Chapter Text
“Peter? Are you okay in there?” May bit her lip and knocked gently on her nephew’s door. The weird noises she’d been hearing stopped in a panicked sort of silence.
She waited a beat before slowly turning the knob and pushing open the door, when a voice that wasn’t Peter’s yelled “NO!” and something slammed against the door. It was lucky she wasn’t wearing the high heels she’d had on ten minutes ago; the force of the door coming back at her sent her stumbling back. As good as she was in them, her butt would’ve met the floor, and she hadn’t mopped in a week. Nevertheless, she stood a few paces away from the door in shock until she found her words again.
“What in the world is going on, Peter? Is that Ned in there with you?”
“Sorry, Ms Parker! We’re, ah, watching porn?
There was a smack sound and some furious whispering before Peter’s face appeared in a crack in the doorway. Sweat dripped down his beet-red face, and the way his shirt caught on his hip said that it had been put on hastily, just then. She knew him well enough to know that his nervous grin meant he was about to lie to her- something he’d seemed to be doing a lot of lately.
“Um, sorry, May, we were not watching porn-” he shot an angry glance at Ned- “but we were watching an R-rated movie, and I know you don’t really like me watching those if you haven’t seen it yet because you think I don’t know what sex is or something so I just kind of panicked and that’s why I rammed the door into you- um, but yeah. That’s all we were watching. Not porn,” he added, with another glance at Ned. May peeked around the door to see Ned, shrugging, with the guiltiest look on his face May had ever seen.
Yeah. Complete lie.
But as she looked between the two boy’s guilty faces, something began to dawn on her- why hadn’t she seen it sooner?
So instead of calling them out on their lie, she just nodded and backed away, as if buying it. “Oh. Okay. If that’s all.” Peter looked at Ned in an obvious moment of Dude! I can’t believe she bought it!
“Well, I’m pretty wiped from my date, so I’m just gonna-” she clicked her tongue and pointed her thumb over her shoulder- “head to bed! Ned, you have a ride home?”
Peter started to say something but was cut off by Ned. “Actually, I’m staying the night.”
May just looked at each of the boy’s faces, unsure what to say. Peter buried his head in his hands. Ned stared at Peter in mild confusion before continuing--
“Oh, well I mean, my parents are out of town, but I didn’t want to be alone, so Peter said I could stay with him tonight. So I wasn’t alone.”
“I see…” May said, still backing up.
There was a pregnant pause that stretched until Peter said “’Night, May,” and she quickly repeated the phrase back to him and backed into her room quickly. Once inside, she quietly banged her head against the hollow door as if trying to erase the night from her memory.
“Well, that was awkward.”
After ensuring that May was safely in her room and out of earshot, Peter turned angrily to face his best friend.
“We’re watching porn ?! Is that your excuse for everything?!”
Ned threw his arms in the air. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Sorry, Ms Parker, you can’t come in right now, I’m just sewing up your nephew after someone knifed him in the back!’”
“I don’t know, Ned!” Peter practically yelled. He put his hands on his head and started to pace, ignoring the stinging pain in his back. He could feel his heart rate speeding up as he began to breath faster. Ned looked at him with concern.
“Dude, what’s the big deal? You fixed it with your story, anyway.”
“The big deal?” Peter hissed, halting his pacing to jam a finger in Ned’s face. “The big deal is that she knows I’ve been hiding something, and now she thinks she’s figured out what! The big deal is that she didn’t believe my story, Ned! So now she thinks we were watching porn together, which is bad enough, but then you had to make it worse by saying that we are SLEEPING TOGETHER!!”
The color slowly drained from Ned’s face as he reached the same realization minutes after Peter had. “So your aunt thinks we’re… she thinks we’re…”
“Oh yeah, Ned! She does!”
Ned shook his head quickly. “No, no, no, no. She wouldn’t think that, right? I mean, it makes no sense, right?”
“C’mon, Catherine, it makes total sense!” May pulled her container of potato salad out of the fridge and dug straight in with a spoon. Catherine snagged a bite with her fork before putting her rice in the microwave and shrugged.
“I guess… but that’s a pretty big thing to assume about someone.”
“I’m not assuming! It all makes sense now!” May insisted. “First, the random disappearances, as well as his secrecy and lies about where he was going. Second, the extended amount of time he’s been spending at Ned’s. Third, the phone calls he’ll be on with Ned in his room, whispering, and as soon as I walk in, he suddenly stops talking. And fourth… whatever happened last night.”
“May.” Catherine turned to her with a disbelieving look on her face, stirring barbeque sauce into her rice.
“Ew,” May scrunched up her nose at her friend’s lunch.
“What? Oh, you’ve never tried it. It’s good.”
Now it was May’s turn for a disbelieving look.
“Whatever. Anyway, you’re jumping to conclusions. Even if Peter was… you know, it still wouldn't explain everything. Didn’t you tell me the other day that he’d quit the band? And he comes home with random bumps and bruises, always with the worst excuses?”
“He did tell me once that he broke his nose running into a lamppost…” May conceded, sliding a potato off her spoon slowly. “So, what? You think he’s in a secret underground fight club or something?”
“No, just that there’s probably another explanation for all this other than he’s with his best friend. And the only way to find out is to talk to him.”
May groaned and leaned up against the fridge. “Raising a teenager is hard,” she whined.
“Oh, honey, don’t even tell me about it. I raised three.”
When Peter heard May come home from work, he knew she would want to talk to him about… things, and he didn’t really want to explain the fresh new bruise on his cheek, so he did the sensible thing. He climbed out his window and sat on the roof of their apartment building, doing his homework.
After a few minutes (enough for May to search the apartment and find him missing) his phone dinged:
may: Where are you?
peter: studying
peter: with friends
peter: mj and andrew
peter: we’re in a group project together
peter: you dont know andrew
peter: hes in my bio class
may: Ok
Peter groaned. Overcompensating much, Peter? It seemed like things would never be not awkward with May after everything the night before.
A sigh escaped him after he realized he had gotten exactly half a math problem done in the last hour. No- not even half a problem. He’d used the wrong formula.
Giving up, he laid down and stared at the darkening sky. Stars were beginning to emerge, making him think of something Ben taught him when he was small, just after his parents died.
“Time for sleep, bud. Hop up on your bed before May comes home and sees you awake an hour past your bedtime.” Ben lifted the little boy on his bed, and he immediately bounded over to the window.
“Look, Ben! The first star!” Peter’s pudgy finger pointed at the blinking light, smudging the glass with his tiny fingerprint.
“Quick, Pete! Make a wish!” Ben scooted up by the window and pulled Peter on his lap. His nephew looked up at him, his almost nonexistent eyebrows furrowed.
“A wish?”
“You’ve never wished on a star before?”
“No…” Peter said with a small shake of his head.
“It’s easy. Just repeat after me. Are you ready?”
And Peter found himself, fourteen years later, remembering what Ben had taught him that night. He could almost feel his warm smile shining down on him, the smile that made him feel like nothing could ever hurt him. Peter longed to feel his uncle’s arms wrapped around him again, feel his rough hands wipe away his tears one more time.
He had never told anyone, but he could hardly remember his dad’s face. People showed him pictures of a man that looked exactly like him and said it was his father, but when he tried to reach into the depths of his memory, all he could see was Ben. Ben’s smile, Ben’s laugh, Ben’s embrace, Ben’s comfort. His voice echoed in Peter’s head now, and he repeated the words he’d said when Ben had held him in his arms, a lifetime ago.
“Star light, star bright…”
“Star light, star bright…”
“I wish I may, I wish I might…”
“I wish I may, I wish I might…”
“Wish the wish I wish tonight.”
“Wish the wish I wish tonight.”
“Now you wish for anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Anything. But silently. Don’t tell anyone what you wished for.”
“I wish…” Peter whispered. He squeezed his eyes shut and wished harder than he’d wished for anything.
He knew it was impossible, his wish.
But it didn’t stop him from making it.
“I love you, Uncle Ben.”
“Love you, too, kiddo.”
“I miss you, Uncle Ben.”
This time, there was no response.
An hour later, he was jerked awake by… something. He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep. Groggily he checked his phone and found several missed texts from May, all in the last ten minutes.
“Oops,” he said, reassuring May that he was not dead in the gutter, and that he’d be home in twenty minutes. Just enough time to finish that episode of Psych.
Then he realized what he’d been woken up by.
There was something happening. Something bad. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but this happened sometimes. It was almost like a sixth sense for danger. It was unreliable and didn’t always show up to save him, but occasionally he’d get this feeling like… he needed to go somewhere. And almost always, it led him to someone in danger. One time, it had turned out that he was just hungry and it had guided him to his favorite hot dog stand.
But this time, someone needed help. He could tell.
He just needed his suit. It should be in his room, he just needed to get back in through the window. But once he crawled (carefully) down the wall, a quick peek inside revealed May at his computer in his room. This wasn’t uncommon, as they could only afford one computer, but it couldn’t be more inconvenient.
He made a split-second decision. Spider-Man always got to save the day. It was time Peter Parker got a turn.
Twenty minutes passed. No Peter. May wasn't worried. He’s often late.
Twenty-five minutes. She shot him a text. No response.
Thirty minutes now. Peter was never on time for anything, she reminded herself. Still, something felt wrong.
After forty-five minutes, she called him. May had never been so worried after hearing someone’s voicemail.
At one hour without Peter, she remembered when Peter showed her the “Find My Phone” thing so she could see where he was. That reassured her for about two minutes, until she saw the words “Location services are off for this person. Ask them to turn them on in Settings.”
Peter was never this late. Not without letting her know. Well, except for that one time. But who didn’t know the way home from their favorite hot dog stand?!
She told herself to calm down. Call him one more time. So she did. And he didn’t pick up.
A minute later, just as she was getting ready to get up and walk around New York to search for him, her phone lit up with his name.
Her heart bursting with relief, she answered immediately. “Peter? Are you ok? Where have you been? What are—”
She was interrupted by an adult male voice that was definitely not Peter’s. “Who is this?”
May thought this was quite audacious of him, as he was the one with someone else’s phone. “Who is this ? What are you doing with my nephew’s phone?”
“This is Officer Jefferson Davis. Are you his legal guardian?”
“I- yes, why? Where is he?”
“I found your nephew’s phone at a crime scene. I—”
“What kind of crime scene? Is Peter okay?” May almost missed the answer because the blood rushing in her ears coupled with her heavy breathing was trying its best to drown out any other noise.
“Your nephew was involved in a mugging. He was shot once in the stomach. He is currently at Mount Sinai Emergency Room.”
Peter was laying in the gutter, dying, precisely what he’d told May he wasn’t doing. He was vaguely aware of people arguing over him, someone crying, and someone making weird gurgling noises. The last one might’ve been him, but he couldn’t be sure.
He probably blacked out because the next thing he knew, he was in an ambulance and two worried faces swam above him.
“....hear me, kid? Can you tell me your name?”
Peter coughed and pulled off his oxygen mask. “Bonzu Pippinpaddleopsicopolis the Third,” he managed to choke out. He just registered the confusion on one medic's face and the slight amusement on the other's before blacking out a second time.