Archive of Our Own

Working at a rundown cafe with a horrible manager wasn’t exactly Michelle’s idea of a good time. Honestly, she was about ready to put in a two weeks notice and start looking into other job opportunities, but the cafe seemed like the only one nearby with a decent pay. 

Plus, it was one of the few stable things in her life, even if she had to get up at 8am for the start of her shift.

For weeks Michelle had been getting these… visions, for lack of a better word, whenever she zoned out for a bit too long. They started out as small glimpses. A flash of red here, a wisp of brown hair there. Joyful laughter, and an endearing “shut up loser” on the tip of her tongue. 

Then they got longer, more detailed. On several occasions Michelle had to stop herself mid-sentence as she realized the person she was making a comment to wasn't there. 

The worst part is that she had no idea who she was even trying to talk to. The visions were gone as fast as they came, leaving nothing but a pang in her chest, and a nagging feeling that she was forgetting something. 

It was… troubling. Michelle didn’t think she was going crazy, but at times it definitely felt that way. She was sure Ned felt the same way, it was evident from the way his eyes always darted to the empty chair at their favorite 3-seater at the library like he expected someone to come in and sit down. 

They had talked about it a few times, but saying the words out loud made her feel like she really was going crazy, and the topic usually ended up being avoided. Michelle would have been content to keep it that way, was it not for the dreams.

In addition to her usual visions, she had begun to have weirdly detailed dreams. She had always been the type of person who forgot their dreams the second they woke up, so to remember her dreams, especially in that detail? Odd, to say the least. 

And so, breaking the unspoken rule to never speak about her problems, ever, Michelle set down a dozen fresh chocolate chip cookies in front of Ned, who was sitting at a table coding while she worked, and slid into the booth across from him.

“Have you been having weirdly detailed dreams about a guy whose face is blurred out that you should feel like you know, but you don’t?” 

Ned slowly closed his laptop, looking slightly bewildered at her sudden question. Ok, that was fair. Maybe suddenly asking that particular question after avoiding the topic like it was taboo for so long wasn’t the best course of action. 

“Most of my dreams are about getting abducted by aliens or becoming famous,” Ned mused, a small frown forming on his face., “so uhh, not really.” 

“Figures,” Michelle sighed, gesturing loosely at Ned with one of the cookies. “Do you think I’m going crazy?” 

This got a laugh out of the former. “I hope not, can you imagine the shit I would get into if I lost my voice of reasoning?”

“Yeah, you should be thanking me for all the hard work I do to keep you two losers out of trouble all the time.”

“C’mon Mj you know you love us,” Ned grinned, before both teens froze. 

Two losers? Us? What was going on? Michelle was getting a headache just trying to think about it. 

After sitting in the awkward silence that had been created by this conversation for a minute too long, Ned spoke. 

“Maybe we should talk about those dreams of yours.”

Yeah, that might be a good idea. 

“There have been a few, so I’ll try to give them to you in the order I remember seeing them.”

|

She was sitting in detention. This wasn’t all that unusual; Michelle’s parents had divorced when she was very young. Her parents alternated every two weeks, and while her dad’s house was within walking distance, her mom’s was not.

Her mother got off of work 3 hours after the school day ended, but due to traveling time it took her closer to 4 hours after the school day ended to get to the school. On the days she was with her mother, Michelle would spend the hours at the school or at the local library. 

Sure, she could get a bus pass or a subway card and get home that way instead of waiting for her mom to get off work, but she enjoyed the free time spent out of the house. Some days she had Academic Decathlon practice. Others she had mountains of homework.

Her favorite days, she had nothing at all and she could spend her time drawing students in crisis while they were forced to watch Captain America PSA’s in one of the spare classrooms. Today was one of those days.

Today was also different, because there was a boy here that wasn’t a part of the usual detention crowd. His features were distorted, like Michelle was looking at him through some kind of foggy glass, which was a stark contrast to the extreme detail the rest of the scene was in. 

As PSA Captain America droned on, the kid seemed more and more annoyed with every word. 

“So,” the star-spangled man began, “you got detention. You screwed up. You know what you did was wrong, the question is: how are you going to make things right? Maybe you were trying to be cool…”

Despite the fuzz, Michelle could see the boys left eye twitching in what she could only assume was suppressed annoyance. It made a great drawing, and she wasted no time in sketching it out.

“...but take it from a guy who's been frozen for 65 years, the only way to really be cool is to follow the rules.”

This seems to really piss annoyed guy off, because he immediately snatches up his bag and speed walks out of the room like a soccer mom who just got told her son is benched for the game. She hears him say something suspiciously like “I don’t need to hear this from a war criminal whose ass I beat,” but that's too much to unpack so she just turns back to her sketchbook. 

 Oh well, Michelle can just go back to drawing Coach Wilson, who looks more than bored that he is on detention duty.

Annoyed guy ignores Coach Wilsons half-hearted “Hey, where are you going? Get back here,” although Wilson’s reaction to him leaving was so delayed, annoyed guy might not have heard him. 

It's only then that Coach seems to notice Michelle for the first time. “Why are you here? You don’t even have detention.”

“Oh, oh I know, I just like coming in here to sketch people in crisis,” Michelle smirks, turning her sketchbook for Coach to see. “That’s you,” she laughs, enjoying the bewildered look on Wilson’s face.  

She thinks back to the annoyed guy. She feels like she remembers him from something, Decathlon maybe, but he wasn’t in the recent competition, and she feels like she would remember if he was.

Michelle wakes up confused.

|

“That’s odd,” Ned comments, face scrunching up in what Michelle assumes is concentration. Maybe Ned is trying to remember if Decathlon had a secret forgotten member or something. 

“Yeah, and it gets weirder, because you're in the next one, so if you don’t remember it, this might be awkward.”

Ned grabs another cookie from the stack Michelle brought over and grins, “alright, give it to me.”

“Do you remember the end of Sophomore year, when I got appointed as team captain for Academic Decathlon?”

“It would be hard to forget; wasn’t that the first time you officially called the team your friends?” 

“This dream starts there,” Michelle continues, expertly ignoring Ned’s question.

|

The team is clapping for Michelle, their new team leader, after Liz’s unfortunate leave. She doesn’t quite know how to feel. On one hand, woah, and on the other hand, Liz may not have been her closest friend but they did hang out enough to make it feel weird to replace her.

Looking around the faces of her team, she makes the decision that she had thought about making countless times but had never gone through with. Keeping her eyes trained to the table, and prepping for rejection, just in case, Michelle addressed the group as a whole.

“My friend’s call me Mj.”

Ned, the poor boy, didn’t seem to get the unspoken message like the rest of the team, who were now watching her with small smiles. 

“I thought you didn’t have any friends?”

“I didn’t,” is her reply, casting a small glance up at the faces of her team. This may have started some kind of emotion filled conversation where she admitted that she actually did care about each person on the team, but a phone buzzing filled the brief moment of silence before she could open her mouth. 

She looks up to the seat across from her to see annoyed boy looking down at his phone. In this dream, he seems significantly less annoyed, but just as blurry.

“I uh, gotta go..” The boy seems more confused than upset this time, but this is the second time the boy has abruptly left and Michelle wonders if it is going to become a pattern. She decided maybe this time she can throw him off his rhythm. 

“Hey, where are you going?” 

The boy looks up at her, bewilderment showing through the fuzz that distorts his face. He clearly isn’t used to being the center of attention like this. When he doesn’t give an answer, Michelle decides to continue toying with him.

“What are you hiding…?” Michelle thinks she said a name there, but the entire dream (memory?) whites out for a second, and she has no idea what was said. Guess we’re sticking to annoyed boy. 

After taking in his stunned face for a few seconds, memorizing it to add to her collection of crisis sketches later, Michelle takes pity and lets him leave. 

“I’m just kidding,” she laughs, “I don’t care.” She waves him a quick bye before turning to the rest of the team to explain the plan for practices. She wakes up as he exits the room. 

|

“That one wasn’t very long, or even very eventful, but it’s the first time I remember actually interacting with him.”

Ned seems to consider this for a minute. “First time?”

“Yeah, well we seem much closer after that dream. Like, weirdly close.” Michelle shifts her focus to a knot in the wood that makes up the table. “I think I had feelings for him? I think we may have dated.”

Ned’s eyes widen. “Dated? Shouldn’t at least one of us remember this guy then?”

“Yeah, its strange, but I think it’s explained later in the dreams because-” 

Before she can finish her sentence, Michelle is cut off by a customer coming into the cafe. As great as talking to Ned about her dreams is, because he looks at her like he is genuinely interested and not at all like she is going insane, she doesn’t want to lose her job. 

She quickly walks over to the counter and welcomes the customer in, taking her order. One glazed donut and a hot coffee later, the woman is paying and heading back out the door, giving Michelle a chance to return to her conversation.

She makes sure to grab two warm cups of coffee on her way back to the table, black for her and way too much creamer for Ned.

“Ew,” he comments, “how can you drink it with nothing added? It’s so bitter.” 

“I guess it’s because I’m not a loser who needs their coffee to be 80 percent creamer like both of you.”

To their credit, the teens don’t freeze up this time, instead just awkwardly coughing and abruptly changing the topic like the slip up didn’t happen. 

“So you remember our trip to Europe? The one with Mysterio? He was there too, and I’m pretty sure that trip is when we started dating…”

Michelle trails off, clearly leaving something unsaid. Ned has believed her so far, but this is where her dreams get so much weirder, so she doesn’t know for sure that he won’t call bullshit. 

Luckily, Ned doesn’t seem to notice her hesitation, or maybe he’s just being nice and letting her stall. 

“So it all started when we got that free time to walk around, you know might before disaster struck for the first time on that trip?” 

|

Michelle is just turning the corner when she catches sight of annoyed kid, who doesn’t look annoyed at all for once. Maybe she should start calling him Kid, with a capital K, in her head so she doesn’t have to change his name for every emotion he experiences. 

“Boh!” she exclaims, falling into step with him. He quickly hides a bag behind his back, clearly not expecting her to see him with it. 

They begin to walk down the crowded street, “What?” 

“Boh,” she continues, “it’s the most perfect word in the world, Italians created it and I just discovered it.” 

It was truly an amazing word. It just felt like the word was made for her. It could mean so many things! It could mean I don’t know, get out of my face, I don't know AND get out of my face. It was the best thing Italy ever created, except for maybe expresso. She tells Kid all that and he seems genuinely impressed.

I mean, his face is a bit hard to concentrate on because of the fuzziness, but Michelle has always been good at reading people and he seems impressed so she’s going with that. 

One of those scammers approaches the two as they walk. They have them in pretty much every tourist spot. Some person will come up to you and hand you a rose or something else of the kind. They literally force it into your hand and then aggressively tell you that you need to pay for it, refusing to take it back when you try to hand it to them.

Normally, Michelle will kindly tell the scammer where they can shove the rose, but today she had been armed with a new power that she intends to use to her full ability. The power of boh. 

“Boh,” she smiles at the scammer, waving her hand in a shooing motion. He visibly deflates before walking off to find his next victim. 

“Woah,” Kid breathes out, and Michelle can tell he is thoroughly impressed with the power she now possesses. 

“Boh is my new superpower,” she explains. “It’s the anti-aloha. I was born to say this word.”

Finally shifting her attention to the bag that she had kindly been ignoring for Kid’s sake, she finally asks the question she’s been wondering for the past few minutes. 

“So, what's in the bag?”

Kid immediately flounders before realizing he, too, can possess the power of boh, and embracing his new power, tilts his head to the side and shrugs out a simple “boh.”

Huh. 

“Nice.”

|

“I think that’s when I first really realized that I liked him. Like, I knew before but I didn’t know until then.”

“Yeah?” Ned asks.

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you found someone,” Ned smiles. “Even if we don’t know much besides your dreams.”

“Thanks Ned.”

“You’re welcome. Wait. Did you just call me Ned? I’m not a loser anymore?”

“Don’t get used to it, loser.” 

Ned can’t stop his grin. “So do you two get together in the next dream or what?”

|

Michelle is pacing her hotel room, still dressed in her nice outfit from the Opera she was supposed to be attending that night before everything went wrong. Most of her classmates had changed into more comfortable clothing already, but she was worried about Kid. 

This had nothing to do, of course, with her massive crush on the guy, or the fact that she’s actually 67 percent sure that Kid is secretly Spider-Man. Of course not. The details to this theory are escaping her mind at the moment, but she is going to blame it on whatever is making Kid’s face so blurry. 

When she finally hears him in the hall she breathes a sigh of relief, before opening her door.

“Where were you?” 

“Uhm, I got lost.” Was the reply Kid gave, clearly not even trying to form a believable excuse. 

Unsure how else to respond, Michelle decided that awkward small talk was the way to go. Why would she do this? Especially when she is not a people person and outright despises small talk? Once again, she is going to blame it on the massive crush she definitely doesn’t have on the guy.

Or the white button up shirt he’s wearing with the top two buttons undone. 

“We were worried about you.”

Kid lets out a soft “oh,” clearly unsure what exactly to say to that.

Michelle carries on, mostly just saying words to keep this conversation going at this point. “Good thing you’re back…” 

Luckily, Kid seems to be just as awkwardly stumbling through this conversation as she is, responding with a simple “yeah.”

“So much for Paris, right?”

“Would have been fun.”

“Yeah. Night.”

“Night.”

Michelle quickly closes her door after that, content to lay down and overthink the situation for a bit. When that doesn’t work, she walks to the door to leave her room, just to find Kid standing right on the other side of the door.

Right after they just ended their awkward conversation. Well, this isn’t really awkward or anything. 

“Hey…” 

Kid shuffles his feet a bit, clearly gathering the courage to say something back.

“Uh, look, uhm, I’m not ready for this trip to be over yet and I kind of want to do something fun that's not on the itinerary or planned or with Mr. Harrington-”

And oh my god is Kid asking her out? Like, for real? 

“Yes.”

“Yes, like you wanna go?” 

“Yes.”

Kid visually perks up and Michelle can’t help the way her heart speeds up a bit at his excitement. 

“Ok, awesome,” he says, “uh, I’ll see you outside in ten minutes?”

“Meet me outside in five minutes,” Michelle counters, secretly doing a little victory dance in her head. Not that she would ever admit to doing something like that out loud. That would be ridiculous. 

Five minutes later finds them outside, both now in more comfortable clothing, though Michelle will admit she misses the white shirt. Only to herself of course. Because there's nothing going on here. Of course not. 

Now, Michelle had never been on a date in her life. To be honest she isn’t even sure that this is a date in the first place. So she does what anyone would do in a situation like this. She panics.

“You know, they used to execute people on this bridge? They would like, put them in a basket and drown them in the water. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” 

Their hands accidentally brush and Michelle immediately pulls her hand away and holds it to her chest. Before it can become awkward, Kid fills the silence. 

“Look, there’s this thing that I’ve been wanting to talk to you about for awhile.”

“Yeah?” 

“It’s our last night in Europe and I had this plan that I wanted to tell you.. I’m just gonna tell you. Uh. Mj I’m-”

Sensing the way the poor guy is freaking out, Mj decides to throw him a metaphorical bone.

“-Spider-Man.” She finishes for him. 

“What-”

“That’s what you’re gonna say, that you’re Spider-Man.”

Kid shakes his head, “no… I’m not Spider-Man”

“I mean, I’ve been watching you for like a while now and it’s kind of obvious”

“I’m not Spider-Man, I mean what would make you think that I was Spider-Man?”

Kid, Maybe Spider-Man, is clearly freaking out a bit. Which is the kind of reaction Michelle would expect from someone who is definitely Spider-Man. Jackpot. Unfortunately her head spins for a second and she misses whatever name she called him in her response. Figures. 

“...Washington?”

“Yeah..?”

“The fact that you like disappear out of nowhere? For no reason?”

“No, that was - I was sick. Remember? I had my- the tummy?”

“You know Susan Yang thinks you're a male escort?”

Maybe Spider-Man seems a bit baffled at that, “What? Of course I'm not a male escort.”

“Well then you're Spider-Man.”

Despite the cold hard facts Michelle is serving him, Peter seems content to deny, deny, deny. 

“I'm not Spider-Man at all.” 

Michelle has had about enough with him at this point. Time to pull out the more pressing stuff. 

“What about tonight? You snuck off, and you fought that thing. I saw you.” 

“You can't have seen me because I'm not Spider-Man. And also, on the news, it was the Night Monkey.”

Right. Of course, how could she be so stupid. Peter can’t be Spider-Man because the fucking “Night Monkey” was out tonight. It's not like the Night Money suit is just a black Spider-Man suit or anything. Jesus Christ. 

“The Night Monkey?”

“Yeah. That's what it said on the news, and the news never lies.”

“Night Monkey. Okay.”

Time to pull out the big guns, Michelle thought. You see, earlier a device of some kind covered in webs had fallen from the sky while she was avoiding the fight. So naturally, she took it. Now, she had perfect evidence to convince Maybe Spider-Man to tell her the truth. 

Holding it out for him to see, she asked the million dollar question with a satisfied smile.

“Well, do the Night Monkey and Spider-Man use the same webs?” 

“ I mean, maybe. Maybe he's a Spider Monkey. Who knows? Were you only watching me because you thought I was Spider-Man?”

There's no way he’s actually still denying it. There’s actually no way. Wait. Back up. Abort. That last question? You see, any normal person would say “of course not I also have a crush on you” and confess their feelings. There’s no way in hell Michelle is going to do that.

“Yeah. Why else would I be watching you?”

Great. Well done Michelle. Really acing this romance thing. 

“Doesn't matter. Just thought that maybe -” 

Whatever he was about to say is cut off pretty quickly when the web-covered device, now revealed to be some kind of projector, turns on and shows an Elemental attacking the bridge. Reasonably, both teens freak out. 

Blinded by panic, Michelle tries to work out what exactly just happened and how a projection could be so realistic. Maybe Spider-Man questions who exactly would plan such a thing and collectively the two have an “oh shit” moment.

Maybe Spider-Man whirles around to face Michelle, now with a bit of a wild-panicky look in his eyes. 

“I am Spider-Man,” he finally admits, “and I’ve really messed up.”

Now, as much as Michelle had wanted him to admit that he was the web-slinging hero, it seemed a bit fake when he actually did admit the truth.

“Wait. You're being- you're being serious?”

Civilian Spider-Man hums affirmatively. 

“You're not joking with me? You're like, 100 percent serious? Because it's not funny.”

“No, I'm not joking.”

“Cause I was, I was only like 67 percent sure.” 

Michelle is definitely freaking out now. So much so, it takes the Webhead three tries to get her attention, before they can both rush out. 

“Mj! Look, I know you have a lot of questions, but look, we really have to get out of here, okay?”

Yeah that's probably a good idea. 

“Okay. Okay. I can't believe I figured it out!”

The dream shifts for the second time that night and she finds herself standing in Spider-Man and Ned’s hotel room. As if this night hasn’t already been crazy enough, Spider-Man takes off his shirt, presumably to change into a suit, right in front of her.

To reveal abs. Serious abs. Six pack abs. This is so much worse than the white shirt. Clearing her throat and turning around to face away from him, Michelle silently allows herself to freak out. As if one crazy revelation wasn’t enough for one night, several more suddenly get dropped on her. 

Apparently not only had Spider-Man given Mysterio, Beck, glasses with access to killer drones, but he had also almost used said killer drones to almost kill Brad. Wild. 

|

“Michelle, your potential boyfriend slash guy we somehow maybe forgot is SPIDER-MAN?”

Michelle quickly jumps up to slap her hand over her friend's mouth, but luckily the cafe was empty anyways so it didn’t really matter. His reaction was an understandable one, after all he was probably Spider-Man’s biggest fan. 

“Listen, I know you probably hate me or think I’m going crazy or-”

Michelle is surprised when her rant gets cut off early by Ned moving across the table to sit next to her in the booth and giving her one of the biggest hugs in her life. 

“You’re not crazy. This situation is crazy. The fact that Spider-Man might be your boyfriend is crazy. But you aren’t, I promise.”

Wiping away tears she didn’t even realize were falling, Michelle returns the hug and mumbles into her best-friend’s shoulder. “Thank’s Ned.”

Ned simply smiles and takes a sip of his now luke-warm coffee. “Tell me more about these dreams of your Spider-Boyfriend.” 

“Well, remember when Spider-Man had that big fight on the bridge in London?”

“Mj, how could I forget? We were there when it happened! It was so cool!”

“Afterwards I went and talked to Spider-Man, without his mask on, and showed him the necklace that guy we were hiding with gave me. It had broken, like it is now,” Michelle continues, absently playing with the necklace she was still wearing, even now. 

“We talked, and then I kissed him. And then he kissed me. And then I think we started dating. It was crazy, Ned. I’m still freaking out and it has been months, Ned, months.”

“Wow,” Ned breathes out, “wow, ok, wow. That’s so cool. You and Spider-Man are dating. And he gave you that necklace. Cool cool cool cool cool. So cool.”

Michelle was usually a woman of many well thought out words. But honestly, “cool cool cool cool cool” summed up the situation pretty well in her opinion. 

Too bad the dreams start getting not so nice after that point. 

|

Unlike the previous ones, this dream begins in a series of flashes. 

Being surrounded by tons of people with cameras asking if she is Spider-Man's girlfriend. Being swung away with Spider-Man and Jameson, Spider-Man’s number one hater, balancing on the highest part of a bridge while Spider-Man and Ned freaked out. Swinging again, this time through the underground of New York. 

Climbing into Spider-Man’s bedroom window, meeting his aunt, closing the door on his nosy neighbor, driving to the police station, where Spider-Man was getting interrogated. Apparently, not only was Spider-Man’s identity revealed, but he was also being accused of murder?

Yeah, right. Because the vigilante who was given the name “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” by the public is definitely a murderer. Because that makes so much sense. God, sometimes it feels like Michelle is the only person with actual brain cells in New York. 

The dream finally stabilizes with her in an interrogation room. They are going to want her to speak. Good thing Michelle knows an unnaturally large amount about laws and how they work. 

“I want a lawyer.”

“Miss Jones-Watson-”

“Jones. I don’t go by Watson”

The interrogator seems a bit annoyed. 

“Miss Jones, why do you want a lawyer if-”

Interrupting once again, Michelle finishes his sentence, “If I have nothing to hide?”

“Exactly. Unless-”

“I’m actually guilty of something? I’m very aware of your tactics and my rights.”

She was also aware that the mirror to the right of her was actually glass with a person sitting on the other side. Michelle made sure to throw in a sarcastic wave at whoever was stuck being a scribe. 

“Just answer my questions. I’ve seen your file. You’re a smart, young woman with a bright future ahead of her. Why would you risk it all by getting involved with a vigilante like -”

Oh boy, they were really going to try this tactic on her? Good luck getting anything Agent WhateverHisNameIs. And once again with that annoying buzz blocking her memory from his name. That really sucked. 

Once again, the dream devolved into flashes. Michelle is on a call with Spider-Man. Then she is walking into school, which is surrounded by hundreds of reporters, fans and angered civilians. She blinks and she is on the roof, talking to a civilian Spider-Man about college and the crap they are saying about him in the newspaper. 

Suddenly she's at work, and Spider-Man is walking into the room holding up a letter from MIT. She, Spider-Man, and Ned all open their letters at the same time, excited and hopeful. All three of them are rejected due to “recent events.”

|

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

Ned has to collect himself. As the number one Spider-Man fan he would definitely know if something like that happened, right?

“Here's what we know,” he begins, “every other dream we know for sure happened because we remember those events. But none of this happened?”

“Yeah, that's what I thought. Because Spider-Man definitely hasn’t revealed his identity, he one hundred percent didn’t kill Mysterio, that was proven false, and both of us got accepted for MIT,” Michelle lists out, putting up a finger for each point. 

“That’s definitely odd, but something tells me it's just the beginning of a landslide of crazy events.” 

The way Ned phrases it, it sounds like a joke. But at this point, it's pretty obvious that there's truth in it. 

|

At this point, it is pretty clear that most of the dreams are filled up with lots of flashes, and not as many drawn out scenes. Michelle wonders if this is because of how much time she is spending with Spider-Man in the suit but without the mask. 

Maybe not knowing Spider-Man’s identity but dreaming of knowing him outside of the mask was messing with her head. Clearly she wasn’t supposed to know what she did about him. 

First she finds herself in some kind of snow filled building, talking to a man who could only be described as being a wizard. Then, in a blink she is in a run-down looking basement being introduced to a… metal octopus?

She and Ned immediately begin working to help Spider-Man. First this means researching potential villains that could be loose in the city, and it evolves into watching spiderman swing through a phone taped to the outside of his suit. 

Eventually the dream stabilizes out again. She and Ned are sitting at Ned’s kitchen table. Ned is frantically waving his hands around to emphasize his point as he says “I just wish… I just wish we could see him.”

Sparks temporarily appear in the air, startling the two.

“...Ned?”

“Yeah?”

“Do that again.”

“Yeah. I just wish we could see him.”

More sparks appear and Michelle immediately stands, Ned quickly joining her. I mean, sure, Michelle had seen Ned slip Dr. Strange's magic ring onto his hand earlier that day, but she didn’t realize he actually could do magic. Clearly Ned didn’t know this either, because, beginning to freak out, Ned tries again to make a portal. 

“I just wish we could see -” 

Once again, the name escapes her. Stupid brain, failing her once again. What didn’t fail was the portal. Suddenly, it opened up to reveal… Spider-Man? But not their Spider-Man. Something was different. He was wearing a different suit, and he sounded a bit different too. He seemed nice enough, however. 

Waving, this Spider-Man addresses the room with a simple “Hi!” Unfortunately he still scared Ned’s Lola, so he quickly tries to recover the situation.

“No, no, no... it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m a nice guy.” To help his point, he pulls off his mask, to reveal… an average guy. From what Michelle can tell, he does look like he could be a variant of her Spider-Man. 

Now, even dream Mj realized pretty early on that it was going to become confusing if she continued to refer to her Spider-Man and this Spider-man both as “Spider-Man.” So, once she realized that she could see this guy's face, she decided to use her pro naming skills to name this guy. 

To her, this guy looked like an Andrew. So that was what she was going to call him.  

“Okay…” Andrew continued.

If she had more time to think, maybe she could have come up with something better. But she did not have more time to think, and there was a random man in Lola’s kitchen that may or may not be a variant of her boyfriend. So, the best she could do was ask, “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Peter Parker.” 

Okay, so not named Andrew. That sucks, because usually Michelle is really good at guessing names and WAIT. Peter Parker. This guy is supposed to be a variant of her Spider-Man. And surely they would have the same name, right? 

So that means whatever force was making her forget her boyfriend must only affect this universe's Spider-Man. Which means all she had to do was look up Peter Parker and she could go from there. 

Unless that wouldn’t work? Maybe she wasn’t the only one who forgot him? Plus, this guy could be the exception, right? They might all still have different names. There was only one way to test that theory.

So, one bread-roll tossing and ceiling crawling conversation later, once Ned had opened another portal, and another Spider-Man variant had stepped through, Michelle made sure to make it the first question she asked him. 

“You’re Peter?”

And maybe by some stroke of luck, or maybe the universe was finally taking pity on her, this Spider-Man, who looked like a Tobey to her, said “Yeah. Peter Parker.” 

Michelle startled awake. 

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“So we have a name?” Ned asked, already booting up his laptop to start searching government records.

“Yeah, but what are the odds of finding this guy when I know his name and still can’t focus enough to figure out his face?”

Michelle was a lot of things, but optimistic wasn’t really one of them. “Expect disappointment,” she always said, “and you will never be disappointed.” And these odds looked especially bad. 

“Tell you what,” Ned offered, “I’ll head to the local library, and meet you back here at the start of your shift tomorrow to let you know if I find anything?” 

“That would be great,” Michelle smiled, “and if you don’t find anything today we can try again whenever I have another dream?”

Michelle doesn’t have a dream that night. Or the next one. Four days later finds her near the start of another long shift, serving coffee to a guy who introduced himself as Stan. 

Out the window, she can see Ned walking up to the building, walking in behind a disheveled looking brunet boy who can only be described as looking like a lost puppy. She waves to Ned, turning to take the customer's order. 

Ned sits at the counter, watching the interaction. 

“Can I help you?”

The boy flounders in a way that is familiar in a subconscious sort of way to Michelle. Finally he is able to answer with.

“Hi, um, My name is Peter Parker.”

Michelle and Ned share a quick glance, eyes wide, that Peter seems to miss in his nervousness. 

Huh. 

Well this was going to be interesting.