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Ben Parker doesn’t drink a lot of coffee, but when he does, he drinks it with a spoonful of hot chocolate powder, two teaspoons of sugar, and a splash of hazelnut creamer stirred in.
“Like drinking liquid fuckin’ Nutella,” he tells May, brandishing the mug towards her.
May, sitting cross-legged on the bare, dusty floor of their brand-spanking-new studio apartment, a bottle of Budweiser weeping condensation over her fingers, squints. “I can’t believe that we don’t have furniture, and yet you stopped to grab instant coffee and Nesquik and whatever else at the bodega. Are those necessities? Ben? Do we need those to survive the night? This one night before we stock the cabinets? We’re sleeping in a sleeping bag tonight. One sleeping bag. We needed toothbrushes, not funfetti cake mix and pizza bagels.”
“Don’t be a stick in the mud, May,” Ben says, nudging her knee with his toe. His entire body is ringing like the aftermath of a gong being whacked by a mallet. It’s euphoric, the grin on his face is painful, he can feel the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening by the second. “We’ll pull the sack out onto the fire escape and sleep under the stars.”
“The stars,” May repeats. “Have you ever seen a star brave enough to show its face in Queens?”
“The fuckin’ pigeons would swoop up and pluck it right outta’ the sky,” Ben acquiesces. “But—still! There’s air that moves, at least. It’s practically camping. Sounds fun, right?”
May’s gaze flits from one of his eyes to the other, slips down over his shoulders, lands unabashedly on his crotch. He takes a big gulp of the coffee monstrosity in his suddenly-white-knuckled grip to hide the flush swallowing his cheeks and staining the rims of his ears. “Eh,” May says. “I could think of something a little more fun.”
Ben clears his throat and carefully places the mug on the hardwood, sliding it a few feet away to prevent a sticky disaster. “Um,” Ben says. “May—May, I’m going to need you to get over here right now before I jump your g-ddamn bones.”
May tosses her head back and laughs—and Christ, what a laugh, the column of her neck tall and slim, her freshly pixied hair falling into her eyes—before crawling towards him like a clumsy jungle cat, and Ben thinks a sniper could take him out right now and he’d be okay with it, because this is his fucking fulfillment right here and he’s so in love that he’s sick with it.
An armful of May. Her rosemary soap and her wicked grin and her—long, long legs, Ben is going to need to start actually remembering to say his Ashamnu every day for the rest of his life. G-d save his weak, weak soul.
— — —
May is trying to wrestle a cookie sheet into a cabinet that is far too narrow to fit it. Ben is watching, because it is hilarious, and also because this angle gives him an excellent view of May’s lacy panties sticking out from under the shirt she’s wearing—the one Ben had been wearing when he’d gotten home from work the night before, unbuttoned over her bra, and, wow, wow, Ben thinks she ought to just keep it for herself.
“Fucking hell,” she says. She pulls it out and the edges drag along the wood. A new angle of approach and it still doesn’t make it all the way in, poking out half-way. “Gesù Cristo. Vaffanculo a me.” She tugs it free and tries again, wedging it awkwardly once more. “Mi stai rompendo le palle.”
“My little balabusta,” Ben says gleefully, watching May struggle. “Get you a good wife, my ma said. A strong Jewish woman to bring your kids to shul and make brisket for the rabbi. I said, no siree, Ma, I found myself una zitellona rabbiosa and I’m gonna put a ring on her little Sicilian finger, just watch me. And look! I did.”
May shoots him a glare over her shoulder. “Come help me, jackass,” she says.
Ben stays right where he is, far too content staring at May’s flushed face above him.
“Ben,” she whines.
“You’re so pretty,” he says. “Do I tell you that enough? That was a trick question. There’s no way possible, scientifically, for me to tell you how pretty you are enough times. It’s astronomical, it’s ridiculous how—look at you. What a face, May Parker, hooo-wee. What did I do to deserve you?”
She stares at him. “You’re mushy,” she chooses to say.
Ben holds his hands up to take the tray. May gives it to him and he pretends it’s a gift from her, he’s grateful for anything she could give him, grateful for anything she could be, and he savors the morning-time chill of metal against his palms. “Was that ever a secret?” he says.
“Nope,” she says, popping the p, leaning her weight on his shoulders as she jumps off the countertop. She huffs as she lands and he leans forward, capturing her lips in a kiss, because he is hopelessly besotted by her. She’s a tempest cracking on the jetty, swallowing up the shoreline, and he’s a boat rocking on the swells, staring transfixed at the lightning bolts through the green walls of her waves, hoping beyond all hope that she won’t drag him under, but knowing it would be a good way to go.
“Go fit that in there, domestica,” she says, checks him with her hip, and then swishes away, down the hallway and around the corner, pausing a moment only to look at him over her shoulder, fluttering her lashes and grinning innocently.
Ben clambers onto the countertop and clumsily fumbles the damn cookie sheet in there, slams the damn door shut, and damn runs to her, forever the smoke to her flame.
— — —
“We’ve—” Ben says. He’s choking. A chasm the size of Gibraltar in his chest and the sea is pouring down his throat, foamy and fast. “May, we’ve got to take him in.”
May breathes sharply through her nose, pacing in front of Ben where he sits on the couch. May’s anger is never static. It is coals beneath her feet and a breeze on her breath that could knock over a California Redwood. “Ben, I’m not ready for that. I’m not, I’m sorry. I’ve never taken care of a kid, not really. I’ve literally—never held a kid, I’ve known Peter for, what, six months? And I’m always on shift when you watch him, so I hardly even know him. And now we’re supposed to raise him?” May pushes her fringe off her forehead with shaking hands. “It was your name on their will, Ben. You, Benjamin Parker, that’s what it said in—black fucking cursive.” She’s got both hands clapped over her mouth, now, muffling her words. “I can’t do this. I can’t.”
“May,” Ben says, and he is not angry, not one bit, and he needs to be grounded, to be the gravity tugging May back towards him. May is the flint. He is the dirt the cigarette butt is smushed into it. “Baby, sit down a minute. May, let’s talk, okay?”
“I can’t,” she says. “How am I supposed to talk about this? It’s—we never thought about kids. Never. I didn’t—I wasn’t—how? How are we supposed to…?”
“Together,” says Ben. “That’s how. And because it’s Ricky and Mary’s kid,” he says, and his voice cracks, and his chest jumps as his breath stutters through it. He can’t even see May through the glaze over his eyes—just a smudge of mustard yellow from her sundress. He jabs his thumbs under his glasses and wipes the wetness from his lashes. It’s a fucking gorgeous fucking day out. They were going to have a picnic. “Because my brother is dead, and Mary—my, my sister, pretty much, she’s dead too, May, they’re dead and I don’t know what else to do but take the kid in.”
May stops pacing to stare at him, and he can see in her eyes that she understands. That it does click for her. That Ben has to do this. But she… doesn’t.
“Ben, I… think I need to go,” she says.
“No,” Ben says. And, stronger, “No,” this is the most ferocious he has ever been and it is nothing more than a tremulous grunt of a thing, “no,” he says once more, because he means it, he means it, he means it.
“What do you mean, no?” says May. “You can’t keep me here.”
Ben stands, comes up to her. Slides his fingers between hers, then up her arms, to her shoulders and back down, “I can’t keep you if you want to go,” he says. “But I can try to make you—see reason, see that you should stay, that you—May, I need you to stay.”
“Why?” she says.
“Because,” Ben says, his hands around May’s elbows, his thumbs pressing into her pulse points, feeling her thrum beneath him, “you’re the best thing there is in this bitch of a life and I’m not about to let you go without a fight.”
All at once, May’s face folds. Ben pulls her sharply into his chest, something in his heart aching fiercely. “I don’t know what to do,” May says and it rides a sob like a surfer. “I don’t know how to take care of a four year old, I have no clue.”
“Neither do I,” says Ben, resting his chin over her head, scritching his fingertips over her ribs. “Not really. It’s different, watching him for the afternoon, than it would be to—keep him. We’re going to figure it out together, because that’s what we do, right? We stick together?” Ben’s tears are dripping into May’s hair but she burrows closer. She burrows closer, and that’s all that matters to Ben, that she burrows right into the hollow between his ribs, wiggles herself under the muscle of his heart and calcifies there, because he always thought that passage about how woman is from man’s rib is a load of horseshit, but he wants her there anyway, keeping him warm from the inside out, protecting his soft parts with her sharpness.
“I love you,” May says. “I always will. Don’t—at least don’t doubt that.”
“I know, babydoll,” Ben says. “I know. I’m just so fuckin’ irresistable, of course you love me.”
She stomps on his foot and he almost smiles.
Peter is waiting for them on the doorstep of Ned’s house, holding Ned’s little hand, his eyes reddish and his lip pouted. The sunlight on them is dappled yellow and bright between the shadows from the low-hanging fig trees along the Leeds’s walkway and it makes Ben want to weep all over again.
Ben hurries towards them, screwing the corners of his lips into a tight smile and scooping Peter up in one smooth motion, dropping him on his hip, and then bending back over to lift Ned in the other arm, settling him against his other side. “Hey, tough guys,” Ben says, planting a kiss firm on Peter’s forehead and bouncing Ned a little. “Why do you look so bummed? Playdate a bust?”
Ned says, “Peter tripped a lil’ bit.”
Ben’s heart squeezes. He didn’t think the tightness in his chest could be—more, could get worse, but he feels like he’s smoked his way through a whole pack of cigarettes, can practically taste the nicotine on his tongue. “You tripped, Petey?” Ben says. “You okay?”
“M’okay,” Peter says, and he rubs his nose on Ben’s shirt, which Ben doesn’t even think is gross. It’s kinda cute, really, and maybe this is the moment he becomes a dad, sort of, when he can look down at a kid wiping snot all over his Todd Hundley t-shirt and almost coo aloud.
Ben nudges Peter’s temple with his nose and whispers into his ear, “I can kiss it better as soon as we’re home. I’ll fix it right up, okay, buddy?”
Peter nods, his hair rustling.
“Hey,” Ben says, “here, I’ll bring Ned inside to his Nanay, and I’ll hand you off to May?”
Peter peers over Ben’s shoulder for her. “May-May’s here?” he says, all quiet and sweet.
“Yeah, baby, of course May-May’s here,” Ben says, and these endearments, they slip off his tongue like a mouthful of bird feathers and float between them. He wants to tell Peter to grab onto one for luck. “Here—and it’s Ben Parker with the ball, Ben Parker running, he’s running,” and he turns the kids in towards him a little, tilts them forward just slightly like a pair of footballs, and Ned laughs aloud, shaking with it, “there’s the open spot, the pass, will he make it?” May is standing, staring, wide-eyed behind her driving glasses. “It’s a clean shot towards May Parker, but will she catch the pass?”
And then May has energy in her muscles again. She moves, a little smirk curling her lips, half-hearted, but there, it’s there. Her arms come out. “I’m open!” she says.
“And Parker’s cutting down the field, dodging all the defenders, no one can catch him!” Ben jogs around the small lawn, swerves around a magnolia tree and a bush peppered with red berries, “He’s going, and here’s the toss, and—”
May scoops Peter from under Ben’s arm and lifts him above her head, grinning up at him, “Touchdown!” she says, and Peter echoes it, “touch-own!”
When Ben catches May’s eyes briefly, he’s beyond roughed, his emotions, he can’t even tell the damn things apart anymore, to see that they’re both damp-eyed.
“I’ll be right back,” he tells them both, May and Peter. He turns to Ned, then, and prods him in the ribs, prompting a shrill squeak. Ben smiles at him as he walks, opening the door with his free hand and kicking his shoes off at the door. “Thanks for being such a good pal for Peter,” Ben says. “I know he has lots of fun hanging out with you.”
“I have fun wif’ him, too,” says Ned, his head bobbing in a nod.
“Of course you do, he’s the best kid in the whole world,” Ben says, and Ned says, “You’re right!” which makes Ben’s eyes leak a little more. Ned looks at him funny, but doesn’t get a chance to say anything before his mother is coming over, soft smile and soft eyes and an armful of tupperware containers.
“I’ll trade you the kid for the food,” she says.
“Oh, please, you don’t have to,” Ben says, but for every time he’s met Mahalia Leeds, he’s never once left her house empty-stomached or empty-handed.
“Come here, Nedo,” she says, and Ned looks at Ben with wide eyes. “Thanks for the ride, Uncle Ben,” he says, and wiggles down out of his arms.
Ben says, “AirParker is always open for you, kid.”
Mahalia shoves the tupperware into his arms and he’s forced to catch them lest two weeks worth of perfectly good lumpia and chicken adobo hit the floor.
“Thank you,” Ben says quietly as Ned runs off somewhere deeper into the house. “Really, thank you. May and I appreciate this, and—we really appreciate you watching Peter for us this morning. It was a lot for us to—y’know, to hear and handle and also have him right away—”
Mahalia waves him off. “I understand, of course. Have you… I hate to ask, but are you going to keep him?”
Ben shoots a glance out the window behind him and sees May sitting cross-legged in the grass with Peter still pressed against her chest. She seems to be talking, shoulders still stiff but the rest of her blessedly relaxed.
“Yes,” Ben says, and his stomach rolls terribly. “Yeah, we’re taking him. I mean, he’s my brother’s kid, and I already spend so much time with him, since Ricky and Mary are always away—” Ben chokes. “Uh, business trips, they were always on business trips.”
Mahalia’s warm hand rubs his shoulder. “Whenever you need a moment free,” she says, “bring him here. If we’re home, we’ll have him. He’s a treat.”
“He’s the best kid in the whole world,” Ben repeats. “No offense. I love Ned, but I’m partial to mine.”
The smile Mahalia gives him is one like a rose twisting on its stem to face the sunlight. A promise of finding the better again. “Yes,” she says, “we’re all partial to our own.”
Ben slips his feet back into his sneakers, heels on top of the backs, arms far too full to imagine fixing them. Mahalia opens the door for him and he goes, squinting against the brightness, feeling as if it’s awfully fucking profane.
Ben lays the tupperware atop the car as he opens the door, then stacks them all in the back, beside the booster seat he keeps for Peter.
When he turns to May, ready to take Peter and stow him in the back, May shushes him, turning to show him Peter’s slack face, eyes closed and cheek squished against May’s shoulder, red with flush.
“Oh,” says Ben, and the breath is knocked out of him.
“You drive,” May whispers, and Ben nods frantically, fixing his shoes. “I’ll just—hold him, I’ll buckle over top of him, it’s a short drive, it’ll be fine.”
They go. Twenty minutes until they’re back in Forest Hills and Peter is still breathing deep and slow, little snuffling snores. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything, at all, he doesn’t know he’ll never see his mom and dad again. Ben tastes bile.
“I don’t want to put him down,” says May. “Open the car door for me.”
Ben does. And he does again at the entrance to their apartment, balancing the tupperware tower against the wall to keep it from tumbling. Once inside, he drops the tupperware on the kitchen table before returning to May’s side. He unties Peter’s little sneakers, removes them slowly, and puts them on the welcome mat between his and May’s, and that sight sets him off again, so May hustles away with her armful of toddler, towards the spare room that will soon become Peter’s, once they have time to stop at Richard and Mary’s place and collect Peter’s stuff. His bed, his clothes, his toys. Jesus. Little kid clothes, tiny little jeans and little winter hats with bobbles bigger than the kids’ heads, Ben can’t stop crying. Richard, it’s like stealing Richard’s kid from him, and Richard is gone, and Ben and May and Peter are alone now, and Ben can only cook a small array of kid-friendly meals, and little kid socks and stocking the freezer with ice pops and they’re going to need to buy kiddie Benadryl, and Ben is going to get to make him little packaged lunches in brown bags with his name scrawled on, and maybe he’ll add a joke to them to make Peter smile, and he’ll sneak in a Reese's cup even though May will say no, and he’s never going to see Richard again.
Ben sits in the entryway with his back against the front door and he weeps, and he weeps, and he weeps in earnest for the things he’s lost, the things Peter has lost, and out of guilt for feeling like he’s still, somehow, won.
— — —
“May,” Ben says, “get back here. You cannot kill a child.”
“Boy, do I ever want to,” May says, visibly trying to stop clenching her jaw and failing. For all her initial uncertainty about adopting Peter, she has become the dragon at the mouth of his tower, his fiercest protector. Ben is so lucky he’s bursting with it. He aches, he aches for his brother, and yet he is drowning in metaphorical gold. “He kicked sand at Peter. The fuck is up with that? What kind of sick bastard just—kicks sand at someone for no reason? We don’t know what’s in that sand. Gonorrhea, probably.”
Ben stares at her. “Gonorrhea,” he repeats, “in the kids’ sandbox?”
May throws her hands up. “How are we supposed to know! I doubt anyone has tested the sand for STDs recently.”
“Or ever,” says Ben, “because I would assume it’s a rather small section of the sandbox-playing-aged population that carries STDs, yes?”
May grunts, then buries her hands in the back pockets of her bell bottoms, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “I don’t like this one bit,” she says, a hair more calmly. “This whole—this.”
“Bringing Peter in public?”
“Yup. That.”
“May,” Ben says, “my sweet, lovely May. Are you jealous? You don’t want to share Peter with the world?”
“No,” May snaps. “I just don’t want him catching—germs.”
“Wasn’t it you who laughed when you found Peter chewing on a piece of loose grout from the fireplace last weekend? And then said, and I quote, Kid is gonna have an immune system of steel?”
May says, “who knows. A week is a long time ago, and you’re so old that your senile brain coulda’ mistaken me for Kermit the frog if I was wearing green.”
Ben, who is thirty, flirty, and thriving, is affronted for a moment before remembering himself. Or May, rather. “Stop deflecting.”
May melts into his side. “I have never done such a thing in all my days. Never once.”
Ben rubs his fingers through the shorn ends of May’s soft hair. In this sunlight, this abrasive, July sunlight, it goes reddish. “Sure,” he says. “So you’re not just trying to shield Peter from the world and its evils?”
“Of course not,” says May with a sniff. Then, “I am. I really am, look at him, Ben, he’s so small, he’s practically made of grissini, are you joking me? Look, are you looking?”
“I’m looking,” Ben says, and the smile on his lips is so broad it will split him in two, it must, “I see him. That’s our little—I was going to call him a rascal but I can’t even do that as a joke, he’s so sweet. So good. Should we embarrass him?”
“That would be terrible of us,” says May. “Absolutely.”
Ben pats his pocket for his Verizon slide-phone, and, upon finding it, quickly pulls a song up.
He raises the volume all the way, sticks the thing in his pocket, and grabs May’s hand, bowing a little to her just as the first chords grab the startled attention of the crowds surrounding them.
May curtsies a little, steps into Ben’s arms, and then they’re dancing, and Ben is singing along, loud and bad and with all the passion he can muster, “Baby, it’s been a long day, baby. Things ain’t been going my way.” They spin, Ben doing the thing properly, not like those stiff guys that look like twigs dipping their girl, but with some hip action and his face right by May’s ear so she can hear him sing every word, so she can feel his breath, so she can press up against him.
“You are the best thing,” Ben belts out, and May sings along, quieter, but still grinning up at him, and some of the adults watching are smiling at them, and some of the teens are filming on their little flip-phones or whispering and blushing, and Ben searches for Peter only to realize all at once that they have far underestimated the goodness of their boy, as Peter is already running towards them with the sweetest, shiniest grin Ben has ever seen and his arms are straight up, so Ben lifts him off the ground and presses him between his chest and May’s, and they dance, all three of them, together, as Ben sings in Peter’s ear, now, pressing kisses to Peter’s forehead and temple and nose, “You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Peter giggles, nose wrinkling, and May is smiling at them both, and this, right here, in Ben’s arms, is it. He holds his whole world to his chest. He’s so fucking lucky.
— — —
As it turns out, contrary to May’s prophecy, Peter has absolutely nothing of steel. He gets sick at every fluctuation of the temperature, pukes when the subway moves too jarringly, bruises like an August peach, and gets a pair of spiffy, roundish glasses by the age of seven.
Ben must say, however, that he has no fucking clue what the fuck is happening when Peter drops in the middle of a pillow fight, a hand on his chest, his every breath wheezing like a dusty trumpet trill.
“Pete,” Ben says, and he comes down onto the floor beside him without hesitating. He rubs his palm over Peter’s back, and wants to wince when he realizes his fingers span the entire width of Peter’s ribs. “Okay, kiddo, tell me what hurts.”
Peter continues gasping. Each breath is thick, and Ben, on an impulse, presses his ear to Peter’s back to see if he can hear Peter choking on something. Every cough rattles and vibrates along Peter’s spine, and Ben yells for May.
Ben grabs Peter and sits him in his lap, Peter’s back against Ben’s propped knees, one hand holding Peter’s cheek and the other rubbing along Peter’s chest as Peter continues to gasp, his straining turning quickly into sobs. The tears are fat and fall fast over Peter’s cheeks, and Ben wants to kiss every single one away.
“Oh, honey,” he says, “it’s okay, I promise. Try and take a big, deep breath with me, come on, come on.”
Peter is sweating through his shirt, his stomach caving in as he sucks desperate breaths, his lungs never filling. “Chest feels funny,” he forces out.
“Okay, baby,” says Ben, and his pulse is flying, he’s lightheaded and dizzy.
May comes rocketing around the corner, hair wet from a shower, wearing mismatched sweats.
“Madonna—Ben, that sounds like an asthma attack, come on,” she’s grabbing her purse, grabbing Peter’s shoes, Ben feeling grateful for May’s nursing degree, “come on, we need to go to the hospital.”
“Okay,” Ben says, “come on, baby, come on, honey,” he presses Peter’s chest to his, holds Peter’s head against his shoulder, wanting to feel every breath, and they run down to the car, Ben in socks, May dripping water, Peter crying and struggling, and May climbs into the driver’s seat, thank G-d, thank G-d, because Ben is fucking beside himself, he can’t imagine putting Peter down, he can’t even—breathe, he can’t.
“You’re all good, baby,” Ben says thinly, and he’s back to rubbing Peter’s chest because he doesn’t know what else to do. “Look. Look at me breathe, and you do it, too.”
Peter shakes with a sob, and Ben is crying too, a lot, because Peter’s lips are turning blue, and he feels terrible because he’s probably scaring the poor thing but he’s scared, too. The wheezing has nearly stopped by the time they pull into the hospital, and Ben is shaking like a leaf, spitting nonsense at Peter, “Good job, Pete, good. Look at you, okay, now look at me, look how I’m breathing and try, okay?”
And then May is wrenching the door open and the car is idling outside the drop-off and Ben is barrelling through the doors and he couldn’t remember the rest if he tried. It’s a blur of white floors and a peak-flow meter and albuterol and a hospital bed far too long for Peter’s three-and-a-quarter-feet. May holds his hand like a vice—this, he knows—and he pukes into a trashcan—this, he knows.
Now Peter is dozing, eyelashes fluttering, with a cannula in his nose just in case and a prescription for an inhaler crumpled in May’s purse.
“That was terrifying,” Ben breathes numbly over Peter’s unconscious body. “My poops are gonna be pure liquid for a week after this, that’s how—fucking scary that was.”
May says, “I’m gonna go to the cafe, they’ve got—a really good cheesecake and I’m going to, I’m going to get us three slices and the two of us will finish them all.”
“I think all three of us cheated death today,” says Ben.
“Don’t you—take away from Peter how strong he just was,” May hisses. “We’re just a pair of wimpy, anxious messes, that’s what almost got us, but his lungs were full of liquid or something. How does that even equate. He’s—Ercole.”
May leans over to kiss Peter’s forehead, then the top of Ben’s head, and then goes.
And Ben is alone with Peter and the beeping of the machines around him.
Ben leans forward and takes Peter’s tiny, cold hand in his. “I’m right here for you, baby,” he says. “You and me, Peter. As long as we’ve got each other, we’ll be okay. I promise you.”
— — —
Peter clips the last Lego into place on his new Hogwarts castle set. Ben spends a moment fixated by Peter’s hands: no longer round and dimpled, but bony and long and proud. For some reason, it hurts a little.
Ben flicks his gaze to Peter’s face and sends him a grin wide enough to match Peter’s. “Ready for the shelf?” Ben asks.
Peter hums in assent, knuckling his eyes.
“Wingardium leviosa!” Ben says, lifting the castle on the make-shift cardboard base they put together and shifting it onto the shelf Peter keeps specially to display his most favorite Lego projects.
Once it’s centered, a little Harry and Sirius standing on the front steps and making Ben’s heart ache fiercely, Ben turns back to Peter.
Peter’s laying on his side on the floor, eyes closed, cheek pillowed on his elbow, knees tucked to his chest. His glasses poke crookedly into his temple.
“Sleepy?” Ben says quietly.
Peter grunts.
“Let’s brush your teeth, at least,” Ben says, and knows how tired Peter must truly be to allow Ben to scoop him up in his arms and carry him into the bathroom the way he had recently been insisting he was too old for, Ben, c’mon, I’m a big kid now. Don’t need your help. Not that Peter doesn’t want the affection— that isn’t it at all. Peter clings to them like touch is his only sense and he’s starved of it, and it’s good, because him and May never want to let Peter out of the distance their toes can prod him at. It’s a new independence streak, is all. If Peter can do it alone, he will, and if he can’t, he’ll certainly try.
Ben sets Peter onto the countertop and Peter hunches forward a little, yawning widely. Ben thinks he’ll need a haircut soon. His curls dangle around his ears, into his eyes. It’s adorable, of course, Peter is the cutest kid in the whole world, but it’s probably going to get annoying, make his face tickle. Ben grabs Peter’s toothbrush and gets it ready for him before handing it off, Peter brushing as Ben wets a washcloth to wipe his face with.
Peter leans heavily over to spit and Ben steadies his shoulder, keeps him from tipping right into the sink. Ben removes Peter’s glasses and rubs his face with the washcloth, careful around his eyes, following the soft angles of Peter’s nose and the corners of his lips.
Ben leans forward and presses a kiss to the little, round tip of Peter’s nose. Freckles like his mom. Richard and Ben never freckled up. Mary was Irish, brown hair and a face so thick with freckles Ben used to call her Pippi Longstocking in the summer. Peter looks like them both, a little, with Richard’s hair and eyes and Mary’s nose and smile, and maybe sometimes Ben slips and says that Peter looks like him, but he does, and Ben has no claim to that, except maybe he does. He and Peter have the same Dumbo ears. That has to count for something, after all.
Peter hums a little. Grabs Ben’s collar in his hand and tugs.
“I hear ya’, pal,” Ben says with a huff of a laugh, picking Peter up and carrying him toward his room. Ben’s lower back aches with it, as if his spine is being pressed on both ends. He would never complain, though, not when Peter sticks his warm little nose into Ben’s neck like this and breathes like he’s never been so comfortable a moment in his life.
Ben kicks some spare Legos aside to clear a path and sits Peter on the edge of his bed. Peter scrambles under the sheets. Ben tucks in the corners, tucks the sheets under the mattress along the edge so Peter, prone to sleep-walking, is less likely to clamber out and roam.
Ben sits on the edge of the bed, his thigh pressing Peter’s shoulder because of the narrow fit, and Peter scoots even closer, more firmly into Ben.
Ben thinks this kid is gonna give him a damn heart condition. Brushes the bangs off Peter’s forehead.
“Night night, Pete,” Ben says.
“Night night, Ben,” Peter mumbles.
“You still awake enough for a Shema?” Ben asks.
“Sure,” Peter says, wiggling a little as if he isn’t, but he thinks Ben wants him to be.
“Hear, O Israel, Adonai, our G-d, Adonai, is One,” Ben starts, Peter jumping in halfway through. “Blessed be the name of his glorious majesty forever and ever,” they continue, and they finish the prayer, Peter stumbling towards the “frontlets” part—Ben doesn’t blame him, the hell is a frontlet?—but smiling peacefully by the final “on your gates.”
Ben slides his palm from Peter’s forehead over his mouth to close his eyes. “Sleep, boychik,” Ben says.
“Love you,” Peter offers.
“And I, you.”
“Ben,” Peter says, and he reaches out, grabs Ben’s hand in his little one.
“Hmm?”
“Can you stay?” he blurts. “Jus’ until I fall asleep.”
Ben feels his entire body melt, he’s vanilla soft-serve dripping over his fingers on Coney Island in August. “Of course, baby,” he says.
Peter presses himself closer to the far wall and Ben lays himself down, an elbow bent beneath his head, on his side to face Peter properly. Peter turns towards him, too, and Peter’s feet press to Ben’s thigh from under the blankets.
Ben reaches a hand out and lays it on Peter’s cheek, runs his thumb along Peter’s cheekbone. “What’s up, kiddo?” he says.
Peter closes his eyes under the touch. “Dunno. Just don’t wanna be alone.”
“Okay,” Ben says, Peter’s hand is wrapped right around the throbbing muscle of Ben’s heart and Ben is ready to drop everything for this kid, “that’s okay. I’m right here. I love you.”
Peter smiles a little, turns his face so Ben’s hand falls over his nose, and presses a kiss to Ben’s palm. “Sneak attack,” Peter says.
Ben is going to have an aneurysm, truly, he is, goodnight, this is the end. “Absolute sneak. I never saw that coming. You got me so good.”
Peter jumps, then, clambering from under the sheets and draping his whole top half along Ben’s chest, his little weight comfortable and familiar, his arms wrapping around Ben’s throat, peppering kisses all along Ben’s cheeks and nose and scruffy chin.
Ben laughs loud, wrapping his arms as tightly around Peter as they can reach, holding him in place, humming and grinning and, “Alright, alright,” another three kisses, “that’s my sweet Pete.”
Peter calms, then, laying flat with his ear curled atop Ben’s heart, rising and falling with Ben’s breaths, and Ben holds him and holds him. “You’re the best kid,” Ben tells him. A beat. “That’s a trade I’m offering you. Compliments for kisses.”
“Smooch smooch smooch,” Peter mumbles, the wave of energy that had hit him receding just as quickly as it had arrived.
“Wow,” says Ben, quieting his voice. “The best. Even you saying smooch is great. Makes me feel like I got a kiss, even if I didn’t.”
Peter hums. Ben can feel his breaths slowing. Easy ones; the air has been crisp these past few days. Good for Peter’s lungs.
“How about we go to the Park tomorrow, huh?” Ben says, his voice like a melody, a lullaby. “Saturday game of catch. We can pet all the dogs, get some pretzels.”
Peter hums again.
“It’s supposed to be sunny, but you’ll still have to wear your jacket. A hat, too. Don’t want you getting sick.”
Silence.
Ben whispers. “It’ll be so much fun. Just you and me. We always have fun, right, Pete?”
A snore.
“Right,” Ben breathes.
He waits another minute or two before gently rolling Peter off him, settling him against his pillow, and tucking him in again.
He sits on the edge of the mattress for another few minutes after that, just sort of looking at Peter’s profile in the low light, the whole room navy save for the corner by the door—bright blue in the light of Peter’s arc reactor night light. May thought the thing was sorta kitschy, but Ben and Peter agree that it is thoroughly awesome.
Ben finally stands with a sigh, sees the array of loose Legos on the ground by his feet.
Sits and starts collecting them one by one, placing them gently into the tub they came from.
Almost ten minutes pass before Ben hears the key in the door. He smiles a little, waiting.
May’s footsteps patter into Peter’s bedroom not two minutes later, and she’s still wearing her scrubs, her face pale and exhausted, hair half falling out of the tail it’s pulled into, and Ben thinks she’s the best thing he’s ever seen.
“Hey, baby,” he says, “hey, May, I love you.”
The smile that spreads on her face is dawn after endless night, clouds with sunlight streaming through the gaps. “Hey, big guy,” she says. She comes into the room, squats down in front of him, and takes his face in her hand, stroking her thumb over his cheek. He could weep. “What are you doing?” she says.
“Putting away Pete’s Legos,” Ben says, “so he doesn’t step on them in the morning.”
“How thoughtful,” she says, and falls back onto her rear to sit beside him, picking up Legos, her hands and his side by side, stowing them in their tub.
Ben knocks their knees together like they’re seventeen and they’ve just met on the 7 line, riding back to Main Street Flushing from school in Manhattan, because their parents couldn’t afford much but what they could they put into sending them into the city for school. They’ll do that for Peter, too. Ben swears it.
Ben watches May turn a green brick over between her fingers, watches the silver moonlight shine on it like they’ve slipped into the spirit world, like they’re ghostly grave-looting, and May holds that piece of plastic like an emerald ring.
She picks up a base, a big, grey, dimpled square thing, and clicks the green block into place. Ben sees a blue one by his foot. Picks it up, clicks it beside May’s. She looks at him and he looks back. There are eons in that stare, and ripe orchards, and yellowed scrolls of lost texts.
At one in the morning the grandfather clock in the hallway chimes quietly, like tinkling bells, and they find they’ve built a home in primary colors without having shared a word on how.
— — —
Peter has been puking for days. Fever through the fucking roof, chills, shaking, he faints every time he stands. The doctor who lives across the hall couldn’t diagnose anything, the nurse who lives in their house couldn’t diagnose anything, and Ben certainly can’t diagnose anything.
Peter and Ben are home alone, May on her shift, and Peter is crying. Ben is holding him the best he can without upsetting him further, but Peter is crying, and Peter is sick, and Ben wants to cry, too, to puke up his guts in Peter’s stead. The trash can lives at the side of Peter’s bed. Ben practically lives at the side of Peter’s bed.
“Ben,” Peter gasps. “Ben, I’m sorry.”
Ben’s stomach is rolling, his hands rubbing Peter’s back. “Why? Why, Peter, why on Earth are you sorry?”
“Scared,” Peter says. “You are. And me, and—May.”
“We’re scared because we love you,” Ben says, and he’s pressing kiss after kiss into Peter’s temple, because he’s afraid Peter is dying. He can’t stop thinking about Richard. “I love you. Hey, I love you.”
“Ben,” Peter sobs, “I’m scared. I’m sorry, I’m so scared.”
“It’s okay to be scared,” Ben says. “This is scary. Anyone would be scared. It’s going to be okay, though. You’re going to get better, this is just—the worst of it, and then you’ll be okay.”
“Promise?” Peter says.
Jewish people aren’t supposed to lie. No one is supposed to lie, really, but especially not Jewish people, and Ben never lies, he tries not to because it makes him sick to his stomach, but he says, “I promise you, Peter,” anyway, because sometimes being a father means you have to lie to your kid for their own good. “I’ll make it better,” Ben says, and he isn’t lying then, at least, because he will, in any way he can. “I’m going to get you more water, Pete, I’ll be right back, I promise.”
And Peter lets go, so Ben rises and he goes to the kitchen, and he cries into the sink for three minutes before returning to Peter’s room with a full glass and a stack of saltines.
He brandishes them. “Up for second breakfast?” Ben offers weakly.
“Elevenses,” Peter rasps.
Ben sits on the bed right in front of Peter, knee to knee, his sweatpants wrinkled and wet with dripped water. He hands over the glass and opens the saltine packet as Peter takes two tiny sips, wincing as the water goes down.
“Good job,” Ben says. “We’re gonna wait a minute, I bet May would say that we should, so we’re gonna wait, and then you can have a cracker.”
“I feel like that parrot,” Peter says, and then he goes white, zoning out a little, a hand on his stomach.
“What parrot?” Ben prompts, a hand landing on Peter’s knee and rubbing. “Can’t leave me without the punchline, kiddo.”
“Iago,” Peter says, then swallows thickly. “Aladdin.”
Ben snorts mirthlessly. “Am I the sultan? You gonna stuff crackers in my mouth as soon as you’re back on your feet?”
Peter’s throat bobs and Ben leans slowly over to grab the trash can. “No,” Peter says. “S’mean. I wouldn’t… be mean to you.”
“‘Cuz you’re such a good kid, best kid, the best kid ever,” Ben says, handing Peter the trash can. “Even when you’re puking. Go ahead, buddy, let it out, I can see you trying to—” Peter gags, “—swallow it.”
Peter heaves and Ben gets up, moves to sit beside Peter, and rubs his back. “That’s it, Petey,” he whispers. He braces Peter’s forehead with one palm. It’s damp, and hot. “You just let it out. I’m right here. I’m right here.”
Peter gasps as he finishes, and Ben reaches over to grab the water glass so Peter can swish.
Peter does, and after spitting, says, “I need to tell you something.”
Ben’s stomach rolls and rolls and rolls. “Anything. What’s up? You can tell me anything. Always.”
Peter spits out another mouthful of bile, red-eyed and teary and pale, and he says, “I think I know what happened. Why I’m sick.”
“Okay,” Ben says, his pulse hammering, but he calms his voice, irons it like shul best, “take your time.”
Peter says, “We were at Oscorp, right?” and Ben thinks he’s gonna faint, because Mary and Richard toggled between Oscorp and working for some freelancer named Octavius for their entire careers and the things they told Ben were enough to make bile rise into his throat. “And we were… doing the tour… and I needed to, um, use the bathroom,” Peter hiccups and Ben rubs his back again, leaning closer to hear his voice, so thin and wavering, “except I got lost, and I ended up in this… this lab? And there were all these spiders, and, Ben, I think one bit me,” Peter is trembling, “I think one bit me and I think it made me sick.”
Ben feels every thought pour out of his ears. “Okay,” he says into the white noise. “Can I see the bite mark?”
“That’s the thing,” Peter says. “It’s already gone.” Peter holds his hand out to Ben, points with one trembling finger right below his middle knuckle, and Ben sees nothing. Just smooth, creamy skin and the smattering of freckles near Peter’s sharp wrist-bone.
“Okay,” Ben says. “I’m gonna… do some research, okay?”
“No,” Peter says, and he has a handful of Ben’s shirt, “no, I already did, and I know what this is. I know it.”
“What is it?” Ben says.
“They were doing testing… exposing the spiders to radioactive energy. This is—Ben, it’s radiation poisoning.”
Ben’s heart stops.
“I looked it up,” Peter says. “Most of the symptoms. I’ve got ‘em.”
“So what do we do?” Ben says. “I bet you know, don’t you, my smart boy.”
But Peter says, “We wait for May to get home,” and Ben doesn’t like the sound of that.
“Um,” he says. “Shouldn’t we get in the car right now, right now and get to the hospital?”
“No,” Peter says. “Ben, three days… is a long time to be sick with this. With as much radiation as I got? A long time.”
Ben sucks in a wet gasp. “Christ.” Another one, and maybe it’s a little bit of a sob, because Peter pulls him backwards by the shoulders so they lay side by side against his pillow, “Peter. Peter. Peter.”
“It’s okay,” Peter says.
“It’s not,” Ben snaps. He has never snapped to Peter before in his life. Peter is his mini-me, his heart and soul, his every breath, his every thought, his everything. He’s never been able to look Peter in the eyes and make himself yell. “It’s not okay,” Ben says. “Peter, do you really think it would be okay for us to be without you? Do you think May and I could really… do that? Really make it? Without—you? Peter?”
“Sure you could,” Peter says, and his eyes are so fucking earnest. “I might pull through this, maybe, I dunno, depends if you believe in miracles—”
“I believe in spending every second of the rest of my life praying for one—”
“—but you’ve lived without me and you can do it again.”
Ben thinks Peter is the smartest person in the world. He does not understand how Peter could be so dumb, so overwhelmingly dumb in this moment. So blind.
“That’s like asking me to live without breathing, Peter,” Ben says, shaking his head. “You can stick a ventilator in my nose, but what kind of life is that?”
Peter begins to cry. Ben does, too.
“I’m just trying not to be scared,” Peter admits. “I need you to tell me you’ll be okay if this—if it kills me, the radiation, because that will make me less scared. Okay? I just need you to be okay, you and May, I need you guys to be okay, I need it more than anything.”
“Peter,” Ben sobs, “I’m so sorry. I can’t lie to you. I can’t. I need you, I need you more than anything in my life.”
“Ben,” Peter says. “Ben, I’m sorry.”
Ben thinks his name has never sounded better than it does off Peter’s lips. He’ll never want it spoken again, if.
“Come here,” Ben says. “Let me hold you. Just let me hold you.”
Peter comes, burrows. “M’sorry.”
“Shh,” Ben says, closing his eyes, burying his nose in Peter’s hair. “Oh, kid. My Peter. We’ll fix this. Just another hour until May is here, and then we’ll fix this. I promise.”
“Okay,” Peter says, and they breathe, chest to chest.
In forty-five minutes, Peter is no longer sick.
His headache, the pain in his throat, the nausea, the body aches—they all melt away in a moment. His chest, his stomach, his arms, his legs clench in one ferocious spasm, and suddenly he is hardened, muscled. He claps his hands over his ears in pain, claiming Ben’s breathing is too loud. He is sobbing again.
“Sensory overload,” Ben knows. An old girlfriend used to get them. He darkens Peter’s room, closes the doors and windows, slips a pair of noise-cancelling headphones over his ears, and closes himself in the hallway bathroom to have his own panic attack.
Ten minutes after that, and Peter comes out of his bedroom, eyes clear, dressed in clean sweats, his puke bag tied closed in his hand. “Don’t tell May,” he says. “I’m fine. I swear. I’ve—Ben, I’ve literally never felt better in my life.”
“G-d heard us,” Ben says. “Danken Got.”
“Danken Got.” Peter repeats, eyes wet. “Don’t tell May. Promise.”
Ben breathes. “I promise,” he says, and he is terrified because he means it. “I promise.”
— — —
And then, like nothing and everything at once in collision, May dies.
— — —
What is hard to notice about the Earth is its axis, and what it allows—there is a sense of liminality in the skew of things. Ben lives there, now. In this liminality.
He plans a funeral from there. He brings Peter to school on his way to work, where he spends eight hours staring at a computer screen and mindlessly answering calls from New York courts, and then drives home, where he makes dinner or orders it, he won’t remember after, and Peter greets him at the door. Sometimes they sit in silence. Sometimes they talk. But every night Peter sleeps in bed with Ben, in Ben’s and May’s old full that is now just Ben’s.
He approves Peter’s new internship from there. Meets Tony Stark, who flirts and quips but smiles like he’s terrified, and Ben would’ve lost his mind meeting Stark not six months ago, but now he is just empty.
This is where he settles, laps at his wounds, attempts to refamiliarize himself with the taste of oxygen on his tongue, the strain of it in his lungs, until Peter walks into Ben’s bedroom in a red and blue suit with a gash cutting across his chest and tears in his eyes and Ben falls, fucking free-fall into his body.
“Oh my g-d,” says Ben, “Peter.”
“I didn’t want to tell you like this,” Peter says, yanking the mask off his head, his hair sticking up in sweaty curls, his eyes red, his cheeks wet, “but I can’t stop my hand from shaking to stitch this. It’s not bad, it’s just—sorta long, I’m so sorry, Ben, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Ben says, already standing, his knees nearly giving out. With a nurse for a mother, a woman who spent every hour of her life taking care of people, how could Peter be anyone else. It is no surprise. “Bathroom, okay? Bathroom, now.”
Peter goes.
Ben collects a first aid kit from the hall closet and goes. He finds Peter half out of the suit, chest bare and already rinsing himself off.
“Sorry,” Peter says again. Ben can hear his own heart hammering in his chest. “Usually I go to Mister Stark for this, but he’s in California for a conference.”
“Usually?” Ben says shrilly. “There’s a usually? This happens? Before, this happened?”
“Oh shit,” Peter says.
“I’m not mad,” says Ben, “I’m fucking terrified. Honestly, I’ve never been so scared in my life, I’m so scared,” he pulls disinfectant out of the first aid kit with shaking hands, “I could vomit right now if I wanted. I won’t, but I thought you should know—I could.”
“Sorry,” Peter says, wincing as Ben wipes gently at the cut.
“Nope,” Ben says. “I’m gonna talk to that Tony Stark fellow, though, I’m— not sure if I like him as much anymore.”
“He’s a mensch,” Peter says. “Really, he’s—you’ll love him. Please meet him. You’ll be friends. Ow, oh fffff—heck.”
“Sorry,” Ben says, “sorry, sorry. Pressed too hard.” Ben throws away the wipe and grabs some thread and a needle. “I don’t know if I can like someone who condones this.”
“He made me the suit,” Peter says. “He protects me, like, all the time. He helps me if I get hurt. He makes me grilled cheese sandwiches, and—” Peter is crying, now, “—he makes really good Italian food and curses at me in dialect and he reminds me of May so much. They get angry to hide it when they’re sad and they laugh really loud and they take care of everyone and don’t ever get recognized for it.”
“Okay,” Ben says, and he takes Peter’s face between his hands, leans their foreheads together. “I hear you. I hear you, Peter. I’m not mad. We’re going to work this out. I’m going to sew you up and then we will—fix this, all of it.”
“Okay,” Peter sobs. “I’m so sorry. I got sliced up by a mugger. The police got ‘em, though. All good. No more mugging for him.”
“You’re so awesome,” Ben says, and he lets go of Peter’s face to start the first stitch, eternally glad that he knows how to embroider. “You’re so awesome that this is going to take so many stitches, Peter, you awesome doofus, your awesomeness is so immense that we need to—use lots of stitches to restore it.”
“Okay,” Peter says. He sniffs. “I don’t feel so awesome.”
“I know, buddy, but we’re gonna fix that, I promise.”
“Okay,” Peter says again.
Ben makes quick work of it. Finishes, wipes it with a wet cloth, runs a hand over the jagged line, and then leans forward and plants a kiss right to the side of it.
“All better,” Ben says, and now he is teary, too, looking at this boy, this brilliant boy.
Peter says, “I’m gonna shower, okay? Okay. I’ll—be right in. I’ll be right there.”
“Okay,” Ben says, and he goes and sits on his bed, numb, until Peter comes in ten minutes later with wet hair and a sheepish grin.
“Hi,” Peter says. “Hello there, my good sir.”
“Hey, schtarker,” Ben says.
Peter comes over and pushes Ben’s shoulders down, against his pillow. Peter gingerly climbs up after him, settling himself down beside Ben.
“Hm,” Peter says. “You look—are you okay?”
Ben rolls the words on his tongue. “I think so,” he says. He does not lie to Peter.
“Yay,” Peter says. He inches closer. “I want you to be okay. I know it’s been—so hard, the worst, it’s been the worst, but we can, um, we can do this. We’ve got each other.”
“We sure do,” says Ben.
“I really, really miss her,” says Peter. His eyes are still red, as if he has spent all night crying. “All the time. I miss her everywhere.”
“Me too,” says Ben. “I don’t know how to be without her.”
“We’ll figure it out together,” Peter says. “I never wanted this to happen, but she—would want us to make it work.”
“She would,” Ben agrees. “She would.”
“Okay,” Peter says surely. “Sleep. You look like you’re gonna pass out.”
“I might,” Ben says.
“Shh,” says Peter. He reaches behind him and turns off the lamp on May’s nightstand. “Hear, O Israel, Adonai, our G-d, Adonai, is One,” Peter says.
For the first time since May’s passing, Ben joins in.
When they finish, he sleeps.
Peter stays awake a bit longer. Texts Mister Stark that he is okay, and then lays himself on his side to look at Ben’s profile in the silver light.
“I’m right here for you,” Peter says. “You and me, Ben. As long as we’ve got each other, we’ll be okay. I promise you.”
He closes his eyes and sleeps.
— — —
Peter Parker doesn’t drink a lot of coffee, but when he does, he drinks it with a spoonful of hot chocolate powder, two teaspoons of sugar, a splash of hazelnut creamer stirred in, and his Uncle Ben across the table from him.
They clink the lips of their mugs, take synchronized sips, and end up with matching pale brown mustaches staining their upper lips, because, like all things, they do it together.