Chapter Text
i. eighteen
Michelle grazes her combat boots against the raggedy welcome mat she picked out when she was eight years old and ignorantly blissful. It says No Place Like Home For the Holidays.
She scoffs.
Her heart feels heavy, the kind of familiar feeling that’s made her drag her feet down the halls of her dorm in Cambridge, through the wet and sloshy snow back in Queens, and right to her doorstep, just a few feet away from the confrontation she’s been dreading since the start of the semester.
She thinks he feels the same way.
They have always ridden one wavelength together, especially when it’s about their relationship.
It’s not that she doesn’t miss him. She does – very much, so much, too much that when she studies for her Intro to Sociology class, all she can think about is if Spider-Man’s going to live to see another day. It’s an ache that stays in the pit of her stomach, in the back of her head, and in the secret places in her heart that she only ever allowed Peter to visit.
The dull feeling follows her back into her childhood bedroom. She laughs at herself as if childhood didn’t end just six months ago when she delivered a top-notch valedictorian speech while Peter and Ned cheered her on from the front row of the football field.
She shimmies out of the thick layers she tucked herself into for travel, jackets thrown lazily on her old desk chair. Her parents aren’t home, Michelle finally checking her phone after commuting alone in the evening, too cautious to be distracted.
There’s an unread message from her mom:
Out shopping late. Leftovers in the fridge for dinner. Love you!
And there are several unread messages from Peter:
I can meet you at the station? Do you want me to?
Let me know when you’re almost home
Are you safe?
MJ?
The closer Michelle made her way back to Queens, the stronger the dread came crashing into her as she plops into her twin bed, untouched sheets empty and cold.
She starts typing, then stops.
He feels the same way, she thinks, she breathes, she repeats until it becomes true enough for her to find vindication in what she’s about to do.
I’m back home safe. No one’s home. Are you next door?
Michelle sends the message with tears in the corner of her eyes and a pounding in her chest. Heartbreak at eighteen is normal, and breakups don’t make the past relationship any less real. She knows what real love is. Hell, she learned what love is from the way Peter looks at her – looked at her.
But they haven’t seen each other since August, and she’s long past convincing herself that when they meet eyes again, it will feel the same.
There’s a light tap against her window, the same sound that used to make her entire body quiver in fear of opening the screen to a potentially beaten and bruised post-patrol Peter.
Now, the feeling is numb.
She quickly lifts herself up, tiptoeing in her own room like she isn’t supposed to be there anymore – like she’s a ghost of her old self, convinced that time in college is warped and different and set in an entirely different universe than her hometown.
She braces herself for the conversation she’s been planning on having since their FaceTime calls gradually stopped, since Peter accidentally dialed her while he was being brutally beaten by Doc Ock, since she realized that maybe she can’t handle the life of a superhero’s heroine, after all.
But then, the moment she finally catches his gaze through the dust-filled window–the moment Michelle believed would set in stone her decision to walk away from this before it’s too late–is the moment she decides to forget that the ache exists.
Peter is smiling, a goofy grin paired with bright eyes that fills her with the warmth she’d been missing – the warmth she thought had gone away, but in reality, she buried it beneath the hardships of starting a new life in Cambridge.
She slides the glass open. “Hey, bug boy. You could knock on the front door, you know.”
“I just got off duty,” he says, both hands placed behind him on the railing of the balcony. “Plus I barely used any powers to get here.”
“Just some basic wall-crawling?” she lifts her eyebrow, ignoring her conscience sending alerts down her spine as if she has her own spider-sense. He shrugs. She backs up further into her room allowing him space to come inside.
His presence fills up the room in the same comforting way it always has. Right now, Michelle’s a senior in high school again. Right now, it’s past midnight and she’s scrambling to her first aid kit and textbooks so that they can both catch up on Peter’s homework together.
Right now, she’s starting to remember why she can’t forget about the heavy feeling in her chest.
She’s taken by surprise at the feeling of his lips pressing softly against hers. When he pulls away, he lands another gentle kiss on her forehead. “I’ve really missed you.”
“I’ve really missed you, too.”
There’s a pain that starts in the pit of her stomach traveling through her body as Peter holds her in his arms, Michelle savoring the moment because something within her lets her know that it can be the last time she feels the blanket of safety that comes with Peter.
She slips out of his hold to pace around her room, pretending to not notice the slight fall of his eyes. He asks, “Parents last-minute shopping?”
Michelle snorts. “Yeah, always. You know how they are. Five days until Christmas and swarming the department stores with everyone else who procrastinated.”
“Christmas shopping sounds stressful,” he winces. “Luckily, I got my gift for you already.”
She turns around and squints. “You don’t celebrate Christmas.”
“But you do,” he shrugs. “I didn’t get you one last year, but you got me something for Hanukkah, remember? The–”
“Necklace, yeah,” she answers flatly.
Peter blinks, fingers fiddling with the bottom of his chain, the dog tag with Ben’s name embossed hidden underneath his telekinetic t-shirt. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says, turning back around, dragging her feet across the floor to sit on the edge of her bed. “I don’t-I don’t know.”
He follows her, placing himself softly by her side. Their thighs touch, and, even over the fabric, she misses what it’s like to be beneath these same sheets with him. She feels a shiver, the breeze coming in from the window left unopened and the view of the city’s horizon reminding MJ of the opportunities she’s yet to cease, the opportunities that might not come to her if she cages her heart in this one, tiny bedroom in Queens.
Peter’s next words surprise Michelle despite the fact that she’s been creating the exact assumption in her head. “This semester has been hard, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she lets out. “That’s… I think we need to talk. About things.”
“About us?” he asks. He pushes closer into her, both of them fighting the longing feeling they’d been waiting for since they departed at the train station at the end of last summer.
Things were different then. Hopeful.
Hopefulness is a funny, fleeting feeling, Michelle thinks.
“Yeah,” she sighs. “About us.”
From her peripherals, she watches Peter nod, slowly at first then furiously rapid. “I had a feeling.”
“Since when?”
“When your finals ended almost a week ago, but you didn’t want to come home until just a few days before Christmas.”
“Peter, that’s not–”
“It’s okay, Em. I get it. At least I think I do.” She hears the crack in his voice, the warmth that she felt before he walked inside slowly dwindling away like the wick of a candle reaching its end. “I can’t tell if it’s better that this doesn’t surprise me.”
Her ears rush with heated guilt.
She’s never been more devastated to be right.
He asks, “When did… when did you start having this feeling?”
Michelle sucks in her lips, licking them nervously. “You called me once during patrol. On accident. Maybe you landed on the ground and your suit dialed me or something, but I heard you getting hurt and… I just can’t handle being so far away from you and being afraid every single day, Peter.”
His hand lays gently on her thigh. She feels wrong for feeling the heat travel in between her legs. “I’m here with you. Right now.”
It doesn’t feel like it.
“But we won’t be in a couple of weeks. For a long time. I have plans, you know? I can’t– I can’t center them around New York.”
Around you.
“I’m not asking that from you.”
“But I know you’d want that. And you deserve someone who can give you that.”
“MJ,” he tries. She doesn’t respond, her nose wrinkling as she attempts to hold back tears. “Michelle.” The tears start to fall. “You’re the only person I ever think about.”
“That isn’t healthy,” she says.
“That’s not…”
“We’re young, Peter. We have so much of our lives ahead of us and,” she says, standing up again, ignoring Peter’s reach, their fingertips brushing before she steps away. “Maybe a break is okay. Maybe we’re meant to find ourselves before we…” She swings on her heels, witnessing the look on Peter’s face and feeling an immediate strike in her chest. Her throat feels thick and helpless. “I don’t know.”
He buries his face in the palm of his hands, elbows balancing on his thighs. He rubs his face quickly, shaking his head as if to wake up from a nightmare that MJ cast over him with no warning.
“My chest hurts.”
Because of me.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to say it now because I looked at your face and I realized I missed you so much more than I let myself,” she mumbles, walking closer to him again, sinking to her knees to the floor as she places her arms on his thighs, looking up at him. “I was going to wait to tell you. We can still spend the weekend together, Peter. I just– I felt too guilty to keep this feeling to myself the entire time.”
“Spend the weekend, and then what? You leave? We’re done?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense,” she whispers, tucking her head in her arms. She feels his hands card through her hair, fingers massaging her scalp.
His next breath is shaky. Silence, and then, “Okay.”
She looks up at him. He smiles at her. She asks, “Okay what?”
“Let’s just use this weekend to… to have a proper goodbye.” He brings one finger to her chin, lifting it up slowly. She follows his lead, lifting herself up from the carpet and leaning toward him, their lips touching once their faces are on the same level.
MJ pulls away before their tongues meet saying, “I don’t want you to hate me, Peter.”
“I’ll never hate you,” he declares, pulling her from the waist and into his lap. She places her legs on either side of him.
“This isn’t a good idea,” she says, panting at the way she grinds down on him. “I’m okay with it, but only if you’re okay with it.”
He presses an open-mouthed kiss on her neck, as she throws her head back from the friction. He mumbles into her, “I’ve had a lot of bad ideas.” The warmth from Peter comes back, traveling from her heart and turning into electricity at her center. “We’re young, MJ.”
Peter’s grip on her waist becomes tighter as he shimmies up the bed pulling her with him, an action that’s been done many times before, but this time feels definitive – a new beginning that starts with a farewell.
Fuck it.
She lets herself go, the tension in her chest flying away, allowing herself to be a stupid young adult for once in her life, forgetting about the consequences that will follow shortly after the weekend ends. Right now, she doesn’t care about the fallout even though she should. Right now, she feels the magic in their kisses and every other bad thing is forgotten if only for a moment.
“Peter,” she hisses as he bucks his hips against her.
“What, babe?” he asks as he continues to devour her skin, covering her in the worship that she’s certain he’s been saving since he stood on the platform of the station and watched her train leave. “Tell me what you want.”
Before she starts, he stops his movements. “Your parents are home.”
“Shit,” she says, shuffling out of the bed, standing up, and patting her hair down. She stares at Peter, arms resting behind his back and smiling. “You have to go home!”
He chuckles, a teasing tune in his throat. “Okay, okay.”
Michelle hears her dad call out from the living room, “Chelle, we’re home! Come give us some love.”
Her cheeks fill with heat watching Peter’s grin double in size. She blinks at him idly. “What?”
He walks over to the open window, laughing. “Nothing.”
“We can continue this tomorrow,” she says, arms folded across her chest. He walks up to her again, his lips lightly pressing her nose, both of them avoiding the continuation of the conversation that led up to desperate kisses.
“I still have your gift,” he whispers.
“MJ!” her dad calls again.
“I have to go, Peter,” she mutters.
“Okay, okay.” He stays still, and then he pulls her into a tight embrace, squeezing her softly as she feels him sniff her hair, and it takes everything within her to not break. He whispers, “Tomorrow.”
The angel on her shoulders continues to fight against it, continues to try to convince her to cut off the contact so she won’t have a hard time walking away. But the devil whispers promises in her ears that she knows won’t be kept–promises of still being friends, of civility after it’s all over.
“Tomorrow,” she agrees, taking the devil’s side.
She watches him hop out of the balcony and disappear, and then the countdown of this sight begins, Michelle mentally preparing herself for the last time he’ll wave goodbye.
The weekend flies by, and that last time comes too quickly.
They’re tangled in her bedsheets, beads of sweat on the edges of her face. He holds her from behind, and she feels protected, but she knows she can’t protect him when they’re apart.
Their breaths are synchronized and heavy like the weight on her chest that never seems to leave.
Peter’s the first to speak. “This is nice.”
It was.
“Yeah,” she whispers, a sharp inhale attempting to remove the lodge that’s growing in her throat. Peter had snuck in again after saying goodbye to her parents for Christmas Eve dinner that both he and May have attended since they became neighbors freshman year of high school.
She feels his lips press against the valley between her shoulder blades. “I have your gift.”
Michelle breaks from his hold and faces him.
“What is it?” she smiles softly, avoiding the sadness in Peter’s eyes. He turns around, diving over the edge of her bed as she hears a wrinkle of wrapping paper. It’s a small paper bag decorated with glittery snowflakes.
“I realize now that you might not like it,” he says. “At least not anymore. So you don’t have to wear it or anything.”
She curses herself for almost forgetting about their agreement, still lost in the moment.
Michelle holds her glare at the paper bag for a beat, refusing to look at Peter until she opens it, and maybe even after then.
Her hands slip through the tissue paper, fingers touching a chain and intricate glass.
“Oh,” she breathes, heart pounding furiously in her chest, feeling more caged than ever.
It’s her favorite flower. She looks up and frowns. “This looks expensive. I don’t know, Peter. It just doesn’t feel right knowing–”
“I can’t return it. And, um, I think keeping it for myself will hurt more.”
Her lips tremble as the black dahlia lies in the palm of her hands, shiny and new. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to,” he says, fingers brushing against the chain on her skin. “May I?”
She nods, removing the sheets on the bed to sit up and turn around. She feels Peter’s hands travel across her skin to tuck her hair to the side. He brings the necklace to her front, wrapping it around her neck before clasping it. He kisses her shoulder and says, “Since you got me one last year. Call it even?”
MJ scoffs fondly. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
When she turns around, she kisses him one more time, and this time their tongues take no time to find each other, twisting and dancing, desperately clinging onto each other.
His phone on the bedside table begins to blare like sirens. Michelle knows exactly what this means, laughing at the irony of their goodbye being cut off by the very thing that caused it in the first place.
“Duty calls,” she says as he pulls away.
He frowns. “I’m sorry. I have to.”
“I know,” she nods. “I have to go too, eventually. Back to Harvard.”
And that’s why this can’t work anymore.
“Yeah,” he mumbles. “The necklace looks great on you. You look really pretty.”
“And therefore I have value?” she smirks at him. His cheeks flush. “I’m just messing with you.”
The alert keeps ringing, like an interruption that can’t be avoided. Peter grabs his clothes from the corner of her room, slipping them on quickly, his hair still tousled from their tryst in the sheets.
With one leg out on the balcony and his body bent down to move through, Peter pauses. “I’m sorry. I…”
“Me too.” She walks over to him.
“When are you leaving?” he asks.
“Before New Year’s Eve, but I have to spend the rest of the time–”
“Upstate with your grandma.”
“Yeah,” she says, a tight-lipped grin across her face.
“Goodbye, MJ,” he says. “We’re still–”
“Friends,” she finishes his sentence, hearing the devil’s sinister laugh in the back of her head, feeling like a fool for making herself believe this to be true.
“I love you,” he says. She bites the inside of her cheek. He shakes his head saying, “I’m sorry.”
The alert continues to ring, each blaring sound of the alarm intensifying. “Go get ‘em, Tiger.”
In one sudden movement, he’s out of her sight, crawling back into his apartment to change into his night shift attire. She sits back down at the edge of her bed, the lingering smell of Peter’s body still keeping her warm.
And then her heart breaks entirely, a flood of hurt and anger bleeding through her veins like a necessary evil.
And then she cries, and cries, and cries.
There’s a knock on her door, a soft sound that has the superpower to patch up any pain that Michelle feels. She catches her breath, “Mom?”
She hears a creak as the door swings open, her mom frowning with worry. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
Her mother looks out at the open window and back to Michelle’s burning red eyes. “Peter came by again?”
Michelle nods, no longer fighting the urge to fall apart. Through her rough sobs she says, “I thought this was supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year.”
“Honey,” her mother whispers, pulling her into a hold, kissing the top of her head. “When you’re young… heartbreaks might feel like the end of the world, but you will learn to carry on. Whether or not things work out with Peter again. I promise.”
And those two simple words–the strength of this new promise from her mother–knocks down the heavy, conflicting feelings that have been weighing down Michelle’s shoulders.
Her fingers trace the glass-cut necklace, cradled in her mother’s arms, still soaking in this goodbye knowing that the next time the holidays come around, nothing between her and Peter will feel the same.