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“Stop sulking,” May said, nudging Peter’s knee as she passed into the kitchen to start the pasta cooking.
“I’m not sulking,” Peter muttered, casting a surreptitious look to where Tony was on the phone with Pepper, who’d had to cancel last minute. Peter heard her dump the fettucine noodles into the pot, turning up her music a little as she did so. She was listening to her favorite 70s and 80s music, humming along as puttered around.
“Are too,” she called back. “You’ve been grumpy all day.”
Peter rolled his eyes, curling tighter into the corner of the couch. It was kind of true, even if he didn’t want to admit it. He wasn’t sure what it was about today, but everything was setting him off. School had been miserable, patrol was frustrating—he’d gotten yelled at by more people than he’d helped and pepper-sprayed, though his mask had saved him from actually getting hurt. Not even Tony coming over for dinner had lightened his mood, though Peter had tried to at least feign excitement.
He just wanted to go to bed, really. Or maybe go back out as Spider-Man and punch some things.
“Pep says sorry, kiddo. She’d rather be here than a meeting,” Tony said as he hung up, ruffling Peter’s hair as he sat down heavily in the arm chair. Peter wrinkled his nose, fixing his now messed up curls, making Tony snort.
“I don’t know, you might be wishing you were at a meeting if May burns the sauce. Again,” Peter grumbled.
“I heard that,” May came back into the living room and hit Peter in the face with a dish towel. While normally he’d laugh it off, today he scowled at her. She just laughed and Peter’s scowl deepened.
“Cheer up, baby,” she told him, sitting down next to him.
The song playing on the battered CD player changed and a new one started, cheerful whistling slightly fuzzy as it came out of the speakers. It was familiar—this CD was an old favorite of May’s, one Ben had burned for her back when burning a CD was still something people did—but Peter couldn’t have told you the name. May, however, instantly brightened in recognition.
She had that look on her face. The one parents get when they’re about to utterly humiliate you. She took a deep breath.
Half a second before she started singing, Peter recognized the song.
“No, don’t—”
“You know I can’t smile without you,” May sang, looking at Peter with a faux-earnest expression that barely masked how utterly delighted she was.
Tony looked up slowly, both eyebrows raised. He’d been coming over for monthly dinners for a while now and May had never broken into song before. Peter made eye contact with him for half a second, his cheeks steadily getting pinker, before looking back at May in horror.
“I can’t laugh.” May grabbed Peter’s face in her hands, purposefully squishing his cheeks. “And I can’t sing.”
“I wish,” Peter grumbled, the words coming out distorted.
“I’m finding it hard to do anything!” May belted out, standing from the couch and tugging Peter with her. He resisted for a second, determined to avoid the next stage of his embarrassment, but worried about hurting her somehow. Reluctantly, he let himself be pulled up.
“You see I feel sad when you’re sad, feel glad when you’re glad!” May put Peter’s hand on her waist, put her own on his shoulder, and yanked him around in the saddest little two-step ever seen.
“May, if you wanted to kill me, there are easier ways than Barry Manilow induced mortification!”
Peter could barely hear Tony’s chuckle over May’s enthusiastic singing.
May pushed his shoulder to get him to spin. He had to duck to fit under her raised arm and nearly tripped on the rug. When he glanced back at Tony, the man was covering his mouth as he watched, but at least he wasn’t filming.
May’s smile was so big it could split her face.
”You came along, just like a song, and brightened my day!”
“At least let me lead,” Peter complained, as they both tried to spin each other at the same time. May laughed through the next lines of the song only to cut off as they heard the pasta boiling over.
“Oh, shoot,” she cried, dropping Peter’s hand and rushing off. “Tony, tap in!”
“Yeah, right,” Peter snorted, stepping back over to the couch, ready to burrow into the cushions and never come out to face Tony and his humiliation again.
Until a hand caught his wrist.
“Ah, ah, ah, Underroos, not so fast.”
To his shock, Peter was once again forcibly spun into a somehow even more uncoordinated dance, Tony placing Peter’s hand on his shoulder and taking the lead.
“What is happening?” Peter asked, his jaw slack. “May, call Pepper, Tony’s been bodysnatched,” he called over the music.
Tony rolled his eyes. “Listen, kid, if your scary aunt tells me to do something, I do it.”
“Even if she told you to jump off a cliff?” Peter asked, tripping over his own feet, making Tony laugh.
“Even then. It’s in the contract. So you see why I want to avoid pissing her off.” Tony spun Peter, who clumsily followed.
“Some people say happiness takes so very long to find,” Tony sang under his breath, like he hadn’t really planned on doing it. “Well I’m finding it hard, leaving your love behind me.”
“You know the words?” Peter asked. If he had one more surprise tonight he might actually go into shock.
“I was raised in the 70s, kid, of course I know the words.”
“You know I can’t smile without you,” Tony quietly sang, his hand warm in Peter’s. “I feel sad when you’re sad, feel glad when you’re glad.”
Tears burned inexplicably in Peter’s eyes. Tony smiled softly down at him, then spun him away one last time, letting go of his hand.
May was there to catch him, pulling him fully into her arms. He buried his face in her shoulder as she quietly sang the last lines into his ear.
“I just can’t smile without you.”
Peter sighed, wrapping his arms around May’s waist. She stroked his hair.
“Bad day, baby?” she asked quietly.
“Not anymore,” he admitted. “I love you, even if you’re the most embarrassing aunt ever and have questionable taste in music.”
May laughed, pushing him gently away. “Unbelievable, Parker,” she chided teasingly. “No one living under my roof can profane Barry Manilow.”
Peter snickered, feeling Tony’s arm come up around his shoulders, pulling him close into his side.
“Come on, dinner’s ready,” May said, walking back into the kitchen, where the chicken alfredo was smelling surprisingly good.
Peter glanced up at Tony, a little taken aback by how warmly Tony was looking at him.
“Feeling better, kid?”
Peter nodded, wrapping his arm around Tony’s waist in a one-armed hug. He felt a kiss pressed to his temple.
“Good. But if you secretly taped that somehow and sell it to TMZ, I’m disowning you.”