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MJ wasn’t even four years old when her first Soul Mark formed on her cheek.
She hadn’t even noticed it was there, because Soul Marks aren’t actually something you can feel. She had only realised something was up when her kindergarten teacher had dropped the book she was holding and quickly shuffled MJ out of the classroom and to the principal’s office.
Fewer than five percent of the population of earth are born with Soulmates, and in turn, with Soul Marks. No one knows why or how Soulmates exists – but in the world of Gods, Aliens and Superheroes, it wasn’t the strangest thing out there. Thus, it just became one of those things. The sort of thing people just stop questioning over time.
MJ had been allowed to go to the restroom when the principal was on the call with her parents. There, in the cracked mirror, underneath the fluorescent lights, she had stared at her reflection, at the mark on her cheek.
Filled with pure wonder and amazement, she’d reached up and touched it carefully. The mark was in the shape of a simple cut. A scratch from a tree branch, or an overly excited pet. It quickly dawned upon her why her teacher had been so sure it was a Soul Mark. It was faintly purple. Not like a bruise. It shimmered on her skin, like the cut itself was made of pure starlight.
In the years that followed, MJ sometimes wished she could go back to that moment in the restroom; relive that childish wonderment. More often though, she looks back on that moment and laughs at herself for ever being so naïve.
At ten years old, she sat in her room, listening with head bowed at the shouting and screaming. The crash of china against the wall as her father informed her mother that he was leaving them both. He had found another woman, one he loved now and who loved him in return. MJ tugged at the sleeves of her hoodie, dragging the fabric over her hands to hide the glittering marks on her forearms – sure now that they were nothing but beautiful lies.
At eleven years old, she walked the playground of her new school, listening to the delighted shrieks of her classmates that never wanted her to join in with their games. Despite being told by the adults around her how lucky she was to have a Soulmate, not one of her peers seemed to agree.
At thirteen years old, she screamed at her mother in their empty apartment, left hollow and broken by an absence that would never be filled. “It’s kind of hard to get close to anyone when you’re constantly reminded that you already have a ‘perfect match’!”
She can’t remember if she eventually gave up, or if one day she just simply stopped caring. Either way, she didn’t care anymore. Not about anyone, especially not her so-called ‘Soul mate’.
But the problem with Soulmates is that, obviously, they are for life. It isn’t like she can just erase this person from her existence – whoever they are. They are bound to her, whether she likes it or not.
And she does not like it.
So she keeps a notebook, dubbed the Idiot Mark Book. Not the most creative title, but she had been ten and rather bitter. She is bitterer now, but more creative.
Every day, without fail, she checks her body for marks. It’s the first thing she does when she wakes up, and the last thing she does before she goes to bed. Not because she’s obsessive, but because there is always something. Bruises, cat-scratches, scrawled messages like pick up milk or feed the cat in messy handwriting.
Sometimes, there are even messages for her.
It’s raining today where I am;
Hope you have a great day;
May the force be with you!;
She never replies.
Sometimes, her heart does reluctantly soften for a moment when she sees the messages directed towards her, but then she quickly remembers to squash those emotions back down. Soulmates are nothing but annoyances, despite the brief warmth those messages bring.
However, around the time she started sophomore year, there was a significant increase in the amount of Soul Marks that appeared on her skin, and they began to become more distressing.
Some could be explained through simple carelessness - a bruise here, a small cut there. But others, they were too large, to…grave. She still recalls the cold terror that washed over her when she lifted her t-shirt one morning to find what looked like a gunshot wound blooming in shimmering purple across her stomach.
It had not been her last.
The first time she wakes up to a ring of purple around her right eye, she stares at it in utter disbelief for a good five minutes before rushing into her mum’s room in search of some concealer. She doesn’t do a particularly good job at applying it, she had never bothered to learn how to use makeup. A mark hadn’t appeared on her face since that day in kindergarten. For all her effort, once she was done applying the concealer, it still looks like she’s smudged purple eyeshadow over one eye and hadn’t bothered to wash it off properly.
But at least it doesn’t look like a Soul Mark.
She still gets several looks as she walks down the hallways of Midtown High. Everyone knows that MJ has a Soulmate, as her arms and legs are always covered in Soul Marks and, alas, Gym class is mandatory. But, like always, she holds herself high and ignores the stares. She keeps her head down, reading War & Peace as she walks, and relies on her reputation to stop anyone from pestering her.
Thankfully, class passes without issue, and no one bothers her when she sits down in the canteen a few hours later. She pulls out her packed lunch – because the school really needs to realise that boiled potatoes are not a legitimate vegetarian option – and picks up her book again. However, after only a few minutes, a small tingle ripples down her neck, and she is forced to raise her head.
Her gaze, for some reason – she isn’t sure what – settles on two boys standing on the opposite end of the canteen.
Ned Leeds and Peter Parker.
She knows them about as much as a she knows anyone else at school. They had been in her classes in freshman year, though she’s never spoken to either of them. But now she only has maths and gym with them.
Even from all the way across the canteen, she can hear them passionately debate which of the Avengers could win in a fight against a Xenomorph. MJ rolls her eyes and is about to turn her attention back to her book when she notices something.
Peter’s right eye is bruised.
It’s eerily similar to the one she’s sporting underneath the layer of makeup, except it looks older, more healed. The purple has faded to a sickly yellow and it doesn’t look remotely swollen. It’s just a coincidence, she tells herself. She had woken up to a dark mark on her skin. It’s fresh, barely healed.
It’s just a coincidence.
Even so, she finds that she can’t really focus on her book after that. Her gaze keeps drifting over to Peter and Ned, now sitting at a table discussing a new LEGO Star Wars set that has just been released.
Just a coincidence.
After that day, MJ begins to pay close attention to Peter Parker. More attention than she has paid anyone in years. Weeks drag by, and she slowly accumulates a long list of notes with her Idiot Mark Book about Peter Parker – not all of them exactly relevant to the still unanswered question on whether he is her Soulmate or not:
- He has dropped out of all extracurricular classes he joined in freshman year.
- He skips classes often, sometimes multiple times a week. Always reappears looking extremely disheveled (Rumours from Midtown halls include the following – part of an illegal street gang; secretly an escort; performing unsupervised experiments in the basement boiler room – none of these have been confirmed).
- He always wears long sleeves (normally hoodies or plaid shirts), even on hot days.
- Over the span of a few months, he has gained an abnormal amount of muscle – not enough to become bulky, but he has definitely been working out or something.
- He no longer needs to wear glasses (when Betty questioned him, he said he now wears contacts, but further studying indicates this does not appear to be the case).
Almost none of this information – strange as some of it is – really relates to whether Peter Parker is her Soulmate, and the continued appearance of Soul Marks on her body confuses her even further. On the rare occasion the marks appear in visible places (not hidden underneath sleeves or other items of clothing), Peter’s ‘coincidental’ injuries always look considerably older; almost fully healed. She has never heard of anything like a delay in Soul Marks forming before. There’s no record of anything like that in any records or history books – she checked!
But something, something, is up with him. She doesn’t quite know what, but she is going to find out.
The feelings of eyes staring at her brings her out of her thoughts. Returning her attention to the teacher at the front of the room, she realises that she is in the middle of speaking about the portrayal of Soul Mates in literature. That would explain the stares.
“The whole concept of Soulmates is dumb anyways,” she says out loud, interrupting the teacher mid-lecture.
The teacher looks at her and sighs. “Miss Jones, if you have a question, please raise your hand.”
“The idea that somewhere out there,” she says, ignoring her teacher entirely, even as she looks the woman right in the eye, “There is some great cosmic force deciding which individuals get to be together. It’s stupid. It’s creepy.”
She leans back in her chair, keeping her eyes fixed on the teacher in front of her and not looking at the entire class, who now all staring at her, their eyes trained on the purple mark shimmering on her left temple. “Why do we, as a society, have this idealistic conviction that some marks appearing on someone’s skin is a sign of true love? How can someone out there even predict ‘true love’? How do you even quantify it? Why should a person’s choices for the rest of their lives be dictated by something out of their control?”
The teacher opens her mouth to speak but MJ is on a roll. Years of late nights pouring over the Idiot Mark Book has worn her patience thin and all her pent-up emotions are finally beginning to overflow out of her.
“It's cruel!” she snaps. “Having everything your body experiences be exposed to someone you don’t even know! It’s a constant invasion of someone’s privacy. Having a Soulmate isn’t something that shouldn’t be celebrated – in reality or in literature. It’s a sick joke that the Cosmos plays on a select few.”
Someone snorts from the corner of the room. MJ’s head snaps towards the source of the sound and finds Flash Thompson sneering at her. “Only because your Soulmate’s an idiot,” he says. “You look like a used punching bag half the time, Michelle.”
She glares at him, but it’s not enough to shut the boy up. “Seriously, look at yourself! They’ve gotta be an even bigger, clumsier loser than Penis Parker!”
“Mister Thompson!” the teacher calls sharply.
Flash slides down in his seat, muttering in a dejected tone, “Well it’s true.”
For a split second, MJ seriously considers getting up and punching Flash in his smug face, consequences be damned. But the teacher claps her hand before MJ can move, and she is forced to turn her attention back to the lesson. “As you can all see, the subject of Soulmates is a rather… divisive subject, to say the least.”
MJ slouches into her chair and returns to tuning out the teacher. She picks up a pencil, flips open the Idiot Mark Book and begins to mindlessly doodle in its margin. It takes until the final bell rings to realise that she is drawing a certain brown-haired boy.
Fall slowly fades into winter and with it comes the cold and wet. The Debate Team has run extra late today, meaning MJ is unfortunate enough to get caught in the rainstorm that sweeps in from the North Atlantic. She makes it home in record time and her freezing fingers manage to hold onto her key long enough to make it into her apartment. Flinging her bag onto a chair, she begins peeling off the layers of drenched clothing, dropping each item one by one into a pile on the floor until she is left standing in her underwear. Shivering, she makes a beeline for the bathroom.
The shower water is so hot that MJ hisses and has to briefly leap out, adjusting the dials from the outside the cubicle for the sake of her stinging skin, until the water is a comfortable temperature. Settling herself underneath the spray, she runs her fingers through her hair and lets them trace to the base of her neck.
Out of nowhere, her body tenses as if all the oxygen has rushed out of her lungs. MJ’s arm reaches out to prop herself against the tiled wall to steady herself, panting heavily. Her eyes are drawn downwards, and they widen with horror as a mark begins blooming across her stomach. Her hand instinctively tries to apply pressure in a vain attempt to keep the mark from spreading further.
There aren’t many known rules of Soulmarks. Marks remain on your body for twenty-four hours; They are always a shade of purple. Most of all, the darker the colour of the mark, the deeper it goes. Surface-level things such as pen scrawls or scratches are a pale lilac, almost unnoticeable unless you're actively looking for them. Bruises tend to be darker, more of an indigo.
But the mark that is spreading out from underneath her fingertip is ink-black, dark as a hopeless night,
“No…” she whispers as her heart falls to the pit of her stomach. For the first time in her life, she is scared. Terrified.
Terrified that she might never have these marks on her body again. That she might have to live the rest of her life without any more glistening mark on her skin. She might never get to meet the Idiot who had been part of her world since that day in Kindergarten.
No more dumb messages.
No more convoluted formulas she couldn’t understand.
Nothing
She doesn’t even notice when her legs buckle, and she falls to the floor of the shower. Doesn’t notice when the warm water runs out and the spray turns cold. All she can focus on is the black.
At some point – she doesn’t exactly recall when, or even how – she picks herself up from the cold, waterlogged cocoon she has made on the shower’s floor. She doesn’t know how she manages to slip on pajamas and a hoodie. Or how she manages to drag herself across the apartment to her bed, her eyes still blurred with tears.
She lies there, unmoving and unsleeping, late into the night, her stomach tight and her body exhausted from the hours of crying. She lifts her hand to wipe the snot away from her nose when she stops dead.
Her wrist is purple.
She sits bolt upright, clutching her wrist so tightly she could have been blocking her blood circulation. With wide eyes, she reads the one word, written in that oh-so-familiar handwriting.
Sorry
The knot that has replaced her heart for the last few hours suddenly releases, and she breathes for the first time in hours. She can’t stop the ragged sob that tears itself from her throat as her eyes once again fill with tears. They’re alive, she thinks as she holds her wrist to her chest.
The stupid idiot was alive.
It takes her several minutes to steady herself. She has been sobbing so hard that she is now hiccupping. She doesn’t care though. She is just relieved that they are alive.
She sits up, wipes her face on her hoodie before casting her gaze around the room. Scrambling off her bed, she grabs a pen from her desk and yanks her sleeve further down her arm, exposing more of her skin. She pulls the pen lid off with her teeth and scrawls a response.
Idiot.
It doesn’t take long for another word to appear. Her Soulmates writing contrasts somehow perfectly with her own neat lettering, bookending the single word into a new phrase.
Your Idiot :)
Midterms slowly creep up on MJ, and she is reluctantly forced to cease her observations of Peter Parker – for the time being. Not that she necessarily needs to do super well in the upcoming exams. In almost all of her classes, she’s on track for A’s. But she has a reputation to uphold. And, directing all of her attention to the upcoming exams is a great way to distract herself from all the festivities that were popping up across Queens.
MJ has never really enjoyed the Christmas period. The actual day itself she doesn’t mind, since it had initially begun as a tradition to celebrate the Winter Solstice, before corporations turned the entire thing into a ludicrous display of commercialisation and capitalism that left a terrible taste in her mouth. She does enjoy the seasonal beverages though. What can she say? She’s a sucker for cinnamon.
So, every day, after school or at the weekend, she stops at her favorite coffee shop, gets herself a cinnamon latte, and settles herself in the corner booth with her textbooks and study notes.
On this particular day, however, she arrives at the coffee shop a few hours later than she had originally planned. Her mother had all by cornered her that morning as she was eating a bowl of cereal and bribed her into helping get their meager collection of Christmas decorations out of a back cupboard and decorate the apartment. MJ reluctantly agreed. She supposed she owed her mother a cheerful Christmas if nothing else. Her mother had always loved Christmas.
So, by the time she’s pushing open the door to the shop, it’s a lot busier than she’s used to. The second weekend of December is prime time for Christmas Shopping. Dropping a quick nod to the barista, who knows her face and order off by heart, she squeezes herself through the masses of people and is relieved to see that her normal corner booth is vacant. She empties the content of her rucksack onto the table and, before her latte arrives, has stacked her revision cards into order and is bent over her algebra textbook.
Three coffees and however many hours later, she hears someone rapping their knuckles against the table’s surface.
“We’re closing, kid,” the barista states, collecting her empty coffee mugs. Nodding, MJ gulps down the last remnants of her drink before packing her things back into her bag. A strong chill hits her as she steps out of the warm shop. She remembers to call out a thank you and an obligatory Happy Holidays before the door swings close behind her.
It’s darker than she’d anticipated. Confused, she pulls out her phone and clicks on her screen. Nine o’clock.
“Shit,” she mutters. Rummaging in her pockets for her earbuds, she puts them in and begins to walk the familiar path home. She watches her breath crystalise in the cold air as she mouths along with the Oh Wonder song playing. The streets were a lot quieter at this hour.
It was… nice.
Flashes of blue and red blinds her vision as she rounds the corner. Lifting a hand upwards to block some of the light, she sees that the entire street had been cornered off by cops. Her hand is already in her pocket, pulling out her phone and seeing the news alert in her notifications.
Local Hero Spiderman defeats uncontrolled Maggia members in Central Queens.
The conflict seemed to have been resolved over half an hour ago, but there was still a lot of clean-up needed. Several buildings had been damaged in the fighting and it had been deemed unsafe for civilians.
MJ sighed. Gonna have to go the long way round. Why do villains always have to brawl on main streets?
She switches over to her maps app, scouring the local area and plotting a route. It will take her an extra fifteen minutes to get back home. Great. Tucking both her phone and hands into her coat pocket, she turns on her heels and walks her new path home.
As she treads the unfamiliar pavement, she allows herself to get re-absorbed in her music.
She is completely unaware that she is being followed.
Turning into an alleyway between two buildings connecting to the next street, she feels a hand clasp her shoulder.
“Give me your wallet kid, and no one gets hurt.”
MJ is only able to turn her head slightly, but she can make out that the person who has grabbed her is a male, and they appear to be grasping a knife in their other hand. Panic rips through MJ and she responds instinctively. She drops down, which her assailant wasn’t expecting. The man’s grip on her shoulder is not as strong as it should have been since he is using his non-dominant hand to grab her, so she knocks it away as she staggers forward. However, the snow that has been falling all evening has left the concrete wet and incredibly slippery. MJ tries to run, but her feet are unable to gain any grip and she falls forward.
There is a flash of red, and suddenly someone is standing behind her, right hand clasped around the knife that had been mere seconds away from being plunged into her back. The attacker’s face turns pale as he looks at the blade and then up to the person now standing between them.
Blood seeps from Spiderman’s hand as he lifts his left arm and fires a web. The knife clatters to the floor and the man is sent flying backwards, hitting the ground with a THUD!
“You know, you really shouldn’t play with knives,” Spiderman warns, firing an extra few shots, so the assailant is encased in a cocoon of webbing. “Are you-oh.” Something seems to catch Spiderman off guard for a moment when he turns to face her. He clears his throat, and suddenly his voice becomes deeper. “…are, are you alright…Miss?”
MJ doesn’t notice anything. Not his hesitation. She barely registers the knife falling onto concrete, or the groans of the man pinned to the floor. Her gaze is fixed on the dark purple that is spreading across her right palm. Identical to the laceration on Spiderman’s hand.
She looks up at him. There are so many thoughts and emotions rushing through her – joy, confusion, relief, anger. Her brain eventually settles on annoyance.
She finally says, “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
Spiderman swings them the last few blocks to MJ’s apartment. Being swung across New York at a substantial height is a rather terrifying experience to say the least. But given that MJ is still reeling from the shock that, Spiderman is her Soulmate, she doesn’t begin to process the sheer terror she was experiencing until both her feet are safely planted on her fire escape. MJ’s grip refuses to lesson on her companion’s red suit, however, as the adrenaline begins to wear off and fear crashes over in waves, sending her shaking. Spiderman remains perfectly still, keeping his arm wrapped around her as she buries her face into his shoulder and attempts to calm her breathing.
It takes a few minutes for MJ to finally compose herself. Even when her breathing has slowed and she’s no longer white-knuckling his arm, it takes another few moments before she is able to lift her head. She can feel how reluctant he is to let go, but still takes a step back when she gently pushes herself away.
An awkward tension falls between them. For once in her life, MJ doesn’t know what to say. What is she even supposed to say?
Eventually, she manages to find her voice.
“Don’t…” she says, stumbling on her words. “Don’t go anywhere.”
She races down the fire escape, taking each step two at a time. Her hands sting from both the coldness of the December air, as well as from the heat from the fiction her grip on the metal railings were producing. As she drops down onto the sidewalk, she gets some strange looks from passers-by – which she completely ignores as she all but sprints into her apartment complex.
She makes it to her flat in record time.
Almost dropping her keys as she yanks them out of her jean pocket, she unlocks her front door and throws it open. Letting her rucksack drop to the floor, she heads directly to the window that opens onto the fire escape. It takes a couple of tries to pry it open, but it eventually slides upwards with a sharp screech. She finds that Spiderman is right where she left him. He was really there. This was all really happening,
“You coming in?” She calls out.
He looks at her, hesitating. “I…really shouldn’t” he mumbles, the lenses of his mask contracting in a squint, reflecting the nervousness in his voice.
MJ leans out of the window, balancing precariously on the windows ledge so she can reach out and grab his wrist. The eyes of his mask narrow with confusion, hesitation, smaller than she has seen all evening, and she can’t help but flash him a smirk.
And then she tugs.
Spiderman’s lenses expand rapidly as he begins to fall forward. His body collapses into hers and they both go tumbling. A hand reaches up to shield her head as they crash onto the apartment floor. MJ finds herself sprawled out on top; head cradled against his chest. Flustered, she pushes herself upright, only for her to lose her balance again when her hand skids out from under her. In a panic, she attempts to stabilise her position, resulting in her legs straddling his waist.
Looking down at her Soulmate, nestled between her legs, the ridiculousness of the situation dawns on her. A big grin spreads across MJ’s face and she begins to giggle uncontrollably. A few moments later, a burst of laughter comes from under his mask.
Her giggling is interrupted by a series of short, loud sneezes.
“Bless you,” Spiderman says, repeating the phrase after every individual sneeze. MJ rubs her nose with the back of her hand and notices that her coat – all of her, really – is damp from the snow.
“I should probably get changed,” she tells him.
Spiderman props himself up on his elbows as she proceeds to lift herself off him. Glancing around the room, she ponders what exactly she should do. She has brought The Spiderman into her mother’s apartment. While, thankfully, said mother is out currently working, MJ isn’t sure of the exact time she’ll get home. Probably best not to leave New York’s friendly neighborhood superhero in their front room.
Looking down at said superhero, who is still propping his body upright, MJ gestures towards her bedroom door. It takes a second for it to dawn on him that she is indicating for him to follow. Mask-eyes widening, he scrambles to his feet and follows her.
Pushing open her door, MJ leans around the door frame and flicks on the power switch. The room becomes illuminated in soft light from the numerous sets of fairy-lights strung across her ceiling, completely negating the need to use the ceiling light.
“I think I would class this as a serious fire hazard,” comments Spiderman, who appears at her shoulder. She shoots him a glare, which he responds to by raising his hands in an I’m kidding gesture. Rolling her eyes, MJ slips her coat off and hangs it on the back of her closet door.
Spiderman hangs in the doorway, clearly still unsure how exactly to navigate things. To be honest, MJ isn’t sure how to either. There’s no manual on what to do when you actually meet your Soulmate – well, there probably is; there’s probably several – but MJ avoids those sort of clickbait articles like the plague. And even if she had read them, they wouldn’t have covered what to do if your soulmate was a fucking superhero!
She has to resist the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. Despite her wit and normally logical way of thinking, right now her brain is in full dial-up mode. Not a single useful thought is coming to the surface. A significant part of her conscious is screaming fuck, fuck, fuck!
Not exactly helpful.
What had she been thinking, bringing him into her apartment? The truth is that she hadn’t been thinking. So many questions that had been collected over the past year had all been answered the moment the man’s knife had cut Spiderman’s palm.
Her marks had started changing from pen scratches and pen scribbles to physical wounds around the time Spiderman first started showing up in Queens. Her marks are a by-product of the injuries he sustained while fighting crime.
Slowly, things are becoming clear in her head, mind un-fogging underneath the panic and nerves tugging at her heartstrings.
Her mind drifts back to that night in the shower a few weeks ago. She remembers the feeling of pure terror that consumed her when she had thought – assumed – he had died. That incident had significantly shifted her feelings. That distance she had put between herself and her Soulmate has shrunken drastically. Now she is standing there, literally, a mere few feet away from him. She’d rejected Soulmates, the whole notion of romance and relationships, for years. And now, within the space of an hour all that had crumbled around her. All that was left was an array of emotions that MJ couldn’t grasp – and it was giving her a headache.
But she knew one thing for certain, now she has found him, she can’t bring herself to let him go.
Taking a deep breath, MJ turns. “I’m going to get changed in the bathroom. You’re free to get yourself settled in here.” Reaching for the first top and pants she sees; she walks straight past him and down the hallway. She all but slams the bathroom door shut behind her.
Leaning her back against the door, MJ presses her face into her hands and lets out a quiet scream. Why is she being so cold? She’s happy, isn’t she? Her lack of social skills is becoming more apparent by the second. A low, exasperated groan escapes her throat as she begins to strip. As she pulls on the top, it dawns on her that she grabbed the same hoodie as she had worn that night. She considers throwing it aside and just putting back on the t-shirt she’s just discarded, but another sneeze rips through her and she thinks better of it.
Dropping the wet clothes into the washing basket, she unlocks the door and heads back into the hallway. Spiderman is no longer standing in her bedroom doorway, which is a good sign, she guesses. When she reaches her bedroom door however, she realises that no, it was not a good sign.
He is standing by her desk, reading an oh-so-familiar notebook.
Shit.
She had left the Idiot Mark Book on her desk this morning when she had jotted down the light indigo bruise that formed on her lower abdomen the night prior.
Spiderman pinches the corner of the page between his thumb and forefinger as he reads. He is clearly aware she’s returned because, without looking up, he asks, “You kept a record?”
She has no idea how to respond, so she swallows deeply and just nods.
The lenses of his mask don’t reflect the warmth on his features, but she knows it’s there. “You have everything,” he says. “Even all the multiple failed formulas that I tried for my web-shooters.” He turns to the next page, studying it with a mixture of fondness and amazement.
MJ leans against her doorframe, just watching what-who-stands in front of her. Part of her is annoyed he has snooped through her personal belongings. Then again, this book is a clearly-labeled record of all that had transpired between them. Years upon years of lilac words; violet bruises; indigo scars. It was a record of their bond.
So, the other part of her – the one seemingly ruled by her heart, rather than her logic – softens at the sight.
Spiderman continues to flick through pages until one, in particular, makes him freezes. His entire frame tenses and his head tips a little as he frantically reads each line. Confused, MJ steps forward to see what has caught him so off guard.
- He has dropped out of all extracurricular classes he joined in freshman year.
It takes all of her restraint not to grab the notebook and throw it out of the window. Though that wouldn’t really work, since Spiderman can just web-shoot it and pull it back. So instead, she remains where she is, brain kicking into overdrive – making up explanations, scrapping them, and then reforming them.
After a moment that seems to last at least half a dozen, Spiderman speaks. “You really are amazing.”
MJ blinks. She hadn’t expected that as a response. Spiderman has read through the notes she’s written about Peter Parker, and he calls her amazing? That doesn’t make any form of sense! All that information is now redundant; incorrect. Spiderman is her Soulmate, not Peter Parker.
And suddenly it clicks in her head.
Who actually is Spiderman? She has been so focused on the fact that Spiderman is her Soulmate, that she’s completely forgotten about the person underneath the mask. That person is her Soulmate. Spiderman is just an aspect of that person – albeit a fairly important one.
Head spinning, MJ takes a step forward.
Lifting her hand, she runs her fingers along the seam on his neck, the line that separates the base of his mask from the rest of his suit. Surprisingly, Spiderman doesn’t flinch away. The lenses of the mask watch her carefully as her fingers hook underneath the fabric. Spiderman’s hand reaches up to clasp hers in his and, together, they pull the mask upwards.
A familiar head of brown hair, curling with sweat, is revealed. Sharp brown eyes twinkle underneath the strings of fairy lights; an anxious smile plastered across his lips.
“I KNEW IT!” MJ practically screams.
And with that, the tension between them snaps. Peter Parker’s smile breaks into a full laugh as MJ begins pummelling his shoulder with her fists. His hand comes to grasp one of hers again and the sudden contact makes her jump, stopping her assault. He gently opens her palm and traces his thumb across the Soul Mark on her skin, causing MJ’s breath to catch in her throat. Tentatively, she reaches out and takes his right in her left, turning it over to expose the knife cut on his palm. The wound is already healing. It looks several days old, with a messy, half-formed scar over the skin. Somehow, MJ just knows that it will be completely gone by morning.
“How…?” She asks, running her thumb across the healing mark, confused.
“My powers increase my metabolism. I heal and regenerate a lot quicker than, uh… a normal person,” he explains, looking down at their joined hands. “I guess that’s why we never could get our marks to match up, at least on my end.”
“Well, you are responsible for the majority of them,” MJ said almost teasingly.
“I thought they would disappear just as quickly on you as they did for me!”
“They stay on you for twenty-four hours from the moment they are received – that’s Soul Mark 101!”
Peter pulls a face, mouthing yeah yeah as his nose scrunches up, which MJ almost giggles at.
It’s strange, having Peter this close after so long observing him from afar. She can see how his irises ever so slightly gradient from dark brown to a lighter shade, and that one eyebrow is messier than the other.
“You’re staring,” Peter comments, so softly that it barely registers in her ears.
“Better get used to it,” she fires back, just as softly. They continue to stare at one another before Peter breaks, dipping his head to capture her lips with his.
God his lips are so soft. They have no given right to be that soft. They kiss one another deeply, almost like they are afraid that, at any moment, the other will vanish from their arms.
“I hate you,” she says stubbornly when they break apart, biting the inside of her mouth in an attempt to prevent herself from pouting. There is no way she is going to pout.
“No, you don’t,” Peter chuckles, his smile wide. And deep down, she knows that she doesn’t.
She offers no protest when he pulls her back to him. Leaning into his touch, she allows him to run his hand through her hair and rest it at the base of her neck. He looks at her softly, still grinning in that sweet puppy dog manner. She leans forward and presses her lips against his again.
Yeah, she doesn’t hate him.