Chapter Text
Peter wanted it on record that it was not his idea. Originally, it was Ned’s idea, but Peter had made the mistake of repeating it to Tony as a joke, and the next thing he knew, everyone else in his life had ganged up on him and decided it was a great idea.
“But why?” Peter whined, the night before his life was scheduled to be invaded. Tony had come over and was watching him try to tidy his postage stamp studio. It had no storage, the kitchen was hideous, and he’d never bothered to get a bed frame when he’d moved in two years ago, so it probably wouldn’t make a difference, but he felt compelled to try anyway. May would kill him if he didn’t.
“What do you mean, why?” Tony asked.
“I mean, I don’t need them to come and make me over. I’m fine.”
“Hmm.” Tony used a hanger to pick a pair of Peter’s underwear up off the floor. Peter grabbed them with a huff. “When was the last time you talked to MJ?”
That was just playing dirty. “A while.”
“And what did she say to you the last time you spoke to her?”
Peter heaved a sigh. “That she loved me, but she deserves to have someone who’s going to pull his weight in the relationship.”
“And what precipitated this?”
“I showed up to our anniversary dinner two hours late, covered in blood,” Peter admitted grudgingly.
“You also missed Morgan’s last gymnastics meet, and you choose to live in a pit of your own filth for reasons I don’t fully understand.”
Peter didn’t answer. He knew Tony didn’t get his need to make do with the meager stipend he received as a PhD student. He could have lived at the compound, but then he would’ve been too far away from the city for patrolling every night, and anyway, he wasn’t ready to be a fulltime Avenger.
But he’d been in this apartment for two years, so he probably could have bought a bed frame by now. Maybe then he wouldn’t have five queer guys (well, four queer guys and one queer nonbinary person) invading his life in the morning for the purpose of other people’s entertainment.
“Anyway, you love the show, don’t you?” Tony said. “God knows we watched enough of it when you broke your leg last fall.”
“I do,” Peter admitted, wrapping his arms around himself, “it’s just... I only revealed my identity eighteen months ago. And now I have to bare my soul for everyone to see? There’s a bunch of stuff that I don’t want to talk about in public.”
“Hey.” Tony pushed off the wall and came to stand in front of Peter. He put a hand on each of Peter’s biceps and squeezed gently. “Don’t worry too much about that, all right? The producers signed an agreement, and our PR folks are going to keep a close eye on everything. Nothing is going to be aired that you’re not comfortable with. Just try to relax and have a good time. You never let other people take care of you.”
Peter frowned at Tony. “You take care of me all the time.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Pete. You literally have to be in traction before you’ll let anyone take care of you.”
Peter didn't think that was strictly true. Tony still fixed his suit half the time. He wouldn’t let Tony give him money on a regular basis, but any time he was in danger of overdrawing his account, an extra five hundred dollars would mysteriously appear. Peter pretended not to see it, and Tony never said a word.
He wasn’t sure what else Tony wanted him to do.
“It’s okay, kid,” Tony said after a few seconds. He pulled Peter into a hug, then kissed him on the top of his head. “I love you just the way you are. I just worry about you, and I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy,” Peter protested. Tony pulled away and looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “I’m happy enough.”
“Yeah, call me crazy, but that’s not good enough for me.” Tony squeezed him again. “I’ll get out of your hair. Get some sleep tonight, all right?”
Peter grimaced. “I’ll try.”
“And don’t go patrolling!” Tony added as he left. “You don’t need a black eye in the morning.”
For once, Peter heeded Tony’s advice. He half-heartedly cleaned for another half hour, then showered and dropped down to lie on his mattress on the floor. He stared up at the ceiling, listening to the thrum of the city –– the sirens two streets over, the loud conversation at the bus stop halfway down the block, the TV someone was watching four stories down. It was somehow too loud and yet comforting at the same time.
It wasn’t really that Peter expected life to be easy. His life had never been easy. But he kind of thought that at some point, life would get easier. Instead, it just seemed to get more and more overwhelming with every passing year, with more to do and less time to do it in, and never enough money to be comfortable. It was exhausting. It was all exhausting.
And even when he had the time to sleep he couldn’t. Peter sighed and rolled over, listening to the sounds of the city until, sometime on the other side of two in the morning, he fell asleep.
***
“So our hero today is a true super hero,” Jonathan announced from the front seat. Strictly speaking, it’d been Bobby’s turn to give the intro, but Jonathan had grabbed the dossier out of his hands as they’d gotten in the car. “We are going to be helping Peter Parker, AKA Spiderman!”
“What?” Antoni yelled from the backseat.
“Yes, ladies, we are helping out Spiderman himself. Peter Parker is twenty-four years old, he lives in Queens –– we all know this, if you don’t know Spiderman lives in Queens, then you’ve been living under a rock, and I can’t help you –– and he was nominated by Tony Fucking Stark.”
“Are you going to call him ‘Tony Fucking Stark’ every single time and make them bleep it out?” Karamo asked, both hands on the wheel as he navigated New York City surface streets.
“Save the universe, honey, and I will call you ‘Karamo Fucking Brown,’ all right?” he replied. “So, Tony Fucking Stark says that that while Peter is wonderful and generous and amazing in all ways, he’s also a ‘human disaster.’”
“Uh oh, what does that mean?” Bobby asked. “Sounds ominous.”
“I have a question,” Tan interjected, raising his hand. “Has anyone ever seen him in anything other than the Spider suit?”
There was a beat of silence.
“He has to have other clothes,” Antoni said. “He’s got a job, right? Or is the superhero gig full time?”
“It says here that he’s a PhD student in bioinformatics at NYU,” Jonathan replied. “Goodness me, brawn and brains.”
“So what you’re telling me,” Tan said, looking pained, “is that he spends all his time in a lab, and when he leaves the lab, he wears a spandex suit.”
“Yeah, you might have it the worst this time,” Bobby said.
Jonathan held up his hand. “Hold that thought, because Tony Fucking Stark says that Peter lives in a very small apartment that –– quoting him now –– ’hurts my soul’ and he doesn’t even have a bed frame. He sleeps on a mattress on the floor.”
“Nooooooo,” Bobby moaned, slumping over into Antoni and thumping his forehead against his shoulder. “Why? Why do men in their twenties do this? Literally no one has ever found a mattress on the floor sexy. No one.”
“And you know that if the mattress is on the floor, the bathroom is a crime scene,” Jonathan added.
“Hey, you know, sometimes money is a genuine issue,” Karamo pointed out.
“He was nominated by Tony Stark!” Bobby yelled. “If he wanted a bed frame, he could have a bed frame!”
“That actually brings us to the big thing, which is what Tony Fucking Stark calls Peter’s ‘dysfunctional self-reliance,’” Jonathan interjected, before they got sidetracked again. “He and Peter’s Aunt May –– who raised him –– both say that Peter won’t let anyone help him, and they’re worried that he’s going to burn out before he’s thirty.”
“Legit,” Bobby said.
Jonathan shut the binder with a snap. “Well, our job this week is to take this Spider-disaster to a Spider-master –– of his own life!”
Everyone cheered. Jonathan reached into the back, and Bobby, Antoni, and Tan gave him upside down high-fives.
“This one’s gonna be a good time,” Karamo said. “I can feel it.”
***
The show’s producers had told Peter to swing around a particular neighborhood after two o’clock. At two o’clock, Peter was obediently swinging through Sunnyside, keeping an eye out for an SUV with the license plate “FAB 5.”
While he waited, he helped a young woman find her dog, helped an older woman carry some shopping into her building, and pointed a couple of tourists toward the subway. By then it was three o’clock, AKA “Tamale Time.” He swung over and got his usual order from the tamale truck and posed for photos with a couple of kids from the middle school down the block.
He expected the Fab Five to ambush him while he was shoving a tamale in his mouth, but they didn’t. He finished his snack, then shot another web and swung off, looping aimlessly around the neighborhood.
“Peter, I found the car you asked me to look out for,” Karen said. “It is one block south and two blocks west of where you are now.”
“Oh yeah? Light it up, Kare-Bear. Stealth mode. Keep me off the cameras.”
Karen lit up the route, and Peter followed it. Once he got close, he stopped and climbed to the top of one of the buildings to get a good view of what was going on.
He spotted the SUV immediately. Four of the guys were inside, and one of them, clad in a hoodie and a pair of sunglasses, was standing by with a paper bag of groceries in one hand. Peter thought it was probably Antoni, judging by his build. There were also a couple of camera guys, carefully concealed, but Peter picked them out easily.
It was obviously a set-up. Peter could guess at the rough outlines: once he got close, Antoni would drop the groceries in the middle of the intersection, and Peter would swoop down to help him, only to be surprised.
For a second, Peter thought about just swinging away in the opposite direction. They’d find him eventually, but it’d buy him some time. On the other hand... he could teach them not to try and sneak up on Spiderman. And while Peter Parker was terrified of giving away too much of himself in this process, Spiderman wasn’t scared of anything.
Two quick swings and Peter dropped down to land on top of the SUV. There were four startled yelps from inside the car.
“I hope you weren’t thinking you could surprise me in my neighborhood,” Peter said. He hesitated for half a beat before reaching up to pull his mask off. Even now, eighteen months later, it never stopped feeling weird to be without his mask in public.
Antoni cracked up. The doors to the SUV swung open and the others poured out.
“We should’ve known better,” Karamo said, reaching up to shake his hand. “Though in all fairness, one of our camera guys had his eye on you for most of the afternoon.”
“Wait, what?” Peter said. “Really?”
“We’ve been watching you help old ladies cross the street,” Tan said.
“Well, that’s what I do,” Peter replied, and backflipped down off the SUV. “I’m just your friendly neighborhood Spiderman.”
“Uh huh, yes, we all absolutely believe that,” Jonathan said. “We’re just going to ignore the fact that you’re an Avenger. Oh my God, look at your little baby face, and those cheekbones. Can I touch your hair?”
“Uh, I guess––”
Jonathan immediately put his fingers in Peter’s hair. “It’s so soft. Do you use any product at all?”
“Okay, wait,” Antoni broke in, “before you start on him, let’s head back to his place. I can’t wait to see the apartment that hurts Tony Stark’s soul.”
“Is that what he told you?” Peter groaned. “Seriously, Tony is such a drama queen, and his standards are ridiculous. It’s really not that bad.”
“Sure,” Bobby said, in a tone that said he definitely did not buy one ounce of whatever Peter was selling. “Come on, let’s go!”
Peter tried to convince them to let him swing home, but they wouldn’t hear of it. Peter let them herd him into the SUV. Antoni climbed into the far back, Tan and Bobby sat upfront, and Karamo and Jonathan sandwiched Peter in the middle.
He was in a car. With the Fab Five. Ned was going to die when Peter told him.
Peter cleared his throat. “So, uh, are there cameras in here?”
“Yeah, but they’re not rolling,” Karamo said. “In fact, this is a good time for us to talk without the cameras on. We like to get an idea of how you feel about things before everything starts. It can get kind of intense.”
“Yeah, I know, I’ve watched the show. Like, all of it.”
“Okay, good. You know how it works, then. So how are you feeling about all of this?”
Peter shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”
“And what does that mean?” Jonathan asked. He started playing with Peter’s hair again.
“Um... mostly fine, but just kind of... nervous. There’s stuff that I don’t want out in public, and I’m worried I’m going to slip up and reveal something I don’t want to.”
Peter didn’t miss the look that bounced around the car from one to another like a ping pong ball. “Peter, we’re not here to make your life harder,” Karamo said. “Our producers sat down and had a long conversation with the Starks’ PR folks, and we understand that there are things that are off-limits. The editors can do amazing things with the footage –– no one will ever know if we cut something out. Okay?”
Peter nodded, relaxing a little. “It’s just weird. I kept a really big secret for a long time.”
“I think you’ll find that we all know how that feels,” Bobby said. “It’s not the same thing, but it also kind of is.”
“Also, vulnerability is a practice,” Jonathan told him, petting Peter’s hair like he was a cat. “Like yoga. The more you do it, the easier it becomes, and the more you get out of it.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way before,” Peter said, still feeling somewhat dubious.
“It’s okay if you don’t trust us just yet,” Karamo said. “It’s on us to earn that trust. All we ask is that you’re open to it.”
Peter didn’t answer immediately. He thought again about how overwhelming life felt sometimes, and how there didn’t seem to be anyone he could really open up to about that anymore. He didn’t want to worry May. Tony would just try to fix everything for him. He had Ned and MJ, but MJ had run out of patience for his bullshit years ago, and Ned tended to freak out.
“Yeah,” Peter said quietly. “Yeah, okay.”
“Good.” Karamo squeezed his shoulder.
The SUV pulled up in front of Peter’s ramshackle apartment building. “Let’s do this thing,” Jonathan said, and the six of them climbed out of the car. Peter let them into the building and led them up the five flights of stairs to his apartment at the top.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Karamo said, halfway up the last flight. “You do this all the time?”
“Not really,” Peter said. “I mostly come and go using other means.”
“Right,” Bobby said, definitely a little out of breath. “But you have to haul groceries up and down sometimes, right?”
“Sometimes,” Peter hedged. He decided it was better not to mention that it had been weeks since he’d been to the grocery store. They’d realize it soon enough when they saw his fridge.
They crowded onto the landing outside Peter’s apartment. Peter took a deep, bracing breath, and let them in. “Here it is. Home sweet home. Or something.”
Peter had tried to clean up. He really had. But the space was small, and more than that, it was kind of drab, with a cheap 80s kitchen and moldings clogged with at least five decades of paint. His mattress sat on the floor, shoved up against the wall in one corner. On the other side of the room, his desk was covered in broken down computer parts. Peter had forgotten to close the closet doors that morning, so they hung open, revealing a laundry hamper that was overflowing.
“I’ve seen much worse,” Bobby announced.
Peter exhaled suddenly. “Really?”
“God, yes, so much worse. This is a blank slate. You haven’t done anything with it. How long have you been here?”
“Oh, um... two years?”
“Two years?” Tan said, turning from where he’d already started eyeing the overflowing hamper. “Two years and you haven’t got a sofa? Or a bedframe?”
“There isn’t any room for a sofa,” Peter said, frowning at the space. It was seriously tiny.
“There’s room for a small sofa,” Bobby assured him. “And a table, too. Where do you eat?”
“Um. On the bed, mostly. Or, like, at the counter.”
“Standing at the counter?” Antoni said, going into the kitchen.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t have a table. Or a chair.”
“Yeah, we’re going to fix that.” Bobby crossed his arms and did a slow turn in the center of the room. “I’m seeing good light and prewar charm. We can work with that. And hey, it actually doesn’t smell like man musk in here. Congratulations on not being gross.”
Peter blinked. “Um, thanks?”
“Oh my God, there is nothing in this fridge!” Antoni yelled.
Peter had known it was coming, but it was still embarrassing. He shuffled sheepishly toward the kitchen. “There’s stuff in there.”
“What, you mean this fine selection of energy drinks?” Antoni started pulling them out and lining them up on the counter. “We got blue, we got yellow, we got red, we got green. Literally nothing in any of these is found in nature.”
Peter shrugged. “I’m busy. I don’t cook very much.”
“But don’t you have, like, the body of a professional athlete? Don’t you need to take care of yourself physically?”
“Not really. It kind of does what it does no matter what I put in it.”
“Oh to be young again,” Tan sighed as he started separating Peter’s clothes into piles.
“But do you like to cook?” Antoni pressed Peter.
Peter shrugged. “Kind of? My Uncle Ben was the cook in the family. He taught me how to make lasagna and spaghetti and meatballs. After...” Peter stopped. His uncle’s death was one of the things he really didn’t want to talk about on camera in any detail. But mentioning it was probably okay. “After my uncle died when I was fourteen, I did a lot of the cooking, because my aunt isn’t very good at it. But cooking just for myself... I don’t know, there never seems to be any point.”
“What kinds of things did you used to cook?” Antoni asked, leaning one hip against the counter.
“A lot of Italian. Later on, I’d make stuff in the slow cooker –– beef stew, chili, that sort of thing.”
Antoni nodded. “I think that sort of meal makes a lot of sense when you’re busy and mostly cooking for yourself. You can make a lot of it and then freeze whatever you don’t want to eat right away in portions. But your face didn’t light up when you talked about beef stew the way it did when you talked about making Italian food with your uncle. What’s the one thing of his you want to learn how to make?”
“Lasagna,” Peter said, without hesitation. “And maybe meatballs, but mostly –– yeah, my Uncle Ben’s lasagna.”
“Okay,” Antoni said, squeezing his shoulder. “Thanks for sharing that with me about your uncle. But you do know that in order to make lasagna you need more in your fridge than energy drinks, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Peter said, rolling his eyes. “I get it, I’m a mess.”
“Antoni, can I steal Peter from you?” Tan called.
“Sure, I’m just going to go through the only other thing he’s got in his fridge –– twelve kinds of hot sauce.”
“I like hot sauce,” Peter protested, letting himself be steered over to his closet.
“You also like science puns,” Tan said, gesturing toward the t-shirts he’d pulled out. “And Star Wars.”
“Yeah, I’m kind of a nerd,” Peter admitted.
“And that’s great,” Tan said, holding up a shirt against Peter’s chest. “Actually, I like a lot of these t-shirts. They’re not too big on you, though I think you should buy your jeans a size smaller than you have been. But the issue is that you have a young face –– which, believe me, is a blessing. But you don’t want to get carded for the rest of your life, do you?”
He had a point, loathe though Peter was to admit it. “I get mistaken for an undergraduate at least three times a week. It’s kind of annoying.”
“So that’s something we can work on,” Tan said.
“But you’re not going to throw out all my science t-shirts, right?” Peter asked nervously.
“No, just the ones that have holes in them or where the logo is faded into nothing.” Tan turned back around and started sorting again. “Carry on!”
“My turn!” Jonathan said, popping his head out of the bathroom. “Come in here and explain to me why you’ve got an 18-in-1 soap in your shower and literally nothing else.”
Peter tried not to sigh. Most of the camera crew followed him into the bathroom, though one stayed in the living room, presumably to capture the others’ reactions without Peter around. He did his best not to overhear what they were saying. He really, truly did not want to know.
“Okay, so talk to me, Peter,” Jonathan said. “You get up in the morning and what do you do?”
“Shower,” Peter said with a shrug.
“And you do everything with this?” Jonathan said, holding up Peter’s 18-in-1 scent-free soap.
“Yeah, kind of. It’s practical. And it doesn’t smell like much to me. Most soaps smell terrible.”
“Okay, so you’ve got some scent sensitivities,” Jonathan said. “We can totally work with that. But I’ll tell you, you shouldn’t wash your dishes and your face and your hair with the exact same soap. Do you ever get breakouts?”
“Yeah, sometimes,” Peter admitted. “Especially if I’ve been spending a lot of time in the suit with my mask on.”
“Okay, this?” Jonathan held up the soap. “Is not helping with that. It’s stripping away all the good oils from your skin, and then you overproduce oil to make up for it, and that’s how you get breakouts. So keep using it for your hands, dishes, even your body-wash, but we’re getting you a new shampoo and a new face cleanser.”
“Okay,” Peter agreed.
“Do you use moisturizer?”
“Not really.”
“Everyone should use moisturizer, honey.” He put his hands on Peter’s shoulder and squeezed. “I promise this is going to be fun. You have gorgeous skin and gorgeous hair, and we’re going to pamper you until you feel as gorgeous as you are.”
Privately, Peter was skeptical, but it seemed wrong to argue with Jonathan Van Ness about anything, so he just nodded.
“So, Peter,” Bobby said, once they’d filed back out of the bathroom, “tell me what’s going on over here.” He pointed to the desk covered in computer parts.
“Oh, that’s kind of my workshop? I have a real workshop at Tony’s place, but I still like buying stuff cheap on Craigslist or whatever and building whatever I can out of it.”
“And how else do you use the apartment? Do you ever have people over?”
“Not really. Sometimes Tony or May, or my friend Ned.” He carefully didn’t mention MJ, who’d been his most frequent visitor since he’d moved in –– right up until the last three months, when she hadn’t been there at all.
“No other friends?”
Peter shrugged. “Keeping a gigantic secret isn’t really conducive to making friends. Ned’s known about Spiderman since I was in high school. Almost everyone else... there were people I really liked, but it was always there between us, you know?”
“Yeah,” Bobby said, “I really, really do. But you’re out now, and you’ve been out for about eighteen months. You haven’t made any friends since?”
Peter grimaced. “Well, now it’s weird for other reasons. Some of the friends I did make in college feel like I lied to them, or didn’t trust them. And people I meet now... I’m not always sure what their motive is, you know?”
“Yeah, I can see that. But do you feel like the space itself and the fact that it’s so unfinished might also be getting in your way? I mean, there’s nowhere for anyone to sit.”
Peter hadn’t really thought about it that way, even though MJ had often complained about the lack of a chair or sofa. “Maybe? Probably.”
Bobby nodded. “Okay. I’m going to set this place up so that if you do want to have one or two people over, you can do that without everyone having to sit on the floor or the... mattress.” He side-eyed the bed.
Peter winced. “Yeah. That sounds good. I mean, it’s not that I want to live like this. I don’t.”
“Is money the main issue?” Bobby asked.
Peter hesitated. He wanted to say yes, but he knew that wasn’t really it. Or it was, but it also wasn’t. And he had the feeling Bobby knew that. “Not really. I just... I don’t know how to be any other way.”
“Let’s talk about that,” Karamo said, putting his arm around Peter’s shoulders. He gently tugged Peter down so they both sat on the floor, then gestured to the others to sit as well. They sat in a circle, legs crossed, aside from Jonathan, who sprawled out and put his head in Antoni’s lap. “What would you like your life to look like?”
“Um.” Peter swallowed. “I don’t know. I want a nice place to live that I don’t have to apologize for, I guess. But I want to take care of myself. Tony’s always throwing money at me and trying to get me to let him buy me an apartment, and I just, I don’t want that.”
Karamo held his hands up. “Hey, we respect that. What else?”
“I want... I want my relationships to be better. My relationships with Ned and May and Tony and Tony’s daughter Morgan –– she’s like my sister –– and... and other people, I know they suffer because I’m Spiderman. I want to be a good friend, but sometimes I can’t be, because I have this other thing that’s really important. And mostly they understand, but I know that sometimes I hurt them.”
“Mmm. Is that what happened with her?” Karamo turned around the framed photo of Peter and MJ that Peter kept by the bed. It had been taken at Tony’s birthday party last year, on the balcony of Stark Tower. Peter had managed to make it on time for once, and he didn’t have a black eye or butterfly bandages across his forehead. MJ was stunning in a red dress May and Pepper had talked her into. The city glowed behind them in the dusk light.
It had been a good night –– a really good night.
Peter felt himself flush. “Um. Yeah.”
“What’s her name?”
“MJ.”
“You want to tell us more about her?”
Peter didn’t, but there was no getting out of it. “Um. So she... she and I got together in high school, and we kind of broke up and got back together a bunch in college, like I guess everyone does. After we both graduated and moved back here, we decided to try and make it work. Only I screwed up.”
“What do you mean, you screwed up?” Karamo asked.
Peter grimaced. “I showed up to our anniversary dinner two hours late and covered in blood, because –– it doesn’t matter. Because of Spiderman stuff. And MJ... not much freaks her out, but that was kind of the last straw. I’d been a huge flake for weeks leading up to it, and I think she just wanted to know that I could put her first once.” Peter’s voice cracked. “She told me that she deserves to have someone who’s going to be an equal partner, and she left.”
“I’m sorry,” Antoni said quietly. “That sounds really hard. You were together off and on for what, eight years? That’s longer than a lot of marriages.”
“I couldn’t even be mad at her,” Peter said miserably. “She wasn’t wrong about anything. I just don’t know how to make it all work. And –– and I’m really tired. I’m so tired.”
He realized with horror that he was close to tears. Goddammit. This was why he hadn’t wanted to do this. Bobby reached over and put a hand on his knee. Jonathan handed him a tissue. Peter mumbled his thanks.
“So, this week is a good time for you to take a break,” Karamo said. “I think you’ll find that when you’re well-rested, it’s easier to think clearly about your life. And listen, we might not be superheroes, but we all know what it’s like to keep a really big secret. We know what kind of effect that has on your relationships with other people. We’re here to help you figure this stuff out.”
Peter nodded. “Thank you.”
“And maybe at the end of the week,” Bobby added, “you can have some people over –– the people closest to you –– and give a little party to thank them for supporting you through this whole transition. I think all of us have people we wouldn’t have made it through our coming out experiences without, you know? And sometimes we assume those people know how important they are to us, but often they don’t. So expressing that gratitude is important.”
“I’d like that,” Peter said. “I know it hasn’t been easy on them –– on any of them, but I think my aunt might have had it the hardest. She’s spent all these years supporting me, even though it scared the hell out of her. I’d really like to get the chance to thank her.”
“Okay, then, that’s our plan.” Karamo nodded to the camera crew, and they started to pack it in. “We’re looking forward to helping you, but for now we’ll get out of your hair. You’re staying at Stark Tower this week, right?”
Peter relaxed, now that the cameras were no longer rolling. “Yeah, I was going to head over after this, squeeze some patrolling in on the way.”
“Or you could not do that,” Karamo pointed out. “You patrolled this afternoon. You could just go have dinner with your family. Take the evening off.”
Peter shrugged. “I have time, and it’s basically on the way. I’ll still get there on time –– well, almost on time.”
Karamo didn't quite look disapproving, but Peter had the impression he disagreed with the decision. “Okay, you do you, Peter. Get a good night’s sleep, though, because we’re picking this up again tomorrow.”
Peter saw them to the door, and listened as the five of them trooped down five flights of stairs. Then he took a deep breath. He needed to decompress before seeing Tony and Morgan and Pepper, and the best way to do that was to webswing to the tower. And if he just happened to run into someone in trouble on the way, he wasn’t going to not help them. But he wouldn’t go looking for it, he promised himself. It would be an easy, quick trip.
Famous last words.
***
It was quiet for a minute or two after the Fab Five piled back into the SUV, with Antoni behind the wheel this time and no cameras running. All of them were coming down from having been “on” for several hours. Karamo was thinking about the way Peter’s voice had broken when he’d said that he was tired.
Peter had been Spiderman for ten years, Karamo thought. Ten years. If he was going to make it through ten more, he clearly had to make some changes.
Tan cleared his throat. “It’s been a while since we’ve had someone cry on the first day.”
“He’s really underwater,” Karamo said. “And the stuff with MJ broke his heart. You can see it.”
“Are you going to try and talk to her?” Antoni asked. “Get her angle on things?”
“I might,” Karamo said. He thought that was probably the thread to pull on, if he really wanted to unravel the mess that was Peter Parker’s life. But he also never pressured a significant other, much less an ex-significant other, to appear on camera if they didn’t want to. “I’ll see if we can. But really, I think this one is going to be all about balance. He’s let Spiderman swamp everything else in his life. I see why the people who care about him are worried about burnout.”
“I have to say,” Bobby said, “based on the dossier, I was expecting him to serve us some serious manchild in that apartment, but it’s more like he’s a monk.”
“That’s probably a good analogy,” Karamo said. “He’s in service to something larger than himself. But he’s gotta realize that even if that’s true, he still has to take care of himself. Otherwise he’s going to burn right out.”
“And putting up walls doesn’t help you serve anyone,” Jonathan added sagely.
“You got any ideas?” Karamo asked Bobby.
“Too many,” Bobby said. “We have permission from the building to paint and do some minor repairs, but I think the bulk of it’s going to be getting him some furniture. It’s not a terrible apartment, actually –– I was expecting mold or mildew or something, but he just hasn’t ever moved in.”
“He needs to learn how to let other people help,” Karamo said, “and also how to be there for the people in his life. He helps so many people as Spiderman, but it sounds like MJ broke up with him because he couldn’t be there for her in any kind of consistent way. But that runs both directions.”
There was a general murmur of agreement, then a beat of silence. “Anyone know what’s for dinner?” Tan asked after a moment.
“There’s Thai food waiting at the loft,” Antoni said, glancing up from his phone.
“Thank God,” Bobby said. “It’s gonna be a long night.”
Karamo tuned out the rest of the conversation, turning his mind back to Peter. He hadn’t wanted to argue with him on the first day; there would be time later to challenge Peter’s beliefs about himself and his life, once they’d built a bit more trust. But he hoped he didn’t stay out too late. Tomorrow was a big day.