Archive of Our Own ^beta

Cindy Moon is the first actual friend Peter makes after the whole multiverse ordeal.

He isn't exactly eager to socialize to begin with. He spends the first few months afterwards studying for his GED and emptying out his and May's apartment. She had left enough money for him to rent a small apartment, groceries, and other necessities for a few months. But by the fifth month, money was running low and Spider-Man didn't exactly pay.

He thinks of applying at MJ's work first but thinks against it quickly. It would be painful and he didn't want to seem like more a stalker than he already did. Not to mention she and Ned would be leaving for MIT in a few months, working there would be pointless.

So he does what any teenager with a sugar addiction and need for money does.

He applies to the nearest boba shop.

It was cliche and beyond dumb but his metabolism was fast and he needed the sugar. The cheap black coffee from MJ's was no longer sustainable.

Cindy is the one who conducts his interview.

She sits down in the seat opposite of him, short black hair swaying, and her uniform apron stained with an unidentifiable substance. She is aloof and distant, barely concerned with applicant in front of her.

She gazes over his resume on her computer and his ID in her hands.

Luckily, the spell had just erased people's memories of him. He legally very much still existed.

Her shift manager is hovering over her shoulder, training her to ask certain questions in their absence. They finally get to the part of his resume that he had worried about.

"GED?" Cindy asks, looking over the top of the laptop. Her eyes are un-judging but curious. Her manager frowns and Peter squirms.

"I—" he says, "it was a really bad family incident. I couldn't go to school," because that was infinitely easier than trying to explain the memory of his existence being wiped from the face of the planet.

And it's not like it was a lie. It was a really bad family incident.

"Oh, I'm sorry," her manager says, smacking Cindy on the back to be more attentive. "Are they okay now?"

Peter tilts his head forward and nods a little numbly.

Cindy continues the interview, nonchalant.

"Do you have any previous job experience?"

"No."

(He had removed the Stark internship from his resume. He figured no one would believe him anyways.)

They ask some more questions and seem to have no reserve talking about his hiring in front of him. Yes, he was going to attend community college next semester. Yes, he was interested in being a team player and working hard. No, his GED wouldn't be anything to worry about.

"No job experience," the shift manager— who's name he learned, Katy— whines. She's pushing and rolling at Cindy's shoulders like an irritated older sister.

"He went to Midtown Science his whole life," Cindy argues. "That's one of the best schools in the city. They don't exactly leave time for extracurriculares."

Peter watches on anxiously, nodding his head when something positive about him is said.

"Give him a chance," Cindy says, leaning back into her seat. She's suppressing a groan. "It's either him or that one weeb," she turns around to glare at her friend. "You know what he said? He said I looked like Mikasa! Mikasa! I'm Korean."

Katy groans.

Peter looks between them. "Uh, does that happen a lot?"

He cringed inwardly.

"Yeah," Katy laughs, leaning a hand onto a nearby chair and stretching. She seems to grow less professional as the minutes go by. "There was this one girl who— oh my god," she slams her hands on the table. She leans close, eyes staring at him comedically large. Cindy watches on in an impressive mixture of boredom and amusement.

Katy whispers it like it's the most horrible thing in the world. She's so close Peter can see her pores. "Do— you— like—"

"My hero," Cindy finishes her sentence. Katy sends her a withering glare. "Do you like My Hero Academia?"

He stares and blinks a little. "The... anime...?"

They nod.

(He was putting his financial futre in the hands of these people.)

"Uh," he scratches his chin, because really this should not be weird considering all of the other situations he's been in, but it was. It was weird. "No? I haven't watched it."

"What animes do you watch? Have you watched any anime?" Katy demands.

"Some of them," he admits wearily, "but I'm not a diehard..."

He should probably not mention his decade old fixation on Star Wars.

Katy and Cindy look at each other. They've seem to come to a mutual agreement. "It's him or the twenty-five year old virgin who came in wearing a nsfw Bakugo t-shirt."

Peter both feared the truth and craved its knowledge.

Katy rubs her head a little, stressed. "I— yeah. I'll get you approved through the big boss. When can you start?"

——-

He starts the next week. Cindy is his assigned mentor. She doesn't seem particularly taken with him, but just grateful he wasn't some random weirdo. He took to the recipes pretty easily and he snuck in a large order of chai tea on his break when nobody was looking. (His blood sugar was getting dangerously low.)

They were pretty busy, with it being summer break and tourists flooding in by the numbers— but he had learned a few things within that short time: They were the same age. She lived with her grandmother, mother, and three other siblings. She was not blipped. She had a relatively positive opinion of the Avengers, but nothing particularly negative about Spider-Man.

It's not friendship, not quite. It's co-workers passing the time with talk and Peter being too polite to shut the conversation down, but it's nice. It's nice to talk. It's nice not being so alone.

——-

He still goes by MJ's work when he can. He talks to Ned when he's there and she calls him by his full name every time. She refuses to let the awkwardness of their first encounter go. He's just grateful he's still a part of her life, even if it's just a small one.

They're not friends, not like they used to. It hurts, he'll stop himself halfway through an inside joke they had before he remembers they won't understand. All the afternoons he spent building weird Lego sets and streaming Star Wars with Ned. All the nights he and MJ had spoken til midnight on the phone.

They didn't exist anymore.

Being there is just as painful as if he had just kept his distance. He hurts if he sees them and he hurts when he tries to distance from them. There is no wining.

——-

By the third time Peter comes into work with a Peter Pan's coffee and donut, Katy demands to know if he's a traitor. She's going on a rant that Cindy is barely listening to, offering up unhelpful advice occasionally.

Katy is pacing the empty lounge. "Should we start selling donuts?"

"Donuts with boba," Cindy suggests sarcastically. If her friends notices the sarcasm, she ignores it.

Katy just nods, very dramatically, very seriously, rubbing her chin with her hand. "I'll talk to my mom."

"Please do not ask your mom if we can sell boba donuts," Peter says, weakly. He briefly wonders how many other gross boba-related food items Katy had suggested to her mother-slash-boss. "It's a terrible idea."

Katy makes a face. "It's a great idea!"

Cindy nods in solemn agreement. Katy smiles at her before bouncing off to find her mother. Cindy resumes her cleaning, looking rather pleased with herself.

"Don't encourage her," he says, moving to stand next to her. Cindy, as he noted, usually tended to cause more trouble than she was worth.

"Relax," she says, completely calm. "Katy's ideas always get shut down. This time is no different."

He briefly wonders how she could be so cruel. He moves on, sighing, as he continued to clean. He looks down at the thin wallet in his pocket. It was going to be even thinner when college started, he thought sadly.

"You excited for classes?" he asks instea. He's not sure why he's suddenly so talkative again at work, but it was easy to convince himself that socializing was for the sake of their comradery. Not for his own spiraling mental health.

"I guess," Cindy says, chattering her teeth nervously. They were enrolled into the same community college. It was less than two miles from both of their apartments, apparently. "I'll have to move from full-time to part-time and money will be worse—"

"—Tell me about it," he says weakly. Just the thought gives him anxiety. He's been eating dominoes pizza for the last two weeks. Dominoes. In New York. Life was not good.

"Still going into nursing?"

"Still going into biochemistry?"

He just shrugs. He's not even sure he'll be able to finish his degree, let alone get a stable job in it. It's more than likely it'll just a waste of money, but May would be disappointed if he didn't try.

"The other day you kept talking about how awful nursing is," he remembers.

"It is," she admits, easily. "But it's in high demand and it pays well. I don't know what else to do and I dont exactly have the luxury to be picky."

He nods.

Cindy was essentially in the same financial situation he was. She was helping her grandmother to keep the family a float while her mother tried to finish her degree.

He couldn't imagine financially supporting so many people. Supporting himself was already so difficult.

He's already saving up. Hopefully cutting down on his sweets will illuminate a good chunk of expenses. He already mourns the loss of his dessert.

——-

Cindy is bothering him again.

In truth, she's not even doing much but playing on her phone as he does homework. The weather is semi-warm and they're sitting at a picnic bench at their college waiting for the next class period. She's laying on the table, legs crossed over the edge. A group of boys playing football nearby.

She snatches one of his pencils and twittles it in her fingers as she scrolls through her phone. Peter is half-tempted to ask her if she has any other friends.

"Pete," she wines. She rolls over onto her stomach. Her shirt is ruffled. "I don't want to go to psychology."

"I have English," he points out. They have different classes considering their majors, but most of them tended to fit around the same time slot. By some curse.

It's not that he dislikes Cindy, really. He appreciates her company and she's often funny. He's just— Not the best at being around people these days.

He watches as a football being flies a little too close to them. He considers leaving before one of them is hit in the face. Cindy sits up suddenly, shuffling through her backpack.

As if on cue, "Hey, watch it!"

Peter sees it too late. It's not a danger to him so he senses aren't going. Though, it's headed straight for Cindy with a speed high enough to break a bone.

"Cin—!"

She catches it, dropping her backpack and spilling its contents everywhere. She mutters, grumpily. "Shit."

"Woah!" one of the boys cheer, running closer. "Awesome catch!"

She looks down at the football in her hands, bewildered. Peter blinks a little. She wasn't paying attention at all, how did she catch that?

He's just glad she's not hurt, he supposes.

"Throw it back!"

She does and it goes surprisingly far despite the apparent lack of technique.

Peter watches, a little amused. "I'm not a sports guy, but that's definitely not how you throw football."

She flips him off without looking.

——-

Cindy sighs half-way through her work, in an admittance of defeat. He turns to look at her, like she had grown another head. "My mom wants you to come over."

He just stares. It takes a few moments to process her words. "Excuse me?"

She rolls her eyes. "She likes to invite all my friends over for dinner at least once."

Friends.

He begins to sweat. When had they crossed that threshold? Friends was MJ and Ned, and maybe even Flash on a great day, but not— not Cindy. They had never even hung out outside of work. Or school. Or studying.

That didn't count.

Cindy notices his panicked expression and frowns. "Look, it's not like we're dating."

Dating, she ducks her cheeks away where he can't see. He raises an eyebrow.

"It's just a friendly invitation."

"I—-" he opens and closes his mouth. "I'm busy."

She looks unimpressed. She knows when he is lying. He's not particularly good at it, anyway. She crosses her arms, "With what?"

He feels a little spiteful. "Friends."

"You have no other friends."

He glares, witheringly. She doesn't mean it in such a crude way, but it was the way it came out. Her filter lacked more emotional depth and sympathy than MJ's.

"Maybe I just don't want to go," he snaps.

A very brief look of hurt flickers across Cindy's face, so quick he questioned if it had even been there. Her mouth tightens and her fists clench. "No need to be a dick about it," she spits, before turning her back.

He sighs as he watches her go.

He knows partially that they're both being difficult. Cindy needs things her way and Peter doesn't like getting too close to anyone anymore. He can understand a little why she's upset. To her, he's just some random asshole, not a traumatized teenage superhero.

He feels a little guilty, looking at where she's angrily scrubbing some dishes. She'll get over it. She always does.

——-

He spends most of his free time at May's grave. MJ and Ned are off in Massachussets, so visiting Pan's is pointless. He has nowhere else to go and the emptiness of his worn-torn apartment is cripplingly lonely.

He places fresh flowers at her grave whenever he can, after Cindy had scolded him that artificial ones were disrespectful.

Sometimes there are other people at her grave and he as to wait until they leave. Happy comes often, but he can never bring himself to say hello. There are few other faces he recognizes, but none he can put a name to. He wonders how he's doing, how Pepper and Rhodey and Morgan are doing.

He misses Tony. Tony would've known how to fix this.

And he tells May this. He hasn't figured out how to let her go. In truth, he's not sure he ever will. He misses her. Her horrible cooking, her bad jokes, the gentle sound of her laugh as she kissed him good night. He even missed her scoldings when he was a little too late for his curfew.

He cries most of the time, laying on the fluffy grass and leaning on the cold stone until he's calm-downed. It's a beautiful place to have been buried. Swaying trees, blooming flowers, streaming sunlight.

He can't help but feel bitter anyways.

May had wanted him to be better. His other Peter's had wanted him to be better. But he's not getting better.

He's laid in bed all day, doing nothing but curled up in his sheets. He has school or work, or one of those, but he doesn't really care. His eyelids are heavy. He's tired.

He's so tired.

He wants to be with May and Tony. Away rom this world, from this suffering and unhappiness. He lived in a world full of superheroes. Did the city really need Spider-Man?

No one would really care if he was gone. MJ, Happy, and Ned didn't know him anymore. Katy and Cindy would be sad, but he was their coworker and he had pushed back on every attempt at theirs to be come closer. Denied outings and lunches and movie nights, they would get over it with time. No one would really care.

Consumed in his own thoughts, he can barely hear the knocking of the front door and a feminine voice being asked to let it. He continues to stare at his bedsheets.

The doorknob rattles and door swings open suddenly. Gentle footsteps echoe through his kitchen, calling out his name. "Peter?"

He wants to go home.

His bedroom door swings open.

"Peter," Cindy sighs, her features wash over with relief. Her shoulders seem to lose a little tension, though she can't seem to decide whether to be worried or upset.  "I was so— we were so worried, you asshole! What the hell. You didn't show up to class yesterday and then work today and you weren't answering your phone or any of our texts and—"

She stops her ranting when she realizes she's getting no reaction. "Peter?"

She takes a reluctant seat at the foot of his bed. He makes no acknowledgment of her. And she frowns.

"Peter?" she asks so gently, so uncharacteristically, like the calm wind on a warm summer's day. She looks... worried. Had she ever been worried for him? They had just fought, why did she care?

She places her hand on his back. He doesn't flinch away.

"Peter?"

She's warm. So, so, warm.

She's barely even touching him, and it's liking being swallowed in a warm pool. It makes his head dizzy with comfort.

He rolls over slightly, just enough for her to squeeze. He pulls his covers over slightly. His message is clear.

Cindy kicks off her shoes and slides in next to him, pulling the covers back over. Her cold toes curl against his warm calf. Her chest pressed against his back

They lay in silence for a few seconds, in a bed far too small for two adults.

He can't see her face, but she can feel the heat radiating from it as she presses it into his shoulder. "What are we doing?" she whispers, flushed.

He just grunts a little softly, basking in the warmth of her presence. He can hear the soft echo of his conscious growing louder. A rising doubt of he shouldn't be doing this.

A thought occurs to him suddenly.

He turns over and looks at her accusingly, "How did you get into my apartment?"

She stares at him. lamely, "This is New York. Your front door doesn't lock properly."

He stares, then frowns. "I should get that fixed."

Not that he had anything valuable to steal, but he should really get that fixed.

She just laughs nervously, a soft breathy chuckle that tickles his face and hair. They try to touch each other as little as possible despite the small distance. Until Cindy reaches upwards, curling the tips of his hair around her finger tips.

And Peter— Peter starts to cry.

"Oh no," Cindy stops touching him immediately. She begins to panic, "Peter crying. Peter crying. I don't—"

She hugs him against her better judgement.

He tucks his face into his shirt, ignoring the warmth of his tears and the edging embarrassment.

He misses his friends. He misses his family.

Cindy continues to gently play his head, hushing softly, legs entangling together. Peter's never felt so ridiculous in his life, but he also can't remember the last time he's felt so much relief.

He's getting tears and snot in her hair and it's all so gross.

"You need to take care of yourself," she whispers so gently, he wonders if she's a different person entirely, "Peter."

His name is like a prayer on her lips, a soft breath that she can't help but escape.

His voice is croaky, scratched, and almost unbearable. "I— I miss— I miss them."

And, and maybe he's never been the best. Maybe he's messed up a lot, accidentally hurt a lot of people— but that didn' mean he deserved this... right? He's always tried his best. All he ever wanted to do was help people.

He didn't deserve this.

They sit in silence for a few more seconds. "Is it the Blip?" Cindy asks so quietly it's just above a whisper.

She is unusually gentle and patient, but he's grateful all the same. She twists his curls in her fingers and he leans into the touch.

He pauses too long to think, apparently, because she takes it as an answer.

She presses her head against his. She seems somber suddenly, she closes her eyes, and she says nothing for a long time. He remembers suddenly that she hadn't been blipped.

"When..." she starts and ends just as quickly, "I was twelve when it happened. And... and I didn't understand. My mom, my friends, my siblings. They were all just... gone."

He turns his head to look at her. He presses her head into his shoulder in an attempt to comfort to her.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. He was lucky enough to have been blipped alongside his friends and family. Only Happy had been left, and he had barely changed in those years.

She rolls her head back onto his pillow. "For a long time, it was just me and Dad and Grandma... and then it was just Grandma and I."

She tilts her head slightly, refusing to make contact with him. He can see her lip trembling, anyway.

"It was really lonely," she admits. "And I thought that I'd always be alone. And then I got this job, and Katy, and then everyone came back, but..."

"Except you had grown up," he muses, "but everyone else had stayed the same."

She just nods a little, numbly.

"You..." he trails off. He silts his head, slightly. "You never told me that."

She seems particularly pale. She's still trying to act cool, "I thought— I thought it would help."

The skin around his eyes wrinkle just a little. His heart feels a little warm. "It did, thank you."

She smiles.

His stomach grumbles and Cindy jumps out next from him suddenly, as if struck by lightning. He looks at her funny. "Get up," she tugs at him. "When was the last time you ate?"

He rolls over, shrugging. (His memory wasn't the best as of late. It might be the low blood sugar or dehydration, whichever fit best.)

She pads into the kitchen and Peter remembers he might have suspicious things laying around. He swears, stumbling after her, pushing a stray Spider-Man mask under the bed and prays she hadn't seen it.

She's shuffling through his fridge, holding an egg carton containing a singular egg and a half-empty sriracha bottle. She stares at him, "Is this literally all of the food you have in your fridge?"

He shrugs, "I ate it all."

Yeah, yeah. He hadn't been to the grocery store lately. The only things he had in his pantry were pop tarts and some foul tasting mint candy that even he wouldn't eat. It was a mild improvement.

He points this out to Cindy.

"Uh," she groans. "You're such a man."

She puts the stuff back in the refrigerator and slams it shut. She claps her hands together, "Let's go out to eat."

"I don't have any money," he reminds her. He had brought pre-sale tickets for the next Star Wars movie. He had no regrets.

(Falafel would taste really good right now, though.)

He and Cindy think together, staring off into different sections of the room. Her eyes light up suddenly and she smiles, and Peter gets a very, very bad feeling.

She picks up a shirt that that he had strewn on a nearby chair and throws it at him. "Get dressed. Let's head out."

He holds up the shirt to her. A white tee with the words "I <3 MILFS", a matching pair he got with Ned.

If it were Katy, she perhaps would've laughed. "Why do you own that?"

He shrugs.

——-

Peter is still too foggy-minded to realize where they're going until Cindy is fiddling with a pair of keys trying to get the door open. Through the thin walls, he can hear yelling in a foreign language and the happy chatter of a nearby TV.

Realization strikes him suddenly and he turns his back and tries to slip away as quietly possible, but Cindy grabs him by his shirt's collar and pulls him back in. "Nope," she says, pushing the door open.

Peter is immediately met with brain-overwhelming stimulus. Two children below the age of ten are screaming, running around and tripping over each other. A third child is studying, surrounded by a stack of books on the dinner table. Teen Titans G0! is playing loudly on the old square tv. A tired middle-aged women is scurrying around the kitchen, scolding her children, while the oven alarm goes off. And in the center of the room, Cindy's grandmother is laid back in an old recliner chair, playing solitaire on a Hello Kitty case iPad.

Cindy is not disturbed by the mess or the noise. She drags him in with her and closes the door behind him. He glances back at it nervously, no escape.

One of the children trips, crying out. The other pauses, ignoring their hurt sibling to point at Cindy. "Mama! Cindy is home!"

Cindy's mom is too busy to turn. She's trying to make sure everything on the stove doesn't burn. "Cindy! You're late! You may be eighteen, but you still need to—"

"She has a boy with her!" the child on the ground screams, apparently not as hurt as he seemed to be. Cindy sends him a withering glare.

Her mother pauses for just a second. "A boy?"

"A white boy!"

"I'm Jewish," he argues weakly. Cindy just pats his shoulder.

The grandmother looks up from her game, eyes sparkling. "Oh, a boy!" she says in a heavy Korean accent and Peter immediately decides that she's his favorite here.

"No," her mother scolds, shaking a wooden spoon in her hand. "She's too young for boys!"

Her grandmother argues back in Korean, something that neither Cindy or Peter seem to catch.

"Mom."

"I had many, many boys when I was her age," her grandmother says. "Think of marriage!"

"Mom."

"She needs to finish college!"

"Mom."

Peter slides behind Cindy, slightly fearful.

"I'm going to my room," the girl at the table declares, sweeping up her books in her arms.

The older woman smacks her daughter on the side. "You scared Hailey."

Her daughter, Cindy's mother, ignores her.

"Mama!" one of the floor children shouts. "You're scaring the jewel— jew—ish white boy!"

"My name is Peter," he says, because he is very tired of being referred to as either of those things.

Cindy's mother relaxes immediately. "Oh, thank god. You're Peter Peter?"

He smiles, politely, "Unless Cindy knows another Peter."

Her mother kisses her daughter on the cheek gratefully. "Oh, thank god, my baby. I thought you had brought home a skinny white boy."

She points to him, "He's not that skinny."

Would it be weird to take off his shirt so Cindy could prove he wasn't that skinny? Yes. No. Yes.

"I've been telling Cindy to bring you over forever," she pats his back, shoving him towards the table. "Come, come."

He waves his hands, frantically. "Wait, I don't want to—- I don't want to impose—"

(Damn you, Cindy.)

"Nonsense! I feed all of Cindy's friends."

"She only has two friends," the floor child pipes up.

Cindy flicks him in the head. He sticks his tongue out and runs off down the hallway. Cindy's mother tells them to set the table. She goes off to look for an extra chair while the grandmother continues to cook.

"James," her mother calls to one of the floor children, who Peter finally realizes are not identical twins. "Sit in the foldout chair."

He pouts.

"I can sit there," Peter blurts, "it's really not—"

She ushers him into the seat. "No, there is no problem with it."

James spoke up. "I have a problem with it."

She ignores him.

Peter scoots up into his chair reluctantly. His head is spinning, stuck between being socially awkward and the fear of being unintentionally impolite.

"This smells really good, Ms. Moon," he says.

She glows at the drop of the "Mrs".

Cindy, embarrassing as always, leans over to whisper to him. "Yo, are you hitting on my mom?"

Would this be related to the "I love milfs" shirt?

He ignores her.

It would be a funnier joke if it wasn't a this expense. He was a simple teenager. He loved "your mom" jokes.

He picks up the fork that had only been set out for him. He turns to Cindy, knowing this is her doing. "I know how to use chopsticks."

He was a New Yorker, not a monster.

"I know," Cindy produced something from her jacket pockets. "I just wanted to surprise you."

She holds up the child's chopsticks, proudly, held together in the middle by a cartoon penguin that Peter vaguely recognizes.

He stares at her, offended.

"Those are my old ones!" Albert, the other floor child, supplies/

Cindy's mother smacks her on the shoulder. "Stop embarrassing the boy, get him some real ones."

"Yes, mama."

She gets up to do as her mother says. Her grandmother takes that as invite to talk. "Study. 'S your study?"

Study? Oh, he blinked. "I'm, um, studying biochemistry."

"Woooow," she says, impressed. "Albert had that."

He looks to Albert who was currently in an eating competition with his brother.

"My dad," Cindy adds, helpfully. "That idiot is Albert junior, but he's just Albert now."

That's right. Cindy had mentioned her father's death in passing.

"Albert was studying for his bioengineering doctorate," her mother corrects. "Not chemistry."

She waves her off. "Both science. Both good money. Who cares?"

"He was a very accomplished man," Nari, the mother says, put off. "He was a research scientist at Columbia."

The dots click together slowly. Bioengineering. Columbia?

No way.

"I went on field trip there once," Peter says, now visibly sweating. "I remember the bioengineering part the best."

"Oh," Nari beams, a clearly unusual feat based on the way her children look at her. "You might've met him! Did you see the spiders?"

Bingo.

There's no way his and Cindy's lives could possibly be this entertained, right? Right? Oh, how the universe hated him so.

He shuffles his shirt collar, "is it— is it hot in here?"

Cindy gives him an odd look.

She kicks him lightly underneath the table.

He splutters,"I, yeah, I mean, uh, yeah, the spiders. I saw them, yeah."

"Cindy saw them too," she smiles. "They were her favorite exhibit."

"I was like five," she mutters.

Her mother ignores her, again. "It was her father's dissertation. It's a shame, though. They had to shut the experiment down."

Peter leans forward. "How, uh, how come..."

"The spiders kept escaping," she says simply, as if it was not the singular most life-changing event to ever happen.

Cindy shakes her head. "It was this whole legal problem. It was Dad and this guy Connor. They kept losing the spiders and couldn't figure out why, then one of the carcasses was found outside the case after a tour one day. The university buried the whole thing before it blew up."

"Ah," Peter says, shoveling more food into mouth. He silently prays that this Connor is also not the same Lizard-man Connor, but with his luck, he knows it is.

Cindy's mother smiles and places her cheeks in her hands. "You used to visit him at the university all the time. You were so cute."

Albert speaks, softly. "Can we... can we stop talking about Dad?"

The other children nod their heads, unusually quiet.

"Sorry," Peter squeaks, guiltily.

"Not your fault," her grandmother beams. Peter wonders if she would adopt him if he asked.

"You're always welcome here, Peter," Nari says. "Living alone at your age must be hard. Come as often as you want."

He blushes slightly, tilts his head, and smiles.

James kicks his feet, whining. "Mama, why aren't you that nice to me?"

She ignores him.

His body floods with warmth. The hallow part of his chest hurts just a little bit less. "Thank you," is all he can think to say.

——-

"I can walk myself home," he tells Cindy. His belly is full and his heart is warm. Despite his words, he's grateful for the company.

"I know," she says. "I just wanted to walk."

She's wrapped in a fuzzy coat and eaarmuffs and the cold wind is snipping at her red cheeks. Peter can't imagine why she would think this is good walking weather.

They reach his apartment building, barren and rundown. It was in no better condition than Cindy's, but her's felt more homely somehow. The thought of it makes him smile a little more.

He stops at the steps as she's turning off to walk away, waving her goodbyes.

"Thank you, again," he says, because he's not sure how many times saying it will make it feel like enough.

She turns, "Hm?"

"The dinner," he breathes. "It meant, it meant a lot to me. It's been really hard for me the past few months. So, thank you for... for looking out for me."

She just smiles, tilting her head. Her eyes sparkle. She seems tame, like a beast who has learned to roll on its back. "Of course. We're friends, right?"

Friends. It didn't feel quite right, but it didn't feel quite right either.

He nods and smiles back at her.

He can't help but feel he's betraying MJ somehow.

——-

Katy is beaming at him. Her arms propped on the counter, hands squishing her cheeks. It's starting to freak him out.

"Don't you have a job?" he asks a little wearily. "We have customers."

"It's a slow day," she grins, "Cindy has it handled."

He eyes her suspiciously as he continues to clean the counters. "Stop being weird," he begs. He's never thought that sentence would ever leave his mouth. It was usually the other way around.

Katy is unbothered. She scooches closer, grinning. "So.... I heard you and Cindy had dinner together last night."

He blinks up at her, was that why she was being so strange? "Yeah, I was in bad shape and Cindy took me over to her house. Her mom made dinner."

She continues to grin, "So you met her mom."

"Yes...?" he trails off. He's not sure where this is going. "She seems nice. Her grandmother was really sweet though."

An angel, he corrects himself mentally. He'll go back to Cindy's house as many times as she asks just to see her grandmother. She had hugged him on his way out. He adored her.

He told Cindy if she died he got her grandma.

"I'm glad," Katy grins, straightening up a little. "They even kept asking me when you would come over. Cindy talks about you so much."

He worries what she tells them. She saw a great deal of stupid things that he did.

"It was nice," he admits, smiling. "Really nice."

He had missed being around family.

She beams. "Cindy really likes you, so I'm glad it's going well."

He blinks, slowly, oblivious. "I would hope so? We're friends."

He's not even really sure Cindy liked anything to be honest. She was a bit of a gremlin.

"Oh," Katy's eyes widen with panic. She's swinging her arms everywhere, distressed. He stares at her, alarmed. "Oh, oh- forget I said anything!"

He still doesn't understand what's happening. "What, why?"

"Nothing!" she shrieks, some of the customers turn their heads. "It's nothing! You didn't hear anything I said!"

"What?" he demands, the realization strikes him suddenly, "that Cindy likes— oh."

Katy squeaks.

Oh.

His face is red and everything he tries to say comes out in splutters. "Look, I, um— I'm flatter—"

"I didn't say anything!" she shouts. She throws her apron to Kevin. "You didn't hear me! I'm taking a break, bye!"

"Kat—"

She grabs Cindy and runs toward the back.

"Katy! Wha—"

He drops what he's doing.

"Wait, no," Kevin cries. "Guys, I need—"

He chases after them, waving to his coworker behind him. "Thanks, Kevin! I'll make it up to you!"

The back exit slams shut. Peter presses his ear to the door.

"You told him?!" Cindy wails.

"I'm sorry!" Katy cries, close to tears. She's talking so fast that only bits a pieces of make sense. "You were both so happy— and you like him!- and the way you talked about what happened!— I just made the assumption!— I'm so sorry!"

"Katy, Katy, Katy!" Cindy cries, trying to calm both of them down. "It was an accident! It's okay!" She grabs her by the cheeks and pulls both of their faces in. "It's. Okay."

——-

It, in fact, was not okay.

Peter's head is a jumbled mess and he spends the next two weeks avoiding both of them. Not his best moment, admittedly, but one of his only two friends has romantic feelings for him and he's still mentally dating his ex girlfriend. Give him a break.

How had he not noticed this?

It's not— its not like Cindy was subtle. She hung out with him whenever she could. She had blushed at the idea of them dating. She had drug him to meet her family, for god's sake.

He feels like an idiot.

And a jackass, to a top it off.

Cindy, on the other hand, finally snaps on the cusp of the third week.

"You," she storms up to him, when the last of the customers have left and she's caught him with his guard down. He drops his broom in surprise. The remaining employees flee without so much as a glance back. Katy is inconspicuously hiding behind a counter.

He can practically see the smoke trundles tunneling from her ears.

She points at him, "What the fuck is wrong with you!"

His spider sense tingles vaguely.

"I—"

She is on him within seconds. She looks ready to strangle him. "You have some nerve, Peter Parker. Ignoring me, for three weeks."

He protests, weakly. "I have not been ignoring you."

He lies, like a lying liar. Avoiding would be a much better suited word, he thinks. 

She sneers. "You're full of shit."

He frowns, defensively. He opens his mouth to argue more, but she beats him to the case.

"I know you didn't like me, I know you don't like me, and I know you will never like me," she says. "I've come to peace with that— but that doesn't mean you get to freak out and drop me."

She steps closer. Peter stands his ground. In that moment, she's never seemed more terrifying.

"I get that you're going through a hard time, Peter, and I've never pushed— but that doesn't mean you get to make the rest of us feel like crap."

He swallows, clenching and unclenching his fists. His brain feels like a marble rattling around in his head.

She pulls off her apron and dumps it on the nearest table. "I'm done covering for you. Find someone else to cover for your bullshit."

She turns her back, slamming the door behind her.

"Cindy!" Katy calls, but she is already gone.

Peter chases after her without another word, weaving through the milling crowd, bumping more than a few people on his way. He grabs her by the wrist, pulling her towards him. She stares ay him, irritated.

His head is spinning.

"What do you mean covering for me?" he demands. Someone shoves him aside, cursing him for blocking up the side walk. She seems to think.

She comes to a decision, finally. "You disappear every day for hours on end," she says. "You are always late to class and shifts."

"I," he shakes his head. "I don't understand."

"Why do you think you still you have a job," she says. "I know you're Spider-Man, Peter."

His heart skips a beat.

"I'm not," he tries to deny, weakly, laughing awkwardly. Her frown just deepens, upset further.

Panic and confirmation spike through him. He looks around frantically, over both his shoulders then in front of him, before pulling both them aside into a dirty alleyway.

He's stuttering, word vomiting, "How—"

"You are very bad at keeping secrets," she hisses. "You leave your suit laying around your apartment, idiot."

"How do you know those aren't cosplay?" he hisses back.

Cindy grabs his arm before he can move, pulling down his jacket sleeve, revealing his web shooters. She holds his wrist up, irritated. She waves his arm angrily at him.

He snatches his arm away, like scorned by fire. "Shit," he drags his hands down his face, "shit."

He feels a bubble of horrendous, ugly emotions all at once, none of which he likes the feeling of. He wants to throw up or punch someone or scream. Pull his hair out and then maybe her own.

An unfortunately familiar bitter feeling settles on his tongue. A taste that makes his stomach pool and his chest clench unconsciously.

He feels... betrayed. Was this the only reason she liked him? Why she was friends with him? Why she had tried to look after him so hard... Because, because he was Spider-Man?

He's not sure he's ever hated her more in that second.

"So what?" he snipes, against his better judgement. The words that come out of his mouth are barely him, but still very much his own. "You're mad I don't return your feelings so you're throwing it back at me?"

(Shut up. Shut up.)

(Is this who he is? Is this the type of person he's become?)

He can feel Aunt May looking down at him, disappointed, shaking his head. It makes his throat close up with grief.

"Oh for fuck's sake, Peter," she cries. "I don't give a shit about feelings!"

She spits out the word like it's a venom she can't stand to taste. She clearly does care. 

"Yes," he says, "you do."

"I care," she says, voice rising, "that you freaked out and ditched me! And that you couldn't even tell me 'no, sorry' to my face! A person who is supposed to be your friend!"

He wants to pull at his hair.

"What was I supposed to say," he cries. "I don't return them, I'm sorry!"

He is. He really, really is, but he was in no place for relationship. Not even if it meant going back to MJ.

"Then just say that!" she screams.

She storms off, slumping against a nearby ledge to sit on. She crosses her arms, distressed, looking so mad she could cry. She wipes her eyes angrily to make sure she isn't, just for good measure.

Peter's head hurts.

Nice one, Parker, he thinks to himself. You made her cry.

His heart hurts and guiltily slumps over to where she is sitting. He stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets. His throat is dry.

He doesn't want to apologize. He doesn't want to say I'm sorry, even. He just wants to go home.

This is all too much.

Cindy is quiet as he sits down next to her. She seems to deflate.

"I didn't mean..." she trails off. She tucks her legs in her hooked arms. "I don't care about the.. the thing," she whispers. "I don't... I didn't mean to make you feel bad about that, I'm sorry."

She, at least, has the nerve to look genuinely guilty. He looks at her.

"You don't owe anyone your feelings."

"I am," he stops and starts. He's not sure where to begin or end, "I'm sorry."

He looks at her again, from her short ruffled black hair to the spots on her face she's picked from stress. They surely look ridiculous, tearful and angry on a dirty Queens sidewalk, dressed in colorful aprons and stained t-shirts.

His mind is reeling. "I," his throat. "I care about you a lot."

It is both a relief and a burden to finally admit it. A blessing and a curse all at once. He thought scares him.

He cares for her a lot, loves her maybe, even. But just admitting he cared for as a friend was difficult and struck a deep fear in his soul. Like now that he's confirmed he cares, she'll be swept away any minute. To death, to Boston.

He finally forces himself to breathe, "I'm just not in a point in life where a relationship would be good for either of us."

He doesn't think he could handle losing anyone else.

There are a million questions she could ask in that moment, every single one of them beginning with why. But she does not. She knew this was not a boundary that needed to be crossed, at least not yet. He would tell her in time, or never at all. He was entitled to that decision and she would respect either one of them.

She twists her fingers in her hands, "This isn't one of those, 'it's not you, it's me' things, is it?"

"Ah," he begins to stutter, panicking.

"I'm kidding," she says, not particularly sure how to handle this either. She looks at him and her eyes seem to warm as her awkwardness melts away. "I care about you too."

His eyes water a little.

"Thanks," is all he manages to say.

She just laughs a little.

It's not quite a true laugh, just a gentle puff of air that huffs through nose. A quiet snort of amusement, but it's something. An olive branch. And Peter appreciates it more than anything.

"Why didn't you say anything?" he asks. He wants to reach out and touch her hand, but he's not sure she'd take that well. "About Spider-Man?"

She mutters d something incoherent, before she repeats it again slightly louder. "It's not exactly an easy conversation starter."

True, he admits to himself. Accusing your coworker of having wall climbing superpowers wasn't exactly the sanest argument.

"Katy knows?" he guesses. He's pretty sure they know each other's underwear colors.

"Yeah," she admits. if a stressed look flashes across his face, she quickly notices. "Sorry, she found out on her own."

He just stares, blinking once, twice. Words circling his head but never truly going in. "I'm not that bad at keeping secrets."

"Yes, you are."

He opens and clothes his mouth to protest, but finds he has no argument. He frowns instead. "Who else knows?"

"No one," she promises. "Everyone does think you have a huge juul addiction though."

He turns so fast his neck almost cracks. "Is that why Emmy asked me if I had lung failure?"

"Possibly," she admits, neither confirming nor denying. She is completely devoid of guilt. "Katy's mom may also try to send you to rehab within the next few months."

He just stares. "Have you guys just been saying that I've just been going out to smoke?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Katy throws in a little weed once in a while."

He groans into his hands. "God, that explains so much."

Maybe he really should pay more attention to detail. Though, it certainly explained why Mason had been repeatedly asking him for "the goof stuff."

They sit in silence for few more minutes, both too fearful to move or touch the other. Their bodies positioned almost as far away as possible from each other.

Peter stands suddenly, holding out his hand to her, smiling. "Are we good?"

He is both terrified of having and terrified of losing her.

She takes his hand in hers and pulls herself up. Her hands are much smaller than his. Less calloused from years of spider training. Her finger tips linger a touch too long on his.

"We're good," she smiles, although it is weary.

She is happy, for the moment at least. And Peter decides that all is right with the world.

———

It takes a little while for things to return to normal, for the most part. Cindy seems more relaxed, less tense. A little more open. Peter has finally accepted that he cares about them, although is still grappling with the after effects of such an affirmation. Katy is just excited to finally be able to openly ask him questions about Spider-Man.

Her questions nostalgically remind him of Ned, to which Peter happily answers them all.

They're lounging in his sad apartment one random day. Cindy's is too crowded and Katy's is unavailable. The weather is ridiculously cold for the time of year and they're sitting around his half-working heater, lazily scrolling through their phones. None of them particularly eager to do anything else.

Katy and Cindy are lying on top of each other on the makeshift couch, legs entangled in a heap, and Peter is laying on the floor beneath them.

There is a shuffling in the front of his apartment. None of them raise their heads.

"Did you hear that?" Cindy asks.

"Probably just upstairs," Peter says.

Katy looks around, confused. "I didn't hear anything."

The small floor heater kicks off suddenly.

Peter hisses to himself, rolling over, "Crap." He sits up quickly, unplugging it from the wall, and already taking it apart into pieces. It hadn't been nearly warm enough to harm him.

He looks over his shoulder, "Hey, can someone grab the screw? It's in the drawer near the front door."

Cindy tries to stand up, but her hands stick to the couch. She grumbles to herself, "You've got to be kidding me."

Katy just laughs, standing up. "Butter fingers."

It seems to be a reoccurring number of incidences. Cindy kept getting her hands stuck in odd places, like the refrigerator door or the bathroom sink.

"It keeps happening," she cries, unusually distressed. Peter has already tuned them out.

Katy skips to the front of the apartment, humming softly as she shuffles through the drawer. When there is a sudden ear piercing scream.

Peter and Cindy both jump, as if struck by lightning. Peter drops the pieces onto the carpet, and Cindy leaps, accidentally pulling the raggedy couch cushions off with her. She is too distraught with her friends wails to notice.

"Katy!" she cries, alarmed.

Katy is climbing onto the counter, throwing spoons and plastic bowls at something on the floor, screeching. She is hysterical. "Gross! Gross, gross, gross!"

Something flies by their feet.

Cindy yelps, jumping back onto the couch. Peter watches the fuzzy creature run back and forth across the apartment, tearing it apart as it went.

"Rat!"

Cindy hisses. "That is not a rat! Even for New York, that is too big to be a rat!"

"It's the size of a cat!" Katy wails, distressed.

Peter reaches for a nearby textbook. "It must've snuck inside looking for some place warm."

"Who cares," Cindy hisses. "Kill it!"

He throws the textbook. The rat squeaks, offended, before running straight towards him, scattering across his feet.

Peter leaps onto the ceiling, shrieking. "So gross," he cries. "Oh, that is so gross!"

"You're the superhero!" Cindy shouts.

"Go away!"

The creature shatters, trying to find a place to hide in Peter's small apartment. It was disgustingly large and reeked familiarity of a back alley.

"I'm gonna cry," Katy declares.

Cindy finally manages to free her hands and flings the cushions at it. Many things happen at once. She misses, the lamp crashes to the ground, Peter shouts, and the rat begins to charge.

Suddenly, an overwhelming amount of stimulus shrunk to the focus size of a pin hole.

Cindy panics, smashing her foot into the oncoming rodent. It flies into the nearby wall, crashing through the plaster and wood, clearing the wall entirely. With a sickening crunch, it hits the brick wall in the other room.

Through the large whole, they can see the cracked brick in the other room and the bloody mess accompanying it. Katy blanches instinctively.

Peter feels a familiar tingle at the back of his neck, staring at the damage far too effortlessly strong for a normal human being. He looks at her, speechless, as an unfamiliar sense of recognition washes over him. His spider sense hums happily.

"Shit."