Archive of Our Own

Peter didn’t find out until a couple of weeks after he had tried to talk to MJ and Ned.

It was Christmas, his first Christmas alone in his entire life. Well, mostly alone, he corrected himself with a sad smile as he stared down at the two positive pregnancy tests in his hands.

He hadn’t meant for it to happen. Naturally, he was only seventeen. But just mere days before he, MJ, and Ned had gotten their un-acceptance letters to MIT, just mere days before they and the rest of the world had forgotten he even existed, he and MJ had had sex for the first time in her bedroom. The only time. It hadn’t even been during one of his heats, which were few and sparse between thanks to both the spider bite and the suppressors he had been taking.

Yet, here he was. Pregnant.

He knew that he should probably get rid of it, either through abortion or adoption. He wasn’t in a good financial place to raise a baby, and though he still somehow had his social security number, he didn’t have a high school diploma, so he probably never would be. Sure, he could get his GED, but that was no guarantee. College would probably out of his future regardless.

But...he couldn’t. This baby was his theta’s, even if they weren’t bonded and she had no idea who he was. It was her last gift to him. He couldn’t just throw it away, even if it would probably be in both his and the baby’s best interests.

So, setting down the pregnancy tests, he pulled out his phone and began to look for the nearest free family planning clinic he could find.

~~~

His landlord was fairly sympathetic.

They hadn’t gotten off to a good start. He had taken one look at Peter at first and must’ve decided he was nothing but a high school dropout and a troublemaker, because he told him that rent was due at the first of the month or “else.” When Peter told him that he was pregnant, though, not to garner any sympathy or to ask for a delay on rent, just to tell him, his harshness softened.

“Is the alpha in the picture?” he asked.

Peter bit his lip. MJ wasn’t an alpha and she had no memory of him existing, so it shouldn’t have been hard for him to answer him, but still, it was. “No. Not really.”

“I’ll get you the forms you need. You aren’t the first omega in this situation I’ve helped. Just get the rent in on time and we’ll be good,” his landlord replied, ignoring his disbelieving look.

And he did.

Peter filled out the forms for OBWIC (Omegas, Beta Women, Infants, and Children), SNAP, and Medicaid not for himself, but for his baby. He also stopped going out as Spider-Man. J. Jonah Jameson said it was a sign of his cowardice, but that couldn’t be anything further from the truth. Going out on patrol would simply be dangerous for the baby, and even if it wasn’t, he needed to save up as much as he possibly could through his job at a nearby sandwich shop (not nearly as good as Mr. Delmar’s, unfortunately) for when he or she arrived.

When he just started to show around sixteen weeks, he returned back to the coffeeshop where MJ worked. She was there, her curly hair done up in two buns. Idly, he thought about how much he would love for their baby to have her curls.

At the sound of the bell above the door ringing, she looked up. “Peter Parker,” she said.

And for a moment, the world stopped.

Of course, the moment was gone as soon as it began. He could tell by the look in her eyes that she didn’t really remember him, just the time before from the coffeeshop. When he had tried to tell her and Ned who he really was to them, and failed.

“You remember me?” he asked anyways, a small smile dancing at his lips.

She nodded. “Good memory,” she said, and he resisted the urge to agree with her. He knew how good her memory was. “Plain coffee?”

His eyes trailed over to the cork board that served as the menu. “Um...no, actually. Can I have a hot chocolate, and a cinnamon roll?”

She got him what he asked for. The total came out to be a little more than what he probably should’ve spent, but that was alright. He took his drink and snack over to one of the tables by the window and sat down, pretending to scroll on his phone while he looked at her when she didn’t notice.

It took him a few days to come back again, and then again and again after that. He knew that he shouldn’t. She was better off without him. Their baby would be better off without him. But life didn’t work like that and Peter was a masochist who wanted to be around his theta, who wanted their child to get a chance to be around its mother before she went off to college and walked out of their lives forever.

He eventually took to bringing his textbooks and GED study guides along with him, once he had finally decided to take the test. MJ never said anything about it, or his obvious pregnancy for that matter, but one day she dropped her old textbooks on his table with a murmuring about how she didn’t need them anymore.

He tried to ignore the way his heart swelled in response.

~~~

At twenty weeks, Peter found out he was having a girl.

She was precious, and perfect. She had everything that she should, from the ten fingers to the ten toes, and a smile in the sonogram he had been given. He took to keeping it in his wallet, so he could look at it whenever he felt lonely. Or whenever he felt lost.

Unfortunately, both of those things happened a lot.

He started to debate names. None of them ever seemed right. Originally, he wanted to name her May, but...the wound was too fresh. Even after twenty weeks, every other night he woke up from a nightmare about her dying...about MJ and Ned, dying in the same way she did. So he relegated her name to the middle name for his daughter’s, and began an endless internet search for the first.

Eventually, his mind came to a rest on the name of the only other theta he had known. He knew there was no guarantee that that was what his daughter would be since he had no idea whether he possessed the theta gene or not, but it seemed right. Especially when he remembered a conversation he had had with Tony once, back before the world had ended and he had died, in which the alpha had inadvertently revealed the name he would’ve been given if he had been born a girl.

“What do you say, baby girl?” he murmured to her as he caressed his growing stomach, once he had mulled over the name several times. “What do you think about the name Natasha May Parker?”

From deep inside him, he felt a kick. He smiled.

Natasha May Parker it was, then.

~~~

Natasha was born on August 2nd, 2025.

His contractions started early on in the night before, when he was busy reading up on the latest news about Daredevil and the new Hawkeye. He noted them with a slight grimace, immediately knowing what they were, but also knowing there was nothing else he could do but wait. He had decided on a home birth long ago, and he knew his body would tell him when it was time for him to push.

Unfortunately, he never got that far. As the night wore on and his contractions got worse and worse, traveling up the far reaches of his back and delving in between his hips and thighs, he was unable to stifle the moans which escaped his lips. He tried, first with his hand, then with a sock stuffed into his mouth. Yet the primal sounds kept on getting louder and louder, and before he knew it, there was a knock at his door.

“...Parker?” his landlord asked. “Peter, are you in labor?”

Peter wanted to say no.

Instead, he moaned again.

When he was done, his landlord spoke up for the second time. “Peter, please open the door.”

On shaky legs, Peter stood. He walked over to the door and opened it, watching how his landlord took one look at his pajamas, which were covered in sweat, and what must’ve been his exhausted face, and nodded to himself. “Right,” he said. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “N – no, please don’t,” he whispered desperately. “C – can’t afford...the bills.”

“I’ll pay them, then,” his landlord replied. Peter tried to protest in response, however the alpha only shook his head and spoke over him. “No. No, I won’t hear it. I’m not having you die in this room because you didn’t go to the hospital. Come on, Peter. Put on your shoes. Let’s go.”

So Peter found himself at the hospital. The nurses were kind to him, as his body stretched and the contractions progressed; as his water broke and midnight passed. He made sure not to grab onto any of them, even when they offered with pitying gazes, out of fear that his enhanced strength would hurt them. It proved to be a good thing, in the end.

He didn’t give birth laying down. The position was awkward, left him scrambling for purchase whenever he tried it. It caused the nurses to move him to a birthing pool, which he nearly broke the sides of as he pushed Natasha out, all seven pounds and eight ounces of her. He did so screaming, screaming at the top of his lungs because God, this was the worst pain he had ever been in. Getting Snapped by Thanos, crushed by a building, stabbed, shot at, beaten...none of it compared.

But he managed it. Somehow.

“Congratulations,” the beta doctor told him softly as she put Natasha in his arms. “It’s a girl.”

He nodded, eyes never leaving his daughter once. She had her mother’s curls, yet his hair color and eyes. Her skin was somewhere in the middle of the two. She was perfect.

And MJ would never know she was hers.

“Hey, ‘Tashi,” he murmured, using the nickname he had chosen for her as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It’s just...it’s just gonna be me and you, but that’s gonna be okay.”

Because it had to be.

~~

It took a little while for Peter to get back on his feet.

Giving birth took a lot out of him. It was hard. Even harder was the fact that his body had shifted and changed permanently from the entire ordeal. His skin contained stretch marks, everywhere; his hips had the classic “omega width” and his chest became large enough to the point where he had to wear a bra. If there had been any doubt about Spider-Man being an omega before (there hadn’t, even before his identity had been revealed), there wouldn’t be now.

He made deal with it, though. Just like how he made deal with the fact MJ didn’t get a chance to see her daughter before she left for MIT. It hadn’t been intentional on his part; there were a measly two weeks between Natasha’s birth and her leaving date, and between his recovery and Natasha requiring his every waking second of attention, he just didn’t have time to stop over at the coffeeshop where she worked. Even to just stop in and say hello.

Months passed. Peter’s maternity leave ended and with it, so did his break from being Spider-Man. He entrusted Natasha into the care of one of the kind, older ladies in his building as a babysitter – an omega woman who had never been able to have children of her own – during the day time, which he spent working and then patrolling. Strangely, his reappearance and the fact that he had obviously had a child made J. Jonah Jameson a tad bit more sympathetic with him. It wasn’t much, just an admission that he had obviously made the right choice with his months-long absence, but it was enough.

It made him close his eyes and wonder, not the the first time, if the public would have eventually come around had he not gone to Strange. If May could have been alive to see her grandniece. If MJ could have known she had a daughter.

Still, he persevered. He had to.

Around the age of eight months, Natasha began to talk. At first, she just babbled, nonsense that only she could understand. But that didn’t stop him from taking out his phone and recording her for a folder of videos and pictures on his laptop labeled “For MJ,” for his own benefit instead of his theta’s, his voice soft as he said, “Yeah, is that so? Uh, huh...tell me all about it, sweetie.”

It was how he got a recording of her saying her first word, actually. “Omi,” the word for a male omega parent.

...And no, he totally didn’t cry himself to sleep that night over the fact neither MJ, May, or Ned were there to hear it.

In late May, MJ returned to the coffeeshop. Even when she had been gone, he had been going there regularly, so when he walked in there one day to see her and Ned talking at the counter, he felt his breath get knocked out from his lungs. She was beautiful. She was always beautiful.

But there was an alpha guy with them, sitting right next to Ned.

Peter didn’t initially recognize him. He was taller, his hair dyed a dark brown instead of its natural color of brown-and-blonde, and he could barely hear the whir of his robotic leg over Natasha’s babbling. But when he did, he closed his eyes. Here was Harley Keener, Tony’s other genius kid who he had met as a few times as Peter Parker during the two summers between the Vulture and Thanos, and who he had also spoken with at Tony’s funeral when they both realized they had been Snapped.

Of course he had gotten into MIT. Of course he had become friends with MJ and Ned. Why wouldn’t he?

“Oh, hey, Peter,” he heard MJ say. He opened his eyes and plastered a smile on his face as he walked forwards, pushing Natasha’s stroller. “You want your usual? Hot chocolate and a cinnamon roll?”

She remembered.

He nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

She went about making his order. Ned waved at him, since he came in here practically every day when MJ was working. He smiled back.

Harley, however, frowned, his eyebrows furrowing as his gaze lingered on him. Peter stared back nervously, wondering what it could be about. No one had looked at him like that before, not since the entire multiverse had forgotten about his existence.

“You seem familiar, have we met before?” the alpha finally asked, after what seemed like an eternity.

Peter laughed, near hysterically, then shook his head. “No. I get that a lot, though,” he lied, the words forming themselves through gritted teeth. There would be no point in trying to tell Harley the truth. He wouldn’t remember, and what was more, he was better off without him. Just like MJ and Ned. “I guess I just have a familiar face.”

Harley nodded, his eyes flitting over to Natasha. His gaze softened. “Is that your daughter?”

He smiled, reaching a hand down to run it through her curls. “Yep, this is Natasha. She’s nine months old.”

“After Black Widow?”

“Yeah...kind of. More after an old friend,” he stated, his smile turning wistful. Tony would’ve loved his daughter too, he knew, had he been alive to see her.

MJ set his order on the counter and rang him up. He paid for his meal and then retreated to the table he always used, though not without a speculative look Harley’s way. Again, no one had ever looked at him like he had before, and they had never told him he looked familiar. He wasn’t familiar. He was Peter Parker, and nobody remembered him. Was something wrong with Strange’s magic, he wondered?

Ultimately, he decided it didn’t matter. It was as he said, his friends were better off without him. The world was better off without him.

Besides, after that initial meeting, Harley didn’t show up again at the coffeeshop for the entire summer.

~~~

In August, Natasha had her first birthday.

There was no party, they had no one in their lives except for each other. Peter bought two cupcakes from down the street, one for himself, one for her. He put a blue candle on top of hers, got out his phone, and started recording. “Happy birthday, to you,” he sang, his voice barely above a whisper because the tenants upstairs kind of hated him. It came with the territory of having a baby. “Happy birthday, to you. Happy birthday, dear Natasha, happy birthday, to you! Alright, do you want me to help you blow out your candle?”

His daughter let out a giggle, quiet but content.

Peter set down his phone on the other side of the table, before he quickly walked over to her high chair. He blew it out for her, laughing himself when she grabbed a curl of his hair and pulled at it. “You’re supposed to pull apart the cake, not Omi’s hair,” he teased.

He took away the candle, moving back to his phone to pick it up. The camera was still rolling as Natasha reached down, her fingers experimentally touching the icing and bringing it to her lips. Once the sugary sweetness of it hit her, her eyes widened and she put both of her hands on the cupcake, tearing into it with abandon.

Peter laughed again. He laughed and laughed, until there were tears streaming down his face and his throat was sore from all the crying. “Oh, G – God, MJ,” he whispered, talking to her for the first time in any of the videos. “I wish you could see this. You too, Ned.”

~~~

In November, Peter took Natasha to visit May for the first time.

He had been to her grave multiple times after Happy had found him there, just never with her. But she was old enough now, to brave the cold for a couple of minutes. And it was the second anniversary of May’s death. He couldn’t not go, and he didn’t want to bother the older lady who watched Natasha for him since it was his day off.

So, the two of them went together. He set Natasha down on the ground, smiling through the tears which were already forming as he put the bouquet of flowers up against May’s gravestone. “Hey, May,” he said to her, voice gentle. “It’s me again. Peter. I brought ‘Tashi with me this time. I know you haven’t seen her before. Say hi, ‘Tashi.”

His daughter scrunched up her face. “Eeee.”

“Eh, close enough,” he chuckled. Then sniffled. “I’m...I’m sorry, May. I screwed everything up. I know, you’re already telling me from wherever it is you and Tony are that I didn’t, but I did. It’s fine. I’ve made my peace with it. I just...wish I hadn’t dragged you into it, too.” He blinked, craning his head to look up at the sky. It was cloudy. He could spot some birds flying in the distance. “At least I didn’t have to deal with you forgetting me too, I guess. And at least I have ‘Tashi. I don’t know what I would do without her. Some days...it’s just so hard. I think I understand now, why Peter-3 was the way he was.”

He paused, taking a moment to think about his multiversal variant. Peter-3 had been an omega like him, unlike Peter-2 who was a beta. And he had lost his theta, too. He wondered about him, what he was like now. Had he moved on? Peter hoped he did. Because he, he didn’t think he could move on. Ever.

Hastily, he wiped away his tears with the sleeve of his jacket. He looked down at his daughter, who was staring up at him, a pouty frown on her face. She had no idea why he was so upset. “Anyways, um, I think we should better get going. Little munchkin’s probably going to start whining in a couple of minutes,” he said. “I love you, May. I always will. Tell Tony I said ‘hi’ for me.”

~~~

Peter stopped going to the coffeeshop.

It was a difficult decision to make. On the one hand, he didn’t want to give MJ up, and him never going to the place where she worked again...it felt like giving her up. On the other hand, he kind of already had. She didn’t remember him. She was never going to. And seeing her all the time was doing nothing except making his heart hurt; he didn’t want to even think about what it would do to Natasha as she got older.

The grief from his choice made him busy himself into his work, both at the sandwich shop and as Spider-Man. His boss was happy for it; he had always been a hard worker, it was just in his blood, but seeing Peter work extra hard made him extra proud. He gave Peter a bit of an extra bonus for Christmas, and told him if he kept it up he was probably looking at a raise in his future.

He sighed. A raise would be nice; he just didn’t like what it would represent.

The sound of the doorbell ringing stirred him out of his thoughts, causing him to look up. He then stared in disbelief as Harley Keener walked into the shop, his still-dark brown hair covered in snow. Harley stared at him in surprise too for a moment, his eyebrows furrowing and his head tilting ever-so-slightly to the side.

“Peter Parker, the guy from the coffeeshop,” he said finally. “Huh, I didn’t know that you worked here.”

Peter did his best to smile. He didn’t think he quite managed it. “Oh, I’ve only been working here for...two years now. What would you like today?”

“...Well, I’ve only come here once or twice, that’s probably why I didn’t know,” Harley admitted with a bashful grin, then proceeded to place his order.

Peter made the order as quickly as he could, his thoughts racing inside his head. He didn’t understand why Harley was here now. They had met by chance, if you could even call their second first meeting that. It was more like a casual conversation between two customers. He should have never seen him again, after he had decided to not go to the coffeeshop again, to not see MJ again. Or, if he did, Harley shouldn’t have been able to remember him like that.

Yet, here he was. Remembering.

Was the universe trying to tell him something, or what?

“Are you excited to go back to MIT?” Peter asked hesitantly when he had finished bagging up the order, and was waiting for Harley to pay for it with his card.

Lucky bastard. All Peter could pay with nowadays was cash.

Harley huffed, a smile at his lips. “Actually, I’m not going back to MIT this semester. I’ve got an internship with Bruce Banner here in the city,” he explained. “I’ll be here until next semester.”

Peter whistled. “Wow, Dr. Banner has seven PhDs. That sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun.”

“It should be,” Harley agreed, finishing up his payment. He took his bag and winked. “Maybe that means I’ll be seeing you around, Peter Parker.”

“Maybe,” he echoed with a wistful smile.

Personally, he didn’t think it was likely. After all, in a city of nine million people, how likely was it for two people who had different lives to cross paths again, even if Harley came back to the sandwich shop a couple of more times?

~~~

As it turned out, it was very likely.

A few weeks later, Peter was taking Natasha out on a walk through Central Park. The air was cold, but like him she had a good immune system...along with a few other things, like the ability to climb walls and ceilings. Yeah, that hadn’t been easy to explain to the older lady who watched her, and Peter had a feeling now that she knew he was Spider-Man and was just choosing not to say anything about it. Whatever. If she didn’t ask or try to out him, he wasn’t going to tell.

...Anyways, he was taking Natasha out on a walk when suddenly one of the wheels to her stroller locked in place. Frowning, he reached down to inspect it; he couldn’t see anything wrong with the wheel, but that didn’t mean much. The stroller was a little worn out, so it could be he was going to have to adjust it when he got home. Which meant carrying both Natasha and the stroller home in his arms.

He resisted the urge to let out a sigh. Great, just great.

“Need some help?” a kind voice asked.

Peter’s head snapped up, tongue already to lash out at whoever it was that had asked. Probably an alpha. No, he didn’t need help. People offered it to him all the time, expecting him to be some sort of weak omega who would be all-too-willing to rely on them, but he wasn’t. He was Spider-Man, if only secretly. He was strong. He could handle himself.

But then –

“Harley Keener,” he said with eyes wide, the name coming out of his mouth before he could stop it.

The alpha paused. “Heh, yeah. Peter Parker,” he said, before his lips quirked. “You know, I don’t think I ever told you my name.”

Peter laughed nervously, wringing his hands. “Yeah, well. I have good memory.”

“You need some help?”

It was the second time he had asked the question.

Peter shifted uncomfortably. “N – no, I’m fine. Think the wheel’s just out of whack. I’ll fix it when I get home.”

“Does that mean you’ll have to carry both your kid and the stroller home?”

He sighed. “Maybe. So what if it does?”

“Let me help,” Harley offered. He reached down, his warm hands (damn you, pregnancy-and-spider-related thermoregulation problems) coming to a rest over Peter’s own.

Peter sighed again. “Fine.”

He watched as the alpha worked on the wheel. So, too, did Natasha. His daughter, always a bright girl, stared at him with a smile. “H – Halley,” she said, mispronouncing his name.

Harley looked up with a smile of his own, his expression soft. “That’s right. I’m Harley,” he said. “And you’re...?”

“‘Tashi,” she replied solemnly.

“‘Tashi,” he repeated. His eyes traveled up to Peter’s. “She’s what...seventeen months now?”

Peter blinked. “You remember?”

He shook his head. “I remember her, just not her age. That, I knew from previous experience,” he explained. “My little sister’s seven years younger than me.”

“Oh,” Peter said lamely.

Suddenly, the wheel on the stroller began to move again. Natasha let out a giggle and Harley, getting to his feet, grinned. “Well, that was simple. Looks like it’s been happening a lot, though. You should probably get a new stroller.” He paused. “Also, I haven’t seen you around at the coffeeshop lately. Aren’t you one of their regulars?”

Peter smiled tightly. “Not anymore, no.”

“That’s a shame. MJ doesn’t work there during the school year, but the other baristas really seem to miss you.”

“No, they miss Natasha,” he corrected him, before his gaze diverted away. “It’s nothing against them. I just...haven’t really had time for anything. Parenthood, job, friends.” Spider-Man. He laughed pathetically. “Can’t have it all.”

There was a tentative silence.

“Well, how about this,” Harley finally said, fishing something out of his pocket. It was a notepad, Peter realized as he turned to look at him, and he was already writing something on it with a pen also from his pocket. His number. “Next time you need a friend, text me. It sounds like you’re lonely and I’m still gonna be in town for a while ‘cause of my internship, so I’m down to hang out.”

Peter tried to protest. “Harley – ”

Harley rolled his eyes as he shoved the piece of paper with his number on it into his hands. “Just text me, Parker. Seriously, I won’t mind.”

~~~

Peter’s resolve to not text Harley lasted all of three days.

It was just...he missed having friends. With Natasha, he had a family and he wouldn’t trade it for the world, but he missed having friends. He missed playing LEGOs (now a forgotten memory of his past besides Darth Sidious, thanks to the choking hazards) with Ned, missed running through Decathlon flashcards with MJ, and everything else they had done together.

Besides, it wasn’t like he had been friends with Harley beforehand. It also wasn’t like he was going to let the alpha get all that close. No, the only people who could know about him being Spider-Man besides himself were Natasha and her babysitter. He was convinced of it.

...At least, that was what he told himself as he opened up his messages app and typed in the number Harley gave him.

Peter: So were you serious about wanting to hang out or were you just pretending to be nice?

Peter: This is Peter btw

Peter: Parker

He watched as the grey text bubble to indicate that someone was typing immediately popped up.

Harley: No, I was serious. Do you want to meet up for coffee sometime later this week?

Harley: It doesn’t have to be at Peter Pan’s.

Peter bit his lip. He should say no, that he had changed his mind. He knew that he should say no, that he had changed his mind.

Peter: I know a place a couple of blocks from where I live. I’ll have to bring Natasha, but does Friday around 4 work for you?

Harley: That works for me :)

~~~

“Hey, by the way, I’m gonna have to cancel next week.”

Peter looked up from the cinnamon roll he had been steadily ripping apart for the past twenty or so minutes. He wasn’t that hungry, never was anymore, and if he broke it off into small enough chunks, Natasha would be able to eat some of it. “What?”

Harley grimaced apologetically. They had been meeting up weekly for “coffee” – Peter always got a hot chocolate – for the past couple of months, usually with Natasha in tow. It was...nice. Having someone to talk to again that wasn’t a toddler, her babysitter, his landlord, one of his coworkers, or his boss was nice.

“MIT’s spring break is next week,” the alpha said by means of explanation. “MJ and Ned are coming home. We’re going to be hashing out some plans.”

It wasn’t the first time that one of them had cancelled. Last month, Peter had had to cancel because he had finally (read: unfortunately) gotten his first heat after Natasha had been born, the one required in order for him to get back on suppressors again.

But plans. He didn’t like the word plans, and not just because of the fact that he was no longer part of them because of, y’know, the entire multiverse had forgotten his existence.

“Oh, what for?” he asked, trying to keep his face and voice as casually optimistic as possible.

Except. Except maybe he wasn’t doing as good of a job as he thought he was, because Harley hesitated.

“MJ and I are getting bonded this summer,” he said at last.

Peter felt the very existence he had been living on fall out from underneath him.

He had always known that MJ was going to move on, eventually. Well, actually, moving on wasn’t the right term for it, because there was nothing in her mind for her to move on from. She didn’t remember Peter Parker.

But he hadn’t been expecting her to move on, for lack of a better term, this soon. He had thought that he had still had some time until she was out of his life for good; until Harley, as he had presumed him to be her friend but not more than that, lost touch with him and moved on to. He had thought that he had still had some time until she would start a family of her own. Without Peter or Natasha being part of it.

Gently, Harley nudged his hand. “Peter?”

Peter blinked. He made a smile form on his face and ignored the tears that were in his eyes. “Hey, congrats! I’m happy for you,” he told him earnestly, because he was. He just wished that he didn’t have to hear about it. “Where’s the ceremony going to be?”

Harley seemed to relax a bit. “At an old friend’s cabin. It’s what he would have wanted,” he said, his lips quirking. “But hey, the week after that, maybe I could come over to your place and watch a movie or something? Or,” the last part, he hurriedly added at what must’ve been a look of terror that flashed across Peter’s face, “you could come to mine. It’s like, a hundred square feet though since I’m living in one of the dorms at NYU this semester. Plus, it doesn’t have a bathroom.”

Peter tried to remember the last time when a room one hundred square feet had been small in size to him.

Spoiler alert: he couldn’t.

...Just, a movie? At his place? He didn’t even have a TV, only his laptop, his phone, and a speaker he had bought used. Plus, he would have to put away all his Spider-Man-related stuff. After Natasha had been born, he had taken to shoving it all onto the desk in his room, but it would have to be put somewhere else if Harley was coming over. Probably underneath his bed.

Still, Peter was a masochist. He couldn’t bring it in himself to give up Harley just yet, even though he knew that it would be a good idea. Now would be the perfect time, even. To leave before he could get his heart broken any further.

So, he made himself smile again and swirled around the dregs of his hot chocolate in his cup. “Nah, my place is fine. What do you want to watch? Fair warning: we’d be watching on my laptop and all I have is Hulu.”

Harley laughed. “That’s fine. If we’d be watching at my place, we’d be watching on my laptop, too. As for what we’d be watching,” he paused, his eyes glimmering, “have you ever seen the movie Just Friends?”

~~~

“...Peter?”

. . .

“Peter, wake up!”

. . .

“Come on, Peter. Wake up!”

. . .

“Spider-Man!”

Peter’s eyes snapped open.

At first, he had no idea where he was. The apartment looked to be his apartment, but he was tired. So tired. Patrol had taken a lot out of him yesterday. And the dream he just woke up from had been about Mysterio, so who knew if this was real at all anyways, right? It could all just be an illusion and –

“Peter, calm down,” the voice of Harley Keener said.

He was holding him by the shoulders, gently, his deep blue eyes gazing into Peter’s own. Peter stared back at him unfathomably for a moment, before he remembered with a sudden clarity the past couple of hours.

Harley had come over, to watch the movie Just Friends with him. He had made the popcorn while Peter had put Natasha to bed in her crib; his sweet girl was probably one of the heaviest sleepers in the entire world, she could handle a bit of noise. The movie had been funny, he remembered, as he hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time. Afterwards, Harley had put on The Proposal, another Ryan Reynolds movie, and then...slowly...nothing.

“That’s it,” Harley soothed. His hands were now rubbing Peter’s back. His breath was ragged, he realized. He had been hyperventilating. “Oh God, Peter. I’m so sorry for scaring you like that. I just – I’m so sorry.”

“Huh?” Peter murmured.

Then his eyes landed on his laptop.

It was open, but the Safari tab wasn’t open anymore. Instead, the folder labeled “For MJ” was.

His blood practically ran to absolute zero.

With wide eyes, he turned back to look at Harley. Harley, who was giving him the most sympathetic look he had ever seen on someone’s face in two-and-a-half years. “Harley, what did you do?”

The alpha reached up to a wipe a hand at his own face. “I – I didn’t mean to do it,” he breathed. “I was just gonna close Safari for you and get out of here, but I accidentally clicked on the ‘For MJ’ tab and I thought it was kind of weird, right? So I clicked on the first thing in there and it was a picture of this letter and you were talking about things like Spider-Man and the multiverse and it just...it just suddenly clicked. I don’t know how else to explain it. It just clicked.”

Peter scrambled away from him. “What do you mean it just clicked?”

He was breathing heavily again. He was probably going to wind up hyperventilating again. He didn’t care.

“I remember,” Harley told him, his expression scrunched up in pain. “Everything. I remember Mysterio revealing your identity and framing you for murder. I remember before that, too, when I first met you. You were a scrawny fucking kid and I remember thinking I didn’t understand why Tony had taken an interest in you, but later I realized you were a pretty nice guy. I remember even telling you about m – my leg and the osteosarcoma after Tony’s funeral, and you were so chill about it. Nobody’s been that chill about it before. Not even my mom or my sister.”

The alpha squeezed his eyes shut tight. “And – and you were dating MJ, before. There were a bunch of articles in the newspapers about it, saying you were hypnotizing her. And that’s – that’s her baby, isn’t it? Natasha? Natasha’s her baby.”

Peter had no idea about what to do, what he should tell Harley. He was barely keeping it together himself. Dr. Strange had told him there was no going back from the spell. It was the perfect example of the “do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars” scenario. Nobody should have remembered him. Nobody was able to remember him.

Except Harley, apparently.

“I – ” Peter began, his eyes flicking over to the crib where Natasha was sleeping. “I don’t understand?”

“I knew you looked familiar,” Harley hissed. His eyes were still shut. “All this time, ever since that time at Peter Pan’s, I knew you looked familiar. I just couldn’t place where I knew you from. Turns out, it was because there was a spell to prevent me from remembering.”

He laughed then. It was a harsh and humorless sound.

Peter flinched at it.

“How could you not tell them, Peter?” he asked, deep blue eyes opening. “Before, I guess I can kind of understand, but you got pregnant! How could you just refuse to tell MJ about that? She has a right to know!”

His voice was getting louder. He was going to wake up Natasha, heavy sleeper or not.

Peter bit his lip. “She’s – she’s better off without me. Everyone is,” he admitted softly.

Harley gaped at him. “How can you honestly think that? You’re the omither of her child! And what about Ned? He’s your best friend! Did you know that they both feel like they’re missing a piece of their lives without you? They know that something isn’t right, just not what. They’ve told me about it several times before. They’re not happy or better off without you, Peter. Not really.”

No. No, Peter did not know that. But –

“It doesn’t matter,” he said resolutely. “They don’t remember. Nobody does. You shouldn’t. I don’t know why you do. But I can’t bring somebody like that into this life, because,” with great power comes great responsibility, “I just can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to them. Hell, I probably should’ve given up Natasha for adoption when she was born, but I couldn’t. But she’s also enhanced, like me. She was born into this life. She didn’t have a choice.”

Abruptly, the alpha stood up. “Yeah, well, you haven’t given me a choice either,” he snarked. He shook his head. “I’m – I’m going to go fix this. You haven’t even tried to fix it, Peter, so I’m going to do it for you.”

And with that, he ran out of the apartment, before Peter could even grab one of the web-shooters he had hidden underneath his bed to stop him with.

~~~

Unfortunately, Peter wasn’t able to stop him before he got to Bleecker Street.

He tried. He really did. But lugging out the suit and making sure he had the baby monitor on his phone on for Natasha cost him precious time, and it was time that he didn’t have.

When he got to Bleecker Street, he rushed into the Sanctum without any care in the world for what the wizards there thought of him. He needn’t have worried, though; there was no one else around except for him as he ran down to the weird lair-thingy, and the evidence of the blizzard that had blew in from two-and-a-half years ago was long gone.

In the lair-thingy, Dr. Strange and Harley were already there, golden magic flying around them in a circle.

At the sound of Peter bursting into the room, Dr. Strange looked up. “Ah, hello, Spider-Man,” he said mildly. “Or, should I say, Peter Parker? Your slightly impervious to magic friend here seems to think so.”

“Dr. Strange, whatever it is that he told you to do, don’t do it!” Peter protested. “Please, sir, don’t do it!”

The older alpha scoffed. “He didn’t ask for anything much, just a simple memory reversal spell. Specifically limited to the people, and I quote, who ‘love the Peter Parker of our universe.’ Apparently, I am one of them.”

“But you can’t do it!” Peter repeated. He activated his web shooters. “Please, Dr. Strange – ”

“Too late,” the man replied with a smirk. Then, he released the golden circle of magic with a bang! It exploded outwards, dissipating into the air, the universe, the...multiverse.

Peter watched it do so numbly.

From across the room, Dr. Strange blinked. His pupils dilated, first once, then twice, before he stared at him with an expression of shock and something else – was that regret? – rippling across his face. “Peter?” he asked.

Peter did the first thing that came to his mind.

He ran.

~~~

He wound up locking himself and Natasha in their apartment.

It wasn’t one of his finer moments. He locked the door and the window and shut the blinds, all before he remembered Ned could use magic. And if not him, then certainly Dr. Strange. One of them could totally make a portal into the building if they wanted to. Or around it. He still wasn’t quite sure how magic worked.

But they didn’t.

His phone was blowing up. He turned it off as soon as he got home, unable to withstand the constant buzzing, but in order to do that he had to take a quick look at the home screen. It was a mess. He had eight missed calls from MJ, four from Ned, two from Harley, and one from Strange himself, and that wasn’t even including the dozens of text messages he had been bombarded with.

MJ: Peter

MJ: Peter pick up the phone

MJ: Dammit Parker pick up the phone!!

MJ: I don’t understand. Why did you do this?

MJ: You promised. You fucking promised.

Ned: Duuuude!

Ned: Oh my God you were right

Ned: Come on, Peter. Answer your phone

Ned: Harley said MJ’s the mom of your kid. He’s right, isn’t he?

Ned: rgefewdgtrrfdg

Harley: Dude pick up the phone. At least do it for MJ

Stephen Strange: Peter, I know this is difficult. I am sorry. But please, at least tell us that you are safe.

With a quiet sob so as to not wake up Natasha, Peter barely resisted the urge to throw his phone across the room. Instead, he burrowed himself under the covers and pretended that the world had ceased to exist.

After all, you couldn’t ignore what didn’t exist, right?

~~~

The next morning, Peter woke up to tear tracks dried on his cheeks and an incredibly sore throat.

He turned on his phone long enough to call his boss to tell him he wouldn’t be able to make it in today. There were a gazillion messages and voicemails left to him, but he ignored them as he told his boss he had the flu. He had never been sick before, only ever missing the four days for his heat, but thankfully his boss seemed to believe him...or at least understand that something serious was going on. He told him to feel better, and to feel free to take another day or two off if necessary.

Peter didn’t tell him how incredibly likely it was that he would take him up on the offer.

Afterwards, he wanted to crawl into a ball and continue to pretend like the world didn’t exist anymore. He wanted to find a way to rewind time so that he never became friends with Harley again.

But, he couldn’t. Time travel was practically impossible now.

And besides, Natasha relied on him.

“Omi!” his daughter whined a few minutes after he had set down his phone, once he had turned it off again. “Omi, up!”

Sniffling, Peter wiped away his tears, standing up on shaky legs. He plastered a smile on his face and walked over to his daughter’s crib, pulling her out and into his arms. “Hey, princess,” he whispered, voice rough. “How we feeling today? You want some breakfast?”

“Bekfas,” she agreed with a nod, before she frowned and patted his cheek. “Omi sad?”

“Yeah, I’m sad,” he replied with a laugh that bordered on hysterical.

“Why?”

He smiled as he set her down in her highchair. “Because sometimes, even Omi gets sad. For...reasons. But that’s okay,” the last part, he added with a kiss to her cheek, “because everyone’s allowed to be sad sometimes.”

...Or, as with him, most times.

He just didn’t let her see all the other times where he was depressed.

They spent the entire day in the apartment. Usually, on nice days such as this one, they went to the park, but Peter didn’t want to go there now. He didn’t want to go out of the safety of the apartment ever again.

His fears were only substantiated when later that day, and for the two days that followed it since he did wind up staying home for them, Harley showed up at his door and knocked at it. He didn’t stay for long, just around half an hour or so each time, but he made his point.

“Come on, Peter. Please open the door.”

“Nobody’s going to yell at you. I promise.”

“I – I screwed up, okay? I won’t apologize for what I did, but I did it too soon. I should have listened to you more first.”

“MJ’s really worried about you. Well, we all are, but...don’t do this to her, Peter. Please.”

Finally, on the third day, Peter’s landlord stepped in. He didn’t actually focus on what was said, but he heard harsh words and then Harley was walking away from his door and his landlord was knocking at it.

“Has that guy been bothering you, Peter?” the alpha asked when he tentatively opened the door.

His eyes trailed towards where Harley had walked away, even though he wasn’t there anymore. He was in the elevator, actually, according to his senses. Going down. “No...um, well, yes,” whispered softly. “But I kind of deserve it.”

No, not just kind of. Definitely deserved it.

“Hey, you’re a good kid. You don’t deserve this kind of harassment,” his landlord said, voice sharp but expression gentle and kind. “If he comes back, I’ll tell him to get lost, ‘kay?”

“Okay,” Peter agreed numbly. Guiltily.

And Harley didn’t come back, at least when he was around.

But nor did anyone else.

~~~

Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months.

Eventually, everybody stopped contacting him. Peter felt glad about it at first, then guilty. So guilty. The guilt made his appetite, which had always been pretty small after Natasha’s birth, vanish into complete non-existence. He knew that he should eat, but every bite of food tasted like ash in his mouth. So he didn’t. It made his body thinner and his face gaunter, but he didn’t care.

It was just, his theta didn’t want him, or their daughter. Sure, she had said in all of the text messages and voicemails – which he only read the transcripts of – that she had sent that she did, but she never once came to try to talk to him in-person. Not that Peter blamed her. He had betrayed her, and besides, she had an alpha now. An alpha who could give her children that weren’t enhanced, like Natasha.

But his understanding didn’t make the pain any less. Instead, it made it worse.

Letting out a sigh, Peter adjusted his now way-too large hoodie around himself as he stopped in front of the door to Natasha’s babysitter’s apartment and knocked at it. He was exhausted. Not just from all of the emotional strain he was suffering under, but also a hard day at work and patrol. All he wanted to do was cuddle up with his daughter and sleep his aches and pains off.

Yet, when the older lady opened the door, she wasn’t holding his daughter in her arms like she always did. He frowned. “Hey, Mrs. Ditkovitch. Is Natasha still down for her nap?”

Mrs. Ditkovitch gave him a sweet smile. “Oh, no, dear. Her mother came to pick her up, I guess she forgot to tell you,” she said. “Such a lovely theta, I’m surprised you never brought her around to introduce her to me sooner.”

Peter gazed at her in horror. “M – MJ?” he gasped out, unable to say her name without stammering.

Mrs. Ditkovitch nodded, before an expression of concern flashed across her face. “Yes, Peter, dear. Why, did you – ?”

He didn’t stay around for her to finish her sentence.

Instead, he ran down the hallways like a man possessed...because he was a man possessed. Images of his daughter, of his darling Natasha, kept on flashing through his mind. MJ couldn’t take her. She couldn’t take her from him. If she didn’t want him, then fine, but she couldn’t take the one good thing about the nightmare of the past two-and-a-half years of his life from him. She just couldn’t.

When he got to his door, it was closed. With shaking fingers, he grabbed his keys and jammed them into the lock, twisting them almost to the point that he broke the lock. He didn’t care. He turned the doorknob and bursted into the room, his eyes wild and his breath coming out of his chest in short gasps.

As he had expected, ish, Harley, MJ, and Ned were waiting on the small couch he had been fortunate enough to buy shortly before Natasha had been born. They looked up at him when he ran into the room, slamming the door behind him as he looked for a trace, any trace, of his daughter inside.

There were none.

“Where – where is she?” he demanded. “Where’s Natasha?”

Harley was the one to stand to his feet; MJ and Ned seemed too shocked to even see him. The alpha reached out with his arms, as if to catch Peter in them, but he stumbled back, the back of his legs hitting his bed and causing him to fall onto it. “Peter, she’s fine. She’s safe. You don’t need to – ”

He shook his head. “Where’s Natasha? Where’s my daughter?”

“Our daughter, you mean,” MJ spoke up. It was the first time he had heard her voice in almost a year. She looked sad, as she stared at him. Her hands were in her lap. “She’s with Dr. Strange, Peter. She’s fine. He’s going to watch her while we...talk.”

Her words didn’t calm him down. If anything, they made the panic worse, because he couldn’t understand what she was saying. Not really. His instincts, both omega and spider, were screaming at him. “You can’t take her from me!” he cried, squeezing his eyes shut. “I – I need her! She’s my daughter! She’s all I have!”

“No one’s taking her, Peter,” someone soothed, he wasn’t quite sure who. “Dr. Strange is just looking after her so we can talk. That’s all.”

Peter put his hands over his ears. It was too much. It was all too much.

“P – please,” he whimpered. “Don’t take her. I’m sorry. So sorry. Just don’t – ”

The hands of two different people were suddenly in his hair. One was rough and just a tad too warm, the hand of an alpha; the other was gentler and nimbler, the hand of a theta. His theta.

He flinched back.

“Oh, Peter,” MJ whispered gently.

“Peter, you need to calm down,” Harley said after her. “Come on, take a deep breath with me. Take a deep breath.”

Shuddering, he instinctively did as he was told.

“Good. Now take another deep breath.”

He sucked in the air.

“Alright, one more. Take a deep breath, Peter.”

He breathed.

The room was suddenly quieter. He could hear MJ, Harley, and Ned all breathing, but the roar in his ears he hadn’t noticed until now was gone. His body was tense, tight and curled into a ball. He didn’t relax it.

“Peter?” MJ murmured.

Tentatively, he opened his eyes.

She was staring at him, her dark brown eyes filled with tears. Tears that he had caused. He flinched again at the thought. “I’m sorry, MJ. I’m so – ”

“Hey, none of that now. You’re just going to work yourself up all over again,” she crooned with a sniffle. “Do you think you can sit up?”

Slowly, because his entire body hurt due to the combination of patrolling and not eating enough, he pushed himself up. Harley’s hands moved onto his back, helping him. They were nice. He kind of missed the feeling of other people besides Natasha touching him.

Ned was still sitting on the couch. His eyes were wide and his mouth was partially open. “Dude,” he said.

It was such a Ned thing of him to say. Peter let out a watery laugh, wiping at the tears in his eyes with his sleeve. “You’re here. You’re all here,” he stated. “To...talk?”

“Well, that was the plan, before we launched you into a panic attack,” Harley winced. “Admittedly, not one of our finer moments.”

“You’re not here to...take her?”

MJ gaped at him. “Of course not, Peter! You’re Natasha’s omither! I’m not going to take her from you! We just want to understand why you did all of this.” She paused, fidgeting with the broken black dahlia necklace around her neck. The one he had gotten her what seemed like a lifetime ago. “You promised us, Peter. You promised us you would find us again and tell us everything.”

Peter clenched his hands into fists, then unclenched them. They were cold. He should probably turn up the thermostat in the room to fix that problem, but that would just be another expense he couldn’t afford. “I did find you, remember?” he said. “That first time at Peter Pan’s, I was gonna tell you everything. I had a speech prepared. But I saw how happy you guys were to get into MIT, and I couldn’t do it. And I know, you guys weren’t really all that happy, Harley told me, but you were also safe. Your safety was all that mattered to me.”

“Peter...” MJ began.

“And then I found out I was pregnant,” he continued, cutting her off. “And yeah, I thought about telling you, MJ. But you wouldn’t remember, so what was the point? I figured that Natasha was your last gift to me. If I had her, everything was going to be fine.” He shuddered in a breath. “And it has been.”

Ned gave him a disbelieving look. “Peter, this is one of the worst apartment buildings I’ve ever seen.”

He shrugged. “It could be worse. If there’s one thing my life ever since the spider bite has taught me, it’s that things could always be worse.”

Next to him, MJ’s heart skipped a beat inside her chest.

Deciding that he didn’t want to talk about this anymore and that their memories were probably back for good, he got off of the bed and walked over to where his laptop was sitting. He grabbed it, biting his lip as he did so, and went back to the bed, gesturing for Ned to come join them. They all fit on it, if only barely. Ned had lost a lot of weight, but four people on one twin-sized bed was a lot of people, especially when one of them was a tall and lanky alpha.

“I made a folder for you,” he told MJ – well, Ned too, but mostly her – with eyes downcast. “Well, more for myself, really, but it’s named for you. It has all these moments since Natasha’s been born on it. Would you like to see them?”

Wordlessly and with the tears in her eyes flowing down her cheeks, she nodded.

~~~

Hours later, the four of them were laying on the bed, entangled in a mess of limbs and dried tears.

Shakily, pulling himself apart from the rest of them, Ned sat up. “I think I’m gonna go,” he said softly.

Peter stared at him with wide eyes. “Ned!”

“Someone needs to make sure Master Strange hasn’t been driven insane yet,” he joked. Well. Peter hoped he was joking. “And besides, you guys need to talk stuff out.”

Then he opened up a portal, in a far smoother fashion than he had two-and-a-half years ago, and was gone.

The silence that followed was thick and uncomfortable. Peter shifted his weight, fidgeting, waiting for the moment he had been waiting for ever since they had appeared in his apartment to come. Waiting for MJ to tell him that she didn’t want him anymore.

But she wasn’t the first one to speak, like he had been expecting.

“So, we’re gonna need to talk about how this is gonna work,” Harley said at last instead.

He frowned, craning his neck to glance up at the alpha. “Huh?”

“This,” Harley gestured with his hands, pointing to all three of them. “We need to talk about how it’s gonna work.”

“I’m not following,” Peter said.

From behind him, MJ laughed into his hair. “He’s talking about our relationship, Peter.”

Our relationship? he thought.

Suddenly, it clicked.

Peter sat up so that he could look at them both. Harley was giving him a lazy smile, MJ a sad one. “You – you want to be in a relationship with me?”

“As far as I’m aware, we never broke up,” MJ said, her eyes flitting over to Harley’s. “We had to talk it over, and push back our bonding ceremony. It’s why we took so long to get over here, besides college.”

“But we both love you,” Harley added, his cheeks reddening. “I mean, with MJ, it’s obvious. But...I’ve been falling in love with you ever since we first met, Peter. You’re adorable, even when you’re being an idiot. It’s kind of hard not to.”

Peter blinked. Harley loved him?

Whatever, it didn’t matter.

“But you love each other,” he tried to protest. “MJ, Harley’s your alpha and – ”

“You’re my omega,” she finished for him. She sat up, gripping onto one of his hands with one of her own. Harley mirrored her. “I may have forgotten about you for two-and-a-half years and we might not be bonded, but that doesn’t make you any less mine. Plus, according to statistics theta relationships with both an alpha and an omega are a lot healthier than others.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that that means anything, but still.”

“Please, let us love you, Parker,” Harley said.

Peter pulled his hands away from theirs. “Y – you shouldn’t move back your bonding ceremony! I betrayed you, MJ! I broke our promise. And my body’s changed, it’s not the same anymore. And – ”

She huffed. “I don’t care about your body, Peter. I care about you. I love you, and so does Harley. Just let us prove it to you.”

There was a glint in her eyes, as she spoke. He knew what it was, he had seen it once before. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from wetting his lips nervously and asking, “How?”

MJ smiled. She leaned forwards, her lips brushing up against his. The kiss was slow and sensual; he felt the air leave his lungs as strong hands, Harley’s hands, slowly pushed him into the bed until he was laying on his back, MJ following after him.

“Well, first I think we should make up for lost time,” she said once she finally broke it off, her head nuzzling into his shoulder. “Then we can get a bite to eat. You’re awfully thin, omega.”

~~~

~~~

Across the multiverse, Peter Parker – otherwise known as Peter-3 – let out a gasp as he sat up in bed. His brown eyes dilated, first once, then twice, as the formerly hazy memories of an event from two-and-a-half years hit him full-force. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

Next to him, his alpha let out a tired groan, his scarred arm coming to wrap around Peter’s torso. “What’s wrong, baby boy?” he asked.

Laughter bursted forth from his lips before he could stop himself. He laughed and laughed, running a shaky hand through his hair, even as his alpha shifted his weight so that he could sit up, too. “Come on, what’s wrong? You’re not going insane, are you? ‘Cause I think there’s only room for one insane person in this relationship, and that’s me.”

“You’re not insane, Wade,” Peter said.

His alpha gave him a look.

“Okay, not that insane,” he amended. “And nothing’s wrong. I just remembered meeting...myself. An alternate version of myself.”

“Sounds like you’re going insane to me.”

“It’s a long story.”

“Even more insane now. But that’s okay,” Wade teased, his lips now ghosting over Peter’s collarbone. But then, he paused. “This alternate version...they don’t happen to be a lookalike of Tom Holland, do they? Because if so, that would be so cool.”