Chapter Text
There’s a pattern of behavior to these vigilante types. May’s been mapping it. Motherfuckers share the same four personality traits and she’s got every one pinned to a little corkboard stored in the furthest back corner of her brain.
Peter was, of course, the first one in whom she noticed the characteristics. She knows him like she knows no one and nothing else. He’s her kid, all six feet and going on an inch of him. Hyperactive and indefatigably bouncy and allergic to walnuts. He’s predictable, easy to read.
First and most important trait to consider: the complete and utter lack of any semblance of a self-preservation instinct. Not a one of them has ever backed away from a challenge. They all act as if bravery and idiocy and reckless abandon are synonymous. As if there’s no distinct line between what has the potential to hurt them and what will hurt them, no ‘and’s, ‘if’s, or ‘but’s.
She thought she’d taught Peter the value of his own life as a kid, but his nightly excursions to all the impossibly high corners of the tallest skyscrapers in the city are veritable evidence of her failure in that regard. Those old fucks in red spandex that he runs around with are even worse. They’re accomplices. Enablers. Certifiable rat bastards. And Stark’s gaggle, good lord. Martyr complexes, the lot of them. She’s of the opinion that someone needs to give Banner a couple of Xanax and a good, long hug.
The second characteristic is subtler, but no less distinct and certainly just as ubiquitous—their unending, compassionate drive to pursue good.
‘Good’ in this context is not an objective word. Has never been one. Herein lies a fair majority of the in-group conflict. Deadpool good is often antithetical to Spider-Man good. Romanov good is only the same as Punisher good, it feels to May, every other full moon for approximately twelve hours. And they’re all pettier than a pack of stray cats haggling over whose territory ends where.
To their credit, every one of them pursues their version of justice to no end, and with such incredible violence that it makes May’s E.R. graveyard shift hindbrain shudder involuntarily.
With the untenable quality of this intrinsic need to enact their version of good comes an amorphous and inexorable loneliness. A deep, gutting knowledge that no matter what they do to effect positive change, they’re always going to hurt someone. There is always a loser, and the fact they can’t absorb that impact kills them inside. And when they try to rectify the damage?
Well, that earns them a lovely little battle against an illness that begins with “post-traumatic” and ends with “stress disorder”.
Ain’t no piecing together of parts which have warped into crooked and unrecognizable shapes.
The guilt aspect of this one may or may not apply to Deadpool. His psyche’s an enigma that May has yet to crack. But Castle? Frank “The Punisher” Castle? An empathic and tortured little shit at his core. Can’t bear what he’s become. Buries it in canned beans and set jaws and lets it break his walls down from the inside out.
May has come to understand that this manifests differently in each case. Murdock shuts himself off from the world. Barton’s the same. Stark throws himself into work, doubles what he’s putting into philanthropy, loses himself in distraction. Thor just fucking leaves to sulk alone in his home dimension.
She kind of likes Thor. Fucks with his vibe; self-pity feels a lot less indulgent when done in a place where no one has to bear witness.
This was the first characteristic she saw in Peter. An aching desperation reflected in the whites of his eyes when he was ten and watching a news segment on a domestic terror attack. Sobbing mess the first time he couldn’t save someone while out fighting in the suit. Panic disorders and breathing exercises and therapy that is way too goddamn expensive, even on their insurance.
It’s the one that leads to their inevitable fall from grace. The hero’s journey, cut short by hubris. Hamartia laid bare, spread out against the concrete. It’s the guilt that piles up so high they lose the will to fight. The fear of failure, the realization of unattained goals thrown by the wayside.
This is the one that hurts the most to watch.
Then there’s that last observation. The one that snuck up on her, but didn’t really come as a surprise.
They love their damn animals.
Collect ‘em like marbles. Like novelty fridge magnets. No single vigilante she’s met to date has not owned or had partial custody of an animal.
Oh, there’s the obvious ones. Castle’s got his dog, who’s built like a brick shithouse with a head which would fit perfectly inside of a square box. He’s an absolute love bug. May would give him belly rubs any time of day. He don’t bite, but that tail sure will leave a bruise. He’s got Castle wrapped around his stubby little dog finger-claw and the whole gang of littles are head-over-heels for those eyes.
A lovely thing. That’s all Max is.
Max has a doppelgänger whose residence is that of Tony Stark’s big ass penthouse apartment atop his big ass tower. Doppelgänger’s name is Hephaestus. Hephaestus was rescued from death row at the pound during one of Stark’s guilt-ridden scrambles for repentance via inscrutable and seemingly random acts of service.
Peter met Hephaestus the day Stark came home from the kennel with him and immediately informed the man that Hephaestus was, in fact, a wonderfully chunky hippo-shaped lady, and also that he was wholly in love with her, so don’t be surprised when she goes missing because she is almost certainly at his and May’s apartment receiving the best belly rubs of her goddamn doggy life.
He’d relayed this to May, red-faced and overproud, as soon as he got home that evening.
Hephaestus has, since Stark discovered that it is indeed possible to sex dogs, assumed the nickname Huffy. The first and last time Peter had attempted to enact his dognapping scheme, May’d rained hellfire upon his sorry little ass. Huffy had been swiftly escorted home, an apology-laden sticky note stuck atop her perfect, square head.
She’d been something of a project, according to Peter. Had been on death row because of her background as a fighting dog and the physical and mental toll it’d taken on her. When she arrived at the Stark residence she was scarred and arthritic and extremely middle-aged and she, along with her long-suffering owner, had PTSD and sensory sensitivities that frequently interfered with proper daily functioning.
May recalls one of the first phone conversations she’d had with Pepper Potts, a mere week or two after Huffy had become a member of the absolute and total dysfunction that was the Stark-Potts household. May still has no idea how Pepper got ahold of her number; it’s best, she’s learned, not to question the data collecting powers of Stark’s various A.I. systems.
She’d called around ten at night, desperate for Peter’s presence (which always seemed to bring unfettered joy to any animal within a ten foot radius) and maybe some reassurance from someone who wasn’t super-powered that she was going to make it through the night. A cruel, driving rain had kept the dog on edge all day, and Tony, in her words, had “worked himself into a bit of a fit” trying to keep her calm.
Peter’s invasive bat ears had eavesdropped from the other room. He popped his head through the doorway to gaze imploringly at her as she gushed bemused placations over the line. She pulled her phone away from her cheek and matched the fervor required to maintain eye contact with him.
“Shoo, gremlin,” she hissed through closed teeth.
“D’you think we could get her a thundershirt?”
Thundershirt? As in, like, one word?
“Squeezes ‘er like a hug.”
“Who, Pepper?”
Pepper heard her name over the din of the rain and said, “Hm? I’m still here.”
May apologized and flapped her free hand impatiently in the direction of the hallway.
The kid took the hint, but not without mouthing an overexaggerated “for the d-o-g” while she was still turned to face him.
Thunder roared overhead. May felt it shudder through the bones of the building. Pepper’s end of the line exploded into the terrified howls of an animal who was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, sure that death was imminent.
May’s heart hurt.
She did not want to talk to the Punisher about why she and Peter needed an article of clothing from his dog’s wardrobe at a quarter to midnight on the rainiest Tuesday they’d seen in weeks.
He squinted blearily at the two of them and their raincoat-clad, imploring faces. Looked down to watch the water dripping all over his front doormat. His clothes were wrinkled. Max poked his head through Castle’s knees to pant excitedly at them. His broad forehead and wide-set puppy dog eyes gazed adoringly at Peter.
Castle sniffed and curled his lip and rumbled, “You comin’ in or what?”
His timbre was that of the ozone-charged night sky, the rolling waves of thunder which taunted them as they crossed the threshold.
Max was awarded plentiful affection as payment for his generosity in sharing his shirt.
Frank, for his part, received very many apologetic ‘thank you’s and promises to return the borrowed item as soon as it was no longer needed by Max’s much less well-adjusted twin over in Midtown.
May offered to purchase some appreciative cans of baked beans and was swiftly shut down by the menacing swivel of Castle’s scarred, buzz-cut scalp and an eyebrow leveled at the front door.
She took that as their cue to get the fuck out of dodge.
By the time they’d arrived at the tower, it was pushing one in the morning. The rain had only worsened, had whipped itself into a furious deluge; a gust of wind nearly knocked them over on the walk up to the building's entrance. The storm felt like it was trying to get in. Like it was encroaching from every side.
Violent claps of thunder split the miserable quiet of the elevator ride up to the top floors. The lights flickered and charged the claustrophobic air with anxiety and anticipatory dread.
Peter led May down a network of darkened hallways to an impressive, ornate door made of patterned glass which reflected what little light there was into crystalized, cross-hatching rainbows. He scanned his ID badge on the wall to its right and the thing swung inward.
Lightning illuminated the sparse foyer for a split second. May rather felt as if she was an unwitting participant in the beginning of a horror movie.
That terrified cry she’d heard over the phone ripped through the air in discord with the raucous thunder that followed the flash.
Peter tapped her on the shoulder and whispered, “C’mon.”
May tore her attention from the symphony of noise and followed him through a spacious kitchen. There was a tea kettle setting in towards a boil on one of the burners, illuminated only by blue fridge-light and the light pollution penetrating the storm through the windows.
May stopped to appreciate the awe-striking view. Peter padded away down a hallway. A gentle knock sounded from that direction soon after. The creak of slow door hinges. A whimper.
May glanced to the corridor into which her kid had disappeared. A flash of lightning revealed not Peter, but Pepper Potts closing a door at the far end.
The kettle whistled. A bark emanated from behind the closed door.
Petter had puffy red eyes which were perched atop a pair of blueish-purple half circles.
Their eyes met. Thunder clapped outside. She thought that maybe she could hear the sound of sobbing coming from the bedroom.
May didn’t know what to do. She looked away and swept her gaze over the room. Landed on the kettle reflecting light from the fridge.
“You want me to get some tea steeping?”
The dog had been very cute in the shirt. Peter has a picture of her snugged up in it from that night set as the background on his phone’s lock screen.
The shirt had helped, the tea had helped, Peter and May’s presence had helped. But it’d still taken a good few more storms for Huffy to begin to grant anyone her trust.
Of course, she’d fallen head over heels for Peter almost immediately. Had warmed up to him even before Stark.
May had not been surprised. Peter’s been known to have that effect on animals.
So now Stark has a dog. And she’s quite certain that he’ll add another as soon as the next self-inflicted guilt trip spiral starts up.
But they don’t all like dogs, these people.
Murdock, being blind as shit, is naturally not particularly disposed to introducing a living, moving tripping hazard into his space.
To the average observer, this is an entirely reasonable position to hold.
‘The average observer’ does not describe a single one of Murdock’s friends.
Reason does not stop Peter from harassing him about getting a service dog every chance he gets. At the very least, he’s done it every time May’s seen them together, which is a metric fuckton.
Wade’s presence compounds the heckling tenfold. She almost feels bad for the guy.
Then she remembers that he has wrought upon himself whatever abuse those two subject him to by deciding that it is a brave and selfless idea to romp all over the rooftops and dumpsters of Hell’s Kitchen at night. Miraculously, the sympathy evaporates.
Peter’s insistent pleading has only pushed Murdock deeper into reactionary territory; he shows up to the office, Peter hisses to her one evening, cranky and red-eyed and seething after a long work shift, with a fish swimming resignedly inside of a bag clenched tightly in the fist not occupied by the cane.
Peter shows her a picture of a scuffed up Murdock, grinning evilly in the direction of Peter and his voyeuristic phone’s camera. Sat inside a plastic baggie in his hand is a gray-bodied fish with large, flowing, strikingly red fins.
“Oh! That’s a betta. My friend used to breed those.”
This observation does not assuage Peter’s sour-lemon behavior. He flips his phone into his back pocket and responds, “This is a fish and not a dog.”
“Well, I think a dog would need a slightly larger bag of water if it were to fit.”
“Can we get a dog?”
May rolls her eyes and turns to start unloading groceries from bags. “Nope. Gimme a hand?”
“A cat?” he asks as he sulks into the kitchen.
“You know how allergic I am to those things?”
“We could get a hairless one!”
May shoots him a look over the head of cabbage she’s inspecting.
“God, FINE.”
She nods sagely and passes him a jar of peanut butter to put away. Peter is having, in the wise words of her late husband, a teenager moment. Teenagers are allowed to have teenager moments.
“What are your feelings regarding snakes?”
May pauses in her shuffling of cereal boxes to snap, “How many of my buttons are you tryin’ to push at once, son?”
He cringes and busies his hands with the organization of bowls on a cabinet shelf. “Captain America’s got a snake,” he mumbles.
Does he, now?
“It’s a ball python.”
Oh? “To which of the members of that household does the ball python belong?”
“I tol’ you, Captain America.”
“There are at least two Captain Americas under that roof at any given moment. Help me out here. My ancient, feeble brain is going to mush as we speak.”
Peter shoots her the most exasperated of looks and responds, “The one with the cyborg arm.”
“That one only counts as Captain America during Lent.”
“How long is Lent?”
Hm. A question for her phone’s search engine. She takes a moment to locate the thing and look it up. “40 days, says Google.”
“That counts as half! He’s a half Cap.”
May harrumphs. She opens the fridge, bracing herself against the stench of weeks-old leftover take-out, and asks, “How do Wilson and Rogers feel about this snake?”
No response, except for the crinkling of reusable bags being flattened.
“Peter.”
More rustling. May turns and makes accusatory eye contact.
He cracks. Supplies, “They don’t exactly know.”
Mmm. Lovely. Infighting between the Caps.
“And Nat?”
He cringes and averts his gaze.
May digs out a soggy-bottomed paper bag from the farthest corner of the deli drawer and wrinkles her nose. “No dogs. No cats. No snakes. Actually, no reptiles of any kind, I’m not sure that’s allowed in our lease.”
Peter deflates faster than a sat-upon whoopie cushion. Tries to get her with them big ol’ dejected puppy eyes.
“And if I find out you’re harboring a secret ball python on the top shelf of your closet, I will be very unhappy indeed.”
His frown falters for a moment. “What about a catfish?”
“I will fry it up and consume it while you watch.”
He stands and throws his hands up. “Jesus Christ! I concede.”
May makes a display of putting on a melodramatic contemplative face. “I’d consider a betta.”
A look of utmost betrayal. Disgust. Disdain, even.
He leaves her to marinate in her smug triumph and ruminate upon what they’re going to do for dinner.