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“You got it, Peter Parker,” Michelle says with a little laugh, touching her necklace again as she turns away and goes over to the stack of cups.
We are happy to serve you.
Embarrassing how it’s so true in this case.
OR: MJ and all of the things that Peter Parker has left behind.- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 7,974
- Chapters:
- 5/5
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Bookmarked by RealClever
14 Jul 2026
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A year after leaving Squahamish, Aster finds a letter in her mailbox, signed from the very girl she has been unable to forget. What happens if they begin writing to each other again, this time both using their real names?
Bookmarked by RealClever
14 Jul 2026
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*An alternative plot which starts after the confrontation at the church.
"When you wrote those letters and sent those messages, how much of that was actually you?"
Bookmarked by RealClever
13 Jul 2026
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Ever since Ellie could remember, she had been fascinated with space. There was something about the enormity of it all, she’d described countless times to anyone who asked. The enormity of being in the middle of something that had no end that anyone could define. The fact that it could stretch on and on and on, and there were corners humans could never hope to reach in their lifetimes. The new frontier, she’d always insisted. Sitting right at our doorstep.
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Or the one where Ellie and Aster still find their way to each other despite being light years apart.
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This is not a love story.
This is the story of how Aster Flores let herself become a main character.
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all your broken promises by corvuriankid
Fandoms: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
29 May 2023
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Apart from himself and MJ, there were four other heartbeats in the store. The fourth heartbeat was soft, and barely detectable, a little thump-thump-thump sound, inaudible, and it was…
It was coming from MJ. There were two heartbeats.
There were two heartbeats.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 40,378
- Chapters:
- 17/17
- Comments:
- 297
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- 2,525
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Bookmarked by RealClever
09 Jul 2026
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something worth fighting for by tendertomb
Fandoms: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
18 Jan 2022
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Michelle Jones wasn’t a forgetful person. When she was captain of the Decathlon team, she’d drilled flashcards until her brain was stuffed full with facts and figures. She remembered birthdays, middle names, and allergies. She prided herself on being observant, cataloging those things away for later. But for once, when she went reaching for a memory, all she found was the empty space where it’d once been kept.
Something was wrong.
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Right before she forgets, MJ leaves a note for herself. She knows Peter too well– he won't want to put her and Ned in danger again. But she refuses to let him fight alone.Read the Chinese translation here, done by Krayt_Amber: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53943853/chapters/136544239
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 23,185
- Chapters:
- 5/5
- Collections:
- 2
- Comments:
- 209
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- 2,545
- Bookmarks:
- 622
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Bookmarked by RealClever
08 Jul 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
His smile at that moment was heart-rendingly genuine. She understood perfectly why her younger self had been drawn to Peter. He was brave without arrogance, smart without pretension. He had a bleeding heart the size of Texas, and a goofy smile. He would be so easy to love, and if she’d done it once, it was worth doing again. It would be like stepping into a pair of shoes she already knew would fit.
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The Way to a Man’s Heart by reki_apples
Fandoms: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
13 Apr 2026
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“I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding at all.” MJ unlocks her door and steps inside, gesturing with her head for him to follow. “Besides, I’m just repaying you for the flowers.”
“You don’t have to,” Peter insists. “I was just being nice.”
“Then I’m being nice too. Come on. I have too much food and only myself for company.”
She holds up the plastic bag in her hand, where Peter can see two boxes of takeout inside.
“Okay,” Peter agrees, his hunger winning against his common sense. “Thank you for having me.”
Peter has done a good job avoiding Ned and MJ for the past four years. Until they both moved in across the hall and began inviting him for meals and giving him leftovers (suspiciously looking freshly cooked). He really shouldn’t get involved in their lives anymore, but Peter Parker is broke, hungry, and can’t resist the temptation of delicious food and the chance to talk to his friends again.
Or: Healing and loving through awkward leftovers, impromptu lunch hangouts, and maybe admitting Peter’s not quite satisfied with his life as he thought he was.
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i do all my own healing (manage all my feelings) by somniatoressinespe
Fandoms: The Half of It (2020)
29 May 2020
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Ellie doesn’t expect the first letter to arrive.
(She doesn’t expect for them to keep coming either and yet.)
or "ellie goes to college but that doesnt mean she can leave aster behind"
Bookmarked by RealClever
03 Jul 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“That time in the hallway,” Aster starts all of the sudden, her hands reaching for Ellie’s like she couldn’t stop herself from touching her otherwise.
She resists the urge to bury her face into them. “God, I must have seemed such an idiot.”
“No,” Aster smiles, and it’s too kind. Ellie tugs at her hands. Aster laughs. “Well yeah, a bit. But I—I didn’t know why, but I kept rambling—”
“You rant when you’re nervous.”
Aster’s smile turns so bright at Ellie’s interruption and then bursts into a small giggle. “Yeah. I wanted you to talk to me.”
Ellie scrunches up her nose. “Why?”
“You were…” Aster trails off, untangling one of her hands and waving it in the air, “Different.”
She catches her hand back. “Yeah.”
“No. Well, that too,” Aster adds, before shaking her head, her hair falling in front of her eyes- Ellie wants to brush them back behind her ear- “I meant, I’ve read one or two of your English papers.”
“You did?”
“Trig had a way too high average in that class,” Aster explains.
“So, you wanted to talk to me because I wrote your ex-boyfriend’s homework?”
“You have a way,” Aster says- very fucking cryptically, in Ellie’s opinion.
“A way?”
“When you look at people…” Aster huffs a half laugh, shaking her head and looking away from her, “You focus on them. I don’t know how to explain it, but you make me feel seen. And I wanted that.”
“And now?”
Aster takes her hand in hers, brushing her thumb over her knuckles. “Now I just want you.”
“Oh,” Ellie can feel herself turn a patchy kind of red, “No big deal?”
“Hardly so,” Aster disagrees, kissing her quickly- Ellie’s eyes flutter close just as quickly, and she wants to chase her lips again, but Aster is already gone, “What do you want?”
And she could be romantic now, say something like they would in the movies.
I want to take your hand and bring you to my favourite secret places, she could say, all of them, all mine, all yours.
I want to let you see me, she could say, and I want to let you love me, and I want you to want to still love me after.
She says: “A taco sausage.”
Aster’s laugh resonates in her small dorm, and Ellie doesn’t think she’s ever felt like this, ever. She feels the kind of happy she used to feel when her mother was still alive. She feels bad for even thinking it.
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Kazuha confesses softly. “What if I only accepted his proposal so that the news would reach you?”
Yunjin’s heart cries out.
“I’m tired of acting like I don’t remember everything.” Kazuha whispers. “Please stop pretending you don’t know me.”
;; shinez royalty au
where yunjin is assigned to give kazuha, her ex-childhood best friend, lessons on how to be a good wife, now that she’s engagedBookmarked by RealClever
01 Jul 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“I believe love is one of the few things we will never truly understand, so it’s an exquisite means for justification when all rationale is gone.” She replies. “Sometimes we do rotten things. And to not feel foolish, we call it love. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. But it’s quite strange… the entire perception of love. To submit yourself like that… It's terrifying. It creates space for deception. It breeds a sense of security that can feel harrowing when broken.”
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Summary
When Aster Flores and her young son go on the run from her abusive husband, the last thing she is expecting is to find love. In her search for home, she and her son find so much more than they were looking for.
Bookmarked by RealClever
29 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
The longer Aster spent with Ellie, the more she got to understand why Ellie and Paul were close friends.
They both had the same brand of good on them.
While Paul was loud, and boisterous, and emphatically happy; Ellie was more quiet about her happiness, and reserved to not be so bold. Paul was the life of the party, Ellie was the home you went too after the party was done and you needed that peace.
Despite their differences though, the good shone through on both of them, all of the qualities that Aster loved on Paul, like his kindness, and his sweetness, and his adoration of Tommy… Aster saw the same in the way Ellie looked at her and her son.
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Paul isn't good with words.
And even though words don’t always work for him, (they just… they just don’t go together sometimes. Logically, you say the words and the words mean what they mean. But sometimes people talk and they mean more than their words and it’s like he’s stuck doing addition while everyone else is doing multiplication.) there is more than one way to talk.
Bookmarked by RealClever
29 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
The second time Paul interacts with Mr. Chu, Ellie isn’t there to translate for him, but that’s fine. Mr. Chu shows him how to make dumplings, and they spend the afternoon together talking with spoons and rolling pins and knives. His dumplings come out wonky and a little sadly shaped, (though one looks like a dinosaur so he did something right) but Mr. Chu smiles and says something in Chinese so Paul smiles back and gives him a big hug.
(Even if you don’t speak the same language, hugs are usually good things. But Paul knows he and Mr. Chu do speak something of the same language here, so he knows that Mr. Chu knows that he meant to say thank you.)
This sets off a series of cooking days with Mr. Chu. Sometimes Ellie’s there, hovering in the background and grinning bemusedly at them, but sometimes she isn’t, and it’s just the two of them in the kitchen, speaking the language they both share.
Paul learns how to make buns stuffed with red bean paste and soup that is way too spicy for him. (Though he’ll never admit it in front of Ellie) He teaches Mr. Chu how to make sausage tacos, and Mr. Chu treats the entire process with a serious gaze and careful intent, which makes Paul’s chest kind of warm and happy. This is respect, he knows. Embodied not in a word that sometimes fails him but in an action that he will always know.
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Summary
After her mother's death, fourteen year old Ellie Chu joins her engineer father on the ocean liner where he works. There, she meets Aster Flores, a child girl with a streak of paint on her cheek and a piece of red string connecting her pinky to Ellie's.
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Ten years later, Squahamish gathers. But more importantly, Paul brings Ellie home.
Bookmarked by RealClever
28 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“Did you have fun at the reunion last night?” Ellie found herself asking after a long moment of just listening to the dawn birdsong. “We lost you after a bit.”
“Yeah.” Paul grinned into his coffee. “It was fun to catch up with everyone. It’s weird how easy it is to lose touch with people. Even the ones who’re like, a street away.”
“It’s a choice, isn’t it?” Ellie shrugged as she swirled her drink in the mug. “ You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes. ”
Paul snorted. “Winnie the Pooh? Really?”
Ellie grinned. “No one knows friendship better than the expert himself.” Ellie pushed off the wall and finished off the rest of her drink. “Thanks for the coffee. And company.”
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A snapshot of Aster and Ellie’s relationship over the years.
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After the events of the movie, Ellie Chu and Aster Flores have a plan to meet up again in a few years. Fortunately for them, life has other plans, and the two find themselves being brought back together again so much sooner than they ever expected.
Bookmarked by RealClever
24 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“Dear Aster Flores, a good man once told me, that love is shown by the efforts you make towards someone else. That the more you love them, the more effort you put into them.” Ellie smiles at Paul for a moment before turning back towards Aster.
“While I can agree with that, I also know, that loving you… takes no effort at all. I love you in the morning, when I first see you, and during the day, when I think of you. I love you at night, when I get to come home to you. I loved you without even trying, I loved you while actively trying not too because my friend was in love with you.” Aster laughs softly at the memory.
“Loving you takes no effort, it’s just something that comes naturally to me, and I know that it will always come naturally to me, even if we fight, even if we yell, even when we don’t want to talk to each other. I will still love you, no effort needed.”
Aster lets out another soft laugh, that turns into a bit of a happy sob as she squeezes Ellie’s hands tightly. “How do I follow that?” She teases, their friends and family laughing in the background.
“Dear Ellie Chu, I am in love with you. I think I knew it, long before the letters. I was scared to admit the truth, but here goes. You are my breath while underwater. You are my light in the dark. You are the song I can’t stop singing.” Ellie blushes softly.
“You understand me, when nobody else can. I’ll stay by your side, even when scared. Because you make me not scared anymore. And I stand here today, to make sure you know, that no matter what we have to face, we do it together. Our story is far from over.”
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Summary
Aster Flores’s first semester of college in Portland is spent two ways: yearning, and figuring herself out.
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She clicks the silver button of her yellow pen and sets it on the paper to paper to write. As she starts, the pen glides over the paper with ease, like it’s whole creation was meant to write this letter.
Dear Ellie,
Bookmarked by RealClever
23 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
Who needs to beat around the bush anymore? I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since that first letter where you knocked off that quote from the French movie.
I hope you don’t mind if I steal some words too.
Pablo Neruda once wrote, “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
And I finally get it. That feeling of whiplash, of connectedness. That feeling you get when the last puzzle piece fits perfectly into the frame.
That feeling of finally achieving the bold stroke.
I love you, Ellie Chu. And if you find yourself in Squahamish this summer, I want you to know I’ll be waiting for you, at our spot, with my radio and some godforsaken taco sausages.
You’re my bold stroke, Ellie. You’re the focal point of the whole painting.
And when you get this, if you ever bother reading it, I just want you to know that falling in love with you was the scariest thing I have ever done. And I’m so grateful for that.
With all my love,
Aster.
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"Do you really want to go to college without at least knowing what touching another person is like?"
Bookmarked by RealClever
23 Jun 2026
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never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary by circulareasoning
Fandoms: The Half of It (2020)
02 May 2020
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They’re out in nature right now, “cell service doesn’t work out here,” Aster had said with a teasing smile, like she’d deliberately taken them away from Squahamish so they can be alone, away from friends and family and other prying eyes, like they can be in their own little world, half-naked in a hot spring—
Wait, what.
The hot spring scene, but different. (And by different, I mean gayer.)
Bookmarked by RealClever
22 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
Church is where Ellie sees Aster for the first time, her soothing voice reading out passages, her pretty face just visible over the pulpit. She’s the pastor’s daughter, which is not the reason why Ellie falls in love with her, because she’s a stereotype in many ways but not in the weird heathen, forbidden nun-wanting way, but it’s certainly one of the reasons why Ellie knows Aster will never return her feelings.
Ellie falls in love one day on the school track, waiting by the bleachers for one of her buyers to meet her to make an exchange. Aster is sitting on one of the middle benches, wind ruffling her hair while she reads a book, The Remains of the Day. She looks up, and she must spot Ellie because she smiles and waves, and Ellie doesn’t believe in God, but Aster’s face was glowing, halo atop her head and white wings spread behind her.
Not an angel; those don’t exist. Aster. Her star.
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Summary
“She’s back, you know, for the summer. She’ll probably be there.”
He doesn’t say who, but he doesn’t need to.
Ellie thinks back to the last time she’d seen Aster Flores. How she’d held her face in her hands; pressed her lips to hers; made a promise she might now be too scared to keep.
Bookmarked by RealClever
22 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
Somewhere, the back of her mind registers that her white shirt is almost see-through now, clinging to wet skin. Aster seems to notice this too, as her gaze drops low, then moves slowly, deliberately, back up. Brown eyes so piercing that it makes Ellie feel compelled to spill all her secrets.
So, she does.
“I think… I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. And I don’t mean just your looks, though it should be illegal to be this pretty.” Once Ellie starts talking, it’s as if a dam has broken. “Honestly, I would listen to you talk about Sartre, Camus, Arendt or Socrates all day. I could live in an ocean of your thoughts. Sometimes, when I’m reading a book, I come across a particular sentence or idea, and my first instinct is that I want to send it to you because I want to know what you think about it.”
Aster blinks, but Ellie is on a roll now.
“I love seeing the art that you create. I love how your eyes look right into mine, like right now. I love the way your laugh busts out like you can’t help yourself, the way you move your hands a lot when you’re nervous, little moments that remind me you’re not perfect. All those times we were in that choir room, every time you sang, you made me want to believe in God, or at least, angels.”
Ellie reaches the end of her speech when it feels like all the air has been knocked out of her lungs, and in its place, regret comes rushing in. Aster is still staring at her, slightly slack-jawed.