Chapter Text
May 9th, 1972
Somewhere in Brooklyn
5:15pm
"S'cuse me ma'am? Can I help you with that?"
She turns around to the sound of his voice, hiking her two overfull grocery bags up higher in her arms. He pushes himself off of the brick wall he'd been leaning on when she catches his eye, and he gives her an earnest smile, the kind that crinkles up the corners of his eyes.
She scoffs out a laugh as she keeps walking. "Thank you, but I've been carrying my own groceries just fine," she shoots back.
When he jogs up beside her she feels guarded but not threatened. There's a kind of ease to him that helps her relax somewhat. Maybe it's his kind of curly hair, or his ridiculously blue bell bottom jeans.
He smiles lopsidedly. "Yeah, but then I wouldn't have an excuse to come talk to you," he says.
She's not usually the kind to stop and talk. The news these days is all serial killers and soldiers with PTSD and she's not 100% sure that this grinning white boy doesn't fit either category.
But the sun's out today. And she heard a song she loves on the radio not too long ago. And the market had perfectly ripe plantains. And she feels...open.
She bites her lip thoughtfully as she looks down the semi-busy street. Her place is just a few blocks from here, and her groceries have suddenly started to feel heavier and heavier by the minute.
She turns to him and holds out her bags with narrowed eyes and a smirk. He scrambles to take them from her, holding onto them with ease as he nods his thanks and they start walking.
For a guy who said he wanted to talk to her, he's doing sweet little in the way of actually starting a conversation.
"So you live around here?" she asks to break the silence.
He shakes his head, smiling at her over the grocery bags. "No. I'm from Queens."
She raises a brow. "Did you get lost on your way home?"
"I'm just here on business actually," he says. "And then I saw a pretty lady who could use some help so—" his sentence breaks when he sees the way she rolls her eyes at him, and his smile falters a little. "What? Was that not—"
"Where do you work?" she interrupts.
He blinks. He seems to be having a bit of a hard time keeping up, but he also seems to like it. "I'm a carpenter. Not much, but...I like working with my hands so..." he trails with a shrug, the paper bags crunching quietly in his arms.
She smiles at him softly. "Honest work."
He smiles back. "So what do you do?"
"I'm a nurse, but I'm training to be a psychologist," she replies.
He looks over at her. "Oh." He's quiet for a moment. "So do you...do you work with folks that just came home and stuff?"
"Sometimes, yeah."
He nods, and then goes quiet again.
She studies his face, tries to determine what reaction her next question will get her, and perhaps whether she should ask it at all.
"Were you in 'Nam?" she asks carefully.
He's quiet for a moment. The outline of his jawbone sharpens as he clenches his teeth subtly, and she's about ready to tell him to forget that she asked, but then he shakes his head.
"No," he says quietly. "Wasn't drafted."
She nods, but the crease in her forehead lingers because there's something he's not saying. She gets the sense that he's the kind of guy that talks a lot but never really says anything.
"I almost enlisted but..." he trails off, shakes his head, "well, things went differently."
"Things do that sometimes," she says softly, offering a smile that he doesn't quite catch. "Did you...lose anyone?" she asks, and then berates herself for asking. A voice in her head that sounds an awful lot like her mom reminds her that no good comes from being nosy.
He clears his throat, swallowing as he looks down at her groceries. "I...lost a couple people," he says. "Probably wouldn't have lost them if I'd been there."
The last part is tacked on so quietly that she almost didn't hear it. She doesn't want to psychoanalyse the guy, but anyone could read from a mile away that he has a guilt complex heavy enough to collapse Brooklyn Bridge.
"You can't know that," she breathes.
"Anyway," he mutters, and it's more to himself than to her, "I'm making up for it now."
Her brows furrow. "What does that mean?"
But he sidesteps her question with such ease that if it weren't for the tension still in his jaw she'd be convinced he hadn't heard her.
"So a psychologist, huh?" he asks with a grin. "Does that mean you can get inside people's heads and stuff?"
She has half a mind to walk him back to the conversation he escaped from, but she reminds herself that she's not at the clinic right now, it's not her job to extract answers from people she meets in the street. Especially when they offer to carry her groceries.
She smiles, shrugs her shoulders. "Maybe."
He looks over at her with a grin. "Well, if you happen to find your way into mine, could you leave your phone number in there?"
Usually a line like that would have her reaching for her pepper spray. But the way he says it, with a deeply innocent, kind of boyish charm...it actually makes her laugh.
"Smooth," she teases. "How old are you anyway?" she asks, more out of curiosity than anything, because he has the air of a teenager, but there's a kind of...weight behind his eyes that only accompanies a person who's seen and lived a lot.
"24 years old, ma'am." He tips his head at her with a crooked smile.
She looks over at him with narrowed eyes. "What year were you born?"
He raises a brow. "Is this an interview?" he asks. "Are you trying to draft me?"
She nudges him in the arm as they walk. "Just answer the question."
"Born in '47," he replies dutifully.
"Huh," she breathes.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just...me too."
An ear-to-ear grin spreads across his face. "Well I think that's what they call fate."
"Or coincidence."
He shakes his head. "There are no coincidences," he says. "What's meant to be is what is."
She breathes out a laugh as she looks at him, and she doesn't know what it means that she feels a little sad that they're finally on her street. "You really believe that?" she asks.
When he looks back at her, and their eyes meet, she thinks that it might not be hard for him to convince her that it’s true.
"Not until today," he says solemnly. "Not until ten minutes ago."
Her heart does a funny leap in her chest and it almost makes her want to vomit. She's not sure when she became the kind of person whose heart leaps.
"All right," she says, stopping a few yards from her front door, "this has been fun but I've gotta get going." She nods towards the house two doors down from her own. "This is me," she lies. It's Mr and Mrs Jefferson's door actually. But Mr Jefferson has fought in three wars and won't think twice about chasing this guy down the street with his rifle if he turns out to be some kind of stalking weirdo.
He looks...disappointed almost. As if he'd been prepared to walk her all around the city and back. He looks at the front door of "her" house and back to her face before nodding and carefully handing over her bags.
"I didn't catch your name," he says after a moment.
She scoffs lightheartedly. "That's 'cause I didn't throw it at you."
"Well, try me," he says, widening his stance and bending his knees a little as he holds out both hands as if preparing to catch something. "I played football in high school you know, I've got a pretty good hand."
And he looks so ridiculous, and so carefree that it almost feels cruel to leave him hanging.
"Michelle," she says, "my name's Michelle."
He makes a grand show of catching it and sticking it to his heart in that same dramatic way that he seems to have quickly learnt makes her laugh.
"Pleasure to meet you Michelle." He holds out a hand for her to shake, but upon realising her hands are full he gives her a little bow instead. "I'm Pete. And I've loved every minute of talking to you today, so can I please get your number? Please?"
Michelle twists her lip as she thinks. "You got a pen?" she asks after a moment.
Pete's brows shoot up into his hairline, as if he wasn't at all expecting an affirmative. And then he pats himself down and immediately looks like he wishes he could kick himself. "No. No but I can find—"
"Roll up your sleeve."
Pete pauses for just a moment, then does what she asked without preamble.
"Hold these."
He takes the bags back from her as he watches her root around in her small purse and produce a little container of lipstick.
He grins when she leans forward and writes her number on his forearm in deep brown.
"I'm usually home in the evenings," Michelle says as she snaps the lid back on and tosses the lipstick back in her purse before retrieving her bags from him. "If someone other than me picks up just say wrong number and put it down. My family are nosy as all hell."
Pete chuckles. "Got it. Thank you."
"See you around Pete," she says.
He nods with a smile. "And you Michelle."
She watches him walk away, waiting for him to turn the corner onto the next street before walking a few yards to her actual door and jogging up the stairs to enter.
"Where's your key?" her sister Gayle asks as she opens the door after Michelle knocks.
"Couldn't reach it," Michelle says, making a beeline for the kitchen.
They chat about mundane stuff, like who's going to make dinner or what weekend plans they have as they pack away the groceries. But after a while, Gayle pauses her movements and looks at her sister oddly.
She squints her eyes as she studies the side of Michelle's face. "What's got you smiling so hard?" she asks.
Michelle pauses. She hadn't even realised she was still smiling (or that she was even smiling that hard in the first place). Embarrassing.
She shakes her head. "Nothing."
"Michelle Joan Watson," Gayle turns to her with raised brows, "you'd better tell me!"
The last thing Michelle needs is her big sister all up in her business. But the smile finds its way back to her face against her will and throws her efforts at secrecy to the wind.
She breathes out a laugh and shakes her head as she puts the last two cans in the cupboard. "I met a fella today."
October 22nd, 1998
Nederlander Theatre, Broadway
8pm curtain
"Sorry, er, you mind if we just squeeze past? Our seats are over there. Thanks."
He shuffles through the the too-small gap between the rows as they make their way to their seats just in time for the start of the show.
He's really not much of a theatre guy. He's always been more interested in movies. Probably because he has the attention span of a fish and sitting in a darkened theatre for next to three hours seems like a sure way to induce sleep.
But his best friend Ned has been bugging him about going to see something and there’s only so many times he can wriggle his way out of it.
"What's this even about?" he asks Ned as they sit down and he flicks through the playbill.
Ned shrugs, studying the name of the play on the ticket stubs between his index and thumb. "I dunno," he says, "I guess somebody who can't afford to pay their rent?"
"Huh." He nods. "Well, I can relate to that."
Silence falls over the theatre as the curtains raise and the show begins with—
"Is this a fucking musical?" He turns to Ned, appalled.
Ned looks back at him as if he's lost his mind. "It's Broadway! Of course it's a musical!"
"You didn't tell me this when I agreed to come here—"
"Didn't think I'd need to—"
"I hate musicals—"
"Shut the hell up!" A deep voice booms out from a seat two rows behind them and puts what could have been a very lengthy and pointless argument to rest.
He turns to Ned. "You owe me for this," he grumbles. With a dejected huff he sits back in his chair and watches the musical.
He hates to admit it (and if Ned asks later he'll deny it) but it's actually...not bad. The story seems compelling, and the music has a cool rock kind of tone to it.
But that's not what draws him in the most.
What draws him in (makes his heart pound, takes his breath away) is the actress playing a character called Joanne.
It's not the way she looks (although her wavy brown hair and siren eyes will stay stuck in his mind long after he's gone home), but there's this kind of...magnetism that she has.
He believes her. Believes every word that comes out of her mouth and every expression that crosses her face. The way she moves her body is hypnotising, like some kind of intricate dance that she was never taught but just knows how to do.
He thinks he falls in love with her a little bit. As he sees her on the stage. Falls in love with the way she talks and the way she moves and he knows she's acting but damn is she doing it well.
Ned leans over to him. "Hey, you know—"
"Shh! I'm tryna watch the thing!" he whispers sharply as he leans forward, eyes glued to the stage.
During the intermission he sifts impatiently through the playbill while Ned gets snacks. And under the cast list he finds what he's earnestly looking for. Mary Jane Watson as Joanne Jefferson.
Mary Jane Watson.
It's...perfect. Granted, he doesn't know how it could be not perfect.
And perhaps it's being inside a theatre but he oddly calls to mind a line from a Shakespeare play that he can't remember the title of but was forced to read in middle school or something. Something like...what's in a name? Everything, it seems.
"Mary Jane..." he breathes, testing the name out on his tongue.
For some reason he'll never understand, it feels familiar.
The second half of the play is even better than the first, and he finds himself disappointed when it's over. And when he stands up and claps at the end he thinks that more than anyone he's clapping for her.
"So I know you hate musicals but even you have to admit that was pretty awesome," Ned says when they walk out of the theatre.
He nods in distracted agreement, as his eyes land upon the small crowd of people gathered outside the stage door. "Yeah. Yeah it was."
"So you wanna maybe get..."
The rest of Ned's sentence doesn't seem to reach his ears because the stage door opens, and out she comes. A real life human being, not like actors and actresses he sees on TV screens. She's in her own clothes now—a checkered button down shirt that looks a few sizes too big and a pair of distressed jeans—and when she smiles and poses for pictures with fans she's a completely different person to the girl on stage, but if possible, infinitely more magnetic.
"Hey," he says, turning to Ned, "I was thinking...might be nice to—"
"Go say hello to the actors?" Ned finishes for him.
He frowns. "How'd you know that's what I was going to say?"
"Maybe because I've seen the way you've been staring at the actress who played Joanne all night?" Ned scoffs.
He blushes. "I wasn't—"
"I think you should go for it. Go say hi. What's the worst that could happen?"
"You're not coming with?" he asks, a little nervous at the prospect of going over there on his own.
Ned shakes his head. "As much as I'd like to stick around and watch you try to put the moves on a Broadway actress, I'm really hungry," he says. "So I'm gonna go get some late night ramen and eat it in my underwear."
"Ew. All right I'll meet you back at the apartment."
With Ned gone there's nothing left to do but just...go over and say hi. Which would be simple enough if he could just get his damn legs to work. Instead he stays glued to the spot. Watching as the crowds come and go, watching the way she smiles and poses with such ease.
Before he knows it the crowd begins to dwindle, and when it's down to just two people he realises that he still hasn't moved from his spot on the sidewalk, and there's a car pulling up that looks like it might be for her.
Determined to not let his chance slip away he kicks his body into gear and finds the courage to walk up to her.
"Mary Jane?" he calls.
He's half expecting her not to respond, so when she turns around and looks him in the eye his entire body goes cold.
She smiles. "Yep. That's my name."
"Right," he laughs nervously, "right. Um. Well, I'm Peter Parker. For what it's worth."
"Nice to meet you, Peter Parker," Mary Jane says.
Peter smiles. "I was er...I was in the audience tonight and I just wanted to tell you that I hate musicals."
Mary Jane blinks at him, her perfectly arched brows raising high on her forehead, before she bursts out laughing and it sounds like...well, music. But it also makes Peter realise he just fucked up his attempt at a compliment.
"Wait, no. Shit," he stammers, "that's not what I meant. Well, it is what I meant. I do hate musicals. Usually. But I didn't hate this one. And...a lot of that was because of you."
She's stopped laughing now, but she's still grinning, and her eyes are sparkling as she listens to him talk out his ass.
Peter shakes his head. "You were...really good," he says. "Watching you was like...I don't know. A revelation or something. Is that what theatre people say? I wouldn't know. Anyway...you're...I think you have a gift. And I just thought you should know that."
She still doesn't speak. And her smile has softened into something more serious, something more thoughtful. And it's just the two of them now, standing in front of the stage door.
But before he can get swept up in the romance of it all, Peter remembers that her driver is waiting in a car that's still running. And the sound of the engine revving brings him back to reality.
"Sorry, that was stupid." He shakes his head, letting out a laugh at his own expense as he steps back from her. "I...I'll leave you alone. Great show."
With a final smile he turns around and starts walking in the opposite direction, trying to escape as quickly as he can until—
"Wait."
He spins on his heel at the sound of her voice, and when he meets her gaze it confirms that she's talking to him. She looks unsure for a brief moment, but then she turns and leans down into the window of the waiting car.
"Hey, Gayle? I'll make my own way home okay?"
"You sure?" The voice in the car replies.
Mary Jane turns to look at Peter once again, but this time there's no uncertainty, it's a more complex mix of anticipation and slight mischief and Peter has no clue what's going on here but it makes his head spin.
"I'm sure."
She walks up to him when the car pulls away, her hands shoved into the back pockets of her jeans as she offers him an easy smile.
"You wanna maybe get a burger or something?" she asks.
Peter wants to pinch himself. But he ultimately decides that if he is dreaming then he doesn't want to stop. He blinks, swallows, glances around.
"You ever heard of Teddy's Diner?" he asks after a moment. And he hopes dearly that she can't hear the loud, irregular thudding of his heart (regardless of the fact that he can hear the quiet, regular beat of hers).
Her face lights up. "My favourite place in the world," she says. But then she frowns, looking down at the silver watch on her wrist. "But they'll be closed now?"
Peter breathes out a laugh as he reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out the keys. For once he's thankful he was put on the early shift tomorrow. "It's never closed when you work there."
Mary Jane grins, and when she brushes past him to lead the way, Peter is 100% sure that in reality he's probably at home sleeping, because this can't be real.
Or maybe it is. Maybe he's just lucky. Or maybe—and this seems more likely—maybe she does this often. Follows her whims wherever they take her. Maybe she's just adventurous, or bored.
But whatever it is, Peter never wants this night to end.
They talk all the way to Teddy's. And she laughs a lot when he makes a big exaggerated show of sneaking her into the diner. And when they're inside she jumps up on a stool and watches him intently as he rolls up his sleeves and begins to make her a burger and fries out of the days leftovers.
And they keep talking. So much that Peter thinks he might just know more about her than some other people he's known for years. And he makes her laugh. More than he thinks he's ever made anyone else laugh, which makes him laugh.
During one of those fits of laughter, he reaches over and uses his thumb to swipe a dollop of burger sauce off her lip. And when she leans over the counter and kisses him chastely, it tastes like pickles and onions and it's the best thing in the world.
December 8th, 2018
Midtown High School
08:13am
Her moving lockers last month is probably the worst thing that could have happened to him.
There was something wrong with her old one. The combination wasn’t working or something like that, he doesn’t really know, and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that for a whole month now, she’s been using the locker just three doors away from his and it has in fact ruined his damn life.
Before last month, he hadn’t thought twice about Michelle Jones-Watson. She’d been just another ghost in the halls, a voice he only heard every now and again in physics class when she raised her hand to give an answer or correct the teacher. There was nothing that made her stand out from the rest of their peers, nothing that made him notice her.
Until she moved three lockers away from him.
And now, she haunts his every waking thought and has started to find her way into his unconscious ones.
He doesn’t know what happened. It’s like something just…changed. Something in his psyche, or in his body just switched on one day. Maybe teenage hormones or some other biological shit is to blame, who knows, but now Peter can’t so much as swap his books around without finding time to gaze at her.
Like he’s doing right now.
He gets a little lost in it sometimes, forgets that he really shouldn’t be starting, forgets how weird it is. But every now and then he’s snapped back into the present by the sound of a friend’s voice or the vibration of a locker slamming shut, or…like today, by the sudden and jolting contact of her eyes on his.
He jumps as she closes her locker and looks directly at him, narrowing her eyes in silent judgement at his Peeping-Tommery from three doors down.
“Shit shit shit,” he chants beneath his breath, immediately turning his head and hiding behind his locker door. “Idiot,” he berates himself, before glancing through the slits in the door to make sure she’s gone.
Once the coast is clear he closes his locker and slings his bag over his shoulder, shaking his head at himself as he reluctantly makes his way to his first class of the day—that she so happens to be in.
He makes a beeline for the seat he usually sits in, but stops in his tracks when he sees her sitting in the seat just behind it. He contemplates sitting somewhere else, but all the other good seats are taken and he doesn’t have the time or the willpower to negotiate with anyone.
With a shaky breath he walks over swiftly and sits in the seat in front of her before unzipping his backpack and fishing around for his stuff.
"Yo, dork."
He turns around so fast he almost gets whiplash. She's looking at him. And that was her voice, he's sure of it, and yet he can't quite believe she was actually speaking to him.
He points at his own chest. "Me?"
She frowns. "Yeah, you."
“Peter,” he croaks.
“I didn't ask.”
Shit. She actually didn’t. “Oh. Sorry,” he says.
She gives him a weird look. Almost like she’s bored of him, but also kind of wants to laugh at him. “You got a spare pen?” she asks.
It takes him a second to compute the request. But when he does he nods, and scrambles to fulfil it. His arm jerks forward awkwardly to grab his lidless blue pen from his desk, and without a second thought he turns around and hands it over to her.
She smiles as she takes it. “Thanks.”
Peter smiles back at her, but his smile quickly turns to a look of confusion when he sees her drop his pen on her desk beside a pile of other pens which seem to be in infinitely better condition.
“I—” his voice cuts off when he turns back to look at his own desk, and his look of confusion turns quickly to a frown when he realises belatedly…that was his only pen. “Shit,” he mutters beneath his breath, and when he turns to look at her again she’s still smiling, leaning sideways in her chair as she studies him like he’s some sort of social experiment.
He feels like too much of an idiot to ask for the pen back so instead he roots around in his backpack and manages to locate a two-inch long, blunt HB pencil that will just have to do for today.
Peter turns round once more, parting his lips to speak (to say what, he’s not really sure), but before he can get another word out the teacher requests quiet to begin the lesson. He gives her a tight-lipped smile instead, and turns around in his seat to face the front of the class.
The pencil only lasts for fifteen minutes before he has to source a sharpener, and he hears MJ snort out a laugh behind him when he asks his left hand neighbour for one.
It’s simultaneously the longest and shortest class he’s ever been in. When the bell rings he packs up his things, and goes over a few conversation openers in his head, but when he turns around, MJ is gone and he wonders at what point during his mental rehearsals he missed her packing up and leaving the room.
With a heavy sigh he stands up from his desk and throws his backpack over his shoulder, making his way out into the hall. He makes a beeline for his locker, opening it up to switch out his physics book for his chemistry one—and maybe find another stray pen while he’s at it. His search proves unsuccessful.
He almost jumps clean out of his skin when he shuts his locker door and sees MJ leaning on the locker beside his, smiling that same intimidating smile that he’s getting used to seeing on her.
“You scared me,” he breathes, chuckling awkwardly. As he says it, a distant part of him is intrigued and a little confused that she actually managed to catch him off guard.
“Good,” she says.
And as she holds his gaze, Peter’s mouth suddenly feels like it has too much saliva in it and he doesn’t know what to do with that.
He swallows hard. “C-can I help you?”
MJ smirks. She reaches into her back pocket briefly. “Here’s your pen,” she says holding it up to his face.
But…it’s not his pen. This one’s better, actually. It’s black, and it has a lid, and probably enough ink to last him halfway through next semester. He contemplates telling her that she mixed it up, but he’d feel like an idiot saying ‘actually, that’s not it. Please return my shitty chewed up blue one. Thanks’. So he lets it go, and reaches out to take it from her, thanking her as he slips it into the front pocket of his backpack.
He’d expected her to leave after the exchange, but she stays put, still leaning on the locker beside his, still looking at him. Only, now her expression has changed a little. A lot, actually. Now, if he didn’t know any better, he’d say she actually looks…nervous?
Peter clears his throat, glances around at passing bodies in the hall before looking back at her again. “Um…is there—”
“You wanna go to the dance with me on Friday?” she blurts.
Peter forgets to breathe. And then remembers to breathe, so suddenly that he draws in a breath so violent that it almost sounds like a gasp. Then he opens and closes his mouth like a fish out of water because this was most definitely not on his metaphorical bingo card for today.
His heart is pounding and his palms are getting sweaty, and he almost wants to ask her if she’s sure, or if she thinks he’s someone else, but then she says—
“Earth to Peter.” And she waves a hand in his face to capture his attention.
Peter shuts his mouth, straightens up, swallows thickly before nodding his head as quickly as he can.
“Yes,” he breathes. “Very much yes please.” He only hears the words on mental playback seconds after he’s already said them, and he fights the strongest urge to facepalm.
MJ snorts out a laugh. “You're weird,” she says, but she looks sort of…happy, it seems. And kind of relieved.
Peter relaxes marginally, his chest filling with warmth as he smiles back at her. “I know.”
“I like it,” she says.
“Thanks.” Peter grins, and he watches her walk away, waiting until she’s out of sight before opening up the door of his locker, sticking his head inside, and letting out a ridiculously joyous squeal.