Spideychelle one-shots

Dear Journal (Pt. 1)

Dear Journal,

Today something crazy happened. I met Spiderman. Like, THE Spiderman. And he was kind and heroic and he saved me...

MJ was bored. She shouldn't have been - she loved participating in the school's annual science fair, and this year she was paired with Peter, which meant they basically had the entire thing in the bag.

But sometimes, MJ couldn't help but want more from life. She wanted adventure. She wanted new experiences. And as cheesy as it sounded, she wanted love. Like, she was in her junior year of high school and she'd never even had a boyfriend!

She knew that she could be... intimidating. She heard how the guys talked about her, in class or the cafeteria when they thought she wasn't listening. It was surprising how quickly people forgot about you when you bury your nose in a book. It's nearly as effective as an invisibility cloak.

But that works both ways - she can listen in on conversations unseen, but she often ends up overlooked. Sure, she has Peter and Ned, but she knows she'll never be as close as the two of them are. She's sort of the outsider.

MJ knows that she's embraced that, with her dark, dry humour and stand-offish personality. But that's just who she was. Awkward to the core, hiding it under an aloof outer shell.

Sometimes she felt like she was just waiting around for her life to start.

MJ sighed and turned her music up, her headphones doing a decent job of drowning out the traffic noises on her walk home.

Waiting for the light, she waved at a few cars before ducking down the alley that made up the "slightly sketchy shortcut" part of her route home.

Humming along with the song playing, she lost herself in thoughts of the book she was reading, which she had (unfortunately) left at home due to her inability to concentrate in class knowing that it was in her backpack not a few feet away.

Daydreaming, she didn't at first notice the man following her, and let out a short scream of surprise as he yanked the backpack from her shoulders, breaking the zipper and causing her schoolwork to spill out over the filthy pavement of the alleyway.

His low, gruff voice caused a ripple of disgust running up her back, fear quickly following as she realized she was alone and cornered, with no way to call for help.

... I mean, he's such a hero! Why aren't any of the guys at school like that? I still can't believe he saved me. I was so scared (not that I would admit that to anybody). He got there so fast. I didn't know his "spidey sense" worked that well...

Peter wasn't a stalker. He wasn't! So what if he had taken to following MJ home. It was just that he was worried about her. The areas she walked through weren't the safest, and besides, she was always taking shortcuts through dark alleyways and stuff like that. Like, come on. Did she have any sense of self-preservation?

Plus, most of the time she either had her face in a book or headphones on, blasting music. She wouldn't be able to tell if someone was sneaking up on her.

And, in the end, it was a good thing he was there. 'Cause as he swung around the corner, he could hear her voice, panicked sounding, and the deeper tones of a guy.

The scene that greeted him made his blood boil with anger. MJ had her back up against a brick wall, her headphones dangling from around her neck and the contents of her backpack spilled across the pavement. The guy who belonged to the voice Peter heard was holding a knife and rummaging through her backpack, and Peter could hear him talking to her in a low, threatening tone.