Archive of Our Own

Stepping through the front door and immediately getting pinned to the wall by a mercenary was, in the scheme of things, a pretty normal Tuesday.

“Hello, Wa—” Matt got out before getting a hand clamped over his mouth as well. He shut up and took a quick stock of the situation. There wasn’t anyone unexpected in their apartment; Wade’s heartbeat was a few inches away and Peter’s was over by the desk that served as their impromptu crafting table. Peter’s heartrate was spiked, but in the way that indicated irritation, not fear.

“Sorry about him,” said Peter in lieu of a greeting.

“No talking!” Wade sang back at him. “Texts only!”

“Not helping, Wade.” Peter kept working regardless.

Matt stayed still while Wade fished around in Matt’s pocket for his cellphone and pressed it into his hand. Wade let him go slowly but didn’t move back until Matt had taken the hint and gotten out his earbud and put it on. Wade stepped back properly then and started tapping on his own phone’s keyboard.

That was no real surprise. Just about everyone who could trigger Wade’s protective streak was in the room right now, so for him to be this jumpy, the logical reason was that something was up with Peter.

The text-to-speech in his ear was quick, and Matt swiped out his response almost as quickly. Still, he’d want to switch to a physical keyboard if this was going to be how they’d have to communicate for the rest of the night. Ideally, Wade could also be convinced that it wasn’t quite as funny as he thought to use that many emoji, but Matt was fairly sure it would take a headache of his own for Wade’s protectiveness to overcome his predilection for being annoying. Matt focused on the more concrete problem first.

Matt shook his head in fond exasperation as he tucked away his phone. Wade waved at him cheerfully, which only worked because Matt was who he was, as Matt headed to his home office to keep working as quietly as he could. Peter said “welcome home” to him as he passed, and Matt responded with a wave of his own, leaving it up to Peter to decide if he wanted to turn and see the gesture or not.

Peter sat on the wall a couple hours later, munching on a cheese sandwich that Wade had threatened a delicatessen into making and then overpaid for, while Wade and Matt sat on more respectable pieces of furniture to eat their own sandwiches. Peter’s repaired headphones were noise-canceling by normal people’s standards, but mostly served to decrease the cacophony of the city down to manageable levels for him. Not being able to hear everything for five blocks around did wonders for his stress level. “Thanks for waiting, guys.”

Matt smiled up at him. “It’s what we do.”

Matt leaned back against the couch, nursing a beer and letting Wade click through an electronics website and read out his findings. Peter was nominally out at an evening review session at Empire State, although neither of them would have put much odds that he made it all the way there without getting distracted. “Is there anything else we should put in the bags? It’d be pretty suspicious if he finds brand new backpacks containing nothing but new headphones, wouldn’t it?” His voice was a deep rumble of vocal fry that gave a feeling of comfort and home to them both.

“‘New backpacks?’” Wade tilted his head. “I thought we were going on a scavenger hunt to find his old ones!”

“In Queens?” The thought of running around Queens rooftops felt oddly unsettling to Matt. Muscling into another vigilante’s turf just wasn’t done.

Unless you were Wade, of course. Wade had no sense of social decorum.

“It’ll be fun!”

“If they’re bags he couldn’t find when he went back for them originally, what makes you think he’ll find them again now?”

Wade waved an arm expressively. “He finds them eventually! And... we could put some really stinky cheese inside to help him sniff them out!”

“Great. So he’ll be bringing stinky backpacks back to the apartment.” Matt took another drink. “I’ll leave that plan to you. I’ll get some new bags and add some fresh notebooks or something, like he lost them right away. He could probably use some more, anyway.”

“They’ll get waterlogged,” Wade warned.

Matt sighed. “Knowing his luck, that just adds to the verisimilitude.”

Matt flinched at the stench of cheese as Peter dropped his backpack on the floor. “Peter...”

“I’m back!”

“I noticed.”

“It was a weird one out there today!” Peter aggressively brushed off the feathers that had gotten stuck in his clothing. They floated slowly to the floor.

“What did you bring in with you?” Matt suspected he knew.

“I found one of my old backpacks!” Peter crouched down to unzip it, and Matt gagged at the increased stench.

“Petey!!” Wade slid into the living room on duck-patterned socks to watch the action.

“Hey, Wade!” Peter started unloading his newly-recovered backpack onto the floor, separating the contents out into “salvagable” and “irredeemable” piles. A moldy hunk of cheese went into the latter pile along with most other things that were porous and non-washable, while a pair of noise-canceling earbuds went into the salvageable stack. “Wow, this thing smells almost half as bad as the dumpster it was stashed near!”

Matt sighed and set about opening the windows. “As someone who’s woken up in a dumpster, I can believe that.”

Peter shimmied into his Spider suit and set about doing up the closures as he bounced into the living room. The padding around the middle was only minimally effective at protecting his organs from a punch — a strike that was hard enough to bother him wasn’t going to be affected by a bit of foam anyway — but it was quite effective at smoothing out his silhouette. Baggy hoodies did the same trick, but they were much more practical for classes than webswinging (although he’d certainly swung in a hoodie and even shown up to school in a Spider suit on one memorable occasion).

“Don’t forget your lunch money!” Wade chucked a pair of protein bars at him, which Peter caught reflexively and tucked into a pouch at his waist, followed by an apple, which he promptly took a bite of.

Peter kept patting down his hidden pouches and pockets one-handed, making sure he had everything he needed as he munched on the apple. “I don’t think you understand the concept of money, Wade.”

“I don’t think you understand the concept of lunch!”

“...fair enough.” Peter zipped another pouch closed. “You guys don’t need any help tonight?”

“Nah, no kitten rescues on my schedule.” Wade laughed as he ducked the half-eaten apple that was Peter’s concise retort about both Wade’s chosen profession and his own.

“The raid against the Enforcers should be happening around 10 if you want to help wrangle any runners,” Matt offered. None of them were probably supposed to know about that, which in practice just meant they made a habit of not asking each other about their sources.

“Got it!” Peter programmed a series of alarms into his phone — a leisurely alert that would give him time to help out passersby on his way there, followed by increasingly pessimistic follow-ups that assumed the worst about his distractability. He could always turn them off later if they weren’t needed. (They’d probably be needed.)

“Be safe out there, sweetie~!” Wade sang out from the kitchen, more of a tease than a sincere well-wish.

“You know I try!” Peter tucked his noise-canceling earbuds into a final pocket and sat down on the sill in front of the open window, pulling on his mask. He hesitated there for a moment. “...you guys know I couldn’t have afforded name-brand tech, right?”

Wade choked on nothing and ensconced himself further into the kitchen.

Matt shook his head at Wade’s ridiculousness and gave Peter a fond smile. “We have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Peter sighed and shook his head before smiling, the warmth of it shining through his voice even though no one could see his face. “Thanks, guys.” He threw them a salute before tumbling backwards out the window into the evening New York cityscape, letting the conversation drop there. After all, they were all entitled to their secrets.