Chapter Text
“Hey, hey, hey.” Peter whispers. His voice is scratchy from the few hours sleep he’s managed to get. His whole body feels sore from exhaustion, and the pummelling he’d had on his way to the hospital. The lack of sleep the last couple days, paired with the hospital food, slowing down his usual healing abilities.
Even still, MJ’s had a rougher ride, and he’ll do whatever he can to grant her even just a couple more minutes of sleep.
“Sh, sh, sh. That’s it. Daddy’s gotcha.” He coos, cautiously and carefully picking May out from the crib. The words still feel strange in his mouth. He can’t quite believe that they belong to him and they’re his to say. For years he thought it might be something he only heard from a distance – on the street, TV, from his friends as they welcomed in their own families, but no. They’re his.
He gets to say them.
He gets to look upon this tiny human and tell her who he is. The little sniffles and attempts at cries as she figures out what she wants are his responsibility to sort.
She’s his little girl, after all. His MayDay. The signal that had torn him away from Schultz and sent him barrelling down the streets like a hound out of hell.
May makes a couple more noises. Each one tugging at a different set of Peter’s heartstrings until it feels like there’s a whole damn symphony playing in his chest.
“Quite the musician, huh?” He asks, cradling her to his chest and adjusting the blanket round her. “How about we keep it low until your Mommy wakes up? She’s kind of tired, but she’ll want to hear it. I promise.” He says to her softly. She wriggles ever so in his arms, and Peter fears she’s about to cry out again.
“She’s gonna be proud of whatever you sing for her. Mhm. She’s gonna be proud of whatever you do. We both are.”
May wriggles again, before seemingly settling. The attention apparently all she was wanting for the moment, maybe the warmth. Peter has no clue. After everything he’s read and heard, he still feels no more prepared for this than before when this was just a late night fantasy.
“No matter what. Always gonna be so proud of you. You’re gonna change the world, May. They aren’t ready.” May makes the start of another cry, one of disbelief Peter thinks, and of course, it’s his job to correct that. “Nope. I know for a fact. This world isn’t ready for you and all you’re gonna do. Wanna know how I know?”
He doesn’t get a reply. Thats alright, he’s got plenty of words for them both in the meantime, he doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of her. Whether she’s replying to him or sleeping soundly in his arms. He’ll always have time for her, always have something for her even if it’s not words or advice like Ben had managed to give him so frequently. Even if it’s just endless and undying amounts of love. He’s got it.
“It’s cause you’ve already changed mine. You weren’t even here yet, and you’d already changed it. That’s how amazing you are.”
He’s crying. Peter’s crying, silent tears of pride and joy running down his face as he looks down at his daughter.
Eventually, May joins in with the tears – hers from hunger and he’s forced to wake MJ.
Like with everything, she takes it in her stride. He’s fought six separate villains across the city, rounded up escaped convicts in the same timeframe, and still he thinks she’s been awake longer than he had been in those few days. She doesn’t look like it though.
Her hair is flat from not being washed, there’s bags under her eyes, and her skin doesn’t look as bright. She’s still so fucking beautiful. Peter can’t believe the things she’s done and yet she still looks like that.
Peter can’t believe that he gets to look at her as she holds their daughter. This small moment that is theirs, and will forever be theirs because they’ll do everything they can for this little girl and they’ll do it together.
He watches on as MJ’s sleepy smile drifts from May to him then back to May, like she’s magnetic. They’re just needles spinning in water until they find her again – their true north.
He doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve the sight before him. He doesn’t know if he will ever do enough to deserve it, but he will try every single day. He’ll do it for them. He’ll find a way because he would rather die than having anything ruin the picture he’s looking at right now. His wife, who’s strength has carried him through to this very day, and their daughter, who’s been waiting to see the world for nine months and who’s going to take it by storm.
May is meant to be at a sleepover. She’d told her mom she’d be out the house – and she had been. She'd gone to Sarah's, she’d eaten dinner with them, she’d changed into her pyjamas, she’d bundled under blankets for a movie. They’d chosen a chic flick with a plan to scare themselves silly later on with a horror movie once Sarah's parents had gone to bed and they themselves were meant to be asleep. They had the whole night ahead of them.
It was meant to be fun.
May was meant to be at a sleepover and sleepovers were fun.
She wasn’t smiling very much for a night that was meant to be fun.
Instead, she was sat under blankets, tears prickling at her eyes. She checked her phone – no messages, nothing from her mom since her last reply of ‘Call me if anything changes. Have fun! Love you’. No extra check-ins, just giving May the space that she said she wanted. Space that must be so hard for her to offer with everything that’s happened.
There is no reason to panic, but there’s rocks in May’s chest. They sit in her lungs, making it impossible for her chest to rise and fall at a steady pace. They poke at her heart, continuously cutting into it with a pain she can't explain.
Her head is buzzing, but there is no danger around. No reason for her senses to be going haywire, but she feels tense and ready to leap off the couch. Her eyes pull away from the screen, checking the windows and it’s quiet. The sky is just empty. There’s no oncoming threats.
She pays no attention to the first movie, so desperately trying to keep her breathing in check and keep her frantic beating heart from Sarah.
It should be fun, but it isn’t.
May should be happy, but she’s not.
She’s away from home, and that should be okay, but it isn’t.
The blanket covering her legs isn’t right, and the smell of the house isn’t the same. It lacks that notes of fresh cotton that stick in her house, having seeped into the floorboards from the cleaner her parents had used time and time again to get out spilled drinks, baby food-... blood. The temperature is wrong. It’s too warm. At this time of the evening, it should be colder so that her dad would complain, tucking his feet under her mom’s legs and earning a shriek from her even though hit was a daily routine. There should be threats of ‘putting socks on or else’, Banter and back and forth until one of them finally got up to change the thermostat.
It hadn’t been like that at her own home for a while, but at least the memories were there. Here there’s none. Here there’s only Sarah and her family. May has a few memories here, school projects and sleepovers from years ago, but they’re only hers – her parents never came inside. Catch-ups between the adults would happen out front while May tried to drag them back to the car, pleading as they embarrassed her.
There’s no sign of them here. No mark of them.
Like they never existed. But. They did. They do. Her mom was back at the apartment, and-... her dad. Her dad had been here. Of course he had. She was evidence of that, but there was.
He wasn’t.
Another shaky breath rattles through her. Sarah doesn’t seem to notice, absorbed in the scenes on screen.
He wasn’t here. Anymore. And he hadn’t ever been here, and maybe she wasn’t quite so ready to take steps away from the places he had been as she thought.
Her mom had already had so much to deal with from the funeral, to getting May back into school, to getting back to work, asking her to pick her up felt stupid – even though the offer had been there. It was only a short subway home. The trip would be good for her. It would calm her down, maybe she’d loop back round to Sarah’s. Maybe it was all a big over-reaction that her mom didn’t need to worry about at all.
May was always in awe of her mom. It was difficult not to be with how she so deftly handled her career and her family. How she kept the press at bay, but also wrapped around her finger.
When she’d learnt about all her dad’s jobs, she’d considered him cooler for a while. Hard not to when he’s a superhero. As she’d gotten older, gotten to know what that had meant, she went back to being in awe of her mom and how she handled it all, understanding more than ever why her dad looked at her as though she hung the stars.
Following his death, her mom had let her know it was okay to be sad. She hadn’t hidden her pain away from May, but had kept the worst of it sheltered. May knew she had bad days. There was no other explanation for the days that her Uncles stopped by unannounced, not trying to fill a gap but walking around it – her mom encouraging them out the house for fresh air for a while.
May knew what that meant, and when she’d come home, her mom would hold her tightly and they’d cry together. It was nice to know that even months down the line her pain wasn’t blown out of proportion – that the very person her dad had said he attributed all his strength to, cried at the fact that for once, it hadn’t been enough.
She’s also happy she’s never had to see a bad day. May doesn’t think she could take it.
Tonight, May wasn’t meant to be home though. She was meant to be at a sleepover. She was meant to be gone for the night for the first time since her dad had died.
She wonders if this was one of her mom’s bad nights. If she’s interrupted the few chances that she gets to properly let everything out without worrying that she’s making things harder or hurting May with it.
Her mom is curled up, asleep, on the couch, still in the clothes she’d worn to work that morning and glasses still on. There’s leftovers in front of her but they haven’t been touched. Her phone is sat in front of her. It’s silent, but she has no doubt that there’s emails and texts coming in non-stop. She’s also certain that if she were to call or text it would light up and scream like a siren.
May doesn’t test her theory.
She creeps closer, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist, only now realising how wet her face was from the tears. She’ll apologise to Sarah for the state she’d left in tomorrow. Now, she just looks at her mom – who even asleep, still looks so tired.
It doesn’t look right for her to be there alone. Vivid memories of both her mom and her dad, falling asleep on each other not even twenty minutes in their movie nights. She remembers her mom coming home from work stressed and falling on to that very couch, wrapping her arms around May’s shoulders and kissing her head while begging to hear about her day, her dad sliding a camomile tea into her hands without a single word. She used to hate it.
She used to hate how they’d kiss, and brush their hands, like they any extra moment they could get still wasn’t enough. She hated their teasing and their banter. Thought it so embarrassing, and now what she’d give to see him walk in from the kitchen, share a silent laugh with her as they call her mom ‘old’ before carrying her off to bed.
May would give anything for it, but she can’t. That’s not how things work.
She can climb walls, and she could lift that couch with her mom still on it, but she can’t bring people back from the dead and she can’t change time.
Instead, she does what she can. It’s not a perfect solution by any means. They don’t really exist. There’s just things that can make the pain feel a little less like rocks in their chests, digging into their lungs and their hearts. They can share it.
May steps away, going into the kitchen and boiling the kettle. She pulls it off the stove just before it whistles, and makes them both a drink.
As the tea seeps, May takes in a deep breath.
Camomile, fresh cotton – manufactured and artificial but comforting with how used to it she is, tomato from her mom’s uneaten dinner, and something under it all. Something she’s probably imagining. Her dad’s aftershave, impossible for it to be there after three months of him gone, but in her head it is.
In her head, he’s there next to her, smiling proudly down at her and squeezing her shoulder. She pictures him telling her how long to wait before it’s perfect so that her mom can take a sip right away.
She imagines him, teasing her for not making him one, and suddenly feels a wave of guilt like she should. Like there’s more to be done, and that a mug shouldn’t be all she does in his place.
She doesn’t act on it, but it eats in her mind like so much else has.
Instead, she carries the mug over to her mom, gently waking her and dragging the blanket across the both of them.
Dazed, tired and confused, her mom watches her for a moment before realisation seeps in. She accepts the drink with one hand, the other coming to rest on May’s knee.
“Call me next time. No matter what.” She murmurs. Her voice is thick and dry. She’d been crying earlier.
May is in awe of her mom, because she’s hurting, but she keeps going. May sees that strength her dad was always talking about.
“I didn’t want to bother you.” May admits, because secrets feel silly. Her mom has seen her bad days. May needs her on those bad days. Secrets feel so ridiculous right now, so she says the truth she was set on keeping to herself.
“You couldn’t. Never you, sweetheart.” Her mom tells her, her hand, moving from her knee to wrap around her shoulders. May leans into it. She closes her eyes. There’s no one on her other side, but she knows he’d be watching them if he could.