Work Text:
Prove It
“What the Fuck?!”
Peter freezes, mask still in hand, afraid to turn around and face the furious woman behind him.
Two minutes ago, he had just been so excited to see the suit again and to know that all had been forgiven between him and Mr. Stark that he hadn’t thought twice about putting it on.
Though he wishes that two minutes ago he had at least thought to shut his door first.
Peter whirls around to see his aunt standing there with a hand on her chest and an expression that reads one part relieved and one part furious, “Peter! Oh my god, I thought you were some kind of burglar! What the hell are you doing?” She yells and then cocks her head to the side in confusion, “And what the hell are you wearing?”
“Oh! Hey May! I … uh …” He stammers, searching for words to explain and coming up blank, his mouth however, decides to just supply whatever answer comes to it first and he says unconvincingly, “I’m just … you know … cosplaying?”
“Cosplaying? You mean like LARPing and putting on costumes and stuff?” She asks, her confusion warranted since Peter really isn’t one for dressing up in silly costumes. Sure, there was the one time he dressed up as Han Solo for the premiere of the Force Awakens, but that doesn’t count. That wasn’t silly, that was cool.
And except for the one he’s currently wearing.
But this isn’t a costume.
Nope. Definitely not a costume … it’s a suit.
A multi-million dollar state-of-the-art supersuit, thank-you very much.
Not a costume.
And it certainly isn’t silly.
He just has to make May believe that it is.
“What? Are you going to some kind of Avengers convention or something?” May asks with a little chuckle like she wants to tease him a little for being such a nerd, “I know you’ve had a thing for Ironman since you were little and you worked for Stark, but why not dress up like him? Not as… uh … what’s his face? The Spider-guy, right?”
“May, c’mon. Really?” Peter tries to keep his face from falling when even his aunt doesn’t know his alter-ego’s name, but has a hard time keeping the whine out of his voice, “It’s Spider-Man. ”
“Jeez, sorry …" She raises her hands in surrender, "didn’t know you’d be so touchy about it.”
For a moment, Peter feels some relief to see her starting to buy the bullshit he’s shoveling and he can’t believe his luck.
It doesn't last long.
Her eyes suddenly narrow like she can see right through him, and he feels his heart drop. She knows something is up. He can feel it in the pit of his stomach, “Seriously through, where did you get that costume? It looks really good. Like, way better than that Han Solo thing you wore. It's almost like it's real.” She walks up to him then touches the material of his sleeve. Peter is starting to sweat and he dares not move. “I know your allowance doesn't even cover the cheap Halloween store crap, so where did you get this? I mean … is this even Spandex?”
Shit, shit, shit, shit shit …
“Uh … y’know … just uh …” Peter blanks and he wishes more than anything that he was a better liar, that he was one of those kids who can just make shit up from the top of their head and have everyone believe it. Like MJ. MJ is a great liar and he never knows when she's kidding or being serious. Why couldn’t that spider have given him that superpower too? He’s an even worse liar than Ned and he’s the guy that told Mrs. Warren he’d been watching porn in the computer lab as his reason for being in there during the homecoming dance.
But Peter doesn’t get a chance to make anything up because in the next second, May is tugging on the mask in his hand, “Let me see this thing.”
Snatching the mask back with a little more force than was probably called for was not the reaction that May clearly wants and Peter knows immediately that he’s messed up big time.
Now she wants the mask more than ever.
“No, May. I’ve been sweating and this thing really stinks.” He laughs nervously, “Pee-yoo, smelly teen hormones and stuff … I don't think you wanna get too close,” he trails off seeing that he's not going to win.
She holds out her hand and beckons with a ‘gimme’ gesture.
He gulps audibly and wonders if it’s too late to make a run for it, but he reluctantly hands it over because God knows that she’ll never let this go now. He can only pray that she doesn’t look too closely at it because if she does, she will see that it’s not just a mask, but a sophisticated piece of equipment that’s way more expensive than any teen should ever have in their possession.
But what happens next is even worse than he imagines.
She looks intently at the mask and turns it over a couple of times and then before he can stop her or even finish saying the words, “No, May! Don’t!” she takes the mask and pulls it over her head.
A squeak of fear and panic escapes Peter’s lips.
He feels the world stop as May stills and goes deathly silent. The eyes of the mask give nothing away.
She stands there for hours.
Okay, it may have been seconds, but to Peter it feels like hours.
She gives a little gasp and flinches.
“Peter?” she speaks in a calm tone that says that she is anything but calm. “There is a woman talking to me.” Her voice grows increasingly agitated, “Why is there a woman talking to me?”
“Oh uh …” Peter responds eloquently. “Yeah, uh that’s … uh … Karen.” He decides that there really isn’t any way of getting out of this without telling his aunt the truth. She’s seen him in the suit and now she’s seeing what he sees when he dons the mask. He’s pretty much screwed anyway, so he might as well explain, “She’s uh … she’s kind of an AI. Mr. Stark programmed her.”
May whips off the mask and her face is as pale as he has ever seen it. Peter is as scared or even more so now than he had been trying to cling to the side of that crashing airplane.
And he’s pretty sure his heart has stopped and death is imminent.
“Oh. My. God.” May breathes out slowly, “How did I not see this?” she begins to pace back and forth as she speaks, her voice growing more distressed by the second. “Mr. Stark, the internship …” she stops in mid-stride and then fixes Peter with a suddenly furious gaze that has him taking a step back.
Her nostrils flare and she rakes a hand through her hair, “Oh my God, Peter! Did you …” She stops as if steeling herself to ask a question of him that she dreads, then closes her eyes and tents her hands over her mouth, taking a breath before asking, “Is that why you lost the internship? Did you steal this suit from Tony Stark?”
Peter is so taken aback by the curveball question that all he can do is blink uncomprehendingly at his aunt, “Wh-What?” he manages to blurt out.
This certainly isn't what he's expecting.
Her gaze is all business as she hones in on him and points an accusing finger at his chest with unbridled anger, “You heard me, Mister. You better start explaining why you are wearing something that probably costs more than this whole apartment block and you better start talking fast because I am about to lose it, okay?”
Peter raises his hands, “May, May, look! I didn’t steal the suit, I swear!”
He tries to defend himself, but May is shaking her head like she can’t believe her nephew has turned into some kind of juvenile delinquent.
“I want the truth!” she shouts.
“That is the truth!” he fights back, "Mr. Stark gave me the suit!"
“Right, like I’m supposed to believe that Tony Stark just handed a fifteen year old intern a supersuit to play with!”
“But May --"
“Why, Peter? Why would he do that?” She’s near hysterics now and Peter is unravelling just as quickly. "The suit belongs to Spider-Man, not you!"
“Because I AM Spider-man!” Peter snaps back and it echoes off the walls.
For a moment, all is quiet.
It feels like the temperature in the room drops by 15 degrees as May’s glare grows colder and colder, “Just how dumb do you think I am, huh? How can you expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true.”
“Really? You?” She scoffs, still seething, “You’re Spider-man? You swing around the city roping up bad guys and saving people from muggers?”
Peter can’t help but be more than a little offended, “Why not me? And I don’t rope people up, I web them up.”
“NO! Spider-MAN webs them up and Spider-MAN is a MAN, not a sophomore in high school!” May throws up her hands in frustration and practically growls, “Why do you insist on giving me this load of horseshit? I know you, Peter and I have raised you since you were five years old, you’d think I’d notice that you have superpowers.”
“Well you haven’t!” Peter comes back sharply, his voice cracking as he unloads on her. How could she not believe him? Did she really think so little of him to believe that he would steal from Mr. Stark, the person he has idolized since he was in 2nd grade?
“I’ve been doing this for a year now. Since before Uncle Ben –” Peter is almost in tears now, but he’s too angry to let them fall, “It’s why I sneak out at night. It’s why I keep losing my backpacks and why I have to wear long-sleeved shirts all the time, because I keep getting bruises. It’s the reason Mr. Stark gave me the internship, in fact, it’s the only reason. Not because I’m smart, but because I AM Spider-Man. You really think he would personally recruit some nobody from Queens to come and work for him just because they wrote a good essay?”
Breathing hard, Peter can’t stop a couple of frustrated tears from escaping now. He wipes them away angrily and sniffs. “And if you really think that I stole the suit, then maybe you don’t know me after all.”
May steps back from the force of Peter’s outburst, and closes her eyes “Fine.” She sighs, hands resting on her hips and her voice losing some of its anger. She opens her eyes and almost looks sympathetic, “I believe you wouldn’t steal and I guess that Tony Stark has enough cash lying around that he can go around passing out supersuits to his interns if he wants to." She pauses, "But this Spider-Man stuff?” She fixes Peter with her gaze, “It's a lot to swallow. I mean, c'mon. You have superpowers? I'm gonna need you to prove it.”
Peter raises his eyebrows, “What?”
“Prove it.” She challenges him, “Show me your spider powers or whatever you call ‘em.”
“But I don’t –” Peter sputters.
“Go on.” She insists again, “I wanna see. If you’re Spider-Man, then this should be easy, right?”
“Uh …” Peter hesitates, but then thinks, what the hell, might as well. Maybe then she’ll finally believe him. “Okay. Watch this.”
Peter motions with his hand to indicate that he needs a little room and as soon as she backs up a few steps, he springs into the air and performs a perfect double backflip.
But when he lands he sees that his aunt, with her arms now folded across her chest, is less than impressed.
“That’s it?” She asks with a shrug. “Kiddo, you’ve been doing backflips since you were six. Granted that was pretty cool, but I don’t think being good at gymnastics makes you a superhero, otherwise Gabby Douglas would be an Avenger.”
Peter rolls his eyes, “Well, I mean. I can do better outside,” he tries to explain.
May just shakes her head, “C’mon. What else you got?”
Peter rubs his hands together and then turns to the wall. He raises his right hand above his head and touches its smooth surface, gripping it with just his fingertips. He does the same with is left and then begins to climb vertically. Once he makes it to the ceiling, he hangs from just his fingertips for a few seconds and then brings his knees up to his chest and tucks them in so that the bottoms of his feet can touch the ceiling. He unsticks his fingers and then straightens out, letting himself hang upside down from the ceiling by only the soles of his feet.
“Well, whatcha think?” He asks as he swings back and forth to prove just how sticky he can be. “Pretty super-powery, right?”
May looks up at him and he can see that yes, she is definitely impressed and maybe even a little bit amazed given the way her mouth is hanging open, but then in the next breath, she narrows her gaze and says with skepticism, “But you’re still wearing the suit. This doesn’t really prove anything.”
“What?” Peter is incredulous and he throws his arms out, “Oh, c’mon, May. I’m sticking to the ceiling here!”
“Yeah.” She comes back, “While wearing a high-tech suit made by Tony Stark. How do I know he hasn’t put in some electro-magnet doohinkies or something into the thing that let you do that?”
“But that’s …” Peter is almost aghast at his aunt’s lack of science knowledge, and he pinches the bridge of his nose, “that’s not even how electro-magnets work.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t know that. So humor me, okay? Take off the suit.”
“Okay, fine!” Peter agrees and then flips down from the ceiling and shoos his aunt of his room so he can change. He walks out two minutes later in his school sweatshirt, some jeans and just his bare feet. He joins his aunt in the living room where she sits on the couch waiting for him and he huffs to make his presence known.
“Is this good enough?” He asks, turning around in a circle to show off his outfit. “See, no supersuit, no special equipment. It’s just me.” He isn’t bothering to hide his petulance and he doesn’t care if May doesn’t like his tone. He never in his wildest dreams thought that he would ever have to actually prove that he has powers to his aunt. In fact, the whole of the last year he’s been doing everything to hide them, but now that they’re out in the open, she doesn’t even believe they’re real.
This day is just too surreal and he is so done with it.
Truthfully. he’s so annoyed, that he doesn’t wait for May to say anything. He just leaps vertically, does a triple backflip this time and lands in a crouch on the ceiling. He then stands upside down and begins to pace back and forth on the ceiling in just his bare feet, ignoring how the popcorn texture digs into his soles, “See? No electro-magnets.” He states, “Just me and my sticky skin.”
Jumping from the ceiling, he flips down (a quad this time) and lands next to the couch May is staring at him from and then reaches down, lifting it up with one hand over his head like it’s the weight of a feather. May squawks but he’s still too keyed up to acknowledge her surprise.
“And oh, look. I’m really strong too. I think that counts as a super-power.”
He puts the couch down, maybe a little jarringly, but he’s still really annoyed that May is being so stubborn.
He keeps going, pacing around the room, walking up and down the walls and ranting the whole time, “And I got really crazy senses now and I can hear everything, and I mean, like … everything. Did you know that the Villners two floors up are newlyweds and they are sooo loud and you really don’t want to know what they do almost every single night. And then there’s my vision. It’s really good now too. I haven’t needed my contacts since I got bit and I can see in the dark, like even when it’s pitch black, which is great, especially when I gotta pee at night or for when I need to web up bad guys in dark alleys."
Peter is now hanging from the ceiling by just one fingertip and rapidly doing one-armed pull-ups as he continues, barely taking time to take a breath, "But then there’s the smells, which I’ll admit, I probably could have done without getting enhanced, because let me tell ya, the bus after school is rank … I mean, curl- your-toes-up-and-die stinky. And I know you had a peanut butter sandwich and an apple with some chamomile tea for lunch because I can still smell it on you. I mean, you don’t stink or anything, but I’m just saying …”
Peter wants to keep unpacking everything and tell her every last detail, but when he looks down at his aunt, he sees that she is looking at him quietly with tears flowing down her face.
Oh shit. He’s made her cry. Why is she crying?
Immediately feeling terrible and guilty, Peter drops down to the floor and sits next to May. Damn .. he did this. He made her feel this way and he's such a jerk.
“Oh crap, May. I’m sorry.” He touches her shoulder but she wants more and pulls him in for a hug. She grips him tight and he can feel her shake a little as she rubs his back up and down.
As she holds him, she says in a raspy, sorrowful voice, “No, I’m sorry, hon. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you at first, and I am so, so sorry for accusing you of stealing. It's just that when I saw you in that suit, something inside of me just didn’t want to believe that any of this is real.” She pushes him out to arm’s length and looks him up and down. She then runs her fingers through his hair and looks at him with such love, acceptance, and warmth that he feels he might be overwhelmed by it.
She smiles through her tears, “But it is real, isn’t it? You’re really Spider-Man, huh?”
Peter nods and pushes the lump in his throat down, “Yeah, I am. But I’m still me. Just a little ... extra.”
She nods then inhales deeply, like she’s drawing strength from the air, “Okay. Okay.” She wipes her eyes. “You and me are going to have a very, very, very long talk about this and about why you didn't tell me all this sooner. And you better believe Tony Stark is going to be getting a piece of my mind for giving you a supersuit without so much as a howdy-do, but we’ll figure it out. I can’t promise that I’m gonna allow you to keep doing this whole vigilante thing, at least not until you’ve graduated high school ...”
“Aw, May, c’mon --” Peter cuts in with a groaning protest.
She cuts him off, “... or at least not until you prove to me that you can be safe being Spider-Man and still make good grades in school.”
Peter knows this is probably the best deal he’s gonna get for now, but he still can’t help but be forlorn about the fact that he might have to shelve Spider-Man for a while.
May seems to sense his gloom and she rubs his shoulder, “It’s gonna be okay, Kiddo. I promise.”
He’s not sure if she’s trying to reassure him or herself, but either way, he feels that it’s true. Even if he’s dreading the inevitable fallout between her and Mr. Stark and what all of this might mean for his future as Spider-Man, he knows that they’ll work it out.
Because they're a team, the two of them.
And he’ll prove to May that there is no one out there that can be a better Spider-Man than he can.