“Love of my life, you’ve hurt me,” Peter Parker sang, his voice echoing through the mostly vacant hallway. Those who had been locked out of their dorms--for some reason--watched as he twirled around a reluctant Michelle Jones. “You’ve broken my heart, and now you leave me.” His singing was intentionally bad to embarrass her. Loud for the sake of being loud.
“Let go of me,” Michelle laughed, peeling off Peter’s fingers from her own. “Hundreds of iconic songs in that movie and that was the one that stuck?”
He shrugged and picked her up, spinning around while saying, “Love of my life, can’t you see? Bring it back--”
The three of them--Peter, Michelle, and Ned--went to see Bohemian Rhapsody together. And unlike every other time, Ned sat in the middle. Michelle, before that night, had never seen the two boys fight each other for a seat. They were going back and forth, saying, “No, you sit next to Michelle.” At a point, she offered to sit in the middle, and was awarded with an outstanding “NO!”
Peter asked to walk her to her dorm afterwards. Ned gave him a wink and a pat on the back when he got into a separate taxi.
“What was up with you guys tonight?” Michelle asked, mid-air. He stopped singing and set her down.
Stuttering, he scratched the back on his neck. “Nothing. What do you mean?”
“I thought we had this unbreakable seating arrangement. Did I suddenly grow a hump on my back or something? Why didn’t you want to sit next to me?” At the very end of the hall was her dorm; she had sixty feet to get an answer from him. “And don’t do that thing were you stall the whole time. A straight answer today, Parker.”
“Ned said something earlier that-- I don’t know. Sorry about that.”
Michelle rolled her eyes. “And what did Ned say?”
“He said,” Peter started, playing with the lint on his sweatshirt. “He said something about how-- Like the way we act during a movie, he said that if he didn’t know us, he’d think we were a c-couple.”
“He’s delusional.”
Was he? The last movie they all saw together, Peter and Michelle shared a soda. That wasn’t that big of a deal, sure, but, because the movie was almost painfully boring, she fell asleep on his shoulder. When she woke up, his hand was resting on her waist. And the movie before that, Peter kept whispering things to her. Not anything important. Just jokes he thought of or how he would make that one scene better, or when the trailers were going, that they should see that movie together. “All three of us. Of course.”
“Of course,” Michelle had repeated, dismissing the small ping in her heart. Of course he didn’t want to go to the movies with just her. Whenever Ned canceled, so did Peter. He avoided being alone with her.
She had been harvesting a crush on him since freshman orientation. Four months ago, Peter bought her lunch and they sat down and had a real conversation. Michelle learned more about him than she ever did in high school, and for her, it ended up sucking. She never thought that she would dream about the day when Peter Parker would confess his feelings for her.
But, here she was. Alone with him, except for the six drunk students who couldn’t open their doors. (Knowing Peter, he was probably going to help them inside after he dropped her off.)
Peter looked like he had gotten hit when she mentioned how delusional Ned was. “Yeah, no, of course he is. ‘Course. And then he was like, ‘Well, you two should be a couple.’ I let him get into my head and it made things weird. Sorry, MJ.”
“No big deal,” Michelle shrugged, and they were finally at her dorm. She swallowed the lump in her throat, tapped her fingernails on the door handle, and got the courage to say, “Could you imagine what we would be like together?”
He furrowed his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“You’re this eternal optimist, saving the world one term paper at a time, and I’m pretty much your opposite. We would bicker all the time,” Michelle tried convincing herself, hopefully playing it off as a joke.
“Opposites attract,” Peter smugly said. He leaned on the wall, incredibly close to Michelle, just gazing at her. She didn’t know what to say.
Michelle turned to unlock her door, and then pushed it open. “Gwen must be with Harry,” she told Peter. “Do you want to come in?”
“Uh…” His face flushed.
“Peter, it’s just me. Gwen isn’t going to walk in with just her towel on like last time you and Ned were here. I think you’ll be okay.” Michelle walked inside, and Peter quickly followed behind her.
He looked around her side of the room while she took her jacket and shoes off. The last time Peter was in there was two months ago, when the Gwen incident occurred and he told her, “Nice towel,” out of sheer embarrassment. There were a few different things in her room--like the pile of candy wrappers Michelle was too lazy to throw away, and the picture on her bedside table.
“Oh wow,” Peter whispered as he picked it up. “Where did you get this?”
It was a picture of the two of them. Senior year, were co-captains of the Decathlon team, and for the third year in a row, Midtown Tech had won. When they did, Michelle launched herself into Peter’s arms. That was when she hadn’t had a single thought about being with him; it was a moment of pure friendship.
But now, looking at it with current context, Michelle had it there for other reasons than friendship.
“Your aunt. She invited me out for lunch a few weeks ago and gave it to me.” She threw a baggy sweatshirt on and sat crisscrossed on her bed.
“You go out to lunch with my aunt?” Peter took a seat, as well, at the end of the bed.
“It was one time. We do have plans for next Friday, though,” she giggled and watched as Peter rolled his eyes. “May is her own person, Peter. You do not have dibs on her just because she raised you.”
“I should,” he sarcastically grumbled. Peter looked over at her, his face turning serious. “MJ, what did you really mean by that comment earlier? Were you saying we wouldn’t be good together or you think I would be a bad boyfriend?” He stumbled over the word ‘boyfriend.’
“Of course you wouldn’t be a bad boyfriend. Remember how you treated Felicia? I’d kill to have a guy treat me like that.” She bounced around his first question, too afraid of what her mouth would want to say.
Peter nodded, scoffing, “Yeah, I remember.”
“And you and I are friends. I guess I haven’t really thought about it.” Lie.
“Friends like me and Ned, or friends like how I was friends with Felicia?”
Felicia was his first real girlfriend. Soon after Michelle realized her crush on Peter last year, Felicia met them in the library one day, asking about Michelle’s top. She quickly became comfortable around them, but mostly Peter. It killed her to watch Peter fall in love with her so fast. But, then, at some point in August, Felicia deleted all of her pictures with Peter on Instagram. When Michelle pressed him about it, he said it wasn’t a big deal.
She didn’t have an answer for his question. She knew what he meant.
“Do you want to know why Felicia broke up with me? You and I were doing our Oscorp internship together, and you were sleeping in the spare room at my house, and Felicia was convinced that I was cheating on her with you. Like, that one time she came to visit, and you were wearing my sweatshirt. That drove her crazy. Then she told me I should go for it with you.”
It was like Michelle was choking on her own tongue. She couldn’t speak, just sit and listen as her mind overloaded her with thoughts.
Peter continued, “And that got me thinking--Do I like you?”
He paused, waiting for her response. “Do you?” Michelle countered.
“I think so.” Peter audibly gulped, and nervously rubbed his palm with his thumb. “I like you, MJ.”
“I like you, too, Peter.”
A grin broke out onto his face. “What now? Wanna make out?” he jokingly proposed.
“Yes,” Michelle blurted.
She reached forward, pulling him towards her by his collar. Peter, at first confused and somewhat afraid, soon obliged, crawling to her side of the bed. In a fit of laughter, the two got comfortable with him hovering above Michelle, in between her legs. His hands rested on her lower back, and her’s around his neck.
Peter looked down at her with nothing except adoration, as if he thought she was the only girl in the world. “Are you sure?” he tried confirming. “There’s no going back from this.”
“It isn’t sex, Parker. Just kiss me, already.”
He leaned down and gently placed his lips against Michelle’s, as if he was testing the water. The kiss rapidly intensified, Peter taking control from Michelle, and Michelle willfully submitting. The awkward boy she knew in high school who was afraid to even talk to her had disappeared, and the more he tugged on her hair, or caressed her thigh, the more Michelle only knew one version of Peter Parker.
He kissed a spot on her neck, and a moan escaped her mouth. Peter laughed.
“What?” Michelle whispered, moving Peter’s head to look him in the eyes.
“I just never thought I’d get to hear that,” he confessed, continuing to kiss that spot over and over, taking pleasure in her uncontrollable noises.
If given the time, Michelle was ready to give everything to him that night. She was certainly ready, after a whole year of falling for him. (But did she really want to rush things?) When Peter’s hands creeped up underneath her shirt, she arched her back into him, and it felt like the first time a man had ever touched her. She had had sex before. It didn’t feel half as good as Peter’s fingertips on her back.
Then--he paused. Resting his forehead on her’s, Peter pulled back, squinting his eyes, like he heard something suspicious. “Is something wrong?” Michelle inquired.
“I think Gwen needs help unlocking the door,” he said, out of breath.
She listened for a second, and heard Gwen’s suppressed giggles and Harry Osborn’s loud shushing. “MJ is probably sleeping,” he slurred.
Michelle cursed, “Damnit. Continue this later?”
Peter eagerly nodded.
He slowly slid off her, stretching as he stood. “Alright, uh, see you, MJ.” He leaned forward, pecking her cheek.
Michelle stood up as well, walking him to the door and opening it for Gwen and Harry. Harry was swaying back and forth and Gwen was hysterically laughing, so Peter exchanged worried glances with Michelle. “I’ll get her to bed. You take Harry home?”
“Yeah, no problem.” Peter put his arm around Harry’s waist, holding him up, and started to walk away.
“Wait up!” Michelle yelled.
One more kiss.
Neither Harry or Gwen would remember it in the morning, so it wouldn’t matter anyways.
It wasn’t soft, and it wasn’t intense, it was something to tell Peter that it wasn’t a mistake. That she wanted it to continue come morning.
And when he kissed her back, for that one small second before Harry fell on his ass, she knew he understood.