Rewrite the Stars

...

I know exactly what this means. It means that you'll keep shutting me out.

I keep hearing her words in my head, roving around in dizzying circles.

You're… you're spider-man? What the hell, Peter?

The sunlight coming through the classroom windows is making the room too hot, a low buzz of springtime coaxing our eyelids shut like cicadas and summer vacations and cold sodas on rooftops. The smells of the Hudson, damp and trash-filled, boardwalks on the Atlantic.

If only. We still have two months till the semester is over.

The worst part is you being so dramatic about this. Waiting until my life was in danger to tell me. I thought we were better than this. I thought I was your friend. I thought maybe we could be…

I had asked her. "Could be what?"

Nothing. Forget it.

"Please finish that sentence," I had whispered.

And she wouldn't.

Not if you can't be honest with me. Not if you keep pushing me away like this. It's not fair to either of us. You keep going like this and you're going to end up dead in an alleyway somewhere and no one will know. No one will even know you needed help.

I knew I had messed up. I had lied to cover my ass one too many times. Until it finally put someone I loved in danger.

I thought I wasn't going to be able to get to her in time, and if she died, I wouldn't be able to handle the guilt. It would be absolutely unfathomable. I'd be buried so deep in it that I would never be able to function again -

But then, she caught my hand. She, caught it. I pulled her safely up onto the bridge.

"Are you okay, MJ?" I had shouted over the roar of the tugboat, blowing apart to pieces beneath us on the river. We two specks, clinging to the edge of the bridge, were invisible in the night darkness. The police and rescue boats put up the sirens and sped across the black waters, heading for the fireball.

"W-what?" she had asked, staring at me with eyes wide.

I called her MJ. No one but her friends call her MJ.

And she knew my voice.

"Peter?" she whispered.

I reached up and took off my mask, soaking wet and partially burned, anyway. "Hey," I said weakly, the rain getting into my eyes.

Her chest had heaved with the adrenaline of nearly dying, her anger bubbling up, the shock and the irreplaceable trust in me that was now flitting away.

The rain crashed down. The flames roared from the boat.

I thought we were friends, she had repeated.

The last six months of lying, missed hang outs, late homework… it all came back at once, crushing her beneath their weight. From the look in her eyes, I knew it was less anger, and more hurt. But I had broken something beyond her trust.

I just didn't know what it was until I thought maybe we could be…

The answer was MORE. She wanted to be more. I didn't know at this point that she liked me too. I thought my affection was entirely one sided, a school boy crush. She was beyond crushes. She was Michelle Jones; strong-willed, studious, feminist, artist, literary decathlon genius.

But she liked me too, and I ruined it.

"I hope you all prepared the sonnet project for today," our English teacher, Ms. Allen, stands in a robust pink sweater and pulled a pair of eyeglasses that hang from a pony bead lanyard on her neck. She slips them on and looks over a to-do list on her desk, waving an old brochure at her face. The classroom is just too hot. There's no A/C and we have the benefit of the late afternoon sun.

Several groan in the room, and her eyebrows shoot up from behind the cat-eye rims.

"That wasn't an extra credit project," she says sternly. "How many actually did the homework?"

Myself, Ned, MJ, and six others raise their hands. The other fourteen shake their heads, laugh, or bury their faces into their desks with shame.

"You have until tomorrow," she snaps at the late ones. "Get them done or you fail the assignment. Period. Not grading on scale, either."

More groans.

"Okay, for those of you who actually pay attention," Ms. Allen continues. "I'd like someone to read their poem out loud."

Kenny raises his hand.

Ms. Allen gives him a suspicious look. "I don't suppose your poem is about a graphic sexual encounter, is it?"

Kenny grins sheepishly. "It's about love."

Everyone sighs. Kenny likes to write… descriptively, and has volunteered to share to the class one too many times.

Ms. Allen shakes her head. "I think we're going to spare the classroom from hearing it out loud, but thank you for your interpretation." She glances around the room. "Michelle, would you kindly read your poem out loud for us?"

Michelle's head lifts like she was electrocuted out of a sound sleep. "Uh… no thanks."

Ms. Allen's eyes squint. Everyone knows she picks on MJ, because MJ calls her out on a lot of stuff - favoritism, archaic interpretations of what we're reading… The two of them have gotten into so many debates that MJ runs the clock out on classtime, pissing off Ms. Allen because she could never not rise to the bait and derail her own lecture.

"Read it, please," Ms. Allen says with pinched lips. "Or I'm counting it as late."

"You can't do that," Ned pipes up, eyes wide with the unfairness of it. "We all can see it. She's turning it in on time."

"Maybe it will magically fall of my desk into the trash can," Ms. Allen snaps. "This is not up for negotiation. If you want to argue, join the debate team. Michelle, we're waiting."

MJ won't look at me, two desks over. She slowly opens her spiral notebook and flips the cover to the back.

"Why don't you stand at the front of the class, so we can all hear you," Ms. Allen pushes.

I only now just notice MJ's sleeve ride up ever so slightly. She's wearing a wrist brace.

My heart guts out of my chest, into my throat. My eyes feel hot and burning. She's hurt. I probably hurt her. When I lifted her onto the bridge last night. I was shocked when I saw her this morning in class, thought maybe she'd miss a day. But no - she has tests, she has assignments, and she doesn't miss a thing if she can help it.

But she hadn't talked to me all day. Avoided me. I called out her name in the hall, and she turned and walked the other way.

Maybe she broke her wrist. Sprained it. I don't know. She didn't say. I didn't know… I didn't know…

Surprisingly, MJ stands slowly. "Can I read something else?" she asks, softer than she usually speaks. "Just this once. I'll turn in the poem, but… it needs work."

"That's what drafts are for," Ms. Allen says. "Read the sonnet assignment, please. Now."

MJ doesn't argue anymore. Clutching her notebook, she walks to the front of the class and turns around to face us. For a split second, her eyes catch mine, but there's no reaction because she too quickly returns her gaze to the paper.

"I know what you are," she begins softly, "this secret you've had to hide...

I know that you love me, when you give it your all,

It hurt me to hear it, and what I cannot abide,

It took death's door to break down your wall."

Her eyes flick up briefly, not at me, but at Ned. He blinks at her confusedly. Then his eyes grow huge, and then he turns to me, mouthing, She knows?

I nod, sullenly. Ned sinks down into his seat.

MJ clears her throat, and I notice her hands are shaking.

"It isn't just the fates that pull us away,

Hiding behind masks and bullshit destiny,

How can I trust that you are here to stay,

When you're so out of reach from me."

Ms. Allen is keeping a tally of the syllables on a piece of paper. She sighs with disapproval.

"But what if we were to rewrite the stars,

Rearrange destinies and open closed doors,

Even your mistakes couldn't keep us apart,

You're everything I've wanted and more."

This time, she looks at me. "It isn't easy for me to break through. My hands are tied if I can't have you."

Her face is dark with a deep, deep blush, and she tears the perforated page out with an obnoxiously loud ripppp and slams the paper onto Ms. Allen's desk.

"There," she snaps. "I turned in my sonnet."

She turns and stomps back to her desk, grabs her book bag off the back of the seat, and walks right out of class. She slams the door loudly behind her.

"Well," Ms. Allen says with annoyance, "I can't say anything for the syllable count - which I can honestly say sounds more like a pop song than a poem - but you should all play close attention to how she completed the assignment. The unrequited love and wordplay is precisely how Shakespeare conducted his own works, with of course, a much better vocabulary. Please pass the completed assignments to the front, please."

The papers rattle across the room, and the bell rings.

I'm out of my seat and out the door before the first ring has even finished.

"Wait, MJ!" I call. I see the door to the outside steps closing on her silhouette through the window, the sunshine bursting around her shadow for a split second before disappearing when the door clicks shut. I burst into a dead run, flying through the empty hall as doors begin to open on either side and crowds stream out. The last few catch me at the last second, and I practicaly bowl people over like pins in an arcade before I'm flying out through the door.

She's sitting on the last step, off to the left on the cement barrier railing that people will usually lounge on during the lunch period. She seems to be waiting for me.

"Hey," I say uncomfortably, suddenly aware of all my limbs and my disheveled shirt and the cut on my forehead nearly healed from last night. The brace on her wrist, her eyes blazing over the notebook at me for a hot, split second.

My poem was absolute shit, but there's a part of me that wishes I could read it out loud to her, too. But there's something too corny about that. I didn't even save a copy. The only one is sitting on Ms. Allen's desk. And I only remember one stanza, anyway.

Her eyes are like fire, and I'll never grow tired

Of seeing them across from me

Like a trapeze artist on a wire,

When I look at her I feel free.

The syllable count was even worse than hers, and I'm pretty sure I flipped half of the rhyming schemes when I wasn't supposed to - ab, ab, aa, bb… abca…

"Hey," she says shortly.

"Did you mean it?" I ask. "What you said?"

She looks away. "It's just a stupid assignment."

"It wasn't stupid."

"It wasn't that great of a poem, either."

"I liked it," I say quickly. "I thought it was amazing."

She glares at me. "Do you ever not lie?"

"That's a fair question," I slowly lower myself beside her. "But I'm not lying right now. I really liked it. Ms. Allen wasn't being fair, though. She… she…"

"She was being an unreasonable - dissembling harlot."

"Wow."

"It's from Comedy of Errors."

"Oh."

"Did you do any of the homework?" she sighs.

"Yeah, I wrote a sonnet too. But it sucks. Not like yours. Yours was great." I fiddle with a keyring on my backpack. "Um… mine was about you."

"Oh, thanks a lot," she snorts.

"My writing skills aren't great, you know that," I reply quickly. "If I could express how I feel about you with math, you'd be the most beautiful equation ever solved."

Silence.

Her eyes are critically surprised. "Now that was a good line. Is that from your poem?"

"No?"

"Well, it worked," she gives me an measuring look. "Got any more of those?"

"No, that wasn't planned. Nothing is. Not lying to you - none of it." I take a deep breath. "Is our friendship over? Am I too late?"

She shrugs. "Am I?"

I blink. "You said it was just a stupid poem. I thought that meant none of it was directed to me. I'm confused. The line about the masks and destiny and stuff… sounds sort of like the bullshit I was saying last night, about my destiny as Spider-Man and how I totally screwed everything up - not being honest with you has literally been the worst decision of my life and I can't believe it took death's door like - you said - to make me realize, how I should have told you ages ago, that I'm in love - "

I'm abruptly cut off by her leaning into me, lips pressing against mine in a brutally short, light touch, just enough to erase all sorts of apologies I was preparing to unleash. She withdraws as if kissing me electrocuted her.

"Sorry," she says shortly. "You just. Talk. A lot. You were saying?"

"Uh, ah, uh," I stutter incoherently.

"Were you about to say the L word?"

I still feel the burning touch of her lips on mine, and my stomach is flip flopping in every direction.

The bell rings, signaling the start of the next class period.

"Late?" I whisper hoarsely.

"The other L word."

"Oh, right, yeah," I gulp nervously. "I'm in love with you. I have been for… a year now? A year and a half?"

She doesn't answer, but one small corner of her mouth begins to turn up. In a rare and beautiful smile.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you before."

"That you loved me?" she asks. "Or that you had this whole other secret alter ego life of saving people and working with the Avengers and all that stuff?" Her eyes suddenly narrow. "That internship isn't an internship at all, is it?"

"No. It's not."

"Damnit, Peter," she looks away. "Every time I start to forgive you I get mad all over again."

"I'm sorry…"

"No, no, don't apologize, you already apologized, multiple times," she looks down at her dark hands, nervously squeezing into fists and releasing. "This is on me now, not you. I have to forgive you."

"You don't have to if you don't want to. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Ever."

"Well," she flicks an invisible piece of lint off her dark, boyish jeans, watching it disappear onto the sidewalk. "I mean, I'm going to have to if I ever intend on getting to kiss you again."

"You wana kiss me again?" I ask, my voice slightly shrieky. I look around the empty school yard. There's no one to see us anyway, they're all in class now. "Wait - why did you kiss me at all?"

"Jesus. I'm in love with you, too, Peter Parker. I have been for longer than a year and a half, that's for sure. I suffered in silence and made fun of you for being with Liz Allen because I couldn't handle doing anything else."

I feel like I've been shot or something. A red-hot bloom of - panic? Adoration? - seems to explode in my chest, my lungs working overtime, my stomach leaving town, my hands cold.

"You love me?" I repeat.

"I wrote two more lines for my sonnet," she changes subject abruptly.

"You… you did? Doesn't that mean it's not a sonnet?"

"Ms. Allen might have graded me down for it, so I left them out. But no. It's still a sonnet. There's a sixteen line version called a stretched sonnet. You can google it."

"I'll take your word for it." There's an uncomfortable pause. "I'd really, really like to hear it."

"Okay," she says shortly. "Here goes…

All I want is to fly with you across the city view,

All I ask is you fall with me, as hard as I've fallen for you."

She gives me a shy look. "Do you like it? Or is that weird face you're making because it's terrible?"

"Maybe you should have led with that," I whisper. "It's a good line."

"Just don't count the syllables."

"I know I said I prefer the math but I'm really not that picky, due to the content," I snicker. I notice her hand is shaking again. I reach forward quickly and take it gently, sliding her fingers between mine. I lay my other hand across the wrist brace, my palm suddenly hot against the scratchy velcro strips. "Are you okay? Is this okay?"

"It's just a little strained and bruised. It's really fine. It's not sprained or broken or anything." She looks down at my hand in hers. "I think considering the circumstances of you catching me before I fell to my death into a fiery explosion - when I was literally just trying to have a peaceful walk with a nice view - I think you earned points with that, not lost them."

"The thought of losing you," I start, and suddenly, I can't continue. At the absolute worst timing, Uncle Ben comes to mind. Bloody and lying in the street, with my bloodred handprints on his chest from trying to do chest compressions. The police swarming the area, pulling me from him, someone saying, It's all right, son, there's nothing more you could have done. It's all right. Is there anyone we can call?

I didn't even realize I had a tear threatening to slip out before MJ's hand reaches up and presses her thumb gently in the corner, wiping it away.

I catch her hand in mine, and lean forward, kissing her a second time.

Unlike the quick kiss she gave me before, which was more of a slap with lips, this one lingers. This one overrides thoughts and feelings and apologies. If love could become physical movements aside from a racing heart and all the other symptoms - it was this, right now, fusing together, every edge caught up in soft flesh and fears nothing but echoes. They all flit away.

I put a hand through the thick curls of hair, an electric buzz in my fingertips as I drift them with a caress on the back of her neck. She wraps both arms around my neck, holding me close, our chests pressed together.

Our faces find openings together, sometimes changing sides, noses smashing together with unfortunate timing. But we don't even care. When our mouths open we truly don't care. I feel everything tingling like wasps through every vein, pieces corresponding, damp and soft and completing the puzzle at last.

The part I was always missing.

She pulls back and gives me a curious look. I feel like I'm shining like a star from every pore in my body.

"So," I whisper carefully. "Am I forgiven?"

"Yeah, I was really on the fence, but that took care of it," she says, rather hoarsely.

"How do the stars look now?" I ask sheepishly.

She actually laughs out loud, and looks up at the smoggy blue afternoon sky. "We don't need their permission," she says, and one hand trails lovingly down one cheek. She leans in again. "Consider them written out. You know I want you and I don't want to hide that anymore."

"I'm all yours," I promise. "Secrets and all."

...

...

Dear Readers,

If you enjoyed this sappy one shot, leave me a review! I pretty much made myself bawl over this, haha. How are YOU all doing? Feeling the feels? I know I am!

Love,

Pip

Here's the full sonnet below, based on "Rewrite the Stars" by BENJ PASEK & JUSTIN PAUL from The Greatest Showman sung by Zendaya (MJ) and Zac Efron. If you haven't seen this movie I cannot recommend it enough. It's powerful and beautiful. And please look up the original lyrics, they are super inspiring.

I know what you are, this secret you've had to hide,

I know that you love me, when you give it your all,

It hurt me to hear it, and what I cannot abide,

It took death's door to break down your wall.

It isn't just the fates that pull us away,

Hiding behind masks and bullshit destiny,

How can I trust that you are here to stay,

When you're so out of reach from me.

But what if we were to rewrite the stars,

Rearrange destinies and open closed doors,

Even your mistakes couldn't keep us apart,

You're everything I've wanted and more.

It isn't easy for me to break through.

My hands are tied if I can't have you.