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They make the trip to MIT in much the same way they’ve taken every other momentous drive for the past ten years, with May behind the wheel of her battered little sedan and Peter navigating from the shotgun seat. There’s a half-empty sack of bagels in the console between them, bookended by a pair of gas station sodas and a package of the gummi worms Peter refuses to roadtrip without. The windows stay rolled down to compensate for the recently deceased-air conditioner, and May finds that she doesn’t mind the wind catching in her hair as she drives. Peter dangles a hand out the window, a wistful sort of smile playing across his face as the breeze ruffles his curls. May can’t blame him; she’s got the same bittersweet confusion swirling through her chest, though perhaps for different reasons.
She’s had plans for this day ever since Peter was small—May always has plans, she’s a planner through and through, for everything from five-year strategies to maximizing the efficiency of her laundry run—but dropping Peter off at college was one of the oldest she harbored these days. She’d pondered the idea a lot back when she and Ben had first taken him in. Most of those thoughts had been centered around how on earth they were going to pay for college, let alone get him there, but there had been other considerations in the mix, too.
Would he look more like Richard or more like Mary when he was grown?
Would he still call them May and Ben or would the seemingly endless stretch of years between the five-year-old sleeping in their spare bedroom and the imagined eighteen-year-old in May’s wonderings have given them more parental titles?
Would they still be driving whatever the most affordable beater on the lot happened to be or would either of their careers have stabilized enough for a slightly more luxurious life?
The questions feel silly now, with all the answers laid out before May’s eyes as she drives into the August sunset…
Peter may be riding to MIT in the same sort of junker the Parkers have always owned, but he’s going on Tony Stark’s dime.
He still calls her May, not mom.
And he looks like Ben, the scrunch of his face as he laughs, the scrape of his hands through his hair when he’s nervous, the kind, easy light in his eyes when he grins at her across the front seat. May’s heart clenches for half a beat with the pondering of it, stuttering a bittersweet rhythm as she drinks in the last few moments before they part. For all the ways Peter carries his parents’ legacy, he’d fallen more closely into Ben’s footsteps than into Richard and Mary’s in all the ways that truly shaped a person. The same tragedies molded them. The same beliefs guided them. The same kindness ruled them. The same bright, steady smile that had once glowed out of Ben did the same with Peter, even now when it wavered and faltered with his valiant attempts to tamp down the emotions that were clearly gnawing at him just as hard as they were at May. He carried the best of them all in that skinny chest…but he carried Ben most of all.
In some small way, that sweet resemblance helps make up for the gaping hole torn in the fantasy May spun all those years ago. Because, of all the scenarios she had envisioned back then, she had never expected there to be one in which she ferried Peter to the next stage of his life alone.
Thirteen years ago, May fully planned to take Peter to college with Ben riding shotgun. It was a foregone conclusion. Whatever they did, they did together. Always would, especially when it came to Peter. There had never been any reason to think that this trip would be any sort of exception. That Ben would be conspicuously absent from the dreams come to life. That absence weighs down the air in the car a little, dampening the taunt sense of excitement that neither May or Peter will acknowledge. May hates to admit it, but that subtle sting is easier to push away these days, now that they’ve struggled through so many other milestones without him. They’re…used to it now.
Or at least, as used to it as they can be.
May reluctantly ticks off the last few mile markers as they pass, counting down to the moment she’d half-dreaded for months now. Twenty miles more and she’d be unpacking the better part of Peter’s belongings from her trunk. Another few moments, and she’d be saying goodbye to her boy. She’s always known the moment would come—he’s always been bright, after all, there was never any doubt that he would eventually leave her behind for a future found among some university’s halls—but “eventually” so often felt more like a dream than a certainty. Like an unpleasant statistic that happened to someone somewhere, but not to her. Parting from the boy she’d devoted the last few years to—from the only family she had left—felt like such a distant problem. A thundercloud on a horizon that her future self would have to sail through, not a woe that May herself would have to face.But now the storm was here, the thunderclouds were bursting, and May tries desperately not to cry when they pull onto MIT’s grounds.
It’s made easier, at least, by the fact that the others are nosing into the parking lot right behind them, a helpful distraction wrapped up in a sleek minivan brimming with friendly chaos. May swipes a hand over her eyes as she finds a spot for her Volvo adjoining one big enough for the absurdly large luxury vehicle Tony bought specifically for the trip. She has the feeling that some past version of herself would be choking on a succession of scandalized gasps at the thought that crosses her mind, but May can’t bring herself to care. It’s true, after all: thank heaven for Tony Stark.
The minivan that pulls up a few spaces down from May’s Volvo spills over with the sort of support May had never expected to have on this day. The others—the family—pour out onto the sidewalk to cluster around May and Peter, all chatter and clatter and sweet chaos as greetings are exchanged and plans formed. It’s easier to bury the weight of the moment under the noise of Tony creaking his prosthetic arm this way and that to work out the (likely exaggerated) kinks picked up on the drive, of Morgan beelining straight for Peter and the conspicuously prominent bag of gummie worms, of Happy and Pepper trading notes on how best to unload the trunk’s worth of boxes and suitcases and textbooks that they had helped ferry in from Queens. Easier still when May can see the same sort of anxious, bittersweet dread she’s struggling with hovering under the surface of all those other faces as they dive into the grueling task that is move-in day. They all do their best to hide it beneath a solid layer of relentless cheer and the sort of happiness for Peter that they know will make the transition easiest…but distracting one another seems to take the most focus of all.
She and Tony heckle one another along through the seemingly endless trips back and forth between the van and the dorm, trading delicate barbs about who’s hauling the most boxes and whose knees are creaking the most.
Pepper joins her in mapping out where Peter’s room is in relation to the RA’s, in tacking up his class schedules and campus information sheets above his desk, even in making and remaking the bed until the sheets are crisp, the pillows fluffed, and the spare blankets neatly folded for easy access.
Happy nods dutifully through her suggestions for second looks and potential modifications as he strides the perimeter of the suite to check locks and windows and smoke detectors, looking almost as anxious about the cramped cracker box of a room as May is and being twice as vocal about it.
Morgan grins right along with her as they slip the surprise goodies—little candies for later, reassurances scrawled on pink Post-Its, little reminders of home and hearth that May suspected would be appreciated later, when they’ve all pulled away for home—into every nook and cranny they can find. Beneath pillows and in medicine cabinets, tucked into desk drawers and hidden behind cereal boxes. May hopes they’ll help bridge the gap…but it still doesn’t feel like enough when the last of Peter’s belongings are stowed away and the time for goodbyes looms up in front of them.
It strikes her with a jolt that Peter carries more than just the Parkers’ final legacy with him now. She sees it in the mirror-image posture as Tony reels Peter in against his chest to clasp him against his heart, in the bright-eyed understanding that passes between them without so much as a word. It’s obvious in the gentle brush of Pepper’s hand over his curls as she reminds him to temper his lab time with a little fun and the occasional sleep, the words delivered with the sort of fond exasperation that only experience could produce. It blares like a beacon in the way Happy claps him around the shoulders with the reminder to call if anyone gives him trouble, in the koala-bear hug he gets from Morgan and the gentle forehead smooch he gives her in return—Peter’s soaked up just as much of this family as he has of his first one. A coil of tension unfurls in May’s stomach and she lets out a sigh as she rubs a hand across his shoulders in a last reassurance.
She can’t say she minds.
Because, as big a gap as Peter’s temporary absence will tear in her life, in her routine, in her everything—the little bits and pieces of Peter that have come from these people, from this strange jumble of a family that she’s fallen into, will stay with her even when her boy is missing. They’ve grown together now, all the tiny little mannerisms and phrases and tics that bind up a family flowing out as naturally as if they’d been together forever rather than just since that one ill-advised trip to Germany. She’ll hear Peter in the infectious, high-pitched giggle Tony lets loose only in the dearest of company: the giggle she hears most when Peter sits between them at BBQs and holiday dinners. She’ll see him in the way Happy walks when on high alert, constantly swiveling for trouble and squared up for danger: the same look Peter has adopted when he’s hunting trouble, too. She’ll feel him in the brand of dry sarcasm that Peter and Pepper have slowly begun to share, in the effervescently mischievous grins that have clearly rubbed off on Morgan, in all the little markers that proclaim just how much the Parkers have settled in amongst the Starks. It’s impossible to tell where the Parkers end and the Starks begin. Not, May supposes, that that’s a bad thing. She suspects that it’s going to make the whole transition a million times easier than it would’ve been.
Life with Peter so far away won’t be the same; May knows better than to assume that. But she has the feeling it won’t change quite as drastically as she had once feared. Particularly when it becomes obvious that the family has come as much for May as they have for Peter. Pepper winds an arm through May’s as they lean against each other with their backs to the van while Peter and Tony trade their last good-byes. Happy retrieves his coffee thermos from said van to transfer it to May’s car, ready to take the trip back with her so she doesn’t have to face it alone. She’s grateful for that when it comes to it. She’s not sure she could handle so many hours alone in a deathly quiet car so soon after it was filled with the light and chatter and warmth she’s accustomed to.
May meets them at the bottom of the stairs as Tony finally peels off to rejoin the others clustered around the van, ceding the final goodbye to May with as sympathetic a look as she’d ever seen on that smug face. She hands off the backpack—the last piece of Peter to be shifted from one home to the next—and loops both arms around Peter’s shoulders as soon as he’s in range.
“Better hang on to that one—Things are going to get complicated if I have to mail you new backpacks from Queens every couple weeks,” May murmurs against Peter’s hair. He laughs, muffled and suspiciously choked-up as he returns the squeeze before they pull a few inches apart.
“You know, it’s probably not too late to get into Columbia…”
May smiles, bittersweet against the ache in her chest. “I think we both know you’re exactly where you need to be, hotshot.”
“Yeah…I guess,” Peter admits with a hesitance that betrays the war between excitement and remorse he’s desperately trying to hide. “Still wish that was closer to Queens, though.”
“I know. Me, too.” The hell with it. May gives in and surges forward again to curl her arms around Peter as tight as she can manage for just a few seconds more. Peter clings right back, and for a moment, they’re timeless. It’s the desperation and grief of the precinct hall thirteen years earlier, the triumph and relief of the lakehouse lawn just after the Blip, the quiet and steady care of every patrol she’s hugged him goodbye for at the apartment windowsill—it’s thirteen years of memory compressed. The embrace eventually loosens, even though it’s not even close to enough to last May through ‘til Thanksgiving or Christmas or whenever Peter will manage to make it home. She’s lived through the struggles of science majors before. She remembers all the weekends Richard and Mary spent buried in research in corner labs while the rest of the campus headed home for the weekend, so she knows she can’t hold her breath on any casual jaunts home. She has to take what she can get.
“Love you, Peter,” she announces it firmly, punctuates it with a kiss on his forehead and another on his cheek just because she can. “Whether you’re here or Queens or anywhere in between.”
“Love you, too, May,” he whispers back. And that’s that. It’s time. Peter is due at the first freshman mixer of his orientation week, and the rest of them are due back on the road. May swallows hard.
“Well…I think that’s everything. All the boxes from the trunk, the bag with your textbooks, the snacks from Delmar’s…” She fusses with the strap of the backpack slung over his shoulder as she rambles, brushes invisible lint from his shoulder, scrubs a thumb over an imagined smudge on his chin—anything to distract from the knowledge that her time is up. “Am I missing something? It feels like I’m missing something.”
Peter leans into the hand she rests against his cheek rather than ducking away with the teenage embarrassment inherent in any fretting that lasts longer than twenty seconds or does not immediately follow a near-death experience, and May’s heart splinters a little more with the knowledge that Peter isn’t looking forward to the separation any more than she is. She sighs, and so does he, but it’s blown out through a quiet smile. He pats her hand.
“I’m good, May—I think…I think we’ve got this.”
There’s a holler from behind them, Morgan’s distinctively plaintive tone carrying over the asphalt to inquire about whether they can go get dinner yet before either of her parents can shush her. It’s enough to make both May and Peter look up long enough for a last wave from the others that makes Peter grin and seals the moment for May. It isn’t the send-off she had once planned for her boy. But it’s good. As good as any sort of goodbye can be, really, but particularly good in light of all the things they’ve weathered on the way to that farewell. It’s miraculous that the two of them came safely back after the Blip. More miraculous still that any of them—Parker or Stark—found one another in one piece in the chaos that reigned after the universe was torn to pieces. They’ve been lucky, and May’s going to treasure that as long as she lives. And as much as her heart breaks to leave Peter behind...it bursts with the hope born of the love he will always come home to.
“We’ve got this,” May agrees softly.
Because with the rest of the family at her back and Peter smiling in front of her, she can just about believe it.