Chapter Text
MONDAY
"Fuck, Michelle, almost there!"
She sucks a little harder, the glimpse of the clock a few moments ago suddenly making her ready for this to be over. Her source follow-up requires her to be across town by 8 am and she hadn't planned to still be on her knees this close to midnight, but Josh had given her two quick orgasms and she's all about an equitable exchange when selecting her sexual partners.
He seems nice enough, hadn't blinked when she'd turned down his offer of a drink but accepted his company, and when she'd decided halfway to orgasm number two that she didn't want him to fuck her in all the ways he'd slurred prettily into her ear, he'd respected her decision like a gentleman.
With a quick twist and a squeeze, Josh finishes into the tissue she'd grabbed while they manoeuvred in the private toilet cubicle.
She's already haphazardly cleaned herself up and is pulling the scrap of lace that is apparently deemed underwear back up her legs, so with a flutter of her fingers, she leaves Josh to sort himself out and struts back into the suffocating atmosphere of DC's nightlife.
She slips easily through the preppy crowd to the exit, exchanging pleasantries with the bouncer who shakes her hand and says, "Good to see you, Michelle. Thanks again for that book loan!"
"Take care, Marcus! Next time I wanna see a hundred pictures of your new baby, okay? I'm gonna count them!"
She's only met Marcus twice, but it's always good to make friends with the bouncers.
Plus his kid is gonna be so fucking cute.
TUESDAY
She doesn't waste a second of the three-hour train ride, typing up the outline of her article in record time. She's got four credible sources and the story is gonna cause a massive political stir, but so far she's managed to fly under the Senator's radar. Which is almost a pity. The week doesn't quite feel right without some kind of threat of bodily harm.
She rolls her shoulders back as the train begins to pull into New York, something settling within her as she takes one last breath of stale train air. If there's one thing she can count on her home state to do, it's threatening her with bodily harm.
Twilight has already set over the city when she emerges from the subway. A podcast chats mindlessly into one ear as she walks the well-trodden path to the crapbox apartment she shares with her cousin, Tia, and the neighbour's cat who seems to have adopted them. She doesn't particularly enjoy her living arrangements, but Tia is clean and works almost as many hours as Michelle does, so they don't step on each other's toes.
It also means they can afford a semi-decent space that allows for a bit of disposable income. It's a relationship built mostly on convenience with a dash of rebellion, since their mothers can't stand each other after The Incident of '04.
The apartment is as empty as she expected, so Michelle allows herself a moment to collapse onto the lumpy monstrosity they call a couch, scratching behind Anastasia's ears when she curls around Michelle's ankles.
"You had dinner yet?" Michelle asks. Anastasia meows in that way that means she's hungry, and how dare Michelle not already be serving her a gourmet meal?
"If you're going to be that grumpy, you can just go to your actual owner," she replies, because she talks casually to cats now. The tabby just meows at her again and follows her to the kitchen.
Michelle spends the next hour showering and finding a pair of dress pants that aren't wrinkled to shit, and then she's back on the subway.
She's running a little late for her dinner plans, but she blames it 100% on the state of public transport in this city. It is definitely not because she'd had to raid Tia's wardrobe for a shirt that would make her look less struggling professional journalist, a little more successful-journalist-on-a-sophisticated-night-out-with-an-old-friend.
It's a fine line to walk. She misses the combat boots and oversized jackets of her youth.
Despite her tiny stature, it's hard to miss the perfectly quaffed blonde bombshell that is Betty Brant. She's perched effortlessly on a stool at the bar, a Cosmo resting between her neatly manicured fingers, a deep pink dress draped effortlessly across her lap, skimming her knees.
Michelle smiles. While a lot has changed since high school, Betty has only evolved into a more Betty version of herself.
"Brant," she greets, after sliding through the crowd of Wall Street douchebags to reach the bar. Betty's eyes glimmer under the strategic lighting to highlight the rainbow of glass bottles on offer, beaten only by the diamond that takes pride of place on her friend's left hand.
"Jones." Betty slides a vodka tonic across the polished wood, a napkin resting on top of the glass. Michelle accepts the drink with a pleased sigh.
"Our table should be ready soon,” Betty says as she side-eyes a trio of pompous boys in suits that leer their way, “and I've made sure we'll be tucked in the back so we don't have to deal with any of those idiots."
"This is why you're the only person I've bothered to keep in contact with. You just get me," Michelle says wistfully, taking a long sip of the cool drink.
"Right. See, that's a lovely sentiment, but now I feel bad for luring you here under false pretences."
Michelle stares at Betty over the rim of her glass, who shifts minutely in her seat as a tension builds between them.
"What did you do?"
Betty's smile is nervous, and is so out of character that Michelle almost feels bad for her. Almost. If she hadn't just betrayed her, apparently.
"Hey, MJ."
She stiffens in her seat.
There are a select group of people that ever had permission for that nickname, and she knows that only two of them are currently New York residents.
One is sitting across from her.
And the other is—
"Ned. Hi."
Michelle redacts her previous statement. If anyone hasn't changed since high school, it's Ned Leeds. Everything, from his eclectic fashion to the boyish wonder that lights his face, is exactly the same. He could tell her right now that he'd time travelled here from 2023 and she'd believe it without question.
"Miss Brant, your table is ready," a waiter informs them. Betty flashes them a tight-lipped smile as Ned and Michelle continue to stare.
She’s so stunned by the way her seemingly innocent evening plans have gone that she can't even remember walking to the table, only that they're here now, tucked into the back with Betty on her left and Ned on her right and a suddenly empty glass in her hand.
The waiter leaves to fetch another round of drinks and it's just the three of them, no one quite sure how to start.
"In case it wasn't obvious, I'm not paying for any of this," Michelle announces, looking mainly at Little Miss Trust Fund.
Betty nods. "Deal."
"As for you," she says pointedly at the boy who's already halfway to tearing his napkin to shreds, "How did you get her to break?"
"I, uh, I just asked."
Michelle looks back at the blonde with a frown. "If you're going to betray someone, Brant, at least get something out of it."
Betty rolls her eyes, realising her friend isn't mad enough to call her by her first name, and relaxes back into her seat as far as her perfect posture will allow.
Their waiter returns with drinks and takes their food orders, which they select randomly from the menu as the guy is clearly stressed. Michelle stirs a paper straw around her glass and studies Ned as he sips at the gin Betty had recommended. He winces when the alcohol burns at the back of his throat.
"So what are you up to, now?" Michelle asks, as if engaging him in small talk will distract him enough that it'll be all they engage in, until dinner is over and she can excuse herself from this whole ordeal.
"I'm an aerospace engineer, working mostly on space crafts." Ned takes another sip, a little more confident with a topic that's familiar to him. "I got my Masters and got accepted into the Stark Industries program."
She arches an eyebrow, because of course he did.
"I've been reverse engineering a lot of alien tech, which has been pretty cool."
"Speaking of Stark Industries, don't you have something you want to ask?" Betty looks at him pointedly and Michelle wants to claw her eyes out, then her own.
She couldn't even get five minutes…
"I already know what he wants to ask me, and he already knows my answer." Michelle picks at the skin around her thumbnail. "He's been bothering me about it since I got the job at the Herald."
"Yes, but it's different now," Betty says slowly. Ned yelps, likely because Betty just kicked him. "Tell her."
Ned's gaze darts between the two women until he settles on Michelle, leaning across the table to address her. "He said yes."
Michelle scoffs. "Just because he suddenly wants to do it doesn't mean I'm now changing my mind."
"Please, MJ. Peter needs your help."
WEDNESDAY
When she opens the door, the hallway lights cut into the darkness of the room, illuminating her path just enough to make it to the bottom of the stairway. She clears her throat, unimpressed.
"E.D.I.T.H, lights please."
Peter jolts up from his napping position against a workspace, a stray bolt sticking to the skin of his cheek.
"Peter Parker, what did I tell you about sleeping in here?"
He shrinks under the glare of his Aunt. "That labs are not for sleeping."
"And what was the one thing I told you to do yesterday?" Her hands are on her hips and even from a distance, he finds her scary.
"To go home at a sensible hour." May stalks closer. The bolt falls with a clatter into the mess of parts spread in front of him. "And sleep in my bed."
Her expression softens as she takes in the tired eyes of her nephew. "Honey, you can't just lock yourself in this space and wait for the next mission. It's not healthy. You're twenty-five, you're supposed to be living life recklessly, making mistakes, falling in and out of love. Pepper didn't give you this space to waste away in."
Peter twists around in his chair, staring at the little collection of photos he had stuck to the wall the day Pepper had opened the door and grandly informed him that everything the light touched was his.
He's paraphrasing, but still.
There are five people in the photographs. Himself, May, Ned, Pepper, Happy and Morgan.
Over the last couple of years, Morgan has expanded the wall into quite an impressive feat of scribbled crayon and more careful pen strokes, her first blueprint sitting pride of place at the top, but at its heart lie the photos that make up the people Peter considers family.
"Peter Parker doesn't get to be reckless or make mistakes."
May steps around the bench and wraps her arms around his shoulders, resting her chin on the top of his head. He leans back into her touch, lets the scent of home wash over him and lighten the weight he carries everywhere with him, even if just for a moment.
"I know the world has been particularly cruel to you, sweetie, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything good to experience. And I know you know that, because you're still out, fighting for what's good and right. You just have to be willing to open yourself up to it."
He wants to believe her.
He wants to believe that there's more than just more pain out there.
But he looks at the ghosts that are missing from his wall.
He remembers how the world turned on a seventeen year old boy who just wanted to help.
And he can't bring himself to unlock that door again.
"I love you, May," he says instead, and she drops a kiss into his hair.
"I love you too, sweetie." He hears her sniff. "Now go shower. you stink."
THURSDAY
While he may spend the vast majority of his time in his little lab bunker, Peter is not a hermit.
For instance, he visits Ned at work sometimes.
(Yes, so technically Ned works in the same facility as his bunker, but it's a big enough campus that Peter has to walk for at least two minutes between buildings in the outdoors.)
He lives in an apartment with May about a fifteen minute drive away in good traffic.
(Which, okay, so Happy usually drives him, but he doesn't mind because he always brings Morgan and they enjoy competing to see who is the cleverest of them all. It's her, for the record, but she's technically a teenager now and the last thing he needs is to inflate her already Tony-sized ego.)
And every so often, under the cover of night, Peter goes for walks down the streets of the place he once called home.
Look, you don't spend eight years having to hide your face from the public without getting really good at it.
Spider-Man won his legal battles against the story Mysterio had tried to spin several years ago, but there was no undoing the outing of his identity. While public opinion was still a little divided, there was a general consensus amongst most that he was innocent, and that was great, for a while.
They had thought Peter would be able to re-enter society. Pepper had a PR team dedicated to it. It would take time, but they had hope.
Then someone snatched May right off the street.
So now he keeps to himself, Spider-Man a rumour, a shadow that dances through the city but is never seen, not until the big things call for it. He'll save the world with a band of misfit superhumans and aliens, or he'll save a person in the whisper of the wind, but nothing more.
He's discovered over the years that the best way to blend in is to dress nondescript, wear a chunky set of glasses to throw people off, and to keep his hair a little too long.
No cap or sunglasses or whatever else just makes you look suspicious.
It has to be simple to be effective.
So Peter walks down a busy Queens street with his head tilted down but his senses alert, looking but not watching as people go about their life like it's easy.
But if he was any one of the thousands of people bustling around him, he probably wouldn't have seen it.
As it stands, he is himself. And that is why, after fifteen years of friendship, Peter can identify his best friend in a crowd as easy as breathing.
He's huddled in a closed shop doorway with a woman, something she's saying making the corners of his mouth tug down. Peter's ears search for the conversation without much thought, in time to hear Ned hiss, "I know what you did, and that's why I know you're one to do this."
"I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't do anything!" The woman's voice is familiar, and she crouches down until their heights are level. "It's sweet that you're trying to help, but there are hundreds of other journalists out there who would kill for it. Right now, this is above my paygrade."
The woman glances out at the street and for the first time, he can see her face.
And it's like time stops.
The last time Peter had Michelle Jones in person, it was the day before their summer trip to Europe, back when his biggest concern was how she'd react to his plan to give her a necklace at the top of the Eiffel Tower. She'd put a major kink into the plan by telling him that her Mom had been in an accident, so she was skipping the break to take care of her while her leg healed. He'd been a little heartbroken but she'd given him this shy little smile when he told her he was bummed but he understood. She'd waved and left to catch her train home, and Peter had darted across the school to find his best friend to work out how to rework the plan.
And then Europe happened, and the plan was forgotten.
It's been eight years, and she looks so different to that day long ago. Her hair is longer and a little sleeker, and she's definitely wearing mascara. She's dressed in a tailored blazer and a pencil skirt that accentuates the length of her legs, a woollen coat thrown over her arm. Her shoulders sit back proudly, a confidence to her that was quiet in their youth but is more sure of itself now.
She looks good, which is almost definitely his downfall, because when he tears his gaze from the cute little flats she's wearing, her eyes are locked right on him.
Of course, if anyone was going to see right through the disguise, it would be the piercing gaze of Michelle Jones.
"Fuck," she whispers.
"Fuck," he whispers.
Peter does an abrupt 180 and darts back in the direction he'd come, ignoring Ned as he calls his name, darting into the closest alley and stripping down to the jet black suit beneath it, a web pulling him onto the closest roof just as Ned stumbles by, searching for the ghost of Queens.
FRIDAY
So admittedly, yesterday hadn't gone quite the way she had expected it to.
After politely turning down Ned's request twice, the dinner on Tuesday had been a little awkward but mostly okay. They had all made their excuses early and she'd thought that perhaps the issue would be left alone, until she'd found him waiting for her on her journey home from the office.
And as if his accusations weren't bad enough, she'd felt someone watching them, only to see Peter Parker for the first time in years on the other side of the street.
"Did you plan this?" She'd been hurt, confused by the sudden appearance of a boy who was known to have withdrawn from public life, right as his best friend had barged back into her life. But Ned's attention was on the skyline, and he'd simply told her,
"I didn't know he was even leaving the lab."
Despite her refusal to be a part of Ned's plan, she spends much of Friday thinking it over anyway, staring at the beginnings of the final draft of her assigned article but her mind abuzz with the potential of something else.
She tries to focus on her work but finds little inspiration, and eventually tells her boss that she has a family emergency to skip out on the rest of the afternoon. She's watching the kids clamber over the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, hoping their delighted screams and innocent view of the world will somehow distract her from what slowly brews in her mind.
Her boss would never go for it—no one will touch the topic of Spider-Man for fear of retribution, no matter which way the opinion sways, not after what an army of very expensive lawyers did to the Daily Bugle.
It would probably destroy her career, and she's spent too long battling for a seat at the table to get thrown out now.
She should walk away right now, but somehow she still dials the number he'd slipped into her bag the night before.
"You said there was a lab. Where is it?"
"You'll do it?"
"I'll talk to him. That's all I'm promising."
Because when you boil it right down, Michelle got into this gig for one reason.
It's been the core principle of her existence, and is the thing she values above all else.
Michelle Jones believes in the truth.
And Peter Parker needs to tell his.
SATURDAY
The downside to his lab bunker is that it's mostly underground, and the lack of windows makes it difficult to judge how much of the day has passed when he gets into the zone on a project.
So when Pepper Potts' shadow falls over the blueprints her daughter had drawn up for him, he's winces, because he definitely missed dinner, and that means two women and a vengeful teenager are mad at him, which is pretty fucking horrific.
There is a covered, steaming bowl of mac and cheese in her hands, and her sharp blue eyes watch him slowly lower the wrench in his hands and offer her a nervous smile.
"Oops."
She tilts her head in that way only mother's can. "Oops."
"You know, this room could really use a clock," he jokes weakly, scrubbing a hand against the skin at the back of his neck.
Pepper puts his microwave dinner down on the closest bit of free workspace. "It's moments like this that I wonder if you're somehow Tony."
"Uh, thanks?"
Pepper shakes her head in amusement and begins to walk away. "That wasn't a compliment."
"Oh. Sorry about dinner!"
She's halfway up the stairs now, her heels clacking on the metal steps. "Stop doing everything Morgan tells you to do and you're forgiven." She pauses at the door, looks back at Peter where he's already spinning the wrench in his hand, stepping around the collection of parts that will inevitably turn into a device her daughter will use to torture her poor Uncle. "Also, you have a visitor."
"Send him in, I could do with Ned's help on this bit anyway," Peter mutters, crossing over to the holotable in the middle of the room to pull up the schematics.
"Hey dude," Peter calls when he hears footsteps approaching. "Could you give me a hand with this? Oh, and we really need to talk about—"
His hairs stand on end. Ned is not the one in the room.
Peter's got a web shooter aimed at the intruder within half a second, but at the end of his webbing is the hand of Michelle Jones, a forkful of pasta frozen in place.
"Hello to you, too, Peter," she says dryly. "Is this how you greet all of your guests? Or am I a special case?"
Peter is gaping. Actually gaping. What the f—
"Do you mind?" she continues, shaking her hand. "I'm starving."
"MJ?" he asks possibly the stupidest question of all time, because of course it's her.
She rolls her eyes and leans into the fork, eating her stolen food with a content sigh. Her free hand rises from behind her back and she eyes him suspiciously when his other hand twitches, like he doesn't trust her, but she puts the tequila bottle down next to his dinner and reaches back into her bag to pull out two shot glasses with an exaggerated flourish.
"I don't know about you, but right now I could do with a drink. Or five."
Peter finally lets the tension out of the web stuck to her hand, and she tugs the fork out of her locked grip to calmly begin pouring the amber liquid, pushing one closer to him when he continues to stand and stare at her like she might vanish in between a blink of his eyes.
"Let me, uh, let me get the—" Peter stumbles to a metal set of drawers three feet away, quickly rifling through the contents until he comes back with a glass vial. He hesitates when he begins to reach for her hand, but she just rolls her eyes again and extends her arm as far as it will go.
With the webbing safely removed from her skin, Michelle makes herself busy finding a seat, walking around his space like she's known it all her life, a surety in her movements that's a little more refined than the Michelle he had known at school. She returns with a chair that has at least three of his jumpers thrown over and drops right on top of them.
In that tiny window of distraction, Peter has managed to make his brain work enough to say, "Not to be rude, but why are you here?"
Michelle pinches another forkful of mac and cheese. "Ned said you needed me."
He blushes like he's still seventeen, and she finds it oddly endearing. "W-Why would he say that?"
She pauses, fork halfway to her lips. "For the article," she says slowly, suddenly unsure.
"The article? What article?" Peter settles into his own chair, flicking between the last few conversations he'd had with his best friend until— "Fuck. I'm gonna kill him."
Michelle's expression clears with understanding. "Oh. Right. He lied. I'm gonna kill him."
Peter sighs, drops his head into his hands. "He had this stupid idea after I got involved in the fight in Maryland that I should 'reclaim my narrative', try to get my life back. He went on about it for months, but I kept telling him no, there was a— Well. Anyway. I thought he dropped it but apparently I just encouraged him to go rogue."
Michelle feels her shoulders sag a little with the disappointment of a lost story, but she fights to keep her face passive. "It wasn't long after that that I got the first email."
"I'm so sorry, MJ, he means well, he's just—"
"Ned?" Michelle offers him a slight smile and Peter visibly relaxes, his grin much wider. "It's fine, Peter. Means I can do this."
Michelle kicks off her shoes and puts her feet up on the workspace.
"Much better," she sighs happily, picking up her shot glass. "Plus now I don't have to count my drinks."
Peter picks up his own and they raise them in a silent toast, throwing them back. Michelle immediately fills them again, capping the bottle and stealing another bite of pasta before pushing the bowl towards him. "I think that's yours."
Peter takes a moment to take in the sight of his high school crush juxtaposed with the sterile, bland surroundings of his lab. How just her presence alone makes the colours a little brighter, everything a little more focused, like she's warming the space just by being here. It makes him smile. "You look good, MJ. Happy."
Michelle shrugs, lets her gaze wander around the open space, a hundred machines and their carcasses littering the outskirts, tools and parts that mean nothing to her but he is intimately familiar with. She lingers on a wall covered in paper, drawings and sketches and photos in perfect condition.
"You look like shit," she says bluntly. And it's true; his hair desperately needs a cut and his skin is too pale, like he hasn't seen the sun in years. His clothes are all a size too big and don't make her want to groan in feigned annoyance, now just plain blocks of black and navy. He looks tired, mostly, but not so much physically. She can't blame him for being tired of it all, not when she considers everything he's been through in the past decade.
He doesn't seem at all phased by her comment, and has likely heard it all before.
Michelle tips tequila down her throat and watches Peter mirror her. "Why were you out, the other night?"
Peter busies himself poking at his rapidly cooling dinner for a moment. "Despite what others may have you believe, I do go places."
"So you were going somewhere? Or just walking?"
Peter shrugs. "It's too quiet up here. I grew up in one of the busiest cities of the world."
Michelle's dark eyes cut right through his bullshit.
"You still love it."
"It's home." Peter snatches the bottle and fills his glass, liquid splashing onto the metal countertop.
"It's my home too, but I don't know if I'd try so hard to save it."
Peter watches a bubble float to the surface of his glass. "Doing what I can do… You can't do nothing."
Peter drinks the tequila, lets it burn along his tongue, down his throat.
"There are stories, you know, of a shadow watching over the city. Whispers among those that call it home." She studies him, how his nose wrinkles, how his pulse jumps in his neck. "You're New York's best kept secret."
She thinks he might deny it, but he leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, using his feet to lazily spin this way and that. "You're a journalist, shouldn't you be reporting that?"
Michelle frowns. "It's not easy to substantiate, rumours are just rumours. Besides, I met him, once upon a time."
Peter cracks open one eye, amusement tickling the corners of his mouth. "Oh?"
She presses her feet against the floor, letting the chill cool the sudden rise in temperature prickling along her skin.
"He saved my friends. Even when it meant they hated him. Even when it was hard. He did what was right, and no one thanked him, so I guess deleting the records of any more concrete tips is my way of saying thanks."
Michelle hides the warmth in her cheeks behind her glass, lets the pleasant buzz of alcohol take the blame for how his tender gaze makes her gut feel.
"So," she says when his silence becomes too loud, "what does this thing do?"
Peter's eyes light up and suddenly she sees the boy she had once known, babbling excitedly as he explains his latest creation to her. An hour passes easily, then two, as he shows her around the space, and she finds it genuinely interesting, asking questions in his pauses for breath, letting him talk out a problem with one and helping him find the solution for another. She enjoys talking about her current article, and her mom's new partner that's taken her out of state. It's easy, and she thinks of how unfair it is that life has been so unkind to him when he's never really lived, how he's so good yet he'd been punished for it.
So really, it can't be helped that when she toys with the idea of leaving, the tequila bottle nearly empty and the first hints of dawn lighting the little windows by the ceiling, that she lets herself get lost in it.
"It's late," she says, her voice a little hoarse from all the talking and the lack of sleep, "So late it's now early."
"Oh." Peter looks up at the windows. "Sorry, I tend to lose track of time in here. I didn't mean to take up so much of your time."
She shakes her head, turns her head to face him from where they're stretched across the holotable, her eyes parallel to his lips.
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be," she tells him, bumping her forehead against his shoulder. Michelle looks back up at the blue hologram of space, projected stars twinkling above and around them. "Do you want me to go?"
Peter shifts on the table above her head. "No."
"Okay." Michelle smiles at the moon. "Then I'll stay."
SUNDAY
He's not entirely sure how, but she coerces him out in broad daylight.
She's ditched her blazer for one of his jumpers she'd been sitting on earlier, and she'd rolled her eyes at his glasses and the scarf but otherwise let him continue, and they'd walked off campus and snatched up a booth at the first place that smelt like a good breakfast. They're in a corner away from the windows, his back to everyone but her, and he orders pancakes and eggs and bacon and she orders him extra to mask his ridiculous appetite from the waitress. She gets a smoothie and drowns her own pancakes in so much syrup that his teeth kinda hurt at the sight.
The diner is small, quiet, a little ways off the beaten track, enough to ease the nerves that make him only a little hyper aware of every customer, every chime of an order ready, every hiss of the coffee machine.
His phone chimes, his Aunt trying to find him because he's not in his room and he's not in the lab. He tells her he's fine and that he's getting breakfast, and then mutes it because no doubt she's going to ask a thousand questions about what the hell has happened to her nephew in the 24 hours since she's seen him last.
He doesn't really know.
He's oddly okay with it.
"Do you always eat this much?" Michelle asks from where she's watching him over the brim of her smoothie.
Peter shrugs, swallows a mouthful of bacon. "I burn through food quicker, but this is mainly because I didn't eat much yesterday. I never do when I'm focused."
"So, it's not just the suit? You can do stuff?"
"Uh, yeah. The suit is useful, but some of it is… Biological."
Michelle leans forward in her seat, a hundred questions on the tip of her tongue, then snaps her jaw shut. "Sorry, sometimes it's hard to turn the journalist thing off."
Peter shrugs, surprised to realise that he doesn't really mind.
"It's just easier to demonstrate, but not right now."
Michelle doesn't miss the unspoken promise in his words of a next time, that he wants to see her again.
Peter watches the tips of her ears go pink, her hair pulled back so she can't hide behind it, and suddenly his mouth is betraying him by telling her, "I used to have a crush on you, you know. Before everything happened."
Michelle's eyebrows travel up her forehead but she seems more amused than surprised. "Oh really?"
He pushes the last two bites of pancake around his plate and chews on his bottom lip. He's suddenly all bashful and she remembers how he used to stumble over his words around her, like she made him nervous. She remembers how she approached everything with an air of cool indifference, unless it involved talking to Peter. Then she'd lose every ounce of cool.
"I was going to tell you, I had this whole plan, but your mom had that accident and I had to delay it."
Peter realises he needs to pull himself together because his tongue is far too loose around the girl he hasn't really known in eight years, barely knows at all, yet here he is, telling her every stupid little secret—
"Well at least your plan is now successful," she says, and reaches across the table to stroke her fingers over the back of his hand. "A little bit later than planned, but what's a few years between friends?"
Peter looks up at her with the most hopeful look on his face that she can't help the smile that spreads her mouth wide. "Friends?"
"I don't stay up all night for just anyone, Peter." She lets her touch linger just a moment longer before tucking her hand under her thigh so it can't go and do something stupid, like touch him again.
"Okay," Peter says with a gooey smile. "Friends."
***
'Friends' is the word she repeats to herself over and over again until it doesn't sound like a real word.
'Friends' is what she thinks when she finally goes home, crashing out on her bed within moments of her head hitting the pillow.
'Friends' is what makes her stuff the stolen jumper into the back of her drawer and throw on a loose fitting dress before she heads to the closest bar and finds Jessica.
Jessica's fingers feel nice enough inside her, and her tongue makes quick work of making Michelle's back arch and her toes curl. And an hour later, Michelle wakes up from a nap alone and heads straight to her laptop, where she powers through a decent chunk of her article and a puff piece her boss asks her to write while she finishes her main project.
She's picking up a late night dinner for her and Tia when her phone rings, and she briefly considers letting it ring out.
"What did you do to my best friend?"
"Why did you lie to me?"
"What did you do to my best friend?"
Michelle huffs. "We hung out."
"You got him to leave the bunker." Ned's tone is one of complete disbelief. "Peter never leaves the bunker. He sleeps there most nights. How did you get him to leave?"
"I asked," she says with a shrug, accepting her order and stepping out into the crisp autumn air.
"Did you bribe him somehow? With money, or drugs, or—" Ned gasps theatrically, and whispers "—did you exchange sexual favours for his release?"
Michelle barks out a laugh. "I did not sleep with Peter. We just talked and got breakfast."
"Please, you expect me to believe that the only thing you guys did all night was talk?"
"Ned, you're being stupid and I'm hanging up."
"Wait! I'm sorry, I'm just surprised. You did in one night what none of us have managed in years."
She presses her phone between her ear and shoulder as she fishes out her keys, her stoop creeping into view ahead. "He goes out, by himself. There's nothing special about what I did, nothing different or unique. The real question is why you lied to me in the first place."
Ned sighs. "I don't know, I guess I thought if he had some kind of a connection to the journalist that he might be more willing, but I knew you wouldn't go if I didn't tell a very minor white lie that ultimately benefited all parties involved."
Michelle unlocks the main entrance of her building. "He doesn't want to do it, Ned, and I'm not gonna make him."