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“Okay, Petey. Take your time. Line up your shot.”
“Huh?” Peter pokes his head around the camera. “What does that mean?”
Golden light filters in through the half-closed curtains, bringing with it a gentle breeze and the murmured hubbub of Queens on the waning end of a Saturday afternoon. Snatches of pedestrian conversation drift up through the window and form a pastiche with the sounds of car alarms, rumbling buses, distant sirens, and the endless aggressive honking that in New York passes for ambience.
“Well,” Ben says, “there’s a lot more that goes into photography than just the settings on the camera. Do you know what composition means?” He gets up out of his worn armchair and kneels next to Peter.
“Yes. Um. No.” Peter frowns at the camera and then at Ben. “Sort of.”
Ben laughs and leans over, grabbing a piece of mail from the coffee table and flipping it to reveal the blank side. He sketches out a quick grid in pencil. “See what I’m doing here?”
“Yeah,” Peter says hesitantly. “You divided the paper in three and then in three again.”
“Right. Sheesh, the brains on you, kiddo!” Ben grins at Peter and then turns the pencil around, using the eraser side to poke at the paper. “This is called the rule of thirds. Imagine this grid placed over everything you can see through the viewfinder. You see the parts where the lines intersect? You want to line up your subject with those points. It adds visual interest and guides the eye.”
“Subject?”
“The thing you’re taking a picture of.”
Peter frowns again, looking at his action figures lined up on the kitchen table. “But I’m taking a picture of lots of things, Uncle Ben. Look, there’s Captain America, Iron Man, Princess Leia, the kitchen table, all the stuff behind the kitchen table...how do I know which one’s the subject?”
“Easy. The subject is the most important thing in the shot.”
Peter crawls up onto Ben’s knee. “But I don’t know what that is, Uncle Ben,” he moans, burying his little curly head into Ben’s shoulder, the picture of abject seven-year-old misery. “How do I choose between Princess Leia, Iron Man and Captain America? I can’t pick just one!”
Ben stifles a laugh and pushes Peter’s round glasses back up his nose. “You can choose all three of them, shutterbug. You just have to group them, like this-” he rearranges the plastic toys so that they’re standing close together- “and then make sure that the background is nice and simple, so that there’s no distractions. Then you adjust your aperture – yep, just like that – and...”
Click.
“Hey! That looks good!” Peter squeals, squinting at the picture in the LCD. “Right, Uncle Ben? Right?”
“You’re a natural,” Ben praises. “Good job, sweetheart. Hey, want to take one more? Then we can get started on dinner.”
“Yeah!” Peter cheers. “Let’s have, um, let’s have pancakes.”
“Pancakes, huh?” Peter grins up at him, all glasses and freckles and missing front tooth, and that’s about all the onvincing Ben needs. “Well...I’m sure your aunt wouldn’t say no to some nice pancakes after a long hift,” he concedes.
“With blueberries? No, with chocolate chips. No, blueberries and chocolate chips- hey, Uncle Ben, do you think Reese’s Pieces would be good in pancakes? What about – what about – Fruit Loops? Fruit Loop pancakes! Yeah! I’m a genius! ”
Ben scoops Peter up, tickling his sides. “An evil genius, more like,” he growls, as Peter erupts into shrieking giggles. “Someone’s gotta curb those mad scientist impulses of yours, before...you turn to the dark side!” He says this last bit with extra drama, dipping Peter so he’s upside-down.
“Nooooo!” Peter howls through peals of laughter, squirming and kicking his legs. “I won’t go to the dark side! Let me down, Uncle Ben-”
“Blueberry or chocolate chip. Choose only one, you must,” Ben says in his best Yoda voice. “Restraint in cooking, the mark of a true Jedi is.”
“Blueberry, blueberry, blueberry,” Peter screeches. As Ben puts him down right-side up, he adds, cheekily, “We can have Fruit Loops as a side dish.”
“Drive a hard bargain, you do,” Ben grumbles, handing Peter the camera.
“Okay, now go sit over there,” Peter instructs, pointing to the armchair. “Where the sun is.”
“Me?” Ben says, raising an eyebrow. “You sure you don’t want to get one more of Iron Man?”
Peter raises an eyebrow right back. “You’re my subject, Uncle Ben. Come on! It’s the golden hour! You gotta hurry, before we lose the light!”
“So you were paying attention last week,” Ben chuckles as he drops into the chair. He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You got your shot all lined up? You want me to do a fancy pose or anything?”
Peter peeks through the viewfinder at Ben, in his worn jeans and his favourite plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his sandy hair perpetually rumpled no matter how many times he smooths it down and a warm smile creasing his broad face all the way up to the corners of his kind brown eyes. “No,” he decides, “Just stay exactly like that, okay?”
“Okay, honey,” Ben says. “I will.”
Click.
“May! Look over here!”
May turns away from the bowl of batter she’s stirring. There’s frosting on her nose.
Click.
“Peter Benjamin, you delete that immediately-”
Peter grins and hops down from the counter, tilting the phone screen towards her. “Nah, look, it’s cute. You should put it on your Facebook. Or LinkedIn, or whatever social media old people are using these days.”
“You cheeky little goober,” May scolds, wrapping one arm around him and using the other hand to muss his hair. “Are you gonna help with these cupcakes or no?”
“You really think that’s a good idea?” Peter wrinkles his nose.
May waves the spatula at him. “There’s a term for that, you know, baby. Strategic incompetence.”
“Strategic what now?”
“You know, where you bat those big eyes of yours and pretend you can’t cook so no one asks you to do it. Go grease the muffin tin, you hooligan. Make yourself useful.” May ruffles Peter’s hair with her free hand until it sticks up on end (over his loud protests) and then turns back to her mixing bowl. “Who the hell invented school bake sales anyway?”
“Some overbearing PTA mom, probably,” Peter says, crouching down in the pantry and rummaging around for the cooking spray.
“Or someone who hates single parents,” May snorts.
She stops mixing abruptly. Peter’s hand freezes just as it closes around the can of PAM.
They’ve talked about it. Of course they have. They’d been to therapy together, and separately, until the money ran out and the free school counseling ran its course. May had held Peter through the many sleepless nights, her arms around him the only thing keeping him together, whispering it’s not your fault, baby, it’s not your fault.
They just don’t talk about it like this – casually, in passing. Not yet.
Peter suddenly feels like he’s floating away from himself. The golden late-afternoon sunbeams streaming in through the sheer curtains bathe the kitchen in a dreamy glow, and his newly enhanced eyesight focuses in on dust-motes swirling around May’s head even as his mind drifts ever farther away.
This can’t be real, can it? Peter and May in the kitchen, without Ben. How can this be real when the two of them have never managed to cook a single thing together without burning it? Who’s going to shoo them out of the kitchen and thirty minutes later pull a perfect batch of cupcakes out of the oven?
Maybe he’ll wake up. Any minute now.
“Or someone who hates strategically incompetent kids,” Peter says, and the loudness of his own voice brings him crashing back down into himself.
May laughs, also a little too loudly, but she puts aside her bowl and crouches down next to Peter. She reaches out and gently takes the can of PAM from him.
“Hey, show me that picture again,” she says, resting her chin on his shoulder. “That is pretty nice. How’d you make me look so good, huh?”
“It’s, um,” Peter waves his hand towards the window, “the lighting. This time of day is really good for pictures. And also you’re really photogenic,” he adds, with a wide grin.
“You’re funny,” May says. She kisses him on the temple. “You think flattery’s gonna get you out of helping with these godforsaken cupcakes, do you?”
“Noooo. Well, maybe. Would that work?”
May digs her fingers in under his ribs, making him squeak. “Brat. Let’s capitalize on the lighting and take a selfie.” She gets up and pulls him up with her. They choose a spot by the window, and Peter takes his time lining up the shot.
“Are you taking forever on purpose? Just take a bunch and then we’ll pick the best one.”
“If we just do this one right we won’t need to take a bunch.”
“Are you sure you’re fourteen? You sound like an old man.”
“Whatever. Since when are you a selfie expert?”
May pokes him in the side again and takes advantage of his laughter to reach up and smack the camera button.
Click.
“May! Now we gotta do it over again!”
“We do not. Look, it’s adorable. How can we possibly be so cute? That’s crazy.”
Peter squints critically at the picture. He’s laughing, mouth open wide and eyes crinkled at the corners, curled into May’s side. She’s grinning directly into the camera with one arm wrapped around his shoulder. The light glints off the frames of her glasses and makes dappled patterns on their skin.
“It’s not bad,” he decides.
They burn the cupcakes.
After a defeated trip to the grocery store they find themselves de-packaging cheap cupcakes into May’s mismatched tupperware. “We can’t just bring it in the container from the store,” May says authoritatively. “The trick to school bake sales is to at least make it look like you’ve put effort into the deception.”
“Why didn’t we just go to the store in the first place?” Peter grumbles.
“Learning experience.” May jabs a finger into the air. “For example, I learned that you’re not strategically incompetent in the kitchen.”
“I told you so.”
“Also, I learned that if I want to take a really good selfie, I should take it in the afternoon with my very photogenic nephew.”
Peter can’t help but smile at that. “And I learned that the person who invented school bake sales was definitely a sadist.”
“Damn right,” May agrees.
No one chased them out of the kitchen, so they burned the cupcakes. The landlord yelled at them again, because they’re both too short to reach the fire alarm and it took both of them balancing on the same chair a full ten minutes to figure out how to silence the beeping. They’re not going to show up tomorrow with perfectly frosted handmade confections. Cindy’s mom is definitely going to know that the cupcakes were store-bought.
But they’re okay, somehow.
Peter changes his lockscreen as a reminder.
They’re okay.
“Come on, just hold still for half a second.”
“No.”
“Noooo!”
“Pepper, make them hold still.”
“Lost cause, sweetheart.” Pepper passes by on her way to the kitchen, ruffling Peter’s hair before he can duck away.
Peter frowns at Tony, putting his camera aside. “You’re setting a bad example.”
“That’s right, and don’t you forget it,” Tony says, pointing his finger dramatically. He’s wearing an absolutely hideous holiday sweater and seems way too pleased with himself about it. “What’s that I told you, all those years ago? Don’t do anything I would do.”
“That was about superhero stuff,” Peter protests. “You’re like, a boring old dad now. Can’t you just act like it for two seconds?”
“Maybe one second,” Tony says, then he suddenly holds up a finger and goes completely still. “Yeah, no, I tried. Sorry kid.”
“Petey,” Morgan says, trying to wiggle her way into his lap. “Petey. Petey.”
“What do you want, huh?” Peter says, his peevishness melting away against his will as he hoists her up the rest of the way. “You can’t stay still for a picture, and now you wanna cuddle?”
“Uh huh.” Morgan bares her little baby teeth. “Cuddle.”
Peter wraps his arms around her and pulls her in close, because she’s in a major biting phase and he knows that was an explicit threat.
“May!” Tony hollers. “Maaaaaaaay.”
“What!” May yells back from somewhere in the direction of the kitchen.
“Get in here. Bring the wine.”
“Come get it yourself, you sad old man!”
“I can’t! I’m parenting!”
Peter puts a hand over his face and lets out a long sigh.
“Yeah, well, I’m baking!” May retorts.
“Are you?” Pepper’s voice teases.
May enters the room shortly thereafter, bearing a bottle of wine and three glasses. She sighs, in that particularly world-weary way only an Italian widow can, and sits down on the floor cross-legged next to Tony. “I thought maybe if Pepper was supervising I wouldn’t do too badly,” she admits.
“There, there,” Tony says, patting her on the arm. “We all have our strengths. You’re not as bad as ol’ Petey over there, anyways.”
“Hey,” Peter says, frowning. “What did I ever do to you?”
“You called me a boring old dad like, three seconds ago,” Tony accuses. “Here, have a glass of wine.”
“Oh, I see, you’re a cool dad,” May teases, although she doesn’t stop him from handing the glass to Peter.
“Juishe,” Morgan says, reaching for the glass.
“You two are the worst,” Peter says, waving it away. “Leave me out of your wine mom club.”
“Suit yourself,” May says, shrugging and downing Peter’s glass in one go before starting on her own. “You can just get trashed on spiked eggnog with us when Rhodey gets here. Hey, what’s the camera for? Are we doing family pictures?”
“We would be, if Tony would contain his gremlin for just two seconds so I could get both of them in the frame,” Peter says. Morgan looks like anything but a gremlin right now – all flushed cheeks and pigtails and adorable Christmas tree-printed overalls – but if there’s anything Peter’s learned about toddlers it’s that they can flip to the dark side in about two seconds flat.
“The gremlin cannot be contained,” Tony says sagely, sipping at his wine. “Rule number one of parenthood.”
“I’ll drink to that,” May replies with a wicked little smile at Peter.
Rhodey arrives shortly afterwards, wearing a holiday sweater that matches Tony’s – both insist that this wasn’t planned, and the sad thing is that that’s actually plausible – then Happy shortly afterwards bearing so many gifts that he’s forced to be extra gruff to offset his own demonstration of holiday cheer, and then Pepper’s so busy in the kitchen that Tony is recruited to help and May is off putting the last touches on the Christmas tree and that means Peter is the designated babysitter.
Morgan is over her angelic cuddling phase and is now hell-bent on destroying the Christmas tree, her pudgy little legs carrying her towards it at breakneck pace whenever Peter sets her down on the ground.
“Wow. Like a Terminator,” Rhodey says unhelpfully from the couch, where he’s lounging and polishing off Tony’s shitty attempt at Christmas cookies as he watches a holiday special. “She gets that from her dad.”
“There’s no way I could’ve guessed that,” Peter mutters, scooping Morgan off the ground. Her legs continue to churn away into empty air, like a cartoon character. “Hey, Morguna, you wanna play tea party instead?”
“No,” Morgan says, arms stretching out towards the tree. The second she senses Peter’s not going to put her down immediately, she lunges towards his arm, baby teeth at the ready.
“Ow,” Peter complains. “Tony!” he yells. “Morgan bit me! Again.”
“Bite her back,” Tony calls. “Teach her a lesson.”
“What? No!”
“Hey,” May chimes in, “if Morgan was radioactive and bit Pete, would he switch superpowers? Or would he get Morgan-powers in addition to the spider-powers?”
“May!” Peter groans, then dumps Morgan into Rhodey’s lap and marches away.
Tony finds him a while later, sitting on the porch swing.
“I wasn’t kidding,” Tony says, sitting down next to him. “You can totally bite her back. Pep did it last week. Toddlers are tiny terrorists and we can’t let them win.”
Peter doesn’t respond. He knows he’s being petulant but he can’t help the despair welling up in his chest as the sun finishes setting, the last rays of orange light giving way to a bluish haze.
“Hey,” Tony says. He pokes Peter’s shoulder. “What’s up, Parker? You’ve been a real bear today. I thought you liked all the cheesy holiday stuff.”
“I do,” Peter mutters. “I just...” he sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I really wanted to get pictures of everyone, and now...”
“What?” Tony says, surprised. “You can still get pictures. It’s not like we’re going anywhere. May’s been aiming that new phone of hers at everything that moves. Told you it was a good idea to get her one with a camera for her birthday.”
“I can’t,” Peter says, knowing full well how pathetic it sounds, “because the golden hour is gone so the lighting is going to be crap and there’s just no point.”
“Well, sure there is,” Tony says, in his ‘reassuring parent’ voice. Peter hates it. It makes him feel like a child. “Just because the lighting isn’t perfect-”
“You don’t understand,” Peter says, desperately trying to find the words. “It’s just...I was trying all afternoon to get everyone together for a picture, but everyone was off doing other stuff, so I tried getting smaller groups, and you and Morgan wouldn’t even sit still for two seconds, and...is it really so crazy just to want a good picture of my family so I can remember this day properly?” His tone is bordering on frantic and he has no idea why he’s getting so worked up about this. He scrubs his eyes furiously, willing the tears not to come.
Tony sighs. After a moment he reaches out and puts his arm around Peter, pulling him in close. “I know, kid,” he says. “I know.”
Peter is nineteen, in college, and aware he’s way too old to be crying to his sort-of-pseudo-father-figure like this – but he gives up and rests his head on Tony’s shoulder, letting the tears well up and spill down his nose. He lets Tony’s familiar scent of aftershave, motor oil and black coffee slowly unwind the knot in his chest.
“Photography was Ben’s thing,” he says finally. “And the pictures were always so good it was like – looking at them, it was like -”
“Yeah,” Tony says gently.
“And then one day I kinda noticed that he was never in any of the pictures, ‘cause he was always the one taking them,” Peter continues. “So I made him teach me. But my pictures of him were never as good as his pictures of me, and after...you know, when me and May would look through the old albums...I just...I wish I’d been better at it.”
“Okay, kid, upsy-daisy,” Tony says, standing up abruptly and pulling Peter with him. “Let’s go.” He marches back into the house without a backwards glance. Peter blinks in surprise, roughly scrubs the rest of the tears from his face, takes a deep breath, then follows Tony inside.
“Living room!” Tony yells obnoxiously, kicking Rhodey awake and nearly causing him to fall off the couch.
“What the hell, man-”
“Come on! Living room! Andiamo!”
“Don’t you andiamo me, Tony Stark-” May protests, but allows herself to be herded towards the tree anyways.
“Tony, honey, what is this all of a sudden?”
“He’s finally lost it. We all knew it was coming. So sad.”
“Let’s go, let’s go, people! Line up by the tree! This is not a drill!”
“Petey!” Morgan shrieks, making a beeline for Peter’s knees.
“Uh uh,” Tony says, scooping her up. “This way, little miss.” He turns to Peter. “You gonna set up the camera, or what?”
“Oh,” Peter says, taken aback. “Uh...”
“You know what? You’re right,” Tony says, completely misinterpreting his hesitation. “You shouldn’t be the one taking it. That thing got a self-timer function?”
“Yup,” Peter says.
“I estimate we’ve got about ninety seconds before all hell breaks loose,” Tony says. “Get on it, Parker.”
Tony is wrong. Turns out they have about forty-five seconds before hell breaks loose. Peter has just finished setting up the tripod and the timer when Morgan gets her hands on a Christmas ornament, tugging viciously in a way that threatens to topple the entire tree. Happy goes to pry apart her tiny yet ferocious grip and is promptly bitten for his trouble. Then Happy’s swearing, Rhodey and May are laughing uproariously, Pepper has her hands over her face in horror, and Tony is standing in front of the entire disastrous scene, striking a classic Iron Man pose.
“Come on, kid!” he yells. “Get in here!”
Peter grins, sets the timer, and sprints. He skids into place and slides into his best Spider-Man pose just as the shutter goes off.
Click.
It’s probably the worst holiday picture anyone’s ever taken. It’s out of focus and the lighting from the Christmas tree casts weird shadows on everyone and the way they’re lined up is against every rule of portrait photography ever invented. Not to mention the fact that Happy is holding Morgan at arm’s length like she’s the literal Antichrist and her demonic smile does nothing to dispel that image.
But it’s also the best holiday picture anyone’s ever taken, and Peter tacks it up on his bedroom wall. Right between a picture of Peter and May in the kitchen and a picture of Ben smiling in his favourite worn armchair.