Chapter Text

Peter wasn’t sure how long he had been walking. 

It was a narrow country road, the kind that was technically two-way but still not quite wide enough to avoid slowing down when a car was coming from the other direction. Peter didn’t have to worry about that though because, as previously stated, he was walking. 

Endless fields of corn or soybeans or something of the sort bracketed his path on either side and Peter was grateful at least for the strip of grass alongside the road because the sun was beating down and he didn’t much care for the idea of bare feet on hot black asphalt. 

He was having trouble taking stock of his body, couldn’t quite separate one injury from another because all he really knew was that it hurt. All of it. All at once. 

There was the limp and there was the spot on his head that had definitely been bleeding at one point and there was the way he could barely keep his eyes open. But he had to keep walking, walking, walking because he could see a rest stop at the edge of the horizon and he really needed to make a phone call. 

Left foot forward. Sweat dripped between his shoulder blades. 

Right foot forward. A shallow breath pressed against a tender rib. 

Left foot. Stumble. 

Right foot. Stand up straight. 

Left. Right. Left. Right--

“Can I help you with something?”

Peter leaned awkwardly against the vending machine at the front of the little convenience store, not entirely certain how he was still holding himself up. 

“Would it be okay if I borrowed your phone?” he asked, despite the hesitant look the woman behind the counter was giving him. Peter knew he probably looked quite the sight, banged up and covered head to toe in dirt and sweat, hair matted down and clothes fraying at the seams. 

And that wasn’t even mentioning how bad he was sure he smelled. 

“You gonna bring trouble to my door?” she asked, arms crossed over a gingham shirt and grey hair tied into a long braid straight down her back. 

“No Ma’am,” Peter tried to stand up straighter. “Just need to call for a ride. I’ll wait on the curb and everything.” 

She gave him a final once over before a perturbed concession passed over her face and she moved the wired landline, cradle and all, onto the counter closest to him with a definitive smack.

Peter pushed himself across the room with a breath of a thank you and then the phone was in his hand and his finger was hovering above the keypad and the logical reasoning that he had to choose someone to call struck him like a freight train. 

He couldn’t put the responsibility of figuring out how to get him out of this mess on May, certainly couldn’t do so to MJ, and quite frankly didn’t want to have to give an immediate rundown of what was going on which meant no Tony either. 

Peter dialled. 

“Who is this and how did you get this number?”

It almost made Peter laugh, the familiarity of it all, but instead his elbow fell to the counter by the register, almost knocking over a display of lighters as his face landed in the palm of his hand. Relief. This was what relief felt like. 

“Hey, Happy,” he breathed. “Sorry to bother you.”

A beat. A sharp intake of breath and a softness in the voice to follow that Peter would never have the heart to tease Happy for. 

“Peter? Kid, is that you?”

“Yeah,” Peter nodded into his hand. “Yeah, uh, hey-- You wouldn’t happen to know if anyone’s free to come pick me up, huh?”

“Jesus--”

“It’s only, I think I lost my wallet,” Peter continued, purely on autopilot at this point. “And there’s a very nice woman letting me borrow her phone, but I don’t think she wants me loitering all that long--”

“Hey, stop,” Happy cut him off, and Peter heard the shuffling of things happening on the other end of the line. “Tell me where you are.” 

Ah. Well. 

“Okay, um…” Peter lifted his head and glanced out the line of windows at the front of the store. “Midwest, maybe? There’s… a lot of corn.” 

“Are you hurt?” Happy asked. “Or in immediate peril?”

“Nope,” Peter shook his head and then winced at what it felt like when he shook his head. “I’m, you know, good. Great even.” 

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you,” Happy said drily. “I’m tracking your location now, so don’t go wandering away when you hang up.” 

Peter just hummed in vague acknowledgment. 

“Pete? You listening?”

“Hey, do me a favor?” Peter disregarded the question. 

“Yeah, kid, anything,” Happy said in a moment of uncharacteristic eagerness. 

“Tell MJ I sounded very-- good and coherent and shit, please,” Peter said, just a step away from slurring his consonants. 

“I’m not gonna lie to your wife for you,” Happy said. “But she’ll be thrilled to hear you’re alive at all, yeah?” 

“Cool.”

“We’ve got your location and the Quinjet will be there in an hour or so, okay?” Happy was clearly trying to keep Peter’s attention from drifting, but Peter was starting to think that he’d broken his leg at some point because it felt like it was healing at a weird angle. “Peter, just stay put, you hearing me?” 

“Yeah, for sure,” he said, really trying to tune in but only halfway there. “I’ll be… right here. With the corn.”

“Good, thank you,” Happy sighed heavily.

“Gonna give the phone back to the nice woman now,” Peter explained. “See you later.”

“Yeah, kid,” and now the relief was there, in Happy’s voice, creating something melodic as it joined forces with the crackling of the phone line. “See you later.” 

*

Peter didn’t have a watch on him, but it felt both shorter and longer than an hour when the Quinjet materialized and landed in the field across from the convenience store. As promised, Peter had waited on the curb, breathing through the feeling of a shin bone, healed wrong and the urge to pass out. 

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Sam Wilson called as he strode down the ramp from the jet and across the narrow road. 

“Oh, Captain, my Captain,” Peter replied hoarsely, offering a weak salute but unable to make himself stand quite yet. He could see the way Sam hurried his steps ever so slightly at the mere look of Peter, but he tried to cover the way he flinched at the abrupt movement. 

Run, Spider-Man! Run, run, run! You know what’ll happen if you stop--

“Can you walk?” Sam asked gently, crouched in front of where Peter was slumped. 

“‘Course,” Peter brushed him off but Sam looked unconvinced. 

“Pete…”

“I walked here,” he insisted. 

Sam frowned, looked at the complete and utter nothing in their general vicinity. 

“From where?”

“Um…” Peter scratched at the inner corner of his eye with one hand and pointed down the road with the other. “That way.” 

“Okay, we’ll dive into what that means later,” Sam said as he started to help lift Peter onto his feet. “But for now, I’ve got a bunch of people who aren’t gonna start breathing again until they see your ugly mug, so let’s go.” 

“I was kidnapped, you know,” Peter teased weakly, pushing Sam away and trudging the distance to the Quinjet on his own two feet. “There should be some sort of moratorium on the insults for at least, like, an hour.” 

“A tall order,” Sam said as he walked confidently onto their transport. “But really when you think about it… Pete?”

Sam turned to look at Peter, realizing that he was no longer following and had instead come to a halt at the base of the ramp. 

One breath, and then two, and then three in too-quick succession. 

Peter lifted a foot to step on the ramp, but pulled it back at the last second, stumbling--

A staircase. He could get the high ground, find an exit to the roof, get out that way. Peter rushed up three steps, but on the fourth instead of solid ground, he found himself plummeting through pixelated illusions and slamming bodily straight into--

“Hey, okay, balance is off,” Sam said, wrapping an arm around Peter’s waist and bringing him back to the moment. “Come on, I’ve got you.” 

Sam started to lead Peter up the ramp, but Peter tested the solidity of it with one foot before taking a full step forward. And then again, and then once more. It was real, it was real, it was holding his weight and it was real. 

If Sam noticed the abnormality in the way Peter carried himself all the way to the seat where he basically collapsed like a rag doll, he didn’t mention it. 

“Hey, Sam?” Peter asked as he watched his captain sit down at the controls and start to take them up. “Will you be honest with me about something?

“Yeah, kid, of course.” 

“How bad do I smell?”

Sam cackled in his seat and Peter smiled, small and self satisfied as he let his eyes finally slip shut. 

*

When he woke up, Peter was disoriented, but that was nothing new. 

Listen close. Map out the space. Be still, be quiet, be uninteresting until absolutely necessary--

“Out cold for the whole flight,” Sam’s voice filtered in through the back of the jet, near the loading ramp. “Figured you could help me get him to medical.” 

“He was on the side of the road in Ohio?” Tony. Definitely Tony. Real Tony? “How the hell did he-- Doesn’t matter-- Pete?” 

And then a hand was on his knee and Peter jumped, flailed, stumbled out of his seat and onto his still muddy, tired feet. His heart stuttered and his breath faltered and his eyes started to focus as Tony stood slowly from where he’d been crouching with hands lifted in quiet surrender. 

“You’re okay, it’s just me,” Tony said. Peter was grateful for the way he stood still, letting Peter take full stock of him in his own time and on his own terms. “You’re safe, alright?” 

Peter nodded, projecting confidence he didn’t really feel as he said, “Tony. Hey.” 

“Hey there,” Tony replied, eyes all warm with gratitude and concern the way they always were when Peter made his way back home after a day as God’s personal punching bag. “Helen’s here. We’re gonna get you checked out.” 

“Here?”

“The Compound,” Tony assured him calmly. “Upstate.” 

Peter fidgeted with his hands, ran one through the tangled mass of hair on his head and ended up just scratching compulsively at his scalp instead. 

“Right. Um, so, uh--” he let out a frustrated sound. “Is-- Is MJ…?”

“May is driving her up as we speak,” Tony continued in that maddeningly even tone that was getting closer and closer to making Peter just want to tear his hair right out. 

“Good. That’s good.”

Peter was shifting restlessly on his feet and Sam was watching carefully and Tony was just-- there with all of his care and ready to fix whatever parts of Peter were broken and it was too good, too good, too good to be true--

“Could you just--” Peter shook his head at himself. “Could you, real quick, just, tell me something only you would know?”

Without even looking at Tony he could feel the way the man’s face fell, could feel it in the way his own heart dropped at the ancient familiarity of it all. 

“...Pete.”

“I know,” Peter dropped his gaze to his feet-- one of his toenails seemed to be missing. Huh.-- and he expelled a near-hysterical laugh. “I know, I know, I know it’s been-- fucking-- ten years, and I know what you’re thinking but I swear I’ll explain if you could just-- Tony, just do it, please.” 

Tony took a beat, thought about it, and then:

“Your sophomore year at ESU, I wanted to drop something off at your place but I thought you weren’t home, so I just let myself in and found you and MJ--”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, cool,” Peter cut him off abruptly, ignoring the blatant snickering coming from Sam. “It’s always gotta be wildly humiliating, huh?” 

“How else would you know it was me?” Tony teased gently. 

Peter’s lungs expelled a startled, trembling laugh of their own accord and at any second that hysteria was bound to shift into tears, so Peter did all he could think to do and pushed himself forward into Tony’s willing embrace. 

“How long?” Peter asked quietly, feeling like a child with the way Tony’s hand smoothed down his hair. 

“Six weeks.” 

The tears came. 

*

The first time Peter Parker encountered Quentin Beck, he had been sixteen years old and two months back in the world. 

The first time had been a cacophony of reckless decisions and developing trust issues, but it had ended with all sorts of definity. It ended, because Beck was dead and the fight was over. 

The second time Peter encountered Quentin Beck, was actually not only the second time. And so, at twenty-eight years old, Peter realized he’d had an honest-to-God nemesis the entire fucking time. 

*

“How did he survive?”

“No clue,” Peter shook his head, looking at his recently re-broken and set leg courtesy of Doctor Helen Cho and the reliable members of the medbay staff. “But that was back when SHIELD was all mixed up with the Skrull. I wouldn’t be surprised if stuff fell through the cracks.”

“ Fell through the cracks?” Tony gaped at him from the chair next to Peter’s bed, feet propped up and arms crossed over his chest. “Pete, they told us the guy was dead and he wasn’t.”

“Yeah, well,” Peter shrugged sluggishly, still more tired about the whole situation than angry. “Shame on us for trusting them, huh?” 

Tony breathed deeply, but Peter just stared at his own broken leg, at the cast they’d be able to take off in no time at all, really. 

“Kid,” Tony said, softer now. “What did he do to you?” 

I built this place for you, Peter! You like it, right? It’d be a real shame if you didn’t after all this time--

“Nothing,” Peter laughed, because he didn’t know how to explain the fun house labyrinth that he’d been trapped inside for six weeks, didn’t know how to tell Tony that all of his injuries had been self-inflicted in one way or another, how Beck had spent the entire time as a voice through tinny speakers and a series of computer commands that turned his world into a living hell. 

“Almost nothing at all,” Peter said, because it was the truth. 

*

He could hear MJ coming down the hall a full three and a half minutes before she was bursting through the door to his room, all messy curls and bloodshot eyes. 

“Are you okay?” Peter asked, already sitting upright in his bed and reaching out for her before she could so much as absorb the presence of him there in front of her. 

In response to his question, MJ scowled, and then she crossed her arms, and then she crumpled. 

“You don’t get to ask first,” she demanded shakily. “You don’t get to be kidnapped and disappear and look like that in a fucking hospital bed and then ask me first.”

At the sight of the tears that were trailing down her cheeks, those flushed, full, beautiful cheeks, Peter felt his own heart break for her, for everything he’d ever put her through. 

“Em…” he begged quietly, and she immediately crossed the distance between them and pulled his face into her chest with a hand pressed to the nape of his neck. With the bridge of his nose pressed flush up against her sternum, Peter could graciously, magnificently, finally take a deep breath. 

Because he could hear her heartbeats. All two of them. 

“You’re okay?” he asked again, desperate for confirmation from the source. MJ pulled him away so she could look him in the eye and Peter rested his hands gently on her waist, thumbs smoothing across the bump in her belly that was just a touch bigger than the last time he’d seen it. 

There was no doubt in his mind that this was real. No power on Earth or otherwise could duplicate the feeling of Michelle Jones in his arms or the sound of their child’s fluttering little heart. 

God. How much had he missed?

“I’m fine,” she nodded, not even attempting to hide her tears. “Healthy on all fronts.”

“Mutant baby?” 

“Seemingly not-so-mutant,” she smiled softly, wetly. 

“I missed too many doctor’s appointments,” he leaned forward and rested his forehead against her stomach. 

“I missed you.”  

Peter pulled her face down to his and kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her with her hands in his hair and his heart monitor trilling along beside them. She eventually pulled away and pressed her lips to his forehead. 

“I lost that job, right?” Peter asked. 

“We’ll figure it out,” MJ reassured him and then shoved gently at his shoulder. “Scootch, I’m getting in.” 

“That’s six weeks of baby savings,” Peter sighed, even as he made room for her on the bed and held up the blanket for her, a well-practiced dance of familiar intimacy. 

She curled up on her side, carefully avoiding all his tender spots and resting a weightless hand on his chest, thumb tracing up and down and up his collarbone. 

“We’ll figure it out,” she breathed into his temple in the centimeters of space between them on that shared pillow. “You’re back now. We’ll figure it out.”

Safety surrounded him and rest overcame him. 

*

Peter slept for eighteen straight hours.

*

When he woke up again, groggy and out-of-body, MJ was gone and May was seated in the chair beside his bed. She was reading, glasses low on her nose because she really needed bifocals but kept putting off going to the eye doctor. 

Peter’s pain meds were wearing off, and he figured that was probably why he had woken up to begin with, but part of him liked to believe that her presence had roused him the way it had when he was fifteen and about to get in trouble for sleeping too late. 

“Whatcha reading?”

“The obituary we’re sending out once I’m done with you,” she said, apparently unsurprised by his wakefulness and offering him a wry grin. 

“Fair enough,” Peter winced as he tried to sit up and jostled his leg. 

“You know better than that,” May reprimanded gently as she pressed the button to lift the bed at an angle to meet him. 

“Did MJ…?”

“Went to get something to eat,” May informed him, compulsively helping him get situated and comfortable. “She’ll be back soon enough.” 

The first time that Peter had been hospitalized for a Spider-Man related injury, May had cried. She had told him never again and she had taken Tony to a different floor of the building so Peter couldn’t overhear her scolding him. 

It had hung heavy in his gut, the way a simple mistake on his part could affect her so completely. They were Parkers and they knew what it was to grieve, but that didn’t mean they didn’t also want to avoid such a fate if at all possible. 

And so Peter had found himself being more careful, less reckless, and seeking out more and more of the proper training that would keep him safe. 

But there were still some things that were unavoidable, and all Peter could really do in those cases was accept the aftermath. 

“May, I’m sorry.” 

She smiled at him softly, full of melancholy. 

“I know,” she said. “And I’d accept that apology if it wasn’t just going to fuel that big ‘ole guilt complex you’ve got going on.” 

“I’m serious,” Peter continued in all earnestness. 

May let out a breath of concession. 

“Peter, I accepted that this was part of it a long time ago,” she said.  “And we both know that you won’t stop being you just because I worry. So. You’re going to let me sit here, and you’re going to let me take care of you, and you’re going to keep doing everything in your power to keep coming home to me and that little family of yours, okay?” 

Peter clenched his jaw to keep it from trembling. 

“Okay.” 

“Good boy.”

May kissed his forehead and reality became one notch clearer. 

*

“If you’re going to find your way out, you’re really going to have to try a bit harder, Spider-Man.” 

“Where are you?! Show your face, Beck, you fucking coward!”

“Show my face?” Two dozen copies of Quentin Beck in head-to-toe Mysterio gear surrounded Peter where he was clambering up off the floor. “Your wish is my command.”

*

Peter awoke with a start, but no one was around and he didn’t actually remember falling asleep. 

No one was around and he really had to piss. 

Of course, there was a call button near his head for situations like this one, and a wheelchair folded up against the adjacent wall, but Peter Parker had a reputation to uphold. (He was also groggy and in pain and not thinking all that clearly, but that’s beside the point.)

He ultimately made it to the bathroom with only moderate amounts of distress, emptied his bladder, and was nearly back to bed with no one made the wiser that he’d even been up when--

“Dude, what the fuck.”

“Hey, that’s a big kid word,” Peter scowled at Morgan, whose arms were crossed and jaw gaping at him from the doorway. He was leaning against the bed rail as he tried to sit down without jostling himself too much. 

“You have a broken leg,” she made a sound of discontent and walked over to attempt to help him even though he was fine. “Why are you trying to walk? Do you want to break it for a third time? Want a compound fracture, idiot?” 

“You got meaner while I was gone,” Peter deadpanned, allowing her to adjust his pillows and pull the covers up his legs with reluctance. 

“You got stupider.” 

Stupid Peter, you thought that was bad? Try this on for size--

“Are you okay?”

There was something about the meeting of Stark and Potts in young Morgan that made her naturally pretty good at hiding what she was feeling. Luckily, Peter had learned the tricks and quirks of both her parents long before she’d been a dream in either of their heads. 

So Peter said, “Of course I am,” even if it wasn’t entirely true. Because Morgan was genuinely shaken and her father had retired to avoid putting her through this very thing. “Are you?” 

Morgan chewed on her lip, looked away, shifted her feet. 

“I got first place at the science fair,” she said, too quickly to really be as casual as she was trying to sound. 

Peter looked at her, the beginnings of a smile gracing his face. “Morgan, that’s--”

“I burst into tears when they gave it to me,” she cut him off without looking at him. “And I couldn’t tell them it was because my idiot pseudo-brother got himself kidnapped and we couldn’t find him and it might’ve been because he was dead, so I looked crazy in front of everyone and it’s all your fault.” 

Okay. Crying teenager at his bedside may not have been a direct test from God on his fatherly instincts, but fuck if it didn’t feel that way in the moment. 

“Mo, sit down, yeah?” he suggested gently. She clearly wanted to push back, but she compromised with herself and wedged herself in at the foot of the bed, between his feet and the rail. “I got out as fast as I could, I promise.” 

“We couldn’t find you,” she fired back resolutely. “You disappeared and we couldn’t find you.”

“Well, unfortunately every once in a while we get a bad guy with a brain,” Peter tried to lighten the depth of tumultuous anger and fear in Morgan’s eyes. He sighed when he didn’t get so much as a huff out of her. “I am sorry, Morgan.” 

“Just. Don’t do it again,” she pleaded. The ironic part was she was the first person ballsy enough to ask this of him, and the only one he couldn’t promise for the way she’d actually believe he had control over such a thing. 

“You gotta show me your science fair project,” he said instead, nudging her with his good foot. “Fill me in on everything I missed.”

“I looked out for MJ while you were gone,” she said, fiddling with the hem of the blanket at his feet. “And the baby.” 

“Yeah?” Peter tilted his head to the side as he studied her, feeling unbearably soft at how grown she pretended to be despite still being so very, very new. He wondered if this was how everyone felt looking at him all those years ago, when he was sixteen and desperate to be more than he was. 

“Last week she tried to eat sushi, but that’s, like, super not allowed when you’re pregnant,” Morgan explained. “So I threw it away.”

Peter snorted. “Oh, I bet she loved that.” 

“This might be my only chance to be an aunt,” Morgan said defensively. “So you better give me a quality niece or nephew.” 

“Hey, don’t doubt how awesome my kid’s gonna be,” Peter made a face. “My kid’s gonna be the coolest.”

“Sure, Spider-Dad,” Morgan deadpanned. Peter grinned at her. She’d be okay. 

*

Peter weaseled his way out of the medbay in a few short days, putting his healing factor to good use and finally being allowed up and about without supervision. He and MJ spent hours in bed the first night they could stay in a guest room instead of a hospital bed, lying awake and holding onto each other, just coming to terms with the reality of their existence together. 

Once again, in the same space, the same life, the same reality. 

They didn’t talk about what had happened, because Peter didn’t bring it up and MJ didn’t ask him to. Instead, she told him about the doctor’s appointments he’d missed, the way her mom and May had ganged up on her and dragged her in extra times out of fear of how the increased stress of a missing husband might affect the pregnancy. 

She told him about how big their baby was now, about how it felt, the extra weight on her bones combated by the unearthly love for this thing inside of her. 

“I missed you,” Peter said quietly, head in MJ’s lap and nose pressed up close to her navel. “But I’m back now, so just keep doing your thing, you little weirdo. And be nice to your mom.” 

He kissed MJ’s stomach with her hand in his hair and ignored the way the sound of the air conditioning kicking on alerted his freshly unreliable spidey-sense. 

*

“I’m staying,” Tony said in a voice that brokered no argument, but Peter shook his head. 

“No.”

It was finally debrief day, seated in a windowless conference room at the Compound with tablet-armed Sam and Rhodey. 

Tony had his arms crossed at the head of the table, trying to intimidate his way into the proceedings with minimal effectiveness. When Peter had been a kid this act might have worked, hell, a couple of years ago it probably still would have, but Peter was experienced with the process at this point and knew he didn’t want anyone in there that didn’t have to be. 

“Kid, don’t--”

“I need you to leave for this part, Tony,” Peter insisted. 

Tony looked to the other two Avengers in the room for backup, but both of them were studiously studying the electronic paperwork in front of them and ignoring the argument at hand. 

“Are we forgetting that I actually knew Beck?” Tony questioned. “I might be able to help fill in some gaps, smooth over any confusion about how he works.” 

“I’ve got it handled,” Peter said. “I’m not gonna fold on this one.” 

“Because?”

“Because, quite frankly, I’m gonna phrase stuff differently for them than I will for you,” Peter said. “The same way I will for May and MJ and the rest.”

Because that’s what you do for family, is what he didn’t say. Because that’s how you save them from the worst of it, how you keep them from having to live through something like this twice over-- once through their own eyes and once through his. 

Of course, Peter knew that Tony had seen plenty worse in his day, had in fact survived worse, but this was Peter’s battle and he refused to bring anyone else into it. 

“Fine,” Tony conceded, clearly unhappy with this decision, but at least marginally understanding. “Find me when you’re done?”

Peter nodded. “Yeah.” 

And so Tony left and they got down to business. 

Peter told them everything, despite his roiling stomach and the shadows in his peripheral vision, he told it all to them. 

He explained the warehouse, how at first he couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten there or who was holding him because Beck had set it up to look like a hospital, had even had the occasional illusory but familiar nurse from the Compound come in to check on him. 

Everything was just vaguely, terrifyingly off for the first two days before Peter started trying to get himself answers, and then it went to shit. 

Because Quentin Beck had had a full decade of watching Peter, of siccing colleagues on him (Scorpion? Rhino? How many did he send your way?-- I wish I knew, Rhodey.) and taking note of his strengths and weaknesses and had just enough of his sanity left to create the perfect torment for the boy who had ruined his life. 

Endless hallways with camouflaged stairs or concrete walls for him to throw himself down and into full force as he tried to escape a threat that he knew was probably fake but couldn’t risk. Beck didn’t have to lay a hand on him, as Peter threw himself down a stairwell without his web shooters because MJ was falling, falling, falling towards her death. 

There were no weapons or drugs or traditional torture tactics, just Beck’s knowledge of Spider-Man’s greatest fears and Peter Parker’s own mind working against him as he tried and failed to escape again and again. 

That wall you’re hiding behind? Are you sure it’s really there?

Sam and Rhodey just listened for the most part as he informed them of the tech being used to hide the warehouse in an empty field, just letting Peter get it out as quickly and painlessly as could be hoped for. 

He didn’t cry, maybe because he didn’t have quite enough distance from it yet to see how utterly fucked up the entire experience had been, but his hands were shaking as he cut himself off and decided not to tell them that he’d watched them die-- them and May and Tony and Morgan and MJ-- slow, painful, endless deaths again and again and--

“You can come with us if you want,” Rhodey said, once they had moved onto the next steps portion of the conversation. “Oversee the demolition yourself.” 

“No, I trust you,” Peter shook his head, not bothering to mention that he didn’t need to ever see that place again, that cage full of nightmares that he’d thoroughly cased and done his own fair share of demolition on before he’d begun his journey home. 

Most of the tech they were going to find had been torn apart by bare, trembling hands. 

Luckily, Sam and Rhodey seemed to understand Peter’s need to pass this off to the rest of the team, or at least carried the air of understanding with them wherever they went. 

“We’ll let you know when it’s done,” Sam said, getting up and readying himself to leave. 

“Thank you,” was Peter’s sincere response, until they were about to cross the threshold at the door, until the opportunity to warn them was about to slip through his fingers. “Guys?”

Rhodey looked at him, eyebrows raised in question. “Yeah, kid?”

Peter breathed. 

And exhaled. 

“There’s a control room on the ground floor,” he said as levelly as he could manage. “That’s where you’ll find Beck’s body.” 

Sam inhaled sharply, but neither of them showed any other outward signs of shock. Just a word of acknowledgment, a determined set to the shoulders, and they were gone. No judgment, no questions of Peter’s morality or whether or not he could be a friendly neighborhood anything if he was breaking his no-kill rule these days. 

No. No judgment. Not from them, anyway. 

*

Peter and MJ stayed at the Compound for another week while they waited for the mission to be completed due to some sort of safety protocol that Peter wasn’t fully up to date on. It could have been a worse house arrest though, tucked up with some of the best medical care in the country for both of them and a significant portion of their support system to boot. 

There were bills to pay (stress over) and jobs to desperately apply to and requests from Tony about just coming and working for SI, Peter to dodge, as if he hadn’t been declining such offers since before he’d even graduated college. 

At night, Peter left the bedside lamp on and MJ didn’t question him for it. In the daylight, sometimes he still saw amorphous figures standing in the corner of his eye, in the corner of the room, in the corner of his mind. He ignored it. He laughed it off. 

He focused on the fact that in less than four months he was going to be a father and not on the fact that he didn’t know how to do that when some mornings he still woke up with his head and body in two different time zones. 

*

The first thing Peter did upon arriving back in the city, before even going home, was take a trip to the Daily Bugle. 

“It’s been a while, Parker,” Jameson said as he clicked through the drive of pictures that Peter hadn’t sold him yet. 

“Yeah, well,” Peter shrugged. “For a minute there I had some respectable employment.” 

Jameson cackled. 

He paid like shit. 

*

“Michelle! Get off-- Leave her alone, leave her--”

A gunshot this time. It must have been a Tuesday.

“Aw. Still not quick enough, Parker. I guess we’ll just have to try again!”

*

“Do you think you’ll be able to tell me about it at some point?”

Peter was trying to read a book about early development. He wanted to know what the benchmarks for the first few months were so he could be well and truly prepared to make up for the fact that he’d left his pregnant wife alone for six weeks. 

“Peter?” MJ spoke up again, curled up in the armchair across from him and observing him in that perceptive way she did. 

“It was…” Peter just breathed. “It was every bad thing that has happened or could happen in my life. Right there, in fucking technicolor. I think the being there was enough reliving it for a lifetime, Em.” 

“I’m not asking you to relive it,” she said. “But you can’t hold onto it forever either. It’ll rot you from the inside out.” 

Peter shook his head, he tried to push back, he didn’t want to put this on her and he didn’t want to speak those words in the presence of the kid he was proving day in and day out he didn’t have the constitution to protect. 

“Peter--”

“He had this tank of water, Michelle,” he said, a touch too harsh. “And I never knew where it was because he changed the look of the place multiple times a day, right? So I’d fall in, and of course I couldn’t tell which way was up because falling into a body of water you didn’t know was there in the first place is disorienting as hell, and by the time I was back on dry land it was like I’d-- waterboarded myself. Done all the fucking work for him.”

“Okay.”

Pain. In her voice and his chest. 

“After the first couple of times,” he continued, manic. “I figured out that I had to let myself sink. Couldn’t for the life of me tell how goddamn deep the thing was, but I had to fight all my instincts and sink so I could find the bottom and work my way up from there.”

MJ moved from her seat to put herself right next to him on the couch, but Peter just kept talking, talking, talking.

“I think it was after the third--” he laughed hysterically and too loud. “Third or fourth time he made me watch you die, and I found the bottom and just-- considered staying there. Considered just-- abandoning you and May and the baby because I-- I-- I hadn’t slept in three days and I couldn’t remember if the memory of you getting your throat slit open was real or not.”  

“Okay,” MJ held him, kept him. “Okay.” 

Peter’s hands trembled on either side of her waist, lacking the coordination to even hold her in return the way he wanted to, the way he knew she deserved. 

“I can’t tell you about all of it,” he croaked, not noticing he’d been crying until he watched the neckline of MJ’s shirt growing damp. “Because it’s everything bad about being married to me.”

“Peter,” she said tearfully, but fierce, so he might have made his point but he also made her cry. “You always come home, you understand? You don’t get any other option, just-- just coming home. No matter what happens, you come back to me.”

Peter kissed her collarbone. It was the only promise he could give.

*

“You really oughta have more respect for your tech,” Peter grimaced, elbow deep in the mechanism for Falcon’s wings. “Christ, what did you do to these things?”

“None of your business, Paternity Leave,” Sam smirked, leaning against a nearby stool. 

“When did I say I was going on leave?” 

“You didn’t,” Sam said. “It was a unilateral decision.” 

“I’m literally doing Avengers work right now,” Peter snorted, motioning to the splayed-out mechanics in front of him. 

Where are the Avengers, Spidey? Huh? Not worth bringing in the big guns for you?

Were Peter’s hands shaking? Weird. 

“You asked to take a look at this,” Sam fired back. 

“Yeah, well, needed to do something,” Peter responded insolently. “Considering I’m an unemployed leech on my wife’s hard earned income and all.” 

“No luck on the job front?” Sam subdued sympathetically. 

“I’m not what you might call highly sought after in-- any of my fields,” Peter shrugged, but none of the bitterness fell off with the motion. “Which would be fine if I wasn’t trying to make the whole trip home from Midwestern purgatory worth it.”

“Pete…”

Sam could see him falling apart, could see the pressure grow too strong, too concentrated on his chest to hold strong against it. Everything was going to shatter eventually and Sam could see it. So Peter laughed. 

“Hey, remind me I’m supposed to pick up eggs before I leave,” he deflected.

“Michelle and that baby are lucky to have you,” Sam implored. “You know that, right?” 

“Sam, I’m being melodramatic, I’m good.”

It was debatable, but they didn’t. 

Peter was definitely going to forget the eggs, though.

*

Peter was fine. 

He wasn’t sleeping but he was fine. 

He was fine, he was fine.

Baby books at three in the morning, because he wanted to be fine. 

He wanted to be more than fine, wanted to be good, wanted to be great. 

Closed his eyes and got hit by a train, dropped from the sky, submerged in deep water. 

Was it real? MJ was real. Their home was real. That could be fine. 

Disintegrating under tons of concrete rubble-- Wait. Under the rubble, escaped. Later disintegrated. 

There was an order to these things, and if Peter could just figure it out he could be okay.

He could be fine. 

*

When he woke up, he was under the kitchen table and he couldn’t remember why. 

Peter couldn’t recall having gotten out of bed, or crossing the small apartment, or the way he’d pulled a chair in behind him so he was closed in on all sides. 

But there he was, breath hitching and muscles trembling with self-inflicted strain. He knew he had to have been awake in order for this to be his current situation, he just apparently hadn’t tuned in until now.

“ Fuck,” he muttered with feeling, because it ached. Whatever it was that was happening, it truly ached at the core of his very being. “Fucking, goddamn-- fuck.”

He covered his face with unsteady hands and breathed, breathed, breathed in one too many times before releasing a thundering exhale. 

“I’m gonna move this chair.”

Peter hadn’t even heard her coming, that was how nonsensical he felt. But true to her word, MJ pulled out the chair directly in front of him and sat down in its place. 

“And now I’m gonna hold you,” she continued simply, already scooting closer and pulling Peter’s face into the crook of her neck. “And I’m gonna remind you that you’re home, and you’re safe. We’re in our kitchen and I’m realizing we should probably clean this floor a bit more often than we do. May’s at her apartment, you talked to her on the phone after we had dinner tonight-- pizza because you somehow both burnt and undercooked that chicken. It’s about four o’clock in the morning on Saturday so neither of us have to work tomorrow. I love you, and I love you, and I love you.” 

She was quiet, but she was confident and Peter did his best to replicate all the certainty she held in those facts. 

They were home. 

They were safe. 

She loved him. 

The light over the stove was on, because they always left it on at night for the sake of not tripping and falling on the way to the sink. It was something Ben had always done, during his nightly patrol of the apartment-- windows and doors locked, toaster unplugged, curtains closed, light in the kitchen on. 

After he had died, May sometimes forgot that piece of the routine, locking the door but keeping the kitchen shrouded in darkness. And then she had found out that her nephew was Spider-Man and stumbled home in the middle of the night, and Peter noticed that the stove light was on more often than not after that. 

“Peter,” MJ said, once he was more grounded and they were no longer quite so entangled. Her thumb trailed across his cheekbone. “You have to call Doctor Carmichael.” 

He dropped his chin to his chest and breathed deeply through his nose, but he wasn’t shaking MJ away, her hand simply moving to the nape of his neck and her fingers finding a new home in his hair. 

“We can’t afford--”

“No, stop,” MJ didn’t let him finish. “Look at me, Parker.” 

He did. She was alive and she was real and she was scared. Peter had made her afraid.

“This thing that you’ve been through? You need help sorting through it,” she continued, soft and losing some of the steadiness from before. “And if I have to personally sit in front of Tony Stark and ask him for a loan so you can get that help-- so you can stop feeling-- like this…”

“Okay,” Peter pulled her close to him as she started to crack there on the kitchen floor beside him. “But you’re going too, Em.” 

She kissed his cheek, spoke into the flush of his skin. “Deal.” 

Peter breathed her in as his heartbeat finally started to settle into a more healthy, human rhythm. He wanted to hold MJ there, hold the both of them there, under the kitchen table and far away from anything that could ever hurt them. He wanted to never let go and he nearly wanted for their baby to be eternally safe inside the powerhouse that was their mother. 

“We’re about to pass along a hell of a lot of trauma onto an innocent child, aren’t we?” he asked quietly, fearfully, guiltily. 

MJ sat back to look him in the eye, hands cradling his jaw as if he was something deserving of her, as if he was precious, as if he had ever earned her love. 

“Maybe,” she said, equally trepidatious at the prospect. “Or maybe years of therapy means we’re about to raise the most emotionally intelligent baby of all time.” 

They laughed about it then, because what else was there to do? Peter had no idea if they would be good enough parents, didn’t know much of anything except the fact that he was going to make mistakes and their kid might resent him, might resent Spider-Man, might wish they could have been born to a father without such a penchant for getting himself into the life-threatening sorts of trouble. 

Peter’s laughter turned tearful and his gaze dropped to MJ’s oversized t-shirt, pulled taut in the middle where it never had been before. She kissed his forehead, long and slow and full of heart wrenching faith. 

“I’m going to do the best I can with what I have,” he said. 

“You’re starting with more than you know,” she replied. 

The light above the stove shined on.

*

Peter started seeing Doctor Jenny Carmichael when he was twenty years old. 

“So, what are you looking to get out of therapy?” she had asked on that fatal first session. 

“Well, being Spider-Man and all, I’ve been trapped under a demolished warehouse, shot and stabbed a bunch, stranded in space with a genocidal maniac, had my good trusting nature manipulated by a bunch of psychopaths, and been all around pretty well traumatized,” he had replied off-handedly. “Also, I lost three of my four parental figures by the time I was fourteen and my ex-girlfriend who I still see sometimes thinks I probably have ADHD-- but the jury’s still out on that last one.” 

Despite the truly comical look that little tirade had put on her face, Jenny had taken the whole thing in stride and the rest was history. 

Peter didn’t see her consistently-- it was the sort of off-again-on-again relationship where she’d help teach him new coping mechanisms and give him a place to work through some stuff, he’d stop attending regularly because he was doing well, and then he’d go and retraumatize himself and they’d start the cycle all over again. 

He loved the shit out of her. 

“Bruce still has some of your sleeping pills on hand, right?” she asked at the end of their first session back together. 

“Yeah, I assume.”

“Okay,” she nodded. “I trust you to know where the line is for when the nightmares get bad enough to need those and they’ve worked well in the past but sparingly, okay? And keep me in the loop?” 

“Hey,” he laughed bitterly. “I know the drill, Doc.” 

Jenny smiled at him sympathetically, but somehow managed to stay clear of any hint of pity which Peter appreciated. 

“I know it sucks to be doing this again,” she said. “But Peter, understand that this isn’t a square one situation. You’ve got a lot of tools in your belt and all the progress you’d made before this isn’t suddenly null and void.” 

Peter scratched at the corner of his eye, definitely not trying to inconspicuously pick up a stray tear. 

“Yeah, I know,” he said, taking a deep breath, steeling himself. “So, what do you say? Should we kick my ass into shape?”

*

Therapy wasn’t an overnight fix, but two weeks later, Peter did remember to water the houseplants before MJ had to ask. 

The succulent on the kitchen windowsill looked like it was cheering him on. It felt something a lot like hope. 

*

“Fuck you, Spider-Freak! You fucking piece of shit!”

“Ooh, anger issues! Neat one, dude!” 

“Get me down from here, motherfucker!” 

“Can’t do that, so sorry, but can I offer some advice?” 

“Fuck off!”

“Totally, man. But first I’m gonna suggest therapy! It really works wonders!”

*

“I hate to suggest it, but is Oscorp hiring?”

“I already got fired from there, which you know, which is the only reason you’re mentioning it right now.”

“Alright know-it-all,” Tony crossed something off of a list that Peter was pretty sure didn’t actually have any of the things he was suggesting written on it. More likely a grocery list. Or-- long division or whatever. 

They were in the dark room that Peter had set up in a storage room at the back of Tony’s lab when he was in his early twenties, because he’d finally gotten around to developing a couple of the rolls of film that had been sitting in his fridge since long before his trip to Ohio. 

“I still have some irons in the fire,” Peter shrugged as he worked. “No reason to panic yet.”

“No reason to panic?” Tony snorted. “Two days ago you asked Morgan if she had any job leads. She’s sixteen, Parker.”

Peter looked up and frowned at him. “Your daughter’s a snitch.” 

“My daughter gets more updates on your life than I do.”

“Not anymore since I know she’s a snitch,” Peter mock-groused. 

Tony laughed and put his not-a-list into his pocket. 

“You getting back into it?” he nodded to the project at hand. 

“A bit, yeah,” Peter nodded. “Jenny thinks it’s a good idea.” 

Over the years he had found that taking pictures grounded him, always had in various ways, but specifically in his connection to reality. If he could take a photograph of something, if he could develop the film with his own two hands and watch the image appear in the darkroom, he felt secure in his grasp on what was going on around him. 

He could have faith in his memories when he could hold the negative in his hands and he could know that he was seeing the same things as everyone else when he showed prints to MJ and May and Tony and they gushed and griped over how he’d captured them. 

“Oh, this is gonna be great,” he laughed truthfully as he lifted up a negative strip. “I’m printing half a dozen of this one.” 

“What is it?”

“Remember at Thanksgiving last year when you got your prosthetic stuck in the turkey?”

“You little shit, don’t you dare--”

*

Peter had seen a lot. He had been around the world at least twice over, stood atop more vistas than he could count, visited actual honest-to-God outer space and still, Michelle Jones in her painting clothes clocked in at number one each and every time. 

On this day in particular, a Sunday afternoon, the featured t-shirt was one Peter had handmade specifically for her on one of their we-got-back-together-and-stopped- being-broken-up-iversaries. Because he thought he was funny. 

It read, My Dog is Stupid, but I Love Him, except Peter had taken his sloppy embroidery skills to it, crossed out Dog, and replaced it with Boyfriend.

As Peter thumbed at the lens cap on his camera, he noticed that MJ was also wearing a pair of his sweatpants, which he could only really tell by the way they skirted a little high around her ankles. 

“It’s not done yet,” MJ said over her shoulder, cross-legged on the floor and painting tall grass near the baseboard. Peter wasn’t sure what the final product was going to be, but he had a sense that sunflowers were going to be involved. 

“So, we’re not going the Halloween theme route as planned?” Peter teased, leaning in the doorway. 

“You think your night job isn’t going to give the kid enough of a complex about the commonality of masks in everyday life as it is?” 

“She’s not our kid if she doesn’t wear her Halloween costume to school every day for at least a week.”

MJ shot him a look as he grinned at her, snapping a quick picture. 

“You’re so certain they’re a girl,” she said as she turned back to her work. 

“Maybe I’m just trying to get you to slip,” he shrugged. “The bet was that I wouldn’t be able to keep from asking about the gender of Mutant Baby, but if you just told me…” 

“If I tell you, will you stop calling them Mutant Baby?” MJ laughed. Peter took another picture, the light in that room, in her eyes, was too good to pass up. 

“Only when they stop having the biological potential for-- being mutant.” 

“You’re unbearable,” she shook her head with uncontained amusement and Peter sat down on the tarp covering the floor, still just watching her in all her masterful focus as she created love from art and art from love for the sake of the little weirdo growing inside of her. 

“You remember that guy I dated that time we broke up?” Peter asked. 

“Pizza delivery guy who always smelled like pepperoni or mullet guy?” MJ absentmindedly pushed a strand of hair out of her face and left a swatch of yellow paint on the high point of her cheek. 

“Pepperoni guy.”

“I figured,” MJ looked at him slyly. “Just wanted to remind you that you dated a guy with a mullet.” 

“Careful,” Peter shot back. “I’m not above growing a mullet to spite you.” 

“Trust me, I know,” MJ snorted. “Why’s pepperoni guy relevant?”

“He wouldn’t have baited me with a bet about my self control and just told me the gender of our baby already.”

“He also could’ve gotten you a lot of free pizza,” MJ nodded solemnly. “Probably should’ve married that guy.” 

“Alas,” Peter sighed melodramatically. “I’m stuck with you.” 

He met her eye as she smiled at him over her shoulder, softer than the teasing tone of their conversation really called for, but matching the palette of colors on her cheeks and hands and clothes near-perfectly. 

“Easy, Tiger,” she smirked. “Or I’ll name the kid Eugene and tell Flash it was your idea.” 

*

MJ had a tendency of holding tension in her lower back even before she started carrying a boatload of extra weight on the front of her body, tugging on her spine and making falling asleep at night a real hurdle to jump. 

Peter became an expert at hot water bottles and microwavable heat packs and giving his wife good enough head to distract her and fingering her in hot baths and lazily kissing her on the sofa while a movie played until she was relaxed enough to just drift off. 

In return, MJ rubbed his back when he woke up abruptly at four o’clock in the morning and reminded him as many times as he needed to hear that she was okay, that the baby was okay, that they were real and alive and his. 

The point of the matter was, they were getting accustomed to their new normal. It didn’t matter how often they’d individually or collectively experienced the amorphous thing that was recovery, it was still different with each new encounter, with brand new circumstances and context, and it was a process to rediscover their footing in it every time. 

But Jenny was right, and they had a lot of tools in their belt and people in their corner, and they were figuring it out. 

*

Being temporarily unemployed and facing constant job rejection gave Peter a lot of spare Spider-Man time. 

He found himself thwipping across the city and back, simultaneously finding places where he could be of use and resetting some of the constant anxiety that resided inside his thick skull. 

It was, for lack of a better descriptor, calming. 

Peter couldn’t remember what exactly had inspired him to explore the whole swinging from webs option all those years ago. It wasn’t something that just came along with his powers after all, he’d had to meticulously design both the webs and their method of delivery in the drawer underneath his lab station in chemistry class, but still somehow, it had always felt natural. 

It was right in a way that needed no explanation, that Peter had never really even questioned because that weightlessness, that exhilaration, was a sensation he would never get enough of. There was also plenty of danger there, sure, but the fear was overwhelmed by a safeness, a trust. 

When they found out that MJ was pregnant, not entirely on purpose and not entirely in time with their long-term plans, Peter had found himself thinking more and more about that feeling of safety, about where it might have come from. Whether it was burned into his DNA or somewhere along the line someone had screwed up enough to make him feel most comfortable hurtling off the tops of skyscrapers. 

He thought about the future, about how he would protect the new piece of humanity he was responsible for, and he thought about the past, about his own childhood, about Morgan’s, about what he could learn from both. 

And then he stumbled across a memory, of holding both his parents hands as they swung his body between them with a three, two, one, jump!

And then he stumbled across another, of him doing the same for Morgan. One, two, three, jump!

And he realized that maybe, all this time he’d just been chasing the high of being four years old and knowing above all else that his journey to the ground would always be accompanied by having a hand to hold. 

*

“How are the nightmares?” Doctor Jenny Carmichael asked, never one to beat around the bush. 

It was one of the things Peter most liked about her, and one of the things he most dreaded. 

“Well, lately when they wake me up I’ve still been in bed and not, you know, under the kitchen table or-- on the roof,” Peter shrugged. “So better. Unless you’re MJ, I guess.” 

“Do you mean that?” 

She also called him out when he tried to turn it all into one big comedy special. This, Peter didn’t particularly like at all. 

“No,” he conceded. “I mean-- She prefers it this way, but I still feel-- something about it.” 

“Do you want to try and place that something feeling?” Jenny challenged. 

“Not really,” Peter snorted. “But anything for you, Doc.” 

She smiled at him. “I appreciate that, Peter.” 

“It’s just-- Put yourself in her shoes for a minute, right?” Peter said. “She’s married to this guy who not only goes out and creates messes in the world, but also brings them home with him. All of the messes are there, right there in her bed and waking her in the night, and now she has to raise a child with that guy? In that messy fucking house?”

“Has she expressed any doubt in your abilities to take care of the baby?” Jenny asked. It was leading, but it didn’t sound leading. 

“No,” Peter breathed. 

“Do you feel doubtful?” 

Peter shot her a disparaging look. “Really?”

“Come on, I have to ask,” she fired back. “What’s really scaring you here? Because a week ago you were telling me how you were finding it easier and easier to accept Michelle’s support.”

“You already know what’s really bothering me,” Peter slouched in his chair. 

“Yeah, probably,” Jenny laughed. “But you don’t pay me to judge you silently.”

“Technically, Tony pays you,” Peter made a face. “Because I’m Mister Unemployed and my wife is about to go on maternity leave.” 

“Peter.”

He pushed himself back upright in his seat and tucked a leg underneath himself, stalling for a beat to give himself enough time to breathe, and think, and accept. 

“How am I supposed to teach a child how to-- to live fully and fearlessly and with-- with intention, if I can barely survive a couple of bad dreams?”

“Okay,” Jenny let out a breath. “I’m supposed to let you come to conclusions on your own, but can I just throw one thing out there? There’s gonna be a while there at the beginning when all you’re doing for that baby is keeping her alive.”

“Am I gonna stop doing that at some point?” Peter deadpanned. 

“At some point,” Jenny continued, unphased. “It’ll become a little less about learning how to feed her and change her diaper and swaddle her up, and more about teaching her how to be a person. But by the time that part comes around, you’ll have a lot more recovery time under your belt and-- ideally-- a bit more wisdom at your disposal.” 

“I don’t want her to be afraid,” Peter implored quietly. “Not the way I’m afraid.” 

A look passed across Jenny’s face that reminded Peter that this woman had known him for going on ten years, that she had essentially watched him grow up from the inside out. Her professionalism didn’t slip often, but there were moments, like this one, when they simply had to talk to each other like real people. 

“She’s going to be afraid sometimes, Peter,” Jenny said. “Maybe it’s more about showing her what to do with that fear, showing her how to channel it into good, how to ask for help when it gets too heavy.”

Peter sniffed and wiped at his nose with the sharp edge of his wrist, dropping his gaze. 

“Maybe,” he said because, yeah, quite frankly, maybe. 

“We’re almost out of time. Is there anything else you want to talk about?”

“I don’t think so,” he shook his head. “Thanks for today.”

“Of course.” 

“I do have one more question though, Doc,” he brushed off some of the residual emotions of just moments before and squinted at her accusingly. 

“Yeah?”

“You don’t happen to know that I’m having a girl, do you?” 

Jenny’s eyes got big. 

Peter’s held-in tears spilled as he burst out laughing. 

*

“Guess who isn’t unemployed anymore!” Peter burst through the front door of May’s apartment. 

“Jesus, Peter, who raised you!” May called out from the kitchen, startled. “Learn to knock!” 

He let the door fall shut behind him and walked to the kitchen as he ignored May’s reprimand. 

“You remember how I subbed at that middle school a few years ago? Well, the principal called me, because one of their summer school teachers had something come up last minute and they needed someone to step in,” Peter explained, grabbing a cookie out of a tupperware on the table, realizing it was homemade, and dropping it back where he’d found it. 

“You’re going to teach summer school?” May looked over her shoulder at him from where she was doing the dishes in the sink.

“Seventh and eighth grade science,” he responded, full of more pride than he’d felt in months. 

“Oh, that’s,” a look of realization passed across her face. “That’s perfect.”

“You think?”

“Doing science experiments with thirteen-year-olds?” May laughed. “Yeah, that might just be your calling.” 

“I might end up giving them all A’s just so they’ll like me,” he said, but he thought she might be right.

*

Quentin Beck was not allowed a seat in Mister Parker’s classroom. 

Peter saw him there once, on his first day, spinning a knife between his fingers in the back row, but Peter had told him that he didn’t belong around children and he hadn’t shown up since. 

*

“There are some really good kids in there,” Peter told MJ over a dinner that he had picked up on the way home to save either of them from cooking. 

“Yeah?” she responded, through a too-large bite of cheeseburger. 

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I’m gonna try to convince one of ‘em to apply for that scholarship program I did at Midtown once he’s old enough. He’s gonna be bored out of his mind where he’s at.” 

“My husband, the mentor,” MJ grinned. “I’m gonna tell Tony.”

Peter made a face. “Don’t you dare.” 

*

“What about the crib? You guys have a crib yet?”

Peter popped his head over a stack of boxes to watch Tony pull a protective covering off of a crib in the corner. 

“I was thinking about designing a crib,” Peter said. “Like, a crazy safe one.”

Tony frowned at him. “This is a crazy safe crib. You think I let my sole offspring, the light of my life, sleep in an unsafe crib, Parker?” 

“I found the clothes!” Pepper called out, seated on the floor nearby with an open box of onesies and little tiny hats. 

“Clothes we can definitely use,” Peter sat down next to her and began to coo over a pair of unbelievably small, ruffled socks. 

“It’s a state of the art crib!” Tony cried. 

“It’s also sixteen years old,” Peter responded. “Oh my God, overalls .” 

“Aren’t those the sweetest?” Pepper grinned at him. 

“Do you have pictures of her in these?” Peter asked. “The fact that I didn’t get to terrorize Morgan when she was a baby is one of the greatest tragedies to ever befall our family.” 

“We’ve got photo albums upstairs, I’ll show you before you leave.” 

“I could let the Hulk at this crib and it wouldn’t break,” Tony continued his tirade, not to be ignored. 

“Tony, it’s old,” Peter laughed. “And it’s been gathering dust in this storage room for ages. If you think it wouldn’t need updates anyway--”

“I can give it updates, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Tony rolled his eyes. 

“Would you?” Peter looked up at him mock-innocently. “That would be so helpful.”

Pepper snorted and Tony scowled. 

“I see how it is, you think you’re sly.” 

Peter shrugged. “I mean, if you don’t want to help make sure my kid is safe and secure at night--”

“So you won’t accept a well-paying job at our company but you’ll let me put countless hours into making a custom crib for your weird mutant baby?” 

“ Countless hours,” Pepper mocked. 

“I like my job!” Peter defended. 

“Fine! I’ll build you a new crib, you godforsaken menace,” Tony threw his hands up in surrender. 

Peter threw his head back and really, truly laughed at that because God it was so unbelievably Tony.  

“That’s very sweet of you, Tony,” Pepper said as she pushed herself off the floor. “I’m going to go find some bags or something for you to take this stuff home in. Start sorting out what you want,” she pointed at Peter, kissed Tony on the cheek, and left the room. 

“Yes, Ma’am!” Peter called after her and turned back to the task at hand. 

As Morgan had grown up, Tony and Pepper had donated quite a bit of her stuff to various organizations that were helping people in need both before and after everyone was brought back, but they still carried a lot of nostalgia for the young life of their daughter, and thus had quite a few well-kept hand-me-downs for the yet to be named Jones-Parker baby. 

Peter pulled clothes out of boxes, getting some both for a newborn and for a few months older like MJ had suggested because babies grow fast, Peter. Like little weeds.  

Tony groaned as he sat down next to Peter and started properly folding baby clothes like some sort of fucking grandparent. 

“Careful, old man,” Peter teased. “You want a chair?”

“I’m going to gift your child with nothing but kazoos and maracas for the first ten years of their life and then buy them a full drum set when they turn fifteen,” Tony threatened. 

Peter huffed out a laugh. 

“Isn’t there a chance Morgan will want some of this stuff eventually?” he asked. “You sure I can take this much?” 

“Morgan almost threw up when Michelle told her what an episiotomy was, so I don’t think we have to worry about that any time soon,” Tony said. “But we’ll just box everything back up as you no longer have use for it. Take anything you want.” 

“Thanks, Tony,” Peter said earnestly. “This really is a big help.”

Tony hummed out a wordless acknowledgment and clipped a tiny bow in Peter’s hair. 

They worked in silence like that for a while, and then Peter worked in silence while Tony leaned back against the wall and watched. 

“You need something?” Peter raised an eyebrow at him when he felt it had been quiet for too long. 

“Nope.”

“You’re thinking awfully hard,” Peter accused. “What about?”

“Nothing really,” Tony shrugged. “Just about how every parent in this family has become one right smack dab in the middle of some life-altering trauma.” 

Peter frowned thoughtfully, mulling it over in his head. “That’s not true,” he said. “Is it?”

“May and Ben when your parents died,” Tony started counting off on his fingers. “May again after Ben died--”

“Surely that doesn’t count twice.”

“Michelle was born the same week her grandfather died,” Tony continued. “And Pepper and I had the Nightmare Princess in the middle of the actual apocalypse.” 

“It’s a bit late to try and convince me not to have a kid, Tony.”

Tony just shot him an insolent look. 

“I’ve been trying to get you to talk about this baby since you got back,” he said. “Nothing has worked so I’m resorting to bullying you into it.” 

“Weird that that’s not your plan A for once,” Peter laughed. 

“Kid, come on, you’re killing me here,” Tony groaned, letting his head fall back against the wall with a dramatic flip of his hands. 

“I don’t know what you want me to say!” Peter said with continuing amusement. “I talk about the baby all the time.”

“You talk about your financial situation all the time,” Tony corrected. “You talk about building the ultimate crib all the time. Fatherhood? Not so much.” 

“I talk about fatherhood with my therapist,” Peter said. “Because it’s not your job to counsel me anymore.” 

Tony rolled his eyes. “Are you really gonna make me say it? Are you gonna make me admit that I’ve been waiting years to have these sappy conversations with you and you’ve been holding out on me?” 

There were moments when Peter remembered in high definition what it had been like to be sixteen years old and walk into Tony Stark’s personal lab for the first time, totally unaware of how the guy in the suit, the guy behind the glasses, the guy who he had watched saved the world from a couch in Queens would eventually become vital to his life. 

Not just the superhero stuff, but the Peter stuff too. The high school graduations and Thanksgivings and first, second, and third break-ups of it all. The stress- and Spider-Man-induced time off college and lost jobs and not entirely thought out proposal of marriage. 

Tony had been there for all of it, in his own emotionally stunted, often too sarcastic way. Maybe he had earned Peter’s grown-up vulnerability.  

“I guess I just…” Peter trailed off briefly with a shake of his head. “We don’t really talk about the way you and May and Pepper co-parented me through four years of high school and six years of college and-- whatever you call everything since then.” 

“Adulthood?” Tony supplied. Peter chuckled. 

“You guys just sort of-- I don’t know, figured it out?” he said with lilting uncertainty. “May and Ben never had the intention of being parents but I came along and they got there fast. And then, when Morgan was born, you didn’t have anyone around to tell you how to be a dad. You just were one.” 

He shrugged, as if that got his point across in its entirety even though he knew it really didn’t. 

“Peter, was I a good mentor when we first met?”

“Tony, no,” Peter said simply. “You brought a fourteen year old without a passport to a foreign country and set him loose in a super-battle. Not to mention all the Vulture shit you pulled. That was-- ill-advised.”

“But I figured it all out overnight, huh?” Tony lifted a brow at him smugly. 

Peter deflated. He wanted to argue that back then, Tony hadn’t been trying to mentor him or that looking out for a teenage vigilante was a beast entirely its own, but he also didn’t really want to argue at all. 

“You do this thing,” Tony went on. “Where the minute you survive something, no matter how terrible it is, no matter how genuinely traumatizing, you just pick up and move on and act like it wasn’t all that big a deal to begin with. You look at everything you’ve been through with rose colored glasses, Pete, and if you think that every single one of your numerous parents didn’t make mistakes and fuck you up a little bit along the way, you’re kidding yourself even more than usual.”

“Thought I was supposed to do better than you,” Peter said without much heart behind it because, contrary to popular belief, he was grown enough to know when he’d lost. 

“Christ, kid,” Tony chuckled. “You already are.”

*

It was the middle of the night and Peter was awake, but for the first time in a long time it wasn’t because he was distressed. 

He had been lying in bed next to his sleeping wife when he had an idea for something he should add to the recommendation letter he was outlining, the one for that kid that was too smart for his own good and was only in summer school to make up a credit he’d missed when he moved and transferred. 

And then that got him thinking about his lesson plans for the week, and how Carol in the second row of his third class of the day was struggling with covalent bonds, and how Beck’s eyes had looked when the life left them, and how he needed a new pack of dry erase markers. 

“This PowerPoint couldn’t wait until morning?” MJ said, reading over his shoulder as she sat down on the couch beside him, hip to hip. 

“I was feeling inspired,” Peter said. “Check it out.”

He pressed enter and they watched a series of truly nonsensical transitions erupt across a slide about magnetic fields-- star swipes, and spins, and the whole chaotic nine yards. 

“Is this what the kids are into these days?” MJ laughed. 

“Oh, no way,” Peter finally looked at her. “They despise it, but they have to pay attention if they want to roast me.” 

MJ smiled, she kissed him good morning in the darkness of night. 

“Hey,” she sighed when she pulled away. 

“Hey,” he said, tone that appropriate middle-of-the-night softness. “What’re you doing up?”

MJ ran her fingers through his hair smoothly from the bottom of his hairline to the crown of his head. 

“Your kid’s learning to tap dance on my bladder,” she replied, taking one of his hands with her free one and placing it on the lower portion of her abdomen. “Check it out.” 

Sure enough, Peter felt a series of tiny thumps drumming against MJ’s belly. 

“Someone wants out,” he said, voice quiet and awed and too-sincere. “I get it, buddy. We’ll let you see the sun soon.” 

“My due date is in two weeks,” MJ said. “They can come out whenever they want at this point.”

“In theory, sure,” Peter shrugged. “But once you’ve gotten so used to living in one spot, even if you want to leave, it’s still scary.” 

“Yeah,” she breathed. “But the Jones-Parker family has a knack for getting out right on time, don’t you think?” 

Peter pressed his hand more firmly against MJ’s stomach, lungs stuttering briefly. 

“You know I killed him, right?” he asked, but it was more a confirmation of his generally correct gut instinct than anything. “I snapped his neck. That’s how I escaped.” 

“Yeah, I know.” 

“And you know that’s not, like, who I am now?” Peter looked to her pleadingly, with all her unshakable understanding. “It’s just something that happened and I-- I don’t regret it because it was how I made it home to you, but I also didn’t enjoy it.”  

“Come on,” she took his hand and rested her chin on where they were clasped together between them. “You think I don’t know you better than that?” 

The huff of breath from Peter’s nose was very nearly a laugh, at the very least the most laugh-like sound capable of existing in these quiet moments. 

“Okay,” MJ said, pushing herself up awkwardly and with effort from the sunken couch. “Bedtime. Your kid is making me all overheated and you’re nice and cold.” 

*

Peter had all of five minutes left in his final class of the day when he got the call. 

Months ago, long before his forced vacation and longer before MJ going into labor was even close to being an imminent concern, Peter had created a new protocol in Karen’s operating system. The point of this protocol was that, no matter if his phone was silenced, or off, or at the bottom of a lake somewhere, one call in particular would always get through to him. 

So, when his cell phone started vibrating so hard it was moving across his desk and the ringer blared loud enough to burst eardrums and a red light started flashing-- Peter knew that his baby was coming. 

He froze mid-sentence in explaining the homework and half the class nearly fell out of their seats but he barely noticed as he lunged across the room and answered the call. 

“Now?” he answered breathlessly. 

“Now, kiddo,” Tony replied. 

“Is she--”

Peter was throwing things into his bag haphazardly-- he probably didn’t need the stapler or a cup of loose paper clips but who was really to say? 

“She’s fine,” Tony continued, and there was the sort of self-assuredness that only a parent could have in this situation. “She was having lunch with Pepper so they’re already on their way to the Tower.”

“Medbay?” Peter asked, before turning to look at the two dozen wide eyes pointed at him. “Uh. You guys are done for the day. I gotta go have a-- Well, my wife is having--”

“Is the baby coming?!” a girl in the second row exclaimed. Peter pointed at her and nodded. 

“Yep, yeah, um, yeah,” and then, under his breath but God with feeling: “ Fuck. Tony.”

“Breathe, kid,” Tony insisted as students packed up and walked out and cast him intrigued glances all the while. 

“I mean, I am,” Peter stammered. “I am, but I’m also--”

Would you look at that? She’s dead!

“I’m just-- Fuck, is she okay?”

“Peter, I swear she’s being taken care of, you just have to--”

How many times do we have to do this before you get there on time? Huh, Peter?

“I don’t have the car,” Peter’s eyes burned. “I-- Em had the car today, I don’t--”

“Mister Parker?”

Peter’s head shot up and he wasn’t sure when he’d sat back down with his backpack on the floor in front of him, but that student managed to bring him at least partially out of the terror of it all. 

He knew this kid pretty well at that point. He was the smart one, the one for whom a half-written letter of recommendation sat saved to Peter’s desktop. 

“Hey, class is over,” Peter said. 

“Do you need a ride?” 

Peter balked. “What?”

“My dad’s here to pick me up,” the boy shrugged. “He’s a cop so he can get you to the hospital or whatever faster than a cab. Sirens and all.” 

“Oh,” Peter breathed. “Oh, um, well I can’t ask--”

His phone was taken straight out of his hand and Peter just sat and stared, brain in about seven different places and none of them here. 

“Hey, uh, Mister Parker’s friend? Yeah, my dad and I are gonna give him a ride, where should we… Avengers Tower? Um-- Sure, yeah, we’ll be there soon,” he hung up and looked at the phone with blatant curiosity. “Why’s your wife having a baby at Avengers Tower?”

“Specialist,” Peter blurted. “They’ve got a specialist for-- Um-- We’ve got potential-- genetic-- complications?” 

Close enough. 

“Whatever,” was the casual response. “Come on. You don’t wanna be late.” 

Peter snatched his bag off the floor and stumbled after the teenager into the hallway. 

“Thank you for this,” he said. 

“Yeah, sure. I mean, you were kind of really freaking out there for a second.”

“Okay, Morales,” Peter snorted as they breached the front entrance and stepped into the sun. “Still your teacher, show some respect.” 

*

“Thank you so much for this, Sir,” Peter said, not entirely registering that he was in the backseat of a police car, but feeling it itching at the back of his neck nonetheless. 

“Anything for Miles’ favorite teacher.”

“ Daaad.”

Officer Morales seemed like the kind of guy who might be intimidating if Peter wasn’t so preoccupied with literally everything else going on in his life at the moment and if he wasn’t teasing his son lightheartedly in the front seat. But Peter had his face, quite impolitely for  first impression, stuck to the screen of his phone. 

Happy had apparently been relegated to keep Peter sane duty, because he was responding to each and every one of his frantic texts within seconds. 

Chill out kid.

She only just went into labor. You have time. 

Don’t get yourself killed trying to get here faster. 

“Mister Parker?” 

“Yeah, Miles?” Peter perked his head up to look at the kid sitting in the passenger seat. 

“With all due respect,” Miles said. “Chill.” 

Officer Morales cackled and Peter couldn’t really help but join in. 

At least until he got another text. 

*

“Tony!” Peter yelled as he ran full speed down the hall of the medbay. Tony turned to look at him and put his hands up in a placating, calming sort of gesture. 

“You’re okay, it’s just me.”

“Tony, is she-- Where--”

“She’s fine, it’s barely started,” Tony said, unable to keep the amusement off his face. 

Peter’s heart was absolutely thundering.  

“This is-- this is happening?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” Tony beamed. “Get in there, you’ve got a kid to meet.”

“Right,” Peter let out a disbelieving laugh. “Okay, um,” he moved to the door, aborted his steps and turned around to hug Tony tight. “Thank you.” 

Tony sighed into it, hugged him back, spoke directly into Peter’s temple. 

“Always, kid.” 

*

“I’m here, I’m here, I made it,” Peter stuttered as he stumbled into the room and directly to MJ’s bedside. “I didn’t miss it, right? I didn’t--”

“Still in time for the excruciating pain, Parker, don’t worry,” MJ said, sweating but clearly not in the middle of an active contraction.

“Good,” Peter nodded frantically and took her hand. “Good-- Fuck, that’s good.” 

“Yeah, I had it at about a fifty-fifty shot,” she deadpanned. “You know, considering you showed up to our wedding late with a shiner and all.” 

“That was-- You know what? I’m not gonna argue with you while you’re creating life, how’s that sound?” 

“I’ll believe it when I-- Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she clutched his hand tight and doubled over with a long groan. “When I see it, you motherfucker,” she bit out.

“Shit,” Peter lost his breath at the sight of her in pain and restlessly placed a hand on her back, pushed her hair out of her face, kissed the top of her head. “Hey, if you wanna break all my fingers that’s totally fine. They’ll heal super fast and you can break them again.” 

MJ fell back against the pillows as the contraction subsided. 

“Don’t tempt me,” she panted. “I kinda hate you right now.” 

*

On hour three of labor, MJ started frustration crying and May had to take over for Peter for a few minutes because MJ couldn’t stand the sight of him. 

On hour four, she curled up against his chest in bed and let him recite old Decathlon facts. 

On hour six, she refused to stop pacing and so Peter had to follow anxiously with a hand at her elbow for twenty minutes. 

On hour nine, the frustration tears were back. For both of them. 

On hour ten, unbelievably, they had a baby. 

*

May cried when they told her they’d named their daughter after MJ’s grandmother, and then cried harder when they told her they’d given the baby a middle name too. 

Andrea May Jones-Parker. 

Little Andy for short, with wispy dark curls and curious brown eyes and nothing notably spider-like about her that they could tell. She wasn’t at all what Peter had expected, but then again, how could expect a feeling, a joy, a love this big when he’d never felt it before? 

MJ held the baby close to her chest and Peter squeezed himself into the bed beside her, one hand around his wife’s shoulders and one smoothing gently over their daughter’s tiny little hat. The room was dark save a single bedside lamp and everyone had conspicuously left to give them some alone time.  

(But not before they all got a turn to gush and ogle and offer endless loving congratulations.)  

“What do you think she’s dreaming about?” Peter whispered, wondering if he’d be able to remove his gaze from that brand-new nose any time soon. 

“Can newborns dream?” MJ asked, equally quiet, equally awed, but still MJ all the way through. 

Peter could feel the exhaustion radiating off of her, couldn’t quite believe she was still alive let alone awake after the past innumerable hours of breathing and swearing. 

“Let’s hypothetically assume they can.”

MJ hummed in agreement. “The womb then. Probably?” 

“Can’t blame her,” Peter said. “If I got to live inside you for nine months I’d dream about it too.” 

MJ nudged him with a quiet laugh. “Gross.” 

“Not in a gross way!” Peter somehow, against all odds lifted his gaze from one of his girls to the other. “All the hormones are giving you gutter-brain.” 

MJ grinned at him sleepily, leaned in to kiss him chastely with chapped lips. Peter smiled into it, kissed her again, and once more before they pulled away. 

“Take her,” MJ offered, both of them over-careful in the transfer of Andy from one set of arms to the other. “I think I’m gonna pass out here any second.” 

“Yeah, stop hogging the baby,” Peter teased as he settled her in his arms. “You’ve had her all to yourself for nine months, so obviously I’ll be teaching sharing.” 

“Shut up,” MJ laughed as she slid down in bed and got comfortable. 

“Go to sleep,” Peter insisted fondly. “I’ve got her.” 

Andy was impossibly small in his arms, and Peter found that with the help of his freaky genetics, his arms may never get tired holding her in that way. So he watched her snuffle in her sleep and he pulled her blanket closer around her when she wiggled a hand out of it, letting her wrap her tiny fingers around his pinky finger and definitely not crying over the fact that it was the first time she held his hand. 

Eventually, he figured MJ had fallen asleep and he let out a long, deep exhale. 

“Hi,” Peter breathed, barely even a whisper at this point as he leaned in close and ran a thumb across Andy’s cheek. “My name’s Peter, but you can call me Dad.”

She made a tiny little baby sound that squeezed at least six of Peter’s organs all at the same time and brought fresh tears to his eyes. 

“Listen,” he continued, rocking her gently. “Don’t tell your mom, but I think you’re my favorite girl in the whole damned world.” 

And if MJ smiled fondly into Peter’s hip where she’d curled up against him, no one needed to know. 

*

“Oh my God, look at her!”

“Right?!” Peter propped the tablet up against a bookshelf so he could keep feeding Andy. “Ned, dude, like I know I’m biased but she’s the coolest.”

“Of course she is!” Ned exclaimed via video-chat. “She’s a Jones-Parker original, there was really no other option.”

“Hear that, Andy?” Peter looked down at her. “Uncle Ned thinks you’re cool. And he lives in California now so that means something.” 

“Uncle Ned will be back in New York for two weeks over Thanksgiving and he’s gonna have to bring a second suitcase for all the little baby presents I’ve been accumulating the past year,” Ned said. 

“Dude, you’re not allowed to be her favorite,” Peter mock-pouted. “I wanna be her favorite.”

“You’re kidding yourself if you think MJ hasn’t already staked her claim on that one,” Ned deadpanned. 

“Fair,” Peter laughed. “Anyway, I’m hogging your phone time with baby stuff-- Tell me about that new project you’re working on.”

*

When Andy was three weeks old, Peter decided to take a paternity leave of sorts from his alter ego. He could suit up in case of serious emergency, but he so desperately wanted to be around for this time. 

He wanted to watch his daughter as she became a part of the world, a member of the human race, and so he did. The city could survive without him for another month while he became a dad, became a full time teacher at the start of the new school year, became maybe, hopefully, a little less jaded with the inevitability of everything souring all over again. 

They took a trip to the lake house in the gap between the summer and fall semesters. 

Morgan built an Avengers-themed mobile for the baby, Pepper and MJ had endless conversations that flipped between global politics and breastfeeding on a dime, Rhodey and Happy inexplicably planned out his baby’s entire life path, Tony cooked something for dinner while May offered unsolicited and unwanted advice. 

Peter, against all odds, turned twenty-nine.

“Hey, birthday boy, you’re missing the party.”

“What does this look like to you?” 

Peter grinned up at May from where he sat on the porch swing, Andy snuffling quietly in his arms. 

“Good point,” May smiled. “As you were.” 

“I should go put her in her crib,” Peter sighed in a way that could only be described as wistful. 

“God, that little girl is going to be so spoiled,” May laughed. “Look at you, you’re absolutely smitten.” 

“Aren’t you?” Peter tossed back. “I mean, look at this kid, May. You can’t convince me she’s not worth it.” 

“I wouldn’t even try.”

The roof of the porch threw shadows across the three of them. Peter adjusted Andy in his arms to move her face out of the direct sunlight and closer to the warmth of his body. 

“There’s a part of me that wishes I could just-- love her enough that nothing bad could ever happen to her,” he said, voice quiet enough not to wake the piece of his heart currently cradled in his arms, but loud enough that he knew both he and May could hear it crack. “But then again, if that was how it worked I’d have had a very different life. Because, really, if I’ve known anything from the moment I was born, I’ve known what it is to be loved.” 

He looked up at May, who had pride and joy written in the lines of her face, in the tears in her eyes, in the hitch of her breath. She pushed off the rail of the porch and tucked herself into the seat next to him, pulling the blanket around Andy up a little closer to her chin in an act of untethered tenderness. 

“Peter,” she said softly. “You and I both know that love doesn’t save us from tragedy. In fact, I've come to realize it just makes us all the more vulnerable to it.” 

“Parker luck,” Peter smirked at her and earned an amused if exasperated look in return. 

“Yeah, okay, but I’ll tell you what, Dad,” May looked at him pointedly. “None of that means we stop loving loudly and on purpose, because you know what love does protect us from?” she placed a hand on his wrist where he was cradling the baby. “Having to face any of it alone.” 

He kissed May’s cheek for that one, because how could he not? How could he not try to express to her, each and every day, his gratitude for the life and love and family she had given him? 

They had so much more than they once did, but it would always be the two of them, learning as they went and holding each other up through it all. 

“We should go in,” he said without moving to get up. 

May squeezed one of Andy’s feet gently in her fingertips. 

“Soon,” she said. 

*

Andy had a nursery of her own, but for the moment she was still sleeping in Peter and MJ’s room so that when she woke up in the night, they didn’t have to go very far. 

This was why, despite the fact that MJ had a handle on this particular bout of crying, Peter was propped up against the headboard awake at past five o’clock in the morning. Neither of them were talking and MJ was breastfeeding and Peter couldn’t have taken his eyes off of her if he had wanted to. 

He rolled over just enough to grab his camera from the bedside table and drop the lens cap on the covers piled up in his lap. MJ didn’t even pay him a glance, used to his antics and too exhausted to care. 

“There you go,” she mumbled to Andy in a moment of quiet, instinctual encouragement. 

Peter cranked the film forward in his camera without taking his eyes off of the scene in front of him-- his family, built from scratch and illuminated by a golden sunrise. 

He had never been a studio photographer, never much of a professional photographer at all when it came down to it, so he had learned the ways of lighting an image through trial and error and the occasional Youtube video. 

In studio, photographers had complete control over the way that shadows fell across a subject, could manufacture the light in a person’s eyes or the shape of their jawline with a bulb or a reflector, but Peter Parker had always just, worked with what he had. 

The available light, the way the sun naturally filtered through a window or a lamp cast warmth across a room. That was how he created the perfect picture, by learning how to mold what he’d been given into being what he needed. 

Terrible times and terrible things into joy, and laughter, and the love of his life holding the greatest creation of their partnership gently against her chest. 

Peter snapped the photo as the sun began to rise and the light began to change. 

*

“Where’d I leave my--”

“Kitchen.”

“And, uh, my fucking--”

“Bathroom, somehow.” 

“I wrote up notes last night, didn’t I?” Peter came skidding into the kitchen in pre-rumpled work clothes and socks. “That wasn’t a fever dream?”

“If it was, we both had it,” MJ said as she tried to get Andy to take a bottle. “Come on, kid, you were just screaming about how hungry you were.” 

Peter pursed his lips and bounced anxiously on the balls of his feet. 

“Em, are you sure I shouldn’t--”

“Go to work, Peter, we’re gonna be fine,” she said with a small smile, and although she still looked as exhausted as he felt Peter knew she wasn’t lying. “Right, baby? You’re gonna be so good. And Aunt May might come over to hang out with you later so I can, I don’t know, take a shower.”

“May will come over and you’ll still anxiously hover while she holds the baby,” Peter scoffed as he slid on his shoes and threw a stack of folders into his bag.

“Will not!” MJ fired back. 

“I would put actual American dollars on it, Em.”

“Damn, I only have Euros or I’d take you up on that,” she said as the toaster popped. “Toast’s yours.” 

“You’re my hero,” Peter grabbed the toast, grabbed his bag, and leaned over to kiss her on the lips. “Love you.” And then Andy on the cheek. “Love you.”

“Love you!” MJ called after him as he raced out the door. 

*

“It might take me a minute to learn all your names,” Peter said, leaning against a whiteboard that had his name and a hastily drawn beaker adorning it. “It’s because I have a two-month-old baby at home and I can barely remember my own most days.”

“Can we see a picture?” a kid in the back asked. 

“Yes, she will be prominently featured in most of my PowerPoints because she’s smarter than all of you and I want you to have something to aspire to.” 

That earned him a laugh despite the early morning hour. 

“Okay, so science!” he clapped his hands together. 

He was going to hold onto this job with the very life in his fingertips. 

*

“Miles, c’mere,” he motioned for the boy to meet him at his desk as the class filtered out to their lockers and busses and homes. 

“What’s up, Mister Parker?” Miles held onto the straps of his backpack as Peter rifled through the papers on his desk. 

“Where is-- Ah!” he grabbed what he was looking for and offered it out to Miles with a grin. “For your Midtown application.” 

“I-- Is this a letter of recommendation?” Miles took it hesitantly. “You were serious about that?” 

“Of course I was,” Peter frowned. “Are my serious and sarcasm voices too similar? I should work on that.” 

“No, I just,” Miles shook his head. “You think I should?”

“Miles, you love this stuff, and you know it like the back of your hand,” Peter laughed softly. “You deserve to go to a high school where you can lean into that.” 

“Yeah, yeah, um,” Miles nodded to himself, practically vibrating with thirteen-year-old potential. “I’ll-- I’ll definitely apply.” 

“Let me know if you need help, yeah?”

“Sure thing,” Miles started for the door with a little skip. “Thanks Mister Parker!”

*

There was a warehouse somewhere in Ohio, dust now despite only ever having been known to a mere handful of people. 

It was farmland again by Peter’s request, a nurturing spot for food to grow tall and strong and nutrient-rich. It was going to help people, it was going to feed a hungry woman after a long shift behind a counter, it was going to get pushed around on a plate by a toddler who didn’t like corn that week, it was going to live in beauty and die in service.

Peter thought about it sometimes, when he sat his commute on the train ride home from school, how he had stumbled out of thin air into a barren field, soil-soaked and starving for the sun. Somehow, he had found his way back to a home that remembered him differently from who he was, had become, would continue to be, and his gratitude would be forever spiked with tumultuous hypotheticals. 

He couldn’t answer them, all the what ifs, even in the clattering calm of the subway, but at some point he thought he might be able to stop wanting to. 

Peter got off the train at a station early, because MJ had asked him to stop at the market and pick up eggs on his way home. He hadn’t forgotten. 

A message buzzed his phone as he strode up the steps to street level two at a time. Without so much as a thought he pulled it out of his pocket and beamed down at probably the fifteenth picture of his daughter he’d been sent that day. 

So stinky, MJ had written under the image of that giggling little girl. She gets it from you.  

The smile’s all yours, Peter typed back. 

The eggs cost a dollar, fifty-six. 

End.