bakerstreet | Enemies to Lovers, with detours in between.

Enemies to Lovers, with detours in between.

Natural Enemies Shipping Meme

Most of us are fortunate enough to not be plagued by "natural enemies" - or even worst, a group that serves as an opposing force. But that doesn't mean that there isn't swaths of society that just do not play well together. Hunters and demons. Predators and prey. Outlaws and lawmen. Vampires and slayers. Montagues and Capulets. The undead and the living. The list goes on. You know, the usual and the unusual alike. It seems like wars will always rage between them. Maybe it's better for these types to just avoid each other, lest there be bloodshed.

What if, though, you - yes, you - were a member of one group and you developed feelings for someone that should be a mortal enemy. Of course, the feelings weren't the expected ones of wanting to gouge eyeballs out; instead, it was love, and a returned one at that. That would be quite the predicament, wouldn't it? But what would it be like? What drew you to them? Would your love be a pure, romantic one, or more of a love/hate? And would you allow that to sway you or repress all those emotions until you burst?

Most importantly, would a happy ending be possible?

HOW TO PLAY

Comment with your character and preferences, plus any information because this meme needs at least a little! People are going to want to know who their character should "hate."
Tag others.
RNG or choose what kind of relationship you're playing from ROUTE and the tone of the eventual ending, which will theoretically color the thread.
Play! Play out anything that strikes your fancy. Draw inspiration from the meme or come up with your own ideas.

ROUTE

ROMANTIC LOVE: Despite who they are, you care for them. Whether this means you'll ignore outside influence, fight your own demons to be with them, run away with them, or change the system depends on you.
LOVE/HATE: You despise them and all the stand for, but you can't keep away.

END

HAPPY: No matter how bad life is, it will take a turn for the better.
TRAGEDY: It may be good now, but eventually, everything is going to fall apart right in front of you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ do you think love can bloom even on a battlefield-- ]

Edited 2023-01-17 21:09 (UTC)

(Angel here, though they're pretty sex-positive at this point. Bring out all your demons, as long as they're not total villains.)

[She's dating (or at least friends with) a certain wallcrawler, so I'm here for any and all supervillains who might be trying to get to him through her, whether she knows they're a villain or is casually hanging out with their mundane alter-ego and is in for a rude awakening. Also open to jocks/cheerleaders, popular people who care more about vanity or money than intelligence, and general Gaston types as those types of people would grate on her nerves. AUs are obviously awesome, and she's generally college-aged unless she needs to be aged up/down to close an age difference (though I'm trash and don't mind age differences all that much).]

OOC: Hope this works for college age. I haven't specified which college; in her own canon Lydia ends up at MIT, skipping the first couple of years. Set post-canon in the MCU. Also one of the edits had them literally sharing a room with a line down the centre.

There were, on paper, worse rooms on campus than MJ's but none of them had Lydia Martin next door. And it was well known that among the Freshmen and indeed the students in general no one partied harder than Lydia Martin. And it was a common question among the other freshmen how Lydia had got in given that she was obviously stupid, a party girl, and a slut who couldn't possibly have time to study.

MJ was a keen observer and had a good vantage point to see at least a little below the surface. That Lydia had thrown together an excellent freshman week dorm party including live music, having introduced the two bands that played to each other seemingly effortlessly said things about her actual intelligence. As did the fact she was taking 300 and 400 math classes in her first term and read Latin verse as easily as she did English. But she pretended to be stupid anyway and partied with the jocks most of the time. The parties were good ones and a regular thing. And the sex? She almost never had the same partner twice but if she didn't either go to sleep exhausted or share a bed she woke up screaming from nightmares.

Neither of them of course were aware that their freshman dorm was built right over a Hydra research base that recruited both members and test subjects from the students.

[ooc: We can definitely go with MIT if you'd like, or else we can continue referring to it as a nameless college. Let me know if there's a particular route you'd like to steer this down or we can just see what happens!]

Just about everyone who'd graduated from Midtown Tech High had been a bit of a nerd, if not some sort of genius in their own right. It was just par for the course, given how much the school focused on science and technology (it was right there in the name). So given the fact that her baseline for most of her acquaintances was "giant nerd," MJ was all too aware that those nerds come with all sorts of nuances and personalities. Being a nerd doesn't disqualify one from being the cool kid, or the popular girl, or from being in the theatre clique. People are multifaceted, and so when she'd first met Lydia, she didn't share the sentiments that most others in the school had about how she couldn't be intelligent because of her social proclivities.

So while MJ wasn't particularly social herself and didn't really enjoy the party scene and had a good pair of noise-canceling headphones that kept Lydia's parties from being migraine-inducing, she wasn't part of the hard-working gossip mill that tried to make Lydia seem worse than she was. Everybody was entitled to enjoy their college years, and since it wasn't midterms or finals week or anything, no one should have any reason to view Lydia's shenanigans as anything but a mild annoyance. But it was her shenanigans that were annoying, not Lydia's entire existence, and so MJ had no real issues with her.

She'd sort of figured out Lydia's routine - as near as she had one - and knew when she should and shouldn't expect a party or other, more intimate noises to interrupt her sleep. So she had no headphones and no earplugs one night, and she was staying up a little bit later than she should while getting some personal reading done, when a sudden shriek pierced the silence of the night and made her drop her book. Her ears tingled from the shrill sound, and she realized it had to have come from just the other side of the wall where her bed was, which meant it had come from Lydia's room. Though she'd been used to hearing all kinds of noises from over there, that definitely hadn't been a pleasurable sound, and MJ scowled as she quickly thought over her options.

Her room was closest to Lydia's, and while no one else in that general vicinity of the dormitory could have missed that scream, there was a chance that their other neighbors would either mistake it for more of those previously mentioned shenanigans and ignore it or else be unable to pinpoint the origin. So since there was a chance that Lydia could be in trouble, she got out of her bed, slipped her cellphone into the pocket of her pajama bottoms, and grabbed the small cannister of mace that she usually kept on a keyring in her jacket pocket before stepping out into the dark corridor.

She stayed at the threshold of her doorway for a moment, determining that Lydia's door was indeed shut and that no one else seemed to be stirring from their rooms. Then she silently padded over towards Lydia's door, hesitating for a moment before lightly tapping on the door just loudly enough to be heard.

"Lydia?" she called. "You okay?"

Lydia stood there, panting for breath; for once she hadn't screamed because she'd woken up from a nightmare or in pleasure. Instead it had been a precisely targeted scream which she hadn't needed to use in months which might have made it a little more alarming. And in her hands she turned the 'bee' over and over, looking at it. She was just pondering what to do, turning it over in her hands when she heard a knock on the door.

"MJ?" Her first thought was to tell her neighbour that everything was fine and to go away. But on second thoughts for all she was a wallflower and a bit of a killjoy (and Lydia knew that she'd have been 100% fine with MJ although part of the issue was guilt; she wouldn't want to be the one living next to herself) MJ was smart and an observer. And Lydia had noticed that MJ looked in shadows the way she did. Her neighbour might not have been through nearly as much as Lydia but had certainly been through something and something more than the directly personal.

So she opened the door, in her nightdress. Two things might be immediately obvious to MJ beyond Lydia seeming much smaller at her barefoot 5'3" than in her normal 4" heels. The first was that Lydia's dark green nightdress, contrary to rumour, was entirely decent and was something she could wear outside without drawing the sort of stares she didn't want; the legacy of too much sleepwalking. The second was how many scars her makeup concealed, a couple on her face and about half a dozen on her throat as if it had been both stabbed and slashed at different times even if it had healed well. The room itself was spotless if a little girly, but there was an unexplained wide dent in the ceiling and another in the side wall above her writing desk.

"MJ." Lydia's tone was more confident as she held her hand out. "No I'm not. Take a close look at this and tell me I'm not going mad?" She held out her hand containing what looked like a crumpled up one winged bumblebee. At least until looked at head on when instead of a face it had a camera.

MJ wasn't here to assess Lydia's appearance outside of whether or not she seemed okay, nor was she here to be nosey about what her living space looked like aside from the same. She noted the things that seemed surprising or unusual, but those things took an immediate seat on the back burner as her eyes scanned the room and she tried to subtly peer behind the door to look for signs of any intruders. She wouldn't be able to do much if someone were lurking among the shadows, but at least she could pull Lydia out of there and take her back to the safety of her room while they called campus security.

But aside from some disconcerting structural damage to the ceiling and a wall, nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary. That didn't make her remove her finger from the trigger button on her mace, though, even if she continued to keep it lowered so she wouldn't unintentionally spray either Lydia or herself in the face. That definitely wouldn't help matters.

At first, she thought Lydia's outstretched hand was some kind of invitation to come in or something like that. But then she made a request and MJ frowned as she took a step closer, looking down at the small crumpled mass in the palm of her hand.

Her initial thought was that Lydia didn't strike her as the type who would be okay holding a dead bug in her hand for an extended period of time. But after gingerly prodding at it with a finger, she realized that it was more likely to be a "bug" of a different kind.

"What the hell?"

MJ's confusion was evident in her whisper as she looked back up into the room, looking for the air conditioner vent as the most likely point of entry before checking the window and any other significant cracks in the wall or ceiling. "What happened? Where did this thing come from?"

Yes, this thing was freaky as hell, but she wasn't sure if that could rightfully explain the scream she'd heard unless there was some other context she was missing.

"Good. I'm not seeing things." It should be impossible for tension both to drain and gather at the same time in someone. But Lydia let out a breath she'd been holding and her balance shifted slightly to the balls of her feet and head changed angle very slightly. She looked like far more of a scarred hunter than a party girl right now.

"With any luck it's some jerk who wanted to spy on me while I was in bed or the shower." She shook her head. "In which case I should do something to convince him to not do that again." Her tone was casual and gave no clues as to what she'd actually do other than confidence.

She frowned. "I'm not a roboticist." This wasn't her normal pretense of not using what was between her ears, but a statement of fact. "And the camera's just about plausible. But whether it's a robot or an actual bee I'm pretty sure you can't make something fly with off the shelf parts that small? Which means best case is it's some PhD's research project."

She bit her lip slightly. "Worst case is a whole lot worse. And I shouldn't have shown this to you if it is." She shivered slightly.

Lydia's words echoed MJ's thoughts even as they formulated in her head. Of course it would be some pervert Nice Guy that she'd invited over for a party, only for him to think that gave him permission to be a creep. But Lydia didn't seem like the type to attract Nice Guys, or at least not the kind who would know enough about robotics to be able to plant this thing. Because while it wouldn't be too hard to find some hack surveillance equipment on Amazon or whatever, this looked just a little too high-tech - and too expensive - for the average college student to casually invest in.

She continued to be quietly surprised as Lydia said out loud everything that MJ herself was thinking. That last bit, though, hadn't yet crossed her mind, at least not in any definitive type of way as it apparently had Lydia's.

"I've seen people do all sorts of surprisingly complex things when they've got a lot of time and not a whole lot of friends to get in the way of that time." Granted, she sort of fit into that category too, but robotics and general tech weren't really her main wheelhouse. "I know somebody who can have a look at this and probably figure out where it originated from, especially if it's attached to a live feed. But the responsible thing to do would be to call the police, since I'm pretty sure this has to break at least a couple of laws. No reason why you couldn't do both, I guess."

And then she peered up at Lydia again, trying to keep her voice neutral. "Though I guess that depends on what the worst case scenario would be."

Lydia shook her head. "The cops almost certainly don't have anyone who can investigate this and wouldn't bother even if they did. Have you ever tried to get them to deal with a stalker? And that's the best case."

"The worst case?" She shivered. "You remember years ago when Black Widow released all the files? Sorry, I don't know if you were blipped." She shook her head, having not mentioned the words Shield or Hydra just in case there was voice recognition software. "Two organisations and many of the heads and researchers set off in different directions rather than fought."

"If they stayed quiet and lost everyone's number and didn't trouble anyone important no one cut their heads off just in case they grew two more." She ran her left thumb along a surgical scar in her throat. "Kids in small towns are no one important."

MJ didn't have much faith in police, generally speaking, but there was such a thing as creating a paper trail. Make enough complaints, have a big enough file, and eventually someone will take notice; and if they don't, then at least your next of kin can point to all the records and use that in one hell of a negligence case.

But before she could say any of that, Lydia kept talking, and while she at first thought she was going to go off on a conspiracy theory tangent - which would have been something of a welcome surprise, since Lydia didn't seem the type - she instead started seemingly talking in riddles. She was obviously talking about Hydra, given the talk of two heads replacing where one had been cut off, but it was all MJ could do to frown down at her, eyeing the way Lydia thumbed along her throat. She could make out some kind of mark there, but surely she wasn't suggesting...?

She very nearly slipped into Italian in an effort to discreetly ask Lydia what the hell she was talking about, but if anyone were listening, then randomly switching into another language would certainly raise some eyebrows. "I think some kids from certain small towns in Eastern Europe might disagree," she guardedly remarked instead. "Especially kids from Sokovia. But that's a far cry from here, isn't it?"

Lydia wasn't expecting to be believed without proof. I mean who would. But it was clear that MJ had picked up on some of what she was saying. "They aren't teenagers any more." she agreed. "And speaking of a far cry from here."

She smirked at the feed line and stepped back and to the side, faced her bed, and screamed. Soundlessly. But not ineffectually; MJ despite being back and to the side would be able to feel the breeze and Lydia's bed? The duvet rucked up against the wall and the mattress depressed as if it was being pushed down.

It was a very soft scream by the standards of what she could do but more than made the point. "Sovakia's only slightly further than California." And the dent in the ceiling over her bed would probably now make perfect sense.

MJ was the type who listened to everyone but believed nothing unless she had some kind of solid proof, even if that proof was the old Sherlockian phrase about eliminating the impossible and then knowing that whatever remains - however improbable - must be the truth. There were still too many possibilities in Lydia's claim for MJ to buy into it right away. She could be lying, or she could be crazy. It was up to MJ to decide whether she had anything to gain from lying or whether her mental faculties were fully sound.

Not that she'd really intended to round out her night with a mystery, especially not one that could actually be potentially dangerous rather than just an idle way to kill time between classes.

But then Lydia turned away, and MJ found that she only had more questions rather than answers when she apparently screamed again. It was startling even if it was quiet, but it wasn't the volume of it that caught her off-guard. It was the effect. And other than maybe some ringing eardrums, screaming shouldn't have any real physical effect on other people.

She could only gape at the bed for a long moment before looking at Lydia again, then looked at the bed and back at the redhead. She was aware that she probably looked like some kind of cartoon character, with half-uttered words and wide eyes, but she couldn't really help herself. "Wh-... I-... whatthehellwasthat?"

"California isn't a million miles away from Sovakia." Lydia shrugged, her smug smirk showing she'd had the desired effect on MJ. "The biggest difference is that in Sovakia they looked for volunteers." Lydia shook her head. "But that's why that's what I'm worried about. And possibly I'm paranoid, but once bitten twice shy." She didn't mention that bitten was literal.

She smirked. "Of course one reason to not use unwilling test subjects is that they might object. Forcefully and as a pack with the 'benefits' of their experiments." Lydia's smile was slightly feral. She then shook her head. "But it might just be paranoia. If it happened once..."

While MJ was from New York City and so had stumbled across her own fair share of superpowered shenanigans, that didn't mean that she could simply shrug off what Lydia was saying as just small talk. She'd just insinuated that she'd been kidnapped and experimented on against her will, and had some weird sort of supersonic screaming abilities as a result.

"Are you for real?" MJ asked, voice low but a bit shrill. She almost asked instead whether Lydia was crazy, but questioning someone's mental state was something she tried to avoid whenever she could; it solved nothing and only served to antagonize the other person, whether or not they actually were crazy. "Are you... like... on the run or something? Shouldn't you keep a lower profile if what you're saying is true?"

Lydia rolled her eyes. "Of the eight of us that survived six are my closest friends and the seventh is my ex." Her tone implied that her problem with him had something to do with the ex part. "And after the animal test subjects broke out there weren't any scientists left while their computers were all old and airgapped. The best copy of their notes is in my head and the second best in the head of a friend of mine."

She shrugged. "And for keeping a low profile I'm neither there nor my ex who's joined a trainee superhero team." A statement accompanied by an expressive roll of her eyes. "Just a random freshman doing almost what I'd have done if they hadn't done anything. This is low profile unless you're one of them, which I doubt."

"No, I mean like... antisocial tendencies or something." MJ was still sort of in shock over this revelation, so words weren't her strong suit at this very moment. But considering how distrusting and skeptical she tended to be of most people without even having the excuse of having been abducted for nefarious experimentation, this particular point was still sticking with her.

"I'm not 'one of them,' but that's the whole point: you don't know who is. So wouldn't it be safer to isolate yourself to minimize chances of your secret getting out to the wrong people? I wouldn't exactly be a social butterfly in your situation." Not that she would be a social butterfly in any situation, but that was a moot point.

Lydia rolled her eyes. "Let's say they got some records I'm pretty sure are destroyed. And they had them on both of us." She shook her head. "How easy would it be to grab each of us and how long would it be until someone noticed? And how many in how many groups would notice?" Lydia smirked. "My twitter and insta aren't just fun and ways of getting me invited places. If I disappeared a lot of people would start asking questions in a few hours. And that's the last thing underground researchers want."

[Gemini's a supervillain (from DC Comics), if you're open to crosscanon she could be in Peter's apartment looking for the EDITH glasses and MJ walks in on her? She'd probably shapeshift into Peter to cover her presence, but MJ's not so easily fooled?]

[Definitely open to cross-canon and interested in seeing how that situation would play out! Feel free to start, unless you'd rather I do it!]

"If I were a billion dollar security system what would I be?" Gemini murmurs under her breath, slender hands clad in leather gloves opening drawers, lifting books and rummaging through papers in search of the device she sought. EDITH was a system that the wrong types of people were prepared to pay a considerable amount of money to get their hands on, enough to afford Gemini's expensive services to secure.

Steal a piece of Stark technology from Spider-man? That was an interesting challenge, one made easier by the Bugle's revelation of Spider-man's identity. Gemini had spent a whole weekend scoping out Peter Parker, observing him, his friends and his aunt. Whilst that observation hadn't yielded the location of the EDITH device, it had given her useful insight into Parker's relationships and how he thought. It was enough for her to come up with some plans: First, search his room and try to find the EDITH device. Second, impersonate a friend to try and fool him into revealing it. If that failed her last plan was to seize his girlfriend and use the threat to her to force Parker to give up EDITH.

That's why she had waited for Parker to leave the building before slipping in. None of the news crews had noticed the pigeon perched on the sill outside Peter's window, why should they when there were others like it all around the block? So nobody had been paying any attention when the 'bird' dissolved into a goo that matched the colour of the brickwork and oozed in through the small gap in the partially open window.

That had worked perfectly, but so far she was not any closer to finding EDITH. Letting out a huff of frustration, she moved over to his bed, effortlessly lifting the mattress to check that predictable hiding place for what could be the EDITH device. Nothing. Where else to look? That thought's cut short by the creak of the floorboard outside, someone was home, damn it, she'd been sure nobody was there!

The door's already starting to open and she only has a split second to respond. Her body shifts in an instant, shrinking slightly, losing the illusion of clothing until a very naked Peter Parker stands in Gemini's place, covering himself in embarrassment and calling out a shrill.

"Don't come in, I'm not dressed!"

That should have the Aunt retreating at speed.

MJ had never enjoyed being the center of attention. She can hold her own if need be - she's proven that often enough, most notably when put on the spot during the Academic Decathlon. But she'd rather know that she can hold her own in a theoretical sense, not because the eyes of millions are literally on her or because she's face-to-face with a killer drone that's got her in its sights. So seeing t-shirts with her face printed on them and reading her name in the newspaper in relation to her suddenly-famous boyfriend? It was amusing at first, but it's starting to severely grate on her nerves.

While Peter might be the unwilling source of all this insanity, he's also her one shred of normalcy. She's never had a boyfriend before, and while she'd never asked about whatever relationship he'd managed to have with Liz after pining over her all of sophomore year, she can tell he's sort of feeling all this out, too. So while these aren't the best of circumstances to test out a blossoming relationship, they're doing their best, even if they're only as good as a pair of teenagers with more book smarts than social intelligence.

Because her dad has definitely prohibited her from dating a vigilante and Peter hadn't wanted the media to see any reason to camp outside her building too, they've been spending time at his place, curtains drawn, phones off, and disconnected from everything aside from studying or talking or watching movies; anything that would keep them from turning on the news while the media circus was still going strong. MJ had been on her way over to Peter's for one such date when she suddenly received a text from him, telling her that he'd ordered food for them and had opted to save on tip and delivery by running out to pick it up. She'd already been mostly there, and so Peter agreed that she could let herself in and wait up for him, and she'd made him promise not to swing back and make a mess out of their pizza.

She'd just come in and had taken her shoes off when she hears a noise coming from Peter's room. She's surprised; unless Peter had run to the pizza place and back, the apartment should still be empty until May comes back from work. She assumes that May had come in early and is just collecting Peter's laundry or something, so she heads towards the room to greet her, freezing only when she hears an unexpected voice.

What. The. Hell?

Her hand stalls on the door as her mind races. Peter claims he'd just ran out even as she was turning onto his block, and he wouldn't swing back with an entire pizza pie after she'd explicitly told him that would be phenomenally dumb. So that... that can't be Peter.

Against her better judgment, she pushes the door the rest of the way open, even more shocked when she sees that, yup, that's Peter, and nope, he's not dressed. She averts her gaze immediately, heat rushing to her face even if she doesn't quite leave the doorway. "Oh! Hey! Hi! Uh... sorry, I didn't-... even after hearing your voice, I didn't really expect you to-... ah."

Damn it. Not the aunt at all but the girlfriend, that's an unexpected complication and for a moment Gemini curses inwardly that she hadn't changed into something entirely unnoticeable. But her choice has been made and there's no choice now but to double down and act like Peter Parker. Geeky and awkward teen albeit with superpowers, how hard could it be?

"Whoa." Peter ducks to one side, pulling up the corner of the comforter to cover himself, standing there awkwardly, a matching blush spreading on his face. "Uh hey MJ. Sorry, I got back early, I thought I'd surprise you...uh not naked obviously."

Gemini had only caught a couple of their interactions over the past week, but it was enough that she was reasonably confident in being able to fool the girl long enough to get her to go away. Luckily anxious babbling seemed to be something Parker did frequently and the girlfriend's blush gave her the leverage she needed to get her to leave.

"Could you um give me a minute? I got you something nice and I don't want to give it to you like this." Peter glances down at himself, his blush if anything only getting redder.

All she needs is another couple of minutes to ransack the room thoroughly, then she can make her excuses and slip away, ideally with her prize with her...But what if Parker had hidden the EDITH tech somewhere away from home? That thought was enough to give her pause.

None of this is making sense. Sure, Peter's acting as awkward as he ever does when it comes to nudity, but that still doesn't explain what he's doing here. Unless there had been a massive delay in her receiving his texts, but even then, why would he get naked right after coming back from a pizza run?

... and he'd gotten her something nice? From the pizzeria?

She's generally a mistrusting person, but nothing about this is feeling right to her. At the same time, though, standing at the doorway and trying to avoid looking at her naked boyfriend isn't solving anything, so she quickly says, "Sure," as she edges away from the door, eyes still avoiding Peter directly.

"Hey," she calls from just beyond the doorway, "do you, um, want me to order Chinese or something for us? I can get your usual." If Peter makes no mention of the pizza, then she's going to call his cell and try to figure out what's going out, or at least subtly sound the alarm to get some reinforcements. But she's still hoping there's a totally logical explanation for this, even as she's calculating whether it would be safer to just run for the door and get the hell out of there the minute she gets confirmation that something's amiss.

Well, at least something has worked. Awkward boyfriend meet awkward girlfriend, go figure, but Gemini wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Um sure, Chinese would be great!" She calls back, already turning her gaze back to the various books and starting to pull them from the shelves, looking for any that might be hiding something out of place. A pair of old sunglasses clatter to the floor, but she paid them no mind, intent on completing her search as quickly as possible. Now that she was no longer alone in the apartment the clock was ticking even faster, even though she'd just bought herself a little added time.

Nonetheless, it would be a good idea to keep an eye on the girlfriend just in case. Peter flicks his hand, a drop of malleable protoplasm flying off it, sprouting wings and completing the shift into an actual small fly as it buzzed under the door. Flying upwards, it zoomed around MJ's head and then settled on the ceiling above her, multifaceted eyes fixed upon her.