Chapter Text
Been saying yes instead of no
“ Fuck .”
“Yeah,” Michelle pants, Peter’s mouth on her neck and his hand on her waist– bringing her closer to him as she wraps an arm around him.
Of all the places that Michelle would’ve thought she would find herself in today, making out with her ex-boyfriend in the back of the prop room for a spring theater class wasn’t one of them.
His hands are on her waist, lithe fingers bring her in closer as his tongue slips into her mouth.
Is this really happening? Michelle thinks as rifles a hand through the hair at the back of his neck, thinking of what got her into this situation in the first place.
THREE HOURS EARLIER
“Alright, you got this. You got this. You got this,” Betty Brant says to herself, Michelle smirking as Betty glares at her.
“What?”
“Why are you freaking out about this? You’ve done this how many times before?” Michelle asks, Betty rolling in her eyes as she continues to do trills in her voice– motioning her hands before her in a way that just makes Michelle laugh. “You know that’s not how that works right?”
“I’m finding my center, Michelle ,” Betty says with her eyes closed before looking at her and making a face. “Be nicer to me, I’m the one who gets to decide casting.”
“As if you’d choose anyone but me to play the lead,” Michelle teases, confident in her ability and of the acting pool at ESU. “You won’t want anything to ruin your show.”
“You’re annoying, you know that? The worst human being alive,” Betty grouses, joking in her expression even if her words are harsh– Michelle laughing as Betty takes a deep breath.
“You love me so much,” Michelle teases, glad that despite all the ways that life has dragged her around that she found herself back in Betty Brant’s orbit.
She hadn’t been great friends with Betty when she knew her in high school until after the Blip– being dead for five years and surviving a European trip where a deranged man tried to kill them is a hell of a bonding experience– but they lost touch when Michelle went to Harvard, a separation that at the time Michelle had been all too eager to begin.
She’d enjoyed her time at Harvard even if a year there proved to her that it wasn’t the right fit, the intensity of the classes and the distance from her family and friends from New York being the exact thing she needed during her freshman year but started to weigh on her during her sophomore.
Michelle made the move back to the city by junior year, the complaints that she heard from her family of transferring from an Ivy League to a state school like ESU being waved away with the claim that this wasn’t just better for her and her changing desires for what she wanted out of life but was also significantly cheaper.
The truth of it was that Michelle missed her home– missed her family but more missed the city, missed being in and around the place that made her into the person that she is. She’d been so consumed with getting away from the city, in part to get away from him and the oversized expectations and feelings that she didn’t know what to do with, that it drove her to a place that wasn’t where she needed to be.
Now, in her last semester of her senior year and with a degree in musical theater just within her grasp, Michelle takes a beat right along with Betty to look around at the space in front of her and what stands between her and graduation.
One last spring showcase. Though Michelle is joking with Betty, she also knows that it’s the truth– this is her chance to shine as the lead, to put her in the position of being on stage not just for the thrill of creating a version of a character that she can be proud of but to be a walking advertisement for her talents.
Michelle already has a plan for what she’ll do post-grad, using her professor’s connections to tell her where she needs to go and ready to put her nose to the grind when it came to auditions. But this, the spring showcase, was a perfect place to bring her that much closer to getting the chance to show what she could do.
Talent scouts and agents might find themselves in the audiences of the performances for Julliard, NYU and Columbia but Michelle knew that ESU was just as likely to get a chance– especially when the current Broadway darling had graduated from ESU just three years before.
Michelle takes that beat with Betty and looks out over the mostly empty auditorium, a deep breath that’s cut off when her eyes land on the last person that she would ever expect to see here .
She sees him see her and he fucking smirks. She looks away before she can do something stupid.
(The last time she saw Peter Parker had been in Boston. He’d taken the cheap bus up for the weekend and it made her feel so much older than she was, to have her boyfriend visiting from out of town. In reality, they were barely 18, barely managing college life, barely speaking. Trying to make it work long distance, pretending that everything was fine when it very much wasn't.
The last time she saw Peter Parker they were both trying not to cry, in the middle of South Station, lost and confused and sad. She kissed him and told him to have a good trip, and he told her good luck on her quiz next week, and they held each other for what felt like hours because it was over. They were over. They had tried, but sometimes -
Sometimes that wasn’t enough.)
“Whoa, is that Peter Parker?” Betty asks. Michelle ignores her, opting instead to say hi to Charlie, one of the other majors, who had come in from the shop. He’s followed by Abraham, a design student, and Michelle takes this opportunity to chat with them about the upcoming showcase auditions while more students file in and they wait for O'Rourke.
But Betty - traitor - starts chatting with Peter, because of course she does, because Betty hasn’t spent the better part of two years avoiding him. Betty hadn't had to explain - over and over and over again - that transferring to ESU had nothing to do with Peter; Betty hadn't wondered if, deep down, that hadn't been part of her motivation. Betty has no reason to avoid Peter, but Michelle? Michelle has moved on, she has grown, she is not the same person she was the last time she saw Peter Parker, but fuck if being this close to him didn't take her right back to being 18 and in love and -
She can’t avoid Betty , though, and if they’re going to be in class together she’s going to have to say something to him. Might as well get it over with - rip the bandaid off, so to speak.
“Hey,” she says, taking in Peter for real.
He looks good, goddamn him. He’d been fit before but now it’s - he seems more lived in, somehow. More settled in himself. His hair is a bit longer than it had been, and she knows he can’t possibly be taller but the way he’s carrying himself is -
Fuck.
“Hey, MJ.” He smiles, and it brings the butterflies, and she’s too old for this shit.
“I go by Michelle now.”
He raises an eyebrow.
"OK. Michelle."
Charlie has joined them and looks between Peter and Michelle.
"You know each other?"
"We went to high school together," she says before Peter can answer. "Do you know each other?"
"Jewish summer camp," Peter supplies. "Plus freshman bio."
"Still a chem major?" She asks him. He shakes his head.
“Biomechanical engineering,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. There’s a story there, she gathers. She remembers when she was the one who heard those stories.
“That makes sense.”
Betty and Charlie have wandered off, leaving Peter and Michelle, but she feels less like running away now, instead finding herself drawn closer to him. He looks around the theatre and smiles softly.
"This isn't where I expected to run into you," he says.
"Been expecting to run into me?" she teases.
"Hoping, maybe." He bumps his shoulder against hers, a patently platonic move that sends a spark through her for being the first bit of contact they've had in years. She wonders if he felt it, too. "I've heard you're killing it here. With this stuff."
She smiles despite herself.
"You've heard, huh?"
"Ned came to that one in the fall. I don't remember what it was."
"You didn't wanna join him?"
"Wasn't sure you'd wanna see me," he says honestly.
"Peter - "
But she doesn't get to finish her sentence because right then Professor O'Rourke comes breezing into the theatre, and she and Peter step away from each other as class begins.
Betty shoots her a look, which she ignores.
(She's glad she didn't get to finish her sentence. She has no idea what she was going to say.)
Michelle loves theatre classes because they’re so different from typical classes. Not only is the space different - a different energy in a theatre, on a stage, in a rehearsal room - but the point is to be collaborative, to work together. There is no lecture, no problem set. Theatre games to loosen them up and bring them closer to each other, acting exercises, movement exercises. Her theatre classes demand a lot from her, but they engage her whole self - mind and body. It’s so different from her environmental studies classes, and she loves it.
Having Peter in this space is different. O’Rourke starts class with his spiel about how “we’re an ensemble here. We do not perform for one another, we rehearse . We work together .”
Michelle knows a thing or two about working with Peter, and as O’Rourke gets them started with a game - tag, where you’re only safe if you’re holding onto someone else, and the person who’s “it” can throw a bomb to disperse groups - she finds herself constantly right next to him.
The whole class is all smiles and giggles as they revert back to this childhood game, many of them stripping off sweatshirts and flannels as the heat in the theatre kicks in and the blood gets flowing from running around, and Michelle doesn’t miss how Peter’s shirt rides up to expose a sliver of skin as he takes off his own sweatshirt, tossing it in the general direction of his backpack.
(She still has a sweatshirt she stole from him, way back when.)
She’s running from Brad Davis - another major - whos'about to tag her when Peter appears out of nowhere, grabbing her hand and pulling her close. Brad reverses direction and she turns to thank Peter and he’s so close -
And then the game ends, and O’Rourke is telling them to grab yoga mats from the prop closet off stage. The rest of class is mostly breathing exercises, movement exercises, and a primer on Stanislavsky.
As he dismisses them, Michelle offers to put the mats away - hoping that having a task, and an excuse, will keep her from doing something stupid, like talking to Peter more - except Peter volunteers to help and Betty - traitor - immediately leaves (but not before winking at Michelle).
“This stuff is no joke,” Peter says lightly as he gathers mats. She nods.
“Thinking of dropping?”
“Are you kidding? This was the most fun I’ve had in a college class. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
She’s not looking at him, instead walking to the prop room with her arms full of yoga mats, trying not to blush or think too closely about Peter and his proximity.
“Unless you want me to?”
She turns and he’s standing right there , brow furrowed and eyes concerned.
“What?”
“I didn’t - I’m not here because of you.”
“Same,” she blurts. He looks confused. “At ESU. I’m not - ”
“I didn’t think you were.” He moves - somehow, impossibly - closer. “I’m just trying to fill my arts credit but if it’s weird for me to be here I’ll find something else.”
“It’s not weird,” she says, breathier than she meant to.
“No?”
She makes the mistake of looking at his lips and fuck he’s close. And hot. And him . And they’re alone in the theatre, in the prop room, him between her and the door, impossibly close and smelling like sweat and soap and he glances down at her lips -
And she honestly doesn’t know who moves first but she’s kissing him, he’s kissing her, hands tangling in his hair as she breathes him in, and there’s no finesse, really, but the muscle memory, God , she remembers this, she remembers him .
“ Fuck .”
“Yeah,” Michelle pants, Peter’s mouth on her neck and his hand on her waist– bringing her closer to him as she wraps an arm around him.
Of all the places that Michelle would’ve thought she would find herself in today, making out with her ex-boyfriend in the back of the prop room for a spring theater class wasn’t one of them.
His hands are on her waist, lithe fingers bringing her in closer as his tongue slips into her mouth.
She is so screwed.