(Both @itzme___gosh and @Zitamientje requested a part 2, and I got so many other enthusiastic comments that I decided why not \o-o/? Enjoy!)
Peter's life was going great. He visited Mr Stark almost every day under the guise of his personal intern (they'd decided to keep their platonic soulmate bond a secret for now to protect Peter's privacy) and they'd gotten to know each other really well. Tony loved being in the presence of the younger boy, who treated him like an actual person instead of an untouchable celebrity. Whenever Peter was bored in class, his soulmate would write out some problems for a project he was working on for him to solve. Whenever Peter got injured on patrol, Tony was there with his exasperation and private medical wing ready to patch him up. Nothing could dampen Peter's mood, not even Flash's teasing about Peter's so-called 'Stark internship'.
Everything was perfect.
Until his romantic soulmate slapped him.
MJ's life was absolutely terrible. It had been months since her sixteenth birthday, since she had woken up screaming, sure that she was dying.
It had become a common occurrence since then. Enough so that her parents had invested in soundproof walls, at a loss for what else to do. She took painkillers every night before bed, but they barely helped whenever the pain made an appearance. She was at her wit's end. At first she'd been worried about her soulmate, certain that they were dying and she wouldn't be able to help them, but a day later and the crushing pain was nothing but a phantom ache every time her soulmate moved.
After that, when there was a new bout of varying levels of pain every week or so, almost always at night, she'd been worried that her soulmate was being abused. But after a while she realised that the pain never lasted long. Whoever her soulmate was got medical attention - good medical attention - almost immediately.
Her next thought was that they were part of a gang or something, especially after one night she was caught in the shoulder by a centralised point of white-hot pain that could only have been a bullet wound. A few nights before that she was pretty sure her soulmate had been stabbed, but she began to doubt even that when the pain receded completely after only a few days.
She was preoccupied by thoughts and worries about them, keeping to herself in school, ignoring everybody who whispered about 'that weird Michelle girl' who sometimes yelped in pain for no reason or bit back a scream when her soulmate aggravated a particularly bad injury. She hated to admit it, but her heart did sink a little when the pain kept coming but Peter Parker, a boy that she had secretly liked for years, remained bruise-free. She had hopes at the start, when he wore sunglasses for a day after her soulmate had been punched in the face, but by the afternoon he'd taken them off, no bruise in sight.
Nobody knew what she was going through, apart from her parents. That was the thing with romantic soulmates - you felt your partner's pain, but no markings would show up on your skin. To begin with, even her parents had thought she was just being overdramatic, but enough nights spent sobbing and days passed wincing convinced them otherwise.
One night, after a particularly rough week of school and before an important test the next week, she was jolted from her sleep with a quiet 'oomph' as her soulmate was punched in the stomach. She gritted her teeth, preparing for the pain she knew would be coming, barely wincing as her knuckles stung with the impact of her soulmate's fist on another's body. The fight continued, luckily mostly physical, no knives or guns that she could feel. Then there was a foot-shaped jolt on her chest, and a couple of seconds later she couldn't hold back a scream as she felt her soulmate slam into something very hard. Searing pain shot through one of her ribs, all the other aches fading to background. Her soulmate must have broken theirs.
Silently, she willed them to stay down, to surrender, whatever. She knew it was futile, but she still screamed again - this time partly in frustration - when a grating agony told her they'd stood back up and were continuing to fight. She wished for unconsciousness, knowing it was impossible as the pain was all mental, and her body shutting down its own nervous system wouldn't help.
MJ took a shaky breath as the attack seemed to cease, leaving her only with the pain of her soulmate's injuries and a broken rib. She'd been through fear. Pity. Pain, and self-pity and frustration, and now she turned to anger. Who was this person? What right did they have to do this to her, to torture her every night and ruin her life every day? She would almost certainly fail the test on Monday, she had no friends, and she couldn't be with her crush, and it was all her soulmate's fault. She wished she had somebody to talk to about it, but her platonic soulmate wasn't sixteen yet, and her parents were already worried enough.
She barely registered her soulmate moving again, the pain of their broken rib stabbing into her.
How dare they? How dare they keep getting up, keeping getting into these brawls or pit-fights or whatever they were. She didn't care if they got medical attention quickly, or if the pain somehow seemed to fade at an extraordinary rate. Did they ever think about her? Did they even spare her a second thought?
Before she could consider what the repercussions of her actions might be, MJ slapped her own cheek, hard, feeling the pain reverberate down the soulmate bond and sending all of her bitter thoughts alongside it.
For a moment, she thought it hadn't worked. Maybe her soulmate hadn't noticed the blow in the ocean of pain they were already feeling. Or maybe they really didn't care.
Then her soulmate stopped moving. The spiking pain faded to a gentle throb that allowed her to take a breath, albeit a jagged one. She could feel her soulmate breathing, each fill of their lungs making her rib sting. Their breathing seemed to ease, becoming shallower. Were they afraid, or trying to lessen the pain? And if so, why hadn't they done it before? MJ felt a tide of guilt wash down the soulmate bond towards her.
For a minute, they were both still, breathing in tandem.
MJ became aware of a pressure on her lip as her soulmate bit theirs, probably hard enough to draw blood. MJ touched the area softly, trying to work out what her soulmate was trying to communicate as another wave of guilt crashed over her, but quickly realised it must have been an apology as they launched into movement again, causing another scream to burst from her lips.
Peter did his best to ignore the tears streaming down his cheeks as he swung madly towards Stark Tower. He hadn't thought about his romantic soulmate. He hadn't considered what he must be putting them through. How long had they been feeling his pain for? They must hate him, he decided as he rapped on the window and climbed inside, doing his best not to jostle any wounds. How did his super abilities affect them? He had a high pain tolerance, but would that apply to his soulmate as well?
"Fractured rib," he told the doctor that usually saw to him. "Can you treat it... quickly?"
"Has it punctured a lung?" The doctor looked alarmed.
"No! No, but my soulmate..."
"Oh." The doctor pushed him onto a bed, and he let her roll down his suit to treat the wound rather than insisting he do it himself, like usual. The less he moved, the less pain his soulmate would feel. It had been a pretty bad fight today - he'd been taking down a gang who were selling a drug that caused a super-soldier high, and the last member had taken some of the stuff, getting in a good few blows before it wore off, leaving her drained and easy to apprehend. He'd noticed a news helicopter filming from above, and the flashing lights had made it hard to focus. He'd been sloppy, and his romantic soulmate had paid for his mistakes.
"More," he told the doctor as the painkiller entered his system through the IV. "I have fast metabolism, I can take it. Please."
The doctor relented reluctantly, and the pain slowly floated away. The guilt stayed.
"Mr Stark, I don't know what to do," Peter held back a sob as he paced in front of his platonic soulmate. "I didn't even think about my other soulmate until they slapped me, and I deserved it! I'm a terrible person!"
"Come on kid, that's not true. You forgot. That isn't your fault."
"Yes it is! Now that I think back, I've been having feelings of loneliness and hopelessness and desperation that don't belong to me for months, and I just dismissed it as a teenage phase or something! I've been so reckless! They must be so scared, and frightened, and..."
"Kid. Peter, look at me. You've made mistakes, sure, but that doesn't make you a bad person. What matters is that you fix them, that you do your best to make amends. You're a good person, Pete. I believe in you. If you want to apologise, go find them. I'm sure the sheer amount of guilt they're getting from you right now is enough to make them hear you out."
Peter wiped away a tear, then hugged Mr Stark.
"Thank you, Mr Shrek," he muttered into the expensive suit. "You're the best."
"And don't you forget it, kid."
MJ could hardly believe it as she ate a bowl of cereal of breakfast. Slapping herself had actually worked. Sure, it had left a faint bruise, but that was easily hidden with a bit of make-up, and the residual pain was nothing like what she was used to.
Speaking of, she was in a lot less pain than was normal the morning after a fight like that. In fact, she was pretty sure her soulmate was going out of their way to keep the pain to a minimum. She'd thought the medical treatments were amazing before, but last night the pain had all but vanished. Much as she wanted to, she was struggling to hate her soulmate. Yes, they were the one that had put her through all of this in the first place, but she had to remind herself that they felt this pain too, and seemed to be doing everything they could to stop it now that they knew she was suffering alongside them. Besides, in the absence of the usual overwhelming pain, their emotions were much clearer, with crushing guilt and a hint of self-hatred a constant, with a rapidly changing flow of sadness, anger (at themself), desperation, then hope.
MJ's dad entered the kitchen. "You okay, hun? I heard you up last night."
"Yeah," MJ said quietly, "I'm okay." For once, it didn't feel like a complete lie.
"Okay," he looked at her for a long second, then, apparently satisfied with whatever he saw, turned on the TV as he poured himself some cereal. The news was on, and MJ watched it as she finished her breakfast.
"Oscorp have released an official thank you to the anonymous hero Spider-Man for recovering the last of the stolen product that caused temporary super strength and was being sold on the black market. Footage of part of the conflict was captured by one of our helicopters late last night."
The footage came on screen, showing an open park area where 5 people were already webbed up and the last woman was swallowing something as Spider-Man leapt towards her.
MJ stood up to put her bowl in the sink, but paused when the super-powered woman swung a punch at the vigilante's stomach, sending him back a step. Spider-Man swung a return punch, and ducked the woman's assault, clumsy at first by getting more confident as she became used to the strength. The news commentator's voice faded into the background as MJ watched Spider-Man shoot webs at the woman, which she tore through with ease, then retreated a step as she charged at him, swinging a kick into his chest.
MJ remembered that kick. Remembered the moments of tense anticipation as Spider-Man now flew backwards across the green area on the footage and slammed into the wall of a public building, cracking the bricks. He sat on the floor, shoulders hunched and a hand going to his side. MJ remembered the pain of the broken rib, remembered begging him to stay down as that woman advanced, knew what was about to come as she remembered screaming as he got shakily back to his feet and rushed back into the fight. She knew how much pain he must be in but on the video he didn't show it, evading the blows with ease until the woman fell to her knees and collapsed. He webbed her up, clutching at his side, and began to swing away.
Slowly, MJ sat back down, putting her bowl back on the table.
"-once again saved the day, vanishing back to whoever he is during the day. But wait, watch this part carefully."
The masked hero was in the air between two buildings. (MJ didn't know how he could even think about swinging around like that - the amount of pain she'd been in last night would have rendered her useless.) The footage zoomed in as Spider-Man's head jerked to the side, and the hand that was on his injured rib flew up to his face, lenses going wide. For a moment, MJ thought he was going to fall and splat on the ground, even though she knew that hadn't happened, but he managed to get an arm up and shoot another web, slinging himself up to the top of the closest building and stumbling onto the roof.
Spider-Man just stood there for a whole minute, and MJ remembered the sensation of breathing in tandem with him as the newsperson talked through different theories. Then he took a deep breath, closing his eyes, and she knew that under his mask he was biting his lip. It felt like a strangely intimate fact.
Then he suddenly launched himself back into the sky at a renewed pace and shot towards Stark Tower. The footage cut off as he crawled inside, and MJ walked out of the kitchen without a word. It all made sense now. All the fights, the not staying down, the advanced medical attention, the way the pain faded so quickly. Frankly, she was disappointed at herself for not working it out sooner.
Spider-Man was her romantic soulmate.
Part 3 coming soon!