or something.  

She totally doesn’t almost cry when she spots them on the subway home wearing the hats later that afternoon.  

— — — 🕸️- - - 🧶- - - 🕸️— — — 

Two weeks before Christmas, Michelle realizes she has way too many scarves on her hands.  

Earlier in the week, she had seen flyers up around school for F.E.A.S.T., a local shelter that provides assistance and resources to those in need. The organization is in need of various donation items, so Michelle skips her weekly trip to buy yarn and uses her allowance money, plus a little of her savings, to buy several grocery bags full of toiletries and food. She likes helping out the community when she can, and it definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that Spider-Man’s face is on the flyer. 

She packs up the items, along with her abundance of scarves, and takes them down to the F.E.A.S.T. community center on Saturday afternoon. When she gets there, her arms ache from carrying the heavy bags, so she steps inside the center and leans up against a wall, dropping the bags next to her feet for a second. 

A woman wearing a multi-color button up and high waisted jeans is on the other side of the room, and Michelle’s jaw drops when she sees that she’s talking to Spider-Man. Sure, the posters have his face all over them, but she didn’t realize that Spider-Man actually volunteered here. 

“Thanks for volunteering your time, Spider-Man,” the woman says loudly. “We always appreciate it!” 

Spider-Man gives a little nod and a wave in reply, then turns and exits through what looks like an employee area. The woman turns around after he leaves, scanning the room, and when her eyes land on Michelle she gives a warm smile and starts walking directly toward her. 

Michelle leans over to grab her bags, lifting them back into her still sore arms and feeling suddenly self conscious as the woman approaches her.

“Hi, hon!” The woman smiles warmly at her. “What brings you in today?”

“I brought a few donations–” Michelle starts to say, but she’s interrupted by someone behind the woman. 

“Hey, May? Do you– Michelle? ”

“Oh!” Michelle’s surprised to see Peter, and he looks equally surprised to see her. “Hi, Peter. What are you doing here?” 

“My aunt works here,” Peter replies, tipping his head sideways toward the nice woman. “And I volunteer here on weekends.” 

The woman wraps her arm around Peter and it suddenly dawns on Michelle that she’s Peter’s aunt. May, he had called her. 

“Oh, gotcha! That’s cool.” 

“Yeah,” Peter agrees with an easy smile. “What are you doing here?” He asks, leaning into May’s side a little.  

“Um, I brought in a few donations. And I knitted so many scarves, I thought maybe…” 

Peter seems to sense her hesitation and gives her a reassuring nod. “That’s awesome! They’re soft, everyone will love them! Well, I mean, they look soft. And warm.” His smile falters a little, but his sudden rambling makes Michelle feel at ease.  

“How’s your arm?” She asks him, and Peter glances up at May, who gives him a weird look. 

“It’s fine,” he says quickly, wiggling his hand a little as if to prove it. “Totally fine now.” 

May’s still looking at him with an unreadable expression. Eventually, she sighs. “You look tired, sweetheart.” She cups Peter’s cheek in her hand, then slides her palm to the back of his neck. “And you feel a little warm. Why don’t you go home and rest?”

Peter blushes and ducks out of her grasp. “I’m fine, May. I’m going to go help Mac with dinner prep.” He turns to Michelle. “I’ll take those bags off your hands!” 

“Thanks,” Michelle says, setting the bags back onto the floor with trembling arms. 

“See you at school on Monday,” Peter says softly, and Michelle blushes, because that’s what she imagines is something a friend would say to another friend, and she’s still not really sure about her standing with Ned and Peter. She’s never had a friend before. 

“Yeah, okay. See you Monday.”  

Peter picks up the bags as if they’re weightless, then leans over to give May a kiss on the cheek before turning around and practically skipping back to the employee door Spider-Man had disappeared through just minutes before. 

On the way home, Michelle pulls out her phone. Her fingers automatically tap on the screen to open her Notes app. She can’t believe she actually saw Spider-Man, if only for a brief moment. She adds a line to her list.

spiderman

goes to Midtown

always cold

kind of short

volunteers at FEAST

When she gets home, she goes to her bookshelf and pulls out her yearbook from last year. There are probably a lot of students who volunteer at F.E.A.S.T. on the weekend. She just has to figure out which one of them is Spider-Man. 

— — — 🕸️- - - 🧶- - - 🕸️— — — 

On Monday morning, Michelle gets to the library at school bright and early. Well, the bright part is nearly impossible with the weather they’ve been having lately, and even the abundance of windows and fluorescent lighting don’t do much to help. She settles down at her usual table, going over her Spanish homework since that’s the first class of the day. It’s the only class she has with Ned and not with Peter, just like chemistry is the only class she and Peter have together that Ned isn’t in. 

Speaking of Ned and Peter, Michelle is surprised to look up and see them both shuffling into the library. She’s usually one of the only students who comes to the library before school. It’s odd to see the pair of them here, and so early, but they do have a pretty big test in chemistry today and she doesn’t blame them for wanting to get in some extra studying.   

Peter is bundled up like he usually is, in too many sweaters and a hat and his puffy coat, but with the addition of a blue scarf wrapped around his neck. The scarf isn’t even the first thing she notices about Peter, though. The first thing she notices is that he looks sick. Pale-faced, red-nosed, dark-circles-under-his-eyes sick, and Ned is right next to his side, hand wrapped firmly around Peter’s elbow like he thinks he’s about to fall over any minute. Which, to be fair, he looks exactly like he’s about to fall over any minute. It’s sweet, the way Ned looks so worried about his friend, and it makes Michelle want to sketch the moment.

She’s pulling out her sketchbook when she glances back over at Peter, who’s being ushered into a seat by Ned, and notices that the scarf he’s wearing looks familiar. Ned is palming Peter’s forehead, checking for a fever, presumably, and Michelle can’t even appreciate what a great sketch that would make because the scarf Peter is wearing looks familiar . As in, Michelle has not only seen that scarf before, but she has owned that scarf before. 

Before she can piece together her thoughts, Peter groans weakly, looking like he’s about to be sick right there in the middle of the library, but instead of vomiting, he brings the scarf up to his face and ducks into it before sneezing three times. 

Michelle’s first thought is ew, disgusting, my poor scarf , but her second thought, one that’s much louder and far more urgent in her head, is that she has heard that exact same triple sneeze before, and not from Peter Parker. 

From Spider-Man . 

Spider-Man, who she pretty sure goes to Midtown, who’s always cold, who she’s been knitting hats and scarves and mittens for, and who she gave that blue speckled scarf to a month ago, and holy shit . 

Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

Chapter Text

Michelle can’t stop staring at the scarf. It is, beyond a doubt, the exact same scarf she gave to Spider-Man in late September that memorable rainy evening on her fire escape. The fact that Peter Parker is now wearing the scarf is really throwing Michelle for a loop, because up until this point she had only been about 23% percent sure that Spider-Man went to her school, and maybe 67% percent sure that he was even a high school student. Now, it’s so glaringly obvious to her. How does the whole city not know Spider-Man’s identity? 

“Haven’t you ever seen a sick person before?” 

Ned’s question snaps her out of her shock and she jumps up out of her chair, scrambling to get her phone out of her pocket. She pulls up her Notes app, hands trembling.  

spiderman

goes to Midtown

always cold

kind of short

volunteers at FEAST

Those four things also happen to describe Peter Parker. Because Peter Parker is Spider-Man. 

Spider-Man is high school sophomore Peter Parker . 

She looks up from her phone and meets Peter’s glassy eyes. Peter goes to Midtown. Peter is always cold. Peter is kind of short. Peter volunteers at F.E.A.S.T. on the weekends. 

There’s no way that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

Except he is totally, completely, undeniably Spider-Man.  

Michelle can’t tear her eyes away from Peter. She looks down to the blue speckled scarf around his neck, then back up to his face, and Peter’s eyes widen, and she knows . She knows that he knows that she knows.

She finds herself nearly sprinting out of the library. As she leaves, she can hear Ned telling Peter that he’s really worried about him, and that he should maybe go home, but the sound of her heart pounding in her chest drowns out the rest and she books it out of there like if she runs fast enough she can outrun the fact that she just discovered Spider-Man’s identity. People turn and stare at her as she runs through the hallway, but Michelle doesn’t care. She keeps going, until she’s pushing past the double doors at the entrance of the school and racing down the front steps. She pauses for just a moment on the sidewalk, feeling dizzy with shock, but there’s a voice in her head that tells her that she needs to keep going.  

Michelle has never skipped school before, but she finds herself spending the next two hours wandering the streets of Queens in a daze. Her phone is going off in her pocket, but she’s too busy processing to pay attention to the dozens of notifications that seem to be coming in. It can’t be real. It feels real, but it also feels like it should be impossible. 

After a while, Michelle starts to wonder if she’s actually right. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that Peter Parker and Spider-Man have so much in common. Maybe it’s not the same scarf. Maybe Spider-Man did lose the scarf, and Peter just happened to find it. Peter is only fifteen years old, and Spider-Man is a superhero who swings around the city and fights crime and scales buildings. The sweatshirt in his backpack could have been anything, maybe not even a school sweatshirt. It’s not like blue and gold are uncommon school colors anyway. 

There’s another layer of doubt, too, a thought Michelle can’t keep from bubbling up as she finally stops walking, sinking down onto a bench in the middle of a random park. She had already been unsure about her friendship with Ned and Peter, too afraid to even call it a friendship yet, and now she’s second guessing that all because sure, there’s maybe a small chance someone like Peter would call her a friend, but Spider-Man ? 

There’s no way a superhero would ever be friends with someone like her. 

— — — 🕸️- - - 🧶- - - 🕸️— — — 

The windowsill is a little too narrow to sit comfortably on, but Michelle needs the air, and it’s the only good place in her apartment to get that. The fire escape is too wobbly for her comfort. She’s back home, after her feet had carried her here sometime after the sun had started to set, and now she’s sitting in her open window, feet dangling down. She feels absolutely exhausted. 

It somehow feels like the most normal thing in the world when Spider-Man lands on her fire escape thirty minutes later. 

“I’m starting to think you’re stalking me,” she says, and Spider-Man’s white eyes go wider than she’s ever seen. 

“No! No, I’m not stalking you, I’m so sorry!” He sounds miserable. The full suit and mask hide a lot, but not the way he slumps against the railing like he can barely stand on his own.  

“Why are you out here when you’re so sick?” Michelle asks.  

“I, uh…” Spider-Man pauses to clear his throat. “I just need to know that…” 

He hesitates, but can’t seem to finish the sentence. Oh. Right. Michelle knows his secret identity now. “Your secret is safe with me,” she tells him. It’s the truth. Even if she had someone to tell, Michelle would never give up his identity. 

Spider-Man leans even harder against the railing. He’s shivering. With a small nod, he clears his throat again. “It’s just usually better that my friends…that people I know don’t know about it. It’s safer that way.” 

Friends .

Michelle nods. 

“I’m sorry for showing up on your fire escape again like this,” he says, laughing weakly. 

“Speaking of,” Michelle says, noticing him start to shiver harder. “Do you need another scarf? Or a hat? I started knitting a sweater the other day, it might be a little short, but…” She’s rambling, she knows, but Spider-Man doesn’t seem to notice. He wraps his arms around himself and nods.  

“Yeah,” he responds quietly. “That would actually be really nice.” 

Michelle goes over to her pile of knitted items sitting on her desk. She picks out a royal blue hat and scarf, and the sweater, which is honestly more of a cropped sweater at this point, and carries them back over to the window. She climbs out onto the fire escape and hands them to Spider-Man. He pulls on the sweater first, then the scarf and finally the hat. He looks somewhat ridiculous, but also cozy.

“You should really get a warmer suit or something,” she comments, and Spider-Man snorts at that.

“Yeah, I’m working on it.” 

He looks down, absently twirling one end of the scarf around his hand. He’s quiet for a while, seemingly lost in his own thoughts, or maybe just so sick that he’s completely out of it. 

“Maybe you should go home?” Michelle suggests finally. Spider-Man nods, eyes still on his feet, and he shifts until he’s standing fully upright before dragging his gaze up to meet hers.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Maybe.” He reaches up and pulls the hat down further over his ears before turning around.  “See ya,” he says, and instead of leaping off the fire escape like last time, he uses the ladder to climb down to the street below. 

Michelle watches him until he disappears around a corner and hopes that he actually makes it home. 

— — — 🕸️- - - 🧶- - - 🕸️— — —

The next morning at school, Michelle can’t even sit in the library and read. She wanders out to the football field and climbs to the very top of the bleachers. Up there, she’s unshielded from the howling wind, and she almost doesn’t hear the first bell ring. It isn’t until she sees a few kids running across the field that she realizes she should probably head to class, but even then, she doesn’t feel any urgency like she normally would. She makes her way to first period in a daze, still reeling from the shock of yesterday.   

At lunch, Peter and Ned aren’t sitting in their usual spot. In fact, Peter isn’t there at all, and Ned is sitting at her end of the table, looking way too calm. She wonders if he knows. 

“Welcome, fellow F-O-S!” Ned holds a hand out toward her, and Michelle just stares at it. Of course Ned knows. “Friend of Spider-Man,” he continues, dropping his voice to a whisper on the last word. “F-O-S.” Leaning in expectantly, he raises his eyebrows. “Peter said you figured it out, but he didn’t say how?” 

Michelle pulls out her phone and taps the screen twice before sliding it across the table toward Ned, showing him the list that she’s been reading over and over and over again. 

“Wow,” Ned says after he reads it. He looks a little impressed and a little weirded out. “How do you know so much about Spider-Man?”  

“I’m not, like, obsessed with him, or anything. I’m just very observant.” Michelle’s face feels hot. She takes her phone back. “He crashed on my fire escape one night a couple of months ago and he had a Midtown sweatshirt in his backpack. And I saw him at F.E.A.S.T. this weekend.”   

“Did you make any notes about me and Peter, too?” Ned asks. 

Michelle ignores his question. “It was actually the scarf, though. The one Peter was wearing yesterday. I gave it to Spider-Man, not to Peter.” 

“So you’re who I have to thank for keeping my boy warm,” Ned grins. “I should have known when you gave us those hats. Nice stitching, by the way.” 

“Why is Peter always cold, anyway?” 

“It’s the spider DNA. He has a hard time with temperature regulation. Mr. Stark put a heater in his suit, but sometimes it’s not enough.”

“So that’s actually real?” Michelle asks. “The Stark Industries internship?” 

“Nah,” Ned says. “The internship is just a front. Peter’s basically an Avenger now so he’s over at the Tower a lot. He and Mr. Stark work together in the lab. It is so cool.” 

“Do you work in the lab too?”

Ned’s face drops a little. “No, not yet. But Peter says that I might be able to soon.” 

Michelle looks down at her lunch tray, suddenly realizing that she hasn’t eaten a single bite. She picks up her plastic fork and pokes at her food. “Have you heard from Peter? Is he doing okay? When I saw him last night, he sounded terrible.” 

“Yeah, classic Peter. He’s always getting sick. His super powers skipped right over his immune system. He has enhanced healing, though, so he’ll get over it pretty quick.” He tilts his head to the side. “This is actually the first time he’s ever stayed home when he’s sick. He thinks I’m, like, not gonna survive one single day without him or something.”

Ned looks to his left, and Michelle follows his gaze over to where Eugene Thompson is sitting. When Euguene sees Ned looking at him, he glares. He’s an asshole, and Michelle is willing to bet he messes with Ned and Peter. Luckily for them, Eugene seems to be intimidated by Michelle, and when he sees her looking he quickly turns back to his friends. 

“Hmm.” Michelle turns back to Ned. “Enhanced healing? So that day, with his arm? That wasn’t actually a bike accident, was it?” 

“Oh yeah, his arm was definitely broken in like, three places. Peter doesn’t even own a bike.”  

Michelle takes a bit of her lunch. She tries to imagine what that would feel like, breaking your arm in three places and then being totally fine a few days later. 

“I’ll probably go check on him after school. See how he’s doing.” Ned says when the bell rings. He stands up and slings his backpack over his shoulders, pausing before he picks up his tray, and Michelle is smart enough to take a hint. 

“Can I come with you?”

— — — 🕸️- - - 🧶- - - 🕸️— — —

Peter’s apartment is four blocks away from where Michelle lives. They have to take the stairs up seven flights to get to his floor, since the elevator is broken, and when they get to the top Michelle isn’t sure if her heart is beating from the exercise or from nerves. Ned knocks on a door, and the woman from F.E.A.S.T.– Peter’s aunt– answers. 

“Hi, May,” Ned greets her. 

“Hi, hon!” May opens her arms, and pulls Ned into a hug when he takes a step forward. 

“This is our friend Michelle,” he tells her when she lets go of him. “She goes to school with us.” 

For a minute, May looks like she might hug Michelle, too, but then she smiles and waves them into the apartment. “Hi, Michelle. I think we’ve already met each other!” 

Michelle nods, and Ned holds up a plastic grocery bag. 

“We brought some stuff for Peter. Is he awake?” 

“He might be asleep, but he’s due for some medicine. Let me go check on him real quick.” May goes into the living room and picks up a bottle of something that looks like NyQuil, but a weird color, from the coffee table before taking it to Peter’s room. 

“That’s medicine that Dr. Banner made for Peter,” Ned tells Michelle when he sees her face. “Since regular medicine doesn’t really work on him.” 

“Dr. Banner as in the Hulk ?” 

Ned nods. “Like I said, Peter is basically an Avenger.”

A few minutes later, May returns to let them know that Peter is awake. Ned leads Michelle down the hall to Peter’s room. It’s dim inside, the only light coming from a small lamp on the nightstand. Peter is in his bed, sitting up with his back against the headboard with a blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders. He aims a weak cough into the blanket, smiling when he sees Ned, and his eyes go wide when he spots Michelle in the doorway. 

“Hey, loser,” Michelle greets him before she can stop herself. “Sorry. I don’t really think you guys are losers.” 

“We know,” Ned responds confidently. He hops up onto the end of the bed, and Peter groans a little when the movement jostles him.

“Your aunt is really nice,” Michelle says.

“Yeah,” Ned sighs. “May’s honestly the best.” 

Peter snorts, which makes him cough again, and Ned jumps up and grabs the glass of water from his nightstand, pushing it into Peter’s hands and hovering until he’s able to take a sip. He pats Peter’s back a couple of times, then goes back to his spot on Peter’s bed, climbing in carefully this time.  

Michelle perches on the edge of Peter’s desk chair and looks around the room. She’s never really been in anyone else’s bedroom before, or at least not someone who isn’t family. She wonders where he keeps his Spider-Man suit.

“You know, I thought Peter wouldn’t look good in red?” She suddenly blurts out. There’s a moment of silence, and then Ned bursts into laughter while Peter tries to stop himself from laughing and ends up coughing some more instead.  

“What’s your favorite color?” Peter asks. It’s the first thing he’s said since they got here, and his voice is hoarse, barely audible.  

“Blue,” Michelle answers, and Ned gasps.

“Sweet! The primaries!”

Michelle frowns, but Ned is nodding like it’s the most logical thing in the world. 

“Peter likes red, I like yellow, and you like blue. All primary colors. Do you know what that means?”

“Okay, nerd,” Michelle snorts. “What does that mean?”

Ned looks over at Peter, who’s rolling his eyes fondly, then back over to Michelle, a grin on his face. “It means the three of us are meant to be best friends.”