Chapter Text
The night before
It began with red lightning.
Not the usual crackle of a summer storm, no—this thunder was wrong. Too sharp, too loud. Like the sky was being torn open with a pair of rusted scissors. It didn’t roll so much as scream, echoing between buildings like a warning too late to be heeded.
Over Manhattan, clouds bloomed like ink in water, thick and red at the edges. They lit up the skyline in pulses, the way a dying star might try to scream before it collapsed. A hot wind pushed through the streets, rattling windows, twisting newspaper stands, and setting off every car alarm in Hell’s Kitchen.
And then it was gone.
No reports. No tweets. No viral videos about the weird red lightning. Because no one remembered it. Not really. Maybe a strange dream, maybe a headache, maybe nothing at all. Just a glitch in the city's collective sleep cycle.
And somewhere back in a bachelor's apartment in Chelsea, tucked beneath a blanket, Peter Parker slept through the whole thing. Mouth half-open. A bit of drool on his makeshift pillow. None the wiser of what was about to come crashing into his life.
Peter woke up to the smell of burned toast and the soft, familiar creak of his apartment settling. He groaned and stretched, stiff from the way he'd passed out last night—half-on, half-off the couch, costume bunched under his head like a very flat pillow. He’d meant to change. He'd meant to eat. He'd meant to... do something responsible probably. The usual.
Instead, he was blinking blearily at the ceiling like a man who lost a fight with a guy dressed in animal furr the day prior—which he did, by the way. As soon as his back stopped aching—or the other was back from Africa—Kraven was on sight.
“Mornin’, world,” he muttered, dragging himself upright and scratching his head. His hair was a mess. His brain, worse.
He stumbled into the kitchen, where the toaster was doing its best impression of an active crime scene. He yanked the blackened slice out before it set off the smoke detector—again—and sighed, biting into it anyway like a man who’d known worse flavors.
He had. Once ate vending machine sushi. Never again.
Coffee. Coffee was the solution. He poured himself a mug, took a sip, and let the warmth settle into his bones. It was shaping up to be a normal day. A quiet day.
And then came the knock.
Three short taps. Confident. Like whoever was out there knew he was home. Like they’d done this before.
Peter frowned. He glanced down—yep, still wearing pajama pants with little spiders on them. Not exactly intimidating. Still, he walked over to the door and cracked it open.
And on the other side was a kid.
Fourteen, maybe. Wild brown curls, big brown eyes. She was standing like she’d practiced this, like she was ready for anything, but her hands were clenched tight at her sides and her jaw was trembling just slightly.
Peter blinked. “Uh… can I help you? Let me just preface this by saying, I don't have money for the cookies. Or for anything, really.
She looked up at him, unimpressed.
“Hi, dad.”
“Okay, go over it again.”
Peter sighed, running a hand through his hair for the tenth time in—he checked the clock—two minutes. The kid wasn’t paying attention. She was already poking around his cabinets and fridge like she owned the place.
Both were deeply disappointing.
“Uh, I haven’t done the monthly grocery shopping yet,” he offered weakly.
“I can tell,” she muttered, pulling out a half-eaten, partially fossilized package of Pop-Tarts from the back of the cupboard. She sniffed it, shrugged, and took a bite like she wasn’t afraid of death. Bold of her.
“I told you,” she said around the food. “My name is May Jane Parker. I’m your daughter. I came from the future.”
“Huh-uh,” Peter nodded, pretending like he believed it. “And let me guess. You found out about me through a heartfelt letter, or a time-traveling robot? Is your favorite movie 'The Game Plan', by any chance?”
“Funny, Dad.”
“Don’t—” He groaned, dragging both hands down his face. “Oh my God, it’s too early for this.”
Honestly, it’d be too early for this even if it was midnight. Or if he were drunk. Or dreaming. He wasn’t. In moments like this, he really regretted not picking up normal people coping mechanisms. Like chain smoking. Or alcoholism.
No. He needed to go punch someone dressed like a cephalopod or a bird just to feel something.
“So. Who is it?” he finally asked, giving in.
“Who is who?” May asked, still munching like this was the most normal breakfast conversation ever.
“Your mom.”
“My mom?”
“Yeah, your mom. You have one. Most people do. I mean—I’m looking at you and it’s weird, because you kinda look like someone, but I can’t place who, and I’m starting to freak out just a little bit.”
She actually did resemble Peter a lot. He just didn’t want to admit it to himself just yet. The big brown eyes that stared into his without flinching, those were like staring into his own in the mirror. And the hair, curly and mesy and wild. If she wasn’t Peter’s child, then her mother had a type.
She looked amused. “Oh, I bet I do.”
“So who is it?” he asked again, leaning on the counter like it could support the weight of this existential nightmare. “Mary Jane?” he added quickly. “I mean, we’re not dating right now, but maybe eventually—”
“I don’t have a mom,” she cut in.
Peter stared. “What do you mean you don’t have a mom? That’s—what? That’s not how any of this works. Even if—” he paused, a horrifying thought flashing through his brain. “Oh God, is your mom—?”
“Dead?” May guessed. “Nope. Just nonexistent.”
“That’s—no. No, that’s biologically impossible. I mean, even if I was a single dad—which, y’know, sure, maybe, tragic and noble—but even then, I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t just pay for a surrogate. That’s not— I mean, not because I’m against surrogates! I’m not! I just, like… morally, ethically, spiritually, I am firmly opposed to men believing they have power over women’s bodies, and also I've been very broke for most of my twenties until no—”
She cut him off with a look.
“You’re spiraling,” she said.
“I am spiraling.”
“And it’s not that complicated. I do have two parents.”
Peter narrowed his eyes. “Two parents. Right. Okay. So, you have two dads.”
“Bingo.”
He stared.
“And I’m one of them?”
“Correct." A nod. "Your husband is the other,” she added casually. Almost too casual.
“Which means I—wait—wait wait a damn second.” Peter held up a hand like he was directing traffic in his own personal meltdown. “Are you saying I’m married?!”
“Well. Will be.”
“To who?!”
May popped the rest of the Pop-Tart in her mouth and said through a full chew, “The Human Torch.”
Peter went very still.
“The Jackal,” she continued casually, as if this was just common Tuesday morning conversation, “took your DNA and Johnny Storm’s DNA and made… me.”
Silence.
Peter’s mouth opened. Closed. He blinked slowly. A hand came up to cover his face.
“Oh, son of a bean dip.”
---
“Papa was right. The younger, the more stupid,” she muttered, unimpressed, as Peter frantically circled the apartment, overturning couch cushions and muttering about subway delays like they were the real enemy here.
“Charming,” Peter grunted, sticking his head under the table. “And I’m assuming your ‘papa’ was talking about himself.”
“Hah-ah!” he added triumphantly a second later, yanking his MetroCard out from under the couch. He was holding the whole thing up with one hand like it weighed nothing, which—yeah, okay, it didn’t, but still. Looked cool.
They were going to the Baxter Building. That was the plan. Step one: dump this entire nightmare on Johnny. Step two: blink real sad-like at Reed until he agreed to run a DNA test. Step three: cry. Probably. Maybe. Definitely.
Because none of this made sense.
Johnny would probably laugh in his face. Peter could already see it: leaning against some multi-million-dollar lab console, arms crossed, grinning that insufferable grin, going on about how elaborate this prank was. How realistic the kid actor was. How it was so like Peter to spend money he didn’t have on the world’s sassiest teen with fake genetic ties.
Which would be hilarious, except Peter couldn’t afford an actor like this. This girl was good.Too good. Her eye-rolls were award-worthy. Her judgmental silences? Master class.
And the worst part—the part Peter kept skirting around—was that he saw something in her. Something unsettlingly familiar. The clenched jaw when she was trying not to feel something. The snark as armor. That exact brand of defensive sarcasm honed from living a life where feelings were always second to survival.
She reminded him of… himself, actually. Which was probably the scariest part.
He didn’t know what was worse: that he believed her a little, or that he kind of already liked her.
God help him.
She’d told him earlier that she knew about Spider-Man. Of course she did. If what she was saying was even half true, she’d been built with that knowledge. Created—not born—to be a weapon, perfectly stitched together from radioactive spider DNA and whatever solar-fried nonsense Johnny’s body had soaked up the day he’d turned into New York’s most reckless rotisserie chicken.
The scientist in Peter was itching. Not ethically, morally, emotionally—those parts of him were actively screaming—but biologically, he had questions.
Did she have his strength? His agility? Spider-sense?
Could she fly? Go full Human Torch?
Did they let her?
Just how responsible had Peter and Johnny supposedly been, as parents? Would Future Them even try? Did they take turns wrangling her into school, or did they throw her in a danger room until she could punch her way out?
God. His head hurt. And not the good kind of headache from too much coffee. The existential kind. The "maybe I accidentally became a dad through science crime" kind.
Classic Parker luck.
Peter grabbed his keys, the kid, and an opened pack of mint bubblegum that had two more pieces inside. A minute later, they were out the door and hitting the streets, wind in their faces and silence crackling awkwardly between them like bad radio static.
By the time they reached the subway entrance, she was already making a face. He caught it out of the corner of his eye.
“What?” he asked, leading the way through the turnstiles. "You don't live in New York back in your timeline? You forgot it smells like diapers?”
She scrunched her nose harder. “We live in New York in my time. Of course we do. You and papa living anywhere else would drive you both insane. You’d probably kill each other. Or get divorced.”
Peter blinked. “You know what? That does sound like us.”
“Yeah,” she muttered, deadpan. “I know.”
She rolled her eyes as the train pulled in, and Peter nearly tripped on his own foot.
Because that expression—God, that expression—he’d seen it before. A thousand times. Smug and biting and fond all at once. He’d seen it at rooftop stakeouts, post-mission debriefs, halfway through some argument about who was the better at any dumb video game. He’d seen it on Johnny’s face, more times than he could count.
And now he was seeing it again on hers, like a flicker of memory that didn’t belong to him.
He spent most of the trip from Chelsea to the Upper East Side wrapped in a silence that was somehow louder than the screech of metal on metal. May leaned against the subway pole like she’d done it a hundred times before, and maybe she had. Maybe she would.
Peter, meanwhile, just stared at his reflection in the dark glass of the window, mentally drafting and redrafting exactly what he was going to say to Johnny. Because if he opened with “Hey, apparently we’re married in the future and made a science baby,” Johnny was going to burst into flames. Just like he did all those years ago when Peter yanked his pants down in public. What a time.
Still, Peter hadn’t wrapped his own brain around it. Three hours ago, if someone had told him he was going to be raising a kid with Johnny Storm, he would’ve laughed in their face. That or asked what drugs they were on. Because yeah, okay, the experiment part tracked. The Jackal had been doing shady cloning things since forever. Kaine and Ben were proof of that.
But marrying Johnny? Staying with him? Building a whole life together?
That was the part that made Peter’s brain short-circuit. Not because the idea was bad, but because it was impossible. He and Johnny were—well, they were them. The idea of it being domestic made Peter feel like he was stuck in a weird sitcom plot, minus the laugh track. Then again, some deep, twisted part of him whispered that he would try if he could, and not only because he had to.
The train jerked to a stop, and before he could fully re-enter reality, May nudged his side with a sharp elbow.
“Come on,” she said, already halfway out the door.
Peter scrambled to follow, muttering something about whiplash and time travel and "not even 10:30," under his breath.
It was 9:47 a.m. when Reed Richards’ fingers paused mid-type.
Johnny raised his eyes from his phone for a second, legs dangling from one of the lab tables. Reed didn’t often pause. In fact, when Reed paused, the smart thing to do was duck. But this time, it wasn’t an explosion or a malfunctioning transdimensional door.
"Okay, I'll bite," he said. "What is it?"
Reed shook his head as if he didn’t understand. Which again, bad.
"The Baxter Building's systems had been going haywire since dawn. Half of the internal sensors had blacked out for exactly thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds between 3:08 and 3:21 a.m., all the surveillance footage in the building’s upper sectors scrambled into static. Some kind of energy spike had surged through the grid just before, registering as both cosmic and bioelectric in origin. And—possibly worst of all—I don't know what had caused it."
There was a long pause between them. Johnny knew Reed hated not knowing things.
The world hated when Reed didn't know things.
A soft ding from his console signaled another failed attempt to reconstruct the video footage.
“Reed, honey,” came Susan’s voice from the kitchen. “You’re going to miss breakfast again.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he called absently, scanning a spike on the energy signature graph that looked uncomfortably like a rip in localized space-time. "This is not stable, either. Like something tore its way through and barely stitched itself back up," he mumbled.
Johnny clapped his shoulder as he passed him by on the way out. "You've got this, man."
From the dining nook across the hall, clinking plates and bickering voices filtered in.
“Valeria, I said no magnets at the table,” Sue warned, as a fork drifted suspiciously toward Franklin’s cereal.
“I need them,” Valeria said, pushing her goggles up her forehead. “I’m recalibrating the polarity of his juice box.”
“I don’t want my juice box recalibrated,” Franklin groaned.
Johnny took a seat next to Ben and stoled a strawberry from the tower of pancakes on his plate, chuckling when the other grumbled. “Let the kids experiment. It builds character. Or turns them into evil geniuses. Honestly, fifty-fifty.”
“Don't tempt fate,” Sue said, swatting him on the shoulder with a napkin as she passed. “And tell your boyfriend to answer his texts.”
“Boyfriend? Pete’s not my boyfriend.” He looked up from the fashion magazine he had just opened.
"Oh, but you immediately knew Suzie-Q was talking about the webhead." Ben chuckled to himself.
"Why don't you—"
Before Johnny could tell Ben where he could shove the pancakes in, the elevator doors opened.
Peter Parker walked in, disheveled, stressed, and looking like he hadn’t blinked in twenty minutes. Right behind him, a girl trailed in, popping bubblegum and holding herself with the posture of someone who owned the room, even if she’d just arrived. Her eyes flicked around like she was mapping escape routes, or maybe just rating the decor.
Johnny’s mouth opened.
“Hey,” Peter said, voice just a little too high. “Um. I have a thing. We have a thing. Kind of a situation.”
“Papa?” the girl asked, perking up at the sight of Johnny.
“Papa?” Johnny echoed, blinking hard. “I—no. No. Absolutely not. No one’s allowed to call me that unless I’ve bought them a car or paid for their therapy.
Peter clapped a hand over his face. “Okay, so that reaction is not as far off from what I was expecting.”
“Is that a clone?” Valeria asked, fascinated, already halfway out of her chair. “Aged-up alternate universe clone? Or—wait—de-aged time loop child? That’s my third favorite.”
“Technically,” May said, hands on her hips, “I’m your cousin. Hi, Val.”
Franklin dropped his spoon. Johnny dropped his magazine. Sue dropped nothing because she was the only adult in the room, apparently.
Reed finally stepped into the kitchen, still clutching his tablet, frown deepening. “Peter,” he said, glancing between him and May, not looking particularly surprised. But well, he was Reed. “Did you happen to encounter something strange during the storm last night?”
Peter blinked at him, then at May. “Nope,” he said. “I was asleep. She, however, may have crash-landed into my timeline like a bootleg Back to the Future DVD.”
Reed’s frown somehow deepened even further. “That… would explain the spatial-temporal breach that overloaded our systems at 3:08 a.m. Localized but powerful. The anomaly destabilized our reality grid long enough to cause a blackout. It wasn’t natural.”
May raised a hand. “That was probably me.”
Johnny just stared. “Wait—you’re saying I’m the other parent? How—”
“I told you this was going to be a lot,” Peter muttered.
May shrugged. “It’s not like you were any better with the news, dad.”
Johnny combusted slightly. Just his hair. Peter sighed.
Reed looked like he’d just been given the best science fair project of his life. “We’ll need to run tests,” he said. “And monitor your genetic structure. This could be—”
“Reed,” Sue said sharply.
Reed blinked. “After breakfast.”
The lab lights hummed softly overhead, casting long lines across the floor. It was quieter now. Reed had stepped out to run the samples, Sue had gone with him, and Ben had heroically carted Valeria and Franklin off for a donut run under the excuse of “child containment.” Probably for the best. They had been one question away from demanding a power demonstration or swabbing May for alien tech.
Peter appreciated the peace, but part of him kind of wished they'd stayed. At least chaos was a good distraction.
He leaned against the lab counter, arms folded, trying to look more composed than he felt. His foot bounced like it had a mind of its own.
May was propped on the edge of one of the sterile exam tables, holding a cotton ball to the crook of her elbow with practiced ease. No fuss, no whining, not even a flinch when Reed had taken the sample. She didn’t look like a science experiment. She looked like a teenager trying not to be bored.
"And then I found dad," she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
That snapped Peter out of his thousand-yard stare.
“And how did you find Peter?” Johnny asked, narrowing his eyes with something between suspicion and amazement.
Peter blinked. Right. That hadn’t come up yet. That had completely flown over his head, and honestly? He felt like he should be excused for missing a couple key details today. It wasn’t every morning a 14-year-old knocked on his door claiming to be his time-traveling test tube daughter.
May swung her legs gently, like this was just a normal family checkup and not a potential multiversal incident.
“I know everything about him. About you two,” she said, shooting Johnny a look that said duh. “I know dad used to work at the paper when he was younger. Back at our house, papa still has the best Spider-Man headlines from the Bugle glued into a scrapbook.”
Johnny snorted.
Peter elbowed him.
“Of course you made a scrapbook,” Peter muttered.
“Excuse you, I made art,” Johnny said with mock indignation. “I'm sure there was glitter involved.”
May smirked and that was all the confirmation he needed. “Anyway, I went there. Found the archives. Found dad’s address.”
Johnny raised an eyebrow. “A kid sneaking into the Bugle?”
“Security sucks,” May and Peter said in unison.
Johnny’s lips parted, and for a second he looked between them like he’d just witnessed some kind of cosmic mirror.
“…Okay,” he said slowly. “Weirdo One and Weirdo Two. I’m starting to believe this.”
Peter didn’t say anything. Just watched May, who seemed pretty pleased with herself. There was a spark in her eyes that was so familiar, it made his stomach do a weird flip. Maybe it was the cadence in how she talked. The sharp, matter-of-fact delivery. Or the way her sarcasm landed like a perfectly aimed web shot. But something about her—hell, everything about her—was slipping under his skin.
Not just Johnny. Not just him.
Them.
They were in there. Woven together. Like it had never been a question.
He wondered if he should tell Johnny that he was starting to believe it too.
Reed chose just that moment to stroll back in, tablet in hand, his expression unreadable in the way only Reed Richards could master. Johnny immediately perked up like a golden retriever at the word 'walk.'
“So?” Johnny leaned in. “Are we pregnant, Doc?”
Peter didn’t even want to laugh. But May snorted behind her hand, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep it together. This was not funny. And yet here he was, resisting the urge to wheeze-laugh into his elbow.
“I don’t think there was actually any pregnancy involved—” Reed started, ever the earnest scientist.
“I was kidding, Reed,” Johnny cut in. “Come on, man. You know I’m impatient and curious by nature.”
Peter’s gaze drifted down to the tablet in Reed’s hands. His palms felt a little clammy, his heart doing a weird little stutter. He knew. Part of him already knew. May wasn’t lying. She couldn’t be. But hearing it out loud? That was going to be something else.
Reed cleared his throat. “The tests are positive. May here has a DNA composition that is exactly half Peter and half Johnny.”
Johnny blinked. “Half…?”
“In every genetic sense,” Reed said, tapping through something on the screen with maddening calm. “It’s almost as if either of you could have carried her.”
Both Johnny and Peter recoiled at the same time like they’d been slapped in the face.
“Jesus, Reed,” Peter muttered.
“Reed, why,” Johnny added, dragging a hand down his face.
Reed, nonplussed, continued with growing enthusiasm. “She doesn’t just carry your respective genetic signatures. She has inherited your superhuman traits. Peter’s enhanced strength, reflexes, possibly the spider-sense; and Johnny’s thermokinetic cellular mutation, though likely stabilized by the genetic interplay.”
Peter blinked slowly. “You’re saying we just made a kid who could, what, shoot fire-webs?.”
May shrugged like that was normal.
“Oh, there’s more,” Reed said, gesturing vaguely toward May. "She also demonstrates personality traits, behavioral markers, and physiognomic similarities. It’s fascinating. I’ve never seen recombinant DNA manipulated this cleanly. I know the Jackal’s earlier attempts to clone Peter were… inconsistent at best. But this time, May seems to be a success. Not just genetically, but functionally. It’s almost as if you two made her from scratch!”
There was a long pause.
“Which we did not,” Peter added quickly, holding up a finger like that would legally distance him from whatever this was.
Reed gave him a bland look. “No, of course not.”
Johnny turned to Peter. “Are we sure?”
Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please don’t say things like that.”
But the thought crept in anyway, uninvited and unwelcome. If this kid was really a combination of them, then somewhere, some version of himself and Johnny had actually raised her. Had done the whole terrifying, exhausting, infuriating parenting thing together and made it work.
"So what?" Johnny’s voice finally cut through the silence like a blade, sharp and edged with something Peter couldn’t immediately name. “That means the Jackal already has our blood samples and he's doing some weird mad science voodoo—what, creating a fetus in a jar as we speak?”
Peter flinched.
“You two actually find me around…” May said, tapping a finger against her chin like she was trying to remember a dentist appointment, not casually giving Peter a small stroke, “three years from now.”
“Three years?!” Peter and Johnny said at the same time, their voices pitching in perfect harmony. The kind of moment that would have been really funny in a sitcom.
May didn’t even blink. She and Reed shared a look. The kind that said adults are so dumb and we’ve just had this conversation. Peter suddenly felt ten years older and also twelve years behind at the same time.
Three years. Three. He didn’t even know what he was gonna eat tomorrow, let alone how to become a dad in a handful of rotations around the sun. He wasn’t prepared for any of this. He didn’t even have a plant he could keep alive right now, and somehow the universe thought, yeah, let’s hand this man a genetically engineered child made of fire and spiders.
With Johnny.
Of course they had to save baby May. That wasn’t even a question now. The Jackal had her—would have her?—sometime soon, if the timeline played out the way it had for her. Peter could feel it coiling in his chest like a bad feeling before a worse fight. Knowing about her now. seeing her here, talking, breathing, eating his crappy Pop-Tarts, how could he not do everything in his power to keep her safe?
It would be criminal. It would be the direct opposite of everything he stands for. She already was—even if he didn’t ask for it—his responsibility, in a futuristic and twisted way.
Sue reentered the lab, calm as always, with the kind of poise Peter could only aspire to on his best day. She was holding a tablet, no doubt catching up on the storm data herself. Her eyes flicked from May, still perched on the edge of the exam table with a cotton ball taped to her arm, to Peter, to Johnny, who has been staring at the same spot for a minute now.
“Well,” Sue started gently, her voice laced with something too practiced to be surprise, “as interesting as all this is, and it is very interesting, shouldn’t our priority be figuring out how to get May back home? Her parents must be worried.”
That landed like a punch to Peter’s gut. Her parents, she said. As if she wasn’t talking about him. About Johnny. Back in the future, wherever and whenever that was, freaking out. He rubbed the back of his neck and exhaled. “Right. Yeah. Of course. That should be the plan.”
Johnny nodded too, a bit more slowly, eyes still locked on May like she might disappear if he blinked. “Yeah. Home.”
May didn’t say anything at first. She swung her legs gently, staring down at the floor. Reed stepped closer, tapping something into his tablet.
“May,” Sue prompted gently, “can you tell us what happened before you came here? Anything about the lightning? Anything that could help us get you back?”
May shrugged, and Peter didn’t miss the hesitation. “I dunno. There was a fight. A… a situation. One of Jackal’s leftover projects went rogue, and things got messy. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in a dumpster behind a bodega. There was red lightning. A lot of it. Like—like the sky cracked open or something.”
Peter blinked.
First of all, what kind of parents were they? Letting their teen daughter anywhere near a fight. He wondered just how much he could change of the future without actually ruining his life. But then, there was something about the way she said it that felt off. Halfhearted. His brows furrowed as he looked at her. That same half-shrug. Avoiding eye contact.
She was hiding something.
“Right,” Reed said, scrolling quickly through his data. “That matches what I picked up. Temporal and dimensional instability spiked right before dawn—our systems glitched out for approximately seven minutes. No security footage, no external sensors. I’ve seen energy signatures like this before—albeit rarely. It’s possible the storm was the result of a targeted quantum event. If we can isolate the energy reading and recreate the atmospheric conditions…”
“You could send her back,” Sue finished.
Reed nodded, almost too casually, like this was just another Wednesday.
Peter, still watching May carefully, spoke up. “And it’d take her right back to the moment she left? Like no time passed at all?”
“In theory,” Reed said, though his tone had that don’t-quote-me-on-that vibe. “It’s not precise science. Yet. But it’s doable.”
“Cool, cool,” Peter muttered, folding his arms. May wasn’t looking at anyone now. “Hey, kid? Anything else you’re forgetting to tell us about this ‘situation’ that landed you in a time vortex?”
She blinked at him. Innocent. Too innocent.
“Nope,” she said. Too fast.
And that was the moment Peter knew: there was definitely more to this.
"This is a little... I know this is a lot—"
Johnny hummed in agreement, arms crossed as he leaned against the windows, quiet in a way that made Peter more nervous than if he were actively yelling. May had gone to the bathroom, Reed and Sue had drifted out to the common area, probably giving them space on purpose. It was just the two of them now, and Peter continued pacing around the lab. His words running together just like his thoughts.
"I thought this was a prank, honestly. I mean, I'd hoped it was a, I dunno. Magic curse? Some kind of cosmic joke, but you just seen the results," he continued.
Johnny nodded.
"Of course she is ours, honey," Johnny said with a bad southern accent. "Now let's get married already and raise her to be a doctor."
Peter let out a short, exhausted laugh. “Yeah, sure. And while we’re at it, we can sell an organ or two to pay for her education. Thank you, truly, for adding another crisis to my already overbooked life.”
“Hey, relax. Listen.” Johnny finally pushed off the window and came over, slinging an arm across Peter’s shoulders like he didn’t just casually drop life-altering news between jokes. “I was gonna tell you a joke about time travel, but eh, you didn’t like it.”
"I swear I will web you to the ceiling if you make another dad joke."
Johnny raised his hands up in mock surrender, but the corner of his mouth was twitching. "You love my dad jokes."
Peter groaned and let his head drop, lightly thunking it against Johnny’s chest. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
"I mean," Johnny shrugged, "it's not every day you find out you're a dad o a teenage girl from the future. I think I'm allowed to cope with my humor."
Peter slumped into a nearby chair. "You are taking this a billion times better than I am."
Johnny followed him, crouching down a little so they were eye level. His expression was soft, still joking at the edges, but open in that rare way Peter had only seen a few times before. Usually when the stakes were too high for performance.
“What’s the part that’s bothering you?” Johnny asked. “Having to raise her... or having to raise her with me?”
Peter hesitated. He hadn't allowed himself to unpack that part. Sure, Johnny was attractive and funny, and honestly just a generally nice guy. And they were good friends. But there were too many factors to consider. He had to admit the question landed heavier than it should have.
His gaze flicked to Johnny’s face, and suddenly his brain filled in the blanks. Not even consciously. Just, there it was. A morning, maybe a few years from now. Johnny in a sun-warmed kitchen, flipping pancakes, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. May at the counter with a textbook open. Peter somewhere in the middle, half-helping, half-stealing bites. It wasn’t a stretch. He’d seen Johnny be soft with Val and Franklin. He’d seen him cook for the team a million times. He’d seen him care.
It wasn’t as impossible to imagine as he had thought before. And that scared the hell out of him.
Peter exhaled. “I don’t know.”
And, for once, Johnny didn’t push. He just stayed there, quiet, eyes kind. And that, somehow, made Peter feel even more like the floor was about to give out beneath him.
May chose that moment to return from the bathroom. She walked through the lab like it was her second home, like she could find the snack drawer with her eyes closed and reroute a dimensional portal without missing a beat.
Peter froze mid-step, watching her weave past equipment with muscle memory that shouldn’t exist.
"You, uh… you’ve been to the Baxter Building a lot, huh?" he asked, trying and failing to sound casual.
“I basically grew up here,” May said with a shrug, as if she were talking about a local park and not one of the most secure scientific labs on Earth. “Papa—Johnny, um, back home, he said you two were a mess in the beginning. You needed help. It wasn’t hard to just… bring me here. Let me hang out with Val and Franklin. I’ve also spent a lot of time at Aunt May’s place.”
Peter’s heart clenched.
“She’s still around, then?” he asked, voice quieter.
May nodded with a small smile, and that one motion did more to calm Peter’s nerves than anything else that day. The idea of May—his May—alive and well in the future, making cookies, humming at the stove, maybe knitting something weird for her granddaughter, it made the whole nightmare a little less jagged around the edges.
“So how do we find you?” Johnny asked. “Do we get a call from someone? Crash the Jackal’s lab mid-mission?”
“Pretty much,” May said, popping her gum with a loud smack. Johnny visibly flinched but kept his mouth shut. Peter, of course, didn’t.
“Stop that,” he said, already regretting handing her a piece of the gum earlier. He touched her arm with a featherlight gesture. “It’s… unbecoming.”
May rolled her eyes and popped her gum again with theatrical flair.
“Peter has a toc,” Johnny explained, already half-smirking.
“I know,” May grinned. “That’s why I do it. Dad banned chewing gum from our house.”
Peter opened his mouth, likely to declare gum a public menace, when a sharp ping cut through the lab. One of the consoles lit up, and Reed was already back and hovering over it, brow drawn low in thought.
“Reed,” Peter said, stepping up beside him, “please tell me you have something that gives me even a glimmer of hope.”
Reed didn’t look away from the screen. “I’ve got good news and bad.”
“Bad news first,” Johnny jumped in.
“I can’t give you the bad without the good,” Reed said, almost cheerfully. “It’s context-dependent.”
Johnny muttered something under his breath. Peter inhaled deeply through his nose.
“Okay. What’s the good?”
Reed tapped a few keys, and a swirling holographic storm appeared above the console. “We detected another energy signature identical to the one that brought May here. There’s going to be another storm. I think we can recalibrate the proper sensors and redirect the energy flow to return her to the exact point in time she came from.”
Peter let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. That—that was something. That was progress. That was—
“And the bad?” he asked, already bracing for the letdown.
“The storm occurs in… roughly one week.”
Peter blinked. “A week.”
He’d thought—hoped—they’d fix it today. He’d imagined May stepping back into a portal before things got too real, before they got too attached, before he had to unpack what any of this meant. A quick goodbye, a reset. But now… now he had seven more days of her. Of this.
“A week,” he repeated, dazed.
“Don’t panic,” Johnny said beside him. “We’re out of paper bags for you to breathe into.”
Peter shot him a look. “I’m not panicking.”
“You look like you’re panicking.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re definitely breathing faster.”
Peter placed a hand on his chest and inhaled slowly. “I’m perfectly calm.”
And that was when the Baxter Building’s alarms went off.
A hologram of Ben blinked to life in front of them. “Stretcho, we’ve got a situation in Central Park. Those blue little Smurf-lookin’ aliens are back. Sue’s already gearing up.”
“I’ll get the car,” Reed said, already moving. As he passed, he didn’t even wait for Johnny to speak. “You two stay here with May. We’ve got it covered.”
“I’m going,” Peter said instinctively, halfway to the armor locker.
Johnny grabbed his arm. “No, you’re not.”
Peter glared. “Don’t tell me what to do. There are aliens rampaging through Central Park,” he argued. “You want me to just sit this out?”
“I want you to stay here and help me deal with,” Johnny hesitated, then cleared his throat. “The current situation.”
That was the thing about them. They were both reckless. Both hotheaded. But they knew when to ground each other. It was one of the few reasons they hadn’t gotten each other killed yet.
Peter sighed, frustration leaking out of him in waves. “Johnny, come on. I can help. I can fight.”
“Reed, Sue, and Ben can handle it,” Johnny said. “What we can’t handle is this whole thing becoming a public circus before we understand it. We’ve got one time traveler, one week, and about a billion variables we still haven’t accounted for.”
Peter’s shoulders slumped. He knew Johnny was right. But that didn’t make it easier to stay behind.
Grumbling, he dropped onto a bench, his armor still half-on. “You suck,” he muttered.
Johnny grinned. “You’ve said worse.”
A soft chuckle broke through the moment, and both of them turned to see May leaning against the doorway with her arms crossed.
Peter squinted. “Wanna share with the class?”
May just smirked, inspecting her nails like she wasn’t about to drop another bomb on them. “Nothing. Just, now I know you two bickered like a married couple even before you were together.”
Peter and Johnny both straightened like they’d been zapped. Johnny opened his mouth with, “We’re not—” just as Peter blurted, “We don’t—!”
They both fell silent. Stared at each other. Then at May.
She raised one very knowing eyebrow. Johnny rubbed the back of his neck, and Peter made a face like he’d bitten into a lemon. She didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t really have to.
Johnny flicked on the TV just for background noise, some late-night rerun of Chopped he wasn’t even watching, and wandered back into the kitchen. Peter had vanished a few minutes earlier. Probably to scream into a pillow. Or climb onto the roof and make a dramatic silhouette against the skyline. Classic Parker coping mechanisms.
HERBIE was chatting away in his chipper little AI voice, and May was lounging at the counter, fiddling with the bot like they were childhood pals. Johnny paused in the doorway and took in the scene. HERBIE was letting her poke at his circuitry in ways he usually swatted Johnny away for. Traitor, Johnny thought affectionately.
It was kind of cute, actually. Weirdly domestic.
“So,” he said, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and cracking the seal with a satisfying pop, “what do you do?”
May looked up. “What do you mean?”
He gestured vaguely with the bottle. “Your routine. School, I guess? Or did Future Us go the homeschool route?”
“Nope. I go to an actual school. We live in Queens, so I go to Midtown. Dad said it’d be good for me to be close. Said it was, like, a generational thing.”
Johnny blinked. Took a swig of water to cover his reaction. “Okay. First of all: can’t believe I agreed to live in Queens. That’s how I know I’m in love. Second—glad we’re not homeschooling you. Kids need friends.”
“I have friends.”
“Cool. Good. That’s good.” He leaned back against the counter and tried not to make a face. The idea of him doing school pickup in traffic was somehow more terrifying than fighting Galactus.
May huffed this little noise that was all teen annoyance and barely-concealed fondness. “Anyway. The days you both work, I go to Aunt MJ’s or hang out here. Depends who’s around. If Uncle Reed’s here, he always helps with homework.”
Johnny snorted. “I bet he does. But do you even need the help?”
May shrugged, looking back down at HERBIE. “Honestly? No. But you and Dad do it too. Homework help, school drop-offs, stuff like that. You always said you wanted me to grow up like a normal kid. With normal-kid experiences. Whatever that means.”
Johnny stood there for a second, blinking at her. Normal-kid experiences. That was such a Peter thing to say. So deliberate. So desperately hopeful. And if he was honest, it wasn’t a bad goal.
He hadn’t thought too hard about what kind of parent he’d be. Honestly, he hadn’t thought about being a parent at all. The idea had always felt like some abstract, far-off maybe. Something for Future Johnny to figure out after he’d stopped almost dying every other week.
But here she was. This kid, their kid, sitting in his kitchen like it was the most natural thing in the world, casually talking about algebra help and going to Midtown like she wasn’t living proof that they’d somehow built a future together. A real one.
And maybe it did make sense. Around her age, he and Peter were already fighting villains and running headfirst into danger like idiots with superpowers and a death wish. They hadn't had much time for high school drama or math tests or movie nights with friends.
Of course they’d want something else for her.
Of course they'd try to give her the kind of life they never got to have.
“Yeah,” Johnny said, quieter this time, not really to her. “That sounds like something we’d say.”
May didn’t look up, but her mouth quirked like she’d heard him anyway.
Johnny twisted the cap back on the water bottle and tossed it in the recycling with a practiced flick. It bounced off the edge, missed completely, and skidded across the floor.
HERBIE sighed and rolled over to retrieve it.
“Still got the aim of a drunk raccoon,” May said dryly.
Johnny smirked. “Rude. And uncalled for. I’m a very coordinated raccoon, thank you.”
She grinned but didn’t say anything else, and for a few seconds, they just stood in it—the warm, quiet, surreal domesticity of it all. Johnny let himself breathe it in.
This wasn’t so bad.
Weird.
But not bad.
May’s gaze shifted to something behind Johnny, her posture relaxing ever so slightly. Johnny turned just in time to see Peter step into the room, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders a little too tight for someone who wasn’t just spiraling alone in a guest bedroom.
“You done with your crisis?” Johnny asked, tilting his head with the same gentleness one might use when addressing a stray cat.
“I wasn’t having a crisis,” Peter lied, deadpan, which might’ve worked better if he hadn’t been wearing his patented ‘I’ve emotionally blackmailed myself for an hour’ face. “I was simply contemplating every single decision, future or otherwise, that’s led me to this exact moment.”
Johnny gave him a slow, theatrical nod.
“So a normal Wednesday.” May didn’t lose a beat. She said it with the kind of casual sass that implied this wasn’t her first time inserting herself into their rhythm, and Peter didn’t even blink. He just smiled a little. She was so smarth mouthed, it was af if anything that came out her mouth could have been scripted by either of them.
Peter slid onto one of the stools by the counter and rested his arms on the surface, palms flat. “So what now?” he asked. “Do we stay here all week and play house? I don’t even know what parents do. Mine died when I was like five.”
“Same,” he replied instead, with a small shrug. Even though for him it was more complicated than that.
They shared a look. It wasn’t one of those soul-crushing and deeply mood-killing grief stares or whatever, just a brief moment of yeah, same boat, then they moved on. Like they always did.
May looked between them, unimpressed but somehow fond, like she’d seen this exchange happen a hundred times. “You usually let me stay at the garage and mess with Papa’s cars.”
Johnny blinked. “Oh no. Now I know you’re lying,” he said, eyebrows raised in mock horror. “No way would I let someone under four feet near my engines.”
May grinned, unbothered by being caught in the fib. “You did once. Supervised. I had goggles.”
Johnny squinted. “Okay, the goggles part sounds like me. But still. I must’ve been under duress.”
“Do I at least make you do chores?” Peter asked May, mostly to mess with her, but Johnny could hear the curiosity underneath.
May shrugged. “Only when I break something.”
Johnny snorted. “I bet that happens often if you are anything like Petey boy here.”
Peter glared. May smirked.
“Only sometimes.”
Peter smiled again, that same rare soft kind that knocked Johnny sideways a little each time it happened. Like he wasn’t quite sure how to handle the idea of something working or something being good. Actually, genuinely good. Not man in a furry costume coming out of nowhere and screaming "caught you!"
Maybe Johnny didn’t either. After all, they were very much cut by the same cloth, Peter and him. But damn if he didn’t want to try to get it for once.