Archive of Our Own

Peter knows a Secret.

He wheedled it out of a certain unnamed resident gun-wielding maniac with a metal arm and a penchant for torturing Wade over a video call a day and a half ago.

Peter knows that Wade is aware of his knowledge of this Secret.

Peter knows that Wade does not like that he knows this Secret.

Peter likes that Wade doesn’t like that he knows.

Makes the Secret fun.

Makes it a game.

Who’s gonna let the ball drop? Who’s gonna tell?

The Secret is that Wade’s never been to Pride.

It’s not a particularly scandalous secret, but Peter’s gonna hold it to his chest like it’s fucking Watergate in the middle of Wade’s second term as president of Lording His Sexual Orientation Over Everyone Else Like He’s Queer God.

Oh, he’s so excited to rub his victory in that dumb, scarred face when Watergate breaks.

Gotta plot. Gotta figure out the perfect time to drop the bomb and where and upon whom.

Peter could tell Matt first; go right for the big guns. He and Wade have been hooking up for the better part of a year. Wade had called it “casual hate sex” the first and last time Peter deigned to prod him about it.

Peter thinks it’s deeper than that. He thinks what’s actually happening there is the disastrous combination of Matt’s self-claimed identity as a romantically repressed whore and Wade’s excruciating inability to acknowledge the breadth of his emotional capacity for relationships since the death of his fiancée.

But Peter’s not gonna be the one to drill that into their skulls. Not like it’d get very far regardless.

Jesus, the trauma shared between those two. Piled up high enough to build unbreachable walls. Fortresses within fortresses within fortresses.

Is that an early-millennial-late-gen-X thing? Where does the line fall between the cynicism of the Xers and the numb resignation of the early 80’s transitionals? That’s something to ask May. She’ll know for certain; she had to live through the comings of age of both groups, bless her poor soul.

Oh, shit, are he and Matt both millennials?

Ugh, gross. Fuck no. That’s a disgusting, terrible thought.

Matt and Wade are both old, crotchety assholes who are completely removed from Peter’s generation in the regions of cultural, economic, and social life. They’re anachronistic fossils and neither of them should be allowed to identify with his generation.

Boomers. That’s what they act like, so that’s what they are. They’re the reason Peter’s college tuition edges on a hundred grand a year. Yeah. It’s their fault. And no one else’s.

Gives him a reason to laugh at them when their old man hips lock up during a fight.

At least, it did five years ago. Before his own hips decided to turn against him.

And then his shoulders. And his knees. Oh man, do his knees hate him.

God, Peter’s fresh into his twenties and he’s been seeing a chiro his entire adult life.

Matt calls sad-life-facts like that “the consequences of poor decision making”. Wade calls them “problems that can be fixed with the help of a terminal cancer diagnosis and a little torture in a lab environment”.

Neither of them are to be trusted. Only May is to be trusted.

Oh, Peter totally knows the person with whom he’s going to share the Secret first.

May squeals louder than a wine aunt drunk on her third boxed sangria when she opens the front door to Peter’s face.

She envelops him in a most excellent and comforting hug before he has a chance to step across the threshold. He drops his bags to squeeze her back.

“Hey, Aunt May. Missed you.”

“Mmph. Less talking, more hugging.”

Yes, ma’am.

She lets him go after a couple of minutes and scoops up the heaviest duffle from the floor. Peter tries to grab it from her hands, but she’s already headed down the hall to deposit it in his bedroom.

He follows with the other luggage and stops in the doorway to watch May mess with a stack of clean sheets at the foot of the bed.

His room is a time capsule of his life from high school. Trophies and posters and miscellaneous kitsch litter walls, dresser and desk tops, even the ceiling. Everything is covered in a gentle but insistent layer of dust, as if to remind him that no one’s been living in the space for three years.

It’s still home. He puts the other bags down on the bedspread next to their long lost comrade-in-arms. He gets a little spaced out while he’s looking down at them. May taps his shoulder and he turns to face her.

When did she get so small? They’ve always been close in height, but it feels like she’s gotten shorter since winter break.

He traps her in another hug and whispers into the top of her silver head, “I’ve missed you so much.”

May pulls him impossibly closer and replies into his collarbone, “I’ve missed you too, hon. So much to talk about. There’s time.”

“Not enough. Already got a job lined up for the summer and I need to spend the rest of my free time applying for grants and internships, not to mention Sp--”

“Baby, we’ll have time to talk, I promise.” She pulls back and looks up at him from arm’s length. Her eyes are shiny with happy tears. “You want some takeout?”

Shitty Chinese food eaten straight from the container is the sole cure for all the world’s ills. May imparted this wisdom upon Peter from a young age, and it continues to hold true years afterward. Peter drowns his woes in fried meat and greasy noodles and it is glorious.

After a couple of hours of Golden Girls reruns, lo mein, and belly laughing at May spilling food on her shirt from across the couch, Peter’s head is clearer than it’s been in months.

He mutes a vacuum commercial to say, “I know I was wanting to talk about schedules earlier.”

May looks at him with a mouth full of crab rangoon and nods in earnest.

“But I was actually hoping we could put that off until tomorrow morning.”

“Mm! Mhm.” May holds up a finger while she chews and swallows, then gestures for Peter to continue.

“In the meantime, could I get some advice?” Peter asks.

“Sure, honey. I’m not sure I’m qualified to help you with your homework anymore, though.”

“Nah, it’s about a secret I just found out.”

May’s eyes light up. She leans forward with a playful, predatory look and says, “Spill it.”

“Damn, okay, Gossip Girl,” Peter says, crossing his legs. “So. You know Wade pretty well, yes?”

An enthusiastic nod. “I make him and Matt and Foggy eat brunch with me biannually.”

“That is hilarious and I’m definitely going to make fun of them about that until they die. But you know that Wade’s pan? And that he and Matt are sort of together?”

May cracks a grin and nods. “They’re equally terrible for each other.”

“So. Way back when I was in high school and working with them like five days a week, Wade would act all high and mighty about his queerness. He teased me for weeks after I came out, which, looking back, fifteen-year-old me probably deserved. But fifteen-year-old me also knew how to harbor resentment like a motherfucker.”

May chortles.

“A couple days ago, I was in a zoom call with a few of Wade’s coworkers for a project they’ve been working on. And halfway through the meeting, Cable sends me a private message that reads ‘just got intel that the infallible Deadpool has yet to make an appearance at a pride parade. do with this what you will’. Can you fucking believe it?! Wade’s never been to Pride!”

May’s smile has slipped away. In its place sits a pensive, furrowed expression. She’s silent for several seconds. “Peter, why does this matter to you so much? Plenty of people don’t go to pride events.”

Really? “He’s been claiming that he knows all there is to know about LGBT issues for years. I guess I just feel like it’s sort of hypocritical of him to be all uppity about his identity when he hasn’t even been to a Pride. That’s, like, New Gay on the Scene pitstop number one.”

“Well, everyone interacts differently with their identities. Maybe it’s just not his thing. Why don’t you ask him about it? In person?”

Genius. Utter and complete genius. Peter points at Aunt May like she’s a potential recruit for the U.S. army and he’s Uncle Sam on a poster. “Amazing advice. What would I do without you?” He scrambles up to give her a greasy kiss on the cheek and scurries off to his room to send a very important text.

Wade is all too happy to have Peter come over to his apartment the next day, on the condition that appropriate noogies are distributed.

This finds Peter rapping on the mildewing doorfront of Wade’s walk-up a little after noon. He’s got a can of Folgers dark roast tucked under one arm as a peace offering.

The door swings in. It’s attached to a massive arm, which is attached to an equally massive person. Wade looks him up and down with bleary eyes, says, “C’mere, shithead. Missed your dumb face,” and sweeps Peter into a lung-flattening hug.

Ah, here come the noogies.

By the time Wade releases him, Peter’s scalp tingles with numbness. He scrubs his hair back into whatever it was doing before the knuckle-infused disruption and skips past Wade to deposit the coffee on the kitchen counter.

Wade trudges in behind him and slides the can over to its twin beside the coffee maker. Peter surveys the living room, then turns to Wade and demands, “Where’s Puggy?”

“Passed out in a corner somewhere. And his name’s not fucking Puggy, for chrissake.”

“I’m not calling your dog Pugnacious Fuckhead,” Peter replies as he heads to Wade’s room to begin a search.

“That’s his given name! He comes to me when I call it!” Wade hollers after him.

Puggy’s passed out all over the made-up bedspread. His giant great dane legs take up its full length and his graying muzzle drools a lovely puddle onto one of the pillows.

Peter cries, “Baby!” and tackles him awake.

Wade yells, “Leave that poor fucker alone and get in here to help me cook!” from the kitchen. He’s using his Very Serious Military Commander tone.

Peter does what he’s ordered.

Several sandwiches later, Peter musters the courage to level Wade with a serious stare. He says, “You know what I came to talk about.”

Wade leans back in his chair and slings an arm over its back. “So. Let’s talk.”

Alright, that’s the way they’re doing this. Direct and concise. “Why haven’t you ever been to a Pride celebration?”

“Why do you care?”

Hm. “It surprises me, I guess. You’ve always been so open about your sexuality. What’s the disconnect?”

Wade looks down at the table. He chews on his bottom lip like he does when he’s trying to puzzle out the dynamics of a fight or a strategy for infiltrating a group of baddies. He purses his lips before he replies, “I might fuck around with jokes about my identity a lot, but I was still raised in a military household. I told you about my dad last year over a couple glasses of whiskey, remember?”

Peter remembers. That had been a low time. Middle of sophomore year and he’d come in through a fire escape window screaming existential terror at Wade’s back until they’d sat down on either side of a bottle of Jameson and had a talk that went on for hours and hours.

“There wasn’t no kinda room for homosexual ponderings in my life ‘til I got out of there. And then I spent years as a military brat. You know what the policy about queer people serving in the military was until this decade?”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Wade sniffs. “Mmm. I got fucking good at hiding my shit and covering my ass. And then I was discharged, out among the masses. I’d spent a quarter of a lifetime having the queer beat outta me, and here were these huge, flourishing communities of people who were out and proud. All these civilians who were absolutely unafraid of their identities, who loved themselves, who saw nothing wrong with living their truths.”

“Must’ve been quite a culture shock.”

“Yeah, no kidding. When I was first patching together the Deadpool persona, I found relief in using humor to cover the fact that I was fucking terrified of myself. I didn’t publicly come out until after Vanessa died.”

Shit. Shit. He didn’t know. “I had no idea.”

Wade grimaces and removes his arm from the chairback. “S’cause I’m still good at repressing the hell out of it. And to answer your question, I don’t go to Pride ‘cause it feels so diametrically opposed to everything I’ve been taught, everything I’ve been conditioned to tell myself. Like--like I’m an imposter. The first and only time I tried attending one, I had a panic attack in a porta potty and left immediately after. Was really not good for my mental health.”

Puggy’s nails clack along the floor as he pads out of the bedroom to shove his big, droopy head under Peter’s hand for pets. His ass hits the ground, his tail thumps lightly against the wood flooring, and he rests his chin, jowls and all, on Peter’s lap. Peter strokes an ear absentmindedly as he asks, “Why not go as Deadpool?”

“Petey-Pie, I live my life staring down the barrel of a gun that I put there myself. If I went in the suit I’d be endangering everyone within a mile radius of me.”

“Why don’t you go this year? As yourself? With Matt? Y’all are still kind of together, right? I know he went last year.”

“Hmm. I’ll think about it. No promises.”

Puggy’s tail thumps a steady beat in the silence that follows.

When Peter calls Matt to see if they can meet up, he’s surprised to hear Foggy’s chipper voice greet him on the other side of the line.

“Hey, Peter. What can I do ya for?”

“Oh! Hi, Foggy. I was actually hoping to talk to Matt--”

“Ooh, unfortunately, Matt’s a little preoccupied at the moment.”

“Oh, okay. Is--is everything okay?”

“For sure! He came into the office today with a mild concussion, so Karen confiscated all of his electronics and locked him in the conference room with a pillow and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones as punishment. Or to recuperate, I can’t quite recall her line of reasoning.”

“Ah, well. I guess he deserves it? When he’s done being held prisoner, would you mind having him call me? Haven’t seen him--or any of you, actually--in too long and I just got back into town.”

“Sure! Or, hm, better yet, you free this afternoon?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Come swing by the office. I’ve got double the workload, thanks to Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless. Somebody needs to escort Mr. Brain Trauma to the gym and then to his home and I really don’t have the time to babysit.”

Fuck it. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Thanks so much. See you around six?”

“Sure thing.”

Matt looks like a raccoon.

Two black eyes, puffy nose, and a gigantic lump at one of his temples to boot.

Peter snaps a picture of his glasses-less face and pillow-rumpled hair. With flash. For posterity, of course.

Matt hisses at him and drops his head back onto the conference table miserably.

Maybe just one more picture.

From the depths of the wood surface of the table, Matt’s voice asks, “Why does God hate me?”

Peter snags a spinny chair and rolls it crunchily over to sit beside the Matt-pile. He crosses one leg over the other on top of the conference table and twists the chair so that it squeaks viciously. Matt cringes. Peter quips, “God doesn’t hate you. That’s all you. You’re projecting, hon.”

Matt tips his head so that Peter can see his sour expression. “Don’t talk to me about self-loathing or I’ll rip your trachea out. Hypocrites ain’t allowed to berate me or my shitty choices.”

“Bitch. You couldn’t hit my trachea if you wanted to.” Peter squeaks the chair to punctuate his point.

“Shhhhhh. Shut. up. Hurts.”

“Good.” Peter swings his legs off the table and leverages himself up. “Get up, loser. We’re going to work out.”

“Don’t reference Mean Girls at me while I’m suffering. It’s impolite.”

“The sight of your face right now is pretty fucking impolite. Let’s goooo, I have orders to get you vacated from the premises before eight. Otherwise we both get to incur Foggy’s stress-wrath.”

Matt shoves himself off the tabletop and upright, where he sways a little bit while he feels around for his jacket. Peter reaches around him and snags it and the cane from their resting places on the table. He hands them to Matt, who takes them gratefully and extracts his glasses from a hidden pocket. He unfolds the cane. “Shall we?”

Yeah, whatever, old man. “Lead the way.”

Turns out even concussed Matt can still fuck up a punching bag.

They’re at Fogwell’s after-hours. Matt’s had a deal worked out with the owner for years; Peter recalls many a training session unfolding under the dim and flickering fluorescents well after midnight.

Peter watches the proceedings from between the ropes of the boxing ring. It’s hypnotizing; hands meet bag meets knee in a violent, well-practiced dance. The chains holding the thing up strain whenever Matt gets a good hit in. He’s swinging at it reckless, belligerent. Like his life depends on it.

Peter waits for the other shoe to drop.

It takes a few minutes, but it eventually falls when Matt miscalculates a kick and ends up headbutting the thing with the full force of his weight behind him. He drops to the ground hard and curses. Peter disentangles himself from the boxing ropes and crosses to the bench to grab Matt’s water bottle and an ice pack he’d picked up as a precaution on the way over. He strides to where Matt’s managed to sit up and presses the ice to the side of his head.

Matt takes over with the ice pack and the water bottle and Peter sits down on the floor across from him. “You ready to take a break from beating out your problems on an inanimate sack?”

Matt glares at the space below the punching bag. “Peter. I’m fucking tired.”

“I know, man. Me too. But you’re gonna get hurt.”

“Yeah. I seem to be pretty fucking good at that.”

Mmm.

“I’m so tired. All the time, Pete.”

Peter lies back. Traces the pattern of water damage in the ceiling tiles. Lets Matt’s words sink deep. He says, “I’m back home for the summer.”

“Noticed that, yeah.” Matt downs about half the contents of the water bottle in one go and scoots back to lean against the boxing ring. “You planning to start up patrols again?”

“I was hoping to. Don’t know. I got a lot going on.”

“You been missin’ it?”

“God. More than I can put into words. I need to find a grad program that keeps me in the city, man. I miss this place so bad. I miss Spider-Man.”

“Hmph. ‘Course you do.”

Peter kicks out at him and misses. He pops up onto his elbows to look at Matt and asks, “You gonna go to Pride?”

“Guess so. If this--” he gestures at his face “--clears up in time.”

Peter laughs and smacks his back down against the floor. “I think you’re beyond help in that department. Ain’t nothin’ gonna fix that mug.”

“Man, shut the hell up,” Matt says as he shifts in Peter’s periphery.

Peter kicks harder this time and nails Matt in the shin. “Hey, when are you and Wade gonna get your shit together?”

“What shit? Ain’t no shit.”

“C’mon. Y’all’ve been dancing around each other since I was in high school. You’re already screwing around.”

“Pffh. Who told you that.”

“Matt. Seriously.”

Matt huffs. “Peter, I don’t know. I don’t wanna think about it; my head is fucking killing me. I should be out dismantling a drug ring I’ve been tracking at the docks, not in here talking about my love life. Wade and I are adults. You’re an adult now, too. Welcome to adult life. It sucks all the time and sometimes people don’t want anything from one another except an occasional booty call.”

“Whatever, buzzkill. Are we allowed to be done here so I can drop your killjoy ass off before I cover your patrol?”

Matt puts a hand to his heart. “Awww, you shouldn’t have,” he says, voice dripping with false gratitude.

“Uh uh, I haven’t yet. And in exchange, you’re gonna call Wade and invite him to Pride.”

Matt groans. “You motherfucker.”

Peter crawls into bed that night an hour before the sun comes up. He’d gotten carried away in the adrenaline and endorphins of working in the suit and lost track of time and now his body’s going to pay for it by soliloquizing arthritic and lactic acid complaints for the next few days.

He’s definitely gotten taller in the past few months, because his suit no longer fits. In any sense of the word.

He teeters on the hazy edge of sleep for a little while. As soon as he settles into a deeper rest, his phone wakes the fuck up and buzzes itself right off of his bedside table.

He pats around on the floor for it. When he turns the screen to his face, Wade’s contact comes up.

Wade never calls. Not unless it’s an emergency.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut for a half second. Presses answer and draws the phone to his ear. “What’s wrong?”

There’s loud rustling on the other side of the line, and then a distant, “Damn it, drop that!”

A bang. The line goes dead.

Peter’s heart stops in his chest. He calls back.

Wade picks up on the second ring. The rustling is still there, but quieter. Wade’s muttering a little bit away from the speaker. Peter asks again, “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

Wade’s voice comes closer and the quality clears a bit. “Hey, sorry about that. Damn dog grabbed the phone right out of my hand after I hit call. Nothing’s wrong. Chill out.”

“Dude, you scared the shit out of me! It’s four in the morning!”

A significant pause. “...Nice to meet you, name’s Wade. Brown eyes, six foot three, functionally immortal.”

“Just ‘cause you can’t die doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to freak out when you call my cell an hour before the ass crack of dawn and greet me with angry yelling and banging noises.”

“You know what. That’s fair. Blame the dog.”

“I’m tryin’ to sleep, dude. Whadda you want?”

Dog nails scrape in the background. Wade growls at them away from the mic before responding, “Wanted to let you know that the worst third of the team called earlier.”

“Wow, how’d you manage to call your own number?”

“Punkass, don’t make me come over there.”

“If you don’t want to come over then quit insulting our teammates behi--”

“As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted, he asked me to go to Pride with him.”

Peter gasps like he’s a thirteen-year-old girl who’s just had the name of her best friend’s crush revealed to her. He lathers on the sarcasm to remark, “That’s crazy, it feels like just yesterday that we were talking about that very subject! What did you say?”

“I told him to fuck off the phone and ask it to my face and then he hung up on me.”

Wade takes a dramatic pause. The fucker fully stops talking to draw out the suspense. Peter takes the bait. “Is that the end of the story?”

“Naw, he hightailed that pretty ass all the way to my place. At midnight, no less. You know his face is beat all to hell?”

“Uh huh.”

“Mmmm. So he got here and I opened the door before he was done knocking. He asked about Pride, we talked for a good two hours, he used his lawyer voice to try to coerce me into agreeing to go, we hate-fucked, I gave in. He left about ten minutes ago.”

Woah.

Where the fuck is Peter supposed to start with that? “Jesus, Wade. I did not need to know a solid half of that information.”

“It was important to your understanding of the story.”

It really wasn’t, though. “You’re impossible. Does this mean you’re going?”

Wade cracks what sounds like a vertebra in his neck straight into his phone’s mic and says, “I’ll tell you what I told Red: If I must.”

Peter fistpumps the darkness and whoops as quietly as he can muster.

When he emerges from his room four hours of sleep later, May’s sitting at the kitchen table tapping red-tipped and frustrated fingers onto the screen of her tablet. She doesn’t look up when Peter scuffs his socked feet past her. She doesn’t reply to his groggy “Morning.”She doesn’t appear to notice when Peter has to battle with the sputtering stove over boiling a kettle for some tea.

Her fingers tap angrier and angrier. At one point, she swipes at something on the screen with the passion of someone in the midst of an intense argument and curses loudly.

Peter slides into the chair across from her with his hard-earned mug and raps on the table twice. May startles and looks up at him for the first time. Her brow is knit in an expression of hard anger. Peter looks at her through the steam rising from his tea and offers a little wave.

May asks, “How do I make this ad go away?” and pushes the abused tablet across the table.

Plastered across its screen is an obscenely explicit pop-up which is trying to solicit a not-safe-for-fucking-work act. From his silver-headed aunt. Who is rapidly approaching retirement.

Peter can’t help the giggle that escapes his lips. May swats at him and squawks with indignance. He tries to navigate out of the app and into settings as he says, “This must be my punishment for minoring in computer engineering.”

“No, it’s your punishment for waking me up with all that yammering at some ungodly hour last night,” May retorts as she drags Peter’s tea away from him like a gremlin. Peter gives up on force-quitting the app and goes for the tried and true method of off-and-then-on-again.

“Sorry. Wade called. It was a whole ordeal.”

May sips at Peter’s tea. “You mind having your ordeals a little quieter in the future, hon?”

The tablet turns back on and appears to have shaken itself free from the gratuitous pop-up’s disgusting, sleazy clutches.

Peter returns the device to its owner and nods. “Yeah. My bad. Won’t happen again,” he says as he holds his hand out for the tea.

May glares at the extended hand and hugs the tea close to her chest. Peter signifies defeat with an eye roll and slumps miserably out of the chair for another fight with the stove.

May turns to watch the proceedings. They make faces at each other while they wait for the kettle to whistle. As Peter lifts it from the element, May squints at his back and asks, “Hey, when are you going to talk to Ned?”

Peter’s hand slips in surprise and drops the kettle, which lands white-hot on his socked foot. He cries out and hobbles away from the fast-spreading puddle of boiling water. May’s out of her chair and at his side in an instant. Peter falls on his ass while he’s trying to tear the sock off. He holds the burned foot in one hand and his head in another and tries to hold in the searing, burning scream shooting up his leg and into his throat.

May’s letting out a litany of apologies and expressions of guilt, but Peter can’t focus in on any of them. He feels hot tears carving canyons into his face. Everything is hot, scorching, melting wet. May’s hands clasp his shoulders and gently guide him upright and to the kitchen counter beside the sink, where the water is running.

Some of May’s soothing pacifications work their way into his hazy brain and tell him to boost himself onto the counter. He does. May maneuvers his leg under the cold water and it burns red and aching pink for a moment before he feels relief.

He takes a shuddering breath.

They sit there in silence for a minute or so, looking at Peter’s wrecked foot.

He says, “‘M sorry. Not usually so dramatic about stuff like that.”

May’s got guilty tears in her eyes. “No need for you to apologize, baby. I shouldn’t have asked you while you were picking up a pot of boiling water.”

Peter shakes his head and rotates his ankle as well as he can for a fresh angle under the stream. “No. It’s okay. I was, uh, gonna call him this evening.”

“Oh, that’s nice to hear, hon.” May steps away from the sink and busies herself in cleaning up the mess by the stove. “When was the last time you two talked?”

“I mean. We didn’t exactly end it on amazing terms. I think I texted him for his birthday.”

“Oh, Peter.”

“Don’t condescend me. S’not my fault he was a crappy, unsupportive boyfriend.”

May gives him a Disappointed Adult Look from the stove and turns to walk down the hall. Peter lets her go to scavenge around for the medkit while his foot throbs numbly at him about the consequences of his decisions.

Ned drops his call on the fourth ring.

Which is great. Makes him feel real good about himself, that.

But then his phone pings while it’s still by his ear and it’s a message from Ned: “in a meeting. urgent?”

Peter sends back, “Nah, call when you have a min?”

Ned reads the message but doesn’t respond. Peter pockets the phone and returns to the research journal he’s scrolling through on his laptop.

May spills through the front door in rumpled scrubs, arms full of purse and keys and laundry and groceries. She dumps the load onto the kitchen table. Peter hops up and limps over to help her sort through it. She hisses at him like a feral fucking cat when she notices, but Peter ignores her and grabs a bag of freezer goods to put away. He avoids her swatting hands on the way into the kitchen.

May hits him square in the back of the head with a pack of sterile gauze while he’s shuffling shit around in the fridge. Peter turns and glares. “What.”

“Get your ass back on the couch and rebandage that foot.” She throws a bag of frozen peas at him from the depths of one of the grocery bags. “And put that shit on ice. Accelerated healing, my ass,” she gripes.

“May, it’s fi--”

“If you say the ‘f’ word out loud to my face, I will hit you over the head with a tub of ice cream. None of that martyr shit in this house, boy.”

Ooookay. To the couch he goes.

Ned calls him while he’s got the handle of a pair of scissors and a roll of surgical tape stuck in his mouth. He switches hands on the gauze to answer the phone. “Yo. ‘S Peter,” he says around the tape.

“Are--is there something going on? Do I need to call back?”

Peter spits out the tape and the scissors and replies, “No, sorry about that. Just need more hands to do everything. Here, lemme put you on speaker. Say hi to May.”

“Oh, uh--”

May pipes up from the kitchen. “Hi, Ned! Hope you’re doing well, tell your folks I miss them!”

“Hi, Ms. Parker. Will do.”

Peter cuts the gauze and tears a length of tape with his teeth. He says, “So I’m back in the city for a couple of months and I was wondering if you were interested in getting MJ and some of the AcaDec gang together to catch up or something?”

Christ, that sentence sounds like something an 80-year-old might say over a game of bridge.

Ned makes contemplative humming noises on the other side of the line. “Yeah, I’d like that. I’m working an internship most weekdays and MJ’s got something that reeks of epigenetics going on at a research lab downtown, but I bet she’s free on a Saturday at some point soon. Not sure about the others, but I’m sure we can make something work.”

“Great! I’ll see if I can resurrect the group chat.”

“Anything else you were wanting to talk about? I can just text you MJ’s availability.”

Peter presses his lips together and glances at May. She’s staring lasers at him. “Um. D’you maybe want to grab a meal sometime? Without MJ? Or anyone else?”

“Oh, sure. I didn’t know whether you were--”

“Cool, cool coolcoolcool. Let me know when you’re free and I’ll see what works best. Thanks, Ned. Have a good one.” Peter hangs up and throws himself bodily at the back of the couch.

Uuuuugh.

May tosses a spinach leaf at him and states the obvious. “You handled that terribly.”

Thanks, Captain Conspicuous. Peter chews on the spinach leaf and commiserates with the popcorn ceiling.

Ned texts Peter the next day that he needs to get his shit together because they’re going to some nice restaurant in Soho for dinner. He refuses to elaborate upon what having one’s shit together means, so Peter’s left to fend for himself in terms of clothing choice and level of formality.

He decides on a patterned dress shirt, slacks that cover the ace bandage wrapped around his lower leg, and a plain tie. He throws a pair of post earrings and a ring or two in the mix and prays that it’s not black tie.

Ned’s not there yet when Peter pushes through the superfluous revolving door. The host working the front says there’s been no sight of him, so Peter sits in the waiting area for nearly a half hour and twiddles his thumbs. Just as he’s made up his mind about leaving and blocking Ned’s number, the man of the hour comes rushing through the rotating door.

Peter offers him naught but a raised eyebrow and dutifully follows the host when he shows them to their table.

Ned tries to make excuses, but Peter waves him off and picks up the menu to scrutinize it.

It’s crickets between them.

It’s awkward. Unbearably so. Peter wracks his brain for stimulating topics of conversation and settles on asking, “So what are you doing at your internship?”

That launches them into nearly an hour of discussion about their academic careers. They exchange stories about the numerous big- and little-name scientists and professors with whom they’ve been working, under whom they’ve been studying, to which they aspire to become. They settle back into the rhythm they’d developed as nerdy middle schoolers and then perfected as even nerdier high schoolers.

About halfway through the main course, Ned says, “Forgot to mention that you made the local news this week.”

Peter puts his fork down and asks, “What did I do to warrant that?”

“Eh, they always run a story through a cycle when Spider-Man pops up again. Someone got a real attractive picture of your crotch while you were chasing down some creep in midtown.”

Delightful. Peter resumes shovelling pasta into his mouth and hopes his blush isn’t too obvious.

Ned makes a face at the pile of rejected candied walnuts on his plate. “Is that why you were limping on the way to the table?”

“No, actually, it’s something a lot dumber,” Peter replies around a mouthful of angel hair. He swallows before he continues. “Lost a fight with a kettle of boiling water.”

Ned cringes in sympathy.

Back to the awkward silence it is.

Peter needs to break it before it grows too big a load to bear.

Before he folds beneath it.

Ned beats him to the punch. “What happened to us?”

“Aw, fuck’s sake, Ned. You were there. Don’t put it on me to exhume that baggage on my own.”

Ned won’t make eye contact. “I don’t know if I was there for as much of it as you think.”

No. That’s not fair. The buck doesn’t get to sit on Peter’s side all the time. “Fine. Here’s my understanding of it: I came out to you as ace during a point in my life when the thing I needed most was acceptance and support. You couldn’t provide that, or I overestimated your willingness to provide it, or some combination of the two. I broke it off a couple weeks later because you hadn’t made an effort to reach out to me or discuss it in any way.”

Ned’s face reads confused. Angry.

He’s not the one who’s supposed to be angry. He’s not allowed to have any harbored resentment or scars stretched unforgiving and sinewed over his heart.

“Peter, when you told me, I didn’t even know what asexual was. We were young and in high school and you were the first person I’d ever fallen in love with. I thought you were telling me you weren’t attracted to me. I--I thought you were telling me you couldn’t love me.”

The pasta in his stomach turns over in its grave. Hot tears make themselves known behind his eyes. “Then why didn’t you tell me? You abandoned me, Ned. You got up and walked away from that conversation and dropped all my calls for a week.”

“I thought you’d broken up with me!”

“That’s--I would never have done it like that! I thought you hated me!”

A couple from a table near them throws furtive glances their way.

Ned lowers his voice. “Why, for being asexual?”

“No--Yes. Fundamentally. Viscerally. Ideologically. I thought you hated me at my base--my roots. My identity. I thought you were disgusted with who I was.”

Ned looks at him with his soul bared in the cut of his brow. “You made me feel unloveable.”

“Yeah? You made me feel like I wasn’t capable of love. Like I wasn’t worthy or deserving of giving or receiving it. I thought you hated every fiber of my existence.”

The silence isn’t awkward anymore. It’s rancid melancholy. Wretched, haggard sadness that’s been dipped in bleach and stripped of its rose hue.

“I could never hate you. Not one part of you,” Ned tells the napkin balled in his fist.

Ha, yeah. No. About five years too late there, boo.

Peter shoves his chair back to stand and pulls out his wallet to rifle through it. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking when I suggested this. I’m gonna go, this is--”

Ned grabs his wrist from out of nowhere and Peter’s panic spikes. His instincts take over. He has Ned knocked out of his chair, laid out on the floor, and an arm wound back to punch him in an instant. He snaps back to himself when he feels Ned shaking below him.

Whole restaurant’s on the edge of their seats. One of the waiters rushes back to the kitchen to grab a cook. Ned’s eyes betray his terror, but his eyebrows are set hard. Righteous and intrepid and unwavering.

Peter curses under his breath and lets go of Ned’s collar. He sits on the floor beside him, defeated.

Ned throws the back of his head against the floor and closes his eyes in relief.

The waiter reappears alongside a big, beefy cook who’s got a meat cleaver protruding prominently from one of his closed fists.

Subtle. Right up Peter’s alley of intimidation tactics.

Peter scrambles to a standing position and offers Ned a hand up. Ned cracks an eye open, rolls it so that only the white is showing, and accepts the help.

Cleaver Man watches as Peter pulls a few twenties from his wallet and puts them on the table. He squints when Peter takes Ned’s dazed hand and gently pulls him along behind him. He trails them for a good block after they leave the restaurant.

Ned’s come out of it by the time they’re on the subway and headed to May’s place. He lets go of Peter’s hand. They stare straight forward for the duration of the ride.

But he doesn’t leave. He steps on Peter’s heels all the way to the apartment complex and trudges up the miserable stairs and comes in when Peter holds the door for him. He sits on the couch and accepts the ice pack when Peter offers it to him.

May walks out of her room, opens her mouth to greet them, gets a good look at the expression on Peter’s face, and retreats back into her room.

Peter sits on the floor in the space between the coffee table and the couch and waits.

After a minute or so, Ned says, “Forgot how jumpy you can be.”

Peter huffs and replies, “Just a bit. Can’t decide whether I should blame Matt, Wade, or somethin’ along the lines of PTSD for that.”

“S’prob’ly a combination of the three.”

“Oh, for sure. That’s it.”

Ned tosses the ice pack on the coffee table. He looks down at where Peter’s legs are slung over his feet. He doesn’t ask, but Peter knows what he’s thinking.

Can they try again? Can they make it work a second time, now that they’ve put years and miles and so much space to mature between them?

Peter leans his head against the couch and Ned looks at him. Reaches over and ruffles his untamable hair. Peter traps the hand against his head and says to it, “Y’know, I’ve always been one for cheesy romance redemption arcs.”

“Dude, I know. You made me watch Say Anything and The Princess Bride like fifty times each.”

Peter raises an eyebrow. “You wanna?”

“What, figure whatever this is out?”

Peter nods sagely into Ned’s hand.

“Mmph. Alright, whatever. But that means we’ve gotta talk about boundaries. And you need to teach me about your limits because I’m not ace and I won’t be able to read your mind.”

Of course. “I ain’t askin’ you to be Charles Xavier.”

“Also I get to steal your Nintendo Switch to play Animal Crossing whenever I want.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

Ned pats him with the hand trapped against his scalp. “That’s business, baby.”

“Can I make a condition?”

“Shoot.”

“You’re going to Pride with me and the old farts.”

Ned squirms his hand out from Peter’s clutches and lies across the length of the couch so that his face is right next to Peter’s. He scrunches his nose up and says, “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”

The day of the parade, May surprises him with a little sign to wear on his back that says “My aunt loves and supports you” in glittery rainbow bubble letters.

It’s genuine and sweet. So unapologetically May. Gets glitter all over his outfit and in his hair, but such is the way of most celebrations of pride.

He hugs her real close before closing the door.

He takes a second on the landing to adjust the ace pride flag tied around his waist.

Then jumps down the stairs two at a time in the direction of Hell’s Kitchen.

Wade pulls him into Matt’s apartment with a force that he usually reserves for his more heinous marks.

He yanks Peter’s shoulder half out of its socket on the way to the kitchen.

Matt’s counters are a hot fucking mess. There’s glitter covering every available surface, a slew of makeup implements and applicators strewn over the bar. A hot glue gun sits lonely and dripping beside an outlet. Colorful bits of construction paper litter the area. One of Matt’s canes rests in the center of the mess like a sacrificial offering. It’s decorated with ribbons and streamers wound around its length in the colors of the bi flag.

Matt’s cowering halfway up the staircase to the roof access.

Wade releases Peter from the vice grip around his upper arm so that he can turn around, arms wide and grandiose. He gestures at the mess on the kitchen counter. “Eh?”

Peter nods, careful and wide-eyed. “I see you’ve lost your fucking gourd again.”

Wade shakes his head. “Nononono, look.” He reaches over and presses something metallic and sticky into Peter’s hand.

It’s a pair of Matt’s glasses. The red-tinted lenses are covered by broad strips of blue, purple, and pink construction paper that have been hot glued to their surface.

“You’re not helpin’ your case here, man.”

“Whatever, dude. It’s my first Pride. I don’t got no fuckin’ clue what I’m doin’. Plus, I am the oldest member of this group and therefore the wisest, so what I say goes. And I say that there needs to be more gay glitter on this goddamn boring white-ass cane.”

Matt groans with well-practiced drama from between the rails on the stairs. Peter strolls over to him and passes the glasses up through the bars. Matt takes them, feels the strips of construction paper and the wispy strings of hot glue protruding from beneath them, and tosses his head back in resignation. He throws, “What’s on these glasses, you fucking vandal?” in Wade’s direction.

Wade has made his way behind the counter. He picks up the hot glue gun and aims it at Matt. He depresses the trigger and strings of glue spill forth onto a piece of construction paper below. “It’s the lesbian flag.”

“Bitch, I’ll kill you.”

“It’s the bi flag.”

Terrible. They’re both so unendingly terrible.

Matt puts the bi glasses on and throws his head sassily in Peter’s direction. “How do I look?”

Peter hems and haws over Matt’s pose for a few seconds, then replies, “Hella fucking queer.”

Matt points just south of Peter’s face and announces, “That’s exactly what I’m goin’ for. Not sure about--Aw, fuckssake, WADE!”

Peter whips around. Wade has fully wrapped the palm of his hand around the hot tip of the glue gun. The smell of burning flesh hits Peter like a wall. Wade looks up with guilty eyes and says, “I wanted to know how hot it was.”

Peter thinks he’s just figured something out that he’s been trying to pin down for a while. A revelation, some circles might call it.

Matt and Wade aren’t just terrible; they’re belligerent toddlers who possess the power to vote and file taxes.

If there is a God, he gave these two fucking knuckleheads to Peter because it was the cruelest joke he could come up with.

Wade wrenches his hand away from the tip of the glue gun and Matt screams at him some more and Peter’s faith in humanity dwindles impossibly smaller.

Somehow, Peter manages to wrangle both Matt and Wade down the stairs and into a cab in time to meet Ned a couple of blocks from where people are gathering.

Wade sobers up as soon as he sees the crowd of parade-watchers. Matt seems to sense the change in his attitude because he whispers something into his ear while they’re standing and waiting for Ned that makes Wade cackle. They loop their arms together and Wade leans microscopically into Matt.

Maybe they aren’t so terrible.

Ned joins them about five minutes later and tugs playfully on the flag around Peter’s waist. He’s wearing expertly winged eyeliner and the colors of the pan flag are displayed proudly across his cheeks. Peter pinches the left one maliciously, so that when his hand comes away one of the flags is smudged. Ned grabs the offending hand and smushes it in his sweaty New York summer armpit. Peter shrieks, tears his hand away, and takes off down the sidewalk in the direction of the music and the people.

Ned gives chase. The old men plod along behind.

Wade makes it through the whole of the parade, the vendors, the music and celebration, and the infinite supply of colorful stimuli with minimal discomfort and anxiety. At one point, someone hands him a bag of rainbow glitter and he showers Matt with every bit of its contents.

Peter loses them in the crowd about halfway through, but Ned stays by his side. A drag queen comes over to where they’re standing at the barrier and fully kisses Ned on the lips. Peter catches it on the video he’s filming with his phone. After the drag queen moves on, Ned’s blushing from his ears to his toes. Peter waggles his eyebrows at him.

And then the parade is over in a whirlwind of dancing and floats and streamers and it’s just the two of them. They meander, hand in hand, down the path of the parade delineated by barriers and rainbow confetti. Peter tosses Wade a text asking if he wants them to wait up.

Ned squeezes Peter’s hand to stop him, yanks on his hair until he stoops so that they’re closer in height, and kisses him.

And Peter kisses back. It’s a kiss full of the throes of high school angst, late-night phone calls from atop a perch on a crane, a tall building, the bottom bunk of his old bed. It’s deep and it’s desolate and Peter puts every “sorry” he’s felt or said or screamed since they broke up into it and multiplies each one a hundredfold. He kisses back like his life depends on it, like all the scars written into his skin from years of abuse by criminals might split open at once, like it’s the first thing he’s ever done and the last thing he’ll ever do.

When they pull back, Peter’s face is smiling and wet with tears. He buries it in Ned’s shoulder and whispers “I love you”s and “I missed you”s into his neck.

They cling to each other.

Someone wolf-whistles a few yards away.

It’s Wade. He’s wearing a bright pink wig and his arms are draped all over Matt, whose hair is a rat’s nest of glitter and confetti.

Wade waggles his eyebrows at Peter and says, “Get a fuckin’ room, Jesus Christ!”

Matt swats at him with his cane. “This is a holy space and I am still very Catholic, quit forsaking the savior’s name.”

“Buddy, I don’t know what kinda holy spaces you’ve been rollin’ up to lately, but we’re standing in the ruins of a pride parade put on by queer folks, for queer folks. Ain’t jack shit holy about that.”

“Anywhere within five feet of my presence immediately becomes holy. That’s how Catholicism works.”

Peter jumps in before the argument can gain any traction. “When y’all are done bickering, I’m fucking starving.”

Wade abandons his endeavor to put Matt in a headlock in favor of grabbing Peter by the waist and tossing him over his shoulder. The wind rushes out of Peter’s lungs. He pounds on Wade’s impervious back and yells, “Hey! Put me down!”

Wade pats the sign on his back and cries, “To lunch!”

And they’re off.

Couple of weeks back in the rhythm of the city finds Peter out in the suit nearly every night. He’s more comfortable in his skin than he’s felt since he turned eighteen. He postulates that it’s from the whistle of air past his face as he swings across the city, the silence with which he and his teammates communicate during a recon job, the pictures filling up the storage on his phone that depict night skylines and sunrises from high places. He starts to feel at home when he’s working on his internship at the lab in upper Manhattan, when he’s stitching Matt up over a bottle of eighty proof whiskey and the sound of Wade’s snores from the couch, when he’s curled up beside Ned traumatizing himself to the tune of Midsommar on a computer screen.

The summer is muggy, hazy ventures under the city lights. The lines in May’s face seem to recede behind soaring crow’s feet and smiley dimples.

Peter meets up with MJ a few times. She picks him apart and checks his ignorance and pinches bits of stubborn pride glitter out of his hair and then when she’s satisfied she disappears off the face of the earth for another two weeks until Peter has adequately undone her hard work.

There’s a lot of energy expended, but he’s got his people around him and they’re matching him in stride. They’re doing good work.

He’s doing good work, too. It’s what he’s always tried to do. It’s how he’s been trying to live since Ben’s death.

He prays that it’s enough.

His prayers go unanswered, but that’s not a new thing. Life goes on. Gets bigger and greater and Peter gets to experience the whole of it from where he’s been standing, observing, rooted in place, for millennia.

It’s so damn good. He leans into it.